Part 22

All at once Schoppe, out of patience with this general emotion, said: "What a masquerade for the sake of a mask! Rag and tag for a piece of rag-paper! Throw a man quietly into his hole, and call nobody to see. I always admire London and Paris, where they toll no alarm-bells, nor set the neighborhood stirring, when the undertaker carries one, who has fallen asleep, to bed." "No, no," said Zesara, full of capacity for grief, "I admire it not: to whomsoever the holy dead are of no consequence, to him the living are so too;--no, I will gladly let my heart break into one tear after another, if I can only still remember the dear being."

O, how did the neighborhood accord with his heart! In a cistern, before which the coffin of the coffin passed by, there stood a bronze statue of the old man on horseback, who saw pass by below him the unsaddled mourning-horses, and the mounted festive-steed; a deaf and dumb man was stopping from door to door, and making, with his bell, a begging jingle, which neither he nor the buried one could hear: and was not the forgotten Prince laid in the earth all unseen, and more lonesome than any one of his subjects? O Zesara! it sank into thy heart, how easily man is forgotten, whether he lies in the urn or in the pyramid; and how our immortal self is regarded, like an actor, as _absent_, so soon as it is once behind the scenes, and frets and fumes no longer among the players on the stage.

But had not the gray hermit, Spener, laid upon the sunken breast of that deeper hermit a double youth? O, in this frosty hour of pomp and pageantry, counts not the faithful Julienne every tone of the funeral bell with the beads of her tears,--that poor daughter whom sickness has exempted from the ceremonials, not from pain, who now has lost her _last but one_, perhaps her _last_ relative, since her brother is hardly one? And will not Liana, in her Elysium, guess the farce of sorrow which is acted so near to her over behind the high trees in Tartarus? And if she suspects anything, O how profoundly will she mourn!

All this the noble youth heard in his soul, and he thirsted hotly after the friendship of the heart: it was to him as if its mountain- and life-air floated down from eternity, and blew the grave-dust away from his life-path, and he saw, up yonder, the Genius place his inverted torch upon the cold bosom, not to extinguish the immortal life, but to enkindle the immortal love.

He could not now do otherwise than go forth into the open air, and, amid the flying tones of spring and the deep, hollow murmur of the receding dead march, write the following words to Liana's brother, in which he said to him, after a youthful style, Be my friend!

"TO CHARLES.

"Stranger! At this hour, when, in the dead sea and through our tears, the triumphal columns and thrones of men and their bridge-posts appear to us _broken_, a true heart puts a question to thee frankly, and let thine answer it willingly and in truth!

"Has the longest prayer of man been answered to thee, stranger, and hast thou thy friend? Do thy wishes and nerves and days grow together with his, like the four cedars on Lebanon, which can bear nothing around them but eagles? Hast thou two hearts and four arms, and livest thou twice over, as if immortal, in the battling world? Or standest thou solitary and alone upon a frosty, dumb, slender, glacier-point, having no human being to whom thou canst show the Alps of creation, and with the heavens arching far above thee and abysses yawning below? When thy birthday comes, hast thou no being to shake thy hand, and look thee in the eye and say, We still cleave together faster than ever?

"Stranger: if thou hast had no friend, hast thou deserved one? When spring kindled into life, and opened all her honey-cups, and her serene heaven, and all the hundred gates of her Paradise, hast thou, like me, bitterly looked up and begged of God a heart for thine? O when, at evening, the sun went down like a mountain, and his flames departed from the earth, and now only his red breath floated upward to the silvery stars, hast thou beheld the brotherly shadows of friendship which sank together on battle-fields, like stars of one constellation, stealing forth through the bloody clouds out of the old world, like giants; and didst thou think of _this_,--how imperishably they loved each other, and thou, like me, wast alone? And, solitary one, when night--that season at which the spirit of man, as in torrid climes, _toils_ and _travels_--reveals her cold suns above thee in a sparkling chain, and when, still, among all the distant forms of the ether there is no dear loved one, and immensity painfully draws thee up, and thou feelest, upon the cold earth, that thy heart beats against no breast but only thine own,--O beloved! weepest thou then, and most bitterly?

