Part 17

Gustavus and Amandus! be reconciled to each other here once more--the red limb of the sun rests already on the margin of the earth--the water and life run on and stop down below in the grave--take each other by the hand, when you look over to the ruined _Place of Rest_,[60] and at its still standing church, image of unprosperous virtue--or when you look over to the _Flower Islands_, where every flower trembles alone on its little green continent, and no relative nods a greeting save its painted shadow in the water--press each other's hands, when your eyes fall upon the _Realm of Shadows_, where, to-day, light and shade, like living and sleeping, fluttered tremblingly beside each other and into each other--and when ye see Alpine horns and AEolian harps leaning against the threefold lattice of the _Dumb Cabinet_, your souls must needs tremble in unison with the harmonies, in echoing vibrations.... It is a wretched rhetorical figure I set up here, as if I had been all this time addressing and exhorting them; for are not the two friends in a greater enthusiasm than I myself? Is not Amandus exalted far above all jealousy of friendship, and is he not with his own hand holding out before him the portrait, to-day apostrophized, of the unknown friend of Gustavus, and saying: "Mightest thou be the Third?" Nay, does he not, in his inspirations, lay the picture on the grass, in order with his left hand to grasp Gustavus and with his right to point to a chamber of the new palace, and does he not confess: "Had I also in my right hand that which I love, then were my hands, my heart and my heaven all full, and I would die!" And as it is only in the greatest love for a second that we can speak of that which he cherishes towards a _third_, can we demand anything more of our Amandus, who here, on the hill-top, confesses himself in love with Beata?

The misfortune was that at this very moment she herself was coming up, to stand at the dying-bed of the sun--herself even more lovely than the object which was the delight of her eyes--walking more and more slowly, as if she were every moment on the point of stopping--with eyes that could not see till she had several times in succession shut and opened them again with a quick winking movement--no living European author could describe the ecstacy of Amandus, if the thing had remained so;--but her slight astonishment at seeing the two guests of the mountain suddenly passed over into a similar sensation at seeing the third on the grass. A hasty movement put her in possession of the picture of her brother and she said, turning involuntarily toward Amandus: "My brother's portrait! and so at last I find it!" But she could not pass by them, without saying to both--with that fine womanly instinct which has got through ten sheets in such documents before we have read the first leaf:--"She thanked them, if it was they who had found the picture." Amandus made a low and bitter obeisance, Gustavus was far away, as if his soul stood on Mount Horeb, and only his body was here. She walked on, as if it had been her intention, straight down over the mountain, with her own eyes on the picture, and with the other four eyes fixed on her back....

"Now, indeed, the mystery of thy five days is out, and without perjury on thy part," said Amandus bitterly, and the high opera of sunset touched him no more; Gustavus, on the contrary, is still more deeply affected; for the feeling of suffering a wrong, mingled with the mistaken feeling of having done a wrong--(tender souls in such cases always justify the other party more than themselves)--melted with it into one bitter tear and he could not say a word. Amandus, who was now vexed at his reconciliation, was still more confirmed in his jealous suspicion by the fact that Gustavus, in his pragmatic relation of the Maussenbach adventure, had entirely left out Beata; but this omission had been intentional on the part of Gustavus, because the presence of the tender soul was just what pained him most in the whole occurrence, and because perhaps in his innermost heart there was budding a tender regard for her, which was too delicate and holy to endure the hard open air of conversation. "And of course she too was present lately in Maussenbach?" said the jealous one in the most unlucky tone.--"Yes!" but Gustavus could not add so much as this, that she had not on that occasion spoken one word to him. This nevertheless unexpected yes, in an instant contorted the face of the questioner, who would have held on high his stump (in case his arm had been shot off) and sworn, "it needed no further proof--Gustavus visibly held Beata in his magnetic vortex--was he not now speechless? Did he not instantly surrender her the likeness? Will she not, as she confounded the copies, also confound the originals, as they are all four so like each other, etc.?"

