Departure for the City.--Woman's Whims.--Gashed Eyes.
As the nobility and wood-rats inhabit the country in summer, and in
winter the city, the Captain did so too; for the beauty of nature (he
thought, and so did his lawyer) amounted at last to nothing more than
an inventory of boors, whose elbows and thighs are cased half in
ticking and half in stitched leather, swampy grounds, fallow fields,
and herds of swine, and that there is nothing there for the senses but
stench; whereas in the city there is at least a bit of flesh to be had,
a game of French cards, some real good fun and a human being or two. It
is youthful intolerance to deny that a man who has no feeling for music
or scenery, may still have some for other people's needs and honor,
especially if that man is the Captain.
Much weightier reasons still drove him to Scheerau; he sought there
13,000 Rixdollars, a lot of recruits, and a tutor. The last first! His
wife said: "Gustavus must have some one; he is still deficient in
breeding!" But tutors are not wanting in that; these infants from the
Alumneum, whom nothing raises but a pulpit staircase, who continue to
be shepherds of the soul to the young noblemen, till they become
spiritual shepherds of the Church, which their pupil governs--these
educational potters are able to shape and smooth not merely the mind of
the young gentleman--as the father hopes--but his body also--as the
mother hopes--right well; first, without any polish of their own;
secondly, in study hours; thirdly, with words; fourthly, without women;
fifthly, in a sixth way, this, namely, that the tutor compresses the
broadest lion-heart into a sleepy badger's heart.
The second metallic spur which urged the Captain to the city was money.
No one could fall into the condition of being either a creditor or a
debtor so easily as he; as he neither denied himself nor others
anything; he had at last transformed half the neighborhood into his
_guests_ and _debtors_; but now he would almost change himself into
both, unless the Prince should build up again his dwindling money-pile.
He was obliged therefore to come to the residence-city of Ober-Scheerau
with the disagreeable petition that the aforesaid Prince would--not so
much present or lend--that might have been practicable--but rather
_pay_ 13,000 Rixdollars, as a capital of seven years standing. The Sufi
of Scheerau had, namely, a habit of never dismissing a mistress without
giving her a parting present of an estate, or a government, or a
starred husband; he always left so much of a female favorite, that a
marriageable wife might be made out of it for a marrying ninny; as the
eagle and the lion (who are also Princes, of beasts) always leave a
portion of their prey unconsumed for other creatures. Accordingly he
divorced himself even from the mother of his natural son--Captain von
Ottomar--on the knightly seat, _Ruhestadt_, which he, on one and the
same day, bought and gave away (with Falkenberg's money.)
Thirdly, the Captain, by coming to Scheerau, would spare his
under-officers, who were mostly stationed there, a step or two; for he
could strike, indeed, with his cane as easily as a lady with her fan,
but he would not willingly break the sixth leg of a grasshopper, and
therefore he spared the limbs of his people, who had four legs less, so
much the more.
At last they are packing up, the Falkenberg family; we will look on. As
the only time that Falkenberg's soul, like clocks and horses, did not
stop was in traveling, on the morning of his journey he was in his most
joyous and impetuous mood; wanted to go ahead not by _seconds_, but by
_nones_; cursed all hands and feet in the castle for not flying;
crammed and jammed the female trinkets and toggery with brazen hands
into the nearest box; and had no other seton to draw off his impatient
ennui than his feet, with which he stamped, and his hands, with which
he partly thrashed the coachman for the same reason that he did the
horses, and partly and handsomely, distributed presents to all that
were left behind in the castle.
But the Captain's lady understood so well how to do all things in the
most complete and judicious manner, that she was never done with
anything. If she had had three jumps to take to get out of the way of
the moon as it came dumping down to the earth, she would, before
jumping have smoothed one more wrinkle out of the window curtain--if
she had been ironing it would have been still worse. Like scholars, in
addition to her professional or livelihood-study, she devotes herself
to an extra-study and by-work and does, in connection with every piece
of work, those that lie adjacent to it. "Once for all, I cannot be so
slovenly as other women," she has just been saying to her gnashing
husband, who looked upon her for eight dumb minutes. "I would rather,
in the devil's name, you were the most slovenly in the whole feudal
nobility," he replied. Now as she, whenever she was overtaken by a
storm and injustice, merely anchored to the angry hyperboles of the
party, as I, in the capacity of appellant advocate must frequently do,
so too, on this occasion, she cleverly proved that slovenly women did
not amount to much--and as there is nothing which still more excites a
heated Captain like a haughty proof of what he does not in the least
deny; so now, as always, things went on from worse to worse; the
war-flails of the tongue were set in motion, his saliva-glands,
her lachrymal-glands, and the livers of both parties with their
gall-bladders secreted as much as must needs be secreted in Christian
connubial colloquies,--but fifteen minutes and fifteen packings
absorbed again like blood-veins all these connubial secretions. In
starting on a journey no mortal has time to be angry. She was, upon my
honor, a right good wife, only not at all times, _e. g_., least of all
in setting out on a journey: she wanted, in the first place, to stay at
home, and scolded at everything that had ears; secondly, she wanted to
go. Never, when her husband in the morning put on his own cravat and
his dog's, to make visits, did she desire to go too (unless indeed she
had foreseen the absolute impossibility of going with them), but if, on
the second day after, he happened to drop a word about a lady he had
met there, then she would bewail her distress in his ears: "One of us
cannot, the whole summer long, get a whiff of air out of the house."
If, the next time he would constrain her to accompany him, then there
was a frightful deal to do; there was bleaching, weeding, screwing up
meat-chests and napkin-presses, washing-bills, and everything to attend
to, or this pretext: "I prefer to stay with my little ones." But her
aim, which few guessed, was merely to be in two places at once, in the
house and out of it, and it is unfortunate for our wives, if our
philosophers and husbands have not as much insight as the Catholic
philosophers and husbands the Combrian, Ariaga, Bekanus had long
ago,[16] who perceived that the same body could easily at the same
second not only sit, speak, grow in two or more places at once, but
could even feel in one city and think in another,--at one and the same
moment laugh in the church and weep in the theatre.