"Charles, often have I reckoned up, on my birthday, the increasing years,--the feathers in the broad wing of time,--and thought upon the sounding flight of youth: then I stretched my hand far out after a friend, who should stick by me in the Charon's skiff wherein we are born, when the seasons of life's year glide by along the shore before me, with their flowers and leaves and fruits, and when, on the long stream, the human race shoots downward in its thousand cradles and coffins.

"Ah, it is not the gay, variegated shore that flies by, but man and his stream: forever bloom the seasons in the gardens up and down along the shore; only _we_ sweep by once for all before the garden, and never return.

"But our friend goes too. O, if thou at this hour of death's juggleries art contemplating the pale Prince, with the images of youth on his breast, and thinking of the gray friend who secretly bewails him in Tartarus, then will thy heart dissolve, and in soft, warm flames run round through thy bosom, and softly say: 'I will love, and then die, and then love--O Almighty, show me the soul which longs and languishes like mine!'

"If thou say'st that, if thou art thus, then come to my heart: I am as thou. Grasp my hand, and hold it till it withers. I have seen thy form to-day, and on it the marks of life's wounds: hasten to me; I will bleed and struggle at thy side. I have long and early sought and loved thee. Like two streams will we mingle and grow, and bear our burdens, and dry up together. Like silver in the furnace, we will run together with glowing light, and all slags shall lie cast out around the pure shimmering metal. Laugh not, then, any longer so grimly, to think what _ignes-fatui_ men are; like _ignes-fatui we_ burn and fly away in the rainy storm of time. And then, when time is gone by, we find each other again, and it will be again in the spring.

"ALBANO DE CESARA."

48. CYCLE.

How gloriously,--before all the beating veins of the inner man, like those of the outer in old age, have stiffened into gristle, and all the vessels have become inflexible and earthy, and the moral pulse, like the physical, hardly makes sixty strokes in a minute, and before the shy old fool, at every emotion, reserves a piece of his nature which he keeps cold and dry, and which is to wait for another occasion, as sprinkled raspberry leaves always remain dry on the rough side,--how gloriously, I say, before this period of espionage, does a youth, especially an Albano, step along his path, how freely, boldly, and exultingly! and seeks with equal confidence the friend and the foe, and closes with him, to fight either for him or against him!

Let this excuse Albano's fiery letter! The next day he received from Roquairol this answer:--

"I am as thou. On ascension-evening I will seek thee among the masks.

"CHARLES."

The redness of mortification rushed over the Count's face at this artificial postponement of the acquaintance; he felt that, after such a tone from the heart, _he_ would have immediately, without a dead interim of five days, and without an _homage-day masquerade_ in a double sense, gone to his friend and become his. But now he swore no longer to run to meet him, but only to wait for him. However, the roused indignation soon subsided, and he began to invent fairer and fairer mitigations for the first leaf of the so-long-sought favorite. Charles might certainly, e. g. not wish to mix up the holy time of the first recognition with this bustle of taking the allegiance-oath,--or that first suicidal masquerade might have made every succeeding one an inspiring era of a new second life,--or he knew, perhaps, in fact, about Albano's birthday,--or, finally, this glowing spirit chose to run or fly on his own track.

Meanwhile, his note made the Count reproach himself for his own letter, as if it had been a sin against his Schoppe; he held it to be a sin, in one friendship, to yearn after another; but thou mistakest, fair soul! Friendship has steps which lead up on the throne of God, through all spirits, even to the Infinite: only love is satiable, and, like truth, admits no three degrees of comparison; and a single being fills its heart. Moreover, Albano and Schoppe, in such a mutual metempsychosis of their ideas, and such a near relationship of their pride and nobility, held each other far more dear than they showed to each other. For, as Schoppe, in fact, showed nothing, one could love him in return only with the finger on the lip, but, perhaps, so much the more strongly. Albano was a burning-hot concave mirror, which has its object near, and represents it erect behind itself; Schoppe one which holds the object far off, and throws an inverted image of it into the air.

