Part 18
And this sighing, stifled soul must shut itself up! O, he began already to fear every key of the harpsichord would become a stylus, the instrument itself a box of letters, and all actions treacherously legible words. For he must keep silent. The first young love, like that of business people (those of the Electorate of Saxony excepted), needs no instruments of speech, at most only a portable inkstand and pen. Only worldly people, who repeat their declarations of love quite as often as the players, are in a situation--and on similar grounds--to publish them, just as the players do. But in the holier season of life the image of the most beloved soul is hung, not in the parlor and antechamber, but in the dim, silent oratory: only with loved ones do we speak of loved ones. Ah, it was with reluctance that he even heard others speak of his saint; and he often stole (with the altar of incense in his bosom) out of the room where people were carrying round for her a censer more full of coal-smoke than of frankincense.
37. CYCLE.
They were expecting every day in Pestitz the return of the German gentleman M. de Bouverot, who had been in Haarhaar, putting the last retouching hand to the almost sketched marriage contract between Luigi and a Haarhaar princess, Isabella. Augusti was not partial to him, and even said Bouverot had no _honnêteté_;[72] and related the following, but with the soft irony of a man of the world:
Some years before, Bouverot had been sent by the court of Haarhaar[73] to the Pope at Rome, in relation to certain canonical difficulties; just at the time when Luigi also made the princely procession to Rome, together with his Romish indictions.[74] Now Haarhaar, which in truth already went _chapeau-bas_ with the princely hat of Hohenfliess, and had every possible officinal prospect of wearing it, would not, for this very reason, present the appearance of looking with cold eyes on the extinction of the race of Hohenfliess, the more, as the very male support of the line, Luigi, even in his first years, was not a hero of any great nervous significance. Nay, it must needs be a matter of some consequence to the court of Haarhaar that the good thin autumn-flowerage should return, if possible, _otherwise_ than it went out; and even on such grounds it privily instructed the German gentleman to rule and watch over all his pleasures and pains as _maître de plaisirs_,--especially with _maîtresses de plaisirs_,--in such a manner as to give perfect satisfaction in this respect. Meanwhile, if our princely abiturient[75] had started pure as a fœtus, unhappily he was brought back ground down to a _punctum saliens_, especially as, by sundry caprioles and other leaps through the hoop of pleasure, he was spoiled for the leap into the knight's saddle. It may be possible that the German gentleman was too sanguine in his expectations of the rejuvenescence of the Prince; yes, he may have imitated the youth-restoring, wondrous essence of the Marquis d'Aymar,[76] whereby an innocent old lady, who anointed herself with the elixir more than her years required, was, through the excessive renovation, reduced to a little child. In short, by this crusade under the Knight of the Cross, Bouverot, the princely seat of Hohenfliess--as is often the consequence of crusades--will be left open at the proper time, and Haarhaar will seat itself thereon.
I confess reluctantly that Albano, in the beginning,--because, with all his sharp-sightedness, his purity was quite as great,--comprehended the fact only confusedly; but when he did get the idea, it was to him _pharmaceutic_ manna, as it was to Schoppe _Israelitish_. "The Knight of the Cross," said the latter, "beareth not his cross in vain,--it does him quite as much service as one daubed on the houses in Italy does to them: not a soul may do on either of them what even in Rome may be done before every antechamber."
Not long after that our three friends were going out into the street just at the hour when the noisy carriages rolled along to tea and play, when a litter was carried by before them with the seat _backward_, whereupon, however, a man was sitting. "Holy Father!" cried Schoppe, "in there sits, bodily, Cephisio, from Rome, who must sometime or other give me a sound drubbing."--"Softly, softly!" said Augusti, "that is the German gentleman; Cephisio is his Arcadian name."[77]--"Well, I rejoice so much the more that I once in my life had a hearty, downright set-to with the red-nose," said he, turning round and accompanying the litter, with his arms thrust under it, for almost ten paces, in order to get a better view of the caged bird, before the latter snatched-to the curtains. Albano caught a glimpse within the litter, as it passed swiftly along, only of a sharp eye drawn like a dagger, and a red-glowing nose-bud.
