Part 10

The second method is the chronological, or that which tackles the horses in front; this starts with the birthday of the world, which, according to Petavius and the Rabbins, came into the world on the forenoon of the 22d October,[35] hastens on to the 28th of October as the first clown's and blunderhead's day of the young Adam, then marches away over the 29th, the first Sunday, Fast-day, and Bankruptcy-day, and so on down to the Bankruptcy- and Fast-day of the latest child of Adam, who is compelled to listen to the case.

This milky-way was, for our Magister, too long, too dreary, too strange. He steered the middle track between the foregoing, which leads to the rich two Indies of history, Greece and Rome. The ancients work upon us more through their deeds than through their writings, more upon the heart than upon the taste; one fallen century after another receives from them the double history as the two sacraments and means of grace for moral confirmation, and their writings, to which their stone works of art attach every after age, are the eternal Bible-institute against every failure of a Kanstein's. But let us now, on a fine summer morning, walk along several times before the Rectorate-residence, and listen, ourselves also, outside, to hear with what voice the Magister within, although in old-fashioned applications, cites out of Plutarch,--the biographical Shakespeare of Universal History,--not the shadowy world of states, but the angels of the churches who shine therein, the holy family of great men, and cast a passing glance at the sparkling eye with which the inspired boy hangs upon the moral antiques which the teacher, as in a foundery, assembles around him. O, when the mighty storm-clouds of the heroic past thus hung around Zesara's soul as on a mountain, and descended upon it with still lightnings and drops, was not then the whole mountain charged with heavenly fire, and every green thing that blossomed thereupon fertilized, quickened, and called forth? And could he, then, so beautifully beclouded, haply look down into low reality? Nay, did not teacher as well as scholar, amid the market-din of the Roman and Athenian forums, where they went round in the train of Cato and Socrates, remain entirely ignorant that the busy mistress was cooking, bed-making, scolding, and scouring close beside them? Of the eight screaming children, on account of the very multitude, they heard nothing; for a single buzzing fly a man cannot bear, without a terrible effort, in his chamber, while he could easily a whole swarm. Even so, from their eyes, the school-room, on whose floor nothing was wanting which is thrown into canary-cages for nest-building,--hair, moss, roe's-hair, pulled flannel, and finger-lengths of yarn,--was hidden by the floor of the (geographical and historical) Old World, which, like the pavement of St. Paul's church in Rome, consists of marble ruins full of broken inscriptions.

18. CYCLE.

The reader is now curious about the afternoon, when the _élève_ is sent into the polishing-mill of the Viennite, in order to know what sort of a polishing he gets there. It cannot but make him still more curious, when I repeat that Wehmeier, who, like other literati, resembled the elephant in clumsiness and sagacity, found nothing more agreeable to think of--and, therefore, to describe--in ancient history, than a great man, who had on little, as, for instance, Diogenes, or went barefoot, like Cato, or unshaven, like the philosophers; nay, he hit the very Mittel-Mark, and drew out for himself Frederick the Second's clothes, whereby he gained as much as Mr. Pagé in Paris, and carried _his_ shirts, like the noble Saladin's, and with similar proclamations, on poles for show, and sketched, as a second _Scheiner_, the best map we have of the sun-spots of snuff on Frederick. Then he took these naked, rough colossi, and piled them together into one scale, and threw into the other the light, wainscoted figures, like Falterle and the nice Nuremberg Kinder-gärten of modern courts, and besought the scholar to take notice which way the swaying tongue of the balance would incline....

I am not wholly on thy side here, Magister, since vigorous youths too easily, without any prompting, tear in pieces the thin plate of the ceremonial law, and often the platers, the head masters of ceremonies, into the bargain. For weaklings, the method is good.

Now, when Albano came to the accomplishing master, he could but faintly, on account of the loud resonance of the previous lesson,--for children of a certain depth, like buildings of a certain size, give an _echo_,--apprehend what Falterle commanded; and only when he remained some days without the historical sensation was he more widely open to the lesser instructions, as gilded things cannot be silvered over till the gold is worn off. The misfortune was, too, that he had to go through his task-dances in the very next room to the study of the Director, who was there occupied with his own. It often happened that Wehrfritz, when Alban was as _distrait_ and inattentive in the Anglaise as a partner in love, would cry out, while he was dictating in there, "In the name of the three devils, chassez!" Quite as many cases might one reckon in which, when the music-master, like a bass-drum, with everlasting exhortations glided away through adagio into piano, the man had to call out in there, with the strongest imaginable fortissimo, "Pianissimo, Satan! pianissimo!" Sometimes he was obliged to rise from his labors, when, in the fencing-lesson, all admonitions to "quart!" availed nothing, and open the door, and, grim with fury, say to him of Vienna, "For God's sake, sir, don't be a hare! Prick his leather soundly, if he doesn't mind!" Whereupon the courtly fencing-master would only gently encourage him to "quart thrust."

