Part 5

The sun sank deeper behind the mountains, and giant shadows, like mighty birds of prey, came coldly down upon us from the eternal snow. I took Karlson's hand in mine, and looked with tearful eyes into his manly, beautiful countenance, and said, "O Karlson! on what a blooming, grand world you throw an immeasurable gravestone, which no time can lift! Are two difficulties,[29] based too on the _necessary ignorance_ of man, sufficient to overthrow a belief, which explains thousand greater difficulties, without which our existence is without aim, our sufferings without explanation, and the holy Trinity in our breast three furies, and three terrible contradictions? A tending God's hand, leading and feeding the inner man (the child of the outer one), teaching him to go and to speak, educating, refining him, is shown in all things, from the shapeless earthworm to the brilliant human face, from the chaotic nations of the primitive ages to the present century, from the first faint pulsation of the invisible heart to its full, bold, throbbing pulse in manhood,--and why? That when man stands upright and exalted, a beautiful demi-god, even amid the ruins of his old body temple, the club of Death may annihilate the demi-god forever? And on the eternal sea, on which the least drop throws immeasurable rings, on this sea a life-long rising and a life-long falling of the soul should have the same termination, namely, the end of all things,--annihilation?[30] And as, from the same cause, the souls of all other worlds must fall and die with ours, and of this shroud and crape-veiled immeasurability nothing remain but the ever-sowing and never-reaping solitary world-spirit, who sees one eternity mourn for another, there can be no aim and no object in the whole spiritual universum, for the purpose of the development of succeeding or successive ephemera is no progress for the vanished ephemera, scarcely even for the last one which can never exist.[31] And you take for granted all these enigmas and contradictions by which all the strings of creation, not only its harmony, are torn, because two difficulties present themselves to you, which _cannot any better_ explain mortality ... Dearest Karlson, you would bring your eternally jarring discord into this harmony of the spheres! See how calmly the day goes, how grandly the night sets in; did you not think that our spirit will rise one day from its grave of ashes, when you saw the mild pale moon rise grandly from the crater of Vesuvius?" ... The sun stood on the mountains, about to plunge into the sea and swim to the new world. Nadine embraced her sister with emotion, and said, "O, we love each other forever and immortally, dearest sister." Karlson accidentally touched the chords of the lyre which he carried: Gione took it from him with one hand, gave him the other, and said, "You are the only one among us who is tormented by this melancholy belief,--and you deserve to have one so beautiful!"

This word of concealed love overpowered his long-filled heart, and two burning drops fell from the blinded eyes, and the sun gilded the holy tears, and he said, looking towards the mountains: "I can bear no annihilation but my own,--my whole heart is of your opinion, and my head must slowly follow."

I will not again mention a man whom I have blamed so often.

We now stood before a mansion, the windows of which were silvered, and, when it was darker, gilt by girandoles. Aloft over its Italian balcony hung two balloons, one at its eastern, the other at its western extremity. Without those beautiful globes, the counterpart, as it were, of the two glorious ones in heaven, the sun and the moon, I should have scarcely paid heed to the scene on earth, in the splendor of the one on high.

