Holy Supper.--Succeeding Love-feast and Kiss of Love.
Oh, beloved Gustavus! the wintered days of our love burst forth and
bloom again from my ink-stand, as I delineate them! Hast thou, reader,
ever had a spring-time of life, and does its image still hang in thy
memory; then lay it, in the winter-month of life, to thy warm bosom and
give its colors life, as the heating of the stove discloses and
animates its invisible spring-pictures--and then think of thy flowery
days, while I depict one.... Our four walls were the railings of a
richer paradise than any pleasure park exhibits, the cherry tree at our
window was our Dessian School-grove[35] and Kindergarten, and two human
beings were happy, although one commanded and the other obeyed. The
machinery of praise, which was so emphatically extolled in the
regulations for my tutor, I laid aside, because it was not applicable
to one, but to a whole school; my chain-pump-work was his love for me.
Children love so easily, so heartily; how poorly must he manage who
makes them hate him! On the scale of my punitory Carolina or
Theresiana--instead of the usual pedagogic disgraces and corporal
inflictions--stood coldness--a mournful look--a mournful reproof--and,
severest of all, the threat of going away. Children like Gustavus, of
tender heart, and of a fancy that flutters at every breath of wind, are
easily diverted and directed; but at the same time a single false
twitch at the rein will confuse and bring them to a stand-still
forever. Especially are the honeymoon weeks of such an education as
dangerous as those after marriage to a woman of fine feelings, with
whom a single cacochymic[36] afternoon is not to be effaced again by
any subsequent seasons of day or year. I will just confess: on such a
sensitive woman's account was I made tutor. As women (so it ran in my
mind) have, in a striking degree, all the perfections of children--their
faults somewhat less:--accordingly a man, who knows how to attach and
fasten his web to the widely diverging boughs of childhood, _i. e_.,
who can adapt himself to a child, cannot possibly fare so ill as
others when he--marries.
Where censure would hurt the child's sense of honor and self-respect,
there I suppressed it, in order to teach my colleagues round about by
example, that the sense of honor and character which our days do not
sufficiently educate, is the best thing in man--that all other
feelings, even the noblest, let him fall out of their arms at hours
when the sentiment of honor holds him up in its own--that among men
whose principles are silent and whose passions scream into each other's
ears, their sense of honor alone imparts to the friend, the creditor
and the beloved an iron security.
Seven days earlier than the regular time my Gustavus communed; for the
Consistory--the Westphalian tribunal[37] [or Star Chamber], of the
parsons, the Penitentiary of the churches and the counterpoise of the
government, sent out to us at the castle with pleasure these seven days
which his communion-age wanted of its full weight, tor the same number
of guilders, as a spiritual fast-dispensation or remission on account
of age, (venia aetatis). My pupil had therefore--while the most
competent religious teacher sat idle at home--to march out twice a week
to the stupid senior parson Setzmann in Auenthal, who fortunately was
no jurist as I was, and in whose parsonage a herd of catechumens
were obliged to thrust their noses into the coagulated catechismal
milk;--Gustavus instead of the beast's tapering snout brought with him
a too short muzzle.
Nevertheless, senior Setzmann was not bad; on a parliamentary wool-sack
he might have sat till he became an orator, _i. e_., a creature who,
among the persons who in the beginning do not believe him, persuades
himself first of all. An orator is as easy to be persuaded as he is
able to persuade. The senior, in the first hour after the sermon each
Sunday, was pious enough; he might indeed incur damnation, but it would
be merely for want of sermons and of beer. A reasonable intoxication
stands instead, to an incredible degree, of both the _ascetic_ and the
_poetic_ enthusiasm. The readers are no friends of mine who say it is
out of mere envy and chagrin that my Gustavus heard his lectures, if I
record and send it out into the world that the cellar was the Parson's
church of St. Paul and St. Peter--that his soul, like the flying fish,
soared upward only so long as its wings were oiled--that he appeared
always intoxicated and tenderly affected at once, and never aspired to
enter heaven, until he could no longer see it. Hermes and Oemler say
that I should avoid offence--although the _example_ of Setzmann must
give a greater than the making fun of it--if I should deliver in Latin,
that the _aquae supercelestes_ of his eyes always accompanied his
two-inches-deeper _humores peccantes_.
