To remove the seals from the enrolled acts of the foregoing history for
the purpose of looking into it,--or to push back the blinds and shove up
the windows of the same,--or to uncover so many covered ways and
vehicles,--or, in fine, the whole matter,--all that is mere
metaphors,--and the most inappropriate ones, too,--which cannot serve
any other purpose than only to hold off still longer and more tediously
the long-expected solution, which they would fain describe; much rather
and better, methinks, will the whole war and peace position in the
ministerial palace be at once freely laid bare as follows:--
Herr Von Froulay had, as has been already mentioned, come home from
Haarhaar with a _Belle-vue_ in his face, and with a _mon-plaisir_ in his
heart (provided these tropes do not seem more elaborate than exquisite).
He told his lady openly, what had hitherto detained and enchanted him so
long,--the future Princess, who had conceived for him a more than
ordinary fancy. He threw a full, glorifying light on her enriched
understanding,--he never praised anything beyond this in
ladies,[198]--as well as a faint streak of shade upon his own _her's_;
and pronounced himself fortunate in the possession of a person whose
fine, persistent coquetry (he said) he for his part could recommend as a
model, and whose attachment he, in fact, (that he pretended not to
conceal,) reciprocated half-way, but only half-way, for it was perfectly
true, what the Duke of Lauzun[199] asserted: in order to keep the love
of Princesses, one must just hold them in right hard and short. In the
old man accordingly there shoots up, as we see, quite late,--not unlike
the case of fresh teeth,--which oftentimes old men do not cut till they
are nonagenarians,--a lover's heart beneath the star; only it is more to
be wished than hoped, he will especially play the ridiculous in the
matter. For as he all the week long holds the helm of state, either on
the rower's bench, to keep it in motion, or on the cabinet-maker's
bench, to trim it down into a fine and light shape for the Prince; the
consequence is, he is so tired when Saturday comes, that no Virgil and
no tempest could persuade him--and though his feet had not more steps to
take for the purpose than the number of feet in Virgil's hexameter, or
of commandments in the Decalogue of Moses--to accompany a Dido out of
the storm into the nearest cave. He does no such thing. He remains quite
as free from sentimental and pathetic love as from sensual, especially
as he apprehends that the former would in the end entangle him in the
latter, because like a minor-tone it has quite a different returning
scale from its ascending one. The ironical and stinging element in the
man made every marriage--even that of souls--to him as well as to other
world's people as disagreeable in the end as the spines of the hedgehogs
make theirs. He lays up, therefore, in the future for the Princess only
a cold, politic, coquettish, courtly love, such as she herself haply
has, and such as he has occasion for, in order less to gain her than to
gain from her, and to gain first of all the entire Prince. I promise
myself cosmopolitan readers, who, I hope, find no offence to this
personage in Froulay's partiality for his lady; for so soon as the
court-preacher has but once laid his joining hand on the Princess, then
has this house-steward made, as it were, the cut in the pea-hen,[200]
and she can then be taken off untouched, and be feasted on in other
places.
I have already (in the second volume) intimated the anxiety of the
Minister's lady lest the Minister, if he should (in this volume) come
back and not find Liana at home, should chafe; but, contrary to
expectation, he approved; her use of the country air-bath fell in
exactly with his design of sending her into the vapor-bath of the court
atmosphere. He told her mother that it by no means displeased him that
she should now be entirely well, since the new Princess would select her
for her maid of honor, whenever he should say the word. He could not for
three minutes see a sceptre or a sceptrelet lying by him without proving
its polarity for himself, and either attracting or repelling something
with it. As the famous theologian, Spener,--a predecessor of our
Spener,--prayed to God so beautifully thrice a day for his friends, one
finds with similar pleasure that the courtier daily prays a little for
his friends before his god, the Prince, and seeks to obtain something.
The Minister's lady, never opposing his changeable plans in the sketch,
but only in the execution, easily became reconciled with his latest one,
because it at least seemed rather to stand in no auxiliary relation to
the old one of the bethrothal to Bouverot.
One evening, unfortunately, the fatal, anxious Lector--who pasted the
smallest visiting-card to a Fulda's historic chart--arrived in her
presence with his packet-ship, and came ashore having under his two arms
the state and imperial advertisements of her two children; he had one of
them under each; and yet why do I fly out upon the man? Could a
double-romance, especially when played in the open air, remain better
concealed than a single one?
