Part 16

In other words, the return of Liana's periodical malady almost distracted him. Offences against his honor, his love, his sympathy, never wrought the Physicus into a heat; through all such he kept on his glazed frost surtout; but disturbances of his cures heated him even to the degree of flying to pieces; and so are we all a kind of Prince-Rupert's-drops, which can bear the hammer and never break, till one just breaks off the little thread point, and they fly into a thousand splinters; with Achilles, it was the heel, with Sphex, the medical D.'s ring-finger, with me, the writing-finger. The Doctor now shook out the contents of his heart, as some call their gall-bladder; he swore by all the devils he had done more for her than any and every physician,--he had, however, already foreseen that such a stupid education--merely to look well and pray and read and sing--would prove a cursed poor economy,--he had often longed to break the harmonica-bells and tambour-needles,[59]--he had often called the attention of the mother, with sufficient distinctness and without indulgence, to Liana's so-called charms, and to her sensibility, her bright redness of cheeks, and velvet-soft skin; but had seemed to himself, by so doing, almost to gratify more than to distress her. The only thing that delighted him was, that the maiden had, some years before, caught a deadly sickness from the first holy sacrament, from which he had tried to keep her away, because he had already experienced, in the case of a fourth patient, the most melancholy consequences from this holy act.

To the astonishment of every one my Count took part against all with Roquairol. Ah, thy first spring-storms were even now whirling round imprisoned in thy bosom, without a friendly hand to give them an outlet, and thou wouldst cover thy bloody grief! And wast thou not seeking a spirit full of flames, and eyes full of flames for thine own, and wouldst thou not rather have entered into brotherhood with a thundering hell-god than with an insipid pietistical saint, forever gnawing like a moth? Sharply he asks the Doctor, "What have you done with the Prince's heart?" "I have it not," said Sphex, startled; "it lies in _Tartarus_,[60] although it would have been more profitable to science had one been permitted to put it among one's preparations; it was large and very singular." He was thinking how often--when he could--he had, as an augur, during the dissection, secretly slipped aside one or another important member--as a princely or a cavalier-robber, _à la minutta_--for his study,--a honey-bag which he gladly cut out for himself with his anatomical honey-knife.

"Has the young lady, then, an unhappy passion, or anything of the sort?" inquired Schoppe. "More than one," said Sphex; "cripples, idiots, young orphans, blind Methusalems,--all these passions she has. Sports and young gentlemen, I often say to the old lady, would be better for her health."

But on this point, in the requirement of cheerfulness, I give in to him. Joy is the only universal tincture which I would prepare; it works uniformly as _antispasmodicum_, as _glutinans_ and _astringens_. The oil of gladness serves as ointment for _burns_ and _chills_ at once. Spring, for example, is a spring-medicine; a country-party, an oyster-medicine; a recreation at the watering-places is, in itself, a glass of _bitters_; a ball is a _motion_; a carnival, a _course_[61] of medicine;--and hence the seat of the _blest_ is at the same time the seat of the _immortals_.

"Yes, he had finally," the Doctor concluded,--"as they were people of rank,--prescribed a dose of _pride_ (of the meadows), which manifests all the officinal healing powers of joy; taken in a stronger dose, it works fully as well as enjoyment itself, enlivens the pulse, steels the fibres, opens the pores, and chases the blood through the long venous labyrinth.[62] In the case of his weakly lady, such as they saw her there, he had used, he said, this medicament long ago by dresses and a doctor's rank, and had helped her to her legs thereby. But he would rather cure sixty common women than one distinguished one,--and he should regret, as family physician, merely his receipts and medical opinions, in case, as he certainly believed, the fair Liana should go hence."

