During the reading of this, Firmian stood with his face pressed to the window, and lifted towards the evening sky. Heinrich, with a true friend"s delicacy of perception, took the answer out of his lips, and said, looking to him, "Yes, this Nathalie is good and kind, in very truth, and a thousand times better than thousands of other people are; but I will let myself be driven over by her carriage, and crushed beneath the wheels of it, if I don"t wait for her at four o"clock in the morning, get into the carriage, and sit down beside her. Ay, verily! I will get her to lend me both her ears, and I will fill them full--or my own are longer than any elephant"s, though he _does_ use his for fly-flappers."
"Yes, do, dear Henry," said Firmian, in the most cheerful tones he could force from his oppressed throat. "I shall give you three lines to take in your hand, just that you may have something to give her, since I an never to bee her again."
There is a certain lyric intoxication of heart, during which people never ought to write letters, because, in the course of fifty years or so they may, perhaps fall into the hands of people who are without either the heart or the intoxication. However, Firmian wrote, and did not seal; and Leibgeber did not read.
"_I_ bid you farewell, too! But _I_ cannot say "Don"t forget me." Ah!
forget me! But leave me the forget-me-not which you gave me--to keep for evermore. Though Heaven is past and over, death has yet to come.
And mine is now very near, and it is for this reason alone that I, and my dear Leibgeber even more urgently, have a favour to beg of you; but such a _strange_ favour. Nathalie, do not refuse. Your soul"s sphere is far, far above that of the feminine souls which are shocked and frightened at everything out of the commonplace track. _You_ can dare, and can venture, nor need you fear to risk that great heart of yours (and happiness) on any cast. And now, as I spoke to you on _that_ night, for the last time, this is the last time I shall write to you.
"But Eternity remains for thee and me!
"F. S."
His sleep was nothing but dreams all night, that he might be sure to awaken Leibgeber in the morning. But as early as three o"clock, the latter, in his capacity of letter-carrier, and _Maitre des Requetes_, was posted under a great linden-tree, whose hanging beds, thronged with a sleeping world of inhabitants, overhung the alley by which Nathalie was to come. Firmian, in bed, enacted Henry"s part along with him, in fancy, thinking to himself, "Now she is bidding the English lady good-bye; now she is getting into the carriage; now she is pa.s.sing the tree, and he is taking her horses by the bridle." He phantasised himself into dreams which stabbed his heart with pictures of her repeated refusals of his pet.i.tion. What a quant.i.ty of dark and cloudy weather is born of one single, bright, starry night, in the physical world as well as in the moral. At last he dreamed that she stretched her hand to him, from her carriage, with tears in her eyes, and the green rose-twig on her breast, and said, in low sweet tones, "I _must_ say no! Could _I_ live long, if _you_ were dead?" She pressed his hand so warmly that he awoke. The pressure was there, and lasted, and before him was the beaming daylight, and his beaming friend, who said, "She has agreed, while you"ve been snoring here."
He had been within a hair"s breadth of missing her. She had not taken so much time to dress and depart as others do to _un_dress and arrive.
A rose-branch, wet with dew, whose leaves p.r.i.c.ked sharper than its thorns, was on her heart, and the long parting had tinted her lids with red. She was delighted to see him, though a little frightened, and anxious to hear. He gave her Firmian"s open letter, to begin with, by way of credential. Her eager eyes shone out once more through two tear-drops, and she asked, "What am I to do?" "Nothing," said Leibgeber, in an artful manner, half jest, half earnest, "except allow the Prussian Treasury to remind you of his death twice a-year, as if you were his widow." She answered, "No!" p.r.o.nouncedly, on one note, behind which, however, there was only a comma, not a full stop. He once more went through his pet.i.tions, and his reasons, adding, "Do it, at least, for _my_ sake, if for no other reason. I can"t bear to see him baulked of a wish, or disappointed in a hope. He is a bear whom that bear-leader, the State, keeps dancing all the winter, without a wink of winter sleep, whereas _I_ seldom take my paw out of my mouth, but suck away continually. He kept awake all last night, so as to make sure of calling me in time, and he is counting the moments anxiously at home now." She read the letter again, syllable by syllable. He did not ask for a final answer, but spun out a talk on other subjects--the morning, her journey, the village of Schraplau. The morning had already raised her pillar of fire beyond Bayreuth, the town kept adding pillars of smoke; in a few minutes he must out of the carriage and back. "And so, fare you well," he said, in the softest of tones, with one foot on the carriage-step; "may your future grow brighter and brighter, like the day about us. And now, _what_ last word am I to carry to my _good_, _dear_ beloved Firmian?" (I shall make a remark in a minute or two.) She lowered her travelling-veil like the drop curtain of a drama which is done, and said in low and stifled accents, "If I must, I must; so let _this_ be, also. But you are giving me _another_ great sorrow to take with me on my way." Here he jumped down, and the carriage, bearing this poor soul--poor now in so many ways--rolled on with her over the shattered ruins of her youthful life.
