Part 12

He was keeping up courage, because he was writing a book! He told his mother, with his high dreams of young authorship, that he should bring home all his old shirts and stockings at vacation, for he should buy new ones then! It is well that all the mountains seem easy to climb in youth; when we are older, we come to know their actual height. The mother discouraged authorship, and hoped her boy would become a preacher; but his project was too dear to be given up. When his book of satirical essays, called "Eulogy of Stupidity," was finished, it was sent, with beating heart, to a publisher. In vain Paul awaited its return. He hoped it would be ready at Michaelmas fair, but the publisher "so long and so kindly patronized the book by letting it lie on his desk, that the fair was half over before the manuscript was returned." The boyish heart must have ached when the parcel came. He had not learned, what most authors are familiar with, the heart sickness from first rejected manuscripts. He had not learned, too, that fame is a hard ladder to climb, and that a "friend at court" is often worth as much, or more, than merit. Publishers are human, and cannot always see merit till fame is won.

For a whole year Paul tried in vain to find a publisher. Then he said to the manuscript, "Lie there in the corner together with school exercises, for thou art no better. I will forget, for the world would certainly have forgotten thee." Faint from lack of food, he says, "I undertook again a wearisome work, and created in six months a brand-new satire." This book was called the "Greenland Lawsuits," a queer title for a collection of essays on theology, family pride, women, fops, and the like.

Paul had now gained courage by failure. Instead of writing a letter, he went personally to every publisher in Leipzig, and offered his manuscript, and every publisher refused it. Finally he sent it to Voss of Berlin. On the last day of December, as he sat in his room, hungry, and shivering because there was no fire in the stove, there was a knock at the door, and a letter from Voss was handed in. He opened it hastily, and found an offer of seventy dollars for the "Greenland Lawsuits." Through his whole life he looked back to this as one of its supreme moments. It was not a great sum, only three dollars a week for the six months, but it was the first fruit of his brain given to the public. He was now nineteen. What little property the mother had possessed had wasted away in the lawsuits; one brother in his despair had drowned himself, and another had entered the army; but Paul still had hope in the future.

After a short vacation with his mother, he went back to Leipzig. The second volume of the "Greenland Lawsuits" was now published, and for this he received one hundred and twenty-six dollars,--nearly twice that given for the first volume. This did not take with the public, and the third volume was refused by every publisher. His money was gone. What could he do? He would try, as some other authors had done, the plan of writing letters to distinguished people, telling them his needs. He did so, but received no answers. Then, spurred on by necessity, he took the manuscript in his hand, and presented it himself at the doors of the learned; but he was either not listened to, or repulsed on every occasion. How one pities this lad of nineteen! How many wealthy men might have aided him, but they did not! He wrote a few essays for various periodicals, but these brought little money, and were seldom wanted. His high hopes for a literary career began to vanish.

It was evident that he must give up college life, for he could not get enough to eat. He had long discontinued his evening meal, making his supper of a few dried prunes. His boarding-mistress was asking daily for her dues. He could bear the privation and the disgrace no longer, and, packing his satchel, and borrowing a coat from a college boy, that he might not freeze, he stole away from Leipzig in the darkness of the twilight, and went home to his disconsolate mother. Is it any wonder that the poor are disconsolate? Is it any wonder that they regard the wealthy as usually cold and indifferent to their welfare? Alas! that so many of us have no wish to be our "brother's keeper."

Perhaps some of the professors and students wondered where the bright lad had gone; but the world forgets easily. Frau Richter received her college boy with a warm heart, but an empty purse. She was living with her two children in one room, supporting them as best she could by spinning, working far into the night. In this room, where cooking, washing, cleaning, and spinning were all carried on, Paul placed his little desk and began to write. Was the confusion trying to his thoughts? Ah! necessity knows no law. He says, "I was like a prisoner, without the prisoner's fare of bread and water, for I had only the latter; and if a gulden found its way into the house, the jubilee was such that the windows were nearly broken with joy." But with the strength of a noble and heroic nature, he adds, "What is poverty that a man should whine under it? It is but like the pain of piercing the ears of a maiden, and you hang precious jewels in the wound."

