Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces Part 2

What I maintain is, that, even should the two balsam-trees of life, namely wit and the love of our fellow men, be withered away up to the very topmost twig, they can still be brought to life by a proper shower out of the watering pot of these said bottles--in three minutes they will begin to sprout. As the glad, wild essence, the wine of the silver foam, touched the heads of the guests, every brain began to seethe and glow while fair air-castles rose in each amain. Brilliant and many tinted were the floating bubbles blown and set free by the Schulrath Stiefel's ideas of all categories, his simple as well as his compound ideas, his innate ideas, and also his fixed. And can it ever be forgotten that he ceased to make learned statements, except on the subject of Lenette's perfections, and that he told Leibgeber in confidence, that he should really like to marry, not indeed, "the tenth Muse, or the fourth Grace, or the second Venus--for it was clear who had got _her_ already but some step-sister G.o.ddess, a distant relation or other of hers." During the whole journey, he said, he had preached from the coachbox, as from a pulpit, enlarging to the bride on the subject of the blessedness of the married state, painting it to her in the brightest colours, and drawing such a lively picture of it, that he quite longed to enter into it himself: and the bridegroom would have thanked him if he had seen how gratefully she had looked at him in return. And, indeed, the bride was a great success, and happy in all she did that day, and particularly that evening; and what became her best of all was that on such a high day as this, she waited upon others more than she let herself be waited upon--that she put on a light every-day dress--that even at this advanced stage of her own education she took private lessons in cookery and household matters from her female guests, who aired their own theories on these subjects--and that she already began to think about to-morrow. Stiefel, in his inspired state, ventured upon exploits which were all but impossible. He placed his left arm under his right, and thus supporting its weight and that of its plush sleeve, in a horizontal position, snuffed the candle before the whole company, and did it rather skilfully on the whole; somewhat like a gardener on a ladder holding out his pruning shears at arm's length to a high branch and snipping off the whole concern by a slight movement of his hand at the bottom. He asked Leibgeber plump out to give him a profile of Lenette, and later on, when he was going away, he even made an attempt (but this was the only one of his ventures which failed) to get hold of her hand and kiss it.

At length all the joy-fires of this happy little company burnt down like their candles, and one by one the rivers of Eden fell away into the night. The guests and the candles got fewer and fewer; at last there was only one guest there, Stiefel (for Leibgeber is not a guest), and one long candle. It is a lovely and touching time when the loud clamour of a merry company has finally buzzed itself away into silence, and just one or two, left alone, sit quietly, often sadly, listening to the faint echoes, as it were, of all the joy. Finally, the Schulrath struck the last remaining tent of this camp of enjoyment, and departed; but he would not for a moment suffer that those fingers, which, in spite of all their efforts, his lips could not touch, should be clasped about a cold bra.s.s candlestick, for the purpose of lighting him downstairs. So Leibgeber had to do this lighting. The husband and wife, for the first time, were alone in the darkness, hand in hand.

Oh, hour of beauty! when in every cloud there stood a smiling angel, dropping flowers instead of rain, may some faint reflection from thee reach even to this page of mine, and s.h.i.+ne on there for ever.

The bridegroom had never yet kissed his bride. He knew, or fancied, that his face was a clever one, with sharp lines and angles, expressing energetic, active effort; not a smooth, regular, "handsome" one: and as, moreover, he always laughed at himself and his own appearance, he supposed it would strike other persons in the same light. Hence it was that, although as an every-day matter he rose superior to the eyes and tongues of a whole street (not even taking the pains mentally to snap his fingers at them), he never, except in extraordinary moments of dithyrambics of friends.h.i.+p, had mustered up the courage to kiss his Leibgeber--let alone Lenette. And now he pressed her hand more closely, and in a dauntless manner turned his face to hers (for, you see, they were in the dark, and he couldn't see her); and he wished the staircase had as many steps as the cathedral tower, so that Leibgeber might be a long time coming back with the candle. Of a sudden there _danced_ (so to speak) over his lips a gliding, tremulous kiss, and--then all the flames of his affection blazed on high, the ashes blown clean away. For Lenette, innocent as a child, believed it to be the bride's duty to give this kiss. He put his arms about the frightened giver with the courage of bashfulness, and glowed upon her lips with his with all the fire wherewith love, wine and joy had endowed him; but--so strange is her s.e.x--she turned away her mouth, and let the burning lips touch her cheek. And there the modest bridegroom contented himself with one long kiss, giving expression to his rapture only in tears of unutterable sweetness which fell like glowing naphtha-drops upon Lenette's cheeks, and thence into her trembling heart. She leant her face further away; but in her beautiful wonder at his love, she drew him closer to her.

