Part 38

Whether the examination of other people's letters pertains to old Froulay as minister or father,--(although the latter presupposes the former, the father of the country implying every other father and his own too,)--I will not decide, except by the parenthesis just inserted. The state which tackles on the post-horses before letters has, it should seem, the right to examine more narrowly, under the closed visor of the seal, these not so much _blind_ as blinding _passengers_,[202] in order to know whether it is not using its horses in the service of its enemies. The state, an ever-drawing light-magnet, means certainly only to have light in the case, and particularly light upon all light in general; it requires only the naked truth, without cover or covering. All that rides and fares through its gates must, though it were dressed in a surtout, just open its _red_ mouth, and say what name and business.

As the common soldier must first show his letters to his officer, the garrison-soldier of the Bastile to the governor, the monk his to the prior, the American colonist his to the Dutchman,[203]--in order that he may burn them up, if they find fault with him,--so, surely, can no statesman, whether he regards the state as a barrack, or as an Engelsburg, or as a _monasterium duplex_, or as a _European possession in Europe_, deny it the right to keep all its letters as open as bills of lading, patents of nobility, bills of sale, and apostolic epistles are. The only mistake is, that it does not get hold of the letters before they are enveloped and sealed. That is immoral enough; for it necessitates the government to open and shut,--to draw the letter out of the case, and put it back again, as the cook with pains turns the snail out of his shell, and then, when he is once taken off from the fire, shoves him back again into it, to serve him up therein.

This last is the point of the compass and cardinal wind which is to guide us onward; for universally acknowledged as it is, just as custom and observance are, that the government, on the same ground on which it opens the _last_ will, must have the power to unseal also the last but one, and the one before that, and finally the very first, before its heir can do it, and that a prince must be able still more readily to bring servants' letters into the same deciphering chancery (and into their antechamber, the unsealing chamber), wherein the letters of princes and legates fly open before the caper-spurge,[204] nevertheless the cork-drawing of letters,--the joint seal, the vicariate seal, the laborious imitation of the L. S., or _loco sigilli_,--all this is something very annoying and almost detestable; out of the wrong a right must therefore be made by constitutional repetition.

Something of the kind might be brought about, I flatter myself, if it were commanded to write letters only on stamp-paper. An inspecting and stamping office appointed for that purpose would then read everything over beforehand.

Or one might prohibit in future all private seals, just as they do mint-stamps for private coin. A seal-department would then interfere, with full rights, and seal up, as they now do the legacies of the deceased, so in that case those of the living.

Or--which is perhaps preferable--an epistolary _censorship_ must commence. Unprinted newspapers, _nouvelles à la main_,[205]--that is, letters,--can never, inasmuch as they divulge still greater mysteries, demand a greater freedom of censorship than printed newspapers; especially as every letter, now-a-days, so easily becomes a circular, going everywhere. A catalogue of prohibited letters (_index expurgandarum_) would always be, in that case, a _word to correspondents_.

Or let the postmasters be put under oath that they will be faithful referendaries of whatever they find weighty or considerable in the letters, which, before despatching, they have laid in the mental letter-balance, and closed again, with the hope, according to the Leibnitzian principle of the non-distinguishable seal, of speeding them far and wide.

If the State finds all these ways of reading and closing letters new and difficult, then it may go on in its own way--of opening them.

* * * * *

Froulay flew, laughing, to his lady, and assured her her falsehood towards him was no news to him at all. Her present plan, merely to work against Herr von Bouverot and himself, he understood full well. Hence it was that Rabette had had to come in, and the daughter to go out. Meanwhile he would show the hypocrite and bigot, or whoever it might be, that she had not merely a mother, but a father too. "She must immediately come home; _je la ferai damer,[206] mais sans vous et sans M. le Compte_," he concluded, with an allusion to the office of court-dame.

But the Minister's lady began, in accordance with her vehement contempt of his projects and powers, with that coldness which would have more exasperated every ardent one than this cold one, to say to him that she must needs disapprove and oppose Liana's and the Count's love still more than he did; that she had merely, in an excessive and otherwise never disappointed confidence in Liana's openness of soul, believed her rather than herself, and, notwithstanding so many signs of Albano's partiality, let her go to Blumenbühl; that she would, however, give him her word on the spot to act with as much energy and spirit against the Count as against the German gentleman, and that she was, as surely as she knew Liana, almost certain of the easiest and happiest result.

Of course this was unexpected to him and--incredible, especially after the previous concealment; only the finest man's soul distinguishes in the female the blending boundaries of self-deception and wilful delusion, weakness and deceit, accident and intent; besides, the Minister's lady was one of those women whom one must first love in order to know them, a case which is generally reversed. He readily accepted on the one hand the confession of her agreement and co-operation,--merely for the sake, hereafter, of turning it as a weapon against her;--but he could not conceal, on the other hand, that _there again_ (that was always his phrase) she had, according to her own confession, neglected to watch over her children from a want of jealousy. He retained the habit, when an open-hearted soul showed him its breaches, of marching in upon it through those breaches, as if he himself had made them. The penitent who knelt before him for forgiveness he would crush still lower, and instead of the key of absolution draw forth the hammer of the law.

I owe it here to the Spaniards, who will one day become acquainted with me through miserable translations,[207] and to the Austrian knighthood of the Golden Fleece, who perhaps read the original in a counterfeit edition, to assign the reasons why the house of Froulay did not bespeak feasts of joy--instead of court-mourning--on the occasion of these advances by a son of their order, a Spanish Grandee, who often lays upon himself a German princely sceptre as a yardstick to measure himself withal. For every Spaniard must have hitherto wondered about this.

I answer every nation. The Froulays had, in the first place, nothing against the union except the--certainty of separation; since on the same ground, which the Knights of the Fleece and the Spaniards have opposed to me, old Gaspard de Zesara can in no wise suffer a bridge to be thrown over from his Gothard to the Jungfrau [virgin]. Secondly, on this very ground the Minister could oppose to this romantic love a much older, wiser, which he bore toward the German gentleman and his moneys and _liaisons_, as well as the old grudge of the Knight of the Fleece. Thirdly, the Minister's lady had, beside these same grounds,--and besides several in favor of the Lector, perhaps,--one quite decisive one, and that was, she could not endure the Count; not merely and solely for the reason that she discovered a painful similarity between him and her son, and even husband, in pride, in excitability, in the characteristic fierceness of genius against poor married women, in want of religious humility and devoutness; but the principal reason why she could not well endure him was this: that she could not bear him. As the system of Predestination sentences some men to hell, whether they afterward deserve heaven or not, so a woman never takes back an enmity to which she has once doomed any one, all that country and city, God, time, and the individual's virtues may say to the contrary, notwithstanding.

In the treaty of peace, concluding the usual chamber-war, the following private articles were adjusted between the married couple: The Count must be, on the Father's and Director's account, treated with the most courtly consideration, and shoved aside,--and Liana gently and gradually drawn away from Wehrfritz's house,--the whole dissolution of the engagement must seem to happen of itself without parental interference, merely through the breaking off of the daughter,--and the whole affair remain a mystery. Froulay hoped to keep the whole interlude or episode concealed from Liana's earlier-intended, the German gentleman, particularly as he, just now, in August, was more at the card-tables of the baths than at home.

So it stood; and into this cold, awful pass the friendly Liana moved on, when on that warm living Sunday she left the blessed, open Lilar. Refined and sanctified by joy,--for every Paradise was to her a purifying Purgatory,--she came nobly to her mother's bosom, without remarking the strange seriousness of the reception by reason of the earnest warmth of her own. Her easy confession of the garden-company opened the trying scene,--almost in the _coulisse_. For the mother, who would fain have begun otherwise, had to mount the thunder-car at once, in order to thunder and lighten against such incomprehensible forgetfulness of female propriety; and yet she held in the thunder-steeds in mid-career, in order to enjoin upon Liana immediately, as the Minister might come any moment, a perfect silence on the subject of to-day's garden-party. Now she cast the deepest strengthening shade upon her previous mute falsehood towards a mother; for she arbitrarily transposed in her story the sowing and blossoming time of this love, even into the days preceding the journey to the country. How did the warm soul shudder at the possibility of such an unkindness! She led her mother as far as she could up along the pure, light pearl-brook of her history and love, and told all that we know, but without giving much satisfaction, because she left out precisely the main point; for, out of forbearance toward her mother, she felt obliged to let the apparition of Caroline, who in the beginning had been the image-stormer of her love and then its inspiring muse and bride's-maid, together with the death-certificate of the future, remain out of sight in the narration.

She held, with fervent pressure, her mother's hand amidst more and more cheerful assurances, how she had always been disposed to tell her everything; she thought hopingly, she needed to save nothing but her _open_ heart. O thou hast more to save, thy warm, thy whole and living heart! Her mother now, from old habit, half believing her, found fault with nothing more than the whole affair, its impropriety, impossibility, folly. "O good mother," said Liana, simply remaining tender under the harsh picturing of the future Albano; "O he is not such, assuredly not!" Quite as tenderly did she far overlook the darkly-sketched future refusal of Don Gaspard, because to her faith the earth was only a blooming grave-mound hanging in the ether. "Ah!" said she, meaning how little time she was for this world, "our love is not so important!" Her mother took this word and the whole gentleness of her resistance, as preludes of an easy victory.

At this moment Albano's father-in-law came in with a kettle-drum, alarm-bell, fire-drum, and rattlesnake, in his girdle, in order therewith to make himself audible. First he inquired,--for he had been listening in vain,--in a very exasperated manner, of the Minister's lady, where she had stowed away his ear (it was the tin duplicate ear, wherein, as in a Venetian lion's-head, all mysteries and accusations of the whole service and family met); he said, he had a little occasion for it just now, particularly since the newest "adventures of his worthy daughter there." The Siamese physicians begin the healing of a patient with treading upon him, which they call softening. In a similar manner Froulay loved to soften, by way of moral pre-cure; and accordingly began, with the above-mentioned speaking-machines in his girdle, to declare his sentiments explicitly on the subject of degenerate children; upon their arts and artifices; and upon intrigues behind fathers' backs (so that no father can accompany a volume of love-poems with a prose preface); backed up many points with the strongest political grounds, which all had reference to himself and his interest, and wound up with a little cursing.

Liana heard him calmly, as one already accustomed to such daily returning equinoctial storm-bursts, without any other emotion, except that she often raised her downcast eye pityingly upon him, out of tender sympathy for the paternal dissatisfaction. In a calm he became loudest. "You will see to it, madam," said he, "that to-morrow forenoon she sends the Count what she has of his, together with a farewell, and notifies him of her new office, as an easy excuse; thou art to be court-dame to the reigning Princess, although thou didst not deserve that I should labor for thee!"

"That is hard!" cried Liana, with breaking heart, falling upon her mother. He supposed she meant the separation from Albano, not from her mother, and asked, angrily: "Why?" "Father, I would so gladly," said she, and turned only her face away from the embrace, "die near my mother!" He laughed; but the Minister's lady herself shut to the hell-gates upon the flames which he still would fain have vomited forth, and assured him it was enough, Liana would certainly obey her parents, and she herself would be surety for it. The preacher of the law came down his pulpit-stairs with an audible ejaculation about a better security, calling back, as he went, that his ear must be produced to-morrow, and though he should have to search for it in all chests and cupboards.

The mother kept silence now, and let her daughter softly weep on her neck; to both, after this drought of the soul, the draught of love was refreshment and medicine. They came out of each other's arms with cheered spirits, but both with entirely delusive hopes.

75. CYCLE.

A hard, black morning; only the outward atmospheric morning was dark-blue; there was nothing loud and stormy, except perchance the swarms of bees in the linden-thicket; the heaven's ether seemed to flutter away high over the stony streets, so as to settle down low in the bright open Lilar upon all hill-tops and tree-tops, and, blue as peacock's plumage, to play its hues over the twigs.

Liana found on her writing-table a billet, folded in large quarto, wherein the Minister, ever-working, like a heart, sought even at this early hour of the morning, before raising out of the public documents for the several administration and exchequer counsellors the transient tempests which were necessary to fruitfulness, to descend upon his shuddering daughter with a cold morning rain-gust. In the decretal letter referred to, he developed more in detail, upon a sheet and a half what he had meant yesterday,--separation on the spot; and offered six grounds of separation,--first, his uncongenial relation with the Knight of the Fleece; secondly, her own and the Count's youth; thirdly, the approaching place of court-dame; fourthly, that she was his daughter, and this the first sacrifice to which he, her father, for all his previous ones, had ever laid claim; fifthly, she might perceive, by his indulgent "Yes," to the love of her brother, whose apparent improvement he held out to her as a model, that he lived and cared only for the welfare of his children; sixthly, he would send her to Fort * * * to his brother, the commandant, in case she were refractory, by way of exiling, punishing, and bringing her round; and neither weeping, nor falling at feet, nor mother, nor hell should bend him; and he gave her three days' time for reflection.

Mutely, and with wet eyes, she handed to her who had been hitherto her comforter the heavy sheet. But the comforter had become a judge: "What wilt thou do?" said the Minister's lady. "I will suffer," said Liana, "in order that _he_ may not suffer; how could I so sorely sin against him?" The mother, whether actually under the old notion of her easy conversion, or from dissimulation, took that "He" for the father, and asked: "Say'st thou nothing of me?" Liana blushed at the substitution, and said: "Ah! poor me, I will not indeed be happy,--only true!" How had she during this night prayingly lived and wept amidst the fearful wars of all her inner angels! A love so guiltless, consecrated by her holy friend in heaven,--a fidelity so exceedingly abridged by early death; so sound-hearted a youth, shooting up with high, fruit-bearing summit heavenward, whom not even ghostly voices could scare or allure out of his faithful childhood's love toward her, insignificant one; the everlasting discomfort and grief which he would experience at the first, greatest lie against his heart; her short, straight path through life, and the nearness of that cross-way, at which she should wish to throw back,--not stones, but flowers upon the other pilgrims;--all these forms took her by _one_ hand to draw her away from her mother, who called after her with the words: "See how ungratefully thou art going from me, and I have so long suffered and toiled for thee!" Then came Liana back again out of the dusky, warm rose-vale of love into the dry, flat earth-surface of a life, wherein nothing breaks the monotony save her last mound. O how imploringly did she look up to the stars, to see whether they did not move as the eyes of her Caroline, and tell her _how_ she must sacrifice herself, whether for her lover or for her parents; but the stars stood friendly, cold, and still in the steadfast heavens.

