Where harps are sounding, lovely ladies dance,
And gay attendants gleam, and jessamine,
Myrtle, and roses spread their soft perfume--
And yet a single word of sad enchantment
Sweeps all the glory of the scene to naught,
And there remain but ruins old and grey,
And screaming birds of night and foul morass.
Even so have I, with but a single word,
Enchanted Nature’s blooming loveliness.
There lies she now, lifeless, cold, and pale,
Just like a monarch’s corse laid out in state,
The royal deathly cheeks fresh stained with rouge,
And in his hand the kingly sceptre laid,
Yet still his lips are yellow, and most changed,
For they forgot to dye them, as they should,
And mice are jumping o’er the monarch’s nose,
And mock the golden sceptre in his grasp.
It is everywhere agreed, Madam, that one should deliver a soliloquy
before shooting himself. Most men on such occasions use Hamlet’s “To
be, or not to be.” It is an excellent passage, and I would gladly have
quoted it--but charity begins at home, and when a man has written
tragedies himself, in which such farewell-to-life speeches occur as,
for instance, in my immortal _Almansor_, it is very natural that one
should prefer his own words even to Shakespeare’s. At any rate, the
delivery of such speeches is a very useful custom; one gains at least a
little time. And so it came to pass that I remained a rather long time
standing at the corner Strada San Giovanni--and as I stood there like a
condemned criminal awaiting death, I raised my eyes and suddenly beheld
her. She wore her blue silk dress and rose-red hat, and her eyes looked
at me so mildly, so death-conqueringly, so life-givingly--Madam, you
well know, out of Roman history, that when the vestals in ancient Rome
met on their way a malefactor led to death they had the right to pardon
him, and the poor rogue lived. With a single glance she saved me from
death, and I stood before her revived, and dazzled by the sunbeams of
her beauty, and she passed on--and left me alive.
And she left me alive, and I live, which is the main point.
Others may, if they choose, enjoy the good fortune of having their
lady-love adorn their grave with garlands, and water them with the
tears of fidelity. Oh, women! hate me, laugh at me, jilt me, but let me
live! Life is all too laughably sweet, and the world too delightfully
bewildered; it is the dream of an intoxicated god, who has taken French
leave of the carousing multitude of immortals, and has laid himself
down to sleep in a solitary star, and knows not himself that he created
all that he dreams--and the dream-images form themselves in such a
mad, variegated fashion, and often so harmoniously reasonable--the
Iliad, Plato, the battle of Marathon, Moses, Medician Venus, Strasburg
Cathedral, the French Revolution, Hegel, the steamboat, etc., etc., are
single good thoughts in this divine dream--but it will not last long,
and the god awakes, and rubs his sleepy eyes, and smiles--and our world
has run to nothing--yes, has never been.
No matter! I live. If I am but a shadowy image in a dream, still this
is better than the cold, black, void, annihilation of Death. Life is
the greatest good, and death the worst evil. Berlin lieutenants of the
guard may sneer and call it cowardice because the Prince of Homburg
shudders when he beholds his open grave. Henry Kleist had, however,
as much courage as his high-breasted, tightly-laced colleagues, and
has, alas! proved it. But all strong men love life. Goethe’s Egmont
does not part willingly from the “cheerful wont of being and working.”
Immermann’s Edwin clings to life “like a little child to his mother’s
breast,” and though he finds it hard to live by stranger mercy, he
still begs for mercy: “For life and breath is still the highest.”
When Odysseus in the under-world sees Achilles as the leader of dead
heroes, and extols his renown among the living, and his glory even
among the dead, Achilles answers--
“No more discourse of death consolingly, noble Odysseus!
Rather would I in the field as daily labourer be toiling,
Slave to the meanest of men, a pauper and lacking possessions,
Than ’mid the infinite host of long-vanished mortals be ruler.”
Yes, when Major Duvent challenged the great Israel Lyon to fight with
pistols, and said to him, “If you do not meet me, Mr. Lyon, you are a
dog;” the latter replied, “I would rather be a live dog than a dead
lion!” and he was right. I have fought often enough, Madam, to dare
to say this, God be praised! I live! Red life pulses in my veins;
earth yields beneath my feet; in the glow of love I embrace trees and
statues, and they live in my embrace. Every woman is to me the gift of
a world. I revel in the melody of her countenance, and with a single
glance of my eye I can enjoy more than others with their every limb
through all their lives. Every instant is to me an eternity. I do not
measure time with the ell of Brabant or of Hamburg, and I need no
priest to promise me a second life, for I can live enough in this life,
when I live backwards in the life of those who have gone before me, and
win myself an eternity in the realm of the past.
