Part 2
FRANCIS. Is not your love for him the source of all your grief? Root out this love, and he concerns you no longer. But for this weak and reprehensible affection he would be dead to you;--as though he had never been born. It is not flesh and blood, it is the heart that makes us sons and fathers! Love him no more, and this monster ceases to be your son, though he were cut out of your flesh. He has till now been the apple of your eye; but if thine eye offend you, says Scripture, pluck it out. It is better to enter heaven with one eye than hell with two! "It is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell." These are the words of the Bible!
OLD M. Wouldst thou have me curse my son?
FRANCIS. By no means, father. God forbid! But whom do you call your son? Him to whom you have given life, and who in return does his utmost to shorten yours.
OLD M. Oh, it is all too true! it is a judgment upon me. The Lord has chosen him as his instrument.
FRANCIS. See how filially your bosom child behaves. He destroys you by your own excess of paternal sympathy; murders you by means of the very love you bear him--has coiled round a father's heart to crush it. When you are laid beneath the turf he becomes lord of your possessions, and master of his own will. That barrier removed, and the torrent of his profligacy will rush on without control. Imagine yourself in his place. How often he must wish his father under ground--and how often, too, his brother--who so unmercifully impede the free course of his excesses. But call you this a requital of love? Is this filial gratitude for a father's tenderness? to sacrifice ten years of your life to the lewd pleasures of an hour? in one voluptuous moment to stake the honor of an ancestry which has stood unspotted through seven centuries? Do you call this a son? Answer? Do you call this your son?
OLD M. An undutiful son! Alas! but still my child! my child!
FRANCIS. A most amiable and precious child--whose constant study is to get rid of his father. Oh, that you could learn to see clearly! that the film might be removed from your eyes! But your indulgence must confirm him in his vices! your assistance tend to justify them. Doubtless you will avert the curse of Heaven from his head, but on your own, father--on yours--will it fall with twofold vengeance.
OLD M. Just! most just! Mine, mine be all the guilt!
FRANCIS. How many thousands who have drained the voluptuous bowl of pleasure to the dregs have been reclaimed by suffering! And is not the bodily pain which follows every excess a manifest declaration of the divine will! And shall man dare to thwart this by an impious exercise of affection? Shall a father ruin forever the pledge committed to his charge? Consider, father, if you abandon him for a time to the pressure of want will not he be obliged to turn from his wickedness and repent? Otherwise, untaught even in the great school of adversity, he must remain a confirmed reprobate? And then--woe to the father who by a culpable tenderness bath frustrated the ordinances of a higher wisdom! Well, father?
OLD M. I will write to him that I withdraw my protection.
FRANCIS. That would be wise and prudent.
OLD M. That he must never come into my sight again
FRANCIS. 'Twill have a most salutary effect.
OLD M. (tenderly). Until he reforms.
FRANCIS. Right, quite right. But suppose that he comes disguised in the hypocrite's mask, implores your compassion with tears, and wheedles from you a pardon, then quits you again on the morrow, and jests at your weakness in the arms of his harlot. No, my father! He will return of his own accord, when his conscience awakens him to repentance.
OLD M. I will write to him, on the spot, to that effect.
FRANCIS. Stop, father, one word more. Your just indignation might prompt reproaches too severe, words which might break his heart--and then--do you not think that your deigning to write with your own hand might be construed into an act of forgiveness? It would be better, I think, that you should commit the task to me?
OLD M. Do it, my son. Ah! it would, indeed, have broken my heart! Write to him that--
FRANCIS (quickly). That's agreed, then?
OLD M. Say that he has caused me a thousand bitter tears--a thousand sleepless nights--but, oh! do not drive my son to despair!
FRANCIS. Had you not better retire to rest, father? This affects you too strongly.
OLD M. Write to him that a father's heart--But I charge you, drive him not to despair. [Exit in sadness.]
FRANCIS (looking after him with a chuckle). Make thyself easy, old dotard! thou wilt never more press thy darling to thy bosom--there is a gulf between thee and him impassable as heaven is from hell. He was torn from thy arms before even thou couldst have dreamed it possible to decree the separation. Why, what a sorry bungler should I be had I not skill enough to pluck a son from a father's heart; ay, though he were riveted there with hooks of steel! I have drawn around thee a magic circle of curses which he cannot overleap. Good speed to thee, Master Francis. Papa's darling is disposed of--the course is clear. I must carefully pick up all the scraps of paper, for how easily might my handwriting be recognized. (He gathers the fragments of the letter.) And grief will soon make an end of the old gentleman. And as for her-- I must tear this Charles from her heart, though half her life come with him.
