BOOK THE FIRST. CHAPTER I. THE HERO.
[figure description] Page 003.[end figure description]
In John Lyly's Endymion, Sir Topas is made
to say; “Dost thou know what a Poet is? Why,
fool, a Poet is as much as one should say,—a
Poet!” And thou, reader, dost thou know what
a hero is? Why, a hero is as much as one should
say,—a hero! Some romance-writers, however,
say much more than this. Nay, the old Lombard,
Matteo Maria Bojardo, set all the church-bells
in Scandiano ringing, merely because he had
found a name for one of his heroes. Here, also,
shall church-bells be rung, but more solemnly.
The setting of a great hope is like the setting
of the sun. The brightness of our life is gone.
-- 004 --
[figure description] Page 004.[end figure description]
Shadows of evening fall around us, and the world
seems but a dim reflection,—itself a broader shadow.
We look forward into the coming, lonely
night. The soul withdraws into itself. Then stars
arise, and the night is holy.
Paul Flemming had experienced this, though
still young. The friend of his youth was dead.
The bough had broken “under the burden of the
unripe fruit.” And when, after a season, he
looked up again from the blindness of his sorrow,
all things seemed unreal. Like the man,
whose sight had been restored by miracle, he beheld
men, as trees, walking. His household gods
were broken. He had no home. His sympathies
cried aloud from his desolate soul, and there came
no answer from the busy, turbulent world around
him. He did not willingly give way to grief. He
struggled to be cheerful,—to be strong. But he
could no longer look into the familiar faces of his
friends. He could no longer live alone, where he
had lived with her. He went abroad, that the sea
might be between him and the grave. Alas!
-- 005 --
[figure description] Page 005.[end figure description]
between him and his sorrow there could be no sea,
but that of time.
He had already passed many months in lonely
wandering, and was now pursuing his way along
the Rhine, to the south of Germany. He had
journeyed the same way before, in brighter days
and a brighter season of the year, in the May of
life and in the month of May. He knew the
beauteous river all by heart;—every rock and
ruin, every echo, every legend. The ancient
castles, grim and hoar, that had taken root as it
were on the cliffs,—they were all his; for his
thoughts dwelt in them, and the wind told him
tales.
He had passed a sleepless night at Rolandseck,
and had risen before daybreak. He opened the
window of the balcony to hear the rushing of the
Rhine. It was a damp December morning; and
clouds were passing over the sky,—thin, vapory
clouds, whose snow-white skirts were “often spotted
with golden tears, which men call stars.” The
day dawned slowly; and, in the mingling of
-- 006 --
[figure description] Page 006.[end figure description]
daylight and starlight, the island and cloister of Nonnenwerth
made together but one broad, dark shadow
on the silver breast of the river. Beyond,
rose the summits of the Siebengebirg. Solemn
and dark, like a monk, stood the Drachenfels, in
his hood of mist, and rearward extended the Curtain
of Mountains, back to the Wolkenburg,—the
Castle of the Clouds.
But Flemming thought not of the scene before
him. Sorrow unspeakable was upon his spirit in
that lonely hour; and, hiding his face in his hands,
he exclaimed aloud;
“Spirit of the past! look not so mournfully at
me with thy great, tearful eyes! Touch me not
with thy cold hand! Breathe not upon me with
the icy breath of the grave! Chant no more
that dirge of sorrow, through the long and silent
watches of the night!”
Mournful voices from afar seemed to answer,
“Treuenfels!” and he remembered how others
had suffered, and his heart grew still.
Slowly the landscape brightened. Down the
-- 007 --
[figure description] Page 007.[end figure description]
rushing stream came a boat, with its white wings
spread, and darted like a swallow through the narrow
pass of God's-Help. The boatmen were
singing, but not the song of Roland the Brave,
which was heard of old by the weeping Hildegund,
as she sat within the walls of that cloister,
which now looked forth in the pale morning from
amid the leafless linden trees. The dim traditions
of those gray old times rose in the traveller's
memory; for the ruined tower of Rolandseck was
still looking down upon the Kloster Nonnenwerth,
as if the sound of the funeral bell had changed the
faithful Paladin to stone, and he were watching still
to see the form of his beloved one come forth, not
from her cloister, but from her grave. Thus the
brazen clasps of the book of legends were opened,
and, on the page illuminated by the misty rays
of the rising sun, he read again the tales of Liba,
and the mournful bride of Argenfels, and Siegfried,
the mighty slayer of the dragon. Meanwhile
the mists had risen from the Rhine, and the whole
air was filled with golden vapor, through which he
-- 008 --
[figure description] Page 008.[end figure description]
beheld the sun, hanging in heaven like a drop of
blood. Even thus shone the sun within him, amid
the wintry vapors, uprising from the valley of the
shadow of death, through which flowed the stream
of his life,—sighing, sighing!
-- 009 --
CHAPTER II. THE CHRIST OF ANDERNACH.
[figure description] Page 009.[end figure description]
Paul Flemming resumed his solitary journey.
The morning was still misty, but not cold. Across
the Rhine the sun came wading through the reddish
vapors; and soft and silver-white outspread
the broad river, without a ripple upon its surface,
or visible motion of the ever-moving current. A
little vessel, with one loose sail, was riding at anchor,
keel to keel with another, that lay right under
it, its own apparition,—and all was silent,
and calm, and beautiful.
The road was for the most part solitary; for
there are few travellers upon the Rhine in winter.
Peasant women were at work in the vineyards;
climbing up the slippery hill-sides, like
beasts of burden, with large baskets of manure
-- 010 --
[figure description] Page 010.[end figure description]
upon their backs. And once during the morning,
a band of apprentices, with knapsacks, passed
by, singing, “The Rhine! The Rhine! a blessing
on the Rhine!”
O, the pride of the German heart in this noble
river! And right it is; for, of all the rivers of
this beautiful earth, there is none so beautiful as
this. There is hardly a league of its whole course,
from its cradle in the snowy Alps to its grave in
the sands of Holland, which boasts not its peculiar
charms. By heavens! If I were a German I
would be proud of it too; and of the clustering
grapes, that hang about its temples, as it reels onward
through vineyards, in a triumphal march,
like Bacchus, crowned and drunken.
But I will not attempt to describe the Rhine; it
would make this chapter much too long. And to
do it well, one should write like a god; and his
style flow onward royally with breaks and dashes,
like the waters of that royal river, and antique,
quaint, and Gothic times, be reflected in it. Alas!
this evening my style flows not at all. Flow,
-- 011 --
[figure description] Page 011.[end figure description]
then, into this smoke-colored goblet, thou blood of
the Rhine! out of thy prison-house,—out of
thy long-necked, tapering flask, in shape not unlike
a church-spire among thy native hills; and,
from the crystal belfry, loud ring the merry tinkling
bells, while I drink a health to my hero, in
whose heart is sadness, and in whose ears the bells
of Andernach are ringing noon.
He is threading his way alone through a narrow
alley, and now up a flight of stone steps, and
along the city wall, towards that old round tower,
built by the Archbishop Frederick of Cologne in
the twelfth century. It has a romantic interest in
his eyes; for he has still in his mind and heart
that beautiful sketch of Carové, in which is described
a day on the tower of Andernach. He
finds the old keeper and his wife still there; and
the old keeper closes the door behind him slowly,
as of old, lest he should jam too hard the poor
souls in Purgatory, whose fate it is to suffer in the
cracks of doors and hinges. But alas! alas! the
daughter, the maiden with long, dark eyelashes!
-- 012 --
[figure description] Page 012.[end figure description]
she is asleep in her little grave, under the linden
trees of Feldkirche, with rosemary in her folded
hands!
Flemming returned to the hotel disappointed.
As he passed along the narrow streets, he was
dreaming of many things; but mostly of the keeper's
daughter, asleep in the churchyard of Feldkirche.
Suddenly, on turning the corner of an
ancient, gloomy church, his attention was arrested
by a little chapel in an angle of the wall. It
was only a small thatched roof, like a bird's nest;
under which stood a rude wooden image of the
Saviour on the Cross. A real crown of thorns was
upon his head, which was bowed downward, as if
in the death agony; and drops of blood were
falling down his cheeks, and from his hands and
feet and side. The face was haggard and ghastly
beyond all expression; and wore a look of unutterable
bodily anguish. The rude sculptor had given
it this, but his art could go no farther. The
sublimity of death in a dying Saviour, the expiring
God-likeness of Jesus of Nazareth was not there.
-- 013 --
[figure description] Page 013.[end figure description]
The artist had caught no heavenly inspiration from
his theme. All was coarse, harsh, and revolting
to a sensitive mind; and Flemming turned away
with a shudder, as he saw this fearful image gazing
at him, with its fixed and half-shut eyes.
He soon reached the hotel, but that face of
agony still haunted him. He could not refrain
from speaking of it to a very old woman, who
sat knitting by the window of the dining-room, in
a high-backed, old-fashioned arm-chair. I believe
she was the innkeeper's grandmother. At all
events she was old enough to be so. She took off
her owl-eyed spectacles, and, as she wiped the
glasses with her handkerchief, said;
“Thou dear Heaven! Is it possible! Did you
never hear of the Christ of Andernach?”
Flemming answered in the negative.
“Thou dear Heaven!” continued the old woman.
“It is a very wonderful story; and a true
one, as every good Christian in Andernach will
tell you. And it all happened before the death
-- 014 --
[figure description] Page 014.[end figure description]
of my blessed man, four years ago, let me see,—
yes, four years ago, come Christmas.”
Here the old woman stopped speaking, but
went on with her knitting. Other thoughts seemed
to occupy her mind. She was thinking, no
doubt, of her blessed man, as German widows
call their dead husbands. But Flemming having
expressed an ardent wish to hear the wonderful
story, she told it, in nearly the following words.
“There was once a poor old woman in Andernach
whose name was Frau Martha, and she lived
all alone in a house by herself, and loved all the
Saints and the blessed Virgin, and was as good as
an angel, and sold pies down by the Rheinkrahn.
But her house was very old, and the roof-tiles
were broken, and she was too poor to get new ones,
and the rain kept coming in, and no Christian soul
in Andernach would help her. But the Frau
Martha was a good woman, and never did anybody
any harm, but went to mass every morning, and
sold pies by the Rheinkrahn. Now one dark,
windy night, when all the good Christians in
-- 015 --
[figure description] Page 015.[end figure description]
Andernach were abed and asleep in the feathers, Frau
Martha, who slept under the roof, heard a great
noise over her head, and in her chamber, drip!
drip! drip! as if the rain were dropping down
through the broken tiles. Dear soul! and sure
enough it was. And then there was a pounding
and hammering overhead, as if somebody were at
work on the roof; and she thought it was Pelz-Nickel
tearing the tiles off, because she had not
been to confession often enough. So she began to
pray; and the faster she said her Pater-noster
and her Ave-Maria, the faster Pelz-Nickel pounded
and pulled; and drip! drip! drip! it went all
round her in the dark chamber, till the poor
woman was frightened out of her wits, and ran to
the window to call for help. Then in a moment
all was still,—death-still. But she saw a light
streaming through the mist and rain, and a great
shadow on the house opposite. And then somebody
came down from the top of her house by a
ladder, and had a lantern in his hand; and he took
the ladder on his shoulder and went down the
-- 016 --
[figure description] Page 016.[end figure description]
street. But she could not see clearly, because
the window was streaked with rain. And in the
morning the old broken tiles were found scattered
about the street, and there were new ones on the
roof, and the old house has never leaked to this
blessed day.
“As soon as mass was over Frau Martha told the
priest what had happened, and he said it was not
Pelz-Nickel, but, without doubt, St. Castor or St.
Florian. Then she went to the market and told
Frau Bridget all about it; and Frau Bridget said,
that, two nights before, Hans Claus, the cooper,
had heard a great pounding in his shop, and in
the morning found new hoops on all his old hogsheads;
and that a man with a lantern and a ladder
had been seen riding out of town at midnight on a
donkey, and that the same night the old windmill,
at Kloster St. Thomas, had been mended up, and
the old gate of the churchyard at Feldkirche made
as good as new, though nobody knew how the
man got across the river. Then Frau Martha
went down to the Rheinkrahn and told all these
-- 017 --
[figure description] Page 017.[end figure description]
stories over again; and the old ferryman of Fahr
said he could tell something about it; for, the very
night that the churchyard-gate was mended, he
was lying awake in his bed, because he could not
sleep, and he heard a loud knocking at the door,
and somebody calling to him to get up and set
him over the river. And when he got up, he saw
a man down by the river with a lantern and a ladder;
but as he was going down to him, the man
blew out the light, and it was so dark he could not
see who he was; and his boat was old and leaky,
and he was afraid to set him over in the dark; but
the man said he must be in Andernach that night;
and so he set him over. And after they had
crossed the river, he watched the man, till he
came to an image of the Holy Virgin, and saw
him put the ladder against the wall, and go up and
light his lamp, and then walk along the street.
And in the morning he found his old boat all
caulked, and tight, and painted red, and he could
not for his blessed life tell who did it, unless it were
-- 018 --
[figure description] Page 018.[end figure description]
the man with the lantern. Dear soul! how
strange it was!
“And so it went on for some time; and, whenever
the man with the lantern had been seen walking
through the street at night, so sure as the
morning came, some work had been done for the
sake of some good soul; and everybody knew he
did it; and yet nobody could find out who he was,
nor where he lived;—for, whenever they came
near him, he blew out his light, and turned down
another street, and, if they followed him, he suddenly
disappeared, nobody could tell how. And
some said it was Rübezahl; and some, Pelz-Nickel;
and some, St. Anthony-on-the-Health.
“Now one stormy night a poor, sinful creature
was wandering about the streets, with her babe
in her arms, and she was hungry, and cold, and
no soul in Andernach would take her in. And
when she came to the church, where the great
crucifix stands, she saw no light in the little chapel
at the corner; but she sat down on a stone at the
foot of the cross and began to pray, and prayed,
-- 019 --
[figure description] Page 019.[end figure description]
till she fell asleep, with her poor little babe on
her bosom. But she did not sleep long; for a
bright light shone full in her face; and, when she
opened her eyes, she saw a pale man, with a lantern,
standing right before her. He was almost
naked; and there was blood upon his hands and
body, and great tears in his beautiful eyes, and
his face was like the face of the Saviour on the
cross. Not a single word did he say to the poor
woman; but looked at her compassionately, and
gave her a loaf of bread, and took the little babe
in his arms, and kissed it. Then the mother
looked up to the great crucifix, but there was no
image there; and she shrieked and fell down as
if she were dead. And there she was found with
her child; and a few days after they both died,
and were buried together in one grave. And nobody
would have believed her story, if a woman,
who lived at the corner, had not gone to the window,
when she heard the scream, and seen the
figure hang the lantern up in its place, and then
set the ladder against the wall, and go up and nail
-- 020 --
[figure description] Page 020.[end figure description]
itself to the cross. Since that night it has never
moved again. Ach! Herr Je!”
Such was the legend of the Christ of Andernach,
as the old woman in spectacles told it to
Flemming. It made a painful impression on his
sick and morbid soul; and he felt now for the
first time in full force, how great is the power of
popular superstition.
The post-chaise was now at the door, and
Flemming was soon on the road to Coblentz, a city
which stands upon the Rhine, at the mouth of the
Mosel, opposite Ehrenbreitstein. It is by no
means a long drive from Andernach to Coblentz;
and the only incident which occurred to enliven
the way was the appearance of a fat, red-faced
man on horseback, trotting slowly towards Andernach.
As they met, the mad little postilion gave
him a friendly cut with his whip, and broke out
into an exclamation, which showed he was from
Münster;
“Jesmariosp! my friend! How is the Man in
the Custom-House?”
-- 021 --
[figure description] Page 021.[end figure description]
Now to any candid mind this would seem a fair
question enough; but not so thought the red-faced
man on horseback; for he waxed exceedingly angry,
and replied, as the chaise whirled by;
“The devil take you, and your Westphalian
ham, and pumpernickel!”
Flemming called to his servant, and the servant
to the postilion, for an explanation of this short
dialogue; and the explanation was, that on the
belfry of the Kaufhaus in Coblentz, is a huge
head, with a brazen helmet and a beard; and
whenever the clock strikes, at each stroke of the
hammer, this giant's head opens its great jaws and
smites its teeth together, as if, like the brazen
head of Friar Bacon, it would say; “Time was;
Time is; Time is past.” This figure is known
through all the country round about, as “The
Man in the Custom-House”; and, when a friend in
the country meets a friend from Coblentz, instead
of saying, “How are all the good people in Coblentz?”—
he says, “How is the Man in the
Custom-House?” Thus the giant has a great part
-- 022 --
[figure description] Page 022.[end figure description]
to play in the town; and thus ended the first day
of Flemming's Rhine-journey; and the only good
deed he had done was to give an alms to a poor
beggar woman, who lifted up her trembling hands
and exclaimed;
“Thou blessed babe!”
-- 023 --
CHAPTER III. HOMUNCULUS.
[figure description] Page 023.[end figure description]
After all, a journey up the Rhine, in the mists
and solitude of December, is not so unpleasant as
the reader may perhaps imagine. You have the
whole road and river to yourself. Nobody is on
the wing; hardly a single traveller. The ruins
are the same; and the river, and the outlines of
the hills; and there are few living figures in the
landscape to wake you from your musings, distract
your thoughts, and cover you with dust.
Thus, likewise, thought our traveller, as he continued
his journey on the morrow. The day is
overcast, and the clouds threaten rain or snow.
Why does he stop at the little village of Capellen?
Because, right above him on the high cliff, the glorious
ruin of Stolzenfels is looking at him with its
-- 024 --
[figure description] Page 024.[end figure description]
hollow eyes, and beckoning to him with its gigantic
finger, as if to say; “Come up hither, and I will
tell thee an old tale.” Therefore he alights, and
goes up the narrow village lane, and up the stone
steps, and up the steep pathway, and throws himself
into the arms of that ancient ruin, and holds
his breath, to hear the quick footsteps of the falling
snow, like the footsteps of angels descending
upon earth. And that ancient ruin speaks to him
with its hollow voice, and says;
“Beware of dreams! Beware of the illusions
of fancy! Beware of the solemn deceivings of thy
vast desires! Beneath me flows the Rhine, and,
like the stream of Time, it flows amid the ruins of
the Past. I see myself therein, and I know that
I am old. Thou, too, shalt be old. Be wise in
season. Like the stream of thy life, runs the
stream beneath us. Down from the distant Alps,—
out into the wide world, it bursts away, like a
youth from the house of his fathers. Broad-breasted
and strong, and with earnest endeavours, like
manhood, it makes itself a way through these
-- 025 --
[figure description] Page 025.[end figure description]
difficult mountain passes. And at length, in its old
age, its stops, and its steps are weary and slow,
and it sinks into the sand, and, through its grave,
passes into the great ocean, which is its eternity.
Thus shall it be with thee.
“In ancient times there dwelt within these halls
a follower of Jesus of Jerusalem,—an Archbishop
in the church of Christ. He gave himself up
to dreams; to the illusions of fancy; to the vast
desires of the human soul. He sought after the
impossible. He sought after the Elixir of Life,—
the Philosopher's Stone. The wealth, that
should have fed the poor, was melted in his crucibles.
Within these walls the Eagle of the clouds
sucked the blood of the Red Lion, and received
the spiritual Love of the Green Dragon, but alas!
was childless. In solitude and utter silence did
the disciple of the Hermetic Philosophy toil from
day to day, from night to night. From the place
where thou standest, he gazed at evening upon
hills, and vales, and waters spread beneath him;
and saw how the setting sun had changed them all
-- 026 --
[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]
to gold, by an alchymy more cunning than his
own. He saw the world beneath his feet; and
said in his heart, that he alone was wise. Alas!
he read more willingly in the book of Paracelsus,
than in the book of Nature; and, believing
that `where reason hath experience, faith hath
no mind,' would fain have made unto himself a
child, not as Nature teaches us, but as the Philosopher
taught,—a poor homunculus, in a glass bottle.
And he died poor and childless!”
Whether it were worth while to climb the Stolzenfels
to hear such a homily as this, some persons
may perhaps doubt. But Paul Flemming doubted
not. He laid the lesson to heart; and it would
have saved him many an hour of sorrow, if he had
learned that lesson better, and remembered it
longer.
In ancient times, there stood in the citadel of
Athens three statues of Minerva. The first was
of olive wood, and, according to popular tradition,
had fallen from heaven. The second was of
bronze, commemorating the victory of Marathon;
-- 027 --
[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]
and the third of gold and ivory,—a great miracle
of art, in the age of Pericles. And thus in the
citadel of Time stands Man himself. In childhood,
shaped of soft and delicate wood, just fallen
from heaven; in manhood, a statue of bronze,
commemorating struggle and victory; and lastly,
in the maturity of age, perfectly shaped in gold
and ivory,—a miracle of art!
Flemming had already lived through the oliveage.
He was passing into the age of bronze, into
his early manhood; and in his hands the flowers
of Paradise were changing to the sword and
shield.
And this reminds me, that I have not yet described
my hero. I will do it now, as he stands
looking down on the glorious landscape;—but in
few words. Both in person and character he resembled
Harold, the Fair-Hair of Norway, who
is described, in the old Icelandic Death-Song of
Regner Hairy-Breeches, as “the young chief so
proud of his flowing locks; he who spent his mornings
among the young maidens; he who loved to
-- 028 --
[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]
converse with the handsome widows.” This was
an amiable weakness; and it sometimes led him
into mischief. Imagination was the ruling power
of his mind. His thoughts were twin-born; the
thought itself, and its figurative semblance in the
outer world. Thus, through the quiet, still waters
of his soul each image floated double, “swan and
shadow.”
These traits of character, a good heart and a
poetic imagination, made his life joyous and the
world beautiful; till at length Death cut down the
sweet, blue flower, that bloomed beside him, and
wounded him with that sharp sickle, so that he
bowed his head, and would fain have been bound
up in the same sheaf with the sweet, blue flower.
