thousandfold wrinkles, that pale sunk mouth, that strange laugh of his,
which looks and sounds so mockingly? No; God keep me from such friends!
If evil spirits ever take the shape of men, they must assume some shape
like this."
"Perhaps a younger and more handsome one," replied the mother; "but I
cannot recognise the good old man in thy description. One easily
observes that he is of a violent temperament, and has inured himself to
lock up his feelings in his own bosom; perhaps, too, as Leopold was
saying, he may have encountered many miseries; so he is grown
mistrustful, and has lost that simple openness, which is especially the
portion of the happy."
The rest of the party entered, and broke off their conversation. Dinner
was served up; and the stranger sat between Agatha and the rich
merchant. When the toasts were beginning, Leopold cried out: "Now, stop
a little, worthy friends; we must have the golden goblet down for this,
then let it travel round."
He was rising, but his mother beckoned him to keep his seat: "Thou wilt
not find it," said she, "for the plate is all stowed elsewhere." She
walked out rapidly to seek it herself.
"How brisk and busy is our good old lady still!" observed the merchant.
"See how nimbly she can move, with all her breadth and weight, and
reckoning sixty by this time of day. Her face is always bright and
joyful, and today she is particularly happy, for she sees herself made
young again in Julia."
The stranger gave assent, and the lady entered with the goblet. It was
filled with wine, and began to circulate, each toasting what was dearest
and most precious to him. Julia gave the welfare of her husband, he the
love of his fair Julia; and thus did every one as it became his turn.
The mother lingered, as the goblet came to her.
"Come, quick with it," said the captain, somewhat hastily and rudely;
"we know, you reckon all men faithless, and not one among them worthy of
a woman's love. What, then, is dearest to you?"
His mother looked at him, while the mildness of her brow was on a sudden
overspread with angry seriousness. "Since my son," said she, "knows me
so well, and can judge my mind so rigorously, let me be permitted _not_
to speak what I was thinking of, and let him endeavour, by a life of
constant love, to falsify what he gives out as my opinion." She pushed
the goblet on, without drinking, and the company was for a while
embarrassed and disturbed.
"It is reported," said the merchant, in a whisper, turning to the
stranger, "that she did not love her husband; but another, who proved
faithless to her. She was then, it seems, the finest woman in the city."
When the cup reached Ferdinand, he gazed upon it with astonishment; for
it was the very goblet out of which old Albert had called forth to him
the lovely shadow. He looked in upon the gold, and the waving of the
wine; his hand shook; it would not have surprised him, if from the magic
bowl that glowing Form had again mounted up, and brought with it his
vanished youth. "No!" said he, after some time, half-aloud, "it is wine
that is gleaming here!"
"Ay, what else?" cried the merchant, laughing: "Drink and be merry."
A thrill of terror passed over the old man; he pronounced the name
"Francesca" in a vehement tone, and set the goblet to his lips. The
mother cast upon him an inquiring and astonished look.
"Whence is this bright goblet?" said Ferdinand, who also felt ashamed of
his embarrassment.
"Many years ago, long ere I was born," said Leopold, "my father bought
it, with this house and all its furniture, from an old solitary
bachelor; a silent man, whom the neighbours thought a dealer in the
Black Art."
The stranger did not say that he had known this old man; for his whole
being was too much perplexed, too like an enigmatic dream, to let the
rest look into it, even from afar.
The cloth being withdrawn, he was left alone with the mother, as the
young ones had retired to make ready for the ball. "Sit down by me,"
said the mother; "we will rest, for our dancing years are past; and if
it is not rude, allow me to inquire whether you have seen our goblet
elsewhere, or what it was that moved you so intensely?"
"O my lady," said the old man, "pardon my foolish violence and emotion;
but ever since I crossed your threshold, I feel as if I were no longer
myself; every moment I forget that my head is gray, that the hearts
which loved me are dead. Your beautiful daughter, who is now celebrating
the gladdest day of her existence, is so like a maiden whom I knew and
adored in my youth, that I could reckon it a miracle. Like, did I say?
No, she is not like; it is she herself! In this house, too, I have often
been; and once I became acquainted with this cup in a manner I shall not
forget." Here he told her his adventure. "On the evening of that day,"
concluded he, "in the park, I saw my loved one for the last time, as she
was passing in her coach. A rose fell from her bosom; this I gathered;
she herself was lost to me, for she proved faithless, and soon after
married."
