Self-Sacrifice.--Farewell Addresses to the Earth.--Memento
Mori.--Walk.--Heart of Wax.
There is a sorrow which lays itself with a great sucker-sting to the
heart and thirstily drains its tears,--the whole heart runs and gushes
and spasmodically contracts its innermost fibres, in order to become a
stream of tears, and does not feel the wrench of grief under the
deadly-sweet effusion.... Such a deadly-sweet pang our Victor felt at
Clotilda's letter.
But deadly bitter was that of his Lordship. "O this tormented and
worn-out spirit," he exclaimed, "longed, indeed, even on the Isle of
Union, for the repose of the dead;--ah! it has surely fled already from
the sweltry earth, which seemed to it so small and oppressive." If this
were so, then all the oaths, on whose remission Flamin's life hung,
were made eternal, and he was lost. If it was not so, then was there at
least no hope of his return, since Emanuel's death and confession,
Flamin's imprisonment, and all the previous occurrences, all of which
his Lordship might learn, had wiped out his whole finely delineated
plan. Now a voice cried aloud in Victor's soul, "Save the brother of
thy beloved!"--Yes, a way to do it was at hand;--but it was perjury.
If, namely he committed that crime by disclosing to the Prince who
Flamin was, then he was rescued. But his conscience said, "No!--The
downfall of a virtue is a greater evil than the downfall of a
man,--only death, but not sin, must be;--shall it cost me still more to
break my word, than it has hitherto cost me to keep it?"
It is well known that on the day of this year's equinox, when he had
received the two London leaves, there was a cold storm of snow and
rain, from which the summer afterward seemed to bloom out a second
time.--Victor went on in his, pondering. He called up before him once
more, with all its moments, that great day on the Isle of Union, and
found that he had absolutely sworn to his Lordship forever to be
silent, except an hour before his own death. We may still remember that
he had at the time reserved this very condition, because he had once
sworn to Flamin to throw himself down with him from the observatory, if
they should be obliged to part as enemies; and because now, when
Clotilda's sisterly relation was announced to him, he feared beforehand
it might come to that separation and suicide. In that case, he would at
least reserve to himself the liberty, only an hour before his death, of
saying to his friend that he was innocent, and that Flamin's beloved
was only a--sister.
"So then, an hour before my death, I may disclose
all?--O God!--Yes!----Yes!--I will die, that so I may speak!" he cried,
enkindled, throbbing, fluttering, exalted above life.--The tempest
hurled the torrents of heaven and the powdered glaciers against the
windows, and the day sank gloomily in the whelming flood.... "O,"
said our friend, "how I long to escape out of this black storm of
life,--into the still, bright ether,--to the steadfast, immovable
breast of death, which does not disturb sleep...."
If he disclosed to the Prince that Flamin was his own son, then was the
latter delivered, and he needed only an hour after that to--destroy
himself.
And that would he gladly do; for what had he left on earth
except--recollections? O, too many recollections, too few hopes--Who
would be grieved at his fall?--the loved one, who, after all, resigns
him,--or her brother, whom he saves and flies from,--or his good lord,
who perhaps rests already in the earth,--or his Emanuel, whose loving
arms are already crumbling to dust?--"Yes, him only will my dying
affect," said he, "for he will long for his faithful scholar, he will
on some sun open his arms and look down along the way to the earth, and
I shall come up with a great wound on my breast, and my streaming heart
will lie naked on the wound.--O Emanuel, despise me not, I shall cry; I
was truly unhappy, after thou hadst died; receive me and heal the
wound!"
--"Seest thou my father?" said the blind Julius, and his face
approached a smile of rapture. Victor started and said, "I talk with
him, but I do not see him."--But this checked his exaltation. He had
been hitherto the paraclete and nurse of the poor blind charge; he
could not leave him, he must needs put off the _retreating-shot_ of
life till the arrival of Clotilda, that she might protect the helpless
one. Ah, the good night-walker and night-sitter (in the proper sense)
had at first every day prayed Victor to operate upon his eye, and give
him back the light, before his dear father should crumble to pieces,
that he might see once more, only once more, the fair countenance not
yet undermined by worms; yes, he would at least touch blindly the cold
mask,--this he had in the beginning implored; but in a few weeks he had
drawn his arms away from under the dead man, and folded them entirely
(like a true child) with all his caressing love around Victor, who
_always_ stayed at home with him. And in the night they reached out to
each other their warm hands out of their adjoining beds, and thus
linked together went into the evening-lands of dreams. To the childlike
blind one, even the continuous din of the city turmoil, which his
village had wanted, had been a comfort....
