Part 12

The day before the Actus offered as it were the proof-shot and sample-sheet of the Wednesday. Persons who on account of dress could not be present at the great school-festival, especially ladies, made their appearance on Tuesday, during the six proof-orations. No one can be readier than I to subordinate the proof-Actus to the Wednesday-Actus; and I do anything but need being stimulated suitably to estimate the solemn feast of a School; but, on the other hand, I am equally convinced that no one, who did not go to the real Actus of Wednesday, could possibly figure anything more splendid than the proof-day preceding; because he could have no object wherewith to compare the pomp in which the Primate of the festival drove in with his triumphal chariot and six--to call the six brethren-speakers coach-horses--next morning in presence of ladies and Councillor gentleman. Smile away, Fixlein, at this astonishment over thy today's _Ovation_, which is leading on to-morrow's _Triumph_; on thy dissolving countenance quivers happy Self, feeding on these incense-fumes; but a vanity like thine, and that only, which enjoys without comparing or despising, can one tolerate, will one foster. But what flowed over all his heart, like a melting sunbeam over wax, was his mother, who after much persuasion had ventured in her Sunday's clothes humbly to place herself quite low down, beside the door of the Prima class-room. It were difficult to say who is happier, the mother, beholding how he whom she has borne under her heart can direct such noble young gentlemen, and hearing how he along with them can talk of these really high things and understand them too;--or the son, who, like some of the heroes of Antiquity, has the felicity of triumphing in the lifetime of his mother. I have never in my writings or doings cast a stone upon the late Burchardt Grossmann, who, under the initial letters of the stanzas in his song "_Brich an, du liebe Morgenroethe_," inserted the letters of his own name; and still less have I ever censured any poor herb-woman for smoothing out her winding-sheet, while still living, and making herself one twelfth of a dozen of grave-shifts. Nor do I regard the man as wise--though indeed as very clever and pedantic--who can fret his gall-bladder full because every one of us leaf-miners views the leaf whereon he is mining as a park-garden, as a fifth Quarter of the World (so near and rich is it); the leaf-pores as so many Valleys of Tempe, the leaf-skeleton as a Liberty-tree, a Bread-tree, and Life-tree, and the dewdrops as the Ocean. We poor day-moths, evening-moths, and night-moths fall universally into the same error, only on different leaves; and whosoever (as I do) laughs at the important airs with which the schoolmaster issues his programmes, the dramaturgist his playbills, the classical variation-alms-gatherer his alphabetic letters,--does it, if he is wise (as is the case here), with the consciousness of his own _similar_ folly; and laughs, in regard to his neighbor, at nothing but mankind and himself.

The mother was not to be detained; she must off, this very night, to Hukelum, to give the Fraeulein Thiennette at least some tidings of this glorious business.--

And now the World will bet a hundred to one, that I forthwith take biographical wax, and emboss such a wax-figure cabinet of the Actus itself as shall be single of its kind.

But on Wednesday morning, while the hope-intoxicated Conrector was just about putting on his fine raiment, something knocked.----

It was the well-known servant of the Rittmeister, carrying the Hukelum Presentation for the Subrector _Fuechslein_ in his pocket. To the last-named gentleman he had been sent with this call to the parsonage; but he had distinguished ill betwixt _Sub_ and _Con_rector; and had besides his own good reasons for directing his steps to the latter; for he thought, "Who can it be that gets it, but the parson that preached last Sunday, and that comes from the village, and is engaged to our Fraeulein Thiennette, and to whom I brought a clock and a roll of ducats already?" That his Lordship could pass over his own godson never entered the man's head.

Fixlein read the address of the Appointment: "To the Reverend the Parson _Fixlein_ of Hukelum." He naturally enough made the same mistake as the lackey; and broke up the Presentation as his own; and finding moreover in the body of the paper no special mention of persons, but only of a _Schul-unterbefehlshaber_, or School-undergovernor (instead of Subrector), he could not but persist in his error.