The family were so needy, however, that they must look somewhere for aid, and hesitatingly Paul applied to Vogel, the young pastor, who loaned them twenty-five gulden. Very soon the boarding-mistress from Leipzig appeared, having walked the whole way to Hof, and demanded her pay. In his distress Paul sent her to another friend, Otto, who became surety for the debt.

Richter now began to work harder than ever. His books of extracts were invaluable, as were his hand-books of comical matters, touching incidents, synonyms, etc. He made it a rule to write half a day, and take long walks in the afternoon in the open air, thinking out the plans for his books. Poor as he was, he was always cheerful, sustaining by his letters any who were downhearted. One of his best friends, Herman, who had become a physician through much struggle, died about this time, broken on the wheel of poverty. Despite his own starving condition, Paul sent him five dollars. Having an opportunity to teach French to the brother of a Leipzig friend, he accepted; but at the end of three years, through the disappointing character of the pupil, and the miserliness of the father, Paul returned to his mother, broken in health and dispirited. His heart ached for those who like himself were suffering, and now he made a resolution that changed for life the course of his writing. He would write satire no more. He said, "I will not pour into the cup of humanity a single drop of gall." Henceforward love, and hope, and tenderness, breathe upon his every page.

He now wrote ten essays on "What is Death?" asking the noble-hearted Herder to send them to Weiland for his magazine, lest they be overlooked in his mass of papers, if Richter, unaided, should venture to ask the favor. They were overlooked for months; but finally Herder procured the insertion of one essay in a different magazine, but Richter never received any pay for it. Three years had passed, and all this time the third volume of the "Greenland Lawsuits" had been journeying from one publishing house to another. At last it was accepted, but little money came from it.

Again he taught,--this time at Schwarzenbach, where he used to go to school. Here his tenderness, his tact, and good cheer won the hearts of the pupils. There was no memorizing of Latin dictionaries, but the exact work of all was kept in a "red book" for parents to see. He instructed them orally five hours a day, till they were eager for astronomy, history, and biography. For four years he taught, "his schoolroom being his Paradise," every Sunday walking to Hof to see his mother. Well might he say, "To the man who has had a mother all women are sacred for her sake."

Paul now determined to write a novel, and though he had little knowledge of any sphere of life save that in which poverty held sway, he would put his own heart into the work. The "Invisible Lodge" was written and sent to the Counsellor of the town, asking, if the work pleased him, that he would assist in its publication. At first Counsellor Moritz was annoyed at the request; but as he read he became deeply interested, and said, this is surely from Goethe, Herder, or Weiland. The book was soon published, and two hundred and twenty-six dollars paid for it! The moment Richter received the first instalment of seventy dollars, he hastened to Hof, and there, late at night, found his mother spinning by the light of the fire, and poured the whole of the gold into her lap. The surprise, joy, and thanksgiving of the poor woman can well be imagined. Her son immediately moved her into a small but more comfortable home.

