NEWS FROM KUHSCHNAPPEL--WOMAN'S ANTICLIMAX--OPENING OF THE SEVENTH
SEAL.
It is a matter which often quite puts me beyond myself that, although
we _do_, in the end, duly accept and honour the bills which Virtue
draws upon us, we only _pay_ them after such a vast number of days of
grace and double-usances--although neither the devil nor Constantinople
will hear of either the one or the other. Firmian urged no further
pleas of objection, except for delay. He merely _postponed_ his
confession, thinking that as Apollo is the best consoler (Paraclete) of
man, and as Nathalie had shown the basilisk of sorrow its own image in
the mirror of poetry, the sight of _itself_ would be sufficient to kill
it, Thus it is that all virtuous motions in us are weakened by the
friction of time and of our inclinations.
One single letter, however, sent all the scenery of his theatre into
confusion again. It came from Schulrath Stiefel:--
"HONOURED SIR,--You doubtless remember more than too well the
testamentary instruction which our mutual friend, the late lamented
Poor's Advocate, Siebenkæs, left behind him, to the effect that Herr
von Blaise should make payment of the trust-funds in his hands--and,
indeed (as you are aware), to your respected self in order that you,
might remit it to the widow--which failing, it was the testator's
avowed intention to appear as a ghost. Be this as it may, thus much is
matter of notoriety in this town and neighbourhood, that, for some
weeks past, a ghost, in the likeness of our lamented friend, has
pursued the Herr Heimlicher everywhere, who has, in consequence, become
so ill and bedridden, that he has taken the Holy Sacrament, and made up
his mind to pay over the above-mentioned moneys in good earnest. I now
beg to inquire of you whether you would wish to receive them in the
first instance, or whether (as would be almost more natural) they shall
be paid at once to the widow. I have yet to mention that--in accordance
with the desire of the testator--I sometime since married the former
Mrs. Siebenkæs, and that I expect very soon to be the happiest of
fathers. She is a most admirable wife and housekeeper. She is by no
means a Thalæa,[110] and would lay down her life for her husband as
gladly as he would lay down his for her; and I often have nothing left
to desire, but that my predecessor, her good, never-to-be-forgotten
first husband Siebenkæs (who _had_ his little whims and eccentricities
at times), could be a spectator of the happiness in which his beloved
Lenette is now bathed. She weeps for him every Sunday as she goes
through the churchyard, but at the same time she confesses that she is
happier now than in former times. It grieves me much that it is only
now that I have learnt, from my wife, in what miserable circumstances
the dear departed found himself, as regarded his purse. How eagerly,
had I been aware of this, I should have taken him and his wife by the
arms, and assisted them as becomes a Christian! If the deceased, who
_now_ possesses more than any, or all, of us, can, in his glory, look
down upon us, I am sure he will forgive me. I would respectfully beg
for an early reply to this letter. One cause of the restitution of the
trust-funds may also be, that the Heimlicher (who is an honest enough
man upon the whole) is now no longer influenced by Herr von Meyern.
They have completely fallen out, as all the town knows, and the latter
has broken off engagements with five ladies in Bayreuth, and is about
to enter into the state of holy matrimony with a native of
Kuhschnappel.
"My wife is as bitter against him as Christian love permits, and says
that when she meets him she feels like a hunter who encounters an old
woman in his path of a morning; for he was the cause of much needless
vexation between her and her husband, and she often tells me with
pleasure how cleverly you, esteemed Mr. Inspector, often set this
dangerous fellow down, and kept him in his place. However, he does not
dare to set foot in _my_ house. I defer, for the present, a more
detailed request--as to whether you would not feel inclined to fill our
departed friend's vacant place as Collaborateur in the 'GOD'S Messenger
of German Programmes,' which (I may say without undue boasting) is
taken in, and looked upon with approval in Gymnasia and Lycæa, from
Swabia as far as Nürnberg, Bayreuth, and Hof. There is rather a
superfluity than a lack of miserable Programme-scribblers; and (let me
say it without flattery) _you_ are the very man to wield the satiric
scourge over the heads of these frog-spawn in the Castalian springs, as
few others _could_. But of this more on another occasion. My wife
desires to add _her_ most cordial remembrances to her departed
husband's highly-esteemed friend; and, hoping for a speedy answer,
"I remain, your most obedient humble servant,
"S. R. STIEFEL, Schulrath."
* * * * *
The human heart is shielded by _great_ sorrows from the impact of
_small_ ones--by the waterfall from the rain.[111] Firmian forgot
everything in remembering, suffering, and crying out to himself, "Thus
I have lost thee for ever, wholly. Oh! _thou_ wert good always, it was
_I_ who was not. Be happier than thy solitary friend whom thou mournest
justly every Sunday." He now cast all the blame of his bygone
matrimonial lawsuits upon his own satirical whimsies, and ascribed the
failure of his crop of happiness to his own ungenial climate.
