A FRIEND'S OPINION.
"Heaven be praised he is at home! I see lights in his room, and he is
playing the guitar. Oh! my good Pilgrim! my dear Pilgrim! God keep me
in life and health, and prevent me dying from joy! Oh! that my dearest
mother had only lived to see this hour!"
Pilgrim sang and played loud, so he did not hear his friend
coming upstairs. Lenz opened the door, and spreading his arms,
exclaimed--"Rejoice with me, brother of my heart--I am so happy."
"What is it?"
"I am betrothed."
"To whom?"
"How can you ask? To her,--the most charming creature; and prudent, and
clever as the day! Oh! Annele!"
"What Annele--Annele of the 'Lion'?"
"So you are surprised that she should accept me! I know I am not worthy
of her, but I will try to deserve her. God is my witness that I will do
my best; I will lay my head under her feet, and----" Lenz looking up at
his mother's picture, said, "Good mother! dear loving mother! rejoice
in the seventh heavens, for your son is happy."
He could not say another word, for tears choked his voice, and he knelt
before the picture. Pilgrim went up to him, and placed his hand on his
shoulder.
"Forgive me, dear Pilgrim," said Lenz. "I had resolved to be such a
strong iron man! I am to have a wife who well deserves a strong-minded
husband; but on this day I feel quite overcome--but for this day only.
On the way here I thought to myself, I wish some one would come and
impose on me a severe task--I don't know what--but something--something
that I might put my whole heart in, and, however difficult, I would
accomplish it. I will show that I deserve the happiness God has sent
me.
"Be quiet, do be quiet; other men besides you have got wives, and there
is no occasion to turn the world upside down on that account."
"Oh! if my mother had only lived to see this day!"
"If your mother had lived, Annele would not have accepted you. You did
not please her till you were quite alone, and without any mother."
"Don't say that; how highly she honoured my mother!"
"She finds it easy enough to do that, as she is no longer in the world,
and I tell you that you are only in the world for Annele, since you
have no mother."
"You have not once even wished me joy yet."
"I wish you joy--I wish you much joy."
"Why do you say that twice over--why twice?"
"Oh! it only chanced so."
"No! you meant something by it"
"It is true, I did. I will tell you what it was tomorrow, but not
today."
"Why tomorrow? I must hear it now, you must tell me now."
"Remember you are now in a state of intoxication; how can I speak
soberly to you?"
"I am not intoxicated, I am perfectly sober."
"Very well, then tell me how has this been so quickly brought about?"
"I don't myself very well know; it came on me like an inspiration from
heaven, and now it is plain enough to me, that for a long time past I
have thought of nothing else."
"I suspected as much, but I did think you would do nothing without me."
"Nor will I; you must go with me tomorrow, to propose in due form on my
behalf to her father."
"So! I am glad of that, for then I hope the affair will soon be at an
end."
"What! do you wish to drive me crazy?"
"No need for that; as yet she is neither your betrothed, nor your wife,
So I may speak freely. Lenz, it would be an indiscretion were you now
to draw back, but only an indiscretion; but if you marry Annele, you
will do wrong during your whole life. Lenz, she is no wife for you."
"You do not know her. You always teaze each other; but I know her
inmost heart, and I know her to be thoroughly good and amiable."
"I don't know her, do you say? and yet I have eaten at least a bushel
of salt with these people. I will tell you exactly how it is. Annele
and her mother are very much alike, and for this very reason they can't
bear each other, however loving they may appear before the world. All
their talk is nothing but flimsy music. People eat and drink better
when they have music; not a note proceeds from their hearts,--they have
no hearts. I never could have believed that there were such people in
the world, but it is so; they can talk away glibly about kindness,
love, and pity, and even sometimes of religion, and of their
Fatherland,--but all these are mere words; they have no serious
thoughts, they don't care for these things, and firmly believe that all
men are accustomed to converse in that manner; but the facts themselves
never trouble them in the slightest degree. Annele herself has not a
spark of real feeling, and I maintain that a person who has no heart
can have no understanding, nor be capable of entering into the feelings
of another, of sharing their joys and their sorrows, or yielding to
their wishes. Annele, like her mother, has the knack of listening to
others, and then cleverly repeating their words; and she has also a
peculiar talent for depreciating and harshly censuring her neighbour,
but in such a way that it is difficult to discern whether she is
praising or blaming. Father, mother, and daughter, make a fine trio of
frivolous music; Annele plays the first violin, the old woman the
second, and the pompous old Landlord, the great bass; still I must say
he is the best of the family. It is a well known fact, that it is only
female bees that can sting--and how they can sting to be sure! The
Landlord talks well of everyone, and can't bear to hear his wife and
daughter abuse people--for no occupation is more grateful to them, than
blighting the good name of any girl or married woman. The mother does
so with a kind of hypocritical compassion, but Annele likes to sport
with slander, as a cat does with a mouse. The burden of their song is
always to show that they are best and cleverest, and they think this
redounds to their credit.
"I have often reflected in what the most cruel barbarity in this world
consists, and I feel convinced it is in malignity towards others, and
yet it often assumes a very polite mask. Oh, Lenz! you don't know the
key in which that house is set, and no knowledge of music will help you
to know it. There is nothing there but scoffing and lies."