The first question which Albano, who never missed anything that was said, put to Augusti on the way back from the Doctor's, was, What the Doctor's wife meant by the subscribing servant? He explained it. There is, namely, in Pestitz, as in Leipsic, an observance, that when a man dies or falls into any other misfortune, his family place a blank sheet of paper, with pen and ink, in the entrance-hall, in order that persons, who take and show a nearer interest, may send a lackey thither, to set their names on the paper as well as he knows how; this merchant-like indorsement of the nearer interest, this descending representative system by means of servants, who are generally, now-a-days, the telegraphs of our hearts, sweetens and alleviates for both cities great sorrow and sympathy through pen and ink.

"What! is that it? O God!" said Alban, and grew unusually indignant, as if people were forcing servants upon him as chrysographs and business-agents of his feelings. "O ye egotistical jugglers! through the pen of scribbling lackeys do ye pour yourselves out? Lector, I would condole with Satan himself more warmly than thus!"

Why is this veiled spirit so lively and loud? Ah, everything had moved him. Not merely lamentation over poor Liana, persecuted by all the nightly arrows of destiny, entered like iron into his open heart, but also amazement at the gloomy intermingling of fate with his young life. Roquairol's ever-recurring expression, "_Breast without a heart_," sounded to him as if it must be familiar; at last the converse of the expression came to his thoughts, the word of the Sphinx on the island, "_Heart without a breast_." So, then, even this riddle was solved, and the place fixed, when he was to hear, contrary to every expectation, the prophecy of the loved one; but how incomprehensible,--incomprehensible!

"O yes! Liana she is called, and no God shall change the name," said his innermost soul. For in earlier years even the most vigorous youth prefers, in maidens, interesting delicacy of health and a tender fulness of feeling and a moisture of the eye,--just as, in general, at Albano's age, one values the flood (later the ebb) of the eyes too highly, although, too often, like an over-rich inundation, they wash away the seed-corns of the best resolutions;--whereas, at a later period, (because he proposes to himself marriage and housekeeping,) he looks out rather for bright and sharp than after moist eyes, and for cold and healthy blood.

As Albano, for the most part, drew down the fire from his internal clouds on the discharging chains of the harpsichord strings,--seldomer into the Hippocrene of poetry,--so did he now unconsciously make out of his inner _charivari_ a passage on the harpsichord. I transpose his fantasy into my fancy in the following manner. On the softest minor-tones the blindness, with its long pains, passed by, and in the whispering-gallery of music he heard all the soft sighs of Liana repeated aloud. Then harder minor-tones led him down into Tartarus, to the grave and heart of the friendly old man who had once prayed with him, and then, in this spirit-hour, fell softly, like a dew-drop from heaven, the sound, Liana! With a thunder-clap of ecstasy he fell into the major-key, and asked himself, "This delicate, pure soul could fate promise to thy imperfect heart?" And when he answered himself, that she would perhaps love him, because she could not see him,--for first love is not vain; and when he saw her led by her gigantic brother, and when he thought of the high friendship which he would give and require of _him_; then did his fingers run over the keys in an exalting war-music, and the heavenly hours sounded before him, which he should enjoy, when his two eternal dreams should pass over livingly out of night into day, and when brother and sister should furnish at once, to his so youthful heart, a loved one and a friend. Here his inner and outer storms softly died away, and the evenly-balanced _temperament_ of the instrument became that of the player....

But a soul like his is more easily appeased with sorrow than with joy. As if the reality had already arrived, he pressed on still further; indescribably fair and unearthly, he saw Liana's image trembling in her cup of sorrow; for the crown of thorns easily ennobles a head to a Christ's head, and the blood of an undeserved wound is a redness on the cheek of the inner man, and the soul which has suffered too much is easily loved too much. The tender Liana appeared to him as already spun into the funeral veil for the Flora of the second world, as the tender limbs of the bee-nymph lie transparently folded over the little breast,--the white form of snow, which had once, in his dream, melted away on his heart, opened the bright little cloud again, and looked, blind and weeping, upon the earth, and said, "Albano, I shall die before I have seen thee."--"And even if thou shouldst never see me," said the dying heart in his breast, "yet will I still love thee. And even if thou shouldst soon pass away, Liana, still I gladly choose sorrow, and walk faithfully with thee till thou art in heaven."... Heaven and hell had both at once drawn aside their curtains before him,--only a few notes, and those the same as before, and only the highest, and that only interruptedly and faintly, could he any longer strike; and at last his hands sank down, and he began to weep, but without too severe pangs,--as the storm which has unburdened itself of its lightnings and thunders stands now over the earth only as a soft, diffused rain.

