Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces Part 18

And then I thought that I was standing in the second world, and all about me a dim green gra.s.sy plain, which, in the distance, merged into brighter flowers, and woods of glowing red, and hills so clear that you could see the lodes of gold within them. Beyond these crystal hills there glowed a bright rose dawn of morning, with dewy rainbows arching it all over. All the shining woods were sprent with suns (where earthly forests would have gleamed with drops of dew); while all the flowers were draped with nebulae, as earthly flowers are hung with gossamer. At times the meadows shook, as waves of motion pa.s.sed quivering over them--but this was not because the zephyrs bent the gra.s.ses in their play--it was that pa.s.sing souls brushed them with unseen wings. I was invisible in this second world, for there this sh.e.l.l of ours is but a little shroud, a tiny fleck of fog not yet condensed.

And on the brink of this, the second world, reposed the holy Virgin near her Son; and she was looking downward to our earth, there as it floated dwarfed and far beneath, in its pale, feeble spring-time, on the mighty face of the Ocean of Death. And every wave was tossing it at will, and its dim light was nothing but the shadow of a shadow. Then Mary's heart beat with a yearning pulse, when she beheld the old beloved world, and all her soul grew tender, and she said, with brightening glance, "Oh, Son! this heart of mine is full of longing, and mine eyes with tears, for all these my beloved human friends! Raise the earth near us, that I once more may look into the eyes of mine own race, my brothers, and my sisters. Ah! my tears will fall when I behold the living once again."

But Christ replied, "The earth is but a dream of many dreams; and thou must sleep to see these dreams."

And Mary answered, "I will gladly sleep that I may dream of man." And then Christ said, "Say what the dream shall show thee."

"Oh beloved! I would the dream would show me mankind's love. Love such as hearts which meet once more in bliss after long painful parting only know."

And as she spake it, lo! the angel of Death stood close behind her, and with closing eyes she sank upon his bosom, which was cold as polar ice.

And then the little earth rose quivering up, but as it neared it paled and narrowed, and grew more dim and small. The clouds about it parted, and the cleft mists gave to view the little night in which it lay, and from a sleeping brook a star or two of the second world were mirrored back. And all the children lay sleeping on the earth, and all were smiling--for they had seen Mary appear to them as they slept, in semblance of a mother. But, in the night, stood one unhappy being, the power of outward grief almost gone from her, except in sighs which tore her breaking heart. Even her very tears had ceased to flow. Oh! gaze no more, sad soul, towards the west, where stands the house of mourning all behung with funeral c.r.a.pe; nor to the east, upon the grave and house of death. For this one day, turn thy sad gaze away from that drear charnel house where the loved corpse is laid, so that the cool night breeze may fan and wake him from his sleep earlier than if he were shut up within the narrow grave! Yet, no! bereaved one, gaze thy fill on thy beloved one while ho still is here, and ere he falls to dust--and steep thy heart deep in the eternal woe.

As then an echo in the lone churchyard began to talk in faint and murmuring tones, repeating the notes of the low-voiced funeral hymn that rose within the house of mourning; and this after-song, floating half-heard in air--as though the dead were chanting low--tore all her heart in twain; and then her tears found vent and flowed anew, and wild with sorrow she raised her voice and cried, "For ever silent! oh my love, my love! Callest thou me once more? oh, speak again--but once--only this once, once more, to me whom thou hast left for ever!

Ah, no! nothing but silence; no sound except the echo stirring among the graves. All the poor dead lie deaf beneath, and not a tone comes from the broken heart."

But when the mourning hymn ceased of a sudden, and the dying echo from the graves sung faintly on alone, a tremor seized her, and her very life shook in the balance; for the echo came nearer and nearer, and from out the night one of the dead came close. And he stretched forth his pale and shadowy hand and took her own, saying, "My darling, why is it that you weep? Where have we been so long? for I have been dreaming that I had lost you!" But they had not lost each other. From Mary's closed lids there fell some happy tears, and ere her son could wipe those tears away, the earth had sunk back to its place again--and on its face this happy pair, restored to one another, and in bliss.

