Part 20
“Do you see, Betty,” I said, “what delicate distinctions the Frau Postlieutenant makes? This afternoon will be one of our proudest memories.”
Mila also said that the weather was exquisite, and there were so few common people on the road. They never went anywhere on Sundays, she said, because the company was so promiscuous.
Betty, who had been reading a good deal lately about human rights and the equality of the classes, was going to reply, but fortunately the carriage stopped just then before the lodge at Paulsborn. I am sure there is no class or rank that I despise, and I respect everybody that gets an honest living; but for all the books in the world, and all the talk about equality, I don’t feel in the least inclined to give a _thé dansant_ to the milkman and the chimney-sweep.
_Julius Stinde._
_WOMAN._
IN his relation to women man is always more or less of a fool, whether he be their husband, lover, counsellor, or friend. He explains the same thing to them over and over again; he declares, he demonstrates with a will; he would have it thus and so, because only in this wise, and at such a time, will it fulfil his purpose; he points the argument and he grounds it with such explicitness that a very sign-post would strike root at listening to him; he accents the _casus quæstionis_ with all possible pantomime, and with all logical emphasis. For a moment the lady fears the threatening storm; but as for the mental effect, the effect which the argument should make as such, which truth should make as truth,--for that her ladyship has no respect; indeed she does not even respect law and justice with all her heart, but only under compulsion, and driven thereto by despair.
Man may talk as much as he pleases; the spoken word exerts no potent influence over a genuine woman. So long as her emotions are strongly affected, the whole line of argumentation to which the word gives expression seems to her but a piece of academical man-invented pedantry--the learned twaddle of the schools. She inclineth not her ear to _reasons_; she considers them an intolerable imposition, an encroachment upon the realm of her sentiment and the supremacy of her feminine intuition. Her logic is passion; she feels but her mood, her interest; she sees things and relations but as they regard her personally. Whether there is an injustice to others implied, and what is the true import of things _per se_, all that is rarely comprehended and retained by a woman where her interest or her antipathy comes into play. In the entire course of the clearest and concisest exposition the fair listener is occupied only with her excitement and opposition, and never with the subject in question and its importance. The spoken word, as soon as she is required to acknowledge its office as bearer and representative of spirit, to value its absolute potency, is to her but empty sound. At the last she yields to pathos--to emphasis, to oratory, as she might do in a play. The dialectics affect her possibly by their eloquence, diction, and plastic qualities, rarely by the force of conviction. When all his arguments are exhausted, and the speaker looks forward to the effect for the sake of which he has marshalled all his rhetorical art and logic, and taken his eloquence into both hands as it were, Madam comes back to the same fatal point, to the same nonsense from whence she started; and all the forces of rhetoric, all the concentrated reasoning goes for nothing.
Now the man’s temper rises, and he waxes indignant; a piece of copper is finally persuaded by the hammer to become a tea-kettle; words can be engraved on stone and steel, why not upon the _tabula rasa_, the blank daguerreotype-plate of a woman’s mind?
