I shall close this chapter with a sort of preliminary word for Lenette. The foul fiend Rosa, by way of giving like for like (or rather worse for like) had emptied whole basketsful of the seed of evil-weeds into Lenette’s open heart, and unpacked compliments, to commence with, and news of her husband; then, afterwards, disparaging matter. She had believed him all the more readily because it was a clever, learned, and intellectual woman whom he was nigrifying, breaking with, and offering up as a sacrifice. What she most hated in Nathalie was her cleverness, her learning, and intellectualness; for it was the want of those that had brought herself to such shame. Like many women, she thought that the heads of Venuses were not “the true article” (as some connoisseurs think is the case with the Venus de Medici). What provoked her most of all was that Firmian should take another woman’s part more than his own wife’s—nay, at his own wife’s expense; and that Nathalie, in her conceit and pride, had got ready a sack to give such a nice, rich gentleman, instead of weaving a net to hold him with. She was also very much annoyed that her husband had admitted everything, as she considered his candour was only lordly indifference as to what she might feel on the subject.
What did Firmian do? He forgave. His two reasons for doing so were good ones—“Bayreuth” and “the grave.” The former had parted him from her so long; the latter was soon to part him from her for ever. A third reason might perhaps be this: Lenette, as regarded his love for Nathalie, was not so very utterly the reverse of right.
CHAPTER XVIII.
AFTER SUMMER OF MARRIAGE—PREPARATIONS FOR DEATH.
Although Sunday was come, and the Vicar’s eyes were no more open than his congregation’s (because, like many of the clergy, he kept his physical eyes shut while preaching), my hero went to him to get his certificate of birth, because this was wanted for the Brandenburg Widows’ Fund.
Leibgeber had charged himself with the rest. Enough of the subject—for I don’t care to say more about it than I can help; because some years ago—long after all Siebenkæs’s pecuniary affairs had been settled up to the last farthing, and his debt to the Fund duly paid—the ‘Imperial Gazette’ publicly accused me of bringing discredit upon Integrity and Widows’ Funds by the last book of this story of mine, and considered it to be its (the ‘Gazette’s’) duty to take me pretty severely to task on the subject, according to its measure of ability. But are the advocate and I the same person? Does not everybody know that my proceedings as regards my married life in general, and the Prussian Widows’ Fund in particular, have been quite unlike those of Siebenkæs in every respect, and that to this very hour I have never departed this life, either in jest or in earnest, in all these years during which I have regularly paid a considerable annual contribution to the institution in question? Nay, do I not mean—(and I need have no hesitation in saying so)—to go on paying my yearly quotum for as many more years as I can—so that, when I die, the fund may have got more out of me than out of any other contributor?
These are my views on the subject; but I must do Siebenkæs the simple justice to state (to his credit) that the views by which he was actuated differed very, very little from my own. The only thing was, that, in Bayreuth, he had immolated his own truthful heart to the stormy urgency of his friend, Leibgeber, which had imbued and intoxicated him, in a moment of enthusiasm, with that cosmopolitan spirit of his which, in the boundless soul-transmigrations which, in the course of his never ending journeyings he passed through, had come to look upon life too much as a mere game at cards, and stage-play—as a Chicken-hazard, and Opera Buffa and Seria combined. And as, besides, he knew Leibgeber’s pecuniary circumstances, and his contempt for money (and his own into the bargain), he had undertaken a rôle which was anything but well suited to him, and as to which he had as little foreseen the torture of difficulty which it would cost him to act it, as the penitential sermon which was to be preached from Gotha concerning it.
At the same time it was a great piece of good luck that it was only Becker’s ‘Gazette’ that found out about Nathalie’s straw-widowhood, and not Lenette! Heavens, if the latter, with her silk “Forget-me” (for the “not” had altogether disappeared from it), in her hand, had got wind of Firmian’s adoptive marriage! I neither desire to judge the fair sex, nor to be judged by them. But at this point I would fain put to all my lady readers (and most particularly to one of them), two rather weighty and important questions.
“Would you not bend down from your judge’s seat, and hand my hero, if not a flower-wreath, an oak-wreath, at all events, for his good and kind behaviour to this feminine couple? Or (inasmuch as there are four female hands playing a duet sonata on his heart), a bouquet for his button-hole at the very least?” Dearest lady readers, you could not possibly have given a better verdict—although my surprise at it is not so great as my gratification. My second question nobody shall put to you but yourselves. Let each of you ask herself, “Suppose you had this fourth book of my story put into your hands, and were Lenette her very self, and consequently knew to a hair all about the whole business from beginning to end; what would you think of your husband Siebenkæs’ proceedings? What would you do?”