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Title: Translations from the German (Vol 3 of 3): Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter

Author: Thomas Carlyle
        Jean Paul
        Johann Karl August Musäus
        Ludwig Tieck

Release date: February 6, 2012 [eBook #38779]
                Most recently updated: January 6, 2014

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Thierry Alberto, Henry Craig, Leonard Johnson
        and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
        http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRANSLATIONS FROM THE GERMAN (VOL 3 OF 3): TALES BY MUSÆUS, TIECK, RICHTER ***




Produced by Thierry Alberto, Henry Craig, Leonard Johnson
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net












TRANSLATIONS FROM THE GERMAN

BY

THOMAS CARLYLE.



UNIFORM WITH HIS COLLECTED WORKS.



IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. III.

MUSÆUS, TIECK, RICHTER.



  LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL (LIMITED),
  11 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN.




TALES

BY

MUSÆUS, TIECK, RICHTER.



TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN

BY

THØMAS CARLYLE.



[1827.]



  LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL (LIMITED),
  11 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN.




CONTENTS


  MUSÆUS:
                                          PAGE
  DUMB LOVE                                  3
  LIBUSSA                                   58
  MELECHSALA                                98


  TIECK:

  THE FAIR-HAIRED ECKBERT                  159
  THE TRUSTY ECKART                        175
  THE RUNENBERG                            200
  THE ELVES                                220
  THE GOBLET                               238


  RICHTER:

  SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FLÆTZ             257
  LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN                  305




MUSÆUS.




DUMB LOVE.[1]


There was once a wealthy merchant, Melchior of Bremen by name, who used
to stroke his beard with a contemptuous grin, when he heard the Rich Man
in the Gospel preached of, whom, in comparison, he reckoned little
better than a petty shopkeeper. Melchior had money in such plenty, that
he floored his dining-room all over with a coat of solid dollars. In
those frugal times, as in our own, a certain luxury prevailed among the
rich; only then it had a more substantial shape than now. But though
this pomp of Melchior's was sharply censured by his fellow-citizens and
consorts, it was, in truth, directed more to trading speculation than to
mere vain-glory. The cunning Bremer easily observed, that those who
grudged and blamed this seeming vanity, would but diffuse the reputation
of his wealth, and so increase his credit. He gained his purpose to the
full; the sleeping capital of old dollars, so judiciously set up to
public inspection in the parlour, brought interest a hundredfold, by the
silent surety which it offered for his bargains in every market; yet, at
last, it became a rock on which the welfare of his family made
shipwreck.

     [1] Prefatory Introduction to Musæus, _suprà_, at p. 316, Vol. VI.
     of _Works_ (Vol. I. of _Miscellanies_).

Melchior of Bremen died of a surfeit at a city-feast, without having
time to set his house in order; and left all his goods and chattels to
an only son, in the bloom of life, and just arrived at the years when
the laws allowed him to take possession of his inheritance. Franz
Melcherson was a brilliant youth, endued by nature with the best
capacities. His exterior was gracefully formed, yet firm and sinewy
withal; his temper was cheery and jovial, as if hung-beef and old French
wine had joined to influence his formation. On his cheeks bloomed
health; and from his brown eyes looked mirthfulness and love of joy. He
was like a marrowy plant, which needs but water and the poorest ground
to make it grow to strength; but which, in too fat a soil, will shoot
into luxuriant overgrowth, without fruit or usefulness. The father's
heritage, as often happens, proved the ruin of the son. Scarce had he
felt the joy of being sole possessor and disposer of a large fortune,
when he set about endeavouring to get rid of it as of a galling burden;
began to play the Rich Man in the Gospel to the very letter; went
clothed in fine apparel, and fared sumptuously every day. No feast at
the bishop's court could be compared for pomp and superfluity with his;
and never while the town of Bremen shall endure, will such another
public dinner be consumed, as it yearly got from him; for to every
burgher of the place he gave a Krusel-soup and a jug of Spanish wine.
For this, all people cried: Long life to him! and Franz became the hero
of the day.

In this unceasing whirl of joviality, no thought was cast upon the
Balancing of Entries, which, in those days, was the merchant's
vade-mecum, though in our times it is going out of fashion, and for want
of it the tongue of the commercial beam too frequently declines with a
magnetic virtue from the vertical position. Some years passed on without
the joyful Franz's noticing a diminution in his incomes; for at his
father's death every chest and coffer had been full. The voracious host
of table-friends, the airy company of jesters, gamesters, parasites, and
all who had their living by the prodigal son, took special care to keep
reflection at a distance from him; they hurried him from one enjoyment
to another; kept him constantly in play, lest in some sober moment
Reason might awake, and snatch him from their plundering claws.

But at last their well of happiness went suddenly dry; old Melchior's
casks of gold were now run off even to the lees. One day, Franz ordered
payment of a large account; his cash-keeper was not in a state to
execute the precept, and returned it with a protest. This
counter-incident flashed keenly through the soul of Franz; yet he felt
nothing else but anger and vexation at his servant, to whose
unaccountable perversity, by no means to his own ill husbandry, he
charged the present disorder in his finances. Nor did he give himself
the trouble to investigate the real condition of the business; but after
flying to the common Fool's-litany, and thundering out some scores of
curses, he transmitted to his shoulder-shrugging steward the laconic
order: Find means.

Bill-brokers, usurers and money-changers now came into play. For high
interest, fresh sums were poured into the empty coffers; the silver
flooring of the dining-room was then more potent in the eyes of
creditors, than in these times of ours the promissory obligation of the
Congress of America, with the whole thirteen United States to back it.
This palliative succeeded for a season; but, underhand, the rumour
spread about the town, that the silver flooring had been privily
removed, and a stone one substituted in its stead. The matter was
immediately, by application of the lenders, legally inquired into, and
discovered to be actually so. Now, it could not be denied, that a
marble-floor, worked into nice Mosaic, looked much better in a parlour,
than a sheet of dirty, tarnished dollars: the creditors, however, paid
so little reverence to the proprietor's refinement of taste, that on the
spot they, one and all, demanded payment of their several moneys; and as
this was not complied with, they proceeded to procure an act of
bankruptcy; and Melchior's house, with its appurtenances, offices,
gardens, parks and furniture, were sold by public auction, and their
late owner, who in this extremity had screened himself from jail by some
chicanery of law, judicially ejected.

It was now too late to moralise on his absurdities, since philosophical
reflections could not alter what was done, and the most wholesome
resolutions would not bring him back his money. According to the
principles of this our cultivated century, the hero at this juncture
ought to have retired with dignity from the stage, or in some way
terminated his existence; to have entered on his travels into foreign
parts, or opened his carotid artery; since in his native town he could
live no longer as a man of honour. Franz neither did the one nor the
other. The _qu'en-dira-t-on_, which French morality employs as bit and
curb for thoughtlessness and folly, had never once occurred to the
unbridled squanderer in the days of his profusion, and his sensibility
was still too dull to feel so keenly the disgrace of his capricious
wastefulness. He was like a toper, who has been in drink, and on
awakening out of his carousal, cannot rightly understand how matters are
or have been with him. He lived according to the manner of unprospering
spendthrifts; repented not, lamented not. By good fortune, he had picked
some relics from the wreck; a few small heir-looms of the family; and
these secured him for a time from absolute starvation.

He engaged a lodging in a remote alley, into which the sun never shone
throughout the year, except for a few days about the solstice, when it
peeped for a short while over the high roofs. Here he found the little
that his now much-contracted wants required. The frugal kitchen of his
landlord screened him from hunger, the stove from cold, the roof from
rain, the four walls from wind; only from the pains of tedium he could
devise no refuge or resource. The light rabble of parasites had fled
away with his prosperity; and of his former friends there was now no one
that knew him. Reading had not yet become a necessary of life; people
did not yet understand the art of killing time by means of those amusing
shapes of fancy which are wont to lodge in empty heads. There were yet
no sentimental, pedagogic, psychologic, popular, simple, comic, or moral
tales; no novels of domestic life, no cloister-stories, no romances of
the middle ages; and of the innumerable generation of our Henrys, and
Adelaides, and Cliffords, and Emmas, no one had as yet lifted up its
mantua-maker voice, to weary out the patience of a lazy and discerning
public. In those days, knights were still diligently pricking round the
tilt-yard; Dietrich of Bern, Hildebrand, Seyfried with the Horns,
Rennewart the Strong, were following their snake and dragon hunt, and
killing giants and dwarfs of twelve men's strength. The venerable epos,
_Theuerdank_, was the loftiest ideal of German art and skill, the latest
product of our native wit, but only for the cultivated minds, the poets
and thinkers of the age. Franz belonged to none of those classes, and
had therefore nothing to employ himself upon, except that he tuned his
lute, and sometimes twanged a little on it; then, by way of variation,
took to looking from the window, and instituted observations on the
weather; out of which, indeed, there came no inference a whit more
edifying than from all the labours of the most rheumatic meteorologist
of this present age. Meanwhile his turn for observation ere long found
another sort of nourishment, by which the vacant space in his head and
heart was at once filled.

In the narrow lane right opposite his window dwelt an honest matron,
who, in hope of better times, was earning a painful living by the long
threads, which, assisted by a marvellously fair daughter, she winded
daily from her spindle. Day after day the couple spun a length of yarn,
with which the whole town of Bremen, with its walls and trenches, and
all its suburbs, might have been begirt. These two spinners had not been
born for the wheel; they were of good descent, and had lived of old in
pleasant affluence. The fair Meta's father had once had a ship of his
own on the sea, and, freighting it himself, had yearly sailed to
Antwerp; but a heavy storm had sunk the vessel, "with man and mouse,"
and a rich cargo, into the abysses of the ocean, before Meta had passed
the years of her childhood. The mother, a staid and reasonable woman,
bore the loss of her husband and all her fortune with a wise composure;
in her need she refused, out of noble pride, all help from the
charitable sympathy of her relations and friends; considering it as
shameful alms, so long as she believed, that in her own activity she
might find a living by the labour of her hands. She gave up her large
house, and all her costly furniture, to the rigorous creditors of her
ill-fated husband, hired a little dwelling in the lane, and span from
early morning till late night, though the trade went sore against her,
and she often wetted the thread with her tears. Yet by this diligence
she reached her object, of depending upon no one, and owing no mortal
any obligation. By and by she trained her growing daughter to the same
employment; and lived so thriftily, that she laid-by a trifle of her
gainings, and turned it to account by carrying on a little trade in
flax.

She, however, nowise purposed to conclude her life in these poor
circumstances; on the contrary, the honest dame kept up her heart with
happy prospects into the future, and hoped that she should once more
attain a prosperous situation, and in the autumn of her life enjoy her
woman's-summer. Nor were these hopes grounded altogether upon empty
dreams of fancy, but upon a rational and calculated expectation. She saw
her daughter budding up like a spring rose, no less virtuous and modest
than she was fair; and with such endowments of art and spirit, that the
mother felt delight and comfort in her, and spared the morsel from her
own lips, that nothing might be wanting in an education suitable to her
capacities. For she thought, that if a maiden could come up to the
sketch which Solomon, the wise friend of woman, has left of the ideal of
a perfect wife, it could not fail that a pearl of such price would be
sought after, and bidden for, to ornament some good man's house; for
beauty combined with virtue, in the days of Mother Brigitta, were as
important in the eyes of wooers, as, in our days, birth combined with
fortune. Besides, the number of suitors was in those times greater; it
was then believed that the wife was the most essential, not, as in our
refined economical theory, the most superfluous item in the household.
The fair Meta, it is true, bloomed only like a precious rare flower in
the greenhouse, not under the gay, free sky; she lived in maternal
oversight and keeping, sequestered and still; was seen in no walk, in no
company; and scarcely once in the year passed through the gate of her
native town; all which seemed utterly to contradict her mother's
principle. The old Lady E * * of Memel understood it otherwise, in her
time. She sent the itinerant Sophia, it is clear as day, from Memel into
Saxony, simply on a marriage speculation, and attained her purpose
fully. How many hearts did the wandering nymph set on fire, how many
suitors courted her! Had she stayed at home, as a domestic modest
maiden, she might have bloomed away in the remoteness of her virgin
cell, without even making a conquest of Kubbuz the schoolmaster. Other
times, other manners. Daughters with us are a sleeping capital, which
must be put in circulation if it is to yield any interest; of old, they
were kept like thrifty savings, under lock and key; yet the bankers
still knew where the treasure lay concealed, and how it might be come
at. Mother Brigitta steered towards some prosperous son-in-law, who
might lead her back from the Babylonian captivity of the narrow lane
into the land of superfluity, flowing with milk and honey; and trusted
firmly, that in the urn of Fate, her daughter's lot would not be coupled
with a blank.

One day, while neighbour Franz was looking from the window, making
observations on the weather, he perceived the charming Meta coming with
her mother from church, whither she went daily, to attend mass. In the
times of his abundance, the unstable voluptuary had been blind to the
fairer half of the species; the finer feelings were still slumbering in
his breast; and all his senses had been overclouded by the ceaseless
tumult of debauchery. But now the stormy waves of extravagance had
subsided; and in this deep calm, the smallest breath of air sufficed to
curl the mirror surface of his soul. He was enchanted by the aspect of
this, the loveliest female figure that had ever flitted past him. He
abandoned from that hour the barren study of the winds and clouds, and
now instituted quite another set of Observations for the furtherance of
Moral Science, and one which afforded to himself much finer occupation.
He soon extracted from his landlord intelligence of this fair neighbour,
and learned most part of what we know already.

Now rose on him the first repentant thought for his heedless
squandering; there awoke a secret good-will in his heart to this new
acquaintance; and for her sake he wished that his paternal inheritance
were his own again, that the lovely Meta might be fitly dowered with it.
His garret in the narrow lane was now so dear to him, that he would not
have exchanged it with the Schudding itself.[2] Throughout the day he
stirred not from the window, watching for an opportunity of glancing at
the dear maiden; and when she chanced to show herself, he felt more
rapture in his soul than did Horrox in his Liverpool Observatory, when
he saw, for the first time, Venus passing over the disk of the Sun.

     [2] One of the largest buildings in Bremen, where the meetings of
     the merchants are usually held.

Unhappily the watchful mother instituted counter-observations, and ere
long discovered what the lounger on the other side was driving at; and
as Franz, in the capacity of spendthrift, already stood in very bad
esteem with her, this daily gazing angered her so much, that she
shrouded her lattice as with a cloud, and drew the curtains close
together. Meta had the strictest orders not again to appear at the
window; and when her mother went with her to mass, she drew a rain-cap
over her face, disguised her like a favourite of the Grand Signior, and
hurried till she turned the corner with her, and escaped the eyes of the
lier-in-wait.

Of Franz, it was not held that penetration was his master faculty; but
Love awakens all the talents of the mind. He observed, that by his
imprudent spying, he had betrayed himself; and he thenceforth retired
from the window, with the resolution not again to look out at it, though
the _Venerabile_ itself were carried by. On the other hand, he meditated
some invention for proceeding with his observations in a private manner;
and without great labour, his combining spirit mastered it.

He hired the largest looking-glass that he could find, and hung it up in
his room, with such an elevation and direction, that he could distinctly
see whatever passed in the dwelling of his neighbours. Here, as for
several days the watcher did not come to light, the screens by degrees
went asunder; and the broad mirror now and then could catch the form of
the noble maid, and, to the great refreshment of the virtuoso, cast it
truly back. The more deeply love took root in his heart,[3] the more
widely did his wishes extend. It now struck him that he ought to lay his
passion open to the fair Meta, and investigate the corresponding state
of her opinions. The commonest and readiest way which lovers, under such
a constellation of their wishes, strike into, was in his position
inaccessible. In those modest ages, it was always difficult for Paladins
in love to introduce themselves to daughters of the family; toilette
calls were not in fashion; trustful interviews tête-à-tête were punished
by the loss of reputation to the female sharer; promenades, esplanades,
masquerades, pic-nics, goutés, soupés, and other inventions of modern
wit for forwarding sweet courtship, had not then been hit upon; yet,
notwithstanding, all things went their course, much as they do with us.
Gossipings, weddings, lykewakes, were, especially in our Imperial
Cities, privileged vehicles for carrying on soft secrets, and expediting
marriage contracts; hence the old proverb, _One wedding makes a score._
But a poor runagate no man desired to number among his baptismal
relatives; to no nuptial dinner, to no wakesupper, was he bidden. The
by-way of negotiating, with the woman, with the young maid, or any other
serviceable spirit of a go-between, was here locked up. Mother Brigitta
had neither maid nor woman; the flax and yarn trade passed through no
hands but her own; and she abode by her daughter as closely as her
shadow.

     [3] [Greek: Apo tou horan erchetai to eran.]

In these circumstances, it was clearly impossible for neighbour Franz to
disclose his heart to the fair Meta, either verbally or in writing. Ere
long, however, he invented an idiom, which appeared expressly calculated
for the utterance of the passions. It is true, the honour of the first
invention is not his. Many ages ago, the sentimental Celadons of Italy
and Spain had taught melting harmonies, in serenades beneath the
balconies of their dames, to speak the language of the heart; and it is
said that this melodious pathos had especial virtue in love-matters;
and, by the confession of the ladies, was more heart-affecting and
subduing, than of yore the oratory of the reverend Chrysostom, or the
pleadings of Demosthenes and Tully. But of all this the simple Bremer
had not heard a syllable; and consequently the invention of expressing
his emotions in symphonious notes, and trilling them to his beloved
Meta, was entirely his own.

In an hour of sentiment, he took his lute: he did not now tune it merely
to accompany his voice, but drew harmonious melodies from its strings;
and Love, in less than a month, had changed the musical scraper to a new
Amphion. His first efforts did not seem to have been noticed; but soon
the population of the lane were all ear, every time the dilettante
struck a note. Mothers hushed their children, fathers drove the noisy
urchins from the doors, and the performer had the satisfaction to
observe that Meta herself, with her alabaster hand, would sometimes open
the window as he began to prelude. If he succeeded in enticing her to
lend an ear, his voluntaries whirled along in gay _allegro_, or skipped
away in mirthful jigs; but if the turning of the spindle, or her thrifty
mother, kept her back, a heavy-laden _andante_ rolled over the bridge of
the sighing lute, and expressed, in languishing modulations, the feeling
of sadness which love-pain poured over his soul.

Meta was no dull scholar; she soon learned to interpret this expressive
speech. She made various experiments to try whether she had rightly
understood it, and found that she could govern at her will the
dilettante humours of the unseen lute-twanger; for your silent modest
maidens, it is well known, have a much sharper eye than those giddy
flighty girls, who hurry with the levity of butterflies from one object
to another, and take proper heed of none. She felt her female vanity a
little flattered; and it pleased her that she had it in her power, by a
secret magic, to direct the neighbouring lute, and tune it now to the
note of joy, now to the whimpering moan of grief. Mother Brigitta, on
the other hand, had her head so constantly employed with her traffic on
the small scale, that she minded none of these things; and the sly
little daughter took especial care to keep her in the dark respecting
the discovery; and, instigated either by some touch of kindness for her
cooing neighbour, or perhaps by vanity, that she might show her
hermeneutic penetration, meditated on the means of making some
symbolical response to these harmonious apostrophes to her heart. She
expressed a wish to have flower-pots on the outside of the window; and
to grant her this innocent amusement was a light thing for the mother,
who no longer feared the coney-catching neighbour, now that she no
longer saw him with her eyes.

Henceforth Meta had a frequent call to tend her flowers, to water them,
to bind them up, and guard them from approaching storms, and watch their
growth and flourishing. With inexpressible delight the happy Franz
explained this hieroglyphic altogether in his favour; and the speaking
lute did not fail to modulate his glad emotions, through the alley, into
the heedful ear of the fair friend of flowers. This, in her tender
virgin heart, worked wonders. She began to be secretly vexed, when
Mother Brigitta, in her wise table-talk, in which at times she spent an
hour chatting with her daughter, brought their melodious neighbour to
her bar, and called him a losel and a sluggard, or compared him with the
Prodigal in the Gospel. She always took his part; threw the blame of his
ruin on the sorrowful temptations he had met with; and accused him of
nothing worse than not having fitly weighed the golden proverb, _A penny
saved is a penny got_. Yet she defended him with cunning prudence; so
that it rather seemed as if she wished to help the conversation, than
took any interest in the thing itself.

While Mother Brigitta within her four walls was inveighing against the
luckless spendthrift, he on his side entertained the kindest feelings
towards her; and was considering diligently how he might, according to
his means, improve her straitened circumstances, and divide with her the
little that remained to him, and so that she might never notice that a
portion of his property had passed over into hers. This pious outlay, in
good truth, was specially intended not for the mother, but the daughter.
Underhand he had come to know, that the fair Meta had a hankering for a
new gown, which her mother had excused herself from buying, under
pretext of hard times. Yet he judged quite accurately, that a present of
a piece of stuff, from an unknown hand, would scarcely be received, or
cut into a dress for Meta; and that he should spoil all, if he stept
forth and avowed himself the author of the benefaction. Chance afforded
him an opportunity to realise this purpose in the way he wished.

Mother Brigitta was complaining to a neighbour, that flax was very dull;
that it cost her more to purchase than the buyers of it would repay; and
that hence this branch of industry was nothing better, for the present,
than a withered bough. Eaves-dropper Franz did not need a second
telling; he ran directly to the goldsmith, sold his mother's ear-rings,
bought some stones of flax, and, by means of a negotiatress, whom he
gained, had it offered to the mother for a cheap price. The bargain was
concluded; and it yielded so richly, that on All-Saints' day the fair
Meta sparkled in a fine new gown. In this decoration, she had such a
splendour in her watchful neighbour's eyes, that he would have
overlooked the Eleven Thousand Virgins, all and sundry, had it been
permitted him to choose a heart's-mate from among them, and fixed upon
the charming Meta.

But just as he was triumphing in the result of his innocent deceit, the
secret was betrayed. Mother Brigitta had resolved to do the
flax-retailer, who had brought her that rich gain, a kindness in her
turn; and was treating her with a well-sugared rice-pap, and a
quarter-stoop of Spanish sack. This dainty set in motion not only the
toothless jaw, but also the garrulous tongue of the crone: she engaged
to continue the flax-brokerage, should her consigner feel inclined, as
from good grounds she guessed he would. One word produced another;
Mother Eve's two daughters searched, with the curiosity peculiar to
their sex, till at length the brittle seal of female secrecy gave way.
Meta grew pale with affright at the discovery, which would have charmed
her, had her mother not partaken of it. But she knew her strict ideas of
morals and decorum; and these gave her doubts about the preservation of
her gown. The serious dame herself was no less struck at the tidings,
and wished, on her side too, that she alone had got intelligence of the
specific nature of her flax-trade; for she dreaded that this neighbourly
munificence might make an impression on her daughter's heart, which
would derange her whole calculations. She resolved, therefore, to root
out the still tender germ of this weed, in the very act, from the maiden
heart. The gown, in spite of all the tears and prayers of its lovely
owner, was first hypothecated, and next day transmitted to the
huckster's shop; the money raised from it, with the other profits of the
flax speculation, accurately reckoned up, were packed together, and
under the name of an old debt, returned to "Mr. Franz Melcherson, in
Bremen," by help of the Hamburg post. The receiver, nothing doubting,
took the little lot of money as an unexpected blessing; wished that all
his father's debtors would clear off their old scores as conscientiously
as this honest unknown person; and had not the smallest notion of the
real position of affairs. The talking brokeress, of course, was far from
giving him a true disclosure of her blabbing; she merely told him that
Mother Brigitta had given up her flax-trade.

Meanwhile, the mirror taught him, that the aspects over the way had
altered greatly in a single night. The flower-pots were entirely
vanished; and the cloudy veil again obscured the friendly horizon of the
opposite window. Meta was seldom visible; and if for a moment, like the
silver moon, from among her clouds in a stormy night, she did appear,
her countenance was troubled, the fire of her eyes was extinguished, and
it seemed to him, that, at times, with her finger, she pressed away a
pearly tear. This seized him sharply by the heart; and his lute
resounded melancholy sympathy in soft Lydian mood. He grieved, and
meditated to discover why his love was sad; but all his thinking and
imagining were vain. After some days were past, he noticed, to his
consternation, that his dearest piece of furniture, the large mirror,
had become entirely useless. He set himself one bright morning in his
usual nook, and observed that the clouds over the way had, like natural
fog, entirely dispersed; a sign which he at first imputed to a general
washing; but ere long he saw that, in the chamber, all was waste and
empty; his pleasing neighbours had in silence withdrawn the night
before, and broken up their quarters.

He might now, once more, with the greatest leisure and convenience,
enjoy the free prospect from his window, without fear of being
troublesome to any; but for him it was a dead loss to miss the kind
countenance of his Platonic love. Mute and stupefied, he stood, as of
old his fellow-craftsman, the harmonious Orpheus, when the dear shadow
of his Eurydice again vanished down to Orcus; and if the bedlam humour
of those "noble minds," who raved among us through the bygone lustre,
but have now like drones disappeared with the earliest frost, had then
been ripened to existence, this calm of his would certainly have passed
into a sudden hurricane. The least he could have done, would have been
to pull his hair, to trundle himself about upon the ground, or run his
head against the wall, and break his stove and window. All this he
omitted; from the very simple cause, that true love never makes men
fools, but rather is the universal remedy for healing sick minds of
their foolishness, for laying gentle fetters on extravagance, and
guiding youthful giddiness from the broad way of ruin to the narrow path
of reason; for the rake whom love will not recover is lost
irrecoverably.

When once his spirit had assembled its scattered powers, he set on foot
a number of instructive meditations on the unexpected phenomenon, but
too visible in the adjacent horizon. He readily conceived that he was
the lever which had effected the removal of the wandering colony: his
money-letter, the abrupt conclusion of the flax-trade, and the
emigration which had followed thereupon, were like reciprocal exponents
to each other, and explained the whole to him. He perceived that Mother
Brigitta had got round his secrets, and saw from every circumstance that
he was not her hero; a discovery which yielded him but little
satisfaction. The symbolic responses of the fair Meta, with her
flower-pots, to his musical proposals of love; her trouble, and the tear
which he had noticed in her bright eyes shortly before her departure
from the lane, again animated his hopes, and kept him in good heart. His
first employment was to go in quest, and try to learn where Mother
Brigitta had pitched her residence, in order to maintain, by some means
or other, his secret understanding with the daughter. It cost him little
toil to find her abode; yet he was too modest to shift his own lodging
to her neighbourhood; but satisfied himself with spying out the church
where she now attended mass, that he might treat himself once each day
with a glance of his beloved. He never failed to meet her as she
returned, now here, now there, in some shop or door which she was
passing, and salute her kindly; an equivalent for a _billet-doux_, and
productive of the same effect.

Had not Meta been brought up in a style too nunlike, and guarded by her
rigid mother as a treasure, from the eyes of thieves, there is little
doubt that neighbour Franz, with his secret wooing, would have made no
great impression on her heart. But she was at the critical age, when
Mother Nature and Mother Brigitta, with their wise nurture, were
perpetually coming into collision. The former taught her, by a secret
instinct, the existence of emotions, for which she had no name, and
eulogised them as the panacea of life; the latter warned her to beware
of the surprisals of a passion, which she would not designate by its
true title, but which, as she maintained, was more pernicious and
destructive to young maidens than the small-pox itself. The former, in
the spring of life, as beseemed the season, enlivened her heart with a
genial warmth; the latter wished that it should always be as cold and
frosty as an ice-house. These conflicting pedagogic systems of the two
good mothers gave the tractable heart of the daughter the direction of a
ship which is steered against the wind, and follows neither the wind nor
the helm, but a course between the two. She maintained the modesty and
virtue which her education, from her youth upwards, had impressed upon
her; but her heart continued open to all tender feelings. And as
neighbour Franz was the first youth who had awakened these slumbering
emotions, she took a certain pleasure in him, which she scarcely owned
to herself, but which any less unexperienced maiden would have
recognised as love. It was for this that her departure from the narrow
lane had gone so near her heart; for this that the little tear had
trickled from her beautiful eyes; for this that, when the watchful
Franz saluted her as she came from church, she thanked him so kindly,
and grew scarlet to the ears. The lovers had in truth never spoken any
word to one another; but he understood her, and she him, so perfectly,
that in the most secret interview they could not have explained
themselves more clearly; and both contracting parties swore in their
silent hearts, each for himself, under the seal of secrecy, the oath of
faithfulness to the other.

In the quarter, where Mother Brigitta had now settled, there were
likewise neighbours, and among these likewise girl-spiers, whom the
beauty of the charming Meta had not escaped. Right opposite their
dwelling lived a wealthy Brewer, whom the wags of the part, as he was
strong in means, had named the Hop-King. He was a young stout widower,
whose mourning year was just concluding, so that now he was entitled,
without offending the precepts of decorum, to look about him elsewhere
for a new helpmate to his household. Shortly after the departure of his
whilom wife, he had in secret entered into an engagement with his Patron
Saint, St. Christopher, to offer him a wax-taper as long as a hop-pole,
and as thick as a mashing-beam, if he would vouchsafe in this second
choice to prosper the desire of his heart. Scarcely had he seen the
dainty Meta, when he dreamed that St. Christopher looked in upon him,
through the window of his bedroom in the second story,[4] and demanded
payment of his debt. To the quick widower this seemed a heavenly call to
cast out the net without delay. Early in the morning he sent for the
brokers of the town, and commissioned them to buy bleached wax; then
decked himself like a Syndic, and set forth to expedite his marriage
speculation. He had no musical talents, and in the secret symbolic
language of love he was no better than a blockhead; but he had a rich
brewery, a solid mortgage on the city-revenues, a ship on the Weser, and
a farm without the gates. With such recommendations he might have
reckoned on a prosperous issue to his courtship, independently of all
assistance from St. Kit, especially as his bride was without dowry.

     [4] St. Christopher never appears to his favourites, like the other
     Saints, in a solitary room, encircled with a glory: there is no
     room high enough to admit him; thus the celestial Son of Anak is
     obliged to transact all business with his wards outside the window.

According to old use and wont, he went directly to the master hand, and
disclosed to the mother, in a kind neighbourly way, his christian
intentions towards her virtuous and honourable daughter. No angel's
visit could have charmed the good lady more than these glad tidings. She
now saw ripening before her the fruit of her prudent scheme, and the
fulfilment of her hope again to emerge from her present poverty into her
former abundance; she blessed the good thought of moving from the
crooked alley, and in the first ebullition of her joy, as a thousand gay
ideas were ranking themselves up within her soul, she also thought of
neighbour Franz, who had given occasion to it. Though Franz was not
exactly her bosom-youth, she silently resolved to gladden him, as the
accidental instrument of her rising star, with some secret gift or
other, and by this means likewise recompense his well-intended
flax-dealing.

In the maternal heart the marriage-articles were as good as signed; but
decorum did not permit these rash proceedings in a matter of such
moment. She therefore let the motion lie _ad referendum_, to be
considered by her daughter and herself; and appointed a term of eight
days, after which "she hoped she should have it in her power to give the
much-respected suitor a reply that would satisfy him;" all which, as the
common manner of proceeding, he took in good part, and with his usual
civilities withdrew. No sooner had he turned his back, than
spinning-wheel and reel, swingling-stake and hatchel, without regard
being paid to their faithful services, and without accusation being
lodged against them, were consigned, like some luckless Parliament of
Paris, to disgrace, and dismissed as useless implements into the
lumber-room. On returning from mass, Meta was astonished at the sudden
catastrophe which had occurred in the apartment; it was all decked out
as on one of the three high Festivals of the year. She could not
understand how her thrifty mother, on a work-day, had so neglectfully
put her active hand in her bosom; but before she had time to question
the kindly-smiling dame concerning this reform in household affairs, she
was favoured by the latter with an explanation of the riddle. Persuasion
rested on Brigitta's tongue; and there flowed from her lips a stream of
female eloquence, depicting the offered happiness in the liveliest hues
which her imagination could lay on. She expected from the chaste Meta
the blush of soft virgin bashfulness, which announces the novitiate in
love; and then a full resignation of herself to the maternal will. For
of old, in proposals of marriage, daughters were situated as our
princesses are still; they were not asked about their inclination, and
had no voice in the selection of their legal helpmate, save the Yes
before the altar.

But Mother Brigitta was in this point widely mistaken; the fair Meta did
not at the unexpected announcement grow red as a rose, but pale as
ashes. An hysterical giddiness swam over her brain, and she sank
fainting in her mother's arms. When her senses were recalled by the
sprinkling of cold water, and she had in some degree recovered strength,
her eyes overflowed with tears, as if a heavy misfortune had befallen
her. From all these symptoms, the sagacious mother easily perceived that
the marriage-trade was not to her taste; at which she wondered not a
little, sparing neither prayers nor admonitions to her daughter to
secure her happiness by this good match, not flout it from her by
caprice and contradiction. But Meta could not be persuaded that her
happiness depended on a match, to which her heart gave no assent. The
debates between the mother and the daughter lasted several days, from
early morning to late night; the term for decision was approaching; the
sacred taper for St. Christopher, which Og King of Bashan need not have
disdained had it been lit for him as a marriage-torch at his espousals,
stood in readiness, all beautifully painted with living flowers like a
many-coloured light, though the Saint had all the while been so inactive
in his client's cause, that the fair Meta's heart was still bolted and
barred against him fast as ever.

Meanwhile she had bleared her eyes with weeping, and the maternal
rhetoric had worked so powerfully, that, like a flower in the sultry
heat, she was drooping together, and visibly fading away. Hidden grief
was gnawing at her heart; she had prescribed herself a rigorous fast,
and for three days no morsel had she eaten, and with no drop of water
moistened her parched lips. By night sleep never visited her eyes; and
with all this she grew sick to death, and began to talk about extreme
unction. As the tender mother saw the pillar of her hope wavering, and
bethought herself that she might lose both capital and interest at once,
she found, on accurate consideration, that it would be more advisable to
let the latter vanish, than to miss them both; and with kindly
indulgence plied into the daughter's will. It cost her much constraint,
indeed, and many hard battles, to turn away so advantageous an offer;
yet at last, according to established order in household governments,
she yielded unconditionally to the inclination of her child, and
remonstrated no more with her beloved patient on the subject. As the
stout widower announced himself on the appointed day, in the full trust
that his heavenly deputy had arranged it all according to his wish, he
received, quite unexpectedly, a negative answer, which, however, was
sweetened with such a deal of blandishment, that he swallowed it like
wine-of-wormwood mixed with sugar. For the rest, he easily accommodated
himself to his destiny; and discomposed himself no more about it, than
if some bargain for a ton of malt had chanced to come to nothing. Nor,
on the whole, had he any cause to sorrow without hope. His native town
has never wanted amiable daughters, who come up to the Solomonic sketch,
and are ready to make perfect spouses; besides, notwithstanding this
unprospered courtship, he depended with firm confidence upon his Patron
Saint; who in fact did him such substantial service elsewhere, that ere
a month elapsed, he had planted with much pomp his devoted taper at the
friendly shrine.

Mother Brigitta was now fain to recall the exiled spinning-tackle from
its lumber-room, and again set it in action. All once more went its
usual course. Meta soon bloomed out anew, was active in business, and
diligently went to mass; but the mother could not hide her secret
grudging at the failure of her hopes, and the annihilation of her
darling plan; she was splenetic, peevish and dejected. Her ill-humour
had especially the upper hand that day when neighbour Hop-King held his
nuptials. As the wedding company proceeded to the church, with the
town-band bedrumming and becymballing them in the van, she whimpered and
sobbed as in the evil hour when the Job's-news reached her, that the
wild sea had devoured her husband, with ship and fortune. Meta looked at
the bridal pomp with great equanimity; even the royal ornaments, the
jewels in the myrtle-crown, and the nine strings of true pearls about
the neck of the bride, made no impression on her peace of mind; a
circumstance in some degree surprising, since a new Paris cap, or any
other meteor in the gallery of Mode, will so frequently derange the
contentment and domestic peace of an entire parish. Nothing but the
heart-consuming sorrow of her mother discomposed her, and overclouded
the gay look of her eyes; she strove by a thousand caresses and little
attentions to work herself into favour; and she so far succeeded that
the good lady grew a little more communicative.

In the evening, when the wedding-dance began, she said, "Ah, child! this
merry dance it might have been thy part to lead off. What a pleasure,
hadst thou recompensed thy mother's care and toil with this joy! But
thou hast mocked thy happiness, and now I shall never see the day when I
am to attend thee to the altar."--"Dear mother," answered Meta, "I
confide in Heaven; and if it is written above that I am to be led to the
altar, you will surely deck my garland: for when the right wooer comes,
my heart will soon say Yes."--"Child, for girls without dowry there is
no press of wooers; they are heavy ware to trade with. Nowadays the
bachelors are mighty stingy; they court to be happy, not to make happy.
Besides, thy planet bodes thee no good; thou wert born in April. Let us
see how it is written in the Calendar: 'A damsel born in this month is
comely of countenance, slender of shape, but of changeful humour, has a
liking to men. Should have an eye upon her maiden garland, and so a
laughing wooer come, not miss her fortune.' Alas, it answers to a hair!
The wooer has been here, comes not again: thou hast missed him."--"Ah,
mother! let the planet say its pleasure, never mind it; my heart says to
me that I should love and honour the man who asks me to be his wife: and
if I do not find that man, or he do not seek me, I will live in good
courage by the labour of my hands, and stand by you, and nurse you in
your old age, as beseems a good daughter. But if the man of my heart do
come, then bless my choice, that it may be well with your daughter on
the Earth; and ask not whether he is noble, rich, or famous, but whether
he is good and honest, whether he loves and is loved."--"Ah, daughter!
Love keeps a sorry kitchen, and feeds one poorly, along with bread and
salt."--"But yet Unity and Contentment delight to dwell with him, and
these season bread and salt with the cheerful enjoyment of our days."

The pregnant subject of bread and salt continued to be sifted till the
night was far spent, and the last fiddle in the wedding-dance was
resting from its labours. The moderation of the prudent Meta, who, with
youth and beauty on her side, pretended only to an altogether bounded
happiness, after having turned away an advantageous offer, led the
mother to conjecture that the plan of some such salt-trade might already
have been sketched in the heart of the virgin. Nor did she fail to guess
the trading-partner in the lane, of whom she never had believed that he
would be the tree for rooting in the lovely Meta's heart. She had looked
upon him only as a wild tendril, that stretches out towards every
neighbouring twig, to clamber up by means of it. This discovery
procured her little joy; but she gave no hint that she had made it.
Only, in the spirit of her rigorous morality, she compared a maiden who
lets love, before the priestly benediction, nestle in her heart, to a
worm-eaten apple, which is good for the eye, but no longer for the
palate, and is laid upon a shelf and no more heeded, for the pernicious
worm is eating its internal marrow, and cannot be dislodged. She now
despaired of ever holding up her head again in Bremen; submitted to her
fate, and bore in silence what she thought was now not to be altered.

Meanwhile the rumour of the proud Meta's having given the rich Hop-King
the basket, spread over the town, and sounded even into Franz's garret
in the alley. Franz was transported with joy to hear this tale
confirmed; and the secret anxiety lest some wealthy rival might expel
him from the dear maiden's heart tormented him no more. He was now
certain of his object; and the riddle, which for every one continued an
insoluble problem, had no mystery for him. Love had already changed a
spendthrift into a dilettante; but this for a bride-seeker was the very
smallest of recommendations, a gift which in those rude times was
rewarded neither with such praise nor with such pudding, as it is in our
luxurious century. The fine arts were not then children of superfluity,
but of want and necessity. No travelling professors were at that time
known, save the Prague students, whose squeaking symphonies solicited a
charitable coin at the doors of the rich. The beloved maiden's sacrifice
was too great to be repaid by a serenade. And now the feeling of his
youthful dissipation became a thorn in the soul of Franz. Many a
touching monodrama did he begin with an O and an Ah, besighing his past
madness: "Ah, Meta," said he to himself, "why did I not know thee
sooner! Thou hadst been my guardian angel, thou hadst saved me from
destruction. Could I live my lost years over again, and be what I was,
the world were now Elysium for me, and for thee I would make it an Eden!
Noble maiden, thou sacrificest thyself to a wretch, to a beggar, who has
nothing in the world but a heart full of love, and despair that he can
offer thee no happiness such as thou deservest." Innumerable times, in
the paroxysms of these pathetic humours, he struck his brow in fury,
with the repentant exclamation: "O fool! O madman! thou art wise too
late."

Love, however, did not leave its working incomplete. It had already
brought about a wholesome fermentation in his spirit, a desire to put
in use his powers and activity, to try if he might struggle up from his
present nothingness: it now incited him to the attempt of executing
these good purposes. Among many speculations he had entertained for the
recruiting of his wrecked finances, the most rational and promising was
this: To run over his father's ledgers, and there note down any small
escheats which had been marked as lost, with a view of going through the
land, and gleaning, if so were that a lock of wheat might still be
gathered from these neglected ears. With the produce of this enterprise,
he would then commence some little traffic, which his fancy soon
extended over all the quarters of the world. Already, in his mind's eye,
he had vessels on the sea, which were freighted with his property. He
proceeded rapidly to execute his purpose; changed the last golden
fragment of his heritage, his father's hour-egg,[5] into money, and
bought with it a riding nag, which was to bear him as a Bremen merchant
out into the wide world.

     [5] The oldest watches, from the shape they had, were named
     hour-eggs.

Yet the parting with his fair Meta went sore against his heart. "What
will she think," said he to himself, "of this sudden disappearance, when
thou shalt no more meet her in the church-way? Will she not regard thee
as faithless, and banish thee from her heart?" This thought afflicted
him exceedingly; and for a great while he could think of no expedient
for explaining to her his intention. But at last inventive Love
suggested the idea of signifying to her from the pulpit itself his
absence and its purpose. With this view, in the church, which had
already favoured the secret understanding of the lovers, he bought a
Prayer "for a young Traveller, and the happy arrangement of his
affairs;" which was to last, till he should come again and pay his
groschen for the Thanksgiving.

At the last meeting, he had dressed himself as for the road; he passed
quite near his sweetheart; saluted her expressively, and with less
reserve than before; so that she blushed deeply; and Mother Brigitta
found opportunity for various marginal notes, which indicated her
displeasure at the boldness of this ill-bred fop, in attempting to get
speech of her daughter, and with which she entertained the latter not in
the most pleasant style the livelong day. From that morning Franz was no
more seen in Bremen, and the finest pair of eyes within its circuit
sought for him in vain. Meta often heard the Prayer read, but she did
not heed it, for her heart was troubled because her lover had become
invisible. This disappearance was inexplicable to her; she knew not what
to think of it. After the lapse of some months, when time had a little
softened her secret care, and she was suffering his absence with a
calmer mind, it happened once, as the last appearance of her love was
hovering upon her fancy, that this same Prayer struck her as a strange
matter. She coupled one thing with another, she guessed the true
connexion of the business, and the meaning of that notice. And although
church litanies and special prayers have not the reputation of extreme
potency, and for the worthy souls that lean on them are but a supple
staff, inasmuch as the fire of devotion in the Christian flock is wont
to die out at the end of the sermon; yet in the pious Meta's case, the
reading of the last Prayer was the very thing which fanned that fire
into a flame; and she never neglected, with her whole heart, to
recommend the young traveller to his guardian angel.

Under this invisible guidance, Franz was journeying towards Brabant, to
call in some considerable sums that were due him at Antwerp. A journey
from Bremen to Antwerp, in the time when road-blockades were still in
fashion, and every landlord thought himself entitled to plunder any
traveller who had purchased no safe-conduct, and to leave him pining in
the ward-room of his tower, was an undertaking of more peril and
difficulty, than in our days would attend a journey from Bremen to
Kamtschatka: for the _Land-fried_ (or Act for suppressing Private Wars),
which the Emperor Maximilian had proclaimed, was in force through the
Empire, rather as a law than an observance. Nevertheless our solitary
traveller succeeded in arriving at the goal of his pilgrimage, without
encountering more than a single adventure.

Far in the wastes of Westphalia, he rode one sultry day till nightfall,
without reaching any inn. Towards evening stormy clouds towered up at
the horizon, and a heavy rain wetted him to the skin. To the fondling,
who from his youth had been accustomed to all possible conveniences,
this was a heavy matter, and he felt himself in great embarrassment how
in this condition he should pass the night. To his comfort, when the
tempest had moved away, he saw a light in the distance; and soon after,
reached a mean peasant hovel, which afforded him but little consolation.
The house was more like a cattle-stall than a human habitation; and the
unfriendly landlord refused him fire and water, as if he had been an
outlaw. For the man was just about to stretch himself upon the straw
among his steers; and too tired to relight the fire on his hearth, for
the sake of a stranger. Franz in his despondency uplifted a mournful
_miserere_, and cursed the Westphalian steppes with strong maledictions:
but the peasant took it all in good part; and blew out his light with
great composure, troubling himself no farther about the stranger; for in
the laws of hospitality he was altogether uninstructed. But as the
wayfarer, standing at the door, would not cease to annoy him with his
lamentations, he endeavoured in a civil way to get rid of him, consented
to answer, and said: "Master, if you want good entertainment, and would
treat yourself handsomely, you could not find what you are seeking here.
But ride there to the left hand, through the bushes; a little way
behind, lies the Castle of the valiant Eberhard Bronkhorst, a knight who
lodges every traveller, as a Hospitaller does the pilgrims from the Holy
Sepulchre. He has just one maggot in his head, which sometimes twitches
and vexes him; he lets no traveller depart from him unbasted. If you do
not lose your way, though he may dust your jacket, you will like your
cheer prodigiously."

To buy a mess of pottage, and a stoup of wine, by surrendering one's
ribs to the bastinado, is in truth no job for every man, though your
spungers and plate-lickers let themselves be tweaked and snubbed, and
from rich artists willingly endure all kinds of tar-and-feathering, so
their palates be but tickled for the service. Franz considered for a
while, and was undetermined what to do; at last he resolved on fronting
the adventure. "What is it to me," said he, "whether my back be broken
here on miserable straw, or by the Ritter Bronkhorst? The friction will
expel the fever which is coming on, and shake me tightly if I cannot dry
my clothes." He put spurs to his nag, and soon arrived before a
castle-gate of old Gothic architecture; knocked pretty plainly on the
iron door, and an equally distinct "Who's there?" resounded from within.
To the freezing passenger, the long entrance ceremonial of this
door-keeper precognition was as inconvenient, as are similar delays to
travellers who, at barriers and gates of towns, bewail or execrate the
despotism of guards and tollmen. Nevertheless he must submit to use and
wont, and patiently wait to see whether the philanthropist in the Castle
was disposed that night for cudgelling a guest, or would choose rather
to assign him a couch under the open canopy.

The possessor of this ancient tower had served, in his youth, as a stout
soldier in the Emperor's army, under the bold Georg von Fronsberg, and
led a troop of foot against the Venetians; had afterwards retired to
repose, and was now living on his property; where, to expiate the sins
of his campaigns, he employed himself in doing good works; in feeding
the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, lodging pilgrims, and
cudgelling his lodgers out of doors. For he was a rude wild son of war;
and could not lay aside his martial tone, though he had lived for many
years in silent peace. The traveller, who had now determined for good
quarters to submit to the custom of the house, had not waited long till
the bolts and locks began rattling within, and the creaking gate-leaves
moved asunder, moaning in doleful notes, as if to warn or to deplore the
entering stranger. Franz felt one cold shudder after the other running
down his back, as he passed in; nevertheless he was handsomely received;
some servants hastened to assist him in dismounting; speedily unbuckled
his luggage, took his steed to the stable, and its rider to a large
well-lighted chamber, where their master was in waiting.

The warlike aspect of this athletic gentleman,--who advanced to meet his
guest, and shook him by the hand so heartily, that he was like to shout
with pain, and bade him welcome with a Stentor's voice, as if the
stranger had been deaf, and seemed withal to be a person still in the
vigour of life, full of fire and strength,--put the timorous wanderer
into such a terror, that he could not hide his apprehensions, and began
to tremble over all his body.

"What ails you, my young master," asked the Ritter, with a voice of
thunder, "that you quiver like an aspen-leaf, and look as pale as if
Death had you by the throat?"

Franz plucked up a spirit; and considering that his shoulders had at all
events the score to pay, his poltroonery passed into a species of
audacity.

"Sir," replied he, "you perceive that the rain has soaked me, as if I
had swum across the Weser. Let me have my clothes dried or changed; and
get me, by way of luncheon, a well-spiced aleberry, to drive away the
ague-fit that is quaking through my nerves; then I shall come to heart,
in some degree."

"Good!" replied the Knight; "demand what you want; you are at home
here."

Franz made himself be served like a bashaw; and having nothing else but
currying to expect, he determined to deserve it; he bantered and
bullied, in his most imperious style, the servants that were waiting on
him; it comes all to one, thought he, in the long-run. "This waistcoat,"
said he, "would go round a tun; bring me one that fits a little better:
this slipper burns like a coal against my corns; pitch it over the
lists: this ruff is stiff as a plank, and throttles me like a halter;
bring one that is easier, and is not plastered with starch."

At this Bremish frankness, the landlord, far from showing any anger,
kept inciting his servants to go briskly through with their commands,
and calling them a pack of blockheads, who were fit to serve no
stranger. The table being furnished, the Ritter and his guest sat down
to it, and both heartily enjoyed their aleberry. The Ritter asked:
"Would you have aught farther, by way of supper?"

"Bring us what you have," said Franz, "that I may see how your kitchen
is provided."

Immediately appeared the Cook, and placed upon the table a repast with
which a duke might have been satisfied. Franz diligently fell to,
without waiting to be pressed. When he had satisfied himself: "Your
kitchen," said he, "is not ill-furnished, I perceive; if your cellar
corresponds to it, I shall almost praise your housekeeping."

Bronkhorst nodded to his Butler, who directly filled the cup of welcome
with common table wine, tasted, and presented it to his master, and the
latter cleared it at a draught to the health of his guest. Franz pledged
him honestly, and Bronkhorst asked: "Now, fair sir, what say you to the
wine?"

"I say," answered Franz, "that it is bad, if it is the best sort in your
catacombs; and good, if it is your meanest number."

"You are a judge," replied the Ritter: "Here, Butler, bring us of the
mother-cask."

The Butler put a stoup upon the table, as a sample, and Franz having
tasted it, said, "Ay, this is genuine last year's growth; we will stick
by this."

The Ritter made a vast pitcher of it be brought in; soon drank himself
into hilarity and glee beside his guest; began to talk of his campaigns,
how he had been encamped against the Venetians, had broken through their
barricado, and butchered the Italian squadrons, like a flock of sheep.
In this narrative he rose into such a warlike enthusiasm, that he hewed
down bottles and glasses, brandishing the carving-knife like a lance,
and in the fire of action came so near his messmate with it, that the
latter was in fright for his nose and ears.

It grew late, but no sleep came into the eyes of the Ritter; he seemed
to be in his proper element, when he got to speak of his Venetian
campaigns. The vivacity of his narration increased with every cup he
emptied; and Franz was afraid that this would prove the prologue to the
melodrama, in which he himself was to play the most interesting part. To
learn whether it was meant that he should lodge within the Castle, or
without, he demanded a bumper by way of good-night. Now, he thought, his
host would first force him to drink more wine, and if he refused, would,
under pretext of a drinking quarrel, send him forth, according to the
custom of the house, with the usual _viaticum_. Contrary to his
expectation, the request was granted without remonstrance; the Ritter
instantly cut asunder the thread of his narrative, and said: "Time will
wait on no one; more of it tomorrow!"

"Pardon me, Herr Ritter," answered Franz, "tomorrow by sunrise I must
over hill and dale; I am travelling a far journey to Brabant, and must
not linger here. So let me take leave of you tonight, that my departure
may not disturb you in the morning."

"Do your pleasure," said the Ritter; "but depart from this you shall
not, till I am out of the feathers, to refresh you with a bit of bread,
and a toothful of Dantzig, then attend you to the door, and dismiss you
according to the fashion of the house."

Franz needed no interpretation of these words. Willingly as he would
have excused his host this last civility, attendance to the door, the
latter seemed determined to abate no whit of the established ritual. He
ordered his servants to undress the stranger, and put him in the
guest's-bed; where Franz, once settled on elastic swan's down, felt
himself extremely snug, and enjoyed delicious rest; so that ere he fell
asleep, he owned to himself that, for such royal treatment, a moderate
bastinado was not too dear a price. Soon pleasant dreams came hovering
round his fancy. He found his charming Meta in a rosy grove, where she
was walking with her mother, plucking flowers. Instantly he hid himself
behind a thick-leaved hedge, that the rigorous duenna might not see him.
Again his imagination placed him in the alley, and by his looking-glass
he saw the snow-white hand of the maiden busied with her flowers; soon
he was sitting with her on the grass, and longing to declare his
heartfelt love to her, and the bashful shepherd found no words to do it
in. He would have dreamed till broad mid-day, had he not been roused by
the sonorous voice and clanking spurs of the Ritter, who, with the
earliest dawn, was holding a review of kitchen and cellar, ordering a
sufficient breakfast to be readied, and placing every servant at his
post, to be at hand when the guest should awake, to dress him, and wait
upon him.

It cost the happy dreamer no small struggling to forsake his safe and
hospitable bed. He rolled to this side and to that; but the pealing
voice of the worshipful Knight came heavy on his heart; and dally as he
might, the sour apple must at last be bit. So he rose from his down; and
immediately a dozen hands were busy dressing him. The Ritter led him
into the parlour, where a small well-furnished table waited them; but
now, when the hour of reckoning had arrived, the traveller's appetite
was gone. The host endeavoured to encourage him. "Why do you not get to?
Come, take somewhat for the raw foggy morning."

"Herr Ritter," answered Franz, "my stomach is still too full of your
supper; but my pockets are empty; these I may fill for the hunger that
is to come."

With this he began stoutly cramming, and stowed himself with the
daintiest and best that was transportable, till all his pockets were
bursting. Then, observing that his horse, well curried and equipt, was
led past, he took a dram of Dantzig for good-b'ye, in the thought that
this would be the watch-word for his host to catch him by the neck, and
exercise his household privileges.

But, to his astonishment, the Ritter shook him kindly by the hand, as at
his first entrance, wished him luck by the way, and the bolted door was
thrown open. He loitered not in putting spurs to his nag; and, tip! tap!
he was without the gate, and no hair of him harmed.

A heavy stone was lifted from his heart as he found himself in safety,
and saw that he had got away with a whole skin. He could not understand
how the landlord had trusted him the shot, which, as he imagined, must
have run pretty high on the chalk; and he embraced with warm love the
hospitable man, whose club-law arm he had so much dreaded; and he felt a
strong desire to search out, at the fountain-head, the reason or
unreason of the ill report which had affrighted him. Accordingly he
turned his horse, and cantered back. The Knight was still standing in
the gate, and descanting with his servants, for the forwarding of the
science of horse-flesh, on the breed, shape and character of the nag,
and his hard pace: he supposed the stranger must have missed something
in his travelling gear, and he already looked askance at his servants
for such negligence.

"What is it, young master," cried he, "that makes you turn again, when
you were for proceeding?"

"Ah! yet a word, valiant Knight," cried the traveller. "An ill report
has gone abroad, that injures your name and breeding. It is said that
you treat every stranger that calls upon you with your best; and then,
when he leaves you, let him feel the weight of your strong fists. This
story I have credited, and spared nothing to deserve my due from you. I
thought within myself, His worship will abate me nothing; I will abate
him as little. But now you let me go, without strife or peril; and that
is what surprises me. Pray tell me, is there any shadow of foundation
for the thing; or shall I call the foolish chatter lies next time I hear
it?"

The Ritter answered: "Report has nowise told you lies; there is no
saying that circulates among the people but contains in it some grain of
truth. Let me tell you accurately how the matter stands. I lodge every
stranger that comes beneath my roof, and divide my morsel with him, for
the love of God. But I am a plain German man, of the old cut and
fashion; speak as it lies about my heart, and require that my guest also
should be hearty and confiding; should enjoy with me what I have, and
tell frankly what he wants. Now, there is a sort of people that vex me
with all manner of grimaces; that banter me with smirkings, and bows,
and crouchings; put all their words to the torture; make a deal of talk
without sense or salt; think they will cozen me with smooth speeches;
behave at dinner as women at a christening. If I say, Help yourself! out
of reverence, they pick you a fraction from the plate which I would not
offer to my dog: if I say, Your health! they scarcely wet their lips
from the full cup, as if they set God's gifts at naught. Now, when the
sorry rabble carry things too far with me, and I cannot, for the soul of
me, know what they would be at, I get into a rage at last, and use my
household privilege; catch the noodle by the spall, thrash him
sufficiently, and pack him out of doors. This is the use and wont with
me, and I do so with every guest that plagues me with these freaks. But
a man of your stamp is always welcome: you told me plump out in plain
German what you thought, as is the fashion with the Bremers. Call on me
boldly again, if your road lead you hither. And so, God be with you."

Franz now moved on, with a joyful humour, towards Antwerp; and he wished
that he might everywhere find such a reception as he had met with from
the Ritter Eberhard Bronkhorst. On approaching the ancient queen of the
Flemish cities, the sail of his hope was swelled by a propitious breeze.
Riches and superfluity met him in every street; and it seemed as if
scarcity and want had been exiled from the busy town. In all
probability, thought he, there must be many of my father's debtors who
have risen again, and will gladly make me full payment whenever I
substantiate my claims. After resting for a while from his fatigues, he
set about obtaining, in the inn where he was quartered, some preliminary
knowledge of the situation of his debtors.

"How stands it with Peter Martens?" inquired he one day of his
companions at table; "is he still living, and doing much business?"

"Peter Martens is a warm man," answered one of the party; "has a brisk
commission trade, and draws good profit from it."

"Is Fabian van Plürs still in good circumstances?"

"O! there is no end to Fabian's wealth. He is a Councillor; his woollen
manufactories are thriving incredibly."

"Has Jonathan Frischkier good custom in his trade?"

"Ah! Jonathan were now a brisk fellow, had not Kaiser Max let the French
chouse him out of his Princess.[6] Jonathan had got the furnishing of
the lace for the bride's dress; but the Kaiser has left poor Frischkier
in the lurch, as the bride has left himself. If you have a fair one,
whom you would remember with a bit of lace, he will give it you at
half-price."

     [6] Anne of Brittany.

"Is the firm Op de Bütekant still standing, or has it sunk?"

"There was a crack in the beams there some years ago; but the Spanish
caravelles have put a new prop to it, and it now holds fast."

Franz inquired about several other merchants who were on his list; found
that most of them, though in his father's time they had "failed," were
now standing firmly on their legs; and inferred from this, that a
judicious bankruptcy has, from of old, been the mine of future gains.
This intelligence refreshed him mightily: he hastened to put his
documents in order, and submit them to the proper parties. But with the
Antwerpers, he fared as his itinerating countrymen do with shopkeepers
in the German towns: they find everywhere a friendly welcome at their
first appearance, but are looked upon with cheerfulness nowhere when
they come collecting debts. Some would have nothing to do with these
former sins; and were of opinion, that by the tender of the legal
five-per-cent composition they had been entirely abolished: it was the
creditor's fault if he had not accepted payment in time. Others could
not recollect any Melchior of Bremen; opened their Infallible Books;
found no debtor-entry marked for this unknown name. Others, again,
brought out a strong counter-reckoning; and three days had not passed
till Franz was sitting in the Debtors' Ward, to answer for his father's
credit, not to depart till he had paid the uttermost farthing.

These were not the best prospects for the young man, who lad set his
hope and trust upon the Antwerp patrons of his fortune, and now saw the
fair soap-bubble vanish quite away. In his strait confinement, he felt
himself in the condition of a soul in Purgatory, now that his skiff had
run ashore and gone to pieces, in the middle of the haven where he
thought to find security. Every thought of Meta was as a thorn in his
heart; there was now no shadow of a possibility, that from the whirlpool
which had sunk him, he could ever rise, and stretch out his hand to her;
nor, suppose he should get his head above water, was it in poor Meta's
power to pull him on dry land. He fell into a sullen desperation; had no
wish but to die speedily, and give his woes the slip at once; and, in
fact, he did attempt to kill himself by starvation. But this is a sort
of death which is not at the beck of every one, so ready as the shrunk
Pomponius Atticus found it, when his digestive apparatus had already
struck work. A sound peptic stomach does not yield so tamely to the
precepts of the head or heart. After the moribund debtor had abstained
two days from food, a ravenous hunger suddenly usurped the government of
his will, and performed, of its own authority, all the operations which,
in other cases, are directed by the mind. It ordered his hand to seize
the spoon, his mouth to receive the victual, his inferior maxillary jaw
to get in motion, and itself accomplished the usual functions of
digestion, unordered. Thus did this last resolve make shipwreck, on a
hard bread-crust; for, in the seven-and-twentieth year of life, it has
a heroism connected with it, which in the seven-and-seventieth is
entirely gone.

At bottom, it was not the object of the barbarous Antwerpers to squeeze
money from the pretended debtor, but only to pay him none, as his
demands were not admitted to be liquid. Whether it were, then, that the
public Prayer in Bremen had in truth a little virtue, or that the
supposed creditors were not desirous of supporting a superfluous boarder
for life, true it is, that after the lapse of three months Franz was
delivered from his imprisonment, under the condition of leaving the city
within four-and-twenty hours, and never again setting foot on the soil
and territory of Antwerp. At the same time, he received five crowns for
travelling expenses from the faithful hands of Justice, which had taken
charge of his horse and luggage, and conscientiously balanced the
produce of the same against judicial and curatory expenses.

With heavy-laden heart, in the humblest mood, with his staff in his
hand, he left the rich city, into which he had ridden some time ago with
high-soaring hopes. Broken down, and undetermined what to do, or rather
altogether without thought, he plodded through the streets to the
nearest gate, not minding whither the road into which chance conducted
him might lead. He saluted no traveller, he asked for no inn, except
when fatigue or hunger forced him to lift up his eyes, and look around
for some church-spire, or sign of human habitation, when he needed human
aid. Many days he had wandered on, as if unconsciously; and a secret
instinct had still, by means of his uncrazed feet, led him right forward
on the way to home; when, all at once, he awoke as from an oppressive
dream, and perceived on what road he was travelling.

He halted instantly, to consider whether he should proceed or turn back.
Shame and confusion took possession of his soul, when he thought of
skulking about in his native town as a beggar, branded with the mark of
contempt, and claiming the charitable help of his townsmen, whom of old
he had eclipsed by his wealth and magnificence. And how in this form
could he present himself before his fair Meta, without disgracing the
choice of her heart? He did not leave his fancy time to finish this
doleful picture; but wheeled about to take the other road, as hastily as
if he had been standing even then at the gate of Bremen, and the ragged
apprentices had been assembling to accompany him with jibes and mockery
through the streets. His purpose was formed: he would make for the
nearest seaport in the Netherlands; engage as sailor in a Spanish ship,
to work his passage to the new world; and not return to his country,
till in the Peruvian land of gold he should have regained the wealth,
which he had squandered so heedlessly, before he knew the worth of
money. In the shaping of this new plan, it is true, the fair Meta fell
so far into the background, that even to the sharpest prophetic eye she
could only hover as a faint shadow in the distance; yet the wandering
projector pleased himself with thinking that she was again interwoven
with the scheme of his life; and he took large steps, as if by this
rapidity he meant to reach her so much the sooner.

Already he was on the Flemish soil once more; and found himself at
sunset not far from Rheinberg, in a little hamlet, Rummelsburg by name,
which has since, in the Thirty-Years War, been utterly destroyed. A
caravan of carriers from Lyke had already filled the inn, so that Mine
Host had no room left, and referred him to the next town; the rather
that he did not draw too flattering a presage from his present vagabond
physiognomy, and held him to be a thieves' purveyor, who had views upon
the Lyke carriers. He was forced, notwithstanding his excessive
weariness, to gird himself for march, and again to take his bundle on
his back.

As in retiring, he was muttering between his teeth some bitter
complaints and curses of the Landlord's hardness of heart, the latter
seemed to take some pity on the forlorn wayfarer, and called after him,
from the door: "Stay, neighbour, let me speak to you: if you wish to
rest here, I can accommodate you after all. In that Castle there are
empty rooms enow, if they be not too lonely; it is not inhabited, and I
have got the keys." Franz accepted the proposal with joy, praised it as
a deed of mercy, and requested only shelter and a supper, were it in a
castle or a cottage. Mine Host, however, was privily a rogue, whom it
had galled to hear the stranger drop some half-audible contumelies
against him, and meant to be avenged on him, by a Hobgoblin that
inhabited the old fortress, and had many long years before expelled the
owners.

The Castle lay hard by the hamlet, on a steep rock, right opposite the
inn, from which it was divided merely by the highway, and a little
gurgling brook. The situation being so agreeable, the edifice was still
kept in repair, and well provided with all sorts of house-gear; for it
served the owner as a hunting-lodge, where he frequently caroused all
day; and so soon as the stars began to twinkle in the sky, retired with
his whole retinue, to escape the mischief of the Ghost, who rioted about
in it the whole night over, but by day gave no disturbance. Unpleasant
as the owner felt this spoiling of his mansion by a bugbear, the
nocturnal sprite was not without advantages, for the great security it
gave from thieves. The Count could have appointed no trustier or more
watchful keeper over the Castle, than this same Spectre, for the rashest
troop of robbers never ventured to approach its station. Accordingly he
knew of no safer place for laying up his valuables, than this old tower,
in the hamlet of Rummelsburg, near Rheinberg.

The sunshine had sunk, the dark night was coming heavily on, when Franz,
with a lantern in his hand, proceeded to the castle-gate, under the
guidance of Mine Host, who carried in his hand a basket of victuals,
with a flask of wine, which he said should not be marked against him. He
had also taken along with him a pair of candlesticks, and two
wax-lights; for in the whole Castle there was neither lamp nor taper, as
no one ever stayed in it after twilight. In the way, Franz noticed the
creaking heavy-laden basket, and the wax-lights, which he thought he
should not need, and yet must pay for. Therefore he said: "What is this
superfluity and waste, as at a banquet? The light in the lantern is
enough to see with, till I go to bed; and when I awake, the sun will be
high enough, for I am tired completely, and shall sleep with both eyes."

"I will not hide from you," replied the Landlord, "that a story runs of
there being mischief in the Castle, and a Goblin that frequents it. You,
however, need not let the thing disturb you; we are near enough, you
see, for you to call us, should you meet with aught unnatural; I and my
folks will be at your hand in a twinkling, to assist you. Down in the
house there we keep astir all night through, some one is always moving.
I have lived here these thirty years; yet I cannot say that I have ever
seen aught. If there be now and then a little hurly-burlying at nights,
it is nothing but cats and martins rummaging about the granary. As a
precaution, I have provided you with candles: the night is no friend of
man; and the tapers are consecrated, so that sprites, if there be such
in the Castle, will avoid their shine."

It was no lying in Mine Host to say that he had never seen anything of
spectres in the Castle; for by night he had taken special care not once
to set foot in it; and by day the Goblin did not come to sight. In the
present case, too, the traitor would not risk himself across the border.
After opening the door, he handed Franz the basket, directed him what
way to go, and wished him good-night. Franz entered the lobby without
anxiety or fear; believing the ghost-story to be empty tattle, or a
distorted tradition of some real occurrence in the place, which idle
fancy had shaped into an unnatural adventure. He remembered the stout
Ritter Eberhard Bronkhorst, from whose heavy arm he had apprehended such
maltreatment, and with whom, notwithstanding, he had found so hospitable
a reception. On this ground he had laid it down as a rule deduced from
his travelling experiences, when he heard any common rumour, to believe
exactly the reverse, and left the grain of truth, which, in the opinion
of the wise Knight, always lies in such reports, entirely out of sight.

Pursuant to Mine Host's direction, he ascended the winding stone stair;
and reached a bolted door, which he opened with his key. A long dark
gallery, where his footsteps resounded, led him into a large hall, and
from this, a side-door, into a suite of apartments, richly provided with
all furniture for decoration or convenience. Out of these he chose the
room which had the friendliest aspect, where he found a well-pillowed
bed; and from the window could look right down upon the inn, and catch
every loud word that was spoken there. He lit his wax-tapers, furnished
his table, and feasted with the commodiousness and relish of an
Otaheitean noble. The big-bellied flask was an antidote to thirst. So
long as his teeth were in full occupation, he had no time to think of
the reported devilry in the Castle. If aught now and then made a stir in
the distance, and Fear called to him, "Hark! hark! there comes the
Goblin;" Courage answered: "Stuff! it is cats and martins bickering and
caterwauling." But in the digestive half-hour after meat, when the sixth
sense, that of hunger and thirst, no longer occupied the soul, she
directed her attention from the other five exclusively upon the sense of
hearing; and already Fear was whispering three timid thoughts into the
listener's ear, before Courage had time to answer once.

As the first resource, he locked the door, and bolted it; made his
retreat to the walled seat in the vault of the window. He opened this,
and to dissipate his thoughts a little, looked out on the spangled sky,
gazed at the corroded moon, and counted how often the stars snuffed
themselves. On the road beneath him all was void; and in spite of the
pretended nightly bustle in the inn, the doors were shut, the lights
out, and everything as still as in a sepulchre. On the other hand, the
watchman blew his horn, making his "List, gentlemen!" sound over all the
hamlet; and for the composure of the timorous astronomer, who still kept
feasting his eyes on the splendour of the stars, uplifted a rusty
evening-hymn right under his window; so that Franz might easily have
carried on a conversation with him, which, for the sake of company, he
would willingly have done, had he in the least expected that the
watchman would make answer to him.

In a populous city, in the middle of a numerous household, where there
is a hubbub equal to that of a bee-hive, it may form a pleasant
entertainment for the thinker to philosophise on Solitude, to decorate
her as the loveliest playmate of the human spirit, to view her under all
her advantageous aspects, and long for her enjoyment as for hidden
treasure. But in scenes where she is no exotic, in the isle of Juan
Fernandez, where a solitary eremite, escaped from shipwreck, lives with
her through long years; or in the dreary night-time, in a deep wood, or
in an old uninhabited castle, where empty walls and vaults awaken
horror, and nothing breathes of life, but the moping owl in the ruinous
turret; there, in good sooth, she is not the most agreeable companion
for the timid anchorite that has to pass his time in her abode,
especially if he is every moment looking for the entrance of a spectre
to augment the party. In such a case it may easily chance that a window
conversation with the watchman shall afford a richer entertainment for
the spirit and the heart, than a reading of the most attractive eulogy
on solitude. If Ritter Zimmermann had been in Franz's place, in the
castle of Rummelsburg, on the Westphalian marches, he would doubtless in
this position have struck out the fundamental topics of as interesting a
treatise on _Society_, as, inspired to all appearance by the irksomeness
of some ceremonious assembly, he has poured out from the fulness of his
heart in praise of _Solitude_.

Midnight is the hour at which the world of spirits acquires activity and
life, when hebetated animal nature lies entombed in deep slumber. Franz
inclined getting through this critical hour in sleep rather than awake;
so he closed his window, went the rounds of his room once more, spying
every nook and crevice, to see whether all was safe and earthly; snuffed
the lights to make them burn clearer; and without undressing or
delaying, threw himself upon his bed, with which his wearied person felt
unusual satisfaction. Yet he could not get asleep so fast as he wished.
A slight palpitation at the heart, which he ascribed to a tumult in the
blood, arising from the sultriness of the day, kept him waking for a
while; and he failed not to employ this respite in offering up such a
pithy evening prayer as he had not prayed for many years. This produced
the usual effect, that he softly fell asleep while saying it.

After about an hour, as he supposed, he started up with a sudden terror;
a thing not at all surprising when there is tumult in the blood. He was
broad awake: he listened whether all was quiet, and heard nothing but
the clock strike twelve; a piece of news which the watchman forthwith
communicated to the hamlet in doleful recitative. Franz listened for a
while, turned on the other side, and was again about to sleep, when he
caught, as it were, the sound of a door grating in the distance, and
immediately it shut with a stifled bang. "Alake! alake!" bawled Fright
into his ear; "this is the Ghost in very deed!"--"'Tis nothing but the
wind," said Courage manfully. But quickly it came nearer, nearer, like
the sound of heavy footsteps. Clink here, clink there, as if a criminal
were rattling his irons, or as if the porter were walking about the
Castle with his bunch of keys. Alas, here was no wind business! Courage
held his peace; and quaking Fear drove all the blood to the heart, and
made it thump like a smith's fore-hammer.

The thing was now beyond jesting. If Fear would still have let Courage
get a word, the latter would have put the terror-struck watcher in mind
of his subsidiary treaty with Mine Host, and incited him to claim the
stipulated assistance loudly from the window; but for this there was a
want of proper resolution. The quaking Franz had recourse to the
bed-clothes, the last fortress of the timorous, and drew them close over
his ears, as Bird Ostrich sticks his head in the grass, when he can no
longer escape the huntsman. Outside it came along, door up, door to,
with hideous uproar; and at last it reached the bed-room. It jerked
sharply at the lock, tried several keys till it found the right one; yet
the bar still held the door, till a bounce like a thunder-clap made bolt
and rivet start, and threw it wide open. Now stalked in a long lean man,
with a black beard, in ancient garb, and with a gloomy countenance, his
eyebrows hanging down in deep earnestness from his brow. Over his right
shoulder he had a scarlet cloak; and on his head he wore a peaked hat.
With a heavy step he walked thrice in silence up and down the chamber;
looked at the consecrated tapers, and snuffed them that they might burn
brighter. Then he threw aside his cloak, girded on a scissor-pouch which
he had under it, produced a set of shaving-tackle, and immediately began
to whet a sharp razor on the broad strap which he wore at his girdle.

Franz perspired in mortal agony under his coverlet; recommended himself
to the keeping of the Virgin; and anxiously speculated on the object of
this manoeuvre, not knowing whether it was meant for his throat or his
beard. To his comfort, the Goblin poured some water from a silver flask
into a basin of silver, and with his skinny hand lathered the soap into
light foam; then set a chair, and beckoned with a solemn look to the
quaking looker-on to come forth from his recess.

Against so pertinent a sign, remonstrance was as bootless as it is
against the rigorous commands of the Grand Turk, when he transmits an
exiled vizier to the Angel of Death, the Capichi Bashi with the Silken
Cord, to take delivery of his head. The most rational procedure that can
be adopted in this critical case, is to comply with necessity, put a
good face on a bad business, and with stoical composure let one's throat
be noosed. Franz honoured the Spectre's order; the coverlet began to
move, he sprang sharply from his couch, and took the place pointed out
to him on the seat. However strange this quick transition from the
uttermost terror to the boldest resolution may appear, I doubt not but
Moritz in his _Psychological Journal_ could explain the matter till it
seemed quite natural.

Immediately the Goblin Barber tied the towel about his shivering
customer; seized the comb and scissors, and clipped off his hair and
beard. Then he soaped him scientifically, first the beard, next the
eyebrows, at last the temples and the hind-head; and shaved him from
throat to nape as smooth and bald as a Death's-head. This operation
finished, he washed his head, dried it clean, made his bow, and
buttoned-up his scissor-pouch; wrapped himself in his scarlet mantle,
and made for departing. The consecrated tapers had burnt with an
exquisite brightness through the whole transaction; and Franz, by the
light of them, perceived in the mirror that the shaver had changed him
into a Chinese pagoda. In secret he heartily deplored the loss of his
fair brown locks; yet now took fresh breath, as he observed that with
this sacrifice the account was settled, and the Ghost had no more power
over him.

So it was in fact; Redcloak went towards the door, silently as he had
entered, without salutation or good-b'ye; and seemed entirely the
contrast of his talkative guild-brethren. But scarcely was he gone three
steps, when he paused, looked round with a mournful expression at his
well-served customer, and stroked the flat of his hand over his black
bushy beard. He did the same a second time; and again, just as he was in
the act of stepping out at the door. A thought struck Franz that the
Spectre wanted something; and a rapid combination of ideas suggested,
that perhaps he was expecting the very service he himself had just
performed.

As the Ghost, notwithstanding his rueful look, seemed more disposed for
banter than for seriousness, and had played his guest a scurvy trick,
not done him any real injury, the panic of the latter had now almost
subsided. So he ventured the experiment, and beckoned to the Ghost to
take the seat from which he had himself just risen. The Goblin instantly
obeyed, threw off his cloak, laid his barber tackle on the table, and
placed himself in the chair, in the posture of a man that wishes to be
shaved. Franz carefully observed the same procedure which the Spectre
had observed to him, clipped his beard with the scissors, cropt away his
hair, lathered his whole scalp, and the Ghost all the while sat steady
as a wig-block. The awkward journeyman came ill at handling the razor:
he had never had another in his hand; and he shore the beard right
against the hair; whereat the Goblin made as strange grimaces as
Erasmus's Ape, when imitating its master's shaving. Nor was the
unpractised bungler himself well at ease, and he thought more than once
of the sage aphorism, _What is not thy trade make not thy business_; yet
he struggled through the task, the best way he could, and scraped the
Ghost as bald as he himself was.

Hitherto the scene between the Spectre and the traveller had been played
pantomimically; the action now became dramatic. "Stranger," said the
Ghost, "accept my thanks for the service thou hast done me. By thee I am
delivered from the long imprisonment, which has chained me for three
hundred years within these walls; to which my departed soul was doomed,
till a mortal hand should consent to retaliate on me what I practised on
others in my lifetime.

"Know that of old a reckless scorner dwelt within this tower, who took
his sport on priests as well as laics. Count Hardman, such his name, was
no philanthropist, acknowledged no superior and no law, but practised
vain caprice and waggery, regarding not the sacredness of hospitable
rights: the wanderer who came beneath his roof, the needy man who asked
a charitable alms of him, he never sent away unvisited by wicked joke. I
was his Castle Barber, still a willing instrument, and did whatever
pleased him. Many a pious pilgrim, journeying past us, I allured with
friendly speeches to the hall; prepared the bath for him, and when he
thought to take good comfort, shaved him smooth and bald, and packed him
out of doors. Then would Count Hardman, looking from the window, see
with pleasure how the foxes' whelps of children gathered from the hamlet
to assail the outcast, and to cry as once their fellows to Elisha:
'Baldhead! Baldhead!' In this the scoffer took his pleasure, laughing
with a devilish joy, till he would hold his pot-paunch, and his eyes ran
down with water.

"Once came a saintly man, from foreign lands; he carried, like a
penitent, a heavy cross upon his shoulder, and had stamped five
nail-marks on his hands, and feet, and side; upon his head there was a
ring of hair like to the Crown of Thorns. He called upon us here,
requesting water for his feet, and a small crust of bread. Immediately I
took him to the bath, to serve him in my common way; respected not the
sacred ring, but shore it clean from off him. Then the pious pilgrim
spoke a heavy malison upon me: 'Know, accursed man, that when thou
diest, Heaven, and Hell, and Purgatory's iron gate, are shut against thy
soul. As goblin it shall rage within these walls, till unrequired,
unbid, a traveller come and exercise retaliation on thee.'

"That hour I sickened, and the marrow in my bones dried up; I faded like
a shadow. My spirit left the wasted carcass, and was exiled to this
Castle, as the saint had doomed it. In vain I struggled for deliverance
from the torturing bonds that fettered me to Earth; for thou must know,
that when the soul forsakes her clay, she panteth for her place of rest,
and this sick longing spins her years to æons, while in foreign element
she languishes for home. Now self-tormenting, I pursued the mournful
occupation I had followed in my lifetime. Alas! my uproar soon made
desolate this house! But seldom came a pilgrim here to lodge. And though
I treated all like thee, no one would understand me, and perform, as
thou, the service which has freed my soul from bondage. Henceforth shall
no hobgoblin wander in this Castle; I return to my long-wished-for rest.
And now, young stranger, once again my thanks, that thou hast loosed me!
Were I keeper of deep-hidden treasures, they were thine; but wealth in
life was not my lot, nor in this Castle lies there any cash entombed.
Yet mark my counsel. Tarry here till beard and locks again shall cover
chin and scalp; then turn thee homewards to thy native town; and on the
Weser-bridge of Bremen, at the time when day and night in Autumn are
alike, wait for a Friend, who there will meet thee, who will tell thee
what to do, that it be well with thee on Earth. If from the golden horn
of plenty, blessing and abundance flow to thee, then think of me; and
ever as the day thou freedst me from the curse comes round, cause for my
soul's repose three masses to be said. Now fare thee well. I go, no more
returning."[7]

     [7] I know not whether the reader has observed that our Author
     makes the Spectre speak in _iambics_; a whim which here and there
     comes over him in other tales also.--WIELAND.

With these words the Ghost, having by his copiousness of talk
satisfactorily attested his former existence as court-barber in the
Castle of Rummelsburg, vanished into air, and left his deliverer full of
wonder at the strange adventure. He stood for a long while motionless;
in doubt whether the whole matter had actually happened, or an unquiet
dream had deluded his senses; but his bald head convinced him that here
had been a real occurrence. He returned to bed, and slept, after the
fright he had undergone, till the hour of noon. The treacherous Landlord
had been watching since morning, when the traveller with the scalp was
to come forth, that he might receive him with jibing speeches under
pretext of astonishment at his nocturnal adventure. But as the stranger
loitered too long, and mid-day was approaching, the affair became
serious; and Mine Host began to dread that the Goblin might have treated
his guest a little harshly, have beaten him to a jelly perhaps, or so
frightened him that he had died of terror; and to carry his wanton
revenge to such a length as this had not been his intention. He
therefore rang his people together, hastened out with man and maid to
the tower, and reached the door of the apartment where he had observed
the light on the previous evening. He found an unknown key in the lock;
but the door was barred within; for after the disappearance of the
Goblin, Franz had again secured it. He knocked with a perturbed
violence, till the Seven Sleepers themselves would have awoke at the
din. Franz started up, and thought in his first confusion that the Ghost
was again standing at the door, to favour him with another call. But
hearing Mine Host's voice, who required nothing more but that his guest
would give some sign of life, he gathered himself up and opened the
room.

With seeming horror at the sight of him, Mine Host, striking his hands
together, exclaimed: "By Heaven and all the saints! Redcloak" (by this
name the Ghost was known among them) "_has_ been here, and has shaved
you bald as a block! Now, it is clear as day that the old story is no
fable. But tell me how looked the Goblin: what did he say to you? what
did he do?"

Franz, who had now seen through the questioner, made answer: "The Goblin
looked like a man in a red cloak; what he did is not hidden from you,
and what he said I well remember: 'Stranger,' said he, 'trust no
innkeeper who is a Turk in grain. What would befall thee here he knew.
Be wise and happy. I withdraw from this my ancient dwelling, for my time
is run. Henceforth no goblin riots here; I now become a silent Incubus,
to plague the Landlord; nip him, tweak him, harass him, unless the Turk
do expiate his sin; do freely give thee prog and lodging till brown
locks again shall cluster round thy head.'"[8]

     [8] Here too, on the Spectre's score, Franz makes extempore
     _iambics_.--WIELAND.

The Landlord shuddered at these words, cut a large cross in the air
before him, vowed by the Holy Virgin to give the traveller free board so
long as he liked to continue, led him over to his house, and treated him
with the best. By this adventure, Franz had well-nigh got the reputation
of a conjuror, as the spirit thenceforth never once showed face. He
often passed the night in the tower; and a desperado of the village once
kept him company, without having beard or scalp disturbed. The owner of
the place, having learned that Redcloak no longer walked in Rummelsburg,
was, of course, delighted at the news, and ordered that the stranger,
who, as he supposed, had laid him, should be well taken care of.

By the time when the clusters were beginning to be coloured on the vine,
and the advancing autumn reddened the apples, Franz's brown locks were
again curling over his temples, and he girded up his knapsack; for all
his thoughts and meditations were turned upon the Weser-bridge, to seek
the Friend, who, at the behest of the Goblin Barber, was to direct him
how to make his fortune. When about taking leave of Mine Host, that
charitable person led from his stable a horse well saddled and equipt,
which the owner of the Castle had presented to the stranger, for having
made his house again habitable; nor had the Count forgot to send a
sufficient purse along with it, to bear its travelling charges; and so
Franz came riding back into his native city, brisk and light of heart,
as he had ridden out of it twelve months ago. He sought out his old
quarters in the alley, but kept himself quite still and retired; only
inquiring underhand how matters stood with the fair Meta, whether she
was still alive and unwedded. To this inquiry he received a satisfactory
answer, and contented himself with it in the mean while; for, till his
fate were decided, he would not risk appearing in her sight, or making
known to her his arrival in Bremen.

With unspeakable longing, he waited the equinox; his impatience made
every intervening day a year. At last the long-wished-for term appeared.
The night before, he could not close an eye, for thinking of the wonders
that were coming. The blood was whirling and beating in his arteries, as
it had done at the Castle of Rummelsburg, when he lay in expectation of
his spectre visitant. To be sure of not missing his expected Friend, he
rose by daybreak, and proceeded with the earliest dawn to the
Weser-bridge, which as yet stood empty and untrod by passengers. He
walked along it several times in solitude, with that presentiment of
coming gladness, which includes in it the real enjoyment of all
terrestrial felicity; for it is not the attainment of our wishes, but
the undoubted hope of attaining them, which offers to the human soul the
full measure of highest and most heartfelt satisfaction. He formed many
projects as to how he should present himself to his beloved Meta, when
his looked-for happiness should have arrived; whether it would be better
to appear before her in full splendour, or to mount from his former
darkness with the first gleam of morning radiance, and discover to her
by degrees the change in his condition. Curiosity, moreover, put a
thousand questions to Reason in regard to the adventure. Who can the
Friend be that is to meet me on the Weser-bridge? Will it be one of my
old acquaintances, by whom, since my ruin, I have been entirely
forgotten? How will he pave the way to me for happiness? And will this
way be short or long, easy or toilsome? To the whole of which Reason,
in spite of all her thinking and speculating, answered not a word.

In about an hour, the Bridge began to get awake; there was riding,
driving, walking to and fro on it; and much commercial ware passing this
way and that. The usual day-guard of beggars and importunate persons
also by degrees took up this post, so favourable for their trade, to
levy contributions on the public benevolence; for of poor-houses and
work-houses, the wisdom of the legislature had as yet formed no scheme.
The first of the tattered cohort that applied for alms to the jovial
promenader, from whose eyes gay hope laughed forth, was a discharged
soldier, provided with the military badge of a timber leg, which had
been lent him, seeing he had fought so stoutly in former days for his
native country, as the recompense of his valour, with the privilege of
begging where he pleased; and who now, in the capacity of physiognomist,
pursued the study of man upon the Weser-bridge, with such success, that
he very seldom failed in his attempts for charity. Nor did his
exploratory glance in anywise mislead him in the present instance; for
Franz, in the joy of his heart, threw a white engel-groschen into the
cripple's hat.

During the morning hours, when none but the laborious artisan is busy,
and the more exalted townsman still lies in sluggish rest, he scarcely
looked for his promised Friend; he expected him in the higher classes,
and took little notice of the present passengers. About the
council-hour, however, when the Proceres of Bremen were driving past to
the hall, in their gorgeous robes of office, and about exchange-time, he
was all eye and ear; he spied the passengers from afar; and when a right
man came along the bridge, his blood began to flutter, and he thought
here was the creator of his fortune. Meanwhile hour after hour passed
on; the sun rose high; ere long the noontide brought a pause in
business; the rushing crowd faded away; and still the expected Friend
appeared not. Franz now walked up and down the Bridge quite alone; had
no society in view but the beggars, who were serving out their cold
collations, without moving from the place. He made no scruple to do the
same; and, not being furnished with provisions, he purchased some fruit,
and took his dinner _inter ambulandum_.

The whole club that was dining on the Bridge had remarked the young man,
watching here from early morning till noon, without addressing any one,
or doing any sort of business. They held him to be a lounger; and
though all of them had tasted his bounty, he did not escape their
critical remarks. In jest, they had named him the Bridge-bailiff. The
physiognomist with the timber-toe, however, noticed that his countenance
was not now so gay as in the morning; he appeared to be reflecting
earnestly on something; he had drawn his hat close over his face; his
movement was slow and thoughtful; he had nibbled at an apple-rind for
some time, without seeming to be conscious that he was doing so. From
this appearance of affairs, the man-spier thought he might extract some
profit; therefore he put his wooden and his living leg in motion, and
stilted off to the other end of the Bridge, and lay in wait for the
thinker, that he might assail him, under the appearance of a new
arrival, for a fresh alms. This invention prospered to the full: the
musing philosopher gave no heed to the mendicant, put his hand into his
pocket mechanically, and threw a six-groat piece into the fellow's hat,
to be rid of him.

In the afternoon, a thousand new faces once more came abroad. The
watcher was now tired of his unknown Friend's delaying, yet hope still
kept his attention on the stretch. He stept into the view of every
passenger, hoped that one of them would clasp him in his arms; but all
proceeded coldly on their way; the most did not observe him at all, and
few returned his salute with a slight nod. The sun was already verging
to decline, the shadows were becoming longer, the crowd upon the Bridge
diminished; and the beggar-piquet by degrees drew back into their
barracks in the Mattenburg. A deep sadness sank upon the hopeless Franz,
when he saw his expectation mocked, and the lordly prospect which had
lain before him in the morning vanish from his eyes at evening. He fell
into a sort of sulky desperation; was on the point of springing over the
parapet, and dashing himself down from the Bridge into the river. But
the thought of Meta kept him back, and induced him to postpone his
purpose till he had seen her yet once more. He resolved to watch next
day when she should go to church, for the last time to drink delight
from her looks, and then forthwith to still his warm love forever in the
cold stream of the Weser.

While about to leave the Bridge, he was met by the invalided pikeman
with the wooden leg, who, for pastime, had been making many speculations
as to what could be the young man's object, that had made him watch upon
the Bridge from dawn to darkness. He himself had lingered beyond his
usual time, that he might wait him out; but as the matter hung too long
upon the pegs, curiosity incited him to turn to the youth himself, and
question him respecting it.

"No offence, young gentleman," said he: "allow me to ask you a
question."

Franz, who was not in a very talking humour, and was now meeting, from
the mouth of a cripple, the address which he had looked for with such
longing from a friend, answered rather testily: "Well, then, what is it?
Speak, old graybeard!"

"We two," said the other, "were the first upon the Bridge today, and
now, you see, we are the last. As to me and others of my kidney, it is
our vocation brings us hither, our trade of alms-gathering; but for you,
in sooth you are not of our guild; yet you have watched here the whole
blessed day. Now I pray you, tell me, if it is not a secret, what it is
that brings you hither; or what stone is lying on your heart, that you
wished to roll away."

"What good were it to thee, old blade," said Franz bitterly, "to know
where the shoe pinches me, or what concern is lying on my heart? It will
give thee small care."

"Sir, I have a kind wish towards you, because you opened your hand to
me, and twice gave me alms, for which God reward you; but your
countenance at night was not so cheerful as in the morning, and that
grieves my heart."

The kindly sympathy of this old warrior pleased the misanthrope, so that
he willingly pursued the conversation.

"Why, then," answered he, "if thou wouldst know what has made me battle
here all day with tedium, thou must understand that I was waiting for a
Friend, who appointed me hither, and now leaves me to expect in vain."

"Under favour," answered Timbertoe, "if I might speak my mind, this
Friend of yours, be who he like, is little better than a rogue, to lead
you such a dance. If he treated _me_ so, by my faith, his crown should
get acquainted with my crutch next time we met. If he could not keep his
word, he should have let you know, and not bamboozled you as if you were
a child."

"Yet I cannot altogether blame this Friend," said Franz, "for being
absent; he did not promise; it was but a dream that told me I should
meet him here."

The goblin-tale was too long for him to tell, so he veiled it under
cover of a dream.

"Ah! that is another story," said the beggar; "if you build on dreams,
it is little wonder that your hope deceives you. I myself have dreamed
much foolish stuff in my time; but I was never such a madman as to heed
it. Had I all the treasures that have been allotted to me in dreams, I
might buy the city of Bremen, were it sold by auction. But I never
credited a jot of them, or stirred hand or foot to prove their worth or
worthlessness: I knew well it would be lost. Ha! I must really laugh in
your face, to think that on the order of an empty dream, you have
squandered a fair day of your life, which you might have spent better at
a merry banquet."

"The issue shows that thou art right, old man, and that dreams many
times deceive. But," continued Franz, defensively, "I dreamed so vividly
and circumstantially, above three months ago, that on this very day, in
this very place, I should meet a Friend, who would tell me things of the
deepest importance, that it was well worth while to go and see if it
would come to pass."

"O, as for vividness," said Timbertoe, "no man can dream more vividly
than I. There is one dream I had, which I shall never in my life forget.
I dreamed, who knows how many years ago, that my Guardian Angel stood
before my bed in the figure of a youth, with golden hair, and two silver
wings on his back, and said to me: 'Berthold, listen to the words of my
mouth, that none of them be lost from thy heart. There is a treasure
appointed thee, which thou shalt dig, to comfort thy heart withal for
the remaining days of thy life. Tomorrow, about evening, when the sun is
going down, take spade and shovel on thy shoulder; go forth from the
Mattenburg on the right, across the Tieber, by the Balkenbrücke, past
the Cloister of St. John's, and on to the Great Roland.[9] Then take thy
way over the Court of the Cathedral, through the Schüsselkorb, till thou
arrive without the city at a garden, which has this mark, that a stair
of three stone steps leads down from the highway to its gate. Wait by a
side, in secret, till the sickle of the moon shall shine on thee, then
push with the strength of a man against the weak-barred gate, which will
resist thee little. Enter boldly into the garden, and turn thee to the
vine-trellises which overhang the covered-walk; behind this, on the
left, a tall apple-tree overtops the lowly shrubs. Go to the trunk of
this tree, thy face turned right against the moon: look three ells
before thee on the ground, thou shalt see two cinnamon-rose bushes;
there strike in, and dig three spans deep, till thou find a stone plate;
under this lies the treasure, buried in an iron chest, full of money and
money's worth. Though the chest be heavy and clumsy, avoid not the
labour of lifting it from its bed; it will reward thy trouble well, if
thou seek the key which lies hid beneath it.'"

     [9] The rude figure of a man in armour, usually erected in the
     public square or market-place of old German towns, is called the
     _Rolandsäule_, or _Rutlandsäule_, from its supposed reference to
     Roland the famous peer of Charlemagne. The proper and ancient name,
     it seems, is _Rügelandsäule_, or Pillar of Judgment; and the stone
     indicated, of old, that the town possessed an independent
     jurisdiction.--ED.

In astonishment at what he heard, Franz stared and gazed upon the
dreamer, and could not have concealed his amazement, had not the dusk of
night been on his side. By every mark in the description, he had
recognised his own garden, left him by his father. It had been the good
man's hobby in his life; but on this account had little pleased his son;
according to the rule that son and father seldom sympathise in their
favourite pursuit, unless indeed it be a vice, in which case, as the
adage runs, the apple often falls at no great distance from the trunk.
Father Melchior had himself laid out this garden, altogether to his own
taste, in a style as wonderful and varied as that of his
great-great-grandson, who has immortalised his paradise by an original
description in _Hirschfeld's Garden-Calendar_. He had not, it is true,
set up in it any painted menagerie for the deception of the eye; but he
kept a very large one, notwithstanding, of springing-horses,
winged-lions, eagles, griffins, unicorns and other wondrous beasts, all
stamped on pure gold, which he carefully concealed from _every_ eye, and
had hid in their iron case beneath the ground. This paternal Tempe the
wasteful son, in the days of his extravagance, had sold for an old song.

To Franz the pikeman had at once become extremely interesting, as he
perceived that this was the very Friend, to whom the Goblin in the
Castle of Rummelsburg had consigned him. Gladly could he have embraced
the veteran, and in the first rapture called him friend and father: but
he restrained himself, and found it more advisable to keep his thoughts
about this piece of news to himself. So he said: "Well, this is what I
call a circumstantial dream. But what didst thou do, old master, in the
morning, on awakening? Didst thou not follow whither thy Guardian Angel
beckoned thee?"

"Pooh," said the dreamer, "why should I toil, and have my labour for my
pains? It was nothing, after all, but a mere dream. If my Guardian
Angel had a fancy for appearing to me, I have had enow of sleepless
nights in my time, when he might have found me waking. But he takes
little charge of me, I think, else I should not, to his shame, be going
hitching here on a wooden leg."

Franz took out the last piece of silver he had on him: "There," said he,
"old Father, take this other gift from me, to get thee a pint of wine
for evening-cup: thy talk has scared away my ill humour. Neglect not
diligently to frequent this Bridge; we shall see each other here, I
hope, again."

The lame old man had not gathered so rich a stock of alms for many a
day, as he was now possessed of; he blessed his benefactor for his
kindness, hopped away into a drinking-shop, to do himself a good turn;
while Franz, enlivened with new hope, hastened off to his lodging in the
alley.

Next day he got in readiness everything that is required for
treasure-digging. The unessential equipments, conjurations, magic
formulas, magic girdles, hieroglyphic characters, and suchlike, were
entirely wanting: but these are not indispensable, provided there be no
failure in the three main requisites: shovel, spade, and, before all, a
treasure underground. The necessary implements he carried to the place a
little before sunset, and hid them for the mean while in a hedge; and as
to the treasure itself, he had the firm conviction that the Goblin in
the Castle, and the Friend on the Bridge, would prove no liars to him.
With longing impatience he expected the rising of the moon; and no
sooner did she stretch her silver horns over the bushes, than he briskly
set to work; observing exactly everything the Invalid had taught him;
and happily accomplished the raising of the treasure, without meeting
any adventure in the process; without any black dog having frightened
him, or any bluish flame having lighted him to the spot.

Father Melchior, in providently burying this penny for a rainy day, had
nowise meant that his son should be deprived of so considerable a part
of his inheritance. The mistake lay in this, that Death had escorted the
testator out of the world in another way than said testator had
expected. He had been completely convinced, that he should take his
journey, old and full of days, after regulating his temporal concerns
with all the formalities of an ordinary sick-bed; for so it had been
prophesied to him in his youth. In consequence he purposed, when,
according to the usage of the Church, extreme unction should have been
dispensed to him, to call his beloved son to his bed-side, having
previously dismissed all bystanders; there to give him the paternal
blessing, and by way of farewell memorial direct him to this treasure
buried in the garden. All this, too, would have happened in just order,
if the light of the good old man had departed, like that of a wick whose
oil is done; but as Death had privily snuffed him out at a feast, he
undesignedly took along with him his Mammon secret to the grave; and
almost as many fortunate concurrences were required before the secreted
patrimony could arrive at the proper heir, as if it had been forwarded
to its address by the hand of Justice itself.

With immeasurable joy the treasure-digger took possession of the
shapeless Spanish pieces, which, with a vast multitude of other finer
coins, the iron chest had faithfully preserved. When the first
intoxication of delight had in some degree evaporated, he bethought him
how the treasure was to be transported, safe and unobserved, into the
narrow alley. The burden was too heavy to be carried without help; thus,
with the possession of riches, all the cares attendant on them were
awakened. The new Croesus found no better plan, than to intrust his
capital to the hollow trunk of a tree that stood behind the garden, in a
meadow: the empty chest he again buried under the rose-bush, and
smoothed the place as well as possible. In the space of three days, the
treasure had been faithfully transmitted by instalments from the hollow
tree into the narrow alley; and now the owner of it thought he might
with honour lay aside his strict incognito. He dressed himself with the
finest; had his Prayer displaced from the church; and required, instead
of it, "a Christian Thanksgiving for a Traveller, on returning to his
native town, after happily arranging his affairs." He hid himself in a
corner of the church, where he could observe the fair Meta, without
himself being seen; he turned not his eye from the maiden, and drank
from her looks the actual rapture, which in foretaste had restrained him
from the break-neck somerset on the Bridge of the Weser. When the
Thanksgiving came in hand, a glad sympathy shone forth from all her
features, and the cheeks of the virgin glowed with joy. The customary
greeting on the way homewards was so full of emphasis, that even to the
third party who had noticed them, it would have been intelligible.

Franz now appeared once more on the Exchange; began a branch of trade
which in a few weeks extended to the great scale; and as his wealth
became daily more apparent, Neighbour Grudge, the scandal-chewer, was
obliged to conclude, that in the cashing of his old debts, he must have
had more luck than sense. He hired a large house, fronting the Roland,
in the Market-place; engaged clerks and warehousemen, and carried on his
trade unweariedly. Now the sorrowful populace of parasites again
diligently handled the knocker of his door; appeared in crowds, and
suffocated him with assurances of friendship, and joy-wishings on his
fresh prosperity; imagined they should once more catch him in their
robber claws. But experience had taught him wisdom; he paid them in
their own coin, feasted their false friendship on smooth words, and
dismissed them with fasting stomachs; which sovereign means for scaring
off the cumbersome brood of pickthanks and toadeaters produced the
intended effect, that they betook them elsewhither.

In Bremen, the remounting Melcherson had become the story of the day;
the fortune which in some inexplicable manner he had realised, as was
supposed, in foreign parts, was the subject-matter of all conversations
at formal dinners, in the Courts of Justice and at the Exchange. But in
proportion as the fame of his fortune and affluence increased, the
contentedness and peace of mind of the fair Meta diminished. The friend
_in petto_ was now, in her opinion, well qualified to speak a plain
word. Yet still his Love continued Dumb; and except the greeting on the
way from church, he gave no tidings of himself. Even this sort of visit
was becoming rarer, and such aspects were the sign not of warm, but of
cold weather in the atmosphere of Love. Jealousy,[10] the baleful Harpy,
fluttered round her little room by night, and when sleep was closing her
blue eyes, croaked many a dolorous presage into the ear of the
re-awakened Meta. "Forego the flattering hope of binding an inconstant
heart, which, like a feather, is the sport of every wind. He loved thee,
and was faithful to thee, while his lot was as thy own: like only draws
to like. Now a propitious destiny exalts the Changeful far above thee.
Ah! now he scorns the truest thoughts in mean apparel, now that pomp,
and wealth, and splendour dazzle him once more; and courts who knows
what haughty fair one that disdained him when he lay among the pots, and
now with siren call allures him back to her. Perhaps her cozening voice
has turned him from thee, speaking with false words: 'For thee, God's
garden blossoms in thy native town: friend, thou hast now thy choice of
all our maidens; choose with prudence, not by the eye alone. Of girls
are many, and of fathers many, who in secret lie in wait for thee; none
will withhold his darling daughter. Take happiness and honour with the
fairest; likewise birth and fortune. The councillor dignity awaits thee,
where vote of friends is potent in the city.'"

     [10] Jealousy too (at bottom a very sad spectre, but not here
     introduced as one) now _croaks_ in iambics, as the Goblin Barber
     lately spoke in them.--WIELAND.

These suggestions of Jealousy disturbed and tormented her heart without
ceasing: she reviewed her fair contemporaries in Bremen, estimated the
ratio of so many splendid matches to herself and her circumstances; and
the result was far from favourable. The first tidings of her lover's
change of situation had in secret charmed her; not in the selfish view
of becoming participatress in a large fortune; but for her mother's
sake, who had abdicated all hopes of earthly happiness, ever since the
marriage project with neighbour Hop-King had made shipwreck. But now
poor Meta wished that Heaven had not heard the Prayer of the Church, or
granted to the traveller any such abundance of success; but rather kept
him by the bread and salt, which he would willingly have shared with
her.

The fair half of the species are by no means calculated to conceal an
inward care: Mother Brigitta soon observed the trouble of her daughter;
and without the use of any great penetration, likewise guessed its
cause. The talk about the re-ascending star of her former
flax-negotiator, who was now celebrated as the pattern of an orderly,
judicious, active tradesman, had not escaped her, any more than the
feeling of the good Meta towards him; and it was her opinion, that if he
loved in earnest, it was needless to hang off so long, without
explaining what he meant. Yet out of tenderness to her daughter, she let
no hint of this discovery escape her; till at length poor Meta's heart
became so full, that of her own accord she made her mother the
confidante of her sorrow, and disclosed to her its true origin. The
shrewd old lady learned little more by this disclosure than she knew
already. But it afforded opportunity to mother and daughter for a full,
fair and free discussion of this delicate affair. Brigitta made her no
reproaches on the subject; she believed that what was done could not be
undone; and directed all her eloquence to strengthen and encourage the
dejected Meta to bear the failure of her hopes with a steadfast mind.

With this view, she spelt out to her the extremely reasonable moral,
_a_, _b_, _ab_; discoursing thus: "My child, thou hast already said _a_,
thou must now say _b_ too; thou hast scorned thy fortune when it sought
thee, now thou must submit when it will meet thee no longer. Experience
has taught me, that the most confident Hope is the first to deceive us.
Therefore, follow my example; abandon the fair cozener utterly, and thy
peace of mind will no longer be disturbed by her. Count not on any
improvement of thy fate; and thou wilt grow contented with thy present
situation. Honour the spinning-wheel, which supports thee: what are
fortune and riches to thee, when thou canst do without them?"

