Hesperus or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days Volume I Part 23

"Are we, then, all not happy?--Do not say so!--Ah, man, who, even from childhood up, has been calling after an unknown soul that grew up in _one_ heart with his own,--that entered into all the dreams of his years, and therein gleamed from afar, and, after his waking, started his tears,--that in spring sent him nightingales, that he might think of her and long for her,--that in every tender hour visited his soul, with so much virtue, so much love, that he would so gladly have offered in his heart, as in a sacrificial chalice, all his blood to the beloved,--but who, alas! never, appeared, and only sent her image in every fair form, but forever kept back her heart;--oh, if at last, oh, if suddenly, oh, if blissfully, her heart beats against his heart, and the two souls embrace each other forever, he can no longer say it, but we can: 'This man, indeed, is happy, and is loved.' ...

"Good Emanuel, thou forgivest me the pain of the fear that I may never be the happy man,--no, never!--Oh, even for this earth, broken up into graves, I should be perhaps too happy, I should be permitted to enjoy, perhaps, too great an Eden for so young a life, and one justified by such slight merits, if my too soft soul, which even now gives way under three happy minutes, which loves every human being, and hangs with the arms of a child on the heart of the whole creation,--oh, which is already made too blissful by this mere dream of love, and is overpowered by this description!--no, it were too blessed, such a soul, long since dissolved by melancholy and humanity, if it should once, after such a long, deathly yearning, at last, at last--O Emanuel, I tremble again for joy, and yet it can never, never be!--if it should find all its wishes, its whole heaven, so much love, acc.u.mulated in one dear, dear soul; if in the presence of great Nature, and before the face of Virtue, and before G.o.d himself, who gave love to her and to me, I could dare to say, weeping, to this only, this sweet, this beloved--O G.o.d, how shall I name her? this fore-loved one, whom in my frenzy I would now name: 'At last my heart has thee, thou good soul! to-day G.o.d gives us to each other, and we remain together through all eternity!'

No, I would not say it; I should for ecstasy be dumb and die!

"--Lo! it seemed to me just now as if a form pa.s.sed across my chamber, and called, 'Victor!' I looked round, and beheld my empty room, and the Sunday clothes which I had taken off, and now, for the first time, I remembered that I was unhappy and not loved.

"But thou, irreplaceable friend, misunderstand me not. I swear to thee that I will give thee these sheets unaltered, though to-morrow, when the whirlpools of to-night flow stiller and smoother, I should find all sorts of alterations necessary. Thy foolish friend remains, nevertheless, thy friend forever.

"S. V. H."

20. DOG-POST-DAY.

Letter from Emanuel.--Flamin's Fruit-Pieces on the Shoulders.--Walk to St. Luna.

"Poor Sebastian!" said I, as I opened to-day's letter-bag, "before I get it open, I know already beforehand, that, after such a night, thou must have shut thyself up all day, to turn thy pale, exhausted face toward the garden of sorrow, that thou to-day lovest these poison-drops better than the vulnerary balsam, and that thou lookest into the gla.s.s to weep for this still, innocent form which it shows thee with its gashes, as if it were the form of a stranger.--Oh, when man has nothing more to love, he embraces the gravestone of his love, and sorrow becomes his loved one! Forgive one another the short delusion of mourning; for, among all the weaknesses of man, this is the most innocent, when, instead of soaring away like the bird of pa.s.sage above winter, and flying to warmer zones, he sinks before it, and helplessly stiffens in his cold grief."

Victor coffined himself, so to speak, that day in his chamber, which he opened to no one but a next-door neighbor of sorrows,--Marie,--whose form affected him as softly as an evening sun. Every other female face on the street gave him stings; and the brother of the lost Clotilda, whom he saw at the window, and to-day would gladly have embraced, lent to the remembrance which tears had dimmed, new colors.... Reader!--my female reader will be, of herself, more reasonable,--laugh not at my good hero, who _is_ none precisely where the strength of the soul becomes the strength of sorrow: at least, let me not hear it. Whoever has the sympathetic nerve of life--love--tied up or cut asunder, can well, if for no other reason, sigh and say, "Anything on earth can man lose more patiently than fellow-men."