Amandus loved her, and thought one loved him too, and that one perceived where his drift lay. He had delicacy enough in his own _actions_, but not enough in the _presumptions_ he cherished regarding those of others. He had, namely, in the medical company of his father, often visited Beata, in her sicknesses, at Maussenbach; he had received at her hands that frank confidence which many maidens in their sick days always express, or in well ones, toward young men who appear to them at once virtuous and indifferent; the good Participle in _dus_, Amandus, assumed therefore after some reflection, that a letter which Beata had translated as a specimen, from Rousseau's Heloise, on fine paper--no maiden writes on coarse--and which had been written to the deceased Saint Preux, was addressed to the Participle himself. Girls should never, therefore, translate anything. Amandus was translated into a lover.

In Gustavus's heaving brain the night settled down at last, which had already come on in the outer world. Storm and moonshine in his inner night stood side by side--joy and sorrow. He thought of an innocent friend eaten up with suspicion, of the forfeited portrait, of the sister with whom he had played in his childhood, of the unknown pictured friend, who was therefore the brother of this lovely creature, and so on. Amandus turned aside to go off; Gustavus followed him unbidden, because, to-day, he could not do anything but forgive. Even during the descent hatred and friendship wrestled with equal force in Amandus, and nothing but an accident could ensure the victory to either. Hatred won it, and the auxiliary accident was, that Gustavus walked along parallel to Amandus. Gustavus should have stolen along ahead (or at most behind), especially with that affectionately dejected soul of his own. In that case friendship would, by the help of his back, have conquered, because a human back, by the suggestion of absence, creates more compassion and less hatred than the face and breast.... In fact one cannot often enough see his fellow men _from behind_....

Ye readers of books! scold not at poor Amandus, who is scolding away his fragile life. You should only see and consider how it is with the seat of the soul in a nervous weakling, that it is devilishly hard, not stuffed out with so much as three horse-hairs, and cuts like the seat of a sleigh. In short, any personality of my acquaintance sits more softly. Nevertheless my pity for the poor fellow is excited by quite other things than by his hard, stony, pineal gland of the soul. There are things which would soften the heart of the reader, and which, alas, despite my repeated filling of my pen, I have not yet been able to write up to!

On the whole it is vain for me to attempt concealing how very deficient my story thus far is in true murder and mortality, pestilence and famine, and all the pathology of the Litany. I and the circulating librarian find the whole public in the shop here, waiting, and with the white handkerchief--that sentimental seton--already taken out, impatient to weep and wipe away its proper quantity of tears ... and yet none of us brings on much that is dead and affecting.... On the other hand I am beset with the peculiar difficulty that the German public cocks up its head and will not let itself be distressed by me; for it counts upon this, that I, as a mere plain biographer (life-writer) cannot go so far as a murder, without which, however, nothing is to be effected. But is then only the romance-manufacturer invested with the supreme criminal jurisdiction, and is only _his_ printing paper a place of execution? Nay, newspaper-writers, who write no romances, have nevertheless, from time immemorial, filled their pens and slain what they chose, and more than was buried. Furthermore, historians, those _Great-Crosses_ (of butterflies) among the _Little-Crosses_ (for out of 100 newspaper annalists I extract and decoct at most one historian) have gone on and destroyed as many as the plan of their historic introductions, their _abreges_, their royal and imperial historiettes absolutely required.... In short, there is no excuse for me if I do not here make anything at all dead and interesting; and at the end I slaughter from necessity one or two lackeys, whom besides, out of Scheerau, no devil knows.

But I proceed with my story and insert out of the Pestilentiary's _Nouvelle a la main_ the following article in my _Nouvelle a la main_ [handy-volume novel] written for several quarters of the globe:

"It is confirmed by reports from Maussenbach, that the public servant at that place, Robisch, is dead as his mice. His death has created two schools of medicine, of which the one contends that his sect-founding death arose from too much beating, and the other, from too little eating."

