preached with unction,----he did it before the crowding, rustling press
of people; before his Guardian, and before the Lord of Aufhammer, the
godfather of the priest and the dog;--a flock with whom in childhood he
had driven out the Castle herds about the pasture, he was now, himself a
spiritual sheep-smearer, leading out to pasture;--he was standing to the
ankles among Candidates and Schoolmasters, for today (what none of them
could) at the altar, with the nail of his finger, he might scratch a
large cross in the air, baptisms and marriages not once mentioned.... I
believe, I should feel less scrupulous than I do to chequer this
sunshiny esplanade with that thin shadow of the grave, which the
preacher threw over it, when, in the application, with wet heavy eyes,
he looked round over the mute attentive church, as if in some corner of
it he would seek the mouldering teacher of his youth and of this
congregation, who without, under the white tombstone, the wrong-side of
life, had laid away the garment of his pious spirit. And when he,
himself hurried on by the internal stream, inexpressibly softened by the
farther recollections of his own fear of death on this day, of his life
now overspread with flowers and benefits, of his entombed benefactress
resting here in her narrow bed--when he now--before the dissolving
countenance of her friend, his Thiennette--overpowered, motionless and
weeping, looked down from the pulpit to the door of the Schadeck vault,
and said: "Thanks, thou pious soul, for the good thou hast done to this
flock and to their new teacher; and, in the fulness of time, may the
dust of thy god-fearing and man-loving breast gather itself,
transfigured as gold-dust, round thy reawakened heavenly heart,"--was
there an eye in the audience dry? Her husband sobbed aloud; and
Thiennette, her beloved, bowed her head, sinking down with inconsolable
remembrances, over the front of the seat, like kindred mourners in a
funeral train.
No fairer forenoon could prepare the way for an afternoon in which a man
was to betroth himself forever, and to unite the exchanged rings with
the Ring of Eternity. Except the bridal pair, there was none present but
an ancient pair; the mother and the long Guardian. The bridegroom wrote
out the marriage-contract or marriage-charter with his own hand; hereby
making over to his bride, from this day, his whole moveable property
(not, as you may suppose, his pocket-library, but his whole library;
whereas, in the Middle Ages, the daughter of a noble was glad to get one
or two books for marriage-portion);--in return for which, she liberally
enough contributed--a whole nuptial coach or car, laden as follows: with
nine pounds of feathers, not feathers for the cap such as we carry, but
of the lighter sort such as carry us;--with a sumptuous dozen of
godchild-plates and godchild-spoons (gifts from Schadeck), together with
a fish-knife;--of silk, not only stockings (though even King Henri II.
of France could dress no more than his legs in silk), but whole
gowns;--with jewels and other furnishings of smaller value. Good
Thiennette! in the chariot of thy spirit lies the true dowry; namely,
thy noble, soft, modest heart, the morning-gift of Nature!
The Parson,--who, not from mistrust but from "the uncertainty of life,"
could have wished for a notary's seal on everything; to whom no security
but a hypothecary one appeared sufficient, and who, in the depositing of
every barleycorn, required quittances and contracts,--had now, when the
marriage-charter was completed, a lighter heart; and through the whole
evening the good man ceased not to thank his bride for what she had
given him. To me, however, a marriage-contract were a thing as painful
and repulsive,--I confess it candidly, though you should in consequence
upbraid me with my great youth,--as if I had to take my love-letter to a
Notary Imperial, and make him docket and countersign it before it could
be sent. Heavens! to see the light flower of Love, whose perfume acts
not on the balance, so laid like tulip-bulbs on the hay-beam of Law; two
hearts on the cold councillor-and flesh-beam of relatives and advocates,
who are heaping on the scales nothing but houses, fields and tin--this,
to the interested party, may be as delightful as, to the intoxicated
suckling and nursling of the Muses and Philosophy, it is to carry the
evening and morning sacrifices he has offered up to his goddess into the
book-shop, and there to change his devotions into money, and sell them
by weight and measure.----
From Cantata-Sunday to Ascension, that is, to marriage-day, are one and
a half weeks--or one and a half blissful eternities. If it is pleasant
that nights or winter separate the days and seasons of joy to a
comfortable distance; if, for example, it is pleasant that birthday,
Saint's-day, betrothment, marriage and baptismal day, do not all occur
on the same day (for with very few do those festivities, like Holiday
and Apostle's day, commerge),--then is it still more pleasant to make
the interval, the flower-border, between betrothment and marriage, of an
extraordinary breadth. Before the marriage-day are the true honey-weeks;
then come the wax-weeks; then the honey-vinegar-weeks.
