“A man whose stubble Death is in the very act of turning up with his plough, has, upon me, a more powerful claim than that of the first request—that of the last. I came the next day, bringing with me the notary, and also my dislike to the dying man and his distrustful suspicions. With gay indifference I helped to protocol the effects in the sick-room—his shooting-jacket, worn into shining patches by his old game-bag—his old guns and knives—even such matters as a leather over-shoe for his thumb, and a long mummy bandage for his nose, which he had worn on occasions when he had hurt himself in these members with his gun.
“As we went through the other silent chambers—empty snail-shells of his shrivelled, dried-up life—my frozen blood began to thaw within me, and to move in warm, light mercury-globules. But when I came to the lumber-room, with the notary, and tuned over the rag-fair of his old night-shirts—(caterpillar cases and blood-shirts of his feverish nights, in which I seemed still to see him groaning and thirsting)—and his Pathebrief,[[71]] and his name copied from thence with all its flourishes on to his pointer’s collar—and the picture of his pretty mother with him as a smiling infant in her lap—and his wife’s bridal garland of wire, covered with green silk—(Oh! for goodness’ sake do not interrupt me with talk—I’ve had enough of that, Heaven knows). When I took in my hands these opera-costumes, these theatrical properties, in which the sick player down-stairs had performed his probe-rolle[[72]] of a Harpaxus for the benefit of the poor—not only did the poor fellow’s moral emptiness of treasury, and miserable rate of monthly salary, strike me with pain, but, moreover, I wished him no heavier suffering, no severer punishment, than he would wish for himself, were he really to repent in good earnest before his plunge into the depths of the soil. No, not so much, for the matter of that. Therefore, my dislike to him was gone. For I put myself in his place—not outwardly only, as people generally do, fancying themselves in another person’s physical place with their own souls, their own wishes, habitudes, &c.—but inwardly—in his mind, his youth, wishes, sufferings, thoughts.
“‘Poor Piqueur,’ I said, as I went down-stairs; ‘I have no more satiric pleasure now over your gnawing suspicion, your errors, your self-shooting covetousness, your hungry avarice. You have got to live through a long eternity with that self, that “me” of yours, the best way you can, just as I have with mine. You have got to rise with that self of yours at the Resurrection, and go about with it, and look after it, and care for its welfare. And, of course, you can’t but be fond of yourself, just as I am of myself, and put up with all that self’s defects and shortcomings whether you will or not. Go in peace then into the other world, where the broken glasses of your harmonica of life will be replaced with fresh-tuned ones—in the great home of all the spirits!’
“The old woman met us on the stairs crying out that the man was dying. I went to his bed-side, looked upon his cold, yellow, senseless form, and saw that he would very soon throw off his last stage-dress, his body. Next day the tolling bell announced that, he had returned to the dust—gone back into the ground—that, stage dressing-room of souls and flowers. (And we are rung off and on to that stage, as well as others.)
“Meanwhile I made an experiment with my modified and mildened system of treatment, upon the poor notary devil; the day after I tried it on the jurists who came from the college. (Jean Paul! communicate your idea to us by-and-bye—do not interrupt me just now)—I did this, I say, and found that I was able to establish a heart-peace even with the plebeians among them—who dishonour their calling—the only really free one in all the body politic. For in the cases of these lawyers, and those of my own medical colleagues from whose breasts I have been so often in such a hurry to cut off, and melt down, the medals of honour which they have cast for themselves, I have had merely to take away the roof from over their heads, lift the rafters from their walls, and bare their houses to the four winds of heaven. Then I could look in and see everything there—their housekeeping, their unoffending wives, their sleep (i. e., mock-death), sicknesses, sorrows, birth-days, and funeral-days, and this reconciled me to them! Of a truth, to love a man, I have only to think of his children, his parents—the love he feels and inspires. One can easily perform this philanthropic transmigration of soul at any moment, without help of the balloon of phantasy, or the diving-bell of profound reflection. Good heavens! it does seem hard (and a shame and disgrace into the bargain) that it should have taken me thirty years of my life to understand properly what it is that self-love is really driving at—my own and everybody else’s—what it wants is, to be surrounded with mere repetitions of its own ‘me.’ It insists upon every infant on earth being a parson’s son (as I am)—that everybody shall have lost, and gained, noble friends—that everybody shall be an M.D., and have studied at Göttingen—that his name shall be Sebastian, and that he shall be an overseer of mines, and write his life in forty-five dog-post-days—in brief, that this world shall contain a thousand million Victors instead of one. I beg that everybody may send spies into his soul, to look carefully about them and see whether it be not the case that there are thousands of instances in which what we hate a man for is, either that he is as fat as a prize pig, or as lean as a stick of vermicelli—or that he is a district secretary, or a Roman Catholic watchman in Augspurg, and wears a coat white on the one side, and green on the other—or that he eats his veal with melted butter;[[73]] (or, at all events, hate them more for these reasons; for when we are indifferent to people, all their external characteristics, beautiful or ugly, merely increase our indifference). People are so deep sunk in their dear selves that everybody yawns at the menu of everybody else’s favourite dishes, but expects them to be interested when he reads out his to them.”
That feathered echo, the nightingale, was singing to us phrases of the music of the spheres, to us inaudible until thus repeated to us by her. But I had my rapid descent from my Mont Cenis to finish, and could but give utterance to my applause (of the bird and her music) by a hasty nod. “Heavenly! Elysian! I’ve been hearing it every now and then. But, one thing more. Since my sentimental journey in other people’s souls, I have been happier and fatter than I used to be, in ball-rooms, anterooms, and large assemblages (hot lark-spits which roasted all the fat out of a Swift). This enduring of transgressors includes a greater enduring still of fools and dunces, although the great world makes war on these three tolerated sects in just the contrary ratio.
“The amnesty thus granted to humanity makes the duty of loving more easy to perform; moreover, it renders the deep blissfulness of friendship and love more justifiable; for the glow, the fire of the latter often vitrifies and calcines the heart towards the rest of mankind. And this is the reason why the last and best fruit....”
Clotilda looked inquiringly here, as if begging to be allowed one word of remonstrance with me for forgetting to put myself in the place of those whose transformation I was thus extolling. I reddened, and paused. “This,” observed Jean Paul, “is the reason why a concert-room audience cries out the loudest against noise or disturbance just during the loveliest adagios—when people are most deeply touched—and swear and weep at the same time.”
“I cannot help being ashamed of an experience of my own,” said Clotilda. “The other day I cried so at reading Silly’s letters (in Allwill’s Papers) that I was obliged to put the book down. Then I went to the casino with my head full of what I had been reading—and I dare not tell you what hard opinions I entertained, several times that very evening, of several people of my acquaintance. I expected of them that they should all be in exactly the same mood of mind as myself—although, of course, they had not just come from reading Silly’s letters.”
“That is exactly what I was coming to,” concluded I. “The last and best fruit, which ripens late in a soul ever warm, is tenderness towards the hard—patience with the impatient—kindly feeling for the selfish—and philanthropy towards the misanthropic.”