The Hair-Dresser with a (musical) Disease of the Lungs.—Clotilda in Victor's Dream.—Extra Lines on Church-Music.—Garden Concert by Stamitz.—Quarrel between Victor and Flamin.—The Heart without Solace.—Letter to Emanuel.
The October Sunday with which I fill up this Dog-Post-Day was, even at nine and a half o'clock in the morning, such a glad, glistening day in St. Luna, that the whole Parsonage thought of the Court-Physician.—"Ah, he ought to come to the concert this evening!" The virtuoso Stamitz was to give one in Le Baut's garden.—"O, better earlier, even to dinner!"—"And to my forenoon sermon, if he will not come to the children's catechizing." Eymann, as he said this, had, more than anything else, his newly dressed peruke in his head, which Herr Meuseler had to-day placed on it. This clever peruke-maker visited those of his diocesans (the parsons) who wore no hair of their own, often and with greater benefit to their heads than the Superintendent himself, that Commander of the Faithful, to whom most chaplains said, Your Excellency! If he could only have weaned himself from singing, lying, and drinking too much,—the friseur,—most of the clergy would have ordered their toupees—those artistic cock's-combs—of him; but as it was, they did not.
As the Chaplain loved to make the confitures of Fate, among which false hair is to be reckoned, bitter in some way, and to give them, as it were, an infusion of hops, he naturally sought to embitter to-day's peruke (for whose false curls he gave, in place of payment, genuine hair cut off from his people's heads) by the misgivings which he conjured up about the long staying away of Victor. He bethought himself: "We must have affronted him in some way,—he does not even write,—he has, perhaps, fallen out with my son,—something has occurred,—and then, too; the old Lord no longer gives us a side-glance,—our rats, also, had a hand (or a foot) in helping drive him away."
By such elegies he threw at first himself, and at last even his hearers, into agony. He was not to be refuted in any way, except by one's bringing out some new subject of distress. The breaking-away spot in his cloud, or his little book for help in distress, was this time a literal book, the "Anecdotes for Preachers," by Teller, of Zeitz, which he to-day received through the peruke-maker from the clerical reading-circle. Clergymen, especially country clergymen, carry everything out with a minute, punctilious solicitude, into which they are partly scared by their reigning bugbear and dragon of a Consistory. Now in this book-club there was a law current—commentators and editors keep it—that every member who should find a grease-spot or ink-stain or rent in the book he was reading should enter it on the fly-leaf in an index and inventory of spots, together with the number of the page "where." Very naturally, every one who was even half-way an honest Lutheran would deny the immaculate re-(or con-)ception of it, and the freckles were therefore all regularly registered, but nobody fined. Only the conscientious Court-Chaplain took upon himself, as scapegoat, the punishment of other people's sins; for he never could sleep a wink the whole night, when he found in a book more blots than in the sin-register, because he clearly saw that he should be made adoptive father of the anonymous smutch and buyer of the book.—Now Teller's Anecdotes for Black-Coats was a complete pile of linen for the wash, black with dirt. Was there not one dog's-ear upon another,—compound dog's-ears,—blot upon blot? were not the leaves regular proof-sheets,—and, in fact, speaking without metaphor? Eymann began, "And if money should come flying in to me through the window"....
Just then Victor's letter flew in at the window, and its—author through the door.
But, of course, the case was this:—Victor, before pleasant weather, had pleasant dreams; before bad weather, Satan and his kin appeared to him. The beautiful weather of Saturday, and the thought of Clotilda's birthday and of the after-summer, gave him a morning dream, which, in turn, gave him a stage on which only her sweet image played. A person whom he had seen behind the veil of dream stood before him all the next day in a magic reflection. With him dreams,—those night-moths of the spirit,—like the real moths, strayed out beyond the bounds of night and sleep; at least for the forenoon, he went on loving, awake, every person whom he had begun to love in dream. This time, by an exactly reverse process, waking love flowed on into dreaming love, and the actual Clotilda coincided with the ideal to form one saintly image, so radiant that any one who knows his dream will easily enter into the rest. Therefore must the dream be given to the readers, the poetic ones especially: for others I should be glad to prepare an expurgated edition of the Dog-Post-Days, in which it should be left out; for unpoetic souls that have no dreams themselves should not read any.
