The Invisible Lodge Part 4

The funeral procession of the princely intestines went to the Abbey of _Hopf_, where occurred the interment of their princely members; which--if a word of Plato is to be believed--are true beasts, and with which man, be he enlaced with order-ribbons or harnessed with drawing-bands, always has his infernal tussle. I will follow the box of viscera just three steps, because the Medical Counsellor--according to his habit of amusing himself in all places, in theatre boxes and church pews and taverns, only not in his study, by writing--here in the burial church of the intestines untied his writing-tablets and wrote down things which literally read as follows: "As princes have themselves interred, just as they also reside, in several places at once, so would I, too--but only in this way, and no other: my stomach must be deposited in the Episcopal Church--my liver, with its bitter bladder, in a Court Church--the thick intestines in a Jewish oratory--the lungs in a mixed,[20] or, at least, a University Church--the heart in the church triumphant, and the spleen in a Dissenting Chapel. But if I were first funeral preacher of a crowned abdomen, I should take another course; I should take the gullet for entrance or exordium of the funeral sermon and the blind gut for the close! And could I not in the three parts of my discourse run through the three concavities, touching lightly therein the n.o.bler parts of the body, and, finally on its last pa.s.sages, deliver myself in tears and eulogies out of the dust? For so one jests here below." There is a poetic frenzy--"fine frenzy"--but also a humorous, which Sterne had; but only readers of finished taste do not account the highest stretch of the faculty as overstraining.

The Falkenberg traveling train reached Scheerau at evening--the finest time to arrive anywhere, hence so many arrive at evening in the other world. It seemed to Gustavus as if he had been there before during his abduction. But as the fewest possible of my readers can have been abducted on account of their beauty, and therefore they do not know the city, it shall be shown up to them in the tenth section.

TENTH SECTION.

Upper-Lower-Scheerau.--Hoppedizel.--Herbarium.--Visitors'

Croup.--Prince's Feathers.

No Geographer and Upper Consistorial Counsellor has ever yet had the misfortune which has befallen Herr Brushcing--namely, of omitting in his topographical atlas a whole good princ.i.p.ality, which shares a seat on the courtly bench of Wetteran and is called _Scheerau_--which, according to the imperial matriculation schedule, furnishes 8/9 of horse and 9-2/8 of foot, and pays the Master of the Exchequer 21 Fl.

1/91 Xr. (kreutzer)--which was promoted to princely rank under Charles IV.--which has its five fair representative Chambers, which have everywhere a say, but nothing to do; namely, the Commandery of the German Order, the University, the Knighthood, the cities and the towns, and which, among other inhabitants, contains also me. I would not stand in the shoes of such a writer--one who creeps with his geographic mirror into every _cul-de-sac_ in order to take its likeness, and yet in this instance has skipped over a whole princ.i.p.ality with its five paralytic estates; I know how it annoys him, but now that I have talked with the whole world about it there is no longer any help for him.

The capital city, Scheerau, consists properly of two cities--New, or Upper Scheerau, where the Prince resides, and Old, or Lower Scheerau, where the Captain lodges. I, for my part, have long been convinced that the Saxon houses are not half so far removed from the Frankforters as the Old and New Scheerauers are from each other in style, face, fare and everything. The New Scheerauer has court-style enough to have dignity, debts and pa.s.sion for extra-domestic pleasures; and yet, again, too much chancery style--because all the highest colleges of the land are there--not to recognize or demand everywhere stiff subordination, or to sink from the Chamberlain to the Chancery Clerk and Auditor of the Treasury. Now, the old Scheerauer perceives this. On the other hand, the New Scheerauer perceives that the other has the following traits: If in China the jaws of a dinner-party must all move simultaneously like a double piano; if in Monomotapa the whole country sneezes every time the Emperor does; let one go to Old Scheerau, and there he will find things still better; at the same moment all streets must weep, cough, pray, ease themselves, hate and spit; their Blue Book looks like a musical score, from which all play the same piece, only with different instruments and voices, (only in music are they swayed by some true spirit of freedom, and none slavishly binds his elbow or fiddle-bow or quill [Tangenten] to his neighbor's)--they hate belles-lettres as much as they do one another--incapable of doing without social pleasures, of arranging or enjoying them, incapable of enterprise, of openly either hating or loving or enduring each other, they worm themselves into their money-piles and publicly respect the richest and privately only the relative, or, in fact, n.o.body at all--without taste and without patriotism and without reading....

