JOHANNES MULLER.
The minister, Baron Thugut, was pacing his cabinet in an excited manner.
His face, usually so cold and immovable, was painfully agitated to-day;
his shaggy white eyebrows were closely contracted, and his eyes were
casting angry glances on the dispatch which he had just thrown on his
desk, and which a courier from General Melas, in Lombardy, had brought
to him a few minutes ago.
“Another battle lost!” he muttered; “another laurel-wreath placed on the
defiant head of General Bonaparte! This man will make me mad yet by his
impudent good luck. It is dreadful only to think that he was already
defeated at Marengo [Footnote: The battle of Marengo was fought on
the 14th of June, 1800.]--so surely defeated that General Melas issued
orders for the pursuit of the enemy, and rode to Alessandria to take his
supper in the most comfortable manner. That fellow Melas is a jackass,
who only scented the roast meat which he was going to have for supper,
but not General Desaix, who arrived with his troops in time to snatch
victory from our grasp, and to inflict a most terrible defeat upon our
triumphant army. All of our generals are short-sighted fools, from that
ridiculously-over-rated Archduke Charles down to General Schwarzenberg,
and whatever the names of these gentlemen may be--these gentlemen with
the golden epaulets, and decorated breasts, and empty heads--I have no
confidence in a single one of them. At the moment of danger as well
as of victory they regularly lose their senses, and thereby turn our
victories into defeats; while they render our checks in the same way
only more disastrous and decisive. I am entirely opposed to placing any
more archdukes at the head of our armies. Fortunately, I have succeeded
in getting rid of Archduke Charles, and I hope that Archduke John, too,
will be badly beaten at no distant period, so that we may remove him,
like his brother, from his position at the head of his troops. It will
never do. Well--” he interrupted himself in his soliloquy, casting an
angry glance on his private secretary, Hudlitz, who was just entering
the room--“well, why do you disturb me without being called for?”
“Pardon me, your excellency,” said Hudlitz, humbly, “but your excellency
had instructed me to inform you immediately of the arrival of the
custodian of the imperial library, whom your excellency had sent for.”
“And he is there now?” asked Thugut.
“Yes, your excellency, Mr. Muller, the aulic councillor and custodian of
the imperial library is waiting in the anteroom.”
“Admit him, then,” said Thugut, waving his hand toward the door.
Hudlitz limped out, and a few minutes later the announced visitor
appeared on the threshold of the door. He was a little, slender man,
with a stooping form, which had not been bent, however, by the burden
of years, but by the burden of learning, of night-watches and untiring
studies. His head, covered with a pig-tail wig, according to the fashion
of that period, was slightly bent forward. His expansive forehead was
indicative of the philosophical turn of his mind; his large eyes were
beaming with deep feeling; his pleasing, yet not handsome features,
were expressive to an almost touching degree, of infinite gentleness
and benevolence, and a winning smile was playing constantly on his thin
lips.
This smile, however, disappeared now that he felt the small, piercing
eyes of the minister resting upon his countenance. Hat in hand, and
without uttering a word, he remained standing at the door; he only
raised his head a little, and his eyes were fixed on the minister with a
calm and proud expression.
“You are the aulic councillor, Johannes Muller?” asked Thugut, after a
short pause, in a somewhat harsh voice.
“Yes, I am Johannes Muller,” said the latter, and the smile had already
returned to his lips. “I thank your excellency for this salutary
question.”
“What do you mean by that, sir?” asked Thugut, wonderingly. “Why do you
call my question salutary?”
“Because it involves a good lesson, your excellency, and because
it informs me that they are wrong who, from motives of mistaken
benevolence, would persuade me that I was a well-known person, and that
everybody in Vienna was familiar with my name. It is always wholesome
for an author to be reminded from time to time of his insignificance and
littleness, for it preserves him from giving way to pride, and pride is
always the first symptom of mental retrogradation.”
Thugut fixed his eyes with a sullen air on the countenance of the
savant. “Do you want to give me a lesson?” he asked, angrily.
“By no means, your excellency,” said Johannes Muller, calmly; “I
only wished to mention the reason why I was grateful to you for
your question. And now I trust your excellency will permit me the
question--to what am I indebted for the honor of being called to your
excellency?”
