Hardly had Matthieu heard that Clotilda's and Flamin's mother had come from London, when this Reineke marched out of his fox-kennel to Flachsenfingen, because he would not let any one take from him the honor of releasing Flamin. He seldom, despite his fieriness, anticipated opportunity; but he watched and only helped things on here or there; as in a romance, so in life, a thousand light trivialities, brought together at last, hook into each other firmly, and a good Mat twists at last out of scattered cobweb-meshes of accident a regular—silk noose for his fellow-man.—He boldly contrived to get himself a secret audience with the Prince, "because he would rather go to meet his punishment (on account of the challenge to the duel) than let certain weighty things remain in silence any longer." Weighty and dangerous had long since been kindred terms with January, but now were absolutely identical, because the Princess entertained him every morning with a few strophes out of the penitential psalm and owl's song about sedition, Ankerstrœms,[[181]] and propagandists. She and Schleunes blew upon one horn,—at least, they blew one melody from it.
Matthieu entered and produced the great weighty matter,—the bold petition for Flamin's life. January pronounced an equally bold "No!" for man is quite as indignant at him who drives him into a groundless fear, as at him who drives him into a well-grounded one. Matthieu coldly repeated his request: "I simply beg your Highness not to suppose that I should ever hold mere friendship as an adequate apology for such a bold petition,—the duty of a subject is my excuse."—January, who was annoyed at the uncourteous retraction, broke it off: "The guilty cannot petition for the guilty."—"Most gracious sir," said the Evangelist, who sought to drive him into fear and fury at once, "in any other times than ours it would be quite as punishable to guess or to predict certain things as to decree them; but in ours, these three things are easier. Against the day when the Regency-Councillor should lose his life, a plan is arranged, which certain persons have formed for the salvation of his life at the expense of their own."—The Prince—enraged at a boldness which ordinarily resides not within the snow-line[[182]] of courts, but only at the democratic equator—said, with the death-sentence which Mat had long since wanted to get into his face: "I shall have you required to tell tomorrow the names of the wretches who propose to sacrifice their lives for the sake of turning the course of justice." ... Here the page fell down before him, and said quickly: "My name is the first; it is now my duty to be unhappy. My friend has killed no one, but I did it; he is not the son of a priest, but the first-born son of the murdered Mr. Le Baut." ...
Since pier-mirrors first existed, never was such a dumfounded, distracted visage seen in them as to-day. January dismissed him, in order to collect himself.
We will now in the antechamber say three words about the absent one. A shrewd thinker once said to me, that he had once said to a great connoisseur of the world, "The fault of the great was never to trust themselves in anything, and hence they were led by every one"; and that the connoisseur answered, he had hit it.—January had a grudge against Mat, and that merely on account of his satirical and sensual face,—but not anywise on account of his vices. I take for granted that the reader will certainly have seen courts enough—on the stage, where the higher classes get their notions of country people, and we ours of them—to know what one hates there—not vicious persons, not even virtuous ones, but both of these one really loves there (precisely as they do violinists, mechanics, Wetzlar attorneys, intendants) whenever they have need of them.—
The page appeared again. January had allayed the sweet paternal ebullition at the news, since he had heretofore given up all his children for lost. He desired now the proof that Flamin was the (nominal) son of the Chamberlain. About the duel he gave himself not the least concern. The proof was easy for the upright soul to produce. The soul appealed directly to the mother, who had this very moment arrived from London, having come to save her son, and to the sister herself. The soul had again the antecedent proposition to prove that both had knowledge of the matter:—Matthieu appealed to the letter of the mother which he had some years before read to the blind lord with the borrowed voice of Clotilda, and to the sister's exclamation during the duel in Maienthal Park, "It is my brother,"—and finally he adduced one more domestic witness in the case, the after-summer, which would now soon appear, and would retouch the maternal mark of the apple, which Le Baut's son bore on his shoulder.
Matthieu had too much veneration for his Prince and master to call the sovereign of the son the son's father. He now closed by saying, "He knew not for what reasons Lord Horion had hitherto concealed Flamin's extraction; but whatever they might have been, all excuses his Lordship had were also his own excuses for having himself kept silence so long,—and so much the more, as the proof of this descent must be more difficult for him than for his Lordship.—Only now, by the arrival of the mother, the facility of the proof was made as great as the necessity of it. All that he could do as a family friend of the Chamberlain had been to become Flamin's confidant in order to be his protector."
Thereby the Prince was necessarily brought back to the subject of the duel, which he in the beginning, after a few hints, had let drop. It was his way of business to break off soon from an affair of importance to him, to talk quite as long about other things, then to bring that matter forward again, and so pack the important matter away under quite as big layers of unimportant matters, as the booksellers slip contraband books in sheets under white or other paper. Then, too, Flamin's innocence of the murder was now of more consequence to January; he therefore naturally inquired why he had exposed his friend as a victim even to the show of a duel.
Matthieu said it would be a long story, and it was a bold step to entreat so much attention on the part of his Highness. He began with reporting what—the Dog-Post-Days have hitherto reported. He lied very little. He intimated that, in order to break off Flamin's love for his unknown sister Clotilda,—at least he wanted to increase it,—he had tried to make him jealous, but had not been able to set him at variance with any one except the lover; nay, it had not even helped matters at all that he had let him be himself an ear-witness of the very pardonable infidelity of Clotilda, but that his friend had at the very last manifested a rage at his sister's betrothal, which he had been able to appease in no other way than by the illusion of a disguised duel with the father. For in order to prevent a second fight between father and son; he had himself undertaken it, but unhappily with too disastrous an effect.
So far the noble Mat. The true circumstances, which are familiar to us, I suppress. January, who was now favorably inclined toward the Evangelist for the removal of a fear into which he himself had thrown him, put to him the natural question, why Flamin took upon himself the murder.—Matthieu: "I fled at once, and it was not in my power to prevent his untruth, which I could not have looked for; but it was in my power to refute it."—January: "Go on in your frankness; it is your vindication; do not evade!"—Matthieu, with a freer mien: "What I had to say I have already said in the beginning, for the sake of saving him; and now he is saved." January went back in thought, could not comprehend, and begged, "Make yourself a little more clear."—Matthieu, with the designed look of a man who prepares silverings-over of his story: "From magnanimity he would have died for him (Mat) who had sinned for him, did not his friends come to the rescue." January shook his head incredulously. "For," the other continued, "as he knows not his high rank, he more readily adopted certain French principles, which would have alleviated for him his death quite as much as certain Englishmen would have made use of them with the people to prevent it." As a proof, by the way, he adduced the blowing-up of the powder-house.
January saw with astonishment a light glide into a dark cavern, and saw far into the cavern.