Close on this stout oration followed a loud humming symphony of
snap-reel and spinning-wheel, to make up for the time lost in speaking.
Mother Brigitta was in truth philosophising from the heart. After her
scheme for the restoration of her former affluence had gone to ruin, she
had so simplified the plan of her life, that Fate could not perplex it
any more. But Meta was still far from this philosophical centre of
indifference; and hence this doctrine, consolation and encouragement
affected her quite otherwise than had been intended: the conscientious
daughter now looked upon herself as the destroyer of her mother's fair
hopes, and suffered from her own mind a thousand reproaches for this
fault. Though she had never adopted the maternal scheme of marriage, and
had reckoned only upon bread and salt in her future wedlock; yet, on
hearing of her lover's riches and spreading commerce, her diet-project
had directly mounted to six plates; and it delighted her to think, that
by her choice she should still realise her good mother's wish, and see
her once more planted in her previous abundance.

This fair dream now vanished by degrees, as Franz continued silent. To
make matters worse, there spread a rumour over all the city, that he was
furnishing his house in the most splendid fashion for his marriage with
a rich Antwerp lady, who was already on her way to Bremen. This
Job's-news drove the lovely maiden from her last defence: she passed on
the apostate sentence of banishment from her heart; and vowed from that
hour never more to think of him; and as she did so, wetted the twining
thread with her tears.

In a heavy hour she was breaking this vow, and thinking, against her
will, of the faithless lover: for she had just spun off a rock of flax;
and there was an old rhyme which had been taught her by her mother for
encouragement to diligence:

     'Spin, daughterkin, spin;
     Thy sweetheart's within!'

which she always recollected when her rock was done; and along with it
the memory of the Deceitful necessarily occurred to her. In this heavy
hour, a finger rapped with a most dainty patter at the door. Mother
Brigitta looked forth: the sweetheart was without. And who could it be?
Who else but neighbour Franz, from the alley? He had decked himself with
a gallant wooing-suit; and his well-dressed, thick brown locks shook
forth perfume. This stately decoration boded, at all events, something
else than flax-dealing. Mother Brigitta started in alarm; she tried to
speak, but words failed her. Meta rose in trepidation from her seat,
blushed like a purple rose, and was silent. Franz, however, had the
power of utterance; to the soft _adagio_ which he had in former days
trilled forth to her, he now appended a suitable text, and explained his
dumb love in clear words. Thereupon he made solemn application for her
to the mother; justifying his proposal by the statement, that the
preparations in his house had been meant for the reception of a bride,
and that this bride was the charming Meta.

The pointed old lady, having brought her feelings once more into
equilibrium, was for protracting the affair to the customary term of
eight days for deliberation; though joyful tears were running down her
cheeks, presaging no impediment on her side, but rather answer of
approval. Franz, however, was so pressing in his suit, that she fell
upon a middle path between the wooer's ardour and maternal use and wont,
and empowered the gentle Meta to decide in the affair according to her
own good judgment. In the virgin heart there had occurred, since Franz's
entrance, an important revolution. His presence here was the most
speaking proof of his innocence; and as, in the course of conversation,
it distinctly came to light, that his apparent coldness had been nothing
else than zeal and diligence in putting his commercial affairs in order,
and preparing what was necessary for the coming nuptials, it followed
that the secret reconciliation would proceed forthwith without any stone
of stumbling in its way. She acted with the outlaw, as Mother Brigitta
with her disposted spinning gear, or the First-born Son of the Church
with an exiled Parliament; recalled him with honour to her high-beating
heart, and reinstated him in all his former rights and privileges there.
The decisive three-lettered little word, that ratifies the happiness of
love, came gliding with such unspeakable grace from her soft lips, that
the answered lover could not help receiving it with a warm melting kiss.

The tender pair had now time and opportunity for deciphering all the
hieroglyphics of their mysterious love; which afforded the most pleasant
conversation that ever two lovers carried on. They found, what our
commentators ought to pray for, that they had always understood and
interpreted the text aright, without once missing the true sense of
their reciprocal proceedings. It cost the delighted bridegroom almost as
great an effort to part from his charming bride, as on the day when he
set out on his crusade to Antwerp. However, he had an important walk to
take; so at last it became time to withdraw.

This walk was directed to the Weser-bridge, to find Timbertoe, whom he
had not forgotten, though he had long delayed to keep his word to him.
Sharply as the physiognomist, ever since his interview with the
open-handed Bridge-bailiff, had been on the outlook, he could never
catch a glimpse of him among the passengers, although a second visit had
been faithfully promised. Yet the figure of his benefactor had not
vanished from his memory. The moment he perceived the fair-apparelled
youth from a distance, he stilted towards him, and gave him kindly
welcome. Franz answered his salutation, and said: "Friend, canst thou
take a walk with me into the Neustadt, to transact a small affair? Thy
trouble shall not be unpaid."

"Ah! why not?" replied the old blade; "though I have a wooden leg, I can
step you with it as stoutly as the lame dwarf that crept round the
city-common;[11] for the wooden leg, you must know, has this good
property, it never tires. But excuse me a little while till Graycloak is
come: he never misses to pass along the Bridge between day and night."

     [11] There is an old tradition, that a neighbouring Countess
     promised in jest to give the Bremers as much land as a cripple, who
     was just asking her for alms, would creep round in a day. They took
     her at her word; and the cripple crawled so well, that the town
     obtained this large common by means of him.

"What of Graycloak?" inquired Franz: "let me know about him."

"Graycloak brings me daily about nightfall a silver groschen, I know not
from whom. It is of no use prying into things, so I never mind.
Sometimes it occurs to me Graycloak must be the devil, and means to buy
my soul with the money. But devil or no devil, what care I? I did not
strike him on the bargain, so it cannot hold."

"I should not wonder," answered Franz, with a smile, "if Graycloak were
a piece of a knave. But do thou follow me: the silver groschen shall not
fail thee."

Timbertoe set forth, hitched on briskly after his guide, who conducted
him up one street and down another, to a distant quarter of the city,
near the wall; then halted before a neat little new-built house, and
knocked at the door. When it was opened: "Friend," said he, "thou madest
one evening of my life cheerful; it is just that I should make the
evening of thy life cheerful also. This house, with its appurtenances,
and the garden where it stands, are thine; kitchen and cellar are full;
an attendant is appointed to wait upon thee; and the silver groschen,
over and above, thou wilt find every noon lying under thy plate. Nor
will I hide from thee that Graycloak was my servant, whom I sent to give
thee daily an honourable alms, till I had got this house made ready for
thee. If thou like, thou mayest reckon me thy proper Guardian Angel,
since the other has not acted to thy satisfaction."

He then led the old man into his dwelling, where the table was standing
covered, and everything arranged for his convenience and comfortable
living. The grayhead was so astonished at his fortune, that he could not
understand or even believe it. That a rich man should take such pity on
a poor one, was incomprehensible: he felt disposed to take the whole
affair for magic or jugglery, till Franz removed his doubts. A stream of
thankful tears flowed down the old man's cheeks; and his benefactor,
satisfied with this, did not wait till he should recover from his
amazement and thank him in words, but, after doing this angel-message,
vanished from the old man's eyes, as angels are wont; and left him to
piece together the affair as he best could.

Next morning, in the habitation of the lovely Meta, all was as a fair.
Franz dispatched to her a crowd of merchants, jewellers, milliners,
lace-dealers, tailors, sutors and sempstresses, in part to offer her all
sorts of wares, in part their own good services. She passed the whole
day in choosing stuffs, laces and other requisites for the condition of
a bride, or being measured for her various new apparel. The dimensions
of her dainty foot, her beautifully-formed arm, and her slim waist, were
as often and as carefully meted, as if some skilful statuary had been
taking from her the model for a Goddess of Love. Meanwhile the
bridegroom went to appoint the bans; and before three weeks were past,
he led his bride to the altar, with a solemnity by which even the
gorgeous wedding-pomp of the Hop-King was eclipsed. Mother Brigitta had
the happiness of twisting the bridal-garland for her virtuous Meta; she
completely attained her wish of spending her woman's-summer in
propitious affluence; and deserved this satisfaction, as a recompense
for one praiseworthy quality which she possessed: She was the most
tolerable mother-in-law that has ever been discovered.




LIBUSSA.[12]


Deep in the Bohemian forest, which has now dwindled to a few scattered
woodlands, there abode, in the primeval times, while it stretched its
umbrage far and wide, a spiritual race of beings, airy and avoiding
light, incorporeal also, more delicately fashioned than the clay-formed
sons of men; to the coarser sense of feeling imperceptible, but to the
finer, half-visible by moonlight; and well known to poets by the name of
Dryads, and to ancient bards by that of Elves. From immemorial ages,
they had dwelt here undisturbed; till all at once the forest sounded
with the din of warriors, for Duke Czech of Hungary, with his Sclavonic
hordes, had broken over the mountains, to seek in these wild tracts a
new habitation. The fair tenants of the aged oaks, of the rocks, clefts
and grottos, and of the flags in the tarns and morasses, fled before the
clang of arms and the neighing of chargers: the stout Erl-King himself
was annoyed by the uproar, and transferred his court to more sequestered
wildernesses. One solitary Elf could not resolve to leave her darling
oak; and as the wood began here and there to be felled for the purposes
of cultivation, she alone undertook to defend her tree against the
violence of the strangers, and chose the towering summit of it for her
residence.

     [12] From _Jo. Dubravii Historia Bohemica_, and _Æneæ Sylvii
     Cardinalis de Bohemarum Origine ac Gestis Historia_.

Among the retinue of the Duke was a young Squire, Krokus by name, full
of spirit and impetuosity; stout and handsome, and of noble mien, to
whom the keeping of his master's stud had been entrusted, which at times
he drove far into the forest for their pasture. Frequently he rested
beneath the oak which the Elf inhabited: she observed him with
satisfaction; and at night, when he was sleeping at the root, she would
whisper pleasant dreams into his ear, and announce to him in expressive
images the events of the coming day. When any horse had strayed into the
desert, and the keeper had lost its tract, and gone to sleep with
anxious thoughts, he failed not to see in vision the marks of the hidden
path, which led him to the spot where his lost steed was grazing.

The farther the new colonists extended, the nearer came they to the
dwelling of the Elf; and as by her gift of divination, she perceived how
soon her life-tree would be threatened by the axe, she determined to
unfold this sorrow to her guest. One moonshiny summer evening, Krokus
had folded his herd somewhat later than usual, and was hastening to his
bed under the lofty oak. His path led him round a little fishy lake, on
whose silver face the moon was imaging herself like a gleaming ball of
gold; and across this glittering portion of the water, on the farther
side, he perceived a female form, apparently engaged in walking by the
cool shore. This sight surprised the young warrior: What brings the
maiden hither, thought he, by herself, in this wilderness, at the season
of the nightly dusk? Yet the adventure was of such a sort, that, to a
young man, the more strict investigation of it seemed alluring rather
than alarming. He redoubled his steps, keeping firmly in view the form
which had arrested his attention; and soon reached the place where he
had first noticed it, beneath the oak. But now it looked to him as if
the thing he saw were a shadow rather than a body; he stood wondering
and motionless, a cold shudder crept over him; and he heard a sweet soft
voice address to him these words: "Come hither, beloved stranger, and
fear not; I am no phantasm, no deceitful shadow: I am the Elf of this
grove, the tenant of the oak, under whose leafy boughs thou hast often
rested. I rocked thee in sweet delighting dreams, and prefigured to thee
thy adventures; and when a brood-mare or a foal had chanced to wander
from the herd, I told thee of the place where thou wouldst find it.
Repay this favour by a service which I now require of thee; be the
Protector of this tree, which has so often screened thee from the shower
and the scorching heat; and guard the murderous axes of thy brethren,
which lay waste the forest, that they harm not this venerable trunk."

The young warrior, restored to self-possession by this soft still voice,
made answer: "Goddess or mortal, whoever thou mayest be, require of me
what thou pleasest; if I can, I will perform it. But I am a man of no
account among my people, the servant of the Duke my lord. If he tell me
today or tomorrow, Feed here, feed there, how shall I protect thy tree
in this distant forest? Yet if thou commandest me, I will renounce the
service of princes, and dwell under the shadow of thy oak, and guard it
while I live."

"Do so," said the Elf: "thou shalt not repent it."

Hereupon she vanished; and there was a rustling in the branches above,
as if some breath of an evening breeze had been entangled in them, and
had stirred the leaves. Krokus, for a while, stood enraptured at the
heavenly form which had appeared to him. So soft a female, of such
slender shape and royal bearing, he had never seen among the short squat
damsels of his own Sclavonic race. At last he stretched himself upon the
moss, but no sleep descended on his eyes; the dawn overtook him in a
whirl of sweet emotions, which were as strange and new to him as the
first beam of light to the opened eye of one born blind. With the
earliest morning he hastened to the Court of the Duke, required his
discharge, packed up his war-accoutrements, and, with rapid steps, his
burden on his shoulders, and his head full of glowing enthusiasm, hied
him back to his enchanted forest-hermitage.

Meanwhile, in his absence, a craftsman among the people, a miller by
trade, had selected for himself the round straight trunk of the oak to
be an axle, and was proceeding with his mill-men to fell it. The
affrighted Elf sobbed bitterly, as the greedy saw began with iron tooth
to devour the foundations of her dwelling. She looked wildly round, from
the highest summit, for her faithful guardian, but her glance could find
him nowhere; and the gift of prophecy, peculiar to her race, was in the
present case so ineffectual, that she could as little read the fate that
stood before her, as the sons of Æsculapius, with their vaunted
prognosis, can discover ways and means for themselves when Death is
knocking at their own door.

Krokus, however, was approaching, and so near the scene of this
catastrophe, that the screeching of the busy saw did not escape his ear.
Such a sound in the forest boded no good: he quickened his steps, and
beheld before his eyes the horror of the devastation that was visiting
the tree which he had taken under his protection. Like a fury he rushed
upon the wood-cutters, with pike and sword, and scared them from their
work; for they concluded he must be a forest-demon, and fled in great
precipitation. By good fortune, the wound of the tree was still curable;
and the scar of it disappeared in a few summers.

In the solemn hour of evening, when the stranger had fixed upon the spot
for his future habitation; had meted out the space for hedging round as
a garden, and was weighing in his mind the whole scheme of his future
hermitage; where, in retirement from the society of men, he purposed to
pass his days in the service of a shadowy companion, possessed
apparently of little more reality than a Saint of the Calendar, whom a
pious friar chooses for his spiritual paramour,--the Elf appeared before
him at the brink of the lake, and with gentle looks thus spoke:

"Thanks to thee, beloved stranger, that thou hast turned away the
wasteful arms of thy brethren from ruining this tree, with which my life
is united. For thou shalt know that Mother Nature, who has granted to my
race such varied powers and influences, has combined the fortune of our
life with the growth and duration of the oak. By us the sovereign of the
forest raises his venerable head above the populace of other trees and
shrubs; we further the circulation of the sap through his trunk and
boughs, that he may gain strength to battle with the tempest, and for
long centuries to defy destructive Time. On the other hand, our life is
bound to his: when the oak, which the lot of Destiny has appointed for
the partner of our existence, fades by years, we fade along with him;
and when he dies, we die, and sleep, like mortals, as it were a sort of
death-sleep, till, by the everlasting cycle of things, Chance, or some
hidden provision of Nature, again weds our being to a new germ; which,
unfolded by our enlivening virtue, after the lapse of long years,
springs up to be a mighty tree, and affords us the enjoyment of
existence anew. From this thou mayest perceive what a service thou hast
done me by thy help, and what gratitude I owe thee. Ask of me the
recompense of thy noble deed; disclose to me the wish of thy heart, and
this hour it shall be granted thee."

Krokus continued silent. The sight of the enchanting Elf had made more
impression on him than her speech, of which, indeed, he understood but
little. She noticed his embarrassment; and, to extricate him from it,
plucked a withered reed from the margin of the lake, broke it into three
pieces, and said: "Choose one of these three stalks, or take one without
a choice. In the first, lie Honour and Renown; in the second, Riches
and the wise enjoyment of them; in the third is happiness in Love laid
up for thee."

The young man cast his eyes upon the ground, and answered: "Daughter of
Heaven, if thou wouldst deign to grant the desire of my heart, know that
it lies not in these three stalks which thou offerest me; the recompense
I aim at is higher. What is Honour but the fuel of Pride? what are
Riches but the root of Avarice? and what is Love but the trap-door of
Passion, to ensnare the noble freedom of the heart? Grant me my wish, to
rest under the shadow of thy oak-tree from the toils of warfare, and to
hear from thy sweet mouth the lessons of wisdom, that I may understand
by them the secrets of the future."

"Thy request," replied the Elf, "is great; but thy deserving toward me
is not less so: be it then as thou hast asked. Nor, with the fruit,
shall the shell be wanting to thee; for the wise man is also honoured;
he alone is rich, for he desires nothing more than he needs, and he
tastes the pure nectar of Love without poisoning it by polluted lips."

So saying, she again presented him the three reed-stalks, and vanished
from his sight.

The young Eremite prepared his bed of moss, beneath the oak, exceedingly
content with the reception which the Elf had given him. Sleep came upon
him like a strong man; gay morning dreams danced round his head, and
solaced his fancy with the breath of happy forebodings. On awakening, he
joyfully began his day's work; ere long he had built himself a pleasant
hermit's-cottage; had dug his garden, and planted in it roses and
lilies, with other odoriferous flowers and herbs; not forgetting pulse
and cole, and a sufficiency of fruit-trees. The Elf never failed to
visit him at twilight; she rejoiced in the prospering of his labours;
walked with him, hand in hand, by the sedgy border of the lake; and the
wavering reeds, as the wind passed through them, whispered a melodious
evening salutation to the trustful pair. She instructed her attentive
disciple in the secrets of Nature; showed him the origin and causes of
things; taught him their common and their magic properties and effects;
and formed the rude soldier into a thinker and philosopher.

In proportion as the feelings and senses of the young man grew refined
by this fair spiritual intercourse, it seemed as if the tender form of
the Elf were condensing, and acquiring more consistency; her bosom
caught warmth and life; her brown eyes sparkled with the fire of love;
and with the shape, she appeared to have adopted the feelings of a young
blooming maiden. The sentimental hour of dusk, which is as if expressly
calculated to awaken slumbering feelings, had its usual effect; and
after a few moons from their first acquaintance, the sighing Krokus
found himself possessed of the happiness in Love, which the Third
Reed-stalk had appointed him; and did not repent that by the trap-door
of Passion the freedom of his heart had been ensnared. Though the
marriage of the tender pair took place without witnesses, it was
celebrated with as much enjoyment as the most tumultuous espousal; nor
were speaking proofs of love's recompense long wanting. The Elf gave her
husband three daughters at a birth; and the father, rejoicing in the
bounty of his better half, named, at the first embrace, the eldest
infant, Bela; the next born, Therba; and the youngest, Libussa. They
were all like the Genies in beauty of form; and though not moulded of
such light materials as the mother, their corporeal structure was finer
than the dull earthy clay of the father. They were also free from all
the infirmities of childhood; their swathings did not gall them; they
teethed without epileptic fits, needed no calomel taken inwardly, got no
rickets; had no small-pox, and, of course, no scars, no scum-eyes, or
puckered faces: nor did they require any leading-strings; for after the
first nine days, they ran like little partridges; and as they grew up,
they manifested all the talents of the mother for discovering hidden
things, and predicting what was future.

Krokus himself, by the aid of time, grew skilful in these mysteries
also. When the wolf had scattered the flocks through the forest, and the
herdsmen were seeking for their sheep and horses; when the woodman
missed an axe or bill, they took counsel from the wise Krokus, who
showed them where to find what they had lost. When a wicked prowler had
abstracted aught from the common stock; had by night broken into the
pinfold, or the dwelling of his neighbour, and robbed or slain him, and
none could guess the malefactor, the wise Krokus was consulted. He led
the people to a green; made them form a ring; then stept into the midst
of them, set the faithful sieve a-running, and so failed not to discover
the misdoer. By such acts his fame spread over all the country of
Bohemia; and whoever had a weighty care, or an important undertaking,
took counsel from the wise Krokus about its issue. The lame and the
sick, too, required from him help and recovery; even the unsound cattle
of the fold were driven to him; and his gift of curing sick kine by his
shadow, was not less than that of the renowned St. Martin of Schierbach.
By these means the concourse of the people to him grew more frequent,
day by day, no otherwise than if the Tripod of the Delphic Apollo had
been transferred to the Bohemian forest: and though Krokus answered all
inquiries, and cured the sick and afflicted, without fee or reward, yet
the treasure of his secret wisdom paid him richly, and brought him in
abundant profit; the people crowded to him with gifts and presents, and
almost oppressed him with testimonies of their good-will. It was he that
first disclosed the mystery of washing gold from the sands of the Elbe;
and for his recompense he had a tenth of all the produce. By these means
his wealth and store increased; he built strongholds and palaces; had
vast herds of cattle; possessed fertile pasturages, fields and woods;
and thus found himself imperceptibly possessed of all the Riches which
the beneficently foreboding Elf had enclosed for him in the Second Reed.

One fine summer evening, when Krokus with his train was returning from
an excursion, having by special request been settling the disputed
marches of two townships, he perceived his spouse on the margin of the
sedgy lake, where she had first appeared to him. She waved him with her
hand; so he dismissed his servants, and hastened to clasp her in his
arms. She received him, as usual, with tender love; but her heart was
sad and oppressed; from her eyes trickled down ethereal tears, so fine
and fugitive, that as they fell they were greedily inhaled by the air,
and not allowed to reach the ground. Krokus was alarmed at this
appearance; he had never seen his wife's fair eyes otherwise than
cheerful, and sparkling with youthful gaiety. "What ails thee, beloved
of my heart?" said he; "black forebodings overcast my soul. Speak, say
what mean those tears."

The Elf sobbed, leaned her head sorrowfully on his shoulder, and said:
"Beloved husband, in thy absence I have looked into the Book of Destiny;
a doleful chance overhangs my life-tree; I must part from thee forever.
Follow me into the Castle, till I bless my children; for from this day
you will never see me more."

"Dearest wife," said Krokus, "chase away these mournful thoughts. What
misfortune is it that can harm thy tree? Behold its sound boughs, how
they stretch forth loaded with fruit and leaves, and how it raises its
top to the clouds. While this arm can move, it shall defend thy tree
from any miscreant that presumes to wound its stem."

"Impotent defence," replied she, "which a mortal arm can yield! Ants can
but secure themselves from ants, flies from flies, and the worms of
Earth from other earthly worms. But what can the mightiest among you do
against the workings of Nature, or the unalterable decisions of Fate?
The kings of the Earth can heap up little hillocks, which they name
fortresses and castles; but the weakest breath of air defies their
authority, blows where it lists, and mocks at their command. This
oak-tree thou hast guarded from the violence of men; canst thou likewise
forbid the tempest that it rise not to disleaf its branches; or if a
hidden worm is gnawing in its marrow, canst thou draw it out, and tread
it under foot?"

Amid such conversation they arrived at the Castle. The slender maidens,
as they were wont at the evening visit of their mother, came bounding
forth to meet them; gave account of their day's employments, produced
their needlework, and their embroideries, to prove their diligence: but
now the hour of household happiness was joyless. They soon observed that
the traces of deep suffering were imprinted on the countenance of their
father; and they looked with sympathising sorrow at their mother's
tears, without venturing to inquire their cause. The mother gave them
many wise instructions and wholesome admonitions; but her speech was
like the singing of a swan, as if she wished to give the world her
farewell. She lingered with her husband, till the morning-star went up
in the sky; then she embraced him and her children with mournful
tenderness; and at dawn of day retired, as was her custom, through the
secret door, to her oak-tree, and left her friends to their own sad
forebodings.

Nature stood in listening stillness at the rising sun; but heavy black
clouds soon veiled his beaming head. The day grew sultry and oppressive;
the whole atmosphere was electric. Distant thunder came rolling over the
forest; and the hundred-voiced Echo repeated, in the winding valleys,
its baleful sound. At the noontide, a forked thunderbolt struck
quivering down upon the oak; and in a moment shivered with resistless
force the trunk and boughs, and the wreck lay scattered far around it in
the forest. When Father Krokus was informed of this, he rent his
garments, went forth with his daughters to deplore the life-tree of his
spouse, and to collect the fragments of it, and preserve them as
invaluable relics. But the Elf from that day was not seen any more.

In some few years, the tender girls had waxed in stature; their maiden
forms blossomed forth, as the rose pushing up from the bud; and the fame
of their beauty spread abroad over all the land. The noblest youths of
the people crowded round, with cases to submit to Father Krokus for his
counsel; but at bottom, these their specious pretexts were directed to
the fair maidens, whom they wished to get a glimpse of; as is the mode
with young men, who delight to have some business with the master of the
household, when his daughters are beautiful. The three sisters lived in
great simplicity and unity together; as yet but little conscious of
their talents. The gift of prophecy had been communicated to them in an
equal degree; and all their words were oracles, although they knew it
not. Yet soon their vanity awoke at the voice of flattery; word-catchers
eagerly laid hold of every sound proceeding from their lips; Celadons
noted down every look, spied out the faintest smile, explored the aspect
of their eyes, and drew from it more or less favourable prognostics,
conceiving that their own destiny was to be read by means of it; and
from this time, it has become the mode with lovers to deduce from the
horoscope of the eyes the rising or declining of their star in
courtship. Scarcely had Vanity obtained a footing in the virgin heart,
till Pride, her dear confidante, with her wicked rabble of a train,
Self-love, Self-praise, Self-will, Self-interest, were standing at the
door; and all of them in time sneaked in. The elder sisters struggled to
outdo the younger in their arts; and envied her in secret her
superiority in personal attractions. For though they all were very
beautiful, the youngest was the most so. Fräulein Bela turned her chief
attention to the science of plants; as Fräulein Medea did in earlier
times. She knew their hidden virtues, could extract from them poisons
and antidotes; and farther, understood the art of making from them sweet
or nauseous odours for the unseen Powers. When her censer steamed, she
allured to her Spirits out of the immeasurable depth of æther, from
beyond the Moon, and they became her subjects, that with their fine
organs they might be allowed to snuff these delicious vapours: and when
she scattered villanous perfumes upon the coals, she could have smoked
away with it the very Zihim and the Ohim from the Wilderness.

Fräulein Therba was inventive as Circe in devising magic formulas,
which could command the elements, could raise tempests and whirlwinds,
also hail and thunder; could shake the bowels of the Earth, or lift
itself from the sockets of its axle. She employed these arts to terrify
the people, and be feared and honoured by them as a goddess; and she
could, in fact, arrange the weather more according to the wish and taste
of men than wise old Nature does. Two brothers quarrelled on this
subject, for their wishes never were the same. The one was a husbandman,
and still desired rain for the growth and strengthening of his crops.
The other was a potter, and desired constant sunshine to dry his dishes,
which the rain destroyed. And as Heaven never could content them in
disposing of this matter, they repaired one day with rich presents to
the Castle of the wise Krokus; and submitted their petitions to Therba.
The daughter of the Elf gave a smile over their unquiet grumbling at the
wise economy of Nature; and contented the demands of each: she made rain
fall on the seed-lands of the cultivator; and the sun shone on the
potter-field close by. By these enchantments both the sisters gained
much fame and riches, for they never used their gifts without a fee.
With their treasures they built castles and country-houses; laid out
royal pleasure-gardens; to their festivals and divertisements there was
no end. The gallants, who solicited their love, they gulled and laughed
at.

Fräulein Libussa was no sharer in the vain proud disposition of her
sisters. Though she had the same capacities for penetrating the secrets
of Nature, and employing its hidden powers in her service, she remained
contented with the gifts she had derived from her maternal inheritance,
without attempting to increase them, or turn them to a source of gain.
Her vanity extended not beyond the consciousness that she was beautiful;
she cared not for riches; and neither longed to be feared nor to be
honoured like her sisters. Whilst these were gadding up and down among
their country-houses, hastening from one tumultuous pleasure to another,
with the flower of the Bohemian chivalry fettered to their
chariot-wheels, she abode in her father's house, conducting the economy,
giving counsel to those who begged it, friendly help to the afflicted
and oppressed; and all from good-will, without remuneration.[13] Her
temper was soft and modest, and her conduct virtuous and discreet, as
beseems a noble virgin. She might secretly rejoice in the victories
which her beauty gained over the hearts of men, and accept the sighing
and cooing of her languishing adorers as a just tribute to her charms;
but none dared speak a word of love to her, or venture on aspiring to
her heart. Yet Amor, the roguish urchin, takes a pleasure in exerting
his privileges on the coy; and often hurls his burning torch upon the
lowly straw-roof, when he means to set on fire a lofty palace.

     [13] _Nulla Crocco virilis sexûs proles fuit, sed moriturus tres a
     morte suâ filias superstites reliquit, omnes ut ipse erat
     fatidicas, vel magas potius, qualis Medea et Circe fuerant. Nam
     Bela natu filiarum maxima herbis incantandis Medeam imitabatur,
     Tetcha (Therba) natu minor carminibus magicis Circem reddebat. Ad
     utramque frequens multitudinis concursus; dum alii amores sibi
     conciliare, alii cum bonâ valetudine in gratiam redire, alii res
     amissas recuperare cupiunt. Illa arcem Belinam, hæc altera arcem
     Thetin ex mercenariâ pecuniâ, nihil enim gratuito faciebant,
     ædificandam curavit. Liberalior in hac re Lybussa natu minima
     apparuit, ut quæ a nemine quidquam extorquebat, et potius fata
     publica omnibus, quam privata singulis, præcinebat: quâ
     liberalitate, et quia non gratuitâ solùm sed etiam minus fallace
     prædictione utebatur, assecuta est ut in locum patris Crocci
     subrogaretur_.--DUBRAVIUS.

Far in the bosom of the forest lived an ancient Knight, who had come
into the land with the host of Czech. In this seclusion he had fixed his
settlement; reduced the desert under cultivation, and formed for himself
a small estate, where he thought to pass the remainder of his days in
peace, and live upon the produce of his husbandry. A strong-handed
neighbour took forcible possession of the land, and expelled the owner,
whom a hospitable peasant sheltered in his dwelling. The distressed old
Knight had a son, who now formed the sole consolation and support of his
age; a bold active youth, but possessed of nothing save a hunting-spear
and a practised arm, for the sustenance of his gray-haired father. The
injustice of their neighbour stimulated him to revenge, and he had been
prepared for resisting force by force; but the command of the anxious
father, unwilling to expose his son to danger, had disarmed him. Yet ere
long he resumed his former purpose. Then the father called him to his
presence, and said:

"Pass over, my son, to the wise Krokus, or to the cunning virgins his
daughters, and ask counsel whether the gods approve thy undertaking, and
will grant it a prosperous issue. If so, gird on thy sword, and take the
spear in thy hand, and go forth to fight for thy inheritance. If not,
stay here till thou hast closed my eyes and laid me in the earth; then
do what shall seem good to thee."

The youth set forth, and first reached Bela's palace, a building like a
temple for the habitation of a goddess. He knocked at the door, and
desired to be admitted; but the porter observing that he came
empty-handed, dismissed him as a beggar, and shut the door in his face.
He went forward in sadness, and reached the house of sister Therba,
where he knocked and requested an audience. The porter looked upon him
through his window, and said: "If thou bringest gold in thy bag, which
thou canst weigh out to my mistress, she will teach thee one of her good
saws to read thy fortune withal. If not, then go and gather of it in the
sands of the Elbe as many grains as the tree hath leaves, the sheaf
ears, and the bird feathers, then will I open thee this gate." The
mocked young man glided off entirely dejected; and the more so, as he
learned that Seer Krokus was in Poland, arbitrating the disputes of some
contending Grandees. He anticipated from the third sister no more
flattering reception; and as he descried her father's castle from a hill
in the distance, he could not venture to approach it, but hid himself in
a thicket to pursue his bitter thoughts. Ere long he was roused by an
approaching noise; he listened, and heard a sound of horses' hoofs. A
flying roe dashed through the bushes, followed by a lovely huntress and
her maids on stately steeds. She hurled a javelin from her hand; it flew
whizzing through the air, but did not hit the game. Instantly the
watchful young man seized his bow, and launched from the twanging cord a
bolt, which smote the deer through the heart, and stretched it lifeless
on the spot. The lady, in astonishment at this phenomenon, looked round
to find her unknown hunting partner: and the archer, on observing this,
stept forward from his bush, and bent himself humbly before her to the
ground. Fräulein Libussa thought she had never seen a finer man. At the
first glance, his figure made so deep an impression on her, that she
could not but award him that involuntary feeling of goodwill, which a
beautiful appearance claims as its prerogative. "Tell me, fair
stranger," said she to him, "who art thou, and what chance is it that
leads thee to these groves?" The youth guessed rightly that his lucky
star had brought him what he was in search of; he disclosed his case to
her in modest words; not hiding how disgracefully her sisters had
dismissed him, or how the treatment had afflicted him. She cheered his
heart with friendly words. "Follow me to my abode," said she; "I will
consult the Book of Fate for thee, and answer thy demand tomorrow by the
rising of the sun."

The young man did as he was ordered. No churlish porter here barred for
him the entrance of the palace; the fair lady exercised the rights of
hospitality with generous attention. He was charmed by this benignant
reception, but still more by the beauty of his gentle hostess. Her
enchanting figure hovered all night before his eyes; he carefully
defended himself from sleep, that he might not for a moment lose from
his thoughts the delightful events of the day. Fräulein Libussa, on the
contrary, enjoyed soft slumber: for seclusion from the influences of the
external senses, which disturb the finer presentiments of the future, is
an indispensable condition for the gift of prophecy. The glowing fancy
of the maiden blended the form of this young stranger with all the
dreaming images which hovered through her mind that night. She found him
where she had not looked for him, in connexion with affairs in which she
could not understand how this unknown youth had come to be involved.

On her early awakening, at the hour when the fair prophetess was wont to
separate and interpret the visions of the night, she felt inclined to
cast away these phantasms from her mind, as errors which had sprung from
a disturbance in the operation of her prophetic faculty, and were
entitled to no heed from her. Yet a dim feeling signified that this
creation of her fancy was not idle dreaming; but had a significant
allusion to certain events which the future would unravel; and that last
night this presaging Fantasy had spied out the decrees of Fate, and
blabbed them to her, more successfully than ever. By help of it, she
found that her guest was inflamed with warm love to her; and with equal
honesty her heart confessed the same thing in regard to him. But she
instantly impressed the seal of silence on the news; as the modest youth
had, on his side, set a guard upon his lips and his eyes, that he might
not expose himself to a contemptuous refusal; for the chasm which
Fortune had interposed between him and the daughter of the wise Krokus
seemed impassable.

Although the fair Libussa well knew what she had to say in answer to the
young man's question, yet it went against her heart to let him go from
her so soon. At sunrise she called him to her in her garden, and said:
"The curtain of darkness yet hangs before my eyes; abide with me till
sunset;" and at night she said: "Stay till sunrise;" and next morning:
"Wait another day;" and the third day: "Have patience till tomorrow." On
the fourth day she at last dismissed him; finding no more pretexts for
detaining him, with safety to her secret. At parting, she gave him his
response in friendly words: "The gods will not that thou shouldst
contend with a man of violence in the land; to bear and suffer is the
lot of the weaker. Return to thy father; be the comfort of his old age;
and support him by the labour of thy diligent hand. Take two white
Steers as a present from my herd; and this Staff to drive them; and when
it blossoms and bears fruit, the spirit of prophecy will descend on
thee."

The young man felt himself unworthy of the gentle virgin's gift; and
blushed that he should receive it and make no return. With ineloquent
lips, but with looks so much the more eloquent, he took mournful leave
of her; and at the gate below found two white Steers awaiting him, as
sleek and glittering as of old the godlike Bull, on whose smooth back
the virgin Europa swam across the blue sea waves. Joyfully he loosed
them from the post, and drove them softly on before him. The distance
home seemed but a few ells, so much was his spirit busied with the fair
Libussa: and he vowed, that as he never could obtain her love, he would
love no other all his days. The old Knight rejoiced in the return of his
son; and still more in learning that the oracle of the fair heiress
agreed so completely with his own wishes. As husbandry had been
appointed by the gods for the young man's trade, he lingered not in
harnessing his white Steers, and yoking them to the plough. The first
trial prospered to his wish: the bullocks had such strength and alacrity
that they turned over in a single day more land than twelve yoke of oxen
commonly can master: for they were fiery and impetuous, as the Bull is
painted in the Almanac, where he rushes from the clouds in the sign of
April; not sluggish and heavy like the Ox, who plods on with his holy
consorts, in our Gospel-Book, phlegmatically, as a Dutch skipper in a
calm.

Duke Czech, who had led the first colony of his people into Bohemia, was
now long ago committed to his final rest, yet his descendants had not
been promoted to succeed him in his princely dignity. The Magnates had
in truth, at his decease, assembled for a new election; but their wild
stormy tempers would admit of no reasonable resolution. Self-interest
and self-sufficiency transformed the first Bohemian Convention of
Estates into a Polish Diet: as too many hands laid hold of the princely
mantle, they tore it in pieces, and no one of them obtained it. The
government had dwindled to a sort of Anarchy; every one did what was
right in his own eyes; the strong oppressed the weak, the rich the
poor, the great the little. There was now no public security in the
land; yet the frank spirits of the time thought their new republic very
well arranged: "All is in order," said they, "every thing goes on its
way with us as well as elsewhere; the wolf eats the lamb, the kite the
dove, the fox the cock." This artless constitution could not last: when
the first debauch of fancied freedom had gone off, and the people were
again grown sober, reason asserted its rights; the patriots, the honest
citizens, whoever in the nation loved his country, joined together to
destroy the idol Hydra, and unite the people once more under a single
head. "Let us choose a Prince," said they, "to rule over us, after the
manner of our fathers, to tame the froward, and exercise right and
justice in the midst of us. Not the strongest, the boldest, or the
richest; the wisest be our Duke!" The people, wearied out with the
oppressions of their petty tyrants, had on this occasion but one voice,
and loudly applauded the proposal. A meeting of Estates was convoked;
and the choice unanimously fell upon the wise Krokus. An embassy of
honour was appointed, inviting him to take possession of the princely
dignity. Though he had never longed for lofty titles, he hesitated not
about complying with the people's wish. Invested with the purple, he
proceeded, with great pomp, to Vizegrad, the residence of the Dukes;
where the people met him with triumphant shouting, and did reverence to
him as their Regent. Whereby he perceived, that now the third Reed-stalk
of the bountiful Elf was likewise sending forth its gift upon him.

His love of justice, and his wise legislation, soon spread his fame over
all the surrounding countries. The Sarmatic Princes, incessantly at feud
with one another, brought their contention from afar before his
judgment-seat. He weighed it with the undeceitful weights of natural
Justice, in the scales of Law; and when he opened his mouth, it was as
if the venerable Solon, or the wise Solomon from between the Twelve
Lions of his throne, had been pronouncing sentence. Some seditious
instigators having leagued against the peace of their country, and
kindled war among the Poles, he advanced at the head of his army into
Poland; put an end to the civil strife; and a large portion of the
people, grateful for the peace which he had given them, chose him for
their Duke also. He there built the city Cracow, which is called by his
name, and has the privilege of crowning the Polish Kings, even to the
present time. Krokus ruled with great glory to the end of his days.
Observing that he was now near their limit, and must soon set out, he
caused a coffin to be made from the fragments of the oak which his
spouse the Elf had inhabited; and then departed in peace, bewept by the
Princesses his three daughters, who deposited the Ducal remains in the
coffin, and consigned him to the Earth as he had commanded; and the
whole land mourned for him.

When the obsequies were finished, the Estates assembled to deliberate
who should now possess the vacant throne. The people were unanimous for
one of Krokus's daughters; but which of the three they had not yet
determined. Fräulein Bela had, on the whole, the fewest adherents; for
her heart was not good; and her magic-lantern was too frequently
employed in doing sheer mischief. But she had raised such a terror of
herself among the people, that no one liked to take exception at her,
lest he might draw down her vengeance on him. When the vote was called,
therefore, the Electors all continued dumb; there was no voice for her,
but also none against her. At sunset the representatives of the people
separated, adjourning their election to another day. Then Fräulein
Therba was proposed: but confidence in her incantations had made
Fräulein Therba's head giddy; she was proud and overbearing; required to
be honoured as a goddess; and if incense did not always smoke for her,
she grew peevish, cross, capricious; displaying all the properties by
which the fair sex, when they please, can cease to be fair. She was less
feared than her elder sister, but not on that account more loved. For
these reasons, the election-field continued silent as a lykewake; and
the vote was never called for. On the third day came Libussa's turn. No
sooner was this name pronounced, than a confidential hum was heard
throughout the electing circle; the solemn visages unwrinkled and
brightened up, and each of the Electors had some good to whisper of the
Fräulein to his neighbour. One praised her virtue, another praised her
modesty, a third her prudence, a fourth her infallibility in prophecy, a
fifth her disinterestedness in giving counsel, a tenth her chastity,
other ninety her beauty, and the last her gifts as a housewife. When a
lover draws out such a catalogue of the perfections of his mistress, it
remains still doubtful whether she is really the possessor of a single
one among them; but the public seldom errs on the favourable side,
however often on the other, in the judgments it pronounces on good fame.
With so many universally acknowledged praiseworthy qualities, Fräulein
Libussa was undoubtedly the favoured candidate, at least _in petto_, of
the sage Electors: but the preference of the younger sister to the elder
has so frequently, in the affair of marriage, as experience testifies,
destroyed the peace of the house, that reasonable fear might be
entertained lest in affairs of still greater moment it might disturb the
peace of the country. This consideration put the sapient guardians of
the people into such embarrassment, that they could come to no
conclusion whatever. There was wanting a speaker, to hang the
clock-weight of his eloquence upon the wheel of the Electors' favourable
will, before the business could get into motion, and the good
disposition of their minds become active and efficient; and this speaker
now appeared, as if appointed for the business.

Wladomir, one of the Bohemian Magnates, the highest after the Duke, had
long sighed for the enchanting Libussa, and wooed her during Father
Krokus's lifetime. The youth being one of his most faithful vassals, and
beloved by him as a son, the worthy Krokus could have wished well that
love would unite this pair; but the coyness of the maiden was
insuperable, and he would in nowise force her inclination. Prince
Wladomir, however, would not be deterred by these doubtful aspects; but
still hoped, by fidelity and constancy, to tire out the hard heart of
the Fräulein, and by his tender attentions make it soft and pliant. He
continued in the Duke's retinue to the end, without appearing by this
means to have advanced a hair's-breadth towards the goal of his desires.
But now, he thought, an opportunity was offered him for opening her
closed heart by a meritorious deed, and earning from her noble-minded
gratitude what love did not seem inclined to grant him voluntarily. He
determined on braving the hatred and vengeance of the two dreaded
sisters, and raising his beloved to her paternal throne. Observing the
indecision of the wavering assembly, he addressed them, and said:

"If ye will hear me, ye courageous Knights and Nobles from among the
people, I will lay before you a similitude, by which you shall perceive
how this coming choice may be accomplished, to the weal and profit of
the land."

Silence being ordered, he proceeded thus:

"The Bees had lost their Queen, and the whole hive sat sad and moping;
they flew seldom and sluggishly out, had small heart or activity in
honey-making, and their trade and sustenance fell into decay. Therefore
they resolved upon a new sovereign, to rule over their community, that
discipline and order might not be lost from among them. Then came the
Wasp flying towards them, and said: 'Choose me for your Queen, I am
mighty and terrible; the strong horse is afraid of my sting; with it I
can even defy the lion, your hereditary foe, and prick him in the snout
when he approaches your store: I will watch you and defend you.' This
speech was pleasant to the Bees; but after deeply considering it, the
wisest among them answered: 'Thou art stout and dreadful, but even the
sting which is to guard us we fear: thou canst not be our Queen.' Then
the Humble-bee came buzzing towards them, and said: 'Choose me for your
Queen; hear ye not that the sounding of my wings announces loftiness and
dignity? Nor is a sting wanting to me, wherewith to protect you.' The
Bees answered: 'We are a peaceable and quiet people; the proud sounding
of thy wings would annoy us, and disturb the continuance of our
diligence: thou canst not be our Queen.' Then the Royal-bee requested
audience: 'Though I am larger and stronger than you,' said she, 'my
strength cannot hurt or damage you; for, lo, the dangerous sting is
altogether wanting. I am soft of temper, a friend of order and thrift,
can guide your honey-making, and further your labour.' 'Then,' said the
Bees, 'thou art worthy to rule over us: we obey thee; be our Queen.'"

Wladomir was silent. The whole assembly guessed the meaning of his
speech, and the minds of all were in a favourable tone for Fräulein
Libussa. But at the moment when the vote was to be put, a croaking raven
flew over their heads: this evil omen interrupted all deliberations, and
the meeting was adjourned till the morrow. It was Fräulein Bela who had
sent this bird of black augury to stop their operations, for she well
knew how the minds of the Electors were inclining; and Prince Wladomir
had raised her bitterest spleen against him. She held a secret
consultation with her sister Therba; when it was determined to take
vengeance on their common slanderer, and to dispatch a heavy Incubus to
suffocate the soul from his body. The stout Knight, dreaming nothing of
this danger, went, as he was wont, to wait upon his mistress, and was
favoured by her with the first friendly look; from which he failed not
to presage for himself a heaven of delight; and if anything could still
have increased his rapture, it must have been the gift of a rose, which
was blooming on the Fräulein's breast, and which she reached him, with
an injunction to let it wither on his heart. He interpreted these words
quite otherwise than they were meant; for of all the sciences, there is
none so deceitful as the science of expounding in matters of love: here
errors, as it were, have their home. The enamoured Knight was anxious to
preserve his rose as long as possible in freshness and bloom; he put it
in a flower-pot among water, and fell asleep with the most flattering
hopes.

At gloomy midnight, the destroying angel sent by Fräulein Bela glided
towards him; with panting breath blew off the bolts and locks of his
apartment; lighted like a mountain of lead upon the slumbering Knight,
and so squeezed him together, that he felt on awakening as if a
millstone had been hung about his neck. In this agonising suffocation,
thinking that the last moment of his life was at hand, he happily
remembered the rose, which was standing by his bed in a flower-pot, and
pressed it to his breast, saying: "Wither with me, fair rose, and die on
my chilled bosom, as a proof that my last thought was directed to thy
gentle mistress." In an instant all was light about his heart; the heavy
Incubus could not withstand the magic force of the flower; his crushing
weight would not now have balanced a feather; his antipathy to the
perfume soon scared him from the chamber; and the narcotic virtue of
this rose-odour again lulled the Knight into refreshing sleep. He rose
with the sun next morning, fresh and alert, and rode to the field, to
see what impression his similitude had made on the Electors, and to
watch what course the business was about to take; determined at all
hazards, should a contrary wind spring up, and threaten with shipwreck
the vessel of his hopes, to lay his hand upon the rudder, and steer it
into port.

For the present this was not required. The electing Senate had
considered Wladomir's parable, and so sedulously ruminated and digested
it overnight, that it had passed into their hearts and spirits. A stout
Knight, who espied this favourable crisis, and who sympathised in the
concerns of his heart with the enamoured Wladomir, was endeavouring to
snatch away, or at least to share with him, the honour of exalting
Fräulein Libussa to the throne. He stept forth, and drew his sword, and
with a loud voice proclaimed Libussa Duchess of Bohemia, calling upon
all who thought as he did, to draw their swords and justify the choice.
In a moment hundreds of swords were gleaming through the field; a loud
huzza announced the new Regent, and on all sides arose the joyful shout:
"Libussa be our Duchess!" A commission was appointed, with Wladomir and
the stout sword-drawer at its head, to acquaint the Fräulein with her
exaltation to the princely rank. With that modest blush, which gives the
highest grace to female charms, she accepted the sovereignty over the
people; and the magic of her enrapturing look made all hearts subject to
her. The nation celebrated the event with vast rejoicings: and although
her two sisters envied her, and employed their secret arts to obtain
revenge on her and their country for the slight which had been put upon
them, and endeavoured by the leaven of criticism, by censuring all the
measures and transactions of their sister, to produce a hurtful
fermentation in the state, yet Libussa was enabled wisely to encounter
this unsisterly procedure, and to ruin all the hostile projects, magical
or other, of these ungentle persons; till at last, weary of assailing
her in vain, they ceased to employ their ineffectual arts against her.

The sighing Wladomir awaited, in the mean time, with wistful longing,
the unfolding of his fate. More than once he had tried to read the final
issue of it in the fair eyes of his Princess; but Libussa had enjoined
them strict silence respecting the feelings of her heart; and for a
lover, without prior treaty with the eyes and their significant glances,
to demand an oral explanation, is at all times an unhappy undertaking.
The only favourable sign, which still sustained his hopes, was the
unfaded rose; for after a year had passed away, it still bloomed as
fresh as on the night when he received it from her fair hand. A flower
from a lady's hand, a nosegay, a ribbon, or a lock of hair, is certainly
in all cases better than an empty nut; yet all these pretty things are
but ambiguous pledges of love, if they have not borrowed meaning from
some more trustworthy revelation. Wladomir had nothing for it but to
play in silence the part of a sighing shepherd, and to watch what Time
and Chance might in the long-run do to help him. The unquiet Mizisla
pursued his courtship with far more vivacity: he pressed forward on
every occasion where he could obtain her notice. At the coronation, he
had been the first that took the oath of fealty to the Princess; he
followed her inseparably, as the Moon does the Earth, to express by
unbidden offices of zeal his devotion to her person; and on public
solemnities and processions, he flourished his sword before her, to keep
its good services in her remembrance.

Yet Libussa seemed, like other people in the world, to have very
speedily forgotten the promoters of her fortune; for when an obelisk is
once standing perpendicular, one heeds not the levers and implements
which raised it; so at least the claimants of her heart explained the
Fräulein's coldness. Meanwhile both of them were wrong in their opinion:
the Fräulein was neither insensible nor ungrateful; but her heart was no
longer a free piece of property, which she could give or sell according
to her pleasure. The decree of Love had already passed in favour of the
trim Forester with the sure cross-bow. The first impression, which the
sight of him had made upon her heart, was still so strong, that no
second could efface it. In a period of three years, the colours of
imagination, in which that Divinity had painted the image of the
graceful youth, had no whit abated in their brightness; and love
therefore continued altogether unimpaired. For the passion of the fair
sex is of this nature, that if it can endure three moons, it will then
last three times three years, or longer if required. In proof of this,
see the instances occurring daily before our eyes. When the heroes of
Germany sailed over distant seas, to fight out the quarrel of a
self-willed daughter of Britain with her motherland, they tore
themselves from the arms of their dames with mutual oaths of truth and
constancy; yet before the last Buoy of the Weser had got astern of them,
the heroic navigators were for most part forgotten of their Chloes. The
fickle among these maidens, out of grief to find their hearts
unoccupied, hastily supplied the vacuum by the surrogate of new
intrigues; but the faithful and true, who had constancy enough to stand
the Weser-proof, and had still refrained from infidelity when the
conquerors of their hearts had got beyond the Black Buoy, these, it is
said, preserved their vow unbroken till the return of the heroic host
into their German native country; and are still expecting from the hand
of Love the recompense of their unwearied perseverance.

It is therefore less surprising that the fair Libussa, under these
circumstances, could withstand the courting of the brilliant chivalry
who struggled for her love, than that Penelope of Ithaca could let a
whole cohort of wooers sigh for her in vain, when her heart had nothing
in reserve but the gray-headed Ulysses. Rank and birth, however, had
established such a difference in the situations of the Fräulein and of
her beloved youth, that any closer union than Platonic love, a shadowy
business which can neither warm nor nourish, was not readily to be
expected. Though in those distant times, the pairing of the sexes was as
little estimated by parchments and genealogical trees, as the chaffers
were arranged by their antennæ and shell-wings, or the flowers by their
pistils, stamina, calix and honey-produce; it was understood that with
the lofty elm the precious vine should mate itself, and not the rough
tangleweed which creeps along the hedges. A misassortment of marriage
from a difference of rank an inch in breadth excited, it is true, less
uproar than in these our classic times; yet a difference of an ell in
breadth, especially when rivals occupied the interstice, and made the
distance of the two extremities more visible, was even then a thing
which men could notice. All this, and much more, did the Fräulein
accurately ponder in her prudent heart; therefore she granted Passion,
the treacherous babbler, no audience, loudly as it spoke in favour of
the youth whom Love had honoured. Like a chaste vestal, she made an
irrevocable vow to persist through life in her virgin closeness of
heart; and to answer no inquiry of a wooer, either with her eyes, or her
gestures, or her lips; yet reserving to herself, as a just
indemnification, the right of platonising to any length she liked. This
nunlike system suited the aspirants' way of thought so ill, that they
could not in the least comprehend the killing coldness of their
mistress; Jealousy, the confidant of Love, whispered torturing suspicion
in their ears; each thought the other was the happy rival, and their
penetration spied about unweariedly to make discoveries, which both of
them recoiled from. Yet Fräulein Libussa weighed out her scanty graces
to the two valiant Ritters with such prudence and acuteness, on so fair
a balance, that the scale of neither rose above the other.

Weary of this fruitless waiting, both of them retired from the Court of
their Princess, and settled, with secret discontent, upon the
affeoffments which Duke Krokus had conferred on them. They brought so
much ill-humour home with them, that Wladomir was an oppression to all
his vassals and his neighbours; and Ritter Mizisla, on the other hand,
became a hunter, followed deer and foxes over the seed-fields and fences
of his subjects, and often with his train, to catch one hare, would ride
ten acres of corn to nothing. In consequence, arose much sobbing and
bewailing in the land; yet no righteous judge stepped forth to stay the
mischief; for who would willingly give judgment against the stronger?
And so the sufferings of the people never reached the throne of the
Duchess. By the virtue of her second-sight, however, no injustice done
within the wide limits of her sway could escape her observation; and the
disposition of her mind being soft, like the sweet features of her
face, she sorrowed inwardly at the misdeeds of her vassals, and the
violence of the powerful. She took counsel with herself how the evil
might be remedied, and her wisdom suggested an imitation of the gods,
who, in their judicial procedure, do not fall upon the criminal, and cut
him off as it were with the red hand; though vengeance, following with
slow steps, sooner or later overtakes him. The young Princess appointed
a general Convention of her Chivalry and States, and made proclamation,
that whoever had a grievance or a wrong to be righted, should come
forward free and fearless, under her safe-conduct. Thereupon, from every
end and corner of her dominions, the maltreated and oppressed crowded
towards her; the wranglers also, and litigious persons, and whoever had
a legal cause against his neighbour. Libussa sat upon her throne, like
the goddess Themis, and passed sentence, without respect of persons,
with unerring judgment; for the labyrinthic mazes of chicane could not
lead her astray, as they do the thick heads of city magistrates; and all
men were astonished at the wisdom with which she unravelled the
perplexed hanks of processes for _meum_ and _tuum_, and at her unwearied
patience in picking out the threads of justice, never once catching a
false end, but passing them from side to side of their embroilments, and
winding them off to the uttermost thrum.

When the tumult of the parties at her bar had by degrees diminished, and
the sittings were about to be concluded, on the last day of these
assizes audience was demanded by a free neighbour of the potent
Wladomir, and by deputies from the subjects of the hunter Mizisla. They
were admitted, and the Freeholder first addressing her, began: "An
industrious planter," said he, "fenced-in a little circuit, on the bank
of a broad river, whose waters glided down with soft rushing through the
green valley; for, he thought, The fair stream will be a guard to me on
this side, that no hungry wild-beast eat my crops, and it will moisten
the roots of my fruit-trees, that they flourish speedily and bring me
fruit. But when the earnings of his toil were about to ripen, the
deceitful stream grew troubled; its still waters began to swell and
roar, it overflowed its banks, and carried one piece after another of
the fruitful soil along with it; and dug itself a bed through the middle
of the cultivated land; to the sorrow of the poor planter, who had to
give up his little property to the malicious wasting of his strong
neighbour, the raging of whose waves he himself escaped with difficulty.
Puissant daughter of the wise Krokus, the poor planter entreats of thee
to command the haughty river no longer to roll its proud billows over
the field of the toilsome husbandman, or wash away the fruit of his
weary arms, his hope of glad harvest; but to flow peacefully along
within the limits of its own channel."

During this speech, the cheerful brow of the fair Libussa became
overclouded; manly rigour gleamed from her eyes, and all around was ear
to catch her sentence, which ran thus: "Thy cause is plain and straight;
no force shall disturb thy rightful privileges. A dike, which it shall
not overpass, shall set bounds to the tumultuous river; and from its
fishes thou shalt be repaid sevenfold the plunder of its wasteful
billows." Then she beckoned to the eldest of the Deputies, and he bowed
his face to the earth, and said: "Wise daughter of the far-famed Krokus,
Whose is the grain upon the field, the sower's, who has hidden the
seed-corn in the ground that it spring up and bear fruit; or the
tempest's, which breaks it and scatters it away?" She answered: "The
sower's."--"Then command the tempest," said the spokesman, "that it
choose not our corn-fields for the scene of its caprices, to uproot our
crops and shake the fruit from our trees."--"So be it," said the
Duchess; "I will tame the tempest, and banish it from your fields; it
shall battle with the clouds, and disperse them, where they are rising
from the south, and threatening the land with hail and heavy weather."

Prince Wladomir and Ritter Mizisla were both assessors in the general
tribunal. On hearing the complaint, and the rigorous sentence passed
regarding it, they waxed pale, and looked down upon the ground with
suppressed indignation; not daring to discover how sharply it stung them
to be condemned by a decree from female lips. For although, out of
tenderness to their honour, the complainants had modestly overhung the
charge with an allegorical veil, which the righteous sentence of the
fair President had also prudently respected, yet the texture of this
covering was so fine and transparent, that whoever had an eye might see
what stood behind it. But as they dared not venture to appeal from the
judgment-seat of the Princess to the people, since the sentence passed
upon them had excited universal joy, they submitted to it, though with
great reluctance. Wladomir indemnified his freeholding neighbour
sevenfold for the mischief done him; and Nimrod Mizisla engaged, on the
honour of a knight, no more to select the corn-fields of his subjects as
a chase for hare-catching. Libussa, at the same time, pointed out to
them a more respectable employment, for occupying their activity, and
restoring to their fame, which now, like a cracked pot when struck,
emitted nothing but discords, the sound ring of knightly virtues. She
placed them at the head of an army, which she was dispatching to
encounter Zornebock, the Prince of the Sorbi, a giant, and a powerful
magician withal, who was then meditating war against Bohemia. This
commission she accompanied with the penance, that they were not to
appear again at Court, till the one could offer her the plume, the other
the golden spurs, of the monster, as tokens of their victory.

The unfading rose, during this campaign, displayed its magic virtues
once more. By means of it, Prince Wladomir was as invulnerable to mortal
weapons, as Achilles the Hero; and as nimble, quick and dextrous, as
Achilles the Light-of-foot. The armies met upon the southern boundaries
of the Kingdom, and joined in fierce battle. The Bohemian heroes flew
through the squadrons, like storm and whirlwind; and cut down the thick
spear-crop, as the scythe of the mower cuts a field of hay. Zornebock
fell beneath the strong dints of their falchions; they returned in
triumph with the stipulated spoils to Vizegrad; and the spots and
blemishes, which had soiled their knightly virtue, were now washed clean
away in the blood of their enemies. Libussa bestowed on them every mark
of princely honour, dismissed them to their homes when the army was
discharged; and gave them, as a new token of her favour, a purple-red
apple from her pleasure-garden, for a memorial of her by the road,
enjoining them to part the same peacefully between them, without cutting
it in two. They then went their way; put the apple on a shield, and had
it borne before them as a public spectacle, while they consulted
together how the parting of it might be prudently effected, according to
the meaning of its gentle giver.

While the point where their roads divided lay before them at a distance,
they proceeded with their partition-treaty in the most accommodating
mood; but at last it became necessary to determine which of the two
should have the apple in his keeping, for both had equal shares in it,
and only one could get it, though each promised to himself great wonders
from the gift, and was eager to obtain possession of it. They split in
their opinions on this matter; and things went so far, that it appeared
as if the sword must decide, to whom this indivisible apple had been
allotted by the fortune of arms. But a shepherd driving his flock
overtook them as they stood debating; him they selected (apparently in
imitation of the Three Goddesses, who also applied to a shepherd to
decide their famous apple-quarrel), and made arbiter of their dispute,
and laid the business in detail before him. The shepherd thought a
little, then said: "In the gift of this apple lies a deep-hidden
meaning; but who can bring it out, save the sage Virgin who hid it
there? For myself, I conceive the apple is a treacherous fruit, that has
grown upon the Tree of Discord, and its purple skin may prefigure bloody
feud between your worshipful knightships; that each is to cut off the
other, and neither of you get enjoyment of the gift. For, tell me, how
is it possible to part an apple, without cutting it in twain?" The
Knights took the shepherd's speech to heart, and thought there was a
deal of truth in it. "Thou hast judged rightly," said they: "Has not
this base apple already kindled anger and contention between us? Were we
not standing harnessed to fight, for the deceitful gift of this proud
Princess? Did she not put us at the head of her army, with intention to
destroy us? And having failed in this, she now arms our hands with the
weapons of discord against each other! We renounce her crafty present;
neither of us will have the apple. Be it thine, as the reward of thy
righteous sentence: to the judge belongs the fruit of the process, and
to the parties the rind."

The Knights then went their several ways, while the herdsman consumed
the _objectum litis_ with all the composure and conveniency common among
judges. The ambiguous present of the Duchess cut them to the heart; and
as they found, on returning home, that they could no longer treat their
subjects and vassals in the former arbitrary fashion, but were forced to
obey the laws, which Fräulein Libussa had promulgated for the general
security among her people, their ill humour grew more deep and
rancorous. They entered into a league offensive and defensive with each
other; made a party for themselves in the country; and many mutinous
wrongheads joined them, and were sent abroad in packs to decry and
calumniate the government of women. "Shame! Shame!" cried they, "that we
must obey a woman, who gathers our victorious laurels to decorate a
distaff with them! The Man should be master of the house, and not the
Wife; this is his special right, and so it is established everywhere,
among all people. What is an army without a Duke to go before his
warriors, but a helpless trunk without a head? Let us appoint a Prince,
who may be ruler over us, and whom we may obey."

These seditious speeches were no secret to the watchful Princess; nor
was she ignorant what wind blew them thither, or what its sounding
boded. Therefore she convened a deputation of the States; entered their
assembly with the stateliness of an earthly goddess, and the words of
her mouth dropped like honey from her virgin lips. "A rumour flies about
the land," said she, "that you desire a Duke to go before you to battle,
and that you reckon it inglorious to obey me any longer. Yet, in a free
and unconstrained election, you yourselves did not choose a man from
among you; but called one of the daughters of the people, and clothed
her with the purple, to rule over you according to the laws and customs
of the land. Whoso can accuse me of error in conducting the government,
let him step forward openly and freely, and bear witness against me. But
if I, after the manner of my father Krokus, have done prudently and
justly in the midst of you, making crooked things straight, and rough
places plain; if I have secured your harvests from the spoiler, guarded
the fruit-tree, and snatched the flock from the claws of the wolf; if I
have bowed the stiff neck of the violent, assisted the down-pressed, and
given the weak a staff to rest on; then will it beseem you to live
according to your covenant, and be true, gentle and helpful to me, as in
doing fealty to me you engaged. If you reckon it inglorious to obey a
woman, you should have thought of this before appointing me to be your
Princess; if there is disgrace here, it is you alone who ought to bear
it. But your procedure shows you not to understand your own advantage:
for woman's hand is soft and tender, accustomed only to waft cool air
with the fan; and sinewy and rude is the arm of man, heavy and
oppressive when it grasps the supreme control. And know ye not that
where a woman governs, the rule is in the power of men? For she gives
heed to wise counsellors, and these gather round her. But where the
distaff excludes from the throne, there is the government of females;
for the women, that please the king's eyes, have his heart in their
hand. Therefore, consider well of your attempt, lest ye repent your
fickleness too late."

The fair speaker ceased; and a deep reverent silence reigned throughout
the hall of meeting; none presumed to utter a word against her. Yet
Prince Wladomir and his allies desisted not from their intention, but
whispered in each other's ear: "The sly Doe is loath to quit the fat
pastures; but the hunter's horn shall sound yet louder, and scare her
forth."[14] Next day they prompted the knights to call loudly on the
Princess to choose a husband within three days, and by the choice of her
heart to give the people a Prince, who might divide with her the cares
of government. At this unexpected requisition, coming as it seemed from
the voice of the nation, a virgin blush overspread the cheeks of the
lovely Princess; her clear eye discerned all the sunken cliffs, which
threatened her with peril. For even if, according to the custom of the
great world, she should determine upon subjecting her inclination to her
state-policy, she could only give her hand to one suitor, and she saw
well that all the remaining candidates would take it as a slight, and
begin to meditate revenge. Besides, the private vow of her heart was
inviolable and sacred in her eyes. Therefore she endeavoured prudently
to turn aside this importunate demand of the States; and again attempted
to persuade them altogether to renounce their schemes of innovation.
"The eagle being dead," said she, "the birds chose the Ring-dove for
their queen, and all of them obeyed her soft cooing call. But light and
airy, as is the nature of birds, they soon altered their determination,
and repented them that they had made it. The proud Peacock thought that
it beseemed him better to be ruler; the keen Falcon, accustomed to make
the smaller birds his prey, reckoned it disgraceful to obey the peaceful
Dove; they formed a party, and appointed the weak-eyed Owl to be the
spokesman of their combination, and propose a new election of a
sovereign. The sluggish Bustard, the heavy-bodied Heath-cock, the lazy
Stork, the small-brained Heron, and all the larger birds chuckled,
flapped, and croaked applause to him; and the host of little birds
twittered, in their simplicity, and chirped out of bush and grove to the
same tune. Then arose the warlike Kite, and soared boldly up into the
air, and the birds cried out: 'What a majestic flight! The brave, strong
Kite shall be our King!' Scarcely had the plundering bird taken
possession of the throne, when he manifested his activity and courage on
his winged subjects, in deeds of tyranny and caprice: he plucked the
feathers from the larger fowls, and eat the little songsters."

     [14] _Invita de lætioribus pascuis, autor seditionis inquit, bucula
     ista decedit; sed jam vi inde deturbanda est, si suâ sponte loco
     suo concedere viro alicui principi noluerit_.--DUBRAVIUS.

Significant as this oration was, it made but a small impression on the
minds of the people, hungering and thirsting after change; and they
abode by their determination, that within three days, Fräulein Libussa
should select herself a husband. At this, Prince Wladomir rejoiced in
heart; for now, he thought, he should secure the fair prey, for which he
had so long been watching in vain. Love and ambition inflamed his
wishes, and put eloquence into his mouth, which had hitherto confined
itself to secret sighing. He came to Court, and required audience of the
Duchess.

"Gracious ruler of thy people and my heart," thus he addressed her,
"from thee no secret is hidden; thou knowest the flames which burn in
this bosom, holy and pure as on the altar of the gods, and thou knowest
also what fire has kindled them. It is now appointed, that at the behest
of thy people, thou give the land a Prince. Wilt thou disdain a heart,
which lives and beats for thee? To be worthy of thy love, I risked my
life to put thee on the throne of thy father. Grant me the merit of
retaining thee upon it by the bond of tender affection: let us divide
the possession of thy throne and thy heart; the first be thine, the
second be mine, and my happiness will be exalted beyond the lot of
mortals."

Fräulein Libussa wore a most maidenlike appearance during this oration,
and covered her face with her veil, to hide the soft blush which
deepened the colour of her cheeks. On its conclusion, she made a sign
with her hand, not opening her lips, for the Prince to step aside; as if
she would consider what she should resolve upon, in answer to his suit.

Immediately the brisk Knight Mizisla announced himself, and desired to
be admitted.

"Loveliest of the daughters of princes," said he, as he entered the
audience-chamber, "the fair Ring-dove, queen of the air, must no longer,
as thou well knowest, coo in solitude, but take to herself a mate. The
proud Peacock, it is talked, holds up his glittering plumage in her
eyes, and thinks to blind her by the splendour of his feathers; but she
is prudent and modest, and will not unite herself with the haughty
Peacock. The keen Falcon, once a plundering bird, has now changed his
nature; is gentle and honest, and without deceit; for he loves the fair
Dove, and would fain that she mated with him. That his bill is hooked
and his talons, sharp, must not mislead thee: he needs them to protect
the fair Dove his darling, that no bird hurt her, or disturb the
habitation of her rule; for he is true and kindly to her, and first
swore fealty on the day when she was crowned. Now tell me, wise
Princess, if the soft Dove will grant to her trusty Falcon the love
which he longs for?"

Fräulein Libussa did as she had done before; beckoned to the Knight to
step aside; and, after waiting for a space, she called the two rivals
into her presence, and spoke thus:

"I owe you great thanks, noble Knights, for your help in obtaining me
the princely crown of Bohemia, which my father Krokus honourably wore.
The zeal, of which you remind me, had not faded from my remembrance; nor
is it hid from my knowledge, that you virtuously love me, for your looks
and gestures have long been the interpreters of your feelings. That I
shut up my heart against you, and did not answer love with love, regard
not as insensibility; it was not meant for slight or scorn, but for
harmoniously determining a choice which was doubtful. I weighed your
merits, and the tongue of the trying balance bent to neither side.
Therefore I resolved on leaving the decision of your fate to yourselves;
and offered you the possession of my heart, under the figure of an
enigmatic apple; that it might be seen to which of you the greater
measure of judgment and wisdom had been given, in appropriating to
himself this gift, which could not be divided. Now tell me without
delay, In whose hands is the apple? Whichever of you has won it from the
other, let him from this hour receive my throne and my heart as the
prize of his skill."

The two rivals looked at one another with amazement; grew pale, and held
their peace. At last, after a long pause, Prince Wladomir broke silence,
and said:

"The enigmas of the wise are, to the foolish, a nut in a toothless
mouth, a pearl which the cock scratches from the sand, a lantern in the
hand of the blind. O Princess, be not wroth with us, that we neither
knew the use nor the value of thy gift; we misinterpreted thy purpose;
thought that thou hadst cast an apple of contention on our path, to
awaken us to strife and deadly feud; therefore each gave up his share,
and we renounced the divisive fruit, whose sole possession neither of us
would have peaceably allowed the other!"

"You have given sentence on yourselves," replied the Fräulein: "if an
apple could inflame your jealousy, what fighting would ye not have
fought for a myrtle-garland twined about a crown!"

With this response she dismissed the Knights, who now lamented that
they had given ear to the unwise arbiter, and thoughtlessly cast away
the pledge of love, which, as it appeared, had been the casket of their
fairest hopes. They meditated severally how they might still execute
their purpose, and by force or guile get possession of the throne, with
its lovely occupant.

Fräulein Libussa, in the mean while, was not spending in idleness the
three days given her for consideration; but diligently taking counsel
with herself, how she might meet the importunate demand of her people,
give Bohemia a Duke, and herself a husband according to the choice of
her heart. She dreaded lest Prince Wladomir might still more pressingly
assail her, and perhaps deprive her of the throne. Necessity combined
with love to make her execute a plan, with which she had often
entertained herself as with a pleasant dream; for what mortal's head has
not some phantom walking in it, towards which he turns in a vacant hour,
to play with it as with a puppet? There is no more pleasing pastime for
a strait-shod maiden, when her galled corns are resting from the toils
of the pavement, than to think of a stately and commodious equipage; the
coy beauty dreams gladly of counts sighing at her feet; Avarice gets
prizes in the Lottery; the debtor in the jail falls heir to vast
possessions; the squanderer discovers the Hermetic Secret; and the poor
woodcutter finds a treasure in the hollow of a tree; all merely in
fancy, yet not without the enjoyment of a secret satisfaction. The gift
of prophecy has always been united with a warm imagination; thus the
fair Libussa had, like others, willingly and frequently given heed to
this seductive playmate, which, in kind companionship, had always
entertained her with the figure of the young Archer, so indelibly
impressed upon her heart. Thousands of projects came into her mind,
which Fancy palmed on her as feasible and easy. At one time she formed
schemes of drawing forth her darling youth from his obscurity, placing
him in the army, and raising him from one post of honour to another; and
then instantly she bound a laurel garland about his temples, and led
him, crowned with victory and honour, to the throne she could have been
so glad to share with him. At other times, she gave a different turn to
the romance: she equipped her darling as a knight-errant, seeking for
adventures; brought him to her Court, and changed him into a Huon of
Bourdeaux; nor was the wondrous furniture wanting, for endowing him as
highly as Friend Oberon did his ward. But when Common Sense again got
possession of the maiden's soul, the many-coloured forms of the magic
lantern waxed pale in the beam of prudence, and the fair vision vanished
into air. She then bethought her what hazards would attend such an
enterprise; what mischief for her people, when jealousy and envy raised
the hearts of her grandees in rebellion against her, and the alarum
beacon of discord gave the signal for uproar and sedition in the land.
Therefore she sedulously hid the wishes of her heart from the keen
glance of the spy, and disclosed no glimpse of them to any one.

But now, when the people were clamouring for a Prince, the matter had
assumed another form: the point would now be attained, could she combine
her wishes with the national demand. She strengthened her soul with
manly resolution; and as the third day dawned, she adorned herself with
all her jewels, and her head was encircled with the myrtle crown.
Attended by her maidens, all decorated with flower garlands, she
ascended the throne, full of lofty courage and soft dignity. The
assemblage of knights and vassals around her stood in breathless
attention, to learn from her lips the name of the happy Prince with whom
she had resolved to share her heart and throne. "Ye nobles of my
people," thus she spoke, "the lot of your destiny still lies untouched
in the urn of concealment; you are still free as my coursers that graze
in the meadows, before the bridle and the bit have curbed them, or their
smooth backs have been pressed by the burden of the saddle and the
rider. It now rests with you to signify, Whether, in the space allowed
me for the choice of a spouse, your hot desire for a Prince to rule over
you has cooled, and given place to more calm scrutiny of this intention;
or you still persist inflexibly in your demand." She paused for a
moment; but the hum of the multitude, the whispering and buzzing, and
looks of the whole Senate, did not long leave her in uncertainty, and
their speaker ratified the conclusion, that the vote was still for a
Duke. "Then be it so!" said she; "the die is cast, the issue of it
stands not with me! The gods have appointed, for the kingdom of Bohemia,
a Prince who shall sway its sceptre with justice and wisdom. The young
cedar does not yet overtop the firm-set oaks; concealed among the trees
of the forest it grows, encircled with ignoble shrubs; but soon it shall
send forth branches to give shade to its roots; and its top shall touch
the clouds. Choose a deputation, ye nobles of the people, of twelve
honourable men from among you, that they hasten to seek out the Prince,
and attend him to the throne. My steed will point out your path;
unloaded and free it shall course on before you; and as a token that
you have found what you are sent forth to seek, observe that the man
whom the gods have selected for your Prince, at the time when you
approach him, will be eating his repast on an iron table, under the open
sky, in the shadow of a solitary tree. To him you shall do reverence,
and clothe his body with the princely robe. The white horse will let him
mount it, and bring him hither to the Court, that he may be my husband
and your lord."

She then left the assembly, with the cheerful yet abashed countenance
which brides wear, when they look for the arrival of the bridegroom. At
her speech there was much wondering; and the prophetic spirit breathing
from it worked upon the general mind like a divine oracle, which the
populace blindly believe, and which thinkers alone attempt
investigating. The messengers of honour were selected, the white horse
stood in readiness, caparisoned with Asiatic pomp, as if it had been
saddled for carrying the Grand Signior to mosque. The cavalcade set
forth, attended by the concourse, and the loud huzzaing of the people;
and the white horse paced on before. But the train soon vanished from
the eyes of the spectators: and nothing could be seen but a little cloud
of dust whirling up afar off: for the spirited courser, getting to its
mettle when it reached the open air, began a furious gallop, like a
British racer, so that the squadron of deputies could hardly keep in
sight of it. Though the quick steed seemed abandoned to its own
guidance, an unseen power directed its steps, pulled its bridle, and
spurred its flanks. Fräulein Libussa, by the magic virtues inherited
from her Elfine mother, had contrived so to instruct the courser, that
it turned neither to the right hand nor to the left from its path, but
with winged steps hastened on to its destination: and she herself, now
that all combined to the fulfilment of her wishes, awaited its returning
rider with tender longing.

The messengers had in the mean time been soundly galloped; already they
had travelled many leagues, up hill and down dale; had swum across the
Elbe and the Moldau; and as their gastric juices made them think of
dinner, they recalled to mind the strange table, at which, according to
the Fräulein's oracle, their new Prince was to be feeding. Their glosses
and remarks on it were many. A forward knight observed to his
companions: "In my poor view of it, our gracious lady has it in her eye
to bilk us, and make April messengers of us; for who ever heard of any
man in Bohemia that ate his victuals off an iron table? What use is it?
our sharp galloping will bring us nothing but mockery and scorn."
Another, of a more penetrating turn, imagined that the iron table might
be allegorical; that they should perhaps fall in with some
knight-errant, who, after the manner of the wandering brotherhood, had
sat down beneath a tree, and spread out his frugal dinner on his shield.
A third said, jesting: "I fear our way will lead us down to the workshop
of the Cyclops; and we shall find the lame Vulcan, or one of his
journeymen, dining from his stithy, and must bring _him_ to our Venus."

Amid such conversation, they observed their guiding quadruped, which had
got a long start of them, turn across a new-ploughed field, and, to
their wonder, halt beside the ploughman. They dashed rapidly forward,
and found a peasant sitting on an upturned plough, and eating his black
bread from the iron ploughshare, which he was using as a table, under
the shadow of a fresh pear-tree. He seemed to like the stately horse; he
patted it, offered it a bit of bread, and it eat from his hand. The
Embassy, of course, was much surprised at this phenomenon; nevertheless,
no member of it doubted but that they had found their man. They
approached him reverently, and the eldest among them opened his lips,
and said: "The Duchess of Bohemia has sent us hither, and bids us
signify to thee the will and purpose of the gods, that thou change thy
plough with the throne of this kingdom, and thy goad with its sceptre.
She selects thee for her husband, to rule with her over the Bohemians."
The young peasant thought they meant to banter him; a thing little to
his taste, especially as he supposed that they had guessed his
love-secret, and were now come to mock his weakness. Therefore he
answered somewhat stoutly, to meet mockery with mockery: "But is your
dukedom worth this plough? If the prince cannot eat with better relish,
drink more joyously, or sleep more soundly than the peasant, then in
sooth it is not worth while to change this kindly furrow-field with the
Bohemian kingdom, or this smooth ox-goad with its sceptre. For, tell me,
Are not three grains of salt as good for seasoning my morsel as three
bushels?"

Then one of the Twelve answered: "The purblind mole digs underground for
worms to feed upon; for he has no eyes which can endure the daylight,
and no feet which are formed for running like the nimble roe; the scaly
crab creeps to and fro in the mud of lakes and marshes, delights to
dwell under tree-roots and shrubs by the banks of rivers, for he wants
the fins for swimming; and the barn-door cock, cooped up within his
hen-fence, risks no flight over the low wall, for he is too timorous to
trust in his wings, like the high-soaring bird of prey. Have eyes for
seeing, feet for going, fins for swimming, and pinions for flight been
allotted thee, thou wilt not grub like a mole underground; nor hide
thyself like a dull shell-fish among mud; nor, like the king of the
poultry, be content with crowing from the barn-door: but come forward
into day; run, swim, or fly into the clouds, as Nature may have
furnished thee with gifts. For it suffices not the active man to
continue what he is; but he strives to become what he may be. Therefore,
do thou try being what the gods have called thee to; then wilt thou
judge rightly whether the Bohemian kingdom is worth an acre of corn-land
in barter, yea or not."

This earnest oration of the Deputy, in whose face no jesting feature was
to be discerned; and still more the insignia of royalty, the purple
robe, the sceptre and the golden sword, which the ambassadors brought
forward as a reference and certificate of their mission's authenticity,
at last overcame the mistrust of the doubting ploughman. All at once,
light rose on his soul; a rapturous thought awoke in him, that Libussa
had discovered the feelings of his heart; had, by her skill in seeing
what was secret, recognised his faithfulness and constancy: and was
about to recompense him, so as he had never ventured even in dreams to
hope. The gift of prophecy predicted to him by her oracle, then came
into his mind; and he thought that now or never it must be fulfilled.
Instantly he grasped his hazel staff; stuck it deep into the ploughed
land; heaped loose mould about it, as you plant a tree; and, lo,
immediately the staff got buds, and shot forth sprouts and boughs with
leaves and flowers. Two of the green twigs withered, and their dry
leaves became the sport of the wind; but the third grew up the more
luxuriantly, and its fruits ripened. Then came the spirit of prophecy
upon the rapt ploughman; he opened his mouth, and said: "Ye messengers
of the Princess Libussa and of the Bohemian people, hear the words of
Primislaus the son of Mnatha, the stout-hearted Knight, for whom, blown
upon by the spirit of prophecy, the mists of the Future part asunder.
The man who guided the ploughshare, ye have called to seize the handles
of your princedom, before his day's work was ended. O that the glebe had
been broken by the furrow, to the boundary--stone; so had Bohemia
remained an independent kingdom to the utmost ages! But since ye have
disturbed the labour of the plougher too early, the limits of your
country will become the heritage of your neighbour, and your distant
posterity will be joined to him in unchangeable union. The three twigs
of the budding Staff are three sons which your Princess shall bear me:
two of them, as unripe shoots, shall speedily wither away; but the third
shall inherit the throne, and by him shall the fruit of late
grandchildren be matured, till the Eagle soar over your mountains and
nestle in the land; yet soon fly thence, and return as to his own
possession. And then, when the Son of the Gods arises,[15] who is his
plougher's friend, and smites the slave-fetters from his limbs, then
mark it, Posterity, for thou shalt bless thy destiny! For when he has
trodden under his feet the Dragon of Superstition, he will stretch out
his arm against the waxing moon, to pluck it from the firmament, that he
may himself illuminate the world as a benignant star."

     [15] Emperor Joseph II.

The venerable deputation stood in silent wonder, gazing at the prophetic
man, like dumb idols: it was as if a god were speaking by his lips. He
himself turned away from them to the two white steers, the associates of
his toilsome labour; he unyoked and let them go in freedom from their
farm-service; at which they began frisking joyfully upon the grassy lea,
but at the same time visibly decreased in bulk; like thin vapour melted
into air, and vanished out of sight. Then Primislaus doffed his peasant
wooden shoes, and proceeded to the brook to clean himself. The precious
robes were laid upon him; he begirt himself with the sword, and had the
golden spurs put on him like a knight; then stoutly sprang upon the
white horse, which bore him peaceably along. Being now about to quit his
still asylum, he commanded the ambassadors to bring his wooden shoes
after him, and keep them carefully, as a token that the humblest among
the people had once been exalted to the highest dignity in Bohemia; and
as a memorial for his posterity to bear their elevation meekly, and,
mindful of their origin, to respect and defend the peasantry, from which
themselves had sprung. Hence came the ancient practice of exhibiting a
pair of wooden shoes before the Kings of Bohemia on their coronation; a
custom held in observance till the male line of Primislaus became
extinct.

The planted hazel rod bore fruit and grew; striking roots out on every
side, and sending forth new shoots, till at last the whole field was
changed into a hazel copse; a circumstance of great advantage to the
neighbouring township, which included it within their bounds; for, in
memory of this miraculous plantation, they obtained a grant from the
Bohemian Kings, exempting them from ever paying any public contribution
in the land, except a pint of hazel nuts; which royal privilege their
late descendants, as the story runs, are enjoying at this day.[16]

     [16] Æneas Sylvius affirms that he saw, with his own eyes, a
     renewal of this charter from Charles IV. _Vidi inter privilegia
     regni literas Caroli Quarti, Romanorum Imperatoris, divi Sigumundi
     patris in quibus (villæ illius incolæ) libertate donantur; nec plus
     tributi pendere jubentur, quam nucum illius arboris exiguam
     mensuram._

Though the white courser, which was now proudly carrying the bridegroom
to his mistress, seemed to outrun the winds, Primislaus did not fail now
and then to let him feel the golden spurs, to push him on still faster.
The quick gallop seemed to him a tortoise-pace, so keen was his desire
to have the fair Libussa, whose form, after seven years, was still so
new and lovely in his soul, once more before his eyes; and this not
merely as a show, like some bright peculiar anemone in the variegated
bed of a flower-garden, but for the blissful appropriation of victorious
love. He thought only of the myrtle-crown, which, in the lover's
valuation, far outshines the crown of sovereignty; and had he balanced
love and rank against each other, the Bohemian throne without Libussa
would have darted up, like a clipped ducat in the scales of the
money-changer.

The sun was verging to decline, when the new Prince, with his escort,
entered Vizegrad. Fräulein Libussa was in her garden, where she had just
plucked a basket of ripe plums, when her future husband's arrival was
announced to her. She went forth modestly, with all her maidens, to meet
him; received him as a bridegroom conducted to her by the gods, veiling
the election of her heart under a show of submission to the will of
Higher Powers. The eyes of the Court were eagerly directed to the
stranger; in whom, however, nothing could be seen but a fair handsome
man. In respect of outward form, there were several courtiers who, in
thought, did not hesitate to measure with him; and could not understand
why the gods should have disdained the anti-chamber, and not selected
from it some accomplished and ruddy lord, rather than the sunburnt
ploughman, to assist the Princess in her government. Especially in
Wladomir and Mizisla, it was observable that their pretensions were
reluctantly withdrawn. It behoved the Fräulein then to vindicate the
work of the gods; and show that Squire Primislaus had been indemnified
for the defect of splendid birth, by a fair equivalent in sterling
common sense and depth of judgment. She had caused a royal banquet to be
prepared, no whit inferior to the feast with which the hospitable Dido
entertained her pious guest Æneas. The cup of welcome passed diligently
round, the presents of the Princess had excited cheerfulness and
good-humour, and a part of the night had already vanished amid jests and
pleasant pastime, when Libussa set on foot a game at riddles; and, as
the discovery of hidden things was her proper trade, she did not fail to
solve, with satisfactory decision, all the riddles that were introduced.

When her own turn came to propose one, she called Prince Wladomir,
Mizisla and Primislaus to her, and said: "Fair sirs, it is now for you
to read a riddle, which I shall submit to you, that it may be seen who
among you is the wisest and of keenest judgment. I intended, for you
three, a present of this basket of plums, which I plucked in my garden.
One of you shall have the half, and one over; the next shall have the
half of what remains, and one over; the third shall again have the half,
and three over. Now, if so be that the basket is then emptied, tell me,
How many plums are in it now?"

The headlong Ritter Mizisla took the measure of the fruit with his eye,
not the sense of the riddle with his understanding, and said: "What can
be decided with the sword I might undertake to decide; but thy riddles,
gracious Princess, are, I fear, too hard for me. Yet at thy request I
will risk an arrow at the bull's-eye, let it hit or miss: I suppose
there is a matter of some three score plums in the basket."

"Thou hast missed, dear Knight," said Fräulein Libussa. "Were there as
many again, half as many, and a third part as many as the basket has in
it, and five over, there would then be as many above three score as
there are now below it."

Prince Wladomir computed as laboriously and anxiously, as if the post of
Comptroller-General of Finances had depended on a right solution; and at
last brought out the net product five-and-forty. The Fräulein then said:

"Were there a third, and a half, and a sixth as many again of them, the
number would exceed forty-five as much as it now falls short of it."

Though, in our days, any man endowed with the arithmetical faculty of a
tapster, might have solved this problem without difficulty, yet, for an
untaught computant, the gift of divination was essential, if he meant to
get out of the affair with honour, and not stick in the middle of it
with disgrace. As the wise Primislaus was happily provided with this
gift, it cost him neither art nor exertion to find the answer.

"Familiar companion of the heavenly Powers," said he, "whoso undertakes
to pierce thy high celestial meaning, undertakes to soar after the eagle
when he hides himself in the clouds. Yet I will pursue thy hidden
flight, as far as the eye, to which thou hast given its light, will
reach. I judge that of the plums which thou hast laid in the basket,
there are thirty in number, not one fewer, and none more."

The Fräulein cast a kindly glance on him, and said: "Thou tracest the
glimmering ember, which lies deep-hid among the ashes; for thee light
dawns out of darkness and vapour: thou hast read my riddle."

Thereupon she opened her basket, and counted out fifteen plums, and one
over, into Prince Wladomir's hat, and fourteen remained. Of these she
gave Ritter Mizisla seven and one over, and there were still six in the
basket; half of these she gave the wise Primislaus and three over, and
the basket was empty. The whole Court was lost in wonder at the fair
Libussa's ciphering gift, and at the penetration of her cunning spouse.
Nobody could comprehend how human wit was able, on the one hand, to
enclose a common number so mysteriously in words; or, on the other hand,
to drag it forth so accurately from its enigmatical concealment. The
empty basket she conferred upon the two Knights, who had failed in
soliciting her love, to remind them that, their suit was voided. Hence
comes it, that when a wooer is rejected, people say, _His love has given
him the basket_, even to the present day.

So soon as all was ready for the nuptials and coronation, both these
ceremonies were transacted with becoming pomp. Thus the Bohemian people
had obtained a Duke, and the fair Libussa had obtained a husband, each
according to the wish of their hearts; and what was somewhat wonderful,
by virtue of Chicane, an agent who has not the character of being too
beneficent or prosperous. And if either of the parties had been
overreached in any measure, it at least was not the fair Libussa.
Bohemia had a Duke in name, but the administration now, as formerly,
continued in the female hand. Primislaus was the proper pattern of a
tractable obedient husband, and contested with his Duchess neither the
direction of her house nor of her empire. His sentiments and wishes
sympathised with hers, as perfectly as two accordant strings, of which
when the one is struck, the other voluntarily trembles to the self-same
note. Nor was Libussa like those haughty overbearing dames, who would
pass for great matches; and having, as they think, made the fortune of
some hapless wight, continually remind him of his wooden shoes: but she
resembled the renowned Palmyran Queen; and ruled, as Zenobia did her
kindly Odenatus, by superiority of mental talent.

The happy couple lived in the enjoyment of unchangeable love; according
to the fashion of those times, when the instinct which united hearts was
as firm and durable, as the mortar and cement with which they built
their indestructible strongholds. Duke Primislaus soon became one of the
most accomplished and valiant knights of his time, and the Bohemian
Court the most splendid in Germany. By degrees, many knights and nobles,
and multitudes of people from all quarters of the empire, drew to it; so
that Vizegrad became too narrow for its inhabitants; and, in
consequence, Libussa called her officers before her, and commanded them
to found a city, on the spot where they should find a man at noontide
making the wisest use of his teeth. They set forth, and at the time
appointed found a man engaged in sawing a block of wood. They judged
that this industrious character was turning his saw-teeth, at noontide,
to a far better use than the parasite does his jaw-teeth by the table of
the great; and doubted not but they had found the spot, intended by the
Princess for the site of their town. They marked out a space upon the
green with the ploughshare, for the circuit of the city walls. On asking
the workman what he meant to make of his sawed timber, he replied,
"Prah," which in the Bohemian language signifies a door-threshold. So
Libussa called her new city Praha, that is Prague, the well-known
capital upon the Moldau. In process of time, Primislaus's predictions
were punctually fulfilled. His spouse became the mother of three
Princes; two died in youth, but the third grew to manhood, and from him
went forth a glorious royal line, which flourished for long centuries on
the Bohemian throne.




MELECHSALA.


Father Gregory, the ninth of the name who sat upon St. Peter's chair,
had once, in a sleepless night, an inspiration from the spirit, not of
prophecy, but of political chicane, to clip the wings of the German
Eagle, lest it rose above the head of his own haughty Rome. No sooner
had the first sunbeam enlightened the venerable Vatican, than his
Holiness summoned his attendant chamberlain, and ordered him to call a
meeting of the Sacred College; where Father Gregory, in his pontifical
apparel, celebrated high mass, and after its conclusion moved a new
Crusade; to which all his cardinals, readily surmising the wise objects
of this armament for God's glory and the common weal of Christendom,
gave prompt and cordial assent.

Thereupon, a cunning Nuncio started instantly for Naples, where the
Emperor Frederick of Swabia had his Court; and took with him in his
travelling-bag two boxes, one of which was filled with the sweet honey
of persuasion; the other with tinder, steel and flint, to light the fire
of excommunication, should the mutinous son of the Church hesitate to
pay the Holy Father due obedience. On arriving at Court, the Legate
opened his sweet box, and copiously gave out its smooth confectionery.
But the Emperor Frederick was a man delicate in palate; he soon smacked
the taste of the physic hidden in this sweetness, and he knew too well
its effects on the alimentary canal; so he turned away from the
treacherous mess, and declined having any more of it. Then the Legate
opened his other box, and made it spit some sparks, which singed the
Imperial beard, and stung the skin like nettles; whereby the Emperor
discovered that the Holy Father's finger might, ere long, be heavier on
him than the Legate's loins; therefore plied himself to the purpose,
engaged to lead the armies of the Lord against the Unbelievers in the
East, and appointed his Princes to assemble for an expedition to the
Holy Land. The Princes communicated the Imperial order to the Counts,
the Counts summoned out their vassals, the Knights and Nobles; the
Knights equipped their Squires and Horsemen; all mounted, and collected,
each under his proper banner.

Except the night of St. Bartholomew, no night has ever caused such
sorrow and tribulation in the world, as this, which God's Vicegerent
upon Earth had employed in watching to produce a ruinous Crusade. Ah,
how many warm tears flowed, as knight and squire pricked off, and
blessed their dears! A glorious race of German heroes never saw the
light, because of this departure; but languished in embryo, as the germs
of plants in the Syrian desert, when the hot Sirocco has passed over
them. The ties of a thousand happy marriages were violently torn
asunder; ten thousand brides in sorrow hung their garlands, like the
daughters of Jerusalem, upon the Babylonian willow-trees, and sat and
wept; and a hundred thousand lovely maidens grew up for the bridegroom
in vain, and blossomed like a rose-bed in a solitary cloister garden,
for there was no hand to pluck them, and they withered away unenjoyed.
Among the sighing spouses, whom this sleepless night of his Holiness
deprived of their husbands, were St. Elizabeth, the Landgraf of
Thuringia's lady, and Ottilia, Countess of Gleichen; a wife not
standing, it is true, in the odour of sanctity, yet in respect of
personal endowments, and virtuous conduct, inferior to none of her
contemporaries.

Landgraf Ludwig, a trusty feudatory of the Emperor, had issued general
orders for his vassals to collect, and attend him to the camp. But most
of them sought pretexts for politely declining this honour. One was
tormented by the gout, another by the stone; one had got his horses
foundered, another's armoury had been destroyed by fire. Count Ernst of
Gleichen, however, with a little troop of stout retainers, who were free
and unencumbered, and took pleasure in the prospect of distant
adventures, equipped their squires and followers, obeyed the orders of
the Landgraf, and led their people to the place of rendezvous. The Count
had been wedded for two years; and in this period his lovely consort had
presented him with two children, a little master and a little miss,
which, according to the custom of those stalwart ages, had been born
without the aid of science, fair and softly as the dew from the
Twilight. A third pledge, which she carried under her heart, was, by
virtue of the Pope's insomnolency, destined, when it saw the light, to
forego the embraces of its father. Although Count Ernst put on the
rugged aspect of a man, Nature maintained her rights in him, and he
could not hide his strong feelings of tenderness, when at parting he
quitted the embraces of his weeping spouse. As in dumb sorrow he was
leaving her, she turned hastily to the cradle of her children; plucked
out of it her sleeping boy; pressed it softly to her breast, and held it
with tearful eyes to the father, to imprint a parting kiss on its
unconscious cheek. With her little girl she did the same. This gave the
Count a sharp twinge about the heart: his lips began to quiver, his
mouth visibly increased in breadth; and sobbing aloud, he pressed the
infants to his steel cuirass, under which there beat a very soft and
feeling heart; kissed them from their sleep, and recommended them,
together with their much loved mother, to the keeping of God and all the
Saints. As he winded down along the castle road with his harnessed troop
from the high fortress of Gleichen, she looked after him with desolate
sadness, till his banner, upon which she herself had wrought the
Red-cross with fine purple silk, no longer floated in her vision.

Landgraf Ludwig was exceedingly contented as he saw his stately vassal,
and his knights and squires, advancing with their flag unfurled; but on
viewing him more narrowly, and noticing his trouble, he grew wroth; for
he thought the Count was faint of heart, and out of humour with the
expedition, and following it against his will. Therefore his brow
wrinkled down into frowns, and the landgraphic nostrils sniffed
displeasure. Count Ernst had a fine pathognomic eye; he soon observed
what ailed his lord, and going boldly up, disclosed to him the reason of
his cloudy mood. His words were as oil on the vinegar of discontent; the
Landgraf, with honest frankness, seized his vassal's hand, and said:
"Ah, is it so, good cousin? Then the shoe pinches both of us in one
place; Elizabeth's good-b'ye has given me a sore heart too. But be of
good cheer! While we are fighting abroad, our wives will be praying at
home, that we may return with renown and glory." Such was the custom of
the country in those days: while the husband took the field, the wife
continued in her chamber, solitary and still, fasting and praying, and
making vows without end, for his prosperous return. This old usage is
not universal in the land at present; as the last crusade of our German
warriors to the distant West,[17] by the rich increase of families
during the absence of their heroic heads, has sufficiently made
manifest.

     [17] Of the Hessian troops to America, during the Revolutionary
     War.--ED.

The pious Elizabeth felt no less pain at parting from her husband than
her fair companion in distress, the Countess of Gleichen. Though her
lord the Landgraf was rather of a stormy disposition, she had lived with
him in the most perfect unity: and his terrestrial mass was by degrees
so imbued with the sanctity of his helpmate, that some beneficent
historians have appended to him likewise the title of Saint; which,
however, must be looked on rather as a charitable compliment than a real
statement of the truth; as with us, in these times, the epithets of
great, magnanimous, immortal, erudite, profound, for the most part
indicate no more than a little outward edge-gilding. So much appears
from all the circumstances, that the elevated couple did not always
harmonise in works of holiness; nay, that the Powers of Heaven had to
interfere at times in the domestic differences thence arising, to
maintain the family peace: as the following example will evince. The
pious lady, to the great dissatisfaction of her courtiers and
lip-licking pages, had the custom of reserving from the Landgraf's table
the most savoury dishes for certain hungry beggars, who incessantly
beleaguered the castle; and she used to give herself the satisfaction,
when the court dinner was concluded, of distributing this kind donation
to the poor with her own hands. According to the courtly system, whereby
thrift on the small scale is always to make up for wastefulness on the
great, the meritorious cook-department every now and then complained of
this as earnestly as if the whole dominions of Thuringia had run the
risk of being eaten up by these lank-sided guests; and the Landgraf, who
dabbled somewhat in economy, regarded it as so important an affair,
that, in all seriousness, he strictly forbade his consort this labour of
love, which had through time become her spiritual hobby. Nevertheless,
one day the impulse of benevolence, and the temptation to break through
her husband's orders in pursuit of it, became too strong to be resisted.
She beckoned to her women, who were then uncovering the table, to take
off some untouched dishes, with a few rolls of wheaten bread, and keep
them as smuggled goods. These she packed into a little basket, and stole
out with it by a postern gate.

But the watchers had got wind of it, and betrayed it to the Landgraf,
who gave instant orders for a strict guard upon all the outlets of the
castle. Being told that his lady had been seen gliding with a heavy load
through the postern, he proceeded with majestic strides across the
court-yard, and stept out upon the drawbridge, as if to take a mouthful
of fresh air. Alas! The pious lady heard the jingling of his golden
spurs; and fear and terror came upon her, till her knees trembled, and
she could not move another footstep. She concealed the victual-basket
under her apron, that modest covering of female charms and roguery; but
whatever privileges this inviolable asylum may enjoy against excisemen
and officers of customs, it is no wall of brass for a husband. The
Landgraf, smelling mischief, hastened to the place; his sunburnt cheeks
were reddened with indignation, and the veins swelled fearfully upon his
brow.

"Wife," said he, in a hasty tone, "what hast thou in the basket thou art
hiding from me? Is it victuals from my table, for thy vile crew of
vagabonds and beggars?"

"Not at all, dear lord," replied Elizabeth, meekly, but with
embarrassment, who held herself entitled, without prejudice to her
sanctity, to make a little slip in the present critical position of
affairs: "it is nothing but a few roses that I gathered in the garden."

Had the Landgraf been one of our contemporaries, he must have believed
his lady on her word of honour, and desisted from farther search; but in
those wild times the minds of men were not so polished.

"Let us see," said the imperious husband, and sharply pulled the apron
to a side. The tender wife had no defence against this violence but by
recoiling: "O! softly, softly, my dear husband!" said she, and blushed
for shame at being detected in a falsehood, in presence of her servants.
But, O wonder upon wonder! the _corpus delicti_ was in very deed
transformed into the fairest blooming roses; the rolls had changed to
white roses, the sausages to red, the omelets to yellow ones! With
joyful amazement the saintly dame observed this metamorphosis, and knew
not whether to believe her eyes; for she had never given credit to her
Guardian Angel for such delicate politeness, as to work a miracle in
favour of a lady, when the point was to cajole a rigorous husband, and
make good a female affirmation.

So visible a proof of innocence allayed the fierceness of the Lion. He
now turned his tremendous looks on the down-stricken serving-men, who,
as it was apparent, had been groundlessly calumniating his angelic wife;
he scornfully rated them, and swore a deep oath, that the first
eaves-dropping pickthank who again accused his virtuous wife to him, he
would cast into the dungeon, and there let him lie and rot. This done,
he took a rose from the basket, and stuck it in his hat, in triumph for
his lady's innocence. History has not certified us, whether, on the
following day, he found a withered rose or a cold sausage there: in the
mean time it assures us, that the saintly wife, when her lord had left
her with the kiss of peace, and she herself had recovered from her
fright, stept down the hill, much comforted in heart, to the meadow
where her nurslings, the lame and blind, the naked and the hungry, were
awaiting her, to dole out among them her intended bounty. For she well
knew that the miraculous deception would again vanish were she there, as
in reality it did; for, on opening her victual-magazine she found no
roses at all, but in their stead the nutritious crumbs which she had
snatched from the teeth of the castle bone-polishers.

Though now, by the departure of her husband, she was to be freed from
his rigorous superintendence, and obtain free scope to execute her
labours of love in secret or openly, when and where it pleased her, yet
she loved her imperious husband so faithfully and sincerely, that she
could not part from him without the deepest sorrow. Ah! she foreboded
but too well, that in this world she should not see him any more. And
for the enjoyment of him in the other, the aspect of affairs was little
better. A canonised Saint has such preferment there, that all other
Saints compared with her are but a heavenly mob.

High as the Landgraf had been stationed in this sublunary world, it was
a question whether, in the courts of Heaven, he might be found worthy to
kneel on the footstool of her throne, and raise his eyes to his former
bedmate. Yet, many vows as she made, many good works as she did, much as
her prayers in other cases had availed with all the Saints, her credit
in the upper world was not sufficient to stretch out her husband's term
a span. He died on this march, in the bloom of life, of a malignant
fever, at Otranto, before he had acquired the knightly merit of chining
a single Saracen. While he was preparing for departure, and the time was
come for him to give the world his blessing, he called Count Ernst from
among his other servants and vassals to his bedside; appointed him
commander of the troops which he himself had led thus far, and made him
swear that he would not return till he had thrice drawn his sword
against the Infidel. Then he took the holy viaticum from the hands of
his marching chaplain; and ordering as many masses for his soul, as
might have brought himself and all his followers triumphantly into the
New Jerusalem, he breathed his last. Count Ernst had the corpse of his
lord embalmed: he enclosed it in a silver coffin, and sent it to the
widowed lady, who wore mourning for her husband like a Roman Empress,
for she never laid her weeds aside while she continued in this world.

Count Ernst of Gleichen forwarded the pilgrimage as much as possible,
and arrived in safety with his people in the camp at Ptolemais. Here, it
was rather a theatrical emblem of war than a serious campaign that met
his view. For as on our stages, when they represent a camp or field of
battle, there are merely a few tents erected in the foreground, and a
little handful of players scuffling together; but in the distance many
painted tents and squadrons to assist the illusion, and cheat the eye,
the whole being merely intended for an artificial deception of the
senses; so also was the crusading army a mixture of fiction and reality.
Of the numerous heroic hosts that left their native country, it was
always the smallest part that reached the boundaries of the land they
had gone forth to conquer. But few were devoured by the swords of the
Saracens. These Infidels had powerful allies, whom they sent beyond
their frontiers, and who made brisk work among their enemies, though
getting neither wages nor thanks for their good service. These allies
were, Hunger and Nakedness, Perils by land and water and among bad
brethren, Frost and Heat, Pestilence and malignant Boils; and the
grinding Home-sickness also fell at times like a heavy Incubus upon the
steel harness, and crushed it together like soft pasteboard, and spurred
the steed to a quick return. Under these circumstances, Count Ernst had
little hope of speedily fulfilling his oath, and thrice dyeing his
knightly sword in unbelieving blood, as must be done before he thought
of returning. For three days' journey round the camp, no Arab archer was
to be seen; the weakness of the Christian host lay concealed behind its
bulwarks and entrenchments; they did not venture out to seek the distant
enemy, but waited for the slow help of his slumbering Holiness, who,
since the wakeful night that gave rise to this Crusade, had enjoyed
unbroken sleep, and about the issue of the Holy War had troubled
himself very little.