And I live! The great pulsation of nature beats too in my breast;
and when I carol aloud I am answered by a thousandfold echo. I hear
a thousand nightingales. Spring has sent them to awaken earth from
her morning slumber, and earth trembles with ecstasy. Her flowers are
hymns, which she sings in inspiration to the sun. The sun moves far too
slowly. I would fain lash on his steeds that they might advance more
rapidly. But when he sinks hissing in the sea, and the night rises with
her passionate eyes, oh! then true pleasure first thrills through me,
the evening breezes lie like flattering maidens on my wild heart, and
the stars wink to me, and I rise and sweep over the little earth and
the little thoughts of men.
Madam, I have deceived you. I am not the Count of the Ganges. Never in
my life have I seen the holy stream, nor the lotus-flowers which are
mirrored in its sacred waves. Never did I lie dreaming under Indian
palms, nor in prayer before the Diamond Deity Juggernaut, who with his
diamonds might have easily aided me out of my difficulties. I have no
more been in Calcutta than the turkey, of which I ate yesterday at
dinner, had ever been in the realms of the Grand Turk. Yet my ancestors
came from Hindustan, and therefore I feel so much at my ease in the
great forest of song of Valmiki. The heroic sorrows of the divine Ramo
move my heart like familiar griefs; from the flower lays of Kalidasa
the sweetest memories bloom; and when a few years ago a gentle lady in
Berlin showed me the beautiful pictures which her father, who had been
Governor in India, had brought from thence, the delicately-painted,
holy, calm faces seemed as familiar to me as though I were gazing at my
own family gallery.
Franz Bopp, Madam--you have of course read his _Nalus_ and his system
of Sanscrit Conjugations--gave me much information relative to my
ancestry, and I now know with certainty that I am descended from
Brahma’s head, and not from his corns. I have also good reason to
believe that the entire Mahabarata, with its two hundred thousand
verses, is merely an allegorical love-letter which my first fore-father
wrote to my first fore-mother. Oh, they loved dearly; their souls
kissed, they kissed with their eyes; they were both but one single kiss.
An enchanted nightingale sits on a red coral bough in the silent sea,
and sings a song of the love of my ancestors; the pearls gaze eagerly
from their shells, the wonderful water-flowers tremble with sorrow,
the cunning sea-snails, bearing on their backs many-coloured porcelain
towers, come creeping onwards, the ocean roses blush with shame, the
yellow, sharp-pointed starfish and the thousand-hued glassy jelly-fish
quiver and stretch, and all swarm and listen.
Unfortunately, Madam, this nightingale song is far too long to be set
down here; it is as long as the world itself. Even its dedication to
Anangas, the God of Love, is as long as all Scott’s novels; and there
is a passage referring to it in Aristophanes, which in German reads
thus--
“Tiotio, tiotio, tiotinx,
Totototo, totototo, tototinx.”
[Illustration: “SIT THE GOOD TOWNSPEOPLE OF A SUMMER EVENING.”]
No, I was not born in India. I first beheld the light of the world on
the shore of that beautiful stream on whose green hills folly grows and
is plucked in autumn, laid away in cellars, poured into barrels, and
exported to foreign lands. In fact, only yesterday I heard some one
speaking a piece of folly, which in the year 1811 was imprisoned in a
bunch of grapes which I myself then saw growing on the Johannisberg.
But much folly is also consumed at home, and men are the same there as
everywhere; they are born, eat, drink, sleep, laugh, cry, slander each
other, are greatly troubled about the propagation of their race, try to
seem what they are not, and to do what they cannot; never shave until
they have a beard, and often have beards before they get discretion;
and when they have at last discretion, they drink it away in white and
red folly.
_Mon dieu!_ If I had faith, so that I could remove mountains--the
Johannisberg would be just the mountain which I would carry with me
everywhere. But as my faith is not strong enough, imagination must aid
me, and she quickly sets me by the beautiful Rhine.