No small cause have I for being dissatisfied with Dame Nature, and, by my honor, I will have amends! Why did I not crawl the first from my mother's womb? why not the only one? why has she heaped on me this burden of deformity? on me especially? Just as if she had spawned me from her refuse.* Why to me in particular this snub of the Laplander? these negro lips? these Hottentot eyes? On my word, the lady seems to have collected from all the race of mankind whatever was loathsome into a heap, and kneaded the mass into my particular person. Death and destruction! who empowered her to deny to me what she accorded to him? Could a man pay his court to her before he was born? or offend her before he existed? Why went she to work in such a partial spirit?
No! no! I do her injustice--she bestowed inventive faculty, and set us naked and helpless on the shore of this great ocean, the world--let those swim who can--the heavy** may sink. To me she gave naught else, and how to make the best use of my endowment is my present business. Men's natural rights are equal; claim is met by claim, effort by effort, and force by force--right is with the strongest--the limits of our power constitute our laws.
It is true there are certain organized conventions, which men have devised to keep up what is called the social compact. Honor! truly a very convenient coin, which those who know how to pass it may lay out with great advantage.*** Conscience! oh yes, a useful scarecrow to frighten sparrows away from cherry-trees; it is something like a fairly written bill of exchange with which your bankrupt merchant staves off the evil day.
* See Richard III., Act I, Sc. 1, line 17.
**Heavy is used in a double meaning; the German word is plump, which Means lumpish clumsy awkward.
***So Falstaff, Hen. IV., Pt. I., Act V., Sc. 1, "Honor is a mere scutcheon."
Well! these are all most admirable institutions for keeping fools in awe, and holding the mob underfoot, that the cunning may live the more at their ease. Rare institutions, doubtless. They are something like the fences my boors plant so closely to keep out the hares--yes I' faith, not a hare can trespass on the enclosure, but my lord claps spurs to his hunter, and away he gallops over the teeming harvest!
Poor hare! thou playest but a sorry part in this world's drama, but your worshipful lords must needs have hares!
*[This may help to illustrate a passage in Shakespeare which puzzles the commentators--"Cupid is a good hare-finder."--Much ADO,
## Act I., Sc. 1.
The hare, in Germany, is considered an emblem of abject submission and cowardice. The word may also be rendered "Simpleton," "Sawney," or any other of the numerous epithets which imply a soft condition.]
Then courage, and onward, Francis. The man who fears nothing is as powerful as he who is feared by everybody. It is now the mode to wear buckles on your smallclothes, that you may loosen or tighten them at pleasure. I will be measured for a conscience after the newest fashion, one that will stretch handsomely as occasion may require. Am I to blame? It is the tailor's affair? I have heard a great deal of twaddle about the so-called ties of blood--enough to make a sober man beside himself. He is your brother, they say; which interpreted, means that he was manufactured in the same mould, and for that reason he must needs be sacred in your eyes! To what absurd conclusions must this notion of a sympathy of souls, derived from the propinquity of bodies, inevitably tend? A common source of being is to produce community of sentiment; identity of matter, identity of impulse! Then again,--he is thy father! He gave thee life, thou art his flesh and blood--and therefore he must be sacred to thee! Again a most inconsequential deduction! I should like to know why he begot me;** certainly not out of love for me--for I must first have existed!
**[The reader of Sterne will remember a very similar passage in the first chapter of Tristram Shandy.]
Could he know me before I had being, or did he think of me during my begetting? or did he wish for me at the moment? Did he know what I should be? If so I would not advise him to acknowledge it or I should pay him off for his feat. Am I to be thankful to him that I am a man? As little as I should have had a right to blame him if he had made me a woman. Can I acknowledge an affection which is not based on any personal regard? Could personal regard be present before the existence of its object? In what, then, consists the sacredness of paternity? Is it in the act itself out of which existence arose? as though this were aught else than an animal process to appease animal desires. Or does it lie, perhaps, in the result of this act, which is nothing more after all than one of iron necessity, and which men would gladly dispense with, were it not at the cost of flesh and blood? Do I then owe him thanks for his affection? Why, what is it but a piece of vanity, the besetting sin of the artist who admires his own works, however hideous they may be? Look you, this is the whole juggle, wrapped up in a mystic veil to work on our fears. And shall I, too, be fooled like an infant? Up then! and to thy work manfully. I will root up from my path whatever obstructs my progress towards becoming the master. Master I must be, that I may extort by force what I cannot win by affection.*
*[This soliloquy in some parts resembles that of Richard, Duke of Gloster, in Shakespeare's Henry VI., Act V. Sc. 6.]
