Translations from the German Part 31

The Subrector dashed by like a comet before the lackey: ordered him to call and take a letter for his master; strode home, and prepared for his patron, who at Schadeck was waiting for a long thanksgiving psalm, a short satirical epistle, as nervous as haste would permit, and mingled a few nicknames and verbal injuries along with it.

The courier handed in, to his master, Fixlein's song of grat.i.tude, and Fuchslein's invectives, with the same hand. The Dragoon Rittmeister, incensed at the ill-mannered churl, and bound to his word, which Fixlein had publicly announced in his Actus, forthwith wrote back to the new Parson an acceptance and ratification; and Fixlein is and remains, to the joy of us all, incontestable ordained parson of Hukelum.

His disappointed rival has still this consolation, that he holds a seat in the wasp-nest of the _Neue Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek_.[55]

Should the Parson ever chrysalise himself into an author, the watch-wasp may then buzz out, and dart its sting into the chrysalis, and put its own brood in the room of the murdered b.u.t.terfly. As the Subrector everywhere went about, and threatened in plain terms that he would review his colleague, let not the public be surprised that Fixlein's _Errata_, and his Masoretic _Exercitationes_, are to this hour withheld from it.

[55] _New Universal German Library_, a reviewing periodical; in those days conducted by Nicolai, a sworn enemy to what has since been called the New School. (See Tieck, _ante_)--ED.

In spring, the widowed church receives her new husband; and how it will be, when Fixlein, under a canopy of flower-trees, takes the _Sponsa Christi_ in one hand, and his own _Sponsa_ in the other,--this, without an Eighth Letter-Box, which, in the present case, may be a true jewel-box and rainbow-key,[56] can no mortal figure, except the _Sponsus_ himself.

[56] Superst.i.tion declares, that on the spot where the rainbow rises, a golden key is left.

EIGHTH LETTER-BOX.

_Instalment in the Parsonage._

On the 15th of April 1793, the reader may observe, far down in the hollow, three baggage-wagons groaning along. These baggage-wagons are transporting the house-gear of the new Parson to Hukelum: the proprietor himself, with a little escort of his parishioners, is marching at their side, that of his china sets and household furniture there may be nothing broken in the eighteenth century, as the whole came down to him unbroken from the seventeenth. Fixlein hears the School-bell ringing behind him; but this chime now sings to him, like a curfew, the songs of future rest: he is now escaped from the Death-valley of the Gymnasium, and admitted into the abodes of the Blessed. Here dwells no envy, no colleague, no Subrector; here in the heavenly country, no man works in the _New Universal German Library_; here, in the heavenly Hukelumic Jerusalem, they do nothing but sing praises in the church; and here the Perfected requires no more increase of knowledge.... Here too one need not sorrow that Sunday and Saint's day so often fall together into one.

Truth to tell, the Parson goes too far: but it was his way from of old never to paint out the whole and half shadows of a situation, till he was got into a new one; the beauties of which he could then enhance by contrast with the former. For it requires little reflection to discover that the torments of a schoolmaster are nothing so extraordinary; but, on the contrary, as in the Gymnasium, he mounts from one degree to another, not very dissimilar to the common torments of h.e.l.l, which, in spite of their eternity, grow weaker from century to century. Moreover, since, according to the saying of a Frenchman, _deux afflictions mises ensemble peuvent devenir une consolation_, a man gets afflictions enow in a school to console him; seeing out of eight combined afflictions--I reckon only one for every teacher--certainly more comfort is to be extracted than out of two. The only pity is, that school-people will never act towards each other as court-people do: none but polished men and polished gla.s.ses will readily cohere. In addition to all this, in schools--and in offices generally--one is always recompensed: for, as in the second life, a greater virtue is the recompense of an earthly one, so, in the Schoolmaster's case, his merits are always rewarded by more opportunities for new merits; and often enough he is not dismissed from his post at all.--

Eight Gymnasiasts are trotting about in the Parsonage, setting up, nailing to, hauling in. I think, as a scholar of Plutarch, I am right to introduce such seeming _minutiae_. A man whom grown-up people love, children love still more. The whole school had smiled on the smiling Fixlein, and liked him in their hearts, because he did not thunder, but sport with them; because he said _Sie_ (They) to the Secundaners, and the Subrector said _Ihr_ (Ye); because his uprearing forefinger was his only sceptre and baculus; because in the Secunda he had interchanged Latin epistles with his scholars; and in the Quinta, had taught not with Napier's Rods (or rods of a sharper description), but with sticks of barley-sugar.

