Hesperus or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days Volume I Part 3

Fate often gives man the balsam before the wound: January received his fifth son, whom I shall never call anything but the Infante, still earlier than the tidings of his forfeited blessing of children. The chief Chamberlain, Von Le Baut, had wedded the mother of the Infante (his Lordship's niece); but he dated his marriage three quarter-days back, instead of announcing it one later. I have never been able to see the connection of this anachronism or misreckoning of time with the Prince's vow. For the rest, dangerous as January's _votum_ made him to the _husbands_ of his court, and harmless to the _fathers_, nevertheless, the virtuous confidence which the husbands reposed in the female virtue which they had appropriated to themselves by marriage was so unlimited, that they, without hesitation, led that virtue into the midst of his unbridled flames. Nay, they even disdained the fear of being suspected of doing so in order that, when he laid down his crown on the toilet-table of their spouses, they might play with the shining wall-crown (_corona muralis_) as with a _joujou_, and with its brilliancy throw a dazzling light into people's windows: for a courtier cares more to own his wife than to watch over her.[27]

It will come on presently, cry the puppet-players; it will be over presently, say I.

When, at length, his Lordship returned empty-handed, he was greatly surprised, not at the presence of the Infante, but at his adoption,--namely, at the marriage of Le Baut. But this High Chamberlain was--and no one minded it less than Horion--an ardent friend of the Prince; this rendered him capable of doing for him (as Cicero requires) even that which he would never have done for himself,--namely, a dishonorable action. In fact, it is an uncommon piece of good fortune for a courtier or a world's man, whose honor his high position exposes often to the worst of weather, that this honor, however sensitive to slight contusions,[28] easily gets over great ones, and can, if not by words, yet by deeds, be a.s.sailed without injury. Something similar is remarked by physicians in regard to madmen, or rather their skin, which to be sure feels the lightest touch, but on which no blister will draw. The Prince was knit to Le Baut by a threefold ligament,--by grat.i.tude, son, and wife; his Lordship plucked the ligament asunder; that is to say, he laid bare to his niece the Chamberlain's heart, and discovered to her the poison-bag therein, and a dramatically carried out _plan_, which she had hitherto regarded as an _indulgent confidence_. All the n.o.bility and pride of her nature flamed up in her with shame and wrath, and, pursued by crashing recollections, she flew with her child, and with the prospect of a second, out of the city to a country-seat of his Lordship's.

Now the Prince with his Lordship and his court (including even Dr.

Culpepper) returned to Germany. Le Baut tarried awhile longer to appease the niece and persuade her to take the journey. But it was not only impossible to draw all her deeply sunk roots out of the land of freedom and go with the party to Germany, but she even separated herself, not only by seas, but by a bill of divorce, from the filthy favorite. She was obliged to leave with the Chamberlain her second child, his real daughter; but the first, the Infante, she clasped to her maternal breast. Le Baut was glad enough to let it be so, and thought that after the building-oration the scaffolding of the building should also go into the house-stove. But when he appeared under the German throne-canopy, his sun (January) stood at the summer solstice, which from decreasing warmth gradually pa.s.sed over to cold storms.

January's love could more easily rise and fall than stay still, and the greatest crime with him was absence. Le Baut, stripped of both wife and child, must needs lose now in comparison with his Lordship, because the latter came upon the stage, and under January's throne-canopy as treasurer and coast-warden of two treasures left behind in London. But there were deeper reasons. His Lordship easily governed the Regent, because he held him in neither by his own nor other people's vices, but by his own virtues. In the first place, he required nothing of him, not so much as diet and chast.i.ty. Secondly, he lifted no cousins into the saddle, but tipped bad men out of it; he bore him like a hawk on his gloved fist, but the falconer did it not for the purpose of darting the Prince upon doves and hares, but in order to make him at once _watchful_ and _tame_. Thirdly, his firmness and his fineness mutually compensated each other: the best one to rule over changeable men is the unchangeable. Fourthly, he was not the favorite, but the a.s.sociate, remained always a Briton and a lord and the country's beneficent bee-father (apiary), whereas January was the queen-bee and in the queen-bee's prison. Fifthly, he was one of the few men to whom one must be _equal_ in order to resist their will; and any one who would play the juggler's trick of throwing a padlock on his mouth slyly, soon had one to fetters and manacles on his own soul. Sixthly, he had a good cheese. This last point needs no copious explanation. In Chester he had a farmer, who produced a cheese, the like of which was not to be found in Europe; but to princes generally an extraordinary cheese is more gratifying than an extraordinary address of thanks from the provincial syndic.