In this inaction, as inglorious to the Christian army, as of old that
loitering was to the Greeks before the walls of bloody but courageous
Troy, where the godlike Achilles, with his confederates, moped so long
about his fair Briseis,--the chivalry of Christendom kept up much
jollity and recreation in their camp, to kill lazy time, and scare away
the blue devils; the Italians, with song and harping, to which the
nimble-footed Frenchmen danced; the solemn Spaniards with chess; the
English with cock-fighting; the Germans with feasting and wassail.

Count Ernst, taking small delight in any of these pastimes, amused
himself with hunting; made war on the foxes in the dry wildernesses, and
pursued the shy chamois into the barren mountains. The knights of his
train "disagreed" with the glowing sun by day, and the damp evening air
under the open sky, and sneaked to a side when their lord called for his
horses; therefore, in his hunting expeditions, he was generally attended
only by his faithful Squire, named the mettled Kurt, and a single groom.
Once, his eagerness in clambering after the chamois, had carried him to
such a distance, that the sun was dipping in the Mid-sea wave before he
thought of returning; and, fast as he hastened homewards, night came
upon him at a distance from the camp. The appearance of some treacherous
_ignes fatui_, which he mistook for the watch-fires, led him off still
farther. On discovering his error, he resolved to rest beneath a tree
till daybreak. The trusty Squire prepared a bed of soft moss for his
lord, who, wearied by the heat of the day, fell asleep before he could
lift his hand to bless himself, according to custom, with the sign of
the cross. But to the mettled Kurt there came no wink of sleep, for he
was by nature watchful like a bird of darkness; and though this gift had
not belonged to him, his faithful care for his lord would have kept him
waking. The night, as usual in the climate of Asia, was serene and
still; the stars twinkled in pure diamond light; and solemn silence, as
in the Valley of Death, reigned over the wide desert. No breath of air
was stirring, yet the nocturnal coolness poured life and refreshment
over herb and living thing. But about the third watch, when the morning
star had begun to announce the coming day, there arose a din in the
dusky remoteness, like the voice of a forest stream rushing over some
steep precipice. The watchful squire listened eagerly, and sent his
other senses also out for tidings, as his sharp eye could not pierce the
veil of darkness. He hearkened, and snuffed at the same time, like a
bloodhound, for a scent came towards him as of sweet-smelling herbs and
trodden grass, and the strange noise appeared to be approaching. He laid
his ear to the ground, and heard a trampling as of horses' hoofs, which
led him to conclude that the Infernal Chase was hunting in these parts.
A cold shudder passed over him, and his terror grew extreme. He shook
his master from sleep; and the latter, having roused himself, soon saw
that here another than a spectral host was to be fronted. Whilst his
groom girded up the horses, the Count had his harness buckled on in all
haste.

The dim shadows gradually withdrew, and the advancing morning tinted the
eastern hem of the horizon with purple light. The Count now discovered,
what he had anticipated, a host of Saracens approaching, all equipped
for fight, to snatch some booty from the Christians. To escape their
hands was hopeless, and the hospitable tree in the wide solitary plain
gave no shelter to conceal horse and man behind it. Unluckily the massy
steed was not a Hippogryph, but a heavy-bodied Frieslander, to which, by
reason of its make, the happy talent of bearing off its master on the
wings of the wind had not been allotted; therefore the gallant hero gave
his soul to the keeping of God and the Holy Virgin, and resolved on
dying like a knight. He bade his servants follow him, and sell their
lives as dear as might be. Thereupon he pricked the Frieslander boldly
forward, and dashed right into the middle of the hostile squadron, who
had been expecting no such sudden onset from a single knight. The Pagans
started in astonishment, and flew asunder like light chaff when
scattered by the wind. But seeing that the enemy was only three men
strong, their courage rose, and there began an unequal battle, in which
valour was surpassed by number. The Count meanwhile kept plunging yarely
through the ranks; the point of his lance gleamed death and destruction
to the Infidel; and when it found its man, he flew inevitably from his
saddle. Their Captain himself, who ran at him with grim fury, his manly
arm laid low, and with his victorious spear transfixed him writhing in
the dust, as St. George of England did the Dragon. The mettled Kurt went
on with no less briskness; though availing little for attack, he was a
master in the science of dispatching, and sent all to pot who did not
make resistance; as a modern critic butchers the defenceless rabble of
the lame and halt, who venture with such courage in our days into the
literary tilt-yard: and if now and then some fainting invalid, with
furious aim, like an exasperated Reviewer-hunter, did hurl a stone at
him with enfeebled fist, he heeded it little; for he knew well that his
basnet and iron jack would turn a moderate thump. The groom, too, did
his best to make clear ground about him, and kept his master's back
unharmed. But as nine gad-flies will beat the strongest horse; four
Caffre bulls an African lion; and, by the common tale, one troop of mice
an archbishop, as the _Mäusethurm_, or Mouse-tower, on the Rhine, by
Hübner's account, gives open testimony; so the Count of Gleichen, after
doing knightly battle, was at length overpowered by the number of his
enemies. His arm grew weary, his lance was shivered into splinters, his
sword became blunt, and his Friesland horse at last staggered down upon
the gory battle-field. The Knight's fall was the watch-word of victory;
a hundred valiant arms stormed in on him to wrench away his sword, and
his hand had no longer any strength for resistance. As the mettled Kurt
observed the Knight come down, his own courage sank also, and along with
it the pole-axe, wherewith he had so magnanimously hammered in the
Saracenic skulls. He surrendered at discretion, and pressingly entreated
quarter. The groom stood in blank rumination; bore himself enduringly;
and awaited with oxlike equanimity the stroke of some mace upon his
basnet, which should crush him to the ground.

But the Saracens were less inhuman victors than the conquered could have
expected; they disarmed their three prisoners of war, and did them no
bodily harm whatever. This mild usage took its rise not in any movement
of philanthropy, but in mere spy's-mercy: from a dead enemy there is
nothing to be learnt, and the special object of this roaming troop had
been to get correct intelligence about the state of matters in the
Christian host at Ptolemais. The captives, being questioned and heard,
were next, according to the Asiatic fashion, furnished with
slave-fetters; and as a ship was just then lying ready to set sail for
Alexandria, the Bey of Asdod sent them off with it as a present to the
Sultan of Egypt, to confirm at Court their description of the Christian
resources and position. The rumour of the bold Frank's valour had
arrived before him at the gates of Grand Cairo; and so pugnacious a
prisoner might, on entering the hostile metropolis, have merited as
pompous a reception as the Twelfth of April saw bestowed upon the Comte
de Grasse in London, where the merry capital emulously strove to let the
conquered sea-hero feel the honour which their victory had done him: but
Moslem self-conceit allows no justice to foreign merit. Count Ernst, in
the garb of a felon, loaded with heavy chains, was quietly locked into
the Grated Tower, where the Sultan's slaves were wont to be kept.

Here, in long painful nights, and mournful solitary days, he had time
and leisure to survey the grim stony aspect of his future life; and it
required as much steadfastness and courage to bear up under these
contemplations, as to tilt it on the battle-field among a wandering
horde of Arabs. The image of his former domestic happiness kept hovering
before his eyes; he thought of his gentle wife, and the tender shoots of
their chaste love. Ah! how he cursed the miserable feud of Mother-church
with the Gog and Magog of the East, which had robbed him of his fair lot
in existence, and fettered him in slave-shackles never to be loosed! In
such moments he was ready to despair altogether; and his piety had
well-nigh made shipwreck on this rock of offence.

In the days of Count Ernst there was current, among anecdotic persons, a
wondrous story of Duke Henry the Lion, which at that period, as a thing
that had occurred within the memory of man, found great credence in the
German Empire. The Duke, so runs the tale, while proceeding over sea to
the Holy Land, was, in a tempest, cast away upon a desert part of the
African coast; where, escaping alone from shipwreck, he found shelter
and succour in the den of a hospitable Lion. This kindness in the savage
owner of the cave had its origin not in the heart, but in the left
hind-paw; while hunting in the Libyan wilderness, he had run a thorn
into his foot, which so tormented him, that he could hardly move, and
had entirely forgotten his natural voracity. The acquaintance being
formed, and mutual confidence established between the parties, the Duke
assumed the office of chirurgeon to the royal beast, and laboriously
picked out the thorn from his foot. The patient rapidly recovered, and,
mindful of the service, entertained his lodger with his best from the
produce of his plunder; and, though a Lion, was as friendly and
officious towards him as a lap-dog.

The Duke, however, soon grew weary of the cold collations of his
four-footed landlord, and began to long for the flesh-pots of his own
far-distant kitchen; for in readying the game handed in to him, he by no
means rivalled his Brunswick cook. Then the home-sickness came upon him
like a heavy load; and seeing no possibility of ever getting back to his
paternal heritage, the thought of this so grieved his soul, that he
wasted visibly, and pined like a wounded hart. Thereupon the Tempter,
with his wonted impudence in desert places, came before him, in the
figure of a little swart wrinkled manikin, whom the Duke at first sight
took for an ourang-outang; but it was the Devil himself, Satan in proper
person, and he grinned, and said: "Duke Henry, what ails thee? If thou
trust to me, I will put an end to all thy sorrow, and take thee home to
thy wife to sup with her this night in the Castle of Brunswick; for a
lordly supper is making ready there, seeing she is about to wed another
man, having lost hope of thy life."

This despatch came rolling like a thunder-clap into the Duke's ear, and
cut him through the heart like a sharp two-edged sword. Rage burnt in
his eyes like flames of fire, and desperation uproared in his breast. If
Heaven will not help me in this crisis, thought he, then let Hell! It
was one of those entangling situations which the Arch-crimp, with his
consummate skill in psychological science, can employ so dextrously when
the enlisting of a soul that he has cast an eye on is to prosper in his
hands. The Duke, without hesitation, buckled on his golden spurs, girded
his sword about his loins, and put himself in readiness. "Quick, my good
fellow!" said he; "carry me, and this my trusty Lion, to Brunswick,
before the varlet reach my bed!"--"Well!" answered Blackbeard, "but dost
thou know the carriage-dues?"--"Ask what thou wilt!" said Duke Henry;
"it shall be given thee at thy word."--"Thy soul at sight in the other
world," replied Beelzebub.--"Done! Be it so!" cried furious jealousy,
from Henry's mouth.

The bargain was forthwith concluded in legal form, between the two
contracting parties. The Infernal Kite directly changed himself into a
winged Griffin, and seizing the Duke in the one clutch, and the trusty
Lion in the other, conveyed them both in one night from the Libyan coast
to Brunswick, the towering city, founded on the lasting basis of the
Harz, which even the lying prophecies of the Zillerfeld vaticinator have
not ventured to overthrow. There he set down his burden safely in the
middle of the market-place, and vanished, just as the watchman was
blowing his horn with intent to proclaim the hour of midnight, and then
carol forth a superannuated bridal-song from his rusty mum-washed
weasand. The ducal palace, and the whole city, still gleamed like the
starry heaven with the nuptial illumination; every street resounded with
the din and tumult of the gay people streaming forward to gaze on the
decorated bride, and the solemn torch-dance with which the festival was
to conclude. The Aeronaut, unwearied by his voyage, pressed on amid the
crowding multitude through the entrance of the Palace; advanced with
clanking spurs, under the guidance of his trusty Lion, to the
banquet-chamber; drew his sword, and cried: "With me, whoever stands by
Duke Henry; and to traitors, death and hell!" The Lion also bellowed, as
if seven thunders had been uttering their united voices; shook his awful
mane, and furiously erected his tail, as the signal of attack. The
cornets and kettle-drums struck silent suddenly, and a horrid sound of
battle pealed from the tumult in the wedding-hall, up to the very Gothic
roof, till the walls rang with it, and the thresholds shook.

The golden-haired bridegroom, and his party-coloured butterflies of
courtiers, fell beneath the sword of the Duke, as the thousand
Philistines beneath the ass's jaw-bone, in the sturdy fist of the son of
Manoah; and he who escaped the sword, rushed into the Lion's throat, and
was butchered like a defenceless lamb. When the forward wooer and his
retinue of serving-men and nobles were abolished, Duke Henry, having
used his household privilege as sternly as of old the wise Ulysses to
the wooing-club of his chaste Penelope, sat down to table, refreshed in
spirit, beside his wife, who was just beginning to recover from the
deadly fright his entrance had caused her. While briskly enjoying the
dainties of his cook, which had not been prepared for him, he cast a
glance of triumph on his new conquest, and perceived that she was bathed
in ambiguous tears, which might as well refer to loss as to gain.
However, like a man that knew the world, he explained them wholly to his
own advantage; and merely reproving her in gentle words for the hurry of
her heart, he from that hour entered upon all his former rights.

Count Ernst had often listened to this strange story, from the lips of
his nurse; yet in riper years, as an enlightened sceptic, entertained
doubts of its truth. But in the dreary loneliness of his Grated Tower,
the whole incident acquired a form of possibility, and his wavering
nursery belief increased almost to conviction. A transit through the air
appeared to him the simplest thing in nature, if the Prince of Darkness,
in the gloomy midnight, chose to lend his bat-wings for the purpose.
Though in obedience to his religious principles, he no night neglected
to cut a large cross before him as he went to sleep; yet a secret
longing awoke in his heart, without its own distinct consciousness, to
accomplish the same adventure. If a wandering mouse in the night-season
happened to scratch upon the wainscot, he immediately supposed the
Hellish Proteus was announcing his arrival, and at times in thought he
went so far as settling the freight charges beforehand. But except the
illusion of a dream, which juggled him into an aerial journey to his
German native land, the Count gained nothing by his nursery faith,
except employing with these fantasies a few vacant hours; and like a
reader of novels, transporting himself into the situation of the acting
hero. Why old Abaddon showed himself so sluggish in this case, when the
kidnapping of a soul was in the wind, and in all likelihood the
enterprise must have succeeded, may be accounted for in two ways. Either
the Count's Guardian Angel was more watchful than the one to whom Duke
Henry had intrusted the keeping of his soul, and resisted so stoutly
that the Evil One could get no advantage over him; or the Prince of the
Air had grown disgusted with the transport-trade in this his own
element, having been bubbled out of his stipulated freightage by Duke
Henry after all their engagements; for when it came to the point with
Henry, his soul was found to have so many good works on her side of the
account, that the scores on the Infernal tally were altogether cancelled
by them.

Whilst Count Ernst was weaving in romantic dreams a feeble shadow of
hope for deliverance from his captivity, and for a few moments in the
midst of them forgetting his dejection and misery, his returning
servants brought the Countess tidings that their master had vanished
from the camp, and none knew what had become of him. Some supposed that
he had been the prey of snakes or dragons; others that a pestilential
blast of wind had met him in the Syrian desert, and killed him; others
that he had been robbed and murdered, or taken captive, by some
plundering troop of Arabs. In one point all agreed: That he was to be
held _pro mortuo_, dead in law, and that the Countess was entirely
relieved and enfranchised from her matrimonial engagements. But to the
Countess herself, a secret foreboding still whispered that her lord was
alive notwithstanding. Nor did she by any means repress this thought,
which so solaced her heart; for hope is always the stoutest stay of the
afflicted, and the sweetest dream of life. To maintain it, she secretly
equipped a trusty servant, and sent him out for tidings, over sea into
the Holy Land. Like the raven from the Ark, this scout flew to and fro
upon the waters, and was no more heard of. Then she sent another forth;
who returned after several years' cruising over sea and land; but no
olive-leaf of hope was in his bill. Nevertheless the steadfast lady
doubted not in the least that she should yet meet her lord in the land
of the living: for she had a firm persuasion that so tender and true a
husband could not possibly have left the world without in the
catastrophe remembering his wife and little children at home, and giving
them some token of his death. Now, since the Count's departure, there
had nothing happened in the Castle; neither in the armoury by rattling
of the harness, nor in the garret by a rolling joist, nor in the
bed-chamber by a faint footstep, or heavy-booted tread. Nor had any
nightly moaning chanted its _Nænia_ down from the high battlements of
the palace; nor had the baleful bird Kreideweiss ever issued its
lugubrious death-summons. In the absence of all these signs of evil
omen, she inferred by the principles of female common-sense philosophy,
which even in our own times are by no means fallen into such desuetude
among the fair sex, as Father Aristotle's _Organum_ is among the male,
that her much-loved husband was still living; a conclusion, which we
know was perfectly correct. The fruitless issue of her first two
missions of discovery, the object of which was more important to her
than the finding of the Southern Polar Continent is to us, she allowed
not in the least to deter her from sending out a third Apostle into All
the World. This third was of a slow turn, and had imprinted on his mind
the adage, _As soon gets the snail to his bed as the swallow_; therefore
he called at every inn, and treated himself well. And it being
infinitely more convenient that the people whom he was to question about
his master should come to him, than that he should go tracking and
spying them out in the wide world, he determined on choosing a position
where he could examine every passenger from the East, with the insolent
inquisitiveness of a toll-man behind his barrier; and fixed his quarters
by the harbour of Venice. This Queen of the Waters was at that time, as
it were, the general gate, which all pilgrims and crusaders from the
Holy Land passed through in their way home. Whether this shrewd genius
chose the best or the worst means for discharging his appointed
function, will appear in the sequel.

After a seven-years narrow custody in the Grated Tower at Grand
Cairo,--a term which to the Count seemed far longer than to the Seven
Sleepers their seventy-years sleep in the Roman catacombs,--he concluded
himself to be forsaken of Heaven and Hell, and utterly gave up hope of
ever getting out in the body from this melancholy cage, where the kind
face of the sun was not allowed to visit him, and the broken daylight
struggled faintly in through a window secured with iron bars. His
devil-romance was long ago concluded; and his faith in miraculous
assistance from his Guardian Saint was lighter than a mustard-seed. He
vegetated rather than lived; and if in these circumstances any wish
arose in him, it was the wish to be annihilated.

From this lethargic stupor he was suddenly aroused by the rattling of a
bunch of keys, before the door of his cell. Since the day of his
entrance, his jailor had never more performed for him the office of
turnkey; for all the necessaries of the prisoner had been conveyed
through a trap-board in the door. Accordingly, it was not without long
resistance, and the bribery of a little vegetable oil, that the rusty
bolt obeyed him. But the creaking of the iron hinges, as the door went
up with reluctant grating, was to the Count a compound of more melodious
notes than ever came from the Harmonica of Franklin. A foreboding
palpitation of the heart set his stagnant blood in motion; and he
expected with impatient longing the intelligence of a change in his
fate: for the rest, it was indifferent to him whether it brought life or
death. Two black slaves entered with his jailor, at whose signal they
loosed the fetters from the prisoner; and a second mute sign from the
solemn graybeard commanded him to follow. He obeyed with faltering
steps; his feet refused their service, and he needed the support of the
two slaves, to totter down the winding stone stair. He was then
conducted to the Captain of the Prison, who, looking at him with a
reproachful air, thus spoke: "Obstinate Frank, what made thee hide the
craft thou art acquainted with, when thou wert put into the Grated
Tower? One of thy fellow-prisoners has betrayed thee, and informed us
that thou art a master in the art of gardening. Go, whither the will of
the Sultan calls thee; lay out a garden in the manner of the Franks, and
watch over it like the apple of thy eye; that the Flower of the World
may blossom in it pleasantly, for the adorning of the East."

If the Count had got a call to Paris to be Rector of the Sorbonne, the
appointment could not have astonished him more, than this of being
gardener to the Sultan of Egypt. About gardening he understood as little
as a laic about the secrets of the Church. In Italy, it is true, he had
seen many gardens; and at Nürnberg, where the dawn of that art was now
first penetrating into Germany, though the horticultural luxury of the
Nürnbergers did not yet extend much farther than a bowling-green, and a
few beds of roman lettuce. But about the planning of gardens, and the
cultivation of plants, like a martial nobleman, he had never troubled
his head; and his botanic science was so limited, that the Flower of the
World had never once come under his inspection. Hence he knew not in the
least by what method it was to be treated; whether like the aloe it must
be brought to blossom by the aid of art, or like a common marigold by
the genial virtue of nature alone. Nevertheless, he did not venture to
acknowledge his ignorance, or decline the preferment offered him; being
reasonably apprehensive that they might convince him of his fitness for
the post, by a bastinading on the soles.

A pleasant park was assigned him, which he was to change into a European
garden. The spot had, either by the hand of bountiful Nature, or of
ancient cultivation, been so happily disposed and ornamented already,
that the new Abdalonymus, let him cudgel his brains as he would, could
perceive no error or defect in it, nothing that admitted of improvement.
Besides, the aspect of living and active nature, which for seven long
years in his dreary prison he had been obliged to forego, affected him
at once so powerfully, that he inhaled rapture from every grass-flower,
and looked at all things around him with delight, like the First Man in
Paradise, to whom the scientific thought of censuring anything in the
arrangement of his Eden did not occur. The Count therefore found himself
in no small embarrassment about discharging his commission creditably;
he feared that every change would rob the garden of a beauty, and were
he detected as a botcher, he must travel back into his Grated Tower.

In the mean time, as Shiek Kiamel, Overseer of the Gardens and favourite
of the Sultan, was diligently stimulating him to begin the work, he
required fifty slaves, as necessary for the execution of his enterprise.
Next morning at dawn, they were all ready, and passed muster before
their new commander, who as yet saw not how he should employ a man of
them. But how great was his joy as he perceived the mottled Kurt and the
ponderous Groom, his two companions of misfortune, ranked among the
troop! A hundredweight of lead rolled off his heart, the wrinkle of
dejection vanished from his brow, and his eyes were enlightened, as if
he had dipt his staff in honey and tasted thereof. He led the trusty
Squire aside, and frankly informed him into what a heterogeneous element
he had been cast by the caprices of fate, where he could neither fly nor
swim; nor could he in the least comprehend what enigmatical mistake had
exchanged his knightly sword with the gardener's spade. No sooner had he
done speaking, than the mettled Kurt, with wet eyes, fell at his feet,
then lifted up his voice and said: "Pardon, dear master! It is I that
have caused your perplexity and your deliverance from the rascally
Grated Tower, which has kept you so long in ward. Be not angry that the
innocent deceit of your servant has brought you out of it; be glad
rather that you see God's sky again above your head. The Sultan required
a garden after the manner of the Franks, and had proclamation made to
all the Christian captives in the Bazam, that the proper man should step
forth, and expect great recompense if the undertaking prospered. No one
of them durst meddle with it; but I recollected your heavy durance. Then
some good spirit whispered me the lie of announcing you as an adept in
the art of gardening, and it has succeeded perfectly. And now never vex
yourself about the way of managing the business: the Sultan, like the
great people of the world, has a fancy not for something better than he
has already, but for something different, that may be new and singular.
Therefore, delve and devastate, and cut and carve, in this glorious
field, according to your pleasure; and depend upon it, everything you do
or purpose will be right in his eyes."

This speech was as the murmur of a running brook in the ears of a tired
wanderer in the desert. The Count drew balsam to his soul from it, and
courage to commence with boldness the ungainly undertaking. He set his
men to work at random, without plan; and proceeded with the well-ordered
shady park, as one of your "bold geniuses" proceeds with an antiquated
author, who falls into his creative hands, and, nill he will he, must
submit to let himself be modernised, that is to say, again made readable
and likeable; or as a new pedagogue with the ancient forms of the
Schools. He jumbled in variegated confusion what he found before him,
making all things different, nothing better. The profitable fruit-trees
he rooted out, and planted rosemary and valerian, and exotic shrubs, or
scentless amaranths, in their stead. The rich soil he dug away, and
coated the naked bottom with many-coloured gravel, which he carefully
stamped hard, and smoothed like a threshing-floor, that no blade of
grass might spring in it. The whole space he divided into various
terraces, which he begirt with a hem of green; and through these a
strangely-twisted flower-bed serpentised along, and ended in a knot of
villanously-smelling boxwood. And as from his ignorance of botany, he
paid no heed to the proper seasons for sowing and planting, his garden
project hovered for a long time between life and death, and had the
aspect of a suit of clothes _à feuille mourante_.

Shiek Kiamel, and the Sultan himself, allowed the Western gardener to
take his course, without deranging his conception by their interference
or their dictatorial opinion, and by premature hypercriticism
interrupting the procedure of his horticultural genius. In this they
acted more wisely than our obstreperous public, which, from our famous
philanthropic scheme of sowing acorns, expected in a summer or two a
stock of strong oaks, fit to be masts for three-deckers; while the
plantation was as yet so soft and feeble, that a few frosty nights might
have sent it to destruction. Now, indeed, almost in the middle of the
second decade of years from the commencement of the enterprise, when the
first fruits must certainly be over-ripe, it were in good season for a
German Kiamel to step forward with the question: "Planter, what art thou
about? Let us see what thy delving, and the loud clatter of thy cars and
wheelbarrows have produced?" And if the plantation stood before him like
that of the Gleichic Garden at Grand Cairo, in the sere and yellow leaf,
then were he well entitled, after due consideration of the matter, like
the Shiek, to shake his head in silence, to spit a squirt through his
teeth, and think within himself: If this be all, it might have stayed as
it was. For one day, as the gardener was surveying his new creation with
contentment, sitting in judgment on himself, and pronouncing that the
work praised the master, and that, everything considered, it had fallen
out better than he could have anticipated, his whole ideal being before
his eyes, not only what was then, but what was to be made of it,--the
Overseer, the Sultan's favourite, stept into the garden, and said:
"Frank, what art thou about? And how far art thou got with thy labour?"
The Count easily perceived that the produce of his genius would now have
to stand a rigorous criticism; however, he had long been ready for this
accident. He collected all his presence of mind, and answered
confidently: "Come, sir, and see! This former wilderness has obeyed the
hand of art, and is now moulded, after the pattern of Paradise, into a
scene which the Houris would not disdain to select for their abode." The
Shiek, hearing a professed artist speak with such apparent warmth and
satisfaction of his own performance, and giving the master credit for
deeper insight in his own sphere than he himself possessed, restrained
the avowal of his discontentment with the whole arrangement, modestly
ascribing this dislike to his inacquaintance with foreign taste, and
leaving the matter to rest on its own basis. Nevertheless, he could not
help putting one or two questions, for his own information; to which the
garden satrap was not in the least behindhand with his answers.

"Where are the glorious fruit-trees," began the Shiek, "which stood on
this sandy level, loaded with peaches and sweet lemons, which solaced
the eye, and invited the promenader to refreshing enjoyment?"

"They are all hewn away by the surface, and their place is no longer to
be found."

"And why so?"

"Could the garden of the Sultan admit such trash of trees, which the
commonest citizen of Cairo cultivates, and the fruit of which is offered
for sale by assloads every day?"

"What moved thee to desolate the pleasant grove of dates and tamarinds,
which was the wanderer's shelter against the sultry noontide, and gave
him coolness and refection under the vault of its shady boughs?"

"What has shade to do in a garden which, while the sun shoots forth
scorching beams, stands solitary and deserted, and only exhales its
balsamic odours when fanned by the cool breeze of evening?"

"But did not this grove cover, with an impenetrable veil, the secrets of
love, when the Sultan, enchanted by the charms of a fair Circassian,
wished to hide his tenderness from the jealous eyes of her companions?"

"An impenetrable veil is to be found in that bower, overarched with
honeysuckle and ivy; or in that cool grotto, where a crystal fountain
gushes out of artificial rocks into a basin of marble; or in that
covered walk with its trellises of clustering vines; or on the sofa,
pillowed with soft moss, in the rustic reed-house by the pond; nor will
any of these secret shrines afford lodging for destructive worms, and
buzzing insects, or keep away the wafting air, or shut up the free
prospect, as the gloomy grove of tamarinds did."

"But why hast thou planted sage, and hyssop which grows upon the wall,
here on this spot where formerly the precious balm-tree of Mecca
bloomed?"

"Because the Sultan wanted no Arabian, but a European garden. In Italy,
and in the German gardens of the Nürnbergers, no dates are ripened, nor
does any balm-tree of Mecca bloom."

To this last argument no answer could be made. As neither the Shiek nor
any of the Heathen in Cairo had ever been at Nürnberg, he had nothing
for it but to take this version of the garden from Arabic into German,
on the word of the interpreter. Only, he could not bring himself to
think that the present horticultural reform had been managed by the
pattern of the Paradise, appointed by the Prophet for believing
Mussulmans; and, allowing the pretension to be true, he promised to
himself, from the joys of the future life, no very special consolation.
There was nothing for him, therefore, but, in the way above mentioned,
to shake his head, contemplatively squirt a dash of liquid out over his
beard, and go the way whence he had come.

The Sultan who at that time swayed the Egyptian sceptre was the gallant
Malek al Aziz Othman, a son of the renowned Saladin. The fame of Sultan
Malek rests less upon his qualities in the field or the cabinet, than
upon the unexampled numerousness of his offspring. Of princes he had so
many, that had every one of them been destined to wear a crown, he might
have stocked with them all the kingdoms of the then known world.
Seventeen years ago, however, this copious spring had, one hot summer,
finally gone dry. Princess Melechsala terminated the long series of the
Sultanic progeny; and, in the unanimous opinion of the Court, she was
the jewel of the whole. She enjoyed to its full extent the prerogative
of youngest children, preference to all the rest; and this distinction
was enhanced by the circumstance, that of all the Sultan's daughters,
she alone had remained in life; while Nature had adorned her with so
many charms, that they enchanted even the paternal eye. For this must in
general be conceded to the Oriental Princes, that in the scientific
criticism of female beauty they are infinitely more advanced than our
Occidentals, who are every now and then betraying their imperfect
culture in this point.[18] Melechsala was the pride of the Sultan's
family; her brothers themselves were unremitting in attentions to her,
and in efforts to outdo each other in affectionate regard. The grave
Divan was frequently employed in considering what Prince, by means of
her, might be connected, in the bonds of love, with the interest of the
Egyptian state. This her royal father made his smallest care; he was
solely and incessantly concerned to grant this darling of his heart her
every wish, to keep her spirit always in a cheerful mood, that no cloud
might overcast the serene horizon of her brow.

     [18] _Journal of Fashions_, June 1786.

The first years of childhood she had passed under the superintendence of
a nurse, who was a Christian, and of Italian extraction. This slave had
in early youth been kidnapped from the beach of her native town by a
Barbary pirate; sold in Alexandria; and, by the course of trade,
transmitted from one hand to another, till at last she had arrived in
the palace of the Sultan, where her hale constitution recommended her to
this office, which she filled with the greatest reputation. Though less
tuneful than the French court-nurse, who used to give the signal for a
general chorus over all Versailles, whenever she uplifted, with
melodious throat, her _Marlborough s'en va-t-en guerre_; yet nature had
sufficiently indemnified her by a glibness of tongue, in which she was
unrivalled. She knew as many tales and stories as the fair Sheherazade
in the Thousand-and-one Nights; a species of entertainment for which it
would appear the race of Sultans, in the privacy of their seraglios,
have considerable liking. The Princess, at least, found pleasure in it,
not for a thousand nights, but for a thousand weeks; and when once a
maiden has attained the age of a thousand weeks, she can no longer be
contented with the histories of others, for she sees materials in
herself to make a history of her own. In process of time, the gifted
waiting-woman changed her nursery-tales with the theory of European
manners and customs; and being herself a warm patriot, and recollecting
her native country with delight, she painted the superiorities of Italy
so vividly, that the fancy of her tender nursling became filled with the
subject, and the pleasant impression never afterwards faded from her
memory. The more this fair Princess grew in stature, the stronger grew
in her the love for foreign decoration; and her whole demeanour shaped
itself according to the customs of Europe rather than of Egypt.

From youth upwards she had been a great lover of flowers: part of her
occupation had consisted in forming, according to the manner of the
Arabs, a constant succession of significant nosegays and garlands; with
which, in delicate expressiveness, she used to disclose the emotions of
her heart. Nay, she at last grew so inventive, that, by combining
flowers of various properties, she could compose, and often very
happily, whole sentences and texts of the Koran. These she would then
submit to her playmates for interpretation, which they seldom failed to
hit. Thus one day, for example, she formed with Chalcedonic Lychnis the
figure of a heart; surrounded it with white Roses and Lilies; fastened
under it two mounting Kingsweeds, enclosing a beautifully marked Anemone
between them; and her women, when she showed them, the wreath,
unanimously read: Innocence of heart is above Birth and Beauty. She
frequently presented her slaves with fresh nosegays: and these
flower-donations commonly included praise or blame for their receivers.
A garland of Peony-roses censured levity; the swelling Poppy, dulness
and vanity; a bunch of odoriferous Hyacinths, with drooping bells, was a
panegyric for modesty; the gold Lily, which shuts her leaves at sunset,
for prudence; the Marine Convolvulus rebuked eye-service; and the
blossoms of the Thorn-Apple, with the Daisy whose roots are poisonous,
indicated slander and private envy.

Father Othman took a secret pleasure in this sprightly play of his
daughter's fancy, though he himself had no talent for deciphering these
witty hieroglyphics, and was frequently obliged to look with the
spectacles of his whole Divan before he could pierce their meaning. The
exotic taste of the Princess was not hidden from him; and though, as a
plain Mussulman, he could not sympathise with her in it, he endeavoured,
as a tender and indulgent parent, rather to maintain than to suppress
this favourite tendency of his daughter. He fell upon the project of
combining her passion for flowers with her preference for foreign parts,
and laying out a garden for her in the taste of the Franks. This idea
appeared to him so happy, that he lost not a moment in imparting it to
his favourite, Shiek Kiamel, and pressing him with the strictest
injunctions to realise it as speedily as possible. The Shiek, well
knowing that his master's wishes were for him commands, which he must
obey without reply, presumed not to mention the difficulties which he
saw in the attempt. He himself understood as little about European
gardens as the Sultan; and in all Cairo there was no mortal known to
him, with whom he might find counsel in the business. Therefore he made
search among the Christian slaves for a man skilful in gardening; and
lighted exactly on the wrong hand for extricating him from his
difficulty. It was no wonder, then, that Shiek Kiamel shook his head
contemplatively as he inspected the procedure of this horticultural
improvement; for he was apprehensive, that if it delighted the Sultan as
little as it did himself, he might be involved in a heavy
responsibility, and his favouriteship, at the very least, might take
wings and fly away.

At Court, this project had hitherto been treated as a secret, and the
entrance of the place prohibited to every one in the seraglio. The
Sultan purposed to surprise his daughter with this present on her
birthday; to conduct her with ceremony into the garden, and make it over
to her as her own. This day was now approaching; and his Highness had a
wish to take a view of everything beforehand, to get acquainted with the
new arrangements; that he might give himself the happiness of pointing
out in person to his daughter the peculiar beauties of her garden. He
communicated this to the Shiek, whom the tidings did not much
exhilarate; and who, in consequence, composed a short defensive oration,
which he fondly hoped might extricate his head from the noose, if the
Sultan showed himself dissatisfied with the appearance of his Christian
garden.

"Commander of the Faithful," he purposed to say, "thy nod is the
director of my path; my feet hasten whither thou leadest them, and my
hand holds fast what thou committest to it. Thou wishedst a garden after
the manner of the Franks: here stands it before thy eyes. These
untutored barbarians have no gardens; but meagre wastes of sand, which,
in their own rude climate, where no dates or lemons ripen, and there is
neither Kalaf nor Bahobab,[19] they plant with grass and weeds. For the
curse of the Prophet has smitten with perpetual barrenness the plains of
the Unbeliever, and forbidden him any foretaste of Paradise by the
perfume of the Mecca balm-tree, or the enjoyment of spicy fruits."

     [19] _Kalaf_, a shrub, from whose blossoms a liquor is extracted,
     resembling our cherry-water, and much used in domestic medicine.
     _Bahobab_, a sort of fruit, in great esteem among the Egyptians.

The day was far spent, when the Sultan, attended only by the Shiek,
stept into the garden, in high expectation of the wonders he was to
behold. A wide unobstructed prospect over a part of the city, and the
mirror surface of the Nile with its _Musherns_, _Shamdecks_ and
_Sheomeons_[20] sailing to and fro; in the background, the
skyward-pointing pyramids, and a chain of blue vapoury mountains, met
his eye from the upper terrace, no longer shrouded-in by the leafy grove
of palms. A refreshing breath of air was also stirring in the place, and
fanning him agreeably. Crowds of new objects pressed on him from every
side. The garden had in truth got a strange foreign aspect; and the old
park which had been his promenade from youth upwards, and had long since
wearied him by its everlasting sameness, was no longer to be recognised.
The knowing Kurt had judged wisely, that the charm of novelty would have
its influence. The Sultan tried this horticultural metamorphosis not by
the principles of a critic, but by its first impression on the senses;
and as these are easily decoyed into contentment by the bait of
singularity, the whole seemed good and right to him there as he found
it. Even the crooked unsymmetrical walks, overlaid with hard stamped
gravel, gave his feet an elastic force, and a light firm tread,
accustomed as he was to move on nothing else but Persian carpets, or on
the soft greensward. He could not satisfy himself with wandering up and
down the labyrinthic walks; and he showed himself especially contented
with the rich variety of wild flowers, which had been fostered and
cultivated with the greatest care, though they were blossoming of their
own accord, outside the wall, with equal luxuriance and in greater
multitude.

     [20] Various sorts of sailing craft in use there.

At last, having placed himself upon a seat, he turned to the Shiek with
a cheerful countenance, and said: "Kiamel, thou hast not deceived my
expectation: I well anticipated that thou wouldst transform me this old
park into something singular, and diverse from the fashion of the land;
and now I will not hide my satisfaction from thee. Melechsala may accept
thy work as a garden after the manner of the Franks."

The Shiek, when he heard his despot talk in this dialect, marvelled much
that all things took so well; and blessed himself that he had held his
tongue, and retained his defensive oration to himself. Perceiving that
the Sultan seemed to look upon the whole as his invention, he directly
turned the rudder of his talk to the favourable breeze which was
rustling his sails, and spoke thus: "Puissant Commander of the Faithful,
be it known to thee that thy obedient slave took thought with himself
day and night how he might produce out of this old date-grove, at thy
beck and order, something unexampled, the like of which had never been
in Egypt before. Doubtless it was an inspiration of the Prophet that
suggested the idea of planning it according to the pattern of Paradise;
for I trusted, that by so doing I should not fail to meet the intention
of thy Highness."

The worthy Sultan's conception of the Paradise, which to all appearance
by the course of nature he must soon become possessed of, had still been
exceedingly confused; or rather, like the favoured of fortune, who take
their ease in this lower world, he had never troubled himself much about
the other. But whenever any Dervish or Iman, or other spiritual person,
mentioned Paradise, some image of his old park used to rise on his
fancy; and the park was not by any means his favourite scene. Now,
however, his imagination had been steered on quite a different tack. The
new picture of his future happiness filled his soul with joy; at least
he could now suppose that Paradise might not be so dull as he had
hitherto figured it: and believing that he now possessed a model of it
on the small scale, he formed a high opinion of the garden; and
expressed this forthwith, by directly making Shiek Kiamel a Bey, and
presenting him with a splendid caftan. Your thorough-paced courtier
belies his nature in no quarter of the world: Kiamel, without the
slightest hesitation, modestly appropriated the reward of a service
which his functionary had performed; not uttering a syllable about him
to the Sultan, and thinking him rather too liberally rewarded by a few
aspers which he added to his daily pay.

About the time when the Sun enters the Ram, a celestial phenomenon,
which in our climates is the watch-word for winter to commence his
operation; but under the milder sky of Egypt announces the finest season
of the year, the Flower of the World stept forth into the garden which
had been prepared for her, and found it altogether to her foreign taste.
She herself was, in truth, its greatest ornament: any scene where she
had wandered, had it been a desert in Arabia the Stony, or a Greenland
ice-field, would, in the eyes of a gallant person, have been changed
into Elysium at her appearance. The wilderness of flowers, which chance
had mingled in interminable rows, gave equal occupation to her eye and
her spirit: the disorder itself she assimilated, by her sprightly
allegories, to methodical arrangement.

According to the custom of the country, every time she entered the
garden, all specimens of the male sex, planters, diggers,
water-carriers, were expelled by her guard of Eunuchs. The Grace for
whom our artist worked was thus hidden from his eyes, much as he could
have wished for once to behold this Flower of the World, which had so
long been a riddle in his botany. But as the Princess used to overstep
the fashions of the East in many points, so by degrees, while she grew
to like the garden more and more, and to pay it several visits daily,
she began to feel obstructed and annoyed by the attendance of her guard
sallying out before her in solemn parade, as if the Sultan had been
riding to Mosque in the Bairam festival. She frequently appeared alone,
or leaning on the arm of some favourite waiting-woman; always, however,
with a thin veil over her face, and a little rush basket in her hand:
she wandered up and down the walks, plucking flowers, which, according
to custom, she arranged into emblems of her thoughts, and distributed
among her people.

One morning, before the hot season of the day, while the dewdrops were
still reflecting all the colours of the rainbow from the grass, she
visited her Tempe to enjoy the cool morning air, just as her gardener
was employed in lifting from the ground some faded plants, and replacing
them by others newly blown, which he was carefully transporting in
flower-pots, and then cunningly inserting in the soil with all their
appurtenances, as if by a magic vegetation they had started from the
bosom of the earth in a single night. The Princess noticed with pleasure
this pretty deception of the senses, and having now found out the secret
of the flowers which she plucked away being daily succeeded by fresh
ones, so that there was never any want, she thought of turning her
discovery to advantage, and instructing the gardener how and when to
arrange them, and make them blossom. On raising his eyes, the Count
beheld this female Angel, whom he took for the possessor of the garden,
for she was encircled with celestial charms as with a halo. He was so
surprised by this appearance that he dropped a flower-pot from his
hands, forgetful of the precious colocassia contained in it, which ended
its tender life as tragically as the Sieur Pilastre de Rosier, though
both only fell into the bosom of their mother Earth.

The Count stood petrified like a statue without life or motion; one
might have broken off his nose, as the Turks do with stone statues in
temples and gardens, and never have aroused him. But the sweet voice of
the Princess, who opened her purple lips, recalled him to his senses.
"Christian," said she, "be not afraid! It is my blame that thou art here
beside me; go forward with thy work, and order thy flowers as I shall
bid thee."--"Glorious Flower of the World!" replied the gardener, "in
whose splendour all the colours of this blossomy creation wax pale, thou
reignest here as in thy firmament, like the Star-queen on the
battlements of Heaven. Let thy nod enliven the hand of the happiest
among thy slaves, who kisses his fetters, so thou think him worthy to
perform thy commands." The Princess had not expected that a slave would
open his mouth to her, still less pay her compliments, and her eyes had
been directed rather to the flowers than the planter. She now deigned to
cast a glance on him, and was astonished to behold a man of the most
noble form, surpassing in masculine grace all that she had ever seen or
dreamed of.

Count Ernst of Gleichen had been celebrated for his manly beauty over
all Germany. At the tournament of Würzburg, he had been the hero of the
dames. When he raised his visor to take air, the running of the boldest
spearman was lost for every female eye; all looked on him alone; and
when he closed his helmet to begin a course, the chastest bosom heaved
higher, and all hearts beat anxious sympathy with the lordly Knight. The
partial hand of the Duke of Bavaria's love-sick niece had crowned him
with a guerdon, which the young man blushed to receive. His seven years'
durance in the Grated Tower, had indeed paled his blooming cheeks,
relaxed his firm-set limbs, and dulled the fire of his eyes; but the
enjoyment of the free atmosphere, and Labour, the playmate of Health,
had now made good the loss, with interest. He was flourishing like a
laurel, which has pined throughout the long winter in the greenhouse,
and at the return of spring sends forth new leaves, and gets a fair
verdant crown.

With her predilection for all foreign things, the Princess could not
help contemplating with satisfaction the attractive figure of the
stranger; and it never struck her that the sight of an Endymion may have
quite another influence on a maiden's heart, than the creation of a
milliner, set up for show in her booth. With kind gentle voice, she gave
her handsome gardener orders how to manage the arrangement of his
flowers; often asked his own, advice respecting it, and talked with him
so long as any horticultural idea was in her head. She left him at
length, but scarcely was she gone five paces when she turned to give
him fresh commissions; and as she took a promenade along the
serpentine-walk, she called him again to her, and put new questions to
him, and proposed new improvements before she went away. As the day
began to cool, she again felt the want of fresh air, and scarcely had
the sun returned to gild the waxing Nile, when a wish to see the
awakening flowers unfold their blossoms, brought her back into the
garden. Day after day her love of fresh air and awakening flowers
increased; and in these visits she never failed to go directly to the
place where her florist was labouring, and give him new orders, which he
strove punctually and speedily to execute.

One day the Bostangi,[21] when she came to see him, was not to be found;
she wandered up and down the intertwisted walks, regardless of the
flowers that were blooming around her, and, by the high tints of their
colours and the balmy air of their perfumes, as if striving with each
other to attract her attention; she expected him behind every bush,
searched every branching plant that might conceal him, fancied she
should find him in the grotto, and, on his failing to appear, made a
pilgrimage to all the groves in the garden, hoping to surprise him
somewhere asleep, and enjoying the embarrassment which he would feel
when she awoke him; but the head-gardener nowhere met her eye. By chance
she came upon the stoical Viet, the Count's Groom, a dull piece of
mechanism, whom his master had been able to make nothing out of but a
drawer of water. On perceiving her, he wheeled with his water-cans to
the left-about, that he might not meet her, but she called him to her,
and asked, Where the Bostangi was? "Where else," said he, in his sturdy
way, "but in the hands of the Jewish quack-salver, who will sweat the
soul from his body in a trice?" These tidings cut the lovely Princess to
the heart, for she had never dreamed that it was sickness which
prevented her Bostangi from appearing at his post. She immediately
returned to her palace, where her women saw, with consternation, that
the serene brow of their mistress was overcast, as when the moist breath
of the south wind has dimmed the mirror of the sky, and the hovering
vapours have collected into clouds. In retiring to the Seraglio, she had
plucked a variety of flowers, but all were of a mournful character, and
bound with cypress and rosemary, indicating clearly enough the sadness
of her mood. She did the same for several days, which brought her
council of women into much perplexity, and many deep debates about the
cause of their fair Melechsala's grief; but withal, as in female
consultations too often happens, they arrived at no conclusion, as in
calling for the vote there was such a dissonance of opinions, that no
harmonious note could be discovered in them. The truth was, Count
Ernst's too zealous efforts to anticipate every nod of the Princess, and
realise whatever she expressed the faintest hint of, had so acted on a
frame unused to labour, that his health suffered under it, and he was
seized with a fever. Yet the Jewish pupil of Galen, or rather the
Count's fine constitution, mastered the disease, and in a few days he
was able to resume his tasks. The instant the Princess noticed him, the
clouds fled away from her brow; and her female senate, to whom her
melancholy humour had remained an inexplicable riddle, now unanimously
voted that some flower-plant, of whose progress she had been in doubt,
had now taken root and begun to thrive,--a conclusion not inaccurate, if
taken allegorically.

     [21] Head-gardener.

Princess Melechsala was still as innocent in heart as she had come from
the hands of Nature. She had never got the smallest warning or
foreboding of the rogueries, which Amor is wont to play on inexperienced
beauties. Hitherto, on the whole, there has been a want of _Hints for
Princesses and Maidens_ in regard to love; though a satisfactory theory
of that kind might do infinitely greater service to the world than any
_Hints for the Instructors of Princes_;[22] a class of persons who
regard no hint, however broad, nay sometimes take it ill; whereas
maidens never fail to notice every hint, and pay heed to it, their
perception being finer, and a secret hint precisely their affair. The
Princess was still in the first novitiate of love, and had not the
slightest knowledge of its mysteries. She therefore yielded wholly to
her feelings, without scrupling in the least, or ever calling a Divan of
the three confidantes of her heart, Reason, Prudence and Reflection, to
deliberate on the business. Had she done so, doubtless the concern she
felt in the circumstances of the Bostangi would have indicated to her
that the germ of an unknown passion was already vegetating strongly in
her heart, and Reason and Reflection would have whispered to her that
this passion was _love_. Whether in the Count's heart there was any
similar process going on in secret, we have no diplomatic evidence
before us: his over-anxious zeal to execute the commands of his
mistress might excite some such conjecture; and if so, a bunch of Lovage
with a withered stalk of Honesty, tied up together, might have befitted
him as an allegorical nosegay. Perhaps, however, it was nothing but an
innocent chivalrous feeling which occasioned this distinguished
alacrity; for in those times it was the most inviolable law of
Knighthood, that its professors should in all things rigorously conform
to the injunctions of the fair.

     [22] Allusion to a small Treatise, which, about the time Musæus
     wrote his story, had appeared under that title.--WIELAND.

No day now passed without the good Melechsala's holding trustful
conversation with her Bostangi. The soft tone of her voice delighted his
ear, and every one of her expressions seemed to say something flattering
to him. Had he been endowed with the self-confidence of a court lord, he
would have turned so fair a situation to profit for making farther
advances: but he constantly restrained himself within the bounds of
modesty. And as the Princess was entirely inexperienced in the science
of coquetry, and knew not how to set about encouraging the timid
shepherd to the stealing of her heart, the whole intrigue revolved upon
the axis of mutual good-will; and might undoubtedly have long continued
so revolving, had not Chance, which we all know commonly officiates as
_primum mobile_ in every change of things, ere long given the scene
another form.

About sunset, one very beautiful day, the Princess visited the garden;
her soul was as bright as the horizon; she talked delightfully with her
Bostangi about many indifferent matters, for the mere purpose of
speaking to him; and after he had filled her flower-basket, she seated
herself in a grove, and bound up a nosegay, with which she presented
him. The Count, as a mark of reverence to his fair mistress, fastened
it, with a look of surprise and delight, to the breast of his waistcoat,
without ever dreaming that the flowers might have a secret import; for
these hieroglyphics were hidden from his eyes, as from the eyes of a
discerning public the secret wheel-work of the famous Wooden
Chess-player. And as the Princess did not afterwards expound that secret
import, it has withered away with the blossoms, and been lost to the
knowledge of posterity. Meanwhile she herself supposed that the language
of flowers must be as plain to all mortals as their mother-tongue; she
never doubted, therefore, but her favourite had understood the whole
quite right; and as he looked at her with such an air of reverence when
he took the nosegay, she accepted his gestures as expressions of modest
thanks for the praise of his activity and zeal, which, in all
probability, the flowers had been meant to convey. She now took a
thought of putting his inventiveness to proof in her turn, and trying
whether in this flowery dialect of thanks he could pay a pretty
compliment; or, in a word, translate the present aspect of his
countenance, which betrayed the feelings of his heart, into
flower-writing; and accordingly, she asked him for a nosegay of his
composition. The Count, affected by such a proof of condescending
goodness, darted to the end of the garden, into a remote greenhouse,
where he had established his flower-dépôt, and out of which he was in
the habit of transferring his plants to the soil as they came into
blossom, without stirring them from their pots. There chanced to be an
aromatic plant just then in bloom, a flower named _Mushirumi_[23] by the
Arabs, and which hitherto had not appeared in the garden. With this
novelty Count Ernst imagined he might give a little harmless pleasure to
his fair florist; and accordingly, for want of a salver, having put a
broad fig-leaf under it, he held it to her on his knees, with a look
expressive of humility, yet claiming a little merit; for he thought to
earn a word of praise by it. But, with the utmost consternation, he
perceived that the Princess turned away her face, and, so far as he
could notice through the veil, cast down her eyes as if ashamed, and
looked on the ground, without uttering a word. She hesitated, and seemed
embarrassed in accepting it; not deigning to cast a look on it, but
laying it beside her on the seat. Her gay humour had departed; she
assumed a majestic attitude, announcing haughty earnestness; and after a
few moments left the grove, without taking any farther notice of her
favourite, not, however, leaving her _Mushirumi_ behind her, but
carefully concealing it under her veil.

     [23] _Hyacinthus Muscari_.

The Count was thunderstruck at this enigmatical catastrophe; he could
not for his life understand the meaning of this strange behaviour, and
continued sitting on his knees, in the position of a man doing penance,
for some time after his Princess had left the place. It grieved him to
the heart that he should have displeased and alienated this divinity,
whom, for her condescending kindness, he venerated as a Saint of Heaven.
When his first consternation had subsided, he slunk home to his
dwelling, timid and rueful, like a man conscious of some heavy crime.
The mettled Kurt had supper on the table; but his master would not
bite, and kept forking about in the plate, without carrying a morsel to
his lips. By this the trusty _Dapifer_ perceived that all was not right
with the Count; wherefore he vanished speedily from the room, and
uncorked a flask of Chian wine; which Grecian care-dispeller did not
fail in its effect. The Count became communicative, and disclosed to his
faithful Squire the adventure in the garden. Their speculations on it
were protracted to a late hour, without affording any tenable hypothesis
for the displeasure of the Princess; and as with all their pondering
nothing could be discovered, master and servant betook them to repose.
The latter found it without difficulty; the former sought it in vain,
and watched throughout the painful night, till the dawn recalled him to
his employments.

At the hour when Melechsala used to visit him, the Count kept an eager
eye on the entrance, but the door of the Seraglio did not open. He
waited the second day; then the third: the door of the Seraglio was as
if walled up within. Had not the Count of Gleichen been a sheer idiot in
flower-language, he would readily have found the key to this surprising
behaviour of the Princess. By presenting the flower to her, he had, in
fact, without knowing a syllable of the matter, made a formal
declaration of love, and that in no Platonic sense. For when an Arab
lover, by some trusty hand, privily transmits a _Mushirumi_ flower to
his mistress, he gives her credit for penetration enough to discover the
only rhyme which exists in the Arabian language for the word. This rhyme
is _Ydskerumi_, which, delicately rendered, means _reward of love_.[24]
To this invention it must be conceded, that there cannot be a more
compendious method of proceeding in the business than this of the
_Mushirumi_, which might well deserve the imitation of our Western
lovers. The whole insipid scribbling of _Billets-doux_, which often cost
their authors so much toil and brain-beating, often when they come into
the wrong hand are pitilessly mangled by hard-hearted jesters, often by
the fair receivers themselves mistreated or falsely interpreted, might
by this means be dispensed with. It need not be objected that the
_Mushirumi_, or _Muscadine-hyacinth_, flowers but rarely and for a short
time in our climates; because an imitation of it might be made by our
Parisian or native gumflower-makers, to supply the wants of lovers at
all seasons of the year; and an inland trade in this domestic
manufacture might easily afford better profit than our present
speculations with America. Nor would a Chevalier in Europe have to
dread that the presenting of so eloquent a flower might be charged upon
him as a capital offence, for which his life might have to answer, as in
the East could very simply happen. Had not Princess Melechsala been so
kind and soft a soul, or had not omnipotent Love subdued the pride of
the Sultan's daughter, the Count, for this flower-gallantry, innocently
as on his part it was intended, must have paid with his head. But the
Princess was in the main so little indignant at receiving this
expressive flower, that on the contrary the fancied proffer struck a
chord in her heart, which had long been vibrating before, and drew from
it a melodious tone. Yet her virgin modesty was hard put to proof, when
her favourite, as she supposed, presumed to entreat of her the reward of
love. It was on this account that she had turned away her face at his
proposal. A purple blush, which the veil had hidden from the Count,
overspread her tender cheeks, her snow-white bosom heaved, and her heart
beat higher beneath it. Bashfulness and tenderness were fighting a
fierce battle within it, and her embarrassment was such that she could
not utter a word. For a time she had been in doubt what to do with the
perplexing _Mushirumi_; to disdain it, was to rob her lover of all hope;
to accept it, was the promise that his wishes should be granted. The
balance of resolution wavered, now to this side, now to that, till at
length love decided; she took the flower with her, and this at least
secured the Count's head, in the first place. But in her solitary
chamber, there doubtless ensued much deep deliberation about the
consequences which this step might produce; and the situation of the
Princess was the more difficult, that in her ignorance of the concerns
of the heart, she knew not how to act of herself; and durst not risk
disclosing the affair to any other, if she would not leave the life of
her beloved and her own fate at the caprice of a third party.

     [24] Hasselquist's _Travels in Palestine_.

It is easier to watch a goddess at the bath than to penetrate the
secrets of an Oriental Princess in the bedchamber of the Seraglio. It is
therefore difficult for the historian to determine whether Melechsala
left the _Mushirumi_ which she had accepted of to wither on her
dressing-table; or put it in fresh water, to preserve it for the solace
of her eyes as long as possible. In like manner, it is difficult to
discover whether this fair Princess spent the night asleep, with gay
dreams dancing round her, or awake, a victim to the wasting cares of
love. The latter is more probable, since early in the morning there
arose great dole and lamentation in the Palace, as the Princess made
her appearance with pale cheeks and languid eyes; so that her female
council dreaded the approach of grievous sickness. The Court Physician
was called in; the same bearded Hebrew who had floated off the Count's
fever in his sweat-bath; he was now to examine the pulse of a more
delicate patient. According to the custom of the country, she was lying
on a sofa, with a large screen in front of it, provided with a little
opening, through which she stretched her beautifully turned arm, twice
and three times wrapt with fine muslin, to protect it from the profane
glance of a masculine eye, "God help me!" whispered the Doctor into the
chief waiting-woman's ear: "Things have a bad look with her Highness;
the pulse is quivering like a mouse-tail." At the same time, with
practical policy, he shook his head dubitatingly, as cunning doctors are
wont; ordered abundance of Kalaf and other cordials, and with a shrug of
the shoulders predicted a dangerous fever.

Nevertheless, these alarming symptoms, which the medical gentleman
considered as so many heralds announcing the approach of a malignant
distemper, appeared to be nothing more than the consequences of a bad
night's-rest; for the patient having taken her _siesta_ about noon,
found herself, to the Israelite's astonishment, out of danger in the
evening; needed no more drugs, and by the orders of her Æsculapius was
required merely to keep quiet for a day or two. This space she employed
in maturely deliberating her intrigue, and devising ways and means for
fulfilling the demands of the _Mushirumi_. She was diligently occupied,
inventing, proving, choosing and rejecting. One hour fancy smoothed away
the most impassable mountains; and the next, she saw nothing but clefts
and abysses, from the brink of which she shuddered back, and over which
the boldest imagination could not build a bridge. Yet on all these rocks
of offence she grounded the firm resolution to obey the feelings of her
heart, come what come might; a piece of heroism, not unusual with Mother
Eve's daughters; which in the mean time they often pay for with the
happiness and contentment of their lives.

The bolted gate of the Seraglio at last went up, and the fair Melechsala
again passed through it into the garden, like the gay Sun through the
portals of the East. The Count observed her entrance from behind a grove
of ivy; and there began a knocking in his heart as in a mill; a thumping
and hammering as if he had just run a race. Was it joy, was it fear, or
anxious expecting of what this visit would announce to him--forgiveness
or disfavour? Who can unfold so accurately the heart of man, as to trace
the origin and cause of every start and throb in this irritable muscle?
In short, Count Ernst did feel considerable palpitations of the heart,
so soon as he descried the Princess from afar; but of their Whence or
Why, he could give his own mind no account. She very soon dismissed her
suite; and from all the circumstances it was clear that poetical
anthology was not her business in the present case. She bent her course
to the grove; and as the Count was not playing hide-and-seek with much
adroitness or zeal, she found him with great ease. While she was still
at some distance, he fell upon his knees with mute eloquence before her,
not venturing to raise his eyes, and looked as ruefully as a delinquent
when the judge is ready to pass sentence on him. The Princess, however,
with a soft voice and friendly gesture, said to him: "Bostangi, rise and
follow me into this grove." Bostangi obeyed in silence; and she having
taken her seat, spoke thus: "The will of the Prophet be done! I have
called on him three days and three nights long, to direct me by a sign
if my conduct were wavering between error and folly. He is silent; and
approves the purpose of the Ringdove to free the captive Linnet from the
chain with which he toilsomely draws water, and to nestle by his side.
The Daughter of the Sultan has not disdained the _Mushirumi_ from thy
fettered hand. My lot is cast! Loiter not in seeking the Iman, that he
lead thee to the Mosque, and confer on thee the Seal of the Faithful.
Then will my Father, at my request, cause thee to grow as the
Nile-stream, when it oversteps its narrow banks, and pours itself into
the valley. And when thou art governing a Province as its Bey, thou
mayest confidently raise thy eyes to the throne: the Sultan will not
reject the son-in-law whom the Prophet has appointed for his daughter."

Like the conjuration of some potent Fairy, this address again
transformed the Count into the image of a stone statue; he gazed at the
Princess without life or motion; his cheeks grew pale, and his tongue
was chained. On the whole, he had caught the meaning of the speech: but
how he was to reach the unexpected honour of becoming the Sultan of
Egypt's son-in-law was an unfathomable mystery. In this predicament, he
certainly, for an accepted wooer, did not make the most imposing figure
in the world; but awakening love, like the rising sun, coats everything
with gold. The Princess took his dumb astonishment for excess of
rapture, and attributed his visible perplexity of spirit to the
overwhelming feeling of his unexpected success. Yet in her heart there
arose some virgin scruples lest she might have gone too fast to work
with the ultimatum of the courtship, and outrun the expectations of her
lover; therefore she again addressed him, and said: "Thou art silent,
Bostangi? Let it not surprise thee that the perfume of thy _Mushirumi_
breathes back on thee the odour of my feelings; in the curtain of deceit
my heart has never been shrouded. Ought I by wavering hope to increase
the toil of the steep path, which thy foot must climb before the bridal
chamber can be opened to thee?"

During this speech the Count had found time to recover his senses; he
roused himself, like a warrior from sleep when the alarm is sounded in
the camp. "Resplendent Flower of the East," said he, "how shall the tiny
herb that grows among the thorns presume to blossom under thy shadow?
Would not the watchful hand of the gardener pluck it out as an unseemly
weed, and cast it forth, to be trodden under foot on the highway, or
withered in the scorching sun? If a breath of air stir up the dust, that
it soil thy royal diadem, are not a hundred hands in instant employment
wiping it away? How should a slave desire the precious fruit, which
ripens in the garden of the Sultan for the palate of Princes? At thy
command I sought a pleasant flower for thee, and found the _Mushirumi_,
the name of which was as unknown to me, as its secret import still is.
Think not that I meant aught with it but to obey thee."

This response distorted the fair plan of the Princess very considerably.
She had not expected that it could be possible for a European not to
combine with the _Mushirumi_, when presented to a lady, the same thought
which the two other quarters of the world unite with it. The error was
now clear as day; but love, which had once for all taken root in her
heart, now dextrously winded and turned the matter; as a seamstress does
a piece of work which she has cut wrong, till at last she makes ends
meet notwithstanding. The Princess concealed her embarrassment by the
playing of her fair hands with the hem of her veil; and, after a few
moments' silence, she said, with gentle gracefulness: "Thy modesty
resembles the night-violet, which covets not the glitter of the sun, yet
is loved for its aromatic odour. A happy chance has been the interpreter
of thy heart, and elicited the feelings of mine. They are no longer hid
from thee. Follow the doctrine of the Prophet, and thou art on the way
to gain thy wish."

The Count now began to perceive the connection of the matter more and
more distinctly; the darkness vanished from his mind by degrees, as the
shades of night before the dawn. Here, then, the Tempter, whom, in the
durance of the Grated Tower, he had expected under the mask of a horned
satyr, or a black shrivelled gnome, appeared to him in the figure of
winged Cupid, and was employing all his treacherous arts, persuading him
to deny his faith, to forsake his tender spouse, and forget the pledges
of her chaste love. "It stands in thy power," said he, "to change thy
iron fetters with the kind ties of love. The first beauty in the world
is smiling on thee, and with her the enjoyment of all earthly happiness!
A flame, pure as the fire of Vesta, burns for thee in her bosom, and
would waste her life, should folly and caprice overcloud thy soul to the
refusing her favour. Conceal thy faith a little while under the turban;
Father Gregory has water enough in his absolution-cistern to wash thee
clean from such a sin. Who knows but thou mayest earn the merit of
saving the pure maiden's soul, and leading it to the Heaven for which it
was intended?" To this deceitful oration the Count would willingly have
listened longer, had not his good Angel twitched him by the ear, and
warned him to give no farther heed to the voice of temptation. So he
thought that he must not speak with flesh and blood any longer, but by
one bold effort gain the victory over himself. The word died away more
than once in his mouth; but at last he took heart, and said: "The
longing of the wanderer, astray in the Libyan wilderness, to cool his
parched lips in the fountains of the Nile, but aggravates the torments
of his thirsty heart, when he must still languish in the torrid waste.
Therefore think not, O best and gentlest of thy sex, that such a wish
has awakened within me, which, like a gnawing worm, would consume my
heart, since I could not nourish it with hope. Know that, in my home, I
am already joined by the indissoluble tie of marriage to a virtuous
wife, and her three tender children lisp their father's name. How could
a heart, torn asunder by sadness and longing, aspire to the Pearl of
Beauty, and offer her a divided love?"

This explanation was distinct; and the Count believed that, as it were
by one stroke, and in the spirit of true knighthood, he had ended this
strife of love. He conceived that the Princess would now see her
over-hasty error, and renounce her plan. But here he was exceedingly
mistaken. The Princess could not bring herself to think that the Count,
a young blooming man, could be without eyes for her; she knew that she
was lovely; and this frank exposition of the state of his heart made no
impression on her whatever. According to the fashion of her country, she
had no thought of appropriating to herself the sole possession of it;
for, in the parabolic sport of the Seraglio, she had often heard, that
man's love is like a thread of silk, which may be split and parted, so
that every filament shall still remain a whole. In truth, a sensible
similitude; which the wit of our Occidental ladies has never yet lighted
on! Her father's Harem, had also, from her earliest years, set before
her numerous instances of sociality in love; the favourites of the
Sultan lived there with one another in the kindest unity.

"Thou namest me the Flower of the World," replied the Princess; "but
behold, in this garden there are many flowers blossoming beside me, to
delight eye and heart by their variety of loveliness; nor do I forbid
thee to partake in this enjoyment along with me. Should I require of
thee, in thy own garden, to plant but a single flower, with the constant
sight of which thy eye would grow weary? Thy wife shall be sharer of the
happiness I am providing for thee; thou shalt bring her into thy Harem;
to me she shall be welcome; for thy sake she shall become my dearest
companion, and for thy sake she will love me in return. Her little
children also shall be mine; I will give them shade, that they bud
pleasantly, and take root in this foreign soil."

The doctrine of Toleration in Love has, in our enlightened century, made
far slower progress than that of Toleration in Religion; otherwise this
declaration of the Princess could not seem to my fair readers so
repulsive, as in all probability it will. But Melechsala was an
Oriental; and under that mild sky, Megæra Jealousy has far less
influence on the lovelier half of the species than on the stronger;
whom, in return, she does indeed rule with an iron sceptre.

Count Ernst was affected by this meek way of thinking; and who knows
what he might have resolved on, could he have depended on an equal
liberality of sentiment from his Ottilia at home, and contrived in any
way to overleap the other stone of stumbling which fronted him,--the
renunciation of his creed? He by no means hid this latter difficulty
from the goddess who was courting him so frankly; and, easy as it had
been for her to remove all previous obstacles, the present was beyond
her skill. The confidential session was adjourned, without any
settlement of this contested point. When the conference broke up, the
proposals stood as in a frontier conference between two neighbouring
states, where neither party will relinquish his rights, and the
adjustment of the matter is postponed to another term, while the
commissioners in the interim again live in peace with each other, and
enjoy good cheer together.

In the secret conclave of the Count, the mettled Kurt, as we know, had a
seat and vote; his master opened to him in the evening the whole
progress of his adventure, for he was much disquieted; and it is very
possible that some spark of love may have sputtered over from the heart
of the Princess into his, too keen for the ashes of his lawful fire to
quench. An absence of seven years, the relinquished hope of ever being
re-united with the first beloved, and the offered opportunity of
occupying the heart as it desires, are three critical circumstances,
which, in so active a substance as love, may easily produce a
fermentation that shall quite change its nature. The sagacious Squire
pricked up his ears at hearing of these interesting events; and, as if
the narrow passage of the auditory nerves had not been sufficient to
convey the tidings fast enough into his brain, he likewise opened the
wide doorway of his mouth, and both heard and tasted the unexpected news
with great avidity. After maturely weighing everything, his vote ran
thus: To lay hold of the seeming hope of release with both hands, and
realise the Princess's plan; meanwhile, to do nothing either for it or
against it, and leave the issue to Heaven. "You are blotted out from the
book of the living," said he, "in your native land; from the abyss of
slavery there is no deliverance, if you do not hitch yourself up by the
rope of love. Your spouse, good lady, will never return to your
embraces. If, in seven years, sorrow for your loss has not overpowered
her and cut her off, Time has overpowered her sorrow, and she is happy
by the side of another. But, to renounce your religion! That is a hard
nut, in good sooth; too hard for you to crack. Yet there are means for
this, too. In no country on Earth is it the custom for the wife to teach
the husband what road to take for Heaven; no, she follows his steps, and
is led and guided by him as the cloud by the wind; looks neither to the
right hand nor to the left, nor behind her, like Lot's wife, who was
changed into a pillar of salt: for where the husband arrives, there is
her abode. I have a wife at home, too; but think you, if I were stuck in
Purgatory, she would hesitate to follow me, and waft fresh air upon my
poor soul with her fan? So, depend on it, the Princess will renounce her
false Prophet. If she love you truly, she will, to a certainty, be glad
to change her Paradise for ours."

The mettled Kurt added much farther speaking to persuade his master that
he ought not to resist this royal passion, but to forget all other ties,
and free himself from his captivity. It did not strike him, that by his
confidence in the affection of his wife, he had recalled to his master's
memory the affection of his own amiable spouse; a remembrance which it
was his object to abolish. The heart of the Count felt crushed as in a
press; he rolled to this side and that on his bed; and his thoughts and
purposes ran athwart each other in the strangest perplexity, till,
towards morning, wearied out by this internal tumult, he fell into a
dead sleep. He dreamed that his fairest front-tooth had dropped, out, at
which he felt great grief and heaviness of heart; but on looking at the
gap in the mirror, to see whether it deformed him much, a fresh tooth
had grown forth in its place, fair and white as the rest, and the loss
could not be observed. So soon as he awoke, he felt a wish to have his
dream interpreted. The mettled Kurt soon hunted out a prophetic Gipsy,
who by trade read fortunes from the hand and brow, and also had the
talent of explaining dreams. The Count related his to her in all its
circumstances; and the dingy wrinkled Pythoness, after meditating long
upon it, opened her puckered mouth, and said: "What was dearest to thee
death has taken away, but fate will soon supply thy loss."

Now, then, it was plain that the sage Squire's suppositions had been no
idle fancies, but that the good Ottilia, from sorrow at the loss of her
beloved husband, had gone down to the grave. The afflicted widower, who
as little doubted of this tragic circumstance as if it had been notified
to him on black-edged paper with seal and signature, felt all that a man
who values the integrity of his jaw must feel when he loses a tooth,
which bountiful Nature is about to replace by another; and comforted
himself under this dispensation with the well-known balm of widowers:
"It is the will of God; I must submit to it!" And now, holding himself
free and disengaged, he bent all his sails, hoisted his flags and
streamers, and steered directly for the haven of happy love. At the
next interview, he thought the Princess lovelier than ever; his looks
languished towards her, and her slender form enchanted his eye, and her
light soft gait was like the gait of a goddess, though she actually
moved the one foot past the other, in mortal wise, and did not, in the
style of goddesses, come hovering along the variegated sand-walk with
unbent limbs. "Bostangi," said she, with melodious voice, "hast thou
spoken to the Iman?" The Count was silent for a moment; he cast down his
beaming eyes, laid his hand submissively on his breast, and sank on his
knee before her. In this humble attitude, he answered resolutely:
"Exalted daughter of the Sultan! my life is at thy nod, but not my
faith. The former I will joyfully offer up to thee; but leave me the
latter, which is so interwoven with my soul, that only death can part
them." From this, it was apparent to the Princess that her fine
enterprise was verging towards shipwreck; wherefore she adopted a
heroical expedient, undoubtedly of far more certain effect than our
animal magnetism, with all its renowned virtues: she unveiled her face.
There stood she, in the full radiance of beauty, like the Sun when he
first raised his head from Chaos to hurl his rays over the gloomy Earth.
Soft blushes overspread her cheeks, and higher purple glowed upon her
lips; two beautifully-curved arches, on which love was sporting like the
many-coloured Iris on the rainbow, shaded her spirit-speaking eyes; and
two golden tresses kissed each other on her lily breast. The Count was
astonished and speechless; the Princess addressed him, and said:

"See, Bostangi, whether this form pleases thy eyes, and whether it
deserves the sacrifice which I require of thee."

"It is the form of an Angel," answered he, with looks of the highest
rapture, "and deserves to shine, encircled with a glory, in the courts
of the Christian Heaven, compared with which, the delights of the
Prophet's Paradise are empty shadows."

These words, spoken with warmth and visible conviction, found free
entrance into the open heart of the Princess: especially, the glory, it
appeared to her, must be a sort of head-dress that would sit not ill
upon the face. Her quick fancy fastened on this idea, which she asked to
have explained; and the Count with all eagerness embraced this
opportunity of painting the Christian Heaven to her as charming as he
possibly could; he chose the loveliest images his mind would suggest;
and spoke with as much confidence as if he had descended directly from
the place on a mission to the Princess. Now, as it has pleased the
Prophet to endow the fair sex with very scanty expectations in the other
world, our apostolic preacher failed the less in his intentions; though
it cannot be asserted that he was preëminently qualified for the
missionary duty. But whether it were that Heaven itself favoured the
work of conversion, or that the foreign tastes of the Princess extended
to the spiritual conceptions of the Western nations, or that the person
of this Preacher to the Heathen mixed in the effect, certain it is she
was all ear, and would have listened to her pedagogue with pleasure for
many hours longer, had not the approach of night cut short their lesson.
For the present, she hastily dropped her veil, and retired to the
Seraglio.

It is a well-known fact, that the children of princes are always very
docile, and make giant steps in every branch of profitable knowledge, as
our Journals often plainly enough testify; while the other citizens of
this world must content themselves with dwarf steps. It was not
surprising, therefore, that the Sultan of Egypt's daughter had in a
short space mastered the whole synopsis of Church doctrine as completely
as her teacher could impart it, bating a few heresies, which, in his
inacquaintance with the delicate shades of faith, he had undesignedly
mingled with it. Nor did this acquisition remain a dead letter with her;
it awakened the most zealous wish for proselytising. Accordingly, the
plan of the Princess had now in so far altered, that she no longer
insisted on converting the Count, but rather felt inclined to let
herself be converted by him; and this not only in regard to unity in
faith, but also to the purposed unity in love. The whole question now
was, by what means this intention could be realised. She took counsel
with Bostangi, he with the mettled Kurt, in their nocturnal
deliberations on this weighty matter; and the latter voted distinctly to
strike the iron while it was hot; to inform the fair proselyte of the
Count's rank and birth; propose to her to run away with him; instantly
to cross the water for the European shore; and live together in
Thuringia as Christian man and wife.

The Count clapped loud applause to this well-grounded scheme of his wise
Squire; it was as if the mettled Kurt had read it in his master's eyes.
Whether the fulfilment of it might be clogged with difficulties or not,
was a point not taken into view in the first fire of the romantic
project: Love removes all mountains, overleaps walls and trenches,
bounds across abyss and chasm, and steps the barrier of a city as
lightly as it does a straw. At the next lecture, the Count disclosed the
plan to his beloved catechumena.

"Thou reflection of the Holy Virgin," said he, "chosen of Heaven from an
outcast people, to gain the victory over prejudice and error, and
acquire a lot and inheritance in the Abodes of Felicity, hast thou the
courage to forsake thy native country, then prepare for speedy flight. I
will guide thee to Rome, where dwells the Porter of Heaven, St. Peter's
deputy, to whom are committed the keys of Heaven's gate; that he may
receive thee into the bosom of the Church, and bless the covenant of our
love. Fear not that thy father's potent arm may reach us; every cloud
above our heads will be a ship manned with angelic hosts, with diamond
shields and flaming swords; invisible indeed to mortal eye, but armed
with heavenly might, and appointed to watch and guard thee. Nor will I
conceal any longer, that I am, by birth and fortune, all that the
Sultan's favour could make me; a Count, that is a Bey born, who rules
over land and people. The limits of my lordship include towns and
villages, palaces also and strongholds. Knights and squires obey me;
horses and carriages stand ready for my service. In my native land, thou
thyself, enclosed by no walls of a seraglio, shalt live and rule in
freedom as a queen."

This oration of the Count the Princess thought a message from above; she
entertained no doubts of his truth; and it seemed to please her that the
Ringdove was to nestle, not beside a Linnet, but beside a bird of the
family of the Eagle. Her warm fancy was filled with such sweet
anticipations, that she consented, with all the alacrity of the Children
of Israel, to forsake the land of Egypt, as if a new Canaan, in another
quarter of the world, had been waiting her beyond the sea. Confident in
the protection of the unseen life-guard promised to her, she would have
followed her conductor from the precincts of the Palace forthwith, had
he not instructed her that many preparations were required, before the
great enterprise could be engaged in with any hope of a happy issue.

Among all privateering transactions by sea or land, there is none more
ticklish, or combined with greater difficulties, than that of kidnapping
the Grand Signior's favourite from his arms. Such a masterstroke could
only be imagined by the teeming fancy of a W*z*l,[25] nor could any but
a Kakerlak achieve it. Yet the undertaking of Count Ernst of Gleichen
to carry off the Sultan of Egypt's daughter, was environed with no fewer
difficulties; and as these two heroes come, to a certain extent, into
competition in this matter, we must say, that the adventure of the Count
was infinitely bolder, seeing everything proceeded merely by the course
of Nature, and no serviceable Fairy put a finger in the pie:
nevertheless, the result of both these corresponding enterprises, in the
one as well as in the other, came about entirely to the wish of parties.
The Princess filled her jewel-box sufficiently with precious stones;
changed her royal garment with a Kaftan; and one evening, under the
safe-conduct of her beloved, his trusty Squire and the phlegmatic
Water-drawer, glided forth from the Palace into the Garden, unobserved,
to enter on her far journey to the West. Her absence could not long
remain concealed; her women sought her, as the proverb runs, like a lost
pin; and as she did not come to light, the alarm in the Seraglio became
boundless. Hints here and there had already been dropped, and surmises
made, about the private audiences of the Bostangi; supposition and fact
were strung together; and the whole produced, in sooth, no row of
pearls, but the horrible discovery of the real nature of the case. The
Divan of Dames had nothing for it but to send advice of the occurrence
to the higher powers. Father Sultan, whom the virtuous Melechsala,
everything considered, might have spared this pang, and avoided flying
her country to make purchase of a glory, demeaned himself at this
intelligence like an infuriated lion, who shakes his brown mane with
dreadful bellowing, when by the uproar of the hunt, and the baying of
the hounds, he is frightened from his den. He swore by the Prophet's
beard that he would utterly destroy every living soul in the Seraglio,
if at sunrise the Princess were not again in her father's power. The
Mameluke guard had to mount, and gallop towards the four winds, in chase
of the fugitives, by every road from Cairo; and a thousand oars were
lashing the broad back of the Nile, in case she might have taken a
passage by water.

     [25] J. K. Wetzel, author of some plays and novels; among the
     latter, of _Kakerlak_.--ED.

Under such efforts, to elude the far-stretching arm of the Sultan was
impossible, unless the Count possessed the secret of rendering himself
and his travelling party invisible; or the miraculous gift of smiting
all Egypt with blindness. But of these talents neither had been lent
him. Only the mettled Kurt had taken certain measures, which, in regard
to their effect, might supply the place of miracles. He had rendered his
flying caravan invisible, by the darkness of an unlighted cellar in the
house of Adullam the sudorific Hebrew. This Jewish Hermes did not
satisfy himself with practising the healing art to good advantage, but
drew profit likewise from the gift which he had received by inheritance
from his fathers; and thus honoured Mercury in all his three qualities,
of Patron to Doctors, to Merchants, and to Thieves. He drove a great
trade in spiceries and herbs with the Venetians, from which he had
acquired much wealth; and he disdained no branch of business whereby
anything was to be made. This worthy Israelite, who for money and
money's worth, stood ready, without investigating moral tendencies, for
any sort of deed, the trusty Squire had prevailed on, by a jewel from
the casket of the Princess, to undertake the transport of the Count,
whose rank and intention were not concealed from him, with three
servants, to a Venetian ship that was loading at Alexandria; but it had
prudently been hidden from him, that in the course of this contraband
transaction, he must smuggle out his master's daughter. On first
inspecting his cargo, the figure of the fair youth struck him somewhat;
but he thought no ill of it, and took him for a page of the Count's. Ere
long the report of the Princess Melechsala's disappearance sounded over
all the city: then Adullam's eyes were opened; deadly terror took
possession of his heart, so that his gray beard began to stir, and he
wished with all his soul that his hands had been free of this perilous
concern. But now it was too late; his own safety required him to summon
all his cunning, and conduct this breakneck business to a happy end. In
the first place, he laid his subterranean lodgers under rigorous
quarantine; and then, after the sharpest of the search was over, the
hope of finding the Princess considerably faded, and the zeal in seeking
for her cooled, he packed the whole caravan neatly up in four bales of
herbs, put them on board a Nile-boat, and sent them with a proper
invoice, under God's guidance, safe and sound to Alexandria; where so
soon as the Venetian had gained the open sea, they were liberated, all
and sundry, from their strait confinement in the herb-sacks.[26]

     [26] The invention of travelling in a sack was several times
     employed during the Crusades. Dietrich the Hard-bested, Markgraf of
     Meissen (Misnia), returned from Palestine to his hereditary
     possessions, under this incognito, and so escaped the snares of the
     Emperor Henry VI., who had an eye to the productive mines of
     Freyberg.--M.

Whether the celestial body-guard, with diamond shields and flaming
swords, posted on a gorgeous train of clouds, did follow the swift ship,
could not now, as they were invisible, be properly substantiated in a
court of justice; yet there are not wanting symptoms in the matter which
might lead to some such conjecture. All the four winds of Heaven seem to
have combined to make the voyage prosperous; the adverse held their
breath; and the favourable blew so gaily in the sails, that the vessel
ploughed the soft-playing billows with the speed of an arrow. The
friendly moon was stretching her horns from the clouds for the second
time, when the Venetian, glad in heart, ran into moorings in the harbour
of his native town.

Countess Ottilia's watchful spy was still at Venice; undismayed by the
fruitless toil of vain inquiries, from continuing his diets of
examination, and diligently questioning all passengers from the Levant.
He was at his post when the Count, with the fair Melechsala, came on
land. His master's physiognomy was so stamped upon his memory, that he
would have undertaken to discover it among a thousand unknown faces.
Nevertheless the foreign garb, and the finger of Time, which in seven
years produces many changes, made him for some moments doubtful. To be
certain of his object, he approached the stranger's suite, made up to
the trusty Squire, and asked him: "Comrade, whence come you?"

The mettled Kurt rejoiced to meet a countryman, and hear the sound of
his mother-tongue; but saw no profit in submitting his concerns to the
questioning of a stranger, and answered briefly: "From sea."

"Who is the gentleman thou followest?"

"My master."

"From what country come you?"

"From the East."

"Whither are you going?"

"To the West."

"To what province?"

"To our home."

"Where is it?"

"Miles of road from this."

"What is thy name?"

"Start-the-game, that is my name. Strike-for-a-word, people call my
sword. Sorrow-of-life, so hight my wife. Rise, Lig-a-bed, she cries to
her maid. Still-at-a-stand, that is my man. Hobbletehoy, I christened
my boy. Lank-i'-the-bag, I scold my nag. Shamble-and-stalk, we call his
walk. Trot-i'-the-bog, I whistle my dog. Saw-ye-that, so jumps my cat.
Snug-in-the-rug, he is my bug. Now thou knowest me, with wife and child,
and all my household."

"Thou seemest to me to be a queer fellow."

"I am no fellow at all, for I follow no handicraft."

"Answer me one question."

"Let us hear it."

"Hast thou any news of Count Ernst of Gleichen, from the East?"

"Wherefore dost thou ask?"

"Therefore."

"Twiddle, twaddle! Wherefore, therefore!"

"Because I am sent into all the world by the Countess Ottilia his wife,
to get her word whether her husband is still living, and in what corner
of the Earth he may be found."

This answer put the mettled Kurt into some perplexity; and tuned him to
another key. "Wait a little, neighbour," said he; "perhaps my master
knows about the thing." Thereupon he ran to the Count, and whispered the
tidings in his ear. The feeling they awoke was complex; made up in equal
proportions of joy and consternation. Count Ernst perceived that his
dream, or the interpretation of it, had misled him; and that the conceit
of marrying his fair travelling companion might easily be baulked. On
the spur of the moment he knew not how he should get out of this
embroiled affair: meanwhile, the desire to learn how matters stood at
home outweighed all scruples. He beckoned to the emissary, whom he soon
recognised for his old valet; and who wetted with joyful tears the hand
of his recovered master, and told in many words what jubilee the
Countess would make, when she received the happy message of her
husband's return. The Count took him with the rest to the inn; and there
engaged in earnest meditation on the singular state of his heart, and
considered deeply what was to be done with his engagements to the fair
Saracen. Without loss of time the watchful spy was dispatched to the
Countess with a letter, containing a true statement of the Count's
fortunes in slavery at Cairo, and of his deliverance by means of the
Sultan's daughter; how she had abandoned throne and country for his
sake, under the condition that he was to marry her, which he himself,
deceived by a dream, had promised. By this narrative he meant not only
to prepare his wife for a participatress in her marriage rights; but
also endeavoured, in the course of it, by many sound arguments, to gain
her own consent to the arrangement.

Countess Ottilia was standing at the window in her mourning weeds, as
the news-bringer for the last time gave his breathless horse the spur,
to hasten it up the steep Castle-path. Her sharp eye recognised him in
the distance; and he too being nothing of a blinkard,--a class of
persons very rare in the days of the Crusades,--recognised the Countess
also, raised the letter-bag aloft over his head, and waved it like a
standard in token of good news; and the lady understood his signal, as
well as if the Hanau _Synthematograph_ had been on duty there. "Hast
thou found him, the husband of my heart?" cried she, as he approached.
"Where lingers he, that I may rise and wipe the sweat from his brow, and
let him rest in my faithful arms from his toilsome journeying?"--"Joy to
you, my lady," said the post; "his lordship is well. I found him in the
Port of Venice, from which he sends you this under his hand and seal, to
announce his arrival himself." The Countess could not hastily enough
undo the seal; and at sight of her husband's hand, she felt as if the
breath of life were coming back to her. Three times she pressed the
letter to her beating heart, and three times touched it with her
languishing lips. A shower of joyful tears streamed over the parchment,
as she began reading: but the farther she read, the drops fell the
slower; and before the reading was completed, the fountain of tears had
dried up altogether.

The contents of the letter could not all interest the good lady equally;
her husband's proposed partition treaty of his heart had not the
happiness to meet with her approval. Greatly as the spirit of partition
has acquired the upper hand nowadays, so that parted love and parted
provinces have become the device of our century; these things were
little to the taste of old times, when every heart had its own key, and
a master-key that would open several was regarded as a scandalous
thief-picklock. The intolerance of the Countess in this point was at
least a proof of her unvarnished love: "Ah! that doleful Crusade," cried
she, "is the cause of it all. I lent the Holy Church a Loaf, of which
the Heathen have eaten; and nothing but a Crust of it returns to me." A
vision of the night, however, soothed her troubled mind, and gave her
whole view of the affair another aspect. She dreamed that there came
two pilgrims from the Holy Sepulchre up the winding Castle-road, and
begged a lodging, which she kindly granted them. One of them threw off
his cloak, and behold it was the Count her lord! She joyfully embraced
him, and was in raptures at his return. The children too came in, and he
clasped them in his paternal arms, pressed them to his heart, and
praised their looks and growth. Meanwhile his companion laid aside his
travelling pouch; drew from it golden chains and precious strings of
jewelry, and hung them round the necks of the little ones, who showed
delighted with these glittering presents. The Countess was herself
surprised at this munificence, and asked the stranger who he was. He
answered: "I am the Angel Raphael, the guide of the loving, and have
brought thy husband to thee out of foreign lands." His pilgrim garments
melted away; and a shining angel stood before her, in an azure robe,
with two golden wings on his shoulders. Thereupon she awoke, and, in the
absence of an Egyptian Sibyl, herself interpreted the dream according to
her best skill; and found so many points of similarity between the Angel
Raphael and the Princess Melechsala, that she doubted not the latter had
been shadowed forth to her in vision under the figure of the former. At
the same time she took into consideration the fact that, without her
help, the Count could scarcely ever have escaped from slavery. And as it
behoves the owner of a lost piece of property to deal generously with
the finder, who might have kept it all to himself, she no longer
hesitated to resolve on the surrender. The water-bailiff, well rewarded
for his watchfulness, was therefore dispatched forthwith back into
Italy, with the formal consent of the Countess for her husband to
complete the trefoil of his marriage without loss of time.

The only question now was, whether Father Gregory at Rome would give his
benediction to this matrimonial anomaly; and be persuaded, for the
Count's sake, to refound, by the word of his mouth, the substance, form
and essence of the Sacrament of Marriage. The pilgrimage accordingly set
forth from Venice to Rome, where the Princess Melechsala solemnly
abjured the Koran, and entered into the bosom of the Church. At this
spiritual conquest the Holy Father testified as much delight as if the
kingdom of Antichrist had been entirely destroyed, or reduced under
subjection to the Romish chair; and after the baptism, on which occasion
she had changed her Saracenic name for the more orthodox _Angelica_, he
caused a pompous _Te-deum_ to be celebrated in St. Peter's. These happy
aspects Count Ernst endeavoured to improve for his purpose, before the
Pope's good-humour should evaporate. He brought his matrimonial concern
to light without delay: but, alas! no sooner asked than rejected. The
conscience of St. Peter's Vicar was so tender in this case, that he
reckoned it a greater heresy to advocate triplicity in marriage than
Tritheism itself. Many plausible arguments as the Count brought forward
to accomplish an exception from the common rule in his own favour, they
availed no jot in moving the exemplary Pope to wink with one eye of his
conscience, and vouchsafe the petitioned dispensation: a result which
cut Count Ernst to the heart. His sly counsel, the mettled Kurt, had in
the mean time struck out a bright expedient for accomplishing the
marriage of his master with the fair convert, to the satisfaction of the
Pope and Christendom in general; only he had not risked disclosing it,
lest it might cost him his master's favour. Yet at last he found his
opportunity, and put the matter into words. "Dear master," said he, "do
not vex yourself so much about the Pope's perverseness. If you cannot
get round him on the one side, you must try him on the other: there are
more roads to the wood than one. If the Holy Father has too tender a
conscience to permit your taking two wives, then it is fair for you also
to have a tender conscience, though you are no priest but a layman.
Conscience is a cloak that covers every hole, and has withal the quality
that it can be turned according to the wind: at present, when the wind
is cross, you must put the cloak on the other shoulder. Examine whether
you are not related to the Countess Ottilia within the prohibited
degrees: if so, as will surely be the case, if you have a tender
conscience, then the game is your own. Get a divorce; and who the deuce
can hinder you from wedding the Princess then?"

The Count had listened to his Squire till the sense of his oration was
completely before him; then he answered it with two words, shortly and
clearly: "Peace, Dog!" In the same moment, the mettled Kurt found
himself lying at full length without the door, and seeking for a tooth
or two which had dropped from him in this rapid transit. "Ah! the
precious tooth," cried he from without, "has been sacrificed to my
faithful zeal!" This tooth monologue reminded the Count of his dream.
"Ah! the cursed tooth," cried he from within, "which I dreamed of
losing, has been the cause of all this mischief!" His heart, between
self-reproaches for unfaithfulness to his amiable wife, and for
prohibited love to the charming Angelica, kept wavering like a bell,
which yields a sound on both sides, when set in motion. Still more than
the flame of his passion, the fire of indignation burnt and gnawed him,
now that he saw the visible impossibility of ever keeping his word to
the Princess, and taking her in wedlock. All which distresses, by the
way, led him to the just experimental conclusion, that a parted heart is
not the most desirable of things; and that the lover, in these
circumstances, but too much resembles the Ass Baldwin between his two
bundles of hay.

In such a melancholy posture of affairs, he lost his jovial humour
altogether, and wore the aspect of an atrabiliar, whom in bad weather
the atmosphere oppresses till the spleen is like to crush the soul out
of his body. Princess Angelica observed that her lover's looks were no
longer as yesterday, and ere-yesterday: it grieved her soft heart, and
moved her to resolve on making trial whether she should not be more
successful, if she took the dispensation business in her own hand. She
requested audience of the conscientious Gregory; and appeared before him
closely veiled, according to the fashion of her country. No Roman eye
had yet seen her face, except the priest who baptised her. His Holiness
received the new-born daughter of the Church with all suitable respect,
offered her the palm of his right hand to kiss, and not his perfumed
slipper. The fair stranger raised her veil a little to touch the sacred
hand with her lips; then opened her mouth, and clothed her petition in a
touching address. Yet this insinuation through the Papal ear seemed not
sufficiently to know the interior organisation of the Head of the
Church; for instead of taking the road to the heart, it passed through
the other ear out into the air. Father Gregory expostulated long with
the lovely supplicant; and imagined he had found a method for in some
degree contenting her desire of union with a bridegroom, without offence
to the ordinations of the Church: he proposed to her a spiritual
wedlock, if she could resolve on a slight change of the veil, the
Saracenic for the Nun's. This proposal suddenly awakened in the Princess
such a horror at veils, that she directly tore away her own; sank full
of despair before the holy footstool, and with uplifted hands and
tearful eyes, conjured the venerable Father by his sacred slipper, not
to do violence to her heart, and constrain her to bestow it elsewhere.

The sight of her beauty was more eloquent than her lips; it enraptured
all present; and the tear which gathered in her heavenly eye fell like a
burning drop of naphtha on the Holy Father's heart, and kindled the
small fraction of earthly tinder that still lay hid there, and warmed it
into sympathy for the petitioner. "Rise, beloved daughter," said he,
"and weep not! What has been determined in Heaven, shall be fulfilled in
thee on Earth. In three days thou shalt know whether this thy first
prayer to the Church can be granted by that gracious Mother, or must be
denied." Thereupon he summoned an assembly of all the Casuists in Rome;
had a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine distributed to each; and locked
them up in the Rotunda, with the warning that no one of them should be
let out again till the question had been determined unanimously. So long
as the loaves and wine held out, the disputes were so violent, that all
the Saints, had they been convened in the church, could not have argued
with greater noise. But so soon as the Digestive Faculty began to have a
voice in the meeting, he was listened to with the deepest attention, and
happily he spoke in favour of the Count, who had got a sumptuous feast
made ready for the entertainment of the casuistic Doctors, when the
Papal seal should be removed from their door. The Bull of Dispensation
was drawn out in proper form of law; in furtherance of which the fair
Angelica had, not at all reluctantly, inflicted a determined cut upon
the treasures of Egypt. Father Gregory bestowed his benediction on the
noble pair, and sent them away betrothed. They lost no time in leaving
Peter's Patrimony for the territories of the Count, to celebrate their
nuptials on arriving.

When Count Ernst, on this side the Alps, again inhaled his native air,
and felt it come soft and kindly round his heart, he mounted his steed;
galloped forward, attended only by the heavy Groom, and left the
Princess, under the escort of the mettled Kurt, to follow him by easy
journeys.

His heart beat high within him, when he saw in azure distance the three
towers of Gleichen. He meant to take his gentle Countess by surprise;
but the news of his approach had preceded him, as on the wings of the
wind; she went forth with man and maid, and met her husband a furlong
from the Castle, in a pleasant green, which, in memory of this event, is
called the Freudenthal, or Valley of Joy, to this day. The meeting on
both sides was as trustful and tender, as if no partition treaty had
ever been thought of: for Countess Ottilia was a proper pattern of the
pious wife, that obeys without commentary the marriage precept of
subjecting her will to the will of her husband. If at times there did
arise some small sedition in her heart, she did not on the instant ring
the alarm-bell; but she shut door and window, that no mortal eye might
look in and see what passed; and then summoned the rebel Passion to the
bar of Reason; gave it over in custody to Prudence, and imposed on
herself a voluntary penance.

She could not pardon her heart for having murmured at the rival sun that
was to shine beside her on the matrimonial horizon; and to expiate the
offence, she had secretly commissioned a triple bedstead, with stout fir
posts, painted green, the colour of Hope; and a round vaulted tester, in
the form of a dome, adorned with winged puffy-cheeked heads of angels.
On the silken coverlet, which lay for show over the downy quilts, was
exhibited in fine embroidery, the Angel Raphael, as he had appeared to
her in vision, beside the Count in pilgrim weeds. This speaking proof of
her ready matrimonial complaisance affected her husband to the soul. He
clasped her to his breast, and overpowered her with kisses, at the sight
of this arrangement for the completion of his wedded joys.

"Glorious wife!" cried he with rapture, "this temple of love exalts thee
above thousands of thy sex; as an honourable memorial, it will transmit
thy name to future ages; and while a splinter of this wood remains,
husbands will recount to their wives thy exemplary conduct."

In a few days afterwards, the Princess also arrived in safety, and was
received by the Count in full gala. Ottilia came to meet her with open
arms and heart, and conducted her into the Palace, as the partner in all
its privileges. The double bridegroom then set out to Erfurt, for the
Bishop to perform the marriage ceremony. This pious prelate was
extremely shocked at the proposal, and signified, that in his diocese no
such scandal could be tolerated. But, on Count Ernst's bringing out the
papal dispensation, signed and sealed in due form, it acted as a lock on
his Reverence's lips; though his doubting looks, and shaking of the
head, still indicated that the Steersman of the bark of the universal
Church had bored a hole in the keel, which bade fair to swamp the
vessel, and send it to the bottom of the sea.

The nuptials were celebrated with becoming pomp and splendour; Countess
Ottilia, who acted as mistress of the ceremonies, had invited widely;
and the counts and knights, over all Thuringia, far and wide, came
crowding to assist at this unusual wedding. Before the Count led his
bride to the altar, she opened her jewel-box, and consigned to him all
its treasures that remained from the expenses of the dispensation, as a
dowry; in return for which, he conferred on her the lands of Ehrenstein,
by way of jointure. The chaste myrtle twined itself about the golden
crown, which latter ornament the Sultan's daughter, as a testimony of
her high birth, retained through life; and was, in consequence,
invariably named the Queen by her subjects, and by her domestics
reverenced and treated like a queen.

If any of my readers ever purchased for himself, for fifty guineas, the
costly pleasure of resting a night in Doctor Graham's _Celestial Bed_ at
London, he may form some slender conception of the Count's delight, when
the triple bed at Gleichen opened its elastic bosom to receive the
twice-betrothed, with both his spouses. Seven days long the nuptial
festivities continued; and the Count declared himself richly compensated
by them for the seven dreary years which he had been obliged to spend in
the Grated Tower at Grand Cairo. Nor would this appear to have been an
empty compliment on his part to his two faithful wives, if the
experimental apophthegm is just, that a single day of gladness sweetens
into oblivion the bitter dole and sorrow of a troublous year.

Next to the Count, there was none who relished this exhilarating period
better than his trusty Squire, the mettled Kurt, who, in the well-stored
kitchen and cellar, found the elements of royal cheer, and stoutly
emptied the cup of joy which circulated fast among the servants; while
the full table pricked up their ears as he opened his lips, his inner
man once satisfied with good things, and began to recount them his
adventures. But when the Gleichic economy returned to its customary
frugal routine, he requested permission to set out for Ordruff, to visit
his kind wife, and overwhelm her with joy at his unexpected return.
During his long absence, he had constantly maintained a rigorous
fidelity, and he now longed for the just reward of so exemplary a walk
and conversation. Fancy painted to his mind's eye the image of his
virtuous Rebecca in the liveliest colours; and the nearer he approached
the walls which enclosed her, the brighter grew these hues. He saw her
stand before him in the charms which had delighted him on his
wedding-day; he saw how excess of joy at his happy arrival would
overpower her spirits, and she would sink in speechless rapture into his
arms.

Encircled with this fair retinue of dreams, he arrived at the gate of
his native town, without observing it, till the watchful guardian of
public tranquillity let down his beam in front of him, and questioned
the stranger, Who he was, what business had brought him to the town, and
whether his intentions were peaceable or not? The mettled Kurt gave
ready answer; and now rode along the streets at a soft pace, lest his
horse's tramp might too soon betray the secret of his coming. He
fastened his beast to the door-ring, and stole, without noise, into the
court of his dwelling, where the old chained house-dog first received
him with joyful bark. Yet he wondered somewhat at the sight of two
lively chub-faced children, like the Angels in the Gleichen bed-tester,
frisking to and fro upon the area. He had no time to speculate on the
phenomenon, for the mistress of the house, in her carefulness, stept out
of doors to see who was there. Alas, what a difference between ideal and
original! The tooth of Time had, in these seven years, been mercilessly
busy with her charms; yet the leading features of her physiognomy had
been in so far spared, that to the eye of the critic she was still
recognisable, like the primary stamp of a worn coin. Joy at meeting
somewhat veiled this want of beauty from the mettled Kurt, and the
thought that sorrow for his absence had so furrowed the smooth face of
his consort put him into a sentimental mood; he embraced her with great
cordiality, and said: "Welcome, dear wife of my heart! Forget all thy
sorrow. See, I am still alive; thou hast got me back!"

The pious Rebecca answered this piece of tenderness by a heavy thwack on
the short ribs, which thwack made the mettled Kurt stagger to the wall;
then raised loud shrieks, and shouted to her servants for help against
violence, and scolded and stormed like an Infernal Fury. The loving
husband excused this unloving reception, on the score of his virtuous
spouse's delicacy, which his bold kiss of welcome had offended, she not
knowing who he was; and tore his lungs with bawling to undo this error;
but his preaching was to deaf ears, and he soon found that there was no
misunderstanding in the case. "Thou shameless varlet," cried she, in
shrieking treble, "after wandering seven long years up and down the
world, following thy wicked courses with other women, dost thou think
that I will take thee back to my chaste bed? Off with thee! Did not I
publicly cite thee at three church-doors, and wert not thou, for thy
contumacious non-appearance, declared to be dead as mutton? Did not the
High Court authorise me to put aside my widow's chair, and marry
Bürgermeister Wipprecht? Have not we lived six years as man and wife,
and received these children as a blessing of our wedlock? And now comes
the Marpeace to perplex my house! Off with thee! Pack, I say, this
instant, or the Amtmann shall crop thy ears, and put thee in the
pillory, to teach such vagabonds, that run and leave their poor tender
wives." This welcome from his once-loved helpmate was a sword's-thrust
through the heart of the mettled Kurt; but the gall poured itself as a
defence into his blood.

"O thou faithless strumpet!" answered he; "what holds me that I do not
take thee and thy bastards, and wring your necks this moment? Dost thou
recollect thy promise, and the oath thou hast so often sworn in the
trustful marriage-bed, that death itself should not part thee from me?
Didst thou not engage, unasked, that should thy soul fly up directly
from thy mouth to Heaven, and I were roasting in Purgatory, thou wouldst
turn again from Heaven's gate, and come down to me, to fan cool air upon
me till I were delivered from the flames? Devil broil thy false tongue,
thou gallows carrion!"

Though the Prima Donna of Ordruff was endowed with a glib organ, which,
in the faculty of cursing, yielded no whit to that of the tumultuous
pretender, she did not judge it good to enter into farther debate with
him, but gave her menials an expressive sign; and, in an instant, man
and maid seized hold of the mettled Kurt, and _brevi manu_ ejected his
body from the house; in which act of domestic jurisdiction Dame Rebecca
herself bore a hand with the besom, and so swept away this discarded
helpmate from the premises. The mettled Kurt, half-broken on the wheel,
then mounted his horse, and dashed full gallop down the street, which he
had rode along so gingerly some minutes before.

As his blood, when he was on the road home, began to cool, he counted
loss and gain, and found himself not ill contented with the balance; for
he found, that except the comfort of having cool air fanned upon his
soul in Purgatory after death, his smart amounted to nothing. He never
more returned to Ordruff, but continued with the Count at Gleichen all
his life, and was an eye-witness of the most incredible occurrence, that
two ladies shared the love of one man without quarrelling or jealousy,
and this even under one bed-tester! The fair Angelica continued
childless, yet she loved and watched over her associate's children as if
they had been her own, and divided with Ottilia the care of their
education. In the trefoil of this happy marriage, she was the first leaf
which faded away in the autumn of life. Countess Ottilia soon followed
her; and the afflicted widower, now all too lonely in his large castle
and wide bed, lingered but a few months longer. The firmly-established
arrangement of these noble spouses in the marriage-bed through life, was
maintained unaltered after their death. They rest all three in one
grave, in front of the Gleichen Altar, in St. Peter's Church at Erfurt,
on the Hill; where their place of sepulture is still to be seen,
overlaid with a stone, on which the noble group are sculptured after the
life. To the right lies the Countess Ottilia, with a mirror in her hand,
the emblem of her praiseworthy prudence; on the left Angelica, adorned
with a royal crown; and in the midst, the Count reposing on his
coat-of-arms, the lion-leopard.[27] Their famous triple bedstead is
still preserved as a relic in the old Castle; it stands in the room
called the Junkernkammer, or Knight's Chamber; and a splinter of it,
worn by way of busk in a lady's bodice, is said to have the virtue of
dispelling every movement of jealousy from her heart.