Today his churchyard appeared to him so solemn and festive, that he wondered (though it was Monday) why his parishioners were not in their holiday, but merely in their weekday drapery. Under the door of the Parsonage stood a weeping woman; for she was too happy, and he was her--son. Yet the mother, in the height of her emotion, contrives quite readily to call upon the carriers, while disloading, not to twist off the four corner globes from the old Frankish chest of drawers. Her son now appeared to her as venerable, as if he had sat for one of the copperplates in her pictured Bible; and that simply, because he had cast off his pedagogue hair-cue, as the ripening tadpole does its tail; and was now standing in a clerical periwig before her: he was now a Comet, soaring away from the profane Earth, and had accordingly changed from a _stella caudata_ into a _stella crinita_.

His bride also had, on former days, given sedulous a.s.sistance in this new improved edition of his house, and laboured faithfully among the other furnishers and furbishers. But today she kept aloof; for she was too good to forget the maiden in the bride. Love, like men, dies oftener of excess than of hunger; it lives on love, but it resembles those Alpine flowers, which feed themselves by _suction_ from the wet clouds, and die if you _besprinkle_ them.--

At length the Parson is settled, and of course he must--for I know my fair readers, who are bent on it as if they were bridemaids--without delay get married. But he may not: before Ascension-day there can nothing be done, and till then are full four weeks and a half. The matter was this: He wished in the first place to have the murder-Sunday, the Cantata, behind him; not indeed because he doubted of his earthly continuance, but because he would not (even for the bride's sake) that the slightest apprehension should mingle with these weeks of glory.

The main reason was, He did not wish to marry till he were betrothed: which latter ceremony was appointed, with the Introduction Sermon, to take place next Sunday. It is the Cantata-Sunday. Let not the reader afflict himself with fears. Indeed, I should not have molested an enlightened century with this Sunday-_Wauwau_ at all, were it not that I delineate with such extreme fidelity. Fixlein himself--especially as the Quartermaster asked him if he was a baby--at last grew so sensible, that he saw the folly of it; nay, he went so far, that he committed a greater folly. For as dreaming that you die signifies, according to the exegetic _rule of false_, nothing else than long life and welfare, so did Fixlein easily infer that his death-imagination was just such a lucky dream; the rather as it was precisely on this Cantata-Sunday that Fortune had turned up her cornucopia over him, and at once showered down out of it a bride, a presentation and a roll of ducats. Thus can Superst.i.tion imp its wings, let Chance favour it or not.

A Secretary of State, a Peace-treaty writer, a Notary, any such incarcerated Slave of the Desk, feels excellently well how far he is beneath a Parson composing his inaugural sermon. The latter (do but look at my Fixlein) lays himself heartily over the paper--injects the venous system of his sermon-preparation with coloured ink--has a Text-Concordance on the right side, and a Song-Concordance on the left; is there digging out a marrowy sentence, here clipping off a song-blossom, with both to garnish his homiletic pastry;--sketches out the finest plan of operations, not, like a man of the world, to subdue the heart of one woman, but the hearts of all women that hear him, and of their husbands to boot;--draws every peasant pa.s.sing by his window into some niche of his discourse, to cooperate with the result;--and, finally, scoops out the b.u.t.ter of the smooth soft hymn-book, and therewith exquisitely fattens the black broth of his sermon, which is to feed five thousand men.----

At last, in the evening, as the red sun is dazzling him at the desk, he can rise with heart free from guilt; and, amid twittering sparrows and finches, over the cherry-trees encircling the parsonage, look toward the west, till there is nothing more in the sky but a faint gleam among the clouds. And then when Fixlein, amid the tolling of the evening prayer-bell, _slowly_ descends the stair to his cooking mother, there must be some miracle in the case, if for him whatever has been done or baked, or served up in the lower regions, is not right and good.... A bound, after supper, into the Castle; a look into a pure loving eye; a word without falseness to a bride without falseness; and then under the coverlid, a soft-breathing breast, in which there is nothing but Paradise, a sermon and evening prayer.... I swear, with this I will satisfy a Mythic G.o.d, who has left his Heaven, and is seeking a new one among us here below!

