when I traveled the same line in the opposite direction; the
conviction that my solitude was, strictly speaking, voluntary, and
that I could at any time, albeit through a resolve smacking of
insubordination and a forty hours' journey, put an end to it, made me
see once more that my heart is ungrateful, dismayed, and resentful;
for soon I said to myself, in the comfortable fashion of the accepted
lover, that even here I am no longer lonely, and I was happy in the
consciousness of being loved by you, my angel, and, in return for the
gift of your love, of belonging to you, not merely in vassalage, but
with my inmost heart. On reaching the village I felt more distinctly
than ever before what a beautiful thing it is to have a home--a home
with which one is identified by birth, memory, and love. The sun shone
bright on the stately houses of the villagers, and their portly
inmates in long coats and the gayly dressed women in short skirts gave
me a much more friendly greeting than usual; on every face there
seemed to be a wish for my happiness, which I invariably converted
into thanks to you. Gray-haired Bellin's[5] fat face wore a broad
smile, and the trusty old soul shed tears as he patted me paternally
on the back and expressed his satisfaction; his wife, of course, wept
most violently; even Odin was more demonstrative than usual, and his
paw on my coat-collar proved incontestably that it was muddy weather.
Half an hour later Miss Breeze was galloping with me on the Elbe,
manifestly proud to carry your affianced, for never before did she so
scornfully smite the earth with her hoof. Fortunately you cannot
judge, my heart, in what a mood of dreary dulness I used to reenter my
house after a journey; what depression overmastered me when the door
of my room yawned at me and the mute furniture in the silent
apartments confronted me, bored like myself. The emptiness of my
existence was never clearer to me than in such moments, until I seized
a book--though none of them was sad enough for me--or mechanically
engaged in any routine work.
My preference was to come home at night, so that I could go to sleep
immediately.[6] Ach, Gott!--and now? What a different view I take of
everything--not merely that which concerns you as well, and because it
concerns you, or will concern you also (although I have been bothering
myself for two days with the question where your writing-desk will
stand), but my whole view of life is a new one, and I am cheerful and
interested even in my work on the dike and police matters. This
change, this new life, I owe, next to God, to you, _ma très chère, mon
adorée Jeanneton_--to you who do not heat me occasionally, like an
alcohol flame, but work in my heart like warming fire. Some one is
knocking.
Visit from the co-director, who complains of the people who will not
pay their school taxes. The man asks me whether my _fiancée_ is tall.
"Oh yes; rather."
"Well, an acquaintance of mine saw you last summer with several ladies
in the Harz Mountains, and you preferred to converse with the tallest,
that must have been your _fiancée_."
The tallest woman in your party was, I fancy, Frau von Mittelstädt.
* * * The Harz! The Harz!
After a thorough consultation with Frau Bellin, I have decided to make
no special changes here for the present, but to wait until we can hear
the wishes of the lady of the house in the matter, so that we may have
nothing to be sorry for. In six months I hope we shall know what we
have to do.
It is impossible as yet to say anything definite about our next meeting.
Just now it is raining; if that continues the Elbe may be played out in
a week or two, and then. * * * Still no news whatever about the Landtag.
Most cordial greetings and assurances of my love to your parents, and
the former--the latter, too, if you like--to all your cousins, women
friends, etc. What have you done with Aennchen?[7] My forgetting the
Versin letters disturbs me; I did not mean to make such a bad job of it.
Have they been found Farewell, my treasure, my heart, consolation of my
eyes.
Your faithful BISMARCK.
Another picture, a description of a storm in the Alps, which catches
my eye as I turn over the pages of the book, and pleases me much:
"The sky is changed, and such a change! O night,
And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,
Leaps the live thunder; not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now has found a tongue,
And Jura answers through her misty shroud--
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud.
And this is in the night:--most glorious night!
Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be
A sharer in thy fierce and fair delight--
A portion of the tempest and of thee!
How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,
And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!
And now again 'tis black, and now the glee
Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth,
As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth."
