“Thousands of people ought to travel and teach both at once. He who limits himself to three days can certainly (as a species of private tutor extraordinary) in that time read excellent lectures on every kind of subject which he knows little or nothing about. Thus much I see already, that there are brilliant comets—shining wandering stars—revolving round me and others, and throwing flying lights upon us concerning electricity, gases, magnetism, in short natural science in general; but this is but a small matter. May this duck’s wing choke me if these rostrum carriers, and travelling professors (travelling scholars they are not), might not lecture upon science of every kind, with great advantage, at all events, upon the minuter branches. Could not one, for instance, travel and read lectures upon the first century after Christ’s birth, or the first millenary before it (which is no longer), I mean, tell ladies and gentlemen all about it in a lecture or two, a second undertaking the second, a third the third, an eighteenth our own? I can quite imagine travelling medicine-chests for the soul of this kind. But as far as I am concerned, I should by no means stop at this point—I should advertise myself as a peripatetic private tutor in branches of the minutest possible order; e. g., in electoral courts, I should give lessons concerning the obligations to be entered into by the nominees to government appointments; in all and every place I should give exegetical instruction concerning the first verse of the first book of Moses—the kraken, the devil (who may, perhaps, be more or less the same as the other), on Hogarth’s tail-piece, in connection with Vandyke’s headpieces, on coins and in portraits; on the true distinction between the Hippocentaur, and the Onocentaur, which is more like that between genius and German criticism than anything else; on the first paragraph of Wolf, or even of Pütter; on the funeral bier of Louis (XIV.) the be-grandised, and the public rejoicings under it; on the academic licences which a passing lecturer may allow himself to take, in addition to that of pocketing his fee—the greatest of which is often that of shutting the lecture-room door, (to make a long story short) on everything, in fact. If we go on in this way (I can’t help being struck), that when circulating high schools have got to be as common as village schools—when savants ply backwards and forwards like live shuttles between the towns (and they have begun to do so already), attaching Ariadne threads (of talk, at all events) everywhere, to everything, with the view of weaving them into something or other—if we go on on this road, I say, when each sun of a professor—on the Ptolemaic system, moves about among the dark orbs (fixed upon necks), which surround him, and casts his light upon each in turn (a state of things wholly opposed to the Copernican system, according to which the sun stands still on the professorial rostrum in the centre of the orbits of the revolving planets or students)—if we go on (I say once more, on this road), one may be pretty sure that the world will really come to be something at last; a learned world, at the very least and lowest—philosophers will obtain the true philosopher’s stone—gold; what fools will obtain will be the philosophers, and knowledge of every kind: and moreover the restorers of science will get set upon their legs. All soil would then be classic soil—so that people would of necessity have to plough, and fight on, classic soil. Every gallows hill would be a Pindus, every prince’s throne an oracle-cave of Delphi—and I should be obliged to anyone who should show me such a thing as a single ass in the whole of Germany, then. This is what would necessarily happen if all the world were to set out upon learned, and instructive, journeys—that portion of it being, of course, necessarily excepted which would be obliged to stay at home if there were to be anybody to listen and pay (like the point de vue, in military ‘evolutions,’ for which the adjutant is generally told off).”
Here he suddenly jumped up, and cried, “I wish to Heaven I could go to Bruckenau;[[79]] there, on the bath tubs, should be my professorial chair, and seat of the Muses. The tradesman’s, the country gentleman’s wife or daughter should lie, like a shell fish, in her closed basin and relic-casquet, with nothing sticking out but her head (just as is the case in her ordinary costume), her head which it would be my business to instruct. What discourses, à la St. Anthony of Padua, should I not hold with these tender tench—or sirens—though they might better be described as fortresses protected by moats, or wet ditches. I should sit lecturing and teaching upon the wooden holsters of their glowing charms (phosphorus-like, kept in water!) But this would be nothing compared to the benefits I should bestow upon society were I to have myself cooped into an etui, or scabbard of the kind, and then be net a-going like a water-organ, and, like some water-god, devote my pedagogical talents to the edification of the class of students sitting on my tub-lid! True, I should have to make my illustrative gestures under the warm water, because the only part of me out of my sheath would be my head (like the hilt of a dagger), with my master’s cap on it. But the loveliest of doctrine,—luxuriant rice-ears, and succulent aquatic plants sprouting in the water—a play of philosophic water-works, and so forth, should be emitted from the bath, and send away all the beauties (whom, in fancy, I see thronging round my quaker’s and Diogenes’ tub) besprinkled with learning and instruction of the most superlative description. By Heaven! I ought to be off to Bruckenau this instant, not so much as a watering-place guest as in the capacity of a private tutor.”