Can a mortal, can a Me in the wet clay of Earth, which Death will soon dry into dust, ask more in one week than Fixlein is gathering into his heart? I see not how: At least I should suppose, if such a dust-framed being, after such a twenty-thousand prize from the Lottery of Chance, could require aught more, it would at most be the twenty-one-thousand prize, namely, the inaugural discourse itself.

And this prize our Zebedaus actually drew on Sunday: he preached--he preached with unction,----he did it before the crowding, rustling press of people; before his Guardian, and before the Lord of Aufhammer, the G.o.dfather of the priest and the dog;--a flock with whom in childhood he had driven out the Castle herds about the pasture, he was now, himself a spiritual sheep-smearer, leading out to pasture;--he was standing to the ankles among Candidates and Schoolmasters, for today (what none of them could) at the altar, with the nail of his finger, he might scratch a large cross in the air, baptisms and marriages not once mentioned.... I believe, I should feel less scrupulous than I do to chequer this sunshiny esplanade with that thin shadow of the grave, which the preacher threw over it, when, in the application, with wet heavy eyes, he looked round over the mute attentive church, as if in some corner of it he would seek the mouldering teacher of his youth and of this congregation, who without, under the white tombstone, the wrong-side of life, had laid away the garment of his pious spirit. And when he, himself hurried on by the internal stream, inexpressibly softened by the farther recollections of his own fear of death on this day, of his life now overspread with flowers and benefits, of his entombed benefactress resting here in her narrow bed--when he now--before the dissolving countenance of her friend, his Thiennette--overpowered, motionless and weeping, looked down from the pulpit to the door of the Schadeck vault, and said: "Thanks, thou pious soul, for the good thou hast done to this flock and to their new teacher; and, in the fulness of time, may the dust of thy G.o.d-fearing and man-loving breast gather itself, transfigured as gold-dust, round thy reawakened heavenly heart,"--was there an eye in the audience dry? Her husband sobbed aloud; and Thiennette, her beloved, bowed her head, sinking down with inconsolable remembrances, over the front of the seat, like kindred mourners in a funeral train.

No fairer forenoon could prepare the way for an afternoon in which a man was to betroth himself forever, and to unite the exchanged rings with the Ring of Eternity. Except the bridal pair, there was none present but an ancient pair; the mother and the long Guardian. The bridegroom wrote out the marriage-contract or marriage-charter with his own hand; hereby making over to his bride, from this day, his whole moveable property (not, as you may suppose, his pocket-library, but his whole library; whereas, in the Middle Ages, the daughter of a n.o.ble was glad to get one or two books for marriage-portion);--in return for which, she liberally enough contributed--a whole nuptial coach or car, laden as follows: with nine pounds of feathers, not feathers for the cap such as we carry, but of the lighter sort such as carry us;--with a sumptuous dozen of G.o.dchild-plates and G.o.dchild-spoons (gifts from Schadeck), together with a fish-knife;--of silk, not only stockings (though even King Henri II.

of France could dress no more than his legs in silk), but whole gowns;--with jewels and other furnishings of smaller value. Good Thiennette! in the chariot of thy spirit lies the true dowry; namely, thy n.o.ble, soft, modest heart, the morning-gift of Nature!

The Parson,--who, not from mistrust but from "the uncertainty of life,"

could have wished for a notary's seal on everything; to whom no security but a hypothecary one appeared sufficient, and who, in the depositing of every barleycorn, required quittances and contracts,--had now, when the marriage-charter was completed, a lighter heart; and through the whole evening the good man ceased not to thank his bride for what she had given him. To me, however, a marriage-contract were a thing as painful and repulsive,--I confess it candidly, though you should in consequence upbraid me with my great youth,--as if I had to take my love-letter to a Notary Imperial, and make him docket and countersign it before it could be sent. Heavens! to see the light flower of Love, whose perfume acts not on the balance, so laid like tulip-bulbs on the hay-beam of Law; two hearts on the cold councillor-and flesh-beam of relatives and advocates, who are heaping on the scales nothing but houses, fields and tin--this, to the interested party, may be as delightful as, to the intoxicated suckling and nursling of the Muses and Philosophy, it is to carry the evening and morning sacrifices he has offered up to his G.o.ddess into the book-shop, and there to change his devotions into money, and sell them by weight and measure.----