With such a conjunction of ill stars, of course our Chamberlain found the bill of divorce, which at first was written with sympathetic ink in January's face, gradually more and more legible. Still he read it through several times every week, in order to read it correctly; he could now no longer procure any lapdog a place, that is, a lap,--his letters of recommendation were Uriah's-letters,[29]--and now, when he actually succeeded in getting, through his Lordship, the charge of chief Chamberlain, he thought it high time to try, against the gout in his knee, bathing at his knightly seat of St. Luna year in and year out, and so he set off, having first been obliged to solemnly promise the whole court that he should come back well.

Properly, now, the preliminary history would be, according to promise, ended, so that I might get well on in the later history this work contains, were I not absolutely obliged on the Court-Chaplain's account to add this much more:--

The only place of which Le Baut had the presentation at court was the parish of St. Luna. He invested therewith, as its patron, the Rat-contradictor Eymann, who had begged from him in London the oral vocation to the Court-Chaplaincy, and who could no longer obtain it.

Hence the Dog-post-days always call him the Court-Chaplain, although in fact he is only a country pastor.

From the slight circ.u.mstance that Eymann, as travelling preacher, accompanied January's retinue, a great deal grew out. Eymann, at his Lordship's country-seat, offered to his present wife the neck- and breast-pendant of a heart hollowed with consumption, as a slight gift, which was accepted. To the couple while still in England their Flamin was born. Her Ladyship loved in the person of the Court-Chaplain's wife a worthy sister of her s.e.x, and a worthy fellow-citizen of her native land; she urged her with fervent prayers to stay in England, and when all were refused, she begged and prevailed upon her at least to let her Flamin--in order to be at all events half a Briton--stay behind in the society of Victor and the Infante, till the friendly trio[30] should be transplanted simultaneously into German soil.

The Parson's wife was strong enough to sacrifice for the sake of her Flamin's finer education the enjoyment of his presence, and left him behind under the eyes of love and in the little arms of childish friendship. The same training hand--_Dah.o.r.e_ was the name of the teacher--reared and watered the three n.o.ble flowers, which sucked from one kind of bed and ether three kinds of color, and developed unlike stamens and honeycups. Dah.o.r.e had the hearts of all children in his tender hand, simply because his own never boiled and bl.u.s.tered, and because an ideal beauty sat upon his youthful form and an ideal love dwelt in his pure breast. The three children loved and embraced each more warmly in his presence, as the Graces enfold each other before Venus Urania: they even bore all the same name, as the Otaheitans exchange names with those they love. When they had attained some ripeness of years, his Lordship came to put them all with Dah.o.r.e on board ship for Germany. But before the embarkation the Infante caught the small-pox and was made blind, and Dah.o.r.e was obliged to return with him to the distressed and weeping lady. Victor had long and speechlessly hung on the neck of his sick friend and clung around Dah.o.r.e's knee, refusing to part from his two loved ones; but his Lordship parted them: Flamin and Victor were, from that time, educated in Flachsenfingen, the former for a jurist, the latter for a physician.

There are some improbabilities in Spitzius Hofmann's gourd-flask; but the Dog must be held responsible for what he delivers. Now the story goes straight forward again.

