Withered Leaves Volume I Part 6

"But my dear friend," said Kuhl, "that is quite immaterial. Old Hegel would turn in his grave for joy if you took the first that comes, because it is just as rational to take the one as the other. Count them off on your coat b.u.t.tons."

"You, like so many others, have misunderstood Hegel," replied Reising, as he a.s.sumed an ominous lecturing posture, and placed his finger against his nose.

"Come, now, no college lecture! If you positively must choose, I will help you. Just go through the days of the week and muster these seven saints."

"You are right," whispered Reising, as he pa.s.sed his hand through his hair, and pushed it up, although it stood rebelliously high enough already, without his doing so. "Do you see the eldest there with the two plaits, that is Euphrasia! She is not good looking, but coquettis.h.!.+

You must allow that those two plaits are only suitable for girls before they are confirmed; the mother was, I believe, a Russian, and now the daughter always coquettes with these two ribbon-interwoven plaits. It looks Panslavistic; I should not wish for Euphrasia at any price."

"Two plaits. You are right," replied Kuhl, laughing, "one is enough for a German professor."

"Ophelia sits beside her!" continued Reising, "she always has something languis.h.i.+ng in her glances, in her nature; she is a regular weeping willow! That is not my style! Everything emotional is abhorrent to me!"

"But if you do not take Ophelia," suggested Kuhl, "you will still not get rid of Father Polonius! We will leave Ophelia alone, let her wear the most beautiful wreath in her hair, naturally a willow branch."

"Then follows Emma, that is the little one with the pug-nose. She is not bad, but she has a soul for nothing but cooking, was.h.i.+ng, scrubbing, and falls asleep when one addresses a sensible word to her."

"That would not do for a philosopher, who requires an intelligent victim."

"Albertina, that is the biggest one, she has a slight figure, rather too tall, but she is always silent; I have not yet heard her utter three sentences; I might believe that she meditates inwardly upon weighty questions, that she possesses an internal life; but those repulsive, watery blue eyes are so utterly apathetic, I am convinced that she thinks of nothing, and is only silent, because speaking is a labour to her."

"_Si tacuisses!_ Yet for a philosopher Albertina is not to be despised; let us make a cross to her name!"

"Beside her sits Lori; she has a pair of sparkling eyes; she is the _enfant terrible_; but such an impudent imp I could not hereafter, as a professor, take into any good society. She scoffs at everything, and is not even witty. Then follow the two youngest, Gretchen and Marie; Gretchen is still like a blank sheet of paper, and Marie even wears short petticoats, and frilled garments."

"Certainly," replied Kuhl. "You cannot wait until the understanding of the one, and the skirts of the other, have grown. Indeed, it is not easy to make a choice here; but who vouches for it that your readings of character are correct! If I should advise you, I must convince myself."

"Very well; then I will introduce you to the Professor, and at the same time to his family."

"In any case my conceptions of these seven girls will then cross the threshold of knowledge with greater facility," replied Kuhl, with an allusion to Herbart's Philosophy, which drew a significant smile from his friend; "but tell me, how does this follower of Herbart come to a Samland bathing place?"

"For one thing, it is a species of pilgrimage to the city of Pure Reason, where Herbart stood so long upon Kant's rostrum, with his blue frock coat, and elegant riding-boots; secondly, he followed a friend's invitation. You, of course, know that worthy Herbartian who always goes to his lectures with a red umbrella, such as the late Lampe, Kant's servant, carried, and looks upon this red umbrella which he places upon a bench, and which gradually transforms itself by some optical delusion into a living being, as the third person, in order to form a college.

At present he is bathing; the only student, who is accustomed to listen to him, is also bathing, only the red umbrella is missing; otherwise the college would be complete in the waves of the East Sea."

"You triumph, you Hegelites," replied Kuhl, solemnly; "but the day will come, when even Hegel will be expounded to empty benches:

'When this Imperial Troy And Priam's race and Priam's royal self Shall in one common ruin be o'erthrown.'"

Kuhl was soon introduced to Professor Baute and the seven girls. The upholder of polygamy was naturally not in the least degree confused by this female Pleiades. He took advantage of the knowledge which he had already gained as to how the land lay, for very adroit man[oe]uvres by which to win the seven ladies' good-will.

He spoke of the Caucasian beauties' plaits interwoven with pearls with Euphrasia, with Ophelia of the gentle rustle of the weeping birches in the hollow way in the evening's crimson light, with Emma of the worthlessness of the Neukuhren laundresses, especially with respect to s.h.i.+rt fronts; in a short time he was even so successful as to cause Albertina to interrupt her inflexible silence by some silliness, which fully explained her taciturnity; Lori, with great tact, made an allusion to both the Fruleins Dornau, acknowledged by Doctor Kuhl with a slight bow; Gretchen to say she would learn French, and Marie catch b.u.t.terflies with him; in short, when the Doctor took leave, all seven voices were unanimous in declaring that he was a most charming man, and Doctor Reising was sadly placed in the shade by him.

The latter perceived this himself, but when he was becoming irritable about it, Kuhl consoled him with saying he should work for his friend in future, so soon as he had discovered the right girl, and established himself firmly in her favour.

Kuhl had hardly risen from table when Blanden, with his friend von Wegen, in a beaming, rosy, wine-flushed mood, went towards him and invited him to come to his Ordensburg in three days' time. Kuhl accepted, and Blanden promised then to recount his adventures in Warnicken, for which place he should set out that night on foot.

Thereupon the Herculean Doctor refreshed himself with a second gla.s.s of grog, sprang boldly over several tables that stood in his way, and had soon plunged into the salt waves, which he clove with a powerful arm, while Reising dejectedly bore the costs of the entertainment with the seven possible brides, and, left alone in his glory, played a by no means triumphant part.