“Well, I wished to make your acquaintance, Mr. Aulic Councillor,” said
Thugut. “I wished no longer to remain the only inhabitant of Vienna who
had not seen the illustrious historian of Switzerland and the author of
the ‘Furstenbund.’ [Footnote: “The League of the Princes,” one of the
celebrated works of Johannes von Muller.] You see, sir, I know your
works at least, even though I did not know your person.”
“And your excellency did not lose any thing by not knowing the latter,
for it is a person that is not worth the trouble to become acquainted
with. We men of learning are less able to speak with our tongues than
with our pens, and our desk alone is our rostrum.”
“And there you are a powerful and most impressive orator, Mr. Aulic
Councillor!” exclaimed Thugut, in a tone of unaffected and cordial
praise.
An air of joyful surprise overspread the gentle face of Johannes Muller,
and he cast a glance of heart-felt gratitude on the minister.
Thugut noticed this glance. “You are surprised that I am able to
appreciate your merits so correctly and yet suffered years to elapse
without inviting you to call on me? I am a poor man, overburdened with
business and harassed with the dry details of my administration, and
the direction of political affairs leaves me no leisure to be devoted to
literature.”
“At least not to German literature,” said Muller, quickly; “but every
one knows your excellency to be a profound connoisseur of oriental
languages; and it is well known, too, that you devote a great deal
of attention to them, notwithstanding the immense burden of business
constantly weighing you down.”
Thugut smiled, and his harsh features assumed a milder expression.
Johannes Muller, without intending it perhaps, had touched the chord
that sounded most sweetly to Thugut’s ears; he had flattered him by
referring to his profound oriental studies.
“Well,” he said, “you see I am taking likewise a lively interest in
German literature, for I invited you to come and see me; and you are a
German author, and one of the most illustrious at that. Now, sir, let us
speak frankly and without circumlocution, as two men of science ought to
do. Let us mutually forget our titles and official positions, and chat
confidentially with each other. Come, my dear sir, let us sit down
in these two arm-chairs and talk like two German gentlemen; that is,
frankly and sincerely. Nobody is here to hear us, and I give you my word
of honor nobody shall learn a word of what we are going to say to each
other. Perfect irresponsibility and impunity for every thing that will
be spoken during this interview. Are you content with this, and will you
promise me to open your mind freely to me?”
“I promise it, your excellency, and shall reply truthfully and
fearlessly to whatever questions you may address to me, provided I am
able to tell you the truth.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Thugut, shrugging his shoulders. “Every thing has
two sides, and both are true according to the stand-point from which
one is looking at them. You have two sides yourself, sir, and they
are contrasting very strangely with each other. You are a native of
Switzerland, and yet you depict the Hapsburg princes in your works with
more genuine enthusiasm than any of our Austrian historians. You are a
republican, and yet you are serving a monarchy, the forms of which seem
to agree with you exceedingly well. You belong to the orthodox reformed
church, and yet you have written ‘The Voyages of the Popes,’ and ‘The
Letters of Two Catholic Prelates.’ You are a friend of justice, and
yet you have even discovered good and praiseworthy qualities in that
tyrannous King of France, Louis XI. Now tell me, sir, which is your true
side, and what you really are?”
“I am a man,” said Johannes Muller, gently; “I commit errors and have my
failings like all men, my heart is vacillating, but not my head. With my
head I am standing above all parties, and above all individual feelings;
hence I am able to write ‘The Voyages of the Popes,’ and ‘The Letters
of Two Catholic Prelates,’ although, as your excellency stated, I am a
member of the orthodox reformed church; and hence I am able to praise
the Hapsburgs and serve a monarchy, although I am a republican. But
my heart does not stand above the contending parties; my heart loves
mankind, and takes pity on their failings; hence it is able to discover
praiseworthy qualities even in Louis XI. of France, for in the BAD king,
it constantly follows the vestiges of the man whom nature created good
and humane.”
