Oath of Allegiance.--I, Beata, Oefel.
Fourteen days after Fenk's letter ... But are readers to be relied on?
I know not how it happens with the German reader, whether from a
splinter in the brain, or from an effusion of lymph, or from deadly
debilitation, that he forgets every thing a writer has said, or it may
come from constipation or from irregular discharges, anyhow the author
has to bear the brunt of it. Thus I have already spread the information
over a multitude of sheets by compositors and printers for the benefit
of the reader (but to no effect), that we have 13,000 thalers in the
Prince's hand, which are to come to us; that I have, it is true, never
studied the Jura; that I did, nevertheless, while I was undergoing my
examination as an advocate, contrive to pick up many a nice juristical
crumb, which now stands me well in stead; that Gustavus is to be a
cadet, and I am bent upon being a justiciary; that Ottomar is invisible
and even inaudible, and that my Principal squanders too much.
Unhappily it cannot be otherwise: for so long as he knows of an
apartment or a stable without cubic contents of an animal nature, he
hangs out his fishing-rod for guests. Like our modern women, he is
never well except in a social hurricane and a thicket of visitors; he
and these women come up out of such a living _men-and-women-bath_ as
rejuvenated and regenerated as out of an _ant_-and-_snail-bath_. He
never can flatter himself upon having herein the least resemblance (to
say no more) to the Commercial Agent Roeper, who in the solitude of a
sage and a capitalist silently reflects upon house-mortgages and
arrears of interest, and who knows that his castle possesses only cup
and pitcher privilege,[48] and therefore no one can be entertained over
night. Falkenberg, hearken to the biographer! Close now and then thy
purse, thy door, and thy heart. Believe me, fate will not spare thy
generous soul. Fortune in her race will run over and cut in pieces with
her wheel thy soft heart, to empty her loto-wheel behind her bandage
before a Roeper. O friend! he will take from thee all that thou would'st
give to others' misery or thy own enjoyment, not even leaving thee the
courage to bury thy shamed heart with its wounds in the bosom of a
friend!--and then how will it fare with thy son?
And yet!--I blame thee only _beforehand_; but _afterward_, when thou
hast one day made thyself miserable by making others happy, then wilt
thou find respect in all good eyes and love in every good breast!
... Fourteen days, then, after Fenk's letter, when my pupil was already
eighteen years old, but still without the position of cadet, there sat
at my principal's lodgings a _bureau d'esprit_ of Bohemian noblemen,
with fiery Pentecostal tongues and March beer. I had nothing to drink
or to say, but made one of the company. I could never refuse my good
captain, but added one, if not to the guests--(one does not begin to
prize fully men of a certain too great refinement till one is away from
them among men of a certain coarseness)--yet to the people. Many
persons are, like him, visiting press-gangs and cannot bid people
enough together, yet without knowing why or wherefore, and without any
real affection for them. Falkenberg would invite the deaf and dumb. It
has its consequences for my readers that I said: "To-day Roeper receives
the oath of allegiance." Falkenberg, who was fond of speaking ill of
others, and doing nothing but good to them, and who would gladly strew
peas in the path of his absent hereditary foes, _i. e_., misers, and
yet sweep them away again just as they were about to slip on them, was
charmed with my idea and his own. "We must all," said he, "ride over
to-day just to vex him (Roeper)." In six minutes the drinking _bureau
d'esprit_ and the tutor were on their nags; but not Gustavus. He was
made for a finer enthusiasm than a noisy one. Hence Gustavus's _inner
life_ often involved me with his father (who demanded _outward_ life)
in the tedious and useless attempt on my part to convince him wherein
the exalted worth of his son properly lay. For a tutor who stands upon
his honor, such a thing is too disagreeable.
We saw, as we sat on our horses, _Maussenbach_, which stood before its
noble _Boyar_,[49] and placed the feudal crown on his Italian head.
Beside the homage-receiving liege-lord stood his judicial department,
his excise college, his privy government, his department of foreign
affairs--namely, Herr Kolb, the magistrate, who represented all these
colleges in his own person. This miniature ministry of the miniature
sovereign stood on a meadow holding a long letter in its hand, from
which it read out to the people all that was to be sworn. The hundred
hands of the confederation then passed in succession through the two
hardening hands of Kolb and Roeper, and promised gladly to obey the
nobleman, if he, on his part, would promise to command.
But _after pleasure comes pain_, after hereditary homage a _bureau
d'esprit_.... In the eighteenth century, certainly, many men have been
scared, and very much so, _e. g_., the Jesuits, the aristocrats, also
Voltaire and other great authors have often been considerably
frightened; but no one in this whole enlightened century was ever so
scared as the commercial agent when he saw what was coming; when he saw
fifteen human heads and fifteen horses' heads between an artillery
train of hands, marching down from above over the hill, who,
collectively, had nothing to seek in his palace, but enough to find.
