"Who loves not wine, women, and song,

Will be a fool all his life long."

He was a complete man--I would say an absolute man, in whom spirit and

matter were not antagonistic. To call him a spiritualist would,

therefore, be as erroneous as to call him a sensualist. How shall I

describe him? He had in him something aboriginal, incomprehensible,

miraculous.

...All praise to Luther! Eternal honour to the blessed man to whom we

owe the salvation of our most precious possessions, and whose

benefactions we still enjoy. It ill becomes us to complain of the

narrowness of his views. The dwarf, standing on the shoulders of the

giant, particularly if he puts on spectacles, can, it is true, see

farther than the giant himself; but for noble thoughts and exalted

sentiments a giant heart is necessary. It were still more unseemly of us

to pass a harsh judgment on his faults, for those very faults have

benefited us more than the virtues of thousands of other men. The

refinement of Erasmus, the mildness of Melanchthon, could never have

brought us so far as the godlike brutality of Brother Martin.

...From the day on which Luther denied the authority of the Pope, and

publicly declared in the Diet "that his teachings must be controverted

through the words of the Bible itself, or with sensible reasons," there

begins a new era in Germany. The fetters with which Saint Boniface had

chained the German Church to Rome are broken. This Church, which has

hitherto formed an integral part of the great hierarchy, now splits into

religious democracies. The character of the religion itself is

essentially changed: the Hindoo-Gnostic element disappears from it, and

the Judaic-theistic element again becomes prominent. We behold the rise

of evangelical Christianity. By recognising and legitimising the most

importunate claims of the senses, religion becomes once more a reality.

The priest becomes man, takes to himself a wife, and begets children, as

God desires.

...If in Germany we lost through Protestantism, along with the ancient

miracles, much other poetry, we gained manifold compensations. Men

became nobler and more virtuous. Protestantism was very successful in

effecting that purity of morals and that strictness in the fulfilment of

duty which is generally called morality. In certain communities, indeed,

Protestantism assumed a tendency which in the end became quite identical

with morality, and the gospels remained as a beautiful parable only.

Particularly in the lives of the ecclesiastics is a pleasing change now

noticeable. With celibacy disappeared also monkish obscenities and

vices. Among the Protestant clergy are frequently to be found the

noblest and most virtuous of men, such as would have won respect from

even the ancient Stoics. One must have wandered on foot, as a poor

student, through Northern Germany, in order to learn how much

virtue--and in order to give virtue a complimentary adjective, how much

evangelical virtue--is to be found in an unpretentious-looking

parsonage. How often of a winter's evening have I found there a

hospitable welcome,--I, a stranger, who brought with me no other

recommendation save that I was hungry and tired! When I had partaken of

a hearty meal, and, after a good night's rest, was ready in the morning

to continue my journey, then came the old pastor, in his dressing-gown,

and gave me a blessing on the way,--and it never brought me misfortune;

and his good-hearted, gossipy wife placed several slices of

bread-and-butter in my pocket, which I found not less refreshing; and

silent in the distance stood the pastor's pretty daughters, with

blushing cheeks and violet eyes, whose modest fire in the mere

recollection warmed my heart for many a whole winter's day.

...How strange! We Germans are the strongest and wisest of nations; our

royal races furnish princes for all the thrones of Europe; our

Rothschilds rule all the exchanges of the world; our learned men are

pre-eminent in all the sciences; we invented gunpowder and

printing;--and yet if one of us fires a pistol he must pay a fine of

three thalers; and if we wish to insert in a newspaper, "My dear wife

has given birth to a little daughter, beautiful as Liberty," then the

censor grasps his red pencil and strikes out the word "Liberty."

...I have said that we gained freedom of thought through Luther. But he

gave us not only freedom of movement, but also the means of movement;

to the spirit he gave a body; to the thought he gave words. He created

the German language.

This he did by his translation of the Bible.

In fact, the divine author of that book seems to have known, as well as

we others, that the choice of a translator is by no means a matter of

indifference; and so He himself selected His translator, and bestowed on

him the wonderful gift to translate from a language which was dead and

already buried, into another language that as yet did not exist.

...The knowledge of the Hebrew language had entirely disappeared from

the Christian world. Only the Jews, who kept themselves hidden here and

there in stray corners of the world, yet preserved the traditions of

this language. Like a ghost keeping watch over a treasure which had been

confided to it during life, so in its dark and gloomy ghettos sat this

murdered nation, this spectre-people, guarding the Hebrew Bible.

...Luther's Bible is an enduring spring of rejuvenation for our

language. All the expressions and phrases contained therein are German,

and are still in use by writers. As this book is in the hands of even

the poorest people, they require no special learned education in order

to be able to express themselves in literary forms. When our political

revolution breaks out, this circumstance will have remarkable results.

Liberty will everywhere be gifted with the power of speech, and her

speech will be biblical.

...More noteworthy and of more importance than his prose writings are

Luther's poems, the songs which in battle and in trouble blossomed forth

from his heart. Sometimes they resemble a floweret that grows on a rocky

crag, then again a ray of moonlight trembling over a restless sea.

Luther loved music, and even wrote a treatise on the art; hence his

songs are particularly melodious. In this respect he merits the name,

Swan of Eisleben. But he is nothing less than a wild swan in those songs

wherein he stimulates the courage of his followers and inflames himself

to the fiercest rage of battle. A true battle-song was that martial

strain with which he and his companions marched into Worms. The old

cathedral trembled at those unwonted tones, and the ravens, in their

dark nests in the steeple, startled with affright. That song, the

Marseillaise of the Reformation, preserves to this day its inspiriting

power.

...The expressions "classic" and "romantic" refer only to the spirit and

the manner of the treatment. The treatment is classic when the form of

that which is portrayed is quite identical with the idea of the

portrayer, as is the case with the art-works of the Greeks, in which,

owing to this identity, the greatest harmony is found to exist between

the idea and its form. The treatment is romantic when the form does not

reveal the idea through this identity, but lets this idea be surmised

parabolically. (I use the word "parabolically" here in preference to

"symbolically.") The Greek mythology had an array of god-figures, each

of which, in addition to the identity of form and idea, was also

susceptible of a symbolic meaning. But in this Greek religion only the

figures of the gods were clearly defined; all else, their lives and

deeds, was left to the arbitrary treatment of the poet's fancy. In the

Christian religion, on the contrary, there are no such clearly-defined

figures, but stated facts--certain definite holy events and deeds, into

which the poetical faculty of man could place a parabolic signification.

It is said that Homer invented the Greek gods and goddesses. That is not

true. They existed previously in clearly-defined outlines; but he

invented their histories. The artists of the middle ages, on the other

hand, never ventured the least addition to the historical part of their

religion. The fall of man, the incarnation, the baptism, the

crucifixion, and the like, were matters of fact, which were not to be

intermeddled with, and which it was not permissible to remould in the

least, but to which poetry might attach a symbolic meaning. All the arts

during the middle ages were treated in this parabolic spirit, and this

treatment is romantic. Hence we find in the poetry of the middle ages a

mystic universality; the forms are all so shadowy, what they do is so

vaguely indicated, all therein is as if seen through a hazy twilight

intermittently illumined by the moon. The idea is merely hinted at in

the form, as in a riddle; and we dimly see a vague, indefinite figure,

which is the peculiarity of spiritual literature. There is not, as among

the Greeks, a harmony, clear as the sun, between form and meaning, but

occasionally the meaning overtops the given form, and the latter strives

desperately to reach the former, and then we behold bizarre, fantastic

sublimity; then, again, the form has overgrown itself, and is out of all

proportion to the meaning. A silly, pitiful thought trails itself along

in some colossal form, and we witness a grotesque farce: misshapenness

is nearly always the result.

The universal characteristic of that literature was that in all its

productions it manifested the same firm, unshaken faith which in that

period reigned over worldly as well as spiritual matters. All the

opinions of that time were based on authorities. The poet journeyed

along the abysses of doubt as free from apprehension as a mule, and

there prevailed in the literature of that period a dauntless composure

and blissful self-confidence such as became impossible in after-times,

when the influence of the Papacy, the chief of those authorities, was

shattered, and with it all the others were overthrown. Hence the poems

of the middle ages have all the same characteristics, as if composed not

by single individuals, but by the whole people _en masse_: they are

objective, epic, naïve.

In the literature that blossomed into life with Luther we find quite

opposite tendencies.

Its material, its subject, is the conflict between the interests and

views of the Reformation and the old order of things. To the new spirit

of the times, that hodge-podge religion which arose from the two

elements already referred to--Germanic nationality and the

Hindoo-Gnostic Christendom--was altogether repugnant. The latter was

considered heathen idol-worship, which was to be replaced by the true

religion of the Judaic-theistic Gospel. A new order of things is

established; the spirit makes discoveries which demand the well-being of

matter. Through industrial progress and the dissemination of

philosophical theories, spiritualism becomes discredited in popular

opinion. The _tiers-état_ begins to rise; the Revolution already rumbles

in the hearts and brains of men, and what the era feels, thinks, needs,

and wills is openly spoken; and that is the stuff of which modern

literature is made. At the same time the treatment is no longer

romantic, but classic.

...The universal characteristic of modern literature consists in this,

that now individuality and scepticism predominate. Authorities are

overthrown; reason is now man's sole lamp, and conscience his only staff

in the dark mazes of life. Man now stands alone, face to face with his

Creator, and chants his songs to Him. Hence this literary epoch opens

with hymns. And even later, when it becomes secular, the most intimate

self-consciousness, the feeling of personality, rules throughout. Poetry

is no longer objective, epic, and naïve, but subjective, lyric, and

reflective.

...The God of the pantheists differs from the God of the theists in so

far that the former is in the world itself, while the latter is external

to, or, in other words, is over the world. The God of the theists rules

the world from above as a quite distinct establishment. Only in regard

to the manner of that rule do the theists differ among themselves. The

Hebrews picture God as a thunder-hurling tyrant; the Christians regard

him as a loving father; the disciples of Rousseau and the whole Genevese

school portray him as a skilful artist, who has made the whole world

somewhat in the same manner as their papas manufacture watches; and as

art-connoisseurs, they admire the work and praise the Maker above.

...From the moment that religion seeks assistance from philosophy her

downfall is unavoidable. She strives to defend herself, and always talks

herself deeper into ruin. Religion, like all other absolutisms, may not

justify herself. Prometheus is bound to the rock by a silent power.

Æschylus represents the personification of brute force as not speaking a

single word. It must be dumb.

...Moses Mendelssohn was the reformer of the German Israelites, his

companions in faith. He overthrew the prestige of Talmudism, and founded

a pure Mosaism. This man, whom his contemporaries called the German

Socrates, and whose nobleness of soul and intellectual powers they so

admired, was the son of a poor sexton of the synagogue at Dessau.

Besides this curse of birth, Providence made him a hunchback, in order

to teach the rabble in a very striking manner that men are to be judged

not by outward appearance but by inner worth. As Luther overthrew the

Papacy, so Mendelssohn overthrew the Talmud; and that, too, by a similar

process. He discarded tradition, declared the Bible to be the

well-spring of religion, and translated the most important parts of it.

