splendour had dissipated, I alone, like a precipitate, abode with him;
and am still abiding, that is, from the fifth of May (the Public should
take the Almanac of 1794, and keep it open beside them) to the
fifteenth: today is Thursday, tomorrow is the sixteenth and Friday, when
comes the Spinat-Kirmes, or Spinage-Wake, as they call it, and the
uplifting of the steeple-ball, which I just purposed to await before I
went. Now, however, I do not go so soon; for on Sunday I have to assist
at the baptismal ceremony, as baptismal agent for my little future
godson. Whoever pays attention to me, and keeps the Almanac open, may
readily guess why the christening is put off till Sunday: for it is that
memorable Cantata-Sunday, which once, for its mad narcotic
hemlock-virtues, was of importance in our History; but is now so only
for the fair betrothment, which after two years we mean to celebrate
with a baptism.
Truly it is not in my power--for want of colours and presses--to paint
or print upon my paper the soft balmy flower-garland of a fortnight
which has here wound itself about my sickly life; but with a single day
I shall attempt it. Man, I know well, cannot prognosticate either his
joys or his sorrows, still less repeat them, either in living or
writing.
The black hour of coffee has gold in its mouth for us and honey; here,
in the morning coolness, we are all gathered; we maintain popular
conversation, that so the parsoness and the gardeneress may be able to
take share in it. The morning-service in the church, where often the
whole people[59] are sitting and singing, divides us. While the bell is
sounding, I march with my writing-gear into the singing Castle-garden;
and seat myself in the fresh acacia-grove, at the dewy two-legged table.
Fixlein's Letter-boxes I keep by me in my pocket; and I have only to
look and abstract from his what can be of use in my own.--Strange
enough! so easily do we forget a thing in describing it, I really did
not recollect for a moment that I am now sitting at the very
grove-table, of which I speak, and writing all this.--
[59] For according to the Jurists, fifteen persons make a people.
My gossip in the mean time is also labouring for the world. His study is
a sort of sacristy, and his printing-press a pulpit, wherefrom he
preaches to all men; for an Author is the Town-chaplain of the Universe.
A man, who is making a Book, will scarcely hang himself; all rich
Lords'-sons, therefore, should labour for the press; for, in that case,
when you awake too early in bed, you have always a _plan_, an aim, and
therefore a cause before you why you should get out of it. Better off
too is the author who collects rather than invents,--for the latter with
its eating fire calcines the heart: I praise the Antiquary, the
Heraldist, Notemaker, Compiler; I esteem the _Title-perch_ (a fish
called _Perca-Diagramma_, because of the letters on its scales), and the
_Printer_ (a chafer, called _Scarabaeus Typographus_, which eats letters
in the bark of fir),--neither of them needs any greater or fairer arena
in the world than a piece of rag-paper, or any other laying-apparatus
than a pointed pencil, wherewith to lay his four-and-twenty
letter-eggs.--In regard to the _catalogue raisonne_, which my gossip is
now drawing up of German _Errata_, I have several times suggested to
him, "that it were good if he extended his researches in one respect,
and revised the rule, by which it has been computed, that _e. g._ for a
hundredweight of pica black-letter, four hundred and fifty semicolons,
three hundred periods, &c. are required; and to recount, and see whether
in Political writings and Dedications the fifty notes of admiration for
a hundredweight of pica black-letter were not far too small an
allowance, and if so, what the real quantity was?"
Several days he wrote nothing; but wrapped himself in the slough of his
parson's-cloak; and so in his canonicals, beside the Schoolmaster, put
the few A-b-c shooters, which were not, like forest-shooters, absent on
furlough by reason of the spring,--through their platoon firing in the
Hornbook. He never did more than his duty, but also never less. It
brought a soft benignant warmth over his heart, to think that he, who
had once ducked under a School-inspectorship, was now one himself.
About ten o'clock, we meet from our different museums, and examine the
village, especially the Biographical furniture and holy places, which I
chance that morning to have had under my pen or pantagraph; because I
look at them with more interest _after_ my description than _before_ it.
