Translations from the German Part 20

A thrill of terror pa.s.sed over the old man; he p.r.o.nounced the name "Francesca" in a vehement tone, and set the goblet to his lips. The mother cast upon him an inquiring and astonished look.

"Whence is this bright goblet?" said Ferdinand, who also felt ashamed of his embarra.s.sment.

"Many years ago, long ere I was born," said Leopold, "my father bought it, with this house and all its furniture, from an old solitary bachelor; a silent man, whom the neighbours thought a dealer in the Black Art."

The stranger did not say that he had known this old man; for his whole being was too much perplexed, too like an enigmatic dream, to let the rest look into it, even from afar.

The cloth being withdrawn, he was left alone with the mother, as the young ones had retired to make ready for the ball. "Sit down by me,"

said the mother; "we will rest, for our dancing years are past; and if it is not rude, allow me to inquire whether you have seen our goblet elsewhere, or what it was that moved you so intensely?"

"O my lady," said the old man, "pardon my foolish violence and emotion; but ever since I crossed your threshold, I feel as if I were no longer myself; every moment I forget that my head is gray, that the hearts which loved me are dead. Your beautiful daughter, who is now celebrating the gladdest day of her existence, is so like a maiden whom I knew and adored in my youth, that I could reckon it a miracle. Like, did I say?

No, she is not like; it is she herself! In this house, too, I have often been; and once I became acquainted with this cup in a manner I shall not forget." Here he told her his adventure. "On the evening of that day,"

concluded he, "in the park, I saw my loved one for the last time, as she was pa.s.sing in her coach. A rose fell from her bosom; this I gathered; she herself was lost to me, for she proved faithless, and soon after married."

"G.o.d in Heaven!" cried the lady, violently moved, and starting up, "thou art not Ferdinand?"

"It is my name," replied he.

"I am Francesca," said the lady.

They sprang forward to embrace, then started suddenly back. Each viewed the other with investigating looks: both strove again to evolve from the ruins of Time those lineaments which of old they had known and loved in one another; and as, in dark tempestuous nights, amid the flight of black clouds, there are moments when solitary stars ambiguously twinkle forth, to disappear next instant, so to these two was there shown now and then from the eyes, from the brow and lips, the transitory gleam of some well-known feature; and it seemed as if their Youth stood in the distance, weeping smiles. He bowed down, and kissed her hand, while two big drops rolled from his eyes. They then embraced each other cordially.

"Is thy wife dead?" inquired she.

"I was never married," sobbed the other.

"Heavens!" cried she, wringing her hands, "then it is I who have been faithless! But no, not faithless. On returning from the country, where I stayed two months, I heard from every one, thy friends as well as mine, that thou wert long ago gone home, and married in thy own country. They showed me the most convincing letters, they pressed me vehemently, they profited by my despondency, my indignation; and so it was that I gave my hand to another, a deserving husband; but my heart and my thoughts were always thine."

"I never left this town," said Ferdinand; "but after a while I heard that thou wert married. They wished to part us, and they have succeeded.

Thou art a happy mother; I live in the past, and all thy children I will love as if they were my own. But how strange that we should never once have met!"

"I seldom went abroad," said she; "and as my husband took another name, soon after we were married, from a property which he inherited, thou couldst have no suspicion that we were so near together."

"I avoided men," said Ferdinand, "and lived for solitude. Leopold is almost the only one that has attracted me, and led me out amongst my fellows. O my beloved friend, it is like a frightful spectre-story, to think how we lost, and have again found each other!"

As the young people entered, the two were dissolved in tears, and in the deepest emotion. Neither of them told what had occurred, the secret seemed too holy. But ever after, the old man was the friend of the house; and Death alone parted these two beings, who had found each other so strangely, to reunite them in a short time, beyond the power of separation.

JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER.

ARMY-CHAPLAIN SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FLaeTZ;

WITH

A RUNNING COMMENTARY OF NOTES BY JEAN PAUL.[29]

PREFACE.

This, I conceive, may be managed in two words.

The _first_ word must relate to the Circular Letter of Army-chaplain Schmelzle, wherein he describes to his friends his Journey to the metropolitan city of Flatz; after having, in an Introduction, premised some proofs and a.s.surances of his valour. Properly speaking, the _Journey_ itself has been written purely with a view that his courageousness, impugned by rumour, may be fully evinced and demonstrated by the plain facts which he therein records. Whether, in the mean-time, there shall not be found certain quick-scented readers, who may infer, directly contrariwise, that his breast is not everywhere bomb-proof, especially in the left side: on this point I keep my judgment suspended.

[29] Prefatory Introduction to Richter, _supra_, at p. 354, Vol.

VI. of _Works_ (Vol. I. of _Miscellanies_).

For the rest, I beg the judges of literature, as well as their satellites, the critics of literature, to regard this _Journey_, for whose literary contents I, as Editor, am answerable, solely in the light of a Portrait (in the French sense), a little Sketch of Character. It is a voluntary or involuntary comedy-piece, at which I have laughed so often, that I purpose in time coming to paint some similar Pictures of Character myself. And, for the present, when could such a little comic toy be more fitly imparted and set forth to the world, than in these very days, when the sound both of heavy money and of light laughter has died away from among us; when, like the Turks, we count and pay merely with sealed _purses_, and the coin within them has vanished?

Despicable would it seem to me, if any clownish squire of the goose-quill should publicly and censoriously demand of me, in what way this self-cabinet-piece of Schmelzle's has come into my hands? I know it well, and do not disclose it. This comedy-piece, for which I, at all events, as my Bookseller will testify, draw the profit myself, I got hold of so unblamably, that I await, with unspeakable composure, what the Army-chaplain shall please to say against the publication of it, in case he say anything at all. My conscience bears me witness, that I acquired this article, at least by more honourable methods than are those of the learned persons who steal with their ears, who, in the character of spiritual auditory-thieves, and cla.s.sroom cutpurses and pirates, are in the habit of disloading their plundered Lectures, and vending them up and down the country as productions of their own.