Before I properly explain why the Rittmeister's Lawyer, the framer of the Presentation, had so designated a Subrector--we two, the reader and myself, will keep an eye for a moment on Fixlein's joyful salutations--on his gratefully-streaming eyes--on his full hands so laden with bounty--on the present of two ducats, which he drops into the hands of the mitre-bearer, as willingly as he will soon drop his own pedagogic office. Could he tell what to think (of the Rittmeister), or to write (to the same), or to table (for the lackey)? Did he not ask tidings of the noble health of his benefactor over and over, though the servant answered him with all distinctness at the very first? And was not this same man, who belonged to the nose-upturning, shoulder-shrugging, shoulder-knotted, toad-eating species of men, at last so moved by the joy which he had imparted, that he determined, on the spot, to bestow his presence on the new clergyman's School-Actus, though no person of quality whatever was to be there? Fixlein, in the first place, sealed his letter of thanks; and courteously invited this messenger of good news to visit him frequently in the Parsonage; and to call this evening, in passing, at his mother's, and give her a lecture for not staying last night, when she might have seen the Presentation from his Lordship arrive to-day.

The lackey being gone, Fixlein for joy began to grow sceptical--and timorous (wherefore, to prevent filching, he stowed his Presentation securely in his coffer, under keeping of two padlocks); and devout and softened, since he thanked God without scruple for all good that happened to him, and never wrote this Eternal Name but in pulpit characters, and with colored ink; as the Jewish copyists never wrote it except ornamental letters and when newly washed;[55]--and deaf also did the parson, grow, so that he scarcely heard the soft wooing-hour of the Actus--for a still softer one beside Thiennette, with its rose-bushes and rose-honey, would not leave his thoughts. He who of old, when Fortune made a wry face at him, was wont, like children in their sport at one another, to laugh at her so long till she herself was obliged to begin smiling--he was now flying as on a huge seesaw higher and higher, quicker and quicker aloft.

But before the Actus, let us examine the Schadeck Lawyer. _Fixlein_ instead of _Fuechslein_[56] he had written from uncertainty about the spelling of the name; the more naturally as in transcribing the Rittmeisterinn's will the former had occurred so often. _Von_, this triumphal arch, he durst not set up before Fuechslein's new name, because Aufhammer forbade it, considering Hans Fuechslein as a mushroom, who had no right to _vons_ and titles of nobility, for all his patents. In fine, the Presentation-writer was possessed with Campe's[57] whim of Germanizing everything, minding little though when Germanized it should cease to be intelligible;--as if a word needed any better act of naturalization than that which universal unintelligibility imparts to it. In itself it is the same--the rather as all languages, like all men, are cognate, intermarried and intermixed--whether a word was invented by a savage or a foreigner; whether it grew up like moss amid the German forests, or like street-grass, in the pavement of the Roman Forum. The Lawyer, on the other hand, contended that it was different; and accordingly he hid not from any of his clients that _Tagefarth_ (Day-turn) meant _Term_, and that _Appealing_ was _Berufen_ (Becalling). On this principle, he dressed the word _Subrector_ in the new livery of _School-undergovernor_. And this version further converted the Schoolmaster into Parson; to such a degree does our _civic_ fortune--not our _personal_ well-being, which supports itself on our own internal soil and resources--grow merely on the _drift-mould_ of accidents, connections, acquaintances, and Heaven or the Devil knows what!--

By the by, from a Lawyer, at the same time a Country Judge, I should certainly have looked for more sense; I should (I may be mistaken) have presumed he knew that the _Acts_, or Reports, which in former times (see Hoffmann's _German or un-German Law-practice_) were written in Latin, as before the times of Joseph the Hungarian,--are now, if we may say so without offence, perhaps written fully more in the German dialect than in the Latin; and in support of this opinion, I can point to whole lines of German language to be found in these Imperial-Court-Confessions. However, I will not believe that the Jurist is endeavoring, because Imhofer declares the Roman tongue to be the mother tongue in the other world, to disengage himself from a language, by means of which, like the Roman _Eagle_, or later, like the Roman _Fish-heron_ (Pope), he has clutched such abundant booty in his talons.----

