The good-hearted Albina had been all day long removing out of the way of
her lord all inflammatory stuff (for the vitriol naptha of his nervous
spirit caught the fire of anger afar off), in order that nothing might
transform her pleasure-castles into incendiary places of joy,--yes, as a
sort of suburbs to the heavenly Jerusalem of the evening, Rabette had
packed away an orchestra of miners that had chanced to pass by, in the
cabinet of the dining-room,--and for Albano Albina had already contrived
an heraldic costume, in which he should deliver to him the _vocation_ of
the Province. Ah, but what did the lady get from it all but flames,
which Wehrfritz vomited forth at his entrance, while he, as a camel in
his maw, had laid up besides, a long, cold stream of water for the
sprinkling of the magister?
Albina, who, like most women, took the gall-stone pelting of her husband
for the fifty pounds of passengers' ballast, which, to a passenger in
the marriage-stage-coach, go free, cheerfully gave him, at first, as
ever, credit of being right, and concealed every tear of unhappiness,
because cold sprinkling hardens men and salad,--then step by step she
took back the right,--but made the blame at first mild on her tongue, as
nurses make the washing-water of the children lukewarm in their
mouths,--and at last said he should just give the child up to her.
But we are making old Wehrfritz swell under our hand to a dragon of the
Apocalypse, to a beast of Gevaudan, and a tyrant, whereas he is in
reality only a lamb with two little horns. Had he not on his birth-feast
in the drudging year of his slaving life a claim upon one unburdened
evening, at least with a child whom he loved more strongly than his own,
and for whom he had loaded himself down with a harpsichord and a
teacher? And had he not a hundred times forbidden him--though he himself
dared and did too much--to imitate him, and risk himself upon horseback,
or in a tempest, in a pouring rain, or in a snow-storm? And had he not
just come from the pedagogical knout-master, the Minister, whose
educational system was only a longer real territion and a shorter
condemnation? And does not the sight of stern parents make one sterner,
and of mild ones, on the contrary, milder?
Albano first met Rabette with his leathern hind-axle in his hand, on his
defiant way to the father's study, and therefore to the court-martial
punishment of a real revolutionary tribunal. But she caught him from
behind, with the angelic greeting, "Art thou here, Absalom?" and set him
down by force; and, after the necessary astonishment and questioning,
tied on the _vena cava_ of his hair tightly and ungently, and showed up
to him, in a fearful light, the whirlwind of paternal wrath that awaited
him; and again, in a ludicrous light, the lull of the musical
mountain-department, who, near the dining-room, that race-ground and
hunting-ground of the Director, striding up and down in rage and
impatience, were waiting with a pause for times of peace; and finally
she released him with a kiss, saying, "I pity you, you rogue!"
He marched, with a defiance which the tightness of his hair aggravated,
into the dining-room. "Out of my sight!" said the sparkling assailant.
Alban instantly stepped back out of the door, enraged at the injustice
of this wrath, and for that very reason the less troubled at its
unhealthiness; for his benefactor kept passionately running up to the
table, which was spread for the birthday feast, and, after an old bad
habit of his, extinguishing the well-kindled lime-pit of his indignation
with wine.
In a few moments the musical academy and mining company, transformed by
their ill-humor into growling contra-bassists, struck up also. The time
had been tedious to them in the dry cabinet, so the bassoonist and the
violinist had taken it into their heads to entertain themselves with a
low tuning. The Director, who could not comprehend what in the world
that forlorn sound was that floated around him, took it for some time to
be a melodious humming in his ears, when suddenly the hammer-master of
the dulcimer let his musical hammer fall on the stringed floor.
Wehrfritz in an instant tore open the doors, and saw before him the
whole musical nest and conspiracy sitting in a circle, armed and
waiting. He asked them, hastily, "What business they had in the
cabinet?" and, after a flying donation of a few curses and cuffs,
ordered the whole garrison, without any tinkling noise, with their
leather aprons and _culs de Paris_, to take themselves off instantly.
