"Long after the troop had passed away, I remained standing at the same

spot, considering what that dance might signify. Was it a national dance

of the south of France or of Spain? In such a dance might appear the

impetuosity with which the dancer swung her little body to and fro, and

the wildness with which she often threw her head backward in the bold

way of those Bacchantes whom we gaze at with amazement on ancient vases.

There was an intoxicated absence of will about her dance, something

gloomy and inevitable; it was like the dance of fate. Or was it a

fragment of some venerable forgotten pantomime? Or was she dancing her

personal history? Often the girl bent down to the earth with a listening

ear, as though she heard a voice which spoke up to her. She trembled

then like an aspen leaf, bent suddenly to another side, went through her

maddest, most unrestrained leaps, then again bent her ear to the earth,

listened more anxiously than before, nodded her head, became red and

pale by turns, shuddered, stood for a while stiffly upright as if

benumbed, and made finally a movement as one who washes his hands. Was

it blood that so long and with such care, such horrible care, she was

washing from her hands? She threw therewith a sideward glance so

imploring, so full of entreaty, so soul-dissolving--and that glance fell

by chance upon me.

"All the following night I was thinking of that glance, of that dance,

of that strange accompaniment; and as, on the following day, I sauntered

as usual through the streets of London, I longed to meet the pretty

dancer again, and I constantly pricked my ears in case I might somewhere

hear the music of the drum and the triangle. I had at last found

something in London which interested me, and I no longer wandered

aimless through its yawning streets.

"I had just come out of the Tower, after carefully examining the axe

which cut off Anne Bullen's head, as well as the English crown-diamonds

and the lions, when in front of the Tower I caught a glimpse, amid a

crowd, of Madame with the great drum, and heard Monsieur Turlutu crowing

like a cock. The learned dog again scraped together the heroism of the

Duke of Wellington, the dwarf again showed his not-to-be-parried

_tierces_ and _quartes_, and Mademoiselle Laurence again began her

wondrous dance. There were again the same enigmatic movements, the same

speech which I could not understand, the same impetuous throwing back of

the beautiful head, the same leaning down to the earth, the anguish

which sought to soothe itself by ever madder leaps, and again the

listening ear bent to the earth, the trembling, the pallor, the benumbed

stiffness; then also the fearful mysterious washing of the hands, and at

last the imploring side-glance, which rested upon me this time still

longer than before.

"Yes, women, and young girls as well as women, immediately observe when

they have excited the attention of a man. Although Mademoiselle

Laurence, when she was not dancing, gazed immovable and ill-humouredly

before her, and while she was dancing often cast only one glance on the

public, it was now no mere chance that this glance fell upon me; and the

oftener I saw her dance, the more significantly it gleamed, but also the

more incomprehensibly. I was fascinated by this glance, and for three

weeks, from morning till evening, I wandered about the streets of

London, always remaining wherever Mademoiselle Laurence danced. In spite

of the greatest confusion of sounds, I could catch the tones of the drum

and the triangle at the farthest distance; and Monsieur Turlutu, as soon

as he saw me hastening near, raised his most friendly crow. Although I

never spoke a word to him or to Mademoiselle Laurence, or to madame, or

to the learned dog, I seemed at last as if I belonged to the company.

When Monsieur Turlutu made a collection, he always behaved with the most

delicate tact as he drew near me, and looked in the opposite direction

when I put a small coin in his little three-cornered hat. His demeanour

was indeed most distinguished; he reminded one of the good manners of

the past; one could tell that the little man had grown up with

monarchs, and all the stranger was it when at times, altogether

forgetting his dignity, he crowed like a cock.

"I cannot describe to you how vexed I became, when, after seeking for

three days in vain for the little company through all the streets of

London, I was forced to conclude that they had left the town. _Ennui_

again took me in its leaden arms, and again closed my heart. At last I

could endure it no longer; I said farewell to the four estates of the

realm--_i.e._, the mob, the blackguards, the gentlemen, and the

fashionables--and travelled back again to civilised _terra firma_, where

I knelt in adoration before the white apron of the first cook I met.

Here once more I could sit down to dinner like a reasonable being, and

refresh my soul by gazing at good-natured, unselfish faces. But I could

not forget Mademoiselle Laurence; she danced in my memory for a long

time; at solitary hours I often reflected over the lovely child's

enigmatic pantomime, especially over the listening ear bent to the

earth. It was a long time, too, before the romantic melodies of the

triangle and drum died away in my memory."

"And is that the whole story?" cried out Maria, all at once, starting up

eagerly.

Maximilian pressed her softly down, placed his finger significantly to

his lips, and whispered, "Still! still! do not talk! Lie down, good and

quiet, and I will tell you the rest of the story. Only on no account

interrupt me."

Leaning slowly back in his chair, Maximilian pursued the story:--

"Five years afterwards I came for the first time to Paris, and at a very

noteworthy period. The French had just performed their July revolution,

and the whole world was applauding. This piece was not so horrible as

the earlier tragedies of the Republic and the Empire. Only some

thousand corpses remained upon the stage. The political Romanticists

were not very contented, and announced a new piece in which more blood

should flow, and the executioner have more to do.

"Paris delighted me by the cheerfulness which prevails there, and which

exercises its influence over the most sombre minds. Singular! Paris is

the stage on which the greatest tragedies of the world's history are

performed--tragedies at the recollection of which hearts tremble and

eyes become moist in the most distant lands; but to the spectator of

these tragedies it happens as it happened to me once at the Porte

Saint-Martin Theatre, when I went to see the _Tour de Nesle_ performed.

I found myself sitting behind a lady who wore a hat of rose-red gauze,

and this hat was so broad that it obstructed the whole of my view of the

stage, and I saw all the tragedy only through the red gauze of this hat,

and all the horror of the _Tour de Nesle_ appeared in the most cheerful

rose-light. Yes, there is such a rose-light in Paris, which makes all

tragedies cheerful to the near spectator, so that his enjoyment of life

is not spoilt there. In the same way all the terrible things that one

may bring in his own heart to Paris there lose their tormenting horror.

Sorrows are singularly soothed. In this air of Paris all wounds are

healed quicker than anywhere else; there is in this air something as

generous, as kind, as amiable as in the people themselves.

"What most pleased me in the people of Paris was their polite bearing

and distinguished air. Sweet pine-apple perfume of politeness! how

beneficently thou refreshedst my sick soul, which had swallowed down in

Germany so much tobacco smoke, sauerkraut odour, and coarseness! The

simple words of apology of a Frenchman, who, on the day of my arrival,

only gently pushed against me, rang in my ears like the melodies of

Rossini. I was almost terrified at such sweet politeness, I, who was

accustomed to German clownish digs in the ribs without apology. During

the first week of my stay in Paris I several times deliberately sought

to be jostled, simply to delight myself with this music of apology. But

the French people has for me a certain touch of nobility, not only on

account of its politeness, but also on account of its language. For, as

you know, with us in the north the French language is one of the

attributes of high birth; from childhood I had associated the idea of

speaking French with nobility. And a Parisian market-woman spoke better

French than a German canoness with sixty-four ancestors.

"On account of this language, which lends a distinguished bearing to it,

the French people has in my eyes something delightfully fabulous. This

originated in another reminiscence of my childhood. The first book in

which I learnt French was the _Fables_ of La Fontaine; its naïve,

sensible manner of speech impressed itself on my recollection

ineffaceably, and as I now came to Paris and heard French spoken

everywhere, I was constantly reminded of La Fontaine's _Fables_, I

constantly imagined I was hearing the well-known animal voices; now the

lion spoke, then the wolf, then the lamb, or the stork, or the dove, not

seldom, I thought, I caught the voice of the fox, and often the words

awoke in my memory--'Eh! bonjour, Monsieur du Corbeau! Que vous êtes

joli! que vous me semblez beau!'

"Such reminiscences, however, awoke in my soul still oftener when at

Paris I ascended to that higher region which is called 'the world.' This

was even that world which gave up to the happy La Fontaine the types of

his animal characters. The winter season began soon after my arrival at

Paris, and I took part in the _salon_ life in which that world more or

less joyfully moves. What struck me as most interesting in this world

was not so much the equality of good manners which reigned there as the

variety of its ingredients. Often when I gazed round at the people

gathered peacefully together in a large drawing-room I thought I was in

one of those curiosity shops where relics of all ages lie beside each

other, a Greek Apollo, a Chinese pagoda, a Mexican Vizlipuzli by a

Gothic Ecce-Homo, Egyptian idols with little dogs' heads, holy

caricatures made of wood, of ivory, of metal, and so on. There I saw old

mousquetaires who had danced with Marie Antoinette, republicans who were

deified in the National Assembly, Montagnards without spot and without

mercy, former men of the Directory who were throned in the Luxembourg,

great dignitaries of the Empire, before whom all Europe had trembled,

ruling Jesuits of the Restoration--in short, mere faded, mutilated

deities of olden times, in whom nobody believed any longer. The names

seem to recoil from each other, but the men one may see standing

peaceful and friendly together like the antiquities in the shops of the

Quai Voltaire. In German countries, where the passions are not so easily

disciplined, for such a heterogeneous mass of persons to live together

in society would be quite impossible. And with us in the cold north the

vivacity of speech is not so strong as in warmer France, where the

greatest enemies, if they meet one another in a _salon_, cannot long

observe a gloomy silence. In France, also, the desire to please is so

great that people zealously strive to please not only their friends, but

also their enemies. There is constant drapery and affectation, and the

women here have the delightful trouble of excelling the men in coquetry;

but they succeed, nevertheless.

"I do not mean anything wicked by this observation, certainly not as

regards the French ladies, and least of all as regards the Parisian

ladies. I am their greatest adorer, and I adore them on account of their

failings still more than on account of their virtues. I know nothing

more excellent than the legend that the Parisian women come into the

world with all possible failings, but that a kind fairy has mercy upon

them and lends to each fault a spell by which it works as a charm. That

kind fairy is Grace! Are the Parisian women beautiful? Who can say? Who

can see through all the intrigues of the toilet? Who can decipher

whether what the tulle betrays is genuine, or what the swelling silk

displays, false? And when the eye succeeds in piercing the shell, and we

are at the point of finding the kernel, we discover that it is enclosed

in a new shell, and after this again in another, and with this ceaseless

change of fashions they mock masculine acuteness. Are their faces

beautiful? Even this is difficult to find out. For all their features

are in constant movement; every Parisian woman has a thousand faces,

each more laughing, _spirituel_, gracious than the other, and puts to

confusion those who seek to choose the loveliest face among them, or at

all events, who wishes to guess which is the true face. Are their eyes

large? What do I know! We cease investigating the calibre of the canon

when the ball carries off our heads. And when their eyes do not hit,

they at least blind us with the flash, and we are glad enough to get out

of range. Is the space between nose and mouth broad or narrow? It is

often broad when they wrinkle up their noses; it is often narrow when

they give their upper lips an insolent little pout. Have they large or

small mouths? Who can say where the mouth leaves off and where the smile

begins? In order to give a just opinion, both the observer and the

object of observation must be in a state of rest. But who can be quiet

near a Parisian, and what Parisian woman is ever quiet? There are people

who think that they can observe a butterfly quite accurately when they

have stuck it on to paper with a pin. That is as foolish as it is cruel.