The new novel began to be talked about and widely read. Fame was really coming. He began at once to work on "Hesperus," one of his most famous productions, though when published he received only two hundred dollars for the four volumes. Letters now came from scholars and famous people. One admirer sent fifty Prussian dollars. What joy must have swelled the heart of the poor schoolteacher! "Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces" followed shortly after, and Richter was indeed famous. Learned ladies of Weimar wrote most enthusiastic thanks. With his reverence for woman, and delight in her intellectual equality with man, these letters were most inspiring. Request after request came for him to visit Weimar. Dare he go and meet such people as Goethe, and Schiller, and Herder, and Weiland, whom for twelve long years he had hoped sometime to look upon? At last he started, and upon reaching Weimar, was made the lion of the day. His warm heart, generous and unaffected nature, and brilliant and well-stored mind made him admired by all. Herder said: "Heaven has sent me a treasure in Richter. That I neither deserved nor expected. He is all heart, all soul; an harmonious tone in the great golden harp of humanity." Caroline Herder, his wife, a very gifted woman, was equally his friend and helper. Noble and intellectual women gathered about him to do him honor. Some fell in love with him; but he studied them closely as models for future characters in his books, giving only an ardent friendship in return. He was even invited to court, and gathered here the scenes for his greatest work, "Titan." How grand all this seemed to the poor man who had been hungering all his life for refined and intellectual companionship! So rejoiced was he that he wrote home, "I have lived twenty years in Weimar in a few days. I am happy, wholly happy, not merely beyond all expectation, but beyond all description."

He was now thirty-four. The poor, patient mother had just died, but not till she had heard the fame of her son spoken on every hand. After her death, Paul found a faded manuscript in which she had kept the record of those small gains in spinning into the midnight hours. He carried it next his heart, saying, "If all other manuscripts are destroyed, yet will I keep this, good mother." For weeks he was not able to write a letter, or mention the loss of his parent.

His youngest brother, Samuel, a talented boy, was now ready for college; so Jean Paul determined to make Leipzig his home while his brother pursued his course. What changes the last few years had wrought! Then he was stealing away from Leipzig in debt for his board, cold, hungry, and desolate; now he was coming, the brilliant author whom everybody delighted to honor. When we are in want, few are ready to help; when above want, the world stands ready to lavish all upon us. After spending some time in Leipzig, he visited Dresden to enjoy the culture of that artistic city. During this visit, Samuel, who had become dissipated, broke into his brother's desk, stole all his hard-earned money, and left the city. He led a wandering life thereafter, dying in a hospital in Silesia. Paul never saw him again, but sent him a yearly allowance, as soon as he learned his abiding-place. What a noble character!

He now returned to Weimar, dedicating his "Titan" to the four daughters of the Duke of Mecklenburg, one of whom became the mother of Emperor William, the famous and beautiful Louise of Prussia. He visited her later in Berlin, where he writes, "I have never been received in any city with such idolatry. I have a watch-chain of the hair of three sisters; and so much hair has been begged of me, that if I were to make it a traffic, I could live as well from the outside of my head as from what is inside of it."

In this city he met the woman who was to be hereafter the very centre of his life. He had had a passing fancy for several, but never for one that seemed fitted, all in all, to make his life complete. Caroline Myer, the daughter of one of the most distinguished Prussian officers, was a refined, intellectual, noble girl, with almost unlimited resources within herself, devoted to her family and to every good. Paul had met women who dressed more elegantly, who were more sparkling in conversation, who were more beautiful, but they did not satisfy his heart. In his thirty-eighth year he had found a character that seemed perfection. He wrote, "Caroline has exactly that inexpressible love for all beings that I have till now failed to find even in those who in everything else possess the splendor and purity of the diamond. She preserves in the full harmony of her love to me the middle and lower tones of sympathy for every joy and sorrow in others."

Her love for Richter was nearly adoration. Several months after their marriage she wrote her father, "Richter is the purest, the holiest, the most godlike man that lives. Could others be admitted, as I am, to his inmost emotions, how much more would they esteem him!" Richter also wrote to his best friend, Otto, "Marriage has made me love her more romantically, deeper, infinitely more than before." At the birth of their first child, he wrote again to Otto, "You will be as transported as I was when the nurse brought me, as out of a cloud, my second love, with the blue eyes wide open, a beautiful, high brow, kiss-lipped, heart-touching. God is near at the birth of every child."

On Caroline's first birthday after their marriage, he wrote, "I will be to thee father and mother! Thou shalt be the happiest of human beings, that I also may be happy."

