Produced by Thierry Alberto, Henry Craig, Leonard Johnson
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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TRANSLATIONS FROM THE GERMAN
BY
THOMAS CARLYLE.
UNIFORM WITH HIS COLLECTED WORKS.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
MUSAEUS, TIECK, RICHTER.
LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL (LIMITED),
11 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
TALES
BY
MUSAEUS, TIECK, RICHTER.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
BY
THOMAS CARLYLE.
[1827.]
LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL (LIMITED),
11 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
CONTENTS
MUSAEUS:
PAGE
DUMB LOVE 3
LIBUSSA 58
MELECHSALA 98
TIECK:
THE FAIR-HAIRED ECKBERT 159
THE TRUSTY ECKART 175
THE RUNENBERG 200
THE ELVES 220
THE GOBLET 238
RICHTER:
SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FLAETZ 257
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN 305
MUSAEUS.
DUMB LOVE.[1]
There was once a wealthy merchant, Melchior of Bremen by name, who used
to stroke his beard with a contemptuous grin, when he heard the Rich Man
in the Gospel preached of, whom, in comparison, he reckoned little
better than a petty shopkeeper. Melchior had money in such plenty, that
he floored his dining-room all over with a coat of solid dollars. In
those frugal times, as in our own, a certain luxury prevailed among the
rich; only then it had a more substantial shape than now. But though
this pomp of Melchior's was sharply censured by his fellow-citizens and
consorts, it was, in truth, directed more to trading speculation than to
mere vain-glory. The cunning Bremer easily observed, that those who
grudged and blamed this seeming vanity, would but diffuse the reputation
of his wealth, and so increase his credit. He gained his purpose to the
full; the sleeping capital of old dollars, so judiciously set up to
public inspection in the parlour, brought interest a hundredfold, by the
silent surety which it offered for his bargains in every market; yet, at
last, it became a rock on which the welfare of his family made
shipwreck.
[1] Prefatory Introduction to Musaeus, _supra_, at p. 316, Vol. VI.
of _Works_ (Vol. I. of _Miscellanies_).
Melchior of Bremen died of a surfeit at a city-feast, without having
time to set his house in order; and left all his goods and chattels to
an only son, in the bloom of life, and just arrived at the years when
the laws allowed him to take possession of his inheritance. Franz
Melcherson was a brilliant youth, endued by nature with the best
capacities. His exterior was gracefully formed, yet firm and sinewy
withal; his temper was cheery and jovial, as if hung-beef and old French
wine had joined to influence his formation. On his cheeks bloomed
health; and from his brown eyes looked mirthfulness and love of joy. He
was like a marrowy plant, which needs but water and the poorest ground
to make it grow to strength; but which, in too fat a soil, will shoot
into luxuriant overgrowth, without fruit or usefulness. The father's
heritage, as often happens, proved the ruin of the son. Scarce had he
felt the joy of being sole possessor and disposer of a large fortune,
when he set about endeavouring to get rid of it as of a galling burden;
began to play the Rich Man in the Gospel to the very letter; went
clothed in fine apparel, and fared sumptuously every day. No feast at
the bishop's court could be compared for pomp and superfluity with his;
and never while the town of Bremen shall endure, will such another
public dinner be consumed, as it yearly got from him; for to every
burgher of the place he gave a Krusel-soup and a jug of Spanish wine.
For this, all people cried: Long life to him! and Franz became the hero
of the day.
In this unceasing whirl of joviality, no thought was cast upon the
Balancing of Entries, which, in those days, was the merchant's
vade-mecum, though in our times it is going out of fashion, and for want
of it the tongue of the commercial beam too frequently declines with a
magnetic virtue from the vertical position. Some years passed on without
the joyful Franz's noticing a diminution in his incomes; for at his
father's death every chest and coffer had been full. The voracious host
of table-friends, the airy company of jesters, gamesters, parasites, and
all who had their living by the prodigal son, took special care to keep
reflection at a distance from him; they hurried him from one enjoyment
to another; kept him constantly in play, lest in some sober moment
Reason might awake, and snatch him from their plundering claws.
But at last their well of happiness went suddenly dry; old Melchior's
casks of gold were now run off even to the lees. One day, Franz ordered
payment of a large account; his cash-keeper was not in a state to
execute the precept, and returned it with a protest. This
counter-incident flashed keenly through the soul of Franz; yet he felt
nothing else but anger and vexation at his servant, to whose
unaccountable perversity, by no means to his own ill husbandry, he
charged the present disorder in his finances. Nor did he give himself
the trouble to investigate the real condition of the business; but after
flying to the common Fool's-litany, and thundering out some scores of
curses, he transmitted to his shoulder-shrugging steward the laconic
order: Find means.
Bill-brokers, usurers and money-changers now came into play. For high
interest, fresh sums were poured into the empty coffers; the silver
flooring of the dining-room was then more potent in the eyes of
creditors, than in these times of ours the promissory obligation of the
Congress of America, with the whole thirteen United States to back it.
