FRANCIS. Stop, father, one word more. Your just indignation might prompt reproaches too severe, words which might break his heart--and then--do you not think that your deigning to write with your own hand might be construed into an act of forgiveness? It would be better, I think, that you should commit the task to me?
OLD M. Do it, my son. Ah! it would, indeed, have broken my heart!
Write to him that--
FRANCIS (quickly). That"s agreed, then?
OLD M. Say that he has caused me a thousand bitter tears--a thousand sleepless nights--but, oh! do not drive my son to despair!
FRANCIS. Had you not better retire to rest, father? This affects you too strongly.
OLD M. Write to him that a father"s heart--But I charge you, drive him not to despair. [Exit in sadness.]
FRANCIS (looking after him with a chuckle). Make thyself easy, old dotard! thou wilt never more press thy darling to thy bosom--there is a gulf between thee and him impa.s.sable as heaven is from h.e.l.l. He was torn from thy arms before even thou couldst have dreamed it possible to decree the separation. Why, what a sorry bungler should I be had I not skill enough to pluck a son from a father"s heart; ay, though he were riveted there with hooks of steel! I have drawn around thee a magic circle of curses which he cannot overleap. Good speed to thee, Master Francis. Papa"s darling is disposed of--the course is clear. I must carefully pick up all the sc.r.a.ps of paper, for how easily might my handwriting be recognized. (He gathers the fragments of the letter.) And grief will soon make an end of the old gentleman. And as for her-- I must tear this Charles from her heart, though half her life come with him.
No small cause have I for being dissatisfied with Dame Nature, and, by my honor, I will have amends! Why did I not crawl the first from my mother"s womb? why not the only one? why has she heaped on me this burden of deformity? on me especially? Just as if she had sp.a.w.ned me from her refuse.* Why to me in particular this snub of the Laplander?
these negro lips? these Hottentot eyes? On my word, the lady seems to have collected from all the race of mankind whatever was loathsome into a heap, and kneaded the ma.s.s into my particular person. Death and destruction! who empowered her to deny to me what she accorded to him?
Could a man pay his court to her before he was born? or offend her before he existed? Why went she to work in such a partial spirit?
No! no! I do her injustice--she bestowed inventive faculty, and set us naked and helpless on the sh.o.r.e of this great ocean, the world--let those swim who can--the heavy** may sink. To me she gave naught else, and how to make the best use of my endowment is my present business.
Men"s natural rights are equal; claim is met by claim, effort by effort, and force by force--right is with the strongest--the limits of our power const.i.tute our laws.
It is true there are certain organized conventions, which men have devised to keep up what is called the social compact. Honor! truly a very convenient coin, which those who know how to pa.s.s it may lay out with great advantage.*** Conscience! oh yes, a useful scarecrow to frighten sparrows away from cherry-trees; it is something like a fairly written bill of exchange with which your bankrupt merchant staves off the evil day.
* See Richard III., Act I, Sc. 1, line 17.
**Heavy is used in a double meaning; the German word is plump, which Means lumpish clumsy awkward.
***So Falstaff, Hen. IV., Pt. I., Act V., Sc. 1, "Honor is a mere scutcheon."
Well! these are all most admirable inst.i.tutions for keeping fools in awe, and holding the mob underfoot, that the cunning may live the more at their ease. Rare inst.i.tutions, doubtless. They are something like the fences my boors plant so closely to keep out the hares--yes I" faith, not a hare can trespa.s.s on the enclosure, but my lord claps spurs to his hunter, and away he gallops over the teeming harvest!
Poor hare! thou playest but a sorry part in this world"s drama, but your worshipful lords must needs have hares!
*[This may help to ill.u.s.trate a pa.s.sage in Shakespeare which puzzles the commentators--"Cupid is a good hare-finder."--Much ADO, Act I., Sc. 1.
The hare, in Germany, is considered an emblem of abject submission and cowardice. The word may also be rendered "Simpleton,"
"Sawney," or any other of the numerous epithets which imply a soft condition.]
Then courage, and onward, Francis. The man who fears nothing is as powerful as he who is feared by everybody. It is now the mode to wear buckles on your smallclothes, that you may loosen or tighten them at pleasure. I will be measured for a conscience after the newest fashion, one that will stretch handsomely as occasion may require. Am I to blame? It is the tailor"s affair? I have heard a great deal of twaddle about the so-called ties of blood--enough to make a sober man beside himself. He is your brother, they say; which interpreted, means that he was manufactured in the same mould, and for that reason he must needs be sacred in your eyes! To what absurd conclusions must this notion of a sympathy of souls, derived from the propinquity of bodies, inevitably tend? A common source of being is to produce community of sentiment; ident.i.ty of matter, ident.i.ty of impulse! Then again,--he is thy father!
He gave thee life, thou art his flesh and blood--and therefore he must be sacred to thee! Again a most inconsequential deduction! I should like to know why he begot me;** certainly not out of love for me--for I must first have existed!
**[The reader of Sterne will remember a very similar pa.s.sage in the first chapter of Tristram Shandy.]
Could he know me before I had being, or did he think of me during my begetting? or did he wish for me at the moment? Did he know what I should be? If so I would not advise him to acknowledge it or I should pay him off for his feat. Am I to be thankful to him that I am a man?
As little as I should have had a right to blame him if he had made me a woman. Can I acknowledge an affection which is not based on any personal regard? Could personal regard be present before the existence of its object? In what, then, consists the sacredness of paternity?