If he had got a "No" instead of this hard wrung-out "Yes," he would have caught her again on the other side of the town, and been her fellow-traveller for another fragment of her journey.
1 said above, that I should "make a remark;" it is this: that the friendship or love which a woman has for a man is fed by that which she sees existing between him and his friends, and grows visibly in consequence--converting it, polyp-fashion, into its own substance. It was for this reason that Leibgeber, by instinct, had given such warm expression to _his_. In the case of us, masculine lovers, again, this sort of electric coating, or magnetic armature of our love with the friendship of our beloved object with other women is most uncommon.
What pleases _us_, is to see her shrinking from everybody else, growing hard and frozen to them on our account, handing _them_ nothing but ices and cold pudding, but serving us with glowing goblets of love. This process of making the heart, like wine, more fiery and strong, and generous, by freezing it at the boiling-point, may please a short-sighted selfish soul; but never a clear-seeing, kindly, loving one. At all events, the author declares that, whenever _he_ has caught a glimpse--in a mirror or in water--of the reverse aide of the Ja.n.u.s-head, of which the other side has been smiling in love upon him, frowning in dislike upon the rest of the world, he has made a face or two of the same disliking sort on the spot--at the Ja.n.u.s-head. For the mere contrast"s sake, a girl should never slander, find fault, or dislike, at all events, while she is a lover; when she is a married woman, the mistress of a house, and has children, and cows, and servants, of course no reasonable man or husband, can possibly object to a moderate amount of bad temper, and a little scolding now and then.
Nathalie had acceded to the strange proposal for many reasons; just because it _was_ a strange one; and then the word "widow" would, to her romantic heart, be constantly weaving a mourning-band of sorrow, binding her and Firmian together, and winding in charming and fanciful wreaths round the events, and the vows, of the night of their good-bye.
Besides, to-day, she had been gradually ascending from one emotion to another, and had reached a height where her head began to reel.
Moreover, she was boundlessly unselfish, and consequently never troubled herself to think whether a thing had the _appearance_ of selfishness or not. And, lastly, she cared less about appearances in general, and the conclusions people drew from them than, perhaps, a young lady _should_ care.
Leibgeber, now that all his goals were reached, emitted a long, gladsome zodiacal light; and Firmian did not darken it with the full depth of his mourning night shadow, but only with the half-tints thereof. At the same time, he felt he could not visit either of Bayreuth"s pleasure-places, Eremitage or Fantaisie, which were Herculaneum and Portici to him now. Yet he _must_ pa.s.s by the latter on his homeward way, and disinter many things that were buried. He did not care to delay his return much longer; not only was the moon set now, which had shed a new silvery radiance upon all the white flowers and blossoms of the spring, but Leibgeber, besides, was a death"s head _memento mori_, always saying, in the most unmistakable manner--though with neither lips nor tongue--"It must be borne in mind that thou hast got to die, in Kuhschnappel, in jest." Leibgeber"s heart burned for the world without, the flames of his forest-conflagration were eager to dart and play uncontrolled over alps, islands, capital cities; the Vaduz water reservoir of acts of parliament--paper _lit-de-parade_ and _lit-de-justice_--would have been to _him_ a heavy, suffocating, feather-bed, such as people in a hopeless state of hydrophobia used to be smothered by out of compa.s.sion. In fact, a small town could as little endure him as he could endure a small town. Indeed, even in Bayreuth--a larger place--there were sundry _Commissaires de Justice_ at the _table d"hote_ at the "Sun" Hotel, who told me with their own lips, that when Leibgeber spoke his table-speech (reported in Chapter XII.) on the subject of Crown Princes, they thought it was a deliberate satire on a particular Margrave then reigning; whereas all his satires were really directed against the human race in _general_, not against individuals. Again, how thoughtlessly he conducted himself during the poor eight days which he spent in our good town of Hof im Voigtlande.
