GERMAN ROMANCE. 
 
GERMAN ROMANCE 
 
 SPECIMENS 
 
 OF 
 
 ITS CHIEF AUTHORS; 
 
 WITH 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL 
 
 NOTICES. 
 
 BY THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 
 VOLUME 
 
 BOSTON: 
 JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY 
 
 M DCCC XLI. 
 
CAMBRIDGE PRESS ! 
 MFTCALF, TORRY, AND BALLOU. 
 
0>L 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 It were unhappy for me if the reader should ex- 
 pect in this Work any full view of so complex a 
 subject as German Novelwriting, or of so motley a 
 body as the German Novelwriters. The dead wall 
 which divides us from this as from all other prov- 
 inces of German Literature, I must not dream that 
 I have anywhere overturned ; at the most, I may 
 have perforated it with a few loopholes, of narrow 
 aperture truly, and scanty range ; through which, 
 however, a studious eye may perhaps discern some 
 limited, but, as I hope, genuine and distinctive fea- 
 tures of the singular country, which, on the other 
 side, has long flourished in such abundant variety of 
 intellectual scenery and product, and been unknown 
 to us, though at our very hand. For this wall, what 
 is the worst property in such walls, is to most of us 
 an invisible one ; and our eye rests contentedly on 
 Vacancy, or distorted Fatarnorganas, where a great 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 and true-minded people have been living and labor- 
 ing, in the light of Science and Art, for many ages. 
 
 In such an undertaking as the present, fragmentary 
 in its very nature, it is not. absolute, but only relative 
 completeness, that can be looked for. German Novel- 
 writers are easily come at ; but the German Novel- 
 writers are a class of persons whom no prudent edi- 
 tor will hope to exhibit, and no reader will engage 
 to examine, even in the briefest mode of specimen. 
 To say nothing of what has been accumulated in 
 past generations, the number of Novelists at present 
 alive and active is to be reckoned not in units, but 
 in thousands. No Leipzig Fair is unattended by its 
 mob of gentlemen that write with ease ; each duly 
 offering his new novel, among the other fancy-goods 
 and fustians of that great emporium. Lafontaine, 
 for example, has already passed his hundredth vol- 
 ume. The inspirations of the Artist are rare and 
 transient, but the hunger of the Manufacturer is uni- 
 versal and incessant. The novel, too, is among the 
 simplest forms of composition ; a free arena for all 
 sorts and degrees of talent ; and may be worked in 
 equally by a Henry Fielding and a Doctor Polydore. 
 In Germany, accordingly, as in other countries, the 
 Novelists are a mixed, innumerable, and most pro- 
 ductive race. Interspersed with a few Poets, we be- 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 hold whole legions and hosts of Poetasters, in all 
 stages of worthlessness ; here languishing in the 
 transports of Sentimentality, there dancing the St. 
 Vitus's dance of hard-studied Wit and Humor ; some 
 soaring on bold pinion into the thundery regions of 
 Atala ou les Amours de deux Sauvages ; some 
 diving, on as bold fin, into the gory profundities of 
 Frankenstein and The Vampyre ; and very many 
 travelling, contented in spirit, the ancient, beaten 
 highway of Commonplace. 
 
 To discover the grain of truth among this mass of 
 falsehood, especially where Time had not yet exer- 
 cised its separating influence, was no plain problem ; 
 nor can I flatter myself either that I have exhausted 
 the search, or in no case been deceived in my selec- 
 tion. The strength of German Literature does not 
 lie in its Novelwriters ; few of its greatest minds 
 have put forth their full power in this department ; 
 many of them, of course, have not attempted it at 
 all. In the seventeenth century, and prior, there 
 was nothing whatever to be gleaned ; though Anton 
 Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick Wolfenbuttel, had laid 
 aside his sceptre, to write a novel,* in six thousand 
 
 *Die Durchlauchtigste Syrerin Aramena (Her Most Serene Majes- 
 ty, Aramena of Syria), 1669. On the whole, it is simple enough 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 eight hundred and twenty-two pages. Klopstock, 
 Herder, Lessing, in the eighteenth century, wrote no 
 novels ; the same might almost be said of Schiller ; 
 for his fragment of the Geisterseher (Ghost-seer), and 
 his Magazine-story of the Verbrecher aus Verlorener 
 Ehre (Criminal from Loss of Honor), youthful at- 
 tempts, and both I believe already in English, scarce- 
 ly form an exception. The elder Jacobi's Woldemar 
 and Allwill I was forced, not without consciousness 
 of their merits, to pass over as too abstruse and di- 
 dactic ; for a like reason of didacticness, though in a 
 far different sense, Wieland could afford me nothing 
 which seemed worthy of himself and our present 
 idea of him ; and Klinger's Faust, the product evi- 
 dently of a rugged, vehement, substantial mind, 
 seemed much too harsh, infernal, and unpoetical for 
 English readers. Of Novalis and his wondrous frag- 
 ments, 1 could not hope that their depth and wizard 
 beauty would be seen across their mysticism. Other 
 
 of our Magazines to inform us, that the literature, nay sometimes 
 it is also the language, of Germany, began to be cultivated in the 
 time of Frederick II. If the names of Hutten, Opitz, Lohenstein, 
 &c, &c, are naturally unknown to us, we ought really to have 
 heard of Luther. Nay, was not Jacob Bbhme rendered into huge 
 folios, with incomparable diagrams, in the time of James I. ? And 
 is not Hans Sachs known (by name at least) to all barbers ? 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 meritorious names I may have omitted, from igno- 
 rance. Maler Muller's I was obliged to omit, be- 
 cause none of his fictions were, properly speaking, 
 novels ; and unwillingly obliged, for his plays and 
 idyls bespeak a true artist ; and the English reader 
 would do well, by the earliest opportunity, to substi- 
 tute the warm and vigorous Adam's Awakening of 
 Muller, for Gessner's rather faint and washy Death 
 of Abel, in forming a judgment of the German 
 Idyl, 
 
 A graver objection than that of omissions is, that, 
 in my selections, I have not always fixed upon the 
 best performance of my author ; and to this I have 
 unhappily no contradiction to give, nor any answer to 
 make, except that it lay not in the nature of my task 
 to avoid it ; and that often not the excellence of a 
 work, but the humble considerations of its size, its 
 subject, and its being untranslated, had to determine 
 my choice. In justice to our strangers, the reader 
 will be pleased to bear this fact in mind. With re- 
 gard to two of them, to Fouque and Richter, it is 
 especially necessary. 
 
 By a secondary arrangement, in surveying what 
 seemed the chief names among the German Novel- 
 writers, we have also obtained a view of the chief 
 modes of German Novelwriting. The Mahrchen 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 (Popular Tale), a favorite, almost tritical topic 
 among the Germans, is here twice handled ; in 
 what may be called the prosaic manner (by Mu- 
 saus), and in the poetical (by Tieck). Of the 
 Ritterroman (Chivalry Romance) there is also a 
 specimen (by Fouque) ; a short one, yet I fear, in 
 many judgments, too long. Hoffmann's Golden Pot 
 belongs to a strange sort (the Fantasy-piece), of 
 which he himself was the originator, and which its 
 sedulous cultivation, by minds more willing than 
 able, bids fair, in no great length of time, to explode. 
 Richter's two works correspond to our common En- 
 glish notion of the Novel ; and Goethe's is a Kun- 
 stroman (Art-novel), a species highly prized by the 
 Germans, and of which Wilhelm Meistefs Appren- 
 ticeship, the first in date, is also in their mind greatly 
 the first in excellence. 
 
 If the reader will impress himself with a clear 
 view of these six kinds, and then conceive some 
 hundreds of persons incessantly occupied in imita- 
 ting, compounding, separating, distorting, exaggera- 
 ting, diluting them, he may have formed as correct 
 an idea of the actual state of German Novelwriting, 
 as it seemed easy with such means to afford him. 
 On the general merits and characteristics of these 
 works, it is for the reader and not me to pass judg- 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 ment. One thing it will behove him not to lose 
 sight of. They are German Novelists, not English 
 ones ; and their Germanhood I have all along regard- 
 ed as a quality, not as a fault. To expect, there- 
 fore, that the style of them shall accord in all points 
 with our English taste were to expect that it should 
 be a false and hollow style. Every nation has its 
 own form of character and life ; and the mind, which 
 gathers no nourishment from the everyday circum- 
 stances of its existence, will in general be but scanti- 
 ly nourished. Of writers that hover on the confines 
 of faultless vacuity, that write not by vision but by 
 hearsay, and so belong to all nations, or, more prop- 
 erly speaking, to none, there is no want in Germany 
 more than in any other country. It would be easy 
 to fill, not four, but four hundred volumes with Ger- 
 man Novelists of this unblamable description ; there- 
 by to refresh the reader with long processions of 
 spotless romances, bright and stately, like so many 
 frontispieces in La Belle Assemblee, with cheeks of 
 the fairest carnation, lips of the gentlest curvature, 
 and most perfect Grecian noses, and no shade of char- 
 acter or meaning to mar their pure idealness. But so 
 long as our Minerva Press and its many branch- 
 establishments do their duty, to import ware of that 
 sort into these Islands seems unnecessary. 
 
Xll PREFACE. 
 
 On the whole, as the light of a very small taper 
 may be useful in total darkness, I have sometimes 
 hoped that this little enterprise might assist, in its 
 degree, to forward an acquaintance with the Ger- 
 mans and their literature ; a literature and a people 
 both well worthy of our study. Translations, in this 
 point of view, can be of little avail, except in so far 
 as they excite us to a much more general study of 
 the language. The difficulties of German are little 
 more than a bugbear ; they can only be compared to 
 those of Greek by persons claiming praise or pudding 
 for having mastered them. Three months of mode- 
 rate diligence will carry any man, almost without as- 
 sistance of a master, over its prime obstacles ; and 
 the rest is play rather than labor. 
 
 To judge from the signs of the times, this general 
 diffusion of German among us seems a consumma- 
 tion not far distant. As an individual, I cannot but 
 anticipate from it some little evil and much good ; 
 and look forward with pleasure to the time when a 
 people, who have listened with the most friendly 
 placidity to criticisms* of the slenderest nature from 
 
 * Voltaire's patronizing letter to Rainier, in which he conde- 
 scends to grant the Germans some privileges of literary citizen- 
 ship, on the strength of " Monsieur Gottched " (Gottsched, long 
 
PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 us, may be more fitly judged of; and thirty millions 
 of men, speaking in the same old Saxon tongue, and 
 thinking in the same old Saxon spirit with ourselves, 
 may be admitted to the rights of brotherhood which 
 they have long deserved, and which it is we chiefly 
 that suffer by withholding. 
 
 ago acknowledged as the true German Antichrist of Wit), is still 
 held in remembrance ; so likewise is the Pere Bouhours' extremely 
 satirical inquiry, Si les Mlemands peuvent avoir de V esprit? 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
NOTE BY THE AMERICAN PUBLISHERS. 
 
 The English edition of the present work, pub- 
 lished in 1827, is comprised in four volumes — the 
 last volume containing Wilhelm Meister's Travels, 
 by Goethe. A revised translation of this novel, to- 
 gether with The Apprenticeship, of which it consti- 
 tutes the sequel, having been recently issued in 
 London, and reprinted in Philadelphia, in a separate 
 form, it has been thought best to omit it in the pres- 
 ent publication. The contents of the other three 
 volumes, here embraced in two, are retained entire, 
 without omission or change. 
 
 Boston, April 15, 1841. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 JOHANN AUGUST MUSAUS. 
 
 Biographical Notice 1 
 
 popular tales. 
 
 I. Dumb Love ........ 14 
 
 II. Libussa ......... 87 
 
 III. Melechsala 140 
 
 FRIEDRICH DE LA MOTTE FOUdUE. 
 
 Biographical Notice . 215 
 
 Aslauga's Knight 228 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 Biographical Notice 271 
 
 popular tales. 
 
 I. The Fair-Haired Eckbert 285 
 
 II. The Trusty Eckart. Part First . . . .306 
 The Trusty Eckart. Part Second .... 328 
 
 III. The Runenberg 340 
 
 IV. The Elves 366 
 
 V. The Goblet 390 
 
JOHANN AUGUST MUSAUS 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
GERMAN ROMANCE. 
 
 JOHANN AUGUST MUSAUS. 
 
 Johann August Musaus was born in the year 1735, at 
 Jena, where his father then held the office of Judge. The 
 quick talents, and kind, lively temper of the boy, recom- 
 mended him to the affection of his uncle, Herr Weissenborn, 
 Superintendent at Allstadt, who took him to his house, and 
 treated him in all respects like a son. Johann was then in 
 his ninth year. A few months afterwards, his uncle was 
 promoted to the post of General Superintendent at Eis- 
 enach ; a change which did not alter the domestic condition 
 of the nephew, though it replaced him in the neighborhood 
 of his parents ; for his father had also been transferred to 
 Eisenach, in the capacity of Councillor and Police Magis- 
 trate. With this hospitable relative he continued till his 
 nineteenth year. 
 
 Old Weissenborn had no children of his own, and he 
 determined that his foster-child should have a liberal edu- 
 cation. In due time he placed him at the University of 
 Jena, as a student of theology. It is not likely that the 
 inclinations of the youth himself had been particularly con- 
 sulted in this arrangement ; nevertheless he appears to have 
 studied with sufficient diligence ; for in the usual period of 
 
4 MUSAEUS. 
 
 three years and a half, he obtained his degree of Master, 
 and, what was then a proof of more than ordinary merit, was 
 elected a member of the German Society. With these 
 titles, and the groundwork of a solid culture, he returned 
 to Eisenach, to wait for an appointment in the church, of 
 which he was now licentiate. 
 
 For several years, though he preached with ability, and 
 not without approval, no appointment presented itself; and 
 when at last a country living in the neighborhood of Eis- 
 enach was offered him, the people stoutly resisted the ad- 
 mission of their new pastor, on the ground, says his biog- 
 rapher, that " he had once been seen dancing." It may be, 
 however, that the sentence of the peasants was not alto- 
 gether so infirm as this its alleged very narrow basis would 
 betoken. Judging from external circumstances, it by no 
 means appears that devotion was at any time the chief dis- 
 tinction of the new candidate ; and to a simple rustic flock, 
 his shining talents, unsupported by zeal, would be empty 
 and unprofitable, as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. 
 At all events, this hindrance closed his theological career. 
 It came in good season to withdraw him from a calling, in 
 which, whether willingly or unwillingly adopted, his history 
 must have been dishonest and contemptible, and his gifts 
 could never have availed him. 
 
 Musaus had now lost his profession ; but his resources 
 were not limited to one department of activity, and he was 
 still young enough to choose another. His temper was 
 gay and kindly ; his faculties of mind were brilliant, and 
 had now been improved by years of steady industry. His 
 residence at Eisenach had not been spent in scrutinizing 
 the phases of church preferment, or dancing attendance 
 on patrons and dignitaries ; he had stored his mind with 
 useful and ornamental knowledge ; and from his remote 
 watch-tower, his keen eye had discerned the movements 
 
MUSAEUS. O 
 
 of the world, and firm judgments of its wisdom and its folly 
 were gathering form in his thoughts. In his twenty-fifth 
 year he became an author ; a satirist, and, what is rarer, a 
 just one. Germany, by the report of its enemies and luke- 
 warm friends, is seldom long without some Idol ; some 
 author of superhuman endowments, some system that prom- 
 ises to renovate the earth, some science destined to con- 
 duct, by a north-west passage, to universal knowledge. At 
 this period, the Brazen Image of the day was our English 
 Richardson ; his novels had been translated into German 
 with unbounded acceptance;* and Grandison was figuring 
 in many weak heads as the sole model of a true Christian 
 gentleman. Musaus published his German Grandison in 
 1760 ; a work of good omen as a first attempt, and received 
 with greater favor than the popularity of its victim seemed 
 to promise. It cooperated with Time in removing this 
 spiritual epidemic ; and appears to have survived its object, 
 for it was reprinted in 1781. 
 
 The success of his anonymous parody, however gratifying 
 to the youthful author, did not tempt him to disclose his 
 name, and still less to think of literature as a profession. 
 With his cool, skeptical temper, he was little liable to over- 
 estimate his talents, or the prizes set up for them ; and he 
 longed much less for a literary existence than for a civic 
 one. In 1763, his wish, to a certain extent, was granted ; 
 he became Tutor of the Pages in the court of Weimar ; 
 which office, after seven punctual and laborious years, he 
 exchanged for a professorship in the Gymnasium or public 
 school of the same town. He had now married ; and amid 
 the cares and pleasures of providing for a family, and keep- 
 ing house like an honest burgher, the dreams of fame had 
 
 * See the Letters of Aleta, Klopstock's lady, in Richardson's Life 
 and Correspondence. 
 
 1* 
 
O MUSAEUS. 
 
 faded still farther from his mind. The emoluments of his 
 post were small ; but his heart was light, and his mind 
 humble. To increase his income he gave private lessons in 
 history and the like, " to young ladies and gentlemen of 
 quality ; " and for several years took charge of a few 
 boarders. The names of Wieland and Goethe had now 
 risen on the world, while his own was still under the hori- 
 zon ; but this obscurity, enjoying as he did the kind esteem 
 of all his many personal acquaintances, he felt to be a 
 very light evil ; and participated without envy in whatever 
 entertainment or instruction his famed contemporaries could 
 afford him. With literature he still occupied his leisure ; he 
 had read and reflected much ; but for any public display 
 of his acquirements he was making no preparation, and 
 feeling no anxiety. 
 
 After an interval of nineteen years, the appearance of 
 a new idol again called forth his iconoclastic faculty. La- 
 vater had left his parsonage among the Alps, and set out on 
 a cruise over Europe, in search of proselytes and striking 
 physiognomies. His theories, supported by his personal 
 influence, and the honest, rude ardor of his character, be- 
 came the rage in Germany ; and men, women, and children 
 were immersed in promoting philanthropy, and studying the 
 human mind. Whereupon Musaus grasped his satirical 
 hammer; and with lusty strokes defaced and unshrined the 
 false divinity. His Physiognomical Travels, which ap- 
 peared in 1779, is still ranked by the German critics among 
 the happiest productions of its kind in their literature ; and 
 still read for its wit and acuteness, and genial, overflowing 
 humor, though the object it attacked has long ago become a 
 reminiscence. At the time of its publication, when every- 
 thing conspired to give its qualities their full effect, the ap- 
 plause it gained was instant and general. The author had, 
 as in the former case, concealed his name ; but the public 
 
MUSAEUS. I 
 
 curiosity soon penetrated the secret, which he had now no 
 interest in keeping ; and Musaus was forthwith enrolled 
 among the lights of his day and generation ; and courteous 
 readers crowded to him from far and near, to see his face, 
 and pay him the tribute of their admiration. This unlook- 
 ed-for celebrity he valued at its just price ; continuing to 
 live as if it were not ; gratified chiefly in his character of 
 father, at having found an honest mean of improving his 
 domestic circumstances, and enlarging the comforts of his 
 family. The ground was now broken, and he was not long 
 in digging deeper. 
 
 The popular traditions of Germany, so numerous and 
 often so impressive, had attracted his attention ; and their 
 rugged Gothic vigor, saddened into sternness or venerable 
 grace by the flight of ages, became dearer to his taste, as 
 he looked abroad upon the mawkish deluge of Sentiment- 
 ality, with which The Sorrows of Werter had been the in- 
 nocent signal for a legion of imitators to drown the land. 
 The spirit of German imagination seemed but ill represent- 
 ed by these tearful persons, who, if their hearts were full, 
 minded little though their heads were empty ; their spasmo- 
 dic tenderness made no imposing figure beside the gloomy 
 strength which might still in fragments be discerned in their 
 distant predecessors. Of what has been' preserved from 
 age to age by living memory alone, the chance is that it pos- 
 sesses some intrinsic merit ; its very existence declares it to 
 be adapted to some form of our common nature, and there- 
 fore calculated more or less to interest all its forms. It 
 struck Musaus that these rude traditionary fragments might be 
 worked anew into shape and polish, and transferred from 
 the hearths of the common people to the parlors of the 
 intellectual and refined. He determined on forming a series 
 of Volksmahrchen, or Popular Traditionary Tales ; a task 
 of more originality and smaller promise in those days than 
 
8 MUSAEUS. 
 
 it would be now. In the collection of materials, he spared 
 no pains ; and despised no source of intelligence, however 
 mean. He would call children from the street; become a 
 child along with them, listen to their nursery tales, and 
 reward his tiny narrators with a dreyer apiece. Sometimes 
 he assembled a knot of old women, with their spinning- 
 wheels, about him ; and, amid the hum of their industrious 
 implements, gathered stories of the ancient time from the 
 lips of the garrulous sisterhood. Once his wife had been 
 out paying visits; on opening the parlor door at her return, 
 she was met by a villanous cloud of tobacco-smoke ; and 
 venturing forward through the haze, she found her husband 
 seated by the stove, in company with an old soldier, who 
 was smoking vehemently on his black slump of a pipe, 
 and charming his landlord, between whiffs, with legendary 
 lore. 
 
 The Volksmiihrclien, in five little volumes, appeared in 
 1782. They soon rose into favor with a large class of read- 
 ers ; and while many generations of novels have since that 
 time been ushered into being, and conducted out of it, they 
 still survive, increasing in popularity rather than declining. 
 This preeminence is owing less to the ancient materials than 
 to the author's way of treating them. The primitive tradi- 
 tion often serves him only as a vehicle for interesting de- 
 scription, shrewd, sarcastic speculation, and gay, fanciful 
 pleasantry, extending its allusions over all things past and 
 present, now rising into comic humor, now sinking into 
 drollery, often tasteless, strained, or tawdry, but never dull. 
 The traces of poetry and earnest imagination, here and 
 there discernible in the original fiction, he treats with levity, 
 and kind, skeptical derision ; nothing is required of the read 
 er but what all readers are prepared to give. Since the 
 publication of this work, the subject of popular tradition has 
 been handled to triteness ; Volksmahrchen have been written 
 
MUSAEUS. y 
 
 and collected without stint or limit; and critics, in admit- 
 ting that Musaus was the first to open this mine of entertain- 
 ment, have lamented the incongruity between his subject 
 and his style. But the faculty of laughing has been given 
 to all men, and the feeling of imaginative beauty has been 
 given only to a few ; the lovers of primeval poetry, in its 
 unadulterated state, may censure Musaus, but they join 
 with the public at large in reading him. 
 
 This book of Volksmahrchen established the character of 
 its author for wit and general talent, and forms the chief 
 support of his reputation with posterity. A few years after, 
 he again appeared before the public with a humorous per- 
 formance, entitled, Friend Heirfs Apparitions, in the style 
 of Holberg, printed in 1785. Friend Hein is a name under 
 which Musaus, for what reason his commentator Wieland 
 seems unable to inform us, usually personifies Death ; the 
 essay itself, which I have never seen, may be less irrever- 
 ent and offensive to pious feeling than its title indicates, and 
 it is said to abound with " wit, humor, and knowledge of 
 life," as much as any of his former works. He had also 
 begun a second series of Tales, under the title of Strauss- 
 federn (Ostrich feathers) ; but only the first volume had 
 appeared, when death put a period to his labors. He had 
 long been in weakly health ; often afflicted with violent 
 headaches; his disorder was a polypus of the heart, which 
 cut him off on the 28th of October, 1787, in the fifty-second 
 year of his age. The Straussfedcrn was completed by 
 another hand ; and a small volume of Remains, edited by 
 Kotzebue in 1791, concludes the list of his writings. A 
 simple but tasteful memorial, we are told, was erected over 
 his grave by some unknown friend. 
 
 Musaus was a practical believer in the Horatian maxim, 
 Nil admirari , of a jovial heart, and a penetrating, well- 
 cultivated understanding, he saw things as they were, and 
 
10 MUSAEUS. 
 
 had little disposition or aptitude to invest them with any 
 colors but their own. Without much effort, therefore, he 
 stood aloof from every species of cant ; and was the man 
 he thought himself, and wished others to think him. Had 
 his temper been unsocial and melancholic, such a creed 
 might have rendered him spiteful, narrow, and selfish; but 
 nature had been kinder to him than education. He did not 
 quarrel with the world, though he saw its barrenness, and 
 knew not how to make it solemn any more than lovely ; for 
 his heart was gay and kind ; and an imperturbable good- 
 humor, more potent than a panoply of brass, defended him 
 from the stings and arrows of outrageous Fortune to the 
 end of his pilgrimage. Few laughers have walked so cir- 
 cumspectly, and acquired or merited so much affection. By 
 profession a Mom us, he looked upon the world as little else 
 than a boundless Chase, where the wise were to recreate 
 themselves with the hunting of Follies ; and perhaps he is 
 the only satirist on record of whom it can be said, that his 
 jesting never cost him a friend. His humor is, indeed, un- 
 tinctured with bitterness ; sportful, ebullient, and guileless, 
 as the frolics of a child. He could not reverence men ; 
 but with all their faults he loved them ; for they were his 
 brethren, and their faults were not clearer to him than his 
 own. He inculcated or entertained no lofty principles of 
 generosity ; yet, though never rich in purse, he was always 
 ready to divide his pittance with a needier fellow-man. Of 
 vanity he showed little or none ; in obscurity he was con- 
 tented ; and when his honors came, he wore them meekly, 
 and was the last to see that they were merited. In society 
 he was courteous and yielding; a universal favorite; in 
 his chosen circle, the most fascinating of companions. 
 From the slenderest trifle he could spin a boundless web of 
 drollery ; and his brilliant mirth enlivened without wound- 
 ing. With the foibles of others he abstained from med- 
 
MUSAEUS. 11 
 
 dling ; but among his friends, we are informed, he could for 
 hours keep the table in a roar, when, with his dry, inimitable 
 vein, he started some banter on himself or his wife ; and, 
 in trustful abandonment, laid the reins on the neck of his 
 fancy to pursue it. Without enthusiasm of character, or 
 any pretension to high or even earnest qualities, he was a 
 well-conditioned, laughter-loving, kindly man; led a gay, 
 jestful life ; conquering, by contentment and mirth of heart, 
 the long series of difficulties and distresses with which it 
 assailed him ; and died regretted by his nation, as a for- 
 warder of harmless pleasure ; and by those that knew him 
 better, as a truthful, unassuming, affectionate, and, on the 
 whole, very estimable person. 
 
 His intellectual character corresponds with his moral and 
 social one ; not high or glorious, but genuine so far as it 
 goes. He does not approach the first rank of writers ; he 
 attempts not to deal with the deeper feelings of the heart; 
 and for instructing the judgment, he ranks rather as a sound, 
 well-informed, common-sense thinker, than as a man of high 
 wisdom or originality. He advanced few new truths, but he 
 dressed many old ones in sprightly apparel ; and it ought to 
 be remembered, that he kept himself unspotted from the 
 errors of his time ; a merit which posterity is apt to under- 
 rate ; for nothing seems more stolid than a past delusion; 
 and we forget that delusions, destined also to be past, are 
 now present with ourselves, about us, and within us, which, 
 were the task so easy, it is pity that we do not forthwith 
 convict and cast away, Musaus had a quick, vigorous in- 
 tellect, a keen eye for the common forms of the beautiful, 
 a fancy ever prompt with allusions, and an overflowing 
 store of sprightly and benignant humor. These natural 
 gifts he had not neglected to cultivate by study both of books 
 and things; his reading distinguishes him even in Germany; 
 nor does he bear it about him like an ostentatious burden, 
 
12 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 but in the shape of spiritual strength and plenty derived 
 from it. As an author, his beauties and defects are numer- 
 ous and easily discerned. His style sparkles with meta- 
 phors, sometimes just and beautiful, often new and sur- 
 prising; but it is laborious, unnatural, and diffuse. Of his 
 humor, his distinguishing gift, it may be remarked, that it 
 seems copious rather than fine, and originates rather in the 
 understanding than in the character; his heart is not deli- 
 cate, or his affections tender; but he loves the ludicrous 
 with true passion ; and seeing keenly, if he feels obtusely, 
 he can choose with sufficient skill the point of view from 
 which his object shall appear distorted, as he requires it. 
 This is the humor of a Swift or a Voltaire, but not of a 
 Cervantes, or even of a Sterne in his best passages ; it may 
 produce a Zadig, or a Battle of the Books ; but not a Don 
 Quixote, or a Corporal Trim. Musaus is, in fact, no poet ; 
 he can see, and describe with rich graces what he sees ; 
 but he is nothing, or very little, of a Maker. His imagina- 
 tion is not powerless ; it is like a bird of feeble wing, which 
 can fly from tree to tree ; but never soars for a moment 
 into the sether of Poetry, to bathe in its serene splendor, 
 with the region of the Actual lying far below, and bright- 
 ened into beauty by radiance not its own. He is a man 
 of fine and varied talent, but scarcely of any genius. 
 
 These characteristics are apparent enough in his Popular 
 Tales ; they may be traced even in the few specimens of 
 that work, by which he is now introduced to the English 
 reader. As has been already stated, his Volksmahrchen 
 exhibit himself much better than his subject. He is not 
 admitted by his critics to have seized the finest spirit of 
 this species of fiction, or turned it to the account of which 
 it is capable in other hands. Whatever was austere or 
 earnest, still more, whatever bordered upon awe or horror^ 
 his riant fancy rejected with aversion ; the rigorous moral 
 
MUSAEUS. 
 
 13 
 
 sometimes hid in these traditions, the grim lines of primeval 
 feeling and imagination to be traced in them, had no charms 
 for him. These ruins of the remote time he has not at- 
 tempted to complete into a perfect edifice, according to 
 the first simple plan ; he has rather pargetted them anew, 
 and decorated them with the most modern ornaments and 
 furniture ; and he introduces his guests, with a roguish 
 smile at the strange, antic contrast they are to perceive 
 between the movables and the apartment. Sometimes he 
 rises into a flight of simple eloquence, and, for a sentence 
 or two, seems really beautiful and affecting; but the knave 
 is always laughing in his sleeve at our credulity, and returns 
 with double relish to riot at will in his favorite domain. 
 
 Of the three Tales here offered to the reader nothing 
 need be said in explanation ; for their whole significance, 
 with all their beauties and blemishes, lies very near the 
 surface. I have selected them, as specimens at once of 
 his manner and his materials ; in the hope, that, conveying 
 some impression of a gifted and favorite writer, they may 
 furnish a little entertainment both to the lovers of intel- 
 lectual novelty, and of innocent amusement. To neither 
 can I promise very much. Musaus is a man of sterling 
 powers, but no literary monster ; and his Tales, though 
 smooth and glittering, are cold ; they have beauty, yet 
 it is the beauty not of living forms, but of well-proportioned 
 statues. Meanwhile, I have given him as I found him, 
 endeavoring to copy faithfully ; changing nothing, whether 
 I might think it good or bad, that my skill enabled me 
 to keep unchanged. With all drawbacks, I anticipate some 
 favor for him; but his case admits no pleading,- being 
 clear by its own light, it must stand or fall by a first judg- 
 ment, and without the help of advocates. 
 vol. i. 2 
 
POPULAR TALES. 
 
 DUMB LOVE. 
 
 There was once a wealthy merchant, Melchior of Bremen 
 by name, who used to stroke his beard with a contemptuous 
 grin, when he heard the Rich Man in the Gospel preached 
 of, whom, in comparison, he reckoned little better than a 
 petty shopkeeper. Melchior had money in such plenty, 
 that he floored his dining-room all over with a coat of solid 
 dollars. In those frugal times, as in our own, a certain 
 luxury prevailed among the rich ; only then it had a more 
 substantial shape than now. But though this pomp of Mel- 
 chior's was sharply censured by his fellow-citizens and con- 
 sorts, it was, in truth, directed more to trading speculation than 
 to mere vain-glory. The cunning Bremer easily observed, 
 that those, who grudged and blamed this seeming vanity, 
 would but diffuse the reputation of his wealth, and so in- 
 crease his credit. He gained his purpose to the full ; the 
 sleeping capital of old dollars so judiciously set up to public 
 inspection in the parlor, brought interest a hundred fold, by 
 the silent surety which it offered for his bargains in every 
 market ; yet, at last, it became a rock on which the welfare 
 of his family made shipwreck. 
 
 Melchior of Bremen died of a surfeit at a city-feast, with- 
 out having time to set his house in order ; and left all his 
 goods and chattels to an only son, in the bloom of life, and 
 
DUMB LOVE. 15 
 
 just arrived at the years when the laws allowed him to take 
 possession of his inheritance. Franz Melcherson was a 
 brilliant youth, endued by nature with the best, capacities. 
 His exterior was gracefully formed, yet firm and sinewy 
 withal ; his temper was cheery and jovial, as if hung-beef 
 and old French wine had joined to influence his formation. 
 On his cheeks bloomed health ; and from his brown eyes 
 looked mirthfulness and love of joy. He was like a mar- 
 rowy plant, which needs but water and the poorest ground 
 to make it grow to strength ; but which, in loo fat a soil, 
 will shoot into luxuriant overgrowth, without fruit or use- 
 fulness. The father's heritage, as often happens, proved 
 the ruin of the son. Scarce had he felt the joy of being 
 sole possessor and disposer of a large fortune, when he set 
 about endeavoring to get rid of it as of a galling burden ; 
 began to play the Rich Man in the Gospel to the very let- 
 ter ; went clothed in fine apparel, and fared sumptuously 
 every day. No feast at the bishop's court could be com- 
 pared for pomp and superfluity with his ; and never, while 
 the town of Bremen shall endure, will such another public 
 dinner be consumed as it yearly got from him ; for to every 
 burgher of the place he gave a Krusel-soup and a jug of 
 Spanish wine. For this all people cried, Long life to him! 
 and Franz became the hero of the day. 
 
 In this unceasing whirl of jovialty, no thought was cast 
 upon the Balancing of Entries, which, in those days, was 
 the merchant's vade-mecum, though in our times it is going 
 out of fashion, and for want of it the tongue of the com- 
 mercial beam too frequently declines with a magnetic virtue 
 from the vertical position. Some years passed on without 
 the joyful Franz's noticing a diminution in his incomes; 
 for at his father's death every chest and coffer had been 
 full. The voracious host of table-friends, the airy company 
 of jesters, gamesters, parasites, and all who had their living 
 
16 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 by the prodigal son, took special care to keep reflection at 
 a distance from him ; they hurried him from one enjoy- 
 ment to another ; kept him constantly in play, lest in some 
 sober moment Reason might awake, and snatch him from 
 their plundering claws. 
 
 But at last their well of happiness went suddenly dry ; 
 old Melchior's casks of gold were now run off even to the 
 lees. One day, Franz ordered payment of a large ac- 
 count ; his cash-keeper was not in a state to execute the 
 precept, and returned it with a protest. This counter-inci- 
 dent flashed keenly through the soul of Franz ; yet he felt 
 nothing else but anger and vexation at his servant, to whose 
 unaccountable perversity, by no means to his own ill hus- 
 bandry, he charged the present disorder in his finances. 
 Nor did he give himself the trouble to investigate the real 
 condition of the business ; but after flying to the common 
 FooPs-litany, and thundering out some scores of curses, he 
 transmitted to his shoulder-shrugging steward, the laconic 
 order, Find means. 
 
 Bill-brokers, usurers, and money-changers now eame into 
 play. For high interest, fresh sums were poured into the 
 empty coffers ; the silver flooring of the dining-room was 
 then more potent, in the eyes of creditors, than in these 
 times of ours the promissory obligation of the Congress of 
 America, with the whole thirteen United States to back it. 
 This palliative succeeded for a season ; but, underhand, the 
 rumor spread about the town, that the silver flooring had 
 been privily removed, and a stone one substituted in its 
 stead. The matter was immediately, by application of the 
 lenders, legally inquired into, and discovered to be actually 
 so. Now, it could not be denied, that a marble floor, 
 worked into nice Mosaic, looked much better in a parlor, 
 than a sheet of dirty, tarnished dollars ; the creditors, how- 
 ever, paid so little reverence to the proprietor's refinement 
 
DUMB LOVE. 17 
 
 of taste, that on the spot they, one and all, demanded pay- 
 ment of their several moneys ; and as this was not complied 
 with, they proceeded to procure an act of bankruptcy ; and 
 Melchior's house, with its appurtenances, offices, gardens, 
 parks, and furniture, were sold by public auction, and their 
 late owner, who in this extremity had screened himself 
 from jail by some chicanery of law, judicially ejected. 
 
 It was now too late to moralize on his absurdities, since 
 philosophical reflections could not alter what was done, and 
 the most wholesome resolutions would not bring him back 
 his money. According to the principles of this our culti- 
 vated century, the hero at this juncture ought to have re- 
 tired with dignity from the stage, or in some way termi- 
 nated his existence ; to have entered on his travels into 
 foreign parts, or opened his carotid artery ; since in his 
 native town he could live no longer as a man of honor. 
 Franz neither did the one nor the other. The qu'en-dira- 
 t-on, which French morality employs as bit and curb for 
 thoughtlessness and folly, had never once occurred to the 
 unbridled squanderer in the days of his profusion, and his 
 sensibility was still too dull to feel so keenly the disgrace 
 of his capricious wastefulness. He was like a toper, who 
 has been in drink, and, on awakening out of his carousal, 
 cannot rightly understand how matters are or have been 
 with him. He lived according to the manner of unprosper- 
 ing spendthrifts; repented not, lamented not. By good 
 fortune, he had picked some relics from the wreck ; a few 
 small heir-looms of the family ; and these secured him for 
 a time from absolute starvation. 
 
 He engaged a lodging in a remote alley, into which the 
 sun never shone throughout the year, except for a few days 
 about the solstice, when it peeped for a short while over the 
 high roofs. Here he found the little that his now much 
 contracted wants required. The frugal kitchen of his land- 
 2* 
 
18 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 lord screened him from hunger, the stove from cold, the 
 roof from rain, the four walls from wind ; only from the 
 pains of tedium he could devise no refuge or resource. 
 The light rabble of parasites had fled away with his pros- 
 perity ; and of his former friends there was now no one that 
 knew him. Reading had not yet become a necessary of 
 life; people did not yet understand the art of killing time 
 by means of those amusing shapes of fancy which are wont 
 to lodge in empty heads. There were yet no sentimental, 
 pedagogic, psychologic, popular, simple, comic, or moral 
 tales ; no novels of domestic life, no cloister-stories, no 
 romances of the middle ages ; and of the innumerable gen- 
 eration of our Henrys, and Adelaides, and Cliffords, and 
 Emmas, no one had as yet lifted up its mantuamaker voice, 
 to weary out the patience of a lazy and discerning pub- 
 lic. In those days, knights were still diligently pricking 
 round the tilt-yard ; Dietrich of Bern, Hildebrand, Seyfried 
 with the Horns, Rennewart the Strong, were following their 
 snake and dragon hunt, and killing giants and dwarfs of 
 twelve men's strength. The venerable epos, Theuerdank, 
 was the loftiest ideal of German art and skill, the latest 
 product of our native wit, but only for the cultivated minds, 
 the poets and thinkers of the age. Franz belonged to none 
 of those classes, and had therefore nothing to employ him- 
 self upon, except that he tuned his lute, and sometimes 
 twanged a little on it ; then, by way of variation, took to 
 looking from the window, and instituted observations on the 
 weather ; out of which, indeed, there came no inference a 
 whit more edifying than from all the labors of the most 
 rheumatic meteorologist of this present age. Meanwhile, his 
 turn for observation ere long found another sort of nourish- 
 ment, by which the vacant space in his head and heart was 
 at once filled. 
 
 In the narrow lane, right opposite his window, dwelt an 
 
DUMB LOVE. 19 
 
 honest matron, who, in hope of better times, was earning a 
 painful living by the long threads, which, assisted by a 
 marvellously fair daughter, she winded daily from her 
 spindle. Day after day the couple spun a lentil of yarn, 
 with which the whole town of Bremen, with its walls and 
 trenches, and all its suburbs, might have been begirt. These 
 two spinners had not been born for the wheel ; they were 
 of good descent, and had lived of old in pleasant affluence. 
 The fair Meta's father had once had a ship of his own on the 
 sea, and, freighting it himself, had yearly sailed to Ant- 
 werp ; but a heavy storm had sunk the vessel, " with man 
 and mouse," and a rich cargo, into the abysses of the ocean, 
 before Meta had passed the years of her childhood. The 
 mother, a staid and reasonable woman, bore the loss of her 
 husband and all her fortune with a wise composure ; in her 
 need she refused, out of noble pride, all help from the 
 charitable sympathy of her relations and friends ; consider- 
 ing it as shameful alms, so long as she believed that in her 
 own activity she might find a living by the labor of her 
 hands. She gave up her large house, and all her costly 
 furniture, to the rigorous creditors of her ill-fated husband, 
 hired a little dwelling in the lane, and span from early 
 morning till late night, though the trade went sore against 
 her, and she often wetted the thread with her tears. Yet by 
 this diligence she reached her object, of depending upon no 
 one, and owing no mortal any obligation. By and by she 
 trained her growing daughter to the same employment; and 
 lived so thriftily, that she .laid by a trifle of her gainings, 
 and turned it to account by carrying on a little trade in 
 flax. 
 
 She, however, nowise purposed to conclude her life in 
 these poor circumstances ; on the contrary, the honest dame 
 kept up her heart with happy prospects into the future, and 
 hoped that she should once more attain a prosperous situa- 
 
20 MUSAEUS. 
 
 tion, and in the autumn of her life enjoy her woman's-sum- 
 mer. Nor were these hopes grounded altogether upon 
 empty dreams of fancy, but upon a rational and calculated 
 expectation. She saw her daughter budding up like a 
 spring rose, no less virtuous and modest than she was fair; 
 and with such endowments of heart and spirit, that the mother 
 felt delight and comfort in her, and spared the morsel from 
 her own lips, that nothing might be wanting in an education 
 suitable to her capacities. For she thought, that, if a maiden 
 could come up to the sketch which Solomon, the wise friend 
 of woman, has left of the ideal of a perfect wife, it could 
 not fail that a pearl of such price would be sought after, and 
 bidden for, to ornament some good man's house; for beauty, 
 combined with virtue, in the days of Mother Brigitta, were 
 as important in the eyes of wooers, as, in our days, birth 
 combined with fortune. Besides, the number of suitors was 
 in those times greater ; it was then believed that the wife 
 was the most essential, not, as in our refined, economical 
 theory, the most superfluous item in the household. The 
 fair Meta, it is true, bloomed only like a precious, rare flower 
 in the greenhouse, not under the gay, free sky; she lived 
 in maternal oversight and keeping, sequestered and still ; 
 was seen in no walk, in no company ; and scarcely once in 
 the year passed through the gate of her native town ; all 
 which seemed utterly to contradict her mother's principle. 
 The old Lady E * * of Memel understood it otherwise, in 
 her time. She sent the itinerant Sophia, it is clear as day, 
 from Memel into Saxony, simply on a marriage speculation, 
 and attained her purpose fully. How many hearts did the 
 wandering nymph set on fire, how many suitors courted 
 her! Had she staid at home, as a domestic modest maiden, 
 she might have bloomed away in the remoteness of her 
 virgin cell, without even making a conquest of Kubbuz the 
 schoolmaster. Other times, other manners. Daughters 
 
DUMB LOVE. 21 
 
 with us are a sleeping capital, which must be put in circu- 
 lation if it is to yield any interest ; of old, they were kept 
 like thrifty savings, under lock and key ; yet the bankers 
 still knew where the treasure lay concealed, and how it 
 might be come at. Mother Brigitta steered towards some 
 prosperous son-in-law, who might lead her back from the 
 Babylonian captivity of the narrow lane into the land of 
 superfluity, flowing with milk and honey ; and trusted firm- 
 ly that in the urn of Fate her daughter's lot would not be 
 coupled with a blank. 
 
 One day, while neighbor Franz was looking from the 
 window, making observations on the weather, he perceived 
 the charming Meta coming with her mother from church, 
 whither she went daily, to attend mass. In the times of his 
 abundance, the unstable voluptuary had been blind to the 
 fairer half of the species ; the finer feelings were still slum- 
 bering in his breast ; and all his senses had been overclouded 
 by the ceaseless tumult of debauchery. But now the stor- 
 my waves of extravagance had subsided ; and in this deep 
 calm the smallest breath of air sufficed to curl the mirror 
 surface of his soul. He was enchanted by the aspect of 
 this, the loveliest female figure that had ever flitted past 
 him. He abandoned, from that hour, the barren study of the 
 winds and clouds, and now instituted quite another set of 
 Observations for the furtherance of Moral Science, and one 
 which afforded to himself much finer occupation. He soon 
 extracted from his landlord intelligence of this fair neighbor, 
 and learned most part of what we know already. 
 
 Now rose on him the first repentant thought for his heed- 
 less squandering ; there awoke a secret good-will in his 
 heart to this new acquaintance ; and for her sake he wished 
 that his paternal inheritance were his own again, that the 
 lovely Meta might be fitly dowered with it. His garret in 
 the narrow lane was now so dear to him, that he would not 
 
22 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 have exchanged it with the Schudding itself.* Throughout 
 the day he stirred not from the window, watching for an 
 opportunity of glancing at the dear maiden ; and when she 
 chanced to show herself, he felt more rapture in his soul 
 than did Horrox in his Liverpool Observatory, when he saw, 
 for the first time, Venus passing over the disk of the 
 Sun. 
 
 Unhappily the watchful mother instituted counter-observa- 
 tions, and ere long discovered what the lounger on the other 
 side was driving at ; and as Franz, in the capacity of spend- 
 thrift, already stood in very bad esteem with her, this daily 
 gazing angered her so much, that she shrouded her lattice 
 as with a cloud, and drew the curtains close together. 
 Meta had the strictest orders not again to appear at the win- 
 dow ; and when her mother went with her to mass, she 
 drew a rain-cap over her face, disguised her like a favorite 
 of the Grand Seignior, and hurried till she turned the corner 
 with her, and escaped the eyes of the lier-in-wait. 
 
 Of Franz, it was not held that penetration was his master 
 faculty ; but Love awakens all the talents of the mind. He 
 observed that by his imprudent spying he had betrayed 
 himself; and he thenceforth retired from the window, with 
 the resolution not again to lookout at it, though the Venera- 
 bih itself were carried by. On the other hand, he medi- 
 tated some invention for proceeding with his observations 
 in a private manner ; and without great labor his combining 
 spirit mastered it. 
 
 He hired the largest looking-glass that he could find, and 
 hung it up in his room, with such an elevation and direction, 
 that he could distinctly see whatever passed in the dwelling 
 of his neighbors. Here, as for several days the watcher 
 
 * One of ihe largest buildings in Bremen, where the meetings of 
 the merchants are usually held, 
 
DUMB LOVE. 23 
 
 did not come to light, the screens by degrees went asunder ; 
 and the broad mirror now and then could catch the form of 
 the noble maid, and, to the great refreshment of the virtuoso, 
 cast it truly back. The more deeply love took root in his 
 heart,* the more widely did his wishes extend. It now 
 struck him that he ought to lay his passion open to the fair 
 Meta, and investigate the corresponding state of her opin- 
 ions. The commonest and readiest way which lovers, under 
 such a constellation of their wishes, strike into, was in his 
 position inaccessible. In those modest ages, it was always 
 difficult for Paladins in love to introduce themselves to 
 daughters of the family ; toilette calls were not in fashion ; 
 trustful interviews tete-a-tete were punished by the loss of 
 reputation to the female sharer ; promenades, esplanades, 
 masquerades, pic-nics, goutes, soupes, and other inventions 
 of modern wit for forwarding sweet courtship, had not then 
 been hit upon ; yet, notwithstanding, all things went their 
 course, much as they do with us. Gossipings, weddings, 
 lykewakes, were, especially in our Imperial Cities, privileg- 
 ed vehicles for carrying on soft secrets, and expediting 
 marriage contracts ; hence the old proverb, One wedding 
 makes a score. But a poor runagate no man desired to 
 number among his baptismal relatives ; to no nuptial dinner, 
 to no wake-supper, was he bidden. The by-way of nego- 
 tiating, with the woman, with the young maid, or any other 
 serviceable spirit of a go-between, was here locked up. 
 Mother Brigitta had neither maid nor woman ; the flax and 
 yarn trade passed through no hands but her own ; and she 
 abode by her daughter as closely as her shadow. 
 
 In these circumstances, it was clearly impossible for 
 neighbor Franz to disclose his heart to the fair Mela, either 
 verbally or in writing. Ere long, however, he invented an 
 
 * ^ jLnh rov oQav tQ/irai to iQav. 
 
24 
 
 MU5AEUS. 
 
 idiom, which appeared expressly calculated for the utter- 
 ance of the passions. It is true, the honor of the first in- 
 vention is not his. Many ages ago, the sentimental Cela- 
 dons of Italy and Spain had taught melting harmonies, in 
 serenades beneath the balconies of their dames, to speak 
 the language of the heart ; and it is said that this melodi- 
 ous pathos had especial virtue in love matters ; and, by the 
 confession of the ladies, was more heart-affecting and sub- 
 duing, than of yore the oratory of the reverend Chrysostom, 
 or the pleadings of Demosthenes and Tully. But of all this 
 the simple Bremer had not heard a syllable ; and, conse- 
 quently, the invention of expressing his emotions in sym- 
 phonious notes, and trilling them to his beloved Meta, was 
 entirely his own. 
 
 In an hour of sentiment, he took his lute ; he did not 
 now tune it merely to accompany his voice, but drew har- 
 monious melodies from its strings ; and Love, in less than 
 a month, had changed the musical scraper to a new Am- 
 phion. His first efforts did not seem to have been noticed ; 
 but soon the population of the lane were all ear, every time 
 the dilettante struck a note. Mothers hushed their children, 
 fathers drove the noisy urchins from the doors, and the per- 
 former had the satisfaction to observe that Meta herself, 
 with her alabaster hand, would sometimes open the window 
 as he began to prelude. If he succeeded in enticing her to 
 lend an ear, his voluntaries whirled along in gay allegro, or 
 skipped away in mirthful jigs ; but if the turning of the 
 spindle, or her thrifty mother, kept her back, a heavy-laden 
 andante rolled over the bridge of the sighing lute, and ex- 
 pressed, in languishing modulations, the feeling of sadness 
 which love-pain poured over his soul. 
 
 Meta was no dull scholar ; she soon learned to interpret 
 this expressive speech. She made various experiments to 
 try whether she had rightly understood it, and found that 
 
DUMB LOVE. 25 
 
 she could govern at her will the dilettante humors of the 
 unseen lute-twanger; for your silent, modest maidens, it is 
 well known, have a much sharper eye than those giddy, 
 flighty girls who hurry with the levity of butterflies from 
 one object to another, and take proper heed of none. She 
 felt her female vanity a little flattered ; and it pleased her 
 that she had it in her power, by a secret magic, to direct 
 the neighboring lute, and tune it now to the note of joy, now 
 to the whimpering moan of grief. Mother Brigitta, on the 
 other hand, had her head so constantly employed with her 
 traffic on the small scale, that she minded none of these 
 things ; and the sly little daughter took especial care to keep 
 her in the dark respecting the discovery ; and, instigated 
 either by some touch of kindness for her cooing neighbor, 
 or perhaps by vanity, that she might show her hermeneutic 
 penetration, meditated on the means of making some sym- 
 bolical response to these harmonious apostrophes to her 
 heart. She expressed a wish to have flower-pots on the 
 outside of the window ; and to grant her this innocent amuse- 
 ment was a light thing for the mother, who no longer feared 
 the coney-catching neighbor, now that she no longer saw 
 him with her eyes. 
 
 Henceforth Meta had a frequent call to tend her flowers, 
 to water them, to bind them up, and guard them from ap- 
 proaching storms, and watch their growth and flourishing. 
 With inexpressible delight the happy Franz explained this 
 hieroglyphic altogether in his favor ; and the speaking lute 
 did not fail to modulate his glad emotions, through the alley, 
 into the heedful ear of the fair friend of flowers. This, in 
 her tender virgin heart, worked wonders. She began to be 
 secretly vexed, when mother Brigitta, in her wise table-talk, 
 in which at times she spent an hour chatting with her 
 daughter, brought their melodious neighbor to her bar, and 
 called him a losel and a sluggard, or compared him with 
 
 vol. i. 3 
 
26 MUSAEUS. 
 
 the Prodigal in the Gospel. She always took his part ; 
 threw the blame of his ruin on the sorrowful temptations he 
 had met with ; and accused him of nothing worse than not 
 having fitly weighed the golden proverb, A penny saved is 
 a penny got. Yet she defended him with cunning prudence; 
 so that it rather seemed as if she wished to help the conver- 
 sation, than took any interest in the thing itself. 
 
 While Mother Brigitta within her four walls was inveigh- 
 ing against the luckless spendthrift, he on his side entertained 
 the kindest feelings towards her ; and was considering dili- 
 gently how he might, according to his means, improve her 
 straitened circumstances, and divide with her the little that 
 remained to him, and so that she might never notice that a 
 portion of his property had passed over into hers. This 
 pious outlay, in good truth, was specially intended not for 
 the mother, but the daughter. Underhand he had come to 
 know, that the fair Meta had a hankering for a new gown, 
 which her mother had excused herself from buying, under 
 pretext of hard times. Yet he judged quite accurately, that 
 a present of a piece of stuff, from an unknown hand, would 
 scarcely be received, or cut into a dress for Meta ; and that 
 he should spoil all, if he stept forth and avowed himself the 
 author of the benefaction. Chance afforded him an oppor- 
 tunity to realize this purpose in the way he wished. 
 
 Mother Brigitta was complaining to a neighbor that flax 
 was very dull ; that it cost her more to purchase than the 
 buyers of it would repay ; and that hence this branch of 
 industry was nothing better, for the present, than a withered 
 bough. Eaves-dropper Franz did not need a second telling ; 
 he ran directly to the goldsmith, sold his mother's ear-rings, 
 bought some stones of flax, and, by means of a negotia- 
 tress, whom he gained, had it offered to the mother for a 
 cheap price. The bargain was concluded ; and it yielded 
 so richly, that on All-Saints' day the fair Meta sparkled in a 
 
DUMB LOVE. 27 
 
 fine new gown. In this decoration, she had such a splen- 
 dor in her watchful neighbor's eyes, that he would have over- 
 looked the Eleven Thousand Virgins, all and sundry, had 
 it been permitted him to choose a heart's-mate from among 
 them, and fixed upon the charming Meta. 
 
 But just as he was triumphing in the result of his inno- 
 cent deceit, the secret was betrayed. Mother Brigitta had 
 resolved to do the flax- retailer, who had brought her that 
 rich gain, a kindness in her turn ; and was treating her with 
 a well-sugared rice-pap, and a quarter-stoop of Spanish sack. 
 This dainty set in motion not only the toothless jaw, but 
 also the garrulous tongue of the crone. She engaged to con- 
 tinue the flax-brokerage, should her consigner feel inclined, 
 as from good grounds she guessed he would. One word 
 produced another ; Mother Eve's two daughters searched, 
 with the curiosity peculiar to their sex, till at length the 
 brittle seal of female secrecy gave way. Meta grew pale 
 with affright at the discovery, which would have charmed 
 her, had her mother not partaken of it. But she knew her 
 strict ideas of morals and decorum ; and these gave her 
 doubts about the preservation of her gown. The serious 
 dame herself was no less struck at the tidings, and wished, 
 on her side too, that she alone had got intelligence of the 
 specific nature of her flax-trade ; for she dreaded that this 
 neighborly munificence might make an impression on her 
 daughter's heart, which would derange her whole calcula- 
 tions. She resolved, therefore, to root out the still tender 
 germ of this weed, in the very act, from the maiden heart. 
 The gown, in spite of all the tears and prayers of its lovely 
 owner, was first hypothecated, and next day transmitted to 
 the huckster's shop; the money raised from it, with the 
 other profits of the flax speculation, accurately reckoned up, 
 were packed together, and under, the name of an old debt, 
 returned to " Mr. Franz Melcherson, in Bremen," by help of 
 
28 MUSAEUS. 
 
 the Hamburg post. The receiver, nothing doubting, took the 
 little lot of money as an unexpected blessing ; wished that 
 all his j father's debtors would clear off their old scores as 
 conscientiously as this honest, unknown person ; and had not 
 the smallest notion of the real position of affairs. The talk- 
 ing brokeress, of course, was far from giving him a true 
 disclosure of her blabbing ; she merely told him that Mo- 
 ther Brigitta had given up her flax-trade. 
 
 Meanwhile, the mirror taught him that the aspects over 
 the way had altered greatly in a single night. The flower-pots 
 were entirely vanished ; and the cloudy veil again obscured 
 the friendly horizon of the opposite window. Meta was 
 seldom visible ; and if for a moment, like the silver moon 
 from among her clouds in a stormy night, she did appear, 
 her countenance was troubled, the fire of her eyes was ex- 
 tinguished, and it seemed to him, that, at times, with her 
 finger, she pressed away a pearly tear. This seized him 
 sharply by the heart ; and his lute resounded melancholy 
 sympathy, in soft, Lydian mood. He grieved, and meditated 
 to discover why his love was sad ; but all his thinking and 
 imagining were vain. After some days were past, he no- 
 ticed, to his consternation, that his dearest piece of furniture, 
 the large mirror, had become entirely useless. He set him- 
 self one bright morning in his usual nook, and observed that 
 the clouds over the way had, like natural fog, entirely dis- 
 persed ; a sign which he at first imputed to a general wash- 
 ing ; but ere long he saw that in the chamber all was waste 
 and empty ; his pleasing neighbors had in silence with- 
 drawn the night before, and broken up their quarters. 
 
 He might now, once more, with the greatest leisure and 
 convenience, enjoy the free prospect from his window, with- 
 out fear of being troublesome to any ; but for him it was a 
 dead loss to miss the kind countenance of his Platonic love. 
 Mute and stupefied, he stood, as of old his fellow-craftsman, 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 29 
 
 the harmonious Orpheus, when the dear shadow of his Eu- 
 rydice again vanished down to Orcus ; and if the bedlam 
 humor of those " noble minds," who raved among us 
 through the by-gone lustre, but have now like drones disap- 
 peared with the earliest frost, had then been ripened to ex- 
 istence, this calm of his would certainly have passed into a 
 sudden hurricane. The least he could have done would 
 have been to pull his hair, to trundle himself about upon 
 the ground, or run his head against the wall, and break his 
 stove and window. All this he omitted ; from the very 
 simple cause, that true love never makes men fools, but 
 rather is the universal remedy for healing sick minds of 
 their foolishness, for laying gentle fetters on extravagance, 
 and guiding youthful giddiness from the broad way of ruin 
 to the narrow path of reason ; for the rake, whom love will 
 not recover, is lost irrecoverably. 
 
 When once his spirit had assembled its scattered powers, 
 he set on foot a number of instructive meditations on the 
 unexpected phenomenon, but too visible in the adjacent ho- 
 rizon. He readily conceived that he was the lever which 
 had effected the removal of the wandering colony ; his 
 money-letter, the abrupt conclusion of the flax-trade, and 
 the emigration which had followed thereupon, were like re- 
 ciprocal exponents to each other, and explained the whole to 
 him. He perceived that Mother Brigitta had got round his 
 secrets, and saw from every circumstance that he was not 
 her hero ; a discovery which yielded him but little satisfac- 
 tion. The symbolic responses of the fair Meta, with her 
 flower-pots, to his musical proposals of love ; her trouble, 
 and the tear which he had noticed in her bright eyes, shortly 
 before her departure from the lane, again animated his 
 hopes, and kept him in good heart. His first employment 
 was to go in quest, and try to learn where Mother Brigitta 
 had pitched her residence, in order to maintain, by some 
 3* 
 
30 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 means or other, his secret understanding with the daughter. 
 It cost him little toil to find her abode ; yet he was too mod- 
 est to shift his own lodging to her neighborhood ; but satis- 
 fied himself with spying out the church where she now 
 attended mass, that he might treat himself once each day 
 with a glance of his beloved. He never failed to meet her 
 as she returned, now here, now there, in some shop or door 
 which she was passing, and salute her kindly ; an equivalent 
 for a billet-doux, and productive of the same effect. 
 
 Had not Meta been brought up in a style too nunlike, and 
 guarded by her rigid mother as a treasure from the eyes of 
 thieves, there is little doubt that neighbor Franz, with his 
 secret wooing, would have made no great impression on her 
 heart. But she was at the critical age, when Mother Nature 
 and Mother Brigitta, with their wise nurture, were perpetu- 
 ally coming into collision. The former taught her, by a 
 secret instinct, the existence of emotions, for which she 
 had no name, and eulogized them as the panacea of life ; 
 the latter warned her to beware of the surprisals of a pas- 
 sion, which she would not designate by its true title, but 
 which, as she maintained, was more pernicious and destruc- 
 tive to young maidens than the small-pox itself. The former 
 in the spring of life, as beseemed the season, enlivened her 
 heart with a genial warmth ; the latter wished that it should 
 always be as cold and frosty as an ice-house. These con- 
 flicting pedagogic systems of the two good mothers gave 
 the tractable heart of the daughter the direction of a ship 
 which is steered against the wind, and follows neither the 
 wind nor the helm, but a course between the two. She 
 maintained the modesty and virtue which her education, 
 from her youth upwards, had impressed upon her ; but her 
 heart continued open to all tender feelings. And as neigh- 
 bor Franz was the first youth who had awakened these 
 slumbering emotions, she took a certain pleasure in him, 
 
DUMB LOVE. 31 
 
 which she scarcely owned to herself, but which any less 
 unexperienced maiden would have recognised as love. It 
 was for this that her departure from the narrow lane had 
 gone so near her heart; for this that the little tear had 
 trickled from her beautiful eyes ; for this, that, when the 
 watchful Franz saluted her as she came from church, she 
 thanked him so kindly, and grew scarlet to the ears. 
 The lovers had in truth never spoken any word to one 
 another ; but he understood her, and she him, so perfectly, 
 that in the most secret interview they could not have ex- 
 plained themselves more clearly ; and both contracting par- 
 ties swore in their silent hearts, each for himself, under the 
 seal of secrecy, the oath of faithfulness to the other. 
 
 In the quarter where Mother Brigitta had now settled, 
 there were likewise neighbors, and among these likewise 
 girl-spiers, whom the beauty of the charming Meta had not 
 escaped. Right opposite their dwelling lived a wealthy 
 brewer, whom the wags of the part, as he was strong in 
 means, had named the Hop-King. He was a young, stout 
 widower, whose mourning year was just concluding, so that 
 now he was entitled, without offending the precepts of de- 
 corum, to look about him elsewhere for a new helpmate to 
 his household. Shortly after the departure of his whilom 
 wife, he had in secret entered into an engagement with his 
 Patron Saint, St. Christopher, to offer him a wax-taper as 
 long as a hop-pole, and as thick as a mashing-beam, if he 
 would vouchsafe in this second choice to prosper the desire 
 of his heart. Scarcely had he seen the dainty Meta, when 
 lie dreamed that St. Christopher looked in upon him, through 
 the window of his bed-room in the second story,* and de- 
 
 * St. Christopher never appears to his favorites, like the other 
 Saints, in a solitary room encircled with a glory; there is no 
 room high enough to admit him ; thus the celestial Son of Anak 
 
32 MUSAEUS. 
 
 manded payment of his debt. To the quick widower this 
 seemed a heavenly call to cast out the net without delay. 
 Early in the morning he sent for the brokers of the town, 
 and commissioned them to buy bleached wax ; then decked 
 himself like a Syndic, and set forth to expedite his marriage 
 speculation. He had no musical talents, and in the secret 
 symbolic language of love he was no better than a block- 
 head ; but he had a rich brewery, a solid mortgage on the 
 city-revenues, a ship on the Weser, and a farm without the 
 gates. With such recommendations, he might have reckoned 
 on a prosperous issue to his courtship, independently of 
 nil assistance from St. Kit, especially as his bride was with- 
 out dowry. 
 
 According to old use and wont, he went directly to the 
 master hand, and disclosed to the mother, in a kind neigh- 
 borly way, his christian intentions towards her virtuous and 
 honorable daughter. No angel's visit could have charmed 
 the good lady more than these glad tidings. She now saw 
 ripening before her the fruit of her prudent scheme, and the 
 fulfilment of her hope again to emerge from her present 
 poverty into her former abundance ; she blessed the good 
 thought of moving from the crooked alley, and in the first 
 ebullition of her joy, as a thousand gay ideas were ranking 
 themselves up within her soul, she also thought of neighbor 
 Franz, who had given occasion to it. Though Franz was not 
 exactly her bosom-youth, she silently resolved to gladden 
 him, as the accidental instrument of her rising star, with 
 some secret gift or other, and by this means likewise 
 recompense his well-intended flax-dealing. 
 
 In the maternal heart the marriage-articles were as good 
 as signed ; but decorum did not permit these rash proceed- 
 
 is obliged to transact all business with his warcte outside the win- 
 dow. 
 
DUMB LOVE. 33 
 
 ings in a matter of such moment. She therefore let the 
 motion lie ad referendum, to be considered by her daughter 
 and herself; and appointed a term of eight days, after 
 which " she hoped she should have it in her power to give 
 the much-respected suitor a reply that would satisfy him ; " 
 all which, as the common manner of proceeding, he took in 
 good part, and with his usual civilities withdrew. No 
 sooner had he turned his back, than spinning-wheel and 
 reel, swingling-stake and hatchel, without regard being paid 
 to their faithful services, and without accusation being 
 lodged against them, were consigned, like some luckless 
 Parliament of Paris, to disgrace, and dismissed as useless 
 implements into the lumber-room. On returning from 
 mass, Meta was astonished at the sudden catastrophe which 
 Jiad occurred in the apartment ; it was all decked out as 
 On one of the three high Festivals of the year. She could 
 not understand how her thrifty mother, on a work-day, had 
 so neglectfully put her active hand in her bosom ; but be- 
 fore she had time to question the kindly-smiling dame con- 
 cerning this reform in household affairs, she was favored by 
 the latter with an explanation of the riddle. Persuasion 
 rested on Brigitta's tongue ; and there flowed from her lips 
 a stream of female eloquence, depicting the offered happi- 
 ness in the liveliest hues which her imagination could lay 
 on. She expected from the chaste Meta the blush of soft 
 virgin bashfulness, which announces the noviciate in love ; 
 and then a full resignation of herself to the maternal will. 
 For of old, in proposals of marriage, daughters were situ- 
 ated as our princesses are still ; they were not asked about 
 their inclination, and had no voice in the selection of their 
 legal helpmate, save the Yes before the altar. 
 
 But Mother Brigitta was in this point widely mistaken ; 
 the fair Meta did not at the unexpected announcement grow 
 red as a rose, but pale as ashes. An hysterical giddiness 
 
34 MUSAEUS. 
 
 swam over her brain, and she sank fainting in her mother's 
 arms. When her senses were recalled by the sprinkling of 
 cold water, and she had in some degree recovered strength, 
 her eyes overflowed with tears, as if a heavy misfortune had 
 befallen her. From all these symptoms, the sagacious moth- 
 er easily perceived that the marriage-trade was not to her 
 taste ; at which she wondered not a little, sparing neither 
 prayers nor admonitions to her daughter to secure her hap- 
 piness by this good match, not flout it from her by caprice 
 and contradiction. But Meta could not be persuaded that 
 her happiness depended on a match to which her heart 
 gave no assent. The debates between the mother and the 
 daughter lasted several days, from early morning to late 
 night ; the term for decision was approaching ; the sacred 
 taper for St. Christopher, which Og, King of Bashan,need not 
 have disdained, had it been lit for him as a marriage 
 torch at his espousals, stood in readiness, all beautifully 
 painted with living flowers like a many-colored light, 
 though the Saint had all the while been so inactive in his 
 client's cause, that the fair Meta's heart was still bolted and 
 barred against him fast as ever. 
 
 Meanwhile she had bleared her eyes with weeping, and 
 the maternal rhetoric had worked so powerfully, that, like a 
 flower in the sultry heat, she was drooping together, and 
 visibly fading away. Hidden grief was gnawing at her 
 heart ; she had prescribed herself a rigorous fast, and for 
 three days no morsel had she eaten, and with no drop of 
 water moistened her parched lips. By night sleep never 
 visited her eyes ; and with all this she grew sick to death, 
 and began to talk about extreme unction. As the tender 
 mother saw the pillar of her hope wavering, and bethought 
 herself that she might lose both capital and interest at once, 
 she found, on accurate consideration, that it would be more 
 advisable to let the latter vanish, than to miss them both ; 
 
DUMB LOVE. 35 
 
 and with kindly indulgence plied into the daughter's will. 
 It cost her much constraint, indeed, and many hard battles, 
 to turn away so advantageous an offer ; yet at last, accord- 
 ing to established order in household governments, she 
 yielded unconditionally to the inclination of her child, and 
 remonstrated no more with her beloved patient on the 
 subject. As the stout widower announced himself on the 
 appointed day, in the full trust that his heavenly deputy had 
 arranged it all according to his wish, he received, quite un- 
 expectedly, a negative answer, which, however, was sweet- 
 ened with such a deal of blandishment, that he swallowed 
 it like wine-of-wormwood mixed with sugar. For the rest, 
 he easily accommodated himself to his destiny ; and dis- 
 composed himself no more about it, than if some bargain for 
 a ton of malt had chanced to come to nothing. Nor, on 
 the whole, had he any cause to sorrow without hope. His 
 native town has never wanted amiable daughters, who come 
 up to the Solomonic sketch, and are ready to make perfect 
 spouses ; besides, notwithstanding this unprospered court- 
 ship, he depended with firm confidence upon his Patron 
 Saint ; who in fact did him such substantial service else- 
 where, that, ere a month elapsed, he had planted, with much 
 pomp, his devoted taper at the friendly shrine. 
 
 Mother Brigitta was now fain to recall the exiled spin- 
 ning-tackle from its lumber-room, and again set it in action. 
 All once more went its usual course. Meta soon bloomed 
 out anew, was active in business, and diligently went to 
 mass ; but the mother could not hide her secret grudging 
 at the failure of her hopes, and the annihilation of her 
 darling plan ; she was splenetic, peevish, and dejected. 
 Her ill-humor had especially the upper hand that day when 
 neighbor Hop-King held his nuptials. As the wedding-com- 
 pany proceeded to the church, with the town-band bedrum- 
 ming and becymballing them in the van, she whimpered 
 
36 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 and sobbed as in the evil hour when the JobVnews reached 
 her, that the wild sea had devoured her husband, with ship 
 and fortune. Meta looked at the bridal-pomp with great 
 equanimity ; even the royal ornaments, the jewels in the 
 myrtle-crown, and the nine strings of true pearls about the 
 neck of the bride, made no impression on her peace of 
 mind ; a circumstance in some degree surprising, since a 
 new Paris cap, or any other meteor in the gallery of Mode, 
 will so frequently derange the contentment and domestic 
 peace of an entire parish. Nothing but the heart-consum- 
 ing sorrow of her mother discomposed her, and overclouded 
 the gay look of her eyes ; she strove by a thousand caresses 
 and little attentions to work herself into favor; and she so 
 far succeeded, that the good lady grew a little more com- 
 municative. 
 
 In the evening, when the wedding-dance began, she said, 
 " Ah, child ! this merry dance it might have been thy part 
 to lead off. What a pleasure, hadst thou recompensed thy 
 mother's care and toil with this joy ! But thou hast mocked 
 thy happiness, and now I shall never see the day when I am 
 to attend thee to the altar." — " Dear mother," answered 
 Meta, "I confide in Heaven ; and if it is written above that 
 I am to be led to the altar, you will surely deck my garland ; 
 for when the right wooer comes, my heart will soon say 
 Yes." — " Child, for girls without dowry there is no press 
 of wooers ; they are heavy ware to trade with. Now-a-days 
 the bachelors are mighty stingy ; they court to be happy, 
 not to make happy. Besides, thy planet bodes thee no 
 good ; thou wert born in April. Let us see how it is writ- 
 ten in the Calendar : ' A damsel born in this month is comely 
 of countenance, slender of shape, but of changeful humor, 
 has a liking to men. Should have an eye upon her*maiden 
 garland, and so a laughing wooer come, not miss her for- 
 tune.' Alas, it answers to a hair ! The wooer has been 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 37 
 
 here, comes not again ; thou hast missed him." — t; Ah, 
 mother ! let the planet say its pleasure, never mind it ; my 
 heart says to me that I should love and honor the man 
 who asks me to be his wife ; and if I do not find that 
 man, or he do not seek me, I will live in good courage by 
 the labor of my hands, and stand by you, and nurse you in 
 your old age, as beseems a good daughter. But if the man 
 of my heart do come, then bless my choice, that it may be 
 well with your daughter on the earth ; and ask not whether 
 he is noble, rich, or famous, but whether he is good and 
 honest, whether he loves and is loved." — " Ah, daughter ! 
 Love keeps a sorry kitchen, and feeds one poorly, along 
 with bread and salt." — '* But yet Unity and Contentment 
 delight to dwell with him, and these season bread and salt 
 with the cheerful enjoyment of our days." 
 
 The pregnant subject of bread and salt continued to be 
 sifted till the night was far spent, and the last fiddle in the 
 wedding-dance was resting from its labors. The moderation 
 of the prudent Meta, who, with youth and beauty on her 
 side, pretended only to an altogether bounded happiness, after 
 having turned away an advantageous offer, led the mother 
 to conjecture that the plan of some such salt-trade might 
 already have been sketched in the heart of the virgin. Nor 
 did she fail to guess the trading-partner in the lane, of whom 
 she never had believed that he would be the tree for rooting 
 in the lovely Meta's heart. She had looked upon him only 
 as a wild tendril that stretches out towards every neighbor- 
 ing twig, to clamber up by means of it. This discovery 
 procured her little joy ; but she gave no hint that she had 
 made it. Only, in the spirit of her rigorous morality, she 
 compared a maiden who lets love, before the priestly bene- 
 diction, nestle in her heart, to a worm-eaten apple, which is 
 good for the eye, but no longer for the palate, and is laid 
 upon a shelf and no more heeded, for the pernicious worm 
 
 vol. i. 4 
 
38 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 is eating its internal marrow, and cannot be dislodged. She 
 now despaired of ever holding up her head again in Bre- 
 men ; submitted to her fate, and bore in silence what she 
 thought was now not to be altered. 
 
 Meanwhile the rumor of the proud Meta's having given 
 the rich Hop-King the basket spread over the town, and 
 sounded even into Franz's garret in the alley. Franz 
 was transported with joy to hear this tale confirmed ; and 
 the secret anxiety lest some wealthy rival might expel him 
 from the dear maiden's heart tormented him no more. He 
 was now certain of his object ; and the riddle, which for 
 every one continued an insoluble problem, had no mystery 
 for him. Love had already changed a spendthrift into a 
 dilettante ; but this for a bride-seeker was the very smallest 
 of recommendations, a gift which in those rude times was 
 rewarded neither with such praise nor with such pudding 
 as it is in our luxurious century. The fine arts were not 
 then children of superfluity, but of want and necessity. No 
 travelling professors were at that time known, save the 
 Prague students, whose squeaking symphonies solicited a 
 charitable coin at the doors of the rich. The beloved maid- 
 en's sacrifice was too great to be repaid by a serenade. And 
 now the feeling of his youthful dissipation became a thorn 
 in the soul of Franz. Many a touching monodrama did he 
 begin with an O and an Ah, besighing his past madness. 
 " Ah, Meta," said he to himself, " why did I not know thee 
 sooner! Thou hadst then been my guardian angel, thou 
 hadst saved me from destruction. Could I live my lost 
 years over again, and be what I was, the world were now 
 Elysium for me, and for thee I would make it an Eden ! 
 Noble maiden, thou sacrificest thyself to a wretch, to a 
 beggar, who has nothing in the world but a heart full of 
 love, and despair that he can offer thee no happiness such 
 as thou deservest." Innumerable times, in the paroxysms 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 39 
 
 of these pathetic humors, he struck his brow in fury, with 
 the repentant exclamation : " O fool ! O madman ! thou art 
 wise too late." 
 
 Love, however, did not leave its working incomplete. It 
 had already brought about a wholesome fermentation in his 
 spirit, a desire to put in use his powers and activity, to try 
 if he might struggle up from his present nothingness ; it 
 now incited him to the attempt of executing these good 
 purposes. Among many speculations he had entertained for 
 the recruiting of his wrecked finances, the most rational and 
 promising was this : to run over his father's ledgers, and 
 there note down any small escheats which had been marked 
 as lost, with a view of going through the land, and gleaning, 
 if so were that a lock of wheat might still be gathered 
 from these neglected ears. With the produce of this enter- 
 prise he would then commence some little traffic, which 
 his fancy soon extended over all the quarters of the world. 
 Already, in his mind's eye, he had vessels on the sea, which 
 were freighted with his property. He proceeded rapidly 
 to execute his purpose ; changed the last golden fragment 
 of his heritage, his father's hour-egg,* into money, and 
 bought with it a riding nag, which was to bear him as a 
 Bremen merchant out into the wide world. 
 
 Yet the parting with his fair Meta went sore against his 
 heart. " What will she think," said he to himself, "of this 
 sudden disappearance, when thou shalt no more meet her in 
 the church-way ? Will she not regard thee as faithless, 
 and banish thee from her heart ? " This thought afflicted 
 him exceedingly ; and for a great while he could think of 
 no expedient for explaining to her his intention. But at 
 last inventive Love suggested the idea of signifying to 
 
 * The oldest watches, from the shape they had, were named 
 hour-eggs. 
 
40 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 her from the pulpit itself his absence and its purpose. With 
 this view, in the church, which had already favored the 
 secret understanding of the lovers, he bought a Prayer " for 
 a young Traveller, and the happy arrangement of his 
 affairs ; " which was to last till he should come again and 
 pay his groschen for the Thanksgiving. 
 
 At the last meeting, he had dressed himself as for the 
 road ; he passed quite near his sweetheart ; saluted her ex- 
 pressively, and with less reserve than before ; so that she 
 blushed deeply ; and Mother Brigitta found opportunity for 
 various marginal notes, which indicated her displeasure at 
 the boldness of this ill-bred fop, in attempting to get speech 
 of her daughter, and with which she entertained the latter 
 not in the most pleasant style the live-long day. From that 
 morning Franz was no more seen in Bremen, and the finest 
 pair of eyes within its circuit sought for him in vain. Meta 
 often heard the Prayer read, but she did not heed it, for her 
 heart was troubled because her lover had become invisible. 
 This disappearance was inexplicable to her; she knew not 
 what to think of it. After the lapse of some months, when 
 time had a little softened her secret care, and she was suf- 
 fering his absence with a calmer mind, it happened once, as 
 the last appearance of her love was hovering upon her 
 fancy, that this same Prayer struck her as a strange matter. 
 She coupled one thing with another, she guessed the true 
 connexion of the business, and the meaning of that notice. 
 And although church litanies and special prayers have not 
 the reputation of extreme potency, and for the worthy souls 
 that lean on them are but a supple staff, inasmuch as the 
 fire of devotion in the Christian flock is wont to die out at 
 the end of the sermon ; yet in the pious Meta's case, the 
 reading of the last Prayer was the very thing which fanned 
 that fire into a flame ; and she never neglected, with her 
 whole heart, to recommend the young traveller to his guard- 
 ian angel. 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 41 
 
 Under this invisible guidance, Franz was journeying 
 towards Brabant, to call in some considerable sums that 
 were due him at Antwerp. A journey from Bremen to 
 Antwerp, in the time when road-blockades were still in 
 fashion, and every landlord thought himself entitled to 
 plunder any traveller who had purchased no safe-conduct, 
 and to leave him pining in the ward-room of his tower, 
 was an undertaking of more peril and difficulty, than in 
 our days would attend a journey from Bremen to Kamt- 
 schatka ; for the Landfried (or Act for suppressing Private 
 Wars), which the Emperor Maximilian had proclaimed, 
 was in force through the Empire rather as a law than an 
 observance. Nevertheless our solitary traveller succeeded 
 in arriving at the goal of his pilgrimage, without encoun- 
 tering more than a single adventure. 
 
 Far in the wastes of Westphalia, he rode one sultry day 
 till nightfall, without reaching any inn. Towards evening 
 stormy clouds towered up at the horizon, and a heavy 
 rain wetted him to the skin. To the fondling, who from 
 his youth had been accustomed to all possible conveniencies, 
 this was a heavy matter, and he felt himself in great em- 
 barrassment how in this condition he should pass the night. 
 To his comfort, when the tempest had moved away, he 
 saw a light in the distance ; and soon after, reached a mean 
 peasant hovel, which afforded him but little consolation. 
 The house was more like a cattle-stall than a human hab- 
 itation ; and the unfriendly landlord refused him fire and 
 water, as if he had been an outlaw. For the man was 
 just about to stretch himself upon the straw among his 
 steers ; and too tired to relight the fire on his hearth, for 
 the sake of a stranger. Franz in his despondency uplifted 
 a mournful miserere, and cursed the Westphalian steppes 
 with strong maledictions; but the peasant took it all in 
 good part ; and blew out his light with great composure, 
 4* 
 
42 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 troubling himself no farther about the stranger; for in the 
 laws of hospitality he was altogether uninstructed. But 
 as the wayfarer, standing at the door, would not cease 
 to annoy him with his lamentations, he endeavored in 
 a civil way to get rid of him, consented to answer, and 
 said : " Master, if you want good entertainment, and would 
 treat yourself handsomely, you could not find what you 
 are seeking here. But ride thereto the left hand, through the 
 bushes; a little way behind, lies the Castle of the valiant 
 Eberhard Bronkhorst, a knight who lodges every traveller, 
 as a Hospitaller does the pilgrims from the Holy Sepulchre. 
 Ho has just one maggot in his head, which sometimes 
 twitches and vexes him ; he lets no traveller depart from 
 him unbasted. If you do not lose your way, though he 
 may dust your jacket, you will like your cheer prodig- 
 iously." 
 
 To buy a mess of pottage, and a stoop of wine, by 
 surrendering one's ribs to the bastinado, is in truth no job 
 for every man, though your spungers and plate-lickers let 
 themselves be tweaked and snubbed, and from rich artists 
 willingly endure all kinds of tar-and-feathering, so their 
 palates be but tickled for the service. Franz considered 
 for a while, and was undetermined what to do ; at last he 
 resolved on fronting the adventure. " What is it to me," 
 said he, " whether my back be broken here on miserable 
 straw, or by the Ritter Bronkhorst? The friction will ex- 
 pel the fever which is coming on, and shake me tightly if 
 I cannot dry my clothes." He put spurs to his nag, and 
 soon arrived before a castle-gate of old Gothic architecture ; 
 knocked pretty plainly on the iron door, and an equally 
 distinct " Who's there?" resounded from within. To the 
 freezing passenger, the long entrance ceremonial of this 
 door-keeper precognition was as inconvenient as are sim- 
 ilar delays to travellers who, at barriers and gates of towns , 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 43 
 
 bewail or execrate the despotism of guards and tollmen. 
 Nevertheless he must submit to use and wont, and patiently 
 wait to see whether the philanthropist in the Castle was 
 disposed that night for cudgelling a guest, or would choose 
 rather to assign him a couch under the open canopy. 
 
