CHAPTER VIII.
On this very afternoon Felix had carried out a resolution that he had long had in mind, and had sought out the two friends, Elfinger and Rosenbusch, in their own quarters.
They occupied two rooms in the third story of a somewhat tumble-down house, which, situated in one of the quaint old streets of the city, concealed its little fantastically-framed windows under a far-projecting roof, like purblind eyes under bushy eyebrows.
Felix had often passed without ever having persuaded himself to enter the untidy-looking vestibule, and climb the dark stairs. To-day, since the dissipation of the previous night and the fact of its being Sunday condemned him to idleness, he determined to fulfill at length the duty he owed to civility. Moreover, he had begun the day before to take a great interest in Elfinger, and wished very much to have an hour's more intimate talk with him.
Luckily he chanced, at his first attempt, to knock at the right door, although, on account of the absolute darkness on the upper landing, it was impossible to make out the names; and, upon entering, he saw Elfinger jump up hastily from a chair, where he had been sitting apparently entirely unoccupied.
As the street, which was not especially lively even on a weekday, reposed to-day in the most profound Sunday quiet, Felix wondered what it could have been that had held his attention there, especially when he noticed that the actor, who was generally so ready and self-possessed, showed evident signs of embarrassment as he hastened forward to welcome him, and, as if to keep him away from the window, forced him to take a seat upon the sofa.
But he soon recovered his easy bearing again.
"You are looking at the walls," said he, "and are wondering that I still preserve these mementoes of my stage days, these pictures of great actors and my pretty colleagues of the fair sex, and even the obligatory laurel-wreath, with its satin ribbons, that is never lacking in any true actor's domicile. If my present employer should ever by chance condescend to visit his clerk, I should, it is true, have done far better had I hung up a bulletin of the stock boards instead of the lithograph of Seydelmann as Mephistophiles. But, as I am safe up here from all haute finance, I think I may be allowed, without injury to my reputation as a sound accountant, to surround myself with all those relics that I hold sacred, even that all-too-flaming sword over there, that drove me from my paradise of the footlights."
He pointed to a rapier that hung on the wall opposite the sofa, arranged with a few pistols and fencing-gloves in the form of a trophy, underneath which hung a picture in water colors representing Elfinger in the costume of Hamlet.
"Yes," he continued, with a quiet smile; "if the point of that sword had not slipped in the hands of an unskillful Laertes, and entered the eye of the unfortunate Hamlet, I should hardly have had the pleasure of seeing you in my chambers just at this particular moment. I should probably have been sitting in my dressing-room at the theatre, painting myself to fit the character of an Alba or a Richard III., for this evening's performance. Whether the public has lost much by it, I can't say. At all events, there is no doubt that I have gained."
"I am amazed that you can speak so cold-bloodedly of something that any other man would regard as the great misfortune of his life. After the high opinion of your talents that I was led to form by your performance of yesterday--"
"Do not allow yourself to be deceived by a little bit of coarse humor, my excellent friend. A man, can rid himself of any other kind of homesickness sooner or later; but no one who has once felt himself at home behind the footlights can ever be free from homesickness for the stage. I must confess that I felt a real pang of envy when I took my little troupe of yesterday out of their box, and rigged them out for the play. Now, does not that positively border on insanity? But reason counts for nothing in such a case. I know that I, with my average talent, could never have attained the highest point of eminence, and that for that reason I ought to feel nothing but gratitude toward my friend Laertes for pushing me back into that obscurity where I can plod comfortably along on the golden, path of mediocrity. And yet all my philosophy oozes away the moment the conversation turns upon the theatre."
"But should not this be so? and since you are justified in thinking yourself a born actor, what reason have you for believing that the highest distinction would have been denied you? Why should not your fate strike you as a tragical one?"
