flower-perfume was mingling with his supper-perfume. No one bowed lower
to a nobleman than he, not out of plebeian servility, nor of
self-interested cringing, but because he thought "a nobleman was a
nobleman." But in this case his bow, instead of falling forwards, fell
obliquely to the right, as it were after his hat: for he had not risked
taking a stick with him; and hat and stick were his proppage and
balance-wheel, in short, his bowing-gear, without which it was out of
his power to produce any courtly bow, had you offered him the High
Church of Hamburg for so doing. Thiennette's mirthfulness soon unfolded
his crumpled soul into straight form, and into the proper tone. He
delivered her a long neat Thanksgiving and Harvest sermon for the scaly
cake; which appeared to her at once kind and tedious. Young women
without the polish of high life reckon tedious pedantry, merely like
snuffing, one of the necessary ingredients of a man: they reverence us
infinitely; and as Lambert could never speak to the King of Prussia, by
reason of his sun-eyes, except in the dark, so they, I believe, often
like better,--also by reason of our sublime air,--if they can catch us
in the dark too. _Him_ Thiennette edified by the Imperial History of
Herr von Aufhammer and Her Ladyship his spouse, who meant to put him,
the Quintus, in her will: _her_ he edified by his Literary History, as
relating to himself and the Subrector; how, for instance, he was at
present vicariating in the Second Form, and ruling over scholars as long
in stature as himself. And thus did the two in happiness, among red
bean-blossoms, red may-chafers, before the red of the twilight burning
lower and lower on the horizon, walk to and fro in the garden; and turn
always with a smile as they approached the head of the ancient
gardeneress, standing like a window-bust through the little lattice,
which opened in the bottom of a larger one.
To me it is incomprehensible he did not fall in love. I know his
reasons, indeed: in the first place, she had nothing; secondly, he had
nothing, and school-debts to boot; thirdly, her genealogical tree was a
boundary-tree and warning-post; fourthly, his hands were tied up by
another nobler thought, which, for good cause, is yet reserved from the
reader. Nevertheless--Fixlein! I durst not have been in thy place! I
should have looked at her, and remembered her virtues and our
school-years, and then have drawn forth my too fusible heart, and
presented it to her as a bill of exchange, or insinuated it as a
summons. For I should have considered that she resembled a nun in two
senses, in her good heart and in her good pastry; that, in spite of her
intercourse with male vassals, she was no Charles Genevieve Louise
Auguste Timothe Eon de Beaumont,[37] but a smooth, fair-haired,
white-capped dove; that she sought more to please her own sex than ours;
that she showed a melting heart, not previously borrowed from the
Circulating Library, in tears, for which in her innocence she rather
took shame than credit.--At the very first cheapening, I should, on
these grounds, have been out with my heart.--Had I fully reflected,
Quintus! that I knew her as myself; that her hands and mine (to wit, had
I been thou) had both been guided by the same Senior to Latin
penmanship; that we two, when little children, had kissed each other
before the glass, to see whether the two image-children would do it
likewise in the mirror; that often we had put hands of both sexes into
the same muff, and there played with them in secret; had I, lastly,
considered that we were here standing before the glass-house, now
splendent in the enamel of twilight, and that on the cold panes of this
glass-house we two (she within, I without) had often pressed our warm
cheeks together, parted only by the thickness of the glass,--then had I
taken this poor gentle soul, pressed asunder by Fate, and seeing, amid
her thunder-clouds, no higher elevation to part them and protect her
than the grave, and had drawn her to my own soul, and warmed her on my
heart, and encompassed her about with my eyes.
[37] See _Schmelzle's Journey_, p. 284.--ED.
In truth, the Quintus would have done so too, had not the
above-mentioned nobler thought, which I yet disclose not, kept him
back. Softened, without knowing the cause--(accordingly he gave his
mother a kiss)--and blessed without having had a literary conversation;
and dismissed with a freight of humble compliments, which he was to
disload on the morrow before the Dragoon Rittmeisterinn, he returned to
his little cottage, and looked yet a long while out of its dark windows,
at the light ones of the Castle. And then, when the first quarter of the
moon was setting, that is, about midnight, he again, in the cool sigh of
a mild, fanning, moist and directly heart-addressing night-breeze,
opened the eyelids of a sight already sunk in dreaming....