"Titan," now ten years in progress, was published, and made a great sensation. The literary world was indignant at the fate of "Linda," his heroine, but all pronounced it a great book,--his masterpiece.

Soon after he removed to Bayreuth, and settled down to earnest work. Almost every day he might be seen walking out into the country, where he rented a room in a peasant's house for quiet and country air. Whenever the day was pleasant he worked out of doors. A son had now been born to him, and life seemed complete. Now he played with his home-treasures, and now talked at table about some matter of art or science that all might be instructed. He was especially fond of animals, having usually a mouse, a tame spider, a tree-frog, and dogs. So good was he to his canary birds that he never left the house without opening the door of their cage that they might fly about and not be lonely. Often when he wrote, they walked over his manuscript, scattering water from the vase and mingling it with his ink.

His son Max, a boy of sixteen, had entered school at Munich. He was a beautiful youth, conscientious, sensitive, devoted to study, and the idol of the household. At first he wept whole nights from homesickness, denying himself sufficient fire, food, and clothing, from a desire to save expense to his parents. He was a fine scholar, but distrusted his intellectual gifts. At the end of a year he came home, pale and worn, and died at the age of nineteen.

To Richter this was a death-blow. He went on writing, while the tears dropped upon his page. He could never bear the sight of a book his boy had touched, and the word "philology," his son's favorite study, cut him to the heart. At the end of three months he wrote to a friend, "My being has suffered not merely a wound, but a complete cutting off of all joy. My longing after him grows always more painful." Broken in health he visited Dresden; but the end was near. The sight of the left eye at first failed him, then the right, till he was left in complete darkness. He still hoped to finish his autobiography, and the "Immortality of the Soul," begun on the very day Max was buried; but this was denied him. Once only did his sorrows overpower him, when pitifully looking toward the window, he cried out as Ajax in the "Iliad":--

"Light! light only, then may the enemy come!"

The devoted wife and two daughters grew unspeakably dear to him. When tired with thinking, he would seat himself at the piano, and play till he, as well as those who heard him, would burst into tears. On the 14th of November, 1825, he sat in his chamber, his youngest child climbing on the back of his chair, and laying her face against her father's. It was only noon, but thinking it was night, Richter said, "It is time to go to rest." He was wheeled into his sleeping apartment, and some flowers laid on the bed beside him. "My beautiful flowers! My lovely flowers!" he said, as he folded his arms, and soon fell asleep. His wife sat beside him, her eyes fixed on the face of the man she loved. About six the doctor arrived. The breath came shorter, the face took on a heavenly expression, and grew cold as marble. The end had come. He was buried by torchlight, the unfinished manuscript of the "Immortality of the Soul" being borne upon his coffin, while the students sung Klopstock's hymn, "Thou shalt arise, my Soul." His more than one hundred volumes and his noble, generous life are his monuments. He said, "I shall die without having seen Switzerland or the ocean, but the ocean of eternity I shall not fail to see."

LEON GAMBETTA.

On January 6, 1883, Paris presented a sad and imposing spectacle. Her shops were closed; her public buildings and her homes were draped in black. Her streets were solid with hundreds of thousands, all dispirited, and many in tears. A large catafalque covered with black velvet upheld a coffin shrouded with the tricolor. From a vase at each corner rose burning perfume, whose vapor was like sweet incense. Six black horses drew the funeral car, and two hundred thousand persons followed in the procession, many bearing aloft wreaths of flowers, and shouting, "Vive la Republique! Vive la Gambetta!"

The maker of the Republic, the brilliant, eloquent leader of the French people, was dead; dead in the prime of his life at forty-five. The "Figaro" but voiced the feeling of the world when it said, "The Republic has lost its greatest man." America might well mourn him as a friend, for he made her his pattern for his beloved France. The "Pall-Mall Gazette" said, "He will live in French history among the most courageous"; and even Germany courted him as the bravest of the brave, while she breathed freer, saying in the "Berlin Press," "The death of Gambetta delivers the peace of Europe from great danger." The hand that would sometime doubtless have reached out to take back sobbing Alsace and Lorraine was palsied; the voice that swayed the multitude, now with its sweet persuasiveness, and now with its thunder like the rush of a swollen torrent, was hushed; the supreme will that held France like a willing child in its power, had yielded to the inevitable,--death.