But in this he was doing himself greater injustice than he had formerly
done Lenette. I mean to make the world a present of my thoughts on this
subject, on the spot. Love is the Perihelion of the fair sex; nay, it
is the transit of every one of those Venuses over the sun of the ideal
world. At the epoch of this "higher style" of their souls, they love
_everything_ that _we_ love, even the sciences, and the whole _best_
world within the breast--and they despise what _we_ despise, even
clothes and news. In this spring of theirs these nightingales go on
singing until the summer solstice; the wedding-day is their longest
day. Then the devil runs away with--not exactly everything, but
something every day. The bast-band of wedlock binds the poetic wings,
and the bridal-bed is (for the imagination, the phantasy), an
Engelsburg, and prison-cell, with bread and water. During the honeymoon
I have often followed these poor birds of paradise, or peacocks of
Psyche, and in this moulting-season of theirs picked up the glorious
wing and tail-feathers which they have dropped; and then, when a
husband has fancied he has married a naked crow, I have held out the
bunch of feathers to him. Why is this? For this reason: marriage
overlays the poetical world with the rind of the actual; as (according
to Descartes) our earthly sphere is a sun covered over with a dirty
crust, or bark. The hands of everyday labour are unwieldy, hard, and
full of indurations, and find much difficulty in going on holding, or
drawing the delicate threads of the woof of the ideal. Hence it is
that among the upper classes (where, instead of work-_rooms_ there are
only little work-_baskets_, and where the little spinning-wheels are
turned on the lap with the finger, and where love still endures after
marriage--often even for the husband) the wedding-ring is not so often,
as among the lower orders, a Gyges-ring, which renders books and the
arts of music, poetry, painting, and dancing--invisible. Upon high
places plants of all sorts, and particularly female plants, have more
vigour and aroma. A woman has not, as a man has, the power of
protecting the outer side of her inner air-and-magic-castles against
rough weather. What then is she to hold to? Her husband. He ought
always to stand beside the liquid silver of the female spirit with a
spoon, and keep skimming off the scum which gathers on it, that the
silver-glittering sheen of the ideal may always keep bright and
shining. But then there are two sorts of husbands--Arcadians, or
lyric-poets of life, who love for ever, like Rousseau, when their hair
is grey--and these are not to be controlled or comforted when they can
no longer see any gold on the feminine anthology (bound with gilt
edges) because they have turned the leaves of the little book over one
by one, (as is the case with all gilt-edged books). Secondly, there are
shepherd-hinds and sheep-smearers, I mean master-singers by profession,
men-of-business, who thank God when the _enchantress_ turns, at last,
like other witches, into a grumbling _house_-cat, keeping down the
vermin.
Nobody has to suffer more anxiety and alarm, combined with tedium and
ennui (and therefore I intend some day to awaken the pity of my readers
for this very condition, in a comic biography) than a portly,
energetic, pushing, pompous, ponderous _Basso_ of a "business-man," who
finds himself (like the elephants in Rome of old) constrained to dance
on the slack-rope of love; and whose deportment and play of feature, in
the circumstances, _I_ think more like those of a marmot than anything
else, when the warmth of a room has awakened him from his winter's
sleep, and he finds he can't get properly into the knack of moving. It
is only with widows (who wish less to be loved than to be married)
that a weighty office-holder of this sort can begin his romance at the
place where all the novel-writers leave theirs off--namely, at the
altar-steps. A man, built after this simplest of styles, would find a
great weight lifted from his heart if anybody would only love his
shepherdess _for_ him till such time as he should have nothing to do
but go and be married; and no one would have greater pleasure in taking
up this burden, or cross, from them than myself. I have often thought
of announcing in the public newspapers (except that I was afraid it
would be looked upon as a joke) that I was prepared to swear Platonic,
eternal love to any number of endurable girls (whom men of business
might not even have _time_ to love), and make them all the necessary
love-declarations as plenipotentiary of the bridegroom-elect--in a
word, to lead them on my arm, as _substitutus sine spe succedendi_, or
_cavalier de société_, athwart the whole of the unlevel land of love,
till, on the frontier, I should hand over my charge, duly prepared, to
the bridegroom; which would be lovemaking, rather than marrying, by
ambassador. If, according to this _systema assistantiæ_, there should
be any one who would care to employ the writer even during the
honeymoon (when a certain amount of love may still be expected to crop
up), he must take care to establish all the necessary conditions in
good time, beforehand.