Dearest friend, how beautiful was the place and the time. Around us, in their majesty, reposed the Pyrenees, half robed in night and half in day, not stooping, like man, beneath the load of years, but erect--forever; and I felt why the great ancients had thought the mountains were a breed of giants. On the mountain heads hung wreaths of roses cloud-woven; but each time that a star appeared upon the clear, deep sea of ether and sparkled on its azure waves, a rose from the mountain's chaplet faded and dropped away. The Mittaghorn, alone, like a higher spirit, gazed long after the sinking lonely sun, and glowed with ecstasy. Down beneath us an amphitheatre of lemon-trees, by its perfumes, brought us back to the veiled earth, and made a dusky paradise of it. And Gione, in calm rapture, struck the chords of her guitar, and softly did Nadine's voice accompany the gliding tones. The nightingale in the rose-hedges by the lake awoke, and the plaintive tones from its tiny heart pierced deep into the great heart of man; and shining glowworms flew from rose-bush to rose-bush, but in the mirror of the lake they were but as golden sparks, floating over pale yellow flowers. But when we looked again towards the heavens, lo! all its stars were gleaming, and in place of rose-woven wreaths, the mountains were clad in extinguished rainbows, and the giant of the Pyrenees was crowned with stars instead of roses. O my beloved Victor! in this moment it was with each of our enraptured souls as if from its oppressed heart earth's load had dropped away; as if from her mother's arms, the earth were giving us, matured in the Father arms of the infinite Creator; as if our little life were over! To ourselves, we seemed the immortal, the exalted. We fancied that our speech of man's immortality had been the prophecy of our own, as with two great and noble men.[32] But though we entered the brilliant rooms, the storm of new joys could not destroy the old ones. We were not yet able to be without the great night around us, and we ascended the platform, that from this little throne we might better contemplate the higher throne of creation beneath the eternal canopy; although kneeling would have been a higher ascension for the moved soul.

There were night-violets in a glass box, which traced Gione's name in blooming colors. I remembered the glowworms and millipeds. I let the former fly down upon the rose-bushes in confused star-pictures; with the latter I fired Gione's beautiful flower namesake.

Gione looked longingly towards the eastern Mongolfiere. Wilhelmi understood her. Her soul was as bold as it was calm, she had already visited many of the magic caves of earth, and had ascended to the summits of the highest Alps; she wished now to rise in the air, and to float in the heavens above this beautiful country, and on this beauteous night; but the enjoyment of the prospect was not her only motive. Wilhelmi asked who should be her companion. Solitude was her chief desire. The breadth and depth of the boat under the globe, a chair in it, and the cords by which she would be raised and lowered, secured the trip from all danger.

Like a celestial being she rose beneath the stars,--the night and the height threw a mist over her rising form. A slight zephyr rocked the blooming Aurora, and crowned the moving goddess with alternate constellations. Now her countenance appeared surrounded by pale supernatural rays. It seemed bright as an angel rising towards its kindred stars through the rich dark blue space. An unusual tremor seized on Wilhelmi and Karlson; it was as if they saw their beloved one again carried from them on the wings of the angel of Death.

When she returned to us her eyes were red with weeping; she had ascended, that she might in an unseen moment, shed her old heavy tears near the stars. O the Celestial one! She smiled strangely in the slumber of this life at higher joys than earthly ones, as sleeping children smile when they see Angels.

It was now impossible to repress my longing for the stars, and my petition to be allowed to ascend. Permission to use the western Mongolfiere was willingly bestowed. Nadine, emboldened by the safe return of her sister, and by the companion in the danger, skipped into the boat, with her usual impulsive warmth, to refresh her thirsting soul with the majestic immeasurability of night.

And now the suns raised us. The heavy earth sank down as the past; wings such as man has in happy dreams bore us upwards.

The mighty vacancy and silence of space lay stretched before us even up into the stars;--as we rose higher, the dark forests seemed but clouds, and snow-girt mountaintops like snow-flakes. The ascending globe bore us nearer to the harmless, silent lightning of the moon, in whose bright satellite we seemed cradled, and which stood as a calm Elysium beneath the heavens, and high above the thick fog air, the light heart beating more quickly, seemed to pant with ethereal gladness to have left the earth with out discarding its shell covering. Our ascent was suddenly arrested--we looked down into the valley, half concealed by distance and the darkness of the night. Only the lights from the mansion were visible to us,--a western cloud hung like a white fog before us, and a black eagle flew like an angel of death from the east through the cloud pillar, seeking its summit, and a cool breeze playfully drew us towards the mist-island. The evening red had already passed the earth at midnight, and wandered over charming France as its future Aurora. O, how the soul was raised towards the stars, and how lightly did our hearts beat above the earth!