There is not a word of truth in all this; the man has, indeed, stripes and appetite, but is living up to date, and the newspaper article is only just this moment been made by myself. But let the rash public draw from this and for future use the hint, that it should not tease and provoke any biographer, because even _he_ by poisoning his ink and by putting rat-powder in his sand box can destroy princes or anybody else, and send them to the church-yard; and learn hence that an ingenuous public must always while reading ask with trembling: "how will it fare with the poor fool (or fair fool) in me next chapter?"

TWENTY-FOURTH, OR XIX TRINITY, SECTION.

Oefel's Intrigues.--The Degradation.--The Departure.

It fares badly enough with him, if, indeed, inquiring Germany meant our Gustavus. It is Oefel's fault. But I will explain to affrighted Germany the whole matter; the fewest people therein know how he comes to be a Romance-writer and a Counsellor of Legation.

No sensitive officer--in the cadet-barracks he wore uniform--has exchanged fewer balls, and more shirts and letters, than Oefel. These last he insisted on writing to all sorts of people; for his letters could be read, because he himself read, and indeed things in the belles-lettres line, which he also imitated. For he was, it must be known, a _bel-esprit_, but had no other [_esprit_]. French booksellers in a body are said to have sent him a ridiculous letter of thanks, because he bought up all their stuff--even the present biography, wherein he himself appears, will one day reappear with him, when he hears of its publication and of its translation into French. Himself, body and soul I mean, he had already translated into all languages out of his French mother-patois. The _bel-esprits_ in Scheerau (including me perhaps) and in Berlin and Weimar despised the fool, not merely because he was from Vienna, where to be sure no earthquake ever heaved up a Parnassus, but still the mole-snouts of a hundred brochurists have thrown up duodecimo-petty-Parnassuses, and where the Viennese citizens who stand on them think envy is looking up, because pride is peering down--but he despised us in a mass, because he had money, fashion, connections and courtly taste. Prince Kaunitz once invited him (if it is true) to a _souper_ and ball, where there was such a crowd and all went off so brilliantly, that the old man never knew at all that Oefel had eaten and danced at his house. As his brother was the chief court-marshal and himself very rich, accordingly no one in all Scheerau had taste enough to read his verses, except the court; for it they were made; it could run over such verses as over the grassy parts of the park without hindrance, so short, soft and clean shorn was their growth; secondly, he published them not on printing-paper, but on silk ribbons, garters, bracelets, visiting-cards and rings. Among other fleas which skip up and down and make themselves audible on the membrane of the public's ear-drum, I too am found and help the thunder; but Oefel imitated none of us and greatly despised thee, my public, and set thee below courts; "_me_" (he said) "no one shall read who has not a yearly income of over 7000 livres."

Next summer he is to set out as envoye to the Court of ----, in order to resume the negotiations respecting the bride of the Prince, which had already been spun at her cradle, and broken off, and to knit them again at the side of her Graham's bed.[61] The Prince must needs, in fact, marry her, because a certain third court, which one is not permitted to name, would fain withhold her thereby from a fourth, which I should be glad to name. But let my word be taken for it, no man in the bridegroom's whole court believes that the reason of his being despatched to the court of the bride is that there fine _esprits_ and fine persons are perhaps articles in demand; verily, in both of these charms he could be outbidden by any one; but in a third charm unfortunately he could not, and one which to an envoye is dearer and more needful than moral ones--money. At an insolvent court the Prince has the first, and the millionaire the second crown. I have often cursed the confounded hereditary misfortune of the Principality of Scheerau, and perceived that there is seldom enough in its treasury, and we would gladly help ourselves by a national bankruptcy, if we could only first get national credit. But, excepting this Principality, I have never in all my travels found the following four regions anywhere but on Etna itself: first, the _fruitful_, and secondly, the _wooded_ region at the foot of the throne, where fruits and grazing and game-cattle, namely, the populace, are to be found; thirdly, the _icy region_ of the court, which yields nothing but glitter; fourthly, the _torrid_ region of the throne-peak, where there is little to be found except the crater. A throne-crater can swallow up and calcine even gold mountains, and eject them as lava.

