The Children of the World Part 66

But Edwin was not thinking of this worthy friend, as he walked down the long street, and plucking up his courage, turned the corner. Here the narrow little house with the steep roof and bright flesh colored paint had formerly appeared at a distance. To-day--what has happened, that his eyes at first failed to distinguish it? Had it been unwilling to outlast its old master? No, it was still standing in its place, but its appearance was completely transformed. The cheerful pink paint, which contrasted too strongly with the feelings of its present owner, had disappeared under a gloomy stone grey, with black stripes, so that it seemed to be in mourning for its old master. The sign over the shop door had been altered also, for a melancholy change had taken place in the firm, whose name now read as follows: "Gottfried Feyertag's Widow & Co.," which appendix of course meant none other than George, the head journeyman.

All the windows on the first floor were wide open. In former days such a thing had never been known to happen even in midsummer. But the little old couple had left this peaceful dwelling several years ago, to occupy that still more quiet last lodging, where protected from every draught of air, we rest on our earthly laurels. Edwin had scarcely exchanged a dozen words with these fellow lodgers, yet he now felt as if they too had been a necessary part of his life, and that not to find them again would be a real sorrow.

He approached the house with hesitating feet, ascended the few door steps and went into the entry. Through the gla.s.s panes of the inner door he could look into the shop, where Madame Feyertag, completely attired in black with a large crepe cap, sat in the corner behind the show case, sewing. He could not make up his mind to enter and deliver Reginchen's message; an iron band seemed to compress his chest, he feared that he should be unable to control his words. He glided cautiously past with noiseless steps and opened the door leading into the courtyard. He had intended to go up to the tun, an uncontrollable longing drew him toward the old room. Every thing here was the same; the bare, grey back building, the arbor overgrown with bean vines, the shade loving plants, the acacia tree, which it is true was now wholly dead, and did not even put forth one puny leaf--but what was that lying among the dry branches like a little heap of last winter's snow? A cat?

Was it she herself, Balder's old friend, sunning her weary limbs on this lofty perch, or was it a descendant, which bore such a striking resemblance to its ancestress? He could not decide, his eyes grew dim with tears and his feet seemed paralysed; in spite of his longing, he could not cross the courtyard and mount the steep stairs. So he stood leaning against the door post with closed eyes. Just at that moment voices became audible in the workshop, and starting as if he feared to be caught here like a thief, he tore himself away and with a beating heart fled back into the street.

For a long time he walked on like a drunken man. He took no heed of the people who pa.s.sed by, the glittering shops, the throng of carriages, the motley stir and bustle of life around him. But by degrees the painful agitation of his soul subsided, isolated words recurred to his mind involuntarily blended together, before he remembered that they composed an old song of Balder's, which suddenly echoed from the depths of his memory and soothed him with its mysterious magic:

Soul how thou roamest!

On wings of the wind, Through high and through low, Thy way thou dost find.

Though thou art poor, What riches are thine!

Ceaselessly restless What calmness divine!

Free above all, Close, close thou art bound; Soul, say, where hast thou Thy resting place found?

Among stars and suns, Thy wing circleth wide, Yet with rapture, Mid violet beds doth abide.

Where the lightning is cradled Thy home thou hast made; To the cloud's ample dwelling As well hast thou strayed.

Yet in narrowest circle, By joy art possessed, And dost tenderly, timidly Pensively rest.

As the ivy that creepeth By lowly abodes, On a thousand weak tendrils Thou climb'st to the G.o.ds.

Where memory glancing The cleft ruins through, As the sun to the vine Giveth warm life anew.

Murmuring the last words aloud just as he turned into the Unter den Linden, he suddenly felt his arm seized, and turning saw a face which had been far from his thoughts.

The old Livonian baron, the enthusiastic connoisseur and friend of art, who had formerly helped the worthy zaunkonig to his short-lived dignity of court painter, stood before him wearing an expression of the greatest delight.

"Well," he cried, shaking Edwin's hand with boyish impetuosity, "this is what I call 'talking of a wolf and seeing the tip of his tail.' Only yesterday evening I was speaking of you for at least two hours, first condemning and then defending you when others undertook to condemn; and to-day, my dear fellow, you appear before me just as I was considering whether I should go to your father-in-law, to get your address; you see I wanted to write to you. I don't know how the worthy Herr Zaunkonig feels toward me, since that stupid piece of business; for gloriously as he behaved in the matter, just as I expected him to do, I was at any rate mixed up in it, and the wager--"

"You ought to know him better, my dear Baron," said Edwin, interrupting the torrent of words. "True, he is by no means such a weak dove as not to have been very much enraged against your prince at the first moment of discovery, but it was less from offended personal dignity, than indignation at the cold blooded frivolity, with which such n.o.ble Maecenas' treat an insignificant artist. But then he grew quiet and thoughtful, collected his studies and the few pictures he had finished, and spread them before him. When I asked what he was doing, he replied: 'I am disgusting myself with my work. Let us be just: these things have emanated from an aberration of the artistic instinct.' The next day they had disappeared, and as I afterwards learned, were nailed up in a chest, loaded with brick-bats, and sunk in the lagune."

