Funeral-Discourse on Himself.--Two Opposite Sorts of
Fatality to the Wax-Statue.
The snow-heavens had fallen and lay upon the landscape. The snow made
me melancholy, and reminded one of the wintry lace-knots of Nature. It
was the 1st of April, when Nature, so to speak, made the season itself
an April fool. Victor had long ago learned manners (_mores_) enough to
teach him that, when one is visiting a Court-Chaplain, he must go with
him to sermon. And then, too, he loved to march to sacristies for the
same reason that he loved to steal away to the huts of shepherds,
hunters, and fowlers. It did not strike him as overwrought that the
Chaplain (as he himself did at last) should place his mounting of the
pulpit,--merely on account of the multitude of preparations he made for
it,--in point of importance, side by side with the scaling of a wall.
Nay, he disputed with him during the long hymn about the surplice-fees
of a stillborn fœtus, and proved by a short argument that a parson
could demand of every fœtus--and though it were five nights old--the
appropriate burial-fees, whether the miserly parents bespoke a funeral
sermon for the thing or not. The Chaplain made a weighty objection, but
Victor removed it by the weighty proposition that a clergyman (for
otherwise he would be cheated out of his best fœtuses) could make
every couple pay him burial-fees as often as it could pay baptismal
moneys. The Chaplain replied: "It is stupid that the best pastoral
Theologies hurry over this point like a pinch of snuff in the wind."
With all the humor of my hero, and with all the gayety of my
parson,--who on every holy eve scolded and, condemned like a
revolutionary tribunal, and who on every first holiday softened, till
on the third he became absolutely an angel,--the world should promise
itself something different from what nevertheless is coming: namely,
that Victor saw gleaming out of every hour of the approaching evening
which was to bring Clotilda for the last time but one into his company,
a protruding sacrificial knife against which he must press his wounded
bosom. She was invited to-day, as it were to a farewell-supper,--the
three twins of course.
At last she came at evening on the arm of the misunderstood
Matthieu.--If, as Ruska asserts, the number of devils (44,435,556) who,
according to the assertion of _Guliermus Parisiensis_, flank a _dying_
Abbess, is made much too small,[39] one can readily imagine how many
devils may form the escorting squadron of a _living_, a _blooming_ one.
I, for my part, assume as many devils around a fair one, as there are
male persons.
When Clotilda appeared with that face of hers smiling down into its
fading beauty, with the exhausted lute-voice, which sorrow draws from
us, as a peculiar pianoforte variation, by the pressure of the
stop,--but is it not with men as with organs, of which the _human
voice_ goes most finely with tremolos?--when she thus appeared, then
had her noblest friend the choice, either to fall down before her with
the words, "Let me die first," or to be, to-day, right funny.
He chose the latter (excepting with her) by way of drowning his dreams.
He therefore flung about him with stories and healthy observations.
Therefore he threw into the imperial military chest against
sentimentalism this satirical contribution, that it was the March-gall
or moist-gall in the human field, i. e. a spot that always remained
damp, and on which everything rotted. As this availed nothing, he
entered into alliance with whole states, and promised himself some help
from remarking concerning them, that their summits, like forest-trees,
had grown into each other, and that it had no effect to saw one through
down below,--that the equality of kingdoms was a substitute or a
preparation for the equality of ranks,--and that gunpowder, which had
hitherto been the _sticking powder_ of the great powers, would finally
burn out and heal the hydrophobous wounds of the human race. At last,
when he plainly perceived that it helped him very little, as he
expressed the conjecture that Europe would one day become the _North
India_, and the same North which had once been the breaking-tools and
building-materials of the earth would be so once more, but the North in
the other hemisphere, he struck, with his chemical process, into the
wet road, and (like a secretary of legation) instead of politics
took--punch.
But only cares, not melancholy nor love, can be drowned by drinking.