His Lordship, during the cannonading of the tattered or riddled garrison, withdrew with Victor into another apartment; and his first word was, "Unbandage me a moment, and leave thy hand in mine, that I may be sure of thy attention, for I have much to say to thee." Good man! we all remark that thou art more tender than thou art willing to appear, and we all praise it. Not _coldness_, but _cooling-off_, is the greater wisdom; and our inner man should, like a hot metal-casting in its mould, cool but slowly, in order that it may round itself out to a smoother form: for that very reason has Nature--just as they _warm_ the mould for statuary metal--poured his soul into an _ardent_ body.

He continued: "I have, my dear boy, in my blindness been able to dictate to thee only empty letters; I meant to save my secrets for thy arrival. I am watched by a small gunpowder-conspiracy." Victor interrupted him with the question, how he had so suddenly become blind.

His Lordship answered, reluctantly, "One eye was probably so already before thy departure for Gottingen, but I did not know it."

"But the other?" said Victor.

Over his Lordship's face glanced the cold shadow of a buried pang; he looked on his son a long time, and answered, as if abstractedly and hurriedly, "Also! as I look on thee, thou seemest to me much taller and larger."

"That is, perhaps," replied he, for he guessed his thought, "an ocular illusion of the sensitive retina.[31] You spoke of a gunpowder-plot."

"They have found out," his Lordship continued, "that the Prince's son is not in London: they even a.s.sume that the disease was given to him at that time designedly; and the Prince daily speaks of the moment when I shall bring his son back to him. Perhaps he knows these suspicions. I was obliged to postpone my departure for London till my cure. Now I shall shortly start for England, where the son is not, to bring his mother; him I shall bring from otherwheres, and with just as good eyes as thou hast given me."

"Then," Victor broke out, "not the best of men, but his enemies, will be hurled down."

"No, I am to be _hurled down_ first (to express myself in thy fashion),--but thou hast interrupted me: I have never had the courage to interrupt other people like fools,--for my absence is just what they want."

I, as installed historiographer, ask no leave of any one, and interrupt whom I will. One who is interrupted may jest, indeed, but he can no longer argue. The Socrates grafted upon Plato, who never let a sophist have his talk out, was therefore one himself. In England, where they tolerate systems even among the wine-cups, a man can spread himself out like a royal folio: in France, where the spectacles of wisdom are splintered into sharp, shiny bits, one must be as curt as a visiting-card. A hundred times is the wise man silent before the c.o.xcomb, because he needs twenty-three sheets to express his opinion.

c.o.xcombs need only lines; their opinions are upstarting islands, held together by nothing but emptiness.... I add the remark, that between the lord and his son a fine, courteous wariness reigned, which in the case of so near a relationship is to be justified only by their rank, their mental structure, and their frequent separation.--

"But my presence is, perhaps, still worse. The Princess--"

(The Prince's bride, since his first wife died early and without children, as Spitz says.)

"The Princess brings along with her a stream of diversions, in which he will no longer hear any voice but that which lures to pleasure. An interrupted influence is as good as lost. And then, too, I am, up to a certain point, so tired of this game, that I gladly flee from the new engagements in which this new arrival would involve me. Should she, as they say, not love him, she might so much the more easily govern him; and then my absence would be, again, not good. But, setting me aside, what dost thou propose to do during my absence?"

After a crotchet-rest, he answered himself, "Thou wilt be his Physician-in-ordinary, Victor." Victor's hand twitched in his father's.

"Thou hast already been promised to him; and he longs for thee, simply because I have often named thee. He is impatient to see for himself how any one looks whose father he knows so well. As Physician-in-ordinary, thou canst, with thy art and thy fancy, keep him clear of strange fetters until I come again; then will I impose still softer ones on him, and go back forever. My engagement has had hitherto the design merely of averting strange ones, particularly a certain--" Then, with full heart and changed voice, "My beloved! it is hard in this world to win Virtue, Freedom, and Happiness, but still harder to diffuse them.

The wise man gets everything from himself; the fool, from others. The freeman must release the slave, the philosopher think for the fool, the happy man labor for the unhappy."