Oh, that is a fair land, full of loveliness and sunshine. In the
blue stream are mirrored the mountain shores, with their ruined
towers and woods and ancient towns. There, before the house-door,
sit the good townspeople of a summer evening, and drink out of great
cans, and gossip confidentially about how the wine--the Lord be
praised!--thrives, and how justice should be free from all secrecy, and
how Marie Antoinette’s being guillotined is none of our business, and
how dear the tobacco tax makes tobacco, and how all mankind are equal,
and what a glorious fellow Goerres is.
I have never troubled myself about such conversation, and sat rather
with the maidens in the arched window, and laughed at their laughter,
and let them throw flowers in my face, and pretended to be ill-natured
until they told me their secrets, or some other important stories.
Fair Gertrude was half wild with delight when I sat by her. She was a
girl like a flaming rose; and once, as she fell on my neck, I thought
that she would burn away into perfume in my arms. Fair Katharine
flamed into sweet music when she talked with me; and her eyes were of
a pure, internal blue, which I have never seen in men or animals, and
very seldom in flowers; one gazed so gladly into them, and could then
think such sweet things. But the beautiful Hedwig loved me, for when
I came to her she bowed her head till her black curls fell down over
her blushing face, and her bright eyes shone like stars from the dark
heaven. Her bashful lips spoke not a word, and I too could say nothing
to her. I coughed, and she trembled. She often begged me through her
sisters not to climb the rocks so rashly, and not to bathe in the
Rhine when I was hot with running or drinking wine. Once I overheard
her pious prayer before the Virgin Mary, which she had adorned with
gold leaf and illuminated with a lamp, and which stood in a corner at
the entrance. I plainly heard her pray to the Mother of God to keep
him from climbing, drinking, and bathing. I should certainly have been
desperately in love with her if she had been indifferent to me; and I
was indifferent to her, because I knew that she loved me. Madam, to win
my love, I must be treated _en canaille_.
Johanna was the cousin of the three sisters, and I was glad to be with
her. She knew the most beautiful old legends, and when she pointed
with her white hand through the window out to the mountains where all
had happened which she narrated, I became enchanted; the old knights
rose visibly from the ruined castles, and hewed away at each other’s
iron clothes, the Loreley sat again on the mountain summit, singing
adown her sweet, seductive song, and the Rhine rippled so reasonably
soothing--and yet so mockingly horrible--and the fair Johanna looked
at me so strangely, with such enigmatic tenderness, that she seemed
herself one with the legend that she told. She was a slender, pale
girl, sickly and musing; her eyes were clear as truth itself; her lips
piously arched; in her face lay a great story. Was it a love legend? I
know not, and I never had the courage to ask. When I looked at her long
I grew calm and cheerful; it seemed to me as though it was Sunday in my
heart, and the angels held service there.
In such happy hours I told her tales of my childhood, and she listened
earnestly, and strangely, when I could not think of the names, she
remembered them. When I then asked her with wonder how she knew the
names, she would answer with a smile that she had learned it of the
birds that had built a nest on the sill of her window; and she tried to
make me believe that these were the same birds which I once bought with
my pocket-money from a hard-hearted peasant-boy, and then let fly away.
But I believed that she knew everything, because she was so pale, and
really soon died. She knew, too, when she would die, and wished that I
would leave Adernach the day before. When I bade her farewell she gave
me both her hands; they were white, sweet hands, and pure as the frost;
and she said, “You are very good, and when you are not, think of the
little dead Veronica.”
Did the chattering birds also tell her this name? Often in hours of
remembrance I had wearied my brain in trying to think of that dear
name, but could not.
And now that I have it again, my earliest infancy shall bloom into
memory again, and I am again a child, and play with other children in
the Castle Court at Düsseldorf, on the Rhine.
Yes, Madam, there was I born, and I am particular in calling
attention to the fact, lest after my death seven cities--those
of Schilda, Krähwinkel, Polkwitz, Bockum, Dülken, Göttingen, and
Schöppenstadt[2]--should contend for the honour of being my birthplace.
