Part 9

And unfortunately warm-blooded and soft-skinned excellent men are just the ones least remarkable for steadiness and moderation in bearing the poetical sorrows which authors send them. I cannot, therefore, possibly leave this third part, which will too easily affect people, wholly without a preface in the way of counterpoise, unless I am willing to be myself the cause of innocent persons weeping over the best scenes of this part, and suffering from sympathy. Such too sensitive persons, to whom Nature has denied æsthetic apathy to cases of great distress in tragedies and romances, should,--unless they are fat, for sorrow is good for fatness as a fasting-cure and _lapis infernalis_,[50]--these should make themselves cold, and arm themselves against the tragic poet with philosophy; they should console themselves during the reading of a great affliction and say: "How long does such a printed misery last? How soon a book and a life are over! To-morrow thou wilt think very differently. The unhappy condition into which I am here brought by Shakespeare exists, in truth, only in my own imagination, and my sorrow over it is indeed, according to the stoic, only illusion. One must not, says Epictetus in his handbook, bewail that which lies not in our will, and the sad scene of Klopstock here is, in fact, an external thing, which thou canst not alter. Wilt thou let thyself be shamed by a North American, by a saltwork-man of Halle, by the rabble, by the Cretin from Gex,[51] who bore that whole scene from Goethe's Tasso quietly and composedly, without the moistening of an eye?"

I assure the readers that I take the field here only against their wives and sisters; for among readers of our sex stout-hearted spectators of æsthetic woes have never been wholly wanting, and still less than among the vulgar themselves; and least of all would I have the appearance of disputing the great majority of business-people, reviewers, criminal-lawyers, and Dutchmen, the possession of great composure during the reading of sad crape-clad scenes, which I and others give to the press. Much rather do I fondly persuade myself that--if there ever was hope of the like--it is precisely now, when the German promises to put on that Belgian stoicism, that noble insensibility, which so becomes him, and through which he is made bullet- and blade-proof against Melpomene's dagger, and goes through Dante's hell, as Christ did through the real one, without suffering. We never, to be sure, had the sensibility of the French, and their Racine would never have been for us anything more than a prince's jester; but we are now, if an author does not absolutely push the matter too far and bring in too many battle-fields, and cups of rat-poison, and gallows-trees,--for that takes hold of us,--but if he only half good-humoredly trots along--I seem really to see him at this moment riding--on a mourning-steed, and shakes with one hand a death-bell, and with the other swings (ah, woe!) a funeral-marshal's baton; or if, finally, he only delineates the invisible, stanched gashes of the tenderer, more delicate soul;--then are we now already in a condition to maintain our merry humor, and to show what a German can endure. People of more moderate force _sleep_ at least, so as not to _suffer_ over a Goethe's _Iphigenia_, because sleep sets sufferers right; or we absolutely forget such elegies, because, according to Plattner, we have no memory for sorrows, and because oblivion--as a prince wrote--is the only remedy for sorrows; or Heaven sends us, as after sorrow joy, after a Messiad (of which a good travesty were to be desired for us) a Blumauer's parody, over which we can easily forget the preceding epopee.

W.

Women.--Ye sweet, soft spring flowers and angel shoots by the side of us hard winter-cabbage-stumps, I have indeed already, under the former letter, remembered you and your tenderness in contrast to the German _immeltableness_! What shall I further say, except that, when you are good, you are so in the highest degree, and that you and the Cornwall tin have one and the same kind of stamp,--namely, the figure of an angel?

X (see I K S).--Y (see I).--Z (see T S).

Tz.