CHAPTER V.

THE AMBER MERCHANT.

Blanden had taken up his pilgrim's staff, when the sun was already bending to its decline, and the heat of the day was over; but his own feelings were quite fresh as dawn. Those dreams of first love, which breathed such a wondrous softness over life, had been revived in him once more; he buried himself completely in those reveries.

His thoughts went back to the time when, as a scholar in the upper school, he had been in love with the daughter of a Burgomaster in some country town. He reverted to the emotions which he then felt, as the rattling post-chaise approached the little town at an early morning hour, first rolling over the pavement between the barns of the suburb, then through the empty, sleeping streets, by the lifeless houses, part closed shutters, until he reached the market-place, where stood the house belonging to the town's functionary, which, with its faded pink colouring, blushed more joyously in the morning sunlight.

There, too, an invisible hand pushed the curtain aside, and a little visible, curly head, around one unfinished side of which curl-papers still rustled, looked out, smiling so pleasantly, and nodded its greeting--and the postillion blew a stirring tune, as he stopped before the Black Eagle of the Post-house.

How happy, how blissful was the schoolboy's heart! That moment in which the angel's head nodded to him out of its concealment, caused him greater ecstacies than any happiness of a later extravagant love, and never had the heart's throbs of expectant longing been more vivid than in the post-chaise at that time!

Now it seemed to him as if he were capable of similar emotions, as if, after internal regeneration, the youth's singleness of heart were returning again for a short period.

The longing for his campanula lent wings to his steps, he saw her picture vividly before him; the flying shadows of the clouds did not bear it away with them; the Samland "Palven"[1] which extended on the left side of the road, that dead heath with its solitary bushes, that chilling sterility and barrenness of nature did not subdue his spirits, and the resounding thunder of the surf, sometimes near, sometimes more distant, stirred the wanderer's heart and steps to move at a merry pace.

Evening's crimson light sparkled in the valley's ravines and brooks, which flow on towards the sea; upon the tops of the oaks and beeches, above the steep, jagged cliffs; in the luxuriant vallies; upon the bare heights and above the glimpses of the swelling ocean which the eye discovers either between groups of trees towering up on nigh, or away over the sand-hills.

This melancholy light, which encourages the mind's return to the past, to half-forgotten scenes, did not harmonise with the wanderer's mood; a fresh, sparkling, dewy morning, with a cool breeze from the coast of the enterprise-loving Scandinavians, or the islands of the old Vikings, would have satisfied it better.

Blanden wished to break with his past, even drive away all the thoughts that reminded him of it; his Eva, whom he had found by the woodland stream, should be to him as the first woman of creation, whom he meets, to whom yields his undesecrated feelings.

This love should be to him as a draught from a fresh spring, refres.h.i.+ng, cooling, and at the same time metamorphosing him as if by mysterious magic.

Was it, then, love? It was in the first instance only a brief meeting; but it dropped the seed of love into his heart, and it was his will to nourish and cultivate that seed.

As he walked along, lost in such thoughts, the rays of the evening sun disappeared suddenly beneath heavy clouds, through which at first it peeped like a flaming triumphal arch, until the increasing shades of night enveloped the extinguished glow.

At the same time a storm arose, which burst in the wooded defiles with furious rapidity, so that the cracking of broken boughs under foot denoted his path, while the thunder of the sea became louder and more portentous, and the thousand crests of waves rose higher towards the heavy, lowering clouds.

Soon the thunder of the sky amalgamated with the thunder of the billows; lightning glided down the sharp, rugged hills along the coast, so that their singular profiles gleamed like demons' faces. The lonely "Palven" bushes s.h.i.+vered in the tempest, and the whole heath seemed to be in ghost-like motion.

Blanden felt himself refreshed by this magnificent spectacle of Nature; he thought of the proud grandeur and immutability of the universe.

Just so did the storm sweep over the verdure of the heath, waving to and fro, just so did the sea cast its foaming surf against the cliffs when the ancient Prussians still lived here, who in the grove of Romove, sacrificed to their G.o.d Perkunos; when the knights of orders, their cloaks above their armour, and the black cross upon their white mantles, rode upon their steeds along the coast, when the Holy Virgin and the old heathen deity stood opposed in irreconcilable conflict.

Then the din of battle raged above the Baltic sh.o.r.e, as to-day the din of the unfettered elements; yet, how everything had been changed!

What would the heathens say to the towns abounding with churches, which had driven out their sacred groves; what the knights of the orders to the disciplined regiments whose close columns belch forth fire, while flying batteries hasten to the heights to hurl death forth to a distance formerly undreamed of? Yet one visible, red thread never lost, extends through all changes of time. That which energetic and highly-gifted Masters of Orders had attempted for the cultivation of the land, when they made the wide plains arable, protected the marshes against the onslaught of the tide by means of d.y.k.es, appointed a secure bed for the streams, was a heritage to which the Hohenzollern princes succeeded, and made fruitful unto the present day.

The sudden breaking of the tempest even drew Blanden's mind momentarily from the immediate emotions which had possession of it, but as the clouds, too, opened their sluices, and thunder followed closely upon the lightning's footsteps as it leaped dazzlingly across the path, then the open air became intolerable, and the wanderer turned into the first tavern.

It was a fisherman's ale-house, whose exterior promised but little hospitable reception. Yet several carts stood in a half-open shed, and numerous baskets were piled up, denoting that there was no lack here of commercial traffic.

Despite the weather, the little windows in the large parlour stood open, and, in the pauses which the thunder made, a confused noise was emitted of men's quarrelling voices, between them the high pitched tones of a woman, who evidently sought to establish quiet in this uproar.