The promised circumstance has its root again in older circumstances
which occurred between the Princess and the Minister; these I here
premise.
The Minister had been very soon furnished by his friend Bouverot--whose
clammy woodpecker's tongue licked off unseen the vermin of all
mysteries out of all musty cracks in the throne--with a description of
all that the Princess concealed in herself in the shape of Phoenix
ashes and rubbish: he had instructed him that she, cold as a piece of
ice ground into a convex lens, never would melt herself, but only
others; that she was one of those more rare coquettes who, like sweet
wines, become sour through warmth, and only sweeter by cold; and that
she therefore had about her one of the worst habits,--which made the
most grievous jobs for every one. It was, namely, the following: She
had a heart, and would never suffer it to lie in her bosom as dead
capital; but it must pay interest, and circulate. So the lover became,
in the beginning, more wide awake and gay from day to day, then from
hour to hour; he knew all by-ways through wood and hollow, all thieves'
paths and shorter cuts in this love-garden regularly by heart, and
would foretell the critical[40] quarter of an hour on his repeating
watch when he should arrive at the summer-house. It was not by any
means unknown to him (but comical) what it signified, that the said
lover would pass with her from sentences to glances, from these to
kissing of the hand, then to kissing of the mouth, whereupon he would
find himself caught, entrapped, and imprisoned in the Whistonian
comet's-train of her ell-long (or mile-long) hair as in a bird-net (in
which, however, the noose was also the berry-bait), and bent up in his
prison to such a degree as to know what o'clock it had struck on his
repeater. But just then, when all clouds seemed fallen from heaven, he
himself would fall out of both into a basket from her;--that was the
bad point. In fact, German princes of the oldest houses, who had made
all other experiments, saw themselves made immoral, ay, ridiculous, and
knew not at all what to think about it; for the Princess openly
wondered at such monsters, gave all the world a copy of her challenge,
showed all the world the redness and the loftiness of her
turkey-hen's-neck, and suffered such an old tempter of a Prince, or
whoever it was, never more in her haughty presence.
As princes (in such cases) know what they want, so of course they
spread it about that she knew not what _she_ would have; and often not
till long after an hereditary prince came the apanaged brother of the
same court, and later the legitimated one. However, the thing remained
the same; namely, she remained like the spherical concave mirror, which
indeed images behind itself what stands close before it, as large and
upright, but so soon as it comes into its focus, makes it invisible, and
then out beyond that point hangs it quite diminished and topsy-turvy
in the air. Her love was a fever of debility, in which Darwin, Weikard,
and other Brownists, by _stimulating_ means--wine, for instance--produce
a _slower_ pulse, and even promise therefrom a cure. So far Bouverot to
the Minister!
But to the Minister came thereby an inexpressible favor. For princes'
sins jumped not at all with his professional studies and trade. When,
therefore, she had decided upon having his understanding and powerful
physiognomy near her, and had named him Minister of her most intimate
relations in Haarhaar, then was it solemnly laid down and sworn to
within him, never, though she were kindness itself, to be the robber of
her honor to her straw-widower. In the beginning, like all his
predecessors, he got on easily with mere pure feelings and discourses;
as yet there was nothing desired of him, except that he should
sometimes unexpectedly dart at her a sly look full of loving
tenderness; and he must also have a longing. He darted the look; he
also got up longings; and so he felt himself comfortably enough insured
for such a successful love affair.
But it stopped not here. Hardly had her Albano appeared, when the
thorn-girdle and hair-shirt of the pure Minister was made
disproportionately more rough and thorny, and the strongest
requirements, namely, gifts, redoubled, in order that the poor Joseph
might the more speedily assail her honor and therefore run into his
ruin, which should be bait for the Count. By this time he had
been already brought along so far that he wove and knotted in her
flying hair (to him poisonous snake-hair),--he must needs blow out
soap-bubbles of sighs from his pipe,--he must needs quite often be
beside himself; yes, he must even (if he would not see himself chased
away as a hypocritical rascal) be half-sensual, although still decent
enough. Meanwhile he was not to be tempted into a temptation by the
Devil himself. Whenever he even thought of the subject, shuddering, how
the least misstep might hurl him from his ministerial post, then he
would as soon have let himself be impaled and quartered as bewitched.