Gustavus went out to him on breezy spring-afternoons over the young
grass, enjoying on his way the prospect of two charming things. The
first was this missionary of the young village heathen himself, whose
enthusiastic breath stirred like a tempest Gustavus's ideas, every one
of which was a sail, and who, especially in the last and sixth week,
when he stretched the young subjects of the _six weeks' confinement_ on
the last of the sixth article, so lengthened the ears of my Gustavus
that there grew out from them a pair of wings that flew away with his
little head. Secondly, his heart was set upon a _broad band_ above a
broad neckerchief and a corresponding apron, all of which, moreover,
was as blossom-white as he, and adorned the fairest body in the whole
parish--namely, that of Regina--who was preparing herself there for the
second communion. Such a phenomenon, my Gustavus, quite naturally
attracted more than distracted thee; and if the school-government had
set over against me only half of such a muse on the seat of instruction
in the place of my pot-bellied leaky conrector--Heavens! I should have
learned, furthermore memorized, furthermore declined, likewise
conjugated, and finally expounded! It was, therefore, secondly, no
witchcraft, Gustavus--inasmuch as thine ear only was turned to the
_windward_ side of the pastor, but thine eye to the _sunny_ side of
Regina--that thou shouldst have made small account of the extra half
hour which the senior gave, by way of befooling his conscience. He
made, in order to quiet that assessor and judge and summoner in the
heart, the conscience, his catechizings half an hour,[38] and his
sermons three quarters longer than the whole diocese. Man likes to do
more than his duty better than to do his duty.
As Gustavus did not know that girls overlook nothing and overhear
everything, the whole catechism was to him a love letter, in which he
conversed with her. When she had to answer the senior, he grew red;
"the senior" (he thought), "cannot answer for his questioning and
tormenting," and his optic nerve took root in her face.
As the Falkenbergs had no special communion-chamber with velvet floor,
my god-father, the Captain, went at the head of his vassals up round
the altar; and, therefore, Gustavus did too.
On the eve of Confession-Sunday--Oh ye tranquil days of my purest
raptures, pass by again before me and give me your childish hand, that
I may faithfully describe you in all your beauty!--on Saturday, after
dinner, Gustavus--who even during the meal had hardly been able to look
upon his parents for love and emotion--went up stairs in order, after
so beautiful a custom, to beg pardon of his parents for his faults. Man
is never so beautiful as when he begs or grants forgiveness. He went up
slowly, in order that his eyes might grow dry and his voice steadier;
but when he came before the parental eyes, he quite broke down again;
he held for a long time in his glowing hand the paternal one, with the
intention of saying something, were it only the three words: "Father,
forgive me!" but he could not find any voice, and parents and child
transformed words into silent embraces.
He came to me also.... in certain moods one is glad that another is in
the same, and therefore forgives one.... I would, Gustavus, that I had
thee at this moment in my chamber. If children _conceive_ of God--not
(as grown up people do), as one like themselves, that is as a
child--but as a man: for a child's heart, that is enough. Gustavus,
after these confessions, went--reeling, trembling, stupefied, as if he
saw, what he thought, namely, God--down into the deserted cavern of his
childhood, where below the earth's surface he had been trained up, and
where his first days and first plays and wishes lay buried. Here he
would fain kneel down, and, in this state of confused devotion, wherein
the genius of suns and worlds in that perhaps holiest time of our life
beholds all warm hearted children, transform his whole soul into a
single sound, a single sigh, and offer it up on the altar of
thanksgiving; but this greatest human thought tore itself away like a
new soul from his, and overmastered it--Gustavus lay prostrate, and
even his thoughts were dumb ... But the voice is heard that remains in
the bosom, and the thought is seen that sinks back under the rays of
the genius; and in the other world, man gives voice to prayers which
were stifled here below....
On the evening of this sacredly blissful day, peace, as a tender
nurse,[39] bore on her secure hands his overfreighted heart; he did not
violently throw his short childish and human arms around the goddess of
joy, but she gently folded her maternal arms round him. This zephyr of
tranquillity--instead of that hurricane of exultation which hurries man
through and against everything--still continued on Whitsuntide to play
around his blossoming young life, and his being lay as if wafted on a
soft cloud when the radiant Whitsunday sun found him; but when the
flower-fragrance of the decorated breast, the feeling and the pressure
of the rustling attire, the pealing of the bells whose prolonged
vibrations ran like golden threads around all individual scenes and
bound them together in one, the odor of the birch trees and the green
claro-oscuro of the church, even the fasting--when all this flung his
feelings and the globules of his blood into flying circles, then did
there stand in his bosom a kindled sun; never did the image and ideal
of a virtuous man burn before him in so great cloud-transcending
outlines as then!
