The Invisible Lodge

by Jean Paul

It was time they came, on account of Herr von Oefel. For at Court one missed them, and in fact anyone, very little. A Russian Prince von * * *--a mestizzo and deponent between courtier and beast, whose visible extremes ended in the invisible extremes of culture and savageness--had been there, together with a herd of Frenchmen and Italians, who as a body had, like their head-master, the common-place singularity of the great world, that they--were not whole; for a man of the world now-a-days nothing is harder than not to make of his person what I properly make in my biography--a sector or section. In fact, this fragmentary division looked like a phalanx of cripples on their journey to a wonder-worker. Of the principal members which we do not recover at the resurrection, e. g., hair, stomach, flesh, etc.,[^[82]]--whence, of course, the great Connor can easily demonstrate that a risen Christian will turn out no longer than a gad-fly--of such members the amputated Junta had already before the resurrection wholly, or in great part, relieved themselves.

I have often reflected upon the question, why the great folks do this and make them in a physical sense the small; but I was too ignorant to guess any other reasons than the following: The seat of anger (which, according to Winckelmann, the Greeks held to be the nose), cannot decay soon enough, because neither a courtier nor a Christian should show anger. Secondly, diminutive bodies are little different from crooked ones, even in size; but the latter, as we see in Esop, Pope, Scarron, Lichtenberg and Mendelssohn, have much wit. Now the man of the world ingeniously draws off the spirit out of the strong vessels of our progenitors into little corporeal bottles, and such sections and optical abridgements and electorates of the body make it impossible to be otherwise than witty, or at most stupid; so a flute which has become cracked, can give out no other tones but fine and high ones. But in the great world wit is notoriously prized, if not more, certainly not less than immorality. Thirdly, as the old patriarchs received a long life in order that they might people the earth, so with the same design have these cosmopolites proposed to themselves a short one, and cheerfully purchased the life of other beings by a Curtius'-leap into the fatal abyss. But it may still be questioned whether I am right. The fourth reason I learn from certain secret and mystic societies, whence these very segments of humanity have themselves derived it. Now-a-days every soul of rank must be disorganized and disembodied. For this now there are only two entirely different operations. The shortest and worst, in my opinion, is for a man--to hang himself, and for the soul thus to separate the body from itself like a wen. I should not blame any great man for this, did I not know that he has in view the far better and easier operation, whereby he can detach his body, as if it were the mould wherein the spiritual statue is cast, piece by piece. I will not fall here into the fault of brevity, but rather into the opposite. Thus, the body is, according to philosophers, who have also a soul, merely an instrument for developing their own and ours, and accustoming them to the renunciation of this instrument. The soul must gradually nibble off all the threads that bind it to the clod. This is to the soul what the cork cuirass[^[83]] is to children learning to swim: it must seek daily to lessen this cuirass and finally to swim without it. The philosophic man of the world and the fellow of secret deorganizing societies at first therefore puts off of this swimming-panoply only the flesh on his legs and cheek-bones. Thus far little is done. Thereupon he burns away in a furnace-fire nerves and other stuff, because they have withstood the kitchen-fire. The hair or human fur every one gets rid of without difficulty. The most important step in this cuirass-reduction is this, that one can without Origen's razor effect as much as he did--only more gently. When this is done, one is not far from that perfect extinction, in which the whole cuirass is clean gone and the soul has learned at last to swim in the sea of existence, without the necessity of having on even so much of the swimming dress as one needs to cork a bottle. After that one is buried. Thus at least they set forth in secret societies of ton the process of human disembodiment.

This broken society covered our and every court as beautifully as broken porcelain vessels do Dutch garden beds; secondly, it had the politest way in the world of being coarse. If a certain je ne sais quoi did not constitute the difference in this gentry between humor and coarseness, between politeness and impudence, then there was none at all.

I said above that it was time our couple arrived, on Herr von Oefel's account. For the birthday fête of the Lady Resident was drawing near, and yet not a soul had memorized a page of his part. The reader, too, has quite as little of the birthday drama in his head as the players; therefore a thin decoction of this plant of Oefel's shall be set before him.

* * * * *

Decoction from the Birthday Drama.