"Oh! oh! oh!" said the old man, shaking his head, "then we have really deprived him of the greatest pleasure of his life. I shall never look at the Luini I won from the prince, without a pang of conscience. Oh!

oh!"

"Cheer up, dear Baron. You have only helped to prove his favorite saying, that to those who love G.o.d all things are for the best. His pa.s.sion for art really emerged again, rejuvenated and vigorous, from the lagune where he had expected to bury it. Since he has lived in the suburbs, where in spite of his new and easier circ.u.mstances, he continues his old modest mode of life and industriously pursues his engraving, he has, it is true, made no attempt to return to his former 'specialty.' He says that now, when he daily sees the green fields, he perceives for the first time the full extent of the frivolous boldness, with which he daubed these wonders of G.o.d on his miserable canva.s.s. To make amends, since what is denied always charms the soul and excites the fancy, he has how set up a new kind of _genre_ picture; he paints views of the Spree and the green ditches, bridges, and steps leading to the water, not without skill, as it seems to me. You may suppose that he is more successful in reproducing the straight lines and grey tone, than the succulent weeds and bright sky of his former zaunkonigs. If you would come out to his house--he has just finished something--"

"_Col sommo piacere!_ With the greatest pleasure. You take a hundred pound weight from my heart. But what was I going to say--what were we talking about just now? My head is growing old, friend, and nothing makes one more confused and forgetful, than intercourse with silent pictures."

"You were saying that you had been scolding about me yesterday for two hours. I am curious--"

"Yes, that was it: your book was the subject of conversation, everybody is talking about it now, so that I was at last ashamed of not having read it, though I don't exactly feel compelled to be familiar with all the new books that are talked about, not even those written by my friends. But, my dear fellow, what have you done?"

"Nothing very bad, I hope. At the worst only written a bad book."

"Something far worse, my friend--a good book, a book which in all main points is perfectly right and has the great majority of thinking men on its side. You laugh. Oh! these young people! You think it is easy to be in the right in this world. As if there could be any thing more repulsive, uncomfortable, and contrary to police regulations, than a person who looks neither to the right nor left, knows neither caution nor discretion, but calls things by their right names. Such a fool-hardy man had better go into the Theban wilderness and deliver his wisdom to the stones; but if he supposes that he will be tolerated in a society founded upon mutual cloaking and palliation of faults, feigned respect for rotten rubbish, and the superficial varnish coated over old cracks, where people do not even have the courage to lay aside the humbug of false names in the catalogues of museums, let alone calling other idols by their right names--you see, my friend, gall enters into the construction of my sentences, and I no longer know how I began. But this I do know, that if you acknowledge the authorship of such books, you will never have any prospect of making a career in our dear native land, and I sincerely regret it."

"I thank you for this regret," replied Edwin with a quiet smile. "Nay I even share it in a certain sense, though not on my own account! I am happy where I am, and offices and t.i.tles have as little charm for me, as a heap of money, which at any rate if I were a little more careful, I might procure by lecturing or writing. But in the interest of public welfare, the health and morality of our political life, I can only think with regret how far we still are, from possessing the much praised and much scouted freedom of thought. So long as the patriarchal delusion still exists, that the state has the right or even the duty, of watching over the theoretical opinions of its members, while only their acts belong to its tribunal, we shall not emerge from a dreamy and trifling minority. And this rests upon a deeper error, against which my whole book is directed, although it apparently turns upon an objectless pyschological problem--the error that metaphysics and morality are closely connected, nay are in a constant interchange of influence."