This palliative succeeded for a season; but, underhand, the rumour
spread about the town, that the silver flooring had been privily
removed, and a stone one substituted in its stead. The matter was
immediately, by application of the lenders, legally inquired into, and
discovered to be actually so. Now, it could not be denied, that a
marble-floor, worked into nice Mosaic, looked much better in a parlour,
than a sheet of dirty, tarnished dollars: the creditors, however, paid
so little reverence to the proprietor's refinement of taste, that on the
spot they, one and all, demanded payment of their several moneys; and as
this was not complied with, they proceeded to procure an act of
bankruptcy; and Melchior's house, with its appurtenances, offices,
gardens, parks and furniture, were sold by public auction, and their
late owner, who in this extremity had screened himself from jail by some
chicanery of law, judicially ejected.
It was now too late to moralise on his absurdities, since philosophical
reflections could not alter what was done, and the most wholesome
resolutions would not bring him back his money. According to the
principles of this our cultivated century, the hero at this juncture
ought to have retired with dignity from the stage, or in some way
terminated his existence; to have entered on his travels into foreign
parts, or opened his carotid artery; since in his native town he could
live no longer as a man of honour. Franz neither did the one nor the
other. The _qu'en-dira-t-on_, which French morality employs as bit and
curb for thoughtlessness and folly, had never once occurred to the
unbridled squanderer in the days of his profusion, and his sensibility
was still too dull to feel so keenly the disgrace of his capricious
wastefulness. He was like a toper, who has been in drink, and on
awakening out of his carousal, cannot rightly understand how matters are
or have been with him. He lived according to the manner of unprospering
spendthrifts; repented not, lamented not. By good fortune, he had picked
some relics from the wreck; a few small heir-looms of the family; and
these secured him for a time from absolute starvation.
He engaged a lodging in a remote alley, into which the sun never shone
throughout the year, except for a few days about the solstice, when it
peeped for a short while over the high roofs. Here he found the little
that his now much-contracted wants required. The frugal kitchen of his
landlord screened him from hunger, the stove from cold, the roof from
rain, the four walls from wind; only from the pains of tedium he could
devise no refuge or resource. The light rabble of parasites had fled
away with his prosperity; and of his former friends there was now no one
that knew him. Reading had not yet become a necessary of life; people
did not yet understand the art of killing time by means of those amusing
shapes of fancy which are wont to lodge in empty heads. There were yet
no sentimental, pedagogic, psychologic, popular, simple, comic, or moral
tales; no novels of domestic life, no cloister-stories, no romances of
the middle ages; and of the innumerable generation of our Henrys, and
Adelaides, and Cliffords, and Emmas, no one had as yet lifted up its
mantua-maker voice, to weary out the patience of a lazy and discerning
public. In those days, knights were still diligently pricking round the
tilt-yard; Dietrich of Bern, Hildebrand, Seyfried with the Horns,
Rennewart the Strong, were following their snake and dragon hunt, and
killing giants and dwarfs of twelve men's strength. The venerable epos,
_Theuerdank_, was the loftiest ideal of German art and skill, the latest
product of our native wit, but only for the cultivated minds, the poets
and thinkers of the age. Franz belonged to none of those classes, and
had therefore nothing to employ himself upon, except that he tuned his
lute, and sometimes twanged a little on it; then, by way of variation,
took to looking from the window, and instituted observations on the
weather; out of which, indeed, there came no inference a whit more
edifying than from all the labours of the most rheumatic meteorologist
of this present age. Meanwhile his turn for observation ere long found
another sort of nourishment, by which the vacant space in his head and
heart was at once filled.
In the narrow lane right opposite his window dwelt an honest matron,
who, in hope of better times, was earning a painful living by the long
threads, which, assisted by a marvellously fair daughter, she winded
daily from her spindle. Day after day the couple spun a length of yarn,
with which the whole town of Bremen, with its walls and trenches, and
all its suburbs, might have been begirt. These two spinners had not been
born for the wheel; they were of good descent, and had lived of old in
pleasant affluence. The fair Meta's father had once had a ship of his
own on the sea, and, freighting it himself, had yearly sailed to
Antwerp; but a heavy storm had sunk the vessel, "with man and mouse,"
and a rich cargo, into the abysses of the ocean, before Meta had passed
the years of her childhood. The mother, a staid and reasonable woman,
bore the loss of her husband and all her fortune with a wise composure;
in her need she refused, out of noble pride, all help from the
charitable sympathy of her relations and friends; considering it as
shameful alms, so long as she believed, that in her own activity she
might find a living by the labour of her hands. She gave up her large
house, and all her costly furniture, to the rigorous creditors of her
ill-fated husband, hired a little dwelling in the lane, and span from
early morning till late night, though the trade went sore against her,
and she often wetted the thread with her tears. Yet by this diligence
she reached her object, of depending upon no one, and owing no mortal
any obligation. By and by she trained her growing daughter to the same
employment; and lived so thriftily, that she laid-by a trifle of her
gainings, and turned it to account by carrying on a little trade in
flax.