Hitherto, in my whole life, I have stolen little, except now and then in youth some--glances.

The _second_ word must explain or apologise for the singular form of this little Work, standing as it does on a substratum of Notes. I myself am not contented with it. Let the World open, and look, and determine, in like manner. But the truth is, this line of demarcation, stretching through the whole book, originated in the following accident: certain thoughts (or digressions) of my own, with which it was not permitted me to disturb those of the Army-chaplain, and which could only he allowed to fight behind the lines, in the shape of Notes, I, with a view to conveniency and order, had written down in a separate paper; at the same time, as will he observed, regularly providing every Note with its Number, and thus referring it to the proper page of the main Ma.n.u.script. But, in the copying of the latter, I had forgotten to insert the corresponding numbers in the Text itself. Therefore, let no man, any more than I do, cast a stone at my worthy Printer, inasmuch as he (perhaps in the thought that it was my way, that I had some purpose in it) took these Notes, just as they stood, pell-mell, without arrangement of Numbers, and clapped them under the Text; at the same time, by a praiseworthy artful computation, taking care at least, that, at the bottom of every page in the Text, there should some portion of this glittering Note-precipitate make its appearance. Well, the thing at any rate is done, nay perpetuated, namely printed. After all, I might almost partly rejoice at it. For, in good truth, had I meditated for years (as I have done for the last twenty) how to provide for my digression-comets new orbits, if not focal suns, for my episodes new epopees,--I could scarce possibly have hit upon a better or more s.p.a.cious Limbo for such Vanities than Chance and Printer here accidentally offer me ready-made.

I have only to regret, that the thing has been printed, before I could turn it to account. Heavens! what remotest allusions (had I known it before printing) might not have been privily introduced in every Text-page and Note-number; and what apparent incongruity in the real congruity between this upper and under side of the cards! How vehemently and devilishly might one not have cut aloft, and to the right and left, from these impregnable casemates and covered ways; and what _laesio ultra dimidium_ (injury beyond the half of the Text) might not, with these satirical injuries, have been effected and completed!

But Fate meant not so kindly with me: of this golden harvest-field of satire I was not to be informed till three days before the Preface.

Perhaps, however, the writing world, by the little blue flame of this accident, may be guided to a weightier acquisition, to a larger subterranean treasure, than I, alas, have dug up! For, to the writer, there is now a way pointed out of producing in one marbled volume a group of altogether different works; of writing in one leaf, for both s.e.xes at the same time, without confounding them, nay, for the five faculties all at once, without disturbing their limitations; since now, instead of boiling up a vile fermenting shove-together, fit for n.o.body, he has nothing to do but draw his note-lines or part.i.tion-lines; and so on his five-story leaf give board and lodging to the most discordant heads. Perhaps one might then read many a book for the fourth time, simply because every time one had read but a fourth part of it.

On the whole, this Work has at least the property of being a short one; so that the reader, I hope, may almost run through it, and read it at the bookseller's counter, without, as in the case of thicker volumes, first needing to buy it. And why, indeed, in this world of Matter should anything whatever be great, except only what belongs not to it, the world of Spirit?

JEAN PAUL FR. RICHTER.

_Bayreuth, in the Hay and Peace Month_, 1807.

SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FLaeTZ.

_Circular Letter of the proposed Catechetical Professor_ ATTILA SCHMELZLE _to his Friends; containing some Account of a Holidays'

Journey to Flatz, with an Introduction, touching his Plight and his Courage as former Army-chaplain._

Nothing can be more ludicrous, my esteemed Friends, than to hear people stigmatising a man as cowardly and hare-hearted, who perhaps is struggling all the while with precisely the opposite faults, those of a lion; though indeed the African lion himself, since the time of Sparrmann's Travels, pa.s.ses among us for a poltroon. Yet this case is mine, worthy Friends; and I purpose to say a few words thereupon, before describing my Journey.

You in truth are all aware that, directly in the teeth of this calumny, it is courage, it is desperadoes (provided they be not braggarts and tumultuous persons), whom I chiefly venerate; for example, my brother-in-law, the Dragoon, who never in his life bastinadoed one man, but always a whole social circle at the same time. How truculent was my fancy, even in childhood, when I, as the parson was toning away to the silent congregation, used to take it into my head: "How now, if thou shouldst start up from the pew, and shout aloud: I am here too, Mr.

Parson!" and to paint out this thought in such glowing colours, that for very dread, I have often been obliged to leave the church! Anything like Rugenda's battle-pieces; horrid murder-tumults, sea-fights or Stormings of Toulon, exploding fleets; and, in my childhood, Battles of Prague on the harpsichord; nay, in short, every map of any remarkable scene of war: these are perhaps too much my favourite objects; and I read--and purchase nothing sooner; and doubtless, they might lead me into many errors, were it not that, my circ.u.mstances restrain me. Now, if it be objected that true courage is something higher than mere thinking and willing, then you, my worthy Friends, will be the first to recognise mine, when it shall break forth into, not barren and empty, but active and effective words, while I strengthen my future Catechetical Pupils, as well as can be done in a course of College Lectures, and steel them into Christian heroes.

[Note 103: Good princes easily obtain good subjects; not so easily good subjects good princes: thus Adam, in the state of innocence, ruled over animals all tame and gentle, till simply through his means they fell and grew savage.]

[Note 5: For a good Physician saves, if not always from the disease, at least from a bad Physician.]