Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces Part 15

In men, again--sometimes, too, in women, but only in one out of a thousand--it may arise from the sad thought of the sharks which tear off the arm with which, down in the dark ocean, all breathless and anxious, we have clasped hold of four pearls of happiness. Or, perhaps, from a deeper question still. Is not our heart's inward bliss but an olive-leaf which a dove brings to us, fluttering over the great deluge foaming and seething all round us--an olive-leaf which she has culled for us away in the far distant Paradise, high up above the flood, clear and blissful in the eternal sun? And if all we attain of that whole olive-garden is but one leaf, instead of all its flowers and its fruit, is this leaf of peace, is this dove of peace, to give to us something _beyond_ peace--namely, hope?

Firmian went back to the shooting-ground, his breast full of growing hopes. The heart of man, which, in matters of chance, makes its calculations in direct defiance of the theory of probabilities, and when heads have turned up once, expects them three times running--(although what _ought_ to be antic.i.p.ated is the very reverse)--or reckons upon hitting the eagle's talon became it has knocked the sceptre out of it--this heart of man, uncontrollable alike in its fears and in its hopes, the advocate took with him to the shooters' trench.

He came not by the talons, however. And at the folded praying claws or hands of the general of the Capuchins--these algebraic exponents or heraldic devices of two forequarters of pork--aimed he alike in vain.

It mattered not; more was left of the eagle, when all was done, than would be this day of Poland, if the latter, or its coat of arms--a silver eagle in a b.l.o.o.d.y field--were to be set up on a throne or a bird-pole, and shot at by a shooting-club composed of an army or two.

Even the imperial globe was not yet knocked down. Number 69, a formidable foregoer, Mr. Everard Rosa von Meyern, had taken his aim--eager to cull _this_ forbidden fruit--a Ribstone pippin and football fit for a very prince, such as this imperial apple, was a thing of too great price to be grasped for the sake of what was to be gained along with it--'twas honour alone that fired his heart--he pulled his trigger, and he might just as well have aimed in the opposite direction. Rosa--this particular apple being too high out of his reach--went, all blushes, in among the lady spectators, dealing out apples of Paris all round, and telling each lady how lovely she was, that she might be convinced how handsome he was himself. In the eyes of a woman, her panegyrist is, firstly, a very _clever_ man, and, ere long, such a _nice_-LOOKING one. Rosa knew that grains of incense are the anise which these doves fly after, as though infatuated.

Our friend had no need to disquiet himself about any of the would-be fruit-gatherers--about the second, eighth, or ninth, till it came to the eleventh--and he was the Saxon, who shot like the demon in person.

There were few among the seventy who didn't wish this accursed gallows-number at the deuce, or at all events into the vegetable kingdom, where it is altogether absent.[50] The hairdresser fired, struck the eagle on the leg, and the leg remained hanging aloft, with the imperial globe in the talons.

His lodger (and lawyer) came up to the scratch, but the landlord stood still in the trench, to satisfy his soul with curses of his luckless star. As the former levelled the sights of his rifle upon the ball above, he made up his mind that he would not aim at the ball at all, but at the eagle's tail, so as simply to _shake_ the apple down.

In one second the worm-eaten world-apple fell. The Saxon cursed beyond all description.

Siebenkaes all but offered up an inward prayer, not because a pewter mustard-pot, a sugar-dish, and five florins came showering along with the apple into his lap, but for the piece of good luck--for the warm burst of sunshine which thus came breaking out from among the clouds of the distant storm. "Thou wouldst prove this soul of mine, happy Fortune," thought he, "and thou placest it, as men do watches, in all positions--perpendicular and horizontal, quiet and unquiet--to see if it will go and mark the time correctly in all, or no. Ay, truly! it _shall_!"

