On the Heights Part 119

"You are a worker of miracles."

"No, I am not that. I am only a physician who has held many a hand hot with fever, or stiff in death, in his own. The healing art might serve as an ill.u.s.tration. We help all who need our help, and do not stop to ask who they are, whence they come, or whether, when restored to health, they persist in their evil courses. Our actions are incomplete, fragmentary; thought alone is complete and all-embracing. Our deeds and ourselves are but fragments--the whole is G.o.d."

"I think I grasp your meaning. But our life, as you say, is indeed a mere fraction of life as a whole, and how is each one to bear up under the portion of suffering that falls to his individual lot? Can one--I mean it in its best sense--always be outside of one's-self?"

"I am well aware, Your Majesty, that pa.s.sions and emotions cannot be regulated by ideas; for they grow in a different soil, or, to express myself correctly, move in entirely different spheres. It is but a few days since I closed the eyes of my old friend Eberhard. Even he never fully succeeded in subordinating his temperament to his philosophy; but, in his dying hour, he rose beyond the terrible grief that broke his heart--grief for his child. He summoned the thoughts of better hours to his aid--hours when his perception of the truth had been undimmed by sorrow or pa.s.sion--and he died a n.o.ble, peaceful death.

Your Majesty must still live and labor, elevating yourself and others, at one and the same time. Permit me to remind you of the moment when, seated under the weeping ash, your heart was filled with pity for the poor child that, from the time it enters into the world, is doubly helpless. Do you still remember how you refused to rob it of its mother? I appeal to the pure and genuine impulse of that moment. You were n.o.ble and forgiving then, because you had not yet suffered. You cast no stone at the fallen; you loved and, therefore, you forgave."

"Oh G.o.d!" cried the queen, "and what has happened to me? The woman on whose bosom my child rested is the most abandoned of creatures. I loved her, just as if she belonged to another world--a world of innocence.

And now I am satisfied that she was the go-between, and that her _navete_ was a mere mask concealing an unparalleled hypocrite. I imagined that truth and purity still dwelt in the simple rustic world--but everything is perverted and corrupt. The world of simplicity is base; aye, far worse than that of corruption!"

"I am not arguing about individuals. I think you mistaken in regard to Walpurga; but, admitting that you are right, of this, at least, we can be sure: morality does not depend upon so-called education or ignorance, belief or unbelief. The heart and mind which have regained purity and steadfastness alone possess true knowledge. Extend your view beyond details and take in the whole--that alone can comfort and reconcile you."

"I see where you are, but I cannot get up there. I can't always be looking through your telescope that shows naught but blue sky. I am too weak. I know what you mean; you say, in effect: 'Rise above these few people, above this span of s.p.a.ce known as a kingdom--compared with the universe, they are but as so many blades of gra.s.s, or a mere clod of earth.'"

Gunther nodded a pleased a.s.sent, but the queen, in a sad voice, added:

"Yes, but this s.p.a.ce and these people const.i.tute my world. Is purity merely imaginary? If it be not about us, where can it be found?"

"Within ourselves," replied Gunther. "If it dwell within us, it is everywhere; if not, it is nowhere. He who asks for more, has not yet pa.s.sed the threshold. His heart is not yet what it should be. True love for the things of this earth, and for G.o.d, the final cause of all, does not ask for love in return. We love the divine spark that dwells in creatures themselves unconscious of it: creatures who are wretched, debased and, as the church has it, unredeemed. My master taught me that the purest joys arise from this love of G.o.d or of eternally pure nature. I made this truth my own, and you can and ought to do likewise.

This park is yours; but the birds that dwell in it, the air, the light, its beauty, are not yours alone, but are shared with you by all. So long as the world is ours, in the vulgar sense of the word, we may love it; but when we have made it our own, in a purer and better sense, no one can take it from us. The great thing is to be strong and to know that hatred is death, that love alone is life, and that the amount of love that we possess is the measure of the life and the divinity that dwells within us."

Gunther rose and was about to withdraw. He feared lest excessive thought might over-agitate the queen, who, however, motioned him to remain. He sat down again.

"You cannot imagine--" said the queen, after a long pause, "but that is one of the cant phrases that we have learned by heart. I mean just the reverse of what I have said. You can imagine the change that your words have effected in me."

"I can conceive it."

"Let me ask a few more questions. I believe--nay, I am sure--that on the height you occupy, and toward which you would fain lead me, there dwells eternal peace. But it seems so cold and lonely up there. I am oppressed with a sense of fear, just as if I were in a balloon ascending into a rarer atmosphere, while more and more ballast was ever being thrown out. I don't know how to make my meaning clear to you. I don't understand how to keep up affectionate relations with those about me, and yet regard them from a distance, as it were--looking upon their deeds as the mere action and reaction of natural forces. It seems to me as if, at that height, every sound and every image must vanish into thin air."

"Certainly, Your Majesty. There is a realm of thought in which hearing and sight do not exist, where there is pure thought and nothing more."

"But are not the thoughts that there abound projected from the realm of death into that of life, and is that any better than monastic self-mortification?"

