"MY DEAR SIR AND ADOPTED FATHER:"--
"I have not had hitherto spare time enough to lift my eyes up and see
what moon we have. Verily, a court wants time for virtue. The Prince
carries me about with him everywhere, like a smelling-bottle, and shows
up his foolish Doctor. Erelong they will not be able to endure me: not
because I am good for anything,--on the contrary, I am convinced they
could bear the most virtuous man in the world quite as well as the
worst, and that merely because he would be an Anglicism, an _homme de
fantaisie_,[201] a _lusus naturæ_,--but because I do not talk enough.
Business-people never trouble themselves about any conversational or
epistolary style; but with court-people the tongue is the artery of
their withered life, the spiral-spring and flag-feather of their souls;
they are all born critics, who look at nothing but fine turns,
expression, fire, and speech. This comes of their having nothing to do;
their good works are _bon mots_,[202] their exchange business consists
in visiting-cards, their housekeeping is a card-party, and their
agriculture a hunting-party, and the _minor service_ a physiognomy.
Hence they must have other people's faults all day long in their ears
as an antidote to tedious leisure, as the physicians inoculate with the
itch to counteract stupidity; a court-establishment is the regular
penny post-office of the smallest items of news, even about you
commoners, when you happen to have done anything really ridiculous. It
were to be wished that we had festivals, or card-parties, or plays, or
assemblies, or _soupers_, or something good to eat, or some amusement
or other; but that is not to be thought of. We have, to be sure, all
these things, but only their names; the President of the Exchequer
would shrug his shoulders, if we should undertake to be, four times in
a year, so brilliantly happy as you are four times a month. As our week
consists of seven Sundays, it follows that our amusements are only
signs in the calendar, epochs of time, to which no one pays heed; and a
festival is nothing but a play-room for the plans which every one has
in his head, the boards on which he is to act his leading part, and the
season for continuing the intrigue against victims of love and of
ambition. Here there is, every minute, a stinging mosquito, and the
thistle-seed of beautifully painted trouble flies round far and wide.
"There are many women here who are good, and disciples of Linnæus, and
their eyes classify men botanically, according to his fine and simple
_sexual_-system; they make a great distinction between virtuous and
vicious love,--namely, that of _degree_, or at least of time; and the
_best_ often speaks on the subject like the _worst_, and the worst like
the best. Meanwhile we have here female virtue and manly fidelity, in
their way,--but no idea of them can be communicated to a parson; for
these two jellies are so soft and delicate, that, if I should undertake
to carry them down over all the steps of the throne to the parsonage,
they would arrive there in such a spoiled and ruined state, that one
would give them down below there the two opposite names,--for which,
however, we ourselves have up here our special and corresponding
objects. Your commoners would find our elderly men ridiculous in
matters of love, as _they_ would your daughters. But what often
embitters for me this happy court-life is the universal want of
dissimulation. For no one believes here what he hears, and no one
thinks how he looks; all must, according to the regular laws of the
game, like cards, have the upper side uniform, and put on an external
stillness of face as a cover to the internal fire, as the lightning
destroys only the sword and not the scabbard. Consequently, as a
universal dissimulation is none at all, and as every one gives every
other credit for poison, no one can _deceive_ another, but only
_outwit_ him; only the understanding, not the heart, is taken in.
Meanwhile, to speak the truth, that is not truth; for every one has two
masks,--the general and the individual. For the rest, the colors which
are used upon the scientific, refined, and philanthropic painting of
the outer man are necessarily scraped off from the inner man, but
advantageously, since there is not much on the inner man, and the study
of appearance lessens reality: so have I often seen hares lying in the
woods that had not an ounce of flesh or a drop of fat on their bodies,
because all had been absorbed by the monstrous fur which had continued
to grow after their death.
"If one compares the substantial value of the throne and that of the
low ground of the commonalty, the physical and moral exaltation of
men appears to bear an inverse relation to that of their soil,
just as the inhabitants of marshy lands are larger than mountaineers.
