Thus it is with—not our Inspector only—but man in general. He has an indescribable fondness for halves, perhaps because he is a colossus and demi-god standing, with out-stretched legs, upon two worlds. He particularly delights in half-romances, half-postage of selfishness, half-proofs, half-scholars (smatterers in knowledge), half-holidays, half-spheres—and (consequently) better halves.
Siebenkæs’s new labours of various kinds concealed his own pains and sufferings from him for the first few weeks (at all events, when the sun was not shining). But what gave him his largest extra-ration of pleasure was the Count’s satisfaction with his legal knowledge, and careful and accurate style of doing his work. Once, when the Count said to him, “Friend Leibgeber, you are keeping your promise like a man. Your ability and accuracy over your work are deserving of all praise, and I do not conceal from you that I felt just the slightest shade of a misgiving on this very head, notwithstanding my high opinion of your other talents. For, like your Frederick II., I consider talk and work to be two wholly distinct things; and as regards the latter, I look for the most accurate and methodical attention to all its details in every one I have to deal with.” Firmian rejoiced within himself, as he thought, “At all events I have turned aside some little matter of blame from my dear Henry, and gained a little modicum of praise for him; though he could have done it all much better himself, if he had chosen.”
After a pleasure of self-sacrifice such as this, one always wants to go on enjoying fresh pleasures of self-sacrifice, and making new sacrifices, just as children, who, whenever they are given anything, cannot cease giving. He brought out his ‘Selections from the Devil’s Papers,’ gave them to the Count, and told him plainly and openly that they were his own work. “This is not a deception in the slightest,” he thought; “though he supposes they are by Leibgeber; I have no other name now.” The Count never wearied of reading and praising these papers, and what particularly pleased him was, that, in the path of satire, he followed the guidance of his own two compatriots, the British Castor and Pollux of humour, Swift and Sterne. Siebenkæs listened to the encomiums on his book with such delight that he seemed exactly like a conceited author—whereas, in reality, he was nothing but a lover of his Henry, who had managed to conjure a few extra laurel-crowns on to his image in the Count’s mind.
This single enjoyment of his was, of a truth, necessary to him by way of consolation and cordial for a life which was flowing on, beshaded and chilled between two steep banks of legal business, week after week, month after month. Alas! with the exception of the good Count’s talk (whose extraordinary kindness to him would have made his heart beat even more warmly than it did, could he have thanked him for it in another’s name as well as his own),—he heard nothing better than an occasional murmur of the waves of his life. He found himself, every day, in his old, disagreeable post of a critic, compelled to read what he had to give judgment upon. Formerly it had been books—now it was lawyers. He saw into so many empty heads, into so many empty hearts—saw such darkness in the former, such blackness in the latter. He saw how very much the common-herd (when it comes to the Egeria-fountain of the juristic ink-bottle to benefit its calculi), is like Carlsbad bath-guests, in whose case the hot-springs bring all diseased matter to the surface of the skin. He saw that most of the oldest, and worst, members of the legal profession are, in only one beautiful respect, like poisonous plants—namely, that they are not half so poisonous, but more innocuous, while they are young. He saw that a just judgment often did as much harm as an unjust one, and that the one was appealed against just as much as the other. He saw that it was easier, and, at the same time, more distasteful, to be a judge than an advocate; although neither of them loses anything by an injustice—for a judge is paid for a judgment reversed on appeal, just as an advocate is for a case which he loses. He saw that, in dealing with defendants, the principle of grooms is applied (who look upon the currycomb as a good half of the forage). And, finally, he saw that nobody fares worse in the affair than he who sees it, and that the devil is the very last of all things that the devil takes.
Amid labours and views such as these, the tender fibres of the heart contract, and the open arms of the inner man are paralysed—the overweighted soul scarce has the strength to love, let alone the time. When we love, and seek after things, it must be at the expense of persons. If we work too much, we must love too little. There was but one place where poor Firmian gave vent, once in the twenty-four hours, to the longings and prayers of his tender soul—namely, his pillow; and its cover was the white handkerchief waiting for his weeping eyes. A deluge (made of tears) was over all his former world—nothing floating on its surface but the two withered funeral-garlands of departed days—the flowers which Lenette and Nathalie had worn on their breasts, like petrified medicine-flowers of his sick soul.
Living so far away, and so wholly outside the elliptical vault, he could hear as little of Kuhschnappel as of Schraplau—of Lenette and Nathalie not a word. He merely learned, from the ‘Messenger of the Gods and Advertiser of German Programmes,’ that he was dead, and that the critical profession was thereby deprived of one of its ablest and most zealous members. Thus our Inspector was honoured by the necrologium sooner than any other German scholar ever was—as soon, in fact, as the Olympic conqueror Euthymus,[[105]] to whom, by a decree of the Delphic Oracle, sacrifice and divine worship was adjudged during his lifetime. I do not know which kind of ears—long ears or deaf—the German trump of fame prefers to blow to.
And yet, in the depths of this ice-month of his love-imploring heart, and in the wilderness of his loneliness, Firmian still had one living, resplendent flower—and that was Nathalie’s parting-kiss. Ah! ye who waste and pine because of our insatiableness, did ye but know how a kiss, which is a first and a last, blossoms and blooms throughout a life—imperishable double-rose of speechless lips and burning souls—ye would search for bliss more enduring—aye, and find it too! That kiss sealed, in Firmian, and confirmed the spirit-bond immortalising and eternising love at its loveliest and brightest hour of bloom. The speechless lips were still eloquent, to him. The spirit breathed between them as of old; and often as he saw, by night, behind the veil of his closed, tearful eyelids, Nathalie going away from him, with all her sacred sorrows, and vanishing down the darkling path—he never had enough of the parting, the anguish, and the love.
At last, when six months had passed, one beautiful winter morning, when the white hills with their snow-crystal woods lay bathed in the rose-blood of the sun, and Aurora was stretching her pinions more widely as she gently laid them down upon the glittering earth—there flew a letter into Firmian’s empty hand, as if borne upon the morning-breeze of a spring as yet among the things to be. It was from Nathalie, who, like the rest of the world, supposed him to be the Henry of former days.
“Dear Leibgeber,—I can restrain or control my heart no longer. Every day it longs to break in pieces before yours, and show you all its wounds. You were once my friend, I know; am I quite forgotten? Have I lost you too? Ah! surely not; it is only that you cannot speak to me for sorrow, since your Firmian died upon your breast, and still rests, vanishing into the frost of death, upon the aching spot. Ah! why did you persuade me to accept the fruit that grows upon his grave—and, as it were, open that grave anew every year?[[106]] The first day I received this fruit was bitter—bitterer than any other. You will see from a little New Year’s Greeting, which I addressed to myself (and which I enclose), how I sometimes feel. One passage in it refers to a white rose in my room, from which I managed to gather a flower or two in December. My friend, now grant me a request, the making of which is really my object in writing this letter—my most earnest prayer for sorrow, a bitterer sorrow than is mine even now—for this will give me consolation. Tell me—for there is no one else who can—and I know no other—tell me everything about our dear one’s last hours and moments; what he said and what he suffered; how his eyes closed, and how his life ended? All this, everything, though it will pierce my heart, I must be told. What can it cost you and me but tears?—and tears soothe suffering eyes.
“I remain, your friend,