And yet at evening an accident--namely, a letter--made all his sorrows pa.s.s once more through his weary heart. A short letter from Emanuel--not, however, an answer to the one just sent to him--arrived.

"My ever-loved one!

"I have learned the day of thy entrance upon a new scene of tumultuous life, and I have said,' May my beloved still continue happy! may the tranquillity of virtue wall in his heart as with a breast against the frosts and storms of his new life! may neither his sorrows nor his raptures be loud! may he mourn softly and silently as a princess in soft white! may he enjoy softly and silently, and in the temple of his heart may Pleasure play only as a noiseless fluttering b.u.t.terfly in a church! and may Virtue float before him in the higher heaven above our sun, and warm and irradiate and gradually attract to herself his heart!'

"In thy affectionate anxiety for my parting life, thou wilt not have me write often: so little, dear one, dost thou believe my hope! Oh, the weights of my machine, as they run down, fall slowly and softly upon the grave; this earthly life arrays itself to my soul in ever fairer colors, and adorns itself for the farewell; this mock-summer around me, which stands beside the August summer like a mock-sun,--this and the coming spring take me beguilingly out of the arms of Nature.

"So does the All-Gracious overhang with foliage, overspread with flowers, the churchyard-wall of life, as we cover the wall of an English garden with ivy and evergreen, and gives the end of the garden the appearance of a new thicket.--

"So ascends the spirit even here in this _dark_ life, as the barometer ascends even during thick weather, and feels the influence of the _brighter_ life even under the clouds.

"But I obey thy love, and will write to thee no more, except once in winter, when I describe to thee the great night wherein I told my blind Julius, for the first time, that there is an Eternal One.--In that night, my beloved, rapture and devotion bore me too high, and came near to rending my thin life. I bled a long time. In winter, when the charms of heaven take the place of those of earth,[225] forbid me not to paint the summer picture.

"O my son!--I was compelled, indeed; to write to thee, because my friend Clotilda complains that the new year will draw her out of the green bower of solitude to the crowded market-place of the court; her soul is dark with sorrow, and stretches out its arms after the tranquil life which is being taken away from her. I know not what a court is; thou wilt know, and, I conjure thee, release my friend, and turn aside the hand that would draw her from St. Luna. If thou canst not do it, still forsake not at court the beloved soul; be her only, her most ardent friend; draw the bee-stings of earthly hours from her gentle heart. When cold words, like snow-flakes, fall upon this flower, then let the breath of love melt them to tears that shall flow before thy sight; when a tempest shall come up, over her life, then show her the angel who stands in the sun, and draws over our tempests the rainbow of hope. O thou whom _I_ so love, my sister also will so love thee; and when my friend discovers to her his gentle heart, his tender eye, his virtue, his soul, the home of Nature and of the Eternal, then will he see my sister grow happy before him, and the exalted countenance which melts into tears and smiles and love before him will remain forever in his heart.

"EMANUEL."

Lo! in this glowing moment the exalted form which he had seen yesterday appeared again before his heart, with the sadly smiling lips and the eyes full of tears; and as the form continued floating before him, and gleamed and smiled, his soul rose up before her as before one dead, and during the uplifting of himself all his wounds began to bleed again, and he cried, "Now, then, never do thou vanish from my heart, thou sublime shape, but rest forever on its wounds!" Disconsolateness, exhaustion, and sleep overwhelmed his spirit, as well as his latest thought,--to go back shortly to St. Luna, and persuade her parents not to force her to court...