The quietest, most serene of men must despair when there is no appealing to human reason. But Madam _shall_ be convinced. He counts again the serried syllogisms on trembling fingers, with flashing eyes and tremulous lips, with a voice half suppressed by rage; every word is accentuated as if it were to conjure up spirits and wake the dead. Arguments are applied like thumb-screws, the entire demonstration is held up menacingly like a pistol with trigger drawn; she is accused of reason, and in the next moment it is demanded of her, as one demands the evidence of his five senses from a person suspicious of insanity. Madam is asked to declare, brief and plain, whether she had understood; she is not to say what she will do or not do; the matter under discussion and its fulfilment is to remain secondary; the man wants naught but the satisfaction of an acknowledgment that he is right, that his better-half possesses and respects human reason. All material interest is to be set aside; her ladyship shall have quite her own way; it is only demanded that there be a declaration in the interest of truth, of logic, of human dignity; but of this the fair sufferer in the cause of Reason is not capable, it is asking too much of her feminine nature, it breaks her heart. She feels herself ill-treated; in her excitement she has heard nothing but words, and like a tragedy-queen, she has been occupied only with her grief. She comprehends naught but her boundless misery, and the axiomatic barbarity of the genus man. And the tears she has long repressed burst forth, washing away demonstrations, syllogisms, and all; _that is a woman’s logic_. Nature will not be forced, and least of all woman-nature. Dosed with argumentation and logic, it loses appetite, fulness, wit, complexion, grace, amiability, and vivacity. A platonic friend of the ladies is, as a rule, an unmanly creature; that is, quite as unreasonable and weakly constructed as the female to whom he feels sympathetically drawn. Manly differences and manly reconciliations are quite out of the question in so unnatural a relation. Especially is there one case which calls for commiseration--viz., when a genuine man is called upon to be the dependant, the counsellor, and the gallant friend of a vain old hag abandoned of all graces; when, for instance, a son-in-law is condemned to manage the affairs of madam his mother-in-law. Either the lady is ungently set to rights, or else his unbounded respect for old age brings the son-in-law to an untimely grave. With the most uncongenial male one can discuss a question, and there is a possibility of arriving at an understanding or compromise; with every man some manœuvre will catch, but never with a woman who thinks her interest and the authority of her wilfulness endangered. In this desperate case she is destitute of reason and character, without method and consistency, without understanding and common justice, an enemy of all business principles and all promptness, ay, even without conscience and pity.
She would like to make a bargain but not risk anything; yes, she will risk but not lose anything; yes, she will lose but it must not cost her anything. All old ladies are parsimonious; they have a passion for playing cards, but there is always the one condition that their cavalier, with dutiful politeness, lets them win his money. Dull are all old ladies, and hard to entertain if they cannot indulge in weather-worn flirtations, or if they do not perceive themselves to be the objects of devotion and attention. Ignorant of affairs are all ladies, the old and the young; but the old never to their disadvantage where money plays a part. Suspicious are they all by unalterable right, and curious because they are suspicious, if for no other reason. In some cases they are compassionate--_i.e._, in cases of illness, of which they have more innate knowledge and power of subtle diagnosis than an experienced physician gets to his dying day; but toward their creditors they are worse than barbaric, they persecute them without sense or reason.
Women are always mixing up the most insignificant things with the most important; the details with the principal points, the person, and the cause.
Neither an old barrister nor a young lawyer can bring them to see the _punctum juris_, for they have as little sense of right and justice as a Hottentot, or an Englishman making a bargain.
Of two evils women cannot choose the lesser until the greater is hard upon them.
They want to build a large house, for instance, but are unwilling to lay a deep foundation; it is to have three storeys, but without the inconvenience of stairs, and there must be a cellar in each storey; else what is the use of having an architect for your lover, or indulgent husband, or friend? They want to go a-travelling, but at the same time things must be more comfortable and cheaper than at home; there is to be no luggage-waggon, but of course they must have twelve trunks and a half, and by dint of much coaxing they will spare you the half. Their goal is toward the north, but they wish to drive in a south-westerly direction, because it blows into the carriage from the other side.
A woman has leased her farm, and is afterwards indignant at the good harvest which she might have had instead of her tenant. At last she has sold the estate, and has the money safe in her pocket, but she is quite taken by surprise at the thought of moving and giving up the old homestead. A woman is always greatly disconcerted to hear that she cannot sell things and keep them at the same time.
_Bogumil Golz_ (1801-1870).
_A CHRISTMAS TALE._
IT is a most charming thing to compose fairy-tales at Christmas-time. But there are difficulties to contend with, take my word for it, dear reader. I am an honest sort of fellow, who never makes a murderer’s den of his heart, as the proverb says. So I will confess that I have a strong aversion to telling any particularly preposterous lies to the good people who may chance to read this, by relating wonderful, supernatural tales, and calling forth an impression as if I had elves to black my boots every day of my life. Ah no! sooner than do that I will give up the whole secret as to how the following story came to me, and at best I cannot swear that it is a pretty one. I said to myself, “Good friend, you must cultivate a certain mood; conjure up the breath of the woodlands about you, and all the rest will follow.” This was not so very difficult. I bought a little fir-tree, and set it up among the folios of the oaken table in my study.