Nevertheless, he learned much. In such early years one cannot rise above the finery nor the fine arts of a Falterle, who, besides, was reinforced with the magical advantage of having shone and taught in the forbidden metropolis. Only the loud stride and the boots were not to be taken from the pupil; but the shoulders soon grew horizontal, and the head perpendicular; and the oscillating fingers, together with the restless body, were steadied with Stahl's eye-holder. In general, men with a _liberal_ soul in a finely-built body have already, without Falterle's espalier-wall and scissors, an agreeable shape and stature. Moreover, he felt toward the neat, friendly Falterle that holy _first love for men_ wherewith a child's heart twines round all inmates of his home and village; and simply for this reason, that a lady could wind the Viennite about her ring-finger,--yes, inside of the gold ring itself,--and because he spoke and lied about the Knight of the Golden Fleece as about a king, and because he was the most agreeable creature that ever trod the earth.

As I mean in my biographies to teach tolerance and even-handed justice toward all characters, I must here lead the way with a pattern of toleration, by remarking of Falterle, that his poor, thin soul had not the power to develop itself under the stone table of the laws of etiquette, and under the wooden yoke of an imposing station. To whom did the poor devil ever do any harm? Not even to ladies, for whom indeed he was always laboring before the looking-glass, like a copperplate engraver, upon his dear self, but only, like other sculptors, by this artistic work, to display pure beauties, not to mislead them. The sea-water of his life--for he is neither a millionnaire, nor even the greatest _savant_ of the age, although he has read about among many circulating libraries--is sweetened by the water of beauty, wherein he hourly bathes. He swills and gormandizes scarcely at all. If he curses and swears, he does it in foreign languages, as the Papist makes his prayers, and flatters very few except himself.

The vain man, and still more the vain woman, hate vain persons much too violently; for such persons, after all, are more diseased in the head than in the will. I can here cheerfully appeal to every thinking reader, whether he ever, even when he was going about with an uncommonly vain feeling, remembers to have detected any deep qualms of conscience or discords in himself, which, however, were never wanting, when he lied very much or was too hard. Much rather has he, on such occasions, experienced an uncommonly agreeable rocking of his inner man in the cradle of state. Hence a vain man is as hard to cure as a gambler; but for this further reason,--most sins are occasional sermons and occasional poems, and must frequently be set aside, from the third to the tenth commandment inclusive. Marriage, the Sabbath, a man's word, cannot be broken at any given hour. One cannot bear false witness against himself, any more than he can play ninepins or fight a duel with himself. Many considerable sins can only be committed on Easter-Fair or New-Year's Day, or in the Palais Royal, or in the Vatican. Many royal, margravely, princely crimes are possible only once in a whole life; many never at all,--for instance, the sin against the Holy Ghost. On the contrary, one can praise and crown himself inwardly day and night, summer and winter, in every place,--in the pulpit, in the Prater, in the general's tent, on the back seat of a sleigh, in the princely chair, in any part of Germany,--for instance, in Weimar. What! and must one let this perennial balsam-plant, which continually perfumes the inner man, be plucked up or lopped off?

19. CYCLE.

All these occupations and thorns were to Albano right good, sharp earthquake-conductors, since in his bosom already more subterranean storm-matter circulated than is needed to burst the thin wall of a man's chest. Now he began to get on deeper and deeper into the wild thunder-months of life. The longing to see Don Zesara caught new warmth from the Roman history, which lifted up on high before him Caesar's colossal image, and wrote under it, "Zesara." The veiled Linden-city was carried over by his fancy and set upon seven hills, and exalted to a Rome. A post-horn rang through his innermost being, like a Swiss Ranz des Vaches, which builds out into the ether all summits of our wishes in long and shining mountain-chains; and it blew for him the signal of a tent-striking, and all cities of the earth lay with open gates and with broad highways round about him. And when, at this period, on a cool, clear summer morning, he marched along metrically by the side of a regiment on its way to Pestitz, so long as he could hear the sound of the drums and fifes, then did his soul celebrate a Handel's Alexander's Feast; the past became audible,--the rattling of the triumphal cars, the movement of the Spartan bands and their flutes, and the clear trumpet of Fame,--and, as if at the sound of the last trumpets, his soul arose among none but glorified dead on the unbolted earth, and, with them, still marched onward.

