Part 33

Here the bell sounded the first stroke, and the Spaniard fired,--at the second Albano blazed away;--both stood there without a wound; powder-smoke floated round, but nowhere was there any appearance of a splintering, as if the ball had been only a glass ball filled with quicksilver. With grim contempt, Albano looked at him on account of the previous voices. "I was forced to," said the uncle.

Suddenly the Lector broke in, breathless, whom Julienne had despatched to hinder a probable duel. "Count!" he stammered, "has anything happened?" "Something," replied the uncle, "must have happened in the neighborhood, the smoke came in; we were just on the point of embracing and bidding each other good night." He rang, and commanded the servant to ask the host who was firing so late at night. Albano was astounded, and could only say in parting, "So be it! But fear the madman, whom I unchain!" "Ah, do it not!" said the Spaniard, and seemed to fear.

Augusti waited upon him down to the street, nor did he let him go till after he had given his word of honor not to go up there again. But Albano flew, even at this late hour of the night, to the house of woe and to the tormented heart.

135. CYCLE.

Hardly had Albano made known to the overseer of the madhouse, a young, sleek, rosy little man, his name, which the little man already knew, and his petition for Schoppe's liberty, together with his security for him, when the overseer smiled upon him with uncommon complacency, and said, "I have quietly watched the whole house for years. I seize greedily the minutest traits for a future, philosophical public; and so also did I apply myself very seriously to Mr. Schoppe. But never, Sir Count, never have I detected in him a trait or trick which would have promised insanity; on the contrary, he reads all my English and German works on the subject, and converses with me upon the modes of treatment in hospitals for the insane. A disciple of Fichte he may be (I infer it from his 'I'), and a humorist, too; now if each of these is, of itself, hard to distinguish from craziness, how much more their union! with what joyful anticipation of the coincidence of our observations I give you here the key to his chamber, conceive for yourself!" "If he is not a fool," said his wife, "why then does he smash all the looking-glasses?" "For that very reason," replied the overseer; "but if he is a fool, then is thy husband a still greater."

Never did Albano open a door with heavier heart than this to Schoppe's little chamber. "I am come to take thee away, my brother," he cried immediately, by way of sparing himself and him the redness of shame. But when he looked at the old lion more nearly, he found him in this trap quite altered,--not tame, creeping, wagging, but broken in two, and with shattered claws weighed down to the earth. The charge of murder, which he had honestly admitted, united to Gaspard's unmerciful sentence, had filled and eaten up his proud, free breast with poisonous shame. "I fare well here, only I feel symptoms of ill health," said Schoppe, with lustreless eye and toneless voice. Albano could not hide his tears; he clung around the sick man, and said, "Magnanimous man, thou gavest me once in my sickness, health and salvation again, and I knew it not, and thanked thee not. Go with me; I must nurse thee in this thy sickness, heal and comfort thee as I can; then we travel."

"Dost thou imagine, my Criton," he replied, strengthened by the balsam of his wounded pride, "that I am not a sort of Socrates, but will really go out of my _torre del filosopho_? A word of _honor_ is a thick chain." "Tell me all, spare no one; but I will tell thee thereafter a piece of news, at which thy chain shall instantly melt down!" said Albano.