It was a nice little tree, and I pictured to myself the spot in the forest where it came from: a snow-covered opening, enclosed by tall dark pines, the edges thickly set with various young evergreens which must needs be thinned out. I smelled of the tree until my nose burned under its prickly needles. Ah, how sweetly aromatic! Like shades out of the lap of eternity, the Christmas-eves of long ago rose up before me, with many sweet memories interesting only to myself, with hosts of fairy-tales which Grimm and Ludwig Bechstein have long since put into charming books. But soon I perceived that the breath of the fir-tree would not suffice for my purpose, and that my mood required to be worked upon by means of other aids. I thereupon pulled down the blinds, although it was noon, and lit my large lamp, thinking of a well-known Vienna novelist, who is in the habit of putting himself into the bloodthirsty and terrible train of thought which serves his purpose by means of a piece of black cloth and four burning tapers, upon which he gazes in the pauses between his work. My large lamp sings, moreover, which is a quality that cannot be prized too highly, for oil-lamps do not as a general thing feel called upon to yield sweet music. As the lamp burned and hummed, I took great pains to start up a rousing fire. It roared and sputtered with a will, for the wood was somewhat damp. But this was all the better, for a good, noisy fire plays a great part in literary difficulties. Hereupon I made myself some tea in my little tea-urn, which puffs and spits like a furious cat, and lit my cigar. The scene now comprised--
A fragrant fir-tree. A burning and singing lamp. A roaring and sputtering fire. A puffing and spitting tea-urn. A glowing and smoking cigar. A meditating poet.
I will not deny the fact that at this point I addressed some words of stern exhortation to myself.
“Carl Pfründner,” I said, “if you don’t catch hold of a brilliant idea now, you never will. Such a comfortable state as you are in would inspire a chimney-sweep to write poetry. Suppose you get up something about an “Enchanted Sparrow,” or a “Bewitched Harlequin,” or a “Noodle in Luck””? As I was still pondering, my eye-lids grew heavy, and I fell asleep. I scorn to make use of the threadbare artifice of telling you that a brilliant thought came to me in my sleep. On the contrary, my nap was dreamless, and I awoke only strengthened in my dearth of ideas. The fir-tree was as fragrant as ever, the lamp and the fire still burned, and all the other aids to my imagination were still there. I now lit a second lamp, placing it upon the antique desk, and gazed thoughtfully into the hollow space between the drawers of the upper part, which can be shut off by a little sliding door. Thousands of times before had my eyes rested on that very spot, as if all possible subjects were contained therein, and my pen had but to choose before transferring them to paper. But never before had I looked with such particular interest at the small carved bar running across the partition.
This bar is removed about a hand’s-breadth from the back of the ancient desk, which came down to me from the last century. I had always taken it to be nothing but an ornament to hide the rough board at the back. This time I suppose I held my head a little lower than usual, for I suddenly beheld a bolt behind the carved bar, which, when pushed back, fitted exactly into a groove cut into the upper edge of the bar. It was this circumstance which drew my attention to the said bar. I pushed the bolt back and forth, but it was back so far in the dark that I could not see how it influenced the bar. A couple of matches, used with great caution near the rotten wood, only showed me that the position of the bar remained unchanged. While I was pondering the object of the bolt, I made a second discovery. Far back behind the bar there was a narrow slit in the wood, like those which one sees on children’s earthen savings-banks. This was the more curious as the edges of the slit, as I approached it with a candle, appeared to be whetted off as if, in times past, they had frequently come in contact with hard objects. The resemblance to the slit of a savings-bank tempted me to drop in a coin. Of course I sacrificed only a kreuzer to this experiment, pushing it slowly through the hole, and then letting it drop.
