Love-Letter.--Comedie.--Bal Paké.--Two Dangerous Midnight Scenes.--Practical Application.
I have at this joyous season no very joyous feelings; perhaps because my body, which threatens to fall to pieces, no more goes right than a longitude-watch or sea-chronometer--perhaps also the contents of this section lie on my brain--perhaps, too, at the sight of the universal joy of the children, the blood creeps so mournfully between the evergreen and autumnal flower age of the remembrance how it once was, how the joys of man roll away, how they mark their remoteness from us by a reflection gleaming over from distant shores, and how our longest days seldom give us so much as the shortest or Christmas night gives the child in the way of enjoyment or of hope.
I should not have spoken with so much levity as I did fourteen days ago of Gustavus's hearty letter. It runs thus:
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"Before I wrote this, my inexpressibly dear one, you went with Laura up through the park to enjoy a little while the sinking sun, that shone down between two great clouds; at your side shadows of clouds flitted away, but the sunshine went with you. I thanked the foliage that it lay at your feet and could not hide you from me; but I would fain have plucked all the thorny leaves from the holly behind which you disappeared and went from me. 'O could I only'--thought I--'strew her autumnal way with young flowers and butterflies, could I encircle her with blossoms and nightingales, and cover the woods and the mountains before her with spring-time--but, if she then should tremble with joy and must needs look upon me and thank me.' ... But these blossoms, these nightingales, these springs you have given me; you have breathed over my life an eternal May, and wrung from a human eye tears of joy--but what have I to give? Ah, Beata, what can I give you for this whole Elysium wherewith you entwine and festoon the dark ground of my life, and for your whole, whole heart?--Mine--that indeed you already had for nothing, and that is all I have to give; for all fair hours, for all your charms, for all your love, for all that you give, have I nothing but this true, happy, warm heart....
"Yes, I have only this; but if the divine spark of the highest love can glow in the human heart it dwells in mine, and burns for one whom I can only love but not repay. Thou, higher spark, wilt gleam on for her in my heart when tears flood or misfortune crushes it, or death turns it to ashes.... Beata! no human being can, here on earth, tell another how he loves him. Friendship and love go with closed lips over this ball, and the inner man has no tongue. Ah, if man, out in the eternal temple, which arches upward even to infinity, amidst the circle of singing choirs, holy places, altars of sacrifice, will fain fall down dazed before an altar and pray, ah then does he, as well as his tear, sink to the ground and remain speechless! But the good soul knows who loves her and is silent; she overlooks not the still eye which follows her, she forgets not the heart which the more strongly it beats has the less power to speak, nor the sigh which seeks to hide itself. But, Beata, believe me!--when once this eye and this heart have ended their silence, when in the most blissful hour they have dared with all the energies of the loving nature to say to the beloved soul, 'I love thee,' then is it hard and painful to be mute again; so painful to press back again the upheaved, flaming, impetuous heart into a close, cold breast--then in the innermost soul will the silent joy dissolve into silent sorrow and gleam sadly into it, as does the moon into a rainbow which the night uprears.... Beata! I can proffer no petitions, I dare not have any; I can picture to myself the Eden which Beata's looks and words might give me, but I dare not crave it; I must with all my wishes fasten myself to the shore of the silver shadow, which even in dreams, and at this moment in life, like a broad stream divides us; but, darling, if I do not sometimes hear to whom the most precious heart has given itself, how shall I retain the courage to believe it? When I behold this gracious heart among so many good and exalted beings, and then am compelled to say to myself, ah, you all, nevertheless, have failed to deserve it; then does a joyful amazement come over me, that it has given itself to my soul, and I can hardly believe it. Beloved! thousands were more worthy of thee; but none could have been made happier by thee than I am!"
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The hardest thing now was, to get the letter, on any other wings than those of a carrier-dove--Venus probably harnessed a span of carrier-doves to her gondola--to its destined place. Of such a thing he saw no possibility, because, among all possibilities, such a one is for him the hardest to see,--for my sister such a one is the easiest.
All came about in the rehearsal of the play.
Regular plays, we know, are not, like their sisters, the political ones, produced without rehearsal. I will willingly let as small a paper-interval as possible come between the rehearsal and the performance; but the reader must also, on his part, turn the leaves over nimbly, and not lay his hands in his lap so much as the book. The rehearsal took place in the old palace. Oefel did his part well enough--Beata still better--and Gustavus the very worst of all. For the faces of the Prince and the Fainting Lady, like salt and nitric acid, almost transformed his heart into an icicle; there are many people before whom one is nerveless and incapable of having inspired feelings. Singular! only his, but not Beata's, were chilled by this north-wind sweeping over the stage. And yet after all it is not singular; for love throws the young man out of his own self into other personalities around him, but repels the maiden from others back into her own. Slightly, if at all, did Beata notice the approaches of the reigning actor or acting Regent. Oefel, however, saw it, and anticipated his victory over the exalted rival--who made his approaches to him in no very large snail-line, as was his custom with the Court ladies, who only in youth give away their virtue a la minutia; in old age, on the contrary, drive a larger business with it in grosso. I said just now something about a snail-line, because I had in my head a conceit of this kind, that women of the world and the sun, under the appearance of leading the planets in a circle round their rays, in fact hurry them onward in a fine spiral (or snail-line) to their burning surface.