But as, in the second place also, no one in the eighteenth century was
seldomer at home than he--he, indeed, was so, but crouched down behind
plate-glass windows or behind fire-proof wall or gabion, because, like
a ring of Gyges, they rendered him invisible--accordingly, he might
have found a refuge and withdrawn himself from so many mammalia as many
miles off; but out on the meadow it was not to be done. A jolly man,
and though he were a miser, will make others jolly: Roeper started,
shuddered, resigned himself to his fate, and welcomed us more joyfully
than we dreamed. He continued in the giving mood to-day, because he was
once in the way of giving.
For his vassals who had to-day sworn away their good sense must also
drink it away; some two buckets of stuff which tasted as sour as the
means by which it had been earned he had released as prisoners from
their dungeons on the coronation day--he had had the casks which held
the liquor not so much inscribed as whitewashed and certified[50] or
clarified with double chalk and had had scouring balls of chalky earth
let down into them in hammocks so long that at last the beverage was
too good to make a present of. The skinflint seeks to save, even while
he bestows. For the rest he moved about among his feudal subjects more
familiarly and generously than with us ennobled guests;--"this is the
way a man always acts, who has no pride of nobility," says the
reviewer; "but this is the way the niggard always does," say I, "to
whom meaner but silver-veined men are of more account than guests that
take what is due to their rank, and who places a servant of his own
above an outside friend, and utility above dignity."--Louisa (Mrs.
Commercial Agent von Roeper), attached to every beer-ark of her
husband's a small shallop beside; his gifts were with her always a
pretext for making privy supplements thereto. Only she charged the
village magistrate to keep a sharp look-out that none of her yeast
should be wasted. Nature had given her a free and loving soul; but this
very love for her husband left her at least the appearance of his
fault.
Thou true heart! let me linger for a few lines upon thy connubial
disinterestedness, which counts all thy own virtues as sins and all thy
husband's as virtues, and which no praise pleases but that which is
given him whom thou surpassest! Why didst thou not fall to the lot of a
soul which should imitate and understand and reward thee? Why
have there been apportioned to thee for thy sacrifices, for thy
heart-rendings here below, no pain-stilling drops but those which fall
for thy sake from the fair eyes of thy daughter?
Ah, thou remindest me of all thy sisters in suffering--I know, indeed,
full well, from my psychology, ye poor women, that your sufferings are
not so great as I imagine them, for the very reason that I imagine and
do not feel them, as the lightning, which at the distance of its
appearing grows to a fiery snake, is in reality only a spark,
which shoots through several moments; but can a man, ye feminine
souls, conceive the inward calluses and gashes which his coarse,
weapon-hardened finger must produce in your delicate nerves, since he
does not deal with you even as you do with him, or as he himself does
with the soppy, slimy caterpillars, which he does not venture to take
away except with the whole leaf whereon they lie? And then, too, a
Louisa and a Beata! But were _Jean Paul_ only your lawyer, as the old
man has promised, he would give you solace enough....
But the old man is a poor stick to lean on; does he not creep round
through all Lower Scheerau, voting in beforehand all advocates into his
judiciary, in order to draw off us counsellors, by the hope of serving
under him, from the purpose of serving against him? Meanwhile, however,
he must deal honestly with _one_, and that is myself.
When the Bohemian chivalry and I went from the esplanade into the
palace, they and I stumbled upon something very lovely and something
very absurd. The absurd was sitting by the lovely. The absurd was
called Oefel, the lovely was named Beata. Heaven should give an author
a _time_ to paint her and an _eternity_ to love her; Oefel I can have
done painting and loving in three seconds. It was an honor to me and to
her, that she at once recognized in her old piano-teacher the old
acquaintance; but it did not afford me any pleasure that she did not
detect in the well-known one a something unknown, and that she did not
remember at the sight of me, that she, from a child had become a woman.
There is an age when one does indeed forgive the fair, even if they do
not notice and do not accept us. Oh, I forgive thee everything, and the
greatest proof of it is this, that I speak of it. The young youth
admires and desires at once; the older youth is capable of merely
admiring. Beata's words and feelings are still the dazzling white and
pure fresh snow, just as they have fallen from heaven: no footprint and
no step of age have yet smutched this splendor. She was to-day still
more beautiful than ever, because she was busier than ever and lent her
fair shoulders to her mother's burdens; the pale _lunar-aurora_ which
once left the whole heaven upon her cheeks white, now suffused it with
a rosy reflection; even the joy of others for which she was to-day
active, gave her the heightened color which she usually lost by her
own. The maidens know not how very much occupation beautifies them, how
much upon them as on doves' necks the plumage plays and sparkles when
they move about, and how very much we men resemble beasts of prey, who
will not seize any creature that keeps a fixed position.