But now from the bright mansion arose sweet harmony, and the subdued echo of the voices of our beloved ones calling upon us. And when Nadine looked down, her lonely heart broke with longing after those dear ones; and when she glanced into the silvered valley, over which the moon had risen, and where the trembling waterfalls danced beside the flowing archings of the stream and the green marble caves, and the white paths between poplars and wheat-ears, and the whole enchanting path of our day's journey lay silvered beneath her inconstant rays,--bright, shining tears flowed unrestrained from her mild eyes, and she looked imploringly to me, as if begging for consideration and secrecy, and said expressively, "We are yet so far from the cruel earth."

When our little globe was drawn back to the shining meadows and the merry music, she looked inquiringly at me, to ask if the traces of tears yet remained in her eyes. She dried them more quickly, but in vain. Silently we descended; I took her burning hand in mine, and looked into her weeping eyes, but could not speak.... --And how could I speak better now, dearest friend!

LIFE

OF

QUINTUS FIXLEIN.

EXTRACTED FROM

FIFTEEN LETTER-BOXES.

TRANSLATED BY THOMAS CARLYLE.

LETTER TO MY FRIENDS, INSTEAD OF PREFACE.

Merchants, Authors, young Ladies, and Quakers, call all persons, with whom they have any business, Friends; and my readers accordingly are my table and college Friends. Now, at this time, I am about presenting so many hundred Friends with just as many hundred gratis copies; and my Bookseller has orders to supply each on request, after the Fair, with his copy--in return for a trifling consideration and _don gratuit_ to printers, pressmen, and other such persons. But as I could not, like the French authors, send the whole Edition to the binder, the blank leaf in front was necessarily wanting; and thus to write a complimentary word or two upon it was out of my power. I have therefore caused a few white leaves to be inserted directly after the title-page; on these we are now printing.

My Book contains the Life of a Schoolmaster, extracted and compiled from various public and private documents. With this Biography, dear Friends, it is the purpose of the Author not so much to procure you a pleasure as to teach you how to enjoy one. In truth, King Xerxes should have offered his prize-medals, not for the invention of new pleasures, but for a good methodology and directory to use the old ones.

Of ways for becoming happier (not happy) I could never inquire out more than three. The first, rather an elevated road, is this: to soar away so far above the clouds of life, that you see the whole external world, with its wolf-dens, charnel-houses, and thunder-rods, lying far down beneath you, shrunk into a little child's garden. The second is: simply to sink down into this little garden; and there to nestle yourself so snugly, so homewise, in some furrow, that, in looking out from your warm lark-nest, you likewise can discern no wolf-dens, charnel-houses, or thunder-rods, but only blades and ears, every one of which, for the nest-bird, is a tree, and a sun-screen, and a rain-screen. The third, finally, which I look upon as the hardest and cunningest, is that of alternating between the other two.

This I shall now satisfactorily expound to men at large.

The Hero, the Reformer, your Brutus, your Howard, your Republican, he whom civic storm, or genius poetic storm, impels; in short, every mortal with a great Purpose, or even a perennial Passion (were it but that of writing the largest folios); all these men fence themselves in by their internal world against the frosts and heats of the external, as the madman in a worse sense does; every _fixed_ idea, such as rules every genius, every enthusiast, at least periodically, separates and elevates a man above the bed and board of this Earth, above its Dog's-grottoes, buckthorns, and Devil's-walls; like the Bird of Paradise, he slumbers flying; and, on his outspread pinions, oversleeps unconsciously the earthquakes and conflagrations of Life, in his long, fair dream of his ideal Mother-land.--Alas! To few is this dream granted; and these few are so often awakened by Flying Dogs![33]

This skyward track, however, is fit only for the winged portion of the human species, for the smallest. What can it profit poor quill-driving brethren, whose souls have not even wing-shells, to say nothing of wings? Or these tethered persons with the best back, breast, and neck-fins, who float motionless in the wicker Fish-box of the State, and are not allowed to swim, because the Box or State, long ago tied to the shore, itself swims in the name of the Fishes? To the whole standing and writing host of heavy-laden State-domestics, Purveyors, Clerks of all departments, and all the lobsters packed together heels over head into the Lobster-basket of the Government office-rooms, and for refreshments, sprinkled over with a few nettles; to these persons, what way of becoming happy _here_ can I possibly point out?