Are there not credible "Varisker" (as according to some authorities the inhabitants of Voigtland were called in Caesar"s time--though others consider "Narisker" to have been the word), who have a.s.sured me that he bought bergamot pears in the open market-place, near the court-house, and cakes at a baker"s stall, in his best suit of Sunday clothes? And are there not Nariskers of the fair s.e.x, who, having observed his proceedings thereafter, are ready to depose that, though stall-feeding is a matter of universal enjoinment, he nevertheless ate this food-offering in the open air like a prince, and on the march, like a Roman army? There are witnesses, who waltzed with him, to testify that he went to masked b.a.l.l.s in a _robe de chambre_ and a c.o.c.ked-hat and feathers, and that he had worn both all the previous day in earnest, before putting them on in the evening in jest. A Narisker not without some brains, and possessing a good memory, who was not aware that I had the fellow under my historical hands, repeated the following somewhat audacious utterances of Leibgeber"s.
"Every man is a born pedant. There are very few who are hung in chains _after_ they are dead: but almost every one _is_ hung, in most accursed chains, _before_ death; and, therefore, in most countries, "Freeman"
means provost-marshal, or hangman. Jest, as such, ought to be serious; therefore, as long as one is only in jest, it is wrong to jest in the slightest degree. He held, that the spirit which brooded, creating, over the ink of colleges was (as many Fathers of the Church held that to be which, according to Moses, moved upon the face of the waters) _wind_. In his eyes, worshipful councils, conferences, deputations, sessions, processions, &c., were not, at bottom, wholly without a spice of comic salt, looked upon as grave parodies of stiff and empty seriousness, more especially as in general there was but one member of the conclave (or perhaps his wife) who really voted, decided, or ruled, the mystic _corpus_ itself, sitting at the green table, chiefly for the joke of the thing; just as, in flute clocks, though there is a flute-player screwed on outside whose fingers work up and down upon the flute, which grows out of his mouth, and children are beyond themselves with delight at the talent of the wooden imposition, every clockmaker knows that it is _inside_ that the wheels are which act on the hidden pipes with their pinions." I answered that these sayings showed that Leibgeber was of a rather audacious and ironical turn of mind. It is, perhaps, to be desired, that everybody were in a position to do what the author does in this place, namely, beg all Nariskers to have the goodness to point to any single word or deed of his which can be called satirical, or not exactly adapted to fit on to the cap-block of a _pays coutumier_. If he is not speaking the truth, he begs that he may be contradicted without the slightest hesitation.
The winnowing-fan which blew Siebenkaes out of Bayreuth on the following day, was a letter from the Count von Vaduz, in which he expressed his friendly regret on account of Leibgeber"s cold-fever and tallowy appearance, at the same time begging him to hasten his entry upon the duties of his office. This letter was to Siebenkaes as a wing-membrane wherewith to hasten his flight to his seeming coc.o.o.n-grave, in order to issue forth from it a young full-fledged inspector. In our next chapter he turns him about, and quits the beautiful town. In what remains of this, he is taking private lessons in silhouette clipping from Leibgeber, whose _role_ he is to succeed to by dying. The master-cutter, and scissorial-mentor did nothing, in this connection, worthy of being handed down to posterity by me save one thing, as to which I do not find a word in my doc.u.ments, which was told me by Mr.
