Hesperus or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days Volume I Part 9

"So soon as the sun comes, I look into it, and my heart lifts itself up and swears to thee that it loves thee, Horion!... Glow, Aurora, through the human heart as through thy field of cloud, illuminate the human eye like thy dew-drops, and send up into the dark breast, as into thy heaven, a sun!...

"I have now sworn to thee, I give thee my whole soul and my little life, and the sun is the seal on the bond betwixt me and thee.

"I know thee, beloved; but knowest thou whose hand thou hast taken into thine? Lo, this hand has closed in Asia eight n.o.ble eyes,--no friend survives me,--in Europe I veil myself,--my sad history lies near the ashes of my parents, in the waters of the Ganges, and on the 24th of June of the coming year I go out of the world.... O Eternal One, I go; on the longest day the happy spirit wings its way out of this temple of the sun, and the green earth opens and closes with its flowers over my sinking chrysalis, and covers the heart that is gone with roses....

"Waft greater waves upon me, morning-air! Draw me into thy broad floods that stand over our lawns and woods, and bear me in clouds of blossoms over sparkling gardens and over glimmering streams; and dizzied between flying blossoms and b.u.t.terflies, melting away under the sun with outspread arms, faintly floating over the earth, let me die, and let the b.l.o.o.d.y garment, dissolved into a red morning-vapor, like the ichor of the b.u.t.terfly[103] just released, fall into the flowers, and let a hot sunbeam absorb the azure-bright spirit out of the rose-chalice of the heart up into the next world.... Ah, ye beloved, ye departed, are ye indeed departed? are ye, then, moving along as dark waves[104] in the quivering blue of heaven? even, now, in that abyss, full of veiled worlds, do your ethereal garments billow around the hidden suns? Ah, come back, sweep hitherward; in a year I melt and flow into your heart!

"--And thou, my friend, seek me soon! No one on earth can love thee so truly as a man who must soon die. Thou good heart, which these mild days press into my hands, even at this last moment, for a farewell, I will love and warm thee inexpressibly. During this year in which I am not yet taken away, I will stay with thee entirely; and when Death comes and demands my heart, he shall find it only on thy breast.

"I know my friend, his life and his future. In thy coming years stand open dark chambers of martyrdom; and when I die, and thou art with me, I shall sigh, Why can I not take him with me, before he sheds his tears?

"Ah, Horion! there lies in man a black Dead Sea, out of which only when it is agitated the blessed island of the next world lifts itself up with its clouds. But my lips will already lie under the earthly clod when the cold hour comes to thee in which thou wilt no longer see any G.o.d,--in which Death shall lie on his throne, and mow around him, and fling even to the domain of nothingness his frosty shadows and the lightnings of his scythe. O beloved, my grave-mound will then be already standing when thy _inner_ midnight comes on; with anguish thou wilt mount upon it, and look sternly into the soft wreaths of the constellations, and cry:[105] 'Where is he whose heart crumbles beneath me? Where is eternity, the mask of time? Where is the Infinite One? The veiled self grasps after itself on all sides, and strikes against its cold form.... Gleam not upon me, broad starry field; thou art only the conglomerate _picture_, formed of colored earths, on an infinite _churchyard-gate_, that stands before the desert of a life buried under s.p.a.ce.... Laugh me not to scorn, ye shapes on higher stars, for, if I melt away, ye melt away also. One, one thing, which man cannot name, glows forever in the immeasurable smoke, and a centre without limit calcines a circ.u.mference without limit.--Still I exist; the Vesuvius of death yet smokes above me, and its ashes envelop me; its flying rocks bore through suns, its lava-torrents move dissolved worlds, and in its crater the former world lies stretched out, and it sends up nothing but graves.... O Hope, where abidest thou?' ...

"Float enraptured around me, animated gold-dust, with thy thin wings,--I will not crush thy short flower-life; swell upward, giddy zephyr, and waft me down into thy blossom-cups. O thou immeasurable flood of radiance, fall from the sun over this narrow earth, and bear up on thy waves of splendor the heavy heart before the highest throne, that the eternal and infinite Heart may take the little ones which are nigh to ashes, and heal and warm them!