“Those are the views of Jean Jacques Rousseau!” exclaimed Thugut,
contemptuously; “but these views are inapplicable to the world and to
practical life; he who desires to derive advantages from men, first, of
all things, must avail himself of their bad qualities and flatter
them. To hold intercourse with perfectly virtuous men is tedious and
unprofitable; fortunately, however, there are very few of them. I
should have no use whatever for such patterns of virtue, and, instead
of admiring them, I should try to annihilate them. He who is to be a
welcome tool for me, must either have a stain by which I may catch
him at the slightest symptom of disobedience, like an insect tied to
a string, and draw him back to me, or he must be so narrow-minded and
ignorant as not to understand me fully, and to be unable to divine and
penetrate my hidden thoughts and intentions.” [Footnote: Thugut’s own
words.--Vide Hormayer, “Lebensbilder aus dein Befreiungskrieg,” voi. i.,
p. 322.]
“In that case I must hope never to be a welcome tool of your
excellency,” said Muller, gravely.
“Are you so sure of your virtue? Are you unconscious of any stain on
your character?”
“If principles be virtue, yes; in that case I am sure of my virtue,”
said Muller, calmly. “I shall never be unfaithful to my principles, and
I hope never to have a stain on my conscience.”
“Who is able to say that?” exclaimed Thugut, laughing; “many a one has
become a murderer, who was unwilling to tread on a worm, and many a one
has become a perjurer, who protested solemnly that he would never utter
a lie. But a truce to philosophical discussions. I like to go directly
at my aim, and to utter my thoughts clearly and precisely. Listen,
then, to me, and learn what I want you to do. You are a great mind, an
illustrious historian, a very learned man, and you are pining away among
the shelves of your imperial library. The greatest historian of the
century is nothing but the custodian of a library, and is subordinate
to a chief whom he must obey, although the latter is mentally a
pigmy compared with him. Such a position is unworthy of your eminent
abilities, or tell me, do you feel contented with it?”
Johannes Muller smiled sadly. “Who is able to say that he feels
contented?” he asked. “I am, perhaps, a bad custodian, and that may be
the reason why the prefect of the Imperial Library, Baron Fenish, is not
on good terms with me, and profits by every opportunity to mortify me.
A German savant never was an independent man, for he generally lacks the
most indispensable requisite for an independent position: he generally
lacks wealth.”
“Then you are poor?” asked Thugut, with flashing eyes.
“I have no other means than my salary. The Muses will adorn a man, but
they will not feed him.”
“I will deliver you from your subordinate position,” said Thugut,
hastily; “you shall be independent, free, and rich. You are a fool to
bury yourself, with your glory and with your pen, in the dust of old
books. Life and history are calling, and offering you their metal
tablets to write thereon. Write, then; write the history of our times;
render yourself an organ of the age; assist us, by your writings, in
preserving the government and law and order. Defend, with your ringing
voice, the actions of the government against the aspersions of this
would-be wise, noisy, and miserable people, and you shall have a
brilliant position and an annual salary of four thousand florins. You
are silent? You are right; consider well what I am proposing to you. I
offer you a brilliant position. I will make you the great historian of
our times. It affords you always so much pleasure to praise and commend;
well, sir, praise and commend what we are doing. Assist me, at least, in
mystifying our contemporaries and posterity a little, and I will reward
you in the most liberal manner. A good title, a large salary, and we
will, moreover, pay your debts.”
“Ah! your excellency knows that I have debts, and you believe that to
be the string by which you may draw me to you like an insect?” asked
Muller, smiling. “To become the historian of our times is an honorable
and welcome offer, and I confess to your excellency that I have already
finished many a chapter of it in my head, and that I have devoted a
great deal of attention to the special history of Austria. It would be
agreeable to me if your excellency would permit me to recite to you a
few passages from the history of Austria, as I have elaborated it in
my head. This will be the best way for your excellency to obtain the
conviction whether I am really able to fill so brilliant a position
as your excellency has offered me, and whether my services deserve so
liberal a salary.”
“Well, sir, let me hear a few passages from your ‘History of Austria.’ I
am very anxious to listen to them.”
“And your excellency remembers the promise that there is to be
irresponsibility and impunity for whatever will be said during this
interview?”
“I do, sir, and I swear that your words shall never be repeated to any
one, and that I shall only remember them when I have to reward you for
them. I swear, besides, that I will quietly and patiently listen to you
until you have concluded.”
“I thank your excellency,” said Johannes Muller, bowing gracefully. “I
should like to recite to your excellency now a chapter that I desire to
write on the literature of Austria. I turn my eyes back to the days
of Maria Theresa and Joseph the Second. Both of them were lovers of
literature, art, and science, which both of them promoted and fostered.
