The Invisible Lodge Part 25

"Angel of tears and of patience! Thou that art oftener about men! Oh, forget my heart and my eye and let them bleed--indeed they do so willingly;--but tranquillize, like death, the heart and the eye of my friend, and show them on the earth nothing but the heavens beyond it.

Ah, angel of tears and of patience! Thou knowest the eye and the heart, which pours itself out for him, thou wilt bring his soul before them, as one sets out flowers under the summer rain! But do it not, if it makes him too sad! O, angel of patience! I love thee! I know thee! I shall die in thy arms!

"Angel of friendship!--perhaps thou art the former angel?... Oh!... let thy heavenly wing cover his heart and warm it more tenderly than a human being can--ah, thou on another earth and I on this would weep, if his heart should, like the warm hand pressed upon freezing iron, cleave to a cold heart and tear itself away bleeding!... O shield him! but if thou canst not do it, then let me not learn his misery.

"Oh ye ever blessed ones in other worlds' with you nothing dies, you lose nothing and have all! what you love you clasp to an eternal breast, what you have you hold in eternal hands. Can you then feel in your shining heights above there, in your eternal bond of souls, that human beings here below are torn asunder, that we reach our hands to one another only out of coffins, before they sink; ah, that death is not the only, not the most painful thing that parts human beings?--Ere that s.n.a.t.c.hes us from one another, many a colder hand breaks in and severs soul from soul----then indeed does the eye fail and the heart sink in anguish, just as much as if death had divided them, as in a _total eclipse of the sun_ no less than in the longer _night_ the dew falls, the nightingale mourns, the flower closes in death!

"May all that is good, all that is fair, all that blesses and exalts man be with my friend; and all my wishes are summed up in my silent prayer."

In all which I join, not merely for Gustavus, but for every good soul of my acquaintance and for all others too.

Though it is already eleven o'clock at night, still I must report to the reader something of melancholy beauty, which has just gone by. A singing person pa.s.sed through our valley, concealed, however, by leaves and shadows, because the moon was not yet up. The voice sang more sweetly than any I ever heard before:

---- No one, nowhere, never.

---- The tear that falls.

---- The angel that shines.

---- There is silence.

---- It suffers.

---- It hopes.

---- I and thou.

Evidently half of each line is wanting, and to every answer the question. It has already occurred to me several times that the _Genius_ who educated our friend under the ground, left him at his departure questions and dissonances, whose answers and solutions he took away with him; I think, too, I have said as much to the reader. Would that Gustavus were here. But I have not the courage to conceive what would be our delight if the Genius himself should introduce himself into our garland of joy at Lilienbad! I still forever hear the long drawn flute-tones from that unknown bosom wail behind the blossoms; but they make me sad. Here lie the ever-sleeping flowers, which I collected today on the path of our last night's ramble, beside the unfolded, waking ones which I have just palled up--they too sadden me. There is nothing I and my readers need more than to begin a new section of joy, so that we may continue our old life.

O Lilienbad! thou appearest only once in the world; and if thou still once more becomest visible thy name is B----zka.

LAST SECTION.

Alas for us unhappy guests of the Spring! It is all over with the pleasures of Lilienbad. The above superscription my brother could still make, before hurrying off to Maussenbach. For there Gustavus lies in _prison_. It is all incomprehensible. My friend Beata sinks under the news we have received and which came to-day in the following letter to my brother from Dr. Fenk. Probably the following Job's-post will conclude this whole book as well as our previous happy days.

"I will not, as a woman would, spare thee, my dear friend, but relate to thee at once the whole extraordinary blow which has smitten our happy hours and most of all those of our two friends.

"Three days after our charming night--dost thou still remember a certain remark of Ottomar about the danger of raptures?--Professor Hoppedizel undertakes to carry out his inconsiderate joke of breaking into the palace of Maussenbach. The sly hunter Robisch was just then away from home; but had gone for fun with thy predecessor, the Government Counsellor Kolb, on a cruise after thieves. Observe, a mult.i.tude of persons and circ.u.mstances are involved here, which can hardly have been brought together by accident.

"The Professor comes with six comrades, and brings a ladder with him, in order to set it up against a window which had been broken for years and which looks over towards Auenthal. But when he comes up under the window--lo! one is already standing there. He takes it as the most fortunate accident and they go up in a body, almost on each other's heels. At the top a hand reaches out a silver sword-belt as if offering it to some one--the Professor seizes both and leaps in at the window.

There he found what appeared to be a thief, who was expecting accomplices on the ladder. The thievish realist, in the fury of desperation falls upon the nominalist--the gallery on the ladder tumbles in after him and increases the fighting melee. The thumps upon the floor startle the listening Roper less out of his sleep than out of his bed--he alarms the whole house and they his tipstaff--to tell all in a word: in a few minutes, with the fury of a miser saving and clutching his goods, he had made both the humorous and the serious thieves prisoners, however much the true thief might lay about him and however much the Professor might argue. And now all are sitting fast and waiting for thee.

"--Ah! wilt thou be able to bear it--if I tell thee all? The scouts of Kolb and Robisch find around Maussenbach the a.s.sociates of the captured thief--they penetrate the woods, they go to a cave, as if they knew it led to something--they find a subterranean human world. Oh, that of all men thou to thy sorrow shouldst have been destined to be found there, thou innocent and unfortunate one! Now thy tender heart beats even against a prison wall!--Must I name to thee thy friend Gustavus?--Haste, haste, that the course of things may be changed!