Then all at once there rose a spark of fire up from the earth, and presently a soul hovered all trembling near the second world, as if in doubt whether to enter there. And Christ a second time raised up the earth ball, and the bodily frame from whence this soul had winged its way was lying still on earth, marked with the scars and wounds of a long life. Beside this fallen leaf.a.ge of the soul a grey old man was standing, and, speaking to the corpse, he said, "I am as old as thou; why must my death be after thine, oh kind and faithful wife? Morning by morning, evening by evening, now, what can I do but think how deep thy grave, how far thy form has crumbled on its course to undistinguished dust, till my time comes to lie and crumble with thee side by side! I am alone! And _what_ a loneliness is mine! For nothing hears me now.

_She_ cannot hear! Well! well! To-morrow I shall gaze with such a woe upon her faithful hands and her grey hairs that my poor broken life must snap and end. Oh, thou All-merciful! end it to-day; spare me that last great sorrow."

Why should it be that, even in old age, when man has grown so weary and oppressed, and has descended to the lowest and last of all the steps that lead him downward to his grave, the spectre, Sorrow, sits so heavy upon him, bowing his head (where every bygone year has left its special thorns) to earth with a new despair?

But the Lord Christ sent not the angel of death with the hand of ice; for he himself looked on the bereaved old man, standing so near him now, with such a glance of glowing solar warmth that the ripe fruit broke from the tree. Like sudden flame his soul burst upwards from his riven heart, and hovering above the second world rejoined that other soul it loved so well; there knit together in silent close embrace, like those of old, they trembled downward into Elysium, where no embrace finds end. And Mary stretched, all love, her hands towards them, and all joy and rapture from her dream, she cried, "Ah, happy pair, ye are together now for evermore."

But now there rose a pillar of red vapour up on high above the hapless earth, and clung there hiding with its dun folds a battle-field's loud roar. At length the smoke parted asunder, and two bleeding men were seen lying enlocked in each other's bleeding arms. They were two grand and glorious friends, and they had sacrificed all to each other, ay!

and their very selves,--but not the Fatherland. "Lay thy wounds upon mine, beloved friend. The past lies all behind us now, we can be friends again; thou hast sacrificed me to the Fatherland, as I have thee. Give me thy heart again, ere it bleeds quite away. Alas! we can only die together now." And each gave to his friend his pierced and wounded heart. But these glorious friends beamed with a l.u.s.tre such that Death shrank back, and the great berg of ice, wherewith he crushes man, melted away at touching their warm hearts. And the earth _kept_ those two, who rose above her level like two lofty mountains, dowering her with streams, with healing virtues, and with lofty views, she giving only _clouds_ to them in return.

Mary in her dream here glanced and bent her head towards her son, for truly he alone can read, support, and succour hearts like these.

Why does she smile now, like some happy mother? Is it because the earth she loves so well, still rising nearer, seems to hover close above the border of the second world, sweet with the flowers of spring, while nightingales lie brooding, with those burning hearts of theirs pressed on the gra.s.ses and the meadow blooms,--the stormy skies all brightening into rainbows? Is it because the earth, never to be forgotten of her heart, now shows so happy and so gay bedecked in its spring dress, radiant in all its flowers, the joy hymn bursting from all its singers'

throats? No, not for this alone; that happy smile breaks over her sleeping face because she sees a mother and her child. For this must be a mother who bends down and holds her arms wide open, and calls in sweet enraptured tones, "Come, darling child, come to my heart again."

This is her child, we see and know, standing all innocence, within the ringing temple of the spring, by his good genius who teaches him--and now goes running up to that smiling form--thus early blest, pressed to that heart overflowing with a mother's love, scarce understanding the blissful words she speaks. "Oh, dearest child, how thou delightest me.

Art thou happy too? Thou lovest me! Oh, look at me, my own, and smile for evermore."

But now the very blissfulness of her dream woke Mary up; and with a tender tremor she fell upon her own son's heart, saying with tears, "None, save a mother, _knows_ what it is to love." And as she spoke the earth sank to its place (where its own aether flowed around its...o...b.., and with it that glad mother with her arms about her child.

And all this bliss bursting upon my heart dissolved my dream. And I awoke--but nothing had truly changed or pa.s.sed away; for the mother of my dream still clasped her child close to her heart here on earth's face; she reads my dream, and, for its truth, forgives, perchance, the dreamer who tells his tale.

BOOK III.

CHAPTER IX.

A POTATO WAR WITH WOMEN--AND WITH MEN--A WALK IN DECEMBER--TINDER FOR JEALOUSY--A WAR OF SUCCESSION ON THE SUBJECT OF A PIECE OF CHECKED CALICO--RUPTURE WITH STIEFEL--SAD EVENING MUSIC.

