He was silent, a little angry at the naughtiness of women, which, under pretence of seeking advice, only desires a hearing. "What is that?" he asked, showing her a leaf. "That is perfectly my hand, and I never wrote it!" She looked at it, and said Charles was often trying experiments with her in this way at handwriting. He wondered, and said: "Nothing, but imitating and counterfeiting all the time! But how canst thou think of my forgiving him?" Some descriptions of travels on her table, formerly so poor in books, met his eye. "I wanted to know, of course," said she, "how you might probably be faring in this, that, and the other place, and that is why I read the long stuff." "Thou art still my sister!" said he, and kissed her heartily. She still asked him much and urgently about his new connection; but chary of words with his full heart, he hastened down stairs.
The first word down below to the Provincial Director was a request for the "deposed letter of Schoppe's." Wehrfritz brought the broad letter, which had been laid up in the little iron box of bonds, and delivered it he hoped, he said, in good order. Hardly could Albano keep back his tears, when he held the crinkled but precious traces of the beloved hand, which certainly never in its life had swerved or stained itself, in his own. As he did not break the seal, they all began good-naturedly to portray to him his friend Schoppe, according to the presumptions and views which man so boldly and complacently indulges upon every higher spirit, with all his actions or colors, as if actions or colors were strokes and outlines. Wehrfritz and Wehmeier deplored that he was growing mad, if not already so. The Magister held back with his main-proof, till the Provincial Director should have contributed the lesser auxiliary ones.
His life beneath this palace-roof was uncovered and showed up, but in a friendly spirit. "He had hitherto"—so went the reports—"had no real or solid aim." Wehrfritz swore he had himself seen him reading the Literary Gazette, just as it was folded together half-sheetwise, and said he of course ascribed it less to insanity than to absence of mind, because he knew with what pleasure the man always took into his hands and understandingly perused the Imperial Advertiser, which the same declared to be the gate-key to the great imperial city, Germany. In the midst of company the Librarian had looked upon his hands with the words: "There sits a gentleman here in bodily presence, and I in him, but who is the same?" Of work he had done very little, seldom looked into a book of any importance, as Herr Wehmeier knew, but got along more easily with the worst of all stuff, for instance, whole volumes of dream-interpretations. His dearest society had been his wolf-dog, with whom for whole hours he would carry on regular discourse, and of whose growling he seriously asserted it sounded like a very distant thunder. He had been fond of sitting before the looking-glass, and had entered into a long conversation with himself. Sometimes he had looked into the camera-obscura, then on a sudden out into the landscape again, to compare the two, and had asserted, unoptically enough, that the busy, gliding images of the camera were magnified by the outer world, but deceptively imitated. "It was a shy bird," added the Director, "for all that. Divers of my acquaintances in the neighboring estates let him paint them, because he did it cheap; he always knew, however, how to slip something into the face so that one's physiognomy should appear quite ridiculous or simple, and that he called his flattering. Of course after that, no one could expect in the long run anything honnette from him."
