Fate plucked away most of the yellow, faded leaves from Firmian’s soul, as gardeners remove those of plants in spring. His giddiness diminished rather than otherwise as he went on; the walking did it good. As the sun rose in heaven, another, a super-earthly sun, rose in his soul. In every valley, in every grove, on every rising ground, he broke and cast away a ring or two of the chrysalis-case of wintry life and trouble (which had been clinging so tightly to him), and unfolded his moist upper and nether wings, and let the breeze of May waft him away, on four outspread pinions, up into the bright air among the butterflies, but higher than they, and over loftier flowers.
And then with what a burst of power the life within him began, under this new impetus, to boil and seethe, as, issuing from a diamond-mine of a valley all shade and dewdrops, he walked a pace or two up through the heaven-gate of the spring. It was as if some great earthquake had upheaved a new-created flowery plain, all dripping from the ocean, stretching further than the eye could reach, all rich in youthful powers and impulses. The fire of earth glowed beneath the roots of this great hanging garden, and the fire of heaven flamed above it burning the colours into the trees and flowers. Between the white mountains, as between porcelain towers, stood the bright tinted, flowery slopes like thrones for the fruit goddesses. And all over the face of this great camp of gladness, the cups of the flowers and the heavy dewdrops were pitched, like peopled tents. The earth teemed with young broods, and sprouting grasses, and countless little hearts; and heart after heart, life after life, burst forth into being from out the warm brooding-cells of Mother Nature—burst forth with wings, or silken threads, or delicate feelers—and hummed, and sucked, and smacked its lips and sang. And for every one of these countless honeysucking trunks a cup of gladness had long since been filled and ready.
In this great market-place of this living city of the sun, so full of glory and sounding life, the pet child of the infinite Mother stood solitary—gazing, with bright and happy eyes, delighted, around him into all its innumerable streets. But his eternal Mother wore her veil of immeasurable immensity, and it was only the warmth which pierced to his heart which told him that he was lying upon her breast. Firmian reposed from this two hours’ intoxication of heart in a peasant’s hut. The foaming spirit of a cup of joy like this went quicker to the heart of a sick man such as he than to those of the commoner run of sufferers.
When he went out again the glory had sobered down into brightness, and his enthusiasm into simple happiness. Every red ladybird fluttering on its way, every red church-roof, and every sparkling stream as it glittered and glistened with dancing stars, shed joyous lights and brilliant colours upon his soul. When he heard the cries of the charcoal burners in the wood, the resounding cracking of whips, and the crash of falling trees, and then, when coming out into the open, he saw the white châteaux and roads standing out against the dark-green background like constellations and milky ways, and above the shining cloud specks in the deep blue sky; while lights flashed and darted everywhere, now down from trees, now up from streams, now athwart saws in the distance—there was no such thing as a foggy corner left in his soul, nor a single spot in it all unpenetrated by the spring sunshine: the moss of gnawing, corroding care, which can grow only in damp shade, fell from his bread-trees and trees of liberty out here in the glad, free air, and his soul could not but join in the great chorus of flying and humming creatures which was rising all round him, singing, “Life is beautiful, and youth is lovelier still; but spring is loveliest of all.”
The bygone winter lay behind him like the dark, frozen South Pole; the royal burgh of Kuhschnappel like some deep, dreary school-dungeon with dripping walls. The only spot in it over which broad, gladsome sunbeams were intertwining was his own home, and he pictured to himself Lenette in that home as commander-in-chief, free to talk, cook, and wash at her own sweet will, and with her head (and hands, too) full all day long of the delight that was coming in the evening. He was glad from the very depths of his heart that, in that little egg-shell of hers, that sulphur-hut and chartreuse, she should enjoy the glory and brightness which that angel Peltzstiefel would bring with him into her St. Peter’s prison. “Ah! in God’s name,” thought he, “may she be as happy as I am—nay, and happier, too, if that be possible.”
The more villages he came to, with their troupes of strolling players (of inhabitants), the more did life in general seem to assume a theatrical guise—his past troubles were transformed into leading parts in the drama, or Aristotelian problems—his clothes into stage costumes—his new boots became cothurna—and his purse a theatre treasury—while a delicious stage-recognition was awaiting him in the arms of his beloved Henry.
About half-past three in the afternoon, in a Swabian village, whose name he did not inquire, his whole soul melted of a sudden to tears, so that he was completely astonished at the unlooked-for and rapid attendrissement. His surroundings at the time would have rather led him to anticipate a contrary effect. He was standing by an old thorn-tree, rather crooked, and dead at the top; the village women were on the green washing their clothes, which glistened in the sunlight, and throwing down chopped eggs and nettles to feed the downy, yellow goslings; a gentleman’s gardener was clipping a hedge, while a herd-boy was summoning his sheep (clipped already for their part) round the thorn-tree, with his cornemuse. It was all so youthful, so pretty, so Italian! The beautiful May had half (or wholly) unclad everything and everyone—the sheep, the geese, the women, the shepherd-minstrel, the hedger, and his hedge....
Why was he thus moved to tenderness in this gladsome and smiling scene? Partly because he had been so happy all day, but chiefly by the shepherd bassoonist calling his flock together with that stage instrument of his beneath the thorn. Firmian had helped a shepherd of this sort, with a crook and a reed-pipe, to drive his own father’s sheep home hundreds of times when he was a boy; and the tones of the Ranz des Vaches brought back in an instant his own rose-coloured childhood—it arose from out its dew of the morning, its bowers of budding blossoms and sleeping flowers, and stood before him in heavenly guise, and smiled in all its own innocence dressed in its thousand hopes, saying, “Behold me! see how lovely I am; we used to play together, you and I; how much I used to give you!—grand kingdoms, broad meadows, and gold, and a great, endless Paradise beyond the hills. But it seems you have nothing left now. And how pale you are, and worn! Come and play with me again!”
Who is there amongst us to whom Music has not brought back his childhood a thousand times? She comes and says, “Are not the rosebuds blown yet which I gave you?” Yes, yes, they are blown; they were white roses, though!
The evening made his joy-flowers close, folding their petals together above their nectaries; and an evening dew of melancholy fell ever heavier and thicker upon his soul as he went on his way. Just before sunset he came to a village; I am sorry to say I cannot remember whether it was Honbart, or Houstein, or Jaxheim; but of this I am pretty certain, that it was one of the three, because it was near the River Jagst, and in Anspach, on the borders of Ellwangen. His night-quarters lay smoking down in the valley before him. Before going on into them he lay down on the hill-side beneath a tree, whose branches were the cathedral chancel of a choir of singing creatures. Not far from him gleamed the trembling tinsel of a piece of water, glittering in the evening sun; and above him the golden leaves and the white blossoms rustled like grasses waving over flowers. The cuckoo (always her own sounding-board and multiplying echo) talked to him from the tree-top in mournful tones of sorrow; the sun was gone; the shadows were throwing thick veils of crape over the brightness of the day. He asked himself, “What is my Lenette doing now? Of whom is she thinking? Who is with her?” And here there fell about his heart, like a band of ice, the thought, “Ah! but I have no loved one whose hand I can clasp!”