Sowing-Day of Joys.--Watch-Tower.--Fraternization of the Heart!
The departure of his Lordship was the removal of the dam which had
hitherto stood in the way of the flood of narrations, questions, and
pleasures. The first investigation upon which the Parsonage entered
was, to see whether it was really the old Bastian. And he it was, hide
and hair; even the left side-lock he had still, as of old, shorter than
the right. When the butcher's boy comes home from Hungary, he wonders
that his kin are the same old pennies; they, however, wonder that he is
no longer so. But in the present case there was mutual delight at the
unchangedness on both sides. On every face lay the halo of joy, but
on each composed of different rays. On a soft face, like Victor's,
rapture looks like virtue. Old Appel, who had never, in all her life,
turned over any leaves but those of David's Psalter and that in an
ox's stomach,[33] expressed her pleasure all day long to the brass
kettles by scouring them with unusual zest. The Vienna hospital for
animals--consisting of an old pug and puss, who no longer hated
each other, just as in the old man the good and bad souls are
reconciled--and the bird-collection under the stove, which was one
rusty-black bulfinch strong, took their full share of interest in the
general uproar, and introduced themselves, and--which no ambassador
would have done--waived the right of the first visit. Agatha expressed
her joy only with her lips, by keeping silence with them, and pressing
them to her brother's. To the Court-Chaplain's credit, it is reported
that he took the invalid pug, who had the podagra in his hind-feet and
the chiragra in his fore-paws, and shoved him quietly in his basket
keeping-room and chamber under the stove again; restored the
architectural order of the chairs without scolding; and rocked the
little Bastian amidst the joyful confusion of tongues, that he might
not wake up and aggravate it. But in the highly refined heart of
Victor's countrywoman, the Chaplain's wife, the rays of joy from the
whole family came to a focus, and diffused through her whole bosom the
living glow of love. She smiled right into Victor's face to such a
degree that she knew no way of escape but by bethinking herself of his
destined chamber, which she directed to be opened and shown to him.
Agatha flew forward with the jingling bunch of keys; and the guest, as
he entered, was followed by only so many people as there were in the
house, all eager to see what he would say to it.
He surrendered himself to all this friendly handling, not with the vain
egotism of a cultivated stranger, but with a delighted, docile, almost
child-like confusion; it gave him not the least concern that he looked
like a child, so gentle, so glad, and so unpretending. In such hours it
is hard to sit down, or to listen to a story, or to tell one....
Everybody began one, but the Chaplain interposed: "We have quite other
things to talk about." But no _quite other things_ came. Everybody
wanted to enjoy the stranger where there were only four ears, but the
six remaining ears could not be kept away. My description of his
confusion is itself confused, but so it is with me always; for
instance, when I describe haste, I do it, unconsciously, with the
greatest. To a heart like his, that hung rocking in the feathers[34]
of love, was there any need that it should see in every notched
window-sill, in every smooth pavement-pebble, in every round hole
drilled by the rain in the door-step, his boyhood's years mosaically
pictured, and that he should enjoy in the same objects age and novelty?
Those boyish years, which appeared to him out of a shadow, abiding on
the lawns of St. Luna, between happy Sundays and among beloved
faces,--those _boyish years_ held a dark mirror in their hands, in
which the glimmering perspective of his _childish years_ ran backward;
and in that remote magic-night stood, dimly gleaming, the form of
_Dahore_, his never-to-be-forgotten teacher in London, who had so
loved, so indulged, so improved him. "Ah!" thought he, "thou unrequited
heart, too warm for this earth, where beatest thou now? why can I not
unite my sighs with thine, and say to thee, Teacher, Beloved? O, man
often perceives but late how much he was loved, how forgetful and
ungrateful he was, and how great the heart he misunderstood." What
nourished his still pleasure the most was the thought that he had
earned it by his filial obedience to his father, and by his resolve to
undertake the future labors-of-Hercules at court; for into every great
joy of his the doubt would fall, like a bitter stomach-drop, whether he
deserved it,--a doubt which reigning houses, palatines, patriarchs, and
grand-masters have skilfully taken from them in childhood. The better
sort of men find pleasure sweetest only after a good action,--the
Easter-Festival after a Passion-Week.
My lady-readers will now want to hear what was cooked for dinner;
but the documents of this Post-day, which reach me half by wheel and
half by water, state, in the first place, that no one had any
appetite,--which joy takes away more than grief,--except the three
regiments, which slashed like veterans into the enemy,--that is, into
the leavings of the table; secondly, that the meal was still leaner
than the guest himself. We will, however, hereby invite all the
reading-societies in a body to the _immovable_ feast of the 4th of May,
the Friday when, for the first time, Victor's arrival and his godson's
churchgoing are suitably celebrated.