He rose, and presupposed Victor's Yes. The latter had therefore to dribble out his rhetorical flood during the leave-taking. He began with compressed breath: "I detest most cordially the simoom of the court-atmosphere ..." (his Lordship has to answer for it with me, that the son leaves out here the concessive conjunction, "to be sure": whoever lets it be seen that he expects obedience, gets it at least in a prouder shape) "which sweeps over nothing but prostrate men, and turns him to powder who remains upright! I wish I could be in an antechamber on a court-day; I would say to all in my thoughts: 'How I hate you and your sour honey of pleasure- and plague-parties; the cursed watchman's- and rower's-bench of your card-tables; the gifts of full dishes of slaughtered provinces (I mean your gaming-plates and your meat-plates)!' But I know very well I can never express myself strongly enough upon the servile, tide-waiting court-oysters, who know not how to stir or open anything--not excepting their hearts--but only their sh.e.l.l, to draw something in ..."

"I have not _interrupted_ thee yet," said his Lordship, and stood still for a moment.

"Meanwhile," the son continued, "I wade with the greatest pleasure down to the oyster-bank ... O, my dear father! how could I help going? Why have I not hitherto left your diseased eye unbandaged, that you might see in my face the absence of a single objection to your wishes? Ah!

around every throne hang a thousand wet eyes, upturned by maimed men without hands; above sits iron Fate in the form of a prince, and stretches out no hand. Why shall not some tender-hearted man go up, and guide Fate's rigid hand, and with one hand dry, down below, a thousand eyes?"

Horion smiled, as one who should say, Young man!

"But I beg only for some legal postponements and delays, in order that I may get time to be more stoical and foolish,--foolish,--that is, I mean--contented. I should be glad to laugh and go on foot for two months longer among the good people around us, and by the side of my Flamin, particularly just now in the almanac spring and in that of my years, and before the ship of life freezes into the harbor of old age.

Stoical I must be at any rate. Verily, did I not lay Epictetus's manual as a serpent-stone[32] to myself and my wounds, in order that the stone might suck out the moral poison; were I to go out of the house with a breast full of cancer-sores; what would the court think of me?... Ah!

but I mean it seriously. The poor inner man--dried up by the intermittent fever of the pa.s.sions, exhausted by the heart-palpitation of pleasure, burning with the wound-fever of love needs, like any other sick man, solitude and stillness and tranquillity, in order to get well."

Though he named the word "tranquillity," his inner being was agitated even to the dissolving-point, so much had the pa.s.sions already stirred his blood and shaken his heart.

And now the two went back in a deepening silence of harmony to Eymann.

"I have a request for my Flamin."

"What is it?" said his Lordship.

"I do not yet know, but he wrote me he would soon name it."

"Mine to him is," said his Lordship, "that, if he will get a place, he must love the Pandects better than tactics, and, instead of the rapier, take the pen."

The son had been treated too politely by the father to have courage enough to ask for his secrets, especially that relating to the whereabouts of January's son. I treat the reader with the same delicacy, and hope he will have just as little courage; for, when any one explains himself guardedly, nothing is more uncivil than to put a new question.

His Lordship now travelled back, a cured man, to the Prince.

3. DOG-POST-DAY.

Sowing-Day of Joys.--Watch-Tower.--Fraternization of the Heart!