The other spirits, dissolved in the nervous spirit, array themselves in
a magically sparkling circle around every idea, around every emotion,
which thou hast therein, as in breweries the lights, by reason of the
steam; burn in a colored circle. The glass with its hot cloud is a
Papin's digester[40] even to the densest heart, and decomposes the
whole soul; the draught makes every one at once more tender and bold. A
soft heart was of old ever associated with a bold, hardened fist. As it
kept on snowing, he offered Clotilda for to-morrow his shell-shaped
sleigh and himself (as he was, besides, invited to the ball) as
knight-errant,--whereby he compelled the Evangelist to offer himself as
sledge-gondolier to the stepmother.
Clotilda withdrew now from the merry male company into the adjoining
room, where her Agatha and all were,--it was not done from disapproval
of decorous, manly festivity,--still less from embarrassment, as it is,
in fact, easier, and made easier for her sex, to behave itself
naturally under forty eyes than under four,--still less from inability
to disguise her sisterly love towards Flamin; for her flying soul had
long since learned to fold together its wings and hide its tears and
wishes, brought up as she had been among _strangers_, trained in thorny
relations and between discordant parents. She did it merely, like the
Parson's wife, because it is a _British_ custom, that the ladies shall
take themselves away from the men and their incense-kettle of punch.
When she was out of Victor's sight,--and when, from her _present_ look
of _increased paleness_, he drew the conclusion that the vale of
Emanuel would hardly restore her spring-colors, since the prospect
of the journey had brought no healing influence,--and when this
_short absence_ held before him as it were in a pocket-mirror the
death-apparition of an _eternal_ one,--and when, at last, to be sure,
the swelling heart carried away the dam of dissimulation,--then he
rushed out into the winter,--bared his inflamed breast to the cooling
flakes, and tore wider the clefts into which fate grafted its
sorrows,--and ran up through the white night to the observatory;--and
here, covered with the snow-avalanche silently descending from heaven,
he looked out into the gray, whirling, trembling, flickering landscape,
and in the broad snow-pierced night,--and all the tears of his heart
fell, and all the thoughts of his soul cried: "So looks the future! So
glistening fall the joys of men from heaven, and dissolve even while
they fall! So does everything melt away! Ah, what air-castles I saw
shine around me on this eminence, and how they gleamed in the evening
red! Alas! all are buried under the snow and under the darkness of
night!" He looked down into Clotilda's garden, in whose dark bowers,
now whitened with snow, he had found and lost again the Eden of his
heart. "The tones which flowed over this garden are dried up, but not
the tears which streamed after them," thought he. He looked down into
her brother's garden, where the tulip-C had dropped its leaves, and the
blooming names had passed away into obscurity.
With such a soul, which had looked into this landscape as into the
charnel-house of mouldered days, he returned to the joyous club. The
alternation of cold and warmth had kept up his similarity to the
punch-union, which meanwhile had gone on drinking. He and all had
touched the limits of drinking, where one laughs and weeps in the
same breath; but I am glad that man can after all extract true
nourishment of mind and heart (though not from a cloister-kitchen or
cloister-library, yet) from a cloister-cellar; that he drinks the
health of his wit; that every cup (not merely on the altar) spiritually
strengthens him, and that, if serpents take off their crowns upon
drinking,[41] he puts his on during the process; and that the vine
sheds tears not merely of itself, or from the eyes of a Catholic image
of the Virgin, but also from those of a man, who has drunk of it. The
club hit upon the fancy of making parliamentary speeches. The Chaplain
proposed occasional discourses. Victor jumped up in a chair and said:
"I am going to deliver a funeral-sermon on myself,--I preached here
long ago in my childhood."
All drank once more, even the corpse, and the latter began the
following harangue:--
"_Most beloved and distressed hearers and brethren!_"
A mortal, deeply-afflicted hearers, may sink into the next world,
without having a mourning-steed prance after him, just as he makes his
entrance into this, without having a festive-nag trot before him. We,
for our part, have jointly taken the _funeral-cup_ beforehand, in order
to be able to go through it all; for man expands by moistening, and
shrinks up when he is dry, I mean, when he takes only solid food, like
the bloodsucker, which, when out of water, loses four inches in length.
And I hope I and the deeply afflicted funeral-procession have _toasted_
the deceased sufficiently.
