Flamin was overmastered by rapidity; but now again there was a want of something, which is still more indispensable than nobility to a game of fighting,—namely, of a good, legitimate offence. Matthieu, to be sure, was ready with pleasure to offer one to the man which should adequately justify a duel; but the man with the Chamberlain's master-key was one who, there was every reason to fear, would forgive it,—and there would be nobody to shoot.—Most fortunately the Evangelist remembered, that he himself had already received one from him, which he knew how profitably and honestly to bring to bear upon the case: "Le Baut had, indeed, three years before, as good as promised him his daughter; and however indifferent this perjury was in itself, still, as a pretext for the chastisement of a greater fault, it retained its full value." ... Thus on a smutty tongue does truth take the form of a lie, provided the lie cannot dress itself in that of truth. And Flamin did not dream that his alleged groomsman was no other than the veritable Sabine robber of his bride.
I am concerned lest it should be thought that Matthieu imputes to a Chamberlain, especially one with whom making and keeping a promise were the most distant cousins, less full-power of lying than to a Court-Page, and that he forgets how, in general, one gets over the stream of the court and of life as over any natural one, not in a direct line, but in a diagonal and oblique manner. But the rascal despises the rascal still more than he hates the good man. Besides, he acted thus not merely from passion, but from calculation: if Flamin were killed, then he must needs receive from Agnola, who now was becoming more and more the Princess of the Prince, and for whom naturally an after-bloom of January's and his Lordship's former sowings was a hedge of thorns, the honest man's fee and fairing, and a higher place on the merit-roll of the court;—furthermore, his Lordship in that case could no longer trundle through the gate and bring word, "Your Grace's son is to be had and is alive."—If the Chamberlain fell, then, too, the result was not to be despised; this former boarder and protégé[[164]] of the princely crown was, after all, gone to the Devil, and his Lordship would have at least to be ashamed to think that by his silence he had entangled the Regency-Councillor in a deadly relation with a man to whom he had, at all events, publicly to pay the veneration of a son. Matthieu could not lose,—besides, he could disguise or disclose his knowledge of Flamin's extraction, as the case might require.
As there was nothing to prevent the Englishmen's being seconds, Flamin said, Yes; but Le Baut said, No, when he received Mat's manifesto and war-articles; he was frightened to death almost at the very death-prescription without the ingredient of the bullet. I shall never so belittle a courtier, as to allege that he declines such a potato-war from virtue or from faint-heartedness,—such men tremble certainly not at death, but merely at a disgrace,—but this latter, which Le Baut feared at the hands of the Prince and Minister, was precisely what deterred him. He therefore, on fine paper and with fine turns of expression, which outsparkled the black sand, represented to Mat their former friendship, and dehortations from this glaring "ordeal,"[[165]] and declared himself besides entirely willing to do everything which his honor—would be offended at, in case he only were not obliged by this sham-fight to violate the laws of the duel. But he was,—Matthieu wrote back, he would pledge himself for the secrecy as well as for the silence of the seconds, and he made the additional proposal to him, that they should insinuate into each other dragon-[[166]] and pitch-balls in the night and in masks; "for the rest he remained in future his friend as ever, and would visit him, for only honor demanded of him this step." ... And of the Chamberlain too;—for these men swallow only great offences, but no little ones, just as those bitten by mad dogs can get down solids, but no liquids,—and herewith in my eyes is a courtier like Le Baut sufficiently excused, if he makes believe he were an honest man, or as if he were very different from those who pawn their honor for the whole year, and—as in the case of imperial pledges or living pledges of love—never redeem the pawn.
All was fixed for the very evening when Victor sorrowfully entered into Maienthal,—the theatre of war was between St. Luna and the city.
EXTRA-LEAF IN DEFENCE OF THE DUEL.
In my opinion the state favors duelling in order to set limits to the increase of the nobility, as Titus for that very reason made the Jews challenge each other. As in chanceries they still continue to make nobles, but no burghers,—as, besides, a burgher must always be used and demolished for the purpose, before the Imperial Chancery can set up a nobleman on his building-ground,—as standing armies and coronations increase simultaneously, and consequently the manufacture of nobles too; the state would accordingly possess too many, certainly, rather than too few noblemen (as is not the case, however), were not a mutual shooting or stabbing of each other allowed them. In reference to the petty princes who are made in the chancery-bakehouse, nothing more were to be wished than that at the same time subjects also—say one or two herds, with every prince—should fall off from the potter's-wheel; just as, in fact, I know no reason, either, why the Imperial Chancery will make poets only, when it might certainly quite as well scrape off from its saltpetre wall historians, publicists, biographers, reviewers.—Let it not be objected to me, that at court they seldom shoot each other; here Nature herself has in another way set beneficial bounds to the increase of courtiers. Somewhat as with marmots, of whose depopulation Bechstein finds a wise design in the fact, that, though they generally assert their own with a malicious rabidity, nevertheless they do not reckon their brood as their own, but willingly let it go. Even Dr. Fenk may possibly be nearer right, who takes their part and says, he grants they are of no use to the weightier members of the state, the teaching class, the peasantry, &c., but of much, however, to the lesser, unprofitable members, the mass-attendants of the stomach and of luxury, the mistresses, the lackey-department, &c., and that an impartial person must compare them with the stinging nettles, on which, while they are of little use to men and large animals, most of the insects get their living.