By so doing he destroyed Jewish Catholicism, for such is the Talmud. It

is a Gothic dome which, although overladen with fanciful, childish

ornamentation, yet amazes us by the immensity of its heaven-aspiring

proportions.

...No German can pronounce the name of Lessing without a responsive echo

in his breast. Since Luther, Germany has produced no greater and better

man than Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. These two are our pride and joy. In

the troubles of the present we look back at their consoling figures, and

they answer with a look full of bright promise. The third man will come

who will perfect what Luther began and what Lessing carried on--the

third Liberator.

Like Luther, Lessing's achievements consisted not only in effecting

something definite, but in agitating the German people to its depths,

and in awakening through his criticism and polemics a wholesome

intellectual activity. He was the vivifying critic of his time, and his

whole life was a polemic. His critical insight made itself felt

throughout the widest range of thought and feeling--in religion, in

science, and in art. His polemics vanquished every opponent, and grew

stronger with every victory. Lessing, as he himself confessed, needed

conflict for the full development of his powers. He resembled that

fabulous Norman who inherited the skill, knowledge, and strength of

those whom he slew in single combat, and in this manner became finally

endowed with all possible excellencies and perfections. It is easily

conceivable that such a contentious champion should stir up not a little

commotion in Germany,--in that quiet Germany which was then even more

sabbatically quiet than now. The majority were stupefied at his literary

audacity. But this was of the greatest assistance to him, for _oser_!

is the secret of success in literature, as it is in revolutions,--and in

love. All trembled before the sword of Lessing. No head was safe from

him. Yes, many heads he struck off from mere wantonness, and was

moreover so spiteful as to lift them up from the ground and show to the

public that they were hollow inside. Those whom his sword could not

reach he slew with the arrows of his wit. His friends admired the pretty

feathers of those arrows; his enemies felt their barbs in their hearts.

Lessing's wit does not resemble that _enjouement_, that _gaîté_, those

lively _saillies_, which are so well known here in France. His wit was

no petty French greyhound, chasing its own shadow: it was rather a great

German tom-cat, who plays with the mouse before he throttles it.

Yes, polemics were our Lessing's delight, and so he never reflected long

whether an opponent was worthy of him,--thus through his controversies

he has saved many a name from well-merited oblivion. Around many a

pitiful authorling he has spun a web of the wittiest sarcasm, the most

charming humour; and thus they are preserved for all time in Lessing's

works, like insects caught in a piece of amber. In slaying his enemies

he made them immortal. Who of us would have ever heard of that Klotz on

whom Lessing wasted so much wit and scorn? The huge rocks which he

hurled at, and with which he crushed, that poor antiquarian, are now the

latter's indestructible monument.

It is noteworthy that this wittiest man of all Germany was also the most

honourable. There is nothing equal to his love of truth. Lessing made

not the least concession to falsehood, even if thereby, after the manner

of the worldly-wise, he could advance the victory of truth itself. He

could do everything for truth, except lie for it. Whoever thinks, he

once said, to bring Truth to man, masked and rouged, may well be her

pander, but he has never been her lover.

...It is heart-rending to read in his biography how fate denied this man

every joy, and how it did not even vouchsafe to him to rest with his

family from his daily struggles. Once only fortune seemed to smile on

him; she gave him a loved wife, a child--but this happiness was like the

rays of the sun gilding the wings of a swift-flying bird: it vanished as

quickly. His wife died in consequence of her confinement, the child soon

after birth. Concerning the latter, he wrote to a friend the

horribly-witty words, "My joy was brief. And I lost him so unwillingly,

that son! For he was so wise, so wise! Do not think that the few hours

of my fatherhood have already made a doting parent of me. I know what I

say. Was it not wisdom that he had to be reluctantly dragged into the

world with iron tongs, and that he so soon discovered his folly? Was it

not wisdom that he seized the first opportunity to leave it? For once I

have sought to be happy like other men; but I have made a miserable

failure of it."

...Lessing was the prophet who from the New Testament pointed towards

the Third Testament. I have called him the successor of Luther; and it

is in this character that I have to speak of him here. Of his influence

on German art I shall speak hereafter. On this he effected a wholesome

reform, not only through his criticism, but also through his example;

and this latter phase of his activity is generally made the most

prominent, and is the most discussed. But, viewed from our present

standpoint, his philosophical and theological battles are to us more

important than all his dramas, or his dramaturgy. His dramas, however,

like all his writings, have a social import, and _Nathan the Wise_ is in

reality not only a good play, but also a philosophical, theological

treatise in support of the doctrine of a pure theism. For Lessing, art

was a tribune, and when he was thrust from the pulpit or the professor's

chair he sprang on to the stage, speaking out more boldly, and gaining a

more numerous audience.

I say that Lessing continued the work of Luther. After Luther had freed

us from the yoke of tradition and had exalted the Bible as the only

well-spring of Christianity, there ensued a rigid word-service, and the

letter of the Bible ruled just as tyrannically as once did tradition.

Lessing contributed the most to the emancipation from the tyranny of the

letter.

Lessing died in Brunswick, in the year 1781, misunderstood, hated, and

denounced. In the same year there was published at Königsberg the

_Critique of Pure Reason_, by Immanuel Kant. With this book there begins

in Germany an intellectual revolution, which offers the most wonderful

analogies to the material revolution in France, and which to the

profound thinker must appear equally important. It develops the same

phases, and between the two there exists a very remarkable parallelism.

On both sides of the Rhine we behold the same rupture with the past: it

is loudly proclaimed that all reverence for tradition is at an end. As

in France no privilege, so in Germany no thought is tolerated without

proving its right to exist: nothing is taken for granted. And as in

France fell the monarchy, the keystone of the old social system, so in

Germany fell theism, the keystone of the intellectual _ancien régime_.

* * * * *

It is horrible when the bodies which we have created ask of us a soul.

But it is still more horrible, more terrible, more uncanny, to create a

soul, which craves a body and pursues us with that demand. The idea

which we have thought is such a soul, and it allows us no peace until we

have given it a body, until we have brought it into actual being. The

thought seems to become deed; the word, flesh. And, strange! man, like

the God of the Bible, needs but to speak his thought, and the world

shapes itself accordingly: light dawns, or darkness descends; the waters

separate themselves from the dry land, and even wild beasts appear. The

universe is but the signature of the word.

Mark this, ye haughty men of action. Ye are naught but the unconscious

servants of the men of thought, who, oftentimes in the humblest

obscurity, have marked out your tasks for you with the utmost

exactitude. Maximilian Robespierre was only the hand of Jean Jacques

Rousseau--the bloody hand that from the womb of time drew forth the body

whose soul Rousseau had created. Did the restless anxiety that

embittered the life of Jean Jacques arise from a foreboding that his

thoughts would require such a midwife to bring them into the world?

Old Fontenelle was perhaps in the right when he declared, "If I carried

all the ideas of this world in my closed hand, I should take good heed

not to open it." For my part, I think differently. If I held all the

ideas of the world in my hand, I might perhaps implore you to hew off my

hand at once, but in no case would I long keep it closed. I am not

adapted to be a jailor of thoughts. By Heaven! I would set them free.

Even if they assumed the most threatening shapes and swept through all

lands like a band of mad Bacchantes; even if with their thyrsus staffs

they should strike down our most innocent flowers; even if they should

break into our hospitals and chase the sick old world from its bed! It

would certainly grieve me sadly, and I myself should come to harm. For,

alas! I too belong to that sick old world; and the poet says rightly

that scoffing at our own crutches does not enable us to walk any the

better. I am the most sick among you all, and the most to be pitied, for

I know what health is. But you know it not, you enviable ones. You can

die without noticing it yourselves. Yes, many of you have already been

dead for these many years, and you think that now only does the true

life begin. When I contradict such madness, then they become enraged

against me, and rail at me, and, horrible! the corpses spring on me and

reproach me; and more even than their revilings does their mouldy odour

oppress me. Avaunt, ye spectres! I am speaking of one whose very name

possesses an exorcising power: I speak of Immanuel Kant.

It is said that the spirits of darkness tremble with affright when they

behold the sword of an executioner. How, then, must they stand aghast

when confronted with Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_! This book is the

sword with which, in Germany, theism was decapitated.

To be candid, you French are tame and moderate compared with us Germans.

At the most, you have slain a king; and he had already lost his head

before he was beheaded. And withal you must drum so much, and shout, and

stamp, so that the whole world was shaken by the tumult. It is really

awarding Maximilian Robespierre too much honour to compare him with

Immanuel Kant. Maximilian Robespierre, the great citizen of the Rue

Saint Honoré, did truly have an attack of destructive fury when the

monarchy was concerned, and he writhed terribly enough in his regicidal

epilepsy; but as soon as the Supreme Being was mentioned, he wiped the

white foam from his mouth and the blood from his hands, put on his blue

Sunday coat with the bright buttons, and attached a bouquet of flowers

to his broad coat-lapel.

The life-history of Immanuel Kant is difficult to write, for he had

neither a life nor a history. He lived a mechanical, orderly, almost

abstract, bachelor life, in a quiet little side-street of Königsberg, an

old city near the north-east boundary of Germany. I believe that the

great clock of the cathedral did not perform its daily work more

dispassionately, more regularly, than its countryman, Immanuel Kant.

Rising, coffee-drinking, writing, collegiate lectures, dining,

walking--each had its set time. And when Immanuel Kant, in his grey

coat, cane in hand, appeared at the door of his house, and strolled

towards the small linden avenue, which is still called "the

philosopher's walk," the neighbours knew it was exactly half-past four.

Eight times he promenaded up and down, during all seasons; and when the

weather was gloomy, or the grey clouds threatened rain, his old servant

Lampe was seen plodding anxiously after, with a large umbrella under his

arm, like a symbol of Providence.

What a strange contrast between the outer life of the man and his

destructive, world-convulsing thoughts! Had the citizens of Königsberg

surmised the whole significance of these thoughts, they would have felt

a more profound awe in the presence of this man than in that of an

executioner, who merely slays human beings. But the good people saw in

him nothing but a professor of philosophy; and when at the fixed hour he

sauntered by, they nodded a friendly greeting, and regulated their

watches.

But if Immanuel Kant, that arch-destroyer in the realms of thought, far

surpassed Maximilian Robespierre in terrorism, yet he had certain points

of resemblance to the latter that invite a comparison of the two men. In

both we find the same inflexible, rigid, prosaic integrity. Then we

find in both the same instinct of distrust,--only that the one exercises

it against ideas, and names it a critique, while the other applies it to

men, and calls it republican virtue. In both, however, the narrow-minded

shopkeeper type is markedly manifest. Nature had intended them to weigh

out sugar and coffee, but fate willed it otherwise, and into the scales

of one it laid a king, into those of the other, a God. And they both

weighed correctly.