Feldmann, the keeper of the hotel, who was carving at table when it occurred. It was only that a stranger who was dining there clipped out a profile of Leibgeber, among others; while Leibgeber, seeing what he was about, clipped out, under cover of the table-cloth, a silhouette of this supernumerary copyist"s _own_ head and shoulders, and when the latter handed him his, Leibgeber returned the compliment, saying "_al Pari_!" thus paying him in his own coin. This stranger made airs of various kinds, as well as silhouettes, but succeeded best with the _phlogistic_ sort, which he made with his lungs, without any difficulty to speak of, and in which he throve and took on colour, as plants do; this sort of air can be breathed, and is designated by the name of "wind," to distinguish it from the other phlogistic gases which can not be inhaled. When this phlogistic wind-maker (who gave admirable lectures from town to town, on the other gases, from that portable professorial chair, his body) had departed with his cutter"s wages, Heinrich contented himself with the following remarks.
"Thousands of people ought to travel and teach both at once. He who limits himself to three days can certainly (as a species of private tutor extraordinary) in that time read excellent lectures on every kind of subject which he knows little or nothing about. Thus much I see already, that there are brilliant comets--shining wandering stars--revolving round me and others, and throwing flying lights upon us concerning electricity, gases, magnetism, in short natural science in general; but this is but a small matter. May this duck"s wing choke me if these rostrum carriers, and travelling professors (travelling scholars they are not), might not lecture upon science of _every_ kind, with great advantage, at all events, upon the minuter branches. Could not _one_, for instance, travel and read lectures upon the first century after Christ"s birth, or the first millenary before it (which is no longer), I mean, tell ladies and gentlemen all about it in a lecture or two, a second undertaking the second, a third the third, an eighteenth our own? I can quite imagine travelling medicine-chests for the soul of this kind. But as far as I am concerned, I should by no means stop at this point--I should advertise myself as a peripatetic private tutor in branches of the minutest possible order; _e. g_., in electoral courts, I should give lessons concerning the obligations to be entered into by the nominees to government appointments; in all and every place I should give exegetical instruction concerning the first verse of the first book of Moses--the _kraken_, the devil (who _may_, perhaps, be more or less the same as the other), on Hogarth"s tail-piece, in connection with Vand.y.k.e"s headpieces, on coins and in portraits; on the true distinction between the Hippocentaur, and the Onocentaur, which is more like that between genius and German criticism than anything else; on the first paragraph of Wolf, or even of Putter; on the funeral bier of Louis (XIV.) the be-grandised, and the public rejoicings under it; on the academic licences which a pa.s.sing lecturer may allow himself to take, in addition to that of pocketing his fee--the greatest of which is often that of shutting the lecture-room door, (to make a long story short) on _everything_, in fact. If we go on in this way (I can"t help being struck), that when circulating high schools have got to be as common as village schools--when savants ply backwards and forwards like live shuttles between the towns (and they have begun to do so already), attaching Ariadne threads (of _talk_, at all events) everywhere, to everything, with the view of weaving them into something or other--if we go on on this road, I say, when each sun of a professor--on the Ptolemaic system, moves about among the dark orbs (fixed upon necks), which surround him, and casts his light upon each in turn (a state of things wholly opposed to the Copernican system, according to which the sun stands still on the professorial rostrum in the centre of the orbits of the revolving planets or students)--if we go on (I say once more, on this road), one may be pretty sure that the world will really come to be something at last; a _learned_ world, at the very least and lowest--philosophers will obtain the true philosopher"s stone--gold; what fools will obtain will be the philosophers, and knowledge of every kind: and moreover the restorers of science will get set upon _their_ legs. All soil would then be cla.s.sic soil--so that people would of necessity have to plough, and fight on, cla.s.sic soil. Every gallows hill would be a Pindus, every prince"s throne an oracle-cave of Delphi--and I should be obliged to anyone who should show me such a thing as a single a.s.s in the whole of Germany, _then_. This is what would necessarily happen if all the world were to set out upon learned, and instructive, journeys--that portion of it being, of course, necessarily excepted which would be obliged to stay at home if there were to be anybody to listen and pay (like the _point de vue_, in military "evolutions," for which the adjutant is generally told off)."