But, nevertheless, those elevated people bear the state easily on
butterfly-wings, survey its wheel-work with the hundred-eyed papilio's
eye, and with a walking-cane defend the people from lions, or chase
therewith the lions among the people, as in Africa the children of the
herdsmen scare away with a whip the real lions of Natural History from
the grazing cattle.... Dear Mr. Court-Chaplain, this satire began to
pain me already on the former page; but here one is malicious, just as
he is vain, without knowing when: the former, because one is obliged to
take too much notice of others; the latter, because he is compelled to
think too much of himself. No! Your garden, your sitting-room, are
pleasanter; there, is no stony breast on which one _crucifies_ the arms
and veins of friendship like a tree trained on an espalier; there, one
is not obliged, as I am, to be twice a day under the barber's hands,
and three times a day under the hair-dresser's; there, one has leave
at least to put on his polished boot. Write soon to your adopted son,
for I still deny myself the festival of a visit to you. Are there
many baptisms and burials? What is _Fox_[203] doing, and the deaf
bellows-blower? At this very moment I hear the mortar, instead of your
rat-drum, pounding down below. Farewell.
"And now at last I greet you, beloved mother! My hand is warm, and in
my heart a pair of souls are beating; for now your face, full of
motherly warmth, shines on all my satirical ice-peaks, and melts them
into warm blood, which will throb for you and for you flow. How good it
feels to love again! Your second son, Flamin, is well, but too busy,
and at present in St. Luna.[204] Greet my sisters and all that love
you.
"Sebastian."
He reserved the letter in order to despatch the Regency-Counsellor, who
wanted to take his person along with him, with a freight at least.
Meanwhile his and January's joint visits, with their stage
entanglements, grew to quite other ones, even a ganglion of friendship
between January and himself,--and at the same time gave this friendship
increased notoriety. In St. Luna, in Le Baut's house, three times as
much was made out of it as there was in it,--in the parsonage, nine
times. To this was added a trifle, namely, a scuffle,--properly, two. I
have the incident from Spitz,--Victor got it from Flamin,--he from
Matthieu,--in whose noble historical style it can here be handed
over to posterity. The Evangelist was never ashamed of a commoner,
provided he could make a fool of him. Therefore he visited the
court-apothecary without scruple. To the latter, who cordially hated
the barrack-physician, Culpepper, on account of his coarse arrogance,
and on account of the reason given in the note[205] below, Matthieu had
long since promised to upset the Doctor. As the latter and the podagra
had actually been banished by Victor from January's feet, the
Evangelist gave the apothecary to understand that he himself would,
without _his_ hint and wishes, have contributed far less to the fall of
Culpepper than he had done. Zeusel, especially as he had the successor
of the barrack-physician in his house, came after some days to the
billiard-table with the certain conviction that he, from his
apothecary's-shop, had thrust under Culpepper's posteriors the
invisible leg, and hurled him down from the steps of the throne. There
were present, unfortunately, the barrack-physician himself, and the
noble Mat. Zeusel came upon this stage with the festoons of three
watch-chains, with a pair of breeches on whose knees some Arabesques
were printed, with a double waistcoat and double neck-tie, and with
double signs of exclamation in his face at the barrack-physician;--his
money-purse lay exactly under the _os sacrum_, because he, like some
Englishmen, had caused his breeches-pocket to be concealed in the
region of the breeches buckle. He had with him as his chamber-moor his
long, lean dispenser, who in the adjoining drinking-room encountered
the very short dispenser of the second apothecary's-shop, or shop of
the _canaille_. The short dispenser, out of malice, followed the tall
one about everywhere, merely to vex him; but this time he had just come
back from the country with some hens'-eggs which he had collected as
fees from convalescent patients.
Matthieu, after an exegetic hint to Zeusel, took the liberty of
being of Culpepper's opinion in regard to the Prince's gout. Culpepper,
who would fain be an old German,--such old Germans can never
dissemble when they are angry, though they can very well do so from
self-interest,--fired away and said the English doctor was a complete
ignoramus. Zeusel displayed with a broad smile, as with a printer's
vignette, his contempt for the coarse man. The Medicus looked like the
Equator, the apothecary like Spitzbergen. Now the tourney went on
merely upon the subject of the gout. The second and umpire, Matthieu,
gave it to be understood, that "Zeusel, to be sure, loved his prince
and lord, but still he could wish that this love had had the best means
and the wholesomest influences. "In bawdy-houses," said Culpepper,
"_that fellow there may_ have influence." When the apothecary, at these
words, proudly and contemptuously straightened himself up, the Doctor
slowly jammed him down on the chair and on his money-purse, and,
bringing down his fist upon his shoulder, nailed the little coxcomb
with his purse to the seat.