The Parson's wife extricated the beset darling in the afternoon from
the musical circle of so many tones, and smuggled him away from under
the eyes of her husband, whose Directress and Lady Mayoress she was,
and led him to his chamber, that she might there, before him alone,
distress and delight herself, and speak out her heart, like a mother.
Long-suppressed sighs and antiquated tears now forced their way out of
the opened motherly heart into another and tender one, which was,
indeed, her son's best friend. She complained to him of Flamin's
excitability, which Victor used always to allay; of his love for
military life, while, after all, he was a scholar; and, finally, of the
company he kept,--namely, he went roving round with a young page, one
_Matthieu_, son of the Minister _Von Schleunes_, a dissolute,
universally-beloved, universally-spoiled, bold, artful young scoffer,
who, when his service allowed it, would spend his time either over
yonder with the Chamberlain's people, or here with her son: "Heaven
only knew what designs he had in his visits at a citizen's house." She
rejoiced that Victor would bear off his old friend out of the traps and
fangs of this rake. Victor pressed her hand with emotion, and said: "I
could hardly think of sharing his heart with the best bond-fellow.
Not so much as fall in love should he dare to, if it depended on me.
Only me must he love, and one other person, who depicts him quite
wrongly,--namely, yourself." He greatly mistrusted, also, her drawing
of the sun-spots of Matthieu, because women seldom comprehend eccentric
men, and because maidens, indeed, often love wild youths, but matrons
(enlightened by marriage) always prefer gentle ones.
He easily drew the hearts of married women into his drag-net by a
certain kindly gallantry towards them which a German saves for
unmarried ones. Old ladies and old tobacco-pipes, however, easily
cleave to men's lips. The younger pigeons he enticed to himself by his
_comic salt_, as they catch turtle-doves by another kind. A _bon-mot_
is to them a _dictum probans_; a _pasquin_, a _magister sententiarum_;
and the critical calendar of scandal is to them a Kant's Critique of
the Pure Reason, in an improved edition. With his medical doctor's
ring, also, he fastened to himself female souls; as physician, he laid
claim to corporeal mysteries, and then the spiritual easily follow
these.
In the evening, when the woodland stream of the first jubilation had
run out, three sober words were at length possible. The Parson, too, by
this time, scolded less; for joy had made him rabid in the forenoon.
Anger and the body are strengthened together, and therefore by
pleasure. Hence in January and February, when dogs get the longer
madness, men have the short one of wrath; hence convalescents grumble
more at all about them, just as people do under strong mental
excitements,--e. g. Dog-post scribes; hence, too, in the exhaustion
following sick-headache, or a fit of intoxication, one is gentler than
a lamb.
Towards evening, there already transpired something of consequence.
Apollonia swept and dusted her blood-relationship and her guest with
her whisks even sooner than the spiders and the dust. On the 4th of May
was this day's arrival of the long-absent fugitive to be right properly
celebrated. Flamin and Victor led the way through the Parsonage garden,
whose _memorabilia_ and _curiosa_ are so edifying that the
correferent[35] of these acts wishes he could, by the Dog-express,
portray the garden to me more clearly. The Chaplain had stamped off
many beds, not into rectangles, but had curved and twisted them into
the shape of Latin characters, in double black-letter, to represent the
initials of his family. His own (E) he had sowed with radishes;
Apollonia's (A), with capuchin-lettuce;[36] Flamin's (F), with
rape-cole; Sebastian's (S), with sweet-root, or _Glycyrrhiza vulgaris_
(liquorice). Whoever was not present had left for him, at all events, a
vacant place and _almanac royal_ among squashes and Stettin-apples,
round which was wrapped a perforated paper with the name cut out,
which, after the peeling off of this wrappage, would appear green or
red on the pale fruit. Victor, as he passed along by a C made of
tulips, asked his Flamin the meaning of it. "Why dost thou ask?" he
inquired; and the loquacious Parsonage-people, following after, drove
away the answer.
Beyond the Parsonage-meadow stood--one had only to leap the brook--a
hill, and thereon an old watchtower, in which there was nothing but a
wooden staircase, and overhead nothing but a board covering instead of
the Italian roof, both of which the Chamberlain had had made, that the
people--not himself, for the unfeelingness of magnates labors for the
feeling of minorites--might up there look round them a little. One
could see from there the columnar architecture of the Creator, the
Swiss mountains, standing, and the Rhine moving along with his ships.