Unluckily Gustavus pleased him, because he regarded the young man's youthful good nature as an exclusive attachment to himself, his modesty as lowliness before the Oefelian grandeur, his virtues as weaknesses. He was pleased with him because Gustavus had a taste for poetry, and consequently, he inferred, the greatest for his own; for Oefel's _noble bloody_ contrary to nature, ran in a thin _poetic vein_, and in a _satirical_ one, too, he thought. Perhaps also, Gustavus, in these years of taste, when youth is enraptured with the lesser beauties and faults of poetry, may sometimes have thought even Oefel's good. Now, as even Rousseau says, he can choose no one for a friend who is not pleased with his Heloise; so belletrists can give their hearts only to such people as have a similarity of heart, mind and consequently taste, to themselves, and who accordingly have a sense of the beauties of their poetic effusions as lively as their own.

Meanwhile what Oefel valued most highly in Gustavus was that he could be planted in his romance. He had studied in the cadet ark sixty-seven specimens, but he could not promote one of them to be the hero of his book, to be the _Grand Sultan_, except the sixty-eighth, Gustavus.

And he is just my hero, too. But that may in time furnish an unprecedented pleasure in the reading, and I would that I could read my things and another write them.

He wished to train up my Gustavus to be the future heir of the Ottoman throne, but not to say a word to him about his being Grand Seignor--either in the romance or in life--he meant to write down all the workings of his pedagogical leading-string and transfer them from the living Gustavus to the printed one. But here there planted himself in the way of the Balaam and his ass a cursed angel; namely, Gustavus. Oefel intended and was obliged to go back from the cadet barracks where his objects were accomplished, to the old palace, where new ones awaited him. In the first place he could more easily from the old palace make him leap over into the Cartesian vortices of the new, its visitings and enjoyments, and be whirled about in them; secondly, he could there better enjoy the company of his beloved, the Minister's lady, who came thither daily, and who sacrificed to love virtue and the love of the assembly hunting-ground; thirdly, the second reason is not strictly true, but he only made believe it was to the Minister's lady, because he had still a third, which was Beata, whom he designed, from his palace, to shoot, or at least blockade in hers. Go he must, then; but Gustavus must go too.

"This is to be done instanter," thought Oefel, "he shall at last himself beg of me that which I beg of him." Nothing gratified him more than an opportunity of leading some one to his object, the leading was still more agreeable to him than the object, as in love he preferred the campaigns to the spoils. He would, as ambassador, have made peace out of war, and war out of peace again, merely for the pleasure of negotiating. He drew, by way of approaching Gustavus, his first parallels, _i. e_., he etched out to him with his sharp tongue a charming picture of courts, that they alone could teach _savoir vivre_ and all that, and the art of talking, as even dogs, the more cultivated they are, bark so much the more, the lap-dog more than the shepherd-dog, the wild one not at all; that through them there murmurs a river-of-paradise of pleasures; that one finds himself there at the fountain head of his felicity, at the ear of the Prince, and at the knot of the greatest connections; that one can intrigue, conquer, etc. It was in Oefel's plan not to betray to the little Grand Sultan even so much as the possibility of his going with him to the old palace. "All the more shall I entice him," he thought. But he did not get on with the enticing, because Gustavus had not yet passed over from the poetic and idyllic years, in which the ingenuous youth hates courts and dissimulations, to the cooler years in which he seeks them. Oefel, like courtiers and women, studied only men, not man.