Spitz.--Poor Spitz likes as well to be in Prefaces among Extra-Shoots as his Master, and comes in just right with the Twenty-ninth Chapter. I can talk for hours with Pomeranian dogs, as Yorick did with asses. I will now set the messenger of the gods on his hind-feet and hold him by the fore-paws, that he may listen to me in an erect posture.----"Stand, nimble beast!--I talk with thee about something only that I may place thee in the third Preface. It deserves, Spitz, to be remarked, that thou art a rogue as men are, and like them wilt not remain _straight_, but _crooked_ and bowed down, merely for the sake of eating well; thou and they will, like Faro-cards, win by _bending_ and _crooking_, as the common English bend their bad silver money that it may not be passed for less, namely, two pieces for one. Thou hast false eyes, but nevertheless thy actions are good. The reviewers, impatient cattle, say, if they were in thy place, they would bring along the biographical building-stuff more industriously, that the biography might be over before it snows;--meet them not with the counter-assertion, that I might do like Baronius, who began his annals without a beard and ended them with a gray one. In that can only reviewers (but not I) imitate him, who have time to polish, and who can begin a work beardless, on shaving day, and not till three days after finish it, when they are lathered.---Just fall down, Hofmann, and eat; thou art at least not wholly without sense, and givest more heed to an harangue, after all, than a Dauphin-fœtus, and at least waggest thy tail, which the fœtus does not. I have now to talk with quite other people, and the fewest possible among them wag their tails in token of appreciation, Spitz!"

JEAN PAUL.

29. DOG-POST-DAY.

Conversion.--Billet-Doux of the Watch.--Crape Hat.

In the morning Clotilda went off to her poplar-Island, and at noon Victor departed to his Pontine marsh,--both contented with a separation which made them worthy to enjoy a reunion. The first thing to which the court-physician gave himself in Flachsenfingen was--afterthought, or rather after-feeling. Man is the Iceland-spar of time, which shows all scenes twice, side by side. Memory caught once more in her mirror the moonshine of last night, and the angels which floated in it, and turned the mirror with this lustre, with this perspective, towards my Victor. He thought over Clotilda's past conduct, in which he--as I hope my reader has--discovered the traits of the purest love, which looks with only one eye out of the veil, together with the traces of a decided mastery of woman's feelings over woman's wishes. She comes on the 1st of May from Maienthal with a weeping heart, which, torn away from a dead companion, still bleeds on from its open wounds.--The pupil of Emanuel meets her, and she hastens back again to the grave, there to quench in tears of mourning her first love.--But Emanuel communicates his holy fire to this love by his own, by his praise of the beloved, by his open letter full of germinating love, which the latter had written to him on the birthday festival of the 4th of May.--She returns unrestored, towards the time of his approaching departure.--But her good Emanuel, with the cruel kindness of friendship, impresses the image which makes her heart too uneasy still more deeply into its wounds, by reporting to her Victor's life in Maienthal and his confession that he loves her. Victor is silent before her, but she thinks he is so because he has no permission from his father to speak with her about Flamin's relationship.--He goes to court, and seems to forget her, nay, he puts upon her the chains of the court office, which nevertheless, as he knows, oppress her soul even to blood. Her parents, either by way of sounding her, or of flattering her secret suitor Matthieu with her female veiling of herself, extort from her by a tyrannical question the unhappy No, which deceives her brother and repels her friend. Victor steals away, on her festal evening, from the garden, without speaking to her, thereupon visits her parents again, and grows entirely cool. Now she hears nothing more of him excepting, at most, of his pleasures at court and his visits to Joachime.----Ay, thou good soul, thus, in conflict with wishes and with troubles, in sick pining after the loved soul, must all thy joys go to sleep and thy hopes die out, and thy innocent cheeks grow pale!----As, now, Victor thus thought over this sad past, and remembered how, in the playhouse, where he revealed to her his knowledge of her sisterly relation, the last bloom of her cheek, the last twig of hope, fell off, because she could regard his previous silence as owing to a command of his father,--and as all these traits conspired to form the image of a heavenly queen before whom it is easier to kneel down than to embrace her,--and as he further reflected that this noble heart, improved by an Emanuel and worthy of an Emanuel, nevertheless gave itself with all its heavens to the fickle heart of the pupil----and that the good soul could not have even this modest wish fulfilled, because fate delayed the blossoming of her love like that of a rose-bush by transplanting it, by setting it in the shade, by clipping the buds in _spring_ and _autumn_,--and as he saw that nevertheless this noble one had gone off to Maienthal with her finger on her lips, with her hand on her heavy heart, without a hint of her bitter disappointment, and that moral coldness _lifted up_ this flower, as physical cold does other flowers, but tore from it thereby the roots of life,--and as, finally, his dream on the third Easter-holiday, when it appeared to him as if he saw her rise singing from the earth on a light veil of mist, passed by before him like a great rain-cloud, and the dream with her faded hues paused before his pining soul, and a voice out of the dream asked him, "Wilt thou long continue to love her, when angels yearn for her and lift her out of her sorrow, and leave thee nothing but the grave of the too long misinterpreted heart?"----As all these thoughts, in glowing procession, like mountain chains of ruddy evening clouds, moved around his soul, then was his heart, like an altar, covered by a sacrificial fire falling from heaven, and all his earthly desires, all his stains, were consumed in this fire,--in short, he resolved to amend himself, in order, by virtue, to be worthy of a virtuous woman.