The motionless transfixed butterfly is a butterfly no longer. One must

observe the butterfly in his antics round the flowers, and one must

observe the Parisian woman, not at home, when she is made fast by a pin

through her breast, but in the _salon_, at soirées, and balls, when she

flutters about with her wings of gauze and silk beneath the gleaming

chandeliers. Then is revealed in her an impetuous passion for life, a

longing after a sweet stupor, a thirsting for intoxication, by which

means she becomes almost horribly beautiful, and wins a charm which at

the same time delights and terrifies our souls.

"This thirst to enjoy life, as if death was about to snatch them from

the bubbling spring of enjoyment, or as if that spring was about to

cease flowing, this haste, this fury, this madness of the Parisian

women, especially as it shows itself at balls, reminds me always of the

legend of the dead dancing-girls which we call Willis. These are young

brides who died before the wedding-day, and the unsatisfied desire of

dancing is preserved so powerfully in their hearts that they come every

night out of their graves, assemble in bands on the high roads, and give

themselves up at midnight to the wildest dances. Dressed in their

wedding clothes, with garlands on their heads, and glittering rings on

their pale hands, laughing horribly, irresistibly lovely, the Willis

dance in the moonshine, and they dance ever more madly the more they

feel that the hour of dancing, which has been granted them, is coming to

an end, and that they must again descend to their cold graves.

"At a soirée once in the Chaussée d'Antin this idea moved my soul

profoundly. It was a brilliant soirée, and none of the customary

ingredients of social pleasure were wanting: enough light to illuminate

us, enough mirrors to see ourselves in, enough people to heat us with

the squeeze, enough _eau sucrée_ to cool us. They began with music.

Franz Liszt allowed himself to be drawn to the piano, pushed his hair

over his genial brows, and waged one of his most brilliant battles. The

keys seemed to bleed. If I am not mistaken, he played a passage from the

_Palingenesis_ of Ballanche, whose ideas he was translating into music,

which was very useful for those who cannot read the works of that famous

writer in the original. Afterwards he played Berlioz's _La Marche au

Supplice_, that excellent piece which the young musician, if I am not

mistaken, composed on the morning of his wedding-day. Throughout the

room paled faces, heaving bosoms, highly-drawn breath during the pauses,

were succeeded at last by stormy applause. The women are always as it

were intoxicated when Liszt plays anything for them. The Willis of the

_salon_ now gave themselves up to dancing with frantic delight, and I

had difficulty in getting out of this confusion and saving myself in the

adjoining room. Here card-playing was going on, and several ladies were

resting in large chairs, looking on at the players, or at all events

pretending to interest themselves in the play. As I passed one of these

ladies, and my arm touched her dress, I felt from hand to shoulder a

slight quiver as from a very weak electric shock. A similar shock, but

of the greatest force, went through my whole heart when I saw the lady's

countenance. Was it she, or was it not? It was the same face, with the

form and sunny colour of an antique, only it was no longer so marble

pure and marble smooth as formerly. The acute observer might perceive

on brow and cheeks several little flaws, perhaps small-pox marks, which

here exactly resembled those delicate weather-flecks which may be seen

on the faces of statues that have been standing some time in the rain.

It was the same black hair which covered the brows in smooth oval like a

raven's wings. As, however, her eyes met mine, and with that well-known

side-glance, whose swift lightning had always shot so enigmatically

through my soul, I doubted no longer--it was Mademoiselle Laurence.

"Stretched in a distinguished way on her chair, with a bouquet in one

hand and the other placed on the arm of the chair, Mademoiselle Laurence

sat not far from one of the tables, and seemed to devote her whole

attention to the cards. Her dress of white satin was elegant and

distinguished, but still quite simple. Except bracelets and breast-pins

of pearl, she wore no jewels. An abundance of lace covered the youthful

bosom, covered it almost puritanically up to the neck, and in this

simplicity and modesty of clothing she formed a lovely and touching

contrast with some elderly ladies, gaily adorned and glistening with

diamonds, who sat near her, and displayed to view the ruins of former

magnificence, the place where once Troy stood, in a state of melancholy

nakedness. She had the same wondrous loveliness, the same enrapturing

look of ill-humour, and I was irresistibly drawn towards her, till at

last I stood behind her chair, burning with desire to speak to her, and

yet held back by a trembling delicacy.

"I must have been standing silently behind her for some time, when she

suddenly drew a flower from her bouquet and, without looking round, held

it to me over her shoulder. The perfume of that flower was strong, and

it exercised a peculiar enchantment over me. I felt myself freed from

all social formality, and I seemed in a dream, where one does and says

all kinds of things at which oneself wonders, and when one's words have

an altogether childish, familiar, and simple character. Quiet,

indifferent, negligent, as one does with old friends, I leant over the

arm of the chair, and whispered in the youthful lady's ear,

'Mademoiselle Laurence, where is, then, the mother with the drum?'

'She is dead,' answered she, in just the same tone--as quiet,

indifferent, negligent.

"After a short pause, I again leant over the arm of the chair, and

whispered in the youthful lady's ear, 'Mademoiselle Laurence, where is

the learned dog?'

"'He has run away into the wide world,' she answered, in the same quiet,

indifferent, negligent tone.

"And again, after a short pause, I leant over the arm of the chair, and

whispered in the youthful lady's ear, 'Mademoiselle Laurence, where,

then, is Monsieur Turlutu, the dwarf?'

"'He is among the giants in the Boulevard du Temple,' she answered. She

had hardly spoken these words, and in just the same quiet, indifferent,

negligent tone, when a serious old man, with a tall military figure,

came towards her and announced that her carriage was ready. Slowly

rising from her seat, she leant upon his arm, and without casting one

glance back to me, left the company.

"When I inquired of the lady of the house, who had been standing all the

evening at the entrance of the principal saloon, presenting her smiles

to those who came or went, the name of the young lady who had just gone

out with the old man, she laughed gaily in my face, and exclaimed--'Mon

Dieu! who can know everybody! I know her as little.'--She stopped, for

she was about to say as little as myself, whom she had that evening

seen for the first time. 'Perhaps,' I remarked, 'your husband can give

me some information; where shall I find him?'

"'At the hunt at Saint Germain,' answered the lady, with a yet louder

laugh; 'he went early yesterday morning, and will return to-morrow

evening. But wait. I know somebody who has been talking a good deal with

the lady you inquire after; I do not know his name, but you can easily

find him out by inquiring after the young man whom M. Casimir Perrier

kicked, I don't know where.'

"Although it is rather difficult to recognise anyone by the fact of his

having received a kick from a minister, I soon discovered my man, and I

desired from him a more intimate knowledge of the singular creature who

had so interested me, and whom I could describe to him clearly enough.

'Yes,' said the young man, 'I know her very well; I have spoken to her

at several soirées'--and he repeated to me a mass of meaningless things

with which he had entertained her. What especially surprised him was her

earnest look whenever he said anything complimentary to her. He also

wondered not a little that she always declined his invitation to a

_contre danse_, assuring him that she was unable to dance. Of name and

condition he knew nothing. And nobody, as much as I inquired, could give

me any more distinct information on the subject. In vain I ran through

all possible soirées; nowhere could I find Mademoiselle Laurence."

"And that is the whole story?" exclaimed Maria, as she slowly turned

round and yawned sleepily--"that is the whole memorable story? And you

have never again seen either Mademoiselle Laurence, or the mother with

the drum, or the dwarf Turlutu, or the learned dog?"

"Remain lying still," replied Maximilian. "I have seen them all again,

even the learned dog. The poor rascal was certainly in a very sad state

of necessity when I came across him at Paris. It was in the Quartier

Latin. I had just passed the Sorbonne, when out of its gates rushed a

dog, and behind him with sticks a dozen students, who were soon joined

by two dozen old women, who all cried in chorus, 'The dog is mad!' The

animal looked almost human in his death agony, tears flowed from his

eyes, and as he ran panting by and lifted his moist glance towards me, I

recognised my old friend the learned dog, the Duke of Wellington's

panegyrist, who had once filled the people of England with wonderment.

Was he really mad? Had he been driven mad by mere learning while

pursuing his studies in the Quartier Latin? Or had he in the Sorbonne,

by his growling and scratching, marked his disapprobation of the

puffed-up charlatanry of some professor, who sought to free himself from

his unfavourable hearer by proclaiming him to be mad? And, alas! the

youths are not long investigating whether it is the wounded conceit of

learning or envy that first called out, 'The dog is mad!' and they

strike with their thoughtless sticks, and the old women are ready with

their howling, and cry down the voice of innocence and reason. My poor

friend must yield; before my eyes he was miserably struck to death,

insulted, and at last thrown on a dunghill! Poor martyr of learning!

"Not much more pleasant was the condition of the dwarf, Monsieur

Turlutu, when I found him on the Boulevard du Temple. Mademoiselle

Laurence had certainly told me that he had gone there, but whether I had

not thought of actually seeing him there, or that the crowd had hindered

me, it was some time before I noted the place where the giants were to

be seen. When I entered I found two tall fellows who lay idly on

benches, and quickly sprang up and placed themselves in giant posture

before me. They were, in truth, not as large as they boasted on the

placards hanging outside. These two long fellows, who were dressed in

pink _tricots_, had very black, perhaps false, whiskers, and brandished

hollow wooden clubs over their heads. When I asked after the dwarf, whom

the placards also announced, they replied that for four weeks he had not

been exhibited on account of his increasing illness--that I could see

him, however, on paying double the price of admission. How willingly one

pays double admission-fee to see a friend again! And, alas, this was a

friend who lay on his death-bed. This death-bed was properly a cradle,

and the poor dwarf lay inside with his yellow shrivelled old face. A

little girl of some fourteen years sat beside him, and rocked the cradle

with her foot, and sang in a laughing, roguish tone--

"'Sleep, little Turlutu, sleep!'

"When the little fellow saw me, he opened his glassy pale eyes as wide

as possible, and a melancholy smile played on his white lips; he seemed

to recognise me again, stretched his shrunken little hand towards me,

and gently rattled--'Old friend!'

"It was, in fact, a sad condition in which I found the man who, in his

eighth year, had had a long conversation with Louis XVI., whom the Czar

Alexander had fed with bon-bons, whom the Princess von Kyritz had taken

on her lap, who had ridden on the Duke of Brunswick's dogs, whom the

King of Bavaria had read his poems to, who had smoked out of the same

pipe with German princes, whom the Pope had idolised, and Napoleon never

loved! This last circumstance troubled him on his death-bed, or, as I

said, in his death-cradle, and he wept over the tragic fate of the great

Emperor, who had never loved him, but who died in such a sorrowful way

at Saint Helena--'just as I am dying,' he added, 'solitary,

misunderstood, forsaken by all kings and princes, a caricature of former

magnificence!'

"Although I could not rightly understand how a dwarf who died among

giants could compare himself with a giant who died among dwarfs, I was

nevertheless moved by poor Turlutu's words and by his forsaken condition

at the last moment. I could not help expressing my astonishment that

Mademoiselle Laurence, who was now so grand, gave herself no trouble

about him. I had scarcely uttered this name than the dwarf in the cradle

was seized by the most fearful spasms, and he whispered with his white

lips--'Ungrateful child! that I brought up, that I would elevate to be

my wife, that I taught to move and behave among the great of this world,

how to smile, how to bow at court, how to act--you have used my

instructions well, and you are now a great lady, and you have a coach

and footmen, and plenty of money, and plenty of pride, and no heart. You

leave me here to die--to die alone and in misery, as Napoleon died at

Saint Helena! O Napoleon! you never loved me.' What he added I could not

catch. He raised his head, made some movements with his hand, as if

fighting against somebody, perhaps against death. But that is an

opponent whose scythe neither a Napoleon nor a Turlutu can withstand. No

skill in fencing avails here. Faint, as if overcome, the dwarf let his

head sink down again, looked at me a long time with an indescribable,

ghostly stare, suddenly crowed like a cock, and expired.