Is it in the act itself out of which existence arose? as though this were aught else than an animal process to appease animal desires. Or does it lie, perhaps, in the result of this act, which is nothing more after all than one of iron necessity, and which men would gladly dispense with, were it not at the cost of flesh and blood? Do I then owe him thanks for his affection? Why, what is it but a piece of vanity, the besetting sin of the artist who admires his own works, however hideous they may be? Look you, this is the whole juggle, wrapped up in a mystic veil to work on our fears. And shall I, too, be fooled like an infant? Up then! and to thy work manfully. I will root up from my path whatever obstructs my progress towards becoming the master. Master I must be, that I may extort by force what I cannot win by affection.*
*[This soliloquy in some parts resembles that of Richard, Duke of Gloster, in Shakespeare"s Henry VI., Act V. Sc. 6.]
[Exit.]
SCENE II.--A Tavern on the Frontier of Saxony.
CHARLES VON MOOR intent on a book; SPIEGELBERG drinking at the table.
CHARLES VON M. (lays the book aside). I am disgusted with this age of puny scribblers when I read of great men in my Plutarch.
SPIEGEL. (places a gla.s.s before him, and drinks). Josephus is the book you should read.
CHARLES VON M. The glowing spark of Prometheus is burnt out, and now they subst.i.tute for it the flash of lycopodium,* a stage-fire which will not so much as light a pipe. The present generation may be compared to rats crawling about the club of Hercules.**
*[Lycopodium (in German Barlappen-mehl), vulgarly known as the Devil"s Puff-ball or Witchmeal, is used on the stage, as well in England as on the continent, to produce flashes of fire. It is made of the pollen of common club moss, or wolf"s claw (Lycopodium clavatum), the capsules of which contain a highly inflammable powder. Translators have uniformly failed in rendering this pa.s.sage.]
**[This simile brings to mind Shakespeare"s: "We petty men Walk under his huge legs, and peep about."
JULIUS CAESAR, Act I., Sc. 2.]
A French abbe lays it down that Alexander was a poltroon; a phthisicky professor, holding at every word a bottle of sal volatile to his nose, lectures on strength. Fellows who faint at the veriest trifle criticise the tactics of Hannibal; whimpering boys store themselves with phrases out of the slaughter at Canna; and blubber over the victories of Scipio, because they are obliged to construe them.
SPIEGEL. Spouted in true Alexandrian style.
CHARLES VON M. A brilliant reward for your sweat in the battle-field truly to have your existence perpetuated in gymnasiums, and your immortality laboriously dragged about in a schoolboy"s satchel. A precious recompense for your lavished blood to be wrapped round gingerbread by some Nuremberg chandler, or, if you have great luck, to be screwed upon stilts by a French playwright, and be made to move on wires! Ha, ha, ha!
SPIEGEL. (drinks). Read Josephus, I tell you.
CHARLES VON M. Fie! fie upon this weak, effeminate age, fit for nothing but to ponder over the deeds of former times, and torture the heroes of antiquity with commentaries, or mangle them in tragedies. The vigor of its loins is dried up, and the propagation of the human species has become dependent on potations of malt liquor.
SPIEGEL. Tea, brother! tea!
CHARLES VON M. They curb honest nature with absurd conventionalities; have scarcely the heart to charge a gla.s.s, because they are tasked to drink a health in it; fawn upon the lackey that he may put in a word for them with His Grace, and bully the unfortunate wight from whom they have nothing to fear. They worship any one for a dinner, and are just as ready to poison him should he chance to outbid them for a feather-bed at an auction. They d.a.m.n the Sadducee who fails to come regularly to church, although their own devotion consists in reckoning up their usurious gains at the very altar. They cast themselves on their knees that they may have an opportunity of displaying their mantles, and hardly take their eyes off the parson from their anxiety to see how his wig is frizzled. They swoon at the sight of a bleeding goose, yet clap their hands with joy when they see their rival driven bankrupt from the Exchange. Warmly as I pressed their hands,--"Only one more day." In vain! To prison with the dog! Entreaties! Vows! Tears! (stamping the ground). h.e.l.l and the devil!
SPIEGEL. And all for a few thousand paltry ducats!
CHARLES VON M. No, I hate to think of it. Am I to squeeze my body into stays, and straight-lace my will in the trammels of law. What might have risen to an eagle"s flight has been reduced to a snail"s pace by law. Never yet has law formed a great man; "tis liberty that breeds giants and heroes. Oh! that the spirit of Herman* still glowed in his ashes!
*[Herman is the German for Armin or Arminius, the celebrated deliverer of Germany from the Roman yoke. See Menzel"s History, vol. i., p. 85, etc.]
Set me at the head of an army of fellows like myself, and out of Germany shall spring a republic compared to which Rome and Sparta will be but as nunneries. (Rises and flings his sword upon the table.)
SPIEGEL. (jumping up). Bravo! Bravissimo! you are coming to the right key now. I have something for your ear, Moor, which has long been on my mind, and you are the very man for it--drink, brother, drink! What if we turned Jews and brought the kingdom of Jerusalem again on the tapis?
But tell me is it not a clever scheme? We send forth a manifesto to the four quarters of the world, and summon to Palestine all that do not eat Swineflesh. Then I prove by incontestable doc.u.ments that Herod the Tetrarch was my direct ancestor, and so forth. There will be a victory, my fine fellow, when they return and are restored to their lands, and are able to rebuild Jerusalem. Then make a clean sweep of the Turks out of Asia while the iron is hot, hew cedars in Lebanon, build ships, and then the whole nation shall chaffer with old clothes and old lace throughout the world. Meanwhile--