But I am putting it quite too strongly; no reader will be willing to stir a step after the Captain towards Lower-Scheerau. Their greatest fault is, that they are good for nothing; but, aside from that, they are thrifty, full of none but trades-people, temperate, and sweep the streets and their faces nice and clean. Capitals, like courts, have a family-likeness; but country-towns inasmuch as more commercial, military, legal, mining or marine sap flows through them--a different full-face and half-face.

The Falkenberg ship's company alighted from its traveling ark before the plated front door of the Professor of Ethics, Hoppedizel; in the Professor's second story they usually had their winter quarters. Just behind the said door the Captain encountered an absurd melodrama, namely: the Raft Inspector, _Peuschel_, was leaning against the wall, vomiting and cursing; and regularly alternating from one to the other, as between Pentameter and Hexameter. The Professor of Morals quickly, with an uninked finger, wrote on the wall the outlines of the following words which he read off as fast as he traced them: "It was indeed disgusting, devilishly disgusting." Any other man the entrance of an old friend like Falkenberg would at once have disconcerted in the whole scene; the Professor, however, was not to be cheated out of his joke, but began his embrace in an unaltered tone with a report of the present case: "The gentleman before you. Raft Inspector Peuschel," (began Hoppedizel) "is fond of tippling, with wine particularly--it was in vain that the inspectoress, his lady"--(for discreet forbearance was never on Hoppedizel's lips)--"had sought to reform him by letting a live frog die in his wine. He himself" (he added) "had therefore to-day tried his hand at making this guzzling sicken him. For he had luckily cut a gall-stone--as thick as a Muscatelle-pear--out of a University subject; _this_ he had hollowed out into a drinking urn and made Herr Peuschel believe it was of lava and to-day had let his vomiting friend drink out of it genuine Hungarian wine of the best crop; and that it might not fail to nauseate him and set his _crop_ into a reaction, he had only a few minutes before made it clear to his patient that the volcanic beaker was veritable gravel-stone. And he hoped it would be some time before his friend would get this piece of earthenware out of his head."

The Professor begged the Inspector to do him the favor, in case the nausea left him, of staying there this evening and joining the Captain in a spoonful of soup.

There are certain houses where, let one visit them as often as he will, one shall find everything revised and turned up and turned over; this was emphatically the case in Hoppedizel's establishment; and the Captain's winter quarters looked always like a summer house in winter.

People of refinement charm us by a certain delicate attention to another's little necessities, by an antic.i.p.ation of his slightest wishes, by a constant sacrifice of their own, by courtesies that wind their silken web more softly and securely round our hearts than the cutting love-cord of a great benefaction. Hoppedizel used neither the silk nor the cord, and cared for n.o.body. It was not from absence of fine feeling, but from rebellion against it, that, when the Captain, the very first week, cursed both his quarters and his landlord, he simply laughed at him.

The delicate Amandus kept his sickbed all the evening and Gustavus crept to his side, in order to play with him. How, in the Arabia Petrea of the hateful world, are we refreshed by the sight of children who love one another, and whose good little eyes and little lips and little hands are no masks!

The next day an accident again took the two children away from each other. The Captain led them through all the streets of the city as through a picture gallery, and silently stopped at last with the two foster-brothers of the heart before the house of his friend Dr. Fenk, and looked wistfully at his picture (on the sign.) It represented a Doctor's coach with a Physician inside, Death in front, harnessed into the shafts, and the Devil sitting up on the box. "The dear, good droll," thought he, "might surely just trudge home from his Italy and give his friends a pleasure!" For he had not heard a word of his actual return. "Mandus! Mandus! run up!" cried suddenly a little maid overhead, who seemed on wires, and came herself skipping down and plucked and pecked at the little fellow. The good-natured Captain gladly followed the children out of the great parterre into the familiar house, and his astonishment at all signs of Fenk's return ceased only with the rushing in of the Doctor himself. The latter, when half way towards embracing him, bounded back to the little blind boy and amidst tears and kisses s.n.a.t.c.hed off the bandage--examined the eyes for a long time at the window--and said, after drawing a long breath: "G.o.d be praised and thanked! he is not blind!" Now, for the first time, the Doctor flung his arms, with redoubled warmth, around his friend. "Pardon me, it is my child!" Nevertheless he drew Amandus again to the light, and examined him still longer, and said, with raised eyebrows; "It seems to be merely a lesion of the _sclerotica_; the oculist-woman let out the aqueous humor. In Pavia I saw it done every week with dogs, whose eyes the dentists (our medical feudal-cousins) slit up and spread over them a stupid salve. When afterwards the humor and the sight came back of themselves, the salve had the credit of it."

