After a long while, he caught sight of him climbing the long hill behind the village of Bindloch, a mountain-road, in the true sense of the words, not to be either ascended or descended at any great speed. Leibgeber was straining up it as fast as he could, however, with the view of unexpectedly overtaking Firmian before he got to Hof, perhaps in Münchberg, or in Gefrees, if not in Berneck itself (which is at no very great distance from Bayreuth).
But was not everything destined to turn out ten times better? Did not Siebenkæs, at the bottom of the hill, at last catch sight of him near the level place on the summit, and call out his name—which he did not hear? Did not Siebenkæs then run at an extraordinary pace after his ascending friend (with the handkerchief in his hand), and did not the latter chance to turn round, by accident, to have a glance at the sunny landscape, and see all Bayreuth, and—at long and at last—his friend hastening after him? And finally, did they not rush together, the one down the hill, the other up (not like two hostile armies, however, but like two wreathed and foaming goblets of joy and friendship)?
Henry speedily perceived that in his friend’s breast there was much of a powerful and dissolvent kind—belonging both to past and to future times—at work, wherefore he sought to appease and calm all the “Naiads of the rivers of tears.”
“Everything went off divinely,” he said, “and everybody is well. Now you are as free as I am. Your chains are off—the world is before you—so in you plunge into it, fresh and merry, like me, and begin to live your real life, for the first time in your life.” “You are right,” said Firmian, “this is like meeting you again after death. Heaven is above us, peaceful and quiet, gladsome, serene, and warm.” For that very reason, he had not the courage to ask after those he had left behind, particularly his widow. Leibgeber expressed great joy that he had caught him up four post-stations on that side of Hof, and all the more that, this being so, they could be together for a good long while before they must part in Hof (which latter was the very point which he was anxious to establish and emphasise).
He now commenced a series of jokes on the subject of dying (with the view of preventing anything in the shape of an expression of the emotions which they both felt), and these jokes recurred like milestones, or stone-benches, all along the turnpike-road to Hof; we have no way of escaping them on the journey, unless we turn back. He asked him if the diet had been sufficient which he had given him, as the old Germans, Romans, and Egyptians did to their dead. He said that Firmian must be excessively pious, inasmuch as he had risen from the dead when he had barely shuffled off this mortal coil, confirming Lavater’s doctrine that there are two resurrections, a first for the good, and a later one for the bad. He said, further, that he could not have had a better Archimimus[[94]] after his departure from this life than himself. Leibgeber’s spirit and body sprang rather than walked. “I am always in high spirits, and free, while I am in the open air. Beneath the clouds, I have no clouds. When we are young, the raw north wind of life whistles only on our backs, and, by Heaven! I am younger than any reviewer.”
They passed the night in Berneck, between the lofty bridge-piers of mountains, through which once streamed those seas which have overspread our globe with fields. Time and Nature—grand and almighty—were reposing side by side on the confines of two kingdoms—between the steep, lofty, memorial-pillars of creation—amongst firm mountains, empty castles crumbling into ruin, rock-barriers and stone-tumuli lying about the rounded green hills, like broken tables of the law of earth’s first creation.
When they arrived here, Henry said, “The clergy between this and Vaduz must not find out that you have exchanged time for eternity, or they will ask you for the surplice fees which every corpse has to pay in each parish which it passes through. If we were in old Rome (and not in Berneck),” said he, before the inn, “the landlord would never let you into his house except down the chimney. And if we were in Athens, you would be obliged to creep through a hoop-petticoat just as if you were going into holy orders.”[[95]] On an occasion of this sort, he never could cease from his witticisms, in which he differed (to his disadvantage) from me; and he said that metaphors and similes were like gold pieces, of which Rousseau says that the first is harder to get than the next thousand.
Therefore it was beyond his power not to be struck with an idea when, in the evening, he saw Firmian paring his nails. “I can’t understand,” he said “(now that I see it in your case), why Katherine Bieri—whose nails had to be cut 250 years after she was dead—couldn’t have done it just as well herself as you do after having given tip the ghost.” And when he saw him turn over on his left side in bed, he simply observed that he made his bed-quilt rise and fall in the same manner as St. John the Evangelist does his earthen one—the grave—to the present hour.[[96]]
In the morning, it rained a little upon these flowers of humour. As Leibgeber was laving that lion’s breast of his with cold water, Firmian noticed that he pushed aside a little key, and asked what it opened. “It unfastens nothing,” he said; “but it fastened the leaden cenotaphium.”[[97]] Firmian was obliged to lean out of window with his eyes, and dry them unobserved. Then (with his head still outside) he said, “Give me the key. It is the wax-impression of a future one. I want to make it the music-key of my inner music. I shall hang it up, and look at it every day; and if ever my resolution to be better should run down, I shall wind it up again with this watch-key.” He got it. Then Leibgeber chanced to look into the mirror; and he cried, “I seem almost to see myself double, not to say triple. One of me must be dead, the one in there or the one out here. Which of us in this room is it that is the real dead man appearing to the other? Or are we only appearing to ourselves? Heh! you my three me’s, what say you to the fourth?”—he asked, and turned to the two-reflected images, then to Firmian—and said, “Here I am, too!”
There was something in these sayings calculated to cause a shudder for his future. Firmian, whose calmer reason made him dread a dangerous growth of this metamorphic self-reflecting during the solitude of Leibgeber’s wanderings, said, with tender anxiety, “My dear Henry, if you are going to be always so much alone upon your eternal journeys, I can’t help fearing it will do you harm. God himself is not alone. He beholds His universe.” “I can always triple myself, in the profoundest solitude, not excepting that of the universe itself,” answered Leibgeber, strangely moved by the coffin-key—and he went to the looking-glass, and pressed his eyeball sideways with his finger, so as to see his reflection double; “but you can’t see the third person there.” Then he went on in a merrier tone, with the view of cheering Firmian (who was not much cheered by what he said, nevertheless), leading him to the window. “But it is a far finer affair as regards the street. I have a much larger company there. I put my finger to my eye, and produce the twin of everybody, be he who he may; double the landlord, as well as his chalk-score. Not a president on his way to his meeting but ‘finds his fellow’ and meets his match. I provide him with his Orang Utang, and the pair of them march past me, tête-à-tête. Does a genius want an imitator? I take my finger—and hey! presto!—a living facsimile of him on the spot. Every learned collaborator has a collaborator collaborating with him. Associates have associates associated with them. Only sons are made out in duplicate, because, as you see, I carry my plastic nature, author, and embossing-instrument—my finger to wit—always about with me. And I seldom let a solo-dancer caper with fewer than four legs; he has to hang in air as a pair of men. But it would amaze you to see how much I can make out of a single fellow and his limbs by this sort of grouping. Try to form some idea (by way of wind-up) of the crowds and masses of people I have when I double such things as funerals and other processions, with doppelgänger, and strengthen every regiment with an entire regiment of flügelmen, repeating and imitating everything. For (as we have been saying), like a grasshopper, I have my ovipositing instrument—my finger—always with me. From all which, Firmian, you may at all events draw the consolation that I enjoy more society than any of you—just as much again, in fact. And, moreover, it consists entirely of people who afford me endless amusement without trouble or inconvenience, by aping their own gestures and proceedings.”