"Were it permitted me," Wehmeier began, "I would now communicate to Mr. Count a fact in regard to Mr. Librarian, which, perhaps—such is at least my opinion—is as frappant as many another. The school-house, as you certainly still well remember, stands close to the church." Thereupon he related, in a long narrative, the following: "Once, at dead of night, he heard the organ going. He listened at the church door, and distinctly heard Schoppe sing and play a short stanza of a popular hymn. Thereupon the said Schoppe came down, with a loud noise, from the choir, and mounted the pulpit, and commenced an occasional sermon to himself with the words: 'My devout hearer and friend in Christ.' In the exordium he touched upon the silent, but unhappily so fleeting bliss which one enjoyed before life, although not according to correct Homiletic principles, since the second part almost repeated the introduction. Thereupon he sang a pulpit stanza to himself, and taking from the 3d chapter of Job, where the writer shows the happiness of non-existence, the 26th verse as his text, which reads thus: 'Was I not in safety, had I not rest, was I not quiet? Yet trouble came,'[[111]]—he proposed to himself as his theme the joys and sorrows of a Christian; in the first part the sorrows, in the second the joys. Thereupon he crowded together concisely, but in a droll style and speech, and yet with Scriptural expressions, too, all the misery and distress on earth,—under which he enumerated singular things: long sermons, the two poles, ugly faces, compliments, games, and the world's stupidity. Thereupon he passed over abruptly to the consolation in the second part, and described the future joys of a Christian, which, as he blasphemously said, consisted in a heavenly ascension into future nothingness, in the death after death, in an eternal deliverance from self. Then (shocking it was to hear it) he addressed the neighboring dead down below under the church and in the princely vault, and asked, whether they had aught to complain of? 'Arise,' said he; 'seat yourselves in the pews, and open your eyes, in case they are wet with weeping. But they are drier than your dust. O how still and lovely lies the infinite past world, swathed in its own shadow, softly laid on the bed of its own ashes, without a single remaining dream-limb upon which a wound can be inflicted. Swift, old Swift, thou who once in thy latter days wast not so very much in thy head, and didst read through, every birthday, the whole chapter from which the text of our harvest sermon is taken,—Swift, how contented thou now art and entirely restored, the hatred of thy bosom burnt out, the round pearl, thy Self, eaten up, at last, and dissolved in the hot tear of life, and the tear alone stands there sparkling! And thou, too, hadst once preached before the Sexton like me!' Here Schoppe wept, and excused himself for his emotion, God knows before whom. Thereupon he passed to the practical improvement, and sharply insisted on both hearer and preacher growing better; upon downright honest truthfulness; fidelity of friends; high-mindedness, bitter hatred of suavity, snake-like movements, and weak lasciviousness. Finally, he had concluded the devotions with a prayer to God, that, if it should be his lot some day to lose his health or understanding, or the like, he would still be pleased to let him die like a man, and darted at once out of the church door. He put me," added Wehmeir, "almost out of my senses for terror, when he all at once flew at me angrily; 'Mock corpse, why creepest thou about the grave?' and I, pale and hurried, made my way home without having made the least reply to him. But what says Mr. Count?"
Albano shook his head with vehemence without one enlightening word, with pain and tears on his face. He merely took a sudden leave of all, and begged them to pardon his haste; and sought the evening sun and freedom, in order to read the letter of the noble man, and learn the purpose of his journey. He struck into the old road to Lilar, where he hoped to find, on the joyous southern breast of his radiant Dian Southern gayety and Southern ways again; for his heart had been upheaved by an earthquake, because, after all, many a wild sign in this Schoppe, as it were an immoderate lightening and flashing of this star, seemed to him to announce a setting and doomsday, which to his extreme pain he was constrained to ascribe to the rising of the new star of love, which had kindled this world of his nature.
122. CYCLE.
He read the following letter from Schoppe:—
"Thy letter, my dear youth, came duly to hand. I praise thy tears and flames, which alternately sustain, instead of extinguishing each other. Only become something, much, too, but not everything, in order that thou mayest be able, in so extremely empty a thing as life is—(I should be glad to know who invented it)—to hold out for all the desolateness. A Homer, an Alexander, who have at length vanquished the whole world and got it under them, must needs be plagued often with the most tiresome and annoying hours, because their life, from being a bride, has now become a wife. Much as I had palisaded and fortified myself against that, in order not to mount over everybody's head, and sit up top as Factotum of the world; I nevertheless, after all, came out at last, unobserved and all standing, on the summit, merely because, under my long contemplation, the whole circle of the earth, full of foam-mountains and cloud-giants, had been melting down lower and lower and crawling together; and now I gazed alone and dry-shod down from my mountain-peak, wholly possessed with the bloodsuckers of disgust at the world.
"Brother, it has changed, however, during this year, and I am afloat. For that reason a long, and to me quite tiresome, letter is written thee here in February, which shall tell thee about my approaching grub- and chrysalis-state, where and how; for when I am once a shining chrysalis, then I can only feebly stir and show myself any longer.
"I will explain myself more clearly,—the Germans add, when they have explained themselves clearly. It fits and hits most luckily—which I prize as much as another—that precisely the end of the year is the end of the paternal property upon which I have thus far lived, and consequently, if Amsterdam ceases to pay, I also fail, and have nothing more on hand than weak, chiromantic prophecies, and nothing in my body except my stomach. I would I could still live by my navel, as in my earlier times, and make myself such a soft bed.