Sleep, for today thou hast done naught ill! I, whilst the drooping shut
flower-bell of thy spirit sinks on thy pillow, will look forth into the
breezy night over thy morning footpath, which, through the translucent
little wood, is to lead thee to Schadeck, to thy patroness. All
prosperity attend thee, thou foolish Quintus!--
SECOND LETTER-BOX.
_Frau von Aufhammer. Childhood-Resonance. Authorcraft._
The early piping which the little thrush last night adopted by the
Quintaner from its nest, started for victual about two o'clock, soon
drove our Quintus into his clothes; whose calender-press and
parallel-ruler the hands of his careful mother had been, for she would
not send him to the Rittmeisterinn "like a runagate dog." The Shock was
incarcerated, the Quintaner taken with him, as likewise many wholesome
rules from Mother Fixlein, how to conduct himself towards the
Rittmeisterinn. But the son answered: "Mamma, when a man has been in
company, like me, with high people, with a Fraeulein Thiennette, he soon
knows whom he is speaking to, and what polished manners and Saver di
veaver (_Savoir vivre_) require."
He arrived with the Quintaner, and green fingers (dyed with the leaves
he had plucked on the path), and with a half-nibbled rose between his
teeth, in presence of the sleek lackeys of Schadeck.--If women are
flowers,--though as often silk and Italian and gum-flowers as botanical
ones,--then was Frau von Aufhammer a ripe flower, with (adipose)
neck-bulb, and tuberosity (of lard). Already, in the half of her body,
cut away from life by the apoplexy, she lay upon her lard-pillow but as
on a softer grave: nevertheless, the portion of her that remained was
at once lively, pious and proud. Her heart was a flowing cornucopia to
all men, yet this not from philanthropy, but from rigid devotion: the
lower classes she assisted, cherished and despised, regarding nothing in
them, except it were their piety. She received the bowing Quintus with
the back-bowing air of a patroness; yet she brightened into a look of
kindliness at his disloading of the compliments from Thiennette.
She began the conversation, and long continued it alone, and said,--yet
without losing the inflation of pride from her countenance: "She should
soon die; but the god-children of her husband she would remember in her
will." Farther, she told him directly in the face, which stood there all
over-written with the Fourth Commandment before her, that "he must not
build upon a settlement in Hukelum; but to the Flachsenfingen
Conrectorate (to which the Buergermeister and Council had the right of
nomination), she hoped to promote him, as it was from the then
Buergermeister that she bought her coffee, and from the Town-Syndic (he
drove a considerable wholesale and retail trade in Hamburg candles) that
she bought both her wax and tallow lights."
And now by degrees he arrived at his humble petition, when she asked him
sick-news of Senior Astmann, who guided himself more by Luther's
Catechism than by the Catechism of Health. She was Astmann's patroness
in a stricter than ecclesiastical sense; and she even confessed that she
would soon follow this, true shepherd of souls, when she heard, here at
Shadeck, the sound of his funeral-bell. Such strange chemical affinities
exist between our dross and our silver veins; as, for example, here
between Pride and Love: and I could wish that we would pardon this
hypostatic union in all persons, as readily as we do it in the fair,
who, with all their faults, are nevertheless by us,--as, according to Du
Fay, iron, though mixed with any other metal, is, by the
magnet,--attracted and held fast.
Supposing even that the Devil _had_, in some idle minute, sown a handful
or two of the seeds of Envy in our Quintus' soul, yet they had not
sprouted; and today especially they did not, when he heard the praises
of a man who had been his teacher, and who,--what he reckoned a Titulado
of the Earth, not from vanity but from piety,--was a clergyman. So much,
however, is, according to History, not to be denied: That he now
straight-way came forth with his petition to the noble lady, signifying
that "indeed he would cheerfully content himself for a few years in the
school; but yet in the end he longed to be in some small quiet priestly
office." To her question, "But was he orthodox?" he answered, that "he
hoped so; he had in Leipzig, not only attended all the public lectures
of Dr. Burscher, but also had taken private instructions from several
sound teachers of the faith, well knowing that the Consistorium, in its
examinations as to purity of doctrine, was now more strict than
formerly."
