Connubial Ordeals.--Five Biters Bit.
So now, Falkenberg has a tutor, the hope of the 13,000 Rixthalers, and
a cadetship for his son--all he wanted now was recruits. These, too,
were brought in to him and his under-officers in abundance by the
Moloch-of-Moles, Robisch: but I know not what the clients meant,
that, when Robisch had once secured his brokerage and they their
christening-present, they for the most part made-off with the latter.
In the Maussenbach woods thieves fell upon the transport and at the end
of the battle thieves and transports had both fled from the field. This
afflicted the Captain sorely, because he, who for himself and his
family never committed the most profitable injustice, sometimes allowed
a small one on the recruiting ground.
To the quiet Gustavus the noisy city-winter brought the longest hours.
He saw no white head-band and no black lamb go by, without flying over
on a sigh back to his enchanted wall and into the midst of his summer
joys. When the ill-bred posterity of Hoppedizel looked upon him as
stupid, because he was not crafty, and proud because he was not loud,
he stanched the bleeding of his inner man, which was teased and
ridiculed, with the thought of the beings who had loved him, of his
Genius and his Shepherdess. For the sake of his Amandus he would so
gladly have had another neighborhood than Hoppedizel's, even the
grounds and the free sky of his home! He loved to have things still and
snug around him, and to be encircled with the immensity of nature. Oh!
when thou art once beside me, darling, how will I indulge and love
thee! Thine eye shall never be clouded beside my desk of instruction,
thy heart never heavy! Thou, tender plant, shalt not be tied to me with
cutting pack-threads as to a straightening hop-pole, but with living
ivy-roots shalt thou of thyself twine around me, as a living thing!
On the whole in Hoppedizel's home they led a confounded dog's life, as
I myself often witnessed, when I and the master of the house in a
dispute on the first principles of morals had each other, in a moral
way merely, by the hair: for all, meanwhile, had a hand and its match
in the business, but physically; one dog was pitted against another
dog, the boys against the girls--the servants against one another--the
heads of the house against the servants--the Professor against the
Professoress, whereof a memorable fact is to be printed--and all these
alternately against each other according to the law of Permutation.
Unfortunately Hoppedizel never had any respect (and consequently no
disrespect either) for anybody; he borrowed on all sides, soiled all he
touched, compromised every one, pardoned everybody and himself first of
all. In the Captain's winter quarters the oil-painted tapestry (24
groschen the yard) formed a Spanish wall or screen between the
Captain's empty room and the cracks in the wall for the bugs to pass
through; the stove was good, but, like the tower of Babel, without a
cupola; the ceiling of the apartment threatened (though, like many
throne-canopies, for a long time without actual damage) to break down
and crush the heads of the greatest philosophers, who stood, in stone,
on the pier-table. He, therefore, had often little tenderness for
people, because he took for granted that they had too much of it to
scold at the invisibleness of his;--in Lower Scheerau we do just so.
But now comes the catastrophe which hastened the flight of us all.
The Professor, we must premise, had, like most people, no taste in
furniture; he had the greatest fancy for placing the best among the
poorest, the finest piece of crockery under an ancestral bed and over
against it a sandy wash-bowl; a nicely cleaned servant's livery behind
the cast-off clothes of his children, etc. Now, he always committed a
breach of the peace against his wife by never coming home empty;
he had always been buying something that was good for nothing; he had
the weakness of innumerable men, of making believe he understood
house-keeping as well as his wife, when he was a mere beginner. Things
which one sees, for a long time, others doing, one comes to think at
last that he can do himself. She had the weakness of numberless women,
of flattering herself into the presumption that her lord and master was
an ignoramus in house-keeping, and never could learn it, however much
he might wish to. "Do I have any say about your books?" asked the very
coarse-bodied Professoress. One could, therefore, at every furniture
auction, or at every annual fair in a calendar of practical matters,
prophesy, in connection with the wars of great lords, that here a
little war would break out between the connubial potentate and the
other hostile power; because the latter could not endure his commercial
treaty; the married couple celebrated then its Olympic games of tongues
and hands, and could mark off the divisions of time since their
marriage by these Olympiads.