     [27] A plate of this tombstone may be seen in Falkenstein's
     _Analecta Nordgaviensia_.--M.




LUDWIG TIECK.




THE FAIR-HAIRED ECKBERT.[28]


In a district of the Harz dwelt a Knight, whose common designation in
that quarter was the Fair-haired Eckbert. He was about forty years of
age, scarcely of middle stature, and short light-coloured locks lay
close and sleek round his pale and sunken countenance. He led a retired
life, had never interfered in the feuds of his neighbours; indeed,
beyond the outer wall of his castle he was seldom to be seen. His wife
loved solitude as much as he; both seemed heartily attached to one
another; only now and then they would lament that Heaven had not blessed
their marriage with children.

Few came to visit Eckbert; and when guests did happen to be with him,
their presence made but little alteration in his customary way of life.
Temperance abode in his household, and Frugality herself appeared to be
the mistress of the entertainment. On these occasions Eckbert was always
cheerful and lively; but when he was alone, you might observe in him a
certain mild reserve, a still, retiring melancholy.

His most frequent guest was Philip Walther; a man to whom he had
attached himself, from having found in him a way of thinking like his
own. Walther's residence was in Franconia; but he would often stay for
half a year in Eckbert's neighbourhood, gathering plants and minerals,
and then sorting and arranging them. He lived on a small independency,
and was connected with no one. Eckbert frequently attended him in his
sequestered walks; year after year a closer friendship grew betwixt
them.

     [28] Prefatory Introduction to Tieck, _suprà_, at p. 330, Vol. VI.
     of _Works_ (Vol. I. of _Miscellanies_).

There are hours in which a man feels grieved that he should have a
secret from his friend, which, till then, he may have kept with niggard
anxiety; some irresistible desire lays hold of our heart to open itself
wholly, to disclose its inmost recesses to our friend, that so he may
become our friend still more. It is in such moments that tender souls
unveil themselves, and stand face to face; and at times it will happen,
that the one recoils affrighted from the countenance of the other.

It was late in Autumn, when Eckbert, one cloudy evening, was sitting,
with his friend and his wife Bertha, by the parlour fire. The flame cast
a red glimmer through the room, and sported on the ceiling; the night
looked sullenly in through the windows, and the trees without rustled in
wet coldness. Walther complained of the long road he had to travel; and
Eckbert proposed to him to stay where he was, to while away half of the
night in friendly talk, and then to take a bed in the house till
morning. Walther agreed, and the whole was speedily arranged: by and by
wine and supper were brought in; fresh wood was laid upon the fire; the
talk grew livelier and more confidential.

The cloth being removed, and the servants gone, Eckbert took his
friend's hand, and said to him: "Now you must let my wife tell you the
history of her youth; it is curious enough, and you should know it."
"With all my heart," said Walther; and the party again drew round the
hearth.

It was now midnight; the moon looked fitfully through the breaks of the
driving clouds. "You must not reckon me a babbler," began the lady. "My
husband says you have so generous a mind, that it is not right in us to
hide aught from you. Only do not take my narrative for a fable, however
strangely it may sound.

"I was born in a little village; my father was a poor herdsman. Our
circumstances were not of the best; often we knew not where to find our
daily bread. But what grieved me far more than this, were the quarrels
which my father and mother often had about their poverty, and the bitter
reproaches they cast on one another. Of myself too, I heard nothing said
but ill; they were forever telling me that I was a silly stupid child,
that I could not do the simplest turn of work; and in truth I was
extremely inexpert and helpless; I let things fall; I neither learned to
sew nor spin; I could be of no use to my parents; only their straits I
understood too well. Often I would sit in a corner, and fill my little
heart with dreams, how I would help them, if I should all at once grow
rich; how I would overflow them with silver and gold, and feast myself
on their amazement; and then spirits came hovering up, and showed me
buried treasures, or gave me little pebbles which changed into precious
stones; in short, the strangest fancies occupied me, and when I had to
rise and help with anything, my inexpertness was still greater, as my
head was giddy with these motley visions.

"My father in particular was always very cross to me; he scolded me for
being such a burden to the house; indeed he often used me rather
cruelly, and it was very seldom that I got a friendly word from him. In
this way I had struggled on to near the end of my eighth year; and now
it was seriously fixed that I should begin to do or learn something. My
father still maintained that it was nothing but caprice in me, or a lazy
wish to pass my days in idleness: accordingly he set upon me with
furious threats; and as these made no improvement, he one day gave me a
most cruel chastisement, and added that the same should be repeated day
after day, since I was nothing but a useless sluggard.

"That whole night I wept abundantly; I felt myself so utterly forsaken,
I had such a sympathy with myself that I even longed to die. I dreaded
the break of day; I knew not on earth what I was to do or try. I wished
from my very heart to be clever, and could not understand how I should
be worse than the other children of the place. I was on the borders of
despair.

"At the dawn of day I arose, and scarcely knowing what I did, unfastened
the door of our little hut. I stept upon the open field; next minute I
was in a wood, where the light of the morning had yet hardly penetrated.
I ran along, not looking round; for I felt no fatigue, and I still
thought my father would catch me, and in his anger at my flight would
beat me worse than ever.

"I had reached the other side of the forest, and the sun was risen a
considerable way; I saw something dim lying before me, and a thick fog
resting over it. Ere long my path began to mount, at one time I was
climbing hills, at another winding among rocks; and I now guessed that I
must be among the neighbouring Mountains; a thought that made me shudder
in my loneliness. For, living in the plain country, I had never seen a
hill; and the very word Mountains, when I heard talk of them, had been a
sound of terror to my young ear. I had not the heart to go back, my fear
itself drove me on; often I looked round affrighted when the breezes
rustled over me among the trees, or the stroke of some distant woodman
sounded far through the still morning. And when I began to meet with
charcoal-men and miners, and heard their foreign way of speech, I had
nearly fainted for terror.

"I passed through several villages; begging now and then, for I felt
hungry and thirsty; and fashioning my answers as I best could when
questions were put to me. In this manner I had wandered on some four
days, when I came upon a little footpath, which led me farther and
farther from the highway. The rocks about me now assumed a different and
far stranger form. They were cliffs so piled on one another, that it
looked as if the first gust of wind would hurl them all this way and
that. I knew not whether to go on or stop. Till now I had slept by night
in the woods, for it was the finest season of the year, or in some
remote shepherd's hut; but here I saw no human dwelling at all, and
could not hope to find one in this wilderness; the crags grew more and
more frightful; I had many a time to glide along by the very edge of
dreadful abysses; by degrees my footpath became fainter, and at last all
traces of it vanished from beneath me. I was utterly comfortless; I wept
and screamed; and my voice came echoing back from the rocky valleys with
a sound that terrified me. The night now came on, and I sought out a
mossy nook to lie down in. I could not sleep; in the darkness I heard
the strangest noises; sometimes I took them to proceed from wild-beasts,
sometimes from wind moaning through the rocks, sometimes from unknown
birds. I prayed; and did not sleep till towards morning.

"When the light came upon my face, I awoke. Before me was a steep rock;
I clomb up, in the hope of discovering some outlet from the waste,
perhaps of seeing houses or men. But when I reached the top, there was
nothing still, so far as my eye could reach, but a wilderness of crags
and precipices; all was covered with a dim haze; the day was gray and
troubled, and no tree, no meadow, not even a bush could I find, only a
few shrubs shooting up stunted and solitary in the narrow clefts of the
rocks. I cannot utter what a longing I felt but to see one human
creature, any living mortal, even though I had been afraid of hurt from
him. At the same time I was tortured by a gnawing hunger; I sat down,
and made up my mind to die. After a while, however, the desire of living
gained the mastery; I roused myself, and wandered forward amid tears and
broken sobs all day; in the end, I hardly knew what I was doing; I was
tired and spent; I scarcely wished to live, and yet I feared to die.

"Towards night the country seemed to grow a little kindlier; my
thoughts, my desires revived, the wish for life awoke in all my veins. I
thought I heard the rushing of a mill afar off; I redoubled my steps;
and how glad, how light of heart was I, when at last I actually gained
the limits of the barren rocks, and saw woods and meadows lying before
me, with soft green hills in the distance! I felt as if I had stept out
of hell into a paradise; my loneliness and helplessness no longer
frightened me.

"Instead of the hoped-for mill, I came upon a waterfall, which, in
truth, considerably damped my joy. I was lifting a drink from it in the
hollow of my hand, when all at once I thought I heard a slight cough
some little way from me. Never in my life was I so joyfully surprised as
at this moment: I went near, and at the border of the wood I saw an old
woman sitting resting on the ground. She was dressed almost wholly in
black; a black hood covered her head, and the greater part of her face;
in her hand she held a crutch.

"I came up to her, and begged for help; she made me sit by her, and gave
me bread, and a little wine. While I ate, she sang in a screeching tone
some kind of spiritual song. When she had done, she told me I might
follow her.

"The offer charmed me, strange as the old woman's voice and look
appeared. With her crutch she limped away pretty fast, and at every step
she twisted her face so oddly, that at first I was like to laugh. The
wild rocks retired behind us more and more: I never shall forget the
aspect and the feeling of that evening. All things were as molten into
the softest golden red; the trees were standing with their tops in the
glow of the sunset; on the fields lay a mild brightness; the woods and
the leaves of the trees were standing motionless; the pure sky looked
out like an opened paradise, and the gushing of the brooks, and, from
time to time, the rustling of the trees, resounded through the serene
stillness, as in pensive joy. My young soul was here first taken with a
forethought of the world and its vicissitudes. I forgot myself and my
conductress; my spirit and my eyes were wandering among the shining
clouds.

"We now mounted an eminence planted with birch-trees; from the top we
looked into a green valley, likewise full of birches; and down below, in
the middle of them, was a little hut. A glad barking reached us, and
immediately a little nimble dog came springing round the old woman,
fawned on her, and wagged its tail; it next came to me, viewed me on all
sides, and then turned back with a friendly look to its old mistress.

"On reaching the bottom of the hill, I heard the strangest song, as if
coming from the hut, and sung by some bird. It ran thus:

     Alone in wood so gay
     'Tis good to stay,
     Morrow like today,
     Forever and aye:
     O, I do love to stay
     Alone in wood so gay.

"These few words were continually repeated, and to describe the sound,
it was as if you heard forest-horns and shalms sounded together from a
far distance.

"My curiosity was wonderfully on the stretch; without waiting for the
old woman's orders, I stept into the hut. It was already dusk; here all
was neatly swept and trimmed; some bowls were standing in a cupboard,
some strange-looking casks or pots on a table; in a glittering cage,
hanging by the window, was a bird, and this in fact proved to be the
singer. The old woman coughed and panted: it seemed as if she never
would get over her fatigue: she patted the little dog, she talked with
the bird, which only answered her with its accustomed song; and for me,
she did not seem to recollect that I was there at all. Looking at her
so, many qualms and fears came over me; for her face was in perpetual
motion; and, besides, her head shook from old age, so that, for my life,
I could not understand what sort of countenance she had.

"Having gathered strength again, she lit a candle, covered a very small
table, and brought out supper. She now looked round for me, and bade me
take a little cane-chair. I was thus sitting close fronting her, with
the light between us. She folded her bony hands, and prayed aloud, still
twisting her countenance, so that I was once more on the point of
laughing; but I took strict care that I might not make her angry.

"After supper she again prayed, then showed me a bed in a low narrow
closet; she herself slept in the room. I did not watch long, for I was
half stupefied; but in the night I now and then awoke, and heard the old
woman coughing, and between whiles talking with her dog and her bird,
which last seemed dreaming, and replied with only one or two words of
its rhyme. This, with the birches rustling before the window, and the
song of a distant nightingale, made such a wondrous combination, that I
never fairly thought I was awake, but only falling out of one dream into
another still stranger.

"The old woman awoke me in the morning, and soon after gave me work. I
was put to spin, which I now learned very easily; I had likewise to take
charge of the dog and the bird. I soon learned my business in the house:
I now felt as if it all must be so; I never once remembered that the old
woman had so many singularities, that her dwelling was mysterious, and
lay apart from all men, and that the bird must be a very strange
creature. Its beauty, indeed, always struck me, for its feathers
glittered with all possible colours; the fairest deep blue, and the most
burning red, alternated about his neck and body; and when singing, he
blew himself proudly out, so that his feathers looked still finer.

"My old mistress often went abroad, and did not come again till night;
on these occasions I went out to meet her with the dog, and she used to
call me child and daughter. In the end I grew to like her heartily; as
our mind, especially in childhood, will become accustomed and attached
to anything. In the evenings, she taught me to read; and this was
afterwards a source of boundless satisfaction to me in my solitude, for
she had several ancient-written books, that contained the strangest
stories.

"The recollection of the life I then led is still singular to me:
Visited by no human creature, secluded in the circle of so small a
family; for the dog and the bird made the same impression on me which in
other cases long-known friends produce. I am surprised that I have never
since been able to recall the dog's name, a very odd one, often as I
then pronounced it.

"Four years I had passed in this way (I must now have been nearly
twelve), when my old dame began to put more trust in me, and at length
told me a secret. The bird, I found, laid every day an egg, in which
there was a pearl or a jewel. I had already noticed that she often went
to fettle privately about the cage, but I had never troubled myself
farther on the subject. She now gave me charge of gathering these eggs
in her absence, and carefully storing them up in the strange-looking
pots. She would leave me food, and sometimes stay away longer, for
weeks, for months. My little wheel kept humming round, the dog barked,
the bird sang; and withal there was such a stillness in the
neighbourhood, that I do not recollect of any storm or foul weather all
the time I stayed there. No one wandered thither; no wild-beast came
near our dwelling: I was satisfied, and worked along in peace from day
to day. One would perhaps be very happy, could he pass his life so
undisturbedly to the end.

"From the little that I read, I formed quite marvellous notions of the
world and its people; all taken from myself and my society. When I read
of witty persons, I could not figure them but like the little shock;
great ladies, I conceived, were like the bird; all old women like my
mistress. I had read somewhat of love, too; and often, in fancy, I would
sport strange stories with myself. I figured out the fairest knight on
Earth; adorned him with all perfections, without knowing rightly, after
all my labour, how he looked: but I could feel a hearty pity for myself
when he ceased to love me; I would then, in thought, make long melting
speeches, or perhaps aloud, to try if I could win him back. You smile!
These young days are, in truth, far away from us all.

"I now liked better to be left alone, for I was then sole mistress of
the house. The dog loved me, and did all I wanted; the bird replied to
all my questions with his rhyme; my wheel kept briskly turning, and at
bottom I had never any wish for change. When my dame returned from her
long wanderings, she would praise my diligence; she said her house,
since I belonged to it, was managed far more perfectly; she took a
pleasure in my growth and healthy looks; in short, she treated me in all
points like her daughter.

"'Thou art a good girl, child,' said she once to me, in her creaking
tone; 'if thou continuest so, it will be well with thee: but none ever
prospers when he leaves the straight path; punishment will overtake him,
though it may be late.' I gave little heed to this remark of hers at the
time, for in all my temper and movements I was very lively; but by night
it occurred to me again, and I could not understand what she meant by
it. I considered all the words attentively; I had read of riches, and at
last it struck me that her pearls and jewels might perhaps be something
precious. Ere long this thought grew clearer to me. But the straight
path, and leaving it? What could she mean by this?

"I was now fourteen; it is the misery of man that he arrives at
understanding through the loss of innocence. I now saw well enough that
it lay with me to take the jewels and the bird in the old woman's
absence, and go forth with them and see the world which I had read of.
Perhaps, too, it would then be possible that I might meet that fairest
of all knights, who forever dwelt in my memory.

"At first this thought was nothing more than any other thought; but when
I used to be sitting at my wheel, it still returned to me, against my
will; and I sometimes followed it so far, that I already saw myself
adorned in splendid attire, with princes and knights around me. On
awakening from these dreams, I would feel a sadness when I looked up,
and found myself still in the little cottage. For the rest, if I went
through my duties, the old woman troubled herself little about what I
thought or felt.

"One day she went out again, telling me that she should be away on this
occasion longer than usual; that I must take strict charge of
everything, and not let the time hang heavy on my hands. I had a sort of
fear on taking leave of her, for I felt as if I should not see her any
more. I looked long after her, and knew not why I felt so sad; it was
almost as if my purpose had already stood before me, without myself
being conscious of it.

"Never did I tend the dog and the bird with such diligence as now; they
were nearer to my heart than formerly. The old woman had been gone some
days, when I rose one morning in the firm mind to leave the cottage, and
set out with the bird to see this world they talked so much of. I felt
pressed and hampered in my heart; I wished to stay where I was, and yet
the thought of that afflicted me; there was a strange contention in my
soul, as if between two discordant spirits. One moment my peaceful
solitude would seem to me so beautiful; the next the image of a new
world, with its many wonders, would again enchant me.

"I knew not what to make of it; the dog leaped up continually about me;
the sunshine spread abroad over the fields; the green birch-trees
glittered; I always felt as if I had something I must do in haste; so I
caught the little dog, tied him up in the room, and took the cage with
the bird under my arm. The dog writhed and whined at this unusual
treatment; he looked at me with begging eyes, but I feared to have him
with me. I also took one pot of jewels, and concealed it by me; the rest
I left.

"The bird turned its head very strangely when I crossed the threshold;
the dog tugged at his cord to follow me, but he was forced to stay.

"I did not take the road to the wild rocks, but went in the opposite
direction. The dog still whined and barked, and it touched me to the
heart to hear him; the bird tried once or twice to sing; but as I was
carrying him, the shaking put him out.

"The farther I went, the fainter grew the barking, and at last it
altogether ceased. I wept, and had almost turned back, but the longing
to see something new still hindered me.

"I had got across the hills, and through some forests, when the night
came on, and I was forced to turn aside into a village. I blushed
exceedingly on entering the inn; they showed me to a room and bed; I
slept pretty quietly, only that I dreamed of the old woman, and her
threatening me.

"My journey had not much variety; the farther I went, the more was I
afflicted by the recollection of my old mistress and the little dog; I
considered that in all likelihood the poor shock would die of hunger,
and often in the woods I thought my dame would suddenly meet me. Thus
amid tears and sobs I went along; when I stopped to rest, and put the
cage on the ground, the bird struck up his song, and brought but too
keenly to my mind the fair habitation I had left. As human nature is
forgetful, I imagined that my former journey, in my childhood, had not
been so sad and woful as the present; I wished to be as I was then.

"I had sold some jewels; and now, after wandering on for several days, I
reached a village. At the very entrance I was struck with something
strange; I felt terrified and knew not why; but I soon bethought myself,
for it was the village where I was born! How amazed was I! How the tears
ran down my cheeks for gladness, for a thousand singular remembrances!
Many things were changed: new houses had been built, some just raised
when I went away, were now fallen, and had marks of fire on them;
everything was far smaller and more confined than I had fancied. It
rejoiced my very heart that I should see my parents once more after such
an absence. I found their little cottage, the well-known threshold; the
door-latch was standing as of old; it seemed to me as if I had shut it
only yesternight. My heart beat violently, I hastily lifted that latch;
but faces I had never seen before looked up and gazed at me. I asked for
the shepherd Martin; they told me that his wife and he were dead three
years ago. I drew back quickly, and left the village weeping aloud.

"I had figured out so beautifully how I would surprise them with my
riches: by the strangest chance, what I had only dreamed in childhood
was become reality; and now it was all in vain, they could not rejoice
with me, and that which had been my first hope in life was lost forever.

"In a pleasant town I hired a small house and garden, and took to myself
a maid. The world, in truth, proved not so wonderful as I had painted
it: but I forgot the old woman and my former way of life rather more,
and, on the whole, I was contented.

"For a long while the bird had ceased to sing; I was therefore not a
little frightened, when one night he suddenly began again, and with a
different rhyme. He sang:

     Alone in wood so gay,
     Ah, far away!
     But thou wilt say
     Some other day,
     'Twere best to stay
     Alone in wood so gay.

"Throughout the night I could not close an eye; all things again
occurred to my remembrance; and I felt, more than ever, that I had not
acted rightly. When I rose, the aspect of the bird distressed me
greatly; he looked at me continually, and his presence did me ill. There
was now no end to his song; he sang it louder and more shrilly than he
had been wont. The more I looked at him, the more he pained and
frightened me; at last I opened the cage, put in my hand, and grasped
his neck; I squeezed my fingers hard together, he looked at me, I
slackened them; but he was dead. I buried him in the garden.

"After this, there often came a fear over me for my maid; I looked back
upon myself, and fancied she might rob me or murder me. For a long while
I had been acquainted with a young knight, whom I altogether liked: I
bestowed on him my hand; and with this, Sir Walther, ends my story."

"Ay, you should have seen her then," said Eckbert warmly; "seen her
youth, her loveliness, and what a charm her lonely way of life had given
her. I had no fortune; it was through her love these riches came to me;
we moved hither, and our marriage has at no time brought us anything but
good."

"But with our tattling," added Bertha, "it is growing very late; we must
go to sleep."

She rose, and proceeded to her chamber; Walther, with a kiss of her
hand, wished her good-night, saying: "Many thanks, noble lady; I can
well figure you beside your singing bird, and how you fed poor little
_Strohmian_."

Walther likewise went to sleep; Eckbert alone still walked in a restless
humour up and down the room. "Are not men fools?" said he at last: "I
myself occasioned this recital of my wife's history, and now such
confidence appears to me improper! Will he not abuse it? Will he not
communicate the secret to others? Will he not, for such is human nature,
cast unblessed thoughts on our jewels, and form pretexts and lay plans
to get possession of them?"

It now occurred to his mind that Walther had not taken leave of him so
cordially as might have been expected after such a mark of trust: the
soul once set upon suspicion finds in every trifle something to confirm
it. Eckbert, on the other hand, reproached himself for such ignoble
feelings to his worthy friend; yet still he could not cast them out. All
night he plagued himself with such uneasy thoughts, and got very little
sleep.

Bertha was unwell next day, and could not come to breakfast; Walther did
not seem to trouble himself much about her illness, but left her husband
also rather coolly. Eckbert could not comprehend such conduct; he went
to see his wife, and found her in a feverish state; she said her last
night's story must have agitated her.

From that day, Walther visited the castle of his friend but seldom; and
when he did appear, it was but to say a few unmeaning words and then
depart. Eckbert was exceedingly distressed by this demeanour: to Bertha
or Walther he indeed said nothing of it; but to any person his internal
disquietude was visible enough.

Bertha's sickness wore an aspect more and more serious; the Doctor grew
alarmed; the red had vanished from his patient's cheeks, and her eyes
were becoming more and more inflamed. One morning she sent for her
husband to her bedside; the nurses were ordered to withdraw.

"Dear Eckbert," she began, "I must disclose a secret to thee, which has
almost taken away my senses, which is ruining my health, unimportant
trifle as it may appear. Thou mayest remember, often as I talked of my
childhood, I could never call to mind the name of the dog that was so
long beside me: now, that night on taking leave, Walther all at once
said to me: 'I can well figure you, and how you fed poor little
_Strohmian_.' Is it chance? Did he guess the name; did he know it, and
speak it on purpose? If so, how stands this man connected with my
destiny? At times I struggle with myself, as if I but imagined this
mysterious business; but, alas! it is certain, too certain. I felt a
shudder that a stranger should help me to recall the memory of my
secrets. What sayest thou, Eckbert?"

Eckbert looked at his sick and agitated wife with deep emotion; he stood
silent and thoughtful; then spoke some words of comfort to her, and went
out. In a distant chamber, he walked to and fro in indescribable
disquiet. Walther, for many years, had been his sole companion; and now
this person was the only mortal in the world whose existence pained and
oppressed him. It seemed as if he should be gay and light of heart, were
that one thing but removed. He took his bow, to dissipate these
thoughts; and went to hunt.

It was a rough stormy winter-day; the snow was lying deep on the hills,
and bending down the branches of the trees. He roved about; the sweat
was standing on his brow; he found no game, and this embittered his
ill-humour. All at once he saw an object moving in the distance; it was
Walther gathering moss from the trunks of trees. Scarce knowing what he
did, he bent his bow; Walther looked round, and gave a threatening
gesture, but the arrow was already flying, and he sank transfixed by it.

Eckbert felt relieved and calmed, yet a certain horror drove him home to
his castle. It was a good way distant; he had wandered far into the
woods. On arriving, he found Bertha dead: before her death, she had
spoken much of Walther and the old woman.

For a great while after this occurrence, Eckbert lived in the deepest
solitude: he had all along been melancholy, for the strange history of
his wife disturbed him, and he dreaded some unlucky incident or other;
but at present he was utterly at variance with himself. The murder of
his friend arose incessantly before his mind; he lived in the anguish of
continual remorse.

To dissipate his feelings, he occasionally moved to the neighbouring
town, where he mingled in society and its amusements. He longed for a
friend to fill the void in his soul; and yet, when he remembered
Walther, he would shudder at the thought of meeting with a friend; for
he felt convinced that, with any friend, he must be unhappy. He had
lived so long with his Bertha in lovely calmness; the friendship of
Walther had cheered him through so many years; and now both of them were
suddenly swept away. As he thought of these things, there were many
moments when his life appeared to him some fabulous tale, rather than
the actual history of a living man.

A young knight, named Hugo, made advances to the silent melancholy
Eckbert, and appeared to have a true affection for him. Eckbert felt
himself exceedingly surprised; he met the knight's friendship with the
greater readiness, the less he had anticipated it. The two were now
frequently together; Hugo showed his friend all possible attentions; one
scarcely ever went to ride without the other; in all companies they got
together. In a word, they seemed inseparable.

Eckbert was never happy longer than a few transitory moments: for he
felt too clearly that Hugo loved him only by mistake; that he knew him
not, was unacquainted with his history; and he was seized again with the
same old longing to unbosom himself wholly, that he might be sure
whether Hugo was his friend or not. But again his apprehensions, and the
fear of being hated and abhorred, withheld him. There were many hours in
which he felt so much impressed with his entire worthlessness, that he
believed no mortal not a stranger to his history, could entertain regard
for him. Yet still he was unable to withstand himself: on a solitary
ride, he disclosed his whole history to Hugo, and asked if he could love
a murderer. Hugo seemed touched, and tried to comfort him. Eckbert
returned to town with a lighter heart.

But it seemed to be his doom that, in the very hour of confidence, he
should always find materials for suspicion. Scarcely had they entered
the public hall, when, in the glitter of the many lights, Hugo's looks
had ceased to satisfy him. He thought he noticed a malicious smile; he
remarked that Hugo did not speak to him as usual; that he talked with
the rest, and seemed to pay no heed to him. In the party was an old
knight, who had always shown himself the enemy of Eckbert, had often
asked about his riches and his wife in a peculiar style. With this man
Hugo was conversing; they were speaking privately, and casting looks at
Eckbert. The suspicions of the latter seemed confirmed; he thought
himself betrayed, and a tremendous rage took hold of him. As he
continued gazing, on a sudden he discerned the countenance of Walther,
all his features, all the form so well known to him; he gazed, and
looked, and felt convinced that it was none but Walther who was talking
to the knight. His horror cannot be described; in a state of frenzy he
rushed out of the hall, left the town overnight, and after many
wanderings, returned to his castle.

Here, like an unquiet spirit, he hurried to and fro from room to room;
no thought would stay with him; out of one frightful idea he fell into
another still more frightful, and sleep never visited his eyes. Often he
believed that he was mad, that a disturbed imagination was the origin of
all this terror; then, again, he recollected Walther's features, and the
whole grew more and more a riddle to him. He resolved to take a journey,
that he might reduce his thoughts to order; the hope of friendship, the
desire of social intercourse, he had now forever given up.

He set out, without prescribing to himself any certain route; indeed, he
took small heed of the country he was passing through. Having hastened
on some days at the quickest pace of his horse, he, on a sudden, found
himself entangled in a labyrinth of rocks, from which he could discover
no outlet. At length he met an old peasant, who took him by a path
leading past a waterfall: he offered him some coins for his guidance,
but the peasant would not have them. "What use is it?" said Eckbert. "I
could believe that this man, too, was none but Walther." He looked round
once more, and it was none but Walther. Eckbert spurred his horse as
fast as it could gallop, over meads and forests, till it sank exhausted
to the earth. Regardless of this, he hastened forward on foot.

In a dreamy mood he mounted a hill: he fancied he caught the sound of
lively barking at a little distance; the birch-trees whispered in the
intervals, and in the strangest notes he heard this song:

     Alone in wood so gay,
     Once more I stay;
     None dare me slay,
     The evil far away:
     Ah, here I stay,
     Alone in wood so gay.

The sense, the consciousness of Eckbert had departed; it was a riddle
which he could not solve, whether he was dreaming now, or had before
dreamed of a wife and friend. The marvellous was mingled with the
common: the world around him seemed enchanted, and he himself was
incapable of thought or recollection.

A crooked, bent old woman, crawled coughing up the hill with a crutch.
"Art thou bringing me my bird, my pearls, my dog?" cried she to him.
"See how injustice punishes itself! No one but I was Walther, was Hugo."

"God of Heaven!" said Eckbert, muttering to himself; "in what frightful
solitude have I passed my life?"

"And Bertha was thy sister."

Eckbert sank to the ground.

"Why did she leave me deceitfully? All would have been fair and well;
her time of trial was already finished. She was the daughter of a
knight, who had her nursed in a shepherd's house; the daughter of thy
father."

"Why have I always had a forecast of this dreadful thought?" cried
Eckbert.

"Because in early youth thy father told thee: he could not keep this
daughter by him for his second wife, her stepmother."

Eckbert lay distracted and dying on the ground. Faint and bewildered, he
heard the old woman speaking, the dog barking, the bird repeating its
song.




THE TRUSTY ECKART.


     Brave Burgundy no longer
       Could fight for fatherland;
     The foe they were the stronger,
       Upon the bloody sand.

     He said: "The foe prevaileth,
       My friends and followers fly,
     My striving naught availeth,
       My spirits sink and die.

     No more can I exert me,
       Or sword and lance can wield;
     O, why did he desert me,
       Eckart, our trusty shield!

     In fight he used to guide me,
       In danger was my stay;
     Alas, he's not beside me,
       But stays at home today!

     The crowds are gathering faster,
       Took captive shall I be?
     I may not run like dastard,
       I'll die like soldier free."

     Thus Burgundy so bitter,
       Has at his breast his sword;
     When, see, breaks-in the Ritter
       Eckart, to save his lord!

     With cap and armour glancing,
       Bold on the foe he rides,
     His troop behind him prancing,
       And his two sons besides.

     Burgundy sees their token,
       And cries: "Now, God be praised!
     Not yet we're beat or broken,
       Since Eckart's flag is raised."

     Then like a true knight, Eckart
       Dash'd gaily through the foe:
     But with his red blood flecker'd,
       His little son lay low.

     And when the fight was ended,
       Then Burgundy he speaks:
     "Thou hast me well befriended,
       Yet so as wets my cheeks.

     The foe is smote and flying;
       Thou'st saved my land and life;
     But here thy boy is lying,
       Returns not from the strife."

     Then Eckart wept almost,
       The tear stood in his eye;
     He clasp'd the son he'd lost,
       Close to his breast the boy.

     "Why diedst thou, Heinz, so early,
       And scarce wast yet a man?
     Thou'rt fallen in battle fairly;
       For thee I'll not complain.

     Thee, Prince, we have deliver'd;
       From danger thou art free:
     The boy and I are sever'd;
       I give my son to thee."

     Then Burgundy our chief,
       His eyes grew moist and dim;
     He felt such joy and grief,
       So great that love to him.

     His heart was melting, flaming,
       He fell on Eckart's breast,
     With sobbing voice exclaiming:
       "Eckart, my champion best,

     Thou stoodst when every other
       Had fled from me away;
     Therefore thou art my brother
       Forever from this day.

     The people shall regard thee
       As wert thou of my line;
     And could I more reward thee,
       How gladly were it thine!"

     And when we heard the same,
       We joy'd as did our prince;
     And Trusty Eckart is the name
       We've call'd him ever since.

The voice of an old peasant sounded over the rocks, as he sang this
ballad; and the Trusty Eckart sat in his grief, on the declivity of the
hill, and wept aloud. His youngest boy was standing by him: "Why weepest
thou aloud, my father Eckart?" said he: "Art thou not great and strong,
taller and braver than any other man? Whom, then, art thou afraid of?"

Meanwhile the Duke of Burgundy was moving homewards to his Tower.
Burgundy was mounted on a stately horse, with splendid trappings; and
the gold and jewels of the princely Duke were glittering in the evening
sun; so that little Conrad could not sate himself with viewing and
admiring the magnificent procession. The Trusty Eckart rose, and looked
gloomily over it; and young Conrad, when the hunting train had
disappeared, struck up this stave:

     On good steed,
     Sword and shield
     Wouldst thou wield,
     With spear and arrow;
     Then had need
     That the marrow
     In thy arm,
     That thy heart and blood,
     Be good,
     To save thy head from harm.

The old man clasped his son to his bosom, looking with wistful
tenderness on his clear blue eyes. "Didst thou hear that good man's
song?" said he.

"Ay, why not?" answered Conrad: "he sang it loud enough, and thou art
the Trusty Eckart thyself, so I liked to listen."

"That same Duke is now my enemy," said Eckart; "he keeps my other son in
prison, nay has already put him to death, if I may credit what the
people say."

"Take down thy broad-sword, and do not suffer it," cried Conrad; "they
will tremble to see thee, and all the people in the whole land will
stand by thee, for thou art their greatest hero in the land."

"Not so, my son," said the other; "I were then the man my enemies have
called me; I dare not be unfaithful to my liege; no, I dare not break
the peace which I have pledged to him, and promised on his hand."

"But what wants he with us, then?" said Conrad, impatiently.

Eckart sat down again, and said: "My son, the entire story of it would
be long, and thou wouldst scarcely understand it. The great have always
their worst enemy in their own hearts, and they fear it day and night;
so Burgundy has now come to think that he has trusted me too far; that
he has nursed in me a serpent in his bosom. People call me the stoutest
warrior in our country; they say openly that he owes me land and life; I
am named the Trusty Eckart; and thus oppressed and suffering persons
turn to me, that I may get them help. All this he cannot suffer. So he
has taken up a grudge against me; and every one that wants to rise in
favour with him increases his distrust; so that at last he has quite
turned away his heart from me."

Hereupon the hero Eckart told, in smooth words, how Burgundy had
banished him from his sight, how they had become entire strangers to
each other, as the Duke suspected that he even meant to rob him of his
dukedom. In trouble and sorrow, he proceeded to relate how the Duke had
cast his son into confinement, and was threatening the life of Eckart
himself, as of a traitor to the land.

But Conrad said to his father: "Wilt thou let me go, my old father, and
speak with the Duke, to make him reasonable and kind to thee? If he has
killed my brother, then he is a wicked man, and thou must punish him;
but that cannot be, for he could not so falsely forget the great service
thou hast done him."

"Dost thou know the old proverb?" said Eckart:

     "Doth the king require thy aid,
     Thou'rt a friend can ne'er be paid;
     Hast thou help'd him through his trouble
     Friendship's grown an empty bubble.

Yes; my whole life has been wasted in vain. Why did he make me great, to
cast me down the deeper? The friendship of princes is like a deadly
poison, which can only be employed against our enemies, and with which
at last we unwarily kill ourselves."

"I will to the Duke," cried Conrad: "I will call back into his soul all
that thou hast done, that thou hast suffered for him; and he will again
be as of old."

"Thou hast forgot," said Eckart, "that they look on us as traitors.
Therefore let us fly together to some foreign country, where a better
fortune may betide us."

"At thy age," said Conrad, "wilt thou turn away thy face from thy kind
home? I will to Burgundy; I will quiet him, and reconcile him to thee.
What can he do to me, even though he still hate and fear thee?"

"I let thee go unwillingly," said Eckart; "for my soul forebodes no
good; and yet I would fain be reconciled to him, for he is my old
friend; and fain save thy brother, who is pining in the dungeon beside
him."

The sun threw his last mild rays on the green Earth: Eckart sat
pensively leaning back against a tree; he looked long at Conrad, then
said: "If thou wilt go, my little boy, go now, before the night grow
altogether dark. The windows in the Duke's Castle are already glittering
with lights, and I hear afar off the sound of trumpets from the feast;
perhaps his son's bride may have arrived, and his mind may be friendlier
to us."

Unwillingly he let him go, for he no longer trusted to his fortune: but
Conrad's heart was light; for he thought it would be an easy task to
turn the mind of Burgundy, who had played with him so kindly but a short
while before. "Wilt thou come back to me, my little boy?" sobbed Eckart:
"if I lose thee, no other of my race remains." The boy consoled him;
flattered him with caresses: at last they parted.

Conrad knocked at the gate of the Castle, and was let in; old Eckart
stayed without in the night alone. "Him too have I lost," moaned he in
his solitude; "I shall never see his face again."

Whilst he so lamented, there came tottering towards him a gray-haired
man; endeavouring to get down the rocks; and seeming, at every step, to
fear that he should stumble into the abyss. Seeing the old man's
feebleness, Eckart held out his hand to him, and helped him to descend
in safety.

"Which way come ye?" inquired Eckart.

The old man sat down, and began to weep, so that the tears came running
over his cheeks. Eckart tried to soothe him and console him with
reasonable words; but the sorrowful old man seemed not at all to heed
these well-meant speeches, but to yield himself the more immoderately to
his sorrows.

"What grief can it be that lies so heavy on you as to overpower you
utterly?" said Eckart.

"Ah, my children!" moaned the old man.

Then Eckart thought of Conrad, Heinz and Dietrich, and was himself
altogether comfortless. "Yes," said he, "if your children are dead, your
misery in truth is very great."

"Worse than dead," replied the old man, with his mournful voice; "for
they are not dead, but lost forever to me. O, would to Heaven that they
were but dead!"

These strange words astonished Eckart, and he asked the old man to
explain the riddle; whereupon the latter answered: "The age we live in
is indeed a marvellous age, and surely the last days are at hand; for
the most dreadful signs are sent into the world, to threaten it. Every
sort of wickedness is casting off its old fetters, and stalking bold and
free about the Earth; the fear of God is drying up and dispersing, and
can find no channel to unite in; and the Powers of Evil are rising
audaciously from their dark nooks, and celebrating their triumph. Ah, my
dear sir! we are old, but not old enough for such prodigious things. You
have doubtless seen the Comet, that wondrous light in the sky, that
shines so prophetically down upon us? All men predict evil; and no one
thinks of beginning the reform with himself, and so essaying to turn off
the rod. Nor is this enough; but portents are also issuing from the
Earth, and breaking mysteriously from the depths below, even as the
light shines frightfully on us from above. Have you never heard of the
Hill, which people call the Hill of Venus?"

"Never," said Eckart, "far as I have travelled."

"I am surprised at that," replied the old man; "for the matter is now
grown as notorious as it is true. To this Mountain have the Devils fled,
and sought shelter in the desert centre of the Earth, according as the
growth of our Holy Faith has cast down the idolatrous worship of the
Heathen. Here, they say, before all others, Lady Venus keeps her court,
and all her hellish hosts of worldly Lusts and forbidden Wishes gather
round her, so that the Hill has been accursed since time immemorial."

"But in what country lies the Hill?" inquired Eckart.

"There is the secret," said the old man, "that no one can tell this,
except he have first given himself up to be Satan's servant; and,
indeed, no guiltless person ever thinks of seeking it out. A wonderful
Musician on a sudden issues from below, whom the Powers of Hell have
sent as their ambassador; he roams through the world, and plays, and
makes music on a pipe, so that his tones sound far and wide. And whoever
hears these sounds is seized by him with visible yet inexplicable force,
and drawn on, on, into the wilderness; he sees not the road he travels;
he wanders, and wanders, and is not weary; his strength and his speed
go on increasing; no power can restrain him; but he runs frantic into
the Mountain, from which he can nevermore return. This power has, in our
day, been restored to Hell; and in this inverse direction, the
ill-starred, perverted pilgrims are travelling to a Shrine where no
deliverance awaits them, or can reach them any more. For a long while,
my two sons had given me no contentment; they were dissolute and
immoral; they despised their parents, as they did religion; but now the
Sound has caught and carried them off, they are gone into unseen
kingdoms; the world was too narrow for them, they are seeking room in
Hell."

"And what do you intend to do in such a mystery?" said Eckart.

"With this crutch I set out," replied the old man, "to wander through
the world, to find them again, or die of weariness and woe."

So saying, he tore himself from his rest with a strong effort; and
hastened forth with his utmost speed, as if he had found himself
neglecting his most precious earthly hope; and Eckart looked with
compassion on his vain toil, and rated him in his thoughts as mad.

It had been night, and was now day, and Conrad came not back. Eckart
wandered to and fro among the rocks, and turned his longing eyes on the
Castle; still he did not see him. A crowd came issuing through the gate;
and Eckart no longer heeded to conceal himself; but mounted his horse,
which was grazing in freedom; and rode into the middle of the troop, who
were now proceeding merrily and carelessly across the plain. On his
reaching them, they recognised him; but no one laid a hand on him, or
said a hard word to him; they stood mute for reverence, surrounded him
in admiration, and then went their way. One of the squires he called
back, and asked him: "Where is my Conrad?"

"O! ask me not," replied the squire; "it would but cause you sorrow and
lamenting."

"And Dietrich!" cried the father.

"Name not their names any more," said the aged squire, "for they are
gone; the wrath of our master was kindled against them, and he meant to
punish you in them."

A hot rage mounted up in Eckart's soul; and, for sorrow and fury, he was
no longer master of himself. He dashed the spurs into his horse, and
rode through the Castle-gate. All drew back, with timid reverence, from
his way; and thus he rode on to the front of the Palace. He sprang from
horseback, and mounted the great steps with wavering pace. "Am I here in
the dwelling of the man," said he, within himself, "who was once my
friend?" He endeavoured to collect his thoughts; but wilder and wilder
images kept moving in his eye, and thus he stept into the Prince's
chamber.

Burgundy's presence of mind forsook him, and he trembled as Eckart stood
in his presence. "Art thou the Duke of Burgundy?" said Eckart to him. To
which the Duke answered, "Yes."

"And thou hast killed my son Dietrich?" The Duke said, "Yes."

"And my little Conrad too," cried Eckart, in his grief, "was not too
good for thee, and thou hast killed him also?" To which the Duke again
answered, "Yes."

Here Eckart was unmanned, and said, in tears: "O! answer me not so,
Burgundy; for I cannot bear these speeches. Tell me but that thou art
sorry, that thou wishest it were yet undone, and I will try to comfort
myself; but thus thou art utterly offensive to my heart."

The Duke said: "Depart from my sight, false traitor; for thou art the
worst enemy I have on Earth."

Eckart said: "Thou hast of old called me thy friend; but these thoughts
are now far from thee. Never did I act against thee; still have I
honoured and loved thee as my prince; and God forbid that I should now,
as I well might, lay my hand upon my sword, and seek revenge of thee.
No, I will depart from thy sight, and die in solitude."

So saying, he went out; and Burgundy was moved in his mind; but at his
call, the guards appeared with their lances, who encircled him on all
sides, and motioned to drive Eckart from the chamber with their weapons.

     To horse the hero springs,
       Wild through the hills he rideth:
     "Of hope in earthly things,
       Now none with me abideth.

     My sons are slain in youth,
       I have no child or wife;
     The Prince suspects my truth,
       Has sworn to take my life."

     Then to the wood he turns him,
       There gallops on and on;
     The smart of sorrow burns him,
       He cries: "They're gone, they're gone

     All living men from me are fled,
       New friends I must provide me,
     To the oaks and firs beside me,
       Complain in desert dead.

     There is no child to cheer me,
       By cruel wolves they're slain;
     Once three of them were near me,
       I see them not again."

     As Eckart cried thus sadly,
       His sense it pass'd away;
     He rides in fury madly
       Till dawning of the day.

     His horse in frantic speed
       Sinks down at last exhausted;
     And naught does Eckart heed,
       Or think or know what caused it;

     But on the cold ground lie,
       Not fearing, loving longer;
     Despair grows strong and stronger,
       He wishes but to die.

No one about the Castle knew whither Eckart had gone; for he had lost
himself in the waste forests, and let no man see him. The Duke dreaded
his intentions; and he now repented that he had let him go, and not laid
hold of him. So, one morning, he set forth with a great train of hunters
and attendants, to search the woods, and find out Eckart; for he
thought, that till Eckart were destroyed, there could be no security.
All were unwearied, and regardless of toil; but the sun set without
their having found a trace of Eckart.

A storm came on, and great clouds flew blustering over the forest; the
thunder rolled, and lightning struck the tall oaks: all present were
seized with an unquiet terror, and they gradually dispersed among the
bushes, or the open spaces of the wood. The Duke's horse plunged into
the thicket; his squires could not follow him: the gallant horse rushed
to the ground; and Burgundy in vain called through the tempest to his
servants; for there was no one that could hear him.

Like a wild man had Eckart roamed about the woods, unconscious of
himself or his misfortunes; he had lost all thought, and in blank
stupefaction satisfied his hunger with roots and herbs: the hero could
not now be recognised by any one, so sore had the days of his despair
defaced him. As the storm came on, he awoke from his stupefaction, and
again felt his existence and his woes, and saw the misery that had
befallen him. He raised a loud cry of lamentation for his children; he
tore his white hair; and called out, in the bellowing of the storm:
"Whither, whither are ye gone, ye parts of my heart? And how is all
strength departed from me, that I could not even avenge your death? Why
did I hold back my arm, and did not send to death him who had given my
heart these deadly stabs? Ha, fool, thou deservest that the tyrant
should mock thee, since thy powerless arm and thy silly heart withstood
not the murderer. Now, O now were he with me! But it is in vain to wish
for vengeance, when the moment is gone by."

Thus came on the night, and Eckart wandered to and fro in his sorrow.
From a distance he heard as it were a voice calling for help. Directing
his steps by the sound, he came up to a man in the darkness, who was
leaning on the stem of a tree, and mournfully entreating to be guided to
his road. Eckart started at the voice, for it seemed familiar to him;
but he soon recovered, and perceived that the lost wayfarer was the Duke
of Burgundy. Then he raised his hand to his sword, to cut down the man
who had been the murderer of his children; his fury came on him with new
force, and he was upon the point of finishing his bloody task, when all
at once he stopped, for his oath and the word he had pledged came into
his mind. He took his enemy's hand, and led him to the quarter where he
thought the road must be.

     The Duke foredone and weary
       Sank in the wilder'd breaks;
     Him in the tempest dreary
       He on his shoulders takes.

     Said Burgundy: "I'm giving
       Much toil to thee, I fear."
     Eckart replied: "The living
       On Earth have much to bear."

     "Yet," said the Duke, "believe me,
       Were we out of the wood,
     Since now thou dost relieve me,
       Thy sorrows I'll make good."

     The hero at this promise
       Felt on his cheek the tear;
     Said he: "Indeed I nowise
       Do look for payment here."

     "Harder our plight is growing,"
       The Duke cries, dreading scath,
     "Now whither are we going?
       Who art thou? Art thou Death?"

     "Not Death," said he, still weeping,
       "Or any fiend am I;
     Thy life is in God's keeping,
       Thy ways are in his eye."

     "Ah," said the Duke, repenting,
       "My breast is foul within;
     I tremble, while lamenting,
       Lest God requite my sin.

     My truest friend I've banish'd,
       His children have I slain,
     In wrath from me he vanish'd,
       As foe he comes again.

     To me he was devoted,
       Through good report and bad;
     My rights he still promoted,
       The truest man I had.

     Me he can never pardon,
       I kill'd his children dear;
     This night to pay my guerdon,
       I' th' wood he lurks, I fear.

     This does my conscience teach me,
       A threat'ning voice within;
     If here to-night he reach me,
       I die a child of sin."

     Said Eckart: "The beginning
       Of our woes is guilt;
     My grief is for thy sinning,
       And for the blood thou'st spilt.

     And that the man will meet thee
       Is likewise surely true;
     Yet fear not, I entreat thee,
       He'll harm no hair of you."

Thus were they going forward talking, when another person in the forest
met them; it was Wolfram, the Duke's Squire, who had long been looking
for his master. The dark night was still lying over them, and no star
twinkled from between the wet black clouds. The Duke felt weaker, and
longed to reach some lodging, where he might sleep till day; besides, he
was afraid that he might meet with Eckart, who stood like a spectre
before his soul. He imagined he should never see the morning; and
shuddered anew when the wind again rustled through the high trees, and
the storm came down from the hollows of the mountains, and went rushing
over his head. "Wolfram," cried the Duke, in his anguish, "climb one of
these tall pines, and look about if thou canst spy no light, no house or
cottage, whither we may turn."

The Squire, at the hazard of his life, clomb up a lofty pine, which the
storm was waving from the one side to the other, and ever and anon
bending down the top of it to the very ground; so that the Squire
wavered to and fro upon it like a little squirrel. At last he reached
the top, and cried: "Down there, in the valley, I see the glimmer of a
candle; thither must we turn." So he descended and showed the way; and
in a while, they all perceived the cheerful light; at which the Duke
once more took heart. Eckart still continued mute, and occupied within
himself; he spoke no word, and looked at his inward thoughts. On
arriving at the hut, they knocked; and a little old housewife let them
in: as they entered, the stout Eckart set the Duke down from his
shoulders, who threw himself immediately upon his knees, and in a
fervent prayer thanked God for his deliverance. Eckart took his seat in
a dark corner; and there he found fast asleep the poor old man, who had
lately told him of his great misery about his sons, and the search he
was making for them.

When the Duke had done praying, he said: "Very strange have my thoughts
been this night, and the goodness of God and his almighty power never
showed themselves so openly before to my obdurate heart: my mind also
tells me that I have not long to live; and I desire nothing save that
God would pardon me my manifold and heavy sins. You two, also, who have
led me hither, I could wish to recompense, so far as in my power, before
my end arrive. To thee, Wolfram, I give both the castles that are on
these hills beside us; and in future, in remembrance of this awful
night, thou shalt call them the Tannenhäuser, or Pine-houses. But who
art thou, strange man," continued he, "that hast placed thyself there in
the nook, apart? Come forth, that I may also pay thee for thy toil."

       Then rose the hero from his place,
     And stept into the light before them;
     Deep lines of woe were on his face,
     But with a patient mind he bore them.

       And Burgundy, his heart forsook him,
     To see that mild old gray-hair'd man;
     His face grew pale, a trembling took him,
     He swoon'd and sank to earth again.

     "O, saints of heaven," he wakes and cries,
     "Is't thou that art before my eyes?
     How shall I fly? Where shall I hide me?
     Was't thou that in the wood didst guide me?
     I kill'd thy children young and fair,
     Me in thy arms how couldst thou bear?"

       Thus Burgundy goes on to wail,
     And feels the heart within him fail;
     Death is at hand, remorse pursues him,
     With streaming eyes he sinks on Eckart's bosom;
     And Eckart whispers to him low:
     "Henceforth I have forgot the slight,
     So thou and all the world may know,
     Eckart was still thy trusty knight."

Thus passed the hours till morning, when some other servants of the Duke
arrived, and found their dying master. They laid him on a mule, and took
him back to his castle. Eckart he could not suffer from his side; he
would often take his hand and press it to his breast, and look at him
with an imploring look. Then Eckart would embrace him, and speak a few
kind words to him, and so the Prince would feel composed. At last he
summoned all his Council, and declared to them that he appointed Eckart,
the trusty man, to be guardian of his sons, seeing he had proved himself
the noblest of all. And thus he died.

Thenceforward Eckart took on him the government with all zeal; and every
person in the land admired his high manly spirit. Not long afterwards a
rumour spread abroad in all quarters, of a strange Musician, who had
come from Venus-Hill, who was travelling through the whole land, and
seducing men with his playing, so that they disappeared, and no one
could find any traces of them. Many credited the story, others not;
Eckart recollected the unhappy old man.

"I have taken you for my sons," said he to the young Princes, as he once
stood with them on the hill before the Castle; "your happiness must now
be my posterity; when dead, I shall still live in your joy." They lay
down on the slope, from which the fair country was visible for many a
league; and here Eckart had to guard himself from speaking of his
children; for they seemed as if coming towards him from the distant
mountains, while he heard afar off a lovely sound.

     "Comes it not like dreams
     Stealing o'er the vales and streams?
     Out of regions far from this,
     Like the song of souls in bliss?"

     This to the youths did Eckart say,
     And caught the sound from far away;
     And as the magic tones came nigher,
     A wicked strange desire
     Awakens in the breasts of these pure boys,
     That drives them forth to seek for unknown joys.

     "Come, let's to the fields, to the meadows and mountains,
     The forests invite us, the streams and the fountains;
     Soft voices in secret for loitering chide us,
     Away to the Garden of Pleasure they'll guide us."

     The Player comes in foreign guise,
     Appears before their wondering eyes;
     And higher swells the music's sound,
     And brighter glows the emerald ground;
     The flowers appear as drunk,
     Twilight red has on them sunk;
     And through the green grass play, with airy lightness,
     Soft, fitful, blue and golden streaks of brightness.
     Like a shadow, melts and flits away
     All that bound men to this world of clay;
     In Earth all toil and tumult cease,
     Like one bright flower it blooms in peace;
     The mountains rock in purple light,
     The valleys shout as with delight;
     All rush and whirl in the music's noise,
     And long to share of these offer'd joys;
     The soul of man is allured to gladness,
     And lies entranced in that blissful madness.

     The Trusty Eckart felt it,
       But wist not of the cause;
     His heart the music melted,
       He wondered what it was.

     The world seems new and fairer,
       All blooming like the rose;
     Can Eckart be a sharer
       In raptures such as those?

     "Ha! Are those tones restoring
       My wife and bonny sons?
     All that I was deploring,
       My lost beloved ones?"

     Yet soon his sense collected
       Brought doubt within his breast;
     These hellish arts detected,
       A horror him possessed.

     And now he sees the raging
       Of his young princes dear;
     Themselves to Hell engaging,
       His voice no more they hear.

     And forth, in wild commotion,
       They rush, not knowing where;
     In tumult like the ocean,
       When mad his billows are.

     Then, as these things assail'd him,
       He wist not what to do;
     His knighthood almost fail'd him
       Amid that hellish crew.

     Then to his soul appeareth
       The hour the Duke did die;
     His friend's faint prayer he heareth,
       He sees his fading eye.

     And so his mind's in armour,
       And hope is conquering fear;
     When see, the fiendish Charmer
       Himself comes piping near!

     His sword to draw he essayeth,
       And smite the caitiff dead;
     But as the music playeth,
       His strength is from him fled.

     And from the mountains issue
       Crowds of distorted forms,
     Of Dwarfs a boundless tissue
       Come simmering round in swarms.

     The youths, possess'd, are running
       As frantic in the crowd:
     In vain is force or cunning;
       In vain to call aloud.

     And hurries on by castle,
       By tower and town, the rout;
     Like imps in hellish wassail,
       With cackling laugh and shout.

     He too is in the rabble;
       May not resist their force,
     Must hear their deafening babble,
       Attend their frantic course.

     But now the Hill appeareth,
       And music comes thereout;
     And as the Phantoms hear it,
       They halt, and raise a shout.

     The Mountain starts asunder,
       A motley crowd is seen;
     This way and that they wander,
       In red unearthly sheen.

     Then his broad-sword he drew it,
       And says: "Still true, though lost!"
     And with mad force he heweth
       Through that Infernal host.

     His youths he sees (how gladly!)
       Escaping through the vale;
     The Fiends are fighting madly,
       And threatening to prevail.

     The Dwarfs, when hurt, fly downward,
       And rise up cured again;
     And other crowds rush onward,
       And fight with might and main.

     Then saw he from a distance
       The children safe, and cried:
     "They need not my assistance,
       I care not what betide."

     His good broad-sword doth glitter
       And flash i' th' noontide ray;
     The Dwarfs, with wailing bitter,
       And howls, depart away.

     Safe at the valley's ending,
       The youths far off he spies;
     Then faint and wounded, bending,
       The hero falls and dies.

     So his last hour o'ertook him,
       Fighting like lion brave;
     His truth, it ne'er forsook him,
       He was faithful to the grave.

     Now Eckart having perish'd,
       The eldest son bore sway;
     His memory still he cherish'd,
       With grateful heart would say:

     "From foes and wreck to save me,
       Like lion grim he fought;
     My throne, my life, he gave me,
       And with his heart's blood bought."

     And soon a wondrous rumour
       The country round did fill,
     That when a desp'rate humour
       Doth send one to the Hill,

     There straight a Shape will meet him,
       The Trusty Eckart's ghost,
     And wistfully entreat him
       To turn, and not be lost.

     There he, though dead, yet ever
       True watch and ward doth hold;
     Upon the Earth shall never
       Be man so true and bold.


PART II.

More than four centuries had elapsed since the Trusty Eckart's death,
when a noble Tannenhäuser, in the station of Imperial Counsellor, was
living at Court in the highest estimation. The son of this knight
surpassed in beauty all the other nobles of the land, and on this

account was loved and prized by every one. Suddenly, however, after some
mysterious incidents had been observed to happen to him, the young man
disappeared; and no one knew or guessed what was become of him. Since
the times of the Trusty Eckart, there had always been a story current in
the land about the Venus-Hill; and many said that he had wandered
thither, and was lost forever.

One of those that most lamented him was his young friend Friedrich von
Wolfsburg. They had grown up together, and their mutual attachment
seemed to each of them to have become a necessary of life.
Tannenhäuser's old father died: Friedrich married some years afterwards;
already was a ring of merry children round him, and still he heard no
tidings of his youthful friend; so that, in the end, he was forced to
conclude him dead.

He was standing one evening under the gate of his Castle, when he
perceived afar off a pilgrim travelling towards the mansion. The
wayfaring man was clad in a strange garb; and his gait and gestures the
Knight thought extremely singular. On his approaching nearer, Wolfsburg
thought that he knew him; and at last he became convinced that the
stranger was no other than his long-lost friend, the Tannenhäuser. He
felt amazed, and a secret horror took possession of him, as he
recognised distinctly these much-altered features.

The two friends embraced; then started back next moment; and gazed
astonished at each other as at unknown beings. Of questions, of
perplexed replies, were many. Friedrich often shuddered at the wild look
of his friend, which seemed to burn as with unearthly light. The
Tannenhäuser had reposed himself a day or two, when Friedrich learned
that he was on a pilgrimage to Rome.

The two friends by and by renewed their former intimacy; took up their
old topics, and told stories to each other of their youth; but the
Tannenhäuser always carefully concealed where he had been since then.
Friedrich, however, pressed him to disclose it, now that they were once
more on their ancient confidential footing: the other long endeavoured
to ward off the friendly prayer; but at last he exclaimed: "Well, be it
so; thy will be done! Thou shalt know all; but cast no reproaches on me
after, should the story fill thee with inquietude and horror."

They went into the open air, and walked a little in a green wood of the
pleasure-grounds, where at last they sat down; and now the Tannenhäuser
hid his face among the grass, and, with loud sobs, held back his right
hand to his friend, who pressed it tenderly in his. The woe-worn pilgrim
raised himself, and began his story in the following words:

"Believe me, Wolfsburg, many a man has, at his birth, an Evil Spirit
linked to him, that vexes him through life, and never lets him rest,
till he has reached his black destination. So has it been with me; my
whole existence has been but a continuing birth-pain, and my awakening
will be in Hell. For this have I already wandered so many weary steps,
and have so many yet before me on the pilgrimage which I am making to
the Holy Father, that I may endeavour to obtain forgiveness at Rome. In
his presence will I lay down the heavy burden of my sins; or fall
beneath it, and die despairing."

Friedrich attempted to console him, but the Tannenhäuser seemed to pay
little heed to what he said; and, after a short while, he proceeded in
the following words: "There is an old legend of a Knight who is said to
have lived many centuries ago, under the name of the Trusty Eckart. They
tell how, in those days, a Musician issued from some marvellous Hill;
and, by his magic tones, awoke in the hearts of all that heard him so
deep a longing, such wild wishes, that he led them irresistibly along
with his music, and forced them to rush in with him to the Hill. Hell
had then opened wide her gates to poor mortals, and enticed them in with
seductive music. In boyhood I often heard this story, and at first
without particularly minding it; yet ere long it so took hold of me,
that all Nature, every sound, every flower, recalled to me the story of
these heart-subduing tones. I cannot tell thee what a sadness, what an
unutterable longing used to seize me, when I looked on the driving of
the clouds, and saw the light lordly blue peering out between them; or
what remembrances the meadows and the woods would awaken in my deepest
heart. Oftentimes the loveliness and fulness of royal Nature so affected
me, that I stretched out my arms, as if to fly away with wings; that I
might pour myself out like the Spirit of Nature over mountain and
valley; that I might brood over grass and forest, and inhale the riches
of her blessedness. And if by day the free landscape charmed me, by
night dark dreaming fantasies tormented me; and set themselves in
louring grimness before me, as if to shut up my path of life forever.
Above all, there was one dream that left an ineffaceable impression on
my feelings, though I never could distinctly call the forms of it to
memory. Methought there was a vast tumult in the streets; I heard
confused unintelligible speaking; it was dark night; I went to my
parents' house; none but my father was there, and he sick. Next morning
I clasped my parents in my arms, and pressed them with melting
tenderness to my breast, as if some hostile power had been about to tear
them from me. 'Am I to lose thee?' said I to my father. 'O! how wretched
and lonely were I without thee in this world!' They tried to comfort me,
but could not wipe away the dim image from my remembrance.

"I grew older, still keeping myself apart from other boys of my age. I
often roamed solitary through the fields: and it happened one morning,
in my rambles, that I had lost my way; and so was wandering to and fro
in a thick wood, not knowing whither to turn. After long seeking vainly
for a road, I at last on a sudden came upon an iron-grated fence, within
which lay a garden. Through the bars, I saw fair shady walks before me;
fruit-trees and flowers; and close by me were rose-bushes glittering in
the sun. A nameless longing for these roses seized me; I could not help
rushing on; I pressed myself by force through between the bars, and was
now standing in the garden. Immediately I sank on my knees; clasped the
bushes in my arms; kissed the roses on their red lips, and melted into
tears. I had knelt a while, absorbed in a sort of rapture, when there
came two maidens through the alleys; the one of my own years, the other
elder. I awoke from my trance, to fall into a higher ecstasy. My eye
lighted on the younger, and I felt at this moment as if all my unknown
woe was healed. They took me to the house; their parents, having learned
my name, sent notice to my father, who, in the evening, came himself,
and brought me back.

"From this day, the uncertain current of my life had got a fixed
direction; my thoughts forever hastened back to the castle and the
maiden; for here, it seemed to me, was the home of all my wishes. I
forgot my customary pleasures, I forsook my playmates, and often
visited the garden, the castle and Emma. Here I had, in a little time,
grown, as it were, an inmate of the house, so that they no longer
thought it strange to see me; and Emma was becoming dearer to me every
day. Thus passed my hours; and a tenderness had taken my heart captive,
though I myself was not aware of it. My whole destination seemed to me
fulfilled; I had no wish but still to come again; and when I went away,
to have the same prospect for the morrow.

"Matters were in this state, when a young knight became acquainted in
the family; he was a friend of my parents; and he soon, like me,
attached himself to Emma. I hated him, from that moment, as my deadly
enemy; but nothing can describe my feelings, when I fancied I perceived
that Emma liked him more than me. From this hour, it was as if the
music, which had hitherto accompanied me, went silent in my bosom. I
meditated but on death and hatred; wild thoughts now awoke in my breast,
when Emma sang her well-known songs to her lute. Nor did I hide the
aversion which I felt; and when my parents tried to reason and
remonstrate with me, I grew fierce and contradictory.

"I now roved about the woods and rocky wastes, infuriated against
myself. The death of my rival was a thing I had determined on. The young
knight, after some few months, made a formal offer of himself to the
parents of my mistress, and she was betrothed to him. All that was rare
and beautiful in Nature, all that had charmed me in her magnificence,
had been united in my soul with Emma's image; I fancied, knew or wished
for no other happiness but Emma; nay I had wilfully determined that the
day, which brought the loss of her, should also bring my own
destruction.

"My parents sorrowed in heart at such perversion; my mother had fallen
sick, but I paid no heed to this; her situation gave me little trouble,
and I saw her seldom. The wedding-day of my enemy was coming on; and
with its approach increased the agony of mind which drove me over woods
and mountains. I execrated Emma and myself with the most horrid curses.
At this time I had no friend; no man would take any charge of me, for
all had given me up for lost.

"The fearful marriage-eve came on. I had wandered deep among the cliffs,
I heard the rushing of the forest-streams below; I often shuddered at
myself. When the morning came, I saw my enemy proceeding down the
mountains; I assailed him with injurious speeches; he replied; we drew
our swords, and he soon fell beneath my furious strokes.

"I hastened on, not looking after him, but his attendants took the
corpse away. At night, I hovered round the dwelling which enclosed my
Emma; and a few days afterwards, I heard in the neighbouring cloister
the sound of the funeral-bell, and the grave-song of the nuns. I
inquired; and was told that Fräulein Emma, out of sorrow for her
bridegroom's death, was dead.

"I could stay no longer; I doubted whether I was living, whether it was
all truth or not. I hastened back to my parents; and came next night, at
a late hour, to the town where they lived. Here all was in confusion;
horses and military wagons filled the streets, soldiers were jostling
one another this way and that, and speaking in disordered haste: the
Emperor was on the point of undertaking a campaign against his enemies.
A solitary light was burning in my father's house when I entered; a
strangling oppression lay upon my breast. As I knocked, my father
himself, with slow, thoughtful steps, advanced to meet me; and
immediately I recollected the old dream of my childhood; and felt, with
cutting emotion, that now it was receiving its fulfilment. In
perplexity, I asked: 'Why are you up so late, Father?' He led me in, and
said: 'I may well be up, for thy mother is even now dead.'

"His words struck through my soul like thunderbolts. He took a seat with
a meditative air; I sat down beside him. The corpse was lying in a bed,
and strangely wound in linen. My heart was like to burst. 'I wake here,'
said the old man, 'for my wife is still sitting by me.' My senses
failed; I fixed my eyes upon a corner; and, after a little while, there
rose, as it were, a vapour; it mounted and wavered; and the well-known
figure of my mother gathered itself visibly together from the midst of
it, and looked at me with an earnest mien. I wished to go, but I could
not; for the form of my mother beckoned to me, and my father held me in
his arms, and whispered to me, in a low voice: 'She died of grief for
thee.' I embraced him with a childlike transport of affection; I poured
burning tears on his breast. He kissed me; and I shuddered; for his
lips, as they touched me, were cold, like the lips of one dead. 'How art
thou, Father?' cried I, in horror. He writhed painfully together, and
made no reply. In a few moments, I felt him growing colder; I laid my
hand on his heart, but it was still; and, in wailing delirium, I held
the body fast clasped in my embrace.

"As it were a gleam, like the first streak of dawn, went through the
dark room; and behold, the spirit of my father sat beside my mother's
form; and both looked at me compassionately, as I held the dear corpse
in my arms. After this my consciousness was over: exhausted and
delirious, the servants found me next morning in the chamber of the
dead."

So far the Tannenhäuser had proceeded with his narrative: Friedrich was
listening to him with the deepest astonishment, when all on a sudden he
broke off, and paused with an expression of the keenest pain. Friedrich
felt embarrassed and immersed in thought; they both returned in company
to the Castle, but stayed in the same room apart from others.

The Tannenhäuser had kept silence for a while, then he again began: "The
remembrance of those hours still agitates me deeply; I understand not
how I have survived them. The world, and its life, now appeared to me as
if dead and utterly desolate; without thoughts or wishes I lived on from
day to day. I then became acquainted with a set of wild young people;
and endeavoured, in the whirl of pleasure and intoxication, to lay the
tumultuous Evil Spirit that was in me. My ancient burning impatience
again awoke; and I could no longer understand myself or my wishes. A
debauchee, named Rudolf, had become my confidant; he, however, always
laughed to scorn my longings and complaints. About a year had passed in
this way, when my misery of spirit rose to desperation; there was
something drove me onwards, onwards, into unknown space; I could have
dashed myself down from the high mountains into the glowing green of the
meadows, into the cool rushing of the waters, to slake the burning
thirst, to stay the insatiability of my soul: I longed for annihilation;
and again, like golden morning clouds, did hope and love of life arise
before me, and entice me on. The thought then struck me, that Hell was
hungering for me, and was sending me my sorrows as well as my pleasures
to destroy me; that some malignant Spirit was directing all the powers
of my soul to the Infernal Abode; and leading me, as with a bridle, to
my doom. And I surrendered to him; that so these torments, these
alternating raptures and agonies, might leave me. In the darkest night,
I mounted a lofty hill; and called on the Enemy of God and man, with all
the energies of my heart, so that I felt he would be forced to hear me.
My words brought him: he stood suddenly before me, and I felt no horror.
Then in talking with him, the belief in that strange Hill again rose
within me; and he taught me a Song, which of itself would lead me by the
straight road thither. He disappeared, and for the first time since I
had begun to live, I was alone with myself; for I now understood my
wandering thoughts, which rushed as from a centre to find out another
world. I set forth on my journey; and the Song, which I sang with a loud
voice, led me over strange deserts; but all other things besides myself
I had forgotten. There was something carrying me, as on the strong wings
of desire, to my home: I wished to escape the shadow which, amid the
sunshine, threatens us; the wild tones which, amid the softest music,
chide us. So travelling on, I reached the Mountain, one night when the
moon was shining faintly from behind dim clouds. I proceeded with my
Song; and a giant form stood by me, and beckoned me back with his staff.
I went nearer: 'I am the Trusty Eckart,' said the superhuman figure; 'by
God's goodness, I am placed here as watchman, to warn men back from
their sinful rashness.'--I pressed through.

"My path was now as in a subterraneous mine. The passage was so narrow,
that I had to press myself along; I caught the gurgling of hidden
waters; I heard spirits forming ore, and gold and silver, to entice the
soul of man; I found here concealed and separate the deep sounds and
tones from which earthly music springs: the farther I went, the more did
there fall, as it were, a veil from my sight.

"I rested, and saw other forms of men come gliding towards me; my friend
Rudolf was among the number. I could not understand how they were to
pass me, so narrow was the way; but they went along, through the middle
of the rock, without perceiving me.

"Anon I heard the sound of music; but music altogether different from
any that had ever struck my ear before. My thoughts within me strove
towards the notes: I came into an open space; and strange radiant
colours glittered on me from every side. This it was that I had always
been in search of. Close to my heart I felt the presence of the
long-sought, now-discovered glory; and its ravishments thrilled into me
with all their power. And then the whole crowd of jocund Pagan gods came
forth to meet me, Lady Venus at their head, and all saluted me. They
have been banished thither by the power of the Almighty; their worship
is abolished from the Earth; and now they work upon us from their
concealment.

"All pleasures that Earth affords I here possessed and partook of in
their fullest bloom; insatiable was my heart, and endless my enjoyment.
The famed Beauties of the ancient world were present; what my thought
coveted was mine; one delirium of rapture was followed by another; and
day after day, the world appeared to burn round me in more glorious
hues. Streams of the richest wine allayed my fierce thirst; and
beauteous forms sported in the air, and soft eyes invited me; vapours
rose enchanting around my head: as if from the inmost heart of blissful
Nature, came a music and cooled with its fresh waves the wild tumult of
desire; and a horror, that glided faint and secret over the rose-fields,
heightened the delicious revel. How many years passed over me in this
abode I know not: for here there was no time and no distinctions; the
flowers here glowed with the charms of women; and in the forms of the
women bloomed the magic of flowers; colours here had another language;
the whole world of sense was bound together into one blossom, and the
spirits within it forever held their rejoicing.

"Now, how it happened, I can neither say nor comprehend; but so it was,
that in all this pomp of sin, a love of rest, a longing for the old
innocent Earth, with her scanty joys, took hold of me here, as keenly as
of old the impulse which had driven me hither. I was again drawn on to
live that life which men, in their unconsciousness, go on leading: I was
sated with this splendour, and gladly sought my former home once more.
An unspeakable grace of the Almighty permitted my return; I found myself
suddenly again in the world; and now it is my intention to pour out my
guilty breast before the chair of our Holy Father in Rome; that so he
may forgive me, and I may again be reckoned among men."

The Tannenhäuser ceased; and Friedrich long viewed him with an
investigating look, then took his hand, and said: "I cannot yet recover
from my wonder, nor can I understand thy narrative; for it is impossible
that all thou hast told me can be aught but an imagination. Emma still
lives, she is my wife; thou and I never quarrelled, or hated one
another, as thou thinkest: yet before our marriage, thou wert gone on a
sudden from the neighbourhood; nor didst thou ever tell me, by a single
hint, that Emma was dear to thee."

Hereupon he took the bewildered Tannenhäuser by the hand, and led him
into another room to his wife, who had just then returned from a visit
to her sister, which had kept her for the last few days from home. The
Tannenhäuser spoke not, and seemed immersed in thought; he viewed in
silence the form and face of the lady, then shook his head, and said:
"By Heaven, that is the strangest incident of all!"

Friedrich, with precision and connectedness, related all that had
befallen him since that time; and tried to make his friend perceive that
it had been some singular madness which had, in the mean while, harassed
him. "I know very well how it stands," exclaimed the Tannenhäuser. "It
is now that I am crazy; and Hell has cast this juggling show before me,
that I may not go to Rome, and seek the pardon of my sins."

Emma tried to bring his childhood to his recollection; but the
Tannenhäuser would not be persuaded. He speedily set out on his journey;
that he might the sooner get his absolution from the Pope.

Friedrich and Emma often spoke of the mysterious pilgrim. Some months
had gone by, when the Tannenhäuser, pale and wasted, in a tattered
pilgrim's dress, and barefoot, one morning entered Friedrich's chamber,
while the latter was in bed asleep. He kissed his lips, and then said,
in breathless haste: "The Holy Father cannot, and will not, forgive me;
I must back to my old dwelling." And with this he went hurriedly away.

Friedrich roused himself; but the ill-fated pilgrim was already gone. He
went to his lady's room; and her maids rushed out to meet him, crying
that the Tannenhäuser had pressed into the apartment early in the
morning, with the words: "She shall not obstruct me in my course!"--Emma
was lying murdered.

Friedrich had not yet recalled his thoughts, when a horror came over
him: he could not rest; he ran into the open air. They wished to keep
him back; but he told them that the pilgrim had kissed his lips, and
that the kiss was burning him till he found the man again. And so, with
inconceivable rapidity, he ran away to seek the Tannenhäuser, and the
mysterious Hill; and, since that day, he was never seen any more. People
say, that whoever gets a kiss from any emissary of the Hill, is
thenceforth unable to withstand the lure that draws him with magic force
into the subterraneous chasm.




THE RUNENBERG.


A young hunter was sitting in the heart of the Mountains, in a
thoughtful mood, beside his fowling-floor, while the noise of the waters
and the woods was sounding through the solitude. He was musing on his
destiny; how he was so young, and had forsaken his father and mother,
and accustomed home, and all his comrades in his native village, to seek
out new acquaintances, to escape from the circle of returning habitude;
and he looked up with a sort of surprise that he was here, that he found
himself in this valley, in this employment. Great clouds were passing
over him, and sinking behind the mountains; birds were singing from the
bushes, and an echo was replying to them. He slowly descended the hill;
and seated himself on the margin of a brook, that was gushing down among
the rocks with foamy murmur. He listened to the fitful melody of the
water; and it seemed to him as if the waves were saying to him, in
unintelligible words, a thousand things that concerned him nearly; and
he felt an inward trouble that he could not understand their speeches.
Then again he looked aloft, and thought that he was glad and happy; so
he took new heart, and sang aloud this hunting-song:

     Blithe and cheery through the mountains
       Goes the huntsman to the chase,
     By the lonesome shady fountains,
       Till he finds the red-deer's trace.

     Hark! his trusty dogs are baying
       Through the bright-green solitude;
     Through the groves the horns are playing:
       O, thou merry gay green wood!

     In some dell, when luck hath blest him,
       And his shot hath stretch'd the deer,
     Lies he down, content, to rest him,
       While the brooks are murmuring clear.

     Leave the husbandman his sowing,
       Let the shipman sail the sea;
     None, when bright the morn is glowing,
       Sees its red so fair as he,

     Wood and wold and game that prizes,
       While Diana loves his art;
     And, at last, some bright face rises:
       Happy huntsman that thou art!

Whilst he sung, the sun had sunk deeper, and broad shadows fell across
the narrow glen. A cooling twilight glided over the ground; and now only
the tops of the trees, and the round summits of the mountains, were
gilded by the glow of evening. Christian's heart grew sadder and sadder:
he could not think of going back to his birdfold, and yet he could not
stay; he felt himself alone, and longed to meet with men. He now
remembered with regret those old books, which he used to see at home,
and would never read, often as his father had advised him to it: the
habitation of his childhood came before him, his sports with the youth
of the village, his acquaintances among the children, the school that
had afflicted him so much; and he wished he were again amid these
scenes, which he had wilfully forsaken, to seek his fortune in unknown
regions, in the mountains, among strange people, in a new employment.
Meanwhile it grew darker; and the brook rushed louder; and the birds of
night began to shoot, with fitful wing, along their mazy courses.
Christian still sat disconsolate, and immersed in sad reflection; he was
like to weep, and altogether undecided what to do or purpose.
Unthinkingly, he pulled a straggling root from the earth; and on the
instant, heard, with affright, a stifled moan underground, which winded
downwards in doleful tones, and died plaintively away in the deep
distance. The sound went through his inmost heart; it seized him as if
he had unwittingly touched the wound, of which the dying frame of Nature
was expiring in its agony. He started up to fly; for he had already
heard of the mysterious mandrake-root, which, when torn, yields such
heart-rending moans, that the person who has hurt it runs distracted by
its wailing. As he turned to go, a stranger man was standing at his
back, who looked at him with a friendly countenance, and asked him
whither he was going. Christian had been longing for society, and yet he
started in alarm at this friendly presence.

"Whither so fast?" said the stranger again.

The young hunter made an effort to collect himself, and told how all at
once the solitude had seemed so frightful to him, he had meant to get
away; the evening was so dark, the green shades of the wood so dreary,
the brook seemed uttering lamentations, and his longing drew him over to
the other side of the hills.

"You are but young," said the stranger, "and cannot yet endure the
rigour of solitude: I will accompany you, for you will find no house or
hamlet within a league of this; and in the way we may talk, and tell
each other tales, and so your sad thoughts will leave you: in an hour
the moon will rise behind the hills; its light also will help to chase
away the darkness of your mind."

They went along, and the stranger soon appeared to Christian as if he
had been an old acquaintance. "Who are you?" said the man; "by your
speech I hear that you belong not to this part."

"Ah!" replied the other, "upon this I could say much, and yet it is not
worth the telling you, or talking of. There was something dragged me,
with a foreign force, from the circle of my parents and relations; my
spirit was not master of itself: like a bird which is taken in a net,
and struggles to no purpose, so my soul was meshed in strange
imaginations and desires. We dwelt far hence, in a plain, where all
round you could see no hill, scarce even a height: few trees adorned the
green level; but meadows, fertile corn-fields, gardens stretched away as
far as the eye could reach; and a broad river glittered like a potent
spirit through the midst of them. My father was gardener to a nobleman,
and meant to breed me to the same employment. He delighted in plants and
flowers beyond aught else, and could unweariedly pass day by day in
watching them and tending them. Nay he went so far as to maintain, that
he could almost speak with them; that he got knowledge from their growth
and spreading, as well as from the varied form and colour of their
leaves. To me, however, gardening was a tiresome occupation; and the
more so as my father kept persuading me to take it up, or even attempted
to compel me to it with threats. I wished to be a fisherman, and tried
that business for a time; but a life on the waters would not suit me: I
was then apprenticed to a tradesman in the town; but soon came home from
this employment also. My father happened to be talking of the Mountains,
which he had travelled over in his youth; of the subterranean mines and
their workmen; of hunters and their occupation; and that instant there
arose in me the most decided wish, the feeling that at last I had found
out the way of life which would entirely fit me. Day and night I
meditated on the matter; representing to myself high mountains, chasms
and pine-forests; my imagination shaped wild rocks; I heard the tumult
of the chase, the horns, the cry of the hounds and the game; all my
dreams were filled with these things, and they left me neither peace nor
rest any more. The plain, our patron's castle, and my father's little
hampered garden, with its trimmed flower-beds; our narrow dwelling; the
wide sky which stretched above us in its dreary vastness, embracing no
hill, no lofty mountain, all became more dull and odious to me. It
seemed as if the people about me were living in most lamentable
ignorance; that every one of them would think and long as I did, should
the feeling of their wretchedness but once arise within their souls.
Thus did I bait my heart with restless fancies; till one morning I
resolved on leaving my father's house directly and forever. In a book I
had found some notice of the nearest mountains, some charts of the
neighbouring districts, and by them I shaped my course. It was early in
spring, and I felt myself cheerful, and altogether light of heart. I
hastened on, to get away the faster from the level country; and one
evening, in the distance, I descried the dim outline of the Mountains,
lying on the sky before me. I could scarcely sleep in my inn, so
impatient did I feel to have my foot upon the region which I regarded as
my home: with the earliest dawn I was awake, and again in motion. By the
afternoon, I had got among my beloved hills; and here, as if
intoxicated, I went on, then stopped a while, looked back; and drank, as
in inspiring draughts, the aspect of these foreign yet well-known
objects. Ere long, the plain was out of sight; the forest-streams were
rushing down to meet me; the oaks and beeches sounded to me from their
steep precipices with wavering boughs; my path led me by the edge of
dizzy abysses; blue hills were standing vast and solemn in the distance.
A new world was opened to me; I was never weary. Thus, after some days,
having roamed over great part of the Mountains, I reached the dwelling
of an old forester, who consented, at my urgent request, to take me in,
and instruct me in the business of the chase. It is now three months
since I entered his service. I took possession of the district where I
was to live, as of my kingdom. I got acquainted with every cliff and
dell among the mountains; in my occupation, when at dawn of day we moved
to the forest, when felling trees in the wood, when practising my
fowling-piece, or training my trusty attendants, our dogs, to do their
feats, I felt completely happy. But for the last eight days I have
stayed up here at the fowling-floor, in the loneliest quarter of the
hills; and tonight I grew so sad as I never was in my life before; I
seemed so lost, so utterly unhappy; and even yet I cannot shake aside
that melancholy humour."

The stranger had listened with attention, while they both wandered on
through a dark alley of the wood. They now came out into the open
country, and the light of the moon, which was standing with its horns
over the summit of the hill, saluted them like a friend. In
undistinguishable forms, and many separated masses, which the pale gleam
again perplexingly combined, lay the cleft mountain-range before them;
in the background a steep hill, on the top of which an antique weathered
ruin rose ghastly in the white light. "Our roads part here," said the
stranger; "I am going down into this hollow; there, by that old
mine-shaft, is my dwelling: the metal ores are my neighbours; the
mine-streams tell me wonders in the night; thither thou canst not follow
me. But look, there stands the Runenberg, with its wild ragged walls;
how beautiful and alluring the grim old rock looks down on us! Wert thou
never there?"

"Never," said the hunter. "Once I heard my old forester relating strange
stories of that hill, which I, like a fool, have forgotten; only I
remember that my mind that night was full of dread and unearthly
notions. I could like to mount the hill some time; for the colours there
are of the fairest, the grass must be very green, the world around one
very strange; who knows, too, but one might chance to find some curious
relic of the ancient time up there?"

"You could scarcely fail," replied the stranger; "whoever knows how to
seek, whoever feels his heart drawn towards it with a right inward
longing, will find friends of former ages there, and glorious things,
and all that he wishes most." With these words the stranger rapidly
descended to a side, without bidding his companion farewell; he soon
vanished in the tangles of the thicket, and after some few instants, the
sound of his footsteps also died away. The young hunter did not feel
surprised, he but went on with quicker speed towards the Runenberg:
thither all things seemed to beckon him; the stars were shining towards
it; the moon pointed out as it were a bright road to the ruins; light
clouds rose up to them; and from the depths, the waters and sounding
woods spoke new courage into him. His steps were as if winged; his heart
throbbed; he felt so great a joy within him, that it rose to pain. He
came into places he had never seen before; the rocks grew steeper; the
green disappeared; the bald cliffs called to him, as with angry voices,
and a lone moaning wind drove him on before it. Thus he hurried forward
without pause; and late after midnight he came upon a narrow footpath,
which ran along by the brink of an abyss. He heeded not the depth which
yawned beneath, and threatened to swallow him forever; so keenly was he
driven along by wild imaginations and vague wishes. At last his perilous
track led him close by a high wall, which seemed to lose itself in the
clouds; the path grew narrower every step; and Christian had to cling by
projecting stones to keep himself from rushing down into the gulf. Ere
long, he could get no farther; his path ended underneath a window: he
was obliged to pause, and knew not whether he should turn or stay.
Suddenly he saw a light, which seemed to move within the ruined edifice.
He looked towards the gleam; and found that he could see into an ancient
spacious hall, strangely decorated, and glittering in manifold
splendour, with multitudes of precious stones and crystals, the hues of
which played through each other in mysterious changes, as the light
moved to and fro; and this was in the hand of a stately female, who kept
walking with a thoughtful aspect up and down the apartment. She seemed
of a different race from mortals; so large, so strong was her form, so
earnest her look; yet the enraptured huntsman thought he had never seen
or fancied such surpassing beauty. He trembled, yet secretly wished she
might come near the window and observe him. At last she stopped, set
down the light on a crystal table, looked aloft, and sang with a
piercing voice:

     What can the Ancient keep
     That they come not at my call?
     The crystal pillars weep,
     From the diamonds on the wall
     The trickling tear-drops fall;
     And within is heard a moan,
     A chiding fitful tone:
     In these waves of brightness,
     Lovely changeful lightness,
     Has the Shape been form'd,
     By which the soul is charm'd,
     And the longing heart is warm'd.
     Come, ye Spirits, at my call,
     Haste ye to the Golden Hall;
     Raise, from your abysses gloomy,
     Heads that sparkle; faster
     Come, ye Ancient Ones, come to me!
     Let your power be master
     Of the longing hearts and souls,
     Where the flood of passion rolls,
     Let your power be master!

On finishing the song, she began undressing; laying her apparel in a
costly press. First, she took a golden veil from her head; and her long
black hair streamed down in curling fulness over her loins: then she
loosed her bosom-dress; and the youth forgot himself and all the world
in gazing at that more than earthly beauty. He scarcely dared to
breathe, as by degrees she laid aside her other garments: at last she
walked about the chamber naked; and her heavy waving locks formed round
her, as it were, a dark billowy sea, out of which, like marble, the
glancing limbs of her form beamed forth, in alternating splendour. After
a while, she went forward to another golden press; and took from it a
tablet, glittering with many inlaid stones, rubies, diamonds and all
kinds of jewels; and viewed it long with an investigating look. The
tablet seemed to form a strange inexplicable figure, from its individual
lines and colours; sometimes, when the glance of it came towards the
hunter, he was painfully dazzled by it; then, again, soft green and blue
playing over it, refreshed his eye: he stood, however, devouring the
objects with his looks, and at the same time sunk in deep thought.
Within his soul, an abyss of forms and harmony, of longing and
voluptuousness, was opened: hosts of winged tones, and sad and joyful
melodies flew through his spirit, which was moved to its foundations: he
saw a world of Pain and Hope arise within him; strong towering crags of
Trust and defiant Confidence, and deep rivers of Sadness flowing by. He
no longer knew himself: and he started as the fair woman opened the
window; handed him the magic tablet of stones, and spoke these words:
"Take this in memory of me!" He caught the tablet; and felt the figure,
which, unseen, at once went through his inmost heart; and the light, and
the fair woman, and the wondrous hall, had disappeared. As it were, a
dark night, with curtains of cloud, fell down over his soul: he searched
for his former feelings, for that inspiration and unutterable love; he
looked at the precious tablet, and the sinking moon was imaged in it
faint and bluish.

He had still the tablet firmly grasped in his hands when the morning
dawned; and he, exhausted, giddy and half-asleep, fell headlong down the
precipice.--

The sun shone bright on the face of the stupefied sleeper; and,
awakening, he found himself upon a pleasant hill. He looked round, and
saw far behind him, and scarce discernible at the extreme horizon, the
ruins of the Runenberg; he searched for his tablet, and could find it
nowhere. Astonished and perplexed, he tried to gather his thoughts, and
connect together his remembrances; but his memory was as if filled with
a waste haze, in which vague irrecognisable shapes were wildly jostling
to and fro. His whole previous life lay behind him, as in a far
distance; the strangest and the commonest were so mingled, that all his
efforts could not separate them. After long struggling with himself, he
at last concluded that a dream, or sudden madness, had come over him
that night; only he could never understand how he had strayed so far
into a strange and remote quarter.

Still scarcely waking, he went down the hill; and came upon a beaten
way, which led him out from the mountains into the plain country. All
was strange to him: he at first thought that he would find his old home;
but the country which he saw was quite unknown to him; and at length he
concluded that he must be upon the south side of the Mountains, which,
in spring, he had entered from the north. Towards noon, he perceived a
little town below him: from its cottages a peaceful smoke was mounting
up; children, dressed as for a holiday, were sporting on the green; and
from a small church came the sound of the organ, and the singing of the
congregation. All this laid hold of him with a sweet, inexpressible
sadness; it so moved him, that he was forced to weep. The narrow
gardens, the little huts with their smoking chimneys, the
accurately-parted corn-fields, reminded him of the necessities of poor
human nature; of man's dependence on the friendly Earth, to whose
benignity he must commit himself; while the singing, and the music of
the organ, filled the stranger's heart with a devoutness it had never
felt before. The desires and emotions of the bygone night seemed
reckless and wicked; he wished once more, in childlike meekness,
helplessly and humbly to unite himself to men as to his brethren, and
fly from his ungodly purposes and feelings. The plain, with its little
river, which, in manifold windings, clasped itself about the gardens and
meadows, seemed to him inviting and delightful: he thought with fear of
his abode among the lonely mountains amid waste rocks; he wished that
he could be allowed to live in this peaceful village; and so feeling, he
went into its crowded church.

The psalm was just over, and the preacher had begun his sermon. It was
on the kindness of God in regard to Harvest; how His goodness feeds and
satisfies all things that live; how marvellously He has, in the fruits
of the Earth, provided support for men; how the love of God incessantly
displays itself in the bread He sends us; and how the humble Christian
may therefore, with a thankful spirit, perpetually celebrate a Holy
Supper. The congregation were affected; the eyes of the hunter rested on
the pious priest, and observed, close by the pulpit, a young maiden, who
appeared beyond all others reverent and attentive. She was slim and
fair; her blue eye gleamed with the most piercing softness; her face was
as if transparent, and blooming in the tenderest colours. The stranger
youth had never been as he now was; so full of charity, so calm, so
abandoned to the stillest, most refreshing feelings. He bowed himself in
tears, when the clergyman pronounced his blessing; he felt these holy
words thrill through him like an unseen power; and the vision of the
night drew back before them to the deepest distance, as a spectre at the
dawn. He issued from the church; stopped beneath a large lime-tree; and
thanked God, in a heartfelt prayer, that He had saved him, sinful and
undeserving, from the nets of the Wicked Spirit.

The people were engaged in holding harvest-home that day, and every one
was in a cheerful mood; the children, with their gay dresses, were
rejoicing in the prospect of the sweetmeats and the dance; in the
village square, a space encircled with young trees, the youths were
arranging the preparations for their harvest sport; the players were
seated, and essaying their instruments. Christian went into the fields
again, to collect his thoughts and pursue his meditations; and on his
returning to the village, all had joined in mirth, and actual
celebration of their festival. The fair-haired Elizabeth was there, too,
with her parents; and the stranger mingled in the jocund throng.
Elizabeth was dancing; and Christian, in the mean time, had entered into
conversation with her father, a farmer, and one of the richest people in
the village. The man seemed pleased with his youth and way of speech;
so, in a short time, both of them agreed that Christian should remain
with him as gardener. This office Christian could engage with; for he
hoped that now the knowledge and employments, which he had so much
despised at home, would stand him in good stead.

From this period a new life began for him. He went to live with the
farmer, and was numbered among his family. With his trade, he likewise
changed his garb. He was so good, so helpful and kindly; he stood to his
task so honestly, that ere long every member of the house, especially
the daughter, had a friendly feeling to him. Every Sunday, when he saw
her going to church, he was standing with a fair nosegay ready for
Elizabeth; and then she used to thank him with blushing kindliness: he
felt her absence, on days when he did not chance to see her; and at
night, she would tell him tales and pleasant histories. Day by day they
grew more necessary to each other; and the parents, who observed it, did
not seem to think it wrong; for Christian was the most industrious and
handsomest youth in the village. They themselves had, at first sight,
felt a touch of love and friendship for him. After half a year,
Elizabeth became his wife. Spring was come back; the swallows and the
singing-birds had revisited the land; the garden was standing in its
fairest trim; the marriage was celebrated with abundant mirth; bride and
bridegroom seemed intoxicated with their happiness. Late at night, when
they retired to their chamber, the husband whispered to his wife: "No,
thou art not that form which once charmed me in a dream, and which I
never can entirely forget; but I am happy beside thee, and blessed that
thou art mine."

How delighted was the family, when, within a year, it became augmented
by a little daughter, who was baptised Leonora. Christian's looks,
indeed, would sometimes take a rather grave expression as he gazed on
the child; but his youthful cheeriness continually returned. He scarcely
ever thought of his former way of life, for he felt himself entirely
domesticated and contented. Yet, some months afterwards, his parents
came into his mind; and he thought how much his father, in particular,
would be rejoiced to see his peaceful happiness, his station as
husbandman and gardener; it grieved him that he should have utterly
forgotten his father and mother for so long a time; his own only child
made known to him the joy which children afford to parents; so at last
he took the resolution to set out, and again revisit home.

Unwillingly he left his wife; all wished him speed; and the season being
fine, he went off on foot. Already at the distance of a few miles, he
felt how much the parting grieved him; for the first time in his life,
he experienced the pains of separation; the foreign objects seemed to
him almost savage; he felt as if he had been lost in some unfriendly
solitude. Then the thought came on him, that his youth was over; that he
had found a home to which he now belonged, in which his heart had taken
root; he was almost ready to lament the lost levity of younger years;
and his mind was in the saddest mood, when he turned aside into a
village inn to pass the night. He could not understand how he had come
to leave his kind wife, and the parents she had given him; and he felt
dispirited and discontented, when he rose next morning to pursue his
journey.

His pain increased as he approached the hills: the distant ruins were
already visible, and by degrees grew more distinguishable; many summits
rose defined and clear amid the blue vapour. His step grew timid;
frequently he paused, astonished at his fear; at the horror which, with
every step, fell closer on him. "Madness!" cried he, "I know thee well,
and thy perilous seductions; but I will withstand thee manfully.
Elizabeth is no vain dream; I know that even now she thinks of me, that
she waits for me, and fondly counts the hours of my absence. Do I not
already see forests like black hair before me? Do not the glancing eyes
look to me from the brook? Does not the stately form step towards me
from the mountains?" So saying, he was about to lay himself beneath a
tree, and take some rest; when he perceived an old man seated in the
shade of it, examining a flower with extreme attention; now holding it
to the sun, now shading it with his hands, now counting its leaves; as
if striving in every way to stamp it accurately in his memory. On
approaching nearer, he thought he knew the form; and soon no doubt
remained that the old man with the flower was his father. With an
exclamation of the liveliest joy, he rushed into his arms; the old man
seemed delighted, but not much surprised, at meeting him so suddenly.

"Art thou with me already, my son?" said he: "I knew that I should find
thee soon, but I did not think such joy had been in store for me this
very day."

"How did you know, father, that you would meet me?"

"By this flower," replied the old gardener; "all my days I have had a
wish to see it; but never had I the fortune; for it is very scarce, and
grows only among the mountains. I set out to seek thee, for thy mother
is dead, and the loneliness at home made me sad and heavy. I knew not
whither I should turn my steps; at last I came among the mountains,
dreary as the journey through them had appeared to me. By the road, I
sought for this flower, but could find it nowhere; and now, quite
unexpectedly, I see it here, where the fair plain is lying stretched
before me. From this I knew that I should meet thee soon; and, lo, how
true the fair flower's prophecy has proved!"

They embraced again, and Christian wept for his mother; but the old man
grasped his hand, and said: "Let us go, that the shadows of the
mountains may be soon out of view; it always makes me sorrowful in the
heart to see these wild steep shapes, these horrid chasms, these
torrents gurgling down into their caverns. Let us get upon the good,
kind, guileless level ground again."

They went back, and Christian recovered his cheerfulness. He told his
father of his new fortune, of his child and home: his speech made
himself as if intoxicated; and he now, in talking of it, for the first
time truly felt that nothing more was wanting to his happiness. Thus,
amid narrations sad and cheerful, they returned into the village. All
were delighted at the speedy ending of the journey; most of all,
Elizabeth. The old father stayed with them, and joined his little
fortune to their stock; they formed the most contented and united circle
in the world. Their crops were good, their cattle throve; and in a few
years Christian's house was among the wealthiest in the quarter.
Elizabeth had also given him several other children.

Five years had passed away in this manner, when a stranger halted from
his journey in their village; and took up his lodging in Christian's
house, as being the most respectable the place contained. He was a
friendly, talking man; he told them many stories of his travels; sported
with the children, and made presents to them: in a short time, all were
growing fond of him. He liked the neighbourhood so well, that he
proposed remaining in it for a day or two; but the days grew weeks, and
the weeks months. No one seemed to wonder at his loitering; for all of
them had grown accustomed to regard him as a member of the family.
Christian alone would often sit in a thoughtful mood; for it seemed to
him as if he knew this traveller of old, and yet he could not think of
any time when he had met with him. Three months had passed away, when
the stranger at last took his leave, and said: "My dear friends, a
wondrous destiny, and singular anticipations, drive me to the
neighbouring mountains; a magic image, not to be withstood, allures me:
I leave you now, and I know not whether I shall ever see you any more. I
have a sum of money by me, which in your hands will be safer than in
mine; so I ask you to take charge of it; and if within a year I come not
back, then keep it, and accept my thanks along with it for the kindness
you have shown me."

So the traveller went his way, and Christian took the money in charge.
He locked it carefully up; and now and then, in the excess of his
anxiety, looked over it; he counted it to see that none was missing, and
in all respects took no little pains with it. "This sum might make us
very happy," said he once to his father; "should the stranger not
return, both we and our children were well provided for."

"Heed not the gold," said the old man; "not in it can happiness be
found: hitherto, thank God, we have never wanted aught; and do thou put
away such thoughts far from thee."

Christian often rose in the night to set his servants to their labour,
and look after everything himself: his father was afraid lest this
excessive diligence might harm his youth and health; so one night he
rose to speak with him about remitting such unreasonable efforts; when,
to his astonishment, he found him sitting with a little lamp at his
table, and counting, with the greatest eagerness, the stranger's gold.
"My son," said the old man, full of sadness, "must it come to this with
thee? Was this accursed metal brought beneath our roof to make us
wretched? Bethink thee, my son, or the Evil One will consume thy blood
and life out of thee."

"Yes," replied he; "it is true, I know myself no more; neither day nor
night does it give me any rest: see how it looks on me even now, till
the red glance of it goes into my very heart! Hark how it clinks, this
golden stuff! It calls me when I sleep; I hear it when music sounds,
when the wind blows, when people speak together on the street; if the
sun shines, I see nothing but these yellow eyes, with which it beckons
to me, as it were, to whisper words of love into my ear: and therefore I
am forced to rise in the night-time, though it were but to satisfy its
eagerness; and then I feel it triumphing and inwardly rejoicing when I
touch it with my fingers; in its joy it grows still redder and lordlier.
Do but look yourself at the glow of its rapture!" The old man,
shuddering and weeping, took his son in his arms; he said a prayer, and
then spoke: "Christel, thou must turn again to the Word of God; thou
must go more zealously and reverently to church, or else, alas! my poor
child, thou wilt droop and die away in the most mournful wretchedness."

The money was again locked up; Christian promised to take thought and
change his conduct, and the old man was composed. A year and more had
passed, and no tidings had been heard of the stranger: the old man at
last gave in to the entreaties of his son; and the money was laid out in
land, and other property. The young farmer's riches soon became the talk
of the village; and Christian seemed contented and comfortable, and his
father felt delighted at beholding him so well and cheerful; all fear
had now vanished from his mind. What then must have been his
consternation, when Elizabeth one evening took him aside; and told him,
with tears, that she could no longer understand her husband; how he
spoke so wildly, especially at night; how he dreamed strange dreams, and
would often in his sleep walk long about the room, not knowing it; how
he spoke strange things to her, at which she often shuddered. But what
terrified her most, she said, was his pleasantry by day; for his laugh
was wild and hollow, his look wandering and strange. The father stood
amazed, and the sorrowing wife proceeded: "He is always talking of the
traveller, and maintaining that he knew him formerly, and that the
stranger man was in truth a woman of unearthly beauty; nor will he go
any more into the fields or the garden to work, for he says he hears
underneath the ground a fearful moaning when he but pulls out a root; he
starts and seems to feel a horror at all plants and herbs."

"Good God!" exclaimed the father, "is the frightful hunger in him grown
so rooted and strong, that it is come to this? Then is his spell-bound
heart no longer human, but of cold metal; he who does not love a flower,
has lost all love and fear of God."

Next day the old man went to walk with his son, and told him much of
what Elizabeth had said; calling on him to be pious, and devote his soul
to holy contemplations. "Willingly, my father," answered Christian; "and
I often do so with success, and all is well with me: for long periods of
time, for years, I can forget the true form of my inward man, and lead a
life that is foreign to me, as it were, with cheerfulness: but then on a
sudden, like a new moon, the ruling star, which I myself am, arises
again in my heart, and conquers this other influence. I might be
altogether happy; but once, in a mysterious night, a secret sign was
imprinted through my hand deep on my soul; frequently the magic figure
sleeps and is at rest; I imagine it has passed away; but in a moment,
like a poison, it darts up and lives over all its lineaments. And then I
can think or feel nothing else but it; and all around me is transformed,
or rather swallowed up, by this subduing shape. As the rabid man recoils
at the sight of water, and the poison in him grows more fell; so too it
is with me at the sight of any cornered figure, any line, any gleam of
brightness; anything will then rouse the form that dwells in me, and
make it start into being; and my soul and body feel the throes of birth;
for as my mind received it by a feeling from without, she strives in
agony and bitter labour to work it forth again into an outward feeling,
that she may be rid of it, and at rest."

"It was an evil star that took thee from us to the Mountains," said the
old man; "thou wert born for calm life, thy mind inclined to peace and
the love of plants; then thy impatience hurried thee away to the company
of savage stones: the crags, the torn cliffs, with their jagged shapes,
have overturned thy soul, and planted in thee the wasting hunger for
metals. Thou shouldst still have been on thy guard, and kept thyself
away from the view of mountains; so I meant to bring thee up, but it has
not so been to be. Thy humility, thy peace, thy childlike feeling, have
been thrust away by scorn, boisterousness and caprice."

"No," said the son; "I remember well that it was a plant which first
made known to me the misery of the Earth; never, till then, did I
understand the sighs and lamentations one may hear on every side,
throughout the whole of Nature, if one but give ear to them. In plants
and herbs, in trees and flowers, it is the painful writhing of one
universal wound that moves and works; they are the corpse of foregone
glorious worlds of rock, they offer to our eye a horrid universe of
putrefaction. I now see clearly it was this, which the root with its
deep-drawn sigh was saying to me; in its sorrow it forgot itself, and
told me all. It is because of this that all green shrubs are so enraged
at me, and lie in wait for my life; they wish to obliterate that lovely
figure in my heart; and every spring, with their distorted deathlike
looks, they try to win my soul. Truly it is piteous to consider how they
have betrayed and cozened thee, old man; for they have gained complete
possession of thy spirit. Do but question the rocks, and thou wilt be
amazed when thou shalt hear them speak."

The father looked at him a long while, and could answer nothing. They
went home again in silence, and the old man was as frightened as
Elizabeth at Christian's mirth; for it seemed a thing quite foreign; and
as if another being from within were working out of him, awkwardly and
ineffectually, as out of some machine.