The sick lady required him to make a proof-shot, namely, to administer
to her a sick-bed exhortation. By Heaven! he administered to her one of
the best. Her pride of birth now crouched before his pride of office and
priesthood; for though he could not, with the Dominican monk, Alanus de
Rupe, believe that a priest was greater than God, inasmuch as the latter
could only make a World, but the former a God (in the mass); yet he
could not but fall-in with Hostiensis, who shows that the priestly
dignity is seven thousand six hundred and forty-four times greater than
the kingly, the Sun being just so many times greater than the Moon.--But
a Rittmeisterinn--_she_ shrinks into absolute nothing before a parson.
In the servants' hall he applied to the lackeys for the last annual
series of the _Hamburg Political Journal_; perceiving, that with these
historical documents of the time, they were scandalously papering the
buttons of travelling raiment. In gloomy harvest evenings, he could now
sit down and read for himself what good news were transpiring in the
political world--twelve months ago.
On a Triumphal Car, full-laden with laurel, and to which Hopes alone
were yoked, he drove home at night, and by the road advised the
Quintaner not to be puffed up with any earthly honour, but silently to
thank God, as himself was now doing.
* * * * *
The thickset blooming grove of his four canicular weeks, and the flying
tumult of blossoms therein, are already painted on three of the sides. I
will now clutch blindfold into his days, and bring out one of them: one
smiles and sends forth its perfumes like another.
Let us take, for instance, the Saint's day of his mother, _Clara_, the
twelfth of August. In the morning, he had perennial, fireproof joys,
that is to say, Employments. For he was writing, as I am doing. Truly,
if Xerxes proposed a prize for the invention of a new pleasure, any man
who had sat down to write his thoughts on the prize-question, had the
new pleasure already among his fingers. I know only one thing sweeter
than making a book, and that is, to project one. Fixlein used to write
little works, of the twelfth part of an alphabet in size, which in their
manuscript state he got bound by the bookbinder in gilt boards, and
betitled with printed letters, and then inserted them among the literary
ranks of his book-board. Every one thought they were novelties printed
in writing types. He had laboured,--I shall omit his less interesting
performances,--at a _Collection of Errors of the Press_, in German
writings: he compared _Errata_ with each other; showed which occurred
most frequently; observed that important results were to be drawn from
this, and advised the reader to draw them.
Moreover, he took his place among the German _Masorites_. He observes
with great justice in his Preface: "The Jews had their _Masora_ to show,
which told them how often every letter was to be found in their Bible;
for example, the Aleph (the A) 42,377 times; how many verses there are
in which all the consonants appear (there are 26 verses), or only eighty
(there are 3); how many verses we have into which 42 words and 160
consonants enter (there is just one, Jeremiah xxi. 7); which is the
middle letter in certain books (in the Pentateuch, it is in Leviticus
xi. 42, the noble V[38]), or in the whole Bible itself. But where have
we Christians any similar Masora for Luther's Bible to show? Has it been
accurately investigated which is the middle word, or the middle letter
here, which vowel appears seldomest, and how often each vowel? Thousands
of Bible-Christians go out of the world, without ever knowing that the
German A occurs 323,015 times (therefore above 7 times oftener than the
Hebrew one) in their Bible."
[38] As in the State.--V. or Von, _de_, _of_, being the symbol of
the nobility, the middle order of the State.--ED.
I could wish that inquirers into Biblical Literature among our Reviewers
would publicly let me know, if on a more accurate summation they find
this number incorrect.[39]
[39] In Erlang, my petition has been granted. The _Bible
Institution_ of that town have found instead of the 116,301 A's,
which Fixlein at first pretended with such certainty to find in the
Bible-books (which false number was accordingly given in the first
Edition of this Work, p. 81), the above-mentioned 323,015; which
(uncommonly singular) is precisely the sum of all the letters in
the Koran put together. See _Luedeke's Beschr. des Tuerk. Reichs_
(Luedeke's Description of the Turkish Empire. New edition, 1780).
