Letter from Emanuel.--Flamin's Fruit-Pieces on the Shoulders.--Walk
to St. Luna.
"Poor Sebastian!" said I, as I opened to-day's letter-bag, "before I get
it open, I know already beforehand, that, after such a night, thou must
have shut thyself up all day, to turn thy pale, exhausted face toward
the garden of sorrow, that thou to-day lovest these poison-drops better
than the vulnerary balsam, and that thou lookest into the glass to weep
for this still, innocent form which it shows thee with its gashes, as
if it were the form of a stranger.--Oh, when man has nothing more to
love, he embraces the gravestone of his love, and sorrow becomes his
loved one! Forgive one another the short delusion of mourning; for,
among all the weaknesses of man, this is the most innocent, when,
instead of soaring away like the bird of passage above winter, and
flying to warmer zones, he sinks before it, and helplessly stiffens in
his cold grief."
Victor coffined himself, so to speak, that day in his chamber, which he
opened to no one but a next-door neighbor of sorrows,--Marie,--whose
form affected him as softly as an evening sun. Every other female face
on the street gave him stings; and the brother of the lost Clotilda,
whom he saw at the window, and to-day would gladly have embraced, lent
to the remembrance which tears had dimmed, new colors.... Reader!--my
female reader will be, of herself, more reasonable,--laugh not at my
good hero, who _is_ none precisely where the strength of the soul
becomes the strength of sorrow: at least, let me not hear it. Whoever
has the sympathetic nerve of life--love--tied up or cut asunder, can
well, if for no other reason, sigh and say, "Anything on earth can man
lose more patiently than fellow-men."
And yet at evening an accident--namely, a letter--made all his
sorrows pass once more through his weary heart. A short letter from
Emanuel--not, however, an answer to the one just sent to him--arrived.
"My ever-loved one!
"I have learned the day of thy entrance upon a new scene of tumultuous
life, and I have said, 'May my beloved still continue happy! may the
tranquillity of virtue wall in his heart as with a breast against the
frosts and storms of his new life! may neither his sorrows nor his
raptures be loud! may he mourn softly and silently as a princess in
soft white! may he enjoy softly and silently, and in the temple of his
heart may Pleasure play only as a noiseless fluttering butterfly in a
church! and may Virtue float before him in the higher heaven above our
sun, and warm and irradiate and gradually attract to herself his
heart!'
"In thy affectionate anxiety for my parting life, thou wilt not have me
write often: so little, dear one, dost thou believe my hope! Oh, the
weights of my machine, as they run down, fall slowly and softly upon
the grave; this earthly life arrays itself to my soul in ever fairer
colors, and adorns itself for the farewell; this mock-summer around me,
which stands beside the August summer like a mock-sun,--this and the
coming spring take me beguilingly out of the arms of Nature.
"So does the All-Gracious overhang with foliage, overspread with
flowers, the churchyard-wall of life, as we cover the wall of an
English garden with ivy and evergreen, and gives the end of the garden
the appearance of a new thicket.--
"So ascends the spirit even here in this _dark_ life, as the barometer
ascends even during thick weather, and feels the influence of the
_brighter_ life even under the clouds.
"But I obey thy love, and will write to thee no more, except once in
winter, when I describe to thee the great night wherein I told my blind
Julius, for the first time, that there is an Eternal One.--In that
night, my beloved, rapture and devotion bore me too high, and came near
to rending my thin life. I bled a long time. In winter, when the charms
of heaven take the place of those of earth,[225] forbid me not to paint
the summer picture.
