I went away without embracing him; the best feelings keep a firmer hold when one does not allow them to express themselves. He remained where he was, and his feelings turned toward the picture of Guido; but that had no power to remind him of his own form--for a man may have come to his twentieth year without knowing his own teeth, and to his twenty-fifth remain unacquainted with his own eyelashes, whereas a maiden shall know all about hers before her confirmation--but the picture woke to life again all of memory and love towards his Genius, his first educator, that slumbered within him; nay, he found in the likeness nothing but resemblances to his friend who had fled from him and saw his form in the painted nothing as in a concave mirror.
His brain burned on in dream, as he lay on his pillow, like a glowing anthracite coal-mine. It seemed to him as if he melted away into a dew-drop and a blue flower-cup drank him up--then the swaying flower stretched itself up with him to a great height and landed him in a lofty, lofty chamber, where his friend, the Genius, or Guido, was playing with his sister; and he dreamed that as often as the young man stretched out his arm towards him it dropped off, and his sister handed it to him again. All at once the flower collapsed, and falling downward he saw three white moonbeams bear his friend into heaven, who cast his eyes downward toward the fallen one. He woke--he was out of bed leaning at the open window which looked out over the garden into the sleeping Auenthal. The heavens came down in a dumb rain of light--throughout the gleaming universe nothing stirred save the scintillating points of the fixed stars--the houses stood like sepulchres in which mortals were taking their long sleep; dreams went in and out through the closed senses of men and sometimes death's tread clove asunder a head and the dream within it. Heaven seemed to Gustavus to have sunk down before his window. "Oh, turn back, come again, beloved!" he cried, transported at once by dream and present reality, "O thou wast there, thou wast seeking me! Ah, thou thousand times beloved! send me from thy heaven at least thy voice!" Unexpectedly something cut the air before the window and cried, "Gustavus," and in its distant flight called down twice from a higher and higher altitude, "Gustavus! Gustavus!" An iceberg fell upon his stiffening skin in the first second; but in the next he recovered his glow, gave his arms to death and to his friend, and concentrated his vision upon a spot in the air under the dazzling moonlight, in order to see something. The two worlds had now for him collapsed into one; calmly he awaited his friend from the world behind the suns and was ready to fall with earthly breast upon his ethereal one. He cooled off at last, and with a shudder of soul and a shiver of the skin went back to bed. But long will the emotions of his soul be wafted to him from this hour, as the winds blow from a region of a storm.
It was probably the work of the old starling, who, so far as I know, had escaped from his cage. Gustavus never knew it. Whether a soul like a standing-pool heaves its waves as high as the shirt-frills, or like the ocean mountain high, those are two things; whether these lofty emotions are excited by a starling or a saint in bliss, that is all one.
The Professor taught him, in my hearing, golden brocards[[53]] of practical wisdom, which he himself transgressed in his teaching,--e. g., Not merely the love but also the hatred of men is changeable, and both die unless they grow.--Most people speak against those vices only which they themselves have.--The greater the genius, the fairer the person, so much the more does the world pardon them; the greater the virtue so much the less does the world pardon it.--Every youth thinks none is like him in feelings, etc., but all youths are alike.--One must never excuse himself; for not the reason but the passion of another is provoked with us, and against that there is no argument but time.--Men love their pleasures more than their prosperity; a good companion more than a benefactor; parrots, lap-dogs, and monkeys more than useful beasts of burden.--One guesses what men are when one gives them credit for having no principles, and the suspicious man is always right; he guesses, if not the actions, yet the thoughts of another; the defeats of the bad and the temptations of the good.--The sin against the Holy Ghost, which no one forgives thee, is the sin against his spirit, i. e., against his vanity, and the flatterer pleases, if not by his conviction, yet by his humiliation. Etc.
There are certain rules and means of knowing human nature which the higher and better man despises and condemns, which he is just the one not to be helped by in guessing character, and which neither instruct nor reveal him. The Professor further advised my Gustavus to form his face, to silhouette virtue upon it, to smooth it out before the looking-glass, and not to rumple or ruffle it by intense emotions. I know full well that with the world's people the mirror is still the only conscience which holds up their faults before them, and which, like the brain, must be divided into the larger and the lesser; the great conscience consists of wall and pier-mirrors, the little one consists of etuis, and is drawn out as a pocket-looking-glass; this for the world's people; but for thee, Gustavus----? Thou, who can'st neither accept, nor even understand, least of all use, the above Decalogue for knaves--for one understands and finds useful only such rules of life as rest upon experiences which he has himself so passed through, that he himself could have given the rules--thou, whom I have taught that virtue is nothing but reverence for our own personality and that of others; that it were better to believe in no vices than in no virtue; that the worst know only their own caste, and the best, one beside----? ... If Gustavus had not risen in rebellion against those teachings, which are mostly truths, and against the teacher of them; if he had not sworn that this disgusting cancer-philosophy should never spin and fasten itself upon a corner of his heart; then should I not have thought even as well of him as of the Resident Lady von Bouse, to whom the system of Helvetius seems as beautiful as her own face; for in her station the best heart has often the worst philosophy.
It will hardly reward the trouble, that I should add here that the rascal Robisch was chased to the devil, because he gave out and reckoned in a runaway recruit for a new one. If I said "chased to the devil," I was satirizing, for it was only to Herr von Röper, who accepts no servants except such as are Polyhistors[[54]] in livery, like Robisch, i. e., who are at once hunters, gardeners, scribes, peasants, and servants.
TWENTY-FIRST, OR MICHAELMAS, SECTION.
New Contract Between the Reader and the Biographer.--Gustavus's Letter.
"Go thy way, beloved," said I, "whom the world-sea bears along with it; may the solar image of thy shy and sensitive heart smile up out of the watery depths and swim along with thee! Thy young heart thou wilt bring to Auenthal no more! Alas, that the fruits of man's life must have a different weather from that of his blossoms, instead of the breath of Spring the sting of August and the autumnal tempest!" Such were my thoughts so long as his carriage remained in sight; after that I went down into the garden-vault to the two monks, and as I thought: in your cold stony breasts dwells no wish, no longing, no sorrow, and--no heart: "for that very reason," said I in another sense.
To-day is Michaelmas, and to-day--I can no longer dissemble--his departure is a year old. To-day begins, between me and the reader, a wholly new life, and we will quietly settle it all with one another beforehand.