Oefel's Intrigues.--The Degradation.--The Departure.
It fares badly enough with him, if, indeed, inquiring Germany meant our Gustavus. It is Oefel's fault. But I will explain to affrighted Germany the whole matter; the fewest people therein know how he comes to be a Romance-writer and a Counsellor of Legation.
No sensitive officer--in the cadet-barracks he wore uniform--has exchanged fewer balls, and more shirts and letters, than Oefel. These last he insisted on writing to all sorts of people; for his letters could be read, because he himself read, and indeed things in the belles-lettres line, which he also imitated. For he was, it must be known, a bel-esprit, but had no other [esprit]. French booksellers in a body are said to have sent him a ridiculous letter of thanks, because he bought up all their stuff--even the present biography, wherein he himself appears, will one day reappear with him, when he hears of its publication and of its translation into French. Himself, body and soul I mean, he had already translated into all languages out of his French mother-patois. The bel-esprits in Scheerau (including me perhaps) and in Berlin and Weimar despised the fool, not merely because he was from Vienna, where to be sure no earthquake ever heaved up a Parnassus, but still the mole-snouts of a hundred brochurists have thrown up duodecimo-petty-Parnassuses, and where the Viennese citizens who stand on them think envy is looking up, because pride is peering down--but he despised us in a mass, because he had money, fashion, connections and courtly taste. Prince Kaunitz once invited him (if it is true) to a souper and ball, where there was such a crowd and all went off so brilliantly, that the old man never knew at all that Oefel had eaten and danced at his house. As his brother was the chief court-marshal and himself very rich, accordingly no one in all Scheerau had taste enough to read his verses, except the court; for it they were made; it could run over such verses as over the grassy parts of the park without hindrance, so short, soft and clean shorn was their growth; secondly, he published them not on printing-paper, but on silk ribbons, garters, bracelets, visiting-cards and rings. Among other fleas which skip up and down and make themselves audible on the membrane of the public's ear-drum, I too am found and help the thunder; but Oefel imitated none of us and greatly despised thee, my public, and set thee below courts; "me" (he said) "no one shall read who has not a yearly income of over 7000 livres."
Next summer he is to set out as envoyé to the Court of ----, in order to resume the negotiations respecting the bride of the Prince, which had already been spun at her cradle, and broken off, and to knit them again at the side of her Graham's bed.[[61]] The Prince must needs, in fact, marry her, because a certain third court, which one is not permitted to name, would fain withhold her thereby from a fourth, which I should be glad to name. But let my word be taken for it, no man in the bridegroom's whole court believes that the reason of his being despatched to the court of the bride is that there fine esprits and fine persons are perhaps articles in demand; verily, in both of these charms he could be outbidden by any one; but in a third charm unfortunately he could not, and one which to an envoyé is dearer and more needful than moral ones--money. At an insolvent court the Prince has the first, and the millionaire the second crown. I have often cursed the confounded hereditary misfortune of the Principality of Scheerau, and perceived that there is seldom enough in its treasury, and we would gladly help ourselves by a national bankruptcy, if we could only first get national credit. But, excepting this Principality, I have never in all my travels found the following four regions anywhere but on Etna itself: first, the fruitful, and secondly, the wooded region at the foot of the throne, where fruits and grazing and game-cattle, namely, the populace, are to be found; thirdly, the icy region of the court, which yields nothing but glitter; fourthly, the torrid region of the throne-peak, where there is little to be found except the crater. A throne-crater can swallow up and calcine even gold mountains, and eject them as lava.
Unluckily Gustavus pleased him, because he regarded the young man's youthful good nature as an exclusive attachment to himself, his modesty as lowliness before the Oefelian grandeur, his virtues as weaknesses. He was pleased with him because Gustavus had a taste for poetry, and consequently, he inferred, the greatest for his own; for Oefel's noble bloody contrary to nature, ran in a thin poetic vein, and in a satirical one, too, he thought. Perhaps also, Gustavus, in these years of taste, when youth is enraptured with the lesser beauties and faults of poetry, may sometimes have thought even Oefel's good. Now, as even Rousseau says, he can choose no one for a friend who is not pleased with his Heloise; so belletrists can give their hearts only to such people as have a similarity of heart, mind and consequently taste, to themselves, and who accordingly have a sense of the beauties of their poetic effusions as lively as their own.