In Siebenkæs's Lenette (from no fault of his) the ideal isle of the
blest had sunk away, miles deep, in an instant, at the very marriage
altar. The husband could in nowise either help or hinder this. On the
whole, dear Mr. Education-Counsellor Campe, you really should not
strike so hard upon your writing-desk with your school birch-rod
whenever a solitary she-frog croaks out something or other out of the
nearest marsh, which is capable of being sent to an almanack. Ah me!
don't tear away from the good creatures (who _do_ put the loveliest
dreams, all full of fantasy-flowers, into this empty life of ours) the
terribly short dream of a delicate, sentimental love. They will be
awakened to reality only too soon without that, and neither you nor I
will be able to put them to sleep again, let us write as much as we
choose.
Siebenkæs wrote off that day a brief and hurried reply to the
Schulrath, saying "he was extremely glad that he had stood to the will,
and the laws, and enclosed him a power of attorney to enable him to
draw the money. Only he entreated him, as a great scholar and man of
letters (one of a class who of ten, perhaps, suppose they understand
matters of business better than they really do), to put the whole
affair into a lawyer's hands to be transacted, inasmuch as _Jus_ is of
little use without jurists--nay, often not of very much even _with_
them. To _review_ 'Programmes' he had no time, let alone to _read_
them; and he sent his kind regards to his wife."
It is not displeasing to me that (as I perceive) my readers have all
discovered of themselves that the ghost, or supernatural bow-wow, and
mumbo-jumbo,[112] who had got the trust money out of the Heimlicher's
clutches more effectually than the whole _posse-comitatus_ of the Court
of Exchequer, was none other than Heinrich Leibgeber, who had availed
himself of his resemblance to the departed Siebenkæs to play the part
of _Revenant_. I need not, therefore, tell the reader what he knows
already.
When one has at last managed to creep up a steep Alp with the hands
of a tree-frog, one very often finds that, what one looks down at from
the summit is a fresh yawning abyss. Firmian saw a new one under his
feet; he had to abandon the resolution he had taken. I mean, he did not
now dare to say a word to Nathalie about his resurrection from the
charnel-house--his immortality after death. Alas! the happiness of his
Lenette, who (in the utmost innocence) had two husbands, would then be
hanging on the tip of a tongue. The blame would be his, the misery
Lenette's. No, no (he said); Time will, by slow degrees, lay dust upon
my pale image in Nathalie's kind heart, and draw the colours out of it.
In brief, he kept silence. The proud Nathalie kept silence also.
In this terrible position of matters, face to face with the hard,
eternal _knot_ of the drama, he passed his anxious hours upon the
stage. The raven-flight of cares and sorrows cast their flitting
shadows over every charm and beauty of the spring, and poisonous dreams
fell upon his sleep like mildew. Every dream-night cut the falling
planetary-knot, and his heart along with it. How would Fate rescue and
recover him from this poison-vapour, this azote-gas, of anguish and
anxiety? How would it cure the finger-worm in his ring finger? By
taking his arm off. One evening, to wit, shortly before bedtime, the
Count was as confidential with him as a man of the world can ever be.
He had something very pleasant to tell him, he said; only he must be
allowed to say something beforehand, by way of a preface or
introduction. It struck him--he went on to say, that, now that his
Inspector had entered upon his duties, he was no longer quite so gay
and full of humour as he had found him to be of old, but rather (if he
might speak openly) downcast at times, and over-sentimental. Yet he had
formerly said himself (but this was the _other_ Leibgeber) that he
would rather hear a man swear at a mischance than lament over it; and
that one might have his feet sticking in the winter, and his nose in
the spring, and smell a flower, though in the midst of snow. "I forgive
it, at once, for perhaps I guess the reason of it," he added. But his
forgiveness was really not quite genuine. For, like all the great, to
him strength of feeling, even of a loving sort--but still more, of a
sorrowful--was an annoyance; and a strong handclasp of friendship was
almost as bad as a crunch on the toes. He demanded of pain that it
should pass before him with a smile--of wickedness and evil, that they
should pass him by laughing, or, at all events, laughed _at_--as,
indeed, the coldest men of the world are like the physical man, whose
highest temperature is about the region of the diaphragm.[113]
Consequently, the previous Leibgeber--that storm-windy, but, at the
same time, serene blue sky--naturally suited the Count better than this
so-called Leibgeber. But how differently from us who _read_ this little
reproach quietly, did Siebenkæs listen to it! These _solar eclipses_ of
his Leibgeber (which really were not even so much as _sun spots_
belonging to _him_, but merely _apparent_ shadows cast on him by
Siebenkæs, by reason of the position he chanced to occupy) the latter
reproached himself with as so many deadly sins against his friend,
which he felt it absolutely necessary to confess and do penance for.
As the Count now went on to say, "This melancholy of yours can scarcely
be caused altogether by grief at the loss of your friend Siebenkæs,
because since his death you have never spoken to me of him with such
warmth as when he was alive. Pardon me this frankness,"--a fresh pang
at this shadowing of Leibgeber cut across his brow, and it was with
difficulty that he could allow his patron to finish his explanation.