Schoppe came back and related the transactions in Rome. He said, against all mortal sinners, blood-guilty men, and imps of iniquity he bore no such bitter and grim wrath as against professional bankers, _croupiers_,[78] and _Grecs_; if he had a canker-worm-iron wherewith he might scrape away this vermin from the earth, or a cochineal-mill wherewith he might grind them to powder, he would do it most cordially. "O heavens!" he then broke out, "had I in fact my foot just stretched out over the curling, coiling worm-stalk (and though that foot had the gout in it), I would gladly dash it down upon them, and tread out the vile filth." But what he could, he did. Being his own travelling servant, and a decoy-spider, darting to and fro through all Europe, he had full often the pleasure of getting these faro-leaf-caterpillars and leaf-sappers under his thumb,--of becoming their pretended associate,--learning their tactics,--and then rolling some fire-wheel or other into their hissing snakes'-hole. I am not intimately instructed whether it is known in Leipsic who the ringleader was that, a short time since, at the fair, played a mock-police with mimic-constables, and broke up a bank;--at least the bankers were altogether out on the subject, because they were expecting the real police the next day, and were begging for some indulgences and _il_legal-benefits; but I am in a condition here to name the thief-catcher: it was Schoppe. The spoils he applied mostly to the purpose of running new mines under the faro-tables.
With Cephisio he had played his cards otherwise. He stepped up before his bank, and looked on for some minutes, and at last presented a card with a shield-louis-d'or. It won, and he showed behind the card a long roll of louis. Bouverot would not pay this roll. "He had not seen anything," he said. "What is your _croupier_ sitting there for, then?" said Schoppe, and pronounced them swindlers, if they did not pay. To escape greater damage, they paid him his winnings. He took the money coldly, and departed, with these words to the Pointeurs: "Gentlemen, I assure you, you are playing here with finished cheats; but they have paid me only because I knew them." Amidst the increasing stiffness and paleness of the partners he turned, and slowly, with his broad-shouldered, compact figure, and his knotty cudgel, walked away unscathed.
Augusti wished from his heart--for the persecution's sake--that Bouverot might not know the Librarian again. They found at home an invitation from the Minister to tea and supper. "The poor daughter!" said Augusti; "for the sake of this Bouverot, the half-blind one must go to-morrow to the table." Meanwhile, our youth will then surely see her again at last, and only a spring-day separates him from the dearest object! If Augusti is right, then my observation fits in here, that a good sound villain is always the motive-pike which sets the still, quaker-like carp-tribe in the pond to swimming; the hidden pock-matter, which brings cold children at once to life.
38. CYCLE.
Liana's eyes healed, but only slowly: Nature would not lead her at once out of her sombre prison into the sun; she could now, like the philosophers, just recognize light rather than forms. Nevertheless, the Minister issued cabinet orders that she should day after to-morrow play on the harmonica, appear at the _souper_, and even make the salad, and thereby mask her blindness. He sometimes commanded impossible things, in order to meet with as much disobedience as his anger needed for the purpose of venting itself in punishment. Certain people keep themselves all day long full of vexation beforehand for some coming event or other, like urinal phosphate, which always boils under the microscope, or forges, wherein every day fire breaks out.
The Minister's lady pronounced her soft, firm, No. About the harmonica she said she had asked the Doctor, in his name, who had strictly forbidden it; and the rest was an impossibility. Here he could already, he felt so like it, be angry at several things, especially at the asking of the Doctor, which, however, had not yet taken place; he grew mad enough, and swore he should act according to _his own_ principles, and devil a bit did he care for _other_ people's.
This _principle_ was in the present case the German gentleman. That is to say, the above-mentioned anecdote--Bouverot's guardianship of the hereditary Prince on his travels, or the design of the thing--had at both courts come to be the common talk in assemblies and at tables, and was hidden only from the Prince Luigi; for on thrones, there are almost no mysteries to any one excepting him (hardly his wife) who sits thereupon, as in whispering-galleries the people in distant corners hear everything aloud, only not he who stands in the middle. The German gentleman was, therefore, in the Hohenfliess system, the important port-vein and pulmonary artery wherewith even Froulay would water himself. The latter is obliged throughout to serve the present and the future, or two masters, of whom the one of Haarhaar might very soon be his.
Bouverot was attached not merely to Froulay the minister, but to Froulay the father; a man like him, who causes to be sent after him from Italy a whole cabinet of Art, and whose acquaintance with the arts has so long knit together even him and the Prince, must know how to prize a Madonna of such carnation as Liana, and of the Romish school, and, what is more, who, detached from the canvas, moved as a full, breathing rose. As to marrying the rose, that he could not propose to himself, because he was a German Herr.
He had not seen her since his Italian tour,--nor had the Count either,--to both the Minister wished to show her as a round pearl of special whiteness and figure. Froulay had--which after all happens oftener than we imagine--quite as much vanity as pride; the latter to repel blame, the former to court praise. But I should have now to write a tournament-chronicle to tell posterity the half of all his raging and racing and lance-thrusts, in a fight wherein he served under the banners of enmity, vanity, and avarice. He was no more to be hunted to death than a wolf. All weapons were alike to him, and he was ever taking sharper and more poisonous ones. In the old _judicial_ duels between man and wife, the man stood commonly up to his stomach in a pit, in order to bring his strength down to a level with the woman's, and she struck at him with a stone tied up in a veil; but in the _matrimonial_ duels the man seems to stand in the free air and the woman in the earth, and she often has only the _veil_ without the stone.
