[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.”

[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

[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.

[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

[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

[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.

[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.”

[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,

[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

[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

[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.”

Previous section

Next section