Part 36

When the Conrector, in a wash-bill from his mother, received these two Death's-posts and Job's-posts in his class, the first thing he did was to dismiss his class-boys, and break into tears before reaching home. Though the mother had informed him that he had been remembered in the will (I could wish, however, that the Notary had blabbed how much it was), yet almost with every O which he masoretically excerpted from his German Bible, and entered in his Masoretic Work, great drops fell down on his pen, and made his black ink pale. His sorrow was not the gorgeous sorrow of the Poet, who veils the gaping wounds of the departed in the winding-sheet, and breaks the cry of anguish in soft tones of plaintiveness; nor the sorrow of the Philosopher, who, through one open grave, must look into the whole catacomb-Necropolis of the Past, and before whom the spectre of a friend expands into the spectral Shadow of this whole Earth: but it was the woe of a child, of a mother, whom this thought itself, without subsidiary reflections, bitterly cuts asunder: "So I shall never more see thee; so must thou moulder away, and I shall never see thee, thou good soul, never, never any more!"--And even because he neither felt the philosophical nor the poetical sadness, every trifle could make a division, a break in his mourning; and, like a woman, he was that very evening capable of sketching some plans for the future employment of his legacy.

Four weeks after, to wit, on the 5th of May, the testament was unsealed; but not till the 6th (Cantata-Sunday) did he go down to Hukelum. His mother met his salutations with tears; which she shed, over the corpse for grief, over the testament for joy.--To the now Conrector Egidius Zebedaeus was left: _In the first place_, a large sumptuous bed, with a mirror-tester, in which the giant Goliath might have rolled at his ease, and to which I and my fair readers will by and by approach nearer, to examine it; _secondly_, there was devised to him, as unpaid Easter-godchild-money, for every year that he had lived, one ducat; _thirdly_, all the admittance and instalment dues, which his elevation to the Quintate and Conrectorate had cost him, were to be made good to the utmost penny. "And dost thou know, then," proceeded the mother, "what the poor Fraeulein has got? Ah Heaven! Nothing! Not one brass farthing!" For Death had stiffened the hand which was just stretching itself out to reach the poor Thiennette a little rain-screen against the foul weather of life. The mother related this perverse trick of Fortune with true condolence; which in women dissipates envy, and comes easier to them than congratulation, a feeling belonging rather to men. In many female hearts sympathy and envy are such near door-neighbours that they could be virtuous nowhere except in Hell, where men have such frightful times of it; and vicious nowhere except in Heaven, where people have more happiness than they know what to do with.

The Conrector was now enjoying on Earth that Heaven to which his benefactress had ascended. First of all, he started off--without so much as putting up his handkerchief, in which lay his emotion--up-stairs to see the legacy-bed unshrouded; for he had a _female_ predilection for furniture. I know not whether the reader ever looked at or mounted any of these ancient chivalric beds, into which, by means of a little stair without balustrades, you can easily ascend; and in which you, properly speaking, sleep always at least one story above ground. Nazianzen informs us (_Orat. XVI._) that the Jews, in old times, had high beds with cock-ladders of this sort; but simply because of vermin. The legacy bed-Ark was quite as large as one of these; and a flea would have measured it not in Diameters of the Earth, but in Distances of Sirius. When Fixlein beheld this colossal dormitory, with the curtains drawn asunder, and its canopy of looking-glass, he could have longed to be in it; and had it been in his power to cut from the opaque hemisphere of Night, at that time in America, a small section, he would have established himself there along with it, just to swim about, for one half hour, with his thin lath figure, in this sea of down. The mother, by longer chains of reasoning and chains of calculation than the bed was, had not succeeded in persuading him to have the broad mirror on the top cut in pieces, though his large dressing-table had nothing to see itself in but a mere shaving-glass: he let the mirror lie where it was for this reason: "Should I ever, God willing, get married," said he, "I shall then, towards morning, be able to look at my sleeping wife, without sitting up in bed."

