One single letter, however, sent all the scenery of his theatre into confusion again. It came from Schulrath Stiefel:—
“Honoured Sir,—You doubtless remember more than too well the testamentary instruction which our mutual friend, the late lamented Poor’s Advocate, Siebenkæs, left behind him, to the effect that Herr von Blaise should make payment of the trust-funds in his hands—and, indeed (as you are aware), to your respected self in order that you, might remit it to the widow—which failing, it was the testator’s avowed intention to appear as a ghost. Be this as it may, thus much is matter of notoriety in this town and neighbourhood, that, for some weeks past, a ghost, in the likeness of our lamented friend, has pursued the Herr Heimlicher everywhere, who has, in consequence, become so ill and bedridden, that he has taken the Holy Sacrament, and made up his mind to pay over the above-mentioned moneys in good earnest. I now beg to inquire of you whether you would wish to receive them in the first instance, or whether (as would be almost more natural) they shall be paid at once to the widow. I have yet to mention that—in accordance with the desire of the testator—I sometime since married the former Mrs. Siebenkæs, and that I expect very soon to be the happiest of fathers. She is a most admirable wife and housekeeper. She is by no means a Thalæa,[[110]] and would lay down her life for her husband as gladly as he would lay down his for her; and I often have nothing left to desire, but that my predecessor, her good, never-to-be-forgotten first husband Siebenkæs (who had his little whims and eccentricities at times), could be a spectator of the happiness in which his beloved Lenette is now bathed. She weeps for him every Sunday as she goes through the churchyard, but at the same time she confesses that she is happier now than in former times. It grieves me much that it is only now that I have learnt, from my wife, in what miserable circumstances the dear departed found himself, as regarded his purse. How eagerly, had I been aware of this, I should have taken him and his wife by the arms, and assisted them as becomes a Christian! If the deceased, who now possesses more than any, or all, of us, can, in his glory, look down upon us, I am sure he will forgive me. I would respectfully beg for an early reply to this letter. One cause of the restitution of the trust-funds may also be, that the Heimlicher (who is an honest enough man upon the whole) is now no longer influenced by Herr von Meyern. They have completely fallen out, as all the town knows, and the latter has broken off engagements with five ladies in Bayreuth, and is about to enter into the state of holy matrimony with a native of Kuhschnappel.
“My wife is as bitter against him as Christian love permits, and says that when she meets him she feels like a hunter who encounters an old woman in his path of a morning; for he was the cause of much needless vexation between her and her husband, and she often tells me with pleasure how cleverly you, esteemed Mr. Inspector, often set this dangerous fellow down, and kept him in his place. However, he does not dare to set foot in my house. I defer, for the present, a more detailed request—as to whether you would not feel inclined to fill our departed friend’s vacant place as Collaborateur in the ‘GOD’S Messenger of German Programmes,’ which (I may say without undue boasting) is taken in, and looked upon with approval in Gymnasia and Lycæa, from Swabia as far as Nürnberg, Bayreuth, and Hof. There is rather a superfluity than a lack of miserable Programme-scribblers; and (let me say it without flattery) you are the very man to wield the satiric scourge over the heads of these frog-spawn in the Castalian springs, as few others could. But of this more on another occasion. My wife desires to add her most cordial remembrances to her departed husband’s highly-esteemed friend; and, hoping for a speedy answer,
“I remain, your most obedient humble servant,
“S. R. Stiefel, Schulrath.”
The human heart is shielded by great sorrows from the impact of small ones—by the waterfall from the rain.[[111]] Firmian forgot everything in remembering, suffering, and crying out to himself, “Thus I have lost thee for ever, wholly. Oh! thou wert good always, it was I who was not. Be happier than thy solitary friend whom thou mournest justly every Sunday.” He now cast all the blame of his bygone matrimonial lawsuits upon his own satirical whimsies, and ascribed the failure of his crop of happiness to his own ungenial climate.