The harvest-home was once more to be held; the people went to church,
and Elizabeth, with her little ones, set out to join the service; her
husband also seemed intending to accompany them, but at the threshold of
the church he turned aside; and with an air of deep thought, walked out
of the village. He set himself on the height, and again looked over upon
the smoking cottages; he heard the music of the psalm and organ coming
from the little church; children, in holiday dresses, were dancing and
sporting on the green. "How have I lost my life as in a dream!" said he
to himself: "years have passed away since I went down this hill to the
merry children; they who were then sportful on the green, are now
serious in the church; I also once went into it, but Elizabeth is now no
more a blooming childlike maiden; her youth is gone; I cannot seek for
the glance of her eyes with the longing of those days; I have wilfully
neglected a high eternal happiness, to win one which is finite and
transitory."

With a heart full of wild desire, he walked to the neighbouring wood,
and immersed himself in its thickest shades. A ghastly silence
encompassed him; no breath of air was stirring in the leaves. Meanwhile
he saw a man approaching him from a distance, whom he recognised for the
stranger; he started in affright, and his first thought was, that the
man would ask him for his money. But as the form came nearer, he
perceived how greatly he had been mistaken; for the features, which he
had imagined known to him, melted into one another; an old woman of the
utmost hideousness approached; she was clad in dirty rags; a tattered
clout bound up her few gray hairs; she was limping on a crutch. With a
dreadful voice she spoke to him, and asked his name and situation; he
replied to both inquiries, and then said, "But who art thou?"

"I am called the Woodwoman," answered she; "and every child can tell of
me. Didst thou never see me before?" With the last words she whirled
about, and Christian thought he recognised among the trees the golden
veil, the lofty gait, the large stately form which he had once beheld
of old. He turned to hasten after her, but nowhere was she to be seen.

Meanwhile something glittered in the grass, and drew his eye to it. He
picked it up; it was the magic tablet with the coloured jewels, and the
wondrous figure, which he had lost so many years before. The shape and
the changeful gleams struck over all his senses with an instantaneous
power. He grasped it firmly, to convince himself that it was really once
more in his hands, and then hastened back with it to the village. His
father met him. "See," cried Christian, "the thing which I was telling
you about so often, which I thought must have been shown to me only in a
dream, is now sure and true."

The old man looked a long while at the tablet, and then said: "My son, I
am struck with horror in my heart when I view these stones, and dimly
guess the meaning of the words on them. Look here, how cold they
glitter, what cruel looks they cast from them, bloodthirsty, like the
red eye of the tiger! Cast this writing from thee, which makes thee cold
and cruel, which will turn thy heart to stone:

     See the flowers, when morn is beaming,
       Waken in their dewy place;
     And, like children roused from dreaming,
       Smiling look thee in the face.

     By degrees, that way and this,
       To the golden Sun they're turning,
     Till they meet his glowing kiss,
       And their hearts with love are burning:

     For, with fond and sad desire,
       In their lover's looks to languish,
     On his melting kisses to expire,
       And to die of love's sweet anguish:

     This is what they joy in most;
       To depart in fondest weakness;
     In their lover's being lost,
       Faded stand in silent meekness.

     Then they pour away the treasure
       Of their perfumes, their soft souls,
     And the air grows drunk with pleasure,
       As in wanton floods it rolls.

     Love comes to us here below,
       Discord harsh away removing;
     And the heart cries: Now I know
       Sadness, Fondness, Pain of Loving."

"What wonderful incalculable treasures," said the other, "must there
still be in the depths of the Earth! Could one but sound into their
secret beds and raise them up, and snatch them to one's-self! Could one
but clasp this Earth like a beloved bride to one's bosom, so that in
pain and love she would willingly grant one her costliest riches! The
Woodwoman has called me; I go to seek for her. Near by is an old ruined
shaft, which some miner has hollowed out many centuries ago; perhaps I
shall find her there!"

He hastened off. In vain did the old man strive to detain him; in a few
moments Christian had vanished from his sight. Some hours afterwards,
the father, with a strong effort, reached the ruined shaft: he saw
footprints in the sand at the entrance, and returned in tears; persuaded
that his son, in a state of madness, had gone in and been drowned in the
old collected waters and horrid caves of the mine.

From that day his heart seemed broken, and he was incessantly in tears.
The whole neighbourhood deplored the fortune of the young farmer.
Elizabeth was inconsolable, the children lamented aloud. In half a year
the aged gardener died; the parents of Elizabeth soon followed him; and
she was forced herself to take charge of everything. Her multiplied
engagements helped a little to withdraw her from her sorrow; the
education of her children, and the management of so much property, left
little time for mourning. After two years, she determined on a new
marriage; she bestowed her hand on a young light-hearted man, who had
loved her from his youth. But, ere long, everything in their
establishment assumed another form. The cattle died; men and maid
servants proved dishonest; barns full of grain were burnt; people in the
town who owed them sums of money, fled and made no payment. In a little
while, the landlord found himself obliged to sell some fields and
meadows; but a mildew, and a year of scarcity, brought new
embarrassments. It seemed as if the gold, so strangely acquired, were
taking speedy flight in all directions. Meanwhile the family was on the
increase; and Elizabeth, as well as her husband, grew reckless and
sluggish in this scene of despair: he fled for consolation to the
bottle, he was often drunk, and therefore quarrelsome and sullen; so
that frequently Elizabeth bewailed her state with bitter tears. As their
fortune declined, their friends in the village stood aloof from them
more and more; so that after some few years they saw themselves
entirely forsaken, and were forced to struggle on, in penury and
straits, from week to week.

They had nothing but a cow and a few sheep left them; these Elizabeth
herself, with her children, often tended at their grass. She was sitting
one day with her work in the field, Leonora at her side, and a sucking
child on her breast, when they saw from afar a strange-looking shape
approaching towards them. It was a man with a garment all in tatters,
barefoot, sunburnt to a black-brown colour in the face, deformed still
farther by a long matted beard: he wore no covering on his head; but had
twisted a garland of green branches through his hair, which made his
wild appearance still more strange and haggard. On his back he bore some
heavy burden in a sack, very carefully tied, and as he walked he leaned
upon a young fir.

On coming nearer, he put down his load, and drew deep draughts of
breath. He bade Elizabeth good-day; she shuddered at the sight of him,
the girl crouched close to her mother. Having rested for a little while,
he said: "I am getting back from a very hard journey among the wildest
mountains of the Earth; but to pay me for it, I have brought along with
me the richest treasures which imagination can conceive, or heart
desire. Look here, and wonder!" Thereupon he loosed his sack, and shook
it empty: it was full of gravel, among which were to be seen large bits
of chuck-stone, and other pebbles. "These jewels," he continued, "are
not ground and polished yet, so they want the glance and the eye; the
outward fire, with its glitter, is too deeply buried in their inmost
heart; yet you have but to strike it out and frighten them, and show
that no deceit will serve, and then you see what sort of stuff they
are." So saying, he took a piece of flinty stone, and struck it hard
against another, till they gave red sparks between them. "Did you see
the glance?" cried he. "Ay, they are all fire and light; they illuminate
the darkness with their laugh, though as yet it is against their will."
With this he carefully repacked his pebbles in the bag, and tied it hard
and fast. "I know thee very well," said he then, with a saddened tone;
"thou art Elizabeth." The woman started.

"How comest thou to know my name?" cried she, with a forecasting
shudder.

"Ah, good God!" said the unhappy creature, "I am Christian, he that was
a hunter: dost thou not know me, then?"

She knew not, in her horror and deepest compassion, what to say. He
fell upon her neck and kissed her. Elizabeth exclaimed: "O Heaven! my
husband is coming!"

"Be at thy ease," said he; "I am as good as dead to thee: in the forest,
there, my fair one waits for me; she that is tall and stately, with the
black hair and the golden veil. This is my dearest child, Leonora. Come
hither, darling: come, my pretty child; and give me a kiss, too; one
kiss, that I may feel thy mouth upon my lips once again, and then I
leave you."

Leonora wept; she clasped close to her mother, who, in sobs and tears,
half held her towards the wanderer, while he half drew her towards him,
took her in his arms, and pressed her to his breast. Then he went away
in silence, and in the wood they saw him speaking with the hideous
Woodwoman.

"What ails you?" said the husband, as he found mother and daughter pale
and melting in tears. Neither of them answered.

The ill-fated creature was never seen again from that day.




THE ELVES.


"Where is our little Mary?" said the father.

"She is playing out upon the green there with our neighbour's boy,"
replied the mother.

"I wish they may not run away and lose themselves," said he; "they are
so thoughtless."

The mother looked for the little ones, and brought them their evening
luncheon. "It is warm," said the boy; "and Mary had a longing for the
red cherries."

"Have a care, children," said the mother, "and do not run too far from
home, and not into the wood; Father and I are going to the fields."

Little Andres answered: "Never fear, the wood frightens us; we shall sit
here by the house, where there are people near us."

The mother went in, and soon came out again with her husband. They
locked the door, and turned towards the fields to look after their
labourers, and see their hay-harvest in the meadow. Their house lay upon
a little green height, encircled by a pretty ring of paling, which
likewise enclosed their fruit and flower garden. The hamlet stretched
somewhat deeper down, and on the other side lay the castle of the Count.
Martin rented the large farm from this nobleman; and was living in
contentment with his wife and only child; for he yearly saved some
money, and had the prospect of becoming a man of substance by his
industry, for the ground was productive, and the Count not illiberal.

As he walked with his wife to the fields, he gazed cheerfully round,
and said: "What a different look this quarter has, Brigitta, from the
place we lived in formerly! Here it is all so green; the whole village
is bedecked with thick-spreading fruit-trees; the ground is full of
beautiful herbs and flowers; all the houses are cheerful and cleanly,
the inhabitants are at their ease: nay I could almost fancy that the
woods are greener here than elsewhere, and the sky bluer; and, so far as
the eye can reach, you have pleasure and delight in beholding the
bountiful Earth."

"And whenever you cross the stream," said Brigitta, "you are, as it
were, in another world, all is so dreary and withered; but every
traveller declares that our village is the fairest in the country far
and near."

"All but that fir-ground," said her husband; "do but look back to it,
how dark and dismal that solitary spot is lying in the gay scene: the
dingy fir-trees with the smoky huts behind them, the ruined stalls, the
brook flowing past with a sluggish melancholy."

"It is true," replied Brigitta; "if you but approach that spot, you grow
disconsolate and sad, you know not why. What sort of people can they be
that live there, and keep themselves so separate from the rest of us, as
if they had an evil conscience?"

"A miserable crew," replied the young Farmer: "gipsies, seemingly, that
steal and cheat in other quarters, and have their hoard and hiding-place
here. I wonder only that his Lordship suffers them."

"Who knows," said the wife, with an accent of pity, "but perhaps they
may be poor people, wishing, out of shame, to conceal their poverty;
for, after all, no one can say aught ill of them; the only thing is,
that they do not go to church, and none knows how they live; for the
little garden, which indeed seems altogether waste, cannot possibly
support them; and fields they have none."

"God knows," said Martin, as they went along, "what trade they follow;
no mortal comes to them; for the place they live in is as if bewitched
and excommunicated, so that even our wildest fellows will not venture
into it."

Such conversation they pursued, while walking to the fields. That gloomy
spot they spoke of lay aside from the hamlet. In a dell, begirt with
firs, you might behold a hut, and various ruined office-houses; rarely
was smoke seen to mount from it, still more rarely did men appear
there; though at times curious people, venturing somewhat nearer, had
perceived upon the bench before the hut, some hideous women, in ragged
clothes, dandling in their arms some children equally dirty and
ill-favoured; black dogs were running up and down upon the boundary;
and, of an evening, a man of monstrous size was seen to cross the
footbridge of the brook, and disappear in the hut; and, in the darkness,
various shapes were observed, moving like shadows round a fire in the
open air. This piece of ground, the firs and the ruined huts, formed in
truth a strange contrast with the bright green landscape, the white
houses of the hamlet, and the stately new-built castle.

The two little ones had now eaten their fruit; it came into their heads
to run races; and the little nimble Mary always got the start of the
less active Andres. "It is not fair," cried Andres at last: "let us try
it for some length, then we shall see who wins."

"As thou wilt," said Mary; "only to the brook we must not run."

"No," said Andres; "but there, on the hill, stands the large pear-tree,
a quarter of a mile from this. I shall run by the left, round past the
fir-ground; thou canst try it by the right over the fields; so we do not
meet till we get up, and then we shall see which of us is swifter."

"Done," cried Mary, and began to run; "for we shall not mar one another
by the way, and my father says it is as far to the hill by that side of
the Gipsies' house as by this."

Andres had already started, and Mary, turning to the right, could no
longer see him. "It is very silly," said she to herself: "I have only to
take heart, and run along the bridge, past the hut, and through the
yard, and I shall certainly be first." She was already standing by the
brook and the clump of firs. "Shall I? No; it is too frightful," said
she. A little white dog was standing on the farther side, and barking
with might and main. In her terror, Mary thought the dog some monster,
and sprang back. "Fy! fy!" said she: "the dolt is gone half way by this
time, while I stand here considering." The little dog kept barking, and,
as she looked at it more narrowly, it seemed no longer frightful, but,
on the contrary, quite pretty: it had a red collar round its neck, with
a glittering bell; and as it raised its head, and shook itself in
barking, the little bell sounded with the finest tinkle. "Well, I must
risk it!" cried she: "I will run for life; quick, quick, I am through;
certainly to Heaven, they cannot eat me up alive in half a minute!" And
with this, the gay, courageous little Mary sprang along the footbridge;
passed the dog, which ceased its barking and began to fawn on her; and
in a moment she was standing on the other bank, and the black firs all
round concealed from view her father's house, and the rest of the
landscape.

But what was her astonishment when here! The loveliest, most variegated
flower-garden, lay round her; tulips, roses and lilies were glittering
in the fairest colours; blue and gold-red butterflies were wavering in
the blossoms; cages of shining wire were hung on the espaliers, with
many-coloured birds in them, singing beautiful songs; and children, in
short white frocks, with flowing yellow hair and brilliant eyes, were
frolicking about; some playing with lambkins, some feeding the birds, or
gathering flowers, and giving them to one another; some, again, were
eating cherries, grapes and ruddy apricots. No hut was to be seen; but
instead of it, a large fair house, with a brazen door and lofty statues,
stood glancing in the middle of the space. Mary was confounded with
surprise, and knew not what to think; but, not being bashful, she went
right up to the first of the children, held out her hand, and wished the
little creature good-even.

"Art thou come to visit us, then?" said the glittering child; "I saw
thee running, playing on the other side, but thou wert frightened at our
little dog."

"So you are not gipsies and rogues," said Mary, "as Andres always told
me? He is a stupid thing, and talks of much he does not understand."

"Stay with us," said the strange little girl; "thou wilt like it well."

"But we are running a race."

"Thou wilt find thy comrade soon enough. There, take and eat."

Mary ate, and found the fruit more sweet than any she had ever tasted in
her life before; and Andres, and the race, and the prohibition of her
parents, were entirely forgotten.

A stately woman, in a shining robe, came towards them, and asked about
the stranger child. "Fairest lady," said Mary, "I came running hither by
chance, and now they wish to keep me."

"Thou art aware, Zerina," said the lady, "that she can be here but for
a little while; besides, thou shouldst have asked my leave."

"I thought," said Zerina, "when I saw her admitted across the bridge,
that I might do it; we have often seen her running in the fields, and
thou thyself hast taken pleasure in her lively temper. She will have to
leave us soon enough."

"No, I will stay here," said the little stranger; "for here it is so
beautiful, and here I shall find the prettiest playthings, and store of
berries and cherries to boot. On the other side it is not half so
grand."

The gold-robed lady went away with a smile; and many of the children now
came bounding round the happy Mary in their mirth, and twitched her, and
incited her to dance; others brought her lambs, or curious playthings;
others made music on instruments, and sang to it.

She kept, however, by the playmate who had first met her; for Zerina was
the kindest and loveliest of them all. Little Mary cried and cried
again: "I will stay with you forever; I will stay with you, and you
shall be my sisters;" at which the children all laughed, and embraced
her. "Now we shall have a royal sport," said Zerina. She ran into the
Palace, and returned with a little golden box, in which lay a quantity
of seeds, like glittering dust. She lifted of it with her little hand,
and scattered some grains on the green earth. Instantly the grass began
to move, as in waves; and, after a few moments, bright rose-bushes
started from the ground, shot rapidly up, and budded all at once, while
the sweetest perfume filled the place. Mary also took a little of the
dust, and, having scattered it, she saw white lilies, and the most
variegated pinks, pushing up. At a signal from Zerina, the flowers
disappeared, and others rose in their room. "Now," said Zerina, "look
for something greater." She laid two pine-seeds in the ground, and
stamped them in sharply with her foot. Two green bushes stood before
them. "Grasp me fast," said she; and Mary threw her arms about the
slender form. She felt herself borne upwards; for the trees were
springing under them with the greatest speed; the tall pines waved to
and fro, and the two children held each other fast embraced, swinging
this way and that in the red clouds of the twilight, and kissed each
other; while the rest were climbing up and down the trunks with quick
dexterity, pushing and teasing one another with loud laughter when they
met; if any one fell down in the press, it flew through the air, and
sank slowly and surely to the ground. At length Mary was beginning to
be frightened; and the other little child sang a few loud tones, and the
trees again sank down, and set them on the ground as gradually as they
had lifted them before to the clouds.

They next went through the brazen door of the palace. Here many fair
women, elderly and young, were sitting in the round hall, partaking of
the fairest fruits, and listening to glorious invisible music. In the
vaulting of the ceiling, palms, flowers and groves stood painted, among
which little figures of children were sporting and winding in every
graceful posture; and with the tones of the music, the images altered
and glowed with the most burning colours; now the blue and green were
sparkling like radiant light, now these tints faded back in paleness,
the purple flamed up, and the gold took fire; and then the naked
children seemed to be alive among the flower-garlands, and to draw
breath, and emit it through their ruby-coloured lips; so that by fits
you could see the glance of their little white teeth, and the lighting
up of their azure eyes.

From the hall, a stair of brass led down to a subterranean chamber. Here
lay much gold and silver, and precious stones of every hue shone out
between them. Strange vessels stood along the walls, and all seemed
filled with costly things. The gold was worked into many forms, and
glittered with the friendliest red. Many little dwarfs were busied
sorting the pieces from the heap, and putting them in the vessels;
others, hunchbacked and bandy-legged, with long red noses, were
tottering slowly along, half-bent to the ground, under full sacks, which
they bore as millers do their grain; and, with much panting, shaking out
the gold-dust on the ground. Then they darted awkwardly to the right and
left, and caught the rolling balls that were like to run away; and it
happened now and then that one in his eagerness overset the other, so
that both fell heavily and clumsily to the ground. They made angry
faces, and looked askance, as Mary laughed at their gestures and their
ugliness. Behind them sat an old crumpled little man, whom Zerina
reverently greeted; he thanked her with a grave inclination of his head.
He held a sceptre in his hand, and wore a crown upon his brow, and all
the other dwarfs appeared to regard him as their master, and obey his
nod.

"What more wanted?" asked he, with a surly voice, as the children came a
little nearer. Mary was afraid, and did not speak; but her companion
answered; they were only come to look about them in the chambers.
"Still your old child's tricks!" replied the dwarf: "Will there never be
an end to idleness?" With this, he turned again to his employment, kept
his people weighing and sorting the ingots; some he sent away on
errands, some he chid with angry tones.

"Who is the gentleman?" said Mary.

"Our Metal-Prince," replied Zerina, as they walked along.

They seemed once more to reach the open air, for they were standing by a
lake, yet no sun appeared, and they saw no sky above their heads. A
little boat received them, and Zerina steered it diligently forwards. It
shot rapidly along. On gaining the middle of the lake, the stranger saw
that multitudes of pipes, channels and brooks, were spreading from the
little sea in every direction. "These waters to the right," said Zerina,
"flow beneath your garden, and this is why it blooms so freshly; by the
other side we get down into the great stream." On a sudden, out of all
the channels, and from every quarter of the lake, came a crowd of little
children swimming up; some wore garlands of sedge and water-lily; some
had red stems of coral, others were blowing on crooked shells; a
tumultuous noise echoed merrily from the dark shores; among the children
might be seen the fairest women sporting in the waters, and often
several of the children sprang about some one of them, and with kisses
hung upon her neck and shoulders. All saluted the strangers; and these
steered onwards through the revelry out of the lake, into a little
river, which grew narrower and narrower. At last the boat came aground.
The strangers took their leave, and Zerina knocked against the cliff.
This opened like a door, and a female form, all red, assisted them to
mount. "Are you all brisk here?" inquired Zerina. "They are just at
work," replied the other, "and happy as they could wish; indeed, the
heat is very pleasant."

They went up a winding stair, and on a sudden Mary found herself in a
most resplendent hall, so that as she entered, her eyes were dazzled by
the radiance. Flame-coloured tapestry covered the walls with a purple
glow; and when her eye had grown a little used to it, the stranger saw,
to her astonishment, that, in the tapestry, there were figures moving up
and down in dancing joyfulness; in form so beautiful, and of so fair
proportions, that nothing could be seen more graceful; their bodies were
as of red crystal, so that it appeared as if the blood were visible
within them, flowing and playing in its courses. They smiled on the
stranger, and saluted her with various bows; but as Mary was about
approaching nearer them, Zerina plucked her sharply back, crying: "Thou
wilt burn thyself, my little Mary, for the whole of it is fire."

Mary felt the heat. "Why do the pretty creatures not come out," said
she, "and play with us?"

"As thou livest in the Air," replied the other, "so are they obliged to
stay continually in Fire, and would faint and languish if they left it.
Look now, how glad they are, how they laugh and shout; those down below
spread out the fire-floods everywhere beneath the earth, and thereby the
flowers, and fruits, and wine, are made to flourish; these red streams
again, are to run beside the brooks of water; and thus the fiery
creatures are kept ever busy and glad. But for thee it is too hot here;
let us return to the garden."

In the garden, the scene had changed since they left it. The moonshine
was lying on every flower; the birds were silent, and the children were
asleep in complicated groups, among the green groves. Mary and her
friend, however, did not feel fatigue, but walked about in the warm
summer night, in abundant talk, till morning.

When the day dawned, they refreshed themselves on fruit and milk, and
Mary said: "Suppose we go, by way of change, to the firs, and see how
things look there?"

"With all my heart," replied Zerina; "thou wilt see our watchmen too,
and they will surely please thee; they are standing up among the trees
on the mound." The two proceeded through the flower-garden by pleasant
groves, full of nightingales; then they ascended a vine-hill; and at
last, after long following the windings of a clear brook, arrived at the
firs, and the height which bounded the domain. "How does it come," said
Mary, "that we have to walk so far here, when without, the circuit is so
narrow?"

"I know not," said her friend; "but so it is."

They mounted to the dark firs, and a chill wind blew from without in
their faces; a haze seemed lying far and wide over the landscape. On the
top were many strange forms standing; with mealy, dusty faces; their
misshapen heads not unlike those of white owls; they were clad in folded
cloaks of shaggy wool; they held umbrellas of curious skins stretched
out above them; and they waved and fanned themselves incessantly with
large bat's wings, which flared out curiously beside the woollen
roquelaures. "I could laugh, yet I am frightened," cried Mary.

"These are our good trusty watchmen," said her playmate; "they stand
here and wave their fans, that cold anxiety and inexplicable fear may
fall on every one that attempts to approach us. They are covered so,
because without it is now cold and rainy, which they cannot bear. But
snow, or wind, or cold air, never reaches down to us; here is an
everlasting spring and summer: yet if these poor people on the top were
not frequently relieved, they would certainly perish."

"But who are you, then?" said Mary, while again descending to the
flowery fragrance; "or have you no name at all?"

"We are called the Elves," replied the friendly child; "people talk
about us in the Earth, as I have heard."

They now perceived a mighty bustle on the green. "The fair Bird is
come!" cried the children to them: all hastened to the hall. Here, as
they approached, young and old were crowding over the threshold, all
shouting for joy; and from within resounded a triumphant peal of music.
Having entered, they perceived the vast circuit filled with the most
varied forms, and all were looking upwards to a large Bird with glancing
plumage, that was sweeping slowly round in the dome, and in its stately
flight describing many a circle. The music sounded more gaily than
before; the colours and lights alternated more rapidly. At last the
music ceased; and the Bird, with a rustling noise, floated down upon a
glittering crown that hung hovering in air under the high window, by
which the hall was lighted from above. His plumage was purple and green,
and shining golden streaks played through it; on his head there waved a
diadem of feathers, so resplendent that they glanced like jewels. His
bill was red, and his legs of a glancing blue. As he moved, the tints
gleamed through each other, and the eye was charmed with their radiance.
His size was as that of an eagle. But now he opened his glittering beak;
and sweetest melodies came pouring from his moved breast, in finer tones
than the lovesick nightingale gives forth; still stronger rose the song,
and streamed like floods of Light, so that all, the very children
themselves, were moved by it to tears of joy and rapture. When he
ceased, all bowed before him; he again flew round the dome in circles,
then darted through the door, and soared into the light heaven, where he
shone far up like a red point, and then soon vanished from their eyes.

"Why are ye all so glad?" inquired Mary, bending to her fair playmate,
who seemed smaller than yesterday.

"The King is coming!" said the little one; "many of us have never seen
him, and whithersoever he turns his face, there is happiness and mirth;
we have long looked for him, more anxiously than you look for spring
when winter lingers with you; and now he has announced, by his fair
herald, that he is at hand. This wise and glorious Bird, that has been
sent to us by the King, is called Phoenix; he dwells far off in
Arabia, on a tree, which there is no other that resembles on Earth, as
in like manner there is no second Phoenix. When he feels himself grown
old, he builds a pile of balm and incense, kindles it, and dies singing;
and then from the fragrant ashes, soars up the renewed Phoenix with
unlessened beauty. It is seldom he so wings his course that men behold
him; and when once in centuries this does occur, they note it in their
annals, and expect remarkable events. But now, my friend, thou and I
must part; for the sight of the King is not permitted thee."

Then the lady with the golden robe came through the throng, and
beckoning Mary to her, led her into a sequestered walk. "Thou must leave
us, my dear child," said she; "the King is to hold his court here for
twenty years, perhaps longer; and fruitfulness and blessings will spread
far over the land, but chiefly here beside us; all the brooks and
rivulets will become more bountiful, all the fields and gardens richer,
the wine more generous, the meadows more fertile, and the woods more
fresh and green; a milder air will blow, no hail shall hurt, no flood
shall threaten. Take this ring, and think of us: but beware of telling
any one of our existence; or we must fly this land, and thou and all
around will lose the happiness and blessing of our neighbourhood. Once
more, kiss thy playmate, and farewell." They issued from the walk;
Zerina wept, Mary stooped to embrace her, and they parted. Already she
was on the narrow bridge; the cold air was blowing on her back from the
firs; the little dog barked with all its might, and rang its little
bell; she looked round, then hastened over, for the darkness of the
firs, the bleakness of the ruined huts, the shadows of the twilight,
were filling her with terror.

"What a night my parents must have had on my account!" said she within
herself, as she stept on the green; "and I dare not tell them where I
have been, or what wonders I have witnessed, nor indeed would they
believe me." Two men passing by saluted her; and as they went along, she
heard them say: "What a pretty girl! Where can she come from?" With
quickened steps she approached the house: but the trees which were
hanging last night loaded with fruit, were now standing dry and
leafless; the house was differently painted, and a new barn had been
built beside it. Mary was amazed, and thought she must be dreaming. In
this perplexity she opened the door; and behind the table sat her
father, between an unknown woman and a stranger youth. "Good God!
Father," cried she, "where is my mother?"

"Thy mother!" said the woman, with a forecasting tone, and sprang
towards her: "Ha, thou surely canst not--Yes, indeed, indeed thou art my
lost, long-lost dear, only Mary!" She had recognised her by a little
brown mole beneath the chin, as well as by her eyes and shape. All
embraced her, all were moved with joy, and the parents wept. Mary was
astonished that she almost reached to her father's stature; and she
could not understand how her mother had become so changed and faded; she
asked the name of the stranger youth. "It is our neighbour's Andres,"
said Martin. "How comest thou to us again, so unexpectedly, after seven
long years? Where hast thou been? Why didst thou never send us tidings
of thee?"

"Seven years!" said Mary, and could not order her ideas and
recollections. "Seven whole years?"

"Yes, yes," said Andres, laughing, and shaking her trustfully by the
hand; "I have won the race, good Mary; I was at the pear-tree and back
again seven years ago, and thou, sluggish creature, art but just
returned!"

They again asked, they pressed her; but remembering her instruction, she
could answer nothing. It was they themselves chiefly that, by degrees,
shaped a story for her: How, having lost her way, she had been taken up
by a coach, and carried to a strange remote part, where she could not
give the people any notion of her parents' residence; how she was
conducted to a distant town, where certain worthy persons brought her up
and loved her; how they had lately died, and at length she had
recollected her birthplace, and so returned. "No matter how it is!"
exclaimed her mother; "enough, that we have thee again, my little
daughter, my own, my all!"

Andres waited supper, and Mary could not be at home in anything she saw.
The house seemed small and dark; she felt astonished at her dress,
which was clean and simple, but appeared quite foreign; she looked at
the ring on her finger, and the gold of it glittered strangely,
enclosing a stone of burning red. To her father's question, she replied
that the ring also was a present from her benefactors.

She was glad when the hour of sleep arrived, and she hastened to her
bed. Next morning she felt much more collected; she had now arranged her
thoughts a little, and could better stand the questions of the people in
the village, all of whom came in to bid her welcome. Andres was there
too with the earliest, active, glad, and serviceable beyond all others.
The blooming maiden of fifteen had made a deep impression on him; he had
passed a sleepless night. The people of the castle likewise sent for
Mary, and she had once more to tell her story to them, which was now
grown quite familiar to her. The old Count and his Lady were surprised
at her good-breeding; she was modest, but not embarrassed; she made
answer courteously in good phrases to all their questions; all fear of
noble persons and their equipage had passed away from her; for when she
measured these halls and forms by the wonders and the high beauty she
had seen with the Elves in their hidden abode, this earthly splendour
seemed but dim to her, the presence of men was almost mean. The young
lords were charmed with her beauty.

It was now February. The trees were budding earlier than usual; the
nightingale had never come so soon; the spring rose fairer in the land
than the oldest men could recollect it. In every quarter, little brooks
gushed out to irrigate the pastures and meadows; the hills seemed
heaving, the vines rose higher and higher, the fruit-trees blossomed as
they had never done; and a swelling fragrant blessedness hung suspended
heavily in rosy clouds over the scene. All prospered beyond expectation:
no rude day, no tempest injured the fruits; the wine flowed blushing in
immense grapes; and the inhabitants of the place felt astonished, and
were captivated as in a sweet dream. The next year was like its
forerunner; but men had now become accustomed to the marvellous. In
autumn, Mary yielded to the pressing entreaties of Andres and her
parents; she was betrothed to him, and in winter they were married.

She often thought with inward longing of her residence behind the
fir-trees; she continued serious and still. Beautiful as all that lay
around her was, she knew of something yet more beautiful; and from the
remembrance of this, a faint regret attuned her nature to soft
melancholy. It smote her painfully when her father and mother talked
about the gipsies and vagabonds, that dwelt in the dark spot of ground.
Often she was on the point of speaking out in defence of those good
beings, whom she knew to be the benefactors of the land; especially to
Andres, who appeared to take delight in zealously abusing them: yet
still she repressed the word that was struggling to escape her bosom. So
passed this year; in the next, she was solaced by a little daughter,
whom she named Elfrida, thinking of the designation of her friendly
Elves.

The young people lived with Martin and Brigitta, the house being large
enough for all; and helped their parents in conducting their now
extended husbandry. The little Elfrida soon displayed peculiar faculties
and gifts; for she could walk at a very early age, and could speak
perfectly before she was a twelvemonth old; and after some few years,
she had become so wise and clever, and of such wondrous beauty, that all
people regarded her with astonishment; and her mother could not keep
away the thought that her child resembled one of those shining little
ones in the space behind the Firs. Elfrida cared not to be with other
children; but seemed to avoid, with a sort of horror, their tumultuous
amusements; and liked best to be alone. She would then retire into a
corner of the garden, and read, or work diligently with her needle;
often also you might see her sitting, as if deep sunk in thought; or
violently walking up and down the alleys, speaking to herself. Her
parents readily allowed her to have her will in these things, for she
was healthy, and waxed apace; only her strange sagacious answers and
observations often made them anxious. "Such wise children do not grow to
age," her grandmother, Brigitta, many times observed; "they are too good
for this world; the child, besides, is beautiful beyond nature, and will
never find its proper place on Earth."

The little girl had this peculiarity, that she was very loath to let
herself be served by any one, but endeavoured to do everything herself.
She was almost the earliest riser in the house; she washed herself
carefully, and dressed without assistance: at night she was equally
careful; she took special heed to pack up her clothes and washes with
her own hands, allowing no one, not even her mother, to meddle with her
articles. The mother humoured her in this caprice, not thinking it of
any consequence. But what was her astonishment, when, happening one
holiday to insist, regardless of Elfrida's tears and screams, on
dressing her out for a visit to the castle, she found upon her breast,
suspended by a string, a piece of gold of a strange form, which she
directly recognised as one of that sort she had seen in such abundance
in the subterranean vault! The little thing was greatly frightened; and
at last confessed that she had found it in the garden, and as she liked
it much, had kept it carefully: she at the same time prayed so earnestly
and pressingly to have it back, that Mary fastened it again on its
former place, and, full of thoughts, went out with her in silence to the
castle.

Sidewards from the farmhouse lay some offices for the storing of produce
and implements; and behind these there was a little green, with an old
grove, now visited by no one, as, from the new arrangement of the
buildings, it lay too far from the garden. In this solitude Elfrida
delighted most; and it occurred to nobody to interrupt her here, so that
frequently her parents did not see her for half a day. One afternoon her
mother chanced to be in these buildings, seeking for some lost article
among the lumber; and she noticed that a beam of light was coming in,
through a chink in the wall. She took a thought of looking through this
aperture, and seeing what her child was busied with; and it happened
that a stone was lying loose, and could be pushed aside, so that she
obtained a view right into the grove. Elfrida was sitting there on a
little bench, and beside her the well-known Zerina; and the children
were playing, and amusing one another, in the kindliest unity. The Elf
embraced her beautiful companion, and said mournfully: "Ah! dear little
creature, as I sport with thee, so have I sported with thy mother, when
she was a child; but you mortals so soon grow tall and thoughtful! It is
very hard: wert thou but to be a child as long as I!"

"Willingly would I do it," said Elfrida; "but they all say, I shall come
to sense, and give over playing altogether; for I have great gifts, as
they think, for growing wise. Ah! and then I shall see thee no more,
thou dear Zerina! Yet it is with us as with the fruit-tree flowers: how
glorious the blossoming apple-tree, with its red bursting buds! It looks
so stately and broad; and every one, that passes under it, thinks surely
something great will come of it; then the sun grows hot, and the buds
come joyfully forth; but the wicked kernel is already there, which
pushes off and casts away the fair flower's dress; and now, in pain and
waxing, it can do nothing more, but must grow to fruit in harvest. An
apple, to be sure, is pretty and refreshing; yet nothing to the blossom
of spring. So is it also with us mortals: I am not glad in the least at
growing to be a tall girl. Ah! could I but once visit you!"

"Since the King is with us," said Zerina, "it is quite impossible; but I
will come to thee, my darling, often, often; and none shall see me
either here or there. I will pass invisible through the air, or fly over
to thee like a bird. O! we will be much, much together, while thou art
still little. What can I do to please thee?"

"Thou must like me very dearly," said Elfrida, "as I like thee in my
heart. But come, let us make another rose."

Zerina took the well-known box from her bosom, threw two grains from it
on the ground; and instantly a green bush stood before them, with two
deep-red roses, bending their heads, as if to kiss each other. The
children plucked them smiling, and the bush disappeared. "O that it
would not die so soon!" said Elfrida; "this red child, this wonder of
the Earth!"

"Give it me here," said the little Elf; then breathed thrice upon the
budding rose, and kissed it thrice. "Now," said she, giving back the
rose, "it will continue fresh and blooming till winter."

"I will keep it," said Elfrida, "as an image of thee; I will guard it in
my little room, and kiss it night and morning, as if it were thyself."

"The sun is setting," said the other; "I must home." They embraced
again, and Zerina vanished.

In the evening, Mary clasped her child to her breast, with a feeling of
alarm and veneration. She henceforth allowed the good little girl more
liberty than formerly; and often calmed her husband, when he came to
search for the child; which for some time he was wont to do, as her
retiredness did not please him; and he feared that, in the end, it might
make her silly, or even pervert her understanding. The mother often
glided to the chink; and almost always found the bright Elf beside her
child, employed in sport, or in earnest conversation.

"Wouldst thou like to fly?" inquired Zerina once.

"O well! How well!" replied Elfrida; and the fairy clasped her mortal
playmate in her arms, and mounted with her from the ground, till they
hovered above the grove. The mother, in alarm, forgot herself, and
pushed out her head in terror to look after them; when Zerina, from the
air, held up her finger, and threatened yet smiled; then descended with
the child, embraced her, and disappeared. After this, it happened more
than once that Mary was observed by her; and every time, the shining
little creature shook her head, or threatened, yet with friendly looks.

Often, in disputing with her husband, Mary had said in her zeal: "Thou
dost injustice to the poor people in the hut!" But when Andres pressed
her to explain why she differed in opinion from the whole village, nay
from his Lordship himself; and how she could understand it better than
the whole of them, she still broke off embarrassed, and became silent.
One day, after dinner, Andres grew more violent than ever; and
maintained that, by one means or another, the crew must be packed away,
as a nuisance to the country; when his wife, in anger, said to him:
"Hush! for they are benefactors to thee and to everyone of us."

"Benefactors!" cried the other, in astonishment: "These rogues and
vagabonds?"

In her indignation, she was now at last tempted to relate to him, under
promise of the strictest secrecy, the history of her youth: and as
Andres at every word grew more incredulous, and shook his head in
mockery, she took him by the hand, and led him to the chink; where, to
his amazement, he beheld the glittering Elf sporting with his child, and
caressing her in the grove. He knew not what to say; an exclamation of
astonishment escaped him, and Zerina raised her eyes. On the instant she
grew pale, and trembled violently; not with friendly, but with indignant
looks, she made the sign of threatening, and then said to Elfrida: "Thou
canst not help it, dearest heart; but they will never learn sense, wise
as they believe themselves." She embraced the little one with stormy
haste; and then, in the shape of a raven, flew with hoarse cries over
the garden, towards the Firs.

In the evening, the little one was very still; she kissed her rose with
tears; Mary felt depressed and frightened, Andres scarcely spoke. It
grew dark. Suddenly there went a rustling through the trees; birds flew
to and fro with wild screaming, thunder was heard to roll, the Earth
shook, and tones of lamentation moaned in the air. Andres and his wife
had not courage to rise; they shrouded themselves within the curtains,
and with fear and trembling awaited the day. Towards morning, it grew
calmer; and all was silent when the Sun, with his cheerful light, rose
over the wood.

Andres dressed himself; and Mary now observed that the stone of the ring
upon her finger had become quite pale. On opening the door, the sun
shone clear on their faces, but the scene around them they could
scarcely recognise. The freshness of the wood was gone; the hills were
shrunk, the brooks were flowing languidly with scanty streams, the sky
seemed gray; and when you turned to the Firs, they were standing there
no darker or more dreary than the other trees. The huts behind them were
no longer frightful; and several inhabitants of the village came and
told about the fearful night, and how they had been across the spot
where the gipsies had lived; how these people must have left the place
at last, for their huts were standing empty, and within had quite a
common look, just like the dwellings of other poor people: some of their
household gear was left behind.

Elfrida in secret said to her mother: "I could not sleep last night; and
in my fright at the noise, I was praying from the bottom of my heart,
when the door suddenly opened, and my playmate entered to take leave of
me. She had a travelling-pouch slung round her, a hat on her head, and a
large staff in her hand. She was very angry at thee; since on thy
account she had now to suffer the severest and most painful punishments,
as she had always been so fond of thee; for all of them, she said, were
very loath to leave this quarter."

Mary forbade her to speak of this; and now the ferryman came across the
river, and told them new wonders. As it was growing dark, a stranger man
of large size had come to him, and hired his boat till sunrise; and with
this condition, that the boatman should remain quiet in his house, at
least should not cross the threshold of his door. "I was frightened,"
continued the old man, "and the strange bargain would not let me sleep.
I slipped softly to the window, and looked towards the river. Great
clouds were driving restlessly through the sky, and the distant woods
were rustling fearfully; it was as if my cottage shook, and moans and
lamentations glided round it. On a sudden, I perceived a white streaming
light, that grew broader and broader, like many thousands of falling
stars; sparkling and waving, it proceeded forward from the dark
Fir-ground, moved over the fields, and spread itself along towards the
river. Then I heard a trampling, a jingling, a bustling, and rushing,
nearer and nearer; it went forwards to my boat, and all stept into it,
men and women, as it seemed, and children; and the tall stranger ferried
them over. In the river were by the boat swimming many thousands of
glittering forms; in the air white clouds and lights were wavering; and
all lamented and bewailed that they must travel forth so far, far away,
and leave their beloved dwelling. The noise of the rudder and the water
creaked and gurgled between whiles, and then suddenly there would be
silence. Many a time the boat landed, and went back, and was again
laden; many heavy casks, too, they took along with them, which
multitudes of horrid-looking little fellows carried and rolled; whether
they were devils or goblins, Heaven only knows. Then came, in waving
brightness, a stately freight; it seemed an old man, mounted on a small
white horse, and all were crowding round him. I saw nothing of the horse
but its head; for the rest of it was covered with costly glittering
cloths and trappings: on his brow the old man had a crown, so bright
that, as he came across, I thought the sun was rising there, and the
redness of the dawn glimmering in my eyes. Thus it went on all night; I
at last fell asleep in the tumult, half in joy, half in terror. In the
morning all was still; but the river is, as it were, run off, and I know
not how I am to steer my boat in it now."

The same year there came a blight; the woods died away, the springs ran
dry; and the scene, which had once been the joy of every traveller, was
in autumn standing waste, naked and bald; scarcely showing here and
there, in the sea of sand, a spot or two where grass, with a dingy
greenness, still grew up. The fruit-trees all withered, the vines faded
away, and the aspect of the place became so melancholy, that the Count,
with his people, next year left the castle, which in time decayed and
fell to ruins.

Elfrida gazed on her rose day and night with deep longing, and thought
of her kind playmate; and as it drooped and withered, so did she also
hang her head; and before the spring, the little maiden had herself
faded away. Mary often stood upon the spot before the hut, and wept for
the happiness that had departed. She wasted herself away like her child,
and in a few years she too was gone. Old Martin, with his son-in-law,
returned to the quarter where he had lived before.




THE GOBLET.


The forenoon bells were sounding from the high cathedral. Over the wide
square in front of it were men and women walking to and fro, carriages
rolling along, and priests proceeding to their various churches.
Ferdinand was standing on the broad stair, with his eyes over the
multitude, looking at them as they came up to attend the service. The
sunshine glittered on the white stones, all were seeking shelter from
the heat. He alone had stood for a long time leaning on a pillar, amid
the burning beams, without regarding them; for he was lost in the
remembrances which mounted up within his mind. He was calling back his
bygone life; and inspiring his soul with the feeling which had
penetrated all his being, and swallowed up every other wish in itself.
At the same hour, in the past year, had he been standing here, looking
at the women and the maidens coming to mass; with indifferent heart, and
smiling face, he had viewed the variegated procession; many a kind look
had roguishly met his, and many a virgin cheek had blushed; his busy eye
had observed the pretty feet, how they mounted the steps, and how the
wavering robe fell more or less aside, to let the dainty little ankles
come to sight. Then a youthful form had crossed the square: clad in
black; slender, and of noble mien, her eyes modestly cast down before
her, carelessly she hovered up the steps with lovely grace; the silken
robe lay round that fairest of forms, and rocked itself as in music
about the moving limbs; she was mounting the highest step, when by
chance she raised her head, and struck his eye with a ray of the purest
azure. He was pierced as if by lightning. Her foot caught the robe; and
quickly as he darted towards her, he could not prevent her having, for
a moment, in the most charming posture, lain kneeling at his feet. He
raised her; she did not look at him, she was all one blush; nor did she
answer his inquiry whether she was hurt. He followed her into the
church: his soul saw nothing but the image of that form kneeling before
him, and that loveliest of bosoms bent towards him. Next day he visited
the threshold of the church again; for him that spot was consecrated
ground. He had been intending to pursue his travels, his friends were
expecting him impatiently at home; but from henceforth his native
country was here, his heart and its wishes were inverted. He saw her
often, she did not shun him; yet it was but for a few separate and
stolen moments; for her wealthy family observed her strictly, and still
more a powerful and jealous bridegroom. They mutually confessed their
love, but knew not what to do; for he was a stranger, and could offer
his beloved no such splendid fortune as she was entitled to expect. He
now felt his poverty; yet when he reflected on his former way of life,
it seemed to him that he was passing rich; for his existence was
rendered holy, his heart floated forever in the fairest emotion; Nature
was now become his friend, and her beauty lay revealed to him; he felt
himself no longer alien from worship and religion; and he now crossed
this threshold, and the mysterious dimness of the temple, with far other
feelings than in former days of levity. He withdrew from his
acquaintances, and lived only to love. When he walked through her
street, and saw her at the window, he was happy for the day. He had
often spoken to her in the dusk of the evening; her garden was adjacent
to a friend's, who, however, did not know his secret. Thus a year had
passed away.

All these scenes of his new existence again moved through his
remembrance. He raised his eyes; that noble form was even then gliding
over the square; she shone out of the confused multitude like a sun. A
lovely music sounded in his longing heart; and as she approached, he
retired into the church. He offered her the holy water; her white
fingers trembled as they touched his, she bowed with grateful kindness.
He followed her, and knelt down near her. His whole heart was melting in
sadness and love; it seemed to him as if, from the wounds of longing,
his being were bleeding away in fervent prayers; every word of the
priest went through him, every tone of the music poured new devotion
into his bosom; his lips quivered, as the fair maiden pressed the
crucifix of her rosary to her ruby mouth. How dim had been his
apprehension of this Faith and this Love before! The priest elevated the
Host, and the bell sounded; she bowed more humbly, and crossed her
breast; and, like a flash, it struck through all his powers and
feelings, and the image on the altar seemed alive, and the coloured
dimness of the windows as a light of paradise; tears flowed fast from
his eyes, and allayed the swelling fervour of his heart.

The service was concluded. He again offered her the consecrated font;
they spoke some words, and she withdrew. He stayed behind, in order to
excite no notice; he looked after her till the hem of her garment
vanished round the corner; and he felt like the wanderer, weary and
astray, from whom, in the thick forest, the last gleam of the setting
sun departs. He awoke from his dream, as an old withered hand slapped
him on the shoulder, and some one called him by name.

He started back, and recognised his friend, the testy old Albert, who
lived apart from men, and whose solitary house was open to Ferdinand
alone: "Do you remember our engagement?" said the hoarse husky voice. "O
yes," said Ferdinand: "and will you perform your promise today?"

"This very hour," replied the other, "if you like to follow me."

They walked through the city to a remote street, and there entered a
large edifice. "Today," said the old man, "you must push through with me
into my most solitary chamber, that we may not be disturbed." They
passed through many rooms, then along some stairs; they wound their way
through passages: and Ferdinand, who had thought himself familiar with
the house, was now astonished at the multitude of apartments, and the
singular arrangement of the spacious building; but still more that the
old man, a bachelor, and without family, should inhabit it by himself,
with a few servants, and never let out any part of the superfluous room
to strangers. Albert at length unbolted the door, and said: "Now, here
is the place." They entered a large high chamber, hung round with red
damask, which was trimmed with golden listings; the chairs were of the
same stuff; and, through heavy red silk curtains covering the windows,
came a purple light. "Wait a little," said the old man, and went into
another room. Ferdinand took up some books: he found them to contain
strange unintelligible characters, circles and lines, with many curious
plates; and from the little he could read, they seemed to be works on
alchemy; he was aware already that the old man had the reputation of a
gold-maker. A lute was lying on the table, singularly overlaid with
mother-of-pearl, and coloured wood; and representing birds and flowers
in very splendid forms. The star in the middle was a large piece of
mother-of-pearl, worked in the most skilful manner into many
intersecting circular figures, almost like the centre of a window in a
Gothic church. "You are looking at my instrument," said Albert, coming
back; "it is two hundred years old: I brought it with me as a memorial
of my journey into Spain. But let us leave all that, and do you take a
seat."

They sat down beside the table, which was likewise covered with a red
cloth; and the old man placed upon it something which was carefully
wrapped up. "From pity to your youth," he began, "I promised lately to
predict to you whether you could ever become happy or not; and this
promise I will in the present hour perform, though you hold the matter
only as a jest. You need not be alarmed; for what I purpose will take
place without danger; no dread invocations shall be made by me, nor
shall any horrid apparition terrify your senses. The business I am on
may fail in two ways: either if you do not love so truly as you have
been willing to persuade me; for then my labour is in vain, and nothing
will disclose itself; or, if you shall disturb the oracle and destroy it
by a useless question, or a hasty movement, should you leave your seat
and dissipate the figure; you must therefore promise me to keep yourself
quite still."

Ferdinand gave his word, and the old man unfolded from its cloths the
packet he had placed on the table. It was a golden goblet, of very
skilful and beautiful workmanship. Round its broad foot ran a garland of
flowers, intertwined with myrtles, and various other leaves and fruits,
worked out in high chasing with dim and with brilliant gold. A
corresponding ring, but still richer, with figures of children, and wild
little animals playing with them, or flying from them, wound itself
about the middle of the cup. The bowl was beautifully turned; it bent
itself back at the top as if to meet the lips; and within, the gold
sparkled with a red glow. Old Albert placed the cup between him and the
youth, whom he then beckoned to come nearer. "Do you not feel
something," said he, "when your eye loses itself in this splendour?"

"Yes," answered Ferdinand, "this brightness glances into my inmost
heart; I might almost say I felt it like a kiss in my longing bosom."

"It is right, then!" said the old man. "Now let not your eyes wander any
more, but fix them steadfastly on the glittering of this gold, and think
as intensely as you can of the woman whom you love."

Both sat quiet for a while, looking earnestly upon the gleaming cup. Ere
long, however, Albert, with mute gestures, began, at first slowly, then
faster, and at last in rapid movements, to whirl his outstretched finger
in a constant circle round the glitter of the bowl. Then he paused, and
recommenced his circles in the opposite direction. After this had lasted
for a little, Ferdinand began to think he heard the sound of music; it
came as from without, in some distant street, but soon the tones
approached, they quivered more distinctly through the air; and at last
no doubt remained with him that they were flowing from the hollow of the
cup. The music became stronger, and of such piercing power, that the
young man's heart was throbbing to the notes, and tears were flowing
from his eyes. Busily old Albert's hand now moved in various lines
across the mouth of the goblet; and it seemed as if sparks were issuing
from his fingers, and darting in forked courses to the gold, and
tinkling as they met it. The glittering points increased; and followed,
as if strung on threads, the movements of his finger to and fro; they
shone with various hues, and crowded more and more together till they
joined in unbroken lines. And now it seemed as if the old man, in the
red dusk, were stretching a wondrous net over the gleaming gold; for he
drew the beams this way and that at pleasure, and wove up with them the
opening of the bowl; they obeyed him, and remained there like a cover,
wavering to and fro, and playing into one another. Having so fixed them,
he again described the circle round the rim; the music then moved off,
grew fainter and fainter, and at last died away. While the tones
departed, the sparkling net quivered to and fro as in pain. In its
increasing agitation it broke in pieces; and the beaming threads rained
down in drops into the cup; but as the drops fell, there arose from them
a ruddy cloud, which moved within itself in manifold eddies, and mounted
over the brim like foam. A bright point darted with exceeding swiftness
through the cloudy circle, and began to form the Image in the midst of
it. On a sudden there looked out from the vapour as it were an eye;
over this came a playing and curling as of golden locks; and soon there
went a soft blush up and down the shadow, and Ferdinand beheld the
smiling face of his beloved, the blue eyes, the tender cheeks, the fair
red mouth. The head waved to and fro; rose clearer and more visible upon
the slim white neck, and nodded towards the enraptured youth. Old Albert
still kept casting circles round the cup; and out of it emerged the
glancing shoulders; and as the fair form mounted more and more from its
golden couch, and bent in lovely kindness this way and that, the soft
curved parted breasts appeared, and on their summits two loveliest
rose-buds glancing with sweet secret red. Ferdinand fancied he felt the
breath, as the beloved form bent waving towards him, and almost touched
him with its glowing lips; in his rapture he forgot his promise and
himself; he started up and clasped that ruby mouth to him with a kiss,
and meant to seize those lovely arms, and lift the enrapturing form from
its golden prison. Instantly a violent trembling quivered through the
lovely shape; the head and body broke away as in a thousand lines; and a
rose was lying at the bottom of the goblet, in whose redness that sweet
smile still seemed to play. The longing young man caught it and pressed
it to his lips; and in his burning ardour it withered and melted into
air.

"Thou hast kept thy promise badly," said the old man, with an angry
tone; "thou hast none but thyself to blame." He again wrapped up the
goblet, drew aside the curtains, and opened a window: the clear daylight
broke in; and Ferdinand, in sadness, and with many fruitless excuses,
left old Albert still in anger.

In an agitated mood, he hastened through the streets of the city.
Without the gate, he sat down beneath the trees. She had told him in the
morning that she was to go that night, with some relations, to the
country. Intoxicated with love, he rose, he sat, he wandered in the
wood: that fair kind form was still before him, as it flowed and mounted
from the glowing gold; he looked that she would now step forth to meet
him in the splendour of her beauty, and again that loveliest image broke
away in pieces from his eyes; and he was indignant at himself that, by
his restless passion and the tumult of his senses, he should have
destroyed the shape, and perhaps his hopes, forever.

As the walk, in the afternoon, became crowded, he withdrew deeper into
the thickets; but he still kept the distant highway in his eye; and
every coach that issued from the gate was carefully examined by him.

The night approached. The setting sun was throwing forth its red
splendour, when from the gate rushed out the richly gilded coach,
gleaming with a fiery brightness in the glow of evening. He hastened
towards it. Her eye had already seized him. Kindly and smilingly she
leaned her glittering bosom from the window; he caught her soft
salutation and signal; he was standing by the coach, her full look fell
on his, and as she drew back to move away, the rose which had adorned
her bosom flew out, and lay at his feet. He lifted it, and kissed it;
and he felt as if it presaged to him that he should not see his loved
one any more, that now his happiness had faded away from him forever.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hurried steps were passing up stairs and down; the whole house was in
commotion; all was bustle and tumult, preparing for the great
festivities of the morrow. The mother was the gladdest and most active;
the bride heeded nothing, but retired into her chamber to meditate upon
her changing destiny. The family were still looking for their elder son,
the captain, with his wife; and for two elder daughters, with their
husbands: Leopold, the younger, was maliciously busied in increasing the
disorder, and deepening the tumult; perplexing all, while he pretended
to be furthering it. Agatha, his still unmarried sister, was in vain
endeavouring to make him reasonable, and persuade him simply to do
nothing, and to let the rest have peace; but her mother said: "Never
mind him and his folly; for today a little more or less of it amounts to
nothing; only this I beg of one and all of you, that as I have so much
to think about already, you would trouble me with no fresh tidings,
unless it be of something that especially concerns us. I care not
whether any one have let some china fall, whether one spoon or two
spoons are wanting, whether any of the stranger servants have been
breaking windows; with all such freaks as these, I beg you would not vex
me by recounting them. Were these days of tumult over, we will reckon
matters; not till then."

"Bravely spoken, mother!" cried her son; "these sentiments are worthy of
a governor. And if it chance that any of the maids should break her
neck; the cook get tipsy, or set the chimney on fire; the butler, for
joy, let all the malmsey run upon the floor, or down his throat, you
shall not hear a word of such small tricks. If, indeed, an earthquake
were to overset the house! that, my dear mother, could not be kept
secret."

"When will he leave his folly!" said the mother: "What must thy sisters
think, when they find thee every jot as riotous as when they left thee
two years ago?"

"They must do justice to my force of character," said Leopold, "and
grant that I am not so changeable as they or their husbands, who have
altered so much within these few years, and so little to their
advantage."

The bridegroom now entered, and inquired for the bride. Her maid was
sent to call her. "Has Leopold made my request to you, my dear mother?"
said he.

"I did, forsooth!" said Leopold. "There is such confusion here among us,
not one of them can think a reasonable thought."

The bride entered, and the young pair joyfully saluted one another. "The
request I meant," continued the bridegroom, "is this: That you would not
take it ill, if I should bring another guest into your house, which, in
truth, is full enough already."

"You are aware yourself," replied the mother, "that extensive as it is,
I could scarcely find another chamber."

"Notwithstanding, I have partly managed it already," cried Leopold; "I
have had the large apartment furbished up."

"Why, that is quite a miserable place," replied the mother; "for many
years it has been nothing but a lumber-room."

"But it is splendidly repaired," said Leopold; "and our friend, for whom
it is intended, does not mind such matters, he desires nothing but our
love. Besides, he has no wife, and likes to be alone; it is the very
place for him. We have had enough of trouble in persuading him to come,
and show himself again among his fellow-creatures."

"Not your dismal conjuror and gold-maker, certainly?" cried Agatha.

"No other," said the bridegroom, "if you will still call him so."

"Then do not let him, mother," said the sister. "What should a man like
that do here? I have seen him on the street with Leopold, and I was
positively frightened at his face. The old sinner, too, almost never
goes to church; he loves neither God nor man; and it cannot come to good
to bring such infidels under the roof, on a solemnity like this. Who
knows what may be the consequence!"

"To hear her talk!" said Leopold, in anger. "Thou condemnest without
knowing him; and because the cut of his nose does not please thee, and
he is no longer young and handsome, thou concludest him a wizard, and a
servant of the Devil."

"Grant a place in your house, dear mother," said the bridegroom, "to our
old friend, and let him take a part in our general joy. He seems, my
dear Agatha, to have endured much suffering, which has rendered him
distrustful and misanthropic; he avoids all society, his only exceptions
are Leopold and myself. I owe him much; it was he that first gave my
mind a good direction; nay, I may say, it is he alone that has rendered
me perhaps worthy of my Julia's love."

"He lends me all his books," continued Leopold; "and, what is more, his
old manuscripts; and what is more still, his money, on my bare word. He
is a man of the most christian turn, my little sister. And who knows,
when thou hast seen him better, whether thou wilt not throw off thy
coyness, and take a fancy to him, ugly as he now appears to thee?"

"Well, bring him to us," said the mother; "I have had to hear so much of
him from Leopold already, that I have a curiosity to be acquainted with
him. Only you must answer for it, that I cannot lodge him better."

Meantime strangers were announced. They were members of the family, the
married daughters, and the officer; they had brought their children with
them. The good old lady was delighted to behold her grandsons; all was
welcoming, and joyful talk; and Leopold and the bridegroom, having also
given and received their greeting, went away to seek their ancient
melancholic friend.

The latter lived most part of the year in the country, about a league
from town; but he also kept a little dwelling for himself in a garden
near the gate. Here, by chance, the young men had become acquainted with
him. They now found him in a coffee-house, where they had previously
agreed to meet. As the evening had come on, they brought him, after some
little conversation, directly to the house.

The stranger met a kindly welcome from the mother; the daughters stood a
little more aloof from him. Agatha especially was shy, and carefully
avoided his looks. But the first general compliments were scarcely
over, when the old man's eye appeared to settle on the bride, who had
entered the apartment later; he seemed as if transported, and it was
observed that he was struggling to conceal a tear. The bridegroom
rejoiced in his joy, and happening sometime after to be standing with
him by a side at the window, he took his hand, and asked him: "Now, what
think you of my lovely Julia? Is she not an angel?"

"O my friend!" replied the old man, with emotion, "such grace and beauty
I have never seen; or rather, I should say (for that expression was not
just), she is so fair, so ravishing, so heavenly, that I feel as if I
had long known her; as if she were to me, utter stranger though she is,
the most familiar form of my imagination, some shape which had always
been an inmate of my heart."

"I understand you," said the young man: "yes, the truly beautiful, the
great and sublime, when it overpowers us with astonishment and
admiration, still does not surprise us as a thing foreign, never heard
of, never seen; but, on the other hand, our own inmost nature in such
moments becomes clear to us, our deepest remembrances are awakened, our
dearest feelings made alive."

The stranger, during supper, mixed but little in the conversation; his
looks were fixed on the bride, so earnestly and constantly, that she at
last became embarrassed and alarmed. The captain told of a campaign
which he had served in; the rich merchant of his speculations and the
bad times; the country gentleman of the improvements which he meant to
make in his estate.

Supper being done, the bridegroom took his leave, returning for the last
time to his lonely chamber; for in future it was settled that the
married pair were to live in the mother's house, their chambers were
already furnished. The company dispersed, and Leopold conducted the
stranger to his room. "You will excuse us," said he, as they went along,
"for having been obliged to lodge you rather far away, and not so
comfortably as our mother wished; but you see, yourself, how numerous
our family is, and more relations are to come tomorrow. For one thing,
you will not run away from us; there is no finding of your course
through this enormous house."

They went through several passages, and Leopold at last took leave, and
bade his guest good-night. The servant placed two wax-lights on the
table; then asked the stranger whether he should help him to undress,
and as the latter waived his help in that particular, he also went away,
and the stranger found himself alone.

"How does it chance, then," said he, walking up and down, "that this
Image springs so vividly from my heart today? I forgot the long past,
and thought I saw herself. I was again young, and her voice sounded as
of old; I thought I was awakening from a heavy dream; but no, I am now
awake, and those fair moments were but a sweet delusion."

He was too restless to sleep; he looked at some pictures on the walls,
and then round on the chamber. "Today," cried he, "all is so familiar to
me, I could almost fancy I had known this house and this apartment of
old." He tried to settle his remembrances, and lifted some large books
which were standing in a corner. As he turned their leaves, he shook his
head. A lute-case was leaning on the wall; he opened it, and found a
strange old instrument, time-worn, and without the strings. "No, I am
not mistaken!" cried he, in astonishment; "this lute is too remarkable;
it is the Spanish lute of my long-departed friend, old Albert! Here are
his magic books; this is the chamber where he raised for me that
blissful vision; the red of the tapestry is faded, its golden hem is
become dim; but strangely vivid in my heart is all pertaining to those
hours. It was for this the fear went over me as I was coming hither,
through these long complicated passages where Leopold conducted me. O
Heaven! On this very table did the Shape rise budding forth, and grow up
as if watered and refreshed by the redness of the gold. The same image
smiled upon me here, which has almost driven me crazy in the hall
tonight; in that hall where I have walked so often in trustful speech
with Albert!"

He undressed, but slept very little. Early in the morning he was up, and
looking at the room again; he opened the window, and the same gardens
and buildings were lying before him as of old, only many other houses
had been built since then. "Forty years have vanished," sighed he,
"since that afternoon; and every day of those bright times has a longer
life than all the intervening space."

He was called to the company. The morning passed in varied talk: at last
the bride entered in her marriage-dress. As the old man noticed her, he
fell into a state of agitation, such that every one observed it. They
proceeded to the church, and the marriage-ceremony was performed. The
party was again at home, when Leopold inquired: "Now, mother, how do you
like our friend, the good morose old gentleman?"

"I had figured him, by your description," said she, "much more
frightful; he is mild and sympathetic, and might gain from one an honest
trust in him."

"Trust?" cried Agatha; "in these burning frightful eyes, these
thousandfold wrinkles, that pale sunk mouth, that strange laugh of his,
which looks and sounds so mockingly? No; God keep me from such friends!
If evil spirits ever take the shape of men, they must assume some shape
like this."

"Perhaps a younger and more handsome one," replied the mother; "but I
cannot recognise the good old man in thy description. One easily
observes that he is of a violent temperament, and has inured himself to
lock up his feelings in his own bosom; perhaps, too, as Leopold was
saying, he may have encountered many miseries; so he is grown
mistrustful, and has lost that simple openness, which is especially the
portion of the happy."

The rest of the party entered, and broke off their conversation. Dinner
was served up; and the stranger sat between Agatha and the rich
merchant. When the toasts were beginning, Leopold cried out: "Now, stop
a little, worthy friends; we must have the golden goblet down for this,
then let it travel round."

He was rising, but his mother beckoned him to keep his seat: "Thou wilt
not find it," said she, "for the plate is all stowed elsewhere." She
walked out rapidly to seek it herself.

"How brisk and busy is our good old lady still!" observed the merchant.
"See how nimbly she can move, with all her breadth and weight, and
reckoning sixty by this time of day. Her face is always bright and
joyful, and today she is particularly happy, for she sees herself made
young again in Julia."

The stranger gave assent, and the lady entered with the goblet. It was
filled with wine, and began to circulate, each toasting what was dearest
and most precious to him. Julia gave the welfare of her husband, he the
love of his fair Julia; and thus did every one as it became his turn.
The mother lingered, as the goblet came to her.

"Come, quick with it," said the captain, somewhat hastily and rudely;
"we know, you reckon all men faithless, and not one among them worthy of
a woman's love. What, then, is dearest to you?"

His mother looked at him, while the mildness of her brow was on a sudden
overspread with angry seriousness. "Since my son," said she, "knows me
so well, and can judge my mind so rigorously, let me be permitted _not_
to speak what I was thinking of, and let him endeavour, by a life of
constant love, to falsify what he gives out as my opinion." She pushed
the goblet on, without drinking, and the company was for a while
embarrassed and disturbed.

"It is reported," said the merchant, in a whisper, turning to the
stranger, "that she did not love her husband; but another, who proved
faithless to her. She was then, it seems, the finest woman in the city."

When the cup reached Ferdinand, he gazed upon it with astonishment; for
it was the very goblet out of which old Albert had called forth to him
the lovely shadow. He looked in upon the gold, and the waving of the
wine; his hand shook; it would not have surprised him, if from the magic
bowl that glowing Form had again mounted up, and brought with it his
vanished youth. "No!" said he, after some time, half-aloud, "it is wine
that is gleaming here!"

"Ay, what else?" cried the merchant, laughing: "Drink and be merry."

A thrill of terror passed over the old man; he pronounced the name
"Francesca" in a vehement tone, and set the goblet to his lips. The
mother cast upon him an inquiring and astonished look.

"Whence is this bright goblet?" said Ferdinand, who also felt ashamed of
his embarrassment.

"Many years ago, long ere I was born," said Leopold, "my father bought
it, with this house and all its furniture, from an old solitary
bachelor; a silent man, whom the neighbours thought a dealer in the
Black Art."

The stranger did not say that he had known this old man; for his whole
being was too much perplexed, too like an enigmatic dream, to let the
rest look into it, even from afar.

The cloth being withdrawn, he was left alone with the mother, as the
young ones had retired to make ready for the ball. "Sit down by me,"
said the mother; "we will rest, for our dancing years are past; and if
it is not rude, allow me to inquire whether you have seen our goblet
elsewhere, or what it was that moved you so intensely?"

"O my lady," said the old man, "pardon my foolish violence and emotion;
but ever since I crossed your threshold, I feel as if I were no longer
myself; every moment I forget that my head is gray, that the hearts
which loved me are dead. Your beautiful daughter, who is now celebrating
the gladdest day of her existence, is so like a maiden whom I knew and
adored in my youth, that I could reckon it a miracle. Like, did I say?
No, she is not like; it is she herself! In this house, too, I have often
been; and once I became acquainted with this cup in a manner I shall not
forget." Here he told her his adventure. "On the evening of that day,"
concluded he, "in the park, I saw my loved one for the last time, as she
was passing in her coach. A rose fell from her bosom; this I gathered;
she herself was lost to me, for she proved faithless, and soon after
married."

"God in Heaven!" cried the lady, violently moved, and starting up, "thou
art not Ferdinand?"

"It is my name," replied he.

"I am Francesca," said the lady.

They sprang forward to embrace, then started suddenly back. Each viewed
the other with investigating looks: both strove again to evolve from the
ruins of Time those lineaments which of old they had known and loved in
one another; and as, in dark tempestuous nights, amid the flight of
black clouds, there are moments when solitary stars ambiguously twinkle
forth, to disappear next instant, so to these two was there shown now
and then from the eyes, from the brow and lips, the transitory gleam of
some well-known feature; and it seemed as if their Youth stood in the
distance, weeping smiles. He bowed down, and kissed her hand, while two
big drops rolled from his eyes. They then embraced each other cordially.

"Is thy wife dead?" inquired she.

"I was never married," sobbed the other.

"Heavens!" cried she, wringing her hands, "then it is I who have been
faithless! But no, not faithless. On returning from the country, where I
stayed two months, I heard from every one, thy friends as well as mine,
that thou wert long ago gone home, and married in thy own country. They
showed me the most convincing letters, they pressed me vehemently, they
profited by my despondency, my indignation; and so it was that I gave my
hand to another, a deserving husband; but my heart and my thoughts were
always thine."

"I never left this town," said Ferdinand; "but after a while I heard
that thou wert married. They wished to part us, and they have succeeded.
Thou art a happy mother; I live in the past, and all thy children I will
love as if they were my own. But how strange that we should never once
have met!"

"I seldom went abroad," said she; "and as my husband took another name,
soon after we were married, from a property which he inherited, thou
couldst have no suspicion that we were so near together."

"I avoided men," said Ferdinand, "and lived for solitude. Leopold is
almost the only one that has attracted me, and led me out amongst my
fellows. O my beloved friend, it is like a frightful spectre-story, to
think how we lost, and have again found each other!"

As the young people entered, the two were dissolved in tears, and in the
deepest emotion. Neither of them told what had occurred, the secret
seemed too holy. But ever after, the old man was the friend of the
house; and Death alone parted these two beings, who had found each other
so strangely, to reunite them in a short time, beyond the power of
separation.




JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER.




ARMY-CHAPLAIN SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FLÆTZ;

WITH

A RUNNING COMMENTARY OF NOTES BY JEAN PAUL.[29]




PREFACE.


This, I conceive, may be managed in two words.

The _first_ word must relate to the Circular Letter of Army-chaplain
Schmelzle, wherein he describes to his friends his Journey to the
metropolitan city of Flätz; after having, in an Introduction, premised
some proofs and assurances of his valour. Properly speaking, the
_Journey_ itself has been written purely with a view that his
courageousness, impugned by rumour, may be fully evinced and
demonstrated by the plain facts which he therein records. Whether, in
the mean-time, there shall not be found certain quick-scented readers,
who may infer, directly contrariwise, that his breast is not everywhere
bomb-proof, especially in the left side: on this point I keep my
judgment suspended.

     [29] Prefatory Introduction to Richter, _suprà_, at p. 354, Vol.
     VI. of _Works_ (Vol. I. of _Miscellanies_).

For the rest, I beg the judges of literature, as well as their
satellites, the critics of literature, to regard this _Journey_, for
whose literary contents I, as Editor, am answerable, solely in the light
of a Portrait (in the French sense), a little Sketch of Character. It is
a voluntary or involuntary comedy-piece, at which I have laughed so
often, that I purpose in time coming to paint some similar Pictures of
Character myself. And, for the present, when could such a little comic
toy be more fitly imparted and set forth to the world, than in these
very days, when the sound both of heavy money and of light laughter has
died away from among us; when, like the Turks, we count and pay merely
with sealed _purses_, and the coin within them has vanished?

Despicable would it seem to me, if any clownish squire of the
goose-quill should publicly and censoriously demand of me, in what way
this self-cabinet-piece of Schmelzle's has come into my hands? I know it
well, and do not disclose it. This comedy-piece, for which I, at all
events, as my Bookseller will testify, draw the profit myself, I got
hold of so unblamably, that I await, with unspeakable composure, what
the Army-chaplain shall please to say against the publication of it, in
case he say anything at all. My conscience bears me witness, that I
acquired this article, at least by more honourable methods than are
those of the learned persons who steal with their ears, who, in the
character of spiritual auditory-thieves, and classroom cutpurses and
pirates, are in the habit of disloading their plundered Lectures, and
vending them up and down the country as productions of their own.
Hitherto, in my whole life, I have stolen little, except now and then in
youth some--glances.

The _second_ word must explain or apologise for the singular form of
this little Work, standing as it does on a substratum of Notes. I
myself am not contented with it. Let the World open, and look, and
determine, in like manner. But the truth is, this line of demarcation,
stretching through the whole book, originated in the following accident:
certain thoughts (or digressions) of my own, with which it was not
permitted me to disturb those of the Army-chaplain, and which could only
he allowed to fight behind the lines, in the shape of Notes, I, with a
view to conveniency and order, had written down in a separate paper; at
the same time, as will he observed, regularly providing every Note with
its Number, and thus referring it to the proper page of the main
Manuscript. But, in the copying of the latter, I had forgotten to insert
the corresponding numbers in the Text itself. Therefore, let no man, any
more than I do, cast a stone at my worthy Printer, inasmuch as he
(perhaps in the thought that it was my way, that I had some purpose in
it) took these Notes, just as they stood, pell-mell, without arrangement
of Numbers, and clapped them under the Text; at the same time, by a
praiseworthy artful computation, taking care at least, that, at the
bottom of every page in the Text, there should some portion of this
glittering Note-precipitate make its appearance. Well, the thing at any
rate is done, nay perpetuated, namely printed. After all, I might almost
partly rejoice at it. For, in good truth, had I meditated for years (as
I have done for the last twenty) how to provide for my digression-comets
new orbits, if not focal suns, for my episodes new epopees,--I could
scarce possibly have hit upon a better or more spacious Limbo for such
Vanities than Chance and Printer here accidentally offer me ready-made.
I have only to regret, that the thing has been printed, before I could
turn it to account. Heavens! what remotest allusions (had I known it
before printing) might not have been privily introduced in every
Text-page and Note-number; and what apparent incongruity in the real
congruity between this upper and under side of the cards! How vehemently
and devilishly might one not have cut aloft, and to the right and left,
from these impregnable casemates and covered ways; and what _læsio ultra
dimidium_ (injury beyond the half of the Text) might not, with these
satirical injuries, have been effected and completed!

But Fate meant not so kindly with me: of this golden harvest-field of
satire I was not to be informed till three days before the Preface.

Perhaps, however, the writing world, by the little blue flame of this
accident, may be guided to a weightier acquisition, to a larger
subterranean treasure, than I, alas, have dug up! For, to the writer,
there is now a way pointed out of producing in one marbled volume a
group of altogether different works; of writing in one leaf, for both
sexes at the same time, without confounding them, nay, for the five
faculties all at once, without disturbing their limitations; since now,
instead of boiling up a vile fermenting shove-together, fit for nobody,
he has nothing to do but draw his note-lines or partition-lines; and so
on his five-story leaf give board and lodging to the most discordant
heads. Perhaps one might then read many a book for the fourth time,
simply because every time one had read but a fourth part of it.

On the whole, this Work has at least the property of being a short one;
so that the reader, I hope, may almost run through it, and read it at
the bookseller's counter, without, as in the case of thicker volumes,
first needing to buy it. And why, indeed, in this world of Matter should
anything whatever be great, except only what belongs not to it, the
world of Spirit?

  JEAN PAUL FR. RICHTER.

_Bayreuth, in the Hay and Peace Month_, 1807.




SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FLÆTZ.


     _Circular Letter of the proposed Catechetical Professor_ ATTILA
     SCHMELZLE _to his Friends; containing some Account of a Holidays'
     Journey to Flätz, with an Introduction, touching his Plight and his
     Courage as former Army-chaplain._

Nothing can be more ludicrous, my esteemed Friends, than to hear people
stigmatising a man as cowardly and hare-hearted, who perhaps is
struggling all the while with precisely the opposite faults, those of a
lion; though indeed the African lion himself, since the time of
Sparrmann's Travels, passes among us for a poltroon. Yet this case is
mine, worthy Friends; and I purpose to say a few words thereupon, before
describing my Journey.

You in truth are all aware that, directly in the teeth of this calumny,
it is courage, it is desperadoes (provided they be not braggarts and
tumultuous persons), whom I chiefly venerate; for example, my
brother-in-law, the Dragoon, who never in his life bastinadoed one man,
but always a whole social circle at the same time. How truculent was my
fancy, even in childhood, when I, as the parson was toning away to the
silent congregation, used to take it into my head: "How now, if thou
shouldst start up from the pew, and shout aloud: I am here too, Mr.
Parson!" and to paint out this thought in such glowing colours, that for
very dread, I have often been obliged to leave the church! Anything like
Rugenda's battle-pieces; horrid murder-tumults, sea-fights or Stormings
of Toulon, exploding fleets; and, in my childhood, Battles of Prague on
the harpsichord; nay, in short, every map of any remarkable scene of
war: these are perhaps too much my favourite objects; and I read--and
purchase nothing sooner; and doubtless, they might lead me into many
errors, were it not that, my circumstances restrain me. Now, if it be
objected that true courage is something higher than mere thinking and
willing, then you, my worthy Friends, will be the first to recognise
mine, when it shall break forth into, not barren and empty, but active
and effective words, while I strengthen my future Catechetical Pupils,
as well as can be done in a course of College Lectures, and steel them
into Christian heroes.

[Note 103: Good princes easily obtain good subjects; not so easily
good subjects good princes: thus Adam, in the state of innocence, ruled
over animals all tame and gentle, till simply through his means they
fell and grew savage.]

[Note 5: For a good Physician saves, if not always from the
disease, at least from a bad Physician.]

It is well known that, out of care for the preservation of my life, I
never walk within at least ten fields of any shore full of bathers or
swimmers; merely because I foresee to a certainty, that in case one of
them were drowning, I should that moment (for the heart overbalances the
head) plunge after the fool to save him, into some bottomless depth or
other, where we should both perish. And if dreaming is the reflex of
waking, let me ask you, true Hearts, if you have forgotten my relating
to you dreams of mine, which no Cæsar, no Alexander or Luther, need have
felt ashamed of? Have I not, to mention a few instances, taken Rome by
storm; and done battle with the Pope, and the whole elephantine body of
the Cardinal College, at one and the same time? Did I not once on
horseback, while simply looking at a review of military, dash headlong
into a _bataillon quarré_; and then capture, in Aix-la-Chapelle, the
Peruke of Charlemagne, for which the town pays yearly ten reichsthalers
of barber-money; and carrying it off to Halberstadt and Herr Gleim's,
there in like manner seize the Great Frederick's Hat; put both Peruke
and Hat on my head, and yet return home, after I had stormed their
batteries, and turned the cannon against the cannoneers themselves? Did
I not once submit to be made a Jew of, and then be regaled with hams;
though they were ape-hams on the Orinocco (see Humboldt)? And a thousand
such things; for I have thrown the Consistorial President of Flätz; out
of the Palace window; those alarm-fulminators, sold by Heinrich Backofen
in Gotha, at six groschen the dozen, and each going off like a cannon, I
have listened to so calmly that the fulminators did not even awaken me;
and more of the like sort.

But enough! It is now time briefly to touch that farther slander of my
chaplainship, which unhappily has likewise gained some circulation in
Flätz, but which, as Cæsar did Alexander, I shall now by my touch
dissipate into dust. Be what truth in it there can, it is still little
or nothing. Your great Minister and General in Flätz (perhaps the very
greatest in the world, for there are not many Schabackers) may indeed,
like any other great man, be turned against me, but not with the
Artillery of Truth; for this Artillery I here set before you, my good
Hearts, and do you but fire it off for my advantage! The matter is this:
Certain foolish rumours are afloat in the Flätz country, that I, on
occasion of some important battles, took leg-bail (such is their
plebeian phrase), and that afterwards, on the chaplain's being
called-for to preach a Thanksgiving sermon for the victory, no chaplain
whatever was to be found. The ridiculousness of this story will best
appear, when I tell you that I never was in any action; but have always
been accustomed, several hours prior to such an event, to withdraw so
many miles to the rear, that our men, so soon as they were beaten, would
be sure to find me. A good retreat is reckoned the masterpiece in the
art of war; and at no time can a retreat be executed with such order,
force and security, as just before the battle, when you are not yet
beaten.

[Note 100: In books lie the Phoenix-ashes of a past Millennium
and Paradise; but War blows, and much ashes are scattered away.]

[Note 102: Dear Political or Religious Inquisitor! art thou aware
that Turin tapers never rightly begin shining, till thou breakest them,
and then they take fire?]

It is true, I might perhaps, as expectant Professor of Catechetics, sit
still and smile at such nugatory speculations on my courage; for if by
Socratic questioning I can hammer my future Catechist Pupils into the
habit of asking questions in their turn, I shall thereby have tempered
_them_ into heroes, seeing they have nothing to fight with but
children--(Catechists at all events, though dreading fire, have no
reason to dread light, since in our days, as in London illuminations, it
is only the _unlighted_ windows that are battered in; whereas, in other
ages, it was with nations and light, as it is with dogs and water; if
you give them none for a long time, they at last get a horror at
it);--and on the whole, for Catechists, any park looks kindlier, and
smiles more sweetly, than a sulphurous park of artillery; and the
Warlike Foot, which the age is placed on, is to them the true Devil's
cloven-foot of human nature.

But for my part I think not so: almost as if the party-spirit influence
of my christian name, Attila, had passed into me more strongly than was
proper, I feel myself impelled still farther to prove my courageousness;
which, dearest Friends! I shall here in a few lines again do. This
proof I could manage by mere inferences and learned citations. For
example, if Galen remarks that animals with large hind-quarters are
timid, I have nothing to do but turn round, and show the enemy my back,
and what is under it, in order to convince him that I am not deficient
in valour, but in flesh. Again, if by well-known experiences it has been
found that flesh-eating produces courage, I can evince, that in this
particular I yield to no officer of the service; though it is the habit
of these gentlemen not only to run up long scores of roast-meat with
their landlords, but also to leave them unpaid, that so at every hour
they may have an open document in the hands of the enemy himself (the
landlord), testifying that they have eaten their own share (with some of
other people's too), and so put common butcher's-meat on a War-footing,
living not like others _by_ bravery, but _for_ bravery. As little have I
ever, in my character of chaplain, shrunk from comparison with any
officer in the regiment, who may be a true lion, and so snatch every
sort of plunder, but yet, like this King of the Beasts, is afraid of
_fire_; or who,--like King James of England, that scampered off at sight
of drawn swords, yet so much the more gallantly, before all Europe, went
out against the storming Luther with book and pen,[2]--does, from a
similar idiosyncrasy, attack all warlike armaments, both by word and
writing. And here I recollect with satisfaction a brave sub-lieutenant,
whose confessor I was (he still owes me the confession-money), and who,
in respect of stout-heartedness, had in him perhaps something of that
Indian dog which Alexander had presented to him, as a sort of
Dog-Alexander. By way of trying this crack dog, the Macedonian made
various heroic or heraldic beasts be let loose against him: first a
stag; but the dog lay still: then a sow; he lay still: then a bear; he
lay still. Alexander was on the point of condemning him; when a lion was
let forth: the dog rose, and tore the lion in pieces. So likewise the
sub-lieutenant. A challenger, a foreign enemy, a Frenchman, are to him
only stag, and sow, and bear, and he lies still in his place; but let
his oldest enemy, his creditor, come and knock at his gate, and demand
of him actual smart-money for long bygone pleasures, thus presuming to
rob him both of past and present; the sub-lieutenant rises, and throws
his creditor down stairs. I, alas, am still standing by the sow; and
thus, naturally enough, misunderstood.

[Note 86: Very true! In youth we love and enjoy the most
ill-assorted friends, perhaps more than, in old age, the best-assorted.]

[Note 128: In Love there are Summer Holidays; but in Marriage also
there are Winter Holidays, I hope.]

[Note 143: Women have weekly at least one active and passive day of
glory, the holy day, the Sunday. The higher ranks alone have more
Sundays than workdays; as in great towns, you can celebrate your Sunday
on Friday with the Turks, on Saturday with the Jews, and on Sunday with
yourself.]

[Note 2: The good Professor of Catechetics is out here. _Indignor
quandoque bonus dormitat Schmelzlæus!_--ED.]

_Quo_, says Livy, xii. 5, and with great justice, _quo timoris minus
est, eo minus ferme periculi est_, The less fear you have, the less
danger you are likely to be in. With equal justice I invert the maxim,
and say: The less the danger, the smaller the fear; nay, there may be
situations, in which one has absolutely no knowledge of fear; and, among
these, mine is to be reckoned. The more hateful, therefore, must that
calumny about hare-heartedness appear to me.

To my Holidays' Journey I shall prefix a few facts, which prove how
easily foresight--that is to say, when a person would not resemble the
stupid marmot, that will even attack a man on horseback--may pass for
cowardice. For the rest, I wish only that I could with equal ease wipe
away a quite different reproach, that of being a foolhardy desperado;
though I trust, in the sequel, I shall be able to advance some facts
which invalidate it.

What boots the heroic arm, without a hero's eye? The former readily
grows stronger and more nervous; but the latter is not so soon ground
sharper, like glasses. Nevertheless, the merits of foresight obtain from
the mass of men less admiration (nay, I should say, more ridicule) than
those of courage. Whoso, for instance, shall see me walking under quite
cloudless skies, with a wax-cloth umbrella over me, to him I shall
probably appear ridiculous, so long as he is not aware that I carry this
umbrella as a thunder-screen, to keep off any bolt out of the blue
heaven (whereof there are several examples in the history of the Middle
Ages) from striking me to death. My thunder-screen, in fact, is exactly
that of Reimarus: on a long walking-stick, I carry the wax-cloth roof;
from the peak of which depends a string of gold-lace as a conductor; and
this, by means of a key fastened to it, which it trails along the
ground, will lead off every possible bolt, and easily distribute it over
the whole superficies of the Earth. With this _Paratonnerre Portatif_
in my hand, I can walk about for weeks, under the clear sky, without the
smallest danger. This Diving-bell, moreover, protects me against
something else; against shot. For who, in the latter end of Harvest,
will give me black on white that no lurking ninny of a sportsman
somewhere, when I am out enjoying Nature, shall so fire off his piece,
at an angle of 45°, that in falling down again, the shot needs only
light directly on my crown, and so come to the same as if I had been
shot through the brain from a side?

[Note 21: Schiller and Klopstock are Poetic Mirrors held up to the
Sun-god: the Mirrors reflect the Sun with such dazzling brightness, that
you cannot find the Picture of the World imaged forth in them.]

It is bad enough, at any rate, that we have nothing to guard us from the
Moon; which at present is bombarding us with stones like a very Turk:
for this paltry little Earth's trainbearer and errand-maid thinks, in
these rebellious times, that she too must begin, forsooth, to sling
somewhat against her Mother! In good truth, as matters stand, any young
Catechist of feeling may go out o' nights, with whole limbs, into the
moonshine, a-meditating; and ere long (in the midst of his meditation
the villanous Satellite hits him) come home a pounded jelly. By heaven!
new proofs of courage are required of us on every hand! No sooner have
we, with great effort, got thunder-rods manufactured, and comet-tails
explained away, than the enemy opens new batteries in the Moon, or
somewhere else in the Blue!

Suffice one other story to manifest how ludicrous the most serious
foresight, with all imaginable inward courage, often externally appears
in the eyes of the many. Equestrians are well acquainted with the
dangers of a horse that runs away. My evil star would have it, that I
should once in Vienna get upon a hack-horse; a pretty enough
honey-coloured nag, but old and hard-mouthed as Satan; so that the
beast, in the next street, went off with me; and this in truth--only at
a _walk_. No pulling, no tugging, took effect; I, at last, on the back
of this Self-riding-horse, made signals of distress, and cried: "Stop
him, good people, for God's sake stop him, my horse is off!" But these
simple persons seeing the beast move along as slowly as a Reichshofrath
law-suit, or the Daily Postwagen, could not in the least understand the
matter, till I cried as if possessed: "Stop him then, ye blockheads and
joltheads; don't you see that I cannot hold the nag?" But now, to these
noodles, the sight of a hard-mouthed horse going off with its rider step
by step, seemed ridiculous rather than otherwise; half Vienna gathered
itself like a comet-tail behind my beast and me. Prince Kaunitz, the
best horseman of the century (the last), pulled up to follow me. I
myself sat and swam like a perpendicular piece of drift-ice on my
honey-coloured nag, which stalked on, on, step by step: a many-cornered,
red-coated letter-carrier, was delivering his letters, to the right and
left, in the various stories, and he still crossed over before me again,
with satirical features, because the nag went along too slowly. The
Schwanzschleuderer, or Train-dasher (the person, as you know, who drives
along the streets with a huge barrel of water, and besplashes them with
a leathern pipe of three ells long from an iron trough), came across the
haunches of my horse, and, in the course of his duty, wetted both these
and myself in a very cooling manner, though, for my part, I had too much
cold sweat on me already, to need any fresh refrigeration. On my
infernal Trojan Horse (only I myself was Troy, not beridden but riding
to destruction), I arrived at Malzlein (a suburb of Vienna), or perhaps,
so confused were my senses, it might be quite another range of streets.
At last, late in the dusk, I had to turn into the Prater; and here, long
after the Evening Gun, to my horror, and quite against the police-rules,
keep riding to and fro on my honey-coloured nag; and possibly I might
even have passed the night on him, had not my brother-in-law, the
Dragoon, observed my plight, and so found me still sitting firm as a
rock on my runaway steed. He made no ceremonies; caught the brute; and
put the pleasant question: Why I had not vaulted, and come off by
ground-and-lofty tumbling? though he knew full well, that for this a
wooden-horse, which stands still, is requisite. However, he took me
down; and so, after all this riding, horse and man got home with whole
skins and unbroken bones.

But now at last to my Journey!

[Note 34: Women are like precious carved works of ivory; nothing is
whiter and smoother, and nothing sooner grows _yellow_.]

[Note 72: The Half-learned is adored by the Quarter-learned; the
latter by the Sixteenth-part-learned; and so on; but not the
Whole-learned by the Half-learned.]


_Journey to Flätz_.

You are aware, my friends, that this Journey to Flätz was necessarily to
take place in Vacation time; not only because the Cattle-market, and
consequently the Minister and General von Schabacker, was there then;
but more especially, because the latter (as I had it positively from a
private hand) did annually, on the 23d of July, the market-eve, about
five o'clock, become so full of gaudium and graciousness, that in many
cases he did not so much snarl on people, as listen to them, and grant
their prayers. The cause of this gaudium I had rather not trust to
paper. In short, my Petition, praying that he would be pleased to
indemnify and reward me, as an unjustly deposed Army-chaplain, by a
Catechetical Professorship, could plainly be presented to him at no
better season, than exactly about five o'clock in the evening of the
first dog-day. In less than a week, I had finished writing my Petition.
As I spared neither summaries nor copies of it, I had soon got so far as
to see the relatively best lying completed before me; when, to my
terror, I observed, that, in this paper, I had introduced above thirty
_dashes_, or breaks, in the middle of my sentences! Nowadays, alas,
these stings shoot forth involuntarily from learned pens, as from the
tails of wasps. I debated long within myself whether a private scholar
could justly be entitled to approach a minister with dashes,--greatly as
this level interlineation of thoughts, these horizontal note-marks of
poetical _music_-pieces, and these rope-ladders or Achilles' tendons of
philosophical _see_-pieces, are at present fashionable and
indispensable: but, at last, I was obliged (as erasures may offend
people of quality) to write my best proof-petition over again; and then
to afflict myself for another quarter of an hour over the name Attila
Schmelzle, seeing it is always my principle that this and the address of
the letter, the two cardinal points of the whole, can never be written
legibly enough.

[Note 35: _Bien écouter c'est presque répondre_, says Marivaux
justly of social circles: but I extend it to round Councillor-tables and
Cabinet-tables, where reports are made, and the Prince listens.]


_First Stage; from Neusattel to Vierstädten._

The 22d of July, or Wednesday, about five in the afternoon, was now, by
the way-bill of the regular Post-coach, irrevocably fixed for my
departure. I had still half a day to order my house; from which, for two
nights and two days and a half, my breast, its breastwork and palisado,
was now, along with my Self, to be withdrawn. Besides this, my good wife
Bergelchen, as I call my Teutoberga, was immediately to travel after me,
on Friday the 24th, in order to see and to make purchases at the yearly
Fair; nay, she was ready to have gone along with me, the faithful
spouse. I therefore assembled my little knot of domestics, and
promulgated to them the Household Law and Valedictory Rescript, which,
after my departure, in the first place _before_ the outset of my wife,
and in the second place _after_ this outset, they had rigorously to
obey; explaining to them especially whatever, in case of conflagrations,
house-breakings, thunder-storms, or transits of troops, it would behove
them to do. To my wife I delivered an inventory of the best goods in our
little Registership; which goods she, in case the house took fire, had,
in the first place, to secure. I ordered her, in stormy nights (the
peculiar thief-weather), to put our Eolian harp in the window, that so
any villanous prowler might imagine I was fantasying on my instrument,
and therefore awake: for like reasons, also, to take the house-dog
within doors by day, that he might sleep then, and so be livelier at
night. I farther counselled her to have an eye on the focus of every
knot in the panes of the stable-window, nay, on every glass of water she
might set down in the house; as I had already often recounted to her
examples of such accidental burning-glasses having set whole buildings
in flames. I then appointed her the hour when she was to set out on
Friday morning to follow me; and recapitulated more emphatically the
household precepts, which, prior to her departure, she must afresh
inculcate on her domestics. My dear, heart-sound, blooming Berga
answered her faithful lord, as it seemed very seriously: "Go thy ways,
little old one; it shall all be done as smooth as velvet. Wert thou but
away! There is no end of thee!" Her brother, my brother-in-law the
Dragoon, for whom, out of complaisance, I had paid the coach-fare, in
order to have in the vehicle along with me a stout swordsman and hector,
as spiritual relative and bully-rock, so to speak; the Dragoon, I say,
on hearing these my regulations, puckered up (which I easily forgave the
wild soldier and bachelor) his sunburnt face considerably into ridicule,
and said: "Were I in thy place, sister, I should do what I liked, and
then afterwards take a peep into these regulation-papers of his."

[Note 17: The Bed of Honour, since so frequently whole regiments
lie on it, and receive their last unction, and last honour but one,
really ought from time to time to be new-filled, beaten and sunned.]

[Note 120: Many a one becomes a free-spoken Diogenes, not when he
dwells in the Cask, but when the Cask dwells in him.]

[Note 3: Culture makes whole lands, for instance Germany, Gaul, and
others, physically warmer, but spiritually colder.]

"O!" answered I, "misfortune may conceal itself like a scorpion in any
corner: I might say, we are like children, who, looking at their gaily
painted toy-box, soon pull off the lid, and, pop! out springs a mouse
who has young ones."

"Mouse, mouse!" said he, stepping up and down. "But, good brother, it is
five o'clock; and you will find, when you return, that all looks exactly
as it does today; the dog like the dog, and my sister like a pretty
woman: _allons donc!_" It was purely his blame that I, fearing his
misconceptions, had not previously made a sort of testament.

I now packed-in two different sorts of medicines, heating as well as
cooling, against two different possibilities; also my old splints for
arm or leg breakages, in case the coach overset; and (out of foresight)
two times the money I was likely to need. Only here I could have wished,
so uncertain is the stowage of such things, that I had been an Ape with
cheek-pouches, or some sort of Opossum with a natural bag, that so I
might have reposited these necessaries of existence in pockets which
were sensitive. Shaving is a task I always go through before setting out
on journeys; having a rational mistrust against stranger bloodthirsty
barbers: but, on this occasion, I retained my beard; since, however
close shaved, it would have grown again by the road to such a length
that I could have fronted no Minister and General with it.

With a vehement emotion, I threw myself on the pith-heart of my Berga,
and, with a still more vehement one, tore myself away: in her, however,
this our first marriage-separation seemed to produce less lamentation
than triumph, less consternation than rejoicing; simply because she
turned her eye not half so much on the parting, as on the meeting, and
the journey after me, and the wonders of the Fair. Yet she threw and
hung herself on my somewhat long and thin neck and body, almost
painfully, being indeed a too fleshy and weighty load, and said to me:
"Whisk thee off quick, my charming Attel (Attila), and trouble thy head
with no cares by the way, thou singular man! A whiff or two of ill luck
we can stand, by God's help, so long as my father is no beggar. And for
thee, Franz," continued she, turning with some heat to her brother, "I
leave my Attel on thy soul: thou well knowest, thou wild fly, what I
will do, if thou play the fool, and leave him anywhere in the lurch."
Her meaning here was good, and I could not take it ill: to you also, my
Friends, her wealth and her open-heartedness are nothing new.

[Note 1: The more Weakness the more Lying: Force goes straight; any
cannonball with holes or cavities in it goes crooked.]

Melted into sensibility, I said: "Now, Berga, if there be a reunion
appointed for us, surely it is either in Heaven or in Flätz; and I hope
in God, the latter." With these words, we whirled stoutly away. I looked
round through the back-window of the coach at my good little village of
Neusattel, and it seemed to me, in my melting mood, as if its steeples
were rising aloft like an epitaphium over my life, or over my body,
perhaps to return a lifeless corpse. "How will it all be," thought I,
"when thou at last, after two or three days, comest back?" And now I
noticed my Bergelchen looking after us from the garret-window. I leaned
far out from the coach-door, and her falcon eye instantly distinguished
my head; kiss on kiss she threw with both hands after the carriage, as
it rolled down into the valley. "Thou true-hearted wife," thought I,
"how is thy lowly birth, by thy spiritual new-birth, made forgettable,
nay remarkable!"

I must confess, the assemblage and conversational picnic of the
stage-coach was much less to my taste: the whole of them suspicious,
unknown rabble, whom (as markets usually do) the Flätz cattle-market was
alluring by its scent. I dislike becoming acquainted with strangers: not
so my brother-in-law, the Dragoon; who now, as he always does, had in a
few minutes elbowed himself into close quarters with the whole
ragamuffin posse of them. Beside me sat a person who, in all human
probability, was a Harlot; on her breast, a Dwarf intending to exhibit
himself at the Fair; on the other side was a Ratcatcher gazing at me;
and a Blind Passenger,[3] in a red mantle, had joined us down in the
valley. No one of them, except my brother-in-law, pleased me. That
rascals among these people would not study me and my properties and
accidents, to entangle me in their snares, no man could be my surety.
In strange places, I even, out of prudence, avoid looking long up at any
jail-window; because some losel, sitting behind the bars, may in a
moment call down out of mere malice: "How goes it, comrade Schmelzle?"
or farther, because any lurking catchpole may fancy I am planning a
rescue for some confederate above. From another sort of prudence, little
different from this, I also make a point of never turning round when any
booby calls, Thief! behind me.

[Note 38: Epictetus advises us to travel, because our old
acquaintances, by the influence of shame, impede our transition to
higher virtues; as a bashful man will rather lay aside his provincial
accent in some foreign quarter, and then return wholly purified to his
own countrymen: in our days, people of rank and virtue follow this
advice, but inversely; and travel because their old acquaintances, by
the influence of shame, would too much deter them from new sins.]

[Note 3: 'Live Passenger,' 'Nip;' a passenger taken up only by
Jarvie's authority, and for Jarvie's profit.--ED.]

As to the Dwarf himself, I had no objection to his travelling with me
whithersoever he pleased; but he thought to raise a particular
delectation in our minds, by promising that his Pollux and Brother in
Trade, an extraordinary Giant, who was also making for the Fair to
exhibit himself, would by midnight, with his elephantine pace,
infallibly overtake the coach, and plant himself among us, or behind on
the outside. Both these noodles, it appeared, are in the habit of going
in company to fairs, as reciprocal exaggerators of opposite magnitudes:
the Dwarf is the convex magnifying-glass of the Giant, the Giant the
concave diminishing-glass of the Dwarf. Nobody expressed much joy at the
prospective arrival of this Anti-dwarf, except my brother-in-law, who
(if I may venture on a play of words) seems made, like a clock, solely
for the purpose of _striking_, and once actually said to me: "That if in
the Upper world he could not get a soul to curry and towzle by a time,
he would rather go to the Under, where most probably there would be
plenty of cuffing and to spare." The Ratcatcher, besides the
circumstance that no man can prepossess us much in his favour, who lives
solely by poisoning, like this Destroying Angel of rats, this
mouse-Atropos; and also, which is still worse, that such a fellow bids
fair to become an increaser of the vermin kingdom, the moment he may
cease to be a lessener of it; besides all this, I say, the present
Ratcatcher had many baneful features about him: first, his stabbing
look, piercing you like a stiletto; then the lean sharp bony visage,
conjoined with his enumeration of his considerable stock of poisons;
then (for I hated him more and more) his sly stillness, his sly smile,
as if in some corner he noticed a mouse, as he would notice a man! To
me, I declare, though usually I take not the slightest exception against
people's looks, it seemed at last as if his throat were a Dog-grotto, a
_Grotta del cane_, his cheek-bones cliffs and breakers, his hot breath
the wind of a calcining furnace, and his black hairy breast a kiln for
parching and roasting.

[Note 32: Our Age (by some called the Paper Age, as if it were made
from the rags of some better-dressed one) is improving in so far, as it
now tears its rags rather into Bandages than into Papers; although, or
because, the Rag-hacker (the Devil as they call it) will not altogether
be at rest. Meanwhile, if Learned Heads transform themselves into Books,
Crowned Heads transform and coin themselves into Government-paper: in
Norway, according to the _Universal Indicator_, the people have even
paper-houses; and in many good German States, the Exchequer Collegium
(to say nothing of the Justice Collegium) keeps its own paper-mills, to
furnish wrappage enough for the meal of its wind-mills. I could wish,
however, that our Collegiums would take pattern from that Glass
Manufactory at Madrid, in which (according to Baumgartner) there were
indeed nineteen clerks stationed, but also eleven workmen.]

Nor was I far wrong, I believe; for soon after this, he began quite
coolly to inform the company, in which were a dwarf and a female, that,
in his time, he had, not without enjoyment, run ten men through the
body; had with great convenience hewed off a dozen men's arms; slowly
split four heads, torn out two hearts, and more of the like sort; while
none of them, otherwise persons of spirit, had in the least resisted:
"but why?" added he, with a poisonous smile, and taking the hat from his
odious bald pate: "I am invulnerable. Let any one of the company that
chooses lay as much fire on my bare crown as he likes, I shall not mind
it."

My brother-in-law, the Dragoon, directly kindled his tinder-box, and put
a heap of the burning matter on the Ratcatcher's pole; but the fellow
stood it, as if it had been a mere picture of fire, and the two looked
expectingly at one another; and the former smiled very foolishly,
saying: "It was simply pleasant to him, like a good warming-plaster; for
this was always the wintry region of his body."

Here the Dragoon groped a little on the naked scull, and cried with
amazement, that "it was as cold as a knee-pan."

But now the fellow, to our horror, after some preparations, actually
lifted off the quarter-scull and held it out to us, saying: "He had
sawed it off a murderer, his own having accidentally been broken;" and
withal explained, that the stabbing and arm-cutting he had talked of was
to be understood as a jest, seeing he had merely done it in the
character of Famulus at an Anatomical Theatre. However, the jester
seemed to rise little in favour with any of us; and for my part, as he
put his brain-lid and sham-scull on again, I thought to myself; "This
dungbed-bell has changed its place indeed, but not the hemlock it was
made to cover."

Farther, I could not but reckon it a suspicious circumstance, that he as
well as all the company (the Blind Passenger too) were making for this
very Flätz, to which I myself was bound: much good I could not expect of
this; and, in truth, turning home again would have been as pleasant to
me as going on, had I not rather felt a pleasure in defying the future.

I come now to the red-mantled Blind Passenger; most probably an _Emigré_
or _Réfugié_; for he speaks German not worse than he does French; and
his name, I think, was _Jean Pierre_ or _Jean Paul_, or some such thing,
if indeed he had any name. His red cloak, notwithstanding this his
identity of colour with the Hangman, would in itself have remained
heartily indifferent to me, had it not been for this singular
circumstance, that he had already five times, contrary to all
expectation, come upon me in five different towns (in great Berlin, in
little Hof, in Coburg, Meiningen and Bayreuth), and each of these times
had looked at me significantly enough, and then gone his ways. Whether
this _Jean Pierre_ is dogging me with hostile intent or not, I cannot
say; but to our fancy, at any rate, no object can be gratifying that
thus, with corps of observation, or out of loopholes, holds and aims at
us with muskets, which for year after year it shall move to this side
and that, without our knowing on whom it is to fire. Still more
offensive did Redcloak become to me, when he began to talk about his
soft mildness of soul; a thing which seemed either to betoken pumping
you or undermining you.

I replied: "Sir, I am just come, with my brother-in-law here, from the
field of battle (the last affair was at Pimpelstadt), and so perhaps am
too much of a humour for fire, pluck and war-fury; and to many a one,
who happens to have a roaring waterspout of a heart, it may be well if
his clerical character (which is mine) rather enjoins on him mildness
than wildness. However, all mildness has its iron limit. If any
thoughtless dog chance to anger me, in the first heat of rage I kick my
foot through him; and after me, my good brother here will perhaps drive
matters twice as far, for he is the man to do it. Perhaps it may be
singular; but I confess I regret to this day, that once when a boy I
received three blows from another, without tightly returning them; and
I often feel as if I must still pay them to his descendants. In sooth,
if I but chance to see a child running off like a dastard from the weak
attack of a child like himself, I cannot for my life understand his
running, and can scarcely keep from interfering to save him by a
decisive knock."