On the evening before his birthday, and the day of allegiance, Albano stood alone at his window, and pondered his past,--for a last day is more solemn than a first: on the 31st of December I reckon up three hundred and sixty-five days and their fates; on the first of January I think of nothing, because, in fact, the whole future is transparent, or may be all out in five minutes;--while the vesper-bell pealed over the fast-closing twentieth year of his life, and the vesper-hour rose within him, he measured the _abside-line_[101] of his moral being, and looked up at the towering pile of the approaching morrow, which hung full either of spring-showers or hailstones. Never yet had he so tenderly surveyed the circle of his beloved beings, or glanced through the open doors of futurity, as at this time.

But the fair hour was spoiled by Malt, who burst in with the information that the limping gentleman had leaped overboard. From the dormer-window might be seen a returning village funeral-procession, conglomerated around the spot on the bank where Schoppe had plunged in. With frightful wildness--for in Albano indignation was next-door neighbor to terror and pain--he dragged along with him, as he flew to the rescue, the lazy provincial physician, and even threatened him with hard words; for Sphex was going to wait for a carriage, and meanwhile represent to himself the possible cases of too late preparations for a rescue, and besides, perhaps, cherished a hope of serving up Schoppe, on the anatomical table, as Doctor's-feast of science.

The youth ran out with him,--through corn-fields, amidst tears and amidst curses,--with alternate clenched fist and outspread palm, and his eye grew more and more dim and dizzy, and his heart hotter and hotter, the nearer they approached the dark circle. At last they could not only see the Librarian, but also hear him; in good case he turned towards them his curly head from among the reeds, and, occasionally, as he was haranguing the mourning-retinue, he flung up, in a fiery manner, his hairy arm above the water-plants.

Of course the case stood thus:--

His sorites, as long as he lived, was the following: "He had come into the world, not feet foremost, but head foremost, and, accordingly, carried his head and nose high and lofty,[102] because he could not help it. Now he knew of no more genuine freedom than health;--every malady shuts up and warps the soul, and the earth is, merely for that reason, a universal block-house, _la salpetrière_ and house of bruises;[103]--whoso made use of an oyster-snail-viper medicine was himself a slimy, snaky, sticking viper, oyster, snail, and therefore the ever-free savages killed their invalids, and the vigorous Spartans gave no patient an office, least of all the crown;--and strength was especially necessary, in our degenerate days, in order to maul qualified subjects, because, to his certain knowledge, the fist with some substance in it was the best plaintiff's plea and _actio ex lege diffamari_ which a citizen could institute."

Therefore he bathed summer and winter in ice-cold water, just as he, for the same reason, kept himself temperate in all things.

