Matthieu's Four Whitsuntide Days and Jubilee.

It is a stroke of art in me to write down true scenes of villany in the higher classes in French first, and then interpret them into the vernacular, as Boileau composed his insipid verses originally in prose.–As I attach great importance to the Forty-Third Dog-Post-Day,–because therein the noble Mat seeks to save his Flamin even at the sacrifice of his virtue and of Lord Horion,–accordingly I meditate to translate it so faithfully into German out of the French, in which I have written it, that my French author himself shall bestow on me his approbation.

Hardly had Matthieu heard that Clotilda's and Flamin's mother had come from London, when this Reineke marched out of his fox-kennel to Flachsenfingen, because he would not let any one take from him the honor of releasing Flamin. He seldom, despite his fieriness, anticipated opportunity; but he watched and only helped things on here or there; as in a romance, so in life, a thousand light trivialities, brought together at last, hook into each other firmly, and a good Mat twists at last out of scattered cobweb-meshes of accident a regular–silk noose for his fellow-man.–He boldly contrived to get himself a secret audience with the Prince, "because he would rather go to meet his punishment (on account of the challenge to the duel) than let certain weighty things remain in silence any longer." Weighty and dangerous had long since been kindred terms with January, but now were absolutely identical, because the Princess entertained him every morning with a few strophes out of the penitential psalm and owl's song about sedition, Ankerstroems,^[181] and propagandists. She and Schleunes blew upon one horn,–at least, they blew one melody from it.

Matthieu entered and produced the great weighty matter,–the bold petition for Flamin's life. January pronounced an equally bold "No!" for man is quite as indignant at him who drives him into a groundless fear, as at him who drives him into a well-grounded one. Matthieu coldly repeated his request: "I simply beg your Highness not to suppose that I should ever hold mere friendship as an adequate apology for such a bold petition,–the duty of a subject is my excuse."–January, who was annoyed at the uncourteous retraction, broke it off: "The guilty cannot petition for the guilty."–"Most gracious sir," said the Evangelist, who sought to drive him into fear and fury at once, "in any other times than ours it would be quite as punishable to guess or to predict certain things as to decree them; but in ours, these three things are easier. Against the day when the Regency-Councillor should lose his life, a plan is arranged, which certain persons have formed for the salvation of his life at the expense of their own."–The Prince–enraged at a boldness which ordinarily resides not within the snow-line^[182] of courts, but only at the democratic equator–said, with the death-sentence which Mat had long since wanted to get into his face: "I shall have you required to tell tomorrow the names of the wretches who propose to sacrifice their lives for the sake of turning the course of justice." ... Here the page fell down before him, and said quickly: "My name is the first; it is now my duty to be unhappy. My friend has killed no one, but I did it; he is not the son of a priest, but the first-born son of the murdered Mr. Le Baut." ...

Since pier-mirrors first existed, never was such a dumfounded, distracted visage seen in them as to-day. January dismissed him, in order to collect himself.

We will now in the antechamber say three words about the absent one. A shrewd thinker once said to me, that he had once said to a great connoisseur of the world, "The fault of the great was never to trust themselves in anything, and hence they were led by every one"; and that the connoisseur answered, he had hit it.–January had a grudge against Mat, and that merely on account of his satirical and sensual face,–but not anywise on account of his vices. I take for granted that the reader will certainly have seen courts enough–on the stage, where the higher classes get their notions of country people, and we ours of them–to know what one hates there—not vicious persons, not even virtuous ones, but both of these one really loves there (precisely as they do violinists, mechanics, Wetzlar attorneys, intendants) whenever they have need of them.—

The page appeared again. January had allayed the sweet paternal ebullition at the news, since he had heretofore given up all his children for lost. He desired now the proof that Flamin was the (nominal) son of the Chamberlain. About the duel he gave himself not the least concern. The proof was easy for the upright soul to produce. The soul appealed directly to the mother, who had this very moment arrived from London, having come to save her son, and to the sister herself. The soul had again the antecedent proposition to prove that both had knowledge of the matter:–Matthieu appealed to the letter of the mother which he had some years before read to the blind lord with the borrowed voice of Clotilda, and to the sister's exclamation during the duel in Maienthal Park, "It is my brother,"–and finally he adduced one more domestic witness in the case, the after-summer, which would now soon appear, and would retouch the maternal mark of the apple, which Le Baut's son bore on his shoulder.