 The possessor of this ancient tower had served, in his 
 youth, as a stout soldier in the Emperor's army, under 
 the bold Georg von Fronsberg, and led a troop of foot 
 against the Venetians; had afterwards retired to repose, 
 and was now living on his property ; where, to expiate 
 the sins of his campaigns, he employed himself in doing 
 good works; in feeding the hungry, giving drink to the 
 thirsty, lodging pilgrims, and cudgelling his lodgers out 
 of doors. For he was a rude, wild son of war ; and could 
 not lay aside his martial tone, though he had lived for 
 many years in silent peace. The traveller, who had now 
 determined for good quarters to submit to the custom of 
 the house, had not waited long till the bolts and locks began 
 rattling within, and the creaking gate-leaves moved asunder, 
 moaning in doleful notes, as if to warn or to deplore the 
 entering stranger. Franz felt one cold shudder after the 
 other running down his back, as he passed in ; nevertheless 
 he was handsomely received ; some servants hastened to 
 assist him in dismounting, speedily unbuckled his luggage, 
 took his steed to the stable, and its rider to a large, well- 
 lighted chamber, where their master was in waiting. 
 '■, The warlike aspect of this athletic gentleman, — who 
 advanced to meet his guest, and shook him by the hand 
 so heartily that he was like to shout with pain, and bade 
 him welcome with a Stentor's voice, as if the stranger had 
 been deaf, and seemed withal to be a person still in the 
 vigor of life, full of fire and strength, — put the timorous 
 wanderer into such a terror that he could not hide his 
 apprehensions, and began to tremble over all his body. 
 
44 MUSAEUS. 
 
 " Wliat ails you, my young master," asked the Ritter, 
 with a voice of thunder, " that you quiver like an aspen 
 leaf, and look as pale as if Death had you by the throat ? " 
 
 Franz plucked up a spirit ; and considering that his 
 shoulders had at all events the score to pay, his poltroonery 
 passed into a species of audacity. 
 
 "Sir," replied he, "you perceive that the rain has soaked 
 me, as if I had swum across the Weser. Let me have my 
 clothes dried or changed ; and get me, by way of luncheon, 
 a well-spiced aleberry, to drive away the ague-fit that is 
 quaking through my nerves; then I shall come to heart, 
 in some degree." 
 
 " Good !" replied the Knight ; " demand what you want ; 
 you are at home here." 
 
 Franz made himself be served like a bashaw; and having 
 nothing else but currying to expect, he determined to de- 
 serve it; he bantered and bullied, in his most imperious 
 style, the servants that were waiting on him ; it comes all 
 to one, thought he, in the long run. " This waistcoat," said 
 he, " would go round a tun ; bring me one that fits a little 
 belter ; this slipper burns like a coal against my corns, 
 pitch it over the lists ; this ruff is stiff as a plank, and 
 throttles me like a halter; bring one that is easier, and is 
 not plastered with starch." 
 
 At this Bremish frankness, the landlord, far from show- 
 ing any anger, kept inciting his servants to go briskly 
 through with their commands, and calling them a pack of 
 blockheads, who were fit to serve no stranger. The table 
 being furnished, the Hitter and his guest sat down to it, 
 and both heartily enjoyed their aleberry. The Ritter asked, 
 " Would you have aught farther, by way of supper ? " 
 
 " Bring us what you have," said Franz, " that I may see 
 how your kitchen is provided." 
 
 Immediately appeared the Cook, and placed upon the 
 
DUMB LOVE. 45 
 
 table a repast with which a duke might have been satisfied. 
 Franz diligently fell to, without waiting to be pressed. When 
 he had satisfied himself, "Your kitchen," said he, "is not 
 ill furnished, I perceive ; if your cellar corresponds to it, 
 I shall almost praise your house-keeping." 
 
 Bronkhorst nodded to his Butler, who directly filled the 
 cup of welcome with common table wine, tasted, and pre- 
 sented it to his master, and the latter cleared it at a draught 
 to the health of his guest. Franz pledged him honestly, 
 and Bronkhorst asked, " Now, fair sir, what say you to 
 the wine ? " 
 
 " I say, n answered Franz, " that it is bad, if it is the best 
 sort in your catacombs ; and good, if it is your meanest 
 number." 
 
 " You are a judge," replied the Hitter. " Here, Butler, 
 bring us of the mother-cask." 
 
 The Butler put a stoop upon the table, as a sample, and 
 Franz, having tasted it, said, "Ay, this is genuine last year's 
 growth ; we will stick by this." 
 
 The Hitter made a vast pitcher of it be brought in ; soon 
 drank himself into hilarity and glee beside his guest ; began 
 to talk of his campaigns, how he had been encamped 
 against the Venetians, had broken through their barricado, 
 and butchered the Italian squadrons, like a flock of sheep. 
 In this narrative he rose into such a warlike enthusiasm, 
 that he hewed down bottles and glasses, brandishing the 
 carving-knife like a lance, and in the fire of action came 
 so near his messmate with it, that the latter was in fright 
 for his nose and ears. 
 
 It grew late, but no sleep came into the eyes of the 
 Ritter; he seemed to be in his proper element, when he 
 got to speak of his Venetian campaigns. The vivacity^of 
 his narration increased with every cup he emptied ; and 
 Franz was afraid that this would prove the prologue to the 
 
46 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 melodrama, in which he himself was to play the most 
 interesting part. To learn whether it was meant that he 
 should lodge within the Castle, or without, he demanded a 
 bumper by way of good-night. Now, he thought, his host 
 would first force him to drink more wine, and if he refused, 
 would, under pretext of a drinking quarrel, send him forth, 
 according to the custom of the house, with the usual viati- 
 cum. Contrary to his expectation, the request was granted 
 without remonstrance; the Ritter instantly cut asunder the 
 thread of his narrative, and said, " Time will wait on no 
 one ; more of it to-morrow ! " 
 
 " Pardon me, Herr Ritter," answered Franz, " to-morrow 
 by sunrise I must over hill and dale; I am travelling a far 
 journey to Brabant, and must not linger here. So let me 
 take leave of you to-night, that my departure may not 
 disturb you in the morning." 
 
 "Do your pleasure," said the Ritter; "but depart from 
 this you shall not, till I am out of the feathers, to refresh 
 you with a bit of bread, and a toothful of Dantzig, then 
 attend you to the door, and dismiss you according to the 
 fashion of the house." 
 
 Franz needed no interpretation of these words. Will- 
 ingly as he would have excused his host this last civility, 
 attendance to the door, the latter seemed determined to 
 abate no whit of the established ritual. He ordered his 
 servants to undress the stranger, and put him in the guest's- 
 bed ; where Franz, once settled on elastic swan's-down, 
 felt himself extremely snug, and enjoyed delicious rest ; so 
 that, ere he fell asleep, he owned to himself that, for such 
 royal treatment, a moderate bastinado was not too dear a 
 price. Soon pleasant dreams came hovering round his 
 fancy. He found his charming Meta in a rosy grove, where 
 she was walking with her mother, plucking flowers. In- 
 stantly he hid himself behind a thick-leaved hedge, that the 
 
DUMB LOVE. 47 
 
 rigorous duenna might not see him. Again his imagination 
 placed him in the alley, and by his looking-glass he saw the 
 snow-white hand of the maiden busied with her flowers ; 
 soon he was sitting with her on the grass, and longing to 
 declare his heartfelt love to her, and the bashful shepherd 
 found no words to do it in. He would have dreamed till 
 broad mid-day\ had he not been roused by the sonorous voice 
 and clanking spurs of the Ritter, who, with the earliest 
 dawn, was holding a review of kitchen and cellar, ordering 
 a sufficient breakfast to be readied, and placing every ser- 
 vant at his post, to be at hand, when the guest should awake, 
 to dress him, and wait upon him. 
 
 It cost the happy dreamer no small struggling to forsake 
 his safe and hospitable bed ; he rolled to this side and to 
 that ; but the pealing voice of the worshipful Knight came 
 heavy on his heart; and dally as he might, the sour apple 
 must at last be bit. So he rose from his down; and imme- 
 diately a dozen hands were busy dressing him. The Ritter 
 led him into the parlor, where a small, well-furnished table 
 waited them ; but now, when the hour of reckoning had ar- 
 rived, the traveller's appetite was gone. The host endeav- 
 ored to encourage him. " Why do you not get to ? Come, 
 take somewhat for the raw, foggy morning." 
 
 " H'err Ritter," answered Franz, " my stomach is still too 
 full of your supper ; but my pockets are empty ; these I 
 may fill for the hunger that is to come." 
 
 With this he began stoutly cramming, and stowed himself 
 with the daintiest and best that was transportable, till all his 
 pockets were bursting. Then observing that his horse, well 
 curried and equipt, was led past, he took a dram of Dant- 
 zig, for good-b'ye, in the thought that this would be the 
 watch-word for his host to catch him by the neck, and exer- 
 cise his household privileges. 
 
 But to his astonishment, the Ritter shook him kindly by 
 
48 MUSAEUS. 
 
 the hand, as at his first entrance, wished him luck by the 
 way, and the bolted door was thrown open. He loitered 
 not in putting spurs to his nag ; and, tip ! tap ! he was with- 
 out the gate, and no hair of him harmed. 
 
 A heavy stone was lifted from his heart, as he found him- 
 self in safety, and saw that he had got away with a whole 
 skin. He could not understand how the landlord had trusted 
 him the shot, which, as he imagined, must have run pretty 
 high on the chalk ; and he embraced with warm love the 
 hospitable man, whose club-law arm he had so much dread- 
 ed ; and he felt a strong desire to search out, at the foun- 
 tain-head, the reason or unreason of the ill report which had 
 affrighted him. Accordingly, he turned his horse, and can- 
 tered back. The Knight was still standing in the gate, and 
 descanting with his servants, for the forwarding of the sci- 
 ence of horse-flesh, on the breed, shape, and character of 
 the nag and his hard pace ; he supposed the stranger must 
 have missed something in his travelling gear, and he already 
 looked askance at his servants for such negligence. 
 
 " What is it, young master," cried he, " that makes you 
 turn again, when you were for proceeding? " 
 
 "Ah! yet a word, valiant Knight," cried the traveller. 
 " An ill report has gone abroad, that injures your name and 
 breeding. It is said that you treat every stranger that calls 
 upon you with your best ; and then, when he leaves you, 
 let him feel the weight of your strong fists. This story I 
 have credited, and spared nothing to deserve my due from 
 you. I thought within myself, His worship will abate me 
 nothing ; I will abate him as little. But now you let me go 
 without strife or peril ; and that is what surprises me. Pray, 
 tell me, is there any shadow of foundation for the thing, or 
 shall I call the foolish chatter lies next time I hear it? " 
 
 The Hitter answered. " Report has nowise told you lies ; 
 there is no saying, that circulates among the people, but 
 
DUMB LOVE. 49 
 
 contains in it some grain of truth. Let me tell you accu- 
 rately how the matter stands. I lodge every stranger that 
 comes beneath my roof, and divide my morsel with him, for 
 the love of God. But I am a plain German man, of the 
 old cut and fashion ; speak as it lies about my heart, and 
 require that my guest also should be hearty and confiding ; 
 should enjoy with me what I have, and tell frankly what he 
 wants. Now, there is a sort of people that vex me with all 
 manner of grimaces ; that banter me with smirkings, and 
 bows, and crouchings ; put all their words to the torture ; 
 make a deal of talk without sense or salt ; think they will 
 cozen me with smooth speeches ; behave at dinner as women 
 at a christening. If I say, Help yourself! out of reverence, 
 they pick you a fraction from the plate, which I would not 
 offer to my dog; if I say, Your health! they scarcely wet 
 their lips from the full cup, as if they set God's gifts at 
 nought. Now, when the sorry rabble carry things too far 
 with me, and I cannot, for the soul of me, know what they 
 would be at, I get into a rage at last, and use my household 
 privilege ; catch the noodle by the spall, thrash him suffi- 
 ciently, and packhi mout of doors. This is the use and 
 wont with me, and I do so with every guest that plagues me 
 with these freaks. But a man of your stamp is always 
 welcome. You told me plump out in plain German what you 
 thought, as is the fashion with the Bremers. Call on me 
 boldly again, if your road lead you hither. And so, God 
 be with you." 
 
 Franz now moved on, with a joyful humor, towards Ant- 
 werp ; and he wished that he might everywhere find such 
 a reception as he had met with from the Ritter Eberhard 
 Bronkhorst. On approaching the ancient Queen of the 
 Flemish cities, the sail of his hope was swelled by a pro- 
 pitious breeze. Riches and superfluity met him in every 
 street ; and it seemed as if scarcity and want had been 
 
 vol. i. 5 
 
50 MUSAEUS. 
 
 exiled from the busy town. In all probability, thought he, 
 there must be many of my father's debtors who have risen 
 again, and will gladly make me full payment whenever I 
 substantiate my claims. After resting for a while from his 
 fatigues, he set about obtaining, in the inn where he was 
 quartered, some preliminary knowledge of the situation of 
 his debtors. 
 
 " How stands it with Peter Martens ? " inquired he, one 
 day, of his companions at table ; " is he still living, and 
 doing much business ? " 
 
 " Peter Martens is a warm man," answered one of the 
 party; "has a brisk commission trade, and draws good 
 profit from it." 
 
 " Is Fabian van Pliirs still in good circumstances ? " 
 
 " O ! there is no end to Fabian's wealth. He is a Coun- 
 cillor ; his woollen manufactories are thriving incredi- 
 bly." 
 
 " Has Jonathan Frischkier good custom in his trade ? " 
 
 " Ah ! Jonathan were now a brisk fellow, had not Kaiser 
 Max let the French chouse him out of his Princess.* Jon- 
 athan had got the furnishing of the lace for the bride's dress, 
 but the Kaiser has left poor Frischkier in the lurch, as the 
 bride has left himself. If you have a fair one, whom you 
 would remember with a bit of lace, he will give it you at 
 half price.'* 
 
 " Is the firm Op de Biitekant still standing, or has it 
 sunk ? " 
 
 « There was a crack in the beams there some years ago ; 
 but the Spanish caravelles have put a new prop to it, and 
 it now holds fast." 
 
 Franz inquired about several other merchants, who were 
 on his list ; found that most of them, though in his father's 
 
 * Anne of Brittany. 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 51 
 
 time they had " failed," were now standing firmly on their 
 legs ; and inferred from this, that a judicious bankruptcy 
 has, from of old, been the mine of future gains. This in- 
 telligence refreshed him mightily. He hastened to put his 
 documents in order, and submit them to the proper parties. 
 But with the Antwerpers, he fared as his itinerating country- 
 men do with shopkeepers in the German towns ; they find 
 everywhere a friendly welcome at their first appearance, 
 but are looked upon with cheerfulness nowhere, when they 
 come collecting debts. Some would have nothing to do 
 with these former sins ; and were of opinion, that by the 
 tender of the legal five-per-cent composition they had been 
 entirely abolished ; it was the creditor's fault if he had not 
 accepted payment in time. Others could not recollect any 
 Melchior of Bremen ; opened their Infallible Books ; found 
 no debtor-entry marked for this unknown name. Others, 
 again, brought out a strong counter-reckoning ; and three 
 days had not passed, till Franz was sitting in the Debtors' 
 Ward, to answer for his father's credit, not to depart till he 
 had paid the uttermost farthing. 
 
 These were not the best prospects for the young man, 
 who had set his hope and trust upon the Antwerp patrons of 
 his fortune, and now saw the fair soap-bubble vanish quite 
 away. In his strait confinement, he felt himself in the con- 
 dition of a soul in Purgatory, now that his skiff had run 
 ashore and gone to pieces, in the middle of the haven where 
 he thought to find security. Every thought of Meta was as a 
 thorn in his heart ; there was now no shadow of a possibil- 
 ity, that from the whirlpool which had sunk him he could 
 ever rise, and stretch out his hand to her ; nor, suppose he 
 should get his head above water, was it in poor Meta's 
 power to pull him on dry land. He fell into a sullen des- 
 peration ; had no wish but to die speedily, and give his woes 
 the slip at once ; and, in fact, he did attempt to kill himself 
 
52 MUSAEUS. 
 
 by starvation. But this is a sort of death which is not at 
 the beck of every one, so ready as the shrunk Pomponius 
 Atticus found it, when his digestive apparatus had already 
 struck work. A sound, peptic stomach does not yield so 
 tamely to the precepts of the head or heart. After the mori- 
 bund debtor had abstained two days from food, a ravenous 
 hunger suddenly usurped the government of his will, and 
 performed, of its own authority, all the operations which, in 
 other cases, are directed by the mind. It ordered his hand 
 to seize the spoon, his mouth to receive the victual, his in- 
 ferior maxillary jaw to get in motion, and itself accomplish- 
 ed the usual functions of digestion, unordered. Thus did 
 this last resolve make shipwreck, on a hard bread-crust ; 
 for, in the seven-and-twentieth year of life, it has a hero- 
 ism connected with it, which in the seven-and-seventieth is 
 entirely gone. 
 
 At bottom, it was not the object of the barbarous Ant- 
 werpers to squeeze money from the pretended debtor, but 
 only to pay him none, as his demands were not admitted to 
 be liquid. Whether it were, then, that the public Prayer in 
 Bremen had in truth a little virtue, or that the supposed 
 creditors were not desirous of supporting a superfluous 
 boarder for life, true it is, that, after the lapse of three 
 months, Franz was delivered from his imprisonment, under 
 the condition of leaving the city within four-and-twenty 
 hours, and never again setting foot on the soil and territory 
 of Antwerp. At the same time, he received five crowns 
 for travelling expenses from the faithful hands of Justice, 
 which had taken charge of his horse and luggage, and 
 conscientiously balanced the produce of the same against 
 judicial and curatory expenses. 
 
 With heavy-laden heart, in the humblest mood, with his 
 staff in his hand, he left the rich city, into which he had 
 ridden some time ago with high-soaring hopes. Broken 
 
DUMB LOVE. 53 
 
 down, and undetermined what to do, or rather altogether 
 without thought, he plodded through the streets to the near- 
 est gate, not minding whither the road into which chance 
 conducted him might lead. He saluted no traveller, he 
 asked for no inn, except when fatigue or hunger forced him 
 to lift up his eyes, and look around for some church-spire, 
 or sign of human habitation, when he needed human aid. 
 Many days he had wandered on, as if unconsciously ; and 
 a secret instinct had still, by means of his uncrazed feet, led 
 him right forward on the way to home ; when, all at once, 
 he awoke as from an oppressive dream, and perceived on 
 what road he was travelling. 
 
 He halted instantly, to consider whether he should pro- 
 ceed or turn back. Shame and confusion took possession 
 of his soul, when he thought of skulking about in his native 
 town as a beggar, branded with the mark of contempt, and 
 claiming the charitable help of his townsmen, whom of old 
 he had eclipsed by his wealth and magnificence. And how 
 in this form could he present himself before his fair Meta, 
 without disgracing the choice of her heart ? He did not 
 leave his fancy time to finish this doleful picture ; but wheel- 
 ed about to take the other road, as hastily as if he had been 
 standing even then at the gate of Bremen, and the ragged 
 apprentices had been assembling to accompany him with 
 jibes and mockery through the streets. His purpose was 
 formed ; he would make for the nearest seaport in the Neth- 
 erlands ; engage as sailor in a Spanish ship, to work his 
 passage to the new world ; and not return to his country, 
 till in the Peruvian land of gold he should have regained the 
 wealth, which he had squandered so heedlessly, before he 
 knew the worth of money. In the shaping of this new 
 plan, it is true, the fair Meta fell so far into the back-ground, 
 that even to the sharpest prophetic eye she could only hover 
 as a faint shadow in the distance ; yet the wandering pro- 
 5* 
 
54 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 jector pleased himself with thinking that she was again in- 
 terwoven with the scheme of his life ; and he took large 
 steps, as if by this rapidity he meant to reach her so much 
 the sooner. 
 
 Already he was on the Flemish soil once more ; and 
 found himself at sunset not far from Rheinberg, in a little 
 hamlet, Rummelsburg by name, which has since, in the 
 Thirty Years' War, been utterly destroyed. A caravan of 
 carriers from Lyke had already filled the inn, so that Mine 
 Host had no room left, and referred him to the next town ; 
 the rather that he did not draw too flattering a presage from 
 his present vagabond physiognomy, and held him to be a 
 thieves' purveyor, who had views upon the Lyke carriers. 
 He was forced, notwithstanding his excessive weariness, to 
 gird himself for march, and again to take his bundle on his 
 back. 
 
 As in retiring, he was muttering between his teeth some 
 bitter complaints and curses of the Landlord's hardness of 
 heart, the latter seemed to take some pity on the forlorn 
 wayfarer, and called after him, from the door : " Stay, 
 neighbor, let me speak to you ; if you wish to rest here, I 
 can accommodate you after all. In that Castle there are 
 empty rooms enow, if they be not too lonely ; it is not in- 
 habited, and I have got the keys." Franz accepted the pro- 
 posal with joy, praised it as a deed of mercy, and requested 
 only shelter and a supper, were it in a castle or a cottage. 
 Mine Host, however, was privily a rogue, whom ithad galled 
 to hear the stranger drop some half-audible contumelies 
 against him, and meant to be avenged on him, by a Hobgob- 
 lin that inhabited the old fortress^ and had many long years 
 before expelled the owners. 
 
 The Castle lay hard by the hamlet, on a steep rock, right 
 opposite the inn, from which it was divided merely by the 
 highway, and a little gurgling brook. The situation being 
 
DUMB LOVE. 55 
 
 so agreeable, the edifice was still kept in repair, and well 
 provided with all sorts of house-gear ; for it served the 
 owner as a hunting-lodge, where he frequently caroused 
 all day ; and so soon as the stars began to twinkle in the 
 sky, retired with his whole retinue, to escape the mischief 
 of the Ghost, who rioted about in it the whole night over, 
 but by day gave no disturbance. Unpleasant as the owner 
 felt this spoiling of his mansion by a bugbear, the noctur- 
 nal sprite was not without advantages, for the great security 
 it gave from thieves. The Count could have appointed no 
 trustier or more watchful keeper over the Castle than this 
 same Spectre, for the rashest troop of robbers never ven- 
 tured to approach its station. Accordingly he knew of no 
 safer place, for laying up his valuables, than this old tower, 
 in the hamlet of Rummelsburg, near Rheinberg. 
 
 The sunshine had sunk, the dark night was coming 
 heavily on, when Franz, with a lantern in his hand, pro- 
 ceeded to the castle-gate, under the guidance of Mine Host, 
 who carried in his hand a basket of victuals, with a flask of 
 wine, which he said should not be marked against him. He 
 had also taken along with him a pair of candlesticks, and 
 two wax-lights ; for in the whole Castle there was neither 
 lamp nor taper, as no one ever staid in it after twilight. In 
 the way, Franz noticed the creaking, heavy-laden basket, 
 and the wax-lights, which he thought he should not need, 
 and yet must pay for. Therefore he said : " What is this 
 superfluity and waste, as at a banquet ? The light in the 
 lantern is enough to see with, till I go to bed ; and when 
 I awake, the sun will be high enough, for I am tired com- 
 pletely, and shall sleep with both eyes." 
 
 " I will not hide from you," replied the Landlord, u that 
 a story runs of there being mischief in the Castle, and a 
 Goblin that frequents it. You, however, need not let the 
 thing disturb you ; we are near enough, you see, for you 
 
56 MUSAEUS. 
 
 to call us, should you meet with aught unnatural ; I and my 
 folks will be at your hand in a twinkling, to assist you. 
 Down in the house there, we keep a stir all night through, 
 some one is always moving. I have lived here these thirty 
 years ; yet I cannot say that I have ever seen aught. If 
 there be now and then a little hurly-burlying at nights, it is 
 nothing but cats and martins rummaging about the granary. 
 As a precaution, I have provided you with candles ; the 
 night is no friend of man ; and the tapers are consecrated, 
 so that sprites, if there be such in the Castle, will avoid 
 their shine." 
 
 It was no lying in Mine Host to say that he had never 
 seen anything of spectres in the Castle ; for by night he 
 had taken special care not once to set foot in it ; and 
 by day the Goblin did not come to sight. In the present 
 case, too, the traitor would not risk himself across the 
 border. After opening the door, he handed Franz the 
 basket, directed him what way to go, and wished him good 
 night. Franz entered the lobby without anxiety or fear ; 
 believing the ghost story to be empty tattle, or a distorted 
 tradition of some real occurrence in the place, which idle 
 fancy had shaped into an unnatural adventure. He re- 
 membered the stout Hitter Eberhard Bronkhorst, from 
 whose heavy arm he had apprehended such maltreatment, 
 and with whom, notwithstanding, he had found so hos- 
 pitable a reception. On this ground he had laid it down as 
 a rule deduced from his travelling experiences, when he 
 heard any common rumor, to believe exactly the reverse, 
 and left the grain of truth, which, in the opinion of the wise 
 Knight, always lies in such reports, entirely out of sight. 
 
 Pursuant to Mine Host's direction, he ascended the wind- 
 ing stone stair ; and reached a bolted door, which he opened 
 with his key. A long, dark gallery, where his footsteps 
 resounded, led him into a large hall, and from this, a side- 
 
DUMB LOVE. 57 
 
 door, into a suite of apartments, richly provided with all 
 furniture for decoration or convenience. Out of these he 
 chose the room which had the friendliest aspect, where he 
 found a well-pillowed bed ; and from the window could look 
 right down upon the inn, and catch every loud word that 
 was spoken there. He lit his wax-tapers, furnished his 
 table, and feasted with the commodiousness and relish of 
 an Otaheitean noble. The big-bellied flask was an antidote 
 to thirst. So long as his teeth were in full occupation, he 
 had no time to think of the reported devilry in the Castle. 
 If aught now and then made a stir in the distance, and Fear 
 called to him, " Hark ! hark ! There comes the Goblin ; " 
 Courage answered, " Stuff! It is cats and martins bicker- 
 ing and caterwauling." But in the digestive half-hour after 
 meat, when the sixth sense, that of hunger and thirst, no 
 longer occupied the soul, she directed her attention from 
 the other five exclusively upon the sense of hearing ; and 
 already Fear was whispering three timid thoughts into the 
 listener's ear, before Courage had time to answer once. 
 
 As the first resource, he .locked the door, and bolted it; 
 made his retreat to the walled seat in the vault of the win- 
 dow. He opened this, and, to dissipate his thoughts a little, 
 looked out on the spangled sky, gazed at the corroded 
 moon, and counted how often the stars snuffed themselves. 
 On the road beneath him all was void ; and in spite of the 
 pretended nightly bustle in the inn, the doors were shut, 
 the lights out, and everything as still as in a sepulchre. On 
 the other hand, the watchman blew his horn, making his 
 " List, gentlemen ! " sound over all the hamlet ; and for 
 the composure of the timorous astronomer, who still kept 
 feasting his eyes on the splendor of the stars, uplifted a rusty 
 evening-hymn right under his window; so that Franz might 
 easily have carried on a conversation with him, which, for 
 the sake of company, he would willingly have done, had he 
 
58 MUSAEUS. 
 
 in the least expected that the watchman would make answer 
 to him. 
 
 In a populous city, in the middle of a numerous house- 
 hold, where there is a hubbub equal to that of a bee-hive, it 
 may form a pleasant entertainment for the thinker to phi- 
 losophize on Solitude, to decorate her as the loveliest play- 
 mate of the human spirit, to view her under all her advan- 
 tageous aspects, and long for her enjoyment as for hidden 
 treasure. But in scenes where she is no exotic, in the isle 
 of Juan Fernandez, where a solitary eremite, escaped from 
 shipwreck, lives with her through long years ; or in the 
 dreary night-time, in a deep wood, or in an old uninhabited 
 castle, where empty walls and vaults awaken horror, and 
 nothing breathes of life, but the moping owl in the ruinous 
 turret ; there, in good sooth, she is not the most agreeable 
 companion for the timid anchorite that has to pass his time 
 in her abode, especially if he is every moment looking for 
 the entrance of a spectre to augment the party. In such a 
 case it may easily chance that a window conversation with 
 the watchman shall afford a richer entertainment for the 
 spirit and the heart, than a reading of the most attractive 
 eulogy on solitude. If Hitter Zimmerman had been in 
 Franz's place, in the castle of Rummelsburg, on the West- 
 phalian marches, he would doubtless in this position have 
 struck out the fundamental topics of as interesting a treatise 
 on Society, as, inspired to all appearance by the irksome- 
 ness of some ceremonious assembly, he has poured out 
 from the fulness of his heart in praise of Solitude. 
 
 Midnight is the hour at which the world of spirits acquires 
 activity and life, when hebetated animal nature lies en- 
 tombed in deep slumber. Franz inclined getting through this 
 critical hour in sleep rather than awake ; so he closed his 
 window, went the rounds of his room once more, spying 
 every nook and crevice, to see whether all was safe and 
 
DUMB LOVE. 59 
 
 earthly ; snuffed the lights to make them burn clearer ; and, 
 without undressing or delaying, threw himself upon his bed, 
 with which his wearied person felt unusual satisfaction. 
 Yet he could not get asleep so fast as he wished. A slight 
 palpitation at the heart, which he ascribed to a tumult in the 
 blood, arising from the sultriness of the day, kept him 
 waking for a while ; and he failed not to employ this res- 
 pite in offering up such a pithy evening prayer as he had 
 not prayed for many years. This produced the usual effect, 
 that he softly fell asleep while saying it. 
 
 After about an hour, as he supposed, he started up with a 
 sudden terror ; a thing not at all surprising when there is 
 tumult in the blood. He was broad awake ; he listened 
 whether all was quiet, and heard nothing but the clock 
 strike twelve ; a piece of news which the watchman forth- 
 with communicated to the hamlet in doleful recitative. 
 Franz listened for a while, turned on the other side, and 
 was again about to sleep, when he caught, as it were, the 
 sound of a door grating in the distance, and immediately 
 it shut with a stifled bang. " Alake ! Alake ! " bawled 
 Fright into his ear ; u this is the Ghost in very deed ! " — 
 " 'T is nothing but the wind," said Courage manfully. But 
 quickly it came nearer, nearer, like the sound of heavy 
 footsteps. Clink here, clink there, as if a criminal were 
 rattling his irons, or as if the porter were walking about the 
 Castle with his bunch of keys. Alas, here was no wind 
 business ! Courage held his peace ; and quaking Fear drove 
 all the blood to the heart, and made it thump like a smith's 
 forehammer. 
 
 The thing was now beyond jesting. If Fear would still 
 have let Courage get a word, the latter would have put the 
 terror-struck watcher in mind of his subsidiary treaty with 
 Mine Host, and incited him to claim the stipulated assist- 
 ance loudly from the window ; but for this there was" a 
 
60 MUSAEUS. 
 
 want of proper resolution. The quaking Franz had re- 
 course to the bed-clothes, the last fortress of the timorous, 
 and drew them close over his ears, as Bird Ostrich sticks his 
 head in the grass, when he can no longer escape the huntsman. 
 Outside it came along, door up, door to, with hideous up- 
 roar ; and at last it reached the bed-room. It jerked sharply 
 at the lock, tried several keys till it found the right one ; yet 
 the bar still held the door, till a bounce like a thunder-clap 
 made bolt and rivet start, and threw it wide open. Now 
 stalked in a long lean man, with a black beard, in ancient 
 garb, and with a gloomy countenance, his eye-brows hang- 
 ing down in deep earnestness from his brow. Over his 
 right shoulder he had a scarlet cloak ; and on his head he 
 wore a peaked hat. With a heavy step, he walked thrice 
 in silence up and down the chamber ; looked at the conse- 
 crated tapers, and snuffed them that they might burn bright- 
 er. Then he threw aside his cloak, girded on a scissor- 
 pouch which he had under it, produced a set of shaving- 
 tackle, and immediately began to whet a sharp razor on the 
 broad strap which he wore at his girdle. 
 
 Franz perspired in mortal agony under his coverlet; re- 
 commended himself to the keeping of the Virgin ; and 
 anxiously speculated on the object of this manoeuvre, not 
 knowing whether it was meant for his throat or his beard. 
 To his comfort, the Goblin poured some water from a silver 
 flask into a basin of silver, and with his skinny hand lather- 
 ed the soap into light foam ; then set a chair, and beckoned 
 with a solemn look to the quaking looker-on to come forth 
 from his recess. 
 
 Against so pertinent a sign remonstrance was as boot- 
 less as it is against the rigorous commands of the Grand 
 Turk, when he transmits an exiled vizier to the Angel of 
 Death, the Capichi Bashi with the Silken Cord, to take de- 
 livery of his head. The most rational procedure that can 
 
, DUMB LOVE. 61 
 
 be adopted in this critical case is to comply with necessity, 
 put a good face on a bad business, and with stoical com- 
 posure let one's throat be noosed. Franz honored the 
 Spectre's order ; the coverlet began to move, he sprang 
 sharply from his couch, and took the place pointed out to 
 him on the seat. However strange this quick transition 
 from the uttermost terror to the boldest resolution may ap- 
 pear, I doubt not but Moritz in his Psychological Journal 
 could explain the matter till it seemed quite natural. 
 
 Immediately the Goblin Barber tied the towel about his 
 shivering customer ; seized the comb and scissors, and 
 clipped off his hair and beard. Then he soaped him scien- 
 tifically, first the beard, next the eye-brows, at last the 
 temples and the hind-head ; and shaved him from throat to 
 nape, as smooth and bald as a Death's-head. This operation 
 finished, he washed his head, dried it clean, made his bow, 
 and buttoned up his scissor-pouch ; wrapped himself in his 
 scarlet mantle, and made for departing. The consecrated 
 tapers had burnt with an exquisite brightness through the 
 whole transaction ; and Franz, by the light of them, per- 
 ceived in the mirror that the shaver had changed him into a 
 Chinese pagoda. In secret he heartily deplored the loss of 
 his fair brown locks ; yet now took fresh breath, as he ob- 
 served that with this sacrifice the account was settled, and 
 the Ghost had no more power over him. 
 
 So it was in fact ; Redcloak went towards the door, 
 silently as he had entered, without salutation or good b'ye ; 
 and seemed entirely the contrast of his talkative guild- 
 brethren. But scarcely was he gone three steps, when he 
 paused, looked round with a mournful expression at his 
 well-served customer, and stroked the flat of his hand over 
 his black bushy beard. He did the same a second time ; 
 and again, just as he was in the act of stepping out at the 
 door. A thought struck Franz that the Spectre wanted 
 
 vol. i. 6 
 
62 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 something; and a rapid combination of ideas suggested 
 that perhaps he was expecting the very service he himself 
 had just performed. 
 
 As the Ghost, notwithstanding his rueful look, seemed 
 more disposed for banter than for seriousness, and had 
 played his guest a scurvy trick, not done him any real inju- 
 ry, the panic of the latter had now almost subsided. So he 
 ventured the experiment, and beckoned to the Ghost to take 
 the seat from which he had himself just risen. The Goblin 
 instantly obeyed, threw off his cloak, laid his barber tackle 
 on the table, and placed himself in the chair, in the posture 
 of a man that wishes to be shaved. Franz carefully observ- 
 ed the same procedure which the spectre had observed 
 to him, clipped his beard with the scissors, cropt away 
 his hair, lathered his whole scalp, and the Ghost all the 
 while sat steady as a wig-block. The awkward journeyman 
 came ill at handling the razor ; he had never had another 
 in his hand ; and he shore the beard right against the hair ; 
 whereat the Goblin made as strange grimaces as Erasmus's 
 Ape, when imitating its master's shaving. Nor was the 
 unpractised bungler himself well at ease, and he thought 
 more than once of the sage aphorism, What is not thy 
 trade make not thy business ; yet he struggled through the 
 task, the best way he could, and scraped the Ghost as bald 
 as he himself was. 
 
 Hitherto the scene between the Spectre and the traveller 
 had been played pantomimically ; the action now became 
 dramatic. " Stranger," said the Ghost, " accept my thanks 
 for the service thou hast done me. By thee I am delivered 
 from the long imprisonment which has chained me for 
 three hundred years within these walls ; to which my de- 
 parted soul was doomed, till a mortal hand should consent 
 to retaliate on me what I practised on others in my lifetime. 
 
 " Know that of old a reckless scorner dwelt within this 
 
DUMB LOVE. 63 
 
 tower, who took his sport on priests as well as laics. Count 
 Hardman, such his name, was no philanthropist, acknow- 
 ledged no superior and no law, but practised vain caprice 
 and waggery, regarding not the sacredness of hospitable 
 rights; the wanderer who came beneath his roof, the needy 
 man who asked a charitable alms of him, he never sent 
 away unvisited by wicked joke. I was his Castle Barber, 
 still a willing instrument, and did whatever pleased him. 
 Many a pious pilgrim, journeying past us, I allured with 
 friendly speeches to the hall ; prepared the bath for him, 
 and when he thought to take good comfort, shaved him 
 smooth and bald, and packed him out of doors. Then 
 would Count Hardman, looking from the window, see with 
 pleasure how the foxes' whelps of children gathered from 
 the hamlet to assail the outcast, and to cry, as once their fel- 
 lows to Elijah, " Baldhead ! Baldhead ! " In this the scof- 
 fer took his pleasure, laughing with a devilish joy, till he 
 would hold his pot-paunch, and his eyes ran down with 
 water. 
 
 " Once came a saintly man, from foreign lands ; he car- 
 ried, like a penitent, a heavy cross upon his shoulder, and 
 had stamped five nail-marks on his hands, and feet, and 
 side ; upon his head there was a ring of hair like to the 
 Crown of Thorns. He called upon us here, requesting 
 water for his feet, and a small crust of bread. Immediately 
 I took him to the bath to serve him in my common way ; 
 respecting not the sacred ring, but shore it clean from off 
 him. Then the pious pilgrim spoke a heavy malison upon 
 me : c Know, accursed man, that, when thou diest, Heaven, 
 and Hell, and Purgatory's iron gate, [are shut against thy 
 soul. As goblin it shall rage within these walls, till un- 
 required, unhid, a traveller come and exercise retaliation on 
 thee.' 
 
 " That hour I sickened, and the marrow in my bones 
 
64 MUSAEUS. 
 
 dried up ; I faded like a shadow. My spirit left the wasted 
 carcass, and was exiled to this Castle, as the saint had 
 doomed it. In vain I struggled for deliverance from the 
 torturing bonds that fettered me to Earth ; for thou must 
 know, that, when the soul forsakes her clay, she panteth for 
 her place of rest, and this sick longing spins her years to 
 aeons, while in foreign element she languishes for home. 
 Now self-tormenting, I pursued the mournful occupation I 
 had followed in my lifetime. Alas! my uproar soon made 
 desolate this house ! But seldom came a pilgrim here to 
 lodge. And though I treated all like thee, no one would 
 understand me, and perform, as thou, the service which has 
 freed my soul from bondage. Henceforth shall no hobgob- 
 lin wander in this Castle ; I return to my long-wished-for 
 rest. And now, young stranger, once again my thanks, 
 that thou hast loosed me ! Were I keeper of deep-hidden 
 treasures, they were thine ; but wealth in life was not my 
 lot, nor in this Castle 4ies there any cash entombed. Yet 
 mark my counsel. Tarry here till beard and locks again 
 shall cover chin and scalp ; then turn thee homewards to thy 
 native town ; and on the Weser-bridge of Bremen, at the 
 time when day and night in Autumn are alike, wait for a 
 Friend, who there will meet thee, who will tell thee what to 
 do, that it be well with thee on earth. If from the golden 
 horn of plenty blessing and abundance flow to thee, then 
 think of me ; and ever as the day thou freedst me from the 
 curse comes round, cause for my soul's repose three masses 
 to be said. Now fare thee well. I go, no more return- 
 ing."* 
 
 With these words the Ghost, having by his copiousness 
 
 * I know not whether the reader has observed that our Author 
 makes the Spectre speak in iambics, a whim which here and there 
 come6 over him in other tales also. — Wieland, 
 
DUMB LOVE. 
 
 65 
 
 of talk satisfactorily attested his former existence as court- 
 barber in the Castle of Rummelsburg, vanished into air, 
 and left his deliverer full of wonder at the strange adven- 
 ture. He stood for a long while motionless; in doubt whether 
 the whole matter had actually happened, or an unquiet 
 dream had deluded his senses ; but his bald head convinced 
 him that here had been a real occurrence. He returned to 
 bed, and slept, after the fright he had undergone, till the hour 
 of noon. The treacherous Landlord had been watching 
 since morning, when the traveller with the scalp was to 
 come forth, that he might receive him with jibing speeches 
 under pretext of astonishment at his nocturnal adventure. 
 But as the stranger loitered too long, and mid-day was ap- 
 proaching, the affair became serious ; and Mine Host began to 
 dread that the Goblin might have treated his guest a little 
 harshly, have beaten him to a jelly perhaps, or so frightened 
 him that he had died of terror ; and to carry his wanton 
 revenge to such a length as this had not been his intention. 
 He therefore rung his people together, hastened out with 
 man and maid to the tower, and reached the door of the 
 apartment where he had observed the light on the previous 
 evening. He found an unknown key in the lock ; but the 
 door was barred within, for, after the disappearance of the 
 Goblin, Franz had again secured it. He knocked with a 
 perturbed violence, till the Seven Sleepers themselves would 
 have awoke at the din. Franz started up, and thought, in 
 his first confusion, that the Ghost was again standing at the 
 door, to favor him with another call. But hearing Mine 
 Host's voice, who required nothing more but that his guest 
 would give some sign of life, he gathered himself up and 
 opened the room. 
 
 With seeming horror at the sight of him, Mine Host, 
 striking his hands together, exclaimed, " By Heaven and 
 all the saints ! Redcloak " (by this name the Ghost was 
 6* 
 
66 
 
 MUSAETJS. 
 
 known among them) " has been here, and has shaved you 
 bald as a block ! Now, it is clear as day that the old 
 story is no fable. But tell me how looked the Goblin ? what 
 did he say to you ? what did he do ? " 
 
 Franz, who had now seen through the questioner, made 
 answer. " The Goblin looked like a man in a red cloak ; 
 what he did is not hidden from you, and what he said I 
 well remember. ' Stranger,' said he, 4 trust no innkeeper 
 who is a Turk in grain. What would befall thee here he 
 knew. Be wise and happy. I withdraw from this my an- 
 cient dwelling, for my time is run. Henceforth no goblin 
 riots here ; I now become a silent Incubus, to plague the 
 Landlord ; nip him, tweak him, harass him, unless the Turk 
 do expiate his sin ; do freely give thee prog and lodging till 
 brown locks again shall cluster round thy head.' "* 
 
 The Landlord shuddered at these words, cut a large cross 
 in the air before him, vowed by the Holy Virgin to give the 
 traveller free board so long as he liked to continue, led him 
 over to his house, and treated him with the best. By this 
 adventure Franz had well nigh got the reputation of a con- 
 juror, as the spirit thenceforth never once showed face. He 
 often passed the night in the tower ; and a desperado of the 
 village once kept him company, without having beard or 
 scalp disturbed. The owner of the place, having learned 
 that Redcloak no longer walked in Rummelsburg, was, of 
 course, delighted at the news, and ordered that the stranger, 
 who, as he supposed, had laid him, should be well taken 
 care of. 
 
 By the time when the clusters were beginning to be 
 colored on the vine, and the advancing autumn reddened 
 the apples, Franz's brown locks were again curling over his 
 
 * Here, too, on the Spectre's score, Franz makes extempore 
 iambics. — Wieland. 
 
DUMB LOVE. 67 
 
 temples, and he girded up his knapsack ; for all his thoughts 
 and meditations were turned upon the Weser-bridge, to seek 
 the Friend, who, at the behest of the Goblin Barber, 
 was to direct him how to make his fortune. When about 
 taking leave of Mine Host, that charitable person led from 
 his stable a horse well saddled and equipt, which the owner 
 of the Castle had presented to the stranger, for having made 
 his house again habitable ; nor had the Count forgot to send 
 a sufficient purse along with it, to bear its travellicg charges ; 
 and so Franz came riding back into his native city, brisk 
 and light of heart, as he had ridden out of it twelve months 
 ago. He sought out his old quarters in the alley, but kept 
 himself quite still and retired ; only inquiring underhand 
 how matters stood with the fair Meta, whether she was still 
 alive and unwedded. To this inquiry he received a satisfac- 
 tory answer, and contented himself with it in the mean- 
 while ; for, till his fate were decided, he would not risk 
 appearing in her sight, or making known to her his arrival 
 in Bremen. 
 
 With unspeakable longing, he waited the equinox ; his 
 impatience made every intervening day a year. At last the 
 long-wished-for term appeared. The night before, he could 
 not close an eye, for thinking of the wonders that were 
 coming. The blood was whirling and beating in his arte- 
 ries, as it had done at the Castle of Rummelsburg, when he 
 lay in expectation of his spectre visitant. To be sure of 
 not missing his expected Friend, he rose by day-break, and 
 proceeded with the earliest dawn to the Weser-bridge, which 
 as yet stood empty, and untrod by passengers. He walked 
 along it several times in solitude, with that presentiment of 
 coming gladness, which includes in it the real enjoyment of all 
 terrestrial felicity ; for it is not the attainment of our wishes, 
 but the undoubted hope of attaining them, which offers to 
 the human soul the full measure of highest and most heart- 
 
6S 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 felt satisfaction. He formed many projects as to how he 
 should present himself to his beloved Meta, when his look- 
 ed-for happiness should have arrived ; whether it would be 
 better to appear before her in full splendor, or to mount 
 from his former darkness with the first gleam of morning 
 radiance, and discover to her by degrees the change in his 
 condition. Curiosity, moreover, put a thousand questions to 
 Reason in regard to the adventure. Who can the Friend 
 be that is t<a meet me on the Weser-bridge ? Will it be one 
 of my old acquaintances, by whom, since my ruin, I have 
 been entirely forgotten ? How will he pave the way to me 
 for happiness ? And will this way be short or long, easy 
 or toilsome ? To the whole of which Reason, in spite of 
 all her thinking and speculating, answered not a word. 
 
 In about an hour, the Bridge began to get awake ; there 
 was riding, driving, walking to and fro on it ; and much 
 commercial ware passing this way and that. The usual 
 day-guard of beggars and importunate persons also by de- 
 grees took up this post, so favorable for their trade, to levy 
 contributions on the public benevolence ; for of poor-houses 
 and work-houses, the wisdom of the legislature had as yet 
 formed no scheme. The first of the tattered cohort that 
 applied for alms to the jovial promenader, from whose eyes 
 gay hope laughed forth, was a discharged soldier, provided 
 with the military badge of a timber leg, which had been 
 lent him, seeing he had fought so stoutly in former days for 
 his native country, as the recompense of his valor, with the 
 privilege of begging where he pleased ; and who now, in 
 the capacity of physiognomist, pursued the study of man 
 upon the Weser-bridge, with such success that he very sel- 
 dom failed in his attempts for charity. Nor did his explo- 
 ratory glance in anywise mislead him in the present instance ; 
 for Franz, in the joy of his heart, threw a white engelgros- 
 chen into the cripple's hat. 
 
DUMB LOVE. 69 
 
 During the morning hours, when none but the laborious 
 artisan is busy, and the more exalted townsman still lies in 
 sluggish rest, he scarcely looked for his promised Friend ; 
 he expected him in the higher classes, and took little notice 
 of the present passengers. About the council-hour, how- 
 ever, when the Proceres of Bremen were driving past to the 
 hall, in their gorgeous robes of office, and about exchange- 
 time, he was all eye and ear ; he spied the passengers from 
 afar ; and when a right man came along the bridge, his 
 blood began to flutter, and he thought here was the creator 
 of his fortune. Meanwhile hour after hour passed on ; the 
 sun rose high ; ere long the noontide brought a pause in 
 business ; the rushing crowd faded away ; and still the ex- 
 pected Friend appeared not. Franz now walked up and 
 down the Bridge quite alone ; had no society in view but 
 the beggars, who were serving out their cold collations, with- 
 out moving from the place. He made no scruple to do the 
 same ; and, not being furnished with provisions, he purchas- 
 ed some fruit, and took his dinner inter ambulandum. 
 
 The whole club that was dining on the Weser-bridge had 
 remarked the young man, watching here from early morn- 
 ing till noon, without addressing any one, or doing any sort 
 of business. They held him to be a lounger ; and though 
 all of them had tasted his bounty, he did not escape their 
 critical remarks. In jest, they had named him the Bridge- 
 bailiff. The physiognomist with the timber-toe, however, 
 noticed that his countenance was not so gay as in the morn- 
 ing ; he appeared to be reflecting earnestly on something ; 
 he had drawn his hat close over his face ; his movement 
 was slow and thoughtful ; he had nibbled at an apple-rind 
 for some time, without seeming to be conscious that he was 
 doing so. From this appearance of affairs, the man-spier 
 thought he might extract some profit; therefore he put his 
 wooden and his living leg in motion, and stilted off to the 
 
70 MUSAEUS. 
 
 other end of the Bridge, and lay in wait for the thinker, 
 that he might assail him, under the appearance of a new 
 arrival, for a fresh alms. This invention prospered to the 
 full ; the musing philosopher gave no heed to the mendicant, 
 put his hand into his pocket mechanically, and threw a six- 
 groat piece into the fellow's hat to be rid of him. 
 
 In the afternoon, a thousand new faces once more came 
 abroad. The watcher was now tired of his unknown Friend's 
 delaying, yet hope still kept his attention on the stretch. 
 He stept into the view of every passenger, hoped that one 
 of them would clasp him in his arms; but all proceeded 
 coldly on their way ; the most did not observe him at all, 
 and few returned his salute with a slight nod. The sun was 
 already verging to decline, the shadows were becoming 
 longer, the crowd upon the Bridge diminished ; and the 
 beggar-piquet by degrees drew back into their barracks in 
 the Mattenburg. A deep sadness sank upon the hopeless 
 Franz, when he saw his expectation mocked, and the lordly 
 prospect, which had lain before him in the morning, vanish 
 from his eyes at evening. He fell into a sort of sulky des- 
 peration ; was on the point of springing over the parapet, 
 and dashing himself down from the Bridge into the river. 
 But the thought of Meta kept him back, and induced him 
 to postpone his purpose till he had seen her yet once more. 
 He resolved to watch next day when she should go to 
 church, for the last time to drink delight from her looks, 
 and then forthwith to still his warm love forever in the cold 
 stream of the Weser. 
 
 While about to leave the Bridge, he was met by the 
 invalided pikeman with the wooden leg, who, for pastime, had 
 been making many speculations as to what could be the 
 young man's object, that had made him watch upon the 
 Bridge from dawn to darkness. He himself had lingered 
 beyond his usual time, that he might wait him out ; but as 
 
DUMB LOVE. 71 
 
 the matter hung too long upon the pegs, curiosity incited 
 him to turn to the youth himself, and question him respect- 
 ing it. 
 
 " No offence, young gentleman," said he; "allow me to 
 ask you a question. 1 ' 
 
 Franz, who was not in a very talking humor, and was 
 now meeting, from the mouth of a cripple, the address 
 which he had looked for with such longing from a friend, 
 answered rather testily : " Well, then, what is it ? Speak, 
 old gray beard ! " 
 
 " We two," said the other, "were the first upon the Bridge 
 to-day, and now, you see, we are the last. As to me and 
 others of my kidney, it is our vocation brings us hither, 
 our trade of alms-gathering; but for you, in sooth you are 
 not of our guild ; yet you have watched here the whole 
 blessed day. Now I pray you, tell me, if it is not a secret, 
 what it is that brings you hither; or what stone is lying on 
 your heart, that you wished to roll away." 
 
 " What good were it to thee, old blade," said Franz 
 bitterly, " to know where the shoe pinches me, or what 
 concern is lying on my heart ? It will give thee small 
 care." 
 
 " Sir, I have a kind wish towards you, because you 
 opened your hand to me, and twice gave me alms, for 
 which God reward you ; but your countenance at night 
 was not so cheerful as in the morning, and that grieves my 
 heart." 
 
 The kindly sympathy of this old warrior pleased the 
 misanthrope, so that he willingly pursued the conversation. 
 
 " Why, then," answered he, " if thou wouldst know what 
 has made me battle here all day with tedium, thou must 
 understand that I was waiting for a Friend, who appointed 
 me hither, and now leaves me to expect in vain." 
 
 " Under favor,' 1 answered Timbertoe, " if I might speak 
 
72 MUSAEUS. 
 
 my mind, this Friend of yours, be who he like, is little 
 better than a rogue, to lead you such a dance. If he treat- 
 ed me so, by my faith, his crown should get acquainted with 
 my crutch next time we met. If he could not keep his 
 word, he should have let you know, and not bamboozled 
 you as if you were a child." 
 
 " Yet I cannot altogether blame this Friend," said Franz, 
 " for being absent; he did not promise; it was but a dream 
 that told me I should meet him here." 
 
 The goblin tale was loo long for him to tell, so he veiled 
 it under cover of a dream. 
 
 "Ah! that is another story," said the beggar; "if you 
 build on dreams, it is little wonder that your hope deceives 
 you. I myself have dreamed much foolish stuff in my 
 time; but I was never such a madman as to heed it. Had 
 I all the treasures that have been allotted to me in dreams, 
 I might buy the city of Bremen, were it sold by auction. 
 But I never credited a jet of them, or stirred hand or foot 
 to prove their worth or worlhlessness ; I knew well it would 
 be lost. Ha ! I must really laugh in your face, to think, that, 
 on the order of an empty dream, you have squandered a 
 fair day of your life, which you might have spent better at 
 a merry banquet." 
 
 " The issue shows that thou art right, old man, and that 
 dreams many times deceive. But," continued Franz, defen- 
 sively, " I dreamed so vividly and circumstantially, above 
 three months ago, that on this very day, in this very place, 
 I should meet a Friend, who would tell me things of the 
 deepest importance, that it was well worth while to go and 
 see if it would come to pass." 
 
 "O, as for vividness," said Timbertoe, " no man can 
 dream more vividly than I. There is one dream I had, 
 which I shall never in my life forget. I dreamed, who 
 knows how many years ago, that my Guardian Angel stood 
 
DUMB LOVE. 73 
 
 before my bed in the figure of a youth, with golden hair, 
 and two silver wings on his back, and said to me : ' Berthold, 
 listen to the words of my mouth, that none of them be lost 
 from thy heart. There is a treasure appointed thee, which 
 thou shalt dig, to comfort thy heart withal for the remaining 
 days of thy life. To-morrow, about evening, when the sun 
 is going down, take spade and shovel on thy shoulder ; go 
 forth from the Mattenburg on the right, across the Tieber, 
 by the Balkenbrucke, past the Cloister of St. John's, and on 
 to the Great Roland.* Then take thy way over the Court 
 of the Cathedral, through the Schiisselkorb, till thou arrive 
 without the city at a garden, which has this mark, that a 
 stair of three stone steps leads down from the highway to 
 its gate. Wait by a side, in secret, till the sickle of the 
 moon shall shine on thee, then push with the strength of a 
 man against the weak-barred gate, which will resist thee 
 little. Enter boldly into the garden, and turn thee to the 
 vine trellises which overhang the covered-walk; behind 
 this, on the left, a tall apple-tree overtops the lowly shrubs. 
 Go to the trunk of this tree, thy face turned right against 
 the moon ; look three ells before thee on the ground, thou 
 shalt see two cinnamon-rose bushes; there strike in, and 
 dig three spans deep, till thou find a stone plate ; under this 
 lies the treasure, buried in an iron chest, full of money, 
 and money's worth. Though the chest be heavy and 
 clumsy, avoid not the labor of lifting it from its bed ; it will 
 
 * The rude figure of a man in armor, usually erected in the 
 public square or market-place of old German towns, is called the 
 Roland slule, or Rutlandslule, from its supposed reference to Roland 
 the famous Peer of Charlemagne. The proper and ancient name, 
 it seems, is Rug elands lule, or Pillar of Judgment; and the stone 
 indicated, of old, that the town possessed an independent jurisdic- 
 tion. — Ed. 
 
 VOL. I. 7 
 
74 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 reward thy trouble well, if thou seek the key which lies hid 
 beneath it.' " 
 
 In astonishment at what he heard, Franz stared and 
 gazed upon the dreamer, and could not have concealed his 
 amazement, had not the dusk of night been on his side. By 
 every mark in the description, he had recognised his own 
 garden, left him by his father. It had been the good man's 
 hobby in his life ; but on this account had little pleased his 
 son ; according to the rule that son and father seldom sym- 
 pathize in their favorite pursuit, unless indeed it be a vice, 
 in which case, as the adage runs, the apple often falls at no 
 great distance from the trunk. Father Melchior had him- 
 self laid out this garden, altogether to his own taste, in a 
 style as wonderful and varied as that of his great-great- 
 grandson, who has immortalized his paradise by an original 
 description in Hirschfeld' , s Garden- Calendar. He had not, 
 it is true, set up in it any painted menagerie for the decep- 
 tion of the eye ; but he kept a very large one, notwithstand- 
 ing, of springing-horses, winged-lions, eagles, griffins, uni- 
 corns, and other wondrous beasts, all stamped on pure gold, 
 which he carefully concealed from every eye, and had hid in 
 their iron case beneath the ground. This paternal Tempe 
 the wasteful son, in the days of his extravagance, had sold 
 for an old song. 
 
 To Franz, the pikeman had at once become extremely 
 interesting, as he perceived that this was the very Friend 
 to whom the Goblin in the Castle of Rummelsburg had con- 
 signed him. Gladly could he have embraced the veteran, 
 and in the first rapture called him friend and father; but he 
 restrained himself, and found it more advisable to keep his 
 thoughts about this piece of news to himself. So he said : 
 11 Well, this is what I call a circumstantial dream. But 
 what didst thou do, old master, in the morning, on awak- 
 ening ? Didst thou not follow whither thy Guardian Angel 
 beckoned thee ? " 
 
DUMB LOVE. 75 
 
 " Pooh," said the dreamer, " why should I toil, and have 
 my labor for my pains ? It was nothing, after all, but a 
 mere dream. If my Guardian Angel had a fancy for ap- 
 pearing to me, I have had enow of sleepless nights in my 
 time, when he might have found me waking. But he takes 
 little charge of me, I think, else I should not, to his shame, 
 be going hitching here on a wooden leg." 
 
 Franz took out the last piece of silver he had on him. 
 " There," said he, " old Father, take this other gift from 
 me, to get thee a pint of wine for evening-cup ; thy talk 
 has scared away my ill humor. Neglect not diligently to 
 frequent this Bridge ; we shall see each other here, I hope, 
 again." 
 
 The lame old man had not gathered so rich a stock of 
 alms for many a day, as he was now possessed of; he 
 blessed his benefactor for his kindness, hopped away into a 
 drinking-shop, to do himself a good turn ; while Franz, 
 enlivened with new hope, hastened off to his lodging in the 
 alley. 
 
 Next day he got in readiness everything that is required 
 for treasure-digging. The unessential equipments, con- 
 jurations, magic-formulas, magic-girdles, hieroglyphic char- 
 acters, and such like, were entirely wanting ; but these are 
 not indispensable, provided there be no failure in the three 
 main requisites : shovel, spade, and, before all — a treasure 
 under ground. The necessary implements he carried to 
 the place a little before sunset, and hid them for the mean- 
 while in a hedge ; and as to the treasure itself, he had the 
 firm conviction that the Goblin in the Castle, and the Friend 
 on the Bridge, would prove no liars to him. With longing 
 impatience he expected the rising of the moon ; and no 
 sooner did she stretch her silver horns over the bushes, 
 than he briskly set to work ; observing exactly every- 
 thing the Invalid had taught him ; and happily accom- 
 
76 
 
 MUFAEUS. 
 
 plislied the raising of the treasure, without meeting any 
 adventure in the process; without any black dog having 
 frightened him, or any bluish flame having lighted him to 
 the spot. 
 
 Father Melchior, in providently burying this penny for 
 a rainy day, had nowise meant that his son should be de- 
 prived of so considerable a part of his inheritance. The 
 mistake lay in this, that Death had escorted the testator out of 
 the world in another way than said testator had expected. 
 He had been completely convinced that he should take his 
 journey, old and full of days, after regulating his temporal 
 concerns with all the formalities of an ordinary sick-bed ; 
 for so it had been prophesied to him in his youth. In con- 
 sequence he purposed, when, according to the usage of the 
 Church, extreme unction should have been dispensed to 
 him, to call his beloved son to his bed-side, having previous- 
 ly dismissed all bystanders; there to give him the paternal 
 blessing, and by way of farewell memorial direct him to 
 this treasure buried in the garden. All this, too, would 
 have happened in just order, if the light of the good old 
 man had departed like that of a wick whose oil is done ; 
 but as Death had privily snuffed him out at a feast, he un- 
 designedly took along with him his Mammon secret to the 
 grave ; and almost as many fortunate concurrences were 
 required before the secreted patrimony could arrive at the 
 proper heir, as if it had been forwarded to its address by the 
 hand of Justice itself. 
 
 With immeasurable joy the treasure-digger took posses- 
 sion of the shapeless Spanish pieces, which, with a vast 
 multitude of other finer coins, the iron chest had faithfully 
 preserved. When the first intoxication of delight had in 
 some degree evaporated, he bethought him how the treasure 
 was to be transported, safe and unobserved, into the narrow 
 alley. The burden was too heavy to be carried without 
 
DUMB LOVE. 77 
 
 help ; thus, with the possession of riches, all the cares 
 attendant on them were awakened. The new Croesus found 
 no better plan than to intrust his capital to the hollow trunk 
 of a tree that stood behind the garden, in a meadow ; the 
 empty chest he again buried under the rose-bush, and 
 smoothed the place as well as possible. In the space of 
 three days, the treasure had been faithfully transmitted by 
 instalments from the hollow tree into the narrow alley ; and 
 now the owner of it thought he might with honor lay 
 aside his strict incognito. He dressed himself with the 
 finest ; had his Prayer displaced from the church ; and re- 
 quired, instead of it, " a Christian Thanksgiving for a 
 Traveller, on returning to his native town, after happily 
 arranging his affairs." He hid himself in a corner of the 
 church, where he could observe the fair Meta, without him- 
 self being seen ; he turned not his eye from the maiden, 
 and drank from her looks the actual rapture which in fore- 
 taste had restrained him from the break-neck somerset on 
 the Bridge of the Weser. When the Thanksgiving came 
 in hand, a glad sympathy shone forth from all her features, 
 and the cheeks of the virgin glowed with joy. The custom- 
 ary greeting on the way homewards was so full of em- 
 phasis, that, even to the third party who had noticed them, 
 it would have been intelligible. 
 
 Franz now appeared once more on the Exchange ; be- 
 gan a branch of trade, which in a few weeks extended to 
 the great scale ; and as his wealth became daily more ap- 
 parent, Neighbor Grudge, the scandal-chewer, was obliged 
 to conclude, that, in the cashing of his old debts, he must 
 have had more luck than sense. He hired a large house, 
 fronting the Roland, in the Market-place ; engaged clerks 
 and warehousemen, and carried on his trade unweariedly. 
 Now the sorrowful populace of parasites again diligently 
 handled the knocker of his door ; appeared in crowds, and 
 7* 
 
78 MUSAEUS. 
 
 suffocated him with assurances of friendship, and joy-wish- 
 ings on his fresh prosperity ; imagined they should once 
 more catch him in their robber claws. But experience had 
 taught him wisdom ; he paid them in their own coin, feasted 
 their false friendship on smooth words, and dismissed them 
 with fasting stomachs ; which sovereign means for scaring off 
 the cumbersome brood of pickthanks and toadeaters pro- 
 duced the intended effect, that they betook them else- 
 whither. 
 
 In Bremen, the remounting Melcherson had become the 
 story of the day ; the fortune which in some inexplicable 
 manner he had realized, as was supposed, in foreign parts, 
 was the subject-matter of all conversations at formal dinners, 
 in the Courts of Justice, and at the Exchange. But in pro- 
 portion as the fame of his fortune and affluence increased, 
 the contentedness and peace of mind of the fair Meta 
 diminished. The friend in petto was now, in her opinion, 
 well qualified to speak a plain word. Yet still his Love 
 continued Dumb ; and except the greeting on the way from 
 church, he gave no tidings of himself. Even this sort of 
 visit was becoming rarer ; and such aspects were the sign 
 not of warm, but of cold weather in the atmosphere of 
 Love. Jealousy, * the baleful Harpy, fluttered round her 
 little room by night, and when sleep was closing her blue 
 eyes, croaked many a dolorous presage into the ear of the 
 re-awakened Meta. " Forego the flattering hope of binding 
 an inconstant heart, which, like a feather, is the sport of every 
 wind. He loved thee, and was faithful to thee, while his 
 lot was as thy own ; like only draws to like. Now a 
 propitious destiny exalts the Changeful far above thee. Ah ! 
 
 * Jealousy, too, (at bottom a very sad spectre, but not here in- 
 troduced as one,) now croaks in iambics, as the Goblin Barber late- 
 ly spoke in them. — Wieland. 
 
DUMB LOVE. 79 
 
 now he scorns the truest thoughts in mean apparel, now 
 that pomp, and wealth, and splendor dazzle him once more ; 
 and courts, who knows what haughty fair one that disdain- 
 ed him when he lay among the pots, and now with siren 
 call allures him back to her. Perhaps her cozening voice 
 has turned him from thee, speaking with false words : l For 
 thee, God's garden blossoms in thy native town ; friend, 
 thou hast now thy choice of all our maidens ; choose with 
 prudence, not by the eye alone. Of girls are many, and 
 of fathers many, who in secret lie in wait for thee ; none 
 will withhold his darling daughter. Take happiness and 
 honor with the fairest ; likewise birth and fortune. The 
 councillor dignity awaits thee, where vote of friends is po- 
 tent in the city.' " 
 
 These suggestions of Jealousy disturbed and tormented 
 her heart without ceasing ; she reviewed her fair contem- 
 poraries in Bremen, estimated the ratio of so many splendid 
 matches to herself and her circumstances ; and the result 
 was far from favorable. The first tidings of her lover's 
 change of situation had in secret charmed her; not in the 
 selfish view of becoming participatress in a large fortune ; 
 but for her mother's sake, who had abdicated all hopes of 
 earthly happiness, ever since the marriage project with 
 neighbor Hop-King had made shipwreck. But now poor 
 Meta wished that Heaven had not heard the Prayer of the 
 Church, or granted to the traveller any such abundance of 
 success ; but rather kept him by the bread and salt, which 
 he would willingly have shared with her. 
 
 The fair half of the species are by no means calculated 
 to conceal an inward care. Mother Brigitta soon observed 
 the trouble of her daughter; and without the use of any 
 great penetration, likewise guessed its cause. The talk 
 about the reascending star of her former flax-negotiator, 
 who was now celebrated as the pattern of an orderly, judici- 
 
80 MUSAEUS. 
 
 ous, active tradesman, had not escaped her, any more than 
 the feeling of the good Meta towards him ; and it was her 
 opinion, that, if he loved in earnest, it was needless to hang 
 off so long, without explaining what he meant. Yet out of 
 tenderness to her daughter, she let no hint of this discovery 
 escape her; till at length poor Meta's heart became so full, 
 that of her own accord she made her mother the confident 
 of her sorrow, and disclosed to her its true origin. The 
 shrewd old lady learned little more by this disclosure than 
 she knew already. But it afforded opportunity to mother 
 and daughter for a full, fair, and free discussion of this del- 
 icate affair. Brigitta made her no reproaches on the sub- 
 ject ; she believed that what was done could not be undone ; 
 and directed all her eloquence to strengthen and encourage 
 the dejected Meta to bear the failure of her hopes with a 
 steadfast mind. 
 
 With this view, she spelt out to her the extremely reason- 
 able moral a, Z>, ah; discoursing thus: " My child, thou 
 hast already said a, thou must now say b too ; thou hast 
 scorned thy fortune when it sought thee, now thou must sub- 
 mit when it will meet thee no longer. Experience has 
 taught me that the most confident Hope is the first to de- 
 ceive us. Therefore, follow my example ; abandon the fair 
 cozener utterly, and thy peace of mind will no longer be 
 disturbed by her. Count not on any improvement of thy 
 fate ; and thou wilt grow contented with thy present situa- 
 tion. Honor the spinning-wheel, which supports thee ; what 
 are fortune and riches to thee, when thou canst do without 
 them ? " 
 
 Close on this stout oration followed a loud humming sym- 
 phony of snap-reel and spinning-wheel, to make up for the 
 time lost in speaking. Mother Brigitta was in truth philoso- 
 phizing from the heart. After her scheme for the restora- 
 tion of her former affluence had gone to ruin, she had so 
 
DUl'3 LOVE. 81 
 
 simplified the plan of her life, that Fate could not perplex 
 it any more. But Meta was still far from this philosophical 
 centre of indifference ; and hence this doctrine, consolation, 
 and encouragement, affected her quite otherwise than had 
 been intended ; the conscientious daughter now looked upon 
 herself as the destroyer of her mother's fair hopes, and suf- 
 fered from her own mind a thousand reproaches for this 
 fault. Though she had never adopted the maternal scheme 
 of marriage, and had reckoned only upon bread and salt in 
 her future wedlock ; yet, on hearing of her lover's riches 
 and spreading commerce, her diet-project had directly 
 mounted to six plates; and it delighted her to think that by 
 her choice she should still realize her good mother's wish, 
 and see her once more planted in her previous abundance. 
 
 This fair dream now vanished by degrees, as Franz con- 
 tinued silent. To make matters worse, there spread a ru- 
 mor over all the city, that he was furnishing his house in 
 the most splendid fashion for his marriage with a rich Ant- 
 werp lady, who was already OP. h a .r way to Bremen. This 
 Job's-news drove the lovely mniden from her last defence ; 
 she pasced on the apostate sentence of banishment from her 
 heart; and vowed from that hour never more to think of 
 him ; and as she did so, wetted the twining thread with her 
 tears. 
 
 In a heavy hour she was breaking this vow, and thinking, 
 against her will, of the faithless lover ; for she hr.d just spun 
 off a rock of flax ; and there was an old rhyme which had 
 been taught her by her mother for encouragement to dil- 
 igence : 
 
 Spin, daughterkin, spin, 
 Thy sweetheart 's within ! 
 
 which she always recollected whan her rock was done ; and 
 along with it the memory of the Deceitful necessarily oc- 
 
82 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 curred to her. In this heavy hour, a finger rapped with a 
 most dainty patter at the door. Mother Brigitta looked forth ; 
 the sweetheart was without. And who could it be? Who 
 else but neighbor Franz, from the alley ? He had decked 
 himself with a gallant wooing-suit ; and his well-dressed, 
 thick brown locks shook forth perfume. This stately dec- 
 oration boded, at all events, something else than flax-deal- 
 ing. Mother Brigitta started in alarm ; she tried to speak, 
 but words failed her. Meta rose in trepidation from her 
 seat, blushed like a purple rose, and was silent. Franz, 
 however, had the power of utterance ; to the soft adagio 
 which he had in former days trilled forth to her, he now 
 appended a suitable text, and explained his dumb love in 
 clear words. Thereupon he made solemn application for 
 her to the mother ; justifying his proposal by the statement, 
 that the preparations in his house had been meant for the 
 reception of a bride, and that this bride was the charming 
 Meta. 
 
 The pointed old lady, having brought her feelings once 
 more into equilibrium, was for protracting the affair to the 
 customary term of eight days for deliberation ; though joy- 
 ful tears were running down her cheeks, presaging no im- 
 pediment on her side, but rather answer of approval. Franz, 
 however, was so pressing in his suit, that she fell upon a 
 middle path between the wooer's ardor and maternal use 
 and wont, and empowered the gentle Meta to decide in the 
 affair according to her own good judgment. In the virgin 
 heart there had occurred, since Franz's entrance, an impor- 
 tant revolution. His presence here was the most speaking 
 proof of his innocence ; and as, in the course of conversa- 
 tion, it distinctly came to light, that his apparent coldness 
 had been nothing else than zeal and diligence in putting his 
 commercial affairs in order, and preparing what was neces- 
 sary for the coming nuptials, it followed that the secret re- 
 
DUMB LOVE. 83 
 
 conciliation would proceed forthwith without any stone of 
 stumbling in its way. She acted with the outlaw, as 
 Mother Brigitta with her disposted spinning gear, or the 
 First-born Son of the Church with an exiled Parliament ; 
 recalled him with honor to her high-beating heart, and rein- 
 stated him in all his former rights and privileges there. The 
 decisive three-lettered little word that ratifies the happiness 
 of love, came gliding with such unspeakable grace from her 
 soft lips, that the answered lover could not help receiving it 
 with a warm, melting kiss. 
 
 The tender pair had now time and opportunity for deci- 
 phering all the hieroglyphics of their mysterious love ; which 
 afforded the most pleasant conversation that ever two lovers 
 carried on. They found, what our commentators ought to 
 pray for, that they had always understood and interpreted 
 the text aright, without once missing the true sense of their 
 reciprocal proceedings. It cost the delighted bridegroom 
 almost as great an effort to part from his charming bride, as 
 on the day when he set out on his crusade to Antwerp. 
 However, he had an important walk to take ; so at last it 
 became time to withdraw. 
 
 This walk was directed to the Weser-bridge, to find Tim- 
 bertoe, whom he had not forgotten, though he had long delay- 
 ed to keep his word to him. Sharply as the physiognomist, 
 ever since his interview with the openhanded Bridge-bailiff, 
 had been on the outlook, he could never catch a glimpse of 
 him among the passengers, although a second visit had been 
 faithfully promised. Yet the figure of his benefactor had 
 not vanished from his memory. The moment he perceived 
 the fair-apparelled youth from a distance, he stilted towards 
 him, and gave him kindly welcome. Franz answered his 
 salutation, and said : " Friend, canst thou take a walk with 
 me into the Neustadt, to transact a small affair? Thy trou- 
 ble shall not be unpaid." 
 
84 MUCAEUS. 
 
 "Ah! why not?" replied the old blade; "though I 
 have a wooden leg, I can step you with it as stoutly as the 
 lame dwarf that crept round the city-common ; * for the 
 wooden leg, you must know, has this good property, it never 
 tires. But excuse mc a little while till Graycloak is come; 
 he never misses to pass along the Bridge between day and 
 night." 
 
 u What of Graycloak ? inquired Franz ; " let me know 
 about him." 
 
 " Graycloak brings me daily about nightfall a silver gros- 
 chen, I know not from whom. It is of no use prying into 
 things, so I never mind. Sometimes it occurs to me Gray- 
 cloak must be the devil, and means to buy my soul with the 
 money. But devil or no devil, what care I? I did not 
 strike him on the bargain, so it cannot hold." 
 
 " I should not wonder," answered Franz, with a smile, 
 u if Graycloak were a piece of a knave. But do thou fol- 
 low me ; the silver groschen shall not fail thee." 
 
 Timbertoe set fonh, hitched on briskly after his guide, 
 who conducted him up one street and down another, to a 
 distant quarter of the city, near the wall ; then halted be- 
 fore a neat little new-built house, and knocked at the door. 
 When it was opened, " Friend," said he, "thou madest one 
 evening of my life cheerful ; it is just that I should make 
 the evening of thy life cheerful also. This house, with its 
 appurtenances, and the garden where it stands, are thine ; 
 kitchen and cellar are full ; an attendant is appointed to 
 wait upon thee ; and the silver groschen, over and above, 
 thou wilt find every noon lying under thy plate. Nor will I 
 
 * There is an old tradition, that a neighboring Countess promised 
 in jest to give the Bremers as much land as a cripple, who was 
 just asking her for alms, would creep round in a day. They took 
 her at her word ; and the cripple crawled so well, that the town 
 obtained this large common by means of him. 
 
du:ib LOVE. 85 
 
 hide from thee that Graycloak was my servant, whom I sent 
 to give thee daily an honorable alms, till [ had got this house 
 made ready for thee. If thou like, thou mayest reckon me 
 thy proper Guardian Angel, since the other has not acted to 
 thy satisfaction."" 
 
 He then led the old man into his dwelling, where the table 
 was standing covered, and everything arranged for his con- 
 venience and comfortable living. The grayhead was so aston- 
 ished at his fortune, that he could not understand or even 
 believe it. That a rich man should take such pity on a 
 poor one was incomprehensible ; he felt disposed to take 
 the whole affair for magic or jugglery, till Franz removed 
 his doubts. A stream of thankful tears flowed down the old 
 man's cheeks ; and his benefactor, satisfied with this, did not 
 wait till he should recover from his amazement and thank 
 him in words, but, after doing this angel-message, vanished 
 from the old man's eyes, as angels are wont ; and left him 
 to piece together the affair as he best could. 
 
 Next morning, in the habitation of the lovely Meta, all 
 was as a fair. Franz dispatched to her a crowd of mer- 
 chants, jewellers, milliners, lace-dealers, tailors, sutors, and 
 semstresses, in part to offer her all sorts of wares, in part 
 their own good services. She passed the whole day in 
 choosing stuffs, laces, and other requisites for the condition 
 of a bride, or being measured for her various new apparel. 
 The dimensions of her dainty foot, her beautifully-formed 
 arm, and her slim waist, were as often and as carefully 
 meted as if some skilful statuary had been taking from her 
 the model for a Goddess of Love. Meanwhile, the bride- 
 groom went to appoint the bans ; and before three weeks 
 were past, he led his bride to the altar, with a solemnity by 
 which even the gorgeous wedding-pomp of the Hop-King 
 was eclipsed. Mother Brigitte had the happiness of twisting 
 the bridal-garland for her virtuous Meta ; she completely 
 
 vol. i. 8 
 
86 MUSAEUS. 
 
 attained her wish of spending her woman's-summer in pro- 
 pitious affluence ; and deserved this satisfaction, as a recom- 
 pense for one praiseworthy quality which she possessed. 
 She was the most tolerable mother-in-law that has ever been 
 discovered. 
 
LIBUSSA. 87 
 
 II. 
 
 LIBUSSA.* 
 
 Deep in the Bohemian forest, which has now dwindled to 
 a few scattered woodlands, there abode, in the primeval 
 times, while it stretched its umbrage far and wide, a spirit- 
 ual race of beings, airy and avoiding light, incorporeal also, 
 more delicately fashioned than the clay-formed sons of men ; 
 to the coarser sense of feeling imperceptible, but to the 
 finer, half-visible by moon-light; and well known to poets 
 by the name of Dryads, and to ancient bards by that of 
 Elves. From immemorial ages, they had dwelt here undis- 
 turbed ; till all at once the forest sounded with the din of 
 warriors, for Duke Czech of Hungary, with his Sclavonic 
 hordes, had broken over the mountains, to seek in these 
 wild tracts a new habitation. The fair tenants of the aged 
 oaks, of the rocks, clefts, and grottos, and of the flags in 
 the tarns and morasses, fled before the clang of arms and 
 the neighing of chargers. The stout Erl-King himself was 
 annoyed by the uproar, and transferred his court to more 
 sequestered wildernesses. One solitary Elf could not resolve 
 to leave her darling oak ; and as the wood began here and 
 there to be felled for the purposes of cultivation, she alone 
 undertook to defend her tree against the violence of the 
 strangers, and chose the towering summit of it for her resi- 
 dence. 
 
 Among the retinue of the Duke was a young Squire, 
 
 * From Jo. Dubravii Hlstoria Bohemica, and JEnece, Sylvii Cardi- 
 nality de Bohemarum Origine ac gestis Historia. 
 
bO MUSAEUS. 
 
 Krokus by name, full of spirit and impetuosity ; stout and 
 handsome, and of noble mien, to whom the keeping of his 
 master's stud had been intrusted, which at times he drove 
 far into the forest for their pasture. Frequently he rested 
 beneath the oak which the Elf inhabited ; she observed him 
 with satisfaction ; and at night, when he was sleeping at the 
 root, she would whisper pleasant dreams into his ear, and 
 announce to him in expressive images the events of the 
 coming day. When any horse had strayed into the desert, 
 and the keeper had lost its track, and gone to sleep with 
 anxious thoughts, he failed not to see in vision the marks of 
 the hidden path, which led him to the spot where his lost 
 steed was grazing. 
 
 The farther the new colonists extended, the nearer came 
 they to the dwelling of the Elf; and as by her gift of divina- 
 tion she perceived how soon her life-tree would be threaten- 
 ed by the axe, she determined to unfold this sorrow to her 
 guest. One moonshiny summer evening, Krokus had 
 folded his herd somewhat later than usual, and was hasten- 
 ing to his bed under the lofty oak. His path led him round 
 a little fishy lake, on whose silver face the moon was imag- 
 ing herself like a gleaming ball of gold ; and across this 
 glittering portion of the water, on the farther side, he per- 
 ceived a female form, apparently engaged in walking by the 
 cool shore. This sight surprised the young warrior. What 
 brings the maiden hither, thought he, by herself, in this 
 wilderness, at the season of the nightly dusk ? Yet the adven- 
 ture was of such a sort, that to a young man the more strict in- 
 vestigation of it seemed alluring rather than alarming. He 
 redoubled his steps, keeping firmly in view the form which 
 had arrested his attention ; and soon reached the place 
 where he had first noticed it, beneath the oak. But. now it 
 looked to him as if the thing he saw were a shadow rather 
 than a body ; he stood wondering and motionless ; a cold 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 89 
 
 shudder crept over him ; and he heard a sweet, soft voice 
 address to him these words : " Come hither, beloved 
 stranger, and fear not ; I am no phantasm, no deceitful 
 shadow. I am the Elf of this grove, the tenant of the oak 
 under whose leafy boughs thou hast often rested. I rocked 
 thee in sweet, delighting dreams, and prefigured to thee thy 
 adventures ; and when a brood-mare or a foal had chanced 
 to wander from the herd, I told thee of the place where 
 thou wouldst find it. Repay this favor by a service which 
 I now require of thee ; be the Protector of this tree, which 
 has so often screened thee from the shower and the scorch- 
 ing heat; and guard the murderous axes of thy brethren, 
 which lay waste the forest, that they harm not this venera- 
 ble trunk." 
 
 The young warrior, restored to self-possession by this soft, 
 still voice, made answer : " Goddess or mortal, whoever 
 thou mayest be, require of me what thou pleasest. If I can, 
 I will perform it. But I am a man of no account among 
 my people, the servant of the Duke my lord. If he tell me 
 to-day or to-morrow, Feed here, feed there, how shall I 
 protect thy tree in this distant forest? Yet if thou com- 
 mandest me, I will renounce the service of princes, and 
 dwell under the shadow of thy oak, and guard it while I 
 live." 
 
 " Do so," said the Elf; " thou shalt not repent it." 
 Hereupon she vanished ; and there was a rustling in the 
 branches above, as if some breath of an evening breeze had 
 been entangled in them, and had stirred the leaves. Krokus, 
 for a while, stood enraptured at the heavenly form which 
 had appeared to him. So soft a female, of such slender 
 shape and royal bearing, he had never seen among the 
 short, squat damsels of his own Sclavonic race. At last he 
 stretched himself upon the moss, but no sleep descended 
 on his eyes ; the dawn overtook him in a whirl of sweet 
 8* 
 
90 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 emotions, which were as strange and new to him as the 
 first beam of light to the opened eye of one born blind. 
 With the earliest morning he hastened to the Court of the 
 Duke, required his discharge, packed up his war-accoutre- 
 ments, and, with rapid steps, his burden on his shoulders, 
 and his head full of glowing enthusiasm, hied him back to 
 his enchanted forest-hermitage. 
 
 Meanwhile, in his absence, a craftsman among the peo- 
 ple, a miller by trade, had selected for himself the round 
 straight trunk of the oak to be an axle, and was proceeding 
 with his mill-men to fell it. The affrighted Elf sobbed 
 bitterly, as the greedy saw began with iron tooth to devour 
 the foundations of her dwelling. She looked wildly round, 
 from the highest summit, for her faithful guardian, but her 
 glance could find him nowhere ; and the gift of prophecy, 
 peculiar to her race, was in the present case so ineffectual, 
 that she could as little read the fate that stood before her, 
 as the sons of iEsculapius, with their vaunted prognosis, can 
 discover ways and means for themselves when Death is 
 knocking at their own door. 
 