"God in Heaven!" cried the lady, violently moved, and starting up, "thou
art not Ferdinand?"
"It is my name," replied he.
"I am Francesca," said the lady.
They sprang forward to embrace, then started suddenly back. Each viewed
the other with investigating looks: both strove again to evolve from the
ruins of Time those lineaments which of old they had known and loved in
one another; and as, in dark tempestuous nights, amid the flight of
black clouds, there are moments when solitary stars ambiguously twinkle
forth, to disappear next instant, so to these two was there shown now
and then from the eyes, from the brow and lips, the transitory gleam of
some well-known feature; and it seemed as if their Youth stood in the
distance, weeping smiles. He bowed down, and kissed her hand, while two
big drops rolled from his eyes. They then embraced each other cordially.
"Is thy wife dead?" inquired she.
"I was never married," sobbed the other.
"Heavens!" cried she, wringing her hands, "then it is I who have been
faithless! But no, not faithless. On returning from the country, where I
stayed two months, I heard from every one, thy friends as well as mine,
that thou wert long ago gone home, and married in thy own country. They
showed me the most convincing letters, they pressed me vehemently, they
profited by my despondency, my indignation; and so it was that I gave my
hand to another, a deserving husband; but my heart and my thoughts were
always thine."
"I never left this town," said Ferdinand; "but after a while I heard
that thou wert married. They wished to part us, and they have succeeded.
Thou art a happy mother; I live in the past, and all thy children I will
love as if they were my own. But how strange that we should never once
have met!"
"I seldom went abroad," said she; "and as my husband took another name,
soon after we were married, from a property which he inherited, thou
couldst have no suspicion that we were so near together."
"I avoided men," said Ferdinand, "and lived for solitude. Leopold is
almost the only one that has attracted me, and led me out amongst my
fellows. O my beloved friend, it is like a frightful spectre-story, to
think how we lost, and have again found each other!"
As the young people entered, the two were dissolved in tears, and in the
deepest emotion. Neither of them told what had occurred, the secret
seemed too holy. But ever after, the old man was the friend of the
house; and Death alone parted these two beings, who had found each other
so strangely, to reunite them in a short time, beyond the power of
separation.
JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER.
ARMY-CHAPLAIN SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FLAETZ;
WITH
A RUNNING COMMENTARY OF NOTES BY JEAN PAUL.[29]
PREFACE.
This, I conceive, may be managed in two words.
The _first_ word must relate to the Circular Letter of Army-chaplain
Schmelzle, wherein he describes to his friends his Journey to the
metropolitan city of Flaetz; after having, in an Introduction, premised
some proofs and assurances of his valour. Properly speaking, the
_Journey_ itself has been written purely with a view that his
courageousness, impugned by rumour, may be fully evinced and
demonstrated by the plain facts which he therein records. Whether, in
the mean-time, there shall not be found certain quick-scented readers,
who may infer, directly contrariwise, that his breast is not everywhere
bomb-proof, especially in the left side: on this point I keep my
judgment suspended.
[29] Prefatory Introduction to Richter, _supra_, at p. 354, Vol.
VI. of _Works_ (Vol. I. of _Miscellanies_).
For the rest, I beg the judges of literature, as well as their
satellites, the critics of literature, to regard this _Journey_, for
whose literary contents I, as Editor, am answerable, solely in the light
of a Portrait (in the French sense), a little Sketch of Character. It is
a voluntary or involuntary comedy-piece, at which I have laughed so
often, that I purpose in time coming to paint some similar Pictures of
Character myself. And, for the present, when could such a little comic
toy be more fitly imparted and set forth to the world, than in these
very days, when the sound both of heavy money and of light laughter has
died away from among us; when, like the Turks, we count and pay merely
with sealed _purses_, and the coin within them has vanished?
