Letter.–Two new Incisions of Fate.–His Lordship's Confession of Faith.

One must excuse a man, who, like horses, increases his speed as night and home draw near, from a tenth intercalary day; at the end of a life and of a book, man makes few digressions.

I have already said, that nothing presses the spiritual and spinal marrow out of a man more than when his misfortune allows him no action; fate still held our Victor fast with one hand, in order to beat him sore with the other, when in these weeks of sorrow the water-wheel of time filled up two new lachrymatories out of the hearts of men, and emptied them into eternity. First came the dismal tidings, like a funeral knell, to Victor's ear, that the sometime friend of his youth, Flamin, was about to expiate a step which, but for the falling out with him, he never would have taken, with his death. Some days after the canicular holidays,–precisely when, a year previous, the poor prisoner had entered on his new office with so many philanthropic hopes,–that rumor came forth like a pestilential cloud out of the session-chambers. Victor flew, incredulous and yet trembling, to the Apothecary, in order to get, by inquiry, a refutation. The latter candidly unfolded before him–for the very reason that he despised and wanted to shame the Court-Physician–all the rapport-lists of the court and the reports of the cercles, and recited to him so much as this out of them: it was not otherwise. Victor heard, what he already presupposed, that the Prince had on now the leading-strings or curb-bit of his own wife, and that she came nearer to him in consequence of Clotilda's withdrawal, and, with her ear-^[171] and ring-finger, moved the bridle, threaded through the nose-ring, as if she were in fact nothing less than his–mistress; which is a new and mournful example, how easily in these times a fine married lady steals the privileges of a concubine. Zeusel found it natural, "that she, as the friend of the Minister, who, as well as his son Matthieu, had been the friend of the Chamberlain, should seek to avenge the death of the latter upon Flamin, and that the Minister, in order the better to get his hand into the handle of the ParcÆ's scissors, and cut in twain the thread of the Regency-Councillor's life, himself ordained and maintained the continued absence of his son, that the latter might not in any way protect the unhappy favorite." In all this there was not a true word,–Victor knew better; but so much the worse. O, does not everything betray that Matthieu has drawn the Princess, by hints respecting Flamin's birth, into his faithless interests, in order, like magicians, to destroy at a distance, and by few characters? Would the mere fear of the stigma of the challenge hold him so long beyond the limits of the country?–Add to this, that the sun of princely favor brooded more and more warmly over the ministerial frog-spawn. It is true,–and Victor did not deny it,–one might expect of the Princess that she would in time overturn with her foot the Matthieu's- or Jacob's-ladder on which she climbed the princely heart, (whereas she had previously reached only January's hand,) just as the marten lets the drowsy eagle snatch him up into the air, and only up aloft begins to hack at him, and keeps doing it till the bearer falls and dies; but by this time, I think, her steadfast gratitude toward Schleunes is abundantly excused with honest men by the fact, that still more remains to be gotten of the uncompleted gift. An old lawgiver ordained a punishment for every case of ingratitude; in my opinion, every one falls into the same fault as he, if one censures and punishes every instance of gratitude, since often the most selfish at court may have his good reasons for it.^[172]

Victor went sadly into his chamber, and looked on Flamin's picture, and said: "O, may it not be the will of Heaven, poor fellow, that it should be no longer possible to save thee." Victor could never, three days after an offence, any longer avenge himself. "I forgive every one," he used to say, "only not friends and maidens, because I am too fond of both." But what helping hand, what twig, could he reach down into prison to the sinking Flamin?–All he could do was to go to the Prince with a naked prayer for his pardon. Thousands of generous acts remain undone, because one is not entirely certain that they will produce their legitimate fruits. But Victor went nevertheless; he had made for himself the golden rule, to act for another even when the result is not a matter of certain hope. For if we chose first to wait for that certainty, sacrifices would be quite as rare as they were devoid of merit.