 Krokus, however, was approaching, and so near the scene 
 of this catastrophe, that the screeching of the busy saw did 
 not escape his ear.. Such a sound in the forest boded no 
 good ; he quickened his steps, and beheld before his eyes 
 the horror of the devastation that was visiting the tree, 
 which he had taken under his protection. Like a fury he 
 rushed upon the wood-cutters, with pike and sword, and 
 scared them from their work ; for they concluded he must 
 be a forest-demon, and fled in great precipitation. By good 
 fortune, the wound of the tree was still curable ; and the 
 scar of it disappeared in a few summers. 
 
 In the solemn hour of evening, when the stranger had 
 fixed upon the spot for his future habitation ; had meted 
 out the space for hedging round as a garden, and was 
 
LIBTJSSA. 91 
 
 weighing in his mind the whole scheme of his future hermit- 
 age ; where, in retirement from the society of men, he 
 purposed to pass his days in the service of a shadowy com- 
 panion, possessed apparently of little more reality than a 
 Saint of the Calendar, whom a pious friar chooses for his 
 spiritual paramour, — the Elf appeared before him at the 
 brink of the lake, and with gentle looks thus spoke : 
 
 u Thanks to thee, beloved stranger, that thou hast turned 
 away the wasteful arms of thy brethren from ruining this 
 tree, with which my life is united. For thou shalt know 
 that Mother Nature, who has granted to my race such 
 varied powers and influences, has combined the fortune of 
 our life with the growth and duration of the oak. By us 
 the sovereign of the forest raises his venerable head above 
 the populace of other trees and shrubs ; we further the cir- 
 culation of the sap through his trunk and boughs, that he 
 may gain strength to battle with the tempest, and for long 
 centuries to defy destructive Time. On the other hand, our 
 life is bound to his ; when the oak, which the lot of Destiny 
 has appointed for the partner of our existence, fades by 
 years, we fade along with him ; and when he dies, we die, 
 and sleep, like mortals, as it were a sort of death-sleep, till, 
 by the everlasting cycle of things, Chance, or some hidden 
 provision of Nature, again weds our being to a new germ ; 
 which, unfolded by our enlivening virtue, after the lapse of 
 long years, springs up to be a mighty tree, and affords us 
 the enjoyment of existence anew. From this thou mayest 
 perceive what a service thou hast done me by thy help, and 
 what gratitude I owe thee. Ask of me the recompense of 
 thy noble deed ; disclose to me the wish of thy heart, and 
 this hour it shall be granted thee." 
 
 Krokus continued silent. The sight of the enchanting 
 Elf had made more impression on him than her speech, of 
 which, indeed, he understood but little. She noticed his 
 
92 MUSAEUS. 
 
 embarrassment , and, to extricate him from it, plucked a 
 withered reed from the margin of the lake, broke it into 
 three pieces, and said : " Choose one of these three stalks, 
 or take one without a choice. In the first, lie Honor and 
 Renown ; in the second, Riches and the wise enjoyment 
 of them ; in the third is happiness in Love laid up for 
 thee." 
 
 The young man cast his eyes upon the ground, and 
 answered : " Daughter of Heaven, if thou wouldst deign 
 to grant the desire of my heart, know that it lies not in 
 these three stalks which thou offerest me ; the recompense 
 I aim at is higher. What is Honor but the fuel of Pride ? 
 what are Riches but the root of Avarice ? and what is Love 
 but the trap-door of Passion, to ensnare the noble freedom 
 of the heart ? Grant me my wish, to rest under the shadow 
 of thy oak-tree from the toils of warfare, and to hear from 
 thy sweet mouth the lessons of wisdom, that I may under- 
 stand by them the secrets of the future." 
 
 " Thy request," replied the Elf, " is great ; but thy de- 
 serving toward me is not less so ; be it then as thou hast 
 asked. Nor, with the fruit, shall the shell be wanting to 
 thee ; for the wise man is also honored ; he alone is rich, 
 for he desires nothing more than he needs ; arid he tastes 
 the pure nectar of Love without poisoning it by polluted 
 lips." 
 
 So saying, she again presented him the three reed-stalks, 
 and vanished from his sight. 
 
 The young Eremite prepared his bed of moss, beneath 
 the oak, exceedingly content with the reception which the 
 Elf had given him. Sleep came upon him like a strong 
 man ; gay morning dreams danced round his head, and 
 solaced his fancy with the breath of happy forebodings. On 
 awakening, he joyfully began his day's work ; ere long he 
 had built himself a pleasant hermit's-cottage ; had dug his 
 
LIBUSSA. 93 
 
 garden, and planted in it roses and lilies, with other odorif- 
 erous flowers and herbs ; not forgetting pulse and cole, and 
 a sufficiency of fruit-trees. The Elf never failed to visit 
 him at twilight ; she rejoiced in the prospering of his la- 
 bors ; walked with him, hand in hand, by the sedgy border 
 of the lake ; and the wavering reeds, as the wind passed 
 through them, whispered a melodious evening salutation to 
 the trustful pair. She instructed her attentive disciple in the 
 secrets of Nature ; showed him the origin and causes of 
 things ; taught him their common and their magic proper- 
 ties and effects ; and formed the rude soldier into a thinker 
 and philosopher. 
 
 In proportion as the feelings and senses of the young man 
 grew refined by this fair spiritual intercourse, it seemed as 
 if the tender form of the Elf were condensing, and acquir- 
 ing more consistency ; her bosom caught warmth and life ; 
 her brown eyes sparkled with the fire of love; and, with the 
 shape, she appeared to have adopted the feelings of a young, 
 blooming maiden. The sentimental hour of dusk, which 
 is as if expressly calculated to awaken slumbering feelings, 
 had its usual effect ; and after a few moons from their first 
 acquaintance, the sighing Krokus found himself possessed of 
 the happiness in Love, which the Third Reed-stalk had ap- 
 pointed him ; and did not repent that by the trap-door of 
 Passion the freedom of his heart had been ensnared. 
 Though the marriage of the tender pair took place without 
 witnesses, it was celebrated with as much enjoyment as the 
 most tumultuous espousal ; nor were speaking proofs ot 
 love's recompense long wanting. The Elf gave her hus- 
 band three daughters at a birth ; and the father, rejoicing in 
 the bounty of his better half, named, at the first embrace, 
 the eldest infant, Bela ; the next born, Therba ; and the 
 youngest, Libussa. They were all like the Genies in beau- 
 ty of form ; and though not moulded of such light materials 
 
94 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 as the mother, their corporeal structure was finer than the 
 dull earthly clay of the father. They were also free from 
 all the infirmities of childhood ; their swalhings did not 
 gall them ; they teethed without epileptic fits, needed no 
 calomel taken inwardly, got no rickets, had no small-pox, 
 and, of course, no scars, no scum-eyes, or puckered faces; 
 nor did they require any leading-strings ; for, after the first 
 nine days, they ran like little partridges ; and as they grew 
 up, they manifested all the talents of the mother, for dis- 
 covering hidden things, and predicting what was future. 
 
 Krokus himself, by the aid of time, grew skilful in these 
 mysteries also. When the wolf had scattered the flocks 
 through the forest, and the herdsmen were seeking for their 
 sheep and horses; when the woodman missed an axe or 
 bill, they took counsel from the wise Krokus, who showed 
 them where to find what they had lost. When a wicked 
 prowler had abstracted aught from the common stock ; had 
 by night broken into the pinfold, or the dwelling of his 
 neighbor, and robbed or slain him, and none could guess 
 the malefactor, the wise Krokus was consulted. He led the 
 people to a green ; made them form a ring ; then stept into 
 the midst of them, set the fiuthful sieve a-running, and so 
 failed not to discover the misdoer. By such acts his fame 
 spread over all the country of Bohemia ; and whoever had 
 a weighty care, or an important undertaking, took counsel 
 from the wise Krokus about its issue, The lame and the sick, 
 too, required from him help and recovery ; even the unsound 
 cattle of the fold were driven to him ; and his gift of curing 
 sick kine by his shadow was not less than that of the re- 
 nowned St. Martin of Schierbach. By these means the 
 concourse of the people to him grew more frequent, day by 
 day, no otherwise than if the Tripod of the Delphic Apollo 
 had been transferred to the Bohemian forest ; and though 
 Krokus answered all inquiries, and cured the sick and 
 
L1BUSSA. 95 
 
 afflicted, without fee or reward, yet the treasure of his 
 secret wisdom paid him richly, and brought him in abundant 
 profit ; the people crowded to him with gifts and presents, 
 and almost oppressed him with testimonies of their good- 
 will. It was he that first disclosed the mystery of washing 
 gold from the sands of the Elbe; and for his recompense 
 he had a tenth of all the produce. By these means his 
 wealth and store increased ; he built strong holds and pal- 
 aces ; had vast herds of cattle ; possessed fertile pasturages, 
 fields, and woods; and thus found himself imperceptibly 
 possessed of all the Riches which the beneficently forebod- 
 ing Elf had inclosed for him in the Second Reed. 
 
 One fine summer evening, when Krokus with his train 
 was returning from an excursion, having by special request 
 been settling the disputed marches of two townships, he 
 perceived his spouse on the margin of the sedgy lake, where 
 she had first appeared to him. She waved him with her 
 hand ; so he dismissed his servants, and hastened to clasp 
 her in his arms. She received him, as usual, with tender 
 love ; but her heart was sad and oppressed ; from her eyes 
 trickled down ethereal tears, so fine and fugitive, that as 
 they fell they were greedily inhaled by the air, and not 
 allowed to reach the ground. Krokus was alarmed at this 
 appearance ; he had never seen his wife's fair eyes other- 
 wise than cheerful, and sparkling with youthful gayety. 
 " What ails thee, beloved of my heart ? " said he ; " black 
 forebodings overcast my soul. Speak, say what mean those 
 tears ? " 
 
 The Elf sobbed, leaned her head sorrowfully on his 
 shoulder, and said : " Beloved husband, in thy absence I 
 have looked into the Book of Destiny; a doleful chance 
 overhangs my life-tree; I must part from thee forever. 
 Follow me into the castle, till I bless my children ; for from 
 this day you will never see me more." 
 
96 MUSAEUS. 
 
 "Dearest wife," said Krokus, "chase away these mourn- 
 ful thoughts. What misfortune is it that can harm thy 
 tree ? Behold its sound houghs, how they stretch forth 
 loaded with fruit and leaves, and how it raises its top to the 
 clouds. While this arm can move, it shall defend thy tree 
 from any miscreant that presumes to wound its stem." 
 
 " Impotent defence," replied she, " which a mortal arm 
 can yield ! Ants can but secure themselves from ants, flies 
 from flies, and the worms of Earth from other earthly 
 worms. But what can the mightiest among you do against 
 the workings of Nature, or the unalterable decisions of 
 Fate ? The kings of the Earth can heap up little hillocks, 
 which they name fortresses and castles ; but the weakest 
 breath of air defies their authority, blows where it lists, and 
 mocks at their command. This oak-tree thou hast guarded 
 from the violence of men ; canst thou likewise forbid the 
 tempest, that it rise not to disleaf its branches ; or if a hid- 
 den worm is gnawing in its marrow, canst thou draw it out, 
 and tread it under foot ? " 
 
 Amid such conversation they arrived at the Castle. The 
 slender maidens, as they were wont at the evening visit of 
 their mother, came bounding forth to meet them, gave ac- 
 count of their day's employments, produced their needle- 
 work, and their embroideries, to prove their diligence ; but 
 now the hour of household happiness was joyless. They 
 soon observed that the traces of deep suffering were im- 
 printed on the countenance of their father ; and they looked 
 with sympathizing sorrow at their mother's tears, without 
 venturing to inquire their cause. The mother gave them 
 many wise instructions and wholesome admonitions ; but her 
 speech was like the singing of a swan, as if she wished to 
 give the world her farewell. She lingered with her hus- 
 band, till the morning-star went up in the sky; then she 
 embraced him and her children with mournful tenderness ; 
 
LIBUSSA. 97 
 
 and at dawn of day retired, as was her custom, through the 
 secret door, to her oak-tree, and left her friends to their 
 own sad forebodings. 
 
 Nature stood in listening stillness at the rising sun ; but 
 heavy black clouds soon veiled his beaming head. The 
 day grew sultry and oppressive ; the whole atmosphere was 
 electric. Distant thunder came rolling over the forest ; and 
 the hundred-voiced Echo repeated, in the winding valleys, 
 its baleful sound. At the noontide, a forky thunderbolt 
 struck quivering down upon the oak; and in a moment 
 shivered, with resistless force, the trunk and boughs, and 
 the wreck lay scattered far around it in the forest. When 
 Father Krokus was informed of this, he rent his garments, 
 went forth with his daughters to deplore the life-tree of his 
 spouse, and to collect the fragments of it, and preserve them 
 as invaluable relics. But the Elf from that day was not 
 seen any more. 
 
 In some few years, the tender girls had waxed in stature ; 
 their maiden forms blossomed forth, as the rose pushing up 
 from the bud ; and the fame of their beauty spread abroad 
 over all the land. The noblest youths of the people crowd- 
 ed round, with cases to submit to Father Krokus for his 
 counsel ; but at bottom, these their specious pretexts were 
 directed to the fair maidens, whom they wished to get a 
 glimpse of; as is the mode with young men, who delight 
 to have some business with the master of the household, 
 when his daughters are beautiful. The three sisters lived 
 in great simplicity and unity together ; as yet but little 
 conscious of their talents. The gift of prophecy had been 
 communicated to them in an equal degree ; and all their 
 words were oracles, although they knew it not. Yet 
 soon their vanity awoke at the voice of flattery ; word- 
 catchers eagerly laid hold of every sound proceeding from 
 
 tol. i. 9 
 
98 MUSAEUS. 
 
 their lips ; Celadons noted down every look, spied out 
 the faintest smile, explored the aspect of their eyes, and 
 drew from it more or less favorable prognostics, conceiving 
 that their own destiny was to be read by means of it ; and 
 from this time it has become the mode with lovers to de- 
 duce from the horoscope of the eyes the rising or declining 
 of their star in courtship. Scarcely had Vanity obtained a 
 footing in the virgin heart, till Pride, her dear confident, 
 with her wicked rabble of a train, Self-love, Self-praise, 
 Self-will, Self-interest, were standing at the door ; and all 
 of them in time sneaked in. The elder sisters struggled to 
 outdo the younger in their arts ; and envied her in secret 
 her superiority in personal attractions. For though they all 
 were very beautiful, the youngest was the most so. Fraii- 
 lein Bela turned her chief attention to the science of plants ; 
 as Fraiilein Medea did in earlier times. She knew their 
 hidden virtues, could extract from them poisons and anti- 
 dotes ; and farther, understood the art of making from them 
 sweet or nauseous odors for the unseen Powers. When her 
 censer steamed, she allured to her Spirits out of the im- 
 measurable depth of aether, from beyond the Moon, and 
 they became her subjects, that with their fine organs they 
 might be allowed to snuff these delicious vapors ; and when 
 she scattered villanous perfumes upon the coals, she could 
 have smoked away with it the very Zihim and the Ohim 
 from the Wilderness. 
 
 Fraiilein Therba was inventive as Circe in devising magic 
 formulas, which could command the elements, could raise 
 tempests and whirlwinds, also hail and thunder ; could shake 
 the bowels of the Earth, or lift itself from the sockets of its 
 axle. She employed these arts to terrify the people, and be 
 feared and honored by them as a goddess ; and she could, 
 in fact, arrange the weather more according to the wish and 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 99 
 
 taste of men than wise old Nature does. Two brothers 
 quarrelled on this subject, for their wishes never were the 
 same. The one was a husbandman, and still desired rain 
 for the growth and strengthening of his crops. The other 
 was a potter, and desired constant sunshine to dry his dishes, 
 which the rain destroyed. And as Heaven never could con- 
 tent them in disposing of this matter, they repaired one day 
 with rich presents to the Castle of the wise Krokus ; and 
 submitted their petitions to Therba. The daughter of the 
 Elf gave a smile over their unquiet grumbling at the wise 
 economy of Nature ; and contented the demands of each ; 
 she made rain fall on the seed-lands of the cultivator ; and 
 the sun shone on the potter-field close by. By these en- 
 chantments both the sisters gained much fame and riches, 
 for they never used their gifts without a fee. With their 
 treasures they built castles and country-houses ; laid out 
 royal pleasure-gardens ; to their festivals and divertisements 
 there was no end. The gallants, who solicited their love, 
 they gulled and laughed at. 
 
 Fraiilein Libussa was no sharer in the vain, proud dispo- 
 sition of her sisters. Though she had the same capacities 
 for penetrating the secrets of Nature, and employing its 
 hidden powers in her service, she remained contented with 
 the gifts she had derived from her maternal inheritance, 
 without attempting to increase them, or turn them to a source 
 of gain. Her vanity extended not beyond the conscious- 
 ness that she was beautiful ; she cared not for riches ; and 
 neither longed to be feared nor'to be honored like her sisters. 
 Whilst these were gadding up and down among their coun- 
 try-houses, hastening from one tumultuous pleasure to anoth- 
 er, with the flower of the Bohemian chivalry fettered to 
 their chariot-wheels, she abode in her father's house, con- 
 ducting the economy, giving counsel to those who begged it, 
 friendly help to the afflicted and oppressed ; and all from 
 
100 MUSAEUS. 
 
 good-will, without remuneration.* Her temper was soft 
 and modest, and her conduct virtuous and discreet, as be- 
 seems a noble virgin. She might secretly rejoice in the 
 victories which her beauty gained over the hearts of men, 
 and accept the sighing and cooing of her languishing ador- 
 ers as a just tribute to her charms ; but none dared speak 
 a word of love to her, or venture on aspiring to her heart. 
 Yet Amor, the roguish urchin, takes a pleasure in exerting 
 his privileges on the coy ; and often hurls his burning torch 
 upon the lowly straw-roof, when he means to set on fire a 
 lofty palace. 
 
 Far in the bosom of the forest lived an ancient Knight, 
 who had come into the land with the host of Czech. In this 
 seclusion he had fixed his settlement ; reduced the desert 
 under cultivation, and formed for himself a small estate, 
 where he thought to pass the remainder of his days in peace, 
 and live upon the produce of his husbandry. A strong- 
 handed neighbor took forcible possession of the land, and 
 expelled the owner, whom a hospitable peasant sheltered in 
 his dwelling. The distressed old Knight had a son, who 
 now formed the sole consolation and support of his age ; a 
 
 * Nulla Cro.cco virilis sexus proles fuit, sed moriturus tres a morte 
 sua Jilias superstites reliquit, omnes ut ipse eratfatidicas, vel magas 
 potius, qualis Medea et Circe fuerant. Nam Bela, natu jiliarum 
 maxima, herbis incantandis Medeam imitabatur ; Tctcha (Therba), 
 natu minor, carminibus magicis Circem reddcbat. Ad utramque 
 frequens multitudinis concur sus ; dum alii amores sibi conciliare, 
 alii cum bond, valetudine in gratiam redire, alii res amissas recupe- 
 rare cupiunt. Ilia arcem Belinam, hac altera arcem Thetin ex 
 mercenarid pecunid, nihil enim gratuito faciebant, adificandam 
 curavit. Liberalior in hac re Lybussa natu minima apparuit, 
 ut qua a nemine quidquam extorquebat, et potius fata publica omni- 
 bus, quam privata singulis, praicinebat : qud liberalitate, et quia non 
 gratuitd solum sed etiam minus fallace pradictione ulebatur, asse- 
 cuta est ut in locum patris Crocci subrogaretur. — Dubravius. 
 
LIBUSSA. 101 
 
 bold, active youth, but possessed of nothing save a hunting- 
 spear and a practised arm, for the sustenance of his gray- 
 haired father. The injustice of their neighbor stimulated 
 him to revenge, and he had been prepared for resisting 
 force by force ; but the command of the anxious father, 
 unwilling to expose his son to danger, had disarmed him. 
 Yet ere long he resumed his former purpose. Then the 
 father called him to his presence, and said : 
 
 " Pass over, my son, to the wise Krokus, or to the cun- 
 ning virgins his daughters, and ask counsel whether the gods 
 approve thy undertaking, and will grant it a prosperous 
 issue. If so, gird on thy sword, and take the spear in thy 
 hand, and go forth to fight for thy inheritance. If not, stay 
 here till thou hast closed my eyes and laid me in the earth ; 
 then do what shall seem good to thee." 
 
 The youth set forth, and first reached Bela's palace, a 
 building like a temple for the habitation of a goddess. He 
 knocked at the door, and desired to be admitted ; but the 
 porter, observing that he came empty-handed, dismissed him 
 as a beggar, and shut the door in his face. He went forward 
 in sadness, and reached the house of sister Therba, where 
 he knocked and requested an audience. The porter looked 
 upon him through his window, and said : " If thou bringest 
 gold in thy bag, which thou canst weigh out to my mistress, 
 she will teach thee one of her good saws to read thy for- 
 tune withal. If not, then go and gather of it in the sands 
 of the Elbe as many grains as the tree hath leaves, the 
 sheaf ears, and the bird feathers, then will I open thee this 
 gate." The mocked young man glided off entirely deject- 
 ed ; and the more so, as he learned that Seer Krokus was 
 in Poland, arbitrating the disputes of some contending 
 Grandees. He anticipated from the third sister no more 
 flattering reception ; and as he descried her father's castle 
 from a hill in the distance, he could not venture to approach 
 9* 
 
102 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 it, but hid himself in a thicket to pursue his bitter thoughts. 
 Ere long he was roused by an approaching noise ; he lis- 
 tened, and heard a sound of horses' hoofs. A flying roe 
 dashed through the bushes, followed by a lovely huntress 
 and her maids on stately steeds. She hurled a javelin from 
 her hand ; it flew whizzing through the air, but did not hit 
 the game. Instantly the watchful young man seized his 
 bow, and launched from the twanging cord a bolt, which 
 smote the deer through the heart, and stretched it lifeless on 
 the spot. The lady in astonishment at this phenomenon 
 looked round to find her unknown hunting partner ; and the 
 archer, on observing this, stept forward from his bush, and 
 bent himself humbly before her to the ground. Fraulein 
 Libussa thought she had never seen a finer man. At the 
 first glance, his figure made so deep an impression on her, 
 that she could not but award him that involuntary feeling of 
 good-will, which a beautiful appearance claims as its prerog- 
 ative. " Tell me, fair stranger," said she to him, " who art 
 thou, and what chance is it that leads thee to these groves ? " 
 The youth guessed rightly that his lucky star had brought 
 him what he was in search of; he disclosed his case to her 
 in modest words ; not hiding how disgracefully her sisters 
 had dismissed him, or how the treatment had afflicted him. 
 She cheered his heart with friendly words. " Follow me to 
 my abode," said she; "I will consult the Book of Fate for 
 thee, and answer thy demand to-morrow by the rising of the 
 sun." 
 
 The young man did as he was ordered. No churlish 
 porter here barred for him the entrance of the palace ; the 
 fair lady exercised the rights of hospitality with generous 
 attention. He was charmed by this benignant reception, but 
 still more by the beauty of his gentle hostess. Her enchant- 
 ing figure hovered all night before his eyes ; he carefully 
 defended himself from sleep, that he might not for a mo- 
 
LIBUSSA. 103 
 
 ment lose from his thoughts the delightful events of the day. 
 Fraulein Libussa, on the contrary, enjoyed soft slumber ; 
 for seclusion from the influences of the external senses, 
 which disturb the finer presentiments of the future, is an 
 indispensable condition for the gift of prophecy. The glow- 
 ing fancy of the maiden blended the form of this young 
 stranger with all the dreaming images which hovered 
 through her mind that night. She found him where she had 
 not looked for him, in connexion with affairs in which she 
 could not understand how this unknown youth had come to 
 be involved. 
 
 On her early awakening, at the hour when the fair proph- 
 etess was wont to separate and interpret the visions of the 
 night, she felt inclined to cast away these phantasms from 
 her mind, as errors which had sprung from a disturbance in 
 the operation of her prophetic faculty, and were entitled to 
 no heed from her. Yet a dim feeling signified that this cre- 
 ation of her fancy was not idle dreaming ; but had a sig- 
 nificant allusion to certain events which the future would 
 unravel ; and that last night this presaging Fantasy had spied 
 out the decrees of Fate, and blabbed them to her, more 
 successfully than ever. By help of it, she found that her 
 guest was inflamed with warm love to her ; and with equal 
 honesty her heart confessed the same thing in regard to him. 
 But she instantly impressed the seal of silence on the news ; 
 as the modest youth had, on his side, set a guard upon his 
 lips and his eyes, that he might not expose himself to a con- 
 temptuous refusal ; for the chasm, whichj Fortune had inter- 
 posed between him and the daughter of the wise Krokus, 
 seemed impassable. 
 
 Although the fair Libussa well knew what she had to say 
 in answer to the young man's question, yet it went against 
 her heart to let him go from her so soon. At sunrise she 
 called him to her in her garden, and said, " The curtain of 
 
104 MUSAEUS. 
 
 darkness yet hangs before my eyes ; abide with me till sun- 
 set ; " and at night she said, " Stay till sunrise ; " and 
 next morning, " Wait another day ; " and the third day, 
 " Have patience till tomorrow." On the fourth day she at 
 last dismissed him ; finding no more pretexts for detaining 
 him with safety to her secret. At parting, she gave him his 
 response in friendly words : " The gods will not that thou 
 shouldst contend with a man of violence in the land ; to 
 bear and suffer is the lot of the weaker. Return to thy 
 father ; be the comfort of his old age ; and support him 
 by the labor of thy diligent hand. Take two white Steers 
 as a present from my herd ; and this Staff to drive them ; 
 and when it blossoms and bears fruit, the spirit of prophecy 
 will descend on thee." 
 
 The young man felt himself unworthy of the gentle vir- 
 gin's gift ; and blushed that he should receive it and make 
 no return. With ineloquent lips, but with looks so much 
 the more eloquent, he took mournful leave of her ; and at 
 the gate below found two white Steers awaiting him, as sleek 
 and glittering as of old the godlike Bull, on whose smooth 
 back the virgin Europa swam across the blue sea-waves. 
 Joyfully he loosed them from the post, and drove them softly 
 on before him. The distance home seemed but a few ells, 
 so much was his spirit busied with the fair Libussa ; and 
 he vowed, that, as he never could obtain her love, he would 
 love no other all his days. The old Knight rejoiced in the 
 return of his son ; and still more in learning that the oracle 
 of the fair heiress agreed so completely with his own wishes. 
 As husbandry had been appointed by the gods for the young 
 man's trade, he lingered not in harnessing his white Steers, 
 and yoking them to the plough. The first trial prospered to 
 his wish ; the bullocks had such strength and alacrity that 
 they turned over in a single day more land than twelve yoke 
 of oxen commonly can master ; for they were fiery and 
 
LIBUSSA. 105 
 
 impetuous, as the Bull is painted in the Almanac, where 
 he rushes from the clouds in the Sign of April ; not slug- 
 gish and heavy like the Ox, who plods on with his holy con- 
 sorts, in our Gospel-Book, phlegmatically, as a Dutch skip- 
 per in a calm. 
 
 Duke Czech, who had led the first colony of his people 
 into Bohemia, was now long ago committed to his final rest, 
 yet his descendants had not been promoted to succeed him 
 in his princely dignity. The Magnates had, in truth, at his 
 decease, assembled for a new election ; but their wild, stormy 
 tempers would admit of no reasonable resolution. Self- 
 interest and self-sufficiency transformed the first Bohemian 
 Convention of Estates into a Polish Diet ; as too many hands 
 laid hold of the princely mantle, they tore it in pieces, and 
 no one of them obtained it. The government had dwin- 
 dled to a sort of Anarchy ; every one did what was right 
 in his own eyes ; the strong oppressed the weak, the rich 
 the poor, the great the little. There was now no public 
 security in the land ; yet the frank spirits of the time 
 thought their new republic very well arranged. " All is in 
 order," said they ; " everything goes on its way with us as 
 well as elsewhere ; the wolf eats the lamb, the kite the dove, 
 the fox the cock." This artless constitution could not last ; 
 when the first debauch of fancied freedom had gone off, 
 and the people were again grown sober, reason asserted its 
 rights ; the patriots, the honest citizens, whoever in the 
 nation loved his country, joined together to destroy the idol 
 Hydra, and unite the people once more under a single head. 
 " Let us choose a Prince," said they, " lo rule over us, after 
 the manner of our fathers, to tame the froward, and exer- 
 cise right and justice in the midst of us. Not the strongest, 
 the boldest, or the richest ; the wisest be our Duke ! " The 
 people, wearied out with the oppressions of their petty ty- 
 rants, had on this occasion but one voice, and loudly 
 
106 MUSAEUS. 
 
 applauded the proposal. A meeting of* Estates was con- 
 voked ; and the choice unanimously fell upon the wise 
 Krokus. An embassy of honor was appointed, inviting him 
 to take possession of the princely dignity. Though he had 
 never longed for lofty titles, he hesitated not about comply- 
 ing with the people's wish. Invested with the purple, he 
 proceeded, with great pomp, to Vizegrad, the residence of 
 the Dukes ; where the people met him with triumphant 
 shouting, and did reverence to him as their Regent. Where- 
 by he perceived that now the Third Reed-stalk of the 
 bountiful Elf was likewise sending forth its gift upon 
 him. 
 
 His love of justice, and his wise legislation, soon spread 
 his fame over all the surrounding countries. The Sarmatic 
 Princes, incessantly at feud with one another, brought their 
 contention from afar before his judgment-seat. He weigh- 
 ed it with the undeceitful weights of natural Justice, in the 
 scales of Law ; and when he opened his mouth, it was as 
 if the venerable Solon, or the wise Solomon from between 
 the Twelve Lions of his throne, had been pronouncing sen- 
 tence. Some seditious instigators having leagued against 
 the peace of their country, and kindled war among the 
 Poles, he advanced at the head of his army into Poland ; put 
 an end to the civil strife ; and a large portion of the people, 
 grateful for the peace which he had given them, chose him 
 for their Duke also. He there built the city Cracow, which 
 is called by his name, and has the privilege of crowning the 
 Polish Kings, even to the present time. Krokus ruled with 
 great glory to the end of his days. Observing that he was 
 now near their limit, and must soon set out, he caused a 
 coffin to be made from the fragments of the oak which his 
 spouse the Elf had inhabited ; and then departed in peace, 
 bevvept by the Princesses his three daughters, who deposited 
 the Ducal remains in the coffin, and consigned him to the 
 
LIBUSSA. 107 
 
 Earth as he had commanded ; and the whole land mourned 
 for him. 
 
 When the obsequies were finished, the Estates assembled 
 to deliberate who should now possess the vacant throne. 
 The people were unanimous for one of Krokus's daughters ; 
 but which of the three they had not yet determined. Fraii- 
 lein Bela had, on the whole, the fewest adherents ; for her 
 heart was not good ; and her magic-lantern was too fre- 
 quently employed in doing sheer mischief. But she had 
 raised such a terror of herself among the people, that no 
 one liked to take exception at her, lest he might draw down 
 her vengeance on him. When the vote was called, there- 
 fore, the electors all continued dumb ; there was no voice 
 for her, but also none against her. At sunset the represen- 
 tatives of the people separated, adjourning their election to 
 another day. Then Fraulein Therba was proposed ; but 
 confidence in her incantations had made Fraulein Therba's 
 head giddy ; she was proud and overbearing ; required to 
 be honored as a goddess ; and if incense did not always 
 smoke for her, she grew peevish, cross, capricious ; dis- 
 playing all the properties by which the fair sex, when they 
 please, can cease to be fair. She was less feared than her 
 elder sister, but not on that account more loved. For these 
 reasons, the election-field continued silent as a lykewake ; 
 and the vote was never called for. On the third day, came 
 Libussa's turn. No sooner was this name pronounced, 
 than a confidential hum was heard throughout the electing 
 circle; the solemn visages unwrinkled,. and brightened up, 
 and each of the Electors had some good to whisper of the 
 Fraulein to his neighbor. One praised her virtue, another 
 praised her modesty, a third her prudence, a fourth her 
 infallibility in prophecy, a fifth her disinterestedness in 
 giving counsel, a tenth her chastity, other ninety her 
 beauty, and the last her gifts as a housewife. When a 
 
108 MUSAEUS. 
 
 lover draws out such a catalogue of the perfections of his 
 mistress, it remains still doubtful whether she is really the 
 possessor of a single one among them ; but the public sel- 
 dom errs on the favorable side, however often on the other, 
 in the judgments it pronounces on good fame. With so 
 many universally acknowledged praiseworthy qualities, Fraii- 
 lein Libussa was undoubtedly the favored candidate, at least 
 in petto, of the sage Electors ; but the preference of the 
 younger sister to the elder has so frequently, in the affair 
 of marriage, as experience testifies, destroyed the peace of 
 the house, that reasonable fear might be entertained lest 
 in affairs of still greater moment it might disturb the peace 
 of the country. This consideration put the sapient guar- 
 dians of the people into such embarrassment, that they could 
 come to no conclusion whatever. There was wanting a 
 speaker, to hang the clock-weight of his eloquence upon the 
 wheel of the Electors 1 favorable will, before the business 
 could get into motion, and the good disposition of their 
 minds become active and efficient ; and this speaker now 
 appeared, as if appointed for the business. 
 
 Wladomir, one of the Bohemian Magnates, the highest 
 after the Duke, had long sighed for the enchanting Libussa, 
 and wooed her during Father Krokus's lifetime. The youth 
 being one of his most faithful vassals, and beloved by him as 
 a son, the worthy Krokus could have wished well that love 
 would unite this pair; but the coyness of the maiden was 
 insuperable, and he would in nowise force her inclination. 
 Prince Wladomir, however, would not be deterred by these 
 doubtful aspects ; but still hoped, by fidelity and constancy, 
 to tire out the hard heart of the Fraiilein, and by his ten- 
 der attentions make it soft and pliant. He continued in the 
 Duke's retinue to the end, without appearing by this means 
 to have advanced a hair's-breadth towards the goal of his 
 desires. But now, he thought, an opportunity was offered 
 
LIBUSSA. 109 
 
 him for opening her closed heart by a meritorious deed, and 
 earning from her noble-minded gratitude what lov.e did not 
 seem inclined to grant him voluntarily. He determined on 
 braving the hatred and vengeance of the two dreaded sisters, 
 and raising his beloved to her paternal throne. Observing 
 the indecision of the wavering assembly, he addressed them, 
 and said : 
 
 " If ye will hear me, ye courageous Knights and Nobles 
 from among the people, I will lay before you a similitude, 
 by which you shall perceive how this coming choice may 
 be accomplished, to the weal and profit of the land." 
 
 Silence being ordered, he proceeded thus : 
 
 " The Bees had lost their Queen, and the whole hive sat 
 sad and moping ; they flew seldom and sluggishly out, had 
 small heart or activity in honey-making, and their trade and 
 sustenance fell into decay. Therefore they resolved upon 
 a new sovereign, to rule over their community, that disci- 
 pline and order might not be lost from among them. Then 
 came the Wasp flying towards them, and said : ' Choose me 
 for your Queen, I am mighty and terrible ; the strong horse 
 is afraid of my sting ; with it I can even defy the lion, your 
 hereditary foe, and prick him in the snout when he ap- 
 proaches your store. I will watch you and defend you.' 
 This speech was pleasant to the Bees ; but after deeply con- 
 sidering it, the wisest among them answered : ' Thou art 
 stout and dreadful, but even the sting which is to guard us 
 we fear ; thou canst not be our Queen. , Then the Humble- 
 bee came buzzing towards them, and said : ' Choose me for 
 your Queen ! hear ye not that the sounding of my wings 
 announces loftiness and dignity ? Nor is a sting wanting 
 to me, wherewith to protect you.' The Bees answered : 
 4 We are a peaceable and quiet people ; the proud sounding 
 of thy wings would annoy us, and disturb the continuance 
 of our diligence; thou canst not be our Queen.' Then the 
 
 VOL. I. 10 
 
110 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 Royal-bee requested audience : ' Though I am larger and 
 stronger than you,' said she, ' my strength cannot hurt or 
 damage you ; for, lo ! the dangerous sting is altogether 
 wanting. I am soft of temper, a friend of order and thrift, 
 can guide your honey-making, and further your labor.' — 
 1 Then,' said the Bees, ' thou art worthy to rule over us ; 
 we obey thee ; be our Queen.'" 
 
 Wladomir was silent. The whole assembly guessed the 
 meaning of his speech, and the minds of all were in a favor- 
 able tone for Fraulein Libussa. But at the moment when 
 the vote was to be put, a croaking raven flew over their 
 heads ; this evil omen interrupted all deliberations, and the 
 meeting was adjourned till the morrow. It was Fraulein 
 Bela who had sent this bird of black augury to stop their 
 operations, for she well knew how the minds of the Electors 
 were inclining; and Prince Wladomir had raised her bitter- 
 est spleen against him. She held a secret consultation with 
 her sister Therba ; when it was determined to take ven- 
 geance on their common slanderer, and to dispatch a heavy 
 Incubus to suffocate the soul from his body. The stout 
 Knight, dreaming nothing of this danger, went, as he was 
 wont, to wait upon his mistress, and was favored by her 
 with the first friendly look; from which he failed not to 
 presage for himself a heaven of delight; and if anything 
 could still have increased his rapture, it must have been the 
 gift of a rose, which was blooming on the Fraiilein's breast, 
 and which she reached him, with an injunction to let it 
 wither on his heart. He interpreted these words quite 
 otherwise than they were meant ; for of all the sciences, 
 there is none so deceitful as the science of expounding in 
 matters of love ; here errors, as it were, have their home. 
 The enamored Knight was anxious to preserve his rose as 
 long as possible in freshness and bloom ; he put it in a 
 flower-pot among water, and fell asleep with the most flat- 
 tering hopes, 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 Ill 
 
 At gloomy midnight, the destroying angel sent by Fraii- 
 lein Bela glided towards him ; with panting breath blew off 
 the bolts and locks of his apartment ; lighted like a moun- 
 tain of lead upon the slumbering Knight, and so squeezed 
 him together, that he felt on awakening as if a millstone 
 had been hung about his neck. In this agonizing suffoca- 
 tion, thinking that the last moment of his life was at hand, 
 he happily remembered the rose, which was standing by his 
 bed in a flower-pot, and pressed it to his breast, saying : 
 " Wither with me, fair rose, and "die on my chilled bosom, 
 as a proof that my last thought was directed to thy gentle 
 mistress." In an instant all was light about his heart ; the 
 heavy Incubus could not withstand the magic force of the 
 flower ; his crushing weight would not now have balanced a 
 feather; his antipathy to the perfume soon scared him from 
 the chamber; and the narcotic virtue of this rose-odor again 
 lulled the Knight into refreshing sleep. He rose with the 
 sun, next morning, fresh and alert, and rode to the field, to 
 see what impression his similitude had made on the Elec- 
 tors, and to watch what course the business was about to 
 take; determined at all hazards, should a contrary wind 
 spring up, and threaten with shipwreck the vessel of his 
 hopes, to lay his hand upon the rudder, and steer it into 
 port. 
 
 For the present this was not required. The electing 
 Senate had considered Wladomir's parable, and so sedulous- 
 ly ruminated and digested it over night, that it had passed 
 into their hearts and spirits. A stout Knight, who espied 
 this favorable crisis, and who sympathized in the concerns 
 of his heart with the enamored Wladomir, was endeavoring 
 to snatch away, or at least to share with him, the honor of 
 exalting Fraiilein Libussa to the throne. He stept forth, 
 and drew his sword, and with a loud voice proclaimed Li- 
 bussa Duchess of Bohemia, calling upon all who thought 
 
112 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 as he did, to draw their swords and justify the choice. In 
 a moment hundreds of swords were gleaming through the 
 field ; a loud huzza announced the new Regent, and on 
 all sides arose the joyful shout : "Libussa be our Duchess ! " 
 A commission was appointed, with Wladomir arid the stout 
 sword-drawer at its head, to acquaint the Fraulein with 
 her exaltation to the princely rank. With that modest 
 blush which gives the highest grace to female charms, 
 she accepted the sovereignty over the people ; and the 
 magic of her enrapturing look made all hearts subject to 
 her. The nation celebrated the event with vast rejoicings ; 
 and although her two sisters envied her, and employed their 
 secret arts to obtain revenge on her and their country for 
 the slight which had been put upon them ; and endeavored 
 by the leaven of criticism, by censuring all the measures 
 and transactions of their sister, to produce a hurtful fer- 
 mentation in the state, yet Libussa was enabled wisely to 
 encounter this unsisterly procedure, and to ruin all the 
 hostile projects, magical or otherwise, of these ungentle 
 persons ; till at last, weary of assailing her in vain, they 
 ceased to employ their ineffectual arts against her. 
 
 The sighing Wladomir awaited, in the meantime, with 
 wistful longing, the unfolding of his fate. More than once 
 he had tried to read the final issue of it in the fair eyes 
 of his Princess; but Libussa had enjoined them strict silence 
 respecting the feelings of her heart ; and for a lover, without 
 prior treaty with the eyes and their significant glances, to 
 demand an oral explanation, is at all times an unhappy un- 
 dertaking. The only favorable sign, which still sustained 
 his hopes, was the unfaded rose ; for after a year had passed 
 away, it still bloomed as fresh as on the night when he 
 received it from her fair hand. A flower from a lady's 
 hand, a nosegay, a ribbon, or a lock of hair, is certainly 
 in all cases better than an empty nut ; yet all these pretty 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 113 
 
 things are but ambiguous pledges of love, if they have not 
 borrowed meaning from some more trust-worthy revelation. 
 Wladomir had nothing for it but to play in silence the part 
 of a sighing shepherd, and to watch what Time and Chance 
 might in the long run do to help him. The unquiet Mizisla 
 pursued his courtship with far more vivacity ; he pressed 
 forward on every occasion where he could obtain her no- 
 tice. At the coronation, he had been the first that took 
 the oath of feally to the Princess ; he followed her insep- 
 arably, as the Moon does the Earth, to express by unbidden 
 offices of zeal his devotion to her person ; and on public 
 solemnities and processions, he flourished his sword before 
 her, to keep its good services in her remembrance. 
 
 Yet Libussa seemed, like other people in the world, to 
 have very speedily forgotten the promoters of her fortune ; 
 for when an obelisk is once standing perpendicular, one 
 heeds not the levers and implements which raised it ; so at 
 least the claimants of her heart explained the Fraulein's 
 coldness. Meanwhile both of them were wrong in their 
 opinion ; the Fraiilein was neither insensible nor ungrate- 
 ful ; but her heart was no longer a free piece of property, 
 which she could give or sell according to her pleasure. 
 The decree of Love had already passed in favor of the trim 
 Forester with the sure cross-bow. The first impression, which 
 the sight of him had made upon her heart, was still so 
 strong, that no second could efface it. In a period of three 
 years, the colors of imagination, in which that Divinity 
 had painted the image of the graceful youth, had no whit 
 abated in their brightness ; and love therefore continued 
 altogether unimpaired. For the passion of the fair sex is 
 of this nature, that, if it can endure three moons, it will then 
 last three times three years, or longer if required. In proof 
 of this, see the instances occurring daily before our eyes. 
 When the heroes of Germany sailed over distant seas, to 
 10* 
 
114 MUSAEUS. 
 
 fightout the quarrel of a self-willed daughter of Britain with 
 her mother-land, they tore themselves from the arms of 
 their dames with mutual oaths of truth and constancy ; yet 
 before the last Buoy of the Weser had got astern of them, 
 the heroic navigators were for most part forgotten of their 
 Chloes. The fickle among these maidens, out' of grief to 
 find their hearts unoccupied, hastily supplied the vacuum 
 by the surrogate of new intrigues ; but the faithful and true, 
 who had constancy enough to stand the Weser-proof, and 
 had still refrained from infidelity when the conquerors of 
 their hearts had got beyond the Black Buoy, these, it is 
 said, preserved their vow unbroken till the return of the 
 heroic host into their German native country ; and are still 
 expecting from the hand of Love the recompense of their 
 unwearied perseverance. 
 
 It is therefore less surprising that the fair Libussa, under 
 these circumstances, could withstand the courting of the 
 brilliant chivalry who struggled for her love, than that 
 Penelope of Ithaca could let a whole cohort of wooers sigh 
 for her in vain, when her heart had nothing in reserve but 
 the gray-headed Ulysses. Rank and birth, however, had 
 established such a difference in the situations of the Fraiilein 
 and of her beloved youth, that any closer union than Pla- 
 tonic love, a shadowy business, which can neither warm nor 
 nourish, was not readily to be expected. Though, in those 
 distant times, the pairing of the sexes was as little estimated 
 by parchments and genealogical trees, as the chaffers were 
 arranged by their antennas and shell-wings, or the flowers 
 by their pistils, stamina, calix, and honey produce ; it was 
 understood that with the lofty elm the precious vine should 
 mate itself, and not the rough tangleweed which creeps 
 along the hedges. A mis-assortment of marriage, from a 
 difference of rank an inch in breadth, excited, it is true, less 
 uproar than in these our classic times ; yet a difference of 
 
LIBUSSA. 115 
 
 an ell in breadth, especially when rivals occupied the in- 
 terstice, and made the distance of the two extremities more 
 visible, was even then a thing which men could notice. All 
 this, and much more, did the Fraiilein accurately ponder 
 in her prudent heart ; therefore she granted Passion, the 
 treacherous babbler, no audience, loudly as it spoke in 
 favor of the youth whom Love had honored. Like a chaste 
 vestal, she made an irrevocable vow to persist through life 
 in her virgin closeness of heart ; and to answer no inquiry 
 of a wooer, either with her eyes, or her gestures, or her 
 lips ; yet reserving to herself, as a just indemnification, the 
 right of platonizing to any length she liked. This nunlike 
 system suited the aspirants' way of thought so ill, that they 
 could not in the least comprehend the killing coldness of 
 their mistress ; Jealousy, the confident of Love, whispered 
 torturing suspicion in their ears; each thought the other 
 was the happy rival, and their penetration spied about 
 unweariedly to make discoveries, which both of them re- 
 coiled from. Yet Fraiilein Libussa weighed out her scanty 
 graces to the two valiant Ritters with such prudence and 
 acuteness, on so fair a balance, that the scale of neither 
 rose above the other. 
 
 Weary of this fruitless waiting, both of them retired from 
 the Court of their Princess, and settled, with secret discon- 
 tent, upon the afTeofFments which Duke Krokus had con- 
 ferred on them. They brought so much ill-humor home 
 with them, that Wladomir was an oppression to all his 
 vassals and his neighbors ; and Ritter Mizisla, on the other 
 hand, became a hunter, followed deer and foxes over the 
 seed-fields and fences of his subjects, and often with his 
 train, to catch one hare, would ride ten acres of corn to 
 nothing. In consequence, arose much sobbing and bewail- 
 ing in the land, yet no righteous judge stepped forth to stay 
 the mischief; for who would willingly give judgment against 
 
116 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 the stronger ? And so the sufferings of* the people never 
 reached the throne of the Duchess. By the virtue of her 
 second-sight, however, no injustice done within the wide 
 limits of her sway could escape her observation ; and the 
 disposition of her mind being soft, like the sweet features of 
 her face, she sorrowed inwardly at the misdeeds of her 
 vassals, and the violence of the powerful. She took counsel 
 with herself how the evil might be remedied, and her wis- 
 dom suggested an imitation of the gods, who, in their ju- 
 dicial procedure, do not fall upon the criminal and cut him 
 off as it were with the red hand ; though vengeance, follow- 
 ing with slow steps, sooner or later overtakes him. The 
 young Princess appointed a general Convention of her 
 Chivalry and States, and made proclamation, that whoever 
 had a grievance or a wrong to be righted should come for- 
 ward free and fearless, under her safe-conduct. Thereupon, 
 from every end and corner of her dominions, the maltreated 
 and oppressed crowded towards her ; the wranglers also, 
 and litigious persons, and whoever had a legal cause against 
 his neighbor. Libussa sat upon her throne, like the goddess 
 Themis, and passed sentence, without respect of persons, 
 with unerring judgment ; for the labyrinthic mazes of chi- 
 cane could not lead her astray, as they do the thick heads 
 of city magistrates; and all men were astonished at the 
 wisdom with which she unravelled the perplexed hanks of 
 processes for meum and tuum, and at her unwearied pa- 
 tience in picking out the threads of justice, never once 
 catching a false end, but passing them from side to side of 
 their embroilments, and winding them off to the uttermost 
 thrum. 
 
 When the tumult of the parties at her bar had by degrees 
 diminished, and the sittings were about to be concluded, on 
 the last clay of these assizes audience was demanded by a 
 free neighbor of the potent Wladomir, and by deputies from 
 
LIBUSSA. 117 
 
 the subjects of the hunter Mizisla. They were admitted, 
 and the Freeholder first addressing her began : " An indus- 
 trious planter," said he, " fenced in a little circuit, on the 
 bank of a broad river, whose waters glided down with soft 
 rushing through the green valley ; for he thought, The fair 
 stream will be a guard to me on this side, that no hungry 
 wild beast eat my crops, and it will moisten the roots of my 
 fruit-trees, that they flourish speedily and bring me fruit. 
 But when the earnings of his toil were about to ripen, the 
 deceitful stream grew troubled ; its still waters began to 
 swell and roar, it overflowed its banks, and carried one piece 
 after another of the fruitful soil along with it ; and dug 
 itself a bed through the middle of the cultivated land ; to 
 the sorrow of the poor planter, who had to give up his little 
 property to the malicious wasting of his strong neighbor, 
 the raging of whose waves he himself escaped with difficul- 
 ty. Puissant daughter of the wise Krokus, the poor planter 
 entreats of thee to command the haughty river no longer to 
 roll its proud billows over the field of the toilsome husband- 
 man, or wash away the fruit of his weary arms, his hope of 
 glad harvest; but to flow peacefully along within the limits 
 of its own channel." 
 
 During this speech, the cheerful brow of the fair Libussa 
 became overclouded ; manly rigor gleamed from her eyes, 
 and all around was ear to catch her sentence, which ran 
 thus : " Thy cause is plain and straight ; no force shall dis- 
 turb thy rightful privileges. A dike, which it shall not over- 
 pass, shall set bounds to the tumultuous river; and from its 
 fishes thou shalt be repaid sevenfold the plunder of its 
 wasteful billows.' 1 Then she beckoned to the eldest of the 
 Deputies, and he bowed his face to the earth, and said : 
 " Wise daughter of the far-famed Krokus, whose is the 
 grain upon the field, the sower's, who has hidden the seed- 
 corn in the ground that it spring up and bear fruit ; or the 
 
118 MUSAEUS. 
 
 tempest's, which breaks it and scatters it away ? " She 
 answered: "The sower's." — "Then command the tem- 
 pest,"" said the spokesman, " that it choose not our corn- 
 fields for the scene of its caprices, to uproot our crops, and 
 shake the fruit from our trees." — " So be it," said the Duch- 
 ess ; " I will tame the tempest, and banish it from your 
 fields ; it shall battle with the clouds, and disperse them, 
 where they are rising from the south, and threatening the 
 land with hail and heavy weather." 
 
 Prince Wladomir, and Ritter Mizisla, were both assessors 
 in the general tribunal. On hearing the complaint, and the 
 rigorous sentence passed regarding it, they waxed pale, and 
 looked down upon the ground with suppressed indignation ; 
 not daring to discover how sharply it stung them to be con- 
 demned by a decree from female lips. For although, out 
 of tenderness to their honor, the complainants had modestly 
 overhung the charge with an allegorical veil, which the 
 righteous sentence of the fair President had also prudently 
 respected, yet the texture of this covering was so fine and 
 transparent, that whoever had an eye might see what stood 
 behind it. But as they dared not venture to appeal from 
 the judgment-seat of the Princess to the people, since the 
 sentence passed upon them had excited universal joy, they 
 submitted to it, though with great reluctance. Wladomir 
 indemnified his freeholding neighbor sevenfold for the mis- 
 chief done him; and Nimrod Mizisla engaged, on the honor 
 of a knight, no more to select the corn-fields of his sub- 
 jects as a chase for hare-catching. Libussa, at the same 
 time, pointed out to them a more respectable employment, 
 for occupying their activity, and restoring to their fame, 
 which now, like a cracked pot when struck, emitted nothing 
 but discords, the sound ring of knightly virtues. She placed 
 them at the head of an army, which she was despatching 
 to encounter Zornebock,'the Prince of the Sorbi, a giant, 
 
LIBUSSA. 119 
 
 and a powerful magician withal, who was then meditating 
 war against Bohemia. This commission she accompanied 
 with the penance, that they were not to appear again at 
 Court, till the one could offer her the plume, the other the 
 golden spurs, of the monster, as tokens of their victory. 
 
 The unfading rose, during this campaign, displayed its 
 magic virtues once more. By means of it, Prince Wlad- 
 omir was as invulnerable to mortal weapons, as Achilles the 
 Hero ; and as nimble, quick, and dexterous, as Achilles the 
 Light-of-foot. The armies met upon the southern bound- 
 aries of the Kingdom, and joined in fierce battle. The 
 Bohemian heroes flew through the squadrons, like storm and 
 whirlwind ; and cut down the thick spear-crop, as the scythe 
 of the mower cuts a field of hay. Zornebock fell beneath 
 the strong dints of their falchions ; they returned in triumph 
 with the stipulated spoils to Vizegrad ; and the spots and 
 blemishes, which had soiled their knightly virtue, were now 
 washed clean away in the blood of their enemies. Libussa 
 bestowed on them every mark of princely honor, dismissed 
 them to their homes when the army was discharged ; and 
 gave them, as a new token of her favor, a purple-red apple 
 from her pleasure-garden, for a memorial of her by the 
 road, enjoining them to part the same peacefully between 
 them, without cutting it in two. They then went their way ; 
 put the apple on a shield, and had it borne before them as a 
 public spectacle, while they consulted together how the part- 
 ing of it might be prudently effected, according to the mean- 
 ing of its gentle giver. 
 
 While the point where their roads divided lay before them 
 at a distance, they proceeded with their partition treaty in 
 the most accommodating mood ; but at last it became neces- 
 sary to determine which of the two should have the apple 
 in his keeping, for both had equal shares in it, and only one 
 could get it, though each promised to himself great wonders 
 
120 MUSAEUS. 
 
 from the gift, and was eager to obtain possession of it. 
 They split in their opinions on this matter ; and things went 
 so far, that it appeared as if the sword must decide to 
 whom this indivisible apple had been allotted by the fortune of 
 arms. But a shepherd driving his flock overtook them as 
 they stood debating ; him they selected (apparently in im- 
 itation of the Three Goddesses, who also applied to a 
 shepherd to decide their famous apple-quarrel), and made 
 arbiter of their dispute, and laid the business in detail before 
 him. The shepherd thought a little, then said: "In the 
 gift of this apple lies a deep-hidden meaning ; but who can 
 bring it out, save the sage Virgin who hid it there ? For 
 myself, I conceive the apple is a treacherous fruit, that has 
 grown upon the Tree of Discord, and its purple skin may 
 prefigure bloody feud between your worshipful knightships ; 
 that each is to cut off the other, and neither of you get en- 
 joyment of the gift. For, tell me, how is it possible to part 
 an apple, without cutting it in twain ? " The Knights took 
 the shepherd's speech to heart, and thought there was a deal 
 of truth in it. " Thou hast judged rightly," said they. 
 " Has not this base apple already kindled anger and conten- 
 tion between us ? Were we not standing harnessed to fight, 
 for the deceitful gift of this proud Princess ? Did she not 
 put us at the head of her army, with intention to destroy 
 us ? And having failed in this, she now arms our hands 
 with the weapons of discord against each other! We re- 
 nounce her crafty present ; neither of us will have the 
 apple. Be it thine, as the reward of thy righteous sentence ; 
 to the judge belongs the fruit of the process, and to the 
 parties the rind." 
 
 The Knights then went their several ways, while the 
 herdsman consumed the objectum litis with all the com- 
 posure and conveniency common among judges. The am- 
 biguous present of the Duchess cut them to the heart ; and 
 
LIBUSSA. 121 
 
 as they found, on returning home, that they could no longer 
 treat their subjects and vassals in the former arbitrary fash- 
 ion, but were forced to obey the laws which FraiileinLibussa 
 had promulgated for the general security among her people, 
 their ill humor grew more deep and rancorous. They 
 entered into a league offensive and defensive with each 
 other ; made a party for themselves in the country ; and 
 many mutinous wrongheads joined them, and were sent 
 abroad in packs to decry and calumniate the government of 
 women. " Shame ! Shame ! " cried they, " that we must 
 obey a woman, who gathers our victorious laurels to deco- 
 rate a distaff with them ! The Man should be master of 
 the house, and not the Wife ; this is his special right, and 
 so it is established everywhere, among all people. What is 
 an army without a Duke to go before his warriors, but a 
 helpless trunk without a head? Let us appoint a Prince, 
 who may be ruler over us, and whom we may obey." 
 
 These seditious speeches were no secret to the watchful 
 Princess ; nor was she ignorant what wind blew them thith- 
 er, or what its sounding boded. Therefore she convened a 
 deputation of the States ; entered their assembly with the 
 stateliness of an earthly goddess, and the words of her 
 mouth dropped like honey from her virgin lips. " A rumor 
 flies about the land," said she, " that you desire a Duke to 
 go before you to battle, and that you reckon it inglorious to 
 obey me any longer. Yet, in a free and unconstrained 
 election, you yourselves did not choose a man from among 
 you ; but called one of the daughters of the people, and 
 clothed her with the purple, to rule over you according to 
 the laws and customs of the land. Whoso can accuse me 
 of error in conducting the government, let him step forward 
 openly and freely, and bear witness against me. But if I, 
 after the manner of my father Krokus, have done prudently 
 and justly in the midst of you, making crooked things 
 
 VOL. I. 11 
 
122 MUSAEUS. 
 
 straight, and rough places plain ; if I have secured your 
 harvests from the spoiler, guarded the fruit-tree, and snatch- 
 ed the flock from the claws of the wolf; if I have bowed 
 the stiff neck of the violent, assisted the down-pressed, and 
 given the weak a staff to rest on ; then will it beseem you 
 to live according to your convenant, and be true, gentle, 
 and helpful to me, as in doing fealty to me you engaged. 
 If you reckon it inglorious to obey a woman, you should 
 have thought of this before appointing me to be your Prin- 
 cess ; if there is disgrace here, it is you alone who ought to 
 bear it. But your procedure shows you not to understand 
 your own advantage ; for woman's hand is soft and tender, 
 accustomed only to waft cool air with the fan ; and sinewy 
 and rude is the arm of man, heavy and oppressive when it 
 grasps the supreme control. And know ye not that where a 
 woman governs, the rule is in the power of men ? For she 
 gives heed to wise counsellors, and these gather round her. 
 But where the distaff excludes from the throne, there is the 
 government of females ; for the women, that please the 
 king's eyes, have his heart in their hand. Therefore, con- 
 sider well of your attempt, lest ye repent your fickleness 
 too late." 
 
 The fair speaker ceased ; and a deep, reverent silence 
 reigned throughout the hall of meeting ; none presumed to 
 utter a word against her. Yet Prince Wladomir and his 
 allies desisted not from their intention, but whispered in 
 each other's ear : " The sly Doe is loath to quit the fat pas- 
 tures ; but the hunter's horn shall sound yet louder, and 
 scare her forth." * Next day they prompted the knights 
 to call loudly on the Princess to choose a husband within 
 
 * Invita de Icetioribus pascuis, autor seditionis inquit, bucula ista 
 dec edit ; sed jam vi inde deturbanda est, si sud sponte loco suo conce- 
 dere viro alicui principi noluerit. — Dubravius. 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 123 
 
 three days, and by the choice of her heart to give the peo- 
 ple a Prince, who might divide with her the cares of gov- 
 ernment. At this unexpected requisition, coming as it 
 seemed from the voice of the nation, a virgin blush over- 
 spread the cheeks of the lovely Princess ; her clear eye 
 discerned all the sunken cliffs, which threatened her with 
 peril. For even if, according to the custom of the great 
 world, she should determine upon subjecting her inclination 
 to her state-policy, she could only give her hand to one 
 suitor, and she saw well that all the remaining candidates 
 would take it as a slight, and begin to meditate revenge. 
 Besides, the private vow of her heart was inviolable and 
 sacred in her eyes. Therefore she endeavored prudently to 
 turn aside this importunate demand of the States ; and again 
 attempted to persuade them altogether to renounce their 
 schemes of innovation. " The Eagle being dead," said she, 
 "the birds chose the Ring-dove for their queen, and all of 
 them obeyed her soft cooing call. But light and airy, as is 
 the nature of birds, they soon altered their determination, 
 and repented them that they had made it. The proud Pea- 
 cock thought that it beseemed him better to be ruler ; the 
 keen Falcon, accustomed to make the smaller birds his prey, 
 reckoned it disgraceful to obey the peaceful Dove ; they 
 formed a party, and appointed the weak-eyed Owl to be the 
 spokesman of their combination, and propose a new election 
 of a sovereign. The sluggish Bustard, the heavy-bodied 
 Heath-cock, the lazy Stork, the small-brained Heron, and 
 all the larger birds chuckled, flapped, and croaked applause 
 to him ; and the host of little birds twittered, in their sim- 
 plicity, and chirped out of bush and grove to the same tune. 
 Then arose the warlike Kite, and soared boldly up into the 
 air, and the birds cried out : l What a majestic flight! The 
 brave, strong Kite shall be our King ! ' Scarcely had the 
 plundering bird taken possession of the throne, when he 
 
124 MUSAEUS. 
 
 manifested his activity and courage on his winged subjects, 
 in deeds of tyranny and caprice ; he plucked the feathers 
 from the larger fowls, and eat the little songsters." 
 
 Significant as this oration was, it made but a small im- 
 pression on the minds of the people, hungering and thirsting 
 after change ; and they abode by their determination, that, 
 within three days, Fraiilein Libussa should select herself 
 a husband. At this, Prince Wladomir rejoiced in heart ; 
 for now, he thought, he should secure the fair prey for 
 which he had so long been watching in vain. Love and 
 ambition inflamed his wishes, and put eloquence into 
 his mouth, which had hitherto confined itself to secret 
 sighing. He came to Court, and required audience of the 
 Duchess. 
 
 " Gracious ruler of thy people and my heart," thus he 
 addressed her, " from thee no secret is hidden ; thou know- 
 est the flames which burn in this bosom, holy and pure as 
 on the altar of the gods, and thou knowest also what fire has 
 kindled them. It is now appointed, that, at the behest of thy 
 people, thou give the land a Prince. Wilt thou disdain a 
 heart which lives and beats for thee ? To be worthy of thy 
 love, I risked my life to put thee on the throne of thy father. 
 Grant me the merit of retaining thee upon it by the bond of 
 tender affection ; let us divide the possession of thy throne 
 and thy heart ; the first be thine, the second be mine, and 
 my happiness will be exalted beyond the lot of mor- 
 tals." 
 
 Fraiilein Libussa wore a most maidenlike appearance 
 during this oration, and covered her face with her veil, to 
 hide the soft blush which deepened the color of her 
 cheeks. On its conclusion, she made a sign with her hand, 
 not opening her lips, for the Prince to step aside ; as if she 
 would consider what she should resolve upon, in answer to 
 his suit, 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 125 
 
 Immediately the brisk Knight Mizisla announced himself, 
 and desired to be admitted. 
 
 " Loveliest of the daughters of princes," said he, as he 
 entered the audience-chamber, " the fair Ring-dove, queen 
 of the air, must no longer, as thou well knowest, coo in soli- 
 tude, but take to herself a mate. The proud Peacock, it is 
 talked, holds up his glittering plumage in her eyes, and 
 thinks to blind her by the splendor of his feathers ; but she 
 is prudent and modest, and will not unite herself with the 
 haughty Peacock. The keen Falcon, once a plundering 
 bird, has now changed his nature ; is gentle and honest, and 
 without deceit ; for he loves the fair Dove, and would fain 
 that she mated with him. That his bill is hooked and his 
 talons sharp must not mislead thee ; he needs them to pro- 
 tect the fair Dove his darling, that no bird hurt her, or 
 disturb the habitation of her rule ; for he is true and 
 kindly to her, and first swore fealty on the day when she 
 was crowned. Now tell me, wise Princess, if the soft Dove 
 will grant to her trusty Falcon the love which he longs 
 for ? " 
 
 Fraulein Libussa did as she had done before; beckoned 
 to the Knight to step aside ; and, after waiting for a space, 
 she called the two rivals into her presence, and spoke 
 thus : 
 
 " I owe you great thanks, noble Knights, for your help 
 in obtaining me the princely crown of Bohemia, which my 
 father Krokus honorably wore. The zeal, of which you 
 remind me, had not faded from my remembrance ; nor is it 
 hid from my knowledge, that you virtuously love me, for 
 your looks and gestures have long been the interpreters of 
 your feelings. That I shut up my heart against you, and 
 did not answer love with love, regard not as insensibility ; it 
 was not meant for slight or scorn, but for harmoniously de- 
 termining a choice which was doubtful. I weighed your mer* 
 11* 
 
126 MUSAEUS. 
 
 its, and the tongue of the trying balance bent to neither 
 side. Therefore I resolved on leaving the decision of your 
 fate to yourselves ; and offered you the possession of my 
 heart, under the figure of an enigmatic apple ; that it might 
 be seen to which of you the greater measure of judgment 
 and wisdom had been given, in appropriating to himself this 
 gift, which could not be divided. Now tell me without 
 delay, in whose hands is the apple ? Whichever of you 
 has won it from the other, let him from this hour receive 
 my throne and my heart as the prize of his skill." 
 
 The two rivals looked at one another with amazement ; 
 grew pale, and held their peace. At last, after a long 
 pause, Prince Wladomir broke silence, and said: 
 
 " The enigmas of the wise are, to the foolish, a nut in a 
 toothless mouth, a pearl which the cock scratches from the 
 sand, a lantern in the hand of the blind. O Princess, be 
 not wroth with us, that we neither knew the use nor the 
 value of thy gift ; we misinterpreted thy purpose ; thought 
 that thou hadst cast an apple of contention on our path, to 
 awaken us to strife and deadly feud ; therefore each gave 
 up his share, and we renounced the divisive fruit, whose 
 sole possession neither of us would have peaceably allowed 
 the other ! " 
 
 " You have given sentence on yourselves/' replied the 
 Fraulein: " if an apple could inflame your jealousy, what 
 fighting would ye not have fought for a myrtle garland 
 twined about a crown ! " 
 
 With this response she dismissed the Knights, who now 
 lamented that they had given ear to the unwise arbiter, and 
 thoughtlessly cast away the pledge of love, which, as it 
 appeared, had been the casket of their fairest hopes. They 
 meditated severally how they might still execute their pur- 
 pose, and by force or guile get possession of the throne, 
 with its lovely occupant. 
 
LIBUSSA. 127 
 
 Fraiilein Libussa, in the meanwhile, was not spending in 
 idleness the three days given her for consideration ; but 
 diligently taking counsel with herself, how she might meet 
 the importunate demand of her people, give Bohemia a 
 Duke, and herself a husband according to the choice of her 
 heart. She dreaded lest Prince Wladomir might still more 
 pressingly assail her, and perhaps deprive her of the throne. 
 Necessity combined with love to make her execute a plan 
 with which she had often entertained herself as with a 
 pleasant dream ; for what mortal's head has not some 
 phantom walking in it, towards which he turns in a vacant 
 hour, to play with it as with a puppet ? There is no more 
 pleasing pastime for a strait-shod maiden, when her galled 
 corns are resting from the toils of the pavement, than to 
 think of a stately and commodious equipage ; the coy beauty 
 dreams gladly of counts sighing at her feet; Avarice gets 
 prizes in the Lottery ; the debtor in the jail falls heir to 
 vast possessions ; the squanderer discovers the Hermetic 
 Secret ; and the poor wood-cutter finds a treasure in the 
 hollow of a tree ; all merely in fancy, yet not without the 
 -enjoyment of a secret satisfaction. The gift of prophecy 
 has always been united with a warm imagination ; thus the 
 fair Libussa had, like others, willingly and frequently given 
 heed to this seductive playmate, which, in kind companion- 
 ship, had always entertained her with the figure of the 
 young Archer, so indelibly impressed upon her heart. 
 Thousands of projects came into her mind, which Fancy 
 palmed on her as feasible and easy. At one time, she 
 formed schemes of drawing forth her darling youth from 
 his obscurity, placing him in the army, and raising him 
 from one post of honor to another ; and then instantly she 
 bound a laurel garland about his temples, and led him, 
 crowned with victory and honor, to the throne she could 
 have been so glad to share with him. At other times, she 
 
128 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 gave a different turn to the romance ; she equipped her 
 darling as a knight-errant, seeking for adventures ; brought 
 him to her Court, and changed him into a Huon of Bour- 
 deaux ; nor was the wondrous furniture wanting, for endowing 
 him as highly as Friend Oberon did his ward. But when 
 Common Sense again got possession of the maiden's soul, 
 the many-colored forms of the magic lantern waxed pale 
 in the beam of prudence, and the fair vision vanished into 
 air. She then bethought her what hazards would attend 
 such an enterprise ; what mischief for her people, when 
 jealousy and envy raised the hearts of her grandees in 
 rebellion against her, and the alarum beacon of discord 
 gave the signal for uproar and sedition in the land. There- 
 fore she sedulously hid the wishes of her heart from the 
 keen glance of the spy, and disclosed no glimpse of them 
 to any one. 
 
 But now, when the people were clamoring for a Prince, 
 the matter had assumed another form ; the point would now 
 be attained, could she combine her wishes with the national 
 demand. She strengthened her soul with manly resolution ; 
 and as the third day dawned, she adorned herself with all 
 her jewels, and her head was encircled with the myrtle 
 crown. Attended by her maidens, all decorated with flower 
 garlands, she ascended the throne, full of lofty courage, and 
 soft dignity. The assemblage of knights and vassals around 
 her stood in breathless attention, to learn from her lips the 
 name of the happy Prince with whom she had resolved to 
 share her heart and throne. " Ye nobles of my people," 
 thus she spoke, "the lot of your destiny still lies untouched 
 in the urn of concealment ; you are still free as my coursers 
 that graze in the meadows, before the bridle and the bit have 
 curbed them, or their smooth backs have been pressed by 
 the burden of the saddle and the rider. It now rests with 
 you to signify, whether, in the space allowed me for the 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 129 
 
 choice of a spouse, your hot desire for a Prince to rule over 
 you has cooled, and mven place to more calm scrutiny of 
 this intention ; or you still persist inflexibly in your de- 
 mand." She paused for a moment ; but the hum of the 
 multitude, the whispering and buzzing, and looks of the 
 whole Senate, did not long leave her in uncertainty, and 
 their speaker ratified the conclusion, that the vote was still 
 for a Duke. " Then be it so ! " said she. " The die is cast, 
 the issue of it stands not with me! The gods have appoint- 
 ed, for the kingdom of Bohemia, a Prince who shall sway 
 its sceptre with justice and wisdom. The young cedar does 
 not yet overtop the firm-set oaks ; concealed among the 
 trees of the forest it grows, encircled with ignoble shrubs ; 
 but soon it shall send forth branches to give shade to its roots, 
 and its top shall touch the clouds. Choose a deputation, ye 
 nobles of the people, of twelve honorable men from among 
 you, that they hasten to seek out the Prince, and at- 
 tend him to the throne. My steed will point out your path; 
 unloaded and free it shall course on before you ; and as a 
 token that you have found what you are sent forth to seek, 
 observe that the man whom the gods have selected for your 
 Prince, at the time when you approach him, will be eating 
 his repast on an iron table, under the open sky, in the 
 shadow of a solitary tree. To him you shall do reverence, 
 and clothe his body with the princely robe. The v/hite 
 horse will let him mount it, and bring him hither to the Court, 
 that he may be my husband and your lord." 
 
 She then left the assembly, with the cheerful yet abashed 
 countenance which brides wear, when they look for the 
 arrival of the bridegroom. At her speech there was much 
 wondering ; and the prophetic spirit breathing from it work- 
 ed upon the general mind like a divine oracle, which the 
 populace blindly believe, and which the thinkers alone at- 
 tempt investigating. The messengers of honor were select- 
 
130 MUSAEUS. 
 
 ed, the white horse stood in readiness, caparisoned with 
 Asiatic pomp, as if it had been saddled for carrying the 
 Grand Seignior to mosque. The cavalcade set forth, attended 
 by the concourse, and the loud huzzaing of the people ; 
 and the white horse paced on before. But the train soon 
 vanished from the eyes of the spectators ; and nothing could 
 be seen but a little cloud of dust whirling up afar off; for 
 the spirited courser, getting to its mettle when it reached 
 the open air, began a furious gallop, like a British racer, so 
 that the squadron of deputies could hardly keep in sight 
 of it. Though the quick steed seemed abandoned to its 
 own guidance, an unseen power directed its steps, pulled 
 its bridle, and spurred its flanks. Fraiilein Libussa, by the 
 magic virtues inherited from her Elfine mother, had con- 
 trived so to instruct the courser, that it turned neither to 
 the right hand nor to the left from its path, but with winged 
 Steps hastened on to its destination ; and she herself, now 
 that all combined to the fulfilment of her wishes, awaited 
 its returning rider with tender longing. 
 
 The messengers had in the mean time been soundly gal- 
 loped ; already they had travelled many leagues, up hill 
 and down dale ; had swum across the Elbe and the Moldau ; 
 and as their gastric juices made them think of dinner, they 
 recalled to mind the strange table, at which, according to 
 the Fraulein's oracle, their new Prince was feeding. Their 
 glosses and remarks on it were many. A forward knight 
 observed to his companions: "In my poor view of it, our 
 gracious lady has it in her eye to bilk us, and make April 
 messengers of us ; for who ever heard of any man in Bohe- 
 mia that ate his victuals off an iron table ? What use is it ? 
 our sharp galloping will bring us nothing but mockery and 
 scorn." Another, of a more penetrating turn, imagined that 
 the iron table might be allegorical ; that they should perhaps 
 fall in with some knight-errant, who, after the manner of 
 
L1BUSSA. 131 
 
 the wandering brotherhood, had sat down beneath a tree, 
 and spread out his frugal dinner on his shield. A third said 
 jesting : " I fear our way will lead us down to the workshop 
 of the Cyclops ; and we shall find the lame Vulcan, or one 
 of his journeymen, dining from his stithy, and must bring him 
 to our Venus." 
 
 Amid such conversation, they observed their guiding 
 quadruped, which had got a long start of them, turn across 
 a new-ploughed field, and, to their wonder, halt beside the 
 ploughman. They dashed rapidly forward, and found a 
 peasant sitting on an upturned plough, and eating his black 
 bread from the iron ploughshare, which he was using as a 
 table, under the shadow of a fresh pear-tree. He seemed 
 to like the stately horse ; he patted it, offered it a bit of 
 bread, and it ate from his hand. The Embassy, of course, 
 was much surprised at this phenomenon ; nevertheless, no 
 member of it doubted but that they had found their man. 
 They approached him reverently, and the eldest among 
 them opened his lips, and said : " The Duchess of Bohemia 
 has sent us hither, and bids us signify to thee the will and 
 purpose of the gods, that thou change thy plough with the 
 throne of this kingdom, and thy goad with its sceptre. She 
 selects thee for her husband, to rule with her over the Bo- 
 hemians." The young peasant thought they meant to ban- 
 ter him ; a thing little to his taste, especially as he supposed 
 that they had guessed his love-secret, and were now come 
 to mock his weakness. Therefore he answered somewhat 
 stoutly, to meet mockery with mockery : " But is your duke- 
 dom worth this plough? If the prince cannot eat with 
 better relish, drink more joyously, or sleep more soundly 
 than the peasant, then in sooth it is not worth while to 
 change this kindly furrow-field with the Bohemian kingdom, 
 or this smooth ox-goad with its sceptre. For tell me, are 
 not three grains of salt as good for seasoning my morsel as 
 three bushels ? " 
 
1C2 MUSAEUS. 
 
 Then one of the Twelve answered : " The purblind mole 
 digs underground for worms to feed upon ; for he has no 
 eyes which can endure the day-light, and no feet which are 
 formed for running like the nimble roe ; the scaly crab 
 creeps to and fro in the mud of lakes and marshes, delights 
 to dwell under tree-roots and shrubs by the banks of rivers, 
 for he wants the fins for swimming ; and the barn-door cock, 
 cooped up within his hen-fence, risks no flight over the low 
 wall, for he is too timorous to trust in his wings, like the 
 high-soaring bird of prey. Have eyes for seeing, feet for 
 going, fins for swimming, and pinions for flight been allotted 
 thee, thou wilt not grub like a mole underground ; nor hide 
 thyself like a dull shell-fish among mud ; nor, like the king 
 of the poultry, be content with crowing from the barn-door ; 
 but come forward into day ; run, swim, or fly into the clouds, 
 as Nature may have furnished thee with gifts. For it suf- 
 fices not the active man to continue what he is ; but he 
 strives to become what he may be. Therefore, do thou try 
 being what the gods have called thee to ; then wilt thou 
 judge rightly whether the Bohemian kingdom is worth an 
 acre of corn-land in barter, yea or not." 
 
 This earnest oration of the Deputy, in whose face no 
 jesting feature was to be discerned ; and still more the in- 
 signia of royalty, the purple robe, the sceptre, and the gold- 
 en sword, which the ambassadors brought forward as a ref- 
 erence and certificate of their mission's authenticity, at last 
 overcame the mistrust of the doubting ploughman. All at 
 once, light rose on his soul ; a rapturous thought awoke in 
 him, that Libussa had discovered the feelings of his heart ; 
 had, by her skill in seeing what was secret, recognised his 
 faithfulness and constancy ; and was about to recompense 
 him, so as he had never ventured even in dreams to hope. 
 The gift of prophecy predicted to him by her oracle then 
 came into his mind ; and he thought that now or never it 
 
LIBUSSA. 133 
 
 must be fulfilled. Instantly he grasped his hazel staff; 
 stuck it deep into the ploughed land ; heaped loose mould 
 about it, as you plant a tree ; and lo ! immediately the staff 
 got buds, and shot forth sprouts and boughs with leaves and 
 flowers. Two of the green twigs withered, and their dry 
 leaves became the sport of the wind ; but the third grew up 
 the more luxuriantly, and its fruits ripened. Then camethe 
 spirit of prophecy upon the rapt ploughman ; he opened his 
 mouth, and said : " Ye messengers of the Princess Libussa 
 and of the Bohemian people, hear the words of Primislaus 
 the son of Mnatha, the stout-hearted Knight, for whom, 
 blown upon by the spirit of prophecy, the mists of the 
 Future part asunder. The man who guided the plough- 
 share, ye have called to seize the handles of your prince- 
 dom, before his day's work was ended. O that the glebe 
 had been broken by the furrow, to the boundary-stone ; so 
 had Bohemia remained an independent kingdom to the ut- 
 most ages ! But since ye have disturbed the labor of the 
 plougher too early, the limits of your country will become 
 the heritage of your neighbor, and your distant posterity 
 will be joined to him in unchangeable union. The three 
 twigs of the budding Staff are three sons which your Prin- 
 cess shall bear me ; two of them, as unripe shoots, shall 
 speedily wither away ; but the third shall inherit the throne, 
 and by him shall the fruit of late grandchildren be matured, 
 till the Eagle soar over your mountains and nestle in the 
 land ; yet soon fly thence, and return as to his own posses- 
 sion. And then, when the Son of the gods arises,* who is 
 his plougher's friend, and smites the slave-fetters from his 
 limbs, then mark it, Posterity, for thou shalt bless thy des- 
 tiny ! For when he has trodden under his feet the Dragon 
 of Superstition, he will stretch out his arm against the wax- 
 
 * Emperor Joseph II. 
 VOL. I. 12 
 
134 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 ing moon, to pluck it from the firmament, that he may him- 
 self illuminate the world as a benignant star." 
 
 The venerable deputation stood in silent wonder, gazing 
 at the prophetic man, like dumb idols ; it was as if a god 
 were speaking by his lips. He himself turned away from 
 them to the two white steers, the associates of his toilsome 
 labor ; he unyoked and let them go in freedom from their 
 farm-service ; at which they began frisking joyfully upon 
 the grassy lea, but at the same time visibly decreased in 
 bulk ; like thin vapor melted into air, and vanished out of 
 sight. Then Primislaus doffed his peasant wooden shoes, 
 and proceeded to the brook to clean himself. The precious 
 robes were laid upon him ; he begirt himself with the sword, 
 and had the golden spurs put on him like a knight ; then 
 stoutly sprang upon the white horse, which bore him peace- 
 ably along. Being now about to quit his still asylum, he 
 commanded the ambassadors to bring his wooden shoes 
 after him, and keep them carefully, as a token that the 
 humblest among the people had once been exalted to the 
 highest dignity in Bohemia ; and as a memorial for his 
 posterity to bear their elevation meekly ; and, mindful of 
 their origin, to respect and defend the peasantry, from which 
 themselves had sprung. Hence came the ancient practice 
 of exhibiting a pair of wooden shoes before the Kings of 
 Bohemia on their coronation ; a custom held in observance 
 till the male line of Primislaus became extinct. 
 
 The planted hazel rod bore fruit and grew ; striking roots 
 out on every side, and sending forth new shoots, till at last 
 the whole field was changed into a hazel copse ; a circum- 
 stance of great advantage to the neighboring township, 
 which included it within their bounds ; for, in memory of 
 this miraculous plantation, they obtained a grant from the 
 Bohemian Kings, exempting them from ever paying any 
 public contribution in the land, except a pint of hazel nuts ; 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 135 
 
 ■which royal privilege their late descendants, as the story 
 runs, are enjoying at this day.* 
 
 Though the white courser, which was now proudly carry- 
 ing the bridegroom to his mistress, seemed to outrun the 
 winds, Primislaus did not fail now and then to let him feel 
 the golden spurs, to push him on still faster. The quick 
 gallop seemed to him a tortoise-pace, so keen was his desire 
 to have the fair Libussa, whose form, after seven years, was 
 still so new and lovely in his soul, once more before his 
 eyes ; and this not merely as a show, like some bright, pe- 
 culiar anemone in the variegated bed of a flower-garden, 
 but for the blissful appropriation of victorious love. He 
 thought only of the myrtle-crown, which, in the lover's val- 
 uation, far outshines the crown of sovereignty ; and had he 
 balanced love and rank against each other, the Bohemian 
 throne without Libussa would have darted up, like a clipped 
 ducat in the scales of the money-changer. 
 
 The sun was verging to decline, when the new Prince 
 with his escort entered Vizegrad. Fraiilein Libussa was in 
 her garden, where she had just plucked a basket of ripe plums, 
 when her future husband's arrival was announced to her. 
 She went forth modestly, with all her maidens, to meet him ; 
 received him as a bridegroom conducted to her by the gods, 
 veiling the election of her heart under a show of submis- 
 sion to the will of Higher Powers. The eyes of the Court 
 were eagerly directed to the stranger ; in whom, however, 
 nothing could be seen but a fair, handsome man. In respect 
 of outward form, there were several courtiers who, in thought, 
 did not hesitate to measure with him ; and could not under- 
 
 * Eneas Sylvius affirms that he saw, with his own eyes, a renewal 
 of this charter from Charles IV. Vidi inter privilegia regni literas 
 Caroli Quarti, Romanorum Imperatoris, dim Sigismundi patris, in 
 quibus (villa illius incoloe.) libertate donantur ; nee plus tributi pen- 
 dere jubentur, quam nucum illius arboris exiguam mensuram. 
 