...Pantheism had already in Fichte's time interpenetrated German art;

even the Catholic Romanticists unconsciously followed this current, and

Goethe expressed it most unmistakably. This he already does in

_Werther_. In _Faust_ he seeks to establish an affinity between man and

nature by a bold, direct, mystic method, and conjures the secret forces

of nature through the magic formula of the powers of hell. But this

Goethean pantheism is most clearly and most charmingly disclosed in his

short ballads. The early philosophy of Spinoza has shed its mathematical

shell, and now flutters about us as Goethean poetry. Hence the wrath of

our pietists, and of orthodoxy in general, against the Goethean ballads.

With their pious bear-paws they clumsily strike at this butterfly, which

is so daintily ethereal, so light of wing, that it always flits out of

reach. These Goethean ballads have a tantalising charm that is

indescribable. The harmonious verses captivate the heart like the

tenderness of a loving maiden; the words embrace you while the thought

kisses you.

...This giant was minister in a lilliputian German state, in which he

could never move at ease. It was said of Phidias's Jupiter seated in

Olympus, that were he ever to stand erect the sudden uprising would rend

asunder the vaulted roof. This was exactly Goethe's situation at

Weimar; had he suddenly lifted himself up from his peaceful, sitting

posture, he would have shattered the gabled canopy of state, or, more

probably, he would have bruised his own head. But the German Jupiter

remained quietly seated, and composedly accepted homage and incense.

...When it was seen that such saddening follies were budding out of

philosophy and ripening into a baleful maturity--when it was observed

that the German youth were generally absorbed in metaphysical

abstractions, thereby neglecting the most important questions of the

time and unfitting themselves for practical life,--it was quite natural

that patriots and lovers of liberty should be led to conceive a

justifiable dislike to philosophy; and a few went so far as to condemn

it utterly and entirely, as idle, useless, chimerical theorising.

We shall not be so foolish as to attempt seriously to refute these

malcontents. German philosophy is a matter of great weight and

importance, and concerns the whole human race. Only our most remote

descendants will be able to decide whether we deserve blame or praise

for completing first our philosophy and afterwards our revolution. To me

it seems that a methodical people, such as we Germans are, must

necessarily have commenced with the Reformation, could only after that

proceed to occupy ourselves with philosophy, and not until the

completion of the latter could we pass on to the political revolution.

This order I find quite sensible. The heads which philosophy has used

for thinking, the revolution can afterwards, for its purposes, cut off.

But philosophy would never have been able to use the heads which had

been decapitated by the revolution, if the latter had preceded.

...Christianity--and this is its fairest service--has to a certain

degree moderated that brutal lust of battle, such as we find it among

the ancient Germanic races, who fought, not to destroy, not yet to

conquer, but merely from a fierce, demoniac love of battle itself; but

it could not altogether eradicate it. And when once that restraining

talisman, the cross, is broken, then the smouldering ferocity of those

ancient warriors will again blaze up; then will again be heard the

deadly clang of that frantic Berserkir wrath, of which the Norse poets

say and sing so much. The talisman is rotten with decay, and the day

will surely come when it will crumble and fall. Then the ancient stone

gods will arise from out the ashes of dismantled ruins, and rub the dust

of a thousand years from their eyes; and finally Thor, with his colossal

hammer, will leap up, and with it shatter into fragments the Gothic

Cathedrals.

And when ye hear the rumbling and the crumbling, take heed, ye

neighbours of France, and meddle not with what we do in Germany. It

might bring harm on you. Take heed not to kindle the fire; take heed not

to quench it. Ye might easily burn your fingers in the flame. Smile not

at my advice as the counsel of a visionary warning you against Kantians,

Fichteans, and natural philosophers. Scoff not at the dreamer who

expects in the material world a revolution similar to that which has

already taken place in the domains of thought. The thought goes before

the deed, as the lightning precedes the thunder. German thunder is

certainly German, and is rather awkward, and it comes rolling along

tardily; but come it surely will, and when ye once hear a crash the like

of which in the world's history was never heard before, then know that

the German thunderbolt has reached its mark. At this crash the eagles

will fall dead in mid air, and the lions in Afric's most distant deserts

will cower and sneak into their royal dens. A drama will be enacted in

Germany in comparison with which the French Revolution will appear a

harmless idyl. To be sure, matters are at present rather quiet, and if

occasionally this one or the other rants and gesticulates somewhat

violently, do not believe that these are the real actors. These are only

little puppies, that run around in the empty arena, barking and snarling

at one another, until the hour shall arrive when appear the gladiators,

who are to battle unto death.

And that hour _will_ come. As on the raised benches of an amphitheatre

the nations will group themselves around Germany to behold the great

tournament. I advise you, ye French, keep very quiet then: on your souls

take heed that ye applaud not. We might easily misunderstand you, and in

our blunt manner roughly quiet and rebuke you, for if in our former

servile condition we could sometimes overcome you, much more easily can

we do so in the wantonness and delirious intoxication of freedom. Ye

yourselves know what one can do in such a condition--and ye are no

longer in that condition. Beware! I mean well with you, therefore I tell

you the bitter truth. You have more to fear from emancipated Germany

than from the whole Holy Alliance, with all its Croats and Cossacks.

For, in the first place, you are not loved in Germany,--which is almost

incomprehensible, for you are so very amiable, and during your sojourn

in Germany took much pains to please at least the better and lovelier

half of the Germans. But even if that half should love you, it is just

the half that does not bear arms, and whose friendship would therefore

avail you but little.

What they really have against you, I could never make out. Once in a

beer-cellar at Göttingen, a young Teuton said that revenge must be had

on the French for Conrad von Stauffen, whom they beheaded at Naples.

You have surely long since forgotten that. But we forget nothing. You

see that if we should once be inclined to quarrel with you, good reasons

will not be wanting. At all events, I advise you to be on your guard.

Let what will happen in Germany, whether the Crown Prince of Prussia or

Dr. Wirth hold sway, be always armed, remain quietly at your post,

musket in hand. I mean well with you; and I almost stood aghast when I

learned lately that your ministry propose to disarm France.

As, notwithstanding your present Romanticism, you are inborn classics,

you know Olympus. Among the naked gods and goddesses who there make

themselves merry with nectar and ambrosia, you behold one goddess who,

although surrounded with mirth and sport, yet wears always a coat of

mail, and keeps helm on head and spear in hand.

It is the goddess of wisdom.

FLORENTINE NIGHTS.

[Heine wrote the fragment entitled _Florentine Nights_ in 1835, and

published it two years later in the third volume of the _Salon_. It is a

series of brilliant pictures united by a very slight thread of

connection. There is unquestionably an additional element of

autobiographical interest; Maximilian's visits to Potsdam and London

correspond to Heine's, and throughout this various record of impressions

we frequently hear Heine's own voice. The translation here given has not

been previously published.]

FIRST NIGHT.

In the ante-room Maximilian found the doctor just as he was drawing on

his black gloves. "I am greatly pressed for time," the latter hurriedly

said to him. "Signora Maria has not slept during the whole night; she

has only just now fallen into a light slumber. I need not caution you

not to wake her by any noise; and when she wakes on no account must she

be allowed to talk. She must lie still, and not disturb herself; mental

excitement will not be salutary. Tell her all kinds of odd stories, so

that she must listen quietly."

"Be assured, doctor," replied Maximilian, with a melancholy smile. "I

have educated myself for a long time in chattering, and will not let her

talk. I will narrate abundance of fantastic nonsense, as much as you

require. But how long can she live?"

"I am greatly pressed for time," answered the doctor, and slipped away.

Black Deborah, quick of hearing as she was, had already recognised the

stranger's footstep, and softly opened the door. At a sign from him she

left as softly, and Maximilian found himself alone with his friend. A

single lamp dimly lighted the chamber. This cast now and then half

timid, half inquisitive gleams upon the countenance of the sick lady,

clothed entirely in white muslin, who lay stretched on a green sofa in

calm sleep.

Silent, and with folded arms, Maximilian stood a little while before the

sleeping figure, and gazed on the beautiful limbs which the light

garments revealed rather than covered; and every time that the lamp

threw a ray of light over the pale countenance, his heart quivered. "For

God's sake!" he said softly, "what is that? What memories are awaking in

me? Yes, now I know. This white form on the green ground, yes, now...."

At this moment the invalid awoke, and gazing out, as it were, from the

depths of a dream, the tender dark-blue eyes rested upon him, asking,

entreating.... "What were you thinking of, just now, Maximilian?" she

said, in that awful, gentle voice so often found in consumptives, and

wherein we seem to recognise the lisping of children, the twittering of

birds, and the gurgle of the dying. "What were you thinking of, just

then, Maximilian?" she repeated again, and started up so hastily that

the long curls, like roused snakes, fell in ringlets around her head.

"For God's sake!" exclaimed Maximilian, as he gently pressed her back on

to the sofa, "lie still, do not talk; I will tell you all I think, I

feel, yes, what I myself do not know!

"In fact," he pursued, "I scarcely know what I was thinking and feeling

just now. Dim visions of childhood were passing through my mind. I was

thinking of my mother's castle, of the deserted garden there, of the

beautiful marble statue that lay in the grass.... I said, 'my mother's

_castle_,' but pray do not imagine anything grand and magnificent. To

this name I have indeed accustomed myself; my father always laid a

special emphasis on the words, 'the castle,' and accompanied them always

with a singular smile. The meaning of that smile I understood later,

when, a boy of some twelve years, I travelled with my mother to the

castle. It was my first journey. We spent the whole day in passing

through a thick forest; I shall never forget its gloomy horror; and only

towards evening did we stop before a long cross-bar which separated us

from a large meadow. Here we waited nearly half-an-hour before the boy

came out of the wretched hut near by, removed the barrier, and admitted

us. I say 'the boy,' because old Martha always called her forty years'

old nephew 'the lad.' To receive his gracious mistress worthily, he had

assumed the livery of his late uncle; and it was in consequence of its

requiring a little previous dusting that he had kept us waiting so long.

Had he had time, he would have also put on stockings; the long red legs,

however, did not form a very marked contrast with the glaring scarlet

coat. Whether there were any trousers underneath I am unable to say. Our

servant, John, who had likewise often heard of 'the castle,' put on a

very amazed grimace as the boy led us to the little ruined building in

which his master had lived. He was, however, altogether at a loss when

my mother ordered him to bring in the beds. How could he guess that at

the 'castle' no beds were to be found, and my mother's order that he

should bring bedding for us he had either not heard or considered as

superfluous trouble.

"The little house, only one storey high, which in its best days

contained, at the most, five habitable rooms, was a lamentable picture

of transitoriness. Broken furniture, torn carpets, not one window-frame

left entire, the floor pulled up here and there, everywhere the hated

traces of the wantonest military possession. 'The soldiers quartered

with us have always amused themselves,' said the boy, with a silly

smile. My mother signed that we should all leave her alone, and while

the boy and John were busying themselves, I went out to see the garden.