Then the world seemed to him less beautiful, and
life became earnest. It would have been well if
he could have forgotten the past; that he might not
so mournfully have lived in it, but might have
enjoyed and improved the present. But this his
heart refused to do; and ever, as he floated upon
the great sea of life, he looked down through the
-- 029 --
[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]
transparent waters, checkered with sunshine and
shade, into the vast chambers of the mighty deep,
in which his happier days had sunk, and wherein
they were lying still visible, like golden sands,
and precious stones, and pearls; and, half in despair,
half in hope, he grasped downward after
them again, and drew back his hand, filled only
with seaweed, and dripping with briny tears!—
And between him and those golden sands, a radiant
image floated, like the spirit in Dante's Paradise,
singing “Ave-Maria!” and while it sang,
down-sinking, and slowly vanishing away.
The truth is, that in all things he acted more
from impulse than from fixed principle; as is the
case with most young men. Indeed, his principles
hardly had time to take root; for he pulled them
all up, every now and then, as children do the
flowers they have planted,—to see if they are
growing. Yet there was much in him which was
good; for underneath the flowers and green-sward
of poetry, and the good principles which would
have taken root, had he given them time, there
-- 030 --
[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]
lay a strong and healthy soil of common sense,—
freshened by living springs of feeling, and enriched
by many faded hopes, that had fallen upon it like
dead leaves.
-- 031 --
CHAPTER IV. THE LANDLADY'S DAUGHTER.
[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]
“Allez Fuchs! allez lustig!” cried the impatient
postilion to his horses, in accents, which, like
the wild echo of the Lurley Felsen, came first from
one side of the river, and then from the other,—
that is to say, in words alternately French and
German. The truth is, he was tired of waiting;
and when Flemming had at length resumed his
seat in the post-chaise, the poor horses had to
make up the time lost in dreams on the mountain.
This is far oftener the case, than most people
imagine. One half of the world has to sweat and
groan, that the other half may dream. It would
have been a difficult task for the traveller or his
postilion to persuade the horses, that these dreams
were all for their good.
-- 032 --
[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]
The next stopping-place was the little tavern of
the Star, an out-of-the-way corner in the town of
Salzig. It stands on the banks of the Rhine; and,
directly in front of it, sheer from the water's edge,
rise the mountains of Liebenstein and Sternenfels,
each with its ruined castle. These are the Brothers
of the old tradition, still gazing at each other
face to face; and beneath them in the valley
stands a cloister,—meek emblem of that orphan
child, they both so passionately loved.
In a small, flat-bottomed boat did the landlady's
daughter row Flemming “over the Rhine-stream,
rapid and roaring wide.” She was a beautiful girl
of sixteen; with black hair, and dark, lovely eyes,
and a face that had a story to tell. How different
faces are in this particular! Some of them speak
not. They are books in which not a line is written,
save perhaps a date. Others are great family
bibles, with all the Old and New Testament written
in them. Others are Mother Goose and nursery
tales;—others bad tragedies or pickle-herring
farces; and others, like that of the landlady's
-- 033 --
[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]
daughter at the Star, sweet love-anthologies, and
songs of the affections. It was on that account,
that Flemming said to her, as they glided out into
the swift stream;
“My dear child! do you know the story of the
Liebenstein?”
“The story of the Liebenstein,” she answered,
“I got by heart, when I was a little child.”
And here her large, dark, passionate eyes looked
into Flemming's, and he doubted not, that she had
learned the story far too soon, and far too well.
That story he longed to hear, as if it were unknown
to him; for he knew that the girl, who had got it
by heart when a child, would tell it as it should
be told. So he begged her to repeat the story,
which she was but too glad to do; for she loved
and believed it, as if it had all been written in the
Bible. But before she began, she rested a moment
on her oars, and taking the crucifix, which
hung suspended from her neck, kissed it, and
then let it sink down into her bosom, as if it were
an anchor she was letting down into her heart.
-- 034 --
[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]
Meanwhile her moist, dark eyes were turned to
heaven. Perhaps her soul was walking with the
souls of Cunizza, and Rahab, and Mary Magdalen.
Or perhaps she was thinking of that Nun, of whom
St. Gregory says, in his Dialogues, that, having
greedily eaten a lettuce in a garden, without making
the sign of the cross, she found herself soon
after possessed with a devil.
The probability, however, is, that she was looking
up to the ruined castles only, and not to
heaven, for she soon began her story, and told
Flemming how, a great, great many years ago, an
old man lived in the Liebenstein with his two
sons; and how both the young men loved the Lady
Geraldine, an orphan, under their father's care;
and how the elder brother went away in despair,
and the younger was betrothed to the Lady Geraldine;
and how they were as happy as Aschenputtel
and the Prince. And then the holy Saint
Bernard came and carried away all the young men
to the war, just as Napoleon did afterwards; and
the young lord went to the Holy Land, and the
-- 035 --
[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]
Lady Geraldine sat in her tower and wept, and
waited for her lover's return, while the old father
built the Sternenfels for them to live in when
they were married. And when it was finished, the
old man died; and the elder brother came back
and lived in the Liebenstein, and took care of the
gentle Lady. Ere long there came news from
the Holy Land, that the war was over; and the
heart of the gentle Lady beat with joy, till she
heard that her faithless lover was coming back
with a Greek wife,—the wicked man! and then
she went into a convent and became a holy nun.
So the young lord of Sternenfels came home, and
lived in his castle in great splendor with the Greek
woman, who was a wicked woman, and did what
she ought not to do. But the elder brother was
angry for the wrong done the gentle Lady, and
challenged the lord of Sternenfels to single combat.
And, while they were fighting with their great
swords in the valley of Bornhofen behind the castle,
the convent bells began to ring, and the Lady
Geraldine came forth with a train of nuns all
-- 036 --
[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]
dressed in white, and made the brothers friends
again, and told them she was the bride of Heaven,
and happier in her convent than she could have
been in the Liebenstein or the Sternenfels. And
when the brothers returned, they found that the
false Greek wife had gone away with another
knight. So they lived together in peace, and were
never married. And when they died—”
“Lisbeth! Lisbeth!” cried a sharp voice
from the shore, “Lisbeth! Where are you taking
the gentleman?”
This recalled the poor girl to her senses; and
she saw how fast they were floating down stream.
For in telling the story she had forgotten every
thing else, and the swift current had swept them
down to the tall walnut trees of Kamp. They
landed in front of the Capucin Monastery. Lisbeth
led the way through the little village, and
turning to the right pointed up the romantic, lonely
valley which leads to the Liebenstein, and
even offered to go up. But Flemming patted her
cheek and shook his head. He went up the
valley alone.
-- 037 --
CHAPTER V. JEAN PAUL, THE ONLY-ONE.
[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]
The man in the play, who wished for `some
forty pounds of lovely beef, placed in a Mediterranean
sea of brewis,' might have seen his ample
desires almost realized at the table d'hôte of the
Rheinischen Hof, in Mayence, where Flemming
dined that day. At the head of the table sat a
gentleman, with a smooth, broad forehead, and
large, intelligent eyes. He was from Baireuth in
Franconia; and talked about poetry and Jean
Paul, to a pale, romantic-looking lady on his
right. There was music all dinner-time, at the
other end of the hall; a harp and a horn and a
voice; so that a great part of the fat gentleman's
conversation with the pale lady was lost to Flemming,
who sat opposite to her, and could look right
into her large, melancholy eyes. But what he
-- 038 --
[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]
heard, so much interested him,—indeed, the very
name of the beloved Jean Paul would have been
enough for this,—that he ventured to join in the
conversation, and asked the German if he had
known the poet personally.
“Yes; I knew him well,” replied the stranger.
“I am a native of Baireuth, where he passed the
best years of his life. In my mind the man and
the author are closely united. I never read a page
of his writings without hearing his voice, and seeing
his form before me. There he sits, with his
majestic, mountainous forehead, his mild blue eyes,
and finely cut nose and mouth; his massive frame
clad loosely and carelessly in an old green frock,
from the pockets of which the corners of books
project, and perhaps the end of a loaf of bread,
and the nose of a bottle;—a straw hat, lined with
green, lying near him; a huge walking-stick in his
hand, and at his feet a white poodle, with pink
eyes and a string round his neck. You would
sooner have taken him for a master-carpenter than
for a poet. Is he a favorite author of yours?”
-- 039 --
[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]
Flemming answered in the affirmative.
“But a foreigner must find it exceedingly difficult
to understand him,” said the gentleman. “It
is by no means an easy task for us Germans.”
“I have always observed,” replied Flemming,
“that the true understanding and appreciation of
a poet depend more upon individual, than upon
national character. If there be a sympathy between
the minds of writer and reader, the bounds
and barriers of a foreign tongue are soon overleaped.
If you once understand an author's character,
the comprehension of his writings becomes
easy.”
“Very true,” replied the German, “and the
character of Richter is too marked to be easily
misunderstood. Its prominent traits are tenderness
and manliness,—qualities, which are seldom found
united in so high a degree as in him. Over all
he sees, over all he writes, are spread the sunbeams
of a cheerful spirit,—the light of inexhaustible
human love. Every sound of human
joy and of human sorrow finds a deep-resounding
-- 040 --
[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]
echo in his bosom. In every man, he loves his
humanity only, not his superiority. The avowed
object of all his literary labors was to raise up
again the down-sunken faith in God, virtue, and
immortality; and, in an egotistical, revolutionary
age, to warm again our human sympathies, which
have now grown cold. And not less boundless is
his love for nature,—for this outward, beautiful
world. He embraces it all in his arms.”
“Yes,” answered Flemming, almost taking the
words out of the stranger's mouth, “for in his mind
all things become idealized. He seems to describe
himself when he describes the hero of his Titan,
as a child, rocking in a high wind upon the branches
of a full-blossomed apple-tree, and, as its summit,
blown abroad by the wind, now sunk him in
deep green, and now tossed him aloft in deep blue
and glancing sunshine,—in his imagination stood
that tree gigantic;—it grew alone in the universe,
as if it were the tree of eternal life; its roots
struck down into the abyss; the white and red
clouds hung as blossoms upon it; the moon as
-- 041 --
[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]
fruit; the little stars sparkled like dew, and Albano
reposed in its measureless summit; and a storm
swayed the summit out of Day into Night, and out
of Night into Day.”
“Yet the spirit of love,” interrupted the Franconian,
“was not weakness, but strength. It was
united in him with great manliness. The sword
of his spirit had been forged and beaten by poverty.
Its temper had been tried by a thirty years'
war. It was not broken, not even blunted; but
rather strengthened and sharpened by the blows it
gave and received. And, possessing this noble spirit
of humanity, endurance, and self-denial, he made
literature his profession; as if he had been divinely
commissioned to write. He seems to have cared
for nothing else, to have thought of nothing else,
than living quietly and making books. He says,
that he felt it his duty, not to enjoy, nor to acquire,
but to write; and boasted, that he had made
as many books as he had lived years.”
“And what do you Germans consider the prominent
characteristics of his genius?”
-- 042 --
[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]
“Most undoubtedly his wild imagination and
his playfulness. He throws over all things a
strange and magic coloring. You are startled at
the boldness and beauty of his figures and illustrations,
which are scattered everywhere with a reckless
prodigality;—multitudinous, like the blossoms
of early summer,—and as fragrant and beautiful.
With a thousand extravagances are mingled ten
thousand beauties of thought and expression, which
kindle the reader's imagination, and lead it onward
in a bold flight, through the glow of sunrise and
sunset, and the dewy coldness and starlight of summer
nights. He is difficult to understand,—intricate,—
strange,—drawing his illustrations from every
by-corner of science, art, and nature,—a comet,
among the bright stars of German literature.
When you read his works, it is as if you were
climbing a high mountain, in merry company, to
see the sun rise. At times you are enveloped in
mist,—the morning wind sweeps by you with a
shout,—you hear the far-off muttering thunders.
Wide beneath you spreads the landscape,—field,
-- 043 --
[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]
meadow, town, and winding river. The ringing of
distant church-bells, or the sound of solemn village
clock, reaches you;—then arises the sweet and
manifold fragrance of flowers,—the birds begin to
sing,—the vapors roll away,—up comes the glorious
sun,—you revel like the lark in the sunshine
and bright blue heaven, and all is a delirious
dream of soul and sense,—when suddenly a friend
at your elbow laughs aloud, and offers you a piece
of Bologna sausage. As in real life, so in his
writings,—the serious and the comic, the sublime
and the grotesque, the pathetic and the ludicrous
are mingled together. At times he is sententious,
energetic, simple; then again, obscure and diffuse.
His thoughts are like mummies embalmed
in spices, and wrapped about with curious envelopements;
but within these the thoughts themselves
are kings. At times glad, beautiful images,
airy forms, move by you, graceful, harmonious;—
at times the glaring, wild-looking fancies, chained
together by hyphens, brackets, and dashes, brave
and base, high and low, all in their motley
-- 044 --
[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]
dresses, go sweeping down the dusty page, like the galley-slaves,
that sweep the streets of Rome, where
you may chance to see the nobleman and the
peasant manacled together.”
Flemming smiled at the German's warmth, to
which the presence of the lady, and the Laubenheimer
wine, seemed each to have contributed
something, and then said;
“Better an outlaw, than not free!—These are
his own words. And thus he changes at his will.
Like the God Thor, of the old Northern mythology,
he now holds forth the seven bright stars in
the bright heaven above us, and now hides himself
in clouds, and pounds away with his great
hammer.”
“And yet this is not affectation in him,” rejoined
the German. “It is his nature, it is Jean
Paul. And the figures and ornaments of his style,
wild, fantastic, and oft-times startling, like those
in Gothic cathedrals, are not merely what they
seem, but massive coignes and buttresses, which
support the fabric. Remove them, and the roof
-- 045 --
[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]
and walls fall in. And through these gurgoyles,
these wild faces, carved upon spouts and gutters,
flow out, like gathered rain, the bright, abundant
thoughts, that have fallen from heaven.
“And all he does, is done with a kind of serious
playfulness. He is a sea-monster, disporting
himself on the broad ocean; his very sport is earnest;
there is something majestic and serious about
it. In every thing there is strength, a rough good-nature,
all sunshine overhead, and underneath the
heavy moaning of the sea. Well may he be
called `Jean Paul, the Only-One.' ”
With such discourse the hour of dinner passed;
and after dinner Flemming went to the Cathedral.
They were singing vespers. A beadle, dressed in
blue, with a cocked hat, and a crimson sash and
collar, was strutting, like a turkey, along the aisles.
This important gentleman conducted Flemming
through the church, and showed him the choir,
with its heavy-sculptured stalls of oak, and the
beautiful figures in brown stone, over the bishops'
tombs. He then led him, by a side-door, into the
-- 046 --
[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]
old and ruined cloisters of St. Willigis. Through
the low gothic arches the sunshine streamed upon
the pavement of tombstones, whose images and
inscriptions are mostly effaced by the footsteps
of many generations. There stands the tomb of
Frauenlob, the Minnesinger. His face is sculptured
on an entablature in the wall; a fine, strongly-marked,
and serious countenance. Below it is
a bas-relief, representing the poet's funeral. He
is carried to his grave by ladies, whose praise he
sang, and thereby won the name of Frauenlob.
“This then,” said Flemming, “is the grave,
not of Praise-God Bare-bones, but of Praise-the-Ladies
Meissen, who wrote songs `somewhat of
lust, and somewhat of love.' But where sleeps
the dust of his rival and foe, sweet Master Bartholomew
Rainbow?”
He meant this for an aside; but the turkey-cock
picked it up and answered;
“I do not know. He did not belong to this
parish.”
It was already night, when Flemming crossed
-- 047 --
[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]
the Roman bridge over the Nahe, and entered
the town of Bingen. He stopped at the White
Horse; and, before going to bed, looked out into
the dim starlight from his window towards the
Rhine, and his heart leaped up to behold the bold
outline of the neighbouring hills crested with Gothic
ruins;—which in the morning proved to be
only a high, slated roof with fantastic chimneys.
The morning was bright and frosty; and the
river tinged with gay colors from the rising sun.
A soft, thin vapor floated in the air. In the sunbeams
flashed the hoar-frost, like silver stars; and
through a long avenue of trees, whose dripping
branches bent and scattered pearls before him,
Paul Flemming journeyed on in triumph.
I will not prolong this journey, for I am
weary and way-worn, and would fain be at Heidelberg
with my readers, and my hero. It was
already night when he reached the Manheim gate,
and drove down the long Hauptstrasse so slowly,
that it seemed to him endless. The shops were
-- 048 --
[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]
lighted on each side of the street, and he saw
faces at the windows here and there, and figures
passing in the lamp-light, visible for a moment
and then swallowed up in the darkness. The
thoughts that filled his mind were strange; as are
always the thoughts of a traveller, who enters for
the first time a strange city. This little world had
been going on for centuries before he came; and
would go on for centuries after he was gone. Of
all the thousands who inhabited it he knew nothing;
and what knew they, or thought, of the
stranger, who, in that close post-chaise, weary with
travel, and chilled by the evening wind, was slowly
rumbling over the paved street! Truly, this
world can go on without us, if we would but think
so. If it had been a hearse instead of a post-chaise,
it would have been all the same to the people of
Heidelberg,—though by no means the same to
Paul Flemming.
But at the farther end of the city, near the
Castle and the Carls-Thor, one warm heart was
-- 049 --
[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]
waiting to receive him; and this was the German
heart of his friend, the Baron of Hohenfels, with
whom he was to pass the winter in Heidelberg.
No sooner had the carriage stopped at the irongrated
gate, and the postilion blown his horn, to
announce the arrival of a traveller, than the Baron
was seen among the servants at the door; and, a
few moments afterwards, the two long-absent
friends were in each other's arms, and Flemming
received a kiss upon each cheek, and another on
the mouth, as the pledge and seal of the German's
friendship. They held each other long by the
hand, and looked into each other's faces, and saw
themselves in each other's eyes, both literally and
figuratively; literally, inasmuch as the images
were there; and figuratively, inasmuch as each was
imagining what the other thought of him, after the
lapse of some years. In friendly hopes and questionings
and answers, the evening glided away at
the supper-table, where many more things were
discussed than the roasted hare, and the
-- 050 --
[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]
Johannisberger; and they sat late into the night, conversing
of the thoughts and feelings and delights, which
fill the hearts of young men, who have already
enjoyed and suffered, and hoped and been disappointed.
-- 051 --
CHAPTER VI. HEIDELBERG AND THE BARON.
[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]
High and hoar on the forehead of the Jettenb
ühl stands the Castle of Heidelberg. Behind it
rise the oak-crested hills of the Geissberg and the
Kaiserstuhl; and in front, from the broad terrace
of masonry, you can almost throw a stone upon
the roofs of the city, so close do they lie beneath.
Above this terrace rises the broad front of the
chapel of Saint Udalrich. On the left, stands the
slender octagon tower of the horologe, and, on the
right, a huge round tower, battered and shattered
by the mace of war, shores up with its broad
shoulders the beautiful palace and garden-terrace
of Elisabeth, wife of the Pfalzgraf Frederick. In
the rear are older palaces and towers, forming a
vast, irregular quadrangle;—Rodolph's ancient
-- 052 --
[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]
castle, with its Gothic gloriette and fantastic gables;
the Giant's Tower, guarding the drawbridge
over the moat; the Rent Tower, with the linden-trees
growing on its summit, and the magnificent
Rittersaal of Otho-Henry, Count Palatine of the
Rhine and grand seneschal of the Holy Roman
Empire. From the gardens behind the castle, you
pass under the archway of the Giant's Tower
into the great court-yard. The diverse architecture
of different ages strikes the eye; and curious
sculptures. In niches on the wall of Saint Udalrich's
chapel stand rows of knights in armour, all
broken and dismembered; and on the front of
Otho's Rittersaal, the heroes of Jewish history
and classic fable. You enter the open and desolate
chambers of the ruin; and on every side are
medallions and family arms; the Globe of the
Empire and the Golden Fleece, or the Eagle of
the Cæsars, resting on the escutcheons of Bavaria
and the Palatinate. Over the windows and door-ways
and chimney-pieces, are sculptures and
mouldings of exquisite workmanship; and the eye
-- 053 --
[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]
is bewildered by the profusion of caryatides, and
arabesques, and rosettes, and fan-like flutings, and
garlands of fruits and flowers and acorns, and bullocks'-heads
with draperies of foliage, and muzzles
of lions, holding rings in their teeth. The cunning
hand of Art was busy for six centuries, in raising
and adorning these walls; the mailed hands of Time
and War have defaced and overthrown them in
less than two. Next to the Alhambra of Granada,
the Castle of Heidelberg is the most magnificent
ruin of the Middle Ages.
In the valley below flows the rushing stream of
the Neckar. Close from its margin, on the opposite
side, rises the Mountain of All Saints, crowned
with the ruins of a convent; and up the valley
stretches the mountain-curtain of the Odenwald.
So close and many are the hills, which eastward
shut the valley in, that the river seems a lake.
But westward it opens, upon the broad plain of
the Rhine, like the mouth of a trumpet; and like
the blast of a trumpet is at times the wintry wind
through this narrow mountain pass. The blue
-- 054 --
[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]
Alsatian hills rise beyond; and, on a platform or
strip of level land, between the Neckar and the
mountains, right under the castle, stands the city of
Heidelberg; as the old song says, “a pleasant
city, when it has done raining.”
Something of this did Paul Flemming behold,
when he rose the next morning and looked from
his window. It was a warm, vapory morning, and
a struggle was going on between the mist and the
rising sun. The sun had taken the hill-tops, but
the mist still kept possession of the valley and the
town. The steeple of the great church rose
through a dense mass of snow-white clouds; and
eastward, on the hills, the dim vapors were rolling
across the windows of the ruined castle, like the
fiery smoke of a great conflagration. It seemed
to him an image of the rising of the sun of Truth
on a benighted world; its light streamed through
the ruins of centuries; and, down in the valley of
Time, the cross on the Christian church caught its
rays, though the priests were singing in mist and
darkness below.
-- 055 --
[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]
In the warm breakfast-parlour he found the
Baron, waiting for him. He was lying upon a
sofa, in morning gown and purple-velvet slippers,
both with flowers upon them. He had a guitar in
his hand, and a pipe in his mouth, at the same
time smoking, playing, and humming his favorite
song from Goethe;
“The water rushed, the water swelled,
A fisher sat thereby.”