"In a French village were two sisters, so good that each deserved to be the Rose-girl, and so disinterested that each wished the other to be. The day before the distribution of the prize-medal of roses they contended together who should--reject it; for they knew from good authority that to one of them alone the rose-crown would fall. Jeanne--played by the Minister's Lady--slipped away from under the leafy crown by the pretty conceit that she had her lover, Perrin--represented by Oefel--too often and too openly about her to entitle her to be a rose-competitor. Marie (Beata's part) could not therefore, it seemed, avert the crown from her head; however she begged her brother Henri (that was Gustavus) who was particularly fond of her, and who since his childhood had been away from their home on his travels,--she begged him to get her the victory in this disinterested rivalry. He sought to persuade her to the opposite victory; but at last, seeing the inexorableness of her sisterly love so decided, he promised, for a proper reward,--to spare her own feelings. 'But thou must have still greater love for me,' he said;--'a sister's,' said she;--'a still stronger,' said he;--'the most friendly affection,' said she;--'a far stronger yet,' said he;--'there cannot be a greater,' said she;--'O surely! I am not really thy brother,' said he, and with love-intoxicated eyes fell flown before her and gave her a paper, which relieved her of her former error and plunged her instead into a little swoon of joy. They all four appeared before the lord of the manor and crown-bestower (the Prince played this part even on the--boards) and each anticipated his choice by a petition and eulogy for her sister, and by neat invectives upon herself. The coquettish wight, Perrin, inquired: Could love need other roses than her own?--Marie gave a flying delineation of the merits to which such a coronation belonged, and which were in fact fine traits from the image of the Bouse. His Lordship said: 'This sisterly impartiality, which is as much to be admired as the merits which it seeks to reward, deserved two rose-crowns, one to receive, and one to confer, as a reward;' (no one, remarked Oefel seemingly in flattery of the ladies, but really of the Prince, more fitly distributes crowns than he who himself wears them and they would be distinguished from him in nothing but impartiality and beauty, if they in his place should happily choose as he would, upon whom the rose-wreath, ere the butterfly flew from it)--(one of the brilliants had been stuck with an egrette into the largest rose)--should be placed.... 'Upon our Rose Queen!' cried the sisters, and presented the crown to the lady Resident."

So far the Drama. To Oefel nothing was more agreeable and felicitous than the foil afforded by flattery bestowed on another. For the rest his piece looked like an idyl of Fontanelle's. The fancy that is to please people ground thin by culture must sparkle, but not burn; must tickle, but not move the heart; the boughs of such a fancy are not bowed down by the heavy mass of fruits, but by the weight of snow. In such court-poets and in earwigs the wings are, one may say, invisible and minute, but both find more easily the way to the ear. In German poems there is nothing; on the contrary most of the French smell not of the study lamp and economical light, but rather of perfumed garters, gloves, etc., and the less they have in them that interests man, so much the more they have that charms the man of the world, because they no longer depict Nature and Heaven and Hell, but one or two salons, and so not without ingenuity draw themselves back into narrower and narrower windings of the snail-house.

Oefel was at once theatre-poet, player and writer of the parts. He gave prominence in the drama to the rôle of Beata, which he had, with the most delicate allusions to their mutual understanding (he thought), or to his individual understanding (I think), set forth to the world. The most delicate hints he had disguised in those passages where he and Beata played together. He drew, therefore, in the transcribing, under many a fine declaration of love, or kindred sentiment, an exegetic line, and figured intelligently his thoroughbass. "The cunning jade will read this over a thousand times," he said to himself.

Thereupon, soon after her arrival he handed her her part, with far more respectful shyness than he was himself aware. Unfortunately for our good dramatizing poltroon, Beata fell into two faults at once, for a reason. The reason simply was, that Cupid had set up in her heart his laboratory and put in his chemical stoves and all; hence must needs arise her first fault, that she looked more beautiful than formerly without this glow; for every emotion and every inner conflict assumed on her face the form of a charm. From love came also her second mistake, that she demeaned herself to-day towards Oefel far more familiarly and frankly than usual; for a maiden who is in love has, in regard to other objects (i. e., from her own feelings in regard to them) nothing more to fear. But Herr von Oefel figured out on his parchment a quite different result; he took all as a sign of joy, that he was now again--to be had. He went on accordingly with a heart which Cupid had shot as full with his Lilliputian arrows as a pin-cushion with needles.