As to the second article of the testament, the godchild Easter-pence, his mother had, last night, arranged it perfectly. The Lawyer took her evidence on the years of the heir; and these she had stated at exactly the teeth-number, two-and-thirty. She would willingly have lied, and passed off her son, like an Inscription, for older than he was: but against this _venia aetatis_, she saw too well, the authorities would have taken exception, "that it was falsehood and cozenage; had the son been two-and-thirty, he must have been dead some time ago, as it could not but be presumed that he then was."

And just as she was recounting this, a servant from Schadeck called, and delivered to the Conrector, in return for a discharge and ratification of the birth-certificate given out by his mother, a gold bar of two-and-thirty ducat age-counters, like a helm-bar for the voyage of his life: Herr von Aufhammer was too proud to engage in any pettifogging discussion over a plebeian birth-certificate.

And thus, by a proud open-handedness, was one of the best lawsuits thrown to the dogs: seeing this gold bar might, in the wire-mill of the judgment-bench, have been drawn out into the finest threads. From such a tangled lock, which was not to be unravelled--for, in the first place, there was no document to prove Fixlein's age; in the second place, so long as he lived, the necessary conclusion was, that he was not yet thirty-two[47]--from such a lock, might not only silk and hanging-cords, but whole dragnets have been spun and twisted. Clients in general would have less reason to complain of their causes, if these lasted longer: Philosophers contend for thousands of years over philosophical questions; and it seems an unaccountable thing, therefore, that Advocates should attempt to end their juristical questions in a space of eighty, or even sometimes of sixty years. But the professors of law are not to blame for this: on the other hand, as Lessing asserts of Truth, that not the _finding_ but the _seeking_ of it profits men, and that he himself would willingly make over his claim to all truths in return for the sweet labour of investigation, so is the professor of Law not profited by the finding and deciding, but by the investigation of a juridical truth,--which is called pleading and practising,--and he would willingly consent to approximate to Truth forever, like an hyperbola to its asymptote, without ever meeting it, seeing he can subsist as an honourable man with wife and child, let such approximation be as tedious as it likes.

[47] As, by the evidence at present before us, we can found on no other presumption, than that he must die in his thirty-second year; it would follow, that, in case he died two-and-thirty years after the death of the testatrix, no farthing could he claimed by him; since, according to our notion, at the making of the testament he was not even one year old.

The Schadeck servant had, besides the gold legacy, a farther commission from the Lawyer, whereby the testamentary heir was directed to sum up the mint-dues which he had been obliged to pay while lying under the coining-press of his superiors, as Quintus and Conrector; the which, properly documented and authenticated, were forthwith to be made good to him.

Our Conrector, who now rated himself among the great capitalists of the world, held his short gold-roll like a sceptre in his hand; like a basket-net lifted from the sea of the Future, which was now to run on, and bring him all manner of fed-fishes, well-washed, sound and in good season.

I cannot relate all things at once; else I should ere now have told the reader, who must long have been waiting for it, that to the moneyed Conrector his two-and-thirty godchild-pennies but too much prefigured the two-and-thirty years of his age; besides which, today the Cantata-Sunday, this Bartholomew-night and Second of September of his family, came in as a farther aggravation. The mother, who should have known the age of her child, said she had forgotten it; but durst wager he was thirty-two a year ago; only the Lawyer was a man you could not speak to. "I could swear it myself," said the capitalist; "I recollect how stupid I felt on Cantata-Sunday last year." Fixlein beheld Death, not as the poet does, in the up-towering, asunder-driving concave-mirror of Imagination; but as the child, as the savage, as the peasant, as the woman does, in the plane octavo-mirror on the board of a Prayer-book; and Death looked to him like an old white-headed man, sunk down into slumber in some latticed pew.--

