Happy Albano! thou wouldst not have remained so, hadst thou, on the
birthday of the Minister, heard what he then proposed!
Already, for a considerable time, had Froulay been full of noticeable,
stormy signs, and might any moment, one must needs fear, let the
thunderbolt fly from him; that is to say, he was gay and mild. Thus,
also, in the case of phlegmatic children, does great liveliness threaten
an eruption of the chicken-pox. As he was a father and a despot,--(the
Greeks had for both only the one word, despot,)--so was it expected of
him, as connubial storm-maker,[138] that he would provide the usual
storms and foul weather for his family. Connubial storm-material for the
mere _troubling_ of marriage can never be wanting, when one considers
how little is required even for its dissolution; for instance, among
the Jews, merely that the woman scream too loud, burn the dinner, leave
her shoes in the place for the man's, &c. Beside all this, there was
much in the present case about which there was a good chance to thunder;
e. g. Liana, upon whom one might visit the misdemeanor of the brother,
because he obstinately stayed away and begged for no grace. One always
loves to let his indignation loose upon wife, daughter, and son at once,
and would rather be a land-rain than a transient shower; one child can
more easily imbitter than sweeten a whole family.
But Froulay still continued the smiling John. Nay, did he not--I have
the proofs--carry it so far, that when, on one occasion, his daughter,
in taking leave of the Princess, fell upon her neck,--instead of
representing to her, with flashing eyes, how one must only accept, not
reciprocate, familiarities with superiors, and must take care not to
forget one's self precisely then, when _they_ do forget themselves,--and
instead of sternly asking whether she had ever seen him, in his warmest
love toward the Prince, offend against _the Dehors_,--instead, I say, of
doing this, and hailing and storming the while, did he not merely break
out that once into the fair words: "Child, thou art too affectionate
toward thy distinguished friend; ask thy mother; she knows, too, what
friendly _liaisons_ are"?
Only Liana--although so often deceived by these calms--was full of
unutterable hope and joy at the domestic peace, and believed in its
permanence, especially as the paternal birthday was so near, that
Olympiad and normal period upon which and by which the house reckoned so
largely. During the whole year the Minister had been looking out for
this day, in order, in the morning, when the congratulations came, not
to forget to make believe he had forgotten it, but to be astonished on
the subject,--all owing to business, he said; and at evening, when the
guests came,--on account of business he never dined, he said, to
astonish _them_. He was alternately the worshipper and image-breaker of
etiquette, ministerial and opposition party thereof, as his vanity
dictated.
Liana importuned her brother, till he promised to do something to please
his father; he composed, for the purpose, a family-piece, in which he
introduced the whole confession-night between himself and Albano, only
he converted Albano into a sister. Liana gladly studied this part also
for the birthday, although she had to deliver the blooming vest.
The Minister, contrary to expectation, accepted the vest, the Captain
and his hand-bill for the evening's performance, graciously; for he was
wont, on former occasions, like some other fathers, to growl the louder
the more his children stroked him. He danced away like a Polack right
merrily with his family, and stuck the rod[139] behind the fur. Nothing
worse at this moment revolved in his head than the question, where it
would be best to open the amateur theatre, whether in the _Salon de
Lecture_ or in the _Salon des bains domestiques_; for the two halls were
entirely distinguished from one another, and from the other chambers, by
their names.
The day came. Albano, whose invitation Charles had to extort, because
the Minister, out of pride, hated his pride, brought with him,
unfortunately, in his soul, the tone which Liana had given him the last
time to carry home with him. His hope had hitherto lived upon this
tone. O blame him not for it! The airy nothing of a sigh bears often a
pastoral world or an orcus on its ephemeron's-wing. Everything weighty
may, like a rock, be placed on a point, whereupon a child's finger can
set it in rotation.
But the tone had died away. Liana knew no other way than that, in the
visiting congregation,--of whose moral pneumatophobia,[140] after all,
she was not aware in its full extent,--one should hide every religious
emotion behind the church fan. Boxes, pit, and farthing gallery were,
almost at the usual play-hour, set off and filled out with Gratulantes,
all fit to be canons. The German gentleman was made particularly
prominent by the rich and insolent ostentation of his circumstances. Of
the visiting-company-lane it can, in passing, only be observed, that in
it, as in the antiphlogistic system, _oxygen_[141] played the chief
part, which, however, was given out less by the lungs than by the heart.
When the curtain rose, and Roquairol made that night of forgiveness and
ecstasy pass by again in a still more glowing form than it had actually
had; when this dreamy imitation seemed the first appearance of the
actual reality, how hotly and deeply did he burn himself thereby into
his friend's soul! (Good Albano! This art of being his own _revenant_,
his own ghost, his mock- and mimic-self, and of counterfeiting the
splendid edition of his own life, should have left thee smaller hopes!)
The Count must needs, in this most grave society that ever sate around
him, break out into an unseemly weeping. And why did Charles put
Albano's words, of that memorable night, into the mouth of Liana, so
bewitchingly interesting in her emotion, and thus make his love,
wrought upon by so many charms, grow even to anguish?
