33. CYCLE.
The German public may still remember the obligato-sheets promised in the Introductory Programme, and ask me what has become of them. The foregoing Cycle was the first, most excellent Public; but see through the matter, how it is with obligato-sheets, and that perhaps as much history lies therein as in any one Cycle, however it may be called.
The Count had not yet learned anything of Liana's misfortune, when he, with the others, went down to the dinner of the Doctor, who to-day was very hospitable. They found him seized with a most violent fit of laughter, his hands thrust into his sides, and his eyes bent over two little ointment vessels on the table. He stood up, and was quite serious. The fact was, he found in Reil's Archives of Physiology, that, according to Fourcroy and Vauquelin, tears dye violet-juice green, and therefore contain alkali. In order to prove the proposition and the tears, he had thrown himself into a chair, and laughed in right hearty earnest, so as afterward to cry and get a drop or two for the brine-gauge of the proposition; he would gladly have wrought himself into another kind of emotion, but he understood his own nature, and knew that nothing could be got out of it so,—not a drop.
He left the guests alone a moment,—the lady was not yet to be seen,—Malt sat on an ottoman,—the children had satirical looks,—in short, Impudence dwelt in this house as in her temple. Ridicule had no effect upon the old man, and he only countermanded what displeased himself, not what displeased others.
At length the rosy-cheeked wife of the physician flourished into the apartment,—as preparatory course or preamble of the dinner,—with three or four esprits or feathers in her cap,—with a dapple neck-apron,—in a red ball-dress, from which waltzing had taken out the color in which she had rouged,—and with a perforated fancy-fan. If I wished, I could be interested in her; for, touching these esprits (since the esprit, like the brain in Embrya, often sets itself upon the brain-pan, and there suns itself), she thought women and partridges were best served up at table with feathers on their heads; touching the fan, she meant to have it understood she had just come from a morning call (whereby she very clearly implied that ladies could no more go through the streets without their fan-stick than joiners without their rule); touching the rest, she knew the guest was a Count. Accordingly, it appears that she belongs to the honorables, who (for the most part), like rattlesnakes, are never better to be enjoyed than when one has previously put the head out of the way; but that we have still time enough to believe, when we come to understand her better.
The beautiful Zesara was for her blind, deaf, dumb, destitute of smell, taste, feeling; but there are many women whom one cannot, with the greatest pains and tediousness, displease; Schoppe could do it more easily. Sphex, for his own personal predilections, made more out of a cell of fat in Malt than out of the whole cellular texture of a lady, even of his own; like all business people, he held women to be veritable angels, whom God had sent for the ministration of the saints (the business men).
The dinner course began. Augusti, a delicate eater, enjoyed much, and took not only to the fine service, but to the torn napkins; the like of which he had often had in his lap at court, because there, in morals and in linen, rents are preferred to plasters. Soon, as usual, came forth even the outposts and first skirmishes of miserable dishes, the common prophets and forerunners of the best tit-bits, although at a hundred tables I have cursed them, that they did not, like good monthly magazines, give the best pieces first, and the most meagre last. The Doctor had already said to the three boys,—"Galen, Boerhave, Van Swieten, what is the polite way of sitting?" and the three physicians had already shoved three right hands between the waistcoat buttons, and three left hands into the waistcoat pockets, and sat waiting, "bolt upright" when good chap-sager was brought in for the dessert. Sphex partly expressed pleasure in cheese, partly a horror of it, just as he found it in the way of his shop-business. He remarked, on one hand, how joiners, in their glue-pot, had no better glue than what stood here before them,—it had just that binding quality in a man,—yet he would rather, for his own individual self, with Dr. Junker, apply it externally, like arsenic; but he also confessed, on the other hand, that the chap-sager for the Lector was poison. "I would pledge myself for it," said he, "that you, if one could examine you, would be found hectic! the long fingers and the long neck speak in my favor, and particularly are white teeth, according to Camper, a bad sign. Persons, on the contrary, who have a set of teeth like my lady there may feel safe."
Augusti smiled, and merely asked the Doctor's lady, at what time one could best gain access to the Minister.
Such poisonous reflections, as well as cats'-dinners,[57] he gave out, not from satirical malice, but from mere indifference to others, whom, like an honest man, he never suffered in the least to sway him in his actions. With the liberty-cap of the doctor's hat on his head, he received, from his medical indispensableness, so many academic freedoms, that he, between his four house-walls, ate and acted not more freely than between the showy, bristling pale-work of the court. Did he ever there—I ask that—let a drop of sweet wine pass his lips without previously drawing out an Ephraimite, which did not itself outlive the probation-day, and hanging it in the glass, merely to prove before the court whether the Ephraimite therein did not grow black? And if the silver did so, was there not as good as a demonstration of the wine being oversmoked, and could not the physician have applied the whole right neatly, court, sweetness, blackening, poisoning, and oversmoking, if he had been the man to do it?