In the Ninth Letter-Box, our Parson celebrates his wedding; and here, in
the Eighth, I shall just briefly skim over his way and manner of
existence till then; an existence, as might have been expected,
celestial enough. To few is it allotted, as it was to him, to have at
once such wings and such flowers (to fly over) before his nuptials; to
few is it allotted, I imagine, to purchase flour and poultry on the same
day, as Fixlein did;--to stuff the wedding-turkey with
hangman-meals;--to go every night into the stall, and see whether the
wedding-pig, which his Guardian has given him by way of
marriage-present, is still standing and eating;--to spy out for his
future wife the flax-magazines and clothes-press-niches in the
house;--to lay in new wood-stores in the prospect of winter;--to obtain
from the Consistorium directly, and for little smart-money, their Bull
of Dispensation, their remission of the threefold proclamation of
banns;--to live not in a city, where you must send to every fool
(because you are one yourself), and disclose to him that you are going
to be married; but in a little angular hamlet, where you have no one to
tell aught, but simply the Schoolmaster that he is to ring a little
later, and put a knee-cushion before the altar.----
O! if the Ritter Michaelis maintains that Paradise was little, because
otherwise the people would not have found each other,--a hamlet and its
joys are little and narrow, so that some shadow of Eden may still linger
on our Ball.----
I have not even hinted that, the day before the wedding, the
Regiments-Quartermaster came uncalled, and killed the pig, and made
puddings gratis, such as were never eaten at any Court.
And besides, dear Fixlein, on this soft rich oil of joy there was also
floating gratis a vernal sun,--and red twilights,--and
flower-garlands,--and a bursting half world of buds!...
How didst thou behave thee in these hot whirlpools of pleasure?--Thou
movedst thy Fishtail (Reason), and therewith describedst for thyself a
rectilineal course through the billows. For even half as much would have
hurried another Parson from his study; but the very crowning felicity of
ours was, that he stood as if rooted to the boundary-hill of Moderation,
and from thence looked down on what thousands flout away. Sitting
opposite the Castle-windows, he was still in a condition to reckon up
that _Amen_ occurs in the Bible one hundred and thirty times. Nay, to
his old learned laboratory he now appended a new chemical stove: he
purposed writing to Nuernberg and Bayreuth, and there offering his pen to
the Brothers Senft, not only for composing practical _Receipts_ at the
end of their _Almanacs_, but also for separate _Essays_ in front under
the copperplate title of each Month, because he had a thought of making
some reformatory cuts at the common people's mental habitudes.... And
now, when in the capacity of Parson he had less to do, and could add to
the holy resting-day of the congregation six literary creating-days, he
determined (even in these Carnival weeks) to strike his plough into the
hitherto quite fallow History of Hukelum, and soon to follow the plough
with his drill....
Thus roll his minutes, on golden wheels-of-fortune, over the twelve
days, which form the glancing star-paved road to the third-heaven of the
thirteenth, that is to the
NINTH LETTER-BOX,
_Or to the Marriage._
Rise, fair Ascension and Marriage day, and gladden readers also! Adorn
thyself with the fairest jewel, with the bride, whose soul is as pure
and glittering as its vesture; like pearl and pearl-muscle, the one as
the other, lustrous and ornamental! And so over the espalier, whose
fruit-hedge has hitherto divided our darling from his Eden, every reader
now presses after him!--
On the 9th of May 1793, about three in the morning, there came a sharp
peal of trumpets, like a light-beam, through the dim-red May-dawn: two
twisted horns, with a straight trumpet between them, like a note of
admiration between interrogation-points, were clanging from a house in
which only a parishioner (not the Parson) dwelt and blew: for this
parishioner had last night been celebrating the same ceremony which the
pastor had this day before him. The joyful tallyho raised our Parson
from his broad bed (and the Shock from beneath it, who some weeks ago
had been exiled from the white sleek coverlid), and this so early, that
in the portraying tester, where on every former morning he had observed
his ruddy visage and his white bedclothes, all was at present dim and
crayonned.
I confess, the new-painted room, and a gleam of dawn on the wall, made
it so light, that he could see his knee-buckles glancing on the chair.
He then softly awakened his mother (the other guests were to lie for
hours in the sheets), and she had the city cookmaid to awaken, who, like
several other articles of wedding-furniture, had been borrowed for a day
or two from Flachsenfingen. At two doors he knocked in vain, and without
answer; for all were already down at the hearth, cooking, blowing and
arranging.