"Freedom of thought!" cried the eager old gentleman, standing still and baring his shinging bald head, as if his hat heated it, "as if it would be of any special consequence to you to obtain, this miserable acquisition, which you possess as much as the Spaniards themselves did in the darkest ages. What you want and will not obtain for a long time, is _freedom to teach_, freedom to transplant your thoughts into other heads, not merely by books, which will only be read by a small number, but by lectures in public halls, just as your colleague instils into his hearers the condensed milk of piety carefully tested and proved harmless. But you are wrong, my dear friend, in asking this, and that is why I blamed you, because I regret that by a premature expression of your secret thoughts, you render your own work difficult, if not impossible. Dear me, the field of philosophy is so terribly barren, people would be glad to foster and cherish a new power; but if it deals such blows to the right and left, loosens with its roots the soil on which tame kitchen vegetables have hitherto peacefully slept their nourishing plant-sleep--you have too clear a head, dear Herr Doctor, not to understand that the time has not yet come when we can need you among us."

"Not yet _come_, certainly, but it is near, nearer perhaps than those in high places suppose. Or how long do you think it will be, before shame at the incompleteness and artificially fostered self-deception, which is palliated by pedagogical considerations, will flush the faces of the leaders of the public, and compel them to openly acknowledge what has long since been secretly perceived and recognized? It is true that hitherto we have had other tasks to solve, questions of existence, of defence in peril, and then of our power and honor. But after we have advanced tolerably far in these, do you suppose that we, who have to support our moral dignity before other nations, will continue in this traditional track, and thereby allow the n.o.blest intellectual possessions to be endangered? For all the canonized myths and metaphysical legends have also produced an ethical effect, not according to the measure of their truth, but by the degree of veracity in the author and hearer of the composition. And must the degree of veracity no longer be the standard of the allowableness and moral power of a lesson? Or is it not a great immorality, out of mere external considerations relating to the political education of children, to give us for the corner stone of our happiness, fairy tales and legends, which all cultivated minds believe as little, as the Greeks of Aristotle's time credited the fables of Homer and Hesiod. Of course we must not pour away the dirty water before we have fresh; but who will answer for it that we shall ever draw from the deepest, purest fountain? And who would not quench his thirst with the wild fruit that grows by the way side, rather than drink the water, which in spite of all filtering, has constantly become darker and more slimy? Oh! my dear friend, I see in your face the reply you wish to make, that the great ma.s.ses are not so particular, and are satisfied with the foul stream in which weak minded theologians have washed their dirty linen for centuries, while we educated people could support ourselves on the fruits that philosophy and natural philosophy pluck from the tree of knowledge. I, too, once held the same aristocratic notions. But I can no longer reconcile myself to them. For--let alone every thing else--I do not believe that it would be dangerous for the ma.s.ses, if they were educated to the truth instead of to a conventional fable, such as our histories of dogmas offer them. But even if certain village and city churches should become still more empty, than is now the case in consequence of the deadness and constantly decreasing reality in our forms of worship, has the state duties to perform only toward the uneducated? Can it, without danger, lose in the eyes of the educated that credit for veracity, which it might so easily maintain, if it did not take sides, and venture to decide questions of conscience by state inst.i.tutions? Has it not also responsibilities toward the great strata _between_ the educated and the simple people, those who will be strengthened and almost confirmed in their own frivolity by all these partly known, partly unknown things? The evil of shallowness and secularization in its worst sense existing in these circle, the preponderance of thoughtless pleasure, the whole despicable materialism of our times--do you really suppose, my friend, that all this is to be remedied by throwing up a dam composed of the crumbling ruins of a faith, which for centuries the elements have shaken, disintegrated, and scarcely left one stone upon another? I cannot believe it, even if I desired to do so, and the patching and mending of the tottering structure seems to me more wicked and dangerous, than erecting a new dam--or at least measuring and marking out the foundations, on which our children's children may put up the structure."

"Our children's children already? Oh! you sanguine mortal!"

"You are right. Who can tell? And yet how quickly intellectual transitions take place now, in comparison with former days, when the intercourse between minds was effected with so much greater difficulty!

Has a century elapsed since the time when Lessing's Nathan was a fact, a challenge, a single burning need of that great heart, until now, when his timid gospel of toleration for all religions has become a commonplace, and honest toleration even of the irreligious ripened to the silent need of countless numbers?"

"I hope your book will be introduced into German seminaries, but at any rate Nathan will be turned into flesh and blood, so that a Jew may be permitted, without hesitation, to read logic and metaphysics before grown men."

"I hope the latter also," replied Edwin smiling. "The former would be a sad token of the small progress science had made in a hundred years.

One of us will then I hope be a conquered station."

