The German public may still remember the _obligato-sheets_ promised in
the Introductory Programme, and ask me what has become of them. The
foregoing Cycle was the first, most excellent Public; but see through
the matter, how it is with obligato-sheets, and that perhaps as much
history lies therein as in any one Cycle, however it may be called.
The Count had not yet learned anything of Liana's misfortune, when he,
with the others, went down to the dinner of the Doctor, who to-day was
very hospitable. They found him seized with a most violent fit of
laughter, his hands thrust into his sides, and his eyes bent over two
little ointment vessels on the table. He stood up, and was quite
serious. The fact was, he found in Reil's Archives of Physiology, that,
according to Fourcroy and Vauquelin, tears dye violet-juice green, and
therefore contain alkali. In order to prove the proposition and the
tears, he had thrown himself into a chair, and laughed in right hearty
earnest, so as afterward to cry and get a drop or two for the
brine-gauge of the proposition; he would gladly have wrought himself
into another kind of emotion, but he understood his own nature, and knew
that nothing could be got out of it so,--not a drop.
He left the guests alone a moment,--the lady was not yet to be
seen,--Malt sat on an ottoman,--the children had satirical looks,--in
short, Impudence dwelt in this house as in her temple. Ridicule had no
effect upon the old man, and he only countermanded what displeased
himself, not what displeased others.
At length the rosy-cheeked wife of the physician flourished into the
apartment,--as preparatory course or preamble of the dinner,--with three
or four _esprits_ or _feathers in her cap_,--with a dapple
neck-apron,--in a red ball-dress, from which waltzing had taken out the
color in which she had rouged,--and with a perforated fancy-fan. If I
wished, I could be interested in her; for, touching these _esprits_
(since the _esprit_, like the brain in Embrya, often sets itself upon
the brain-pan, and there suns itself), she thought women and partridges
were best served up at table with feathers on their heads; touching the
fan, she meant to have it understood she had just come from a morning
call (whereby she very clearly implied that ladies could no more go
through the streets without their fan-stick than joiners without their
rule); touching the rest, she knew the guest was a Count. Accordingly,
it appears that she belongs to the honorables, who (for the most part),
like rattlesnakes, are never better to be enjoyed than when one has
previously put the head out of the way; but that we have still time
enough to believe, when we come to understand her better.
The beautiful Zesara was for her blind, deaf, dumb, destitute of smell,
taste, feeling; but there are many women whom one cannot, with the
greatest pains and tediousness, displease; Schoppe could do it more
easily. Sphex, for his own personal predilections, made more out of a
cell of fat in Malt than out of the whole cellular texture of a lady,
even of his own; like all business people, he held women to be veritable
_angels_, whom God had sent for the ministration of the saints (the
business men).
The dinner course began. Augusti, a delicate eater, enjoyed much, and
took not only to the fine service, but to the torn napkins; the like of
which he had often had in his lap at court, because there, in morals and
in linen, rents are preferred to plasters. Soon, as usual, came forth
even the outposts and first skirmishes of miserable dishes, the common
prophets and forerunners of the best tit-bits, although at a hundred
tables I have cursed them, that they did not, like good monthly
magazines, give the best pieces first, and the most meagre last. The
Doctor had already said to the three boys,--"Galen, Boerhave, Van
Swieten, what is the polite way of sitting?" and the three physicians
had already shoved three right hands between the waistcoat buttons, and
three left hands into the waistcoat pockets, and sat waiting, "bolt
upright" when good chap-sager was brought in for the dessert. Sphex
partly expressed pleasure in cheese, partly a horror of it, just as he
found it in the way of his shop-business. He remarked, on one hand, how
joiners, in their glue-pot, had no better glue than what stood here
before them,--it had just that binding quality in a man,--yet he would
rather, for his own individual self, with Dr. Junker, apply it
externally, like arsenic; but he also confessed, on the other hand, that
the chap-sager for the Lector was poison. "I would pledge myself for
it," said he, "that you, if one could examine you, would be found
hectic! the long fingers and the long neck speak in my favor, and
particularly are white teeth, according to Camper, a bad sign. Persons,
on the contrary, who have a set of teeth like my lady there may feel
safe."