I should very much like to make an incidental digression about this point; however, I feel that I don't dare.

You see there are, now-a-days, so very few readers (at all events, of the younger and more aristocratic sort) who don't know everything--while, at the same time, they expect their pet authors (and I don't blame them for it) to know more than themselves--which is impossible. By the help of the English machinery (now brought to such high perfection), of encyclopaedias, of encyclopaedic-dictionaries, of conversations-lexicons, of excerpts from conversations-lexicons, of Ersch and Gruber's 'Universal Dictionaries of all the Sciences,' a young man, after devoting his _days_ to it for a month or two (he has no occasion to devote his _nights_) converts himself into a perfect Senatus Academicus of all the Faculties of a University, which he represents in his own single person; besides, in a sense, also himself standing to it in the relation of the student-body at the same time.

I have never, myself, met with a phenomenal youth of the sort above described, unless it were, perhaps, a fellow I once heard playing in the Baireuth band, who represented in his own person a whole Royal Academy of Music--a complete orchestra--inasmuch as he held, carried, and played upon instruments of every kind. This Panharmonist performing, to us partial harmonists only (as we were), blew a French horn, which he held under his right arm, and this right arm bowed a fiddle placed under his left; and that left arm beat, at the proper moments, a drum which was fastened on his back; his cap was hung round with bells, out of which he shook an accompaniment "alla Turca," by moving his head, and he had a cymbal strapped upon each of his knees, which he banged vigorously together; so that the man was all music, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot So that, one is tempted to make this simile-man an occasion and ground-work of further similes, and liken him to a prince who represents in his own person all the instruments of his State, and all its members and representatives.

Now, in the presence of readers who are all-knowers, just as this man was an all-player, how is a humble individual such as I, who am but a mere Heidelberg master of seven arts, at the outside, and doctor of a small trifle of philosophy, or so, to venture to take upon himself to attempt such a thing as a bit of a digression with any approach to the clever or the felicitous about it? No; the safe course, in the circ.u.mstances, for me is to go quietly on with my story.

We find the advocate, Siebenkaes, once more, then, in full blossom of hope; although that blossom is all sterile, and not of the sort which bears fruit. After his royal shot, he had reckoned upon, at any rate, as many happy days as the money would last for--upon fourteen at least; but mourning-black, now the traveller's uniform, ought to have been the colour of his upon his earthly night-journey--that _voyage pittoresque_ for poets. Though marmots and squirrels know how to plug up that particular hole in their dwellings which chances to be on the side from which the approaching storm is coming, men do not; Firmian thought if the hole in his _purse_ was mended no more was necessary. Alas! a better thing than money now departed from him--_Love_. His good Lenette receded to a greater distance from his heart, as he did from hers, day by day.

Her having concealed from him the fact that Rosa had given back the wreath, formed in his heart (as foreign matter lodged in any vessel of the body always does) the nucleus of a gradual deposit of stone about it. But that was only a small matter.

For she brushed and sc.r.a.ped of a morning, and every morning, and that whether (as the saying goes) he "liked it or lumped it."

She would persist, and insist, on communicating all her prorogations of parliament and other decrees to the servant girl, in several duplicates and revised copies, let him protest as much as he chose.

She asked him every thing she had to ask him (no matter what) two or three separate times over; and that whether he shouted beforehand like a quack doctor at a fair, or swore afterwards like one of his customers.

She continued to say, "It has struck four quarters to four o'clock."

When he had proved, with immense care and trouble, that Augspurg was not in the Island of Cyprus, she would return him the quiet incontrovertible answer, "Well, it's not in Roumania either, nor in Bulgaria, nor in the Princ.i.p.ality of Jauer, nor in Vauduz, nor in the neighbourhood of Hushen--two very little, insignificant places, both of them." He could never bring her to give an unqualified a.s.sent, when he made the unconditional and positive a.s.sertion (in a loud voice), "It's in Swabia--or the devil's in it." She would go no further than to admit that it was situated, in a certain sense, and to some extent, between Franconia, Bavaria, and Switzerland, &c.; it was only to the bookbinder's wife that she would _acknowledge_ that it was in Swabia.