Her astonishment can be compared with the greater astonishment of her
husband, who happened to have just been screwing on in the third chamber
his tin ear,--made by Schropp of Magdeburg,--in order to listen to the
servants, and who now caught a number of things. Nevertheless, the
double-ear, with the broad meshes of its nocturnal lark-net, had only
fished up from Augusti's low, whispering, courtly lips single, long,
proper names,--such as Roquairol and Zesara. Hardly had the soft-spoken
Lector gone out, when he stepped gayly into the chamber, with his ear in
his hand, and demanded of her a report of the reports. He held
it beneath his dignity either to patch up or disguise his
suspicion,--which, even in the friendliest and gayest mood, would never
shut its Argus ears and eyes,--or to dissemble his eavesdropping, with
so much as a syllable or a blush of shame; the fair lilies of the most
colorless impudence were not painted, but branded on him. The Minister's
lady immediately seized upon the female expedient, of telling the
truth--half-way; namely, the agreeable truth of Roquairol's
well-received advances at the house of Wehrfritz, whose estate and
provincial directorship had been cast into a very fitting shape for a
father-in-law. Meanwhile the Minister had seen in his lady's face the
mourning-border around this pleasant notification-document, far too
clearly and broadly not to inquire about that prominent word "Zesara,"
which his delicate tin searcher had also caught up, but he inquired in
vain; for the mother held her good daughter too dear to set this wolf on
the scent for her into her Eden; she hoped to get her out of it in a
gentler way, by a divine voice and angels; and so evaded his question.
But the wolf now ran farther on in his track; he got the gout in his
stomach,--so it was reported to Dr. Sphex,--demanded of him speedy aid,
and also some intelligence of his tenant, the Count. Doctor and Madam
Sphex had already a grudge against the inflated youth; through their
four juvenile envoys, as _enfans perdus_ in every sense, as four
hearing-organs of every city rumor, much might be brought in on
advice-yachts from Blumenbühl and Lilar. In short, the auricular organs
fitted in so well to those of others, that Froulay, in a few days, was
in a situation to ask, with his lily brow, the Greek woman for a letter
to his son, which he offered to take along with him.
He found one, which he broke open with great joy, without, however,
finding anything therein from Albano's or Liana's hand, but only some
stupid allusion of Rabette to that couple, which, to the Minister, were
as much as if, with his sharp exciseman's-probes, he had bored into
Liana's heart and lighted upon contraband there. Without any long,
slavish copying of the former seal, he set a second upon the letter, and
went away enlightened by it.
We can all follow him, when we have detained ourselves only a few
minutes for his justification, with my
_Apology and Defence[201] in the Matter of the Second Seal upon Letters
in State Affairs._
Whether the examination of other people's letters pertains to old
Froulay as minister or father,--(although the latter presupposes the
former, the father of the country implying every other father and his
own too,)--I will not decide, except by the parenthesis just inserted.
The state which tackles on the post-horses before letters has, it
should seem, the right to examine more narrowly, under the closed visor
of the seal, these not so much _blind_ as blinding _passengers_,[202] in
order to know whether it is not using its horses in the service of its
enemies. The state, an ever-drawing light-magnet, means certainly only
to have light in the case, and particularly light upon all light in
general; it requires only the naked truth, without cover or covering.
All that rides and fares through its gates must, though it were dressed
in a surtout, just open its _red_ mouth, and say what name and business.
As the common soldier must first show his letters to his officer, the
garrison-soldier of the Bastile to the governor, the monk his to the
prior, the American colonist his to the Dutchman,[203]--in order that he
may burn them up, if they find fault with him,--so, surely, can no
statesman, whether he regards the state as a barrack, or as an
Engelsburg, or as a _monasterium duplex_, or as a _European possession
in Europe_, deny it the right to keep all its letters as open as bills
of lading, patents of nobility, bills of sale, and apostolic epistles
are. The only mistake is, that it does not get hold of the letters
before they are enveloped and sealed. That is immoral enough; for it
necessitates the government to open and shut,--to draw the letter out of
the case, and put it back again, as the cook with pains turns the snail
out of his shell, and then, when he is once taken off from the fire,
shoves him back again into it, to serve him up therein.
This last is the point of the compass and cardinal wind which is to
guide us onward; for universally acknowledged as it is, just as custom
and observance are, that the government, on the same ground on which it
opens the _last_ will, must have the power to unseal also the last but
one, and the one before that, and finally the very first, before its
heir can do it, and that a prince must be able still more readily to
bring servants' letters into the same deciphering chancery (and into
their antechamber, the unsealing chamber), wherein the letters of
princes and legates fly open before the caper-spurge,[204] nevertheless
the cork-drawing of letters,--the joint seal, the vicariate seal, the
laborious imitation of the L. S., or _loco sigilli_,--all this is
something very annoying and almost detestable; out of the wrong a right
must therefore be made by constitutional repetition.
Something of the kind might be brought about, I flatter myself, if it
were commanded to write letters only on stamp-paper. An inspecting and
stamping office appointed for that purpose would then read everything
over beforehand.
Or one might prohibit in future all private seals, just as they do
mint-stamps for private coin. A seal-department would then interfere,
with full rights, and seal up, as they now do the legacies of the
deceased, so in that case those of the living.