In this combat there stepped between the two a shining peace-angel who caught the wounds, namely, Liana. The daughter, who had an enthusiastic love for her mother, and the womanly reverence for the stronger sex toward her father, and who suffered so endlessly under their strifes, fell upon her mother's neck and begged her to allow her what her father demanded; she would certainly do everything so as not to excite observation; she would take the greatest pains and practise herself specially beforehand,--ah, he would otherwise only be still more unkind to her poor brother,--this discord, merely on her account, was so painful to her, and perhaps more injurious than playing on the harmonica.
"My child, thou knowest," said the mother, for now she _had_ asked, "what the physician said yesterday against the harmonica; the rest is at thine own risk!" Liana kissed her joyfully. She must needs be led to her father, that she might make known to him aloud the gladness of her obedience. "I thank you, and be hanged," said he, softly; "it is simply your cursed duty." She left him with her joy dissipated to atoms, but without any great pangs; she was already accustomed to this.
39. CYCLE.
The Lector, while they were yet on their way to the Minister's, begged Albano to moderate the fire of his assertions and his pantomimes. He made known to him only so much of the family-jar as was necessary, in order that he might not, by a mistaken idea of her restoration, throw Liana into embarrassment. As they entered the card-room, everything was already in full blaze.
As, at this time, no one is presented to him, I must do it; they are disciples (at least _twelfth_ disciples) of the Minister.
And first, I introduce to thee the holy President of Justice, Von Landrok, a good apothecary's-balance of Themis, which weighs out scruples, and wherein no false weights lie; but what is quite as bad, much smut, rubbish, and rust. Those at the ombre-table near by are the lords and ladies of Vey, Flöl, and Kob, sleek, fine souls, like minerals in cabinets, polished off on the show-side, but on the concealed base still jagged and scratching.
Go with me to the entrance of the next apartment; here I have to present to thee the young but fat canon Von Meiler, who, in order to line and stuff out and pad his inner man with a thick, warm, outer one, needs to fleece no more peasants yearly than the number of linden-trees the Russian peels for his bark-shoes, namely, one hundred and fifty.
The apartment into which thou art looking I present to thee as a fly-glass full of courtiers, who, in order to enter into the _kingdom of heaven_, have become not merely _children_, but in fact _embryons_ of four weeks, who, as is well known, look like flies; if Swift desires of his servants nothing more than the _shutting-to_ of the doors, these wish nothing of their employer and bread-provider but the _leaving-open_ of the same.
I have the honor to set before thee yonder--it is he who is not playing--the holy Church-Counsellor, Schäpe, who would fain be chief chaplain to the court; a soft scoundrel, who soaks and softens the seed-corns of the divine and human word, like melon-seed (they are thereby to spring up sooner in the heart), so long in sugared wine, that they rot in it; a spiritual lord who never in his life _offered_ any other prayers than the two which he always refuses, the _fourth_ and _fifth_.[79]
But the Lector will soon name to thee, at the window, every one of the lords and dames, coldly, gently, and without pantomime. At present the Minister himself conducts thee to a gentleman, one of the players, with a cross on, who drinks water with saltpetre, and is continually licking his dry mouth; it is _Bouverot_,--he is just rising in thy presence; examine the cold, but impudent and cutting, sharply-ground eye, whose corners resemble a pair of open tinman's-shears, or a trap set,--the red nose, and the hard, lipless mouth, whose reddish crab's-claw, worn off by whetting, pinches together,--the cocked-up chin, and the whole stocky, firm figure. Albano does not surprise him; he has already seen all men, and he inquires about no one.
The Minister refreshed the youth, whose inner being was one snarl, with the promise that at supper he would present to him his daughter. He offered him a game; but Alban replied, with a too youthful accent, he never played.
He could now roam round through the lanes of the card-tables, and survey whatever he wished. In such a case one posts himself, if there is no one of the company whom he can endure, exactly before or beside the face he detests the most, in order inwardly to lash himself into vexation at every word and every feature of the countenance. Albano might have had many visages in his eye which were, at least in a small degree, intolerable, and by which he might have stationed himself;--nay, no sufficient reasons could have been assigned why he should not have given his whole attention to a certain chaffy, dried up paste-eel, a weakling full of impertinence, who was observing through an eye-glass the card constellations as they came up, while Albano could extend the feelers of his optic nerves even to the spots on the cards in the second apartment;--there would, indeed, have been no reasons, had not the German gentleman been there; before him he must place himself; of him he knew the most and the worst; he stood in distant connection with Schoppe, even with Liana. Furies! in the neighborhood of certain faces the pinions of the soul crumple up and mew themselves as swans' and pigeons' feathers are crushed before eagles' quills; it was as uncomfortable and close for all the innocent feelings in such a roomy breast as Albano's, as it is to a flock of pigeons into whose cote some one has thrown the tail of a polecat.