Despicable would it seem to me, if any clownish squire of the
goose-quill should publicly and censoriously demand of me, in what way
this self-cabinet-piece of Schmelzle's has come into my hands? I know it
well, and do not disclose it. This comedy-piece, for which I, at all
events, as my Bookseller will testify, draw the profit myself, I got
hold of so unblamably, that I await, with unspeakable composure, what
the Army-chaplain shall please to say against the publication of it, in
case he say anything at all. My conscience bears me witness, that I
acquired this article, at least by more honourable methods than are
those of the learned persons who steal with their ears, who, in the
character of spiritual auditory-thieves, and classroom cutpurses and
pirates, are in the habit of disloading their plundered Lectures, and
vending them up and down the country as productions of their own.
Hitherto, in my whole life, I have stolen little, except now and then in
youth some--glances.
The _second_ word must explain or apologise for the singular form of
this little Work, standing as it does on a substratum of Notes. I
myself am not contented with it. Let the World open, and look, and
determine, in like manner. But the truth is, this line of demarcation,
stretching through the whole book, originated in the following accident:
certain thoughts (or digressions) of my own, with which it was not
permitted me to disturb those of the Army-chaplain, and which could only
he allowed to fight behind the lines, in the shape of Notes, I, with a
view to conveniency and order, had written down in a separate paper; at
the same time, as will he observed, regularly providing every Note with
its Number, and thus referring it to the proper page of the main
Manuscript. But, in the copying of the latter, I had forgotten to insert
the corresponding numbers in the Text itself. Therefore, let no man, any
more than I do, cast a stone at my worthy Printer, inasmuch as he
(perhaps in the thought that it was my way, that I had some purpose in
it) took these Notes, just as they stood, pell-mell, without arrangement
of Numbers, and clapped them under the Text; at the same time, by a
praiseworthy artful computation, taking care at least, that, at the
bottom of every page in the Text, there should some portion of this
glittering Note-precipitate make its appearance. Well, the thing at any
rate is done, nay perpetuated, namely printed. After all, I might almost
partly rejoice at it. For, in good truth, had I meditated for years (as
I have done for the last twenty) how to provide for my digression-comets
new orbits, if not focal suns, for my episodes new epopees,--I could
scarce possibly have hit upon a better or more spacious Limbo for such
Vanities than Chance and Printer here accidentally offer me ready-made.
I have only to regret, that the thing has been printed, before I could
turn it to account. Heavens! what remotest allusions (had I known it
before printing) might not have been privily introduced in every
Text-page and Note-number; and what apparent incongruity in the real
congruity between this upper and under side of the cards! How vehemently
and devilishly might one not have cut aloft, and to the right and left,
from these impregnable casemates and covered ways; and what _laesio ultra
dimidium_ (injury beyond the half of the Text) might not, with these
satirical injuries, have been effected and completed!
But Fate meant not so kindly with me: of this golden harvest-field of
satire I was not to be informed till three days before the Preface.
Perhaps, however, the writing world, by the little blue flame of this
accident, may be guided to a weightier acquisition, to a larger
subterranean treasure, than I, alas, have dug up! For, to the writer,
there is now a way pointed out of producing in one marbled volume a
group of altogether different works; of writing in one leaf, for both
sexes at the same time, without confounding them, nay, for the five
faculties all at once, without disturbing their limitations; since now,
instead of boiling up a vile fermenting shove-together, fit for nobody,
he has nothing to do but draw his note-lines or partition-lines; and so
on his five-story leaf give board and lodging to the most discordant
heads. Perhaps one might then read many a book for the fourth time,
simply because every time one had read but a fourth part of it.
On the whole, this Work has at least the property of being a short one;
so that the reader, I hope, may almost run through it, and read it at
the bookseller's counter, without, as in the case of thicker volumes,
first needing to buy it. And why, indeed, in this world of Matter should
anything whatever be great, except only what belongs not to it, the
world of Spirit?
JEAN PAUL FR. RICHTER.
_Bayreuth, in the Hay and Peace Month_, 1807.
SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FLAETZ.
_Circular Letter of the proposed Catechetical Professor_ ATTILA
SCHMELZLE _to his Friends; containing some Account of a Holidays'
Journey to Flaetz, with an Introduction, touching his Plight and his
Courage as former Army-chaplain._
Nothing can be more ludicrous, my esteemed Friends, than to hear people
stigmatising a man as cowardly and hare-hearted, who perhaps is
struggling all the while with precisely the opposite faults, those of a
lion; though indeed the African lion himself, since the time of
Sparrmann's Travels, passes among us for a poltroon. Yet this case is
mine, worthy Friends; and I purpose to say a few words thereupon, before
describing my Journey.