He was converted on the 3d of April, 1793, towards evening; when the moon--and the EARTH--were under his feet in the Nadir.

The reader may have laughed at this chronometer; but every man in whom virtue is anything higher than an accidental _water-sucker_ and wood-shoot, must be able to tell the hour wherein she became the Hamadryad of his inner being,--which the theologians call conversion and the Moravians the _breaking-through_. Why should not time mark off our spiritual sensations, when in fact it is only they that mark off its periods?

There is--or comes--in every man who is more solar than planetary, a lofty hour when his heart, amidst violent commotions and painful rendings, at last, by a lifting-up, suddenly turns round towards virtue, in an indescribable transition like that in which man lifts himself over from one system of faith to another, or, suddenly, from the highest point of wrath to a melting forgiveness of all faults;--that lofty hour, the birth-hour of the virtuous life, is also its sweetest hour, because it is to man as if his oppressive body were taken off from him; because he enjoys the bliss of feeling in himself _no contradictions_; because all his chains fall; _because he fears nothing more_ in the awfully sublime universe.--The spectacle is great, when the angel is born in man; when, thereafter, on the horizon of earth, the whole solar warmth of virtue falls upon his heart unobstructed by a cloud.

But poor mortal man, the prisoner man, immersed in blood, encased in flesh, soon feels the difference between his raptures and his powers; he who was going to subdue the promised land, when its clusters of grapes came to meet him, hesitates, when he has to march against its giants (the passions). I do not, however, reject even the extravagance of that enthusiasm; Man, like buildings, must be _screwed up into the air_, in order to be _rebuilt_; a syllogism does not lead off the blood streams of our desires. It is singular that the devil in us must have alone the right to spend blood, nerves, beverage, passions, upon his military operations and for his imperial treasury, but the angel not....

So it is, however; men are vicious, because they look upon virtue as too hard, and they again become so, because they held it easier than it is. Not reason (i. e. conscience) makes us good: that is the outstretched wooden arm on the road to virtue; but this arm can neither draw nor drive us thither,--reason has the legislative, not the executive force. The power of loving these commandments, the still greater power of giving one's self up to them, is a second conscience by the side of the first; and as Kant cannot indicate with ink that which makes man bad, so neither can that be set forth which keeps his heart upright above moral filth or lifts it out of it.

Who can explain the fact, if there are men who, from youth up, either possess or do without a certain sense of honor,--in the female sex this line of division is still sharper and more important,--if there are men who, from youth up either experience or forever live without a certain yearning for the super-earthly, for religion, for the nobler principle in man (and for systems which seal this nobler quality instead of disputing it)?----(With children a warm feeling for religion is often a sign of genius.) Man does not become good (though he does grow better) because he is converted, but he gets converted because he is good.