But the evening! Then did the little communicants stroll round in
modest groups with lighter heart and fuller stomach and with a distinct
sense of food and finery. Gustavus--of whose flames the supper had
smothered some portion, though a soft glow still lingered--roamed
slowly up and down his garden, (for his brain was no dancing-place, but
a moss-bank of joyous feelings), and tore open the tulip-leaves which
had closed in slumber, in order to let loose from their flowery prison
many a belated bee. At last, he leaned against the post of the rear
garden gate and looked down longingly over the meadows into the
village, where the rows of parents were chatting together and with eyes
of motherly vanity following their children,--parents who to-day walked
out for the first and haply for the last time, because peasants and
orientals love best to sit. At that moment there moved cautiously
around the garden-wall a shy picket of peasants' children, whose object
was to hear more nearly the old starling, which Gustavus had to-day
brought in its cage out into open air, and amuse themselves with the
racy and saucy words the bird would utter in his tone of genuine irony.
Children in strange clothes, and strange places, are strangers to each
other; but Gustavus had fortunately his key-note at hand by which to
pass over into conversation with them, the starling, and had only to
begin one with him. And the plan succeeded; the rhetorical arts of the
bird soon made the conversation so general and unembarrassed, that one
could talk with every one about everything. Gustavus began to tell
stories, but before a younger and fairer public than mine; his stories
he invented and related at the same moment, and his fancy's wings hit
against nothing in the immeasurable careering-ground. In fact, one
invents more ingenious _contes_ in talking than in writing, and Madame
D'Aunoy, whom I would rather marry than read, would have given us
grown-up children better fairy tales if she had invented them before
the ears of the little ones.
Under the pretext of sitting down, he invited and entreated his whole
audience and public to come up to a terrace which, with a stairway, was
woven and arched around a linden-tree in the garden.... I do not let my
readers sit down so quickly; for bees, carvers, and I, love lindens
exceedingly, those for the honey, these for the soft wood, and I for
the sake of the name and the fragrance.
But here is still something quite different to love--three maiden
communicants were listening at the open garden gate, and reinforced the
audience at a distance; in a word, Regina was down below, and her
brother was already in the party above; the gallery or the boxes must
needs at last--since calling up availed nothing--drag up the female
parterre. I myself narrate now with more fire; no wonder that Gustavus
did so too. Regina seated herself farthest off from him, but opposite
to him. He began an entirely fresh history, because the _bureau
d'esprit_ had become much stronger. He depicted a poor, miserable
little girl--children love best stories about children--one without
supper, without parents, without bed, without a hood, and without sins,
but who, when a star had dressed itself in finery and journeyed down,
found on the ground a bright dollar, on which was set a silver angel,
which angel grew even brighter and broader, till he actually spread his
wings and flew up from the dollar to heaven, and then brought down to
the little one from all the stars up there everything she wanted, and
indeed magnificent things, whereupon the angel set himself back on the
silver again, and very neatly pressed himself down there. What flames,
during this creation, burst forth from Gustavus's words, from his eyes
and features into his auditory! And then, too, the moon meanwhile
embroidered the linden-night on the floor with wavering points of
silver--a belated bee cruised through the glowing circle, and a bumming
hawk-moth around a crowned head--on the double ground of linden-green
and sky-blue leaves quivered among stars--the night-breeze rocked
itself on their foliage, and on gold-spangles of the decorated Regina,
and washed with cool waves her fiery cheek and Gustavus's breath of
flame.... But, verily, I assert, _the_ pulpit he needed not, so
magnificent were pulpit and orator. How could that be necessary for
him, when he was narrating to the bride of Christ and his own; when the
whole past day rose again with its dazzling nimbus; when he infused
pity into the breasts of the unpreoccupied and unsophisticated
children, and wrung it forth again from their eyes; and when he saw
certain maidenly ones grow moist.... His own melted into ecstasy, and
he expanded his smile more and more broadly, in order to cover
therewith his eye, which had already veiled itself more tenderly....