On such a night the suggestion comes uncommonly near to me that I wish
to be _a sharer in the delight, a portion of tempest, of night_;[8]
mounted on a runaway horse, to dash down the cliffs into the falls of
the Rhine, or something similar. A pleasure of that kind,
unfortunately, one can enjoy but once in this life. There is something
intoxicating in nocturnal storms. Your nights, dearest, I hope you
regard, however, as _sent for slumber, not for writing_.[9] I see with
regret that I write English still more illegibly than German. Once
more, farewell, my heart. Tomorrow noon I am invited to be the guest
of Frau Brauchitsch, presumably so that I may be duly and thoroughly
questioned about you and yours. I'll tell them as much as I please.
_Je t'embrasse mille fois._
Your own
B.
Schönhausen, February 7, '47.
_My Heart_,--Just returned through a wild, drifting snow-storm from an
appointment (which unfortunately was occasioned by the burning out of a
poor family). I have warmed myself at your dear letter; in the twilight,
even, I recognized your "Right honorable." All my limbs are twitching
with eagerness to be off to Berlin again today, and to characterize the
dikes and floods in terms of the unutterable Poberow[10] dialect. The
inexorable thermometer stands at 2 below freezing-point, accompanied
with howling wind and large flakes, as though it would soon rain. What
is duty! Compare Falstaff's expressions touching honor. At any rate, I
shall write you straightway, even if I ruin myself in postage, and no
sensible thoughts find their way through the débris of the fire that
still has possession of my imagination. After reading your last remark I
have just lit my cigar and stirred the ink. First, like a business-man,
to answer your letter. I begin with a request smacking of the official
desk--namely, that when you write you will, if you please, expressly
state what letters you have received from me, giving their dates;
otherwise one is uncertain as to the regular forwarding of them, as I am
in doubt whether you have received my first letter, which I wrote the
day of my arrival here, while on a business trip, in Jerichow, if I
mistake not, on very bad paper, Friday, the 29th of January. I am very
thankful that you do not write in the evening, my love, even if I am
myself to suffer thereby. Every future glance into your gray-blue-black
eye with its large pupil will compensate me for possibly delayed or
shortened letters.
If I could only dream of you when you do of me! But recently I do not
dream at all--shockingly healthy and prosaic; or does my soul fly to
Reinfeld in the night and associate with yours? In that case it can
certainly not dream here; but it ought to tell about its journey in
the morning, whereas the wayward thing is as silent about its
nocturnal employments as though it, too, slept like a badger.
Your reminder of the bore, Fritz, with the letter-pouch transports me
to Reinfeld and makes me long still more eagerly for the time when I
can once again hug my black Jeannette for my good-morning at the desk.
About the letter with the strange address, _evidently_ in a woman's
hand, I should like to tell you a romantic story, but I must destroy
every illusion with the explanation that it comes from a man who used
to be a friend of mine, who, if I do not mistake, once in Kniephof
took a copy of an Italian address that I received. Again a curtain
behind which one fancies there is all the poetry in the world, and
finds the flattest prose. (I once saw in Aix-la-Chapelle, while
strolling about the stage, the Princess of Eboli, after I had just
spent my sympathy upon her as she lay overwhelmed and fainting at the
queen's feet in one of the scenes, eating bread and butter and
cracking bad jokes behind the scenes.) That cousin Woedtke is fond of
me, and that the Versin sausage and letter affair is all right, I am
glad to learn.
I need not assure you that I have the most heartfelt sympathy for the
sufferings of your good mother; I hope rest and summer will affect her
health favorably, and that she will recover after a while, with the
joy of seeing her children happy. When she is here she shall not have
any steps to go up to reach you, and shall live directly next to you.
Why do you wear mournful black in dress and heart, my angel?
Cultivate the green of hope that today made right joyous revelry in me
at sight of its external image, when the gardener placed the first
messengers of spring, hyacinths and crocus, on my window-ledge. _Et
dis-moi donc, pourquoi es-tu paresseuse? Pourquoi ne fais-tu pas de
musique?_ I fancied you playing _c-dur_ when the hollow, melting wind
howls through the dry twigs of the lindens, and _d-moll_ when the
snow-flakes chase in fantastic whirls around the corners of the old
tower, and, after their desperation is spent, cover the graves with
their winding-sheet. Oh, were I but Keudell, I'd play now all day
long, and the tones would bear me over the Oder, Rega, Persante,
Wipper--I know not whither. _A propos de paresse_, I am going to
permit myself to make one more request of you, but with a preface.
