Schoppe's history was, according to Wehrfritz's and the uncle's
telling, this: He had started up glowing out of the constrained
slumber; the snorting war-steed of vindictive fury against the Spaniard
had hurried him away. In the hotel-yard of the latter the servant had
directed him with a lie to the castle. Here, amidst the confused tumult
about the suffering Prince, he had reached, unasked, unseen, the
mirror-room where he had once begged of the Countess Linda Idoine's
word of peace for his distracted friend. When the cylindrical mirror
which graves the long years of age on the young face, and shakes
thereon the moss and rubbish of time, threw out at him his image wasted
with madness, said he, "Ho, ho! the old _I_ lurks somewhere in the
neighborhood," and looked grimly round. Out of the mirrors of the
mirrors he saw a whole people of _I_'s looking at him. He sprang upon a
chair, to unhang a long mirror. While he was starting the nail of the
same, a clock in the wall struck twelve times. Here the prediction of
Gaspard came into his head, which his friend had confided to him, and
all the rules which the latter had prescribed to him for the solution
of the riddles. The prediction mentioned, indeed, a picture-gallery,
but a mirror-room is itself one, only more vacillating, and deeper in
behind the wall. He took down the mirror, according to the rules given
by Gaspard, found and opened the arras-door corresponding to the size
of the mirror; the wooden female form, with the open souvenir in her
left hand and the crayon in her right, sat behind there. He pressed,
according to the prescription, the ring on the left middle finger; the
form stood up, with the rolling of an inward machinery, stepped out
into the apartment, stopped at the opposite wall, drew a line down
thereon with the crayon in its hand. He drew up the border of the
wall-hanging; the perspective-glass and the waxen impression of the
coffin-key lay in a compartment behind there. Now he pressed the
ring-finger; the figure set the crayon upon the souvenir, and wrote,
"Son, go into the princely vault in the Blumenbühl church, and open the
coffin of the Princess Eleonore, and thou wilt find the black slab."
When that was done (the Knight had told Albano), if the marble slab,
nevertheless, was not found in the coffin, then he must press the third
ring on the little finger, whereupon something would appear which he
himself did not foreknow. Schoppe tried the pressure of this finger
before going into the Blumenbühl Church,--the figure remained
standing,--but something began to roll inside,--the arms stretched
themselves out and fell down,--wheels rolled out,--at last the whole
form dismembered itself by a mechanical suicide, and there appeared an
old head of wax.
Here Schoppe went off, to run to Blumenbühl and fetch out of the vault
the light required for this night-piece. Though it was noonday, church
and vault were left open,--perhaps because they were making room for
the new cavern-guest who was just dying. Without stopping to transform
the waxen key into an iron one, he violently broke open the coffin with
an iron tool, and quickly snatched out the marble slab and Albano's
portrait. He broke the slab behind a bush. When he read the
superscription, he examined no farther; he hastened to Albano's house
to deliver all. But the two were simultaneously seeking each other in
vain. Meanwhile he lighted upon the honest Wehrfritz, through whom
alone he could despatch such important booty; he himself was now on the
scent after his deadly foe, the Spaniard, and no power could drive him
off the hunting-ground of his wrath.
At sundown Schoppe espied the Spaniard, who, flying out of the Prince's
Garden to escape the fac-simile, Siebenkäs, came running into his
hands. He stiffened at the sight of the madman, cried, "Lord and God,
are you behind me and before me, are you red and green?" and rushed
sidewards into the old Chapel of the Cross, to fall on his knees and
invoke the Holy Virgin. Schoppe stretched out his condor wings, shot
off and dropped them together before the chapel. "Turn thyself round,
Spaniard, I'll devour thee from top to toe," said he. "Holy mother of
God, help me,--good, bad spirit, stand by me, O gloomy one!" prayed the
Baldhead. "Step round, knave, without further trick," said Schoppe,
describing from behind with his sword a horse-shoe in the air. He
turned round piteously on his knees, and his head hung slackly down
from his neck. Schoppe began: "Now I've got thee, villain! thou prayest
to me to no purpose on thy knees; I hold the sword of judgment,--mad am
I, too,--in a few minutes, when we have said our say, I stick this
present cane-sword into thee,--for I am a madman, full of fixed ideas."
"Ah, sir," replied the Baldhead, "you are certainly entirely rational
and in your head and yourself; I beg to live; killing is so great a
deadly sin." Schoppe replied: "As to my understanding, of that another
time! I have already shot thee in effigy, now will I not carry round in
vain the deadly sin and the sting of conscience, but set myself about
it _in naturâ_, thou hangman of souls, thou trepan of hearts!"