How softly does the Spring day gradually fold back its nun-veil, and the
Earth grow bright, as if it were the morning of a Resurrection!--The
quicksilver-pillar of the barometer, the guiding Fire-pillar of the
weather-prophet, rests firmly on Fixlein's Ark of the Covenant. The Sun
raises himself, pure and cool, into the morning-blue, instead of into
the morning-red. Swallows, instead of clouds, shoot skimming through the
melodious air.... O, the good Genius of Fair Weather, who deserves many
temples and festivals (because without him no festival could be held),
lifted an ethereal azure Day, as it were, from the well-clear atmosphere
of the Moon, and sent it down, on blue butterfly-wings--as if it were a
_blue_ Monday--glittering below the Sun, in the zigzag of joyful
quivering descent, upon the narrow spot of Earth, which our heated
fancies are now viewing.... And on this balmy vernal spot, stand amid
flowers, over which the trees are shaking blossoms instead of leaves, a
bride and a bridegroom.... Happy Fixlein! how shall I paint thee without
deepening the sighs of longing in the fairest souls?--
But soft! we will not drink the magic cup of Fancy to the bottom at six
in the morning; but keep sober till towards night!
At the sound of the morning prayer-bell, the bridegroom, for the din of
preparation was disturbing his quiet orison, went out into the
churchyard, which (as in many other places), together with the church,
lay round his mansion like a court. Here on the moist green, over whose
closed flowers the churchyard-wall was still spreading broad shadows,
did his spirit cool itself from the warm dreams of Earth: here, where
the white flat grave-stone of his Teacher lay before him like the
fallen-in door on the Janus'-temple of Life, or like the windward side
of the narrow house, turned towards the tempests of the world: here,
where the little shrunk metallic door on the grated cross of his father
uttered to him the inscriptions of death, and the year when his parent
departed, and all the admonitions and mementos, graven on the
lead;--there, I say, his mood grew softer and more solemn; and he now
lifted up by heart his morning prayer, which usually he read; and
entreated God to bless him in his office, and to spare his mother's
life; and to look with favour and acceptance on the purpose of
today.--Then over the graves he walked into his fenceless little angular
flower-garden; and here, composed and confident in the divine keeping,
he pressed the stalks of his tulips deeper into the mellow earth.
But on returning to the house, he was met on all hands by the
bell-ringing and the janissary-music of wedding-gladness;--the
marriage-guests had all thrown off their nightcaps, and were drinking
diligently;--there was a clattering, a cooking, a
frizzling;--tea-services, coffee-services and warm-beer-services, were
advancing in succession; and plates full of bride-cakes were going round
like potter's frames or cistern-wheels.--The Schoolmaster, with three
young lads, was heard rehearsing from his own house an _Arioso_, with
which, so soon as they were perfect, he purposed to surprise his
clerical superior.--But now rushed all the arms of the foaming
joy-streams into one, when the sky-queen besprinkled with blossoms, the
bride, descended upon Earth in her timid joy, full of quivering humble
love;--when the bells began;--when the procession-column set forth with
the whole village round and before it;--when the organ, the
congregation, the officiating priest and the sparrows on the trees of
the church-window, struck louder and louder their rolling peals on the
drum of the jubilee-festival.... The heart of the singing bridegroom was
like to leap from its place for joy, "that on his bridal-day it was all
so respectable and grand."--Not till the marriage-benediction could he
pray a little.
Still worse and louder grew the business during dinner, when pastry-work
and marchpane-devices were brought forward,--when glasses and slain
fishes (laid under the napkins to frighten the guests) went round;--and
when the guests rose, and themselves rent round, and at length danced
round: for they had instrumental music from the city there.
One minute handed over to the other the sugar-bowl and bottle-case of
joy: the guests heard and saw less and less, and the villagers began to
see and hear more and more, and towards night they penetrated like a
wedge into the open door,--nay two youths ventured even in the middle
of the parsonage-court, to mount a plank over a beam, and commence
seesawing.--Out of doors, the gleaming vapour of the departed Sun was
encircling the Earth, the evening-star was glittering over parsonage and
churchyard; no one heeded it.