You in truth are all aware that, directly in the teeth of this calumny,
it is courage, it is desperadoes (provided they be not braggarts and
tumultuous persons), whom I chiefly venerate; for example, my
brother-in-law, the Dragoon, who never in his life bastinadoed one man,
but always a whole social circle at the same time. How truculent was my
fancy, even in childhood, when I, as the parson was toning away to the
silent congregation, used to take it into my head: "How now, if thou
shouldst start up from the pew, and shout aloud: I am here too, Mr.
Parson!" and to paint out this thought in such glowing colours, that for
very dread, I have often been obliged to leave the church! Anything like
Rugenda's battle-pieces; horrid murder-tumults, sea-fights or Stormings
of Toulon, exploding fleets; and, in my childhood, Battles of Prague on
the harpsichord; nay, in short, every map of any remarkable scene of
war: these are perhaps too much my favourite objects; and I read--and
purchase nothing sooner; and doubtless, they might lead me into many
errors, were it not that, my circumstances restrain me. Now, if it be
objected that true courage is something higher than mere thinking and
willing, then you, my worthy Friends, will be the first to recognise
mine, when it shall break forth into, not barren and empty, but active
and effective words, while I strengthen my future Catechetical Pupils,
as well as can be done in a course of College Lectures, and steel them
into Christian heroes.
[Note 103: Good princes easily obtain good subjects; not so easily
good subjects good princes: thus Adam, in the state of innocence, ruled
over animals all tame and gentle, till simply through his means they
fell and grew savage.]
[Note 5: For a good Physician saves, if not always from the
disease, at least from a bad Physician.]
It is well known that, out of care for the preservation of my life, I
never walk within at least ten fields of any shore full of bathers or
swimmers; merely because I foresee to a certainty, that in case one of
them were drowning, I should that moment (for the heart overbalances the
head) plunge after the fool to save him, into some bottomless depth or
other, where we should both perish. And if dreaming is the reflex of
waking, let me ask you, true Hearts, if you have forgotten my relating
to you dreams of mine, which no Caesar, no Alexander or Luther, need have
felt ashamed of? Have I not, to mention a few instances, taken Rome by
storm; and done battle with the Pope, and the whole elephantine body of
the Cardinal College, at one and the same time? Did I not once on
horseback, while simply looking at a review of military, dash headlong
into a _bataillon quarre_; and then capture, in Aix-la-Chapelle, the
Peruke of Charlemagne, for which the town pays yearly ten reichsthalers
of barber-money; and carrying it off to Halberstadt and Herr Gleim's,
there in like manner seize the Great Frederick's Hat; put both Peruke
and Hat on my head, and yet return home, after I had stormed their
batteries, and turned the cannon against the cannoneers themselves? Did
I not once submit to be made a Jew of, and then be regaled with hams;
though they were ape-hams on the Orinocco (see Humboldt)? And a thousand
such things; for I have thrown the Consistorial President of Flaetz; out
of the Palace window; those alarm-fulminators, sold by Heinrich Backofen
in Gotha, at six groschen the dozen, and each going off like a cannon, I
have listened to so calmly that the fulminators did not even awaken me;
and more of the like sort.
But enough! It is now time briefly to touch that farther slander of my
chaplainship, which unhappily has likewise gained some circulation in
Flaetz, but which, as Caesar did Alexander, I shall now by my touch
dissipate into dust. Be what truth in it there can, it is still little
or nothing. Your great Minister and General in Flaetz (perhaps the very
greatest in the world, for there are not many Schabackers) may indeed,
like any other great man, be turned against me, but not with the
Artillery of Truth; for this Artillery I here set before you, my good
Hearts, and do you but fire it off for my advantage! The matter is this:
Certain foolish rumours are afloat in the Flaetz country, that I, on
occasion of some important battles, took leg-bail (such is their
plebeian phrase), and that afterwards, on the chaplain's being
called-for to preach a Thanksgiving sermon for the victory, no chaplain
whatever was to be found. The ridiculousness of this story will best
appear, when I tell you that I never was in any action; but have always
been accustomed, several hours prior to such an event, to withdraw so
many miles to the rear, that our men, so soon as they were beaten, would
be sure to find me. A good retreat is reckoned the masterpiece in the
art of war; and at no time can a retreat be executed with such order,
force and security, as just before the battle, when you are not yet
beaten.