136 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 stand why the gods should have disdained the antechamber, 
 and not selected from it some accomplished and ruddy lord, 
 rather than the sun-burnt ploughman, to assist the Princess 
 in her government. Especially in Wladomir and Mizisla, 
 it was observable that their pretensions were reluctantly 
 withdrawn. It behoved the Fraiilein then to vindicate the 
 work of the gods ; and show that Squire Primislaus had 
 been indemnified for the defect of splendid birth, by a fair 
 equivalent in sterling common sense and depth of judgment. 
 She had caused a royal banquet to be prepared, no whit inferior 
 to the feast with which the hospitable Dido entertained her 
 pious guest iEneas. The cup of welcome passed diligently 
 round, the presents of the Princess had excited cheerfulness 
 and good-humor, and a part of the night had already van- 
 ished amid jests and pleasant pastime, when Libussa set on 
 foot a game at riddles ; and, as the discovery of hidden 
 things was her proper trade, she did not fail to solve, with 
 satisfactory decision, all the riddles that were introduced. 
 
 When her own turn came to propose one, she called 
 Prince Wladomir, Mizisla, and Primislaus to her, and said : 
 " Fair sirs, it is now for you to read a riddle, which I shall 
 submit to you, that it may be seen who among you is the 
 wisest and of keenest judgment. I intended, for you three, 
 a present of this basket of plums, which I plucked in my 
 garden. One of you shall have the half and one over ; the 
 next shall have the half of what remains, and one over ; the 
 third shall again have the half, and three over. Now, if so 
 be that the basket is then emptied, tell me, how many 
 plums are in it now ? " 
 
 The headlong Hitter Mizisla took the measure of the 
 fruit with his eye, not the sense of the riddle with his un- 
 derstanding, and said : " What can be decided with the 
 sword I might undertake to decide ; but thy riddles, gracious 
 Princess, are, I fear, too hard for me. Yet at thy request 
 
LIBUSSA. 
 
 137 
 
 I will risk an arrow at the bull's-eye, let it hit or miss ; I 
 suppose there is a matter of some threescore plums in the 
 basket." 
 
 " Thou hast missed, dear Knight," said Fraulein Libussa. 
 u Were there as many again, half as many, and a third 
 part as many as the basket has in it, and five over, there 
 would then be as many above threescore as there are now 
 below it." 
 
 Prince Wladomir computed as laboriously and anxiously 
 as if the post of Comptroller-General of Finances had de- 
 pended on a right solution ; and at last brought out the net 
 product five-and-forty. The Fraulein then said : 
 
 " Were there a third, and a half, and a sixth as many 
 again of them, the number would exceed forty-five, as much 
 as it now falls short of it." 
 
 Though, in our days, any man endowed with the arith- 
 metical faculty of a tapster, might have solved this problem 
 without difficulty, yet, for an untaught computant, the gift 
 of divination was essential, if he meant to get out of the 
 affair with honor, and not stick in the middle of it with dis- 
 grace. As the wise Primislaus was happily provided with 
 this gift, it cost him neither art nor exertion to find the 
 answer. 
 
 " Familiar companion of the heavenly Powers," said he, 
 " whoso undertakes to pierce thy high celestial meaning, 
 undertakes to soar after the eagle when he hides himself in 
 the clouds. Yet I will pursue thy hidden flight, as far as the 
 eye, to which thou hast given it light, will reach. I judge 
 that of the plums which thou hast laid in the basket, there 
 are thirty in number, not one fewer, and none more" 
 
 The Fraulein cast a kindly glance on him, and said : 
 M Thou tracest the glimmering ember, which lies deep-hid 
 among the ashes; for thee light dawns out of darkness and 
 vapor ; thou hast read my riddle." 
 12* 
 
138 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 Thereupon she opened her basket, and counted out 
 fifteen plums, and one over, into Prince Wladomir's hat, 
 and fourteen remained. Of these she gave Ritter Mizisla 
 seven and one over, and there were still six in the basket ; 
 half of these she gave the wise Primislaus and three over, 
 and the basket was empty. The whole Court was lost in 
 wonder at the fair Libussa's ciphering gift, and at the 
 penetration of her cunning spouse. Nobody could compre- 
 hend how human wit was able, on the one hand, to enclose 
 a common number so mysteriously in words ; or, on the 
 other hand, to drag it forth so accurately from its enigmatical 
 concealment. The empty basket she conferred upon the 
 two Knights, who had failed in soliciting her love, to remind 
 them that their suit was voided. Hence comes it, that, when 
 a wooer is rejected, people say, His Jove has given him the 
 basket, even to the present day. 
 
 So soon as all was ready for the nuptials and coronation, 
 both these ceremonies were transacted with becoming pomp. 
 Thus the Bohemian people had obtained a Duke, and the 
 fair Libussa had obtained a husband, each according to the 
 wish of their hearts ; and, what was somewhat wonderful, by 
 virtue of Chicane, an agent who has not the character of 
 being too beneficent or prosperous. And if either of the 
 parties had been overreached in any measure, it at least 
 was not the fair Libussa. Bohemia had a Duke in name, 
 butthe administration now, as formerly, continued in the 
 female hand. Primislaus was the proper pattern of a tract- 
 able, obedient husband, and contested with his Duchess 
 neither the direction of her house nor of her empire. His 
 sentiments and wishes sympathized with hers, as perfectly 
 as two accordant strings, of which when the one is struck, 
 the other voluntarily trembles to the self-same note. Nor 
 was Libussa like those haughty, overbearing dames, who 
 would pass for great matches ; and having, as they think, 
 
LIBUSSA. 139 
 
 made the fortune of some hapless wight, continually remind 
 him of his wooden shoes ; but she resembled the renowned 
 Palmyran Queen ; and ruled, as Zenobia did her kindly 
 Odenatus, by superiority of mental talent. 
 
 The happy couple lived in the enjoyment of unchange- 
 able love ; according to the fashion of those times, when the 
 instinct which united hearts was as firm and durable as the 
 mortar and cement with which they built their indestructible 
 strongholds. Duke Primislaus soon became one of the most 
 accomplished and valiant knights of his time, and the Bo- 
 hemian Court the most splendid in Germany. By degrees, 
 many knights and nobles, and multitudes of people from all 
 quarters of the empire, drew to it ; so that Vizegrad became 
 too narrow for its inhabitants ; and, in consequence, Libussa 
 called her officers before her, and commanded them to 
 found a city, on the spot where they should find a man at 
 noontide making the wisest use of his teeth. They set 
 forth, and at the time appointed found a man engaged in 
 sawing a block of wood. They judged that this industrious 
 character was turning his saw-teeth, at noontide, to a far 
 better use than the parasite does his jaw-teeth by the 
 table of the great ; and doubted not but they had found the 
 spot intended by the Princess for the site of their town. 
 They marked out a space upon the green with the plough- 
 share, for the circuit of the city walls. On asking the 
 workman what he meant to make of his sawed timber, he re- 
 plied, " Prah," which in the Bohemian language signifies a 
 door-threshold. So Libussa called her new city Praha, that 
 is Prague, the well-known capital upon the Moldau. In 
 process of time, Primislaus's predictions were punctually 
 fulfilled. His spouse became the mother of three Princes ; 
 two died in youth, but the third grew to manhood, and from 
 him went forth a glorious royal line, which flourished for 
 long centuries on the Bohemian throne. 
 
140 MUSAEUS. 
 
 III. 
 
 MELECHSALA. 
 
 Father Gregory, the Ninth of the name who sat upon 
 St. Peter's chair, had once, in a sleepless night, an inspiration 
 from the spirit, not of prophecy, but of political chicane, to 
 clip the wings of the German Eagle, lest it rose above the 
 head of his own haughty Rome. No sooner had the first 
 sunbeam enlightened the venerable Vatican, than his Holi- 
 ness summoned his attendant chamberlain, and ordered him 
 to call a meeting of the Sacred College ; where Father 
 Gregory, in his pontifical apparel, celebrated high mass, 
 and after its conclusion moved a new Crusade ; to which all 
 his cardinals, readily surmising the wise objects of this 
 armament for God's glory, and the common weal of Christ- 
 endom, gave prompt and cordial assent. 
 
 Thereupon, a cunning Nuncio started instantly for Naples, 
 where the Emperor Frederick of Swabia had his Court; 
 and took with him in his travelling-bag two boxes, one of 
 which was filled with the sweet honey of persuasion ; the 
 other with tinder, steel, and flint, to light the fire of excom- 
 munication, should the mutinous son of the Church hesitate 
 to pay the Holy Father due obedience. On arriving at 
 Court, the Legate opened his sweet box, and copiously gave 
 out its smooth confectionery. But the Emperor Frederick 
 was a man delicate in palate ; he soon smacked the taste of 
 the physic hidden in this sweetness, and he knew too well its 
 effects on the alimentary canal ; so he turned away from 
 the treacherous mess, and declined having any more of it. 
 Then the Legate opened his other box, and made it spit 
 
MELECHSALA. 141 
 
 some sparks, which singed the Imperial beard, and stung 
 the skin like nettles ; whereby the Emperor discovered that 
 the Holy Father's finger might, ere long, be heavier on him 
 than the Legate's loins ; therefore plied himself to the pur- 
 pose, engaged to lead the armies of the Lord against the 
 Unbelievers in the East, and appointed his Princes to as- 
 semble for an expedition to the Holy Land. The Princes 
 communicated the Imperial order to the Counts, the Counts 
 summoned out their vassals, the Knights and Nobles ; 
 the Knights equipped their Squires and Horsemen ; all 
 mounted, and collected, each under his proper banner. 
 
 Except the night of St. Bartholomew, no night has ever 
 caused such sorrow and tribulation in the world, as this, 
 which God's Vicegerent upon Earth had employed in 
 watching to produce a ruinous Crusade. Ah, how many 
 warm tears flowed, as knight and squire pricked off, and 
 blessed their dears ! A glorious race of German heroes 
 never saw the light, because of this departure ; but languish- 
 ed in embryo, as the germs of plants in the Syrian desert, 
 when the hot Sirocco has passed over them. The ties of a 
 thousand happy marriages were violently torn asunder ; 
 ten thousand brides in sorrow hung their garlands, like the 
 daughters of Jerusalem, upon the Babylonian willow-trees, 
 and sat and wept ; and a hundred thousand lovely maidens 
 grew up for the bridegroom in vain, and blossomed like a 
 rose-bed in a solitary cloister garden, for there was no hand 
 to pluck them, and they withered away unenjoyed. Among 
 the sighing spouses, whom this sleepless night of his Holi- 
 ness deprived of their husbands, were St. Elizabeth, the 
 Landgraf of Thuringia's lady, and Ottilia, Countess of Glei- 
 chen ; a wife not standing, it is true, in the odor of 
 sanctity, yet, in respect of personal endowments and 
 virtuous conduct, inferior to none of her contempora- 
 ries. 
 
142 MUSAEUS. 
 
 Landgraf Ludwig, a trusty feudatory of the Emperor, 
 had issued general orders for his vassals to collect, and 
 attend him to the camp. But most of them sought pretexts 
 for politely declining this honor. One was tormented by 
 the gout, another by the stone ; one had got his horses 
 foundered, another's armory had been destroyed by fire. 
 Count Ernst of Gleichen, however, with a little troop of 
 stout retainers, who were free and unincumbered, and took 
 pleasure in the prospect of distant adventures, equipped their 
 squires and followers, obeyed the orders of the Landgraf, 
 and led their people to the place of rendezvous. The 
 Count had been wedded for two years ; and in this period 
 his lovely consort had presented him with two children, a 
 little master and a little miss, which, according to the cus- 
 tom of those stalwart ages, had been born without the aid of 
 science, fair and softly as the dew from the Twilight. A 
 third pledge, which she carried under her heart, was, by 
 virtue of the Pope's insomnolency, destined, when it saw the 
 light, to forego the embraces of its father. Although Count 
 Ernst put on the rugged aspect of a man, Nature main- 
 tained her rights in him, and he could not hide his strong 
 feelings of tenderness, when at parting he quitted the em- 
 braces of his weeping spouse. As in dumb sorrow he was 
 leaving her, she turned hastily to the cradle of her children; 
 plucked out of it her sleeping boy ; pressed it softly to her 
 breast, and held it with tearful eyes to the father, to imprint 
 a parting kiss on its unconscious cheek. With her little 
 girl she did the same. This gave the Count a sharp twinge 
 about the heart; his lips began to quiver, his mouth visibly 
 increased in breadth ; and sobbing aloud, he pressed the 
 infants to his steel cuirass, under which there beat a very 
 soft and feeling heart ; kissed them from their sleep, and 
 recommended them, together with their much-loved mother, 
 to the keeping of God and all the Saints. As he winded 
 
MELECHSALA. 143 
 
 down along the castle road with his harnessed troop from 
 the high fortress of Gleichen, she looked after him with 
 desolate sadness, till his banner, upon which she herself 
 had wrought the Red-cross with fine purple silk, no longer 
 floated in her vision. 
 
 Landgraf Ludwig was exceedingly contented as he saw 
 his stately vassal, and his knights and squires, advancing 
 with their flag unfurled ; but on viewing him more narrowly, 
 and noticing his trouble, he grew wroth ; for he thought the 
 Count was faint of heart, and out of humor with the expe- 
 dition, and following it against his will. Therefore his brow 
 wrinkled down into frowns, and the landgraphic nostrils 
 sniffed displeasure. Count Ernst had a fine pathognomic 
 eye ; he soon observed what ailed his lord, and going boldly 
 up, disclosed to him the reason of his cloudy mood. His 
 words were as oil on the vinegar of discontent ; the Land- 
 graf, with honest frankness, seized his vassal's hand, and 
 said : "Ah, is it so, good cousin ? Then the shoe pinches 
 both of us in one place ; Elizabeth's good-b'ye has given 
 me a sore heart too. But be of good cheer ! While we 
 are fighting abroad, our wives will be praying at home, that 
 we may return with renown and glory." Such was the 
 custom of the country in those days ; while the husband 
 took the field, the wife continued in her chamber, solitary 
 and still, fasting and praying, and making vows without end, 
 for his prosperous return. This old usage is not universal 
 in the land at present ; as the last crusade of our German 
 warriors to the distant West,* by the rich increase of fam- 
 ilies during the absence of their heroic heads, has sufficiently 
 made manifest. 
 
 The pious Elizabeth felt no less pain at parting from her 
 
 * Of the Hessian troops to America, during the Revolutionary 
 War. — Ed. 
 
144 MUSAEUS. 
 
 husband, than her fair companion in distress, the Countess 
 of Gleichen. Though her lord the Landgraf was rather 
 of a stormy disposition, she had lived with him in the most 
 perfect unity ; and his terrestrial mass was by degrees so 
 imbued with the sanctity of his helpmate, that some bene- 
 ficent historians have appended to him likewise the title of 
 Saint; which, however, must be looked on rather as a char- 
 itable compliment, than a real statement of the truth ; as 
 with us, in these times, the epithets of great, magnanimous, 
 immortal, erudite, profound, for the most part indicate no 
 more than a little outward edge-gilding. So much appears 
 from all the circumstances, that the elevated couple did not 
 always harmonize in works of holiness ; nay, that the Powers 
 of Heaven had to interfere at times in the domestic differ- 
 ences thence arising, to maintain the family peace ; as 
 the following example will evince. The pious lady, to the 
 great dissatisfaction of her courtiers and lip-licking pages, 
 had the custom of reserving from the Landgrafs table the 
 most savory dishes for certain hungry beggars, who inces- 
 santly beleaguered the castle ; and she used to give herself 
 the satisfaction, when the court dinner was concluded, of 
 distributing this kind donation to the poor with her own 
 hands. According to the courtly system, whereby thrift on 
 the small scale is always to make up for wastefulness on 
 the great, the meritorious cook-department every now and 
 then complained of this as earnestly as if the whole domin- 
 ions of Thuringia had run the risk of being eaten up by 
 these lank-sided guests ; and the Landgraf, who dabbled 
 somewhat in economy, regarded it as so important an affair, 
 that, in all seriousness, he strictly forbade his consort this 
 labor of love, which had through time become her spiritual 
 hobby. Nevertheless, one day the impulse of benevolence, 
 and the temptation to break through her husband's orders in 
 pursuit of it, became too strong to be resisted. She beck- 
 
MELECHSALA. 145 
 
 oned to her women, who were then uncovering the table, to 
 take off some untouched dishes, with a few rolls of wheaten 
 bread, and keep them as smuggled goods. These she 
 packed into a little basket, and stole out with it by a postern 
 gate. 
 
 But the watchers had got wind of it, and betrayed it to 
 the Landgraf, who gave instant orders for a strict guard upon 
 all the outlets of the castle. Being told that his lady had 
 been seen gliding with a heavy load through the postern, he 
 proceeded with majestic strides across the court-yard, and 
 stept out upon the draw-bridge, as if to take a mouthful of 
 fresh air. Alas ! The pious lady heard the jingling of his 
 golden spurs ; and fear and terror came upon her, till her 
 knees trembled, and she could not move another footstep. 
 She concealed the victual-basket under her apron, that 
 modest covering of female charms and roguery ; but what- 
 ever privileges this inviolable asylum may enjoy against 
 excisemen and officers of customs, it is no wall of brass for 
 a husband. The Landgraf, smelling mischief, hastened to 
 the place ; his sun-burnt cheeks were reddened with indig- 
 nation, and the veins swelled fearfully upon his brow. 
 
 " Wife," said he, in a hasty tone, " what hast thou in the 
 basket thou art hiding from me ? Is it victuals from my 
 table, for thy vile crew of vagabonds and beggars ? " 
 
 " Not at all, dear lord," replied Elizabeth, meekly, but 
 with embarrassment, who held herself entitled, without pre- 
 judice to her sanctity, to make a little slip in the present 
 critical position of affairs ; " it is nothing but a few roses 
 that I gathered in the garden." 
 
 Had the Landgraf been one of our contemporaries, he 
 must have believed his lady on her word of honor, and de- 
 sisted from farther search ; but in those wild times the 
 minds of men were not so polished. 
 
 " Let us see," said the imperious husband, and sharply 
 
 VOL. I. 13 
 
146 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 pulled the apron to a side. The tender wife had no defence 
 against this violence but by recoiling. "O! softly, softly, 
 my dear husband ! " said she, and blushed for shame at 
 being detected in a falsehood, in presence of her servants. 
 But, O wonder upon wonder! the corpus delicti was in very 
 deed transformed into the fairest blooming roses ; the rolls 
 had changed to white roses, the sausages to red, the omelets 
 to yellow ones ! With joyful amazement the saintly dame 
 observed this metamorphosis, and knew not whether to be- 
 lieve her eyes ; for she had never given credit to her Guar- 
 dian Angel for such delicate politeness as to work a miracle 
 in favor of a lady, when the point was to cajole a rigorous 
 husband, and make good a female affirmation. 
 
 So visible a proof of innocence allayed the fierceness of 
 the Lion. He now turned his tremendous looks on the 
 down-stricken serving-men, who, as it was apparent, had 
 been groundlessly calumniating his angelic wife ; he 
 scornfully rated them, and swore a deep oath, that the 
 first eaves-dropping pickthank who again accused his 
 virtuous wife to him, he would cast into the dungeon, 
 and there let him lie and rot. This done, he took a 
 rose from the basket, and stuck it in his hat, in triumph for 
 his lady's innocence. History has not certified us, whether, 
 on the following day, he found a withered rose or a cold 
 sausage there ; in the meantime it assures us that the 
 saintly wife, when her lord had left her with the kiss of 
 peace, and she herself had recovered from her fright, stept 
 down the hill, much comforted in heart, to the meadow 
 where her nurslings, the lame and blind, the naked and the 
 hungry, were awaiting her to dole out among them her in- 
 tended bounty. For she well knew that the miraculous 
 deception would again vanish were she there, as in reality 
 it did ; for on opening her victual-magazine, she found no 
 roses at all, but in their stead the nutritious crumbs, which 
 she had snatched from the teeth of the castle bone-nolishers. 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 147 
 
 Though now, by the departure of her husband, she was 
 to be freed from his rigorous superintendence, and obtain 
 free scope to execute her labors of love in secret or openly, 
 when and where it pleased her, yet she loved her imperious 
 husband so faithfully and sincerely, that she could not part 
 from him without the deepest sorrow. Ah ! she foreboded 
 but too well, that in this world she should not see him any 
 more. And for the enjoyment of him in the other the 
 aspect of affairs was little better. A canonized Saint has 
 such preferment there, that all other Saints compared with 
 her are but a heavenly mob. 
 
 High as the Landgraf had been stationed in this sublunary 
 world, it was a question, whether, in the courts of Heaven, 
 he might be found worthy to kneel on the footstool of her 
 throne, and raise his eyes to his former bed-mate. Yet, 
 many vows as she made, many good works as she did, 
 much as her prayers in other cases had availed with all 
 the Saints, her credit in the upper world was not sufficient 
 to stretch out her husband's term a span. He died on this 
 march, in the bloom of life, of a malignant fever, at Otranto, 
 before he had acquired the knightly merit of chining a single 
 Saracen. While he was preparing for departure, and the 
 time was come for him to give the world his blessing, he 
 called Count Ernst from among his other servants and 
 vassals to his bed-side ; appointed him commander of the 
 troops which he himself had led thus far, and made him 
 swear that he would not return, till he had thrice drawn his 
 sword against the Infidel. Then he took the holy viaticum 
 from the hands of his marching chaplain ; and ordering as 
 many masses for his soul, as might have brought himself and 
 all his followers triumphantly into the New Jerusalem, he 
 breathed his last. Count Ernst had the corpse of his lord 
 embalmed ; he enclosed it in a silver coffin, and sent it to 
 the widowed lady, who wore mourning for her husband like 
 
148 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 a Roman Empress, for she never laid her weeds aside while 
 she continued in this world. 
 
 Count Ernst of Gleichen forwarded the pilgrimage as 
 much as possible, and arrived in safety with his people in 
 the camp at Ptolemais. Here it was rather a theatrical 
 emblem of war than a serious campaign that met his view. 
 For as on our stages, when they represent a camp or field 
 of battle, there are merely a few tents erected in the fore- 
 ground, and a little handful of players scuffling together ; 
 but in the distance many painted tents and squadrons to 
 asgist the illusion, and cheat the eye, the whole being 
 merely intended for an artificial deception of the senses ; so 
 also was the crusading army a mixture of fiction and reality. 
 Of the numerous heroic hosts that left their native country, 
 it was always the smallest part that reached the boundaries 
 of the land they had gone forth to conquer. But few were 
 devoured by the swords of the Saracens. These Infidels 
 had powerful allies, whom they sent beyond their frontiers, 
 and who made brisk work among their enemies, though 
 getting neither wages nor thanks for their good service. 
 These allies were Hunger and Nakedness, Perils by land 
 and water and among bad brethren, Frost and Heat, Pesti- 
 lence and malignant Boils; and the grinding Home-sickness 
 also fell at times like a heavy Incubus upon the steel harness, 
 and crushed it together like soft pasteboard, and spurred the 
 steed to a quick return. Under these circumstances, Count 
 Ernst had little hope of speedily fulfilling his oath, and 
 thrice dyeing his knightly sword in unbelieving blood, as 
 must be done before he thought of returning. For three 
 days' journey round the camp, no Arab archer was to be 
 seen ; the weakness of the Christian host lay concealed 
 behind its bulwarks and entrenchments ; they did not ven- 
 ture out to seek the distant enemy, but waited for the slow 
 help of his slumbering Holiness, who, since the wakeful 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 149 
 
 night that gave rise to this Crusade, had enjoyed unbroken 
 sleep, and about the issue of the Holy War had troubled 
 himself very little. 
 
 In this inaction, as inglorious to the Christian army, as 
 of old that loitering was to the Greeks before the walls of 
 bloody but courageous Troy, where the godlike Achilles, 
 with his confederates, moped so long about his fair Briseis, 
 — the chivalry of Christendom kept up much jollity and 
 recreation in their camp, to kill lazy time, and scare away 
 the blue devils; the Italians, with song and harping, to 
 which the nimble-footed Frenchmen danced ; the solemn 
 Spaniards with chess ; the English with cock-fighting ; the 
 Germans with feasting and wassail. 
 
 Count Ernst, taking small delight in any of these pastimes, 
 amused himself with hunting ; made war on the foxes in 
 the dry wildernesses, and pursued the shy chamois into the 
 barren mountains. The knights of his train " disagreed n 
 with the glowing sun by day, and the damp evening air 
 under the open sky, and sneaked to a side when their lord 
 called for his horses ; therefore, in his hunting expeditions, 
 he was generally attended only by his faithful Squire 
 named the mettled Kurt, and a single groom. Once his 
 eagerness in clambering after the chamois had carried him 
 to such a distance, that the sun was dipping in the Mid-sea 
 wave before he thought of returning ; and, fast as he hast- 
 ened homewards, night came upon him at a distance from 
 the camp. The appearance of some treacherous ignes 
 fatui, which he mistook for the watchfires, led him off still 
 farther. On discovering his error, he resolved to rest be- 
 neath a tree till daybreak. The trusty Squire prepared a 
 bed of soft moss for his lord, who, wearied by the heat of 
 the day, fell asleep before he could lift his hand to bless 
 himself, according to custom, with the sign of the cross. 
 But to the mettled Kurt there came no wink of sleep, for 
 13* 
 
150 MUSAEUS. 
 
 he was by nature watchful like a bird of darkness ; and 
 though this gift had not belonged to him, his faithful care 
 for his lord would have kept him waking. The night, as 
 usual in the climate of Asia, was serene and still ; the stars 
 twinkled in pure diamond light ; and solemn silence, as in 
 the Valley of Death, reigned over the wide desert. No 
 breath of air was stirring, yet the nocturnal coolness poured 
 life and refreshment over herb and living thing. But about 
 the third watch, when the morning star had begun to an- 
 nounce the coming day, there arose a din in the dusky 
 remoteness, like the voice of a forest stream rushing over 
 some steep precipice. The watchful squire listened eagerly, 
 and sent his other senses also out for tidings, as his sharp 
 eye could not pierce the veil of darkness. He hearkened 
 and snuffed at the same time, like a bloodhound, for a scent 
 came towards him as of sweet-smelling herbs and trodden 
 grass, and the strange noise appeared to be approaching. 
 He laid his ear to the ground, and heard a trampling as of 
 horses' hoofs, which led him to conclude that the Infernal 
 Chase was hunting in these parts. A cold shudder passed 
 over him, and his terror grew extreme. He shook his mas- 
 ter from sleep ; and the latter, having roused himself, soon 
 saw that here another than a spectral host was to be fronted. 
 Whilst his groom girded up the horses, the Count had his 
 harness buckled on in all haste. 
 
 The dim shadows gradually withdrew, and the advancing 
 morning tinted the eastern hem of the horizon with purple 
 light. The Count now discovered, what he had anticipated, 
 a host of Saracens approaching, all equipped for fight, to 
 snatch some booty from the Christians. To escape their 
 hands was hopeless, and the hospitable tree, in the wide, 
 solitary plain, gave no shelter to conceal horse and man be- 
 hind it. Unluckily, the massy steed was not a Hippogriff, 
 hut a heavy. bodied Frieslander, to which, by reason of its 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 151 
 
 make, the happy talent of bearing off its master on the 
 wings of the wind had not been allotted ; therefore the 
 gallant hero gave his soul to the keeping of God and the 
 Holy Virgin, and resolved on dying like a knight. He bade 
 his servants follow him, and sell their lives as dear as might 
 be. Thereupon he pricked the Frieslander boldly forward, 
 and dashed right into the middle of the hostile squadron, 
 who had been expecting no such sudden onset from a single 
 knight. The Pagans started in astonishment, and flew 
 asunder like light chaff when scattered by the wind. But 
 seeing that the enemy was only three men strong, their 
 courage rose, and there began an unequal battle, in which 
 valor was surpassed by number. The Count, meanwhile, 
 kept plunging yarely through the ranks ; the point of his 
 lance gleamed death and destruction to the Infidel ; and 
 when it found its man, he flew inevitably from his saddle. 
 Their Captain himself, who ran at him with grim fury, his 
 manly arm laid low, and with his victorious spear transfixed 
 him writhing in the dust, as St. George of England did the 
 dragon. The mettled Kurt went on with no less briskness ; 
 though availing little for attack, he was a master in the 
 science of despatching, and sent all to pot who did not make 
 resistance ; as a modern critic butchers the defenceless 
 rabble of the lame and halt, who venture with such courage 
 in our days into the literary tilt-yard ; and if now and then 
 some fainting invalid, with furious aim, like an exasperated 
 Reviewer-hunter, did hurl a stone at him with enfeebled fist, 
 he heeded it little ; for he knew well that his basenet and 
 iron jack would turn a moderate thump. The groom, too, 
 did his best to make clear ground about him, and kept his 
 master's back unharmed. But as nine gad-flies will beat 
 the strongest horse ; four Caffre bulls an African lion; and, 
 by the common tale, one troop of mice an archbishop, as 
 the Mausethurm or Mouse-tower, on the Rhine, by Hub- 
 
152 MUSAEUS. 
 
 ner's account, gives open testimony ; so the Count of Glei- 
 chen, after doing knightly battle, was at length overpowered 
 by the number of his enemies. His arm grew weary, 
 his lance was shivered into splinters, his sword became 
 blunt, and his Friesland horse at last staggered down 
 upon the gory battle-field. The Knight's fall was the 
 watch-word of victory; a hundred valiant arms stormed 
 in on him to wrench away his sword, and his hand had 
 no longer any strength for resistance. As the mettled 
 Kurt observed the Knight come down, his own courage sank 
 also, and along with it the poleaxe, wherewith he had so 
 magnanimously hammered in the Saracenic skulls. He 
 surrendered at discretion, and pressingly entreated quarter. 
 The groom stood in blank rumination ; bore himself endur- 
 ingly ; and awaited with ox-like equanimity the stroke of some 
 mace upon his basenet, which should crush him to the ground. 
 But the Saracens were less inhuman victors than the con- 
 quered could have expected ; they disarmed their three 
 prisoners of war, and did them no bodily harm whatever. 
 This mild usage took its rise not in any movement of phi- 
 lanthropy, but in mere spy's-mercy ; from a dead enemy 
 there is nothing to be learnt, and the special object of this 
 roaming troop had been to get correct intelligence about 
 the state of matters in the Christian host at Ptolemais. The 
 captives, being questioned and heard, were next, according 
 to the Asiatic fashion, furnished with slave-fetters ; and as a 
 ship was just then lying ready to set sail for Alexandria, the 
 Bey of Asdod sent them off with it as a present to the Sultan 
 of Egypt, to confirm at Court their description of the Chris- 
 tian resources and position. The rumor of the bold Frank's 
 valor had arrived before him at the gates of Grand Cairo ; 
 and so pugnacious a prisoner might, on entering the hostile 
 metropolis, have merited as pompous a reception as the 
 Twelfth of April saw bestowed upon the Comte de Grasse 
 
MELECHSALA. 153 
 
 in London, where the merry capital emulously strove to let 
 the conquered sea-hero feel the honor which their victory 
 had done him ; but Moslem self-conceit allows no justice 
 to foreign merit. Count Ernst, in the garb of a felon, 
 loaded with heavy chains, was quietly locked into the 
 Grated Tower, where the Sultan's slaves were wont to be 
 kept. 
 
 Here, in long, painful nights, and mournful, solitary days, 
 he had time and leisure to survey the grim, stony aspect of 
 his future life ; and it required as much steadfastness and 
 courage to bear up under these contemplations, as to tilt it 
 on the battle-field among a wandering horde of Arabs. The 
 image of his former domestic happiness kept hovering be- 
 fore his eyes ; he thought of his gentle wife, and the tender 
 shoots of their chaste love. Ah ! how he cursed the misera- 
 ble feud of Mother-church with the Gog and Magog of the 
 East, which had robbed him of his fair lot in. existence, 
 and fettered him in slave-shackles never to be loosed ! In 
 such moments he was ready to despair altogether ; and 
 his piety had well nigh made shipwreck on this rock of 
 offence. 
 
 In the days of Count Ernst there was current, among 
 anecdotic persons, a wondrous story of Duke Henry the 
 Lion, which, at that ^period, as a thing that had occurred 
 within the memory of man, found great credence in the 
 German Empire. The Duke, so runs the tale, while pro- 
 ceeding over sea to the Holy Land, was, in a tempest, cast 
 away upon a desert part of the African coast ; where, 
 escaping alone from shipwreck, he found shelter and suc- 
 cor in the den of a hospitable Lion. This kindness in the 
 savage owner of the cave had its origin not in the heart, 
 but in the left hind paw ; while hunting in the Lybian wilder- 
 ness, he had run a thorn into his foot, which so tormented 
 him that he could hardly move, and had entirely forgotten 
 
154 MUSAEUS. 
 
 his natural voracity. The acquaintance being formed, and 
 mutual confidence established between the parties, the Duke 
 assumed the office of chirurgeon to the royal beast, and 
 laboriously picked out the thorn from his foot. The patient 
 rapidly recovered, and, mindful of the service, entertained 
 his lodger with his best from the produce of his plunder ; 
 and, though a Lion, was as friendly and officious towards 
 him as a lapdog. 
 
 The Duke, however, soon grew weary of the cold colla- 
 tions of his four-footed landlord, and began to long for the 
 flesh-pots of his own far-distant kitchen ; for in readying 
 the game handed into him, he. by no means rivalled his 
 Brunswick cook. Then the home-sickness came upon him 
 like a heavy load ; and seeing no possibility of ever getting 
 back to his paternal heritage, the thought of this so grieved 
 his soul, that he wasted visibly, and pined like a wounded 
 hart. Thereupon the Tempter, with his wonted impudence 
 in desert places, came before him, in the figure of a little, 
 swart, wrinkled mannikin, whom the Duke at first sight took 
 for an ourang-outang ; but it was the Devil himself, Satan 
 in proper person, and he grinned, and said : " Duke Henry, 
 what ails thee ? If thou trust to me, I will put an end to all 
 thy sorrow, and take thee home to thy wife to sup with her 
 this night in the Castle of Brunswick ; for a lordly supper is 
 making ready there, seeing she is about to wed another 
 man, having lost hope of thy life.'" 
 
 This despatch came rolling like a thunder-clap into the 
 Duke's ear, and cut him through the heart like a sharp two- 
 edged sword. Rage burnt in his eyes like flames of fire, 
 and desperation uproared in his breast. If Heaven will not 
 help me in this crisis, thought he, then let Hell ! It was 
 one of those entangling situations which the Arch-crimp, 
 with his consummate skill in psychological science, can 
 employ so dexterously, when the enlisting of a soul that he 
 
MELECHSALA. 155 
 
 has cast an eye on is to prosper in his hands. The Duke, 
 without hesitation, buckled on his golden spurs, girded his 
 sword about his loins, and put himself in readiness. " Quick, 
 my good fellow ! " said he ; " carry me, and this my trusty 
 Lion, to Brunswick, before the varlet reach my bed ! " — 
 " Well !" answered Blackbeard, "but dost thou know the 
 carriage-dues?" — "Ask what thou wilt!" said Duke 
 Henry; " it shall be given thee at thy word." — " Thy soul 
 at sight in the other world," replied Beelzebub. — " Done ! 
 Be it so ! " cried furious jealousy, from Henry's mouth. 
 
 The bargain was forthwith concluded in legal form, be- 
 tween the two contracting parties. The Infernal Kite 
 directly changed himself into a winged Griffin, and seizing 
 the Duke in the one clutch, and the trusty Lion in the other, 
 conveyed them both in one night from the Lybian coast to 
 Brunswick, the towering city, founded on the lasting basis 
 of the Harz, which even the lying prophecies of the Ziller- 
 feld vaticinator have not ventured to overthrow. There he 
 set down his burden safely in the middle of the market- 
 place, and vanished, just as the watchman was blowing his 
 horn with intent to proclaim the hour of midnight, and then 
 carol forth a superannuated bridal-song from his rusty mum- 
 washed weazand. The ducal palace, and the whole city, 
 still gleamed like the starry heaven with the nuptial illumi- 
 nation ; every street resounded with the din and tumult of 
 the gay people streaming forward to gaze on the decorated 
 bride, and the solemn torch-dance with which the festival 
 was to conclude. The Aeronaut, unwearied by his voyage, 
 pressed on amid the crowding multitude through the en- 
 trance of the Palace ; advanced with clanking spurs, under the 
 guidance of his trusty Lion, to the banquet-chamber ; drew 
 his sword, and cried, " With me, whoever stands by Duke 
 Henry ; and to traitors, death and hell ! " The Lion also 
 bellowed, as if seven thunders had been uttering their uni- 
 
156 MUSAEUS. 
 
 ted voices ; shook his awful mane, and furiously erected his 
 tail, as the signal of attack. The cornets and kettle-drums 
 struck silent suddenly, and a horrid sound of battle pealed 
 from the tumult in the wedding-hall, up to the very Gothic 
 roof, till the walls rang with it, and the thresholds shook. 
 
 The golden-haired bridegroom, and his party-colored but- 
 terflies of courtiers, fell beneath the sword of the Duke, as 
 the thousand Philistines beneath the ass's jaw-bone, in the 
 sturdy fist of the son of Manoah ; and he who escaped the 
 sword rushed into the Lion's throat, and was butchered like 
 a defenceless lamb. When the forward wooer and his re- 
 tinue of serving-men and nobles were abolished, Duke 
 Henry having used his household privilege as sternly as of 
 old the wise Ulysses to the wooing-club of his chaste Pe- 
 nelope, sat down to table, refreshed in spirit, beside his wife, 
 who was just beginning to recover from the deadly fright 
 his entrance had caused her. While briskly enjoying the 
 dainties of his cook, which had not been prepared for him, 
 he cast a glance of triumph on his new conquest, and per- 
 ceived that she was bathed in ambiguous tears, which might 
 as well refer to loss as to gain. However, like a man that 
 knew the world, he explained them wholly to his own ad- 
 vantage ; and merely reproving her in gentle words for the 
 hurry of her heart, he from that hour entered upon all his 
 former rights. 
 
 Count Ernst had often listened to this strange story, from 
 the lips of his nurse ; yet in riper years, as an enlightened 
 skeptic, entertained doubts of its truth. But in the dreary 
 loneliness of his Grated Tower, the whole incident acquired 
 a form of possibility, and his wavering nursery belief in- 
 creased almost to conviction. A transit through the air ap- 
 peared to him the simplest thing in nature, if the Prince of 
 Darkness, in the gloomy midnight, chose to lend his bat- 
 wings for the purpose. Though in obedience to his relig- 
 
MELECHSALA. 157 
 
 ious principles, he no night neglected to cut a large cross 
 before him as he went to sleep, yet a secret longing awoke 
 in his heart, without its own distinct consciousness, to ac- 
 complish the same adventure. If a wandering mouse in 
 the night season happened to scratch upon the wainscot, he 
 immediately supposed the Hellish Proteus was announcing 
 his arrival, and at times in thought he went so far as settling 
 the freight charges beforehand. But except the illusion of 
 a dream, which juggled him into an areial journey to his 
 German native land, the Count gained nothing by his nur- 
 sery faith, except employing with these fantasies a few va- 
 cant hours ; and like a reader of novels, transporting him- 
 self into the situation of the acting hero. Why old Abad- 
 don showed himself so sluggish in this case, when the kid- 
 napping of a soul was in the wind, and in all likelihood the 
 enterprise must have succeeded, may be accounted for in 
 two ways. Either the Count's Guardian Angel was more 
 watchful than the one to whom Duke Henry had intrusted 
 the keeping of his soul, and resisted so stoutly that the Evil 
 One could get no advantage over him ; or the Prince of the 
 Air had grown disgusted with the transport-trade in this his 
 own element, having been bubbled out of his stipulated 
 freightage by Duke Henry after all their engagements ; for 
 when it came to the point with Henry, his soul was found to 
 have so many good works on her side of the account, that 
 the scores on the Infernal tally were altogether cancelled by 
 them. 
 
 Whilst Count Ernst was weaving in romantic dreams a 
 feeble shadow of hope for deliverance from his captivity, 
 and for a few moments in the midst of them forgetting his 
 dejection and misery, his returning servants brought the 
 Countess tidings that their master had vanished from the 
 camp, and none knew what had become of him. Some 
 supp6sed that he had been the prey of snakes or dragons ; 
 vol. i. 14 
 
158 MUSAEUS. 
 
 others that a pestilential blast of wind had met him in the 
 Syrian desert, and killed him; others that he had been 
 robbed and murdered, or taken captive, by some plundering 
 troop of Arabs. In one point all agreed. That he was to 
 be held pro mortuo, dead in law, and that the Countess was 
 entirely relieved and enfranchised from her matrimonial 
 engagements. But to the Countess herself a secret fore- 
 boding still whispered that her lord was alive notwithstand- 
 ing. Nor did she by any means repress this thought, which 
 so solaced her heart ; for hope is always the stoutest stay of 
 the afflicted, and the sweetest dream of life. To maintain 
 it, she secretly equipped a trusty servant, and sent him out 
 for tidings, over sea into the Holy Land. Like the raven 
 from the Ark, this scout flew to and fro upon the waters, 
 and was no more heard of. Then she sent another forth ; 
 who returned after several years cruising over sea and land ; 
 but no olive leaf of hope was in his bill. Nevertheless the 
 steadfast lady doubted not in the least that she should yet 
 meet her lord in the land of the living; for she had a firm 
 persuasion that so tender and true a husband could not pos- 
 sibly have left the world, without in the catastrophe remem- 
 bering his wife and little children at home, and giving them 
 some token of his death. Now, since the Count's departure, 
 there had nothing happened in the Castle ; neither in the 
 armory by rattling of the harness, nor in the garret by a 
 rolling joist, nor in the bed-chamber by a faint footstep, or 
 heavy-booted tread. Nor had any nightly moaning chanted 
 its Ncenia down from the high battlements of the palace ; 
 nor had the baleful bird Kreidevveiss ever issued its lugubri- 
 ous death-summons. In the absence of all these signs of 
 evil omen, she inferred, by the principles of female common- 
 sense philosophy, which even in our own times are by no 
 means fallen into such desuetude among the fair sex, as 
 Father Aristotle's Organum is among the male, that her 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 159 
 
 much- loved husband was still living ; a conclusion which 
 we know was perfectly correct. The fruitless issue of her 
 first two missions of discover}', the object of which was 
 more important to her than the finding of the Southern 
 Polar Continent is to us, she allowed not in the least to deter 
 her from sending out a third Apostle into All the World. 
 This third was of a slow turn, and had imprinted on his 
 mind the adage, As soon gets the snail to his bed as the 
 swallow ; therefore he called at every inn, and treated him- 
 self well. And it being infinitely more convenient that the 
 people whom he was to question about his master should 
 come to him, than that he should go tracking and spying 
 them out in the wide world, he determined on choosing a 
 position where he could examine every passenger from the 
 East, with the insolent inquisitiveness of a toll-man behind 
 his barrier ; and fixed his quarters by the harbor of Venice. 
 This Queen of the Waters was at that time, as it were, the 
 general gate, which all pilgrims and crusaders from the Holy 
 Land passed through in their way home. Whether this 
 shrewd genius chose the best or the worst means for dis- 
 charging his appointed function will appear in the sequel. 
 
 After a seven years' narrow custody in the Grated Tower 
 at Grand Cairo; a term which to the Count seemed far 
 longer than to the Seven Sleepers their seventy years' sleep 
 in the Roman catacombs, he concluded himself to be for- 
 saken of Heaven and Hell, and utterly gave up hope of 
 ever getting out in the body from this melancholy cage, 
 where the kind face of the sun was not allowed to visit him, 
 and the broken daylight struggled faintly in through a win- 
 dow secured with iron bars. His devil-romance was long 
 ago concluded ; and his faith in miraculous assistance from 
 his Guardian Saint was lighter than a mustard-seed. He 
 vegetated rather than lived ; and if in these circumstances 
 any wish arose in him, it was the wish to be annihilated. 
 
160 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 From this lethargic stupor he was suddenly aroused by 
 the rattling of a bunch of keys before the door of his cell 
 Since the day of his entrance, his jailor had never more 
 performed for him the office of turnkey ; for all the neces- 
 saries of the prisoner had been conveyed through a trap-board 
 in the door. Accordingly, it was not without long resist- 
 ance, and the bribery of a little vegetable oil, that the rusty 
 bolt obeyed him. But the creaking of the iron hinges, as 
 the door went up with reluctant grating, was to the Count 
 a compound of more melodious notes than ever came from 
 the harmonica of Franklin. A foreboding palpitation of the 
 heart set his stagnant blood in motion ; and he expected 
 with impatient longing the intelligence of a change in his 
 fate ; for the rest, it was indifferent to him whether it brought 
 life or death. Two black slaves entered with his jailor, at 
 whose signal they loosed the fetters from the prisoner ; and 
 a second mute sign from the solemn graybeard commanded 
 him to follow. He obeyed with faltering steps ; his feet 
 refused their service, and he needed the support of the 
 two slaves, to totter down the winding stone stair. He was 
 then conducted to the Captain of the Prison, who, looking 
 at him with a reproachful air, thus spoke : "Obstinate Frank, 
 what made thee hide the craft thou art acquainted with, 
 when thou wert put into the grated Tower ? One of thy 
 fellow-prisoners has betrayed thee, and informed us that 
 thou art a master in the art of gardening. Go, whither the 
 will of the Sultan calls thee ; lay out a garden in the man- 
 ner of the Franks, and watch over it like the apple of thy 
 eye ; that the Flower of the World may blossom in it pleas- 
 antly, for the adorning of the East." 
 
 If the Count had got a call to Paris to be Rector of the 
 Sorbonne, the appointment could not have astonished him 
 more, than this of being gardener to the Sultan of Egypt. 
 About gardening he understood as little as a laic about the 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 161 
 
 secrets of the Church In Italy, it is true, he had seen 
 many gardens ; and at Nurnberg, where the dawn of that 
 art was now first penetrating into Germany ; though the 
 horticultural luxury of the Niirnbergers did not yet extend 
 much farther than a bowling-green, and a few beds of Ro- 
 man lettuce. But about the planning of gardens, and the 
 cultivation of plants, like a martial nobleman, he had never 
 troubled his head ; and his botanic science was so limited, 
 that the Flower of the World had never once come under 
 his inspection. Hence he knew not in the least by what 
 method it was to be treated ; whether like the aloe it must 
 be brought to blossom by the aid of art, or like a common 
 marigold by the genial virtue of nature alone. Neverthe- 
 less, he did not venture to acknowledge his ignorance, or 
 decline the preferment offered him ; being reasonably ap- 
 prehensive that they might convince him of his fitness for 
 the post, by a bastinading on the soles. 
 
 A pleasant park was assigned him, which he was to 
 change into a European garden. The spot had, either by 
 the hand of bountiful Nature, or of ancient cultivation, been 
 so happily disposed and ornamented already, that the new 
 Abdalonymus, let him cudgel his brains as he would, could 
 perceive no error or defect in it, nothing that admitted of 
 improvement. Besides, the aspect of living and active na- 
 ture, which for seven long years in his dreary prison he 
 had been obliged to forego, affected him at once so power- 
 fully, that he inhaled rapture from every grass-flower, and 
 looked at all things around him with delight, like the First 
 Man in Paradise, to whom the scientific thought of censur- 
 ing anything in the arrangement of his Eden did not occur. 
 The Count therefore found himself in no small embarrass- 
 ment about discharging his commission creditably ; he feared 
 that every change would rob the garden of a beauty, and 
 14* 
 
162 MUSAEUS. 
 
 were he detected as a botcher, he must travel back into his 
 Grated Tower. 
 
 In the mean time, as Sheik Kiamel, Overseer of the 
 Gardens and favorite of the Sultan, was diligently stim- 
 ulating him to begin the work, he required fifty slaves, as 
 necessary for the execution of his enterprise. Next morn- 
 ing at dawn they were all ready, and passed muster before 
 their new commander, who as yet saw not how he should 
 employ a man of them. But how great was his joy as he 
 perceived the mettled Kurt and the ponderous Groom, his 
 two companions of misfortune, ranked among the troop! A 
 hundred-weight of lead rolled off his heart, the wrinkle of 
 dejection vanished from his brow, and his eyes were en- 
 lightened, as if he had dipt his staff in honey and tasted 
 thereof. He led the trusty Squire aside, and frankly in- 
 formed him into what a heterogeneous element he had been 
 cast by the caprices of fate, where he could neither fly nor 
 swim ; nor could he in the least comprehend what enigmat- 
 ical mistake had exchanged his knightly sword with the 
 gardener's spade. No sooner had he done speaking, than 
 the mettled Kurt, with wet eyes, fell at his feet, then lifted 
 up his voice and said : "Pardon, dear master ! It is I that 
 have caused your perplexity and your deliverance from the 
 rascally Grated Tower, which has kept you so long in 
 ward. Be not angry that the innocent deceit of your ser- 
 vant has brought you out of it ; be glad rather that you 
 see God's sky again above your head. The Sultan required 
 a garden after the manner of the Franks, and had procla- 
 mation made to all the Christian captives in the Bazam, that 
 the proper man should step forth, and expect great recom- 
 pense if the undertaking prospered. No one of them durst 
 meddle with it ; but I recollected your heavy duranee. 
 Then some good spirit whispered me the lie of announcing 
 you as an adept in the art of gardening, and it has succeeded 
 
MELECHSALA. 163 
 
 perfectly. And now never vex yourself about the way of 
 managing the business ; the Sultan, like the great people of 
 the world, has a fancy not for something better than he has 
 already, but for something different, that may be new and 
 singular. Therefore, delve and devastate, and cut and 
 carve, in this glorious field, according to your pleasure ; and 
 depend upon it, everything you do or purpose will be right 
 in his eyes." 
 
 This speech was as the murmur of a running brook in 
 the ears of a tired wanderer in the desert. The Count drew 
 balsam to his soul from it, and courage to commence with 
 boldness the ungainly undertaking. He set his men to 
 work at random, without plan ; and proceeded with the 
 well-ordered shady park, as one of your " bold geniuses" 
 proceeds with an antiquated author, who falls into his crea- 
 tive hands, and, nill he will he, must submit to let himself 
 be modernized, that is to say, again made readable and 
 likeable ; or as a new pedagogue with the ancient forms of 
 the Schools. He jumbled in variegated confusion what he 
 found before him, making all things different, nothing better. 
 The profitable fruit-trees he rooted out, and planted rose- 
 mary and valerian, and exotic shrubs, or scentless ama- 
 ranths, in their stead. The rich soil he dug away, and 
 coated the naked bottom with many colored gravel, which 
 he carefully stamped hard, and smoothed like a threshing- 
 floor, that no blade of grass might spring in it. The whole 
 space he divided into various terraces, which he begirt with 
 a hem of green ; and through these a strangely-twisted flow- 
 er-bed serpentized along, and ended in a knot of villainous- 
 ly smelling boxwood. And as, from his ignorance of botany, 
 he paid no heed to the proper seasons for sowing and plant- 
 ing, his garden project hovered for a long time between life 
 and death, and had the aspect of a suit of clothes a feuille 
 mourante. 
 
164 MUSAEUS. 
 
 Sheik Kiamel, and the Sultan himself, allowed the Wes- 
 tern gardener to take his course, without deranging his con- 
 ception by their interference or their dictatorial opinion, and 
 by premature hypercriticism interrupting the procedure of his 
 horticultural genius. In this they acted more wisely than 
 our obstreperous public, which, from our famous philanthro- 
 pic scheme of sowing acorns, expected in a summer or two 
 a stock of strong oaks, fit to be masts for three-deckers ; 
 while the plantation was as yet so soft and feeble, that a few 
 frosty nights might have sent it to destruction. Now, in- 
 deed, almost in the middle of the second decade of years 
 from the commencement of the enterprise, when the first 
 fruits must certainly be over-ripe, it were in good season for 
 a German Kiamel to step forward with the question : 
 " Planter, what art thou about ? Let us see what thy del- 
 ving and the loud clatter of thy cars and wheel-barrows 
 have produced ? " And if the plantation stood before him 
 like that of the Gleichic Garden at Grand Cairo, in the sere 
 and yellow leaf, then were he well entitled, after due con- 
 sideration of the matter, like the Sheik, to shake his head in 
 silence, to spit a squirt through his teeth, and think within 
 himself: If this be all, it might have staid as it was. For 
 one day, as the gardener was surveying his new creation 
 with contentment, sitting in judgment on himself, and pro- 
 nouncing that the work praised the master, and that, every- 
 thing considered, it had fallen out better than he could have 
 anticipated, his whole ideal being before his eyes, not only 
 what was then, but what was to be made of it — the Over- 
 seer, the Sultan's favorite, stept into the garden, and said : 
 " Frank, what art thou about ? And how far art thou got 
 with thy labor ? " The Count easily perceived that the pro- 
 duce of his genius would now have to stand a rigorous 
 criticism ; however, he had long been ready for this acci- 
 dent. He collected all his presence of mind, and answered 
 
MELECHSA.LA. 165 
 
 confidently : " Come, sir, and see ! This former wilderness 
 has obeyed the hand of art, and is now moulded, after the 
 pattern of Paradise, into a scene which the Houris would not 
 disdain to select for their abode." The Sheik, hearing a 
 professed artist speak with such apparent warmth and satis- 
 faction of his own performance, and giving the master credit 
 for deeper insight in his own sphere than he himself possess- 
 ed, restrained the avowal of his discontentment with the 
 whole arrangement, modestly ascribing this dislike to his 
 inacquaintance with foreign taste, and leaving the matter to 
 rest on its own basis. Nevertheless, he could not help put- 
 ting one or two questions, for his own information ; to 
 which the garden satrap was not in the least behindhand 
 with his answers. 
 
 " Where are the glorious fruit-trees," began the Sheik, 
 " which stood on this sandy level, loaded with peaches and 
 sweet lemons, which solaced the eye, and invited the pro- 
 menader to refreshing enjoyment ? " 
 
 "They are all hewn away by the surface, and their place 
 is no longer to be found." 
 
 " And why so ? " 
 
 " Could the garden of the Sultan admit such trash of 
 trees, which the commonest citizen of Cairo cultivates, and 
 the fruit of which is offered for sale by assloads every 
 day ? " 
 
 " What moved thee to desolate the pleasant grove of dates 
 and tamarinds, which was the wanderer's shelter against the 
 sultry noontide, and gave him coolness and refection under 
 the vault of its shady boughs ? " 
 
 " What has shade to do in a garden, which, while the sun 
 shoots forth scorching beams, stands solitary and deserted, 
 and only exhales its balsamic odors when fanned by the 
 cool breeze of evening ? " 
 
 " But did not this grove cover, with an impenetrable veil, 
 
166 MUSAEUS. 
 
 the secrets of love, when the Sultan, enchanted by the 
 charms of a fair Circassian, wished to hide his tenderness 
 from the jealous eyes of her companions ? " 
 
 " An impenetrable veil is to be found in that bower, over- 
 arched with honey-suckle and ivy ; or in that cool grotto, 
 where a crystal fountain gushes out of artificial rocks into a 
 basin of marble ; or in that covered walk with its trellises of 
 clustering vines ; or on the sofa, pillowed with soft moss, 
 in the rustic reed-house by the pond ; nor will any of these 
 secret shrines afford lodging for destructive worms, and 
 buzzing insects, or keep away the wafting air, or shut up 
 the free prospect, as the gloomy grove of tamarinds 
 did." 
 
 " But why hast thou planted sage, and hyssop which 
 grows upon the wall, here on this spot, where formerly the 
 precious balm-tree of Mecca bloomed ? " 
 
 " Because the Sultan wanted no Arabian, but a European 
 garden. In Italy, and in the German gardens of the Niirn- 
 bergers, no dates are ripened, nor does any balm-tree of 
 Mecca bloom." 
 
 To this last argument no answer could be made. As 
 neither the Sheik nor any of the Heathen in Cairo had ever 
 been at Nurnberg, he had nothing for it but to take this 
 version of the garden from Arabic into German, on the word 
 of the interpreter. Only he could not bring himself to think 
 that the present horticultural reform had been managed by 
 the pattern of the Paradise appointed by the Prophet for 
 believing Mussulmen ; and, allowing the pretension to be 
 true, he promised to himself, from the joys of the future life, 
 no very special consolation. There was nothing for him, 
 therefore, but in the way above-mentioned, to shake his 
 head, contemplatively squirt a dash of liquid out over his 
 beard, and go the way whence he had come. 
 
 The Sultan who at that time swayed the Egyptian sceptre 
 
MELECHSALA. 167 
 
 was the gallant Malek al Aziz Olhman, a son of the re- 
 nowned Saladin. The fame of Sultan Malek rests less 
 upon his qualities in the field or the cabinet, than upon the 
 unexampled numerousness of his offspring. Of princes he had 
 so many, that had every one of them been destined to wear 
 a crown, he might have stocked with them all the kingdoms 
 of the then known world. Seventeen years ago, however, 
 this copious spring had, one hot summer, finally gone dry. 
 Princess Melechsala terminated the long series of the Sul- 
 tanic progeny ; and in the unanimous opinion of the Court, 
 she was the jewel of the whole. She enjoyed to its full 
 extent the prerogative of youngest children, preference to 
 all the rest ; and this distinction was enhanced by the cir- 
 cumstance, that, of all the Sultan's daughters, she alone had 
 remained in life ; while Nature had adorned her with so 
 many charms that they enchanted even the paternal eye. 
 For this must in general be conceded to the Oriental Prin- 
 ces, that, in the scientific criticism of female beauty, they are 
 infinitely more advanced than our Occidentals, who are 
 every now and then betraying their imperfect culture in this 
 point.* Melechsala was the pride of the Sultan's family ; 
 her brothers themselves were unremitting in attentions to 
 her, and in efforts to outdo each other in affectionate regard. 
 The grave Divan was frequently employed in considering 
 what Prince, by means of her, might be connected, in the 
 bonds of love, with the interest of the Egyptian state. This 
 her royal father made his smallest care ; he was solely and 
 incessantly concerned to grant this darling of his heart her 
 every wish, to keep her spirit always in a cheerful mood, 
 that no cloud might overcast the serene horizon of her brow. 
 The first years of childhood she had passed under the 
 superintendence of a nurse, who was a Christian, and of 
 
 * Journal of Fashions. June, 1786. 
 
168 MUSAEUS. 
 
 Italian extraction. This slave had in early youth been kid- 
 napped from the beach of her native town by a Barbary 
 pirate; sold in Alexandria; and, by the course of trade, 
 transmitted from one hand to another, till at last she had 
 arrived in the palace of the Sultan, where her hale constitu- 
 tion recommended her to this office, which she filled with 
 the greatest reputation. Though less tuneful than the 
 French court-nurse, who used to give the signal for a gen- 
 eral chorus over all Versailles, whenever she uplifted, with 
 melodious throat, her Marlborough s^en va-t-en guerre ; yet 
 nature had sufficiently indemnified her by a glibness of 
 tongue, in which she was unrivalled. She knew as many 
 tales and stories as the fair Sheherazade in the Thousand 
 and One Nights; a species of entertainment for which it 
 would appear the race of Sultans, in the privacy of their 
 seraglios, have considerable liking. The Princess, at least, 
 found pleasure in it, not for a thousand nights, but for a 
 thousand weeks ; and when once a maiden has attained the 
 age of a thousand weeks, she can no longer be contented 
 with the histories of others, for she sees materials in her- 
 self to make a history of her own. In process of time, the 
 gifted waiting-woman changed her nursery-tales with the 
 theory of European manners and customs; and being her- 
 self a warm patriot, and recollecting her native country 
 with delight, she painted the superiorities of Italy so vividly, 
 that the fancy of her tender nursling became filled with the 
 subject, and the pleasant impression never afterwards faded 
 from her memory. The more this fair Princess grew in 
 stature, the stronger grew in her the love for foreign deco- 
 ration ; and her whole demeanor shaped itself according to 
 the customs of Europe rather than of Egypt. 
 
 From youth upwards she had been a great lover of flow- 
 ers ; part of her occupation had consisted in forming, ac- 
 cording to the manner of the Arabs, a constant succession 
 
MELECHSALA. 169 
 
 of significant nosegays and garlands ; with which, in delicate 
 expressiveness, she used to disclose the emotions of her 
 heart. Nay, she at last grew so inventive, that, by combin- 
 ing flowers of various properties, she could compose, and 
 often very happily, whole sentences and texts of the Koran. 
 These she would then submit to her playmates for interpre- 
 tation, which they seldom failed to hit. Thus one day, for 
 example, she formed with Chalcedonic Lychnis the figure 
 of a heart ; surrounded it with white Roses and Lilies ; fas- 
 tened under it two mounting Kingsweeds, enclosing a beau- 
 tifully marked Anemone between them ; and her women, 
 when she showed them the wreath, unanimously read : Inno- 
 cence of heart is above Birth and Beauty. She frequently 
 presented her slaves with fresh nosegays ; and these flower 
 donations commonly included praise or blame for their re- 
 ceivers. A garland of Peony-roses censured levity ; the 
 swelling Poppy, dulness and vanity ; a bunch of odoriferous 
 Hyacinths, with drooping bells, was a panegyric for mod- 
 esty ; the gold Lily, which shuts her leaves at sunset, for 
 prudence ; the Marine Convolvulus rebuked eye-service ; and 
 the blossoms of the Thorn-Apple, with the Daisy whose 
 roots are poisonous, indicated slander and private envy. 
 
 Father Othman took a secret pleasure in this sprightly 
 play of his daughter's fancy, though he himself had no 
 talent for deciphering these witty hieroglyphics ; and was 
 frequently obliged to look with the spectacles of his whole 
 Divan before he could pierce their meaning. The exotic 
 taste of the Princess was not hidden from him ; and though, 
 as a plain Mussulman, he could not sympathize with her in 
 it, he endeavored, as a tender and indulgent parent, rather 
 to maintain than to suppress this favorite tendency of his 
 daughter. He fell upon the project of combining her pas- 
 sion for flowers with her preference for foreign parts, and 
 laying out a garden for her in the taste of the Franks. This 
 
 vol.- i. 15 
 
170 MUSAEUS. 
 
 idea appeared to him so happy, that he lost not a moment 
 in imparting it to his favorite, Sheik Kiamel, and pressing 
 him with the strictest injunctions to realize it as speedily as 
 possible. The Sheik, well knowing that his master's wishes 
 were for him commands, which he must obey without reply, 
 presumed not to mention the difficulties which he saw in the 
 attempt. He himself understood as little about European 
 gardens as the Sultan ; and in all Cairo there was no mortal 
 known to him, with whom he might find counsel in the busi- 
 ness. Therefore he made search among the Christian slaves 
 for a man skilful in gardening ; and lighted exactly on the 
 wrong hand for extricating him from his difficulty. It was 
 no wonder, then, that Sheik Kiamel shook his head con- 
 templatively as he inspected the procedure of his horticul- 
 tural improvement ; for he was apprehensive, that, if it de- 
 lighted the Sultan as little as it did himself, he might be in- 
 volved in a heavy responsibility, and his favoriteship, at the 
 very least, might take wings and fly away. 
 
 At Court, this project had hitherto been treated as a 
 secret, and the entrance of the place prohibited to every 
 one in the seraglio. The Sultan purposed to surprise his 
 daughter with this present on her birth-day ; to conduct her 
 with ceremony into the garden, and make it over to her as 
 her own. This day was now approaching ; and his High- 
 ness had a wish to take a view of everything beforehand, to 
 get acquainted with the new arrangements; that he might 
 give himself the happiness of pointing out in person to his 
 daughter the peculiar beauties of her garden. He commu- 
 nicated this to the Sheik, whom the tidings did not much 
 exhilarate ; and who, in consequence, composed a short 
 defensive oration, which he fondly hoped might extricate 
 his head from the noose, if the Sultan showed himself dis- 
 satisfied with the appearance of his Christian garden. 
 
 u Commander of the Faithful," he purposed to say, " thy 
 
MELECHSALA. 171 
 
 nod is the director of my path ; my feet hasten whither thou 
 leadest them, and my hand holds fast what thou committest 
 to it. Thou wishedst a garden after the manner of the 
 Franks ; here stands it before thy eyes. These untutored 
 barbarians have no gardens ; but meagre wastes of sand, 
 which, in their own rude climate, where no dates or lemons 
 ripen, and there is neither Kalaf nor Bahobab,* they plant 
 with grass and weeds. For the curse of the Prophet has 
 smitten with perpetual barrenness the plains of the Unbe- 
 liever, and forbidden him any foretaste of Paradise by the 
 perfume of the Mecca balm-tree, or the enjoyment of spicy 
 fruits." 
 
 The day was far spent, when the Sultan, attended only 
 by the Sheik, stept into the garden, in high expectation of 
 the wonders he was to behold. A wide, unobstructed pros- 
 pect over a part of the city, and the mirror surface of the 
 Nile with its Musherns, Shamdecks, and Sheomeonsi sailing 
 to and fro ; in the background, the skyward-pointing pyr- 
 amids, and a chain of blue, vapory mountains, met his eye 
 from the upper terrace, no longer shrouded in by the leafy 
 grove of palms. A refreshing breath of air was also stir- 
 ring in the place, and fanning him agreeably. Crowds of 
 new objects pressed on him from every side. The garden 
 had in truth got a strange, foreign aspect ; and the old park 
 which had been his promenade from youth upwards, and 
 had long since wearied him by its everlasting sameness, was 
 no longer to be recognised. The knowing Kurt had judged 
 wisely, that the charm of novelty would have its influence. 
 The Sultan tried this horticultural metamorphosis not by the 
 principles of a critic, but by its first impression on the 
 
 * Kalaf, a shrub, from whose blossoms a liquor is extracted, resem- 
 bling our cherry- water, and much used in domestic medicine. Baho- 
 bab, a sort of fruit, in great esteem among the Egyptians. 
 
 t Various sorts of sailing craft in use there. 
 
172 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 senses ; and as these are easily decoyed into contentment 
 by the bait of singularity, the whole seemed good and right 
 to him there as he found it. Even the crooked unsymmet- 
 rical walks, overlaid with hard stamped gravel, gave his feet 
 an elastic force, and a light firm tread, accustomed as he 
 was to move on nothing else but Persian carpets, or on the 
 soft green sward. He could not satisfy himself with wan- 
 dering up and down the labyrinthic walks ; and he showed 
 himself especially contented with the rich variety of wild 
 flowers, which had been fostered and cultivated with the 
 greatest care, though they were blossoming of their own 
 accord, outside the wall, with equal luxuriance, and in 
 greater multitude. 
 
 At last, having placed himself upon a seat/ he turned to 
 the Sheik with a cheerful countenance, and said : " Kiamel, 
 thou hast not deceived my expectation ; I well anticipated 
 that thou wouldst transform me this old park into something 
 singular, and diverse from the fashion of the land ; and now 
 I will not hide my satisfaction from thee. Melechsala may 
 accept thy work as a garden after the manner of the 
 Franks." 
 
 The Sheik, when he heard his despot talk in this dialect, 
 marvelled much that all things took so well ; and blessed 
 himself that he had held his tongue, and retained his defen- 
 sive oration to himself. Perceiving that the Sultan seemed 
 to look upon the whole as his invention, he directly turned 
 the rudder of his talk to the favorable breeze which was 
 rustling his sails, and spoke thus : " Puissant Commander 
 of the Faithful, be it known to thee that thy obedient slave 
 took thought with himself day and night how he might 
 produce out of this old date grove, at thy beck and order, 
 something unexampled, the like of which had never been in 
 Egypt before. Doubtless it was an inspiration of the Prophet 
 that suggested the idea of planning it according to the pattern 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 173 
 
 of Paradise ; for I trusted that by so doing I should not fail 
 to meet the intention of thy Highness." 
 
 The worthy Sultan's conception of the Paradise, which to 
 all appearance by the course of nature he must soon become 
 possessed of, had still been exceedingly confused ; or rather 
 like the favored of fortune, who take their^ ease in this 
 lower world, he had never troubled himself much about the 
 other. But whenever any Dervish or Iman, or other spirit- 
 ual person, mentioned Paradise, some image of his old park 
 used to rise on his fancy ; and the park was not by any 
 means his favorite scene. Now, however, his imagination 
 had been steered on quite a different tack. The new picture 
 of his future happiness filled his soul with joy ; at least he 
 could now suppose that Paradise might not be so dull as 
 he had hitherto figured it; and believing that he now pos- 
 sessed a model of it on the small scale, he formed a high 
 opinion of the garden ; and expressed this forthwith, by 
 directly making Sheik Kiamel a Bey, and presenting him 
 with a splendid caftan. Your thorough-paced courtier belies 
 his nature in no quarter of the world. Kiamel, without the 
 slightest hesitation, modestly appropriated the reward of a 
 service which his functionary had performed ; not uttering 
 a syllable about him to the Sultan, and thinking him rather 
 too liberally rewarded by a few aspers which he added to 
 his daily pay. 
 
 About the time when the Sun enters the Ram, a celestial 
 phenomenon, which in our climates is the watch-word for 
 winter to commence his operation, but under the milder 
 sky of Egypt announces the finest season of the year, the 
 Flower of the World stept forth into the garden which had 
 been prepared for her, and found it altogether to her foreign 
 taste. She herself was, in truth, its greatest ornament; any 
 scene where she had wandered, had it been a desert in 
 Arabia the Stony, or a Greenland ice-field, would, in the 
 15* 
 
174 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 eyes of a gallant person, have been changed into Elysium 
 at her appearance. The wilderness of flowers, which 
 chance had mingled in interminable rows, gave equal occu- 
 pation to her eye and her spirit; the disorder itself she 
 assimilated, by her sprightly allegories, to methodical ar- 
 rangement. 
 
 According to the custom of the country, every time she 
 entered the garden, all specimens of the male sex, planters, 
 diggers, water-carriers, were expelled by her guard of 
 Eunuchs. The Grace for whom our artist worked was 
 thus hidden from his eyes, much as he could have wished 
 for once to behold this Flower of the World, which had so 
 long been a riddle in his botany. But as the Princess used 
 to overstep the fashions of the East in many points, so by 
 degrees, while she grew to like the garden more and more, 
 and to pay it several visits daily, she began to feel obstruct- 
 ed and annoyed by the attendance of her guard sallying 
 out before her in solemn parade, as if the Sultan had been 
 riding to mosque in the Bairam festival. She frequently 
 appeared alone, or leaning on the arm of some favorite 
 waiting- woman ; always, however, with a thin veil over her 
 face, and a little rush basket in her hand. She wandered 
 jup and down the walks, plucking flowers, which, according 
 to custom, she arranged into emblems of her thoughts, and 
 distributed among her people. 
 
 One morning, before the hot season of the day, while 
 the dew-drops were still reflecting all the colors of the 
 rainbow from the grass, she visited her Tempe to enjoy the 
 cool morning air, just as her gardener was employed in lift- 
 ing from the ground some faded plants, and replacing them 
 by others newly blown, which he was carefully transporting 
 in flower-pots, and then cunningly inserting in the soil with 
 all their appurtenances, as if by a magic vegetation they 
 had started from the bosom of the Earth in a single night. 
 
MELECHSALA. 175 
 
 The Princess noticed with pleasure this pretty deception ,of 
 the senses, and having now found out the secret of the flow- 
 ers which she plucked away being daily succeeded by fresh 
 ones, so that there was never any want, she thought of 
 turning her discovery to advantage, and instructing the 
 gardener how and when to arrange them, and make them 
 blossom. On raising his eyes, the Count beheld this female 
 Angel, whom he took for the possessor of the garden, for 
 she was encircled with celestial charms as with a halo. He 
 was so surprised by this appearance that he dropped a 
 flower-pot from his hands, forgetful of the precious colo- 
 cassia contained in it, which ended its tender life as tragi- 
 cally as the Sieur Pilastre de Rosier, though both only fell 
 into the bosom of their mother Earth. 
 
 The Count stood petrified like a statue without life or 
 motion ; one might have broken off his nose, as the Turks 
 do with stone statues in temples and gardens, and never 
 have aroused him. But the sweet voice of the Princess, 
 who opened her purple lips, recalled him to his senses. 
 " Christian," said she, " be not afraid ! It is my blame that 
 thou art here beside me ; go forward with thy work, and 
 order thy flowers as I shall bid thee."—" Glorious Flower 
 of the World ! " replied the gardener, u in whose splendor 
 all the colors of this blossomy creation wax pale, thou 
 reignest here as in thy firmament, like the Star-queen on 
 the battlements of Heaven. Let thy nod enliven the hand 
 of the happiest among thy slaves, who kisses his fetters, so 
 thou think him worthy to perform thy commands." The 
 Princess had not expected that a slave would open his 
 mouth to her, still less pay her compliments, and her eyes 
 had been directed rather to the flowers than the planter 
 She now deigned to cast a glance on him, and was as- 
 tonished to behold a man of the most noble form, surpass- 
 ing in masculine grace all that she had ever seen or 
 dreamed of. 
 
17G MUSAEUS. 
 
 Count Ernst of Gleichen had been celebrated for his 
 manly beauty over all Germany. At the tournament of 
 Wiirzburg, he had been the hero of the dames. When he 
 raised his visor to take air, the running of the boldest spear- 
 men was lost for every female eye ; all looked on him 
 alone ; and when he closed his helmet to begin a course, the 
 chastest bosom heaved higher, and all hearts beat anxious 
 sympathy with the lordly Knight. The partial hand of the 
 Duke of Bavaria's love-sick niece had crowned him with a 
 guerdon, which the young man blushed to receive. His 
 seven years' durance in the Grated Tower had indeed paled 
 his blooming cheeks, relaxed his firm-set limbs, and dulled 
 the fire of his eyes ; but the enjoyment of the free atmo- 
 sphere, and Labor, the playmate of Health, had now made 
 good the loss, with interest. He was flourishing like a 
 laurel, which has pined throughout the long winter in the 
 green-house, and at the return of spring sends forth new 
 leaves, and gets a fair, verdant crown. 
 
 With her predilection for all foreign things, the Princess 
 could not help contemplating with satisfaction the attractive 
 figure of the stranger ; and it never struck her that the sight 
 of an Endymion may have quite another influence on a 
 maiden's heart, than the creation of a milliner, set up for 
 show in her booth. With kind, gentle voice, she gave her 
 handsome gardener orders how to manage the arrangement 
 of his flowers ; often asked his own advice respecting it, 
 and talked with him so long as any horticultural idea was in 
 her head. She left him at length, but scarcely was she 
 gone five paces, when she turned to give him fresh commis- 
 sions ; and as she took a promenade along the serpentine- 
 walk, she called him again to her, and put new questions 
 to him, and proposed new improvements before she went 
 away. As the day began to cool, she again felt the want 
 of fresh air ; and scarcely had the sun returned to gild the 
 
MELECHSALA. 177 
 
 waxing Nile, when a wish to see the awakening flowers 
 unfold their blossoms brought her back into the garden. 
 Day after day her love of fresh air and awakening flowers 
 increased ; and in these visits she never failed to go directly 
 to the place where her florist was laboring, and give him 
 new orders, which he strove punctually and speedily to 
 execute. 
 
 One day the Bostangi,* when she came to see him, was 
 not to be found ; she wandered up and down the intertwisted 
 walks, regardless of the flowers that were blooming around 
 her, and, by the high tints of their colors and the balmy air 
 of their perfumes, as if striving with each other to attract 
 her attention ; she expected him behind every bush, searched 
 every branching plant that might conceal him, fancied she 
 should find him in the grotto, and, on his failing to appear, 
 made a pilgrimage to all the groves in the garden, hoping to 
 surprise him somewhere asleep, and enjoying the embarrass- 
 ment which he would feel when she awoke him ; but the 
 head-gardener nowhere met her eye. By chance she came 
 upon the stoical Viet, the Count's Groom, a dull piece of 
 mechanism, whom his master had been able to make noth- 
 ing out of but a drawer of water. On perceiving her, he 
 wheeled with his water-cans to the left-about, that he might 
 not meet her, but she called him to her, and asked, Where 
 the Bostangi was ? " Where else," said he, in his sturdy 
 way, " but in the hands of the Jewish quacksalver, who will 
 sweat the soul from his body in a trice ? " These tidings 
 cut the lovely Princess to the heart, for she had never 
 dreamed that it was sickness which prevented her Bostangi 
 from appearing at his post. She immediately returned to 
 her palace, where her women saw, with consternation, that 
 the serene brow of their mistress was overcast, as when the 
 moist breath of the south wind has dimmed the mirror of the 
 
 * Head gardener. 
 
178 MUSAEUS. 
 
 sky, and the hovering vapors have collected into clouds. In 
 retiring to the Seraglio, she had plucked a variety of flow- 
 ers, but all were of a mournful character, and bound with 
 cypress and rosemary, indicating clearly enough the sadness 
 of her mood. She did the same for several days, which 
 brought her council of women into much perplexity, and 
 many deep debates about the cause of their fair Melechsala's 
 grief; but withal, as in female consultations too often hap- 
 pens, they arrived at no conclusion, as in calling for the 
 vote there was such a dissonance of opinions, that no har- 
 monious note could be discovered in them. The truth was, 
 Count Ernst's too zealous efforts to anticipate every nod of 
 the Princess, and realize whatever she expressed the faint- 
 est hint of, had so acted on a frame unused to labor, that 
 his health suffered under it, and he was seized with a fever. 
 Yet the Jewish pupil of Galen, or rather the Count's fine 
 constitution, mastered the disease, and in a few days he was 
 able to resume his tasks. The instant the Princess noticed 
 him, the clouds fled away from her brow ; and her female 
 senate, to whom her melancholy humor had remained an 
 inexplicable riddle, now unanimously voted that some flow- 
 er-plant, of whose progress she had been in doubt, had now 
 taken root and begun to thrive, a conclusion not inaccurate, 
 if taken allegorically. 
 
 Princess Melechsala was still as innocent in heart as she 
 had come from the hands of Nature. She had never got 
 the smallest warning or foreboding of the rogueries which 
 Amor is wont to play on inexperienced beauties. Hitherto, 
 on the whole, there has been a want of Hints for Prin- 
 cesses and Maidens in regard to love ; though a satisfactory 
 theory of that kind might do infinitely greater service to 
 the world than any Hints for the Instructors of Princes ;* 
 
 * Allusion to a small Treatise, which, about the time MusRus 
 wrote his story, had appeared under that title. — Wieland. 
 
MELECHSALA. 179 
 
 a class of persons who regard no hint, however broad, nay, 
 sometimes take it ill ; whereas maidens never fail to notice 
 every hint, and pay heed to it, their perception being finer, 
 and a secret hint precisely their affair. The Princess was 
 still in the first noviciate of love, and had not the slightest 
 knowledge of its mysteries. She therefore yielded wholly 
 to her feelings, without scrupling in the least, or ever calling 
 a Divan of the three confidants of her heart, Reason, Pru- 
 dence, and Reflection, to deliberate on the business. Had 
 she done so, doubtless the concern she felt in the circum- 
 stances of the Bostangi would have indicated to her that the 
 germ of an unknown passion was already vegetating strong- 
 ly in her heart, and Reason and Reflection would have 
 whispered to her that this passion was love. Whether in 
 the Count's heart there was any similar process going on in 
 secret, we have no diplomatic evidence before us ; his over- 
 anxious zeal to execute the commands of his mistress might 
 excite some such conjecture ; and if so, a bunch of Lovage 
 with a withered stalk of Honesty, tied up together, might 
 have befitted him as an allegorical nosegay. Perhaps, how- 
 ever, it was nothing but an innocent, chivalrous feeling which 
 occasioned this distinguished alacrity ; for in those times it 
 was the most inviolable law of Knighthood, that its profes- 
 sors should in all things rigorously conform to the injunctions 
 of the fair. 
 
 No day now passed without the good Melechsala's hold- 
 ing trustful conversation with her Bostangi. The soft tone 
 of her voice delighted his ear, and every one of her ex- 
 pressions seemed to say something flattering to him. Had 
 he been endowed with the self-confidence of a court lord, 
 he would have turned so fair a situation to profit for making 
 farther advances ; but he constantly restrained himself with- 
 in the bounds of modesty. And as the Princess was entirely 
 inexperienced in the science of coquetry, and knew not how 
 
180 MUSAEUS. 
 
 to set about encouraging the timid shepherd to the stealing 
 of her heart, the whole intrigue revolved upon the axis of 
 mutual good-will ; and might undoubtedly have long con- 
 tinued so revolving, had not Chance, which we all know 
 commonly officiates as primum mobile in every change of 
 things, ere long given the scene another form. 
 
 About sunset, one very beautiful day, the Princess visited 
 the garden ; her soul was as bright as the horizon ; she talked 
 delightfully with her Bostangi about many indifferent mat- 
 ters, for the mere purpose of speaking to him ; and after 
 he had filled her flower-basket, she seated herself in a grove 
 and bound up a nosegay, with which she presented him. 
 The Count, as a mark of reverence to his fair mistress, fast- 
 ened it, with a look of surprise and delight, to the breast of 
 his waistcoat, without ever dreaming that the flowers might 
 have a secret import ; for these hieroglyphics were hidden 
 from his eyes, as from the eyes of a discerning public the 
 secret wheel-work of the famous Wooden Chess-player. 
 And as the Princess did not afterwards expound that secret 
 import, it has withered away with the blossoms, and been 
 lost to the knowledge of posterity. Meanwhile, she herself 
 supposed that the language of flowers must be as plain to 
 all mortals as their mother-tongue ; she never doubted, 
 therefore, but her favorite had understood the whole quite 
 right ; and as he looked at her with such an air of rever- 
 ence when he took the nosegay, she accepted his gestures 
 as expressions of modest thanks for the praise of his activ- 
 ity and zeal, which, in all probability, the flowers had been 
 meant to convey. She now took a thought of putting his 
 inventiveness to proof in her turn, and trying whether in 
 this flowery dialect of thanks he could pay a pretty compli- 
 ment ; or, in a word, translate the present aspect of his 
 countenance, which betrayed the feelings of his heart, into 
 flower-writing ; and accordingly, she asked him for a nose- 
 
MELECHSALA. 181 
 
 gay of his composition. The Count, affected by such a 
 proof of condescending goodness, darted to the end of the 
 garden, into a remote green-house, where he had established 
 his flower-depot, and out of which he was in the habit of 
 transferring his plants to the soil, as they came into blossom, 
 without stirring them from their pots. There chanced to be 
 an aromatic plant just then in bloom, a flower named Mush' 
 irumi* by the Arabs, and which hitherto had not appeared 
 in the garden. With this novelty Count Ernst imagined 
 he might give a little harmless pleasure to his fair florist; 
 and accordingly, for want of a waiter, having put a broad 
 fig-leaf under it, he held it to her on his knees, with a look 
 expressive of humility, yet claiming a little merit; for he 
 thought to earn a word of praise by it. But, with the 
 utmost consternation, he perceived that the Princess turned 
 away her face, and, so far as he could notice through the 
 veil, cast down her eyes as if ashamed, and looked on the 
 ground, without uttering a word. She hesitated, and seemed 
 embarrassed in accepting it; not deigning to cast a look on 
 it, but laying it beside her on the seat. Her gay humor 
 had departed ; she assumed a majestic attitude, announcing 
 haughty earnestness ; and after a few moments left the grove 
 without taking any farther notice of her favorite, not, how- 
 ever, leaving her Musldrumi behind her, but carefully con- 
 cealing it under her veil. 
 
 The Count was thunderstruck at this enigmatical catastro- 
 phe ; he could not for his life understand the meaning of 
 this strange behavior, and continued sitting on his knees, in 
 the position of a man doing penance, for some time after his 
 Princess had left the place. It grieved him to the heart, 
 that he should have displeased and alienated this divinity, 
 whom, for her condescending kindness, he venerated as a 
 
 * Hyacinthus Muscari. 
 VOL. I. 16 
 
182 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 Saint of Heaven. When his first consternation had subsid- 
 ed, he slunk home to his dwelling, timid and rueful, like 
 a man conscious of some heavy crime. The mettled Kurt 
 had supper on the table ; but his master would not bite, and 
 kept forking about in the plate, without carrying a morsel to 
 his lips. By this the trusty Dapifer perceived that all 
 was not right with the Count ; wherefore he vanished speed- 
 ily from the room, and uncorked a flask of Chian wine ; 
 which Grecian care-dispeller did not fail in its effect. The 
 Count became communicative, and disclosed to his faithful 
 Squire the adventure in the garden. Their speculations on 
 it were protracted to a late hour, without affording any ten- 
 able hypothesis for the displeasure of the Princess ; and as 
 with all their pondering nothing could be discovered, master 
 and servant betook them to repose. The latter found it 
 without difficulty ; the former sought it in vain, and watched 
 throughout the painful night, till the dawn recalled him to 
 his employments. 
 