"Pilgrim, what a man must you be yourself! For the last eight years,
you have daily frequented the house of the very people of whom you are
speaking so harshly; you have eaten with them at the same table, and
have been the best friends with them. What can I think of you?"
"That I go to an inn, and eat and drink and pay ready money. I pay my
score every day, and then have no more to do with them."
"I cannot understand a person doing that."
"I believe you. I have paid dear enough for it, however; I would much
rather be like you. It is no treat to know men as they really are.
There are some, however, who----"
"I suppose you consider yourself one of the good."
"Not altogether; but I expected that you would fly out at me. I must
bear it. Abuse me, do with me what you will, hack off my hand; I will
beg my bread, and at least know that I have saved a friend. Give up
Annele! I implore you to do so! You have not yet made your proposals to
the Landlord of the 'Lion;' you are not yet bound."
"These are your worldly subterfuges! I am not so clever as you, and I
have never mixed with the world like you, but I know what is right. I
betrothed myself to Annele in her mother's presence, and I will keep my
word. God grant I may get her from her father! And, now I say to you
for the last time, I did not ask your advice, and I know well what I am
doing."
"Hear me, Lenz. I shall only be too glad if I have been in error: but,
no! My dear Lenz, for God's sake listen to me; it is still time. You
cannot say that I ever tried to dissuade you from marrying."
"No, you never did."
"You are just the man to be a good husband, but I was a fool not to say
to you sooner, that you ought to marry one of the Doctor's daughters."
"Do you think I would have gone to them and said:--'My guardian,
Pilgrim, desires his compliments, and bids me say that he thinks I
ought to marry one of you: Amanda, if possible.' No, no; these young
ladies are too high and refined for me."
"They are, indeed, refined; while Annele only pretends to be so. The
fact is, you were shy with the Doctor's daughters, but not with Annele;
you could go into the 'Lion,' without anyone asking you why you came
there. Oh! I see it all! Annele talked to you about your sorrow, for
she can talk on any subject, and that softened your heart. Annele wears
a leather pocket in every one of her gowns, and her heart is nothing
but leather, where she has always small coin ready to give every guest
his change in full."
"You are committing a sin, a great sin!" said Lenz, his lip quivering
from anger and grief; and to prove to Pilgrim how cruelly unjust he was
towards Annele, he related to him how kindly and touchingly Annele had
spoken to him, both about the death of his mother, and at the time when
he sent away his clock; he had cherished every word like a revelation.
"My own money! my own coin!" cried Pilgrim. "She has plundered a
beggar! What a confounded, stupid idiot I have been! Every syllable she
said to you she picked up from my lips. I was such a fool as to say
these very words before her, from time to time. I well deserve it all!
but how could I possibly guess that she was to entrap you with my
words? Oh! my poor coins!"
The two friends remained silent for a time. Pilgrim bit his lips till
they bled, and Lenz shook his head incredulously; at last Pilgrim
resumed the discussion by saying:--"Do you know Annele's principal
reason for accepting you? Not from your tall figure nor your good
heart; not for your property either! No, these are all very secondary
considerations. Her real motive is to prevent one of the Doctor's
daughters getting you. 'Aha! you shan't get him, but I shall!' Believe
me, Annele is a creature that you cannot judge of; you cannot believe
that there are people who have no real delight or happiness, unless
their enjoyment makes some one else miserable; or unless they can
triumph in the thought that they are envied for their riches, their
beauty, or their good fortune. I never knew there were such people in
the world till I knew Annele. My Lenz, don't you try to know anything
further of her, for she will make you miserable. Why do you look so
strangely at me, and never say a word? Attack me, do what you will, say
what you choose to me, only give up Annele, for she is poison! I
implore of you to renounce her. One very important point, too, I quite
forgot: think of it, and God grant that you may not think of it too
late; I do not wish to be a prophet of evil, but Annele will never live
to be old."
"Ha, ha! I suppose you intend now to make out that she has bad health:
her face is like the rose and the lily blended."
"That is not what I meant; but something very different: remember your
mother; was there ever any one who was so pleasant to look at? because
her kind heart was seen in her face; kindness for everyone, and her
love for you, and anxiety about you: that makes an old face charming,
and it does one's heart good to look at it. As for Annele, when she can
no longer plait her hair in a coronet, and has lost her fresh
complexion, and cannot show her white teeth when she laughs, what will
remain? She has nothing to grow old on; she has no soul, she has only
plausible speeches; no good heart, no good sense; all she can do is to
scoff at others; when she is an old woman, she will be nothing but the
devil's grandmother!"
Lenz pressed his teeth violently against his lips, and at last
said:--"You have said enough; far too much, indeed! Not another word!
But I must exact one thing from you, which is, that you are not
to speak of her in such a way except to me, and even to me this
day for the last time, and to no one else; no one! I love my Annele,
and--and--you also; you may say what you will in your jealousy. I
no longer wish that you should go with me when I make my offer.
Fortunately these four walls alone have heard what has passed. Good
night, Pilgrim!"
"Good night, Lenz!"