I have left Hukelum, and my gossip his bed; and the one is as sound as
the other. The cure was as foolish as the malady. It first occurred to
me, that, as Boerhaave used to remedy convulsions by convulsions, one
fancy might in my gossip's case be remedied by another; namely, by the
fancy that he was yet no man of thirty-two, but only a man of six or
nine. Deliriums are dreams not encircled by sleep; and all dreams
transport us back into youth, why not deliriums too? I accordingly
directed every one to leave the patient; only his mother, while the
fiercest meteors were darting, hissing before his fevered soul, was to
sit down by him alone, and speak to him as if he were a child of eight
years. The bed-mirror also I directed her to cover. She did so; she
spoke to him as if he had the small-pox fever; and when he cried,
"Death is standing with two-and-thirty pointed teeth before me,
to eat my heart," she said to him, "Little dear, I will give thee thy
roller-hat, and thy copy-book, and thy case, and thy hussar-cloak
again, and more too if thou wilt be good." A reasonable speech he would
have taken up and heeded much less than he did this foolish one.
At last she said,--for to women in the depth of sorrow dissimulation
becomes easy,--"Well, I will try it this once, and give thee thy
playthings; but do the like again, thou rogue, and roll thyself about
in the bed so, with the smallpox on thee!" And with this, from her full
apron she shook out on the bed the whole stock of playthings and
dressing-ware, which I had found in the press of the drowned brother.
First of all his copy-book, where Egidius in his eighth year had put
down his name, which he necessarily recognized as his own handwriting;
then the black velvet _fall-hat_ or roller-cap; then the red and white
leading-strings; his knife-case, with a little pamphlet of tin leaves;
his green hussar-cloak, with its stiff facings; and a whole _orbis
pictus_ or _fictus_ of Nuernberg puppets....
The sick man recognized in a moment these projecting peaks of a
spring-world sunk in the stream of Time,--these half shadows, this dusk
of down-gone days,--this conflagration-place and Golgotha of a heavenly
time, which none of us forgets, which we love forever, and look back to
even from the grave.... And when he saw all this, he slowly turned
round his head, as if he were awakening from a long, heavy dream; and
his whole heart flowed down in warm showers of tears, and he said,
fixing his full eyes on the eyes of his mother: "But are my father and
brother still living then?"--"They are dead lately," said the wounded
mother; but her heart was overpowered, and she turned away her eyes,
and bitter tears fell unseen from her down-bent head. And now at once
that evening, when he lay confined to bed by the death of his father,
and was cured by his playthings, overflowed his soul with splendor and
lights, and presence of the Past.
And so Delirium dyed for itself rosy wings in the Aurora of life, and
fanned the panting soul,--and shook down golden butterfly-dust from its
plumage on the path, on the flowerage of the suffering man;--in the far
distance rose lovely tones, in the distance floated lovely clouds--O
his heart was like to fall in pieces, but only into fluttering
flower-stamina, into soft sentient nerves; his eyes were like to melt
away, but only into dew-drops for the cups of joy-blossoms, into
blood-drops for loving hearts; his soul was floating, palpitating,
drinking, and swimming in the warm, relaxing rose-perfume of the
brightest delusion....
The rapture bridled his feverish heart; and his mad pulse grew calm.
Next morning his mother, when she saw that all was prospering, would
have had the church-bells rung, to make him think that the second
Sunday was already here. But his wife (perhaps out of shame in my
presence) was averse to the lying; and said it would be all the same if
we moved the month-hand of his clock (but otherwise than Hezekiah's
Dial) eight days forward; especially as he was wont rather to rise and
look at his clock for the day of the month, then to turn it up in the
almanac. I for my own part simply went up to the bedside, and asked
him: "If he was cracked--what in the world he meant with his mad
death-dreams, when he had lain so long, and passed clean over the
Cantata-Sunday, and yet, out of sheer terror, was withering to a lath?"
A glorious reinforcement joined me; the Flesher or Quartermaster. In
his anxiety, he rushed into the room, without saluting the women, and I
forthwith addressed him aloud: "My gossip here is giving me trouble
enough, Mr. Regiments-Quartermaster; last night, he let them persuade
him he was little older than his own son; here is the child's fall-hat
he was for putting on." The Guardian deuced and devilled, and said:
"Ward, are you a parson or a fool?--Have not I told you twenty times,
there was a maggot in your head about this?"--
At last he himself perceived that he was not rightly wise, and so grew
better; besides the guardian's invectives, my oaths contributed a good
deal; for I swore I would hold him as no right gossip, and edit no word
of his Biography, unless he rose directly and got better....