Burdens, nay, overloads, of this sort, however, can be borne more or less easily and bravely by a soul fortified by the example of great sufferers--such as a Lycurgus, who let himself be deprived of an eye, and an Epictetus, who allowed his master to hack off his leg; and all these little failings of Lenette's have been touched upon in a previous chapter. But I have to tell of new shortcomings besides; and as regards these, I leave it to unbia.s.sed married men to determine whether they are among the matters which husbands can, and should, put up with.

Firstly: Lenette washed her hands forty times in the course of the day, at the very least; no matter what she touched, she must needs put herself through this process of Holy Re-baptism; like a Jew, she was rendered unclean by the propinquity of _everything_. She would far more probably have followed the example of Rabbi Akiba, than have been in the least astonished at his proceedings--who, when he was a captive in prison, and in the direst distress for water, instead of quenching his thirst with the very small quant.i.ty of it he could get, preferred to use it for his ablutions.

"Of course it is right and proper that she should be scrupulous about cleanliness," said Siebenkaes, "and more so than I am; but there are limits to all things. Why doesn't she rub herself with a towel when anybody breathes upon her? Why not purify her lips with soap after a fly has deposited itself (and not _only_ itself) upon them? I'm sure she turns our sitting-room into a regular English man-of-war, scoured and holystoned from stem to stern every morning; and I look on as pleased as any officer on her quarter-deck."

If a heavy Irish rain-cloud, or a waterspout with its attendant thunders and lightnings, came over his and her days, she always managed to put her husband right under water (like a Dutch fortress), with all his courageous energy, and gave free course to all her tears. But when the sun of happiness cast a feeble ray no broader than a window into the room, Lenette would always have a hundred things, other than this pleasant one, to attend to and to look at. Firmian had particularly made up his mind that he would most thoroughly winnow the husks from the corn of these few days during which he had a few shillings of ready money in his pocket; that he would skim off the cream of them, and completely hide, with a thick veil, the second Ja.n.u.s face, let it be smiling or weeping over the past or the future, as the case might be; but Lenette would insist upon rending this veil, and pointing to the hidden face. "My dear soul!" her husband more than once implored her, "do but wait till we're as poor as church mice, and leading the life of a dog, again; then I'll groan and moan with you with the greatest pleasure." And she only once made him any pertinent answer, namely, "How long will it be before we're without a farthing in the house?" But to this he was able to return a still more apposite reply: "If that is your way of looking at the matter, you will never be able to enjoy a single quiet, bright, happy day, unless one can give you his solemn oath that there will never come another dark, cloudy, wretched one again; in which case, of course, you can _never_ enjoy one. What king or emperor--ay! and though he had thrones upon the head of him and crowns under his tail--can ever be sure but that any post-delivery, or any sitting of his parliament, may bring him a cloudy time of it; yet he pa.s.ses his happy day in his _Sans Souci_, or his _Bellevue_ (or whatever he may call it), and enjoys his life." (She shook her head).

"I can prove it to you in print, and from the Greek." And, opening the New Testament, he read out the following pa.s.sage (inserted by himself on the spur of the moment): "If, in a time of good fortune and happiness, thou delayest the joy of thine heart until a moment shall come in which nothing shall lie before thee save hopes in unbroken sequence for whole years to come, then there can be no true happiness on the face of this changing world. For after ten days, or years, some sorrow shall surely come; and thus thou canst delight in no May-day, though it shower blossoms and nightingales upon thee, since, beyond all doubt, the winter will come thereafter, with its nights and its snowflakes. Yet thou enjoyest thine ardent youth, not thinking with dread upon the ice-pit of age, which is ready in the background, with a gradually-increasing coldness to preserve thee for a certain season.

Look, then, upon the glad To-day as a long youth; and let the sad Day-after-to-morrow appear unto thee but as a brief old age."

"The Latin or the Greek always has a more religious sound, I know," she answered, "and we often hear the thing in the pulpit, too; and whenever I do hear it preached I always go home and feel much comforted and consoled, till the money's all gone again."

He had greater difficulty still to get her to jump for joy quite to his liking at the dinner-table at mid-day. If, instead of their every-day fare, some extraordinary fleshpot of Egypt should chance to be smoking on the table--some dish such as the Counts of Wratislaw might have served, and the Counts of Waldstein have carved, without a blush--then Siebenkaes might be sure that his wife would have at least one hundred things more than usual to finish and to put away before she could come to dinner. There sits her husband, eager to begin; he looks round for her, quietly at first, angrily after a while, but keeps command of himself for two or three entire minutes, during which he has time to remember all his troubles as well as think about the roast--then, however, he discharges the first thunder-clap of his storm, and shouts, "Thunder and lightning! here have I been sitting for a whole Eternity, and everything getting as cold as charity. Wife! Wife!!"