The long sleep of death closes our _scars_, and the short sleep of life our _wounds_. Sleep is the half of time which heals us. On awaking, Victor, whose fever of love had yesterday been so aggravated by sleeplessness, saw today that his sorrow had been unmoderated because his hope had been immoderate. At first he had wished,--then observed,--then a.s.sumed,--then seen,--then interpreted,--then hoped,--then sworn to it. Every little circ.u.mstance, even his share in Clotilda's nomination as maid-of-honor, had poured mild oil of love into his flame. "Oh, fool that I am!" said he, with the three swearing-fingers placed upon his forehead; and, like all energetic men, he was so much the more spirited in proportion as he had been spiritless. Nay, he felt himself all at once too light; for a too sudden cure betokens, in the case of souls also, a relapse. A new consolation was his yesterday's resolve, that he would render Clotilda a service,--namely, save her from the court-service. He still reflected upon his determination to see her again.--Feelest thou, haply, Victor, that everything which Love does, in order to die, is only an expedient for rising again from the dead, and that its epilogues are only prologues to the Second Act?

But a basket of apples in the market confirmed him again in his resolution. That is to say, Flamin came in. He began immediately with questions about the disappearance on Sunday, and with reports of the general uneasiness about the dear runaway. Victor, heated again by the whole recollection, and almost a little enraged against the image-breaker and government-attorney of a vain love, gave him the true answer:--"Thou tookest away from me in part my pleasure; and why should I, at so late an hour, come upon the stage?" The more vividly Flamin painted the affectionate concern of the Parson's wife and Clotilda about his disappearing, so much the more painful grew the maze of contending feelings within him. But for his conscience calling him back, it would now have been easier for him to confess the love that was hopeless, than formerly the love that was hopeful.--Accidentally Flamin wondered at the ripeness of the apples down below in the market, and desired some. A lightning beam now darted before Victor's eye at the inherited fruit-pieces on Flamin's shoulders, which always appeared in the after-summer at the time of the apples' ripening, but which, in the previous whirl of his feelings, he had forgotten. Heaven knows whether it has not escaped the reader himself, that Flamin bears this winter-fruitage (his maternal mole) on his back, which may become a Sodom-apple and Eve's-apple for him. Might not Matthieu, who until now could not examine upon Flamin this seal of his princely relations.h.i.+p, suddenly become convinced of all that which, with his thievish glances at his Lords.h.i.+p's letter, he had only been able to guess? And might he not afterward go to the Prince, and there mix for all our friends the most poisonous broths?--As, however, the magic image generally faded in one week, Victor needed for only so long a time to keep its wearer out of sight; he therefore laid before his friend, thus tattooed by Nature, the request to take for once a social walk to St. Luna, as they had day before yesterday missed each other.

"I can't do it," said Flamin, who had the lesser delicacy not to avail himself of the request for company on account of the reproaches in Le Baut's garden, and forgot in that the greater delicacy of not imputing such a reference to his Victor.

The latter, in a pa.s.sionate hurry to avert two such evils (Clotilda's court-office and Matthieu's inspection), seized upon the singular expedient of proposing to the page to share the journey with him.

"With pleasure!" said the Evangelist; "_this_ week I have to do cabinet-service, but I can _next_ week."

And it was precisely this week that Victor wanted it to be done.--So many sudden miscarriages confounded him to such a degree, that he, whose careless and innocent heart was always an open letter with flying seal, dissembled now towards his dear, good friend Flamin.--He wanted at least to investigate the maternal mole and its distinctness for himself, He therefore went to him, and found him bent over his writing, and with a glowing work-face. He conjured him to consider that recreation and holidays were indispensable to him, and urged it upon him that he should work, like a compositor, standing. Then he came gradually upon the subject of Flamin's full-blooded chest, and upon the question whether it could bear his exertions without stingings and oppressions. Then he arrived at the point, and proposed that Flamin should, at all events, have a Burgundy-pitch plaster applied as lung-conductor to his shoulder-blades; yes, he would himself do it for him now, and show him how all was to be prepared. He hoped, besides, to draw thereby a curtain around the apple-piece. But he dissembled so wretchedly,--for he always succeeded in his innocent intrigues with maidens, and comic disguises for satirical purposes, while his serious ones always miscarried,--that even Flamin heard him out, and dryly replied, he had already had on such a plaster for two days, and--Matthieu had advised, and himself applied it.