Now the second parallel was drawn and a still nearer approach made to the fortress. One forenoon he took a walk with him in the park, just when he knew he should find there the Resident Lady. While conversing with her, he observed Gustavus's observation, or rather blushing astonishment, who, never before in his life had stood before such a lady, around whom all charms entwined, redoubled, lost each other, like triple rainbows spanning heaven. And thou, too, Beata, thou flower soul, whose roots so seldom find on the sandy ground of earth the right flower soil, thou wast standing by, with an attention fixed upon the Resident Lady, which was meant to be an innocent mask of thy slight confusion. Gustavus could contrive no mask for his greater embarrassment. Oefel ascribed this mutual confusion, not as I do to the mutual recollection of the Guido-iconoclasm, but Gustavus's to the Resident Lady, and that on the female side to himself. "So then I have him where I want him!" said he, and let him accompany him even to the old palace. "Apropos! supposing now we should both stay here," said he. The responsive sigh of impossibility grounded upon other reasons was just what he desired. "All the same! You will be my Secretary of Legation!" he continued, with his keen glance on the watch for surprise, a glance which he never properly covered with an eyelid, because he always fancied he surprised everybody.

But it turned out stupidly for Oefel. Gustavus declined and said: "_Never!_" whether from a dread of courts, fear of his father, from being ashamed to change, or from love of quiet; in short Oefel stood there dumbfounded gazing after the floating fragments of his wrecked building-plan. It is true, there was still left him this advantage from it all, that he could work the whole shipwreck into his romance, only, however, the Secretary was gone! He had also, not unreasonably, voted him already in advance to the Secretaryship of the Embassy; for the throne of Scheerau has a ladder leaning against it, with the lowest and the highest rungs of honor, but the steps are so near together that one can place his left foot on the lowest round and yet reach with his right the highest--once indeed we might almost have created an upper field marshal. Secondly, in courts, as in nature, all things hang and join together, and professors might properly call it the cosmological nexus: every one is at once bearer and burden; thus the iron ruler sticks to the magnet, a little ruler to that, to that a needle, and to that steel-filings. At most only what sits upon the throne and what lies down below under it, has not nexus enough with the efficient company; so in the French opera only the flying gods and the shuffling _beasts_ are made of Savoyards, all the rest of the regular company.

So Oefel must needs draw a third parallel, and therefrom shoot at the cadet. Namely--he made his uniform every day a thumbs breadth snugger and tighter, by way of tormenting him out of it. He had, with this view, already and recently been the means of sending him off to the grain-cordon, where the warm-hearted youth, accustomed only to mercy and charity, found stern and sharp no's, new and hard duties; but now the service, from below upward, was still more aggravated, and the military exercises almost crushed his fine porcelain frame, so often and so severely did the _Romancier_ drag him into the society of the father of all peace-treaties, namely, War.

How painfully must the rude external world have galled his wounded inner man! Before his eyes, ever since his falling-out with his dying darling, stood evermore that mournful evening, with its tears, and would not stir; on his desolate heart the blood-red sun still glimmered and would not go down. The dumb departure of his Amandus, who lost him and so many wishes beside; the waning autumn-days of his life and their former love, wrung tears of sorrow from his eyes and heart. Friendship can endure misunderstandings less than love; with the latter they tickle the heart, with the former they tear it asunder. Amandus, who had so misinterpreted and grieved him, and yet whose innermost love had not lost him, forgave him all until five o'clock in the evening--then he heard (or it was enough for him if he only imagined it) that Gustavus had visited the park (and consequently the fair promenader)--then he took back his reconciliation till eleven at night--then night and dream flung once more a mantle over all human failings, and over this one. At five o'clock the next evening it began again as before. Laugh at him, if you will, but without pride, and at me and yourselves likewise; for all our emotions--without their lion and maniac-keeper. Reason--are just as crazy, if not in our outward lives, yet in our inner being! But at last he had taken back his forgiveness so often, that he determined to let it stay, provided only that Gustavus should knock and hear from him all the grievances which he intended to pardon him. One often postpones forgiveness because one is compelled to postpone the repetition of the charges. But, friend Amandus, could Gustavus come then, and would the Romancier let him?