He let this little, bright, miniature earth-ball roll from one hand to the other, spinning and weaving, as he did so, the following brief chain of syllogisms:--"What a genealogical tree of copies! Nothing but pictures within pictures comedies within comedies! The emperor's globe is an emblem of this terrestrial globe of ours--the core of each is a handful of earth--and this emperor's globe of mine, again, is a miniature emblem of a real emperor's, with even less of earth--none at all, in fact. The mustard-pot and sugar-dish, again, are emblems of this emblem. What a long, diminishing series, ere man arrives at enjoyment!" Most of man's pleasures are but _preparations_ for pleasure; he thinks he has attained his _ends_, when he has merely got hold of his _means_ to those ends. The burning sun of bliss is beheld of our feeble eyes but in the seventy mirrors of our seventy years.

Each of these mirrors reflects that sun's image less brightly--more faint and pale--upon the next; and in the seventieth it shimmers upon us all frozen, and is become a moon.

He ran home, but without his globe, for he did not mean to tell her of that till the evening. It was a great refreshment to him to slip, during his shooting vacations, away from the public turmoil to his quiet little chamber, give a rapid narrative of anything of importance going on, and then cast himself back into the _melee_. As his number was a next-door neighbour to Rosa's, and they had, consequently, their holidays at the same time, it surprises me that he did not come upon Herr von Meyern beneath his own window, inasmuch as that gentleman was walking up and down there, with his head elevated, like an ant. He who desires to destroy a young gentleman of this species, let him look for him _under_ (if not _in_) a lady's window; just as an experienced gardener, when he wants to kill woodlice or earwigs, needs only lift up his flower-pots to annihilate them by the score.

Siebenkaes did not hit so much as another shaving the whole of the afternoon; even the very tail, which he had attacked with such success in his bold stroke for the conquest of the globe of the holy Roman empire, resisted all his efforts to knock it off. He let himself be drummed and fifed home by the town militia towards evening. When he got to his wife's door, he there a.s.sumed the _role_ of Knecht Ruprecht (the children's "Bogie," who, on St. Andrew's Day, bestows upon them, for the _first_ time in their career, fruit, and fear along with the same), and, growling in a terrible manner, chucked his (wooden) apple in to her; a piece of fun which delighted her immensely. But really I ought not to record such little trifles.

As Firmian laid his head on his pillow, he said to his wife, "This time to-morrow, wife, we shall know if it be two crowned heads that we are going to lay on the pillow, or not! I shall just _recall_ this important minute to your memory to-morrow night, when we're going to bed!" When he got up in the morning he said, "Very likely this is the last time that I shall rise a common, ordinary person, without a crown."

He was so anxious to have the mutilated bird (all wet with dew, a ma.s.s of gunshot wounds and compound fractures) once more before his bodily eyes, that he hardly knew how to possess himself in patience till the time came. But it was only as long as he _did not_ see the eagle that his hopes of shooting himself into a king at him endured. He was, therefore, delighted to agree to a proposal made by the clever Saxon, whose bullet had throughout the proceedings always cleared the way for his number-neighbour's; the proposal was, "we go shares in gains and in losses--in the bird and in the cardinal." This copartnership doubled the advocate's hopes by the process of halving them.

But these companions in arms didn't bring down a single painted splinter the whole of the afternoon. Each in his secret heart thought the other was the bird of evil omen; for in matters of chance we are p.r.o.ne to hang our faith upon a bit of superst.i.tion, rather than to nothing at all. The fickle Babylonish harlot went fluttering off with that amount of bashful coyness, that the hairdresser once sent a bullet within an ace of the fellow who was working her backwards and forwards.

At last, however, in the afternoon, he sent his Cupid's dart right through that black heart of hers, and, by consequence, through the pig at the same time. This almost terrified Firmian; he said that if he couldn't hit anything himself he would accept only the head of this pig--this polypus in the heart of the Babylonian _fille de joie_. All that was left of the bird was its _torso_, which stuck to its perch like the very Rump Parliament, which these pretenders to the crown would so fain have dissolved.

A regular running musketry fusilade of eager interest, enthusiasm, emulation, now went flashing from breast to breast, fanned by every puff of powder which rose in smoke as a rifle went off. When the bird shook a little all the compet.i.tors shook also, except Herr von Meyern, who had gone off, and--seeing what a state of excitement everybody was in, especially our hero--marched away to Madame Siebenkaes, thinking that he had a better chance of becoming, in _that_ quarter, king of a queen than he had here of acquiring the sovereignty of the riflemen.

