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The Hair-Dresser with a (musical) Disease of the Lungs.—Clotilda in Victor's Dream.—Extra Lines on Church-Music.—Garden Concert by Stamitz.—Quarrel between Victor and Flamin.—The Heart without Solace.—Letter to Emanuel.
The October Sunday with which I fill up this Dog-Post-Day was, even at nine and a half o'clock in the morning, such a glad, glistening day in St. Luna, that the whole Parsonage thought of the Court-Physician.—"Ah, he ought to come to the concert this evening!" The virtuoso Stamitz was to give one in Le Baut's garden.—"O, better earlier, even to dinner!"—"And to my forenoon sermon, if he will not come to the children's catechizing." Eymann, as he said this, had, more than anything else, his newly dressed peruke in his head, which Herr Meuseler had to-day placed on it. This clever peruke-maker visited those of his diocesans (the parsons) who wore no hair of their own, often and with greater benefit to their heads than the Superintendent himself, that Commander of the Faithful, to whom most chaplains said, Your Excellency! If he could only have weaned himself from singing, lying, and drinking too much,—the friseur,—most of the clergy would have ordered their toupees—those artistic cock's-combs—of him; but as it was, they did not.
As the Chaplain loved to make the confitures of Fate, among which false hair is to be reckoned, bitter in some way, and to give them, as it were, an infusion of hops, he naturally sought to embitter to-day's peruke (for whose false curls he gave, in place of payment, genuine hair cut off from his people's heads) by the misgivings which he conjured up about the long staying away of Victor. He bethought himself: "We must have affronted him in some way,—he does not even write,—he has, perhaps, fallen out with my son,—something has occurred,—and then, too; the old Lord no longer gives us a side-glance,—our rats, also, had a hand (or a foot) in helping drive him away."
By such elegies he threw at first himself, and at last even his hearers, into agony. He was not to be refuted in any way, except by one's bringing out some new subject of distress. The breaking-away spot in his cloud, or his little book for help in distress, was this time a literal book, the "Anecdotes for Preachers," by Teller, of Zeitz, which he to-day received through the peruke-maker from the clerical reading-circle. Clergymen, especially country clergymen, carry everything out with a minute, punctilious solicitude, into which they are partly scared by their reigning bugbear and dragon of a Consistory. Now in this book-club there was a law current—commentators and editors keep it—that every member who should find a grease-spot or ink-stain or rent in the book he was reading should enter it on the fly-leaf in an index and inventory of spots, together with the number of the page "where." Very naturally, every one who was even half-way an honest Lutheran would deny the immaculate re-(or con-)ception of it, and the freckles were therefore all regularly registered, but nobody fined. Only the conscientious Court-Chaplain took upon himself, as scapegoat, the punishment of other people's sins; for he never could sleep a wink the whole night, when he found in a book more blots than in the sin-register, because he clearly saw that he should be made adoptive father of the anonymous smutch and buyer of the book.—Now Teller's Anecdotes for Black-Coats was a complete pile of linen for the wash, black with dirt. Was there not one dog's-ear upon another,—compound dog's-ears,—blot upon blot? were not the leaves regular proof-sheets,—and, in fact, speaking without metaphor? Eymann began, "And if money should come flying in to me through the window"....
Just then Victor's letter flew in at the window, and its—author through the door.
But, of course, the case was this:—Victor, before pleasant weather, had pleasant dreams; before bad weather, Satan and his kin appeared to him. The beautiful weather of Saturday, and the thought of Clotilda's birthday and of the after-summer, gave him a morning dream, which, in turn, gave him a stage on which only her sweet image played. A person whom he had seen behind the veil of dream stood before him all the next day in a magic reflection. With him dreams,—those night-moths of the spirit,—like the real moths, strayed out beyond the bounds of night and sleep; at least for the forenoon, he went on loving, awake, every person whom he had begun to love in dream. This time, by an exactly reverse process, waking love flowed on into dreaming love, and the actual Clotilda coincided with the ideal to form one saintly image, so radiant that any one who knows his dream will easily enter into the rest. Therefore must the dream be given to the readers, the poetic ones especially: for others I should be glad to prepare an expurgated edition of the Dog-Post-Days, in which it should be left out; for unpoetic souls that have no dreams themselves should not read any.
But to you, ye good, seldom requited female souls,—ye who have a second conscience of your own, beside the first, for pure manners,—whose single virtue, when one looks at it nearly, is seen to bloom up into one wreath made of all the virtues, as nebulous stars, seen through glasses, fall into millions,—ye who, so changeable in all purposes, so unchangeable in the noblest one, go from the earth with unrecognized wishes, with forgotten worth, with eyes full of tears and love, with hearts full of virtue and grief,—to you, dear ones, I gladly tell the little dream and my long story!...