"Is, then, a poor son of this earth so unhappy that he can quail in the midst of the splendor of morning, so near to G.o.d on the hot steps of his throne?

"Fly not from me, my dear one, because a shadow always encompa.s.ses me, which daily grows darker, until at last it shall wall me in as a little night. I see the heavens and thee through the shadow, in the midnight I smile, and in the night-wind my breath goes forth full and warm. For, O man, my soul has stood erect toward the stars; man is an asthmatic, who suffocates if he lies down and does not lift up his breast.--But darest thou despise the earth, that forecourt of heaven, which the Eternal has thought worthy to move along as one in the bright host of his worlds?

The great, the G.o.dlike, which thou hast in thy soul and lovest in another's,--seek it not in any sun-crater, on any planet-floor; the whole next world, the whole of Elysium, G.o.d himself, appear to thee in no other place than in the midst of thee. Be great enough to despise the earth; be greater, so as to respect it. To the mouth which is bent down to it, it seems a rich, flowery plain; to man in his _perigee_, a dark world; to man in his _apogee_, a glimmering moon. Then, and not till then, will the holy element, which from unknown heights is sent down into man, flow from the soul, mix itself with the earthly life, and quicken all that surrounds thee. So must the water, shed from heaven and its clouds, first run under the earth, and well up from it again, before it is purified into a fresh, clear draught. The whole earth is trembling now for rapture, till all rings and sings and shouts, as bells sound of themselves during an earthquake. And the soul of man is made greater and greater by its nearness to the Invisible....

"I love thee exceedingly!

"EMANUEL."

Horion read through swimming eyes. "Ah," he wished, "were I only, this very day, near thee, with my disordered heart, thou glorified one!" and now, for the first time, occurred to him the nearness of St. John's day, and he proposed to himself on that day to see him. The sun had already vanished; the evening red fell like a ripe apple-blossom; he felt not the hot drops on his face, nor the icy dew of twilight on his hands; and with a bosom illuminated by dreams, and a heart tranquillized and reconciled to earth, he wandered back....

--By the way! is it, then, necessary that I should elaborate an apology for Emanuel as stylist and as _stylite_ (in the higher sense)? And if such is necessary, need I therein bring forward anything more than this,--that his soul is still the echo of his Indian palms and the River Ganges; that the walk of the better sort of unfettered men, just as in dream, is always a flight; that he does not manure his life, like Europeans, with the blood of other animals, nor hatch it out of dead flesh, and this abstinence in eating (quite another effect than that of excess in drinking) makes the wings of fancy lighter and broader; that a few ideas, to which he guides with partial hand all the mental sap and nutriment (and this distinguishes not only madmen, but also extraordinary men; from ordinary ones), must in him obtain a disproportionate weight, because the fruits of a tree become so much thicker and sweeter when the rest have been plucked; and more of the same sort? For, to speak candidly, those readers who desire an apology, themselves need one, and Emanuel deserves something better than a--criminal defence.--

At this moment the consolation leaped up within my hero like a fountain, that he was to begin on Thursday his metempsychosis through nature,--his journey. "Deuse take it!" said he, skipping up; "what needs a Christian to coin money for the present distress,[106] and put on mourning-cloaks, when he can journey on Thursday to Kussewitz to see the handing-over of the Italian Princess, and on Sat.u.r.day to the _Isle of Union_, and, what is more, on the same day, which is _one_ day before St. John's, to Maienthal, to his dear one, his angel?"

O Heavens! I would that he and I were already about the journey,--really it may perhaps, unless all hopes deceive me, be quite tolerable!--

During the week-day prayer-hour of Wednesday, two carriages rolled along. Out of the full one stepped his Lordship and the Prince; out of the empty one, n.o.body. Old Appel had dressed herself up splendidly, and locked herself into the pantry. The Chaplain was happier,--he taught in the Temple. Seldom does one make a clever face when one is presented, or a stupid one when one presents. His Lordship led his son to the Prince's hand and heart, as a collateral security for his future loyalty, but with a dignity which won as much reverence as it showed.