And yet he thought oftener of him than last year: for joy readily melts us into softness; and the lackered Wheel of Fortune is a cistern-wheel that empties its water in our eyes.... But the friendly Genius of this terrestrial, or rather aquatic Ball,--for, in the physical and in the moral world, there are more tear-seas than firm land,--has provided for the poor water-insects that float about in it, for us namely, a quite special elixir against spasms in the soul: I declare this same Genius must have studied the whole pathology of man with care; for to the poor devil who is no Stoic, and can pay no Soul-doctor, that for the fissures of his cranium and his breast might prepare costly prescriptions of simples, he has stowed up cask-wise in all cellarages a precious wound-water, which the patient has only to take and pour over his slashes and bone-breakages--gin-twist, I mean, or beer, or a touch of wine.... By Heaven! it is either stupid ingratitude towards this medicinal Genius on the one hand, or theological confusion of permitted tippling with prohibited drunkenness on the other, if men do not thank God that they have something at hand, which, in the nervous vertigos of life, will instantly supply the place of Philosophy, Christianity, Judaism, Paganism and _Time_;--liquor, as I said.

The Conrector had long before sunset given the village post three groschens of post-money, and commissioned,--for he had a whole cabinet of ducats in his pocket, which all day he was surveying in the dark with his hand,--three thalers' worth of Pontac from the town. "I must have a Cantata merrying-making," said he; "if it be my last day, let it be my gayest too!" I could wish he had given a larger order; but he kept the bit of moderation between his teeth at all times; even in a threatened sham-death-night, and in the midst of jubilee. The question is, Whether he would not have restricted himself to a single bottle, if he had not wished to treat his mother and the Fraeulein. Had he lived in the tenth century, when the Day of Judgment was thought to be at hand, or in other centuries, when new Noah's Deluges were expected, and when, accordingly, like sailors in a shipwreck, people bouzed up all,--he would not have spent one kreutzer more on that account. His joy was, that with his legacy he could now satisfy his head-creditor Steinberger, and leave the world an honest man: just people, who make much of money, pay their debts the most punctually.

The purple Pontac arrived at a time when Fixlein could compare the red-chalk-drawings and red-letter-titles of joy, which it would bring out on the cheeks of its drinker and drinkeresses,--with the Evening-carnation of the last clouds about the Sun....

I declare, among all the spectators of this History, no one can be thinking more about poor Thiennette than I; nevertheless, it is not permitted me to bring her out from her tiring-room to my historical scene, before the time. Poor girl! The Conrector cannot wish more warmly than his Biographer, that, in the Temple of Nature as in that of Jerusalem, there were a special door--besides that of Death--standing open, through which only the afflicted entered, that a Priest might give them solace. But Thiennette's heart-sickness over all her vanished prospects, over her entombed benefactress, over a whole life enwrapped in the pall, had hitherto, in a grief which the stony Rittmeister rather made to bleed than alleviated, swept all away from her, occupations excepted; had fettered all her steps which led not to some task, and granted to her eyes nothing to dry them or gladden them, save down-falling eyelids full of dreams and sleep.

All sorrow raises us above the civic Ceremonial-law, and makes the Prosaist a Psalmist: in sorrow alone have women courage to front opinion. Thiennette walked out only in the evening, and then only in the garden.

The Conrector could scarcely wait for the appearance of his fair friend, to offer his thanks,--and tonight also--his Pontac. Three Pontac decanters and three wine-glasses were placed outside on the projecting window-sill of his cottage; and every time he returned from the dusky covered-way amid the flower-forests, he drank a little from his glass,--and the mother sipped now and then from within through the opened window.