Much also did the Quintus _collect_: he had a fine _Almanac Collection_,
a _Catechism_ and _Pamphlet Collection_; also a _Collection of
Advertisements_, which he began, is not so incomplete as you most
frequently see such things. He puts high value on his _Alphabetical
Lexicon of German Subscribers for Books_, where my name also occurs
among the J's.
But what he liked best to produce were Schemes of Books. Accordingly, he
sewed together a large work, wherein he merely advised the Learned of
things they ought to introduce in Literary History, which History he
rated some ells higher than Universal or Imperial History. In his
Prolegomena to this performance, he transiently submitted to the
Literary republic that Hommel had given a register of Jurists who were
sons of wh--, of others who had become Saints; that Baillet enumerates
the Learned who _meant_ to write something; and Ancillon those who wrote
nothing at all; and the Luebeck Superintendent Goetze, those who were
shoemakers, those who were drowned; and Bernhard those whose fortunes
and history before birth were interesting. This (he could now continue)
should, as it seems, have excited us to similar muster-rolls and
matriculations of other kinds of Learned; whereof he proposed a few: for
example, of the Learned, who were unlearned; of those who were entire
rascals; of such as wore their own hair,--of cue-preachers,
cue-psalmists, cue-annalists, and so forth; of the Learned who had worn
black leather breeches, of others who had worn rapiers; of the Learned
who had died in their eleventh year,--in their twentieth--twenty-first,
&c.,--in their hundred and fiftieth, of which he knew no instance,
unless the Beggar Thomas Parr might be adduced; of the Learned who wrote
a more abominable hand than the other Learned (whereof we know only
Rolfinken and his letters, which were as long as his hands[40]); or of
the Learned who had clipt nothing from each other but the beard (whereof
no instance is known, save that of Philelphus and Timotheus[41]).
[40] _Paravicini Singularia de viris claris. Cent. I. 2._
[41] _Ejusd. Cent. II._ Philelphus quarrelled with the Greek about
the quantity of a syllable: the prize or bet was the beard of the
vanquished. Timotheus lost his.
Such by-studies did he carry on along with his official labours: but I
think the State in viewing these matters is actually mad; it compares
the man who is great in Philosophy and Belles Lettres at the expense of
his jog-trot officialities, to _concert-clocks_, which, though striking
their hours in flute-melodies, are worse time-keepers than your gross
stupid _steeple-clocks_.
To return to St. Clara's day. Fixlein, after such mental exertions,
bolted out under the music-bushes and rustling-trees; and returned not
again out of warm Nature, till plate and chair were already placed at
the table. In the course of the repast, something occurred which a
Biographer must not omit: for his mother had, by request, been wont to
map out for him, during the process of mastication, the chart of his
child's-world, relating all the traits which in any way prefigured what
he had now grown to. This perspective sketch of his early Past, he
committed to certain little leaves, which merit our undivided attention.
For such leaves exclusively, containing scenes, acts, plays of his
childhood, he used chronologically to file and arrange in separate
drawers in a little child's-desk of his; and thus to divide his
Biography, as Moser did his Publicistic Materials, into separate
_letter-boxes_. He had boxes or drawers for memorial-letters of his
twelfth, of his thirteenth, fourteenth, &c. of his twenty-first year,
and so on. Whenever he chose to conclude a day of pedagogic drudgery by
an evening of peculiar rest, he simply pulled out a letter-drawer, a
register-bar in his Life-hand-organ, and recollected the whole.
And here must I in reference to those reviewing Mutes, who may be for
casting the noose of strangulation round my neck, most particularly beg,
that, before doing so on account of my Chapters being called
Letter-boxes, they would have the goodness to look whose blame it was,
and to think whether I could possibly help it, seeing the Quintus had
divided his Biography into such Boxes himself: they have Christian
bowels.
