Introduced by me to my parents, she had managed to make herself
agreeable to them; for her rough sort of manner is seldom offensive in
an imperial city, and backed by cleverness and tact, is even welcome.
She knew very well our wishes and our hopes; her love of meddling made
her see in all this a call upon her good offices; in short she had a
conversation with our parents. How she commenced it, how she put aside
the difficulties which must have stood in her way, I know not; but she
came to us one evening and brought the consent. "Take each other by
the hand!" cried she, in her pathetic yet commanding manner. I stood
opposite to Lili and offered her my hand; she, not indeed hesitatingly,
but still slowly, placed hers in it. After a long and deep breath we
fell with lively emotion into each other's arms.
It was a strange degree of the overruling Providence, that in the
course of my singular history, I should also have experienced the
feelings of one who is betrothed.
I may venture to assert, that for a truly moral man it is the
pleasantest of all recollections. It is delightful to recall those
feelings, which are with difficulty expressed and are hardly explained.
For him the state of things is all at once changed; the sharpest
oppositions are removed, the most inveterate differences are adjusted;
prompting nature, ever warning reason, the tyrannizing impulses, and
the sober law, which before kept up a perpetual strife within us,
all are now reconciled in friendly unity, and at the festival, so
universally celebrated with solemn rites, that which was forbidden is
commanded, and that which was penal is raised to an inviolable duty.
The reader will learn with moral approval that from this time forward
a certain change took place in me. If my beloved had hitherto been
looked upon as beautiful, graceful, and attractive, now she appeared
to me a being of superior worth and excellence. She was as it were a
double person: her grace and loveliness belonged to me,--that I felt
as formerly; but the dignity of her character, her self-reliance, her
confidence in all persons remained her own. I beheld it, I looked
through it, I was delighted with it as with a capital of which I should
enjoy the interest as long as I lived.
There is depth and significance in the old remark: on the summit
of fortune one abides not long. The consent of the parties on both
sides, so gained in such a peculiar manner by Demoiselle Delf, was now
ratified silently and without further formality. But as soon as we
believe the matter to be all settled--as soon as the ideal, as we may
well call it, of a betrothal is over, and it begins to pass into the
actual and to enter soberly into facts, then too often comes a crisis.
The outward world is utterly unmerciful, and it has reason, for it
must maintain its authority at all costs; the confidence of passion is
very great, and we see it too often wrecked upon the rocks of opposing
realities. A young married couple who enter upon life, unprovided with
sufficient means, can promise themselves no honey-moon, especially
in these latter times; the world immediately presses upon them with
incompatible demands, which, if not satisfied, make the young couple
appear ridiculous.
Of the insufficiency of the means which for the attainment of my end,
I had anxiously scraped together, I could not before be aware, because
they had held out up to a certain point; but now the end was drawing
nearer, I saw that matters were not quite what they ought to be.
The fallacy, which passion finds so convenient, was now exposed in
all its inconsistency. My house, my domestic circumstances, had
to be considered in all their details, with some soberness. The
consciousness, that his house would one day contain a daughter-in-law,
lay indeed at the bottom of my father's design; but then what sort of a
lady did he contemplate?
[Side-note: The Realities of Life.]
At the end of our third part, the reader made the acquaintance of the
gentle, dear, intelligent, beautiful, and talented maiden, so always
like herself, so affectionate, and yet so free from passion; she was a
fitting key-stone to the arch already built and curved. But here, upon
calm unbiassed consideration, it could not be denied that, in order to
establish the newly acquired treasure in such a function, a new arch
would have to be built!
However this had not yet become clear to me, and still less was it so
to her mind. But now when I tried to fancy myself bringing her to my
home, she did not seem somehow to suit it exactly. It appeared to me
something like what I had myself experienced, when I first joined her
social circle: in order to give no offence to the fashionable people
I met there, I found it necessary to make a great change in my style
of dress. But this could not be so easily done with the domestic
arrangement of a stately burgher's house, which, rebuilt in the olden
style, had with its antique ornaments, given an old-fashioned character
to the habits of its inmates.