Joseph expelled darkness from his states and uttered the great words,
‘The mind shall be free!’ And the mind became free. It became active and
exalted in every art; the poets raised their voices; the learned sent
the results of their studies into the world, and labored powerfully for
the advancement and enlightenment of the people. The mind tore down
the barriers that stupid fear had raised between Austria and the other
German states, and the great poets who had lately arisen in Germany now
became, also, the poets and property of Austria. Austria called Lessing
and Klopstock HER poets; like the rest of Germany, she enthusiastically
admired Schiller’s ‘Robbers,’ and wept over ‘Werther’s Sorrows;’ she was
delighted with the poetry of Wieland; she learned to love the clear and
noble mind of Herder, and the writings of Jean Paul admonished her to
learn and to reflect. It was a glorious period, your excellency, for a
young nation had arisen in Austria, and it was drawing its nourishment
from the breasts of a young literature.”
“And sucking from these breasts the revolutionary spirit, and the
arrogance of independent thinkers,” interrupted Thugut, rudely.
Johannes Muller seemed not to have heard him, and continued: “Joseph the
Second died; scarcely a decade has passed, and what has this decade
made of Austria? The mind has been chained again; the censor with
his scissors has taken his stand again by the side of the Austrian
boundary-post; and the wall severing Austria from Germany has been
recreated. Every thing now has become again suspicious; even the
national spirit of the Austrian, even his hatred of foreign oppression,
and his hostility to foreign encroachments. In this hatred itself the
government sees the possibility of a rising, and a spirit of opposition,
for it sees that the people are no longer asleep, but awake and
thinking, and thought in itself is even now an opposition. Every
manifestation of enthusiasm for a man who has spoken of the freedom and
independence of Germany is looked upon with suspicion, and the noblest
men are being proscribed and banished, merely because the people love
them, and hope and expect great things from them. The people, according
to the wishes of government, shall do nothing but sleep, obey, and
be silent; the people shall manifest no enthusiasm for any thing; the
people shall love nothing, desire nothing, think nothing; the people
shall have no heroes, to whom they are attached; for the glory of the
heroes might eclipse the emperor, and the shouts of love sound like
shouts of insurrection.”
“You refer to the Archdukes Charles and John,” said Thugut, quietly.
“It is true, I have removed Archduke Charles from his command, for his
popularity with the army and people is very great, and would have become
dangerous to the emperor. We must conquer through tools, and not through
heroes; the latter are very unpleasant to deal with, for they do not
gratefully receive their reward as a favor, but they impudently claim
and take it as a right. The imperial throne must be surrounded by
heroes, but these heroes must never eclipse the imperial throne. Pardon
this note to your chapter, and proceed.”
“The heroes of the sword are
cast aside,” continued Johannes Muller, “but neither the heroes of
thought nor the heroes of literature are spared. The government tries to
disgrace and insult literature, because it is unable to assassinate it
entirely; it drags literature into the caves of unworthy censors, and
mutilates its most beautiful limbs and destroys the most magnificent
splendor of its ideas. The government is AFRAID of the mind; hence it
desires to kill IT. A government, however, may commit many mistakes, but
it never ought to show that it is afraid, fear exposing it to
ridicule. And if we ought not to weep over the persecutions which the
apprehensions of the government have caused to be instituted against
literature, we ought to laugh at them. Whole volumes of the most sublime
works of Gibbon, Robertson, Hume, and other great historians have been
prohibited; and there is not one of our German poets--neither Goethe,
nor Schiller, nor Herder, nor Wieland, nor Lessing, nor Jean Paul--whose
works are not ostracized in German Austria. Fear and a bad conscience
scent everywhere allusions, references, and hints. Hence history is
banished from the stage; for the history of the past constantly points
with a menacing finger at the sore spots of the present. Shakespeare’s
‘King Lear’ has been prohibited, because the public might believe
princes would lose their heads if weighed down by misfortunes. ‘Hamlet,’
‘Richard the Third,’ and ‘Macbeth’ must not be performed, because people
might get accustomed to the dethronement and assassination of emperors
and kings. Schiller’s ‘Mary Stuart’ is looked upon as an allusion to
Marie Antoinette; ‘Wallenstein’ and ‘Tell’ are ostracized, because
they might provoke revolutions and military mutinies. The ‘Merchant of