"His death troubled me the more since he had been unable to give me any

more exact information about Mademoiselle Laurence. Where should I now

find her again? I was not in love with her, nor did I feel my former

inclination towards her; yet a mysterious desire spurred me to seek her

everywhere. When I entered a drawing-room and examined the company, and

could not find the well-known face, I soon lost all repose and was

driven away. Reflecting over this feeling, I stood one day at a remote

entrance to the Great Opera, waiting for a carriage, and waiting with

considerable annoyance, for it was raining very fast. But no carriage

came, or, rather, only carriages which belonged to other people, who

placed themselves comfortably inside, and the place around me became

gradually solitary. "Then you must come with me," said at last a lady,

who, concealed in her black mantilla, had stood for a little time near

me, and was now on the point of getting into a carriage. The voice sent

a quiver through my heart, the well-known side-glance again exercised

its charm, and I was again as in a dream on finding myself beside

Mademoiselle Laurence in a cosy warm carriage. We did not speak, indeed

we could not have understood each other, as the carriage rattled noisily

through the streets of Paris for a long time, till it stopped at last

before a great gateway.

"Servants in gorgeous livery lighted us up the steps and through a

succession of rooms. A lady's-maid met us with sleepy face, and

stammering many excuses, said that there was only a fire in the red

room. Motioning to the woman to go away, Laurence said, with a laugh,

'Chance is leading you a long way to-night; there is only a fire in my

bed-room.'

"In this bed-room, in which we soon found ourselves alone, blazed a

large open fire, which was the pleasanter since the room was of immense

size and height. This large sleeping-room, which rather deserved the

name of a sleeping-hall, had a similarly desolate appearance. Furniture

and decoration, all bore the impress of a time whose brilliance seems to

us now so bedimmed, its sublimity so _jejune_, that its remains raise a

certain dislike within us, if not indeed a smile. I speak of the time of

the Empire, of the time of the golden eagle, of high-flying plumes, of

Greek coiffures, of glory, of great drum-majors, of military masses, of

official immortality (conferred by the _Moniteur_), of continental

coffee prepared from chickory, of bad sugar manufactured from beet root,

and of princes and dukes made from nothing at all. But it had its charm,

though, that time of pathetic materialism. Talma declaimed, Gros

painted, Bigottini danced, Grassini sang, Maury preached, Rovigo had the

police, the Emperor read Ossian, Pauline Borghese let herself be moulded

as Venus, and quite naked too,[13] for the room was well warmed, like

the bed-room in which I found myself with Mademoiselle Laurence.

"We sat by the fire chatting familiarly, and she told me with a sigh

that she was married to a Buonopartist hero, who enlivened her every

evening before going to bed with a description of one of his battles; a

few days ago, before going away, he had fought for her the battle of

Jena; he was very ill, and with difficulty survived the Prussian

campaign. When I asked her how long her father had been dead, she

laughed, and confessed that she had never known a father, and that her

so-called mother had never been married.

"'Not married!' I exclaimed; 'I saw her myself in London in the deepest

mourning on account of her husband's death!'

"'Oh,' replied Laurence, 'for twelve years she had always dressed

herself in black, to excite people's compassion as an unhappy widow, as

well as to allure any donkey desirous of marrying, for she hoped to

reach the haven of marriage quicker under black flags. But only death

had pity on her, and she died of a hæmorrhage. I never loved her, for

she always, gave me plenty of beating and little to eat. I should have

died of starvation if Monsieur Turlutu had not often given me a little

piece of bread on the sly; but the dwarf wished to marry me on that

account, and when his hopes were frustrated he made common cause with my

mother--I say 'mother' from custom--and both agreed to torment me. They

always said that I was a superfluous creature, and that the learned dog

was worth a thousand times more than I with my bad dancing. And then

they praised the dog at my expense, extolled him to the skies, caressed

him, fed him with cakes, and threw me the crumbs. The dog, they said,

was their best support; he delighted the public, who were not in the

least interested in me; the dog must support me by his work. I ate the

bread of the dog. The cursed dog!'

"'Oh, do not curse him any more,' I broke in upon her passion; 'he is

dead now; I saw him die.'

"'Is the beast dead?' exclaimed Laurence, springing up with a red glow

of joy over her face.

"'And the dwarf is also dead,' I added.

"'Monsieur Turlutu?' cried Laurence, also with joy. But this joy

gradually died from her face, and in a milder, almost melancholy tone,

she added, 'Poor Turlutu!'

"When I told her, without any concealment, that the dwarf had complained

of her very bitterly on his death-bed, she became passionately

disturbed, and assured me, with many protestations, that she had had the

foresight to care for him as well as possible, that she had offered him

a pension if he would go and live quietly somewhere in the country. 'But

ambitious as he was,' Laurence pursued, "he wished to stay in Paris, and

even to live at my house; he could then, he thought, through my

interposition, renew his connections in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and

again take his former brilliant position in society. When I flatly

refused him this, he told me that I was a cursed ghost, a vampyre, a

death-child."

"Laurence suddenly stopped, shuddered violently, and said at last, with

a deep sigh, 'Ah, I wish they had left me in the grave with my mother!'

As I pressed her to explain these mysterious words, a stream of tears

flowed from her eyes, and, trembling and sobbing, she confessed to me

that the black woman with the drum, who gave herself out as her mother,

had once herself told her that the rumour which went about concerning

her birth was no mere story. 'For in the town where we lived,' pursued

Laurence, 'they always called me the death-child! The old woman

maintained that I was the daughter of a Count who lived there, and who

constantly ill-treated his wife, and when she died buried her very

magnificently; she was, however, near her confinement, and only

apparently dead, and when some churchyard thieves opened the grave to

strip the richly-adorned corpse, they found the countess alive and in

child-birth; and as she expired immediately after delivery, the thieves

placed her again quietly in her grave, took away the child, and gave it

to the receiver of the stolen goods, the great ventriloquist's

sweetheart, to be brought up. This poor child, who had been buried

before it was born, was everywhere called the death-child. Ah! you

cannot understand how much sorrow I felt even as a little girl when

anyone called me by that name. While the great ventriloquist was alive,

whenever he was discontented with me, he always called out, 'Cursed

death-child, I wish you had never been taken out of the grave!' He was a

skilful ventriloquist, and could so modulate his voice that it seemed to

come up out of the earth, and he told me that that was the voice of my

dead mother telling me her fate. He might well know that horrible fate,

for he had been a valet of the Count's. He took a cruel pleasure in the

horrible fright which I, poor little girl, received from the words which

seemed to ascend from the earth. These words, which seemed to ascend

from the earth, mingled together fearful tales--tales which I never

understood in their connection, and which later on I gradually forgot;

but when I danced they would again come into my mind with living power.

Yes, when I danced a singular remembrance seized me; I forgot myself,

and I seemed to be quite another person, and as if all the sorrows and

secrets of this person were poisoning me, and as soon as I left off

dancing it was all extinguished in my memory.'

"While Laurence said this, slowly and as if questioning, she stood

before me at the fireplace, where the fire was burning pleasanter than

ever; and I sat in the easy-chair, which was apparently the seat of her

husband, where he told her his battles before going to bed of an

evening. Laurence looked at me with her large eyes as if she was asking

my advice; she moved her head to and fro in such a melancholy,

reflective way; she filled me with such a sweet compassion; she was so

slender, so young, so lovely, this lily that had sprung out of the

grave, this daughter of death, this ghost with the face of an angel and

the body of a bayadere! I do not know how it came to pass; perhaps it

was the influence of the easy-chair on which I was sitting, but it

suddenly came into my mind that I was the old general who had described

the battle of Jena yesterday from this place, and as if I must go on

with my narrative, and I said, 'After the battle of Jena all the

Prussian fortresses yielded themselves up within a few weeks, almost

without drawing a sword. First Magdeburg yielded; it was the strongest

fortress, and had three hundred cannon. Was not that disgraceful?'

"But Mademoiselle Laurence allowed me to say no more; the troubled mood

had vanished from her face; she laughed like a child, and cried, 'Yes,

that was disgraceful, more than disgraceful! If I was a fortress and had

three hundred guns, I would never yield myself!'

"But as Mademoiselle Laurence was not a fortress, and had not three

hundred guns----"

At these words Maximilian suddenly stopped in his story, and, after a

short pause, asked gently, "Are you asleep, Maria?"

"I'm asleep," answered Maria.

"So much the better," said Maximilian, with a smile; "then I need not be

afraid of wearying you if I describe the furniture of the room in which

I found myself, as novelists are accustomed to do rather at length

now-a-days."

"Say what you like, dear friend; I'm asleep."

"It was," continued Maximilian, "a very magnificent bed. The feet, as in

all the beds of the Empire, consisted of caryatides and sphinxes; it

gleamed with richly-gilt eagles, billing like turtle doves, perhaps an

emblem of love under the Empire. The curtains of the bed were of red

silk, and as the flames from the fireplace shone brightly through them,

I found myself with Laurence in a fiery red illumination, and I seemed

to be the god Pluto with the flames of hell blazing round him as he

held the sleeping Proserpine in his arms. She was asleep, and in this

condition I gazed on her sweet face, and sought in her features a clue

to that sympathy which my soul felt for her. What was the meaning of

this woman? What sense lurked under the symbolism of that beautiful

form? I held the charming enigma in my arms now as my own property, and

yet I could not find the solution of it.

"But is it not folly to wish to sound the inner meaning of any

phenomenon outside us, when we cannot even solve the enigma of our own

souls? We hardly know even whether outside phenomena really exist! We

are often unable to distinguish reality from mere dream-faces. Was it a

shape of my fancy, or was it horrible reality that I heard and saw on

that night? I know not. I only remember that as the wildest thoughts

were flowing through my heart, a singular sound came to my ear. It was a

crazy melody, peculiarly soft. It seemed known to me, and at last I

distinguished the tones of a triangle and a drum. This music, whirring

and humming, seemed to come from afar, and yet as I looked up I saw near

me in the middle of the room a well-known performance. It was Monsieur

Turlutu the dwarf who played the triangle, and Madame beating the great

drum, while the learned dog was scratching about on the floor, as if

searching for his wooden letters. The dog appeared to move with

difficulty, and his skin was spotted with blood. Madame still wore her

black mourning, but her belly was no longer so spaciously protuberant,

but repulsively pendant. Her face, too, was no longer red, but pale. The

dwarf, who still wore the embroidered coat of an old French marquis and

a powdered toupet, appeared to have grown somewhat, perhaps because he

was so horribly lean. He again exhibited his skill in fencing, and

seemed to be again spinning off his old vaunts; but he spoke so softly

that I was unable to understand a word, and only by the movements of his

lips could I sometimes observe that he was again crowing like a cock.