He left her before his darling friend came back. The tell-tale powder-snow which had fallen on the bridegroom--that b.u.t.terfly-dust which the very slightest touch of these white b.u.t.terflies leaves upon our fingers (and hence it was a good idea of Pitt's to put a tax on powder in 1795)--told some of the story, but the eyes of the friend and the bride, gleaming in happy tears, told him it all. The two friends looked for some time at each other with embarra.s.sed smiles, and Lenette looked at the ground. Leibgeber said, "Hem! Hem!" twice over, and at length, in his perplexity, remarked, "We've had a delightful evening!"

He took up a position behind the bridegroom's chair, to be out of sight, and laid his hand on his shoulder, and squeezed it right heartily; but the happy Siebenkaes could restrain himself no longer; he stood up, resigned the bride's hand, and the two friends, at last, after the long yearning of the long day, as if celebrating the moment of their meeting, stood silently embracing, united by angels, with Heaven all around them. His heart beating higher, the bridegroom would fain have widened and completed this circle of union, by joining his bride and his friend in one embrace; but the bride and the friend took each one side of him, each embracing only him. Then three pure heavens opened in glory in three pure hearts; and nothing was there but G.o.d, love, and happiness, and the little earthly tear which hangs on all our joy-flowers, here below.

In this their great joy and bliss, overborne by unwonted emotion, and feeling almost strange to each other, they had scarce the courage to look into each other's tearful eyes; and Leibgeber went away in silence, without a word of parting or good night.

CHAPTER II.

HOME FUN--SUNDRY FORMAL CALLS--THE NEWSPAPER ARTICLE--A LOVE QUARREL, AND A FEW HARD WORDS--ANTIPATHETIC INK ON THE WALL-- FRIENDs.h.i.+P OF THE SATIRISTS--GOVERNMENT OF KUHSCHNAPPEL.

There is many a life which is as pleasant to live as to write, and the material of this one, in particular, which I am engaged in writing, is as yet always giving out, like rosewood on the turning lathe, a truly delicious perfume, all over my workshop. Siebenkaes duly arose on the Wednesday, but not till the Sunday was it his intention to deposit in the hands of his diligent house G.o.ddess--who put a cap on to her cap-block in the morning before she put one on to herself--the silver ingots from his guardian's coffer (wrapped in blotting paper), her palisades of refuge in the siege of this life; for in fact he couldn't do so any sooner, because his guardian had gone into the country, that is to say, out of town, till the Sat.u.r.day night. "I can give you no notion, old Leibgeber," said Siebenkaes, "what a joy I feel in looking forward to how this will delight my wife. I'm sure, to give her pleasure, I could wish it were three thousand dollars. The dear child has always. .h.i.therto had to live from bonnet to bonnet, but how she _will_ consider herself a woman set up on a sudden fur life, when she finds she can carry out a hundred housekeeping projects, which, I see as well as possible, she has got in her head already. And then, old boy, with the money in our hands, we shall begin the keeping of my silver wedding directly, the moment the evening service is over--there shall be a good half-florin's worth of beer in every room in the house.

Look here! why shouldn't the dove, or call him the sparrow, of _my_ hymen play out beer on the people as the two-headed eagle in Frankfort does wine at a coronation?" Leibgeber answered, "The reason he can't is, that the prey he catches is of quite another brand. The sour wine (of the Frankfort eagle) is but the grapeskins--the feathers, the wool, and the hair which eagles always eject."

It would be of no use whatever--because hundreds of Kuhschnappelers would correct my statement in their local paper, the 'Imperial News'--if I were to tell a falsehood here (which I should like very much to do), and a.s.sert that the two advocates spent the short week of their being together with that gravity and propriety which, becoming as they are to mankind in general, do yet more particularly secure to scholars and to the learned the respect and consideration of commoner minds, to say nothing of the Kuhschnappelian intelligences.