Venice’ must not be performed, because it might give rise to riotous
proceedings against the Jews; and in Schiller’s ‘Love and Intrigue,’
President de Kalb has been transformed into a plebeian vicedomus, in
order to maintain the respect due to the nobility and to the government
functionaries. It is true, it is permitted to represent villains and
impostors on the stage, but they must never be noblemen; and if men of
ideal character are to be brought upon the stage, they must be either
princes, counts, or police-directors. For even more sacred than the
dignity of the highest classes is the holy police, the great guardian
of the government, the great spy watching the people, who are being
deprived of every thing; to whom every intellectual enjoyment, every
free manifestation of their enthusiasm is forbidden, and who are yet
required to deem themselves happy, and that they shall be faithfully
attached to their government! If the government enslaves the people, it
must expect that these slaves will lose all sense of honor and justice,
and willingly sell themselves to him who holds out to them the
most glittering offers, and knows best how to tempt them by golden
promises!--I am through, your excellency,” said Johannes Muller, drawing
a deep breath; “I have recited to you my whole chapter on the literature
of Austria, and I thank you for having listened to me so patiently. Now
it is for your excellency alone to decide whether you deem me worthy of
filling the honorable position you have offered. I am ready to accept
it, and to write the history of our times in this spirit, and shall be
very grateful if your excellency will grant me for this purpose your
protection and a salary of four thousand florins.”
Thugut looked with an air of pride and disdain into his glowing face.
“My dear sir,” he said, after a long pause--“my dear sir, I was mistaken
in you, for I believed you to have a clear head and a strong mind, and
I perceive now that you are nothing but a weak enthusiast, dreaming
of ideal fancies which one day will turn out entirely differently; to
become spectres, from which you will shrink back in dismay. You will not
always remain the enthusiastic admirer of freedom as at present; and the
proud republican will one day, perhaps, be transformed into the obedient
servant of a tyrant. You assured me quite haughtily that you had no
stain on your conscience; let me tell you, sir, that there is a stain on
your character, and I should have profited by it--you are vain. I should
not have tried to bribe you with money, but with flattery, and I had
been successful. I had too good an opinion of you, however. I believed
you had a vigorous mind, capable of comprehending what is necessary and
useful, and of preferring the practical and advantageous to the ideal.
Although a native of Switzerland, you are a genuine German dreamer, and
I hate dreamers. Go, sir, remain custodian of the Imperial Library and
complete your catalogues, but never imagine that you will be able with
your weak hand to stem the wheel of history and of political affairs;
the wheel would only destroy your hand and what little glory you have
obtained, and hurl you aside like a crushed dog. Farewell!”
He turned his back upon Johannes Muller, and placed himself at the
window until the soft noise of the closing door told him that the
historian had left him.
“What a fool!” he said. Then, turning around again--“a genuine German
fool! Wanted to lecture me--ME!”
And, amused by the idea, Thugut burst into loud laughter. He then
rang the bell violently, and as soon as the valet de chambre made his
appearance he ordered him to get the carriage ready for him.
Fifteen minutes later the minister left the chancery of state for the
purpose of repairing, as was his custom every evening, to his garden
in the Wahringer Street. The streets through which he had to pass were
crowded with citizens, who were talking with ill-concealed rage about
the fresh defeat of the Austrians at Marengo, and were loudly calling
out that Minister Thugut was alone to blame for Austria’s misfortunes,
and that he was the only obstacle that prevented the emperor from making
peace. And the people surrounded the well-known carriage of the minister
with constantly-increasing exasperation, and cried in a constantly
louder and more menacing tone: “We do not want war! We want peace!
peace!”
Thugut was leaning back comfortably on the cushions of his carriage. He
seemed not to hear the shouts of the people, and not to deem them worthy
of the slightest notice. Only when the tumult increased in violence,
and when the incensed people commenced hurling stones and mud at his
carriage, the minister rose for a moment in order to look out with an
air of profound disdain. He then leaned back on his seat, and muttered,
with a glance of indescribable contempt:
“Canaille!” [Footnote: Hormayer’s “Lebensbilder,” vol. i., p. 230.]