The Court now caused to be made known in writing (it could not speak for
sorrow) that the dead Nestor had departed this life. I set aside here
the lamentation of the city, together with the rejoicing of the same
over the new perspective. The Land-physicus Sphex had to eviscerate the
Regent like a mighty beast,--whereas we subjects are served up with all
our viscera, like snipes and ground-sparrows, on the table of the worms.
At evening, there reposed the pale one on his bed of state,--the
princely hat and the whole electrical apparatus of the throne-thunder
lay quite as still and cold beside him on a Tabouret; he had the
suitable torches and corpse-watchers around him. These Swiss-guards of
the dead (the sound of the word rings through me, and I at this moment
see Liberty lying on her bed of state in the Alps, and the Swiss
guarding her) consist, as is well known, of two regency-counsellors, two
counsellors of the exchequer, and so on. One of the
exchequer-counsellors was Captain Roquairol. It can be only touched upon
here, in the way of interpolation, how this youth, who of financial
matters understood little more than a treasury-counsellor in ----h,[52]
arose, nevertheless, to be a counsellor in war-matters there,--namely,
against his own will, through old Froulay, who (in himself no very
sentimental gentleman) was always reviving and retouching the youthful
remembrances of the old Prince, because, in this tender mood, one could
get from him by begging what one would. How odious and low! so can a
poor prince have not a smile, not a tear, not a happy thought, out of
which some court-mendicant, who sees it, will not make a door-handle to
open something for himself, or a dagger-handle to inflict a wound; not a
sound can he utter which some forester and bugle-master of the chase
shall not pervert to the purpose of a mouth-piece and tally-ho.
Julienne, at nine o'clock in the evening, visited the only heart which,
in the whole court, beat like hers and for hers,--her good Liana. The
latter gladly offered her forehead to her commencing sick-headache, and
sought only to feel and to still another's pain. The friends, who,
before strangers' eyes, only displayed pleasantry, and before each other
only a tender, enthusiastic seriousness, sank more and more deeply into
this mood before the severe and religious lady of the Minister, who
never found in Julienne so much soul as in the soft hour after weeping,
as stock-gilliflowers begin to scent the air when they are sprinkled.
Not the struggle, but the flight of pain, beautifies the person; hence
the countenance of the dead is transfigured, because the agonies have
cooled away. The maidens stood enthusiastically together at the window,
the waxing moonlight of their fancy was made full moonlight by that of
the outer world; they formed the nun's-plan to live together, and go in
and out together for life. Often it seemed to them, in this still hour
of emotion (and the thought made them shudder), as if the murmuring
wings of departed souls swept by over them (it was only a couple of
flies, who, with feet and wings, had caught a few tones on the harp of
the Minister's lady); and Julienne thought most bitterly of her dead
father in Lilar.
At last she begged the sister of her soul to ride with her this night to
Lilar, and to share and assuage the last and deepest woe of an orphan.
She did it willingly; but the "yes" was hard to extort from the
Minister's lady. I see the gentle forms step, from their long embrace in
the carriage, out into the mourning chamber at Lilar,--Julienne, the
smaller of the two, with quivering eyes and changing color; Liana, more
pale with megrim and mourning, and milder and taller than her companion,
having completed her growth in her twelfth year.[53]
Like supernatural beings the two maidens beamed upon Roquairol's soul,
already burning in every corner. A single tear-drop had power to bring
into this calcining oven boiling and desolation. Already this whole
evening had he been glancing at the old man with fearful shudderings at
the childish end of that faded spirit, which once had been as fiery as
his own now was; and the longer he looked, so much the thicker
smoke-clouds floated from the open crater of the grave over into his
green-blooming life, and he heard therein a thundering, and he saw
therein an iron hand glowing and threatening to grasp at human hearts.
Amidst these grim dreams, which illuminated every inner stain of his
being, and which sternly threatened him that a day would come, when, in
his volcano too, there would remain nothing fruitful but the--ashes, the
mournful maidens entered, who, on their way, had wept only over the face
that had grown _cold_, and now wept still more heavily over the form
that had grown _beautiful_; for the hand of death had effaced from it
the lines of the last years,--the prominent chin, the fire-mounds of the
passions, and so many pains underscored with wrinkles, and had, as it
were, painted upon the earthly tabernacle the reflection of that fresh,
still morning light which now invested the disrobed soul. But upon
Julienne a black taffeta-plaster on the eyebrows, which had been left
behind by a blow,--this sign of wounds made a more violent impression
than all signs of healing: she observed only the tears, but not the
words of Liana. "O, how beautifully he rests there!" "But why does he
rest?" said her brother, with that voice, murmuring from his innermost
being, which she recognized as coming from the amateur-stage; and
grasped her hand with agitation, because he and she loved each other
fervently, and his lava broke now through the thin crust: "for this
reason,--because the heart is cut out of his breast, because the wheel
is broken at the cistern, because the fire-wheel of rapture, the
fountain-wheel of tears, moves therein no more!"