Flemming could hardly refrain from laughing at
the sight of his friend; and told him it reminded
him of a street-musician he once saw in Aix-la-Chapelle,
who was playing upon six instruments
at once; having a helmet with bells on his head,
a Pan's-reed in his cravat, a fiddle in his hand, a
triangle on his knee, cymbals on his heels, and
on his back a bass-drum, which he played with his
elbows. To tell the truth, the Baron of Hohenfels
was rather a miscellaneous youth, rather a universal
genius. He pursued all things with eagerness,
but for a short time only; music, poetry, painting,
pleasure, even the study of the Pandects. His
-- 056 --
[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]
feelings were keenly alive to the enjoyment of life.
His great defect was, that he was too much in love
with human nature. But by the power of imagination,
in him, the bearded goat was changed to a
bright Capricornus:—no longer an animal on
earth, but a constellation in heaven. An easy and
indolent disposition made him gentle and childlike
in his manners; and, in short, the beauty of his
character, like that of the precious opal, was owing
to a defect in its organization. His person was tall
and slightly built; his hair light; and his eyes
blue, and as beautiful as those of a girl. In the
tones of his voice, there was something indescribably
gentle and winning; and he spoke the German
language, with the soft, musical accent of his native
province of Curland. In his manners, if he
had not `Antinous' easy sway,' he had at least
an easy sway of his own. Such, in few words,
was the bosom friend of Flemming.
“And what do you think of Heidelberg and the
old castle up there?” said he, as they seated
themselves at the breakfast-table.
-- 057 --
[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]
“Last night the town seemed very long to me,”
replied Flemming; “and as to the castle, I have
as yet had but a glimpse of it through the mist.
They tell me there is nothing finer in its way, excepting
the Alhambra of Granada; and no doubt I
shall find it so. Only I wish the stone were gray
and not red. But, red or gray, I foresee that I
shall waste many a long hour in its desolate halls.
Pray, does anybody live up there now-a-days?”
“Nobody,” answered the Baron, “but the man,
who shows the Heidelberg Ton, and Monsieur
Charles de Grainberg, a Frenchman, who has
been there sketching ever since the year eighteen-hundred
and ten. He has, moreover, written a
super-magnificent description of the ruin, in which
he says, that during the day only birds of prey
disturb it with their piercing cries, and at night,
screech-owls, and other fallow deer. These are
his own words. You must buy his book and his
sketches.”
“Yes, the quotation and the tone of your voice
will certainly persuade me so to do.”
-- 058 --
[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]
“Take his or none, my friend, for you will find
no others. And seriously, his sketches are very
good. There is one on the wall there, which is
beautiful, save and except that straddle-bug figure
among the bushes in the corner.”
“But is there no ghost, no haunted chamber in
the old castle?” asked Flemming, after casting a
hasty glance at the picture.
“Oh, certainly,” replied the Baron; “there
are two. There is the ghost of the Virgin Mary
in Ruprecht's Tower, and the Devil in the Dungeon.”
“Ha! that is grand!” exclaimed Flemming,
with evident delight. “Tell me the whole story,
quickly! I am as curious as a child.”
“It is a tale of the times of Louis the Debonnaire,”
said the Baron, with a smile; “a mouldy
tradition of a credulous age. His brother Frederick
lived here in the castle with him, and had a
flirtation with Leonore von Luzelstein, a lady of
the court, whom he afterwards despised, and was
consequently most cordially hated by her. From
-- 059 --
[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]
political motives he was equally hateful to certain
petty German tyrants, who, in order to effect his
ruin, accused him of heresy. But his brother
Louis would not deliver him up to their fury, and
they resolved to effect by stratagem, what they
could not by intrigue. Accordingly, Leonore
von Luzelstein, disguised as the Virgin Mary,
and the father confessor of the Elector, in the costume
of Satan, made their appearance in the Elector's
bed-chamber at midnight, and frightened
him so horribly, that he consented to deliver
up his brother into the hands of two Black
Knights, who pretended to be ambassadors from
the Vehm-Gericht. They proceeded together to
Frederick's chamber; where luckily old Gemmingen,
a brave soldier, kept guard behind the arras.
The monk went foremost in his Satanic garb; but,
no sooner had he set foot in the prince's bed-chamber,
than the brave Gemmingen drew his
sword, and said quaintly, `Die, wretch!' and
so he died. The rest took to their heels, and
were heard of no more. And now the souls of
-- 060 --
[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]
Leonore and the monk haunt the scene of their
midnight crime. You will find the story in Grainberg's
book, worked up with a kind of red-morocco
and burnt-cork sublimity, and great melo-dramatic
clanking of chains, and hooting of owls, and other
fallow deer!”
“After breakfast,” said Flemming, “we will go
up to the castle. I must get acquainted with this
mirror of owls, this modern Till Eulenspiegel.
See what a glorious morning we have! It is truly
a wondrous winter! what summer sunshine; what
soft Venetian fogs! How the wanton, treacherous
air coquets with the old gray-beard trees! Such
weather makes the grass and our beards grow
apace! But we have an old saying in English,
that winter never rots in the sky. So he will come
down at last in his old-fashioned, mealy coat. We
shall have snow in spring; and the blossoms will
be all snow-flakes. And afterwards a summer,
which will be no summer, but, as Jean Paul says,
only a winter painted green. Is it not so?”
“Unless I am much deceived in the climate of
-- 061 --
[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]
Heidelberg,” replied the Baron, “we shall not
have to wait long for snow. We have sudden
changes here, and I should not marvel much if it
snowed before night.”
“The greater reason for making good use of the
morning sunshine, then. Let us hasten to the
castle, after which my heart yearns.”
-- 062 --
CHAPTER VII. LIVES OF SCHOLARS.
[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]
The forebodings of the Baron proved true. In
the afternoon the weather changed. The western
wind began to blow, and its breath drew a cloud-veil
over the face of heaven, as a breath does over
the human face in a mirror. Soon the snow began
to fall. Athwart the distant landscape it swept
like a white mist. The storm-wind came from the
Alsatian hills, and struck the dense clouds aslant
through the air. And ever faster fell the snow, a
roaring torrent from those mountainous clouds.
The setting sun glared wildly from the summit of
the hills, and sank like a burning ship at sea,
wrecked in the tempest. Thus the evening set
in; and winter stood at the gate wagging his white
and shaggy beard, like an old harper, chanting an
old rhyme:—“How cold it is! how cold it is!”
-- 063 --
[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]
“I like such a storm as this,” said Flemming,
who stood at the window, looking out into the tempest
and the gathering darkness. “The silent falling
of snow is to me one of the most solemn things
in nature. The fall of autumnal leaves does not
so much affect me. But the driving storm is
grand. It startles me; it awakens me. It is wild
and woful, like my own soul. I cannot help
thinking of the sea; how the waves run and toss
their arms about,—and the wind plays on those
great harps, made by the shrouds and masts of
ships. Winter is here in earnest! Whew! How
the old churl whistles and threshes the snow!
Sleet and rain are falling too. Already the trees
are bearded with icicles; and the two broad branches
of yonder pine look like the white mustache of
some old German Baron.”
“And to-morrow it will look more wintry still,”
said his friend. “We shall wake up and find that
the frost-spirit has been at work all night building
Gothic Cathedrals on our windows, just as
the devil built the Cathedral of Cologne. So
-- 064 --
[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]
draw the curtains, and come sit here by the warm
fire.”
“And now,” said Flemming, having done as his
friend desired, “tell me something of Heidelberg
and its University. I suppose we shall lead about
as solitary and studious a life here as we did of
yore in little Göttingen, with nothing to amuse us,
save our own day-dreams.”
“Pretty much so,” replied the Baron; “which
cannot fail to please you, since you are in pursuit
of tranquillity. As to the University, it is, as you
know, one of the oldest in Germany. It was
founded in the fourteenth century by the Count
Palatine Ruprecht, and had in the first year more
than five hundred students, all busily committing to
memory, after the old scholastic wise, the rules of
grammar versified by Alexander de Villa Dei, and
the extracts made by Peter the Spaniard from
Michel Psellus's Synopsis of Aristotle's Organon,
and the Categories, with Porphory's Commentaries.
Truly, I do not much wonder, that Eregina
Scotus should have been put to death by
-- 065 --
[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]
his scholars with their penknives. They must
have been pushed to the very verge of despair.”
“What a strange picture a University presents
to the imagination. The lives of scholars in their
cloistered stillness;—literary men of retired habits,
and Professors who study sixteen hours a day,
and never see the world but on a Sunday. Nature
has, no doubt, for some wise purpose, placed in
their hearts this love of literary labor and seclusion.
Otherwise, who would feed the undying
lamp of thought? But for such men as these, a
blast of wind through the chinks and crannies of
this old world, or the flapping of a conqueror's
banner, would blow it out forever. The light of
the soul is easily extinguished. And whenever I
reflect upon these things I become aware of the
great importance, in a nation's history, of the individual
fame of scholars and literary men. I fear,
that it is far greater than the world is willing to
acknowledge; or, perhaps I should say, than the
world has thought of acknowledging. Blot out
from England's history the names of Chaucer,
-- 066 --
[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]
Shakspere, Spenser, and Milton only, and how
much of her glory would you blot out with them!
Take from Italy such names as Dante, Petrarch,
Boccaccio, Michel Angelo, and Raphael, and
how much would still be wanting to the completeness
of her glory! How would the history of
Spain look if the leaves were torn out, on which
are written the names of Cervantes, Lope de Vega,
and Calderon! What would be the fame of Portugal,
without her Camoens; of France, without her
Racine, and Rabelais, and Voltaire; or Germany,
without her Martin Luther, her Goethe, and Schiller!
—Nay, what were the nations of old, without
their philosophers, poets, and historians! Tell
me, do not these men in all ages and in all places,
emblazon with bright colors the armorial bearings
of their country? Yes, and far more than this;
for in all ages and all places they give humanity
assurance of its greatness; and say; Call not this
time or people wholly barbarous; for thus much,
even then and there, could the human mind
achieve! But the boisterous world has hardly
-- 067 --
[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]
thought of acknowledging all this. Therein it has
shown itself somewhat ungrateful. Else, whence
the great reproach, the general scorn, the loud derision,
with which, to take a familiar example,
the monks of the Middle Ages are regarded! That
they slept their lives away is most untrue. For in
an age when books were few,—so few, so precious,
that they were often chained to their oaken shelves
with iron chains, like galley-slaves to their benches,
these men, with their laborious hands, copied upon
parchment all the lore and wisdom of the past,
and transmitted it to us. Perhaps it is not too
much to say, that, but for these monks, not one line
of the classics would have reached our day. Surely,
then, we can pardon something to those superstitious
ages, perhaps even the mysticism of the
scholastic philosophy, since, after all, we can find
no harm in it, only the mistaking of the possible
for the real, and the high aspirings of the human
mind after a long-sought and unknown somewhat.
I think the name of Martin Luther, the monk of
Wittemberg, alone sufficient to redeem all
-- 068 --
[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]
monkhood from the reproach of laziness! If this will
not, perhaps the vast folios of Thomas Aquinas
will;—or the countless manuscripts, still treasured
in old libraries, whose yellow and wrinkled pages
remind one of the hands that wrote them, and the
faces that once bent over them.”
“An eloquent homily,” said the Baron laughing,
“a most touching appeal in behalf of suffering
humanity! For my part, I am no friend of this
entire seclusion from the world. It has a very injurious
effect on the mind of a scholar. The Chinese
proverb is true; a single conversation across
the table with a wise man, is better than ten years'
mere study of books. I have known some of these
literary men, who thus shut themselves up from
the world. Their minds never come in contact
with those of their fellow-men. They read little.
They think much. They are mere dreamers.
They know not what is new nor what is old. They
often strike upon trains of thought, which stand
written in good authors some century or so back,
and are even current in the mouths of men around
-- 069 --
[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]
them. But they know it not; and imagine they
are bringing forward something very original, when
they publish their thoughts.”
“It reminds me,” replied Flemming, “of what
Dr. Johnson said of Goldsmith, when he proposed
to travel abroad in order to bring home improvements;—
`He will bring home a wheelbarrow, and
call that an improvement.' It is unfortunately the
same with some of these scholars.”
“And the worst of it is,” said the Baron, “that,
in solitude, some fixed idea will often take root
in the mind, and grow till it overshadow all one's
thoughts. To this must all opinions come; no
thought can enter there, which shall not be wedded
to the fixed idea. There it remains, and
grows. It is like the watchman's wife, in the
tower of Waiblingen, who grew to such a size,
that she could not get down the narrow stair-case;
and, when her husband died, his successor was
forced to marry the fat widow in the tower.”
“I remember an old English comedy,” said
Flemming laughing, “in which a scholar is
-- 070 --
[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]
described, as a creature, that can strike fire in the
morning at his tinder-box,—put on a pair of lined
slippers,—sit ruminating till dinner, and then go to
his meat when the bell rings;—one that hath a
peculiar gift in a cough, and a license to spit;—
or, if you will have him defined by negatives, he
is one that cannot make a good leg;—one that
cannot eat a mess of broth cleanly. What think
you of that?”
“That it is just as people are always represented
in English comedy,” said the Baron. “The
portrait is over-charged,—caricatured.”
“And yet,” continued Flemming, “no longer
ago than yesterday, in the Preface of a work by
Dr. Rosenkranz, Professor of Philosophy in the
University of Halle, I read this passage.”
He opened a book and read.
“Here in Halle, where we have no public garden
and no Tivoli, no London Exchange, no Paris
Chamber of Deputies, no Berlin nor Vienna Theatres,
no Strassburg Minster, nor Salzburg Alps,—
no Grecian ruins nor fantastic Catholicism, in fine,
-- 071 --
[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]
nothing, which after one's daily task is finished,
can divert and refresh him, without his knowing or
caring how,—I consider the sight of a proof-sheet
quite as delightful as a walk in the Prater of Vienna.
I fill my pipe very quietly, take out my ink-stand
and pens, seat myself in the corner of my
sofa, read, correct, and now for the first time
really set about thinking what I have written. To
see this origin of a book, this metamorphosis of
manuscript into print, is a delight to which I give
myself up entirely. Look you, this melancholy
pleasure, which would have furnished the departed
Voss with worthy matter for more than one
blessed Idyl—(the more so, as on such occasions,
I am generally arrayed in a morning gown, though
I am sorry to say, not a calamanco one, with great
flowers;) this melancholy pleasure was already
grown here in Halle to a sweet, pedantic habit.
Since I began my hermit's life here, I have been
printing; and so long as I remain here, I shall
keep on printing. In all probability, I shall die
with a proof-sheet in my hand.”
-- 072 --
[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]
“This,” said Flemming, closing the book, “is
no caricature by a writer of comedy, but a portrait
by a man's own hand. We can see by it how
easily, under certain circumstances, one may glide
into habits of seclusion, and in a kind of undress,
slipshod hardihood, with a pipe and a proof-sheet,
defy the world. Into this state scholars have too
often fallen; thus giving some ground for the prevalent
opinion, that scholarship and rusticity are
inseparable. To me, I confess, it is painful to see
the scholar and the world assume so often a hostile
attitude, and set each other at defiance. Surely,
it is a characteristic trait of a great and liberal
mind, that it recognises humanity in all its forms
and conditions. I am a student;—and always,
when I sit alone at night, I recognise the divinity
of the student, as she reveals herself to me in the
smoke of the midnight lamp. But, because solitude
and books are not unpleasant to me,—nay,
wished-for,—sought after,—shall I say to my
brother, Thou fool! Shall I take the world by the
beard and say, Thou art old, and mad!—Shall I
-- 073 --
[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]
look society in the face and say, Thou art heartless!—
Heartless! Beware of that word! Life, says
very wisely the good Jean Paul, Life in every
shape, should be precious to us, for the same reason
that the Turks carefully collect every scrap of
paper that comes in their way, because the name
of God may be written upon it. Nothing is more
true than this, yet nothing more neglected!”
“If it be painful to see this misunderstanding
between scholars and the world,” said the Baron,
“I think it is still more painful to see the private
sufferings of authors by profession. How many
have languished in poverty, how many died broken-hearted,
how many gone mad with over-excitement
and disappointed hopes! How instructive
and painfully interesting are their lives!
with so many weaknesses,—so much to pardon,—
so much to pity,—so much to admire! I
think he was not so far out of the way, who said,
that, next to the Newgate Calendar, the Biography
of Authors is the most sickening chapter in
the history of man.”
-- 074 --
[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]
“It is indeed enough to make one's heart
ache!” interrupted Flemming. “Only think of
Johnson and Savage, rambling about the streets of
London at midnight, without a place to sleep in;
Otway starved to death; Cowley mad, and howling
like a dog, through the aisles of Chichester
Cathedral, at the sound of church music; and
Goldsmith, strutting up Fleet Street in his peach-blossom
coat, to knock a bookseller over the pate
with one of his own volumes; and then, in his
poverty, about to marry his landlady in Green Arbour
Court.”
“A life of sorrow and privation, a hard life, indeed,
do these poor devil authors have of it,”
replied the Baron; “and then at last must get
them to the work-house, or creep away into some
hospital to die.”
“After all,” said Flemming with a sigh, “poverty
is not a vice.”
“But something worse,” interrupted the Baron;
“as Dufresny said, when he married his laundress,
because he could not pay her bill. He
-- 075 --
[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]
was the author, as you know, of the opera of Lot;
at whose representation the great pun was made;—
I say the great pun, as we say the great ton of
Heidelberg. As one of the performers was singing
the line, `L'amour a vaincu Loth,' (vingt
culottes,) a voice from the pit cried out, `Qu'il en
donne une à l'auteur!' ”
Flemming laughed at the unseasonable jest;
and then, after a short pause, continued;
“And yet, if you look closely at the causes of
these calamities of authors, you will find, that many
of them spring from false and exaggerated ideas
of poetry and the poetic character; and from disdain
of common sense, upon which all character,
worth having, is founded. This comes from
keeping aloof from the world, apart from our fellow-men;
disdainful of society, as frivolous. By
too much sitting still the body becomes unhealthy;
and soon the mind. This is nature's law. She
will never see her children wronged. If the mind,
which rules the body, ever forgets itself so far as
to trample upon its slave, the slave is never
-- 076 --
[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]
generous enough to forgive the injury; but will rise and
smite its oppressor. Thus has many a monarch
mind been dethroned.”
“After all,” said the Baron, “we must pardon
much to men of genius. A delicate organization
renders them keenly susceptible to pain and pleasure.
And then they idealize every thing; and, in
the moonlight of fancy, even the deformity of vice
seems beautiful.”
“And this you think should be forgiven?”
“At all events it is forgiven. The world loves
a spice of wickedness. Talk as you will about
principle, impulse is more attractive, even when
it goes too far. The passions of youth, like unhooded
hawks, fly high, with musical bells upon
their jesses; and we forget the cruelty of the sport
in the dauntless bearing of the gallant bird.”
“And thus doth the world and society corrupt
the scholar!” exclaimed Flemming.
Here the Baron rang, and ordered a bottle of
Prince Metternich. He then very slowly filled
his pipe, and began to smoke. Flemming was lost
in a day-dream.
-- 077 --
CHAPTER VIII. LITERARY FAME.
[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]
Time has a Doomsday-Book, upon whose pages
he is continually recording illustrious names. But,
as often as a new name is written there, an old one
disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated characters,
never to be effaced. These are the high
nobility of Nature,—Lords of the Public Domain
of Thought. Posterity shall never question their
titles. But those, whose fame lives only in the indiscreet
opinion of unwise men, must soon be as
well forgotten, as if they had never been. To
this great oblivion must most men come. It is
better, therefore, that they should soon make up
their minds to this; well knowing, that, as their
bodies must ere long be resolved into dust again,
and their graves tell no tales of them; so must
-- 078 --
[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]
their names likewise be utterly forgotten, and their
most cherished thoughts, purposes, and opinions
have no longer an individual being among men;
but be resolved and incorporated into the universe
of thought. If, then, the imagination can trace
the noble dust of heroes, till we find it stopping a
beer-barrel, and know that
“Imperial Cæsar, dead and turned to clay,
May stop a hole to keep the wind away;”
not less can it trace the noble thoughts of great
men, till it finds them mouldered into the common
dust of conversation, and used to stop men's
mouths, and patch up theories, to keep out the
flaws of opinion. Such, for example, are all popular
adages and wise proverbs, which are now resolved
into the common mass of thought; their
authors forgotten, and having no more an individual
being among men.
It is better, therefore, that men should soon
make up their minds to be forgotten, and look
about them, or within them, for some higher motive,
in what they do, than the approbation of men,
-- 079 --
[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]
which is Fame; namely, their duty; that they
should be constantly and quietly at work, each in
his sphere, regardless of effects, and leaving their
fame to take care of itself. Difficult must this indeed
be, in our imperfection; impossible perhaps
to achieve it wholly. Yet the resolute, the indomitable
will of man can achieve much,—at
times even this victory over himself; being persuaded,
that fame comes only when deserved, and
then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.
It has become a common saying, that men of
genius are always in advance of their age; which
is true. There is something equally true, yet not
so common; namely, that, of these men of genius,
the best and bravest are in advance not only of
their own age, but of every age. As the German
prose-poet says, every possible future is behind
them. We cannot suppose, that a period of time
will ever come, when the world, or any considerable
portion of it shall have come up abreast with
these great minds, so as fully to comprehend them.
And oh! how majestically they walk in
-- 080 --
[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]
history; some like the sun, with all his travelling glories
round him; others wrapped in gloom, yet
glorious as a night with stars. Through the else
silent darkness of the past, the spirit hears their
slow and solemn footsteps. Onward they pass,
like those hoary elders seen in the sublime vision
of an earthly Paradise, attendant angels bearing
golden lights before them, and, above and behind,
the whole air painted with seven listed colors, as
from the trail of pencils!
And yet, on earth, these men were not happy,—
not all happy, in the outward circumstance
of their lives. They were in want, and in pain,
and familiar with prison-bars, and the damp, weeping
walls of dungeons! Oh, I have looked with
wonder upon those, who, in sorrow and privation,
and bodily discomfort, and sickness, which is the
shadow of death, have worked right on to the
accomplishment of their great purposes; toiling
much, enduring much, fulfilling much;—and then,
with shattered nerves, and sinews all unstrung,
have laid themselves down in the grave, and slept
-- 081 --
[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]
the sleep of death,—and the world talks of them,
while they sleep!