"Ha! Meanwhile, this place here, for its part, is well enough, as aforesaid, a _torre del filosopho, quai de Voltaire_, and Shakespeare's street, and whatever else one might, could, would, or should name. Moreover, I always hear by night one or another man speak close by me, and so I have no fear at all that the 'I' will come. I throw every day five little bread-balls: if they form a cross, then it signifies (think what thou wilt) that I do not yet appear to myself. But they always make one. I have been, in this Anticyra here, so quieted about so many a phantom, even by those books,--look at them, nothing but treatises on madness,--that I, although it touches my Mordian[137] quite as little as it does me, am glad to have been here. My intercourse is not the safest, I own, though I talk with the keeper and wife alone (a rhyme), both of whom cleverly understand the prison-fever that prevails here. The man has got the fixed idea into his head, and his wife thereby into hers, that he is our present overseer, and has to assist, oversee, and read excellent books which fall in with his office. Those treatises are by the fool. It is to be presumed he has let his overseeing idea peep out too broadly in the city, and the medical college clapped him in with his serviceable idea; because, in the end, to be sure, every overseer must have it in order to exercise his office, whether he is mad or not. Amongst all here in the house, we two please each other most. He sounded me to my advantage, and I can make great use of him for my liberty, only I must not attack his foul, fixed spot. Only I often improvisate for them an evening blessing,--because they have no prayer-book,--and weave in with the blessing hints which might be of medical service to the pair, if they chose. So we two wander round in the mazes of this labyrinth along before the patients,--behind him, the incurable hub of the whole wheel, I walk quite tolerant. In the club, universal polemics and scepticism reign as in no other university hall. 'It is a thing to make one become crazy,' he says to me, in a low tone. 'To make one _be_ crazy,[138] they say in this _palais d'égalité_,' I reply. I cut him out the profiles of the patients for his manuscript. As children still have something which appears to them childish, so have madmen something which seems even to them madness. But I never become any more pointed with him, and keep sharper jokes to myself. Ah, what is man, especially a discreet one, and how thin are his sticks and staves! Is there anything about me that moves thee, Albano? My dull, pale face, perhaps?"

But Albano could not possibly confess to him, that this wreck of a noble man, with his delusions, and even with his style, whose wings had also wheels on them, brought the tears into his eyes, but he said merely, "Ah, I think of many things, but now, at last, I pray, to thy story, dear friend!" But Schoppe had already forgotten again what he was to tell. Albano named the issue of the portrait-affair with the Countess, and Schoppe began:--

"The Princess Julienne was just jumping into her carriage, when I led the blind maiden up the steps, to let it be said, the Librarian Schoppe was here from Spain. I was ushered into a darkened apartment, wherein I walked quietly up and down waiting or watching for people, until the Countess greeted me out of the gloom 'This darkness,' said I, 'is just what I like for the light which I have to give, only I would rather speak Irish or Lettonian[139] or Spanish, because I don't know who may be eavesdropping about here.' 'Spanish!' said she, seriously. I related to her how I had known thy mother, and painted her, and so forth, and inserted my name indelibly into the likeness; after a long time, had met her in the market-place of this city, and taken her for the looking-glass image of thy mother, so like was she to her own. 'I know not,' said she, breaking in here with heated pride upon the midst of my narrative, 'how far your secrets can become mine.' 'You may,' said I, seriously, 'by letting me ring for a light; for I hold here in my hand the portrait of the Frau von Cesara and von Romeiro, two names of one person.' She comprehended nothing of it, wanted to know nothing of it, and I must not ring. I acknowledged to her that I saw myself necessitated to adorn myself with the rhetorical chessman, generally called repetition of the narrative, and proceeded to move the piece. But as soon as in so doing I came upon thy name again, she said I had probably in my mind relations now entirely done away. 'No,' said I, 'I have an eternal and restored relation in my mind, and bring with me his greeting, full of the most profound regard.' The greeting seemed to touch her sensibilities, just as if one held her to be in need of such an assurance, and she begged me rather to leave thee out. 'Heavens! he is your brother, and here I have about me the portrait of your mother, stolen from Valencia, and only no light to show it by.'

"Light was then ordered. As the flame set the tall, imposing form in gold, I said right out to myself, she was fully as deserving as her brother that one should make that long pilgrimage to the family tree of both, for she is not without her charms. Albano, were I her brother, as thou hast the honor to be, and had she a gondola, but no river of paradise for it, my blood would have to be made navigable for her; I would bear her up not only in my hands, but, like an æquilibrist, on my nose and mouth, the unfortunate one! She no sooner saw the portrait than she cried, 'Mother, mother!' and kept passing her hand over her eyes, complaining that they were now still worse than ever. I resumed my scraping, and at last dug out before her eyes my whole name, _Loewenskiould_, even with the addition, which had escaped me, 'Loves much.'

