Titan: A Romance Volume I Part 11

[49] Derham (in his Physico-Theology, 1750) observes that the deaf hear best under a noise; e. g. one hard of hearing, under the sound of bells; a deaf housewife, under the drumming of the house-servant. Hence when princes and ministers, who for the most part hear badly, are pa.s.sing through the country, kettle-drums are beat and cannon fired, so that they can hear the people more easily.

[50] In whose wall the lady with the souvenir sits.

[51] A kind of gray fur.--TR.

[52] Baireuth.--TR.

[53] This precocious completion of growth I have observed in many distinguished women, just as if these Psyches should resemble b.u.t.terflies, which do not grow after coming out of the chrysalis state.

[54] Cloth is roughened with thistles, i.e. scratched up, in order to the better shearing of it afterwards.

[55] A distinguished actor of tragedy.

[56] He means here their divorce, which was only deferred by the mutual wish to keep Liana.

[57] Poor dinners, just as cat-silver is an inferior metal.--TR.

[58] A weak-nerved lady (I know not whether it is the same) who had much religion, fancy, and suffering, became, as she tells me, blind in the same way, and was cured in the same way.

[59] The eternal p.r.i.c.king of the sensitive finger-nerves by knitting, tambour, and other needles, perhaps as much as the touching of the harmonica-bells, makes one, by stimulating, weak in the nerves.

[60] Tartarus is the melancholy part of Lilar.

[61] Kursus--corso.--TR.

[62] Pride of the meadows quickens the circulation of the blood even to frenzy. This whole observation on the pharmaceutic value of pride of the meadows is taken from Tissot's "Traite sur les Nerfs."

SIXTH JUBILEE.

THE TEN PERSECUTIONS OF THE READER.--LIANA'S EASTERN ROOM.--DISPUTATION UPON PATIENCE.--THE PICTURESQUE CURE.

34. CYCLE.

Postulates--apothegms--philosophems--Erasmian adages--observations of Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, Lavater, do I in one week invent in countless numbers, more than I can in six months get rid of by bringing them into my biographical _pet.i.ts soupes_ as episode-dishes. Thus does the lottery-mintage of my _unprinted_ ma.n.u.scripts swell higher and higher every day, the more extracts and winnings I deal out to my reader therefrom in print. In this way I creep out of the world without having, while in it, said anything. Lavater takes a more rational course; he lets the whole lottery-wheel, filled with treasures, under the t.i.tle of ma.n.u.scripts (just as we, inversely, despatch ma.n.u.scripts to the publishers by mail under the t.i.tle of printed matter) circulate even among the _literati_.

But why shall I not do the same, and let at least one or two lymphatic veins of my water-treasure leap up and run out? I limit myself to ten persecutions of the reader,--calling my ten aphorisms thus, merely because I imagine the readers to be martyrs of their opinions, and myself the Regent who converts them by force. The following aphorism, if one reckons the foregoing as the first persecution, is, I hope, the

_SECOND._

Nothing sifts and winnows our preferences and partialities better than an imitation of the same by others. For a genius there are no sharper polishing-machines and grinding-disks at hand than his apes. If, further, every one of us could see running along beside him a duplicate of himself, a complete Archimimus[63] and repeater in complimenting, taking off the hat, dancing, speaking, scolding, bragging, &c.; by Heaven! such an exact repeating-work of our discords would make quite other people out of me and other people than we are at present. The first and least step which we should take toward reflection and virtue would be this, that we should find our bodily methodology, e. g. our walk, dress, dialect, our oaths, looks, favorite dishes, &c., no better than those of all others, but just the same. Princes have the good fortune that all courtiers around them station themselves as faithful supernumerary copyists and pier-mirrors of _their_ selves, and propose to improve them by this Helot-mimicry. But they seldom attain their good end, because the Prince,--and that were also to be feared of me and the reader,--like the principle of _non-distinguendum_, does not believe in any real twins, but imagines that in morals, as in catoptrics, every mirror and mock rainbow shows everything _inverted_.

_THIRD._

It is easier and handier for men to flatter than to praise.

_FOURTH._

In the centuries before us humanity appears to us to be growing up; in those which come after us, to be fading away; in our own, to burst forth in glorious bloom: thus do the clouds, only when in our zenith, seem to move straight forward, those in front of us come up from the horizon, the others behind us sail downward with fore-shortened forms.

_FIFTH._

What makes old age so sad is, not that our joys, but that our hopes then cease.[64]

_SIXTH._

The old age of women is sadder and more solitary than that of men; spare, therefore, in them their years, their sorrows, and their s.e.x! In fact, life often resembles the trap-tree with its spines directed upward, on which the bear easily clambers up to the honey-bait, but from which he can slide down again only under severe stings.

_SEVENTH._

Have compa.s.sion on Poverty, but a hundred times more on Impoverishment!

Only the former, not the latter, makes nations and individuals better.

_EIGHTH._

Love lessens woman's delicacy and increases man's.

_NINTH._

When two persons, in suddenly turning a corner, knock their heads together, each begins anxiously to apologize, and thinks only the other feels the pain and that he himself has all the blame. (Only I excuse myself without any embarra.s.sment, for the very reason that I know, by my persecutions, how the other party thinks.) Would to G.o.d we did not invert this in the case of moral offences!

_LAST PERSECUTION OF THE READER._

Deluded and darkened man, living on from the mourning veil to the corpse-veil, thinks there is no further evil beyond that which he has immediately to overcome; and forgets that after the victory the new situation brings a new struggle. Hence, as before swift ships there swims a hill of water and a corresponding billowy abyss glides along close behind, so always before us is there a mountain, which we hope to climb, and behind us still a deep valley out of which we seem to have ascended.