"A hand which Horion did not see laid hold of him; lips which he saw not spake to him, 'Let thy heart now be clean and holy, for the genius of female virtue resides in this region.'—Lo! there stood Horion on a field clothed with forget-me-nots, over which the sky like a blue shadow fell; for all the stars had been withdrawn from it, only the evening star stood gleaming alone up in the place of the sun. White ice-pyramids, streaked with down-trickling lines of evening redness, closed in, as with a wall of gold and silver ore, the whole dark horizon.—Therein Clotilda passed by, sublime as one dead, serene as a human being in the next world, conducted now by winged children, now by a veiled nun, now by an earnest angel, but she passed forever by before Horion; she smiled upon him in blissful lovingness while thus passing, but she passed by.—Flowery hillocks, almost like graves, rose and sank, for every one was stirred by the breathing of a bosom slumbering beneath it; a white rose stood over the heart that lay veiled below; two red ones grew over the cheeks, where tender blushes hid themselves in the earth; and overhead in the night-blue of heaven the white and red reflections of the hill-flowers glided fitfully into each other as often as the roses of the heart and the cheeks swayed with the hillock.—Dying echoes, awakened, however, by unheard voices, gave answer to each other behind the mountains; each echo lifted the little hills of slumber still higher, as if a deep sigh or a bosom full of rapture heaved them; and Clotilda smiled more blissfully, sinking at every resonance more deeply into the flowery earth.—The tones were too full of ecstasy, and the dissolved heart of man was fain to die therein. Clotilda sank now into the graves up to her heart; only her silent head still smiled above the meadow; the forget-me-nots at last reached up to the sunken eyes that were full of blissful tears, and bloomed over them.—Then suddenly a hill of slumber crept over the saint, and from beneath the flowers her words came up, 'Rest thou, too, Horion!'—But the sounds, growing more distant, transformed themselves during the burial into dim harmonica-tones.... And lo! as they sank into silence, there came up a great shadow like Emanuel, and stood before him like a short night, and covered the unknown moment as with a hand from a higher world. But when the moment and the shadow had passed away, then had all the hills sunk.—Then the reflections of the flowers, flowing together, gilded over the undulating heavens.—Then were seen white butterflies, white doves, white swans, climbing up to the purple peaks of the ice-mountains with outstretched wings as with arms, and behind the mountains, as if by an uncontainable transport, blossoms were flung up, and stars and garlands.—And there on the highest ice-mountain, as it rose tranquil in clear radiance and purple blaze, stood Clotilda, glorified, consecrated, radiant with supernatural rapture, and on her heart fluttered a nebulous globe, which consisted of little vaporized tears, and on which Horion's pallid form was delineated, and Clotilda spread wide her arms."—
But to embrace? or to soar away? or to pray?... Ah! he awoke too soon, and his eyes streamed down in greater tears than the nebulous ones, and a sinking voice cried incessantly all around him, "Rest thou, too!"
O thou soul of woman,—thou that goest, weary and unrewarded, wounded and bleeding, but great and unspotted, up from the smoking battle-field of life,—thou angel, whom the heart of man, reared by storms, soiled by the world's dealings, can respect and love, but cannot reward or reach,—how does my soul at this moment bow down before thee! how do I wish thee now the soothing balm of Heaven, the requiting goodness of the Eternal! And thou, Philippina, precious soul, glide away into a secret cell, and, amidst the tears which thou hast already so often shed, lay thy hand upon thy soft, rich heart, and swear, "Forever shalt thou continue consecrated to God and virtue, even if not to repose!" To thyself swear it,—not to me, for I believe it without an oath.—
What a parade-night, full of stars and dreams, was that! and what a gala-day of Nature followed upon it! In Victor's brain stood nothing but St. Luna, veiled in blue, bespangled with silver dew-drops, and graced by the loveliest angel, who to-day raised moist, glad eyes to the friendly heaven, and thought, "How beautiful art thou to-day, just upon my birthday festival!"—Even the Senior Pastor and his daughter, who both made a wedding,—the former an anniversary second wedding with his Senioress, the latter a first one with the preacher of the Orphan Asylum,—slipped themselves into the procession of his joyous thoughts as two new couples.
He did not mean to go to St. Luna, but he said; "I will dress myself up just for a little walk."—
"It is all one where I go to-day," he said, when he was out of doors; and so he took the St. Luna road.—
"I can turn round at any time," he said, when he had gone half-way.—
"But it would be something still more ridiculously funny, if I should be at once correspondent and postman, and deliver my own letter," said he, and drew it out.—
"And answer my good mother's orally by the same opportunity," he continued, half in dream, and full of greater love towards her who had sent him the sweet nocturnal one by the intelligence of the birthday.—
—But when he heard the first bells of St. Luna ringing for church, then he sprang up, and said, "Now I will no longer embitter the way by further scruples, but will march boldly and decidedly into the village."
And so, taking the hand of Fortune, with all Nature smiling after him, with dreams in his heart, with innocent hope in his freshly blooming countenance, he entered into the Eden of his soul.
Flamin he had not asked to go with him, in order not to rob the Senior Pastor of his wedding-guest, and because he did not know, himself, that he should reach St. Luna, and perhaps, too, because he did not want to have his fantasying attention to the sparkling morning disturbed by any news about juristic cases. In fact, he would rather take a walk with a woman than with a man. Men are almost ashamed, beside one another, of any except silent emotions; but womanly souls love to unfold to each other their bashful sensibilities; for they cover up the naked heart with maternal warmth, that it may not become chilled during the unveiling.
As Victor passed round the Parsonage below, he saw himself up at the window, in his second edition for a few good friends; but the wax Victor had forthwith to be banished behind a false partition, that it might not frighten the fleshly one. The reception of the latter, and the feast of jubilee thereupon, need not be described by me in a more lively manner than by my saying that the pug-dog was almost crushed underfoot, the bulfinch hopped round in vain for his breakfast, nor did the Parson's wife offer any to the guest, in her joy at staring at him, and church did not begin till after the double usance of half an hour; so that this time more parishioners went to church drunk than usual.
Victor, too, went thither intoxicated, but with joy. There is nothing more agreeable than to be a parson's wife, and to say to one's husband, while putting on his clerical bands, "Make the service a little longer to-day, else the mutton will not be quite roasted through."—Domestic trifles gratified my hero full as much as courtly ones provoked him.