This also offered the most disconsolate picture of ruin. The great trees

were partly destroyed, partly broken down, and parasites were scornfully

spreading over the fallen trunks. Here and there by the grown-up

box-bushes the old paths might be recognised. Here and there also stood

statues, for the most part wanting heads, or at all events noses. I

remember a Diana whose lower half the dark ivy grew round in a most

amusing way, as I also remember a Goddess of Plenty, out of whose

cornucopia mere ill-odorous weeds were blooming. Only one statue had

been spared from the malice of men and of time; it had, indeed, been

thrown from off its pedestal into the high grass; but there it lay, free

from mutilation, the marble goddess with pure lovely features and the

noble deep-cleft bosom, which seemed, as it glowed out of the grass,

like a Greek revelation. I almost started when I saw it; this form

inspired me with a singular feeling, and bashfulness kept me from

lingering long near so sweet a sight.

"When I returned to my mother, she was standing at the window, lost in

thought, her head resting on her right arm, and the tears were flowing

over her cheeks. I had never seen her weep so before. She embraced me

with passionate tenderness, and asked my forgiveness, because, owing to

John's negligence, I should have no regular bed. 'Old Martha,' she said,

'is very ill, dear child, and cannot give up her bed to you; but John

will arrange the cushions out of the coach, so that you will be able to

sleep upon them, and he can also give you his cloak for a covering. I

shall sleep on the straw; this was my dear father's bed-room; it was

much better here once. Leave me alone!' And the tears came still more

impetuously.

"Whether it was owing to my unaccustomed place of rest or to my

disturbed heart, I could not sleep. The moonlight streamed in through

the broken window-panes, and seemed to allure me out into the bright

summer night. I might lie on the right or the left side, close my eyes

or impatiently open them again--I could still think of nothing but the

lovely marble statue I had seen lying in the grass. I could not

understand the shyness which had come over me at the sight of it; I was

vexed at this childish feeling, and 'To-morrow,' I said softly to

myself, 'to-morrow I will kiss you, you lovely marble face, kiss you

just on that pretty corner of your mouth where the lips melt into such a

sweet dimple!' An impatience I had never before felt was stirring

through all my limbs; I could no longer rule the strange impulse, and I

sprang up at last with audacious vivacity, exclaiming, 'And why should I

not kiss you to-night, you dear image?' Quietly, so that mother might

not hear my steps, I left the house; with the less difficulty, since the

entrance was furnished with an escutcheon indeed, but no longer with a

door, and hastily worked my way through the abundant growth of the

neglected garden. There was no sound; everything was resting silent and

solemn in the still moonlight. The shadows of the trees seemed to be

nailed on the earth. In the green grass lay the beautiful goddess,

likewise motionless, yet no stony death, but only a quiet sleep, seemed

to hold her lovely limbs fettered; and as I came near, I almost feared

lest the least noise should awake her out of her slumber. I held my

breath, as I leant over to gaze on the beautiful features; a shuddering

pain thrust me back, but a boyish wantonness drew me again towards her;

my heart was beating wildly, and at last I kissed the lovely goddess

with such passion and tenderness and despair as I have never in this

life kissed with again. And I have never been able to forget the fearful

and sweet sensation which flowed through my soul as the blissful cool of

those marble lips touched my mouth.... And so you see, Maria, that as I

was just now standing before you, and saw you lying in your white muslin

garments on the green sofa, your appearance suggested to me the white

marble form in the green grass. Had you slept any longer my lips would

not have been able to resist----"

"Max! Max!" she cried from the depth of her soul. "Horrible! You know

that a kiss from your mouth----"

"Oh, be silent only; I know you think that something horrible. Do not

look at me so imploringly. I do not misunderstand your feelings,

although their causes are hidden from me. I have never dared to press my

mouth on your lips."

But Maria would not let him finish speaking; she seized his hand,

covered it with passionate kisses, and then said, smiling--"Please tell

me more of your love affairs. How long did you adore the marble beauty

that you kissed in your mother's castle garden?"

"We went away the next day," Maximilian answered, "and I have never seen

the lovely statue again. It occupied my heart, however, for nearly three

years. A wonderful passion for marble statues has since then developed

in my soul, and this very day I have felt its transporting power. I was

coming out of the Laurentian, the library of the Medici, and I wandered,

I know not how, into the chapel where that most magnificent of Italian

families built for itself a resting-place of jewels, and is quietly

sleeping. For a whole hour I was absorbed in gazing on the marble figure

of a woman, whose powerful body witnesses to the cunning strength of

Michael Angelo, while yet the whole form is pervaded by an ethereal

sweetness which we are not accustomed to seek in that master. The whole

dream-world, with its silent blisses, lives in that marble; a tender

repose dwells in the lovely limbs, a soothing moonlight seems to course

through the veins. It is the Night of Michael Angelo Buonarotti. O, how

willingly would I sleep the eternal sleep in the arms of that Night!

"Painted women forms," Maximilian pursued, after a pause, "have never so

powerfully interested me as statues. Only once was I in love with a

painting. It was a wondrously lovely Madonna that I learnt to know at a

church in Cologne. I was at that time a very zealous church-goer, and my

heart was absorbed in the mysticism of the Catholic religion. I would

then have willingly fought like a Spanish knight, at the peril of my

life, for the immaculate conception of Mary, the Queen of Angels, the

fairest lady of Heaven and earth! I was interested in all the members of

the holy family at that time, and I took my hat off in an especially

friendly manner whenever I passed near a picture of the holy Joseph.

This disposition did not last long, however, and I deserted the Mother

of God almost without any explanations, having become acquainted, in a

gallery of antiquities, with a Grecian nymph, who for a long time held

me enchained in marble fetters."

"And you only loved sculptured or painted women?" said Maria, smiling.

"No, I have also loved dead women," answered Maximilian, over whose face

an expression of seriousness had spread. He failed to perceive Maria

start and shrink at these words, and quietly proceeded--

"Yes, it is very strange that I once fell in love with a girl after she

had been seven years dead. When I became acquainted with little Very I

liked her extremely. For three days I occupied myself with this young

person, and experienced the greatest pleasure in all that she said and

did, and in every expression of her charming wayward being, without

being betrayed withal into any over-tender emotion. And so I was not too

deeply grieved when a few months later I heard that a fever that had

seized her suddenly resulted in death. I forgot her entirely, and I am

convinced that from one year's end to another's I had not one thought of

her. Seven years passed away, and I found myself at Potsdam, to enjoy

the beautiful summer in undisturbed solitude. My society was confined to

the statues in the garden of Sansouci. It happened there one day that I

recollected certain features, and a singular, lovely way of speaking and

moving, without being able to remember to whom they belonged. Nothing is

more annoying than such a drifting into old memories, and I was

therefore joyfully surprised when, after some days, I recollected little

Very, and discovered that it was her dear, forgotten form that had

hovered before me so restlessly. Yes, I rejoiced at this discovery like

one who unexpectedly meets his most intimate friend; the pale hues

gradually grew bright, and at last her sweet little person seemed to

stand bodily before me, smiling, pouting, witty, and prettier than ever.

From that time forth the sweet vision never left me, it filled my whole

soul; wherever I went or stood, that went and stood at my side, spoke

with me, laughed with me, always gentle, and yet never over-tender. I

was, however, more and more fascinated with this vision, which daily

gained more and more reality for me. It is easy to raise ghosts, but it

is difficult to send them back again to their dark night; they look at

us then so imploringly, our own hearts lend them such powerful

intercession. I could not tear myself free, and fell in love with little

Very after she had been seven years dead. I lived thus at Potsdam for

six months, quite buried in this love. I guarded myself more carefully

than ever from any contact with the outer world, and if anyone in the

street came at all near me, I experienced the most miserable oppression.

I cherished a deep horror of every occurrence, such as, perhaps, the

night-wandering spirits of the dead experience; for these, it is said,

are terrified when they meet a living man, as much as a living man is

terrified when he meets a spectre. By chance a traveller came at that

time to Potsdam whom I could not escape--namely, my brother. His

appearance and his accounts of the latest news woke me as from a deep

dream, and I suddenly felt, with a shudder, in what a frightful solitude

I had been so long living. In this condition I had not once noted the

change of the seasons, and I now gazed with wonder on the trees, long

since leafless, decked in their autumn mellowness. I immediately left

Potsdam and little Very, and in another town, where important business

was awaiting me, and by means of difficult circumstances and relations,

I was soon again plunged into crude reality.

"The living women," Maximilian pursued, while a sorrowful smile played

on his upper lip, "the living women with whom I then came into

unavoidable contact, how they tormented me, tenderly tormented me with

their pouting, jealousy, and constant sighs. At how many balls must I

trot round with them, in how much gossip must I mix myself! What

restless vanity, what delight in lying, what kissing treachery, what

envenomed flowers! These women spoilt all pleasure and love for me, and

I was for some time a misogynist, who damned the whole sex. It went with

me almost as with the French officer, who, in the Prussian campaign,

only saved himself with the greatest difficulty from the ice-pits at

Beresina, and since that retains such an antipathy to everything frozen,

that now he thrusts away with disgust the sweetest and most delicious of

Tortoni's ices. Yes, the remembrance of the Beresina of love that I

passed through then spoilt for me, for a time, even the most charming

ladies, women like angels, girls like Vanilla sherbert."

"Pray, do not abuse women," exclaimed Maria. "That is a worn-out

commonplace among men. In the end, to be happy, you need women after

all."

"Oh," sighed Maximilian, "that is true, certainly. But women,

unfortunately, have only one way of making us happy, while they have

thirty thousand ways of making us unhappy."

"Dear friend," replied Maria, suppressing a little smile, "I am speaking

of the concord of two souls in unison. Have you never experienced this

joy? But I see an unaccustomed blush spreading over your cheeks. Tell

me, Max."

"It is true, Maria, I feel as confused almost as a boy at confessing to

you the happy love with which I was once infinitely blessed. That memory

is not yet lost to me, and to its cool shades my soul often flies, when

the burning dust and day's heat of life grow almost unbearable. Yet I am

not able to give you a just idea of her. She was such an ethereal

creature that she only seemed revealed to me in dreams. I think that

you, Maria, have no vulgar prejudice against dreams; those nightly

visions have, in truth, as much reality as the coarser shapes of day,

which we can touch with our hands, and by which we are not seldom

besmutched. Yes, it was in a dream that I knew that sweet being who has

made me most happy on earth. I can say little of her outward appearance.

I am not able to describe the form of her features with precision. It

was a face that I had never seen before, and that I have never in my

life seen since. So much I remember; it was not white and rosy, but all

of one colour--a soft, reddened, pale-yellow, transparent as crystal.

The charm of this face was not in firm regularity of beauty, nor in

interesting vivacity; its characteristic was, rather, a charming,

enrapturing, almost terrible veracity. It was a face full of conscious

fire and gracious goodness; it was more a soul than a face, and on that

account I have never been able to make her outward form quite present to

myself. The eyes were soft as flowers, the lips rather pale, but

charmingly arched. She wore a silk dressing-gown of a corn-flour blue

colour, and in that consisted her entire clothing; neck and feet were

naked, and through the thin delicate garment now and then peeped

stealthily the slender tenderness of the limbs. Nor can I make plain the

words we said to one another; I only know that we betrothed each other,

and that we chatted with one another, gay and familiar and open-hearted,

like bridegroom and bride, almost like brother and sister. Often we left

off talking, and gazed into each other's eyes; we spent whole eternities

so. What waked me I cannot say, but I revelled for a long time in the

after-feeling of these love-blisses. I was long, as it were, intoxicated

with ineffable delight, the pining depth of my heart was filled with

bliss, a hitherto unknown joy seemed poured over all my emotions, and I

remained glad and joyful, though I never saw the beloved form in my

dreams again. But had I not enjoyed whole eternities in her gaze? and

she knew me too well not to be aware that I do not like repetitions."