Augusti smiled, and merely asked the Doctor's lady, at what time one
could best gain access to the Minister.
Such poisonous reflections, as well as cats'-dinners,[57] he gave out,
not from satirical malice, but from mere indifference to others, whom,
like an honest man, he never suffered in the least to sway him in his
actions. With the liberty-cap of the doctor's hat on his head, he
received, from his medical indispensableness, so many academic freedoms,
that he, between his four house-walls, ate and acted not more freely
than between the showy, bristling pale-work of the court. Did he ever
there--I ask that--let a drop of sweet wine pass his lips without
previously drawing out an Ephraimite, which did not itself outlive the
probation-day, and hanging it in the glass, merely to prove before the
court whether the Ephraimite therein did not grow black? And if the
silver did so, was there not as good as a demonstration of the wine
being oversmoked, and could not the physician have _applied_ the whole
right neatly, court, sweetness, blackening, poisoning, and oversmoking,
if he had been the man to do it?
The Lector's accidentally inquiring about the time of seeing the
Minister was what Albano had to thank for saving him from first learning
the painful misfortune in the house of the Minister, or in the presence
of the blind girl herself. "You can," answered Sara, the Doctoress,
"also despatch the servant; he will subscribe for you all; I, however,
pity none as I do the daughter." Now broke loose a storm of questions
about the unknown accident. "It is so," began the physician, sulkily;
but soon (because he saw in some eyes water for his mill, and because he
sought to roll off all medical blame from himself upon Captain
Roquairol) he set himself as well as he could to pathetic detail, and
lied almost like a sentimentalist. With an unobserved hint to the
_affected_ lady, he pushed an empty dish towards her as a lachrymatory,
in order that nothing might be lost. From the eclipsed eyes of the
vainly struggling youth, this first woe of his life snatched some great
drops. "May recovery be possible?" asked Augusti, exceedingly troubled,
on account of his connection with the family.
"Certainly; it is a mere affection of the nerves," replied Schoppe,
briskly, "and nothing more." Whytt relates, that a lady who had too much
acid in her stomach (in the _heart_ it were still worse) saw everything
in a _cloud_, as girls do at the approach of sick-headache. Sphex, who
had lied only for the sake of pathos and alkali, and who was vexed that
the Librarian should have been of his private opinion, answered just as
if the latter had not spoken at all. "The highest degree of consumption,
Mr. Lector, often winds up with blindness, and it were well, in this
case, to prescribe for both. Meanwhile I am acquainted with a certain
periodical nervous blindness. I had the case in a lady[58] whom I
brought out of it merely by blood-letting, smoke of burnt coffee, and
the evening fog from the water; this we are now trying again in the case
of our nervous patient. A dutiful physician will, however, always wish
the devil would take mother and brother."
In other words, the return of Liana's periodical malady almost
distracted him. Offences against his honor, his love, his sympathy,
never wrought the Physicus into a heat; through all such he kept on his
glazed frost surtout; but disturbances of his cures heated him even to
the degree of flying to pieces; and so are we all a kind of
Prince-Rupert's-drops, which can bear the hammer and never break, till
one just breaks off the little thread point, and they fly into a
thousand splinters; with Achilles, it was the heel, with Sphex, the
medical D.'s ring-finger, with me, the writing-finger. The Doctor now
shook out the contents of his heart, as some call their gall-bladder; he
swore by all the devils he had done more for her than any and every
physician,--he had, however, already foreseen that such a stupid
education--merely to look well and pray and read and sing--would prove a
cursed poor economy,--he had often longed to break the harmonica-bells
and tambour-needles,[59]--he had often called the attention of the
mother, with sufficient distinctness and without indulgence, to Liana's
so-called charms, and to her sensibility, her bright redness of cheeks,
and velvet-soft skin; but had seemed to himself, by so doing, almost to
gratify more than to distress her. The only thing that delighted him
was, that the maiden had, some years before, caught a deadly sickness
from the first holy sacrament, from which he had tried to keep her away,
because he had already experienced, in the case of a fourth patient, the
most melancholy consequences from this holy act.