"No," exclaimed the old man with a solemnity which moved Edwin strangely, and seizing both his companion's hands, while he looked him steadily in the eyes, he continued: "I must tell you here, though it probably will not signify much from an old enthusiast in art, in the new building of which you speak, even though it too, after thousands of years will become mouldy and tottering, and have to be rebuilt, the foundation will remain, and among other mementoes of these days, which will deserve to be placed in the corner stone, your book will find a place. I bought it and wrote on the first page averse of the old poet enlightened by divine frenzy the poet Holderlin:

"With shield divine, oh genius of the brave, Desert not innocence, but swift to save Ever be nigh; inspire and win to thee The heart of youth with joy of victory.

Arouse, conquer, punish; do not delay, The majesty of truth secure alway.

Till time's mysterious cradle shall release, The child of Heaven, eternal peace.

"And may this peace be with you, my dear fellow. Farewell."

He embraced his silent companion and in spite of the throng of pedestrians, kissed him on both cheeks, then hastily turned the nearest street corner and vanished from Edwin's sight.

LAST CHAPTER.

This conversation echoed in Edwin's soul like a strong and solemn harmony, as he continued his walk along the Unter den Linden.

But he was not to be permitted to return to his family in this exalted mood. As he approached the Brandenbourg Gate, he saw a light elegant carriage, drawn by two beautiful horses, pa.s.s through the central portal and turn up the Unter den Linden. A gentleman with a carefully trimmed beard, and regular, but shallow, vacant features, drove the fiery animals, occasionally addressing a word to the young lady, who sat beside him, leaning negligently back and casting smiling glances at the pa.s.sers by from under her pink parasol. Edwin had just noticed her face in a photographer's show window, and beneath it the name of a well known ballet dancer. Behind this couple, with his arms folded across his breast in true jockey insolence, sat a tall, fair lad, in a green livery embroidered with silver, with a stiff shirt collar reaching to his ears, and the round gla.s.sy eyes in his beardless, boyish face, were upturned with a saucy, yet wearied expression to the sky.

Neither of the three had noticed the unpretending pedestrian, who remained rooted to the spot, as if he could not believe his eyes. A feeling of repugnance, such as one experiences when rudely awakened from enthusiastic dreams to a prosaic reality, where hopeless commonplace or shallow every day life prevails or occupies the largest place, overpowered Edwin and accompanied him as he walked through the shady paths of the Thiergarten to his father-in-law's house. Even there the painful impression did not instantly leave him. He was grave and silent, and as the others knew, or fancied they knew, where he had been that morning, they respected his feelings and did not trouble him with questions.

In the afternoon he asked Leah to drive with him. She was unwilling to leave the child, though it was well taken care of by the grandmother and nurse, for in spite of her philosophy, she was the most anxious and unreasonably careful of mothers. But she felt that Edwin needed to be alone with her, and instantly prepared to accompany him.

They had driven quite a distance in the direction of Charlottenburg, when he first broke the silence, and holding her hand in his, and now and then gently pressing it, he told her the events and experiences of his morning. When he mentioned his meeting with the count, he said: "I do not understand why it moved me so deeply. To return from the pilgrimage to the 'Promised Land,' and then fill the empty seat in the carriage with such a creature--many of the most trivial natures could not bring their hearts to it. But I did not know him, was not aware what a 'perfect gentleman' he was, to be able to console himself by 'n.o.ble pa.s.sions' for what he might have suffered in the higher emotions. And yet I instantly felt as if I owed her memory a silent ceremonial, to conciliate her insulted shade. The Catholics have the clever invention of their silent ma.s.ses. We must help ourselves in our own way."

Meantime having reached the entrance to the park of Charlottenburg they alighted from the carriage. Silence surrounded them; the atmosphere was balmy, and the earth bathed in sunshine; not a leaf was stirring, and scarce a bubble rose to the surface of the carp pond as a frog leaped croaking from the hot gra.s.s into the water. There are hours when even nature seems to be gazing at her reflection, conscious of her beauty, as if in a dream.

The two, who walked arm in arm through the shaded avenue, felt the magic of the midsummer noon in their own souls, which grew more and more agitated, as if secret fountains were welling up within them without overflowing at their lips. Thus silent, they at last reached the mausoleum, which in the bright sunlight, looked specially grave and solemn under the dark trees.

"I wanted to come here," said Edwin. "It was on this spot that she said to me: 'There is but one real n.o.bility: to be true to ourselves.' The poor, brave, free-born heart--it has been true to its n.o.bility, faithful unto death. Let us enter the little temple, where beauty is high priestess and conquers death by perpetuating the forms of n.o.ble humanity. But we know that for that, marble is not necessary; for have not we in our grief, engraved the transfigured image indefaceably upon our hearts till we ourselves shall enter eternity?"