My good hero behaved himself like a--fool; he had far more wit than our deference for higher persons, or theirs towards us, allows. A talent which expresses itself outside the limits of feudal service may be regarded as high-treason.

His wit was only a covered embarra.s.sment, into which he was thrown by two faces and a third cause. First, the Prince's....

--If the reading world complains that so gradually, as they observe, one new name and actor after another steals into this star Venus, and makes it so full, that, at last, the historical picture-gallery becomes a regular gallery of vocables, in which they must wander round with a directory in their hands, they have really only too much ground for the complaint, and I have myself already complained the most bitterly of the same thing; for, after all, the greatest load remains on my shoulders, inasmuch as every fresh ninny is a new organ-stop drawn out, which I have to take into my performance, and which makes the pressing down upon the keys more disagreeable to me; but my correspondent forwards to me in the gourd-flask, without leave asked, all these people to be quartered on me, and the rogue actually writes me I have only to tell the world, _There are still more people coming_.--

The Prince's face threw our hero into embarra.s.sment, not from anything imposing about it, but because everything of that kind was discharged from it. It was a week-day and _current_ face, that belonged on coins, but not on prize-medals,--with arabesque lines, which mean neither good nor evil,--tinged with a little dead gold of court-life,--anointed with a soft oil, which might stifle the strongest waves,--a sort of sweet wine, more drinkable for women than men. Of the finest turns, which Victor had intended to reciprocate, there was nothing to be heard or seen; but of apt and easy ones so much the more. Victor was embarra.s.sed by the conflict and interchange of politeness and truth. Social embarra.s.sments arise not from the uncertainty and impracticableness of the path, but from the crossways of choice and the perplexity of the scholastic a.s.s between his two bundles of hay. Victor, whose politeness always sprang from philanthropy, must to-day let it spring from self-interest; but this was precisely what he could not get into him.

Beside the paternal face, before which, with most children, the whole wheelwork of a free behavior grates and sticks, a third cause made him disconcerted and witty,--namely, that he was after something. I can tell by the look of every one,--except a courtier, whose life, like a Christian's, is a constant prayer for something,--the moment he enters the door, whether he calls as an alms-beggar and saint-by-works, or as merely a member of the joy-club.

Long before the people left the church, Victor already conceived a hearty love for the Prince,--the reason was, he was determined to love him, though the Devil himself stood before him there incarnate. He often said, Give me two days, or _one_ night, and I will fall in love with whomsoever you propose. He was delighted to find on January's face no second-hands, no minute-hands, of those a.s.signation-hours with which a good Caesar generally seeks gladly to interleave, as with honeymoons, the tedious years of wedlock; but on his face nothing was displayed but continence, and Victor would rather swear by the face than by the reputation. He misses the mark; for on the male face--although it is made of mere printed characters of physiognomy, as certain pictures are of written letters--Nature has, nevertheless, written the _matres lectionis_[107] and signs of sensuality very small, but upon the female larger, which is really lucky for the former and stronger and less chaste s.e.x. In fact, adultery is, with princes of the January stamp, nothing but a milder sort of ruling and conquering. And yet honest regents always return--with pleasure the wives, so soon as they have conquered them, to their former lords. This, however, is only the same greatness which led the Romans to deprive the greatest kings of their realms, in order afterward to present them with them again.

As princes are not, like jurists, bad Christians, but prefer to be none at all, January prepossessed our Victor by sundry sparks of religion, and by some hatred of the French Encyclopedists; although he saw that for a prince religion has indeed its good, but also its bad side, since only a crowned Atheist, but no Theist, possesses the invaluable _privilegium de non appellando_, which consists in this, that the accused party is not permitted (_per saltus_ or by a _salto mortale_) to appeal to the highest jurisdiction beyond the pale of earth.