But, when the morning sun again beamed upon her heart, it beat hopefully, newly strengthened with the resolution to endure this day for Albano full many sorrows,--ah yes, even the first. Could Caroline, thought she, approve a love to which I must be untrue?

Hardly had she left the lips of her mother with the morning greeting, when the latter sought, but more earnestly than yesterday, to draw up the roots of this steadfast heart out of its strange soil by a longer use of yesterday's flower-extractor. In her comparative anatomy of Albano and Roquairol, from the similarity of voice even to that of stature, she grew more and more cutting, till Liana, with a maiden's wit, at once asked, "But why may my brother, then, love Rabette?" "_Quelle comparaison!_" said the mother. "Art thou nothing better than she?" "She _does_, strictly speaking, much more than I," said she, quite candidly. "Didst thou never quarrel with the wild Zesara?" asked the mother. "Never, except when I was in the wrong," said she, innocently.

The mother was alarmed to perceive more and more clearly that she had to pull up deeper and stronger roots than light flowers strike into the soil. She concentrated all her maternal powers of attraction and lifting-machines upon one point, for the upturning of the still green myrtle. She disclosed to her the Minister's dark plan of an alliance with the German gentleman, her hitherto concealed strifes and sighs on the subject, her thus far effectual resistance, and the latest paternal stratagem, to make her a garrison-prisoner with his brother, and thereby probably Herr von Bouverot a besieger of the citadel.

For some readers and relicts of the heavy, old-fashioned, golden age of morality, the remark is here introduced and printed, that a peculiar, cold, unsparing, often shocking and provoking, candor of remark upon the nearest relatives and the tenderest relations is so very much at home in the higher ranks, that even the fairer souls, among whom, surely, this mother belongs, cannot, absolutely, understand or do otherwise.

"O thou best mother!" cried Liana, agitated, but not by the thought of the rattle and the snaky breath of Bouverot, or of his murderous spring at her heart,--she thought with as much indifference of being betrothed to him as any innocent one does of his dying on a scaffold,--but by the thought of the long building over and crowding out of sight of the motherly tears, the streams of motherly love, which had hitherto flowed nourishingly deep down under her flowers. She threw herself gratefully between those helpful arms. They closed not around her, because the Minister's lady was not to be made weak and soft by any washing wave and surge of sudden emotion.

Into this embrace the Minister struck or stepped in. "So!" said he, hastily. "My ear, madam," he continued, "cannot be found again at all among the domestics; I have that to tell you." For he had to-day posted himself upon a law-giving Sinai, and thundered into the ears of the service assembled at its foot the inquiry after his own ear, "because I must believe," he had said to them, "that you, for very good reasons, have stolen it from me." Then he had swept like a hail-storm, or a kitchen-smoke in windy weather, through the servants' apartments and corners, one by one, in quest of his ear. "And thou?" said he, in a half-friendly tone to Liana. She kissed his hand, which he, as the Pope does his foot, always despatched for kisses, as proxy and lip-bearer, agent, and _de latere nuncio_ of his mouth.

"She continues disobedient," said the severe lady. "Then she is a little like you," said he, because the mistrustful one looked upon the embrace as a conspiracy against him and his Bouverot. Upon this, his ice-Hecla burst out, and flamed and flowed, now upon daughter, now upon wife. The former was absolutely a miserable creature, he said; and only the Captain was worth anything, whom he luckily had educated by himself alone. He saw through all, heard all, though they had hid away his ear-trumpet. There was, accordingly, as he saw, (he pointed to his unsealed morning-psalm,[208]) a communication between the two colleges; but he invoked God to punish him if he did not--"my dear daughter, pray answer at last!" he begged.

"My father," said Liana, who, since the fraternization of Bouverot and the ill treatment from her mother, had begun to feel her heart wake up, which, however, could only despise and never hate, "my mother has to-day and yesterday told me all; but I have surely duties towards the Count!" A bolder liveliness than her parents had ever missed or found in her beamed under her upraised eye. "Ah, I will truly remain faithful to him just as long as I live," said she. "_C'est bien peu_," replied the Minister, astounded at such pertness.