Were virtue nothing but stoicism, then it were a mere child of reason, whereas it is at the highest her foster-daughter. Stoicism represents virtue as so useful, so reasonable, that it is nothing more than a conclusion; it gives one nothing to conquer but errors. As (according to the stoical principle) it is, not the highest, but the only good,--as, according to that principle, all desires aim at an empty nothing--it follows that virtue is no merit, but a necessity. E. g. if there is nothing odious: then love and the victory over anger towards an enemy are not harder or more meritorious than towards a friend, but all one.

What then has the Stoic to sacrifice to Virtue according to his notion, but mock-goods, air-castles, and fever-images? Nevertheless Stoicism renders Virtue, as criticism does genius, negative services; the stoical _chill_ calls forth no spring, but it destroys the insects which gnaw it; the stoical winter, like the physical, removes the _pestilence_, ere the warmer months come, which bring new life....

Although Victor said: "Thou dear one, no heart can be pure, still, tender, and great enough for thine, but the weak one which thou endurest will sanctify itself through thine and come to thee improved"; still mere love was not the source of his virtue, but the reverse was the case, only virtue could manifest itself by such a love. But even without taking that into account, a half-selfish change of purpose becomes by action a disinterested one, as the love which starts from beauty of face ennobles itself at last into love for beauty of soul.

His separation from Clotilda gave him joy in the thought that so long as it lasted he should spare the delusions of her jealous brother. _General love_ now led the way to friendship for the better sort of women, and tolerance toward the worse. He annulled his satirical intolerance--which, however, was not half so great as that of young wags of authors--by toleration-mandates of his own. He read Gulliver's last journey into Horse-land (Houynheim), as a recipe against lying when one goes to court. His Kubach[52] and jewel-casket and his _collegium pietatis_ consisted of three dissimilar volumes,--Kant, Jacobi, and Epictetus.

I could wish, however, that he would not make himself ridiculous. Of a man who had been nine months at court, one was surely justified in expecting that he would behave differently, and not offend against that equality of ranks and of vices; as men practise sins best in common, as in Swiss churches the hearers must cough simultaneously, or as recruits on their march must make water at the same time. At least, the well-bred man seeks to conceal his love for his religion, as well as that for his wife.--I return to the story.

Victor determined now to make only visits that annoyed himself and pleased his neighbor. The first was an extraordinary tribute of a visit to the Princess (for his daily portioning-tax[53] of calls on her now ceased). To be sure, the thick hour-watch of old Bee-father Lind was every minute an alarm-clock to hold up before him his former foolhardy jokes, his watch-enclosure, and love-letter to Agnola. I cannot avoid the apprehension that the reader may make a slip, and not dream with what heart Sebastian went to the Princess;--O, with one full of dumb apologies and--exculpations, with a distended breast full of proud confidence, and yet full of sympathetic mildness. Whence came this?--It came from the fair soul which now, reconciled and filled up with another's _love_, could wish nothing more but _friendship_, and which was now too happy to be inexorable. But he found in her apartment two cold, refined faces, which it is quite as hard to apologize to as to forgive,--namely, her own and that of Count von O. from Kussewitz, in whose house her transfer had taken place. Victor blushed; the Count appeared not to have the least knowledge of him,--they were not introduced to each other,--but talked together as genially as if they had been (especially as it made no difference),--and so, with cold feelings, and with the greatest indifference about their own and each other's anonymousness, they politely separated. Only Victor afterward worried himself with doubts whether he had not sooner than Agnola called the unknown Count by that title.

For the rest, he now, for the first time since he had loved Clotilda, found the partition-wall between _love_ and _friendship_ with women to be very _visible_ and very _thick_: before that he could see through the partition-wall well enough. A woman cannot choose for herself a firmer or purer friend than another woman's lover.