"It is just the contrary. They praise death, or, at all events, extol it, because, after it, life is to begin. I am not one of those who deny a future life. I only say, in the words of my master: 'Our knowledge is of life and not of death,' and where my knowledge ceases, my thoughts must cease. Our labors, our love, are all of this life. And because G.o.d is in this world and in all that exist in it, and only in those things, have we to liberate the divine essence, wherever it exists. The law of love should rule. What the law of nature is in regard to matter, the moral law is to man."

"I cannot reconcile myself to your dividing the divine power into millions of parts. When a stone is crushed, every fragment still remains a stone; but when a flower is torn to pieces, the parts are no longer flowers."

"Let us take your simile as an ill.u.s.tration, although in truth no example is adequate. The world, the firmament, the creatures that live on the face of the earth, are not divided--they are one; thought regards them as a whole. Take, for instance, the flower. The idea of divinity which it suggests to us, and the fragrance which ascends from it, are yet part and parcel of the flower: attributes without which it is impossible for us to conceive of its existence. The works of all poets, all thinkers, all heroes, may be likened to streams of fragrance, wafted through time and s.p.a.ce. It is in the flower that they live forever. Although the eternal spirit dwells in the cell of every tree or flower, and in every human heart, it is undivided and, in its unity, fills the world. He whose thoughts dwell in the infinite, regards the world as the mighty corolla from which the thought of G.o.d exhales."

For some time, the queen kept her face buried in her hands. Gunther quietly withdrew.

CHAPTER XVI.

The king returned from the hunt. His courageous wanderings among the Highlands had reinvigorated him. He, too, was in a changed frame of mind. He had already received a full account of what had happened at the lake. "That's over," thought he; "I can't always be dragging the past about with me."

He was informed that the queen had not left her apartments since the receipt of the dreadful news. He sent for Gunther, who informed him of the queen's condition, and recommended that she be treated with great indulgence.

The king fancied that the doctor's manner was more reserved than usual.

He would have liked to ask him as to the queen's thoughts, how she had received the sad news, and whether she had conquered her grief; but it was Gunther's duty to tell him all this, without waiting to be questioned. At last, the king asked him:

"Is the queen's mind composed?"

"It is n.o.ble and beautiful as ever," replied Gunther.

"Has she been reading of late? Did she send for the court chaplain?"

"Not to my knowledge, Your Majesty."

The king, who, at other times, found the observance of etiquette so convenient, now found it irksome.

He would have liked the doctor to speak of his own accord, and explain much that was yet unclear, instead of simply answering the questions put to him.

"You have had a great trial; in Count Eberhard, you lost an old friend."

"He lives in my memory, just as he did before he died," replied Gunther.

The king's heart was filled with anger. He had been very friendly in his advances toward this man, had even inquired after an event in his private life, and yet Gunther, while preserving perfect decorum, remained as reserved and as repelling as ever.

His old aversion toward this man, who, in the midst of the excitement at court, always remained unmoved, was again aroused. He dismissed Gunther, with a gracious wave of his hand; but when he had gone, his eye followed him with a sinister expression.

A thought occurred to him which made his cheeks glow, and determined him upon another line of action. It was now clear to him that the real cause of his misstep lay in the fact that a third person had stood between him and his wife. This should no longer be the case, no matter how well it was meant. Instead of asking Gunther for information as to his wife's thoughts and feelings, she should tell him all, in person and alone. He felt a deep affection for her, and thought that, since he had conquered so much within himself, he was again worthy of her.

The king sent for Countess Brinkenstein. Since the sad occurrence, the king had only moved among men, by whom affairs of this nature are treated more lightly and, in fact, are scarcely alluded to. And now, for the first time, he stood face to face with a woman; one indeed in whom a n.o.ble mind was combined with the most orthodox observance of court etiquette. The king's demeanor was dignified, although his heart trembled with emotion.

"We have had sad experiences," said he to her.

With great tact, Countess Brinkenstein managed to turn the conversation into another channel and thus avert any explanation on the king's part.

She thought it unbecoming a king to justify himself or to show himself weak or perplexed; and, besides that, she regarded it as the duty of those about him, to smooth over all that was unpleasant as gracefully as possible.

The king appreciated her considerateness. He asked her whether she had often seen the queen during the last few days, and who was now waiting on her. The countess informed him that she had only once been with the queen, who had expressed a wish in regard to his royal highness the crown prince.

"Ah, how is the prince?" asked the king. During all these days, he had scarcely thought of his child, and now, as if with renewed consciousness of the fact, he remembered that he had a son.

"Remarkably well," replied the countess, who went on to name the various ladies and gentlemen of the court who were now in attendance upon her majesty the queen. No one had seen her during the last few days, except Madame Leoni, who had been with her constantly, and the doctor, who had conversed with her for hours.

The king gave orders to have the prince brought into his apartments. He kissed the boy, whose round and delicate little hand played with his father's face.

"Thou shalt honor thy father--if I could only wipe away that one reproach," said he to himself.

He felt as if his child's touch had endowed him with new strength, and was about to proceed to the queen's apartments when Schnabelsdorf was announced. The king was obliged to remain and receive him.

The prime minister informed him that the result of all the elections was now known, and that his position would be a difficult one, for the majority had been on the side of the opposition.