Hesperus or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days Volume I Part 21

"The general talk here is that you are dead. But I express my mind against people, that, as you let so little be heard from you, and have forgotten all the world, you must, for that very reason, be still alive. Do confirm my proposition! We all have a fond and foolish longing for you, and I should like to beg you to come on the twenty-first (if the wedding at the senior Parson's hinders you no more than it does my Flamin). We have nothing to offer you here, but the birthday of our Clotilda. O good my Lord, and my beloved Lords.h.i.+p, how has it been possible for you hitherto to remain so long mute and invisible? A true friend, who has nothing at all of the ladies of your court about her, not even their fickleness, wishes heartily to have you before her eyes and beside her ears,--and that lady is myself,--and when I see you come, I shall certainly weep for joy, let me laugh or pout the while as I will.

"E."

When did he receive this letter, so full of soul? And what answer did his make to it?--

It was on the loveliest evening, which announced the coming of the loveliest Sunday morning and of the magic after-summer,--he looked at the evening red under which lay Maienthal's mountains, and his heart beat heavily within him,--he looked toward the dawning red of the full moon which kindled over St. Luna, and his yearning thitherward became inexpressible,--he thought of Clotilda, whose birthday fell upon to-morrow,--and so, very naturally, as to-day closed, he went--to bed.

19. DOG--POST-DAY.

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 c.o.c.k'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 n.o.body 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 s.m.u.tch 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 Sat.u.r.day, 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 gla.s.ses, fall into millions,--ye who, so changeable in all purposes, so unchangeable in the n.o.blest 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed forever by before Horion; she smiled upon him in blissful lovingness while thus pa.s.sing, but she pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed away, then had all the hills sunk.--Then the reflections of the flowers, flowing together, gilded over the undulating heavens.--Then were seen _white_ b.u.t.terflies, _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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 part.i.tion, 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 paris.h.i.+oners 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 add 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 ma.n.u.script 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 G.o.d. But so soon as the music had drawn its last breath, then the harmonious bird-of-pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sing with his bandboxes through a village just as parson and schoolmaster and pedagogic frog-sp.a.w.n 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.

POOR LITTLE EXTRA-SYLLABLE ON 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 pa.s.sing, I purpose to express myself; but thus much let me still be allowed to a.s.sert, 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 sc.r.a.ping 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 Abbe 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 c.r.a.pe-clad fields, and amidst the mute funeral escort of birds, and at the rising of the first cloud would pa.s.s 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 Loschenkohl'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 n.o.ble metals and n.o.ble birth, never n.o.ble deeds, to be cards of admission, and who, highly valuing the people of the Parsonage as friends of his Lords.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d-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 G.o.d-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 G.o.dchild, how often she would s.n.a.t.c.h 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 n.o.ble 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 flouris.h.i.+ng, of that harmonious phraseology, that crackling of fire-works produced by the mutual contact of sounding pa.s.sages, 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.