Or--which is perhaps preferable--an epistolary _censorship_ must
commence. Unprinted newspapers, _nouvelles à la main_,[205]--that is,
letters,--can never, inasmuch as they divulge still greater mysteries,
demand a greater freedom of censorship than printed newspapers;
especially as every letter, now-a-days, so easily becomes a circular,
going everywhere. A catalogue of prohibited letters (_index
expurgandarum_) would always be, in that case, a _word to
correspondents_.
Or let the postmasters be put under oath that they will be faithful
referendaries of whatever they find weighty or considerable in the
letters, which, before despatching, they have laid in the mental
letter-balance, and closed again, with the hope, according to the
Leibnitzian principle of the non-distinguishable seal, of speeding them
far and wide.
If the State finds all these ways of reading and closing letters new and
difficult, then it may go on in its own way--of opening them.
* * * * *
Froulay flew, laughing, to his lady, and assured her her falsehood
towards him was no news to him at all. Her present plan, merely to work
against Herr von Bouverot and himself, he understood full well. Hence it
was that Rabette had had to come in, and the daughter to go out.
Meanwhile he would show the hypocrite and bigot, or whoever it might be,
that she had not merely a mother, but a father too. "She must
immediately come home; _je la ferai damer,[206] mais sans vous et sans
M. le Compte_," he concluded, with an allusion to the office of
court-dame.
But the Minister's lady began, in accordance with her vehement contempt
of his projects and powers, with that coldness which would have more
exasperated every ardent one than this cold one, to say to him that she
must needs disapprove and oppose Liana's and the Count's love still more
than he did; that she had merely, in an excessive and otherwise never
disappointed confidence in Liana's openness of soul, believed her rather
than herself, and, notwithstanding so many signs of Albano's partiality,
let her go to Blumenbühl; that she would, however, give him her word on
the spot to act with as much energy and spirit against the Count as
against the German gentleman, and that she was, as surely as she knew
Liana, almost certain of the easiest and happiest result.
Of course this was unexpected to him and--incredible, especially after
the previous concealment; only the finest man's soul distinguishes in
the female the blending boundaries of self-deception and wilful
delusion, weakness and deceit, accident and intent; besides, the
Minister's lady was one of those women whom one must first love in order
to know them, a case which is generally reversed. He readily accepted on
the one hand the confession of her agreement and co-operation,--merely
for the sake, hereafter, of turning it as a weapon against her;--but he
could not conceal, on the other hand, that _there again_ (that was
always his phrase) she had, according to her own confession, neglected
to watch over her children from a want of jealousy. He retained the
habit, when an open-hearted soul showed him its breaches, of marching in
upon it through those breaches, as if he himself had made them. The
penitent who knelt before him for forgiveness he would crush still
lower, and instead of the key of absolution draw forth the hammer of the
law.
I owe it here to the Spaniards, who will one day become acquainted with
me through miserable translations,[207] and to the Austrian knighthood
of the Golden Fleece, who perhaps read the original in a counterfeit
edition, to assign the reasons why the house of Froulay did not bespeak
feasts of joy--instead of court-mourning--on the occasion of these
advances by a son of their order, a Spanish Grandee, who often lays upon
himself a German princely sceptre as a yardstick to measure himself
withal. For every Spaniard must have hitherto wondered about this.
I answer every nation. The Froulays had, in the first place, nothing
against the union except the--certainty of separation; since on the same
ground, which the Knights of the Fleece and the Spaniards have opposed
to me, old Gaspard de Zesara can in no wise suffer a bridge to be thrown
over from his Gothard to the Jungfrau [virgin]. Secondly, on this very
ground the Minister could oppose to this romantic love a much older,
wiser, which he bore toward the German gentleman and his moneys and
_liaisons_, as well as the old grudge of the Knight of the Fleece.
Thirdly, the Minister's lady had, beside these same grounds,--and
besides several in favor of the Lector, perhaps,--one quite decisive
one, and that was, she could not endure the Count; not merely and solely
for the reason that she discovered a painful similarity between him and
her son, and even husband, in pride, in excitability, in the
characteristic fierceness of genius against poor married women, in want
of religious humility and devoutness; but the principal reason why she
could not well endure him was this: that she could not bear him. As the
system of Predestination sentences some men to hell, whether they
afterward deserve heaven or not, so a woman never takes back an enmity
to which she has once doomed any one, all that country and city, God,
time, and the individual's virtues may say to the contrary,
notwithstanding.
In the treaty of peace, concluding the usual chamber-war, the following
private articles were adjusted between the married couple: The Count
must be, on the Father's and Director's account, treated with the most
courtly consideration, and shoved aside,--and Liana gently and gradually
drawn away from Wehrfritz's house,--the whole dissolution of the
engagement must seem to happen of itself without parental interference,
merely through the breaking off of the daughter,--and the whole affair
remain a mystery. Froulay hoped to keep the whole interlude or episode
concealed from Liana's earlier-intended, the German gentleman,
particularly as he, just now, in August, was more at the card-tables of
the baths than at home.