Düsseldorf is a town on the Rhine, sixteen thousand people live there,
and many hundred thousands besides are buried there; and among them
are many of whom my mother says it were better if they were still
alive--for example, my grandfather and my uncle, the old Herr von
Geldern and the young Herr von Geldern, who were both such celebrated
doctors, and saved the life of so many men, and yet must both die
themselves. And pious Ursula, who carried me as a child in her arms,
also lies buried there, and a rosebush grows over her grave; she loved
rose-perfume so much in her life, and her earth was all rose-perfume
and goodness. And the shrewd old Canonicus also lies there buried.
Lord, how miserable he looked when I last saw him! He consisted of
nothing but soul and plasters, and yet he studied night and day as
though he feared lest the warmth might find a few ideas missing in his
head. Little William also lies there--and that is my fault. We were
schoolmates in the Franciscan cloister, and were one day playing on
that side of the building where the Düssel flows between stone walls,
and I said, “William, do get the kitten out, which has just fallen in!”
and he cheerfully climbed out on the board which stretched over the
brook, and pulled the cat out of the water, but fell in himself, and
when they took him out he was cold and dead. The kitten lived to a good
old age.
The town of Düsseldorf is very beautiful, and if you think of it when
in foreign lands, and happen at the same time to have been born there,
strange feelings come over the soul. I was born there, and feel as if I
must go directly home. And when I say home, I mean the Volkerstrasse,
and the house where I was born. This house will be some day very
remarkable, and I have sent word to the old lady who owns it that
she must not for her life sell it. For the whole house she would now
hardly get as much as the present which the green-veiled, distinguished
English ladies will give the servant when she shows them the room where
I was born, and the hen-house wherein my father generally imprisoned me
for stealing grapes, and also the brown door on which my mother taught
me to write with chalk. Ah me! should I ever become a famous author, it
has cost my poor mother trouble enough.
But my fame still slumbers in the marble quarries of Carrara; the
waste-paper laurel with which they have bedecked my brow has not yet
spread its perfume through the wide world, and when the green-veiled,
distinguished English ladies visit Düsseldorf, they leave the
celebrated house unvisited, and go direct to the Market Place, and
there gaze on the colossal black equestrian statue which stands in its
midst. This represents the Prince-Elector, Jan Wilhelm. He wears black
armour and a long hanging wig. When a boy I was told that the artist
who made this statue observed with terror while it was being cast that
he had not metal enough, and then all the citizens of the town came
running with all their silver spoons, and threw them in to fill the
mould; and I often stood for hours before the statue puzzling my head
as to how many spoons were sticking in it, and how many apple-tarts
all that silver would buy. Apple-tarts were then my passion--now it is
love, truth, freedom, and crab-soup--and not far from the statue of
the Prince-Elector, at the theatre corner, generally stood a curiously
constructed sabre-legged rascal, with a white apron and a basket
girt around him full of smoking apple-tarts, which he knew how to
praise with an irresistible treble voice. “Apple-tarts! quite fresh,
so delicious!” Truly, whenever in my later years the Evil One sought
to win me, he always cried in such an enticing treble, and I should
certainly have never remained twelve hours by the Signora Guilietta
if she had not thrilled me with her sweet, fragrant, apple-tart
tones. And, in fact, the apple-tarts would never have so enticed me
if the crooked Hermann had not covered them up so mysteriously with
his white apron; and it is aprons, you know, which--but I wander from
the subject. I was speaking of the equestrian statue which has so
many silver spoons in its body and no soup, and which represents the
Prince-Elector, Jan Wilhelm.
He must have been a brave gentleman, very fond of art, and skilful
himself. He founded the picture-gallery in Düsseldorf, and in the
observatory there they show a very artistic piece of woodwork which he
himself had carved in his leisure hours, of which latter he had every
day four-and-twenty.
In those days princes were not the persecuted wretches which they now
are; the crown grew firmly on their heads, and at night they drew their
night-caps over it and slept peacefully, and their people slumbered
peacefully at their feet; and when they awoke in the morning they said,
“Good morning, father!” and he replied, “Good morning, dear children!”
But there came a sudden change over all this. One morning when we
awoke in Düsseldorf and would say, “Good morning, father,” the father
had travelled away, and in the whole town there was nothing but dumb
sorrow. Everywhere there was a funeral-like expression, and people
slipped silently to the market and read the long paper on the door of
the Town Hall. It was bad weather, yet the lean tailor Kilian stood in
his nankeen jacket, which he generally wore only at home, and his blue
woollen stockings hung down so that his little bare legs peeped out in
a troubled way, and his thin lips quivered as he murmured the placard.