Toll, toll your bell for the Actus; stream in, in to the ceremony; who cares for it? Neither I nor the Ex-Conrector. The six pygmy Ciceros will in vain set forth before us in sumptuous dress their thoughts and bodies. The draught-wind of Chance has blown away from the Actus its powder-nimbus of glory; and the Conrector that was has discovered how small a matter a cathedra is, and how great a one a pulpit. "I should not have thought," thought he now, "when I became Conrector, that there could be anything grander, I mean a parson." Man, behind his everlasting blind, which he only colors differently, and makes no thinner, carries his pride with him from one step to another; and on the higher step, blames only the pride of the lower.

The best of the Actus was, that the Regiments-Quartermaster and Master Butcher, Steinberg, attended there, embaled in a long woollen shag. During the solemnity, the Subrector Hans von Fuechslein cast several gratified and inquiring glances on the Schadeck servant, who did not once look at him. Hans would have staked his head, that, after the Actus, the fellow would wait upon him. When at last the sextuple cockerel-brood had on their dunghill done crowing, that is to say, had perorated, the scholastic cocker, over whom a higher banner was now waving, himself came upon the stage; and delivered to the School-Inspectorships, to the Subrectorship, to the Guardianship, and the lackeyship, his most grateful thanks for their attendance; shortly, announcing to them at the same time, "that Providence had now called him from his post to another; and committed to him, unworthy as he was, the cure of souls in the Hukelum parish, as well as in the Schadeck chapel of ease."

This little address, to appearance, wellnigh blew up the then Subrector Hans von Fuechslein from his chair; and his face looked of a mingled color, like red bole, green chalk, tinsel-yellow, and _vomissement de la reine_.

The tall Quartermaster erected himself considerably in his shag, and hummed loud enough in happy forgetfulness: "The Dickens!--Parson?"----

The Subrector dashed by like a comet before the lackey; ordered him to call and take a letter for his master; strode home, and prepared for his patron, who at Schadeck was waiting for a long thanksgiving psalm, a short satirical epistle, as nervous as haste would permit, and mingled a few nicknames and verbal injuries along with it.

The courier handed in to his master Fixlein's song of gratitude and Fuechslein's invectives with the same hand. The dragoon Rittmeister, incensed at the ill-mannered churl, and bound to his word, which Fixlein had publicly announced in his Actus, forthwith wrote back to the new Parson an acceptance and ratification; and Fixlein is and remains, to the joy of us all, incontestible ordained parson of Hukelum.

His disappointed rival has still this consolation, that he holds a seat in the wasp-nest of the _Neue Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek_.[58] Should the Parson ever chrysalize himself into an author, the watch-wasp may then buzz out, and dart its sting into the chrysalis, and put its own brood in the room of the murdered butterfly. As the Subrector everywhere went about, and threatened in plain terms that he would review his colleague, let not the public be surprised that Fixlein's _Errata_, and his Masoretic _Exercitationes_, are to this hour withheld from it.

In spring, the widowed church receives her new husband; and how it will be, when Fixlein, under a canopy of flower-trees, takes the _Sponsa Christi_ in one hand, and his own _Sponsa_ in the other,--this without an Eighth Letter-Box, which, in the present case, may be a true jewel-box and rainbow-key,[59] can no mortal figure, except the _Sponsus_ himself.

EIGHTH LETTER-BOX.

Instalment in the Parsonage.

On the 15th of April, 1793, the reader may observe, far down in the hollow, three baggage-wagons groaning along. These baggage-wagons are transporting the house-gear of the new Parson to Hukelum; the proprietor himself, with a little escort of his parishioners, is marching at their side, that of his china sets and household furniture there may be nothing broken in the eighteenth century, as the whole came down to him unbroken from the seventeenth. Fixlein hears the School-bell ringing behind him; but this chime now sings to him, like a curfew, the songs of future rest; he is now escaped from the Death-valley of the Gymnasium, and admitted into the abodes of the Blessed. Here dwells no envy, no colleague, no Subrector; here, in the heavenly country, no man works in the _New Universal German Library_; here in the heavenly Hukelumic Jerusalem, they do nothing but sing praises in the church; and here the Perfected requires no more increase of knowledge.... Here, too, one needs not sorrow that Sunday and Saint's day so often fall together into one.