The conversation was indifferent and empty, as in such cases it always is. In fact, men deserve, for their conversation, to be dumb; their thoughts are always better than their talk; and it is a pity that one could not apply to good heads some barometrograph, or compositor's harpsichord, which should write off outwardly what is thought within. I would bet that every great head goes to the grave with a whole library of unprinted thoughts, and lets only some few book-shelves of printed ones go out to the world.

Victor submitted to the Prince the usual medical interrogatories, not merely as physician-in-ordinary, but also as a man, for the sake of loving him. Although people from the great world and the greatest have, like the sub-man, the orang-outang, lived out and died out in their twenty-fifth year,--for which reason, perhaps, in many countries kings are placed under guardianship as early as their fourteenth,--nevertheless January had not ante-dated his life so far, and was really older than many a youth. The Prince won the good, warm heart of Sebastian most by the unpretending simplicity which served neither vanity nor pride, and whose ingenuousness differed from the usual sort only in refinement. Victor had seen va.s.sals stand in such a manner beside the mouth[108] of their liege-lord; that the latter looked like a shark carrying a man crosswise in his jaws; but January resembled a Peter-fish, which holds forth in _its_ jaws a fine _stater_.

The Court-Chaplain, when he arrived, in his astonishment at a crowned guest, found it impossible to stir lip or foot; he remained immovable in the broad water-spout of the priestly frock, which was thrown around him like a sheet of royal paper round marchpane. The only thing in which he indulged, and on which he ventured, was--not to put away the Bible (the mouse-trap), but--to send his eyes secretly round the room, to spy out whether _it_ had been properly st.i.tched, folded, and superscribed by the registresses of rooms.

The Prince proceeded at once on his journey with his Lordship, who had to reserve his leave-taking of his son and his farewell sermons till the solitary day they were to spend on the Isle of Union. The son contracted a liking for the company of the Prince, when he thought over his demeanor towards his father; he had a double joy, a filial and a human, as that father transformed his own happiness into the happiness of the poor country, and only for the sake of doing good made foot-tracks for himself in the rock of the throne, as in Italy the footsteps of angels who have appeared and left a blessing are shown in the rocks. Other favorites resemble the executioner who hollows out for himself foot-holes in the sand, so as to stand steadier when he--beheads.

When the room was emptied, the first of Eymann's members to wake up--he still stood in the sentry-box of the priest's frock--was the index-finger, which stretched itself out, and pointed out to the family-circle the bed. "It would have been more satisfactory and serviceable to me," said he, "to have been strangled to death with that rag, than to have had his _Serenissimus_ spy it out." He meant, however, his own soiled cravat, which he himself had thrown upon the nuptial bed,--that art-chamber and wareroom of his linen. Whenever one contradicted any tormenting notion of his, he argued it so long that at last he believed it himself; but if one admitted it, then he conjured up certain scruples, and adopted a different opinion. "His Highness must inevitably have seen the tattered thing through the bed-curtains,"

he replied. Finally he travelled over all the places where January had stood, and took observations at the torn neck-tie, and investigated its parallax. "We must adhere to the _blinding_ of the windows, if we want to have any _peace_," he concluded, and--

So do I.

P. S. I shall always remark after an eighth chapter (because I get ready exactly two Dog-post-days in a week), that I have again worked for the s.p.a.ce of a month. I therefore report that to-morrow June comes on.

FIRST INTERCALARY DAY.

Must Treaties be kept, or is it enough that they are made?

The latter.--To-day the mining-superintendent exercises, for the first time, on the reader's ground and soil the right (_servitus oneris ferendi_, or I may say _servitus projiciendi_) which, according to the contract of May 4, he actually possesses. The main question now is, whether a dog-contract between two such great powers--inasmuch as the reader has all the quarters of the world, and I, in turn, have the reader--must, after being concluded, also be kept.

Frederick, the Antimachiavellist, answers us, and backs himself by Machiavelli: Certainly every one of us must keep his word so long as it--is for his advantage. So true is this, that such treaties would never be broken, if they were not once--concluded; and the Swiss, who, as late as 1715, swore one with France, might quite as well in all the Cantons have lifted their fingers and taken an oath they would every day regularly--make water.