In the midst of the rehearsal, just as Gustavus (or Henry) handed Marie the blank paper as a certificate declaring their relationship null and void, something occurred to him as Henry which would have occurred to another long before as Gustavus, namely, that something might be written on the blank paper, and in fact the best something--his love-letter, which we have already long since read. In short, he proposed to himself to slip his letter into her hands in the play in the form of that certificate, if it could not be done otherwise. Even the romantic element in the resolve, to insinuate his real part into his theatrical one, and to put upon so many spectators another deception than the poetic one, did not repel, but rather impelled him. I will just confess, dear Gustavus--and though my confession should fall into thine own hands--on thy heavenly modesty the honey-dew of approbation, which in such a place thou wast justified in regarding not even as flattery, but merely as a façon of speech, had fallen with a disturbing influence! Of all things human, modesty is the most fumigated or brimstoned to death, and many a commendation is as harmful as a calumny. In the madhouse we see that man takes other people's word for it that he is crazy,[[85]] and in palaces we see that he takes their word for it when they call him wise. On the whole Gustavus--(for a man is often destined on an evening not merely to play one wretched part after another, but often also mere thoughtless pranks)--on the dramatic evening, was almost selected for the latter rôle.
... At length the Bouse's birthday fête has arrived.... O my Gustavus! To this very day thy eyes are wet with the remembrance!
The fête breaks into three courses--Comédie, Souper, and Bal paré. In reality, there is still a fourth course--a fall.
On the day of the performance, the new palace emptied itself into that of the Prince at Ober-Scheerau. Gustavus thought, while on the way (in Oefel's carriage), of his letter which he was going to deliver, and of good Doctor Fenk a little; but the shortened days gave him no time for visiting. His fault was, that for him the present, like a cataract, always drowned all distant sounds; and he would not perhaps even have come to me if my crowded legal work-table had allowed me to go to town.
He saw his Marie--ten hundred thousand new charms ... but I will restrain himself. So much is physiologically true, that a maiden of our familiar acquaintance in a strange place will appear to us somewhat as a stranger, but only the more interesting. Beata had this in common with the brilliant Lady Resident, but a certain breath of modest shyness adorned her alone with its veil. In what was Gustavus at this time distinguished from her? In this: man's bashfulness lies merely in his training and his circumstances; woman's lies deep in her nature--man has internal courage and often merely external helplessness; woman has not this, and is nevertheless shy--the former expresses his respect by pressing forward; the latter hers by drawing backward.
The Fainting Lady, the so-called Défaillante, the Ministress, to-day excepted! Her winking and blinking, her lisping and whispering, her wriggling and giggling, her fearing and daring, her coquetry and mockery--how shall the one-legged Jean Paul biographically copy all this in poor, common prose? Nevertheless, it is absolutely not otherwise to be done, and he must. If the variegated heads of women had to represent, in the great garden of nature, the blue, red, glass-globes on lacquered pedestals (which not one man in a hundred believes), I would go on in my portrayal thus: that of the Minister's Lady was hot bad, not gay; this head was a short, practical extract of ten other heads, that is to say, which had contributed hair, teeth, features, to the making-up of it. She was an antique of great beauty, but one which after the devastations of years and men was no more to be had in a sound state; she had, therefore, to be restored by skilful sculptors with new members--such as bosom, teeth, etc.
On the cheeks the alloying was done in red, the neighboring parts below were alloyed with white.[[86]]
Those teeth which place man in the class of ruminant animals, the incisors, were as white as ivory, and all the more so, because they were really such and came from the mouth of a graminivorous beast;--whether I mean by that an elephant or a common man, who seldom applies the teeth which, as scions, he grafts upon a nobler stem, to anything but vegetables; at all events so much is certain, that no other concluding clause will fit this period but the following: she had once more as many teeth as other Christian women, and two gold threads beside, because the dentist always had one part in the house and under the brush, while the others pronounced the dental letters.
As, according to the latest text-books trigonometry--and bosoms--can be divided only into plane and spherical, and as she had manifestly the entire alternative before her, her geometrical genius preferred for her those magnitudes which afford geometers the greatest power and the greatest pleasure--the spherical.
Her attire, from shoe-rosettes to hat-rosettes, sought its effect far less in form than in material, and consequently could be less appraised by the eyes than on jeweler's scales, less by lines of beauty than according to carats--there always remained a distinction therefore between her and her legislative doll; for the rest she, like every other woman, had to carry herself according to that standard. I will say just one timely word here on dolls.
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