FOOTNOTES:

[45] One who dedicated a new house (somewhat as we name a ship). The _glass fire-bucket_ which _quenched the inner conflagration_ was probably the wine-glass or beer-tumbler.--TR.

[46] Collegians.--TR.

[47] Provincial Physician.--TR.

[48] According to Camper, hectic patients have very white and fair teeth.

[49] Derham (in his Physico-Theology, 1750) observes that the deaf hear best under a noise; e. g. one hard of hearing, under the sound of bells; a deaf housewife, under the drumming of the house-servant. Hence when princes and ministers, who for the most part hear badly, are passing through the country, kettle-drums are beat and cannon fired, so that they can hear the people more easily.

[50] In whose wall the lady with the souvenir sits.

[51] A kind of gray fur.--TR.

[52] Baireuth.--TR.

[53] This precocious completion of growth I have observed in many distinguished women, just as if these Psyches should resemble butterflies, which do not grow after coming out of the chrysalis state.

[54] Cloth is roughened with thistles, i.e. scratched up, in order to the better shearing of it afterwards.

[55] A distinguished actor of tragedy.

[56] He means here their divorce, which was only deferred by the mutual wish to keep Liana.

[57] Poor dinners, just as cat-silver is an inferior metal.--TR.

[58] A weak-nerved lady (I know not whether it is the same) who had much religion, fancy, and suffering, became, as she tells me, blind in the same way, and was cured in the same way.

[59] The eternal pricking of the sensitive finger-nerves by knitting, tambour, and other needles, perhaps as much as the touching of the harmonica-bells, makes one, by stimulating, weak in the nerves.

[60] Tartarus is the melancholy part of Lilar.

[61] Kursus--corso.--TR.

[62] Pride of the meadows quickens the circulation of the blood even to frenzy. This whole observation on the pharmaceutic value of pride of the meadows is taken from Tissot's "Traité sur les Nerfs."

SIXTH JUBILEE.

THE TEN PERSECUTIONS OF THE READER.--LIANA'S EASTERN ROOM.--DISPUTATION UPON PATIENCE.--THE PICTURESQUE CURE.

34. CYCLE.

Postulates--apothegms--philosophems--Erasmian adages--observations of Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, Lavater, do I in one week invent in countless numbers, more than I can in six months get rid of by bringing them into my biographical _petits soupés_ as episode-dishes. Thus does the lottery-mintage of my _unprinted_ manuscripts swell higher and higher every day, the more extracts and winnings I deal out to my reader therefrom in print. In this way I creep out of the world without having, while in it, said anything. Lavater takes a more rational course; he lets the whole lottery-wheel, filled with treasures, under the title of manuscripts (just as we, inversely, despatch manuscripts to the publishers by mail under the title of printed matter) circulate even among the _literati_.

But why shall I not do the same, and let at least one or two lymphatic veins of my water-treasure leap up and run out? I limit myself to ten persecutions of the reader,--calling my ten aphorisms thus, merely because I imagine the readers to be martyrs of their opinions, and myself the Regent who converts them by force. The following aphorism, if one reckons the foregoing as the first persecution, is, I hope, the

