The Serapion Brethren Volume Ii Part 10

"Well," said Benjie, angrily, "and what then?"

"Out with it," the Goldsmith said, "and try the file on the edge of it."

The Baron did so, with an amount of skill which told of much previous practice; and the more ducats he filed at--for he tried a good many, one after another--the fresher the edges of them came out.

Up to this point Mana.s.seh had been looking on in silence at what was transpiring; but here he jumped up, with eyes sparkling wildly, and dashed at his nephew, crying, in a hollow, terrible voice--

"G.o.d of my Fathers! what do I see? Give me that file!--here with it instantly! It is the piece of magic-work for which I sold my soul more than three hundred years ago. G.o.d of my Fathers!--hand it over to me!"

And he made at his nephew to take it from him; but Benjie pushed him back, crying, "Go to the Deuce, you old idiot! It was I who found the file, not you!"

To which Mana.s.seh responded, in fury: "Viper! Worm-eaten fruit of my race!--Here with that file! All the Demons of h.e.l.l be upon you, accursed thief!"

Mana.s.seh clutched hold of the Baron, with a torrent of Hebrew curses, and foaming and gnas.h.i.+ng his teeth, he exerted all the strength at his command to wrest the file from him. But Benjie fought for it as a lioness does for her cubs, till at length Mana.s.seh was worn out; on which his nephew seized him by the shoulders and threw him out of the door, with such force that all his limbs cracked again. Then, coming back like a flash of lightning, he shoved a small table into a corner, and sitting down there, opposite to the Clerk of the Privy Chancery, took a handful of ducats from his pocket, and set to work to file away at them as hard as he could.

"Now," said the Goldsmith, "we have seen the last of that terrible Mana.s.seh. He is off our hands, for good and all. People say he is a second Ahasuerus, and has been going spooking about since the year 1572. That was the year in which he was put to death for diabolical practices and sorcery, under the name of Lippolt, the Jew-coiner. But the Devil saved his body from death at the price of his immortal soul.

Many folk who understand those things say they have seen him in Berlin in a good many forms; so that, if all tales are true, there are a good number of Lippolts at the present time about. However, I, who have a certain amount of experience in those mysterious matters, can a.s.sure you that I have given him his quietus."

It would weary you very needlessly, dear reader, were I to waste words in telling you what you know quite well; namely, that Edmund Lehsen chose the ivory casket, inscribed--

"Who chooseth me doth gain his dreamed-of bliss,"

and found in it a beautiful portrait of Albertine, with the lines--

"Yes--thou hast it--read thy chance In thy darling's loving glance.

What has past returns no more-- Earthly fate so willeth this.

All the joy which lies _before_ Gather from thy sweetheart's kiss."

And Edmund, like Ba.s.sanio, followed the counsel of the last line, and pressed his blus.h.i.+ng sweetheart to his breast, and kissed her glowing lips; whilst the Commissionsrath greatly rejoiced, and was full of happiness over this happy _denouement_ of this most involved love-affair.

Meanwhile the Baron had been filing at ducats quite as eagerly and absorbedly as the Clerk of the Privy Chancery had been reading, neither of them taking the slightest notice of what had been going on, till the Commissionsrath announced, in a loud voice, that Edmund Lehsen had chosen the casket containing Albertine's portrait, and was, consequently, to be her husband. Tussmann seemed to be quite delighted to hear it, and expressed his satisfaction in his usual manner, by rubbing his hands, jumping a little way up and down for a moment or two, and giving a delicate little laugh. The Baron seemed to feel no further interest about the matter; but he embraced the Commissionsrath; said he was a real "gentleman" and had made him most utterly happy by his present of the file, and told him that he could always count upon him, in all circ.u.mstances. With which he took his departure.

Tussmann, too, thanked him, with tears of the most heartfelt emotion, for making him the happiest of men by this most rare and wonderful of all rare and wonderful books; and, after the most profuse expenditure of politeness to Albertine, Edmund, and the old Goldsmith, he followed the Baron as quickly as ever he could.

Benjie ceased to torture the world of letters with literary abortions, as he had formerly done, preferring to employ his time in filing ducats; and Tussmann no longer made the booksellers' lives a burden to them by pestering them to hunt out old forgotten books for him.

But when a few weeks of rapture and happiness had pa.s.sed, a great and bitter sorrow took possession of the Commissionsrath's house. For the Goldsmith urged, in the strongest terms, upon Edmund that for his own sake, and for the sake of his art, he was bound to keep his solemn promise and go to Italy.

Edmund, notwithstanding the dreadful parting from Albertine, felt the strongest possible impulse urging him towards the country of the arts; and, although Albertine shed the bitterest tears, she could not help thinking how very nice it would be to be able to take out letters from her lover at Rome, and read them out--or extracts from them--at aesthetic teas of an afternoon.