Matthieu had too much veneration for his Prince and master to call the sovereign of the son the son's father. He now closed by saying, "He knew not for what reasons Lord Horion had hitherto concealed Flamin's extraction; but whatever they might have been, all excuses his Lordship had were also his own excuses for having himself kept silence so long,–and so much the more, as the proof of this descent must be more difficult for him than for his Lordship.–Only now, by the arrival of the mother, the facility of the proof was made as great as the necessity of it. All that he could do as a family friend of the Chamberlain had been to become Flamin's confidant in order to be his protector."

Thereby the Prince was necessarily brought back to the subject of the duel, which he in the beginning, after a few hints, had let drop. It was his way of business to break off soon from an affair of importance to him, to talk quite as long about other things, then to bring that matter forward again, and so pack the important matter away under quite as big layers of unimportant matters, as the booksellers slip contraband books in sheets under white or other paper. Then, too, Flamin's innocence of the murder was now of more consequence to January; he therefore naturally inquired why he had exposed his friend as a victim even to the show of a duel.

Matthieu said it would be a long story, and it was a bold step to entreat so much attention on the part of his Highness. He began with reporting what–the Dog-Post-Days have hitherto reported. He lied very little. He intimated that, in order to break off Flamin's love for his unknown sister Clotilda,–at least he wanted to increase it,–he had tried to make him jealous, but had not been able to set him at variance with any one except the lover; nay, it had not even helped matters at all that he had let him be himself an ear-witness of the very pardonable infidelity of Clotilda, but that his friend had at the very last manifested a rage at his sister's betrothal, which he had been able to appease in no other way than by the illusion of a disguised duel with the father. For in order to prevent a second fight between father and son; he had himself undertaken it, but unhappily with too disastrous an effect.

So far the noble Mat. The true circumstances, which are familiar to us, I suppress. January, who was now favorably inclined toward the Evangelist for the removal of a fear into which he himself had thrown him, put to him the natural question, why Flamin took upon himself the murder.–Matthieu: "I fled at once, and it was not in my power to prevent his untruth, which I could not have looked for; but it was in my power to refute it."–January: "Go on in your frankness; it is your vindication; do not evade!"–Matthieu, with a freer mien: "What I had to say I have already said in the beginning, for the sake of saving him; and now he is saved." January went back in thought, could not comprehend, and begged, "Make yourself a little more clear."–Matthieu, with the designed look of a man who prepares silverings-over of his story: "From magnanimity he would have died for him (Mat) who had sinned for him, did not his friends come to the rescue." January shook his head incredulously. "For," the other continued, "as he knows not his high rank, he more readily adopted certain French principles, which would have alleviated for him his death quite as much as certain Englishmen would have made use of them with the people to prevent it." As a proof, by the way, he adduced the blowing-up of the powder-house.

January saw with astonishment a light glide into a dark cavern, and saw far into the cavern.

One wrongs the excellent Evangelist, if one thinks it satisfies him merely to have saved his friend. His good heart was also bent upon setting up for his Lordship a monumental column, and of laying him under the column as its corner-stone. He gladly (as in "Hamlet") quartered in the play another play, and raised two theatre-curtains. We will seat ourselves in the first box. His previous conduct toward the Regency-Councillor shows plainly enough how far he was capable of carrying a true friendship without offending other friends, e. g. the Princess; for to the latter the finding again of the lost son of the Prince was no remarkable disadvantage, since the son was presented at once as master of a Jacobin lodge and rebel against his step-father and father both, and since his Lordship was so terrible a loser in the matter besides. But inasmuch as Matthieu had nothing to reproach himself with in the case, except his excess of philanthropy, he sought to counteract this extreme by an opposite one, of malice, because Bacon writes: "Exaggerations are best cured by their opposites." Neither, according to his too ardent notions of friendship, could he be a genuine friend of his Lordship's, since, according to Montaigne, one can have only one true friend, as well as only one lover; and his Lordship already exhibited one such in the person of January.

