Letters.

Had I or any one else been lying in wait behind a bush or in a narrow pass, and had we darted out in the nick of time, we might have taken away the two letters, sealed up one into the other, which Victor was sending to Maienthal, from the hands of the messenger, who understood no German, namely, his Italian servant. The letter to Emanuel was the wrapper of the letter to Clotilda,–friendship is always the envelope of love. Of the wrapper I will give only an extract before I communicate in full the letter to Clotilda. He begged his Emanuel to take this only as a letter-cover, and to hand the enclosed to Clotilda alone;–he told him without further explanation he was held not by his own wishes, but by flowery chains which drew him back from the other chains of flowers in Maienthal, and that a manifold fettering with garlands was something one could not break through, because one would not,–he was intentionally obscure in regard to his new connection with Clotilda, because he could not presume upon her permission of the contrary;–he playfully begged his friend to beg his lady-friend to command him to make the journey to Flachsenfingen, that they might get a sight of each other,–(I lose my way in this period if I show the design of this way of putting the thing);–he erased again in his head the question, whether Clotilda still needed the physician, merely because he was one for her in a double sense, and only asked whether she had recovered.–Finally he concluded thus:–

"And thus then I flutter with tolerably dusted butterfly's^[59] wings in the immense temple which to our butterfly^[60] eyes breaks up into smaller ones, and the leafy ornaments of whose columns we take for the columns themselves, and whose rows of pillars become invisible from their greatness; there flutters the human butterfly^[61] up and down,–strikes against windows,–rows through dusty cobwebs,–flaps his wings at last around a hollow flower,–and the great organ-tone of the eternal harmony tosses him about with merely a dumb, rising and falling tempest, which is too great for a mortal ear.

"Ah, now I know life! Were not man even in his desires and wishes so systematic,–did he not in all things aim at roundings-off as well of his Arcadias as of the kingdom of truth,–then he might be happy and brave enough for wisdom. But a looking-glass wall of his system, a living hedge of his paradise, neither of which lets him sally or see into the infinite, fling him back forthwith to the opposite side, which receives him with new railings and throws in his way new limits.... Now, when I have gone through such various states, passionate, wise, foolish, Æsthetic, stoic; now that I see that the most perfect of them crooks and cripples either my earthly roots in the earth, or my twigs in the ether, and that, even if it did not do that, still it could not last over an hour, to say nothing of a life;–as, therefore, I clearly see that we are a fraction only and not a unit, and that all reckoning and reduction of the fraction is only an approximation between numerator and denominator, a change of the 1000/1001 into 10000/10001, I say: 'Well, for all me–be it so! Let wisdom, then, be for me the finding out and enduring of merely the least gaps in our knowing, enjoying, and doing.' Accordingly, I no longer let myself be led astray, nor my neighbor either, by that most common illusion, that man regards every change in himself–every improvement at all events, but also even every deterioration–as greater than it afterward proves.

"–Enough! but since this observation–and still more since high destiny has given me joys, in order that I might deserve them–new morning-light has fallen on my shady path, and I have new courage to improve myself. The clear stream of time runs over a sloping flower-bed of fair hours, on which I once stood, and upon which I can distinctly look down.–O when this Eden-lawn once comes up again, and I can take thy hand and walk upon it, and kneel down beside thee and look gratefully now to the morning-sky and now over the waving flower-fields of this life; then will I fall back upon thee speechless, and gratefully embrace thy breast, and say: 'O my Emanuel! only through thee do I indeed deserve it all.' Nay, I say it to-day, beloved teacher, and do thou stay a good long while by the side of thy scholar on the earth, even until he is worthy to accompany thee out of it."–

* * * * *

Long as this letter was, still Victor after all loved his teacher too much,–and hated too much the princely rudeness of making men tools,–not to have told him outright, that this letter owed–not so much its origin as–its birthday to the letter to his beloved. Here is the one to Clotilda, into which with the following words he brings his request to see her:–

"If I knew that I should even for a moment oppress or disturb by this sheet the beloved soul, which will now be enjoying itself by the side of the lofty Emanuel, in the presence of spring and amidst its fair thoughts, O most gladly would I sacrifice this blessed hour, in order, perhaps, to deserve it. But no, my friend forever! your tender heart desires not my silence! Ah, man must so often conceal coldness and bitterness, why, too, even love and joy?–Nor should I be able to do it today.