"While this ludicrous, horrible caricature moved like a magic lantern

with confused haste before my eyes, I felt Mademoiselle Laurence

breathing more and more uneasily. A cold paroxysm froze her whole body,

and her sweet limbs writhed as if with unbearable agony. At last,

however, supple as an eel, she glided from my arms, stood suddenly in

the middle of the room, and began to dance, while the mother with the

drum and the dwarf with the triangle continued their deadened soft

music. She danced just as formerly on Waterloo Bridge and in the squares

of London. There were the same mysterious pantomimes, the same outbreaks

of passionate leaping, the same Bacchante-like throwing of the head

backwards, often also the same leaning towards the earth, as if she

wished to hear somebody speaking beneath, then also the trembling, the

pallor, the benumbed stiffness, and again the listening with ear bent to

the earth. Again also she rubbed her hands as if washing herself. At

last she appeared again to cast her intense, sorrowful, imploring glance

upon me, but now only in the features of her death-pale countenance

could I recognise that glance--not in her eyes, for they were shut. In

ever softer sounds the music died away; the mother with the drum and the

dwarf, gradually growing pale and breaking like mist, vanished at last

altogether; but Mademoiselle Laurence still stood and danced with closed

eyes. This dance with closed eyes in the silent nocturnal chamber gave

this sweet being so ghostly an appearance that a disagreeable feeling

seized me; I shuddered, and was heartily glad when she finished her

dance, and as easily as she had slipped away again glided into my arms.

"In truth, this scene was not pleasant to me. But we accustom ourselves

to everything. And it is even possible that what was mysterious in this

woman lent her a more peculiar charm, that an awful tenderness mingled

with my emotions. In any case, after some weeks I ceased to wonder in

the least when the low sounds of the drum and triangle were heard at

night, and my dear Laurence suddenly started up and danced a solo with

closed eyes. Her husband, the old Buonapartist, commanded in the

neighbourhood of Paris, and his duties allowed him to pass the day only

in the city. Of course he became my most intimate friend, and he wept

when later on he bade me farewell. He travelled with his wife to Sicily,

and I have seen neither of them again since."

When Maximilian had finished this narrative, he hastily seized his hat

and slipped out of the room.

DON QUIXOTE.

[The following admirable account of _Don Quixote_--here given

chiefly in Mr. Fleishman's translation--was written in 1837, as the

introduction to an _edition de luxe_ of Cervantes's masterpiece.]

The first book that I read after I arrived at boyhood's years of

discretion, and had tolerably mastered my letters, was _The Life and

Deeds of the Sagacious Knight, Don Quixote de la Mancha_, written by

Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra. Well do I remember the time, when, early

in the morning, I stole away from home and hastened to the court-garden,

that I might read Don Quixote without being disturbed. It was a

beautiful day in May, the blooming Spring lay basking in the silent

morning light, listening to the compliments of that sweet flatterer, the

nightingale, who sang so softly and caressingly, with such a melting

fervour, that even the shyest of buds burst into blossom, and the lusty

grasses and the fragrant sunshine kissed more rapturously, and the trees

and flowers trembled from very ecstasy. But I seated myself on an old

moss-covered stone bench in the so-called Avenue of Sighs, not far from

the water-fall, and feasted my little heart with the thrilling

adventures of the valiant knight. In my childish simplicity I took

everything in sober earnest; no matter how ridiculous the mishaps which

fate visited upon the poor hero, I thought it must be just so, and

imagined that to be laughed at was as much a part of heroism as to be

wounded; and the former vexed me just as sorely as the latter grieved my

heart. I was a child, and knew nothing of the irony God has interwoven

into the world, and which the great poet has imitated in his miniature

world;--and I wept most bitterly, when for all his chivalry and

generosity the noble knight gained only ingratitude and cudgels. As I

was unpracticed in reading, I spoke every word aloud, and so the birds

and the trees, the brooks and the flowers, could hear all I read, and as

these innocent beings know as little as children of the irony of the

world, they too took it all for sober earnest, and wept with me over the

sorrows of the unfortunate knight; an old worn-out oak sobbed even; and

the water-fall shook more vehemently his white beard, and seemed to

scold at the wickedness of the world. We felt that the heroism of the

knight was none the less worthy of admiration because the lion turned

tail without fighting, and that if his body was weak and withered, his

armour rusty, his steed a miserable jade, his deeds were all the more

worthy of praise. We despised the vulgar rabble who beat the poor hero

so barbarously, and still more the rabble of higher rank, who were

decked in silk attire, gay courtly phrases, and grand titles, and jeered

at the man who was so far their superior in powers of mind and nobility

of soul. Dulcinea's knight rose ever higher in my esteem, and my love

for him grew stronger and stronger the longer I read in that wonderful

book, which I continued to do daily in that same garden, so that when

autumn came I had reached the end of the story,--and I shall never

forget the day when I read the sorrowful combat, in which the knight

came to so ignominious an end.

It was a gloomy day; dismal clouds swept over a leaden sky, the yellow

leaves fell sorrowfully from the trees, heavy tear-drops hung on the

last flowers that drooped down in a sad faded way their dying little

heads, the nightingales had long since died away, from every side the

image of transitoriness stared at me--and my heart was ready to break as

I read how the noble knight lay on the ground, stunned and bruised, and

through his closed visor said, in tones faint and feeble, as if he was

speaking from the grave, "Dulcinea is the fairest lady in the world, and

I the unhappiest knight on earth, but it is not meet that my weakness

should disown this truth--strike with your lance, Sir Knight."

Ah me! that brilliant knight of the silver moon, who vanquished the

bravest and noblest man in the world, was a disguised barber!

That was long ago. Many new springs have bloomed forth since then, yet

their mightiest charm has always been wanting, for, alas! I no longer

believe the sweet deceits of the nightingale, Spring's flatterer; I know

how soon his magnificence fades, and when I look at the youngest

rosebuds I see them in spirit bloom to a sorrowful red, grow pale, and

be scattered by the winds. Everywhere I see a disguised Winter.

In my breast, however, still blooms that flaming love, which soared so

ardently above the earth, to revel adventurously in the broad yawning

spaces of heaven, and which, pushed back by the cold stars, and sinking

home again to the little earth, was forced to confess, with sighing and

triumph, that there is in all creation nothing fairer or better than the

heart of man. This love is the inspiration that fills me, always divine,

whether it does foolish or wise deeds.--And so the tears the little boy

shed over the sorrows of the silly knight were in no wise spent in vain,

any more than the later tears of the youth, as on many a night he wept

in the study over the deaths of the holy heroes of freedom--over King

Agis of Sparta, over Caius and Tiberius Gracchus of Rome, over Jesus of

Jerusalem, and over Robespierre and Saint Just of Paris. Now that I have

put on the _toga virilis_, and myself desire to be a man, the tears have

come to an end, and it is necessary to act like a man, imitating my

great predecessors; in the future, if God will, to be wept also by boys

and youths. Yes, upon these one can still reckon in our cold age; for

they can still be kindled by the breezes that blow to them from old

books, and so they can comprehend the flaming hearts of the present.

Youth is unselfish in its thoughts and feelings, and on that account it

feels truth most deeply, and is not sparing, where a bold sympathy is

wanted, with confession or deed. Older people are selfish and

narrow-minded; they think more of the interest of their capital than of

the interest of mankind; they let their little boat float quietly down

the gutter of life, and trouble themselves little about the sailor who

battles with the waves on the open sea; or they creep with clinging

tenacity up to the heights of mayoralty or the presidency of their club,

and shrug their shoulders over the heroic figures which the storm throws

down from the columns of fame; and then they tell, perhaps, how they

themselves also in their youth ran their heads against the wall, but

that later on they reconciled themselves to the wall, for the wall was

the absolute, existing by and for itself, which, because it was, was

also reasonable, on which account he is unreasonable who will not endure

a high, reasonable, inevitable, eternally-ordained absolutism. Ah, these

objectionable people, who wish to philosophise us into a gentle slavery,

are yet more worthy of esteem than those depraved ones who do not even

admit reasonable grounds for the defence of despotism, but being

learned in history fight for it as a right of custom, to which men in

the course of time have gradually accustomed themselves, and which has

so become incontestably valid and lawful.

Ah, well! I will not, like Ham, lift up the garment of my fatherland's

shame; but it is terrible how slavery has been made with us a matter for

prating about, and how German philosophers and historians have tormented

their brains to defend despotism, however silly or awkward, as

reasonable and lawful. Silence is the honour of slaves, says Tacitus;

these philosophers and historians maintain the contrary, and exhibit the

badge of slavery in their button-holes.

Perhaps, after all, you are right, and I am only a Don Quixote, and the

reading of all sorts of wonderful books has turned my head, as it was

with the Knight of La Mancha, and Jean Jacques Rousseau was my Amadis of

Gaul, Mirabeau my Roland or Agramanto; and I have studied too much the

heroic deeds of the French Paladins and the round table of the National

Convention. Indeed, my madness and the fixed ideas that I created out of

books are of a quite opposite kind to the madness and the fixed ideas of

him of La Mancha. He wished to establish again the expiring days of

chivalry; I, on the contrary, wish to annihilate all that is yet

remaining from that time, and so we work with altogether different

views. My colleague saw windmills as giants; I, on the contrary, can see

in our present giants only vaunting windmills. He took leather

wine-skins for mighty enchanters, but I can see in the enchanters of

to-day only leather wine-skins. He held beggarly pot-houses for castles,

donkey-drivers for cavaliers, stable wenches for court ladies; I, on the

contrary, hold our castles for beggarly pot-houses, our cavaliers for

mere donkey-drivers, our court ladies for ordinary stable wenches. As he

took a puppet-show for a state ceremony, so I hold our state ceremonies

as sorry puppet-shows, yet as bravely as the brave Knight of La Mancha I

strike out at the clumsy machinery. Alas! such heroic deeds often turn

out as badly for me as for him, and like him I must suffer much for the

honour of my lady. If I denied her from mere fear or base love of gain,

I might live comfortably in this reasonably-constructed world, and I

should lead a fair Maritorna to the altar, and let myself be blessed by

fat enchanters, and banquet with noble donkey-drivers, and engender

harmless romances as well as other little slaves! Instead of that,

wearing the three colours of my lady, I must strike through unspeakable

opposition, and fight battles, everyone of which costs me my heart's

blood. Day and night I am in straits, for those enemies are so artful

that many I struck to death still give themselves the appearance of

being alive, changing themselves into all forms, and spoiling day and

night for me. How many sorrows have I suffered by such fatal spectres!

Where anything lovely bloomed for me then they crept in, those cunning

ghosts, and broke even the most innocent buds. Everywhere, and when I

should least suspect it, I discovered on the ground the traces of their

silvery slime, and if I took no care, I might have a dangerous fall even

in the house of my love. You may smile and hold such anxieties for idle

fancies like those of Don Quixote. But fancied pains hurt all the same;

and if one fancies that he has drunk hemlock he may get into a

consumption, and he certainly will not get fat. And the report that I

have got fat is a calumny; at least I have not yet received any fat

sinecure, even if I possess the requisite talents. I fancy that

everything has been done to keep me lean; when I was hungry they fed me

with snakes, when I was thirsty they gave me wormwood to drink; they

poured hell into my heart, so that I wept poison and sighed fire; they

crouched near me even in my dreams; and I see horrible spectres, noble

lackey faces with gnashing teeth and threatening noses, and deadly eyes

glaring from cowls, and white ruffled hands with gleaming knives.