"And so then I see before me" ... --Here he beckoned to the Parson to
toss out his nightcap, that something death-like might lie there on
which his emotion could "vent itself--
"I see lying before me him, the never-to-be-forgotten Mr.
Court-Physician, Sebastian Victor von Horion, and dead he is and is
about to go down under the covering of earth, into the place full of
long repose. What do we see still lying at rest before us but the
diving-bell, wherein the covered soul descended into this vapory
life,--what but the dry shell of a kernel which is sown for the first
time in a second planet,--what but his hull,--what but (so to speak)
the cast-off nightcap of his awakened spirit?
"Behold, weeping hearers, this emblematic pale cap! Here it lies, the
head is out of it, which once mused therein. Our Victor is gone and is
hushed, who talked so often of mathematics, clinical medicine,
heraldry, precautionary jurisprudence, _medicina forensis_,
Sphragistics and their auxiliary sciences. We have lost much in
him--who shall console you for this loss, excellent Herr von Schleunes,
and the other gentlemen likewise? One has not however, absolutely, in
this absurd life, which may well be a sort of ante-death, time enough
to administer proper consolation. Not merely church-pews are often
built on tombstones, but also princely chairs--_they_ particularly--and
even pulpits.
"Can it be supposed that thy soul, deceased Sebastian, in its
intermediate state after death, should know anything of its body, from
which it is unpacked, as out of its hat-box, and of the last honors
which we here pay to its case? If it still has consciousness and an eye
for this room, wherein it has been so often, then will it be glad that
the three holy kings, of whom the Moor is Cato the Elder, are standing
round its worm-bag, hardly willing to let the bag go; it must be
pleased, that we are unitedly lamenting: where is his equal in
common chemistry, in physiognomies and physiognomy,--in the modern
languages,--in the _doctrine of ribbons_, from which he imbibed a love
for all kinds of ribbons? Who sought less than he that strict
concatenation of ideas, which misleads the Germans to cement good ones
with bad ones, and to use more mortar than stones? Not even the
Court--hence he never liked to go thither, when fun was going
forward--could break him off from a certain serious sedate way, which
he ran even into a ridiculous one, which last was always his aim.----By
heaven! through the hour-glass of death, through which he peeped, as
through a pocket spyglass, everything came out so small to him, that he
knew not why he should be serious--I hope I may not be standing here
alive and well, if in the aforesaid glass all the _steps_ of the throne
did not appear to him as diminutive as the thumb-long _wood-stair_ of
the tree-frog in his preserving jar.
"He was a very good preacher, particularly of funeral sermons, hence
even a very good preacher asked him for godfather, and the godson
stands among the present company and takes his part in the weeping, for
the stomach-ache.... Only great court preachers, who deliver the
princely funeral oration in the Cathedral Church, can boast of what I,
to my greatest satisfaction, now hear, that they make the mourning
company laugh, and this is to me an earnest that my consolation is
effectual....
"And yet one who lies upon the death-bed has more consolation than one
who only stands at the foot of the bed. The souterrain of the earth's
crust is peopled only by still, reposing human beings, who draw close
together; but above the souterrain stand their uneasy friends, and long
to go down to the beloved arms of dust; for the linen on the eye of the
dead is truly a padded hat for the cold brow, the coffin is a parachute
to the unhappy, and the winding-sheet the last bandage of the widest
wounds. Ah! why does weary man love better to sink into the short than
into the long, undisturbed, sure sleep? Take, then, good Sebastian, the
death-certificate as an eternal peace-instrument from the hand of
gentle nature....
"But, the Deuse! where then is our dead man? what has the white cap to
do down there? I see the corpse in the looking-glass opposite--it must
be somewhere--I must fetch it":----with a shudder running through his
soul he sprang down; an exalted frenzy passed, through the stages of
tears, of smiles, of torpor, up and down his face. He ran behind a
screen which had been placed before his wax statue--and brought
out the waxen man--and threw him down as a corpse--and a veil was wound
over the corpse--and with a distorted face he mounted the chair to
proceed:--
"This is the night-corpse,--the scorified, carbonized man,--into such
stiff lumps are conscious beings fastened and compelled to turn them
round. Why do you tremble at me, hearers, because I tremble, to stare
so at this overturned form of humanity?--I see a spectre hover round
this corpse which is an 'I.' ... I! I! thou precipice that in the
mirror of thought runnest back deep down into the darkness,--I! thou
mirror within the mirror,--thou terror within a terror! Draw the veil
away from the corpse! I will boldly look on the dead, till he destroys
me."