Leon Gambetta was born at Cahors, April 2, 1838. His father was an Italian from Genoa, poor, and of good character; his mother, a French woman, singularly hopeful, energetic, and noble. They owned a little bazaar and grocery, and here, Onasie, the wife, day after day helped her husband to earn a comfortable living. When their only son was seven years old, he was sent to a Jesuits' preparatory school at Monfaucon, his parents hoping that he would become a priest. His mother had great pride in him, and faith in his future. She taught him how to read from the "National," a newspaper founded by Thiers, republican in its tendencies. She saw with delight that when very young he would learn the speeches of Thiers and Guizot, which he found in its columns, and declaim them as he roamed alone the narrow streets, and by the quaint old bridges and towers of Cahors. At Monfaucon, he gave his orations before the other children, the mother sending him the much-prized "National" whenever he obtained good marks, and the Jesuits, whether pleased or not, did not interfere with their boyish republican.

At eight years of age an unfortunate accident happened which bade fair to ruin his hopes. While watching a cutter drill the handle of a knife, the foil broke, and a piece entered the right eye, spoiling the sight. Twenty years afterward, when the left, through sympathy, seemed to be nearly destroyed, a glass eye was inserted, and the remaining one was saved.

When Leon was ten years old, the Revolution of 1848 deposed Louis Philippe, the Orleanist, and Louis Napoleon was made President of the Republic. Perhaps the people ought to have known that no presidency would long satisfy the ambition of a Bonaparte. He at once began to increase his power by winning the Catholic Church to his side. The Jesuits no longer allowed the boy Leon to talk republicanism; they saw that it was doomed. They scolded him, whipped him, took away the "National," and finally expelled him, writing to his parents, "You will never make a priest of him; he has an utterly undisciplinable character."

The father frowned when he returned home, and the neighbors prophesied that he would end his life in the Bastile for holding such radical opinions. The poor mother blamed herself for putting the "National" into his hands, and thus bringing all this trouble upon him. Ah, she wrought better than she knew! But for the "National," and Gambetta's unconquerable love for a republic, France might to-day be the plaything of an emperor.

Meantime Louis Napoleon was putting his friends into office, making tours about the country to win adherents, and securing the army and the police to his side. At seven o'clock, on the morning of December 2, 1851, the famous Coup d'etat came, and the unscrupulous President had made himself Emperor. Nearly two hundred and fifty deputies were arrested and imprisoned, and the Republicans who opposed the usurpation were quickly subdued by the army. Then the French were graciously permitted to say, by ballot, whether they were willing to accept the empire. There was, of course, but one judicious way to vote, and that was in the affirmative, and they thus voted.

Joseph Gambetta, the father, saw the political storm which was coming, and fearing for his outspoken son, locked him up in a lyceum at Cahors, till he was seventeen. Here he attracted the notice of his teachers by his fondness for reading, his great memory, and his love of history and politics. At sixteen he had read the Latin authors, and the economical works of Proudhon. When he came home, his father told him that he must now become a grocer, and succeed to the business. He obeyed, but his studious mind had no interest in the work. He recoiled from spending his powers in persuading the mayor's wife that a yard of Genoa velvet at twenty francs was cheaper than the same measure of the Lyon's article at thirteen. So tired and sick of the business did he become, that he begged his father to be allowed to keep the accounts, which he did in a neat, delicate hand.

His watchful mother saw that her boy's health was failing. He was restless and miserable. He longed to go to Paris to study law, and then teach in some provincial town. He planned ways of escape from the hated tasks, but he had no money, and no friends in the great city.