I skip over the stream of the outpouring, conversational and joyous, of the two friends, which left them hardly eye or ear for anything, least of all the clock. "Ah, here they come," said Fenk, namely, the guests.

As my readers have understanding enough, they can permit me, I hope, to finish my narrative before they take down their rod of wrath, against the imaginary posterior of the Doctor, from behind the looking-gla.s.s.

No one had such a burning hatred as he for the narrowness, intolerance, and provincial pedantry of the inhabitants of Lower Scheerau, wherewith they made a short life so much the shorter to themselves, and a sour one so much the more sour. "It disgusts me to be praised by them"--he not merely said that, but he even loved to exasperate by putting the worst face upon his purest motives, the whole town, from one end to the other; meanwhile, in the tenderness of his heart, he could not do more than vex the whole city _in grosso_, never one single person. For this reason on the second morning after his arrival he glided about like an influenza from one house to another, and invited all aunts, cousins, blood-relations and blood-enemies, people in whom he had no interest save as they belonged to the dear Christendom, _e. g_., the Raft Inspector, Peuschel, the Late-Director Eckert, with his four late-pears of daughters, and all that had breath in Unter-Scheerau--he invited all in a body to spend an afternoon, and inspect a rarity he had brought home with him, namely, a _herbarium vivum_, which he would exhibit. "It was no live book of plants, but something quite special, and he had brought home from the glaciers the very best."

And these all were now coming, not because they cared the least for a book of plants, but because they wanted to see it, and _incidentally_ the bachelor Doctor's housekeeping. I must confess thus much to the European courts, that the whole a.s.sembled township and cousinship swept in and coughed and hemmed their way through with grace; and the four late-pears were not wanting in good-breeding, but made instead of bows profound genuflexions and kept very well their perpendicular position.

The host then brought in two long folios of plants, and said in a friendly manner he should take pleasure in showing them all--and now he kindled the h.e.l.l into which he cast the company--he crawled with caterpillar's feet and snail-slime from leaf to leaf of book and plant; he showed nothing superficially; he went through the pistils, stamens, anthers of every single plant; he said he should weary them if he were more copious, and would describe, therefore, name, country, and natural history of every group very briefly. All faces burned, all backs were roasted, all toes were in a fidget. Vainly did one cousin attempt to turn away her eyes toward the blind Amandus, only for the sake of looking at something animal; the botanical connoisseur fastened their attention upon a new dust-bag which he at that moment eulogized. He had already dragged his club to the _Pentandria_,[21] when he said: "This evening must find us in the neighborhood of the _Dodecandria_ [of twelve stamens]; but it will cost toil and sweat." He grew more and more delighted with the universal lamentation over such a purgatorial afternoon, the like of which no Scheerauer had ever before experienced, and said their attention fired his enthusiasm in the highest degree.

Still the botanic candidates let themselves be martyred from one leaf to another, and would have obligingly stayed it out, till the Captain, although he divined the prank, grew infernally impatient and was on the point of going. The Doctor said he should have to reserve the second folio for another lesson; but he wished they would come again soon, that would be the only evidence that they had been pleased to-day. The mere thought of the second folio-torture, to which the Theresian[22]

Codex with its racking pictures is but a pocket-almanac with monthly engravings, brought with it something of a feverish shudder. Thus had they disgracefully lost a whole half day without a bit of scandal, gossip, or calumny, which might have been carried home with them and retailed through the neighborhood. The elder dames usually visited b.a.l.l.s and concerts, not at all, however, to be seen, but to see, and to elaborate there physiognomical fragments for the furtherance of the _knowledge of humanity_, though not for the promotion of _philanthropy_. Nay, they loved to visit even their avowed enemies, when there was a shot to be fired at an absent enemy; as wolves, who flee one another, nevertheless ally themselves together for the death of another wolf. I have always taken pleasure in observing how heartily and with what friendship a pair of Scheerau ladies sympathize with each other when they have the least scandal to bring out of their budget against a third. Only when two no longer sit beside each other on the sofa, but turn their faces instead of their hips towards each other, then I would rather not be the one they handle.