[Note 100: In books lie the Phoenix-ashes of a past Millennium
and Paradise; but War blows, and much ashes are scattered away.]
[Note 102: Dear Political or Religious Inquisitor! art thou aware
that Turin tapers never rightly begin shining, till thou breakest them,
and then they take fire?]
It is true, I might perhaps, as expectant Professor of Catechetics, sit
still and smile at such nugatory speculations on my courage; for if by
Socratic questioning I can hammer my future Catechist Pupils into the
habit of asking questions in their turn, I shall thereby have tempered
_them_ into heroes, seeing they have nothing to fight with but
children--(Catechists at all events, though dreading fire, have no
reason to dread light, since in our days, as in London illuminations, it
is only the _unlighted_ windows that are battered in; whereas, in other
ages, it was with nations and light, as it is with dogs and water; if
you give them none for a long time, they at last get a horror at
it);--and on the whole, for Catechists, any park looks kindlier, and
smiles more sweetly, than a sulphurous park of artillery; and the
Warlike Foot, which the age is placed on, is to them the true Devil's
cloven-foot of human nature.
But for my part I think not so: almost as if the party-spirit influence
of my christian name, Attila, had passed into me more strongly than was
proper, I feel myself impelled still farther to prove my courageousness;
which, dearest Friends! I shall here in a few lines again do. This
proof I could manage by mere inferences and learned citations. For
example, if Galen remarks that animals with large hind-quarters are
timid, I have nothing to do but turn round, and show the enemy my back,
and what is under it, in order to convince him that I am not deficient
in valour, but in flesh. Again, if by well-known experiences it has been
found that flesh-eating produces courage, I can evince, that in this
particular I yield to no officer of the service; though it is the habit
of these gentlemen not only to run up long scores of roast-meat with
their landlords, but also to leave them unpaid, that so at every hour
they may have an open document in the hands of the enemy himself (the
landlord), testifying that they have eaten their own share (with some of
other people's too), and so put common butcher's-meat on a War-footing,
living not like others _by_ bravery, but _for_ bravery. As little have I
ever, in my character of chaplain, shrunk from comparison with any
officer in the regiment, who may be a true lion, and so snatch every
sort of plunder, but yet, like this King of the Beasts, is afraid of
_fire_; or who,--like King James of England, that scampered off at sight
of drawn swords, yet so much the more gallantly, before all Europe, went
out against the storming Luther with book and pen,[2]--does, from a
similar idiosyncrasy, attack all warlike armaments, both by word and
writing. And here I recollect with satisfaction a brave sub-lieutenant,
whose confessor I was (he still owes me the confession-money), and who,
in respect of stout-heartedness, had in him perhaps something of that
Indian dog which Alexander had presented to him, as a sort of
Dog-Alexander. By way of trying this crack dog, the Macedonian made
various heroic or heraldic beasts be let loose against him: first a
stag; but the dog lay still: then a sow; he lay still: then a bear; he
lay still. Alexander was on the point of condemning him; when a lion was
let forth: the dog rose, and tore the lion in pieces. So likewise the
sub-lieutenant. A challenger, a foreign enemy, a Frenchman, are to him
only stag, and sow, and bear, and he lies still in his place; but let
his oldest enemy, his creditor, come and knock at his gate, and demand
of him actual smart-money for long bygone pleasures, thus presuming to
rob him both of past and present; the sub-lieutenant rises, and throws
his creditor down stairs. I, alas, am still standing by the sow; and
thus, naturally enough, misunderstood.
[Note 86: Very true! In youth we love and enjoy the most
ill-assorted friends, perhaps more than, in old age, the best-assorted.]
[Note 128: In Love there are Summer Holidays; but in Marriage also
there are Winter Holidays, I hope.]
[Note 143: Women have weekly at least one active and passive day of
glory, the holy day, the Sunday. The higher ranks alone have more
Sundays than workdays; as in great towns, you can celebrate your Sunday
on Friday with the Turks, on Saturday with the Jews, and on Sunday with
yourself.]