He went with the Parson and with the Parson's wife, who abridged all the processes of kitchen and toilet in a summary and manlike way. His toleration for the faults of the clerical order had nothing in common with that of the distinguished people who are fit for high dignities and dinners, which arises from supreme contempt, and which can endure a Christian priest as easily as an Egyptian; but it grew out of his opinion that the churches are still the only Sunday-Schools and Spartan school-gates for the poor commoners, who cannot hear their cours de morale from the state. Besides, he loved, as a youth, the favorites of his childhood.
Many preachers try to combine the rule of Quintilian, who requires that bad arguments should be put forward in the earlier part of the discourse, with that of Cicero, who is for keeping them back till the latter part, by posting them in both places; but Eymann held good feelings to be better than bad reasons, and wound around the peasants chains, not of reasoning, but of flowers.
The friseur above-mentioned, at first, would not go to church, because it was beneath his dignity, but afterward he could not do otherwise; for, on account of the court stranger present to-day, church-music was to be made.
It is the only fault of the peruke-maker Meuseler, that he loves to sing too well, and is too fond of intruding his natural pipes into all church-music that is made in his perukial diocese, especially on Holy Whitsuntide. The St. Luna chorister could never bear this; but how to cheat him and feast a thousand ears? Simply thus: He frizzled out to-day what was still to be frizzled, (not to-day alone, but it was always so,) and merely glided up the choir-steps. Here he leaned and watched, till the chorister, seated on the musical sausage-sledge, struck with his finger the first note of the church-music. Then, like a sunbeam, he darted up into the choir, and filched away from the young counter-tenor his part, and sang it into the ears of the congregation, but with much whining and puffing, as if he were chanting his manuscript to the reviewers. For one must now, once for all, make it known to the world, that the enraged musician at the clavichord had, with a sharp-cornered triangle of elbows, furiously thrust back at the frizzling counter-tenor, in order to push the strange singing-bird out of the bird-house of the choir. But as the singer made his right arm the firm note-desk of his text, and the other a war-club,—like the Jews, who built up Jerusalem with one hand full of building-tools and the other full of weapons,—one sees that the peruke-maker, even amidst this continuance of fighting and fa-sol-la-ing, could do his very best, and execute somewhat during the musical truce of God. But so soon as the music had drawn its last breath, then the harmonious bird-of-passage and stormy-petrel skipped nimbly out across the choir, accompanied by the memory of a thousand ears and a single elbow. The chorister could not catch him, nor get scent of him.
If, on the contrary, he had the good fortune to be passing with his bandboxes through a village just as parson and schoolmaster and pedagogic frog-spawn were quacking and croaking[220] round a deaf corpse,—all which many name, more concisely, a dirge,—then could the virtuoso, without the counter-prop of elbows, spring gayly with both feet into the motet,[221] work out the funeral serenade given to the dead man by his heirs, throw in gratis some final cadences to the funeral procession, and yet have time to offer in the village to the bailiff an entirely new bag-wig.—
To our hero the music in country churches gave the greatest satirical pleasure. But little should we get by it, had I not the forethought to beg leave just for one poor little extra-syllable—one shall hardly see it—upon church-music.
It always gives me pleasure to see the people keep their seats during church-music, because it is a proof that no one is bitten by the tarantula; for, if they should run out, one would see that they could not endure any discords, and so had been bitten. I, as profane music-master, compose for few churches,—that is to say, only the consecration-noise for new ones, or old ones that have been repaired,—and therefore, in truth, I understand nothing of the matter whereupon, in passing, I purpose to express myself; but thus much let me still be allowed to assert, that the Lutheran church-music is good for something,—in the country, not in the capitals, where, perhaps, the fewest discords are correctly delivered. Verily, a miserable, sottish, blue chorister, who in bravura-airs sings himself brown and beats others brown,—there are, therefore, two kinds of bravura-airs,—is able, with a few mechanics who on Sundays work at the fiddle, with a trumpeter who might blow down without an instrument the walls of Jericho, with a smith who lays about him with the sticks of the kettle-drums, with a few spasmodic youngsters that do not yet even understand singing, and still resemble a female singer, who labors, not, like the fine arts, for ear and eye alone, but also (only in a worse acceptation than the youngsters) for a third sense, and with the little wind which he draws from the lungs of the organ and his own lungs,—such a thumper, I say, is able, with so extraordinarily little musical rubbish, nevertheless, to get up a much louder thundering and fiddle-rosin-lightning around the pulpit Sinai—I mean, to draw a far more vehement and discordant church-music out of his choir—than many much better sustained theatre-orchestras and chapels, with whose harmonies temples are so often desecrated. Hence such a noisy man is pained afterward, when people misunderstand and falsely judge his church scraping and squeaking and groaning. Shall, then, the soft, low Moravian music steal into all our provincial churches?—Fortunately, however, there are still city choristers who are working against this, and who know wherein pure choral tone and discord are to be distinguished from court-tone.
I expect, not readers, but organists, to know why mere dissonances—for consonances are to be endured only among the voices of the instruments—belong to the choir. Dissonances—according to Euler and Sulzer—are relations of tones which are expressed in high numbers; they displease us, therefore, not on account of their incongruity, but on account of our inability to reduce them rapidly to an equation. Higher minds would find the near relations of our harmonies too easy and monotonous,—the larger ones of our discords, on the contrary, charming and not above their comprehension. Now, as divine service is held more in honor of higher beings than for the profit of men, the church style must insist upon this, that a music shall be made, suitable for higher beings,—namely, of discords,—and that precisely that which is the most abominable to our ears shall be chosen as most appropriate for the temple.