She, however, nowise purposed to conclude her life in these poor
circumstances; on the contrary, the honest dame kept up her heart with
happy prospects into the future, and hoped that she should once more
attain a prosperous situation, and in the autumn of her life enjoy her
woman's-summer. Nor were these hopes grounded altogether upon empty
dreams of fancy, but upon a rational and calculated expectation. She saw
her daughter budding up like a spring rose, no less virtuous and modest
than she was fair; and with such endowments of art and spirit, that the
mother felt delight and comfort in her, and spared the morsel from her
own lips, that nothing might be wanting in an education suitable to her
capacities. For she thought, that if a maiden could come up to the
sketch which Solomon, the wise friend of woman, has left of the ideal of
a perfect wife, it could not fail that a pearl of such price would be
sought after, and bidden for, to ornament some good man's house; for
beauty combined with virtue, in the days of Mother Brigitta, were as
important in the eyes of wooers, as, in our days, birth combined with
fortune. Besides, the number of suitors was in those times greater; it
was then believed that the wife was the most essential, not, as in our
refined economical theory, the most superfluous item in the household.
The fair Meta, it is true, bloomed only like a precious rare flower in
the greenhouse, not under the gay, free sky; she lived in maternal
oversight and keeping, sequestered and still; was seen in no walk, in no
company; and scarcely once in the year passed through the gate of her
native town; all which seemed utterly to contradict her mother's
principle. The old Lady E * * of Memel understood it otherwise, in her
time. She sent the itinerant Sophia, it is clear as day, from Memel into
Saxony, simply on a marriage speculation, and attained her purpose
fully. How many hearts did the wandering nymph set on fire, how many
suitors courted her! Had she stayed at home, as a domestic modest
maiden, she might have bloomed away in the remoteness of her virgin
cell, without even making a conquest of Kubbuz the schoolmaster. Other
times, other manners. Daughters with us are a sleeping capital, which
must be put in circulation if it is to yield any interest; of old, they
were kept like thrifty savings, under lock and key; yet the bankers
still knew where the treasure lay concealed, and how it might be come
at. Mother Brigitta steered towards some prosperous son-in-law, who
might lead her back from the Babylonian captivity of the narrow lane
into the land of superfluity, flowing with milk and honey; and trusted
firmly, that in the urn of Fate, her daughter's lot would not be coupled
with a blank.
One day, while neighbour Franz was looking from the window, making
observations on the weather, he perceived the charming Meta coming with
her mother from church, whither she went daily, to attend mass. In the
times of his abundance, the unstable voluptuary had been blind to the
fairer half of the species; the finer feelings were still slumbering in
his breast; and all his senses had been overclouded by the ceaseless
tumult of debauchery. But now the stormy waves of extravagance had
subsided; and in this deep calm, the smallest breath of air sufficed to
curl the mirror surface of his soul. He was enchanted by the aspect of
this, the loveliest female figure that had ever flitted past him. He
abandoned from that hour the barren study of the winds and clouds, and
now instituted quite another set of Observations for the furtherance of
Moral Science, and one which afforded to himself much finer occupation.
He soon extracted from his landlord intelligence of this fair neighbour,
and learned most part of what we know already.
Now rose on him the first repentant thought for his heedless
squandering; there awoke a secret good-will in his heart to this new
acquaintance; and for her sake he wished that his paternal inheritance
were his own again, that the lovely Meta might be fitly dowered with it.
His garret in the narrow lane was now so dear to him, that he would not
have exchanged it with the Schudding itself.[2] Throughout the day he
stirred not from the window, watching for an opportunity of glancing at
the dear maiden; and when she chanced to show herself, he felt more
rapture in his soul than did Horrox in his Liverpool Observatory, when
he saw, for the first time, Venus passing over the disk of the Sun.
[2] One of the largest buildings in Bremen, where the meetings of
the merchants are usually held.
Unhappily the watchful mother instituted counter-observations, and ere
long discovered what the lounger on the other side was driving at; and
as Franz, in the capacity of spendthrift, already stood in very bad
esteem with her, this daily gazing angered her so much, that she
shrouded her lattice as with a cloud, and drew the curtains close
together. Meta had the strictest orders not again to appear at the
window; and when her mother went with her to mass, she drew a rain-cap
over her face, disguised her like a favourite of the Grand Signior, and
hurried till she turned the corner with her, and escaped the eyes of the
lier-in-wait.
Of Franz, it was not held that penetration was his master faculty; but
Love awakens all the talents of the mind. He observed, that by his
imprudent spying, he had betrayed himself; and he thenceforth retired
from the window, with the resolution not again to look out at it, though
the _Venerabile_ itself were carried by. On the other hand, he meditated
some invention for proceeding with his observations in a private manner;
and without great labour, his combining spirit mastered it.
He hired the largest looking-glass that he could find, and hung it up in
his room, with such an elevation and direction, that he could distinctly
see whatever passed in the dwelling of his neighbours. Here, as for
several days the watcher did not come to light, the screens by degrees
went asunder; and the broad mirror now and then could catch the form of
the noble maid, and, to the great refreshment of the virtuoso, cast it
truly back. The more deeply love took root in his heart,[3] the more
widely did his wishes extend. It now struck him that he ought to lay his
passion open to the fair Meta, and investigate the corresponding state
of her opinions. The commonest and readiest way which lovers, under such
a constellation of their wishes, strike into, was in his position
inaccessible. In those modest ages, it was always difficult for Paladins
in love to introduce themselves to daughters of the family; toilette
calls were not in fashion; trustful interviews tete-a-tete were punished
by the loss of reputation to the female sharer; promenades, esplanades,
masquerades, pic-nics, goutes, soupes, and other inventions of modern
wit for forwarding sweet courtship, had not then been hit upon; yet,
notwithstanding, all things went their course, much as they do with us.