CHAPTER XVI.
THE HOMEWARD JOURNEY, WITH ALL ITS PLEASURES—THE ARRIVAL AT HOME.
Firmian took his departure. He was sorry to leave the hotel, which had been a royal “Sans Souci” and “mon repos” to him, and turn his face away from its comfortable chambers towards his own bare comfortless rooms. To him who had never known any of the comforts—the soft paddings, so to speak, of this hard life of ours—who had never had any other Jack but the boot-jack, it had been an enormous pleasure and enjoyment to have the power of ringing that leading actor, John the waiter, up from his coulisses with such facility, and that too with plates and glasses in his hand, out of which said actor enjoyed nothing, only Siebenkæs and the public so doing. Just at the door of the hotel, he made to Mr. Feldmann, the landlord, the following eulogistic address, which shall be made him once more in print by me, by way of an additional blazon to his coat of arms, the moment it gets through the press. “There is only one thing which your guests have to desire, that they have not got, and that is the most important of all things—time. May your sun reach the sign of the crab, and remain in it.” Several Bayreuthians who were standing by thought this was a miserable satire.
Henry went with Firmian some thirty paces beyond the Reformation church, as far as the church-yard, and tore himself away from him with less difficulty than usual, for he expected to see him again in a few weeks’ time—on his death-bed. He would not go as far as Fantaisie with him, wishing to allow him to sink, in silence and undisturbed, and lose himself in the enjoyment of the magic echoes of the spirit-harmonies of that night of bliss wherewith all the garden would be vocal.
Alone, then, Firmian entered into the valley as into some holy temple, all sacredness and awe. Every thicket seemed, to his eyes, glorified with super-earthly light, the stream, a stream flowing out of Arcadia, and the whole valley a Vale of Tempè, transported thither and unveiled to view. And when he came to the dear and holy spot where Nathalie had prayed him to “think of that night,” it seemed to him that the sun was shedding a heavenlier brightness; and that the hum of bees in the blossoms was music of spirit-voices wafted on the air, and that he must needs prostrate himself and press his heart upon the dewy sward. Upon this trembling sound-board he once more retraced the old path by which he had walked with Nathalie, and, now in a rose espalier, now from some streamlet, now from the balcony, now from some leafy nook or trembling stem, string after string, breaking from silence, gave forth once more its old lovely tone. His enraptured heart swelled, even to pain; a moist transparent shimmer was over his eyes, and dissolved into a great tear-drop. His eyes, drunken with weeping, distinguished nothing save the brightness of the morning and the whiteness of the flowers; details were hid by the flowery vail of dreaming, in whose lily perfume his soul sank down, soothed to a restful sleep. It was as if hitherto, in the enjoyment of being with his Leibgeber he had only felt half the real strength of his love for Nathalie; with such a new might and breeze of heaven did that love come breathing upon him in this solitude with ethereal tire. A world all youth burst into blossom in his heart.
Of a sudden the bells of Bayreuth came ringing into this world, striking for him the hour of his farewell to it; and there fell on him that anxious sadness with which we linger, too long, beside a place where we have been happy, when the time has come when we must say Adieu. He went upon his way.
What a brightness fell upon all the hills and meadows, with the thought of Nathalie, and that imperishable kiss! The green world, which had been but a series of pictures for him, as he came, was now all speech and language. There was a light-magnet of happiness all day long in the dimmest corner of his being; and when, in the thick of distractions, conversations and the like, en route, he cast a sudden glance into himself, he found a continual sense of blissfulness within him.