Moreover, even after our parents' consent had been gained, it had
not been possible to establish friendly relations or intercourse
between our respective families. Different religious opinions produced
different manners; and if the amiable girl had wished to continue
in any way her former mode of life, it would have found neither
opportunity nor place in our moderate-sized house.
If I had never thought of all this until now, it was because I had been
quieted by the opening of fine prospects from without, and the hope
of getting some valuable appointment. An active spirit gets a footing
everywhere: capacities, talents create confidence; every one thinks
that a change of management is all that is needed. The earnestness of
youth finds favour, genius is trusted for, everything, though its
power is only of a certain kind.
The intellectual and literary domain of Germany was at that time
regarded as but newly broken ground. Among the business-people there
were prudent men, who desired skilful cultivators and prudent managers
for the fields about to be turned up. Even the respectable and well
established Free-Mason's lodge, with the most distinguished members of
which I had become acquainted through my intimacy with Lili, contrived
in a suitable manner to get me introduced to them; but I, from a
feeling of independence, which afterwards appeared to me madness,
declined all closer connection with them, not perceiving that these
men, though already bound together in a higher sense, would yet do much
to further my own ends, so nearly related to theirs.
I return to more personal matters.
In such cities as Frankfort, men often hold several situations
together, such as residentships, and agencies, the number of which
may by diligence be indefinitely increased. Something of this sort
now occurred to me, and at first sight it seemed both advantageous
and honorable. It was assumed that I should suit the place; and it
would, under the conditions, certainly have succeeded, if it could have
commanded the co-operation of the Chancery triad already described.
We thus suppress our doubts; we dwell only on what is favorable, by
powerful activity we overcome all wavering; whence there results a
something untrue in our position, without the force of passion being in
the least subdued.
* * * * *
In times of peace there is no more interesting reading for the
multitude than the public papers, which furnish early information of
the latest doings in the world. The quiet opulent citizen exercises
thus in an innocent way a party spirit, which in our finite nature
we neither can nor should get rid of. Every comfortable person thus
gets up a factitious interest, like that which is often felt in a
bet, experiences an unreal gain or loss, and as in the theatre, feels
a very lively, though imaginary sympathy in the good or evil fortune
of others. This sympathy seems often arbitrary, but it rests on moral
grounds. For now we give to praiseworthy designs the applause they
deserve; and now again, carried away by brilliant successes, we turn
to those whose plans we should otherwise have blamed. For all this
there was abundant material in those times.
Frederick the Second, resting on his victories, seemed to hold in his
hand the fate of Europe and the world; Catherine, a great woman, who
had proved herself every way worthy of a throne, afforded ample sphere
of action to able and highly gifted men, in extending the dominion of
their Empress; and as this was done at the expense of the Turks, whom
we are in the habit of richly repaying for the contempt with which
they look down upon us, it seemed as if it was no sacrifice of human
life, when these infidels were slain by thousands. The burning of the
fleet in the harbor of Tschesme, caused a universal jubilee throughout
the civilized world, and every one shared the exultation of a victory,
when, in order to preserve a faithful picture of that great event, a
ship of war was actually blown up on the roads of Leghorn, before the
studio of an artist. Not long after this, a young northern king, to
establish his own authority, seized the reins of government, out of
the hands of an oligarchy. The aristocrats whom he overthrew were not
lamented, for aristocracy finds no favor with the public, since it is
in its nature to work in silence, and it is the more secure the less
talk it creates about itself; and in this case the people thought all
the better of the young king, since in order to balance the enmity of
the higher ranks, he was obliged to favor the lower, and to conciliate
their good will.
[Side-note: American Revolution.]