For a third party, not for these two,--they were the sufferers,--it
would perhaps have been a feast, to have seen how they (if I may use a
too low comparison) resembled a pair of silk stockings drawn over each
other, which for and by each other, when one keeps them distended[41]
at a certain distance, ethereally blow themselves and fill, but
immediately collapse, flat and flabby, when they touch each other.
Of course, in the long run, it fell heavily upon the old statesman to
have to leap along before the dancing pageantry of love-gods as their
arch-master, tackled into the triumphal car of the Cyprian,--a
flower-garland on his state-peruke, in his eyes two Vauclusa fountains,
the cavity of his breast a choked-up Dido's cave, wearing in his
button-hole an arrow in a heart, or a heart on an arrow, and faring
toward the capitol, in order there, after the Roman fashion, not so
much to sacrifice as to be sacrificed. Nothing except the tin boxes
which the government officers and exchequer messengers stowed away for
him at home could fan fresh and cool again the stalemated man, who
would fain be a checkmated one.
He read with her Catullus, she with him the better pictures out of the
Prince's cabinet; it was allowed him to reward her by his Latinity for
her artistic favors: but he remained, nevertheless, as he was.
When women wish to carry a point, and find hindrances constantly
recurring, they grow at last blind and wild, and dare anything
and everything. The tour to Italy approached so fast; still the
Minister was no nearer to letting go his high consideration for his
beloved,--although from just her own motive, that of the tour, with the
nearness of which he animated himself to a cheerful endurance of so
short a flame. Her passion for the Count increased with the Count's
tranquillity, because coldness strengthens strong love, just as
physical coldness makes strong people more vigorous and weak ones more
puny. Froulay, as an old man, was, as it seemed, capable of creeping
along so for a whole age to his object, without making one unnecessary
leap, since old people, like ships, always move slower the longer they
have been going, and on similar grounds, namely, that both, by the
adhesion of filth, weeds, barnacles, and the like, have become
unwieldy. In short, the Princess at last ceased to ask for anything,
but matters went thus:--
The Prince had gone a journey, the Princess had been invited as
god-mother out into the country. The castellain on one of her country
castles, who had already the year before invited the Minister, had not
been restrained by bashfulness from making his way still farther up on
this rope-ladder, with his descendant under his arm, and up there on
the throne laying his child of the land in the arms of her, the
Princess herself. Princes love to let themselves down--on thin
silk-worm threads--(as well as up); they value the good-natured, stupid
people, and would fain in this way raise somewhat the poor creeping
dwarf-beans,--for they well know how little it matters,--and, so to
speak, pole them and boot them by means of the leg of the princely
chair. Beside this, the Minister had been invited as grand-god-father
(so called). The autumn day was only a brighter, more perfect spring,
and the autumnal night stood under a brilliant full moon. Courts always
long so exceedingly to be away in the country, among the idyls of
murmuring rivulets, sighing branches, and tree-tops, and bleating
Swisseries, and farmers; Courts--that is, courtiers, court-dames and
official chamberlains'-staves, and others--yearn so for the society of
human beings; as beasts are driven by the December hunger, so does a
noble hunger drive them down from the throne-mountains into the flat
plains; not that they would fly from _ennui_, but they desire only a
different kind, as their very pastime consists in the abbreviation and
alternation of their _ennui_.
Hardly had the Court appeased its first longing for the people with
whom it stood for half a quarter of an hour on a confidential,
conversational footing, when it came to itself again, and dispersed
itself through the princely garden, in order to consume full as long a
time in satisfying its longing after nature. A sponsoress of the
sponsoress promised Christianity in the stead of Princess and child.
The Princess herself attached the Minister to her as a chamberlain. The
grand-god-father looked out into the prospect of a d--d long evening,
in which he should be obliged to parade round her procession-banner.
