Part 3
Few enough guests put up at my house nowadays. If this goes on I might as well take down my sign. Dear me, those were other times when there was scarce a piece performed but had a tavern and a host in it. I well remember in how many hundreds of pieces the foundations for the finest plots were laid in this very room. Now it was a prince in disguise, who spent his money here; now it was a prime minister, or a wealthy count at the very least, who lay in ambush here for some conspiracy. Yes, even in things that were translated from the English, I always earned an honest penny. Some drawbacks to be sure there were, when I was required to be a disguised member of a band of sharpers, and then be smartly rated by the moral characters; but there was always healthy activity in it. But now!--Now when a wealthy stranger returns from a journey, he goes to stay with his relatives by way of doing something novel and original, and does not drop his disguise until the fifth act; others appear only upon the street, as if there were no respectable house for them to stay at. All this keeps the audience in a marvellous state of curiosity, but it takes the bread out of our mouth.
(_Enter Anne._)
ANNE.
You seem to be in low spirits, father.
INNKEEPER.
Yes, child, I’m out of sorts about my calling.
ANNE.
Would you like to be something finer?
INNKEEPER.
No, not exactly; but it vexes me more than I can tell you that there is no more demand for my calling.
ANNE.
Surely in time all that will change for the better.
INNKEEPER.
No, dear daughter. The times do not tend that way. Oh, why was I not a Hofrath! You may look at any play-bill this day, it always says at the bottom: “The scene is at the house of the Hofrath.” If things go on like this I’ll study for a gaoler, for prisons, you know, still occur in patriotic and mediæval pieces. But my son must see to it that he gets to be a Hofrath.
ANNE.
Be comforted, dear father, and do not yield to your melancholy.
INNKEEPER.
I’ve half a mind to turn poet myself, and invent a new art of poetry which shall supersede the Hofrath pieces, and in which the scene shall invariably play in a tavern.
ANNE.
Do so, dear father, and I will attend to the love-scenes.
INNKEEPER.
Hist! There is a diligence pulling up at the door. Indeed it seems to be an express. Kind heavens, where can the unsophisticated person come from who would put up at this house?
(_Enter a Stranger._)
STRANGER.
Good morrow, mine host.
INNKEEPER.
Your servant, your servant, noble lord. Who in the world are you to travel _incognito_, and put up at my house? Surely you are of the old school, eh? A man of the good old times! Perhaps translated from the English!
STRANGER.
I am neither a noble lord nor do I travel _incognito_. Can I lodge here this day and night?
INNKEEPER.
My whole house is at your disposal. But really, is there no family in the vicinity you wish to make happy? Or do you wish to marry suddenly, or find a sister?
STRANGER.
No, good friend.
INNKEEPER.
So you are only journeying as a simple, ordinary traveller?
STRANGER.
Yes.
INNKEEPER.
Then you will have but little applause.
STRANGER.
The fellow must be crazy.
(_Enter a Postillion._)
POSTILLION.
Here is your trunk, sir.
STRANGER.
And here is your fee.
POSTILLION.
Oh, that is very little. I drove down the hill so smartly!
STRANGER.
There.
POSTILLION.
Many thanks. (_Exit._)
STRANGER.
Shall I succeed in finding her? Oh, how all my thoughts turn to my beloved native shore! How can I endure the sight, when once more I view it?--when the past, with all its joys and pains, passes before my inner vision? Ah, thou poor mortal! what callest thou the past? For thee there is no present. Between the times that are flown and the future thou clingest to a little moment, and joys flit past thee, and do not so much as touch thy heart.
INNKEEPER.
If I may be permitted to ask, I take it your grace is from some old worm-eaten drama that some unknown author has modernised a bit?
STRANGER.
What say you?
INNKEEPER.
I greatly doubt that you will have applause! I hope, at any rate, that you have money? Or is it a part of the plot that you should pretend to be poor?
STRANGER.
You are very inquisitive, good friend.
INNKEEPER.
That’s part of my trade, sir, as any schoolboy will tell you. Old people must be old; Telephus must be a beggar; the slave must chatter in keeping with his _rôle_. You can look it up in the _Ars poetica_, to which I too am subject in my office as host.