 At the hour when Melechsala used to visit him, the Count 
 kept an eager eye on the entrance, but the door of the Se- 
 raglio did not open. He waited the second day ; then the 
 third ; the door of the Seraglio was as if walled up within. 
 Had not the Count of Gleichen been a sheer idiot in flower- 
 language, he would readily have found the key to this sur- 
 prising behavior of the Princess. By presenting the 
 flower to her, he had, in fact, without knowing a syllable of 
 the matter, made a formal declaration of love, and that in 
 no Platonic sense. For when an Arab lover by some trusty 
 hand privily transmits a Mushirumi flower to his mistress, 
 he gives her credit for penetration enough to discover the 
 only rhyme which exists in the Arabian language for the 
 word. This rhyme is Ydskerumi, which, delicately render- 
 ed, means reward of love.* To this invention it must be 
 
 * Hasselquist's Travels in Palestine. 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 183 
 
 conceded, that there cannot be a more compendious method 
 of proceeding in the business than this of the Mushirumi, 
 which might well deserve the imitation of our Western 
 lovers. The whole insipid scribbling of Billets-Doux, which 
 often cost their authors so much toil and brain-beating, often, 
 when they come into the wrong hand are pitilessly mangled 
 by hard-hearted jesters, often by the fair receivers them- 
 selves mistreated or falsely interpreted, might by this means 
 be dispensed with. It need not be objected that the Mush- 
 irumi, or Muscadine-hyacinth, flowers but rarely, and for a 
 short time, in our climates ; because an imitation of it might 
 be made by our Parisian or native gumflower-makers, to 
 supply the wants of lovers at all seasons of the year ; and 
 an inland trade in this domestic manufacture might easily 
 afford better profit than our present speculations with Amer- 
 ica. Nor would a Chevalier in Europe have to dread that 
 the presenting of so eloquent a flower might be charged 
 upon him as a capital offence, for which his life might have 
 to answer, as in the East could very simply happen. Had 
 not Princess Melechsala been so kind and soft a soul, or had 
 not omnipotent Love subdued the pride of the Sultan's 
 daughter, the Count, for this flower gallantry, innocently as 
 on his part it was intended, must have paid with his head. 
 But the Princess was in the main so little indignant at receiv- 
 ing this expressive flower, that on the contrary the fancied 
 proffer struck a chord in her heart, which had long been 
 vibrating before, and drew from it a melodious tone. Yet 
 her virgin modesty was hard put to proof, when her favorite, 
 as she supposed, presumed to entreat of her the reward of 
 love. It was on this account that she had turned away her 
 face at his proposal. A purple blush, which the veil had 
 hidden from the Count, overspread her tender cheeks, her 
 snow-white bosom heaved, and her heartbeat higher beneath 
 it. Bashfulness and tenderness were fighting a fierce battle 
 
184 AIUSAEUS. 
 
 ■within it, and her embarrassment was such that she could 
 not utter a word. For a time she had been in doubt what 
 to do with the perplexing Mushirumi ; to disdain it was to 
 rob her lover of all hope ; to accept it was the promise 
 that his wishes should be granted. The balance of resolu- 
 tion wavered, now to this side, now to that, till at length 
 love decided ; she took the flower with her, and this at least 
 secured the Count's head, in the first place. But in her sol- 
 itary chamber, there doubtless ensued much deep deliber- 
 ation about the consequences which this step might produce ; 
 and the situation of the Princess was the more difficult, that, 
 in her ignorance of the concerns of the heart, she knew not 
 how to act of herself; and durst not risk disclosing the affair 
 to any other, if she would not leave the life of her beloved 
 and her own fate at the caprice of a third party. 
 
 It is easier to watch a goddess at the bath, than to pene- 
 trate the secrets of an Oriental Princess in the bed-chamber 
 of the Seraglio. It is therefore difficult for the historian to 
 determine whether Melechsala left the Mushirumi, which she 
 had accepted of, to wither on her dressing-table ; or put it 
 in fresh water, to preserve it for the solace of her eyes as 
 long as possible. In like manner, it is difficult to discover 
 whether this fair Princess spent the night asleep, with gay 
 dreams dancing round her, or awake, a victim to the wast- 
 ing cares of love. The latter is more probable, since early 
 in the morning there arose great dole and lamentation in the 
 Palace, as the Princess made her appearance with pale 
 cheeks and languid eyes ; so that her female council dread- 
 ed the approach of grievous sickness. The Court Physician 
 was called in ; the same bearded Hebrew who had floated 
 off the Count's fever in his sweat-bath ; he was now to ex- 
 amine the pulse of a more delicate patient. According to 
 the custom of the country, she was lying on a sofa, with a 
 large screen in front of it, provided with a little opening, 
 
MELECHSALA. 185 
 
 through which she stretched her beautifully turned arm, 
 twice and three times wrapt with fine muslin, to protect it 
 from the profane glance of a masculine eye. " God help 
 me ! " whispered the Doctor into the chief waiting-woman's 
 ear ; " things have a bad look with her Highness ; the pulse 
 is quivering like a mouse-tail. 1 ' At the same time, with 
 practical policy, he shook his head dubitatingly, as cunning 
 doctors are wont ; ordered abundance of Kalaf, and other 
 cordials, and with a shrug of the shoulders predicted a dan- 
 gerous fever. 
 
 Nevertheless, these alarming symptoms, which the med- 
 ical gentleman considered as so many heralds announcing 
 the approach of a malignant distemper, appeared to be 
 nothing more than the consequences of a bad night's-rest ; 
 for the patient having taken her siesta about noon, found 
 herself, to the Israelite's astonishment, out of danger in the 
 evening ; needed no more drugs, and by the orders of her 
 iEsculapius was required merely to keep quiet for a day or 
 two. This space she employed in maturely deliberating 
 her intrigue, and devising ways and means for fulfilling the 
 demands of the Mushirumi. She was diligently occupied, 
 inventing, proving, choosing, and rejecting. One hour fancy 
 smoothed away the most impassable mountains ; and the 
 next, she saw nothing but clefts and abysses, from the brink 
 of which she shuddered back, and over which the boldest 
 imagination could not build a bridge. Yet on all these rocks 
 of offence she grounded the firm resolution to obey the 
 feelings of her heart, come what come might ; a piece of 
 heroism not unusual with Mother Eve's daughters ; which 
 in the mean time they often pay for with the happiness and 
 contentment of their lives. 
 
 The bolted gate of the Seraglio at last went up, and the 
 fair Melechsala again passed through it into the garden, like 
 the gay Sun through the portals of the East. The Count 
 16* 
 
186 MUSAEUS. 
 
 observed her entrance from behind a grove of ivy ; and 
 there began a knocking in his heart as in a mill ; a thump- 
 ing and hammering as if he had just run a race. Was it 
 joy, was it fear, or anxious expecting of what this visit would 
 announce to him — forgiveness or disfavor ? Who can un- 
 fold so accurately the heart of man, as to trace the origin 
 and cause of every start and throb in this irritable muscle ? 
 In short, Count Ernst did feel considerable palpitations of 
 the heart, so soon as he descried the Princess from afar ; 
 but of their Whence or Why he could give his own mind 
 no account. She very soon dismissed her suite ; and from 
 all the circumstances it was clear that poetical anthology 
 was not her business in the present case. She bent her 
 course to the grove ; and as the Count was not playing hide- 
 and-seek with much adroitness or zeal, she found him with 
 great ease. While she was still at some distance, he fell 
 upon his knees with mute eloquence before her, not ventur- 
 ing to raise his eyes, and looked as ruefully as a delinquent 
 when the judge is ready to pass sentence on him. The 
 Princess, however, with a soft voice and friendly gesture, said 
 to him : " Bostangi, rise and follow me into this grove." 
 Bostangi obeyed in silence ; and she, having taken her seat, 
 spoke thus : " The will of the Prophet be done ! I have 
 called on him three days and three nights long, to direct me 
 by a sign if my conduct were wavering between error and 
 folly. He is silent; and approves the purpose of the Ring- 
 dove to free the captive Linnet from the chain with which 
 he toilsomely draws water, and to nestle by his side. The 
 Daughter of the Sultan has not disdained the Mushirumi 
 from thy fettered hand. My lot is cast ! Loiter not in seek- 
 ing the Iman, that he lead thee to the Mosque, and confer on 
 thee the Seal of the Faithful. Then will my Father, at my 
 request, cause thee to grow as the Nile-stream, when it 
 oversteps its narrow banks and pours itself into the valley. 
 
MELECHSALA. 187 
 
 And when thou art governing a Province as its Bey, thou 
 mayest confidently raise thy eyes to the throne ; the Sultan 
 will not reject the son-in-law whom the Prophet has appoint- 
 ed for his daughter." 
 
 Like the conjuration of some potent Fairy, this address 
 again transformed the Count into the image of a stone 
 statue ; he gazed at the Princess without life or motion ; his 
 cheeks grew pale, and his tongue was chained. On the 
 whole, he had caught the meaning of the speech ; but how 
 he was to reach the unexpected honor of becoming the 
 Sultan of Egypt's son-in-law was an unfathomable mystery. 
 In this predicament, he certainly, for an accepted wooer, 
 did not make the most imposing figure in the world ; but 
 awakening love, like the rising sun, coats everything with 
 gold. The Princess took his dumb astonishment for excess 
 of rapture, and attributed his visible perplexity of spirit to 
 the overwhelming feeling of his unexpected success. Yet 
 in her heart there arose some virgin scruples lest she might 
 have gone too fast to work with the ultimatum of the court- 
 ship, and outrun the expectations of her lover ; therefore she 
 again addressed him, and said ; " Thou art silent, Bostangi ? 
 Let it not surprise thee that the perfume of thy Mushirumi 
 breathes back on thee the odor of my feelings ; in the cur- 
 tain of deceit my heart has never been shrouded. Ought I 
 by wavering to hope to increase the toil of the steep path 
 which thy foot must climb before the bridal chamber can be 
 opened to thee ? " 
 
 During this speech, the Count had found time to recover 
 his senses ; he roused himself, like a warrior from sleep 
 when the alarm is sounded in the camp. " Resplendent 
 Flower of the East," said he, u how shall the tiny herb that 
 grows among the thorns presume to blossom under thy 
 shadow ? Would not the watchful hand of the gardener 
 pluck it out as an unseemly weed, and cast it forth, to be 
 
188 MUSAEUS. 
 
 trodden under foot on the highway, or withered in the 
 scorching sun ? If a breath of air stir up the dust, that it 
 soil thy royal diadem, are not a hundred hands in instant 
 employment wiping it away ? How should a slave desire 
 the precious fruit which ripens in the garden of the Sultan 
 for the palate of Princes ? At thy command I sought a 
 pleasant flower for thee, and found the Mushirumi, the name 
 of which was as unknown to me, as its secret import still 
 is. Think not that I meant aught with it but to obey 
 thee." 
 
 This response distorted the fair plan of the Princess very 
 considerably. She had not expected that it could be possi- 
 ble for a European not to combine with the Mushirumi, 
 when presented to a lady, the same thought which the two 
 other quarters of the world unite with it. The error was 
 now clear as day ; but love, which had once for all taken 
 root in her heart, now dexterously winded and turned the 
 matter ; as a sempstress does a piece of work which she has 
 cut wrong, till at last she makes ends meet notwithstanding. 
 The Princess concealed her embarrassment by the playing 
 of her fair hands with the hem of her veil ; and, after a few 
 moments' silence, she said, with gentle gracefulness : " Thy 
 modesty resembles the night-violet, which covets not the 
 glitter of the sun, yet is loved for its aromatic odor. A 
 happy chance has been the interpreter of thy heart, and 
 elicited the feelings of mine. They are no longer hid from 
 thee. Follow the doctrine of the Prophet, and thou art on 
 the way to gain thy wish." 
 
 The Count now began to perceive the connexion of the 
 matter more and more distinctly ; the darkness vanished 
 from his mind by degrees, as the shades of night before the 
 dawn. Here, then, the Tempter, whom, in the durance of 
 the Grated Tower, he had expected under the mask of a 
 horned satyr, or a black, shrivelled gnome, appeared to him 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 189 
 
 in the figure of winged Cupid, and was employing all his 
 treacherous arts, persuading him to deny his faith, to forsake 
 his tender spouse, and forget the pledges of her chaste love. 
 u It stands in thy power," said he, " to change thy iron fet- 
 ters with the kind ties of love. The first beauty in the 
 world is smiling on thee, and with her the enjoyment of all 
 earthly happiness ! A flame, pure as the fire of Vesta, 
 burns for thee in her bosom, and would waste her life, 
 should folly and caprice overcloud thy soul to the refusing 
 her favor. Conceal thy faith a little while under the 
 turban ; Father Gregory has water enough in his absolution- 
 cistern to wash thee clean from such a sin. Who knows 
 but thou mayest earn the merit of saving the pure maiden's 
 soul, and leading it to the Heaven for which it was in- 
 tended ? " To this deceitful oration the Count would willingly 
 have listened longer, had not his good Angel twitched him 
 by the ear, and warned him to give no farther heed to the 
 voice of temptation. So he thought that he must not speak 
 with flesh and blood any longer, but by one bold effort gain 
 the victory over himself. The word died away more than 
 once in his mouth, but at last he took heart, and said : "The 
 longing of the wanderer, astray in the Lybian wilderness, to 
 cool his parched lips in the fountains of the Nile, but 
 aggravates the torments of his thirsty heart, when he must 
 still languish in the torrid waste. Therefore think not, O 
 best and gentlest of thy sex, that such a wish has awakened 
 within me, which, like a gnawing worm, would consume my 
 heart, since I could not nourish it with hope. Know, that, 
 in my home, I am already joined by the indissoluble tie of 
 marriage to a virtuous wife, and her three tender children 
 lisp their father's name. How could a heart, torn asunder 
 by sadness and longing, aspire to the Pearl of Beauty, and 
 offer her a divided love ? " 
 
 This explanation was distinct ; and the Count believed 
 
190 MUSAEUS. 
 
 that, as it were, by one stroke, and in the spirit of true 
 knighthood, he had ended this strife of love. He conceived 
 that the Princess would now see her over-hasty error, and 
 renounce her plan. But here he was exceedingly mistaken. 
 The Princess could not bring herself to think that the Count, 
 a young, blooming man, could be without eyes for her; she 
 knew that she was lovely ; and this frank exposition of the 
 state of his heart made no impression on her whatever. 
 According to the fashion of her country, she had no thought 
 of appropriating to herself the sole possession of it ; for, in 
 the parabolic sport of the seraglio, she had often heard that 
 man's love is like a thread of silk, which may be split and 
 parted, so that every filament shall still remain a whole. In 
 truth, a sensible similitude; which the wit of our Occidental 
 ladies has never yet lighted on ! Her father's Harem 
 had also, from her earliest years, set before her nume- 
 rous instances of sociality in love ; the favorites of the 
 Sultan lived there with one another in the kindest unity. 
 
 "Thou namest me the Flower of the World," replied the 
 Princess; "but behold, in this garden there are many 
 flowers blossoming beside me, to delight eye and heart by 
 their variety of loveliness ; nor do I forbid thee to partake 
 in this enjoyment along with me. Should I require of thee, 
 in thy own garden, to plant but a single flower, with the 
 constant sight of which thy eye would grow weary ? Thy 
 wife shall be sharer of the happiness I am providing for 
 thee ; thou shalt bring her into thy Harem ; to me she shall 
 be welcome ; for thy sake she shall become my dearest 
 companion, and for thy sake she will love me in return. 
 Her little children also shall be mine ; I will give them 
 shade, that they bud pleasantly, and take root in this foreign 
 soil." 
 
 The doctrine of Toleration in Love has, in our enlight- 
 ened century, made far slower progress than that of Tolera- 
 
MELECHSALA. 191 
 
 tion in Religion ; otherwise this declaration of the Princess 
 could not seem to my fair readers so repulsive as in all 
 probability it will. But Melechsala was an Oriental ; and 
 under that mild sky, Megsera Jealousy has far less influence 
 on the lovelier half of the species than on the stronger ; 
 whom, in return, she does indeed rule with an iron scep- 
 tre. 
 
 Count Ernst was affected by this meek way of thinking; 
 and who knows what he might have resolved on, could he 
 have depended on an equal liberality of sentiment from his 
 Ottilia at home, and contrived in any way to overleap the 
 other stone of Stumbling which fronted him, the renuncia- 
 tion of his creed. He by no means hid this latter difficulty 
 from the goddess who was courting him so frankly ; and, 
 easy as it had been for her to remove all previous obstacles, 
 the present was beyond her skill. The confidential session 
 was adjourned, without any settlement of this contested 
 point. When the conference broke up, the proposals stood 
 as in a frontier conference between two neighboring states, 
 where neither party will relinquish his rights, and the adjust- 
 ment of the matter is postponed to another term, while the 
 commissioners in the interim again live in peace with each 
 other, and enjoy good cheer together. 
 
 In the secret conclave of the Count, the mettled Kurt, as 
 we know, had a seat and vote ; his master opened to him in 
 the evening the whole progress of his adventure, for he was 
 much disquieted ; and it is very possible that some spark of 
 love may have sputtered over from the heart of the Princess 
 into his, too keen for the ashes of his lawful fire to quench. 
 An absence of seven years, the relinquished hope of ever 
 being reunited with the first beloved, and the offered oppor- 
 tunity of occupying the heart as it desires, are three critical 
 circumstances, which, in so active a substance as love, may 
 easily produce a fermentation that shall quite change its na- 
 
192 MUSAEUS. 
 
 ture. The sagacious Squire pricked up his ears at hearing 
 of these interesting events; and, as if the narrow passage 
 of the auditory nerves had not been sufficient to convey the 
 tidings fast enough into his brain, he likewise opened the 
 wide door-way of his mouth, and both heard and tasted the 
 unexpected news with great avidity. After maturely weigh- 
 ing everything, his vote run thus : To lay hold of the 
 seeming hope of release with both hands, and realize the 
 Princess's plan ; meanwhile, to do nothing either for it or 
 against it, and leave the issue to Heaven. " You are blotted 
 out from the book of the living," said he, " in your native 
 land ; from the abyss of slavery there is no deliverance, if 
 you do not hitch yourself up by the rope of love. Your 
 spouse, good lady, will never return to your embraces. If, 
 in seven years, sorrow for your loss has not overpowered 
 her and cut her off, Time has overpowered her sorrow, and 
 she is happy by the side of another. But, to renounce your 
 religion ! That is a hard nut, in good sooth ; too hard for 
 you to crack. Yet there are means for this, too. In no 
 country on Earth is it the custom for the wife to teach the 
 husband what road to take for Heaven ; no, she follows his 
 steps, and is led and guided by him as the cloud by the 
 wind ; looks neither to the right hand nor to the left, nor 
 behind her, like Lot's wife, who was changed into a pillar 
 of salt; for where the husband arrives, there is her abode. 
 I have a wife at home, too ; but think you, if I were stuck 
 in Purgatory, she would hesitate to follow me, and waft 
 fresh air upon my poor soul with her fan ? So, depend on 
 it, the Princess will renounce her false Prophet. If she love 
 you truly, she will, to a certainty, be glad to change her 
 Paradise for ours." 
 
 The mettled Kurt added much farther speaking to per- 
 suade his master that he ought not to resist this royal pas- 
 sion, but to forget all other ties, and free himself from his 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 193 
 
 captivity. It did not strike him, that, by his confidence in 
 the affection of his wife, he had recalled to his master's 
 memory the affection of his own amiable spouse ; a remem- 
 brance which it was his object to abolish. The heart of 
 the Count felt crushed as in a press ; he rolled to this side 
 and that on his bed ; and his thoughts and purposes ran 
 athwart each other in the strangest perplexity, till, towards 
 morning, wearied out by this internal tumult, he fell into a 
 dead sleep. He dreamed that his fairest front-tooth had 
 dropped out, at which he felt great grief and heaviness of 
 heart; but on looking at the gap in the mirror, to see 
 whether it deformed him much, a fresh tooth had grown 
 forth in its place, fair and white as the rest, and the loss 
 could not be observed. So soon as he awoke, he felt a 
 wish to have his dream interpreted. The mettled Kurt 
 soon hunted out a prophetic Gipsy, who by trade read for- 
 tunes from the hand and brow, and also had the talent of 
 explaining dreams. The Count related his to her in all its 
 circumstances; and the dingy, wrinkled Pythian, after med- 
 itating long upon it, opened her puckered mouth, and said : 
 " What was dearest to thee death has taken away, but fate 
 will soon supply thy loss." 
 
 Now, then, it was plain that the sage Squire's suppositions 
 had been no idle fancies, but that the good Ottilia, from 
 sorrow at the loss of her beloved husband, had gone down 
 to the grave. The afflicted widower, who as little doubted of 
 this tragic circumstance as if it had been notified to him on 
 black-edged paper with seal and signature, felt all that a 
 man who values the integrity of his jaw must feel when he 
 loses a tooth, which bountiful Nature is about to replace 
 by another ; and comforted himself under this dispensation 
 with the well-known balm of widowers: "It is the will of 
 God ; I must submit to it ! " And now, holding himself free 
 and disengaged, he bent all his sails, hoisted his flags and 
 
 vol. i. 17 
 
194 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 streamers, and steered directly for the haven of happy 
 love. At the next interview, he thought the Princess love- 
 lier than ever ; his looks languished towards her, and her 
 slender form enchanted his eye, and her light, soft gait was 
 like the gait of a goddess, though she actually moved the 
 one foot past the other in mortal wise, and did not, in the 
 style of goddesses, come hovering along the variegated 
 sand-walk with unbent limbs. " Bostangi," said she, with 
 melodious voice, " hast thou spoken to the Iman ? " The 
 Count was silent for a moment ; he cast down his beaming 
 eyes, laid his hand submissively on his breast, and sank on 
 his knee before her. In this humble attitude, he answered 
 resolutely: "Exalted daughter of the Sultan! my life Js 
 at thy nod, but not my faith. The former I will joyfully 
 offer up to thee, but leave me the latter, which is so inter- 
 woven with my soul, that only death can part them." From 
 this it was apparent to the Princess that her fine enterprise 
 was verging towards shipwreck ; wherefore she adopted a 
 heroical expedient, undoubtedly of far more certain effect 
 than our animal magnetism, with all its renowned virtues ; 
 she unveiled her face. There stood she, in the full radiance 
 of beauty, like the Sun when he first raised his head from 
 Chaos to hurl his rays over the gloomy Earth. Soft blushes 
 overspread her cheeks, and higher purple glowed upon her 
 lips ; two beautifully curved arches, on which love was 
 sporting like the many-colored Iris on the rainbow, shaded 
 her spirit-speaking eyes ; and two golden tresses kissed each 
 other on her lily breast. The Count was astonished and 
 speechless ; the Princess addressed him, and said : 
 
 "See, Bostangi, whether this form pleases thy eyes, 
 and whether it deserves the sacrifice which I require of 
 thee." 
 
 " It is the form of an Angel," answered he, with looks 
 of the highest rapture, " and deserves to shine, encircled 
 
MELECHSALA. 195 
 
 with a glory, in the courts of the Christian Heaven, com- 
 pared with which, the delights of the Prophet's Paradise 
 are empty shadows." 
 
 These words, spoken with warmth and visible conviction, 
 found free enterance into the open heart of the Princess; 
 especially, the glory, it appeared to her, must be a sort of 
 head-dress that would sit not ill upon the face. Her quick 
 fancy fastened on this idea, which she asked to have ex- 
 plained ; and the Count with all eagerness embraced this 
 opportunity of painting the Christian Heaven to her as 
 charming as he possibly could; he chose the loveliest images 
 his mind would suggest ; and spoke with as much confi- 
 dence as if he had descended directly from the place on a 
 mission to the Princess. Now, as it has pleased the Proph- 
 et to endow the fair sex with very scanty expectations in 
 the other world, our apostolic preacher failed the less in 
 his intentions; though it cannot be asserted that he was 
 preeminently qualified for the missionary duty. But wheth- 
 er it were that Heaven itself favored the work of conversion, 
 or that the foreign taste of the Princess extended to the 
 spiritual conceptions of the Western nations, or that the 
 person of this Preacher to the Heathen mixed in the effect, 
 certain it is she was all ear, and would have listened to her 
 pedagogue with pleasure for many hours longer, had not 
 the approach of night cut short their lesson. For the 
 present, she hastily dropped her veil, and retired to the 
 Seraglio. 
 
 It is a well-known fact, that the children of princes are 
 always very docile, and make giant steps in every branch of 
 profitable knowledge, as our Journals often plainly enough 
 testify ; while the other citizens of this world must content 
 themselves with dwarf steps. It was not surprising, there- 
 fore, that the Sultan of Egypt's daughter had in a short 
 space mastered the whole synopsis of Church doctrine as 
 
196 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 completely as her teacher could impart it, bating a few 
 heresies, which, in his inacquaintance with the delicate 
 shades of faith, he had undesignedly mingled with it. Nor 
 did this acquisition remain a dead letter with her; it awak- 
 ened the most zealous wish for proselytizing. According- 
 ly, the plan of the Princess had now in so far altered, that 
 she no longer insisted on converting the Count, but rather 
 felt inclined to let herself be converted by him ; and this 
 not only in regard to unity in faith, but also to the purposed 
 unity in love. The whole question now was, by what 
 means this intention could be realized. She took counsel 
 with Bostangi, he with the mettled Kurt, in their nocturnal 
 deliberations on this weighty matter; and the latter voted 
 distinctly to strike the iron while it was hot ; to inform the 
 fair proselyte of the Count's rank and birth ; propose to her 
 to run away with him; instantly to cross the water for the 
 European shore ; and live together in Thuringia as Christian 
 man and wife. 
 
 The Count clapped loud applause to this well-grounded 
 scheme of his wise Squire ; it was as if the mettled Kurt 
 had read it in his master's eyes. Whether the fulfilment 
 of it might be clogged with difficulties or not was a point 
 not taken into view in the first fire of the romantic project. 
 Love removes all mountains, overleaps walls and trenches, 
 bounds across abyss and chasm, and steps the barrier of 
 a city as lightly as it does a straw. At the next lecture, 
 the Count disclosed the plan to his beloved catechumen. 
 
 "Thou reflection of the Holy Virgin," said he, "chosen 
 of Heaven from an outcast people, to gain the victory over 
 prejudice and error, and acquire a lot and inheritance in 
 the Abodes of Felicity, hast thou the courage to forsake thy 
 native country, then prepare for speedy flight. I will guide 
 thee to Rome, where dwells the Porter of Heaven, St. Pe- 
 ter's deputy, to whom are committed the keys of Heaven's- 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 197 
 
 gate ; that he may receive thee into the bosom of the 
 Church, and bless the covenant of our love. Fear not that 
 thy father's potent arm may reach us ; every cloud above 
 our heads will be a ship manned with angelic hosts, with 
 diamond shields and flaming swords ; invisible indeed to 
 mortal eye, but armed with heavenly might, and appointed 
 to watch and guard thee. Nor will I conceal any longer, 
 that I am, by birth and fortune, all that the Sultan's favor 
 could make me ; a Count, that is, a Bey born, who rules 
 over land and people. The limits of my lordship include 
 towns and villages, palaces also, and strongholds. Knights 
 and squires obey me ; horses and carriages stand ready for 
 my service. In my native land, thou thyself, enclosed by 
 no walls of a seraglio, shalt live and rule in freedom as a 
 queen." 
 
 This oration of the Count the Princess thought a message 
 from above ; she entertained no doubts of his truth ; and it 
 seemed to please her that the Ring-dove was to nestle, not 
 beside a Linnet, but beside a bird of the family of the Eagle. 
 Her warm fancy was filled with such sweet anticipations, 
 that she consented, with all the alacrity of the Children of 
 Israel, to forsake the land of Egypt, as if a new Canaan, in 
 another quarter of the world, had been waiting her beyond 
 the sea. Confident in the protection of the unseen life- 
 guard promised to her, she would have followed her con- 
 ductor from the precincts of the Palace forthwith, had he 
 not instructed her that many preparations were required, 
 before the great enterprise could be engaged in with any 
 hope of a happy issue. 
 
 Among all privateering transactions by sea or land, there 
 
 is none more ticklish, or combined with greater difficulties, 
 
 than that of kidnapping the Grand Seignior's favorite from 
 
 his arms. Such a masterstroke could only be imagined by 
 
 17* 
 
198 MUSAEUS. 
 
 the teeming fancy of a W*z*l,t nor could any but a Kaker- 
 lak achieve it. Yet the undertaking of Count Ernst of Glei- 
 chen to carry off the Sultan of Egypt's daughter was en- 
 vironed with no fewer difficulties; and as these two heroes 
 come, to a certain extent, into competition in this matter, we 
 must say that the adventure of the Count was infinitely 
 bolder, seeing everything proceeded merely by the course 
 of Nature, and no serviceable Fairy put a finger in the pie ; 
 nevertheless, the result of both these corresponding enter- 
 prises, in the one as well as in the other, came about entirely 
 to the wish of parties. The Princess filled her jewel-box 
 sufficiently with precious stones ; changed her royal garment 
 with a Kaftan ; and one evening, under the safe-conduct of 
 her beloved, his trusty Squire, and the phlegmatic Water- 
 drawer, glided forth from the Palace into the Garden, unob- 
 served, to enter on her far journey to the West, Her ab- 
 sence could not long remain concealed ; her women sought 
 her, as the proverb runs, like a lost pin ; and as she did not 
 come to light, the alarm in the Seraglio became boundless. 
 Hints here and there had already been dropped, and sur- 
 mises made, about the private audiences of the Bostangi ; 
 supposition and fact were strung together ; and the whole 
 produced, in sooth, no row of pearls, but the horrible dis- 
 covery of the real nature of the case. The Divan of Dames 
 had nothing for it but to send advice of the occurrence to 
 the higher powers. Father Sultan, whom the virtuous Mel- 
 echsala, everything considered, might have spared this pang, 
 and avoided flying her country to make purchase of a glory, 
 demeaned himself at this intelligence like an infuriated lion, 
 who shakes his brown mane with dreadful bellowing, when, 
 by the uproar of the hunt, and the baying of the hounds, 
 
 t J. K. Wetzel, author of some plays and novels; among the 
 latter, of Kakerlak. — Ed. 
 
MELECHSALA. 199 
 
 he is frightened from his den. He swore by the Prophet's 
 beard that he would utterly destroy every living soul in the 
 Seraglio, if at sunrise the Princess were not again in her 
 father's power. The Mameluke guard had to mount, and 
 gallop towards the four winds, in chase of the fugitives, by 
 every road from Cairo ; and a thousand oars were lash- 
 ing the broad back of the Nile, in case she might have 
 taken a passage by water. 
 
 Under such efforts, to elude the far-stretching arm of the 
 Sultan was impossible, unless the Count possessed the secret 
 of rendering himself and his travelling party invisible, or 
 the miraculous gift of smiting all Egypt with blindness. But 
 of these talents neither had been lent him. Only the met- 
 tled Kurt had taken certain measures, which, in regard to 
 their effect, might supply the place of miracles. He had 
 rendered his flying caravan invisible, by the darkness of an 
 unlighted cellar in the house of AduIIam the sudorific He- 
 brew. This Jewish Hermes did not satisfy himself with 
 practising the healing art to good advantage, but drew profit 
 likewise from the gift which he had received by inheritance 
 from his fathers ; and thus honored Mercury in all his three 
 qualities, of Patron to Doctors, to Merchants, and to Thieves. 
 He drove a great trade in spiceries and herbs with the Ve- 
 netians, from which he had acquired much wealth ; and he 
 disdained no branch of business whereby anything was to 
 be made. This worthy Israelite, who, for money, and mon- 
 ey's worth, stood ready, without investigating moral tend- 
 encies, for any sort of deed, the trusty Squire had prevailed 
 on, by a jewel from the casket of the Princess, to undertake 
 the transport of the Count, whose rank and intention were 
 not concealed from him, with three servants, to a Venetian 
 ship that was loading at Alexandria ; but it had prudently 
 been hidden from him, that, in the course of this contraband 
 transaction, he must smuggle out his master's daughter. 
 
200 MUSAEUS. 
 
 On first inspecting his cargo, the figure of the fair youth 
 struck him somewhat ; but he thought no ill of it, and took 
 him for a page of the Count's. Ere long the report of the 
 Princess Melechsala's disappearance sounded over all the 
 city ; then Adullam's eyes were opened ; deadly terror 
 took possession of his heart, so that his grey beard began to 
 stir, and he wished with all his soul that his hands had been 
 free of this perilous concern. But now it was too late ; his 
 own safety required him to summon all his cunning, and 
 conduct this break-neck business to a happy end. In the 
 first place, he laid his subterranean lodgers under rigorous 
 quarantine; and then, after the sharpest of the search was 
 over, the hope of finding the Princess considerably faded, 
 and the zeal in seeking for her cooled, he packed the whole 
 caravan neatly up in four bales of herbs, put them on board 
 a Nile-boat, and sent them with a proper invoice, under God's 
 guidance, safe and sound to Alexandria ; where, so soon as 
 the Venetian had gained the open sea, they were liberated, 
 all and sundry, from their strait confinement in the herb- 
 sacks* 
 
 Whether the celestial body-guard, with diamond shields 
 and flaming swords, posted on a gorgeous train of clouds, 
 did follow the swift ship, could not now, as they were invis- 
 ible, be properly substantiated in a court of justice ; yet 
 there are not wanting symptoms in the matter which might 
 lead to some such conjecture. All the four winds of Heaven 
 seemed to have combined to make the voyage prosperous ; 
 the adverse held their breath ; and the favorable blew so 
 
 * The invention of travelling in a sack was several times em- 
 ployed during the Crusades. Dietrich the Hard-bested, Markgraf 
 of Meissen (Misnia), returned frem Palestine to his hereditary pos- 
 sessions, under this incognito, and so escaped the snares of the 
 Emperor Henry VI., who had an eye to the productive mines of 
 Freyberg. — M. 
 
MELECHSALA. 201 
 
 gaily in the sails, that the vessel ploughed the soft-playing 
 billows with the speed of an arrow. The friendly moon 
 was stretching her horns from the clouds for the second 
 time, when the Venetian, glad in heart, ran into moorings 
 in the harbor of his native town. 
 
 Countess Ottilia's watchful spy was still at Venice ; undis- 
 mayed by the fruitless toil of vain inquiries, from continuing 
 his diets of examination, and diligently questioning all pas- 
 sengers from the Levant. He was at his post when the 
 Count, with the fair Melechsala, came on land. His master's 
 physiognomy was so stamped upon his memory, that he 
 would have undertaken to discover it among a thousand un- 
 known faces. Nevertheless the foreign garb, and the fin- 
 ger of Time, which in seven years produces many changes, 
 made him for some moments doubtful. To be certain of 
 his object, he approached the stranger's suite, made up to 
 the trusty Squire, and asked him : " Comrade, whence come 
 you ? " 
 
 The mettled Kurt rejoiced to meet a countryman, and 
 hear the sound of his mother-tongue ; but saw no profit in 
 submitting his concerns to the questioning of a stranger, and 
 answered briefly : " From sea." 
 
 " Who is the gentleman thou followest ? " 
 
 a My master." 
 
 " From what country come you ? " 
 
 " From the East." 
 
 " Whither are you going ? " 
 
 " To the West." 
 
 " To what province ? " 
 
 u To our home." 
 
 " Where is it ? " 
 
 11 Miles of road from this." 
 
 " What is thy name ? " 
 
 u Start-the-game, that is my name. Strike-for-a-word, 
 
202 MUSAEUS. 
 
 people call my sword. Sorrow-of-life, so hight my wife. 
 Rise, Lig-a-bed, she cries to her maid. Still-at-a-stand, 
 that is my man. Hobbletehoy, I christened my boy. Lank- 
 i'-the-bag, I scold my nag. Shamble-and-stalk, we call his 
 walk. Trot-i'-the-bog, I whistle my dog. Saw-ye-that, so 
 jumps my cat. Snug-in-the-rug, he is my bug. Now thou 
 knowest me, with wife and child, and all my household." 
 
 " Thou seemest to me to be a queer fellow." 
 
 " I am no fellow at all, for I follow no handicraft." 
 
 " Answer me one question." 
 
 " Let us hear it." 
 
 " Hast thou any news of Count Ernst of Gleichen from 
 the East ? " 
 
 " Wherefore dost thou ask ? " 
 
 "Therefore." 
 
 " Twiddle, twaddle ! Wherefore, therefore ! V 
 
 " Because I am sent into all the world by the Countess 
 Ottilia his wife, to get her word whether her husband is still 
 living, and in what corner of the Earth he may be found." 
 
 This answer put the mettled Kurt into some perplexity ; 
 and turned him to another key. " Wait a little, neighbor," 
 said he ; " perhaps my master knows about the thing." 
 Thereupon he ran to the Count, and whispered the tidings 
 in his ear. The feeling they awoke was complex ; made 
 up in equal proportions of joy and consternation. Count 
 Ernst perceived that his dream, or the interpretation of it, 
 had misled him ; and that the conceit of marrying his fair 
 travelling companion might easily be baulked. On the spur 
 of the moment he knew not how he should get out of this 
 embroiled affair; meanwhile, the desire to learn how mat- 
 ters stood at home outweighed all scruples. He beckoned 
 to the emissary, whom he soon recognised for his old valet ; 
 and who wetted with joyful tears the hand of his recovered 
 master, and told in many words what jubilee the Countess 
 
MELECHSALA. 203 
 
 would make, when she received the happy message of her 
 husband's return. The Count took him with the rest to the 
 inn ; and there engaged in earnest meditation on the singular 
 state of his heart, and considered deeply what was to be 
 done with his engagements to the fair Saracen. Without 
 loss of time the watchful spy was despatched to the Coun- 
 tess with a letter, containing a true statement of the Count's 
 fortunes in slavery at Cairo, and of his deliverance by means 
 of the Sultan's daughter ; how she had abandoned throne 
 and country for his sake, under the condition that he was to 
 marry her, which he himself, deceived by a dream, had 
 promised. By this narrative he meant not only to prepare 
 his wife for a participatress in her marriage rights ; but also 
 endeavored, in the course of it, by many sound arguments, 
 to gain her own consent to the arrangement. 
 
 Countess Ottilia was standing at the window in her mourn- 
 ing weeds, as the news-bringer for the last time gave his 
 breathless horse the spur, to hasten it up the steep Castle- . 
 path. Her sharp eye recognised him in the distance ; and 
 he too, being nothing of a blinkard, a class of persons very 
 rare in the days of the Crusades, recognised the Countess 
 also ; raised the letter-bag aloft over his head, and waved it 
 like a standard in token of good news ; and the lady under- 
 stood his signal, as well as if the Hanau Synthemato graph 
 had been on duty there. " Hast thou found him, the hus- 
 band of my heart ? " cried she, as he approached. " Where 
 lingers he, that I may rise -and wipe the sweat from his brow, 
 and let him rest in my faithful arms from his toilsome jour- 
 neying ? " — "Joy to you, my lady, ' ; said the post ; " his 
 lordship is well. I found him in the Port of Venice, from 
 which he sends you this under his hand and seal, to announce 
 his arrival himself." The Countess could not hastily enough 
 undo the seal ; and at sight of her husband's hand, she felt 
 as if the breath of life were coming back to her. Three 
 
204 MUSAEUS. 
 
 times she pressed the letter to her beating heart, and three 
 times touched it with her languishing lips. A shower of 
 joyful tears streamed over the parchment, as she began 
 reading; but the farther she read, the drops fell the slower, 
 and before the reading was completed, the fountain of tears 
 had dried up altogether. 
 
 The contents of the letter could not all interest the good 
 lady equally ; her husband's proposed partition treaty of his 
 heart had not the happiness to meet with her approval. 
 Greatly as the spirit of partition has acquired the upper 
 hand nowadays, so that parted love and parted provinces 
 have become the device of our century ; these things were 
 little to the taste of old times, when every heart had its own 
 key, and a masterkey that would open several was regarded 
 as a scandalous thief-picklock. The intolerance of the 
 Countess in this point was at least a proof of her unvarnished 
 love. " Ah ! that doleful Crusade," cried she, " is the 
 cause of it all. I lent the Holy Church a Loaf, of which 
 the Heathen have eaten ; and nothing but a Crust of it re- 
 turns to me." A vision of the night, however, soothed her 
 troubled mind, and gave her whole view of the affair another 
 aspect. She dreamed that there came two pilgrims from 
 the Holy Sepulchre up the winding Castle-road, and begged 
 a lodging, which she kindly granted them. One of them 
 threw off his cloak, and behold, it was the Count her lord ! 
 She joyfully embraced him, and was in raptures at his return. 
 The children too came in, and he clasped them in his pater- 
 nal arms, pressed them to his heart, and praised their looks 
 and growth. Meanwhile his companion laid aside his 
 travelling pouch ; drew from it golden chains and precious 
 strings of jewelry, and hung them round the necks of the 
 little ones, who showed delighted with these glittering pre- 
 sents. The Countess was herself surprised at this munifi- 
 cence, and asked the stranger who he was. He answered : 
 
MELECHSALA. 205 
 
 "I am the Angel Raphael, the guide of the loving, and have 
 brought thy husband to thee out of foreign lands." His 
 pilgrim garments melted away ; and a shining angel stood 
 before her, in an azure robe, with two golden wings on his 
 shoulders. Thereupon she awoke, and, in the absence of 
 an Egyptian Sibyl, herself interpreted the dream according 
 to her best skill ; and found so many points of similarity 
 between the Angel Raphael and the Princess Melechsala, 
 that she doubted not the latter had been shadowed forth to 
 her in vision under the figure of the former. At the same 
 time she took into consideration the fact, that, without her 
 help, the Count could scarcely ever have escaped from 
 slavery. And as it behoves the owner of a lost piece of 
 property to deal generously with the finder, who might have 
 kept it all to himself, she no longer hesitated to resolve on 
 the surrender. The water-bailiff, well rewarded for his 
 watchfulness, was therefore despatched forthwith back into 
 Italy, with the formal consent of the Countess for her hus- 
 band to complete the trefoil of his marriage without loss of 
 time. 
 
 The only question now was, whether Father Gregory at 
 Rome would give his benediction to this matrimonial ano- 
 maly ; and be persuaded, for the Count's sake, to refound, 
 by the word of his mouth, the substance, form, and essence 
 of the Sacrament of Marriage. The pilgrimage accordingly 
 set forth from Venice to Rome, where the Princess Me- 
 lechsala solemnly abjured the Koran, and entered into the 
 bosom of the Church. At this spiritual conquest the Holy 
 Father testified as much delight as if the kingdom of Anti- 
 christ had been entirely destroyed, or reduced under sub- 
 jection to the Romish chair ; and after the baptism, on which 
 occasion she had changed her Saracenic name for the more 
 orthodox Angelica, he caused a pompous Te-deum to be 
 celebrated in St. Peter's. These happy aspects Count Ernst 
 
 vol. i. 18 
 
206 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 endeavored to improve for his purpose, before the Pope's 
 good-humor should evaporate. He brought his matrimonial 
 concern to light without delay ; but, alas ! no sooner asked 
 than rejected. The conscience of St. Peter's Vicar was so 
 tender in this case, that he reckoned it a greater heresy to 
 advocate triplicity in marriage than Tritheism itself. Many 
 plausible arguments as the Count brought forward to accom- 
 plish an exception from the common rule in his own favor, 
 they availed no jot in moving the exemplary Pope to wink 
 with one eve of his conscience, and vouchsafe the petitioned 
 dispensation; a result which cut Count Ernst to the heart. 
 His sly counsel, the mettled Kurt, had in the mean time 
 struck out a bright expedient for accomplishing the marriage 
 of his master with the fair convert, to the satisfaction of the 
 Pope and Christendom in general ; only he had not risked 
 disclosing it, lest it might cost him his master's favor. Yet 
 at last he found his opportunity, and put the matter into 
 words. " Dear master,"' said he, " do not vex yourself so 
 much about the Pope's perverseness. If you cannot get 
 round him on the one side, you must try him on the other ; 
 there are more roads to the wood than one. If the Holy 
 Father has too tender a conscience to permit your taking 
 two wives, then it is fair for you also to have a tender con- 
 science, though you are no priest but a layman. Conscience 
 is a cloak that covers every hole, and has withal the quality 
 that it can be turned according to the wind ; at present, 
 when the wind is cross, you must put the cloak on the other 
 shoulder. Examine whether you are not related to the 
 Countess Ottilia within the prohibited degrees ; if so, as 
 will surely be the case, if you have a tender conscience, 
 then the game is your own. Get a divorce ; and who 
 the deuce can hinder you from wedding the Princess 
 then ? " 
 
 The Count had listened to his Squire till the sense of his 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 207 
 
 oration was completely before him ; then he answered it 
 with two words, shortly and clearly : " Peace, Dog ! " In 
 the same moment, the mettled Kurt found himself lying at 
 full length without the door, and seeking for a tooth or two 
 which had dropped from him in this rapid transit. " Ah ! 
 the precious tooth," cried he from without, " has been sacri- 
 ficed to my faithful zeal ! n This tooth monologue reminded 
 the Count of his dream. "Ah! the cursed tooth," cried 
 he from within, "which I dreamed of losing, has been the 
 cause of all this mischief!" His heart, between self-re- 
 proaches for unfaithfulness to his amiable wife, and for pro- 
 hibited love to the charming Angelica, kept wavering like a 
 bell, which yields a sound on both sides, when set in motion. 
 Still more than the flame of his passion, the fire of indigna- 
 tion burnt and gnawed him, now that he saw the visible 
 impossibility of ever keeping his word to the Princess, and 
 taking her in wedlock. All which distresses, by the way, 
 led him to the just experimental conclusion, that a parted 
 heart is not the most desirable of things ; and that the lover, 
 in these circumstances, but too much resembles the Ass 
 Baldwin between his two bundles of hay. 
 
 In such a melancholy posture of affairs, he lost his jovial^ 
 humor altogether, and wore the aspect of an atrabiliarr 
 whom in bad weather the atmosphere oppresses till the 
 spleen is like to crush the soul out of his body. Princess 
 Angelica observed that her lover's looks were no longer as 
 yesterday, and ere-yesterday ; it grieved her soft heart, and 
 moved her to resolve on making trial whether she should 
 not be more successful, if she took the dispensation business 
 in her own hand. She requested audience of the conscien- 
 tious Gregory ; and appeared before him closely veiled, ac- 
 cording to the fashion of her country. No Roman eye had 
 yet seen her face, except the priest who baptized her. His 
 Holiness received the new-born daughter of the Church with 
 
208 MUSAEUS. 
 
 all suitable respect ; offered her the palm of his right hand 
 to kiss, and not his perfumed slipper. The fair stranger 
 raised her veil a little to touch the sacred hand with her 
 lips ; then opened her mouth, and clothed her. petition in a 
 touching address. Yet this insinuation through the Papal 
 ear seemed not sufficiently to know the interior organization 
 of the Head of the Church ; for instead of taking the road 
 to the heart, it passed through the other ear out into the air. 
 Father Gregory expostulated long with the lovely suppli- 
 cant; and imagined he had found a method for in some 
 degree contenting her desire of union with a bridegroom, 
 without offence to the ordinations of the Church ; he pro- 
 posed to her a spiritual wedlock, if she could resolve on a 
 slight change of the veil, the Saracenic for the Nun's. This 
 proposal suddenly awakened in the Princess such a horror 
 at veils that she directly tore away her own ; sank full of 
 despair before the holy footstool, and with uplifted hands 
 and tearful eyes, conjured the venerable Father by his 
 sacred slipper, not to do violence on her heart, and constrain 
 her to bestow it elsewhere. 
 
 The sight of her beauty was more eloquent than her lips ; 
 it enraptured all present ; and the tear which gathered in 
 her heavenly eye fell like a burning drop of naphtha on 
 the Holy Father's heart, and kindled the small fraction of 
 earthly tinder that still lay hid there, and warmed it into 
 sympathy for the petitioner. " Rise, beloved daughter," 
 said he, " and weep not ! What has been determined in 
 Heaven shall be fulfilled in thee on Earth. In three days 
 thou shalt know whether this thy first prayer to the Church 
 can be granted by that gracious Mother, or must be denied." 
 Thereupon he summoned an assembly of all the Casuists 
 in Rome ; had a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine distri- 
 buted to each ; and locked them up in the Rotunda, with 
 the warning that no one of them should be let out again, 
 
MELECHSALA. 
 
 209 
 
 till the question had been determined unanimously. So 
 long as the loaves and wine held out, the disputes were so 
 violent, that all the Saints, had they been convened in the 
 church, could not have argued with greater noise. But so 
 soon as the Digestive Faculty began to have a voice in the 
 meeting, he was listened to with the deepest attention, and 
 happily he spoke in favor of the Count, who had got a sump- 
 tuous feast made ready for the entertainment of the casuis- 
 tic Doctors, when the Papal seal should be removed from 
 their door. The Bull of Dispensation was drawn out in 
 proper form of law ; in furtherance of which the fair An- 
 gelica had, not at all reluctantly, inflicted a determined cut 
 upon the treasures of Egypt. Father Gregory bestowed his 
 benediction on the noble pair, and sent them away betrothed. 
 They lest no time in leaving Peter's Patrimony for the terri- 
 tories of the Count, to celebrate their nuptials on arriv- 
 ing. 
 
 When Count Ernst, on this side the Alps, again inhaled 
 his native air, and felt it come soft and kindly round his 
 heart, he mounted his steed ; galloped forward, attended 
 only by the heavy Groom, and left the Princess, under the 
 escort of the mettled Kurt, to follow him by easy jour- 
 neys. 
 
 His heart beat high within him, when he saw in azure 
 distance the three towers of Gleichen. He meant to take his 
 gentle Countess by surprise ; but the news of his approach 
 had preceded him, as on the wings of the wind ; she went 
 forth with man and maid, and met her husband a furlong 
 from the Castle, in a pleasant green, which, in memory of 
 this event, is called the Freudenthal, or Valley of Joy, to 
 this day. The meeting on both sides was as trustful and 
 tender as if no partition treaty had ever been thought of; for 
 Countess Ottilia was a proper pattern of the pious wife, that 
 obeys without commentary the marriage precept of sub- 
 18* 
 
210 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 jecting her will to the will of her husband. If at times 
 there did arise some small sedition in her heart, she did 
 not on the instant ring the alarm bell ; but she shut door 
 and window, that no mortal eye might look in and see what 
 passed ; and then summoned the rebel Passion to the bar 
 of Reason, gave it over in custody to Prudence, and imposed 
 on herself a voluntary penance. 
 
 She could not pardon her heart for having murmured at 
 the rival sun that was to shine beside her on the matrimo- 
 nial horizon ; and to expiate the offence, she had secretly 
 commissioned a triple bedstead, with stout fir posts, painted 
 green, the color of Hope ; and a round, vaulted tester, in 
 the form of a dome, adorned with winged, puffy-cheeked 
 heads of angels. On the silken coverlet, which lay for 
 show over the downy quilts, was exhibited, in fine embroid- 
 ery, the Angel Raphael, as he had appeared to her in 
 vision, beside the Count in pilgrim weeds. This speaking 
 proof of her ready matrimonial complaisance affected her 
 husband to the soul. He clasped her to his breast, and 
 overpowered her with kisses, at the sight of this arrangement 
 for the completion of his wedded joys. 
 
 " Glorious wife ! " cried he with rapture, " this temple 
 of love exalts thee above thousands of thy sex ; as an 
 honorable memorial, it will transmit thy name to future 
 ages ; and while a splinter of this wood remains, husbands 
 will recount to their wives thy exemplary conduct." 
 
 In a few days afterwards, the Princess also arrived in 
 safety, and was received by the Count in full gala. Ottilia 
 came to meet her with open arms and heart, and conducted 
 her into the Palace, as the partner in all its privileges. The 
 double bridegroom then set out to Erfurt, for the Bishop to 
 perform the marriage ceremony. This pious prelate was 
 extremely shocked at the proposal, and signified that in his 
 diocese no such scandal could be tolerated. But, on Count 
 
MELECHSALA. 211 
 
 Ernst's bringing out the papal dispensation, signed and 
 sealed in due form, it acted as a lock on His Reverence's 
 lips; though his doubling looks, and shaking of the head, 
 still indicated that the Steersman of the bark of the uni- 
 versal Church had bored a hole in the keel, which bade 
 fair to swamp the vessel, and send it to the bottom of the 
 sea. 
 
 The nuptials were celebrated with becoming pomp and 
 splendor; Countess Ottilia, who acted as mistress of the 
 ceremonies, had invited widely; and the counts and knights, 
 over all Thuringia, far and wide, came crowding to assist 
 at this unusual wedding. Before the Count led his bride to 
 the altar, she opened her jewel-box, and consigned to him 
 all its treasures that remained from the expenses of the 
 dispensation, as a dowry ; in return for which, he conferred 
 on her the lands of Ehrenstein, by way of jointure. The 
 chaste myrtle twined itself about the golden crown, which 
 latter ornament the Sultan's daughter, as a testimony of 
 her high birth, retained through life; and was, in conse- 
 quence, invariably named the Queen, by her subjects, and 
 by her domestics reverenced and treated like a queen. 
 
 If any of my readers ever purchased for himself, for fifty 
 guineas, the costly pleasure of resting a night in Doctor 
 Graham's Celestial Bed at London, he may form some 
 slender conception of the Count's delight, when the triple 
 bed at Gleuchen opened its elastic bosom to receive the 
 twice-betrothed, with both his spouses. Seven days long 
 the nuptial festivities continued ; and the Count declared 
 himself richly compensated by them for the seven dreary 
 years which he had been obliged to spend in the Grated 
 Tower at Grand Cairo. Nor would this appear to have 
 been an empty compliment on his part to his two faithful 
 wives, if the experimental apophthegm is just, that a single 
 day of gladness sweetens into oblivion the bitter dole and 
 sorrow of a troublous year. 
 
212 MUSAEUS, 
 
 Next to the Count, there was none who relished this ex- 
 hilarating period better than his trusty Squire, the mettled 
 Kurt, who, in the well-stored kitchen and cellar, found the 
 elements of royal cheer, and stoutly emptied the cup of joy 
 which circulated fast among the servants ; while the full 
 table pricked up their ears as he opened his lips, his inner 
 man once satisfied with good things, and began to recount 
 them his adventures. But when the Gleichic economy re- 
 turned to its customary frugal routine, he requested permis- 
 sion to set out for Ordruff, to visit his kind wife, and over- 
 whelm her with joy at his unexpected return. During his 
 long absence, he had constantly maintained a rigorous fidel- 
 ity, and he now longed for the just reward of so exemplary 
 a walk and conversation. Fancy painted to his mind's eye 
 the image of his virtuous Rebecca in the liveliest colors ; 
 and the nearer he approached the walls which enclosed her, 
 the brighter grew these hues. He saw her stand before him 
 in the charms which had delighted him on his wedding-day ; 
 he saw how excess of joy at his happy arrival would over- 
 power her spirits, and she would sink in speechless rapture 
 into his arms. 
 
 Encircled with this fair retinue of dreams, he arrived at 
 the gate of his native town, without observing it, till the 
 watchful guardian of public tranquillity let down his beam 
 in front of him, and questioned the stranger, Who he was, 
 what business had brought him to the town, and whether his 
 intentions were peaceable or not ? The mettled Kurt gave 
 ready answer ; and now rode along the streets at a soft pace, 
 lest his horse's tramp might too soon betray the secret of 
 his coming. He fastened his beast to the door-ring, and 
 stole, without noise, into the court of his dwelling, where 
 the old chained house-dog first received him with joyful 
 bark. Yet he wondered somewhat at the sight of two lively, 
 chub-faced children, like the Angels in the Gleichen bed- 
 
MELECHSALA. 213 
 
 tester, frisking to and fro upon the area. He had no time 
 to speculate on the phenomenon, for the mistress of the 
 house, in her carefulness, stept out of doors to see who was 
 there. Alas ! What a difference between ideal and orig- 
 inal ! The tooth of Time had, in these seven years, been 
 mercilessly busy with her charms ; yet the leading features 
 of her physiognomy had been in so far spared, that to the 
 eye of the critic she was still recognizable, like the primary 
 stamp of a worn coin. Joy at meeting somewhat veiled this 
 want of beauty from the mettled Kurt, and the thought that 
 sorrow for his absence had so furrowed the smooth face of 
 his consort put him into a sentimental mood ; he embraced 
 her with great cordiality, and said : " Welcome, dear wife 
 of my heart ! Forget all thy sorrow. See, I am still alive ; 
 thou hast got me back ! " 
 
 The pious Rebecca answered this piece of tenderness by 
 a heavy thwack on the short ribs, which thwack made the 
 mettled Kurt stagger to the wall ; then raised loud shrieks, 
 and shouted to her servants for help against violence, 
 and scolded and stormed like an Infernal Fury. The 
 loving husband excused this unloving reception, on the 
 score of his virtuous spouse's delicacy, which his bold 
 kiss of welcome had offended, she not knowing who he 
 was ; and tore his lungs with bawling to undo this er- 
 ror ; but his preaching was to deaf ears, and he soon 
 found that there was no misunderstanding in the case. 
 u Thou shameless varlet," cried she, in shrieking treble, 
 " after wandering seven long years up and down the world, 
 following thy wicked courses with other women, dost thou 
 think that I will take thee back to my chaste bed ? Off 
 with thee ! Did not I publicly cite thee at three church doors, 
 and wert thou not, for thy contumacious non-appearance, 
 declared to be dead as mutton ? Did not the High Court 
 authorize me to put aside my widow's chair, and marry 
 
214 
 
 MUSAEUS. 
 
 Burgermeister Wipprecht ? Have we not lived six years as 
 man and wife, and received these children as a blessing of 
 our wedlock? And now comes the Marpeace to perplex 
 my house ! Off with thee ! Pack, I say, this instant, or 
 the Amtmann shall crop thy ears, and put thee in the pillory, 
 to teach such vagabonds, that run and leave their poor ten- 
 der wives." This welcome from his once-loved helpmate 
 was a swordVthrust through the heart of the mettled Kurt ; 
 but the gall poured itself as a defence into his blood. 
 
 " O thou faithless strumpet ! " answered he ; " what holds 
 me, that I do not take thee and thy bastards and wring your 
 necks this moment ? Dost thou recollect thy promise, and 
 the oath thou hast so often sworn in the trustful marriage- 
 bed, that death itself should not part thee from me ? Didst 
 thou not engage, unasked, that should thy soul fly up di- 
 rectly from thy mouth to Heaven, and I were roasting in 
 Purgatory, thou wouldst turn again from Heaven's gate, and 
 come down to me, to fan cool air upon me, till I were deliv- 
 ered from the flames ? Devil broil thy false tongue, thou 
 gallows carrion ! " 
 
 Though the Prima Donna of Ordruff was endowed with 
 a glib organ, which, in the faculty of cursing, yielded no 
 whit to that of the tumultuous pretender, she did not judge 
 it good to enter into farther debate with him, but gave her 
 menials an expressive sign ; and, in an instant, man and 
 maid seized hold of the mettled Kurt, and, brevi manu, 
 ejected his body from the house ; in which act of domestic 
 jurisdiction Dame Rebecca herself bore a hand with the 
 besom, and so swept away this discarded helpmate from the 
 premises. The mettled Kurt, half-broken on the wheel, 
 then mounted his horse, and dashed full gallop down the street, 
 which he had rode along so gingerly some minutes before. 
 
 As his blood, when he was on the road home, began 
 to cool, he counted loss and gain, and found himself not 
 
MELECHSALA. 215 
 
 ill contented with the balance ; for he found, that, except 
 the comfort of having cool air fanned upon his soul in Pur- 
 gatory after death, his smart amounted to nothing. He never 
 more returned to Ordruff, but continued with the Count at 
 Gleichen all his life, and was an eye-witness of the most in- 
 credible occurrence, that two ladies shared the love of one 
 man, without quarrelling or jealousy, and that even under 
 one bed-tester ! The fair Angelica continued childless, yet 
 she loved and watched over her associate's children as if 
 they had been her own, and divided with Ottilia the care of 
 their education. In the trefoil of this happy marriage, she 
 was the first leaf which faded away in the autumn of life. 
 Countess Ottilia soon followed her, and the afflicted widower, 
 now all too lonely in his large castle and wide bed, lingered 
 but a few months longer. The firmly-established arrange- 
 ment of these noble spouses in the marriage-bed through 
 life was maintained unaltered after their death. They rest 
 all three in one grave in front of the Gleichen Altar, in St. 
 Peter's Church at Erfurt, on the Hill ; where their place of 
 sepulture is still to be seen, overlaid with a stone, on which 
 the noble group are sculptured after the life. To the right 
 lies the Countess Ottilia, with a mirror in her hand, the em- 
 blem of her praiseworthy prudence ; on the left Angelica, 
 adorned with a royal crown ; and in the midst the Count, 
 reposing on his coat-of-arms, the lion-leopard.* Their fa- 
 mous triple bedstead is still preserved as a relic in the old 
 Castle ; it stands in the room called the Junkernkammer, or 
 Knight's Chamber ; and a splinter of it, worn by way of 
 busk in a lady's boddice, is said to have the virtue of dis- 
 pelling every movement of jealousy from her heart. 
 
 * A plate of this tomb-stone may be seen in Falkenstein's Ana- 
 lecta Nordgaviensia. — M. 
 
FR. DE LA MOTTE FOUQUE 
 
 VOL. I. 19 
 
FRIEDRICH DE LA MOTTE FOUQUE. 
 
 The Baron Friedrich de La Motte Fouque is of French 
 extraction, but distinguished for the true Germanism of his 
 character, both as a writer and a man ; and ranks, for the 
 last twenty years, among the most popular and productive 
 authors of his country. 
 
 His family, expelled from France by the Revocation of 
 the Edict of Nantz, appears to have settled at the Hague ; 
 from which this branch of it was transferred to Prussia by the 
 fortunes of our Author's grandfather, whose name and title 
 the present Baron has inherited. This first Friedrich, born 
 in the early part of last century, had been sent in boyhood 
 to the Court of Anhalt Dessau, in the character of Page : 
 he soon quitted this station ; entered the Prussian army as 
 a private volunteer ; by merit, or recommendation, was 
 gradually advanced ; and became acquainted with the Prince 
 Royal, then a forlorn, oppressed, and discontented youth, 
 but destined afterwards to astonish and convulse the world, 
 under the name of Frederick the Great. Young La Motte 
 stood in high favor with Frederick ; and seems likewise to 
 have shown some prudence in humoring the jealous temper 
 of the old King ; for during the Prince's arrest, which had 
 followed his projected elopement from paternal tuition, the 
 royal Shylock, instead of beheading La Motte, as he had 
 treated poor De Catt, permitted him to visit the disconsolate 
 prisoner, and without molestation to do him kind offices. On 
 his accession to the throne, Frederick the King did not fail, 
 
220 
 
 FOUqUE. 
 
 in this instance, to remember the debts of Frederick the 
 Prisoner ; the friend of his youth continued to be the friend 
 of his manhood and age ; La Motte rose rapidly from post 
 to post in the army, till, having gained the rank of General, 
 he had opportunity, by various gallant services in the Seven 
 Years' War, to secure the prosperity of his household, and 
 earn for himself a place in the military history of his new 
 country. With his Sovereign he continued in a kindly and 
 honest relation throughout his whole life. His Letters, pre- 
 served in Frederick's Works, are a proof that he was not 
 only favored but esteemed ; the imperious King is said to 
 have respected his upright and truthful nature ; and, though 
 himself a skeptic and a scoffer, never to have interfered in 
 word or deed with the piety and strict religious persuasions 
 of his servant. The General became the founder of that 
 Prussian family, which has since acquired a new and fairer 
 distinction in the person of his grandson. 
 
 The present Friedrich, our Author, was born on the 11th 
 of February, 1777. Of his early history or habits we have 
 no account, except that he was educated by Hiilse ; and 
 soon sent to the army as an officer in the Royal Guards. In 
 this capacity he served, during his nineteenth year, in the 
 disastrous campaign of the Rhine. One of his brother offi- 
 cers and intimates here was Heinrich von Kleist, a noble- 
 minded and ill-fated man of genius, whom the mismanage- 
 ment of a too impetuous and feeling heart has since driven 
 to suicide, before the world had sufficiently reaped the bright 
 promise of his early years. 
 
 The misfortunes of his country drove Fouque back into 
 retirement. While Prussia languished in hopeless degrada- 
 tion under the iron sway of France, he kept himself apart 
 from military life ; settled in the country, and hanging up 
 his ineffectual sword, devoted himself to domestic cares and 
 joys, and in the Kingdoms of Imagination sought refuge 
 
FOUQUE. 
 
 221 
 
 from the aspect of actual oppression and distress. Of a 
 temper susceptible, lively, and devout, his faculties had been 
 quickened by communion with kindred minds ; and still 
 more by collision with the vast events which had filled the 
 world with astonishment, and his portion of it with darkness 
 and obstruction. At this juncture, while contemplating a 
 literary life, it was doubtless a circumstance of no small 
 influence on his future efforts that he became acquainted 
 with August Wilhelm Schlegel. By Schlegel he was intro- 
 duced to the study of Spanish poetry ; a fact from which a 
 skilful theorizer might plausibly enough deduce the whole 
 psychological history of Fouque ; for it seems as if the 
 beautiful and wondrous spirit of this literature, so fervent 
 yet so joyful, so solemn yet so full of blandishment, with its 
 warlike piety, and gay, chivalrous pomp, had taken entire 
 possession of his mind, and moulded his unsettled powers 
 into the form which they have ever since retained. One 
 thing, at all events, is clear without help of theory ; an 
 ideal of Christian Knighthood, whencesoever borrowed or 
 derived, has all along, with more or less distinctness, hov- 
 ered round his fancy ; and this it has been the constant task 
 not only of his pen to represent in poetical delineations, but 
 also of his life to realize in external conduct. As to its 
 origin, whether in the poetry of Spain, or in the perplexities 
 of a suffering and religious life, or in the French Revolution 
 and its reaction on a temper abhorrent of its material prin- 
 ciples, or in any or all of these causes, it were unpro- 
 fitable to inquire ; for the problem is of no vital impor- 
 tance, and we have not data for even an approximate solu- 
 tion. 
 
 Fouque published his first works under the pseudonym of 
 
 Pellegrin ; he translated the Numancia of Cervantes ; he 
 
 wrote Sigurd, Alwin, The History of Ritter Galmy ; a 
 
 small volume of Dramatic Tales was published for him by 
 
 19 * 
 
222 fouque. 
 
 his friend Schlegel. These performances are all of a chiv- 
 alry cast ; attempts to body forth the sentiment with which 
 our Author's mind was already almost exclusively pervaded. 
 Their success was incomplete ; sufficient to indicate their 
 object, but not to attain it. The models which he had in 
 view seem still to have awed and overshadowed his poetic 
 faculty ; his productions have a southern, exotic aspect ; and 
 in the opinion of his critics, it is only in glimpses that a 
 genuine inspiration can be discerned in them. Der Held 
 des Nor dens (The Hero of the North), a dramatic work in 
 three parts, grounded on the story of the Niebelungen Lied, 
 was the first performance sent forth in his own name ; and 
 also the first which showed his genius in its own form, or 
 produced any deep impression on the public. This work 
 was acknowledged to be of true northern growth ; it found 
 applauding readers, and had the honor to be criticized in the 
 Hiedelherger Jahrbiicher, by no meaner a person than Jean 
 Paul Friedrich Kichter, who bestowed on the poet the sur- 
 name of Der Tapfere, or The Valiant, in allusion to the 
 quality which seemed to be the soul of his own character, 
 and of the characters which he portrayed. 
 
 The ground thus gained, La Motte Fouque has not been 
 negligent to make good and extend. Since the date of his 
 first appearance, year after year has duly added its tribute 
 of volumes to the list of his works ; he has written in verse 
 and prose, in narrative and representation ; his productions 
 varying in form through all the extremes of variety, but 
 animated by the same old spirit, that of Knighthood and 
 Religion. On the whole, he seems to have continued grow- 
 ing in esteem, both with the lower and the upper classes of 
 the literary world. His Zauberring (Magic Ring) has 
 lately been translated into English ; we have also versions 
 of his Sintram and his Undine. The last little work, pub- 
 lished in 1811, has become a literary pet in its own coun- 
 
FOUQJJE. 223 
 
 try ; been dandled and patted not only by the soft hands of 
 poetical maidens, but even by the horny paws of Recensents, 
 a class of beings to the full as dire and doughty as our own 
 Reviewers. Undine and Sintram are parts of a series or 
 circuit of " Romantic fictions," entitled the Jahreszeiten 
 (Seasons), which were published successively at four differ- 
 ent periods ; it is from the same work, the Autumn Number 
 of it, that Aslauga's Knight, the Tale which follows this 
 Introduction, has been extracted. 
 
 The poet had now wedded ; and we figure him as happy 
 in his own Arcadian seclusion ; for his lady is a woman of 
 kindred genius, and has added new celebrity to his name by 
 various writings, partly of her own, partly in concert with 
 her husband. In 1813, his poetic leisure was interrupted 
 by the clang of battle-trumpets. Napoleon's star had begun 
 to decline ; and Prussia rose, as one man, to break asunder 
 the fetters with which he had so long chained Europe to the 
 dust. The knightly Baron was the first to rouse himself at 
 the voice of his country ; he again girded on his harness, 
 and took the field at the head of a small troop of volunteers. 
 His little band would seem to have been joined with the 
 Jager (or, as we call it, Chasseur^Regiment of Branderburg 
 Cuirassiers; in which squadron he served, first as Lieu- 
 tenant, then as Rittmeister, with the devout and fervid gal- 
 lantry which he had so often previously delineated in his 
 writings. Like the lamented Korner, he stood by the cause 
 both with " the Lyre and the Sword." His arm was ever in 
 the hottest of the battle ; and his songs uplifted the triumph 
 of victory, or breathed fresh ardor into the hearts of his 
 comrades in defeat. These lyrical effusions have since been 
 collected and published ; for the future historian they will 
 form an interesting memorial. At Culm, the poetical soldier 
 was wounded ; but the incompleteness of his cure did not 
 prevent him from appearing in his place on the great day of 
 
224 Fouqui:. 
 
 Leipzig ; and thenceforward following the scattered enemy 
 to the banks of the Rhine. Here ill health, arising from 
 excessive exertion, forced him to return ; he had toiled 
 faithfully till the struggle was decided ; and could now, 
 with a quiet mind, leave others to complete the task. By 
 the King he was raised to the rank of Major, and decorated 
 with the cross of the Order of St. John. He retired to his 
 former residence at Rennhausen, near Rathenau ; betook 
 himself again to writing, with unabated diligence; and has 
 since produced, among various other chivalry performances 
 of greater or smaller extent, an " epic poem," entitled 
 Corona, celebrating the events in which he himself was pre- 
 sent and formed part. Here, so far as I have understood, 
 he still chiefly resides ; enjoying an enviable lot ; the do- 
 mestic society of a virtuous and gifted wife ; the exercise of 
 a poetic genius, which his brethren repay with praise ; and 
 still dearer honors as a man and a citizen, which his own 
 conscience may declare that he has merited. 
 
 Fouque's genius is not of a kind to provoke or solicit much 
 criticism ; for its faults are negative rather than positive, 
 and its beauties are not difficult to discern. The structure 
 of his mind is simple ; his intellect is in harmony with his 
 feelings ; and his taste seems to include few modes of excel- 
 lence, which he has not in some considerable degree the 
 power to realize. He is thus in unison with himself; his 
 works are free from internal inconsistency, and appear to be 
 produced with lightness and freedom. A pure, sensitive 
 heart, deeply reverent of Truth, and Beauty, and Heroic 
 Virtue ; a quick perception of certain forms embodying these 
 high qualities ; and a delicate and dainty hand in picturing 
 them forth, are gifts which few readers of his works will 
 contest him. At the same time, it must be granted, he 
 has no preeminence in strength, either of head or heart; 
 and his circle of activity, though full of animation, is far 
 
fouque, 225 
 
 from comprehensive. He is, as it were, possessed by one 
 idea. A few notes, some of them, in truth, of rich melody, 
 yet still a very few, include the whole music of his being, 
 The Chapel and the Tiltyard stand in the background or 
 the foreground, in all the scenes of his universe. He gives 
 us knights, soft-hearted and strong-armed ; full of Christian 
 self-denial, patience, meekness, and gay, easy daring ; they 
 stand before us in their mild frankness, with suitable equip- 
 ment, and accompaniment of squire and dame ; and fre- 
 quently the whole has a true, though seldom a vigorous, 
 poetic life. If this can content us, it is well ; if not, there 
 is no help; for change of scene and person brings little 
 change of subject ; even when no chivalry is mentioned, we 
 feel too clearly the influence of its unseen presence. Nor 
 can it be said that in this solitary department his success is 
 of the very highest sort. To body forth the spirit of Chris- 
 tian Knighthood in existing poetic forms, to wed that old 
 sentiment to modern thoughts, was a task which he could 
 not attempt. He has turned rather to the fictions and 
 machinery of former days ; and transplanted his heroes into 
 distant ages, and scenes divided by their nature from our 
 common world. Their manner of existence comes imaged 
 back to us faint and ineffectual, like the crescent of the 
 setting moon. 
 
 These things, however, are not faults, but the want of 
 merits. Where something is effected, it were ungracious to 
 reckon up too narrowly how much is left untried. In all 
 his writings, Fouque shows himself as a man deeply imbued 
 with feelings of religion, honor, and brotherly love ; he sings 
 of Faith and Affection with a full heart ; and a spirit of 
 tenderness, and vestal purity, and meek heroism, sheds 
 salutary influences from his presence. He is no primate or 
 bishop in the Church Poetical ; but. a simple chaplain, who 
 merits the honors of a small but well-discharged function, 
 and claims no other. 
 
226 fouque. 
 
 In mental structure, Fouque seems the converse of 
 Musaus, whom he follows in the present volume. If Musaus 
 was a man of talent, with little genius, Fouque is a man of 
 genius, with little more than an ordinary share of talent. 
 His intellect is not richer, or more powerful than that of 
 common minds, nor his insight into the world, and man's 
 heart, more keen ; but his feelings are finer, and the touch 
 of an aerial fancy gives life and loveliness to the products of 
 his other powers. Among English authors, we might liken 
 him to Southey ; though their provinces of writing are 
 widely diverse ; and, in regard to general culture and ac- 
 quirement, the latter must be reckoned greatly his superior. 
 Like Southey, he finds more readily than he invents ; and 
 his invention, when he does trust to it, is apt to be daring 
 rather than successful. Yet his extravagant fictions are 
 pervaded by a true sentiment ; a soft, vivifying soul looks 
 through them ; a religious submission, a cheerful and un- 
 wearied patience in affliction ; mild, earnest hope and love ; 
 and peaceful, subdued enthusiasm. 
 
 To these internal endowments, he adds the merit of a 
 style by no means ill adapted for displaying them. Light- 
 ness and simplicity are its chief characteristics ; his periods 
 move along in lively rhythm ; studiously excluding all pomp 
 of phraseology ; expressing his strongest thoughts in the 
 humblest words, and veiling dark sufferings or resolute pur- 
 poses in a placid smile. A faint, superficial gayety seems 
 to rest over all his images ; it is not merriment or humor ; 
 but the self-possession of a man too earnestly serious to be 
 heedful of solemn looks ; and it plays like sunshine on the 
 surface of a dark pool, deepening by contrast the impressive- 
 ness of the gloom which it does not penetrate. 
 
 If this little Tale of Aslauga's Knight afford any tolerable 
 emblem of those qualities, the reader will not grudge pe- 
 
FOUQUE. 227 
 
 rusing it. I pretend not to offer it as the best of Fouque's 
 writings, but only as the best I know of for my present pur- 
 pose. Slntram and Undine are already in our language. 
 This tale is weaker in result, but also shorter in compass. 
 That its chivalry is of a still wilder sort than that which we 
 supposed Cervantes had abolished two centuries ago ; that 
 its wonders are unnatural even in the region of the wonder- 
 ful ; that its form is thin and unsubstantial, and its effect 
 unsatisfactory, I need not attempt to deny. An extravagant 
 fiction for the basis ; delicate, airy, and beautiful delineations, 
 in the detail ; and the everlasting principles of Faith, and 
 Integrity, and Love, pervading the whole ; such is frequent- 
 ly the character of Fouque's writings; and such, on a 
 smaller scale, appears to be that of AslaugcCs Knight, 
 which is now, with all its imperfections on its head, to be 
 submitted to the courtesy of English judges. 
 
ASLAUGA'S KNIGHT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 In the Island of Funen, there lived, in old times, a noble 
 gentleman, called Froda the Skalds'-friend ; a title which 
 had been given him, because he not only took delight in 
 hospitably entertaining all famous and honorable singers in 
 his fair Castle, but also labored, with great industry, in col- 
 lecting any ancient songs, tales, or traditions, which might 
 still be met with in Runic manuscripts, or otherwise. With 
 this view, he had even made some voyages to Iceland, and, 
 in the course of them, fought several bloody battles with the 
 pirates ; as indeed he was, in all points, a bold, knightly hero, 
 and vied with his great ancestors not only in the matter of 
 poetry, but also of war. He was still a blooming young 
 man ; yet all the other nobles of the Island were accustomed 
 to combine in his counsels and follow his banner ; nay, his 
 fame had passed over sea, and was known in the neighbor- 
 ing Empire of Germany. This also was what he wished ; 
 for it would have broken his heart, had he thought that of 
 him no songs would be sung, and no tales told, in after 
 days. 
 
 One fine autumn evening, this worthy lord was sitting 
 before his Castle, as he often did at that time of day, both 
 that he might have a free view on all sides over land and 
 sea, and also that he might invite any passing traveller to 
 come in with him, and taste his hospitality. However, on 
 the present occasion, he took little notice of the sights he 
 was wont to look at ; for an old Book, in artful, beautifully 
 painted characters, had just been sent over to him by a learned 
 
229 
 
 Icelander, and was now lying on his knee. It was the 
 story of Aslauga, the fair daughter of Sigurd, who at first, 
 concealing her high birth, and in mean apparel, had herded 
 goats for some poor peasants; then, in her gold veil of 
 flowing tresses, had pleased King Ragnar Lodbrog, and at 
 last, as his queenly spouse, had adorned the Danish throne 
 till the end of her days. 
 
 The Knight Froda felt within his mind as if the graceful 
 Lady Aslauga were rising in life and bodily presence before 
 him ; so that his brave, still heart, devoted indeed in knightly 
 service to all women, but hitherto untouched with passion 
 for any individual female, now flamed up in bright love for 
 this fair daughter of Sigurd. " What matters it," thought he, 
 " that she has vanished from the Earth long years ago ? She 
 still sees so bright and clear into this heart of mine; and 
 what more would a knight desire ? Therefore shall she 
 henceforth, for ever and ever, be my gentle dame, and my 
 helper in fight and song." In this mood, he made some 
 verses on his new mistress, which ran as follows : 
 
 " They ride and they seek with toil and care, 
 To find a heart's mistress passing fair; 
 Through tower and through town they ride and seek, 
 To find a heart's mistress passing meek ; 
 Where rivers are rolling and mountains rise, 
 To find a heart's mistress passing wise: 
 Ah, Knights ! ye may seek, and seek full long, 
 'Tis I have found her in Realms of Song! 
 I've found her, this mistress, wise, fair, and meek; 
 How hearts can adore, my sword shall speak: 
 And should I not see her while toiling Here, 
 O, Yonder, her form is light and clear; 
 And dwells she not down in Earth, this love, 
 Our spirits are one in lands Above. 
 Good night, thou old Avorld! — Sweet love, 'tis past! 
 Who seeketh in faith will find at last." 
 vol. i. 20 
 
230 FOUQUE. 
 
 " Much depends on fortune, too," said a hollow voice, 
 hard by the Knight ; and, on looking round, he observed 
 the form of a poor peasant woman, so closely shrouded up 
 in gray-colored wrappings, that he could not see the small- 
 est portion of her face. She was looking over his shoulder 
 into the Book, and she said, with a deep sigh: " I know 
 this story well ; and I myself fare no better than the lady 
 it is written of." Froda looked at her with amazement. 
 "Yes indeed, yes indeed," continued she, with strange becks 
 and nods; " sure, I am the descendant of the great Rolf, 
 to whom the fairest castles, and forests, and fields, of this 
 Island belonged ; thy castle, and thy lands, Froda, among 
 others. And now we are sunk into poverty ; and because 
 I am not so fair as Aslauga, there is nothing can be done 
 for me, and I am fain to hide my poor face altogether." It 
 seemed as if she wept warm tears under her covering. At 
 this Froda was touched, and he begged of her, for Heaven's 
 sake, to let him know how he might help her ; he was a 
 descendant, he said, of the great Northland heroes, and 
 perhaps something more than they, a good Christian. " I 
 almost fancy," murmured she beneath her veil, " that thou 
 art the same Froda whom they name the Good and the 
 Skalds'-friend, and of whose mildness and greatness of mind 
 they tell such strange stories. If it is so, I may still find 
 help. Thou hast but to give me the half of thy fields and 
 meadows ; I should then be in something like a state to 
 live as beseemeth the descendant of the great Rolf." 
 
 Then Froda looked thoughtfully on the ground, both 
 because she had asked so much, and because he was con- 
 sidering whether she could be in truth descended from the 
 mighty Rolf. But after a short pause, the veiled woman 
 said : " I must be mistaken, then, it seems ; and thou art 
 not that far-famed, gentle-hearted Froda. Would Froda 
 have thought so long over such a trifle ? But I will try the 
 
aslauga's knight. 231 
 
 utmost. See, for the fair Aslauga's sake, of whom thou 
 hast been reading, and wert just singing ; for the sake of 
 Sigurd's bright daughter, fulfil my petition." 
 
 Then Froda started up with a glowing heart, and cried : 
 "Let it be as thou hast said !" and held out to her his 
 knightly hand, in confirmation. But he could not grasp 
 the fingers of the woman, though her dim shape continued 
 standing close by him. At this, a secret shudder began to 
 creep over his frame, while suddenly a light seemed to issue 
 from the form ; a golden light, which covered her as with 
 a dazzling garment ; and he felt in his mind as if Aslauga 
 were standing before him, clothed in the waving veil of 
 her gold hair, and looking on him with a kind smile. Trans- 
 ported and blinded, he sank on his knee. On again rising 
 up, he saw nothing but an autumn cloud passing over the 
 meadows, fringed in its outline with the last brightness of 
 twilight, and then disappearing far off among the waves 
 of the sea. 
 