On the tower two linden-trees had grown aloft, twined together by
nature, so as, sometimes, with their foliage, which had been hollowed
out into a green niche and underlaid with a grassy bench, to fan, up
there, a fevered islander. The loving party climbed the battlement, and
carried up with them in their rural breasts a tranquillity which softly
copied therein the still outer heaven that encircled these good hearts
with its veiled suns. One lingering cloud gave a farewell glow, but it
melted away before it burned out.
Now could the supplementary volumes of the Universal History of St.
Luna be conveniently issued. Eymann could deliver his folio volumes of
_gravamina_ (grievances) upon the consistorial councils and the rats.
All at once, Agatha, like her saintly namesake, was invoked down below
by the organ-blower _loci_, who was _valet-de-place_ of the village,
and Parsonage-coachman. When certain authors say, "The coachman was
blind, and the horse was deaf," they exactly reverse the case. The
churl was deaf. He had in his _mouchoir de Vénus_--the handkerchief is,
with the common people, at once letter-bag and envelope, because a
letter is as important and rare a thing to them as a good one is to a
reviewer--to-day discovered and unwrapped an epistle to Agatha, which
he should have delivered yesterday with his Lordship's: but coachmen
consider a master only as the mock-sun and second party to the horse,
and the lady absolutely as no more than a parasite-growth of the
stable; hence "immediately" means with them one or two or three days;
and "to-morrow forenoon" meant, on the Ratisbon notification-programme
of matters to be voted on, one or two or three years. Agatha, with more
eagerness, hurried down, held the letter towards the lighter quarter of
the west, and deciphered something, which, with sparkling eyes, she
carried in a gallop up the stairs. "She is coming to-morrow!" she cried
out to Flamin; for she seemed almost, in the person of every one of her
friends, to love only the companion and friend of her other friends.
The case was this: _Clotilda_, Le Baut's only daughter by his first
wife (his Lordship's niece), was coming from the Girls' Institute in
Maienthal, where she had been educated, back to her father.
"Do _you_ take good care!" said the Chaplain's wife; "she is very
beautiful."
"Then," said he, "I shall much rather take care _not_ to take care."
"In fact," she continued, "all that is beautiful is now gathering
around you" (here he tried to confuse and chastise her by a flattering
look, but in vain). "The Italian Princess comes, too, on St. John's
Day; and she is said to be as charming as if she were no princess at
all, but only an Italian woman." There she did most princesses wrong;
but a certain irony upon her own sex was the only fault of the
Chaplain's wife, to whom, as to many other mothers, there were almost
no step-sons and hardly anything but step-daughters.
He hoped, he replied, that very few princesses, even in America, had
yet been married, in whose affections he could not have become
completely entangled, and that merely from pity for such a poor, tender
creature or heraldic beast, pressed under the seal-stamp and then on
the contracts, which were often the only children of these marriages.
"The young Mothers of the Country are really, like bee-mothers, set up
for sale in their queen's prison, and wait to see into what hive the
bee-father, or Father of the Country, will this year trade them off
again."
A woman cannot possibly comprehend how a man whom she esteems can
fall in love, except with her; and she can hardly wait to get sight of
his beloved. Quite as curious is she about this man's style in his
love,--that is, whether it is of the Flemish or French or Italian
school. The Chaplain's wife questioned her confidential guest on this
point also.
"My harem," he began, "reaches from this watchtower to the Cape, and
away round the globe: Solomon is but a yellow straw-widower compared
with me. I have in it even his wives; and, from Eve with her Sodom's
Borsdorf-apple down to the latest Eve with an Imperial apple, and even
to a marchioness with a mere fruit-piece, they are all in my hold and
breast."
A lady excuses esteem for her sex on the ground that she is included
therein. Women themselves have not so much as an idea of the
peculiarities of their sex.
"But what says the favorite Sultana to this?" asked the Grand
Inquisitress.
"She--" He paused, less from embarrassment than as one sunk in the
fulness of glowing dreams. "_She_, of course--" he continued. "I pledge
my head, meanwhile, that every youth has two periods, or, at least,
moments. In the first, he stakes his head that he would sooner let his
heart mould in his thorax or chest, and his _poples_ or knee-joint grow
lame, than that either should stir for any other woman than the very
best of her sex,--for a real angel, a decided Quinterne.[37] He
absolutely insists on the highest prize in the marriage Loto,--that is,
in the first period; for the second comes, and cheats him out of so
much. The female Quinterne would naturally require a _male_ one; and,
in case he were _that_,...
