The Invisible Lodge

by Jean Paul

The latter carried on his game still further and cunningly planned that this Grand Sultan, this hero of two well-written books, should, on a certain evening, when the Cadet-General gave a great souper, stand before his house as--sentry. Deuce take it! when the loveliest of ladies pass by him:--the well-known Resident--who, with a casual glance set up our good sentry all skinned and stuffed as an image in her brain--and her maid-of-honor Beata--and when one has to present arms before such faces: one would much rather lay them down, and, in fact, instead of standing, kneel down to wound not so much the foe as the (female) friend.... Heavens! I shall have had more wit here than one may well give me credit for; but let a live man once try it, and write upon love and refrain from wit! It is almost impracticable. I neither affirm nor deny that Oefel may perhaps, from the dreams of Gustavus, which were always talkative, and often prolonged their effect after waking, have caught the names of the aforesaid double-lottery-number of beauty. The Romancier has therefore an advantage over the Biographer (which is I): he keeps close by his hero.

He disgusted his and our hero, who, however, was such only in the æsthetic, not in the military sense, with the great Autumn-review: for every little prince imitates the still smaller children in playing soldier after the great soldiers in the streets; hence we Scheerauers have a neat pocket-land-force, a portable artillery and a juvenile cavalry. Besides, a sovereign makes a joke, when he makes a man a recruit; it does no harm to the fellow, all he needs is to be in motion, because now-a-days [namely in 1791] our more important wars, as the Italian once did, consist of nothing but marchings out of countries into countries. So also in the theatre campaigns consist merely in repeated marches round the stage, only shorter ones. I walked along, a year ago, for a joke, half a league beside a regiment, and made believe to myself: "Now thou art in fact joining in a campaign of half a league against the enemy: but the newspapers hardly mention thee, although thou and the regiment by this warlike sham-procession ward off as many plagues from the country as the clerisy do by their spiritual singing processions."

He disgusted him, I said: he pictured the review namely in this style: "Frederick the Great did smaller wonders than will be expected of the cadet-corps! There will be more wounded than wounding! In all tents and barracks they will talk of the last Scheerau grand-review!" Gustavus had long since got so far along in the minor service that he was in a condition, through the fortification of his body, to wound at least one, namely that body itself. I shall surely not lessen the apprehensions of the world, when I go on to relate that Gustavus regularly every seven weeks has leave of absence for five days, wherefrom his friends and the Biographer himself will derive just as much light as the oldest readers--that Oefel by secret intriguing made his furlough so disagreeable, that he could not at such price desire a repetition of it--that Gustavus from his last journey brought home to Dr. Fenk a letter from Ottomar, which we shall not indeed withhold from the reader, but of the reception whereof we can disclose nothing to him, because we ourselves know nothing.

From all these thorns and from the wounds of the Review our Gustavus was rescued by another's degradation. After the aforementioned march homeward an officer in Upper Scheerau, whose name and regiment one will here suppress out of regard for his distinguished family, was declared under disgrace, because he had associated with low company. When the Provost in the middle of the regiment which he had dishonored, broke his sword and weapons and tore off his uniform, and stripped him of everything which helps a man to stand upright when bowed by calamity, Gustavus, whose sense of honor bled even out of the wounds of a stranger, and who had never yet witnessed the black spectacle of a public punishment, sank into a swoon; his first exclamation on coming-to was: "Done with soldiering forever!--If the poor officer was innocent or if he is reformed, who shall give back to him his murdered honor?--Only the Omniscient God can take it away; the court-martial should take nothing but life!--No; the bullet, but not disgrace!" he cried as in a spasm. I think he is right. For two days he was sick and his fancies transported him into the robbers'-caves and catacombs of the degraded----a new proof that the fever images of poor mortals persecuted by their torments from the sick bed into the grave are not always the warrants and transcripts of their inner selves!--Martyred brothers! how I love you and the tender-hearted Gustavus at this moment, when my fancy peers in among you all and sees how, driven about in the zig-zag of destiny, you stand with your wounds and tears, wearily beside each other, embracing, bewailing--burying one another!

So long as he was sick and wandering, Amandus hung upon his glowing eyes and suffered as much as he and forgave him all. When Dr. Fenk assured them that on the morrow he would be well, the next morning Amandus came not, but meant to be hard-hearted again.