Victor, therefore, waited first for the arrival of Clotilda;--ah! he
would have done it even without reference to the blind youth.--Must he
not see once more his good mother, hear once more the voice of his
never-to-be-forgotten beloved?--For the rest, I cannot disguise the
fact, that not merely the salvation of Flamin, but a real disgust
at life, guided his hand in his death-sentence. The verdict of
murderous disgust had, for its grounds of decision, the sunset
of Emanuel,--Victor's oft-recurring night-thoughts upon this
our lucubration of life,--his entire revolution of his social
relations,--the corresponding past or future example of his
Lordship,--his panting for a deed full of energy,--and, most of all,
the death-chill about his forlorn and naked bosom, which once was
covered by so many warm hearts. One can do without love and friendship
only so long as one has not yet enjoyed them;--but to lose them, and
that without hope, _this_ one cannot do without dying. Upon his
conscience he played off the optical deception and stage-trick of
asking it whether he might not draw his friend out of the water at the
hazard of his life; whether he might not leap from the plank, which
could hold only one, into the waves, in order to make his death the
purchase-money of another's life.--Two singular ideas sweetened for him
his deadly purpose more than all.
The first was, that on his death-day (after the disclosure to the
Prince) he could repair to Flamin's prison, and grasp his hand, and
boldly say: "Come out,--to-day I die for thee, that I may prove to thee
that Clotilda was thy sister, and I thy friend.--I quench the black
word, which can only be forgiven on the death-day, with my innocent
blood, and death folds me again to thy arms.---O, I do it gladly, so
that I may only love thee once more right heartily, and say to thee, My
good, precious, never-to-be-forgotten youthful friend!"--Then would he
fall upon his neck with a thousand tears, and forgive him all; for _in
the neighborhood of death, and after a great deed_, man can and may
forgive man everything, everything.
Every tenderer soul will easily divine the second thought that
sweetened that of death.--It was this, that he could go once more to
his beloved and think, though not say, before her, "I fall for thee."
For he now felt, after all, that the resolve of a parting for life was
too hard, and only that of doing so by death was easy.--O right easy
and sweet it is, he felt, to close the wet eye in the presence of the
loved one, then to see nothing more on the earth; but with the high
flames of the heart, and with the dear image pressed to the bosom, like
the encoffined mother with the dead darling, to step blindfold to the
brink of this world, and throw one's self headlong into the still,
deep, dark, cold sea of the dead.... "Thou art," he often said,
"painted on my conscious being, and nothing can sever thy image from my
heart; both must, as in Italy the wall and the picture upon it, be
transported together."--And as now there was no longer any need to care
for his body, he could call forth, of his own accord, the tears which
agitated him. He wanted really to offer something of his life to
Clotilda: therefore he rehearsed, for some days in succession, the part
of the bloodiest farewell scene, even to exhaustion, and made
pen-and-ink sketches of his sorrow, and said to himself, when thereby
headaches and heart-beatings came upon him, "I can thus at least suffer
something for _her_, though _she_ knows nothing of it."
Here is one such mournful leaf.
"O thou angel! Were it not that it would affect thee too sadly, I would
go to thee, and before thy eyes fill my heart with tears, with images
of the fairer time, with the bitterest sorrows, until it broke and
sank,--or I would slay myself in thy presence. Ah! it were sweet to
pierce my heart with lead, as it leaned on thy bosom, and to let my
blood and life flow out on thy breast.--But, O God! no, no! Smiling
will I go to thee, good soul, when thou comest back again, as if it
were merely for joy at thy return,--only the pink with the red drop
will I beg of thee, that my heart, adorned with it, may moulder under
the last flower of life. I will, indeed, bleed so near thee, heavenly
murderess, as the corpse does before its murderess, but yet only
inwardly; and every drop of blood will fall merely from one thought to
another.--Then, at last, will I be silent for a long time, and go, and
that forever, only saying this and no more: 'Think of me, beloved, but
be happier than heretofore.'----Whither then will I go, after an hour?