If we once open the church-doors to the instrumental music of the Moravians, then we shall at last be infected with their singing, and by degrees all that vocal bleating and bellowing will be lost which makes our churches so lively, and which to castrated ears is such a disagreeable hammer of the law, but for us so good a proof that we resemble the swine, which the Abbé de Baigne, at the command of Louis XI., arranged according to the scale, goaded with jacks, and set to squealing.—These are my thoughts on church-music, or modern German battle-song.
End of the Extra-Syllable on Church-Music.
I should not have let the hair-dresser sing and strut so long, if my hero had been available for anything else, all this Sunday, than a supernumerary; but he did nothing of consequence the whole day, except, that, out of a sort of humanity, by unpacking, himself; her chests-of-drawers and bandboxes, he compelled old Appel, who would rather dress hams than her person, to prepare the usual Sabbath edition of the latter, printed with typographic splendor, as early as three o'clock in the afternoon; otherwise she would not have delivered the same till after supper. The Jews believe that they get, on the Sabbath, a new Schabbes-[222] or Sabbath-Soul: into maidens there enters one at least; into the Appels, two or three.
But why do I expect my hero to make any more active demonstration to-day,—him who, to-day, buried in that dream-night and in the coming evening, his emotions stirred by every kindly eye, and by the rudera[223] and urns of a spring which he had dreamed away,—softly dissolved by the calm, bland summer, which still lay smiling and dying on the incense-altars of the mountains, on the crape-clad fields, and amidst the mute funeral escort of birds, and at the rising of the first cloud would pass away from the boughs,—Victor, I say, who to-day, greeted with a melancholy smile by nothing but tender remembrances, felt that he had hitherto been too mirthful? He could only look upon the good souls around him with glistening eyes of love, then turn them away, more intensely glistening, and go out. Over his heart and all its notes stood written, Tremolando. No one is more profoundly sad than he who laughs too much; for when this laughter ceases, everything has power over the exhausted soul, and a meaningless lullaby, a flute-concert,—whose D sharp and F sharp keys and mouthpieces are merely the two lips wherewith a young shepherd whistles,—opens the flood-gates of the old tears, as a whisper loosens the poised and trembling avalanche. He felt as if his dream of this morning absolutely did not allow him to address Clotilda; she seemed to him too holy, and still escorted by winged children, and placed upon icy thrones. As, upon the whole, he had to-day neither a tongue nor an ear for Le Baut's conversations in the realm of the morally dead, he preferred to listen unseen in the great leafy garden to this Stamitz concert, and at the farthest let himself be introduced to the company by accident. His second reason was, that his heart was made for a sounding-board of music, and gladly drank in the fleeting tones without disturbance, and loved to conceal their effects upon him from ordinary men, of the world, who can truly quite as little do without Goethe's, Raphael's, and Sacchini's things (and for not a whit inferior reasons) as without Löschenkohl's own. Emotion, it is true, raises one above being ashamed to show emotion; but while his emotions lasted, he hated and shunned all attention to another's attention, because the Devil smuggles in vanity among the best feelings, often one knows not how. In the night, in a shady nook, tears fall more gracefully, and by-and-by evaporate.
In all this he was strengthened by the Parson's wife; for she had secretly sent to town and invited her son, and artistically prepared in the garden a surprise.
The Parson's family repaired at last to the embowered concert-hall, and gave not a thought to the consideration how much they were despised by Le Baut's household, who held only noble metals and noble birth, never noble deeds, to be cards of admission, and who, highly valuing the people of the Parsonage as friends of his Lordship and of Matthieu, would, however, have valued them still higher as lap-dogs of either.
Victor kept back a little in the Parsonage garden, because it was still too light, and also because he pitied poor Apollonia, who was peering solitary and unseen, in full finery, from the window of the summer-house, out into the air, and dandling perpendicularly the little god-son, whom she hung now over her head, now under her stomach. After the manner of a cit, he did not put on his hat in the summer-house, in order to strengthen her spirit by courtesy. An infant is, as it were, prompter and bellows-blower to the nurse: the young Sebastian sent Appel timely and sufficient succor under the siege by the elder one, and she undertook at last to speak, and remark that the god-son was a dear, good, beautiful, little "Basty." "But," she added, "the young leddy (Clotilda) must not hear that: she will have it that we should call him Victor, when she hears father call him Basty." Now she began to magnify how Clotilda loved his godchild, how often she would snatch the little monkey and smile on him and hug and kiss him; and the eulogist repeated on a small scale everything that she praised. Nay, the grown-up Sebastian did it after her, but he sought on the little lips only the kisses of others; and perhaps, in Appel's case, again, his were among the things which are sought. Made happier himself, he left one whom he had made happier; for Love despatched now one gayly attired hope after another as messengers to his heart, and all said, "Truly, we do not deceive thee: trust us!"