However, my readers and I shall slip into the Siebenkaes' chamber after him presently.

Twice already had the seventy numbers loaded in vain for the decisive shot; the obstinate stump still stuck glued to its perch, and scarce so much as trembled; the poor tantalised hearts were torn and pierced by every bullet that sped on its course. Their fears waxed apace, so did their hopes, but most of all their curses (those brief ejaculatory prayers to the devil). The theologians of the seventh decade of the present century had the devil often enough in their pens--in their denials or in their a.s.sertions of him--but the Kuhschnappelers had him far oftener in their mouths, particularly the upper cla.s.ses.

Seneca, in his 'Remedies for Anger,' has omitted the simplest of all, the devil. True, the Kabbalists highly extol the therapeutic powers of the word Shemhamphorash, which is a name of a diametrically opposite character; but I have observed, for my part, that the spotted, malignant fever of wrath, so readily diagnosed by the raving delirium of the patient, is instantly relieved, dispersed, and mitigated, by invoking the name of the devil, which is perhaps, indeed, quite as efficacious a remedy as the wearing of amulets. In the absence of this name, the ancients, who were altogether without a Satan, recommended a mere repet.i.tion of the A B C, which, it is true, does _contain_ the devil's name, only too much diluted with other letters. And the word Abracadabra, spoken _diminuendo_, was a cure for corporeal fevers. As regards the inflammatory fever of anger, however, the greater the quant.i.ty of morbid matter which has to be ejected from the system through the secretions of the mouth, the greater is the number of devils necessary to make mention of. For a mere trifling irritation--a mild case of simple anger--"the devil," or perhaps "h.e.l.l and the devil," will generally be found sufficient; but for the pleuritic fever of rage I should be disposed to prescribe "the devil and his infernal grandmother:" strengthening the dose, moreover, with a "_donnerwetter_"

or two, and a few "_sacraments_," as the curative powers of the electric fluid are now so generally recognised. It is unnecessary to point out to me that in cases of absolute canine fury or maniacal wrath, doses of the specific, such as the foregoing, are of little avail; I should, of course, let a patient in this condition be "taken and torn by all the devils in h.e.l.l." But what I would fain render clear is that, in all these remedies, the real _specific_ is the devil; for as it is his sting which is the cause of our malady, he himself has got to be employed as the remedy, just as the stings of scorpions are cured by the application of scorpions in powder.

The tumult of antic.i.p.ation shook up the aristocracy and the sixpenny gallery into one common whole. On occasions like this--as also in the chase and in agricultural operations--the aristocracy forget what they are, viz., something better than the citizen cla.s.ses. An aristocrat should, in my opinion, never for a moment lose sight of the fact that his position with reference to the common herd is that which the actor now a days stands in with respect to the chorus. In the time of Thespis the whole of the tragedy was sung and acted by the chorus, while one single actor, called the protagonist, delivered a speech or two, unaccompanied by any music, bearing on the subject of the play.

aeschylus introduced a second actor, the deuteragonist; Sophocles even a third, the tritagonist. In more recent times the actors have been retained, but the chorus omitted, unless we consider those who applaud to represent it. In a similar manner also, in this world of ours (mankind's natural theatre), the chorus, _i. e_. the people, has been gradually cleared off the stage, only with more advantage than in the case of smaller theatrical ones, and promoted from taking part in the action of the drama (which the protagonists (princes), deuteragonists (ministers), and tritagonists (people of quality), are better fit to do), to the post of spectators who criticise and applaud--what was the chorus in Athens, now sitting at ease in the pit, near the orchestra, and before the stage where the great "business" is going on.

By this time it was past two o'clock, and the afternoons were brief; yet the saucy bird would not stir. Everybody swore that the carpenter who had hatched it from its native block was a low scoundrel, and must have carved it out of tough branchwood. But at last, all battered, with nearly the whole of its paint broken away from it, it did appear to be somewhat disposed to topple down. The hairdresser, who, like the common herd in general, was conscientious towards individuals only, not towards an aggregation of them, now without any scruple secretly doubled his bullets (since he could not double his rifle), putting in one for himself and one for his brother in arms, in the hope that this decomposing medium might have the effect of precipitating the eagle.

