The Invisible Lodge

by Jean Paul

Next summer he is to set out as envoyé to the Court of ----, in order to resume the negotiations respecting the bride of the Prince, which had already been spun at her cradle, and broken off, and to knit them again at the side of her Graham's bed.[^[61]] The Prince must needs, in fact, marry her, because a certain third court, which one is not permitted to name, would fain withhold her thereby from a fourth, which I should be glad to name. But let my word be taken for it, no man in the bridegroom's whole court believes that the reason of his being despatched to the court of the bride is that there fine esprits and fine persons are perhaps articles in demand; verily, in both of these charms he could be outbidden by any one; but in a third charm unfortunately he could not, and one which to an envoyé is dearer and more needful than moral ones--money. At an insolvent court the Prince has the first, and the millionaire the second crown. I have often cursed the confounded hereditary misfortune of the Principality of Scheerau, and perceived that there is seldom enough in its treasury, and we would gladly help ourselves by a national bankruptcy, if we could only first get national credit. But, excepting this Principality, I have never in all my travels found the following four regions anywhere but on Etna itself: first, the fruitful, and secondly, the wooded region at the foot of the throne, where fruits and grazing and game-cattle, namely, the populace, are to be found; thirdly, the icy region of the court, which yields nothing but glitter; fourthly, the torrid region of the throne-peak, where there is little to be found except the crater. A throne-crater can swallow up and calcine even gold mountains, and eject them as lava.

Unluckily Gustavus pleased him, because he regarded the young man's youthful good nature as an exclusive attachment to himself, his modesty as lowliness before the Oefelian grandeur, his virtues as weaknesses. He was pleased with him because Gustavus had a taste for poetry, and consequently, he inferred, the greatest for his own; for Oefel's noble bloody contrary to nature, ran in a thin poetic vein, and in a satirical one, too, he thought. Perhaps also, Gustavus, in these years of taste, when youth is enraptured with the lesser beauties and faults of poetry, may sometimes have thought even Oefel's good. Now, as even Rousseau says, he can choose no one for a friend who is not pleased with his Heloise; so belletrists can give their hearts only to such people as have a similarity of heart, mind and consequently taste, to themselves, and who accordingly have a sense of the beauties of their poetic effusions as lively as their own.

Meanwhile what Oefel valued most highly in Gustavus was that he could be planted in his romance. He had studied in the cadet ark sixty-seven specimens, but he could not promote one of them to be the hero of his book, to be the Grand Sultan, except the sixty-eighth, Gustavus.

And he is just my hero, too. But that may in time furnish an unprecedented pleasure in the reading, and I would that I could read my things and another write them.

He wished to train up my Gustavus to be the future heir of the Ottoman throne, but not to say a word to him about his being Grand Seignor--either in the romance or in life--he meant to write down all the workings of his pedagogical leading-string and transfer them from the living Gustavus to the printed one. But here there planted himself in the way of the Balaam and his ass a cursed angel; namely, Gustavus. Oefel intended and was obliged to go back from the cadet barracks where his objects were accomplished, to the old palace, where new ones awaited him. In the first place he could more easily from the old palace make him leap over into the Cartesian vortices of the new, its visitings and enjoyments, and be whirled about in them; secondly, he could there better enjoy the company of his beloved, the Minister's lady, who came thither daily, and who sacrificed to love virtue and the love of the assembly hunting-ground; thirdly, the second reason is not strictly true, but he only made believe it was to the Minister's lady, because he had still a third, which was Beata, whom he designed, from his palace, to shoot, or at least blockade in hers. Go he must, then; but Gustavus must go too.

"This is to be done instanter," thought Oefel, "he shall at last himself beg of me that which I beg of him." Nothing gratified him more than an opportunity of leading some one to his object, the leading was still more agreeable to him than the object, as in love he preferred the campaigns to the spoils. He would, as ambassador, have made peace out of war, and war out of peace again, merely for the pleasure of negotiating. He drew, by way of approaching Gustavus, his first parallels, i. e., he etched out to him with his sharp tongue a charming picture of courts, that they alone could teach savoir vivre and all that, and the art of talking, as even dogs, the more cultivated they are, bark so much the more, the lap-dog more than the shepherd-dog, the wild one not at all; that through them there murmurs a river-of-paradise of pleasures; that one finds himself there at the fountain head of his felicity, at the ear of the Prince, and at the knot of the greatest connections; that one can intrigue, conquer, etc. It was in Oefel's plan not to betray to the little Grand Sultan even so much as the possibility of his going with him to the old palace. "All the more shall I entice him," he thought. But he did not get on with the enticing, because Gustavus had not yet passed over from the poetic and idyllic years, in which the ingenuous youth hates courts and dissimulations, to the cooler years in which he seeks them. Oefel, like courtiers and women, studied only men, not man.

