The time had arrived when Siebenkæs had to pave the way, and give a colour to, his sham death, by a feigned sickness of some sort; but this voluntary bending over the grave, and drooping towards it, gave his conscience a pretext for trying to win back Lenette’s embittered heart. Thus it is that deceived, and deceiving, man always magnifies and elevates his false shows, his cheateries, and deceptions either into less ones than they really are, or into beneficently intended ones.
The Greek and Roman lawgivers invented dreams and prophecies, which contained the ground-plans and elevations of their projects, as well as the building-conditions, and building-materials of them. For instance, Alcibiades lied forth a prophecy of the conquest of Sicily. Firmian imitated this process, with alterations suitable to the circumstances of his case. He often said, in Stiefel’s presence (for Stiefel took a deep and tender interest in everything, and, consequently, so did she), that he should soon be going away for ever—that he should soon be playing in a game at hide-and-seek, and hide himself so effectually that no friendly eye should be able to find him again—that he would soon slip behind the bed-curtain of the coffin-pall, and vanish. He told them a dream (which, perhaps, was no invention). He said, “The Schulrath and Lenette were looking at a room in which a scythe was moving of its own accord;[[82]] then, in a while, Firmian’s clothes were walking about in the room, empty, without any body in them. ‘He must have other clothes on,’ they both said. Then all at once the churchyard passed along the street, with a fresh grave in it, no grass on it as yet. But a voice cried, ‘Seek him not there; it is over and past now.’ And a second (softer) voice cried, Rest—rest—thou art worn and weary. And a third said, ‘Weep not, if ye love him.’ But a fourth cried out, in terrible tones, ‘Jest—jest—all human life and death.’” Firmian was the first to shed tears; his friend was the next, and his angry spouse wept, with the latter.
But now he looked with eager longing for the coming of Leibgeber, whose hand would lead him quicker and more pleasantly through the dark foreground, and the hot, reeking, sultry, breathless, forehell of his artificial death. For he himself was now too feeble and too tender to pass through them alone.
And upon one particular, unusually lovely, August evening he was so, more than ever before. There played and rested on his face that glorified and celestial bliss of self-devotion—that tearless depth of emotion and smiling gentleness, which sometimes come to us when pain and sorrow are—weary for the time, rather than over and past—something like the blue sky when the brightness of the rainbow falls in light athwart its radiant beauty. He resolved to bid good-bye, in solitude, that day to all the beautiful country which lay around the town.
The face of Nature was veiled (but not for his eyes, for his soul only), in a thin, soft mist, which went hovering before the breeze in ever-changing wreaths, like the tender vapouriness—not amounting to a shrouding—which Berghem’s and Wouvermanns’ pencils have cast upon their landscapes. As though to say farewell, he went and touched, and gazed upon, every leafy tree beneath whose branches he had been wont to read—each little darkling brooklet, purling on its way beneath its thickets of forest-roots, laved bare of earth by its ripples—each rocky crag, all green and sweet of scent with moss and flowers—each stair-way of rising hillocks which, in the days gone by, he had climbed to see the sun set (or gone down to watch his risings) many times instead of once—and every spot where wide creation had brought tears of rapture from his happy heart. But everywhere—amid the long harvest corn-ears, amid Creation’s oft-repeated tale in Nature’s brooding-oven with all its swarming life, in the seed-nursery of the ripe and endless garden—a hollow, broken voice cried out, in long-drawn tones which mingled with, and sounded clear above, the bright, rejoicing, trumpet-clang of Nature’s ‘Alexander’s Feast,’ “What are these dead men’s bones that move about amid this life of mine, defiling all my blossoms?” And to him it seemed as if, from out the glory of the red West sky, a something sang to him, “Wandering skeleton! with strings of nerves clasped in thy bony hand, thou playest not on thyself. The breath of endless life is breathing on the Æolian harp, which answers back in music, and thou art played upon.” But soon this mournful error fell away from him, and he thought thus: “I am both playing and answering back in music. I both think and am thought. It is not the green bark that holds my Dryad, my spiritus rector (the soul). The latter holds the former. The life of the body depends as intimately on the life of the soul, as that of the latter on that of the former. Life and force are at work, with power, everywhere. The grave hillock and the mouldering body are each a world of powers at work. We change our stage, but do not retire from it.”
When he got home, he found the following letter from Leibgeber for him:—
“I am on my way; set out on yours.—L.”
CHAPTER XIX.
THE APPARITION—HOMECOMING OF THE STORMS IN AUGUST, OR THE LAST QUARREL—THE RAIMENT OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL.