Victor, so near to his friend, and as during the talking his better soul, like nightingales during concerts, grew louder and louder, would fain, from minute to minute, have fallen upon that noble face, on those lips rounded for the kiss of reconciliation,—but he started back at the thought of the recent repulse. He saw now how Flamin stepped farther and farther into the bed, and slowly trod down the heart leaves of the cole-rape, and crushed them asunder; at last he observed that this trampling out of the blooming name was merely the dumb language of disconsolateness, which wanted to say: "I hate my tormented self, and I could crush it as I do my name here: for whom should it stand here?"—This snatched blood from Victor's heart and from his eye tears which had been brushed away, and he took gently the long withdrawn hand, to lead him away from the suicide of his name. But Flamin turned his quivering face side-wise toward the waxen shadow of his friend and rigidly crooking his head away stared up at it.—"Best Flamin!" said Victor with the tone of the deepest emotion, and pressed the burning hand. Then Flamin tore it out of his, and with his two fists pressed back the tear-drops into his eyes, and breathed loud,—and said in a choked voice, "Victor!" and turned round with great tears and said in a still more muffled tone, "Love me again!"—And they rushed into each other's arms, and Victor answered, "For ever and ever do I love thee, thou hast indeed never offended me"; and Flamin, glowing and dying, stammered, "Only take my beloved, and remain my friend."—For a long time Victor could not speak, and their cheeks and their tears united burned on each other, till at last he was able to say: "O thou! O thou! thou noble man! But thou art in error somewhere!—Now will we forsake each other no more, now will we remain so forever.—Ah, how inexpressibly shall we one day love each other, when my father comes!"
At this moment the Parson's wife, who was perhaps anxious about both, came to call them in, and Flamin in his softened mood honored her, which he seldom did, with a filial embrace; and from four eyes swollen with weeping she read with delight the renewal of their imperishable covenant.
Nothing moves man more than the spectacle of a reconciliation; our weaknesses are not too dearly purchased by the hours of their forgiveness, and the angel, who should never feel wrath, must envy the mortal who conquers it.—When thou forgivest, then is man who inflicts wounds on thy heart the sea-worm that drills through the shell of the mussel, which closes the openings with pearls.
This reconciliation drew after it one with fortune, as it were,—the Brumaire-evening became a Floréal[[81]] evening,—the three-twins ate of the remains of Appel's roasted glory,—the Parson had nothing to do any longer with any other keys than the loosing-keys, the spiritual music-keys,—and the birthday feast had bloomed out into a feast of the covenant, an opposition club, where all, but in a higher sense than that of Quakers and merchants, called each other friend. The three-twins delivered old-British speeches, which only freemen could understand. Victor wondered at the universal frankness before such a stinging gad-fly as Matthieu,—but the Englishmen cared for nothing. The Parson sent off heart-felt prayers, and said: "He, for his part, took little notice of what they did, and only begged them to harangue more softly, that he might not get the name of allowing pietistic conventicles in his parsonage; meanwhile he relied entirely upon Messrs. the Court-Physician and the Court-Page, who would certainly insure him against a fine; otherwise he would not let wife and son join in the conversation." The Parson's wife preferred reminiscences of her free native land to the best calumnies and fashions. Victor must needs to-day keep his promise of putting his Republican Orthodoxy beyond question; and as he gave the same in our hearing, we will also help see how he keeps it, and whether he is an old-Briton.
He imitated mostly the style which he had last read or—as to-day—heard; therefore he spoke in the sententious manner of the burning-cold Englishman of the three.
"No state is free but that which loves itself; the measure of patriotism is the measure of freedom. What, then, is now this Freedom! History is the Place La-Morgue[[82]] where every one seeks the dead kinsmen of his heart: ask the mighty dead of Sparta, Athens, and Rome, what freedom is! Their perpetual festival days, their games, their eternal wars, their constant sacrifices of property and life, their contempt of riches, of trade, and of mechanics, cannot make the fiscal prosperity of a country the goal of freedom. But the logical despot must assiduously promote the material well-being of his negro-plantation. The tyranny or the mildness, the injustice or the virtue of an individual, constitute so little the distinction between a servile and a free form of government, that Rome was a slave under the Antonines, and free under Sulla.[[83]]—Not every Union, but the object of the Union, not the uniting under common laws, but the import of those laws, give the soul the wings of patriotism; for otherwise every Hansa, every trade-league, were a Pythagorean Society and would create Spartans. That for which man gives blood and goods must be something higher than either;—not in defence of his own life and property has the good man so much valor as he has when he contends for another's;—the mother risks nothing for herself and everything for her child;—in short, only for what is nobler than self in himself, for virtue, does man open his veins and offer his spirit; only the Christian martyr names this virtue Faith, the Barbarian, Honor, the Republican, Freedom.
"—Take ten men, shut them up in ten different islands: neither of them (I have not selected cosmopolites) will love or defend either of the others, if he meets him in his canoe, but will merely, like an innocent uncultivated beast, let him pass unharmed. But throw them together on one island,[[84]] then they will make mutual conditions of living together, of common defence, &c., i. e. laws; now they have more frequent enjoyment of use and right, consequently of their personality, which distinguishes them from mere tools, consequently of their freedom. Before, on their ten islands, they have been rather unrestrained than free. The more the objects of their laws rise in dignity, the more they see that law concerns the inner man more than the rubbish heap it protects, right more than property, and that the noble man fights for his goods, his rights, his life, not on account of their importance, but on account of his own dignity.—I will look at the matter on another side, in order to defend the proposition with which I began the discourse. When a people hates its constitution, then the object of its constitution, i. e. of its union, is lost. Love of the constitution, and love for one's fellow-citizens as fellow-citizens, are one. I start with this principle: If all men were wise and good, then they would be all alike consequently friendly. As that is not so, accordingly Nature makes up for this goodness by similarity of motives, by community of object, by living together, &c., and by these bonds—of connubial, of brotherly and sisterly and of friendly affection—holds our smooth, slippery hearts together at different distances. Thus she educates our heart to the higher warmth. The State gives it a still greater, for the citizen loves the man even more in the citizen, than the brother loves him in the brother, the father in the son. The love of country is nothing but a restricted cosmopolitan love; and the higher philanthropy is the philosopher's enlarged patriotism for the whole earth. In my younger years the mass of men was often painful to me, because I felt myself incapable of loving 1000 millions at once; but the heart of man takes more into itself than his head, and the better man must needs despise himself, if his arms should reach only round a single planet...."
* * * * *
—Now, as in a drama, I set only the names of the players before their remarks. The coldly-philosophical Balthazar: "Then must the whole earth become one day a single state, a universal republic; Philosophy must approve wars, misanthropy, in short all possible contradictions to morality, so long as there are still two states. There must one day be a national convention of Humanity; the kingdoms are the municipalities."
Matthieu: "We are only just living now, then, in the 11th of October and a little in the 4th of August."[[85]]