"O, if an inhabitant of earth had in a dream gone through Elysium; if great unknown flowers had waved above him; if a saint had handed him one of these flowers with the words, 'Let this remind thee when thou awakest that thou hast not dreamed!'–how would he pine for the Elysian land, as often as he looked upon the flower! Never-to-be-forgotten one! you have, in the glimmering night, when my heart twice succumbed, but only once from pain, given a mortal an Eden, which reaches out beyond his life; but to me it has seemed till now as if I were waking more and more out of the receding dream-night,–when, lo! I received from the paradisiacal dream a flower,^[62] which you left behind for me, that I might remain inexpressibly happy, and that my longing might be as great as my bliss. Why does this crape draw up all the hot tears out of the depth of my heart, why do I see behind this woven lattice the eyes open, which are so far from me, and which so move my inmost being to sadness? O, nothing appeases the loving soul, but what it shares with the loved one; therefore do I gaze upon the spring with such a sweet stir of emotion; for she enjoys it, too, I say,–therefore it is that thou pleasest me so, dear moon, with thy evening star; for thou weavest the web of thy silver-threads round her shadows also and her May-flowers,–therefore it is that I so love to bury myself in every shaded dell of your Eldorado; for I think, in the magnified shadows, in the fragrance-breathing blossoms of these pictures, she is now roaming, and the moon-sickle deflects the softened lightnings of the sun upon her eye. Then when I am too full of joy, when the evening-rain of memory falls upon the hot cheeks, when my rapture rocks up and down on a single long trembling tri-clang of the harpsichord, then does the trembling and the silence and the infinite love too heavily oppress with woe the tumultuous heart, then do I yearn for the least sound, wherewith I may tell the beloved of my heart how I love her, how I honor her, that for her I will live, for her will die!—O my dream, my dream steals now like a tear into my heart! In the night of the third Easter-holiday I dreamed: Emanuel and I stood in a dusky nocturnal region. A great scythe on the western horizon flung flying, reflected flashes at the high lawns, which forthwith dried up and turned pale. But when a flash flickered into our eyes, our hearts, sweetly fainting, drew themselves up in the breast, and our bodies grew lighter for soaring away. 'It is the scythe of Time,' said Emanuel, 'but whence does it, haply, catch the reflection?' We looked toward the east, and there hung far in the distance and high in the air a broad dark-glowing land of vapor, which occasionally lightened. 'Is not that Eternity?' said Emanuel. Then fell before us light snow-pearls, like sparks. We looked up and three gold-green birds of paradise poised themselves overhead and swept round incessantly in a little circle, one after the other, and the falling pearls came from their eyes, or were their eyes themselves. High above them stood the full moon in the blue, but on the earth there was still no light, but a blue shadow: for the blue of heaven was a great blue cloud, opened only in one place by the moon, which poured down radiance on the three birds of paradise, and down below on a bright form averted from us.–You were that form, and turned your face toward the East, toward the hanging landscape, as if you would presently see something there. The birds of paradise sprinkled their pearls faster and faster into your eyes; 'They are the tears which our friend must shed,' said Emanuel; and then, too, they fell from your eyes, but more brightly, and lay glittering on the flowery ground. The blue on the earth suddenly grew brighter than the blue in the heavens, and a steep cavern, whose mouth yawned towards Eternity, sank back deeper and deeper through the earth towards the west, down even to America, where the sun shone from below into the opening,–and a stream of evening-red, broad as a grave, shot upward out of the earth, and diffused itself with its evening sheen over the far haze-land of the vapory Eternity like thin flames. Then trembled your outspread arms, then trembled your songs full of blissful longing, then could we and you see perfectly the illuminated Eternity. But it shifted with playing colors under the gaze, we could not retain even in thought what we saw; they were elusive forms and dissolving hues, they seemed near, seemed far, seemed to be in the midst of our thoughts.–-Little clouds going up from the earth floated around the glowing Eternity, and each bore a human being, standing upon it and singing, up to that luminous island, which clove itself open toward the earth, with only an endless row of white trees, moulded of light and snow, and instead of blossoms putting forth purple flowers.–And we saw our three shadows lying sublimely projected on the radiant white grove; and on Clotilda's shadow the purple flowers hung down as garlands; an angel hovered round the lovely shadow and smiled upon it tenderly and touched the place of the heart upon it. Then didst thou suddenly tremble, Clotilda, and turn round towards us, fairer than the angel in Eternity; thy whole ground gleamed under the fallen tears and became transparent. And now when thy dropping pearls dissolved the ground into a rising cloud, then didst thou hastily reach thy hand to us, and say, The cloud takes me up, we shall see each other again.–Ah! my fainting heart no more retained its blood: I knelt down, but I could say nothing; I would fain have melted my soul into a single sound, but the fettered tongue could not frame one, and I stared at the ascending immortal with infinite and inconsolable love.–Ah! thought I, life is a dream; but I could perhaps say to her how I love her, were I only awake.

