The Hair-Dresser with a (musical) Disease of the Lungs.--Clotilda in
Victor's Dream.--Extra Lines on Church-Music.--Garden Concert by
Stamitz.--Quarrel between Victor and Flamin.--The Heart without
Solace.--Letter to Emanuel.
The October Sunday with which I fill up this Dog-Post-Day was,
even at nine and a half o'clock in the morning, such a glad,
glistening day in St. Luna, that the whole Parsonage thought of the
Court-Physician.--"Ah, he ought to come to the concert this evening!"
The _virtuoso_ Stamitz was to give one in Le Baut's garden.--"O, better
earlier, even to dinner!"--"And to my forenoon sermon, if he will not
come to the children's catechizing." Eymann, as he said this, had, more
than anything else, his newly dressed peruke in his head, which Herr
Meuseler had to-day placed _on_ it. This clever peruke-maker visited
those of his diocesans (the parsons) who wore no hair of their own,
often and with greater benefit to their heads than the Superintendent
himself, that _Commander of the Faithful_, to whom most chaplains said,
Your Excellency! If he could only have weaned himself from singing,
lying, and drinking too much,--the _friseur_,--most of the clergy would
have ordered their toupees--those artistic cock's-combs--of him; but as
it was, they did not.
As the Chaplain loved to make the _confitures_ of Fate, among which
false hair is to be reckoned, bitter in some way, and to give them, as
it were, an infusion of hops, he naturally sought to embitter to-day's
peruke (for whose false curls he gave, in place of payment, genuine
hair cut off from his people's heads) by the misgivings which he
conjured up about the long staying away of Victor. He bethought
himself: "We must have affronted him in some way,--he does not even
write,--he has, perhaps, fallen out with my son,--something has
occurred,--and then, too; the old Lord no longer gives us a
side-glance,--our rats, also, had a hand (or a foot) in helping drive
him away."
By such elegies he threw at first himself, and at last even his
hearers, into agony. He was not to be refuted in any way, except by
one's bringing out some new subject of distress. The breaking-away spot
in his cloud, or his _little book for help in distress_, was this time
a literal book, the "Anecdotes for Preachers," by Teller, of Zeitz,
which he to-day received through the peruke-maker from the clerical
reading-circle. Clergymen, especially country clergymen, carry
everything out with a minute, punctilious solicitude, into which they
are partly scared by their reigning bugbear and dragon of a Consistory.
Now in this book-club there was a law current--commentators and editors
keep it--that every member who should find a grease-spot or ink-stain
or rent in the book he was reading should enter it on the fly-leaf in
an index and inventory of spots, together with the number of the page
"where." Very naturally, every one who was even half-way an honest
Lutheran would deny the _immaculate re_-(or _con_-)_ception_ of it, and
the freckles were therefore all regularly registered, but nobody fined.
Only the conscientious Court-Chaplain took upon himself, as scapegoat,
the punishment of other people's sins; for he never could sleep a wink
the whole night, when he found in a book more blots than in the
sin-register, because he clearly saw that he should be made adoptive
father of the anonymous smutch and buyer of the book.--Now Teller's
Anecdotes for Black-Coats was a complete pile of linen for the wash,
black with dirt. Was there not one dog's-ear upon another,--compound
dog's-ears,--blot upon blot? were not the leaves regular
_proof-sheets_,--and, in fact, speaking _without metaphor_? Eymann
began, "And if money should come flying in to me through the
window"....
Just then Victor's letter flew in at the window, and its--author
through the door.
But, of course, the case was this:--Victor, before pleasant weather,
had pleasant dreams; before bad weather, Satan and his kin appeared to
him. The beautiful weather of Saturday, and the thought of Clotilda's
birthday and of the after-summer, gave him a morning dream, which, in
turn, gave him a stage on which only her sweet image played. A person
whom he had seen behind the veil of dream stood before him all the next
day in a magic reflection. With him dreams,--those night-moths of the
spirit,--like the real moths, strayed out beyond the bounds of night
and sleep; at least for the forenoon, he went on loving, awake, every
person whom he had begun to love in dream. This time, by an exactly
reverse process, waking love flowed on into dreaming love, and the
actual Clotilda coincided with the ideal to form one saintly image, so
radiant that any one who knows his dream will easily enter into the
rest. Therefore must the dream be given to the readers, the poetic ones
especially: for others I should be glad to prepare an expurgated
edition of the Dog-Post-Days, in which it should be left out; for
unpoetic souls that have no dreams themselves should not read any.
But to you, ye good, seldom requited female souls,--ye who have
a second conscience of your own, beside the first, for pure
manners,--whose single virtue, when one looks at it nearly, is seen to
bloom up into one wreath made of all the virtues, as nebulous stars,
seen through glasses, fall into millions,--ye who, so changeable in all
purposes, so unchangeable in the noblest one, go from the earth with
unrecognized wishes, with forgotten worth, with eyes full of tears and
love, with hearts full of virtue and grief,--to you, dear ones, I
gladly tell the little dream and my long story!...