This pinning-down vexed the tailor-bird most of all, and he replied,
trying to get up, that "he would this very day, if he were consulted,
advise his Highness to adhere to his present better choice." The
barrack-physician might perhaps have too hurriedly withdrawn his hand
from the shoulder which it covered; for he grazed with it, as with a
cannon, the nose of his adversary, whereupon the latter, like Saint
Januarius, discharged some blood. The Evangelist was personally grieved
"that two such sensible men could not fall out and fight with each
other without personal hatred and heat, since they _might_, like
princes who go to war, attack each other without either,--but the
bleeding too well attested Zeusel's ebullition." ... Zeusel cried out
to the Doctor, "You lout!" The latter, in his fury, actually took
Matthieu's opinion, that the former bled only from fury, and compared
him to those corpses which in old times bled, indeed, at the approach
of the murderer, but from none other than quite natural causes. The
Medicus, therefore, looked for his cane, which like a prince was
gold-headed, and took his leave with the crowned stick, drawing it a
few times, as with magnetic passes, across Zeusel's fingers; but I
would call the staff, if I were in the place of other people, neither
an ear-trumpet for Zeusel, which the physician applied to him, as they
often do to persons hard of hearing, that the latter might hear better,
nor yet a door-knocker, which he stretched out before the truth, that
it might the more easily get admission into the apothecary. What he
wanted was merely to oblige him to let his handkerchief drop, in order
that he might look him in the face as he bade farewell, which he
clothed in the following forbearing and neatly turned remark: "You tell
your Doctor that he and you there are the two greatest blockheads in
town."
Under these last words both dispensers kept themselves still enough in
other respects, though not with their tongues, indeed; for the tall
dispenser saluted, as second chorus, the short one with the same
war-song, and was a genuine Anti-Podagrist. Whoso considers that the
tall one loved my hero on account of his politeness, and could not bear
the short one, because Culpepper sent all his prescriptions to _his_
shop,--such a one cannot expect anything less of the couple than a
reflection of the scene in the billiard-room; but the tall dispenser
was composed, and never, like Portugal, propagated edifying truths with
blood, but--the moment the barrack-doctor called the court-physician a
blockhead--he quietly took the hat of the short dispenser, who had
deposited his income of eggs therein to guard them from being broken,
and coolly, without the least resentment, placed the aforesaid hatful
of eggs on the head of the professional brother; and by a slight
squeeze fitted the Doctor's hat, which sat half an ell too high, upon
the head of his friend,--with all the more propriety, as Castor and
Pollux also had on egg-shells,[206]--and having effected this
promotion, he went his way, without exactly caring to have much thanks
for the felt-stuffing and the streaming face-poultice.
Fisticuffs spread abroad lesser truths, as wars do great truths. The
Court-Chaplain Eymann sent a long letter of congratulation to Victor,
and called him "January's kidney-keeper," and begged for his promised
visit. A travelling[207]-advocate knocked at his door as at that of a
superior court, and begged him for a princely injunction against the
Regency-College. The apothecary, with his application about the
_lavement_,[208] still holds back.
Victor still laid up for himself his first visit to St. Luna like a
ripening fruit, and thereby vexed the Regency-Counsellor, who wanted to
persuade him into it. But he said: "Those who are left behind in a
place long indescribably for him who has gone from it, until he has
made his first visit; and so, too, with him. After the first, both
parties wait quite coolly and composedly for the second."--What he
neither said nor thought, but felt and feared, was this: that his
demigoddess, Clotilda, who inhabited the most holy place in his breast,
and who by her invisibleness had become dearer, more indispensable, and
for that very reason more sure to his soul, would, perhaps, at her
appearance, take away at once all hopes out of his heart.
It was on the evening of the day when he received Eymann's letter, that
he thus fantasied: "Ah, if January would only continue so well! He must
have exercise, but of an unusual kind,--the rider must walk, the
pedestrian must drive. We ought to travel together on foot through the
country, in disguise. Ah, I might, perhaps, be of service to many a
poor devil! We would steal homeward through St. Luna,--No, no, no!" ...
He started back himself, affrighted at a certain idea,--for he feared
he should, when he had once had it, even execute it; hence he said to
it three times, No. The idea was this,--to persuade the Prince to visit
Clotilda's parents. But it was of no use; he remembered that his father
had held too strict a court of cognizance over the Chamberlain and the
Minister. "And yet, what harm can Le Baut do to me? If I should only
draw three sun-glances from January upon the poor fool! The wisest
thing for me is, not to think any more about it to-day."
The dog will bring us the answer; I, for my part, make a bet--a fine
connoisseur of human nature on my island bets the contrary--that he
does not carry out this joke.