Now, then, in this odious May-weather, he had merely, in his gray hussar-cloak,--at home, his night-gown,--and with shoes down at the heel, gone to the water-side; he had previously stripped himself at the house so as to be ready as soon as he should arrive at the bank. The mourning-company, who saw him go at his swift pace down to the water, and at last throw off everything and leap in, could not but believe the man meant to drown himself, and ran in a body to his bathing-place, not to let him do it. "Do not drown himself!" cried the mourning-company of blacks, while yet afar off. He just let them come on till he could discourse the matter to them somewhat nearer, in the following wise:--"I am yet open to conviction; I can hear reason, good folk, though I am already standing up to my neck in the water; but suffer yourselves to be correctly informed in this case, dear _Cherstens_ generally, for so Christians were called in the time of Charles. I am a poor Sacramentarian, and can hardly recollect what I have hitherto lived on, it was so bloody-desperate little. Whatever I have undertaken in this world, no blessing went with it, but it was all crab's-track backwards and forward. I set up, in Vienna, a neat little magazine of snipes' dung, but I made nothing out of it for want of snipes. I took hold on the other end, and hawked about in Carlsbad, for the lords and great ones, who are accustomed to set a picture upon every old stool and piece of trumpery, fine engravings for waste-paper and privy purposes, in order that, instead of the mere printed paper, they might have something tasty for consumption; but the whole set was left, a dead loss, on my hands, because the manner was too hard and not ideal enough. In London I prepared ready-made speeches (for I am a _litterateur_) to be used by men who are hanged, and yet would fain have something to say for themselves: I offered them to the richest parliamentary orators, and even knaves of booksellers, but came near having to use the speeches for myself. I would gladly have got my living by vomiting,[104] but that requires funds. I tried once to get a settlement as note-stand to a count's regiment, because it looks stupid enough on drill- and parade-days to see every one with a musical flap hanging on his shoulder, from which his next neighbor behind plays. I offered for a trifle to wear all the musicalia on my own person, and stand before them with the notes; but the first-lieutenant (who is at once in the regency and in the treasury) thought it would make the fifers laugh when they came to blow. Thus has it fared with me from time immemorial, dear Cherstens--but don't trample about on my precious cloak there! As ill luck would have it, I entered into wedlock with a lady of Vienna, who was endowed with melted seals;[105] her name was _Prænumerantia Elementaria Philanthropia_;[106] you don't know what this means in German,--a real hell-broom, who chased me, all heated, like a hunted stag, into the reeds here. Cherstens, I should defame myself in the water, were I to come out plainly with the whole story of our woful condition;[107] ... in short, my Philanthropia before marriage was soft as the spines of a new-born hedge-hog, but in the nuptial state, when the foliage was off, I saw, as on trees in winter, one raven's- and devil's-nest after another. She was all the time dressing herself and dressing herself, till it was time to undress; when a fault in me or the children had been removed, she would still continue to scold a little, as one continues to vomit, when the emetic and everything is out; she indulged me preciously little, and had I had a Fontanel[108] she would have reproached me for the fresh pea which I should have been obliged every day to put into it; in short, we two pulled opposite ways,--the linch-pin of love came out in the struggle, and I came with the forward-wheels down into the water here, and my Prænumerantia stays with the hind-wheels at home. See, my women, this is why I do violence to myself--besides, the gnawing-man[109] would have, at any rate, caught me by the throat; but behold yourselves in me as in a mirror! For when a man who is a _litterateur_, and therefore, as you yet know by the case of Fichte, goes about as instituted overseer, schoolmaster, and mentor of the human race, leaps overboard before his wife's face, and lets his Ephorie and tutorship go, you may conclude from this of what your own husbands, who cannot measure themselves with me at all in learning, are capable, in case you are such Prænumerantias, Elementarias, and Philanthropias as unfortunately you have the appearance of being. But," he concluded suddenly, as he saw Albano and the Doctor, "clear yourselves away; I am going to drown myself!"

"Ah, dear Schoppe!" said Albano. Schoppe blushed at his situation. "It must be a clown," said the retiring funeral retinue. "What child's foolery is this, then?" asked Sphex, resenting Albano's former passion and the anatomical misshot, and derived satisfaction from telling the story of the latter's rage. Schoppe knew how heartily the noble youth loved him, and he would not say anything, because he was ashamed, but he swore to himself (in the grotesque style to which he was accustomed even in soliloquy) very shortly to let him into his breast-cavern, and show him hanging therein a whole, wild heart full of love.