Meanwhile what Oefel valued most highly in Gustavus was that he could be planted in his romance. He had studied in the cadet ark sixty-seven specimens, but he could not promote one of them to be the hero of his book, to be the Grand Sultan, except the sixty-eighth, Gustavus.
And he is just my hero, too. But that may in time furnish an unprecedented pleasure in the reading, and I would that I could read my things and another write them.
He wished to train up my Gustavus to be the future heir of the Ottoman throne, but not to say a word to him about his being Grand Seignor--either in the romance or in life--he meant to write down all the workings of his pedagogical leading-string and transfer them from the living Gustavus to the printed one. But here there planted himself in the way of the Balaam and his ass a cursed angel; namely, Gustavus. Oefel intended and was obliged to go back from the cadet barracks where his objects were accomplished, to the old palace, where new ones awaited him. In the first place he could more easily from the old palace make him leap over into the Cartesian vortices of the new, its visitings and enjoyments, and be whirled about in them; secondly, he could there better enjoy the company of his beloved, the Minister's lady, who came thither daily, and who sacrificed to love virtue and the love of the assembly hunting-ground; thirdly, the second reason is not strictly true, but he only made believe it was to the Minister's lady, because he had still a third, which was Beata, whom he designed, from his palace, to shoot, or at least blockade in hers. Go he must, then; but Gustavus must go too.
"This is to be done instanter," thought Oefel, "he shall at last himself beg of me that which I beg of him." Nothing gratified him more than an opportunity of leading some one to his object, the leading was still more agreeable to him than the object, as in love he preferred the campaigns to the spoils. He would, as ambassador, have made peace out of war, and war out of peace again, merely for the pleasure of negotiating. He drew, by way of approaching Gustavus, his first parallels, i. e., he etched out to him with his sharp tongue a charming picture of courts, that they alone could teach savoir vivre and all that, and the art of talking, as even dogs, the more cultivated they are, bark so much the more, the lap-dog more than the shepherd-dog, the wild one not at all; that through them there murmurs a river-of-paradise of pleasures; that one finds himself there at the fountain head of his felicity, at the ear of the Prince, and at the knot of the greatest connections; that one can intrigue, conquer, etc. It was in Oefel's plan not to betray to the little Grand Sultan even so much as the possibility of his going with him to the old palace. "All the more shall I entice him," he thought. But he did not get on with the enticing, because Gustavus had not yet passed over from the poetic and idyllic years, in which the ingenuous youth hates courts and dissimulations, to the cooler years in which he seeks them. Oefel, like courtiers and women, studied only men, not man.
Now the second parallel was drawn and a still nearer approach made to the fortress. One forenoon he took a walk with him in the park, just when he knew he should find there the Resident Lady. While conversing with her, he observed Gustavus's observation, or rather blushing astonishment, who, never before in his life had stood before such a lady, around whom all charms entwined, redoubled, lost each other, like triple rainbows spanning heaven. And thou, too, Beata, thou flower soul, whose roots so seldom find on the sandy ground of earth the right flower soil, thou wast standing by, with an attention fixed upon the Resident Lady, which was meant to be an innocent mask of thy slight confusion. Gustavus could contrive no mask for his greater embarrassment. Oefel ascribed this mutual confusion, not as I do to the mutual recollection of the Guido-iconoclasm, but Gustavus's to the Resident Lady, and that on the female side to himself. "So then I have him where I want him!" said he, and let him accompany him even to the old palace. "Apropos! supposing now we should both stay here," said he. The responsive sigh of impossibility grounded upon other reasons was just what he desired. "All the same! You will be my Secretary of Legation!" he continued, with his keen glance on the watch for surprise, a glance which he never properly covered with an eyelid, because he always fancied he surprised everybody.