Oefel enjoyed the victory of his place. He took upon himself the setting matters right with old Falkenberg, and wrote to the man with his own hand. As he placed with his inky wand the good father on the Mosaic mountain, beyond the mountain the promised land of the embassy, and in the midst of the Canaan the young Secretary of Legation: then did the old man share the joy of many parents, who are glad to see their children become what they themselves hated to be or could not. He came to me with the letter and rode under my window.--All that Gustavus had inwardly to say still further against his removal to the old palace was that the fair Beata lived in the new one, which was separated from the old merely by a bisected wall, and that he should be confirming Amandus's suspicion. But fortunately, after the conclusion he fell upon the original motive which had suggested it and which gave dignity and expansion to its sphere of action: "He might," (he said) "after his release from the post of the embassy, be appointed to a board, and there help up the prostrate country, etc." In short, the highest beauty of Beata could not now have brought him to the point of--avoiding her.

In fact, the romance writer shelled him so effectually out of his military skin, that, inasmuch as he, like married men and princes, oftener had the bridle in the passive mouth than in the active hand--one would have thought he was led in order to lead; but that is not my idea.

Gustavus paid his farewell visit to Amandus. A good way of forgiving one whom an imaginary offence has exasperated against us is to commit a real one. Gustavus, in the circuit of streets which he voluntarily made on the way to his aggrieved Amandus, thought of Beata, who was now to be his next-door neighbor, of the love and suspicion of his friend, of the impossibility of removing that suspicion, and when, exactly at 6 o'clock, the evening music-of-the-spheres floated down into the streets from the iron orchestra and the St. Stephen's tower, his heart melted into the tones, and he imparted to his friend the tenderest feeling that existed outside of the breast of Beata. I and the reader have our thoughts on the subject; this very placable tenderness was ascribable merely to the covert consciousness that he half deserved the suspicion of rivalry, for otherwise he would, elevated by pride, have, to be sure, forgiven the other; but not on that account loved him the more intensely. He found him in the worst mood for his purpose, namely, in a friendly one; for in sensitive invalids every feeling is a sure forerunner of its opposite, and all have alternating voices. Amandus was in his father's anatomical chamber; the last ray of the setting sun darted into the empty eye-socket of a skull; there hung in vials human fluids, little ground strokes, according to which fate would absolutely draw out man; manikins with great protruding head and heart, but without an error in the great head or a pang in the great heart. On a table lay the black hand of a dyer, upon whose color the Doctor was about to make experiments.... What a scene for a reconciliation and a leave taking; three looks made and sealed the former,--even looks, in this naked disembodiment of souls, speak too loud a language--but when Gustavus, transported by the finest enthusiasm above fear and suspicion, announced to his friend the latter; when he made known to him, who had till now no idea of it, his new neighborhood and the loss of the old one, the friend had flown away and a black foe sprang up out of the ashes. Of this moment death availed himself and absolutely tore asunder the last root-fibres of his trembling life.... Gustavus stood too high to be angry; but he must needs place himself still higher; he fell on his neck and said with clear, resolute voice, "be angry and hate me, but I must forgive thee and love thee. My whole heart with every vein remains true to thine and seeks it out in thy breast, and even if thou henceforward misunderstandest me, still I will come every week. I will look on thee; I will listen to thee when thou speakest with a stranger, and if thou then lookest on me with hatred, I will go with a sigh, but still love thee. Ah, I shall think of this then, that thy eyes when they were still lacerated looked upon me more sweetly, and recognized me more truly.... O do not thus thrust me from thee, only give me thy hand and look away!"

"There!" said the shattered Amandus, and gave him the cold, black--dyer's fist.... Hatred ran down like a shower over the most affectionate heart that ever bled to death in a human breast. Gustavus stamped his love and his hatred under his feet, and with choked emotions went silently out of the house, and the next day out of Upper Scheerau.

Hardly had Amandus seen his maltreated youthful friend stagger along the street, than he went into his chamber, buried himself in the pillows and, without accusing or excusing himself, let his eyes weep as much as they could. We shall hear whether he raised his sick head from the pillow again, and when he was again accompanied by Gustavus into the Silent Land, from which he once sought to thrust him back. O man!--why will thy heart, so soon to crumble into salt, water and earth, crush another crumbling heart?--Ah, before thou strikest a blow with thy uplifted dead-man's-hand, it falls off into the grave--Ah, before thou hast inflicted the wound upon thy foeman's bosom he sinks and feels it not, and thy hatred is dead or thou art dead thyself.