"The devil and his infernal grandmother!" cried he, when he had fired his shot, making use of the febrifuge or cooling draught above alluded to. He now had to place all his trust in his lodger, to whom he handed his rifle. Siebenkaes fired, and the Saxon cried, "Ten thousand devils!"

doubling in vain the dose of devils, as he had the dose of bullets.

They now, in despair, laid aside their rifles and also their hopes; for there were more pretenders to this crown than there were to that of Rome in the time of Galienus, when there were but thirty. This shooting septuaginta had all telescopes at their eyes (when they had not rifles there), that they might observe how there were a greater number of bullets in this heaven-suspended constellation of theirs than there are stars in the astronomical one of the eagle. The faces of all beholders were now turned towards this Keblah of a bird, like those of the Jews towards their ruined Jerusalem. Even old Sabel sat behind her table of sweetmeats customerless, and gazing up at the eagle. The earlier numbers didn't even give themselves the trouble of shaking a pinch of powder into their pans.

Firmian pitied these oppressed hearts, swimming heavily in turbid, earthy blood--for whom at this time, the setting sun, the bright array of sky tints, and the broad, fair world were all invisible--or, rather, all shrivelled up to a battered block of wood. The surest token that these hearts were all lying fettered in the eternal dungeon of need and necessity, was that none could make a single witty allusion either to the bird or the kingship. It is only concerning matters which leave our souls free and unshackled that we notice similitudes and connection.

"This bird," thought Firmian, "is the decoy of all these men, and the money is what baits the lure." But he himself had three reasons for desiring to be king: firstly, to laugh himself to death at his own coronation; secondly, on account of his Lenette: thirdly, on account of the Saxon.

The second half of the seventy gradually fired off, and the earlier numbers began to load again, if it were for nothing but the fun of the thing. Every one put in two bullets now. Our two Hanseatic confederates came once more up to the mark, and Siebenkaes borrowed a more powerful gla.s.s, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g it on to his rifle like the finder of a telescope.

No. 10 loosened the bird from its joining to the pole. Nothing but the sheer weight of it now retained it on its perch, for they had well nigh saturated and incrusted the wood of it with lead (as certain springs transform wood into iron).

The Saxon had but to graze the eagle-torso--ay, or even the perch of it--nay, the very evening breeze had but to give an extra puff--to send the bird of prey swooping down. He had his rifle to his shoulder--aimed for a whole eternity (there were fifty florins hanging in the sky)--and pulled his trigger. The powder flashed in the pan. The band had all their trumpets ready at their lips--trumpets horizontal, music perpendicular--the boys stood round ready to seize the fallen skeleton; the buffoon in his excitement couldn't think of a joke to make--his ideas were all up beside the bird; the poor, anxious, eager, excited hairdresser drew his trigger once more, and again 'twas but a flash in the pan. Great drops of perspiration bedewed him; he glowed, he trembled; loaded, aimed, fired, and sent his bullet several ells, at the least, away over the bird.

He stepped back, pale and silent, in a cold perspiration; not an oath did he utter; nay, I suspect he offered up a silent prayer or two that his co-partner might, by heaven's grace, capture the feathered game.

Firmian went forward, thinking as hard as he could about something else, to keep down his thrilling excitement; aimed, not very long, at this, his anchor in his little storms, as it hung hovering in the twilight, fired; saw the old stump turn three times round in the air, like Fortune's wheel, and, at last, break loose, and come pitching down.

As, when the old French kings were crowned, a live bird always fluttered in the air; as, at the apotheoses of the Roman emperors, an eagle soared skyward from out the funeral pyre, so did one swoop downward from the heavens at the coronation of my hero.

The children screamed, and the trumpets blared. One moiety of the a.s.semblage crowded to see who the new king was, and to have a look at him; while the other moiety streamed crowding round the jester, as he advanced bearing that shattered bullet-case, the eagle's body, holding it up above the heads of the throng. The barber ran to meet it, crying, "Vive le roi," and adding that he was a king himself into the bargain; and Firmian moved towards the door in silence, full of happiness, but fuller of emotion.