"Because with all my good qualifications, especially for declamation, I am not only a born actor but also a born German, which, I admit, sounds like a very palpable paradox. But just consider our race a moment. In spite of some rare exceptions, that stand out almost like miracles and that merely prove the rule, it may be said to possess scarcely a single qualification that would enable it to reach any decided greatness in the art! Ought not the actor to be able to shed his own skin when he slips into that of another? And when did a true German ever exist that could put himself in another's place? When was he ever untrue to himself?--when did he ever deny his personal virtues and faults? Don't you see, the very thing that makes our people so respectable stands in the way of our acting. We are not a people given to impersonation, to posing, and to representation. We are sublime in our earnestness, and silly in our trifling. We like best to sit still in our private corner behind the stove, and we grow red and awkward if we have to pass through a room where there are ten unknown men, or even as many ladies, watching us. Only the highest problems of tragic poetry give us wings to lift us over these chasms. When we attempt to walk with metrical feet, which are shod with winged shoes, we get on very well. But on our own flat every-day extremities, we stumble so wretchedly that an ordinary Frenchman or Italian, who can neither read nor write, appears like a prince of the blood beside us."
"I wish I were able to deny all this," said Felix. "Unfortunately we have no real society; and where we have the germs of one, actors are as a rule excluded from it. But though that part of your art that has to do with the representation of human beings and a characteristic imitation of life suffers from this, the higher branches still continue to be our domain; and if you compare the art of tragedy among the Italians or the French with our representations of Shakespeare and Goethe--"
"That is all very true," interrupted the actor; "in what is spiritual and belongs to an inner consciousness, we can always bear comparison with our neighbors. But only wait ten years longer and you will see that not a soul here in Germany will ever think of going to see a tragedy, and our classical theatre will be then just such another puppet-show as the Théâtre Français is now. Ought we to be surprised at this? All tragedy is aristocratic. Why should the hero leave this world with such sublimity and grandeur if it were not that he found it too miserable for him to feel comfortable in? But he who finds the world a wretched place insults all those to whom it appears most charming, because, with their low desires, they are able to take comfort in it. And inasmuch as the good of the masses will become more and more the watchword, as time goes on, therefore he who towers above the masses must not be disappointed if he finds that he cannot be of much use either in real life or behind the footlights. Tragical heroes are only possible where social differences exist; where the ordinary man looks on with a certain respect while a Coriolanus conquers and falls, without thinking to himself: 'It served him right. Why did he insult us common folk?' But with our excellent, humane, democratic way of looking at things--"
"A depressing prospect, certainly! So the longer our nation goes on freeing itself from prejudices and conforming to true ideas of humanity, the less hope will there be that we shall ever be able to cut a good figure on the stage?"
"On the contrary, I think then is the time when we shall really first begin. Self-respect is one of the most important requisites even in the acting of a comedy. When we have once taken our place among the nations of Europe, when we have rid ourselves of our dullness and tactlessness in our dealings with the outside world, when we cease to be such wretched crawlers that we will go through any humiliation for our daily-bread's sake, and cannot conduct ourselves like gentlemen, then you will see how quickly we shall find the art of acting infused into our blood--we who have been for so many centuries mere zealous animals. To be sure, in regard to tragedy it is a question whether we shall ever succeed, in our better days, in attaining sufficient earnestness and reverence to enable us to keep in mind the fact that, as old Goethe says, 'awe is mankind's best quality'--"
He seemed about to talk still further of his hopes and fears; and Felix, to whom many of these ideas were new, and to whom the speaker, with his unselfish warmth, grew more and more attractive as he went on, would gladly have listened half through the night. But the door was noisily thrown open, and Rosenbusch made his appearance on his friend's threshold arrayed in a costume the comicality of which irresistibly swept away all these serious considerations.
He had had his red beard shaved off, leaving only a diminutive mustache and a pair of side whiskers; his flowing hair was elegantly arranged; he wore an old-fashioned black coat, and a tall stove-pipe hat, brushed smooth and shining.