Gossipings, weddings, lykewakes, were, especially in our Imperial
Cities, privileged vehicles for carrying on soft secrets, and expediting
marriage contracts; hence the old proverb, _One wedding makes a score._
But a poor runagate no man desired to number among his baptismal
relatives; to no nuptial dinner, to no wakesupper, was he bidden. The
by-way of negotiating, with the woman, with the young maid, or any other
serviceable spirit of a go-between, was here locked up. Mother Brigitta
had neither maid nor woman; the flax and yarn trade passed through no
hands but her own; and she abode by her daughter as closely as her
shadow.
[3] [Greek: Apo tou horan erchetai to eran.]
In these circumstances, it was clearly impossible for neighbour Franz to
disclose his heart to the fair Meta, either verbally or in writing. Ere
long, however, he invented an idiom, which appeared expressly calculated
for the utterance of the passions. It is true, the honour of the first
invention is not his. Many ages ago, the sentimental Celadons of Italy
and Spain had taught melting harmonies, in serenades beneath the
balconies of their dames, to speak the language of the heart; and it is
said that this melodious pathos had especial virtue in love-matters;
and, by the confession of the ladies, was more heart-affecting and
subduing, than of yore the oratory of the reverend Chrysostom, or the
pleadings of Demosthenes and Tully. But of all this the simple Bremer
had not heard a syllable; and consequently the invention of expressing
his emotions in symphonious notes, and trilling them to his beloved
Meta, was entirely his own.
In an hour of sentiment, he took his lute: he did not now tune it merely
to accompany his voice, but drew harmonious melodies from its strings;
and Love, in less than a month, had changed the musical scraper to a new
Amphion. His first efforts did not seem to have been noticed; but soon
the population of the lane were all ear, every time the dilettante
struck a note. Mothers hushed their children, fathers drove the noisy
urchins from the doors, and the performer had the satisfaction to
observe that Meta herself, with her alabaster hand, would sometimes open
the window as he began to prelude. If he succeeded in enticing her to
lend an ear, his voluntaries whirled along in gay _allegro_, or skipped
away in mirthful jigs; but if the turning of the spindle, or her thrifty
mother, kept her back, a heavy-laden _andante_ rolled over the bridge of
the sighing lute, and expressed, in languishing modulations, the feeling
of sadness which love-pain poured over his soul.
Meta was no dull scholar; she soon learned to interpret this expressive
speech. She made various experiments to try whether she had rightly
understood it, and found that she could govern at her will the
dilettante humours of the unseen lute-twanger; for your silent modest
maidens, it is well known, have a much sharper eye than those giddy
flighty girls, who hurry with the levity of butterflies from one object
to another, and take proper heed of none. She felt her female vanity a
little flattered; and it pleased her that she had it in her power, by a
secret magic, to direct the neighbouring lute, and tune it now to the
note of joy, now to the whimpering moan of grief. Mother Brigitta, on
the other hand, had her head so constantly employed with her traffic on
the small scale, that she minded none of these things; and the sly
little daughter took especial care to keep her in the dark respecting
the discovery; and, instigated either by some touch of kindness for her
cooing neighbour, or perhaps by vanity, that she might show her
hermeneutic penetration, meditated on the means of making some
symbolical response to these harmonious apostrophes to her heart. She
expressed a wish to have flower-pots on the outside of the window; and
to grant her this innocent amusement was a light thing for the mother,
who no longer feared the coney-catching neighbour, now that she no
longer saw him with her eyes.
Henceforth Meta had a frequent call to tend her flowers, to water them,
to bind them up, and guard them from approaching storms, and watch their
growth and flourishing. With inexpressible delight the happy Franz
explained this hieroglyphic altogether in his favour; and the speaking
lute did not fail to modulate his glad emotions, through the alley, into
the heedful ear of the fair friend of flowers. This, in her tender
virgin heart, worked wonders. She began to be secretly vexed, when
Mother Brigitta, in her wise table-talk, in which at times she spent an
hour chatting with her daughter, brought their melodious neighbour to
her bar, and called him a losel and a sluggard, or compared him with the
Prodigal in the Gospel. She always took his part; threw the blame of his
ruin on the sorrowful temptations he had met with; and accused him of
nothing worse than not having fitly weighed the golden proverb, _A penny
saved is a penny got_. Yet she defended him with cunning prudence; so
that it rather seemed as if she wished to help the conversation, than
took any interest in the thing itself.
While Mother Brigitta within her four walls was inveighing against the
luckless spendthrift, he on his side entertained the kindest feelings
towards her; and was considering diligently how he might, according to
his means, improve her straitened circumstances, and divide with her the
little that remained to him, and so that she might never notice that a
portion of his property had passed over into hers. This pious outlay, in
good truth, was specially intended not for the mother, but the daughter.