The Lector's accidentally inquiring about the time of seeing the Minister was what Albano had to thank for saving him from first learning the painful misfortune in the house of the Minister, or in the presence of the blind girl herself. "You can," answered Sara, the Doctoress, "also despatch the servant; he will subscribe for you all; I, however, pity none as I do the daughter." Now broke loose a storm of questions about the unknown accident. "It is so," began the physician, sulkily; but soon (because he saw in some eyes water for his mill, and because he sought to roll off all medical blame from himself upon Captain Roquairol) he set himself as well as he could to pathetic detail, and lied almost like a sentimentalist. With an unobserved hint to the affected lady, he pushed an empty dish towards her as a lachrymatory, in order that nothing might be lost. From the eclipsed eyes of the vainly struggling youth, this first woe of his life snatched some great drops. "May recovery be possible?" asked Augusti, exceedingly troubled, on account of his connection with the family.
"Certainly; it is a mere affection of the nerves," replied Schoppe, briskly, "and nothing more." Whytt relates, that a lady who had too much acid in her stomach (in the heart it were still worse) saw everything in a cloud, as girls do at the approach of sick-headache. Sphex, who had lied only for the sake of pathos and alkali, and who was vexed that the Librarian should have been of his private opinion, answered just as if the latter had not spoken at all. "The highest degree of consumption, Mr. Lector, often winds up with blindness, and it were well, in this case, to prescribe for both. Meanwhile I am acquainted with a certain periodical nervous blindness. I had the case in a lady[58] whom I brought out of it merely by blood-letting, smoke of burnt coffee, and the evening fog from the water; this we are now trying again in the case of our nervous patient. A dutiful physician will, however, always wish the devil would take mother and brother."
In other words, the return of Liana's periodical malady almost distracted him. Offences against his honor, his love, his sympathy, never wrought the Physicus into a heat; through all such he kept on his glazed frost surtout; but disturbances of his cures heated him even to the degree of flying to pieces; and so are we all a kind of Prince-Rupert's-drops, which can bear the hammer and never break, till one just breaks off the little thread point, and they fly into a thousand splinters; with Achilles, it was the heel, with Sphex, the medical D.'s ring-finger, with me, the writing-finger. The Doctor now shook out the contents of his heart, as some call their gall-bladder; he swore by all the devils he had done more for her than any and every physician,—he had, however, already foreseen that such a stupid education—merely to look well and pray and read and sing—would prove a cursed poor economy,—he had often longed to break the harmonica-bells and tambour-needles,[59]—he had often called the attention of the mother, with sufficient distinctness and without indulgence, to Liana's so-called charms, and to her sensibility, her bright redness of cheeks, and velvet-soft skin; but had seemed to himself, by so doing, almost to gratify more than to distress her. The only thing that delighted him was, that the maiden had, some years before, caught a deadly sickness from the first holy sacrament, from which he had tried to keep her away, because he had already experienced, in the case of a fourth patient, the most melancholy consequences from this holy act.
To the astonishment of every one my Count took part against all with Roquairol. Ah, thy first spring-storms were even now whirling round imprisoned in thy bosom, without a friendly hand to give them an outlet, and thou wouldst cover thy bloody grief! And wast thou not seeking a spirit full of flames, and eyes full of flames for thine own, and wouldst thou not rather have entered into brotherhood with a thundering hell-god than with an insipid pietistical saint, forever gnawing like a moth? Sharply he asks the Doctor, "What have you done with the Prince's heart?" "I have it not," said Sphex, startled; "it lies in Tartarus,[60] although it would have been more profitable to science had one been permitted to put it among one's preparations; it was large and very singular." He was thinking how often—when he could—he had, as an augur, during the dissection, secretly slipped aside one or another important member—as a princely or a cavalier-robber, à la minutta—for his study,—a honey-bag which he gladly cut out for himself with his anatomical honey-knife.
"Has the young lady, then, an unhappy passion, or anything of the sort?" inquired Schoppe. "More than one," said Sphex; "cripples, idiots, young orphans, blind Methusalems,—all these passions she has. Sports and young gentlemen, I often say to the old lady, would be better for her health."
But on this point, in the requirement of cheerfulness, I give in to him. Joy is the only universal tincture which I would prepare; it works uniformly as antispasmodicum, as glutinans and astringens. The oil of gladness serves as ointment for burns and chills at once. Spring, for example, is a spring-medicine; a country-party, an oyster-medicine; a recreation at the watering-places is, in itself, a glass of bitters; a ball is a motion; a carnival, a course[61] of medicine;—and hence the seat of the blest is at the same time the seat of the immortals.
"Yes, he had finally," the Doctor concluded,—"as they were people of rank,—prescribed a dose of pride (of the meadows), which manifests all the officinal healing powers of joy; taken in a stronger dose, it works fully as well as enjoyment itself, enlivens the pulse, steels the fibres, opens the pores, and chases the blood through the long venous labyrinth.[62] In the case of his weakly lady, such as they saw her there, he had used, he said, this medicament long ago by dresses and a doctor's rank, and had helped her to her legs thereby. But he would rather cure sixty common women than one distinguished one,—and he should regret, as family physician, merely his receipts and medical opinions, in case, as he certainly believed, the fair Liana should go hence."