"Gustavus!" the call had twice come from the Castle; but in this
blissful hour no one heard it, till the voice rang out for the third
time, nearer down in the garden. The stupefied Secret Society rolled
down the steps--only Regina still lingered by the side of Gustavus,
under the dark foliage, in order, as hastily as possible, to remove
with her apron the traces of the story from her eyes, and to pin
herself up a little--he stood so near to the face on which so many fair
evening twilights of his life had gone down--so near and so dumb, and
held her back a little when she offered to follow the rest--had she
stood still, he could not have held her, but when she tore herself
away, then he clasped her more tightly and in a larger embrace--her
struggling drew both more closely together, but to his intoxicated soul
nearness supplied the place of the kiss--the struggle brought his
trembling lips to hers--but still it was not till, as she pushed back
his breast from hers, and pricked his with the pin, that with
inexpressible love, intensified by his own blood, he clasped her to
himself, as if he would fain drain out her soul from her lips and pour
in his own--they stood on two distant heavens, leaning over to each
other above the abyss, and clinging to each other on the trembling
ground, in order not, by letting go, to plunge down headlong between
the heavens into the abyss beneath....
.... Could I depict his first kiss in a thousand times more burning
colors, I would do it; for it is one of the _first impressions_ taken
of the soul, one of the May-flowers of love; it is the best
dephlegmation [or distillation] known to me of the earthly man. Only in
this German and Belgic life is it impossible to bring it about that man
shall take the first kiss for more than five or six times. By and bye
he always consults his technical definition, which he carries in his
head, of a kiss, and cites the paragraph in which it is found; but the
sum and substance of the stupid paragraph is, that the thing is
properly a _mutual pressure of red skins_. Verily, an author of feeling
cannot sit down and reflect that a kiss is one of the few things that
can be enjoyed only when the bodily taste does not make itself
prominent under the spiritual--but that such an author of feeling (who
is no other than myself)--falls to upbraiding those who have not so
much understanding as himself;--he upbraids not merely Messrs. Veit
Weber and Kotzebue, in whose writings so many kisses occur, but
other people also, in whose lives so many occur, especially whole
picnic-parties who, after the blessing, wipe and cup each other's
cheeks with their lips. If the thing is carried so far, that this fine
lip-bloom of one face must be rumpled against skins of sheep and of
silk-worms, against gloves (hand-sandals)[40]--then will an author of
so much sensibility want to cut off the hands of the _suffering party_
and the lips of the acting one....
My reason for showering the reader whom the last kiss has heated with
this cold douche is not, assuredly, that I may deal with him as fate
does with me; for she has made it a rule, every time that I find myself
in the midst of the _oil of gladness_ with which such scenes as that of
Gustavus--or even the mere description of them--anoints me, to plunge
me forthwith into brine and oil of vitriol. But I would do precisely
the reverse, and halve with the reader the odious feeling at the
exchange of opposite scenes, which poor Gustavus experienced to the
full, when the voice called down: "Will you instantly--!" The Captain's
lady threw into her tone a more offensive gravity than my innocent
Gustavus had as yet understanding enough to feel. The loving maiden, in
such surprises, loses the courage which the lover gains. The first
verses of the fulminated penal psalm pierced the ear of the guiltless
Regina, who stole, mute and weeping, out of the garden, and thus closed
in darkness her day of joy. The softer verses took hold of the
narrative-poet, who had it in mind to wind up his _contes moraux_
aesthetically and pathetically,[41] and was now himself arrested by
another's pathos.
Ernestina's heart, lips and oars had been trained behind the strictest
grating; hence her soul, melodious as it was, lapsed (at a mere kiss)
into a strange, harsh key; she admitted, in regard to the most
beautiful maiden no more than: "She is a good girl." In general, the
woman who judges very indulgently certain missteps of a sister is with
all her toleration suspicious; a perfectly pure female soul puts on, at
most, the air of this tolerance for one less pure.
On innocent lips Gustavus imprinted the first and last kiss; for in
Whitsuntide-week the shepherdess went back to Maussenbach as messenger
to the castle. We shall hear no more of her. And so it will go on
through the book, which, like life, is full of scenes that never occur
again. Even now the sun is rising higher in Gustavus's day of life and
begins to scorch--one flower of joy after another bows its head already
in the forenoon to slumber, and by 10 o'clock at night the drooping
flora with its vanished beauty will be asleep.