Underhand he had come to know, that the fair Meta had a hankering for a
new gown, which her mother had excused herself from buying, under
pretext of hard times. Yet he judged quite accurately, that a present of
a piece of stuff, from an unknown hand, would scarcely be received, or
cut into a dress for Meta; and that he should spoil all, if he stept
forth and avowed himself the author of the benefaction. Chance afforded
him an opportunity to realise this purpose in the way he wished.
Mother Brigitta was complaining to a neighbour, that flax was very dull;
that it cost her more to purchase than the buyers of it would repay; and
that hence this branch of industry was nothing better, for the present,
than a withered bough. Eaves-dropper Franz did not need a second
telling; he ran directly to the goldsmith, sold his mother's ear-rings,
bought some stones of flax, and, by means of a negotiatress, whom he
gained, had it offered to the mother for a cheap price. The bargain was
concluded; and it yielded so richly, that on All-Saints' day the fair
Meta sparkled in a fine new gown. In this decoration, she had such a
splendour in her watchful neighbour's eyes, that he would have
overlooked the Eleven Thousand Virgins, all and sundry, had it been
permitted him to choose a heart's-mate from among them, and fixed upon
the charming Meta.
But just as he was triumphing in the result of his innocent deceit, the
secret was betrayed. Mother Brigitta had resolved to do the
flax-retailer, who had brought her that rich gain, a kindness in her
turn; and was treating her with a well-sugared rice-pap, and a
quarter-stoop of Spanish sack. This dainty set in motion not only the
toothless jaw, but also the garrulous tongue of the crone: she engaged
to continue the flax-brokerage, should her consigner feel inclined, as
from good grounds she guessed he would. One word produced another;
Mother Eve's two daughters searched, with the curiosity peculiar to
their sex, till at length the brittle seal of female secrecy gave way.
Meta grew pale with affright at the discovery, which would have charmed
her, had her mother not partaken of it. But she knew her strict ideas of
morals and decorum; and these gave her doubts about the preservation of
her gown. The serious dame herself was no less struck at the tidings,
and wished, on her side too, that she alone had got intelligence of the
specific nature of her flax-trade; for she dreaded that this neighbourly
munificence might make an impression on her daughter's heart, which
would derange her whole calculations. She resolved, therefore, to root
out the still tender germ of this weed, in the very act, from the maiden
heart. The gown, in spite of all the tears and prayers of its lovely
owner, was first hypothecated, and next day transmitted to the
huckster's shop; the money raised from it, with the other profits of the
flax speculation, accurately reckoned up, were packed together, and
under the name of an old debt, returned to "Mr. Franz Melcherson, in
Bremen," by help of the Hamburg post. The receiver, nothing doubting,
took the little lot of money as an unexpected blessing; wished that all
his father's debtors would clear off their old scores as conscientiously
as this honest unknown person; and had not the smallest notion of the
real position of affairs. The talking brokeress, of course, was far from
giving him a true disclosure of her blabbing; she merely told him that
Mother Brigitta had given up her flax-trade.
Meanwhile, the mirror taught him, that the aspects over the way had
altered greatly in a single night. The flower-pots were entirely
vanished; and the cloudy veil again obscured the friendly horizon of the
opposite window. Meta was seldom visible; and if for a moment, like the
silver moon, from among her clouds in a stormy night, she did appear,
her countenance was troubled, the fire of her eyes was extinguished, and
it seemed to him, that, at times, with her finger, she pressed away a
pearly tear. This seized him sharply by the heart; and his lute
resounded melancholy sympathy in soft Lydian mood. He grieved, and
meditated to discover why his love was sad; but all his thinking and
imagining were vain. After some days were past, he noticed, to his
consternation, that his dearest piece of furniture, the large mirror,
had become entirely useless. He set himself one bright morning in his
usual nook, and observed that the clouds over the way had, like natural
fog, entirely dispersed; a sign which he at first imputed to a general
washing; but ere long he saw that, in the chamber, all was waste and
empty; his pleasing neighbours had in silence withdrawn the night
before, and broken up their quarters.
He might now, once more, with the greatest leisure and convenience,
enjoy the free prospect from his window, without fear of being
troublesome to any; but for him it was a dead loss to miss the kind
countenance of his Platonic love. Mute and stupefied, he stood, as of
old his fellow-craftsman, the harmonious Orpheus, when the dear shadow
of his Eurydice again vanished down to Orcus; and if the bedlam humour
of those "noble minds," who raved among us through the bygone lustre,
but have now like drones disappeared with the earliest frost, had then
been ripened to existence, this calm of his would certainly have passed
into a sudden hurricane. The least he could have done, would have been
to pull his hair, to trundle himself about upon the ground, or run his
head against the wall, and break his stove and window. All this he
omitted; from the very simple cause, that true love never makes men
fools, but rather is the universal remedy for healing sick minds of
their foolishness, for laying gentle fetters on extravagance, and
guiding youthful giddiness from the broad way of ruin to the narrow path
of reason; for the rake whom love will not recover is lost
irrecoverably.