An old invalid soldier from the Palatine read it rather louder, and at
some words a clear tear ran down his white, honourable old moustache.
I stood near him, crying too, and asked why we were crying. And he
replied, “The Prince-Elector has abdicated.” And then he read further,
and at the words, “for the long manifested fidelity of my subjects,”
“and hereby release you from allegiance,” he wept still more. It
is a strange sight to see, when an old man, in faded uniform and
scarred veteran’s face, suddenly bursts into tears. While we read the
Prince-Electoral coat-of-arms was being taken down from the Town Hall,
and everything began to appear as anxiously dreary as though we were
waiting for an eclipse of the sun. The town councillors went about at
an abdicating, wearisome gait; even the omnipotent beadle looked as
though he had no more commands to give, and stood calmly indifferent,
although the crazy Aloysius stood upon one leg and chattered the names
of French generals with foolish grimaces, while the tipsy, crooked
Gumpertz rolled around in the gutter singing _ça ira! ça ira!_
But I went home crying and lamenting, “The Prince-Elector has
abdicated.” My mother might do what she would, I knew what I knew,
and went crying to bed, and in the night dreamed that the world had
come to an end--the fair flower-gardens and green meadows of the world
were taken up and rolled away like carpets from the floor; the beadle
climbed up on a high ladder and took down the sun, and the tailor
Kilian stood by and said to himself, “I must go home and dress myself
neatly, for I am dead, and am to be buried this afternoon.” And it grew
darker and darker--a few stars glimmered on high, and even these fell
down like yellow leaves in autumn; men gradually vanished, and I, poor
child, wandered in anguish around, until before the willow fence of a
deserted farmhouse I saw a man digging up the earth with a spade, and
near him an ugly, spiteful-looking woman, who held something in her
apron like a human head, but it was the moon, and she laid it carefully
in the open grave; and behind me stood the Palatine soldier sobbing and
spelling, “The Prince-Elector has abdicated.”
When I awoke, the sun shone as usual through the window; there was a
sound of drums in the street; and as I entered our sitting-room and
wished my father, who sat in his white dressing-gown, good morning, I
heard the little light-footed barber, as he made up his hair, narrate
very minutely that homage would that morning be offered at the Town
Hall to the Archduke Joachim. I heard too that the new ruler was
of excellent family, that he had married the sister of the Emperor
Napoleon, and was really a very respectable man; that he wore his
beautiful black hair in curls; that he would shortly enter the town,
and would certainly please all the ladies. Meanwhile the drumming in
the streets continued, and I stood before the house-door and looked
at the French troops marching--those joyous and famous people who
swept over the world--singing and playing, the merry, serious faces
of the Grenadiers, the bear-skin shakoes, the tri-coloured cockades,
the glittering bayonets, the _voltigeurs_ full of vivacity and _point
d’honneur_, and the giant-like, silver-laced tambour major, who cast
his _baton_ with the gilded head as high as the first storey, and his
eyes to the second, where pretty girls gazed from the windows. I was
so glad that soldiers were to be quartered in our house--my mother was
not glad--and I hastened to the Market Place. There everything looked
changed; it was as though the world had been new whitewashed. A new
coat-of-arms was placed on the Town Hall; its iron balconies were hung
with embroidered velvet drapery, French Grenadiers stood as sentinels,
the old town councillors had put on new faces and Sunday coats, and
looked at each other French fashion, and said, “_Bon jour!_” Ladies
peeped from every window, inquisitive citizens and soldiers filled the
square, and I, with other boys, climbed on the shining Prince-Elector’s
great bronze horse, and looked down on the motley crowd.
Neighbour Peter and Long Conrad nearly broke their necks on this
occasion, and that would have been well, for the one afterwards ran
away from his parents, enlisted as a soldier, deserted, and was finally
shot in Mayence; while the other, having made geographical researches
in strange pockets, became a working member of a public tread-mill
institute. But having broken the iron bands which bound him to his
fatherland, he passed safely beyond sea, and eventually died in London,
in consequence of wearing a much too long cravat, one end of which
happened to be firmly attached to something just as a royal official
removed a plank from beneath his feet.