And even the old woman who lives near me in the next room considers me

to be mad, and says that I talk the maddest nonsense in my sleep; and

the other night she plainly heard me calling out--"Dulcinea is the

fairest woman in the world, and I the unhappiest knight on earth; but it

is not meet that my weakness should disown this truth. Strike with your

lance, Sir Knight!"

* * * * *

It is now eight years since I wrote the foregoing lines[14] for the

Fourth Part of the _Reisebilder_, in which I described the impression

which the reading of _Don Quixote_ had made on my mind many years ago.

Good Heavens! how swiftly time flies! It seems to me as if it were but

yesterday that, in the Avenue of Sighs, in the court-garden at

Düsseldorf, I finished reading the book, and my heart is still moved

with admiration for the deeds and sufferings of the noble knight. Has my

heart remained constant in this ever since, or has it, after passing

through a wonderful cycle, returned to the emotions of childhood? The

latter may well be the case, for I remember that during each lustrum of

my life _Don Quixote_ has made a different impression upon me. When I

was blossoming into adolescence, and with inexperienced hands sought to

pluck the roses of life, climbed the loftiest peaks in order to be

nearer to the sun, and at night dreamed of naught else but eagles and

chaste maidens, then Don Quixote was to me a very unsatisfactory book,

and if it chanced to fall in my way I involuntarily shoved it aside. At

a later period, when I had ripened into manhood, I became to a certain

degree reconciled to Dulcinea's luckless champion, and I began to laugh

at him. The fellow is a fool, said I. And yet, strange to say, the

shadowy forms of the lean knight and his fat squire have ever followed

me in all the journeyings of my life, particularly when I came to any

critical turning-point. Thus I recollect that while making the journey

to France, one morning in the post-chaise I awakened from a

half-feverish slumber, and saw in the early morning mist two well-known

figures riding by my side. The one on my right was Don Quixote de la

Mancha, mounted on his lean, abstract Rosinante, the other on my left

was Sancho Panza, on his substantial, positive grey donkey. We had just

reached the French frontier. The noble Manchean bowed his head

reverently before the tri-coloured flag, which fluttered towards us from

the high post that marks the boundary line. Our good Sancho saluted with

a somewhat less cordial nod the first French _gendarmes_ whom we saw

approaching near by. At last my two friends pushed on ahead, and I lost

sight of them, only now and then I caught the sound of Rosinante's

spirited neighing, and the donkey's responsive bray.

At that time I was of the opinion that the ridiculousness of Don

Quixotism consisted in the fact that the noble knight endeavoured to

recall a long-perished past back to life, and his poor limbs and back

came into painful contact with the harsh realities of the present.

Alas! I have since learned that it is an equally ungrateful folly to

endeavour to bring the future prematurely into the present, and that for

such an assault upon the weighty interests of the day, one possesses but

a very sorry steed, a brittle armour, and an equally frail body! And the

wise man dubiously shakes his sage head at the one, as well as at the

other, of these Quixotisms. But Dulcinea del Toboso is still the most

beautiful woman in the world; although I lie stretched upon the earth,

helpless and miserable, I will never take back that assertion, I cannot

do otherwise--on with your lances, ye Knights of the Silver Moon, ye

disguised barbers!

What leading idea guided Cervantes when he wrote his great book? Was his

purpose merely the destruction of the romances of knight-errantry, the

reading of which at that time was so much the rage in Spain that both

clerical and secular ordinances against them were powerless? Or did he

seek to hold up to ridicule all manifestations of human enthusiasm in

general, military heroism in particular? Ostensibly he aimed only to

satirise the romances above referred to, and through the exposition of

their absurdities deliver them over to universal derision, and thus put

an end to them. In this he succeeded most brilliantly; for that which

neither the exhortations from the pulpit, nor the threats of the

authorities could effect, that a poor writer accomplished with his pen.

He destroyed the romances of chivalry so effectually that soon after the

appearance of _Don Quixote_ the taste for that class of literature

wholly died out in Spain, and no more of that order were printed. But

the pen of a man of genius is always greater than he himself; it extends

far beyond his temporary purpose, and without being himself clearly

conscious of it, Cervantes wrote the greatest satire against human

enthusiasm. He had not the least presentiment of this, for he himself

was a hero, who had spent the greater portion of his life in chivalrous

conflicts, and who in his old age was wont to rejoice that he had

participated in the battle of Lepanto, although he paid for this glory

with the loss of his left hand.

The biographers can tell us but little concerning the person or private

life of the poet who wrote _Don Quixote_. We do not lose much by the

omission of such details, which are generally picked up from the female

gossips of the neighbourhood. They see only the outer shell; but we see

the man, his true, sincere, unslandered self.

He was a handsome, powerful man, Don Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra. He

had a high forehead, and a large heart. His eyes possessed a wonderful

magic; just as there are people who can look into the earth, and see the

hidden treasures and the dead that lie buried there, so the eye of the

great poet could penetrate the breasts of men, and see distinctly all

that was concealed there. To the good his look was as a ray of sunlight

gladdening and illuminating the heart; to the bad his glance was a

sword, sharply piercing their souls. His searching eyes penetrated to

the very soul of a person, and questioned it, and if it refused to

answer, he put it to the torture, and the soul lay stretched bleeding on

the rack, while perhaps the body assumed an air of condescending

superiority. Is it to be wondered at that many formed a dislike for him,

and gave him but scant assistance in his journey through life? He never

achieved rank or position, and from all his toilsome pilgrimages he

brought back no pearls, but only empty shells. It is said that he could

not appreciate the value of money, but I assure you he fully appreciated

its worth when he had no more. But he never prized it as highly as he

did his honour. He had debts, and in one of his writings, in which

Apollo is supposed to grant to the poets a charter of privileges, the

first paragraph declares: When a poet says he has no money, his simple

assurance shall suffice, and no oath shall be required of him. He loved

music, flowers, and women, but in his love for the latter he sometimes

fared very badly, particularly in his younger days. Did the

consciousness of future greatness console him, when pert young roses

stung him with their thorns?--Once on a bright summer afternoon, while

yet a young gallant, he walked along the banks of the Tagus in company

with a pretty girl of sweet sixteen, who continually mocked at his

tender speeches. The sun had not yet set, it still glowed with all its

golden splendour, but high up in the heavens was the moon, pale and

insignificant, like a little white cloud. "See'st thou," said the young

poet to his sweetheart, "see'st thou yonder small pale disk? The river

by our side in which it mirrors itself seems to receive its pitiful

reflex on its proud bosom merely out of compassion, and the curling

billows at times cast it disdainfully aside towards the shore. But wait

until day fades into twilight; as soon as darkness descends, yonder pale

orb will grow brighter and brighter, and will flood the whole stream

with its silvery light, and the haughty billows that before were so

scornful will then tremble with ecstasy at sight of the lovely moon, and

roll rapturously towards it."

The history of poets must be sought for in their works, for there are to

be found their most confidential confessions. In all his writings, in

his dramas even more than in _Don Quixote_, we see, as I have before

mentioned, that Cervantes had long been a soldier. In fact, the Roman

proverb, "Living means fighting," finds a double application in his

case. He took part as a common soldier in most of those fierce games of

war which King Philip II. carried on in all countries for the honour of

God and his own pleasure. The circumstance that Cervantes devoted his

whole youth to the service of the greatest champion of Catholicism, and

that he fought to advance Catholic interests, warrants the assumption

that he had those interests at heart, and hence refutes the

widely-spread opinion that only the fear of the Inquisition withheld him

from discussing in _Don Quixote_ the great Protestant questions of the

time. No, Cervantes was a faithful son of the Roman church, and he not

only bled physically in knightly combats for her blessed banner, but his

whole soul suffered a most painful martyrdom during his many years of

captivity among the Unbelievers.

We are indebted to accident for most of the details of Cervantes's

doings while in Algiers, and here we recognise in the great poet an

equally great hero. The history of his captivity gives a most emphatic

contradiction to the melodious lie of that polished man of the world,

who made Augustus and the German pedants believe that he was a poet, and

that poets are cowards. No, the true poet is also a true hero, and in

his breast dwells that God-like patience, which, as the Spaniards say,

is a second fount of courage. There is no more elevating spectacle than

that of the noble Castilian who serves the Dey of Algiers as a slave,

constantly meditating an escape, with unflagging energy preparing his

bold plans, composedly facing all dangers, and when the enterprise

miscarries, is ready to submit to torture and death rather than betray

his accomplices. The blood-thirsty master of his body becomes disarmed

by such grand magnanimity and virtue. The tiger spares the fettered

lion, and trembles before the terrible "One-Arm," whom with but a single

word he could dispatch to his death. Cervantes is known in all Algiers

as "One-Arm," and the Dey confesses that only when he knows that the

one-armed Spaniard is in safe-keeping can he sleep soundly at night,

assured of the safety of his city, his army, and his slaves.

I have referred to the fact that Cervantes was always a common soldier,

but even in so subordinate a position he succeeded in distinguishing

himself to such a degree as to attract the notice of the great general,

Don John of Austria, and on his return from Italy to Spain he was

furnished with the most complimentary letters of recommendation to the

king, in which his advancement was most emphatically urged. When the

Algerine corsairs, who captured him on the Mediterranean Sea, beheld

these letters, they took him to be a person of the highest rank and

importance, and hence demanded so large a ransom that notwithstanding

all their efforts and sacrifices his family were not able to purchase

his freedom, and the unfortunate poet's captivity was thereby prolonged

and embittered. Thus the recognition of his merits became an additional

source of misfortune, and thus to the very end of his days was he mocked

by that cruel dame, the Goddess Fortuna, who never forgives genius for

having achieved fame and honour without her assistance.

But are the misfortunes of a man of genius always the work of blind

chance, or do they necessarily follow from his inner nature and

environment? Does his soul enter into strife with the world of reality,

or do the coarse realities begin the unequal conflict with his noble

soul?

Society is a republic. When an individual strives to rise, the

collective masses press him back through ridicule and abuse. No one

shall be wiser or better than the rest. But against him, who by the

invincible power of genius towers above the vulgar masses, society

launches its ostracism, and persecutes him so mercilessly with scoffing

and slander, that he is finally compelled to withdraw into the solitude

of his own thoughts.

Verily, society is republican in its very essence. Every sovereignty,

intellectual as well as material, is hated by it. The latter oftener

gives aid to the former than is generally imagined. We ourselves came to

this conclusion soon after the revolution of July, when the spirit of

republicanism manifested itself in all social relations. Our republicans

hated the laurels of a great poet even as they hated the purple of a

great king. They sought to level the intellectual inequalities of

mankind, and in as much as they regarded all ideas that had been

produced on the soil of the state as general property, nothing remained

to be done but to decree an equality of style also. In sooth, a good

style was decried as something aristocratic, and we heard manifold

assertions: "A true democrat must write in the style of the

people--sincere, natural, crude." Most of the Party of Action succeeded

easily in doing this, but not every one possesses the gift of writing

badly, especially if one has previously formed the habit of writing

well, and then it was at once said, "That is an aristocrat, a lover of

style, a friend of art, an enemy of the people." They were surely honest

in their views, like Saint Hieronymus, who considered his good style a

sin, and gave himself sound scourgings for it.