[Exit.]
## SCENE II.--A Tavern on the Frontier of Saxony.
CHARLES VON MOOR intent on a book; SPIEGELBERG drinking at the table.
CHARLES VON M. (lays the book aside). I am disgusted with this age of puny scribblers when I read of great men in my Plutarch.
SPIEGEL. (places a glass before him, and drinks). Josephus is the book you should read.
CHARLES VON M. The glowing spark of Prometheus is burnt out, and now they substitute for it the flash of lycopodium,* a stage-fire which will not so much as light a pipe. The present generation may be compared to rats crawling about the club of Hercules.**
*[Lycopodium (in German Barlappen-mehl), vulgarly known as the Devil's Puff-ball or Witchmeal, is used on the stage, as well in England as on the continent, to produce flashes of fire. It is made of the pollen of common club moss, or wolf's claw (Lycopodium clavatum), the capsules of which contain a highly inflammable powder. Translators have uniformly failed in rendering this passage.]
**[This simile brings to mind Shakespeare's: "We petty men Walk under his huge legs, and peep about." JULIUS CAESAR, Act I., Sc. 2.]
A French abbe lays it down that Alexander was a poltroon; a phthisicky professor, holding at every word a bottle of sal volatile to his nose, lectures on strength. Fellows who faint at the veriest trifle criticise the tactics of Hannibal; whimpering boys store themselves with phrases out of the slaughter at Canna; and blubber over the victories of Scipio, because they are obliged to construe them.
SPIEGEL. Spouted in true Alexandrian style.
CHARLES VON M. A brilliant reward for your sweat in the battle-field truly to have your existence perpetuated in gymnasiums, and your immortality laboriously dragged about in a schoolboy's satchel. A precious recompense for your lavished blood to be wrapped round gingerbread by some Nuremberg chandler, or, if you have great luck, to be screwed upon stilts by a French playwright, and be made to move on wires! Ha, ha, ha!
SPIEGEL. (drinks). Read Josephus, I tell you.
CHARLES VON M. Fie! fie upon this weak, effeminate age, fit for nothing but to ponder over the deeds of former times, and torture the heroes of antiquity with commentaries, or mangle them in tragedies. The vigor of its loins is dried up, and the propagation of the human species has become dependent on potations of malt liquor.
SPIEGEL. Tea, brother! tea!
CHARLES VON M. They curb honest nature with absurd conventionalities; have scarcely the heart to charge a glass, because they are tasked to drink a health in it; fawn upon the lackey that he may put in a word for them with His Grace, and bully the unfortunate wight from whom they have nothing to fear. They worship any one for a dinner, and are just as ready to poison him should he chance to outbid them for a feather-bed at an auction. They damn the Sadducee who fails to come regularly to church, although their own devotion consists in reckoning up their usurious gains at the very altar. They cast themselves on their knees that they may have an opportunity of displaying their mantles, and hardly take their eyes off the parson from their anxiety to see how his wig is frizzled. They swoon at the sight of a bleeding goose, yet clap their hands with joy when they see their rival driven bankrupt from the Exchange. Warmly as I pressed their hands,--"Only one more day." In vain! To prison with the dog! Entreaties! Vows! Tears! (stamping the ground). Hell and the devil!
SPIEGEL. And all for a few thousand paltry ducats!
CHARLES VON M. No, I hate to think of it. Am I to squeeze my body into stays, and straight-lace my will in the trammels of law. What might have risen to an eagle's flight has been reduced to a snail's pace by law. Never yet has law formed a great man; 'tis liberty that breeds giants and heroes. Oh! that the spirit of Herman* still glowed in his ashes!
*[Herman is the German for Armin or Arminius, the celebrated deliverer of Germany from the Roman yoke. See Menzel's History, vol. i., p. 85, etc.]
Set me at the head of an army of fellows like myself, and out of Germany shall spring a republic compared to which Rome and Sparta will be but as nunneries. (Rises and flings his sword upon the table.)
SPIEGEL. (jumping up). Bravo! Bravissimo! you are coming to the right key now. I have something for your ear, Moor, which has long been on my mind, and you are the very man for it--drink, brother, drink! What if we turned Jews and brought the kingdom of Jerusalem again on the tapis? But tell me is it not a clever scheme? We send forth a manifesto to the four quarters of the world, and summon to Palestine all that do not eat Swineflesh. Then I prove by incontestable documents that Herod the Tetrarch was my direct ancestor, and so forth. There will be a victory, my fine fellow, when they return and are restored to their lands, and are able to rebuild Jerusalem. Then make a clean sweep of the Turks out of Asia while the iron is hot, hew cedars in Lebanon, build ships, and then the whole nation shall chaffer with old clothes and old lace throughout the world. Meanwhile--
CHARLES VON M. (smiles and takes him by the hand). Comrade! There must be an end now of our fooleries.