But about his elder brother he put no saddening question to his mother:
this poor boy a peculiar Fate had laid hold of, and with all his genial
endowment, dashed to pieces on the iceberg of Death. For he chanced to
leap on an ice-board that had jammed itself among several others; but
these recoiled, and his shot forth with him; melted away as it floated
under his feet, and so sunk his heart of fire amid the ice and waves. It
grieved his mother that he was not found, that her heart had not been
harrowed by the look of the swoln corpse.--O good mother, rather thank
God for it!--
* * * * *
After breakfast, to fortify himself with new vigour for his desk, he
for some time strolled idly over the house, and, like a Police
Fire-inspector, visited all the nooks of his cottage, to gather from
them here and there a live ember from the ash-covered rejoicing-fire of
his childhood. He mounted to the garret, to the empty bird-coops of his
father, who in winter had been a birder; and he transiently reviewed the
lumber of his old playthings, which were lying in the netted enclosure
of a large canary breeding-cage. In the minds of children, it is regular
_little_ forms, such as those of balls and dies, that impress and
express themselves most forcibly. From this may the reader explain to
himself Fixlein's delight in the red acorn-blockhouse, in the sparwork
glued together out of white chips and husks of potato-plums, in the
cheerful glass-house of a cube-shaped lantern, and other the like
products of his early architecture. The following, however, I explain
quite differently: he had ventured, without leave given from any lord of
the manor, to build a clay house; not for cottagers, but for flies; and
which, therefore, you could readily enough have put in your pocket. This
fly-hospital had its glass windows, and a red coat of colouring, and
very many alcoves, and three balconies: balconies, as a sort of house
within a house, he had loved from of old so much, that he could scarcely
have liked Jerusalem well, where (according to Lightfoot) no such thing
is permitted to be built. From the glistening eyes, with which the
architect had viewed his tenantry creeping about the windows or feeding
out of the sugar-trough,--for, like the Count St. Germain, they ate
nothing but sugar,--from this joy an adept in the art of education might
easily have prophesied his turn for household contraction; to his fancy,
in those times, even gardeners'-huts were like large waste Arks and
Halls, and nothing bigger than such a fly-Louvre seemed a true, snug,
citizen's-house. He now felt and handled his old high child's-stool,
which had, in former days, resembled the _Sedes Exploratoria_ of the
Pope; he gave his child's-coach a tug and made it run; but he could not
understand what balsam and holiness so much distinguished it from all
other child's-coaches. He wondered that the real sports of children
should not so delight him, as the emblems of these sports, when the
child that had carried them on was standing grown up to manhood in his
presence.
Before one article in the house he stood heart-melted and sad; before a
little angular clothes-press, which was no higher than my table, and
which had belonged to his poor drowned brother. When the boy with the
key of it was swallowed by the waves, the excruciated mother had made a
vow that this toy-press of his should never be broken up by violence.
Most probably there is nothing in it, but the poor soul's playthings.
Let us look away from this bloody urn.----
Bacon reckons the remembrances of childhood among wholesome medicinal
things; naturally enough, therefore, they acted like a salutary
digestive on the Quintus. He could now again betake him with new heart
to his desk, and produce something quite peculiar--petitions for
church-livings. He took the Address-calendar, and for every country
parish that he found in it, got a petition in readiness; which he then
laid aside, till such time as the present incumbent should decease. For
Hukelum alone he did not solicit.--It is a pretty custom in
Flachsenfingen that for every office which is vacant, you are required,
if you want it, to sue. As the higher use of Prayer consists not in its
fulfilment, but in its accustoming you to pray; so likewise petitionary
papers ought to be given in, not indeed that you may get the
office,--this nothing but your money can do,--but that you may learn to
write petitions. In truth, if among the Calmucks, the turning of a
calabash[42] stands in the place of Prayer, a slight movement of the
purse may be as much as if you supplicated in words.
[42] Their prayer-barrel, Kueruedu, is a hollowed shell, a calabash,
full of unrolled formulas of prayer; they sway it from side to
side, and then it works. More philosophically viewed, since in
prayer the feeling only is of consequence, it is much the same
whether this express itself by motion of the mouth or of the
calabash.