"Truly," exclaimed Maria, "you are an _homme à bonne fortune_. But, tell

me, was Mademoiselle Laurence a marble statue or a painting--was she

dead or a dream?"

"Perhaps she was all these together," answered Maximilian, very

earnestly.

"I can imagine, dear friend, that this sweetheart was of very doubtful

character. And when will you tell me the history?"

"To-morrow. It is too long, and I am tired to-night. I have just come

from the opera, and have too much music in my ears."

"You often go to the opera now, and I think, Max, you go there more to

see than to hear."

"You are not mistaken, Maria; I go to the opera, indeed, to look at the

faces of the beautiful Italian women. In truth, they are beautiful

enough outside the theatre, and a connoisseur in faces could easily

trace in the ideality of their features the influence which the arts

have had on the physique of the Italian people. Nature has taken back

from the artists the capital she once lent, and see how delightfully the

interest has increased! Nature, who once furnished the artists with

their model, now on her side copies the masterpieces which have thus

arisen. The sense of the beautiful has permeated the whole people, and

as once the flesh on the spirit, so now the spirit works on the flesh.

The devotion paid before those fair Madonnas and lovely altar-pieces,

which impress themselves on the mind of the bridegroom, while the bride

bears a handsome saint in her ardent heart, is not fruitless. From this

affinity a race has arisen still fairer than the gracious earth on which

it flourishes, and the sunny sky that is as bright around it as a golden

frame. The men do not interest me much when they are not painted or

sculptured, and I resign to you, Maria, all possible enthusiasm in

regard to those handsome, supple Italians, who have such wild-black

beards, such bold noble noses, and such soft subtle eyes. They say the

Lombards are the most handsome men. I have never made any investigations

on the subject, but I have earnestly considered the Lombardy women, and

they, I have noted well, are indeed as beautiful as report announces.

Even in the middle ages they must have been tolerably beautiful. It is

said of Francis I. that the fame of the beauty of the Milanese women was

a secret motive which impelled him to the Italian campaign; the

chivalrous king was certainly curious whether the kinsfolk of his

spiritual muses were really as beautiful as fame reported. Poor rogue!

he had to atone dearly for this curiosity at Pavia!

"But how beautiful they are, these Italian women, when music illuminates

their countenances! I say 'illuminates,' because the effect of the

music, which I marked in the opera, on the faces of the beautiful women

altogether resembled those light-and-shade effects which surprise us so

when we look at statues by torch-light at night-time. These marble forms

reveal to us then, with terrifying truth, their indwelling spirit and

their horrible dumb secrets. In the same way the whole life of the fair

Italian women becomes known to us when we see them in the opera; the

changing melodies wake in their souls a succession of emotions,

memories, wishes, scandals, which visibly speak in the movements of

their features, in their blushes, in their pallors, and even in their

eyes. He who knows how to read them may then see in their faces many

very sweet and interesting things--histories as remarkable as

Boccaccio's tales, emotions as tender as Petrarch's sonnets, caprices as

full of adventure as Ariosto's _ottaverime_, sometimes, too, fearful

treachery and sublime wickedness as poetic as Dante's _Inferno_. It is

worth while to gaze at the boxes. If the men would only express their

enthusiasm meanwhile with less frightful sounds! This mad noise in an

Italian theatre often annoys me. But music is the soul of these men,

their life, their national business. In other countries, certainly,

there are musicians who equal the greatest Italian masters, but there is

no other musical nation. Here, in Italy, music is not represented by

individuals; it manifests itself in the whole population; music has

become a nation. With us in the north it is quite different; there music

only becomes a man, and is called Mozart or Meyerbeer; and when,

moreover, they would accurately investigate what is the best that this

northern music offers us, they find it in Italian sunshine and

orange-perfume; and much rather than to our Germany those belong to fair

Italy, the home of music. Yes, Italy will always be the home of music,

even though her great _maestri_ descend early into the grave or become

dumb--even though Bellini dies and Rossini keeps silence."

"Indeed," remarked Maria, "Rossini has preserved a very long silence. If

I do not mistake, he has been silent for ten years."

"Perhaps that is a joke on his part," answered Maximilian. "He wishes to

show that the title, "Swan of Pesaro," which has been conferred upon

him, is quite unsuitable. Swans sing at the end of their lives, but

Rossini has left off singing in the middle of his life. And I believe

that he has done well in that, and shown, even by that, that he is a

genius. The artist who has only talent retains to the end of his life

the impulse to exercise that talent; ambition stimulates him; he feels

that he is constantly perfecting himself, and he is compelled to strive

after the highest. But genius has already accomplished the highest; it

is content; it contemns the world and small ambition, and goes home to

Stratford-on-Avon, like William Shakespeare, or walks about the

Boulevard des Italiens at Paris, and laughs and jokes, like Giacomo

Rossini. If genius has a not altogether badly constituted body, it lives

on in this way for a good while after it has given forth its

masterpieces, or, as people express it, after it has fulfilled its

mission. It is owing to a prepossession that people say that genius must

die early; I think that from the thirtieth to the thirty-fourth year has

been indicated as the most dangerous period for genius. How often have I

bantered poor Bellini on this subject, and playfully prophesied that,

being a genius, and having reached that dangerous age, he must soon die.

Singular! in spite of the playful tone, he tormented himself about this

prophecy; he called me his _jettatore_, his evil eye, and always made

the _jettatore_ sign. He so wished to live, he had an almost passionate

hatred of death: he would hear nothing of dying; he was frightened of it

as a child who is afraid to sleep in the dark.... He was a good, dear

child, often rather naughty, but then one only needed to threaten him

with an early death, and he would immediately draw in, and entreat, and

make with his two raised fingers the _jettatore_ sign. Poor Bellini!"

"So you knew him personally? Was he handsome?"

"He was not ugly. You see, we cannot answer affirmatively when anyone

asks us such a question about our own sex. He had a tall, slender

figure, which moved in an elegant, I might say a coquettish, manner;

always _a quatre épingles_; a long, regular face, with a pale rosiness;

very fair, almost golden, hair, put into small curls; very high noble

brows, a straight nose, pale blue eyes, a beautifully-chiselled mouth, a

round chin. His features had something vague and characterless;

something like milk, and in this milk-face often mingled, half sweet,

half bitter, an expression of sorrow. This expression of sorrow

compensated for the want of soul in Bellini's face, but it was a sorrow

without depth; it glistened in the eyes without poetry, it played

passionless about his lips. The young _Maestro_ seemed anxious to make

this flat, languid sorrow conspicuous in his whole person. His hair was

curled in such a fanciful, melancholy way, his clothes sat so languidly

about his frail body, he carried his little Spanish cane in so idyllic a

way, that he always reminded me of the affected young shepherds with

their be-ribboned sticks, and bright-coloured jackets, and pantaloons

that we see in our pastorals. And his gait was so young-lady-like, so

elegiac, so ethereal. The whole man looked like a sigh _en escarpins_.

He had received much applause among women, but I doubt if he anywhere

awakened a strong passion. In himself his appearance had something

comically unenjoyable, the reason of which lay in his way of speaking

French. Although Bellini had lived many years in France, he spoke the

language so badly, that even in England it could scarcely be spoken

worse. I ought not to call it 'bad;' bad is here much too good. One must

call it awful, a violation, something enough to overturn the world. Yes,

when one was in society with him, and he mangled the poor French words

like an executioner, and displayed, unmoved, his colossal _coq-à-l'âne_,

one thought sometimes that the world must fall in with a crash of

thunder. The stillness of the grave reigned on the whole room; a death

agony was painted on all faces in chalk or in vermilion; the ladies were

uncertain whether to faint or to escape; the gentlemen gazed in alarm at

their trousers, to convince themselves that they actually had them on;

and what was most horrible, this fright raised at the same time a

convulsive desire to laugh, which could hardly be suppressed. So that

when one was in Bellini's society, his presence inspired a certain

anxiety, which by a horrible charm was at once repellant and attractive.

Often his involuntary _calembours_ were merely amusing, and in their

droll insipidity reminded one of the castle of his fellow-countryman,

the Prince of Pallagonia, which Goethe in his _Italian Journey_ has

described as a museum of uncouth distortions and absurd deformities. As

Bellini on such occasions always imagined he had said something quite

harmless and earnest, his face and his words formed the maddest

contrast. That which displeased me in his face came at such moments

specially prominent. What I disliked could not be exactly described as

something lacking, and may not have been displeasing to women at all.

Bellini's face, like his whole appearance, had that physical freshness,

that bloom of flesh, that rosiness which makes a disagreeable impression

on me--on me, because I like much more what is death-like and marble.

Later on, when I had known him a long time, I felt some liking for

Bellini. This arose after I had observed that his character was

thoroughly noble and good. His soul was certainly pure and unspotted by

any hateful contagion. And he was not wanting in that good-natured,

childlike quality which we never miss in men of genius, even if they do

not wear it as an outward show.

"Yes, I remember," Maximilian pursued, sinking down on the chair, on the

back of which he had been hitherto leaning--"I remember one moment when

Bellini appeared in so amiable a light, that I gazed on him with

pleasure, and resolved to become more intimately acquainted with him.

But, unhappily, it was the last time I should see him in this life. It

was one evening after we had been dining together at the house of a

great lady who had the smallest foot in Paris. We were very merry, and

the sweetest melodies rang out from the piano. I see him still, the

good-natured Bellini, as, at last, exhausted with the mad Bellinism that

he chattered, he sank into a seat.... It was a very low one, so that

Bellini found himself sitting at the foot, as it were, of a beautiful

lady, stretched on a sofa opposite, who gazed down on him with a sweet,

malicious delight, as he worked off some French expressions to entertain

her, and was compelled, as usual, to communicate what he had said in his

Sicilian jargon to show that it was no _sottise_, but, on the contrary,

the most delicate flattery. I think the fair lady paid little attention

to Bellini's conversation. She had taken from his hand the little

Spanish cane with which he often used to assist his weak rhetoric, and

was making use of it for a calm destruction of the elegant curl-edifice

on the young _Maestro's_ brows. But this wanton occupation was well

repaid by the smile which gave her face an expression which I have seen

on no other living human countenance. That face will never leave my

memory! It was one of those faces which belong more to the kingdom of

poetry than to the crude reality of life, contours which remind one of

Da Vinci--that noble oval, with the naïve cheek-dimples and the

sentimental pointed chin of the Lombard school. The colouring was more

soft and Roman, with the dull gleam of pearls, a distinguished pallor,

_morbidezza_. In short, it was one of those faces which can only be

found in early Italian portraits, which, perhaps, represent those great

ladies with whom the Italian artists of the sixteenth century were in

love when they created their masterpieces, of whom the poets of those

days thought when they sang themselves immortal, and which kindled

German and French heroes with desire when they girded on their swords

and started across the Alps in search of great deeds. Yes, it was such a

face, and on it played a smile of sweetest, malicious delight and most

delicate wantonness, as she, the fair lady, with the point of the little

Spanish cane destroyed the blonde curls on the good-natured Bellini's

brows. At that moment Bellini seemed to me as if touched by an enchanted

wand, as if transformed, and he was at once akin to my heart. His face

shone with the reflection of that smile; it was, perhaps, the most

joyful moment of his life. I shall never forget it. Fourteen days

afterwards I read in the papers that Italy had lost one of her most

famous sons!