When History leads a noble youth to the plains of Marathon, and up to the Capitol, he would fain have at his side a friend,--a comrade,--a brother-in-arms, but no more than this,--no sister-in-arms; for a heroine injures a hero greatly. Into the energetic youth friendship enters earlier than love: the former appears, like the lark, in the early spring of life, and goes not away till late autumn; the latter comes and flees, like the quail, with the warm season. Albano already heard this lark warbling, invisible, in the air: he found a friend, not in Blumenbühl, not in the Linden-city, not in any place, but in his own bosom; and the name of that friend was--Roquairol.

The case was this: For people like myself, country life is the honey wherein they take the pill of city life. Falterle, on the contrary, could not worry down the bitter country life without the silvering-over of city life: thrice every week he ran over to Pestitz, either into the boxes of the amateur-theatre as dramaturgist, or on the stage itself as actor. Now, on every such occasion, he took his little part-book out into the village with him, and there, relying on this rehearsal of the play, studied his part independently of those of his colleagues; just as, to this day, every state-servant commits his to memory without a glance at those of his fellow-performers: hence every one of us consists of only one faculty, and, as in the Russian hunting-music, knows how to fife only one tone, and must throw his strength into the pauses. Into these fragments of theatricals, then, borrowed from Falterle, Albano entered with a rapture which his master soon sought to increase by exchanging for these limited sectors of the globe the whole dramatic world.

The Viennite had long since eulogized before him the suicidal mad-cap Roquairol as a genius in learning,--and himself as particularly such in teaching; and now he adduced the proof of it from the great parts which the mad-cap always played so well. For the rest, it was not his fault that he did not exceedingly disparage the Minister's son, whom he envied, not only for his theatrical, but for his erotic achievements. For the inventively rich Roquairol had with that shot at himself in his thirteenth year saluted and won the whole female sex, and made himself, out of a sacrificial victim, priest of sacrifices, and manager of the amateuress-theatre, attached to the amateur-theatre; whereas the shy, stupid Falterle, with his still-born fancy, could never bring a charmer to any other step than the pas retrograde in a minuet, or to anything more than a setting of the fingers, when he wanted to get himself set in her heart. But the vain man cannot deny others any praise which is also his own.

How must all this have won our friend's admiration for a youth whom he saw pass through his soul now as Charles Moor, now as Hamlet, as Clavigo, as Egmont! As regards the notorious masquerade-shot described in a former Jubilee period, our so inexperienced Hercules, dazzled as he was by the naked dagger of Cato, must have accredited that shot to such a kindred Heraclide, as one of his twelve tragical labors. The fee-court-provost Hafenreffer even tells me, Albano once disputed with the Vienna gentleman, who had long since let himself down from a schoolmaster to a schoolmate, about the finest ways of dying, and, in opposition to the tender Falterle, who declared _himself_ in favor of the sleeping-potion, declared himself on Roquairol's side, even with the stronger addition: "He should like best of all to stand on the top of a tower and draw the lightning on his head!" In this latter article he shows the high feeling of the ancients, who held death by lightning to be no damnation, but a deification; but might not physical causes also have had something to do with it, for his elbows and his hair often flashed out, in the dark, electric fire, and more than once a holy circle streamed out round his head even in the cradle? The Provost is strong for this view of the matter.

Albano, at last, could find no way to cool his fiery heart but by taking paper and writing to the invisible friend, and giving it in charge to the gentleman from Vienna. Falterle, who was complaisance itself--and withal untruth itself, too--in spite of his aversion to Roquairol, took the letters with him, and was _heartily glad to do it_ ("I am quite at home at the Minister's," said he); but never delivered a single one of them, since he had as little influence in the proud Froulay-palace as with the son himself, and so he merely brought back with him every time a new and valid reason why Roquairol had not been able to answer: he was either too very busy, or in the sick-chair, or in company,--but every letter _had delighted him_; and our unsuspecting youth firmly believed it all, and kept on writing and hoping. It would have been handsomely done of the Legation's-counsellor, had he only, that is to say, if he could, been so obliging as to hand over to me Albano's palm-leaves of a loving heart; not for the archives of this book, but merely for my documents relating to the case, for the catalogue of petals, which I for my own private use am stitching and gluing together, of Albano's flowering-time.