"You may well laugh!" cried he, knitting his brows tragically at his friends. "If you only knew how a man felt who was yesterday in Paradise, and to-day is forced to get himself up in such a toilet as this, as if he were going to his execution. The executioner's minion, who cut my hair, has just left me. Whoever wishes to have a lock of hair of the celebrated battle-painter Maximilian Rosenbusch will find them lying about, like useless wool, on the floor of the adjoining room. O Delila, for whom I have suffered this! O Nanny, for whose sake I cut my noble hair!--for whom I dress myself in this Philistine fashion!"
He stopped, and now revealed to Felix that he was on the point of taking the most painful step of his life. In the opposite house lived the object of his desire, the muse of his songs, the beautiful daughter of a glovemaker, with whom he had been madly in love for the last six months, so that he could positively hold out no longer. He had received quite enough tokens to show him that his love was returned; indeed he had an assurance, written on rose-colored paper and exhibiting one or two orthographical liberties, that if the parents did not say no their little daughter would certainly say yes. In order to have this question decided, he had been obliged to assume his present masquerading costume, notwithstanding the fact that the carnival was still far off. For papa glovemaker had no very exalted opinion of artists of the ordinary type.
"Therefore, my friends, drop a tear for the departed splendors of my noble head, and pray for my poor soul, that it may soon be released from this purgatory and admitted to the joys of the blessed. And, by-the-way, how is it, Elfinger? Don't you want to slip on your best coat and come with me? Then the whole thing would be finished at one go."
Felix saw that the actor blushed, and cast a look of displeasure at his loquacious friend.
"Ah! to be sure!" replied the latter, stepping in front of the glass and winking at Felix as he passed, "you haven't slept off your headache from last night. Hm! Another time, then. It seems to me, do you know, I look devilish respectable, and the glovemaker's little daughter will make no end of a good match in catching a person of my tone and style. Look, there she sits over there at her post, the little witch, and at the other window, completely absorbed in her work, is her pious sister. Sua cuique-- Well, I won't quote any further, Elfinger, my boy! But now, I must wend my way to the high tribunal. Will you accompany me, friend baron? You must support me with spiritual comfort, in case I should show signs of weakness by the way. To be sure, I have just been working up my courage by three beautiful strophes; but a lyric of that sort, strongly diluted with water, does not last long, and a more spiritual elixir for the heart cannot be prepared off-hand. May Heaven take me in its safe keeping! Amen! Well, Elfinger, you shall hear before long how it turns out!"
Upon this he pressed his hat down firmly on his forehead, nodded to his friend with a comical expression of misery and despair, and dragged Felix with him from the room.
On the stairs he suddenly stood still and said, in a suppressed and mysterious voice:
"Our friend up-stairs has the same trouble worse than I have. He is smitten with the other one; but she is a little saint, as much of a nun, thanks to her education with the English sisters, as my little witch is a child of the world for the same reason. Now just conceive of it, the more my little imp carries on--it will be hard work making a sensible housewife of her--the more zealously does our good Fanny confess and do penance and pray, and it really looks as if she were seriously intent upon gaining a saint's halo. The fact is the girls never associate with sensible people, and for that reason one of us must sacrifice himself so that the ice will at last be broken, although I confess it is pure madness on my part to think of marrying. You have no idea, my dear friend, what extraordinary cobwebs gather in an old Munich burgherhouse like this. Well, a few fresh fellows like us--I imagine it would not take us long to bring new life into it, if we were only once inside!"
He sighed, and appeared not to be in the most courageous mood, notwithstanding his brave words. Felix accompanied him across the street and saw him enter the narrow, arched door next to the glove store, which was closed on account of its being Sunday--going in with an assumed air of boldness, as if he were going to a dance.
Then he himself wandered aimlessly down the street. In what direction should he turn his steps? In the whole city there was no one who would be looking for him to-day, and the one to whom he felt most drawn was, strangely enough, on Sunday afternoons farther out of his reach than at any other time.
He was deliberating whether he should not hire a horse again and dash away across the country, when companionship was unexpectedly thrown in his way, of a kind that a man in his frame of mind could not but welcome.