Villa Eden Part 232

Our good Major wants to have a room built in the hot-house, and, next winter, live there all day long among the plants, breathing in their fragrance; then, he a.s.serts, he should live to be a hundred years old.

[Claudine to Manna.]

If you feel overwhelmed by the hard experiences which you must bear, do not forget to keep up your study of astronomy; it takes us out of all our small troubles.

You will have to make new applications of your astronomical knowledge to new conditions in America.

[Lina to Manna.]

To-morrow I give my first large coffee-party; look upon me with respect. I spread fine damask table-cloths, and have my own gilt-edged cups. Ah, why can you not be here? People say that my voice is much stronger now that I am a mother. O Manna, the most beautiful song is that which one sings to her child. I hope it won't be long before you know it.

Pranken and his wife have come back, but they are not to remain with us. He is to be amba.s.sador somewhere on the Lower Danube, near Turkey; I don't know the name of the country.

I have thought of a beautiful plan for you. When you come home, you must establish a special singing-club of all the matrons and maidens in the neighborhood, and we'll sing in your garden, and in the beautiful music-room, and in the pretty boats on the river, and on the flat-roofs, and everywhere. Ah, that will be life! If to-morrow were only here!

[Einsiedel to Eric.]

Elevating thoughts are in these papers which your father left behind him. It is much to be regretted that one of them has not been given to the world before this. He foresaw this war in America quite clearly.

Connected and logical thought is a kind of prophecy. I shall publish the sheets with my positive a.s.surance that they were written by a n.o.ble recluse many years before the events foretold.

[Weidmann to Eric.]

We are in the midst of all sorts of work. You wanderers took much of our peace away with you, but now all is in its habitual order again.

Thank you, dear Dournay, for your letter. My nephew always sends me the newspapers regularly. Do not allow yourself to be distracted by thoughts of Europe, and by too great a variety of interests; you are stationed at a post where you must keep only the next duty before your eyes. Forgive me for permitting myself to admonish you thus. It was high time that this disgrace should be wiped out from the consciousness of our age, for it had begun to appear that long habit was weakening the keen and bitter sense of its sin and shame.

I am finding surprising confirmation of this opinion. Herr Sonnenkamp corrupted our district more than he knew; people now speak well of him.

"Ah, only a slave-trader!" "Nothing worse!" may be heard on all sides.

There is always something commanding in heroism; the bold scoundrel is more attractive than the un.o.btrusively virtuous man. Not only the frivolous, but quite sober-minded men think that the Prince was unnecessarily scrupulous in refusing to enn.o.ble Herr Sonnenkamp.

A plant has become common in Europe which is called the water-pest: you may have read of it; it came from Canada, probably attached to some vessel, and has almost choked the Thames with its roots and entangled stems; it has crept far into the continent, and has now reached us, but we will conquer it. Such a water-pest spreads too in spiritual matters.

[Doctor Richard to Eric.]

All the others have no doubt written most edifying and sentimental letters; I have something better for you. First, let me tell you to rejoice that you have something to do, and have done with speculating.

And now for a fine story:--

Otto von Pranken--for whom I always had a sympathy, like all the rest of the profane world; he is no paragon of virtue, but there's a good deal in him--has beaten the black-coats in shrewdness; he got himself recommended to Rome by them and there he has played a smart trick. He entered the Papal army with the rank of Major, but got into some difficulty, on purpose, as I believe. He wrote a letter full of dissatisfaction over the organization of the army, and this gave him an excuse for resigning, and marrying the young widow, the daughter of Herr von Endlich. When you come home you will have some new neighbors.

They say, though, that Pranken is to enter on a diplomatic career, and I think he has talent for it.

Have you seen or heard nothing of Frau Bella?

[The Majorin Gra.s.sler late Fraulein Milch, to Knopf.]

You can fancy how your letter rejoiced us. My good husband was cheered up by it into better spirits than he has had for a long time. I am sorry to say that since you all went off, he has been full of trouble.

For months he has not been able to get rid of the thought why he was not younger, so that he could have gone with you. And then, don't laugh at us, we have a real family trial, for our Laadi has grown blind, and no physician can help her. People laughed at us for tending the dog so carefully: they want us to have her shot, but that we can't do, and so we take care of poor Laadi. My husband sits for hours by her, talking to her, and even takes her out for a little walk every day. Why must the dog grow blind? Ah, but I'm asking stupid questions; one has to be careful not to grow sentimental; Mother Nature is a hard mother.

I knew the father of your Rosalie; he was once at our house with the school-master Fa.s.sbender.

[Eric to Weidmann.]

Adams was ordered to work in the trenches, and a great number of negroes with him, but he would not take the pick in his hand; then Roland did what I once dissuaded him from doing, when he wanted to labor among the workmen at the castle. I think I told you about it. Now he joined the negroes and used his pick with them, and when I went to him once, as he wiped the perspiration from his forehead, I saw a light in the youth's eye, which said that the crown of human honor rests on the brow from which runs the sweat of toil.

Beginning this letter to you composes me, in the midst of the constant excitement of camp-life.

There is much discontent in the army; men are blaming Lincoln for maintaining a vacillating, uncertain policy, or, to say the least, for his extreme slowness.

I must leave it to Dr. Fritz, or rather to time, to prove the truth of his words when he says, Lincoln is not a genius, an individual towering above the ma.s.s; he is an average man, the exact exponent of the spirit of the people at its present stage of progress. He is not remarkably distinguished, but a man of just the right stamp.

Perhaps that is true, and it is much to say. This is not greatness in the old sense of the word, and we may have entered upon an age which has outgrown the heroic, and those representatives of heroism around whom all others seemed grouped as minor figures.

Opposed to the Monarchic, the Aristocratic, and the Monotheistic, stand the Republican, the Democratic, and the Pantheistic: they are only three different names for three unfoldings of the same principle.

[Roland to the Professorin.]

My first lines from camp shall be to you, dear Frau Professorin. I thank you for the motto which you once gave me; I feel as if I were not the same person to whom all that happened. I promise you, and this is a new oath of allegiance, to be true to your motto.

Ah, why do you not know Lilian? she deserves that you should know her.

I have told her a great deal about you; she thinks she should stand in awe of any one so wise and learned, but I tell her she need not.

And oh, Dr. Fritz is such a n.o.ble man. He told me that he was a pupil of your husband, and it must make you happy that your husband's spirit lives on in such a man, here in the New World.

I must try not to think too much of you and of the past: I ought now to give my thoughts only to what we have before us; and I am tired out. I have had a very fatiguing drill.

Eric is held in great respect here. All is still; in camp it is said that to-morrow we shall come under fire for the first time.

Morning.

The battle is beginning; I hope to do my duty.

Evening.

I have been promoted on the field.

[Eric to Weidmann.]

In Camp.