Here he suddenly jumped up, and cried, "I wish to Heaven I could go to Bruckenau;[79] there, on the bath tubs, should be my professorial chair, and seat of the Muses. The tradesman"s, the country gentleman"s wife or daughter should lie, like a sh.e.l.l fish, in her closed basin and relic-casquet, with nothing sticking out but her head (just as is the case in her ordinary costume), her head which it would be my business to instruct. What discourses, _a la_ St. Anthony of Padua, should I not hold with these tender tench--or sirens--though they might better be described as fortresses protected by moats, or wet ditches. I should sit lecturing and teaching upon the wooden holsters of their glowing charms (phosphorus-like, kept in water!) But this would be nothing compared to the benefits I should bestow upon society were _I_ to have _my_self cooped into an _etui_, or scabbard of the kind, and then be net a-going like a water-organ, and, like some water-G.o.d, devote my pedagogical talents to the edification of the cla.s.s of students sitting on my tub-lid! True, I should have to make my ill.u.s.trative gestures under the warm water, because the only part of me out of my sheath would be my head (like the hilt of a dagger), with my master"s cap on it. But the loveliest of doctrine,--luxuriant rice-ears, and succulent aquatic plants sprouting in the water--a play of philosophic water-works, and so forth, should be emitted from the bath, and send away all the beauties (whom, in fancy, I see thronging round my quaker"s and Diogenes" tub) besprinkled with learning and instruction of the most superlative description. By Heaven! I ought to be off to Bruckenau this instant, not so much as a watering-place guest as in the capacity of a private tutor."
CHAPTER XVI.
THE HOMEWARD JOURNEY, WITH ALL ITS PLEASURES--THE ARRIVAL AT HOME.
Firmian took his departure. He was sorry to leave the hotel, which had been a royal "Sans Souci" and "mon repos" to him, and turn his face away from its comfortable chambers towards his own bare comfortless rooms. To him who had never known any of the comforts--the soft _paddings_, so to speak, of this hard life of ours--who had never had any other Jack but the boot-jack, it had been an enormous pleasure and enjoyment to have the power of ringing that leading actor, John the waiter, up from his _coulisses_ with such facility, and that too with plates and gla.s.ses in his hand, out of which said actor enjoyed nothing, only Siebenkaes and the public so doing. Just at the door of the hotel, he made to Mr. Feldmann, the landlord, the following eulogistic address, which shall be made him once more in print by me, by way of an additional blazon to his coat of arms, the moment it gets through the press. "There is only one thing which your guests have to desire, that they have not got, and that is the most important of all things--time. May your sun reach the sign of the crab, and remain in it." Several Bayreuthians who were standing by thought this was a miserable satire.
Henry went with Firmian some thirty paces beyond the Reformation church, as far as the church-yard, and tore himself away from him with less difficulty than usual, for he expected to see him again in a few weeks" time--on his death-bed. He would not go as far as Fantaisie with him, wishing to allow him to sink, in silence and undisturbed, and lose himself in the enjoyment of the magic echoes of the spirit-harmonies of that night of bliss wherewith all the garden would be vocal.
Alone, then, Firmian entered into the valley as into some holy temple, all sacredness and awe. Every thicket seemed, to his eyes, glorified with super-earthly light, the stream, a stream flowing out of Arcadia, and the whole valley a Vale of Tempe, transported thither and unveiled to view. And when he came to the dear and holy spot where Nathalie had prayed him to "think of that night," it seemed to him that the sun was shedding a heavenlier brightness; and that the hum of bees in the blossoms was music of spirit-voices wafted on the air, and that he must needs prostrate himself and press his heart upon the dewy sward. Upon this trembling sound-board he once more retraced the old path by which he had walked with Nathalie, and, now in a rose espalier, now from some streamlet, now from the balcony, now from some leafy nook or trembling stem, string after string, breaking from silence, gave forth once more its old lovely tone. His enraptured heart swelled, even to pain; a moist transparent shimmer was over his eyes, and dissolved into a great tear-drop. His eyes, drunken with weeping, distinguished nothing save the brightness of the morning and the whiteness of the flowers; details were hid by the flowery vail of dreaming, in whose lily perfume his soul sank down, soothed to a restful sleep. It was as if hitherto, in the enjoyment of being with his Leibgeber he had only felt half the real strength of his love for Nathalie; with such a new might and breeze of heaven did that love come breathing upon him in this solitude with ethereal tire. A world all youth burst into blossom in his heart.