The first question which Albano, who never missed anything that was said, put to Augusti on the way back from the Doctor's, was, What the Doctor's wife meant by the subscribing servant? He explained it. There is, namely, in Pestitz, as in Leipsic, an observance, that when a man dies or falls into any other misfortune, his family place a blank sheet of paper, with pen and ink, in the entrance-hall, in order that persons, who take and show a nearer interest, may send a lackey thither, to set their names on the paper as well as he knows how; this merchant-like indorsement of the nearer interest, this descending representative system by means of servants, who are generally, now-a-days, the telegraphs of our hearts, sweetens and alleviates for both cities great sorrow and sympathy through pen and ink.
"What! is that it? O God!" said Alban, and grew unusually indignant, as if people were forcing servants upon him as chrysographs and business-agents of his feelings. "O ye egotistical jugglers! through the pen of scribbling lackeys do ye pour yourselves out? Lector, I would condole with Satan himself more warmly than thus!"
Why is this veiled spirit so lively and loud? Ah, everything had moved him. Not merely lamentation over poor Liana, persecuted by all the nightly arrows of destiny, entered like iron into his open heart, but also amazement at the gloomy intermingling of fate with his young life. Roquairol's ever-recurring expression, "Breast without a heart," sounded to him as if it must be familiar; at last the converse of the expression came to his thoughts, the word of the Sphinx on the island, "Heart without a breast." So, then, even this riddle was solved, and the place fixed, when he was to hear, contrary to every expectation, the prophecy of the loved one; but how incomprehensible,—incomprehensible!
"O yes! Liana she is called, and no God shall change the name," said his innermost soul. For in earlier years even the most vigorous youth prefers, in maidens, interesting delicacy of health and a tender fulness of feeling and a moisture of the eye,—just as, in general, at Albano's age, one values the flood (later the ebb) of the eyes too highly, although, too often, like an over-rich inundation, they wash away the seed-corns of the best resolutions;—whereas, at a later period, (because he proposes to himself marriage and housekeeping,) he looks out rather for bright and sharp than after moist eyes, and for cold and healthy blood.
As Albano, for the most part, drew down the fire from his internal clouds on the discharging chains of the harpsichord strings,—seldomer into the Hippocrene of poetry,—so did he now unconsciously make out of his inner charivari a passage on the harpsichord. I transpose his fantasy into my fancy in the following manner. On the softest minor-tones the blindness, with its long pains, passed by, and in the whispering-gallery of music he heard all the soft sighs of Liana repeated aloud. Then harder minor-tones led him down into Tartarus, to the grave and heart of the friendly old man who had once prayed with him, and then, in this spirit-hour, fell softly, like a dew-drop from heaven, the sound, Liana! With a thunder-clap of ecstasy he fell into the major-key, and asked himself, "This delicate, pure soul could fate promise to thy imperfect heart?" And when he answered himself, that she would perhaps love him, because she could not see him,—for first love is not vain; and when he saw her led by her gigantic brother, and when he thought of the high friendship which he would give and require of him; then did his fingers run over the keys in an exalting war-music, and the heavenly hours sounded before him, which he should enjoy, when his two eternal dreams should pass over livingly out of night into day, and when brother and sister should furnish at once, to his so youthful heart, a loved one and a friend. Here his inner and outer storms softly died away, and the evenly-balanced temperament of the instrument became that of the player....
But a soul like his is more easily appeased with sorrow than with joy. As if the reality had already arrived, he pressed on still further; indescribably fair and unearthly, he saw Liana's image trembling in her cup of sorrow; for the crown of thorns easily ennobles a head to a Christ's head, and the blood of an undeserved wound is a redness on the cheek of the inner man, and the soul which has suffered too much is easily loved too much. The tender Liana appeared to him as already spun into the funeral veil for the Flora of the second world, as the tender limbs of the bee-nymph lie transparently folded over the little breast,—the white form of snow, which had once, in his dream, melted away on his heart, opened the bright little cloud again, and looked, blind and weeping, upon the earth, and said, "Albano, I shall die before I have seen thee."—"And even if thou shouldst never see me," said the dying heart in his breast, "yet will I still love thee. And even if thou shouldst soon pass away, Liana, still I gladly choose sorrow, and walk faithfully with thee till thou art in heaven."... Heaven and hell had both at once drawn aside their curtains before him,—only a few notes, and those the same as before, and only the highest, and that only interruptedly and faintly, could he any longer strike; and at last his hands sank down, and he began to weep, but without too severe pangs,—as the storm which has unburdened itself of its lightnings and thunders stands now over the earth only as a soft, diffused rain.