"I am a stupid drawing, an _ambe_, a double number, I say, and
absolutely refuse to let the period have its talk out; but I shall
still be on the look-out for the _Quinterne_.... And here let me ask,
What would be the use of being a man if one were not a fool? Well, now,
if I should draw the above-mentioned Quinterne,--which, to be sure,
without any extravagant hope, I may well presuppose,--I should not be
indifferent on the subject, but in raptures. Good heavens! I must
instanter be frizzled, and have my profile taken. I should make verses
and _pas_, and both with their traditional _pedes_ (or feet); I should
bend myself oftener than a devout monk, to make bows and (where there
was anything to gather) bouquets; body, soul, and spirit I should have
consist with me of so many finger-tips and feelers, that I should
perceive at once (the Quinterne would perceive it still quicker) if our
two shadows should come in collision. The touch of the smallest little
end of a ribbon would be a good conductor to the electrical ether,
which would shoot out from me in lightnings, as she would be charged
negatively and I positively; and as to touching her hair, that could
not create any less explosion than if a world should fall into the
dishevelled[38] hair of a bearded comet....
"And yet what does it all amount to, if I have sense, and consider what
she deserves, this good creature, this faithful, this undeserved one?
What, in fact, were dull verses, sighs, shoes (boots I should put
away), one or two hands pressed, a sacrificing heart, but a slight
_gratial_ and _don gratuit_, if thereby a creature was to be obtained
who, as I see more and more, has everything belonging to the fairest
angel that conducts man through life (invisibleness perhaps excepted);
who has all virtues, and arrays them all in beauties; who gleams and
gladdens like this spring evening, and yet, like it, conceals her
flowers and all her stars, except the star of love; into whose
all-powerful and yet gentle harmonica of the heart I would fain be so
absorbed in listening; in whose eyes I would behold with such
extraordinary delight the tear-drops of the tenderer soul, and the
beamings of the loftier one; by whose side I could so fondly remain
standing through the whole flying _opera buffa_ and _seria_[39] of
life,--so fondly, I say, that so the poor Sebastian might at least,
when, in life's holy evening, his shadow grew longer and longer, and
the landscape around--him melted away to a broad shadow, and he
himself, too, that I might at least behold _both_ shadowy hands," (one
of them Flamin was just then holding,) "and exclaim--" (Checking
himself:) "Here comes the-old bellows-blower, too, with something in
one of his!"
As he could no longer either hide his emotion behind jest, nor the
signs of it in his eyes behind some low-hanging linden-leaves, it was a
real piece of good luck, that, just at the second when his voice was
about to give way to it, he looked over the watch-tower, and saw the
coachman come racing over again. The man cried from below, "he had got
it from Seebass, but not till this moment." Agatha flew down
passionately, and, after reading a billet below, darted off across the
meadow. The bellows-blower ascended slowly, like a barometer before
settled weather, and lifted himself and the billet he had brought back
with him,--not a minute the sooner for all the beckoning overhead
there,--with his levers, to the top of the tower. In the billet was
written, in Clotilda's hand, "Come to thy bower, beloved friend!"
All eyes now ran after the runner, and fluttered with her through the
clear-obscure of evening into the Parsonage, around whose arbor,
however, no one could yet be seen. Hardly had Agatha caught sight of
the opening of the latter, when her hurrying became flying; and when
she was almost up to it, a white form flew out with widespread arms and
into hers, but the arbor concealed the end of the embrace, and the eyes
of all lingered long in vain expectation up in the cloister of love.
The Chaplain's wife, who generally would allow maidens only
degradations and not elevations of rank, now imparted to Clotilda all
the seven consecrations, and praised her so much--perhaps also because
she was a countrywoman of hers on the mother's side--that Victor could
have embraced the eulogist and her subject at once. The Chaplain added,
as his mite to her praise, that he had printed the initial of her name
(C) with tulips in red, like a title, and that the letter would shine
out, when the bed bloomed, far and wide.
The husband and husbandman began now to break in more and more upon the
sphere-music of night with the reed-stops of his cough; at last, he
made off with Victor's enthusiastic female friend, and left the two
friends alone, in the lovely night, with the two full hearts that
panted to pour themselves out into each other.