Unfortunately I have got to sing to another tune. In the town of Kuhschnappel, as in all other towns, provincial, or metropolitan, what Leibgeber was least of all conspicuous for was a proper gravity of deportment and behaviour. Here, as elsewhere, his first proceeding was to get an introduction to the club, as a stranger artist, in order that he might ensconce himself on a sofa, and, without uttering a word or a syllable to a human being, go to sleep under the noses of the company of the "Relaxation" as the club was called. "This," he said, "was what he liked to have the opportunity of doing in all towns where there were clubs, casinos, museums, musical societies, &c.; because to sleep in any rational manner at night in one's ordinary quiet bed was a thing which _he_, at least, found he was seldom able to manage, on account of the loud battle of ideas which went on in his head, and the firework trains of processions of pictures all interweaving and whirling in and out with such a crash and a din that one could hardly see or hear one's self. Whereas when one lies down upon a club sofa, everything of this sort quiets itself down, and a universal truce of ideas establishes itself; the delicious effect of the company all talking at once--the happily chosen and appropriate words contributed to the political-and-other-conversation-picnic, of which one distinguishes nothing but an _ultima_, perhaps, or sometimes only an _antepenultima_; this alone sings you into a light slumber. But when a more serious discussion arises, and some point is argued, disputed and discussed in all its bearings in a universal clamorous shout--your barometer becomes completely stationary, and you sleep the deep sleep of a flower which is rocked, but not awakened, by the storm."

One or two towns with which I am acquainted must, I am sure, remember a stranger who always used to go to sleep in their clubs, and must also recollect the beaming expression of countenance with which he would look about him when he got up and took his hat, as much as to say, "Many thanks for this refres.h.i.+ng rest."

However, I have little to do with Leibgeber's waking or with his sleeping here in Kuhschnappel; him I may treat with some indulgence, seeing that he is soon to be off again into the wide world. But it is anything but a matter of indifference that my young hero, just established here with his wife, and whose pranks I have undertaken to give some account of, as well as of the hits he gets in return, should go and conduct himself just as if his name was Leibgeber; which had long ceased to be the case, seeing that he had given formal notice to his guardian that he had changed it to Siebenkaes.

To mention but one prank--was it not a piece of true tomfoolery that, when the procession of poor scholars, singing for alms about the streets, were just beginning their usual begging hymn under the windows of the best religious families on the opposite side of the street, and just as they had struck their key-note and were going to start off with their chorus, Leibgeber, to begin with, made his boar-hound "Saufinder"

(he couldn't live without a big dog) look out of window with a fas.h.i.+onable lady's night-cap on his head? And was it by any means a soberer proceeding on Siebenkaes's part, that he took lemons and bit into them before the eyes of the whole singing cla.s.s, so that all their teeth begun to water in an instant? The result will answer these questions for itself. The singers, having Saufinder in his night-cap in full view, could no more bring their lips together into a singing position than a man can whistle and laugh at the same instant. At the same time all their vocal apparatus being completely submerged by the opening of their glands, every note they attempted to give out had to wade painfully through water. In short, was this entire ludicrous interruption of the whole company of street singers not the precise end aimed at by both the advocates?

But Siebenkaes has only recently come back from college, and being still half-full of the freedom of university life, may be excused a liberty or two. And indeed I consider the little exuberances of university youth to be like the adipose matter, which, according to Reaumur, Bonnet, and Cuvier, is stored up by the caterpillar for the nourishment of the future b.u.t.terfly during its chrysalis state; the liberty of manhood has to be alimented by that of youth, and if a son of the muse has not room given him to develop in full freedom, he will never develop into anything but some office-holder creeping along on all fours.