 The Knight knew not what to make of this occurrence. 
 In deep reflection, he returned to his apartments ; at one 
 time thinking for certain that he had seen Aslauga herself; 
 at another, that some goblin had risen before him with 
 deceitful juggleries, mocking, in spiteful wise, the service 
 which he had vowed to the departed lady. But thenceforth, 
 whether he was passing over dale, and heath, and forest, 
 or sailing on the sea billows, such like appearances fre- 
 quently met him. Once he found a cithern lying in the 
 wood, and scared off a wolf from it ; and while the cithern 
 of itself broke forth into sweet tones, a fair baby rose out 
 of it, as of old Aslauga herself had done, when found in a 
 similar manner. At other times, he would see goats clam- 
 bering among the cliffs by the shore, and a golden form as 
 if herding them ; then again a resplendent queen in a 
 glittering bark would seem to glide past him, and salute 
 
232 FOUQUE. 
 
 him with smiles. And still, when he tried to get near aught 
 of this, it was vapor, and cloud, and air. A poet might sing 
 many songs of these things. So much, however, he gathered 
 from it, that the fair dame, Aslauga, had accepted his ser- 
 vice, and that he had in deed and in truth become her 
 knight. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 During these things, winter had come on, and again 
 passed away. In northern countries, this young season of 
 the year, to those who understand it and know how to love 
 it, is always wont to bring along with a crowd of most fair 
 and expressive images ; with which, if you speak of earthly 
 enjoyment, many a man might content himself for his whole 
 earthly life. But at this time, when the spring came glanc- 
 ing forth with its budding leaves and its streaming brooks, 
 there came likewise from the German Empire a most flow- 
 ery and sunshiny piece of tidings over to Funen. 
 
 On the rich banks of the Mayo, where he pours his flood 
 through the blessed land of Franconia, there stood an almost 
 royal fortress, the orphan heiress of which was a relative of 
 the German Kaiser. She was called Hildegardis, and ac- 
 knowledged far and wide for the fairest of virgins. Now 
 her Imperial uncle wished also that she should wed the bold- 
 est Knight that could be found far and wide, and no other 
 than the boldest. Accordingly, he followed the example of 
 many noble chiefs in such cases, and appointed a Tourna- 
 ment, in which the first prize should be the hand of the 
 lovely Hildegardis, provided that the victor were not already 
 married, or occupied in his heart with some other fair friend. 
 For the lists were not to be shut against any knightly war- 
 rior of proper bearing and birth, that the contest of courage 
 
233 
 
 and strength to be displayed might be so much the richer. 
 Of all this Froda's German brethren wrote him full ac- 
 counts, and he made ready for appearing at the festival. 
 
 Before all, he forged for himself a gallant suit of mail, as 
 indeed, among the whole armorers of the North, a region 
 famed on this account, he was the most expert. The hel- 
 met he worked of pure gold, and formed it in such a way 
 that it looked on all parts like mere clustering locks, recall- 
 ing to his mind the golden hair of Aslauga. Thus, also, he 
 fashioned on the breast-plate of his harness, which was 
 coated with silver, a gold shape, in half-relief, representing 
 Aslauga in her tressy veil ; to make it clear to all at the 
 commencement of the Tourney, that this Knight, bearing 
 on his breast the figure of a lady, was fighting not for the 
 hand of the fair Hildegardis, but for the joy of battle and 
 knightly honor. 
 
 Then he led his gay Danish horse from its stall, put it 
 carefully on shipboard, and sailed over in safety. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 In one of those fair boxwood thickets, which you often 
 see in the kind lands of Germany, he once fell in with a 
 young friendly Knight, of delicate form ; who having just, 
 in the gayest manner, spread out his repast on the green 
 sward, under the shadow of pleasant boughs, invited the 
 brave Northman to partake of it. As the two were here 
 dining cheerfully together, they felt a kindness in their hearts 
 towards one another; and rejoiced to observe, on rising, 
 that their present destinations led them both the same road. 
 Not that they had signified this in words ; on the contrary, 
 the young Knight, whoose name was Edwald, was of an 
 extremely taciturn nature, so that he could sit for hours with 
 20* 
 
234 fouque. 
 
 a quiet smile on his face, and never once open his mouth. 
 But in this quiet, smile itself there came a pious and kindly- 
 grace to view ; and then, when at times a simple but sig- 
 nificant word escaped over his lips, it appeared as a gift 
 deserving thanks. So likewise was it with the little songs, 
 which he now and then chanted. They were almost as 
 soon ended as begun ; but in their short lines dwelt a deep, 
 graceful life, whether it shaped itself as a friendly sigh, or 
 as a blessed smile. The noble Froda felt as if a younger 
 brother had been riding at his hand, or even a tender, bloom- 
 ing son. 
 
 In this way they continued several days together ; it al- 
 most seemed as if their paths were marked out for them in 
 inseparable union ; and much as they rejoiced in this, they 
 used to look at one another, at outsetting, or when cross- 
 ways met, with an air of sadness, as if asking whether there 
 would still appear no diversity in their direction. Nay, it 
 seemed as if in Edwald's downcast eye a tear were gather- 
 ing. 
 
 It happened once, that, in their inn, they came upon a 
 rude, overbearing Knight, of gigantic form and strong limbs, 
 and foreign, un-German speech and manners. He came, it 
 appeared, from Bohemia. This Knight looked over with 
 a strange smile to Froda, who had again spread out the old 
 Book with Aslauga's History before him, and was diligently- 
 reading it. " Perhaps you are a clerical Knight ? " he in- 
 quired of him, and seemed ready furnished to commence a 
 whole train of unseemly jests. But the negative reply 
 came over Froda's lips in so grave and firm a tone, that the 
 foreign Knight on the instant stopped short ; as you often 
 see the smaller animals, when they have risked a little lib- 
 erty with their king the Lion, shrink into peace at a single 
 look from him. Into peace, however, this foreign Knight 
 did not shrink. On the other hand, he now began to break 
 
ASLAUGAS KNIGHT. 
 
 235 
 
 jokes on Edwald, on his youth, his silence, and delicate 
 form ; all which the latter bore for some time with great 
 patience ; but at last when the stranger ventured a too inju- 
 rious word, he rose up, girt on his sword, and said with a 
 dainty bow : " I thank you, Sir, for your wish to give me 
 opportunity of proving that I am no timid or unpractised 
 follower of knighthood. For in this view alone can your 
 behavior be excused, which otherwise I should be obliged to 
 call extremely uncivil. Would you please ? " 
 
 With this he stept out before the door ; the Bohemian 
 followed him with a scornful smile ; and Froda, much con- 
 cerned for his young friend, whose honor was, however, far 
 too precious in his eyes to allow a thought of in any way 
 taking up the cause himself. 
 
 It soon appeared that the Northman's anxiety had been 
 groundless. With equal vigor and address, young Edwald 
 fell on his gigantic adversary ; so that to look upon the 
 matter, it was almost like those battles between knights and 
 forest monsters, of which we read in old books. The issue, 
 too, was of the same sort. As the Bohemian was collecting 
 all his strength for a decisive stroke, Edwald darted in on 
 him, and with the force of a wrestler cast him to the ground. 
 Then, however, he spared his conquered enemy ; courteous- 
 ly helped him up again, and went to seek his horse. In a 
 little, he and Froda left the inn ; and their journey once 
 more led them both the same way. 
 
 " From henceforth I am glad of this," said Froda, point- 
 ing with a look of satisfaction to their common road. " For 
 I must own to thee, Edkin " — he was wont in pleasant con- 
 fidence to call his young friend by this childlike name — "I 
 must own to thee, when I thought hitherto, that perhaps 
 thou wert journeying with me to the Tournament in honor 
 of the fair Hildegardis, a certain care arose up over my 
 heart Thy true knightly spirit I well knew \ but I dreaded 
 
236 fou^ue. 
 
 lest the force in thy tender arms might not suffice it. At 
 length I have come to know thee as a swordsman that may- 
 long seek his match ; and Heaven be thanked if our paths 
 go on and on, one way ; and welcome to me, by the first 
 chance, to front me in the lists ! " 
 
 But Edwald looked at him with a sad countenance, and 
 said : " What can my strength and skill avail me, when it 
 is with thee I am to try them, and for the highest prize of 
 life, which only one of us can gain? Ah ! this heavy news, 
 that thou also art proceeding to the fair Hildegardis's Tourn- 
 ament, I have long foreboded with sorrowful heart." 
 
 " Edkin," answered the smiling Froda, " thou kind, gentle 
 child, dost thou not see, then, that I already wear the image 
 of a mistress on my breast-plate ? My battle is but for the 
 honor of victory, not for thy fair Hildegardis." 
 
 "My fair Hildegardis!" sighed Edwald. "That she 
 will never be in this world ; or if she should — Ah, Froda ! 
 it would break thy heart. I know well, the Northland faith 
 is deep-rooted like your rocks, and hard to melt like their 
 snowy tops ; but let no son of man believe that he can look 
 unpunished into the fair eyes of Hildegardis. Has not she, 
 the proud, the overproud maiden, so cra-zed my still, humble 
 mind, that I have forgotten the chasm which is lying betwixt 
 us, and am hastening after her, and would rather die than 
 renounce the wild hope of gaining this eagle spirit for my- 
 self?" 
 
 "I will help thee, Edkin," answered Froda, still smiling. 
 " Could I but know how this queenly mistress looks ! She 
 must resemble the Walkeurs of our Heathen ancestors, I 
 think, since so many gallant heroes yield before her." 
 
 Edwald, with a serious air, took a picture from his breast- 
 plate, and held it up to him. Fixed, and as if enchanted, 
 Froda gazed upon it ; his cheeks glowed, his eyes sparkled + 
 the smile vanished from his face, as sunlight fades away 
 
ASLAUGA S KNIGHT. 
 
 237 
 
 from the meadows before the advancing blackness of the 
 storm. 
 
 "Dost thou see now, my lordly comrade," muttered 
 Edvvald, " that for one, or perhaps for both of us, the joy 
 of life is gone ? " 
 
 " Not yet," answered Froda, with a violent effort over his 
 mind ; " but hide thy strange picture, and let us rest beneath 
 this shade. The duel must have tired thee a little ; and for 
 me an unwonted weariness presses me down with leaden 
 weight." 
 
 They dismounted from their horses; and reclined them- 
 selves on the sward. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The noble Froda had no purpose of sleeping ; he wish- 
 ed without disturbance to begin a stout struggle with him- 
 self, and try, if so might be, to drive from his mind the 
 frightfully fair image of Hildegardis. But it was as if the 
 foreign power had already grown a portion of his own life ; 
 and at last a restless, dreamy sleep did in fact overshadow 
 his exhausted senses. He fancied himself fighting among 
 a crowd of knights, and Hildegardis was looking on with 
 smiles from a gay balcony ; and as he was about gaining 
 the prize, he perceived Edvvald moaning in his blood under 
 the hoofs of the horses. Again it seemed to him that he 
 was standing by the side of Hildegardis in a church, and 
 about to be married to her; he knew that it was not right; 
 and the Yes, which he was to pronounce, he pressed back 
 with resolute force into his heart ; and in doing so his eyes 
 were wetted with warm tears. Out of still wilder and more 
 perplexed vision Edwald's voice at length awoke him. He 
 sat up ; and his young comrade was saying in a kind tone, 
 
238 fouque. 
 
 directed towards a neighboring bush : " Come back, how- 
 ever, noble maid. I will surely help you if I can ; I did not 
 mean to scare you away ; only you were not to interrupt 
 my brother in his sleep." A departing gleam of gold glit- 
 tered over through the twigs. 
 
 " For Heaven's sake, comrade," cried Froda, starting to 
 his feet, " whom art thou speaking to, whom didst thou see 
 near me ? " 
 
 " I know not rightly how it was, myself," said Edwald. 
 " Thou hadst scarcely fallen asleep, when a figure came 
 forward from the wood, wrapped up in deep, dark coverings ; 
 at first I took her for a peasant woman. She sat down by 
 thy head, and though I could see nothing of her face, I ob- 
 served that she was in grief, and even saw her weeping. I 
 beckoned to her to remove, and not disturb thee ; and was 
 about to offer her a piece of gold, supposing her distress 
 arose from poverty. But suddenly my hand was as it were 
 rendered powerless ; and a terror passed through my heart, 
 as if I had conceived such a thought against a queen. At 
 the same time glittering gold locks here and there waved out 
 from among her coverings, and the grove began almost to 
 shine with the reflection of them. ' Poor boy,' said she then, 
 1 thou lovest in thy own breast, and canst figure how a high 
 female soul must burn in keen sadness, when a hero that 
 engaged to be ours turns away his heart, and is drawn to 
 lower hopes like a weak bondsman.' Thereupon she rose, 
 and disappeared with a sigh in that bush. I almost felt, 
 Froda, as if she named thee." 
 
 " Yes, she named me," answered Froda ; " and she has 
 not named me in vain. Aslauga ! thy knight comes on; 
 he rides into the lists, and for thee and thy renown alone. 
 And in the meanwhile, Edkin, we will win thy proud bride 
 for thee also." With this, full of his old, proud joyfulness, 
 he again sprang on horseback ; and whenever the magic of 
 
239 
 
 Hildegardis's beauty was about to mount up before him, to 
 dazzle and perplex, he gave a smile and cried, " Aslauga ! " 
 and his inward sun again beamed forth serene and cloud- 
 less. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 On a balcony in the stately Castle of the Mayn, Hilde- 
 gardis was accustomed to enjoy the cool of the evening, 
 looking over the rich, sweet scene ; and, with still more pleas- 
 ure, over the gleam of arms, which might generally be seen 
 at the same time on many distant roads, from knights jour- 
 neying hither, with and without retinue, purposing for the 
 high prize of the Tournament to try their force and courage 
 in it. She was in truth a very proud and high-minded 
 maiden ; and perhaps carried matters farther in this respect 
 than even her glancing beauty and princely rank could 
 altogether justify. Now, as she was once looking over the 
 glittering roads with her usual smile, a young damsel of her 
 train began this little song : 
 
 Ah, were I but a little bird, 
 
 To sing from tree to tree ; 
 And telling no one e'er a word, 
 
 Come out so frank and free 
 With all, O with all that dwelt in me ! 
 
 Ah, were I but a little flower, 
 
 To bloom on grassy lea ; 
 With my sweet perfumes every hour, 
 
 Come out so frank and free 
 With all, O with all that dwelt in me ! 
 
 Ah, I am but an armed Knight 
 
 Bound over land and sea; 
 Must shut my heart in rest and fight ; 
 
 And laid in grave shall be 
 My all, O my all that dwells in me! 
 
240 FOU^UE. 
 
 "Why do you sing this song, and even now ? " said 
 Hildegardis, striving to look very proud and scornful at it, 
 yet a deep, secret sadness was visibly enough flitting over 
 her face. " It came into my head I know not how," re- 
 plied the maid, "as I looked up the road, where the soft 
 Edwald with his dainty little songs first came to us; it was 
 he that taught me this. But seems it not, my mistress, and 
 you, good girls, as if Edwald were riding hither that way 
 again this moment ? " — " Dreams ! " sneered Hildegardis ; 
 and yet for a long while could not lead away her eye from 
 the knight, till at last almost by violence she turned it on 
 Froda, his companion, saying : " Well, yes, that one is 
 Edwald. But what have you to see in that meek, humble 
 boy ? Here cast your eyes, my maidens, on that other 
 lofty form, if you would see a proper man." She was 
 silent. Through her bosom went a sound as of prophesying, 
 that now the conqueror of the Tournament was riding into 
 the court ; and for the first time in her life, in looking at 
 the stately Northman, she felt a submissive, almost painful 
 reverence for a human being. 
 
 At supper the two new-come Knights were placed 
 opposite the queenly Hildegardis. As Froda, after the 
 fashion of the North, was sitting in full armor, the golden 
 figure of Aslauga glittered from the silver cuirass full in the 
 eyes of the proud lady. She smiled haughtily, as if she 
 felt that it depended but on her will to drive the image of 
 that fair one from the breast and the heart of the Knight. 
 But suddenly a clear, golden gleam passed through the hall, 
 so that Hildegardis cried : " What keen lightning ! " and 
 covered her eyes with her hands. Froda, however, looked 
 with joyful salutation at the bright splendor. Thereby 
 Hildegardis's fear of him grew still deeper ; though she 
 thought within herself, this highest and most mysterious 
 of men was before all others born for her alone. Yet she 
 
241 
 
 could not help often looking, almost against her will, with 
 emotion and warmth at the poor Edwald, who was sitting 
 there so silent and kindly, as if he were smiling compassion- 
 ately on his own sorrow and his own vain hope. 
 
 When the two Knights were left alone in their apartment, 
 Edwald still kept looking for a long time from the window 
 into the fresh, airy night. Then he sang to his cithern : 
 
 A Hero so true, 
 A Boy who loved 
 This hero proved, 
 They went through the world, these two. 
 
 The Hero did win 
 Him peace and joy ; 
 This saw the Boy, 
 And had his delight therein. 
 
 But Froda took the cithern from his hands, and said : 
 " No, Edkin, I will teach thee another song. Listen : 
 
 The Hall it grows bright as at morning-tide, 
 
 The Maiden is come in beauty's pride ; 
 
 She looks on the right, and then round the left ; 
 
 No gallant is yet of hope bereft. 
 
 He there with the golden cloak will 't be ? 
 
 She glances aside ; I think, not he. 
 
 Or he with the cunning talk and wise ? 
 
 She's turning from him her ear and eyes. 
 
 Belike 't is the Prince with the pearls and gold ? 
 
 Her look on that side is short and cold. 
 
 Then who, in the world, let us hear, I pray, 
 
 Who is 't that the Maid at last will say ? 
 
 All silent and sorrowing, sits apart 
 
 A dainty young Squire ; he rules her heart. 
 
 They tell many tales to themselves, I wot ; 
 
 That one, he shall win, and knows it not." 
 
 Edwald's heart was glowing within his breast. " As God 
 vol. i. 21 
 
242 FOUQUE. 
 
 will," said he, low to himself; " but I think I should never 
 understand how such a thing had come to pass." 
 
 " As God will ! " repeated Froda. The two friends em- 
 braced, and soon after fell cheerfully asleep. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Some days after this, Froda was once sitting in a remote 
 grove of the Castle garden, reading in the ancient Book 
 about his fair mistress Aslauga. Now it chanced that 
 Hildegardis was passing that way at the time. She stopped 
 thoughtfully, and said : 
 
 " How comes it, you strange compound of Knight and 
 cunning Master, that you keep the rich treasures of your 
 knowledge so much to yourself? I should think, you 
 must have many fine stories ready in your mind ; for in- 
 stance, the one you have before you even now ; for I see 
 some bright, dainty figures of fair virgins and noble heroes 
 painted among the letters." 
 
 " In sooth, it is the lordliest and loveliest story this, in 
 the whole world," answered Froda. " But ye have no 
 patience, and no seriousness, to listen to our old Northland 
 tales." 
 
 " Who told you that ? " said Hildegardis, with a little 
 pride, which she liked to assume towards Froda when she 
 could ; then seated herself on the stone bench opposite him, 
 and gave order that " he should forthwith read to her some- 
 what from the Book." 
 
 Froda began ; and, in the very exertion with which he 
 labored to translate the old heroic Iceland speech into 
 German, his heart and soul flamed up in more solemn 
 fervor. When he raised his eyes now and then, he looked 
 into Hildegardis's beaming countenance, as for joy and sym- 
 
aslauga's knight. 243 
 
 pathy and admiration, it glanced still fairer and fairer ; 
 and thoughts went through his mind, as if she, after all, 
 might be his appointed bride on Earth, to whom Aslauga 
 herself was conducting him. 
 
 Then suddenly the characters grew strangely perplexed 
 before his eyes ; it was as if the figures were beginning to 
 move, and he was forced to stop. But, as he was looking 
 with strained sight into the Book, to drive away this won- 
 drous interruption, he heard a well-known, gently-solemn 
 voice, saying : " Make a little room, fair lady. The story 
 which the Knight is reading to you treats of me, and I like 
 to hear it." 
 
 Before the eyes of the gazing Froda sat his mistress 
 Aslauga, in the pomp of her golden, waving locks, on the 
 bench beside Hildegardis. The maiden, with tears of fright 
 in her eyes, sank back in a swoon. Aslauga threatened her 
 Knight, earnestly but kindly, with her fair right hand, and 
 vanished. 
 
 " What have I done to you," cried Hildegardis, recov- 
 ering from her faint by his exertions, " what have I done 
 to you, wicked Knight, that you call your Northern spectres 
 to my side ; and with your horrid magic frighten me to 
 death ? " 
 
 " Dame," answered Froda, " so help me God, I did not 
 call this mysterious lady, who has just appeared to us. But 
 her will I now know full well ; and so I recommend you to 
 God's keeping." 
 
 With this, he walked thoughtfully out of the grove. 
 
 In affright, Hildegardis fled on the other side, from the 
 sombre gloom of the leaves, and stept forth on a fair 
 open green, where Edwald, in the fine glow of twilight, 
 was plucking flowers ; and, with friendly smiles, he offered 
 her a nosegay of narcissuses and sensitive violets. 
 
244 fouque. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The day appointed for the Tournament had now arrived ; 
 and a great Duke, commissioned as deputy by the Emperor, 
 arranged all things in the lordliest and most splendid fashion 
 for the solemn festival. Large, and level, and beautiful 
 shaped, lay the jousting-ground ; strewed with the finest 
 sand, that man and horse might have proper footing on it; 
 and glancing forth almost like a pure field of snow in the 
 middle of the green lea. Rich cloths of silk from Arabia, 
 decorated in curious interlacings with Indian gold, hung 
 many-colored over the lists inclosing the space, and flowed 
 down from the high scaffoldings erected for ladies and 
 princely spectators. At the upper end, under a canopy of 
 golden arches, tastefully and boldly crossed and combined, 
 was Hildegardis's station. Green garlands and wreaths 
 waved gracefully between the glittering pillars, in the fine 
 July air ; and, with impatient eyes, the crowding multitude 
 outside the lists looked up to this, expecting the sight of the 
 fairest maiden in Germany ; and only now and then drawn 
 some other way by the stately entrance of men-at-arms, 
 riding gallantly through the barriers. O ! how many bright 
 harnesses, and richly embroidered cloaks of satin, and high- 
 waving plumes, were to be seen there that day ! The lordly 
 host, saluting each other and speaking together, swayed this 
 way and that, on the ground within the lists, like a flower- 
 bed stirred by the breath of the air; but a bed where the 
 stalks had grown to trees, and the yellow and white leaves had 
 bloomed into gold and silver, and the dew-drops had har- 
 dened into pearls and diamonds. For whatever was beau- 
 tiful and precious in the world these noble gentlemen 
 had tastefully and variedly expended on the glory of that 
 day. 
 
aslauga's knight. 245 
 
 Many eyes were turned on Froda, who, without scarf, or 
 plume, or cloak, with his silver-gleaming cuirass, and 
 Aslauga's golden figure on it, and his well- wrought helmet 
 of golden locks, glittered from amid the crowd like polished 
 brass. Others also there were, that found their enjoyment 
 in looking at young Edwald, who wore a cloak of white 
 satin, fringed with azure and silver, almost covering his 
 whole armor ; and a large plume of swan-white feathers, 
 overflowing his whole helmet. To view him, he seemed 
 decorated with almost feminine grace ; and yet the rare 
 force with which he managed his wild white steed an- 
 nounced the victorious strength of this tender hero. 
 
 In strange contrast with these two was a giant shape in 
 armor, dressed in a cloak of black, shining bearskin, 
 trimmed with fine fur, without any ornament of clear metal 
 whatever ; even his helmet was overlaid with black bear- 
 skin ; and, instead of plumes, a mane of blood-red horse-hair 
 streamed copiously down on all sides from it. Froda and 
 Edwald knew the dark Knight well ; it was their uncivil 
 guest in the inn ; and he likewise seemed to recognize the 
 two friends; for he whirled hfs horse abruptly round, 
 pressed through the crowd of fighters, and, after speaking 
 some time at the lists with an ugly, brass-colored old wo- 
 man, sprang over the enclosure with a wild leap, and, dart- 
 ing off like an arrow, vanished out of sight. The old woman 
 nodded after him with a friendly gesture ; the multitude 
 laughed, as at a strange Carnival show ; and Edwald and 
 Froda had their own almost frightsome thoughts on the 
 matter; which, however, they did not see meet to impart to 
 each other. 
 
 The kettledrums rolled, the trumpets sounded ; leaning on 
 the old Duke's arm, Hildegardis, richly attired, more re- 
 splendent still in all the brightness of her own beauty, stept 
 forward, under the arching of the golden bower and ccurt- 
 21* 
 
246 fouque. 
 
 esied to the assembly. The Knights bowed their heads to 
 the ground, and perhaps in every one of their hearts this 
 thought might be beating : " There is no man on Earth that 
 can merit so royal a bride." While Froda bowed, it seemed 
 to him the golden light of Aslauga's tresses glanced over his 
 eye ; and his heart was proud and gay, that his mistress 
 held him worthy to be put in mind of her so often. 
 
 The Tournament began. At first, the trial was with 
 blunt swords and battle-axes ; then man to man, with 
 lances ; and, finally, the whole host parted into two equal 
 bodies, and commenced a universal fight, in which it stood 
 with every one to use sword or spear, as he pleased. 
 
 Froda and Edwald had alike gained the prize over their 
 rivals ; as each, justly estimating his own and his friend's 
 courageous force, had in some degree anticipated ; and 
 now the two were to decide, by a match at running with 
 the lance, to whom the highest crown of victory belonged. 
 Before commencing, they rode slowly into the middle of 
 the course together, and settled where they were to take 
 their places. 
 
 "Keep thy inspiring star firmly in thy eye, 1 ' smiled Froda. 
 w I, too, shall not want the like gracious help." 
 
 Edwald looked round with astonishment to see the mis- 
 tress whom his friend seemed to have in view, and the 
 latter continued : 
 
 "I did wrong to conceal aught from thee; but after the 
 jousting, thou shalt know all. For the present, heed not 
 unnecessary thoughts, dear Edkin, and sit firm, firm in thy 
 saddle ; for I tell thee, I will run with all my force ; seeing 
 it is not my own honor only that is at stake, but the far 
 higher honor of my lady." 
 
 "In such wise I also purpose to do," said Edwald kindly. 
 They shook hands, and then rode to their places. 
 
 At the pealing of the trumpets, the friends, dashing for- 
 
aslauga's knight. 247 
 
 ward quick as arrows, again met together. Their lances 
 shivered into splinters ; the horses staggered ; the Knights, 
 unmoved in their stirrups, plucked them up, and rode back 
 to their stations. 
 
 When the signal was given for another course, Edwald's 
 white steed snorted, wild and affrighted ; Froda's strong 
 chesnut reared into the air. It was clear that the two noble 
 animals both dreaded a second hard encounter ; but the 
 Knights held them firm with bit and spur, and, at a new 
 call of the trumpets, they again thundered forward, fierce 
 and obedient. Edwald had, with a deep, glowing look anew 
 impressed his soul with the beauty of his mistress ; at the 
 moment of meeting, he cried aloud: "Hildegardis ! " and 
 so hard did his lance strike his valiant adversary, that the 
 latter sank back on the haunches of his horse, with diffi- 
 culty kept his saddle, and scarcely continued stirrup-fast; 
 while Edwald, without wavering, dashed by ; lowered his 
 spear in salutation as he passed Hildegardis's bower; and 
 then, amid the loud huzzaing of the multitude, galloped to 
 his place for the third course. Ah ! Hildergardis herself had 
 greeted him with blushes and kind looks, in her surprise ; 
 and he felt as if the intoxicating bliss of this victory were 
 already won. 
 
 Won, however, it was not ; for the noble Froda, glowing 
 with warlike shame, was again taming his frighted horse, 
 and chastising it with sharp strokes of his spurs, for the 
 share it had borne in this mischief. At the same time he 
 said in a low voice : " Dear, fair mistress, show thyself visi- 
 bly to me ; it concerns thy name's honor." 
 
 To all other persons it seemed as if a rosy, golden sum- 
 mer cloud were flitting over the deep blue sky ; but Froda 
 looked into the heavenly face of his mistress; felt himself, 
 as it were, fanned by her golden tresses; and "Aslauga!" 
 cried he, and the Knights rushed together; and far from, 
 his horse flew Edwald, down upon the dusty course. 
 
248 fou^ue. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Froda, in knightly fashion, first for a space continued in 
 motionless stillness ; as if waiting to see whether any one 
 yet thought of contesting him the victory ; and, on his 
 mailed horse, he looked almost like a lofty statue of metal. 
 All around, the people stood silent in abashed astonishment; 
 and as they did break out in the cry of triumph, he beck- 
 oned solemnly with his hand, and all were again dumb. 
 Then, with a light bound, he was out of his saddle, and 
 hastened to the place where the fallen Edwald was rising. 
 He pressed him closely to his heart ; led his white steed 
 to him, and insisted on holding the stirrup as he mounted. 
 Then he himself again sprang on horseback also, and rode 
 by the side of Edwald to Hildegardis's gold bower ; where, 
 with lowered spear, and lifted visor, he thus spoke: 
 
 "Fairest of all living women, I bring you here Edwald, 
 your knightly bridegroom, before whose lance and sword 
 all the heroes of this Tournament have yielded, I excepted, 
 to whom the lordly jewel of the victory can nowise belong ; 
 seeing, as the figure on my cuirass shows, [ already serve 
 another mistress." 
 
 The Duke was on the point of stepping forward to the 
 two Knights, to conduct them up to the bower ; but a sign 
 from Hildegardis restrained him ; and she said, with angry, 
 agitated looks : 
 
 "Then it seems, my Danish Knight, Sir Froda, you serve 
 your lady ill ; for, even now, you have openly called me 
 the fairest of living women." 
 
 "This I did," answered Froda, with a courteous bow, 
 "because my fair mistress belongs to the dead." 
 
 A slight horror breathed through the multitude at these 
 words, and through Hildegardis's heart ; but soon the anger 
 
aslauga's knight. 249 
 
 of the virgin again flamed up, and the more, as the lordliest 
 and most wondrous knight whom she knew despised her for 
 the sake of one dead. 
 
 "I make known to all," cried she, with solemn earnest- 
 ness, " that by the just will of my Imperial uncle, this hand 
 can belong to no vanquished man, how noble and renowned 
 soever he may otherwise have appeared. And as the con- 
 queror in this Tournament is bound by service elsewhere, 
 this battle must for me be accounted no battle, and I go 
 hence as I came, a free, unaflianced maid." 
 
 The Duke seemed desirous of remonstrating ; but she 
 turned proudly from him, and left the bower. At this in- 
 stant, a sharp, unexpected gust of air laid hold of the green 
 garlands and wreaths, and threw their ravelled and rustling 
 festoons after her ; wherein the people, dissatisfied with her 
 haughtiness, thought they saw a threatening omen ; and so, 
 with murmurs of derisive approval, they dispersed. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The two Knights had returned, in deep silence, to their 
 apartments. Arrived there, Edwald had himself dishar- 
 nessed ; he placed all the pieces of his fair, bright armor 
 carefully together, with a kind exactness, almost as if he 
 were burying a beloved friend that was dead. Then he 
 beckoned his squires to leave the chamber, took his lute in 
 his arm, and sang this little song to its notes : 
 
 " Who 's this thou art laying 
 
 In grave so still ? 
 My wild, my unstaying, 
 
 And fro ward will. 
 Sleep soundly, thou will, in thy narrow bedl 
 My hope sleeps with thee, *t is cold and dead," 
 
250 FOUQCE. 
 
 " Thou wilt make me hate thy lute," said Froda : " do 
 now accustom it to merrier touches. It is far too good for 
 a passing-bell, and thou, in sooth, for such a bellman. I tell 
 thee, my young hero, it will all be right, and as it should 
 be." 
 
 Edvvald looked in his face with astonishment for a while, 
 then answered kindly : " No, dear Froda, if it offends thee, 
 I will surely not sing again." However, he struck a few 
 tones from the lute, which sounded infinitely tender and lov- 
 ing. Then the Northman, much moved, caught him in his 
 arms, and said : " Dear Edkin, sing, and speak, and do 
 whatever pleases thee ; to me it will always be delightful. 
 But thou mayest believe it well, when I say to thee, with 
 no unaided knowledge, that thy sorrow must end ; whether 
 to death or life I yet see not, but great, surpassing joy does 
 await thee, for certain." Firm and cheerful Edvvald rose 
 from his s^at. grasped his companion's arm, and stept out 
 with him, through blooming shrubberies, into the airy cool- 
 ness of twilight. 
 
 At this same hour, an old woman, disguised in much su- 
 perfluous apparel, was proceeding, under secret guidance, 
 to the fair Hildegardis's chamber. The woman was swarthy 
 and singular to look upon ; by many feats of art, she had 
 collected about her a part of the multitude returning from 
 the Tournament, and, in the end, had scared them all 
 asunder in wild horror. Before this last occurrence, Hilde- 
 gardis's girdle-maid had hastened to her mistress, to en- 
 tertain her with the strange, merry, conjuring tricks of 
 the old brass-colored woman ; and the ladies of the suite, 
 striving to banish the chagrin of their disconsolate Princess, 
 bade the messenger call in the crone. Hildegardis assented, 
 hoping thereby to divert the attention of her maidens from 
 herself; and so be permitted, with more deep and earnest 
 attention, to watch the varying forms that were flitting in 
 confusion through her mind. 
 
251 
 
 Hildegardis's maid found the place already empty, and 
 the old brass-colored stranger standing in the middle of it, 
 laughing immoderately. Being questioned, the woman did 
 not hesitate to tell how she had, in a twinkling, disguised 
 herself in the shape of a huge owl, and, in screeching words, 
 informed the spectators that she was the Devil, whereupon 
 every one of them had with loud shrieks run off for home. 
 
 The maid felt frightened at the thought of such hateful 
 jesting ; yet she durst not go back to ask new orders from her 
 mistress, having already noticed the bad humor she was in. 
 Therefore she satisfied herself with enjoining on the old 
 woman, under many promises and threats, the strictest 
 charges to behave herself with proper discreetness and 
 good-manners in the Castle ; and then led her in by the 
 most secret paths, that none of those she had just frightened 
 might notice her. 
 
 The crone now appeared before Hildegardis ; and, in 
 the midst of a deep, humble courtesy, nodded to her, in a 
 strange, confidential wise, as if the two had been concerned 
 in some mutual secret. The Princess involuntarily shrunk 
 together at this movement ; yet, hideous as the old woman's 
 face appeared to her, she could not for a moment turn away 
 her eyes from it. To the rest, the expectations they had 
 placed on the old woman seemed by no means repaid ; in 
 truth, she played nothing but the most ordinary tricks, and 
 told stories, known to every one ; so that even the girdle- 
 maid grew wearied and indifferent, and felt no little shame 
 at having recommended her. She accordingly soon glided 
 out unobserved, and several of the maidens followed her ex- 
 ample ; and still, as any one of them withdrew, the old 
 crone twisted her mouth into a smile, and repeated that hate- 
 fully confidential nod. Hildegardis could not understand 
 what attraction it was that she felt to the jests and stories of 
 this brass-colored woman ; but so it was, in her whole life 
 
252 fou^ue. 
 
 she had never listened to any one with such attention. The 
 crone went on narrating and narrating, and the night was 
 already looking dark through the windows ; but the maidens 
 who were still with Hildegardis had all sunk into deep 
 sleep, and forgotten to light tapers in the chamber. 
 
 Then, in the sombre hour of dusk, this swart old woman 
 rose from the stool where she had hitherto been sitting, and 
 just as if she now felt at her ease and at home, stept for- 
 ward to Hildegardis, who was stupefied with horror ; sat 
 down beside her on her purple couch, clasped her, with 
 odious caresses, in her long, withered arms, and whispered 
 some words in her ear. The Princess felt as if some one 
 were pronouncing Froda's and Edwald's name, both at once, 
 and the sound of them seemed to change into a melody of 
 flutes; which, clear and silvery as its warblings were, never- 
 theless lulled her as into a sleep ; she could move her limbs 
 indeed, but only to follow the music, which wove as it were 
 a veil of silver net-work around the hideous form of the 
 crone. And the latter walked from the chambers, and Hil- 
 degardis after her, through her sleeping maidens, singing all 
 the way in a low, small voice : "Ye maidens, ye maidens, I 
 wander at night." 
 
 Outside the Castle was the giant Bohemian, in his bear- 
 skin cloak, waiting with squire and groom, all ready mount- 
 ed. He laid a heavy bag of money on the crone's shoul- 
 ders, so that she sank, half-whimpering, half-laughing, to the 
 around ; then he lifted the dreaming Hildegardis on his 
 horse, and galloped off with her in silence, into the deepen- 
 ing gloom of the night. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 " Ye bold lords and knights, who yesterday contended in 
 honor for the prize of your arms, the fair Hildegardis's 
 
aslauga's knight. 253 
 
 hand ! Arise ! Arise ! Saddle your steeds, and away ! The 
 fair Hildegardis is stolen ! " 
 
 So next morning, in the clear redness of dawn, were 
 many heralds crying through castle and town ; and on every 
 side were knights and noble squires dashing forth in clouds 
 of dust, by all the roads, along which, lately in the fair 
 twilight, Hildegardis had, in silent pride, seen her many 
 suitors advancing. 
 
 Two, whom you well knew, proceeded in inseparable 
 companionship on this occasion, as before ; but whether 
 they were on the right track or not, they knew as little as 
 the rest ; for how, and when, the adored mistress could 
 have vanished from her chambers, was still to the whole 
 Court a frightful, inexplicable riddle. 
 
 Edwald and Froda had travelled on so long as the sun 
 moved over their heads, unresting as he ; and now when he 
 was sinking in the waves of the river, they thought to gain 
 the race of him, and again spurred their wearied horses ; 
 but the noble animals staggered and moaned, and there was 
 nothing for it but to let them feed a little on the grassy 
 sward. Certain of bringing them again at the first call, the 
 knights freed them of curb and snaffle, and sent them off to 
 graze at freedom, and drink in the blue, fresh Mayn ; they 
 themselves, in the mean while, resting under the boughs of a 
 neighboring alder-tree. 
 
 And, deep in the cool, dark shades, rose a gleam as of a 
 mild but clear-glittering light, and checked Froda's utter- 
 ance, who was, even now, preparing to acquaint his friend 
 of his plighted service to the fair Aslauga ; having hitherto 
 been hindered from it, first by Edwald's sadness, and then 
 by his impatience in travelling. Ah ! this soft, lovely, gold 
 light was well known to Froda. ." Let us follow it, Edkin," 
 said he, in a low voice ; "and let the horses, in the mean 
 while, rest and graze." Edwald, without answering, did as 
 
 vol. i. 22 
 
254 fouque. 
 
 his companion advised. An inward voice, half-sweet, half- 
 fearful, seemed to tell him that here was the path to Hilde- 
 gardis, and the sole path that led to her. Once only he said, 
 with a tone of surprise : u I never saw the twilight glance 
 so beautifully on the leaves as it is doing now." Froda 
 shook his head and smiled, and they pursued in silence their 
 secret track. 
 
 On issuing from the other side of the alder-wood, at the 
 shore of the Mayn, which almost encircled it by a sweeping 
 turn, Edwald saw well that some other brightness than that 
 of twilight was shining on them ; for the night already hung 
 in cloudy darkness in the sky, and their guiding beam stop- 
 ped at the strand of the river. The waves were sufficiently 
 enlightened by it, to expose to view a little woody island in 
 the middle of the stream, and a boat on this side fastened 
 to a stake. But on approaching the spot, the Knights de- 
 scried new objects. A troop of horsemen, of strange, for- 
 eign shape, all in deep slumber ; and, reclining on cushions 
 in the midst of them, a sleeping female dressed in while. 
 
 11 Hildegardis ! " smiled Edwald to himself, in scarcely- 
 audible tones; at the same time he drew his sword, making 
 ready for battle, if so were, the robbers might awaken ; and 
 beckoned to Froda to lift the sleeping lady, and bring her 
 to a place of safety. But at that instant, something in the 
 figure of an owl passed whirring over the black squadron ; 
 and, with a sudden rattling clang, they all started up, and 
 flew with hideous howling to arms. A tumultuous, unequal 
 battle rose in the darkness, for the friendly gleam had van- 
 ished. Froda and Edwald were parted in the press, and 
 could only hear each other's stout war-cry from a far dis- 
 tance. Hildegardis, roused from her enchanted sleep, not 
 knowing whether she was dreaming or awake, fled with 
 bewildered senses, and bitterly weeping, into the deepest 
 shades of the alders. 
 
255 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Froda felt his arm growing weary, and the warm blood 
 running down from two wounds in his shoulder. Therefore 
 he determined so to die, that he might mount up with honor 
 from his bloody grave to the high mistress whom he served ; 
 and throwing his shield backwards, he grasped the handle of 
 his sword with both hands, and rushed with a loud war-shout 
 on the terrified enemy. Immediately he heard some voices 
 crying : " It is the Northland fury that is coming on him ! 
 The battle-madness ! " And the host, in affright, darted 
 asunder, and the wearied hero remained in his wounds alone 
 in the darkness. 
 
 Then once more Aslauga's gold hair gleamed in the 
 shades of the wood; and Froda, exhausted and leaning on 
 his sword, looked towards it, and said : " I think not that I 
 am yet wounded to death ; but when it does come to this, 
 then, O beloved mistress ! then, of a surety, thou wilt like- 
 wise appear to me in all thy loveliness and splendor ? " A 
 low " Yes " came breathing over his cheeks, and the gold 
 light vanished. 
 
 But now Hildegardis, almost fainting, staggered forth 
 from the thickets, and said, with a feeble voice : " Within is 
 the frightfully fair Northland spectre, and without is the 
 battle ! O good God ! whither shall I turn ? " 
 
 Then Froda went towards her with soothing gestures, 
 was about to say many comforting words to her, and to ask 
 concerning Edwald, when suddenly the sound of armor, and 
 wild shouts, gave notice that the Bohemian robbers were 
 returning to the charge. Froda hastily conducted the 
 maiden to the boat ; pushed it off from the shore ; and 
 rowed with the last effort of his strength to reach the 
 woody island, which he had before seen in the middle of the 
 
256 fouque. 
 
 river. But the robbers had lit torches ; they waved them 
 sparkling this way and that ; and by their light discovered 
 the boat, as well as that their dreaded Danish enemy was 
 wounded ; and from this, new courage rose in their plunder- 
 ing hearts. Froda, before he reached the island, had heard 
 a Bohemian on the other side coming down with a fresh 
 skiff, then a crowd of the foe getting into it, and beginning 
 to pull after him. 
 
 M To the wood, fair virgin ! " whispered he, so soon as he 
 had helped Hildegardis ashore. " Hide yourself there, 
 while I try to keep the robbers from landing. " 
 
 But Hildegardis clung fast to his arm, and whispered in 
 reply : " Did I not see you stained in your blood, and pale ? 
 And would you that 1 die of terror in the. solitary clefts of 
 this dark hill ? Ah ! and if your Northland gold-haired 
 lady-spirit were to come again, and sit down by me — O 
 think you, I do not see how she shines there through the 
 bushes even now ? " 
 
 " She shines I " repeated Froda ; and new force and 
 hope ran through his veins. He mounted the ascent, follow- 
 ing the kind gleam ; and though Hildegardis trembled at it, 
 she willingly accompanied her guide; only now and then 
 whispering, in an anxious voice: " Ah, Knight! my high, 
 wondrous Knight ! do not leave me alone here ! It would be 
 my death ! " Soothing her with friendly encouragements, 
 he walked on faster and faster, through the hollows and 
 darkness of the wood ; for he already heard the sound of 
 the robbers landing on the shore of the island. 
 
 Suddenly he found himself at the mouth of a cave, 
 thickly covered with bushes ; and the gleam vanished. 
 " Here, then ! " whispered he, endeavoring to hold the 
 branches asunder, that Hildegardis might enter more easily. 
 She paused for a moment, and said : 
 
 " If you were to let go the branches again behind me, 
 
aslauga's knight. 257 
 
 and I were to be left alone with spectres in the cave ! — Oh 
 Heaven ! — But, Froda, no doubt you will follow me, poor, 
 frightened, hunted creature, will you not IV 
 
 In this confidence she stepped through the boughs ; and 
 Froda, who could have wished to remain as sentry, followed 
 her. With strained ear he hearkened through the stillness 
 of the night ; Hildegardis durst scarcely draw her breath. 
 The clanging of an armed footstep approached nearer 
 and nearer, close by the mouth of the cave ; and Froda 
 endeavored in vain to get loose of the trembling maiden. 
 The branches at the entrance were crashing and breaking. 
 Froda sighed heavily : " So I must fall here, like a lurking 
 fugitive, with women's veils floating round me ! O God ! it 
 is a sorry end ! But can I cast away from me this half- 
 fainting form, and let her sink upon the dark, hard ground ? 
 Perhaps down into an abyss ? Well, be then what must be ! 
 Thou, Aslauga, my mistress, knowest that I die in honor ! M 
 
 " Froda ! Hildegardis ! n said a soft, well-known voice, at 
 the entrance of the cavern ; and, recognizing Edwald, Froda, 
 with glad readiness, carried out the Princess into the star- 
 light; " She is dying in our hands for terror,' 1 said he, "in 
 this black chasm. Are the enemy near? " 
 
 " Most part of them are lying dead on the shore, or 
 floating in their blood among the waves. Lay aside anxiety, 
 and rest yourselves. Art thou wounded, dear Froda? n 
 
 In answer to the questions of his astonished friends, he 
 then briefly related, how, passing in the dark for a Bohe- 
 mian knight, he had stept into the skiff with the rest ; after 
 which, on landing, he had found no difficulty in entirely 
 confounding the robbers; who, seeing themselves attacked 
 from the middle of their own troop, had imagined that they 
 were bewitched. " At last," thus he ended his narrative, 
 " they set to cutting down each other ; and now we have 
 only to wait for morning, to begin our journey home with 
 22* 
 
258 
 
 FOUQUE. 
 
 the Princess. For what of the owl-squadron still flits about 
 will of itself hide in daylight." 
 
 While relating these things, he had been preparing, with 
 great care and daintiness, a bed of twigs and moss for 
 Hildegardis; and the wearied lady having, with some 
 gentle words of thanks, soon fallen asleep, he began to 
 dress his friend's wounds, as well as the darkness would 
 permit. 
 
 During this earnest occupation, under the moaning of the 
 high, dark trees, with the voice of the river-waves murmuring 
 from a distance, Froda, in a low voice, informed his knight- 
 ly brother what mistress it was that he served. Ed\vald 
 listened in deep thought, but at last said : 
 
 " Believe me, however, the lofty Princess Aslauga will 
 not be wroth with thee, though thou bind thyself in true love 
 with this earthly fair one. Ah ! surely even now thou art 
 shining in the dreams of Hildegardis, thou richly-gifted, 
 happy hero ! I will not stand in thy way with my foolish 
 wishes ; it is clear enough that she can never, never love 
 me. Therefore this very day will I set forth to join the 
 war, which so many bold German knights are waging in the 
 heathen land of Prussia ; and the black cross, which makes 
 them priestly warriors, I will lay, as the surest remedy, on 
 my beating heart. And do thou, dear Froda, take the fair 
 hand which thou hast won in knightly battle, and lead a life 
 of happiness and satisfaction without example." 
 
 " Edwald," said Froda, in a serious tone, " this is the 
 first time I ever heard a word from thy mouth, which an 
 honest follower of knighthood could not turn to action. Do 
 thou towards the fair, haughty Hildegardis according to thy 
 pleasure ; but Aslauga remains my mistress, and no other 
 will I serve in life or death." 
 
 At this rigorous answer the youth felt as it were rebuked, 
 and was silent ; and the two, without farther speech, sat 
 
259 
 
 watching throughout the night in their own solemn contem- 
 plations. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Next morning, scarcely had the sun, bright and smiling, 
 scattered his first radiance over the flowery plains round Hil- 
 degardis's castle, when the watchman blew a merry air on his 
 silver horn ; for, with his falcon eyes, he had already from a 
 far distance recognized the Princess, as she came riding 
 along between her two deliverers. And from castle, and 
 town, and hamlet, gay crowds issued forth, hastening to wit- 
 ness the glad arrival. 
 
 Hildegardis turned on Edwald her eyes, shining through 
 tears, and said : " Had it not been for you, young hero, 
 all these kind people might have sought long and vainly 
 before finding me in my distress, and before tracing out the 
 noble Froda, who doubtless must now have been lying dumb 
 and cold, a bloody, mangled corpse, in the dark cleft of the 
 rocks." 
 
 Edwald bowed humbly, but persisted in his usual silence ; 
 nay, it seemed as if some unwonted sorrow repressed even 
 the friendly smile, which formerly, in sweet gentleness, 
 came over his face so readily, at any word of kindness. 
 
 The Duke, Hildegardis's guardian, had, in the great joy 
 of his heart, prepared a sumptuous morning repast, and 
 invited to it all the dames and knights who were still there. 
 Now, as Froda and Edwald were ascending the stair, in 
 shining pomp, close after Hildegardis, the youth said in a 
 half whisper to his friend : 
 
 " Thou canst indeed never more love me, thou noble, 
 steadfast hero ? " and as Froda looked at him with astonish- 
 ment, he proceeded : " This it is when boys take it into their 
 
260 Fouqui. 
 
 heads to counsel heroes, however well intended it may be. 
 For now I have sinned heavily against thee, and against thy 
 high mistress Aslauga still more." 
 
 " Because thou wouldst have plucked away every flower 
 in the garden of thy life, to give me pleasure ? " said Froda. 
 " No ; thou continuest my gentle brother in knighthood now 
 as before, dear Edkin ; perhaps thou art grown still dearer 
 to me." 
 
 Then Edwald again smiled in still gladness, like a flower 
 after the morning rain in May. 
 
 The eyes of Hildegardis glanced on him, mild and kindly ; 
 she often spoke with him also, in benignant words and tones ; 
 while, on the other hand, since yesternight, a reverent fear 
 seemed to withdraw her from Froda. But Edwald, too, was 
 much altered. With whatever humble joy he accepted the con- 
 descending favor of his mistress, it still seemed as if there 
 stood something between the two, which forbade his every, 
 even the most distant, hope of happiness in love. 
 
 Now, it chanced that a noble Count, from the Emperor's 
 Court, was announced ; who, being then bound on a weighty 
 mission, wished to pay his reverence to the Princess in 
 passing. She received him joyfully ; and, directly after the 
 first salutations, looking at her and Edwald, he said : " I 
 know not if my good fortune has guided me to a most 
 pleasant festival ? It would be glad news for the Emperor 
 my master." 
 
 Hildegardis and Edwald looked very lovely in their em- 
 barrassed blushing ; and the Count, observing that he had 
 been too hasty, bowed humbly to the young knight, and 
 said : " Pardon me, noble Duke Edwald, my forward way ; 
 but I know the wish of my Sovereign, and the hope 
 that this might be already fulfilled made my tongue forget 
 itself." 
 
 The eyes of all present fixed inquiringly upon the young 
 
aslauga's knight. 261 
 
 hero, who, with graceful embarrassment, thus spoke : " It 
 is true, the Emperor, during my last attendance in his Imperi- 
 al camp, had the excessive graciousness to make me a Duke. 
 My good fortune so ordered it, that, in one of our actions, some 
 horsemen of the enemy, who had dared to attack the sacred 
 person of our Sovereign, fled away just as I arrived at the 
 spot." 
 
 The Count, at Hildegardis's request, circumstantially re- 
 lated this heroic achievement; and it came to light that 
 Edwald had not only saved the Emperor from the most 
 imminent danger ; but likewise, shortly afterwards ar- 
 ranged, and, in the cool, daring spirit of a general, 
 victoriously fought, the main battle which decided the 
 war. 
 
 Astonishment at first held every one mute ; and before 
 the congratulations could begin, Hildegardis turned to Ed- 
 wald, and said, in a low voice, which, however, in the 
 silence, was heard by all: " The noble Count has expressed 
 the wish of my Imperial uncle ; and I now conceal it no 
 longer, my heart's wish is the same. I am Duke Edwald's 
 bride." 
 
 With this, she held out to him her fair right hand ; and 
 all present waited only for his taking it, to break forth in 
 loud approval. But Edwald did not do as they expected ; 
 on the contrary, he sank on his knee before the Princess, 
 saying: " God forbid that the lofty Hildegardis should ever 
 recall a word which she has solemnly spoken before dames 
 and knights. To no vanquished man, you -said, could the 
 hand of the Emperor's niece belong ; and there stands the 
 noble Danish knight Froda, my conqueror." 
 
 Hildegardis turned hastily away with a slight blush, and 
 hid her eyes; and while Edwald rose, it seemed as if a tear 
 ran over his cheek. 
 
 Clanging in his armor, Froda stept into the middle of the 
 
262 FOUQUE. 
 
 hall, and exclaimed : " I declare my late victory over Duke 
 Edwald to be pure accident, and again challenge the knight- 
 ly hero into the lists to-morrow." And so saying, he threw 
 down his iron gauntlet, and it rung on the floor. 
 
 But Edwald did not rise to lift it. On the contrary, a 
 deep blush of anger glowed on his cheeks, his eyes glanced 
 indignantly, so that you would scarcely have recognized 
 him for the same person ; and after a pause, he said : " No- 
 ble Knight, Sir Froda, if I erred towards you, we are now 
 even. How could you, a hero gloriously wounded of two 
 sword-cuts, challenge a healthy man to-morrow into the 
 lists, if you did not despise him ? " 
 
 " Pardon me, Duke," answered Froda, somewhat put to 
 shame, but in all cheerfulness ; " I spoke too fast. Not till 
 my complete cure do I challenge you." 
 
 Then Edwald joyfully lifted the gauntlet ; again knelt 
 down before Hildegardis, who, turning away her face, held 
 him out her fair right hand to kiss ; and then, arm in arm 
 with his high Danish friend, he walked out of the hall. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 While Froda's cure was proceeding, Edwald, impatient 
 till it were completed, went out now and then, while the 
 evening was darkening down deep and silent over him, and 
 walked on the flowery terrace under Hildegardis's window, 
 singing graceful little dainty songs, which the maidens of 
 the Princess learned from him, and often repeated. 
 
 About this time it happened, that, one night when the two 
 friends were together, a man who occupied the post of 
 Writer to the old Duke, Hildegardis's guardian, and who 
 reckoned himself a very knowing person, paid them a visit ; 
 for the purpose, as he said, of making them an humble 
 proposal. 
 
263 
 
 The short account of the business was this : that, as it 
 was impossible for Froda to do any good with victory, he 
 should take his opportunity, in the approaching Tournament, 
 and quietly fall from his horse ; in which wise he might 
 with certainty secure to his companion the hand of the 
 bride, and at the same time gratify the Imperial will, a thing 
 that could not but turn to good profit for himself in many- 
 senses. 
 
 At this the two friends in the first place laughed very 
 heartily together ; then Froda stept up to the Writer, and 
 said, with great seriousness: "Thee, little mannikin, the 
 old Duke, if he knew thy foolish talk, would, in all likeli- 
 hood, pack out of his service, not once to mention the 
 Imperial will. But there is a proverb you must get by- 
 heart : 
 
 When knight with knight hath rode to the lists, 
 
 The time is gone for talking of jests ; 
 
 When knight on knight in the course must dash, 
 
 No king or kaiser can stay the clash ; 
 
 And who pokes his nose in their knightly fray, 
 
 He has wished his nose from that hour good-day. 
 
 "And so your servant, worthy Sir ! And assure yourself 
 that Edwald and I will run at one another in truth of heart, 
 with all the force that is in us." 
 
 The Writer vanished from the chamber in no small haste ; 
 and it is said that even next morning he looked exceedingly 
 pale. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Soon after this, Froda had recovered ; the course was again 
 made ready as before, only that it was encircled by even 
 a greater multitude of people ; and, in the freshness of the 
 
264 fouque, 
 
 clear, dewy morning, the two heroes rode out solemnly to- 
 gether to the battle. 
 
 " Good Edwald," said Froda, in a low voice by the way, 
 " prepare thyself beforehand ; for this time, too, the victory 
 will not be thine. On that red, shining cloud stands As- 
 lauga." 
 
 "May be," replied Edwald, with a still smile; "but, 
 under the wreaths of her gold bower, Hildegardis is already 
 beaming, and to-day is even there before us." 
 
 The knights took their places; the trumpets called, the 
 course began ; and truly Froda's prediction seemed about 
 to be fulfilled ; for, as they rushed together, Edwald tottered 
 in his seat, so that he let go the bridle, caught the mane 
 with both hands, -and not without great labor recovered his 
 position ; whilst his wild white horse scoured over the ground 
 with ungovernable springs. Hildegardis also seemed to 
 waver at this sight, but the youth at last tamed his steed, 
 and the second course began. 
 
 Froda shot along the ground like a thunderbolt ; all 
 thought that the Duke's victory was utterly hopeless. But 
 just at the instant of meeting, the bold Danish horse reared 
 on end as if frightened ; the rider swayed, his spear went 
 by without hitting, and, under Edwald's firm charge, both 
 steed and knight rushed clanging to the ground, and lay 
 there as if stupefied. 
 
 Edwald now did as Froda had done a short time before. 
 In knightly wise he continued for a space motionless on the 
 spot, as if waiting whether any other adversary would dis- 
 pute the victory with him ; then he sprang from his horse, 
 and flew to the help of his prostrated friend. 
 
 Eagerly he labored to draw him from beneath his horse ; 
 and, ere long, Froda regained his senses, extricated himself, 
 and also plucked up his steed. Then lie raised his visor, 
 and smiled on his conqueror with a face of warm friendli- 
 
265 
 
 ness, though it was somewhat pale. The latter bowed 
 humbly, almost bashfully, and said : " Thou, my hero, 
 thrown ! And by me ! I understand it not." 
 
 " She herself wished it," answered Froda, smiling. " But 
 come now to thy lofty bride." 
 
 In loud triumph shouted the people, low bowed the knights 
 and ladies, as the old Duke now advanced with the lovely 
 pair, and, at his bidding, under the wreaths of the gold bower, 
 they fell into each other's arms with soft blushing. 
 
 That same day they were solemnly wedded in the chapel 
 of the Castle, seeing Frocla had so wished it. A far jour- 
 ney, he said, into another country, was at hand for him ; 
 and he could wish so much to be present at the nuptials of 
 his friend before departing. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The tapers were flaming clear in the arched halls of the 
 Castle ; Hildegardis had just quitted the arm of her lord, to 
 lead off a dance with the old Duke, when Edwald beckoned 
 to his brother-in-arms, and both walked out into the moon- 
 shiny garden. 
 
 " Ah ! Froda, my high, lordly hero," said Edwald, after 
 some pause ; " wert thou but as happy as I ! But thy look, 
 earnest and thoughtful, fixes on the ground ; or glows im- 
 patient skyward. It were unspeakable if thou hadst really 
 borne a secret longing in thy heart for Hildegardis ; and I, 
 foolish boy, had now, favored in so incomprehensible a man- 
 ner, stept in thy way." 
 
 " Be at ease, good Edkin," smiled the Danish hero. " On 
 the word of a knight, my thinking and longing is for another 
 than thy fair Hildegardis. Aslauga's glancing gold figure 
 
 vol. i. 23 
 
266 fouque. 
 
 beams in my heart more bright than ever. But hear what 
 I have to tell thee. 
 
 " At the instant when we met in the course — O, had I 
 words to express it ! — I was overflowed, overshone, dazzled, 
 blinded by Aslauga's gold locks, which came waving round 
 me ; and my noble horse must have seen them too ; for I 
 felt how he reared and started under me. Thee I no longer 
 saw, the world no longer ; nothing but Aslauga's angel face 
 close by me, smiling, blooming like a flower in the sea of 
 sunshine which floated round it. My senses failed me ; I 
 knew not where I was till thou wert lifting me from beneath 
 the horse ; and then, too, in great joy, I saw that it was her 
 own kind will which had struck me to the ground. But a 
 strange exhaustion lay over me, far more than the mere fall 
 could have caused ; and I, at the same time, felt as if my 
 mistress must, of a surety, soon send me forth on a far mis- 
 sion. I hastened to my chamber to rest, and immediately a 
 deep sleep fell on me. Then came Aslauga to my dreams, 
 more royally adorned than ever ; she entered, sat down by 
 the head of my couch, and said : ' Haste, array thee in all 
 the pomp of thy silver armor, for thou art not a marriage 
 
 guest only, thou art also the ' And before the word was 
 
 spoken, she had melted away like a dream ; and I felt great 
 haste to fulfil her command, and was rejoiced in heart. But 
 now, even in the middle of the festival, I seem to myself so 
 solitary as I never was before, and cannot cease thinking 
 what the unfinished speech of my mistress could have 
 meant." 
 
 " Thou art of far higher soul, Froda, than I," said Ed- 
 wald, after a short silence ; " and I cannot soar after thee 
 in thy joys. Tell me, however, has a deep sadness never 
 seized thee, that thou shouldst serve so distant a mistress ; 
 alas ! a mistress, who is almost ever hidden from thee ? " 
 
 "No, Edwald ; not so," answered Froda, with eyes 
 
aslauga's knight. 267 
 
 gleaming rapture. " I know still that she despises not my 
 service ; nay, there are times when she deigns to show 
 herself before me. O ! I am a happy, too happy knight and 
 singer." 
 
 " And yet thy silence to-day, thy troubled musing ? " 
 "Not troubled, dear Edkin ; but so inward, so deep from 
 the heart, and so strangely unaccountable, withal. But this, 
 too, like everything I feel or encounter, comes all from the 
 words and commands of Aslauga. How can it fail, then, to 
 be something beautiful, and to lead to some high mark ? " 
 
 A squire, who had hastened after them, gave notice that 
 the ducal bridegroom was staid for in the torch-dance ; and 
 Edwald, in returning, desired his friend to take his place in 
 the stately ceremony next to him and Hildegardis. Froda 
 assented, with a friendly nod, 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 The horns and hautboys were already raising their state- 
 ly tones ; Edwald hastened to offer his hand to his fair 
 bride ; and whilst he walked with her to the middle of the 
 gay floor, Froda was requesting of the noble dame nearest 
 him, not heeding farther who she was, to rise with him for 
 the torch-dance ; and, on her consent, the two took their 
 place next the married pair. 
 
 But what were his feelings when a light began to gleam 
 from his partner, before which the torch in his left hand lost 
 its brightness ! Scarcely did he dare, in sweet, awe-struck 
 hope, to turn his eyes on the dame ; and when at last he 
 did so, his boldest wishes and longings were fulfilled. Ad- 
 orned in a shining bridal-crown of precious stones, Aslauga, 
 in solemn loveliness, was dancing beside him, and beaming 
 on him, from amid the sunny splendor of her gold hair, with 
 enrapturing looks. 
 
268 FOUQUE. 
 
 The amazed spectators could not turn an eye from the 
 mysterious pair : the heroin his silver mail, with the uplifted 
 torch in his hand, pacing on, earnest and joyful, with meas- 
 ured tread ; his mistress beside him, rather floating than 
 stepping, and from her golden locks raying forth such bright- 
 ness, that you might have thought the day was peering in 
 through the night; and where a look could penetrate through 
 all this beamy glory to her face, entrancing heart and sense 
 with the unutterably blissful smile of her eyes and mouth. 
 
 Towards the end of the dance, she bent towards Froda, 
 and whispered with a kind, trustful air; and with the last 
 tones of the horns and hautboys she had disappeared. 
 
 No one of the curious onlookers had the courage to ques- 
 tion the Northman about his partner ; Hildegardis did 
 not seem to have observed her. But shortly before the end 
 of the festival, Edwald approached his friend, and asked in 
 a whisper : " Was it — ? " — " Yes, dear youth," answered 
 Froda, " thy marriage-dance has been glorified by the pres- 
 ence of the purest beauty that was ever seen in any land. 
 Ah ! and if I understood her whisper rightly, thou shalt not 
 any more behold me sighing and languishing on this clayey 
 Earth. But I dare scarcely hope it. Now, good night, 
 dear Edkin, good night. So soon as I may, I will tell thee 
 all." 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Light, gay, morning dreams were still flitting round Ed- 
 wald's head ; when all at once he thought a clear splendor 
 shone over him. He remembered Aslauga ; but it was 
 Froda, whose gold helm of locks was now beaming with a 
 no less sunny brightness than Aslauga's flowing hair. " Ha," 
 thought Edwald in his dream, " how has my beloved brother 
 
aslauga's knight. 269 
 
 grown so fair ! " And Froda said to him : " I will sing 
 thee somewhat, Edkin ; low, quite low, that Hildegardis 
 may not awaken. Listen to me j 
 
 " She came in her brightness, fair as day, 
 To where in his sleep her true Knight lay ; 
 She held in her small and light-white hand, 
 A plaything, a glancing moon-gold band; 
 She wound it about his hair and her own, 
 Still singing the while : We two are one ! 
 All round them the world lay poor and dim, 
 She mounts in her sheen aloft with him ; 
 He stood in a garden sweet and bright, 
 The Angels do name it : Land of Light." 
 
 " So finely thou hast never in thy life sung before," said 
 the dreaming youth. 
 
 " That I well believe, Edkin," said Froda, smiling, and 
 vanished. 
 
 But Edwald continued dreaming, dreaming ; and many 
 other visions passed before him, all of a lovely cast, though 
 he could not recollect them, when far in the morning 
 he opened his smiling eyes. Froda and his mysterious song 
 alone stood clear before his memory. He now saw well 
 that his friend was dead ; but he sorrowed not because of it 
 in his mind, feeling as he did, that the pure heart of the 
 hero and singer could nowhere find its proper joy, save in 
 the Land of Light, in blissful communion with the high 
 spirits of the ancient time. He glided softly from his sleep- 
 ing Hildegardis into the chamber of the departed. He was 
 lying on his bed of rest, almost as beautiful as he had looked 
 in the vision ; and the gold helmet on his head was entwist- 
 ed in a wondrous, beaming lock of hair. Then Edwald 
 made a fair, shady grave on consecrated ground ; summoned 
 the Castle Chaplain, and with his help interred in it his 
 heroic Froda. 
 
 23* 
 
270 FOU^UE. 
 
 As he returned, Hildegardis awoke. Astonished at his 
 look of solemn, humble cheerfulness, she inquired where he 
 had been, and with a smile he answered : " I have been 
 burying the body of my beloved Froda, who has last night 
 passed away to his gold-haired mistress." Thereupon he 
 told Hildegardis the whole history of Aslauga's Knight ; 
 and continued in undisturbed, mild joy, though, for some 
 time after this, a little stiller than formerly. 
 
 He was often to be found sitting at his friend's grave, 
 singing this little song to his cithern : 
 
 Aslauga's Knight, 
 
 Fair is the dance 
 
 Where Angels glance, 
 
 And stars do sound the measure ! 
 
 On earthly fight, 
 
 Through change and chance, 
 
 To guide us right, 
 
 Send down thy light, 
 
 Thy heart's undying treasure ! 
 
LUDWIG TIECK 
 
LUDWIG TIECK 
 
 Ludwig Tieck, born at Berlin, on the 31st of May, 1773, 
 is known to the world only as a man of Letters, having 
 never held any public station, or followed any profession, 
 except that of authorship. Of his private history the critics 
 and news-hunters of his own country complain that they 
 have little information ; a deficiency which may arise in 
 part from the circumstance, that, till of late years, though 
 from the first admired by the Patricians of his native litera- 
 ture, he has stood in no high favor, and of course awakened 
 no great curiosity, among the reading Plebs ; and may indi- 
 cate, at the same time, that in his walk and conversation 
 there is little wonderful to be discovered. 
 
 His literary life he began at Berlin, in his twenty-second 
 year, by the publication of three novels, following each other 
 in quick succession ; Abdallali, William Lovell, and Peter 
 Leberrecht. These works found small patronage at their 
 first appearance, and are still regarded as immature products 
 of his genius ; the opening of a cloudy, as well as fervid 
 dawn ; betokening a day of strong heat, and perhaps, at 
 last, of serene brightness. A gloomy, tragic spirit is said to 
 reign throughout all of them ; the image of a high, passion- 
 ate mind, scorning the base and the false, rather than ac- 
 complishing the good and the true ; in rapt earnestness 
 " interrogating Fate," and receiving no answer but the 
 echo of its own questions reverberated from the dead walls 
 of its vast and lone imprisonment. 
 
274 TIECK. 
 
 In this stage of spiritual progress, where so many not 
 otherwise ungifted minds at length painfully content them- 
 selves to take up their permanent abode, where our own 
 noble and hapless Byron perished from among us at the 
 instant when his deliverance seemed at hand, it was not 
 Tieck's ill fortune to continue too long. His Popular Tales, 
 published in 1797, as an appendage to his last novel, under 
 the title of Peter Leberrechts Volksmahrc7ie?i, already indi- 
 cate that he had worked his way through these baleful 
 shades into a calmer and sunnier elevation ; from which, and 
 happily without looking at the world through a painted glass 
 of any sort, he had begun to see that there were things to 
 be believed, as well as things to be denied ; things to be 
 loved and forwarded, as well as things to be hated and 
 trodden under foot. The active and positive of Goodness 
 was displacing the barren and tormenting negative ; and 
 worthy feelings were now to be translated into their only 
 proper language, worthy actions. In Tieck's mind, all 
 Goodness, all that was noble or excellent in Nature, seems 
 to have combined itself under the image of Poetic Beauty ; 
 to the service and defence of which he has ever since un- 
 weariedly devoted his gifts and his days. 
 
 These Volskmahrchen are of the most varied nature ; 
 sombre, pathetic, fantastic, satirical ; but all pervaded by a 
 warm, genial soul, which accommodates itself with equal 
 aptitude to the gravest or the gayest form. A soft abun- 
 dance, a simple and kindly but often solemn majesty is in 
 them ; wondrous shapes, full of meaning, move over the 
 scene, true modern denizens of the old Fairyland ; low tones 
 of plaintiveness or awe flit round us ; or a starry splendor 
 twinkles down from the immeasurable depths of Night. 
 
 It is by this work, as revised and perfected long after- 
 wards, that we now purpose introducing Tieck to the 
 notice of the English reader. It was by this also that 
 
TIECK. 
 
 275 
 
 he was introduced to the notice of his countrymen. Peter 
 Leberrechts Volksmahrchen was reviewed by August Wil- 
 helm Schlegel, in the Jena Litteraturzeitung ; and its 
 author, for the first time, brought under the eye of the world 
 as a man of rich endowments, and in the fair way for turn- 
 ing them to proper account. To the body of the world, 
 however, this piece of news was surprising rather than de- 
 lightful ; for Tieck's merits were not of a kind to split the 
 ears of the groundlings, and his manner of producing them 
 was ill calculated to conciliate a kind hearing. Schiller and 
 Goethe were at this time silent, or occupied with History 
 and Philosophy. Tieck belonged not to the existing poetic 
 guild ; and, far from soliciting admission, he had not scru- 
 pled, in the most pleasant fashion, to inform the craftsmen 
 that their great Diana was a dumb idol, and their silver 
 shrines an unprofitable thing. Among these Volksmahrchen, 
 one of the most prominent is Der Gestiefelte Kater, a 
 dramatized version of Puss in Boots ; under the grotesque 
 mask of which he had laughed with his whole heart, in a 
 true Aristophanic vein, at the actual aspect of literature; 
 and without mingling his satire with personalities, or any 
 other false ingredient, had rained it, like a quiet shower of 
 volcanic ashes, on the cant of Illumination, the cant of Sen- 
 sibility, the cant of Criticism, and the many other cants of 
 that shallow time, till the gum-flower products of the poetic 
 garden hung draggled and black under their unkindly coat- 
 ing. In another country, at another day, the drama of Puss 
 in Boots may justly be supposed to appear with enfeebled 
 influences ; yet even to a stranger there is not wanting a 
 feast of broad, joyous humor in this strange phantasmagoria, 
 where pit and stage, and man and animal, and earth and 
 air, are jumbled in confusion worse confounded, and the 
 copious, kind, ruddy light of true mirth overshines and 
 warms the whole. 
 
276 TIECK. 
 
 This What-d'ye-call-it of Puss in Boots was, as it were, 
 the key-note which for several years determined the tone of 
 Tieck's literary enterprises. The same spirit lives in his 
 Verkehrte Welt (World Turned Topsyturvy), a drama of 
 similar structure, which accompanied the former ; in his 
 tale of Zerbino, or the Tour in search of Taste, which soon 
 followed it ; and in numerous parodies and lighter pieces 
 which he gave to the world in his Poetic Journal ; the second 
 and last volume of which periodical contains his Letters on 
 Shakspeare, inculcating the same doctrines in a graver 
 shape. About this time, after a short residence in Ham- 
 burg, where he had married, he removed his abode to Jena ; 
 a change which confirmed him in his literary tendencies, 
 and facilitated the attainment of their objects. It was here 
 that he became acquainted with the two Schlegels ; and, at 
 the same time, with their friend Novalis, a young man of a 
 pure, warm, and benignant genius, whose fine spirit died in its 
 first blossoming, and whose posthumous works it was, ere 
 long, the melancholy task of Tieck and the younger Schle- 
 gel to publish under their superintendence. With Wack- 
 enroder of Berlin, a person of kindred mind with Novalis, 
 and kindred fortune also, having died very early, Tieck was 
 already acquainted and united ; for he had cooperated in the 
 Herzensergiessungen eines einsamen Klosterbruders, an 
 elegant and impressive work on pictorial art, and Wacken- 
 roder's chief performance. 
 
 These young men sympathized completely in their critical 
 ideas with Tieck ; and each was laboring in his own sphere 
 to disseminate them, and reduce them to practice. Their 
 endeavors, it would seem, have prospered ; for, in colloquial, 
 literary history, this gifted cinquefoil — often it is only the 
 trefoil of Tieck and the two Schlegels — have the credit, 
 which was long the blame, of founding a New School of 
 Poetry, by which the Old School, first fired upon in the 
 
TIECK. 27 7 
 
 Gestiefelte Kater, and ever afterwards assailed, without 
 intermission, by eloquence and ridicule, argument and 
 entreaty, was at length displaced and hunted out of being ; 
 or, like Partridge the Astrologer, reduced to a life which 
 could be proved to be no life. 
 
 Of this New School, which has been the subject of much 
 unwise talk, and of much not very wise writing, we cannot 
 here attempt to offer any suitable description, far less any 
 just estimate. One thing may be remarked, that the epithet 
 School seems to describe the case with little propriety. 
 That since the beginning of the present century, a great 
 change has taken place in German literature, is plain 
 enough, without commentators ; but that it was effected by 
 three young men, living in the little town of Jena, is not by 
 any means so plain. The critical principles of Tieck and 
 the Schlegels had already been set forth, in the form both 
 of precept and prohibition, and with all the aids of philoso- 
 phic depth and epigrammatic emphasis, by the united minds 
 of Goethe and Schiller, in the Horen and Xenien. The 
 development and practical application of the doctrine is all 
 that pertains to these reputed founders of the sect, But 
 neither can the change be said to have originated with 
 Schiller and Goethe ; for it is a change originating not in 
 individuals, but in universal circumstances, and belongs not 
 to Germany, but to Europe. Among ourselves, for in- 
 stance, within the last thirty years, who has not lifted up his 
 voice with double vigor in praise of Shakspeare and Nature, 
 and vituperation of French taste and French philosophy ? 
 Who has not heard of the glories of old English literature ; 
 the wealth of Queen Elizabeth's age ; the penury of Queen 
 Anne's; and the inquiry whether Pope was a poet? A 
 similar temper is breaking out in France itself, hermetically 
 sealed as that country seemed to be against all foreign in- 
 fluences ; and doubts are beginning to be entertained, and 
 vol. i. 24 
 
278 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 even expressed, about Corneille and the Three Unities. It 
 seems to be substantially the same thing which has occur- 
 red in Germany, and been attributed to Tieck and his 
 associates ; only, that the revolution, which is here proceed- 
 ing, and in France commencing, appears in Germany to be 
 completed. Its results have there been embodied in elabor- 
 ate laws, and profound systems have been promulgated and 
 accepted ; whereas with us, in past years, there has been 
 as it were a Literary Anarchy ; for the Pandects of Blair 
 and Bossu are obsolete or abrogated, but no new code sup- 
 plies their place ; and, author and critic, each sings or says 
 that which is right in his own eyes. For the principles of 
 German Poetics we can only refer the reader to the trea- 
 tises of Kant, Schiller, Richter, the Schlegels, and their 
 many copyists and expositors ; with the promise that his 
 labor will be hard, but not unrewarded by a plenteous har- 
 vest of results, which, whether they be doubted, denied, or 
 believed, he will find no trivial or unprofitable subject for 
 his contemplation. 
 
 These doctrines of taste, which Tieck embraced every 
 opportunity of enforcing as a critic, he did not fail diligently 
 to exemplify in practice ; as a long and rapid series of poeti- 
 cal performances lies before the world to attest. Of these, 
 his Genoveva, a play grounded on the legend of that Saint, 
 appears to be regarded as his master-piece by the best 
 judges ; though Franz Sternebalds Wanderungen, the fic- 
 titious History of a Student of Painting, was more relished 
 by others ; and, as a critic tells us, " here and there a low 
 voice might be even heard voting that this novel equalled 
 Wilhehn Meister ; the peaceful clearness of which it how- 
 ever nowise attained, but only, with visible effort, strove tQ 
 imitate." In this last work he was assisted by Wacken- 
 roder. At an earlier period he had come forth, as a trans- 
 lator, with a new version of Don Quixote ; he now appeared 
 
TIECK. 
 
 279 
 
 also as a commentator, with a work entitled Minnelieder 
 ans dem Schwabischen Zeitalter (Minstrelsy of the Swabian 
 Era), published at Berlin in 1803 ; with an able Preface, 
 explaining the relation of these poets to Petrarca and the 
 Troubadours. In 1804 he sent out his Kaiser Octavianus, 
 a story which, like the other works mentioned in this para- 
 graph, I have never seen, but which I find praised by his 
 countrymen in no very intelligible terms, as "a fair revival 
 of the old Mahrchen (Traditionary Tale) ; in which, how- 
 ever, the poet moves freely, and has completed the cycle 
 of the romance." Die Gemalde (The Pictures), another of 
 his fictions, has lately been translated into English. 
 
 Tieck's frequent change of place bespeaks less settledness 
 in his domestic, than happily existed in his intellectual 
 circumstances. From Jena he seems to have again removed 
 to Berlin ; then to a country residence near Frankfort on 
 the Oder; which, in its turn, he quitted for a journey into 
 Italy. In this classic country he found new facilities for 
 two of his favorite pursuits. Pie employed himself, it is said, 
 to good purpose, in the study of ancient and modern art ; 
 to which, while in Rome, he added the examining of many 
 old German manuscripts preserved in the Vatican Library. 
 From his labors in this latter department, and elsewhere, 
 his countrymen have not long ago obtained, in addition to 
 the Minstrelsy, an Altdeutsches Theater (Old-German The- 
 atre), in two volumes, with the hope of more. A collection 
 of Old-German Poetry is still expected. 
 
 In 1806 he returned to Germany; first to Munich, then 
 to his former retreat near Frankfort ; but for the next seven 
 years, he was little heard of as an active member of the 
 literary world ; and the regret of his admirers was increased 
 by intelligence that ill health was the cause of his inactiv- 
 ity. That this inactivity was more apparent than real, he 
 has proved by his reappearance in new vigor, at a time 
 
280 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 when he finds a readier welcome and more willing audi- 
 ence. He has since published abundantly in various forms ; 
 as a translator, an editor, and a writer both of poetry and 
 prose. In 1812 appeared his early Volksmahrchen, re- 
 touched, and improved, and combined into a whole, by 
 conversations, critical, disquisitionary, and descriptive, in 
 two volumes, entitled Phantasus ; from which our present 
 specimens of him are taken. His Altdeutsches Theater was 
 followed by an Altenglisches, including the disputed plays of 
 Shakspeare ; a work gladly received by his countrymen, no 
 less devoted admirers of Shakspeare than ourselves. Since 
 that time, he has paid us a personal visit. In 1818 he was 
 in London, and is said to have been well satisfied with his 
 reception; which we cannot but hope was as respectful and 
 kind as a guest so accomplished, and so friendly to Eng- 
 land, deserved at our hands. The fruit of his residence 
 among us, it seems, has already appeared in his writings. 
 He has very lately given to the world a novel on Shakspeare 
 and his Times; in which he has not trembled to introduce, 
 as acting characters, the great dramatist himself, with Mar- 
 lowe, and various other poets of that age. Such is the 
 report, which adds, that his work is admired in Germany ; 
 but that any copy of it has crossed the Channel, I have not 
 heard. Of Tieck's present residence, or special pursuits, or 
 economical circumstances, I am sorry to confess my entire 
 ignorance. One little fact may perhaps be worth adding; 
 that Sophie Bernhardi, an esteemed authoress, is his sister. 
 
 A very slight power of observation will suffice to con- 
 vince us that Tieck is no ordinary man ; but a true Poet, 
 a Poet born as well as made. Of a nature at once suscep- 
 tible and strong, he has looked over the circle of human 
 interests with a far-sighted and piercing eye, and partaken 
 deeply of its joy and woe ; and these impressions on his 
 heart or his mind have been like seed sown on fertile 
 
TIECK. 
 
 281 
 
 ground, ripening under the skyey influences into rich and 
 varied luxuriance. He is no mere observist and compiler; 
 rendering back to us, with additions or subtractions, the 
 Beauty which existing things have of themselves presented 
 to him ; but a true Maker, to whom the actual and external 
 is but the excitement for ideal creations, representing and 
 ennobling its effects. His feeling or knowledge, his love or 
 scorn, his gay humor or solemn earnestness, all the riches 
 of his inward world, are pervaded and mastered by the 
 living energy of the soul which possesses them ; and their 
 finer essence is wafted to us in his poetry, like Arabian 
 odors on the wings of the wind. 
 
 But this may be said of all true poets; and each is dis- 
 tinguished from all by his individual characteristics. Among 
 Tieck's, one of the most remarkable is his combination of 
 so many gifts in such full and simple harmony. His ridi- 
 cule does not obstruct his adoration ; his gay Southern fancy 
 lives in union with a Northern heart. With the moods of 
 a longing and impassioned spirit he seems deeply conver- 
 sant ; and a still imagination, in the highest sense of that 
 word, reigns over all his poetic world. Perhaps, on the 
 whole, this is his distinguishing faculty ; an imagination, 
 not of the intellect, but of the character, not so much vague 
 and gigantic as altogether void and boundless. A feeling 
 as of desert vastness steals over us in what appeared to be 
 a common scene ; or in high passages, a fire as of a furnace 
 glows in one small spot, under the infinitude of darkness; 
 Immensity and Eternity seem to rest over the bounded and 
 quickly-fading. 
 
 His mind we should call well cultivated ; for no part of 
 it seems stunted in its growth, and it acts in soft, unimpeded 
 union. His heart seems chastened in the school of expe- 
 rience ; fervid, yet meek and humble, heedful of good in 
 mean forms, and looking for its satisfaction not in passive. 
 24* 
 
282 TIECK. 
 
 but in active enjoyments. His poetical taste seems no less 
 polished and pure; with all his mental riches and excur- 
 siveness, he merits in the highest degree the praise of chaste 
 simplicity, both in conception and style. No man ever 
 rejected more carefully the aid of exaggeration in word and 
 thought, or produced more result by humbler means. Who 
 could have supposed that a tragedy, no mock-heroic, but a 
 real tragedy, calculated to affect and excite us, could have 
 been erected on the ground-work of a nursery tale? Yet 
 let any one read Blaubart in the Phantasus, and say wheth- 
 er this is not accomplished. Nor is Tieck's history of our 
 old friend Bluebeard any Fairyland George Barnwell ; but 
 a genuine play, with comic as well as tragic life in it; u a 
 group of earnest figures, painted on a laughing ground," 
 and surprising us with poetical delight, where we looked for 
 anything sooner. 
 