Just as little as we find anti-Catholic, so also do we fail to discover

anti-absolutist strains in _Don Quixote_. The critics who think that

they scent such sentiments therein are clearly in error. Cervantes was

the son of a school which went so far as to poetically idealise the idea

of unquestioning obedience to the sovereign. And that sovereign was the

King of Spain at a time when its majesty dazzled the whole world. The

common soldier felt himself a ray in that halo of glory, and willingly

sacrificed his individual freedom to gratify the national pride of the

Castilian.

The political grandeur of Spain at that time contributed not a little to

exalt and enlarge the hearts of her poets. In the mind of a Spanish

poet, as in the realm of Charles V., the sun never set. The fierce wars

against the Moors were ended, and as after a storm the flowers are most

fragrant, so poesy ever blooms most grandly after a civil war. We

witness the same phenomenon in England at the time of Elizabeth, and at

the same time as in Spain there arose a galaxy of poets, which invites

the most remarkable parallelisms. There we see Shakespeare, here

Cervantes, as the flower of the school.

Like the Spanish poets under the three Philips, so also the English

poets under Elizabeth present a certain family likeness, and neither

Shakespeare nor Cervantes have claim to originality in our sense of the

word. They by no means differ from their contemporaries through peculiar

modes of thought or feeling, or by an especial manner of portrayal, but

only through greater depth, fervour, tenderness, and power. Their

creations are more infused and penetrated with the divine spark of

poetry.

But both poets were not only the flowers of their time, but they were

also the germs of the future. As Shakespeare, by the influence of his

works, particularly on Germany and the France of to-day, is to be

regarded as the creator of the later dramatic art, so must we honour in

Cervantes the author of the modern novel. I shall allow myself a few

passing observations on the subject.

The older novels, the so-called romances of chivalry sprang from the

poetry of the middle ages. They were at first prose versions of those

epic poems whose heroes are derived from the mythical traditions of

Charlemagne and the Holy Grail. The subject was always knightly

adventures. It was the romance of the nobility, and the personages that

figured therein were either fabulous, fantastic beings, or knights with

golden spurs; nowhere an allusion to the people. These romances of

knighthood, which degenerated into the most ridiculous absurdities,

Cervantes overthrew by his _Don Quixote_. But while by his satire he

destroyed the earlier romances, he also furnished a model for a new

school of fiction, which we call the Modern Novel. Such is always the

wont of great poets; while they tear down the old, they at the same time

build up the new; they never destroy without replacing. Cervantes

created the modern novel by introducing into his romances of knighthood

a faithful description of the lower classes, by intermingling with it

phases of folk-life. This partiality for describing the doings of the

common rabble, of the vilest tatterdemalions, is not only found in

Cervantes, but in all his literary contemporaries, and among the Spanish

painters as well as among the poets of that period. A Murillo, who stole

heaven's loveliest tints with which to paint his beautiful Madonnas,

painted with the same love the filthiest creatures of this earth. It was

perhaps the enthusiasm for art itself that made these noble Spaniards

find equal pleasure in the faithful portrayal of a beggar lad scratching

his head as in the representation of the Blessed Virgin. Or, perhaps, it

was the charm of contrast that led noblemen of the highest rank, a

dapper courtier like Quevedo, or a powerful minister like Mendoza, to

fill their romances with ragged beggars and vagabonds. They perhaps

sought to relieve the monotony of their lofty rank by putting

themselves in imagination into a quite different sphere of life, just as

we find a similar tendency among some of our German authors, whose

novels contain naught else but descriptions of the nobility, and who

always make their heroes counts and barons. We do not find in Cervantes

this one-sided tendency to portray the vulgar only; he intermingles the

ideal and the common; one serves as light or as shade to the other, and

the aristocratic element is as prominent in it as the popular. But this

noble, chivalrous, aristocratic element disappears entirely from the

novels of the English, who were the first to imitate Cervantes, and to

this day always keep him in view as a model. These English novelists

since Richardson's reign are prosaic natures; to the prudish spirit of

their time even pithy descriptions of the life of the common people are

repugnant, and we see on yonder side of the channel those _bourgeois_

novels arise, wherein the petty, humdrum life of the middle classes is

depicted. The public were surfeited with this deplorable class of

literature until recently, when appeared the great Scot, who effected a

revolution, or rather a restoration, in novel-writing. As Cervantes

introduced the democratic element into romance, at a time when one-sided

knight-errantry ruled supreme, so Walter Scott restored the aristocratic

element to romance when it had wholly disappeared, and only a prosaic

bourgeoisie was to be found there. By an opposite course Walter Scott

again restored to romance that beautiful symmetry which we admire in

Cervantes's _Don Quixote_.

I believe that the merits of England's second great poet have never in

this respect been recognised. His Tory proclivities, his partiality for

the past, were wholesome for literature, and for those masterpieces of

his genius that everywhere found favour and imitators, and which drove

into the darkest corners of the circulating libraries those ashen-grey,

ghostly remains of the _bourgeoisie_ romances. It is an error not to

recognise Walter Scott as the founder of the so-called Historical

Romance, and to endeavour to trace the latter to German initiative. This

error arises from the failure to perceive that the characteristic

feature of the Historical Romance consists just in the harmony between

the aristocratic and democratic elements, and that Walter Scott, through

the re-introduction of the aristocratic element, most beautifully

restored that harmony which had been overthrown during the absolutism of

the democratic element, whereas our German romanticists eliminated the

democratic element entirely from their novels, and returned again to the

ruts of those crazy romances of knight-errantry that flourished before

Cervantes. Our De la Motte-Fouqué is only a straggler from the ranks of

those poets who gave to the world _Amadis de Gaul_, and similar

extravagant absurdities. I admire not only the talent, but also the

courage of the noble Baron who, two centuries after the appearance of

_Don Quixote_, has written his romances of chivalry. It was a peculiar

period in Germany when the latter appeared and found favour with the

public. What was the significance in literature of that partiality for

knight-errantry, and for those pictures of the old feudal times? I

believe that the German people desired to bid an eternal farewell to the

middle ages, but moved with emotion as we Germans are so apt to be, we

took our leave with a kiss. For the last time we pressed our lips to the

old tombstone. True, some of us behaved in a very silly manner on that

occasion. Ludwig Tieck, the smallest boy in school, dug the dead

ancestors out of their grave, rocked the coffin as if it were a cradle,

and in childish, lisping accents sang, "Sleep, little grandsire,

sleep."

I have called Walter Scott England's second great poet, and his novels

masterpieces; but it is to his genius only that I would give the highest

praise. His novels I can by no means place on an equality with the great

romance of Cervantes. The latter surpasses him in epic spirit. Cervantes

was, as I have already stated, a Catholic poet, and it is perhaps to

this circumstance that he is indebted for that grand epic composure of

soul, which, like a crystalline firmament, overarches those picturesque

and poetical creations; nowhere is there a rift of scepticism. Added to

this is the calm dignity which is the national characteristic of the

Spaniard. But Walter Scott belongs to a church which subjects even

divine matters to a sharp examination; as an advocate and as a Scotchman

he is accustomed to action and to debate, and we find the dramatic

element most prominent in his novels, as well as in his life and his

temperament. Hence his works can never be regarded as the pure model of

that style of fiction which we denominate the Romance. To the Spaniards

is due the honour of having produced the best novel, as England is

entitled to the credit of having achieved the highest rank in the drama.

And the Germans, what palm remains for them? Well, then, we are the best

lyric poets on earth. No people possesses such beautiful songs as the

Germans. At present the nations are too much occupied with political

affairs, but when these are once laid aside, then let us Germans,

English, Spaniards, French, Italians, all go out into the green forests

and chant our lays, and the nightingale shall be umpire. I am convinced

that in this tournament of minstrelsy the songs of Wolfgang Goethe will

win the prize.

Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Goethe form the triumvirate of poets, who,

in the three great divisions of poetry, epic, dramatic, and lyric, have

achieved the greatest success. The writer of these pages is perhaps

peculiarly fitted to sound the praises of our great countryman as the

most perfect of lyric poets. Goethe stands midway between the two

classes of song-writers, between those two schools, of which one, alas!

is known by my own name, the other as the Suabian school. Both have

their merits; they have indirectly promoted the welfare of German

poetry. The first effected a wholesome reaction against the one-sided

idealism of German poetry, it led the intellect back to stern realities,

and uprooted that sentimental Petrarchism that has always seemed to us

as a Quixotism in verse. The Suabian school also contributed indirectly

to the weal of German poetry. If in Northern Germany strong and healthy

poetical productions came to light, thanks are perhaps due to the

Suabian school, which attracted to itself all the sickly chlorotic,

mawkishly-pious, clumsy votaries of the German muse. Stuttgart was the

fontanel, as it were, for the German muse.

While I ascribe the highest achievements in drama, in romance, and in

lyric poetry to this great triumvirate, far be it from me to depreciate

the poetical merits of other great poets. Nothing is more foolish than

the query, "Which poet is greater than the other?" Flame is flame, and

its weight cannot be determined in pounds and ounces. Only a narrow

shopkeeper mind will attempt to weigh genius in its miserable cheese

scales. Not only the ancients, but some of the moderns, have written

works in which the fire of poetry burns with a splendour equal to that

of the masterpieces of Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Goethe. Nevertheless,

these names hold together as if through some secret bond. A kindred

spirit shines forth from their creations, an immortal tenderness

exhales from them like the breath of God, the modesty of nature blooms

in them. Goethe not only constantly reminds one of Shakespeare, but also

of Cervantes, and he resembles the latter even in the details of style,

and in that charming prose diction which is tinged with a vein of the

sweetest and most harmless irony. Cervantes and Goethe resemble each

other even in their faults, in diffusiveness of style, in those long

sentences that we occasionally find in their writings, and which may be

compared to a procession of royal equipages. Not infrequently but a

single thought sits in one of those long, wide-spreading sentences that

rolls majestically along like a great, gilded court-chariot, drawn by

six plumed steeds. But that single idea is always something exalted,

perhaps even royal.

My remarks concerning the genius of Cervantes and the influence of his

book have been necessarily scant. Concerning the true value of his

romance from an artistic standpoint, I must express myself still more

briefly, as otherwise questions might arise which would lead to wide

digressions into the sphere of æsthetics. I may only call attention in a

general way to the form of the romance, and to the two figures that

constitute its central point. The form is that of a description of

travels which has ever been the most natural for this class of writings.

I am reminded of The Golden Ass of Apuleius, the first romance of

antiquity. Later poets sought to relieve the monotony of this form

through what we to-day call _fabliaux_. But on account of poverty of

invention the majority of romance writers have borrowed each other's

fables; at least, part have always used the same tales, making but

slight variations. Hence, through the resulting sameness of characters,

situations, and complications, the public became at last somewhat

wearied of romance-reading. To escape from the tediousness of hackneyed

tales and fables, they sought refuge in the ancient, original form of

narratives of travels. But this form will again be wholly supplanted

just as soon as some creative genius shall arise with a new and original

style of romance. In literature, as well as in politics, all things are

subject to the law of action and reaction.