"O my son!--I was compelled, indeed; to write to thee, because my
friend Clotilda complains that the new year will draw her out of the
green bower of solitude to the crowded market-place of the court; her
soul is dark with sorrow, and stretches out its arms after the tranquil
life which is being taken away from her. I know not what a court is;
thou wilt know, and, I conjure thee, release my friend, and turn aside
the hand that would draw her from St. Luna. If thou canst not do it,
still forsake not at court the beloved soul; be her only, her most
ardent friend; draw the bee-stings of earthly hours from her gentle
heart. When cold words, like snow-flakes, fall upon this flower, then
let the breath of love melt them to tears that shall flow before thy
sight; when a tempest shall come up, over her life, then show her the
angel who stands in the sun, and draws over our tempests the rainbow of
hope. O thou whom _I_ so love, my sister also will so love thee; and
when my friend discovers to her his gentle heart, his tender eye, his
virtue, his soul, the home of Nature and of the Eternal, then will he
see my sister grow happy before him, and the exalted countenance which
melts into tears and smiles and love before him will remain forever in
his heart.
"EMANUEL."
* * *
Lo! in this glowing moment the exalted form which he had seen yesterday
appeared again before his heart, with the sadly smiling lips and the
eyes full of tears; and as the form continued floating before him, and
gleamed and smiled, his soul rose up before her as before one dead, and
during the uplifting of himself all his wounds began to bleed again,
and he cried, "Now, then, never do thou vanish from my heart, thou
sublime shape, but rest forever on its wounds!" Disconsolateness,
exhaustion, and sleep overwhelmed his spirit, as well as his latest
thought,--to go back shortly to St. Luna, and persuade her parents not
to force her to court...
The long sleep of death closes our _scars_, and the short sleep of life
our _wounds_. Sleep is the half of time which heals us. On awaking,
Victor, whose fever of love had yesterday been so aggravated by
sleeplessness, saw today that his sorrow had been unmoderated
because his hope had been immoderate. At first he had wished,--then
observed,--then assumed,--then seen,--then interpreted,--then
hoped,--then sworn to it. Every little circumstance, even his share in
Clotilda's nomination as maid-of-honor, had poured mild oil of love
into his flame. "Oh, fool that I am!" said he, with the three
swearing-fingers placed upon his forehead; and, like all energetic men,
he was so much the more spirited in proportion as he had been
spiritless. Nay, he felt himself all at once too light; for a too
sudden cure betokens, in the case of souls also, a relapse. A new
consolation was his yesterday's resolve, that he would render Clotilda
a service,--namely, save her from the court-service. He still reflected
upon his determination to see her again.--Feelest thou, haply, Victor,
that everything which Love does, in order to die, is only an expedient
for rising again from the dead, and that its epilogues are only
prologues to the Second Act?
But a basket of apples in the market confirmed him again in his
resolution. That is to say, Flamin came in. He began immediately with
questions about the disappearance on Sunday, and with reports of the
general uneasiness about the dear runaway. Victor, heated again
by the whole recollection, and almost a little enraged against the
image-breaker and government-attorney of a vain love, gave him the true
answer:--"Thou tookest away from me in part my pleasure; and why should
I, at so late an hour, come upon the stage?" The more vividly Flamin
painted the affectionate concern of the Parson's wife and Clotilda
about his disappearing, so much the more painful grew the maze of
contending feelings within him. But for his conscience calling him
back, it would now have been easier for him to confess the love that
was hopeless, than formerly the love that was hopeful.--Accidentally
Flamin wondered at the ripeness of the apples down below in the market,
and desired some. A lightning beam now darted before Victor's eye at
the inherited fruit-pieces on Flamin's shoulders, which always appeared
in the after-summer at the time of the apples' ripening, but which, in
the previous whirl of his feelings, he had forgotten. Heaven knows
whether it has not escaped the reader himself, that Flamin bears this
winter-fruitage (his maternal mole) on his back, which may become a
Sodom-apple and Eve's-apple for him. Might not Matthieu, who until now
could not examine upon Flamin this seal of his princely relationship,
suddenly become convinced of all that which, with his thievish glances
at his Lordship's letter, he had only been able to guess? And might he
not afterward go to the Prince, and there mix for all our friends the
most poisonous broths?--As, however, the magic image generally faded in
one week, Victor needed for only so long a time to keep its wearer out
of sight; he therefore laid before his friend, thus tattooed by Nature,
the request to take for once a social walk to St. Luna, as they had day
before yesterday missed each other.