From Cantata-Sunday to Ascension, that is, to marriage-day, are one and a half weeks--or one and a half blissful eternities. If it is pleasant that nights or winter separate the days and seasons of joy to a comfortable distance; if, for example, it is pleasant that birthday, Saint's-day, betrothment, marriage and baptismal day, do not all occur on the same day (for with very few do those festivities, like Holiday and Apostle's day, commerge),--then is it still more pleasant to make the interval, the flower-border, between betrothment and marriage, of an extraordinary breadth. Before the marriage-day are the true honey-weeks; then come the wax-weeks; then the honey-vinegar-weeks.

In the Ninth Letter-Box, our Parson celebrates his wedding; and here, in the Eighth, I shall just briefly skim over his way and manner of existence till then; an existence, as might have been expected, celestial enough. To few is it allotted, as it was to him, to have at once such wings and such flowers (to fly over) before his nuptials; to few is it allotted, I imagine, to purchase flour and poultry on the same day, as Fixlein did;--to stuff the wedding-turkey with hangman-meals;--to go every night into the stall, and see whether the wedding-pig, which his Guardian has given him by way of marriage-present, is still standing and eating;--to spy out for his future wife the flax-magazines and clothes-press-niches in the house;--to lay in new wood-stores in the prospect of winter;--to obtain from the Consistorium directly, and for little smart-money, their Bull of Dispensation, their remission of the threefold proclamation of banns;--to live not in a city, where you must send to every fool (because you are one yourself), and disclose to him that you are going to be married; but in a little angular hamlet, where you have no one to tell aught, but simply the Schoolmaster that he is to ring a little later, and put a knee-cushion before the altar.----

O! if the Ritter Michaelis maintains that Paradise was little, because otherwise the people would not have found each other,--a hamlet and its joys are little and narrow, so that some shadow of Eden may still linger on our Ball.----

I have not even hinted that, the day before the wedding, the Regiments-Quartermaster came uncalled, and killed the pig, and made puddings gratis, such as were never eaten at any Court.

And besides, dear Fixlein, on this soft rich oil of joy there was also floating gratis a vernal sun,--and red twilights,--and flower-garlands,--and a bursting half world of buds!...

How didst thou behave thee in these hot whirlpools of pleasure?--Thou movedst thy Fishtail (Reason), and therewith describedst for thyself a rectilineal course through the billows. For even half as much would have hurried another Parson from his study; but the very crowning felicity of ours was, that he stood as if rooted to the boundary-hill of Moderation, and from thence looked down on what thousands flout away. Sitting opposite the Castle-windows, he was still in a condition to reckon up that _Amen_ occurs in the Bible one hundred and thirty times. Nay, to his old learned laboratory he now appended a new chemical stove: he purposed writing to Nurnberg and Bayreuth, and there offering his pen to the Brothers Senft, not only for composing practical _Receipts_ at the end of their _Almanacs_, but also for separate _Essays_ in front under the copperplate t.i.tle of each Month, because he had a thought of making some reformatory cuts at the common people's mental habitudes.... And now, when in the capacity of Parson he had less to do, and could add to the holy resting-day of the congregation six literary creating-days, he determined (even in these Carnival weeks) to strike his plough into the hitherto quite fallow History of Hukelum, and soon to follow the plough with his drill....

Thus roll his minutes, on golden wheels-of-fortune, over the twelve days, which form the glancing star-paved road to the third-heaven of the thirteenth, that is to the

NINTH LETTER-BOX,

_Or to the Marriage._

Rise, fair Ascension and Marriage day, and gladden readers also! Adorn thyself with the fairest jewel, with the bride, whose soul is as pure and glittering as its vesture; like pearl and pearl-muscle, the one as the other, l.u.s.trous and ornamental! And so over the espalier, whose fruit-hedge has. .h.i.therto divided our darling from his Eden, every reader now presses after him!--

On the 9th of May 1793, about three in the morning, there came a sharp peal of trumpets, like a light-beam, through the dim-red May-dawn: two twisted horns, with a straight trumpet between them, like a note of admiration between interrogation-points, were clanging from a house in which only a parishioner (not the Parson) dwelt and blew: for this parishioner had last night been celebrating the same ceremony which the pastor had this day before him. The joyful tallyho raised our Parson from his broad bed (and the Shock from beneath it, who some weeks ago had been exiled from the white sleek coverlid), and this so early, that in the portraying tester, where on every former morning he had observed his ruddy visage and his white bedclothes, all was at present dim and crayonned.