"A hand which Horion did not see laid hold of him; lips which he saw
not spake to him, 'Let thy heart now be clean and holy, for the genius
of female virtue resides in this region.'--Lo! there stood Horion on a
field clothed with forget-me-nots, over which the sky like a blue
shadow fell; for all the stars had been withdrawn from it, only the
_evening star_ stood gleaming alone up in the place of the sun. White
ice-pyramids, streaked with down-trickling lines of evening redness,
closed in, as with a wall of gold and silver ore, the whole dark
horizon.----Therein Clotilda passed by, sublime as one dead, serene as
a human being in the next world, conducted now by winged children, now
by a veiled nun, now by an earnest angel, but she passed forever by
before Horion; she smiled upon him in blissful lovingness while thus
passing, but she passed by.--Flowery hillocks, almost like graves, rose
and sank, for every one was stirred by the breathing of a bosom
slumbering beneath it; a white rose stood over the heart that lay
veiled below; two red ones grew over the cheeks, where tender blushes
hid themselves in the earth; and overhead in the night-blue of heaven
the white and red reflections of the hill-flowers glided fitfully into
each other as often as the roses of the heart and the cheeks swayed
with the hillock.--Dying echoes, awakened, however, by unheard voices,
gave answer to each other behind the mountains; each echo lifted the
little hills of slumber still higher, as if a deep sigh or a bosom full
of rapture heaved them; and Clotilda smiled more blissfully, sinking at
every resonance more deeply into the flowery earth.--The tones were too
full of ecstasy, and the dissolved heart of man was fain to die
therein. Clotilda sank now into the graves up to her heart; only her
silent head still smiled above the meadow; the forget-me-nots at last
reached up to the sunken eyes that were full of blissful tears, and
bloomed over them.--Then suddenly a hill of slumber crept over the
saint, and from beneath the flowers her words came up, 'Rest thou, too,
Horion!'--But the sounds, growing more distant, transformed themselves
during the burial into dim harmonica-tones.... And lo! as they sank
into silence, there came up a great shadow like Emanuel, and stood
before him like a short night, and covered the unknown moment as with a
hand from a higher world. But when the moment and the shadow had passed
away, then had all the hills sunk.--Then the reflections of the
flowers, flowing together, gilded over the undulating heavens.--Then
were seen _white_ butterflies, _white_ doves, _white_ swans, climbing
up to the purple peaks of the ice-mountains with outstretched wings as
with arms, and behind the mountains, as if by an uncontainable
transport, blossoms were flung up, and stars and garlands.--And there
on the highest ice-mountain, as it rose tranquil in clear radiance and
purple blaze, stood Clotilda, glorified, consecrated, radiant with
supernatural rapture, and on her heart fluttered a nebulous globe,
which consisted of little vaporized tears, and on which Horion's pallid
form was delineated, and Clotilda spread wide her arms."----
But to embrace? or to soar away? or to pray?... Ah! he awoke too soon,
and his eyes streamed down in greater tears than the nebulous ones, and
a sinking voice cried incessantly all around him, "Rest thou, too!"
O thou soul of woman,--thou that goest, weary and unrewarded, wounded
and bleeding, but great and unspotted, up from the smoking battle-field
of life,--thou angel, whom the heart of man, reared by storms, soiled
by the world's dealings, can respect and love, but cannot reward or
reach,--how does my soul at this moment bow down before thee! how do I
wish thee now the soothing balm of Heaven, the requiting goodness of
the Eternal! And thou, Philippina, precious soul, glide away into a
secret cell, and, amidst the tears which thou hast already so often
shed, lay thy hand upon thy soft, rich heart, and swear, "Forever shalt
thou continue consecrated to God and virtue, even if not to repose!" To
thyself swear it,--not to me, for I believe it without an oath.----
What a parade-night, full of stars and dreams, was that! and what a
gala-day of Nature followed upon it! In Victor's brain stood nothing
but St. Luna, veiled in blue, bespangled with silver dew-drops, and
graced by the loveliest angel, who to-day raised moist, glad eyes to
the friendly heaven, and thought, "How beautiful art thou to-day, just
upon my birthday festival!"--Even the Senior Pastor and his daughter,
who both made a wedding,--the former an anniversary second wedding with
his Senioress, the latter a first one with the preacher of the Orphan
Asylum,--slipped themselves into the procession of his joyous thoughts
as two new couples.
He did not mean to go to St. Luna, but he said; "I will dress myself up
just for a little walk."--
"It is all one where I go to-day," he said, when he was out of doors;
and so he took the St. Luna road.--
"I can turn round at any time," he said, when he had gone half-way.--
"But it would be something still more ridiculously funny, if I should
be at once correspondent and postman, and deliver my own letter," said
he, and drew it out.--
"And answer my good mother's orally by the same opportunity," he
continued, half in dream, and full of greater love towards her who had
sent him the sweet nocturnal one by the intelligence of the birthday.--
----But when he heard the first bells of St. Luna ringing for church,
then he sprang up, and said, "Now I will no longer embitter the way by
further scruples, but will march boldly and decidedly into the
village."