As regards the two figures that are called Don Quixote and Sancho Panza,

that so constantly burlesque, and yet so wonderfully complement each

other, so that together they form the one true hero of the

romance,--these two figures give evidence equally of the poet's artistic

taste and of his intellectual profundity. If other authors, in whose

romances the hero journeys solitary and alone through the world, are

compelled to have recourse to monologues, letters, or diaries in order

to communicate the thoughts and emotions of their heroes, Cervantes can

always let a natural dialogue arise; and, inasmuch as the one figure

always parodies the other, the author's purpose is the more clearly

shown. Manifold have been the imitations of this double figure which

lends to the romance of Cervantes such an artistic naturalness, and out

of which, as from a single seed, has grown the whole novel, with all its

wild foliage, its fragrant blossoms, its glowing fruits, its apes and

marvellous birds that cluster amid its branches, resembling one of those

giant trees of India.

But it would be unjust to charge all this to a servile imitation; on the

surface, as it were, lay the introduction of two such figures as Don

Quixote and Sancho Panza, of which the one, the poetical nature, seeks

adventures, and the other, half out of affection, half out of selfish

motives, follows through sunshine and rain, as we often meet them in

real life. In order to recognise this couple anywhere, under the most

varied disguises, in art as well as in life, one must keep in view only

the essential, the spiritual characteristics, not the incidental or

external. I could offer innumerable instances of this. Do we not find

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza clearly repeated in Don Juan and Leporello,

and to a certain degree also in the persons of Lord Byron and his

servant Fletcher? Do we not recognise these two types and their changed

relations in the figures of the Knight von Waldsee and his Caspar

Larifari, as also in the form of many an author and his publisher? The

latter clearly discerns his author's follies, but in order to reap

pecuniary profit out of them, faithfully accompanies him in all his

ideal vagaries. And Master Publisher Sancho, even if at times he gains

only buffets in the transaction, yet always remains fat, while the noble

knight grows daily more and more emaciated. But not only among men, but

also among women, have I often met the counterparts of Don Quixote and

his henchman. I particularly remember a beautiful English lady, an

impulsive, enthusiastic blonde, who, accompanied by her friend, had run

away from a London boarding-school, to roam the wide world over in

search of a noble, true-hearted lover, such as she had dreamed of on

soft moonlight nights. Her friend, a short, plump brunette, also hoped

through this opportunity to gain, if not so rare and high an ideal, at

least a husband of good appearance. Still do I see her, with her slender

figure, and blue, love-longing eyes, standing on the beach at Brighton,

casting wistful glances over the billowy sea towards the French coast;

meanwhile her companion cracked hazel-nuts, munched the sweet kernels

with relish, and threw the shells into the water.

And yet neither in the masterpieces of other artists, nor in nature

herself, do we find these two types in their varying relations so

minutely elaborated as in Cervantes. Every trait in the character and

appearance of the one answers to a contrasting, and yet kindred, trait

in the other. Here every detail has a burlesque signification; yes, even

between Rosinante and Sancho's grey donkey there exists the same ironic

parallelism as between the squire and the knight, and the two beasts are

made to convey symbolically the same idea. As in their modes of thought,

so also in their speech, do master and servant reveal a most marvellous

contrast, and I cannot here omit to refer to the difficulties with which

the translator has had to contend in order to reproduce in German the

homely, gnarled dialect of our good Sancho. Through his blunt,

frequently vulgar speeches, and his fondness for proverbialising, our

good Sancho reminds us of King Solomon's fool, and of Marculfe, who,

also, in opposition to a somewhat pathetic idealism, expresses in short

and pithy sayings the practical wisdom of the common people. Don

Quixote, on the contrary, speaks the language of culture, of the higher

classes, and in the solemn gravity of his well-rounded periods, he

fairly represents the high-born Hidalgo. At times his sentences are spun

out too broadly, and the knight's language resembles a haughty court

dame, attired in a much bepuffed silken robe, with a long rustling

train. But the graces, disguised as pages, laughingly carry the tips of

this train, and the long sentences end with the most charming turns.

The character of Don Quixote's language and that of Sancho Panza may be

briefly summarised in the words: the former, when he speaks, seems

always mounted on his high horse; the latter, as if seated on his humble

donkey.

It is remarkable that a book which is so rich as _Don_ Quixote in

picturesque matter has as yet found no painter who has taken from it

subjects for a series of independent art works. Is the spirit of the

book so volatile and fanciful that the variegated colours elude the

artist's skill? I do not think so, for _Don Quixote_, light and fanciful

as it is, is still based on rude, earthly realities, as must necessarily

be the case to make it a book of the people. Is it, perhaps, because

behind the figures brought before us by the poet, deeper ideas lie

hidden, which the artist cannot produce again, so that he can give only

the outward features, salient though they be, but fails to grasp and

reproduce the deeper meaning?

GODS IN EXILE.

[_Gods in Exile_, in which Heine has gathered up some of the

mediæval legends concerning the later history of the Greek and

Roman gods, was written in the early spring of 1853 (a few pages,

however, had been written so long before as 1836), and published in

the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for that year. The translation, by Mr.

Fleishman, here used, has been carefully revised, and in part

rewritten.

It will be observed that the years between 1837 and 1853 are

unrepresented in this volume. During that period--with the

exception of the fragment of _The Rabbi of Bacharach_ (which was,

however, written earlier) and his book on Börne, both published in

1840--Heine produced very little prose.]

...I am speaking here of that metamorphosis into demons which the Greek

and Roman gods underwent when Christianity achieved supreme control of

the world. The superstition of the people ascribed to those gods a real

but cursed existence, coinciding entirely in this respect with the

teaching of the Church. The latter by no means declared the ancient gods

to be myths, inventions of falsehood and error, as did the philosophers,

but held them to be evil spirits, who, through the victory of Christ,

had been hurled from the summit of their power, and now dragged along

their miserable existences in the obscurity of dismantled temples or in

enchanted groves, and by their diabolic arts, through lust and beauty,

particularly through dancing and singing, lured to apostasy unsteadfast

Christians who had lost their way in the forest.... I will remind the

reader that the perplexities into which the poor old gods fell at the

time of the final triumph of Christendom--that is, in the third

century--offer striking analogies to former sorrowful events in their

god-lives; for they found themselves plunged into the same sad

predicament in which they had once before been placed in that most

ancient time, in that revolutionary epoch when the Titans broke loose

from their confinement in Orcus and, piling Pelion on Ossa, scaled high

Olympus. At that time the poor gods were compelled to flee ignominiously

and conceal themselves under various disguises on earth. Most of them

repaired to Egypt, where, as is well known, for greater safety, they

assumed the forms of animals. And in a like manner, when the true Lord

of the universe planted the banner of the cross on the heavenly heights,

and those iconoclastic zealots, the black band of monks, hunted down the

gods with fire and malediction and razed their temples, then these

unfortunate heathen divinities were again compelled to take to flight,

seeking safety under the most varied disguises and in the most retired

hiding-places. Many of these poor refugees, deprived of shelter and

ambrosia, were now forced to work at some plebeian trade in order to

earn a livelihood. Under these circumstances several, whose shrines had

been confiscated, became wood-choppers and day-labourers in Germany, and

were compelled to drink beer instead of nectar. It appears that Apollo

was reduced to this dire plight, and stooped so low as to accept service

with cattle-breeders, and as once before he had tended the cows of

Admetus, so now he lived as a shepherd in Lower Austria. Here, however,

he aroused suspicion through the marvellous sweetness of his singing

and, being recognised by a learned monk as one of the ancient

magic-working heathen gods, he was delivered over to the ecclesiastical

courts. On the rack he confessed that he was the god Apollo. Before his

execution he begged that he might be permitted for the last time to play

the zither and sing to its accompaniment. But he played so touchingly

and sang so enchantingly, and was so handsome in face and form, that all

the women wept; and many of them indeed afterwards sickened. After some

lapse of time, it was decided to remove his body from the grave under

the impression that he was a vampire, and impale it upon a stake, this

being an approved domestic remedy certain to effect the cure of the sick

women; but the grave was found empty.

I have but little to communicate concerning the fate of Mars, the

ancient god of war. I am not disinclined to believe that during the

feudal ages he availed himself of the then prevailing doctrine that

might makes right. Lank Schimmelpennig, nephew of the executioner of

Münster, once met Mars at Bologna, and conversed with him. Shortly

before he had served as a peasant under Froudsberg, and was present at

the storming of Rome. Bitter thoughts must have filled his breast when

he saw his ancient, favourite city, and the temples wherein he and his

brother gods had been so revered, now ignominiously laid waste.

Better than either Mars or Apollo fared the god Bacchus at the great

stampede, and the legends relate the following:--In Tyrol there are very

large lakes, surrounded by magnificent trees that are mirrored in the

blue waters. Trees and water murmur so that one experiences strange

feelings of awe when one wanders there alone. On the bank of such a lake

stood the hut of a young fisherman, who lived by fishing, and who also

acted as ferryman to any travellers who wished to cross the lake. He

had a large boat, that was fastened to the trunk of an old tree not far

from his dwelling. Here he lived quite alone. Once, about the time of

the autumnal equinox, towards midnight, he heard a knocking at his

window, and on opening the door he saw three monks, with their heads

deeply muffled in their cowls, who seemed to be in great haste. One of

them hurriedly asked him for the boat, promising to return it within a

few hours. The monks were three, and the fisherman could not hesitate;

so he unfastened the boat, and when they had embarked and departed, he

went back to his hut and lay down. He was young, and soon fell asleep;

but in a few hours he was awakened by the returning monks. When he went

out to them, one of them pressed a silver coin into his hand, and then

all three hastened away. The fisherman went to look at his boat, which

he found made fast. Then he shivered, but not from the night-air. A

peculiarly chilling sensation had passed through his limbs, and his

heart seemed almost frozen, when the monk who paid the fare touched his

hand; the monk's fingers were cold as ice. For some days the fisherman

could not forget this circumstance; but youth will soon shake off

mysterious influences, and the fisherman thought no more of the

occurrence until the following year, when, again just at the time of the

autumnal equinoxes, towards midnight, there was a knocking at the window

of the hut, and again the three cowled monks appeared, and again

demanded the boat. The fisherman delivered up the boat with less anxiety

this time, but when after a few hours they returned, and one of the

monks again hastily pressed a coin into his hand, he again shuddered at

the touch of the icy cold fingers. This happened every year at the same

time and in the same manner. At last, as the seventh year drew near, an

irresistible desire seized on the fisherman to learn, at all costs, the

secret that was hidden under these three cowls. He piled a mass of nets

into the boat, so as to form a hiding-place into which he could slip

while the monks were preparing to embark. The sombre expected travellers

came at the accustomed time, and the fisherman succeeded in hiding

himself under the nets unobserved. To his astonishment, the voyage

lasted but a short time, whereas it usually took him over an hour to

reach the opposite shore; and greater yet was his surprise when here, in

a locality with which he had been quite familiar, he beheld a wide

forest-glade which he had never before seen, and which was covered with

flowers that, to him, were of quite strange kind. Innumerable lamps hung

from the trees, and vases filled with blazing rosin stood on high

pedestals; the moon, too, was so bright that the fisherman could see all

that took place, as distinctly as if it had been mid-day. There were

many hundreds of young men and young women, most of them beautiful as

pictures, although their faces were all as white as marble, and this

circumstance, together with their garments, which consisted of white,

very white, tunics with purple borders, girt up, gave them the

appearance of moving statues. The women wore on their heads wreaths of

vine leaves, either natural or wrought of gold and silver, and their

hair was partly plaited over the brow into the shape of a crown, and

partly fell in wild locks on their necks. The young men also wore

wreaths of vine leaves. Both men and women swinging in their hands

golden staffs covered with vine leaves, hastened joyously to greet the

new-comers. One of the latter threw aside his cowl, revealing an

impertinent fellow of middle age, with a repulsive, libidinous face, and

pointed goat-ears, and scandalously extravagant sexuality. The second

monk also threw aside his cowl, and there came to view a big-bellied

fellow, not less naked, whose bald pate the mischievous women crowned

with a wreath of roses. The faces of the two monks, like those of the

rest of the assemblage, were white as snow. White as snow also was the

face of the third monk, who laughingly brushed the cowl from his head.