Next comes dinner.--
After the concluding grace, which is too long, we both of us set to
entering the charitable subsidies, and religious donations, which our
parishioners have remitted to the sinking or rather rising fund of the
church-box for the purchase of the new steeple-globe, into two ledgers:
the one of these, with the names of the subscribers, or (in case they
have subscribed for their children) with their children's names also, is
to be inurned in a leaden capsule, and preserved in the steeple-ball;
the other will remain below among the parish Registers. You cannot fancy
what contributions the ambition of getting into the Ball brings us in;
I declare, several peasants who had given and well once already,
contributed again when they had baptisms: must not little Hans be in the
Ball too?
After this book-keeping by double-entry, my gossip took to engraving on
copper. He had been so happy as to elicit the discovery, that from a
certain stroke resembling an inverted Latin S, the capital letters of
our German Chancery-hand, beautiful and intertwisted as you see them
stand in Law-deeds and Letters-of-nobility, may every one of them be
composed and spun out.
"Before you can count sixty," said he to me, "I take my
fundamental-stroke and make you any letter out of it."
I merely inverted this fundamental-stroke, that is, gave him a German S,
and counted sixty till he had it done. This line of beauty, when once it
has been twisted and flourished into all the capitals, he purposes by
copperplates which he is himself engraving, to make more common for the
use of Chanceries; and I may take upon me to give the Russian, the
Prussian, and a few other smaller Courts, hopes of proof impressions
from his hand: to under-secretaries they are indispensable.
Now comes evening; and it is time for us both, here forking about with
our fruit-hooks on the literary Tree of Knowledge, at the risk of our
necks, to clamber down again into the meadow-flowers and pasturages of
rural joy. We wait, however, till the busy Thiennette, whom we are now
to receive into our communion, has no more walks to take but the one
between us. Then slowly we stept along (the sick lady was weak) through
the office-houses; that is to say, through stalls and their population,
and past a horrid lake of ducks, and past a little milk-pond of carps,
to both of which colonies, I and the rest, like princes, gave bread,
seeing we had it in view on the Sunday after the christening, to--take
them for bread ourselves.
The sky is still growing kindlier and redder, the swallows and the
blossom-trees louder, the house-shadows broader, and men more happy. The
clustering blossoms of the acacia-grove hang down over our cold
collation; and the ham is not stuck (which always vexes me) with
flowers, but beshaded with them from a distance....
And now the deeper evening and the nightingale conspire to soften me;
and I soften in my turn the mild beings round me; especially the pale
Thiennette, to whom, or to whose heart, after the apoplectic crushings
of a downpressed youth, the most violent pulses of joy are heavier than
the movements of pensive sadness. And thus beautifully runs our pure
transparent life along, under the blooming curtains of May; and in our
modest pleasures we look with timidity neither behind us nor before; as
people who are lifting treasure gaze not round at the road they came, or
the road they are going.
So pass our days. Today, however, it was different: by this time,
usually, the evening meal is over; and the Shock has got the osseous
preparation of our supper between his jaws; but tonight I am still
sitting here alone in the garden, writing the Eleventh Letter-Box, and
peeping out every instant over the meadows, to see if my gossip is not
coming.
For he is gone to town, to bring a whole magazine of spiceries: his
coat-pockets are wide. Nay, it is certain enough that oftentimes he
brings home with him, simply in his coat-pocket, considerable
flesh-tithes from his Guardian, at whose house he alights; though truly
intercourse with the polished world and city, and the refinement of
manners thence arising,--for he calls on the bookseller, on
school-colleagues, and several respectable shopkeepers,--does, much more
than flesh-fetching, form the object of these journeys to the city. This
morning he appointed me regent head of the house, and delivered me the
_fasces_ and _curule chair_. I sat the whole day beside the young pale
mother; and could not but think, simply because the husband had left me
there as his representative, that I liked the fair soul better. She had
to take dark colours, and paint out for me the winter landscape and ice
region of her sorrow-wasted youth; but often, contrary to my intention,
by some simple elegiac word, I made her still eye wet; for the too full
heart, which had been crushed with other than sentimental woes,
overflowed at the smallest pressure. A hundred times in the recital I
was on the point of saying: "O yes, it was with winter that your life
began, and the course of it has resembled winter!"--Windless, cloudless
day! Three more words about thee, the world will still not take amiss
from me!