Her mother joyfully communicated to me the reason why the counsellor or
legation was sitting there: he had brought Beata an invitation from the
Resident Lady von Bouse to come to her country-seat, where my sister
also is. The new palace Marienhof lies half a league from the city; as
an annex of the new one Oefel occupies the old, which is perhaps
connected with it by secret doors. He impolitely gave it to be surmised
that without his fine intriguing--_i. e_. he made, like the advocates,
a bridge instead of a leap over the slenderest brook--the thing would
have gone lamely. It is impossible that such a vain fool should stamp a
slate-impression of his heart on so precious a stone as Beata. Even
though the ninny should in future besiege her every afternoon in the
new palace, as he will do, nevertheless I can rely upon what I say--nay
I would swear to it. A coxcomb of his magnitude may, to be sure, force
one or two angular, mossy, country-damsels (as happened this very day)
into an amorous amazement at his bell-polypus gyrations, at his
audacity, his sense (_i. e_., wit) and his immodesty in saying, instead
of ladies and the fair sex, merely _women_: _that_ he can do, and more
too, I say; but from Beata's heart all her virtues will eternally
separate him; she will, by the side of his love for the minister's
lady, not see nor believe his love for _her_ at all; she will open her
soul to no sentimental flourishes of an Oefel, which, like counterfeit
gold, are now too large and now too small. She will find, rather, there
is more chance with an honest _Jean Paul_; she will, I hope, readily
forgive the said Jean Paul the resemblance he may bear in some traits
to Oefel, as he is free from the faults of the latter, and stands
before her with a true, modest heart, which has hardly the courage
softly to breathe upon her the finest gold-leaf of praise, and which,
even if misunderstood, is silent, and shrinks back even without having
made the attempt. She will, in her decision, steer just as widely away
from the old country damsels as I from the young country squires, who
sat there in the company. For Oefel's appearance took from them all
former wit and sense, and his quicksilvery politeness filled all their
limbs with lead; in a falcon-baiting where such a bird pounced upon
female hearts, they drew their clumsy wings to their sides and in
virtue of their manly sincerity admired, instead of the female charms,
his: Jean Paul, on the contrary, remained as he was, and did not let
himself be put upon.
I should be leading many a German circle to the presumption of a secret
jealousy on my part, if I said nothing at all in praise of Oefel: he
promised on the same afternoon to do my pupil a great service. I must
premise, that, although he rented the old palace near the resident
lady's he did not lodge there, but in the Scheerau cadet-house, wherein
he moved from room to room, in order--as his high rank did not allow
him to dress singularly--that he might at least act singularly; his
object was to study men there, in order to have them engraved on
copper. That is to say, he was composing a romance as a short
encyclopaedia for hereditary princes and crown-tutors, and wrote on the
title-page "the Great Sultan." This Fenelon made the harem of his
Telemachus into a mirror-chamber, which imaged the whole female court
of Scheerau; his work was a _herbarium vivum_, a flora of all that
grows on and around the Scheerau throne, from the prince down--if he
still remembers me--to me. When it appears, we shall all swallow it,
because in it he has swallowed us all. The reviewers will find nothing
in it, but will say: "trivial stuff!" As he never did any thing which
he did not before and afterward trumpet to the world, of course even my
Captain had heard that he had so long and so finely intrigued with the
Cadet-General, that he got leave at last, in the place of an inspecting
officer, to occupy and exchange chambers in the cadet schoolhouses; and
thus our prince came to the help of this natural historian of men with
a human menagerie, just as Alexander did to Aristotle with one of
beasts. The Captain, therefore, with his victorious good-heartedness,
came to him and begged him cleverly to intercede with the Cadet-General
for his Gustavus, that the latter might one day come under his
standard. Protector Oefel said the thing was already as good as
arranged; he was himself enraptured with the vision of getting a
singular genius who had been educated under ground for a room-mate and
a sitter.
The refraction of light always shows the land to sea-men some hundreds
of miles nearer than it really lies, and by a so innocent illusion
fortifies them with hope and pleasure. But in the moral world also the
beneficial arrangement exists whereby princes and their ministries keep
us _prayer-offerers_ (as Campe would say instead of suppliants)
cheerful and lively, in that they, by an ocular illusion, make us see
the court-places, offices, favors, which we covet, always some hundred
miles or months nearer--(so much nearer, we think we can actually touch
them)--than they really are. This illusive appearance of approximation
is even then useful as well as usual, when the spiritual or secular
bench which is shown in such nearness to the sitters on the long bench
of expectancy, proves at last to be nothing in fact but a--bank[51] of
cloud.
The Commercial Agent (the Captain said to me on the way homeward)
is after all not so bad a fellow as you make him out--and the
legation-counsellor needs in fact only to grow in years.