When I ask you for anything I add (do not take it for blasphemy or
mockery) thy will be done--_your_ will, I mean; and I do not love you
less, nor am I vexed with you for a second if you do not fulfil my
request. I love you as you are, and as you choose to be. After I have,
by way of preface, said so much with inmost, unadorned truth, without
hypocrisy or flattery, I beg you to pay some attention to French--not
much, but somewhat--by reading French things that interest you, and,
what is not clear to you, make it clear with the dictionary. If it
bores you, stop it; but, lest it bore you, try it with books that
interest you, whatever they may be--romances or anything else. I do
not know your mother's views on such reading, but in my opinion there
is nothing that you cannot read to yourself. I do not ask this for my
own sake, for we will understand each other in our mother tongue, but
in your intercourse with the world you will not seldom find occasions
when it will be disagreeable or even mortifying if you are unfamiliar
with French. I do not know, indeed, to what degree this is true of
you, but reading is in any case a way to keep what you have and to
acquire more. If it pleases you, we shall find a way for you to become
more fluent in talking, than, as you say, you are now. If you do not
like it, rely with entire confidence on the preface to my request.
I wrote to poor Moritz yesterday, and, after reading your description
of his sadness, my letter lies like a stone on my conscience, for,
like a heartless egotist, I mocked his pain by describing my
happiness, and in five pages did not refer to his mourning by even a
syllable, speaking of myself again and again, and using him as
father-confessor. He is an awkward comforter who does not himself feel
pain sympathetically, or not vividly enough. My first grief was the
passionate, selfish one at the loss I had sustained; for Marie,[11] so
far as she is concerned, I do not feel it, because I know that she is
well provided for, but that my sympathy with the suffering of my
warmest friend, to whom I owe eternal thanks, is not strong enough to
produce a word of comfort, of strong consolation from overflowing
feeling, that burdens me sorely. Weep not, my angel; let your sympathy
be strong and full of confidence in God; give him real consolation
with encouragement, not with tears, and, if you can, doubly, for
yourself and for your thankless friend whose heart is just now filled
with you and has room for nothing else. Are you a withered leaf, a
faded garment? I will see whether my love can foster the verdure once
more, can brighten up the colors. You must put forth fresh leaves, and
the old ones I shall lay between the pages of the book of my heart so
that we may find them when we read there, as tokens of fond
recollection. You have fanned to life again the coal that under ashes
and débris still glowed in me; it shall envelop you in life-giving
flames.
_Le souper est servi_, the evening is gone, and I have done nothing
but chat with you and smoke: is that not becoming employment for the
dike-captain? Why not?
A mysterious letter from ---- lies before me. He writes in a tone new
for him; admits that he perceives that he did many a wrong to his first
wife; did not always rightly guide and bear with her weakness; was no
prop to the "child," and believes himself absolved by this severe
castigation. _Qu'est-ce qu'il me chante_? Has the letter undergone
transformation in the Christian climate of Reinfeld, or did it leave the
hand of this once shallow buffoon in its present form? He asserts,
moreover, that he lives in a never dreamed of happiness with his present
wife, whose acquaintance he made a week before the engagement, and whom
he married six weeks after the same event: a happiness which his first
marriage has taught him rightly to prize. Do you know the story of the
French tiler who falls from the roof, and, in passing the second story,
cries out, "_Ça va bien, pourvu que ça dure_?" Think, only, if we had
been betrothed on the 12th of October '44, and, on November 23d, had
married: What anxiety for mamma!
The English poems of mortal misery trouble me no more now; that was of
old, when I looked out into nothing--cold and stiff, snow-drifts in my
heart. Now a black cat plays with it in the sunshine, as though with a
rolling skein, and I like to see its rolling. I will give you, at the
end of this letter, a few more verses belonging to that period, of
which fragmentary copies are still preserved, as I see, in my
portfolio. You may allow me to read them still; they harm me no more.
_Thine eyes have still (and will always have) a charm for me_.[12]
Please write me in your next letter about the uncertain
marriage-plans. I believe, _by Jove!_[12] that the matter is becoming
serious. Until the day is fixed, it still seems to me as though we had
been dreaming; or have I really passed a fortnight in Reinfeld, and
held you in these arms of mine? Has Finette been found again? Do you
remember our conversation when we went out with her in leash--when
you, little rogue, said you would have "given me the mitten" had not
God taken pity on me and permitted me at least a peep through the
keyhole of His door of mercy! That came into my mind when I was
reading I Cor. vii. 13 and 14 yesterday.