But it turned out stupidly for Oefel. Gustavus declined and said: "Never!" whether from a dread of courts, fear of his father, from being ashamed to change, or from love of quiet; in short Oefel stood there dumbfounded gazing after the floating fragments of his wrecked building-plan. It is true, there was still left him this advantage from it all, that he could work the whole shipwreck into his romance, only, however, the Secretary was gone! He had also, not unreasonably, voted him already in advance to the Secretaryship of the Embassy; for the throne of Scheerau has a ladder leaning against it, with the lowest and the highest rungs of honor, but the steps are so near together that one can place his left foot on the lowest round and yet reach with his right the highest--once indeed we might almost have created an upper field marshal. Secondly, in courts, as in nature, all things hang and join together, and professors might properly call it the cosmological nexus: every one is at once bearer and burden; thus the iron ruler sticks to the magnet, a little ruler to that, to that a needle, and to that steel-filings. At most only what sits upon the throne and what lies down below under it, has not nexus enough with the efficient company; so in the French opera only the flying gods and the shuffling beasts are made of Savoyards, all the rest of the regular company.
So Oefel must needs draw a third parallel, and therefrom shoot at the cadet. Namely--he made his uniform every day a thumbs breadth snugger and tighter, by way of tormenting him out of it. He had, with this view, already and recently been the means of sending him off to the grain-cordon, where the warm-hearted youth, accustomed only to mercy and charity, found stern and sharp no's, new and hard duties; but now the service, from below upward, was still more aggravated, and the military exercises almost crushed his fine porcelain frame, so often and so severely did the Romancier drag him into the society of the father of all peace-treaties, namely, War.
How painfully must the rude external world have galled his wounded inner man! Before his eyes, ever since his falling-out with his dying darling, stood evermore that mournful evening, with its tears, and would not stir; on his desolate heart the blood-red sun still glimmered and would not go down. The dumb departure of his Amandus, who lost him and so many wishes beside; the waning autumn-days of his life and their former love, wrung tears of sorrow from his eyes and heart. Friendship can endure misunderstandings less than love; with the latter they tickle the heart, with the former they tear it asunder. Amandus, who had so misinterpreted and grieved him, and yet whose innermost love had not lost him, forgave him all until five o'clock in the evening--then he heard (or it was enough for him if he only imagined it) that Gustavus had visited the park (and consequently the fair promenader)--then he took back his reconciliation till eleven at night--then night and dream flung once more a mantle over all human failings, and over this one. At five o'clock the next evening it began again as before. Laugh at him, if you will, but without pride, and at me and yourselves likewise; for all our emotions--without their lion and maniac-keeper. Reason--are just as crazy, if not in our outward lives, yet in our inner being! But at last he had taken back his forgiveness so often, that he determined to let it stay, provided only that Gustavus should knock and hear from him all the grievances which he intended to pardon him. One often postpones forgiveness because one is compelled to postpone the repetition of the charges. But, friend Amandus, could Gustavus come then, and would the Romancier let him?
The latter carried on his game still further and cunningly planned that this Grand Sultan, this hero of two well-written books, should, on a certain evening, when the Cadet-General gave a great souper, stand before his house as--sentry. Deuce take it! when the loveliest of ladies pass by him:--the well-known Resident--who, with a casual glance set up our good sentry all skinned and stuffed as an image in her brain--and her maid-of-honor Beata--and when one has to present arms before such faces: one would much rather lay them down, and, in fact, instead of standing, kneel down to wound not so much the foe as the (female) friend.... Heavens! I shall have had more wit here than one may well give me credit for; but let a live man once try it, and write upon love and refrain from wit! It is almost impracticable. I neither affirm nor deny that Oefel may perhaps, from the dreams of Gustavus, which were always talkative, and often prolonged their effect after waking, have caught the names of the aforesaid double-lottery-number of beauty. The Romancier has therefore an advantage over the Biographer (which is I): he keeps close by his hero.