So it stood; and into this cold, awful pass the friendly Liana moved on,
when on that warm living Sunday she left the blessed, open Lilar.
Refined and sanctified by joy,--for every Paradise was to her a
purifying Purgatory,--she came nobly to her mother's bosom, without
remarking the strange seriousness of the reception by reason of the
earnest warmth of her own. Her easy confession of the garden-company
opened the trying scene,--almost in the _coulisse_. For the mother, who
would fain have begun otherwise, had to mount the thunder-car at once,
in order to thunder and lighten against such incomprehensible
forgetfulness of female propriety; and yet she held in the
thunder-steeds in mid-career, in order to enjoin upon Liana immediately,
as the Minister might come any moment, a perfect silence on the subject
of to-day's garden-party. Now she cast the deepest strengthening shade
upon her previous mute falsehood towards a mother; for she arbitrarily
transposed in her story the sowing and blossoming time of this love,
even into the days preceding the journey to the country. How did the
warm soul shudder at the possibility of such an unkindness! She led her
mother as far as she could up along the pure, light pearl-brook of her
history and love, and told all that we know, but without giving much
satisfaction, because she left out precisely the main point; for, out of
forbearance toward her mother, she felt obliged to let the apparition of
Caroline, who in the beginning had been the image-stormer of her love
and then its inspiring muse and bride's-maid, together with the
death-certificate of the future, remain out of sight in the narration.
She held, with fervent pressure, her mother's hand amidst more and more
cheerful assurances, how she had always been disposed to tell her
everything; she thought hopingly, she needed to save nothing but her
_open_ heart. O thou hast more to save, thy warm, thy whole and living
heart! Her mother now, from old habit, half believing her, found fault
with nothing more than the whole affair, its impropriety, impossibility,
folly. "O good mother," said Liana, simply remaining tender under the
harsh picturing of the future Albano; "O he is not such, assuredly not!"
Quite as tenderly did she far overlook the darkly-sketched future
refusal of Don Gaspard, because to her faith the earth was only a
blooming grave-mound hanging in the ether. "Ah!" said she, meaning how
little time she was for this world, "our love is not so important!" Her
mother took this word and the whole gentleness of her resistance, as
preludes of an easy victory.
At this moment Albano's father-in-law came in with a kettle-drum,
alarm-bell, fire-drum, and rattlesnake, in his girdle, in order
therewith to make himself audible. First he inquired,--for he had been
listening in vain,--in a very exasperated manner, of the Minister's
lady, where she had stowed away his ear (it was the tin duplicate ear,
wherein, as in a Venetian lion's-head, all mysteries and accusations of
the whole service and family met); he said, he had a little occasion for
it just now, particularly since the newest "adventures of his worthy
daughter there." The Siamese physicians begin the healing of a patient
with treading upon him, which they call softening. In a similar manner
Froulay loved to soften, by way of moral pre-cure; and accordingly
began, with the above-mentioned speaking-machines in his girdle, to
declare his sentiments explicitly on the subject of degenerate children;
upon their arts and artifices; and upon intrigues behind fathers' backs
(so that no father can accompany a volume of love-poems with a prose
preface); backed up many points with the strongest political grounds,
which all had reference to himself and his interest, and wound up with a
little cursing.
Liana heard him calmly, as one already accustomed to such daily
returning equinoctial storm-bursts, without any other emotion, except
that she often raised her downcast eye pityingly upon him, out of tender
sympathy for the paternal dissatisfaction. In a calm he became loudest.
"You will see to it, madam," said he, "that to-morrow forenoon she sends
the Count what she has of his, together with a farewell, and notifies
him of her new office, as an easy excuse; thou art to be court-dame to
the reigning Princess, although thou didst not deserve that I should
labor for thee!"
"That is hard!" cried Liana, with breaking heart, falling upon her
mother. He supposed she meant the separation from Albano, not from her
mother, and asked, angrily: "Why?" "Father, I would so gladly," said
she, and turned only her face away from the embrace, "die near my
mother!" He laughed; but the Minister's lady herself shut to the
hell-gates upon the flames which he still would fain have vomited forth,
and assured him it was enough, Liana would certainly obey her parents,
and she herself would be surety for it. The preacher of the law came
down his pulpit-stairs with an audible ejaculation about a better
security, calling back, as he went, that his ear must be produced
to-morrow, and though he should have to search for it in all chests and
cupboards.
The mother kept silence now, and let her daughter softly weep on her
neck; to both, after this drought of the soul, the draught of love was
refreshment and medicine. They came out of each other's arms with
cheered spirits, but both with entirely delusive hopes.