CHAPTER XLVII.
“HOMO SUM.”
Away in Strassburg there has been much debating and variance of opinion touching the spirit in which Dasipodius will comport himself towards this recantation. Quidnuncs have contested it over their cups, burgher and trader have discussed it in the market-place, women have gossipped, apprentices have interchanged fisticuffs, and young bloods more than one rapier-thrust over it. University dons have argued the bearings of the case from all points; but on the one postulate only, that Dasipodius is a man cast in no ordinary mould, is absolute unanimity; otherwise it breaks off in curious divergence.
“A man,” contended but yesterday forenoon, one of a little group of grizzled dominis, “a man you won’t meet once in a century, is Dasipodius; eminently unselfish, loyal-minded to the marrow, a great-souled man in whom not a grain of guile or rancour could take root.”
“And yet homo sum—still a man,” said a thoughtful, cynical-lipped, yet withal not ill-natured-looking colleague.
The younger bystanders exchange disgustful smiles at the learned philosophers’ truisms.
“Yes, and a man, mind you,” hotly contended a third, “whose nature is so sensitive, that the faintest breath of all this whirlwind of insult which has swept over him, would be infinite torture.”
“Now, what the deuce,” grumbled a youth with restless, fire-bright eyes, tossing back a wealth of raven-black locks from his white brow, with the back of a slender hand, which holds a well-thumbed duodecimo Horace, “what do they mean with all their cant about his sensitiveness? He’s just a mathematician. No end of a one, I grant you; but as far as I can ever see, he always takes what the gods provide, rough or smooth, like a man of marble.”
“But still—a man, dear boy,” smiled the philosopher.
“And,” placidly ejaculated a portly cathedral canon, folding his velvety white hands, “what is man’s lot here below but to suffer?”
“Ah! but furor fit læsa sæpiens potientiæ, father,” cried another; “and worms will turn at last. And—well, look for instance at my dog Schnaps here. There’s not an amiabler brute in all Elsass, treat him like a decent christian; but just you give him a bone, and then try to take it away again. Just you try, that’s all.”
“But Dasipodius—is a man,” smiled the cynic.
“And they’ve treated him worse than a dog!” indignantly returned the other, whistling to Schnaps and striding away.
“While we,” musingly murmured a stout, gentle-eyed man, “stood by like so many posts, and permitted the injustice.”
“My son,” said the churchman, “it is for us all to submit to the powers that be.”
“Heaven send them wits then,” lightly laughed the poet.
But not his nearest friends, not Bruno Wolkenberg himself, not Kaspar’s wistful affection, can divine the shadow of what is passing now in the blind man’s mind, from any signs of it upon his face. Even unwontedly pale he is, as he stands, seemingly gazing on the sunlit crags yonder across the lake; while, evoked like some nightmare dream by Tobias Hackernagel’s harsh accents, rushes back all the memory of that weary time, clothed, perhaps, in colours tenfold more vivid by the lending of that exteriorly dead sense to his interior vision. Hidden out of memory, he has told himself they were, forgiven heartily the taunts and insults to his bodily affliction, the aspersions on his honour, the irritating ignorances, the petty impertinences of men who cared little for, and comprehended less of the art which was for him a thing of life, and so bound up in his own, that severance from that dear fair human love would have been easier than giving up intercommunion with it. Nay, had not he been almost angry with himself to find how this talent of his had wooed him to a comfort he had thought it impossible could ever again be his, when he believed Sabina’s love lost and gone for ever? His forgiveness of the injuries wrought against him had been the more complete, because of its birth in that lofty nature, which still, in its extremest distress, had echoed the Master’s utterance: “They know not what they do!” seeing, in his own, some reflex of that supreme endurance, whose sublimity had come home to him in these later days as it never had come before; and apprehending something of that infinite pity and charity, he had schooled himself unreservedly and entirely to forgive, as one day he hoped to be forgiven, the men who, out of their ignorance, or worse still, their woeful smattering of knowledge, could not gauge the measure of injury they had heaped on him.
To that crowd, now so curiously watching him, there is no trace of emotion visible in the mathematician’s face; only presently, Bruno Wolkenberg, standing nearest to him, Bruno, his heart’s chosen friend, Bruno, the clever physician, marvellously skilled in such sort of reading, marks the slight tremour thrilling his frame, and the deep flush gradually supplanting the pallor which had deadened and chilled his face at the sound of Syndic Hackernagel’s discords; and he believed that now at last the sluices of the self-contained nature are taking their course, and that Dasipodius’ moment of giving rein to some expression of just indignation has come. So it is our best friends know us; and, indeed, Bruno was not so far astray, the agitation stirring him was the effect of one transient startling doubt, whether in very truth, as he had so long believed, he felt himself free of that pride men call ‘proper’—that fetish, for ever stifling down human nature’s best and purest impulses?