"'Was that the painter's name?' she asked. 'Are you he? You loved her too?' 'Beauty is a cliff,' replied I, seriously, 'on which one and another man seeks to shipwreck himself, because it lies full of pearls and oysters.' She begged of me, in a friendly manner, the most distinct repetition of the repetition; she wished to attend better; hearing and thinking were as hard and heavy for her now as living. Albano, you should have despatched me to her with more preparatory information. As it was, I was half confused and cloudy, and when, during my picture of the Long Lake Isle,[140] something moist sprang from her eyes, I sank in the drops, and almost drowned therein, and not till after some time could I rub myself to life. At the end of my discourse, she stood up, folded her hands, and prayed, with weeping, as if she gave thanks: 'O God, O God! thou hast spared me!'--which I, after all, do not wholly understand."

Albano understood it well,--namely, that she thanked fate for the accidental delay of Schoppe's arrival, which had spared her the short but fearful transformation of Roquairol into a brother.

"Thereupon she broke out into too many thanks to the painter, robbers and purveyors of the painted birth-certificate. He whose heart has gone to sleep like an arm, and is feelingless and hard to move, finds a something very droll run through and over the awaking member when he stirs it. 'I could not do less,' said I, 'for your holy brother; the sunny side is, then, the moon-side.' She turned suddenly to the subject of thy father, and asked, as he was immediately coming, whether she or I should propose to him these riddles. 'Or rather both!' I had hardly replied, when he stepped wildly in.

"Now, Gaspard is, to be sure and decidedly, thy own and thy sister's natural father, and filial love toward him is never to be set down against _thee_ as a fault; but if I chose to tell thee he was no bear, no rhinoceros, no werewolf or other kind of wolf, I should do it more from singular politeness than from any other cause. He snorted to me a good evening; so did I to him. Many men resemble glass,--smooth and slippery and flat so long as one does not break them, but _then_ cursedly cutting, and every splinter stings. The matter was laid before him with the accompanying frontispiece of the portrait. Wert thou more distantly related to him, I would let myself out on this subject; for his face was overspread with the northern light of grim fury; out of his eyes yellow wasps flew at me; straight lines shot up on his tempestuous brow like electrical lances, particularly two perpendicular lines of discomfort. But, as was said, thou art, to my knowledge, his son. 'My friend,' he thundered away, 'with what _right_ do you steal pictures, then?' 'That ought to be a hard question for me to answer,' replied I, gently; 'but I have an _inability_ to look at an unrighteous deception; I march right in.' 'Countess,' said he, gasping, 'in three minutes you shall know this _gentleman_ well enough.' O no, no! he used another word than _gentleman_, but I will one day clasp him to my breast for it, and though we stood on the highest steps of God's throne, and wrestled in the glory." "Schoppe!" said Albano. "Don't excite me!" replied Schoppe, and went on.

"He rang; a servant flew in with a card; we all were silent. 'Indulgence, Countess,' said he, 'only for the space of one minute.' He thereupon gave her some miserable court-news, but she looked silently on the ground. Then came thy tall uncle, nodded sixteen times with his little head, for that he takes to be an obeisance, and stepped far off from me. 'Brother, simply say, what has this gentleman here done back of Valencia?' 'Murdered, murdered!' said he, rapidly. 'Under what circumstances?' asked thy father. Here he began to depose the minutest particulars of my shot of distress at the Baldhead with such an incomprehensible sharpness that I said, 'That is true!' and went on myself, and kept asking, 'Is it not so?' and he hurriedly nodded, till I had come to the end. Then I asked, 'But, Spaniard, tell me, by Heaven! whence have _you_, then, derived this knowledge?' 'From me!' answered a strange, hollow voice, exactly like the Baldhead's.