[Note 2: In his Prince, a soldier reverences and obeys at once his
Prince and his Generalissimo; a Citizen only his Prince.]

The Passenger meanwhile was smiling, not in the best fashion. He gave
himself out for a Legations-Rath, and seemed fox enough for such a post;
but a mad fox will, in the long-run, bite me as rabidly as a mad wolf
will. For the rest, I calmly went on with my eulogy on courage; only
that, instead of ludicrous gasconading, which directly betrays the
coward, I purposely expressed myself in words at once cool, clear and
firm.

"I am altogether for Montaigne's advice," said I: "Fear nothing but
fear."

"I again," replied the Legations-man, with useless wire-drawing, "I
should fear again that I did not sufficiently fear fear, but continued
too dastardly."

"To this fear also," replied I coldly, "I set limits. A man, for
instance, may not in the least believe in, or be afraid of ghosts; and
yet by night may bathe himself in cold sweat, and this purely out of
terror at the dreadful fright he should be in (especially with what
whiffs of apoplexies, falling-sicknesses and so forth, he might be
visited), in case simply his own too vivid fancy should create any wild
fever-image, and hang it up in the air before him."

"One should not, therefore," added my brother-in-law the Dragoon,
contrary to his custom, moralising a little, "one should not bamboozle
the poor sheep, man, with any ghost-tricks; the hen-heart may die on the
spot."

A loud storm of thunder, overtaking the stage-coach, altered the
discourse. You, my Friends, knowing me as a man not quite destitute of
some tincture of Natural Philosophy, will easily guess my precautions
against thunder. I place myself on a chair in the middle of the room
(often, when suspicious clouds are out, I stay whole nights on it), and
by careful removal of all conductors, rings, buckles, and so forth, I
here sit thunder-proof, and listen with a cool spirit to this elemental
music of the cloud-kettledrum. These precautions have never harmed me,
for I am still alive at this date; and to the present hour I
congratulate myself on once hurrying out of church, though I had
confessed but the day previous; and running, without more ceremony, and
before I had received the sacrament, into the charnel-house, because a
heavy thunder-cloud (which did, in fact, strike the churchyard
linden-tree) was hovering over it. So soon as the cloud had disloaded
itself, I returned from the charnel-house into the church, and was happy
enough to come in after the Hangman (usually the last), and so still
participate in the Feast of Love.

[Note 45: Our present writers shrug their shoulders most at those
on whose shoulders they stand; and exalt those most who crawl up along
them.]

Such, for my own part, is my manner of proceeding: but in the full
stage-coach I met with men to whom Natural Philosophy was no philosophy
at all. For when the clouds gathered dreadfully together over our
coach-canopy, and sparkling, began to play through the air like so many
fire-flies, and I at last could not but request that the sweating
coach-conclave would at least bring out their watches, rings, money and
suchlike, and put them all into one of the carriage-pockets, that none
of us might have a conductor on his body; not only would no one of them
do it, but my own brother-in-law the Dragoon even sprang out, with naked
drawn sword, to the coach-box, and swore that he would conduct the
thunder all away himself. Nor do I know whether this desperate mortal
was not acting prudently; for our position within was frightful, and any
one of us might every moment be a dead man. At last, to crown all, I got
into a half altercation with two of the rude members of our leathern
household, the Poisoner and the Harlot; seeing, by their questions, they
almost gave me to understand that, in our conversational picnic,
especially with the Blind Passenger, I had not always come off with the
best share. Such an imputation wounds your honour to the quick; and in
my breast there was a thunder louder than that above us: however, I was
obliged to carry on the needful exchange of sharp words as quietly and
slowly as possible; and I quarrelled softly, and in a low tone, lest in
the end a whole coachful of people, set in arms against each other,
might get into heat and perspiration; and so, by vapour steaming through
the coach-roof, conduct the too-near thunderbolt down into the midst of
us. At last, I laid before the company the whole theory of Electricity,
in clear words, but low and slow (striving to avoid all emission of
vapour); and especially endeavoured to frighten them away from fear. For
indeed, through fear, the stroke--nay two strokes, the electric or the
apoplectic--might hit any one of us; since in Erxleben and Reimarus, it
is sufficiently proved, that violent fear, by the transpiration it
causes, may attract the lightning. I accordingly, in some fear of my own
and other people's fear, represented to the passengers that now, in a
coach so hot and crowded, with a drawn sword on the coach-box piercing
the very lightning, with the thunder-cloud hanging over us, and even
with so many transpirations from incipient fear; in short, with such
visible danger on every hand, they must absolutely fear nothing, if they
would not, all and sundry, be smitten to death in a few minutes.

[Note 103: The Great perhaps take as good charge of their posterity
as the Ants: the eggs once laid, the male and female Ants fly about
their business, and confide them to the trusty _working-Ants_.]

[Note 10: And does Life offer us, in regard to our ideal hopes and
purposes, anything but a prosaic, unrhymed, unmetrical Translation?]

"O Heaven!" cried I, "Courage! only courage! No fear, not even fear of
fear! Would you have Providence to shoot you here sitting, like so many
hares hunted into a pinfold? Fear, if you like, when you are out of the
coach; fear to your heart's content in other places, where there is less
to be afraid of; only not here, not here!"

I shall not determine--since among millions scarcely one man dies by
thunder-clouds, but millions perhaps by snow-clouds, and rain-clouds,
and thin mist--whether my Coach-sermon could have made any claim to a
prize for man-saving; however, at last, all uninjured, and driving
towards a rainbow, we entered the town of Vierstädten, where dwelt a
Postmaster, in the only street which the place had.


_Second Stage; from Vierstädten to Niederschöna._

The Postmaster was a churl and a striker; a class of mortals whom I
inexpressibly detest, as my fancy always whispers to me, in their
presence, that by accident or dislike I might happen to put on a
scornful or impertinent look, and hound these mastiffs on my own throat;
and so, from the very first, I must incessantly watch them. Happily, in
this case (supposing I even had made a wrong face), I could have
shielded myself with the Dragoon; for whose giant force such matter are
a tidbit. This brother-in-law of mine, for example, cannot pass any
tavern where he hears a sound of battle, without entering, and, as he
crosses the threshold, shouting: "Peace, dogs!"--and therewith, under
show of a peace-deputation, he directly snatches up the first chair-leg
in his hand, as if it were an American peace-calumet, and cuts to the
right and left among the belligerent powers, or he gnashes the hard
heads of the parties together (he himself takes no side), catching each
by the hind-lock; in such cases the rogue is in Heaven!

[Note 78: Our German frame of Government, cased in its harness, had
much difficulty in moving, for the same reason why Beetles cannot fly,
when their _wings_ have _wing-shells_, of very sufficient strength,
and--grown together.]

[Note 8: Constitutions of Government are like highways: on a new
and quite untrodden one, where every carriage helps in the process of
bruising and smoothing, you are as much jolted and pitched as on an old
worn-out one, full of holes? What is to be done then? Travel on.]

I, for my part, rather avoid discrepant circles than seek them; as I
likewise avoid all dead or killed people: the prudent man easily
foresees what is to be got by them; either vexatious and injurious
witnessing, or often even (when circumstances conspire) painful
investigation, and suspicions of your being an accomplice.

In Vierstädten, nothing of importance presented itself, except--to my
horror--a dog without tail, which came running along the town or street.
In the first fire of passion at this sight, I pointed it out to the
passengers, and then put the question, Whether they could reckon a
system of Medical Police well arranged, which, like this of Vierstädten,
allowed dogs openly to scour about, when their tails were wanting? "What
am I to do," said I, "when this member is cut away, and any such beast
comes running towards me, and I cannot, either by the tail being cocked
up or being drawn in, since the whole is snipt off, come to any
conclusion whether the vermin is mad or not? In this way, the most
prudent man may be bit, and become rabid, and so make shipwreck purely
for want of a tail-compass."

The Blind Passenger (he now got himself inscribed as a Seeing one, God
knows for what objects) had heard my observation; which he now spun out
in my presence almost into ridicule, and at last awakened in me the
suspicion, that by an overdone flattery in imitating my style of speech,
he meant to banter me. "The Dog-tail," said he, "is, in truth, an
alarm-beacon, and finger-post for us, that we come not even into the
outmost precincts of madness: cut away from Comets their tails, from
Bashaws theirs, from Crabs theirs (outstretched it denotes that they are
burst); and in the most dangerous predicaments of life we are left
without clew, without indicator, without hand _in margine_; and we
perish, not so much as knowing how."

[Note 3: In Criminal Courts, murdered children are often
represented as still-born; in Anticritiques, still-born as murdered.]

[Note 101: Not only were the Rhodians, from their Colossus, called
Colossians; but also innumerable Germans are, from their Luther, called
Lutherans.]

For the rest, this stage passed over without quarrelling or peril. About
ten o'clock, the whole party, including even the Postillion, myself
excepted, fell asleep. I indeed pretended to be sleeping, that I might
observe whether some one, for his own good reasons, might not also be
pretending it; but all continued snoring; the moon threw its brightening
beams on nothing but down-pressed eyelids.

I had now a glorious opportunity of following Lavater's counsel, to
apply the physiognomical ellwand specially to sleepers, since sleep,
like death, expresses the genuine form in coarser lines. Other sleepers
not in stage-coaches I think it less advisable to mete with this
ellwand; having always an apprehension lest some fellow, but pretending
to be asleep, may, the instant I am near enough, start up as in a dream,
and deceitfully plant such a knock on the physiognomical mensurator's
own facial structure, as to exclude it forever from appearing in any
Physiognomical Fragments (itself being reduced to one), either in the
stippled or line style. Nay, might not the most honest sleeper in the
world, just while you are in hand with his physiognomical dissection,
lay about him, spurred on by honour in some cudgelling-scene he may be
dreaming; and in a few instants of clapper-clawing, and kicking, and
trampling, lull you into a much more lasting sleep than that out of
which he was awakened?

In my _Adumbrating Magic-lantern_, as I have named the Work, the whole
physiognomical contents of this same sleeping stage-coach will be given
to the world: there I shall explain to you at large how the Poisoner,
with the murder-cupola, appeared to me devil-like; the Dwarf
old-childlike; the Harlot languidly shameless; my Brother-in-law
peacefully satisfied, with revenge or food; and the Legations-Rath,
_Jean Pierre_, Heaven only knows why, like a half angel,--though,
perhaps, it might be because only the fair body, not the other half, the
soul, which had passed away in sleep, was affecting me.

[Note 88: Hitherto I have always regarded the Polemical writings of
our present philosophic and æsthetic Idealist Logic-buffers,--in which,
certainly, a few contumelies, and misconceptions, and misconclusions do
make their appearance,--rather on the fair side; observing in it merely
an imitation of classical Antiquity, in particular of the ancient
Athletes, who (according to Schottgen) besmeared their bodies with
_mud_, that they might not be laid hold of; and filled their hands with
_sand_, that they might lay hold of their antagonists.]

I had almost forgotten to mention, that in a little village, while my
Brother-in-law and the Postillion were sitting at their liquor, I
happily fronted a small terror, Destiny having twice been on my side.
Not far from a Hunting Box, beside a pretty clump of trees, I noticed a
white tablet, with a black inscription on it. This gave me hopes that
perhaps some little monumental piece, some pillar of honour, some battle
memento, might here be awaiting me. Over an untrodden flowery tangle, I
reach the black on white; and to my horror and amazement, I decipher in
the moonshine: _Beware of Spring-guns_! Thus was I standing perhaps half
a nail's breadth from the trigger, with which, if I but stirred my heel,
I should shoot myself off like a forgotten ramrod, into the other world,
beyond the verge of Time! The first thing I did was to cramp-down my
toe-nails, to bite, and, as it were, eat myself into the ground with
them; since I might at least continue in warm life so long as I pegged
my body firmly in beside the Atropos-scissors and hangman's block, which
lay beside me; then I endeavoured to recollect by what steps the fiend
had let me hither unshot, but in my agony I had perspired the whole of
it, and could remember nothing. In the Devil's village close at hand,
there was no dog to be seen and called to, who might have plucked me
from the water; and my Brother-in-law and the Postillion were both
carousing with full can. However, I summoned my courage and
determination; wrote down on a leaf of my pocket-book my last will, the
accidental manner of my death, and my dying remembrance of Berga; and
then, with full sails, flew helterskelter through the midst of it the
shortest way; expecting at every step to awaken the murderous engine,
and thus to clap over my still long candle of life the _bonsoir_, or
extinguisher, with my own hand. However, I got off without shot. In the
tavern, indeed, there was more than one fool to laugh at me; because,
forsooth, what none but a fool could know, this Notice had stood there
for the last ten years, without any gun, as guns often do without any
notice. But so it is, my Friends, with our game-police, which warns
against all things, only not against warnings.

[Note 103: Or are all Mosques, Episcopal-churches, Pagodas,
Chapels-of-Ease, Tabernacles and Pantheons, anything else than the
Ethnic Forecourt of the Invisible Temple and its Holy of Holies?]

[Note 40: The common man is copious only in narration, not in
reasoning; the cultivated man is brief only in the former, not in the
latter: because the common man's reasons are a sort of sensations,
which, as well as things visible, he merely _looks at_; by the
cultivated man, again, both reasons and things visible are rather
_thought_ than looked at.]

For the rest, throughout the whole stage, I had a constant source of
altercation with the coachman, because he grudged stopping perhaps once
in the quarter of an hour, when I chose to come out for a natural
purpose. Unhappily, in truth, one has little reason to expect
water-doctors among the postillion class, since Physicians themselves
have so seldom learned from Haller's large _Physiology_, that a
postponement of the above operation will precipitate devilish stoneware,
and at last precipitate the proprietor himself; this stone-manufactory
being generally concluded, not by the Lithotomist, but by Death. Had
postillions read that Tycho Brahe died like a bombshell by bursting,
they would rather pull up for a moment; with such unlooked-for
knowledge, they would see it to be reasonable that a man, though
expecting some time to carry his death-stone _on_ him, should not
incline, for the time being, to carry it _in_ him. Nay, have I not
often, at Weimar, in the longest concluding scenes of Schiller, run out
with tears in my eyes; purely that, while his Minerva was melting me on
the whole, I might not by the Gorgon's head on her breast be partially
turned to stone? And did I not return to the weeping playhouse, and fall
into the general emotion so much the more briskly, as now I had nothing
to give vent to but my heart?

Deep in the dark we arrived at Niederschöna.


_Third Stage; from Niederschöna to Flätz._

While I am standing at the Posthouse musing, with my eye fixed on my
portmanteau, comes a beast of a watchman, and bellows and brays in his
night-tube so close by my ear, that I start back in trepidation, I whom
even a too hasty accosting will vex. Is there no medical police, then,
against such efflated hour fulminators and alarm-cannon, by which
notwithstanding no gunpowder cannon are saved? In my opinion, nobody
should be invested with the watchman-horn but some reasonable man, who
had already blown himself into an asthma, and who would consequently be
in case to sing out his hour-verse so low, that you could not hear it.

[Note 9: In any national calamity, the ancient Egyptians took
revenge on the god Typhon, whom they blamed for it, by hurling his
favourites, the Asses, down over rocks. In similar wise have countries
of a different religion now and then taken their revenge.]

What I had long expected, and the Dwarf predicted, now took place:
deeply stooping, through the high Posthouse door, issued the Giant, and
raised, in the open air, a most unreasonably high figure, heightened by
the ell-long bonnet and feather on his huge jobber-nowl. My
Brother-in-law, beside him, looked but like his son of fourteen years;
the Dwarf like his lap-dog waiting for him on its two hind legs. "Good
friend," said my bantering Brother-in-law, leading him towards me and
the stage-coach, "just step softly in, we shall all be happy to make
room for you. Fold yourself neatly together, lay your head on your knee,
and it will do." The unseasonable banterer would willingly have seen the
almost stupid Giant (of whom he had soon observed that his brain was no
active substance, but in the inverse ratio of his trunk) squeezed in
among us in the post-chest, and lying kneaded together like a sand-bag
before him. "Won't do! Won't do!" said the Giant, looking in. "The
gentleman perhaps does not know," said the Dwarf, "how big the Giant is;
and so he thinks that because _I_ go in--But that is another story; _I_
will creep into any hole, do but tell me where."

In short, there was no resource for the Postmaster and the Giant, but
that the latter should plant himself behind, in the character of
luggage, and there lie bending down like a weeping willow over the whole
vehicle. To me such a back-wall and rear-guard could not be particularly
gratifying: and I may refer it, I hope, to any one of you, ye Friends,
if with such ware at your back, you would not, as clearly and earnestly
as I, have considered what manifold murderous projects a knave of a
Giant behind you, a _pursuer_ in all senses, might not maliciously
attempt; say, that he broke in and assailed you by the back-window, or
with Titanian strength laid hold of the coach-roof and demolished the
whole party in a lump. However, this Elephant (who indeed seemed to owe
the similarity more to his overpowering mass than to his quick light of
inward faculty), crossing his arms over the top of the vehicle, soon
began to sleep and snore above us; an Elephant, of whom, as I more and
more joyfully observed, my Brother-in-law the Dragoon could easily be
the tamer and bridle-holder, nay had already been so.

[Note 70: Let Poetry veil itself in Philosophy, but only as the
latter does in the former. Philosophy in poetised Prose resembles those
tavern drinking-glasses, encircled with parti-coloured wreaths of
figures, which disturb your enjoyment both of the drink, and (often
awkwardly eclipsing and covering each other) of the carving also.]

As more than one person now felt inclined to sleep, but I, on the
contrary, as was proper, to wake, I freely offered my seat of honour,
the front place in the coach (meaning thereby to abolish many little
flaws of envy in my fellow-passengers), to such persons as wished to
take a nap thereon. The Legations-man accepted the offer with eagerness,
and soon fell asleep there sitting, under the Titan.[4] To me this sort
of coach-sleeping of a diplomatic _chargé d'affaires_ remained a thing
incomprehensible. A man that, in the middle of a stranger and often
barbarously-minded company, permits himself to slumber, may easily,
supposing him to talk in his sleep and coach (think of the Saxon
minister[5] before the Seven-Years War!), blab out a thousand secrets,
and crimes, some of which, perhaps, he has not committed. Should not
every minister, ambassador, or other man of honour and rank, really
shudder at the thought of insanity or violent fevers; seeing no mortal
can be his surety that he shall not in such cases publish the greatest
scandals, of which, it may be, the half are lies?

[Note 4: _Titan_ is also the title of this Legations-Rath Jean
Pierre or Jean Paul (Friedrich Richter)'s chief novel.--ED.]

[Note 5: Brühl, I suppose; but the historical edition of the matter
is, that Brühl's treasonable secrets were come at by the more ordinary
means of wax impressions of his keys.--ED.]

At last, after the long July night, we passengers, together with Aurora,
arrived in the precincts of Flätz, I looked with a sharp yet moistened
eye at the steeples: I believe, every man who has anything decisive to
seek in a town, and to whom it is either to be a judgment-seat of his
hopes, or their anchoring-station, either a battle-field or a
sugar-field, first and longest directs his eye on the steeples of the
town, as upon the indexes and balance-tongues of his future destiny;
these artificial peaks, which, like natural ones, are the thrones of our
Future. As I happened to express myself on this point perhaps too
poetically to _Jean Pierre_, he answered, with sufficient want of taste:
"The steeples of such towns are indeed the Swiss Alpine peaks, on which
we milk and manufacture the Swiss cheese of our Future." Did the
Legations-Peter mean with this style to make me ridiculous, or only
himself? Determine!

"Here is the place, the town," said I in secret, "where today much and
for many years is to be determined; where thou, this evening, about five
o'clock, art to present thy petition and thyself: May it prosper! May it
be successful! Let Flätz, this arena of thy little efforts among the
rest, become a building-space for fair castles and air-castles to two
hearts, thy own and thy Berga's!"

At the Tiger Inn I alighted.


_First Day in Flätz._

No mortal, in my situation at this Tiger-hotel, would have triumphed
much in his more immediate prospects. I, as the only man known to me,
especially in the way of love (of the runaway Dragoon anon!), looked out
from the windows of the overflowing Inn, and down on the rushing sea of
marketers, and very soon began to reflect, that except Heaven and the
rascals and murderers, none knew how many of the latter two classes were
floating among the tide; purposing perhaps to lay hold of the most
innocent strangers, and in part cut their purses, in part their throats.
My situation had a special circumstance against it. My Brother-in-law,
who still comes plump out with everything, had mentioned that I was to
put up at the Tiger: O Heaven, when will such people learn to be secret,
and to cover even the meanest pettinesses of life under mantles and
veils, were it only that a silly mouse may as often give birth to a
mountain, as a mountain to a mouse! The whole rabble of the stage-coach
stopped at the Tiger; the Harlot, the Ratcatcher, _Jean Pierre_, the
Giant, who had dismounted at the Gate of the town, and carrying the huge
block-head of the Dwarf on his shoulders as his own (cloaking over the
deception by his cloak), had thus, like a ninny, exhibited himself
gratis by half a dwarf more gigantic than he could be seen for money.

[Note 158: Governments should not too often change the penny-trumps
and child's-drums of the Poets for the regimental trumpet and fire-drum:
on the other hand, good subjects should regard many a princely
drum-tendency simply as a disease, in which the patient, by air
insinuating under the skin, has got dreadfully swoln.]

[Note 89: In great towns, a stranger, for the first day or two
after his arrival, lives purely at his own expense in an inn;
afterwards, in the houses of his friends, without expense: on the other
hand, if you arrive at the Earth, as, for instance, I have done, you are
courteously maintained, precisely for the first few years, free of
charges; but in the next and longer series--for you often stay
sixty--you are actually obliged (I have the documents in my hands) to
pay for every drop and morsel, as if you were in the great Earth Inn,
which indeed you are.]

And now for each of the Passengers, the question was, how he could make
the Tiger, the heraldic emblem of the Inn, his prototype; and so, what
lamb he might suck the blood of, and tear in pieces, and devour. My
Brother-in-law too left me, having gone in quest of some horse-dealer;
but he retained the chamber next mine for his sister: this, it appeared,
was to denote attention on his part. I remained solitary, left to my own
intrepidity and force of purpose.

Yet among so many villains, encompassing if not even beleaguering me, I
thought warmly of one far distant, faithful soul, of my Berga in
Neusattel; a true heart of pith, which perhaps with many a weak
marriage-partner might have given protection rather than sought it.

"Appear, then, quickly tomorrow at noon, Berga," said my heart; "and if
possible before noon, that I may lengthen thy market paradise so many
hours as thou arrivest earlier!"

A clergyman, amid the tempests of the world, readily makes for a free
harbour, for the church: the church-wall is his casemate-wall and
fortification; and behind are to be found more peaceful and more
accordant souls than on the market-place: in short, I went into the High
Church. However, in the course of the psalm, I was somewhat disturbed by
a Heiduc, who came up to a well-dressed young gentleman sitting opposite
me, and tore the double opera-glass from his nose, it being against rule
in Flätz, as it is in Dresden, to look at the Court with glasses which
diminish and approximate. I myself had on a pair of spectacles, but they
were magnifiers. It was impossible for me to resolve on taking them off;
and here again, I am afraid, I shall pass for a foolhardy person and a
desperado; so much only I reckoned fit, to look invariably into my
psalm-book; not once lifting my eyes while the Court was rustling and
entering, thereby to denote that my glasses were ground convex. For the
rest, the sermon was good, if not always finely conceived for a
Court-church; it admonished the hearers against innumerable vices, to
whose counterparts, the virtues, another preacher might so readily have
exhorted us. During the whole service, I made it my business to exhibit
true deep reverence, not only towards God, but also towards my
illustrious Prince. For the latter reverence I had my private reason: I
wished to stamp this sentiment strongly and openly as with raised
letters on my countenance, and so give the lie to any malicious imp
about Court, by whom my contravention of the _Panegyric on Nero_, and my
free German satire on this real tyrant himself, which I had inserted in
the _Flätz Weekly Journal_, might have been perverted into a secret
characteristic portrait of my own Sovereign. We live in such times at
present, that scarcely can we compose a pasquinade on the Devil in Hell,
but some human Devil on Earth will apply it to an angel.

[Note 107: Germany is a long lofty mountain--under the sea.]

[Note 144: The Reviewer does not in reality employ his pen for
writing; but he burns it, to awaken weak people from their swoons, with
the smell; he tickles with it the throat of the plagiary, to make him
render back; and he picks with it his own teeth. He is the only
individual in the whole learned lexicon that can never exhaust himself,
never write himself out, let him sit before the ink-glass for centuries
or tens of centuries. For while the Scholar, the Philosopher, and the
Poet, produce their new book solely from new materials and growth, the
Reviewer merely lays his old gage of taste and knowledge on a thousand
new works; and his light, in the ever-passing, ever-differently-cut
glass-world which he _elucidates_, is still refracted into new colours.]

When the Court at last issued from church, and were getting into their
carriages, I kept at such a distance that my face could not possibly be
noticed, in case I had happened to assume no reverent look, but an
indifferent or even proud one. God knows, who has kneaded into me those
mad desperate fancies and crotchets, which perhaps would sit better on a
Hero Schabacker than on an Army-chaplain under him. I cannot here
forbear recording to you, my Friends, one of the maddest among them,
though at first it may throw too glaring a light on me. It was at my
ordination to be Army-chaplain, while about to participate in the
Sacrament, on the first day of Easter. Now, here while I was standing,
moved into softness, before the balustrade of the altar, in the middle
of the whole male congregation,--nay, I perhaps more deeply moved than
any among them, since, as a person going to war, I might consider myself
a half-dead man, that was now partaking in the last Feast of Souls, as
it were like a person to be hanged on the morrow,--here then, amid the
pathetic effects of the organ and singing, there rose something--were it
the first Easter-day which awoke in me what primitive Christians called
their Easter-laughter, or merely the contrast between the most devilish
predicaments and the most holy,--in short there rose something in me
(for which reason, I have ever since taken the part of every simple
person, who might ascribe such things to the Devil), and this something
started the question: "Now, could there be aught more diabolical than if
thou, just in receiving the Holy Supper, wert madly and blasphemously to
begin laughing?" Instantly I took to wrestling with this hell-dog of a
thought; neglected the most precious feelings, merely to keep the dog in
my eye, and scare him away; yet was forced to draw back from him,
exhausted and unsuccessful, and arrived at the step of the altar with
the mournful certainty that in a little while I should, without more
ado, begin laughing, let me weep and moan inwardly as I liked.
Accordingly, while I and a very worthy old Bürgermeister were bowing
down together before the long parson, and the latter (perhaps kneeling
on the low cushion, I fancied him too long) put the wafer in my clenched
mouth, I felt all the muscles of laughter already beginning sardonically
to contract; and these had not long acted on the guiltless integument,
till an actual smile appeared there; and as we bowed the second time, I
was grinning like an ape. My companion the Bürgermeister justly
expostulated with me, in a low voice, as we walked round behind the
altar: "In Heaven's name, are you an ordained Preacher of the Gospel, or
a Merry-Andrew? Is it Satan that is laughing out of you?"

[Note 71: The Youth is singular from caprice, and takes pleasure in
it; the Man is so from constraint, unintentionally, and feels pain in
it.]

[Note 198: The Populace and Cattle grow giddy on the edge of no
abyss; with the Man it is otherwise.]

"Ah, Heaven! who else?" said I; and this being over, I finished my
devotions in a more becoming fashion.

From the church (I now return to the Flätz one), I proceeded to the
Tiger Inn, and dined at the _table-d'hôte_, being at no time shy of
encountering men. Previous to the second course, a waiter handed me an
empty plate, on which, to my astonishment, I noticed a French verse
scratched-in with a fork, containing nothing less than a lampoon on the
Commandant of Flätz. Without ceremony, I held out the plate to the
company; saying, I had just, as they saw, got this lampooning cover
presented to me, and must request them to bear witness that I had
nothing to do with the matter. An officer directly changed plates with
me. During the fifth course, I could not but admire the chemico-medical
ignorance of the company; for a hare, out of which a gentleman extracted
and exhibited several grains of shot, that is to say, therefore, of lead
alloyed with arsenic, and then cleaned by hot vinegar, did,
nevertheless, by the spectators (I excepted) continue to be pleasantly
eaten.

[Note 11: The Golden Calf of Self-love soon waxes to be a burning
Phalaris' Bull, which reduces its father and adorer to ashes.]

[Note 103: The male Beau-crop which surrounds the female Roses and
Lilies, must (if I rightly comprehend its flatteries) most probably
presuppose in the fair the manners of the Spaniards and Italians, who
offer any valuable, by way of present, to the man who praises it
excessively.]

In the course of our table-talk, one topic seized me keenly by my weak
side, I mean by my honour. The law custom of the city happened to be
mentioned, as it affects natural children; and I learned that here a
loose girl may convert any man she pleases to select into the father of
her brat, simply by her oath. "Horrible!" said I, and my hair stood on
end. "In this way may the worthiest head of a family, with a wife and
children, or a clergyman lodging in the Tiger, be stript of honour and
innocence, by any wicked chambermaid whom he may have seen, or who may
have seen him, in the course of her employment!"

An elderly officer observed: "But will the girl swear herself to the
Devil so readily?"

What logic! "Or suppose," continued I, without answer, "a man happened
to be travelling with that Vienna Locksmith, who afterwards became a
mother, and was brought to bed of a baby son; or with any disguised
Chevalier d'Eon, who often passes the night in his company, whereby the
Locksmith or the Chevalier can swear to their private interviews: no
delicate man of honour will in the end risk travelling with another;
seeing he knows not how soon the latter may pull off his boots, and pull
on his women's-pumps, and swear his companion into fatherhood, and
himself to the Devil!"

Some of the company, however, misunderstood my oratorical fire so much,
that they, sheep-wise, gave some insinuations as if I myself were not
strict in this point, but lax. By Heaven! I no longer knew what I was
eating or speaking. Happily, on the opposite side of the table, some
lying story of a French defeat was started: now, as I had read on the
street-corners that French and German Proclamation, calling before the
Court Martial any one who had heard war-rumours (disadvantageous,
namely), without giving notice of them,--I, as a man not willing ever to
forget himself, had nothing more prudent to do in this case, than to
withdraw with empty ears, telling none but the landlord why.

[Note 199: But not many existing Governments, I believe, do behead
under pretext of trepanning; or sew (in a more choice allegory) the
people's lips together, under pretence of sewing the harelips in them.]

[Note 67: Hospitable Entertainer, wouldst thou search into thy
guest? Accompany him to another Entertainer, and listen to him. Just so:
Wouldst thou become better acquainted with Mistress in an hour, than by
living with her for a month? Accompany her among her female friends and
female enemies (if that is no pleonasm), and look at her!]

It was no improper time; for I had previously determined to have my
beard shaven about half-past four, that so, towards five I might present
myself with a chin just polished by the razor smoothing-iron, and sleek
as wove-paper, without the smallest root-stump of a hair left on it. By
way of preparation, like Pitt before Parliamentary debates, I poured a
devilish deal of Pontac into my stomach, with true disgust, and contrary
to all sanitary rules; not so much for fronting the light stranger
Barber, as the Minister and General von Schabacker, with whom I had it
in view to exchange perhaps more than one fiery statement.

The common Hotel Barber was ushered in to me; but at first view you
noticed in his polygonal zigzag visage, more of a man that would finally
go mad, than of one growing wiser. Now, madmen are a class of persons
whom I hate incredibly; and nothing can take me to see any madhouse,
simply because the first maniac among them may clutch me in his giant
fists if he like; and because, owing to infection, I cannot be sure that
I shall ever get out again with the sense which I brought in. In a
general way, I sit (when once I am lathered) in such a posture on my
chair as to keep both my hands (the eyes I fix intently on the barbering
countenance) lying clenched along my sides, and pointed directly at the
midriff of the barber; that so, on the smallest ambiguity of movement, I
may dash in upon him, and overset him in a twinkling.

I scarce know rightly how it happened; but here, while I am anxiously
studying the foolish twisted visage of the shaver, and he just then
chanced to lay his long-whetted weapon a little too abruptly against my
bare throat, I gave him such a sudden bounce on the abdominal viscera,
that the silly varlet had well-nigh suicidally slit his own windpipe.
For me, truly, nothing remained but to indemnify the man; and then,
contrary to my usual principles, to tie round a broad stuffed cravat, by
way of cloak to what remained unshorn.

[Note 80: In the summer of life, men keep digging and filling
ice-pits as well as circumstances will admit; that so, in their Winter,
they may have something in store to give them coolness.]

[Note 28: It is impossible for me, amid the tendril-forest of
allusions (even this again is a tendril-twig), to state and declare on
the spot whether all the Courts or Heights, the (Bougouer) _Snowline_ of
Europe, have ever been mentioned in my Writings or not; but I could wish
for information on the subject, that if not, I may try to do it still.]

And now at last I sallied forth to the General, drinking out the remnant
of the Pontac, as I crossed the threshold. I hope, there were plans
lying ready within me for answering rightly, nay for asking. The
Petition I carried in my pocket, and in my right hand. In the left I had
a duplicate of it. My fire of spirit easily helped over the living fence
of ministerial obstructions; and soon I unexpectedly found myself in the
ante-chamber, among his most distinguished lackeys; persons, so far as I
could see, not inclined to change flour for bran with any one. Selecting
the most respectable individual of the number, I delivered him my paper
request, accompanied with the verbal one that he would hand it in. He
took it, but ungraciously: I waited in vain till far in the sixth hour,
at which season alone the gay General can safely be applied to. At last
I pitch upon another lackey, and repeat my request: he runs about
seeking his runaway brother, or my Petition; to no purpose, neither of
them could be found. How happy was it that in the midst of my Pontac,
before shaving, I had written out the duplicate of this paper; and
therefore--simply on the principle that you should always keep a second
wooden leg packed into your knapsack when you have the first on your
body--and out of fear that if the original petition chanced to drop from
me in the way between the Tiger and Schabacker's, my whole journey and
hope would melt into water--and therefore, I say, having stuck the
repeating work of that original paper into my pocket, I had, in any
case, something to hand in, and that something truly a Ditto. I handed
it in.

[Note 36: And so I should like, in all cases, to be the First,
especially in Begging. The first prisoner-of-war, the first cripple, the
first man ruined by burning (like him who brings the first fire-engine),
gains the head-subscription and the heart; the next-comer finds nothing
but Duty to address; and at last, in this melodious _mancando_ of
sympathy, matters sink so far, that the last (if the last but one may at
least have retired laden with a rich "God help you!") obtains from the
benignant hand nothing more than its fist. And as in Begging the first,
so in Giving I should like to be the last: one obliterates the other,
especially the last the first. So, however, is the world ordered.]

Unhappily six o'clock was already past. The lackey, however, did not
keep me long waiting; but returned with--I may say, the text of this
whole Circular--the almost rude answer (which you, my Friends, out of
regard for me and Schabacker, will not divulge) that: "In case I were
the Attila Schmelzle of Schabacker's Regiment, I might lift my
pigeon-liver flag again, and fly to the Devil, as I did at Pimpelstadt."
Another man would have dropt dead on the spot: I, however, walked quite
stoutly off, answering the fellow: "With great pleasure indeed, I fly to
the Devil; and so Devil a fly I care." On the road home I examined
myself whether it had not been the Pontac that spoke out of me (though
the very examination contradicted this, for Pontac never examines); but
I found that nothing but I, my heart, my courage perhaps, had spoken:
and why, after all, any whimpering? Does not the patrimony of my good
wife endow me better than ten Catechetical Professorships? And has she
not furnished all the corners of my book of Life with so many golden
clasps, that I can open it forever without wearing it? Let henhearts
cackle and pip; I flapped my pinions, and said: "Dash boldly through it,
come what may!" I felt myself excited and exalted; I fancied Republics,
in which I, as a hero, might be at home; I longed to be in that noble
Grecian time, when one hero readily put up with bastinadoes from
another, and said: "Strike, but hear!" and out of this ignoble one,
where men will scarcely put up with hard words, to say nothing of more.
I painted out to my mind how I should feel, if, in happier
circumstances, I were uprooting hollow Thrones, and before whole nations
mounting on mighty deeds as on the Temple-steps of Immortality; and in
gigantic ages, finding quite other men to outman and outstrip, than the
mite-populace about me, or, at the best, here and there a Vulcanello. I
thought and thought, and grew wilder and wilder, and intoxicated myself
(no Pontac intoxication therefore, which, you know, increases more by
continuance than cessation of drinking), and gesticulated openly, as I
put the question to myself: "Wilt thou be a mere state-lapdog? A
dog's-dog, a _pium desiderium_ of an _impium desiderium_, an Ex-Ex, a
Nothing's-Nothing?--Fire and Fury!" With this, however, I dashed down my
hat into the mud of the market. On lifting and cleaning this old
servant, I could not but perceive how worn and faded it was; and I
therefore determined instantly to purchase a new one, and carry the same
home in my hand.

[Note 136: If you mount too high above your time, your ears (on the
side of Fame) are little better off than if you sink too deep below it:
in truth, Charles up in his Balloon, and Halley down in his Diving-bell,
felt equally the same strange pain in their ears.]

I accomplished this; I bought one of the finest cut. Strangely enough,
by this hat, as if it had been a graduation-hat, was my head tried and
examined, in the Ziegengasse or Goat-gate of Flätz. For as General
Schabacker came driving along that street in his carriage, and I (it
need not be said) was determined to avenge myself, not by vulgar
clownishness, but by courtesy, I had here got one of the most ticklish
problems imaginable to solve on the spur of the instant. You observe, if
I swung only the fine hat which I carried in my hand, and kept the faded
one on my head,--I might have the appearance of a perfect clown, who
does not doff at all: if, on the other hand, I pulled the old hat from
my head, and therewith did my reverence, then two hats, both in play at
once (let me swing the other at the same time or not), brought my salute
within the verge of ridicule. Now do you, my Friends, before reading
farther, bethink you how a man was to extricate himself from such a
plight, without losing head! I think, perhaps, by this means: by merely
losing hat. In one word, then, I simply dropped the new hat from my hand
into the mud, to put myself in a condition for taking off the old hat by
itself, and swaying it in needful courtesy, without any shade of
ridicule.

Arrived at the Tiger,--to avoid misconstructions, I first had the
glossy, fine and superfine hat cleaned, and some time afterwards the
mud-hat or rubbish-hat.

And now, weighing my momentous Past in the adjusting balance within me,
I walked in fiery mood to and fro. The Pontac must--I know that there is
no unadulterated liquor here below--have been more than usually
adulterated; so keenly did it chase my fancy out of one fire into the
other. I now looked forth into a wide glittering life, in which I lived
without post, merely on money; and which I beheld, as it were, sowed
with the Delphic caves, and Zenonic walks, and Muse-hills of all the
Sciences, which I might now cultivate at my ease. In particular, I
should have it in my power to apply more diligently to writing
Prize-essays for Academies; of which (that is to say, of the
Prize-essays) no author need ever be ashamed, since, in all cases, there
is a whole crowning Academy to stand and blush for the crownee. And even
if the Prize-marksman does not hit the crown, he still continues more
unknown and more anonymous (his Device not being unsealed) than any
other author, who indeed can publish some nameless Long-ear of a book,
but not hinder it from being, by a Literary Ass-burial (_sepultura
asinina_), publicly interred, in a short time, before half the world.

[Note 25: In youth, like a blind man just couched (and what is
birth but a couching of the sight?), you take the Distant for the Near,
the starry heaven for tangible room-furniture, pictures for objects;
and, to the young man, the whole world is sitting on his very nose, till
repeated bandaging and unbandaging have at last taught him, like the
blind patient, to estimate _Distance_ and _Appearance_.]

Only one thing grieved me by anticipation; the sorrow of my Berga, for
whom, dear tired wayfarer, I on the morrow must overcloud her arrival,
and her shortened market-spectacle, by my negatory intelligence. She
would so gladly (and who can take it ill of a rich farmer's daughter?)
have made herself somebody in Neusattel, and overshone many a female
dignitary! Every mortal longs for his parade-place, and some earlier
living honour than the last honours. Especially so good a lowly-born
housewife as my Berga, conscious perhaps rather of her metallic than of
her spiritual treasure, would still wish at banquets to be mistress of
some seat or other, and so in place to overtop this or that plucked
goose of the neighbourhood.

It is in this point of view that husbands are so indispensable. I
therefore resolved to purchase for myself, and consequently for her, one
of the best of those titles, which our Courts in Germany (as in a
Leipzig sale-room) stand offering to buyers, in all sizes and sorts,
from Noble and Half-noble down to Rath or Councillor; and once invested
therewith, to reflect from my own Quarter-nobility such an
Eighth-part-nobility on this true soul, that many a Neusattelitess (I
hope) shall half burst with envy, and say and cry: "Pooh, the stupid
farmer thing! See how it wabbles and bridles! It has forgot how matters
stood when it had no money-bag, and no Hofrath!" For to the Hofrathship
I shall before this have attained.

But in the cold solitude of my room, and the fire of my remembrances, I
longed unspeakably for my Bergelchen: I and my heart were wearied with
the foreign busy day; no one here said a kind word to me, which he did
not hope to put in the bill. Friends! I languished for my friend, whose
heart would pour out its blood as a balsam for a second heart; I cursed
my over-prudent regulations, and wished that, to have the good Berga at
my side, I had given up the stupid houseware to all thieves and fires
whatsoever: as I walked to and fro, it seemed to me easier and easier to
become all things, an Exchequer-Rath, an Excise-Rath, any Rath in the
world, and whatever she required when she came.

[Note 125: In the long-run, out of mere fear and necessity, we
shall become the warmest cosmopolites I know of; so rapidly do ships
shoot to and fro, and, like shuttles, weave Islands and Quarters of the
World together. For, let but the political weatherglass fall today in
South America, tomorrow we in Europe have storm and thunder.]

"See thou take thy pleasure in the town!" had Bergelchen kept saying the
whole week through. But how, without her, can I take any? Our tears of
sorrow friends dry up, and accompany with their own: but our tears of
joy we find most readily repeated in the eyes of our wives. Pardon me,
good Friends, these libations of my sensibility; I am but showing you my
heart and my Berga. If I need an Absolution-merchant, the
Pontac-merchant is the man.


_First Night in Flätz._

Yet the wine did not take from me the good sense to look under the bed,
before going into it, and examine whether any one was lurking there; for
example, the Dwarf, or the Ratcatcher, or the Legations-Rath; also to
shove the key under the latch (which I reckon the best bolting
arrangement of all), and then, by way of farther assurance, to bore my
night-screws into the door, and pile all the chairs in a heap behind it;
and, lastly, to keep on my breeches and shoes, wishing absolutely to
have no care upon my mind.

But I had still other precautions to take in regard to sleepwalking. To
me it has always been incomprehensible how so many men can go to bed,
and lie down at their ease there, without reflecting that perhaps, in
the first sleep, they may get up again as Somnambulists, and crawl over
the tops of roofs and the like; awakening in some spot where they may
fall in a moment and break their necks. While at home, there is little
risk in my sleep: because, my right toe being fastened every night with
three ells of tape (I call it in jest our marriage-tie) to my wife's
left hand, I feel a certainty that, in case I should start up from this
bed-arrest, I must with the tether infallibly awaken her, and so by my
Berga, as by my living bridle, be again led back to bed. But here in the
Inn, I had nothing for it but to knot myself once or twice to the
bed-foot, that I might not wander; though in this way, an irruption of
villains would have brought double peril with it.--Alas! so dangerous is
sleep at all times, that every man, who is not lying on his back a
corpse, must be on his guard lest with the general system some limb or
other also fall asleep; in which case the sleeping limb (there are not
wanting examples of it in Medical History) may next morning be lying
ripe for amputation. For this reason, I have myself frequently awakened,
that no part of me fall asleep.

[Note 19: It is easier, they say, to climb a hill when you ascend
back foremost. This, perhaps, might admit of application to political
eminences; if you still turned towards them that part of the body on
which you sit, and kept your face directed down to the people; all the
while, however, removing and mounting.]

[Note 26: Few German writers are not original, if we may ascribe
originality (as is at least the conversational practice of all people)
to a man, who merely dishes out his own thoughts without foreign
admixture. For as, between their Memory, where their reading or foreign
matter dwells, and their Imagination or Productive Power, where their
writing or own peculiar matter originates, a sufficient space
intervenes, and the boundary-stones are fixed-in so conscientiously and
firmly that nothing foreign may pass over into their own, or inversely,
so that they may really read a hundred works without losing their own
primitive flavour, or even altering it,--their individuality may, I
believe, be considered as secured; and their spiritual nourishment,
their pancakes, loaves, fritters, caviare and meat-balls, are not
assimilated to their system, but given back pure and unaltered. Often in
my own mind I figure such writers as living but thousandfold more
artificial Ducklings from Vaucanson's Artificial Duck of Wood. For in
fact they are not less cunningly put together than this timber Duck,
which will gobble meat, and apparently void it again, under show of
having digested it, and derived from it blood and juices; though the
secret of the business is, the artist has merely introduced an ingenious
compound ejective matter behind, with which concoction and nourishment
have nothing to do, but which the Duck illusorily gives forth and
publishes to the world.]

Having properly tied myself to the bed-posts, and at length got under
the coverlid, I now began to be dubious about my Pontac Fire-bath, and
apprehensive of the valorous and tumultuous dreams too likely to ensue;
which, alas, did actually prove to be nothing better than heroic and
monarchic feats, castle-stormings, rock-throwings, and the like. This
point also I am sorry to see so little attended to in medicine. Medical
gentlemen, as well as their customers, all stretch themselves quietly in
their beds, without one among them considering whether a furious rage
(supposing him also directly after to drink cold water in his dream), or
a heart-devouring grief, all which he may undergo in vision, does harm
to life or not.

Shortly before midnight, I awoke from a heavy dream, to encounter a
ghost-trick much too ghostly for my fancy. My Brother-in-law, who
manufactured it, deserves for such vapid cookery to be named before you
without reserve, as the malt-master of this washy brewage. Had suspicion
been more compatible with intrepidity, I might perhaps, by his moral
maxim about this matter, on the road, as well as by his taking up the
side-room, at the middle door of which stood my couch, have easily
divined the whole. But now, on awakening, I felt myself blown upon by a
cold ghost-breath, which I could nowise deduce from the distant bolted
window; a point I had rightly decided, for the Dragoon was producing the
phenomenon, through the keyhole, by a pair of bellows. Every sort of
coldness, in the night-season, reminds you of clay-coldness and
spectre-coldness. I summoned my resolution, however, and abode the
issue: but now the very coverlid began to get in motion; I pulled it
towards me; it would not stay; sharply I sit upright in my bed, and cry:
"What is that?" No answer; everywhere silence in the Inn; the whole room
full of moonshine. And now my drawing-plaster, my coverlid, actually
rose up, and let in the air; at which I felt like a wounded man whose
cataplasm you suddenly pull off. In this crisis, I made a bold leap from
this Devil's-torus, and, leaping, snapped asunder my somnambulist
tether. "Where is the silly human fool," cried I, "that dares to ape the
unseen sublime world of Spirits, which may, in the instant, open before
him?" But on, above, under the bed, there was nothing to be heard or
seen. I looked out of the window: everywhere spectral moonlight and
street-stillness; nothing moving except (probably from the wind), on the
distant Gallows-hill, a person lately hanged.

Any man would have taken it for self-deception as well as I: therefore I
again wrapped myself in my passive _lit de justice_ and air-bed, and
waited with calmness to see whether my fright would subside or not.

[Note 15: After the manner of the fine polished English
folding-knives, there are now also folding-war-swords, or in other
words--Treaties of Peace.]

[Note 13: _Omnibus una_ SALUS _Sanctis, sed_ GLORIA _dispar:_ that
is to say (as Divines once taught) according to Saint Paul, we have all
the same Beatitude in Heaven, but different degrees of Honour. Here, on
Earth, we find a shadow of this in the writing world; for the Beatitude
of authors once beatified by Criticism, whether they be genial, good,
mediocre, or poor, is the same throughout; they all obtain the same
pecuniary Felicity, the same slender profit. But, Heavens! in regard to
the degrees of Fame, again, how far (in spite of the same emolument and
sale) will a Dunce, even in his lifetime, be put below a Genius! Is not
a shallow writer frequently forgotten in a single Fair, while a deep
writer, or even a writer of genius, will blossom through fifty Fairs,
and so may celebrate his Twenty-five Years' Jubilee, before, late
forgotten, he is lowered into the German Temple of Fame; a Temple
imitating the peculiarity of the _Padri Luichesi_ churches in Naples,
which (according to Volkmann) permit _burials_ under their roofs, but no
_tombstone_.]

In a few minutes, the coverlid, the infernal Faust's-mantle, again began
flying and towing; also, by way of change, the invisible bed-maker again
lifted me up. Accursed hour!--I should beg to know whether, in the whole
of cultivated Europe, there is one cultivated or uncultivated man, who,
in a case of this kind, would not have lighted on ghost-devilry? I
lighted on it, under my piece of (self) movable property, my coverlid:
and thought Berga had died suddenly, and was now, in spirit, laying hold
of my bed. However, I could not speak to her, nor as little to the
Devil, who might well be supposed to have a hand in the game; but I
turned myself solely to Heaven, and prayed aloud: "To thee I commit
myself; thou alone heretofore hast cared for thy weak servant; and I
swear that I will turn a new leaf,"--a promise which shall be kept
nevertheless, though the whole was but stupid treachery and trick.

My prayer had no effect with the unchristian Dragoon, who now, once for
all, had got me prisoner in the dragnet of a coverlid; and heeded little
whether a guest's bed were, by his means, made a state-bed and death-bed
or not. He span out my nerves, like gold-wire through smaller and
smaller holes, to utter inanition and evanition; for the bed-clothes at
last literally marched off to the door of the room.

Now was the moment to rise into the sublime; and to trouble myself no
longer about aught here below, but softly to devote myself to death.
"Snatch me away," cried I, and, without thinking, cut three crosses;
"quick, dispatch me, ye ghosts: I die more innocent than thousands of
tyrants and blasphemers, to whom ye yet appear not, but to unpolluted
me." Here I heard a sort of laugh, either on the street or in the
side-room: at this warm human tone, I suddenly bloomed up again, as at
the coming of a new Spring, in every twig and leaf. Wholly despising the
winged coverlid, which was not now to be picked from the door, I laid
myself down uncovered, but warm and perspiring from other causes, and
soon fell asleep. For the rest, I am not the least ashamed, in the face
of all refined capital cities,--though they were standing here at my
hand,--that by this Devil-belief and Devil-address I have attained some
likeness to our great German Lion, to Luther.


_Second Day in Flätz._

Early in the morning, I felt myself awakened by the well-known coverlid;
it had laid itself on me like a nightmare: I gaped up; quiet, in a
corner of the room, sat a red, round, blooming, decorated girl, like a
full-blown tulip in the freshness of life, and gently rustling with gay
ribbons as with leaves.

"Who's there--how came you in?" cried I, half-blind.

"I covered thee softly, and thought to let thee sleep," said Bergelchen;
"I have walked all night to be here early; do but look!"

She showed me her boots, the only remnant of her travelling-gear, which,
in the moulting process of the toilette, she had not stript at the gate
of Flätz.

"Is there," said I, alarmed at her coming six hours sooner, and the
more, as I had been alarmed all night and was still so, at her
mysterious entrance,--"is there some fresh woe come over us, fire,
murder, robbery?"

She answered: "The old Rat thou hast chased so long died yesterday;
farther, there was nothing of importance."

"And all has been managed rightly, and according to my Letter of
Instructions, at home?" inquired I.

"Yes, truly," answered she; "only I did not see the Letter; it is lost;
thou hast packed it among thy clothes."

Well, I could not but forgive the blooming brave pedestrian all
omissions. Her eye, then her heart was bringing fresh cool morning air
and morning red into my sultry hours. And yet, for this kind soul,
looking into life with such love and hope, I must in a little while
overcloud the merited Heaven of today, with tidings of my failure in the
Catechetical Professorship! I dallied and postponed to the utmost. I
asked how she had got in, as the whole _chevaux-de-frise_ barricado of
chairs was still standing fast at the door. She laughed heartily,
curtseying in village fashion, and said, she had planned it with her
brother the day before yesterday, knowing my precautions in locking,
that he should admit her into my room, that so she might cunningly
awaken me. And now bolted the Dragoon with loud laughter into the
apartment, and cried: "Slept well, brother?"

[Note 79: Weak and wrong heads are the hardest to change; and their
inward man acquires a scanty covering: thus capons never moult.]

[Note 89: In times of misfortune, the Ancients supported themselves
with Philosophy or Christianity; the moderns again (for example, in the
reign of Terror), take to Pleasure; as the wounded Buffalo, for bandage
and salve, rolls himself in the mire.]

In this wise truly the whole ghost-story was now solved and expounded,
as if by the pen of a Biester or a Hennings; I instantly saw through the
entire ghost-scheme, which our Dragoon had executed. With some
bitterness I told him my conjecture, and his sister my story. But he
lied and laughed; nay, attempted shamelessly enough to palm
spectre-notions on me a second time, in open day. I answered coldly,
that in me he had found the wrong man, granting even that I had some
similarity with Luther, with Hobbes, with Brutus, all of whom had seen
and dreaded ghosts. He replied, tearing the facts away from their
originating causes: "All he could say was, that last night he had heard
some poor sinner creaking and lamenting dolefully enough; and from this
he had inferred, it must be an unhappy brother set upon by goblins."

In the end, his sister's eyes also were opened to the low character
which he had tried to act with me: she sharply flew at him, pushed him
with both hands out of his and my door, and called after him: "Wait,
thou villain, I will mind it!"

Then hastily turning round, she fell on my neck, and (at the wrong
place) into laughter, and said: "The wild fool! But I could not keep my
laugh another minute, and he was not to see it. Forgive the ninny, thou
a learned man, his ass pranks: what can one expect?"

I inquired whether she, in her nocturnal travelling, had not met with
any spectral persons; though I knew that to her, a wild beast, a river,
a half abyss, are nothing. No, she had not; but the gay-dressed
town's-people, she said, had scared her in the morning. O! how I do
love these soft Harmonica-quiverings of female fright!

[Note 181: God be thanked that we live nowhere forever except in
Hell or Heaven; on Earth otherwise we should grow to be the veriest
rascals, and the World a House of Incurables, for want of the dog-doctor
(the Hangman), and the issue-cord (on the Gallows), and the sulphur and
chalybeate medicines (on Battlefields). So that we too find our gigantic
moral force dependent on the _Debt of Nature_ which we have to pay,
exactly as your politicians (for example, the Author of the _New
Leviathan_) demonstrate that the English have their _National Debt_ to
thank for their superiority.]

At last, however, I was forced to bite or cut the coloquinta-apple, and
give her the half of it; I mean the news of my rejected petition for the
Catechetical Professorship. Wishing to spare this joyful heart the
rudeness of the whole truth, and to subtract something from a heavy
burden, more fit for the shoulders of a man, I began: "Bergelchen, the
Professorship affair is taking another, though still a good enough
course: the General, whom may the Devil and his Grandmother teach sense,
will not be taken except by storm; and storm he shall have, as certainly
as I have on my nightcap."

"Then, thou art nothing yet?" inquired she.

"For the moment, indeed, not!" answered I.

"But before Saturday night?" said she.

"Not quite," said I.

"Then am I sore stricken, and could leap out of the window," said she,
and turned away her rosy face, to hide its wet eyes, and was silent very
long. Then, with painfully quivering voice, she began: "Good Christ
stand by me at Neusattel on Sunday, when these high-prancing prideful
dames look at me in church, and I grow scarlet for shame!"

Here in sympathetic woe I sprang out of bed to the dear soul, over whose
brightly blooming cheeks warm tears were rolling, and cried: "Thou true
heart, do not tear me in pieces so! May I die, if yet in these dog-days
I become not all and everything that thou wishest! Speak, wilt thou be
Mining-räthin, Build-räthin, Court-räthin, War-räthin, Chamber-räthin,
Commerce-räthin, Legations-räthin, or Devil and his Dam's räthin: I am
here, and will buy it, and be it. Tomorrow I send riding posts to Saxony
and Hessia, to Prussia and Russia, to Friesland and Katzenellenbogen,
and demand patents. Nay, I will carry matters farther than another, and
be all things at once, Flachsenfingen Court-rath, Scheerau Excise-rath,
Haarhaar Building-rath, Pestitz[6] Chamber-rath (for we have the cash);
and thus, alone and single-handed, represent with one _podex_ and
_corpus_ a whole Rath-session of select Raths; and stand, a complete
Legion of Honour, on one single pair of legs: the like no man ever did."

[Note 63: To apprehend danger from the Education of the People, is
like fearing lest the thunderbolt strike into the house because it has
_windows_; whereas the lightning never comes through these, but through
their _lead_ framing, or down by the _smoke_ of the chimney.]

[Note 6: Cities of Richter's romance kingdom. Flachsenfingen he
sometimes calls _Klein-Wien_, Little Vienna.--ED.]

"O! now thou art angel-good!" said she, and gladder tears rolled down;
"thou shalt counsel me thyself which are the finest Raths, and these we
will be."

"No," continued I, in the fire of the moment, "neither shall this serve
us: to me it is not enough that to Mrs. Chaplain thou canst announce
thyself as Building-räthin, to Mrs. Town-parson as Legations-räthin, to
Mrs. Bürgermeister as Court-räthin, to Mrs. Road-and-toll-surveyor as
Commerce-räthin, or how and where thou pleasest----"

"Ah! my own too good Attelchen!" said she.

"--But," continued I, "I shall likewise become corresponding member of
the several Learned Societies in the several best capital cities (among
which I have only to choose); and truly no common actual member, but a
whole honorary member; then thee, as another honorary member, growing
out of my honorary membership, I uplift and exalt."

Pardon me, my Friends, this warm cataplasm, or deception-balsam for a
wounded breast, whose blood is so pure and precious, that one may be
permitted to endeavour, with all possible stanching-lints and
spider-webs, to drive it back into the fair heart, its home.

But now came bright and brightest hours. I had conquered Time, I had
conquered myself and Berga: seldom does a conqueror, as I did, bless
both the victorious and the vanquished party. Berga called back her
former Heaven, and pulled off her dusty boots, and on her flowery shoes.
Precious morning beverage, intoxicating to a heart that loves! I felt
(if the low figure may be permitted) a double-beer of courage in me, now
that I had one being more to protect. In general it is my nature--which
the honourable Premier seems not to be fully aware of--to grow bolder
not among the bold, but fastest among poltroons, the bad example acting
on me by the rule of contraries. Little touches may in this case shadow
forth man and wife, without casting them into the shade: When the trim
waiter with his green silk apron brought up cracknels for breakfast,
and I told him: "Johann, for two!" Berga said: "He would oblige her very
much," and called him Herr Johann.

[Note 76: Your economical, preaching Poetry, apparently supposes
that a surgical Stone-cutter is an Artistical one; and a Pulpit or a
Sinai a Hill of the Muses.]

Bergelchen, more familiar with rural burghs than capital cities, felt a
good deal amazed and alarmed at the coffee-trays, dressing-tables,
paper-hangings, sconces, alabaster inkholders, with Egyptian emblems, as
well as at the gilt bell-handle, lying ready for any one to pull out or
to push in. Accordingly, she had not courage to walk through the hall,
with its lustres, purely because a whistling, whiffling Cap-and-feather
was gesturing up and down in it. Nay, her poor heart was like to fail
when she peeped out of the window at so many gay promenading
town's-people (I was briskly whistling a Gascon air down over them); and
thought that in a little while, at my side, she must break into the
middle of this dazzling courtly throng. In a case like this, reasons are
of less avail than examples. I tried to elevate my Bergelchen, by
reciting some of my nocturnal dream-feats; for example, how, riding on a
whale's back, with a three-pronged fork, I had pierced and eaten three
eagles; and by more of the like sort: but I produced no effect; perhaps,
because to the timid female heart the battle-field was presented rather
than the conqueror, the abyss rather than the overleaper of it.

At this time a sheaf of newspapers was brought me, full of gallant
decisive victories. And though these happen only on one side, and on the
other are just so many defeats, yet the former somehow assimilate more
with my blood than the latter, and inspire me (as Schiller's _Robbers_
used to do) with a strange inclination to lay hold of some one, and
thrash and curry him on the spot. Unluckily for the waiter, he had
chanced, even now, like a military host, to stand a triple bell-order
for march, before he would leave his ground and come up. "Sir," began I,
my head full of battle-fields, and my arm of inclination to baste him;
and Berga feared the very worst, as I gave her the well-known anger and
alarm signal, namely, shoved up my cap to my hindhead--"Sir, is this
your way of treating guests? Why don't you come promptly? Don't come so
again; and now be going, friend!" Although his retreat was my victory,
I still kept briskly cannonading on the field of action, and fired the
louder (to let him hear it), the more steps he descended in his flight.
Bergelchen,--who felt quite horrorstruck at my fury, particularly in a
quite strange house, and at a quality waiter with silk apron,--mustered
all her soft words against the wild ones of a man-of-war, and spoke of
dangers that might follow. "Dangers," answered I, "are just what I seek;
but for a man there are none; in all cases he will either conquer or
evade them, either show them front or back."

[Note 115: According to Smith, the universal measure of economical
value is _Labour_. This fact, at least in regard to spiritual and
poetical value, we Germans had discovered before Smith; and to my
knowledge we have always preferred the learned poet to the poet of
genius, and the heavy book full of labour to the light one full of
sport.]

I could scarcely lay aside this indignant mood, so sweet was it to me,
and so much did I feel refreshed by the fire of rage, and quickened in
my breast as by a benignant stimulant. It belongs certainly to the class
of Unrecognised Mercies (on which, in ancient times, special sermons
were preached), that one is never more completely in his Heaven and
_Monplaisir_ (a pleasure-palace) than while in the midst of right hearty
storming and indignation. Heavens! what might not a man of weight
accomplish in this new walk of charity! The gall-bladder is for us the
chief swimming-bladder and Montgolfier; and the filling of it costs us
nothing but a contumelious word or two from some bystander. And does not
the whirlwind Luther, with whom I nowise compare myself, confess, in his
_Table-talk_, that he never preached, sung, or prayed so well, as while
in a rage? Truly, he was a man sufficient of himself to rouse many
others into rage.

The whole morning till noon now passed in viewing sights, and
trafficking for wares; and indeed, for the greatest part, in the broad
street of our Hotel. Berga needed but to press along with me into the
market throng; needed but to look, and see that she was decorated more
according to the fashion than hundreds like her. But soon, in her care
for household gear, she forgot that of dress, and in the potter-market
the toilette-table faded from her thoughts.

I, for my share, full of true tedium, while gliding after her through
her various marts, with their long cheapenings and chafferings, merely
acted the Philosopher hid within me: I weighed this empty Life, and the
heavy value which is put upon it, and the daily anxiety of man lest it,
this lightest down-feather of the Earth, fly off, and feather him, and
take him with it. These thoughts, perhaps, I owe to the street-fry of
boys, who were turning their market-freedom to account, by throwing
stones at one another all round me: for, in the midst of this tumult, I
vividly figured myself to be a man who had never seen war; and who,
therefore, never having experienced, that often of a thousand bullets
not one will hit, feels apprehensive of these few silly stones lest they
beat-in his nose and eyes. O! it is the battle-field alone that sows,
manures and nourishes true courage, courage even for daily, domestic and
smallest perils. For not till he comes from the battle-field can a man
both sing and cannonade; like the canary-bird, which, though so
melodious, so timid, so small, so tender, so solitary, so
soft-feathered, can yet be trained to fire off cannon, though cannon of
smaller calibre.

[Note 4: The Hypocrite does not imitate the old practice, of
cutting fruit by a knife poisoned only on the one side, and giving the
poisoned side to the victim, the cutter eating the sound side himself;
on the contrary, he so disinterestedly inverts this practice, that to
others he shows and gives the sound moral half, or side, and retains for
himself the poisoned one. Heavens! compared with such a man, how wicked
does the Devil seem!]

After dinner (in our room), we issued from the Purgatory of the
market-tumult,--where Berga, at every booth, had something to order, and
load her attendant maid with,--into Heaven, into the Dog Inn, as the
best Flätz public and pleasure-house without the gates is named, where,
in market-time, hundreds turn in, and see thousands going by. On the way
thither, my little wife, my elbow-tendril, as it were, had extracted
from me such a measure of courage, that, while going through the Gate
(where I, aware of the military order that you must not pass _near_ the
sentry, threw myself over to the other side), she quietly glided on,
close by the very guns and fixed bayonets of the City Guard. Outside the
wall, I could direct her with my finger, to the bechained, begrated,
gigantic Schabacker-Palace, mounting up even externally on stairs, where
I last night had called and (it may be) stormed: "I had rather take a
peep at the Giant," said she, "and the Dwarf: why else are we under one
roof with them?"

In the pleasure-house itself we found sufficient pleasure; encircled, as
we were, with blooming faces and meadows. In my secret heart, I all
along kept looking down, with success, on Schabacker's refusal; and till
midnight made myself a happy day of it: I had deserved it, Berga still
more. Nevertheless, about one in the morning, I was destined to find a
windmill to tilt with; a windmill, which truly lays about it with
somewhat longer, stronger and more numerous arms than a giant, for which
Don Quixote might readily enough have taken it. On the market-place, for
reasons more easily fancied than specified in words, I let Berga go
along some twenty paces before me; and I myself, for these foresaid
reasons, retire without malice behind a covered booth, the tent most
probably of some rude trader; and linger there a moment according to
circumstances: lo! steering hither with dart and spear, comes the
Booth-watcher, and coins and stamps me, on the spot, into a filcher and
housebreaker of his Booth-street; though the simpleton sees nothing but
that I am standing in the corner, and doing anything but--taking. A
sense of honour without callosity is never blunted for such attacks. But
how in the dead of night was a man of this kind, who had nothing in his
head--at the utmost beer, instead of brains--to be enlightened on the
truth of the matter?

[Note 67: Individual Minds, nay Political Bodies, are like organic
bodies: extract the _interior_ air from them, the atmosphere crushes
them together; pump off under the bell the _exterior_ resisting air, the
interior inflates and bursts them. Therefore, let every State keep up
its internal and its external resistance both at once.]

I shall not conceal my perilous resource: I seized the fox by the tail,
as we say; in other words, I made as if I had been muddled, and knew not
rightly, in my liquor, what I was about: I therefore mimicked everything
I was master of in this department; staggered hither and thither;
splayed out my feet like a dancing-master; got into zigzag in spite of
all efforts at the straight line; nay, I knocked my good head (perhaps
one of the clearest and emptiest of the night), like a full one, against
real posts.

However, the Booth-bailiff, who probably had been oftener drunk than I,
and knew the symptoms better, or even felt them in himself at this
moment, looked upon the whole exhibition as mere craft, and shouted
dreadfully: "Stop, rascal; thou art no more drunk than I! I know thee of
old. Stand, I say, till I speak to thee! Wouldst have thy long finger in
the market, too? Stand, dog, or I'll make thee!"

You see the whole _nodus_ of the matter: I whisked away zigzag among the
booths as fast as possible, from the claws of this rude Tosspot; yet he
still hobbled after me. But my Teutoberga, who had heard somewhat of it,
came running back; clutched the tipsy market-warder by the collar, and
said (shrieking, it is true, in village-wise): "Stupid sot, go sleep the
drink out of thy head, or I'll teach thee! Dost know, then, whom thou
art speaking to? My husband, Army-chaplain Schmelzle under General and
Minister von Schabacker at Pimpelstadt, thou blockhead!--Fye! Take
shame, fellow!" The watchman mumbled: "Meant no harm," and reeled about
his business. "O thou Lioness!" said I, in the transport of love, "why
hast thou never been in any deadly peril, that I might show thee the
Lion in thy husband?"

[Note 8: In great Saloons, the real stove is masked into a pretty
ornamented sham stove; so likewise, it is fit and pretty that a virgin
_Love_ should always hide itself in an interesting virgin _Friendship_.]

[Note 12: Nations--unlike rivers, which precipitate their
impurities in level places and when at rest--drop their baseness just
whilst in the most violent motion; and become the dirtier the farther
they flow along through lazy flats.]

Thus lovingly we both reached home; and perhaps in the sequel of this
Fair day might still have enjoyed a glorious after-midnight, had not the
Devil led my eye to the ninth volume of Lichtenberg's Works, and the
206th page, where this passage occurs: "It is not impossible that at a
future period, our Chemists may light on some means of suddenly
decomposing the Atmosphere by a sort of Ferment. In this way the world
may be destroyed." Ah! true indeed! Since the Earth-ball is lapped up in
the larger Atmospheric ball, let but any chemical scoundrel, in the
remotest scoundrel-island, say in New Holland, devise some decomposing
substance for the Atmosphere, like what a spark of fire would be for a
powder-wagon: in a few seconds, the monstrous devouring world-storm
catches me and you in Flätz by the throat; my breathing, and the like,
in this choke-air is over, and the whole game ended! The Earth becomes a
boundless gallows, where the very cattle are hanged: worm-powder, and
bug-liquor, Bradly ant-ploughs, and rat-poison, and wolf-traps are, in
this universal world-trap and world-poison, no longer specially needful;
and the Devil takes the whole, in the Bartholomew-night, when this
cursed "Ferment" is invented.

From the true soul, however, I concealed these deadly Night Thoughts;
seeing she would either painfully have sympathised in them, or else
mirthfully laughed at them. I merely gave orders that next morning
(Saturday) she was to be standing booted and ready, at the outset of the
returning coach; if so were she would have me speedily fulfil her wishes
in regard to that stock of Rathships which lay so near her heart. She
rejoiced in my purpose, gladly surrendering the market for such
prospects. I too slept sound, my great toe tied to her finger, the whole
night through.

[Note 28: When Nature takes the huge old Earth-round, the
Earth-loaf, and kneads it up again, for the purpose of introducing under
this pie-crust new stuffing and Dwarfs,--she then, for most part, as a
mother when baking will do to her daughters, gives in jest a little
fraction of the dough (two or three thousand square leagues of such
dough are enough for a child) to some Poetical or Philosophical, or
Legislative polisher, that so the little elf may have something to be
shaping and manufacturing beside its mother. And when the other young
ones get a taste of sisterkin's baking, they all clap hands, and cry:
"Aha, Mother! canst; bake, like _Suky_ here?"]

The Dragoon, next morning, twitched me by the ear, and secretly
whispered into it that he had a pleasant fairing to give his sister; and
so would ride off somewhat early, on the nag he had yesterday purchased
of the horse-dealer. I thanked him beforehand.

At the appointed hour, all gaily started from the Staple, I excepted;
for I still retained, even in the fairest daylight, that nocturnal
Devil's-Ferment and Decomposition (of my cerebral globe as well as of
the Earth-globe) fermenting in my head; a proof that the night had not
affected me, or exaggerated my fear. The Blind Passenger, whom I liked
so ill, also mounted along with us, and looked at me as usual, but
without effect; for on this occasion, when the destruction not of myself
only, but of worlds, was occupying my thoughts, the Passenger was
nothing to me but a joke and a show: as a man, while his leg is being
sawed off, does not feel the throbbing of his heart; or amid the humming
of cannon, does not guard himself from that of wasps; so to me any
Passenger, with all the fire-brands he might throw into my near or
distant Future, could appear but ludicrous, at a time when I was
reflecting that the "Ferment" might, even in my journey between Flätz
and Neusattel, be, by some American or European man of science, quite
guiltlessly experimenting and decomposing, hit upon by accident and let
loose. The question, nay prize-question now, however, were this: "In how
far, since Lichtenberg's threatening, it may not appear world-murderous
and self-murderous, if enlightened Potentates of chemical nations do not
enjoin it on their chemical subjects, who in their decompositions and
separations may so easily separate the soul from their body, and unite
Heaven with Earth,--not in future to make any other chemical experiments
than those already made, which hitherto have profited the State rather
than harmed it?"

Unfortunately, I continued sunk in this Domsday of the Ferment with all
my thoughts and meditations, without, in the whole course of our return
from Flätz to Neusattel, suffering or observing anything, except that I
actually arrived there, and at the same time saw the Blind Passenger
once more go his ways.

My Bergelchen alone had I constantly looked at by the road, partly that
I might still see her, so long as life and eyes endured; partly that,
even at the smallest danger to her, be it a great, or even
all-over-sweeping Deluge and World's-doom, I might die, if not _for_
her, at least _by_ her, and so united with that stanch true heart, cast
away a plagued and plaguing life, in which, at any rate, not half of my
wishes for her have been fulfilled.

So then were my Journey over,--crowned with some _Historiolæ_; and in
time coming, perhaps, still more rewarded through you, ye Friends about
Flätz, if in these pages you shall find any well-ground pruning-knives,
whereby you may more readily out-root the weedy tangle of Lies, which
for the present excludes me from the gallant Schabacker:--Only this
cursed Ferment still sits in my head. Farewell then, so long as there
are Atmospheres left us to breathe. I wish I had that Ferment out of my
head.

  Yours always,

  ATTILA SCHMELZLE.

P.S.--My Brother-in-law has kept his promise well, and Berga is dancing.
Particulars in my next!




LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN,

DOWN TO OUR OWN TIMES;

EXTRACTED FROM

FIFTEEN LETTER-BOXES BY JEAN PAUL.




LETTER TO MY FRIENDS,

INSTEAD OF PREFACE.


Merchants, Authors, young Ladies and Quakers, call all persons, with
whom they have any business, Friends; and my readers accordingly are my
table and college Friends. Now, at this time, I am about presenting so
many hundred Friends with just as many hundred gratis copies; and my
Bookseller has orders to supply each on request, after the Fair, with
his copy--in return for a trifling consideration and _don gratuit_ to
printers, pressmen and other such persons. But as I could not, like the
French authors, send the whole Edition to the binder, the blank leaf in
front was necessarily wanting; and thus to write a complimentary word or
two upon it was out of my power. I have therefore caused a few white
leaves to be inserted directly after the title-page: on these we are now
printing.

My Book contains the Life of a Schoolmaster, extracted and compiled from
various public and private documents. With this Biography, dear Friends,
it is the purpose of the Author not so much to procure you a pleasure,
as to teach you how to enjoy one. In truth, King Xerxes should have
offered his prize-medals not for the invention of new pleasures, but for
a good methodology and directory to use the old ones.

Of ways for becoming happier (not happy) I could never inquire out more
than three. The first, rather an elevated road, is this: To soar away so
far above the clouds of life, that you see the whole external world,
with its wolf-dens, charnel-houses and thunder-rods, lying far down
beneath you, shrunk into a little child's garden. The second is: Simply
to sink down into this little garden; and there to nestle yourself so
snugly, so homewise, in some furrow, that in looking out from your warm
lark-nest, you likewise can discern no wolf-dens, charnel-houses or
thunder-rods, but only blades and ears, every one of which, for the
nest-bird, is a tree, and a sun-screen, and rain-screen. The third,
finally, which I look upon as the hardest and cunningest, is that of
alternating between the other two.

This I shall now satisfactorily expound to men at large.

The Hero, the Reformer, your Brutus, your Howard, your Republican, he
whom civic storm, or genius, poetic storm, impels; in short, every
mortal with a great Purpose, or even a perennial Passion (were it but
that of writing the largest folios), all these men fence themselves in
by their internal world against the frosts and heats of the external, as
the madman in a worse sense does: every _fixed_ idea, such as rules
every genius, every enthusiast, at least periodically, separates and
elevates a man above the bed and board of this Earth, above its
Dog's-grottoes, buckthorns and Devil's-walls; like the Bird of Paradise,
he slumbers flying; and on his outspread pinions, oversleeps
unconsciously the earthquakes and conflagrations of Life, in his long
fair dream of his ideal Motherland,--Alas! to few is this dream granted;
and these few are so often awakened by Flying Dogs![30]

     [30] So are the Vampires called.

This skyward track, however, is fit only for the winged portion of the
human species, for the smallest. What can it profit poor quill-driving
brethren, whose souls have not even wing-shells, to say nothing of
wings? Or these tethered persons with the best back, breast and neck
fins, who float motionless in the wicker Fish-box of the State, and are
not allowed to swim, because the Box or State, long ago tied to the
shore, itself swims in the name of the Fishes? To the whole standing and
writing host of heavy-laden State-domestics, Purveyors, Clerks of all
departments, and all the lobsters packed together heels over head into
the Lobster-basket of the Government office-rooms, and for refreshment,
sprinkled over with a few nettles; to these persons, what way of
becoming happy _here_, can I possibly point out?

My _second_ merely; and that is as follows: To take a compound
microscope, and with it to discover, and convince themselves, that their
drop of Burgundy is properly a Red Sea, that butterfly-dust is
peacock-feathers, mouldiness a flowery-field, and sand a heap of jewels.
These microscopic recreations are more lasting than all costly
watering-place recreations.--But I must explain these metaphors by new
ones. The purpose, for which I have sent _Fixleins Life_ into the
Messrs. Lübeks' Warehouse, is simply that in this same
_Life_,--therefore in this Preface it is less needful,--I may show to
the whole Earth that we ought to value little joys more than great ones,
the nightgown more than the dresscoat; that Plutus' heaps are worth less
than his handfuls, the plum than the penny for a rainy day; and that not
great, but little good-haps can make us happy.--Can I accomplish this, I
shall, through means of my Book, bring up for Posterity, a race of men
finding refreshment in all things; in the warmth of their rooms and of
their nightcaps; in their pillows; in the three High Festivals; in mere
Apostles' days; in the Evening Moral Tales of their wives, when these
gentle persons have been forth as ambassadresses visiting some Dowager
Residence, whither the husband could not be persuaded; in the
bloodletting-day of these their news-bringers; in the day of
slaughtering, salting, potting against the rigour of grim winter; and in
all such days. You perceive, my drift is that man must become a little
Tailor-bird, which, not amid the crashing boughs of the storm-tost,
roaring, immeasurable tree of Life, but on one of its leaves, sews
itself a nest together, and there lies snug. The most essential sermon
one could preach to our century, were a sermon on the duty of staying at
home.

The _third_ skyward road is the alternation between the other two. The
foregoing _second_ way is not good enough for man, who here on Earth
should take into his hand not the Sickle only, but also the Plough. The
_first_ is too good for him. He has not always the force, like Rugendas,
in the midst of the Battle to compose Battle-pieces; and, like
Backhuysen in the Shipwreck, to clutch at no board but the drawing-board
to paint it on. And then his _pains_ are not less lasting than his
_fatigues_. Still oftener is Strength denied its Arena: it is but the
smallest portion of life that, to a working soul, offers Alps,
Revolutions, Rhine-falls, Worms Diets, and Wars with Xerxes; and for the
whole it is better so: the longer portion of life is a field beaten flat
as a threshing-floor, without lofty Gothard Mountains; often it is a
tedious ice-field, without a single glacier tinged with dawn.

But even by walking, a man rests and recovers himself for climbing; by
little joys and duties, for great. The victorious Dictator must contrive
to plough down his battle Mars-field into a flax and carrot field; to
transform his theatre of war into a parlour theatre, on which his
children may enact some good pieces from the _Children's Friend_. Can he
accomplish this, can he turn so softly from the path of poetical
happiness into that of household happiness,--then is he little different
from myself, who even now, though modesty might forbid me to disclose
it--who even now, I say, amid the creation of this Letter, have been
enabled to reflect, that when it is done, so also will the Roses and
Elder-berries of pastry be done, which a sure hand is seething in butter
for the Author of this Work.

As I purpose appending to this Letter a Postscript (at the end of the
Book), I reserve somewhat which I had to say about the Third[31]
half-satirical half-philosophical part of the Work, till that
opportunity.

Here, out of respect for the rights of a Letter, the Author drops his
half anonymity,[32] and for the first time subscribes himself with his
_whole_ true name,

  JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER.

  _Hof in Voigtland, 29th June 1795._

     [31] _Fixlein_ stands in the middle of the volume; preceded by
     _Einer Mustheil für Madchen_ (A Jelly-course for Young Ladies); and
     followed by _Some_ JUS DE TABLETTE _for Men_. A small portion of
     the Preface relating to the first I have already omitted. Neither
     of the two has the smallest relation to _Fixlein_.--ED.

     [32] _J. P. H., Jean Paul_ HASUS, _Jean Paul_, &c. have in
     succession been Richter's signatures. At present even, his German
     designation, either in writing or speech, is never _Richter_, but
     _Jean Paul_.--ED.




LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN.

FIRST LETTER-BOX.

_Dog-days Vacation. Visits. An Indigent of Quality_.


Egidius Zebedæus Fixlein had just for eight days been Quintus,[33] and
fairly commenced his teaching duties, when Fortune tabled out for him
four refreshing courses and collations, besprinkled with flowers and
sugar. These were the four canicular weeks. I could find in my heart, at
this hour, to pat the cranium of that good-man who invented the Dog-days
Vacation: I never go to walk in that season, without thinking how a
thousand down-pressed pedagogic persons are now erecting themselves in
the open air; and the stiff knapsack is lying unbuckled at their feet,
and they can seek whatsoever their soul desires; butterflies,--or roots
of numbers,--or roots of words,--or herbs,--or their native villages.

     [33] For understanding many little hints which occur in this _Life
     of Fixlein_, it will be necessary to bear in mind the following
     particulars: A German _Gymnasium_, in its complete state, appears
     to include eight Masters; Rector, Conrector, Subrector, Quintus,
     Quartus, Tertius, &c., to the _first_ or lowest. The _forms_, or
     classes, again, are arranged in an inverse order; the _Primaner_
     (boys of the _Prima_, or first form) being the most advanced, and
     taught by the Rector; the _Secundaner_, by the Conrector, &c., and
     therefore the _Quartaner_ by the Quintus. In many cases, it would
     seem, the number of Teachers is only six; but, in this
     Flachsenfingen Gymnasium, we have express evidence that there was
     no curtailment.--ED.

The last did our Fixlein. He moved not, however, till Sunday,--for you
like to know how holidays taste in the city; and then, in company with
his Shock and a Quintaner, or Fifth-Form boy, who carried his Green
nightgown, he issued through the gate in the morning. The dew was still
lying; and as he reached the back of the gardens, the children of the
Orphan Hospital were uplifting with clear voices their morning hymn. The
city was Flachsenfingen, the village Hukelum, the dog Schil, and the
year of Grace 1791.

"Manikin," said he to the Quintaner, for he liked to speak as Love,
children, and the people of Vienna do, in diminutives, "Manikin, give me
the bundle to the village: run about, and seek thee a little bird, as
thou art thyself, and so have something to pet too in vacation-time."
For the manikin was at once his page, lackey, room-comrade, train-bearer
and gentleman-in-waiting; and the Shock also was his manikin.

He stept slowly along, through the crisped cole-beds, overlaid with
coloured beads of dew; and looked at the bushes, out of which, when the
morning wind bent them asunder, there seemed to start a flight of
jewel-colibri, so brightly did they glitter. From time to time he drew
the bell-rope of his--whistle, that the manikin might not skip away too
far; and he shortened his league and half of road, by measuring it not
in leagues, but in villages. It is more pleasant for pedestrians--for
geographers it is not--to count by wersts than by miles. In walking, our
Quintus farthermore got by heart the few fields, on which the grain was
already reaped.

But now roam slower, Fixlein, through his Lordship's garden of Hukelum;
not, indeed, lest thy coat sweep away any tulip-stamina, but that thy
good mother may have time to lay her Cupid's-band of black taffeta about
her smooth brow. I am grieved to think my fair readers take it ill of
her, that she means first to iron this same band: they cannot know that
she has no maid; and that today the whole Preceptorial dinner--the money
purveyances the guest has made over to her three days before--is to be
arranged and prepared by herself, without the aid of any Mistress of the
Household whatever; for indeed she belongs to the _Tiers Etat_, being
neither more nor less than a gardener's widow.

You can figure how this true, warm-hearted mother may have lain in wait
all morning for her Schoolman, whom she loved as the apple of her eye;
since, on the whole populous Earth, she had not (her first son, as well
as her husband, was dead) any other for her soul, which indeed
overflowed with love; not any other but her Zebedäus. Could she ever
tell you aught about him, I mean aught joyful, without ten times wiping
her eyes? Nay, did she not once divide her solitary Kirmes (or
Churchale) cake between two mendicant students, because she thought
Heaven would punish her for so feasting, while her boy in Leipzig had
nothing to feast on, and must pass the cake-garden like other gardens,
merely smelling at it?

"Dickens! Thou already, Zebedäus!" said the mother, giving an
embarrassed smile, to keep from weeping, as the son, who, had ducked
past the window, and crossed the grassy threshold without knocking,
suddenly entered. For joy she forgot to put the heater into the
smoothing-iron, as her illustrious scholar, amid the loud boiling of the
soup, tenderly kissed her brow, and even said Mamma; a name which
lighted on her breast like downy silk. All the windows were open; and
the garden, with its flower-essences, and bird-music, and
butterfly-collections, was almost half within the room: but I suppose I
have not yet mentioned that the little garden-house, rather a chamber
than a house, was situated on the western cape of the Castle garden. The
owner had graciously allowed the widow to retain this dowager-mansion;
as indeed the mansion would otherwise have stood empty, for he now kept
no gardener.

But Fixlein, in spite of his joy, could not stay long with her; being
bound for the Church, which, to his spiritual appetite, was at all times
a king's kitchen; a mother's. A sermon pleased him simply because it was
a sermon, and because he himself had once preached one. The mother was
contented he should go: these good women think they enjoy their guests,
if they can only give them aught to enjoy.

In the choir, this Free-haven and Ethnic Forecourt of stranger
church-goers, he smiled on all parishioners; and, as in his childhood,
standing under the wooden wing of an archangel, he looked down on the
coifed _parterre_. His young years now enclosed him like children in
their smiling circle; and a long garland wound itself in rings among
them, and by fits they plucked flowers from it, and threw them in his
face: Was it not old Senior Astman that stood there on the pulpit
Parnassus, the man by whom he had been so often flogged, while acquiring
Greek with him from a grammar written in Latin, which he could not
explain, yet was forced to walk by the light of? Stood there not behind
the pulpit-stairs the sacristy-cabin, and in this was there not a
church-library of consequence--no schoolboy could have buckled it wholly
in his book-strap--lying under the minever cover of pastil dust? And did
it not consist of the Polyglott in folio, which he, spurred on by
Pfeiffer's _Critica Sacra_, had turned up leaf by leaf, in his early
years, excerpting therefrom the _literæ inversæ_, _majusculæ_,
_minusculæ_, and so forth, with an immensity of toil? And could he not
at present, the sooner the more readily, have wished to cast this
alphabetic soft-fodder into the Hebrew letter-trough, whereto your
Oriental Rhizophagi (Root-eaters) are tied, especially as here they get
so little vowel hard-fodder to keep them in heart?--Stood there not
close by him the organ-stool, the throne to which, every Apostle-day,
the Schoolmaster had by three nods elevated him, thence to fetch down
the sacred hyssop, the sprinkler of the Church?

My readers themselves will gather spirits when they now hear that our
Quintus, during the outshaking of the poor-bag, was invited by the
Senior to come over in the afternoon; and to them, it will be little
less gratifying than if he had invited themselves. But what will they
say, when they get home with him to mother and dinner-table, both
already clad in their white Sunday dress; and behold the large cake
which Fräulein Thiennette (Stephanie) has rolled from her peel? In the
first place, however, they will wish to know who _she_ is?

She is,--for if (according to Lessing) in the very excellence of the
Iliad, we neglect the personalities of its author; the same thing will
apply to the fate of several authors, for instance to my own; but an
authoress of cakes must not be forgotten in the excellence of her
baking,--Thiennette is a poor, indigent, insolvent young lady; has not
much, except years, of which she counts five-and-twenty; no near
relations living now; no acquirements (for in literature she does not
even know _Werter_) except economical; reads no books, not even mine;
inhabits, that is, watches like a wardeness, quite alone, the thirteen
void disfurnished chambers of the Castle of Hukelum, which belongs to
the Dragoon Rittmeister Aufhammer, at present resident in his other
mansion of Schadeck: on occasion, she commands and feeds his soccagers
and handmaids; and can write herself By the grace of God,--which, in the
thirteenth century, the country nobles did as well as princes,--for she
lives by the grace of man, at least of woman, the Lady Rittmeisterinn
Aufhammer's grace, who, at all times, blesses those vassals whom her
husband curses. But, in the breast of the orphaned Thiennette lay a
sugared marchpane heart, which, for very love, you could have devoured:
her fate was hard, but her soul was soft; she was modest, courteous and
timid, but too much so;--cheerfully and coldly she received the most
cutting humiliations in Schadeck, and felt no pain, and not till some
days after did she see it all clearly, and then these cuts began sharply
to bleed, and she wept in her loneliness over her lot.

It is hard for me to give a light tone, after this deep one, and to add,
that Fixlein had been almost brought up beside her, and that she, his
school-moiety over with the Senior, while the latter was training him
for the dignities of the Third Form, had learned the _Verba Anomala_
along with him.

The Achilles'-shield of the cake, jagged and embossed with carved work
of brown scales, was whirling round in the Quintus like a swing-wheel of
hungry and thankful ideas. Of that philosophy which despises eating, and
of that high breeding which wastes it, he had not so much about him as
belongs to the ungratefulness of such cultivated persons; but for his
platter of meat, for his dinner of herbs, he could never give thanks
enough.

Innocent and contented, the quadruple dinner-party,--for the Shock with
his cover under the stove cannot be omitted,--now began their Feast of
Sweet Bread, their Feast of Honour for Thiennette, their Grove-feast in
the garden. It may truly be a subject of wonder how a man who has not,
like the King of France, four hundred and forty-eight persons (the
hundred and sixty-one _Garçons de la Maison-bouche_ I do not reckon) in
his kitchen, nor a _Fruiterie_ of thirty-one human bipeds, nor a
Pastry-cookery of three-and-twenty, nor a daily expenditure of 387
livres 21 sous,--how such a man, I say, can eat with any satisfaction.
Nevertheless, to me, a cooking mother is as dear as a whole royal
cooking household, given rather to feed upon me than to feed me.--The
most precious fragments which the Biographer and the World can gather
from this meal, consist of here and there an edifying piece of
table-talk. The mother had much to tell. Thiennette is this night, she
mentions, for the first time, to put on her morning promenade-dress of
white muslin, as also a satin girdle and steel buckle: but, adds she, it
will not sit her; as the Rittmeisterinn (for this lady used to hang her
cast clothes on Thiennette, as Catholics do their cast crutches and
sores on their patron Saints) was much thicker. Good women grudge each
other nothing, save only clothes, husbands and flax. In the fancy of the
Quintus, by virtue of this apparel, a pair of angel pinions were
sprouting forth from the shoulder-blades of Thiennette: for him a
garment was a sort of hollow half-man, to whom only the nobler parts and
the first principles were wanting: he honoured these wrappages and hulls
of our interior, not as an Elegant, or a Critic of Beauty, but because
it was not possible for him to despise aught which he saw others
honouring. Farther, the good mother read to him, as it were, the
monumental inscription of his father, who had sunk into the arms of
Death in the thirty-second year of his age, from a cause which I explain
not here, but in a future Letter-box, having too much affection for the
reader. Our Quintus could not sate himself with hearing of his father.

The fairest piece of news was, that Fräulein Thiennette had sent word
today: "he might visit Her Ladyship tomorrow, as My Lord, his godfather,
was to be absent in town." This, however, I must explain. Old Aufhammer
was called _Egidius_, and was Fixlein's godfather: but he,--though the
Rittmeisterinn duly covered the cradle of the child with nightly
offerings, with flesh-tithes and grain-tithes,--had frugally made him no
christening present, except that of his name, which proved to be the
very balefulest. For, our _Egidius_ Fixlein, with his Shock, which, by
reason of the French convulsions, had, in company with other emigrants,
run off from Nantes, was but lately returned from college,--when he and
his dog, as ill luck would have it, went to walk in the Hukelum wood.
Now, as the Quintus was ever and anon crying out to his attendant:
"Coosh, Schil" (_Couche, Gilles_), it must apparently have been the
Devil that had just then planted the Lord of Aufhammer among the trees
and bushes in such a way, that this whole travestying and docking of his
name,--for Gilles means Egidius,--must fall directly into his ear.
Fixlein could neither speak French, nor any offence to mortal: he knew
not head or tail of what _couche_ signified; a word, which, in Paris,
even the plebeian dogs are now in the habit of saying to their _valets
de chiens_. But there were three things which Von Aufhammer never
recalled; his error, his anger and his word. The provokee, therefore,
determined that the plebeian provoker and honour-stealer should never
more speak to him, or--get a doit from him.

I return. After dinner he gazed out of the little window into the
garden, and saw his path of life dividing into four branches, leading
towards just as many skyward Ascensions; towards the Ascension into the
Parsonage, and that into the Castle to Thiennette, for this day; and
towards the third into Schadeck for the morrow; and lastly, into every
house in Hukelum as the fourth. And now when the mother had long enough
kept cheerfully gliding about on tiptoe, "not to disturb him in studying
his Latin Bible" (the _Vulgata_), that is, in reading the
_Litteratur-zeitung_, he at last rose to his own feet; and the humble
joy of the mother ran long after the courageous son, who dared to go
forth and speak to a Senior, quite unappalled. Yet it was not without
reverence that he entered the dwelling of his old, rather gray than
bald-headed teacher, who was not only Virtue itself, but also Hunger,
eating frequently, and with the appetite of Pharaoh's lean kine. A
schoolman, that expects to become a professor, will scarcely deign to
cast an eye on a pastor; but one, who is himself looking up to a
parsonage as to his working-house and breeding-house, knows how to value
such a character. The new parsonage,--as if it had, like a _Casa Santa_,
come flying out of Erlangen, or the Berlin Friedrichs-strasse, and
alighted in Hukelum,--was for the Quintus a Temple of the Sun, and the
Senior a Priest of the Sun. To be Parson there himself, was a thought
overlaid with virgin honey; such a thought as occurs but one other time
in History, namely, in the head of Hannibal, when he projected stepping
over the Alps, that is to say, over the threshold of Rome.

The landlord and his guest formed an excellent _bureau d'esprit_: people
of office, especially of the same office, have more to tell each other,
namely, their own history, than your idle May-chafers and
Court-celestials, who must speak only of other people's.--The Senior
made a soft transition from his iron-ware (in the stable furniture), to
the golden age of his Academic life, of which such people like as much
to think, as poets do of their childhood. So good as he was, he still
half joyfully recollected that he had once been less so: but joyful
remembrances of wrong actions are their half repetition, as repentant
remembrances of good ones are their half abolishment.

Courteously and kindly did Zebedäus (who could not even enter in his
Notebook the name of a person of quality without writing an H. for Herr
before it) listen to the Academic Saturnalia of the old gentleman, who
in Wittenberg had toped as well as written, and thirsted not more for
the Hippocrene than for Guk-guk.[34]

     [34] A university beer.

Herr Jerusalem has observed, that the barbarism which often springs up,
close on the brightest efflorescence of the sciences, is a sort of
strengthening mudbath, good for averting the over-refinement, wherewith
such efflorescence always threatens us. I believe that a man who
considers how high the sciences have mounted with our upper
classes,--for instance with every Patrician's son in Nürnberg, to whom
the public must present 1000 florins for studying with,--I believe that
such a man will not grudge the Son of the Muses a certain barbarous
Middle-age (the Burschen or Student Life, as it is called), which may
again so case-harden him that his refinement shall not go beyond the
limits. The Senior, while in Wittenberg, had protected the one hundred
and eighty Academic Freedoms,--so many of them has Petrus Rebuffus
summed up,[35]--against prescription, and lost none except his moral
one, of which truly a man, even in a convent, can seldom make much. This
gave our Quintus courage to relate certain pleasant somersets of his
own, which at Leipzig, under the Incubus-pressure of poverty, he had
contrived to execute. Let us hear him: His landlord, who was at the same
time Professor and Miser, maintained in his enclosed court a whole
community of hens: Fixlein, in company with three room-mates, without
difficulty mastered the rent of a chamber, or closet: in general their
main equipments, like Phoenixes, existed but in the singular number;
one bed, in which always the one pair slept before midnight, the other
after midnight, like nocturnal watchmen; one coat, in which one after
the other they appeared in public, and which, like a watch-coat, was the
national uniform of the company; and several other _ones_, Unities both
of Interest and Place. Nowhere can you collect the stress-memorials and
siege-medals of Poverty more pleasantly and philosophically than at
College; the Academic burgher exhibits to us how many humorists and
Diogeneses Germany has in it. Our Unitarians had just one thing four
times, and that was hunger. The Quintus related, perhaps with a too
pleasurable enjoyment of the recollection, how one of this famishing
_coro_ invented means of appropriating the Professor's hens as just
tribute, or subsidies. He said (he was a Jurist), they must once for all
borrow a legal fiction from the Feudal code, and look on the Professor
as the soccage tenant, to whom the usufruct of the hen-yard and
hen-house belonged; but on themselves, as the feudal superiors of the
same, to whom accordingly the vassal was bound to pay his feudal dues.
And now, that the Fiction might follow Nature, continued he,--"_fictio
sequitur naturam_,"--it behoved them to lay hold of said Yule-hens, by
direct personal distraint. But into the court-yard there was no getting.
The feudalist, therefore, prepared a fishing-line; stuck a bread-pill on
the hook, and lowered his fishing-tackle, anglerwise, down into the
court. In a few seconds the barb stuck in a hen's throat, and the hen
now communicating with its feudal superior, could silently, like ships
by Archimedes, be heaved aloft to the hungry air-fishing society, where,
according to circumstances, the proper feudal name and title of
possession failed not to be awaiting her: for the updrawn fowls were now
denominated Christmas-fowls, now Forest-hens, Bailiff-hens, Pentecost
and Summer-hens. "I begin," said the angling lord of the manor, "with
taking _Rutcher-dues_, for so we call the triple and quintuple of the
original quit-rent, when the vassal, as is the case here, has long
neglected payment." The Professor, like any other prince, observed with
sorrow the decreasing population of his hen-yard, for his subjects, like
the Hebrews, were dying by enumeration. At last he had the happiness,
while reading his lecture,--he was just come to the subject of _Forest
Salt and Coin Regalities_,--to descry, through the window of his
auditorium, a quit-rent hen suspended, like Ignatius Loyola in prayer,
or Juno in her punishment, in middle air: he followed the
incomprehensible direct ascension of the aeronautic animal, and at last
descried at the upper window the attracting artist, and
animal-magnetiser, who had drawn his lot for dinner from the hen-yard
below. Contrary to all expectation, he terminated this fowling sport
sooner than his Lecture on Regalities.

     [35] From Peter I will copy one or two of these privileges; the
     whole of which were once, at the origin of universities, in full
     force. For instance, a student can compel a citizen to let him his
     house and his horse; an injury, done even to his relations, must be
     made good fourfold; he is not obliged to fulfil the written
     commands of the Pope; the neighbourhood must indemnify him for what
     is stolen from him; if he and a non-student are living at variance,
     the latter only can be expelled from the boarding-house; a Doctor
     is obliged to support a poor student; if he is killed, the next ten
     houses are laid under interdict till the murderer is discovered;
     his legacies are not abridged by _falcidia_, &c. &c.

Fixlein walked home, amid the vesperal melodies of the steeple
sounding-holes; and by the road, courteously took off his hat before the
empty windows of the Castle: houses of quality were to him like persons
of quality, as in India the Pagoda at once represents the temple and the
god. To the mother he brought feigned compliments, which she repaid with
authentic ones; for this afternoon she had been over, with her
historical tongue and nature-interrogating eye, visiting the
white-muslin Thiennette. The mother was wont to show her every spare
penny which he dropped into her large empty purse, and so raise him in
the good graces of the Fräulein; for women feel their hearts much more
attracted towards a son, who tenderly reserves for a mother some of his
benefits, than we do to a daughter anxiously caring for her father;
perhaps from a hundred causes, and this among the rest, that in their
experience of sons and husbands they are more used to find these persons
mere six-feet thunder-clouds, forked waterspouts, or even reposing
tornadoes.

Blessed Quintus! on whose Life this other distinction like an order of
nobility does also shine, that thou canst tell it over to thy mother;
as, for example, this past afternoon in the parsonage. Thy joy flows
into another heart, and streams back from it, redoubled, into thy own.
There is a closer approximating of hearts, and also of sounds, than that
of the _Echo_; the highest approximation melts Tone and Echo into
_Resonance_ together.

It is historically certain that both of them supped this evening; and
that instead of the whole dinner fragments which tomorrow might
themselves represent a dinner, nothing but the cake-offering or pudding
was laid upon the altar of the table. The mother, who for her own child
would willingly have neglected not herself only, but all other people,
now made a motion that to the Quintaner, who was sporting out of doors
and baiting a bird instead of himself, there should no crum of the
precious pastry be given, but only table-bread without the crust. But
the Schoolman had a Christian disposition, and said that it was Sunday,
and the young man liked something delicate to eat as well as he.
Fixlein,--the counterpart of great men and geniuses,--was inclined to
treat, to gift, to gratify a serving house-mate, rather than a man who
is for the first time passing through the gate, and at the next
post-stage will forget both his hospitable landlord and the last
postmaster. On the whole, our Quintus had a touch of honour in him, and
notwithstanding his thrift and sacred regard for money, he willingly
gave it away in cases of honour, and unwillingly in cases of
overpowering sympathy, which too painfully filled the cavities of his
heart, and emptied those of his purse. Whilst the Quintaner was
exercising the _jus compascui_ on the cake, and six arms were peacefully
resting on Thiennette's free-table, Fixlein read to himself and the
company the Flachsenfingen Address-calendar; any higher thing, except
Meusel's _Gelehrtes Deutschland_,[36] he could not figure: the
Kammerherrs and Raths of the Calendar went tickling over his tongue like
the raisins of the cake; and of the more rich church-livings he, by
reading, as it were levied a tithe.

     [36] _Literary Germany_; a work (I believe of no great merit) which
     Richter often twitches in the same style.--ED.

He purposely remained his own Edition in Sunday Wove-paper; I mean, he
did not lay away his Sunday coat, even when the Prayer-bell tolled; for
he had still much to do.

After supper, he was just about visiting the Fräulein, when he descried
her in person, like a lily dipt in the red twilight, in the
Castle-garden, whose western limit his house constituted, the southern
one being the Chinese wall of the Castle.... By the way, how I got to
the knowledge of all this, what Letter-boxes are, whether I myself was
ever there, &c. &c.,--the whole of this shall, upon my life, be soon and
faithfully communicated to the reader, and that too in the present Book.

Fixlein hopped forth like a Will-o'-wisp into the garden, whose
flower-perfume was mingling with his supper-perfume. No one bowed lower
to a nobleman than he, not out of plebeian servility, nor of
self-interested cringing, but because he thought "a nobleman was a
nobleman." But in this case his bow, instead of falling forwards, fell
obliquely to the right, as it were after his hat: for he had not risked
taking a stick with him; and hat and stick were his proppage and
balance-wheel, in short, his bowing-gear, without which it was out of
his power to produce any courtly bow, had you offered him the High
Church of Hamburg for so doing. Thiennette's mirthfulness soon unfolded
his crumpled soul into straight form, and into the proper tone. He
delivered her a long neat Thanksgiving and Harvest sermon for the scaly
cake; which appeared to her at once kind and tedious. Young women
without the polish of high life reckon tedious pedantry, merely like
snuffing, one of the necessary ingredients of a man: they reverence us
infinitely; and as Lambert could never speak to the King of Prussia, by
reason of his sun-eyes, except in the dark, so they, I believe, often
like better,--also by reason of our sublime air,--if they can catch us
in the dark too. _Him_ Thiennette edified by the Imperial History of
Herr von Aufhammer and Her Ladyship his spouse, who meant to put him,
the Quintus, in her will: _her_ he edified by his Literary History, as
relating to himself and the Subrector; how, for instance, he was at
present vicariating in the Second Form, and ruling over scholars as long
in stature as himself. And thus did the two in happiness, among red
bean-blossoms, red may-chafers, before the red of the twilight burning
lower and lower on the horizon, walk to and fro in the garden; and turn
always with a smile as they approached the head of the ancient
gardeneress, standing like a window-bust through the little lattice,
which opened in the bottom of a larger one.