"Then I woke. O Clotilda, can man say how much he loves?

"H."

* * * * *

His character and the contents of this dream shut out the suspicion of invention.–For the rest, even if Clotilda refuses his veiled wish to see her in Maienthal, still she must do it with a leaf of paper and three lines, which he can then read a thousand times over, and with which the cabinet of pictures and seals, wherein already are contained the hat and the views, will be considerably enriched. Meanwhile he stood in his fair Alpine valley between two high mountains, on each of which was mustering material for an avalanche,–one is perhaps already started up there in its crushing course, and he is not yet able to see it. The first avalanche, which the least sound of his may topple down upon him, is his crazy relation with his court acquaintance. He can boast of having angered them in a body: the Princess, Joachime, Matthieu. But, even independently of that, some conductor or other–merely because he stands not with the rest on the social isolating stool of the throne–must soon dart a diminished flash at his fingers or his eyes; at boards and at courts no one can stand upright without connections; it is there as in galleys, where all the slaves must move their oars together, if no one is to feel the cutting of the chain. But Victor said to himself, "Be not a child! be not the reversed fox who pronounces sour grapes, because he cannot reach them by leaping, to be sweet! I flatter myself, thou canst dispense with courtly hearts, which like their viands must first be warmed over a chafing-dish full of flickering spirits of wine.–By heaven! a man will surely be able to eat, even though that which he puts on the spit is not fetched by a guard from the kitchen, then handed to a page, then served up by a chamberlain or some other regulation-cavalier.–Only my father,–if it makes no difference to him!" That was just it: in the son there was nothing to be felled, but there was in the father,^[63] for whom they will probably let the uplifted woodman's and sacrificial axe hover, till he stands under it with his head, which without his return is not to be had.

But deuse a bit does a Pastor-fido care for the first avalanche. On the harmonica-bells of his fancy the external dissonances of fate, as the rolling of carriage-wheels over the pavement does on the strings of a musical instrument, die away in softly ascending murmur. With him, as with the astrologers, April, like my book, was dedicated to the evening-star, i. e. to Venus.

On the contrary, the other avalanche lay already beforehand on his breast,–the possibility of a breach with Clotilda's brother. A jealous man the twelve Apostles and the twelve minor Prophets cannot convert;–if he is cured on Sunday, then on Monday he is sick again, on Tuesday he is raving mad, and on Wednesday you can loose him again; he is weak and cunning and—only lies in wait. The cancer of jealousy on the breast can never wholly be cut out, if I am to believe great masters of the healing art. This time, furthermore, there was something true at the bottom; and then too the jealous man insures it in good season; jealousy enforces infidelity, and the provoked woman will not, so far as in her lies, leave the man in error. I cannot give myself the trouble (but the reader may) to enumerate in my biography all the little crannies and wood-holes through which he has hitherto let his Flamin see and hear into his love-smitten heart: these knot-holes are so much the larger, as he was before the third Easter-holiday more improvident, for the very reason that he was more innocent, or, rather, more unhappy.

To this add, that Flamin–who every day thought the dear Evangelist Mattheus more honest and open (like a burnt-out touchhole)–every day looked upon his faithful Bastian as more artful and impenetrable. I could wish the Regency-Councillor were more discerning; but crowded souls like Victor's, that have more powers, and for that very reason more sides, than common, seem, of course, to be less porous, just as authors full of meaning seem less clear. A man who exposes to you with frankness all the colors of his heart playing into each other, loses thereby the glory of frankness;–one who like Victor, from humor, collects and shows up other people's tricks, seems to imitate them;–a changeable, an ironical, a fine man is in the eyes of narrow ones a thorough-going false thief. Then, too, Victor, when it could be done without noise, jumped out of the way of any long mentionings of Clotilda, i. e. long dissemblings; and this very flight from artifice, even his present increased human-kindliness toward Flamin, precisely overshadowed his noble form; and nothing consoled him for the distortions of suspicion, but the sweet reflection that to please the brother of his beloved and of his heart he had turned his back upon the fairest days in Maienthal.

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