"My heart grew cold as a dog's nose, and my tongue full of stone. 'As _convictus_ and _confessus_,' began thy father, 'you can now prophesy your fate.' 'To be sure,' murmured the uncle, pulling out and putting back his handkerchief, taking the picture up and laying it away,--'prophesy, prophesy!' 'Meanwhile,' thy father continued, 'it is freely left with you whether you will, until a nearer investigation, choose, instead of the prison, which belongs to you in consideration of the murder and theft, a milder place, the madhouse, which befits you in consideration of your journey; if you do not choose, then I choose for you.' 'To the madhouse, to the madhouse!' cried I, 'for the sake of true sociability, on my honor. But I make no questions about anything; on the washing-bill of my conscience stands no murder. Do you only burn yourselves white and clean. Your chariot of the sun and triumphal car goes up to the very hub in dung. Countess, let, I pray, everything be cleared up by you in the best manner, and think unceasingly of me, in order to get a father, like the students' father of his country, to be sure, who consists in a hole through the hat.'[141] 'Step farther back!' said thy father to thy uncle, 'the madness is broken out.' Upon that the hare made eighteen springs down over thresholds and steps. I executed my own orders of march and halt. Thy father still crawled after me with a licking, flamy look. I charged my eye with poison, and saw him, down below at the door, fall headlong at the stroke."

Albano shuddered, and inquired about the how. Then Schoppe was silent, buried in thought, for a long time, and said, in a troubled tone, "That, to be sure, was only a dream of mine; but so do I now confound dream with reality, and the reverse. I ought to be more moved about Schoppe; he is, after all, an old man, and old men weep like the jester, when it goes down hill." "I will comfort thee now, my friend," said Albano, with distracted breast; "I will remove an error from thy faithful heart, and then thou wilt certainly go with me. This Baldhead, our mocker and juggler, is, according to the holy word of my sister, one and the same person with my uncle, and is a ventriloquist."

Schoppe stood for a long time like one dead, as if he had not heard a word. Suddenly, with radiant face and sparkling eye, he threw himself on his knee, and stammered, "Heaven, Heaven! make me mad! The rest I will do." Here he made a wicked neck-wringing motion with his hands, and said, in a tone of restored strength, "I can follow thee." He really could now, but before he had hardly been able to stand. And so Albano led the unhappy, excited friend with heavy heart to his own lodgings.

136. CYCLE.

Albano now left no stone unturned which friendship could lift, for the sake of setting the noble patient to rights again, and renewing his youth, inwardly and outwardly. Especially did he seek to set up again the bridge over which all his strings were drawn, and which the Knight and his brother had overturned in the presence of Linda, namely, his pride of character, which had been brought so very low by this barbarous humiliation. As only pure brotherly respect and holy worship of a divine relic can softly warm and reanimate a wounded pride, the faithful Albano took this course. But without satisfaction from the Spaniard, the contriver of the mischief and the misleader of the Knight, his backbone, Schoppe said, would never run perpendicular again, and his spinal marrow would remain bent. Only Albano's duel with the uncle was a fresh draught of cool water to him; he had to have it told over to him several times. His thirsty wish was to be as well as he needed to be in order to fight with the Spaniard, and then, as a madman, to extort from him on a death-bed, whereupon he thought to lay him, the confession of all his tricks and juggleries. "Then," he added, all the time smiling, "it can well be _égal_ to me whether the world is round or angular, and to France is my first step."

Albano had to let this Greek fire of wrath, which in the end worked as a strengthening cure to a body frozen by humiliation, burn deeper and deeper under itself, since every attempt to extinguish merely fed it; only he had to watch, that he did not get a free, solitary moment, to fly off in a blaze and seek out the Spaniard. Albano stirred not day nor night from his sofa-bed, and that for other reasons also. For if Schoppe should be left alone, and his Mordian fall asleep (whom he never woke, because the dog, he said, evidently dreamed, and then went flying and nosing about in ideal worlds, snuffing things whereof in the streets of the actual hardly a trace of a shadow was to be scented), if, then, he should be alone with the quiet animal (for when it was awake he had society enough), and his eye should accidentally fall upon his legs or hands, then would his cold fear creep over him that he might appear to himself as his own apparition, and see his own "I." The looking-glass had to be overhung, that he might not come across himself.