And so, taking the hand of Fortune, with all Nature smiling after him,
with dreams in his heart, with innocent hope in his freshly blooming
countenance, he entered into the Eden of his soul.
Flamin he had not asked to go with him, in order not to rob the Senior
Pastor of his wedding-guest, and because he did not know, himself, that
he should reach St. Luna, and perhaps, too, because he did not want to
have his fantasying attention to the sparkling morning disturbed by any
news about juristic cases. In fact, he would rather take a walk with a
woman than with a man. Men are almost ashamed, beside one another, of
any except silent emotions; but womanly souls love to unfold to each
other their bashful sensibilities; for they cover up the naked heart
with maternal warmth, that it may not become chilled during the
unveiling.
As Victor passed round the Parsonage below, he saw himself up at the
window, in his _second edition for a few good friends_; but the wax
Victor had forthwith to be banished behind a false partition, that it
might not frighten the fleshly one. The reception of the latter, and
the feast of jubilee thereupon, need not be described by me in a more
lively manner than by my saying that the pug-dog was almost crushed
underfoot, the bulfinch hopped round in vain for his breakfast, nor did
the Parson's wife offer any to the guest, in her joy at staring at him,
and church did not begin till after the double usance of half an hour;
so that this time more parishioners went to church drunk than usual.
Victor, too, went thither intoxicated, but with joy. There is nothing
more agreeable than to be a parson's wife, and to say to one's husband,
while putting on his clerical bands, "Make the service a little longer
to-day, else the mutton will not be quite roasted through."--Domestic
trifles gratified my hero full as much as courtly ones provoked him.
He went with the Parson and with the Parson's wife, who abridged all
the processes of kitchen and toilet in a summary and manlike way. His
toleration for the faults of the clerical order had nothing in common
with that of the distinguished people who are fit for high dignities
and dinners, which arises from supreme contempt, and which can endure a
Christian priest as easily as an Egyptian; but it grew out of his
opinion that the churches are still the only Sunday-Schools and Spartan
school-gates for the poor commoners, who cannot hear their _cours de
morale_ from the _state_. Besides, he loved, as a youth, the favorites
of his childhood.
Many preachers try to combine the rule of Quintilian, who requires that
_bad_ arguments should be put forward in the earlier part of the
discourse, with that of Cicero, who is for keeping them back till the
latter part, by posting them in _both_ places; but Eymann held good
feelings to be better than bad reasons, and wound around the peasants
chains, not of reasoning, but of flowers.
The _friseur_ above-mentioned, at first, would not go to church,
because it was beneath his dignity, but afterward he could not do
otherwise; for, on account of the court stranger present to-day,
church-music was to be made.
It is the only fault of the peruke-maker Meuseler, that he loves to
sing too well, and is too fond of intruding his natural pipes into all
church-music that is made in his perukial diocese, especially on Holy
Whitsuntide. The St. Luna chorister could never bear this; but how to
cheat him and feast a thousand ears? Simply thus: He frizzled out
to-day what was still to be frizzled, (not to-day alone, but it was
always so,) and merely glided up the choir-steps. Here he leaned and
watched, till the chorister, seated on the musical sausage-sledge,
struck with his finger the first note of the church-music. Then, like a
sunbeam, he darted up into the choir, and filched away from the young
counter-tenor his part, and sang it into the ears of the congregation,
but with much whining and puffing, as if he were chanting his
manuscript to the reviewers. For one must now, once for all, make it
known to the world, that the enraged musician at the clavichord had,
with a sharp-cornered triangle of elbows, furiously thrust back at the
frizzling counter-tenor, in order to push the strange singing-bird out
of the bird-house of the choir. But as the singer made his right arm
the firm note-desk of his text, and the other a war-club,--like the
Jews, who built up Jerusalem with one hand full of building-tools and
the other full of weapons,--one sees that the peruke-maker, even
amidst this continuance of fighting and fa-sol-la-ing, could do his
very best, and execute somewhat during the musical truce of God. But
so soon as the music had drawn its last breath, then the harmonious
bird-of-passage and stormy-petrel skipped nimbly out across the choir,
accompanied by the memory of a thousand ears and a single elbow. The
chorister could not catch him, nor get scent of him.
If, on the contrary, he had the good fortune to be passing with his
bandboxes through a village just as parson and schoolmaster and
pedagogic frog-spawn were quacking and croaking[220] round a deaf
corpse,--all which many name, more concisely, a dirge,--then could the
_virtuoso_, without the counter-prop of elbows, spring gayly with both
feet into the motet,[221] work out the funeral serenade given to the
dead man by his heirs, throw in gratis some final cadences to the
funeral procession, and yet have time to offer in the village to the
bailiff an entirely new bag-wig.--
To our hero the music in country churches gave the greatest satirical
pleasure. But little should we get by it, had I not the forethought to
beg leave just for one poor little extra-syllable--one shall hardly see
it--upon church-music.