Of a sudden the bells of Bayreuth came ringing into this world, striking for him the hour of his farewell to it; and there fell on him that anxious sadness with which we linger, too long, beside a place where we have been happy, when the time has come when we must say Adieu. He went upon his way.
What a brightness fell upon all the hills and meadows, with the thought of Nathalie, and that imperishable kiss! The green world, which had been but a series of pictures for him, as he came, was now all speech and language. There was a light-magnet of happiness all day long in the dimmest corner of his being; and when, in the thick of distractions, conversations and the like, _en route_, he cast a sudden glance into himself, he found a continual sense of blissfulness within him.
How often he turned back to the Bayreuth hills, beyond which he had lived real days of youth, for the first time in his existence! Behind him Nathalie was journeying on towards the east, and breezes from that quarter--airs which had breathed gently around the distant, lonely one--came wafting back to him, and he drunk the aether-stream like the breath of one beloved.
The hills sunk low on the horizon; his paradise was whelmed in the blue of heaven. His west and Nathalie"s east flowed asunder, and parted wider, faster and faster as the moments sped. One beautiful plain receded, flying behind him, after another; and he hastened past the flower-decked limbs of Spring as she lay outstretched on earth, alternating between looking and enjoying, as in early days gone by.
Thus he came at evening to the village in the valley by the Jaxt, where on his journey to Bayreuth, he had pa.s.sed in review, with tears, his loveless days; but he came with a new heart, full to the brim with love and happiness; and tears flowed this time too. Here where, amid the melting magic lights of evening, he had asked himself, "What womanly soul has ever loved _you_ as your old dreams have so often pictured to your heart you _might_ be loved by one," and had given himself so sad an answer; here he could think on that Bayreuth night, and say, "Yes!
Nathalie has loved me!" And then the old sorrow rose again, but glorified, from the dead. He had made to her a vow of invisibility here on earth; he was now journeying on towards his own death; he was to die, and never see her more. She was gone before him--had _died_ first, as it were; she had merely taken away with her into the long, dim, coming years of her life the grief of having loved and lost, _twice_.
"And I look into my own life here, and weep, away from her," he said, wearily, and closed his eyes undried.
Another world altogether opened upon him in the morning--not a new world by any means--the old, old familiar one. Just as if the concentric magic circles which surrounded Nathalie and Leibgeber reached no further than the little Valley of Longing on the Jaxt, and could include nothing beyond it. Every step towards home translated the poetry which had come into his life to poetic prose. The Imperial market-town (that frigid zone of his life) was nearer to him; his torrid zone, over which the faded petals of his ephemeral joy-flowers were fluttering still, was far away behind him.
But, on the other hand, the pictured imagery of his domestic life kept growing clearer and brighter, taking the form of a picture-bible, while the paintings of his month of bliss died away into a dark picture gallery. I think the weather, which was rainy, had some connection with this.
Towards the end of the week the weather, as well as penitents and churchgoers, puts on other shirts and clothes.
It was Sat.u.r.day, and cloudy. Damp weather affects the walls of our brains as it does the walls of our rooms; the paperings of both imbibe the moisture, and get curled up into clouds, until the next dry day smooths both out again. Under a blue sky, I long for eagles" pinions; under a cloudy one, I only want a goose"s wing to write with. In the former case we are eager to be off and out, into the wide world; in the latter, all we want is to sit comfortably down in our arm-chair. In short, clouds, when they drop, make us domestic, citizenish, and hungry, while blue skies make us thirsty, and citizens _of the world_.
These clouds of this Sat.u.r.day formed a kind of palisade about the Eden of Bayreuth. Every big drop which fell on the leaves made him think longingly of the wifely, wedded heart, which was his lawful property (and which he was soon to lose), and of his poor little lodging. At last when the ice-floes of the rugged-clouds melted into grey foam, and the setting sun was drawn like a sluice, out of this suspended mill-pond, and it poured down in consequence, Kuhschnappel came in sight.