His nights were sleepless, but dreams moved nakedly and boldly round him. Albano readily devoted to him his own well nights, yet could not drive away any of his friend's dreams, those spectres which generally flee or sink before the living. They crept and peeped about in the shadows of the corners of the room. Once toward midnight Albano had gone out, and on returning found him just in the act of grasping one hand with the other, and exclaiming, "Whom have I here, man?" "O good, best Schoppe," cried Albano, half in anger, "such irrational plays! Quite as well might one finger catch the other!" "Yes, to be sure," replied he. "But listen," said he softly, and squatted, ducked his head, and pointed with the right index-finger up over his nose into the air, "thou calledst me Schoppe; that is not my name: but I may not utter my real name; the 'I' who has been so long seeking me would hear it, and come stalking along,--a long gravestone lies on the name. Schoppe or _Scioppius_ I could very well call myself, because my many-named namesake and name-father (it is all found in Bayle) called himself, now so, now so, now Junipere d'Amone, now Denig Bargas, or Grosippe, or Krigsöder, Sotelo, and now Hay. I must appear to have wholly forgotten that the man was, after all, veritable Titular Prince of Athens and Duke of Thebes by Ottoman chancery and grace, if I should choose to remain Maltese Librarian. In fact, I used to go from one hotel to another with many a name, which magnificently played with and played upon the 'I,' that forever hunted and haunted me; for example, Löwenskiould, Leibgeber, Graul, Schoppe, too, Mordian (which I afterward gave my dog), Sacramentierer, and once _huleu_,--many I may have entirely forgotten. The true one," said he, shyly whispering, "is a ss or S--s,[142]--give me a _third_ hand here. The name is cut out of grave-clothes, and I lie therein already buried in the ground. 'I am I.' Such were the last words of the fine old Swift, who otherwise said little in his long madness. I might not venture, however, to be so much myself as that. Well, courage! Infinite Wisdom has created all,--madness, too,--in the lump. Only God grant, that God may never say to himself, 'I!' The universe would tremble to pieces, I believe; for God finds no third hand."

Albano shuddered at the sense of this nonsense. Schoppe seemed ice; then he threw himself suddenly on the brotherly bosom; neither said aught upon the subject, and Albano began sunny descriptions of the happy Hesperia.

Thus patiently and solitarily did he spend with his sick friend, in nursing, indulging, caressing, the days which he would gladly have made use of for his flight out of Germany; and loved him more and more passionately, the more he did and endured in his behalf. He absolutely would not suffer it at the hand of fate, that such a world full of ideas should approach its conflagration, and so free a heart, full of honesty, its last beating. Schoppe had in the youth's heart even a greater realm than Dian; for he took life more freely, deeply, greatly, bravely; and if the law of Dian's life was beauty, his was freedom, and he tended, like our solar system, to the constellation Hercules.

Notwithstanding all entreaties, he took no medicines from Dr. Sphex; for he had already, he said, committed his case to an old, well-known practitioner and circuit-physician, Time. He readily allowed Sphex to draw up a recipe, to bring it; willingly looked it through, disputed about the contents, remarked it was easier to _be_ sanitary-counsel than to give it, and he saw, indeed, that he hit his case, because he pursued a weakening treatment, which was the first thing with crazy people; he added, however, that reason was not just the thing he desired, but only a couple of valiant shanks to walk with and stand upon, and a couple of arms well filled out to strike home withal; and for the rest, he told him he did not like him, because he cut up dogs. Albano, too, at last, took the position, that, if Schoppe could only get muscular strength again for a social journey with him, then the frenzy-dream into which the unsocial one had thrown him would readily fly away of itself.

Schoppe was always flying out at the Doctor particularly. Once the latter said: "Follow, if not me, at least your second self," and pointed to Albano. "To the Devil," he replied, "with my second self,--that may be you: I feel shy enough of you to make it probable,--but he, there, is certainly, I have every reason to hope, hardly my sixth, twentieth self, or the like."