"Schoppe, Schoppe!" cried at this moment, several times over, at great
distances, a something with Albano's voice. He looked swiftly round;
nothing was to be seen. "Good Schoppe," it continued, "let my uncle
go!" Now Schoppe blazed up, and raised his dagger for a thrust. "Thou
absolutely too abominably petrified ventriloquist! Should not one
immediately stick the trumpery here as they do a wounded horse? Seest
thou not, then, the hellish, cursed murder- and death-stroke before thy
nose, thy pest-cart already tackled up, the stuffed-out skeleton of
death cased in this flesh of mine, and just lifting the scythe?
Confess, Spaniard, for Jesus' sake, confess! Fly, ere I stick, spit
thee! Thou wilt thereby have some plea with the devils in hell;
otherwise thou art, even down below there, an utterly ruined man."
"Where sits the Pater? I will confess, indeed," said the Spaniard.
"Here stands thy gallows-Pater; behold the shorn poll," said Schoppe,
shaking off the hat from his bending, close-shaven head.
"Hear my confession! But by night the gloomy one suffers me not to tell
the truth,--he comes certainly, he comes to take me, Pater! fumigate
me, baptize me against the devil!"
"Step-penitent and thief, am I not father-confessor and Pater
enough for thee, who will soon baptize thee? Just say all, hound, I
absolve thee, and then strike thee dead for penitence. Say on, thou
coronation-mint of the Devil, art thou not the Baldhead, and the Father
of Death, and the monk at the same time, whose figure full of gas went
up toward heaven in Mola, and hadst ventriloquism and wax-moulding and
considerable knavery at hand?"
"Yes, father, ventriloquism and wax-images and the knave. But the evil
spirit was always by; often I said nothing, and yet it was said, and
the figures ran."
"Mordian," said Schoppe, waxing furious upon this subject, "seize the
hound! Dost thou still lie,--thou cloaca dug in Paradise!--into the ear
of the great Fatal Sister, thou mimic mummery? Does thy death's head
without lip and tongue still bestir itself to lie? O God, what are thy
human creatures!"
"O Pater, they are no lies! but the gloomy one wills them by night; I
have made a league with him,--I have seen him this evening; he looked
like you, and was in green. Holy Mary, O Pater, I have spoken the
truth; there he comes in green,--O Pater, O Mary, and has your form and
a fiery eye in his hand--"
"No one has my form," said Schoppe, agitated, "but the 'I.'"
"O glance round! The evil spirit comes to me--absolve--stab--I will die
off!"
Schoppe at last looked behind him. The striding cast of his form came
moving along towards him,--the fiery eye in the hand ascended into the
face,--the mask of the _I_ was clad in green. "Evil spirit, I am just
in the act of auricular confession; thou canst not come hither; I am
holy," cried the Spaniard, and grasped Schoppe. The dog seized _him_.
Schoppe stared at the green form,--the sword fell from his hand. "My
Schoppe," it cried, "I seek thee, dost thou not know me?"
"Long enough! Thou art the old _I_,--only bring thy face along hither
and put it to mine, and make this stupid existence cold," cried
Schoppe, with a last effort of manly force. "I am Siebenkäs," said the
Fac-simile, tenderly, and stepped quite near. "So am I; I resemble I,"
said he once more, in a low tone; but at that moment the overpowered
man collapsed, and this cleansing storm became a sighing, still breath
of air. With a face growing white, spasmodically shutting-to his stiff
eyes, he fell; the playing fingers seemed still to be calling the dog,
and the lips were just making themselves up for a joke which they did
not utter. His friend Siebenkäs, who could not guess anything of the
matter, raised, weeping, the cold, fast-closed hand to his heart, to
his mouth, and cried: "Brother, look up, thy old friend from Baduz
stands verily beside thee, and sees thee in the pangs of death; he bids
thee a thousand times farewell,--farewell!"
This seemed to convey into the breaking heart, through the ears still
open to life, sweet tones of the dear old times and pleasant dreams of
eternal love;--the mouth began a faint smile, traced at once by
pleasure and death,--the broad breast filled, and heaved once more for
a sigh of pleasure: it was the last sigh of life, and the dead one sank
back, smiling, on the earth.
Now hast thou ended thy course here below, stern, steadfast spirit! and
into the last evening-tempest on thy bosom there still streamed a soft,
playing sun, and filled it with roses and gold. The earth-ball, and all
the earthly stuff out of which the fleeting worlds are formed, was
indeed far too small and light for thee. For thou soughtest behind,
beneath, and beyond life, something higher than life; not thy _self_,
thy _I_,--no mortal, not an immortal, but the Eternal, the Original
One, God! This present _seeming_ was so indifferent to thee, the evil
as well as the good. Now thou art reposing in real _being_,--death has
swept away from the dark heart the whole sultry cloud of life, and the
eternal light stands uncovered which thou didst so long seek, and thou,
its beam, dwellest again in the fire.