I confess, the new-painted room, and a gleam of dawn on the wall, made it so light, that he could see his knee-buckles glancing on the chair.

He then softly awakened his mother (the other guests were to lie for hours in the sheets), and she had the city cookmaid to awaken, who, like several other articles of wedding-furniture, had been borrowed for a day or two from Flachsenfingen. At two doors he knocked in vain, and without answer; for all were already down at the hearth, cooking, blowing and arranging.

How softly does the Spring day gradually fold back its nun-veil, and the Earth grow bright, as if it were the morning of a Resurrection!--The quicksilver-pillar of the barometer, the guiding Fire-pillar of the weather-prophet, rests firmly on Fixlein's Ark of the Covenant. The Sun raises himself, pure and cool, into the morning-blue, instead of into the morning-red. Swallows, instead of clouds, shoot skimming through the melodious air.... O, the good Genius of Fair Weather, who deserves many temples and festivals (because without him no festival could be held), lifted an ethereal azure Day, as it were, from the well-clear atmosphere of the Moon, and sent it down, on blue b.u.t.terfly-wings--as if it were a _blue_ Monday--glittering below the Sun, in the zigzag of joyful quivering descent, upon the narrow spot of Earth, which our heated fancies are now viewing.... And on this balmy vernal spot, stand amid flowers, over which the trees are shaking blossoms instead of leaves, a bride and a bridegroom.... Happy Fixlein! how shall I paint thee without deepening the sighs of longing in the fairest souls?--

But soft! we will not drink the magic cup of Fancy to the bottom at six in the morning; but keep sober till towards night!

At the sound of the morning prayer-bell, the bridegroom, for the din of preparation was disturbing his quiet orison, went out into the churchyard, which (as in many other places), together with the church, lay round his mansion like a court. Here on the moist green, over whose closed flowers the churchyard-wall was still spreading broad shadows, did his spirit cool itself from the warm dreams of Earth: here, where the white flat grave-stone of his Teacher lay before him like the fallen-in door on the Ja.n.u.s'-temple of Life, or like the windward side of the narrow house, turned towards the tempests of the world: here, where the little shrunk metallic door on the grated cross of his father uttered to him the inscriptions of death, and the year when his parent departed, and all the admonitions and mementos, graven on the lead;--there, I say, his mood grew softer and more solemn; and he now lifted up by heart his morning prayer, which usually he read; and entreated G.o.d to bless him in his office, and to spare his mother's life; and to look with favour and acceptance on the purpose of today.--Then over the graves he walked into his fenceless little angular flower-garden; and here, composed and confident in the divine keeping, he pressed the stalks of his tulips deeper into the mellow earth.

But on returning to the house, he was met on all hands by the bell-ringing and the janissary-music of wedding-gladness;--the marriage-guests had all thrown off their nightcaps, and were drinking diligently;--there was a clattering, a cooking, a frizzling;--tea-services, coffee-services and warm-beer-services, were advancing in succession; and plates full of bride-cakes were going round like potter's frames or cistern-wheels.--The Schoolmaster, with three young lads, was heard rehearsing from his own house an _Arioso_, with which, so soon as they were perfect, he purposed to surprise his clerical superior.--But now rushed all the arms of the foaming joy-streams into one, when the sky-queen besprinkled with blossoms, the bride, descended upon Earth in her timid joy, full of quivering humble love;--when the bells began;--when the procession-column set forth with the whole village round and before it;--when the organ, the congregation, the officiating priest and the sparrows on the trees of the church-window, struck louder and louder their rolling peals on the drum of the jubilee-festival.... The heart of the singing bridegroom was like to leap from its place for joy, "that on his bridal-day it was all so respectable and grand."--Not till the marriage-benediction could he pray a little.