Edmund has been in Rome now more than a year, and people do say that his correspondence with Albertine languishes, and that the letters are becoming rarer and colder. Who knows whether or not anything will ever come, ultimately, of the engagement between those two people? Certainly Albertine won't be long "in the market" in any case; she is so pretty, and so well off. Just at present, there is young Mr. Gloria (just going to be called to the bar), a very nice young gentleman indeed, with a slim and tightly-girded waist, a couple of waistcoats on at once, and a cravat tied in the English style; and he danced all last season with Albertine, and is to be seen now going continually with her to the Thiergarten, whilst the Commissionsrath trots very complacently after them, looking like a satisfied father. Moreover, Mr. Gloria has pa.s.sed his second examination at the Supreme Court with flying colours.

"So perhaps he and Albertine may make a match of it, should he get a fairly good appointment. There's no telling. Let us see what happens."

"You have certainly written a wonderfully crack-brained thing in that,"

Ottmar said, when Lothair had finished. "This 'Tale containing improbable incidents,' as you have called it, appears to me to be a kind of mosaic, composed of all kinds of stones put together at random, which dazzles and confuses one's eyes so that they can't take firm hold of any definite figure."

"As far as I am concerned," Theodore said, "I must confess that I think a great deal of it is exceedingly delightful, and that it might very likely have been a very superior production, if Lothair hadn't, most imprudently, gone and read Hafft.i.tz. The consequence of this was that those two pract.i.tioners of the black art, the Goldsmith and the Jew-coiner, had to be brought into the story somehow, w.i.l.l.y-nilly; and thus those two unfortunate revenants make their appearance as heterogeneous elements, working, with their sorceries, in an unnaturally constrained manner among the incidents of the tale. It is well your story hasn't been printed, or you would have been hauled over the coals by the critics."

"Wouldn't it do to light up the pages of a Berlin Almanack?" the Author asked, with one of his ironical smiles. "Of course I should still more localize the localities, and add a few names of celebrities, and so gain a little applause from the literary-aesthetic, if from n.o.body else.[2]

[Footnote 2: "This speech of Lothair's shows what the Author had in his mind at the time. The tale _did_ appear in the Berlin Almanack of 1820, with additional localities, and names of celebrities in the Art-World, but the publishers told him he ought to try to keep within the bounds of 'probability,' in future."--(Note of Editor of Collected Works.)]

"However, all the same, my dear friends, did you not laugh heartily enough at times, as I was reading it? and ought that not to deprive your criticism of some of its severity? If you, Ottmar, say my tale is a mosaic, you might admit that it has something of a Kaleidoscope character, in spite of its crackiness, and that its matters, though most advent.i.tiously shaken together, do ultimately form more or less interesting combinations. At all events, you surely admit that there are one or two good characters in my story, and at the head of them, the love-stricken Baron Benjie, that worthy scion of the Jew-coiner race of Lippolts; however, we've had far too much of my piece of patchwork, which was only intended to amuse you for a moment as a _bizarre_ jest. What I would have you notice is that I have been faithful to my principle of welding on the Legendary to the every-day life of the present day."

"And," said Theodore, "I am a great adherent of that principle. It used to be supposed to be necessary to localize everything of the legendary kind in the remote East, taking Scheherezade as the model in so doing; and, as soon as we touched upon the manners, the customs, the ways of life of the East, we got into a world which was apparently hovering, adrift, all in a sort of unreality, anchorless, before our eyes, on the point of floating away and disappearing. This is why those tales so often strike coldly on us, and have no power to kindle the inner spirit--the fancy. What I think, and mean, is, that the foot of the heavenly ladder, which we have got to mount in order to reach the higher regions, has to be fixed firmly in every-day life, so that everybody may be able to climb up it along with us. When people then find that they have got climbed up higher and higher into a marvellous, magical world, they will feel that that realm, too, belongs to their ordinary, every-day life, and is, merely, the wonderful and most glorious part thereof. For them it is the beautiful flower-garden beyond the city-wall into which they can go, and in which they can wander and enjoy themselves, if they have but made up their minds to quit the gloomy walls of the city, for a time."

"Don't forget, though, Theodore, my friend," said Ottmar, "that there are quant.i.ties of people who won't go up the ladder at all, because it isn't 'proper' or 'becoming.' And many turn giddy by the time they get to the third rung of it. Many never see the ladder at all, though it is facing them in the broad, daily path of their lives, and they pa.s.s by it every day. As regards the tales of the 'Thousand and One Nights,' it is remarkable enough that most of those who have tried to imitate them have overlooked that which is just what gives them life and reality-- exactly what Lothair's principle is. All the cobblers, tailors, dervishes, merchants, and so forth, who appear as the characters in those tales, are people who are to be met with every day in the streets. And--inasmuch as life is independent of times and manners, but is always the same affair--in its essential conditions (and always must be so), it follows that we feel that all those folks--upon whom, in the middle of their everyday lives, such extraordinary and magical adventures came, and such spells wound themselves--are really the sort of people who are actually walking about amongst us. Such is the marvellous, mighty power of description, characterization, and representation in that immortal book."