When once his spirit had assembled its scattered powers, he set on foot
a number of instructive meditations on the unexpected phenomenon, but
too visible in the adjacent horizon. He readily conceived that he was
the lever which had effected the removal of the wandering colony: his
money-letter, the abrupt conclusion of the flax-trade, and the
emigration which had followed thereupon, were like reciprocal exponents
to each other, and explained the whole to him. He perceived that Mother
Brigitta had got round his secrets, and saw from every circumstance that
he was not her hero; a discovery which yielded him but little
satisfaction. The symbolic responses of the fair Meta, with her
flower-pots, to his musical proposals of love; her trouble, and the tear
which he had noticed in her bright eyes shortly before her departure
from the lane, again animated his hopes, and kept him in good heart. His
first employment was to go in quest, and try to learn where Mother
Brigitta had pitched her residence, in order to maintain, by some means
or other, his secret understanding with the daughter. It cost him little
toil to find her abode; yet he was too modest to shift his own lodging
to her neighbourhood; but satisfied himself with spying out the church
where she now attended mass, that he might treat himself once each day
with a glance of his beloved. He never failed to meet her as she
returned, now here, now there, in some shop or door which she was
passing, and salute her kindly; an equivalent for a _billet-doux_, and
productive of the same effect.
Had not Meta been brought up in a style too nunlike, and guarded by her
rigid mother as a treasure, from the eyes of thieves, there is little
doubt that neighbour Franz, with his secret wooing, would have made no
great impression on her heart. But she was at the critical age, when
Mother Nature and Mother Brigitta, with their wise nurture, were
perpetually coming into collision. The former taught her, by a secret
instinct, the existence of emotions, for which she had no name, and
eulogised them as the panacea of life; the latter warned her to beware
of the surprisals of a passion, which she would not designate by its
true title, but which, as she maintained, was more pernicious and
destructive to young maidens than the small-pox itself. The former, in
the spring of life, as beseemed the season, enlivened her heart with a
genial warmth; the latter wished that it should always be as cold and
frosty as an ice-house. These conflicting pedagogic systems of the two
good mothers gave the tractable heart of the daughter the direction of a
ship which is steered against the wind, and follows neither the wind nor
the helm, but a course between the two. She maintained the modesty and
virtue which her education, from her youth upwards, had impressed upon
her; but her heart continued open to all tender feelings. And as
neighbour Franz was the first youth who had awakened these slumbering
emotions, she took a certain pleasure in him, which she scarcely owned
to herself, but which any less unexperienced maiden would have
recognised as love. It was for this that her departure from the narrow
lane had gone so near her heart; for this that the little tear had
trickled from her beautiful eyes; for this that, when the watchful
Franz saluted her as she came from church, she thanked him so kindly,
and grew scarlet to the ears. The lovers had in truth never spoken any
word to one another; but he understood her, and she him, so perfectly,
that in the most secret interview they could not have explained
themselves more clearly; and both contracting parties swore in their
silent hearts, each for himself, under the seal of secrecy, the oath of
faithfulness to the other.
In the quarter, where Mother Brigitta had now settled, there were
likewise neighbours, and among these likewise girl-spiers, whom the
beauty of the charming Meta had not escaped. Right opposite their
dwelling lived a wealthy Brewer, whom the wags of the part, as he was
strong in means, had named the Hop-King. He was a young stout widower,
whose mourning year was just concluding, so that now he was entitled,
without offending the precepts of decorum, to look about him elsewhere
for a new helpmate to his household. Shortly after the departure of his
whilom wife, he had in secret entered into an engagement with his Patron
Saint, St. Christopher, to offer him a wax-taper as long as a hop-pole,
and as thick as a mashing-beam, if he would vouchsafe in this second
choice to prosper the desire of his heart. Scarcely had he seen the
dainty Meta, when he dreamed that St. Christopher looked in upon him,
through the window of his bedroom in the second story,[4] and demanded
payment of his debt. To the quick widower this seemed a heavenly call to
cast out the net without delay. Early in the morning he sent for the
brokers of the town, and commissioned them to buy bleached wax; then
decked himself like a Syndic, and set forth to expedite his marriage
speculation. He had no musical talents, and in the secret symbolic
language of love he was no better than a blockhead; but he had a rich
brewery, a solid mortgage on the city-revenues, a ship on the Weser, and
a farm without the gates. With such recommendations he might have
reckoned on a prosperous issue to his courtship, independently of all
assistance from St. Kit, especially as his bride was without dowry.
[4] St. Christopher never appears to his favourites, like the other
Saints, in a solitary room, encircled with a glory: there is no
room high enough to admit him; thus the celestial Son of Anak is
obliged to transact all business with his wards outside the window.
According to old use and wont, he went directly to the master hand, and
disclosed to the mother, in a kind neighbourly way, his christian
intentions towards her virtuous and honourable daughter. No angel's
visit could have charmed the good lady more than these glad tidings. She
now saw ripening before her the fruit of her prudent scheme, and the
fulfilment of her hope again to emerge from her present poverty into her
former abundance; she blessed the good thought of moving from the
crooked alley, and in the first ebullition of her joy, as a thousand gay
ideas were ranking themselves up within her soul, she also thought of
neighbour Franz, who had given occasion to it. Though Franz was not
exactly her bosom-youth, she silently resolved to gladden him, as the
accidental instrument of her rising star, with some secret gift or
other, and by this means likewise recompense his well-intended
flax-dealing.