And now it is time that we should all of us hurry to the town to see how Rosa fares, what kind of throne he gains _chez_ Madame Siebenkaes (while her husband is thus ascending _his_)--a richer throne, or only a pillory--and what number of steps he climbs towards whichever of the two it may prove to be.

Rosa knocked at Lenette's door, and straightway entered in at it, in order that she might not have a chance of coming and ascertaining who was there. "He had torn himself away from the shooting-match; her husband was coming immediately, and he would wait for him there. His rifle had once more been excessively fortunate." It was with these truths that he came into the presence of the alarmed Lenette, bearing, however upon his countenance, an a.s.sumed aristocratic frigid zone. He walked, in an easy and unconcerned manner, up and down the room. He inquired whether this April weather affected her health at all; as for himself, it produced in him a kind of miserable prostrating low fever.

Lenette, timid and nervous, stood at the window, her eyes half in the street, half in the room. He glanced, in pa.s.sing, at her work-table, took up a paper bonnet shape and a pair of scissors, and put them down again, his attention being arrested by a paper of pins. "Why, these are No. 8's," he said; "these pins are a great deal too large, Madame; their heads would do for No. 1 shot. The lady whose hat you were putting them in ought really to be immensely grateful to me."

He then went quickly up to her, and, from a spot a trifling distance below her heart (where she had a whole quiver, or thorn-hedge of needles planted, ready for use), he plucked one out with a dauntless coolness, and held it up for her inspection, saying, "Look how badly this is plated; 'twill spoil every st.i.tch you take with it." He threw it out of the window, and evinced symptoms of being about to pluck out the remainder from that heart (where the fates had stuck none other than such as were "badly plated"), and stick the contents of his own needle-book into that pretty pincushion instead. But she waved him off with an icy, repellant, gesture, saying, "Don't trouble yourself."

"I really wish your husband would come," ho said, looking at his watch.

"The king's shot must be over long ere this time."

He took up the paper cap-pattern again, and the scissors; but, as she fixed on him a gaze of deep anxiety (lest he should spoil her pattern), he took from his pocket a sheet of verses dipped in hippocrene, and, by way of pa.s.sing the time, he clipped this up, by wavy lines, into a series of hearts, one within the other. This gentleman, who, like the Augurs, always strove to carry off the _heart_ of the sacrifice--he, whose own heart (like that of a coquette) constantly grew again as often as he lost it (as a lizard's tail does)--he had the _word_ "heart," which Germans and men in general seem almost to shrink from uttering, continually on his tongue, or, at all events, impressions of it in his hand.

My belief that his motive for leaving behind him (as he did) his needles, and his rhymeful hearts, was that he had observed of women that they always think fondly of an absent person when they chance to see something of his which he has left behind. Rosa belonged to that cla.s.s of persons (of both s.e.xes) who never show any cleverness, delicacy of perception, or knowledge of human nature, save in matters relating to love of the opposite s.e.x.

He now catechised out of her a number of cooking and washing receipts of various kinds, and these, despite her cautious monosyllabicity, she imparted--prescription fashion--in all their fulness, both of words and of ingredients. At length he made preparations for departure, saying, he had been most anxious for her husband's homecoming because of a certain matter of business which he could not well discuss with him on the shooting-ground, among so many people, and before Herr von Blaise.

"I shall come another day," he said; "but the most important point of the affair I can mention to yourself," and he sat down before her, with his hat and stick in his hand. Just as he commenced his recital, however, observing that she was standing, he laid aside his hat and stick to place a chair for her, opposite to his. His propinquity was grateful to her Schneiderian membrane, at any rate; his odour was paradisaic; his pocket-handkerchief a musk-bag, his head an altar of incense, or magnified civet-ball. (Shaw has remarked that the whole viper tribe has the property of emitting a peculiar, sweet scent.)