"Lo! not merely on thy breast, but upon mine also has this day laid a heavy load. Canst thou endure that I should tell thee more still?--that it is the merest chance that Ottomar still lives. I carried him the news of our misfortune. With a frightful struggle of his nature, in which every fibre battled with a different horror, he heard me through, and then asked me whether no one had been taken prisoner who had _six_ fingers. 'I took a solemn oath,' said he, 'in that hole in the woods, never to reveal to a soul our _subterranean league_, until an hour before my death. Fenk, I will now divulge the whole secret. My supplications and struggles availed nothing; he told me all, 'Gustavus must be vindicated,' said he. But this history is nowhere safe, hardly in the most faithful bosom, least of all on this paper. Ottomar was attacked by his so-called moment-of-annihilation. I let not his hand go out of mine, so that he might outlive his hour and break his oath.

There is nothing higher than a man who despises life; and in this lofty position my friend stood before me, who, in his cave, had risked more and lived better than all they in Scheerau. I saw upon him the sign that he meant to die. It was right. We were in the chamber where the wax mummies stand with the black garlands, to remind man how little he was, and how little he is. 'Bend thy head aside,' said he (for I chained myself to him), 'that I may look into Sirius--that I may see out into the infinite heavens and have a solace--that I may transport myself over an earth more or less. O friend, make not dying so bitter to me--and be neither angry nor sad. O, see how all heaven gleams from one infinity to another, how it lives and nothing is dead up yonder; the human originals of all these waxen corpses dwell there in that blue.--O ye departed ones, to-day I too join you, into whatever sun my human spark of light may fly, when the body melts away from it. I shall find you again.'"

"The striking of every quarter of an hour had up to this time pierced my heart; but the last quarter struck upon my ear like a funeral knell; I watched anxiously his hands and steps; he fell on my neck: 'No! no!'

said I, 'here is no parting--I shall hate thee into the very grave, if thou hast any design--embrace me not.' He had already done it; his whole being was a throbbing heart; he would fain expire in the very emotion of friendship; I pressed his bosom to mine, and his soul to mine: 'I embrace thee,' said he, 'on the earth; into whatever world death may cast me, never shall I forget thee; I shall there look toward the earth and spread out my arms after the earthly friend and nothing shall fill these arms but the faithful, heavy-laden breast which here has suffered with me, here with me has endured the earth.... Behold!

thou weepest and yet wouldst not embrace me! O beloved!--on thy bosom I feel not the vanity of earth----thou too wilt die!... Mighty Being above the earth!' ... Here he tore himself away from me and fell on his knees and prayed: 'Destroy me not, punish me not! I go away from this earth; thou knowest what man comes to; thou knowest what earthly life is and our earthly condition. But, O G.o.d! man has a second heart; a second soul, his friend! Give me again the friend, together with my life--when one day all human hearts and all human blood molder in graves; O gracious, loving Being! then breathe thou over men and show Eternity their love!' A leap upward--a sudden dart towards me--a crushing embrace--a blow upon the wall--a shot from it.--

"But he still lives.

"Fenk."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The German word for the dash is _Gedanken-strich_: _Thought-stroke_: (or _Pause for Reflection_).--(Tr.)]

[Footnote 2: He would not have known that, had he not got it from the new Tacticians, Messrs. Hahn & Muller, who teach the young officer the Differential Calculus in order that it may not be hard for him in the heat of battle to calculate the right base angle in wheeling and deploying. Even so have I a hundred times wanted to write a book in which to enable the poor-aiming billiard player merely by a few solutions in mechanics and higher mathematics to carom with his eyes shut.]

[Footnote 3: An allusion to an imagined mystic virtue in the number 4.--(Tr.)]

[Footnote 4: Lit. "Knee-piece."--(Tr.)]

[Footnote 5: Famous grammarian and purist.--(Tr.)]

[Footnote 6: _Stieck, oder Steckte_, is the German, quizzing the grammatical purists of the day.]

[Footnote 7: Cambyses took Pelusium by storm, by interspersing among his soldiers sacred animals, cats, etc., at which the Egyptian garrison did not dare to shoot, and discharged prayers instead of arrows.]

[Footnote 8: The "one-leg" is myself. I have made the Preface, which every one will have skipped and this note which must not be, for the purpose of making known that I have only one leg, leaving out of account the abridged one, and that in my neighborhood they call me by no other name than the "one-leg" or "one-legged author," whereas my proper name is Jean Paul. See the Baptismal Register and the Preface.]

[Footnote 9: By which the physicians mean; 1, sleeping and waking; 2, eating of drinking; 3, motion; 4, breathing; 5, discharges; 6, pa.s.sions.]

[Footnote 10: _Rastriven_ means literally to rule a staff for _music_.--(Tr.)]

[Footnote 11: _Gross-gezogen_ and _Kleingezogen_ is Jean Paul's contrast.--(Tr.)]

[Footnote 12: Ohr-rose (ear-rose.)--(Tr.)]

[Footnote 13: In Haller's great physiology it is stated that man according to Sanctorius sheds his old body every eleven years--according to Bernouilli and Blumenbach every three years--according to the Anatomist Keil every year.]

[Footnote 14: According to the Rabbins, the devil helped build the temple, and the worm gnawed the stones smooth.]

[Footnote 15: The b.u.t.terflies of Spring have (through the celibate) lingered over from the former year; the Autumn ones are this year's children.]

[Footnote 16: Affirmant idem corpus existens in duobis locis habere posse utrobique, formas absolutas non dependentes--ita ut hic moveater localiter, illic non, hic calidum sit, illic frigidum, etc. hic moriatur, illic vivat, hic eliceret actus vitales tum sensitivos tum intellectivos, illic non. V[oe]tii disp. throl. T. 1, p. 632. Bekanas with philosophic ac.u.men limits it so far as to say that such body--ergo a woman--cannot be pious in one place and G.o.dless in another at the same time; which is also clear to my mind.]

[Footnote 17: Wolfe's lect. memorab. Cent. XVI. p. 994 etc.]