He went to the Prince, for the first time after so long, an interval,–with the disadvantage against him of terminating a long absence with a petition,–spoke with the fire of a recluse in behalf of his Flamin,–besought the Prince for the postponement of his fate till his Lordship should return,–received the decision, "Your honored father and I must simply leave it in the hands of justice,"–and was coldly and proudly dismissed.

Now precisely it was, on the 5th of September of this year, when a great eclipse of the sun made the soul as well as the earth sad and gloomy, that the water-wheel of time had filled the first lachrymatory vessel in his breast; it rolled over farther, and the second overflowed. Clotilda's letter arrived on the 22d of September, at the beginning of autumn.

"Dear Friend:–

"Your honored father was still in London at the beginning of February, and had much French correspondence; then he went off to Germany, and since that my mother knows nothing of his movements. May Destiny watch over his important life! Upon three oaths,^[173] which his absence makes inviolable, hang many tears, many hearts, and, O God! a human life.–I enclose a leaf from your honored father, which he wrote at my mother's, and which contains a philosophy that makes my spirit and my prospects more and more sad. Ah, although you once said, neither the fear nor the hopes of man hit their mark, but always something else; still I have the mournful right to believe my apprehensions and all the dreams of anxiety, as I have hitherto been mistaken in nothing but in hope.–How insatiable is man!–But even though all should come true, and I should become too unhappy, still I should say, how could I now be too unhappy, had I not once been too happy?"—

You will readily forgive me, if I am silent about London, and about the impression which it might make on so distrait a heart as mine. The active stir of freedom, and the glitter of luxury and of commerce, simply oppress a sorrowing soul, and do not make one more cheerful who was not cheerful before. Be happy, beloved native city, my heart said, be long and greatly happy, as I was in thee in my youth!–But then I love rather to hasten with my mother to her country-seat, where once three good children^[174] so joyously bloomed, and there I am inexpressibly softened, and then I fancy myself happier here than among the happy. I only fancy it, I may well say: for when I contemplate there all the playthings of those good children, their task-books and their little clothes; when I seat myself under three cherry-trees planted close together, which they in play had set out in the child's garden, which was too narrow for them; and then when I think how on this stage they exercised and built up their hearts for a happier life than they have won, for a higher virtue than their relations allowed them, and for better society than they have found,–then am I sorely distressed, and then I feel as if I must weep and could say, I too was born in England, and was educated in Maienthal by Emanuel.

"Ah, I cannot hide the feelings of my heart, when I write the name of that great soul.–He was often on a mountain here, where lies a ruined church, and where he climbed a column that was still standing, in order to lift his eye to the stars, above which he now dwells.–I was just on the point of writing to you now what my mother told me of his departure; but it makes me too sad, and I will tell it to you orally. I visit this mountain very often, because one can look down on the whole plain eastward: here is the old tree, still hanging with its roots and twigs down into the quarry, which lies full of broken temple columns. Emanuel often at evening took thither the child whom he loved most,^[175] and who, when he prayed on the column, with one arm wound round the tree, looked out and leaned out, longing and singing, over the broad landscape, and, without knowing it, wept in sweet distress at his own tones, and at the distant fields, and at the pale morning-red which gleamed back from the red of evening. Once, when the teacher asked the child, 'Why art thou so still, and leavest off singing?'–the answer was, 'Ah, I long for the morning-red. I should like to lie in it and go through it, and look, over into the bright lands behind there.'–I often seat myself under that tree, and lean my head against it, and silently follow with my eye the stretch of distance even to the horizon, which stands before Germany; and no one disturbs my weeping or my still prayer.

"I was there to-day for the last time; for to-morrow we go with my mother, without whom my orphan heart can no longer live, back to Germany, to the best friend of

"The truest friend,

"Cl."