STRANGER.
Thank you for this graceful frenzy; I have not found so rare a curiosity for a long time. Show me to my room.
(_Exeunt._)
_Ludwig Tieck._
_VAN DER KABEL’S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT._
EVER since Haslan was a duke’s residence there was no record of anything having been looked forward to with such curiosity--excepting the birth of a hereditary prince--as the opening of Van der Kabel’s last will and testament. Van der Kabel might have been called the Crœsus of Haslan, and his life a comedy of coins. Seven distant relatives of seven deceased distant relatives of Kabel’s indulged in some little hope of a place in the testament, the Crœsus having sworn to remember them there; but the hope was a faint one, as he seemed not greatly to be trusted, not only because he was in the habit of managing his affairs in a grimly moral and unselfish manner--in matters of morality the seven relatives were but beginners--but also because he handled things in so cynical a spirit, and with a heart so full of traps and snares that there was no depending upon him. The continuous smile about his temples and thick lips, and his shrill sneering voice, impaired the good impression which his nobly-formed features and a pair of large hands, dropping New Year’s gifts and benefits every day, might have made; therefore the swarms of birds declared this man, this living fruit-tree, which furnished them with food and nests, to be a secret snare, and would not see the visible berries for invisible nooses.
Between two strokes of paralysis he had dictated his testament, and entrusted it to the magistrate. When in a half-dying state he handed the receipt of deposit to the seven heirs-presumptive, he said, in his old tone, that he should greatly deplore it if this sign of his approaching decease would strike down sensible men, whom he liked to picture as laughing heirs rather than as weeping ones.
In due time the seven heirs put in an appearance at the Rathhaus with their receipt of deposit. There was the Right Reverend Glanz, the Police-inspector, the Court-agent Neupeter, the Court-attorney Knoll, the Bookseller Pasvogel, the Preacher Flachs, and Flitte from Elsass. They urged the magistrate to produce the _charte_ of the deceased Kabel, and open the will with all the formalities of the law. The high executor of the same was the ruling burgomaster in person; the low executors were the town councillors. Without delay the _charte_ and testament were fetched out of the private closet and deposited in the court-room, passed around to the senators and heirs, that they might gaze upon the printed town-seal. The directions written upon the outside of the _charte_ were read in a loud voice by the town-scribent to the seven heirs, who were therewith informed that the deceased had in truth deposited the said _charte_ with the magistrate, and entrusted it to the same _scrinio rei publicae_, and that on the day when he had thus deposited it he had been in his right mind; last, the seven seals which he himself had placed thereon were examined and found intact. After the town-scribent had entered a registry of all these proceedings, the testament was opened in God’s name, and read aloud by the ruling burgomaster as follows:--
“I, Van der Kabel, herewith declare my last will and testament this 7th day of May 179--, here in my house in Haslan in the Hundgasse, without many millions of words, though I was once a German Notary Public and a Dutch dominé. But I believe I am still sufficiently conversant with the art of a notary to be enabled to act the part of a testator and bequeather in a proper and becoming manner.
“As for charitable legacies, so far as they are any concern of the lawyer’s, I declare that the poor of this town, 3000 in number, shall receive as many light florins, for which they may celebrate the anniversary day of my death next year by pitching a camp upon the public common; make a merry day of it, and then take the tents to make clothes out of them. To all schoolmasters of our dukedom I bequeath a Louis d’or apiece; and to the Jews of the place I bequeath my pew in church. As I desire to have my testament sub-divided into paragraphs, this may be considered as the first.
“_Paragraph 2._--Declarations of inheritance and disinheritance are universally counted among the essentials of a testament. I therefore bequeath to the Right Reverend Glanz, the Court-attorney Knoll, the Court-agent Peter Neupeter, the Police-inspector Harprecht, the Preacher Flachs, the Bookseller Pasvogel, and Herr Flitte, nothing for the present, not so much because the most distant relatives can lay no claim to a _Trebellianica_, nor because most of them have enough to pass on to future generations as it is, but mainly because I know from their own assurance that they esteem my humble person more than my large fortune, of which I must therefore dispose otherwise.”