_SECOND._

Nothing sifts and winnows our preferences and partialities better than an imitation of the same by others. For a genius there are no sharper polishing-machines and grinding-disks at hand than his apes. If, further, every one of us could see running along beside him a duplicate of himself, a complete Archimimus[63] and repeater in complimenting, taking off the hat, dancing, speaking, scolding, bragging, &c.; by Heaven! such an exact repeating-work of our discords would make quite other people out of me and other people than we are at present. The first and least step which we should take toward reflection and virtue would be this, that we should find our bodily methodology, e. g. our walk, dress, dialect, our oaths, looks, favorite dishes, &c., no better than those of all others, but just the same. Princes have the good fortune that all courtiers around them station themselves as faithful supernumerary copyists and pier-mirrors of _their_ selves, and propose to improve them by this Helot-mimicry. But they seldom attain their good end, because the Prince,--and that were also to be feared of me and the reader,--like the principle of _non-distinguendum_, does not believe in any real twins, but imagines that in morals, as in catoptrics, every mirror and mock rainbow shows everything _inverted_.

_THIRD._

It is easier and handier for men to flatter than to praise.

_FOURTH._

In the centuries before us humanity appears to us to be growing up; in those which come after us, to be fading away; in our own, to burst forth in glorious bloom: thus do the clouds, only when in our zenith, seem to move straight forward, those in front of us come up from the horizon, the others behind us sail downward with fore-shortened forms.

_FIFTH._

What makes old age so sad is, not that our joys, but that our hopes then cease.[64]

_SIXTH._

The old age of women is sadder and more solitary than that of men; spare, therefore, in them their years, their sorrows, and their sex! In fact, life often resembles the trap-tree with its spines directed upward, on which the bear easily clambers up to the honey-bait, but from which he can slide down again only under severe stings.

_SEVENTH._

Have compassion on Poverty, but a hundred times more on Impoverishment! Only the former, not the latter, makes nations and individuals better.

_EIGHTH._

Love lessens woman's delicacy and increases man's.

_NINTH._

When two persons, in suddenly turning a corner, knock their heads together, each begins anxiously to apologize, and thinks only the other feels the pain and that he himself has all the blame. (Only I excuse myself without any embarrassment, for the very reason that I know, by my persecutions, how the other party thinks.) Would to God we did not invert this in the case of moral offences!

_LAST PERSECUTION OF THE READER._

Deluded and darkened man, living on from the mourning veil to the corpse-veil, thinks there is no further evil beyond that which he has immediately to overcome; and forgets that after the victory the new situation brings a new struggle. Hence, as before swift ships there swims a hill of water and a corresponding billowy abyss glides along close behind, so always before us is there a mountain, which we hope to climb, and behind us still a deep valley out of which we seem to have ascended.

Thus does the reader vainly hope now, after having stood out ten persecutions, to ride into the haven of the story, and there to lead a peaceable life, free from the troubled one of my characters; but can any spiritual or worldly arm, then, protect him against scattered similes,--against hemispherical headaches,--whimsies,--reviews,--curtain-lectures,--rainy months,--or in fact honey-moons, which come in at the end of every volume?--

Now for our History! In the evening Albano and Augusti went with the paternal letter of credit to the Minister's. The frostiness and pride of that individual the Lector endeavored, on their way, to varnish over by praising his laboriousness and discernment. With a knocking at his heart the Count seized the door-knocker to the heaven- or hell-gate of his future destiny. In the antechamber--that higher servant's apartment and _Limbus infantum et patrum_--there were still people enough, for Froulay regarded an antechamber as a stage, which must never be empty, and on which, as in the Jewish temple, according to the Rabbins, for those who kneel and pray, it is never too close. The Minister's lady was not present as a patient here, merely because she was looking after one of her own elsewhere. The Minister also was not here,--because he made few ceremonies, and only demanded uncommonly many,--but in his working-cabinet; he had heretofore had his head under the warm throne-canopy and taken a deep bite into the forbidden apple of the Empire, therefore he willingly made a sacrifice (not _to_ others, but _of_ others), and let himself, as a saintly statue, be hung round with votive limbs, without having to bestir his own, and, like St. Franciscus at Oporto, with letters of thanks and petitions which he never opens.