There was a fix.--Sebastian had nothing further left him than, with a singular _sangfroid_, which, on the St. Luna road, was mixed only with a few stings from the old th.o.r.n.y latelings of his withered Paradise, to go unaccompanied to the Chamberlain Le Baut, to say what was to be said, hardly to peep into the Parsonage, and quietly to trudge off again without a single--hope.

Dear Fortune! better beheaded than scalped,--better _one_ disaster than ten miscarriages; I mean, break man upon thy wheel rather from above than from below upward!--

Victor, to be sure, knew as yet not a word of the turn he should give to the subject, in order to put two such court-emigrants as the Le Bauts, who knew nothing holier than the _Latreia_ towards a prince, the _Douleia_ towards his minister, and the _Hyperdouleia_ towards his w--, out of humor with Clotilda's promotion; but he thought, "I will do what I can."

Clotilda's parents received him with so much civility,--i. e. with so much courtesy of the body, with so much powdered sugar on every feature, with so much sirup of violets on every word,--in short, he found the report which Matthieu had rendered to Flamin of their amiable disposition towards him so well grounded,--that he could have selected no better opportunity than this to dissuade them from the transplanting of their daughter, had they not begun to thank him for having been himself the very transplanter. They had learned or guessed all, and thanked him for his intercession, to which they probably attached more self-interested views than the daughter did. It would have been ridiculous, in Clotilda's presence, to advise _her_ against Flachsenfingen, and dissuade from that for which they thanked him; still, however, he attempted something. He told the Chamberlain "his daughter deserved rather to _have_ a court than to adorn one; nay, that _he_ deserved at most in the whole matter--an excuse, as Clotilda would certainly prefer the society of her parents to the constraint of court; in that case, he would promise to put the index back again with the Prince, and rectify everything without disadvantage." The father took this expression for a strong deprecation of grat.i.tude; the step-mother, for some piece of knavery or other; the daughter, for--words. She said, a little curtly, "I think it was easy to choose between disobedience and absence." For, unbending as she was to her step-mother, she willingly followed the hints of her father, whom, with all his weaknesses, and as the only soul on the earth attached to him, she tenderly loved. Victor, at last, though reluctantly, was forced to give it up; but why does man find it harder to resign himself to the future than to the past?--The coldness of the daughter was naturally not less (but sincerer) than the warmth of the parents.... And this coldness was precisely what refreshed his glowing brain. This cold, indifferent form was wrapped as a veil about the sublime and loving one, as it ever floated before him with that melancholy look which he could not endure.

Without the consciousness of anything wrong, satisfied with his obedience to Emanuel's request, he withdrew, with his feelings oppressed by decorum, returning coldness with greater coldness.--He would have been a poor lover, if he had known what he wanted; for otherwise he never could have desired of Clotilda, even in case of her love for him, any extraordinary warmth towards a medicus whom her parents forced upon her (which injures a man even more than ugliness), who so impolitely took himself out of the garden without a birthday _carmen_, and who pressed her into the seven gilded towers of court-service, despite her reluctance, despite every probability of her future _prison-fever_.--But for the _vacant freehold_ of his heart this very vexation was wholesome....

If my good reader ever has to take an eternal farewell of a too dear friend, let him take it _twice_.--The _first_ we all understand, as a matter of course, when he sinks in the intoxication of sorrow, in the hemorrhage of heart and eyes, and when the beloved object burns itself with flames into the tender soul; but _then_ he will never be able to forget the being thus torn from his heart. Therefore he must take a _second_ farewell, which is colder even for the reason that pa.s.sionate emotions admit no _dal segno_[226] of repet.i.tion; nay, (if he will take the wisest course of all,) he must endeavor, after the first tragic leave-taking, to see her in a public place (e. g. at a coronation), where she must appear cold. Her frosty face will then snow over her glowing one in his brain; and my good reader has, undoubtedly, collected together again wits enough to know what he reads in the Dog-Post-Days....