"Strange! At the same time Paganini's death was announced. About his

death I had no doubt, for the old, ash-coloured Paganini always looked

like a dying man; but the death of the young, rosy Bellini seemed to me

incredible. And yet the news of the death of the first was only a

newspaper error; Paganini is safe and sound at Genoa, and Bellini lies

in his grave at Paris!"

"Do you like Paganini?" asked Maria. "He is the ornament of his

country," answered Maximilian, "and deserves the most distinguished

mention in speaking of the musical notabilities of Italy."

"I have never seen him," Maria remarked, "but according to report his

outward appearance does not altogether satisfy the sense of beauty. I

have seen portraits of him."

"Which are all different," broke in Maximilian; "they either make him

uglier or handsomer than he is; they do not give his actual appearance.

I believe that only one man has succeeded in putting Paganini's true

physiognomy on to paper--a deaf painter, Lyser by name, who, in a frenzy

full of genius, has, with a few strokes of chalk, so well hit Paganini's

head that one is at the same time amused and terrified at the truth of

the drawing. 'The devil guided my hand,' the deaf painter said to me,

chuckling mysteriously, and nodding his head with good-natured irony in

the way he generally accompanied his genial witticisms. This painter

was, however, a wonderful old fellow; in spite of his deafness he was

enthusiastically fond of music, and he knew how, when near enough to the

orchestra, to read the music on the musicians' faces, and to judge the

more or less skilful execution by the movements of their fingers;

indeed, he wrote critiques on the opera for an excellent journal at

Hamburg. And is that peculiarly wonderful? In the visible symbols of the

performance the deaf painter could see the sounds. There are men to whom

the sounds themselves are invisible symbols in which they hear colours

and forms."

"You are one of those men!" exclaimed Maria.

"I am sorry that I no longer possess Lyser's little drawing; it would

perhaps have given you an idea of Paganini's outward appearance. Only

with black and glaring strokes could those mysterious features be

seized, features, which seemed to belong more to the sulphurous kingdom

of shades than to the sunny world of life. 'Indeed, the devil guided my

hand,' the deaf painter assured me, as we stood before the Alster

pavilion at Hamburg on the day when Paganini gave his first concert

there. 'Yes, my friend,' he pursued, 'it is true, as everyone believes,

that he has sold himself to the devil, body and soul, in order to become

the best violinist, to fiddle millions of money, and principally to

escape the damnable galley where he had already languished many years.

For, you see, my friend, when he was chapel-master at Lucca he fell in

love with a princess of the theatre, was jealous of some little

_abbate_, was perhaps deceived by the faithless _Amata_, stabbed her in

approved Italian fashion, came in the galley to Genoa, and, as I said,

sold himself to the devil to escape from it, become the best

violin-player, and impose upon us this evening a contribution of two

thalers each. But, you see, all good spirits praise God; there in the

avenue he comes himself, with his suspicious Famulus!'

"It was indeed Paganini himself, whom I then saw for the first time. He

wore a dark grey overcoat, which reached to his feet, and made his

figure seem very tall. His long black hair fell in neglected curls on

his shoulders, and formed a dark frame round the pale, cadaverous face,

on which sorrow, genius, and hell had engraved their indestructible

lines. Near him danced along a little pleasing figure, elegantly

prosaic--with rosy, wrinkled face, bright grey little coat with steel

buttons, distributing greetings on all sides in an insupportably

friendly way, leering up, nevertheless, with apprehensive air at the

gloomy figure who walked earnest and thoughtful at his side. It reminded

one of Retzsch's representation of Faust and Wagner walking before the

gates of Leipsic. The deaf painter made comments to me in his mad way,

and bade me observe especially the broad, measured walk of Paganini.

'Does it not seem,' said he, 'as if he had the iron cross-pole still

between his legs? He has accustomed himself to that walk for ever. See,

too, in what a contemptuous, ironical way he sometimes looks at his

guide when the latter wearies him with his prosaic questions. But he

cannot separate himself from him; a bloody contract binds him to that

companion, who is no other than Satan. The ignorant multitude, indeed,

believe that this guide is the writer of comedies and anecdotes, Harris

from Hanover, whom Paganini has taken with him to manage the financial

business of his concerts. But they do not know that the devil has only

borrowed Herr George Harris's form, and that meanwhile the poor soul of

this poor man is shut up with other rubbish in a trunk at Hanover, until

the devil returns its flesh-envelope, while he perhaps will guide his

master through the world in a worthier form--namely, as a black poodle.'

"But if Paganini seemed mysterious and strange enough when I saw him

walking in bright mid-day under the green trees of the Hamburg

Jungfernstieg, how his awful bizarre appearance startled me at the

concert in the evening! The Hamburg Opera House was the scene of this

concert, and the art-loving public had flocked thither so early, and in

such numbers, that I only just succeeded in obtaining a little place in

the orchestra. Although it was post-day, I saw in the first row of boxes

the whole educated commercial world, a whole Olympus of bankers and

other millionaires, the gods of coffee and sugar by the side of their

fat goddesses, Junos of Wandrahm and Aphrodites of Dreckwall. A

religious silence reigned through the assembly. Every eye was directed

towards the stage. Every ear was making ready to listen. My neighbour,

an old furrier, took the dirty cotton out of his ears in order to drink

in better the costly sounds for which he had paid two thalers. At last a

dark figure, which seemed to have arisen from the under-world, appeared

upon the stage. It was Paganini in his black costume--the black

dress-coat and the black waistcoat of a horrible cut, such as is perhaps

prescribed by infernal etiquette at the court of Proserpina; the black

trousers anxiously hanging around the thin legs. The long arms appeared

to grow still longer, as, holding the violin in one hand and the bow in

the other, he almost touched the ground with them while displaying to

the public his unprecedented obeisances. In the angular curves of his

body there was a horrible woodenness, and also something absurdly

animal-like, that during these bows one could not help feeling a strange

desire to laugh; but his face, that appeared still more cadaverously

pale in the glare of the orchestra lights, had about it something so

imploring, so simply humble, that a sorrowful compassion repressed one's

desire to laugh. Had he learnt these complimentary bows from an

automaton or a dog? Is that the entreating gaze of one sick unto death,

or is there lurking behind it the mockery of a crafty miser? Is that a

man brought into the arena at the moment of death, like a dying

gladiator, to delight the public with his convulsions? Or is it one

risen from the dead, a vampire with a violin, who, if not the blood out

of our hearts, at any rate sucks the gold out of our pockets?

"Such questions crossed our minds while Paganini was performing his

strange bows, but all those thoughts were at once still when the

wonderful master placed his violin under his chin and began to play. As

for me, you already know my musical second-sight, my gift of seeing at

each tone a figure equivalent to the sound, and so Paganini with each

stroke of his bow brought visible forms and situations before my eyes;

he told me in melodious hieroglyphics all kinds of brilliant tales; he,

as it were, made a magic-lantern play its coloured antics before me, he

himself being chief actor. At the first stroke of his bow the stage

scenery around him had changed; he suddenly stood with his music-desk in

a cheerful room, decorated in a gay, irregular way after the Pompadour

style; everywhere little mirrors, gilded Cupids, Chinese porcelain, a

delightful chaos of ribbons, garlands of flowers, white gloves, torn

lace, false pearls, diadems of gold leaf and spangles--such tinsel as

one finds in the room of a prima-donna. Paganini's outward appearance

had also changed, and certainly most advantageously; he wore short

breeches of lily-coloured satin, a white waistcoat embroidered with

silver, and a coat of bright blue velvet with gold buttons; the hair in

little carefully curled locks bordered his face, which was young and

rosy, and gleamed with sweet tenderness as he ogled the pretty little

lady who stood near him at the music-desk, while he played the violin.

"Yes, I saw at his side a pretty young creature, in antique costume, the

white satin swelled out below the waist, making the figure still more

charmingly slender; the high raised hair was powdered and curled, and

the pretty round face shone out all the more openly with it glancing

eyes, its little rouged cheeks, its little beauty-patches, and the sweet

impertinent little nose. In her hand was a roll of white paper, and by

the movements of her lips as well as by the coquettish waving to and fro

of her little upper lip she seemed to be singing; but none of her trills

were audible to me, and only from the violin with which the young

Paganini led the lovely child could I discover what she sang, and what

he himself during her song felt in his soul. O, what melodies were

those! Like the nightingale's notes, when the fragrance of the rose

intoxicates her yearning young heart with desire, they floated in the

evening twilight. O, what melting, languid delight was that! The sounds

kissed each other, then fled away pouting, and then, laughing, clasped

each other and became one, and died away in intoxicated harmony. Yes,

the sounds carried on their merry game like butterflies, when one, in

playful provocation, will escape from another, hide behind a flower, be

overtaken at last, and then, wantonly joying with the other, fly away

into the golden sunlight. But a spider, a spider can prepare a sudden

tragical fate for such enamoured butterflies. Did the young heart

anticipate this? A melancholy sighing tone, a foreboding of some slowly

approaching misfortune, glided softly through the enrapturing melodies

that were streaming from Paganini's violin. His eyes became moist.

Adoringly he knelt down before his _Amata_. But, alas! as he bowed down

to kiss her feet, he saw under the bed a little _abbate_! I do not know

what he had against the poor man, but the Genoese became pale as death,

he seized the little fellow with furious hands, gave him sundry boxes on

the ear, as well as a considerable number of kicks, flung him outside,

drew a stiletto from its sheath, and buried it in the young beauty's

breast.

"At this moment, however, a shout of 'Bravo! Bravo!' broke out from all

sides. Hamburg's enthusiastic sons and daughters were paying the tribute

of their uproarious applause to the great artist, who had just ended the

first part of his concert, and was now bowing with even more angles and

contortions than before. And on his face the abject humility seemed to

me to have become more intense. From his eyes stared a sorrowful anxiety

like that of a poor malefactor. 'Divine!' cried my neighbour, the

furrier, as he scratched his ears; 'that piece alone was worth two

thalers.'