The lively interest of the world was still more, excited when a whole
people prepared to effect their independence. Already had it witnessed
a welcome spectacle of the same effort on a small scale: Corsica had
long been the point to to which all eyes were directed; Paoli, when
despairing of ever being able to carry out his patriotic designs, he
passed through Germany to England, attracted and won all hearts; he was
a fine man, slender, fair, full of grace and friendliness. I saw him
in the house of Bethmann, where he stopped a short time, and received
with cheerful cordiality the curious visitors who thronged to see
him. But now similar events were to be repeated in a remote quarter
of the globe; we wished the Americans all success, and the names of
Franklin and Washington began to shine and sparkle in the firmament of
politics and war. Much had been accomplished to improve the condition
of humanity, and now, when in France, a new and benevolent sovereign
evinced the best intentions of devoting himself to the removal of
so many abuses and to the noblest ends,--of introducing a regular
and efficient system of political economy,--of dispensing with all
arbitrary power and of ruling alone by law and justice; the brightest
hopes spread over the world, and confident youth promised itself and to
all mankind a bright and noble future.
In all these events, however, I only took part so far as they
interested society in general; I myself and my immediate circle did not
meddle with the news of the day; our affair was to study men; men in
general we allowed to have their way.
The quiet position of the German Fatherland, to which also my native
city had now conformed for upwards of a hundred years, had been fully
preserved in spite of many wars and convulsions. A highly varied
gradation of ranks, which, instead of holding the several classes
apart, seemed to bind them the more closely together, had promoted
the interest of all, from the highest to the lowest--from the Emperor
to the Jew. If the sovereign princes stood in a subordinate relation
to the Emperor, still their electoral rights and immunities thereby
acquired and maintained, were a full compensation. Moreover, the
highest nobility belonged exclusively to the Agnates of the royal
houses, so that in the enjoyment of their distinguished privileges,
they could look upon themselves as equal with the highest and even
superior to them in some sense, since, as spiritual electors, they
might take precedence of all others, and, as branches of the sacred
hierarchy, hold an honorable and uncontested rank.
If now we think of the extraordinary privileges which these ancient
houses enjoyed, not only in their old patrimonial estates, but also
in the ecclesiastical endowments, the knightly orders, the official
administration of the Empire, and the old brotherhoods and alliances
for mutual defence and protection, we can vainly conceive that this
great body of influential men feeling themselves at once subordinated
to and co-ordinate with the highest, and occupying their days with
a regular round of employments, might well be contented with their
situation, and would without further anxiety seek only to secure and
transmit to their successors the same comforts and prerogatives. Nor
was this class deficient in intellectual culture. Already for more than
a century the decided proofs of high training in military and political
science had been discernible in our noble soldiers and diplomatists.
But at the same time there were many minds who, through literary and
philosophical studies, had arrived at views not over favorable to the
existing state of things.
[Side-note: State of Germany.]
In Germany scarcely any one had as yet learned to look with envy on
that monstrous privileged class, or to grudge its fortunate advantages.
The middle class had devoted themselves undisturbed to commerce and
the sciences, and by these pursuits, as well as by the practice of the
mechanic arts, so closely related to them, had raised themselves to a
position of importance which fully balanced its political inferiority;
the free or half-free cities favoured this activity, while individuals
felt a certain quiet satisfaction in it. The man who increased his
wealth, or enhanced his intellectual influence, especially in matters
of law or state, could always be sure of enjoying both respect and
authority. In the Supreme Courts of the empire, and indeed in all
others, a learned bench stood parallel with the noble; the uncontrolled
oversight of the one managed to keep in harmony with the deepest
insight of the other; and experience could never detect a trace of
rivalry between them; the noble felt secure in his exclusive and
time-hallowed privileges, and the burgher felt it beneath his dignity
to strive for a semblance of them by a little prefix to his name.[1]
The merchant, the manufacturer, had enough to do to keep pace with
those of other nations in progress and improvement. Leaving out of the
account the usual temporary fluctuations, we may certainly say that
it was on the whole a time of pure advance, such as had not appeared
before, and such as, on account of another and greater progress both of
mind and things, could not long continue.