At last Stamitz began to tune up, about whom the stiff family of the Lord Chamberlain would certainly not have concerned themselves, because to-day there were no strangers present, had not Clotilda begged for this garden-concert as the only festival of her birth-night. Stamitz and his orchestra filled a lighted bower,—the noble audience sat in the next brightest niche, and wished the thing were already over,—the commonalty sat farther off, and the Chaplain, for fear of the catarrhal, dewy floor, twisted one leg round the other above the thighs,—Clotilda and her Agatha reclined in the darkest leafy box. Victor did not steal in, till the overture announced to him the seats and the seating of the company: in the remotest arbor, in a true aphelion, this comet took its place. The overture consisted of that musical scrawling and flourishing, of that harmonious phraseology, that crackling of fire-works produced by the mutual contact of sounding passages, which I so extol, when it is nowhere but in the overture. There it is in place; it is the sprinkling rain which softens the heart for the great drops of the simpler tones. All emotions in the world need exordia; and music paves the way, or the tear-ways, (lachrymal ducts,) for music.
Stamitz—after a dramatic plan which not every conductor marks out for himself—gradually descended from the ears into the heart, and from allegros to adagios: this great composer sweeps in ever-narrowing circles around every bosom in which there is a heart, until at last he reaches it and folds it in a rapturous embrace.
Horion trembled alone, without seeing his loved ones, in a gloomy arbor, upon which a single withered twig let in the light of the moon and of its pursuing clouds. Nothing ever stirred him more during music than to look at the chase of the clouds. When he accompanied with his eyes and with the tones these nebulous streams in their everlasting flight around our shadowy globe, and when he imparted to them all his joys and his wishes, then he thought, as in all his joys and sorrows, on other clouds, of another flight, of other shadows, than those above him,—then did his whole soul pine and languish; but the strings stilled the panting bosom, as the cold leaden bullet in, the mouth allays thirst, and the tones discharged the heavy tears from the full soul.
Dear Victor! there is in man a mighty wish which was never fulfilled: it has no name, it seeks its object, though all that thou namest it and all joys are not its reality; but it recurs, when in a summer night thou lookest to the north or towards distant mountains, or when moonlight is on the earth, or the heavens are studded with stars, or when thou art very happy. This great, vast wish lifts our soul aloft, but with sorrow: ah! here below we are thrown upward in a prostrate position like epileptics. But this wish, to which nothing can give a name,—our strings and tones name it to the human spirit; the yearning soul then weeps more profusely and can no longer comprehend itself, and calls inward in rapture of lamentation between the tones: "Ay, all that ye name to me is what I want!" ...
Mortal man, the enigmatical creature, has also a nameless, monstrous dread, which has no object, which awakes at hearing of spiritual apparitions, and which one sometimes feels when one only speaks of it....
Horion yielded up his bruised heart, with quiet tears which no one saw flow, to the high adagios which laid themselves with warm wings of eider-down over all his wounds. All that he loved entered now into his shady arbor,—his oldest friend and his youngest; he hears the thunder-storm-bells of life toll, but the hands of friendship stretch forth to meet each other, and they clasp each other, and even in the second life they hold each other fast in withering grasp. All tones seemed the unearthly echoes of his dream, sent back by beings whom one neither saw nor heard....
He could not possibly stay longer in this dark inclosure with his burning fancies, at this too great distance from the Pianissimo. He went—almost too boldly and too closely—through a leafy avenue up to the tones, and pressed his face far through the leaves, in order at last to see Clotilda in the dim and distant green glimmer....
Ah, and he saw her! But in too angelic, too paradisiacal a form! He saw not the thinking eye, the cold mouth, the calm person, that forbade so much and desired so little; but he saw for the first time her mouth encircled by a sweet harmonious sorrow, with an inexpressibly touching smile,—for the first time her eye weighed down under a brimming tear, as a forget-me-not bows itself beneath a tear-drop of rain. O, this good soul surely concealed her fairest feelings most of all! But the first tear in a beloved eye is too mighty for a soft heart.... Victor knelt down, overpowered by reverence and rapture, before the noble soul, and lost himself in the darkling, weeping form, and in the weeping tones. And when he saw at length her features turned to paleness, because the green foliage overspread her lips and cheeks with a deathly hue from the reflection of the lamps,—and when his dream came back to him, with Clotilda sunk under the flowery hill,—and when his soul, dissolved into dreams, into sorrows, into joys, and into wishes for her who consecrated her birthday festival with devout tears,—oh, was there then any need, for the completion of his euthanasia, that the violin should die away, and that the second harmonica, the viole d'amour, should send its music-of-the-spheres to his naked, enkindled, palpitating heart? O, the pang of bliss quieted him, and he thanked the Creator of this melodious Eden, that He, with the highest tones of His harmonica, which with unknown forces shiver the heart of man to tears, as high tones shatter glasses, had at last exhausted his bosom, his sighs, and his tears: amidst these tones, after these tones, there were no more sounds; the full soul was wrapped up in foliage and night and tears; the speechless swelling heart drank the tones into itself, and took the outer ones for inner ones; and at last the tones played like zephyrs around the head that was drowsy with bliss, and only in the innermost part of the dying soul still stammered the too happy wish: "Ah, Clotilda, could I surrender to thee to-day this mute, glowing heart!—ah, that I might on this imperishable heavenly evening, with this trembling soul, sink dying at thy feet, and say the words, 'I love thee!'"
And as he thought of her festive anniversary, and of her letter to Maienthal, which had given him the greatest praise, that of being a scholar of Emanuel, and of little tokens of her regard for him, and of the sweet fraternization of his heart with hers,—ay, then did the heavenly hope of winning this ennobled heart for the first time draw near to him amidst the music, and that hope caused the sounds of the harmonica, like dying echoes, to float far and wide over the whole future of his life....