But so soon as the advantage of contracts ceases, then is a regent ent.i.tled to break them in two cases,--those which he makes with other regents, and those he makes with his own step-children of the country,--his subjects.

While I was already at work in the cabinet, (not later than six o'clock, with the goose-wing, dusting the session-table, not with the pen,) I had under the latter a clever fugitive paper, wherein I proposed to show that the _ouverture_ of treaties (_au nom de la Sainte Trinite_ or _in nomine Sanctissimae et individuae Trinitatis_) was the cipher which amba.s.sadors sometimes place over their reports, meaning that the opposite is to be understood. Nothing, however, came of the fugitive paper but a--ma.n.u.script. In this I was simple enough, and proposed first to advise princes, that, in regard to lies of necessity and truths of necessity, they must have, for every lat.i.tude and hour, _declinations_ and _inclinations_. I proposed to whistle the state-chanceries to myself into a corner, and whisper in their ears, I would never suffer it, and, though I had only nine regiments in pay and starvation, that my hands and feet should be glued together with the sealing-wax of contracts, and my wings clogged with ink. That would I for the first time introduce into state-praxis; but the state-chanceries laughed at me, afar off in my foolish corner, and said, The whistler may believe, himself,--we do the thing otherwise.

In the works of Herr _Herkommen_[109]--the best German publicist, who, however, writes no _acta sanctorum_ it is proved that a reigning prince need not observe at all any treaties, privileges, and concessions granted by his predecessor to his subjects; hence it follows that he is far less bound to keep his _own_ covenants with them, since the enjoyment of the benefit of these covenants, which consists in nothing but the keeping or breaking, manifestly vests in him as proprietor. Mr.

Herkommen says the same on every page, and absolutely swears to it.

Nay, can there be a dean or rector magnificus who exercises so little reason--considering that, according to a general a.s.sumption, a king never dies, and consequently predecessors and successors grow together into one man--as not to draw from this the conclusion that the successor may regard his own covenants as those of his predecessor, and accordingly, since the two make only one man, may break them just as much as if they were transmitted ones?

Whoso chose to discourse philosophically about this might prove that, in fact, _no man whatever_ needs keep his word, not merely no prince.

According to physiology, the old body of a king (a reader, a superintendent of mines) in _three_ years makes way for a new one. Hume carries it still farther with the soul, inasmuch as he considers that as a fleeting (not frozen) stream of phenomena. How much soever, then, the king (reader, author) may, at the moment of making a promise, be bound to keep it, still he cannot possibly be held thereto the next minute after, when he has already become his own successor and heir; so that, in fact, of us two contracting parties of the 4th of May, nothing more is extant than our mere _posthumi_ and successors,--namely, ourselves. As now, fortunately, promising and fulfilling never enter into one and the same moment, herefrom may follow the conclusion, pleasant to all of us, that, in fact, no one at all is bound to keep his word, whether he is the top of a throne or only a chip thereof. Nor will courtiers (the corner-clips of the throne) oppose this proposition.

The public is requested to consider the Preface as the Second Intercalary Day, for the sake of symmetry.

9. DOG-POST-DAY.

A Heavenly Morning; a Heavenly Afternoon.--A House without Walls; a Bed without a House.

Ah, the poor miner, the delver in rock-salt pits, and the island-negro have in their calendar no such day as is here described or repeated!

Sebastian stood on Thursday, as early as three o'clock, on the flying-board of his bee-hive, in order in one day to land in _Great Kussewitz_ and be off again before people were up. A reader who has an atlas on the floor at his feet cannot possibly confound this market-town, where the presentation of the Princess takes place, with a namesake of a town, which the city of Rostock has annexed to its immovable property. Unfortunately, the whole house loved him so that it had already, for half an hour earlier, been out of the morning feathers of which the greatest wings of dream are made. Amidst the din of carriage-chains, dogs, and c.o.c.kerels, he tore his tender heart away from eyes that were all love, and, as the beating of the former and the melting of the latter annoyed him, all grew still worse; for external noise stills the inner tumult of the soul.