I shall take the dumb, dreary road to the poisonous Buo-upas-tree,[176]
to where death stands solitary, and there die all alone, all
alone.----The dead are mutes, they have bells, and in the blue a mute
will hover, and toll the death-bell.... Clotilda, Clotilda! then our
love on earth is over!"
Dost thou, reader, still recognize the voice which, in his inner being,
always, amidst the weeping of music, rang in the cadence of verse? Here
it rings again.--But his hurricane of resolve soon gave place to
gentler deeds and hours, just as the equinoctial storm of autumn
dissolved into still after-summer days. The thought, "In a few weeks
thou wilt fly to the land beyond the grave," made him a _free-born_
creature and an angel. He forgave everybody, even the Evangelist. He
filled his little sphere with virtues as with an after-bloom of life,
and devoted his short hours, not to sweet fantasies, but to needy
patients. He denied himself every expenditure, in order to leave to
Julius his paternal property unimpaired. He was neither vain nor proud.
He spoke frankly about and against the state;--for what is there to
fear so near to the storm- and weather-shed of the coffin-lid?--But for
the very reason that he felt only love for what is good, and no
passions and no cowardice in his inner man, therefore he resisted
_gently_ and _quietly_; for when once man is convinced for himself that
he has laid up courage for a day of need, he no longer seeks to make a
show of it before others. The thought of death used to incline him to
humorous follies, but now only to good actions. He was so happy,
men and scenes around him appeared to him in the mild, soothing
evening-light, wherein he always beheld both in the _sicknesses_ of his
childhood. It seemed as if he wanted (and he succeeded in it) to bribe
his conscience by this piety to a legible indorsement of his
autographic sentence of death. To him, as to the departed Emanuel, men
appeared as children, the light of earth as evening-light, everything
seemed softer, everything a little smaller; he had no anxiety or
hankering; the earth was his moon; now for the first time he understood
the soul of his Dahore....
--And thou, my reader, dost thou not feel that thou, too, so near to
the cloister-gate of death, wouldst improve just so? But thou and I are
in fact already standing before it. Is not our death as certain as
Victor's, although the certainty ranges through a longer interval? O,
if every one only had a fixed belief that after fifty years, on an
appointed day, Nature would lead him to her place of execution, he
would be a different man; but we all banish the image of death out of
our souls, as the Silesians on Lætare-Sunday cast it out of the cities.
The thought and the expectation of death improve us as much as the
certainty and the choice of it.
And now the fair, blue after-summer days of this year's October floated
on tender butterfly-wings of spider-webs across the heavens. Victor
said to himself, "Fair earthly heaven, I will take one more walk
beneath thee! Good mother-land, I will look out upon thee once more,
with thy woods and mountains, and fix thy image in the immortal soul,
ere thy yellow green grows over my heart, and strikes its roots
therein. I will see thee, St. Luna of my childhood, and you, my fair
Whitsuntide paths, and thee, thou blessed Maienthal, and thee, thou
good old Bee-father,[177] and will give back to thee thy watch that
counts the hours of joy----and then I shall have lived long enough."
He asked himself, "Am I, then, ripe for the granary of the
churchyard?--But then is any man ripe? Is he not in his ninetieth year
still incomplete as in his twentieth?"--Yes, indeed! Death takes off
children and Patagonians; man is summer fruit, which Heaven must pluck
before it matures. The other world is no uniform alley and orangery,
but the tree-nursery of our present seed-nursery.