Seven elongated faces here started up. Especially did the Right Reverend Glanz, a young man noted throughout Germany for his spoken and printed sermons, feel himself keenly injured by such sneers. Flitte, from Elsass, permitted a whispered oath to escape his lips; and as for Flachs, the preacher, his chin grew longer and longer, and threatened to grow into a beard. Many a whispered ejaculation was overheard by the magistrate addressing the late Herr Kabel by such appellatives as scoundrel, fool, antichrist. But the ruling burgomaster waved his hand, the court-attorney and the bookseller set all the elastic springs in their faces as in a trap once more, and the former continued reading albeit with affected seriousness.
“_Paragraph 3._--Excepting my present residence in the Hundgasse, which, according to this third paragraph, I will leave, with all that pertains thereto, to that one of the afore-mentioned seven gentlemen who, in one half-hour (counting from the reading of the paragraph), shall outdo his six rivals by being the first to shed a tear over me, his deceased relative, before an honourable magistrate, who shall register the fact. Should there be a drought at the end of that time, then the property must accrue to my heir-general, whom I shall forthwith name.”
Here the burgomaster shut the will, remarking the conditions to be unusual, but not illegal, and in accordance therewith the court would now proceed to award the house to the first that wept; laid his watch, which pointed to half-past eleven, upon the table, and sat down silently to note, together with the lawyers, in his office of chief executor, who would first shed the required tears.
That so long as this world exists there has ever been a sadder and more ruffled assembly than this of seven dry provinces united as it were to weep, cannot fairly be assumed. At first precious moments were lost in dismay and smiling surprise; it was no easy matter to be transported so abruptly from cursing to weeping. Emotion pure and simple was not to be thought of, that was quite evident; but in twenty-six minutes something might be done by way of enforcing an April shower.
The merchant Neupeter asked if that was not a confounded affair and fool’s comedy for a respectable man to be concerned in, and would have nothing to do with it; but at the same time the thought that a house might be washed into his purse on the bosom of a tear strangely moved his lachrymal glands.
The Court-attorney Knoll screwed up his face like a poor workman getting shaved and scratched by an apprentice on Saturday night by the light of a murky little lamp; he was greatly enraged at the misuse of testaments, and was not far removed from shedding tears of wrath.
The sly bookseller at once proceeded to apply himself assiduously to the matter in hand, and sent his memory on a stroll through all the sentimental subjects he was publishing or taking on commission; he looked much like a dog slowly licking off the emetic which the Paris doctor Demet had spread on his nose; some time must necessarily elapse before it could take effect.
Flitte, from Elsass, danced about the Session-room, looked at all the mourners with laughing eyes, and swore, though he was not the richest among them, he could not for the whole of Strasburg and Elsass weep when there was such a joke abroad.
At last the Police-inspector Harprecht looked at him very significantly, and remarked that if Monsieur hoped to extract the required drops from the well-known glands by means of laughter, and fraudulently profit thereby, he begged to remind him that he would gain as little as if he were to blow his nose, for it was well known that the _ductus nasalis_ caused as many tears to take that direction as flow into a pew under the most affecting funeral sermon. But the Elsassian assured him that he was only laughing for fun without any serious intentions. The inspector on his part tried to bring something appropriate to the occasion into his eyes by opening them very wide and looking fixedly at one spot.
The preacher Flachs looked like a beggar on horseback, whose nag is running away with him; like the sun shining on a dismal day, his heart, which was piled about with the most suitable clouds of hardships at home and in church, might easily have drawn water on the spot, but unfortunately the house swimming in on the high-tide proved too pleasant a sight, and repeatedly served as a dam.
The Right Reverend Glanz, who knew his nature from his experience in New Years’ and funeral sermons, and who was quite certain that he would be able to work upon his own feelings if only he were granted an opportunity of addressing himself in touching language to others, now arose and said with dignity that he was sure every one who had read his printed works would feel convinced that he had a heart in his bosom, and that it was rather to be expected of him to suppress such sacred symbols as tears, so as to deprive no human brother, than to extract them by force. “This heart has overflowed ere now, but it was in secret, for Kabel was my friend,” he said, and looked about him.