"I can't do it," said Flamin, who had the lesser delicacy not to avail
himself of the request for company on account of the reproaches in Le
Baut's garden, and forgot in that the greater delicacy of not imputing
such a reference to his Victor.
The latter, in a passionate hurry to avert two such evils (Clotilda's
court-office and Matthieu's inspection), seized upon the singular
expedient of proposing to the page to share the journey with him.
"With pleasure!" said the Evangelist; "_this_ week I have to do
cabinet-service, but I can _next_ week."
And it was precisely this week that Victor wanted it to be done.--So
many sudden miscarriages confounded him to such a degree, that he,
whose careless and innocent heart was always an open letter with flying
seal, dissembled now towards his dear, good friend Flamin.--He wanted
at least to investigate the maternal mole and its distinctness for
himself, He therefore went to him, and found him bent over his writing,
and with a glowing work-face. He conjured him to consider that
recreation and holidays were indispensable to him, and urged it upon
him that he should work, like a compositor, standing. Then he came
gradually upon the subject of Flamin's full-blooded chest, and upon the
question whether it could bear his exertions without stingings and
oppressions. Then he arrived at the point, and proposed that Flamin
should, at all events, have a Burgundy-pitch plaster applied as
lung-conductor to his shoulder-blades; yes, he would himself do it for
him now, and show him how all was to be prepared. He hoped, besides, to
draw thereby a curtain around the apple-piece. But he dissembled so
wretchedly,--for he always succeeded in his innocent intrigues with
maidens, and comic disguises for satirical purposes, while his
serious ones always miscarried,--that even Flamin heard him out, and
dryly replied, he had already had on such a plaster for two days,
and--Matthieu had advised, and himself applied it.
There was a fix.--Sebastian had nothing further left him than, with a
singular _sangfroid_, which, on the St. Luna road, was mixed only with
a few stings from the old thorny latelings of his withered Paradise, to
go unaccompanied to the Chamberlain Le Baut, to say what was to be
said, hardly to peep into the Parsonage, and quietly to trudge off
again without a single--hope.
Dear Fortune! better beheaded than scalped,--better _one_ disaster than
ten miscarriages; I mean, break man upon thy wheel rather from above
than from below upward!--
Victor, to be sure, knew as yet not a word of the turn he should give
to the subject, in order to put two such court-emigrants as the Le
Bauts, who knew nothing holier than the _Latreia_ towards a prince, the
_Douleia_ towards his minister, and the _Hyperdouleia_ towards his
w--, out of humor with Clotilda's promotion; but he thought, "I will do
what I can."
Clotilda's parents received him with so much civility,--i. e. with so
much courtesy of the body, with so much powdered sugar on every
feature, with so much sirup of violets on every word,--in short, he
found the report which Matthieu had rendered to Flamin of their amiable
disposition towards him so well grounded,--that he could have selected
no better opportunity than this to dissuade them from the transplanting
of their daughter, had they not begun to thank him for having been
himself the very transplanter. They had learned or guessed all, and
thanked him for his intercession, to which they probably attached more
self-interested views than the daughter did. It would have been
ridiculous, in Clotilda's presence, to advise _her_ against
Flachsenfingen, and dissuade from that for which they thanked him;
still, however, he attempted something. He told the Chamberlain "his
daughter deserved rather to _have_ a court than to adorn one; nay, that
_he_ deserved at most in the whole matter--an excuse, as Clotilda would
certainly prefer the society of her parents to the constraint of court;
in that case, he would promise to put the index back again with the
Prince, and rectify everything without disadvantage." The father took
this expression for a strong deprecation of gratitude; the step-mother,
for some piece of knavery or other; the daughter, for--words. She said,
a little curtly, "I think it was easy to choose between disobedience
and absence." For, unbending as she was to her step-mother, she
willingly followed the hints of her father, whom, with all his
weaknesses, and as the only soul on the earth attached to him, she
tenderly loved. Victor, at last, though reluctantly, was forced to give
it up; but why does man find it harder to resign himself to the future
than to the past?--The coldness of the daughter was naturally not less
(but sincerer) than the warmth of the parents.... And this coldness was
precisely what refreshed his glowing brain. This cold, indifferent form
was wrapped as a veil about the sublime and loving one, as it ever
floated before him with that melancholy look which he could not endure.