"Victor!' said some one, in a slowly lengthened tone. He sprang up and turned his exalted features toward the—brother of his Clotilda, and embraced him with joy. Flamin, into whom all music flung war-flames and more open sincerity, looked at him wonderingly, inquiringly, and with an imperceptible suspicion, and with that friendliness which resembled scorn, but which was never anything but the smarting of injuries received.
"Why didst thou not take me, too, with thee to-day?" said Flamin, in a friendly tone.
Victor pressed his hand, and was silent.
"No! speak!" said he.
"Let it be for to-day, my Flamin; I'll tell thee some time," replied Victor.
"I will tell it to thee myself," Flamin began, more quickly and warmly. "Thou thinkest, perhaps, I shall be jealous. And look thou, did I not know thee, I should be so: truly, another would be so, if he had thus lighted upon thee here, and put all things together,—thy late retreat from our summer-house out into the foliage, thy writing without a light, and thy singing of love"—
"To Emanuel," said Victor, softly.
"Thy sending off that leaf to her"—
"It was another from her album," said he.
"Still worse; that I did not even know. Thy lingering in St. Luna, and a thousand other signs, which do not immediately occur to me,—thy going off alone today"—
"O my Flamin, this is going too far! thou seest with other eyes than those of friendship."—
Here Flamin, who never could dissemble without immediately becoming what he assumed, and who could never recount an offence without falling into the old anger, grew warmer, and said, in a less friendly manner,—
"And others, too, see it,—even the Chamberlain, and the Chamberlain's wife."
This tore Victor's heart.
"Thou dear old friend of my youth! so, then, we are to be drawn and torn asunder, bleed we ever so much; so, then, this Matthieu is to succeed (for all comes from him, not from thee, thou good soul!) in getting thee to torment thyself, and me to torment thee. No, he shall not succeed; thou shalt not be taken from me. See, by Heaven!" (and here the feeling of his innocence stood in Victor erect and sublime,) "and though thou shouldst for years misunderstand me, still the time will come when thou shalt start back, and say to me, 'I have done thee wrong!'—But I shall gladly forgive thee."
This touched the jealous one, who to-day, indeed, (for a special reason,) was more composed.
"See," said he, "I believe thee always: say, dost thou never do anything against me?"
"Never, never, my dear fellow!" answered Victor.
"Now, then, forgive my heat," the other continued. "Thus have I already, with my cursed jealousy, once tormented Clotilda herself in Maienthal. But wrong not Matthieu; it is he, rather, who tranquillized me. He told me, to be sure, what Clotilda's parents thought they observed; nay, still more,—see, I tell thee everything,—he said they had even, on account of thy presumed liking and thy present influence, which the Chamberlain would fain avail himself of for his reinstatement, spoken of a possible betrothal to their daughter, and had even spoken to her and sounded her on the subject; but (to thee, however, this is a matter of indifference) my beloved remained true to me, and said, No."
Now was the hitherto so happy heart of our friend broken: that hard No had never yet been uttered to him. With an inexpressible, crushing, but meek woe, he said, softly, to Flamin,—
"Be thou, too, always true to me, for I have very little; and never torment me more as thou hast to-day."
He could say no more; the stifled tears stormed surging up over his heart, and painfully collected themselves under the pupil; he must needs now have a still, dark place, where he could weep to his heart's content; and in his lacerated and smarting bosom there remained only one soft and balmy thought: "Now, in the night, I can weep as much as I will, and no one can see my shattered face, my shattered soul, my shattered fortune."
And when he thought, "Ah, Emanuel, if thou shouldst see me as I am to-day!" he could hardly any longer contain himself.
He fled, with suppressed tears, unconcerned who saw it or did not see it, out of the garden, over which a dark angel let float a great funereal banner and the music of a dirge. He bruised himself against a stone garden-roller which was used to crush the sprinkled grass-blades and flowerets,—he wept not yet, but on the observatory there would he satisfy himself and steep himself in abundant sorrow,—he kept repeating, "But she remained true, and said, No, no, no!"—the concert-tones glided after, like fire after the conjurer,—he waded through moist, slumbering lawns, which concealed their flowers, and, swifter than he, swept over the earth the shadowy outlines of the clouds overhead chased by the wind,—he stood at the foot of the observatory, still held back every tear, and hurried up,—he threw himself on the bench where he had seen Clotilda for the first time afar off, in a white dress,—"Rest thou, too, Horion!" she had called to him out of his dream from under the flowery hill, and he heard it again.—
Here he tore open joyfully all his wounds, and let them bleed out freely in tears; they overspread with mournful streams the face which once had often smiled, but always good-naturedly, and which from other eyes had never wrung any, but only wiped them away; every flood was a load taken off, but the heart grew heavy again upon it, and poured out a fresh one.—At last he could hear the tones again; most of them sank and were lost before they were wafted to the tower; little ones arrived dying, and expired in his darkling heart; every tone was a falling tear, and made him lighter, and expressed his anguish. The garden seemed to consist of softly resounding, dark-green waves of shadow, veiled under a broken twilight. Stung by memory, he tore his eye away from it: "What does it concern me any longer?" he thought. But at last from this shadowy Eden and from the viole d'amour came up the song, "Forget me not," to his weary heart, and gave him back the softer pang and the past love. "No," said he, "I never will forget thee, though thou hast not loved me! thy form will assuredly forever move me, and remind me of my dreams! ah, thou heavenly one, it is, indeed, now, the only thing that does not pain me, to think I forget thee not!"