The departure of his Lordship was the removal of the dam which had hitherto stood in the way of the flood of narrations, questions, and pleasures. The first investigation upon which the Parsonage entered was, to see whether it was really the old Bastian. And he it was, hide and hair; even the left side-lock he had still, as of old, shorter than the right. When the butcher's boy comes home from Hungary, he wonders that his kin are the same old pennies; they, however, wonder that he is no longer so. But in the present case there was mutual delight at the unchangedness on both sides. On every face lay the halo of joy, but on each composed of different rays. On a soft face, like Victor's, rapture looks like virtue. Old Appel, who had never, in all her life, turned over any leaves but those of David's Psalter and that in an ox's stomach,[33] expressed her pleasure all day long to the bra.s.s kettles by scouring them with unusual zest. The Vienna hospital for animals--consisting of an old pug and puss, who no longer hated each other, just as in the old man the good and bad souls are reconciled--and the bird-collection under the stove, which was one rusty-black bulfinch strong, took their full share of interest in the general uproar, and introduced themselves, and--which no amba.s.sador would have done--waived the right of the first visit. Agatha expressed her joy only with her lips, by keeping silence with them, and pressing them to her brother's. To the Court-Chaplain's credit, it is reported that he took the invalid pug, who had the podagra in his hind-feet and the chiragra in his fore-paws, and shoved him quietly in his basket keeping-room and chamber under the stove again; restored the architectural order of the chairs without scolding; and rocked the little Bastian amidst the joyful confusion of tongues, that he might not wake up and aggravate it. But in the highly refined heart of Victor's countrywoman, the Chaplain's wife, the rays of joy from the whole family came to a focus, and diffused through her whole bosom the living glow of love. She smiled right into Victor's face to such a degree that she knew no way of escape but by bethinking herself of his destined chamber, which she directed to be opened and shown to him.

Agatha flew forward with the jingling bunch of keys; and the guest, as he entered, was followed by only so many people as there were in the house, all eager to see what he would say to it.

He surrendered himself to all this friendly handling, not with the vain egotism of a cultivated stranger, but with a delighted, docile, almost child-like confusion; it gave him not the least concern that he looked like a child, so gentle, so glad, and so unpretending. In such hours it is hard to sit down, or to listen to a story, or to tell one....

Everybody began one, but the Chaplain interposed: "We have quite other things to talk about." But no _quite other things_ came. Everybody wanted to enjoy the stranger where there were only four ears, but the six remaining ears could not be kept away. My description of his confusion is itself confused, but so it is with me always; for instance, when I describe haste, I do it, unconsciously, with the greatest. To a heart like his, that hung rocking in the feathers[34]

of love, was there any need that it should see in every notched window-sill, in every smooth pavement-pebble, in every round hole drilled by the rain in the door-step, his boyhood's years mosaically pictured, and that he should enjoy in the same objects age and novelty?

Those boyish years, which appeared to him out of a shadow, abiding on the lawns of St. Luna, between happy Sundays and among beloved faces,--those _boyish years_ held a dark mirror in their hands, in which the glimmering perspective of his _childish years_ ran backward; and in that remote magic-night stood, dimly gleaming, the form of _Dah.o.r.e_, his never-to-be-forgotten teacher in London, who had so loved, so indulged, so improved him. "Ah!" thought he, "thou unrequited heart, too warm for this earth, where beatest thou now? why can I not unite my sighs with thine, and say to thee, Teacher, Beloved? O, man often perceives but late how much he was loved, how forgetful and ungrateful he was, and how great the heart he misunderstood." What nourished his still pleasure the most was the thought that he had earned it by his filial obedience to his father, and by his resolve to undertake the future labors-of-Hercules at court; for into every great joy of his the doubt would fall, like a bitter stomach-drop, whether he deserved it,--a doubt which reigning houses, palatines, patriarchs, and grand-masters have skilfully taken from them in childhood. The better sort of men find pleasure sweetest only after a good action,--the Easter-Festival after a Pa.s.sion-Week.

My lady-readers will now want to hear what was cooked for dinner; but the doc.u.ments of this Post-day, which reach me half by wheel and half by water, state, in the first place, that no one had any appet.i.te,--which joy takes away more than grief,--except the three regiments, which slashed like veterans into the enemy,--that is, into the leavings of the table; secondly, that the meal was still leaner than the guest himself. We will, however, hereby invite all the reading-societies in a body to the _immovable_ feast of the 4th of May, the Friday when, for the first time, Victor's arrival and his G.o.dson's churchgoing are suitably celebrated.