Frau von Aufhammer.--Childhood-resonance.--Authorcraft.
The early piping which the little thrush, last night adopted by the Quintaner from its nest, started for victual about two o'clock, soon drove our Quintus into his clothes; whose calender-press and parallel-ruler the hands of his careful mother had been, for she would not send him to the Rittmeisterinn "like a runagate dog." The Shock was incarcerated, the Quintaner taken with him, as likewise many wholesome rules from Mother Fixlein, how to conduct himself towards the Rittmeisterinn. But the son answered: "Mamma, when a man has been in company, like me, with high people, with a Fräulein Thiennette, he soon knows whom he is speaking to, and what polished manners and Saver di veaver (Savoir vivre) require."
He arrived with the Quintaner, and green fingers (dyed with the leaves he had plucked on the path), and with a half-nibbled rose between his teeth, in presence of the sleek lackeys of Schadeck. If women are flowers--though as often silk and Italian and gum-flowers as botanical ones--then was Frau von Aufhammer a ripe flower, with (adipose) neck-bulb, and tuberosity (of lard). Already, in the half of her body, cut away from life by the apoplexy, she lay upon her lard-pillow but as on a softer grave; nevertheless, the portion of her that remained was at once lively, pious, and proud. Her heart was a flowing cornucopia to all men, yet this not from philanthropy, but from rigid devotion; the lower classes she assisted, cherished, and despised, regarding nothing in them, except it were their piety. She received the bowing Quintus with the back-bowing air of a patroness; yet she brightened into a look of kindliness at his disloading of the compliments from Thiennette.
She began the conversation, and long continued it alone, and said,--yet without losing the inflation of pride from her countenance,--"She should soon die; but the godchildren of her husband she would remember in her will." Further, she told him directly in the face, which stood there all over-written with the Fourth Commandment before her, that "he must not build upon a settlement in Hukelum; but to the Flachsenfingen Conrectorate (to which the Burgermeister and Council had the right of nomination) she hoped to promote him, as it was from the then Burgermeister that she bought her coffee, and from the Town-Syndic (he drove a considerable wholesale and retail trade in Hamburg candles) that she bought both her wax and tallow lights."
And now by degrees he arrived at his humble petition, when she asked him sick-news of Senior Astmann, who guided himself more by Luther's Catechism than by the Catechism of Health. She was Astmann's patroness in a stricter than ecclesiastical sense; and she even confessed that she would soon follow this true shepherd of souls, when she heard, here at Schadeck, the sound of his funeral-bell. Such strange chemical affinities exist between our dross and our silver veins; as, for example, here between Pride and Love; and I could wish that we would pardon this hypostatic union in all persons, as we do it in the fair, who, with all their faults, are nevertheless by us--as, according to Du Fay, iron, though mixed with any other metal, is by the magnet--attracted and held fast.
Supposing even that the Devil had, in some idle minute, sown a handful or two of the seeds of Envy in our Quintus's soul, yet they had not sprouted; and to-day especially they did not, when he heard the praises of a man who had been his teacher, and who--what he reckoned a Titulado of the Earth, not from vanity, but from piety--was a clergyman. So much, however, is, according to History, not to be denied; that he now straightway came forth with his petition to the noble lady, signifying that "indeed he would cheerfully content himself for a few years in the school; but yet in the end he longed to be in some small quiet priestly office." To her question, "But was he orthodox?" he answered, that "he hoped so; he had, in Leipzig, not only attended all the public lectures of Dr. Burscher, but also had taken private instructions from several sound teachers of the faith, well knowing that the Consistorium, in its examinations as to purity of doctrine, was now more strict than formerly."
The sick lady required him to make a proof-shot, namely, to administer to her a sick-bed exhortation. By Heaven! he administered to her one of the best. Her pride of birth now crouched before his pride of office and priesthood; for though he could not, with the Dominican monk, Alanus de Rupe, believe that a priest was greater than God, inasmuch as the latter could only make a World, but the former a God (in the mass); yet he could not but fall in with Hostiensis, who shows that the priestly dignity is seven thousand six hundred and forty-four times greater than the kingly, the Sun being just so many times greater than the Moon. But a Rittmeisterinn--she shrinks into absolute nothing before a parson.
In the servants' hall he applied to the lackeys for the last annual series of the Hamburg Political Journal; perceiving that with these historical documents of the time they were scandalously papering the buttons of travelling raiment. In gloomy harvest evenings, he could now sit down and read for himself what good news were transpiring in the political world--twelve months ago.
On a Triumphal Car, full-laden with laurel, and to which Hopes alone were yoked, he drove home at night, and by the road advised the Quintaner not to be puffed up with any earthly honor, but silently to thank God, as himself was now doing.
The thickset blooming grove of his four canicular weeks, and the flying tumult of blossoms therein, are already painted on three of the sides. I will now clutch blindfold into his days, and bring out one of them; one smiles and sends forth its perfumes like another.