[Illustration: PRINCE BISMARCK FRANZ VON LENBACH]
A commentator says of the passage that, in all relations of life,
Christ regards the kingdom of God as the more powerful, victorious,
finally overcoming all opposition, and the kingdom of darkness as
powerless, falling in ruins ever more and more. Yet, how do most
of you have so little confidence in your faith, and wrap it carefully
in the cotton of isolation, lest it take cold from any draught of
the world; while others are vexed with you, and proclaim that you
are people who esteem yourselves too holy to come into contact
with publicans, etc. If every one should think so who believes he
has found truth--and many serious, upright, humble seekers do believe
they find it elsewhere, or in another form--what a Pennsylvania
solitary-confinement prison would God's beautiful earth become,
divided up into thousands and thousands of exclusive coteries by
insuperable partitions! Compare, also, Rom. xiv. 22 and xv. 2; also,
particularly, I Cor. iv. 5; viii. 2; ix. 20; also xii. 4 and the
following; further, xiii. 2; all in the First Ep. to the Cor., which
seems to me to apply to the subject. We talked, during that walk, or
another one, a great deal about "the sanctity of doing good works." I
will not inundate you with Scripture passages in this connection, but
only tell you how splendid I find the Epistle of James. (Matt. xxv. 34
and following; Rom. ii. 6; II Cor. v. 10; Rom. ii. 13; I Epistle of
John iii. 7, and countless others.) It is, indeed, unprofitable to
base arguments upon separate passages of Scripture apart from their
connection; but there are many who are honestly striving, and who
attach more importance to passages like James ii. 14 than to Mark xvi.
16, and for the latter passage offer expositions, holding them to be
correct, which do not literally agree with yours. To what
interpretation does the word "faith" not lend itself, both when taken
alone and in connection with that which the Scriptures command us "to
believe," in every single instance where they employ the word! Against
my will, I fall into spiritual discussion and controversies. Among
Catholics the Bible is read not at all, or with great precaution, by
the laity; it is expounded only by the priests, who have concerned
themselves all their lives with the study of the original sources. In
the end, all depends upon the interpretation. Concert in Bütow amuses
me: the idea of Bütow is, to my mind, the opposite of all music.
I have been quite garrulous, have I not? Now I must disturb some
document-dust, and sharpen my pen afresh to the police-official style,
for the president of the provincial court and the government. Could I
but enclose myself herewith, or go along in a salmon-basket as
mail-matter! Till we meet again, _dearest black one_.[13] I love you,
_c'est tout dire_.
BISMARCK.
(I am forgetting the English verses):
"Sad dreams, as when the spirit of our youth
Returns in sleep, sparkling with all the truth
And innocence, once ours, and leads us back
In mournful mockery over the shining track
Of our young life, and points out every ray
Of hope and peace we've lost upon the way!"
By Moore, I think; perhaps Byron.
"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
Cordial remembrances to your parents and the Reddentin folk.
Schönhausen, February 23, '47.
_My Angel!_--I shall not send this letter on its way tomorrow, it's
true, but I do want to make use of the few unoccupied minutes left me
to satisfy the need I am conscious of every hour, to communicate with
you, and forthwith to compose a "Sunday letter" to you once more.