As he unbound the girdle of his robe, and with a gesture of disgust

flung off from him the pious and dirty garment, together with crucifix

and rosary, lo! there stood, robed in a tunic brilliant as a diamond, a

marvellously beautiful youth with a form of noble symmetry, save that

there was something feminine in the rounded hips and the slender waist.

His delicately-curved lips, also, and soft, mobile features gave him a

somewhat feminine appearance; but his face expressed also a certain

daring, almost reckless heroism. The women caressed him with wild

enthusiasm, placed an ivy-wreath upon his head, and threw a magnificent

leopard-skin over his shoulders. At this moment came swiftly dashing

along, drawn by two lions, a golden two-wheeled triumphal chariot.

Majestically, yet with a merry glance, the youth leaped on the chariot,

guiding the wild steeds with purple reins. At the right of the chariot

strode one of his uncassocked companions, whose lewd gestures and

unseemly form delighted the beholders, while his comrade, with the bald

pate and fat paunch, whom the merry women had placed on an ass, rode at

the left of the chariot, carrying in his hand a golden drinking-cup,

which was constantly refilled with wine. On moved the chariot, and

behind it whirled the romping, dancing, vine-crowned men and women. At

the head of the triumphal procession marched the orchestra; the pretty,

chubby-cheeked youth, playing the double flute; then the nymph with the

high-girt tunic, striking the jingling tambourine with her knuckles;

then the equally gracious beauty, with the triangle; then the

goat-footed trumpeters, with handsome but lascivious faces, who blew

their fanfares on curious sea-shells and fantastically-shaped horns;

then the lute-players.

But, dear reader, I forgot that you are a most cultured and

well-informed reader, and have long since observed that I have been

describing a Bacchanalia and a feast of Dionysius. You have often seen

on ancient bas-reliefs, or in the engravings of archæological works,

pictures of the triumphal processions held in honour of the god Bacchus;

and surely, with your cultivated and classic tastes, you would not be

frightened even if at dead of night, in the depths of a lonely forest,

the lonely spectres of such a Bacchanalian procession, together with the

customary tipsy personnel, should appear bodily before your eyes. At the

most you would only give way to a slight voluptuous shudder, an æsthetic

awe, at sight of this pale assemblage of graceful phantoms, who have

risen from their monumental sarcophagi, or from their hiding-places amid

the ruins of ancient temples, to perform once more their ancient,

joyous, divine service; once more, with sport and merry-making, to

celebrate the triumphal march of the divine liberator, the Saviour of

the senses; to dance once more the merry dance of paganism, the

_can-can_ of the antique world--to dance it without any hypocritical

disguise, without fear of the interference of the police of a

spiritualistic morality, with the wild abandonment of the old days,

shouting, exulting, rapturous. Evoe Bacche!

But alas, dear reader, the poor fisherman was not, like yourself, versed

in mythology; he had never made archæological studies; and terror and

fear seized upon him when he beheld the Triumphator and his two

wonderful acolytes emerge from their monks' garb. He shuddered at the

immodest gestures and leaps of the Bacchantes, Fauns, and Satyrs, who,

with their goats' feet and horns, seemed to him peculiarly diabolical,

and he regarded the whole assemblage as a congress of spectres and

demons, who were seeking by their mysterious rites to bring ruin on all

Christians. His hair stood on end at sight of the reckless impossible

posture of a Mænad, who, with flowing hair and head thrown back, only

balanced herself by the weight of her thyrsus. His own brain seemed to

reel as he saw the Corybantes in mad frenzy wounding their own bodies

with short swords, seeking voluptuousness in pain itself. The soft and

tender, yet so terrible, tones of the music seemed to penetrate to his

very soul, like a burning, consuming, excruciating flame. But when he

saw that defamed Egyptian symbol, of exaggerated size and crowned with

flowers, borne upon a tall pole by an unashamed woman, then sight and

hearing forsook the poor fisherman--and he darted back to the boat, and

crept under the nets, with chattering teeth and trembling limbs, as

though Satan already held him fast by the foot. Soon after, the three

monks also returned to the boat and shoved off. When they had

disembarked at the original starting-place, the fisherman managed to

escape unobserved from his hiding-place, so that they supposed he had

merely been behind the willows awaiting their return. One of the monks,

as usual, with icy-cold fingers pressed the fare into the fisherman's

hand, then all three hurried away.

For the salvation of his own soul, which he believed to be endangered,

and also to guard other good Christians from ruin, the fisherman held it

his duty to communicate a full account of the mysterious occurrence to

the Church authorities; and as the superior of a neighbouring

Franciscan monastery was in great repute as a learned exorcist, the

fisherman determined to go to him without delay. The rising sun found

him on his way to the monastery, where, with modest demeanour, he soon

stood before his excellency the superior, who received him seated in an

easy-chair in the library, and with hood drawn closely over his face,

listened meditatively while the fisherman told his tale of horror. When

the recital was finished, the superior raised his head, and as the hood

fell back, the fisherman saw, to his dismay, that his excellency was one

of the three monks who annually sailed over the lake--the very one,

indeed, whom he had the previous night seen as a heathen demon riding in

the golden chariot drawn by lions. It was the same marble-white face,

the same regular, beautiful features, the same mouth with its

delicately-curved lips. And these lips now wore a kindly smile, and from

that mouth now issued the gracious and melodious words, "Beloved son in

Christ, we willingly believe that you have spent the night in company of

the god Bacchus. Your fantastic ghost-story gives ample proof of that.

Not that we would say aught unpleasant of this god: at times he is

undoubtedly a care-dispeller, and gladdens the heart of man. But he is

very dangerous for those who cannot bear much; and to this class you

seem to belong. We advise you to partake in future very sparingly of the

golden juice of the grape, and not again to trouble the spiritual

authorities with the fantasies of a drunken brain. Concerning this last

vision of yours, you had better keep a very quiet tongue in your head;

otherwise the secular arm of our beadle shall measure out to you

twenty-five lashes. And now, beloved son in Christ, go to the monastery

kitchen, where brother butler and brother cook will set before you a

slight repast."

With this, the reverend father bestowed the customary benediction on the

fisherman, and when the latter, bewildered, took himself off to the

kitchen and suddenly came face to face with brother cook and brother

butler, he almost fell to the earth in affright, for they were the same

monks who had accompanied the superior on his midnight excursions across

the lake. He recognised one by his fat paunch and bald head, and the

other by his lascivious grin and goat-ears. But he held his tongue, and

only in later years did he relate his strange story.

Several old chronicles which contain similar legends locate the scene

near the city of Speyer, on the Rhine.

Along the coast of East Friesland an analogous tradition is found, in

which the ancient conception of the transportation of the dead to the

realm of Hades, which underlies all those legends, is most distinctly

seen. It is true that none of them contain any mention of Charon, the

steersman of the boat: this old fellow seems to have entirely

disappeared from folk-lore, and is to be met with only in puppet-shows.

But a far more notable mythological personage is to be recognised in the

so-called forwarding agent, or dispatcher, who makes arrangements for

the transportation of the dead, and pays the customary passage-money

into the hands of the boatman; the latter is generally a common

fisherman, who officiates as Charon. Notwithstanding his quaint

disguise, the true name of this dispatcher may readily be guessed, and I

shall therefore relate the legend as faithfully as possible.

The shores of East Friesland that border on the North Sea abound with

bays, which are used as harbours, and are called fiords. On the farthest

projecting promontory of land generally stands the solitary hut of some

fisherman, who here lives, peaceful and contented, with his family.

Here nature wears a sad and melancholy aspect. Not even the chirping of

a bird is to be heard, only now and then the shrill screech of a

sea-gull flying up from its nest among the sand-hills, that announces

the coming storm. The monotonous plashings of the restless sea harmonise

with the sombre, shifting shadows of the passing clouds. Even the human

inhabitants do not sing here, and on these melancholy coasts the strain

of a _volkslied_ is never heard. The people who live here are an

earnest, honest, matter-of-fact race, proud of their bold spirit and of

the liberties which they have inherited from their ancestors. Such a

people are not imaginative, and are little given to metaphysical

speculations. Fishing is their principal support, added to which is an

occasional pittance of passage-money for transporting some traveller to

one of the adjacent islands.

It is said that at a certain period of the year, just at mid-day, when

the fisherman and his family are seated at table eating their noonday

meal, a traveller enters and asks the master of the house to vouchsafe

him an audience for a few minutes to speak with him on a matter of

business. The fisherman, after vainly inviting the stranger to partake

of the meal, grants his request, and they both step aside to a little

table. I shall not describe the personal appearance of the stranger in

detail, after the tedious manner of novel-writers: a brief enumeration

of the salient points will suffice. He is a little man, advanced in

years, but well preserved. He is, so to say, a youthful greybeard:

plump, but not corpulent; cheeks ruddy as an apple; small eyes, which

blink merrily and continually, and on his powdered little head is set a

three-cornered little hat. Under his flaming yellow cloak, with its many

collars, he wears the old-fashioned dress of a well-to-do Dutch

merchant, such as we see depicted in old portraits--namely, a short silk

coat of a parrot-green colour, a vest embroidered with flowers, short

black trousers, striped stockings, and shoes ornamented with buckles.

The latter are so brightly polished that it is hard to understand how

the wearer could trudge a-foot through the slimy mud of the coast and

yet keep them so clean. His voice is a thin, asthmatic treble, sometimes

inclining to be rather lachrymose; but the address and bearing of the

little man are as grave and measured as beseem a Dutch merchant. This

gravity, however, appears to be more assumed than natural, and is in

marked contrast with the searching, roving, swift-darting glances of the

eye, and with the ill-repressed fidgettiness of the legs and arms. That

the stranger is a Dutch merchant is evidenced not only by his apparel,

but also by the mercantile exactitude and caution with which he

endeavours to effect as favourable a bargain as possible for his

employers. He is, as he says, a forwarding agent, and has received from

some of his mercantile friends a commission to transport a certain

number of souls, as many as can find room in an ordinary boat, from the

coast of East Friesland to the White Island. In fulfilment of this

commission, he adds, he wishes to know if the fisherman will this night

convey in his boat the aforesaid cargo to the aforesaid island; in which

case he is authorised to pay the passage-money in advance, confidently

hoping that, in Christian fairness, the fisherman will make his price

very moderate. The Dutch merchant (which term is, in fact, a pleonasm,

since every Dutchman is a merchant) makes this proposition with the

utmost nonchalance, as if it referred to a cargo of cheeses, and not to

the souls of the dead. The fisherman is startled at the word "souls,"

and a cold chill creeps down his back, for he immediately comprehends

that the souls of the dead are here meant, and that the stranger is none

other than the phantom Dutchman, who has already intrusted several of

his fellow-fishermen with the transportation of the souls of the dead,

and paid them well for it, too.