In Lenette, as in other women, the cause of this was not ill-temper, neither was it stupidity, nor stubborn indifference to the matter or to her husband; she really could not do otherwise, however, and that's quite sufficient explanation.

At the same time, my friend Siebenkaes--who will have this story in his hands even before the printer's devils get hold of it--musn't take it ill of me that I divulge to the world in general certain small breakfast-failings of his own--which he has communicated to me with his own lips. As he lay in his trellis-bed in the morning, before getting up, with his eyes closed, there would suddenly flash upon him ideas for his book, and forms in which to express them, such as never occurred to him while he was sitting or standing during the day; and, indeed, I have in the course of my reading found that there have been many men of learning--such, for instance, as Descartes, Abbe Galiani, Basedow--I, myself, too, whom of course I don't count, who belonged to the Coleopterous family of backswimmers (_Notonectae_), and got on quickest in the rec.u.mbent position, and in whose cases bed has been the brewing-kettle of their most brilliant and original ideas. I, myself, could point to many such which I have written down immediately after getting out of bed in the morning. Any one who sets himself to work to explain this phenomenon should adduce in the first place the matutinal power of the brain, and the fact of its lending itself with a more nimble, as well as vigorous obedience to the impulses of the spirit after its internal and external holiday of rest; next, the freedom and facility both of thinking and of brain mobility, which the manifold impulsions of the day has not yet begun to weary and impair; and, lastly, the vigour which is a peculiar property of all firstborn things--a vigour which our earliest morning thoughts possess in common with the first impressions of youth.

Now, after the above explanations, it will doubtless seem clear that, when the advocate lay in this fashion, sprouting and sending out long shoots in the warm forcing-house of the pillow, and bearing the most precious flowers and fruit, nothing could strike upon his ear in a harsher and more distracting manner than the voice of Lenette calling from the next room, "Come to breakfast, the coffee's ready." He generally gave birth to one or two more happy turns of expression after he _did_ hear it, p.r.i.c.king his ears all the while, however, in dread of a second order to march. But as Lenette knew that he always allowed himself a considerable number of minutes of grace after the summons, she always cried, "Get up, the coffee's cold," when it was only just coming to the boil. The notonectic satirist, for his part, had observed the law which governed this precession of the equinoxes, and lay quietly among the feathers breeding his ideas happy and undisturbed when it was only once that she had summoned him, merely answering, "This very moment!" and availing himself of the double usance prescribed by law.

This obliged his wife, for her part, to go farther back, and when the coffee was made and standing by the fire, to cry, "Come, dear, it's getting quite cold." Now, on this system, of getting earlier on one side and later on the other, matters became more critical every day, with nowhere a prospect of extrication from the difficulty; in fact, what was naturally to be expected was the arrival of a state of things in which Lenette would end by calling him to get up a whole day too soon; although, in the end, this would eventuate in a mere restoration of the original condition of affairs, just as our suppers at the present day threaten to become too-early breakfasts, and our breakfasts unfashionably early dinners. Had Siebenkaes been able to bear the process of grinding the coffee, he might have moored himself to that as to an anchor of hope, and it would then have been a simple matter to calculate the time the coffee would take to get ready; but this he could not, for, in the absence of a coffee-mill, the coffee was bought ready ground (by everybody in the house, for that matter). If Lenette could have been induced to call him just one exact minute before the coffee was boiling and smoking, _she_ would have done instead of the coffee-mill--however, she could _not_ be induced.

What are trifling differences of opinion before marriage a.s.sume large dimensions thereafter--as north winds are warm in summer and cold in winter; the zephyr, when it is breathed forth by conjugal lungs, is like Homer's zephyr, concerning the biting keenness of which the poet sings so much. For this period onward, Firmian set himself to look with much care and minuteness for every crack, feather, flaw, or cloudiness, which might be discoverable in that diamond--Lenette's heart. Poor fellow! this being the case with thee, soon, soon must the crumbling altar of thy love go toppling down one stone after another, and the sacrificial fire flutter and go out.

He now discovered that she was not nearly as learned a woman as Mdlles.