My _second_ merely; and that is as follows: to take a compound microscope, and with it to discover, and convince themselves, that their drop of Burgundy is properly a Red Sea, that butterfly-dust is peacock-feathers, mouldiness a flowery-field, and sand a heap of jewels. These microscopic recreations are more lasting than all costly watering-place recreations.--But I must explain these metaphors by new ones. The purpose for which I have sent _Fixlein's Life_ into the Messrs. Luebeks' Warehouse, is simply that in this same _Life_--therefore in this Preface it is less needful--I may show to the whole Earth that we ought to value little joys more than great ones, the night-gown more than the dress-coat; that Plutus's heaps are worth less than his handfuls, the plum than the penny for a rainy day; and that not great, but little good-haps can make us happy.--Can I accomplish this, I shall, through means of my Book, bring up for Posterity a race of men finding refreshment in all things; in the warmth of their rooms and of their night-caps; in their pillows; in the three High Festivals; in mere Apostles' days; in the Evening Moral Tales of their wives, when these gentle persons have been forth as ambassadresses visiting some Dowager Residence, whither the husband could not be persuaded; in the bloodletting-day of these their newsbringers; in the day of slaughtering, salting, potting against the rigor of grim winter; and in all such days. You perceive, my drift is, that man must become a little Tailor-bird, which, not amid the crashing boughs of the storm-tost, roaring, immeasurable tree of Life, but on one of its leaves, sews itself a nest together, and there lies snug. The most essential sermon one could preach to our century were a sermon on the duty of staying at home.

The _third_ skyward road is the alternation between the other two. The foregoing _second_ way is not good enough for man, who here on Earth should take into his hand not the Sickle only, but also the Plough. The _first_ is too good for him. He has not always the force, like Rugendas, in the midst of the Battle to compose Battle-pieces; and, like Backhuisen in the Shipwreck, to clutch at no board but the drawing-board to paint it on. And then his pains are not less lasting than his _fatigues_. Still oftener is Strength denied its Arena; it is but the smallest portion of life that, to a working soul, offers Alps, Revolutions, Rhine-falls, Worms Diets, and Wars with Xerxes; and for the whole it is better so; the longer portion of life is a field beaten flat as a threshing-floor, without lofty Gothard Mountains; often it is a tedious ice-field, without a single glacier tinged with dawn.

But even by walking, a man rests and recovers himself for climbing; by little joys and duties, for great. The victorious Dictator must contrive to plough down his battle Mars-field into a flax and carrot field; to transform his theatre of war into a parlor theatre, on which his children may enact some good pieces from the _Children's Friend_. Can he accomplish this, can he turn so softly from the path of poetical happiness into that of household happiness,--then is he little different from myself, who even now, though modesty might forbid me to disclose it--who even now, I say, amid the creation of this Letter, have been enabled to reflect, that, when it is done, so also will the Roses and Elder-berries of pastry be done, which a sure hand is seething in butter for the Author of this Work.

As I purpose appending to this Letter a Postscript (at the end of the Book), I reserve somewhat which I had to say about the Third[34] half-satirical, half-philosophical part of the Work till that opportunity.

Here, out of respect for the rights of a Letter, the Author drops his half anonymity,[35] and for the first time subscribes himself with his whole true name,

Jean Paul Friedrich Richter.

_Hof in Voigtland, 29th June_, 1795.

LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN, DOWN TO OUR OWN TIMES. IN FIFTEEN LETTER-BOXES.

FIRST LETTER-BOX.

Dog-days' Vacation.--Visits.--An Indigent of Quality.