 In his literary life, Tieck has essayed many provinces, 
 both of the imaginative and the intellectual world; but his 
 own peculiar province seems to be that of the Mahrchen ; 
 a word which, for want of a proper synonym, we are forced 
 to translate by the imperfect periphrase of Popular Tradi- 
 tionary Tale. Here, by the consent of all his critics, 
 including even the collectors of real Mdhrchen, he reigns 
 without any rival. The true tone of that ancient time, 
 when man was in his childhood, when the universe within 
 was divided by no wall of adamant from the universe with- 
 out, and the forms of the Spirit mingled and dwelt in trustful 
 sisterhood with the forms of the Sense, was not easy to 
 seize and adapt with any fitness of application to the feelings 
 of modern minds. It was to penetrate into the inmost 
 shrines of Imagination, where human passion and action 
 are reflected in dim and fitful, but deeply significant resem- 
 blances, and to copy these with the guileless, humble graces 
 which alone can become them. Such tales ought to be 
 
TIECK. 
 
 283 
 
 poetical, because they spring from the very fountains of 
 natural feeling ; they ought to be moral, not as exemplifying 
 some current apophthegm, but as imaging forth in shadowy 
 emblems the universal tendencies and destinies of man. That 
 Tieck has succeeded thus far in his Tales is not asserted 
 by his warmest admirers ; but only that he now and then 
 approaches such success, and throughout approaches it more 
 closely than any of his rivals. 
 
 How far this judgment of Tieck's admirers is correct, 
 our readers are now to try for themselves. Respecting the 
 reception of these Tales, I cannot boast of having any very 
 certain, still less any very flattering presentiment. Their 
 merits, such as they have, are not of a kind to force them- 
 selves on the reader ; and to search for merits few readers 
 are inclined. The ordinary lovers of witch and fairy matter 
 will remark a deficiency of spectres and enchantments here, 
 and complain that the whole is rather dull. Cultivated free- 
 thinkers, again, well knowing that no ghosts or elves exist 
 in this country, will smile at the crack-brained dreamer, 
 with his spelling-book prose and doggrel verse, and dismiss 
 him good-naturedly as a German Lake-poet. Alas ! alas ! 
 Ludwig Tieck could also fantasy, " like a drunk Irishman," 
 with great conveniency, if it seemed good to him ; he can 
 laugh, too, and disbelieve, and set springes to catch wood- 
 cocks in manifold wise ; but his present business was not 
 this ; nor, I fear, is the lover of witchmatter, or the free- 
 thinker, likely soon to discover what it was. 
 
 Other readers there are, however, who will come to him 
 in a truer and meeker spirit, and, if I mistake not, be re- 
 warded with some touches of genuine poetry. For the 
 credit of the stranger, I ought to remind them that he ap- 
 pears under many disadvantages. In the process of trans- 
 lation he has necessarily lost, and perhaps in more than the 
 
284 TIECK. 
 
 usual proportion ; the childlike character of his style was 
 apt to diverge into the childish ; the nakedness of his rhymes, 
 perhaps at first only wavering between simplicity and silli- 
 ness, must in my hands too frequently have shifted nearer 
 the latter. Above all, such works as his come on us unpre- 
 pared ; unprovided with any model * by which to estimate 
 them, or any category under which to arrange them. Never- 
 theless, the present specimens of Tieck do 'exhibit some 
 features of his mind ; a few, but those, as it seems to me, 
 its rarest and highest features. To such readers, and with 
 such allowances, the Runenherg, the Trusty Eckart, and 
 their associates, may be commended with some confidence. 
 
 * I have not forgotten Allan Cunningham's Traditional Tales of 
 the English and Scottish Peasantry ; a work full of kind fancy and 
 soft glowing exuberance, and with traces of a genius which might 
 rise into a far loftier and purer element than it has ever yet moved 
 and lived in. 
 
POPULAR TALES 
 
 THE FATR-HAIRED ECKBERT. 
 
 In a district of the Harz dwelt a Knight, whose common 
 designation in that quarter was the Fair-haired Eckbert. He 
 was about forty years of age, scarcely of middle stature, 
 and short, light-colored locks lay close and sleek round his 
 pale and sunken countenance. He led a retired life, had 
 never interfered in the feuds of his neighbors ; indeed, be- 
 yond the outer wall of his castle, he was seldom to be seen. 
 His wife loved solitude as much as he ; both seemed heartily 
 attached to one another ; only now and then they would 
 lament that Heaven had not blessed their marriage with 
 children. 
 
 Few came to visit Eckbert, and when guests did happen 
 to be with him, their presence made but little alteration in 
 his customary way of life ; Temperance abode in his house- 
 hold, and Frugality herself appeared to be the mistress of 
 the entertainment. On these occasions, Eckbert was always 
 cheerful and lively ; but when he was alone, you might ob- 
 serve in him a certain mild reserve, a still, retiring melan- 
 choly. 
 
 His most frequent guest was Philip Walther ; a man to 
 whom he had attached himself, from having found in him a 
 way of thinking like his own. Walther's residence was in 
 Franconia ; but he would often stay for half a year in Eck- 
 
286 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 bert's neighborhood, gathering plants and minerals, and then 
 sorting and arranging them. He lived on a small inde- 
 pendency, and was connected with no one. Eckbert fre- 
 quently attended him in his sequestered walks ; year after 
 year, a closer friendship grew betwixt them. 
 
 There are hours in which a man feels grieved that he 
 should have a secret from his friend, which, till then, he 
 may have kept with niggard anxiety. Some irresistible de- 
 sire lays hold of our heart to open itself wholly, to disclose 
 its inmost recesses to our friend, that so he may become 
 our friend still more. It is in such moments that tender 
 souls unveil themselves, and stand face to face ; and at times 
 it will happen that the one recoils affrighted from the coun- 
 tenance of the other. 
 
 It was late in Autumn, when Eckbert, one cloudy evening, 
 was sitting, with his friend and his wife Bertha, by the parlor 
 fire. The flame cast a red glimmer through the room, and 
 sported on the ceiling ; the night looked sullenly in through 
 the windows, and the trees without rustled in wet coldness. 
 Walther complained of the long road he had to travel ; and 
 Eckbert proposed to him to stay where he was, to while 
 away half of the night in friendly talk, and then to take a 
 bed in the house till morning. Walther agreed, and the 
 whole was speedily arranged ; by and by wine and supper 
 were brought in ; fresh wood was laid upon the fire ; the 
 talk grew livelier and more confidential. 
 
 The cloth being removed, and the servants gone, Eckbert 
 took his friend's hand, and said to him : " Now you must let 
 my wife tell you the history of her youth ; it is curious 
 enough, and you should know it." — "With all my heart," 
 said Walther ; and the party again drew round the hearth. 
 
 It was now midnight, the moon looked fitfully through 
 the breaks of the driving clouds. " You must not reckon 
 me a babbler," began the lady. " My husband says you 
 
THE PAIR-HAIRED ECK.BERT. 287 
 
 have so generous a mind, that it is not right in us to hide 
 aught from you. Only do not take my narrative for a 
 fable, however strangely it may sound. 
 
 " I was born in a little village ; my father was a poor 
 herdsman. Our circumstances were not of the best ; often 
 we knew not where to find our daily bread. But what 
 grieved me far more than this, were the quarrels which my 
 father and mother often had about their poverty, and the 
 bitter reproaches they cast on one another. Of myself too, 
 I heard nothing said but ill : they were for ever telling me 
 that I was a silly, stupid child, that I could not do the simp- 
 lest turn of work ; and in truth I was extremely inexpert 
 and helpless ; I let things fall, I neither learned to sew nor 
 spin, I could be of no use to my parents; only their straits 
 I understood too well. Often I would sit in a corner and 
 fill my little heart with dreams, how I would help them, if I 
 should all at once grow rich, how I would overflow them 
 with silver and gold, and feast myself on their amazement ; 
 and then, spirits came hovering up, and showed me buried 
 treasures, or gave me little pebbles which changed into 
 precious stones ; in short the strangest fancies occupied me, 
 and when I had to rise and help with anything, my inex- 
 pertness was still greater, as my head was giddy with these 
 motley visions. 
 
 " My father in particular was always very cross to me ; he 
 scolded me for being such a burden to the house ; indeed he 
 often used me rather cruelly, and it was very seldom that I 
 got a friendly word from him. In this way I had struggled 
 on to near the end of my eighth year ; and now it was serious- 
 ly fixed that I should begin to do or learn something. My 
 father still maintained that it was nothing but caprice in me, 
 or a lazy wish to pass my days in idleness ; accordingly he set 
 upon me with furious threats, and as these made no improve- 
 ment, he one day gave me a most cruel chastisement, and 
 
288 TIECK. 
 
 added, that the same should be repeated day after day, since 
 I was nothing but a useless sluggard. 
 
 " That whole night I wept abundantly ; I felt myself so 
 utterly forsaken, I had such a sympathy with myself, that I 
 even longed to die. I dreaded the break of day; I knew 
 not on earth what I was to do or try. I wished from my 
 very heart to be clever, and could not understand how I 
 should be worse than the other children of the place. I 
 was on the borders of despair. 
 
 " At the dawn of day I rose, and, scarcely knowing what 
 I did, unfastened the door of our little hut. I stept upon 
 the open field ; next minute I was in a wood, where the 
 light of the morning had yet hardly penetrated. I ran along, 
 not looking round ; for I felt no fatigue, and I still thought 
 my father would catch me, and, in his anger at my flight, 
 would beat me worse than ever. 
 
 " I had reached the other side of the forest, and the sun 
 was risen a considerable way ; I saw something dim lying 
 before me, and a thick fog resting over it. Ere long my 
 path began to mount, at one time I was climbing hills, at 
 another winding among rocks; and I now guessed that I 
 must be among the neighboring Mountains ; a thought that 
 made me shudder in my loneliness. For, living in the plain 
 country, I had never seen a hill ; and the very word Moun- 
 tains, when I heard talk of them, had been a sound of terror 
 to my young ear. I had not the heart to go back, my fear 
 itself drove me on ; often I looked round affrighted when the 
 breezes rustled over me among the trees, or the stroke of 
 some distant woodman sounded far through the still morn- 
 ing. And when I began to meet with charcoal-men and 
 miners, and heard their foreign way of speech, I had nearly 
 fainted for terror. 
 
 " I passed through several villages ; begging now and 
 then, for I felt hungry and thirsty ; and fashioning my an- 
 
THE FAIR-HAIRED ECKBERT. 289 
 
 swers as I best could when questions were put to me. In 
 this manner I had wandered on some four days, when I 
 came upon a little footpath, which led me farther and farther 
 from the highway. The rocks about me now assumed a 
 different and far stranger form. They were cliffs so piled 
 on one another, that it looked as if the first gust of wind 
 would hurl them all this way and that. I knew not whether 
 to go on or stop. Till now I had slept by night in the woods, 
 for it was the finest season of the year, or in some remote 
 shepherd's hut ; but here I saw no human dwelling at all, 
 and could not hope to find one in this wilderness ; the crags 
 grew more and more frightful ; I had many a time to glide 
 along by the very edge of dreadful abysses ; by degrees my 
 foot-path became fainter, and at last all traces of it vanished 
 from beneath me. I was utterly comfortless ; I wept and 
 screamed ; and my voice came echoing back from the rocky 
 valleys with a sound that terrified me. The night now came 
 on, and I sought out a mossy nook to lie down in. I could 
 not sleep ; in the darkness I heard the strangest noises ; 
 sometimes I took them to proceed from wild beasts, some- 
 times from wind moaning through the rocks, sometimes 
 from unknown birds. I prayed ; and did not sleep till to- 
 wards morning. 
 
 " When the light came upon my face, I awoke. Before 
 me was a steep rock; I clomb up, in the hope of discovering 
 some outlet from the waste, perhaps of seeing houses or 
 men. But when I reached the top there was nothing still, 
 so far as my eye could reach, but a wilderness of crags and 
 precipices ; all was covered with a dim haze, the day was 
 grey and troubled, and no tree, no meadow, not even a bush 
 could I find, only a few shrubs shooting up stunted and 
 solitary in the narrow clefts of the rocks. I cannot utter 
 what a longing I felt but to see one human creature, any 
 living mortal, even though I had been afraid of hurt from 
 
 vol. i. 25 
 
290 TIECK. 
 
 him. At the same time I was tortured by a gnawing hun- 
 ger ; I sat down, and made up my mind to die. After a 
 while, however, the desire of living gained the mastery ; I 
 roused myself, and wandered forward amid tears and broken 
 sobs all day ; in the end I hardly knew what I was doing ; 
 I was tired and spent, I scarcely wished to live, and yet I 
 feared to die. 
 
 " Towards night the country seemed to grow a little 
 kindlier; my thoughts, my desires revived, the wish for 
 life awoke in all my veins. I thought I heard the rushing 
 of a mill afar off; I redoubled my steps; and how glad, 
 how light of heart was I, when at last I actually gained the 
 limits of the barren rocks, and saw woods and meadows 
 lying before me, with soft green hills in the distance ! I felt 
 as if I had stept out of hell into a paradise ; my loneliness 
 and helplessness no longer frightened me. 
 
 " Instead of the hoped-for mill, I came upon a water-fall, 
 which, in truth, considerably damped my joy. I was lifting 
 a drink from it in the hollow of my hand, when all at once 
 I thought I heard a slight cough some little way from me. 
 Never in my life was I so joyfully surprised as at this mo- 
 ment ; I went near, and at the border of the wood I saw 
 an old woman sitting resting on the ground. She was 
 dressed almost wholly in black; a black hood covered her 
 head, and the greater part of her face ; in her hand she held 
 a crutch. 
 
 " I came up to her, and begged for help ; she made me 
 sit by her, and gave me bread, and a little wine. While I 
 ate, she sang in a screeching tone some kind of spiritual 
 song. When she had done, she told me I might follow 
 her. 
 
 " The offer charmed me, strange as the^ old woman's 
 voice and look appeared. With her crutch she limped away 
 pretty fast, and at every step she twisted her face so oddly, 
 
THE FAIR-HAIRED ECKBERT. 291 
 
 that at first I was like to laugh. The wild rocks retired 
 behind us more and more ; I never shall forget the aspect 
 and the feeling of that evening. All things were as molten 
 into the softest golden red ; the trees were standing with 
 their tops in the glow of the sunset ; on the fields lay a mild 
 brightness ; the woods and the leaves of the trees were 
 standing motionless ; the pure sky looked out like an opened 
 paradise ; and the gushing of the brooks, and, from time to 
 time, the rustling of the trees, resounded through the serene 
 stillness, as in pensive joy. My young soul was here first 
 taken with a forethought of the world and its vicissitudes. 
 I forgot myself and my conductress ; my spirit and my eyes 
 were wandering among the shining clouds. 
 
 " We now mounted an eminence planted with birch-trees ; 
 from the top we looked into a green valley, likewise full of 
 birches ; and down below, in the middle of them, was a 
 little hut. A glad barking reached us, and immediately a 
 little nimble dog came springing round the old woman, 
 fawned on her, and wagged its tail ; it next came to me, 
 viewed me on all sides, and then turned back with a friendly 
 look to its old mistress. 
 
 " On reaching the bottom of the hill, I heard the strangest 
 song, as if coming from the hut, and sung by some bird. 
 It ran thus : 
 
 Alone in wood so gay 
 'T is good to stay, 
 Morrow like to-day, 
 For ever and aye ; 
 O, I do love to stay, 
 Alone in wood so gay. 
 
 " These few words were continually repeated, and to de- 
 scribe the sound, it was as if you heard forest-horns and 
 shalms sounded together from a far distance. 
 
 " My curiosity was wonderfully on the stretch ; without 
 
292 
 
 T1ECK. 
 
 wailing for the old woman's orders, I stept into the hut. It 
 was already dusk ; here all was neatly swept and trimmed ; 
 some bowls were standing in a cupboard, so^ie strange- 
 looking casks or pots on a table ; in a glittering cage, 
 hanging by the window, was a bird, and this in fact 
 proved to be the singer. The old woman coughed, and 
 panted ; it seemed as if she never would get over her 
 fatigue ; she patted the little dog, she talked with the bird, 
 which only answered her with its accustomed song ; and 
 for me, she did not seem to recollect that I was there at all. 
 Looking at her so, many qualms and fears came over me, 
 for her face was in perpetual motion ; and, besides, her 
 head shook from old age, so that for my life I could not 
 understand what sort of countenance she had. 
 
 " Having gathered strength again, she lit a candle, cov- 
 ered a very small table, and brought out supper. She now 
 looked round for me, and bade me take a little cane chair. 
 I was thus sitting close fronting her, with the light between 
 us. She folded her bony hands, and prayed aloud, still 
 twisting her countenance, so that I was once more on the 
 point of laughing ; but I took strict care that I might not 
 make her angry. 
 
 " After supper she again prayed, then showed me a bed 
 in a low, narrow closet; she herself slept in the room. I did 
 not watch long, for I was half stupefied ; but in the night I 
 now and then awoke, and heard the old woman coughing, 
 and between whiles talking with her dog and her bird, 
 which last seemed dreaming, and replied with only one or 
 two words of its rhyme. This, with the birches rustling 
 before the window, and the song of a distant nightingale, 
 made such a wondrous combination, that I never fairly 
 thought I was awake, but only falling out of one dream into 
 another still stranger. 
 
 " The old woman awoke me in the morning, and soon 
 
THE FAIR-HA.IRED ECKBERT. 
 
 293 
 
 after gave me work. I was put to spin, which I now learned 
 very easily ; I had likewise to take charge of the dog and 
 the bird. I soon learned my business in the house ; I now 
 felt as if it all must be so ; I never once remembered that 
 the old woman had so many singularities, that her dwelling 
 was mysterious, and lay apart from all men, and that the 
 bird must be a very strange creature. Its beauty, indeed, 
 always struck me, for its feathers glittered with all possible 
 colors ; the fairest deep blue and the most burning red 
 alternated about his neck and body ; and when singing, he 
 blew himself proudly out, so that his feathers looked still finer. 
 
 " My old mistress often went abroad, and did not come 
 again till night ; on these occasions I went out to meet her 
 with the dog, and she used to call me child, and daughter. 
 In the end I grew to like her heartily ; as our mind, espe- 
 cially in childhood, will become accustomed and attached to 
 anything. In the evenings she taught me to read ; and this 
 was afterwards a source of boundless satisfaction to me in 
 my solitude, for she had several ancient-written books, that 
 contained the strangest stories. 
 
 " The recollection of the life I then led is still singular to 
 me ; visited by no human creature, secluded in the circle 
 of so small a family; for the dog and the bird made the 
 same impression on me which in other cases long-known 
 friends produce. I am surprised that I have never since 
 been able to recall the dog's name, a very odd one, often as 
 I then pronounced it. 
 
 "Four years I had passed in this way ( I must now have 
 been nearly twelve), when my old dame began to put more 
 trust in me, and at length told me a secret. The bird, I 
 found, laid every day an egg, in which there was a pearl or 
 a jewel. I had already noticed that she often went to fettle 
 privately about the cage, but I had never troubled myself 
 farther on the subject. She now gave me charge of gather- 
 25* 
 
294 TIECK. 
 
 ing these eggs in her absence, and carefully storing them 
 up in the strange looking pots. She would leave me food, 
 and sometimes stay away longer, for weeks, for months. 
 My little wheel kept humming round, the dog barked, the 
 bird sang ; and withal there was such a stillness in the 
 neighborhood, that I do not recollect of any storm or foul 
 weather all the time I staid there. No one wandered 
 thither; no wild beast came near our dwelling ; I was satis- 
 fied, and worked along in peace from day to day. One 
 would perhaps be very happy, could he pass his life so un- 
 disturbedly to the end. 
 
 " From the little that I read, I formed quite marvellous 
 notions of the world and its people ; all taken from myself 
 and my society. When I read of witty persons, I could not 
 figure them but like the little shock ; great ladies, I con- 
 ceived, were like the bird; all old women, like my mistress. 
 I had read somewhat of love, too ; and often, in fancy, I would 
 sport strange stories with myself. I figured out the fairest 
 knight on Earth ; adorned him with all perfections, without 
 knowing rightly, after all my labor, how he looked ; but I 
 could feel a hearty pity for myself when he ceased to love 
 me ; I would then, in thought, make long, melting speeches, 
 or perhaps aloud, to try if I could win him back. You 
 smile ! These young days are, in truth, far away from us 
 all. 
 
 " I now liked better to be left alone, for I was then sole 
 mistress of the house. The dog loved me, and did all I 
 wanted ; the bird replied to all my questions with his rhyme ; 
 my wheel kept briskly turning, and at bottom I had never 
 any wish for change. When my dame returned from her 
 long wanderings, she would praise my diligence ; she said 
 her house, since I belonged to it, was managed far more 
 perfectly ; she took a pleasure in my growth and healthy 
 looks ; in short, she treated me in all points like her 
 daughter. 
 
THE FAIR-HAIRED ECKBERT. 295 
 
 " ' Thou art a good girl, child,' said she once to me, in 
 her creaking tone ; l if thou continuest so, it will be well with 
 thee ; but none ever prospers when he leaves the straight 
 path ; punishment will overtake him, though it may be late.' 
 I gave little heed to this remark of hers at the time, for in 
 all my temper and movements I was very lively ; but by 
 night it occurred to me again, and I could not understand 
 what she meant by it. I considered all the words attentively; 
 I had read of riches, and at last it struck me that her pearls 
 and jewels might perhaps be something precious. Ere long,, 
 this thought grew clearer to me. Bui the straight path, and 
 leaving it? What could she mean by this? 
 
 " I was now fourteen ; it is the misery of man that he 
 arrives at understanding through the loss of innocence. I 
 now saw well enough that it lay with me to take the jewels 
 and the bird in the old woman's absence, and go forth with 
 them and see the world which I had read of. Perhaps, too, 
 it would then be possible that I might meet that fairest of 
 all knights, who forever dwelt in my memory. 
 
 "At first this thought was nothing more than any other 
 thought; but when I used to be sitting at my wheel, it still 
 returned to me, against my will ; and I sometimes followed 
 it so far, that I already saw myself adorned in splendid 
 attire, with princes and knights around me. On awakening 
 from these dreams, I would feel a sadness when I looked 
 up, and found myself still in the little cottage. For the 
 rest, if I went through my duties, the old woman troubled 
 herself little about what I thought or felt. 
 
 " One day she went out again, telling me that she should 
 be away on this occasion longer than usual ; that I must 
 take strict charge of everything, and not let the time hang 
 heavy on my hands. I had a sort of fear on taking leave of 
 her, for I felt as if I should not see her any more. I looked 
 long after her, and knew not why I felt so sad ; it was 
 
296 TIECK. 
 
 almost as if my purpose had already stood before me, with- 
 out myself being conscious of it. 
 
 " Never did I tend the dog and the bird with such dili- 
 gence as now ; they were nearer to my heart than formerly. 
 The old woman had been gone some days, when I rose one 
 morning in the firm mind to leave the cottage, and set out 
 with the bird to see this world they talked so much of. I 
 felt pressed and hampered in my heart ; I wished to stay 
 where I was, and yet the thought of that afflicted me ; there 
 was a strange contention in my soul, as if between two 
 discordant spirits. One moment my peaceful solitude would 
 seem to me so beautiful ; the next the image of a new world, 
 with its many wonders, would again enchant me. 
 
 "I knew not what to make of it; the dog leaped up 
 continually about me ; the sunshine spread abroad over the 
 fields ; the green birch-trees glittered ; I always felt as if 
 I had something I must do in haste ; so I caught the little 
 dog, tied him up in the room, and took the cage with the 
 bird under my arm. The dog writhed and whined at this 
 unusual treatment ; he looked at me with begging eyes, 
 but I feared to have him with me. I also took one pot of 
 jewels, and concealed it by me ; the rest I left. 
 
 " The bird turned its head very strangely when I crossed 
 the threshold ; the dog tugged at his cord to follow me, but 
 he was forced to stay. 
 
 " I did not take the road to the wild rocks, but went in 
 the opposite direction. The dog still whined and barked, 
 and it touched me to the heart to hear him; the bird tried 
 once or twice to sing; but as I was carrying him, the shak- 
 ing put him out. 
 
 " The farther I went, the fainter grew the barking, and 
 at last it altogether ceased. I wept, and had almost turned 
 back, but the longing to see something new still hindered 
 me. 
 
THE FAIR-HAIRED ECKBERT. 297 
 
 " I had got across the hills, and through some forests, 
 when the night came on, and I was forced to turn aside 
 into a village. I blushed exceedingly on entering the inn; 
 they showed me to a room and bed ; I slept pretty quietly, 
 only that I dreamed of the old woman, and her threaten- 
 ing me. 
 
 "My journey had not much variety; the farther I went, 
 the more was 1 afflicted by the recollection of my old mis- 
 tress and the little dog; I considered that in all likelihood 
 the poor shock would die of hunger, and often in the woods 
 I thought my dame would suddenly meet me. Thus amid 
 tears and sobs I went along ; when I stopped to rest, and 
 put the cage on the ground, the bird struck up his song, 
 and brought but too keenly to my mind the fair habitation 
 I had left. As human nature is forgetful, I imagined that 
 my former journey, in my childhood, had not been so sad 
 and woful as the present ; I wished to be as I was then. 
 
 "I had sold some jewels; and now, after wandering on 
 for several days, I reached a village. At the very entrance 
 I was struck with something strange ; I felt terrified and 
 knew not why ; but I soon bethought myself, for it was the 
 village where I was born! How amazed was I! How the 
 tears ran down my cheeks for gladness, for a thousand 
 singular remembrances! Many things were changed; new 
 houses had been built, some, just raised when I went away, 
 were now fallen, and had marks of fire on them ; every- 
 thing was far smaller and more confined than I had fancied. 
 It rejoiced my very heart that I should see my parents 
 once more after such an absence ; I found their little cot- 
 tage, the well-known threshold ; the door-latch was standing 
 as of old ; it seemed to me as if I had shut it only yester- 
 night. My heart beat violently, I hastily lifted that latch ; 
 but faces I had never seen before looked up and gazed at 
 me. I asked for the shepherd Martin ; they told me that 
 
298 TIECK. 
 
 his wife and he were dead three years ago. I drew back 
 quickly, and left the village weeping aloud. 
 
 a I had figured out so beautifully how I would surprise 
 them with my riches ; by the strangest chance, what I had 
 only dreamed in childhood was become reality ; and now it 
 was all in vain, they could not rejoice with me, and that 
 which had been my first hope in life was lost forever. 
 
 " In a pleasant town I hired a small house and garden, 
 and took myself a maid. The world, in truth, proved not 
 so wonderful as I had painted it ; but I forgot the old wo- 
 man and my former way of life rather more, and on the 
 whole I was contented. 
 
 " For a long while the bird had ceased to sing ; I was 
 therefore not a little frightened, when one night he suddenly 
 began again, and with a different rhyme. He sang : 
 
 Alone in wood so gay, 
 Ah, far away ! 
 But thou wilt say 
 Some other day, 
 'T were best to stay 
 Alone in wood so gay. 
 
 " Throughout the night I could not close an eye ; all 
 things again occurred to my remembrance ; and I felt, more 
 than ever, that I had not acted rightly. When I rose, the 
 aspect of the bird distressed me greatly ; he looked at me 
 continually, and his presence did me ill. There was now 
 no end to his song ; he sang it louder and more shrilly than 
 he had been wont. The more I looked at him, the more he 
 pained and frightened me; at last I opened the cage, put in 
 my hand, and grasped his neck ;" I squeezed my fingers hard 
 together, he looked at me, I slackened them ; but he was 
 dead. I buried him in the garden. 
 
 " After this, there often came a fear over me for my 
 
THE FAIR-HAIRED ECKBERT. 299 
 
 maid ; I looked back upon myself, and fancied she might 
 rob me or murder me. For a long while, I had been ac- 
 quainted with a young knight, whom I altogether liked. I 
 bestowed on him my hand ; and with this, Sir Walther, ends 
 my story." 
 
 "Ay, you should have seen her then," said Eckbert 
 warmly ; " seen her youth, her loveliness, and what a charm 
 her lonely way of life had given her. I had no fortune ; it 
 was through her love these riches came to me ; we moved 
 hither, and our marriage has at no time brought us anything 
 but good." 
 
 " But with our tattling," added Bertha, " it is growing 
 very late ; we must go to sleep." 
 
 She rose, and proceeded to her chamber ; Walther, with 
 a kiss of her hand, wished her good night, saying : " Many 
 thanks, noble lady ; I can well figure you beside your sing- 
 ing bird, and how you fed poor little Stroh?nian." 
 
 Walther likewise went to sleep ; Eckbert alone still walk- 
 ed in a restless humor up and down the room. " Are not 
 men fools ? " said he at last. " I myself occasioned this 
 recital of my wife's history, and now such confidence ap- 
 pears to me improper! Will he not abuse it ? Will he not 
 communicate the secret to others ? Will he not, for such is 
 human nature, cast unblessed thoughts on our jewels, and 
 form pretexts and lay plans to get possession of them ? " 
 
 It now occurred to his mind that Walther had not taken 
 leave of him so cordially as might have been expected after 
 such a mark of trust. The soul once set upon suspicion finds 
 in every trifle something to confirm it. Eckbert, on the 
 other hand, reproached himself for such ignoble feelings to 
 his worthy friend ; yet still he could not cast them out. All 
 night he plagued himself with such uneasy thoughts, and got 
 very little sleep. 
 
 Bertha was unwell next day, and could not come to 
 
300 TIECK. 
 
 breakfast; Walther did not seem to trouble bimself much 
 about her illness, but left her husband also rather coolly. 
 Eckbert could not comprehend such conduct ; he went to 
 see his wife, and found her in a feverish state ; she said her 
 last night's story must have agitated her. 
 
 From that day, Walther visited the castle of his friend 
 but seldom ; and when he did appear, it was but to say a 
 few unmeaning words and then depart. Eckbert was ex- 
 ceedingly distressed by this demeanor; to Bertha or Wal- 
 ther he indeed said nothing of it ; but to any person his in- 
 ternal disquietude was visible enough. 
 
 Bertha's sickness wore an aspect more and more serious ; 
 the Doctor grew alarmed ; the red had vanished from his 
 patient's cheeks, and her eyes were becoming more and 
 more inflamed. One morning she sent for her husband to 
 her bedside ; the nurses were ordered to withdraw. 
 
 "Dear Eckbert," she began, " I must disclose a secret to 
 thee, which has almost taken away my senses, which is ru- 
 ining my health, unimportant trifle as it may appear. Thou 
 mayest remember, often as I talked of my childhood, I could 
 never call to mind the name of the dog that was so long 
 beside me ; now, that night on taking leave, Walther all at 
 once said to me : c I can well figure you, and how you fed 
 poor little Strohmian.' Is it chance? Did he guess the 
 name; did he know it, and speak it on purpose? If so, 
 how stands this man connected with my destiny? At times 
 I struggle with myself, as if I but imagined this mysterious 
 business ; but, alas ! it is certain, too certain. I felt a shud- 
 der that a stranger should help me to recall the memory of 
 my secrets. What sayest thou, Eckbert? " 
 
 Eckbert looked at his sick and agitated wife with deep 
 emotion ; he stood silent and thoughtful ; then spoke some 
 words of comfort to her, and went out. In a distant cham- 
 ber he walked to and fro in indescribable disquiet. Wal- 
 
THE FAIR-HAIRED ECKBERT. 301 
 
 ther, for many years, had been his sole companion ; and 
 now this person was the only mortal in the world whose ex- 
 istence pained and oppressed him. It seemed as if he 
 should be gay and light of heart, were that one thing but 
 removed. He took his bow, to dissipate these thoughts; 
 and went to hunt. 
 
 It was a rough, stormy, winter day ; the snow was lying 
 deep on the hills, and bending down the branches of the 
 trees. He roved about ; the sweat was standing on his brow ; 
 he found no game, and this embittered his ill-humor. All 
 at once he saw an object moving in the distance ; it was 
 Walther gathering moss from the trunks of trees. Scarce 
 knowing what he did, he bent his bow ; Walther looked 
 round, and gave a threatening gesture, but the arrow was 
 already flying, and he sank transfixed by it. 
 
 Eckbert felt relieved and calmed, yet a certain horror 
 drove him home to his castle. It was a good way distant ; 
 he had wandered far into the woods. On arriving, he found 
 Bertha dead ; before her death, she had spoken much of 
 Walther and the old woman. 
 
 For a great while after this occurrence, Eckbert lived in 
 the deepest solitude ; he had all along been melancholy, for 
 the strange history of his wife disturbed him, and he dreaded 
 some unlucky incident or other ; but at present he was 
 utterly at variance with himself. The murder of his friend 
 arose incessantly before his mind ; he lived in the anguish 
 of continual remorse. 
 
 To dissipate his feelings, he occasionally moved to the 
 neighboring town, where he mingled in society and its 
 amusements. He longed for a friend to fill the void in his 
 soul ; and yet, when he remembered Walther, he would 
 shudder at the thought of meeting with a friend ; for he 
 felt convinced that, with any friend, he must be unhappy. 
 He had lived so long with his Bertha in lovely calmness ; 
 
 vol. i. 26 
 
302 TIECK. 
 
 the friendship of Walther had cheered him through so many- 
 years ; and now both of them were suddenly swept away. 
 As he thought of these things, there were many moments 
 when his life appeared to him some fabulous tale, rather 
 than the actual history of a living man. 
 
 A young knight, named Hugo, made advances to the 
 silent, melancholy Eckbert, and appeared to have a true 
 affection for him. Eckbert felt himself exceedingly sur- 
 prised ; he met the knight's friendship with the greater 
 readiness, the less he had anticipated it. The two were now 
 frequently together ; Hugo showed his friend all possible 
 attentions ; one scarcely ever went to ride without the other ; 
 in all companies they got together. In a word, they seemed 
 inseparable. 
 
 Eckbert was never happy longer than a few transitory 
 moments ; for he felt too clearly that Hugo loved him only 
 by mistake ; that he knew him not, was unacquainted with 
 his history ; and he was seized again with the same old 
 longing to unbosom himself wholly, that he might be sure 
 whether Hugo was his friend or not. But again his appre- 
 hensions, and the fear of being hated and abhorred, with- 
 held him. There were many hours in which he felt so 
 much impressed with his entire worthlessness, that he be- 
 lieved no mortal, not a stranger to his history, could enter- 
 tain regard for him. Yet still he was unable to withstand 
 himself; on a solitary ride, he disclosed his whole history to 
 Hugo, and asked if he could love a murderer. Hugo seemed 
 touched, and tried to comfort him. Eckbert returned to 
 town with a lighter heart. 
 
 But it seemed to be his doom that, in the very hour of 
 confidence, he should always find materials for suspicion. 
 Scarcely had they entered the public hall, when, in the 
 crlitter of the many lights, Hugo's looks had ceased to sat- 
 isfy him. He thought he noticed a malicious smile ; he 
 
THE FAIR-HAIRED ECKBERT. 303 
 
 remarked that Hugo did not speak to him as usual ; that he 
 talked with the rest, and seemed to pay no heed to him. In 
 the party was an old knight, who had always shown himself 
 the enemy of Eckbert, had often asked about his riches 
 and his wife in a peculiar style. With this man Hugo was 
 conversing, they were speaking privately, and casting looks 
 at Eckbert. The suspicions of the latter seemed confirmed ; 
 he thought himself betrayed, and a tremendous rage took 
 hold of him. As he continued gazing, on a sudden he 
 discerned the countenance of Walther, all his features, all 
 the form so well known to him ; he gazed, and looked, and 
 felt convinced that it was none but Walther who was talk- 
 ing to the knight. His horror cannot be described ; in a 
 state of frenzy he rushed out of the hall, left the town 
 over night, and, after many wanderings, returned to his 
 castle. 
 
 Here, like an unquiet spirit, he hurried to and fro from 
 room to room ; no thought would stay with him ; out of one 
 frightful idea he fell into another still more frightful, and 
 sleep never visited his eyes. Often he believed that he was 
 mad, that a disturbed imagination was the origin of all this 
 terror ; then, again, he recollected Walther's features, and 
 the whole grew more and more a riddle to him. He re- 
 solved to take a journey, that he might reduce his thoughts 
 to order ; the hope of friendship, the desire of social inter- 
 course, he had now forever given up. 
 
 He set out, without prescribing to himself any certain 
 route ; indeed, he took small heed of the country he was 
 passing through. Having hastened on some days at the 
 quickest pace of his horse, he, on a sudden, found himself 
 entangled in a labyrinth of rocks, from which he could dis- 
 cover no outlet. At length he met an old peasant, who took 
 him by a path leading past a waterfall ; he offered him some 
 coins for his guidance, but the peasant would not have them. 
 
304 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 " What use is it ? " said Eckbert. " I could believe that 
 this man, too, was none but Walther." He looked round 
 once more, and it was none but Walther. Eckbert spurred 
 his horse as fast as it could gallop over meads and forests, 
 till it sank exhausted to the earth. Regardless of this he 
 hastened forward on foot. 
 
 In a dreamy mood he mounted a hill ; he fancied he 
 caught the sound of lively barking at a little distance ; the 
 birch-trees whispered in the intervals, and in the strangest 
 notes he heard this song : 
 
 Alone in the wood so gay, 
 Once more I stay ; 
 None dare me slay, 
 The evil far away : 
 Ah, here I stay, 
 Alone in wood so gay. 
 
 The sense, the consciousness of Eckbert had departed ; 
 it was a riddle which he could not solve, whether he was 
 dreaming now, or had before dreamed of a wife and friend. 
 The marvellous was mingled with the common ; the world 
 around him seemed enchanted, and he himself was incapa- 
 ble of thought or recollection. 
 
 A crooked, bent, old woman crawled coughing up the hill 
 with a crutch. " Art thou bringing me my bird, my pearls, 
 my dog? " cried she to him. " See how injustice punishes 
 itself ! No one but I was Walther, was Hugo." 
 
 "God of Heaven!" said Eckbert, muttering to him- 
 self; " in what frightful solitude have I passed my life ? " 
 
 " And Bertha was thy sister." 
 
 Eckbert sank to the ground. 
 
 " Why did she leave me deceitfully ? All would have 
 been fair and well ; her time of trial was already finished. 
 She was the daughter of a knight, who had her nursed in a 
 shepherd's house *, the daughter of thy father." 
 
THE FAIR-HAIRED ECKBERT. 305 
 
 " Why have I always had a forecast of this dreadful 
 thought ? " cried Eckbert. 
 
 " Because in early youth thy father told thee ; he could 
 not keep this daughter by him for his second wife, her step- 
 mother." 
 
 Eckbert lay distracted and dying on the ground. Faint 
 and bewildered, he heard the old woman speaking, the dog 
 barking, and the bird repeating its song. 
 
 26 
 
II. 
 THE TRUSTY ECKART 
 
 PART FIRST. 
 
 Brave Burgundy no longer 
 Could fight for fatherland ; 
 
 The foe they were the stronger, 
 Upon the bloody sand. 
 
 He said : The foe prevaileth, 
 My friends and followers fly, 
 
 My striving nought availeth, 
 My spirits sink and die. 
 
 No more can I exert me, 
 
 Or sword and lance can wield ; 
 
 O, why did he desert me, 
 Eckart, our trusty shield ! 
 
 In fight he used to guide me, 
 In danger Avas my stay, 
 
 Alas ! he 's not beside me, 
 But stays at home to-day. 
 
 The crowds are gathering faster, 
 Took captive shall I be ? 
 
 I may not run like dastard, 
 I '11 die like soldier free. 
 
 Thus Burgundy so bitter 
 Has at his breast his sword ; 
 
 When, see ! breaks in the Ritter 
 Eckart, to save his lord ! 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 307 
 
 With cap and armor glancing 1 , 
 
 Bold on the foe he rides, 
 His troop behind him prancing, 
 
 And his two sons besides. 
 
 Burgundy sees their token, 
 
 And cries : Now, God be praised ! 
 
 Not yet we 're beat or broken, 
 Since Eckart's flag is raised. 
 
 Then like a true knight, Eckart 
 
 Dash'd gaily through the foe ; 
 But with his red blood flecker'd, 
 
 His little son lay low. 
 
 And when the fight was ended, 
 
 Then Burgundy he speaks : 
 Thou hast me well befriended, 
 
 Yet so as wets my cheeks. 
 
 The foe is smote and flying ; 
 
 Thou 'st saved my land and life ; 
 But here thy boy is lying, 
 
 Returns not from the strife. 
 
 Then Eckart wept almost, 
 
 The tear stood in his eye ; 
 He clasp'd the son he 'd lost, 
 
 Close to his breast the boy. 
 
 Why died'st thou, Heinz, so early, 
 
 And scarce wast yet a man ? 
 Thou 'rt fallen in battle fairly ; 
 
 For thee I '11 not complain. 
 
 Thee, Prince, we have deliver'd ; 
 
 From danger thou art free ; 
 The boy and I are sever'd ; 
 
 I give my son to thee. 
 
308 TIECK. 
 
 Then Burgundy our chief, 
 
 His eyes grew moist and dim ; 
 
 He felt such joy and grief, 
 So great that love to him. 
 
 His heart was melting, flaming, 
 
 He fell on Eckart's breast, 
 With sobbing voice exclaiming : 
 
 Eckart, my champion best, 
 
 Thou stood'st when every other 
 
 Had fled from me away ; 
 Therefore thou art my brother 
 
 Forever from this day. 
 
 The people shall regard thee 
 
 As wert thou of my line; 
 And could I more reward thee, 
 
 How gladly were it thine! 
 
 And when we heard the same, 
 
 We joy'd as did our prince ; 
 And Trusty Eckart is the name 
 
 We 've called him ever since. 
 
 The voice of an old peasant sounded over the rocks as 
 he sang this ballad ; and the trusty Eckart sat, in his grief, 
 on the declivity of the hill, and wept aloud. His youngest 
 boy was standing by him. " Why weepest thou aloud, my 
 father Eckart ? " said he ; " art thou not great and strong, 
 taller and braver than any other man ? Whom, then, art 
 thou afraid of ? " 
 
 Meanwhile the Duke of Burgundy was moving homewards 
 to his Tower. Burgundy was mounted on a stately horse, 
 with splendid trappings ; and the gold and jewels of the 
 princely Duke were glittering in the evening sun ; so that 
 little Conrad could not sate himself with viewing and admir- 
 ing the magnificent procession. The trusty Eckart rose, 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 309 
 
 and looked gloomily over it ; and young Conrad, when the 
 hunting train had disappeared, struck up this stave : 
 
 On good steed, 
 
 Sword and shield 
 
 Wouldst thou wield, 
 
 With spear and arrow, 
 
 Then had need 
 
 That the marroAv 
 
 In thy arm, 
 
 That thy heart and blood, 
 
 Be good, 
 
 To save thy head from harm. 
 
 The old man clasped his son to his bosom, looking with 
 wistful tenderness on his clear blue eyes. " Didst thou hear 
 that good man's song ? " said he. 
 
 " Ay, why not ? " answered Conrad ; " he sang it loud 
 enough, and thou art the trusty Eckart thyself, so I liked to 
 listen." 
 
 " That same Duke is now my enemy," said Eckart ; " he 
 keeps my other son in prison, nay, has already put him to 
 death, if I may credit what the people say." 
 
 " Take down thy broad-sword, and do not suffer it," cried 
 Conrad ; " they will tremble to see thee, and all the people 
 in the whole land will stand by thee, for thou art their 
 greatest hero in the land." 
 
 "Not so, my son," said the other; "I were then the 
 man my enemies have called me ; I dare not be unfaithful 
 to my liege ; no, I dare not break the peace which I have 
 pledged to him, and promised on his hand." 
 
 " But what wants he with us, then ? " said Conrad, im- 
 patiently. 
 
 Eckart sat down again, and said : " My son, the entire 
 story of it would be long, and thou wouldst scarcely under- 
 stand it. The great have always their worst enemy in their 
 
310 TIECK. 
 
 own hearts, and they fear it day and night ; so Burgundy 
 has now come to think that he has trusted me too far ; that 
 he has nursed in me a serpent in his bosom. People call 
 me the stoutest warrior in our country ; they say openly 
 that he owes me land and life ; I am named the Trusty 
 Eckart ; and thus oppressed and suffering persons turn to 
 me, that I may get them help. All this he cannot suffer. 
 So he has taken up a grudge against me ; and every one 
 that wants to rise in favor with him increases his distrust ; 
 so that at last he has quite turned away his heart from 
 me." 
 
 Hereupon the hero Eckart told, in smooth words, how 
 Burgundy had banished him from his sight, how they had 
 become entire strangers to each other, as the Duke sus- 
 pected that he even meant to rob him of his dukedom. In 
 trouble and sorrow, he proceeded to relate how the Duke 
 had cast his son into confinement, and was threatening the 
 life of Eckart himself, as of a traitor to the land. 
 
 But Conrad said to his father : " Wilt thou let me go, 
 my old father, and speak with the Duke, to make him 
 reasonable and kind to thee ? If he has killed my brother, 
 then he is a wicked man, and thou must punish him ; but 
 that cannot be, for he could not so falsely forget the great 
 service thou hast done him." 
 
 " Dost thou know the old proverb ? " said Eckart ; 
 
 " Doth the king require thy aid, 
 Thou 'rt a friend can ne'er be paid ; 
 Hast thou help'd him through his trouble, 
 Thy friendship is an empty bubble. 
 "Yes; my whole life has been wasted in vain. Why 
 did he make me great, to cast me down the deeper ? The 
 friendship of princes is like a deadly poison, which can only 
 be employed against our enemies, and with which at last we 
 unwarily kill ourselves." 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 311 
 
 " I will to the Duke," cried Conrad ; " I will call back 
 into his soul all that thou hast done, that thou hast suffered 
 for him ; and he will again be as of old." 
 
 " Thou hast forgot," said Eckart, " that they look on us 
 as traitors. Therefore let us fly together to some foreign 
 country, where a better fortune may betide us." 
 
 " At thy age," said Conrad, " wilt thou turn away thy 
 face from thy kind home ? I will to Burgundy ; I will quiet 
 him, and reconcile him to thee. What can he do to me, 
 even though he still hate and fear thee ? " 
 
 " I let thee go unwillingly," said Eckart ; " for my soul 
 forebodes no good ; and yet I would fain be reconciled to 
 him, for he is my old friend ; and fain save thy brother, who 
 is pining in the dungeon beside him." 
 
 The sun threw his last mild rays on the green Earth ; 
 Eckart sat pensively leaning back against a tree ; he looked 
 long at Conrad, then said : " If thou wilt go, my little boy, 
 go now, before the night grow altogether dark. The win- 
 dows in the Duke's Castle are already glittering with lights, 
 and I hear afar off the sound of trumpets from the feast ; 
 perhaps his son's bride may have arrived, and his mind may 
 be friendlier to us." 
 
 Unwillingly he let him go, for he no longer trusted to his 
 fortune ; but Conrad's heart was light ; for he thought it 
 would be an easy task to turn the mind of Burgundy, who 
 had played with him so kindly but a short while before. 
 " Wilt thou come back to me, my little boy ? " sobbed 
 Eckart ; " if I lose thee, no other of my race remains." 
 The boy consoled him ; flattered him with caresses ; at last 
 they parted. 
 
 Conrad knocked at the gate of the Castle, and was let in ; 
 old Eckart stayed without in the night alone. " Him too have 
 I lost," moaned he in his solitude ; " I shall never see his 
 face again." 
 
312 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 Whilst he so lamented, there came tottering towards him 
 a grey-haired man ; endeavoring to get down the rocks ; 
 and seeming, at every step, to fear that he should stumble 
 into the abyss. Seeing the old man's feebleness, Eckart 
 held out his hand to him, and helped him to descend in 
 safety. 
 
 " Which way come ye ? " inquired Eckart. 
 
 The old man sat down, and began to weep, so that the 
 tears came running over his cheeks. Eckart tried to soothe 
 him and console him with reasonable words ; but the sorrow- 
 ful old man seemed not at all to heed these well-meant 
 speeches, but to yield himself the more immoderately to his 
 sorrows. 
 
 " What grief can it be that lies so heavy on you as to 
 overpower you utterly ? " said Eckart. 
 
 " Ah, my children ! " moaned the old man. 
 
 Then Eckart thought of Conrad, Heinz, and Dietrich, 
 and was himself altogether comfortless. " Yes," said he, 
 " if your children are dead, your misery in truth is very 
 great.'" 
 
 " Worse than dead," replied the old man, with his mourn- 
 ful voice ; " for they are not dead, but lost forever to me. 
 Oh ! would to Heaven that they were but dead ! " 
 
 These strange words astonished Eckart, and he asked 
 the old man to explain the riddle ; whereupon the latter 
 answered : " The age we live in is indeed a marvellous age, 
 and surely the last days are at hand ; for the most dreadful 
 signs are sent into the world to threaten it. Every sort of 
 wickedness is casting off its old fetters, and stalking bold 
 and free about the Earth ; the fear of God is drying up and 
 dispersing, and can find no channel to unite in ; and the 
 Powers of Evil are rising audaciously from their dark nooks 
 and celebrating their triumph. O, my dear sir ! we are old, 
 but not old enough for such prodigious things. You have 
 
THE TRUSTS ECKART. 
 
 313 
 
 doubtless seen the Comet, that wondrous light in the sky, 
 that shines so prophetically down upon us ? All men pre- 
 dict evil ; and no one thinks of beginning the reform with 
 himself, and so essaying to turn off the rod. Nor is this 
 enough ; but portents are also issuing from the Earth, and 
 breaking mysteriously from the depths below, even as the 
 light shines frightfully on us from above. Have you never 
 heard of the Hill which people call the Hill of Venus ? " 
 
 " Never," said Eckart, " far as I have travelled." 
 
 " I am surprised at that," replied the old man; " for the 
 matter is now grown as notorious as it is true. To this 
 Mountain have the Devils fled, and sought shelter in the 
 desert centre of the Earth, according as the growth of our 
 Holy Faith has cast down the idolatrous worship of the 
 Heathen. Here, they say, before all others, Lady Venus 
 keeps her court, and all her hellish hosts of worldly Lusts 
 and forbidden Wishes gather round her, so that the Hill has 
 been accursed since time immemorial." 
 
 " But in what country lies the Hill ? " inquired Eckart. 
 
 " There is the secret," said the old man, " that no one 
 can tell this, except he have first given himself up to be 
 Satan's servant; and, indeed, no guiltless person ever thinks 
 of seeking it out. A wonderful Musician on a sudden issues 
 from below, whom the Powers of Hell have sent as their 
 ambassador ; he roams through the world, and plays, and 
 makes music on a pipe, so that his tones sound far and wide. 
 And whoever hears these sounds is seized by him with 
 visible yet inexplicable force, and drawn on, on, into the 
 wilderness; he sees not the road he travels; he wanders, 
 and wanders, and is not weary ; his strength and his speed 
 go on increasing ; no power can restrain him ; but he runs 
 frantic into the Mountain, from which he can never more 
 return. This power has, in our day, been restored to Hell ; 
 and in this inverse direction, the illstarred, perverted pil- 
 
 vol. i. 27 
 
314 TIECK. 
 
 grims are travelling to a Shrine where no deliverance awaits 
 them, or can reach them any more. For a long while, my 
 two sons had given me no contentment ; they were dissolute 
 and immoral ; they despised their parents, as they did re- 
 ligion ; but now the Sound has caught and carried them off, 
 they are gone into unseen kingdoms ; the world was too 
 narrow for them, they are seeking room in Hell." 
 
 " And what do you intend to do in such a mystery ? " 
 said Eckart. 
 
 " With this crutch I set out," replied the old man, " to 
 wander through the world, to find them again, or die of 
 weariness and woe." 
 
 So saying, he tore himself from his rest with a strong 
 effort ; and hastened forth with his utmost speed, as if he 
 had found himself neglecting his most precious earthly 
 hope ; and Eckart looked with compassion on his vain toil, 
 and rated him in his thoughts as mad. 
 
 It had been night, and was now day, and Conrad came 
 not back. Eckart wandered to and fro among the rocks, 
 and turned his longing eyes on the Castle ; still he did not 
 see him. A crowd came issuing through the gate ; and 
 Eckart no longer heeded to conceal himself; but mounted 
 his horse, which was grazing in freedom ; and rode into the 
 middle of the troop, who were now proceeding merrily and 
 carelessly across the plain. On his reaching them, they 
 recognized him ; but no one laid a hand on him, or said 
 a hard word to him ; they stood mute for reverence, sur- 
 rounded him in admiration, and then went their way. One 
 of the squires he called back, and asked him : " Where is 
 my Conrad ? " 
 
 " O ! ask me not," replied the squire ; " it would but 
 cause you sorrow and lamenting." 
 
 " And Dietrich ! " cried the father. 
 
 " Name not their names any more," said the aged squire, 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 315 
 
 u for they are gone ; the wrath of our master was kindled 
 against them, and he meant to punish you in them." 
 
 A hot rage mounted up in Eckart's soul ; and, for sorrow 
 and fury, he was no longer master of himself. He dashed 
 the spurs into his horse, and rode through the Castle-gate. 
 All drew back, with timid reverence, from his way; and 
 thus he rode on to the front of the Palace. He sprang from 
 horseback, and mounted the great steps with wavering 
 pace. "Am I here in the dwelling of the man," said he, 
 within himself, "who was once my friend ? " He endeav- 
 ored to collect his thoughts ; but wilder and wilder images 
 kept moving in his eye, and thus he stept into the Prince's 
 chamber. 
 
 Burgundy's presence of mind forsook him, and he trem- 
 bled as Eckart stood in his presence. "Art thou the Duke 
 of Burgundy ? " said Eckart to him. To which the Duke 
 answered, " Yes." 
 
 "And thou hast killed my son Dietrich?" — The Duke 
 said, " Yes." 
 
 "And my little Conrad too," cried Eckart, in his grief, 
 " was not too good for thee, and thou hast killed him also ? " 
 To which the Duke again answered, "Yes." 
 
 Here Eckart was unmanned, and said, in tears: "O! 
 answer me not so, Burgundy, for I cannot bear these 
 speeches. Tell me but that thou art sorry, that thou 
 wishest it were yet undone, and I will try to comfort my- 
 self; but thus, thou art utterly offensive to my heart." 
 
 The Duke said : " Depart from my sight, false traitor ; 
 for thou art the worst enemy I have on Earth." 
 
 Eckart said : " Thou hast of old called me thy friend ; 
 but these thoughts are now far from thee. Never did I act 
 against thee ; still have I honored and loved thee as my 
 prince ; and God forbid that I should now, as I well might, 
 lay my hand upon my sword, and seek revenge of thee. No 
 I will depart from thy sight, and die in solitude." 
 
316 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 So saying, he went out ; and Burgundy was moved in his 
 mind ; but at his call the guards appeared with their lances, 
 who encircled him on all sides, and motioned to drive Eckart 
 from the chamber with their weapons. 
 
 To horse the hero springs, 
 Wild through the hills he rideth: 
 " Of hope in earthly things, 
 Now none with me abideth. 
 
 " My sons are slain in youth, 
 
 I have no child or wife ; 
 The Prince suspects my truth, 
 Has sworn to take my life." 
 
 Then to the wood he turns him, 
 
 There gallops on and on ; 
 The smart of sorrow burns him, 
 
 He cries : " They 're gone, they 're gone! 
 
 " All living men from me are fled, 
 New friends I must provide me, 
 To the oaks and firs beside me, 
 Complain in desert dead. 
 
 " There is no child to cheer me, 
 By cruel wolves they 're slain ; 
 Once three of them were near me 
 I see them not again," 
 
 As Eckart cried thus sadly, 
 
 His sense it pass'd away ; 
 He rides in fury madly 
 
 Till dawning of the day. 
 
 His horse in frantic speed, 
 
 Sinks down at last exhausted ; 
 And nought does Eckart heed, 
 
 Or think or know what caused it ; 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 317 
 
 But on the cold ground lie, 
 
 Not fearing, loving longer ; 
 
 Despair grows strong and stronger, 
 He wishes but to die. 
 
 No one about the Castle knew whither Eckart had gone ; 
 for he had lost himself in the waste forests, and let no man 
 see him. The Duke dreaded his intentions ; and he now 
 repented that he had let him go, and not laid hold of him. 
 So, one morning, he set forth with a great train of hunters 
 and attendants, to search the woods, and find out Eckart ; 
 for he thought, that till, Eckart were destroyed, there could 
 be no security. All were unwearied, and regardless of 
 toil ; but the sun set without their having found a trace of 
 Eckart. 
 
 A storm came on, and great clouds flew blustering over 
 the forest; the thunder rolled, and lightning struck the tall 
 oaks ; all present were seized with an unquiet terror, and 
 they gradually dispersed among the bushes, or the open 
 spaces of the wood. The Duke's horse plunged into the 
 thicket ; his squires could not follow him ; the gallant horse 
 rushed to the ground, and Burgundy in vain called through 
 the tempest to his servants ; for there was no one that could 
 hear him. 
 
 Like a wild man, had Eckart roamed about the woods, 
 unconscious of himself or his misfortunes ; he had lost all 
 thought, and, in blank stupefaction, satisfied his hunger with 
 roots and herbs ; the hero could not now be -recognized 
 by any one, so sore had the days of his despair defaced 
 him. As the storm came on, he awoke from his stupefac- 
 tion, and again felt his existence and his woes, and saw the 
 misery that had befallen him. He raised a loud cry of 
 lamentation for his children ; he tore his white hair ; and 
 called out, in the bellowing of the storm : " Whither, whith- 
 er are ye gone, ye parts of my heart ? And how is all 
 27* 
 
318 
 
 T1ECK. 
 
 strength departed from me, that I could not even avenge your 
 death ? Why did I hold back my arm, and did not send 
 to death him who had given my heart these deadly stabs ? 
 Ha, fool, thou deservest that the tyrant should mock thee, 
 since thy powerless arm and thy silly heart withstood not 
 the murderer. Now, O now were he with me ! But it is 
 in vain to wish for vengeance, when the moment is gone by." 
 Thus came on the night, and Eckart wandered to and 
 fro in his sorrow. From a distance he heard as it were a 
 voice calling for help. Directing his steps by the sound, 
 he came up to a man in the darkness, who was leaning on 
 the stem of a tree, and mournfully entreating to be guided 
 to his road. Eckart started at the voice, for it seemed familiar 
 to him ; but he soon recovered, and perceived that the lost 
 wayfarer was the Duke of Burgundy. Then he raised his 
 hand to his sword, to cut down the man who had been the 
 murderer of his children ; his fury came on him with new 
 force, and he was on the point of finishing his bloody task, 
 when all at once he stopped, for his oath and the word he 
 had pledged came into his mind. He took his enemy's 
 hand, and led him to the quarter where he thought the road 
 must be. 
 
 The Duke foredone and weary 
 
 Sank in the wilder'd brakes ; 
 Him in the tempest dreary 
 
 He on his shoulder takes. 
 
 Said Burgundy : " I 'm giving 
 
 Much toil to thee, I fear." 
 Eckart replied : " The living 
 
 On Earth have much to bear." 
 
 " Yet," said the Duke, " believe me, 
 Were we out of the wood, 
 Since now thou dost relieve me, 
 Thy sorrows I '11 make good." 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 319 
 
 The hero at this promise 
 
 Felt on his cheek the tear ; 
 Said he : " Indeed I nowise 
 
 Do look for payment here." 
 
 "Harder our plight is growing," 
 
 The Duke cries, dreading scath, 
 " Now whither are we going ? 
 
 Who art thou ? Art thou Death ? " 
 
 " Not Death," said he, still weeping, 
 " Or any fiend am I ; 
 Thy life is in God's keeping, 
 Thy ways are in his eye." 
 
 " Ah," said the Duke, repenting, 
 " My breast is foul within ; 
 I tremble, while lamenting, 
 Lest God requite my sin. 
 
 " My truest friend I 've banish'd, 
 His children have I slain, 
 In wrath from me he vanish'd, 
 As foe he comes again. 
 
 " To me he was devoted, 
 
 Through good report and bad ; 
 My rights he still promoted, 
 The truest man I had. 
 
 * Me he can never pardon, 
 I kill'd his children dear ; 
 This night, to pay my guerdon, 
 I' th' wood he lurks, I fear. 
 
 " This does my conscience teach me, 
 A threat'ning voice within ; 
 If here to-night he reach me, 
 I die a child of sin." 
 
320 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 Said Eckart : " The beginning 
 
 Of our woes is guilt ; 
 My grief is for thy sinning, 
 
 And for the blood thou 'st spilt. 
 
 " And that the man will meet thee 
 Is likewise surely true; 
 Yet fear not, I entreat thee, 
 He '11 harm no hair of you." 
 
 Thus were they going forward talking, when another per- 
 son in the forest met them ; it was Wolfram, the Duke's 
 Squire, who had long been looking for his master. The 
 dark night was still lying over them, and no star twinkled 
 from between the wet, black clouds. The Duke felt weaker, 
 and longed to reach some lodging, where he might sleep till 
 day ; besides, he was afraid that he might meet with Eckart, 
 who stood like a spectre before his soul. He imagined he 
 should never see the morning ; and shuddered anew when 
 the wind again rustled through the high trees, and the storm 
 came down from the hollows of the mountains, and went 
 rushing over his head. " Wolfram," cried the Duke, in his 
 anguish, " climb one of these tall pines, and look about if 
 thou canst spy no light, no house, or cottage, whither we 
 may turn." 
 
 The Squire, at the hazard of his life, clomb up a lofty 
 pine, which the storm was waving from the one side to the 
 other, and ever and anon bending down the top of it to the 
 very ground ; so that the squire wavered to and fro upon it 
 like a little squirrel. At last he reached the top, and cried : 
 " Down there, in the valley, I see the glimmer of a candle ; 
 thither must we turn." So he descended and showed the 
 way; and in a while, they all perceived the cheerful light ; 
 at which the Duke once more took heart. Eckart still con- 
 tinued mute, and occupied within himself; he spoke no 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 321 
 
 word, and looked at his inward thoughts. On arriving at 
 the hut, they knocked ; and a little old housewife let them 
 in. As they entered, the stout Eckart set the Duke down 
 from his shoulders, who threw himself immediately upon 
 his knees, and in a fervent prayer thanked God for his de- 
 liverance. Eckart took his seat in a dark corner ; and 
 there he found fast asleep the poor old man who had lately 
 told him of his great misery about his sons, and the search 
 he was making for them. 
 
 When the Duke had done praying, he said : " Very 
 strange have my thoughts been this night, and the goodness 
 of God and his almighty power never showed themselves so 
 openly before to my obdurate heart; my mind also tells me 
 that I have not long to live ; and I desire nothing save that 
 God would pardon me my manifold and heavy sins. You 
 two, also, who have led me hither, I could wish to recom- 
 pense, so far as in my power, before my end arrive. To 
 thee, Wolfram, I give both the castles that are on these hills 
 beside us ; and in future, in remembrance of this awful 
 night, thou shalt call them the Tannenhauser, or Pine-houses. 
 But who art thou, strange man," continued he, u that hast 
 placed thyself there in the nook, apart ? Come forth, that 
 I may also pay thee for thy toil." 
 
 Then rose the hero from his place, 
 And stept into the light before them ; 
 Deep lines of woe were on his face, 
 But with a patient mind he bore them. 
 
 And Burgundy his heart forsook him, 
 To see that mild old grey-hair'd man ; 
 His face grew pale, a trembling took him, 
 He swoon'd and sank to earth again. 
 
 " O, saints of heaven," he wakes and cries, 
 "Is 't thou that art before ray eyes ? 
 
322 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 How shall I fly ? Where shall I hide me ? 
 Was 't thou that in the wood didst guide me ? 
 I killed thy children young and fair, 
 Me in thy arms how couldst thou bear ? " 
 
 Thus Burgundy goes on to wail, 
 And feels the heart within him fail ; 
 Death is at hand, remorse pursues him, 
 With streaming eyes he sinks on Eckart's bosom, 
 And Eckart whispers to him Ioav : 
 " Henceforth I have forgot the slight, 
 So thou and all the world may know, 
 Eckart was still thy trusty knight." 
 
 Thus passed the hours till morning, when some other 
 servants of the Duke arrived, and found their dying master. 
 They laid him on a mule and took him back to his Castle. 
 
 Eckart he could not suffer from his side ; he would often 
 take his hand and press it to his breast, and look at him with 
 an imploring look. Then Eckart would embrace him, and 
 speak a few kind words to him, and so the Prince would feel 
 composed. At last he summoned all his Council, and de- 
 clared to them that he appointed Eckart, the trusty man, to 
 be guardian of his sons, seeing he had proved himself the 
 noblest of all. And thus he died. 
 
 Thenceforward Eckart took on him the government with 
 all zeal ; and every person in the land admired his high, 
 manly spirit. Not long afterwards a rumor spread abroad 
 in all quarters, of a strange Musician, who had come from 
 Venus's Hill, who was travelling through the whole land, and 
 seducing men with his playing, so that they disappeared, 
 and no one could find any traces of them. Many credited 
 the story, others not ; Eckart recollected the unhappy old 
 man. 
 
 " I have taken you for my sons," said he to the young 
 Princes, as he once stood with them on the hill before the 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 323 
 
 Castle ; your happiness must now be my posterity ; when 
 dead, I shall still live in your joy." They lay down on the 
 slope, from which the fair country was visible for many a 
 league ; and here Eckart had to guard himself from speak- 
 ing of his children ; for they seemed as if coming towards 
 him from the distant mountains, while he heard afar off a 
 lovely sound. 
 
 " Comes it not like dreams 
 Stealing o'er the vales and streams? 
 Out of regions far from this, 
 Like the song of souls in bliss ? " 
 
 This to the youths did Eckart say, 
 
 And caught the sound from far away ; 
 
 And as the magic tones came nigher, 
 
 A wicked, strange desire 
 
 Awakens in the breasts of these pure boys, 
 
 That drives them forth to seek for unknown joys. 
 
 " Come, let 's to the fields, to the meadows and mountains, 
 The forests invite us, the streams and the fountains ; 
 Soft voices in secret for loitering chide us, 
 Away to the Garden of Pleasure they '11 guide us." 
 
 The Player comes in foreign guise, 
 
 Appears before their wondering eyes ; 
 
 And higher swells the music's sound, 
 
 And brighter glows the emerald ground ; 
 
 The flowers appear as drunk, 
 
 Twilight red has on them sunk ; 
 
 And through the green grass play with airy lightness, 
 
 Soft, fitful, blue and golden streaks of brightness. 
 
 Like a shadow, melts and flits away 
 
 All that bound men to this world of clay ; 
 
 In Earth all toil and tumult cease, 
 
 Like one bright flower it blooms in peace ; 
 
 The mountains rock in purple light, 
 
 The valleys shout as with delight ; 
 
324 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 All rush and whirl in the music's noise, 
 And long to share of these offered joys ; 
 The soul of man is allured to gladness, 
 And lies entranced in that blissful madness. 
 
 The trusty Eckart felt it, 
 But wist not of the cause ; 
 
 His heart the music melted, 
 He wondered what it was. 
 
 The world seems new and fairer, 
 All blooming like the rose ; 
 
 Can Eckart be a sharer 
 In raptures such as those ? 
 
 " Ha ! Are those tones restoring 
 My wife and bonny sons ? 
 All that I was deploring, 
 My lost beloved ones ? " 
 
 Yet soon his sense collected 
 
 Brought doubt within his breast ; 
 
 These hellish arts detected, 
 A horror him possess'd. 
 
 And now he sees the raging 
 Of his young princes dear ; 
 
 Themselves to Hell engaging, 
 His voice no more they hear. 
 
 And forth, in wild commotion, 
 They rush, not knowing where ; 
 
 In tumult like the ocean, 
 When mad his billows are. 
 
 Then, as these things assail'd him, 
 He wist not what to do ; 
 
 His knighthood almost fail'd him 
 Amid that hellish crew. 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 325 
 
 Then to his soul appeareth 
 
 The hour the Duke did die; 
 His friend's faint prayer he heareth, 
 
 He sees his fading eye. 
 
 And so his mind 's in armor, 
 And hope is conquering fear ; 
 
 When see, the fiendish Charmer 
 Himself comes piping near! 
 
 His sword to draw he essayeth, 
 
 And smite the caitiff dead ; 
 But as the music playeth, 
 
 His strength is from him fled. 
 
 And from the mountains issue 
 
 Crowds of distorted forms, 
 Of Dwarfs a boundless tissue 
 
 Come simmering round in swarms. 
 
 The youths, possess'd, are running 
 
 As frantic in the crowd ; 
 In vain is force or cunning ; 
 
 In vain to call aloud. 
 
 And hurries on by castle, 
 
 By tower and town, the rout ; 
 
 Like imps in hellish wassail, 
 
 With crackling laugh and shout. 
 
 He too is in the rabble ; 
 
 May not resist their force, 
 Must hear their deafening babble, 
 
 Attend their frantic course. 
 
 But now the Hill appeareth, 
 
 And music comes thereout ; 
 And as the Phantoms hear it, 
 They halt, and raise a shout. 
 vol. I. 28 
 
326 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 The Mountain starts asunder, 
 
 A motley crowd is seen ; 
 This way and that they wander, 
 
 In red, unearthly sheen. 
 
 Then his broad sword he drew it, 
 And says : " Still true, though lost ! " 
 
 And with mad force he heweth 
 Through that Infernal host. 
 
 His youths he sees (how gladly ! ) 
 Escaping through the vale ; 
 
 The Fiends are fighting madly, 
 And threatening to prevail. 
 
 The Dwarfs, when hurt, fly downward, 
 
 And rise up cured again ; 
 And other crowds rush onward, 
 
 And fight with might and main. 
 
 Then saw he from a distance 
 The children safe, and cried: 
 " They need not my assistance, 
 I care not what betide." 
 
 His good broad sword doth glitter 
 And flash i' th' noontide ray ; 
 
 The Dwarfs, with wailing bitter, 
 And howls, depart away. 
 
 Safe at the valley's ending, 
 The youths far off he spies ; 
 
 Then faint and wounded, bending, 
 The hero falls and dies. 
 
 So his last hour o'ertook him, 
 
 Fighting like lion brave ; 
 His truth, it ne'er forsook him, 
 
 He was faithful to the srrave. 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 327 
 
 Now Eckart having- perish'd, 
 
 The eldest son bore sway ; 
 His memory still he cherish'd, 
 
 With grateful heart would say : 
 
 From foes and wreck to save me, 
 
 Like lion grim he fought, 
 My throne, my life, he gave me, 
 
 And with his heart's blood bought." 
 
 And soon a wondrous rumor 
 
 The country round did fill, 
 That when a desp'rate humor 
 
 Doth send one to the Hill, 
 
 There straight a Shape will meet him, 
 
 The Trusty Eckart's ghost, 
 And wistfully entreat him 
 
 To turn, and not be lost. 
 
 There he, though dead, yet ever 
 
 True watch and ward doth hold ; 
 Upon the Earth shall never 
 
 Be man so true and bold. 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 
 
 PART SECOND. 
 
 More than four centuries had elapsed since the trusty 
 Eckart's death, when a noble Tannenhauser, in the station 
 of Imperial Counsellor, was living at Court in the highest 
 estimation. The son of this knight surpassed in beauty all 
 the other nobles of the land, and on this account was loved 
 and prized by every one. Suddenly, however, after some 
 mysterious incidents had been observed to happen to him, the 
 young man disappeared ; and no one knew or guessed what 
 was become of him. Since the times of the Trusty 
 Eckart, there had always been a story current in the land 
 about the Venus-Hill ; and many said that he had wandered 
 thither, and was lost forever. 
 
 One of those that most lamented him was his young friend 
 Friedrich von Wolfsburg. They had grown up together, 
 and their mutual attachment seemed to each of them to 
 have become a necessary of life. Tannenhauser's old father 
 died ; Friedrich married some years afterwards ; already 
 was a ring of merry children round him, and still he heard 
 no tidings of his youthful friend; so that, in the end, he 
 was forced to conclude him dead. 
 
 He was standing one evening under the gate of his Castle, 
 when he perceived afar off a pilgrim travelling towards the 
 mansion. The wayfaring man was clad in a strange garb ; 
 and his gait and gestures the Knight thought extremely 
 singular. On his approaching nearer, Wolfsburg thought 
 that he knew him : and at last he became convinced that 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 329 
 
 the stranger was no other than his long-lost friend the Tan- 
 nenhauser. He felt amazed, and a secret horror took pos- 
 session of him, as he recognized distinctly these much- 
 altered features. 
 
 The two friends embraced ; then started back next mo- 
 ment ; and gazed astonished at each other as at unknown 
 beings. Of questions, of perplexed replies, were many. 
 Friedrich often shuddered at the wild look of his friend, 
 which seemed to burn as with unearthly light. The Tan- 
 nenhauser had reposed himself a day or two, when Friedrich 
 learned that he was on a pilgrimage to Rome. 
 
 The two friends by and by renewed their former inti- 
 macy ; took up their old topics, and told stories to each 
 other of their youth ; but the Tannenhauser always carefully 
 concealed where he had been since then. Friedrich, how- 
 ever, pressed him to disclose it, now that they Were once 
 more on their ancient confidential footing ; the other long 
 endeavored to ward off the friendly prayer; but at last he 
 exclaimed : " Well, be it so ; thy will be done ! Thou 
 shalt know all ; but cast no reproaches on me after, should 
 the story fill thee with inquietude and horror." 
 
 They went into the open air, and walked a little in a green 
 wood of the pleasure-grounds, where at last they sat down ; 
 and now the Tannenhauser hid his face among the grass, 
 and, with loud sobs, held back his right hand to his friend, 
 who pressed it tenderly in his. The woe-worn pilgrim rais- 
 ed himself, and began his story in the following words. 
 
 " Believe me, Wolfsburg, many a man has, at his birth, 
 an Evil Spirit linked to him, that vexes him through life, and 
 never lets him rest, till he has reached his black destination. 
 So has it been with me ; my whole existence has been 
 but a continuing birth-pain, and my awakening will be in 
 Hell. For this have I already wandered so many weary 
 steps, and have so many yet before me on the pilgrimage 
 28* 
 
330 TIECK. 
 
 which I am making to the Holy Father, that I may endeav- 
 or to obtain forgiveness at Rome. In his presence will I 
 lay down the heavy burden of my sins ; or fall beneath it, 
 and die despairing." 
 
 Friedrich attempted to console him, but the Tannenhauser 
 seemed to pay little heed to what he said ; and, after a short 
 while, he proceeded in the following words : " There is an old 
 legend of a Knight who is said to have lived many centuries 
 ago, under the name of the Trusty Eckart. They tell how, 
 in those days, a Musician issued from some marvellous Hill ; 
 and, by his magic tones, awoke in the hearts of all that 
 heard him so deep a longing, such wild wishes, that he led 
 them irresistibly along with his music, and forced them to 
 rush in with him to the Hill. Hell had then opened wide 
 her gates to poor mortals, and enticed them in with seduc- 
 tive music. In boyhood I often heard this story, and at first 
 without particularly minding it ; yet ere long it so took hold 
 of me, that all Nature, every sound, every flower, recalled 
 to me the story of these heart-subduing tones. I cannot 
 tell thee what a sadness, what an unutterable longing used 
 to seize me, when I looked on the driving of the clouds, and 
 saw the light, lordly blue peering out between them ; or what 
 remembrances the meadows and the woods would awaken 
 in my deepest heart. Oftentimes the loveliness and fulness 
 of royal Nature so affected me, that I stretched out my arms, 
 as if to fly away with wings ; that I might pour myself out 
 like the spirit of Nature over mountain and valley ; that I 
 might brood over grass and forest, and inhale the riches of 
 her blessedness. And if by day the free landscape charmed 
 me, by night dark, dreaming fantasies tormented me ; and 
 set themselves in lowering grimness before me, as if to shut 
 up my path of life forever. Above all, there was one dream 
 that left an ineffaceable impression on my feelings, though 
 I never could distinctly call the forms of it to memory. 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 331 
 
 Methought there was a vast tumult in the streets ; I heard 
 confused, unintelligible speaking ; it was dark night ; I went 
 to my parents' house ; none but my father was there, and 
 he sick. Next morning I clasped my parents in my arms, 
 and pressed them with melting tenderness to my breast, as 
 if some hostile power had been about to tear them from me. 
 1 Am I to lose thee ? ' said I to my father. ' Oh ! how 
 wretched and lonely were I without thee in this world ! ' 
 They tried to comfort me, but could not wipe away the dim 
 image from my remembrance. 
 
 " I grew older, still keeping myself apart from other boys 
 of my age. I often roamed solitary through the fields ; and 
 it happened one morning, in my rambles, that I had lost my 
 way ; and so was wandering to and fro in a thick wood, not 
 knowing whither to turn. After long seeking vainly for a 
 road, I at last on a sudden came upon an iron-grated fence, 
 within which lay a garden. Through the bars, I saw fair 
 shady walks before me ; fruit-trees and flowers ; and close 
 by me were rose-bushes glittering in the sun. A nameless 
 longing for these roses seized me; I could not help rushing 
 on ; I pressed myself by force through between the bars, 
 and was now standing in the garden. Immediately I sank 
 on my knees; clasped the bushes in my arms; kissed the 
 roses on their red lips, and melted into tears. I had knelt 
 a while, absorded in a sort of rapture, when there came two 
 maidens through the alleys ; the one of my own years, the 
 other elder. I awoke from my trance, to fall into a higher 
 ecstasy. My eye lighted on the younger, and I felt at this 
 moment as if all my unknown woe was healed. They took 
 me to the house ; their parents, having learned my name, 
 sent notice to my father, who, in the evening, came himself, 
 and brought me back. 
 
 " From this day, the uncertain current of my life had 
 got a fixed direction ; my thoughts forever hastened back to 
 
332 TIECK. 
 
 the castle and the maiden ; for here, it seemed to me, was 
 the home of all my wishes. I forgot my customary plea- 
 sures, I forsook my playmates, and often visited the garden, 
 the castle, and Emma. Here I had, in a little time, grown, 
 as it were, an inmate of the house, so that they no longer 
 thought it strange to see me ; and Emma was becoming 
 dearer to me every day. Thus passed my hours ; and a 
 tenderness had taken my heart captive, though I myself was 
 not aware of it. My whole destination seemed to me 
 fulfilled ; I had no wish but still to come again ; and when I 
 went away, to have the same prospect for the morrow. 
 
 " Matters were in this state, when a young knight became 
 acquainted in the family; he was a friend of my parents; 
 and he soon, like me, attached himself to Emma. I hated 
 him, from that moment, as my deadly enemy ; but nothing 
 can describe my feelings, when I fancied I perceived that 
 Emma liked him more than me. From this hour, it 
 was as if the music, which had hitherto accompanied me, 
 went silent in my bosom. I meditated but on death and 
 hatred ; wild thoughts now awoke in my breast, when 
 Emma sang her well-known songs to her lute. Nor did 
 I hide the aversion which I felt ; and when my parents tried 
 to reason and remonstrate with me, I grew fierce and con- 
 tradictory. 
 
 " I now roved about the woods and rocky wastes, in- 
 furiated against myself. The death of my rival was a thing 
 I had determined on. The young knight, after some few 
 months, made a formal offer of himself to the parents of my 
 mistress, and she was betrothed to him. All that was rare 
 and beautiful in Nature, all that had charmed me in her 
 magnificence, had been united in my soul with Emma's 
 image; I fancied, knew, or wished for no other happiness 
 but Emma ; nay, I had wilfully determined that the day, 
 which brought the loss of her, should also bring my own 
 destruction. 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 
 
 333 
 
 " My parents sorrowed in heart at such perversion ; my 
 mother had fallen sick, but I paid no heed to this ; her situa- 
 tion gave me little trouble, and I saw her seldom. The 
 wedding-day of my enemy was coming on ; and with its 
 approach increased the agony of mind which drove me over 
 woods and mountains. I execrated Emma and myself with 
 the most horrid curses. At this time I had no friend ; no 
 man would take any charge of me, for all had given me up 
 for lost. 
 
 " The fearful marriage-eve came on. I had wandered 
 deep among the cliffs, I heard the rushing of the forest- 
 streams below ; I often shuddered at myself. When 
 the morning came, I saw my enemy proceeding down 
 the mountains ; I assailed him with injurious speeches ; he 
 replied ; we drew our swords, and he soon fell beneath my 
 furious strokes. 
 
 " I hastened on, not looking after him, but his attendants 
 took the corpse away. At night, I hovered round the dwell- 
 ing which enclosed my Emma ; and a few days after- 
 wards, I heard in the neighboring cloister the sound of the 
 funeral-bell, and the grave-song of the nuns. I inquired ; 
 and was told that Fraulein Emma, out of sorrow for her 
 bridegroom's death, was dead. 
 
 " I could stay no longer ; I doubted whether I was living, 
 whether it was all truth or not. I hastened back to my par- 
 ents ; and came next night, at a late hour, to the town where 
 they lived. Here all was in confusion ; horses and military 
 wagons filled the streets, soldiers were jostling one another 
 this way and that, and speaking in disordered haste ; the 
 Emperor was on the point of undertaking a campaign 
 against his enemies. A solitary light was burning in my 
 father's house when I entered : a strangling oppression lay 
 upon my breast. As I knocked, my father himself, with 
 slow, thoughtful steps, advanced to meet me ; and immedi- 
 
334 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 ately I recollected the old dream of my childhood ; and felt, 
 with cutting emotion, that now it was receiving its fulfil- 
 ment. In perplexity, I asked: " Why are you up so late, 
 Father ? ' He led me in, and said : ' I may well be up, for 
 thy mother is even now dead.' 
 
 " His words struck through my soul like thunderbolts. 
 He took a seat with a meditative air ; I sat down beside 
 him. The corpse was lying in a bed, and strangely wound 
 in linen. My heart was like to burst. ' I wake here,' said 
 the old man, ' for my wife is still sitting by me.' My senses 
 failed; I fixed my eyes upon a corner; and, after a little 
 while, there rose, as it were, a vapor; it mounted and 
 wavered ; and the well-known figure of my mother gathered 
 itself visibly together from the midst of it, and looked at 
 me with an earnest mien. I wished to go, but I could not ; 
 for the form of my mother beckoned to me, and my father 
 held me in his arms, and whispered to me, in a low voice : 
 'She died of grief for thee.' I embraced him with a child- 
 like transport of affection ; I poured burning tears on his 
 breast. He kissed me ; and I shuddered ; for his lips, as 
 they touched me, were cold, like the lips of one dead. 
 * How art thou, Father ? ' cried I, in horror. He writhed 
 painfully together, and made no reply. In a few moments? 
 I felt him growing colder ; I laid my hand on his heart, 
 but it was still; and in wailing delirium I held the body 
 fast clasped in my embrace. 
 
 "As it were a gleam, like the first streak of dawn, 
 went through the dark room ; and behold, the spirit of my 
 father sat beside my mother's form ; and both looked at me 
 compassionately, as I held the dear corpse in my arms- 
 After this, my consciousness was over; exhausted and 
 delirious, the servants found me next morning in the cham- 
 ber of the dead." 
 
 So far the Tannenhauser had proceeded with his narra- 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 335 
 
 tive ; Friedrich was listening to him with the deepest aston- 
 ishment, when all on a sudden he broke off, and paused 
 with an expression of the keenest pain. Friedrich felt em- 
 barrassed and immersed in thought ; they both returned 
 in company to the Castle, but staid in the same room apart 
 from others. 
 