It would seem, indeed, as if all their sufferings
had but sanctified them! As if the death-angel,
in passing, had touched them with the hem of his
garment, and made them holy! As if the hand of
disease had been stretched out over them only to
make the sign of the cross upon their souls! And
as in the sun's eclipse we can behold the great
stars shining in the heavens, so in this life eclipse
have these men beheld the lights of the great eternity,
burning solemnly and forever!
This was Flemming's reverie. It was broken
by the voice of the Baron, suddenly exclaiming;
“An angel is flying over the house!—Here;
in this goblet, fragrant as the honey of Hymettus,
fragrant as the wild flowers in the Angel's Meadow,
I drink to the divinity of thy dreams.”
“This is all sunshine,” said Flemming, as he
drank. “The wine of the Prince, and the Prince
of wines. By the way, did you ever read that
brilliant Italian dithyrambic, Redi's Bacchus in
-- 082 --
[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]
Tuscany? an ode which seems to have been
poured out of the author's soul, as from a golden
pitcher,
`Filled with the wine
Of the vine
Benign,
That flames so red in Sansavine.'
He calls the Montepulciano the king of all wines.”
“Prince Metternich,” said the Baron, “is greater
than any king in Italy; and I wonder, that this
precious wine has never inspired a German poet
to write a Bacchus on the Rhine. Many little
songs we have on this theme, but none very extraordinary.
The best are Max Schenkendorf's
Song of the Rhine, and the Song of Rhine
Wine, by Claudius, a poet who never drank
Rhenish without sugar. We will drink for him a
blessing on the Rhine.”
And again the crystal lips of the goblets kissed
each other, with a musical chime, as of evening
bells at vintage-time from the villages on the Rhine.
Of a truth, I do not much wonder, that the
-- 083 --
[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]
German poet Schiller loved to write by candle-light
with a bottle of Rhine-wine upon the table. Nor
do I wonder at the worthy schoolmaster Roger
Ascham, when he says, in one of his letters from
Germany to Mr. John Raven, of John's College;
`Tell Mr. Maden I will drink with him now a carouse
of wine; and would to God he had a vessel
of Rhenish wine; and perchance, when I come to
Cambridge, I will so provide here, that every year
I will have a little piece of Rhenish wine.' Nor,
in fine, do I wonder at the German Emperor of
whom he speaks in another letter to the same
John Raven, and says, `The Emperor drank
the best that I ever saw; he had his head in the
glass five times as long as any of us, and never
drank less than a good quart at once of Rhenish
wine.' These were scholars and gentlemen.
“But to resume our old theme of scholars and
their whereabout,” said the Baron, with an unusual
glow, caught no doubt from the golden sunshine,
imprisoned, like the student Anselmus, in the glass
bottle; “where should the scholar live? In
-- 084 --
[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]
solitude or in society? In the green stillness of the
country, where he can hear the heart of nature
beat, or in the dark, gray city, where he can hear
and feel the throbbing heart of man? I will make
answer for him, and say, in the dark, gray city.
Oh, they do greatly err, who think, that the stars
are all the poetry which cities have; and therefore
that the poet's only dwelling should be in
sylvan solitudes, under the green roof of trees.
Beautiful, no doubt, are all the forms of Nature,
when transfigured by the miraculous power of poetry;
hamlets and harvest-fields, and nut-brown
waters, flowing ever under the forest, vast and shadowy,
with all the sights and sounds of rural life.
But after all, what are these but the decorations
and painted scenery in the great theatre of human
life? What are they but the coarse materials
of the poet's song? Glorious indeed is the world
of God around us, but more glorious the world of
God within us. There lies the Land of Song;
there lies the poet's native land. The river of
life, that flows through streets tumultuous, bearing
-- 085 --
[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]
along so many gallant hearts, so many wrecks of
humanity;—the many homes and households,
each a little world in itself, revolving round its
fireside, as a central sun; all forms of human joy
and suffering, brought into that narrow compass;—
and to be in this and be a part of this; acting,
thinking, rejoicing, sorrowing, with his fellow-men;—
such, such should be the poet's life. If he
would describe the world, he should live in the
world. The mind of the scholar, also, if you
would have it large and liberal, should come in
contact with other minds. It is better that his armour
should be somewhat bruised even by rude
encounters, than hang forever rusting on the wall.
Nor will his themes be few or trivial, because
apparently shut in between the walls of houses, and
having merely the decorations of street scenery.
A ruined character is as picturesque as a ruined
castle. There are dark abysses and yawning gulfs
in the human heart, which can be rendered passable
only by bridging them over with iron nerves
and sinews, as Challey bridged the Savine in
-- 086 --
[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]
Switzerland, and Telford the sea between Anglesea
and England, with chain bridges. These are the
great themes of human thought; not green grass,
and flowers, and moonshine. Besides, the mere
external forms of Nature we make our own, and
carry with us into the city, by the power of
memory.”
“I fear, however,” interrupted Flemming, “that
in cities the soul of man grows proud. He needs
at times to be sent forth, like the Assyrian monarch,
into green fields, `a wonderous wretch and
weedless,' to eat green herbs, and be wakened
and chastised by the rain-shower and winter's
bitter weather. Moreover, in cities there is danger
of the soul's becoming wed to pleasure, and
forgetful of its high vocation. There have been
souls dedicated to heaven from childhood and
guarded by good angels as sweet seclusions for
holy thoughts, and prayers, and all good purposes;
wherein pious wishes dwelt like nuns, and every
image was a saint; and yet in life's vicissitudes,
by the treachery of occasion, by the thronging
-- 087 --
[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]
passions of great cities, have become soiled and sinful.
They resemble those convents on the river Rhine,
which have been changed to taverns; from whose
chambers the pious inmates have long departed,
and in whose cloisters the footsteps of travellers
have effaced the images of buried saints, and
whose walls are written over with ribaldry and the
names of strangers, and resound no more with holy
hymns, but with revelry and loud voices.”
“Both town and country have their dangers,”
said the Baron; “and therefore, wherever the
scholar lives, he must never forget his high vocation.
Other artists give themselves up wholly to
the study of their art. It becomes with them almost
religion. For the most part, and in their
youth, at least, they dwell in lands, where the
whole atmosphere of the soul is beauty; laden
with it as the air may be with vapor, till their very
nature is saturated with the genius of their art.
Such, for example, is the artist's life in Italy.”
“I agree with you,” exclaimed Flemming;
“and such should be the Poet's everywhere; for
-- 088 --
[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]
he has his Rome, his Florence, his whole glowing
Italy within the four walls of his library. He has
in his books the ruins of an antique world,—and
the glories of a modern one,—his Apollo and
Transfiguration. He must neither forget nor undervalue
his vocation; but thank God that he is a
poet; and everywhere be true to himself, and to
`the vision and the faculty divine' he feels within
him.”
“But, at any rate, a city life is most eventful,”
continued the Baron. “The men who make, or
take, the lives of poets and scholars, always
complain that these lives are barren of incidents.
Hardly a literary biography begins without some
such apology, unwisely made. I confess, however,
that it is not made without some show of truth; if,
by incidents, we mean only those startling events,
which suddenly turn aside the stream of Time,
and change the world's history in an hour. There
is certainly a uniformity, pleasing or unpleasing,
in literary life, which for the most part makes
to-day seem twin-born with yesterday. But if, by
-- 089 --
[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]
incidents, you mean events in the history of the
human mind, (and why not?) noiseless events, that
do not scar the forehead of the world as battles
do, yet change it not the less, then surely the
lives of literary men are most eventful. The
complaint and the apology are both foolish. I do
not see why a successful book is not as great an
event as a successful campaign; only different in
kind, and not easily compared.”
“Indeed,” interrupted Flemming, “in no sense
is the complaint strictly true, though at times apparently
so. Events enough there are, were they
all set down. A life, that is worth writing at all,
is worth writing minutely. Besides, all literary
men have not lived in silence and solitude;—not
all in stillness, not all in shadow. For many
have lived in troubled times, in the rude and adverse
fortunes of the state and age, and could say
with Wallenstein,
`Our life was but a battle and a march;
And, like the wind's blast, never-resting, homeless,
We stormed across the war convulsed earth.'
-- 090 --
[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]
Of such examples history has recorded many;
Dante, Cervantes, Byron, and others; men of
iron; men who have dared to breast the strong
breath of public opinion, and, like spectre-ships,
come sailing right against the wind. Others have
been puffed out by the first adverse wind that
blew; disgraced and sorrowful, because they could
not please others. Truly `the tears live in an
onion, that should water such a sorrow.' Had
they been men, they would have made these disappointments
their best friends, and learned from
them the needful lesson of self-reliance.”
“To confess the truth,” added the Baron, “the
lives of literary men, with their hopes and disappointments,
and quarrels and calamities, present
a melancholy picture of man's strength and weakness.
On that very account the scholar can make
them profitable for encouragement,—consolation,—
warning.”
“And after all,” continued Flemming, “perhaps
the greatest lesson, which the lives of literary
men teach us, is told in a single word; Wait!—
-- 091 --
[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]
Every man must patiently bide his time. He must
wait. More particularly in lands, like my native
land, where the pulse of life beats with such feverish
and impatient throbs, is the lesson needful.
Our national character wants the dignity of repose.
We seem to live in the midst of a battle,—there
is such a din,—such a hurrying to and fro. In
the streets of a crowded city it is difficult to walk
slowly. You feel the rushing of the crowd, and
rush with it onward. In the press of our life it is
difficult to be calm. In this stress of wind and
tide, all professions seem to drag their anchors,
and are swept out into the main. The voices of
the Present say, Come! But the voices of the
Past say, Wait! With calm and solemn footsteps
the rising tide bears against the rushing torrent up
stream, and pushes back the hurrying waters.
With no less calm and solemn footsteps, nor less
certainly, does a great mind bear up against public
opinion, and push back its hurrying stream.
Therefore should every man wait;—should bide
his time. Not in listless idleness,—not in useless
-- 092 --
[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]
pastime,—not in querulous dejection; but in constant,
steady, cheerful endeavours, always willing
and fulfilling, and accomplishing his task, that,
when the occasion comes, he may be equal to
the occasion. And if it never comes, what matters
it? What matters it to the world whether I,
or you, or another man did such a deed, or wrote
such a book, sobeit the deed and book were well
done! It is the part of an indiscreet and troublesome
ambition, to care too much about fame,—
about what the world says of us. To be always
looking into the faces of others for approval;—
to be always anxious for the effect of what we do
and say; to be always shouting to hear the echo
of our own voices! If you look about you,
you will see men, who are wearing life away in
feverish anxiety of fame, and the last we shall
ever hear of them will be the funeral bell, that tolls
them to their early graves! Unhappy men, and
unsuccessful! because their purpose is, not to accomplish
well their task, but to clutch the `trick
and fantasy of fame'; and they go to their graves
-- 093 --
[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]
with purposes unaccomplished and wishes unfulfilled.
Better for them, and for the world in
their example, had they known how to wait!
Believe me, the talent of success is nothing
more than doing what you can do well; and doing
well whatever you do,—without a thought
of fame. If it come at all, it will come because it
is deserved, not because it is sought after. And,
moreover, there will be no misgivings,—no disappointment,—
no hasty, feverish, exhausting excitement.”
Thus endeth the First Book of Hyperion. I
make no record of the winter. Paul Flemming
buried himself in books; in old, dusty books. He
studied diligently the ancient poetic lore of Germany,
from Frankish Legends of Saint George,
and Saxon Rhyme-Chronicles, down through Nibelungen
Lieds, and Helden-Buchs, and Songs of
the Minnesingers and Mastersingers, and Ships
of Fools, and Reinecke Foxes, and Death-Dances
-- 094 --
[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]
and Lamentations of Damned Souls, into the
bright, sunny land of harvests, where, amid the
golden grain and the blue corn-flowers, walk the
modern bards, and sing.
-- --
BOOK THE SECOND.
“Something the heart must have to cherish,
Must love, and joy, and sorrow learn;
Something with passion clasp, or perish,
And in itself to ashes burn.”
-- --
[figure description] Blank Leaf.[end figure description]
-- 097 --
BOOK THE SECOND. CHAPTER I. SPRING.
[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]
It was a sweet carol, which the Rhodian children
sang of old in Spring, bearing in their hands,
from door to door, a swallow, as herald of the
season;
“The Swallow is come!
The Swallow is come!
O fair are the seasons, and light
Are the days that she brings,
With her dusky wings,
And her bosom snowy white.”
A pretty carol, too, is that, which the Hungarian
boys, on the islands of the Danube, sing to the
returning stork in Spring;
“Stork! Stork! poor Stork!
Why is thy foot so bloody?
A Turkish boy hath torn it;
-- 098 --
[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]
Hungarian boy will heal it,
With fiddle, fife, and drum.”
But what child has a heart to sing in this capricious
clime of ours, where Spring comes sailing in
from the sea, with wet and heavy cloud-sails, and
the misty pennon of the East-wind nailed to the
mast! Yet even here, and in the stormy month
of March even, there are bright, warm mornings,
when we open our windows to inhale the balmy
air. The pigeons fly to and fro, and we hear the
whirring sound of wings. Old flies crawl out of
the cracks, to sun themselves; and think it is summer.
They die in their conceit; and so do our
hearts within us, when the cold sea-breath comes
from the eastern sea; and again,
“The driving hail
Upon the window beats with icy flail.”
The red-flowering maple is first in blossom, its
beautiful purple flowers unfolding a fortnight before
the leaves. The moose-wood follows, with
rose-colored buds and leaves; and the dog-wood,
robed in the white of its own pure blossoms. Then
-- 099 --
[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]
comes the sudden rain-storm; and the birds fly to
and fro, and shriek. Where do they hide themselves
in such storms? at what firesides dry their
feathery cloaks? At the fireside of the great,
hospitable sun, to-morrow, not before;—they
must sit in wet garments until then.
In all climates Spring is beautiful. In the South
it is intoxicating, and sets a poet beside himself.
The birds begin to sing;—they utter a few rapturous
notes, and then wait for an answer in the silent
woods. Those green-coated musicians, the frogs,
make holiday in the neighbouring marshes. They,
too, belong to the orchestra of Nature; whose vast
theatre is again opened, though the doors have been
so long bolted with icicles, and the scenery hung
with snow and frost, like cobwebs. This is the
prelude, which announces the rising of the broad
green curtain. Already the grass shoots forth.
The waters leap with thrilling pulse through the
veins of the earth; the sap through the veins of the
plants and trees; and the blood through the veins
of man. What a thrill of delight in spring-time!
-- 100 --
[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]
What a joy in being and moving! Men are at
work in gardens; and in the air there is an odor of
the fresh earth. The leaf-buds begin to swell
and blush. The white blossoms of the cherry
hang upon the boughs like snow-flakes; and
ere long our next-door neighbours will be completely
hidden from us by the dense green foliage.
The May-flowers open their soft blue eyes. Children
are let loose in the fields and gardens. They
hold butter-cups under each others' chins, to see
if they love butter. And the little girls adorn
themselves with chains and curls of dandelions;
pull out the yellow leaves to see if the schoolboy
loves them, and blow the down from the leafless
stalk, to find out if their mothers want them at
home.
And at night so cloudless and so still! Not a
voice of living thing,—not a whisper of leaf or
waving bough,—not a breath of wind,—not a
sound upon the earth nor in the air! And overhead
bends the blue sky, dewy and soft, and radiant
with innumerable stars, like the inverted bell
-- 101 --
[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]
of some blue flower, sprinkled with golden dust,
and breathing fragrance. Or if the heavens are
overcast, it is no wild storm of wind and rain; but
clouds that melt and fall in showers. One does
not wish to sleep; but lies awake to hear the
pleasant sound of the dropping rain.
It was thus the Spring began in Heidelberg.
-- 102 --
CHAPTER II. A COLLOQUY.
[figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]
“And what think you of Tiedge's Urania,” said
the Baron smiling, as Paul Flemming closed the
book, and laid it upon the table.
“I think,” said Flemming, “that it is very
much like Jean Paul's grandfather,—in the highest
degree poor and pious.”
“Bravo!” exclaimed the Baron. “That is
the best criticism I have heard upon the book.
For my part, I dislike the thing as much as Goethe
did. It was once very popular, and lay about in
every parlour and bed-room. This annoyed the
old gentleman exceedingly; and I do not wonder
at it. He complains, that at one time nothing was
sung or said but this Urania. He believed in
Immortality; but wished to cherish his belief in
-- 103 --
[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]
quietness. He once told a friend of his, that he
had, however, learned one thing from all this talk
about Tiedge and his Urania; which was, that the
saints, as well as the nobility, constitute an aristocracy.
He said he found stupid women, who were
proud because they believed in Immortality with
Tiedge, and had to submit himself to not a few
mysterious catechizings and tea-table lectures on
this point; and that he cut them short by saying,
that he had no objection whatever to enter into
another state of existence hereafter, but prayed
only that he might be spared the honor of meeting
any of those there, who had believed in it here;
for, if he did, the saints would flock around him
on all sides, exclaiming, Were we not in the
right? Did we not tell you so? Has it not all
turned out just as we said? And, with such a
conceited clatter in his ears, he thought that, before
the end of six months, he might die of ennui in
Heaven itself.”
“How shocked the good old ladies must have
been,” said Flemming.
-- 104 --
[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]
“No doubt, their nerves suffered a little; but
the young ladies loved him all the better for being
witty and wicked; and thought if they could only
marry him, how they would reform him.”
“Bettina Brentano, for instance.”
“O no! That happened long afterwards.
Goethe was then a silver-haired old man of sixty.
She had never seen him, and knew him only by
his writings; a romantic girl of seventeen.”
“And yet much in love with the Sexagenarian.
And surely a more wild, fantastic, and, excuse me,
German passion never sprang up in woman's
breast. She was a flower, that worshipped the
sun.”
“She afterwards married Achim von Arnim,
and is now a widow. And not the least singular
part of the affair, is, that, having grown older, and
I hope colder, she should herself publish the letters
which passed between her and Goethe.”
“Particularly the letter in which she describes
her first visit to Weimar, and her interview with
the hitherto invisible divinity of her dreams. The
-- 105 --
[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]
old gentleman took her upon his knees, and she
fell asleep with her head upon his shoulder. It
reminds me of Titania and Nick Bottom, begging
your pardon, always, for comparing your All-sided-One
to Nick Bottom. Oberon must have
touched her eyes with the juice of Love-in-idleness.
However, this book of Goethe's Correspondence
with a Child is a very singular and valuable
revelation of the feelings, which he excited
in female hearts. You say she afterwards married
Achim von Arnim?”
“Yes; and he and her brother, Clemens Brentano,
published that wondrous book, the Boy's
Wonder-Horn.”
“The Boy's Wonder-Horn!” said Flemming,
after a short pause, for the name seemed to have
thrown him into a reverie;—“I know the book
almost by heart. Of all your German books it is
the one which produces upon my imagination the
most wild and magic influence. I have a passion
for ballads!”
“And who has not?” said the Baron with a
-- 106 --
[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]
smile. “They are the gypsy-children of song,
born under green hedgerows, in the leafy lanes
and by-paths of literature,—in the genial summer-time.”
“Why do you say summer-time and not summer?”
inquired Flemming. “The expression reminds
me of your old Minnesingers;—of Heinrich
von Ofterdingen, and Walter von der Vogelweide,
and Count Kraft von Toggenburg, and
your own ancestor, I dare say, Burkhart von
Hohenfels. They were always singing of the
gentle summer-time. They seem to have lived
poetry, as well as sung it; like the birds who
make their marriage beds in the voluptuous trees.”
“Is that from Shakspere?”
“No; from Lope de Vega.”
“You are deeply read in the lore of antiquity,
and the Aubades and Watch-Songs of the old
Minnesingers. What do you think of the shoe-maker
poets that came after them,—with their
guilds and singing-schools? It makes me laugh
to think how the great German Helicon, shrunk to
-- 107 --
[figure description] Page 107.[end figure description]
a rivulet, goes bubbling and gurgling over the pebbly
names of Zwinger, Wurgendrussel, Buchenlin,
Hellfire, Old Stoll, Young Stoll, Strong Bopp,
Dang Brotscheim, Batt Spiegel, Peter Pfort, and
Martin Gumpel. And then the Corporation of
the Twelve Wise Masters, with their stumpfereime
and klingende-reime, and their Hans Tindeisen's
rosemary-weise; and Joseph Schmierer's
flowery-paradise-weise, and Frauenlob's yellow-weise,
and blue-weise, and frog-weise, and looking-glass-weise!”
“O, I entreat you,” exclaimed Flemming,
laughing, “do not call those men poets! You
transport me to quaint old Nuremberg, and I see
Hans Sachs making shoes, and Hans Folz shaving
the burgomaster.”
“By the way,” interrupted the Baron, “did
you ever read Hoffmann's beautiful story of Master
Martin, the Cooper of Nuremberg? I will
read it to you this very night. It is the most
delightful picture of that age, which you can conceive.
But look! the sun has already set behind
-- 108 --
[figure description] Page 108.[end figure description]
the Alsatian hills. Let us go up to the castle
and look for the ghost in Prince Ruprecht's tower.
O, what a glorious sunset!”
Flemming looked at the evening sky, and a
shade of sadness stole over his countenance. He
told not to his friend the sorrow, with which his
heart was heavy; but kept it for himself alone.
He knew that the time, which comes to all
men,—the time to suffer and be silent,—had
come to him likewise; and he spake no word.
O well has it been said, that there is no grief like
the grief which does not speak.
-- 109 --
CHAPTER III. OWL-TOWERS.
[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]
“There sits the old Frau Himmelhahn, perched
up in her owl-tower,” said the Baron to Flemming,
as they passed along the Hauptstrasse.
“She looks down through her round-eyed spectacles
from her nest up there, and watches every
one that goes by. I wonder what mischief she is
hatching now? Do you know she has nearly
ruined your character in town? She says you have
a rakish look, because you carry a cane, and your
hair curls. Your gloves, also, are a shade too
light for a strictly virtuous man.”
“It is very kind in her to take such good care
of my character, particularly as I am a stranger in
town. She is doubtless learned in the Clothes-Philosophy.”