Extra Lines on the Quinsy which Attacks all the Ladies in Scheerau at the Sight Of a Stranger of their own s.e.x.

To the men of that place the sight of a strange lady does little harm; it merely causes all frizzlers and barbers to come a little later than usual; at the billiard tables the cues or tobacco pipes point up into the air, and the teachers of the worthy gymnasium do not stop at all on that account. On the contrary the women!--

On the island of St. Hilda, when a stranger disembarks there occurs a misfortune which no philosopher has yet been able to explain--the whole country _coughs_ on his account.[23] All villages, all corporate bodies, all ages cough--if the pa.s.senger makes a purchase, the provision dealers cough, at the gate the military do it, and the body of teachers cough over their lessons. It is of no use at all to call in the physician--he barks more than his patients and is his own patient....

In Lower Scheerau the same misfortune occurs, only in a greater degree.

Let a strange lady set foot in the post-house, in the concert hall or ball-room, immediately all the women of Scheerau are compelled to _cough_, and--which always proceeds from a sore throat--to speak _lower_--all are attacked by quinsy, _i. e._, the _angina vera_. The poor ladies show all signs of the most virulent inflammation of the throat; heat (hence the fanning) _chills_, distress for breath, _fancies_, swollen nostrils, heartburn. Cooling remedies, water, clearing of the air tubes, prove the most effectual thus far for the fair patients. But if (which Heaven avert!) the strange lady who enters is the handsomest--the cleverest--the richest--the famousest--the most celebrated--the most tasteful--then not a single sufferer in the whole hospital is cured; such an angel becomes a true death angel, and one should absolutely prevent any stranger of merit from pa.s.sing the gate.

The attack, like every other malady, is most aggravating in autumn and winter during the winter gaieties and among the winter guests. This quinsy is ascribed by wit or understanding to two causes: first, to external or sh.e.l.l-merits (never to inner ones); thus, too, Unzer thinks that crustaceous animals act most upon the throat, hence, _e. g_., oysters produce difficulty of swallowing, calcined crabs counteract hydrophobia, steam of crabs produces dumbness, scorpions lameness of the tongue. The second reason is, that ladies in a city live as on an insulating stool, and if a stranger of their s.e.x, who has not been put _en rapport_ with them, touches the manipulated clairvoyants, or even stands at a distance from them, these latter feel ugly sensations in all their limbs.

_End of the Extra Lines_.

After the botanical divine-service Fenk gave the departing ladies of Scheerau the additional piece of information to take home with them, as an altar-benediction, leaving it to them, meanwhile, to make the sign of the crossover it: That the two children, whom they had seen, the little boy and the little girl, had had no other cradle than the traveling carriage; but that he, at present, had become at once Pestilentiary and Medical Counsellor; he preferred however to cure women only, and in time hoped to wed one, and hereby made a standing offer....

When the people of Lower Scheerau have anything put upon them which seems at once sweet, sour and senseless, at first they listen to it--then they smile at it--then reflect upon it--then cannot see into it--then for three days surmise nothing good of it--and finally become fairly enraged about it. Fenk did not trouble himself about that, but said from time to time something or other and what neither they nor he himself understood.

Thereupon he explained all to the Captain, as I do to the reader. The pressed plants, he said, would keep, henceforth, all aunts and ninnies and visiting ants away from his lodgings, as an enclosing hemp-thread does caterpillars from a vegetable garden. That he communicated only half the history of his travels and a riddle or two growing out of it, because one becomes most interested in persons about whom one has something left him to guess, and the curious patient females would become his female patients. Whether he was married or not, he did not himself know; nor should others know, because all whose houses were sale-rooms of daughters would invite him in as physician that he might come out again as bridegroom. Finally, that the reasons of his taking only female patients were these: that they were the most numerous; that this exclusive practice would beget a peculiar confidence in him; that this confidence was a woman-doctor's whole dispensary; that most of the ailments of women consisted merely of weaknesses, and their whole cure in abstinence from--medicine; that apothecaries' shops were only for men, not for women; and because he liked full as well to adore as to cure them.