With satisfaction he saw that they were all sitting there as dry as so many sticks. As things stood now, crocodiles, stags, elephants, and witches could have wept more easily than the heirs, irritated and enraged by Glanz as they were. Only Flachs had a turn of good luck. He thought of Kabel’s good deeds and of the shabby dresses and grey locks of his congregation at early service, then in haste he gave a thought to Lazarus and his dogs and to his own lengthy coffin, then to all the people who have been beheaded at one time or other, the “Sorrows of Werther,” a battle-field; and last he gave a pitiful thought to himself, how young he was, and how he was working and slaving for a miserable paragraph in a testament. Another good heave with his pump-handle and it would fetch him water and a house.
“Oh, Kabel, my Kabel,” continued Glanz, almost weeping at the glad prospect of mournful tears, “when on some future day, beside thy precious bosom now covered with dust, my own lies mouldering----”
“I believe, gentlemen,” said Flachs, getting up sadly and overflowing with tears, “I am weeping.” Thereupon he sat down again and allowed them to run cheerfully down his cheeks; he was high and dry now; he had successfully angled the house away from Glanz, who was very much put out by his efforts, because he had talked away his appetite all to no purpose. Flachs’s emotion was duly registered, and the house in the Hundgasse was legally assigned to him. The burgomaster was gratified that the poor devil should have it. It was the first time in the dukedom of Haslan that the tears of a teacher and preacher, like those of the goddess Freya, had changed into gold. Glanz was profuse in his congratulations, and jocosely reminded Flachs that he himself had perhaps been instrumental in bringing about this happy consummation.
_Jean Paul Friedrich Richter_ (1763-1825).
_DIVISION OF LABOUR IN MATTERS SENTIMENTAL._
LOVE is the perihelion of women--ay, it is the transit of such a Venus through the sun of the ideal world. During this time of their highest refinement of soul they love whatever we love, even though it be Science, and the best world of beauty within us; and they despise whatever we despise, even though it be dress and gossip. These nightingales sing up to the date of the summer solstice; their marriage-day is their longest day. The devil does not take it all at once, but piecemeal day by day. The firm bands of wedlock tie up the wings of poesy; to the free play of fancy marriage means imprisonment on bread and water. Many a time I have followed about one of these poor birds of paradise or peacocks or Psyches during their honeymoon, and picked up the moulted feathers that were strewn about; and when later the husband complained that he had taken unto himself a bald and unlovely bird, I would show him the wasted treasure. Why is this? Because marriage erects a crust of reality about the ideal world; it is much the same case as with the sphere we live on, which, according to Descartes, is a sun enveloped in an earthy shell. A woman lacks the power which a man has to protect the inner structures of air and fancy against the encroachments of the rough outside. Where shall she seek refuge? In her natural keeper. A man should ever stand guard with a spoon over the fluid silver of the feminine intellect, to remove the scum as it rises, that the regulus of the ideal may shine the brighter. But there are two kinds of men: the Arcadians or lyric poets of life, who love for ever, like Rousseau when his hair was grey--such are not to be comforted when the gilt-edged feminine anthology of wit shows no gold as they turn the leaves, as is apt to be the case in books bordered with gold; second, there are the boorish shepherds of to-day, the plebeian poetasters and practical men of business, who thank God when their enchantress, like other enchantresses, changes into a growling domestic cat, and keeps the house free from vermin.