In the maternal heart the marriage-articles were as good as signed; but
decorum did not permit these rash proceedings in a matter of such
moment. She therefore let the motion lie _ad referendum_, to be
considered by her daughter and herself; and appointed a term of eight
days, after which "she hoped she should have it in her power to give the
much-respected suitor a reply that would satisfy him;" all which, as the
common manner of proceeding, he took in good part, and with his usual
civilities withdrew. No sooner had he turned his back, than
spinning-wheel and reel, swingling-stake and hatchel, without regard
being paid to their faithful services, and without accusation being
lodged against them, were consigned, like some luckless Parliament of
Paris, to disgrace, and dismissed as useless implements into the
lumber-room. On returning from mass, Meta was astonished at the sudden
catastrophe which had occurred in the apartment; it was all decked out
as on one of the three high Festivals of the year. She could not
understand how her thrifty mother, on a work-day, had so neglectfully
put her active hand in her bosom; but before she had time to question
the kindly-smiling dame concerning this reform in household affairs, she
was favoured by the latter with an explanation of the riddle. Persuasion
rested on Brigitta's tongue; and there flowed from her lips a stream of
female eloquence, depicting the offered happiness in the liveliest hues
which her imagination could lay on. She expected from the chaste Meta
the blush of soft virgin bashfulness, which announces the novitiate in
love; and then a full resignation of herself to the maternal will. For
of old, in proposals of marriage, daughters were situated as our
princesses are still; they were not asked about their inclination, and
had no voice in the selection of their legal helpmate, save the Yes
before the altar.
But Mother Brigitta was in this point widely mistaken; the fair Meta did
not at the unexpected announcement grow red as a rose, but pale as
ashes. An hysterical giddiness swam over her brain, and she sank
fainting in her mother's arms. When her senses were recalled by the
sprinkling of cold water, and she had in some degree recovered strength,
her eyes overflowed with tears, as if a heavy misfortune had befallen
her. From all these symptoms, the sagacious mother easily perceived that
the marriage-trade was not to her taste; at which she wondered not a
little, sparing neither prayers nor admonitions to her daughter to
secure her happiness by this good match, not flout it from her by
caprice and contradiction. But Meta could not be persuaded that her
happiness depended on a match, to which her heart gave no assent. The
debates between the mother and the daughter lasted several days, from
early morning to late night; the term for decision was approaching; the
sacred taper for St. Christopher, which Og King of Bashan need not have
disdained had it been lit for him as a marriage-torch at his espousals,
stood in readiness, all beautifully painted with living flowers like a
many-coloured light, though the Saint had all the while been so inactive
in his client's cause, that the fair Meta's heart was still bolted and
barred against him fast as ever.
Meanwhile she had bleared her eyes with weeping, and the maternal
rhetoric had worked so powerfully, that, like a flower in the sultry
heat, she was drooping together, and visibly fading away. Hidden grief
was gnawing at her heart; she had prescribed herself a rigorous fast,
and for three days no morsel had she eaten, and with no drop of water
moistened her parched lips. By night sleep never visited her eyes; and
with all this she grew sick to death, and began to talk about extreme
unction. As the tender mother saw the pillar of her hope wavering, and
bethought herself that she might lose both capital and interest at once,
she found, on accurate consideration, that it would be more advisable to
let the latter vanish, than to miss them both; and with kindly
indulgence plied into the daughter's will. It cost her much constraint,
indeed, and many hard battles, to turn away so advantageous an offer;
yet at last, according to established order in household governments,
she yielded unconditionally to the inclination of her child, and
remonstrated no more with her beloved patient on the subject. As the
stout widower announced himself on the appointed day, in the full trust
that his heavenly deputy had arranged it all according to his wish, he
received, quite unexpectedly, a negative answer, which, however, was
sweetened with such a deal of blandishment, that he swallowed it like
wine-of-wormwood mixed with sugar. For the rest, he easily accommodated
himself to his destiny; and discomposed himself no more about it, than
if some bargain for a ton of malt had chanced to come to nothing. Nor,
on the whole, had he any cause to sorrow without hope. His native town
has never wanted amiable daughters, who come up to the Solomonic sketch,
and are ready to make perfect spouses; besides, notwithstanding this
unprospered courtship, he depended with firm confidence upon his Patron
Saint; who in fact did him such substantial service elsewhere, that ere
a month elapsed, he had planted with much pomp his devoted taper at the
friendly shrine.