Allow me in three words to be short and agreeable. If the Arabs have two hundred names for the snake, they should certainly add the two hundred and first,–that of Courtier. Indulge me further in saying, that a man of influence and tone, by a capital crime,–a so-called debt of blood,^[183]–flourishes full as well as a whole state does upon more pitiful ones in the matter of money.–

January was now prepared to believe anything that explained the foregoing singular things. A lie which unties a knot is more credible to us than one which ties one. Matthieu went on: "He had attended all the republican concerts spirituels, in order to take measures against Flamin's catching the contagion; and he did not carry to an extreme friendship for the three Englishmen and the Lord's son (Victor), if he looked upon them and him more as tools of some other concealed hand, than as themselves workers on a plan.–This was confirmed by the misuse hitherto made of the innocent Flamin."–By way of excusing Victor, he said,–in doing which, he all along named him the Court-Physician, so that January, in his present mood, was more likely to think of a court-poisoner than anything else,–by way, then, of setting him in a favorable light, he said that individual was a mere lover of pleasure, and only carried out obediently what his father had sketched out for him,–that Victor had disguised himself as an Italian to watch the Princess, and afterward to report to the Lord, at whose behest he probably did it, in a secret interview on an island.–As Italian, he had handed the Princess a watch, in which he had covertly pasted a slip of paper, wherein he had forgotten the higher rank to flatter his own.

The Prince, who loved his spouse with greater jealousy than his betrothed, swept the floor with heavy strokes of the turkey-cock's wing, and pulled out the point of his nose to an unusual length, and proudly inquired how he knew that.–Matthieu replied calmly, "From Victor himself; for the Princess herself knew nothing of it." ...

The reader owes it to me, that he knows better about a thousand things.–Agnola certainly knew the contents of the watch very well; nay, I even imagine, that, when the enraged Joachime informed her of Victor's direct confession of his concepit, she had allowed Mat or Joachime to trace the present recipe, according to which the bridegroom here has to swallow Sebastian's billet-doux.

–"On the contrary," he continued, "she had long after presented his sister the watch, together with the billet.–Joachime had taken it out in Victor's presence, and he had thought fit to confess to her freely that very thing, which neither she nor he himself had, out of respect, yet disclosed to the Princess.–Meanwhile his sister had thereupon given him the slip,–whereupon he had made advances to Clotilda, perhaps according to a paternal instruction to bring the brother into nearer relations.–But in every instance he mixed up with the paternal schemes of ambition his own of pleasure, and was well disposed, just as the Englishmen were, whom he held to be Frenchmen in disguise."

The Prince, during the whole exhibition of these pretty snake-preparations, concealed his fear behind anger; Matthieu, who saw both mask and face, had hitherto cut all according to the former, and made the apparent want of fear the cloak of his boldness in exciting it.–And so he went from the Prince into a sort of indefinite, mock arrest for the murder; but January began to examine persons and papers.

Before reporting the result, let me gladly confess that Mat, the noble, knows how to lie well enough, and all the more, that he puts in truth as lath-work to his mortar of falsehood. As in the Polish rock-salt mines, the good liar always, in the undermining, leaves so many truths standing for pillars as may be necessary to prevent the breaking-in of the arch. In fact, every lie is a happy sign that there is still truth in the world; for, without this, no lie would be believed, and therefore none attempted. Bankruptcies give pleasure to the honest man, as new evidences of the unexhausted religious fund of other men's honesty, which must be extant, if it is to be deceived. So long as treaties of war and peace are disgracefully broken, so long is there still hope enough left, and so long courts will not want for genuine honesty; for every breach of a contract presupposes that one has been made,–and that is what no one could be any longer, if not one were any longer observed. It is with lies as with false teeth, which the gold thread cannot fasten, except to a couple of genuine ones still remaining.

January began the mint-probation days of Matthew's Gospel.

1. The Parson was summoned to confess, in the presence of the supreme authority of the state, what meetings he had suffered in the priestly house. The poor man turned over the leaves of oemler's Pastoral Theology, to find out how a parson has to behave who is going to be hanged, Without a murmur he now laid his neck upon the block and under the axe for lesser and moderate mishaps, for the Rat-King, who went like a whirlwind through his dwelling, for the garter which, while he walked, gradually slipped down over his knee-pan, and exchanged the anxiety of the happy for the agony of the unhappy. At the audience he said, he had, at church and elsewhere, inveighed against the clubs as much as any one, and had bought Girtanner^[184] for the purpose. To the question, whether Flamin was his son, he replied sadly, he hoped his wife had never violated his and her marriage vows.–When he got back to his house, in order not to be in agony for fear of arrest, he took a bundle of old manuscript sermons with him into a quarry, and learned them there by heart for three or four Sundays to come.