Still more! Our new Regent--as in Italy, the people get the palace of
the deceased Doge or Pope gratis--let the furniture of his illustrious
father be sold at auction for a song; he did it, as all Crown princes
do, out of respect for him, so that the people might inherit a souvenir
of the departed, as the Roman people did the gardens of Caesar. The
Professor proposed to himself, therefore, to inherit and purchase. He
bid, therefore, for the benefit of the Captain, in whose chamber the
commode, the looking-glass, and the chairs were miserable objects--not
upon those three objects, but upon three to match them--upon two
elegant bronze vases, with goats' heads and myrtle leaves, for the
miserable commode; upon a straight-legged pier-table, with pointed
feet, to go under the miserable looking-glass; upon a splendid bergere
to stand between the miserable chairs. The whole was knocked off to
him. His first word, as he went from the auction room into his own, was
to his wife: "Is the Captain up stairs? I have bought some elegant
things for him." At this she sang the first verse of her war-song,
without having yet noticed a single article of his purchase. He did not
name one of them to her; for he had the greatest misfortune of a
husband, namely, contempt for his wife, just as she, on the contrary,
took his part against all persons, even the best, only not against
herself. During the unpacking of the purchases he responded to the
first verse of the war-song, yet did not name an article; and no they
merely kept up an antiphonal chanting. At last the goats' heads and
pointed feet were set down in the house. Then broke loose the war-cry:
"That is stupid, stupid, stupid! Ha! you stupid man, you! the stuff!
the rubbish! where were your five senses to-day! I wont pay a doit
(besides she was never treasurer), and so dear! But when children and
fools go to market!"
Quite coolly he said: "Just see that no harm comes to them, and take
them up to the Captain, my sweet!" She obeyed on the instant; but then
went into his room and opened all the sluices of her roaring wrath. At
a late period of this roaring he said, at last, threateningly: "You
know, wife!..." Now the wind grew to a storm in her mouth. He was not
the man to be carried away by anger or any other passion, but he was a
genuine Stoic, and always himself; hence, it is easily explained how,
as Epictetus and Seneca advise Stoics to make up for the forbidden
inward anger by the outward show of the same, so as to get the upper
hand of people, he too diligently availed himself of his show of anger,
and quickly petrified his fist and threw this bunch as a _fire-ball_ at
those members of his spouse, which were devoid of light in the matter.
This blunt Wilsonian conducting-knob of her anger was the first thing
to draw forth from her the greatest spark of eloquence; and, in fact,
it is in marriage as in the old Republics, which (according to Hume's
observation), never produced greater orators than in the stormy times
of war. He made the material thing a mere vehicle of the mental, and
accompanied his hand with fragmentary extracts from the manual of
Epictetus: "I am really quite in my senses," said he, "but you will
scream altogether too loud if I don't strike into the midst of it." His
carnal arm continued to move upon her. "I shall just keep on," he
continued, "meanwhile, thank God that your husband has so much
composure, that he can weigh everything he does!" But she never grew
cold till he grew heated; this she discovered, at any time, by his
growing dumb as Socrates, and arming and winging his hand with his
night-cap suddenly snatched down from its nail. In proportion as his
stinging sunny friendliness before the irruption of her thunderstorms
seemed hot to her, in the same degree was his cloudiness that followed
disagreeably cold; in short, both parties played before and after the
battle reversed parts. This time her anger found a crisis of relief,
and vented its whole force upon the head of him who was sitting under
the goat-headed vases on the bergere--the Captain. The latter at the
first gazette of this disgusting war had his winter-things packed up in
Scheerau, and his summer things unpacked in Auenthal, and went--yes,
actually went away.
But he came near staying. For the rest I do not wish to see this
pugnacious pair I have depicted with their marriage-rings turned into
explosive rings, too much despised by the more refined connubial world
that never descends to fisticuffs; for, verily, the corrosive,
poisonous words which ooze out from the refined married couple upon
each other, drop by drop, the slow annoyance, drawing like a blister,
wherewith they undertake to wound and cure each other, only drives the
sore deeper under the skin, and makes not the surgeon indeed, but the
doctor, necessary.