Without the consciousness of anything wrong, satisfied with his
obedience to Emanuel's request, he withdrew, with his feelings
oppressed by decorum, returning coldness with greater coldness.--He
would have been a poor lover, if he had known what he wanted; for
otherwise he never could have desired of Clotilda, even in case of her
love for him, any extraordinary warmth towards a medicus whom her
parents forced upon her (which injures a man even more than ugliness),
who so impolitely took himself out of the garden without a birthday
_carmen_, and who pressed her into the seven gilded towers of
court-service, despite her reluctance, despite every probability of her
future _prison-fever_.--But for the _vacant freehold_ of his heart this
very vexation was wholesome....
If my good reader ever has to take an eternal farewell of a too dear
friend, let him take it _twice_.--The _first_ we all understand, as a
matter of course, when he sinks in the intoxication of sorrow, in the
hemorrhage of heart and eyes, and when the beloved object burns itself
with flames into the tender soul; but _then_ he will never be able to
forget the being thus torn from his heart. Therefore he must take a
_second_ farewell, which is colder even for the reason that passionate
emotions admit no _dal segno_[226] of repetition; nay, (if he will take
the wisest course of all,) he must endeavor, after the first tragic
leave-taking, to see her in a public place (e. g. at a coronation),
where she must appear cold. Her frosty face will then snow over her
glowing one in his brain; and my good reader has, undoubtedly,
collected together again wits enough to know what he reads in the
Dog-Post-Days....
--Upon my word, if Jean Paul does not write industriously, then no one
does; it has already struck one, and he took it for a quarter to
twelve; my sister will already be folding her hands before the
tucked-up smoking pike, which, like the serpent of eternity, has his
tail in his mouth, and saying, incessantly, "It is all growing
cold!"--"It must be so, after such glowing chapters," say I, "if thou
meanest the reader and the author."--Already, while I still sit over
the twentieth chapter, the post-dog is frisking round in the chamber
with the twenty-first; and yet I will starve myself, unless I can still
utter before dinner, like the seven wise men, seven golden sayings:--
1. When one who is stung by a bee or by fate does not keep still, the
sting tears out, and is left behind.
2. Miserable earth, which three or four great or bold men can reform
and agitate! Thou art a true stage: in the foreground are some fighting
players and a few canvas-tents; the background swims with painted tents
and soldiers!
3. States and diamonds are in these days, when they have stains, cut up
into little ones; and as
4. Men in great states and bees in great hives suffer a loss of courage
and warmth; accordingly now-a-days they join to small countries other
small countries, as they do to beehives colony-hives.
5. Man takes _his_ suffering for that of _humanity_, as the bees take
the dropping of their bee-stand, when the sun already shines out again,
for rain, and stay in-doors.
6. But he commits daily a _lesser_ error: he regards as an _eternity_
(that Aristotelian Unity of Time to the drama--of Existence) at first
his present _hour_,--then his _youth_,--then his _life_,--then his
_century_,--then the duration of the _globe_,--then that of the
_sun_,--then that of the _heavens_,--then (this is the least error)
_time_ itself....
7. There are in man, in the beginning and at the end, as in books, two
blank bookbinder's leaves,--childhood and old age; and so, too, in the
Dog-Post-Days: see the end of this day and the beginning of the next.