He disgusted his and our hero, who, however, was such only in the æsthetic, not in the military sense, with the great Autumn-review: for every little prince imitates the still smaller children in playing soldier after the great soldiers in the streets; hence we Scheerauers have a neat pocket-land-force, a portable artillery and a juvenile cavalry. Besides, a sovereign makes a joke, when he makes a man a recruit; it does no harm to the fellow, all he needs is to be in motion, because now-a-days [namely in 1791] our more important wars, as the Italian once did, consist of nothing but marchings out of countries into countries. So also in the theatre campaigns consist merely in repeated marches round the stage, only shorter ones. I walked along, a year ago, for a joke, half a league beside a regiment, and made believe to myself: "Now thou art in fact joining in a campaign of half a league against the enemy: but the newspapers hardly mention thee, although thou and the regiment by this warlike sham-procession ward off as many plagues from the country as the clerisy do by their spiritual singing processions."
He disgusted him, I said: he pictured the review namely in this style: "Frederick the Great did smaller wonders than will be expected of the cadet-corps! There will be more wounded than wounding! In all tents and barracks they will talk of the last Scheerau grand-review!" Gustavus had long since got so far along in the minor service that he was in a condition, through the fortification of his body, to wound at least one, namely that body itself. I shall surely not lessen the apprehensions of the world, when I go on to relate that Gustavus regularly every seven weeks has leave of absence for five days, wherefrom his friends and the Biographer himself will derive just as much light as the oldest readers--that Oefel by secret intriguing made his furlough so disagreeable, that he could not at such price desire a repetition of it--that Gustavus from his last journey brought home to Dr. Fenk a letter from Ottomar, which we shall not indeed withhold from the reader, but of the reception whereof we can disclose nothing to him, because we ourselves know nothing.
From all these thorns and from the wounds of the Review our Gustavus was rescued by another's degradation. After the aforementioned march homeward an officer in Upper Scheerau, whose name and regiment one will here suppress out of regard for his distinguished family, was declared under disgrace, because he had associated with low company. When the Provost in the middle of the regiment which he had dishonored, broke his sword and weapons and tore off his uniform, and stripped him of everything which helps a man to stand upright when bowed by calamity, Gustavus, whose sense of honor bled even out of the wounds of a stranger, and who had never yet witnessed the black spectacle of a public punishment, sank into a swoon; his first exclamation on coming-to was: "Done with soldiering forever!--If the poor officer was innocent or if he is reformed, who shall give back to him his murdered honor?--Only the Omniscient God can take it away; the court-martial should take nothing but life!--No; the bullet, but not disgrace!" he cried as in a spasm. I think he is right. For two days he was sick and his fancies transported him into the robbers'-caves and catacombs of the degraded----a new proof that the fever images of poor mortals persecuted by their torments from the sick bed into the grave are not always the warrants and transcripts of their inner selves!--Martyred brothers! how I love you and the tender-hearted Gustavus at this moment, when my fancy peers in among you all and sees how, driven about in the zig-zag of destiny, you stand with your wounds and tears, wearily beside each other, embracing, bewailing--burying one another!
So long as he was sick and wandering, Amandus hung upon his glowing eyes and suffered as much as he and forgave him all. When Dr. Fenk assured them that on the morrow he would be well, the next morning Amandus came not, but meant to be hard-hearted again.
Oefel enjoyed the victory of his place. He took upon himself the setting matters right with old Falkenberg, and wrote to the man with his own hand. As he placed with his inky wand the good father on the Mosaic mountain, beyond the mountain the promised land of the embassy, and in the midst of the Canaan the young Secretary of Legation: then did the old man share the joy of many parents, who are glad to see their children become what they themselves hated to be or could not. He came to me with the letter and rode under my window.--All that Gustavus had inwardly to say still further against his removal to the old palace was that the fair Beata lived in the new one, which was separated from the old merely by a bisected wall, and that he should be confirming Amandus's suspicion. But fortunately, after the conclusion he fell upon the original motive which had suggested it and which gave dignity and expansion to its sphere of action: "He might," (he said) "after his release from the post of the embassy, be appointed to a board, and there help up the prostrate country, etc." In short, the highest beauty of Beata could not now have brought him to the point of--avoiding her.