The German gentleman himself gave to Liana, that white swan, floating,
tinged with rosy redness, through the evening glow of Phœbus, several
loud, and to the Count annoying signs of approbation. The Minister was
chiefly glad that all this happened in his honor, and that the point of
the last act was still going to throw a very special epigrammatic
laurel-wreath on his crown.
He got the wreath. The pair of children were very favorably criticised
by the Erlangen literary gazette[142] of spectators, and by the
belles-lettres review, and covered over with crowns,--with noble
martyrs' crowns. The German gentleman had and used the public right of
ushering in the Coronation, and the Coronation-car. Base man! why should
thy beetle's-eyes be permitted to creep gnawingly over the holy roses
which emotion and sisterly love plants on Liana's cheeks? But how much
gayer still was the old gentleman,--so much so that he flirted with the
oldest ladies,--when he saw the knight bring out magnificently into full
daylight his interest in Liana, not fantastically or sentimentally, but
by still and steady advances and marked attention, by jokes and glances
and sly addresses, and at last by something decisive! That is to say,
the German gentleman drew the old man into a cabinet, and both came back
out of it vehemently animated.
The lovely Liana, withdrawn into her own heart, fled from the upas-tree
of the laurel away to her comforting mother. Liana had preserved, in the
midst of the stormy mill-races of daily _assemblées_, a low voice and a
delicate ear, and the tumult had driven her inward, and left her almost
shy.
The fair soul seldom guessed anything, except a fair soul: she so easily
divined her like; with such difficulty her counterpart. Bouverot's
advances seemed to her the usual forward and side steps of manly
courtesy; and his knightly celibacy did not allow her entirely to
understand him. Do not the lilies of innocence bloom earlier than the
roses of shame, as the purple color, in the beginning, only dyes pale,
and not till afterward puts on the red glow, when it lies before the
sun? She kept herself this evening near her mother, because she
perceived in her an unwonted seriousness. When Froulay had taken off
from his head the birthday garland, wherein were planted more thorns and
stalks than flowers,--when he had taken off the crown of thorns, and
stood in his night-cap amidst his family,--he addressed himself to the
business whereupon he had been thinking all the evening. "My little
dove," said he to his daughter, borrowing a good expression from the
Bastile,[143]--"my little dove, leave me and _Guillemette_ alone." He
now laid bare his upper teeth by a characteristic grin, and said he had,
as he hoped, something agreeable to communicate to her. "You know," he
continued, "what I owe to the German gentleman." He meant not thanks,
but money and consideration.
We love to dwell upon it as a matter of great praise in the family of
the Quintii,[144] that they never possessed gold: I adduce--without
arraying a thousand other families of whom the same is to be sworn--only
Froulay's. Certain families, like antimony, have no chemical affinity
whatever with that metal, however much they might wish it; certainly
Froulay wished it: he looked very much to his interest (to nothing
else), he willingly (although only in cases of collision) set conscience
and honor aside; but he got no further than to great outlays and great
projects, simply because he sought money, not as the end and aim of his
ambition, but only as the means of ambition and enterprise. Even for
some pictures which Bouverot had purchased for the Prince in Italy he
still owed that individual the purchase-shilling which he had taken out
of the treasury. By his bonds as if by circulars, he stood in
widely-extended connections. He would gladly have transposed his
marriage contract into a bond, and had, with his lady, at least that
most intimate community--of goods; for, under present circumstances,
divorce and bankruptcy stood in neighborly relations to each other; but,
as was said, many men, with the best talons,--like the eagle of the
Romish king,[145]--have nothing in them.
He continued: "Now, perhaps, this _géne_ will cease. Have you hitherto
made any observations upon him?" She shook her head. "I have," he
replied, "for a long time, and such as were really consoling to
me,--_j'avais le nez bon quant à cela_,--he has a real liking for my
Liana."
The Minister's lady here could draw no inference, and begged him, with
disguised astonishment, to come to the _agreeable_ matter. Comically on
his face did the show of friendship wrestle with the expectation that he
should be under the necessity immediately of being exasperated. He
replied: "Is not _this_ an agreeable matter? The knight means it in
earnest. He wished now to be privately espoused to her; after three
years he retires from the order, and her fortune is made. _Vous êtes, je
l'espere, pour cette fois, un peu sur mes interêts, ils sont les
vôtres._"
Her maternal heart, so suddenly and deeply wounded, wept, and could
hardly be concealed. "Herr von Froulay!" said she, when she had composed
herself a little; "I do not disguise my astonishment. Such a disparity
in years, in tastes, in religion."[146]
"That is the knight's affair, not ours," he replied, refreshed by her
angry confusedness, and, like the weather, in his coldness threw only
fine, sharp snow, no hail. "As to Liana's heart, I beg you just to sound
that." "O, that innocent heart? You are mocking!" "_Posito!_ so much the
more gladly will the _innocent_ heart reconcile itself to make her
father's fortune, if she is not the greatest egotist. I should never
love to constrain an obedient daughter." "_N'epuiséz pas ce chapitre;
mon cœur est en presse._ It will cost her her life, which already
hangs by such frail threads." This allusion always struck the fire of
wrath from his flint. "_Tant mieux_," said he; "then it will never go
further than an engagement! I had almost said--_Sacre!_ and who is to
blame for that? So it fares with me at the hands of the Captain too,--in
the beginning my children promise everything, then they turn out
nothing. But, madam," he said, swiftly and venomously collecting
himself; and, instead of compressing his lips and teeth, merely pinching
moderately the auditory organs of a sleeping lap-dog; "you alone indeed
know, by your influence upon Liana, how to dress and redress everything.
