Hammer and Anvil Part 60

How gladly would I have followed these enticing examples, and spoken my mind also to the new superintendent. Probably in my whole life I have never exercised such constraint over myself as in those days, when I saw this miserable creature occupying the place which that n.o.ble man had left; and in all likelihood I should not have succeeded, and should have plunged myself into far worse misfortune, had not a voice perpetually sounded in my ear which was more potent with me than the impulse of my heart. And this voice said: "You have already endured much, poor George; bear this also, though it be the hardest of all, and if you cannot control yourself, call to mind him who loved you as his own son."

I sat down to my book again and turned the leaves; but this night I could not fix my attention on even the simplest things. Old well-known algebraic formulas wore a quite strange appearance, and seemed to form themselves into the words: If he loved me as his son, and she was the best beloved of his children, should she and I not also love each other?

"Are you going to keep your light burning all night?" called the voice of the old watchman from below. "It is now one o'clock, and I am to wake you at five, and a nice job I will have of it!"

CHAPTER II.

In another shop of our establishment several men had been wounded, more or less dangerously, by the slipping of a belt. In our shop we had heard the news of the accident just before dinner, and the men were standing about the yard inquiring the particulars and talking it over.

I had joined one of the groups, and was listening attentively, when I saw a little man pus.h.i.+ng through the crowd, with his hat in his hand, and whose great bald skull emerging here and there between these dark figures resembled the full moon sailing through black clouds. This skull could only belong to one man. I hastened in pursuit, and overtook it by the gate at the moment when it was covered with a felt hat, which had not improved in appearance since I last saw it. I followed the felt hat a few steps in the street, and then with a stride placed myself beside its wearer.

"Permit me, doctor," I said.

Doctor Snellius brought his round spectacles to bear on me, and stared at me with a look of the profoundest astonishment.

"It is no hallucination, doctor," I said; "this is really myself."

"George, mammoth, man, how come you here, and in this questionable shape?" cried the doctor, holding out both his hands.

"Hush, doctor," I said, "I am here incognito, and must deny myself the pleasure of embracing you."

"Don't tell me you have run away, and that too after I expressly forbade you," said the doctor, in a low, anxious tone.

I set his mind at rest on this point.

"Heaven be thanked!" he said; "not forgetting also to thank me, or rather her. How did you find her?"

"I have not yet seen her, doctor."

"And you have been here two weeks? Shameful! incredible! Where is my lantern, that I may dash it to pieces, for now I give up forever the hope of finding a man. Go! I will never see you again."

"When shall I come to see you, doctor?"

"Whenever you will, or can: shall we say this evening? eh? A gla.s.s of grog in the old fas.h.i.+on, half-and-half, eh?"

And over a gla.s.s of grog, half-and-half in the old fas.h.i.+on. Doctor Snellius and I faced each other that very evening, in his more roomy lodging, and talked of by-gone times, of what we had gone through together, as two old friends talk who meet for the first time after long separation.

The doctor gave me a drastic description of his great scene with Major D., and how Herr von Krossow had come in, and how he had said that it was true that three made a college, but for the whole world he would not make a college with those two, and that he begged to take leave of them at once and forever. I answered, laughing, that I now could understand the vindictiveness with which I was persecuted by Herr von Krossow, whom I had never offended.

"You are mistaken, my dear fellow," said the doctor. "The reptile had other and better reasons for turning his fangs upon you. I can tell you now that there is no danger of your wringing the miscreant's neck. So now listen; but mix yourself a gla.s.s first--you will not get it down without a good swig. This it was: he had once before paid his court to her--to Paula von Zehren; and as he received one mitten, he thought he might venture to apply for the other. For this purpose he selected as the fittest time those days of grief and distraction immediately after her father's death, nor did he forget to remind her that the new superintendent was his good friend, and the president his cousin, and that through these two he held the fortunes of Paula and her family, so to speak, in his hands; for her mother's claim to a pension was, as she knew herself, open to dispute; but the thing could be managed; and although he had no property of his own, he had good connections, and by no means bad prospects, especially under the new king, who was in truth an anointed of the Lord. What do you think of that?" crowed Doctor Snellius, springing up and performing a grotesque dance through the room.

The doctor's statement filled me with astonishment and indignation. I had had no idea that the sanctimonious deacon had dared to raise his hypocritical eyes to Paula; and this suggested the thought that I might probably have been equally dim of sight in another quarter. I sank into a gloomy silence; but the doctor must have read my thoughts in my face through his great round spectacles.

"You are thinking that it cost her no great effort to dismiss the priest when her heart was already in the possession of the knight? I know we often spoke of it and made each other uneasy, but it was all nonsense, I a.s.sure you, all nonsense. Paula no more thinks of marrying the young Adonis than an old satyr like me."

The doctor gave me a side-glance at these words, and smiled sardonically as I involuntarily murmured a heart-felt "Thank heaven!"

"Don't rejoice too soon, though," he went on, and his smile grew ever more diabolic; "we must not praise the day before the evening, and you know my doctrine, that with men anything is possible. Arthur is really a most fascinating youth, and now he has worked himself into the diplomatic career, he may well die our Minister to London. It is the same trade, and that they understand--ah! don't they understand it?

especially the old man, who really is a genius in the n.o.ble art. From his tailor, whom he cajoles until the man gives him credit again, up to the king, whom he without hesitation pet.i.tions for a subsidy that will enable him to pay his debts and push his Arthur in his new career, no man is safe from him--no man. I warn you b.u.t.ton up your pockets when you meet the gentleman on the street."