I advanced nearer and nearer to the heart-central-fire of the women; and
at last they mildly broke forth in censure of the Parson; the best wives
will complain of their husbands to a stranger, without in the smallest
liking them the less on that account. The mother and the wife, during
dinner, accused him of buying lots at every book-auction; and, in
truth, in such places, he does strive and bid not so much for good or
for bad books--or old ones--or new ones--or such as he likes to read--or
any sort of favourite books--but simply for books. The mother blamed
especially his squandering so much on copperplates; yet some hours
after, when the Schultheis, or Mayor, who wrote a beautiful hand, came
in to subscribe for the steeple-ball, she pointed out to him how finely
her son could engrave, and said that it was well worth while to spend a
groschen or two on such capitals as these.
They then handed me,--for when once women are in the way of a full
open-hearted effusion, they like (only you must not turn the stop-cock
of inquiry) to pour out the whole,--a ring-case, in which he kept a
Chamberlain's key that he had found, and asked me if I knew who had lost
it. Who could know such a thing, when there are almost more Chamberlains
than picklocks among us?--
At last I took heart, and asked after the little toy-press of the
drowned son, which hitherto I had sought for in vain over all the house.
Fixlein himself had inquired for it, with as little success. Thiennette
gave the old mother a persuading look full of love; and the latter led
me up-stairs to an outstretched hoop-petticoat, covering the poor press
as with a dome. On the way thither the mother told me, she kept it hid
from her son, because the recollection of his brother would pain him.
When this deposit-chest of Time (the lock had fallen off) was laid open
to me, and I had looked into the little charnel-house, with its wrecks
of a childlike sportful Past, I, without saying a word, determined, some
time ere I went away, to unpack these playthings of the lost boy, before
his surviving brother: Can there be aught finer than to look at these
ash-buried, deep-sunk Herculanean ruins of childhood, now dug up and in
the open air?
Thiennette sent twice to ask me whether he was come. He and she,
precisely because they do not give their love the weakening expression
of phrases, but the strengthening one of actions, have a boundless
feeling of it towards one another. Some wedded pairs eat each other's
lips and hearts and love away by kisses,--as in Rome, the statues of
Christ (by Angelo) have lost their feet by the same process of kissing,
and got leaden ones instead; in other couples, again, you may see, by
mere inspection, the number of their conflagrations and eruptions, as in
Vesuvius you can discover his, of which there are now forty-three: but
in these two beings rose the Greek fire of a moderate and everlasting
love, and gave warmth without casting forth sparks, and flamed straight
up without crackling. The evening-red is flowing back more magically
from the windows of the gardener's cottage into my grove; and I feel as
if I must say to Destiny: "Hast thou a sharp sorrow, then throw it
rather into my breast, and strike not with it three good souls, who are
too happy not to bleed by it, and too sequestered in their little dim
village not to shrink back at the thunderbolt which hurries a stricken
spirit from its earthly dwelling."----
Thou good Fixlein! Here comes he hurrying over the parsonage-green. What
languishing looks full of love already rest in the eye of thy
Thiennette!--What news wilt thou bring us tonight from the town!--How
will the ascending steeple-ball refresh thy soul tomorrow!--
TWELFTH LETTER-BOX.
_Steeple-ball-Ascension. The Toy-press._
How, on this sixteenth of May, the old steeple-ball was twisted-off from
the Hukelum steeple, and a new one put on in its stead, will I now
describe to my best ability; but in that simple historical style of the
Ancients, which, for great events, is perhaps the most suitable.
At a very early hour, a coach arrived containing Messrs. Court-Guilder
Zeddel and Locksmith Waechser, and the new Peter's-cupola of the steeple.