Albina, with a tender look, beckoned her outlawed darling into her
sewing-chamber, where she asked him, quite composedly, because she knew
he would not lie, to tell the truth. After hearing his report, she
represented to him a little his fault (although she blamed the present
child, in comparison with the absent man, pretty much in the style in
which she had previously blamed the present man, in comparison with the
absent child), and still more the consequences; she pointed out (untying
and tying again his cravat the while, and buttoning some of his
waistcoat buttons) how her husband was disgraced in Albano's person
before the second school-consul, (with four and twenty Fasces,) whom he
had brought with him, the music- and dancing-master, Mr. Von Falterle,
who was up-stairs dressing himself; how the dancing-master would
certainly write all about it to Don Gaspard; and how for her good man
the whole sweet, painted jelly-apple of to-day's joy had been turned
into water: and now he must, even on this festive day, afflict his soul
in solitude, and, perhaps, catch his death from drinking so much to
drown his anger. Women, like harpers, usually, during their playing,
convert, with small pedals, the whole tones of truth into semi-tones.
After she had still further enumerated to him all the paternal
evening-tempests which he had ever drawn upon himself by his rides and
his Robinson's voyages of discovery, and whose thunder-claps had, on
every occasion, only melted down the lightning-conductor (namely,
herself), she added, with that touching tone flowing, not from the bony
throat, but from the swelling heart, "Ah, Albano, thou wilt one day
think of thy foster-mother, when it is too late!" and melted into tears.
Hitherto the unmeltable slags and the molten portion of his heart had
been boiling up together within him, and the warm flood had pressed
upward, ever higher and hotter, in his bosom, only his face had remained
cold and hard,--for certain persons have, exactly at the melting point,
the greatest appearance and capacity of hardening, as snow freezes just
before a thaw; but now the strain upon the too tightly-bound queue,
which was the paradoxical sign of the approaching eruption, made him, in
the paroxysm of his fury, tear the Würzburg appendage off over his head.
Before Albina saw it, she had handed him the Directorship appointment,
with the words, "I ought hardly to do it; but just hand it to him, and
say it was my present, and that thou wilt be quite another boy in
future." But when she saw his hand armed, she asked, in a terrified
tone, with the deep echo of a wearied-out grief, "Alban!" and turned
immediately away from the poor child, whose pain she misunderstood, with
too bitter tears, and said: "What new trouble is this? O, how you all
torment my heart to-day! Go away! O, come here," she called after him,
"and relate the circumstances!" And when he had innocently and truly
done this, her voice, overpowered with tears, could no longer blame him,
but only say, mildly, "Well, then, carry the present." Nevertheless, she
had it in mind to represent to her husband the abbreviation of the hair
as an act of obedience to her will, and to the fashion of city children
in high life.
Alban went; but on the painful way, the full glands of his tears and his
long-repressed heart broke forth, and he entered with eyes still weeping
before his solitary foster-father, who was resting his tired and
thinking head; and the boy held out to him, while yet a great way off,
the big-sealed document, and could only say, "The present," and nothing
more, and sparks darted with the storm-drops from his hot eyes. Lay
thyself, innocent one, softly on thy father's unbuttoned bosom; and
while he holds in his right hand the enchanted cup of glory, and makes
himself drunk with it, let him not on any account push thee away with
his left! The repelling hand will by and by come to pulsate languidly
and lightly upon thy wet, fiery cheeks, and warm, penitent eyes: then
will the old man read the _Decretum_ over again still more slowly, so as
almost to postpone the very first sound; then will he, when thou, with
indescribable impetuosity, pressest his hand to thy face to kiss it,
make appear as if he had just awaked, and say, with saltpetre coldness
and glistening eyes, "Call mother"; and then, when thou liftest upon him
thy glowing countenance all quivering with love from under thy
downfallen locks, and when they are flung softly back from thy cherry
cheeks,--then will he look a pretty long time after his departing
darling, and brush away something from his eyes, that he may run over
the address of the diploma at his will.
Say, Albano, have I not guessed right?