Today I have been "on the move" all day long. "The Moorish king rode
up and down," unfortunately not "through Granada's royal town," but
between Havelberg and Jerichow, on foot, in a carriage, and on
horseback, and got mighty cold doing so--because, after the warm
weather of the last few days, I had not made the slightest preparation
to encounter five degrees below freezing, with a cutting north wind,
and was too much in haste or too lazy to mount the stairs again when I
noticed the fresh air. During the night it had been quite endurable
and superb moonlight. A beautiful spectacle it was, too, when the
great fields of ice first set themselves massively in motion, with
explosions like cannon-shots, shattering themselves against one
another; they rear, shoving over and under each other; they pile up
house-high, and sometimes build dams obliquely across the Elbe, in
front of which the pent stream rises until it breaks through them with
rage. Now are they all broken to pieces in the battle--the giants--and
the water very thickly covered with ice-cakes, the largest of which
measure several square rods, which it bears out to the free sea like
shattered chains, with grumbling, clashing noises. This will go on so
for about three days more, until the ice that comes from Bohemia,
which passed the bridge at Dresden several days ago, has gone by. (The
danger is that the ice-cakes by jamming together may make a dam, and
the stream rise in front of this--often ten to fifteen feet in a few
hours.) Then comes the freshet from the mountains which floods the bed
of the Elbe, often a mile in width, and is dangerous in itself, owing
to its volume. How long that is to last we cannot tell beforehand. The
prevailing cold weather, combined with the contrary sea wind, will
certainly retard it. It may easily last so long that it will not be
worth while to go to Reinfeld before the 20th. If only eight days
should be left me, would you have me undertake it, nevertheless?--or
will you wait to have me without interruption after the 20th, or
perhaps 18th? It is true that _fiancé_ and dike-captain are almost
incompatible; but were I not the latter, I have not the slightest idea
who would be. The revenues of the office are small, and the duties
sometimes laborious; the gentlemen of the neighborhood, however, are
deeply concerned, and yet without public spirit. And even if one
should be discovered who would undertake it for the sake of the title,
which is, strange to say, much desired in these parts, yet there is no
one here (may God forgive me the offence) who would not be either
unfit for the business or faint-hearted. A fine opinion, you will
think, I have of myself, that I only am none of this; but I assert
with all of my native modesty that I have all these faults in less
degree than the others in this part of the country--which is, in fact,
not saying much.
I have not yet been able to write to Moritz, and yet I must send
something to which he can reply, inasmuch as my former letter has not
as yet brought a sign of life. Or have you crowded me out of his
heart, and do you fill it alone? The little pale-faced child is not in
danger, I hope. That is a possibility in view of which I am terrified
whenever I think of it--that as a crowning misfortune of our most
afflicted friend, this thread of connection with Marie might be
severed. But she will soon be a year and a half old, you know; she has
passed the most dangerous period for children. Will you mope and talk
of warm hands and cold love if I pay a visit to Moritz on my next
journey, instead of flying to Reinfeld without a pause as is required
of a loving youth?
That you are getting pale, my heart, distresses me. Do you feel well
otherwise, physically, and of good courage? Give me a bulletin of your
condition, your appetite, your sleep. I am surprised also that Hedwig
Dewitz has written to you--such a heterogeneous nature, that can have
so little in common with you. She was educated with my sister for
several years in Kniephof, although she was four or five years the
elder of the two. Either she loves you--which I should find quite easy
to explain--or has other prosaic intentions. I fancy that she, as is
quite natural, does not feel at home in her father's house; she has,
therefore, always made her home with others for long periods and with
satisfaction.
In your letter which lies before me I come upon "self-control" again.
That is a fine acquisition for one who may profit by it, but surely to
be distinguished from compulsion. It is praiseworthy and amiable to
wean one's self from tasteless or provoking outbursts of feeling, or
to give to them a more ingratiating form; but I call it
self-constraint--which makes one sick at heart--when one stifles his
own feelings in himself. In social intercourse one may practise it,
but not we two between ourselves. If there be tares in the field of
our heart, we will mutually exert ourselves so to dispose of them that
their seed cannot spring up; but, if it does, we will openly pull it
up, but not cover it artificially with straw and hide it--that harms
the wheat and does not injure the tares. Your thought was, I take it,
to pull them up unaided, without paining me by the sight of them; but
let us be in this also one heart and one flesh, even if your little
thistles sometimes prick my fingers. Do not turn your back on them nor
conceal them from me. You will not always take pleasure in my big
thorns, either--so big that I cannot hide them; and we must pull at
them both together, even though our hands bleed. Moreover, thorns
sometimes bear very lovely flowers, and if yours bear roses we may
perhaps let them alone sometimes. "The best is foe to the good"--in
general, a very true saying; so do not have too many misgivings about
all your tares, which I have not yet discovered, and leave at least a
sample of them for me. With this exhortation, so full of unction, I
will go to sleep, although it has just struck ten, for last night
there was little of it; the unaccustomed physical exercise has used me
up a bit, and tomorrow I am to be in the saddle again before daylight.
Very, very tired am I, like a child.
Schönhausen, March 14, 1847.