Heavens! what was that? The kreuzer fell first upon wood, judging by the sound, then it seemed to roll down some distance, and fell with a metallic sound. There was no doubt then that the desk contained a secret drawer, the existence of which I had never even suspected; and over and above this, it was evident that this secret drawer was designed especially to harbour coins, as the opening was not suited to paper-money or documents. The metallic ring gave good reason to suppose that the kreuzer had not fallen into an empty wooden drawer, but had joined the society of other coins filling the secret partition up to a certain height.
I beg the reader to put himself in my position. Here I have a desk dating from the last century, my rightful property, and containing a secret drawer, which harbours, in all probability, a treasure of gold coins. I had often wondered at the tremendous weight of the old desk, and sometimes the motion of writing at it seemed to call forth a softly ringing sound. And now in this prosaic age my hand was destined to come upon a hoarded treasure, a treasure of gold and mayhap some other rare valuables! I trembled with excitement, and would have knocked down any one who in this supreme moment had asked me to think of that confounded fairy tale, not to mention writing it. My one thought was how to open the secret drawer.
At first I tested the carved bar. It was immovable. I threw in another kreuzer, and, aided by the sense of hearing, tried to locate the secret drawer. Plainly I heard the metallic ring once more. It seemed to come from behind the carved bar, but the latter would not budge.
I will not tire the reader, as I did myself, with my labours of research. For two hours I worked in the sweat of my brow, taking the old desk to pieces, so far as that was possible, without coming any nearer to the solution of the mystery. Furious at last, I ran out to get a hatchet, and swung it with might to crush all obstacles, when once more my eyes fell upon the left-hand set of drawers that I had put upon the floor during my search, and I laid the axe aside. Both of the drawers showed grooves along the sides, which were evidently there for some purpose, probably in order that they might be fastened from the side, frustrating any attempt to draw them out. Mastering my excitement, I put the drawers back in place, and saw now that the carved bar exactly corresponded to the position of the grooves. I tried to push it to the left, a thing I had of course not thought of before--it moved, and fitted as snugly as need be. Now, treasure, your last hour is come; that’s what I call a Christmas present worth having! Two seconds later the drawers were out, I pushed the carved bar around further, and behold, two small, dust-stained drawers were revealed. I put out my trembling hand----
* * * * *
I would say here that there must have been infamous rascals in the past century, who, not content with wantonly causing great excitement to honest people of these modern times, steal away their time, which they might have spent in writing a tolerable fairy-tale. Is there any one that can tell me why in the world one of those ancient fellows should have put the key of his street-door into a secret drawer? I wish it were the key to paradise which he had forgotten! The vicious old sinner might roast in purgatory so long as I lived, for of course I left the rusty key, together with my two kreuzers in the secret drawer, adding my curse.
Every sympathetic Christian soul will understand that after this heavy disappointment I was not in the mood to spin out the graceful fairy-tale I promised. Indeed the holidays were quite spoiled for me that year!
_Eduard Pötzl._
_THE CASE OF MINCKWITZ._
IN the course of the past month I have been called upon to bear the most acute sorrow, dear friend, of which a fine-strung soul like mine is capable. Indeed, my friend, terrible things have occurred! I am _misunderstood_! And misunderstood by whom? You will scarce believe me when I tell you, but it is even so: misunderstood by Professor Johannes Minckwitz,[8] of Leipsic, the great epic poet and literary connoisseur, for whom I feel the deepest reverence and the most tender affection.
Hear the sad news. One morning as I was innocently turning the leaves of my “Neuhochdeutschen Parnass,”[9] my thoughts naturally enough wandering somewhat, my faithful maid-of-all-work stepped over the threshold of my door with weeping eyes.
“What in the world has happened to you?” I asked in great consternation. “Has your lover proved faithless, Thrine?”
“I shall have to leave this place, sir,” sobbed the honest creature.
“I don’t understand you, Thrine; express yourself more explicitly.”