Of that doubt, brief as a lightning flash, the assurance is born. “Is Otto von Steinbach here?” he asks.
There is, in Syndic Hackernagel’s eyes, in this meeting of question with question, such a deliberate defiance of the proprieties that it almost assumes the hideous proportions of contempt of court; and exercises the happy effect of restoring to him some degree of his normal confidence. And with a succession of preliminary gasps, he is preparing to remonstrate, but the mathematician waves him to silence. “Is Otto von Steinbach here?” he reiterates.
“Here, Master Dasipodius,” falteringly answers a voice somewhere within the sheltering shadow of Radegund von Steinbach; and then, with flurried steps, the ex-chief horologist stumbles into the presence of the other.
“Speak up, friend,” prompts Isaac Habrecht; “the master hasn’t got long ears like——”
“Be silent, Isaac,” rebukes Dasipodius; “and so, Otto, the Horologe does not prosper?”
A groan is Otto’s sole reply.
“Nay,” continues Dasipodius, “I want to hear about the progress——”
“Progress!” ejaculates Otto with contritely upturned eyes, “but—I tell you—but—there hasn’t been any.”
“None at all?”
Otto twiddles the rim of his smart velvet cap, and mutely shakes his head.
“What’s the use of doing that?” says Habrecht under his breath, and nudging his arm he glances significantly up at the blind man’s eyes. “Find your tongue, can’t you, and speak up.”
“It is just as it was then, yes?” enquires Dasipodius.
“N—no, Master Dasipodius, it is not,” blurts out the truthful Otto; “it—has gone backward. If only—only you could see——”
“Mind your words,” frowns Habrecht, “and whom you’re speaking to.”
“For pity’s sake,” urges Dasipodius, “do let him tell his tale in his own way. Am I so thin-skinned? Well, my friend, and if I could only see,—or is my affliction to prove my consoler? Maybe it is better I cannot see this poor Horologe—if I love it. Nay, be your old honest self, and say.”
“It’s in the most awful mess you ever—that anybody ever—I mean—oh, Master Dasipodius, you were always so good to me; and I—oh, Master Dasipodius!” And with a storm of sobs he fell at his old master’s feet.
“Nay, nay, come, Otto, be a man,” said the mathematician, laying his hand gently on Otto’s shoulder and raising him; “you’re not the first miscalculator of your own powers the world has known. If you have proved a bad master, you were a good servant; and, under guidance, could fashion excellent cog-wheels. Come, don’t sigh your heart out like that. See now, shall we go back to Strassburg, you and I, and Isaac Habrecht here——”
“Ay, ay,” assented Isaac.
“And put our heads together to right the mischief? And Kaspar,” added Dasipodius, stretching out his hand wet with Otto’s tears, “will you come too, lad?”
“Master,” cried the boy, seizing it joyfully and kissing it, “to the world’s end.”
“Ay. Not so far,” smiled Dasipodius, making no effort to suppress the content he felt at the prospect of standing in the old place, with all the old workers round him. “Not so far, else the good mother might be having a crow to pluck with me. Gentlemen,” he added, raising his voice and addressing the deputation, “we will come.”
One simultaneous prolonged cheer rang to the hill tops.
“But this,” protested Syndic Hackernagel out of the midst of the chorus, “is informal. It should be through the medium of myself; and—oh this is—this is altogether——”
“It is all we want,” interrupted Burgomaster von Steinbach. “Hang your formalities, Tobias Hackernagel, and thank your stars. Some time at his leisure the Professor Dasipodius will formally signify his reacceptance. In the meantime——”
“We can go, can’t we, Burgomaster?” enquired Councillor Job, finding the formal semi-circle about him breaking up into little scattered groups. “I wonder,” he went on, speculatively casting his eyes over the lake’s broad expanse, “where one can get a drink? Thousand thunders! if we stop here two minutes more, we shall be grilled to the bones!”
“My mother,” said Isaac Habrecht, “will be proud to offer you the best our poor house affords, gentlemen all.”
“Thanks! my good friend,” said Hackernagel with an ineffable smile. “A thousand thanks.”
“Give them where they’re due, Master Syndic,” bluntly returned Isaac, and eyeing the speaker’s length and breadth with undisguised contempt. “The Habrechts never turned away from their door the pitifullest cur that was in need of bit or sup.”
“Quite right,” nodded Hackernagel. “Quite right. One might entertain an angel unawares.”
“Or a devil,” muttered Isaac, turning away and lending an arm to Dasipodius, “as the case may be. Come, master.”
END OF VOL. II.
[Transcriber’s note—the following changes have been made to this text.
Page 14: stifly to stiffly—“stiffly-starched”.
Page 100: Schhlettstadt to Schlettstadt—“near Schlettstadt”.
Page 149: cheefully to cheerfully—“they said more cheerfully”.
Page 213: wordly to worldly—“own worldly state”.]