Discordant, jarring fancies clanged in contention within him. The commonplace, narrow-minded, provincial town, seemed, when contrasted with freer and more liberal places and societies, so crowded and crushed together, so official in style, and full of Troglodytes--with doggrel, and table-verses by way of poetry--that he felt it would be a satisfaction to drag out his green trellis-bed into the market-place in broad daylight, and go to sleep beneath the very windows of the local "quality," without minding a bra.s.s-farthing what the upper council might think, or the lower council either. The nearer he came to the stage he was to die upon, the more difficult did this first role of his (and last but one) appear to him.
_Away_ from home we are bold and daring: we resolve, and undertake; _at_ home, we pause and hesitate, and delay.
Yes, and the smoke and smells of the mean streets gnawed into him, matters which, of themselves unaided, so sorely affect and depress us that there are very few indeed who can raise their heads wholly beyond these effluvia. For in man there nestles an accursed tendency towards still-sitting ease and comfort; like a big dog he lets himself be poked and pinched a thousand times before he takes the trouble to get up, rather than growl. Once fairly on his legs, however, he is not in a hurry to lie down again. The first heroic deed (like the first earned dollar, according to Rousseau) costs more than the next thousand. The prospect of the long, difficult, tedious and risky financial and surgical operation of a stage death stung our Siebenkaes on the domestic bolster.
But the nearer he drew to the gallows-hill (that mouse-tower of his old, narrow life), the quicker and the clearer did the thoughts of the heart-oppressing stamping-mills of past days, and of his approaching salvation, vibrate in alternation in his mind. He kept thinking that he would have to suffer care, anxiety, and struggle of all sorts, as of old, because he kept losing sight of the open sky of his future, just as we go on suffering the pain and fear of a painful dream for some time after we have awakened from it.
But when he saw the house where dwelt his Lenette, whose voice he had not heard for so many a day, the pain all vanished from his heart, the trouble from his eyes, nothing being left in them but affection and its warmest tears.
"Ah! am I not going to tear myself, so soon, from her for ever, and make her shed tears of delusion, and wound her with the terrible wounds of a funeral and mourning? and then, poor darling soul, we shall see each other no more!" he thought.
He quickened his pace. He squeezed close past the shop windows of his co-commandant, Meerbitzer, with his head thrown back, and his eyes fixed upon the up-stairs windows. Meerbitzer was in the house, splitting the Sunday wood; and Firmian signed to him not to give note of his presence by any sort of sentry-challenge. The old a.s.sociate czar signed back to him, with outstretched fingers, that Lenette was alone in the room up-stairs. The old familiar ripieno voices of the house, the querulous scolding of the book-binder"s wife, the damper-pedal effect of the eternal prayer and curser, Fecht, met him like so much sweet provender, as he climbed the stairs. The waning moon of his movable pewter property shone silvery and glorious upon him from the kitchen, everything fresh from its font of regeneration; a copper fish-kettle, which poisoned no vinegar as long as it was unmended, glowed upon him through the kitchen smoke like the sun in a November fog. He opened the door of the sitting-room gently; he saw no one in it, but heard Lenette making the bed in the bed-room. With a whole iron foundry hammering in his breast, he made a long, noiseless stride into the room, which was all in apple-pie order, with its Sunday shirt of white sand on already (upon which the bed-making river G.o.ddess and water nymph had expended all her aquatic arts in the production, of a highly-finished masterpiece). Ah! everything was so full of rest and peace, so tranquilly reposing after the whirl and turmoil of the week.
The rain stars had risen upon everything, except his ink bottle, which was quite dry.
His writing-table was, so to speak, _manned_ by two or three large heads, which, being cap-blocks, had on their Sunday bonnets, already, which would be transferred from them in their capacity of _Curatores s.e.xus_, next morning, to the heads of the ladies of the members of council.
He pushed the bed-room door wider open, and there, after this long separation, he saw his dear wife, standing with her back to him.
Just then he fancied he recognised Stiefel"s fulling-mill steps coming up stairs; and, that he might pa.s.s his first minute on her heart unseen by a stranger eye, he said twice, softly, "Lenette!"