-- 110 --
[figure description] Page 110.[end figure description]
“And ignorant of every thing else. She asked
a friend of mine the other day, whether Christ
was a Catholic or a Protestant.”
“That is really too absurd!”
“Not too absurd to be true. And, ignorant as
she is, she contrives to do a good deal of mischief
in the course of the year. Why, the ladies already
call you Wilhelm Meister.”
“They are at liberty to call me what they
please. But you, who know me better, know that
I am something more than they would imply by
the name.”
“She says, moreover, that the American ladies
sit with their feet out of the window, and have no
pocket-handkerchiefs.”
“Excellent!”
They crossed the market-place and went up
beneath the grand terrace into the court-yard of
the castle.
“Let us go up and sit under the great linden-trees,
that grow on the summit of the Rent Tower,”
said Flemming. “From that point as from a
-- 111 --
[figure description] Page 111.[end figure description]
watch-tower we can look down into the garden,
and see the crowd below us.”
“And amuse ourselves, as old Frau Himmelhahn
does, at her window in the Hauptstrasse,”
added the Baron.
The keeper's daughter unlocked for them the
door of the tower, and, climbing the steep stair-case,
they seated themselves on a wooden bench
under the linden-trees.
“How beautifully these trees overgrow the old
tower! And see what a solid mass of masonry
lies in the great fosse down there, toppled from its
base by the explosion of a mine! It is like a
rusty helmet cleft in twain, but still crested with
towering plumes!”
“And what a motley crowd in the garden!
Philisters and Sons of the Muses! And there
goes the venerable Thibaut, taking his evening
stroll. Do you see him there, with his silver
hair flowing over his shoulders, and that friendly
face, which has for so many years pored over the
Pandects. I assure you, he inspires me with awe.
-- 112 --
[figure description] Page 112.[end figure description]
And yet he is a merry old man, and loves his
joke, particularly at the expense of Moses and
other ancient lawgivers.”
Here their attention was diverted by a wild-looking
person, who passed with long strides under
the archway in the fosse, right beneath them,
and disappeared among the bushes. He was
ill-dressed,—his hair flying in the wind,—his
movements hurried and nervous, and the expression
of his broad countenance wild, strange, and
earnest.
“Who can that be!” asked Flemming. “He
strides away indignantly, like one of Ossian's
ghosts?”
“A great philosopher, whose name I have forgotten.
Truly a strange owl!”
“He looks like a lion with a hat on.”
“He is a mystic, who reads Schubert's History
of the Soul, and lives, for the most part, in the
clouds of the Middle Ages. To him the spirit-world
is still open. He believes in the transmigration
of souls; and I dare say is now
-- 113 --
[figure description] Page 113.[end figure description]
following the spirit of some departed friend, who has
taken the form of yonder pigeon.”
“What a strange hallucination! He lives, I
suppose, in the land of cloud-shadows. And, as
St. Thomas Aquinas was said to be lifted up from
the ground by the fervor of his prayers, so, no
doubt, is he by the fervor of his visions.”
“He certainly appears to neglect all sublunary
things; and, to judge from certain appearances,
since you seem fond of holy similitudes, one would
say, that, like St. Serapion the Sindonite, he had
but one shirt. Yet what cares he? he lives in
that poetic dream-land of his thoughts, and clothes
his dream-children in poetry.”
“He is a poet, then, as well as a philosopher?”
“Yes; but a poet who never writes a line.
There is nothing in nature to which his imagination
does not give a poetic hue. But the power
to make others see these objects in the same
poetic light, is wanting. Still he is a man of fine
powers and feelings; for, next to being a great
-- 114 --
[figure description] Page 114.[end figure description]
poet, is the power of understanding one,—of
finding one's-self in him, as we Germans say.”
Three figures, dressed in black, now came from
one of the green alleys, and stopped on the brink
of a little fountain, that was playing among the gay
flowers in the garden. The eldest of the three
was a lady in that season of life, when the early
autumn gives to the summer leaves a warmer
glow, yet fades them not. Though the mother of
many children, she was still beautiful;—resembling
those trees, which blossom in October, when
the leaves are changing, and whose fruit and blossom
are on the branch at once. At her side was
a girl of some sixteen years, who seemed to lean
upon her arm for support. Her figure was slight;
her countenance beautiful, though deadly white;
and her meek eyes like the flower of the night-shade,
pale and blue, but sending forth golden
rays. They were attended by a tall youth of
foreign aspect, who seemed a young Antinous,
with a mustache and a nose à la Kosciusko. In
other respects a perfect hero of romance.
-- 115 --
[figure description] Page 115.[end figure description]
“Unless mine eyes deceive me,” said the Baron,
“there is the Frau von Ilmenau, with her
pale daughter Emma, and that eternal Polish
Count. He is always hovering about them, playing
the unhappy exile, merely to excite that poor
girl's sympathies; and as wretched as genius and
wantonness can make him.”
“Why, he is already married, you know,” replied
Flemming. “And his wife is young and
beautiful.”
“That does not prevent him from being in love
with some one else. That question was decided
in the Courts of Love in the Middle Ages. Accordingly
he has sent his fair wife to Warsaw.
But how pale the poor child looks.”
“She has just recovered from severe illness.
In the winter, you know, it was thought she would
not live from hour to hour.”
“And she has hardly recovered from that disease,
before she seems threatened with a worse
one; namely, a hopeless passion. However, people
do not die of love now-a-days.”
-- 116 --
[figure description] Page 116.[end figure description]
“Seldom, perhaps,” said Flemming. “And
yet it is folly to pretend that one ever wholly recovers
from a disappointed passion. Such wounds
always leave a scar. There are faces I can never
look upon without emotion. There are names I
can never hear spoken without almost starting!”
“But whom have we here?”
“That is the French poet Quinet, with his
sweet German wife; one of the most interesting
women I ever knew. He is the author of a very
wild Mystery, or dramatic prose-poem, in which
the Ocean, Mont-Blanc, and the Cathedral of
Strassburg have parts to play; and the saints on
the stained windows of the minster speak, and
the statues and dead kings enact the Dance of
Death. It is entitled Ahasuerus, or the Wandering
Jew.”
“Or, as the Danes would translate it, the Shoemaker
of Jerusalem. That would be a still more
fantastic title for his fantastic book. You know I
am no great admirer of the modern French school
of writers. The tales of Paul de Kock, who is,
-- 117 --
[figure description] Page 117.[end figure description]
I believe, the most popular of all, seem to me like
obscene stories told at dinner-tables, after the ladies
have retired. It has been well said of him,
that he is not only populaire but populacier; and
equally well said of George Sand and Victor Hugo,
that their works stand like fortifications, well
built and well supplied with warlike munitions; but
ineffectual against the Grand Army of God,
which marches onward, as if nothing had happened.
In surveying a national literature, the point
you must start from, is national character. That
lets you into many a secret; as, for example, Paul
de Kock's popularity. The most prominent trait in
the French character, is love of amusement, and
excitement; and—”
“I should say, rather, the fear of ennui,” interrupted
Flemming. “One of their own writers has
said with a great deal of truth, that the gentry of
France rush into Paris to escape from ennui, as, in
the noble days of chivalry, the defenceless inhabitants
of the champaign fled into the castles, at the
-- 118 --
[figure description] Page 118.[end figure description]
approach of some plundering knight, or lawless
Baron; forsaking the inspired twilight of their native
groves, for the luxurious shades of the royal
gardens. What do you think of that?”
The Baron replied with a smile;
“There is only one Paris; and out of Paris
there is no salvation for decent people.”
Thus conversing of many things, sat the two
friends under the linden-trees on the Rent Tower,
till gradually the crowd disappeared from the garden,
and the objects around them grew indistinct,
in the fading twilight. Between them and the
amber-colored western sky, the dense foliage of
the trees looked heavy and hard, as if cast in
bronze; and already the evening stars hung like
silver lamps in the towering branches of that Tree
of Life, brought more than two centuries ago
from its primeval Paradise in America, to beautify
the gardens of the Palatinate.
“I take a mournful pleasure in gazing at that
tree,” said Flemming, as they rose to depart. “It
stands there so straight and tall, with iron bands
-- 119 --
[figure description] Page 119.[end figure description]
around its noble trunk and limbs, in silent majesty,
or whispering only in its native tongue, and freighting
the homeward wind with sighs! It reminds
me of some captive monarch of a savage tribe,
brought over the vast ocean for a show, and
chained in the public market-place of the city,
disdainfully silent, or breathing only in melancholy
accents a prayer for his native forest, a longing to
be free.”
“Magnificent!” cried the Baron. “I always
experience something of the same feeling when I
walk through a conservatory. The luxuriant plants
of the tropics,—those illustrious exotics, with their
gorgeous, flamingo-colored blossoms, and great,
flapping leaves, like elephant's ears,—have a singular
working upon my imagination; and remind
me of a menagerie and wild-beasts kept in cages.
But your illustration is finer;—indeed, a grand
figure. Put it down for an epic poem.”
-- 120 --
CHAPTER IV. A BEER-SCANDAL.
[figure description] Page 120.[end figure description]
On their way homeward, Flemming and the
Baron passed through a narrow lane, in which was
a well-known Studenten-Kneipe. At the door
stood a young man, whom the Baron at once recognised
as his friend Von Kleist. He was a student;
and universally acknowledged, among his
young acquaintance, as a “devilish handsome fellow”;
notwithstanding a tremendous scar on his
cheek, and a cream-colored mustache, as soft as
the silk of Indian corn. In short he was a renowner,
and a duellist.
“What are you doing here, Von Kleist?”
“Ah, my dear Baron! Is it you? Come in;
come in. You shall see some sport. A Fox-Commerce
is on foot, and a regular Beer-Scandal.”
“Shall we go in, Flemming?”
-- 121 --
[figure description] Page 121.[end figure description]
“Certainly. I should like to see how these
things are managed in Heidelberg. You are a
Baron, and I am a stranger. It is of no consequence
what you and I do, as the king's fool Angeli
said to the poet Bautru, urging him to put on
his hat at the royal dinner-table.”
William Lilly, the Astrologer, says, in his Autobiography,
that, when he was committed to the
guard-room in White Hall, he thought himself in
hell; for “some were sleeping, others swearing,
others smoking tobacco; and in the chimney of
the room there were two bushels of broken tobacco-pipes,
and almost half a load of ashes.” What
he would have thought if he had peeped into this
Heidelberg Studenten-Kneipe, I know not. He
certainly would not have thought himself in heaven;
unless it were a Scandinavian heaven. The
windows were open; and yet so dense was the atmosphere
with the smoke of tobacco, and the
fumes of beer, that the tallow candles burnt but
dimly. A crowd of students were sitting at three
long tables, in the large hall; a medley of fellows,
-- 122 --
[figure description] Page 122.[end figure description]
known at German Universities under the cant
names of Old-Ones, Mossy-Heads, Princes of
Twilight, and Pomatum-Stallions. They were
smoking, drinking, singing, screaming, and discussing
the great Laws of the Broad-Stone and the
Gutter. They had a great deal to say, likewise,
about Besens, and Zobels, and Poussades; and, if
they had been charged for the noise they made, as
travellers used to be, in the old Dutch taverns,
they would have had a longer bill to pay for that,
than for their beer.
In a large arm-chair, upon the middle table,
sat one of those distinguished individuals, known
among German students as a Senior, or Leader of
a Landsmannschaft. He was booted and spurred,
and wore a very small crimson cap, and a very
tight blue jacket, and very long hair, and a very
dirty shirt. He was President of the night; and,
as Flemming entered the hall with the Baron and
his friend, striking upon the table with a mighty
broadsword, he cried in a loud voice;
“Silentium!”
-- 123 --
[figure description] Page 123.[end figure description]
At the same moment a door at the end of the
hall was thrown open, and a procession of newcomers,
or Nasty-Foxes, as they are called in the
college dialect, entered two by two, looking wild,
and green, and foolish. As they came forward,
they were obliged to pass under a pair of naked
swords, held cross-wise by two Old-Ones, who,
with pieces of burnt cork, made an enormous
pair of mustaches, on the smooth, rosy cheeks
of each, as he passed beneath this arch of triumph.
While the procession was entering the
hall, the President lifted up his voice again, and
began to sing the well-known Fox-song, in the
chorus of which all present joined lustily.
What comes there from the hill?
What comes there from the hill?
What comes there from the leathery hill?
Ha! Ha!
Leathery hill!
What comes there from the hill?
-- 124 --
[figure description] Page 124.[end figure description]
It is a postilion!
It is a postilion!
It is a leathery postilion!
Ha! Ha!
Postilion!
It is a postilion!
What brings the postilion?
What brings the postilion?
What brings the leathery postilion?
Ha! Ha!
Postilion!
What brings the postilion?
He bringeth us a Fox!
He bringeth us a Fox!
He bringeth us a leathery Fox!
Ha! Ha!
Leathery Fox!
He bringeth us a Fox!
Your servant, Masters mine!
Your servant, Masters mine!
Your servant, much-honored Masters mine!
Ha! Ha!
Much-honored Masters mine!
Your servant, Masters mine!
-- 125 --
[figure description] Page 125.[end figure description]
How does the Herr Papa?
How does the Herr Papa?
How does the leathery Herr Papa?
Ha! Ha!
Herr Papa!
How does the Herr Papa?
He reads in Cicero!
He reads in Cicero!
He reads in leathery Cicero!
Ha! Ha!
Cicero!
He reads in Cicero!
How does the Frau Mama?
How does the Frau Mama?
How does the leathery Frau Mama?
Ha! Ha!
Frau Mama!
How does the Frau Mama?
She makes the Papa tea!
She makes the Papa tea!
She makes the Papa leathery tea!
Ha! Ha!
Leathery tea!
She makes the Papa tea!
-- 126 --
[figure description] Page 126.[end figure description]
How does the Mamsell Sœur?
How does the Mamsell Sœur?
How does the leathery Mamsell Sœur?
Ha! Ha!
Mamsell Sœur!
How does the Mamsell Sœur?
She knits the Papa stockings!
She knits the Papa stockings!
She knits the Papa leathery stockings!
Ha! Ha!
Leathery stockings!
She knits the Papa stockings!
How does the Herr Rector?
How does the Herr Rector?
How does the leathery Herr Rector?
Ha! Ha!
Herr Rector!
How does the Herr Rector?
He calls the scholar, Boy!
He calls the scholar, Boy!
He calls the scholar, leathery Boy!
Ha! Ha!
Leathery Boy!
He calls the scholar, Boy!
-- 127 --
[figure description] Page 127.[end figure description]
And smokes the Fox tobacco?
And smokes the Fox tobacco?
And smokes the leathery Fox tobacco?
Ha! Ha!
Fox tobacco!
And smokes the Fox tobacco?
A little, Masters mine!
A little, Masters mine!
A little, much-honored Masters mine!
Ha! Ha!
Much-honored Masters mine!
A little, Masters mine!
Then let him fill a pipe!
Then let him fill a pipe!
Then let him fill a leathery pipe!
Ha! Ha!
Leathery pipe!
Then let him fill a pipe!
O Lord! It makes me sick!
O Lord! It makes him sick!
O Lord! It makes me leathery sick!
Ha! Ha!
Leathery sick!
O Lord! It makes me sick!
-- 128 --
[figure description] Page 128.[end figure description]
Then let him throw it off!
Then let him throw it off!
Then let him throw it leathery off!
Ha! Ha!
Leathery off!
Then let him throw it off!
Now I again am well!
Now he again is well!
Now I again am leathery well!
Ha! Ha!
Leathery well!
Now I again am well!
So grows the Fox a Bursch!
So grows the Fox a Bursch!
So grows the leathery Fox a Bursch!
Ha! Ha!
Fox a Bursch!
So grows the Fox a Bursch!
At length the song was finished. Meanwhile
large tufts and strips of paper had been twisted
into the hair of the Branders, as those are called
who have been already one semestre at the University,
and then at a given signal were set on fire,
-- 129 --
[figure description] Page 129.[end figure description]
and the Branders rode round the table on sticks,
amid roars of laughter. When this ceremony was
completed, the President rose from his chair, and
in a solemn voice pronounced a long discourse, in
which old college jokes were mingled with much
parental advice to young men on entering life, and
the whole was profusely garnished with select
passages from the Old Testament. Then they all
seated themselves at the table and the heavy beer-drinking
set in, as among the Gods and Heroes of
the old Northern mythology.
“Brander! Brander!” screamed a youth,
whose face was hot and flushed with supper and
with beer; “Brander, I say? Thou art a Doctor!
No,—a Pope;—thou art a Pope, by—”
These words were addressed to a pale, quiet-looking
person, who sat opposite, and was busy
in making a wretched, shaved poodle sit on his
hind legs in a chair, by his master's side, and hold
a short clay pipe in his mouth,—a performance
to which the poodle seemed no wise inclined.
“Thou art challenged!” replied the pale
-- 130 --
[figure description] Page 130.[end figure description]
Student, turning from his dog, who dropped the pipe
from his mouth and leaped under the table.
Seconds were chosen on the spot; and the arms
ordered; namely, six mighty goblets, or Bassgläser,
filled to the brim with foaming beer. Three were
placed before each duellist.
“Take your weapons!” cried one of the seconds,
and each of the combatants seized a goblet
in his hand.
“Strike!”
And the glasses rang, with a salutation like the
crossing of swords.
“Set to!”
Each set the goblet to his lips.
“Out!”
And each poured the contents down his throat,
as if he were pouring them through a tunnel into
a beer-barrel. The other two glasses followed in
quick succession, hardly a long breath drawn between.
The pale Student was victorious. He
was first to drain the third goblet. He held it for
a moment inverted, to let the last drops fall out,
-- 131 --
[figure description] Page 131.[end figure description]
and then placing it quietly on the table, looked his
antagonist in the face, and said;
“Hit!”
Then, with the greatest coolness, he looked under
the table and whistled for his dog. His antagonist
stopped midway in his third glass. Every
vein in his forehead seemed bursting; his eyes
were wild and bloodshot, his hand gradually loosened
its hold upon the table, and he sank and
rolled together like a sheet of lead. He was
drunk.
At this moment a majestic figure came stalking
down the table, ghost-like, through the dim, smoky
atmosphere. His coat was off, his neck bare, his
hair wild, his eyes wide open, and looking right
before him, as if he saw some beckoning hand in
the air, that others could not see. His left hand
was upon his hip, and in his right he held a drawn
sword extended, and pointing downward. Regardless
of every one, erect, and with a martial stride
he marched directly along the centre of the table,
crushing glasses and overthrowing bottles at every
-- 132 --
[figure description] Page 132.[end figure description]
step. The students shrunk back at his approach;
till at length one more drunk, or more courageous,
than the rest, dashed a glass full of beer into his
face. A general tumult ensued, and the student
with the sword leaped to the floor. It was Von
Kleist. He was renowning it. In the midst of the
uproar could be distinguished the offensive words;
“Arrogant! Absurd! Impertinent! Dummer
Junge!”
Von Kleist went home that night with no less
than six duels on his hands. He fought them all
out in as many days; and came off with only a
gash through his upper lip and another through his
right eyelid from a dexterous Suabian Schlaeger.
-- 133 --
CHAPTER V. THE WHITE LADY'S SLIPPER AND THE PASSION-FLOWER.
[figure description] Page 133.[end figure description]
That night Emma of Ilmenau went to her
chamber with a heavy heart, and her dusky eyes
were troubled with tears. She was one of those
gentle beings, who seem created only to love and
to be loved. A shade of melancholy softened her
character. She shunned the glare of daylight
and of society, and wished to be alone. Like the
evening primrose, her heart opened only after sunset;
but bloomed through the dark night with sweet
fragrance. Her mother, on the contrary, flaunted
in the garish light of society. There was no sympathy
between them. Their souls never approached,
never understood each other, and words were
often spoken which wounded deeply. And
-- 134 --
[figure description] Page 134.[end figure description]
therefore Emma of Ilmenau went to her chamber that
night with tears in her eyes.
She was followed by her French chamber-maid,
Madeleine, a native of Strassburg, who had grown
old in the family. In her youth, she had been
poor,—and virtuous because she had never been
tempted; and, now that she had grown old, and
seen no immediate reward for her virtue, as is
usual with weak minds, she despaired of Providence,
and regretted she had never been tempted.
Whilst this unfortunate personage was lighting the
wax tapers on the toilet, and drawing the bed-curtains,
and tattling about the room, Emma threw
herself into an arm-chair, and, crossing her hands
in her lap, and letting her head fall upon her
bosom, seemed lost in a dream.
“Why have these gentle feelings been given
me!” said she in her heart. “Why have I been
born with all these warm affections,—these ardent
longings after what is good, if they lead only to
sorrow and disappointment? I would love some
one;—love him once and forever;—devote
-- 135 --
[figure description] Page 135.[end figure description]
myself to him alone,—live for him,—die for him,—
exist alone in him! But alas! in all this wide
world there is none to love me, as I would be
loved,—none whom I may love, as I am capable
of loving. How empty, how desolate, seems
the world about me! Why has Heaven given me
these affections, only to fall and fade!”
Alas! poor child! thou too must learn like others,
that the sublime mystery of Providence goes
on in silence, and gives no explanation of itself,—
no answer to our impatient questionings!
“Bless me, child, what ails you?” exclaimed
Madeleine, perceiving that Emma paid no attention
to her idle gossip. “When I was of your
age—”
“Do not talk to me now, good Madeleine.
Leave me, I wish to be alone?”
“Well, here is something,” continued the maid,
taking a billet from her bosom, “which I hope will
enliven you. When I was of your age—”
“Hush! hush!” said Emma, taking the billet
-- 136 --
[figure description] Page 136.[end figure description]
from the hard hand of Madeleine. “Once more
I beg you, leave me! I wish to be alone!”
Madeleine took the lamp and retired slowly,
wishing her young mistress many good nights and
rosy dreams. Emma broke the seal of the note.
As she read, her face became deadly pale, and
then, as quick as thought, a crimson blush gleamed
on her cheek, and her hands trembled. Tenderness,
pity, love, offended pride, the weakness
and dignity of woman, were all mingled in her
look, changing and passing over her fine countenance
like cloud-shadows. She sunk back in
her chair, covering her face with her hands, as if
she would hide it from herself and Heaven.