Before Victor left the blind one, with tears and kisses, he sent for
poor Marie the evening previous to come to the cabinet, and commended
to her (as well as to the Italian servant) the care of the dependent
youth. But his design was to give and announce beforehand to the
crushed and powerless soul the hope of some hundred florins; for so
much he could already expect as inheritance from his well-circumstanced
father, Eymann. The selfishness of this humiliated creature, which
would have made others cold, was precisely what moved his innermost
being. Long since he had said, "One should not have compassion on any
man who thought philosophically or loftily, least of all on a learned
man,--with such a one the wasp-stings of fate hardly went through
the stocking,--on the contrary, with the poor vulgar soul he suffered
and wept infinitely, which knew nothing greater than the goods of
earth, and which, without principles, without consolation, pale,
helpless, convulsed, and rigid, sank at the sight of the ruin of its
goods."--It therefore only redoubled his pity when this Marie in wild
gratitude passed in his presence from abrupt utterances of thanks,
ejaculations, gushes of joy, to kissing of the coat, silly laughing,
and kneeling.
When he went the next morning,--first to St. Luna,--and passed along
before the convent of Mary, where once the adopted daughter of the
Italian Tostato would have offered a sixth finger, Marie was just
coming out of a limb-shop,[178] where she had bought two wax hearts.
Victor drew out from her by long and ingenious questioning that she was
going to hang one of them, which represented hers, on the holy Mary,
because hers no longer pained her so much nor was so much oppressed as
it had been the week before.--As to the second, she would not for a
long time let anything out; at last she confessed: it was Victor's own,
which she was going to offer to the Holy Mother of God, because she
thought it must pain him also right sorely, as he looked so pale and
sighed so often.----"Give it to me, love," he said, too deeply moved,
"_I will offer my heart myself_."
"Ay," he repeated out under the still heaven, "the heart behind the
wall of the breast will I offer,--that, too, is of wax,--and to mother
Earth will I give it, that it may heal,--heal." ...
Let him weep freely, my friends, now that he beholds smiling the still,
pale earth, even up to its hazy mountains.--For softness of
sensibility loves to ally itself with petrifying processes and the
art[179] of Passau against the calamities of fate. Let him weep freely,
as he looks upon this flowerless earth, spinning itself, as it were,
into the silk of the fugitive summer, and feels as if he must fall down
and kiss the cold meadow as a mother, and say, "Bloom again sooner than
I; thou hast given me enough of joys and flowers!"--The silent
dissolution of nature, on whose corpse the full-blooming daisy stood as
if it were a death-garland, softly unnerved his powers by this
loosening friction,--he was exhausted and stilled,--nature reposed
around him and he in it,--the exhaustion overflowed almost into a
sweet, tickling faintness,--the tear-gland swelled and pressed no more
before it ran over; but its water trickled down like dew out of
flowers, easily and without stopping, as the blood flowed through his
breast.
He saw now St. Luna lying before him, but, as it were, withdrawn from
him in a moonlight. He passed not through, in order not to see the wax
statue, whose funeral sermon he had delivered, and for which he also
possessed a heart of wax; but he went round along the outskirts. "Grow
ever broader and more bustling, fair spot: never may an enemy beleaguer
thee around!" He said no more. For as he passed by the church-yard he
thought, "Have not all these, then, also taken leave of the place; and
am I the only one who does it?"--The mere backward glance at the slated
roof of the parsonage kindled one more lightning flash of pain at the
thought of a _mother's_ tears for his death; but he soon whispered to
himself the consolation, that the maternal heart of the parson's wife,
never weaned from Flamin, would cure its sorrow for the victim by its
joy over the rescued favorite.
He went now towards Maienthal, and carefully kept away his dreaming
thoughts from its exalted places, in order (at evening on the arrival)
to enjoy so much the more--sorrow. But now his conscious soul spun
itself into a new ideal web. He thought over the pleasure of sinking
without any sick nights into the earth, bright and erect, not
prostrate, but upright like the giant Cænæus,[180]--he felt himself
shielded against all disasters of life, and purged from the fear
perpetually gnawing on in every heart,--all this, and the joy of having
fulfilled his duties and controlled his impulses, and the lights
of the blue day standing as if in flower-dust, so cleared his turbid
life-stream, that at last he could have wished (had not his
determination forbidden it) to play longer in the bright stream.... So
great does contempt of death render the beauty of life,--so sure is
every one, who in _cold blood_ renounces life, of being able to endure
it,--so sound is the advice of Rousseau, before death to undertake a
good deed, because one can then do without dying.... --As Victor
thought thus, Fate stepped before him and asked him sternly, "Wilt thou
die?"--He answered, "Yes!"--as, just before sundown, he beheld again in
Upper Maienthal Clotilda's carriage, which he had seen there at its
starting upon the journey. Now the death-cloud fell upon the landscape.