For the enjoyment of the evening there was a concert, and for the
enjoyment of the concert card playing had been arranged; and for the
enjoyment of the latter, the Princess had seated herself alone with
Froulay, in order, during the general playing of cards and instruments,
to have some inaudible conversation with him. Suddenly the two pounds
which were hung up in his breast--for no heart, according to the
anatomists, weighs more than that--became two hundred-weight heavier,
when she asked him whether he was steadfast and could confide in her
and dare for her. He swore that, if only as Princess, she might expect
of his two-pounder any and every sacrifice and mark of veneration. She
went on: she had some weighty things to intrust him with to-day about
herself and the Prince; she wished, when the _Foule_ was gone, to speak
with him alone; he need only go up the little stairway from the side of
the garden to the door of the library-chamber; this was open; in the
poetical bookcase on the left side was a spring in the wall, the
pressure of which would open to him the tapestry door of the apartment,
where he was to await her.
Immediately she rose, presuming upon an affirmative. How it fared now
with the two pounds of his sixty-four-ounce-heart can gratify none but
his deadly enemy to realize. So much lay written before him with long,
thick, stony letters, as on an epitaphium, namely, that after a few
hours, when the other lords, in other respects still greater sinners
than he, could snore away quietly in the pleasant ministerial houses
which formed the court of the Palace, that then for him, innocent
knave, the wolf-hour, that is to say, the shepherd's hour,[42] would so
soon strike, when he on the most flowery meadow must kneel beneath the
butcher's knife. But he--angry that his faith in female and princely
impudence should prove a soothsayer--made silently all kinds of oaths
to himself, that, even if as much were imposed upon him as on the
greatest saints and universal philosophers, he would nevertheless
behave like both, for instance, like old Zeno and Franz.
The Princess sought him all the evening less than usual. At last he
took his respectful leave of the whole court, but with the prospect
of creeping, not, like them, under silk quilts, but under cold
bowers. He even marched--sure of himself--up the stairway, opened the
library-chamber, found the spring, touched it, and stepped through the
tapestry door into the princely--bedchamber. "It is certain, then,"
said he, and cursed about him inwardly to his heart's content, lying
prostrate and crushed quite flat beneath the love-letter weight. In the
side chamber on the left hand he already heard her and a chambermaid,
who was undressing her. On the right the door of a second but lighted
chamber stood ajar. He stood long in doubt whether he should step into
that, or stay where he was under the light-screen of a dark corner. At
last he laid hold of the protection of night. During his suspense and
her disrobing, he had time to rehearse or read over his part; now he
came to an agreement with himself, in case of necessity,--and if he
should find himself pushed too hard--and all the more, as the place
would speak more against _her_ than against _him_, inasmuch as every
one must needs ask, whether he could otherwise have possibly gained
admission,--in such a case of necessity, where only the choice between
a satire and a satyr was left him, he determined to transform himself
on the spot into a respectful--Faun.
Directly the Princess strode in, but in the direction of the
illuminated chamber. "I have no further occasion for thee," she called
back to the chambermaid. "_Diable!_" screamed she, in the bedchamber,
spying out the tall Minister; "who stands there? Hanna, a light!
_Ciel!_" she continued, recognizing him, but continuing to speak
French, because Hanna understood nothing of that. "_Mais, Monsieur! Me
voila donc compromise! Quelle méprise! Vous vous etes trompé de
chambres! Pardonnéz, Monsieur, que je sauve les déhors de mon sexe et
de mon rang. Comment avez-vous-pu_--" She uttered all this, perhaps,
by way of blinding the German witness, with an angry accent. The
grand-godfather--who, after all previous gratifications, felt like a
cock, who has gulped down many live chafers, and is now threatened with
his life by their sticking in his distressed crop--kept not silence,
but replied in German, opening the tapestry door, meanwhile, that he
had, even as she commanded, laid the books out of the library in the
lighted chamber, and had been caught _in transitu_. He went immediately
through the tapestry; but she could hardly contain herself for terror,
had the physician called in the morning, and sent back her retinue.
Froulay--however much like the Spanish he found his romances, among
which, according to Fisher's assertion, the thieves' literature is the
best--at last did not know, himself, what to make of it.
The chambermaid had to make profession with the vow of silence, which
she kept as strictly as she could, but not more so. Next morning very
few alighted before their own doors, most before the doors of others,
in order to land the news together with the injunction of the Princess
not to make the thing _éclatant_, because in that case the Prince would
hear of it.
If ever the nobility of Pestitz was happy _en masse_, it was this very
morning. Nothing was wanting to universal joy but a chambermaid who
should have only understood as much French as a hunting-dog.