Victor must now also, and for still more urgent reasons, visit Joachime. The evil spirit, which, like the youngest councillors, always gives its voice first in man, made the motion that "he should indulge Joachime in the slight illusion of believing that he loved her."--As this did not pass, the _filou_[54] took another voice, and proposed that "he should punish her for her former ambiguity by the most unambiguous signs of his hatred."--But he followed willingly the good spirit which led him by the hand, and said on the way, "Go now to her,--disengage thyself from her without giving her any pain,--let thy hand glide gradually out of hers, and clear one finger after another, as maidens do with their natural hand, and assume the attitude neither of her enemy nor of her lover." He went to her house without any selfish consideration; for the latter would rather have prompted him to stay at home, and enjoy and turn over the leaves of the past and future, or else to quit the house and go to St. Luna, to sit down by Agatha beside the crape hat of Clotilda which she was studying.

In order, however, not to let his visit have too much weight in the eyes of Joachime, he proposed to himself to beg of her for some weeks the views of Maienthal, which hung in her room. O Maienthal, how much thou must have, if the very sketch of thee makes one so happy!--But his visit turned out singularly. He wished on the way that he might find in her toilette-chamber the fine fool and the fragrant fool and more stuff;--there was nothing there. She received him with a careless gayety, as if she were the Columbine[55] and the Medicus the clown. He, however, was going merely to execute the gradual weakening or _diminuendo_ of his moral dissonances; therefore he became, by his constant looking off at his note-stand, and at the score of his inner harmony, somewhat stiff and awkward in his playing. Women easily distinguish the coldness of reason (if only by the very want of extravagance) from coldness of mood. Now he asked for the views. Joachime did not grow cooler, but warm, i. e. serious, and lifted up her watch in the hollow of her hand, and said, looking at it, "I give you as many minutes' grace as you have stayed away days, to excuse your staying away." Victor accepted without embarrassment--like every one who acts only according to _one_, either good or bad, principle--the allowed time for decision, and took the _montre à régulateur_ from under the looking-glass, that Joachime might not cheat him. This cursed watch of the Princess grinned at him everywhere, like a percussion-ball and powder-mine under his feet. He wound it up just to have a chance to open this Nuremberg egg (as they used to call watches), and finally for once to examine whether the love-declaration, i. e. the _punctum saliens_ of love, or the Cupid,--who also, according to Plato, came out of an egg,--was still in there. "I know well enough--he said to himself--it has been gone this long time, but I'll just try it."

There might have been, indeed, a question whether it was the same watch, as the one in Tostato's shop had no diamonds,--had there not come fluttering out from this Pandora's box, so soon as it was opened at the window, a little thin piece of paper half as big as a butterfly's wing, and as long as the stamen of a tulip.--The little leaf took flight at every breath of wind.----Joachime caught the thing,--read the thing,--found the declaration of love still there,--took it for one which he was just making to _herself_, by way of atoning for his absence, and which, for the sake of the wit (he might allude to its heart-shape), he had been trying to incorporate into the watch....

Every one can imagine how he felt about the matter.--He would have got through it very well, if he had dared to lie terribly, or if he could have ventured at least to imitate the few courtiers who, into the twenty-eight pounds of blood which irrigate their bodies, have not instilled twenty-eight drops of honest blood,--of which a single one may, as a _liquor probatorius_, leave behind in the remaining mass confounded precipitates. But his soul loathed this new bait to lure him to a lie. The reader cannot possibly yet know that Victor shot aside from the mark,--that is to say, that, on account of the remoteness of Joachime's suspicion, he did not guess it at all, but fell upon the nearer one, that Joachime had nosed out his whole whimsical trick upon the Princess. He was never capable of holding up another's body as a shield against the arrows which were aimed at his own,--a habit on the Court-Moriah, which, not, like the Old Testament plan, redeems an _Isaac_ with a _ram_, but a ram with an Isaac; he was to-day least of all capable of sacrificing the Princess to save himself; but neither could he bring himself even to _this_, to sacrifice Joachime for the sake of saving _her_, i. e. to recoin the devil's-billet into a sweet-billet (_billet-doux_) to Joachime. The Satan in him screamed himself hoarse to get him only so far along, that he at least would lie by silent expression of countenance, and justify hers, wherein there began to be less and less appearance as if she supposed it directed to another lady.