Meanwhile the two friends spent the following days--not wholly in a disorderly manner--in the writing of marriage cards. With these, on which of course there was nothing but the words, "Mr. Firmian Stanislaus Siebenkaes, Poor's Advocate, and his wife, _nee_ Engelkraut; with compliments."--with these papers, and with the lady, they were both to drive about the town on the Sat.u.r.day, and Leibgeber had to get down at all the respectable houses and hand in a card, which is by no means otherwise than a laudable and befitting custom in towns where people observe the usages of good society. But the two brethren, Siebenkaes and Leibgeber, appeared to follow these usages of imperial and rural towns more from satirical motives than anything else, conforming to them pretty minutely, it is true, but clearly chiefly for the fun of the thing, each of them playing the part of first low comedian and of audience at the same time. It would be an insult to the borough of Kuhschnappel to suppose that, notwithstanding Siebenkaes's zealous readiness to join in all the processions of the little place, in and out of churches, to the town hall and the shooting-ground, it was wholly un.o.bservant of the satisfaction which it afforded him rather to make fun of some properly ordered cortege, and mar the effect of it by his unsuitable dress and absurd behaviour, than to be an ornament to it. And the genuine eagerness with which he tried to get admitted as a member of the Kuhschnappel shooting-club was ascribed rather to his love of a joke than to his being the son of a keen sportsman. As for Leibgeber, he of course has the very devil in him as regards all such matters; but he is younger than Siebenkaes, and about to set out on his travels.

So they drove about the town on the Sat.u.r.day--and where anybody in the shape of a grandee lived they stopped, left their pa.s.sengers' tickets and drove on, without any misbehaviour. Many ladies and gentlemen, it is true, got the wrong sow by the ear, and confounded the card carrier with the young husband sitting in the carriage; but the card carrier maintained his gravity, knowing that fun has its own proper time. The cards (some of which were glazed) were delivered according to the directory, firstly to the members of the government, both of the greater and lesser council--to the seventy members of the greater, and the thirteen of the lesser council; consequently the judge, the treasurer, the two finance councillors, the Heimlicher (so to say, tribune of the people) and the remaining eight ordinary members--these const.i.tuting the said lesser council--each received his card. After which the carriage drove down lower, and provided the minor government officials in the various chambers and offices with _their_ cards, such as the Offices of Woods, of the Game Commissioners, the Office of Reform (which latter was for the repression of luxury), and the Meat Tax Commission, which was presided over by a single master butcher, a very nice old man.

I am much afraid I have made a considerable slip, inasmuch as I have drawn up no tables relative to the const.i.tution, &c., of this imperial borough of Kuhschnappel (which is properly a small imperial town, though it was once a large one) to lay before the learned and statistical world. However, I can't possibly pull up here in the full gallop of my chapter, but must wait till we all get to the end of it, when I can more conveniently open my statistical warehouse.

The wheel of fortune soon began to rattle, and throw up mud; for when Leibgeber took his eighth part of a placard of Siebenkaes's marriage to the house of his guardian, the Heimlicher von Blaise, a tall, meagre, barge-pole of a woman, wrapped up in wimples of calico, the Heimlicher's wife, received it indeed, and with warmth, but warmth of the sort with which we generally administer a cudgelling; moreover, she uttered the following words (calculated to give rise to reflection)--

"My husband is the Heimlicher of this town, and what is more, he's away from home. He has nothing to do with seven cheeses;[13] he is tutor and guardian to persons belonging to the highest and n.o.blest families. You had better be off as fast as you like; you've got hold of the wrong man here."

"I quite think we have, myself," said Leibgeber.

Siebenkaes, the ward, here tried to pacify his letter or paper carrier with the woman a little, by suggesting that, like every good dog, she was but barking at the strangers before fetching and carrying for them: and when his friend, more anxious than himself, said, "You're quite sure, are you not, that you took proper legal precautions against any venomous 'objections' which the guardian might make to paying up your money, on account of your changing your name?" he a.s.sured him, that before he had established himself as Siebenkaes, he had procured his guardian's opinion and approval in writing, which he would show him when they got home.

But when they did get home, Von Blaise's letter was nowhere to be found--it wasn't in any of the boxes, nor in any of the college note-books, nor even among the wastepaper--in fact, there was nothing of the kind.

"But what a donkey I am to bother about it!" cried Siebenkaes, "what do I require it for, at all?"

Here Leibgeber, who had been glancing at the Sat.u.r.day newspapers, suddenly shoved them into his pocket, and said in a somewhat unwonted tone of voice, "Come out, old boy, and let's have a run in the fields."

