I am ready, here, with an explanation of the fullest description as to this proceeding. That grave and earnest person, the bookbinder, was exercised in his mind, all through the ecclesiastical year, by nothing to such an extent as by the conduct of his “Rascal,” as he styled his son, a bit of a mauvais sujet, who was a better hand at reading a book than at binding one—always clipping the edges askew, or cropping them too closely, or doubling or halving the dimensions of the damp sheets by screwing the press too tight. Now these were matters of a sort which his father could by no means endure, and he lost his temper over them to such an extent that he would not speak to this child of the devil and his realm, not so much as a syllable. Such sumptuary laws and golden rules connected with bookmaking, therefore, as he had to communicate to his son he delivered to his wife, in her capacity of postmistress, and she (using her needle by way of rod of office) would then get up in her distant corner of the room and transmit the commands of the father to the son, who would be planing away at no very great distance. The son, who had to deliver all his questions and answers to the postmistress in the same manner, approved of this arrangement most thoroughly; his father’s tongue gave much less trouble than before. The father got into the habit of this system and ceased to treat of anything by word of mouth, no matter what. He even got to trying to express his views concerning his son’s proceedings by means of looks, darting burning glances at him, like a lover, as he sat opposite to him. An eye full of glances, however (notwithstanding the fact that there are ocular letters, as well as palatals, labials, and glossals), is at best but a box of confused pearl type. But as, by good fortune, the invention of writing, and the institution of the post-office have enabled a man, who is drifting round the North Pole on a slab of ice, to communicate with another who is sitting in a palm-tree amidst parrots in the torrid zone—this father and son (when, thus divided, they sat opposite to one another at the work-table) were provided with a means of sweetening and lightening their separation by help of an epistolary correspondence carried on across the table. Business letters of the utmost importance were conveyed from one to the other unsealed, and in complete safety, for the mail bags, the mail-packet of this penny-post, consisted of a pair of fingers. The interchange of letters and couriers between these two silent powers took place over roads so smooth, and by such an admirable system of “Poste aux Anes” without interruption and free from all delay, that the father could, without difficulty, receive a reply on a subject of importance from his correspondent within one minute of its despatch (such was the facility of communication), in fact, they were quite as near to one another as if they had been next door neighbours. I would here beg any traveller who may visit Kuhschnappel before I do so to saw off the two corners of the table, of which the one served as Bureau d’Intelligence to the other, put both these bureaux in his pocket and exhibit them to the curious in some great city or company—or to me in Hof.
Siebenkæs partially copied the bookbinder’s system. He cut out brief letters of decretal in anticipation, to be ready for the occasions when they should be required. If Lenette put an unforeseen question to which there wasn’t an answer in his letter-bag, he would write three lines and pass them across the table. Such notes of hand or orders in council as had to be renewed daily, he ordered the return of in a standing requisition, so as to save paper, and not be obliged to write a fresh order on this subject every day; for he merely passed this particular paper back across the table again. But what said Lenette to all this? I shall be better able to answer this question after relating what follows here. There was only one occasion on which he spoke in this deaf and dumb institution of a house of his; it was while he was eating salad out of an earthenware-dish, which had poetical as well as pictorial flowers on it by way of ornament. Lifting the salad with his fork, he disclosed to view the little carmen which bordered this dish, and which ran as follows:—
“Peace feeds, but strife
Consumes our life.”
Whenever he lifted up a forkful of his salad, he was in a position to read one or the other foot of this didactic poem; and he did so aloud.
“Well, and what said Lenette to all this?” we inquired above. Not a word, I answer. She wasn’t going to let his sulks and silence diminish hers in the slightest degree, for in the end it seemed clear to her that he was holding his tongue out of sheer ill-temper, and she wasn’t going to be outdone by him in that respect. And, in fact, he carried matters further and further every day, continually passing new broken tables-of-the-law across the table to her, or carrying them round to her side. I shall not catalogue the whole of them, but merely quote a few specimens, e. g. ‘The Forty-eight-pounder Paper’ (he gratified himself by continually inventing new titles for these missives), of which the contents were: “Stop the mouth of that tall sewing creature there, who sees perfectly well how busy I am with my writing, or I shall seize her by that throat with which she’s baiting me.”
“The ‘Official Gazette’ paragraph:”—“Let me have a little drop of some of your dirty wash-water; I want to get the ink off these raccoon paws of mine.” “The Pastoral Letter:”—“I want to get a glance or so at ‘Epictetus on what Man has to endure,’ could I find a moment of some sort of peace; don’t disturb me.” “The Pin-paper:”—“I happen to be in the middle of a satire, of the hardest and severest nature, on the subject of women; take that screeching bookbinderess down stairs to the hairdresseress, and yell away there as sprightlily as ye have a mind.” “Torture-bench Note,” or rather “Folio:”—“I have held out, this forenoon, through well-nigh as much as is possible; I have fought my course through besoms, feather-dusters, women’s bonnets, and women’s tongues. Is there no hope that, now that evening is falling, I may have a little, brief hour of peace, in which to try to get some slight idea of the sense of these terrible Acts of Parliament before me here?” Nobody can convince me that it was any blunting of the stings of these visiting cards of his (which he left upon her so very frequently), that he occasionally translated writing into speech, and when other people were present, jested with them concerning cognate subjects. Thus he said on one occasion to Meerbitzer, the hairdresser, in Lenette’s presence, “Monsieur Meerbitzer, it’s incredible what my housekeeping costs in the course of the year. Why, that wife of mine, there as she stands, gets through half-a-ton of food or so by herself alone, and” (when she and the barber both beat their hands together above their heads) “so do I, too.” He showed it to Meerbitzer, printed in Schötzer’s book, that every one does consume about that quantity of sustenance in the course of the year; but did anybody in that room fancy such a thing was possible?
Ill-will towards a person is a kind of catalepsy of the mind, and so is sulking; and in this mental catalepsy, as in the bodily, every limb remains immovably fixed in the position which it chanced to be in when the attack came on. Moreover, mental catalepsy has this feature in common with corporeal—that women are more subject to it than men. Consequently the only effect upon Lenette of her husband’s little joke (which had the outward semblance of being a piece of ill temper, although it was in reality only carried on with a view to the complete maintaining of his own calmness and self-control) was to redouble her stiffness and chilliness. Yet how very little she would have minded it had she but seen Stiefel even once in the course of the week, and had not the cares connected with those house expenses of hers (which melted down and swallowed up all the pewter-plattery of the eagle’s perch) decomposed and dried up the very last drop of happy warm blood in her wretched heart. Ah! sorrow-laden soul! But, as things were, there was no help for her, nor any for him whom she so terribly misunderstood.
Poverty is the only burden which grows heavier in proportion to the number of dear ones who have to help to bear it. Had Firmian been alone, he would scarcely have so much as glanced at the holes and ruts in the streets of life; for destiny lays down little piles of stones for us every thirty steps with which we may fill the holes up. And he had a haven of refuge, a diving-bell, to fly to in the strongest gale that might blow—in the shape of his watch (to say nothing of his glorious philosophy), which he could always turn into cash. But that wife of his, and all her funereal music and Kyrie Eleisons, and a thousand things besides, and Leibgeber’s inexplicable silence, and his growing ill-health—the continual immixture of all these impure matters into the breeze of his life converted it into a sultry, unnerving sirocco blast—a wind which creates in a man a dry, hot, sickly thirst, which often makes him put that into his breast which soldiers put into their mouths to cure bodily thirst, namely, cold powder and lead.
On the 11th of February, Firmian sought relief.
On the 11th of February, Euphrosyne’s day, 1767, Lenette was born.