“He loves me!” said she to herself; “loves
me; and is married to another, whom he loves
not! and dares to tell me this! O, never,—
never,—never! And yet he is so friendless and
alone in this unsympathizing world,—and an exile,
and homeless! I can but pity him;—yet I hate
him, and will see him no more!”
This short reverie of love and hate was broken
-- 137 --
[figure description] Page 137.[end figure description]
by the sound of a clear, mellow voice, which, in
the universal stillness of the hour, seemed almost
like the voice of a spirit. It was a voice, without
the accompaniment of any instrument, singing
those sweet lines of Goethe;
“Under the tree-tops is quiet now!
In all the woodlands hearest thou
Not a sound!
The little birds are asleep in the trees,
Wait! wait! and soon like these,
Sleepest thou!”
Emma knew the voice and started. She rushed
to the window to close it. It was a beautiful
night, and the stars were shining peacefully over
the mountain of All-Saints. The sound of the
Neckar was soft and low, and nightingales were
singing among the brown shadows of the woods.
The large red moon shone, like a ruby, in the
horizon's ample ring; and golden threads of
light seemed braided together with the rippling
current of the river. Tall and spectral stood the
white statues on the bridge. The outline of the
-- 138 --
[figure description] Page 138.[end figure description]
hills, the castle, the arches of the bridge, and the
spires and roofs of the town were as strongly
marked as if cut out of pasteboard. Amid this
fairy scene, a little boat was floating silently down
the stream. Emma closed the window hastily,
and drew the curtains close.
“I hate him; and yet I will pray for him,”
said she, as she laid her weary head upon that pillow,
from which, but a few months before, she
thought she should never raise it again. “O,
that I had died then! I dare not love him, but I
will pray for him!”
Sweet child! If the face of the deceiver comes
so often between thee and Heaven, I tremble for
thy fate! The plant that sprang from Helen's
tears destroyed serpents;—would that from thine
might spring up heart's-ease;—some plant, at
least, to destroy the serpents in thy bosom. Believe
me, upon the margin of celestial streams
alone, those simples grow, which cure the heartache!
And this the silent stars beheld, looking down
-- 139 --
[figure description] Page 139.[end figure description]
from heaven, and told it not again. This, likewise,
the Frau Himmelhahn beheld, looking from
her chamber-window, and was not so discreet as
the silent stars.
-- 140 --
CHAPTER VI. GLIMPSES INTO CLOUD-LAND.
[figure description] Page 140.[end figure description]
“There are many things, which, having no
corporeal evidence, can be perceived and comprehended
only by the discursive energies of reason.
Hence the ambiguous nature of matter can
be comprehended only by adulterated opinion.
Matter is the principle of all bodies, and is stamped
with the impression of forms. Fire, air, and
water derive their origin and principle from the
scalene triangle. But the earth was created from
right-angled triangles, of which two of the sides
are equal. The sphere and the pyramid contain
in themselves the figure of fire; but the octaedron
was destined to be the figure of air, and
the icosaedron of water. The right-angled isosceles
triangle produces from itself a square, and
-- 141 --
[figure description] Page 141.[end figure description]
the square generates from itself the cube, which
is the figure peculiar to earth. But the figure
of a beautiful and perfect sphere was imparted
to the most beautiful and perfect world, that
it might be indigent of nothing, but contain all
things, embracing and comprehending them in
itself, and thus might be excellent and admirable,
similar to and in concord with itself, ever moving
musically and melodiously. If I use a novel language,
excuse me. As Apuleius says, pardon
must be granted to novelty of words, when it
serves to illustrate the obscurity of things.”
These words came from the lips of the lion-like
philosopher, who has been noticed before in these
pages. He was sitting with Flemming, smoking a
long pipe. As the Baron said, he was indeed a
strange owl; for the owl is a grave bird; a monk,
who chants midnight mass in the great temple of
Nature;—an anchorite,—a pillar saint,—the
very Simeon Stylites of his neighbourhood. Such,
likewise, was the philosophical Professor.
-- 142 --
[figure description] Page 142.[end figure description]
Solitary, but with a mighty current, flowed the river
of his life, like the Nile, without a tributary
stream, and making fertile only a single strip in
the vast desert. His temperament had been in
youth a joyous one; and now, amid all his sorrows
and privations, for he had many, he looked upon
the world as a glad, bright, glorious world. On
the many joys of life he gazed still with the eyes
of childhood, from the far-gone Past upward,
trusting, hoping;—and upon its sorrows with the
eyes of age, from the distant Future, downward,
triumphant, not despairing. He loved solitude,
and silence, and candle-light, and the deep midnight.
“For,” said he, “if the morning hours
are the wings of the day, I only fold them about
me to sleep more sweetly; knowing that, at its
other extremity, the day, like the fowls of the
air, has an epicurean morsel,—a parson's nose;
and on this oily midnight my spirit revels and is
glad.”
Such was the Professor, who had been talking
in a half-intelligible strain for two hours or more.
-- 143 --
[figure description] Page 143.[end figure description]
The Baron had fallen fast asleep in his chair; but
Flemming sat listening with excited imagination,
and the Professor continued in the following words,
which, to the best of his listener's memory, seemed
gleaned here and there from Fichte's Destiny
of Man, and Shubert's History of the Soul.
“Life is one, and universal; its forms many
and individual. Throughout this beautiful and
wonderful creation there is never-ceasing motion,
without rest by night or day, ever weaving to and
fro. Swifter than a weaver's shuttle it flies from
Birth to Death, from Death to Birth; from the
beginning seeks the end, and finds it not, for the
seeming end is only a dim beginning of a new
out-going and endeavour after the end. As the
ice upon the mountain, when the warm breath
of the summer sun breathes upon it, melts,
and divides into drops, each of which reflects an
image of the sun; so life, in the smile of God's
love, divides itself into separate forms, each bearing
in it and reflecting an image of God's love.
Of all these forms the highest and most perfect in
-- 144 --
[figure description] Page 144.[end figure description]
its god-likeness is the human soul. The vast
cathedral of Nature is full of holy scriptures, and
shapes of deep, mysterious meaning; but all is
solitary and silent there; no bending knee, no uplifted
eye, no lip adoring, praying. Into this vast
cathedral comes the human soul, seeking its Creator;
and the universal silence is changed to
sound, and the sound is harmonious, and has a
meaning, and is comprehended and felt. It was
an ancient saying of the Persians, that the waters
rush from the mountains and hurry forth into all
the lands to find the Lord of the Earth; and the
flame of the Fire, when it awakes, gazes no more
upon the ground, but mounts heavenward to seek
the Lord of Heaven; and here and there the
Earth has built the great watch-towers of the
mountains, and they lift their heads far up into
the sky, and gaze ever upward and around, to see
if the Judge of the World comes not! Thus in
Nature herself, without man, there lies a waiting,
and hoping, a looking and yearning, after an unknown
somewhat. Yes; when, above there,
-- 145 --
[figure description] Page 145.[end figure description]
where the mountain lifts its head over all others,
that it may be alone with the clouds and storms of
heaven, the lonely eagle looks forth into the gray
dawn, to see if the day comes not! when, by the
mountain torrent, the brooding raven listens to
hear if the chamois is returning from his nightly
pasture in the valley; and when the soon uprising
sun calls out the spicy odors of the thousand
flowers, the Alpine flowers, with heaven's deep
blue and the blush of sunset on their leaves;—
then there awakes in Nature, and the soul of man
can see and comprehend it, an expectation and a
longing for a future revelation of God's majesty.
It awakens, also, when in the fulness of life, field
and forest rest at noon, and through the stillness is
heard only the song of the grasshopper and the
hum of the bee; and when at evening the singing
lark, up from the sweet-smelling vineyards rises,
or in the later hours of night Orion puts on his
shining armour, to walk forth in the fields of heaven.
But in the soul of man alone is this longing
changed to certainty and fulfilled. For lo! the
-- 146 --
[figure description] Page 146.[end figure description]
light of the sun and the stars shines through the
air, and is nowhere visible and seen; the planets
hasten with more than the speed of the storm
through infinite space, and their footsteps are not
heard, but where the sunlight strikes the firm
surface of the planets, where the stormwind
smites the wall of the mountain cliff, there is the
one seen and the other heard. Thus is the glory
of God made visible, and may be seen, where in
the soul of man it meets its likeness changeless
and firm-standing. Thus, then, stands Man;—a
mountain on the boundary between two worlds;—
its foot in one, its summit far-rising into the other.
From this summit the manifold landscape of life
is visible, the way of the Past and Perishable,
which we have left behind us; and, as we evermore
ascend, bright glimpses of the daybreak of
Eternity beyond us!”
Flemming would fain have interrupted this discourse
at times, to answer and inquire, but the
Professor went on, warming and glowing more and
-- 147 --
[figure description] Page 147.[end figure description]
more. At length, there was a short pause, and
Flemming said;
“All these indefinite longings,—these yearnings
after an unknown somewhat, I have felt and
still feel within me; but not yet their fulfilment.”
“That is because you have not faith;” answered
the Professor. “The Present is an age
of doubt and disbelief, and darkness; out of which
shall arise a clear and bright Hereafter. In the
second part of Goethe's Faust, there is a grand
and striking scene, where in the classical Walpurgis
Night, on the Pharsalian Plains, the mocking
Mephistopheles sits down between the solemn antique
Sphinxes, and boldly questions them, and
reads their riddles. The red light of innumerable
watch-fires glares all round about, and shines upon
the terrible face of the arch-scoffer; while on either
side, severe, majestic, solemnly serene, we
behold the gigantic forms of the children of Chim
æra, half buried in the earth, their mild eyes
gazing fixedly, as if they heard through the midnight,
the swift-rushing wings of the Stymphalides,
-- 148 --
[figure description] Page 148.[end figure description]
striving to outstrip the speed of Alcides' arrows!
Angry griffins are near them; and not far are Sirens,
singing their wondrous songs from the rocking
branches of the willow trees! Even thus does
a scoffing and unbelieving Present sit down, between
an unknown Future and a too believing
Past, and question and challenge the gigantic
forms of faith, half buried in the sands of Time,
and gazing forward steadfastly into the night,
whilst sounds of anger and voices of delight alternate
vex and soothe the ear of man!—But the
time will come, when the soul of man shall return
again childlike and trustful to its faith in God; and
look God in the face and die; for it is an old saying,
full of deep, mysterious meaning, that he
must die, who hath looked upon a God. And this
is the fate of the soul, that it should die continually.
No sooner here on earth does it awake to its
peculiar being, than it struggles to behold and comprehend
the Spirit of Life. In the first dim twilight
of its existence, it beholds this spirit, is pervaded
by its energies,—is quick and creative like
-- 149 --
[figure description] Page 149.[end figure description]
the spirit itself, and yet slumbers away into death
after having seen it. But the image it has seen,
remains, in the eternal procreation, as a homogeneal
existence, is again renewed, and the seeming
death, from moment to moment, becomes the
source of kind after kind of existences in ever-ascending
series. The soul aspires ever onward
to love and to behold. It sees the image more
perfect in the brightening twilight of the dawn, in
the ever higher-rising sun. It sleeps again, dying
in the clearer vision; but the image seen remains
as a permanent kind; and the slumberer awakes
anew and ever higher after its own image, till at
length, in the full blaze of noonday, a being comes
forth, which, like the eagle, can behold the sun
and die not. Then both live on, even when this
bodily element, the mist and vapor through which
the young eagle gazed, dissolves and falls to
earth.”
“I am not sure that I understand you,” said
Flemming; “but if I do, you mean to say, that,
as the body continually changes and takes unto
-- 150 --
[figure description] Page 150.[end figure description]
itself new properties, and is not the same to-day as
yesterday, so likewise the soul lays aside its idiosyncrasies,
and is changed by acquiring new powers,
and thus may be said to die. And hence,
properly speaking, the soul lives always in the
Present, and has, and can have, no Future; for
the Future becomes the Present, and the soul that
then lives in me is a higher and more perfect
soul; and so onward forevermore.”
“I mean what I say,” continued the Professor;
“and can find no more appropriate language to
express my meaning than that which I have used.
But as I said before, pardon must be granted to
the novelty of words, when it serves to illustrate
the obscurity of things. And I think you will see
clearly from what I have said, that this earthly life,
when seen hereafter from heaven, will seem like
an hour passed long ago, and dimly remembered;—
that long, laborious, full of joys and sorrows as
it is, it will then have dwindled down to a mere
point, hardly visible to the far-reaching ken of the
disembodied spirit. But the spirit itself soars
-- 151 --
[figure description] Page 151.[end figure description]
onward. And thus death is neither an end nor a beginning.
It is a transition not from one existence
to another, but from one state of existence to another.
No link is broken in the chain of being;
any more than in passing from infancy to manhood,
from manhood to old age. There are seasons of
reverie and deep abstraction, which seem to me
analogous to death. The soul gradually loses its
consciousness of what is passing around it; and
takes no longer cognizance of objects which are
near. It seems for the moment to have dissolved
its connexion with the body. It has passed as it
were into another state of being. It lives in another
world. It has flown over lands and seas;
and holds communion with those it loves, in distant
regions of the earth, and the more distant heaven.
It sees familiar faces, and hears beloved voices,
which to the bodily senses are no longer visible
and audible. And this likewise is death; save
that when we die, the soul returns no more to the
dwelling it has left.”
“You seem to take it for granted,” interrupted
-- 152 --
[figure description] Page 152.[end figure description]
Flemming, “that, in our reveries, the soul really
goes out of the body into distant places, instead of
summoning up their semblance within itself by the
power of memory and imagination!”
“Something I must take for granted,” replied
the Professor. “We will not discuss that point
now. I speak not without forethought. Just observe
what a glorious thing human life is, when
seen in this light; and how glorious man's destiny.
I am; thou art; he is! seems but a school-boy's
conjugation. But therein lies a great mystery.
These words are significant of much. We behold
all round about us one vast union, in which no man
can labor for himself without laboring at the same
time for all others; a glimpse of truth, which by
the universal harmony of things becomes an inward
benediction, and lifts the soul mightily upward.
Still more so, when a man regards himself as a
necessary member of this union. The feeling of
our dignity and our power grows strong, when we
say to ourselves; My being is not objectless and in
vain; I am a necessary link in the great chain,
-- 153 --
[figure description] Page 153.[end figure description]
which, from the full development of consciousness
in the first man, reaches forward into eternity.
All the great, and wise, and good among mankind,
all the benefactors of the human race, whose
names I read in the world's history, and the still
greater number of those, whose good deeds have
outlived their names,—all those have labored for
me. I have entered into their harvest. I walk
the green earth, which they inhabited. I tread in
their footsteps, from which blessings grow. I can
undertake the sublime task, which they once undertook,
the task of making our common brotherhood
wiser and happier. I can build forward,
where they were forced to leave off; and bring
nearer to perfection the great edifice which they
left uncompleted. And at length I, too, must leave
it, and go hence. O, this is the sublimest thought
of all! I can never finish the noble task;
therefore, so sure as this task is my destiny, I can
never cease to work, and consequently never cease
to be. What men call death cannot break off this
task, which is never-ending; consequently no
-- 154 --
[figure description] Page 154.[end figure description]
period is set to my being, and I am eternal. I lift
my head boldly to the threatening mountain peaks,
and to the roaring cataract, and to the storm-clouds
swimming in the fire-sea overhead and say; I am
eternal, and defy your power! Break, break over
me! and thou Earth, and thou Heaven, mingle in
the wild tumult! and ye Elements foam and rage,
and destroy this atom of dust,—this body, which
I call mine! My will alone, with its fixed purpose,
shall hover brave and triumphant over the ruins of
the universe; for I have comprehended my destiny;
and it is more durable than ye! It is eternal;
and I, who recognise it, I likewise am eternal!
Tell me, my friend, have you no faith in
this?”
“I have;” answered Flemming, and there was
another pause. He then said;
“I have listened to you patiently and without
interruption. Now listen to me. You complain
of the skepticism of the age. This is one form
in which the philosophic spirit of the age presents
itself. Let me tell you, that another form, which
-- 155 --
[figure description] Page 155.[end figure description]
it assumes, is that of poetic reverie. Plato of old
had dreams like these; and the Mystics of the
Middle Ages; and still their disciples walk in the
cloud-land and dream-land of this poetic philosophy.
Pleasant and cool upon their souls lie the
shadows of the trees under which Plato taught.
From their whispering leaves comes wafted across
the noise of populous centuries a solemn and mysterious
sound, which to them is the voice of the
Soul of the World. All nature has become spiritualized
and transfigured; and, wrapt in beautiful,
vague dreams of the real and the ideal, they live in
this green world, like the little child in the German
tale, who sits by the margin of a woodland
lake, and hears the blue heaven and the branches
overhead dispute with their reflection in the water,
which is the reality and which the image. I willingly
confess, that such day-dreams as these appeal
strongly to my imagination. Visitants and attendants
are they of those lofty souls, which, soaring
ever higher and higher, build themselves nests under
the very eaves of the stars, forgetful that they
-- 156 --
[figure description] Page 156.[end figure description]
cannot live on air, but must descend to earth for
food. Yet I recognise them as day-dreams only;
as shadows, not substantial things. What I mainly
dislike in the New Philosophy, is the cool impertinence
with which an old idea, folded in a new
garment, looks you in the face and pretends not to
know you, though you have been familiar friends
from childhood. I remember an English author
who, in speaking of your German Philosophies, says
very wisely; `Often a proposition of inscrutable
and dread aspect, when resolutely grappled with,
and torn from its shady den, and its bristling entrenchments
of uncouth terminology,—and dragged
forth into the open light of day, to be seen
by the natural eye and tried by merely human
understanding, proves to be a very harmless truth,
familiar to us from old, sometimes so familiar as to
be a truism. Too frequently the anxious novice
is reminded of Dryden in the Battle of the Books;
there is a helmet of rusty iron, dark, grim, gigantic;
and within it, at the farthest corner, is a head
no bigger than a walnut.'—Can you believe, that
-- 157 --
[figure description] Page 157.[end figure description]
these words ever came from the lips of Carlyle!
He has himself taken up the uncouth terminology
of late; and many pure, simple minds are much
offended at it. They seem to take it as a personal
insult. They are angry; and deny the just meed
of praise. It is, however, hardly worth while to
lose our presence of mind. Let us rather profit
as we may, even from this spectacle, and recognise
the monarch in his masquerade. For, hooded and
wrapped about with that strange and antique garb,
there walks a kingly, a most royal soul, even as
the Emperor Charles walked amid solemn cloisters
under a monk's cowl;—a monarch still in soul.
Such things are not new in the history of the
world. Ever and anon they sweep over the
earth, and blow themselves out soon, and then
there is quiet for a season, and the atmosphere of
Truth seems more serene. Why would you
preach to the wind? Why reason with thunder-showers?
Better sit quiet, and see them pass over
like a pageant, cloudy, superb, and vast.”
-- 158 --
[figure description] Page 158.[end figure description]
The Professor smiled self-complacently, but said
not a word. Flemming continued;
“I will add no more than this;—there are
many speculations in Literature, Philosophy, and
Religion, which, though pleasant to walk in, and
lying under the shadow of great names, yet
lead to no important result. They resemble rather
those roads in the western forests of my native
land, which, though broad and pleasant at first,
and lying beneath the shadow of great branches,
finally dwindle to a squirrel track, and run up a
tree!”
The Professor hardly knew whether he should
laugh or be offended at this sally; and, laying his
hand upon Flemming's arm, he said seriously;
“Believe me, my young friend, the time will
come, when you will think more wisely on these
things. And with you, I trust, that time will soon
come; since it moves more speedily with some
than with others. For what is Time? The shadow
on the dial,—the striking of the clock,—the
running of the sand,—day and night,—
-- 159 --
[figure description] Page 159.[end figure description]
summer and winter,—months, years, centuries!
These are but arbitrary and outward signs,—the
measure of Time, not Time itself! Time is the
Life of the Soul. If not this, then tell me what
it is?”
The high and animated tone of voice in which
the Professor uttered these words aroused the
Baron from his sleep; and, not distinctly comprehending
what was said, but thinking the Professor
asked what time it was, he innocently exclaimed;
“I should think it must be near midnight!”
This somewhat disconcerted the Professor, who
took his leave soon afterward. When he was gone
the Baron said;
“Excuse me for treating your guest so cavalierly.
His transcendentalism annoyed me not a
little; and I took refuge in sleep. One would
think, to judge by the language of this sect, that
they alone saw any beauty in Nature; and, when I
hear one of them discourse, I am instantly reminded
of Goethe's Baccalaureus, when he exclaims;
`The world was not before I created it; I
-- 160 --
[figure description] Page 160.[end figure description]
brought the sun up out of the sea; with me began
the changeful course of the moon; the day decked
itself on my account; the earth grew green and blossomed
to meet me; at my nod in that first night,
the pomp of all the stars developed itself; who
but I set you free from all the bonds of Philisterlike,
contracting thoughts? I, however, emancipated
as my mind assures me I am, gladly pursue
my inward light, advance boldly in a transport
peculiarly my own, the bright before me, and the
dark behind!'—Do you not see a resemblance?
O, they might be modest enough to confess, that
one straggling ray of light may, by some accident,
reach the blind eyes of even us poor, benighted
heathens?”
“Alas! how little veneration we have!” said
Flemming. “I could not help closing the discussion
with a jest. An ill-timed levity often takes
me by surprise. On all such occasions I think of
a scene at the University, where, in the midst of a
grave discussion on the possibility of Absolute
Motion, a scholar said he had seen a rock split
-- 161 --
[figure description] Page 161.[end figure description]
open, from which sprang a toad, who could not be
supposed to have any knowledge of the external
world, and consequently his motion must have
been absolute. The learned Professor, who presided
on that occasion, was hardly more startled
and astonished, than was our learned Professor, five
minutes ago. But come; wind up your watch,
and let us go to bed.”
“By the way,” said the Baron, “did you mind
what a curious head he has. There are two
crowns upon it.”
“That is a sign,” replied Flemming, “that he
will eat his bread in two kingdoms.”