Mother Brigitta was now fain to recall the exiled spinning-tackle from
its lumber-room, and again set it in action. All once more went its
usual course. Meta soon bloomed out anew, was active in business, and
diligently went to mass; but the mother could not hide her secret
grudging at the failure of her hopes, and the annihilation of her
darling plan; she was splenetic, peevish and dejected. Her ill-humour
had especially the upper hand that day when neighbour Hop-King held his
nuptials. As the wedding company proceeded to the church, with the
town-band bedrumming and becymballing them in the van, she whimpered and
sobbed as in the evil hour when the Job's-news reached her, that the
wild sea had devoured her husband, with ship and fortune. Meta looked at
the bridal pomp with great equanimity; even the royal ornaments, the
jewels in the myrtle-crown, and the nine strings of true pearls about
the neck of the bride, made no impression on her peace of mind; a
circumstance in some degree surprising, since a new Paris cap, or any
other meteor in the gallery of Mode, will so frequently derange the
contentment and domestic peace of an entire parish. Nothing but the
heart-consuming sorrow of her mother discomposed her, and overclouded
the gay look of her eyes; she strove by a thousand caresses and little
attentions to work herself into favour; and she so far succeeded that
the good lady grew a little more communicative.
In the evening, when the wedding-dance began, she said, "Ah, child! this
merry dance it might have been thy part to lead off. What a pleasure,
hadst thou recompensed thy mother's care and toil with this joy! But
thou hast mocked thy happiness, and now I shall never see the day when I
am to attend thee to the altar."--"Dear mother," answered Meta, "I
confide in Heaven; and if it is written above that I am to be led to the
altar, you will surely deck my garland: for when the right wooer comes,
my heart will soon say Yes."--"Child, for girls without dowry there is
no press of wooers; they are heavy ware to trade with. Nowadays the
bachelors are mighty stingy; they court to be happy, not to make happy.
Besides, thy planet bodes thee no good; thou wert born in April. Let us
see how it is written in the Calendar: 'A damsel born in this month is
comely of countenance, slender of shape, but of changeful humour, has a
liking to men. Should have an eye upon her maiden garland, and so a
laughing wooer come, not miss her fortune.' Alas, it answers to a hair!
The wooer has been here, comes not again: thou hast missed him."--"Ah,
mother! let the planet say its pleasure, never mind it; my heart says to
me that I should love and honour the man who asks me to be his wife: and
if I do not find that man, or he do not seek me, I will live in good
courage by the labour of my hands, and stand by you, and nurse you in
your old age, as beseems a good daughter. But if the man of my heart do
come, then bless my choice, that it may be well with your daughter on
the Earth; and ask not whether he is noble, rich, or famous, but whether
he is good and honest, whether he loves and is loved."--"Ah, daughter!
Love keeps a sorry kitchen, and feeds one poorly, along with bread and
salt."--"But yet Unity and Contentment delight to dwell with him, and
these season bread and salt with the cheerful enjoyment of our days."
The pregnant subject of bread and salt continued to be sifted till the
night was far spent, and the last fiddle in the wedding-dance was
resting from its labours. The moderation of the prudent Meta, who, with
youth and beauty on her side, pretended only to an altogether bounded
happiness, after having turned away an advantageous offer, led the
mother to conjecture that the plan of some such salt-trade might already
have been sketched in the heart of the virgin. Nor did she fail to guess
the trading-partner in the lane, of whom she never had believed that he
would be the tree for rooting in the lovely Meta's heart. She had looked
upon him only as a wild tendril, that stretches out towards every
neighbouring twig, to clamber up by means of it. This discovery
procured her little joy; but she gave no hint that she had made it.
Only, in the spirit of her rigorous morality, she compared a maiden who
lets love, before the priestly benediction, nestle in her heart, to a
worm-eaten apple, which is good for the eye, but no longer for the
palate, and is laid upon a shelf and no more heeded, for the pernicious
worm is eating its internal marrow, and cannot be dislodged. She now
despaired of ever holding up her head again in Bremen; submitted to her
fate, and bore in silence what she thought was now not to be altered.
Meanwhile the rumour of the proud Meta's having given the rich Hop-King
the basket, spread over the town, and sounded even into Franz's garret
in the alley. Franz was transported with joy to hear this tale
confirmed; and the secret anxiety lest some wealthy rival might expel
him from the dear maiden's heart tormented him no more. He was now
certain of his object; and the riddle, which for every one continued an
insoluble problem, had no mystery for him. Love had already changed a
spendthrift into a dilettante; but this for a bride-seeker was the very
smallest of recommendations, a gift which in those rude times was
rewarded neither with such praise nor with such pudding, as it is in our
luxurious century. The fine arts were not then children of superfluity,
but of want and necessity. No travelling professors were at that time
known, save the Prague students, whose squeaking symphonies solicited a
charitable coin at the doors of the rich. The beloved maiden's sacrifice
was too great to be repaid by a serenade. And now the feeling of his
youthful dissipation became a thorn in the soul of Franz. Many a
touching monodrama did he begin with an O and an Ah, besighing his past
madness: "Ah, Meta," said he to himself, "why did I not know thee
sooner! Thou hadst been my guardian angel, thou hadst saved me from
destruction. Could I live my lost years over again, and be what I was,
the world were now Elysium for me, and for thee I would make it an Eden!
Noble maiden, thou sacrificest thyself to a wretch, to a beggar, who has
nothing in the world but a heart full of love, and despair that he can
offer thee no happiness such as thou deservest." Innumerable times, in
the paroxysms of these pathetic humours, he struck his brow in fury,
with the repentant exclamation: "O fool! O madman! thou art wise too
late."