"He lives here, then?"

"Of course, he lives here. The soil here is not so soon exhausted, and a great man like the Herr Steuerrath needs a wide field everywhere. Oh these brows, these brows of bra.s.s!"

"Why do we talk so much of such a crew?" I asked. "Rather tell me something about _her_. How does she live? How does she get on with her painting? Has she made great progress? And has she found sale for her pictures?"

"Made progress? Find sale?" cried the doctor. "Pretty questions, indeed! I tell you she is in a fair way to make her fortune. They fairly fight over her pictures."

"Doctor," I said, "I do not think this is a proper subject for jesting."

The doctor, who had spoken in his shrillest tones, tuned down his voice a couple of octaves by an energetic "ahem!" and said:

"You are right; but it is no jest--merely a lie. As I see, however, that I have not made any progress in the art of lying, it is probably best for me to tell you, or rather show you, the truth. Come with me."

He lighted two candles that stood under the looking-gla.s.s, and led me into an adjoining room, which he had first to unlock.

"I have put them here," he said, pointing to the wall, which was hung with large and small pictures, "because they are not safe from the boys anywhere else. Now what do you think of them?"

Taking the candles from the doctor, and letting the light fall upon the pictures, I saw at once that they were all by Paula's hand. I had too long watched her studies, and too deeply entered into her way of seeing and of reproducing what she saw, to be liable to any error.

There were three or four heads, all idealized, the originals of which I fancied that I recognized; two or three genre-pieces--scenes from the prison, which I had already seen in the first draught; and finally a landscape--a great reach of coast with stormy sea--the sketch of which I remembered perfectly. At this time I understood but little of painting, and least of all did I know how to justify my opinion when formed. Now I can say that I really perceived a decisive improvement in these pictures--an improvement both in the technical execution and in the freer and broader style of treatment: especially did the heads strike me as exhibiting remarkable power, and I enthusiastically expressed my opinion to the doctor in the best words I could find.

"Yes," said he, leaning his head first on one side and then on the other, and contemplating the pictures with melancholy pride, "you are right; perfectly right. She is a genius; but of what use is genius when it has no name? The world is stupid, my friend; incredibly stupid: it can discover anything grand or beautiful soon enough when the one or two enlightened heads that a century produces have given their testimony to it, one after the other; then the thing is an article of faith that the boys recite from their benches and the sparrows chatter upon the roofs. But when the gentlemen have to pa.s.s judgment upon the work of an author whose name they have never before heard, or the picture of an artist who comes before them for the first time, then they are at the end of their lesson and do not know what to think. How long would these pictures have travelled from one exhibition to another, or hung in the dealers' shops, if I had allowed them to hang there? So they have all travelled into my possession, and not to America, England, and Russia, as the good Paula believes. But do not look so seriously at me. My part of Maecenas did not last long; her last picture at the Artists' Exposition--you know it, and are in it yourself--Richard the Lion-heart sick in his tent, visited by an Arab physician: well, that picture, as I hear, has been bought by the commerzienrath--your commerzienrath--strange to say, for the man knows just as much about paintings as I do about making money, and Paula, by my advice, fixed its price at a considerable sum. You see I am now superfluous. _Sic tansit gloria!_"

The doctor sighed deeply, and then preceded me with the two candles in his hands, casting flickering lights upon his broad skull.

We took our seats again behind the gla.s.ses of grog. The doctor seemed disposed to drown the deep melancholy that had possessed him by doubting the strength of his potations, while I sat in deep meditation.

The fact that the commerzienrath had bought Paula's picture set me to pondering. I knew of old how absolutely indifferent the man was to everything connected with art, and that the relations.h.i.+p had in any way moved him to the purchase was the unlikeliest thing in the world. It was therefore no very chimerical conclusion that the daughter had more to do in the affair than the father; and I confess that as I reckoned up the probabilities of this supposition the blood rushed to my cheeks.

In fact the hypothesis stood or fell on a certain point, which was yet uncertain. I drew a long breath, took a deep draught from my gla.s.s, and asked:

"Has King Richard still any likeness----"

"To you, my most esteemed friend; to you? Do not vex yourself with any doubts on that score," answered Doctor Snellius with a promptness that seemed to indicate that our thoughts had met in the same point. "The only fault I have to find with it is just this, that Paula seems to have fancied that she had only to take you as you were, and there was a king ready made. Have the goodness not to take credit to yourself for what is merely her poverty of invention."

"I think I have not yet given you any reason to hold me exceptionally vain," I said.

"No; heaven knows you have not; you deserve rather to descend to posterity in the character of St. Simon Stylites than as Richard C[oe]ur de Lion."

"You say that as bitterly as if you were seriously dissatisfied with me."

"And so I am, my good sir," cried the doctor. "What kind of a crochet is it to live by the labor of your hands, when you can live by your head? Do you know, sir, that our departed friend said to me, not long before his death, that you had the most remarkable talent for mathematics he had ever known, and that you could at any time take charge of the highest cla.s.s in a public school? Do you suppose that your head grows acuter just in proportion as your hands grow coa.r.s.er?

You will say, like the tailor to Talleyrand, _il faut vivre_; and a journeyman blacksmith will make a living easier than a teacher of mathematics. Well, have you no friends that could help you? Why did you not come to me at once? Why did you leave it for chance to decide whether we should meet or not?"

I endeavored to calm his irritation, showing him that I had taken my present course, not from necessity but conviction; but he would not yield the point.