To the astonishment of every one my Count took part against all with
Roquairol. Ah, thy first spring-storms were even now whirling round
imprisoned in thy bosom, without a friendly hand to give them an outlet,
and thou wouldst cover thy bloody grief! And wast thou not seeking a
spirit full of flames, and eyes full of flames for thine own, and
wouldst thou not rather have entered into brotherhood with a thundering
hell-god than with an insipid pietistical saint, forever gnawing like a
moth? Sharply he asks the Doctor, "What have you done with the Prince's
heart?" "I have it not," said Sphex, startled; "it lies in
_Tartarus_,[60] although it would have been more profitable to science
had one been permitted to put it among one's preparations; it was large
and very singular." He was thinking how often--when he could--he had, as
an augur, during the dissection, secretly slipped aside one or another
important member--as a princely or a cavalier-robber, _à la
minutta_--for his study,--a honey-bag which he gladly cut out for
himself with his anatomical honey-knife.
"Has the young lady, then, an unhappy passion, or anything of the sort?"
inquired Schoppe. "More than one," said Sphex; "cripples, idiots, young
orphans, blind Methusalems,--all these passions she has. Sports and
young gentlemen, I often say to the old lady, would be better for her
health."
But on this point, in the requirement of cheerfulness, I give in to him.
Joy is the only universal tincture which I would prepare; it works
uniformly as _antispasmodicum_, as _glutinans_ and _astringens_. The oil
of gladness serves as ointment for _burns_ and _chills_ at once. Spring,
for example, is a spring-medicine; a country-party, an oyster-medicine;
a recreation at the watering-places is, in itself, a glass of _bitters_;
a ball is a _motion_; a carnival, a _course_[61] of medicine;--and hence
the seat of the _blest_ is at the same time the seat of the _immortals_.
"Yes, he had finally," the Doctor concluded,--"as they were people of
rank,--prescribed a dose of _pride_ (of the meadows), which manifests
all the officinal healing powers of joy; taken in a stronger dose, it
works fully as well as enjoyment itself, enlivens the pulse, steels the
fibres, opens the pores, and chases the blood through the long venous
labyrinth.[62] In the case of his weakly lady, such as they saw her
there, he had used, he said, this medicament long ago by dresses and a
doctor's rank, and had helped her to her legs thereby. But he would
rather cure sixty common women than one distinguished one,--and he
should regret, as family physician, merely his receipts and medical
opinions, in case, as he certainly believed, the fair Liana should go
hence."
The first question which Albano, who never missed anything that was
said, put to Augusti on the way back from the Doctor's, was, What the
Doctor's wife meant by the subscribing servant? He explained it. There
is, namely, in Pestitz, as in Leipsic, an observance, that when a man
dies or falls into any other misfortune, his family place a blank sheet
of paper, with pen and ink, in the entrance-hall, in order that persons,
who take and show a nearer interest, may send a lackey thither, to set
their names on the paper as well as he knows how; this merchant-like
indorsement of the nearer interest, this descending representative
system by means of servants, who are generally, now-a-days, the
telegraphs of our hearts, sweetens and alleviates for both cities great
sorrow and sympathy through pen and ink.
"What! is that it? O God!" said Alban, and grew unusually indignant, as
if people were forcing servants upon him as chrysographs and
business-agents of his feelings. "O ye egotistical jugglers! through the
pen of scribbling lackeys do ye pour yourselves out? Lector, I would
condole with Satan himself more warmly than thus!"