In fact, the romance writer shelled him so effectually out of his military skin, that, inasmuch as he, like married men and princes, oftener had the bridle in the passive mouth than in the active hand--one would have thought he was led in order to lead; but that is not my idea.
Gustavus paid his farewell visit to Amandus. A good way of forgiving one whom an imaginary offence has exasperated against us is to commit a real one. Gustavus, in the circuit of streets which he voluntarily made on the way to his aggrieved Amandus, thought of Beata, who was now to be his next-door neighbor, of the love and suspicion of his friend, of the impossibility of removing that suspicion, and when, exactly at 6 o'clock, the evening music-of-the-spheres floated down into the streets from the iron orchestra and the St. Stephen's tower, his heart melted into the tones, and he imparted to his friend the tenderest feeling that existed outside of the breast of Beata. I and the reader have our thoughts on the subject; this very placable tenderness was ascribable merely to the covert consciousness that he half deserved the suspicion of rivalry, for otherwise he would, elevated by pride, have, to be sure, forgiven the other; but not on that account loved him the more intensely. He found him in the worst mood for his purpose, namely, in a friendly one; for in sensitive invalids every feeling is a sure forerunner of its opposite, and all have alternating voices. Amandus was in his father's anatomical chamber; the last ray of the setting sun darted into the empty eye-socket of a skull; there hung in vials human fluids, little ground strokes, according to which fate would absolutely draw out man; manikins with great protruding head and heart, but without an error in the great head or a pang in the great heart. On a table lay the black hand of a dyer, upon whose color the Doctor was about to make experiments.... What a scene for a reconciliation and a leave taking; three looks made and sealed the former,--even looks, in this naked disembodiment of souls, speak too loud a language--but when Gustavus, transported by the finest enthusiasm above fear and suspicion, announced to his friend the latter; when he made known to him, who had till now no idea of it, his new neighborhood and the loss of the old one, the friend had flown away and a black foe sprang up out of the ashes. Of this moment death availed himself and absolutely tore asunder the last root-fibres of his trembling life.... Gustavus stood too high to be angry; but he must needs place himself still higher; he fell on his neck and said with clear, resolute voice, "be angry and hate me, but I must forgive thee and love thee. My whole heart with every vein remains true to thine and seeks it out in thy breast, and even if thou henceforward misunderstandest me, still I will come every week. I will look on thee; I will listen to thee when thou speakest with a stranger, and if thou then lookest on me with hatred, I will go with a sigh, but still love thee. Ah, I shall think of this then, that thy eyes when they were still lacerated looked upon me more sweetly, and recognized me more truly.... O do not thus thrust me from thee, only give me thy hand and look away!"
"There!" said the shattered Amandus, and gave him the cold, black--dyer's fist.... Hatred ran down like a shower over the most affectionate heart that ever bled to death in a human breast. Gustavus stamped his love and his hatred under his feet, and with choked emotions went silently out of the house, and the next day out of Upper Scheerau.
Hardly had Amandus seen his maltreated youthful friend stagger along the street, than he went into his chamber, buried himself in the pillows and, without accusing or excusing himself, let his eyes weep as much as they could. We shall hear whether he raised his sick head from the pillow again, and when he was again accompanied by Gustavus into the Silent Land, from which he once sought to thrust him back. O man!--why will thy heart, so soon to crumble into salt, water and earth, crush another crumbling heart?--Ah, before thou strikest a blow with thy uplifted dead-man's-hand, it falls off into the grave--Ah, before thou hast inflicted the wound upon thy foeman's bosom he sinks and feels it not, and thy hatred is dead or thou art dead thyself.