The Invisible Lodge

by Jean Paul

Gustavus is now in the old palace--thus far his theatre has been daily rising, from the subterranean cell to a knightly manor, thence to a military academy, and finally to a princely castle. The rich Oefel hired it, because it adjoined the new palace, where lay the Blocksberg of the great world of Scheerau. The Lady Resident von Bouse had inherited both from her brother, who had here, amidst her tears and kisses, departed this life. Nature had given her all that exalts one's own heart and wins the hearts of others; but art had given her too much and her rank had taken too much away from her--she had too many talents to retain at a court any other than masculine virtues; she combined friendship and coquetry--sensibility and satire--she united respect for virtue and worldly philosophy--herself and our Prince. For the latter was her avowed lover, to whom she surrendered her heart more from ambition than inclination. She was made for something better than to shine; only as she had no opportunity for any thing else than shining, she forgot that there was anything better. But anyone who is born for something higher than worldly or courtly happiness feels in better hours the forfeiture of his destiny. It will be proper here to assign a new reason which sent Oefel out of Scheerau: he was called upon and was pleased at the princely behest to knead out on the potter-wheel of his desk a drama for the birthday of the Lady Resident. The drama was to have applications. On the amateur-stage at Upper-Scheerau--where the Prince was, not as on the war-theatre a mere supernumerary, but first actor, and where he filled the place and saved the expense of a regular court troop--it was to be played by the Prince, Oefel and some others. The Prince still had eyes to look upon the Resident Lady; still a tongue to love her; still, days to prove it to her; still a theatre to pay her homage: nevertheless he already hated her, because she was too noble for him; for his theatrical part (as shall be printed further on) was to do more service to him than to her. Oefel (who was ambassador, court theatre-poet and actor in one, because there is miserably little difference among them) worked into his drama a portrait of Beata and would fain flatter her by this likeness of her, and hoped she would be one of the actors and make her portrait her part. All this he hoped of Gustavus too; but we shall see below how it was.

Gustavus, in the old palace--while all visiting-wheels rattled over his nerves of hearing and all processions of visitors swarmed around his eyes--still felt himself as lonesome as death. He worked his way to his future destination. More than fifty secretaries of legation will conclude, therefore, that he learned to open letters and hearts, to decipher women and reports, to make love, pay court and execute knaveries--the fifty are in error; they will furthermore think he learned to write a fine hand, in order to lighten his portfolio, item to know whose name should stand first in a public instrument which goes to three Powers, and that each Power should stand first in its instrument--they are right; but he did more: he learned in solitude to endure and enjoy society. Far from men principles thrive; among them actions. Solitary inactivity ripens outside of the glass-bell of the study to social activity, and among men one grows no better, unless when he comes among them he is already good.

His occupations gradually experienced pleasant interruptions. For out of doors before his windows stood lovely and almost coquettish Nature hung round with Paris's apples, and in the midst of all a fair promenader who deserved the whole of them. Who can it be but--Beata? Did she walk into the park, it was quite as impossible for him to walk after her, as not to look after her through the window, and his eyes sought out from among the bushes all the ribbons that went twinkling by through them. Did she come back on her walk with her face toward his windows, then he stepped back as far as possible not only from them, but even from the curtains, so as to see without being seen. Perhaps (but hardly) the parts were reversed, if he ventured to follow her in her walks, which to him were ways to heaven. A rose that had dropped from its stem and which he once in the darkest night picked up under her window, was to him the rose of an order; its withered honey-cup was the potpourri of his sweetest dreams and his flora of pleasure:--thus dost thou, lofty Destiny, oftentimes place immortal man's heaven under a faded rose-leaf, often on the blossom-cup of a forget-me-not, often in a piece of land 305,000 miles square.

He who has been too forgiving, will afterward avenge himself. Gustavus's friendship towards Amandus has mounted to so high a flame, that it must necessarily burn down to ashes upon its material. When he looked after Beata, he looked back to Amandus, and blamed himself so often that he must needs begin to justify himself. What was carried away from the ash-heap under which his love glimmered, was thrown upon the ash-heap of his friendship. Nevertheless he would at any hour have sacrificed for Amandus all that people call pleasures;--for in the new time of a first friendship sacrifices are more ardently sought, than at a later time they are offered, and the giver is more blessed than the receiver. O! the rightly-disposed soul has not only the power, but also the yearning, to sacrifice.--The life which Gustavus, encompassed with spring and gardens and wishes of love, now enjoyed, he shall himself paint in a letter to me. This letter they of course will throw aside, who stand before the spectacle of Nature as cold spectators, as absentee-box-proprietors; but there are better and rarer men, who feel themselves irresistibly drawn in as players, and regard every spear of grass as animated, every chafer as eternal, and the illimitable whole as an infinite pulsing venous system in which every creature throbs as an absorbing and dropping twig between lesser and greater ones and whose full heart is God.