My position with regard to the higher classes at this time was very
favorable. In _Werther_, to be sure, the disagreeable circumstances
which arise just at the boundary between two distinct positions,
were descanted upon with some impatience; but this was overlooked in
consideration of the generally passionate character of the book, since
every one felt that it had no reference to any immediate effect.
But _Götz von Berlichingen_ had set me quite right with the upper
classes; whatever improprieties might be charged upon my earlier
literary productions, in this work I had with considerable learning and
cleverness depicted the old German constitution, with its inviolable
emperor at the head, with its many degrees of nobility, and a knight
who, in a time of general lawlessness, had determined as a private man
to act uprightly, if not lawfully, and thus fell into a very sorry
predicament. This complicated story, however, was not snatched from the
air, but founded on fact; it was cheerfully lively, and consequently
here and there a little modern, but it was, nevertheless, on the whole,
in the same spirit as the brave and capable man had with some degree of
skill set it forth in his own narrative.
The family still flourished; its relation to the Frankish knighthood
had remained in all its integrity, although that relation, like many
others at that time, might have grown somewhat faint and nominal.
Now all at once the little stream of Jaxt, and the castle of
Jaxthausen, acquired a poetical importance; they, as well as the
council-house at Heilbronn, were visited by travellers.
It was known that I had the mind to write of other points of that
historical period; and many a family, which could readily deduce its
origin from that time, hoped to see its ancestors brought to the light
in the same way.
A strange satisfaction is generally felt, when a writer felicitously
recalls a nation's history to its recollection; men rejoice in the
virtues of their ancestors, and smile at the failings, which they
believe they themselves have long since got rid of. Such a delineation
never fails to meet with sympathy and applause, and in this respect I
enjoyed an envied influence.
Yet it may be worth while to remark, that among the numerous advances,
and in the multitude of young persons who attached themselves to me,
there was found no nobleman; on the other hand, many who had already
arrived at the age of thirty sought me and visited me, and of these
the willing and striving were pervaded by a joyful hope of earnestly
developing themselves in a national and even more universally humane
sense.
[Side-note: Ulrich Von Hutten.]
At this time a general curiosity about the epoch between the fifteenth
and sixteenth century had commenced, and was very lively. The works
of ULRICH VON HUTTEN had fallen into my hands, and I was not a little
struck to see something so similar to what had taken place in his time,
again manifesting itself in our later days.
The following letter of Ulrich von Hutten to Billibald Pyrkheymer, may
therefore suitably find place here:--
"What fortune gives us, it generally takes away again; and not only
that--everything else which accrues to man from without, is, we see,
liable to accident and change. And yet, notwithstanding, I am now
striving for honor, which I should wish to obtain, if possible, without
envy, but still at any cost; for a fiery thirst for glory possesses
me, so that I wish to be ennobled as highly as possible. I should make
but a poor figure in my own eyes, dear Billibald, if, born in the
rank, in the family I am, and of such ancestors, I could be content
to hold myself to be noble, though I never ennobled myself by my own
exertions. So great a work have I in my mind! my thoughts are higher!
it is not that I would see myself promoted to a more distinguished and
more brilliant rank; but I would fain seek a fountain elsewhere, out of
which I might draw a peculiar nobility of my own, and not be counted
among the factitious nobility, contented with what I have received
from my ancestors. On the contrary, I would add to those advantages
something of my own, which may, from me, pass over to my posterity.