Still worse and louder grew the business during dinner, when pastry-work and marchpane-devices were brought forward,--when gla.s.ses and slain fishes (laid under the napkins to frighten the guests) went round;--and when the guests rose, and themselves rent round, and at length danced round: for they had instrumental music from the city there.

One minute handed over to the other the sugar-bowl and bottle-case of joy: the guests heard and saw less and less, and the villagers began to see and hear more and more, and towards night they penetrated like a wedge into the open door,--nay two youths ventured even in the middle of the parsonage-court, to mount a plank over a beam, and commence seesawing.--Out of doors, the gleaming vapour of the departed Sun was encircling the Earth, the evening-star was glittering over parsonage and churchyard; no one heeded it.

However, about nine o'clock,--when the marriage-guests had well-nigh forgotten the marriage-pair, and were drinking or dancing along for their own behoof; when poor mortals, in this sunshine of Fate, like fishes in the sunshine of the sky, were leaping up from their wet cold element; and when the bridegroom under the star of happiness and love, casting like a comet its long train of radiance over all his heaven, had in secret pressed to his joy-filled breast his bride and his mother,--then did he lock a slice of wedding-bread privily into a press, in the old superst.i.tious belief that this residue secured continuance of bread for the whole marriage. As he returned, with greater love for the sole partner of his life, she herself met him with his mother, to deliver him in private the bridal-nightgown and bridal-shirt, as is the ancient usage. Many a countenance grows pale in violent emotions, even of joy: Thiennette's wax-face was bleaching still whiter under the sunbeams of Happiness. O never fall, thou lily of Heaven, and may four springs instead of four seasons open and shut thy flower-bells to the sun!--All the arms of his soul, as he floated on the sea of joy, were quivering to clasp the soft warm heart of his beloved, to encircle it gently and fast, and draw it to his own....

He led her from the crowded dancing-room into the cool evening. Why does the evening, does the night put warmer love in our hearts? Is it the nightly pressure of helplessness; or is it the exalting separation from the turmoil of life; that veiling of the world, in which for the soul nothing more remains but souls;--is it therefore, that the letters in which the loved name stands written on our spirit appear, like phosphorus-writing, by night _in fire_, while by day in their _cloudy_ traces they but smoke?

He walked with his bride into the Castle-garden: she hastened quickly through the Castle, and past its servants'-hall, where the fair flowers of her young life had been crushed broad and dry, under a long dreary pressure; and her soul expanded and breathed in the free open garden, on whose flowery soil destiny had cast forth the first seeds of the blossoms which today were gladdening her existence. Still Eden! green flower-chequered _chiaroscuro_!--The moon is sleeping underground like a dead one; but beyond the garden the sun's red evening-clouds have fallen down like rose-leaves; and the evening-star, the brideman of the sun, hovers, like a glancing b.u.t.terfly, above the rosy red, and, modest as a bride, deprives no single starlet of its light.

The wandering pair arrived at the old gardener's hut; now standing locked and dumb, with dark windows in the light garden, like a fragment of the Past surviving in the Present. Bared twigs of trees were folding, with clammy half-formed leaves, over the thick intertwisted tangles of the bushes.--The Spring was standing, like a conqueror, with Winter at his feet.--In the blue pond, now bloodless, a dusky evening-sky lay hollowed out, and the gushing waters were moistening the flower-beds.--The silver sparks of stars were rising on the altar of the East, and falling down extinguished in the red sea of the West.

The wind whirred, like a night-bird, louder through the trees; and gave tones to the acacia-grove, and the tones called to the pair who had first become happy within it: "Enter, new mortal pair, and think of what is past, and of my withering and your own; and be holy as Eternity, and weep not only for joy, but for grat.i.tude also!"--And the wet-eyed bridegroom led his wet-eyed bride under the blossoms, and laid his soul, like a flower, on her heart, and said: "Best Thiennette, I am unspeakably happy, and would say much, and cannot.--Ah, thou Dearest, we will live like angels, like children together! Surely I will do all that is good to thee; two years ago I had nothing, no nothing; ah, it is through thee, best Love, that I am happy. I call thee Thou, now, thou dear good soul!" She drew him closer to her, and said, though without kissing him: "Call me Thou always, Dearest!"