No one suffers from greater _ennui_ and anxiety than a fat, weighty, slouching, bass-voiced man of business, who, like the Roman elephants of former times, is called upon to dance upon the slender rope of love, and whose amorous pantomimes always remind me of dormice, that seem to be at a loss about their every movement when sudden warmth interrupts their dormant state. Only with widows, who care less to be loved than to be married, can a heavy man of business begin his romance where the novelists end theirs--viz., at the steps of the altar. Such a man, constructed on the crudest style, would have a load off his mind if he could get some one to love his shepherdess in his name until there was nothing more to be done but to have the wedding; the taking upon myself of such crosses and burdens for another is just what I should feel a calling for. I have often thought of advertising it in public papers (had I not feared it might be taken for a joke), that I offer myself to serve as plenipotentiary to any man of business who has no time to properly make love to a girl. Provided only she be tolerable, I should be willing to swear platonic everlasting affection, make the necessary declarations of love, and, in short, substitute myself in the most disinterested manner, or escort her arm-in-arm through the ups and downs of the land of love, until on the border I could make her over to the prospective bridegroom in proper condition to be married. Instead of marriage by proxy we should thus have love by proxy.
_Jean Paul Friedrich Richter._
_A TENDER-HEARTED CRITIC._
HE composed reviews as others do prayers--only when in straits; it was like the carrying of water of the Athenian so that he might thus be free to devote himself to his favourite studies without hunger. But his satirical sting he would put in the sheath when writing reviews. “Petty authors,” he said, “are always bitter, and great ones are worse than their works. Why should I be less severe upon the genius for his moral faults, such as vanity, than upon the dunce? On the contrary. Poverty and ugliness not self-incurred deserve no disdain; but neither do they deserve it _when_ self-incurred, though Cicero be against me. For neither a moral fault nor its punishment can be increased by a physical consequence which may follow or may not follow. Is the spendthrift who is impoverished in consequence of his way of living more to be blamed than the spendthrift who goes free? On the contrary.”
Applying this to poor writers whose unconquerable self-conceit hides their worthlessness to themselves, upon whose innocent hearts the critic vents his just wrath over their guilty heads, it is certainly permissible to scoff bitterly at the type, but the individual should be more gently dealt with. Methinks it would be the gold-test of a morally immaculate scholar if he were called upon to review a poor but celebrated book.
_Jean Paul Friedrich Richter._
_THE ACCIDENT OF THE DISTINGUISHED STRANGER._
(FROM SCENE XII. OF “DIE DEUTSCHEN KLEINSTÄDTER.”)
(_Scene in the Burgomaster’s home in a small town. News has just been received of a traveller, whose carriage has met with an accident in a quarry just outside the town._ FRAU STAAR, _the Burgomaster’s mother, is all in a flutter as to the best way of doing honour to the distinguished stranger, and has sent for all of her female relatives, to obtain their advice in this difficult question_.)
FRAU STAAR. FRAU BRENDEL.
FRAU BRENDEL.
Here I am, most dear Dame Cousin. I ran so, I have no breath left. I was but just drinking my seventh cup of coffee, but I jumped up and left everything, at your message.
FRAU STAAR.
Greatly obliged, most esteemed Dame Cousin. Have you heard----
FRAU BRENDEL.
I know everything! My maid had gone to market, and the butcher told her his neighbour, the linen-draper, had heard how the bailiff had said to his daughter: Mickey, he said, out in the quarry there are a couple of counts lying, who have broken their arms and legs, and will be here in a minute. The watchman will blow a horn from the turret, the children will strew flowers on their path, the magistrate _in corpore_ will go to meet them, and the bells will be rung.
FRAU STAAR.
It is only one, Dame Cousin; only one is lying in the quarry, probably a gentleman of quality. He is to be our guest. The Minister of State has written and has asked my son. Now you can fancy, Dame Cousin, the excitement in the house. And everything is on my shoulders! Everything rests upon me!
(_Enter Frau Morgenroth._)
FRAU MORGENROTH.
Your servant, most esteemed Dame Cousin. Only see how my walk has heated me. I trust I am not too late? With your permission be it said, I had scarce a thing on me, was singing my morning hymn and combing my poodle-dog. At the third stanza your maid came rushing in. My God, I thought the house was on fire! Then and there I jumped up, the poodle-dog dropped from my lap, the hymnal fell in the coals where I was warming my coffee, the coffee was spilled, and two stanzas of the hymn, “Awake, my heart, and sing!” were burned up.
FRAU STAAR.
I regret it, exceedingly, worthy Dame Cousin----
FRAU MORGENROTH.