The Serapion Brethren, Vol. II

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

Bosswinkel was utterly shaken; more by Manasseh's curse than by the wild piece of spookery which, as he saw, the Goldsmith had been carrying on. And indeed it was a terrible curse, for it set the Dā-lěs on to him.

Dear reader, I don't know if you are aware what the Dā-lěs of the Jews is.

One of the Talmudists says that the wife of a certain poor Jew, one day on coming into her house, found a weazened, emaciated, naked stranger there, who begged her to give him the shelter of her roof, and food and drink. Being afraid, she went to her husband, and told him, in tones of complaint: "A naked, starving man has come in, asking for food and shelter. How are we to help him, when it is all we can do to keep body and soul together ourselves?" The husband said: "I will go to this stranger, and see how I can get him out of the house."

"Why," he said to him, "hast thou come hither, I being so poor and unable to help thee? Begone! Betake thee to the house of Riches, where the cattle are fat, and the guests bidden to the feast!"

"How," said the stranger, "canst thou drive me from this shelter which I have found? Thou seest that I am bare and naked: how can I go to the house of Riches? Have clothing made for me that shall be fitting, and I will leave thee." "Better," thought the master of the house, "better were it for me to spend all I possess in getting rid of him, than that he should stay, and consume whatever I earn in the time to come, as well." So he killed his last calf, on which he and his wife had thought to live for many days; sold the meat, and with the price provided good clothing for the stranger. But when he took the clothing to him, behold! the stranger, who had before been lean, and short of stature, was become tall and stout, so that the clothing was everywhere too short for him and too narrow. At this the poor Jew was much afraid. But the stranger said: "Give up the foolish idea of getting me out of thy house. Know that I am the Dā-lěs!" At this the poor Jew wrung his hands and lamented, crying: "God of my fathers! I am scourged with the rod of Thine anger, and poverty-smitten for ever and ever! For if thou art the Dā-lěs, thou wilt never leave us, but consume all that we have, and always grow bigger and stronger. For the Dā-lěs is Poverty; which, when once it takes up its abode in a house, never departs from it, but ever increases more and more."

If, then, the Commissionsrath was terrified that Manasseh, by his curse, had brought poverty into his house, on the other hand, he stood in the utmost dread of Leonhard, who, to say nothing of the extraordinary magical powers at his command, had a certain something about him which created a decided sense of awe. The Commissionsrath could not but feel that there was nothing (with respect to the two of them) which one could "do;" and thus the full brunt of his anger was discharged upon Edmund Lehsen, upon whom he laid all the blame of all the "unpleasantness" which had come about. Over and above all this, Albertine came to the front, and declared, of her own motion, having evidently completely made up her mind on the subject--declared, we say, with the utmost distinctness, that she loved Edmund more than words could express, and would never marry either that insufferable and unendurable old pedant of a Tussmann, or that equally not-to-be-heard-of beast of a Baron Benjamin. So that the Commissionsrath got into the most tremendous rage imaginable, and wished Edmund at (ahem!) Hong Kong, or Jericho, or, to speak idiomatically, "where the pepper grows." But inasmuch as he could not carry this wish into effect, as the late French Government did (which actually did send objectionable persons to the place "where the pepper grows"), he had to be content with writing Edmund a nice little note, into which he poured all the gall and venom which was in him at the time (and that was not a little), and which ended by telling him that if ever he crossed his, the Commissionsrath's, threshold again, he had better--look out for squalls.

Of course we all know the state of inconsolable despair in which Leonhard found Edmund, when he went to see him, at the fall of the twilight, according to his wont.

"What have I to thank you for?" Edmund cried, indignantly. "Of what service have your protection and all your efforts been to me? Your attempts to send this cursed rival of mine out of my way--what has been the result of them? Those damnable conjuring tricks of yours--all that they have done has been to send everybody into a state of higgledy-piggledy, where nobody knows what to think of anything! Even that darling girl of mine is in the same boat with all the rest of them. It's just this stupid, nonsensical bosh of yours--that, and nothing else,--which is blocking up my way, and so I tell you. Oh Lord! the only thing which I can see that I can do is to be off to Rome at once, and, I can assure you, I mean to do it, too."

"Just so," the Goldsmith said: "that is exactly what I want you to do. Be good enough to remember what I said to you when you first told me you were in love with Albertine. I said my idea was that a young artist was right to be in love, but that he should not go and marry, all at once, because that was most inadvisable. When I said that to you, I brought to your mind, half in jest, the case of Sternbald; but now I tell you, in the utmost seriousness, that, if you really wish to become a great painter, you must put all ideas of marrying out of your head. Go you away, free and glad, into the Father-land of Art; study, in the most enthusiastic manner that ever you can, the inner-being of that world of Art; and then, and only then, will the technical and practical skill (which you might pick up here) be of the slightest real use to you."

"Good gracious!" Edmund cried, "what an idiot I was to say anything to you about my love affairs. I see, now, that it was you--you, on whom I relied for advice and help in them--who have been purposely throwing difficulties in the way, playing Old Harry with my most special heart's desires, out of mere nastiness and unkindness."