He hurried by,--at the window he saw his mother and the lady, the
mother of Flamin,--his inner being was in a tumult,--his eyes glowed,
but remained dry,--for he was choosing among the instruments of
death.---Why did he go, so late, in the dark, with a stormy soul, which
obscured all sweet dreams, to Maienthal?--He would go to Emanuel's
grave; not to mourn there, not to dream there, but to seek for himself
a hollow there, namely, the last. His impetuous grief had sketched a
picture of his dying, and he had approved the sketch; namely, so soon
as fate had decided the necessity of his death by the disappearance of
his father and by the peril of Flamin, he meant to scoop out his grave
near the weeping birch, lay himself down in it, kill himself therein,
and then let the blind Julius, who could not know nor see anything of
it, fling the earth over him, and so, veiled, unknown, nameless, flee
out of life to the side of his mouldering Emanuel....
Black funeral processions of ravens flew slowly like a cloud through
the sunless heavens, and settled down like a cloud into the woods,--the
half-moon hung above the earth,--a strange, little shadow, as big as a
heart, ran fearfully beside him. He looked up: it was the shadow of a
slowly hovering hawk; he rushed through Maienthal; he saw not the
leafless garden nor Dahore's closed house, but ran through the chestnut
alley toward the weeping birch.--
But under the chestnuts, at the place where Flamin would have killed
him, he saw Clotilda's withered pink, with the bloody drop in its
chalice, lying on the ground.... And as a lark, the last songstress of
Nature, still quivered over the garden, and called with too ardent
tones after all the spring-times of life, and pierced the heart with an
infinite, deathly yearning, then did my Victor look up and weep aloud;
and when, up on the grave, he had wiped away the great, dark tears,
there stood--Clotilda before him.
One thrill ran through him, and he was dumb.... She hardly recognized
the paled form, and asked, trembling, "Is it you? Do we see each other
again?"--His soul was torn asunder, and he said, but in another sense,
"We see each other again." She was in the bloom of health, having been
restored by the journey. But there was blood on her handkerchief;--it
was the blood which Emanuel's bosom had shed during the duel in the
alley. He stared inquiringly at the blood. She pointed to the grave,
and veiled her weeping eyes.--With the question, "Has your honored
father come?" the good soul sought gently to lead him aside; but she
led him to his grave,--his eye sought wildly the place for the last
cool grotto of life,--she had never seen her gentle lover thus, and
would fain soothe his soul by quiet remembrances of Emanuel,--she
filled out the chasm in her letter, and related how quietly and
composedly the dead man went from England, and previously at his
departure lowered down into an extraordinarily deep hollow of the
fallen temple all his East-Indian flowers, three pictures, written
palm-leaves, and collections of loved ashes....
Victor was beside himself,--he supported himself by his hand on the
dew-cold, wet, yellow grave,--he wept in one steady stream, and could
no longer see his beloved,--he threw himself upon her quivering lips,
and gave her the farewell-kiss of death. He could venture to kiss her;
for there is no rank among the dead. He felt her streaming tears, and a
cruel longing seized him to provoke these tears forth; but he could
only not speak. He choked her words with kisses and his own with grief.
At last he was able to say, "Farewell!" She extricated herself with
terror, and looked on him with greater tears, and said, "What is it
with _you_? You break my heart!"--He said, "Only mine must break!" and
hurriedly drew out the heart of wax, and crushed it to pieces on the
grave, and said, "I offer my heart to thee, Emanuel; I offer thee my
heart." And when Clotilda had fled with alarm, he could only call after
her, with exhausted tones, "Farewell! farewell!"