Another point was this, how he had so quickly come to Scheerau and come so quickly to be Medical Counsellor. This was the way: the hereditary Prince, who at this moment on the high throne-coach-box will drive with the state-carriage to the devil, loves n.o.body; on his journey he made jests upon his mistresses; his friendship is only a lesser degree of hatred, his indifference is a greater; but the greatest, which stings him like a heartburn, he cherishes for his unmarried brother, Captain von Ottomar, Fenk's friend, who had stayed in Rome in the midst of the most beautiful _natural nature_, as well as _artistic_, in order to revel in the enjoyments of Roman landscapes and antiques. Ottomar seemed a _genius_ in the good sense as well as in the bad. He and the hereditary Prince could hardly endure each other in ante-chambers, and were often on the point of a duel. Now the Grand Duke of Scheerau hates poor Fenk also, first, because the latter is a friend of his foe; secondly, because he once restored to life and to his allowance-money the hereditary Prince's third brother; thirdly, because the Prince needed far less reasons (or in fact none) for hating any one than for loving him.

Now the Doctor would have been glad to be made Medical Counsellor under the former administration, whose stomach we met on the road; under the coming administration, whose stomach was still filling itself in Italy, there was little chance for him. The Doctor sought therefore to get his fortune firmly rooted a week or two before the new coronation. He found the old minister still at his post, who was patron and whose patron the hereditary Prince was far from being, for the reason that leads hereditary princes generally to think that they must get the creatures of their dead father under the ground just as certainly, only more slowly and delicately, as savage tribes do, who lay on the funeral-pile of the king his favorites and servants also.

When Fenk came, the _deceased_ Regent made him all he wanted to be: for it was in this way: When the departed father of his people had become in the physiological sense a child of the people, _i. e_., had returned to the age of which he was when they had hung upon him the first order-ribbon instead of leading-strings, namely, six and a half years, the eternal signing of his cabinet decrees became much too disagreeable to the Prince, and at last impossible. As, however, he must after all still govern, when he could no longer write, the court-engraver cut his decreeing name so well in stone that he had only to dip the stamp in ink and press it while moist under the edict: then he had his edict before him. In this way he governed fifteen per cent. easier; but the minister one hundred per cent., who, at last, out of grat.i.tude, in order to relieve the enfeebled Prince even of the heavy handling of the stamp, dipped, himself, the beautiful seal (which he preferred to Michael Angelo's) into his own ink-stand; so that the old lord, several days after his death, had subscribed sundry vocations and rescripts--but this modeling-stamp of men in general became the insect's-laying-sting[24] and father of the best government officials, and at last sp.a.w.ned the Pestilentiary.

Extra-Thoughts Upon Regents' Thumbs.

Not the crown but the inkstand oppresses Princes, Grand Masters and Commanders; not the Sceptre, but the Pen do they find so much difficulty in wielding, because with the former they merely command, but with the latter they have to sign what is commanded. A cabinet councillor would not wonder if a tormented crowned scribe should, like Roman recruits, amputate his thumb, in order to be freed from the eternal making of his mark, as _they_ do to escape fighting. But the reigning and writing heads keep the thumb; they see that the welfare of the land requires their dipping the pen,--the little illegibleness on cabinet orders which one calls their name, opens and shuts, like a magic formula, money-chests, hearts, gates, warehouses, ports; the black drop of their pen manures and forces or macerates whole fields.

Professor Hoppedizel had, when he was first teacher of morals to the Scheerau Infante, a good idea, although only in his last month: might not the princely tutor command the sub-tutor to let the crown-abecedarian, who of course must one day learn to write, instead of useless bills of feoffment merely scrawl his name in the middle of every blank leaf? The child would write his signature without disgust on as many pages as would be needed in his whole administration--the sheets might be laid away against the child's coronation--and then (he continued) when he had bespattered pages enough, as a college would often require his signature yearly, if, accordingly on New Year's day the necessary number of signed reams had been distributed among the colleges to last the whole year--what more would the child need to do in his whole administration?

_End of the Extras-thoughts_.