--In short, he showed so much politeness to me that he rose and got
better.--He was still sickly, it is true, on Saturday; and on Sunday
could not preach a sermon (something of the sort the Schoolmaster read,
instead); but yet he took Confessions on Saturday, and at the altar
next day he dispensed the Sacrament. Service ended, the feast of his
recovery was celebrated, my farewell-feast included; for I was to go in
the afternoon.
This last afternoon I will chalk out with all possible breadth, and
then, with the pentagraph of free garrulity, fill up the outline and
draw on the great scale.
During the Thanksgiving-repast, there arrived considerable personal
tribute from his catechumens, and fairings by way of bonfire for his
recovery; proving how much the people loved him, and how well he
deserved it; for one is oftener hated without reason by the many, than
without reason loved by them. But Fixlein was friendly to every
child; was none of those clergy who never pardon their enemies except
in--God's stead; and he praised at once the whole world, his wife, and
himself.
I then attended at his afternoon's catechizing; and looked down (as he
did in the first Letter-Box) from the choir, under the wing of the
wooden cherub. Behind this angel, I drew out my note-book, and
shifted a little under the cover of the Black Board, with its white
Psalm-ciphers,[66] and wrote down what I was there--thinking. I was
well aware, that when I to-day, on the twenty-fifth of May retired from
this _Salernic_[67] spinning-school, where one is taught to spin out
the thread of life, in fairer wise, and without wetting it by foreign
mixtures,--I was well aware, I say, that I should carry off with me far
more elementary principles of the Science of Happiness than the whole
Chamberlain piquet ever muster all their days. I noted down my first
impression, in the following Rules of Life for myself and the press.
"Little joys refresh us constantly like house-bread, and never bring
disgust; and great ones, like sugar-bread, briefly, and then bring
it.--Trifles we should let, not plague us only, but also gratify us; we
should seize not their poison-bags only, but their honey-bags also; and
if flies often buzz about our room, we should, like Domitian, amuse
ourselves with flies, or, like a certain still living Elector,[68] feed
them.--For _civic_ life and its micrologies, for which the Parson has a
natural taste, we must acquire an artificial one; must learn to love
without esteeming it; learn, far as it ranks beneath _human_ life, to
enjoy it like another twig of this human life, as poetically as we do
the pictures of it in romances. The loftiest mortal loves and seeks the
_same sort_ of things with the meanest; only from higher grounds and by
higher paths. Be every minute, Man, a full life to thee!--Despise
anxiety and wishing, the Future and the Past!--If the _Second-pointer_
can be no road-pointer into an Eden for thy soul, the _Month-pointer_
will still less be so, for thou livest not from month to month, but
from second to second! Enjoy thy Existence more than thy Manner of
Existence, and let the dearest object of thy Consciousness be this
Consciousness itself!--Make not the Present a means of thy Future;
for this Future is nothing but a coming Present; and the Present,
which thou despisest, was once a Future which thou desiredst!--Stake
in no lotteries,--keep at home,--give and accept no pompous
entertainments,--travel not abroad every year!--Conceal not from
thyself, by long plans, thy household goods, thy chamber, thy
acquaintance!--Despise Life, that thou mayst enjoy it!--Inspect the
neighborhood of thy life; every shelf, every nook of thy abode; and
nestling in, quarter thyself in the farthest and most domestic winding
of thy snail-house!--Look upon a capital but as a collection of
villages, a village as some blind-alley of a capital; fame as the talk
of neighbors at the street-door; a library as a learned conversation,
joy as a second, sorrow as a minute, life as a day; and three things as
all in all: God, Creation, Virtue!"----
And if I would follow myself and these rules, it will behoove me not to
make so much of this Biography; but once for all, like a moderate man,
to let it sound out.
After the Catechizing, I stept down to my wide-gowned and black-gowned
gossip. The congregation gone, we clambered up to all high places,
perused the plates on the pews--I took a lesson on the altar on its
inscription incrusted with the _sediment of Time_ (I speak not
metaphorically); I organed, my gossip managing the bellows; I mounted
the pulpit, and was happy enough there to alight on one other
rose-shoot, which in the farewell minute, I could still plant in the
rose-garden of my Fixlein. For I descried aloft, on the back of a
wooden Apostle, the name _Lavater_, which the Zurich Physiognomist had
been pleased to leave on this sacred Torso in the course of his
wayfaring. Fixlein did not know the hand, but I did, for I had seen it
frequently in Flachsenfingen, not only on the tapestry of a Court Lady
there, but also in his _Hand-Library_;[69] and met with it besides in
many country churches, forming, as it were, the Directory and
Address-Calendar of this wandering name, for Lavater likes to inscribe
in pulpits, as a shepherd does in trees, the name of his beloved. I
could now advise my gossip prudently to cut away the name, with the
chip of wood containing it, from the back of the Apostle, and to
preserve it carefully among his _curiosa_.