"Therefore, in my studies and my efforts, I proceed in opposition
to the opinion of those who consider that what actually exists is
enough; for to me nothing of that sort is enough, according to what
I have already confessed to you of my ambition in this respect. And
I here avow that I do not envy those who, starting from the lowest
stations, have climbed higher than myself; for on this point I by
no means agree with those of my own rank, who are wont to sneer at
persons who, of a lower origin, have, by their own talents, raised
themselves to eminence. For those with perfect right are to be
preferred to us, who have seized for themselves and taken possession
of the material of glory, which we ourselves neglected; they may be
the sons of fullers or of tanners, but they have contrived to attain
their ends, by struggling with greater difficulties than we ever had
against us. The ignorant man, who envies him who by his knowledge has
distinguished himself, is not only to be called a fool, but is to be
reckoned among the miserable--indeed among the most miserable; and with
this disease are our nobles especially affected, that they look with
an evil eye upon such accomplishments. For what, in God's name! is it
to envy one who possesses that which we have despised? Why have we not
applied ourselves to the law? why have we not ourselves this excellent
learning, the best arts? And now fullers, shoemakers, and wheelwrights,
go before us. Why have we forsaken our post, why left the most liberal
studies to hired servants and (shamefully for us!) to the very lowest
of the people? Most justly has that inheritance of nobility which we
have thrown away been taken possession of by every clever and diligent
plebeian who makes it profitable by its own industry. Wretched beings
that we are, who neglect that which suffices to raise the very humblest
above us; let us cease to envy, and strive also to obtain what others,
to our deep disgrace, have claimed for themselves.
"Every longing for glory is honorable; all striving for the excellent
is praiseworthy. To every rank may its own honor remain, may its own
ornaments be secured to it! Those statues of my ancestors I do not
despise any more than the richly endowed pedigree; but whatever their
worth may be, it is not ours, unless by our own merits we make it ours;
nor can it endure, if the nobility do not adopt the habits which become
them. In vain will yonder fat and corpulent head of a noble house point
to the images of his ancestors, whilst he himself, inactive, resembles
a clod rather than those whose virtues throw a halo upon his name from
bygone days.
"So much have I wished most fully and most frankly to confide to you
respecting my ambition and my nature."
Although, perhaps, not exactly in the same train of ideas, yet the
same excellent and strong sentiments had I to hear from my more
distinguished friends and acquaintances, of which the results appeared
in an honest activity. It had become a creed, that every one must earn
for himself a personal nobility, and if any rivalry appeared in those
fine days, it was from above downwards.
We others, on the contrary, had what we wished; the free and approved
exercise of the talents lent to us by nature, as far as could consist
with all our civil relations.
[Side-note: Frankfort and Its Constitution.]
For my native city had in this a very peculiar position, and one
which has not been enough considered. While of the free imperial
cities the northern could boast of an extended commerce, but the
southern, declining in commercial importance, cultivated the arts and
manufactures with more success; Frankfort on the Main exhibited a
somewhat mixed character, combining the results of trade, wealth, and
capital, with the passion for learning, and its collection of works of
art.
The Lutheran Confession controlled its government; the ancient lordship
of the _Gan_, now bearing the name of the house of Limburg; the house
of Frauenstein, originally only a club, but during the troubles
occasioned by the lower classes, faithful to the side of intelligence;
the jurist, and others well to do and well disposed--none was excluded
from the magistracy; even those mechanics who had upheld the cause
of order at a critical time, were eligible to the council, though
they were only stationary in their place. The other constitutional
counterpoises, formal institutions, and whatever else belongs to such
a constitution, afforded employment to the activity of many persons;
while trade and manufacture, in so favorable a situation, found no
obstacle to their growth and prosperity.
The higher nobility kept to itself, unenvied and almost unnoticed; a
second class pressing close upon it was forced to be more active; and
resting upon old wealthy family foundations, sought to distinguish
itself by political and legal learning.
The members of the so-called Reformed persuasion (Calvinists) composed,
like the refugees in other places, a distinguished class, and when they
rode out in fine equipages on Sundays to their service in Bockenheim,
seemed almost to celebrate a sort of triumph over the citizen's party,
who had the privilege of going to church on foot in good weather and in
bad.
The Roman Catholics were scarcely noticed; but they also were aware
of the advantages which the other two confessions had appropriated to
themselves.
[1] The "von" which in Germany those who are ennobled prefix to their
surnames.
EIGHTEENTH BOOK.