“You are dishonoured! And sooner will I starve than serve a dishonoured master, for folks do say that ‘a servant is no better than his master,’ and I am a respectable woman. Here is the paper, you’d better read and see for yourself!” Thrine sobbed bitterly, and handed me a number of the Leipsic local paper, containing an article heavily marked with a red pencil, and thereby recommending itself specially to my attention.
No sooner had I glanced over the first lines of the terrible article than I grew dizzy, and therewith began to tremble convulsively. Thrine fainted away. Picture the scene to yourself, dear friend. Without raged the storm. Ah, the situation was dramatic. From the paper I gathered that Professor Johannes Minckwitz, in just indignation over the last of my harmless letters, had sued the editor of the _Salon_ for misuse of his name, and for literary forgery, and had entrusted Dr. Coccius, a lawyer in Leipsic, with the impeachment.
“Thrine,” I began, after an effective pause, “I begin to understand that we must part! You knew me in happy days of yore, do not forget me now when sorrow is breaking in upon me. One service I would ask of you before parting, it is the last. Do me the favour to accept the “Neuhochdeutschen Parnass” as a token of remembrance from me. You always need paper to clean the windows, I know. Fare-thee-well, Thrine!”
I was left alone with my anguish. Dishonoured, I cried, dishonoured! Misunderstood, indicted! How different was it, oh _Kleinstädter_, when you glided innocently through the pages of the _Salon_ in the company of better wits than Minckwitz! Johannes turns from me, and
“Wo ich ihn nicht gab, Ist mir das Grab.”
So “The Death of a Youthful Hero” did not flow from the pen of the great poet! Never was I more surprised than over this discovery. I am to stand before the jury; I shall be condemned to dishonourable penalties--in a word, like the knapsack of the lieutenant, I am _perdu_.
The _Kleinstädter_ before the jury? Since I have heard that in the “Lawyer Hamlet” the jury are brought upon the stage to do nothing at all, I have a very clear impression of this horrible situation. In this “Lawyer Hamlet,” which, by the way, has been very scantily advertised (indeed scarce thirty papers devoted more than five columns to a detailed account of the piece), there is a certain Baron von Sonne who defends all poor people, and takes this opportunity of speechifying on various topics. This Baron von Sonne is the man for me; I shall turn to him in my extremity. And as I need not fear that the unknown author of “Lawyer Hamlet” will impeach me for misuse of his name--a guilt which he himself has been careful to avoid--I will herewith give the last act of the play, that is to say, the last act as it would have read if the accused had been the _Kleinstädter_ instead of Stella.
Here goes then--
LAWYER HAMLET.
FOURTH ACT.
(_The court-room. At the left the benches of the jury. In the middle a table for the judge. At the right two small tables for the Crown solicitor and for the defendant. To the front a bench for the accused. As the curtain rises the judges are seen to enter. The jurymen take the seats appointed. The Kleinstädter, with his hands and feet securely fettered, is dragged into the room by gens d’armes. The defendant, Lawyer Hamlet, exchanges some words with the accused. The court solicitor breathes revenge._)
FIRST AND LAST SCENE.
_Chairman Lehmann._ I request the audience to remain quiet; at the first signs of applause or displeasure all persons occupying the gallery will be turned out. The accused will rise from his seat. (_The Kleinstädter rises, his chains clash, the audience shudders._) What is your name? (_The Kleinstädter looks perplexed, and does not reply._) Do you hear what I say? I asked you what your name is?
_The Accused_ (_greatly embarrassed_). Oh, Mr. Chairman----
_Chairman._ Well now, go ahead! What is your name?
_The Accused._ My name’s _Lehmann_ too.
_Chairman._ You are accused of having published a poem in the Salon under the name of our honoured and esteemed Professor Johannes Minckwitz, and so to have passed off your own production for his. What have you to say for yourself?
_Accused._ Nix.[10]
_Lawyer Hamlet._ Gentlemen of the jury, I beg that you will note this “nix”; it is of the greatest importance.