Thy Brother,
J. P.
END OF BOOK III.
BOOK IV.
CHAPTER XV.
ROSA VON MEYERN—TONE-ECHOES AND AFTER BREEZES FROM THE LOVELIEST OF ALL NIGHTS—LETTERS OF NATHALIE AND FIRMIAN—TABLE-TALK BY LEIBGEBER.
If on some dewy, warm and starry night of spring the miners in some salt mine were to have their great penthouse-roof of earth lifted away from over their heads, and find themselves thus, of a sudden, brought out from their confined, candle-lit cellar into the wide, dim, sleeping-hall of nature—out of their subterranean stillness in among the breezes, the perfumes, the whisperings of the spring—these miners would be exactly in Firmian’s case, whose heretofore prisoned, silent, and serene soul the night just past had driven out of its prison with might, darkening it with new sorrows and joys, and a whole new world. Heinrich maintained a most speaking silence concerning the night in question, and, on the other hand, Firmian betrayed a mute hunting after speech. Strive as he might to fold those wings of his (which had been stretched all moist from under their wing-covers on that foregoing night for a first time), they would not fold quite short enough to go back under them again. Matters got to feel very oppressive and sultry for Leibgeber after a time. On that previous night they had come back in perfect silence to Bayreuth and to bed, and he wearied at the thought of all the demi-shades and demi-tints which would have to be got ready on the palette before so much as four bold touches could be given to the picture of the night.
Perhaps there is nothing more regrettable than that we do not all have the hooping-cough at one and the same time—or are not all suffering the sorrows of Werther—or are not all twenty-one, or sixty-one—or have not all hypochondria—or are not all spending our honeymoons—or indulging in games of banter. How charming it would be (were we all choristers singing in the same coughing-tutti) to find everybody else in just the same condition as ourselves—and put up with them therefore, and forgive in them that in which they were just like us! But as things really are—now when the one coughs to-day, and the other not till to-morrow (the simultaneous company-coughing in church always excepted); when one has to be taking dancing-lessons while another is saying his prayers in the conventicle; when one father’s daughter is being held up at the font while the other’s son is being lowered into his little grave;—now, when destiny is always striking on the hearts about us chords quite unrelated to the key of our own, or, at any rate, superfluous sixths, major sevenths, minor seconds;—now, as things are, in this universal lack of unison and harmony, what can be expected but a screeching cat-charivari—and, if we can’t have a little melody, we must be content with a little arpeggio-ing up and down.
By way of a fever for conversation, or pump-handle wherewith to force a drop or two up from the heart, Leibgeber caught hold of Firmian’s hand, and embraced it softly and warmly with all his fingers. He put one or two unimportant questions concerning what walks and expeditions they should think of for the day. But he had not foreseen that this hand-clasp would be the means of landing him in deeper difficulties of embarrassment,—for he found that it was now incumbent on him to keep a control on his hand as well as on his tongue—and he couldn’t let Firmian’s hand drop all in a moment, like a hot potato, but found it necessary to let it out of his clasp by a gradual diminuendo. This species of careful watch over his feelings was a process which made Leibgeber blush with shame, and drove him nearly frantic; and, indeed, he would have thrown even this description of mine of it into the fire. I am given to understand that he never could bring himself to utter the word “heart” even to women—who always have their heart (namely the word) on their tongues, like a kind of globus hystericus. He said, “It is the bullet-screw of their real hearts,—the button on their fanfoil; and, to me, it is a poison bolus, a pitch-ball for the Bel of Babel.”
So his hand escaped, on a sudden, from its close arrest; he seized his hat and stick, and cried: “I see you are just as great a goose as I am myself: instanter, instantius, instantissime, in three words, did you talk to her about the Widows’ Fund? Yes or no—not another syllable. I go Out at that door this instant!” Siebenkæs brought out all his items of news on this subject as rapidly as possible, so as to be quit of each and all of them for ever. “She is certain to agree to it. I said nothing to her about it. I can NOT. But you can quite easily. And you must. I am going no more to Fantasie. And we shall have a grand time of it this afternoon, Heinrich! The music of our lives shall be of a sounding sort. The pedals of the joy-notes are all ready on our harps to be pressed down; and we’ll press them!” Heinrich, partly recovering his equanimity, said, as he went out, “The Cremona strings of the human instrument are made of living membrane, the breast is only the sounding board—and the head is the damper.”