End of this Apologetic Extra-Leaf.
Flamin's soul worked itself off all day in images of revenge. In such a boiling of the blood, moral skin-moles became to him bone-black,[[167]] the typographical mistakes of the state appeared to him as grammatical blunders, the peccata splendida of the regency-college as black vices. To-day, too, he saw the Prince always before his eyes, whom in the clubs of the twins and still more in relation to Clotilda he mortally hated. He despised the load of life, and in this heat, wherein all materials of his inner being were melted into one flood, the inner lava sought an outbreak in some foolhardy venture. His to-day's exasperation was, after all, a daughter of virtue; but the daughter grew over the mother's head. The three twins, who, although not with the tongue, yet with the head, were as wild as he, kindled absolutely the whole vaporous atmosphere of his full soul.
At length, when night came, the two seconds and Flamin and Matthieu disguised as the third Englishman rode out to the shooting-ground. Flamin contended furiously with his prancing, smoking steed. By and by a gray nag brought along in curvets the Chamberlain. Mutely they measure off the murdering and shooting distance, and exchange pistols. Flamin, as insulted party, first lets fly like a storm against the other; and, on his snorting steed, and in the trembling of rage, he shoots his ball away over his adversary's—life. The Chamberlain fired intentionally and openly far aside from his antagonist, because the fall of the (supposed) Matthieu would have killed at the same time his whole prosperity at court. Matthieu, with all his slyness, too precipitate and too full of energy, foaming already amidst the very preparations for the fight, and still more exasperated at the frustration of both his alternatives, and too proud to let himself be shamed before the Englishmen by receiving his life as a present under another's name and from so contemptible an adversary, thrust down his own mask and Flamin's too, and rode coldly up to the Chamberlain and said, by way of humiliating him with the disclosure of his ignoble opponent, "You have been under a mistake about rank,—but now let us exchange shots." ... Le Baut stuttered, confused and offended; but Matthieu backed his horse—stopped—screamed—shot with petrified arm, and hit, and snuffed out the bald life of poor Le Baut.... Quick as lightning he said to all, "To Count O.'s!" and—with the conviction of an early and easy forgiveness on the part of the princely couple and of the widow—trotted off over the limits towards Kussewitz.
Flamin became an iceberg,—then a volcano,—then a wild-fire,—then he grasped the hands of the Britons, and said: "I, only I, have killed this man. My friend would have had no quarrel with him; but, as he has sinned for me, it is my duty to suffer for him.—I will die: I shall give myself up to the judges as the murderer, that I may be executed,—and you must back my asseveration."—But he disclosed to them now a much higher motive for his bold lie; "If I die," said he, more and more glowingly, "they will have to let me say at the place of execution what I will. Then will I throw flames among the people, which shall turn the throne to ashes. I will say, 'Lo! here beside the sword of justice I am as firm and cheerful as you; and yet I have sent only one good-for-nothing fellow out of the world. You could catch and confine bloodsuckers, wolves, and serpents, and a lamb-vulture at once;—you could reap a life full of freedom, or a death full of fame. Are then the thousand staring eyes around me all blind with the cataract, the arms all palsied, that none will see and hurl away the long bloodsucker that crawls over you all, and whose tail is cut off, so that the court and the boards in turn suck from it behind? Lo! I too was once part and parcel of all that, and saw how they flay you,—and how the messieurs of the court go about in your skins. Take one look into the city; are yours the palaces or the dog-kennels? The long pleasure-gardens in which they walk, or the stony fields in which you must work yourselves—to death? You toil, indeed; but you have nothing, you are nothing, you become nothing,—on the contrary the lazy, dead Chamberlain there beside me'" ... No one smiled; but he came to himself. The three twins, to whom the body and time and the throne were a fire-proof wall, or a stove-screen against their self-devouring blaze of freedom, vowed to him tied tongues, steadfast hearts, and active hands; yet were they silently resolved, after the flashing speech, to rescue him with their blood, and to reveal his innocence. One consequence of this dithyrambic of freedom was, that Cato the Elder, the day after, blew up in the storm the powder-house at Maienthal, which was the only powder-magazine in the country (magazines of corn they had not so many), as he rode towards Kussewitz to join Matthieu.