"When Paganini began to play again a gloom came before my eyes. The

sounds were not transformed into bright forms and colours; the master's

form was clothed in gloomy shades, out of the darkness of which his

music moaned in the most piercing tones of lamentation. Only at times,

when a little lamp that hung above cast its sorrowful light over him,

could I catch a glimpse of his pale countenance, on which the youth was

not yet extinguished. His costume was singular, in two colours, yellow

and red. Heavy chains weighed upon his feet. Behind him moved a face

whose physiognomy indicated a lusty goat-nature. And I saw at times long

hairy hands seize assistingly the strings of the violin on which

Paganini was playing. They often guided the hand which held the bow, and

then a bleating laugh of applause accompanied the melody, which gushed

from the violin ever more full of sorrow and anguish. They were melodies

which were like the song of the fallen angels who had loved the

daughters of earth, and, being exiled from the kingdom of the blessed,

sank into the under-world with faces red with shame. They were melodies

in whose bottomless shallowness glimmered neither consolation nor hope.

When the saints in heaven hear such melodies, the praise of God dies

upon their paled lips, and they cover their heads weeping. At times when

the _obligato_ goat's laugh bleated in among the melodious pangs, I

caught a glimpse in the background of a crowd of small women-figures who

nodded their odious heads with wicked wantonness. Then a rush of

agonising sounds came from the violin, and a fearful groan and a sob,

such as was never heard upon earth before, nor will be perhaps heard

upon earth again; unless in the valley of Jehoshaphat, when the colossal

trumpets of doom shall ring out, and the naked corpses shall crawl forth

from the grave to abide their fate. But the agonised violinist suddenly

made one stroke of the bow, such a mad despairing stroke, that his

chains fell rattling from him, and his mysterious assistant and the

other foul mocking forms vanished.

"At this moment my neighbour, the furrier, said, 'A pity, a pity; a

string has snapped--that comes from the constant _pizzicato_.'

"Had a string of the violin really snapped? I do not know. I only

observed the alteration in the sounds, and Paganini and his surroundings

seemed to me again suddenly changed. I could scarcely recognise him in

the monk's brown dress, which concealed rather than clothed him. With

savage countenance half hid by the cowl, waist girt with a cord, and

bare feet, Paganini stood, a solitary defiant figure, on a rocky

prominence by the sea, and played his violin. But the sea became red and

redder, and the sky grew paler, till at last the surging water looked

like bright scarlet blood, and the sky above became of a ghastly,

corpse-like pallor, and the stars came out large and threatening; and

those stars were black, black as glooming coal. But the tones of the

violin grew ever more stormy and defiant, and the eyes of the terrible

player sparkled with such a scornful lust of destruction, and his thin

lips moved with such a horrible haste, that it seemed as if he murmured

some old accursed charms to conjure the storm and loose the evil spirits

that lie imprisoned in the abysses of the sea. Often, when he stretched

his long thin arm from the broad monk's sleeve, and swept the air with

his bow, he seemed like some sorcerer who commands the elements with his

magic wand; and then there was a wild wailing from the depth of the sea,

and the horrible waves of blood sprang up so fiercely that they almost

besprinkled the pale sky and the black stars with their red foam. There

was a wailing and a shrieking and a crashing, as if the world was

falling into fragments, and ever more stubbornly the monk played his

violin. He seemed as if by the power of violent will he wished to break

the seven seals wherewith Solomon sealed the iron vessels in which he

had shut up the vanquished demons. The wise king sank those vessels in

the sea, and I seemed to hear the voices of the imprisoned spirits while

Paganini's violin growled its most wrathful bass. But at last I thought

I heard the jubilee of deliverance, and out of the red billows of blood

emerged the heads of the fettered demons: monsters of legendary horror,

crocodiles with bats' wings, snakes with stags' horns, monkeys with

shells on their heads, seals with long patriarchal beards, women's faces

with breasts in place of cheeks, green camels' heads, hermaphrodites of

incomprehensible combination--all staring with cold, crafty eyes, and

with long fin-like claws grasping at the fiddling monk. From the latter,

however, in the furious zeal of his conjuration, the cowl fell back, and

the curly hair, fluttering in the wind, fell round his head in ringlets,

like black snakes.

"So maddening was this vision that, to keep my senses, I closed my ears

and shut my eyes. When I again looked up the spectre had vanished, and I

saw the poor Genoese in his ordinary form, making his ordinary bows,

while the public applauded in the most rapturous manner.

"'That is the famous performance upon G,' remarked my neighbour; 'I

myself play the violin, and I know what it is to master that

instrument.' Fortunately, the pause was not considerable, or else the

musical furrier would certainly have engaged me in a long conversation

upon art. Paganini again quietly set his violin to his chin, and with

the first stroke of his bow the wonderful transformation of melodies

again also began. They no longer fashioned themselves so brightly and

corporeally. The melody gently developed itself, majestically billowing

and swelling like an organ chorale in a cathedral, and everything

around, stretching larger and higher, had extended into a colossal space

which, not the bodily eye, but only the eye of the spirit could seize.

In the midst of this space hovered a shining sphere, upon which,

gigantic and sublimely haughty, stood a man who played the violin. Was

that sphere the sun? I do not know. But in the man's features I

recognised Paganini, only ideally lovely, divinely glorious, with a

reconciling smile. His body was in the bloom of powerful manhood, a

bright blue garment enclosed his noble limbs, his shoulders were covered

by gleaming locks of black hair; and as he stood there, sure and secure,

a sublime divinity, and played the violin, it seemed as if the whole

creation obeyed his melodies. He was the man-planet about which the

universe moved with measured solemnity and ringing out beatific rhythms.

Those great lights, which so quietly gleaming swept around, were they

the stars of heaven, and that melodious harmony which arose from their

movements, was it the song of the spheres, of which poets and seers have

reported so many ravishing things? At times, when I endeavoured to gaze

out into the misty distance, I thought I saw pure white garments

floating around, in which colossal pilgrims passed muffled along with

white staves in their hands, and, singular to relate, the golden knob of

each staff was even one of those great lights which I had taken for

stars. These pilgrims moved in large orbit around the great performer,

the golden knobs of their staves shone even brighter at the tones of the

violin, and the chorale which resounded from their lips, and which I had

taken for the song of the spheres, was only the dying echo of those

violin tones. A holy, ineffable ardour dwelt in those sounds, which

often trembled, scarce audibly, in mysterious whisper on the water, then

swelled out again with a shuddering sweetness, like a bugle's notes

heard by moonlight, and then finally poured forth in unrestrained

jubilee, as if a thousand bards had struck their harps and raised their

voices in a song of victory. These were sounds which the ear never

hears, which only the heart can dream when it rests at night on a

beloved breast. Perhaps also the heart can grasp them in the bright

light of day, when it loses itself with joy in the curves of beauty in a

Grecian work of art...."

"Or when one has drunk one too many bottles of champagne!" broke in

suddenly a laughing voice, which woke our story-teller as from a dream.

Turning round, he saw the doctor, who, under the guidance of black

Deborah, had gently entered the room to inform himself of the effect of

his medicine on the patient.

"That sleep does not please me," he said, pointing to the sofa.

Maximilian, who, absorbed in the fancies of his own discourse, had not

observed that Maria had long since fallen asleep, bit his lip with

vexation.

"That sleep," the doctor pursued, "gives to her countenance already the

appearance of death. Does it not look like those white masks, those

plaster casts, in which we seek to preserve the features of the dead?"

"I should like," Maximilian whispered in his ear, "to have such a cast

of our friend's face. Even as a corpse she would be very lovely."

"I do not advise you to do so," answered the doctor. "Such masks spoil

the recollection of those we love. We think that in the plaster we have

procured something of their life, but it is only death that we have

caught. Beautiful regular features get something horribly rigid,

mocking, fatal, with which they terrify rather than delight us; but the

casts of those faces whose charm was of a more spiritual kind, whose

features were less regular than interesting, are absolute caricature;

for as soon as the graces of life are extinguished, the real

declinations from the line of ideal beauty are no longer compensated by

the spiritual charm. A certain enigmatic expression is common to all

these casts, which, after long contemplation, send an intolerable chill

through our souls; they look as if on the point of going a long

journey."

"Whither?" asked Maximilian, as the doctor took his arm and led him from

the room.

SECOND NIGHT.

"And why will you torment me with this horrible medicine, since I must

die so soon?"

It was Maria who, as Maximilian entered, spoke these words. The doctor

was standing before her with a medicine bottle in one hand and in the

other a little glass in which a brownish liquor frothed nauseously. "My

dear fellow," he exclaimed, turning to the new-comer, "you have just

come at the right time; try and persuade Signora to swallow these few

drops; I am in a hurry."

"I entreat you, Maria!" whispered Maximilian, in that tender voice which

one did not often observe in him, and which seemed to come from so

wounded a heart that the patient, singularly touched, took the glass in

her hand. Before she put it to her mouth, she said, smiling, "Will you

reward me with the story of Laurence?"

"All that you wish shall be done," nodded Maximilian.

The pale lady then drank the contents of the glass, half smiling, half

shuddering.

"I am in a hurry," said the doctor, drawing on his black gloves. "Lie

down quietly, Signora, and move as little as possible."

Led by black Deborah, who lighted him, he left the room. When the two

friends were left alone, they looked at each other for a long time in

silence. In the souls of both thoughts were clamorous which each strove

to hide from the other. The woman, however, suddenly seized the man's

hand and covered it with glowing kisses.

"For God's sake," said Maximilian, "do not agitate yourself so, and lie

back quietly on the sofa."

As Maria fulfilled this wish, he covered her feet carefully with a

shawl, which he previously touched with his lips. She probably noticed

him, for her eyes winked with contentment, like a happy child's.

"Was Mademoiselle Laurence very beautiful?"

"If you will not interrupt me, dear friend, and promise to listen quite

silently, I will tell you circumstantially all that you wish to know."

Smiling in response to Maria's affirmative glance, Maximilian seated

himself on the chair which was beside the sofa, and began his story:--

It is now eight years since I travelled to London to become acquainted

with the language and the people. Confound the people and their language

too! There they take a dozen monosyllables in their mouths, chew them,

gnash them, spit them out again, and they call that speaking!

Fortunately, they are by nature tolerably taciturn, and though they

always gape at us with open mouths, they spare us long conversations.

But woe unto us if we fall into the hands of a son of Albion who has

made the great tour and learnt French on the Continent. He will use the

opportunity to exercise the achieved language, and overwhelm us with

questions on all possible subjects. And scarcely is one question

answered before he comes out with another about one's age or home or

length of one's stay, and with these incessant inquiries he thinks he is

entertaining us in the most delightful manner. One of my friends at

Paris was perhaps right when he maintained that the English learn their

French conversation at the _Bureaux des Passeports_. Their talk is most

useful at table, when they carve their colossal roast beef and inquire

which cut you like, overdone or underdone, the inside or the brown

outside, fat or lean. This roast beef and this roast mutton are the only

good things they have. Heaven preserve every Christian man from their

sauces, which consist of one part of flour and two of butter, or when

the composition aims at a change, of one part of butter and two of

flour. Heaven preserve anyone also from their vegetables, which they

bring on the table cooked in water, just as God created them. Still more

horrible than the cookery of the English are their toasts and _obligato_

speeches, when the table-cloth is taken away and the ladies retire, and

instead of them just so many bottles of port wine are brought up; for

they think that that is the best way to replace the absence of the fair

sex. I say the 'fair' sex, for the English women deserve that name. They

are fair, slender creatures. Only the excessive space between the nose

and the mouth, which is found in them as frequently as in the men, has

often spoiled for me in England the most beautiful faces. This

declination from the type of beauty acts upon me still more fatally when

I see the English here in Italy, where their sparingly chiselled noses,

and the broad space of flesh that stretches from there to the mouth,

forms so much the more uncouth contrast with the faces of the Italians,

whose features have a more antique regularity, and whose noses, either

curved in the Roman way or inclined in the Grecian, degenerate into too

great a length. Very correct is the observation of a German traveller

that the English, when among the Italians, all look like statues with

the points of their noses broken off.