Perhaps she belongs to you by a still prior claim than to me. I am not
then compromitted with the knight. The advantages I detail no further."
His breast was here already warmed under the vulture-skin of rage.
But the noble lady now indignantly rose, and said: "Herr von Froulay!
hitherto I have not spoken of myself. Never will I counsel or
countenance or consent to it,--I will do the opposite. Herr von Bouverot
is not worthy of my Liana."
The Minister, during this speech, had several times unnecessarily
snapped-to the snuffers over the wax candles, and only beheaded the
point of the flame; the fixed air of wrath now colored the roses of his
lips (as the chemical does botanical ones) blue. "_Bon!_" he replied, "I
travel; you can reflect on the subject,--but I give my word of honor,
that I never consent to any other match; and though it were (whereupon
he looked at the lady ironically) still more considerable[147] than the
one just projected,--either the maiden obeys or she suffers, _decidéz_!
_Mais je me fie à l'amour que vous portéz au pere et à la fille; vous
nous rendréz tous assêz contens._" And then he went forth, not like a
tempest, but like a rainbow, which he manufactured out of the eighth
color only, namely, the black, and that with his eyebrows.
After some days of resentment with the mother and the daughter, he rode,
as Luigi's business-agent, to Haarhaar to see the princely bride. The
oppressed mother confided to her oldest and only friend, the Lector, the
sad secret. The two had now a pure relation of friendship toward one
another, which, in France, in consequence of the higher respect for
women, is more common. In the first years of the ministerial forced
marriage, which dawned not with morning dew, but with morning frost,
perhaps the hawk-moth[148] Cupid fluttered after them; but by and by
children drove away this sphinx. The wife is often forgotten when she
becomes the mother. She, therefore, with her characteristic cool and
clear strength, took all that was ambiguous in her relation to Augusti
forever out of the way; and he made her firmness more easy by his own,
because he, with more love of honor than of women, grew not more red at
any kind of braided-work than at that of a basket,[149] and erroneously
believed that a man who receives it, has as much to be ashamed of as a
woman who does.
The Lector could foresee that she would also, after her divorce,--which
she postponed only for Liana's sake,--remain single, if only for this
reason, in order not to deprive her daughter of an allodial estate,
Klosterdorf, for the reservation of which she had now for one and twenty
years exposed herself to the battering-ram and scythe-chariot and
blunderbuss of the old Minister. Whether she was not even silently
intending her dear Liana for a man so firm and tender, who differed from
her in nothing but in a worldly coolness toward positive religion, is
another and more delicate question. Such a reciprocal gift were worthy
such a mother and friend, who must know from her heart, that combined
feelings of tenderness and honor prepare for a loved soul a surer bliss
than the love which genius offers, that alternation of flying heat and
flying cold,--that fire which, like the electric, always twice
destroys,--in the stroke and in the rebound. The Lector himself started
not that question; for he never made rash, unsafe plans; and what one
would have been more so than that of such a connection, in his poverty,
or with such a father-in-law, in a country where, as in the Electorate
of Saxony, a statute, so beneficial (for parents), can countermand even
a marriage of many years' standing, which has been concluded without
parental consent?
With moist eyes the Minister's lady showed him the new storm-clouds,
which had again descended upon her and her Liana. She could build upon
his fine eye for the world, upon his dumb lip and upon his ready hand
for business. He said, as ever, he had foreseen all this; but proved to
her that Bouverot, if only from avarice, would never exchange his
knightly cross for the wedding-ring, whatever designs he might cherish
with regard to Liana. He gave her to surmise, so far as a tender regard
to her sore relations would tolerate, to what degree of readiness for
compliance with Bouverot's wishes the very frailty of Liana's life might
allure the Minister, in order to harvest it before it had done blooming.
For Froulay could much more nimbly swallow demands against honor than
injuries done to his vanity, as the victim of hydrophobia can much more
easily get down solid morsels than fluids. Yet all this did not sound so
immorally hard to the Minister's lady as readers of the middling classes
might imagine; I appeal to the more sensible among the higher.
Augusti and the Minister's lady saw that something must certainly be
done for Liana during the Minister's absence; and both wonderfully
coincided in their project. Liana must go into the country this pleasant
season,--she must muster up health for the wars that were in
prospect,--she must be put out of the way of the knight's visits, which
now the birthday would multiply fourfold,--even the Minister must have
nothing to object to the place. And where can this be? Simply under the
roof of the Director Wehrfritz, who cannot endure the German gentleman,
because he knows his poisonous relation to the Prince. But of course
there are first still other mountains to be climbed than that which lies
on the way to Blumenbühl.
The reader himself must now get over a low one; and that is a short
comico-tragic Extra-leaf upon