--Upon my word, if Jean Paul does not write industriously, then no one does; it has already struck one, and he took it for a quarter to twelve; my sister will already be folding her hands before the tucked-up smoking pike, which, like the serpent of eternity, has his tail in his mouth, and saying, incessantly, "It is all growing cold!"--"It must be so, after such glowing chapters," say I, "if thou meanest the reader and the author."--Already, while I still sit over the twentieth chapter, the post-dog is frisking round in the chamber with the twenty-first; and yet I will starve myself, unless I can still utter before dinner, like the seven wise men, seven golden sayings:--

1. When one who is stung by a bee or by fate does not keep still, the sting tears out, and is left behind.

2. Miserable earth, which three or four great or bold men can reform and agitate! Thou art a true stage: in the foreground are some fighting players and a few canvas-tents; the background swims with painted tents and soldiers!

3. States and diamonds are in these days, when they have stains, cut up into little ones; and as

4. Men in great states and bees in great hives suffer a loss of courage and warmth; accordingly now-a-days they join to small countries other small countries, as they do to beehives colony-hives.

5. Man takes _his_ suffering for that of _humanity_, as the bees take the dropping of their bee-stand, when the sun already s.h.i.+nes out again, for rain, and stay in-doors.

6. But he commits daily a _lesser_ error: he regards as an _eternity_ (that Aristotelian Unity of Time to the drama--of Existence) at first his present _hour_,--then his _youth_,--then his _life_,--then his _century_,--then the duration of the _globe_,--then that of the _sun_,--then that of the _heavens_,--then (this is the least error) _time_ itself....

7. There are in man, in the beginning and at the end, as in books, two blank bookbinder's leaves,--childhood and old age; and so, too, in the Dog-Post-Days: see the end of this day and the beginning of the next.

FIFTH INTERCALARY DAY.

_Continuation of the Register of Extra-Sheets_.

K.

Cold.[227]--In our age decrease of _stoicism_ and increase of _egotism_ are found side by side. The former covers its treasures and germs with ice; the latter is itself ice. So, in physics, _mountains_ wear away, and _glaciers_ increase.

L.

Library (Circulating) for Reviewers and Young Ladies.--I still always adhere to my purpose of having it inserted in the Intelligence-leaf of the Literary Gazette, that I shall not destroy the purchase-money which I raise upon my _evening star_ [Hesperus], nor, like Musaeus, fritter it away in the purchase of summer-houses, but shall lay out the whole capital upon a complete collection of all German _prefaces_ and _t.i.tles_ that appear from fair to fair. I can carry out the plan, if I give out a preface a week, on the payment of a penny, to reviewers, who do not care to read the book itself when they review it.

That not even the surplus of the aforesaid mintage may lie as dead capital in my house, I shall employ it--if I do not change my mind--in getting the bookbinder to publish the _heavier_ German masterpieces,--e. g.

Frederick Jacobi's, Klinger's, Goethe's Ta.s.so,--likewise the better satirical and philosophical ones, in a _lighter_ ladies' edition, which shall consist wholly of so-called _puzzle-volumes_, which have no book slid into them. I shall thereby, methinks, be playing something pithy into the hands of my fair readers, which shall be as well bound and as well t.i.tled as the booksellers' edition, and in which--because the hard stone-fruit is already _sh.e.l.led out_, and there is nothing inside--they can lay not only just as much of silk threads and silk snippings as in the printed edition, but six ounces more. _Allwill's_ correspondence--a heavy, two-yolked ostrich's egg of the author's, which I have had _blown out_ by the bookbinder in this manner, because most of the fair readers are too _cold_ to hatch it--is now quite _light_.