20. CYCLE.

Our Zesara, on entering into the years when the song of poets and nightingales flows more deeply into the softened soul, became suddenly another being. He grew stiller and wilder at once, more tender and more impetuous, as, for instance, he once flew in the highest rage to the help of a dog yelping under the blows of the cudgel. Heaven and earth, which hitherto in his bosom, as in the Egyptian system, had run into each other, that is to say, the ideal and the real, worked themselves free from each other, and Heaven ascended and receded, pure and high and brilliant,--upon the inner world rose a sun and upon the outer a moon, but the two worlds and hemispheres attracted each other and made one whole,--his step became slower, his bright eye dreamy, his athlete-gymnastics less frequent,--he could not now help loving all human beings more warmly, and feeling them more near to him; and often with closed eyes he fell trembling upon the neck of his foster-mother, or out in the open air bade his foster-father, at his starting on his journeys, a more lonely and heartfelt farewell.

And now before such clear and sharp eyes the Isis-veil of Nature became transparent, and a living Goddess looked down into his heart with features full of soul. Ah, as if he had found his mother, so did he now find Nature,--now for the first time he knew what spring was, and the moon, and the ruddy dawn, and the starry night.... Ah, we have all once known it, we have all once been tinged with the morning-redness of life!... O, why do we not regard all _first_ stirrings of human emotion as holy, as firstlings for the altar of God? There is truly nothing purer and warmer than our first friendship, our first love, our first striving after truths, our first feeling for Nature: like Adam, we are made mortals out of immortals; like Egyptians, we are governed earlier by gods than by men; and the ideal foreruns the reality, as, with some trees, the tender _blossoms_ anticipate the broad, rough _leaves_, in order that the latter may not set before the dusting and fructifying of the former.

When, as often happened, Albano came home from his inner and outer roamings, at once intoxicated and thirsty,--with senses at the same time _shut_ and _sharpened_, but dreaming like sleepers who feel the more painfully the putting out of the light,--at such times of course it needed only a few cold drops of cold words to make the hot, flowing soul, upon the contact of the strange, cold bodies, scatter in zigzag and globules; whereas a warm mould would have rounded the fluid mass into the loveliest form.

Circumstances being such, of course no one will wonder at what I am presently to report. The dancing-, music-, and fencing-master, who boasted little of his steps, touches, and thrusts, but so much the more of his (Imperial Diet-) Literature,--for he had the new names of the months, the orthography of Klopstock, and the Latin characters in German letters sooner in _his_ letters than any one of us,--would fain show the house of Wehrfritz that he understood a little more of literature and knew a thing or two better than other Viennites (the more so since he read absolutely nothing, not even political newspapers and novels, because he preferred real, living men); he therefore never came into the house without two pockets full of romance and verse for Rabette and Albano. He was encouraged in this by his endless officiousness, and his emulous race-running with his colleague Wehmeier in education, and the interest which he took in the youth now growing so silent, whom he wished to help out of the sweet _dreams_ which the _ruby_[36] of his glittering young life inspired with the exegetic _dream-books_, the works of the poets. The revolution which had taken place in the youth, who now mowed away whole romantic glades of Everdingen, and plucked whole poetical flower-borders of Huysum, I have now neither time nor wish even so much as tolerably to portray, on account of the above-promised wondrous circumstance; suffice it, that Albano, so situated,--the heaven of the poetic art open before him, the promised land of Romance spread out before his eyes,--resembled a planet, assailed by several whizzing comets, and blazing up with them into a common conflagration.

But what further? The Vienna master--this I must still premise--was a vain fool (at least in matters of humility, for example, his pigmy feet, his literature, his success with women), and particularly loved, by familiar pictures of great ones and ladies, to have inferred his confederation with the originals. The poor devil was, to be sure, poor, and believed, with many other authors, that he--unlike Solomon, who prayed for wisdom and received gold--had inversely had the misfortune while supplicating for the latter to receive only the former. In short, on such grounds as these he would have been very glad, let it be observed in passing, to know that the belief prevailed in the house of Wehrfritz that he stood on very good terms with his former pupil, the Minister's daughter,--_Liana_, I think it was, if I read Hafenreffer's handwriting correctly,--and that he quite often saw her, and spoke with her mother. Add to this, that there was not one word of truth in the whole: through the temple in which Liana was there was no door-way for him. But so much the less could he let the Director get ahead of him, who often saw her, and always praised her more warmly at home, merely for the sake of scolding the rude innocence of Rabette, who had never been educated by anybody. The Vienna master wished also, of course, to draw the Count--to whom he only showed the coasts of Roquairol's isle of friendship afar off, but no point for landing--cunningly away from the brother through the sister (he had found it impossible longer to deceive and hold him back); for why did he paint it out before him at such length, how poisonously, some years before, the night-and death-chill brought on by that parting shot of a brother whom she too devotedly loved had fallen upon those tender, white leaves of her heart?