I have already said, his Life-laboratory lay in the south-west corner of the garden or park, over against the Castle-Escurial, which stretched back into the village. In the north-west corner bloomed an acacia-grove, like the floral crown of the garden. Fixlein turned his steps in that direction also; to see if, perhaps, he might not cast a happy glance through the wide-latticed grove over the intervening meads to Thiennette. He recoiled a little before two stone steps leading down into a pond before this grove, which were sprinkled with fresh blood. On the flags, also, there was blood hanging. Man shudders at this oil of our life's lamp where he finds it shed: to him it is the red death-signature of the Destroying Angel. Fixlein hurried apprehensively into the grove; and found here his paler benefactress leaning on the flower-bushes; her hands with their knitting-ware sunk into her bosom, her eyes lying under their lids as if in the bandage of slumber; her left arm in the real bandage of blood-letting; and with cheeks to which the twilight was lending as much red, as late woundings--this day's included--had taken from them. Fixlein, after his first terror--not at this flower's-sleep, but at his own abrupt entrance--began to unrol the spiral butterfly's-sucker of his vision, and to lay it on the motionless leaves of this same sleeping flower. At bottom, I may assert, that this was the first time he had ever looked at her: he was now among the thirties; and he still continued to believe, that, in a young lady, he must look at the clothes only, not the person, and wait on her with his ears, not with his eyes.

I impute it to the elevating influences of the Pontac, that the Conrector plucked up courage to--turn, to come back, and employ the resuscitating means of coughing, sneezing, trampling and calling to his Shock, in stronger and stronger doses on the fair sleeper. To take her by the hand, and, with some medical apology, gently pull her out of sleep, this was an audacity of which the Conrector, so long as he could stand for Pontac, and had any grain of judgment left, could never dream.

However, he did awake her, by those other means.

Wearied, heavy-laden Thiennette! how slowly does thy eye open! The warmest balsam of this earth, soft sleep has shifted aside, and the night-air of memory is again blowing on thy naked wounds!--And yet was the smiling friend of thy youth the fairest object which thy eye could light on, when it sank from the hanging garden of Dreams into this lower one round thee.

She herself was little conscious,--and the Conrector not at all,--that she was bending her flower-leaves imperceptibly towards a terrestrial body, namely towards Fixlein: she resembled an Italian flower, that contains cunningly concealed within it a newyear's gift, which the receiver knows not at first how to extract. But now the golden chain of her late kind deed attracted her as well towards him, as him towards her.--She at once gave her eye and her voice a mask of joy; for she did not put her tears, as Catholics do those of Christ, in relic-vials, upon altars to be worshiped. He could very suitably preface his invitation to the Pontac festival, with a long acknowledgment of thanks for the kind intervention which had opened to him the sources for procuring it. She rose slowly, and walked with him to the banquet of wine; but he was not so discreet, as at first to attempt leading her, or rather not so courageous; he could more easily have offered a young lady his hand (that is, with marriage ring) than offered her his arm. One only time in his life had he escorted a female, a Lombard Countess from the theatre; a thing truly not to be believed, were not this the secret of it, that he was obliged; for the lady, a foreigner, parted in the press from all her people, in a bad night, had laid hold of him as a sable Abbe by the arm, and requested him to take her to her inn. He, however, knew the fashions of society, and attended her no farther than the porch of his Quintus-mansion, and there directed her with his finger to her inn, which, with thirty blazing windows, was looking down from another street.

These things he cannot help. But tonight he had scarcely, with his fair faint companion, reached the bank of the pond, into which some superstitious dread of water-sprites had lately poured the pure blood of her left arm,--when, in his terror lest she fell in, with the rest of her blood, over the brink, he quite valiantly laid hold of the sick arm. Thus will much Pontac and a little courage at all times put a Conrector in case to lay hold of a Fraeulein. I aver, that, at the banquet-board of the wine, at the window-sill, he continued in the same conducting position. What a soft group in the penumbra of the Earth, while Night, with its dusky waters, was falling deeper and deeper, and the silver-light of the Moon was already glancing back from the copper-ball of the steeple! I call the group soft, because it consists of a maiden that in two senses has been bleeding; of a mother again with tears giving her thanks for the happiness of her child; and of a pious, modest man, pouring wine, and drinking health to both, and who traces in his veins a burning lava-stream, which is boiling through his heart, and threatening piece by piece to melt it and bear it away.--A candle stood without among the three bottles, like Reason among the Passions; on this account the Conrector looked without intermission at the window-panes, for on them (the darkness of the room served as mirror-foil) was painted, among other faces which Fixlein liked, the face he liked best of all, and which he dared to look at only in reflection, the face of Thiennette.