On returning to the parsonage, I made for my hat and stick; but the
design, as it were the projection and contour of a supper in the
acacia-grove, had already been sketched by Thiennette. I declared that
I would stay till evening, in case the young mother went out with us to
the proposed meal.... and truly the Biographer at length got his way,
all doctors' regulations notwithstanding.
I then constrained the Parson to put on his Kraeutermuetze,[70] or
Herb-cap, which he had stitched together out of simples for the
strengthening of his memory: "Would to Heaven," said I, "that Princes
instead of their Princely Hats, Doctors and Cardinals instead
of theirs, and Saints instead of martyr-crowns, would clap such
memory-bonnets on their heads!"--Thereupon, till the roasting and
cooking within doors were over, we marched out alone over the parsonage
meadows, and talked of learned matters, we packed ourselves into the
ruined Robber-Castle, on which my gossip, as already mentioned,
has a literary work in hand. I deeply approved, the rather as this
Kidnapper-tower had once belonged to an Aufhammer, his intention of
dedicating the description to the Rittmeister; that nobleman, I think,
will sooner give his name to the Book than to the Shock. For the rest,
I exhorted my fellow-craftsman to pluck up literary heart, and said to
him: "A fearless pen, good gossip! Let Subrector Hans von Fuechslein be,
if he like, the Dragon of the Apocalypse, lying in wait for the
delivery of the fugitive Woman, to swallow the offspring; I am there
too, and have my friend the Editor of the _Litteraturzeitung_ at my
side, who will gladly permit me to give an _anticritique_ on paying the
insertion-dues!"--I especially excited him to new fillings and
return-freights of his Letter-Boxes. I have not taken oath that into
this biographical chest-of-drawers I will not in the course of time
introduce another Box. "Neither to my godson, worthy gossip, will it do
any harm that he is presented, poor child, even now to the reading
public, when he does not count more months than, as Horace will have
it, a literary child should count years, namely, _nine_."
In walking homewards, I praised his wife. "If marriage," said I to him,
"is the madder which in maids, as in cotton, makes the colors visible,
then I contend, that Thiennette, when a maid, could scarcely be so good
as she is now when a wife. By Heaven! in such a marriage, I should
write Books of quite another sort, divine ones; in a marriage, I mean,
where beside the writing-table (as beside the great voting-table at the
Regensburg Diets, there are little tables of confectionery); where in
like manner, I say, a little jar of marmalade were standing by me,
namely, a sweetened, dainty, lovely face, and out of measure fond of
the Letter-Box-writer, gossip! Your marriage will resemble the
acacia-grove we are now going to, the leaves of which grow thicker with
the heat of summer, while other shrubs are yielding only shrunk and
porous shade."
As we entered through the upper garden-door into this same bower, the
supper and the good mistress were already there. Nothing is more pure
and tender than the respect with which a wife treats the benefactor or
comrade of her husband; and happily the Biographer himself was this
comrade, and the object of this respect. Our talk was cheerful, but my
spirit was oppressed. The fetters, which bind the mere reader to my
heroes, were in my case of triple force; as I was at once their guest
and their portrait-painter. I told the Parson that he would live to a
greater age than I, for that his temperate temperament was balanced, as
if by a doctor, so equally between the nervousness of refinement and
the hot thick-bloodedness of the rustic. Fixlein said that if he lived
but as long as he had done, namely, two-and-thirty years, it would
amount, exclusive of the leap-year-days, to 280,320 seconds, which in
itself was something considerable; and that he often reckoned up with
satisfaction the many thousand persons of his own age that would have a
life equally long.
At last I tried to get in motion; for the red lights of the falling sun
were mounting up over the grove, and dipping us still deeper in the
shadows of night; the young mother had grown chill in the evening dew.
In confused mood, I invited the Parson to visit me soon in the city,
where I would show him not only all the chambers of the Palace, but the
Prince himself. Gladder there was nothing this day on our old world
than the face to which I said so; and than the other one which was
the mild reflection of the former.--For the Biographer it would
have been too hard, if now in that minute, when his fancy, like
mirror-telescopes, was representing every object in a _tremulous_ form,
he had been obliged to cut and run; if, I will say, it had not occurred
to him that to the young mother it could do little harm (but much good)
were she to take a short walk, and assist in escorting the Author and
architect of the present Letter-Box out of the garden to his road.