To me it is incomprehensible he did not fall in love. I know his
reasons, indeed: in the first place, she had nothing; secondly, he had
nothing, and school-debts to boot; thirdly, her genealogical tree was a
boundary-tree and warning-post; fourthly, his hands were tied up by
another nobler thought, which, for good cause, is yet reserved from the
reader. Nevertheless--Fixlein! I durst not have been in thy place! I
should have looked at her, and remembered her virtues and our
school-years, and then have drawn forth my too fusible heart, and
presented it to her as a bill of exchange, or insinuated it as a
summons. For I should have considered that she resembled a nun in two
senses, in her good heart and in her good pastry; that, in spite of her
intercourse with male vassals, she was no Charles Genevieve Louise
Auguste Timothé Eon de Beaumont,[37] but a smooth, fair-haired,
white-capped dove; that she sought more to please her own sex than ours;
that she showed a melting heart, not previously borrowed from the
Circulating Library, in tears, for which in her innocence she rather
took shame than credit.--At the very first cheapening, I should, on
these grounds, have been out with my heart.--Had I fully reflected,
Quintus! that I knew her as myself; that her hands and mine (to wit, had
I been thou) had both been guided by the same Senior to Latin
penmanship; that we two, when little children, had kissed each other
before the glass, to see whether the two image-children would do it
likewise in the mirror; that often we had put hands of both sexes into
the same muff, and there played with them in secret; had I, lastly,
considered that we were here standing before the glass-house, now
splendent in the enamel of twilight, and that on the cold panes of this
glass-house we two (she within, I without) had often pressed our warm
cheeks together, parted only by the thickness of the glass,--then had I
taken this poor gentle soul, pressed asunder by Fate, and seeing, amid
her thunder-clouds, no higher elevation to part them and protect her
than the grave, and had drawn her to my own soul, and warmed her on my
heart, and encompassed her about with my eyes.

     [37] See _Schmelzle's Journey_, p. 284.--ED.

In truth, the Quintus would have done so too, had not the
above-mentioned nobler thought, which I yet disclose not, kept him
back. Softened, without knowing the cause--(accordingly he gave his
mother a kiss)--and blessed without having had a literary conversation;
and dismissed with a freight of humble compliments, which he was to
disload on the morrow before the Dragoon Rittmeisterinn, he returned to
his little cottage, and looked yet a long while out of its dark windows,
at the light ones of the Castle. And then, when the first quarter of the
moon was setting, that is, about midnight, he again, in the cool sigh of
a mild, fanning, moist and directly heart-addressing night-breeze,
opened the eyelids of a sight already sunk in dreaming....

Sleep, for today thou hast done naught ill! I, whilst the drooping shut
flower-bell of thy spirit sinks on thy pillow, will look forth into the
breezy night over thy morning footpath, which, through the translucent
little wood, is to lead thee to Schadeck, to thy patroness. All
prosperity attend thee, thou foolish Quintus!--




SECOND LETTER-BOX.

_Frau von Aufhammer. Childhood-Resonance. Authorcraft._


The early piping which the little thrush last night adopted by the
Quintaner from its nest, started for victual about two o'clock, soon
drove our Quintus into his clothes; whose calender-press and
parallel-ruler the hands of his careful mother had been, for she would
not send him to the Rittmeisterinn "like a runagate dog." The Shock was
incarcerated, the Quintaner taken with him, as likewise many wholesome
rules from Mother Fixlein, how to conduct himself towards the
Rittmeisterinn. But the son answered: "Mamma, when a man has been in
company, like me, with high people, with a Fräulein Thiennette, he soon
knows whom he is speaking to, and what polished manners and Saver di
veaver (_Savoir vivre_) require."

He arrived with the Quintaner, and green fingers (dyed with the leaves
he had plucked on the path), and with a half-nibbled rose between his
teeth, in presence of the sleek lackeys of Schadeck.--If women are
flowers,--though as often silk and Italian and gum-flowers as botanical
ones,--then was Frau von Aufhammer a ripe flower, with (adipose)
neck-bulb, and tuberosity (of lard). Already, in the half of her body,
cut away from life by the apoplexy, she lay upon her lard-pillow but as
on a softer grave: nevertheless, the portion of her that remained was
at once lively, pious and proud. Her heart was a flowing cornucopia to
all men, yet this not from philanthropy, but from rigid devotion: the
lower classes she assisted, cherished and despised, regarding nothing in
them, except it were their piety. She received the bowing Quintus with
the back-bowing air of a patroness; yet she brightened into a look of
kindliness at his disloading of the compliments from Thiennette.

She began the conversation, and long continued it alone, and said,--yet
without losing the inflation of pride from her countenance: "She should
soon die; but the god-children of her husband she would remember in her
will." Farther, she told him directly in the face, which stood there all
over-written with the Fourth Commandment before her, that "he must not
build upon a settlement in Hukelum; but to the Flachsenfingen
Conrectorate (to which the Bürgermeister and Council had the right of
nomination), she hoped to promote him, as it was from the then
Bürgermeister that she bought her coffee, and from the Town-Syndic (he
drove a considerable wholesale and retail trade in Hamburg candles) that
she bought both her wax and tallow lights."

And now by degrees he arrived at his humble petition, when she asked him
sick-news of Senior Astmann, who guided himself more by Luther's
Catechism than by the Catechism of Health. She was Astmann's patroness
in a stricter than ecclesiastical sense; and she even confessed that she
would soon follow this, true shepherd of souls, when she heard, here at
Shadeck, the sound of his funeral-bell. Such strange chemical affinities
exist between our dross and our silver veins; as, for example, here
between Pride and Love: and I could wish that we would pardon this
hypostatic union in all persons, as readily as we do it in the fair,
who, with all their faults, are nevertheless by us,--as, according to Du
Fay, iron, though mixed with any other metal, is, by the
magnet,--attracted and held fast.

Supposing even that the Devil _had_, in some idle minute, sown a handful
or two of the seeds of Envy in our Quintus' soul, yet they had not
sprouted; and today especially they did not, when he heard the praises
of a man who had been his teacher, and who,--what he reckoned a Titulado
of the Earth, not from vanity but from piety,--was a clergyman. So much,
however, is, according to History, not to be denied: That he now
straight-way came forth with his petition to the noble lady, signifying
that "indeed he would cheerfully content himself for a few years in the
school; but yet in the end he longed to be in some small quiet priestly
office." To her question, "But was he orthodox?" he answered, that "he
hoped so; he had in Leipzig, not only attended all the public lectures
of Dr. Burscher, but also had taken private instructions from several
sound teachers of the faith, well knowing that the Consistorium, in its
examinations as to purity of doctrine, was now more strict than
formerly."

The sick lady required him to make a proof-shot, namely, to administer
to her a sick-bed exhortation. By Heaven! he administered to her one of
the best. Her pride of birth now crouched before his pride of office and
priesthood; for though he could not, with the Dominican monk, Alanus de
Rupe, believe that a priest was greater than God, inasmuch as the latter
could only make a World, but the former a God (in the mass); yet he
could not but fall-in with Hostiensis, who shows that the priestly
dignity is seven thousand six hundred and forty-four times greater than
the kingly, the Sun being just so many times greater than the Moon.--But
a Rittmeisterinn--_she_ shrinks into absolute nothing before a parson.

In the servants' hall he applied to the lackeys for the last annual
series of the _Hamburg Political Journal_; perceiving, that with these
historical documents of the time, they were scandalously papering the
buttons of travelling raiment. In gloomy harvest evenings, he could now
sit down and read for himself what good news were transpiring in the
political world--twelve months ago.

On a Triumphal Car, full-laden with laurel, and to which Hopes alone
were yoked, he drove home at night, and by the road advised the
Quintaner not to be puffed up with any earthly honour, but silently to
thank God, as himself was now doing.

       *       *       *       *       *

The thickset blooming grove of his four canicular weeks, and the flying
tumult of blossoms therein, are already painted on three of the sides. I
will now clutch blindfold into his days, and bring out one of them: one
smiles and sends forth its perfumes like another.

Let us take, for instance, the Saint's day of his mother, _Clara_, the
twelfth of August. In the morning, he had perennial, fireproof joys,
that is to say, Employments. For he was writing, as I am doing. Truly,
if Xerxes proposed a prize for the invention of a new pleasure, any man
who had sat down to write his thoughts on the prize-question, had the
new pleasure already among his fingers. I know only one thing sweeter
than making a book, and that is, to project one. Fixlein used to write
little works, of the twelfth part of an alphabet in size, which in their
manuscript state he got bound by the bookbinder in gilt boards, and
betitled with printed letters, and then inserted them among the literary
ranks of his book-board. Every one thought they were novelties printed
in writing types. He had laboured,--I shall omit his less interesting
performances,--at a _Collection of Errors of the Press_, in German
writings: he compared _Errata_ with each other; showed which occurred
most frequently; observed that important results were to be drawn from
this, and advised the reader to draw them.

Moreover, he took his place among the German _Masorites_. He observes
with great justice in his Preface: "The Jews had their _Masora_ to show,
which told them how often every letter was to be found in their Bible;
for example, the Aleph (the A) 42,377 times; how many verses there are
in which all the consonants appear (there are 26 verses), or only eighty
(there are 3); how many verses we have into which 42 words and 160
consonants enter (there is just one, Jeremiah xxi. 7); which is the
middle letter in certain books (in the Pentateuch, it is in Leviticus
xi. 42, the noble V[38]), or in the whole Bible itself. But where have
we Christians any similar Masora for Luther's Bible to show? Has it been
accurately investigated which is the middle word, or the middle letter
here, which vowel appears seldomest, and how often each vowel? Thousands
of Bible-Christians go out of the world, without ever knowing that the
German A occurs 323,015 times (therefore above 7 times oftener than the
Hebrew one) in their Bible."

     [38] As in the State.--V. or Von, _de_, _of_, being the symbol of
     the nobility, the middle order of the State.--ED.

I could wish that inquirers into Biblical Literature among our Reviewers
would publicly let me know, if on a more accurate summation they find
this number incorrect.[39]

     [39] In Erlang, my petition has been granted. The _Bible
     Institution_ of that town have found instead of the 116,301 A's,
     which Fixlein at first pretended with such certainty to find in the
     Bible-books (which false number was accordingly given in the first
     Edition of this Work, p. 81), the above-mentioned 323,015; which
     (uncommonly singular) is precisely the sum of all the letters in
     the Koran put together. See _Lüdeke's Beschr. des Türk. Reichs_
     (Lüdeke's Description of the Turkish Empire. New edition, 1780).

Much also did the Quintus _collect_: he had a fine _Almanac Collection_,
a _Catechism_ and _Pamphlet Collection_; also a _Collection of
Advertisements_, which he began, is not so incomplete as you most
frequently see such things. He puts high value on his _Alphabetical
Lexicon of German Subscribers for Books_, where my name also occurs
among the J's.

But what he liked best to produce were Schemes of Books. Accordingly, he
sewed together a large work, wherein he merely advised the Learned of
things they ought to introduce in Literary History, which History he
rated some ells higher than Universal or Imperial History. In his
Prolegomena to this performance, he transiently submitted to the
Literary republic that Hommel had given a register of Jurists who were
sons of wh--, of others who had become Saints; that Baillet enumerates
the Learned who _meant_ to write something; and Ancillon those who wrote
nothing at all; and the Lübeck Superintendent Götze, those who were
shoemakers, those who were drowned; and Bernhard those whose fortunes
and history before birth were interesting. This (he could now continue)
should, as it seems, have excited us to similar muster-rolls and
matriculations of other kinds of Learned; whereof he proposed a few: for
example, of the Learned, who were unlearned; of those who were entire
rascals; of such as wore their own hair,--of cue-preachers,
cue-psalmists, cue-annalists, and so forth; of the Learned who had worn
black leather breeches, of others who had worn rapiers; of the Learned
who had died in their eleventh year,--in their twentieth--twenty-first,
&c.,--in their hundred and fiftieth, of which he knew no instance,
unless the Beggar Thomas Parr might be adduced; of the Learned who wrote
a more abominable hand than the other Learned (whereof we know only
Rolfinken and his letters, which were as long as his hands[40]); or of
the Learned who had clipt nothing from each other but the beard (whereof
no instance is known, save that of Philelphus and Timotheus[41]).

     [40] _Paravicini Singularia de viris claris. Cent. I. 2._

     [41] _Ejusd. Cent. II._ Philelphus quarrelled with the Greek about
     the quantity of a syllable: the prize or bet was the beard of the
     vanquished. Timotheus lost his.

Such by-studies did he carry on along with his official labours: but I
think the State in viewing these matters is actually mad; it compares
the man who is great in Philosophy and Belles Lettres at the expense of
his jog-trot officialities, to _concert-clocks_, which, though striking
their hours in flute-melodies, are worse time-keepers than your gross
stupid _steeple-clocks_.

To return to St. Clara's day. Fixlein, after such mental exertions,
bolted out under the music-bushes and rustling-trees; and returned not
again out of warm Nature, till plate and chair were already placed at
the table. In the course of the repast, something occurred which a
Biographer must not omit: for his mother had, by request, been wont to
map out for him, during the process of mastication, the chart of his
child's-world, relating all the traits which in any way prefigured what
he had now grown to. This perspective sketch of his early Past, he
committed to certain little leaves, which merit our undivided attention.
For such leaves exclusively, containing scenes, acts, plays of his
childhood, he used chronologically to file and arrange in separate
drawers in a little child's-desk of his; and thus to divide his
Biography, as Moser did his Publicistic Materials, into separate
_letter-boxes_. He had boxes or drawers for memorial-letters of his
twelfth, of his thirteenth, fourteenth, &c. of his twenty-first year,
and so on. Whenever he chose to conclude a day of pedagogic drudgery by
an evening of peculiar rest, he simply pulled out a letter-drawer, a
register-bar in his Life-hand-organ, and recollected the whole.

And here must I in reference to those reviewing Mutes, who may be for
casting the noose of strangulation round my neck, most particularly beg,
that, before doing so on account of my Chapters being called
Letter-boxes, they would have the goodness to look whose blame it was,
and to think whether I could possibly help it, seeing the Quintus had
divided his Biography into such Boxes himself: they have Christian
bowels.

But about his elder brother he put no saddening question to his mother:
this poor boy a peculiar Fate had laid hold of, and with all his genial
endowment, dashed to pieces on the iceberg of Death. For he chanced to
leap on an ice-board that had jammed itself among several others; but
these recoiled, and his shot forth with him; melted away as it floated
under his feet, and so sunk his heart of fire amid the ice and waves. It
grieved his mother that he was not found, that her heart had not been
harrowed by the look of the swoln corpse.--O good mother, rather thank
God for it!--

       *       *       *       *       *

After breakfast, to fortify himself with new vigour for his desk, he
for some time strolled idly over the house, and, like a Police
Fire-inspector, visited all the nooks of his cottage, to gather from
them here and there a live ember from the ash-covered rejoicing-fire of
his childhood. He mounted to the garret, to the empty bird-coops of his
father, who in winter had been a birder; and he transiently reviewed the
lumber of his old playthings, which were lying in the netted enclosure
of a large canary breeding-cage. In the minds of children, it is regular
_little_ forms, such as those of balls and dies, that impress and
express themselves most forcibly. From this may the reader explain to
himself Fixlein's delight in the red acorn-blockhouse, in the sparwork
glued together out of white chips and husks of potato-plums, in the
cheerful glass-house of a cube-shaped lantern, and other the like
products of his early architecture. The following, however, I explain
quite differently: he had ventured, without leave given from any lord of
the manor, to build a clay house; not for cottagers, but for flies; and
which, therefore, you could readily enough have put in your pocket. This
fly-hospital had its glass windows, and a red coat of colouring, and
very many alcoves, and three balconies: balconies, as a sort of house
within a house, he had loved from of old so much, that he could scarcely
have liked Jerusalem well, where (according to Lightfoot) no such thing
is permitted to be built. From the glistening eyes, with which the
architect had viewed his tenantry creeping about the windows or feeding
out of the sugar-trough,--for, like the Count St. Germain, they ate
nothing but sugar,--from this joy an adept in the art of education might
easily have prophesied his turn for household contraction; to his fancy,
in those times, even gardeners'-huts were like large waste Arks and
Halls, and nothing bigger than such a fly-Louvre seemed a true, snug,
citizen's-house. He now felt and handled his old high child's-stool,
which had, in former days, resembled the _Sedes Exploratoria_ of the
Pope; he gave his child's-coach a tug and made it run; but he could not
understand what balsam and holiness so much distinguished it from all
other child's-coaches. He wondered that the real sports of children
should not so delight him, as the emblems of these sports, when the
child that had carried them on was standing grown up to manhood in his
presence.

Before one article in the house he stood heart-melted and sad; before a
little angular clothes-press, which was no higher than my table, and
which had belonged to his poor drowned brother. When the boy with the
key of it was swallowed by the waves, the excruciated mother had made a
vow that this toy-press of his should never be broken up by violence.
Most probably there is nothing in it, but the poor soul's playthings.
Let us look away from this bloody urn.----

Bacon reckons the remembrances of childhood among wholesome medicinal
things; naturally enough, therefore, they acted like a salutary
digestive on the Quintus. He could now again betake him with new heart
to his desk, and produce something quite peculiar--petitions for
church-livings. He took the Address-calendar, and for every country
parish that he found in it, got a petition in readiness; which he then
laid aside, till such time as the present incumbent should decease. For
Hukelum alone he did not solicit.--It is a pretty custom in
Flachsenfingen that for every office which is vacant, you are required,
if you want it, to sue. As the higher use of Prayer consists not in its
fulfilment, but in its accustoming you to pray; so likewise petitionary
papers ought to be given in, not indeed that you may get the
office,--this nothing but your money can do,--but that you may learn to
write petitions. In truth, if among the Calmucks, the turning of a
calabash[42] stands in the place of Prayer, a slight movement of the
purse may be as much as if you supplicated in words.

     [42] Their prayer-barrel, Kürüdu, is a hollowed shell, a calabash,
     full of unrolled formulas of prayer; they sway it from side to
     side, and then it works. More philosophically viewed, since in
     prayer the feeling only is of consequence, it is much the same
     whether this express itself by motion of the mouth or of the
     calabash.

Towards evening--it was Sunday--he went out roving over the village; he
pilgrimed to his old sporting-places, and to the common where he had so
often driven his snails to pasture; visited the peasant, who, from
school-times upwards, had been wont, to the amazement of the rest, to
_thou_[43] him; went, an Academic Tutor, to the Schoolmaster; then to
the Senior; then to the Episcopal-barn or church. This last no mortal
understands, till I explain it. The case was this: some three-and-forty
years ago, a fire had destroyed the church (not the steeple), the
parsonage, and--what was not to be replaced--the church-records. (For
this reason, it was only the smallest portion of the Hukelum people that
knew exactly how old they were; and the memory of our Quintus himself
vibrated between adopting the thirty-third year and the thirty-second.)
In consequence, the preaching had now to be carried on where formerly
there had been thrashing; and the seed of the divine word to be turned
over on the same threshing-floor with natural corn-seed. The Chanter and
the Schoolboys took up the threshing-floor; the female
mother-church-people stood on the one sheaves-loft, the Schadeck
womankind on the other; and their husbands clustered pyramidically, like
groschen and farthing-gallery men, about the barn-stairs; and far up on
the straw-loft, mixed souls stood listening. A little flute was their
organ, an upturned beer-cask their altar, round which they had to walk.
I confess, I myself could have preached in such a place, not without
humour. The Senior (at that time still a Junior), while the parsonage
was building, dwelt and taught in the Castle: it was here, accordingly,
that Fixlein had learned the _Irregular Verbs_ with Thiennette.

     [43] In German, as in some other languages, the common mode of
     address is by the _third_ person: plural, it indicates respect;
     singular, command: the _second_ person is also used; plural, it
     generally denotes indifference; singular, great familiarity, and
     sometimes its product, contempt. _Dutzenfreund, Thouing-friend_, is
     the strictest term of intimacy; and among the wild _Burschen_
     (Students) many a duel (happily, however, often ending like the
     _Polemo-Midinia_ in _one_ drop of blood) has been fought, in
     consequence of saying _Du_ (thou) and _Sie_ (they) in the wrong
     place.--ED.

These voyages of discovery completed, our Hukelum voyager could still,
after evening prayers, pick leaf-insects, with Thiennette, from the
roses; worms from the beds, and a Heaven of joy from every minute. Every
dew-drop was coloured as with oil of cloves and oil of gladness; every
star was a sparkle from the sun of happiness; and in the closed heart of
the maiden, there lay near to him, behind a little wall of separation
(as near to the Righteous man behind the thin wall of Life), an
outstretched blooming Paradise.... I mean, she loved him a little.

He might have known it, perhaps. But to his compressed delight he gave
freer vent, as he went to bed, by early recollections on the stair. For
in his childhood he had been accustomed, by way of evening-prayer, to go
over, under his coverlid, as it were, a rosary, including fourteen Bible
Proverbs, the first verse of the Psalm, "All people that on Earth," the
Tenth Commandment, and, lastly, a long blessing. To get the sooner done
with it, he had used to begin his devotion, not only on the stair, but
before leaving that place where Alexander studied men, and Semler stupid
books. Moored in the haven of the down-waves, he was already over with
his evening supplication; and could now, without farther exertion, shut
his eyes and plump into sleep.----Thus does there lurk, in the smallest
_homunculus_, the model of--the Catholic Church.

So far the Dog-days of Quintus Zebedäus Egidius Fixlein.--I, for the
second time, close a Chapter of this _Life_, as Life itself is closed,
with a sleep.




THIRD LETTER-BOX.

_Christmas Recollections. New Occurrence._


For all of us the passage to the grave is, alas! a string of empty
insipid days, as of glass pearls, only here and there divided by an
orient one of price. But you die murmuring, unless, like the Quintus,
you regard your existence as a drum: this has only one single _tone_,
but variety of _time_ gives the sound of it cheerfulness enough. Our
Quintus taught in the Fourth Class; vicariated in the Second; wrote at
his desk by night; and so lived on in the usual monotonous fashion--all
the time from the Holidays--till Christmas-eve, 1791; and nothing was
remarkable in his history except this same eve, which I am now about to
paint.

But I shall still have time to paint it, after, in the first place,
explaining shortly how, like birds of passage, he had contrived to soar
away over the dim cloudy Harvest. The secret was, he set upon the
_Hamburg Political Journal_, with which the lackeys of Schadeck had been
for papering their buttons. He could now calmly, with his back at the
stove, accompany the winter campaigns of the foregoing year; and fly
after every battle, as the ravens did after that of Pharsalia. On the
printed paper he could still, with joy and admiration, walk round our
German triumphal arches and scaffoldings for fireworks: while to the
people in the town, who got only the newest newspapers, the very
fragments of these our trophies, maliciously torn down by the French,
were scarcely discernible; nay, with old plans he could drive back and
discomfit the enemy, while later readers in vain tried to resist them
with new ones.

Moreover, not only did the facility of conquering the French prepossess
him in favour of this journal; but also the circumstance that it--cost
him nothing. His attachment to gratis reading was decided. And does not
this throw light on the fact, that he, as Morhof advised, was wont
sedulously to collect the separate leaves of waste-paper books as they
came from the grocer, and to rake among the same, as Virgil did in
Ennius? Nay, for him the grocer was a Fortius (the scholar), or a
Frederick (the king), both which persons were in the habit of simply
cutting from complete books such leaves as contained anything. It was
also this respect for all waste-paper that inspired him with such esteem
for the aprons of French cooks, which it is well known consist of
printed paper; and he often wished some German would translate these
aprons: indeed I am willing to believe that a good version of more than
one of such paper aprons might contribute to elevate our Literature
(this Muse _à belles fesses_), and serve her in place of drivel-bib.--On
many things a man puts a _pretium affectionis_, simply because he hopes
he may have half stolen them: on this principle, combined with the
former, our Quintus adopted into his belief anything he could snap away
from an open Lecture, or as a visitor in class-rooms; opinions only for
which the Professor must be paid, he rigorously examined.--I return to
the Christmas-eve.

At the very first, Egidius was glad, because out of doors millers and
bakers were at fisty-cuffs (as we say of drifting snow in large flakes),
and the ice-flowers of the window were blossoming; for external frost,
with a snug warm room, was what he liked. He could now put fir-wood into
his stove, and Mocha coffee into his stomach; and shove his right foot
(not into the slipper, but) under the warm side of his Shock, and also
on the left keep swinging his pet Starling, which was pecking at the
snout of old Schil; and then with the right hand--with the left he was
holding his pipe--proceed, so undisturbed, so intrenched, so cloud-capt,
without the smallest breath of frost, to the highest enterprise which a
Quintus can attempt,--to writing the Class-prodromus of the
Flachsenfingen Gymnasium, namely, the eighth part thereof. I hold the
_first printing_ in the history of a literary man to be more important
than the _first printing_ in the history of Letters: Fixlein could not
sate himself with specifying what he purposed, God willing, in the
following year, to treat of; and accordingly, more for the sake of
printing than of use, he farther inserted three or four pedagogic
glances at the plan of operations to be followed by his schoolmaster
colleagues as a body.

He lastly introduced a few dashes, by way of hooking his thoughts
together; and then laid aside the _Opus_, and would no longer look at
it, that so, when printed, he might stand astonished at his own
thoughts. And now he could take the Leipzig Fair Catalogue, which he
purchased yearly, instead of the books therein, and open it without a
sigh: he too was in print, as well as I am.

The happy fool, while writing, had shaken his head, rubbed his hands,
hitched about on his chair, puckered his face, and sucked the end of his
cue.--He could now spring up about five o'clock in the evening, to
recreate himself; and across the magic vapour of his pipe, like a
new-caught bird, move up and down in his cage. On the warm smoke, the
long galaxy of street-lamps was gleaming; and red on his bed-curtains
lay the fitful reflection of the blazing windows, and illuminated trees
in the neighbourhood. And now he shook away the snow of Time from the
winter-green of Memory; and beheld the fair years of his childhood,
uncovered, fresh, green and balmy, standing afar off before him. From
his distance of twenty years, he looked into the quiet cottage of his
parents, where his father and his brother had not yet been reaped away
by the sickle of Death. He said to himself: "I will go through the whole
Christmas-eve from the very dawn, as I had it of old."

At his very rising he finds spangles on the table; sacred spangles from
the gold-leaf and silver-leaf, with which the Christ-child[44] has been
emblazoning and coating his apples and nuts, the presents of the
night.--On the mint-balance of joy, this metallic foam pulls heavier
than the golden calves, and golden Pythagoras'-legs, and golden
Philistine-mice of wealthier capitalists.--Then came his mother,
bringing him both Christianity and clothes: for in drawing on his
trousers, she easily recapitulated the Ten Commandments, and, in tying
his garters, the Apostles' Creed. So soon as candle-light was over, and
day-light come, he clambers to the arm of the settle, and then measures
the nocturnal growth of the yellow wiry grove of Christmas-Birch; and
devotes far less attention than usual to the little white
winter-flowerage, which the seeds shaken from the bird-cage are sending
forth in the wet joints of the window-panes.--I nowise grudge J. J.
Rousseau his _Flora Petrinsularis_;[45] but let him also allow our
Quintus his _Window-flora_.--There was no such thing as school all day;
so he had time enough to seek his Butcher (his brother), and commence
(when could there be finer frost for it?) the slaughtering of their
winter-meat. Some days before, the brother, at the peril of his life and
of a cudgelling, had caught their stalled-beast--so they called the
sparrow--under a window-sill in the Castle. Their slaughtering wants not
an axe (of wood), nor puddings, nor potted meat.--About three o'clock
the old Gardener, whom neighbours have to call the Professor of
Gardening, takes his place on his large chair, with his Cologne
tobacco-pipe; and after this no mortal shall work a stroke. He tells
nothing but lies; of the aeronautic Christ-child, and the jingling
Ruprecht with his bells. In the dusk, our little Quintus takes an apple;
divides it into all the figures of stereometry, and spreads the
fragments in two heaps on the table: then as the lighted candle enters,
he starts up in amazement at the unexpected present, and says to his
brother: "Look what the good Christ-child has given thee and me; and I
saw one of his wings glittering." And for this same glittering he
himself lies in wait the whole evening.

     [44] These antique Christmas festivities Richter describes with
     equal _gusto_ in another work (_Briefe und Zukünftige Lebenslemf_);
     where the Christ-child (falsely reported to the young ones, to have
     been seen flying through the air, with gold wings); the Birch-bough
     fixed in a corner of the room, and by him made to grow; the fruit,
     of gilt sweetmeats, apples, nuts, which (for good boys) it suddenly
     produces, &c. &c. are specified with the same fidelity as
     here.--ED.

     [45] Which he purposed to make for his Island of St. Pierre in the
     Bienne Lake.

About eight o'clock,--here he walks chiefly by the chronicle of his
letter-drawer,--both of them, with necks almost excoriated with washing,
and in clean linen, and in universal anxiety lest the Holy Christ-child
find them up, are put to bed. What a magic night!--What tumult of
dreaming hopes!--The populous, motley, glittering cave of Fancy opens
itself, in the length of the night, and in the exhaustion of dreamy
effort, still darker and darker, fuller and more grotesque; but the
awakening gives back to the thirsty heart its hopes. All accidental
tones, the cries of animals, of watchmen, are, for the timidly devout
Fancy, sounds out of Heaven; singing voices of Angels in the air,
church-music of the morning worship.

Ah! it was not the mere Lubberland of sweetmeats and playthings which
then, with its perspective, stormed like a river of joy against the
chambers of our hearts; and which yet, in the moonlight of memory, with
its dusky landscapes, melts our souls in sweetness. Ah! this was it,
that then for our boundless wishes there were still boundless hopes: but
now reality is round us, and the wishes are all that we have left!

At last came rapid lights from the neighbourhood playing through the
window on the walls, and the Christmas trumpets, and the crowing from
the steeple, hurries both the boys from their bed. With their clothes in
their hands, without fear for the darkness, without feeling for the
morning-frost, rushing, intoxicated, shouting, they hurry down-stairs
into the dark room. Fancy riots in the pastry and fruit-perfume of the
still eclipsed treasures, and paints her air-castles by the glimmering
of the Hesperides-fruit with which the Birch-tree is loaded. While their
mother strikes a light, the falling sparks sportfully open and shroud
the dainties on the table, and the many-coloured grove on the wall; and
a single atom of that fire bears on it a hanging garden of Eden.----

--On a sudden all grew light; and the Quintus got--the Conrectorship,
and a table-clock.




FOURTH LETTER-BOX.

_Office-brokage. Discovery of the promised Secret. Hans van Füchslein._


For while the Quintus, in his vapoury chamber, was thus running over the
sounding-board of his early years, the Rathsdiener, or City-officer,
entered with a lantern and the Presentation; and behind him the courier
of the Frau von Aufhammer with a note and a table-clock. The
Rittmeisterinn had transformed her payment for the Dog-days
sickbed-exhortation into a Christmas present; which consisted, _first_,
of a table-clock, with a wooden ape thereon, starting out when the hours
struck, and drumming along with every stroke; _secondly_, of the
Conrectorate, which she had procured for him.

As in the public this appointment from the private Flachsenfingen
Council has not been judged of as it deserved, I consider it my duty to
offer a defence for the body corporate; and that rather here, than in
the _Reichsanzeiger_, or _Imperial Indicator_.--I have already
mentioned, in the Second Letter-Box, that the Town-Syndic drove a trade
in Hamburg candles; and the then Bürgermeister in coffee-beans, which he
sold as well whole as ground. Their joint traffic, however, which they
carried on exclusively, was in the eight School-offices of
Flachsenfingen: the other members of the Council acting only as
bale-wrappers, shopmen and accountants in the Council wareroom. A
Council-house, indeed, is like an India-house, where not only
resolutions or appointments, but also shoes and cloth, are exposed to
sale. Properly speaking, the Councillor derives his freedom of
office-trading from that principle of the Roman law: _Cui jus est
donandi, eidem et vendendi jus est_, that is to say, He who has the
right of giving anything away, has also a right to dispose of it for
money, if he can. Now as the Council-members have palpably the right of
conferring offices gratis, the right of selling them must follow of
course.


_Short Extra-word on Appointment-brokers in general._

My chief anxiety is lest the Academy-product-sale-Commission[46] of the
State carry on its office-trade too slackly. And what but the commonweal
must suffer in the long-run, if important posts are distributed, not
according to the current cash, which is laid down for them, but
according to connexions, relationships, party recommendations, and
bowings and cringings? Is it not a contradiction, to charge titulary
offices dearer than real ones? Should not one rather expect that the
real Hofrath would pay higher by the _alterum tantum_ than the mere
titulary Hofrath?--Money, among European nations, is now the equivalent
and representative of value in all things, and consequently in
understanding; the rather as a _head_ is stamped on it: to pay down the
purchase-money of an office is therefore neither more nor less than to
stand an _examen rigorosum_, which is held by a good _schema
examinandi_. To invert this, to pretend exhibiting your qualifications,
in place of these their surrogates, and assignates and _monnoie de
confiance_, is simply to resemble the crazy philosophers in _Gulliver's
Travels_, who, for social converse, instead of names of things, brought
the things themselves tied up in a bag; it is, indeed, plainly as much
as trying to fall back into the barbarous times of trade by barter, when
the Romans, instead of the figured cattle on their leather money, drove
forth the beeves themselves.

     [46] Borrowed from the "Imperial Mine-product-sale-Commission," in
     Vienna: in their very names these Vienna people show taste.

From all such injudicious notions I myself am so far removed, that often
when I used to read that the King of France was devising new offices, to
stand and sell them under the booth of his Baldaquin, I have set myself
to do something of the like. This I shall now at least calmly propose;
not vexing my heart whether Governments choose to adopt it or not. As
our Sovereign will not allow us to multiply offices purely for sale,
nay, on the contrary, is day and night (like managers of strolling
companies) meditating how to give more parts to one State-actor; and
thus to the Three Stage Unities to add a Fourth, that of Players; as the
above French method, therefore, will not apply, could not we at least
contrive to invent some Virtues harmonising with the offices, along with
which they might be sold as titles? Might we not, for instance, with the
office of a Referendary, put off at the same time a titular
Incorruptibility, for a fair consideration; and so that this virtue, as
not belonging to the office, must be separately paid for by the
candidate? Such a market-title and patent of nobility could not but be
ornamental to a Referendary. We forget that in former times such high
titles were appended to all posts whatsoever: the scholastic Professor
then wrote himself (besides his official designation) "The Seraphic,"
"The Incontrovertible," "The Penetrating;" the King wrote himself "The
Great," "The Bald," "The Bold," and so also did the Rabbins. Could it be
unpleasant to gentlemen in the higher stations of Justice, if the titles
of Impartiality, Rapidity, &c. might be conferred on them by sale, as
well as the posts themselves? Thus with the appointment of a Kammerrath,
or Councillor of Revenue, the virtue of Patriotism might fitly be
conjoined; and I believe, few Advocates would grudge purchasing the
title of Integrity (as well as their common one of Government-advocacy),
were it to be had in the market. If, however, any candidate chose to
take his post without the virtues, then it would stand with himself to
do so, and in the adoption of this reflex morality, Government should
not constrain him.

It might be that, as, according to Tristram Shandy, clothes; according
to Walter Shandy and Lavater, proper names exert an influence on men,
appellatives would do so still more; since, on us, as on testaceous
animals, _the foam so often hardens into shell_: but such internal
morality is not a thing the State can have an eye to; for, as in the
fine arts, it is not this, but the _representation_ of it, which forms
her true aim.

I have found it rather difficult to devise for our different offices
different verbal-virtues; but I should think there might many such
divisions of Virtue (at this moment, Love of Freedom, Public-spirit,
Sincerity and Uprightness occur to me) be hunted out; were but some
well-disposed minister of state to appoint a Virtue-board or Moral
Address Department, with some half dozen secretaries, who, for a small
salary, might devise various virtues for the various posts. Were I in
their place, I should hold a good prism before the white ray of Virtue,
and divide it completely. Pity that it were not crimes we wanted--their
subdivision I mean;--our country Judges might then be selected for this
purpose. For in their tribunals, where only inferior jurisdiction, and
no penalty above five florins Frankish, is admitted, they have a daily
training how out of every mischief to make several small ones, none of
which they ever punish to a greater amount than their five florins. This
is a precious moral _Rolfinkenism_, which our Jurists have learned from
the great Sin-cutters, St. Augustin and his Sorbonne, who together have
carved more sins on Adam's Sin-apple than ever Rolfinken did faces on a
cherry-stone. How different one of our Judges from a Papal Casuist, who,
by side-scrapings, will rasp you down the best deadly sin into a
venial!--

School-offices (to come to these) are a small branch of traffic
certainly; yet still they are monarchies,--school-monarchies, to
wit,--resembling the Polish crown, which, according to Pope's verse, is
twice exposed to sale in the century; a statement, I need hardly say,
arithmetically false, Newton having settled the average duration of a
reign at twenty-two years. For the rest, whether the city Council bring
the young of the community a Hameln _Rat_-and-Child-_catcher_; or a
Weisse's _Child's-friend_,--this to the Council can make no difference;
seeing the Schoolmaster is not a horse, for whose secret defects the
horse-dealer is to be responsible. It is enough if Town-Syndic and Co.
cannot reproach themselves with having picked out any fellow of genius;
for a genius, as he is useless to the State, except for recreation and
ornament, would at the very least exclude the duller, cooler head, who
properly forms the true care and profit of the State; as your costly
carat-pearl is good for show alone, but coarse grain-pearls for
medicine. On the whole, if a schoolmaster be adequate to flog his
scholars, it should suffice; and I cannot but blame our Commission of
Inspectors when they go examining schools, that they do not make the
schoolmaster go through the duty of firking one or two young persons of
his class in their presence, by way of trial, to see what is in him.


_End of the Extra-word on Appointment-brokers in general._

Now again to our history! The Councillor Heads of the Firm had conferred
the Conrectorate on my hero, not only with a view to the continued
consumpt of candles and beans, but also on the strength of a quite mad
notion: they believed, the Quintus would very soon die.

--And here I have reached a most important circumstance in this History,
and one into which I have yet let no mortal look: now, however, it no
longer depends on my will whether I shall shove aside the folding-screen
from it or not; but I must positively lay it open, nay hang a
reverberating-lamp over it.

In medical history, it is a well-known fact that in certain families the
people all die precisely at the same age, just as in these families they
are all born at the same age (of nine months); nay, from Voltaire, I
recollect one family, the members of which at the same age all killed
themselves. Now, in the Fixleinic lineage, it was the custom that the
male ascendants uniformly on Cantata-Sunday, in their thirty-second
year, took to bed and died: every one of my readers would do well to
insert in his copy of the _Thirty-Years War_, Schiller having entirely
omitted it, the fact, that in the course thereof, one Fixlein died of
the plague, another of hunger, another of a musket-bullet; all in their
thirty-second year. True Philosophy explains the matter thus: "The first
two or three times, it happened purely by accident; and the other times,
the people died of sheer fright: if not so, the whole fact is rather to
be questioned."

But what did Fixlein make of the affair? Little or nothing: the only
thing he did was, that he took little or no pains to fall in love with
Thiennette; that so no other might have cause for fear on his account.
He himself, however, for five reasons, minded it so little, that he
hoped to be older than Senior Astmann before he died: First, because
three Gipsies, in three different places and at three different times,
had each shown him the same long vista of years in her magic mirror.
Secondly, because he had a sound constitution. Thirdly, because his own
brother had formed an exception, and perished before the thirties.
Fourthly, on this ground: When a boy he had fallen sick of sorrow, on
the very Cantata-Sunday when his father was lying in the winding-sheet,
and only been saved from death by his playthings; and with this
Cantata-sickness, he conceived that he had given the murderous Genius of
his race the slip. Fifthly, the church-books being destroyed, and with
them the certainty of his age, he could never fall into a right
definite deadly fear: "It may be," said he, "that I have got whisked
away over this whoreson year, and no one the wiser." I will not deny
that last year he had fancied he was two-and-thirty: "however," said he,
"if I am not to be so till, God willing, the next (1792), it may run
away as smoothly as the last; am I not always in _His_ keeping? And were
it unjust if the pretty years that were broken off from the life of my
brother should be added to mine?"--Thus, under the cold snow of the
Present, does poor man strive to warm himself, or to mould out of it a
fair snow-man.

The Councillor Oligarchy, however, built upon the opposite opinion; and,
like a Divinity, elevated our Quintus all at once from the Quintusship
to the Conrectorate; swearing to themselves, that he would soon vacate
it again. Properly speaking, by school-seniority, this holy chair should
have belonged to the Subrector Hans von Füchslein; but he wished it not;
being minded to become Hukelum Parson; especially, as Astmann's
Death-angel, according to sure intelligence, was opening more and more
widely the door of this spiritual sheepfold. "If the fellow weather
another year, 'tis more than I expect," said Hans.

This Hans was such a churl, that it is pity he had not been a Hanoverian
Postboy; that so, by the Mandate of the Hanoverian Government, enjoining
on all its Post-officers an elegant style of manners, he might have
somewhat refined himself. To our poor Quintus, whom no mortal disliked,
and who again could hate no mortal, he alone bore a grudge; simply
because _Fixlein_ did not write himself _Füchslein_, and had not chosen
along with him to purchase a Patent of Nobility. The Subrector, on this
his Patent triumphal chariot, drawn by a team of four specified
ancestors, was obliged to see the Quintus, who was related to him,
clutching by the lackey-straps behind the carriage; and to hear him, in
the most despicable raiment, saying to the train: "He that rides there
is my cousin, and a mortal, and I always remind him of it." The mild
compliant Quintus never noticed this large wasp-poisonbag in the
Subrector, but took it for a honeybag; nay, by his brotherly warmness,
which the nobleman regarded as mere show, he concreted these venomous
juices into still feller consistency. The Quintus, in his simplicity,
took Füchslein's contempt for envy of his pedagogic talents.

A Catherinenhof, an Annenhof, an Elizabethhof, Stralenhof and Petershof,
all these Russian pleasure palaces, a man can dispense with (if not
despise), who has a room, in which on Christmas-eve he walks about with
a Presentation in his hand. The new Conrector now longed for nothing
but--daylight: joys always (cares never) nibbled from him, like
sparrows, his sleep-grains; and tonight, moreover, the registrator of
his glad time, the clock-ape, drummed out every hour to him, which,
accordingly, he spent in gay dreaming, rather than in sound snoring.

On Christmas-morn, he looked at his Class-prodromus, and thought but
little of it; he scarcely knew what to make of his last night's foolish
inflation about his Quintusship: "the Quintus-post," said he to himself,
"is not to be named in the same day with the Conrectorate; I wonder how
I could parade so last night before my promotion; at present, I had more
reason." Today he ate, as on all Sundays and holydays, with the
Master-Butcher Steinberger, his former Guardian. To this man, Fixlein
was, what common people are _always_, but polished philosophical and
sentimental people very _seldom_ are,--_thankful_: a man thanks you the
less for presents, the more inclined he is to give presents of his own;
and the beneficent is rarely a grateful person. Meister Steinberger, in
the character of store-master, had introduced into the wire-cage of a
garret, where Fixlein, while a Student at Leipzig, was suspended, many a
well-filled trough with good canary-meat, of hung-beef, of household
bread and _Sauerkraut_. Money indeed was never to be wrung from him: it
is well known that he often sent the best calfskins gratis to the
tanner, to be boots for our Quintus; but the tanning-charges the Ward
himself had to bear.--On Fixlein's entrance, as was at all times
customary, a smaller damask table-cloth was laid upon the large coarser
one; the armchair; silver implements, and a wine-stoup were handed him;
mere waste, which, as the Guardian used to say, suited well enough for a
Scholar; but for a Flesher not at all. Fixlein first took his victuals,
and then signified that he was made Conrector. "Ward," said Steinberger,
"if you are made that, it is well.--Seest thou, Eva, I cannot buy a tail
of thy cows now; I must have smelt it beforehand." He was hereby
informing his daughter that the cash set apart for the fatted cattle
must now be applied to the Conrectorate; for he was in the habit of
advancing all instalment-dues to his ward, at an interest of four and a
half per cent. Fifty gulden he had already lent the Quintus on his
advancement to the Quintusship: of these the interest had to be duly
paid; yet, on the day of payment, the Quintus always got some
abatement; being wont every Sunday after dinner to instruct his
guardian's daughter in arithmetic, writing and geography. Steinberger
with justice required of his own grown-up daughter that she should know
all the towns, where he in his wanderings as a journeyman had slain fat
oxen; and if she slipped, or wrote crookedly, or subtracted wrong, he
himself, as Academical Senate and Justiciary, was standing behind her
chair, ready, so to speak, with the forge-hammer of his fist to beat out
the dross from her brain, and at a few strokes hammer it into right
ductility. The soft Quintus, for his part, had never struck her. On this
account she had perhaps, with a few glances, appointed him executor and
assignee of her heart. The old Flesher--simply because his wife was
dead--had constantly been in the habit of searching with mine-lamps and
pokers into all the corners of Eva's heart; and had in consequence long
ago observed--what the Quintus never did--that she had a mind for the
said Quintus. Young women conceal their sorrows more easily than their
joys: today at the mention of this Conrectorate, Eva had become
unusually _red_.

When she went after breakfast to bring in coffee, which the Ward had to
drink down to the grounds: "I beat Eva to death if she but look at him,"
said he. Then addressing Fixlein: "Hear you, Ward, did you never cast an
eye on my Eva? She can suffer you, and if you want her, you get her; but
_we_ have done with one another: for a learned man needs quite another
sort of thing."

"Herr Regiments-Quartermaster," said Fixlein (for this post Steinberger
filled in the provincial Militia), "such a match were far too rich, at
any rate, for a Schoolman." The Quartermaster nodded fifty times; and
then said to Eva, as she returned,--at the same time taking down from
the shelf a wooden crook, on which he used to rack out and suspend his
slain calves: "Stop!--Hark, dost wish the present Herr Conrector here
for thy husband?"

"Ah, good Heaven!" said Eva.

"Mayst wish him or not," continued the Flesher; "with this crook, thy
father knocks thy brains out, if thou but think of a learned man. Now
make his coffee." And so by the dissevering stroke of this wooden crook
was a love easily smitten asunder, which in a higher rank, by such
cutting through it with the sword, would only have foamed and hissed the
keenlier.

Fixlein might now, at any hour he liked, lay hold of fifty florins
Frankish, and clutch the pedagogic sceptre, and become coadjutor of the
Rector, that is, Conrector. We may assert, that it is with debts, as
with proportions in Architecture; of which Wolf has shown that those are
the best, which can be expressed in the smallest numbers. Nevertheless,
the Quartermaster cheerfully took learned men under his arm: for the
notion that his debtor would decease in his thirty-second year, and that
so Death, as creditor in the first rank, must be paid his Debt of
Nature, before the other creditors could come forward with their
debts--this notion he named stuff and oldwifery; he was neither
superstitious nor fanatical, and he walked by firm principles of action,
such as the common man much oftener has than your vapouring man of
letters, or your empty dainty man of rank.

       *       *       *       *       *

As it is but a few clear Ladydays, warm Mayday-nights, at the most a few
odorous Rose-weeks, which I am digging from this Fixleinic Life,
embedded in the dross of week-day cares; and as if they were so many
veins of silver, am separating, stamping, smelting and burnishing for
the reader,--I must now travel on with the stream of his history to
Cantata-Sunday, 1792, before I can gather a few handfuls of this
gold-dust, to carry in and wash in my biographical gold-hut. That
Sunday, on the contrary, is very metalliferous: do but consider that
Fixlein is yet uncertain (the ashes of the Church-books not being
legible) whether it is conducting him into his thirty-second or his
thirty-third year.

From Christmas till then he did nothing, but simply became Conrector.
The new chair of office was a Sun-altar, on which, from his
Quintus-ashes, a young Phoenix combined itself together. Great
changes--in offices, marriages, travels--make us younger; we always date
our history from the last revolution, as the French have done from
theirs. A colonel, who first set foot on the ladder of seniority as
corporal, is five times younger than a king, who in his whole life has
never been aught else except a--crown-prince.




FIFTH LETTER-BOX.

_Cantata-Sunday. Two Testaments. Pontac; Blood; Love._


The Spring months clothe the earth in new variegated hues; but man they
usually dress in black. Just when our icy regions are becoming fruitful,
and the flower-waves of the meadows are rolling together over our
quarter of the globe, we on all hands meet with men in sables, the
beginning of whose Spring is full of tears. But, on the other hand,
this very upblooming of the renovated earth is itself the best balm for
sorrow over those who lie under it; and graves are better hid by
blossoms than by snow.

In April, which is no less deadly than it is fickle, old Senior Astmann,
our Conrector's teacher, was overtaken by death. His departure it was
meant to hide from the Rittmeisterinn; but the unusual ringing of
funereal peals carried his swan-song to her heart; and gradually set the
curfew-bell of her life into similar movement. Age and sufferings had
already marked out the first incisions for Death, so that he required
but little effort to cut her down; for it is with men as with trees,
they are notched long before felling, that their life-sap may exude. The
second stroke of apoplexy was soon followed by the last: it is strange
that Death, like criminal courts, cites the apoplectic thrice.

Men are apt to postpone their _last_ will as long as their _better_ one:
the Rittmeisterinn would perhaps have let all her hours, till the
speechless and deaf one, roll away without testament, had not
Thiennette, during the last night, before from sick-nurse she became
corpse-watcher, reminded the patient of the poor Conrector, and of his
meagre hunger-bitten existence, and of the scanty aliment and
board-wages which Fortune had thrown him, and of his empty Future,
where, like a drooping yellow plant in the parched deal-box of the
schoolroom between scholars and creditors, he must languish to the end.
Her own poverty offered her a model of his; and her inward tears were
the fluid tints with which she coloured her picture. As the
Rittmeisterinn's testament related solely to domestics and dependents,
and as she began with the male ones, Fixlein stood at the top; and
Death, who must have been a special friend of the Conrector's, did not
lift his scythe and give the last stroke till his protegee had been with
audible voice declared testamentary heir; then he cut all away, life,
testament and hopes.

When the Conrector, in a wash-bill from his mother, received these two
Death's-posts and Job's-posts in his class, the first thing he did was
to dismiss his class-boys, and break into tears before reaching home.
Though the mother had informed him that he had been remembered in the
will (I could wish, however, that the Notary had blabbed how much it
was), yet almost with every O which he masoretically excerpted from his
German Bible, and entered in his Masoretic Work, great drops fell down
on his pen, and made his black ink pale. His sorrow was not the
gorgeous sorrow of the Poet, who veils the gaping wounds of the
departed in the winding-sheet, and breaks the cry of anguish in soft
tones of plaintiveness; nor the sorrow of the Philosopher, who, through
one open grave, must look into the whole catacomb-Necropolis of the
Past, and before whom the spectre of a friend expands into the spectral
Shadow of this whole Earth: but it was the woe of a child, of a mother,
whom this thought itself, without subsidiary reflections, bitterly cuts
asunder: "So I shall never more see thee; so must thou moulder away, and
I shall never see thee, thou good soul, never, never any more!"--And
even because he neither felt the philosophical nor the poetical sadness,
every trifle could make a division, a break in his mourning; and, like a
woman, he was that very evening capable of sketching some plans for the
future employment of his legacy.

Four weeks after, to wit, on the 5th of May, the testament was unsealed;
but not till the 6th (Cantata-Sunday) did he go down to Hukelum. His
mother met his salutations with tears; which she shed, over the corpse
for grief, over the testament for joy.--To the now Conrector Egidius
Zebedäus was left: _In the first place_, a large sumptuous bed, with a
mirror-tester, in which the giant Goliath might have rolled at his ease,
and to which I and my fair readers will by and by approach nearer, to
examine it; _secondly_, there was devised to him, as unpaid
Easter-godchild-money, for every year that he had lived, one ducat;
_thirdly_, all the admittance and instalment dues, which his elevation
to the Quintate and Conrectorate had cost him, were to be made good to
the utmost penny. "And dost thou know, then," proceeded the mother,
"what the poor Fräulein has got? Ah Heaven! Nothing! Not one brass
farthing!" For Death had stiffened the hand which was just stretching
itself out to reach the poor Thiennette a little rain-screen against the
foul weather of life. The mother related this perverse trick of Fortune
with true condolence; which in women dissipates envy, and comes easier
to them than congratulation, a feeling belonging rather to men. In many
female hearts sympathy and envy are such near door-neighbours that they
could be virtuous nowhere except in Hell, where men have such frightful
times of it; and vicious nowhere except in Heaven, where people have
more happiness than they know what to do with.

The Conrector was now enjoying on Earth that Heaven to which his
benefactress had ascended. First of all, he started off--without so much
as putting up his handkerchief, in which lay his emotion--up-stairs to
see the legacy-bed unshrouded; for he had a _female_ predilection for
furniture. I know not whether the reader ever looked at or mounted any
of these ancient chivalric beds, into which, by means of a little stair
without balustrades, you can easily ascend; and in which you, properly
speaking, sleep always at least one story above ground. Nazianzen
informs us (_Orat. XVI._) that the Jews, in old times, had high beds
with cock-ladders of this sort; but simply because of vermin. The legacy
bed-Ark was quite as large as one of these; and a flea would have
measured it not in Diameters of the Earth, but in Distances of Sirius.
When Fixlein beheld this colossal dormitory, with the curtains drawn
asunder, and its canopy of looking-glass, he could have longed to be in
it; and had it been in his power to cut from the opaque hemisphere of
Night, at that time in America, a small section, he would have
established himself there along with it, just to swim about, for one
half hour, with his thin lath figure, in this sea of down. The mother,
by longer chains of reasoning and chains of calculation than the bed
was, had not succeeded in persuading him to have the broad mirror on the
top cut in pieces, though his large dressing-table had nothing to see
itself in but a mere shaving-glass: he let the mirror lie where it was
for this reason: "Should I ever, God willing, get married," said he, "I
shall then, towards morning, be able to look at my sleeping wife,
without sitting up in bed."

As to the second article of the testament, the godchild Easter-pence,
his mother had, last night, arranged it perfectly. The Lawyer took her
evidence on the years of the heir; and these she had stated at exactly
the teeth-number, two-and-thirty. She would willingly have lied, and
passed off her son, like an Inscription, for older than he was: but
against this _venia ætatis_, she saw too well, the authorities would
have taken exception, "that it was falsehood and cozenage; had the son
been two-and-thirty, he must have been dead some time ago, as it could
not but be presumed that he then was."

And just as she was recounting this, a servant from Schadeck called, and
delivered to the Conrector, in return for a discharge and ratification
of the birth-certificate given out by his mother, a gold bar of
two-and-thirty ducat age-counters, like a helm-bar for the voyage of his
life: Herr von Aufhammer was too proud to engage in any pettifogging
discussion over a plebeian birth-certificate.

And thus, by a proud open-handedness, was one of the best lawsuits
thrown to the dogs: seeing this gold bar might, in the wire-mill of the
judgment-bench, have been drawn out into the finest threads. From such a
tangled lock, which was not to be unravelled--for, in the first place,
there was no document to prove Fixlein's age; in the second place, so
long as he lived, the necessary conclusion was, that he was not yet
thirty-two[47]--from such a lock, might not only silk and hanging-cords,
but whole dragnets have been spun and twisted. Clients in general would
have less reason to complain of their causes, if these lasted longer:
Philosophers contend for thousands of years over philosophical
questions; and it seems an unaccountable thing, therefore, that
Advocates should attempt to end their juristical questions in a space of
eighty, or even sometimes of sixty years. But the professors of law are
not to blame for this: on the other hand, as Lessing asserts of Truth,
that not the _finding_ but the _seeking_ of it profits men, and that he
himself would willingly make over his claim to all truths in return for
the sweet labour of investigation, so is the professor of Law not
profited by the finding and deciding, but by the investigation of a
juridical truth,--which is called pleading and practising,--and he would
willingly consent to approximate to Truth forever, like an hyperbola to
its asymptote, without ever meeting it, seeing he can subsist as an
honourable man with wife and child, let such approximation be as tedious
as it likes.

     [47] As, by the evidence at present before us, we can found on no
     other presumption, than that he must die in his thirty-second year;
     it would follow, that, in case he died two-and-thirty years after
     the death of the testatrix, no farthing could he claimed by him;
     since, according to our notion, at the making of the testament he
     was not even one year old.

The Schadeck servant had, besides the gold legacy, a farther commission
from the Lawyer, whereby the testamentary heir was directed to sum up
the mint-dues which he had been obliged to pay while lying under the
coining-press of his superiors, as Quintus and Conrector; the which,
properly documented and authenticated, were forthwith to be made good to
him.

Our Conrector, who now rated himself among the great capitalists of the
world, held his short gold-roll like a sceptre in his hand; like a
basket-net lifted from the sea of the Future, which was now to run on,
and bring him all manner of fed-fishes, well-washed, sound and in good
season.

I cannot relate all things at once; else I should ere now have told the
reader, who must long have been waiting for it, that to the moneyed
Conrector his two-and-thirty godchild-pennies but too much prefigured
the two-and-thirty years of his age; besides which, today the
Cantata-Sunday, this Bartholomew-night and Second of September of his
family, came in as a farther aggravation. The mother, who should have
known the age of her child, said she had forgotten it; but durst wager
he was thirty-two a year ago; only the Lawyer was a man you could not
speak to. "I could swear it myself," said the capitalist; "I recollect
how stupid I felt on Cantata-Sunday last year." Fixlein beheld Death,
not as the poet does, in the up-towering, asunder-driving concave-mirror
of Imagination; but as the child, as the savage, as the peasant, as the
woman does, in the plane octavo-mirror on the board of a Prayer-book;
and Death looked to him like an old white-headed man, sunk down into
slumber in some latticed pew.--

And yet he thought oftener of him than last year: for joy readily melts
us into softness; and the lackered Wheel of Fortune is a cistern-wheel
that empties its water in our eyes.... But the friendly Genius of this
terrestrial, or rather aquatic Ball,--for, in the physical and in the
moral world, there are more tear-seas than firm land,--has provided for
the poor water-insects that float about in it, for us namely, a quite
special elixir against spasms in the soul: I declare this same Genius
must have studied the whole pathology of man with care; for to the poor
devil who is no Stoic, and can pay no Soul-doctor, that for the fissures
of his cranium and his breast might prepare costly prescriptions of
simples, he has stowed up cask-wise in all cellarages a precious
wound-water, which the patient has only to take and pour over his
slashes and bone-breakages--gin-twist, I mean, or beer, or a touch of
wine.... By Heaven! it is either stupid ingratitude towards this
medicinal Genius on the one hand, or theological confusion of permitted
tippling with prohibited drunkenness on the other, if men do not thank
God that they have something at hand, which, in the nervous vertigos of
life, will instantly supply the place of Philosophy, Christianity,
Judaism, Paganism and _Time_;--liquor, as I said.

The Conrector had long before sunset given the village post three
groschens of post-money, and commissioned,--for he had a whole cabinet
of ducats in his pocket, which all day he was surveying in the dark with
his hand,--three thalers' worth of Pontac from the town. "I must have a
Cantata merrying-making," said he; "if it be my last day, let it be my
gayest too!" I could wish he had given a larger order; but he kept the
bit of moderation between his teeth at all times; even in a threatened
sham-death-night, and in the midst of jubilee. The question is, Whether
he would not have restricted himself to a single bottle, if he had not
wished to treat his mother and the Fräulein. Had he lived in the tenth
century, when the Day of Judgment was thought to be at hand, or in other
centuries, when new Noah's Deluges were expected, and when, accordingly,
like sailors in a shipwreck, people bouzed up all,--he would not have
spent one kreutzer more on that account. His joy was, that with his
legacy he could now satisfy his head-creditor Steinberger, and leave the
world an honest man: just people, who make much of money, pay their
debts the most punctually.

The purple Pontac arrived at a time when Fixlein could compare the
red-chalk-drawings and red-letter-titles of joy, which it would bring
out on the cheeks of its drinker and drinkeresses,--with the
Evening-carnation of the last clouds about the Sun....

I declare, among all the spectators of this History, no one can be
thinking more about poor Thiennette than I; nevertheless, it is not
permitted me to bring her out from her tiring-room to my historical
scene, before the time. Poor girl! The Conrector cannot wish more warmly
than his Biographer, that, in the Temple of Nature as in that of
Jerusalem, there were a special door--besides that of Death--standing
open, through which only the afflicted entered, that a Priest might give
them solace. But Thiennette's heart-sickness over all her vanished
prospects, over her entombed benefactress, over a whole life enwrapped
in the pall, had hitherto, in a grief which the stony Rittmeister rather
made to bleed than alleviated, swept all away from her, occupations
excepted; had fettered all her steps which led not to some task, and
granted to her eyes nothing to dry them or gladden them, save
down-falling eyelids full of dreams and sleep.

All sorrow raises us above the civic Ceremonial-law, and makes the
Prosaist a Psalmist: in sorrow alone have women courage to front
opinion. Thiennette walked out only in the evening, and then only in the
garden.

The Conrector could scarcely wait for the appearance of his fair friend,
to offer his thanks,--and tonight also--his Pontac. Three Pontac
decanters and three wine-glasses were placed outside on the projecting
window-sill of his cottage; and every time he returned from the dusky
covered-way amid the flower-forests, he drank a little from his
glass,--and the mother sipped now and then from within through the
opened window.

I have already said, his Life-laboratory lay in the south-west corner of
the garden or park, over against the Castle-Escurial, which stretched
back into the village. In the north-west corner bloomed an acacia-grove,
like the floral crown of the garden. Fixlein turned his steps in that
direction also; to see if, perhaps, he might not cast a happy glance
through the wide-latticed grove over the intervening meads to
Thiennette. He recoiled a little before two stone steps leading down
into a pond before this grove, which were sprinkled with fresh blood. On
the flags, also, there was blood hanging. Man shudders at this oil of
our life's lamp where he finds it shed: to him it is the red
death-signature of the Destroying Angel. Fixlein hurried apprehensively
into the grove; and found here his paler benefactress leaning on the
flower-bushes; her hands with their knitting-ware sunk into her bosom,
her eyes lying under their lids as if in the bandage of slumber; her
left arm in the real bandage of blood-letting; and with cheeks to which
the twilight was lending as much red, as late woundings--this day's
included--had taken from them. Fixlein, after his first terror--not at
this flower's-sleep, but at his own abrupt entrance--began to unrol the
spiral butterfly's-sucker of his vision, and to lay it on the motionless
leaves of this same sleeping flower. At bottom, I may assert, that this
was the first time he had ever looked at her: he was now among the
thirties; and he still continued to believe, that, in a young lady, he
must look at the clothes only, not the person, and wait on her with his
ears, not with his eyes.

I impute it to the elevating influences of the Pontac, that the
Conrector plucked up courage to--turn, to come back, and employ the
resuscitating means of coughing, sneezing, trampling and calling to his
Shock, in stronger and stronger doses on the fair sleeper. To take her
by the hand, and, with some medical apology, gently pull her out of
sleep, this was an audacity of which the Conrector, so long as he could
stand for Pontac, and had any grain of judgment left, could never dream.

However, he did awake her, by those other means.

Wearied, heavy-laden Thiennette! how slowly does thy eye open! The
warmest balsam of this earth, soft sleep has shifted aside, and the
night-air of memory is again blowing on thy naked wounds!--And yet was
the smiling friend of thy youth the fairest object which thy eye could
light on, when it sank from the hanging garden of Dreams into this lower
one round thee.

She herself was little conscious,--and the Conrector not at all,--that
she was bending her flower-leaves imperceptibly towards a terrestrial
body, namely towards Fixlein: she resembled an Italian flower, that
contains cunningly concealed within it a newyear's gift, which the
receiver knows not at first how to extract. But now the golden chain of
her late kind deed attracted her as well towards him, as him towards
her.--She at once gave her eye and her voice a mask of joy; for she did
not put her tears, as Catholics do those of Christ, in relic-vials, upon
altars to be worshiped. He could very suitably preface his invitation to
the Pontac festival, with a long acknowledgment of thanks for the kind
intervention which had opened to him the sources for procuring it. She
rose slowly, and walked with him to the banquet of wine; but he was not
so discreet, as at first to attempt leading her, or rather not so
courageous; he could more easily have offered a young lady his hand
(that is, with marriage ring) than offered her his arm. One only time in
his life had he escorted a female, a Lombard Countess from the theatre;
a thing truly not to be believed, were not this the secret of it, that
he was obliged; for the lady, a foreigner, parted in the press from all
her people, in a bad night, had laid hold of him as a sable Abbé by the
arm, and requested him to take her to her inn. He, however, knew the
fashions of society, and attended her no farther than the porch of his
Quintus-mansion, and there directed her with his finger to her inn,
which, with thirty blazing windows, was looking down from another
street.

These things he cannot help. But tonight he had scarcely, with his fair
faint companion, reached the bank of the pond, into which some
superstitious dread of water-sprites had lately poured the pure blood of
her left arm,--when, in his terror lest she fell in, with the rest of
her blood, over the brink, he quite valiantly laid hold of the sick arm.
Thus will much Pontac and a little courage at all times put a Conrector
in case to lay hold of a Fräulein. I aver, that, at the banquet-board of
the wine, at the window-sill, he continued in the same conducting
position. What a soft group in the penumbra of the Earth, while Night,
with its dusky waters, was falling deeper and deeper, and the
silver-light of the Moon was already glancing back from the copper-ball
of the steeple! I call the group soft, because it consists of a maiden
that in two senses has been bleeding; of a mother again with tears
giving her thanks for the happiness of her child; and of a pious, modest
man, pouring wine, and drinking health to both, and who traces in his
veins a burning lava-stream, which is boiling through his heart, and
threatening piece by piece to melt it and bear it away.--A candle stood
without among the three bottles, like Reason among the Passions; on this
account the Conrector looked without intermission at the window-panes,
for on them (the darkness of the room served as mirror-foil) was
painted, among other faces which Fixlein liked, the face he liked best
of all, and which he dared to look at only in reflection, the face of
Thiennette.

Every minute was a Federation-festival, and every second a
Preparation-Sabbath for it. The Moon was gleaming from the evening dew,
and the Pontac from their eyes, and the bean-stalks were casting a
shorter grating of shadow.--The quicksilver-drops of stars were hanging
more and more continuous in the sable of night.--The warm vapour of the
wine set our two friends (like steam-engines) again in motion.

Nothing makes the heart fuller and bolder than walking to and fro in the
night. Fixlein now led the Fräulein in his arm without scruple. By
reason of her lancet-wound, Thiennette could only put her hand, in a
clasping position, in his arm; and he, to save her the trouble of
holding fast, held fast himself, and pressed her fingers as well as
might be with his arm to his heart. It would betray a total want of
polished manners to censure his. At the same time, trifles are the
provender of Love; the fingers are electric dischargers of a fire
sparkling along every fibre; sighs are the guiding tones of two
approximating hearts; and the worst and most effectual thing of all in
such a case is some misfortune; for the fire of Love, like that of
naphtha, likes to swim on water. Two teardrops, one in another's, one in
your own eyes, compose, as with two convex lenses, a microscope which
enlarges everything, and changes all sorrows into charms. Good sex! I
too consider every sister in misfortune as fair; and perhaps thou
wouldst deserve the name of the Fair, even because thou art the
Suffering sex!

And if Professor Hunczogsky in Vienna modelled all the wounds of the
human frame in wax, to teach his pupils how to cure them, I also, thou
good sex, am representing in little figures the cuts and scars of thy
spirit, though only to keep away rude hands from inflicting new ones....

Thiennette felt not the loss of the inheritance, but of her that should
have left it; and this more deeply for one little trait, which she had
already told his mother, as she now told him: In the last two nights of
the Rittmeisterinn, when the feverish watching was holding up to
Thiennette's imagination nothing but the winding-sheet and the
mourning-coaches of her protectress; while she was sitting at the foot
of the bed, looking on those fixed eyes, unconsciously quick drops often
trickled over her cheeks, while in thought she prefigured the heavy,
cumbrous dressing of her benefactress for the coffin. Once, after
midnight, the dying lady pointed with her finger to her own lips.
Thiennette understood her not; but rose and bent over her face. The
Enfeebled tried to lift her head, but could not,--and only rounded her
lips. At last, a thought glanced through Thiennette, that the Departing,
whose dead arms could now press no beloved heart to her own, wished that
she herself should embrace her. O then, that instant, keen and tearful
she pressed her warm lips on the colder,--and she was silent like her
that was to speak no more,--and she embraced alone and was not embraced.
About four o'clock, the finger waved again;--she sank down on the
stiffened lips--but this had been no signal, for the lips of her friend
under the long kiss had grown stiff and cold....

How deeply now, before the infinite Eternity's-countenance of Night, did
the cutting of this thought pass through Fixlein's warm soul: "O thou
forsaken one beside me! No happy accident, no twilight hast thou, like
that now glimmering in the heavens, to point to the prospect of a sunny
day: without parents art thou, without brother, without friend; here
alone on a disblossomed, emptied corner of the Earth; and thou, left
Harvest-flower, must wave lonely and frozen over the withered stubble of
the Past." That was the meaning of his thoughts, whose internal words
were: "Poor young lady! Not so much as a half-cousin left; no nobleman
will seek her, and she grows old so forgotten, and she is so good from
the very heart--Me she has made happy--Ah, had I the presentation to the
parish of Hukelum in my pocket, I should make a trial.".... Their mutual
lives, which a straitcutting bond of Destiny was binding so closely
together, now rose before him overhung with sable,--and he forthwith
conducted his friend (for a bashful man may in an hour and a half be
transformed into the boldest, and then continues so) back to the last
flask, that all these upsprouting thistles and passion-flowers of sorrow
might therewith be swept away. I remark, in passing, that this was
stupid: the torn vine is full of water-veins as well as grapes; and a
soft oppressed heart the beverage of joy can melt only into tears.

If any man disagree with me, I shall desire him to look at the
Conrector, who demonstrates my experimental maxim like a very
syllogism.--One might arrive at some philosophic views, if one traced
out the causes, why liquors--that is to say, in the long-run, more
plentiful secretion of the nervous spirits--make men at once pious, soft
and poetical. The Poet, like Apollo his father, is _forever a youth_;
and is, what other men are only once, namely in love,--or only after
Pontac, namely intoxicated,--all his life long. Fixlein, who had been no
poet in the morning, now became one at night: wine made him pious and
soft; the Harmonica-bells in man, which sound to the tones of a higher
world, must, like the glass Harmonica-bells, if they are to act, be kept
_moist_.

He was now standing with her again beside the wavering pond, in which
the second blue hemisphere of heaven, with dancing stars and amid
quivering trees, was playing; over the green hills ran the white crooked
footpaths dimly along; on the one mountain was the twilight sinking
together, on the other was the mist of night rising up; and over all
these vapours of life, hung motionless and flaming the thousand-armed
lustre of the starry heaven, and every arm held in it a burning
galaxy....

It now struck eleven.... Amid such scenes, an unknown hand stretches
itself out in man, and writes in foreign language on his heart, a dread
_Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin_. "Perhaps by twelve I am dead," thought our
friend, in whose soul the Cantata-Sunday, with all its black funeral
piles, was mounting up.

The whole future Crucifixion-path of his friend lay prickly and
bethorned before him; and he saw every bloody trace from which she
lifted her foot,--she who had made his own way soft with flowers and
leaves. He could no longer restrain himself; trembling in his whole
frame, and with a trembling voice, he solemnly said to her: "If the Lord
this night call me away, let the half of my fortune be yours; for it is
your goodness I must thank that I am free of debts, as few Teachers
are."

Thiennette, unacquainted with our sex, naturally mistook this speech
for a proposal of marriage; and the fingers of her wounded arm, tonight
for the first time, pressed suddenly against the arm in which they lay;
the only living mortal's arm, by which Joy, Love and the Earth, were
still united with her bosom. The Conrector, rapturously terrified at the
first pressure of a female hand, bent over his right to take hold of her
left; and Thiennette, observing his unsuccessful movement, lifted her
fingers, and laid her whole wounded arm in his, and her whole left hand
in his right. Two lovers dwell in the Whispering-gallery,[48] where the
faintest breath bodies itself forth into a sound. The good Conrector
received and returned this blissful love-pressure, wherewith our poor
powerless soul, stammering, hemmed in, longing, distracted, seeks for a
warmer language, which exists not: he was overpowered; he had not the
courage to look at her; but he looked into the gleam of the twilight,
and said (and here for unspeakable love the tears were running warm over
his cheeks): "Ah, I will give you all; fortune, life and all that I
have, my heart and my hand."

     [48] In St. Paul's Church at London, where the slightest whisper
     sounds over across a space of 143 feet.

She was about to answer, but casting a side-glance, she cried, with a
shriek: "Ah, Heaven!" He started round; and perceived the white muslin
sleeve all dyed with blood; for in putting her arm into his, she had
pushed away the bandage from the open vein. With the speed of lightning,
he hurried her into the acacia-grove; the blood was already running from
the muslin; he grew paler than she, for every drop of it was coming from
his heart. The blue-white arm was bared; the bandage was put on; he tore
a piece of gold from his pocket; clapped it, as one does, with open
arteries, on the spouting fountain, and bolted with this golden bar, and
with the bandage over it, the door out of which her afflicted life was
hurrying.--

When it was over, she looked up to him; pale, languid, but her eyes were
two glistening fountains of an unspeakable love, full of sorrow and full
of gratitude.--The exhausting loss of blood was spreading her soul
asunder in sighs. Thiennette was dissolved into inexpressible softness;
and the heart, lacerated by so many years, by so many arrows, was
plunging with all its wounds in warm streams of tears, to be healed; as
chapped flutes close together by lying in water, and get back their
tones.--Before such a magic form, before such a pure heavenly love, her
sympathising friend was melted between the flames of joy and grief; and
sank, with stifled voice, and bent down by love and rapture, on the pale
angelic face, the lips of which he timidly pressed, but did not kiss,
till all-powerful Love bound its girdles round them, and drew the two
closer and closer together, and their two souls, like two tears, melted
into one. O now, when it struck twelve, the hour of death, did not the
lover fancy that her lips were drawing his soul away, and all the fibres
and all the nerves of his life closed spasmodically round the last heart
in this world, round the last rapture of existence?... Yes, happy man,
thou didst express thy love; for in thy love thou thoughtest to die....

However, he did not die. After midnight, there floated a balmy morning
air through the shaken flowers, and the whole spring was breathing. The
blissful lover, setting bounds even to his sea of joy, reminded his
delicate beloved, who was now his bride, of the dangers from night-cold;
and himself of the longer night-cold of Death, which was now for long
years passed over.--Innocent and blessed, they rose from the grove of
their betrothment, from its dusk broken by white acacia-flowers and
straggling moonbeams. And without, they felt as if a whole wide Past had
sunk away in a convulsion of the world; all was new, light and young.
The sky stood full of glittering dewdrops from the everlasting Morning;
and the stars quivered joyfully asunder, and sank, resolved into beams,
down into the hearts of men.--The Moon, with her fountain of light, had
overspread and kindled all the garden; and was hanging above in a
starless Blue, as if she had consumed the nearest stars; and she seemed
like a smaller wandering Spring, like a Christ's-face smiling in love of
man.--

Under this light they looked at one another for the first time, after
the first words of love; and the sky gleamed magically down on the
disordered features with which the first rapture of love was still
standing written on their faces....

Dream, ye beloved, as ye wake, happy as in Paradise, innocent as in
Paradise!




SIXTH LETTER-BOX.

_Office-impost. One of the most important of Petitions._


The finest thing was his awakening in his European Settlement in the
giant Schadeck bed!--With the inflammatory, tickling, eating fever of
love in his breast; with the triumphant feeling, that he had now got the
introductory program of love put happily by; and with the sweet
resurrection from his living prophetic burial; and with the joy that
now, among his thirties, he could, for the first time, cherish hopes of
a longer life (and did not longer mean at least till seventy?) than he
could ten years ago;--with all this stirring life-balsam, in which the
living fire-wheel of his heart was rapidly revolving, he lay here, and
laughed at his glancing portrait in the bed-canopy; but he could not do
it long, he was obliged to move. For a less happy man, it would have
been gratifying to have measured,--as pilgrims measure the length of
their pilgrimage,--not so much by steps as by body-lengths, like
Earth-diameters, the superficial content of the bed. But Fixlein, for
his own part, had to launch from his bed into warm billowy Life, he had
now his dear good Earth again to look after, and a Conrectorship
thereon, and a bride to boot. Besides all this, his mother downstairs
now admitted that he had last night actually glided through beneath the
scythe of Death, like supple-grass, and that yesterday she had not told
him merely out of fear of his fear. Still a cold shudder went over
him,--especially as he was sober now,--when he looked round at the high
Tarpeian Rock, four hours' distance behind him, on the battlements of
which he had last night walked hand in hand with Death.

The only thing that grieved him was, that it was Monday, and that he
must back to the Gymnasium. Such a freightage of joys he had never taken
with him on his road to town. After four he issued from his house,
satisfied with coffee (which he drank in Hukelum merely for his mother's
sake, who, for two days after, would still have portions of this
woman's-wine to draw from the lees of the pot-sediment) into the
_cooling_ dawning May-morning (for joy needs coolness, sorrow sun); his
Betrothed comes--not indeed to meet him, but still--into his hearing, by
her distant morning hymn; he makes but one momentary turn into the
blissful haven of the blooming acacia-grove, which still, like the
covenant sealed in it, has no thorns; he dips his warm hand in the
cold-bath of the dewy leaves; he wades with pleasure through the
beautifying-water of the dew, which, as it imparts colour to faces, eats
it away from boots ("but with thirty ducats, a Conrector may make shift
to keep two pairs of boots on the hook").--And now the Moon, as it were
the hanging seal of his last night's happiness, dips down into the
West, like an emptied bucket of light, and in the East the other
overrunning bucket, the Sun, mounts up, and the gushes of light flow
broader and broader.--

The city stood in the celestial flames of Morning. Here his divining-rod
(his gold-roll, which, excepting one sixteenth of an inch broken off
from it, he carried along with him) began to quiver over all the spots
where booty and silver-veins of enjoyment were concealed; and our
rod-diviner easily discovered that the city and the future were a true
entire Potosi of delights.

In his Conrectorate closet he fell upon his knees, and thanked God--not
so much for his heritage and bride as--for his life: for he had gone
away on Sunday morning with doubts whether he should ever come back; and
it was purely out of love to the reader, and fear lest he might fret
himself too much with apprehension, that I cunningly imputed Fixlein's
journey more to his desire of knowing what was in the will, than of
making his own will in presence of his mother. Every recovery is a
bringing back and palingenesia of our youth: one loves the Earth and
those that are on it with a new love.--The Conrector could have found in
his heart to take all his class by the locks, and press them to his
breast; but he only did so to his adjutant, the Quartaner, who, in the
first Letter-box, was still sitting in the rank of a Quintaner....

His first expedition, after school-hours, was to the house of Meister
Steinberger, where, without speaking a word, he counted down fifty
florins cash, in ducats, on the table: "At last I repay you," said
Fixlein, "the moiety of my debt, and give you many thanks."

"Ey, Herr Conrector," said the Quartermaster, and continued calmly
stuffing puddings as before, "in my bond it is said, _payable at three
months' mutual notice_. How could a man like me go on, else?--However, I
will change you the gold pieces." Thereupon he advised him that it might
be more judicious to take back a florin or two, and buy himself a better
hat, and whole shoes: "if you like," added he, "to get a calfskin and
half a dozen hareskins dressed, they are lying upstairs."--I should
think, for my own part, that to the reader it must be as little a matter
of indifference as it was to the Butcher, whether the hero of such a
History appear before him with an old tattered potlid of a hat, and a
pump-sucker and leg-harness pair of boots, or in suitable apparel.--In
short, before St. John's day, the man was dressed with taste and pomp.

But now came two most peculiarly important papers--at bottom only one,
the Petition for the Hukelum parsonship--to be elaborated; in regard to
which I feel as if I myself must assist.... It were a simple turn, if
now at least the assembled public did not pay attention.

In the first place, the Conrector searched out and sorted all the
Consistorial and Councillor quittances, or rather the toll-bills of the
road-money, which he had been obliged to pay, before the toll-gates at
the Quintusship and Conrectorship had been thrown open: for the executor
of the Schadeck testament had to reimburse him the whole, as his
discharge would express it, "to penny and farthing." Another would have
summed up this post-excise much more readily; by merely looking what
he--owed; as these debt-bills and those toll-bills, like parallel
passages, elucidate and confirm each other. But in Fixlein's case, there
was a small circumstance of peculiarity at work; which I cannot explain
till after what follows.

It grieved him a little that for his two offices he had been obliged to
pay and to borrow no larger a sum than 135 florins, 41 kreutzers and one
halfpenny. The legacy, it is true, was to pass directly from the hands
of the testamentary executor into those of the Regiments-Quartermaster;
but yet he could have liked well, had he--for man is a fool from the
very foundation of him--had more to pay, and therefore to inherit. The
whole Conrectorate he had, by a slight deposit of 90 florins, plucked,
as it were, from the Wheel of Fortune; and so small a sum must surprise
my reader: but what will he say, when I tell him that there are
countries where the entry-money into schoolrooms is even more moderate?
In Scherau, a Conrector is charged only 88 florins, and perhaps he may
have an income triple of this sum. Not to speak of Saxony (what, in
truth, was to be expected from the cradle of the Reformation, in
Religion and Polite Literature), where a schoolmaster and a parson have
_nothing_ to pay,--even in Bayreuth, for example, in Hof, the progress
of improvement has been such, that a Quartus--a Quartus do I say,--a
Tertius--a Tertius do I say,--a Conrector, at entrance on his post, is
not required to pay down more than:

   Fl. rhen. Kr. rhen.

        30     49      For taking the oaths at the Consistorium.
         4      0      To the Syndic for the Presentation.
         2      0      To the then Bürgermeister.
        45      7½     For the Government-sanction.
       -------------
  Total 81 fl. 56½ kr.

If the printing-charges of a Rector do stand a little higher in some
points, yet, on the other hand, a Tertius, Quartus &c. come cheaper from
the press than even a Conrector. Now it is clear that in this case a
schoolmaster can subsist; since, in the course of the very first year,
he gets an overplus beyond this _dock-money_ of his office. A
schoolmaster must, like his scholars, have been advanced from class to
class, before these his loans to Government, together with the interest
for delay of payment, can jointly amount to so much as his yearly income
in the highest class. Another thing in his favour is, that our
institutions do not--as those of Athens did--prohibit people from
entering on office while in debt; but every man, with his debt-knapsack
on his shoulders, mounts up, step after step, without obstruction. The
Pope, in large benefices, appropriates the income of the first year
under the title of _Annates_, or First Fruits; and accordingly he, in
all cases, bestows any large benefice on the possessor of a smaller one,
thereby to augment both his own revenues and those of others; but it
shows, in my opinion, a bright distinction between Popery and
Lutheranism, that the Consistoriums of the latter abstract from their
school-ministers and church-ministers not perhaps above two-thirds of
their first yearly income; though they too, like the Pope, must
naturally have an eye to vacancies.

It may be that I shall here come in collision with the Elector of Mentz,
when I confess, that in Schmausen's _Corp. Jur. Pub. Germ._ I have
turned up the Mentz-Imperial-Court-Chancery-tax-ordinance of the 6th
January 1659; and there investigated how much this same
Imperial-Court-Chancery demands, as contrasted with a Consistorium. For
example, any man that wishes to be baked or sodden into a _Poet
Laureate_, has 50 florins tax-dues, and 20 florins Chancery-dues to pay
down; whereas, for 20 florins more, he might have been made a Conrector,
who is a poet of this species, as it were by the by and _ex
officio_.--The institution of a Gymnasium is permitted for 1000 florins;
an extraordinary sum, with which the whole body of the teachers in the
instituted Gymnasium might with us clear off the entrymoneys of their
schoolrooms. Again, a Freiherr, who, at any rate, often enough grows old
without knowing how, must purchase the _venia ætatis_ with 200 hard
florins; while with the half sum he might have become a schoolmaster,
and here _age_ would have come of its own accord.--And a thousand such
things!--They prove, however, that matters can be at no bad pass in our
Governments and Circles, where promotions are sold dearer to Folly than
to Diligence, and where it costs more to institute a school than to
serve in one.

The remarks I made on this subject to a Prince, as well as the remarks a
Town-Syndic made on it to myself, are too remarkable to be omitted for
mere dread of digressiveness.

The Syndic--a man of enlarged views, and of fiery patriotism, the warmth
of which was the more beneficent that he collected all the beams of it
into one focus, and directed them to himself and his family--gave me (I
had perhaps been comparing the School-bench and the School-stair to the
_bench_ and the _ladder_, on which people are laid when about to be
tortured) the best reply: "If a schoolmaster consume nothing but 30
reichsthalers;[49] if he annually purchase manufactured goods, according
as Political Economists have calculated for each individual, namely, to
the amount of 5 reichsthalers; and no more hundredweights of victual
than these assume, namely 10; in short, if he live like a substantial
wood-cutter,--then the Devil must be in it, if he cannot yearly lay by
so much net profit, as shall, in the long-run, pay the interest of his
entry-debts."

     [49] So much, according to Political Economists, a man yearly
     requires in Germany.

The Syndic must have failed to convince me at the time, since I
afterwards told the Flachsenfingen Prince:[50] "Illustrious Sir, you
know not, but I do--not a player in your Theatre would act the
Schoolmaster in Engel's _Prodigal Son_, three nights running, for such a
sum as every real Schoolmaster has to take for acting it all the days of
the year.--In Prussia, Invalids are made Schoolmasters; with us,
Schoolmasters are made Invalids."...

     [50] This singular tone of my address to a Prince can only be
     excused by the equally singular relation, wherein the Biographer
     stands to the Flachsenfingen Sovereign, and which I would willingly
     unfold here, were it not that, in my Book, which, under the title
     of _Dog-post-days_, I mean to give to the world at Easter-fair
     1795, I hoped to expound the matter to universal satisfaction.

       *       *       *       *       *

But to our story! Fixlein wrote out the inventory of his Crown-debts;
but with quite a different purpose than the reader will guess, who has
still the Schadeck testament in his head. In one word, he wanted to be
Parson of Hukelum. To be a clergyman, and in the place where his cradle
stood, and all the little gardens of his childhood, his mother also, and
the grove of betrothment,--this was an open gate into a New Jerusalem,
supposing even that the living had been nothing but a meagre
penitentiary. The main point was, he might marry, if he were appointed.
For, in the capacity of lank Conrector, supported only by the
strengthening-girth of his waistcoat, and with emoluments whereby
scarcely the purchase-money of a--purse was to be come at; in this way
he was more like collecting wick and tallow for his burial-torch than
for his bridal one.

For the Schoolmaster class are, in well-ordered States, as little
permitted to marry as the Soldiery. In _Conringius de Antiquitutibus
Academicis_, where in every leaf it is proved that all cloisters were
originally schools, I hit upon the reason. Our schools are now
cloisters, and consequently we endeavour to maintain in our teachers at
least an imitation of the Three Monastic Vows. The vow of Obedience
might perhaps be sufficiently enforced by School-Inspectors; but the
second vow, that of Celibacy, would be more hard of attainment, were it
not that, by one of the best political arrangements, the third vow, I
mean a beautiful equality in Poverty, is so admirably attended to, that
no man who has made it needs any farther _testimonium paupertatis_;--and
now _let_ this man, if he likes, lay hold of a matrimonial half, when of
the two halves each has a whole stomach, and nothing for it but
half-coins and half-beer!...

I know well, millions of my readers would themselves compose this
Petition for the Conrector, and ride with it to Schadeck to his
Lordship, that so the poor rogue might get the sheepfold, with the
annexed wedding-mansion: for they see clearly enough, that directly
thereafter one of the best Letter-Boxes would be written that ever came
from such a repository.

Fixlein's Petition was particularly good and striking: it submitted to
the Rittmeister four grounds of preference: 1. "He was a native of the
parish: his parents and ancestors had already done Hukelum service;
therefore he prayed," &c.

2. "The here-documented official debts of 135 florins, 41 kreutzers and
one halfpenny, the cancelling of which a never-to-be-forgotten testament
secured him, he himself could clear, in case he obtained the living,
and so hereby give up his claim to the legacy," &c.

_Voluntary Note by me._ It is plain he means to bribe his Godfather,
whom the lady's testament has put into a fume. But, gentle reader, blame
not without mercy a poor, oppressed, heavy-laden school-man and
school-horse for an indelicate insinuation, which truly was never mine.
Consider, Fixlein knew that the Rittmeister was a cormorant towards the
poor, as he was a squanderer towards the rich. It may be, too, the
Conrector might once or twice have heard, in the Law Courts, of patrons,
by whom not indeed the church and churchyard--though these things are
articles of commerce in England--so much as the true management of them
had been sold, or rather farmed to farming-candidates. I know from
Lange,[51] that the Church must support its patron, when he has nothing
to live upon: and might not a nobleman, before he actually began
begging, be justified in taking a little advance, a fore-payment of his
alimentary moneys, from the hands of his pulpit-farmer?--

     [51] His _Clerical Law_, p. 551.

3. "He had lately betrothed himself with Fräulein von Thiennette, and
given her a piece of gold, as marriage-pledge; and could therefore wed
the said Fräulein were he once provided for," &c.

_Voluntary Note by me._ I hold this ground to be the strongest in the
whole Petition. In the eyes of Herr von Aufhammer, Thiennette's
genealogical tree was long since stubbed, disleaved, worm-eaten and full
of millepedes: she was his OEconoma, his Castle-Stewardess and
Legatess _a Latere_ for his domestics; and with her pretensions for an
alms-coffer, was threatening in the end to become a burden to him. His
indignant wish that she had been provided for with Fixlein's legacy
might now be fulfilled. In a word, if Fixlein become Parson, he will
have the third ground to thank for it; not at all the mad fourth....

4. "He had learned with sorrow, that the name of his Shock, which he had
purchased from an Emigrant at Leipzig, meant Egidius in German; and that
the dog had drawn upon him the displeasure of his Lordship. Far be it
from him so to designate the Shock in future; but he would take it as a
special grace, if for the dog, which he at present called without any
name, his Lordship would be pleased to appoint one himself."

_My Voluntary Note._ The dog then, it seems, to which the nobleman has
hitherto been godfather, is to receive its name a _second_ time from
him!--But how can the famishing gardener's son, whose career never
mounted higher than from the school-bench to the school-chair, and who
never spoke with polished ladies, except singing, namely in the church,
how can he be expected, in fingering such a string, to educe from it any
finer tone than the pedantic one? And yet the source of it lies deeper:
not the contracted _situation_, but the contracted _eye_, not a
favourite science, but a narrow plebeian soul, makes us pedantic, a soul
that cannot _measure_ and _separate_ the _concentric_ circles of human
knowledge and activity, that confounds the focus of universal human
life, by reason of the focal distance, with every two or three
converging rays; and that cannot see all, and tolerate all----In short,
the true Pedant is the Intolerant.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Conrector wrote out his petition splendidly in five propitious
evenings; employed a peculiar ink for the purpose; worked not indeed so
long over it as the stupid Manucius over a Latin letter, namely, some
months, if Scioppius' word is to be taken; still less so long as another
scholar at a Latin epistle, who--truly we have nothing but Morhof's word
for it--hatched it during four whole months; inserting his variations,
adjectives, feet, with the authorities for his phrases, accurately
marked between the lines. Fixlein possessed a more thorough-going
genius, and had completely mastered the whole enterprise in sixteen
days. While sealing, he thought, as we all do, how this cover was the
seed-husk of a great entire Future, the rind of many sweet or bitter
fruits, the swathing of his whole after-life.

Heaven bless his cover; but I let you throw me from the Tower of Babel,
if he get the parsonage: can't you see, then, that Aufhammer's hands are
tied? In spite of all his other faults, or even because of them, he will
stand like iron by his word, which he has given so long ago to the
Subrector. It were another matter had he been resident at Court; for
there, where old German manners still are, no promise is kept; for as,
according to Möser, the Ancient Germans kept only such promises as they
made in the _forenoon_ (in the afternoon they were all dead-drunk),--so
the Court Germans likewise keep no afternoon promise; forenoon ones they
would keep if they made any, which, however, cannot possibly happen, as
at those hours they are--sleeping.




SEVENTH LETTER-BOX.

_Sermon. School-Exhibition. Splendid Mistake._


The Conrector received his 135 florins, 43 kreutzers, one halfpenny
Frankish; but no answer: the dog remained without name, his master
without parsonage. Meanwhile the summer passed away; and the Dragoon
Rittmeister had yet drawn out no pike from the Candidate
_breeding-pond_, and thrown him into the _feeding-pond_ of the Hukelum
parsonage. It gratified him to be behung with prayers like a Spanish
guardian Saint; and he postponed (though determined to prefer the
Subrector) granting any one petition, till he had seven-and-thirty
dyers', buttonmakers', tinsmiths' sons, whose petitions he could at the
same time refuse. Grudge not him of Aufhammer this outlengthening of his
electorial power! He knows the privileges of rank; feels that a nobleman
is like Timoleon, who gained his greatest victories on his birthday, and
had nothing more to do than name some squiress, countess, or the like,
as his mother. A man, however, who has been exalted to the Peerage,
while still a foetus, may with more propriety be likened to the
_spinner_, which, contrariwise to all other insects, passes from the
chrysalis state, and becomes a perfect insect in its mother's womb.--

But to proceed! Fixlein was at present not without cash. It will be the
same as if I made a present of it to the reader, when I reveal to him,
that of the legacy, which was clearing off old scores, he had still
thirty-five florins left to himself, as _allodium_ and pocket-money,
wherewith he might purchase whatsoever seemed good to him. And how came
he by so large a sum, by so considerable a competence? Simply by this
means: Every time he changed a piece of gold, and especially at every
payment he received, it had been his custom to throw in, blindly at
random, two, three, or four small coins, among the papers of his trunk.
His purpose was to astonish himself one day, when he summed up and took
possession of this sleeping capital. And, by Heaven! he reached it too,
when on mounting the throne of his Conrectorate, he drew out these funds
from among his papers, and applied them to the coronation charges. For
the present, he sowed them in again among his waste letters. Foolish
Fixlein! I mean, had he not luckily exposed his legacy to jeopardy,
having offered it as bounty-money, and luck-penny to the patron, this
false clutch of his at the knocker of the Hukelum church-door would
certainly have vexed him; but now if he had missed the knocker, he had
the luck-penny again, and could be merry.

I now advance a little way in his History, and hit, in the rock of his
Life, upon so fine a vein of silver, I mean upon so fine a day, that I
must (I believe) content myself even in regard to the twenty-third of
Trinity-term, when he preached a vacation sermon in his dear native
village, with a brief transitory notice.

In itself the sermon was good and glorious; and the day a rich day of
pleasure; but I should really need to have more hours at my disposal
than I can steal from May, in which I am at present living and writing;
and more strength than wandering through this fine weather has left me
for landscape pictures of the same, before I could attempt, with any
well-founded hope, to draw out a mathematical estimate of the length and
thickness, and the vibrations and accordant relations to each other, of
the various strings, which combined together to form for his heart a
Music of the Spheres, on this day of Trinity-term, though such a thing
would please myself as much as another.... Do not ask me! In my opinion,
when a man preaches on Sunday before all the peasants, who had carried
him in their arms when a gardener's boy; farther, before his mother, who
is leading off her tears through the conduit of her satin muff; farther,
before his Lordship, whom he can positively command to be blessed; and
finally, before his muslin bride, who is already blessed, and changing
almost into stone, to find that the same lips can both kiss and preach:
in my opinion, I say, when a man effects all this, he has some right to
require of any Biographer who would paint his situation, that he--hold
his jaw; and of the reader who would sympathise with it, that he open
his, and preach himself.----

But what I must _ex officio_ depict, is the day to which this Sunday was
but the prelude, the vigil and the whet; I mean the prelude, the vigil
and the whet to the _Martini Actus_, or _Martinmas Exhibition_, of his
school. On Sunday was the Sermon, on Wednesday the Actus, on Tuesday the
Rehearsal. This Tuesday shall now be delineated to the universe.

I count upon it that I shall not be read by mere people of the world
alone, to whom a School-Actus cannot truly appear much better, or more
interesting, than some Investiture of a Bishop, or the _opera seria_ of
a Frankfort Coronation; but that I likewise have people before me, who
have been at schools, and who know how the school-drama of an Actus, and
the stage-manager, and the playbill (the Program) thereof are to be
estimated, still without overrating their importance.

Before proceeding to the Rehearsal of the _Martini Actus_, I impose upon
myself, as dramaturgist of the play, the duty, if not of extracting, at
least of recording the Conrector's Letter of Invitation. In this
composition he said many things; and (what an author likes so well) made
proposals rather than reproaches; interrogatively reminding the public,
Whether in regard to the well-known head-breakages of Priscian on the
part of the Magnates in Pest and Poland, our school-houses were not the
best quarantine and lazar-houses to protect us against infectious
_barbarisms_? Moreover, he defended in schools what could be defended
(and nothing in the world is sweeter or easier than a defence); and
said, Schoolmasters, who not quite justifiably, like certain Courts,
spoke nothing, and let nothing be spoken to them but Latin, might plead
the Romans in excuse, whose subjects, and whose kings, at least in their
epistles and public transactions, were obliged to make use of the Latin
tongue. He wondered why only our Greek, and not also our Latin Grammars,
were composed in Latin, and put the pregnant question: Whether the
Romans, when they taught their little children the Latin tongue, did it
in any other than in this same? Thereupon he went over to the Actus, and
said what follows, in his own words:

"I am minded to prove, in a subsequent Invitation, that everything which
can be said or known about the great founder of the Reformation, the
subject of our present Martini Prolusions, has been long ago exhausted,
as well by Seckendorf as others. In fact, with regard to Luther's
personalities, his table-talk, incomes, journeys, clothes, and so forth,
there can now nothing new be brought forward, if at the same time it is
to be true. Nevertheless, the field of the Reformation history is, to
speak in a figure, by no means wholly cultivated; and it does appear to
me as if the inquirer even of the present day might in vain look about
for correct intelligence respecting the children, grandchildren and
children's children, down to our own times, of this great Reformer; all
of whom, however, appertain, in a more remote degree, to the Reformation
history, as he himself in a nearer. Thou shalt not perhaps be threshing,
said I to myself, altogether empty straw, if, according to thy small
ability, thou bring forward and cultivate this neglected branch of
History. And so have I ventured, with the last male descendant of
Luther, namely, with the Advocate Martin Gottlob Luther, who practised
in Dresden, and deceased there in 1759, to make a beginning of a more
special Reformation history. My feeble attempt, in regard to this
Reformationary Advocate, will be sufficiently rewarded, should it excite
to better works on the subject: however, the little which I have
succeeded in digging up and collecting with regard to him I here
submissively, obediently, and humbly request all friends and patrons of
the Flachsenfingen Gymnasium to listen to, on the 14th of November, from
the mouths of sis well-conditioned perorators. In the first place, shall

"_Gottlieb Spiesglass_, a Flachsenfinger, endeavour to show, in a Latin
oration, that Martin Gottlob Luther was certainly descended of the
Luther family. After him strives

"_Friedrich Christian Krabbler_, from Hukelum, in German prose, to
appreciate the influence which Martin Gottlob Luther exercised on the
then existing Reformation; whereupon, after him, will

"_Daniel Lorenz Stenzinger_ deliver, in Latin verse, an account of
Martin Gottlob Luther's lawsuits; embracing the probable merits of
Advocates generally, in regard to the Reformation. Which then will give
opportunity to

"_Nikol Tobias Pfizman_ to come forward in French, and recount the most
important circumstances of Martin Gottlob Luther's school-years,
university-life and riper age. And now, when

"_Andreas Eintarm_ shall have endeavoured, in German verse, to apologise
for the possible failings of this representative of the great Luther,
will

"_Justus Strobel_, in Latin verse according to ability, sing his
uprightness and integrity in the Advocate profession; whereafter I
myself shall mount the cathedra, and most humbly thank all the patrons
of the Flachsenfingen School, and then farther bring forward those
portions in the life of this remarkable man, of which we yet know
absolutely nothing, they being spared _Deo volente_ for the speakers of
the next _Martini Actus_."

       *       *       *       *       *

The day before the Actus offered as it were the proof-shot and
sample-sheet of the Wednesday. Persons who on account of dress could not
be present at the great school-festival, especially ladies, made their
appearance on Tuesday, during the six proof-orations. No one can be
readier than I to subordinate the proof-Actus to the Wednesday-Actus;
and I do anything but need being stimulated suitably to estimate the
solemn feast of a School; but on the other hand I am equally convinced
that no one, who did not go to the real Actus of Wednesday, could
possibly figure anything more splendid than the proof-day preceding;
because he could have no object wherewith to compare the pomp in which
the Primate of the festival drove in with his triumphal chariot and
six--to call the six brethren-speakers coach-horses--next morning in
presence of ladies and Councillor gentlemen. Smile away, Fixlein, at
this astonishment over thy today's _Ovation_, which is leading on
tomorrow's _Triumph_: on thy dissolving countenance quivers happy Self,
feeding on these incense-fumes; but a vanity like thine, and that only,
which enjoys without comparing or despising, can one tolerate, will one
foster. But what flowed over all his heart, like a melting sunbeam over
wax, was his mother, who after much persuasion had ventured in her
Sunday clothes humbly to place herself quite low down, beside the door
of the Prima class-room. It were difficult to say who is happier, the
mother, beholding how he whom she has borne under her heart can direct
such noble young gentlemen, and hearing how he along with them can talk
of these really high things and understand them too;--or the son, who,
like some of the heroes of Antiquity, has the felicity of triumphing in
the lifetime of his mother. I have never in my writings or doings cast a
stone upon the late Burchardt Grossmann, who under the initial letters
of the stanzas in his song, "_Brich an, du liebe Morgenröthe_," inserted
the letters of his own name; and still less have I ever censured any
poor herbwoman for smoothing out her winding-sheet, while still living,
and making herself one-twelfth of a dozen of grave-shifts. Nor do I
regard the man as wise--though indeed as very clever and pedantic--who
can fret his gall-bladder full because every one of us leaf-miners views
the leaf whereon he is mining as a park-garden, as a fifth Quarter of
the World (so near and rich is it); the leaf-pores as so many Valleys of
Tempe, the leaf-skeleton as a Liberty-tree, a Bread-tree and Life-tree,
and the dew-drops as the Ocean. We poor day-moths, evening-moths and
night-moths, fall universally into the same error, only on different
leaves; and whosoever (as I do) laughs at the important airs with which
the schoolmaster issues his programs, the dramaturgist his playbills,
the classical variation-alms-gatherer his alphabetic letters,--does it,
if he is wise (as is the case here), with the consciousness of his own
_similar_ folly; and laughs in regard to his neighbour, at nothing but
mankind and himself.

The mother was not to be detained; she must off, this very night, to
Hukelum, to give the Fräulein Thiennette at least some tidings of this
glorious business.--

And now the World will bet a hundred to one, that I forthwith take
biographical wax, and emboss such a wax-figure cabinet of the Actus
itself as shall be single of its kind.

But on Wednesday morning, while the hope-intoxicated Conrector was just
about putting on his fine raiment, something knocked.----

It was the well-known servant of the Rittmeister, carrying the Hukelum
Presentation for the Subrector _Füchs_lein in his pocket. To the
last-named gentleman he had been sent with this call to the parsonage:
but he had distinguished ill betwixt _Sub_ and _Con_rector; and had
besides his own good reasons for directing his steps to the latter; for
he thought: "Who can it be that gets it, but the parson that preached
last Sunday, and that comes from the village, and is engaged to our
Fräulein Thiennette, and to whom I brought a clock and a roll of ducats
already?" That his Lordship could pass over his own godson, never
entered the man's head.

Fixlein read the address of the Appointment: "To the Reverend the Parson
_Fixlein_ of Hukelum." He naturally enough made the same mistake as the
lackey; and broke up the Presentation as his own: and finding moreover
in the body of the paper no special mention of persons, but only of a
_Schul-unter-befehlslaber_ or School-undergovernor (instead of
Subrector), he could not but persist in his error. Before I properly
explain why the Rittmeister's Lawyer, the framer of the Presentation,
had so designated a Subrector--we two, the reader and myself, will keep
an eye for a moment on Fixlein's joyful saltations--on his
gratefully-streaming eyes--on his full hands so laden with bounty--on
the present of two ducats, which he drops into the hands of the
mitre-bearer, as willingly as he will soon drop his own pedagogic
office. Could he tell what to think (of the Rittmeister), or to write
(to the same), or to table (for the lackey)? Did he not ask tidings of
the noble health of his benefactor over and over, though the servant
answered him with all distinctness at the very first? And was not this
same man, who belonged to the nose-upturning, shoulder-shrugging,
shoulder-knotted, toad-eating species of men, at last so moved by the
joy which he had imparted, that he determined on the spot, to bestow his
presence on the new clergyman's School-Actus, though no person of
quality whatever was to be there? Fixlein, in the first place, sealed
his letter of thanks; and courteously invited this messenger of good
news to visit him frequently in the Parsonage; and to call this evening
in passing at his mother's, and give her a lecture for not staying last
night, when she might have seen the Presentation from his Lordship
arrive today.

The lackey being gone, Fixlein for joy began to grow sceptical--and
timorous (wherefore, to prevent filching, he stowed his Presentation
securely in his coffer, under keeping of two padlocks); and devout and
softened, since he thanked God without scruple for all good that
happened to him, and never wrote this Eternal Name but in pulpit
characters and with coloured ink, as the Jewish copyists never wrote it
except in ornamental letters and when newly washed;[52]--and deaf also
did the parson grow, so that he scarcely heard the soft wooing-hour of
the Actus--for a still softer one beside Thiennette, with its
rose-bushes and rose-honey, would not leave his thoughts. He who of old,
when Fortune made a wry face at him, was wont, like children in their
sport at one another, to laugh at her so long till she herself was
obliged to begin smiling,--he was now flying as on a huge seesaw higher
and higher, quicker and quicker aloft.