Every one shuddered in response; but one of the Englishmen drew aside
the veil from the dead.... Rigid, speechless, horror-struck and
quaking, Victor looked upon the unveiled face, which also in a living
shape hung round his soul; but at last tears gushed out down his cold
cheeks, and then he spoke in a lower tone, as if his heart were
melting:--
"See how the corpse smiles! why, then, dost thou smile so, Sebastian?
Wast thou perchance so happy on the earth, that thy mouth stiffened and
grew cold in a rapture of delight?... No, happy thou canst scarcely
have been,--joy itself was often to thee a seed-vessel of sorrow. And
thou saidst thyself very often, I am well contented and deserve hardly
my hopes and wishes, to say nothing of their fulfilment.----
"Flamin! look upon this assumed countenance here,--it smiles from
friendship, not from joy. Flamin, this extinct breast was arched over a
heart that loved thee without limit, and even unto death.
"And this, after all, is the only misfortune of the poor man now at
rest. In and for himself, and so far as concerned his original
condition and temper, the good Bastian might have fared well
enough; but he was too sensitive for joy,--too inconsiderate,--too
ardent,--almost too much a child of fantasy. He wanted even to love
(during his lifetime), and it could not be done. The flower-goddess of
love passed by him, she denied him the transfiguration of man, the
melodrama of the heart, the golden age of life.... Cold form, erect
thyself, and show men the tears that flow from a tender heart, which
breaks for love and finds none!...
"If our Horion was not happy, then, of course, it may well be a comfort
to him, if he is permitted even in the noonday of life to take his
siesta, if he is permitted to die, and released from the hotly-beating
heart, hushed by the death-angel, to lay himself down so early under
the long shroud, which the genius of humanity draws over whole peoples,
as the gardener draws the cover over the flower-bed to shield it from
sun and rain,--against the glow of our joys, against the gush of our
sorrow.... _Rest thou too, Horion!_" ...
His grief at these words from the old dream so overmastered and so
unmanned him that he passed over from it--by way either of excuse or of
relief--into an almost frenzied humor.
"The whole joke, however, is half against my taste, which at court I
wanted to cultivate. Life absolutely does not pay for one's scolding on
its account at our good friend Death, or fumigating him with the
incense of praise. The fear of dying excepted, there is nothing more
pitiable than the fear of living. People of true talents should get
drunk in order to see life in the right light, and afterward report it
to us. The wretchedest of all (but so that _human_ life in the
comparison turns out still passable) is _civil_ life, at which I could
let fly for years, because it has nothing but long troughs for the
stomach, from which hang down chains for the fancy,--because it
perverts man into a cit,--because it turns our fleeting existence from
a corn-field into a drill-plough,--because it exhales a pestilential
vapor which lies thick before the grave and over the heavens, and in
which the poor expeditionary committee-man, sweating, chewing, fat, and
besmeared, without a warm sunbeam for his heart, without a streak of
light for his eye, drives round, till the ramming-block of the
pavior[42] pounds him down on the marshy ropewalk. The only advantage
such a poor piece of marble has, out of which a _pavement_ is made,
instead of a _statue_, is that it looks upon the whole of human life as
something really edifying, which it cannot sufficiently praise. And
yet to us good fools the outer world could not appear so small, were
there not something eternal and great within us, whereto we contrast
it,--were there not a sunlight in us, which falls into this
opera-house, just as the daylight, sometimes, when a door opens, falls
in upon the nightly stage,--were it not that, like men in old pictures
of the resurrection, we are half bedded in the earth and half out of
it,--and if this ice-life were not an _Aiguille percée_,[43] and had
not an opening out into an eternal blue.... Amen!
"I have, however, still to announce to the sorrowing assembly, that I
have been making an April-fool of it; for the dead man, whose funeral
sermon I have been delivering, is really myself." ...