Egidius Zebedaeus Fixlein had just for eight days been Quintus,[36] and fairly commenced teaching duties, when Fortune tabled out for him four refreshing courses and collations, besprinkled with flowers and sugar. These were the four canicular weeks. I could find in my heart, at this hour, to pat the cranium of that good man who invented the Dog-days' Vacation. I never go to walk in that season, without thinking how a thousand down-pressed pedagogic persons are now erecting themselves in the open air; and the stiff knapsack is lying unbuckled at their feet, and they can seek whatsoever their soul desires; butterflies,--or roots of numbers,--or roots of words,--or herbs,--or their native villages.

The last did our Fixlein. He moved not, however, till Sunday,--for you like to know how holidays taste in the city; and then, in company with his Shock and a Quintaner, or Fifth-Form boy, who carried his Green nightgown, he issued through the gate in the morning. The dew was still lying; and as he reached the back of the gardens, the children of the Orphan Hospital were uplifting with clear voices their morning hymn. The city was Flachsenfingen, the village Hukelum, the dog Schil, and the year of Grace 1791.

"Manikin," said he, to the Quintaner, for he liked to speak, as Love, children, and the people of Vienna do, in diminutives, "Manikin, give me the bundle to the village; run about, and seek thee a little bird, as thou art thyself, and so have something to pet too in vacation-time." For the manikin was at once his page, lackey, room-comrade, train-bearer, and gentleman in waiting; and the Shock also was his manikin.

He stept slowly along, through the crisped cole-beds, overlaid with colored beads of dew; and looked at the bushes, out of which, when the morning wind bent them asunder, there seemed to start a flight of jewel-colibri, so brightly did they glitter. From time to time he drew the bell-rope of his--whistle, that the manikin might, not skip away too far; and he shortened his league and half of road, by measuring it not in leagues, but in villages. It is more pleasant for pedestrians--for geographers it is not--to count by wersts than by miles. In walking, our Quintus furthermore got by heart the few fields on which the grain was already reaped.

But now roam slower, Fixlein, through His Lordship's garden of Hukelum; not, indeed, lest thy coat sweep away any tulip-stamina, but that thy good mother may have time to lay her Cupid's-band of black taffeta about her smooth brow. I am grieved to think my fair readers take it ill of her, that she means first to iron this same band; they cannot know that she has no maid; and that to-day the whole Preceptorial dinner--the money purveyances the guest has made over to her three days before--is to be arranged and prepared by herself, without the aid of any Mistress of the Household whatever; for indeed she belongs to the _Tiers Etat_, being neither more nor less than a gardener's widow.

You can figure how this true, warm-hearted mother may have lain in wait all morning for her Schoolman, whom she loved as the apple of her eye; since, on the whole populous Earth, she had not (her first son, as well as her husband, was dead) any other for her soul, which indeed overflowed with love; not any other but her Zebedaeus. Could she ever tell you aught about him, I mean aught joyful, without ten times wiping her eyes? Nay, did she not once divide her solitary Kirmes (or Churchale) cake between two mendicant students, because she thought Heaven would punish her for so feasting, while her boy in Leipzig had nothing to feast on, and must pass the cake-garden like other gardens, merely smelling at it?

"Dickens! Thou already, Zebedaeus!" said the mother, giving an embarrassed smile, to keep from weeping, as the son, who had ducked past the window, and crossed the grassy threshold without knocking, suddenly entered. For joy she forgot to put the heater into the smoothing-iron, as her illustrious scholar, amid the loud boiling of the soup, tenderly kissed her brow, and even said Mamma; a name which lighted on her breast like downy silk. All the windows were open; and the garden, with its flower-essences, and bird-music, and butterfly-collections, was almost half within the room. But I suppose I have not yet mentioned that the little garden-house, rather a chamber than a house, was situated on the western cape of the Castle garden. The owner had graciously allowed the widow to retain this dowager-mansion; as indeed the mansion would otherwise have stood empty, for he now kept no gardener.

But Fixlein, in spite of his joy, could not stay long with her; being bound for the Church, which, to his spiritual appetite, was at all times a king's kitchen; a mother's. A sermon pleased him simply because it was a sermon, and because he himself had once preached one. The mother was contented he should go; these good women think they enjoy their guests, if they can only give them aught to enjoy.