Now the second parallel was drawn and a still nearer approach made to the fortress. One forenoon he took a walk with him in the park, just when he knew he should find there the Resident Lady. While conversing with her, he observed Gustavus's observation, or rather blushing astonishment, who, never before in his life had stood before such a lady, around whom all charms entwined, redoubled, lost each other, like triple rainbows spanning heaven. And thou, too, Beata, thou flower soul, whose roots so seldom find on the sandy ground of earth the right flower soil, thou wast standing by, with an attention fixed upon the Resident Lady, which was meant to be an innocent mask of thy slight confusion. Gustavus could contrive no mask for his greater embarrassment. Oefel ascribed this mutual confusion, not as I do to the mutual recollection of the Guido-iconoclasm, but Gustavus's to the Resident Lady, and that on the female side to himself. "So then I have him where I want him!" said he, and let him accompany him even to the old palace. "Apropos! supposing now we should both stay here," said he. The responsive sigh of impossibility grounded upon other reasons was just what he desired. "All the same! You will be my Secretary of Legation!" he continued, with his keen glance on the watch for surprise, a glance which he never properly covered with an eyelid, because he always fancied he surprised everybody.

But it turned out stupidly for Oefel. Gustavus declined and said: "Never!" whether from a dread of courts, fear of his father, from being ashamed to change, or from love of quiet; in short Oefel stood there dumbfounded gazing after the floating fragments of his wrecked building-plan. It is true, there was still left him this advantage from it all, that he could work the whole shipwreck into his romance, only, however, the Secretary was gone! He had also, not unreasonably, voted him already in advance to the Secretaryship of the Embassy; for the throne of Scheerau has a ladder leaning against it, with the lowest and the highest rungs of honor, but the steps are so near together that one can place his left foot on the lowest round and yet reach with his right the highest--once indeed we might almost have created an upper field marshal. Secondly, in courts, as in nature, all things hang and join together, and professors might properly call it the cosmological nexus: every one is at once bearer and burden; thus the iron ruler sticks to the magnet, a little ruler to that, to that a needle, and to that steel-filings. At most only what sits upon the throne and what lies down below under it, has not nexus enough with the efficient company; so in the French opera only the flying gods and the shuffling beasts are made of Savoyards, all the rest of the regular company.

So Oefel must needs draw a third parallel, and therefrom shoot at the cadet. Namely--he made his uniform every day a thumbs breadth snugger and tighter, by way of tormenting him out of it. He had, with this view, already and recently been the means of sending him off to the grain-cordon, where the warm-hearted youth, accustomed only to mercy and charity, found stern and sharp no's, new and hard duties; but now the service, from below upward, was still more aggravated, and the military exercises almost crushed his fine porcelain frame, so often and so severely did the Romancier drag him into the society of the father of all peace-treaties, namely, War.

How painfully must the rude external world have galled his wounded inner man! Before his eyes, ever since his falling-out with his dying darling, stood evermore that mournful evening, with its tears, and would not stir; on his desolate heart the blood-red sun still glimmered and would not go down. The dumb departure of his Amandus, who lost him and so many wishes beside; the waning autumn-days of his life and their former love, wrung tears of sorrow from his eyes and heart. Friendship can endure misunderstandings less than love; with the latter they tickle the heart, with the former they tear it asunder. Amandus, who had so misinterpreted and grieved him, and yet whose innermost love had not lost him, forgave him all until five o'clock in the evening--then he heard (or it was enough for him if he only imagined it) that Gustavus had visited the park (and consequently the fair promenader)--then he took back his reconciliation till eleven at night--then night and dream flung once more a mantle over all human failings, and over this one. At five o'clock the next evening it began again as before. Laugh at him, if you will, but without pride, and at me and yourselves likewise; for all our emotions--without their lion and maniac-keeper. Reason--are just as crazy, if not in our outward lives, yet in our inner being! But at last he had taken back his forgiveness so often, that he determined to let it stay, provided only that Gustavus should knock and hear from him all the grievances which he intended to pardon him. One often postpones forgiveness because one is compelled to postpone the repetition of the charges. But, friend Amandus, could Gustavus come then, and would the Romancier let him?