Flamin had, during this whole day, shown a deepening silence of
touching tenderness, which seldom found its way into his being,
and which seemed to say, "I have something on my heart." When the
watch-tower was comparatively deserted, Victor, who had become full of
loving and softening dreams, could no longer conceal his tear-swimming
eyes: he opened them freely before the oldest darling of his days, and
showed him that open eye which says, "Look right through, if thou wilt,
down to my very heart; there is nothing therein but clear love." ...
Silently the vortices of love swept round the two, and drew them nearer
together; they opened their arms for each other, and sank into each
other's without a sound, and between the brother-hearts lay only two
mortal bodies. Covered deep by the stream of love and ecstasy, they
closed for a moment their enraptured eyes; and when they opened again,
there stood the night sublimely before them, with its suns withdrawn
into eternal depths; the milky-way ran, like the ring of eternity,
around the immensity of space; the sharp sickle of the earthly moon
glided, cutting, across the short days and joys of men.
But in that which stood under the suns, which the ring encircled, which
the sickle smote, there was something higher, clearer, and more lasting
than they: it was the imperishable friendship lodged in these
perishable integuments.
Flamin, instead of being satisfied by this exhausting expression of our
speechless love, became now a living, flying flame. "Victor! in this
night give me thy friendship forever, and swear to me that thou wilt
never disturb me in my love to thee."
"O thou good soul! I have given thee my heart long since, but I will
gladly swear to thee again to-day."
"And swear to me that thou wilt never plunge me into misfortune and
despair."
"Flamin! that distresses me too much."
"O, I beseech thee, swear it! and lift thy hand and promise me, even if
thou hast made me unhappy, nevertheless that thou wilt not forsake me
nor hate me." ... Victor pressed him to his bosom. "But we will come up
hither when we can no longer be reconciled,--O, it pains me, too,
Victor!--up hither, and embrace each other, and throw ourselves down
and die!"
"Ay!" said Victor, in a low and exhausted voice. "O God! has anything
happened, then?"
"I will tell thee all. Now let us live and die together."
"O Flamin! how inexpressibly I love thee to-day!"
"Now will I let thee see into my whole heart, Victor, and reveal to
thee all."
But, before he could do it, he had to man himself by holding his peace;
and they remained a long time silent, lost in the depths of the inner
and outer heavens.
At last he was able to begin, and to tell him that that Clotilda, about
whom he had jested to-day, had written herself in ineffaceable
characters on his heart; that he could neither forget nor possess her;
that the creeping fever of a frightful, frenzied jealousy burned,
galling, within him; that he could not, to be sure, say a word to her
about his love, according to her prohibition, until her brother (the
Infante) should come back and be present; but that she, to judge by her
demeanor, and according to Matthieu's assurances, had perhaps some
regard for him; that her position must be an eternal wall of separation
between them, so long as he took the _juristic_ instead of the
_military_ road to promotion; and that on this last, if his Lordship
would lend him a hand in the matter, he would attain to Clotilda more
swiftly on similar steps; and that the request of which he had spoken
in his letters to Victor was just this,--that he would repeat all to
his Lordship, and beg his assistance. In fact, his wild arm could hold
the sword better than the balance of justice. A frightful
predisposition to jealousy, which even from future possibilities
catches palpitations, was the chief reason.--Victor rejoiced that he
could give his feelings the best language,--namely, action, and
assented to all he required, with delight at his confidence, and at the
absence from his communication of dreaded news; and so, newly attached
to each other, they went to rest. And the Twins--that ever-burning,
intertwined name of friendship--glimmered in the west, beckoning upward
out of an _earthly_ eternity; and the heart of the Lion blazed on their
right....
There are men laid upon this earth, and bound to the soil, who never
erect themselves to the contemplation of a friendship which winds
around two souls, not earthy, metallic, and unclean bonds, but the
spiritual ones that interweave this world itself with another and man
with God. Such ones, degraded to the dust, it is, that, like
travellers, regard from below the temple that hangs round the Alpine
peaks as baseless and airy, because they do not themselves stand on
the heights, and on the great floor of the temple,--because they know
not that in friendship we revere and love something higher than self
(which latter cannot at once be the _source_ and the _object_ of
love),--something higher, namely, the embodiment and reflection of the
virtue which in ourselves we only _approve_, and not till we see it in
others can _love_.
Ah! can, then, higher beings judge severely the weaknesses of the
shadowy groups that seek to hold fast to one another, driven apart as
they are by north winds,--who would fain press to their bosoms the
noble, invisible form of each other over which the thick and heavy
earthly mask hangs,--and who fall, one after another, into graves into
which the mourned draw their mourners?