O thou good soul!—

How hard, after this, sounds the singular leaf of his Lordship, which seems to be no letter, but a cold apology for his future conduct. "Life is a petty; empty game. If my many years have not refuted me, then a refutation by my few remaining ones is neither necessary nor possible. A single unhappy man outweighs all drunken ones. For us insignificant things, insignificant things are good enough; for sleepers, dreams. Therefore, neither in us nor out of us is there anything worthy of wonder. The sun near to is a ball of earth; an earthly globe is merely the more frequent repetition of an earthly clod.–What is not sublime in itself and for itself can no more be made so by repetition than the flea by the microscope; at most, smaller. Why should the tempest be sublimer than an electric experiment, a rainbow greater than a soap-bubble? If I resolve a great Swiss landscape into its constituent parts, I get fir-needles, icicles, grasses, drops, and gravel.–Time resolves itself into moments, peoples into individuals, genius into thoughts, immensity into points; there is nothing great.–A trigonometrical proposition, often thought over, becomes a tautological one; an oft-read conceit, stale; an old truth, indifferent.–Again I assert, what becomes great by steps remains little. If the poetic power, which paints either images or passions, is not already admirable in the invention of the most commonplace image, then it is nowhere so. Every one can, like the poet, put himself into the place of another, at least in some degree.–I hate inspiration, because it is raised as well by liquors as by fancies, and because, during and after it, one is most inclined to intolerance and sensual pleasure.–The greatness of a sublime deed consists not in the execution, which amounts to mere corporeal pitiablenesses, going and staying; not in the simple resolve, because the opposite one, e. g., that of murdering, requires just as much energy as that of dying; not in its rarity, because we all are conscious in ourselves of the same capacity for the act, but have not the motive;–not in any of these, but in our boasting.–We hold our very last error for truth, and only the last but one as none at all; our today as holy, and every future moment as the crown and heaven of its predecessors. In old age, after so many labors, after so many appeasings, the spirit has the same thirst, the same torment. As in a higher eye everything is diminished, a spirit or a world, in order to be great, should be so even before a so-called Divine eye; but then the one or the other would have to be greater than God, for one never admires his own image.–In my youth, I composed a tragedy, and put all the above principles into the mouth of my hero, and made him, shortly before he plunged the dagger into his own heart, add these further words: But perhaps death is sublime; for I do not comprehend it. And so, then, will I lead aside the columns of blood which leap up out of the heart and so sportively keep up the human head and the human individuality at such an elevation, as a fountain bears the hollow ball balanced on its flickering stream,–this fountain will I draw off with the dagger, so that the I may be precipitated.–I shuddered at this character at the time; but afterward, I reflected upon it, and it became my own!"

* * * * *

Frightful man! Thy blood-stream and the I on the top of it have perhaps already collapsed, or will soon fall through.–And precisely this dark presentiment is also in the hearts of Victor and Clotilda—O that thou, thou other bowed man, whom I dare not name here before the public, mightest guess that I mean thee, that thou, just as well as the unhappy Lord, art eating away thy own self like blood-sucking corpses, and that, in the starry night of life, thou still bearest a deadly mist of thine own around thee! O the spectacle of a magnanimous heart, which merely through ideas makes itself helpless, and which lies inaccessible and benumbed in its arbor of philosophical poison-trees, often dyes our days black!–Believe, not that his Lordship is anywhere right! How can he find anything to be small, without holding it over against something great? Without reverence there could be no contempt; without the feeling of disinterestedness, no perception of selfishness; without greatness, no littleness. When thou canst explain the tears of the adagio by the vibration of the strings, or by the blood-globules and threefold skins of a beautiful face thy regard for the same; then and as well canst thou think to justify thy rapture for the spiritual in Nature by means of its corporeal filaments, which are nothing but the flute-pieces and flat and sharp valves of the unplayed harmony. The sublime resides only in thoughts, whether those of the Eternal One, who expresses them by letters made of worlds, or those of man, who reads them and spells them out!–

I postpone the refutation of his Lordship to another book, although this, too, is a refutation.–

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