Truth to tell, the parson goes too far; but it was his way from of old never to paint out the whole and half shadows of a situation till he was got into a new one; the beauties of which he could then enhance by contrast with the former. For it requires little reflection to discover that the torments of a Schoolmaster are nothing so extraordinary; but, on the contrary, as in the Gymnasium, he mounts from one degree to another, not very dissimilar to the common torments of Hell, which, in spite of their eternity, grow weaker from century to century. Moreover, since, according to the saying of a Frenchman, _deux afflictions mises ensemble peuvent devener une consolation_, a man gets afflictions enow in a school to console him; seeing out of eight combined afflictions--reckon only one for every teacher--certainly more comfort is to be extracted than out of two. The only pity is, that school-people will never act towards each other as court-people do: none but polished men and polished glasses will readily cohere. In addition to all this, in schools--and in offices generally--one is always recompensed; for, as in the second life a greater virtue is the recompense of an earthly one, so, in the Schoolmaster's case, his merits are always rewarded by more opportunities for new merits; and often enough he is not dismissed from his post at all.--

Eight Gymnasiasts are trotting about in the Parsonage, setting up, nailing to, hauling in. I think, as a scholar of Plutarch, I am right to introduce such seeming _minutiae_. A man whom grown-up people love, children love still more. The whole school had smiled on the smiling Fixlein, and liked him-in their hearts, because he did not thunder, but sport with them; because he said _Sie_ (They), to the Secundaners, and the Subrector said _Ihr_ (Ye); because his uprearing forefinger was his only sceptre and baculus; because in the Secunda he had interchanged Latin epistles with his scholars; and in the Quinta had taught not with Napier's Rods (or rods of a sharper description), but with sticks of barley-sugar.

To-day his churchyard appeared to him so solemn and festive, that he wondered (though it was Monday) why his parishioners were not in their holiday, but merely in their week-day drapery. Under the door of the Parsonage stood a weeping woman; for she was too happy, and he was her--son. Yet the mother, in the height of her emotion, contrives quite readily to call upon the carriers, while disloading, not to twist off the four corner globes from the old Frankish chest of drawers. Her son now appeared to her as venerable as if he had sat for one of the copperplates in her pictured Bible; and that simply because he had cast off his pedagogue hair-cue, as the ripening tadpole does its tail; and was now standing in a clerical periwig before her; he was now a Comet, soaring away from the profane Earth, and had accordingly changed from a _stella caudata_ into a _stella crinita_.

His bride also had, on former days, given sedulous assistance in this new improved edition of his house, and labored faithfully among the other furnishers and furbishers. But to-day she kept aloof; for she was too good to forget the maiden in the bride. Love, like men, dies oftener of excess than of hunger; it lives on love, but it resembles those Alpine flowers which feed themselves by _suction_ from the wet clouds, and die if you _besprinkle_ them.

At length the Parson is settled, and of course he must--for I know my fair readers, who are bent on it as if they were bridemaids--without delay get married. But he may not; before Ascension-day there can nothing be done, and till then are full four weeks and a half. The matter was this. He wished in the first place to have the murder-Sunday, the Cantata, behind him; not indeed because he doubted of his earthly continuance, but because he would not (even for the bride's sake) that the slightest apprehension should mingle with these weeks of glory.

The main reason was, he did not wish to marry till he were betrothed; which latter ceremony was appointed, with the Introduction Sermon, to take place next Sunday. It is the Cantata-Sunday. Let not the reader afflict himself with fears. Indeed, I should not have molested an enlightened century with this Sunday-_Wauwau_ at all, were it not that I delineate with such extreme fidelity. Fixlein himself--especially as the Quartermaster asked him if he was a baby--at last grew so sensible that he saw the folly of it; nay, he went so far that he committed a greater folly. For as dreaming that you die signifies, according to the exegetic _rule of false_, nothing else than long life and welfare, so did Fixlein easily infer that his death-imagination was just such a lucky dream; the rather as it was precisely on this Cantata-Sunday that Fortune had turned up her cornucopia over him, and at once showered down out of it a bride, a presentation, and a roll of ducats. Thus can Superstition imp its wings, let Chance favor it or not.

