The Springs.--The Wail of Love.
I went to sleep in the first heaven and woke up in the third. One
should never wake up in any but strange places--nor in any chambers
except those into which the morning-sun flings its first flames--and
before only those windows where the green shadows burn like a traced
name in the heavenly firework, and where the bird screams among the
leaves through which he is skipping....
I could wish my future reviewer were living with me in my chamber at
Lilienbad; he would not (as he does) break over my joy-sections the
aesthetic staff, but an oak-twig to crown their father....
That father is just now a ladies' tailor, but merely in the following
sense: in the centre of Lilienbad is the medicinal spring, from which
is drawn the dispensary gushing out or the earth; from this spring
radiate in regular symmetry the artificial peasants'-cottages, which
the bathing guests occupy; each of these little cottages is decorated
in jest with the hung-out emblem or signature of one or another trade.
My little house holds out a pair of shears as a technical _insigne_, to
announce that its occupant (myself) drives the trade of a ladies'
tailor. My sister (to judge by the exponent of a wooden stocking) is a
stocking-weaver; next door to her swings a wooden boot or a wooden leg
(who can tell which?) which tells us as plainly as a journeyman's
greeting, that the occupant is a shoemaker, who is no other than my
Gustavus.
Against Beata's cottage, which like ladies of the present day has on a
hat or roof of straw, rests a long ladder, which indicates the fair
peasant-woman dwelling within, and is the Jacob's ladder, at the foot
of which is seen at least _one_ angel.
It is well known even in foreign parts, that our principality has and
must have its healing springs as well as any one on the princely bench,
for everyone of them must carry round with it such a pharmaceutic well
as a flask, to smell of, against financial fainting; further, it may be
well known that once many guests came hither, and now not a cat--and
for this, not the springs, but the Chamber of Finance is to blame,
which has built too much into the place and wants to get too much out
of it, and which began at as dear a rate as the Selter's springs
ended--that consequently our springs will end as cheaply as those
began--and that our Lilienbad, with all its medicinal virtues, has not
after all the more important one of making people as sick as a
chamber-maid--I said, that is all sufficiently well known, and
therefore I need not in fact have said it at all.
To be sure, it is not a merit in other healing springs, if they are
popular resorts of the sick, around which the whole great and rich
world stands in priestly attitude; had we only here in Lilienbad also
such female angels as in other watering-places, to agitate the pool of
Bethesda and impart to it a medicinal virtue, which is the _reverse_ of
that of the Biblical one; had we players who should compel the guests
to sit, attendant physicians who should force them to swig, not sip,
the eau-de-vie, then would our springs be as capable as any others in
Germany of putting the tippling guests into such a state that they
would come again every year. But as it is, our Board of Inspection will
have to see again and again the sick phalanx of the great world roll by
us and throng to other springs; as the wild beasts do round one in
Africa; and if Pliny[91] explains by these animal-conventions the
proverb in the note, I too would find a key to similar novelties in the
mineral-spring-congresses.
The Exchequer is after all the most to be pitied, that in our Valley of
Jehosaphat, nothing is to be found but Nature, Blessedness, Temperance
and Resurrection.
To-day we all drank, at the _Baquet_ (or water-trough) the water drawn
off over iron, amidst the noise of birds and leaves, and swallowed down
the image of the sun that gleamed up out of it and its fire too. The
winter of sorrow has drawn around the eyelids of Beata and around her
mouth the inexpressibly tender lines and letters of her faded grief;
her large eye is a sunny heaven, from which escape glistening drops. As
a maiden can unfold the peacock's-mirror of her charms with another
maiden more easily than with a male person, so she gained greatly by
her play with my sister. Gustavus--was invisible, he drank his water
after the rest and lost himself amidst the charms of the country, in
order, strictly speaking, to escape the greater charms of its fair
inhabitant. Except the happiness of seeing her he knew no greater than
that of not seeing her. She never speaks of him, nor he of her; his
thoughts of her which yearn outward do not grow into words, but only
into blushes. Would to Heaven I were composing a romance instead of a
biography! then would I bring you, fair souls, nearer together and
reconstruct a friendly circle out of its segments; then should we both
secure even here such a heaven, that if death should come along looking
for us, that worthy man would not know whether we were already settled
there or whether we were still waiting for him to get us in....
I acted at once judiciously and delicately, in bringing before Gustavus
at this time, as I now do before my readers, a certain sketch which
Beata made in the winter and which I came by in an equally honorable
and ingenious manner. It is addressed to the picture of her brother and
consists of questions. Grief lies upon woman's heart, which yields
patiently to its burden, far more heavily than on man's, which by
throbbing and thumping labors to shake it off; as on the motionless
fir-peaks all the snow piles itself up, whereas on the lower twigs,
which are always in motion, none remains.
"_To the Picture of my Brother._
"Why dost thou look on me so smilingly, thou precious image? Why dost
thy pictured eye remain forever dry, when mine is so full of tears
before thee? Oh, how I would love thee, wert thou painted mourning!
"Ah, Brother! dost thou not still long for a sister, does thy heart
never tell thee that there is in the desolate world yet another which
loves thee so unspeakably?-~Ah had I but _once_ set my eyes upon thee,
clasped thee in my arms ... we could never forget each other! But now,
if thou too art forsaken like thy sister, if thou too, like her,
ploddest on under a rainy heaven and over a dreary earth, and findest
no friend in the hours of sorrow--ah, in that case, thou hast not even
a sister's likeness, before which thy heart may bleed to death! Oh,
Brother! if thou art good and unhappy, then come to thy sister and take
her whole heart--it is torn, but not asunder, and only bleeds! Oh, it
would love thee so! Why dost thou not long for a sister? O thou unseen
one, if thou too art abandoned, art deceived, art forgotten by
strangers, why dost thou not long for a faithful sister? When can I
tell thee, how often I have passed thy mute image to my heart, how
often I have gazed upon it for hours together, and imagined my tears
into its painted eyes, till I myself have burst into a flood of real
tears at the thought?--Tarry not so long that thy sister with her
worn-out heart shall repose under the coffin-lid, and with all her vain
yearnings, her vain tears, her vain love, shall have crumbled into
cold, forgotten earth! Nor tarry so long that our youthful meadows
shall meanwhile have been mowed down and snowed over, and the heart has
stiffened, and years and sorrows have become too many. There comes all
at once over my soul so sad, so bitter a feeling.... Art thou perhaps
already dead, dear one?--Ah, the thought benumbs my heart--turn thine
eyes away, if thou art in bliss, from thy orphaned sister, and behold
not her sorrows--ah, I put to myself the heavy question in my bleeding
heart: _What have I left to love me?_ and I give myself no answer...."
* * * * *
The reader has the courage to divine from this more to Gustavus's
advantage than he himself can. To him, as the hero of this book, this
leaf must be a welcome one; but I, as his mere biographer, have nothing
from it but two or three more heavy scenes, which however I gladly
despatch out of true love for the reader--billions of them would I work
out for his pleasure. Only it does my whole biography harm, that the
persons whom I have set to work at the same time set me to work, and
that the writer of this history or protocol is himself one of the
heroes and parties. I should perhaps be more impartial, too, if I
composed this history two or three decades or centuries after its
birth, as they will have to do who shall in future draw from me. The
artists direct the portrait-painter to sit three times as far off from
the original as it is tall--and as Princes are so great and
consequently can only be drawn by authors who sit at a distance from
them, of place or time, equal to such greatness--accordingly it were to
be desired that I did not stand so near to the Prince, so that I might
portray less partially than I do....