Froulay came, and was--as ever, _aside_ from business--as courteous as a Persian. For Augusti was his home friend,--i. e. the Minister's lady was _his_ home-friend,--and Albano was not a good person to run against; because one had occasion for his foster-father in the votes of the Province, and because the youth by a peculiar and proper pride of his own commanded men. There is a certain noble pride through which merits shine brighter than through modesty. Froulay had not the most comfortable part before him; for the Court of Haarhaar was as disaffected toward the Knight of the Fleece, as he was toward it;[65] but Haarhaar was to be without doubt (according to all Italian _surgical_ reports) and in a few years (according to all _nosological_ ones) the heir of his inheritance and throne. Now the bad thing about it was, that the Minister, who, like a good Christian, looked mainly to the future, had to creep along between the German Herr von Bouverot, on the one hand, who was secretly a creature of Haarhaar, and the demands of the present moment, on the other.

He received the Count, I said, in an uncommonly obliging manner, as well as the Lector, and disclosed to the two that he must present to them his lady, who desired their acquaintance. He sent word to her, but, without waiting an answer, conducted them both into her apartment. Now was it to the youth as if the heavy door of a still and holy temple turned on its hinges. Even I too, at this moment, during their passage through the rooms, share so in his foolishness that I fall into full as great anxiety, as if I went in behind them. When we entered the eastern room, which was extended out at pleasure by picturesque paper-tapestry into a latticed arbor of woodbine, there sat merely the Minister's lady, who received us pleasantly, with firm and cold reserve in look and tone. Her severely closed and faintly-marked lips mutely spoke a seriousness which is the gift of a good heart, and a stillness which is the ornament of beauty,--as many wings, only when they are folded, shower down peacocks'-eyes,--and her eye gleamed with the good-will of reason; but the eyelids had been, by stern years, drawn deeply in, with a sickly expression, over the mild sight. Ah, as oftentimes between newly-married people a dividing sword was laid, so did Froulay grind daily at a three-edged one which separated him and her! Singularly did the impure roil on his face contrast with the aftersummer serenity on hers, although before witnesses, as it seemed, he took away the irony from his courteousness towards her, and kept hatred, as others do love, only for solitude.

Fortunately this nut-tree, which threw an unwholesome, frosty nut-shadow on the whole flowerage of love and poetry, soon transplanted itself back again among more congenial guests. The Minister's lady, after the first expressions of courtesy, directed herself more to the Lector, whose correct, civilian's measure accorded entirely with her religious one; especially as only he could ask and condole with her about Liana. She replied, that this room of Liana's had been left exactly as it was the evening the blindness came on, in order that, when she recovered, it might remain for her a pleasant remembrancer, or a mournful one for others, if she did not. O, deeply moved Albano, if every absence glorifies, how much more must it do so with so many traces of the beloved object's presence! I confess, except a loved one, I know of nothing lovelier than her sitting-room in her absence.

On Liana's work-table lay a sketched outline of a Christ's head near the open Messiah,--a folded walking-veil, together with the green walking-fan, with inscribed wishes of female friends,--some cut-out envelopes,--the gossiping letter of one of Froulay's tenants,--a whole lacquerwork sheep-fold, with wagon, stalls, and house, with whose Lilliputian Arcadia she had proposed to please Dian's children,[66]--a plucked leaf from the thinning album of a female friend, which she had trimmed with an India-ink flower border and then planted full of fair wishes, of which fate had robbed her own life. Ah, beautiful heart, how fondly would I sketch and hand round something like a tabular view of all the little mosaic of thy lightsome past, had the fee-provost entered more intimately into these matters! But what moves me and the Count more deeply is a framed embroidery, on which her needle, like an ingrafting-knife, had, on that dark day, ingrafted a rose with two buds, and which wanted nothing more but the thorns. O, _these_ had destiny only too fully developed on thy roses of joy, and then pressed them so deeply through thy breast even to the heart!