But in this he was doing himself greater injustice than he had formerly done Lenette. I mean to make the world a present of my thoughts on this subject, on the spot. Love is the Perihelion of the fair sex; nay, it is the transit of every one of those Venuses over the sun of the ideal world. At the epoch of this “higher style” of their souls, they love everything that we love, even the sciences, and the whole best world within the breast—and they despise what we despise, even clothes and news. In this spring of theirs these nightingales go on singing until the summer solstice; the wedding-day is their longest day. Then the devil runs away with—not exactly everything, but something every day. The bast-band of wedlock binds the poetic wings, and the bridal-bed is (for the imagination, the phantasy), an Engelsburg, and prison-cell, with bread and water. During the honeymoon I have often followed these poor birds of paradise, or peacocks of Psyche, and in this moulting-season of theirs picked up the glorious wing and tail-feathers which they have dropped; and then, when a husband has fancied he has married a naked crow, I have held out the bunch of feathers to him. Why is this? For this reason: marriage overlays the poetical world with the rind of the actual; as (according to Descartes) our earthly sphere is a sun covered over with a dirty crust, or bark. The hands of everyday labour are unwieldy, hard, and full of indurations, and find much difficulty in going on holding, or drawing the delicate threads of the woof of the ideal. Hence it is that among the upper classes (where, instead of work-rooms there are only little work-baskets, and where the little spinning-wheels are turned on the lap with the finger, and where love still endures after marriage—often even for the husband) the wedding-ring is not so often, as among the lower orders, a Gyges-ring, which renders books and the arts of music, poetry, painting, and dancing—invisible. Upon high places plants of all sorts, and particularly female plants, have more vigour and aroma. A woman has not, as a man has, the power of protecting the outer side of her inner air-and-magic-castles against rough weather. What then is she to hold to? Her husband. He ought always to stand beside the liquid silver of the female spirit with a spoon, and keep skimming off the scum which gathers on it, that the silver-glittering sheen of the ideal may always keep bright and shining. But then there are two sorts of husbands—Arcadians, or lyric-poets of life, who love for ever, like Rousseau, when their hair is grey—and these are not to be controlled or comforted when they can no longer see any gold on the feminine anthology (bound with gilt edges) because they have turned the leaves of the little book over one by one, (as is the case with all gilt-edged books). Secondly, there are shepherd-hinds and sheep-smearers, I mean master-singers by profession, men-of-business, who thank God when the enchantress turns, at last, like other witches, into a grumbling house-cat, keeping down the vermin.
Nobody has to suffer more anxiety and alarm, combined with tedium and ennui (and therefore I intend some day to awaken the pity of my readers for this very condition, in a comic biography) than a portly, energetic, pushing, pompous, ponderous Basso of a “business-man,” who finds himself (like the elephants in Rome of old) constrained to dance on the slack-rope of love; and whose deportment and play of feature, in the circumstances, I think more like those of a marmot than anything else, when the warmth of a room has awakened him from his winter’s sleep, and he finds he can’t get properly into the knack of moving. It is only with widows (who wish less to be loved than to be married) that a weighty office-holder of this sort can begin his romance at the place where all the novel-writers leave theirs off—namely, at the altar-steps. A man, built after this simplest of styles, would find a great weight lifted from his heart if anybody would only love his shepherdess for him till such time as he should have nothing to do but go and be married; and no one would have greater pleasure in taking up this burden, or cross, from them than myself. I have often thought of announcing in the public newspapers (except that I was afraid it would be looked upon as a joke) that I was prepared to swear Platonic, eternal love to any number of endurable girls (whom men of business might not even have time to love), and make them all the necessary love-declarations as plenipotentiary of the bridegroom-elect—in a word, to lead them on my arm, as substitutus sine spe succedendi, or cavalier de société, athwart the whole of the unlevel land of love, till, on the frontier, I should hand over my charge, duly prepared, to the bridegroom; which would be lovemaking, rather than marrying, by ambassador. If, according to this systema assistantiæ, there should be any one who would care to employ the writer even during the honeymoon (when a certain amount of love may still be expected to crop up), he must take care to establish all the necessary conditions in good time, beforehand.
In Siebenkæs’s Lenette (from no fault of his) the ideal isle of the blest had sunk away, miles deep, in an instant, at the very marriage altar. The husband could in nowise either help or hinder this. On the whole, dear Mr. Education-Counsellor Campe, you really should not strike so hard upon your writing-desk with your school birch-rod whenever a solitary she-frog croaks out something or other out of the nearest marsh, which is capable of being sent to an almanack. Ah me! don’t tear away from the good creatures (who do put the loveliest dreams, all full of fantasy-flowers, into this empty life of ours) the terribly short dream of a delicate, sentimental love. They will be awakened to reality only too soon without that, and neither you nor I will be able to put them to sleep again, let us write as much as we choose.