As the evening was fast growing colder, it was thought advisable--on account of Theodore's having but half recovered from his late illness--that the friends should go to the great summer-house, and indulge in a cup of refres.h.i.+ng tea, in place of anything more exciting.

And when the urn was on the table, singing its usual little domestic tune, Ottmar said--

"I don't think I could have a better opportunity for reading you a tale which I wrote a long while ago, and which happens to begin with tea-drinking. I mention, to begin with, that it is in Cyprian's style."

Ottmar read--

THE UNCANNY GUEST.

A storm was raging through the heavens, announcing the coming of winter, whirling black clouds on its wings, which dashed down hissing, rattling squall-showers of rain and hail.

"n.o.body will come to-night," said Madame von G. to her daughter Angelica, as the clock struck seven. "They would never venture out in such weather. If your father were but home!"

Almost as she was speaking, in came Captain Moritz von E. (a cavalry officer), followed by a young Barrister, whose brilliant and inexhaustible fund of humour and wit was the life and soul of the circle which was accustomed to a.s.semble every Thursday evening in Colonel von G.'s house. So that, as Angelica said, there was little cause to be sorry that the less intimate members of the circle were away, seeing that the more welcome ones had come.

It felt very chilly in the drawing-room. The lady of the house had had a fire lighted, and the tea-table brought.

"I am sure," she said, "that you two gentlemen, who have been so courageous as to come to see us tonight through such a storm, can never be content with our wretched tea. Mademoiselle Marguerite shall make you a brew of that good, northern beverage which can keep any sort of weather out." Marguerite--a young French lady, who was "companion" to Angelica, for the sake of her language, and other lady-like accomplishments, but who was only about her own age, or barely more--came, and performed the duty thus entrusted to her. So the punch steamed, while the fire sparkled and blazed; and the company sate down round the little tea-table.

A s.h.i.+ver suddenly pa.s.sed through them--through each and all of them; and they felt chilled. Though they had been talking merrily before they sat down, there fell now upon them a momentary silence, during which the strange voices which the storm had called into life in the chimney whistled and howled with marvellous distinctness.

"There can be no doubt," said Dagobert (the young barrister), "that the four ingredients, Autumn, a stormy Wind, a good fire, and a jorum of punch, have, when taken together, a strange power of causing people to experience a curious sense of awesomeness."

"A very pleasant one, though," said Angelica. "At all events, I do not know a more delightful sensation than the sort of strange s.h.i.+veriness which goes through one when one feels--heaven knows how, or why--as if one were suddenly casting a glance, with one's eyes open, into some strange, mystic dream-world."

"Exactly," said Dagobert; "that delicious s.h.i.+veriness was exactly what came over all of us just now; and the glance into the dream-world, which we were involuntarily making at that moment, made us all silent.

It is well for us that we have got it over, and that we have come back so quickly from the dream-world to this charming reality, which provides us with this grand liquid." He rose, and, bowing politely to Madame von G., emptied the gla.s.s before him.

"But," Moritz said, "if you felt all the deliciousness of that species of shudder, and of the dreamy condition accompanying it (as Miss Angelica and I did), why shouldn't you be glad to prolong it?"

"Let me say, my dear friend," Dagobert answered, "that the kind of dreaminess which we have to do with in this instance is not that in which the mind, or spirit, goes losing and sinking itself in all kinds of vague labyrinths of complexity of wondrous, calm enjoyment. The storm-wind, the blazing fire, and the punch are only the predisposing causes of the onsetting of that incomprehensible, mysterious condition--deeply grounded in our human organism--which our minds strive, in vain, to fight against, and which we ought to take great care not to allow ourselves to yield to over much. What I mean is, the fear of the supernatural. We all know that the uncanny race of ghosts, the haunters, choose the night (and particularly in stormy weather), to arise from their darksome dwellings, and set forth upon their mysterious wanderings. So that we are right in expecting some of those fearsome visitants just at a time like this."

"You do not mean what you say, of course," Madame von G. answered; "and I need not tell you that the sort of superst.i.tious fear which we so often, in a childish way, feel, is not in any degree inherent in our organization as human beings. I am certain that it is chiefly traceable to the foolish stories of ghosts, and so forth, which servants tell us while we are children."