SPIEGEL. (with surprise). Fie! you are not going to play the prodigal son!--a fellow like you who with his sword has scratched more hieroglyhics on other men's faces than three quill-drivers could inscribe in their daybooks in a leap-year! Shall I tell you the story of the great dog funeral? Ha! I must just bring back your own picture to your mind; that will kindle fire in your veins, if nothing else has power to inspire you. Do you remember how the heads of the college caused your dog's leg to be shot off, and you, by way of revenge, proclaimed a fast through the whole town? They fumed and fretted at your edict. But you, without losing time, ordered all the meat to be bought up in Leipsic, so that in the course of eight hours there was not a bone left to pick all over the place, and even fish began to rise in price. The magistrates and the town council vowed vengeance. But we students turned out lustily, seventeen hundred of us, with you at our head, and butchers and tailors and haberdashers at our backs, besides publicans, barbers, and rabble of all sorts, swearing that the town should be sacked if a single hair of a student's head was injured. And so the affair went off like the shooting at Hornberg,* and they were obliged to be off with their tails between their legs.
*[The "shooting at Hornberg" is a proverbial expression in Germany for any expedition from which, through lack of courage, the parties retire without firing a shot.]
You sent for doctors--a whole posse of them--and offered three ducats to any one who would write a prescription for your dog. We were afraid the gentlemen would stand too much upon honor and refuse, and had already made up our minds to use force. But this was quite unnecessary; the doctors got to fisticuffs for the three ducats, and their competition brought down the price to three groats; in the course of an hour a dozen prescriptions were written, of which, of course, the poor beast very soon died.
CHARLES VON M. The vile rascals.
SPIEGEL. The funeral procession was arranged with all due pomp; odes for the dog were indited by the gross; and at night we all turned out, near a thousand of us, a lantern in one hand and our rapier in the other, and so proceeded through the town, the bells chiming and ringing, till the dog was entombed. Then came a feed which lasted till broad daylight, when you sent your acknowledgments to the college dons for their kind sympathy, and ordered the meat to be sold at half-price. _Mort de ma vie_, if we had not as great a respect for you as a garrison for the conqueror of a fortress.
CHARLES VON M. And are you not ashamed to boast of these things? Have you not shame enough in you to blush even at the recollection of such pranks?
SPIEGEL. Come, come! You are no longer the same Moor. Do you remember how, a thousand times, bottle in hand, you made game of the miserly old governor, bidding him by all means rake and scrape together as much as he could, for that you would swill it all down your throat? Don't you remember, eh?--don't you remember?' O you good-for-nothing, miserable braggart! that was speaking like a man, and a gentleman, but--
CHARLES VON M. A curse on you for reminding me of it! A curse on myself for what I said! But it was done in the fumes of wine, and my heart knew not what my tongue uttered.
SPIEGEL. (shakes his head). No, no! that cannot be! Impossible, brother! You are not in earnest! Tell me! most sweet brother, is it not poverty which has brought you to this mood? Come! let me tell you a little story of my youthful days. There was a ditch close to my house, eight feet wide at the least, which we boys were trying to leap over for a wager. But it was no go. Splash! there you lay sprawling, amidst hisses and roars of laughter, and a relentless shower of snowballs. By the side of my house a hunter's dog was lying chained, a savage beast, which would catch the girls by their petticoats with the quickness of lightning if they incautiously passed too near him. Now it was my greatest delight to tease this brute in every possible way; and it was enough to make one burst with laughing to see the beast fix his eyes on me with such fierceness that he seemed ready to tear me to pieces if he could but get at me. Well, what happened? Once, when I was amusing myself in this manner, I hit him such a bang in the ribs with a stone that in his fury he broke loose and ran right upon me. I tore away like lightning, but--devil take it!--that confounded ditch lay right in my way. What was to be done? The dog was close at my heels and quite furious; there was no time to deliberate. I took a spring and cleared the ditch. To that leap I was indebted for life and limb; the beast would have torn me to atoms.
CHARLES VON M. And to what does all this tend?
SPIEGEL. To this--that you may be taught that strength grows with the occasion. For which reason I never despair even when things are the worst. Courage grows with danger. Powers of resistance increase by pressure. It is evident by the obstacles she strews in my path that fate must have designed me for a great man.
CHARLES VON M. (angrily). I am not aware of anything for which we still require courage, and have not already shown it.