Thus does the reader vainly hope now, after having stood out ten persecutions, to ride into the haven of the story, and there to lead a peaceable life, free from the troubled one of my characters; but can any spiritual or worldly arm, then, protect him against scattered similes,--against hemispherical headaches,--whimsies,--reviews,--curtain-lectures, --rainy months,--or in fact honey-moons, which come in at the end of every volume?--

Now for our History! In the evening Albano and Augusti went with the paternal letter of credit to the Minister's. The frostiness and pride of that individual the Lector endeavored, on their way, to varnish over by praising his laboriousness and discernment. With a knocking at his heart the Count seized the door-knocker to the heaven- or h.e.l.l-gate of his future destiny. In the antechamber--that higher servant's apartment and _Limbus infantum et patrum_--there were still people enough, for Froulay regarded an antechamber as a stage, which must never be empty, and on which, as in the Jewish temple, according to the Rabbins, for those who kneel and pray, it is never too close. The Minister's lady was not present as a patient here, merely because she was looking after one of her own elsewhere. The Minister also was not here,--because he made few ceremonies, and only demanded uncommonly many,--but in his working-cabinet; he had heretofore had his head under the warm throne-canopy and taken a deep bite into the forbidden apple of the Empire, therefore he willingly made a sacrifice (not _to_ others, but _of_ others), and let himself, as a saintly statue, be hung round with votive limbs, without having to bestir his own, and, like St. Franciscus at Oporto, with letters of thanks and pet.i.tions which he never opens.

Froulay came, and was--as ever, _aside_ from business--as courteous as a Persian. For Augusti was his home friend,--i. e. the Minister's lady was _his_ home-friend,--and Albano was not a good person to run against; because one had occasion for his foster-father in the votes of the Province, and because the youth by a peculiar and proper pride of his own commanded men. There is a certain n.o.ble pride through which merits shine brighter than through modesty. Froulay had not the most comfortable part before him; for the Court of Haarhaar was as disaffected toward the Knight of the Fleece, as he was toward it;[65]

but Haarhaar was to be without doubt (according to all Italian _surgical_ reports) and in a few years (according to all _nosological_ ones) the heir of his inheritance and throne. Now the bad thing about it was, that the Minister, who, like a good Christian, looked mainly to the future, had to creep along between the German Herr von Bouverot, on the one hand, who was secretly a creature of Haarhaar, and the demands of the present moment, on the other.

He received the Count, I said, in an uncommonly obliging manner, as well as the Lector, and disclosed to the two that he must present to them his lady, who desired their acquaintance. He sent word to her, but, without waiting an answer, conducted them both into her apartment. Now was it to the youth as if the heavy door of a still and holy temple turned on its hinges. Even I too, at this moment, during their pa.s.sage through the rooms, share so in his foolishness that I fall into full as great anxiety, as if I went in behind them. When we entered the eastern room, which was extended out at pleasure by picturesque paper-tapestry into a latticed arbor of woodbine, there sat merely the Minister's lady, who received us pleasantly, with firm and cold reserve in look and tone. Her severely closed and faintly-marked lips mutely spoke a seriousness which is the gift of a good heart, and a stillness which is the ornament of beauty,--as many wings, only when they are folded, shower down peac.o.c.ks'-eyes,--and her eye gleamed with the good-will of reason; but the eyelids had been, by stern years, drawn deeply in, with a sickly expression, over the mild sight. Ah, as oftentimes between newly-married people a dividing sword was laid, so did Froulay grind daily at a three-edged one which separated him and her! Singularly did the impure roil on his face contrast with the aftersummer serenity on hers, although before witnesses, as it seemed, he took away the irony from his courteousness towards her, and kept hatred, as others do love, only for solitude.

Fortunately this nut-tree, which threw an unwholesome, frosty nut-shadow on the whole flowerage of love and poetry, soon transplanted itself back again among more congenial guests. The Minister's lady, after the first expressions of courtesy, directed herself more to the Lector, whose correct, civilian's measure accorded entirely with her religious one; especially as only he could ask and condole with her about Liana. She replied, that this room of Liana's had been left exactly as it was the evening the blindness came on, in order that, when she recovered, it might remain for her a pleasant remembrancer, or a mournful one for others, if she did not. O, deeply moved Albano, if every absence glorifies, how much more must it do so with so many traces of the beloved object's presence! I confess, except a loved one, I know of nothing lovelier than her sitting-room in her absence.

On Liana's work-table lay a sketched outline of a Christ's head near the open Messiah,--a folded walking-veil, together with the green walking-fan, with inscribed wishes of female friends,--some cut-out envelopes,--the gossiping letter of one of Froulay's tenants,--a whole lacquerwork sheep-fold, with wagon, stalls, and house, with whose Lilliputian Arcadia she had proposed to please Dian's children,[66]--a plucked leaf from the thinning alb.u.m of a female friend, which she had trimmed with an India-ink flower border and then planted full of fair wishes, of which fate had robbed her own life. Ah, beautiful heart, how fondly would I sketch and hand round something like a tabular view of all the little mosaic of thy lightsome past, had the fee-provost entered more intimately into these matters! But what moves me and the Count more deeply is a framed embroidery, on which her needle, like an ingrafting-knife, had, on that dark day, ingrafted a rose with two buds, and which wanted nothing more but the thorns. O, _these_ had destiny only too fully developed on thy roses of joy, and then pressed them so deeply through thy breast even to the heart!