One word more: after nine weeks the Doctor's revenge by means of the plant-book produced in him, as the least revenge does in every good man, a painful reaction. "The Herbarium," said he, "annoys me, as often as I stick anything into it; but it is certainly true, a man shall have pa.s.sed through all capital cities and retain his modesty: at the very gate of his native town the devil of pride enters into him and accompanies him on his first visits--his good fellow citizens, he will have it, must during his absence have become rational."

ELEVENTH SECTION.

Amandus's Eyes.--Blindman's Buff.

That sympathy which grafts, by approach, grown up people in the first quarter of an hour, often draws children also to each other. Our couple flew into each other's arms and hugged each other over forty times a day. You good children! Be glad that you can venture to express your love still more strongly than by letters. For culture restricts the bodily domain of love's expression within narrower and narrower limits--this haggard Duenna took away from us first the whole body of the one we love--then the hand, which we are no longer allowed to press--then the b.u.t.tons and the shoulders, which we are no more permitted to touch--and of a whole woman she has given us nothing to kiss, except (as a kind of hair) the glove--we all now manipulate each other at a distance. Amandus with his more feminine heart hung upon Gustavus's more manly one with all the love which the weaker gives the stronger, more richly than it wins back from it love in return. Hence woman loves man more purely; she loves in him the present object of her heart, he in her, oftentimes, the image of his fancy; hence comes his fickleness and vacillation. This little preface must be taken only as an introduction to a little pa.s.sage of arms between our little Castor and Pollux.

Namely: they could not bear to be so long apart, as it took to unbind and bind up the eyes. As often as the bandage came off, Gustavus stood before him and absolutely demanded that he should see him, and put his finger up to his own nose and said: "Where do I touch now?" But he examined the blind boy without seeing. After a week's absence Amandus ran up to him, saying: "Shove up my bandage, I can certainly see thee too as well as my cat Harry!" When Gustavus had lifted[25] it up, and when it proved that he actually pa.s.sed into the eye of his cured friend, just as he was, coat, shoes and stockings, then was he gladder than a patriot whose Prince opens his eyes or his bandage and sees him.

He inventoried his picture-cabinet before his eyes with a perpetual "look!" at every piece. But yet further! The world will know little of it--except those minute particles thereof, the children, of whom it is that I am just going to speak--that these latter played blindman's buff at Hoppedizel's. A disagreeable game!--when there are girls in the case, as there were here, especially such naughty ones as the Professor's were. Amandus introduced himself into the game, and ran round the room, behind the handkerchief, which female cunning had folded over his eyes, catching nothing but disembodied clothes.

Unfortunately, crawling, contrary to all proper rules of the game, under the stove, they came against the milk-pan of the dog Spitz. As, now, they had read at that time too few moral philosophers, although they had seen enough of them, accordingly, for want of pure _practical reason_, they softly pushed the pan so far forward that the groping catch-poll easily trampled upon and tipped it over. Gustavus, as a child, could not help laughing a little. The little sinners threw the blame on him and cried: "O you! if now Amandus had received an injury?"

The latter extricated himself from the wet fragments and slightly thumped Gustavus, who was holding him by the hands to comfort him behind on the shoulder-blade, just where according to the Compends the chyle (or milk-juice) joins the blood. "I didn't set it there, indeed I didn't," said he. "Yes, yes! and didn't tell me of it," replied the blindman and gave him another push, only more _violently_ and yet less _angrily_. "Strike away, I did not do anything to thee," and my good hero's voice broke--the other struck at him again and said: "I will never be friends with you any more," but said it as if he was just on the point of weeping. "Ah, thou hast surely run a splinter into thy hand?" asked Gustavus with the most sympathetic voice--in the midst of attempting a fresh punch the thin crust of ice melted down from the warmed heart of Amandus, he embraced the innocent one, and said with glistening tears: "No, indeed! thou hast not done anything, and I will give thee all my playthings; I pray thee, beat me right hard," and so saying he beat himself. It is only the feeling of love that struggles with such bitter-sweet singularities. Amandus often confessed that whenever he had done injustice to any one, in the midst of his grief about it, the propensity always seized him to keep on offending, in order to continue grieving himself so far that at last for very anguish he must needs throw himself with the most ardent love upon the heart of the injured one. But, oh dear Amandus, if a pedagogue in the form of a moral code had happened to open the door!

It must never be supposed that I would vent here personal resentment upon tutors in a body, for, in the first place, I never had any tutor at all, and, secondly, I have been one myself, and a proper one.