Every minute was a Federation-festival, and every second a Preparation-Sabbath for it. The Moon was gleaming from the evening dew, and the Pontac from their eyes, and the bean-stalks were casting a shorter grating of shadow.--The quicksilver-drops of stars were hanging more and more continuous in the sable of night.--The warm vapour of the wine set our two friends (like steam-engines) again in motion.

Nothing makes the heart fuller and bolder than walking to and fro in the night. Fixlein now led the Fraeulein in his arm without scruple. By reason of her lancet-wound, Thiennette could only put her hand, in a clasping position, in his arm; and he, to save her the trouble of holding fast, held fast himself, and pressed her fingers as well as might be with his arm to his heart. It would betray a total want of polished manners to censure his. At the same time, trifles are the provender of Love; the fingers are electric dischargers of a fire sparkling along every fibre; sighs are the guiding tones of two approximating hearts; and the worst and most effectual thing of all in such a case is some misfortune; for the fire of Love, like that of naphtha, likes to swim on water. Two teardrops, one in another's, one in your own eyes, compose, as with two convex lenses, a microscope which enlarges everything, and changes all sorrows into charms. Good sex! I too consider every sister in misfortune as fair; and perhaps thou wouldst deserve the name of the Fair, even because thou art the Suffering sex!

And if Professor Hunczogsky in Vienna modelled all the wounds of the human frame in wax, to teach his pupils how to cure them, I also, thou good sex, am representing in little figures the cuts and scars of thy spirit, though only to keep away rude hands from inflicting new ones....

Thiennette felt not the loss of the inheritance, but of her that should have left it; and this more deeply for one little trait, which she had already told his mother, as she now told him: In the last two nights of the Rittmeisterinn, when the feverish watching was holding up to Thiennette's imagination nothing but the winding-sheet and the mourning-coaches of her protectress; while she was sitting at the foot of the bed, looking on those fixed eyes, unconsciously quick drops often trickled over her cheeks, while in thought she prefigured the heavy, cumbrous dressing of her benefactress for the coffin. Once, after midnight, the dying lady pointed with her finger to her own lips. Thiennette understood her not; but rose and bent over her face. The Enfeebled tried to lift her head, but could not,--and only rounded her lips. At last, a thought glanced through Thiennette, that the Departing, whose dead arms could now press no beloved heart to her own, wished that she herself should embrace her. O then, that instant, keen and tearful she pressed her warm lips on the colder,--and she was silent like her that was to speak no more,--and she embraced alone and was not embraced. About four o'clock, the finger waved again;--she sank down on the stiffened lips--but this had been no signal, for the lips of her friend under the long kiss had grown stiff and cold....

How deeply now, before the infinite Eternity's-countenance of Night, did the cutting of this thought pass through Fixlein's warm soul: "O thou forsaken one beside me! No happy accident, no twilight hast thou, like that now glimmering in the heavens, to point to the prospect of a sunny day: without parents art thou, without brother, without friend; here alone on a disblossomed, emptied corner of the Earth; and thou, left Harvest-flower, must wave lonely and frozen over the withered stubble of the Past." That was the meaning of his thoughts, whose internal words were: "Poor young lady! Not so much as a half-cousin left; no nobleman will seek her, and she grows old so forgotten, and she is so good from the very heart--Me she has made happy--Ah, had I the presentation to the parish of Hukelum in my pocket, I should make a trial.".... Their mutual lives, which a straitcutting bond of Destiny was binding so closely together, now rose before him overhung with sable,--and he forthwith conducted his friend (for a bashful man may in an hour and a half be transformed into the boldest, and then continues so) back to the last flask, that all these upsprouting thistles and passion-flowers of sorrow might therewith be swept away. I remark, in passing, that this was stupid: the torn vine is full of water-veins as well as grapes; and a soft oppressed heart the beverage of joy can melt only into tears.