When they got there, he put into his hands the 'Schaffhausen News,' the 'Swabian Mercury,' the 'Stuttgart Times,' and the 'Erlangen Gazette,'

and said, "These will enable you to form some idea of the sort of scoundrel you have for a guardian."

In each of these newspapers, the following notification appeared:--

"Whereas, Hoseas Heinrich Leibgeber, now in his 29th year, proceeded to the University of Leipzig in 1774, but since that date has not been heard of: now the said Hoseas Heinrich Leibgeber, is hereby, at the instance of his cousin, Herr Heimlicher von Blaise, edictally cited and summoned by himself or the lawful heirs of his body, within six months from the date of these presents (whereof two months are hereby const.i.tuted the first term, two months the second, and two months the third and peremptory term), to appear within the Inheritance Office of this borough, and, on satisfactory proof of ident.i.ty, to receive over the sum of 1200 Rhenish gulden deposited in the hands of the said Heimlicher von Blaise as trustee and guardian; _which failing_, that, as directed by the decree of council of 24th July 1655 (which enacts, that any person who shall be for ten years absent from the realm, shall be taken _pro mortuo_), the above-named sum of 1200 Rhenish florins may be made over and paid to his said guardian and trustee, the aforesaid Heimlicher von Blaise. Dated at Kuhschnappel in Swabia, the 20th August, 1785.

"Inheritance Office of the free Imperial Borough of Kuhschnappel."

It is unnecessary to remind the legal reader that the decree of council referred to is not in accordance with the legal usage of Bohemia, where thirty-one years is the stipulated period, but with that which formerly prevailed in France, when ten years were sufficient. And when the advocate came to the end of the notice, and stared, motionless, at its concluding lines, his soul's brother took hold of his hand, and cried, "Alas! alas! it is I who am to blame for all this, for changing names with you."

"You?--oh, you? The devil alone, and n.o.body else. But I must find that letter," he said, and they made another search all over the house, in every corner where a letter could be. After an hour of this Leibgeber hunted out one with a broken seal of the guardian, of which the thick paper, and the broad legal fold, without an envelope, told unmistakeably that it had been addressed neither by a lady, a merchant, nor courtier, but by the quill of a bird of quite a different tribe.

However, there was nothing _in_ this letter, except Siebenkaes's name in Siebenkaes's own writing--not another word, outside or inside. Quite natural; for the advocate had a bad habit of trying his hand and his pen on the backs of letters, and writing his own name and other people's as well, with flourishes about them.

The letter _had_ once been written in the inside, but, to save an incredible waste of good paper, the Heimlicher von Blaise had written his concurrence in the exchange of the names with an ink which vanishes from the paper of itself, and leaves it, _in integrum_, white as it was before it was written on.

I may, perhaps, be doing a chance service to many persons of the better cla.s.ses, who nowadays more than ever have occasion to write promissory notes and other business doc.u.ments, if I here copy out for them the receipt for this ink which vanishes after it is dry; I take it from a reliable source. Let the man of rank sc.r.a.pe off the surface from a piece of fine black cloth, such as he wears at court--grind the sc.r.a.pings finer still on a piece of marble--moisten this fine cloth dust repeatedly with water, then make his ink with this, and write his promissory note with it; he will find that, as soon as the moisture has evaporated, every letter of the promissory note has flown away with it in the form of dust; the white star will have shone out, as it were, through the blackness of the ink.

But I consider that I am doing an equal service to the holders and presenters of such promissory notes as to the drawers of them, inasmuch as, for the future, they will be careful not to be satisfied with a security of this description, till they have exposed it for some time to the sun.

Some time ago, I should have here been apt to confound this cloth ink with the _sympathetic_ ink (likewise possessing the property of turning pale and disappearing after a time), which is commonly made use of in both the preliminary and final treaties entered into between royal persons; the latter however, has a _red_ tint. A treaty of peace of three years' standing is no longer legible to a man in the prime of life, because the _red_ ink--the _encaustum_, with which formerly no one but the Roman emperors might write--is too apt to turn _pale_, unless a sufficient number of human beings (from whom, as from the cochineal insect, this dye stuff is prepared) have been made use of in its manufacture; and this (from motives of sordid parsimony) is not always the case. So that the treaty has frequently to be engraved and etched into the territory afresh with good instruments--the so-called "instruments of peace"--at the point of the bayonet.

