A man not naturally ignoble is perhaps never more disposed or better fitted to sympathize in other's misfortunes than when he himself has a heavy sorrow. Thus the horrible treachery which Constance had practiced upon me opened my eyes and my heart to the doctor's trouble. That the singular man loved Paula I had never doubted; but as he always draped his love in a humorous cloak, I, in my simplicity, had never seen how strong and deep this love was. It seemed to me so evident that this dwarfish figure, with the misshapen bald head and the grotesquely ugly face, could never be loved by a beautiful slender maiden, as one looks upon it as a matter of course that a man who goes on crutches cannot dance upon the tight-rope. Now for the first time I saw what this man must have suffered through all these years--the man who, not without reason, and assuredly not without a reference to himself, said that a man to live scarcely required more than a head and a heart. And then I compared him, the stoical sufferer, with myself, and asked myself if he, the pure, the good, the noble, did not better deserve Paula's love than I, for this good fortune had always seemed to me a kind of miracle, of which I had ever felt myself unworthy, but never so unworthy as now.
Perhaps more than one youth of eighteen, who may read these lines, will smile compassionately, in the consciousness of his maturer experience, at the man of twenty-eight, who took such a trifle so deeply to heart. But he should consider that I had grown up among the simplest associations, had been eight years in prison, and now since I had lived in the city had employed all my time in carrying out my determination to be a good machinist. How could I have accumulated the experience of my wise censor? How could I know that love-troubles of this kind are to a man of the world what scars are to a brigand--not only honorable in his own eyes and those of his companions, but also in the eyes of the fair whose grace and favor he counts upon winning? I was but a great boy with all my twenty-eight years; I confess it with contrition, and beg my wise friend of eighteen to have patience with me.
Perhaps he will find this a difficult task, when he learns that I carried my folly so far as to feel convinced that I had given myself to the fair sinner, body and soul, forever, and that it was my duty henceforth to live for her; to save her if I could, to perish with her if I must; and that I felt myself nowise released from this obligation and free once more, when she wrote me a delicate little perfumed billet, saying that I was still as ever her good George, whom she loved dearly, but that she could not live with me, and had no wish to be saved by me, far less to perish with me.
But in my own eyes I was and remained a condemned criminal, severed from the companionship of the good and pure. Never for me should the flame glow on the domestic hearth, never a pure woman make me happy with her hand, never laughing children play around my knees. The curse with which unkind Nature had smitten the good doctor--the curse of never being loved as his heart yearned to be--I had in my folly invoked upon myself; and thus nothing remained for me but, like him, to renounce individual love, and, like him, to draw comfort and solace from the overflowing fountain of love for suffering humanity.
I was able to see, later, that the doctor, as wise as he was skilful, judged pretty accurately of my condition, and took a far less tragical view of it than I did. But the state of my thoughts and feelings at the moment fitted very well with his purposes. For years he had looked upon me as his pupil, and he might do so in more than one light. He had a great scheme in view in which he counted on his pupil's assistance, and this, in his opinion, was one step necessary to success.
I had always known that the worthy man, although he constantly maintained that while it was true that stupidity was a misfortune, it was none the less true that misfortune was in most cases mere stupidity--cherished a great love for the unfortunate stupids and the stupid unfortunates. How great this love was, I was now to know. He made me theoretically and practically acquainted with those social questions with which the whole world is now occupied, but then were only seen in their full importance by a few enlightened minds. He showed me the state of things in England, in France, and at home, and what might also be done in Germany upon the pattern of what had been done in England and France. Then he spoke of benefit-societies, of co-operative associations, and workmen's unions, of play-schools for children and trade-schools for adults, and all the means that have been devised to fight the universal enemy upon his own ground. At this time there had been next to nothing of this sort done among us: which was all the more unfortunate, as just at this time, with the springing up of the first railroads, manufactures received a quite unlooked-for expansion, the increased demand for labor brought an enormous influx of workmen, and with this an enormous increase of those evils which even under the old patriarchal relations it had not been possible entirely to prevent.
In my frame of mind at the time I was soon brought to enter into his views with passionate ardor. An ordinary workman, as I was, in brotherly intercourse with my fellow-workmen, I heard and saw everything that went on among them. Where my knowledge was at fault, Klaus, from his fuller experience, could supply the defect, and further than either reached the keen vision of the doctor, who saw into the darkest recesses which poverty and misery hide from the eyes of all but the physician. So we three interchanged experiences, and many an evening, after the heavy work of the day, sat around the doctor's table in consultation over the projects which the doctor had so long been nursing.
Alas! it was little, very little that we could do. On the one side, we had to contend with the stupidity of those who would rather go to ruin than abandon their old routine; and on the other side, with the dull selfishness of those who could not see why they might not prosper, even if the others were ruined.
"It is the old story of Hammer and Anvil," I said one evening to my two friends. "The workmen have so accustomed themselves to the dull passive part of the anvil that they can set nothing in motion, even when their own interest manifestly requires it. The manufacturers, on the other hand, think that as they are now the gentlemen of the hammer, they have only to pound away upon the anvil which, heaven be thanked, has remained patient so far."
"Have I not always told you that it has been so as long as the world has stood?" replied the doctor. "Now you see it for yourself."