A Secretary of State, a Peace-Treaty writer, a Notary, any such incarcerated Slave of the Desk, feels excellently well how far he is beneath a Parson composing his inaugural sermon. The latter (do but look at my Fixlein) lays himself heartily over the paper,--injects the venous system of his sermon-preparation with colored ink,--has a Text-Concordance on the right side, and a Song-Concordance on the left; is there digging out a marrowy sentence, here clipping off a song-blossom, with both to garnish his homiletic pastry;--sketches out the finest plan of operations, not, like a man of the world, to subdue the heart of one woman, but the hearts of all women that hear him, and of their husbands to boot; draws every peasant passing by his window into some niche of his discourse, to co-operate with the result;--and, finally, scoops out the butter of the smooth, soft hymn-book, and therewith exquisitely fattens the black broth of his sermon, which is to feed five thousand men.----

At last, in the evening, as the red sun is dazzling him at the desk, he can rise with heart free from guilt; and, amid twittering sparrows and finches, over the cherry-trees encircling the parsonage, look toward the west, till there is nothing more in the sky but a faint gleam among the clouds. And then when Fixlein, amid the tolling of the evening prayer-bell, _slowly_ descends the stair to his cooking mother, there must be some miracle in the case, if for him whatever has been done or baked, or served up in the lower regions, is not right and good.... A bound, after supper, into the Castle; a look into a pure loving eye; a word without falseness to a bride without falseness; and then under the coverlet, a soft-breathing breast, in which there is nothing but Paradise, a sermon, and evening prayer.... I swear, with this I will satisfy a Mythic God, who has left his Heaven, and is seeking a new one among us here below!

Can a mortal, can a Me in the wet clay of Earth, which Death will soon dry into dust, ask more in one week than Fixlein is gathering into his heart? I see not how. At least I should suppose, if such a dust-framed being, after such a twenty-thousand prize from the Lottery of Chance, could require aught more, it would at most be the twenty-one-thousand prize, namely, the inaugural discourse itself.

And this prize our Zebedaeus actually drew on Sunday; he preached,--he preached with unction,----he did it before the crowding, rustling press of people; before his Guardian, and before the Lord of Aufhammer, the godfather of the priest and the dog;--a flock, with whom in Childhood he had driven out the Castle herds about the pasture, he was now, himself a spiritual sheep-smearer, leading out to pasture;--he was standing to the ankles among Candidates and Schoolmasters, for to-day (what none of them could) at the altar, with the nail of his finger, he might scratch a large cross in the air, baptisms and marriages not once mentioned.... I believe I should feel less scrupulous than I do to checker this sunshiny esplanade with that thin shadow of the grave which the preacher threw over it, when, in the application, with wet, heavy eyes, he looked round over the mute, attentive church, as if in some corner of it he would seek the mouldering teacher of his youth and of this congregation, who without, under the white tombstone, the wrong-side of life, had laid away the garment of his pious spirit. And when he, himself hurried on by the internal stream, inexpressibly softened by the further recollections of his own fear of death on this day, of his life now overspread with flowers and benefits, of his entombed benefactress resting here in her narrow bed,--when he now, before the dissolving countenance of her friend, his Thiennette, overpowered, motionless, and weeping, looked down from the pulpit to the door of the Schadeck vault, and said: "Thanks, thou pious soul, for the good thou hast done to this flock and to their new teacher; and, in the fulness of time, may the dust of thy god-fearing and man-loving breast gather itself, transfigured as gold-dust, round thy reawakened heavenly heart,"--was there an eye in the audience dry? Her husband sobbed aloud, and Thiennette, her beloved, bowed her head, sinking down with inconsolable remembrances, over the front of the seat, like kindred mourners in a funeral train.