In short, I took this couple one in each hand, instead of under each
arm, and moved with them through the garden to the Flachsenfingen
highway. I often abruptly turned round my head between them, as if I
had heard some one coming after us; but in reality I only meant once
more, though mournfully, to look back into the happy hamlet, whose
houses were all dwellings of contented still Sabbath-joy, and which is
happy enough, though over its wide-parted pavement-stones there passes
every week but one barber, every holiday but one dresser of hair, and
every year but one hawker of parasols. Then truly I had again to turn
round my head, and look at the happy pair beside me. My otherwise
affectionate gossip could not rightly suit himself to these tokens of
sorrow; but in thy heart, thou good, so oft afflicted sex, every
mourning-bell soon finds its unison; and Thiennette, ennobled with the
thin trembling _resonance_ of a reverberating soul, gave me back all my
tones with the beauties of an echo.---- At last we reached the
boundary, over which Thiennette could not be allowed to walk; and now
must I part from my gossip, with whom I had talked so gayly every
morning (each of us from his bed), and from the still circuit of modest
hope where he dwelt, and return once more to the rioting, fermenting
Court-sphere, where men in bull-beggar tone demand from Fate a root of
Life-Licorice, thick as the arm, like the botanical one on the Wolga,
not so much that they may chew the sweet bean themselves, as fell
others to earth with it.
As I thought to myself that I would say, Farewell! to them, all the
coming plagues, all the corpses, and all the marred wishes of this
good pair, arose before my heart; and I remembered that little, save
the falling asleep of joy-flowers, would mark the current of their
Life-day, as it does of mine and of every one's.--And yet is it fairer,
if they measure their years not by the _Water-clock_ of falling tears,
but by the _Flower-clock_[71] of asleep-going flowers, whose bells in
our short-lived garden are sinking together before us from hour to
hour.--
I would even now--for I still recollect how I hung with streaming eyes
over these two loved ones, as over their corpses--address myself, and
say: Far too soft, _Jean Paul_, whose chalk still sketches the models
of Nature on a ground of Melancholy; harden thy heart like thy frame,
and waste not thyself and others by such thoughts. Yet why should I do
it, why should I not confess directly what, in the softest emotion, I
said to these two beings? "May all go right with you, ye mild beings,"
I said, for I no longer thought of courtesies, "may the arm of
Providence bear gently your lacerated hearts, and the good Father,
above all these suns which are now looking down on us, keep you ever
united, and exalt you still undivided to his bosom and his lips!" "Be
you, too, right happy and glad!" said Thiennette. "And to you,
Thiennette," continued I, "Ah! to your pale cheeks, to your oppressed
heart, to your long cold maltreated youth, I can never, never wish
enough. No! But all that can soothe a wounded soul, that can please a
pure one, that can still the hidden sigh--O, all that you deserve--may
this be given you; and when you see me again, then say to me, 'I am now
much happier!'"
We were all of us too deeply moved. We at last tore ourselves asunder
from repeated embraces; my friend retired with the soul whom he
loves,--I remained alone behind him with the Night.
And I walked without aim through woods, through valleys, and over
brooks, and through sleeping villages, to enjoy the great Night like a
Day. I walked, and still looked like the magnet to the region of
midnight, to strengthen my heart at the gleaming twilight, at
this upstretching Aurora of a morning beneath our feet. White
night-butterflies flitted, white blossoms fluttered, white stars fell,
and the white snow-powder hung silvery in the high Shadow of the Earth,
which reaches beyond the Moon, and which is our Night. Then began the
AEolian Harp of the Creation to tremble and to sound, blown on from
above, and my immortal soul was a string in this Harp.--The heart
of a brother everlasting Man swelled under the everlasting Heaven,
as the seas swell under the Sun and under the Moon.--The distant
village-clocks struck midnight, mingling, as it were, with the
ever-pealing tone of ancient Eternity.--The limbs of my buried ones
touched cold on my soul, and drove away its blots, as dead hands heal
eruptions of the skin.--I walked silently through little hamlets, and
close by their outer churchyards, where crumbled upcast coffin-boards
were glimmering, while the once bright eyes that had lain in them were
mouldered into gray ashes.--Cold thought! clutch not like a cold
spectre at my heart; I look up to the starry sky, and an everlasting
chain stretches thither, and over and below; and all is Life, and
Warmth, and Light, and all is godlike or God....
Towards morning I descried thy late lights, little city of my dwelling,
which I belong to on this side the grave; I return to the Earth; and in
thy steeples, behind the by-advanced great Midnight, it struck half
past two; about this hour, in 1794, Mars went down in the west, and the
Moon rose in the east; and my soul desired, in grief for the noble
warlike blood which is still streaming on the blossoms of Spring: "Ah,
retire, bloody War, like red Mars; and thou, still Peace, come forth
like the mild divided Moon!"--
ARMY-CHAPLAIN SCHMELZLE'S
JOURNEY TO FLAeTZ;