The Campaner Thal, and Other Writings

by Jean Paul

The Conrector had long before sunset given the village post three groschens of post-money, and commissioned--for he had a whole cabinet of ducats in his pocket, which all day he was surveying in the dark with his hand--three thalers' worth of Pontac from the town. "I must have a Cantata merry-making," said he; "if it be my last day, let it be my gayest too!" I could wish he had given a larger order; but he kept the bit of moderation between his teeth at all times; even in a threatened sham-death-night, and in the midst of jubilee. The question is, whether he would not have restricted himself to a single bottle, if he had not wished to treat his mother and the Fräulein. Had he lived in the tenth century, when the Day of Judgment was thought to be at hand, or in other centuries, when new Noah's Deluges were expected, and when, accordingly, like sailors in a shipwreck, people boused up all,--he would not have spent one kreuzer more on that account. His joy was, that with his legacy he could now satisfy his head-creditor Steinberger, and leave the world an honest man. Just people, who make much of money, pay their debts the most punctually.

The purple Pontac arrived at a time when Fixlein could compare the red-chalk-drawings and red-letter-titles of joy, which it would bring out on the cheeks of its drinker and drinkeresses,--with the Evening-carnation of the last clouds about the Sun....

I declare, among all the spectators of this History, no one can be thinking more about poor Thiennette than I; nevertheless, it is not permitted me to bring her out from her tiring-room to my historical scene before the time. Poor girl! The Conrector cannot wish more warmly than his Biographer, that, in the Temple of Nature as in that of Jerusalem, there were a special door--besides that of Death--standing open, through which only the afflicted entered, that a Priest might give them solace. But Thiennette's heart-sickness over all her vanished prospects, over her entombed benefactress, over a whole life enwrapped in the pall, had hitherto, in a grief which the stony Rittmeister rather made to bleed than alleviated, swept all away from her, occupations excepted; had fettered all her steps which led not to some task, and granted to her eyes nothing to dry them or gladden them, save down-falling eyelids full of dreams and sleep.

All sorrow raises us above the civic Ceremonial-law, and makes the Prosaist a Psalmist; in sorrow alone have women courage to front opinion. Thiennette walked out only in the evening, and then only in the garden.

The Conrector could scarcely wait for the appearance of his fair friend, to offer his thanks,--and to-night also--his Pontac. Three Pontac decanters and three wineglasses were placed outside on the projecting window-sill of his cottage; and every time he returned from the dusky covered-way amid the flower forests, he drank a little from his glass,--and the mother sipped now and then from within through the opened window.

I have already said, his Life-laboratory lay in the southwest corner of the garden or park, over against the Castle-Escurial, which stretched back into the village. In the northwest corner bloomed an acacia grove, like the floral crown of the garden. Fixlein turned his steps in that direction also; to see if, perhaps, he might not cast a happy glance through the wide-latticed grove over the intervening meads to Thiennette. He recoiled a little before two stone steps leading down into a pond before this grove, which were sprinkled with fresh blood. On the flags, also, there was blood hanging. Man shudders at this oil of our life's lamp where he finds it shed; to him it is the red death-signature of the Destroying Angel. Fixlein hurried apprehensively into the grove; and found here his paler benefactress leaning on the flower-bushes; her hands with her knitting-ware sunk into her bosom, her eyes lying under their lids as if in the bandage of slumber; her left arm in the real bandage of bloodletting; and with cheeks to which the twilight was lending as much red, as late woundings--this day's included--had taken from them. Fixlein, after his first terror--not at this flower's sleep, but at his own abrupt entrance--began to unroll the spiral butterfly's-sucker of his vision, and to lay it on the motionless leaves of this same sleeping flower. At bottom, I may assert, that this was the first time he had ever looked at her; he was now among the thirties; and he still continued to believe, that, in a young lady, he must look at the clothes only, not the person, and wait on her with his ears, not with his eyes.

I impute it to the elevating influences of the Pontac, that the Conrector plucked up courage to--turn, to come back, and employ the resuscitating means of coughing, sneezing, trampling, and calling to his Shock, in stronger and stronger doses on the fair sleeper. To take her by the hand, and with some medical apology, gently pull her out of sleep, this was an audacity of which the Conrector, so long as he could stand for Pontac, and had any grain of judgment left, could never dream.

However, he did awake her, by those other means.

Wearied, heavy-laden Thiennette! how slowly does thy eye open! The warmest balsam of this earth, soft sleep has shifted aside, and the night-air of memory is again blowing on thy naked wounds!--and yet was the smiling friend of thy youth the fairest object which thy eye could light on, when it sank from the hanging-garden of Dreams into this lower one round thee.

She herself was little conscious,--and the Conrector not at all,--that she was bending her flower-leaves imperceptibly towards a terrestrial body, namely, towards Fixlein. She resembled an Italian flower, that contains cunningly concealed within it a new-year's gift, which the receiver knows not at first how to extract. But now the golden chain of her late kind deed attracted her as well towards him, as him towards her. She at once gave her eye and her voice a mask of joy; for she did not put her tears, as Catholics do those of Christ, in relic-vials, upon altars, to be worshipped. He could very suitably preface his invitation to the Pontac festival with a long acknowledgment of thanks for the kind intervention which had opened to him the sources for procuring it. She rose slowly, and walked with him to the banquet of wine; but he was not so discreet, as at first to attempt leading her, or rather not so courageous; he could more easily have offered a young lady his hand (that is, with marriage ring) than offered her his arm. One only time in his life had he escorted a female, a Lombard Countess from the theatre; a thing truly not to be believed, were not this the secret of it, that he was obliged; for the lady, a foreigner, parted in the press from all her people, in a bad night, had laid hold of him as a sable Abbé by the arm, and requested him to take her to her inn. He, however, knew the fashions of society, and attended her no farther than the porch of his Quintus-mansion, and there directed her with his finger to her inn, which, with thirty blazing windows, was looking down from another street.