Towards eight o'clock the community, consisting of subscribers to the
Globe, was visibly collecting. A little later came the Lord Dragoon
Rittmeister von Aufhammer, as Patron of the church and steeple, attended
by Mr. Church-Inspector Streichert. Hereupon my Reverend Cousin Fixlein
and I repaired, with the other persons whom I have already named, into
the Church, and there celebrated before innumerable hearers a weekday
prayer-service. Directly afterwards, my Reverend Friend made his
appearance above in the pulpit, and endeavoured to deliver a speech
which might correspond to the solemn transaction;--and immediately
thereafter, he read aloud the names of the patrons and charitable souls,
by whose donations the Ball had been put together; and showed to the
congregation the leaden box in which they were specially recorded;
observing, that the book from which he had recited them was to be
reposited in the Parish Register-office. Next he held it necessary to
thank them and God, that he, above his deserts, had been chosen as the
instrument and undertaker of such a work. The whole he concluded with a
short prayer for Mr. Stechmann the Slater (who was already hanging on
the outside on the steeple, and loosening the old shaft); and entreated
that he might not break his neck, or any of his members. A short hymn
was then sung, which the most of those assembled without the
church-doors sang along with us, looking up at the same time to the
steeple.
All of us now proceeded out likewise; and the discarded ball, as it were
the amputated cock's-comb of the church, was lowered down and untied.
Church-Inspector Streichert drew a leaden case from the crumbling ball,
which my Reverend Friend put into his pocket, purposing to read it at
his convenience; I, however, said to some peasants: "See, thus will your
names also be preserved in the new Ball, and when, after long years, it
shall be taken down, the box lies within it, and the then parson becomes
acquainted with you all."--And now was the new steeple-globe, with the
leaden cup in which lay the names of the bystanders, at length
full-laden so to speak, and saturated, and fixed to the
pulley-rope;--and so did this the whilom cupping-glass of the community
ascend aloft....
By heaven! the unadorned style is here a thing beyond my power: for when
the Ball moved, swung, mounted, there rose a drumming in the centre of
the steeple; and the Schoolmaster, who, till now, had looked down
through a sounding-hole directed towards the congregation, now stept out
with a trumpet at a side sounding-hole, which the mounting Ball was not
to cross.--But when the whole Church rung and pealed, the nearer the
capital approached its crown,--and when the Slater clutched it and
turned it round, and happily incorporated the spike of it, and delivered
down, between Heaven and Earth, and leaning on the Ball, a
Topstone-speech to this and all of us,--and when my gossip's eyes, in
his rapture at being Parson on this great day, were running over, and
the tears trickling down his priestly garment;--I believe I was the only
man,--as his mother was the only woman,--whose souls a common grief laid
hold of to press them even to bleeding; for I and the mother had
yesternight, as I shall tell more largely afterwards, discovered in the
little chest of the drowned boy, from a memorial in his father's hand,
that, on the day after the morrow, on Cantata-Sunday and his
baptismal-Sunday, he would be--two-and-thirty years of age. "O!"
thought I, while I looked at the blue heaven, the green graves, the
glittering ball, the weeping priest, "so, at all times, stands poor man
with bandaged eyes before thy sharp sword, incomprehensible Destiny! And
when thou drawest it and brandishest it aloft, he listens with pleasure
to the whizzing of the stroke before it falls!"--
Last night I was aware of it; but to the reader, whom I was preparing
for it afar off, I would tell nothing of the mournful news, that, in the
press of the dead brother, I had found an old Bible which the boys had
used at school, with a white blank leaf in it, on which the father had
written down the dates of his children's birth. And even this it was
that raised in thee, thou poor mother, the shade of sorrow which of late
we have been attributing to smaller causes; and thy heart was still
standing amid the rain, which seemed to us already past over and changed
into a rainbow!--Out of love to him, she had yearly told one falsehood,
and concealed his age. By extreme good luck, he had not been present
when the press was opened. I still purpose, after this fatal Sunday, to
surprise him with the parti-coloured reliques of his childhood, and so
of these old Christmas-presents to make him new ones. In the mean while,
if I and his mother can but follow him incessantly, like
fish-hook-floats and foot-clogs, through tomorrow and next day, that no
murderous accident lift aside the curtain from his
birth-certificate,--all may yet be well. For now, in truth, to his eyes,
this birthday, in the metamorphotic mirror of his superstitious
imagination, and behind the magnifying magic vapour of his present joys,
would burn forth like a red death-warrant.... But besides all this, the
leaf of the Bible is now sitting higher than any of us, namely, in the
new steeple-ball, into which I this morning prudently introduced it.
Properly speaking there is indeed no danger.
THIRTEENTH LETTER-BOX.