All was silent and extinguished; he was alone in the presence of night. At length, after remaining a long time in silence, he went down and back to Flachsenfingen, exhausted with weeping, and a poor man. And as, on the way, he cast a hurried glance up at the dark-blue heaven, in which floating clouds lay flung around the moon like scoriæ, and a hurried glance again over the half-annihilated shadowy landscape, over the shadow-hills and shadow-villages, all appeared to him dead, empty, and vain, and it seemed to him as if, in some brighter world, there were a magic-lantern, and through the lantern glasses moved on which earth and springs and human groups were painted, and we called the descending, dancing images of these glasses us and an earth and a life; and after all that was bright and many-colored, a great shadow followed on.—
Ah, I stir up, perhaps, once more, in many a breast, long-forgotten troubles! But it is good for us—since sorrows occupy so large a place in our memory—that this bitter winter-fruit should grow mild by lying, and that there is but a small difference between a past sorrow and a present bliss.
Poor Victor arrived after midnight, with a pale face and burning eyes, at the house of the Apothecary. He asked for nothing, that he might not betray his broken voice. When he saw his every-day overcoat hanging in the moonbeams, and when he imagined himself a strange person to whom the coat belonged, and who took it off so joyfully in the morning and now would put it on again so sorrowfully, then did a certain compassion which he had for himself seize again with too strong an impression his exhausted heart. Marie came, and he turned not away from her even the signs of this compassion. She stood surprised; he said to her with the softest voice, woven of sighs, that he wanted nothing; and the good soul went slowly out without courage to console or to weep, but all night long she shed invisible tears for those of another, and for a woe which had not been whispered in her ear.
Why did Fate to-day, of all days, open all the veins of his heart? Why must the Senior Pastor's silver wedding and the first marriage of his daughter to the preacher of the Orphan-House fall just on this day? Why, if indeed the two nuptial feasts had to coincide on this day, must they last till after midnight, when they gave poor Victor occasion to gaze into all the mouldering scenes of his burnt-up hopes, when he could see from his dark chamber, in a brilliantly lighted room, the love which linked hand in hand, pressed lips to lips, and mingled eyes and souls? At another time he would have smiled at the Orphan-House preacher and at two catechists of the poor; but tonight he could only sigh over them,—and it is a soft line of beauty on his inner man, that he did not grudge, but felicitated, the poor people's possession of what he was deprived of himself. "Ah, you are happy!" said he. "O, love each other truly, press your throbbing, transitory hearts ardently to each other, ere the wing of Time shatters them, and glow on each other's bosoms during the short minute of life, and exchange your tears and kisses ere eyes and lips freeze in the grave! Ye are happier than I,—I, who can give my heart full of love to no one but the worms of the grave, and on whose coffin a joiner shall paint the inscription, which like myself shall be buried in the earth: 'Ye good children of men, you loved me not, and yet I loved you so well!'"
Every happy smile, every fleeting touch of the violin, every thought, became now, to his soft tear-bathed heart, a hard, sharp corner,—just as a hand which dips itself under the water feels everything hard to the touch.
His unbounded sincerity, his unbounded tenderness, he could now satisfy in no other way than by a letter to Emanuel, into which he let his whole soul overflow.
"O Dearly Loved Friend!
"Ought I to hide it from thee, when griefs or follies unman me? Ought I to show thee the faults I have repented of, and never my present ones? No, come hither, dear one, to my wounded breast! I will lay open to thee the heart therein, let it bleed and beat under the exposure as it will. Thou wilt, perhaps, still cover it up again with thy fatherly love, and say, 'I love thee still.'
"Thou, my Emanuel, reposest in thy lofty solitude, on the Ararat of the saved soul, on the Tabor of the shining One: there thou gazest, softly dazzled, into the sun of Deity, and seest calmly the cloud of death swim in over the sun; it veils the orb: thou growest blind under the cloud; it melts away, and again thou standest before God. Thou lovest men as children who cannot offend,—thou lovest earthly enjoyments as fruits, which one plucks for refreshment, but without hungering for them; the storms and earthquakes of life pass by thee unheard, because thou liest in a life-dream full of tones, full of songs, full of meadows,—and when death awakes thee, thou art still smiling over the bright dream.
"But, ah! more than one tempest thunders into the life's-dream of the rest of us, and makes it distressful. If a higher being could enter into the hurly-burly of ideas which encompasses our spirit, and from which it must draw its breath, as we breathe in an air composed of all kinds of gases poured together,—if he were to see what kinds of nutriment pass through our inner man, from which it has to extract its chyle: that medley of comic operas,—Bayle's Dictionaries,—concerts of Mozart,—Messiahs,—military operations,—Goethe's poems,—Kant's writings,—table-talks,—lunar observations,—vices and virtues,—men and sicknesses and sciences of all sorts:—if the Being should examine this olla-podrida of life, would he not be curious to know what heterogeneous and mutually repulsive juices thereby run together in the poor soul, and would he not wonder that anything settled and uniform is left as a residuum in man? Ah, Emanuel! if thy friend is now in a fine banquet-hall, now in a garden, now in an opera-box, now under the great night-heavens, now in the presence of a coquette, and now before thee,—surely, this ambiguous alternation of scenes must bring him sorrows, and perhaps leave stains....
"No, I will not deceive my Emanuel—O, are, then, the trifles and the pebbles of this life worth our choosing crooked paths to avoid them, as the sapping-caterpillar submits to winding courses through the twig-work of its leaf? No, all that I have said is true; but I should not have said it, had not other sorrows led me to speak of these also; and yet, thou innocently, simple-heartedly, sublimely trusting teacher, thou wouldst have believed me! Ah, thou hast too good an opinion of me!... O, it is a long and weary step from admiration to imitation! But now look into my open heart!