“I think the poor man would be very thankful,”
said the Baron with a smile, “if he were always
sure of eating it in one. He is what the Transcendentalists
call a god-intoxicated man; and I
advise him, as Sauteul advised Bossuet, to go to
Patmos and write a new Apocalypse.”
-- 162 --
CHAPTER VII. MILL-WHEELS AND OTHER WHEELS.
[figure description] Page 162.[end figure description]
A few days after this the Baron received letters
from his sister, telling him, that her physicians had
prescribed a few weeks at the Baths of Ems, and
urging him to meet her there before the fashionable
season.
“Come,” said he to Flemming; “make this
short journey with me. We will pass a few pleasant
days at Ems, and visit the other watering-places
of Nassau. It will drive away the melancholy
day-dreams that haunt you. Perhaps some
future bride is even now waiting for you, with dim
presentiments and undefined longings, at the Serpent's
Bath.”
“Or some widow of Ems, with a cork-leg!”
said Flemming, smiling; and then added, in a tone
-- 163 --
[figure description] Page 163.[end figure description]
of voice half jest, half earnest, “Certainly; let
us go in pursuit of her;—
`Whoe'er she be,
That not impossible she,
That shall command my heart and me.
Where'er she lie,
Hidden from mortal eye,
In shady leaves of destiny.' ”
They started in the afternoon for Frankfort,
pursuing their way slowly along the lovely
Bergstrasse, famed throughout Germany for its
beauty. They passed the ruined house where
Martin Luther lay concealed after the Diet of
Worms, and through the village of Handschuhsheimer,
as old as the days of King Pepin the Short,—
a hamlet, lying under the hills, half-buried in
blossoms and green leaves. Close on the right
rose the mountains of the mysterious Odenwald;
and on the left lay the Neckar, like a steel bow in
the meadow. Farther westward, a thin, smoky
vapor betrayed the course of the Rhine; beyond
which, like a troubled sea, ran the blue, billowy
-- 164 --
[figure description] Page 164.[end figure description]
Alsatian hills. Song of birds, and sound of evening
bells, and fragrance of sweet blossoms filled
the air; and silent and slow sank the broad red
sun, half-hidden amid folding clouds.
“We shall not pass the night at Weinheim,”
said the Baron to the postilion, who had dismounted
to walk up the hill, leading to the town.
“You may drive to the mill in the Valley of
Birkenau.”
The postilion seized one of his fat horses by
the tail, and swung himself up to his seat again.
They rattled through the paved streets of Weinheim,
and took no heed of the host of the Golden
Eagle, who stood so invitingly at the door of his
own inn; and the ruins of Burg Windeck, above
there, on its mountain throne, frowned at them for
hurrying by, without staying to do him homage.
“The old ruin looks well from the valley,”
said the Baron; “but let us beware of climbing
that steep hill. Most travellers are like children;
they must needs touch whatever they behold.
They climb up to every old broken tooth of a
-- 165 --
[figure description] Page 165.[end figure description]
castle, which they find on their way;—get a
toilsome ascent and hot sunshine for their pains,
and come down wearied and disappointed. I trust
we are wiser.”
They crossed the bridge, and turned up the
stream, passing under an arch of stone, which
serves as a gateway to this enchanted Valley of
Birkenau. A cool and lovely valley! shut in by
high hills;—shaded by alder-trees and tall poplars,
under which rushes the Wechsnitz, a noisy
mountain brook, that ever and anon puts its
broad shoulder to the wheel of a mill, and
shows that it can labor as well as laugh. At one
of these mills they stopped for the night.
A mill forms as characteristic a feature in the
romantic German landscape, as in the romantic
German tale. It is not only a mill, but likewise
an ale-house and rural inn; so that the associations
it suggests are not of labor only, but also
of pleasure. It stands in the narrow defile, with
its picturesque, thatched roof; thither throng the
-- 166 --
[figure description] Page 166.[end figure description]
peasants, of a holiday; and there are rustic dances
under the trees.
In the twilight of the fast-approaching summer
night, the Baron and Flemming walked
forth along the borders of the stream. As they
heard it, rushing and gushing among the stones and
tangled roots, and the great wheel turning in the
current, with its never-ceasing plash! plash! it
brought to their minds that exquisite, simple song
of Goethe, the Youth and the Mill-brook. It was
for the moment a nymph, which sang to them in
the voice of the waters.
“I am persuaded,” said Flemming, “that, in
order fully to understand and fell the popular
poetry of Germany, one must be familiar with the
German landscape. Many sweet little poems are
the outbreaks of momentary feelings;—words, to
which the song of birds, the rustling of leaves, and
the gurgle of cool waters form the appropriate
music. Or perhaps I should say they are words,
which man has composed to the music of nature.
Can you not, even now, hear this brooklet telling
-- 167 --
[figure description] Page 167.[end figure description]
you how it is on its way to the mill, where at day-break
the miller's daughter opens her window, and
comes down to bathe her face in its stream, and
her bosom is so full and white, that it kindles the
glow of love in the cool waters!”
“A most delightful ballad, truly,” said the
Baron. “But like many others of our little songs,
it requires a poet to fell and understand it. Sing
them in the valley and woodland shadows, and
under the leafy roofs of garden walks, and at night,
and alone, as they were written. Sing them not in
the loud world,—for the loud world laughs such
things to scorn. It is Mueller who says, in that
little song, where the maiden bids the moon good
evening;
`This song was made to be sung at night,
And he who reads it in broad daylight,
Will never read the mystery right;
And yet it is childlike easy!'
He has written a great many pretty songs, in
which the momentary, indefinite longings and impulses
of the soul of man find an expression. He
-- 168 --
[figure description] Page 168.[end figure description]
calls them the songs of a Wandering Horn-player.
There is one among them much to our present
purpose. He expresses in it, the feeling of unrest
and desire of motion, which the sight and sound of
running waters often produce in us. It is entitled,
`Whither?' and is worth repeating to you.
`I heard a brooklet gushing
From its rocky fountain near,
Down into the valley rushing,
So fresh and wondrous clear.
`I know not what came o'er me,
Nor who the counsel gave;
But I must hasten downward,
All with my pilgrim-stave.
`Downward, and ever farther,
And ever the brook beside;
And ever fresher murmured,
And ever clearer the tide.
`Is this the way I was going?
Whither, O brooklet, say!
Thou hast, with thy soft murmur,
Murmured my senses away.
-- 169 --
[figure description] Page 169.[end figure description]
`What do I say of a murmur?
That can no murmur be;
'T is the water-nymphs, that are singing
Their roundelays under me.
`Let them sing, my friend, let them murmur,
And wander merrily near;
The wheels of a mill are going
In every brooklet clear.' ”
“There you have the poetic reverie,” said
Flemming, “and the dull prose commentary and
explanation in matter of fact. The song is pretty;
and was probably suggested by some such
scene as this, which we are now beholding.
Doubtless all your old national traditions sprang
up in the popular mind as this song in the
poet's.”
“Your opinion is certainly correct,” answered
the Baron; “and yet all this play of poetic fancy
does not prevent me from feeling the chill night
air, and the pangs of hunger. Let us go back to
the mill, and see what our landlady has for
-- 170 --
[figure description] Page 170.[end figure description]
supper. Did you observe what a loud, sharp voice
she has?”
“People always have, who live in mills, and
near water-falls.”
On the following morning they emerged unwillingly
from the green, dark valley, and journeyed
along the level highway to Frankfort, where in
the evening they heard the glorious Don Giovanni
of Mozart. Of all operas this was Flemming's
favorite. What rapturous flights of sound! what
thrilling, pathetic chimes! what wild, joyous revelry
of passion! what a delirium of sense!—what
an expression of agony and woe! all the feelings of
suffering and rejoicing humanity sympathized with
and finding a voice in those tones. Flemming and
the Baron listened with ever-increasing delight.
“How wonderful this is!” exclaimed Flemming,
transported by his feelings. “How the
chorus swells and dies, like the wind of summer!
How those passages of mysterious import seem
to wave to and fro, like the swaying branches
of trees; from which anon some solitary sweet
-- 171 --
[figure description] Page 171.[end figure description]
voice darts off like a bird, and floats away and
revels in the bright, warm sunshine! And then
mark! how, amid the chorus of a hundred voices
and a hundred instruments,—of flutes, and drums,
and trumpets,—this universal shout and whirl-wind
of the vexed air, you can so clearly distinguish
the melancholy vibration of a single string,
touched by the finger,—a mournful, sobbing
sound! Ah, this is indeed human life! where in
the rushing, noisy crowd, and amid sounds of
gladness, and a thousand mingling emotions, distinctly
audible to the ear of thought, are the
pulsations of some melancholy string of the heart,
touched by an invisible hand.”
Then came, in the midst of these excited feelings,
the ballet; drawing its magic net about
the soul. And soon, from the tangled yet harmonious
mazes of the dance, came forth a sylph-like
form, her scarf floating behind her, as if
she were fanning the air with gauze-like wings.
Noiseless as a feather or a snow-flake falls, did
her feet touch the earth. She seemed to float
-- 172 --
[figure description] Page 172.[end figure description]
in the air, and the floor to bend and wave under
her, as a branch, when a bird alights upon
it, and takes wing again. Loud and rapturous
applause followed each wonderful step, each voluptuous
movement; and, with a flushed cheek
and burning eye, and bosom panting to be free,
stood the gracefully majestic figure for a moment
still, and then the winged feet of the swift dancing-girls
glanced round her, and she was lost again in
the throng.
“How truly exquisite this is!” exclaimed the
Baron, after joining loudly in the applause.
“What a noble figure! What grace! what attitudes!
How much soul in every motion! how
much expression in every gesture! I assure you,
it produces upon me the same effect as a beautiful
poem. It is a poem. Every step is a word; and
the whole together a poem!”
The Baron and Flemming were delighted with
the scene; and at the same time exceedingly
amused with the countenance of an old prude in
the next box, who seemed to look upon the whole
-- 173 --
[figure description] Page 173.[end figure description]
magic show, with such feelings as Michal, Saul's
daughter, experienced, when she looked from her
window and saw King David dancing and leaping
with his scanty garments.
“After all,” said Flemming, “the old French
priest was not so far out of the way, when he said,
in his coarse dialect, that the dance is the Devil's
procession; and paint and ornaments, the whetting
of the devil's sword; and the ring that is made
in dancing, the devil's grindstone, whereon he
sharpens his sword; and finally, that a ballet is
the pomp and mass of the Devil, and whosoever
entereth therein, entereth into his pomp and mass;
for the woman who singeth is the prioress of the
Devil, and they that answer are clerks, and they
that look on are parishioners, and the cymbals and
flutes are the bells, and the musicians that play
are the ministers, of the Devil.”
“No doubt this good lady near us, thinks so
likewise,” answered the Baron laughing; “but she
likes it, for all that.”
-- 174 --
[figure description] Page 174.[end figure description]
When the play was over the Baron begged
Flemming to sit still, till the crowd had gone.
“I have a strange fancy,” said he, “whenever
I come to the theatre, to see the end of all things.
When the crowd is gone, and the curtain raised
again to air the house, and the lamps are all out,
save here and there one behind the scenes, the
contrast with what has gone before is most impressive.
Every thing wears a dream-like aspect.
The empty boxes and stalls,—the silence,—the
smoky twilight, and the magic scene dismantled,
produce in me a strange, mysterious feeling. It
is like a dim reflection of a theatre in water, or in
a dusty mirror; and reminds me of some of Hoffmann's
wild Tales. It is a practical moral lesson,—
a commentary on the play, and makes the show
complete.”
It was truly as he said; only tenfold more desolate,
solemn, and impressive; and produced upon
the mind the effect we experience, when slumber
is suddenly broken, and dreams and realities
-- 175 --
[figure description] Page 175.[end figure description]
mingle, and we know not yet whether we sleep or
wake. As they at length passed out through the
dimly-lighted passage, they heard a vulgar-looking
fellow, with a sensual face and shaggy whiskers,
say to some persons who were standing near
him, and seemed to be hangers-on of the play-house;
“I shall run her six nights at Munich, and then
take her on to Vienna.”
Flemming thought he was speaking of some favorite
horse. He was speaking of his beautiful
wife, the ballet-dancer.
-- 176 --
CHAPTER VIII. OLD HUMBUG.
[figure description] Page 176.[end figure description]
What most interested our travellers in the ancient
city of Frankfort, was neither the opera nor
the Ariadne of Dannecker, but the house in which
Goethe was born, and the scenes he frequented in
his childhood, and remembered in his old age.
Such for example are the walks around the city,
outside the moat; the bridge over the Maine, with
the golden cock on the cross, which the poet beheld
and marvelled at when a boy; the cloister of
the Barefooted Friars, through which he stole with
mysterious awe to sit by the oilcloth-covered table
of old Rector Albrecht; and the garden in which
his grandfather walked up and down among fruit-trees
and rose-bushes, in long morning gown,
black velvet cap, and the antique leather gloves,
-- 177 --
[figure description] Page 177.[end figure description]
which he annually received as Mayor on Pipers-Doomsday,
representing a kind of middle personage
between Alcinous and Laertes. Thus, O Genius!
are thy foot-prints hallowed; and the star
shines forever over the place of thy nativity.
“Your English critics may rail as they list,”
said the Baron, while he and Flemming were returning
from a stroll in the leafy gardens, outside the
moat; “but, after all, Goethe was a magnificent
old fellow. Only think of his life; his youth of
passion, alternately aspiring and desponding, stormy,
impetuous, headlong;—his romantic manhood,
in which passion assumes the form of
strength; assiduous, careful, toiling, without haste,
without rest; and his sublime old age,—the age
of serene and classic repose, where he stands like
Atlas, as Claudian has painted him in the Battle
of the Giants, holding the world aloft upon his
head, the ocean-streams hard frozen in his hoary
locks.”
“A good illustration of what the world calls his
indifferentism.”
-- 178 --
[figure description] Page 178.[end figure description]
“And do you know I rather like this indifferentism?
Did you never have the misfortune to live
in a community, where a difficulty in the parish
seemed to announce the end of the world? or to
know one of the benefactors of the human race,
in the very `storm and pressure period' of his
indiscreet enthusiasm? If you have, I think you
will see something beautiful in the calm and dignified
attitude which the old philosopher assumes.”
“It is a pity, that his admirers had not a little
of this philosophic coolness. It amuses me to read
the various epithets, which they apply to him;
The Dear, dear Man! The Life-enjoying Man!
The All-sided One! The Representative of Poetry
upon earth! The Many-sided Master-Mind of
Germany! His enemies rush into the other extreme,
and hurl at him the fierce names of Old
Humbug! and Old Heathen! which hit like pistol-bullets.”
“I confess, he was no saint.”
“No; his philosophy is the old ethnic philosophy.
You will find it all in a convenient and
-- 179 --
[figure description] Page 179.[end figure description]
concentrated, portable form in Horace's beautiful
Ode to Thaliarcus. What I most object to in the
old gentleman is his sensuality.”
“O nonsense. Nothing can be purer than the
Iphigenia; it is as cold and passionless as a marble
statue.”
“Very true; but you cannot say the same
of some of the Roman Elegies and of that
monstrous book the Elective Affinities.”
“Ah, my friend, Goethe is an artist; and
looks upon all things as objects of art merely.
Why should he not be allowed to copy in words
what painters and sculptors copy in colors and in
marble?”
“The artist shows his character in the choice of
his subject. Goethe never sculptured an Apollo,
nor painted a Madonna. He gives us only sinful
Magdalens and rampant Fauns. He does not so
much idealize as realize.”
“He only copies nature.”
“So did the artists, who made the bronze
-- 180 --
[figure description] Page 180.[end figure description]
lamps of Pompeii. Would you hang one of
those in your hall? To say that a man is an
artist and copies nature is not enough. There are
two great schools of art; the imitative and the
imaginative. The latter is the most noble, and
most enduring; and Goethe belonged rather to the
former. Have you read Menzel's attack upon
him?”
“It is truly ferocious. The Suabian hews into
him lustily. I hope you do not side with him.”
“By no means. He goes too far. He blames
the poet for not being a politician. He might as
well blame him for not being a missionary to the
Sandwich Islands.”
“And what do you think of Eckermann?”
“I think he is a toady; a kind of German
Boswell. Goethe knew he was drawing his portrait,
and attitudinized accordingly. He works
very hard to make a Saint Peter out of an old Jupiter,
as the Catholics did at Rome.”
“Well; call him Old Humbug, or Old
-- 181 --
[figure description] Page 181.[end figure description]
Heathen, or what you please; I maintain, that, with
all his errors and short-comings, he was a glorious
specimen of a man.”
“He certainly was. Did it ever occur to you
that he was in some points like Ben Franklin? a
kind of rhymed Ben Franklin? The practical tendency
of his mind was the same; his love of science
was the same; his benignant, philosophic spirit
was the same; and a vast number of his little
poetic maxims and sooth-sayings seem nothing
more than the worldly wisdom of Poor Richard,
versified.”
“What most offends me is, that now every
German jackass must have a kick at the dead
lion.”
“And every one who passes through Weimar
must throw a book upon his grave, as travellers
did of old a stone upon the grave of Manfredi, at
Benevento. But, of all that has been said or
sung, what most pleases me is Heine's Apologetic,
if I may so call it; in which he says, that the
minor poets, who flourished under the imperial
-- 182 --
[figure description] Page 182.[end figure description]
reign of Goethe `resemble a young forest, where
the trees first show their own magnitude after
the oak of a hundred years, whose branches
had towered above and overshadowed them, has
fallen. There was not wanting an opposition,
that strove against Goethe, this majestic tree.
Men of the most warring opinions united themselves
for the contest. The adherents of the old
faith, the orthodox, were vexed, that, in the trunk
of the vast tree, no niche with its holy image was
to be found; nay, that even the naked Dryads of
paganism were permitted to play their witchery
there; and gladly, with consecrated axe, would
they have imitated the holy Boniface, and levelled
the enchanted oak to the ground. The followers
of the new faith, the apostles of liberalism, were
vexed on the other hand, that the tree could not
serve as the Tree of Liberty, or, at any rate, as a
barricade. In fact the tree was too high; no one
could plant the red cap upon its summit, or dance
the Carmagnole beneath its branches. The multitude,
however, venerated this tree for the very
-- 183 --
[figure description] Page 183.[end figure description]
reason, that it reared itself with such independent
grandeur, and so graciously filled the world with
its odor, while its branches, streaming magnificently
toward heaven, made it appear, as if the stars
were only the golden fruit of its wondrous limbs.'
Don't you think that beautiful?”
“Yes, very beautiful. And I am glad to see,
that you can find something to admire in my favorite
author, notwithstanding his frailties; or, to
use an old German saying, that you can drive
the hens out of the garden without trampling
down the beds.”
“Here is the old gentleman himself!” exclaimed
Flemming.
“Where!” cried the Baron, as if for the moment
he expected to see the living figure of the
poet walking before them.
“Here at the window,—that full-length cast.
Excellent, is it not! He is dressed, as usual, in
his long yellow nankeen surtout, with a white cravat
crossed in front. What a magnificent head!
and what a posture! He stands like a tower of
-- 184 --
[figure description] Page 184.[end figure description]
strength. And, by Heavens! he was nearly
eighty years old, when that was made.”
“How do you know?”
“You can see by the date on the pedestal.”
“You are right. And yet how erect he stands,
with his square shoulders braced back, and his
hands behind him. He looks as if he were standing
before the fire. I feel tempted to put a live
coal into his hand, it lies so invitingly half-open.
Gleim's description of him, soon after he went to
Weimar, is very different from this. Do you
recollect it?”
“No, I do not.”
“It is a story, which good old father Gleim
used to tell with great delight. He was one
evening reading the Göttingen Musen-Almanach
in a select society at Weimar, when a young man
came in, dressed in a short, green shooting-jacket,
booted and spurred, and having a pair of brilliant,
black, Italian eyes. He in turn offered to read;
but finding probably the poetry of the Musen-Almanach
of that year rather too insipid for him,
-- 185 --
[figure description] Page 185.[end figure description]
he soon began to improvise the wildest and most
fantastic poems imaginable, and in all possible forms
and measures, all the while pretending to read from
the book. `That is either Goethe or the Devil,'
said good old father Gleim to Wieland, who sat
near him. To which the `Great I of Osmannstadt'
replied; `It is both, for he has the Devil in
him to-night; and at such times he is like a wanton
colt, that flings out before and behind, and you
will do well not to go too near him!' ”
“Very good!”
“And now that noble figure is but mould. Only
a few months ago, those majestic eyes looked
for the last time on the light of a pleasant spring
morning. Calm, like a god, the old man sat; and
with a smile seemed to bid farewell to the light of
day, on which he had gazed for more than eighty
years. Books were near him, and the pen which
had just dropped, as it were from his dying fingers.
`Open the shutters, and let in more light!' were
the last words that came from those lips. Slowly
stretching forth his hand, he seemed to write in
-- 186 --
[figure description] Page 186.[end figure description]
the air; and, as it sank down again and was motionless,
the spirit of the old man departed.”
“And yet the world goes on. It is strange how
soon, when a great man dies, his place is filled;
and so completely, that he seems no longer wanted.
But let us step in here. I wish to buy that cast;
and send it home to a friend.”
-- 187 --
CHAPTER IX. THE DAYLIGHT OF THE DWARFS, AND THE FALLING STAR.
[figure description] Page 187.[end figure description]
After lingering a day or two in Frankfort, the
two friends struck across through Hochheim to the
Rhine, and then up among the hills of the Rheingau
to Schlangenbad, where they tarried only to
bathe, and to dine; and then pursued their way
to Langenschwalbach. The town lies in a valley,
with gently-sloping hills around it, and long
avenues of poplars leading forth into the fields.
One interminable street cuts the town in twain,
and there are old houses with curious faces carved
upon their fronts, and dates of the olden time.
Our travellers soon sallied forth from their hotel,
impatient to drink the strength-giving waters
-- 188 --
[figure description] Page 188.[end figure description]
of the fountains. They continued their walk far
up the valley under the poplars. The new grain
was waving in the fields; the birds singing in the
trees and in the air; and every thing seemed
glad, save a poor old man, who came tottering
out of the woods, with a heavy bundle of sticks
on his shoulders.