     [52] Eichhorn's _Einleit. ins A. T._ (Introduction to the Old
     Testament), vol. ii.

But before the Actus, let us examine the Schadeck Lawyer. _Fixlein_
instead of _Füchslein_[53] he had written from uncertainty about the
spelling of the name; the more naturally as in transcribing the
Rittmeisterinn's will, the former had occurred so often. _Von_, this
triumphal arch he durst not set up before Füchslein's new name, because
Aufhammer forbade it, considering Hans Füchslein as a mushroom who had
no right to _vons_ and titles of nobility, for all his patents. In fine,
the Presentation-writer was possessed with Campe's[54] whim of
Germanising everything, minding little though when Germanised it should
cease to be intelligible;--as if a word needed any better act of
naturalisation than that which universal intelligibility imparts to it.
In itself it is the same--the rather as all languages, like all men, are
cognate, intermarried and intermixed--whether a word was invented by a
savage or a foreigner; whether it grew up like moss amid the German
forests, or like street-grass, in the pavement of the Roman forum. The
Lawyer, on the other hand, contended that it was different; and
accordingly he hid not from any of his clients that _Tagefarth_
(Day-turn) meant _Term_, and that _Appealing_ was _Berufen_ (Becalling).
On this principle he dressed the word _Subrector_ in the new livery of
_School-undergovernor_. And this version farther converted the
Schoolmaster into Parson: to such a degree does our _civic_ fortune--not
our _personal_ well-being, which supports itself on our own internal
soil and resources--grow merely on the _drift-mould_ of accidents,
connexions, acquaintances, and Heaven or the Devil knows what!--

     [53] Both have the same sound. _Füchslein_ means Foxling,
     Foxwhelp.--ED.

     [54] Campe, a German philologist, who, along with several others of
     that class, has really proposed, as represented in the Text, to
     substitute for all Greek or Latin derivatives corresponding German
     terms of the like import. _Geography_, which may be
     _Erdbeschreibung_ (Earth-description), was thenceforth to be
     nothing else; a _Geometer_ became an _Earthmeasurer_, &c. &c.
     _School-undergovernor_, instead of _Subrector_, is by no means the
     happiest example of the system, and seems due rather to the
     Schadeck Lawyer than to Campe, whom our Author has elsewhere more
     than once eulogised for his project in similar style.--ED.

By the by, from a Lawyer, at the same time a Country Judge, I should
certainly have looked for more sense; I should (I may be mistaken) have
presumed he knew that the _Acts_ or Reports, which in former times (see
Hoffmann's _German or un-German Law-practice_) were written in Latin, as
before the times of Joseph the Hungarian,--are now, if we may say so
without offence, perhaps written fully more in the German dialect than
in the Latin; and in support of this opinion, I can point to whole lines
of German language, to be found in these Imperial-Court-Confessions.
However, I will not believe that the Jurist is endeavouring, because
Imhofer declares the Roman tongue to be the mother tongue in the other
world, to disengage himself from a language, by means of which, like the
Roman _Eagle_, or later, like the Roman _Fish-heron_ (Pope), he has
clutched such abundant booty in his talons.----

Toll, toll your bell for the Actus; stream in, in to the ceremony: who
cares for it? Neither I nor the Ex-Conrector. The six pigmy Ciceros will
in vain set forth before us in sumptuous dress their thoughts and
bodies. The draught-wind of Chance has blown away from the Actus its
powder-nimbus of glory; and the Conrector that was has discovered how
small a matter a cathedra is, and how great a one a pulpit: "I should
not have thought," thought he now, "when I became Conrector, that there
could he anything grander, I mean a Parson." Man, behind his everlasting
blind, which he only colours differently, and makes no thinner, carries
his pride with him from one step to another; and, on the higher step,
blames only the pride of the lower.

The best of the Actus was, that the Regiments-Quartermaster, and Master
Butcher, Steinberg, attended there, embaled in a long woollen shag.
During the solemnity, the Subrector Hans von Füchslein cast several
gratified and inquiring glances on the Schadeck servant, who did not
once look at him: Hans would have staked his head, that after the Actus,
the fellow would wait upon him. When at last the sextuple cockerel-brood
had on their dunghill done crowing, that is to say, had perorated, the
scholastic cocker, over whom a higher banner was now waving, himself
came upon the stage; and delivered to the School-Inspectorships, to the
Subrectorship, to the Guardianship and the Lackeyship, his most grateful
thanks for their attendance; shortly announcing to them at the same
time, "that Providence had now called him from his post to another; and
committed to him, unworthy as he was, the cure of souls in the Hukelum
parish, as well as in the Schadeck chapel of ease."

This little address, to appearance, well-nigh blew up the then Subrector
Hans von Füchslein from his chair; and his face looked of a mingled
colour, like red bole, green chalk, tinsel-yellow and _vomissement de la
reine_.

The tall Quartermaster erected himself considerably in his shag, and
hummed loud enough in happy forgetfulness: "The Dickens!--Parson?"----

The Subrector dashed by like a comet before the lackey: ordered him to
call and take a letter for his master; strode home, and prepared for his
patron, who at Schadeck was waiting for a long thanksgiving psalm, a
short satirical epistle, as nervous as haste would permit, and mingled a
few nicknames and verbal injuries along with it.

The courier handed in, to his master, Fixlein's song of gratitude, and
Füchslein's invectives, with the same hand. The Dragoon Rittmeister,
incensed at the ill-mannered churl, and bound to his word, which Fixlein
had publicly announced in his Actus, forthwith wrote back to the new
Parson an acceptance and ratification; and Fixlein is and remains, to
the joy of us all, incontestable ordained parson of Hukelum.

His disappointed rival has still this consolation, that he holds a seat
in the wasp-nest of the _Neue Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek_.[55]
Should the Parson ever chrysalise himself into an author, the watch-wasp
may then buzz out, and dart its sting into the chrysalis, and put its
own brood in the room of the murdered butterfly. As the Subrector
everywhere went about, and threatened in plain terms that he would
review his colleague, let not the public be surprised that Fixlein's
_Errata_, and his Masoretic _Exercitationes_, are to this hour withheld
from it.

     [55] _New Universal German Library_, a reviewing periodical; in
     those days conducted by Nicolai, a sworn enemy to what has since
     been called the New School. (See Tieck, _ante_)--ED.

In spring, the widowed church receives her new husband; and how it will
be, when Fixlein, under a canopy of flower-trees, takes the _Sponsa
Christi_ in one hand, and his own _Sponsa_ in the other,--this, without
an Eighth Letter-Box, which, in the present case, may be a true
jewel-box and rainbow-key,[56] can no mortal figure, except the
_Sponsus_ himself.

     [56] Superstition declares, that on the spot where the rainbow
     rises, a golden key is left.




EIGHTH LETTER-BOX.

_Instalment in the Parsonage._


On the 15th of April 1793, the reader may observe, far down in the
hollow, three baggage-wagons groaning along. These baggage-wagons are
transporting the house-gear of the new Parson to Hukelum: the proprietor
himself, with a little escort of his parishioners, is marching at their
side, that of his china sets and household furniture there may be
nothing broken in the eighteenth century, as the whole came down to him
unbroken from the seventeenth. Fixlein hears the School-bell ringing
behind him; but this chime now sings to him, like a curfew, the songs of
future rest: he is now escaped from the Death-valley of the Gymnasium,
and admitted into the abodes of the Blessed. Here dwells no envy, no
colleague, no Subrector; here in the heavenly country, no man works in
the _New Universal German Library_; here, in the heavenly Hukelumic
Jerusalem, they do nothing but sing praises in the church; and here the
Perfected requires no more increase of knowledge.... Here too one need
not sorrow that Sunday and Saint's day so often fall together into one.

Truth to tell, the Parson goes too far: but it was his way from of old
never to paint out the whole and half shadows of a situation, till he
was got into a new one; the beauties of which he could then enhance by
contrast with the former. For it requires little reflection to discover
that the torments of a schoolmaster are nothing so extraordinary; but,
on the contrary, as in the Gymnasium, he mounts from one degree to
another, not very dissimilar to the common torments of Hell, which, in
spite of their eternity, grow weaker from century to century. Moreover,
since, according to the saying of a Frenchman, _deux afflictions mises
ensemble peuvent devenir une consolation_, a man gets afflictions enow
in a school to console him; seeing out of eight combined afflictions--I
reckon only one for every teacher--certainly more comfort is to be
extracted than out of two. The only pity is, that school-people will
never act towards each other as court-people do: none but polished men
and polished glasses will readily cohere. In addition to all this, in
schools--and in offices generally--one is always recompensed: for, as in
the second life, a greater virtue is the recompense of an earthly one,
so, in the Schoolmaster's case, his merits are always rewarded by more
opportunities for new merits; and often enough he is not dismissed from
his post at all.--

Eight Gymnasiasts are trotting about in the Parsonage, setting up,
nailing to, hauling in. I think, as a scholar of Plutarch, I am right to
introduce such seeming _minutiæ_. A man whom grown-up people love,
children love still more. The whole school had smiled on the smiling
Fixlein, and liked him in their hearts, because he did not thunder, but
sport with them; because he said _Sie_ (They) to the Secundaners, and
the Subrector said _Ihr_ (Ye); because his uprearing forefinger was his
only sceptre and baculus; because in the Secunda he had interchanged
Latin epistles with his scholars; and in the Quinta, had taught not with
Napier's Rods (or rods of a sharper description), but with sticks of
barley-sugar.

Today his churchyard appeared to him so solemn and festive, that he
wondered (though it was Monday) why his parishioners were not in their
holiday, but merely in their weekday drapery. Under the door of the
Parsonage stood a weeping woman; for she was too happy, and he was
her--son. Yet the mother, in the height of her emotion, contrives quite
readily to call upon the carriers, while disloading, not to twist off
the four corner globes from the old Frankish chest of drawers. Her son
now appeared to her as venerable, as if he had sat for one of the
copperplates in her pictured Bible; and that simply, because he had cast
off his pedagogue hair-cue, as the ripening tadpole does its tail; and
was now standing in a clerical periwig before her: he was now a Comet,
soaring away from the profane Earth, and had accordingly changed from a
_stella caudata_ into a _stella crinita_.

His bride also had, on former days, given sedulous assistance in this
new improved edition of his house, and laboured faithfully among the
other furnishers and furbishers. But today she kept aloof; for she was
too good to forget the maiden in the bride. Love, like men, dies oftener
of excess than of hunger; it lives on love, but it resembles those
Alpine flowers, which feed themselves by _suction_ from the wet clouds,
and die if you _besprinkle_ them.--

At length the Parson is settled, and of course he must--for I know my
fair readers, who are bent on it as if they were bridemaids--without
delay get married. But he may not: before Ascension-day there can
nothing be done, and till then are full four weeks and a half. The
matter was this: He wished in the first place to have the murder-Sunday,
the Cantata, behind him; not indeed because he doubted of his earthly
continuance, but because he would not (even for the bride's sake) that
the slightest apprehension should mingle with these weeks of glory.

The main reason was, He did not wish to marry till he were betrothed:
which latter ceremony was appointed, with the Introduction Sermon, to
take place next Sunday. It is the Cantata-Sunday. Let not the reader
afflict himself with fears. Indeed, I should not have molested an
enlightened century with this Sunday-_Wauwau_ at all, were it not that I
delineate with such extreme fidelity. Fixlein himself--especially as the
Quartermaster asked him if he was a baby--at last grew so sensible, that
he saw the folly of it; nay, he went so far, that he committed a greater
folly. For as dreaming that you die signifies, according to the exegetic
_rule of false_, nothing else than long life and welfare, so did Fixlein
easily infer that his death-imagination was just such a lucky dream;
the rather as it was precisely on this Cantata-Sunday that Fortune had
turned up her cornucopia over him, and at once showered down out of it a
bride, a presentation and a roll of ducats. Thus can Superstition imp
its wings, let Chance favour it or not.

A Secretary of State, a Peace-treaty writer, a Notary, any such
incarcerated Slave of the Desk, feels excellently well how far he is
beneath a Parson composing his inaugural sermon. The latter (do but look
at my Fixlein) lays himself heartily over the paper--injects the venous
system of his sermon-preparation with coloured ink--has a
Text-Concordance on the right side, and a Song-Concordance on the left;
is there digging out a marrowy sentence, here clipping off a
song-blossom, with both to garnish his homiletic pastry;--sketches out
the finest plan of operations, not, like a man of the world, to subdue
the heart of one woman, but the hearts of all women that hear him, and
of their husbands to boot;--draws every peasant passing by his window
into some niche of his discourse, to coöperate with the result;--and,
finally, scoops out the butter of the smooth soft hymn-book, and
therewith exquisitely fattens the black broth of his sermon, which is to
feed five thousand men.----

At last, in the evening, as the red sun is dazzling him at the desk, he
can rise with heart free from guilt; and, amid twittering sparrows and
finches, over the cherry-trees encircling the parsonage, look toward the
west, till there is nothing more in the sky but a faint gleam among the
clouds. And then when Fixlein, amid the tolling of the evening
prayer-bell, _slowly_ descends the stair to his cooking mother, there
must be some miracle in the case, if for him whatever has been done or
baked, or served up in the lower regions, is not right and good.... A
bound, after supper, into the Castle; a look into a pure loving eye; a
word without falseness to a bride without falseness; and then under the
coverlid, a soft-breathing breast, in which there is nothing but
Paradise, a sermon and evening prayer.... I swear, with this I will
satisfy a Mythic God, who has left his Heaven, and is seeking a new one
among us here below!

Can a mortal, can a Me in the wet clay of Earth, which Death will soon
dry into dust, ask more in one week than Fixlein is gathering into his
heart? I see not how: At least I should suppose, if such a dust-framed
being, after such a twenty-thousand prize from the Lottery of Chance,
could require aught more, it would at most be the twenty-one-thousand
prize, namely, the inaugural discourse itself.

And this prize our Zebedäus actually drew on Sunday: he preached--he
preached with unction,----he did it before the crowding, rustling press
of people; before his Guardian, and before the Lord of Aufhammer, the
godfather of the priest and the dog;--a flock with whom in childhood he
had driven out the Castle herds about the pasture, he was now, himself a
spiritual sheep-smearer, leading out to pasture;--he was standing to the
ankles among Candidates and Schoolmasters, for today (what none of them
could) at the altar, with the nail of his finger, he might scratch a
large cross in the air, baptisms and marriages not once mentioned.... I
believe, I should feel less scrupulous than I do to chequer this
sunshiny esplanade with that thin shadow of the grave, which the
preacher threw over it, when, in the application, with wet heavy eyes,
he looked round over the mute attentive church, as if in some corner of
it he would seek the mouldering teacher of his youth and of this
congregation, who without, under the white tombstone, the wrong-side of
life, had laid away the garment of his pious spirit. And when he,
himself hurried on by the internal stream, inexpressibly softened by the
farther recollections of his own fear of death on this day, of his life
now overspread with flowers and benefits, of his entombed benefactress
resting here in her narrow bed--when he now--before the dissolving
countenance of her friend, his Thiennette--overpowered, motionless and
weeping, looked down from the pulpit to the door of the Schadeck vault,
and said: "Thanks, thou pious soul, for the good thou hast done to this
flock and to their new teacher; and, in the fulness of time, may the
dust of thy god-fearing and man-loving breast gather itself,
transfigured as gold-dust, round thy reawakened heavenly heart,"--was
there an eye in the audience dry? Her husband sobbed aloud; and
Thiennette, her beloved, bowed her head, sinking down with inconsolable
remembrances, over the front of the seat, like kindred mourners in a
funeral train.

No fairer forenoon could prepare the way for an afternoon in which a man
was to betroth himself forever, and to unite the exchanged rings with
the Ring of Eternity. Except the bridal pair, there was none present but
an ancient pair; the mother and the long Guardian. The bridegroom wrote
out the marriage-contract or marriage-charter with his own hand; hereby
making over to his bride, from this day, his whole moveable property
(not, as you may suppose, his pocket-library, but his whole library;
whereas, in the Middle Ages, the daughter of a noble was glad to get one
or two books for marriage-portion);--in return for which, she liberally
enough contributed--a whole nuptial coach or car, laden as follows: with
nine pounds of feathers, not feathers for the cap such as we carry, but
of the lighter sort such as carry us;--with a sumptuous dozen of
godchild-plates and godchild-spoons (gifts from Schadeck), together with
a fish-knife;--of silk, not only stockings (though even King Henri II.
of France could dress no more than his legs in silk), but whole
gowns;--with jewels and other furnishings of smaller value. Good
Thiennette! in the chariot of thy spirit lies the true dowry; namely,
thy noble, soft, modest heart, the morning-gift of Nature!

The Parson,--who, not from mistrust but from "the uncertainty of life,"
could have wished for a notary's seal on everything; to whom no security
but a hypothecary one appeared sufficient, and who, in the depositing of
every barleycorn, required quittances and contracts,--had now, when the
marriage-charter was completed, a lighter heart; and through the whole
evening the good man ceased not to thank his bride for what she had
given him. To me, however, a marriage-contract were a thing as painful
and repulsive,--I confess it candidly, though you should in consequence
upbraid me with my great youth,--as if I had to take my love-letter to a
Notary Imperial, and make him docket and countersign it before it could
be sent. Heavens! to see the light flower of Love, whose perfume acts
not on the balance, so laid like tulip-bulbs on the hay-beam of Law; two
hearts on the cold councillor-and flesh-beam of relatives and advocates,
who are heaping on the scales nothing but houses, fields and tin--this,
to the interested party, may be as delightful as, to the intoxicated
suckling and nursling of the Muses and Philosophy, it is to carry the
evening and morning sacrifices he has offered up to his goddess into the
book-shop, and there to change his devotions into money, and sell them
by weight and measure.----

From Cantata-Sunday to Ascension, that is, to marriage-day, are one and
a half weeks--or one and a half blissful eternities. If it is pleasant
that nights or winter separate the days and seasons of joy to a
comfortable distance; if, for example, it is pleasant that birthday,
Saint's-day, betrothment, marriage and baptismal day, do not all occur
on the same day (for with very few do those festivities, like Holiday
and Apostle's day, commerge),--then is it still more pleasant to make
the interval, the flower-border, between betrothment and marriage, of an
extraordinary breadth. Before the marriage-day are the true honey-weeks;
then come the wax-weeks; then the honey-vinegar-weeks.

In the Ninth Letter-Box, our Parson celebrates his wedding; and here, in
the Eighth, I shall just briefly skim over his way and manner of
existence till then; an existence, as might have been expected,
celestial enough. To few is it allotted, as it was to him, to have at
once such wings and such flowers (to fly over) before his nuptials; to
few is it allotted, I imagine, to purchase flour and poultry on the same
day, as Fixlein did;--to stuff the wedding-turkey with
hangman-meals;--to go every night into the stall, and see whether the
wedding-pig, which his Guardian has given him by way of
marriage-present, is still standing and eating;--to spy out for his
future wife the flax-magazines and clothes-press-niches in the
house;--to lay in new wood-stores in the prospect of winter;--to obtain
from the Consistorium directly, and for little smart-money, their Bull
of Dispensation, their remission of the threefold proclamation of
banns;--to live not in a city, where you must send to every fool
(because you are one yourself), and disclose to him that you are going
to be married; but in a little angular hamlet, where you have no one to
tell aught, but simply the Schoolmaster that he is to ring a little
later, and put a knee-cushion before the altar.----

O! if the Ritter Michaelis maintains that Paradise was little, because
otherwise the people would not have found each other,--a hamlet and its
joys are little and narrow, so that some shadow of Eden may still linger
on our Ball.----

I have not even hinted that, the day before the wedding, the
Regiments-Quartermaster came uncalled, and killed the pig, and made
puddings gratis, such as were never eaten at any Court.

And besides, dear Fixlein, on this soft rich oil of joy there was also
floating gratis a vernal sun,--and red twilights,--and
flower-garlands,--and a bursting half world of buds!...

How didst thou behave thee in these hot whirlpools of pleasure?--Thou
movedst thy Fishtail (Reason), and therewith describedst for thyself a
rectilineal course through the billows. For even half as much would have
hurried another Parson from his study; but the very crowning felicity of
ours was, that he stood as if rooted to the boundary-hill of Moderation,
and from thence looked down on what thousands flout away. Sitting
opposite the Castle-windows, he was still in a condition to reckon up
that _Amen_ occurs in the Bible one hundred and thirty times. Nay, to
his old learned laboratory he now appended a new chemical stove: he
purposed writing to Nürnberg and Bayreuth, and there offering his pen to
the Brothers Senft, not only for composing practical _Receipts_ at the
end of their _Almanacs_, but also for separate _Essays_ in front under
the copperplate title of each Month, because he had a thought of making
some reformatory cuts at the common people's mental habitudes.... And
now, when in the capacity of Parson he had less to do, and could add to
the holy resting-day of the congregation six literary creating-days, he
determined (even in these Carnival weeks) to strike his plough into the
hitherto quite fallow History of Hukelum, and soon to follow the plough
with his drill....

Thus roll his minutes, on golden wheels-of-fortune, over the twelve
days, which form the glancing star-paved road to the third-heaven of the
thirteenth, that is to the




NINTH LETTER-BOX,

_Or to the Marriage._


Rise, fair Ascension and Marriage day, and gladden readers also! Adorn
thyself with the fairest jewel, with the bride, whose soul is as pure
and glittering as its vesture; like pearl and pearl-muscle, the one as
the other, lustrous and ornamental! And so over the espalier, whose
fruit-hedge has hitherto divided our darling from his Eden, every reader
now presses after him!--

On the 9th of May 1793, about three in the morning, there came a sharp
peal of trumpets, like a light-beam, through the dim-red May-dawn: two
twisted horns, with a straight trumpet between them, like a note of
admiration between interrogation-points, were clanging from a house in
which only a parishioner (not the Parson) dwelt and blew: for this
parishioner had last night been celebrating the same ceremony which the
pastor had this day before him. The joyful tallyho raised our Parson
from his broad bed (and the Shock from beneath it, who some weeks ago
had been exiled from the white sleek coverlid), and this so early, that
in the portraying tester, where on every former morning he had observed
his ruddy visage and his white bedclothes, all was at present dim and
crayonned.

I confess, the new-painted room, and a gleam of dawn on the wall, made
it so light, that he could see his knee-buckles glancing on the chair.
He then softly awakened his mother (the other guests were to lie for
hours in the sheets), and she had the city cookmaid to awaken, who, like
several other articles of wedding-furniture, had been borrowed for a day
or two from Flachsenfingen. At two doors he knocked in vain, and without
answer; for all were already down at the hearth, cooking, blowing and
arranging.

How softly does the Spring day gradually fold back its nun-veil, and the
Earth grow bright, as if it were the morning of a Resurrection!--The
quicksilver-pillar of the barometer, the guiding Fire-pillar of the
weather-prophet, rests firmly on Fixlein's Ark of the Covenant. The Sun
raises himself, pure and cool, into the morning-blue, instead of into
the morning-red. Swallows, instead of clouds, shoot skimming through the
melodious air.... O, the good Genius of Fair Weather, who deserves many
temples and festivals (because without him no festival could be held),
lifted an ethereal azure Day, as it were, from the well-clear atmosphere
of the Moon, and sent it down, on blue butterfly-wings--as if it were a
_blue_ Monday--glittering below the Sun, in the zigzag of joyful
quivering descent, upon the narrow spot of Earth, which our heated
fancies are now viewing.... And on this balmy vernal spot, stand amid
flowers, over which the trees are shaking blossoms instead of leaves, a
bride and a bridegroom.... Happy Fixlein! how shall I paint thee without
deepening the sighs of longing in the fairest souls?--

But soft! we will not drink the magic cup of Fancy to the bottom at six
in the morning; but keep sober till towards night!

At the sound of the morning prayer-bell, the bridegroom, for the din of
preparation was disturbing his quiet orison, went out into the
churchyard, which (as in many other places), together with the church,
lay round his mansion like a court. Here on the moist green, over whose
closed flowers the churchyard-wall was still spreading broad shadows,
did his spirit cool itself from the warm dreams of Earth: here, where
the white flat grave-stone of his Teacher lay before him like the
fallen-in door on the Janus'-temple of Life, or like the windward side
of the narrow house, turned towards the tempests of the world: here,
where the little shrunk metallic door on the grated cross of his father
uttered to him the inscriptions of death, and the year when his parent
departed, and all the admonitions and mementos, graven on the
lead;--there, I say, his mood grew softer and more solemn; and he now
lifted up by heart his morning prayer, which usually he read; and
entreated God to bless him in his office, and to spare his mother's
life; and to look with favour and acceptance on the purpose of
today.--Then over the graves he walked into his fenceless little angular
flower-garden; and here, composed and confident in the divine keeping,
he pressed the stalks of his tulips deeper into the mellow earth.

But on returning to the house, he was met on all hands by the
bell-ringing and the janissary-music of wedding-gladness;--the
marriage-guests had all thrown off their nightcaps, and were drinking
diligently;--there was a clattering, a cooking, a
frizzling;--tea-services, coffee-services and warm-beer-services, were
advancing in succession; and plates full of bride-cakes were going round
like potter's frames or cistern-wheels.--The Schoolmaster, with three
young lads, was heard rehearsing from his own house an _Arioso_, with
which, so soon as they were perfect, he purposed to surprise his
clerical superior.--But now rushed all the arms of the foaming
joy-streams into one, when the sky-queen besprinkled with blossoms, the
bride, descended upon Earth in her timid joy, full of quivering humble
love;--when the bells began;--when the procession-column set forth with
the whole village round and before it;--when the organ, the
congregation, the officiating priest and the sparrows on the trees of
the church-window, struck louder and louder their rolling peals on the
drum of the jubilee-festival.... The heart of the singing bridegroom was
like to leap from its place for joy, "that on his bridal-day it was all
so respectable and grand."--Not till the marriage-benediction could he
pray a little.

Still worse and louder grew the business during dinner, when pastry-work
and marchpane-devices were brought forward,--when glasses and slain
fishes (laid under the napkins to frighten the guests) went round;--and
when the guests rose, and themselves rent round, and at length danced
round: for they had instrumental music from the city there.

One minute handed over to the other the sugar-bowl and bottle-case of
joy: the guests heard and saw less and less, and the villagers began to
see and hear more and more, and towards night they penetrated like a
wedge into the open door,--nay two youths ventured even in the middle
of the parsonage-court, to mount a plank over a beam, and commence
seesawing.--Out of doors, the gleaming vapour of the departed Sun was
encircling the Earth, the evening-star was glittering over parsonage and
churchyard; no one heeded it.

However, about nine o'clock,--when the marriage-guests had well-nigh
forgotten the marriage-pair, and were drinking or dancing along for
their own behoof; when poor mortals, in this sunshine of Fate, like
fishes in the sunshine of the sky, were leaping up from their wet cold
element; and when the bridegroom under the star of happiness and love,
casting like a comet its long train of radiance over all his heaven, had
in secret pressed to his joy-filled breast his bride and his
mother,--then did he lock a slice of wedding-bread privily into a press,
in the old superstitious belief that this residue secured continuance of
bread for the whole marriage. As he returned, with greater love for the
sole partner of his life, she herself met him with his mother, to
deliver him in private the bridal-nightgown and bridal-shirt, as is the
ancient usage. Many a countenance grows pale in violent emotions, even
of joy: Thiennette's wax-face was bleaching still whiter under the
sunbeams of Happiness. O never fall, thou lily of Heaven, and may four
springs instead of four seasons open and shut thy flower-bells to the
sun!--All the arms of his soul, as he floated on the sea of joy, were
quivering to clasp the soft warm heart of his beloved, to encircle it
gently and fast, and draw it to his own....

He led her from the crowded dancing-room into the cool evening. Why does
the evening, does the night put warmer love in our hearts? Is it the
nightly pressure of helplessness; or is it the exalting separation from
the turmoil of life; that veiling of the world, in which for the soul
nothing more remains but souls;--is it therefore, that the letters in
which the loved name stands written on our spirit appear, like
phosphorus-writing, by night _in fire_, while by day in their _cloudy_
traces they but smoke?

He walked with his bride into the Castle-garden: she hastened quickly
through the Castle, and past its servants'-hall, where the fair flowers
of her young life had been crushed broad and dry, under a long dreary
pressure; and her soul expanded and breathed in the free open garden, on
whose flowery soil destiny had cast forth the first seeds of the
blossoms which today were gladdening her existence. Still Eden! green
flower-chequered _chiaroscuro_!--The moon is sleeping underground like
a dead one; but beyond the garden the sun's red evening-clouds have
fallen down like rose-leaves; and the evening-star, the brideman of the
sun, hovers, like a glancing butterfly, above the rosy red, and, modest
as a bride, deprives no single starlet of its light.

The wandering pair arrived at the old gardener's hut; now standing
locked and dumb, with dark windows in the light garden, like a fragment
of the Past surviving in the Present. Bared twigs of trees were folding,
with clammy half-formed leaves, over the thick intertwisted tangles of
the bushes.--The Spring was standing, like a conqueror, with Winter at
his feet.--In the blue pond, now bloodless, a dusky evening-sky lay
hollowed out, and the gushing waters were moistening the
flower-beds.--The silver sparks of stars were rising on the altar of the
East, and falling down extinguished in the red sea of the West.

The wind whirred, like a night-bird, louder through the trees; and gave
tones to the acacia-grove, and the tones called to the pair who had
first become happy within it: "Enter, new mortal pair, and think of what
is past, and of my withering and your own; and be holy as Eternity, and
weep not only for joy, but for gratitude also!"--And the wet-eyed
bridegroom led his wet-eyed bride under the blossoms, and laid his soul,
like a flower, on her heart, and said: "Best Thiennette, I am
unspeakably happy, and would say much, and cannot.--Ah, thou Dearest, we
will live like angels, like children together! Surely I will do all that
is good to thee; two years ago I had nothing, no nothing; ah, it is
through thee, best Love, that I am happy. I call thee Thou, now, thou
dear good soul!" She drew him closer to her, and said, though without
kissing him: "Call me Thou always, Dearest!"

And as they stept forth again from the sacred grove into the magic-dusky
garden, he took off his hat; first, that he might internally thank God,
and secondly, because he wished to look into this fairest evening sky.

They reached the blazing, rustling marriage-house, but their softened
hearts sought stillness; and a foreign touch, as in the blossoming vine,
would have disturbed the flower-nuptials of their souls. They turned
rather, and winded up into the churchyard to preserve their mood.
Majestic on the groves and mountains stood the Night before man's heart,
and made it also great. Over the _white_ steeple-obelisk the sky rested
_bluer_ and _darker_; and behind it wavered the withered summit of the
May-pole with faded flag. The son noticed his father's grave, on which
the wind was opening and shutting, with harsh noise, the little door of
the metal cross, to let the year of his death be read on the brass plate
within. An overpowering sadness seized his heart with violent streams of
tears, and drove him to the sunk hillock, and he led his bride to the
grave, and said: "Here sleeps he, my good father; in his thirty-second
year, he was carried hither to his long rest. O thou good, dear father,
couldst thou today but see the happiness of thy son, like my mother! But
thy eyes are empty, and thy breast is full of ashes, and thou seest us
not."--He was silent. The bride wept aloud; she saw the mouldering
coffins of her parents open, and the two dead arise and look round for
their daughter, who had stayed so long behind them, forsaken on the
Earth. She fell upon his heart, and faltered: "O beloved, I have neither
father nor mother, do not forsake me!"

O thou who hast still a father and a mother, thank God for it, on the
day when thy soul is full of joyful tears, and needs a bosom wherein to
shed them....

And with this embracing at a father's grave, let this day of joy be
holily concluded.--




TENTH LETTER-BOX.

_St. Thomas's Day and Birthday._


An Author is a sort of bee-keeper for his reader-swarm; in whose behalf
he separates the Flora kept for their use into different seasons, and
here accelerates, and there retards, the blossoming of many a flower,
that so in all chapters there be blooming.

The goddess of Love and the angel of Peace conducted our married pair on
tracks running over full meadows, through the Spring; and on footpaths
hidden by high cornfields, through the Summer; and Autumn, as they
advanced towards Winter, spread her marbled leaves under their feet. And
thus they arrived before the low dark gate of Winter, full of life, full
of love, trustful, contented, sound and ruddy.

On St. Thomas's day was Thiennette's birthday as well as Winter's. About
a quarter past nine, just when the singing ceases in the church, we
shall take a peep through the window into the interior of the parsonage.
There is nothing here but the old mother, who has all day (the son
having restricted her to rest, and not work) been gliding about, and
brushing, and burnishing, and scouring, and wiping: every carved
chair-leg, and every brass nail of the waxcloth-covered table, she has
polished into brightness;--everything hangs, as with all married people
who have no children, in its right place, brushes, fly-flaps and
almanacs;--the chairs are stationed by the room-police in their ancient
corners;--a flax-rock, encircled with a diadem, or scarf of azure
ribbon, is lying in the Schadeckbed, because, though it is a half
holiday, some spinning may go on;--the narrow slips of paper, whereon
heads of sermons are to be arranged, lie white beside the sermons
themselves, that is, beside the octavo paper-book which holds them, for
the Parson and his work-table, by reason of the cold, have migrated from
the study to the sitting-room;--his large furred doublet is hanging
beside his clean bridegroom nightgown: there is nothing wanting in the
room but He and She. For he had preached her with him tonight into the
empty Apostle's-day church, that so her mother, without
witnesses--except the two or three thousand readers who are peeping with
me through the window--might arrange the provender-baking, and whole
commissariat department of the birthday-festival, and spread out her
best table-gear and victual-stores without obstruction.

The soul-curer reckoned it no sin to admonish, and exhort, and
encourage, and threaten his parishioners, till he felt pretty certain
that the soup must be smoking on the plates. Then he led his birthday
helpmate home, and suddenly placed her before the altar of
meat-offering, before a sweet title-page of bread-tart, on which her
name stood baked, in true _monastic characters_, in tooth-letters of
almonds. In the background of time and of the room, I yet conceal
two--bottles of Pontac. How quickly, under the sunshine of joy, do thy
cheeks grow ripe, Thiennette, when thy husband solemnly says: "This is
thy birthday; and may the Lord bless thee and watch over thee, and cause
his countenance to shine on thee, and send thee, to the joy of our
mother and thy husband especially, a happy glad _recovery_. Amen!"--And
when Thiennette perceived that it was the old mistress who had cooked
and served up all this herself, she fell upon her neck, as if it had
been not her husband's mother, but her own.

Emotion conquers the appetite. But Fixlein's stomach was as strong as
his heart; and with him no species of movement could subdue the
peristaltic. Drink is the friction-oil of the tongue, as eating is its
drag. Yet, not till he had eaten and spoken much, did the pastor fill
the glasses. Then indeed he drew the cork-sluice from the bottle, and
set forth its streams. The sickly mother, of a being still hid beneath
her heart, turned her eyes, in embarrassed emotion, on the old woman
only; and could scarcely chide him for sending to the city wine-merchant
on her account. He took a glass in each hand, for each of the two whom
he loved, and handed them to his mother and his wife, and said: "To thy
long, long life, Thiennette!--And your health and happiness, Mamma!--And
a glad arrival to our little one, if God so bless us!"--"My son," said
the gardeneress, "it is to thy long life that we must drink; for it is
by thee we are supported. God grant thee length of days!" added she,
with stifled voice, and her eyes betrayed her tears.

I nowhere find a livelier emblem of the female sex in all its boundless
levity, than in the case where a woman is carrying the angel of Death
beneath her heart, and yet in these nine months full of mortal tokens
thinks of nothing more important, than of who shall be the gossips, and
what shall be cooked at the christening. But thou, Thiennette, hadst
nobler thoughts, though these too along with them. The still-hidden
darling of thy heart was resting before thy eyes like a little angel
sculptured on a grave-stone, and pointing with its small finger to the
hour when thou shouldst die; and every morning and every evening, thou
thoughtest of death, with a certainty, of which I yet knew not the
reasons; and to thee it was as if the Earth were a dark mineral cave
where man's blood like stalactitic water drops down, and in dropping
raises shapes which gleam so transiently, and so quickly fade away! And
that was the cause why tears were continually trickling from thy soft
eyes, and betraying all thy anxious thoughts about thy child: but thou
repaidst these sad effusions of thy heart by the embrace in which, with
new-awakened love, thou fellest on thy husband's neck, and saidst: "Be
as it may, God's will be done, so thou and my child are left alive!--But
I know well that thou, Dearest, lovest me as I do thee.".... Lay thy
hand, good mother, full of blessings, on the two; and thou kind Fate,
never lift thine away from them!--

It is with emotion and good wishes that I witness the kiss of two fair
friends, or the embracing of two virtuous lovers; and from the fire of
their altar sparks fly over to me: but what is this to our sympathetic
exaltation, when we see two mortals, bending under the same burden,
bound to the same duties, animated by the same care for the same little
darlings--fall on one another's overflowing hearts, in some fair hour?
And if these, moreover, are two mortals who already wear the
mourning-weeds of life, I mean old age, whose hair and cheeks are now
grown colourless, and eyes grown dim, and whose faces a thousand thorns
have marred into images of Sorrow;--when these two clasp each other with
such wearied aged arms, and so near to the precipice of the grave, and
when they say or think: "All in us is dead, but not our love--O, we have
lived and suffered long together, and now we will hold out our hands to
Death together also, and let him carry us away together,"--does not all
within us cry: O Love, thy spark is superior to Time; it burns neither
in joy nor in the cheek of roses; it dies not, neither under a thousand
tears, nor under the snow of old age, nor under the ashes of
thy--beloved? It never dies: and Thou, All-good! if there were no
eternal love, there were no love at all....

To the Parson it was easier than it is to me to pave for himself a
transition from the heart to the digestive faculty. He now submitted to
Thiennette (whose voice at once grew cheerful, while her eyes time after
time began to sparkle) his purpose to take advantage of the frosty
weather, and have the winter meat slaughtered and salted: "the pig can
scarcely rise," said he; and forthwith he fixed the determination of the
women, farther the butcher, and the day, and all _et ceteras_;
appointing everything with a degree of punctuality, such as the
war-college (when it applies the cupping-glass, the battle-sword, to the
overfull system of mankind) exhibits on the previous day, in its
arrangements, before it drives a province into the baiting-ring and
slaughter-house.

This settled, he began to talk and feel quite joyously about the course
of winter, which had commenced today at two-and-twenty minutes past
eight in the morning: "for," said he, "new-year is close at hand; and we
shall not need so much candle tomorrow night as tonight." His mother, it
is true, came athwart him with the weapons of her five senses: but he
fronted her with his Astronomical Tables, and proved that the
lengthening of the day was no less undeniable than imperceptible. In the
last place, like most official and married persons, heeding little
whether his women took him or not, he informed them in
juristico-theological phrase: "That he would put off no longer, but
write this very afternoon to the venerable Consistorium, in whose hands
lay the _jus circa sacra_, for a new Ball to the church-steeple; and
the rather, as he hoped before newyear's day to raise a bountiful
subscription from the parish for this purpose.--If God spare us till
Spring," added he with peculiar cheerfulness, "and thou wert happily
recovered, I might so arrange the whole that the Ball should be set up
at thy first church-going, dame!"

Thereupon he shifted his chair from the dinner and dessert table to the
work-table; and spent the half of his afternoon over the petition for
the steeple-ball. As there still remained a little space till dusk, he
clapped his tackle to his new learned _Opus_, of which I must now afford
a little glimpse. Out of doors among the snow, there stood near Hukelum
an old Robber-Castle, which Fixlein, every day in Autumn, had hovered
round like a _revenant_, with a view to gauge it, ichnographically to
delineate it, to put every window-bar and every bridle-hook of it
correctly on paper. He believed he was not expecting too much, if
thereby--and by some drawings of the not so much vertical as horizontal
walls--he hoped to impart to his "_Architectural Correspondence of two
Friends concerning the Hukelum Robber-Castle_" that last polish and
_labor limæ_ which contents Reviewers. For towards the critical
Starchamber of the Reviewers he entertained not that contempt which some
authors actually feel--or only affect, as for instance, I. From this
mouldered Robber-_Louvre_, there grew for him more flowers of joy, than
ever in all probability had grown from it of old for its owners.--To my
knowledge, it is an anecdote not hitherto made public, that for all this
no man but _Büsching_ has to answer. Fixlein had not long ago, among the
rubbish of the church letter-room, stumbled on a paper wherein the
Geographer had been requesting special information about the statistics
of the village. Büsching, it is true, had picked up
nothing--accordingly, indeed, Hukelum, in his _Geography_, is still
omitted altogether;--but this pestilential letter had infected Fixlein
with the spring-fever of Ambition, so that his palpitating heart was no
longer to be stilled or held in check, except by the
assafoetida-emulsion of a review. It is with authorcraft as with love:
both of them for decades long one may equally desire and forbear: but is
the first spark once thrown into the powder-magazine, it burns to the
end of the chapter.

Simply because winter had commenced by the Almanac, the fire must be
larger than usual; for warm rooms, like large furs and bearskin-caps,
were things which he loved more than you would figure. The dusk, this
fair _chiaroscuro_ of the day, this coloured foreground of the night, he
lengthened out as far as possible, that he might study Christmas
discourses therein: and yet could his wife, without scruple, just as he
was pacing up and down the room, with the sowing-sheet full of divine
word-seeds hung round his shoulder,--hold up to him a spoonful of
alegar, that he might try the same in his palate, and decide whether she
should yet draw it off. Nay, did he not in all cases, though fonder of
roe-fishes himself, order a milter to be drawn from the herring-barrel,
because his good-wife liked it better?--

Here light was brought in; and as Winter was just now commencing his
glass-painting on the windows, his ice flower-pieces, and his
snow-foliage, our Parson felt that it was time to read something cold,
which he pleasantly named his cold collation; namely, the description of
some unutterably frosty land. On the present occasion, it was the winter
history of the four Russian sailors on Nova Zembla. I, for my share, do
often in summer, when the sultry zephyr is inflating the flower-bells,
append certain charts and sketches of Italy, or the East, as additional
landscapes to those among which I am sitting. And yet tonight he farther
took up the _Weekly Chronicle_ of Flachsenfingen; and amid the
bombshells, pestilences, famines, comets with long tails, and the
roaring of all the Hell-floods of another Thirty-Years War, he could
still listen with the one ear towards the kitchen, where the salad for
his roast-duck was just a-cutting.

Good-night, old Fixlein! I am tired. May kind Heaven send thee with the
young year 1794, when the Earth shall again carry her people, like
precious night-moths, on leaves and flowers, the new steeple-ball, and a
thick handsome--boy to boot!




ELEVENTH LETTER-BOX.

_Spring; Investiture; and Childbirth._


I have just risen from a singular dream; but the foregoing Box makes it
natural. I dreamed that all was verdant, all full of odours; and I was
looking up at a steeple-ball glittering in the sun, from my station in
the window of a little white garden-house, my eyelids full of
flower-pollen, my shoulders full of thin cherry-blossoms, and my ears
full of humming from the neighbouring bee-hives. Then, methought,
advancing slowly through the beds, came the Hukelum Parson, and stept
into the garden-house, and solemnly said to me: "Honoured Sir, my wife
has just brought me a little boy; and I make bold to solicit _your
Honour_ to do the holy office for the same, when it shall be received
into the bosom of the church."

I naturally started up, and there was--Parson Fixlein standing bodily at
my bedside, and requesting me to be godfather: for Thiennette had given
him a son last night about one o'clock. The confinement had been as
light and happy as could be conceived; for this reason, that the father
had, some months before, been careful to provide one of those
_Klappersteins_, as we call them, which are found in the aerie of the
eagle, and therewith to alleviate the travail: for this stone performs,
in its way, all the service which the bonnet of that old Minorite monk
in Naples, of whom Gorani informs us, could accomplish for people in
such circumstances, who put it on....

--I might vex the reader still longer; but I willingly give up, and show
him how the matter stood.

Such a May as the present (of 1794), Nature has not, in the memory of
man--begun: for this is but the fifteenth of it. People of reflection
have for centuries been vexed once every year, that our German singers
should indite May-songs, since several other months deserve such a
poetical night-music much better; and I myself have often gone so far as
to adopt the idiom of our market-women, and instead of May butter, to
say June butter, as also June, March, April songs.--But thou, kind May
of this year, thou deservest to thyself all the songs which were ever
made on thy rude namesakes! By Heaven! when I now issue from the
wavering chequered acacia-grove of the Castle-garden, in which I am
writing this Chapter, and come forth into the broad living day, and look
up to the warming Heaven, and over its Earth budding out beneath
it,--the Spring rises before me like a vast full cloud, with a splendour
of blue and green. I see the Sun standing amid roses in the western sky,
into which he has thrown his ray-brush, wherewith he has today been
painting the Earth;--and when I look round a little in our
picture-exhibition, his enamelling is still hot on the mountains; on the
moist chalk of the moist Earth, the flowers full of sap-colours are laid
out to dry, and the forget-me-not with miniature colours; under the
varnish of the streams, the skyey Painter has pencilled his own eye; and
the clouds, like a decoration-painter, he has touched off with wild
outlines and single tints: and so he stands at the border of the Earth,
and looks back upon his stately Spring, whose robe-folds are valleys,
whose breast-bouquet is gardens, and whose blush is a vernal evening,
and who, when she arises, shall be--Summer.

But to proceed! Every spring--and especially in such a spring--I imitate
on foot our birds of passage; and travel off the hypochondriacal
sediment of winter: but I do not think I should have seen even the
steeple-ball of Hukelum, which is to be set up one of these days, to say
nothing of the Parson's family, had not I happened to be visiting the
Flachsenfingen Superintendent and Consistorialrath. From him I got
acquainted with Fixlein's history (every Candidatus must deliver an
account of his life to the Consistorium), and with his still madder
petition for a steeple-ball. I observed, with pleasure, how gaily the
cob was diving and swashing about in his duck-pool and milk-bath of
life; and forthwith determined on a journey to his shore. It is
singular, that is to say, manlike, that when we have for years kept
prizing and describing some original person or original book, yet the
moment we see such, they anger us: we would have them fit us and delight
us in all points, as if any originality could do this but our own.

It was Saturday the third of May, when I, with the Superintendent, the
_Senior Capituli_, and some temporal Raths, mounted and rolled off, and
in two carriages were driven to the Parson's door. The matter was, he
was not yet--_invested_, and tomorrow this was to be done. I little
thought, while we whirled by the white espalier of the Castle-garden,
that there I was to write another book.

I still see the Parson, in his peruke-minever and head-case, come
springing to the coach-door and lead us out; so smiling--so
courteous--so vain of the disloaded freight, and so attentive to it. He
looked as if in the journey of life he had never once put on the
_travelling-gauze_ of Sorrow: Thiennette again seemed never to have
thrown hers back. How neat was everything in the house, how dainty,
decorated and polished! And yet so quiet, without the cursed
alarm-ringing of servants' bells, and without the bass-drum tumult of
stair-pedaling. Whilst the gentlemen, my road-companions, were sitting
in state in the upper room, I flitted, as my way is, like a smell, over
the whole house, and my path led me through the sitting-room over the
kitchen, and at last into the churchyard beside the house. Good
Saturday! I will paint thy hours as I may, with the black asphaltos of
ink, on the tablets of other souls! In the sitting-room, I lifted from
the desk a volume gilt on the back and edges, and bearing this title:
"_Holy Sayings, by Fixlein. First Collection._" And as I looked to see
where it had been printed, the Holy Collection turned out to be in
writing. I handled the quills, and dipped into the negro-black of the
ink, and I found that all was right and good: with your fluttering
gentlemen of letters, who hold only a department of the foreign, and
none of the home affairs, nothing (except some other things about them)
can be worse than their ink and pens. I also found a little copperplate,
to which I shall in due time return.

In the kitchen, a place not more essential for the writing of an English
novel, than for the acting of a German one, I could plant myself beside
Thiennette, and help her to blow the fire, and look at once into her
face and her burning coals. Though she was in wedlock, a state in which
white roses on the cheeks are changed for red ones, and young women are
similar to a similitude given in my Note;[57]--and although the blazing
wood threw a false rouge over her, I guessed how pale she must have
been; and my sympathy in her paleness rose still higher at the thought
of the burden which Fate had now not so much taken from her, as laid in
her arms and nearer to her heart. In truth, a man must never have
reflected on the Creation-moment, when the Universe first rose from the
bosom of an Eternity, if he does not view with philosophic reverence a
woman, whose thread of life a secret all-wondrous Hand is spinning to a
second thread, and who veils within her the transition from Nothingness
to Existence, from Eternity to Time;--but still less can a man have any
heart of flesh, if his soul, in presence of a woman, who, to an unknown
unseen being, is sacrificing more than we will sacrifice when it is seen
and known, namely, her nights, her joys, often her life, does not bow
lower, and with deeper emotion, than in presence of a whole
nun-orchestra on their Sahara-desert;--and worse than either is the man
for whom his own mother has not made all other mothers venerable.

     [57] To the Spring, namely, which begins with snowdrops, and ends
     with roses and  pinks.--

"It is little serviceable to thee, poor Thiennette," thought I, "that
now, when thy bitter cup of sickness is made to run over, thou must
have loud festivities come crowding round thee." I meant the Investiture
and the Ball-raising. My rank, the diploma of which the reader will find
stitched in with the _Dog-post-days_, and which had formerly been hers,
brought about my ears a host of repelling, embarrassed, wavering titles
of address from her; which people, to whom they have once belonged, are
at all times apt to parade before superiors or inferiors, and which it
now cost me no little trouble to disperse. Through the whole Saturday
and Sunday, I could never get into the right track either with her or
him, till the other guests were gone. As for the mother, she acted, like
obscure ideas, powerfully and constantly, but out of view: this arose in
part from her idolatrous fear of us; and partly also from a slight shade
of care (probably springing from the state of her daughter), which had
spread over her like a little cloud.

I cruised about, so long as the moon-crescent glimmered in the sky, over
the churchyard; and softened my fantasies, which are at any rate too
prone to paint with the brown of crumbling mummies, not only by the red
of twilight, but also by reflecting how easily our eyes and our hearts
can become reconciled even to the ruins of Death; a reflection which the
Schoolmaster, whistling as he arranged the charnel-house for the morrow,
and the Parson's maid singing, as she reaped away the grass from the
graves, readily enough suggested to me. And why should not this
habituation to all forms of Fate in the other world, also, be a gift
reserved for us in our nature by the bounty of our great Preserver?--I
perused the grave-stones; and I think even now that Superstition[58] is
right in connecting with the reading of such things a loss of _memory_;
at all events, one does _forget_ a thousand things belonging to this
world....

     [58] This Christian superstition is not only a Rabbinical, but also
     a Roman one. _Cicero de Senectute_.

The Investiture on Sunday (whose Gospel, of the good shepherd, suited
well with the ceremony) I must dispatch in few words; because nothing
truly sublime can bear to be treated of in many. However, I shall impart
the most memorable circumstances, when I say that there was--drinking
(in the Parsonage),--music-making (in the Choir),--reading (of the
Presentation by the Senior, and of the Ratification-rescript by the lay
Rath),--and preaching, by the Consistorialrath, who took the soul-curer
by the hand, and presented, made over and guaranteed him to the
congregation, and them to him. Fixlein felt that he was departing as a
high-priest from the church, which he had entered as a country parson;
and all day he had not once the heart to ban. When a man is treated with
solemnity, he looks upon himself as a higher nature, and goes through
his solemn feasts devoutly.

This indenturing, this monastic profession, our Head-Rabbis and
Lodge-masters (our Superintendents) have usually a taste for putting off
till once the pastor has been some years ministering among the people,
to whom they hereby present him; as the early Christians frequently
postponed their consecration and investiture to Christianity, their
baptism namely, till the day when they died: nay, I do not even think
this clerical Investiture would lose much of its usefulness, if it and
the declaring-vacant of the office were reserved for the same day; the
rather as this usefulness consists entirely in two items; what the
Superintendent and his Raths can eat, and what they can pocket.

Not till towards evening did the Parson and I get acquainted. The
Investiture officials, and elevation pulley-men, had, throughout the
whole evening, been very violently--breathing. I mean thus: as these
gentlemen could not but be aware, by the most ancient theories and the
latest experiments, that air was nothing else than a sort of rarefied
and exploded water, it became easy for them to infer that, conversely,
water was nothing else than a denser sort of air. Wine-drinking,
therefore, is nothing else but the breathing of an air pressed together
into proper spissitude, and sprinkled over with a few perfumes. Now, in
our days, by clerical persons too much (fluid) breath can never be
inhaled through the mouth; seeing the dignity of their station excludes
them from that breathing through the _smaller_ pores, which Abernethy so
highly recommends under the name of _air-bath_: and can the Gullet in
their case be aught else than door-neighbour to the Windpipe, the
_consonant_ and fellow-shoot of the Windpipe?--I am running astray: I
meant to signify, that I this evening had adopted the same opinion; only
that I used this air or ether, not like the rest for loud laughter, but
for the more quiet contemplation of life in general. I even shot forth
at my gossip certain speeches, which betrayed devoutness: these he at
first took for jests, being aware that I was from Court, and of quality.
But the concave mirror of the wine-mist at length suspended the images
of my soul, enlarged and embodied like spiritual shapes, in the air
before me.--Life shaded itself off to my eyes like a hasty summer night,
which we little fire-flies shoot across with transient gleam;--I said to
him that man must turn himself like the leaves of the great mallow, at
the different day-seasons of his life, now to the rising sun, now to the
setting, now to the night, towards the Earth and its graves;--I said,
the omnipotence of Goodness was driving us and the centuries of the
world towards the gates of the City of God, as, according to Euler, the
resistance of the _Ether_ leads the circling Earth towards the Sun, &c.
&c.


On the strength of these entremets, he considered me the first
theologian of his age; and had he been obliged to go to war, would
previously have taken my advice on the matter, as belligerent powers
were wont of old from the theologians of the Reformation. I hide not
from myself, however, that what preachers call vanity of the world, is
something altogether different from what philosophy so calls. When I,
moreover, signified to him that I was not ashamed to be an Author; but
had a turn for working up this and the other biography; and that I had
got a sight of his _Life_ in the hands of the Superintendent; and might
be in case to prepare a printed one therefrom, if so were he would
assist me with here and there a tint of flesh-colour,--then was my silk,
which, alas! not only isolates one from electric fire, but also from a
kindlier sort of it, the only grate which rose between his arms and me;
for, like the most part of poor country parsons, it was not in his power
to forget the rank of any man, or to vivify his own on a higher one. He
said: "He would acknowledge it with veneration, if I should mention him
in print; but he was much afraid his life was too common and too poor
for a biography." Nevertheless, he opened me the drawer of his
Letter-boxes; and said, perhaps, he had hereby been paving the way for
me.

The main point, however, was, he hoped that his _Errata_, his
_Exercitationes_, and his _Letters on the Robber-Castle_, if I should
previously send forth a Life of the Author, might be better received;
and that it would be much the same as if I accompanied them with a
Preface.

In short, when on Monday the other dignitaries with their nimbus of
splendour had dissipated, I alone, like a precipitate, abode with him;
and am still abiding, that is, from the fifth of May (the Public should
take the Almanac of 1794, and keep it open beside them) to the
fifteenth: today is Thursday, tomorrow is the sixteenth and Friday, when
comes the Spinat-Kirmes, or Spinage-Wake, as they call it, and the
uplifting of the steeple-ball, which I just purposed to await before I
went. Now, however, I do not go so soon; for on Sunday I have to assist
at the baptismal ceremony, as baptismal agent for my little future
godson. Whoever pays attention to me, and keeps the Almanac open, may
readily guess why the christening is put off till Sunday: for it is that
memorable Cantata-Sunday, which once, for its mad narcotic
hemlock-virtues, was of importance in our History; but is now so only
for the fair betrothment, which after two years we mean to celebrate
with a baptism.

Truly it is not in my power--for want of colours and presses--to paint
or print upon my paper the soft balmy flower-garland of a fortnight
which has here wound itself about my sickly life; but with a single day
I shall attempt it. Man, I know well, cannot prognosticate either his
joys or his sorrows, still less repeat them, either in living or
writing.

The black hour of coffee has gold in its mouth for us and honey; here,
in the morning coolness, we are all gathered; we maintain popular
conversation, that so the parsoness and the gardeneress may be able to
take share in it. The morning-service in the church, where often the
whole people[59] are sitting and singing, divides us. While the bell is
sounding, I march with my writing-gear into the singing Castle-garden;
and seat myself in the fresh acacia-grove, at the dewy two-legged table.
Fixlein's Letter-boxes I keep by me in my pocket; and I have only to
look and abstract from his what can be of use in my own.--Strange
enough! so easily do we forget a thing in describing it, I really did
not recollect for a moment that I am now sitting at the very
grove-table, of which I speak, and writing all this.--

     [59] For according to the Jurists, fifteen persons make a people.

My gossip in the mean time is also labouring for the world. His study is
a sort of sacristy, and his printing-press a pulpit, wherefrom he
preaches to all men; for an Author is the Town-chaplain of the Universe.
A man, who is making a Book, will scarcely hang himself; all rich
Lords'-sons, therefore, should labour for the press; for, in that case,
when you awake too early in bed, you have always a _plan_, an aim, and
therefore a cause before you why you should get out of it. Better off
too is the author who collects rather than invents,--for the latter with
its eating fire calcines the heart: I praise the Antiquary, the
Heraldist, Notemaker, Compiler; I esteem the _Title-perch_ (a fish
called _Perca-Diagramma_, because of the letters on its scales), and the
_Printer_ (a chafer, called _Scarabæus Typographus_, which eats letters
in the bark of fir),--neither of them needs any greater or fairer arena
in the world than a piece of rag-paper, or any other laying-apparatus
than a pointed pencil, wherewith to lay his four-and-twenty
letter-eggs.--In regard to the _catalogue raisonné_, which my gossip is
now drawing up of German _Errata_, I have several times suggested to
him, "that it were good if he extended his researches in one respect,
and revised the rule, by which it has been computed, that _e. g._ for a
hundredweight of pica black-letter, four hundred and fifty semicolons,
three hundred periods, &c. are required; and to recount, and see whether
in Political writings and Dedications the fifty notes of admiration for
a hundredweight of pica black-letter were not far too small an
allowance, and if so, what the real quantity was?"

Several days he wrote nothing; but wrapped himself in the slough of his
parson's-cloak; and so in his canonicals, beside the Schoolmaster, put
the few A-b-c shooters, which were not, like forest-shooters, absent on
furlough by reason of the spring,--through their platoon firing in the
Hornbook. He never did more than his duty, but also never less. It
brought a soft benignant warmth over his heart, to think that he, who
had once ducked under a School-inspectorship, was now one himself.

About ten o'clock, we meet from our different museums, and examine the
village, especially the Biographical furniture and holy places, which I
chance that morning to have had under my pen or pantagraph; because I
look at them with more interest _after_ my description than _before_ it.

Next comes dinner.--

After the concluding grace, which is too long, we both of us set to
entering the charitable subsidies, and religious donations, which our
parishioners have remitted to the sinking or rather rising fund of the
church-box for the purchase of the new steeple-globe, into two ledgers:
the one of these, with the names of the subscribers, or (in case they
have subscribed for their children) with their children's names also, is
to be inurned in a leaden capsule, and preserved in the steeple-ball;
the other will remain below among the parish Registers. You cannot fancy
what contributions the ambition of getting into the Ball brings us in;
I declare, several peasants who had given and well once already,
contributed again when they had baptisms: must not little Hans be in the
Ball too?

After this book-keeping by double-entry, my gossip took to engraving on
copper. He had been so happy as to elicit the discovery, that from a
certain stroke resembling an inverted Latin S, the capital letters of
our German Chancery-hand, beautiful and intertwisted as you see them
stand in Law-deeds and Letters-of-nobility, may every one of them be
composed and spun out.

"Before you can count sixty," said he to me, "I take my
fundamental-stroke and make you any letter out of it."

I merely inverted this fundamental-stroke, that is, gave him a German S,
and counted sixty till he had it done. This line of beauty, when once it
has been twisted and flourished into all the capitals, he purposes by
copperplates which he is himself engraving, to make more common for the
use of Chanceries; and I may take upon me to give the Russian, the
Prussian, and a few other smaller Courts, hopes of proof impressions
from his hand: to under-secretaries they are indispensable.

Now comes evening; and it is time for us both, here forking about with
our fruit-hooks on the literary Tree of Knowledge, at the risk of our
necks, to clamber down again into the meadow-flowers and pasturages of
rural joy. We wait, however, till the busy Thiennette, whom we are now
to receive into our communion, has no more walks to take but the one
between us. Then slowly we stept along (the sick lady was weak) through
the office-houses; that is to say, through stalls and their population,
and past a horrid lake of ducks, and past a little milk-pond of carps,
to both of which colonies, I and the rest, like princes, gave bread,
seeing we had it in view on the Sunday after the christening, to--take
them for bread ourselves.

The sky is still growing kindlier and redder, the swallows and the
blossom-trees louder, the house-shadows broader, and men more happy. The
clustering blossoms of the acacia-grove hang down over our cold
collation; and the ham is not stuck (which always vexes me) with
flowers, but beshaded with them from a distance....

And now the deeper evening and the nightingale conspire to soften me;
and I soften in my turn the mild beings round me; especially the pale
Thiennette, to whom, or to whose heart, after the apoplectic crushings
of a downpressed youth, the most violent pulses of joy are heavier than
the movements of pensive sadness. And thus beautifully runs our pure
transparent life along, under the blooming curtains of May; and in our
modest pleasures we look with timidity neither behind us nor before; as
people who are lifting treasure gaze not round at the road they came, or
the road they are going.

So pass our days. Today, however, it was different: by this time,
usually, the evening meal is over; and the Shock has got the osseous
preparation of our supper between his jaws; but tonight I am still
sitting here alone in the garden, writing the Eleventh Letter-Box, and
peeping out every instant over the meadows, to see if my gossip is not
coming.

For he is gone to town, to bring a whole magazine of spiceries: his
coat-pockets are wide. Nay, it is certain enough that oftentimes he
brings home with him, simply in his coat-pocket, considerable
flesh-tithes from his Guardian, at whose house he alights; though truly
intercourse with the polished world and city, and the refinement of
manners thence arising,--for he calls on the bookseller, on
school-colleagues, and several respectable shopkeepers,--does, much more
than flesh-fetching, form the object of these journeys to the city. This
morning he appointed me regent head of the house, and delivered me the
_fasces_ and _curule chair_. I sat the whole day beside the young pale
mother; and could not but think, simply because the husband had left me
there as his representative, that I liked the fair soul better. She had
to take dark colours, and paint out for me the winter landscape and ice
region of her sorrow-wasted youth; but often, contrary to my intention,
by some simple elegiac word, I made her still eye wet; for the too full
heart, which had been crushed with other than sentimental woes,
overflowed at the smallest pressure. A hundred times in the recital I
was on the point of saying: "O yes, it was with winter that your life
began, and the course of it has resembled winter!"--Windless, cloudless
day! Three more words about thee, the world will still not take amiss
from me!

I advanced nearer and nearer to the heart-central-fire of the women; and
at last they mildly broke forth in censure of the Parson; the best wives
will complain of their husbands to a stranger, without in the smallest
liking them the less on that account. The mother and the wife, during
dinner, accused him of buying lots at every book-auction; and, in
truth, in such places, he does strive and bid not so much for good or
for bad books--or old ones--or new ones--or such as he likes to read--or
any sort of favourite books--but simply for books. The mother blamed
especially his squandering so much on copperplates; yet some hours
after, when the Schultheis, or Mayor, who wrote a beautiful hand, came
in to subscribe for the steeple-ball, she pointed out to him how finely
her son could engrave, and said that it was well worth while to spend a
groschen or two on such capitals as these.

They then handed me,--for when once women are in the way of a full
open-hearted effusion, they like (only you must not turn the stop-cock
of inquiry) to pour out the whole,--a ring-case, in which he kept a
Chamberlain's key that he had found, and asked me if I knew who had lost
it. Who could know such a thing, when there are almost more Chamberlains
than picklocks among us?--

At last I took heart, and asked after the little toy-press of the
drowned son, which hitherto I had sought for in vain over all the house.
Fixlein himself had inquired for it, with as little success. Thiennette
gave the old mother a persuading look full of love; and the latter led
me up-stairs to an outstretched hoop-petticoat, covering the poor press
as with a dome. On the way thither the mother told me, she kept it hid
from her son, because the recollection of his brother would pain him.
When this deposit-chest of Time (the lock had fallen off) was laid open
to me, and I had looked into the little charnel-house, with its wrecks
of a childlike sportful Past, I, without saying a word, determined, some
time ere I went away, to unpack these playthings of the lost boy, before
his surviving brother: Can there be aught finer than to look at these
ash-buried, deep-sunk Herculanean ruins of childhood, now dug up and in
the open air?

Thiennette sent twice to ask me whether he was come. He and she,
precisely because they do not give their love the weakening expression
of phrases, but the strengthening one of actions, have a boundless
feeling of it towards one another. Some wedded pairs eat each other's
lips and hearts and love away by kisses,--as in Rome, the statues of
Christ (by Angelo) have lost their feet by the same process of kissing,
and got leaden ones instead; in other couples, again, you may see, by
mere inspection, the number of their conflagrations and eruptions, as in
Vesuvius you can discover his, of which there are now forty-three: but
in these two beings rose the Greek fire of a moderate and everlasting
love, and gave warmth without casting forth sparks, and flamed straight
up without crackling. The evening-red is flowing back more magically
from the windows of the gardener's cottage into my grove; and I feel as
if I must say to Destiny: "Hast thou a sharp sorrow, then throw it
rather into my breast, and strike not with it three good souls, who are
too happy not to bleed by it, and too sequestered in their little dim
village not to shrink back at the thunderbolt which hurries a stricken
spirit from its earthly dwelling."----

Thou good Fixlein! Here comes he hurrying over the parsonage-green. What
languishing looks full of love already rest in the eye of thy
Thiennette!--What news wilt thou bring us tonight from the town!--How
will the ascending steeple-ball refresh thy soul tomorrow!--




TWELFTH LETTER-BOX.

_Steeple-ball-Ascension. The Toy-press._


How, on this sixteenth of May, the old steeple-ball was twisted-off from
the Hukelum steeple, and a new one put on in its stead, will I now
describe to my best ability; but in that simple historical style of the
Ancients, which, for great events, is perhaps the most suitable.

At a very early hour, a coach arrived containing Messrs. Court-Guilder
Zeddel and Locksmith Wächser, and the new Peter's-cupola of the steeple.
Towards eight o'clock the community, consisting of subscribers to the
Globe, was visibly collecting. A little later came the Lord Dragoon
Rittmeister von Aufhammer, as Patron of the church and steeple, attended
by Mr. Church-Inspector Streichert. Hereupon my Reverend Cousin Fixlein
and I repaired, with the other persons whom I have already named, into
the Church, and there celebrated before innumerable hearers a weekday
prayer-service. Directly afterwards, my Reverend Friend made his
appearance above in the pulpit, and endeavoured to deliver a speech
which might correspond to the solemn transaction;--and immediately
thereafter, he read aloud the names of the patrons and charitable souls,
by whose donations the Ball had been put together; and showed to the
congregation the leaden box in which they were specially recorded;
observing, that the book from which he had recited them was to be
reposited in the Parish Register-office. Next he held it necessary to
thank them and God, that he, above his deserts, had been chosen as the
instrument and undertaker of such a work. The whole he concluded with a
short prayer for Mr. Stechmann the Slater (who was already hanging on
the outside on the steeple, and loosening the old shaft); and entreated
that he might not break his neck, or any of his members. A short hymn
was then sung, which the most of those assembled without the
church-doors sang along with us, looking up at the same time to the
steeple.

All of us now proceeded out likewise; and the discarded ball, as it were
the amputated cock's-comb of the church, was lowered down and untied.
Church-Inspector Streichert drew a leaden case from the crumbling ball,
which my Reverend Friend put into his pocket, purposing to read it at
his convenience; I, however, said to some peasants: "See, thus will your
names also be preserved in the new Ball, and when, after long years, it
shall be taken down, the box lies within it, and the then parson becomes
acquainted with you all."--And now was the new steeple-globe, with the
leaden cup in which lay the names of the bystanders, at length
full-laden so to speak, and saturated, and fixed to the
pulley-rope;--and so did this the whilom cupping-glass of the community
ascend aloft....

By heaven! the unadorned style is here a thing beyond my power: for when
the Ball moved, swung, mounted, there rose a drumming in the centre of
the steeple; and the Schoolmaster, who, till now, had looked down
through a sounding-hole directed towards the congregation, now stept out
with a trumpet at a side sounding-hole, which the mounting Ball was not
to cross.--But when the whole Church rung and pealed, the nearer the
capital approached its crown,--and when the Slater clutched it and
turned it round, and happily incorporated the spike of it, and delivered
down, between Heaven and Earth, and leaning on the Ball, a
Topstone-speech to this and all of us,--and when my gossip's eyes, in
his rapture at being Parson on this great day, were running over, and
the tears trickling down his priestly garment;--I believe I was the only
man,--as his mother was the only woman,--whose souls a common grief laid
hold of to press them even to bleeding; for I and the mother had
yesternight, as I shall tell more largely afterwards, discovered in the
little chest of the drowned boy, from a memorial in his father's hand,
that, on the day after the morrow, on Cantata-Sunday and his
baptismal-Sunday, he would be--two-and-thirty years of age. "O!"
thought I, while I looked at the blue heaven, the green graves, the
glittering ball, the weeping priest, "so, at all times, stands poor man
with bandaged eyes before thy sharp sword, incomprehensible Destiny! And
when thou drawest it and brandishest it aloft, he listens with pleasure
to the whizzing of the stroke before it falls!"--

Last night I was aware of it; but to the reader, whom I was preparing
for it afar off, I would tell nothing of the mournful news, that, in the
press of the dead brother, I had found an old Bible which the boys had
used at school, with a white blank leaf in it, on which the father had
written down the dates of his children's birth. And even this it was
that raised in thee, thou poor mother, the shade of sorrow which of late
we have been attributing to smaller causes; and thy heart was still
standing amid the rain, which seemed to us already past over and changed
into a rainbow!--Out of love to him, she had yearly told one falsehood,
and concealed his age. By extreme good luck, he had not been present
when the press was opened. I still purpose, after this fatal Sunday, to
surprise him with the parti-coloured reliques of his childhood, and so
of these old Christmas-presents to make him new ones. In the mean while,
if I and his mother can but follow him incessantly, like
fish-hook-floats and foot-clogs, through tomorrow and next day, that no
murderous accident lift aside the curtain from his
birth-certificate,--all may yet be well. For now, in truth, to his eyes,
this birthday, in the metamorphotic mirror of his superstitious
imagination, and behind the magnifying magic vapour of his present joys,
would burn forth like a red death-warrant.... But besides all this, the
leaf of the Bible is now sitting higher than any of us, namely, in the
new steeple-ball, into which I this morning prudently introduced it.
Properly speaking there is indeed no danger.




THIRTEENTH LETTER-BOX.

_Christening._


Today is that stupid Cantata-Sunday; but nothing now remains of it save
an hour.--By heaven! in right spirits were we all today. I believe I
have drunk as faithfully as another.--In truth, one should be moderate
in all things, in writing, in drinking, in rejoicing; and as we lay
straws into the honey for our bees that they may not drown in their
sugar, so ought one at all times to lay a few firm Principles, and twigs
from the tree of Knowledge, into the Syrup of life, instead of those
same bee-straws, that so one may cling thereto, and not drown like a
rat. But now I do purpose in earnest to--write (and also live) with
steadfastness; and therefore, that I may record the christening ceremony
with greater coolness,--to besprinkle my fire with the night-air, and to
roam out for an hour into the blossom-and-wave-embroidered night, where
a lukewarm breath of air, intoxicated with soft odours, is sinking down
from the blossom-peaks to the low-bent flowers, and roaming over the
meadows, and at last launching on a wave, and with it sailing down the
moonshiny brook. O, without, under the stars, under the tones of the
nightingale, which seem to reverberate, not from the echo, but from the
far-off down-glancing worlds; beside that moon, which the gushing brook
in its flickering watery band is carrying away, and which creeps under
the little shadows of the bank as under clouds,--O, amid such forms and
tones, the heart of man grows serious; and as of old an evening bell was
rung to direct the wanderer through the deep forests to his nightly
home, so in our Night are such voices within us and about us, which call
to us in our strayings, and make us calmer, and teach us to moderate our
own joys, and to conceive those of others.

       *       *       *       *       *

I return, peaceful and cool enough, to my narrative. All yesternight I
left not the worthy Parson half an hour from my sight, to guard him from
poisoning the well of his life. Full of paternal joy, and with the
skeleton of the sermon (he was committing it to memory) in his hand, he
set before me all that he had; and pointed out to me the fruit-baskets
of pleasures which Cantata-Sunday always plucked and filled for him. He
recounted to me, as I did not go away, his baptisms, his accidents of
office; told me of his relatives; and removed my uncertainty with regard
to the public revenues--of his parish, to the number of his communicants
and expected catechumens. At this point, however, I am afraid that many
a reader will in vain endeavour to transport himself into my situation,
and still be unable to discover why I said to Fixlein: "Worthy gossip,
better no man could wish himself." I lied not, for so it is.... But
look in the Note.[60]

     [60] A long philosophical elucidation is indispensably requisite:
     which will be found in this Book, under the title: _Natural Magic
     of the Imagination_. [A part of the _Jus de Tablette_ appended to
     this Biography, unconnected with it, and not given here.--ED.]

At last rose the Sunday, the present; and on this holy day, simply
because my little godson was for going over to Christianity, there was a
vast racket made: every time a conversion happens, especially of
nations, there is an uproaring and a shooting; I refer to the two
Thirty-Years Wars, to the more recent one, and to the earlier, which
Charlemagne so long carried on with the heathen Saxons: thus, in the
_Palais Royal_, the Sun, at his transit over the meridian, fires off a
cannon.[61] But this morning the little Unchristian, my godson, was
precisely the person least attended to; for, in thinking of the
conversion, they had no time left to think of the convert. Therefore I
strolled about with him myself half the forenoon; and, in our walk,
hastily conferred on him a private-baptism; having named him _Jean Paul_
before the priest did so. At midday, we sent the beef away as it had
come; the Sun of happiness having desiccated all our gastric juices. We
now began to look about us for pomp; I for scientific decorations of my
hair, my godson for his christening-shirt, and his mother for her
dress-cap. Yet before the child's-rattle of the christening-bell had
been jingled, I and the midwife, in front of the mother's bed,
instituted Physiognomical Travels[62] on the countenance of the small
Unchristian, and returned with the discovery, that some features had
been embossed by the pattern of the mother, and many firm portions
resembled me; a double similarity, in which my readers can take little
interest. _Jean Paul_ looks very sensible for his years, or rather for
his minutes, for it is the small one I am speaking of.----

     [61] This pigmy piece of ordnance, with its cunningly devised
     burning-glass, is still to be seen on the south side of the Paris
     Vanity-Fair; and in fine weather, to be heard, on all sides
     thereof, proclaiming the _conversion_ (so it seems to Richter) of
     the Day from Forenoon to Afternoon.--ED.

     [62] See _Musäus_, ante.--ED.

But now I would ask, what German writer durst take it upon him to spread
out and paint a large historic sheet, representing the whole of us as we
went to church? Would he not require to draw the father, with swelling
canonicals, moving forward slowly, devoutly, and full of emotion? Would
he not have to sketch the godfather, minded this day to lend out his
names, which he derived from two Apostles (John and Paul), as Julius
Cæsar lent out his names to two things still living even now (to a
month, and a throne)?--And must he not put the godson on his sheet, with
whom even the Emperor Joseph (in his need of nurse-milk) might become a
foster-brother, in his old days, if he were still in them?--

In my chamber, I have a hundred times determined to smile at
solemnities, in the midst of which I afterwards, while assisting at
them, involuntarily wore a petrified countenance, full of dignity and
seriousness. For, as the Schoolmaster, just before the baptism, began to
sound the organ,--an honour never paid to any other child in
Hukelum,--and when I saw the wooden christening-angel, like an alighted
Genius, with his painted timber arm spread out under the baptismal ewer,
and I myself came to stand close by him, under his gilt wing, I protest
the blood went slow and solemn, warm and close, through my pulsing head,
and my lungs full of sighs; and, to the silent darling lying in my arms,
whose unripe eyes Nature yet held closed from the full perspective of
the Earth, I wished, with more sadness than I do to myself, for his
Future also as soft a sleep as today; and as good an angel as today, but
a more living one, to guide him into a more living religion, and, with
invisible hand, conduct him unlost through the forest of Life, through
its falling trees, and Wild Hunters,[63] and all its storms and
perils.... Will the world not excuse me, if when, by a side-glance, I
saw on the paternal countenance prayers for the son, and tears of joy
trickling down into the prayer; and when I noticed on the countenance of
the grandmother far darker and fast-hidden drops, which she could not
restrain, while I, in answer to the ancient question, engaged to provide
for the child if its parents died,--am I not to be excused if I then
cast my eyes deep down on my little godson, merely to hide their running
over?--For I remembered that his father might perhaps this very day grow
pale and cold before a suddenly arising mask of Death; I thought how the
poor little one had only changed his bent posture in the womb with a
freer one, to bend and cramp himself ere long more harshly in the strait
arena of life; I thought of his inevitable follies and errors and sins;
of these soiled steps to the Grecian Temple of our Perfection; I thought
that one day his own fire of genius might reduce himself to ashes, as a
man that is electrified can kill himself with his own lightning.... All
the theological wishes, which, on the godson-billet printed over with
them, I placed in his young bosom, were glowing written in mine.... But
the white feathered-pink of my joy had then, as it always has, a bloody
point within it,--I again, as it always is, went to nest, like a
woodpecker, in a skull.... And as I am doing so even now, let the
describing of the baptism be over for today, and proceed again
tomorrow....

     [63] The Wild Hunter, _Wilde Jäger_, is a popular spectre of
     Germany.--ED.




FOURTEENTH LETTER-BOX.


O, so is it ever! So does Fate set fire to the theatre of our little
plays, and our bright-painted curtain of Futurity! So does the Serpent
of Eternity wind round us and our joys, and crush, like the royal-snake,
what it does not poison! Thou good Fixlein!--Ah! last night, I little
thought that thou, mild soul, while I was writing beside thee, wert
already journeying into the poisonous Earth-shadow of Death.

Last night, late as it was, he opened the lead box found in the old
steeple-ball; a catalogue of those who had subscribed to the last
repairing of the church was there; and he began to read it now; my
presence and his occupations having prevented him before. O, how shall I
tell that the record of his birth-year, which I had hidden in the new
Ball, was waiting for him in the old one? that in the register of
contributions he found his father's name, with the appendage, "given for
his new-born son Egidius"?--

This stroke sank deep into his bosom, even to the rending of it asunder:
in this warm hour, full of paternal joy, after such fair days, after
such fair employments, after dread of death so often survived, here, in
the bright smooth sea, which is rocking and bearing him along, starts
snorting, from the bottomless abyss, the sea-monster Death; and the
monster's throat yawns wide, and the silent sea rushes into it in
whirlpools, and hurries him along with it.

But the patient man, quietly and slowly, and with a heart silent, though
deadly cold, laid the leaves together;--looked softly and firmly over
the churchyard, where, in the moonshine, the grave of his father was to
be distinguished;--gazed timidly up to the sky, full of stars, which a
white overarching laurel-tree half screened from his sight;--and though
he longed to be in bed, to settle there and sleep it off, yet he paused
at the window to pray for his wife and child, in case this night were
his last.

At this moment the steeple-clock struck twelve; but from the breaking of
a pin, the weights kept rolling down, and the clock-hammer struck
without stopping,--and he heard with horror the chains and wheels
rattling along; and he felt as if Death were hurling forth in a heap all
the longer hours which he might yet have had to live,--and now to his
eyes, the churchyard began to quiver and heave, the moonlight flickered
on the church-windows, and in the church there were lights flitting to
and fro, and in the charnel-house there was a motion and a tumult.

His heart fainted within him, and he threw himself into bed, and closed
his eyes that he might not see;--but Imagination in the gloom now blew
aloft the dust of the dead, and whirled it into giant shapes, and chased
these hollow fever-born masks alternately into lightning and shadow.
Then at last from transparent thoughts grew coloured visions, and he
dreamed this dream: He was standing at the window looking out into the
churchyard; and Death, in size as a scorpion, was creeping over it, and
seeking for his bones. Death found some arm-bones and thigh-bones on the
graves, and said: "They are my bones;" and he took a spine and the
bone-legs, and stood with them, and the two arm-bones and clutched with
them, and found on the grave of Fixlein's father a skull, and put it on.
Then he lifted a scythe beside the little flower-garden, and cried:
"Fixlein, where art thou? My finger is an icicle and no finger, and I
will tap on thy heart with it." The skeleton, thus piled together, now
looked for him who was standing at the window, and powerless to stir
from it; and carried in the one hand, instead of a sandglass, the
ever-striking steeple-clock, and held out the finger of ice, like a
dagger, far into the air....

Then he saw his victim above at the window, and raised himself as high
as the laurel-tree to stab straight into his bosom with the finger,--and
stalked towards him. But as he came nearer, his pale bones grew redder,
and vapours floated woolly round his haggard form. Flowers started up
from the ground; and he stood transfigured and without the clam of the
grave, hovering above them, and the balm-breath from the flower-cups
wafted him gently on;--and as he came nearer, the scythe and cloak were
gone, and in his bony breast he had a heart, and on his bony head red
lips;--and nearer still, there gathered on him soft, transparent,
rosebalm-dipt flesh, like the splendour of an Angel flying hither from
the starry blue;--and close at hand, he was an Angel with shut
snow-white eyelids....

The heart of my friend, quivering like a Harmonica-bell, now melted in
bliss in his clear bosom;--and when the Angel opened its eyes, his were
pressed together by the weight of celestial rapture, and his dream fled
away.----

But not his life: he opened his hot eyes, and--his good wife had hold of
his feverish hand, and was standing in room of the Angel.

The fever abated towards morning: but the certainty of dying still
throbbed in every artery of the hapless man. He called for his fair
little infant into his sick-bed, and pressed it silently, though it
began to cry, too hard against his paternal heavy-laden breast. Then
towards noon his soul became cool, and the sultry thunder-clouds within
it drew back. And here he described to us the previous (as it were,
arsenical) fantasies of his usually quiet head. But it is even those
tense nerves, which have not quivered at the touch of a poetic hand
striking them to melody of sorrow, that start and fly asunder more
easily under the fierce hand of Fate, when with sweeping stroke it
smites into discord the firm-set strings.

But towards night his ideas again began rushing in a torch-dance, like
fire-pillars round his soul: every artery became a burning-rod, and the
heart drove flaming naphtha-brooks into the brain. All within his soul
grew bloody: the blood of his drowned brother united itself with the
blood which had once flowed from Thiennette's arm, into a bloody
rain;--he still thought he was in the garden in the night of
betrothment, he still kept calling for bandages to stanch blood, and was
for hiding his head in the ball of the steeple. Nothing afflicts one
more than to see a reasonable moderate man, who has been so even in his
passions, raving in the poetic madness of fever. And yet if nothing save
this mouldering corruption can soothe the hot brain; and if, while the
reek and thick vapour of a boiling nervous-spirit, and the hissing
water-spouts of the veins are encircling and eclipsing the stifled soul,
a higher Finger presses through the cloud, and suddenly lifts the poor
bewildered spirit from amid the smoke to a sun--is it more just to
complain, than to reflect that Fate is like the oculist, who, when
about to open to a blind eye the world of light, first bandages and
darkens the other eye that sees?

But the sorrow does affect me, which I read on Thiennette's pale lips,
though do not hear. It is not the distortion of an excruciating agony,
nor the burning of a dried-up eye, nor the loud lamenting or violent
movement of a tortured frame that I see in her; but what I am forced to
see in her, and what too keenly cuts the sympathising heart, is a pale,
still, unmoved, undistorted face, a pale bloodless head, which Sorrow is
as it were holding up after the stroke, like a head just severed by the
axe of the headsman; for, O! on this form the wounds, from which the
three-edged dagger had been drawn, are all fallen firmly together, and
the blood is flowing from them in secret into the choking heart. O
Thiennette, go away from the sick-bed, and hide that face which is
saying to us: "Now do I know that I shall not have any happiness on
Earth; now do I give over hoping--would this life were but soon done."

You will not comprehend my sympathy, if you know not what, some hours
ago, the too loud lamenting mother told me. Thiennette, who of old had
always trembled for his thirty-second year, had encountered this
superstition with a nobler one: she had purposely stood farther back at
the marriage-altar, and in the bridal-night fallen sooner asleep than
he; thereby--as is the popular belief--so to order it that she might
also die sooner. Nay, she has determined if he die, to lay with his
corpse a piece of her apparel, that so she may descend the sooner to
keep him company in his narrow house. Thou good, thou faithful wife, but
thou unhappy one!--




CHAPTER LAST.


I have left Hukelum, and my gossip his bed; and the one is as sound as
the other. The cure was as foolish as the malady.

It first occurred to me, that as Boerhaave used to remedy convulsions by
convulsions, one fancy might in my gossip's case be remedied by another;
namely, by the fancy that he was yet no man of thirty-two, but only a
man of six or nine. Deliriums are dreams not encircled by sleep; and all
dreams transport us back into youth, why not deliriums too? I
accordingly directed every one to leave the patient: only his mother,
while the fiercest meteors were dancing and hissing before his fevered
soul, was to sit down by him alone, and speak to him as if he were a
child of eight years. The bed-mirror also I directed her to cover. She
did so; she spoke to him as if he had the small-pox fever; and when he
cried: "Death is standing with two-and-thirty pointed teeth before me,
to eat my heart," she said to him: "Little dear, I will give thee thy
roller-hat, and thy copybook, and thy case, and thy hussar-cloak again,
and more too, if thou wilt be good." A reasonable speech he would have
taken up and heeded much less than he did this foolish one.

At last she said,--for to women in the depth of sorrow, dissimulation
becomes easy: "Well, I will try it this once, and give thee thy
playthings: but do the like again, thou rogue, and roll thyself about in
the bed so, with the small-pox on thee!" And with this, from her full
apron she shook out on the bed the whole stock of playthings and
dressing-ware, which I had found in the press of the drowned brother.
First of all his copybook, where Egidius in his eighth year had put down
his name, which he necessarily recognised as his own handwriting; then
the black velvet _fall-hat_ or roller-cap; then the red and white
leading-strings; his knife-case, with a little pamphlet of tin-leaves;
his green hussar-cloak, with its stiff facings; and a whole _orbis
pictus_ or _fictus_ of Nürnberg puppets....

The sick man recognised in a moment these projecting peaks of a
spring-world sunk in the stream of Time,--these half shadows, this dusk
of down-gone days,--this conflagration-place and Golgotha of a heavenly
time, which none of us forgets, which we love forever, and look back to
even from the grave.... And when he saw all this, he slowly turned round
his head, as if he were awakening from a long heavy dream; and his whole
heart flowed down in warm showers of tears, and he said, fixing his full
eyes on the eyes of his mother: "But are my father and brother still
living, then?"--"They are dead lately," said the wounded mother; but her
heart was overpowered, and she turned away her eyes, and bitter tears
fell unseen from her down-bent head. And now at once that evening, when
he lay confined to bed by the death of his father, and was cured by his
playthings, overflowed his soul with splendour and lights, and presence
of the past.

And so Delirium dyed for itself rosy wings in the Aurora of life, and
fanned the panting soul,--and shook down golden butterfly-dust from its
plumage on the path, on the flowerage of the suffering man;--in the far
distance rose lovely tones, in the distance floated lovely clouds,--O,
his heart was like to fall in pieces, but only into fluttering
flower-stamina, into soft sentient nerves; his eyes were like to melt
away, but only into dewdrops for the cups of joy-blossoms, into
blooddrops for loving hearts; his soul was floating, palpitating,
drinking and swimming in the warm relaxing rose-perfume of the brightest
delusion....

The rapture bridled his feverish heart; and his mad pulse grew calm.
Next morning, his mother, when she saw that all was prospering, would
have had the church-bells rung, to make him think that the second Sunday
was already here. But his wife (perhaps out of shame in my presence) was
averse to the lying; and said it would be all the same if we moved the
month-hand of his clock (but otherwise than Hezekiah's Dial) eight days
forward; especially as he was wont rather to rise and look at his clock
for the day of the month, than to turn it up in the Almanac. I for my
own part simply went up to the bedside, and asked him: "If he was
cracked--what in the world he meant with his mad death-dreams, when he
had lain so long, and passed clean over the Cantata-Sunday, and yet, out
of sheer terror, was withering to a lath?"

A glorious reinforcement joined me; the Flesher or Quartermaster. In his
anxiety, he rushed into the room, without saluting the women, and I
forthwith addressed him aloud: "My gossip here is giving me trouble
enough, Mr. Regiments-Quartermaster: last night, he let them persuade
him he was little older than his own son: here is the child's fall-hat
he was for putting on." The Guardian deuced and devilled, and said:
"Ward, are you a parson or a fool?--Have not I told you twenty times,
there was a maggot in your head about this?"--

At last he himself perceived that he was not rightly wise, and so grew
better; besides the guardian's invectives, my oaths contributed a good
deal; for I swore I would hold him as no right gossip, and edit no word
of his Biography, unless he rose directly and got better....

--In short, he showed so much politeness to me that he rose and got
better.--He was still sickly, it is true, on Saturday; and on Sunday
could not preach a sermon (something of the sort the Schoolmaster read,
instead); but yet he took Confessions on Saturday, and at the altar
next day he dispensed the Sacrament. Service ended, the feast of his
recovery was celebrated, my farewell-feast included; for I was to go in
the afternoon.

This last afternoon I will chalk out with all possible breadth, and
then, with the pantagraph of free garrulity, fill up the outline and
draw on the great scale.

During the Thanksgiving-repast, there arrived considerable personal
tribute from his catechumens, and fairings by way of bonfire for his
recovery; proving how much the people loved him, and how well he
deserved it: for one is oftener hated without reason by the many, than
without reason loved by them. But Fixlein was friendly to every child;
was none of those clergy, who never pardon their enemies except
in--God's stead; and he praised at once the whole world, his wife and
himself.

I then attended at his afternoon's catechising; and looked down (as he
did in the first Letter-Box) from the choir, under the wing of the
wooden cherub. Behind this angel, I drew out my note-book, and shifted a
little under the cover of the Black Board, with its white
Psalm-ciphers,[64] and wrote down what I was there--thinking. I was well
aware, that when I today, on the twenty-fifth of May, retired from this
_Salernic_[65] spinning-school, where one is taught to spin out the
thread of life, in fairer wise, and without wetting it by foreign
mixtures,--I was well aware, I say, that I should carry off with me far
more elementary principles of the Science of Happiness, than the whole
Chamberlain piquet ever muster all their days. I noted down my first
impression, in the following Rules of Life for myself and the press:

     [64] Indicating to the congregation what Psalm is to be sung.--ED.

     [65] Salerno was once famous for its medical science; but here, as
     in many other cases, we could desire the aid of Herr Reinhold with
     his _Lexicon-Commentary_.--ED.

"Little joys refresh us constantly like house-bread, and never bring
disgust; and great ones, like sugar-bread, briefly, and then bring
it.--Trifles we should let, not plague us only, but also gratify us; we
should seize not their poison-bags only, but their honey-bags also: and
if flies often buz about our room, we should, like Domitian, amuse
ourselves with flies, or, like a certain still living Elector,[66] feed
them.--For _civic_ life and its micrologies, for which the Parson has a
natural taste, we must acquire an artificial one; must learn to love
without esteeming it; learn, far as it ranks beneath _human_ life, to
enjoy it like another twig of this human life, as poetically as we do
the pictures of it in romances. The loftiest mortal loves and seeks the
_same sort_ of things with the meanest; only from higher grounds and by
higher paths. Be every minute, Man, a full life to thee!--Despise
anxiety and wishing, the Future and the Past!--If the _Second-pointer_
can be no road-pointer into an Eden for thy soul, the _Month-pointer_
will still less be so, for thou livest not from month to month, but from
second to second! Enjoy thy Existence more than thy Manner of Existence,
and let the dearest object of thy Consciousness be this Consciousness
itself!--Make not the Present a means of thy Future; for this Future is
nothing but a coming Present; and the Present, which thou despisest, was
once a Future which thou desiredst!--Stake in no lotteries,--keep at
home,--give and accept no pompous entertainments,--travel not abroad
every year!--Conceal not from thyself, by long plans, thy household
goods, thy chamber, thy acquaintance!--Despise Life, that thou mayst
enjoy it!--Inspect the neighbourhood of thy life; every shelf, every
nook of thy abode; and nestling in, quarter thyself in the farthest and
most domestic winding of thy snail-house!--Look upon a capital but as a
collection of villages, a village as some blind-alley of a capital; fame
as the talk of neighbours at the street-door; a library as a learned
conversation, joy as a second, sorrow as a minute, life as a day; and
three things as all in all: God, Creation, Virtue!"----

     [66] This hospitable Potentate is as unknown to me as to any of my
     readers.--ED.

And if I would follow myself and these rules, it will behove me not to
make so much of this Biography; but once for all, like a moderate man,
to let it sound out.

After the Catechising, I stept down to my wide-gowned and black-gowned
gossip. The congregation gone, we clambered up to all high places,
perused the plates on the pews,--I took a lesson on the altar on its
inscription incrusted with the _sediment of Time_ (I speak not
metaphorically); I organed, my gossip managing the bellows; I mounted
the pulpit, and was happy enough there to alight on one other
rose-shoot, which, in the farewell minute, I could still plant in the
rose-garden of my Fixlein. For I descried aloft, on the back of a wooden
Apostle, the name _Lavater_, which the Zurich Physiognomist had been
pleased to leave on this sacred Torso in the course of his wayfaring.
Fixlein did not know the hand, but I did, for I had seen it frequently
in Flachsenfingen, not only on the tapestry of a Court Lady there, but
also in his _Hand-Library_;[67] and met with it besides in many country
churches, forming, as it were, the Directory and Address-Calendar of
this wandering name, for Lavater likes to inscribe in pulpits, as a
shepherd does in trees, the name of his beloved. I could now advise my
gossip prudently to cut away the name, with the chip of wood containing
it, from the back of the Apostle, and to preserve it carefully among his
_curiosa_.

     [67] A little work printed in manuscript types; and seldom given by
     him to any but Princes. This piece of print-writing he
     intentionally passes off to the great as a piece of hand-writing;
     these persons being both more habituated and inclined to the
     reading of manuscript than of print.

On returning to the parsonage, I made for my hat and stick; but the
design, as it were the projection and contour of a supper in the
acacia-grove, had already been sketched by Thiennette. I declared that I
would stay till evening, in case the young mother went out with us to
the proposed meal ... and truly the Biographer at length got his way,
all doctors' regulations notwithstanding.

I then constrained the Parson to put on his Kräutermütze,[68] or
Herb-cap, which he had stitched together out of simples for the
strengthening of his memory; "Would to Heaven," said I, "that Princes
instead of their Princely Hats, Doctors and Cardinals instead of theirs,
and Saints instead of martyr-crowns, would clap such memory-bonnets on
their heads!"--Thereupon, till the roasting and cooking within doors
were over, we marched out alone over the parsonage meadows, and talked
of learned matters, we packed ourselves into the ruined Robber-Castle,
on which my gossip, as already mentioned, has a literary work in hand. I
deeply approved, the rather as this Kidnapper-tower had once belonged to
an Aufhammer, his intention of dedicating the description to the
Rittmeister: that nobleman, I think, will sooner give his name to the
Book than to the Shock. For the rest, I exhorted my fellow-craftsman to
pluck up literary heart, and said to him: "A fearless pen, good gossip!
Let Subrector Hans von Füchslein be, if he like, the Dragon of the
Apocalypse, lying in wait for the delivery of the fugitive Woman, to
swallow the offspring; I am there too, and have my friend the Editor of
the _Litteraturzeitung_ at my side, who will gladly permit me to give an
_anticritique_, on paying the insertion-dues!"--I especially excited
him to new fillings and return-freights of his Letter-Boxes. I have not
taken oath that into this biographical chest-of-drawers, I will not in
the course of time introduce another Box. "Neither to my godson, worthy
gossip, will it do any harm that he is presented, poor child, even now
to the reading public, when he does not count more months than, as
Horace will have it, a literary child should count years, namely,
_nine_."

     [68] Thus defined by Adelung in his Lexicon: "_Kräutermütze_, in
     Medicine, a cap with various dried herbs sewed into it, and which
     is worn for all manner of troubles in the head."--ED.

In walking homewards, I praised his wife. "If marriage," said I to him,
"is the madder, which in maids, as in cotton, makes the colours visible,
then I contend, that Thiennette, when a maid, could scarcely be so good
as she is now when a wife. By Heaven! in such a marriage, I should write
Books of quite another sort, divine ones; in a marriage, I mean, where
beside the writing-table (as beside the great voting-table at the
Regensburg Diets, there are little tables of confectionery); where in
like manner, I say, a little jar of marmalade were standing by me,
namely, a sweetened, dainty, lovely face, and out of measure fond of the
Letter-Box-writer, gossip! Your marriage will resemble the Acacia-grove
we are now going to, the leaves of which grow thicker with the heat of
summer, while other shrubs are yielding only shrunk and porous shade."

As we entered through the upper garden-door into this same bower, the
supper and the good mistress were already there. Nothing is more pure
and tender than the respect with which a wife treats the benefactor or
comrade of her husband: and happily the Biographer himself was this
comrade, and the object of this respect. Our talk was cheerful, but my
spirit was oppressed. The fetters, which bind the mere reader to my
heroes, were in my case of triple force; as I was at once their guest
and their portrait-painter. I told the Parson that he would live to a
greater age than I, for that his temperate temperament was balanced as
if by a doctor so equally between the nervousness of refinement, and the
hot thick-bloodedness of the rustic. Fixlein said that if he lived but
as long as he had done, namely, two-and-thirty years, it would amount,
exclusive of the leap-year-days, to 280,320 seconds, which in itself was
something considerable; and that he often reckoned up with satisfaction
the many thousand persons of his own age that would have a life equally
long.

At last I tried to get in motion; for the red lights of the falling sun
were mounting up over the grove, and dipping us still deeper in the
shadows of night: the young mother had grown chill in the evening dew.
In confused mood, I invited the Parson to visit me soon in the city,
where I would show him not only all the chambers of the Palace, but the
Prince himself. Gladder there was nothing this day on our old world than
the face to which I said so; and than the other one which was the mild
reflexion of the former.--For the Biographer it would have been too
hard, if now in that minute, when his fancy, like mirror-telescopes, was
representing every object in a _tremulous_ form, he had been obliged to
cut and run; if, I will say, it had not occurred to him that to the
young mother it could do little harm (but much good), were she to take a
short walk, and assist in escorting the Author and architect of the
present Letter-Box out of the garden to his road.

In short, I took this couple one in each hand, instead of under each
arm, and moved with them through the garden to the Flachsenfingen
highway. I often abruptly turned round my head between them, as if I had
heard some one coming after us; but in reality I only meant once more,
though mournfully, to look back into the happy hamlet, whose houses were
all dwellings of contented still Sabbath-joy, and which is happy enough,
though over its wide-parted pavement-stones there passes every week but
one barber, every holiday but one dresser of hair, and every year but
one hawker of parasols. Then truly I had again to turn round my head,
and look at the happy pair beside me. My otherwise affectionate gossip
could not rightly suit himself to these tokens of sorrow: but in thy
heart, thou good, so oft afflicted sex, every mourning-bell soon finds
its unison; and Thiennette, ennobled with the thin trembling _resonance_
of a reverberating soul, gave me back all my tones with the beauties of
an echo.----At last we reached the boundary, over which Thiennette
could not be allowed to walk; and now must I part from my gossip, with
whom I had talked so gaily every morning (each of us from his bed), and
from the still circuit of modest hope where he dwelt, and return once
more to the rioting, fermenting Court-sphere, where men in bull-beggar
tone demand from Fate a root of Life-Licorice, thick as the arm, like
the botanical one on the Wolga, not so much that they may chew the sweet
beam themselves, as fell others to earth with it.

As I thought to myself that I would say, Farewell! to them, all the
coming plagues, all the corpses, and all the marred wishes of this good
pair, arose before my heart; and I remembered that little save the
falling asleep of joy-flowers would mark the current of their Life-day,
as it does of mine and of every one's.--And yet is it fairer, if they
measure their years not by the _Water-clock_ of falling tears, but by
the _Flower-clock_[69] of asleep-going flowers, whose bells in our
short-lived garden are sinking together before us from hour to hour.--

     [69] Linné formed in Upsal a flower-clock, the flowers of which, by
     their different times of falling asleep, indicated the hours of the
     day.

I would even now--for I still recollect how I hung with streaming eyes
over these two loved ones, as over their corpses--address myself, and
say: Far too soft, _Jean Paul_, whose chalk still sketches the models of
Nature on a ground of Melancholy; harden thy heart like thy frame, and
waste not thyself and others by such thoughts. Yet why should I do it,
why should I not confess directly what, in the softest emotion, I said
to these two beings? "May all go right with you, ye mild beings," I
said, for I no longer thought of courtesies, "may the arm of Providence
bear gently your lacerated hearts, and the good Father, above all these
suns which are now looking down on us, keep you ever united, and exalt
you still undivided to his bosom and his lips!"--"Be you too right happy
and glad!" said Thiennette.--"And to you, Thiennette," continued I, "Ah!
to your pale cheeks, to your oppressed heart, to your long cold
maltreated youth, I can never, never wish enough. No! But all that can
soothe a wounded soul, that can please a pure one, that can still the
hidden sigh--O, all that you deserve--may this be given you; and when
you see me again, then say to me, 'I am now much happier!'"

We were all of us too deeply moved. We at last tore ourselves asunder
from repeated embraces; my friend retired with the soul whom he
loves;--I remained alone behind him with the Night.

And I walked without aim through woods, through valleys, and over
brooks, and through sleeping villages, to enjoy the great Night like a
Day. I walked, and still looked like the magnet, to the region of
midnight, to strengthen my heart at the gleaming twilight, at this
upstretching Aurora of a morning beneath our feet. White
night-butterflies flitted, white blossoms fluttered, white stars fell,
and the white snow-powder hung silvery in the high Shadow of the Earth,
which reaches beyond the Moon, and which is our Night. Then began the
Eolian Harp of the Creation to tremble and to sound, blown on from
above, and my immortal soul was a string in this Harp.--The heart of a
brother everlasting Man swelled under the everlasting Heaven, as the
seas swell under the Sun and under the Moon.--The distant village-clocks
struck midnight, mingling, as it were, with the ever-pealing tone of
ancient Eternity.--The limbs of my buried ones touched cold on my soul,
and drove away its blots, as dead hands heal eruptions of the skin.--I
walked silently through little hamlets, and close by their outer
churchyards, where crumbled upcast coffin-boards were glimmering, while
the once bright eyes that had laid in them were mouldered into gray
ashes.--Cold thought! clutch not like a cold spectre at my heart: I look
up to the starry sky, and an everlasting chain stretches thither, and
over and below; and all is Life, and Warmth, and Light, and all is
godlike or God....

Towards morning I descried thy late lights, little city of my dwelling,
which I belong to on this side the grave; I returned to the Earth; and
in thy steeples, behind the by-advanced great Midnight, it struck
half-past two; about this hour, in 1794, Mars went down in the west, and
the Moon rose in the east; and my soul desired, in grief for the noble
warlike blood which is still streaming on the blossoms of Spring: "Ah
retire, bloody War, like red Mars; and thou, still Peace, come forth
like the mild divided Moon!"--

THE END.



Transcriber's Notes

Footnotes in (Schmelzle's Journey to Flætz) are numbered as in the original.
They are placed at the end of the paragraph, so as not to split the paragraph.
None of these footnotes seem to link directly to the text. This is explained
by the author in the introduction.

The following hyphenated words are used interchangeably with its
non-hyphenated form:

bed-chamber
bed-clothes
bed-room
bed-side
block-head
break-neck
class-room
corn-fields
day-light
dew-drops
down-pressed
down-stairs
good-will
hand-writing
hind-head
Litteratur-zeitung
love-sick
mid-day
re-awakened
Ring-dove
school-man
tear-drops
to-night
train-bearer
up-stairs
water-spouts
week-day
wood-cutter


Page 59

'the keeper had lost its tract,' may be 'the keeper had lost its
track,'. Unchanged.

Page 208

'her blue eye gleamed' may be 'her blue eyes gleamed'. Unchanged.

Page 376

'sheep-smearer' may be 'sheep-shearer'. Unchanged.

Page 408

'without the clam of the grave,' may be 'without the calm of the grave,'.
Unchanged.









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