"But this is not a shortcoming in _my_ eyes, dear Leibgeber: on the
contrary, it is an excellence. We ought not to go on eternally mourning
for the dead; if we grieve at all, it should be for the living. And
even the latter species of grief may come to an end with you next week,
for then I expect my daughter, and" (he spoke here very deliberately)
"her friend Nathalie with her. They have met _en route_." Siebenkæs
sprang hastily up, stood speechless and motionless, held his hand
before his eyes, not to hide them, but to keep the light out of
them, so that he might look through, and follow the course of, the
cloud-masses of thought which were piled one over another and rolling
in all directions, ere he should give his answer.
But the Count--misconstruing him (as Leibgeber) in all points, and
ascribing his sentimental metamorphosis to Nathalie's account, and the
fact of his being deprived of her--begged him merely to hear him out
before speaking, and to accept his assurance that he would be delighted
to do everything in his power to retain his daughter's lovely friend
always in the neighbourhood. Heavens! what thousandfold entanglement
the Count made of a matter so wholly simple!
Here Siebenkæs, stormed at from fresh points of the compass, had to beg
for a moment to think--for there were now _three_ souls at stake--but
he had scarcely taken one or two hasty steps across the room, when he
stood firm again, and said to the Count, and to himself, "Yes, I shall
do what is right." Then he begged the Count to give his word of honour
that he would keep inviolate a secret which he would confide to him,
and which neither related to, nor would injure, himself or his daughter
in the slightest degree. "In that case why should I not?" answered the
Count, to whom the discovery of a secret was as the clearing away of a
thick woodland before a fine view.
Then Firmian opened his heart, his life, and everything, like a stream
let loose and dashing into a new channel, not yet to be measured with a
glance. The Count several times detained him by fresh misunderstandings,
because he had only preassumed, out of his own imagination, a love on
Nathalie's part for the real Leibgeber, and had never heard from any
one of her real love for Siebenkæs.
And now the astonished Count, in his turn, astonished the Advocate;
and, of all the many faces which in such a case he might have put
on--faces offended, angry, startled, embarrassed, delighted, cold--he
only showed the Inspector an exceedingly contented one. It only
particularly pleased him, he said, that he _had_ observed so many
little matters which rather vexed him, and that in certain points he
had _not_ thought over-highly of Leibgeber; but what delighted him most
was his good fortune at possessing, in this manner, a _double_
Leibgeber, and the knowledge that the absent one was not sorrowing for
a dead friend.
Let no one be surprised at the Count's maintaining his good-humour and
serenity who has seen a bright order-star sparkle on an aged, and
extinguished, breast. When our old man of the world beheld the little
shuttle of this chain of friends flying to and fro between love and
sacrifice on either side; when he held in his hand the bright
Raphael-tapestry of friendship which it wove, and looked at it closely,
there came to him the enjoyment of _something new_, for the first time
for many years. So that, up to this point, he had been sitting in his
front box before a living comic-historical drama, of which he himself
unravelled the plot, and which could be performed all over again in his
head at any given moment. Moreover, his Inspector had become a new
being for him, full of fresh entertainment, inasmuch as he had gone off
the stage, changed his dress and re-entered as the pseudo-deceased
Siebenkæs; and could, in the future, tell him as much as he
pleased of the narrator. In this way both the friends had become
flatteringly-precious to him, by reason of the dependent interest in
him with which they had interwoven the bond which bound their souls.
He who has tasted the bliss of sticking to the truth can understand
the new delight with which Siebenkæs could now pour himself
out unrestrained concerning everything--himself and Henry and
Nathalie--inasmuch as it was not till now that he felt the full weight
of the burden he had got relieved of--that of working the light,
jest-falsehood of a moment into a yearly comedy, in 365 acts. With what
ease he explained to the Count that, before Nathalie's arrival (whom he
could neither undeceive, nor go on deceiving), he must fly, and that
straight to Kuhschnappel. As the Count listened, he told him all the
reasons urging him to go; longing to see his tombstone, and unhallowed
grave, so as to do penitence and expiation; longing to see Lenette,
unseen, from afar, perhaps her child near; longing to hear from
eye-witnesses a minute account of her happy married life with Stiefel
(for Stiefel's letter had wafted the flower ashes of bygone days into
his eyes, and opened the leaves of the sleeping-flower of his conjugal
love); longing to wander, romantically (erect now, and with his burden
off), about the scenes of his old oppressed life; longing to hear, in
the market-town, something of his Leibgeber, who had been there so
recently; longing to celebrate August, the month of his death, in
solitude--the month when it had been with him as with the vine, whose
leaves are taken off in August, that the sun may shine more warmly on
the grapes.
In three words, for why give many reasons--since when once there is a
_will_, there can never be any lack of _reasons_--he set off.