Returning upon their steps, they passed down
the valley and through the long street to the
tumble-down old Lutheran church. A flight of
stone steps leads from the street to the green terrace
or platform on which the church stands, and
which, in ancient times, was the churchyard, or as
the Germans more devoutly say, God's-acre; where
generations are scattered like seeds, and that which
is sown in corruption shall be raised hereafter in
incorruption. On the steps stood an old man,—
a very old man,—holding a little girl by the
hand. He took off his greasy cap as they passed,
and wished them good day. His teeth were
gone; he could hardly articulate a syllable. The
Baron asked him how old the church was. He
-- 189 --
[figure description] Page 189.[end figure description]
gave no answer; but when the question was repeated,
came close up to them, and taking off his
cap again, turned his ear attentively, and said;
“I am hard of hearing.”
“Poor old man,” said Flemming; “He is as
much a ruin as the church we are entering. It
will not be long before he, too, shall be sown as
seed in this God's-acre!”
The little girl ran into a house close at hand,
and brought out the great key. The church door
swung open, and, descending a few steps, they
passed through a low-roofed passage into the
church. All was in ruin. The gravestones in
the pavement were started from their places;
the vaults beneath yawned; the roof above was
falling piecemeal; there were rents in the old
tower; and mysterious passages, and side doors
with crazy flights of wooden steps, leading down
into the churchyard. Amid all this ruin, one
thing only stood erect; it was a statue of a knight
in armour, standing in a niche under the pulpit.
“Who is this?” said Flemming to the old
-- 190 --
[figure description] Page 190.[end figure description]
sexton; “who is this, that stands here so solemnly in
marble, and seems to be keeping guard over the
dead men below?”
“I do not know,” replied the old man; “but I
have heard my grandfather say it was the statue
of a great warrior!”
“There is history for you!” exclaimed the
Baron. “There is fame! To have a statue of
marble, and yet have your name forgotten by the
sexton of your parish, who can remember only,
that he once heard his grandfather say, that you
were a great warrior!”
Flemming made no reply, for he was thinking
of the days, when from that old pulpit, some bold
reformer thundered down the first tidings of a new
doctrine, and the roof echoed with the grand old
hymns of Martin Luther.
When he communicated his thoughts to the
Baron, the only answer he received was;
“After all, what is the use of so much preaching?
Do you think the fishes, that heard the sermon
of St. Anthony, were any better than those
-- 191 --
[figure description] Page 191.[end figure description]
who did not? I commend to your favorable
notice the fish-sermon of this saint, as recorded
by Abraham à Santa Clara. You will find it in
your favorite Wonder-Horn.”
Thus passed the day at Langenschwalbach; and
the evening at the Allée-Saal was quite solitary;
for as yet no company had arrived to fill its chambers,
or sit under the trees before the door. The
next morning even Flemming and the Baron were
gone; for the German's heart was beating with
strong desire to embrace his sister; and the heart
of his friend cared little whither he went, sobeit
he were not too much alone.
After a few hours' drive, they were looking
down from the summit of a hill right upon the
house-tops of Ems. There it lay, deep sunk in
the hollow beneath them, as if some inhabitant
of Sirius, like him spoken of in Voltaire's tale
of Micromegas, held it in the hollow of his
hand. High and peaked rise the hills, that throw
their shadows into this romantic valley, and at
their base winds the river Lahn. Our travellers
-- 192 --
[figure description] Page 192.[end figure description]
drove through the one long street, composed entirely
of hotels and lodging-houses. Sick people looked
out of the windows, as they passed. Others were
walking leisurely up and down, beneath the few
decapitated trees, which represent a public promenade;
and a boy, with a blue frock and crimson
cap, was driving three donkeys down the street.
In short, they were in a fashionable watering-place;
as yet sprinkled only by a few pattering
drops of the summer rain of strangers, which generally
follows the first hot days.
On alighting at the London Hotel, the Baron
found—not his sister, but only a letter from her,
saying she had changed her mind and gone to the
Baths of Franconia. This was a disappointment,
which the Baron pocketed with the letter, and said
not a word more about either. It was his way;
his life-philosophy in small things and great. In
the evening, they went to an æsthetic tea, at the
house of the Frau Kranich, the wife of a rich
banker of Frankfort.
“I must tell you about this Frau Kranich,”
-- 193 --
[figure description] Page 193.[end figure description]
said the Baron to Flemming, on the way. “She
is a woman of talent and beauty, and just in the
prime of life. But, unfortunately, very ambitious.
Her mania is, to make a figure in the fashionable
world; and to this end she married a rich banker
of Frankfort, old enough to be her father, not to
say her grandfather, hoping, doubtless, that he
would soon die; for, if ever a woman wished to be
a widow, she is that woman. But the old fellow
is tough and won't die. Moreover, he is deaf, and
crabbed, and penurious, and half the time bed-ridden.
The wife is a model of virtue, notwithstanding
her weakness. She nurses the old gentleman
as if he were a child. And, to crown all, he
hates society, and will not hear of his wife's receiving
or going into company.”
“How, then, can she give soirées?” asked
Flemming.
“I was just going to tell you,” continued the
Baron. “The gay lady has no taste for long evenings
with the old gentleman in the back chamber;—
for being thus chained like a criminal
-- 194 --
[figure description] Page 194.[end figure description]
under Mezentius, face to face with a dead body. So
she puts him to bed first, and—”
“Gives him opium.”
“Yes, I dare say; and then gives herself a
soirée, without his knowing any thing about it.
This course of deception is truly hateful in itself,
and must be particularly so to her, for she is not
a low, or an immoral woman; but one of those
who, not having strength enough to complete the
sacrifice they have had strength enough to commence,
are betrayed into a life of duplicity and
falsehood.”
They had now reached the house, and were
ushered into a room gaily lighted and filled with
guests. The hostess came forward to receive them,
dressed in white, and sailing down the room like a
swan. When the customary salutations had passed
and Flemming had been duly presented, the
Baron said, not without a certain degree of malice;
“And, my dear Frau Kranich, how is your good
husband to night?”
This question was about as discreet as a
-- 195 --
[figure description] Page 195.[end figure description]
cannon-ball. But the lady replied in the simplicity
of her heart, and not in the least disconcerted;
“The same as ever, my dear Baron. It is astonishing
how he holds out. But let us not talk of
these things now. I must introduce your friend to
his countryman, the Grand Duke of Mississippi;
alike remarkable for his wealth, his modesty, and
the extreme simplicity of his manners. He drives
only six horses. Besides, he is known as a man of
learning and piety;—has his private chapel, and
private clergyman, who always preaches against
the vanity of worldly riches. He has also a private
secretary, whose sole duty is to smoke to him, that
he may enjoy the aroma of Spanish cigars, without
the trouble of smoking.”
“Decidedly a man of genius!”
Here Flemming was introduced to his illustrious
countryman; a person who seemed to consist chiefly
of linen, such a display did he make of collar,
bosom, and wristbands.
“Pray, Mr. Flemming, what do you think of
that Rembrandt?” said he, pointing to a picture on
-- 196 --
[figure description] Page 196.[end figure description]
the wall. “Exquisite picture! The grandeur of
sentiment and splendor of chiaroscuro are of the
first order. Just observe the liquidity of the water,
and the silveryness of the clouds! Great
power! There is a bravura of handling in that
picture, Sir, which requires the eye of the connoisseur
to appreciate.”
“Yes, a most undoubted—copy!”
And here their conversation ended; for at that
moment the little Moldavian Prince Jerkin made
his way through the crowd, with his snuff-box as
usual in his hand, and hurried up to Flemming
whom he had known in Heidelberg. He was
eager to let every one know that he spoke English,
and in his haste began by making a mistake.
“Good bye! Good bye! Mr. Flemming!”
said he, instead of good evening. “I am ravished
to see you in Ems. Nice place;—all that there
is of most nice. I drink my water and am good!
Do you not think the Frau Kranich has a very
beautiful leather?”
He meant skin. Flemming laughed outright;
-- 197 --
[figure description] Page 197.[end figure description]
but it was not perceived by the Prince, because at
that moment he was pushed aside, in the rush of a
gallopade, and Flemming beheld his face no more.
At the same moment the Baron introduced a
friend of his, who also spoke English and said;
“You will sup with me to-night. I have some
Rhine-wine, which will be a seduction to you.”
Soon after, the Baron stood with an impassioned,
romantic lady leaning on his arm, examining a
copy of Raphael's Fornarina.
“Ach! I wish I had been the Fornarina,”
sighed the impassioned, romantic lady.
“Then, my dear Madam,” replied the Baron,
“I wish I had been Raphael.”
And so likewise said to himself a very tall man
with fiery red hair, and fancy whiskers, who was
waltzing round and round in one spot, and in a
most extraordinary waistcoat; thus representing a
fiery, floating-light, to warn men of the hidden
rocks, on which the breath of vanity drives them
shipwreck. At length, his partner, tired of
-- 198 --
[figure description] Page 198.[end figure description]
spinning, sank upon a sofa, like a child's top, when it
reels and falls.
“You do not like the waltz?” said an elderly
French gentleman, remarking the expression of
Flemming's countenance.
“O yes; among the figurantes of the Opera.
But I confess, it sometimes makes me shudder to
see a young rake clasp his arms round the waist of
a pure and innocent girl. What would you say,
were you to see him sitting on a sofa with his arms
round your wife?”
“Mere prejudice of education,” replied the
French gentleman. “I know that situation. I
have read all about it in the Bibliothèque de Romans
Choisis!”
And merrily went the dance; and bright eyes
and flushed cheeks were not wanting among the
dancers;
“And they waxed red, and waxed warm,
And rested, panting, arm in arm,”
and the Strauss-walzes sounded pleasantly in the
ears of Flemming, who, though he never danced,
-- 199 --
[figure description] Page 199.[end figure description]
yet, like Henry of Ofterdingen, in the Romance of
Novalis, thought to music. The wheeling waltz
set the wheels of his fancy going. And thus the
moments glided on, and the footsteps of Time
were not heard amid the sound of music and
voices.
But suddenly this scene of gayety was interrupted.
The door opened wide; and the short
figure of a gray-haired old man presented itself,
with a flushed countenance and wild eyes. He
was but half-dressed, and in his hand held a silver
candlestick without a light. A sheet was wound
round his head, like a turban; and he tottered
forward with a vacant, bewildered look, exclaiming;
“I am Mahomet, the king of the Jews!”
At the same moment he fell in a swoon; and
was borne out of the room by the servants. Flemming
looked at the lady of the festival, and she
was deadly pale. For a moment all was confusion;
and the dance and the music stopped. The
-- 200 --
[figure description] Page 200.[end figure description]
impression produced on the company was at once
ludicrous and awful. They tried in vain to rally.
The whole society was like a dead body, from
which the spirit has departed. Ere long the guests
had all dispersed, and left the lady of the mansion
to her mournful, expiring lamps, and still more
mournful reflections.
“Truly,” said Flemming, to the Baron, as they
wended their way homeward, “this seems not
like reality; but like one of the sharp contrasts
we find in novels. Who shall say, after this, that
there is not more romance in real life, than we find
written in books!”
“Not more romance,” said the Baron, “but a
different romance.”
A still more tragic scene had been that evening
enacted in Heidelberg. Just as the sun set,
two female figures walked along the romantic
woodland path-way, leading to the Angel's Meadow,
a little green opening on the brow of one of
the high hills, which see themselves in the Neckar
and hear the solemn bells of Kloster-Neuburg.
-- 201 --
[figure description] Page 201.[end figure description]
The evening shadows were falling broad and long;
and the cuckoo began to sing.
“Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” said the eldest of the
two figures, repeating an old German popular
rhyme,
`Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
Tell me true,
Tell me fair and fine,
How long must I unmarried pine!' ”
It was the voice of an evil spirit, that spoke in
the person of Madeleine; and the pale and shrinking
figure, that walked by her side, and listened
to those words, was Emma of Ilmenau. A young
man joined them, where the path turns into the
thick woodlands; and they disappeared among the
shadowy branches. It was the Polish Count.
The forget-me-nots looked up to heaven with
their meek blue eyes, from their home in the
Angel's Meadow. Calmly stood the mountain of
All-Saints, in its majestic, holy stillness;—the
river flowed so far below, that the murmur of its
-- 202 --
[figure description] Page 202.[end figure description]
waters was not heard;—there was not a sigh of
the evening wind among the leaves,—not a sound
upon the earth nor in the air;—and yet that
night there fell a star from heaven!
-- 203 --
CHAPTER X. THE PARTING.
[figure description] Page 203.[end figure description]
It was now that season of the year, which an
old English writer calls the amiable month of
June, and at that hour of the day, when, face to
face, the rising moon beholds the setting sun. As
yet the stars were few in heaven. But, after
the heat of the day, the coolness and the twilight
descended like a benediction upon the earth, by all
those gentle sounds attended, which are the meek
companions of the night.
Flemming and the Baron had passed the afternoon
at the Castle. They had rambled once
more together, and for the last time, over the
magnificent ruin. On the morrow they were to
part, perhaps forever. The Baron was going to
Berlin, to join his sister; and Flemming, driven
-- 204 --
[figure description] Page 204.[end figure description]
forward by the restless spirit within him, longed
once more for a change of scene, and was going to
the Tyrol and Switzerland. Alas! he never said
to the passing hour; “Stay, for thou art fair!”
but reached forward into the dark future, with
unsatisfied longings and aimless desires, that were
never still.
As the day was closing, they sat down on the
terrace of Elisabeth's Garden. The sun had
set beyond the blue Alsatian hills; and on the valley
of the Rhine fell the purple mist, like the mantle
of the departing prophet from his fiery chariot.
Over the castle walls, and the trees of the garden,
rose the large moon; and between the contending
daylight and moonlight there were as yet no
shadows. But at length the shadows came; transparent
and faint outlines, that deepened into form.
In the valley below only the river gleamed, like
steel; and here and there the lamps were lighted
in the town. Solemnly stood the leafy lindentrees
in the garden near them, their trunks in
darkness and their summits bronzed with
-- 205 --
[figure description] Page 205.[end figure description]
moonlight; and in his niche in the great round tower,
overhung with ivy, like a majestic phantom, stood
the gray statue of Louis, with his venerable beard,
and shirt of mail, and flowing mantle; and the
mild, majestic countenance looked forth into the
silent night, as the countenance of a seer, who
reads the stars. At intervals the wind of the
summer night passed through the ruined castle
and the trees, and they sent forth a sound as if
nature were sighing in her dreams; and for a moment
overhead the broad leaves gently clashed together,
like brazen cymbals, with a tinkling sound;
and then all was still, save the sweet, passionate
song of nightingales, that nowhere upon earth
sing more sweetly than in the gardens of Heidelberg
Castle.
The hour, the scene, and the near-approaching
separation of the two young friends, had filled their
hearts with a pleasant, though at the same time
not painless excitement. They had been conversing
about the magnificent old ruin, and the
ages in which it had been built, and the
-- 206 --
[figure description] Page 206.[end figure description]
vicissitudes of time and war, that had battered down its
walls, and left it “tenantless, save to the crannying
wind.”
“How sorrowful and sublime is the face of that
statue yonder,” said Flemming. “It reminds me
of the old Danish hero Beowulf; for careful, sorrowing,
he seeth in his son's bower the wine-hall
deserted, the resort of the wind, noiseless;
the knight sleepeth; the warrior lieth in darkness;
there is no noise of the harp, no joy in the
dwellings, as there was before.”
“Even as you say,” replied the Baron; “but
it often astonishes me, that, coming from that fresh
green world of yours beyond the sea, you should
feel so much interest in these old things; nay, at
times, seem so to have drunk in their spirit, as
really to live in the times of old. For my part, I
do not see what charm there is in the pale and
wrinkled countenance of the Past, so to entice the
soul of a young man. It seems to me like falling
in love with one's grandmother. Give me the
Present;—warm, glowing, palpitating with life.
-- 207 --
[figure description] Page 207.[end figure description]
She is my mistress; and the Future stands waiting
like my wife that is to be, for whom, to tell the
truth, I care very little just now. Indeed, my
friend, I wish you would take more heed of this
philosophy of mine; and not waste the golden
hours of youth in vain regrets for the past, and
indefinite, dim longings for the future. Youth
comes but once in a lifetime.”
“Therefore,” said Flemming; “let us so enjoy
it as to be still young when we are old. For my
part, I grow happier as I grow older. When I
compare my sensations and enjoyments now, with
what they were ten years ago, the comparison is
vastly in favor of the present. Much of the fever
and fretfulness of life is over. The world and I
look each other more calmly in the face. My
mind is more self-possessed. It has done me good
to be somewhat parched by the heat and drenched
by the rain of life.”
“Now you speak like an old philosopher,” answered
the Baron, laughing. “But you deceive
yourself. I never knew a more restless, feverish
-- 208 --
[figure description] Page 208.[end figure description]
spirit than yours. Do not think you have gained
the mastery yet. You are only riding at anchor
here in an eddy of the stream; you will soon be
swept away again in the mighty current and whirl
of accident. Do not trust this momentary calm.
I know you better than you know yourself.
There is something Faust-like in you; you would
fain grasp the highest and the deepest; and `reel
from desire to enjoyment, and in enjoyment languish
for desire.' When a momentary change of
feeling comes over you, you think the change permanent,
and thus live in constant self-deception.”
“I confess,” said Flemming, “there may be
some truth in what you say. There are times
when my soul is restless; and a voice sounds
within me, like the trump of the archangel, and
thoughts that were buried, long ago, come out of
their graves. At such times my favorite occupations
and pursuits no longer charm me. The
quiet face of Nature seems to mock me.”
“There certainly are seasons,” replied the
Baron, “when Nature seems not to sympathize
-- 209 --
[figure description] Page 209.[end figure description]
with her beloved children. She sits there so
eternally calm and self-possessed, so very motherly
and serene, and cares so little whether the
heart of her child breaks or not, that at times I
almost lose my patience. About that, too, she
cares so little, that, out of sheer obstinacy, I become
good-humored again, and then she smiles.”
“I think we must confess, however,” continued
Flemming, “that all this springs from our own imperfection,
not from hers. How beautiful is this
green world, which we inhabit! See yonder, how
the moonlight mingles with the mist! What a
glorious night is this! Truly every man has a
Paradise around him until he sins, and the angel of
an accusing conscience drives him from his Eden.
And even then there are holy hours, when this
angel sleeps, and man comes back, and, with the
innocent eyes of a child, looks into his lost Paradise
again,—into the broad gates and rural solitudes
of Nature. I feel this often. We have
much to enjoy in the quiet and retirement of our
-- 210 --
[figure description] Page 210.[end figure description]
own thoughts. Boisterous mirth and loud laughter
are not my mood. I love that tranquillity of
soul, in which we feel the blessing of existence,
and which in itself is a prayer and a thanksgiving.
I find, however, that, as I grow older, I love the
country less, and the city more.”
“Yes,” interrupted the Baron; “and presently
you will love the city less and the country more.
Say at once, that you have an undefined longing for
both; and prefer town or country, according to
the mood you are in. I think a man must be of a
very quiet and happy nature, who can long endure
the country; and, moreover, very well contented
with his own insignificant person, very
self-complacent, to be continually occupied with
himself and his own thoughts. To say the least,
a city life makes one more tolerant and liberal in
his judgment of others. One is not eternally
wrapped up in self-contemplation; which, after all,
is only a more holy kind of vanity.”
In conversation like this, the hours glided away;
till at length, from the Giant's Tower, the Castle
-- 211 --
[figure description] Page 211.[end figure description]
clock struck twelve, with a sound that seemed to
come from the Middle Ages. Like watchmen
from their belfries the city clocks answered it, one
by one. Then distant and muffled sounds were
heard. Inarticulate words seemed to blot the foggy
air, as if written on wet paper. These were
the bells of Handschuhsheimer, and of other villages
on the broad plain of the Rhine, and among
the hills of the Odenwald; mysterious sounds, that
seemed not of this world.
Beneath them, in the shadow of the hills, lay
the valley, like a fathomless, black gulf; and above
were the cloistered stars, that, nun-like, walk the
holy aisles of heaven. The city was asleep in the
valley below; all asleep and silent, save the clocks,
that had just struck twelve, and the veering, golden
weathercocks, that were swimming in the moonshine,
like golden fishes, in a glass vase. And
again the wind of the summer night passed through
the old Castle, and the trees, and the nightingales
recorded under the dark, shadowy leaves, and the
heart of Flemming was full.
-- 212 --
[figure description] Page 212.[end figure description]
When he had retired to his chamber, a feeling
of utter loneliness came over him. The night
before one begins a journey is always a dismal
night; for, as Byron says,
“In leaving even the most unpleasant people
And places, one keeps looking at the steeple!”
And how much more so when the place and people
are pleasant; as was the case with those, that
Flemming was now leaving. No wonder he was
sad and sleepless. Thoughts came and went, and
bright and gloomy fancies, and dreams and visions,
and sweet faces looked under his closed eyelids,
and vanished away, and came again, and again departed.
He heard the clock strike from hour to
hour, and said, “Another hour is gone.” At length
the birds began to sing; and ever and anon the
cock crew. He arose, and looked forth into the
gray dawn; and before him lay the city he was so
soon to leave, all white and ghastly, like a city
that had arisen from its grave.
“All things must change,” said he to the Baron,
as he embraced him, and held him by the hand.
-- 213 --
[figure description] Page 213.[end figure description]
“Friends must be torn asunder, and swept along
in the current of events, to see each other seldom,
and perchance no more. For ever and ever in the
eddies of time and accident we whirl away. Besides
which, some of us have a perpetual motion in
our wooden heads, as Wodenblock had in his
wooden leg; and like him we travel on, without
rest or sleep, and have hardly time to take a friend
by the hand in passing; and at length are seen
hurrying through some distant land, worn to a
skeleton, and all unknown.”
END OF VOL. I.
Back matter
-- --
[figure description] Blank Leaf.[end figure description]
-- --
[figure description] Blank Leaf.[end figure description]
-- --
[figure description] Blank Leaf.[end figure description]
-- --
[figure description] Blank Leaf.[end figure description]
-- --
[figure description] Blank Leaf.[end figure description]
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 1807-1882 [1839], Hyperion. Volume 1 (Samuel Colman, New York) [word count] [eaf259v1].