"She might readily see," he said, "that it referred to that wretched lawsuit with the Heimlicher. The poor's advocate did not deserve, indeed, that a man should interest himself in _his_ favour; but then, you see, he had an _admirable_ wife, who _did_ deserve it." (He italicised the word "admirable" by means of a hurried squeeze of her hand.) "He had been fortunate enough to induce Herr von Blaise to defer his 'no' three separate times, though he had not as yet been able to speak to the advocate in person. But now, that a pasquinade of Mr.

Leibgeber's (whose hand was well known), had come to light near a stove-statue at the Heimlicher's, nothing approximating to a yielding, or a payment of the trust-fund, was to be dreamt of for a moment. Mow this was a state of matters for which his very heart bled, particularly as, since he had been in such poor health of late, he felt only too keen a sympathy and interest in everything; he knew perfectly well what an unhappy condition her (Lenette's) household matters had been placed in by this lawsuit; and had often sighed, in vain, over many things. He should be delighted, therefore, to advance whatever she might require for current expenditure. As yet she did not know _him_ in the slightest degree, and perhaps could scarce surmise what he did, from motives of the purest benevolence, for six charities in Kuhschnappel--though he could produce doc.u.mentary evidence if she liked," and he did produce and hand to her six receipts of the Charitable Commission. I should not be giving proof of that impartiality of character which I bear the reputation of possessing, did I not here freely admit, and clearly place on record, that the Venner had, from his youth up, always shown a certain disposition to benefit and a.s.sist the poor of both s.e.xes, and that his consciousness that he dealt in this large-hearted manner, did (when compared with the narrow close-fistedness prevalent in Kuhschnappel) give him some warrant for bearing himself with a certain amount of proper pride towards those mean and miserly beings who sate in judgment upon his little genial breaches of the moral laws. For his conscience bore him witness that, conversely to the process whereby spiders are metamorphosed into jewels, he spun his shining webs (of gold and silver), and in their meshes, wet with the glittering dew of tears, made an occasional capture from time to time.

But for a woman like Lenette (he continued) he would do things of a much grander description; as proofs of which, given already by him, he needed only to point to the fact that he had set at defiance the Heimlicher's hostility towards her husband, and that he had more than once quietly swallowed speeches of her husband's own, such as in his social position he had never suffered anybody to address to him before.

"Name any sum of money you are in want of; by Heaven, all you have to do is to ask for it."

Lenette, bashful and trembling, glowed red with shame at this discovery of (what she had believed to be) the mystery of her poverty and her p.a.w.nings. With the view of pouring a few drops of oil on the troubled waters, he began, by way of preamble, to make some disparaging remarks concerning his fiancee at Bayreuth. "She reads too much, and doesn't work enough. I only wish she could have the benefit of a few lessons from _you_ in housekeeping. And really, a lady such as you, with so many attractions (quite unaware of them, too, herself), so much patience, such wonderful diligence and a.s.siduity, should have a very different kind of household than this place for her sphere of action." Her hand was by this time lying still in the stocks--the close arrest--of his; her wings and her tongue, as well as her hands, were tied and fettered by that fainthearted incapacity of self-a.s.sertion which is born of the sense of poverty. When women were in question, Mr.

Everard's longings and likings paid no heed to boundary-marks; but rather strove hard to obliterate them, and get rid of them altogether.

Most men, in the wild, unreasoning whirl of their appet.i.tes, are like the jay, which tears the carnation to tatters in order to get at its seeds.

Upon her downcast eyes he now riveted a long gaze of fondness, not withdrawing it, however, when she raised them up; and, by dint of keeping his eyes very wide open, and thinking with great vividness on pathetic and touching subjects, he managed to squeeze out about as much water as would have sufficed to make an end of a humming bird of the smaller sort.

In him, as in a fine actor, all false emotions became for the time real and genuine; and when he flattered any one, he at once began to respect him. As soon as he felt there were tears enough in his eyes, and sighs enough in his breast, he asked her if she had _any idea_ what was causing them. She looked innocently, and with kindly alarm, into those eyes of his, and her own began to overflow. This greatly encouraged him, and he said, "It is the fact that _you_ have not such a happy lot as you deserve."