But here all his friends embraced him, in order to set limits to his
ingenious frenzy,--and to press such an impassioned, true British heart
to their own. The embrace softly warmed all his cold wounds, and he was
healed, though exhausted; another's life grew into his, and love
conquered death. The Englishmen, in whose eyes stood the tears of a
double intoxication, could hardly tear themselves away from the
humorous darling.
Clotilda, who with her female friends overheard the funeral oration in
the adjoining chamber, at first held them back beseechingly from
opening it. But when Victor said, "Cold form, erect thyself, and
show men the tears which flow from a tender heart that breaks for
love,"--then she took leave of them with a hasty "good-night," unable
to master an emotion which upheaved her whole being. When they reported
to him the time of her withdrawal, then did he, who was now already so
weary, weak, and tender, become inexpressibly so,--all the lights which
his effort had brightened on his countenance seemed to melt away in
love like moonlight in dew-drops,--he waited not for his chamber to be
empty, but showed that which Clotilda in hers would conceal,--he could
even contemplate the unveiled wax statue with softened spirit, and said
smilingly: "I fancy, the reason why I have let the _whole_ of me be
repeated in wax is the same for which the Catholic does it with single
limbs, in order to hang them on a saint, and thereby give thanks or
pray for recovery; or like the Roman Emperors, whose wax statues the
physicians visited after the death of the original."[44] The company
went away, and he was at last alone. The moon, which had risen at 11
o'clock and 57 minutes, just began to throw its still low and waning
light up against the windows of Clotilda's sitting-room. Victor put out
his night-lamp, and, in order not to sink with his still tossing,
dreaming heart into the dreams of sleep, seated himself at the
window, almost in the wonted place of his wax copy and in a similar
attitude----when fate ordained, that he, who to-day had given out the
wax mummy to be his own person, should now inversely be looked upon as
the image--by Clotilda! She stood at some distance from her window, on
which no light fell but that from heaven; Victor, as this latter could
not yet reach him, was quite in shadow, and turned towards her with
five quarters of his profile. Scarcely had he observed that she fixed
upon him an unchanging glance, that seemed as if it would not only take
him in but go through him, when he guessed that she confounded him with
the man of wax; he also observed out of the corner of his eye that
something white fluttered around her, i. e. that she often dried her
eyes. But how would it have been possible for his fine feeling by the
least motion to take away from her her error, and to make her blush
with confusion for her innocent gaze! Another, e. g. the misunderstood
Mat, would in such an emergency have composedly straightened himself up
and looked indifferently out of the window; but he ossified himself, as
it were, in his attitude of lifelessness. But only the night and the
distance could conceal from her his trembling, when her tears shed for
his corpse seized like a hot stream his dismembered heart, and softened
and dissolved the little of it which this evening had still left whole
into a burning wave of love. Children's tears flow more freely, when
one shows them sympathy; and in this hour of exhaustion, Victor, who
was generally made more hard by another's sympathy for him, grew
softer; and when Clotilda seated herself at the window, to lean upon it
her weary head, it seemed to him as if something exhorted him now to
verify that which he had said to-day to the statue: Cold form, erect
thyself, and show men the tears which flow from a soft heart.
Clotilda at length closed the curtains and disappeared. But he still
cautiously acted for some time longer the part of his image, and just
when he made less effort to play the statue he succeeded better. All
his thoughts flowed now like balm over the lacerated spots of his inner
man, and he said: "Though thou art only my friend, I am satisfied, and
thou canst appease this bosom's tumultuous yearnings. O, besides, this
full heart would fly to pieces, if it should entertain the thought that
thou lovest me!" For the rest he took home to himself to-day for the
first time the improbability of his recent supposition, that a person
so reserved as she could have demeaned herself in so unreserved a
manner towards the blind Julius, and he asked himself: "Is there not,
then, sufficient explanation of her departure from the court, in
January's and Matthieu's unholy love, and the holy love of Emanuel?"
But that she might not in the morning discover her erroneous
confounding of things, he gave his wax figurant exactly the position
which he had occupied at the window.