The two friends kept the happy young wife in ignorance of this first thunderclap of the storm which was threatening her married life. On the Sunday morning they went to make a friendly call on the Heimlicher during the church service; unfortunately he was at church, however.

They postponed their entertaining visit till the afternoon; but then he himself was paying one to the chapel of the orphan asylum, the whole blooming body of the orphans, boys and girls, having previously made one to him, to enjoy the privilege of kissing his hand in his capacity of superintendent of the orphan asylum; for the inspectors.h.i.+p of that inst.i.tution was, as he modestly but truly observed, entrusted to his unworthy hands. After the evening sermon, he had to perform a service of his own in his own house, in short, he was fenced off from the two advocates by a triple row of spiritual altar rails. It was his admirable custom to permit the members of his household, not indeed to eat, but to pray at the same table with him. He thought it well to spend the Sunday as a day of labour in psalm-singing with them, because, by such devotional exercises, he best preserved them from sins of Sabbath breaking, such as working on _their own_ account, at sewing, mending, &c. And, on the whole, he thought it well to make of the Sunday in this manner a day of preparation for the coming week, just as actors in places where Sunday representations are not allowed, have their rehearsals on that day.

However, I recommend people in delicate health not to go near or smell at this sort of beautiful sky-blue plants which grow in the Church's vineyard only to be looked at, as an English garden is adorned with the pretty aconite and its sky- or Jesuit's-blue _poisonous_ flowers, which grow pyramidally to man's height.[14] People like Von Blaise, not only ascend Mount Sinai and the Golgotha, that, like goats, they may feed as they climb; but they occupy these sacred heights for the purpose of making attacks and incursions from them, just as good generals take possession of the hills, and particularly the _gallows-hills_. The Heimlicher mounts from earth to the heavens oftener than Blanchard does, and with similar motives, indeed, he can keep his soul on the wing in these elevated regions for half a day at a time, in which respect, however, he does not quite equal the King of Siam's dragon kites which the mandarins, by relieving each other at the task, manage to keep up in the sky for a couple of months at a time. He soars, not as the lark does, to make music, but as the n.o.ble falcon does, to swoop down upon something or other. If you see him praying on a Mount of Olives, be sure that he's going to build an oil mill on it; and if he weeps by a brook Kedron, depend upon it he's either going a-fis.h.i.+ng in it, or else thinking of pitching somebody into it. He prays with the object of luring to him the _ignes-fatui_ of sins; he kneels, but only as a front rank does, to deliver its fire at the foe before it; he opens his arms as with warm benevolent affection, to fold home one, a ward say, in their embrace, but only in the manner of the red-hot Moloch, that he may burn him to cinders; or he folds his arms piously together, but does it as the machines called "maidens" did, only to cut people to pieces.

At last the friends, in their anxiety, came to see that there are some people whom one can only manage to get access to when one comes as thieves do, unannounced so at 8 o'clock on the Sunday evening they walked, _sans facon_, into Von Blaise's house. Everything was still and empty; they went through an empty hall into an empty drawing-room, the half-open folding doors of which led into the household chapel. All they could see through the crevice was six chairs, an open hymn-book lying on its face on each of them, and a table with wax-cloth cover, on which were Miller's 'Heavenly Kiss of the Soul,' and Schlichthoher's 'Five-fold Dispositions for all Sundays and Feasts of the Church.' They pressed through the gap, and lo and behold! there was the Heimlicher all alone, continuing his devotions in his sleep, with his cap under his arm. His house- and church-servants had read to him till sleep had stiffened him to a petrifaction, or pillar of salt (an event which occurred every Sunday), for his eyes and his head were alike heavy with the edible, the potable, and the spiritual, refreshment of which he had partaken; or because he was like many who think it well to close their eyes during the sowing of the heavenly seed, just as people do when their heads are being powdered, or because churches and private chapels are still like those ancient temples in which the communications of the oracles were received during sleep. And as soon as they saw his eyes closed, the servants would read more and more softly, to accustom him gradually to the complete cessation of the sound; and, by and by, the devout domestics would steal gently away, leaving him in his att.i.tude of prayer till 10 o'clock; at that hour (when, moreover, Madame von Blaise generally came home from paying visits) the domestic sacristan and night watchman would rouse him from his sleep with a shrill "Amen,"

and he would put something on to his bald head again.