However, about nine o'clock,--when the marriage-guests had well-nigh
forgotten the marriage-pair, and were drinking or dancing along for
their own behoof; when poor mortals, in this sunshine of Fate, like
fishes in the sunshine of the sky, were leaping up from their wet cold
element; and when the bridegroom under the star of happiness and love,
casting like a comet its long train of radiance over all his heaven, had
in secret pressed to his joy-filled breast his bride and his
mother,--then did he lock a slice of wedding-bread privily into a press,
in the old superstitious belief that this residue secured continuance of
bread for the whole marriage. As he returned, with greater love for the
sole partner of his life, she herself met him with his mother, to
deliver him in private the bridal-nightgown and bridal-shirt, as is the
ancient usage. Many a countenance grows pale in violent emotions, even
of joy: Thiennette's wax-face was bleaching still whiter under the
sunbeams of Happiness. O never fall, thou lily of Heaven, and may four
springs instead of four seasons open and shut thy flower-bells to the
sun!--All the arms of his soul, as he floated on the sea of joy, were
quivering to clasp the soft warm heart of his beloved, to encircle it
gently and fast, and draw it to his own....
He led her from the crowded dancing-room into the cool evening. Why does
the evening, does the night put warmer love in our hearts? Is it the
nightly pressure of helplessness; or is it the exalting separation from
the turmoil of life; that veiling of the world, in which for the soul
nothing more remains but souls;--is it therefore, that the letters in
which the loved name stands written on our spirit appear, like
phosphorus-writing, by night _in fire_, while by day in their _cloudy_
traces they but smoke?
He walked with his bride into the Castle-garden: she hastened quickly
through the Castle, and past its servants'-hall, where the fair flowers
of her young life had been crushed broad and dry, under a long dreary
pressure; and her soul expanded and breathed in the free open garden, on
whose flowery soil destiny had cast forth the first seeds of the
blossoms which today were gladdening her existence. Still Eden! green
flower-chequered _chiaroscuro_!--The moon is sleeping underground like
a dead one; but beyond the garden the sun's red evening-clouds have
fallen down like rose-leaves; and the evening-star, the brideman of the
sun, hovers, like a glancing butterfly, above the rosy red, and, modest
as a bride, deprives no single starlet of its light.
The wandering pair arrived at the old gardener's hut; now standing
locked and dumb, with dark windows in the light garden, like a fragment
of the Past surviving in the Present. Bared twigs of trees were folding,
with clammy half-formed leaves, over the thick intertwisted tangles of
the bushes.--The Spring was standing, like a conqueror, with Winter at
his feet.--In the blue pond, now bloodless, a dusky evening-sky lay
hollowed out, and the gushing waters were moistening the
flower-beds.--The silver sparks of stars were rising on the altar of the
East, and falling down extinguished in the red sea of the West.
The wind whirred, like a night-bird, louder through the trees; and gave
tones to the acacia-grove, and the tones called to the pair who had
first become happy within it: "Enter, new mortal pair, and think of what
is past, and of my withering and your own; and be holy as Eternity, and
weep not only for joy, but for gratitude also!"--And the wet-eyed
bridegroom led his wet-eyed bride under the blossoms, and laid his soul,
like a flower, on her heart, and said: "Best Thiennette, I am
unspeakably happy, and would say much, and cannot.--Ah, thou Dearest, we
will live like angels, like children together! Surely I will do all that
is good to thee; two years ago I had nothing, no nothing; ah, it is
through thee, best Love, that I am happy. I call thee Thou, now, thou
dear good soul!" She drew him closer to her, and said, though without
kissing him: "Call me Thou always, Dearest!"
And as they stept forth again from the sacred grove into the magic-dusky
garden, he took off his hat; first, that he might internally thank God,
and secondly, because he wished to look into this fairest evening sky.
They reached the blazing, rustling marriage-house, but their softened
hearts sought stillness; and a foreign touch, as in the blossoming vine,
would have disturbed the flower-nuptials of their souls. They turned
rather, and winded up into the churchyard to preserve their mood.
Majestic on the groves and mountains stood the Night before man's heart,
and made it also great. Over the _white_ steeple-obelisk the sky rested
_bluer_ and _darker_; and behind it wavered the withered summit of the
May-pole with faded flag. The son noticed his father's grave, on which
the wind was opening and shutting, with harsh noise, the little door of
the metal cross, to let the year of his death be read on the brass plate
within. An overpowering sadness seized his heart with violent streams of
tears, and drove him to the sunk hillock, and he led his bride to the
grave, and said: "Here sleeps he, my good father; in his thirty-second
year, he was carried hither to his long rest. O thou good, dear father,
couldst thou today but see the happiness of thy son, like my mother! But
thy eyes are empty, and thy breast is full of ashes, and thou seest us
not."--He was silent. The bride wept aloud; she saw the mouldering
coffins of her parents open, and the two dead arise and look round for
their daughter, who had stayed so long behind them, forsaken on the
Earth. She fell upon his heart, and faltered: "O beloved, I have neither
father nor mother, do not forsake me!"