This cruel allusion to the opening of the body wrought terribly on the
sick Liana. She must needs avert her eyes from the covered breast,
because the anguish cramped the breath in her lungs; and yet the wild
man, desolating others as well as himself, who had hitherto been silent
by the side of the stiff corpse-guard, went on with redoubled crushing:
"Feel'st thou how painfully this cricket-ball of fate, this Ixion's
wheel of the wishes, rolls within us? Only the breast without a heart is
calm."
At once Liana took a longer and more intense look at the corpse; an
ice-cold edge, as if of death's scythe, cut through her burning
brain,--the funeral torches (it seemed to her) burned dimmer and
dimmer,--then she saw in the corner of the chamber a dark cloud playing
and growing up;--then the cloud began to fly, and, full of gushing
night, rushed over her eyes,--then the thick night struck deep roots
into her wounded eyes, and the affrighted soul could only say, "Ah,
brother, I am blind!"
Only hard man, but no woman, will be able to conceive that an æsthetic
pleasure at the murderous tragedy found its way into Roquairol's
frightful anguish. Julienne left the dead, and her old sorrow, and, with
the new one, flung herself around her neck, and moaned: "O my Liana, my
Liana! Seest thou not yet? Do look up at me!" The distracted and
distracting brother led on the sister, upon whose pale cheeks only
single drops fell like hard, cold water, with the sharp question: "Does
no destroying angel, with red wings, whiz through thy night; hurls he no
yellow vipers at thy heart, and no sword-fish into thy network of
nerves, in order that they may be entangled therein, and whet their
saw-teeth in the wounds? I am happy in my pain; such thistles scratch us
up,[54] according to good moralists, and smooth us down too. Thou
anguish-stricken blind one, what say'st thou,--have I made thee truly
miserable again?" "Madman!" said Julienne, "let her alone: thou art
destroying her." "O, he is not to blame for that," said Liana; "the
headache long since made it misty to my eyes."
The friends took their departure in double darkness, and therein will I
leave it with all its agonies. Then Liana begged her maiden to say
nothing of it to her mother so little time before sleep, since it might,
perhaps, go away in the night. But in vain; the Minister's lady was
accustomed to close her day on the bosom and lips of her daughter. The
latter now came in, led along, and sought her mother's heart with a
groping, sidelong motion, and, in this beloved neighborhood, could no
longer refrain from a softer weeping; then, indeed, all was betrayed and
confessed. The mother first sent for the Doctor before she, with wet
eyes and with her gentle arms around her, heard her afflicted daughter's
story. Sphex came, examined the eyes and pulse, and made no more of it
than a nervous prostration.
The Minister, who had everywhere in the house leading-hounds with
fine--ears, came in, upon being informed; and while Sphex stood by, he
made, except long strides, nothing but this little note, "_Voyez,
Madame, comme votre le Cain[55] joue son rôle à merveille_."
As soon as Sphex had gone out, Froulay let loose several
billion-pounders and hand-grenades upon his lady. "Such," he observed,
"are the consequences of your visionary scheme of education (to be sure
his own, in respect to his son, had not turned out specially well). Why
did you let the sick ninny go?" He would himself have still more gladly
allowed it from courtly views; but men love to blame the faults which
they have been saved the trouble of committing; in general, like
head-cooks, they had rather apply the knife to the _white_- than to the
_dark_-feathered fowl. "_Vous aimez, ce me semble, à anticiper le sort
de cette reveuse un peu avant qu'il soit decidé de nôtre._"[56] Her
silence only made him the more bitter. "_O, ce sied si bien à votre art
cosmétique que de rendre aveugle et de l'être, le dieu de l'amour s'y
prête de modèle._" Wounded by this extreme severity,--especially as the
Minister himself had chosen and commanded this very _cosmetic_ education
of Liana, against the maternal wishes, to gratify his political
ones,--the mother had to go and hide and dry her wet eyes in her
daughter's bosom. Married men and the latest literati regard themselves
as flints, whose power of giving _light_ is reckoned according to their
_sharp corners_. Our forefathers ascribed to a diamond belt the power to
kindle love between spouses. I also still find in jewels this power;
only this stone (which appertains to the flint species) leaves one,
after the marriage-compact, as cold and hard as it is itself. Probably
Froulay's marriage-bond was one of such precious stone.
But the lady only said, "Dear Minister, leave we that! only spare you
the sick one." "_Voilà précisement ce qui fût votre affaire_," said he,
laughing scornfully. In vain did Liana eloquently and touchingly pour
out to him her mistaken yet moving convictions, (aimed at the wall,
however,) and plead for her brother, which everlasting advocacy of all
sorts of people (which proved too much) was her only failing;--all in
vain, for his sympathy with an afflicted one consisted in nothing but
fury against the tormentors, and his love toward Liana showed itself
only in hatred of the same. "Peace, fool! But _Monsieur le Cain_ comes
not into my house, madam, till further orders!" Out of forbearance, I
say nothing further to the old conjugal bully than go--to the devil, or
at least to bed.