_Christening._
Today is that stupid Cantata-Sunday; but nothing now remains of it save
an hour.--By heaven! in right spirits were we all today. I believe I
have drunk as faithfully as another.--In truth, one should be moderate
in all things, in writing, in drinking, in rejoicing; and as we lay
straws into the honey for our bees that they may not drown in their
sugar, so ought one at all times to lay a few firm Principles, and twigs
from the tree of Knowledge, into the Syrup of life, instead of those
same bee-straws, that so one may cling thereto, and not drown like a
rat. But now I do purpose in earnest to--write (and also live) with
steadfastness; and therefore, that I may record the christening ceremony
with greater coolness,--to besprinkle my fire with the night-air, and to
roam out for an hour into the blossom-and-wave-embroidered night, where
a lukewarm breath of air, intoxicated with soft odours, is sinking down
from the blossom-peaks to the low-bent flowers, and roaming over the
meadows, and at last launching on a wave, and with it sailing down the
moonshiny brook. O, without, under the stars, under the tones of the
nightingale, which seem to reverberate, not from the echo, but from the
far-off down-glancing worlds; beside that moon, which the gushing brook
in its flickering watery band is carrying away, and which creeps under
the little shadows of the bank as under clouds,--O, amid such forms and
tones, the heart of man grows serious; and as of old an evening bell was
rung to direct the wanderer through the deep forests to his nightly
home, so in our Night are such voices within us and about us, which call
to us in our strayings, and make us calmer, and teach us to moderate our
own joys, and to conceive those of others.
* * * * *
I return, peaceful and cool enough, to my narrative. All yesternight I
left not the worthy Parson half an hour from my sight, to guard him from
poisoning the well of his life. Full of paternal joy, and with the
skeleton of the sermon (he was committing it to memory) in his hand, he
set before me all that he had; and pointed out to me the fruit-baskets
of pleasures which Cantata-Sunday always plucked and filled for him. He
recounted to me, as I did not go away, his baptisms, his accidents of
office; told me of his relatives; and removed my uncertainty with regard
to the public revenues--of his parish, to the number of his communicants
and expected catechumens. At this point, however, I am afraid that many
a reader will in vain endeavour to transport himself into my situation,
and still be unable to discover why I said to Fixlein: "Worthy gossip,
better no man could wish himself." I lied not, for so it is.... But
look in the Note.[60]
[60] A long philosophical elucidation is indispensably requisite:
which will be found in this Book, under the title: _Natural Magic
of the Imagination_. [A part of the _Jus de Tablette_ appended to
this Biography, unconnected with it, and not given here.--ED.]
At last rose the Sunday, the present; and on this holy day, simply
because my little godson was for going over to Christianity, there was a
vast racket made: every time a conversion happens, especially of
nations, there is an uproaring and a shooting; I refer to the two
Thirty-Years Wars, to the more recent one, and to the earlier, which
Charlemagne so long carried on with the heathen Saxons: thus, in the
_Palais Royal_, the Sun, at his transit over the meridian, fires off a
cannon.[61] But this morning the little Unchristian, my godson, was
precisely the person least attended to; for, in thinking of the
conversion, they had no time left to think of the convert. Therefore I
strolled about with him myself half the forenoon; and, in our walk,
hastily conferred on him a private-baptism; having named him _Jean Paul_
before the priest did so. At midday, we sent the beef away as it had
come; the Sun of happiness having desiccated all our gastric juices. We
now began to look about us for pomp; I for scientific decorations of my
hair, my godson for his christening-shirt, and his mother for her
dress-cap. Yet before the child's-rattle of the christening-bell had
been jingled, I and the midwife, in front of the mother's bed,
instituted Physiognomical Travels[62] on the countenance of the small
Unchristian, and returned with the discovery, that some features had
been embossed by the pattern of the mother, and many firm portions
resembled me; a double similarity, in which my readers can take little
interest. _Jean Paul_ looks very sensible for his years, or rather for
his minutes, for it is the small one I am speaking of.----
[61] This pigmy piece of ordnance, with its cunningly devised
burning-glass, is still to be seen on the south side of the Paris
Vanity-Fair; and in fine weather, to be heard, on all sides
thereof, proclaiming the _conversion_ (so it seems to Richter) of
the Day from Forenoon to Afternoon.--ED.
[62] See _Musaeus_, ante.--ED.