2. On the same day the Minister Von Schleunes (out of complacency to the Princess) paid a visit at Le Baut's house, and communicated to the lady and Clotilda the current rumors about Flamin's birth. Both ladies had to believe that Victor must have disclosed the secret to the Prince, in order to save his unhappy friend. How could they have helped imitating him, when the iron pear^[185] of the oath was taken from the tongue and out of the mouth, and since one may violate a vow of secrecy when one would otherwise have to violate truth, and the tender souls rejoiced now so heartily at the opening of the door of the year of Jubilee into the prison of their darling?–In one word, the Minister brought back nothing but confirmations of the hypotheses of his son.

3. On the same day, the merchant Tostato was examined by Count O. respecting his shop-partner, and Victor by the confessor respecting the author of the pastoral or bucolic letter in the watch, and then heard. Here, too, Matthieu, as was to be expected, had the truth entirely on his side. Victor was now too proud, too good, too resigned, to conceal anything.

4. All the tallies of sins in Kussewitz and everywhere fitted into each other; even from Victor's former mediatorial office, which he once discharged with the Prince for Agnola, from his little indiscretions, from his satires, from his dressing up the juvenile soldiery in breeches, from his journey with the Prince, there was now spelled out nothing but draughts and ground-strokes of a sketched plan of battle against the throne. In fact it was necessary, January was obliged, the more spy-glasses he directed at this meteorological phenomenon of lies, to behold it only so much the greater.

I have forgotten the Princess, who made believe that she was very much offended and wholly ignorant in the matter of the billet, and could hardly be contented with the punishment, that the hero of the Dog-Post-Days should be forbidden the court. The court! thee, good Victor! thee,–who wilt soon forbid thyself the earth!

January easily overlooked past offences, but he strictly punished future ones. And since, moreover, Mat, like a rattlesnake, rattled so terribly, not to give warning, but, as more recent naturalists have found in the case of the real rattlesnake, for the sake of making the victim stiff and fearful: accordingly his Lordship was tumbled down so out of January's heart over all the steps of the throne, that it could not have helped him at all, even if he had immediately stept forth out of the air. Flamin was found without his help.–To the house of the three Englishmen permission was sent to take passage for their island, when they pleased. They sent back word, they needed only one day to reach their island, and waited only for their travelling companion. By the island, however, they meant the Isle of Union,–and by the travelling companion the fettered Flamin, whom they wanted to persuade to go along with them.

I am pleased that my Victor was forbidden the court. Dismissal from court is generally a favor,–(now a deliverance from court-services may well deserve that name,)–which is not always bestowed on the worthiest, but often on a devil like Louvois,^[186] as well as on an apostle like Tessin.^[187] But does it not amount to taking away from an eminent favor, an order pour le mÉrite, all its value, when one tosses it to knaves, whereas it ought to be laid up as the greatest and last reward, as a premium and pike-bearer's reward,^[188] as an ovation, for the most honest, candid, and oldest man at court?

In the next chapter one may hold himself prepared for an uproar, the like of which is heard in few German chapters; the alarm-cannons of the court-party, the knocking down of scaffoldings and upsetting of chairs, in getting from the criminal court, I shall be able to hear even over on my island. The black-haired and black-hearted court-page, when he is discharged from arrest, with his ironical mien and his peculiar low voice,–the ripieno-voice of his most malicious scorn, as it is with others that of the most exalted enthusiasm,–will stalk round everywhere and say, he wishes his Lordship would appear, he has hitherto labored in his matters to the best of his ability. At court one sometimes becomes sublime by an eminent wickedness,^[189] as, according to Burke, no smell is sublime except the most stinking of all, and no taste except the bitterest. And just so every one easily conceals there his compassionate interest in the falling favorite, like the wise father, who, at the fall of a child, disguises his compassionate face under a comic one.

On the 21st of October, Matthieu is set at large, and is at liberty to go to Flamin,–he has begged the favor for himself–to announce to him his freedom and promotion at once.... In a few days the incidents, and my protocol of them, might run out of the hour-glass of one and the same time, if the dog should come regularly; but he comes when he will.

shieldstart