Why is this veiled spirit so lively and loud? Ah, everything had moved
him. Not merely lamentation over poor Liana, persecuted by all the
nightly arrows of destiny, entered like iron into his open heart, but
also amazement at the gloomy intermingling of fate with his young life.
Roquairol's ever-recurring expression, "_Breast without a heart_,"
sounded to him as if it must be familiar; at last the converse of the
expression came to his thoughts, the word of the Sphinx on the island,
"_Heart without a breast_." So, then, even this riddle was solved, and
the place fixed, when he was to hear, contrary to every expectation, the
prophecy of the loved one; but how incomprehensible,--incomprehensible!
"O yes! Liana she is called, and no God shall change the name," said his
innermost soul. For in earlier years even the most vigorous youth
prefers, in maidens, interesting delicacy of health and a tender fulness
of feeling and a moisture of the eye,--just as, in general, at Albano's
age, one values the flood (later the ebb) of the eyes too highly,
although, too often, like an over-rich inundation, they wash away the
seed-corns of the best resolutions;--whereas, at a later period,
(because he proposes to himself marriage and housekeeping,) he looks out
rather for bright and sharp than after moist eyes, and for cold and
healthy blood.
As Albano, for the most part, drew down the fire from his internal
clouds on the discharging chains of the harpsichord strings,--seldomer
into the Hippocrene of poetry,--so did he now unconsciously make out of
his inner _charivari_ a passage on the harpsichord. I transpose his
fantasy into my fancy in the following manner. On the softest
minor-tones the blindness, with its long pains, passed by, and in the
whispering-gallery of music he heard all the soft sighs of Liana
repeated aloud. Then harder minor-tones led him down into Tartarus, to
the grave and heart of the friendly old man who had once prayed with
him, and then, in this spirit-hour, fell softly, like a dew-drop from
heaven, the sound, Liana! With a thunder-clap of ecstasy he fell into
the major-key, and asked himself, "This delicate, pure soul could fate
promise to thy imperfect heart?" And when he answered himself, that she
would perhaps love him, because she could not see him,--for first love
is not vain; and when he saw her led by her gigantic brother, and when
he thought of the high friendship which he would give and require of
_him_; then did his fingers run over the keys in an exalting war-music,
and the heavenly hours sounded before him, which he should enjoy, when
his two eternal dreams should pass over livingly out of night into day,
and when brother and sister should furnish at once, to his so youthful
heart, a loved one and a friend. Here his inner and outer storms softly
died away, and the evenly-balanced _temperament_ of the instrument
became that of the player....
But a soul like his is more easily appeased with sorrow than with joy.
As if the reality had already arrived, he pressed on still further;
indescribably fair and unearthly, he saw Liana's image trembling in her
cup of sorrow; for the crown of thorns easily ennobles a head to a
Christ's head, and the blood of an undeserved wound is a redness on the
cheek of the inner man, and the soul which has suffered too much is
easily loved too much. The tender Liana appeared to him as already spun
into the funeral veil for the Flora of the second world, as the tender
limbs of the bee-nymph lie transparently folded over the little
breast,--the white form of snow, which had once, in his dream, melted
away on his heart, opened the bright little cloud again, and looked,
blind and weeping, upon the earth, and said, "Albano, I shall die before
I have seen thee."--"And even if thou shouldst never see me," said the
dying heart in his breast, "yet will I still love thee. And even if thou
shouldst soon pass away, Liana, still I gladly choose sorrow, and walk
faithfully with thee till thou art in heaven."... Heaven and hell had
both at once drawn aside their curtains before him,--only a few notes,
and those the same as before, and only the highest, and that only
interruptedly and faintly, could he any longer strike; and at last his
hands sank down, and he began to weep, but without too severe pangs,--as
the storm which has unburdened itself of its lightnings and thunders
stands now over the earth only as a soft, diffused rain.