But to you, ye good, seldom requited female souls,—ye who have a second conscience of your own, beside the first, for pure manners,—whose single virtue, when one looks at it nearly, is seen to bloom up into one wreath made of all the virtues, as nebulous stars, seen through glasses, fall into millions,—ye who, so changeable in all purposes, so unchangeable in the noblest one, go from the earth with unrecognized wishes, with forgotten worth, with eyes full of tears and love, with hearts full of virtue and grief,—to you, dear ones, I gladly tell the little dream and my long story!...
"A hand which Horion did not see laid hold of him; lips which he saw not spake to him, 'Let thy heart now be clean and holy, for the genius of female virtue resides in this region.'—Lo! there stood Horion on a field clothed with forget-me-nots, over which the sky like a blue shadow fell; for all the stars had been withdrawn from it, only the evening star stood gleaming alone up in the place of the sun. White ice-pyramids, streaked with down-trickling lines of evening redness, closed in, as with a wall of gold and silver ore, the whole dark horizon.—Therein Clotilda passed by, sublime as one dead, serene as a human being in the next world, conducted now by winged children, now by a veiled nun, now by an earnest angel, but she passed forever by before Horion; she smiled upon him in blissful lovingness while thus passing, but she passed by.—Flowery hillocks, almost like graves, rose and sank, for every one was stirred by the breathing of a bosom slumbering beneath it; a white rose stood over the heart that lay veiled below; two red ones grew over the cheeks, where tender blushes hid themselves in the earth; and overhead in the night-blue of heaven the white and red reflections of the hill-flowers glided fitfully into each other as often as the roses of the heart and the cheeks swayed with the hillock.—Dying echoes, awakened, however, by unheard voices, gave answer to each other behind the mountains; each echo lifted the little hills of slumber still higher, as if a deep sigh or a bosom full of rapture heaved them; and Clotilda smiled more blissfully, sinking at every resonance more deeply into the flowery earth.—The tones were too full of ecstasy, and the dissolved heart of man was fain to die therein. Clotilda sank now into the graves up to her heart; only her silent head still smiled above the meadow; the forget-me-nots at last reached up to the sunken eyes that were full of blissful tears, and bloomed over them.—Then suddenly a hill of slumber crept over the saint, and from beneath the flowers her words came up, 'Rest thou, too, Horion!'—But the sounds, growing more distant, transformed themselves during the burial into dim harmonica-tones.... And lo! as they sank into silence, there came up a great shadow like Emanuel, and stood before him like a short night, and covered the unknown moment as with a hand from a higher world. But when the moment and the shadow had passed away, then had all the hills sunk.—Then the reflections of the flowers, flowing together, gilded over the undulating heavens.—Then were seen white butterflies, white doves, white swans, climbing up to the purple peaks of the ice-mountains with outstretched wings as with arms, and behind the mountains, as if by an uncontainable transport, blossoms were flung up, and stars and garlands.—And there on the highest ice-mountain, as it rose tranquil in clear radiance and purple blaze, stood Clotilda, glorified, consecrated, radiant with supernatural rapture, and on her heart fluttered a nebulous globe, which consisted of little vaporized tears, and on which Horion's pallid form was delineated, and Clotilda spread wide her arms."—
But to embrace? or to soar away? or to pray?... Ah! he awoke too soon, and his eyes streamed down in greater tears than the nebulous ones, and a sinking voice cried incessantly all around him, "Rest thou, too!"
O thou soul of woman,—thou that goest, weary and unrewarded, wounded and bleeding, but great and unspotted, up from the smoking battle-field of life,—thou angel, whom the heart of man, reared by storms, soiled by the world's dealings, can respect and love, but cannot reward or reach,—how does my soul at this moment bow down before thee! how do I wish thee now the soothing balm of Heaven, the requiting goodness of the Eternal! And thou, Philippina, precious soul, glide away into a secret cell, and, amidst the tears which thou hast already so often shed, lay thy hand upon thy soft, rich heart, and swear, "Forever shalt thou continue consecrated to God and virtue, even if not to repose!" To thyself swear it,—not to me, for I believe it without an oath.—