Yes, when one meets the English in a foreign land, the contrast brings

out their deficiencies distinctly. They are the gods of _ennui_, who

travel through all lands at post haste in shining, lacquered coaches,

and leave everywhere a grey, dark cloud of mournfulness behind them.

Their curiosity without interest, their dressed-up awkwardness, their

insolent timidity, their angular egotism, and their empty joy at all

melancholy objects, aid in this impression. In the last three weeks an

Englishman has been visible every day on the Piazza del Gran Duca,

gazing for an hour at a time at a quack sitting on a horse who draws

people's teeth. Perhaps this performance compensates the noble son of

Albion for the loss of the executions of his own dear native land. For

after boxing and cock-fights, there is no more delightful sight for a

Briton than the agony of some poor devil who has stolen a sheep, or

imitated somebody's handwriting, and is exhibited for an hour in front

of the Old Bailey before he is thrown into eternity. It is no

exaggeration to say that forgery and the theft of a sheep in that

detestable and barbarous land are punished in the same way as the most

awful crimes, as parricide and incest.[12] I, myself, led by a sad

chance, saw a man hanged for stealing a sheep, and after that I lost all

pleasure in roast mutton; the fat reminded me of the poor culprit's

white cap. Near him an Irishman was hanged for forging the signature of

a rich banker; I still see poor Paddy's death agony; he could not

understand at the assizes why he should be so hardly punished for

imitating a signature when he would allow any human being to imitate his

own! And these people talk constantly of Christianity, and never miss

church on Sunday, and flood the whole world with Bibles.

"I confess to you, Maria, that if I relished nothing in England, men or

cookery, the reason lay partly in myself. I brought over a good store of

ill-humour with me, and I was seeking amusement among a people who can

only kill their _ennui_ in the whirlpool of political and mercantile

activity. The perfection of machinery, which is applied to everything

here, and has superseded so many human functions, has for me something

dismal; this artificial life of wheels, bars, cylinders, and a thousand

little hooks, pins, and teeth which move almost passionately, fills me

with horror. I am annoyed no less by the definiteness, the precision,

the strictness, in the life of the English; for just as the machines in

England seem to have the perfection of men, so the men seem like

machines. Yes, wood, iron, and brass seem to have usurped the human mind

there, and to have gone almost mad from fulness of mind, while the

mindless man, like a hollow ghost, exercises his ordinary duties in a

machine-like fashion; at the appointed moment eats beef-steaks, makes

parliamentary speeches, trims his nails, mounts the stage-coach, or

hangs himself.

"You can well imagine how my dissatisfaction increased in this country.

Nothing, however, equalled the gloomy mood which once came over me as I

stood on Waterloo Bridge towards evening and gazed on the water. It

seemed to me as if my soul was mirrored there, and was gazing up out of

the water at me with all its scars. The most sorrowful stories came to

my recollection. I thought of the rose which was always watered with

vinegar, and so lost its sweet fragrance and faded early. I thought of

the strayed butterfly which a naturalist, who ascended Mount Blanc, saw

fluttering amid the ice. I thought of the tame monkey who was so

familiar with men, played with them, eat with them, but once at table

recognised in the roast meat on the dish her own little monkey baby,

quickly seized it, and hastened to the woods, never more to be seen

among her human friends. Ah, I felt so sorrowful that the hot tears

started from my eyes. My tears fell down into the Thames, and floated on

to the great sea which has swallowed so many tears without noticing

them.

"At this moment it happened that a singular music awoke me from my

gloomy dreams, and looking round, I saw on the bank a crowd of people,

who seemed to have formed a circle round some amusing display. I drew

nearer, and saw a family of performers, consisting of the following four

persons:--

"Firstly, a short, thick-set woman, dressed entirely in black, who had a

very little head and a very large, protuberant belly. Upon this belly

was hung an immense drum, upon which she drummed away most unmercifully.

"Secondly, a dwarf, who wore an embroidered coat like an old French

marquis. He had a large powdered head, but for the rest, had very thin

contemptible limbs, and danced to and fro striking the triangle.

"Thirdly, a young girl of about fifteen years, who wore a short

close-fitting jacket of blue-striped silk, and broad pantaloons also

with blue stripes. She was an ærially-made figure. The face was of

Grecian loveliness. A straight nose, sweet lips turned outwards, a

dreamy, tender, rounded chin, the colour a sunny yellow, the hair of a

gleaming black, wound round the brows. So she stood, slender and

serious; yes, ill-humoured, and gazed upon the fourth person of the

company, who was just then engaged in his performance.

"This fourth person was a learned dog, a very hopeful poodle, and to the

great delight of the English public, he had just put together from some

wooden letters before him, the name of the Duke of Wellington, and

joined to it a very flattering word--namely, "Hero." Since the dog, as

one might conclude from his witty expression, was no English beast, but

had, like the other three persons, come from France, the sons of Albion

rejoiced that their great general had at least obtained from the French

dog that recognition which the other French creatures had so

disgracefully denied.

"In fact, this company consisted of French people, and the dwarf, who

now announced himself as Monsieur Turlutu, began to bluster in French,

and with such vehement gestures, that the poor English opened their

mouths and noses still wider than usual. Often, after a long phrase, he

crowed like a cock, and these cock-a-doodle-doos, as also the names of

many emperors, kings, and princes which he mixed up with his discourse,

were probably the only sounds the poor spectators understood. Those

emperors, kings, and princes he extolled as his patrons and friends.

When only a boy of eight years, so he assured us, he had had an

interview with his most sacred majesty Louis XVI., who also, later on,

always asked his advice on weighty matters. He escaped the storms of the

Revolution, like many others, by flight, and he only returned under the

empire to his beloved country to take part in the glory of the great

nation. Napoleon, he said, never loved him, whereas His Holiness Pope

Pius VII. almost idolised him. The Emperor Alexander gave him bon-bons,

and the Princess Wilhelm von Kyritz always placed him on her lap. His

Highness Duke Charles of Brunswick often allowed him to ride on his

dogs, and his majesty King Ludwig of Bavaria read to him his sublime

poems. The Princes of Reuss-Schleiz-Kreuz and of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen

loved him as a brother, and always smoked the same pipe with him. Yes,

from childhood up, he said, he had lived among sovereigns; the present

monarchs, had, as it were, grown up with him; he looked upon them as

equals, and he felt deep sorrow every time that one of them passed from

the scene of life. After these solemn words he crowed like a cock.

"Monsieur Turlutu was, in fact, one of the most curious dwarfs I ever

saw; his wrinkled old face formed such a droll contrast with his scanty,

childish, little body, and his whole person again contrasted as

comically with his performances. He threw himself into the most

sprightly postures, and with thrusts of an inhumanly long rapier he

transfixed the air, affirming all the while, on his honour, that no one

could parry this _quarte_ or that _tierce_; that, on the contrary, his

own defence could be broken through by no mortal man, and he challenged

anyone to engage with him in the noble art. After the dwarf had carried

this performance on for some time, and found no one who would resolve on

open conflict with him, he bowed with old French grace, gave thanks for

the applause which was bestowed upon him, and took the liberty of

announcing to the very honourable public the most extraordinary

performance ever displayed upon English ground. 'You see this person,'

he exclaimed, after drawing on dirty kid gloves, and leading the young

girl of the company with respectful gallantry into the middle of the

circle--'this is Mademoiselle Laurence, the only daughter of the

honourable Christian lady whom you see there with the drum, and who

still wears mourning for the loss of her dearly-beloved husband, the

greatest ventriloquist in Europe! Mademoiselle Laurence will now dance!

Now, admire the dancing of Mademoiselle Laurence.' After these words, he

again crowed like a cock.

"The young girl appeared to care not the least either for these words or

the gaze of the spectators; ill-humouredly absorbed in herself, she

waited till the dwarf had spread a large carpet at her feet, and under

the guidance of the great drum had again begun to play his triangle. It

was strange music, a mixture of awkward humming and a delightful

tinkling, and I caught a pathetic, foolish, melancholy, bold, bizarre

melody of, nevertheless, the most singular simplicity. But I soon forgot

the music when the young girl began to dance.

"Dance and dancer powerfully seized my attention. It was not the

classical dance which we still see in our great ballets, where, just as

in classical tragedy, only sprawling unities and artificialities reign;

it was not those danced Alexandrines, those declamatory springs, those

antithetic capers, that noble emotion which pirouets round on one foot,

so that one sees nothing except heaven and petticoats, ideality and

lies! There is, indeed, nothing so odious to me as the ballet at the

Paris Grand Opera, where the traditions of that classical dance are

retained in their purest forms, while in the rest of the arts, in

poetry, in music, and in painting, the French have overturned the

classical system. It will be, however, difficult for them to bring about

a similar revolution in the art of dancing; they will need, as in their

political revolution, to have recourse to terrorism, and guillotine the

legs of the obdurate dancers. Mademoiselle Laurence was no great dancer;

the joints of her feet were not very supple, her legs were not exercised

in all possible dislocations, she understood nothing of the art of

dancing as Madame Vestris teaches it, but she danced as nature commands

to dance: her whole being was in harmony with her _pas_; not only her

feet but her whole body danced; her face danced--she was often pale,

almost deathly pale, her eyes opened to an almost ghostly size, desire

and pain quivered on her lips, and her black hair, which enclosed her

brows in smooth oval, moved like a pair of fluttering wings. It was,

indeed, no classical dance, but also no romantic dance, in the sense of

a young Frenchman of the Eugène Renduel school. This dance had nothing

mediæval, nor Venetian, nor hump-backed, nor Macabrian about it; there

was neither moonshine nor incest in it. It was a dance which did not

seek to answer by outward movements, but the outward movements seemed

words of a strange speech which strove to express strange things. But

what did this dance express? I could not understand, however

passionately this speech uttered itself. I only guessed sometimes that

it spoke of something intensely sorrowful. I, who so easily seized the

meaning of all appearances, was nevertheless unable to solve this danced

riddle; and that I groped in vain for the sense of it was partly the

fault of the music, which certainly pointed intentionally to false

roads, cunningly sought to lead me astray, and always disturbed me.

Monsieur Turlutu's triangle often tittered maliciously. Madame, however,

beat upon her drum so wrathfully, that her face glowed forth from the

black cloud of cap like a blood-red northern light.