"Since I have, here in the charnel-house of my childish joys, in the beds where my childhood's years bloomed and faded, been conversing with perhaps too many dreams of the past,—and, still more, from the day when thou gavest my heart the provocative to the fever-stroke which has shaken my whole life,—since thou disclosedst to me the life wherein man exfoliates, and the thin, sharp moment whereon he so painfully stands,—since that farewell-night when my soul was great and my tears inexhaustible,—an eternal wound has been running within me, and the sigh of a longing which nothing can name but dreams and tears and love has lain like a stagnant vein, oppressive and consuming in my breast.—Ah! I still smile as ever, I still philosophize as ever, but my innermost heart only the beloved friend sees to whom I now lay it bare.
"O Fate, why dost thou strike in man the spark of a love which must be smothered in his own heart's blood? Have we not all, abiding within us, the sweet image of a beloved, of a friend, before whom we weep, after whom we seek, for whom we hope,—ah, and so vainly, so vainly? Does not man stand before a human bosom, as the turtle-dove before a mirror, and, like her, coo himself hoarse before a dead, flat image therein, which he takes for the sister of his complaining soul? Why is it, then, that every fair spring-evening, every melting lay, every overflowing rapture, asks us, 'Where dost thou find the beloved soul to which thou wilt tell and impart thy bliss?' Why does music give the tempest-stricken heart, instead of peace, only greater waves,—as the tolling of bells, instead of dispelling, draws down the thunder-storms? And why is it, that out of doors, on a fair, still, bright day, when thou lookest over the whole unrolled picture of a landscape, over the seas of flowers that tremble upon it, over the shadows flung down by the clouds which fly from one hill to another, and over the mountains which stretch like shores and walls round our flowery circle,—why does then a voice within thee cry incessantly, 'Ah! behind the smoking[224] mountains, beyond the clouds that repose upon them, there rests a fairer land, there dwells the soul thou seekest, there heaven lies nearer to the earth'? But behind the mountain and behind the cloud there sighs also an unappreciated heart, that looks over towards this thy horizon, and thinks, 'Ah, in that far region I should doubtless be happier!'
"Are we not, then, all happy?—Do not assert it, nor say to me, Emanuel, that, in the winter of this life, the few warm sunbeams that interrupt it burst and destroy the better man like a vegetable; say not that every year steals away something from our heart, and that, like ice, it grows less and less, the farther it drifts down the stream of Time; only say not that the wandering Psyche, though she hears her second self in her prison, yet can never get into its arms.—But thou hast already somewhere said: 'All loving souls on earth dwell apart from each other in two bodies, as on two hills; a waste lies between them, as between solar systems; they see each other, speak across by distant signs; at last they hear each other's voices from hill to hill; but they never touch each other, and each embraces only its thought. And yet this poor love crumbles like an old corpse, when it is exhibited; and its flame flickers like a burial-lamp, when it is uncovered.'
"Are we, then, all not happy?—Do not say so!—Ah, man, who, even from childhood up, has been calling after an unknown soul that grew up in one heart with his own,—that entered into all the dreams of his years, and therein gleamed from afar, and, after his waking, started his tears,—that in spring sent him nightingales, that he might think of her and long for her,—that in every tender hour visited his soul, with so much virtue, so much love, that he would so gladly have offered in his heart, as in a sacrificial chalice, all his blood to the beloved,—but who, alas! never, appeared, and only sent her image in every fair form, but forever kept back her heart;—oh, if at last, oh, if suddenly, oh, if blissfully, her heart beats against his heart, and the two souls embrace each other forever, he can no longer say it, but we can: 'This man, indeed, is happy, and is loved.' ...
"Good Emanuel, thou forgivest me the pain of the fear that I may never be the happy man,—no, never!—Oh, even for this earth, broken up into graves, I should be perhaps too happy, I should be permitted to enjoy, perhaps, too great an Eden for so young a life, and one justified by such slight merits, if my too soft soul, which even now gives way under three happy minutes, which loves every human being, and hangs with the arms of a child on the heart of the whole creation,—oh, which is already made too blissful by this mere dream of love, and is overpowered by this description!—no, it were too blessed, such a soul, long since dissolved by melancholy and humanity, if it should once, after such a long, deathly yearning, at last, at last—O Emanuel, I tremble again for joy, and yet it can never, never be!—if it should find all its wishes, its whole heaven, so much love, accumulated in one dear, dear soul; if in the presence of great Nature, and before the face of Virtue, and before God himself, who gave love to her and to me, I could dare to say, weeping, to this only, this sweet, this beloved—O God, how shall I name her? this fore-loved one, whom in my frenzy I would now name: 'At last my heart has thee, thou good soul! to-day God gives us to each other, and we remain together through all eternity!' No, I would not say it; I should for ecstasy be dumb and die!
"—Lo! it seemed to me just now as if a form passed across my chamber, and called, 'Victor!' I looked round, and beheld my empty room, and the Sunday clothes which I had taken off, and now, for the first time, I remembered that I was unhappy and not loved.
"But thou, irreplaceable friend, misunderstand me not. I swear to thee that I will give thee these sheets unaltered, though to-morrow, when the whirlpools of to-night flow stiller and smoother, I should find all sorts of alterations necessary. Thy foolish friend remains, nevertheless, thy friend forever.
"S. V. H."