O thou who hast still a father and a mother, thank God for it, on the
day when thy soul is full of joyful tears, and needs a bosom wherein to
shed them....
And with this embracing at a father's grave, let this day of joy be
holily concluded.--
TENTH LETTER-BOX.
_St. Thomas's Day and Birthday._
An Author is a sort of bee-keeper for his reader-swarm; in whose behalf
he separates the Flora kept for their use into different seasons, and
here accelerates, and there retards, the blossoming of many a flower,
that so in all chapters there be blooming.
The goddess of Love and the angel of Peace conducted our married pair on
tracks running over full meadows, through the Spring; and on footpaths
hidden by high cornfields, through the Summer; and Autumn, as they
advanced towards Winter, spread her marbled leaves under their feet. And
thus they arrived before the low dark gate of Winter, full of life, full
of love, trustful, contented, sound and ruddy.
On St. Thomas's day was Thiennette's birthday as well as Winter's. About
a quarter past nine, just when the singing ceases in the church, we
shall take a peep through the window into the interior of the parsonage.
There is nothing here but the old mother, who has all day (the son
having restricted her to rest, and not work) been gliding about, and
brushing, and burnishing, and scouring, and wiping: every carved
chair-leg, and every brass nail of the waxcloth-covered table, she has
polished into brightness;--everything hangs, as with all married people
who have no children, in its right place, brushes, fly-flaps and
almanacs;--the chairs are stationed by the room-police in their ancient
corners;--a flax-rock, encircled with a diadem, or scarf of azure
ribbon, is lying in the Schadeckbed, because, though it is a half
holiday, some spinning may go on;--the narrow slips of paper, whereon
heads of sermons are to be arranged, lie white beside the sermons
themselves, that is, beside the octavo paper-book which holds them, for
the Parson and his work-table, by reason of the cold, have migrated from
the study to the sitting-room;--his large furred doublet is hanging
beside his clean bridegroom nightgown: there is nothing wanting in the
room but He and She. For he had preached her with him tonight into the
empty Apostle's-day church, that so her mother, without
witnesses--except the two or three thousand readers who are peeping with
me through the window--might arrange the provender-baking, and whole
commissariat department of the birthday-festival, and spread out her
best table-gear and victual-stores without obstruction.
The soul-curer reckoned it no sin to admonish, and exhort, and
encourage, and threaten his parishioners, till he felt pretty certain
that the soup must be smoking on the plates. Then he led his birthday
helpmate home, and suddenly placed her before the altar of
meat-offering, before a sweet title-page of bread-tart, on which her
name stood baked, in true _monastic characters_, in tooth-letters of
almonds. In the background of time and of the room, I yet conceal
two--bottles of Pontac. How quickly, under the sunshine of joy, do thy
cheeks grow ripe, Thiennette, when thy husband solemnly says: "This is
thy birthday; and may the Lord bless thee and watch over thee, and cause
his countenance to shine on thee, and send thee, to the joy of our
mother and thy husband especially, a happy glad _recovery_. Amen!"--And
when Thiennette perceived that it was the old mistress who had cooked
and served up all this herself, she fell upon her neck, as if it had
been not her husband's mother, but her own.
Emotion conquers the appetite. But Fixlein's stomach was as strong as
his heart; and with him no species of movement could subdue the
peristaltic. Drink is the friction-oil of the tongue, as eating is its
drag. Yet, not till he had eaten and spoken much, did the pastor fill
the glasses. Then indeed he drew the cork-sluice from the bottle, and
set forth its streams. The sickly mother, of a being still hid beneath
her heart, turned her eyes, in embarrassed emotion, on the old woman
only; and could scarcely chide him for sending to the city wine-merchant
on her account. He took a glass in each hand, for each of the two whom
he loved, and handed them to his mother and his wife, and said: "To thy
long, long life, Thiennette!--And your health and happiness, Mamma!--And
a glad arrival to our little one, if God so bless us!"--"My son," said
the gardeneress, "it is to thy long life that we must drink; for it is
by thee we are supported. God grant thee length of days!" added she,
with stifled voice, and her eyes betrayed her tears.