* * * *

Gustavus's Letter.

"To-day, for the second time, I have come up out of my cavern into the infinite world; all my veins are still flooded with the afternoon's influence--it seems as if my blood would revolve with the worlds around their suns, and my heart with the suns around the sparkling goal, which stands beside the Creator....

"The night-air which bends my light cools me off in vain, unless I can open my burning bosom to the heart of a friend, and tell him all. In the afternoon I took my instruments with which I had hitherto been obliged to create, instead of landscapes, the fortifications which disfigure and desolate them, and went out into the Silent Land. This ball of earth glided away through the ethereal ocean as softly as did the swan among the flowery islands, on which I reclined; the friendly heaven bent down lower toward the earth--it seemed as if my heart would melt away in the still expanse of blue, as if it must hear in the distance the echo of a shout of exultation, and it yearned for Arcadian lands and for a friend before whom it might expire. I seated myself with my drawing pen upon an artificial rock near the lake and prepared to draw the scene: the mutually embracing alders which veiled and embowered the end of the winding lake--the variegated row of flowery islands around each of which floated a double flower-piece of its beauteous islander, namely the gay flower-image which went down under the water to the mirrored heaven, and the silhouette which rocked on the trembling silver-ground--and the living gondola, the swan, that wheeled at my feet in hungry expectation:--but when all Nature in full height sat to me and dazzled me with its rays that reach from sun, to sun, then did I adore what I would have copied, and sank at the feet of Goddess and God....

"I rose with lamed hand and surrendered myself to the sea which bore me up. I went from corner to corner of the vast table with its million covers for giant guests and for guests invisible, for my bosom was not yet full, and I passively suffered the billows which rolled in to rise within me. I penetrated into the deepest shadow of the shadowy world, in which the sun, that had shrunk into a star, more remotely glimmered.--I went out through the firwood by the jangling of the coal-mouse and the lonely desolate cry of the thrush till I stood under the singing lark.--I went up through the long evening valley to the populous brook, and an enraptured choir of beings moved along with me, the sun which had dipped its head in the waves, and the fly with its skate-like feet ran along beside me on the water, the large-eyed dragonfly floated along on a willow-leaf.--I waded through green, inhaling und exhaling life, with glad children of short, warm moments flying, singing, skipping, creeping around me.--I climbed the hermitage-hill and my bosom was not yet full of the world-stream to which it lay passively open.... But there stood the giantess Nature no longer recumbent, but erect before me, bearing in her arms thousands and thousands of nursing children; and when my soul, amidst the throng of innumerable souls, now set in the gold of insect wings, now encased in armor of wing-shells, now dusted over with butterfly-down, now enclosed in flower-chrysales, was enfolded in an immense and infinite embrace, and when the earth lay before me with its mountains and streams, and pastures, and forests, and when I thought, all this is full of hearts, which are moved by joy and love; and from the great human heart with four cavities to the shrunk-up insect's heart with one, and down to the gullets of the worm, there leaps from generation to generation a perpetually creating, eternal, rapture-kindling spark of love--....

"Ah! then did I spread out my arms into the fluttering, quivering, throbbing air, which brooded over the earth, and all my thoughts cried out: 'O wert thou she, in whose broad, billowy bosom the globe rests; O couldst thou, like her, enfold all souls; oh, could thy arms reach around all like hers, which bend the antennæ of the chafer and the quivering plumage of the lily-butterfly and the tough woods, that stroke with their hands the hair of the caterpillar and all the flowery meadows and the seas of the earth; oh, couldst thou, like her, rest on every lip which burns with joy, and hover with cooling breath over every agonized bosom that longs to relieve itself with a sigh! All, has man, then, so slender, so narrow a heart, that of the whole realm of God enthroned around him he can love nothing, feel nothing, but what his ten fingers grasp and feel? must he not wish that all human beings and all beings had only one neck, one bosom, that he might embrace them all with a single arm, that he might forget none, and in his satisfied love no longer know but two hearts, the loving and the loved?--To-day I became linked to the whole creation and gave all beings my heart....