This evening matters fell out differently. Leibgeber rapped loudly on the table two or three times with the knuckle of his forefinger to wake the city's father out of his first sleep. When he opened his eyes and saw before him the two lean parodies and copies of one another, he took, in his beer- and sleep-heaviness of idea, a gla.s.s periwig from off a block, and put that on his head instead of his cap, which had fallen down. His ward addressed him politely, saying he wished to present to him his friend with whom he had made the exchange of names.

He likewise called him his "kind cousin and guardian." Leibgeber, more angry and less self-contained, because he was younger, and because the wrong had not been done to _him_, fired into the Heimlicher's ears, from a position closer to him by three discourteous paces, the inquiries, "Which of us two is it that your wors.h.i.+p has given out _pro mortuo_, that you may be able to cite him as a dead man? There are the ghosts of _two_ of us here both together." Blaise turned with a lofty air from Leibgeber to Siebenkaes, and said, "If you have not changed your dress, sir, as well as your name, I believe _you_ are the gentleman whom I have had the honour of talking with on several previous occasions. Or was it _you_, sir?" he said to Leibgeber, who shook like one possessed. "Well," he continued in a more pleasant tone, "I must confess to you, Mr. Siebenkaes, that I had always supposed, until now, that you were the person who left this for the university ten years ago, and whose little inheritance I then a.s.sumed the guardians.h.i.+p or curators.h.i.+p of. What probably chiefly contributed to my mistake, if it be a mistake, was, I presume, the likeness which, _praeter propter_, you certainly seem to bear to my missing ward; for in many details you undoubtedly differ from him; for instance, he had a mule beside his ear."

"The infernal mole," interrupted Leibgeber, "was obliterated by means of a toad, on my account entirely, because it was like an a.s.s's ear, and he never thought that, when he lost his ear, he should lose a relative along with it."

"That may be," said the guardian coldly, "You must prove to me, Herr Advocate, that it was to YOU I had been thinking of paying over the inheritance to-day; for your announcement that you had exchanged your family name for that of an utter stranger I considered to be probably one of the jokes for which you are so celebrated. But I learned last week that you had been proclaimed in church and married in the name of Siebenkaes, and more to the same effect. I then discussed the question with Herr Grossweibel (the President of the Chamber of Inheritance), and with my son-in-law, Herr von Knarnschilder, and they a.s.sured me I should be acting contrary to my duty and safety if I let this property out of my hands. What would you do--they very properly said--what answer would you have to make if the real owner of the name were to appear and demand another settlement of the guardians.h.i.+p accounts? It would be too bad, truly, for a man, who, besides his manifold business of other kinds, undertook this troublesome guardian work, which the law does not require him to do, purely from affection for his relative, and from the love which he bears to all his brethren of mankind[15]--it would be too bad, I say, for him to have to pay up this money a second time out of his own pocket. At the same time, Mr. Siebenkaes, as, in my capacity of a private individual, I am more disposed to admit the validity of your claim than you perhaps suppose, you being a lawyer, know quite as well as I that my individual conviction carries with it no legal weight whatever, and that I have to deal with this matter not as a man, but as a guardian--it would probably be the best course to let some third party less bia.s.sed in my favour, such as the Inheritance Office, decide the question. Let me have the satisfaction, Mr.

Siebenkaes, as soon as it may be possible" (he ended more smilingly, and laying his hand on the other's shoulder) "to see that which I hope may prove the case, namely, that you are my long-missing cousin, Leibgeber, properly established by legal proof."

"Then," said Leibgeber, grimly calm, and with all kinds of scale-pa.s.sages and fugatos coursing over the colour-piano of his face, "is the little bit of resemblance which Mr. Siebenkaes there has to--to _himself_, that is to say, to your wors.h.i.+p's ward, to be taken as proving nothing; not even as much as an equal similarity in a case of _comparatio literarum_ would prove?"

"Oh, of course," said Blasius, "something, certainly, but not everything; for there were several false Neros, and three or four sham Sebastians in Portugal; suppose, now, _you_ should be my cousin yourself, Mr. Leibgeber!"