I cannot disguise the fact, he muttered and growled inwardly at all the man did and had,--whether it was his having fingers whose points were finely shaved for the faro-game, and whose nails had been somewhat peeled off by an altogether worse game of _hazard_ yet,--or his looking occasionally through the hair of his eyebrows,--or (only once) squashing a fly by a sudden snapping to of his lips like a fly-trap,--or his uttering now a line of German and now of French, which I expect of good circles, whereas only low people never bring out a German word, except a few, such as _Lansquenet_,[80] _canif_ (kneif), _birambrot_ (bier am brod), excepted. Suffice it, he thought always of Schoppe's fine expression: "There are men and times at which and with whom nothing could be more refreshing to an honest man than--to give them a sound drubbing." Duelling is quite as good, thought the Count.
However, Schoppe must here be justified by an authority. Namely, the author himself, otherwise such a soft, warm swan-skin, could never stand behind card-table-chairs without becoming a complete game-cock, and spreading out his scratching, bristly wing the wider the longer he idly looked on; the reason is this, that in general one finds only those people more and more tolerable and better upon acquaintance, with whom one pursues and purposes the same kind of objects.
Albano wished heartily he had his brother-in-arms Schoppe with him now; he went often, it is true, to Augusti to vent himself; but _he_ always sought to pacify him; yes, by keeping himself constantly engaged with the church-counsellor, he cut off from him the opportunity of betraying his youthful, inexperienced soul to listeners. Moreover, the Lector chose afterward for half an hour--what familiar friends often do in the absence of familiar female friends--the latter (namely, absence).
The Count stood some time behind Bouverot's seat, and looked into a Chinese mirror, japanned on the inside with grotesque figures, and changed his position constantly, till he brought Cephisio's face to appear therein right beside a painted dragon, just by way of comparison;--all this went on, interrupted, however, by constantly increasing heart-beatings for Liana, when the servants opened the doors to the supper-hall; and now his heart thumped even to pain, and his form, already so blooming with youth, hung all full of the roses of happy and modest confusion.
40. CYCLE.
With beating heart and burning cheek he made his way into the midst of the motley promenading throng with some old lady or other, who, in her vanity, misunderstood him, and at once hung on his arm like a spring-bracelet, and who got nothing from him but--answers. With flying and piercing glances he stepped into the bright hall, which seemed as if it were made of crystallized light, and into the sea of heads. He was just making some answer when he caught, in the tumult behind him, the low words, "I certainly hear my brother,"--and immediately the still lower refutation, "It is my Count." He turned round; between the Lector and her mother stood the dear Liana, a modest, timid, pale-red angel, in a black silk dress, over which ran only the glittering spring-frost of a silver chain, and with a light ribbon in her blond hair. The mother presented her to him, and the tender cheek bloomed more redly,--for she had, indeed, confounded the similar voices of the guest and the brother,--and she cast down those beautiful eyes which could see nothing. Ah, Albano, how violently thy heart trembles now that the past has become present, the moonlit night a spring morning; and this still form, now so near thee, works far more mightily than in any dream! She was too holy in his sight for him to have been able to utter a lie before her about the apparent recovery; he preferred silence;--and thus the warmest friend of her life came to her the first time only veiled and dumb.
The Lector soon led her away to her seat under the second lustre; opposite her sat her mother (probably, for this reason, that the good, unconscious daughter, who surely could not always be letting her eyelids fall, might raise them with friendliness and propriety towards a beloved being); the German gentleman, as an acquaintance, seated himself, without further ceremony, on her right, Augusti on her left,--Zesara, as Count, came far up above beside the highest lady.
Deuse take it! that is, unfortunately, so often my own case! I assert the upper seat of honor,--and observe, a mile below me, the daughter, but, like a myops, only half of her, and can bring about nothing the whole evening. Do pray transpose me without any scruples down beside her,--you have to deal with nothing more than a puffed-up man,--why, on earth, as in the heavens, must, then, the largest planets be placed exactly the farthest from their sun?
I now draw my readers to the Minister's table, not to show them the ministerial pomp ingrafted upon avarice, or his dance of honor hemmed in between the parallel lines of etiquette, or even his family arms, which were carried round on every chafing-dish and salt-cellar, and with the ice and mustard,--enough for us to know the ubiquity of the insignia upon his flower-pots, shirts, bed-clothes, dog's cravats, and all his thoughts; but the reader shall just now look only at my hero.