49. CYCLE.

The blue day on which an ascension, a rendering of allegiance, and a birthday were to be celebrated already stood over Pestitz, after having cast off its morning-red,--two horses were already harbingers of four, the lowly coach-box, of the highest,--the country nobility already went down, uncomfortably frizzled, into the rooms of the inn, and scolded at being cheated out of the fairest weather for heath-cock coupling, and the city nobility, yet unpowdered, spoke of the day, but without real earnestness,--the court-micrometer,[110] the court-marshal, was surrounded by all his quartermasters,--the court-transit-instruments,[111] the courtiers, instead of their half-holiday, when they work only in the afternoon, had a whole working-day, and were already standing at the wash-table,--the allegiance-preacher, Schäpe, believed almost every word of his discourse, because he had read it too many times over, and the nearness of publication infused emotion into him,--there was no longer a domino to be had for the evening, except among the Jews,--when a man alighted at the door of the Doctor's house, who among all others was the most honest and hearty about the allegiance, the Director Wehrfritz. There were a son and a father in each other's arms, a fiery youth and a fiery man. Albano seemed to him no longer to be the old Albano, but--warmer than ever. He brought with him from "his women," as he called them, congratulatory letters and birthday presents; he himself made not much of the birthday or forgot it, and Albano had only celebrated it a little just after waking. These festivals belong more to the other sex, who gladly toy with times and seasons in the way of loving and giving.

The Titular Librarian marched out to a village, named Klosterdorf, where the Mayor with his family, after an ancient custom, had to imitate the Prince with his, and so, as commissioner, drive in the allegiance of the neighboring circle; this, Schoppe said, he still was pleased with, but the other worked too fatally on his inwards. The Director, dazzled by the prospects of the day, and posted in the front with an official speech to the chivalry, fell into a quarrel with Schoppe. "The Exchequer and the Court," said he, "have been, of course, from time immemorial, such as they are; but the Princes, dear sir, are good; they are themselves sucked dry, and then they seem to be the suckers." "Somewhat," rejoined Schoppe, "as the death-vampyres only give out blood from themselves, while they appear to take it; but I make up for that again by attributing wholly to the Regents, besides the sins of others, the merits, victories, and sacrifices of others also; herein they are the pelicans, who shed a blood for their children which really at a distance seems to be their own."

All went off: Schoppe, out into the country; Wehrfritz, to church with the procession; Albano, into a spectator's-box in the allegiance-hall; for he would not in any wise be stuck into the train of the Prince, not even as embroidery. Soon the noisy stream of pomp came sounding back into the hall. The chivalry, the spirituality, and the cities mounted the stage, where the oath was to be taken. In the court-yard of the castle one foot stood upon another, and a needle might, to be sure, have reached the ground, but no one could do so, to pick it up; everybody looked up at the balcony, and cursed before he _swore_. The Prince, too, stayed not away; the throne, that graduated and paraphrased princely seat, stood open, and Fraischdörfer had decorated it with beautiful mythological and heraldic shoulder-pieces and appendages.

Opposite the Count bloomed the court-dames, and below them a rose and a lily, Julienne and Liana. As one lifts his eye from the stiff frosty landscape of winter to the blue breathing heavens which looked down upon our spring evenings, and wherein the light summer clouds floated and the rainbow stood, so did he glance over the shining snow-light of the court at the lovely Grace of spring, around whom remembrances hung, like flowers, and who now stood so far aloof, so cut off, so imprisoned in the heavy finery of the court! Only through her friend, who sits beside her, was she gently melted and harmonized with the dazzling present.

Now began fine official speeches, the longest being made by the old Minister, the shortest by Wehrfritz: the Prince let the warm eulogies glide over his December-visage without thawing it down,--a mistaken indifference! For the praise of the Minister, as well as of other court-servants, may yet help him with posterity, since, according to Bacon, no praise is of more consequence than that which servants give, because they surely know their master best.

Then the Upper-Secretary, Heiderscheid, read Luigi's genealogical table, and illuminated the hollow family-tree, together with its dryness, and the last pale green twig; with sunken eyes Julienne heard this amid the _vivat_ of the people, and Albano, never subdued by _one_ thought alone, saw her eyes, and could not, however intently the Regent listened, avoid the funeral picture, how, one day, and that very soon, this extinguished man would bear down after him the name of his whole race into the vault; he saw them carving the inverted arms and hanging the shield upside down, and heard the shovels strike against the helmet and fling the earth after the coffin. Gloomy idea! the tender sister would certainly have wept, had she only been alone!