 The Tannenhauser had kept silence for a while, then 
 he again began : " The remembrance of those hours still 
 agitates me deeply ; I understand not how I have survived 
 them. The world, and its life, now appeared to me as if 
 dead and utterly desolate ; without thoughts or wishes I 
 lived on from day to day. I then became acquainted with 
 a set of wild young people ; and endeavored, in the whirl 
 of pleasure and intoxication, to lay the tumultuous Evil 
 Spirit that was in me. My ancient burning impatience 
 again awoke ; and I could no longer understand myself or 
 my wishes. A debauchee, named Rudolf, had become my 
 confident ; he, however, always laughed to scorn my long- 
 ings and complaints. About a year had passed in this way, 
 when my misery of spirit rose to desperation ; there was 
 something drove me onwards, onwards, into unknown space ; 
 I could have dashed myself down from the high mountains 
 into the glowing green of the meadows, into the cool rushino- 
 of the waters, to slake the burning thirst, to stay the insatia- 
 bility of my soul ; I longed for annihilation ; and again, 
 like golden morning clouds, did hope and love of life arise 
 before me, and entice me on. The thought then struck 
 me, that Hell was hungering for me, and was sending me 
 my sorrows as well as my pleasures to destroy me ; that 
 some malignant Spirit was directing all the powers of my 
 soul to the Infernal Abode; and leading me, as with a 
 bridle, to my doom. And I surrendered to him ; that so 
 these torments, these alternating raptures and agonies, might 
 leave me. In the darkest night, I mounted a lofty hill; 
 
336 TIECK. 
 
 and called on the Enemy of God and man, with all the 
 energies of my heart, so that I felt he would be forced to 
 hear me. My words brought him ; he stood suddenly be- 
 fore me, and I felt no horror. Then in talking with him, 
 the belief in that strange Hill again arose within me ; and 
 he taught me a Song, which of itself would lead me by the 
 straight road thither. He disappeared, and for the first time 
 since I had begun to live, I was alone with myself; for I 
 now understood my wandering thoughts, which rushed as 
 from a centre to find out another world. I set forth on 
 my journey ; and the Song, which I sang with a loud voice, 
 led me over strange deserts; but all other things besides 
 myself I had forgotten. There was something carrying me, 
 as on the strong wings of desire, to my home. I wished to 
 escape the shadow which, amid the sunshine, threatens us ; 
 the wild tones which, amid the softest music, chide us. So 
 travelling on, I reached the Mountain one night when the 
 moon was shining faintly from behind dim clouds. I pro- 
 ceeded with my Song ; and a giant form stood by me, and 
 beckoned me back with his staff. I went nearer : 1 1 am 
 the Trusty Eckart,' said the superhuman figure ; ' by God's 
 goodness, I am placed here as watchman, to warn men back 
 from their sinful rashness.' — I pressed through. 
 
 " My path was now as in a subterraneous mine. The 
 passage was so narrow, that I had to press myself along; 
 I caught the gurgling of hidden waters ; I heard spirits 
 forming ore, and gold, and silver, to entice the soul of man ; 
 I found here concealed and separate the deep sounds and 
 tones from which earthly music springs ; the farther I went, 
 the more did there fall as it were a veil from my sight. 
 
 "I rested, and saw other forms of men come gliding 
 towards me ; my friend Rudolf was among the number. 
 I could not understand how th eywere to pass me, so narrow 
 was the way ; but they went along, through the middle of 
 the rock, without perceiving me. 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 337 
 
 "Anon I heard the sound of music ; but music altogether 
 different from any that had ever struck my ear before. My 
 thoughts within me strove towards the notes ; I came into 
 an open space ; and strange, radiant colors glittered on me 
 from every side. This it was that I had always been in 
 search of. Close to my heart I felt the presence of the 
 long-sought, now-discovered glory ; and its ravishments 
 thrilled into me with all their power. And then the whole 
 crowd of jocund Pagan gods came forth to meet me, Lady 
 Venus at their head, and all saluted me. They have been 
 banished thither by the power of the Almighty ; their wor- 
 ship is abolished from the earth ; and now they work upon 
 us from their concealment. 
 
 " All pleasures that Earth affords, I here possessed and 
 partook of in their fullest bloom; insatiable was my heart, 
 and endless my enjoyment. The famed Beauties of the 
 ancient world were present ; what my thought coveted was 
 mine; one delirium of rapture was followed by another; 
 and day after day, the world appeared to burn round me 
 in more glorious hues. Streams of the richest wine 
 allayed my fierce thirst ; and beauteous forms sported in 
 the air, and soft eyes invited me ; vapors rose enchanting 
 around my head ; as if from the inmost heart of blissful 
 Nature, came a music, and cooled with its fresh waves the 
 wild tumult of desire ; and a horror, that glided faint and 
 secret over the rose-fields, heightened the delicious revel. 
 How many years passed over me in this abode, I know not ; 
 for here there was no time, and no distinctions ; the flowers 
 here glowed with the charms of women ; and in the forms 
 of the women bloomed the magic of flowers ; colors here 
 had another language ; the whole world of sense was bound 
 together into one blossom, and the spirits within it forever 
 held their rejoicing. 
 
 " Now, how it happened, I can neither say nor compre- 
 
 vol. i. 29 
 
338 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 hend ; but so it was, that, in all this pomp of sin, a love of 
 rest, a longing for the old innocent Earth, with her scanty- 
 joys, took hold of me here, as keenly as of old the impulse 
 which had driven me hither. I was again drawn on to live 
 that life which men, in their unconsciousness, go on leading; 
 I was sated with this splendor, and gladly sought my former 
 home once more. An unspeakable grace of the Almighty 
 permitted my return ; I found myself suddenly again in the 
 world ; and now it- is my intention to pour out my guilty 
 breast before the chair of our Holy Father in Rome ; that 
 so he may forgive me, and I may again be reckoned among 
 men." 
 
 The Tannenhauser ceased ; and Friedrich long viewed 
 him with an investigating look, then took his hand, and said : 
 " I cannot yet recover from my wonder, nor can I under- 
 stand thy narrative ; for it is impossible that all thou hast 
 told me can be aught but an imagination. Emma still lives, 
 she is my wife ; thou and I never quarrelled, or hated one 
 another, as thou thinkest; yet before our marriage, thou 
 wert gone on a sudden from the neighborhood ; nor didst 
 thou ever tell me, by a single hint, that Emma was dear to 
 thee." 
 
 Hereupon he took the bewildered Tannenhauser by the 
 hand, and led him into another room to his wife, who had 
 just then returned from a visit to her sister, which had kept 
 her for the last few days from home. The Tannenhauser 
 spoke not, and seemed immersed in thought; he viewed in 
 silence the form and face of the lady, then shook his head 
 and said : " By Heaven, that is the strangest incident of 
 all ! " 
 
 Friedrich, with precision and connectedness, related all 
 that had befallen him since that time ; and tried to make 
 his friend perceive that it had been some singular madness 
 which had, in the meanwhile, harassed him. " I know very 
 
THE TRUSTY ECKART. 339 
 
 well how it stands," exclaimed the Tannenhauser. " It is 
 now that I am crazy ; and Hell has cast this juggling show 
 before me, that I may not go to Rome, and seek the pardon 
 of my sins." 
 
 Emma tried to bring his childhood to his recollection, but 
 the Tannenhauser would not be persuaded. He speedily 
 set out on his journey, that he might the sooner get his 
 absolution from the Pope. 
 
 Friedrich and Emma often spoke of the mysterious pil- 
 grim. Some months had gone by, when the Tannenhauser, 
 pale and wasted, in a tattered pilgrim's dress, and barefoot, 
 one morning entered Fried rich's chamber, while the latter 
 was in bed asleep. He kissed his lips, and then said, in 
 breathless haste : " The Holy Father cannot and will not 
 forgive me ; I must back to my old dwelling." And with 
 this he went hurriedly away. 
 
 Friedrich roused himself; but the ill-fated pilgrim was 
 already gone. He went to his lady's room ; and her maids 
 rushed out to meet him, crying that the Tannenhauser had 
 pressed into the apartment early in the morning, with the 
 words : " She shall not obstruct me in my course ! " — 
 Emma was lying murdered. 
 
 Friedrich had not yet recalled his thoughts, when a horror 
 came over him ; he could not rest ; he ran into the open air. 
 They wished to keep him back ; but he told them that the 
 pilgrim had kissed his lips, and that the kiss was burning 
 him till he found the man again. And so, with inconceiva- 
 ble rapidity, he ran away to seek the Tannenhauser, and 
 the mysterious Hill ; and, since that day, he was never seen 
 any more. People say, that whoever gets a kiss from any 
 emissary of the Hill is thenceforth unable to withstand the 
 lure that draws him with magic force into the subterraneous 
 chasm. 
 
III. 
 THE RUNENBERG. 
 
 A young hunter was sitting in the heart of the Mountains, 
 in a thoughtful mood, beside his fowling-floor, while the 
 noise of the waters and the woods was sounding through the 
 solitude. He was musing on his destiny ; how he was so 
 young, and had forsaken his father and mother, and accus- 
 tomed home, and all his comrades in his native village, to 
 seek out new acquaintances, to escape from the circle of 
 returning habitude ; and he looked up with a sort of surprise 
 that he was here, that he found himself in this valley, in 
 this employment. Great clouds were passing over him, 
 and sinking behind the mountains ; birds were singing from 
 the bushes, and an echo was replying to them. He slowty 
 descended the hill ; and seated himself on the margin of a 
 brook that was gushing down among the rocks with foamy 
 murmur. He listened to the fitful melody of the water ; an4 
 it seemed to him as if the waves were saying to him, in un- 
 intelligible words, a thousand things that concerned him 
 nearly ; and he felt an inward trouble that he could not 
 understand their speeches. Then again he looked aloft, and 
 thought that he was glad and happy ; so he took new heart, 
 and sang aloud this hunting song : 
 
 Blithe and cheery through the mountains 
 
 Goes the huntsman to the chase, 
 By the lonesome, shady fountains, 
 
 Till he finds the red-deer's trace. 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 341 
 
 Hark ! his trusty dogs are baying 
 Through the bright, green solitude ; 
 
 Through the groves the horns are playing ; 
 O, thou merry, gay, green wood ! 
 
 In some dell, when luck hath blest him, 
 And his shot hath stretch'd the deer, 
 
 Lies he down, content, to rest him, 
 While the brooks are murmuring clear. 
 
 Leave the husbandman his sowing, 
 
 Let the shipman sail the sea; 
 None, when bright the morn is glowing, 
 
 Sees its red so fair as he. 
 
 Wood, and wold, and game that prizes, 
 
 While Diana loves his art ; 
 And, at last, some bright face rises 5 
 
 Happy huntsman that thou art ! 
 
 Whilst he sung, the sun had sunk deeper, and broad shad- 
 ows fell across the narrow glen. A cooling twilight glided 
 over the ground ; and now only the tops of the trees, and 
 the round summits of the mountains, were gilded by the 
 glow of evening. Christian's heart grew sadder and sadder; 
 he could not think of going back to his bird-fold, and yet he 
 could not stay ; he felt himself alone, and longed to meet 
 with men. He now remembered with regret those old 
 books which he used to see at home, and would never read, 
 often as his father had advised him to it ; the habitation of 
 his childhood came before him, his sports with the youth of 
 the village, his acquaintances among the children, the school 
 that had afflicted him so much ; and he wished he were 
 again amid these scenes, which he had wilfully forsaken, to 
 seek his fortune in unknown regions, in the mountains, among 
 strange people, in a new employment. Meanwhile it grew 
 29* 
 
342 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 darker ; and the brook rushed louder ; and the birds of 
 night began to shoot, with fitful wing, along their mazy- 
 courses. Christian still sat disconsolate, and immersed in 
 sad reflection ; he was like to weep, and altogether undeci- 
 ded what to do or purpose. Unthinkingly, he pulled a 
 straggling root from the earth ; and on the instant heard, 
 with affright, a stifled moan under ground, which winded 
 downwards in doleful tones, and died plaintively away in 
 the deep distance. The sound went through his inmost 
 heart ; it seized him as if he had unwittingly touched the 
 wound, of which the dying frame of Nature was expiring in 
 its agony. He started up to fly ; for he had already heard of 
 the mysterious mandrake-root, which, when torn, yields such 
 heart-rending moans that the person who has hurt it runs 
 distracted by its wailing. As he turned to go, a stranger 
 man was standing at his back, who looked at him with a 
 friendly countenance, and asked him whither he was going. 
 Christian had been longing for society, and yet he started 
 in alarm at this friendly presence. 
 
 " Whither so fast ? " said the stranger again. 
 The young hunter made an effort to collect himself, and 
 told how all at once the solitude had seemed so frightful to 
 him, he had meant to get away ; the evening was so dark, 
 the green shades of the wood so dreary, the brook seemed 
 uttering lamentations, and his longing drew him over to the 
 other side of the hills. 
 
 " You are but young," said the stranger, " and cannot yet 
 endure the rigor of solitude ; I will accompany you, for you 
 will find no house or hamlet within a league of this ; and in 
 the way we may talk, and tell each other tales, and so your 
 sad thoughts will leave you ; in an hour the moon will rise 
 behind the hills ; its light also will help to chase away the 
 darkness of your mind.'" 
 
 They went along, and the stranger soon appeared to 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 343 
 
 Christian as if he had been an old acquaintance. "Who 
 are you ? " said the man ; " by your speech I hear that you 
 belong not to this part." 
 
 u Ah ! " replied the other, " upon this I could say much, 
 and yet it is not worth the telling you, or talking of. There 
 was something dragged me, with a foreign force, from the 
 circle of my parents and relations ; my spirit was not master 
 of itself ; like a bird which is taken in a net, and struggles 
 to no purpose, so my soul was meshed in strange imagi- 
 nations and desires. We dwelt far hence, in a plain, where 
 all round you could see no hill, scarce even a height ; few 
 trees adorned the green level ; but meadows, fertile corn- 
 fields, gardens stretched away as far as the eye could reach; 
 and a broad river glittered like a potent spirit through the 
 midst of them. My father was gardener to a nobleman, 
 and meant to breed me to the same employment. He de- 
 lighted in plants and flowers beyond aught else, and could 
 unweariedly pass day by day in watching them and tending 
 them. Nay, he went so far as to maintain that he could 
 almost speak with them ; that he got knowledge from their 
 growth and spreading, as well as from the varied form and 
 color of their leaves. To me, however, gardening was a 
 tiresome occupation ; and the more so that my father kept 
 persuading me to take it up, or even attempted to compel 
 me to it with threats. I wished to be a fisherman, and tried 
 that business for a time ; but a life on the waters would not 
 suit me. I was then apprenticed to a tradesman in the 
 town ; but soon came home from this employment also. My 
 father happened to be talking of the Mountains, which he 
 had travelled over in his youth ; of the subterranean mines 
 and their workmen ; of hunters and their occupation ; and 
 that instant, there arose in me the most decided wish ; the 
 feeling that at last I had found out the way of life which 
 would entirely fit me. Day and night I meditated on the 
 
344 TIECK. 
 
 matter ; representing to myself high mountains, chasms, and 
 pine forests ; my imagination shaped wild rocks ; I heard the 
 tumult of the chase, the horns, the cry of the hounds and the 
 game ; all my dreams were filled with these things, and they 
 left me neither peace nor rest any more. The plain, our 
 patron's castle, and my father's little, hampered garden, with 
 its trimmed flower-beds ; our narrow dwelling ; the wide sky 
 which stretched above us in its dreary vastness, embracing 
 no hill, no lofty mountain, all became more dull and odious 
 to me. It seemed as if the people about me were living in 
 most lamentable ignorance ; that every one of them would 
 think and long as I did, should the feeling of their wretched- 
 ness but once arise within their souls. Thus did I bait my 
 heart with restless fancies ; till one morning I resolved on 
 leaving my father's house directly, and forever. In a book 
 I had found some notice of the nearest mountains, some 
 charts of the neighboring districts, and by them I shaped my 
 course. It was early in spring, and I felt myself cheerful, 
 and altogether light of heart. I hastened on, to get away 
 the faster from the level country ; and one evening, in the 
 distance, I descried the dim outline of the Mountains, lying 
 on the sky before me. 1 could scarcely sleep in my inn, so 
 impatient did I feel to have my foot upon the region which I 
 regarded as my home. With the earliest dawn I was awake, 
 and again in motion. By the afternoon, I had got among 
 my beloved hills; and here, as if intoxicated, I went on, 
 then stopped a while, looked back; and drank, as in inspir- 
 ing draughts, the aspect of these foreign, yet well-known 
 objects. Ere long, the plain was out of sight; the forest 
 streams were rushing down to meet me ; the oaks and 
 beeches sounded to me from their steep precipices with 
 wavering boughs ; my path led me by the edge of dizzy 
 abysses; blue hills were standing vast and solemn in the 
 distance. A new world was opened to me ; I was never 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 
 
 345 
 
 weary. Thus, after some days, having roamed over great 
 part of the Mountains, I reached the dwelling of an old 
 forester, who consented, at my urgent request, to take me 
 in, and instruct me in the business of the chase. It is now 
 three months since I entered his service. I took possession 
 of the district where I was to live, as of my kingdom. I got 
 acquainted with every cliff and dell among the mountains ; 
 in my occupation, when at dawn of day we moved to the 
 forest, when felling trees in the wood, when practising my 
 fowling-piece, or training my trusty attendants, our dogs, to 
 do their feats, I felt completely happy. But for the last 
 eight days I have staid up here at the fowling-floor, in the 
 loneliest quarter of the hills ; and to-night I grew so sad as 
 I was never in my life before ; I seemed so lost, so utterly 
 unhappy; and even yet I cannot shake aside that melancho- 
 ly humor." 
 
 The stranger had listened with attention, while they 
 both wandered on through a dark alley of the wood. They 
 now came out into the open country, and the light of the 
 moon, which was standing with its horns over the summit of 
 the hill, saluted them like a friend. In undistinguishable forms, 
 and many separated masses; which the pale gleam again 
 perplexingly combined, lay the cleft mountain-range before 
 them ; in the back-ground a steep hill, on the top of which 
 an antique, weathered ruin rose ghastly in the white light. 
 " Our roads part here," said the stranger ; " I am going 
 down into this hollow ; there, by that old mine shaft, is my 
 dwelling; the metal ores are my neighbors; the mine 
 streams tell me wonders in the night ; thither thou canst not 
 follow me. But look, there stands the Runenberg, with its 
 wild, ragged walls ; how beautiful and alluring the grim old 
 rock looks down on us ! Wert thou never there ? " 
 
 u Never," said the hunter. " Once I heard my old for- 
 ester relating strange stories of that hill, which I, like a fool, 
 
346 T1ECK. 
 
 have forgotten; only I remember that my mind that night 
 was full of dread and unearthly notions. I could like to 
 mount the hill some time ; for the colors there are of the 
 fairest, the grass must be very green, the world around one 
 very strange ; who knows, too, but one might chance to find 
 some curious relic of the ancient time up there ? " 
 
 " You could scarcely fail," replied the stranger ; " who- 
 ever knows how to seek, whoever feels his heart drawn 
 towards it with a right inward longing, will find friends of 
 former ages there, and glorious things, and all that he 
 wishes most." With these words the stranger rapidly de- 
 scended to a side, without bidding his companion farewell ; 
 he soon vanished in the tangles of the thicket, and after some 
 few instants, the sound of his footsteps also died away. The 
 young hunter did not feel surprised, he but went on with 
 quicker speed towards the Runenberg. Thither all things 
 seemed to beckon him ; the stars were shining towards it ; 
 the moon pointed out as it were a bright road to the ruins ; 
 light clouds rose up to them ; and from the depths, the 
 waters and sounding woods spoke new courage into him. 
 His steps were as if winged ; his heart throbbed ; he felt so 
 great a joy within him, that it rose to pain. He came into 
 places he had never seen before ; the rocks grew steeper \ 
 the green disappeared ; the bald cliffs called to him, as with 
 angry voices, and a lone moaning wind drove him on be- 
 fore it. Thus he hurried forward without pause ; and late 
 after midnight he came upon a narrow footpath, which ran 
 along by the brink of an abyss. He heeded not the depth 
 which yawned beneath, and threatened to swallow him for- 
 ever ; so keenly was he driven along by wild imaginations 
 and vague wishes. At last his perilous track led him close 
 by a high wall, which seemed to lose itself in the clouds ; 
 the path grew narrower every step ; and Christian had to 
 cling by projecting stones to keep himself from rushing 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 347 
 
 down into the gulf. Ere long he could get no farther ; his 
 path ended underneath a window ; he was obliged to pause, 
 and knew not whether he should turn or stay. Suddenly he 
 saw a light, which seemed to move within the ruined 
 edifice. He looked towards the gleam ; and found that he 
 could see into an ancient spacious hall strangely decorated, 
 and glittering in manifold splendor, with multitudes of pre- 
 cious stones and crystals, the hues of which played through 
 each other in mysterious changes, as the light moved to and 
 fro ; and this was in the hand of a stately female, who kept 
 walking with a thoughtful aspect up and down the apart- 
 ment. She seemed of a different race from mortals; so 
 large, so strong was her form, so earnest her look ; yet the 
 enraptured huntsman thought he had never seen or fancied 
 such surpassing beauty. He trembled, yet secretly wished 
 she might come near the window and observe him. At last 
 she stopped ; set down the light on a crystal table ; looked 
 aloft, and sang with a piercing voice : 
 
 What can the Ancient keep 
 
 That they come not at my call ? 
 
 The crystal pillars weep, 
 
 From the diamonds on the wall 
 
 The trickling tear-drops fall ; 
 
 And within is heard a moan, 
 
 A chiding, fitful tone: 
 
 In these waves of brightness, 
 
 Lovely, changeful lightness, 
 
 Has the Shape been form'd, 
 
 By which the soul is charm'd, 
 
 And the longing heart is warm'd. 
 
 Come, ye Spirits, at my call, 
 
 Haste ye to the Golden Hall ; 
 
 Raise, from your abysses gloomy, 
 
 Heads that sparkle ; faster 
 
 Come, ye Ancient Ones, come to me ! 
 
348 TIECK. 
 
 Let your power be master 
 Of the longing hearts and souls, 
 Where the flood of passion rolls, 
 Let your power be master ! 
 
 On finishing the song, she began undressing; laying her 
 apparel in a costly press. First she took a golden veil 
 from her head ; and her long black hair streamed down 
 in curling fulness over her loins ; then she loosed her bo- 
 som-dress ; and the youth forgot himself and all the world, 
 in gazing at that more than earthly beauty. He scarcely 
 dared to breathe, as by degrees she laid aside her other 
 garments ; at last she walked about the chamber naked ; 
 and her heavy, waving locks formed round her, as it were, 
 a dark, billowy sea, out of which, like marble, the glancing 
 limbs of her form beamed forth, in alternating splendor. 
 After a while, she went forward to another golden press; 
 and took from it a tablet, glittering with many inlaid stones, 
 rubies, diamonds, and all kinds of jewels ; and viewed it 
 long with an investigating look. The tablet seemed to form 
 a strange, inexplicable figure, from its individual lines and 
 colors ; sometimes, when the glance of it came towards 
 the hunter, he was painfully dazzled by it ; then, again, 
 soft green and blue playing over it refreshed his eye ; he 
 stood, however, devouring the objects with his looks, and 
 at the same time sunk in deep thought. Within his soul 
 an abyss of forms and harmony, of longing and voluptu- 
 ousness, was opened ; hosts of winged tones, and sad and 
 joyful melodies flew through his spirit, which was moved 
 to its foundations. He saw a world of Pain and Hope arise 
 within him ; strong, towering crags of Trust and defiant 
 Confidence, and deep rivers of Sadness flowing by. He no lon- 
 ger knew himself; and he started as the fair woman opened 
 the window, handed him the magic tablet of stones, and 
 spoke these words : " Take this in memory of me ! " He 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 349 
 
 caught the tablet ; and felt the figure, which, unseen, at 
 once went through his inmost heart ; and the light, and the 
 fair woman, and the wondrous hall, had disappeared. As 
 it were, a dark night, with curtains of cloud, fell down 
 over his soul ; he searched for his former feelings, for that 
 inspiration and unutterable love ; he looked at the precious 
 tablet, and the sinking moon was imaged in it faint and 
 bluish. 
 
 He had still the tablet firmly grasped in his hands, when 
 the morning dawned ; and he, exhausted, giddy, and half- 
 asleep, fell headlong down the precipice. — 
 
 The sun shone bright on the face of the stupefied sleeper ; 
 and, awakening, he found himself upon a pleasant hill. 
 He looked round, and saw far behind him, and scarce dis- 
 cernible at the extreme horizon, the ruins of the Runenberg; 
 he searched for his tablet, and could find it nowhere. As- 
 tonished and perplexed, he tried to gather his thoughts, and 
 connect together his remembrances ; but his memory was 
 as if filled with a waste haze, in which vague, irrecognizable 
 shapes were wildly jostling to and fro. His whole previous 
 life lay behind him, as in a far distance ; the strangest and 
 the commonest were so mingled, that all his efforts could 
 not separate them. After long struggling with himself, he 
 at last concluded that a dream, or sudden madness, had 
 come over him that night ; only he could never understand 
 how he had strayed so far into a strange and remote quar- 
 ter. 
 
 Still scarcely waking, he went down the hill ; and came 
 upon a beaten way, which led him out from the mountains 
 into the plain country. All was strange to him; he at first 
 thought that he would find his old home ; but the country 
 which he saw was quite unknown to him ; and at length he 
 concluded that he must be upon the south side of the 
 Mountains, which, in spring, he had entered from the north. 
 
 vol. i. 30 
 
350 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 Towards noon, he perceived a little town below him ; from 
 its cottages a peaceful smoke was mounting up ; children, 
 dressed as for a holiday, were sporting on the green ; and 
 from a small church came the sound of the organ, and the 
 singing of the congregation. All this laid hold of him with 
 a sweet, inexpressible sadness ; it so moved him, that he 
 was forced to weep. The narrow gardens, the little huts 
 with their smoking chimneys, the accurately-parted corn- 
 fields, reminded him of the necessities of poor human 
 nature ; of man's dependence on the friendly Earth, to 
 whose benignity he must commit himself; while the singing, 
 and the music of the organ, filled the stranger's heart with 
 a devoutness it had never felt before. The desires and 
 emotions of the bygone night seemed reckless and wicked ; 
 he wished once more, in childlike meekness, helplessly 
 and humbly to unite himself to men as to his brethren, and 
 fly from his ungodly purposes and feelings. The plain, 
 with its little river, which, in manifold windings, clasped 
 itself about the gardens and meadows, seemed to him inviting 
 and delightful ; he thought with fear of his abode among 
 the lonely mountains amid waste rocks ; he wished that he 
 could be allowed to live in this peaceful village ; and so 
 feeling, he went into its crowded church 
 
 The psalm was just over, and the preacher had begun 
 his sermon. It was on the kindness of God in regard to 
 Harvest ; how His goodness feeds and satisfies all things 
 that live ; how marvellously He has, in the fruits of the 
 Earth, provided support for men ; how the love of God 
 incessantly displays itself in the bread He sends us ; and 
 how the humble Christian may therefore, with a thankful 
 spirit, perpetually celebrate a Holy Supper. The congre- 
 gation were affected ; the eyes of the hunter rested on the 
 pious priest, and observed, close by the pulpit, a young 
 maiden, who appeared beyond all others reverent and at- 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 351 
 
 tentive. She was slim and fair; her blue eye gleamed with 
 the most piercing softness ; her face was as if transparent, 
 and blooming in the tenderest colors. The stranger youth 
 had never been as he now was ; so full of charity, so calm, 
 so abandoned to the stillest, most refreshing feelings. He 
 bowed himself in tears, when the clergyman pronounced 
 his blessing ; he felt these holy words thrill through him 
 like an unseen power ; and the vision of the night drew 
 back before them to the deepest distance, as a spectre at the 
 dawn. He issued from the church ; stopped beneath a 
 large lime-tree; and thanked God, in a heart-felt prayer, 
 that He had saved him, sinful and undeserving, from the 
 nets of the Wicked Spirit. 
 
 The people were engaged in holding harvest-home that 
 day, and every one was in a cheerful mood ; the children, 
 with their gay dresses, were rejoicing in the prospect of the 
 sweetmeats and the dance ; in the village square, a space 
 encircled with young trees, the youths were arranging the 
 preparations for their harvest sport; the players were seated, 
 and essaying their instruments. Christian went into the 
 fields again, to collect his thoughts and pursue his medita- 
 tions ; and on his returning to the village, all had joined in 
 mirth, and actual celebration of their festival. The fair- 
 haired Elizabeth was there, too, with her parents; and the 
 stranger mingled in the jocund throng. Elizabeth was danc- 
 ing ; and Christian, in the meantime, had entered into con- 
 versation with her father, a farmer, and one of the richest 
 people in the village. The man seemed pleased with his 
 youth and way of speech ; so, in a short time, both of them 
 agreed that Christian should remain with him as gardener. 
 This office Christian could engage with ; for he hoped that 
 now the knowledge and employments, which he had so much 
 despised at home, would stand him in good stead. 
 
 From this period, a new life began for him. He went to 
 
352 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 live with the farmer, and was numbered among his family. 
 With his trade, he likewise changed his garb. He was so 
 good, so helpful and kindly, he stood to his task so honestly, 
 that ere long every member of the house, especially the 
 daughter, had a friendly feeling to him. Every Sunday, 
 when he saw her going to church, he was standing with a 
 fair nosegay ready for Elizabeth ; and then she used to 
 thank him with blushing kindliness ; he felt her absence, on 
 days when he did not chance to see her ; and at night, she 
 would tell him tales and pleasant histories. Day by day 
 they grew more necessary to each other ; and the parents, 
 who observed it, did not seem to think it wrong; for Chris- 
 tian was the most industrious and handsomest youth in the 
 village. They themselves had, at first sight, felt a touch of 
 love and friendship for him. After half a year, Elizabeth 
 became his wife. Spring was come back ; the swallows and 
 the singing birds had revisited the land ; the garden was 
 standing in its fairest trim ; the marriage was celebrated 
 with abundant mirth ; bride and bridegroom seemed intoxi- 
 cated with their happiness. Late at night, when they re- 
 tired to their chamber, the husband whispered to his wife : 
 " No, thou art not that form which once charmed me in a 
 dream, and which I never can entirely forget ; but I am 
 happy beside thee, and blessed that thou art mine." 
 
 How delighted was the family, when, within a year, it 
 became augmented by a little daughter, who was baptized 
 Leonora. Christian's looks, indeed, would sometimes take 
 a rather grave expression as he gazed on the child ; but his 
 youthful cheeriness continually returned. He scarcely ever 
 thought of his former way of life, for he felt himself entire- 
 ly domesticated and contented. Yet, some months after- 
 wards, his parents came into his mind ; and he thought how 
 much his father, in particular, would be rejoiced to see his 
 peaceful happiness, his station as husbandman and gardener ; 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 353 
 
 it grieved him that he should have utterly forgotten his 
 father and mother for so long a time ; his own only child made 
 known to him the joy which children afford to parents ; so 
 at last he took the resolution to set out, and again revisit 
 home. 
 
 Unwillingly he left his wife ; all wished him speed ; and 
 the season being fine, he went off on foot. Already, at the 
 distance of a few miles, he felt how much the parting 
 grieved him ; for the first time in his life, he experienced 
 the pains of separation ; the foreign objects seemed to him 
 almost savage ; he felt as if he had been lost in some un- 
 friendly solitude. Then the thought came on him, that his 
 youth was over ; that he had found a home to which he now 
 belonged, in which his heart had taken root; he was almost 
 ready to lament the lost levity of younger years ; and his 
 mind was in the saddest mood, when he turned aside into a 
 village inn to pass the night. He could not understand how 
 he had come to leave his kind wife, and the parents she 
 had given him; and he felt dispirited and discontented, 
 when he rose next morning to pursue his journey. 
 
 His pain increased as he approached the hills ; the distant 
 ruins were already visible, and by degrees grew more dis- 
 tinguishable ; many summits rose defined and clear amid 
 the blue vapor. His step grew timid ; frequently he paused, 
 astonished at his fear ; at the horror which with every step 
 fell closer on him. " Madness ! " cried he, " I know thee 
 well, and thy perilous seductions ; but I will withstand thee 
 manfully. Elizabeth is no vain dream ; I know that even 
 now she thinks of me, that she waits for me, and fondly 
 counts the hours of my absence. Do I not already see 
 forests like black hair before me ? Do not the glancing 
 eyes look to me from the brook ? Does not the stately 
 form step towards me from the mountains ? " So saying, he 
 was about to lay himself beneath a tree, and take some rest ; 
 30* 
 
354 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 when he perceived an old man seated in the shade of it T 
 examining a flower with extreme attention; now holding it 
 to the sun, now shading it with his hands, now counting its 
 leaves ; as if striving in every way to stamp it accurately 
 in his memory. On approaching nearer, he thought he 
 knew the form ; and soon no doubt remained that the old 
 man with the flower was his father. With an exclamation 
 of the liveliest joy, he rushed into his arms; the old man 
 seemed delighted, but not much surprised, at meeting him 
 so suddenly. 
 
 "Art thou with me already, my son?" said he; "I 
 knew that I should find thee soon, but I did not think such 
 joy had been in store for me this very day." 
 
 u How did you know, father, that you would meet me ? " 
 
 " By this flower," replied the old gardener ; " all my 
 days I have had a wish to see it ; but never had I the for- 
 tune ; for it is very scarce, and grows only among the moun- 
 tains. I set out to seek thee, for thy mother is dead, and 
 the loneliness at home made me sad and heavy. I knew 
 not whither I should turn my steps ; at last I came among 
 the mountains, dreary as the journey through them had ap- 
 peared to me. By the road, I sought for this flower, but 
 could find it nowhere ; and now, quite unexpectedly, I see 
 it here, where the fair plain is lying stretched before me. 
 From this I knew that I should meet thee soon ; and lo ! 
 how true the fair flower's prophecy has proved ! " 
 
 They embraced again, and Christian wept for his mother; 
 but the old man grasped his hand, and said : " Let us go, 
 that the shadows of the mountains may be soon out of view ; 
 it always makes me sorrowful in the heart to see these wild, 
 steep shapes, these horrid chasms, these torrents gurgling 
 down into their caverns. Let us get upon the good, kind, 
 guileless, level ground again." 
 
 They went back, and Christian recovered his cheerful- 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 355 
 
 ness. He told his father of his new fortune, of his child 
 and home ; his speech made himself as if intoxicated ; and 
 he now, in talking of it, for the first time truly felt that 
 nothing more was wanting to his happiness. Thus, amid 
 narrations sad and cheerful, they returned into the village. 
 All were delighted at the speedy ending of the journey ; 
 most of all, Elizabeth. The old father stayed with them, 
 and joined his little fortune to their stock ; they formed the 
 most contented and united circle in the world. Their crops 
 were good, their cattle throve ; and in a few years Chris- 
 tian's house was among the wealthiest in the quarter ; Eliz- 
 abeth had also given him several other children. 
 
 Five years had passed away in this manner, when a 
 stranger halted from his journey in their village *, and took 
 up his lodging in Christian's house, as being the most re- 
 spectable the place contained. He was a friendly, talking 
 man ; he told them many stories of his travels; sported with 
 the children, and made presents to them. In a short time, 
 all were growing fond of him. He liked the neighborhood 
 so well, that he proposed remaining in it for a day or two ; 
 but the days grew weeks, and the weeks months. No one 
 seemed to wonder at his loitering; for all of them had 
 grown accustomed to regard him as a member of the fam- 
 ily. Christian alone would often sit in a thoughtful mood ; 
 for it seemed to him as if he knew this traveller of old, and 
 yet he could not think of any time when he had met with 
 him. Three months had passed away, when the stranger 
 at last took his leave, and said : " My dear friends, a wond- 
 rous destiny, and singular anticipations, drive me to the 
 neighboring mountains ; a magic image, not to be withstood, 
 allures me ; I leave you now, and I know not whether I 
 shall ever see you any more. I have a sum of money by 
 me, which in your hands will be safer than in mine; so I 
 ask you to take charge of it ; and if within a year I come 
 
356 TIECK. 
 
 not back, then keep it, and accept my thanks along with it 
 for the kindness you have shown me." 
 
 So the traveller went his way, and Christian took the 
 money in charge. He locked it carefully up; and now and 
 then, in the excess of his anxiety, looked over it; he count- 
 ed it to see that none was missing, and in all respects took 
 no little pains with it. " This sum might make us very 
 happy," said he once to his father; "should the stranger 
 not return, both we and our children were well provided 
 for." 
 
 " Heed not the gold," said the old man ; " not in it can 
 happiness be found ; hitherto, thank God, we have never 
 wanted aught ; and do thou put away such thoughts far from 
 thee." 
 
 Christian often rose in the night to set his servants to their 
 labor, and look after everything himself; his father was 
 afraid lest this excessive diligence might harm his youth and 
 health; so one night he rose to speak with him about con- 
 tracting such unreasonable efforts ; when, to his astonish- 
 ment, he found him sitting with a little lamp at his table, 
 and counting, with the greatest eagerness, the stranger's 
 gold. " My son," said the old man, full of sadness; " must 
 it come to this with thee ? Was this accursed metal brought 
 beneath our roof to make us wretched ? Bethink thee, my 
 son, or the Evil One will consume thy blood and life out of 
 thee." 
 
 " Yes," replied he ; " it is true, I know myself no more ; 
 neither day nor night does it give me any rest ; see how it 
 looks on me even now, till the red glance of it goes into my 
 very heart! Hark how it clinks, this golden stuff! It calls 
 me when I sleep ; I hear it when music sounds, when the 
 wind blows, when people speak together on the street ; if 
 the sun shines, I see nothing but these yellow eyes, with 
 which it beckons to me, as it were, to whisper words of love 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 357 
 
 into my ear ; and therefore I am forced to rise in the night, 
 time, though it were but to satisfy its eagerness ; and then I 
 feel it triumphing and inwardly rejoicing when I touch it 
 with my fingers ; in its joy, it grows still redder and lord- 
 lier. Do but look yourself at the glow of its rapture ! " 
 The old man, shuddering and weeping, took his son in his 
 arms; he said a prayer, and then spoke: " Christel, thou 
 must turn again to the Word of God ; thou must go more 
 zealously and reverently to church, or else, alas ! my poor 
 child, thou wilt droop and die away in the most mournful 
 wretchedness." 
 
 The money was again locked up ; Christian promised to 
 take thought and change his conduct, and the old man was 
 composed. A year and more had passed, and no tidings 
 had been heard of the stranger ; the old man at last gave 
 in to the entreaties of his son ; and the money was laid out 
 in land, and other property. The young farmer's riches 
 soon became the talk of the village ; and Christian seemed 
 contented and comfortable, and his father felt delighted at 
 beholding him so well and cheerful ; all fear had now van- 
 ished from his mind. What then must have been his con- 
 sternation, when Elizabeth one evening took him aside, 
 and told him, with tears, that she could no longer understand 
 her husband ; how he spoke so wildly, especially at night ; 
 how he dreamed strange dreams, and would often in his 
 sleepwalk long about the room, not knowing it; how he 
 spoke strange things to her, at which she often shuddered. 
 But what terrified her most, she said, was his pleasantry by 
 day; for his laugh was wild and hollow, his look wandering 
 and strange. The father stood amazed, and the sorrowing 
 wife proceeded : " He is always talking of the traveller, 
 and maintaining that he knew him formerly, and that the 
 stranger man was in truth a woman of unearthly beauty ; 
 nor will he go any more into the fields or the garden to 
 
358 TIKCK. 
 
 work, for he says he hears underneath the ground a fearful 
 moaning, when he but pulls out a root ; he starts and seems 
 to feel a horror at all plants and herbs." 
 
 " Good God ! " exclaimed the father, " is the frightful 
 hunger in him grown so rooted and strong, that it is come 
 to this? Then is his spell-bound heart no longer human, 
 but of cold metal ; he who does not love a flower has lost 
 all love and fear of God." 
 
 Next day the old man went to walk with his son, and told 
 him much of what Elizabeth had said; calling on him to be 
 pious, and devote his soul to holy contemplations. " Wil- 
 lingly, my father," answered Christian; " and I often do so 
 with success, and all is well with me ; for long periods of 
 time, for years, I can forget the true form of my inward man, 
 and lead a life that is foreign to me, as it were, with cheer- 
 fulness ; but then on a sudden, like a new moon, the ruling 
 star, which I myself am, arises again in my heart, and con- 
 quers this other influence. I might be altogether happy ; 
 but once, in a mysterious night, a secret sign was imprinted 
 through my hand deep on my soul ; frequently the magic 
 figure sleeps and is at rest ; I imagine it has passed away ; but 
 in a moment, like a poison, it darts up and lives over all its 
 lineaments. And then I can think or feel nothing else but 
 it ; and all around me is transformed, or rather swallowed 
 up, by this subduing shape. As the rabid man recoils at 
 the sight of water, and the poison in him grows more fell ; 
 so too it is with me at the sight of any cornered figure, any 
 line, any gleam of brightness ; anything will then rouse the 
 form that dwells in me, and make it start into being ; and 
 my soul and body feel the throes of birth ; for as my 
 mind received it by a feeling from without, she strives in 
 agony and bitter labor to work it forth again into an outward 
 feeling, that she may be rid of it, and at rest." 
 
 " J.t was an evil star, that took thee from us to the Moun- 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 
 
 359 
 
 tains," said the old man ; " thou wert born for calm life, thy 
 mind inclined to peace and the love of plants ; then thy im- 
 patience hurried thee away to the company of savage 
 stones ; the crags, the torn cliffs, with their jagged shapes, 
 have overturned thy soul, and planted in thee the wasting 
 hunger for metals. Thou shouldst still have been on thy guard, 
 and kept thyself away from the view of mountains. So I 
 meant to bring thee up, but it has not so been to be. Thy 
 humility, thy peace, thy childlike feeling, have been thrust 
 away by scorn, boisterousness, and caprice." 
 
 " No," said the son ; " I remember well that it was a 
 plant which first made known to me the misery of the 
 Earth. Never, till then, did I understand the sighs and 
 lamentations one may hear on every side, throughout the 
 whole of Nature, if one but give ear to them. In plants 
 and herbs, in trees and flowers, it is the painful writhing of 
 one universal wound that moves and works ; they are the 
 corpse of foregone glorious worlds of rock, they offer to our 
 eye a horrid universe of putrefaction. I now see clearly it 
 was this, which the root with its deep-drawn sigh was saying 
 to me; in its sorrow it forgot itself, and told me all. It is be- 
 cause of this that all green shrubs are so enraged at me, and 
 lie in wait for my life ; they wish to obliterate that lovely 
 figure in my heart ; and every spring, with their distorted, 
 death-like looks, they try to win my soul. Truly it is piteous 
 to consider how they have betrayed and cozened thee, old 
 man ; for they have gained complete possession of thy spirit. 
 Do but question the rocks, and thou wilt be amazed when 
 thou shalt hear them speak." 
 
 The father looked at him a long while, and could answer 
 nothing. They went home again in silence, and the old 
 man was as frightened as Elizabeth at Christian's mirth ; 
 for it seemed a thing quite foreign ; and as if another being 
 from within were working out of him, awkwardly and in- 
 effectually, as out of some machine. 
 
360 TIECK. 
 
 The harvest-home was once more to be held ; the people 
 went to church, and Elizabeth, with her little ones, set out 
 to join the service ; her husband also seemed intending to 
 accompany them, but at the threshold of the church he 
 turned aside ; and with an air of deep thought, walked out 
 of the village. He set himself on the height, and again 
 looked over upon the smoking cottages ; he heard the music 
 of the psalm and organ coming from the little church ; 
 children, in holiday dresses, were dancing and sporting on 
 the green. " How have I lost my life as in a dream ! " 
 said he to himself; " years have passed away since I went 
 down this hill to the merry children ; they who were then 
 sportful on the green are now serious in the church ; I also 
 once went into it, but Elizabeth is now no more a blooming, 
 childlike maiden ; her youth is gone ; I cannot seek for the 
 glance of her eyes with the longing of those days ; I have 
 wilfully neglected a high, eternal happiness, to win one which 
 is finite and transitory.'" 
 
 With a heart full of wild desire, he walked to the neigh- 
 boring wood, and immersed himself in its thickest shades. 
 A ghastly silence encompassed him ; no breath of air was 
 stirring in the leaves. Meanwhile, he saw a man approach- 
 ing him from a distance, whom he recognized for the 
 stranger ; he started in affright, and his first thought was, 
 that the man would ask him for his money. But as the 
 form came nearer, he perceived how greatly he had been 
 mistaken ; for the features, which he had imagined known 
 to him, melted into one another ; an old woman of the 
 utmost hideousness approached ; she was clad in dirty rags ; 
 a tattered clout bound up her few grey hairs ; she was 
 limping on a crutch. With a dreadful voice she spoke to 
 him, and asked his name and situation. He replied to both 
 inquiries, and then said, " But who art thou ? " 
 
 t; I am called the Woodwoman," answered she ; " and 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 361 
 
 every child can tell of me. Didst thou never see me be- 
 fore ? " With the last words she whirled about, and Chris- 
 tian thought he recognized among the trees the golden veil, 
 the lofty gait, the large stately form which he had once 
 beheld of old. He turned to hasten after her, but nowhere 
 was she to be seen. 
 
 Meanwhile, something glittered in the grass, and drew 
 his eye to it. He picked it up ; it was the magic tablet 
 with the colored jewels, and the wondrous figure, which he 
 had lost so many years before. The shape and the change- 
 ful gleams struck over all his senses with an instantaneous 
 power. He grasped it firmly, to convince himself that it 
 was really once more in his hands, and then hastened back 
 with it to the village. His father met him. " See," cried 
 Christian, " the thing which I was telling you about so 
 often, which I thought must have been shown to me only in 
 a dream, is now sure and true." 
 
 The old man looked a long while at the tablet, and then 
 said : " My son, I am struck with horror in my heart when 
 I view these stones, and dimly guess the meaning of the 
 words on them. Look here, how cold they glitter, what 
 cruel looks they cast from them, bloodthirsty, like the red 
 eye of the tiger! Cast this writing from thee, which 
 makes thee cold and cruel, which will turn thy heart to 
 stone : 
 
 See the flowers, when morn is beaming, 
 
 Waken in their dewy place; 
 And, like children roused from dreaming, 
 
 Smiling look thee in the face. 
 
 By degrees, that way and this, 
 
 To the golden Sun they 're turning, 
 Till they meet his glowing kiss, 
 And their he 
 vol. i. 31 
 
362 TIECK. 
 
 For, with fond and sad desire, 
 
 In their lover's looks to languish, 
 On his melting kiss to expire, 
 
 And to die of love's sweet anguish : 
 
 This is what they joy in most ; 
 
 To depart in fondest weakness ; 
 In their lover's being lost, 
 
 Faded stand in silent meekness. 
 
 Then they pour away the treasure 
 
 Of their perfumes, their soft souls, 
 And the air grows drunk with pleasure, 
 
 As in wanton floods it rolls. 
 
 Love comes to us here below, 
 
 Discord harsh away removing ; 
 And the heart cries : " Now I know 
 
 Sadness, Fondness, Pain of Loving." 
 
 u What wonderful, incalculable treasures," said the other, 
 ** must there still be in the depths of the Earth ! Could one 
 but sound into their secret beds and raise them up, and 
 snatch them to oneself! Could one but clasp this Earth 
 like a beloved bride to one's bosom, so that in pain and love 
 she would willingly grant one her costliest riches! The 
 Woodwoman has called me ; I go to seek for her. Near 
 by is an old ruined shaft, which some miner has hollowed 
 out many centuries ago ; perhaps I shall find her there ! " 
 
 He hastened off. In vain did the old man strive to detain 
 him ; in a few moments Christian had vanished from his 
 sight. Some hours afterwards, the father, with a strong 
 effort, reached the ruined shaft ; he saw footprints in the 
 sand at the entrance, and returned in tears ; persuaded that 
 his son, in a state of madness, had gone in, and been 
 drowned in the old collected waters, and horrid caves of the 
 mine. 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 363 
 
 From that day his heart seemed broken, and he was in- 
 cessantly in tears. The whole neighborhood deplored the 
 fortune of the young farmer. Elizabeth was inconsolable, 
 the children lamented aloud. In half a year the aged gar- 
 dener died ; the parents of Elizabeth soon followed him ; 
 and she was forced herself to take charge of everything. 
 Her multiplied engagements helped a litttle to withdraw her 
 from her sorrow ; the education of her children, and the 
 management of so much property, left little time for mourn- 
 ing. After two years, she determined on a new marriage; 
 she bestowed her hand on a young, light-hearted man, who 
 had loved her from his youth. But, ere long, everything in 
 their establishment assumed another form. The cattle died; 
 men and maid-servants proved dishonest; barns full of grain 
 were burnt; people in the town, who owed them sums of 
 money, fled and made no payment. In a little while, the 
 landlord found himself obliged to sell some fields and mead- 
 ows ; but a mildew, and a year of scarcity, brought new 
 embarrassments. It seemed as if the gold, so strangely 
 acquired, were taking speedy flight in all directions. Mean- 
 while, the family was on the increase ; and Elizabeth, as 
 well as her husband, grew reckless and sluggish in this 
 scene of despair. He fled for consolation to the bottle, he 
 was often drunk, and therefore quarrelsome and sullen ; so 
 that frequently Elizabeth bewailed her state with bitter tears. 
 As their fortune declined, their friends in the village stood 
 aloof from them more and more ; so that after some few 
 years they saw themselves entirely forsaken, and were 
 forced to struggle on, in penury and straits, from week to 
 week. 
 
 They had nothing but a cow and a few sheep left them ; 
 these Elizabeth herself, with her children, often tended at 
 their grass. She was sitting one day with her work in the 
 field, Leonora at her side, and a sucking child on her breast, 
 
364 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 when they saw from afar a strange-looking shape approach- 
 ing towards them. It was a man with a garment all in 
 tatters, barefoot, sunburnt to a black brown color in the 
 face, deformed still farther by a long matted beard ; he wore 
 no covering on his head ; but had twisted a garland of green 
 branches through his hair, which made his wild appearance 
 still more strange and haggard. On his back he bore some 
 heavy burden in a sack, very carefully tied, and as he 
 walked, he leaned upon a young fir. 
 
 On coming nearer, he put down his load, and drew deep 
 draughts of breath. He bade Elizabeth good-day ; she 
 shuddered at the sight of him, the girl crouched close to her 
 mother. Having rested for a little while, he said : "lam 
 getting back from a very hard journey among the wildest 
 mountains of the Earth ; but to pay me for it, I have 
 brought along with me the richest treasures which imagina- 
 tion can conceive, or heart desire. Look here, and 
 wonder ! " Thereupon he loosed his sack, and shook it 
 empty ; it. was full of gravel, among which were to be seen 
 large bits of chuck-stone, and other pebbles. " These jew- 
 els," he continued, " are not ground and polished yet, so 
 they want the glance and the eye ; the outward fire, with its 
 glitter, is too deeply buried in their inmost heart ; yet you 
 have but to strike it out and frighten them, and show that 
 no deceit will serve, and then you see what sort of stuff they 
 are." So saying, he took a piece of flinty stone, and struck 
 it hard against another, till they gave red sparks between 
 them. " Did you see the glance ? " cried he. " Ay, they 
 are all fire and light ; they illuminate the darkness with 
 their laugh, though as yet it is against their will." With 
 this he carefully repacked his pebbles in the bag, and tied 
 it hard and fast. " I know thee very well," said he then, 
 with a saddened tone ; "thou art Elizabeth." The woman 
 started. 
 
THE RUNENBERG. 365 
 
 u How comest thou to know my name ? " cried she, with 
 a forecasting shudder. 
 
 44 Ah, good God ! " said the unhappy creature, 44 1 am 
 Christian, he that was a hunter. Dost thou not know me, 
 then ? " 
 
 She knew not, in her horror and deepest compassion, 
 what to say. He fell upon her neck and kissed her. Eliza- 
 beth exclaimed : " O Heaven ! my husband is coming ! " 
 
 44 Be at thy ease," said he ; 44 1 am as good as dead to 
 thee ; in the forest, there, my fair one waits for me ; she 
 that is tall and stately, with the black hair, and the golden 
 veil. This is my dearest child, Leonora. Come hither, 
 darling ; come, my pretty child ; and give me a kiss, too ; 
 one kiss, that I may feel thy mouth upon my lips once 
 again, and then I leave you." 
 
 Leonora wept ; she clasped close to her mother, who, in 
 sobs and tears, half held her towards the wanderer, while 
 he half drew her towards him, took her in his arms, and 
 pressed her to his breast. Then he went away in silence, 
 and in the wood they saw him speaking with the hideous 
 Wood woman. 
 
 44 What ails you ? " said the husband, as he found mother 
 and daughter pale and melting in tears. Neither of them 
 answered. 
 
 The ill-fated creature was never seen again from that 
 day. 
 
 31 
 
IV. 
 
 THE ELVES 
 
 " Where is our little Mary ? " said the father. 
 
 " She is playing out upon the green there, with our neigh- 
 bor's boy," replied the mother. 
 
 u I wish they may not run away and lose themselves," 
 said he ; " they are so thoughtless." 
 
 The mother looked for the little ones, and brought them 
 their evening luncheon. " It is warm," said the boy ; " and 
 Mary had a longing for the red cherries." 
 
 " Have a care, children," said the mother, " and do not 
 run too far from home, and not into the wood. Father and I 
 are going to the fields." 
 
 Little Andres answered: " Never fear, the wood fright- 
 ens us ; we shall sit here by the house, where there are 
 people near us." 
 
 The mother went in, and soon came out again with her 
 husband. They locked the door, and turned towards the 
 fields to look after their laborers, and see their hay-harvest 
 ill the meadow. Their house lay upon a little green height, 
 encircled by a pretty ring of paling, which likewise enclosed 
 their fruit and flower garden. The hamlet stretched some- 
 what deeper down, and on the other side lay the castle of 
 the Count. Martin rented the large farm from this noble- 
 man ; and was living in contentment with his wife and only 
 child ; for he yearly saved some money, and had the pros- 
 pect of becoming a man of substance by his industry, for the 
 ground was productive, and the Count not illiberal. 
 
THE ELVES. 
 
 367 
 
 As he walked with his wife to the fields, he gazed cheer- 
 fully round, and said : " What a different look this quarter 
 has, Brigitta, from the place we lived in formerly! Here 
 it is all so green ; the whole village is bedecked with thick- 
 spreading fruit-trees ; the ground is full of beautiful herbs 
 and flowers ; all the houses are cheerful and cleanly ; the 
 inhabitants are at their ease ; nay, I could almost fancy that 
 the woods are greener here than elsewhere, and the sky 
 bluer ; and, so far as the eye can reach, you have pleasure 
 and delight in beholding the bountiful Earth." 
 
 "And whenever you cross the stream," said Brigitta, 
 "you are, as it were, in another world, all is so dreary and 
 withered ; but every traveller declares that our village is 
 the fairest in the country far and near." 
 
 "All but that fir-ground," said her husband; "do but 
 look back to it, how dark and dismal that solitary spot is 
 lying in the gay scene ; the dingy fir-trees with the smoky 
 huts behind them, the ruined stalls, the brook flowing past 
 with a sluggish melancholy." 
 
 " It is true," replied Brigitta; "if you but approach that 
 spot you grow disconsolate and sad, you know not why. 
 What sort of people can they be that live there, and keep 
 themselves so separate from the rest of us, as if they had 
 an evil conscience ? " 
 
 "A miserable crew," replied the young Farmer; "gyp- 
 sies, seemingly, that steal and cheat in other quarters, and 
 have their hoard and hiding-place here. I wonder only 
 that his Lordship suffers them." 
 
 " Who knows," said the wife, with an accent of pity, 
 " but perhaps they may be poor people, wishing, out of 
 shame, to conceal their poverty ; for, after all, no one can 
 say aught ill of them; the only thing is, that they do not 
 go to church, and none knows how they live ; for the little 
 garden, which indeed seems altogether waste, cannot pos- 
 sibly support them ; and fields they have none." 
 
368 TIECK. 
 
 " God knows," said Martin, as they went along, " what 
 trade they follow ; no mortal comes to them ; for the place 
 they live in is as if bewitched and excommunicated, so that 
 even our wildest fellows will not venture into it." 
 
 Such conversation they pursued, while walking to the 
 fields. That gloomy spot they spoke of lay aside from the 
 hamlet. In a dell, begirt with firs, you might behold a hut, 
 and various ruined office-houses; rarely was smoke seen 
 to mount from it, still more rarely did men appear there ; 
 though at times curious people, venturing somewhat nearer, 
 had perceived upon the bench before the hut some hideous 
 women, in ragged clothes, dandling in their arms some 
 children equally dirty and ill-favored ; black dogs were 
 running up and down upon the boundary ; and, of an eve- 
 ning, a man of monstrous size was seen to cross the foot- 
 bridge of the brook, and disappear in the hut ; and in the 
 darkness various shapes were observed, moving like shad- 
 ows round a fire in the open air. This piece of ground, 
 the firs, and the ruined huts, formed in truth a strange con- 
 trast with the bright green landscape, the white houses of 
 the hamlet, and the stately new-built castle. 
 
 The two little ones had now eaten their fruit; it came 
 into their heads to run races ; and the little nimble Mary 
 always got the start of the less active Andres. "It is not 
 fair," cried Andres at last; "let us try it for some length, 
 then we shall see who wins." 
 
 "As thou wilt," said Mary ; "only to the brook we must 
 not run." 
 
 " No," said Andres ; " but there, on the hill, stands the 
 large pear-tree, a quarter of a mile from this. I shall run 
 by the left, round past the fir-ground ; thou canst try it by 
 the right over the fields; so we do not meet till we get up, 
 and then we shall see which of us is swifter." 
 
 " Done," cried Mary, and began to run ; " for we shall 
 
THE ELVES. 
 
 369 
 
 not mar one another by the way, and my father says it is 
 as far to the hill by that side of the Gypsies' house as by 
 this." 
 
 Andres had already started, and Mary, turning to the 
 right, could no longer see him. " It is very silly," said she 
 to herself; "I have only to take heart, and run along the 
 bridge, past the hut, and through the yard, and I shall cer- 
 tainly be first." She was already standing by the brook 
 and the clump of firs. " Shall I ? No ; it is too frightful," 
 said she. A little white dog was standing on the farther 
 side, and barking with might and main. In her terror, 
 Mary thought the dog some monster, and sprang back. 
 " Fy ! fy ! " said she ; " the dolt is gone half way by this 
 time while I stand here considering." The little dog kept 
 barking, and, as she looked at it more narrowly, it seemed 
 no longer frightful, but, on the contrary, quite pretty ; it had 
 a red collar round its neck, with a glittering bell ; and as 
 it raised its head, and shook itself in barking, the little bell 
 sounded with the finest tinkle. "Well, I must risk it!" 
 cried she ; " I will run for life ; quick, quick, I am through ; 
 certainly to Heaven, they cannot eat me up alive in half a 
 minute!" And with this the gay, courageous little Mary 
 sprang along the foot-bridge ; passed the dog, which ceased 
 its barking, and began to fawn on her ; and in a moment 
 she was standing on the other bank, and the black firs all 
 round concealed from view her father's house, and the rest 
 of the landscape. 
 
 But what was her astonishment when here ! The love- 
 liest, most variegated flower-garden lay round her; tulips, 
 roses, and lilies were glittering in the fairest colors ; blue 
 and gold-red butterflies were wavering in the blossoms ; 
 cages of shining wire were hung on the espaliers, with 
 many-colored birds in them, singing beautiful songs ; and 
 children in short white frocks, with flowing yellow hair and 
 
370 TIECK. 
 
 brilliant eyes, were frolicking about ; some playing with 
 lambkins, some feeding the birds, or gathering flowers, and 
 giving them to one another ; some, again, were eating 
 cherries, grapes, and ruddy apricots. No hut was to be 
 seen ; but, instead of it, a large, fair house, with a brazen 
 door and lofty statues, stood glancing in the middle of the 
 space. Mary was confounded with surprise, and knew not 
 what to think ; but, not being bashful, she went right up to 
 the first of the children, held out her hand, and wished the 
 little creature good even. 
 
 " Art thou come to visit us, then ? " said the glittering 
 child ; " T saw thee running, playing on the other side, but 
 thou wert frightened for our little dog." 
 
 " So you are not gypsies and rogues," said Mary, " as 
 Andres always told me ? He is a stupid thing, and talks of 
 much he does not understand." 
 
 " Stay with us," said the strange little girl ; " thou wilt 
 like it well." 
 
 " But we are running a race." 
 
 " Thou wilt find thy comrade soon enough. There, take 
 and eat." 
 
 Mary ate, and found the fruit more sweet than any she 
 had ever tasted in her life before ; and Andres, and the race, 
 and the prohibition of her parents, were entirely forgotten. 
 
 A stately woman, in a shining robe, came towards them, 
 and asked about the stranger child. "Fairest lady," said 
 Mary, " I came running hither by chance, and now they 
 wish to keep me." 
 
 " Thou art aware, Zerina," said the lady, " that she can 
 be here but for a little while ; besides, thou shouldst have 
 asked my leave." 
 
 "I thought," said Zerina, "when I saw her admitted 
 across the bridge, that I might do it ; we have often seen 
 her running in the fields, and thou thyself hast taken pleas- 
 
THE ELVES. 
 
 371 
 
 ure in her lively temper. She will have to leave us soon 
 enough." 
 
 " No, I will stay here," said the little stranger; "for 
 here it is so beautiful, and here I shall find the prettiest 
 playthings, and store of berries and cherries to boot. On 
 the other side it is not half so grand." 
 
 The gold-robed lady went away with a smile ; and many 
 of the children now came bounding round the happy Mary 
 in their mirth, and twitched her, and incited her to dance ; 
 others brought her lambs, or curious playthings ; others 
 made music on instruments, and sang to it. 
 
 She kept, however, by the playmate who had first met 
 her ; for Zerina was the kindest and loveliest of them all. 
 Little Mary cried and cried again : " I will stay with you 
 forever ; I will stay with you, and you shall be my sisters ;" 
 at which the children all laughed, and embraced her. " Now, 
 we shall have a royal sport," said Zerina. She ran into 
 the Palace, and returned with a little golden box, in which 
 lay a quantity of seeds, like glittering dust. She lifted of 
 it with her little hand, and scattered some grains on the 
 green earth. Instantly the grass began to move, as in 
 waves ; and, after a few moments, bright rose-bushes started 
 from the ground, shot rapidly up, and budded all at once, 
 while the sweetest perfume filled the place. Mary also 
 took a little of the dust, and, having scattered it, she saw 
 white lilies, and the most variegated pinks, pushing up. At 
 a signal from Zerina, the flowers disappeared, and others 
 rose in their room. " Now," said Zerina, " look for some- 
 thing greater." She laid two pineseeds in the ground, and 
 stamped them in sharply with her foot. Tv\to green bushes 
 stood before them. " Grasp me fast," said she ; and Mary 
 threw her arms about the slender form. She felt herself 
 borne upwards; for the trees were springing under them 
 with the greatest speed ; the tall pines waved to and fro, 
 
372 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 and the two children held each other fast embraced, swing- 
 ing this way and that in the red clouds of the twilight, and 
 kissed each other; while the rest were climbing up and 
 down the trunks with quick dexterity, pushing and teasing 
 one another with loud laughter when they met ; if any one 
 fell down in the press, it flew through the air, and sank 
 slowly and surely to the ground. At length Mary was be- 
 ginning to be frightened ; and the other little child sang a 
 few loud tones, and the trees again sank down, and set them 
 on the ground as gradually as they had lifted them before 
 to the clouds. 
 
 They next went through the brazen door of the palace. 
 Here many fair women, elderly and young, were sitting in 
 the round hall, partaking of the fairest fruits, and listening 
 to glorious, invisible music. In the vaulting of the ceiling, 
 palms, flowers, and groves stood painted, among which little 
 figures of children were sporting and winding in every 
 graceful posture ; and with the tones of the music, the 
 images altered and glowed with the most burning colors ; 
 now the blue and green were sparkling like radiant light, 
 now these tints faded back in paleness, the purple flamed 
 up, and the gold took fire; and then the naked children 
 seemed to be alive among the flower-garlands, and to draw 
 breath, and emit it through their ruby-colored lips ; so that 
 by fits you could see the glance of their little white teeth, 
 and the lighting up of their azure eyes. 
 
 From the hall, a stair of brass led down to a subterranean 
 chamber. Here lay much gold and silver, and precious 
 stones of every hue shone out between them. Strange 
 vessels stood akmg the walls, and all seemed filled with 
 costly things. The gold was worked into many forms, and 
 glittered with the friendliest red. Many little dwarfs were 
 busied sorting the pieces from the heap, and putting them in 
 the vessels ; others, hunch-backed, and bandy-legged, with 
 
THE ELVES. 373 
 
 long red noses, were tottering slowly along, half-bent to the 
 ground, under full sacks, which they bore as millers do their 
 grain ; and, with much panting, shaking out the gold-dust 
 on the ground. Then they darted awkwardly to the right 
 and left, and caught the rolling balls that were like to run 
 away ; and it happened now and then that one in his eager- 
 ness overset the other, so that both fell heavily and clumsily 
 to the ground. They made angry faces, and looked as- 
 kance, as Mary laughed at their gestures and their ugliness. 
 Behind them sat an old, crumpled little man, whom Zerina 
 reverently greeted ; he thanked her with a grave inclination 
 of his head. He held a sceptre in his hand, and wore a 
 crown upon his brow, and all the other dwarfs appeared to 
 regard him as their master, and obey his nod. 
 
 *' What more wanted ? " asked he, with a surly voice, 
 as the children came a little nearer. Mary was afraid, and 
 did not speak ; but her companion answered, they were only 
 come to look about them in the chambers. " Still your old 
 child's tricks ! " replied the dwarf; "will there never be 
 an end to idleness? " With this, he turned again to his em- 
 ployment, kept his people weighing and sorting the ingots ; 
 some he sent away on errands, some he chid with angry 
 tones. 
 
 " Who is the gentleman ? " said Mary. 
 
 "Our Metal-Prince," replied Zerina, as they walked 
 along. 
 
 They seemed once more to reach the open air, for they 
 were standing by a lake, yet no sun appeared, and they 
 saw no sky above their heads. A little boat received them, 
 and Zerina steered it diligently forwards. It shot rapidly 
 along. On gaining the middle of the lake, the stranger saw 
 that multitudes of pipes, channels, and brooks were spread- 
 ing from the little sea in every direction. " These waters 
 to the right," said Zerina, M flow beneath your garden, and 
 
 vol. i. 32 
 
374 TIECK. 
 
 this is why it blooms so freshly ; by the other side we get 
 down into the great stream." On a sudden, out of all the 
 channels, and from every quarter of the lake, came a crowd 
 of little children swimming up ; some wore garlands of sedge 
 and water-lily ; some had red stems of coral, others were 
 blowing on crooked shells; a tumultuous noise echoed mer- 
 rily from the dark shores ; among the children might be 
 seen the fairest women sporting in the waters, and often 
 several of the children sprang about some one of them, and 
 with kisses hung upon her neck and shoulders. All saluted 
 the strangers ; and these steered onwards through the revel- 
 ry out of the lake, into a little river, which grew narrower 
 and narrower. At last the boat came aground. The strang- 
 ers took their leave, and Zerina knocked against the cliff. 
 This opened like a door, and a female form, all red, assisted 
 them to mount. " Are you all brisk here ? " inquired Ze- 
 rina. " They are just at work," replied the other, " and 
 happy as they could wish ; indeed, the heat is very pleas- 
 ant." 
 
 They went up a winding stair, and on a sudden Mary 
 found herself in a most resplendent hall, so that, as she 
 entered, her eyes were dazzled by the radiance. Flame- 
 colored tapestry covered the walls with a purple glow ; and 
 when her eye had grown a little used to it, the stranger saw, 
 to her astonishment, that in the tapestry there were figures 
 moving up and down in dancing joyfulness ; in form so 
 beautiful, and of so fair proportions, that nothing could be 
 seen more graceful ; their bodies were as of red crystal, so 
 that it appeared as if the blood were visible within them, 
 flowing and playing in its courses. They smiled on the 
 stranger, and saluted her with various bows; but as Mary 
 was about approaching nearer them, Zerina plucked her 
 sharply back, crying: "Thou wilt burn thyself, my little 
 Mary, for the whole of it is fire." 
 
THE ELVES. 375 
 
 Mary felt the heat. " Why do the pretty creatures not 
 come out,'" said she, " and play with us? " 
 
 u As thou livest in the Air," replied the other, " so are 
 they obliged to stay continually in Fire, and would faint and 
 languish if they left it. Look now, how glad they are, how 
 they laugh and shout ; those down below spread out the fire- 
 floods everywhere beneath the earth, and thereby the flow- 
 ers, and fruits, and wine, are made to flourish ; these red 
 streams, again, are to run beside the brooks of water; and 
 thus the fiery creatures are kept ever busy and glad. But 
 for thee it is too hot here ; let us return to the garden." 
 
 In the garden the scene had changed since they left it. 
 The moonshine was lying on every flower ; the birds were 
 silent, and the children were asleep in complicated groups, 
 among the green groves. Mary and her friend, however, 
 did not feel fatigue, but walked about in the warm summer 
 night, in abundant talk till morning. 
 
 When the day dawned, they refreshed themselves on 
 fruit and milk, and Mary said : " Suppose we go, by way 
 of change, to the firs, and see how things look there ? " 
 
 " With all my heart," replied Zerina ; " thou wilt see 
 our watchmen, too, and they will surely please thee ; they 
 are standing up among the trees on the mound." The two 
 proceeded through the flower-garden by pleasant groves, 
 full of nightingales ; then they ascended a vine-hill ; and at 
 last, after long following the windings of a clear brook, 
 arrived at the firs, and the height which bounded the do- 
 main. " How does it come," said Mary, " that we have to 
 walk so far here, when without the circuit is so narrow ? " 
 
 " I know not," said her friend ; " but so it is." 
 
 They mounted to the dark firs, and a chill wind blew 
 from without in their faces ; a haze seemed lying far and 
 wide over the landscape. On the top were many strange 
 forms standing; with mealy, dusty faces; their misshapen 
 
376 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 heads not unlike those of while owls ; they were clad in 
 folded cloaks of shaggy wool; they held umbrellas of curious 
 skins stretched out above them ; and they waved and fanned 
 themselves incessantly with large bats' wings, which flared 
 out curiously beside the woollen roquelaures. " I could 
 laugh, yet I am frightened," cried Mary. 
 
 " These are our good trusty watchmen," said her play- 
 mate ; " they stand here and wave their fans, that cold 
 anxiety and inexplicable fear may fall on every one that 
 attempts to approach us. They are covered so, because 
 without it is now cold and rainy, which they cannot bear. 
 But snow, or wind, or cold air, never reaches down to us ; 
 here is an everlasting spring and summer ; yet if these poor 
 people on the top were not frequently relieved, they would 
 certainly perish." 
 
 " But who are you, then ? " said Mary, while again 
 descending to the flowery fragrance ; " or have you no 
 name at all ? " 
 
 " We are called the Elves, 1 ' replied the friendly child ; 
 " people talk about us in the Earth, as I have heard." 
 
 They now perceived a mighty bustle on the green. " The 
 fair Bird is come !" cried the children to them ; all hastened 
 to the hall. Here, as they approached, young and old were 
 crowding over the threshold, all shouting for joy ; and from 
 within resounded a triumphant peal of music. Having 
 entered, they perceived the vast circuit filled with the most 
 varied forms, and all were looking upwards to a large Bird 
 with glancing plumage, that was sweeping slowly round in 
 the dome, and in its stately flight describing many a circle. 
 The music sounded more gaily than before ; the colors and 
 lights alternated more rapidly. At last the music ceased ; 
 and the Bird, with a rustling noise, floated down upon a 
 glittering crown that hung hovering in air under the high 
 window by which the hall was lighted from above. His 
 
THE ELVES. 
 
 377 
 
 plumage was purple and green, and shining, golden streaks 
 played through it ; on his head there waved a diadem of 
 feathers, so resplendent that they glanced like jewels. His 
 bill was red, and his legs of a glancing blue. As he moved, 
 the tints gleamed through each other, and the eye was 
 charmed with their radiance. His size was as that of an 
 eagle. But now he opened his glittering beak ; and sweet- 
 est melodies came pouring from his moved breast, in finer 
 tones than the lovesick nightingale gives forth ; still stronger 
 rose the song, and streamed like floods of Light, so that all, 
 the very children themselves, were moved by it to tears of 
 joy and rapture. When he ceased, all bowed before him ; 
 he again flew round the dome in circles, then darted through 
 the door, and soared into the light heaven, where he shone 
 far up like a red point, and then soon vanished from their 
 eyes. 
 
 " Why are ye all so glad ? " inquired Mary, bending 
 to her fair playmate, who seemed smaller than yesterday. 
 
 " The King is coming ! " said the little one ; " many of 
 us have never seen him, and whithersoever he turns his 
 face, there is happiness and mirth ; we have long looked for 
 him, more anxiously than you look for spring when winter 
 lingers with you ; and now he has announced, by his fair 
 herald, that he is at hand. This wise and glorious Bird, 
 that has been sent to us by the King, is called Phcenix ; he 
 dwells far off in Arabia, on a tree, which there is no other 
 that resembles on Earth, as in like manner there is no 
 second Phcenix. When he feels himself grown old, he 
 builds a pile of balm and incense, kindles it, and dies sing- 
 ing ; and then from the fragrant ashes soars up the renewed 
 Phcenix with unlessened beauty. It is seldom he so wings 
 his course that men behold him ; and when once in centuries 
 this does occur, they note it in their annals, and expect 
 32* 
 
378 
 
 TIF.CK. 
 
 remarkable events. But now, my friend, thou and I must 
 part ; for the sight of the King is not permitted thee.' 1 
 
 Then the lady with the golden robe came through the 
 throng, and beckoning Mary to her, led her into a sequest- 
 ered walk. " Thou must leave us, my dear child," said 
 she ; " the King is to hold his court here for twenty years, 
 perhaps longer ; and fruitfulness and blessings will spread 
 far over the land, but chiefly here beside us ; all the brooks 
 and rivulets will become more bountiful, all the fields and 
 gardens richer, the wine more generous, the meadows more 
 fertile, and the woods more fresh and green ; a milder air 
 will blow, no hail shall hurt, no flood shall threaten. Take 
 this ring, and think of us ; but beware of telling any one of 
 our existence ; or we must fly this land, and thou and all 
 around will lose the happiness and blessing of our neighbor- 
 hood. Once more, kiss thy playmate, and farewell." They 
 issued from the walk ; Zerina wept, Mary stooped to em- 
 brace her, and they parted. Already she was on the narrow- 
 bridge ; the cold air was blowing on her back from the firs ; 
 the little dog barked with all its might, and rang its little 
 bell ; she looked round, then hastened over, for the darkness 
 of the firs, the bleakness of the ruined huts, the shadows of 
 the twilight, were filling her with terror. 
 
 " What a night my parents must have had on my ac- 
 count ! " said she within herself, as she stept on the green ; 
 "and I dare not tell them where I have been, or what 
 wonders I have witnessed, nor indeed would they believe 
 me." Two men passing by saluted her, aud as they went 
 along, she heard them say : " What a pretty girl ; where 
 can she come from?" With quickened steps she ap- 
 proached the house ; but the trees, which were hanging last 
 night loaded with fruit, were now standing dry and leafless ; 
 the house was differently painted, and a new barn had been 
 built beside it. Mary was amazed, and thought she must 
 
THE ELVES. 
 
 379 
 
 be dreaming. In this perplexity she opened the door ; and 
 behind ihe table sat her father, between an unknown woman 
 and a stranger youth. " Good God ! Father," cried she, 
 " where is my mother ? " 
 
 " Thy mother ! " said the woman, with a forecasting tone, 
 and sprang towards her. " Ha, thou surely canst not — Yes, 
 indeed, indeed thou art my lost, long-lost, dear, only Mary ! " 
 She had recognized her by a little brown mole beneath the 
 chin, as well as by her eyes and shape. All embraced her, 
 all were moved with joy, and the parents wept. Mary was 
 astonished that she almost reached to her father's stature ; 
 and she could not understand how her mother had become 
 so changed and faded ; she asked the name of the stranger 
 youth. "It is our neighbor's Andres," said Martin. " How 
 comest thou to us again, so unexpectedly, after seven long 
 years ? Where hast thou been ? Why didst thou never 
 send us tidings of thee ? " 
 
 " Seven years ! " said Mary, and could not order her 
 ideas and recollections. " Seven whole years ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes," said Andres,laughing and shaking her trust- 
 fully by the hand ; " I have won the race, good Mary ; I 
 was at the pear-tree and back again seven years ago, and 
 thou, sluggish creature, art but just returned ! " 
 
 They again asked, they pressed her ; but remembering 
 her instruction, she could answer nothing. It was they 
 themselves chiefly that, by degrees, shaped a story for her ; 
 how, having lost her way, she had been taken up by a 
 coach, and carried to a strange, remote part, where she could 
 not give the people any notion of her parents 1 residence : 
 how she was conducted to a distant town, where certain 
 worthy persons brought her up, and loved her ; how they 
 had lately died, and at length she had recollected her birth- 
 place, and so returned. " No matter how it is ! " exclaimed 
 her mother ; " enough, that we have thee again, my little 
 daughter, my own, my all ! " 
 
380 TIECK. 
 
 Andres waited supper, and Mary could not be at home 
 in any thing she saw. The house seemed small and dark ; 
 she felt astonished at her dress, which was clean and simple, 
 but appeared quite foreign ; she looked at the ring on her 
 finger, and the gold of it glittered strangely, inclosing a stone 
 of burning red. To her father's question, she replied that 
 the ring also was a present from her benefactors. 
 
 She was glad when the hour of sleep arrived, and she 
 hastened to her bed. Next morning she felt much more 
 collected ; she had now arranged her thoughts a little, and 
 could better stand the questions of the people in the village, 
 all of whom came in to bid her welcome. Andres was 
 there too with the earliest, active, glad, and serviceable 
 beyond all others. The blooming maiden of fifteen had 
 made a deep impression on him ; he had passed a sleepless 
 night. The people of the castle likewise sent for Mary, and 
 she had once more to tell her story to them, which was now 
 grown quite familiar to her. The old Count and his Lady 
 were surprised at her good breeding ; she was modest, but 
 not embarrassed; she made answer courteously in good 
 phrases to all their questions ; all fear of noble persons and 
 their equipage had passed away from her ; for when she 
 measured these halls and forms by the wonders and the 
 high beauty she had seen with the Elves in their hidden 
 abode, this earthly splendor seemed but dim to her, the pre 
 sence of men was almost mean. The young lords were 
 charmed with her beauty. 
 
 It was now February. The trees were budding earlier 
 than usual ; the nightingale had never come so soon ; the 
 spring rose fairer in the land than the oldest men could 
 recollect it. In every quarter, little brooks gushed out to 
 irrigate the pastures and meadows ; the hills seemed heav- 
 ing, the vines rose higher and higher, the fruit-trees blos- 
 somed as they had never done ; and a swelling, fragrant 
 
THE ELVES. 
 
 381 
 
 blessedness hung suspended heavily in rosy clouds over the 
 scene. All prospered beyond expectation ; no rude day, no 
 tempest injured the fruits; the wine flowed blushing in 
 immense grapes; and the inhabitants of the place felt 
 astonished, and were captivated as in a sweet dream. The 
 next year was like its. forerunner; but men had now be- 
 come accustomed to the marvellous. In autumn, Mary 
 yielded to the pressing entreaties of Andres and her 
 parents ; she was betrothed to him, and in winter they were 
 married. 
 
 She often thought with inward longing of her residence 
 behind the fir-trees; she continued serious and still. Beauti- 
 ful as all that lay around her was, she knew of something 
 yet more beautiful; and from the remembrance of this, a 
 faint regret attuned her nature to soft melancholy. It smote 
 her painfully when her father and mother talked about the 
 gypsies and vagabonds that dwelt in the dark spot of 
 ground. Often she was on the point of speaking out in 
 defence of those good beings, whom she knew to be the 
 benefactors of the land ; especially to Andres, who appeared 
 to take delight in zealously abusing them ; yet still she 
 repressed the word that was struggling to escape her bosom. 
 So passed this year; in the next, she was solaced by a 
 little daughter, whom she named Elfrida, thinking of the 
 designation of her friendly Elves. 
 
 The young people lived with Martin and Brigitta, the 
 house being large enough for all ; and helped their parents 
 in conducting their now extended husbandry. The little 
 Elfrida soon displayed peculiar faculties and gifts ; for she 
 could walk at a very early age, and could speak perfectly 
 before she was a twelvemonth old ; and after some few 
 years she had become so wise and clever, and of such won- 
 drous beauty, that all people regarded her with astonish- 
 ment ; and her mother could not keep away the thought 
 
382 TIECK. 
 
 that her child resembled one of those shining little ones in 
 the space behind the Firs. Elfrida cared not to be with 
 other children ; but seemed to avoid, with a sort of horror, 
 their tumultuous amusements ; and liked best to be alone. 
 She would then retire into a corner of the garden, and read, 
 or work diligently with her needle ; often also you might 
 see her silting, as if deep sunk in thought ; or violently 
 walking up and down the alleys, speaking to herself. Her 
 parents readily allowed her to have her will in these things, 
 for she was healthy, and waxed apace ; only her strange, 
 sagacious answers and observations often made them anx- 
 ious. " Such wise children do not grow to age," her grand- 
 mother, Brigitta, many times observed ; " they are too good 
 for this world ; the child, besides, is beautiful beyond nature, 
 and will never find its proper place on Earth." 
 
 The little girl had this peculiarity, that she was very loath 
 to let herself be served by any one, but endeavored to do 
 everything herself. She was almost the earliest riser in 
 the house ; she washed herself carefully, and dressed with- 
 out assistance ; at night she was equally careful ; she took 
 special heed to pack up her clothes and washes with her 
 own hands, allowing no one, not even her mother, to med- 
 dle with her articles. The mother humored her in this 
 caprice, not thinking it of any consequence. But what was 
 her astonishment, when happening one holiday to insist, 
 regardless of Elfrida's tears and screams, on dressing her 
 out for a visit to the castle, she found upon her breast, 
 suspended by a string, a piece of gold of a strange form, 
 which she directly recognized as one of that sort she had 
 seen in such abundance in the subterranean vault ! The 
 little thing was greatly frightened ; and at last confessed 
 that she had found it in the garden, and as she liked it 
 much, had kept it carefully ; she at the same time prayed 
 so earnestly and pressingly to have it back, that Mary fas- 
 
THE ELVES. 383 
 
 tened it again on its former place, and, full of thoughts, 
 went out with her in silence to the castle. 
 
 Sidewards from the farm-house lay some offices for the 
 storing of produce and implements ; and behind these there 
 was a little green, with an old grove, now visited by no one, 
 as, from the new arrangement of the buildings, it lay too 
 far from the garden. In this solitude Elfrida delighted 
 most ; and it occurred to nobody to interrupt her here, so 
 that frequently her parents did not see her for half a day. 
 One afternoon her mother chanced to be in these buildings, 
 seeking for some lost article among the lumber; and she 
 noticed that a beam of light was coming in through a chink 
 in the wall. She took a thought of looking through this 
 aperture, and seeing what her child was busied with ; and 
 it happened that a stone was lying loose, and could be 
 pushed aside, so that she obtained a view right into the 
 grove. Elfrida was sitting there on a little bench, and 
 beside her the well-known Zerina ; and the children were 
 playing, and amusing one another, in the kindliest unity. 
 The Elf embraced her beautiful companion, and said mourn- 
 fully : "Ah ! dear little creature, as I sport with thee, so 
 have I sported with thy mother, when she was a child ; but 
 you mortals so soon grow tall and thoughtful ! It is very 
 hard ; wert thou but to be a child as long as I ! " 
 
 "Willingly would I do it," said Elfrida; "but they all 
 say, I shall come to sense, and give over playing altogether ; 
 for I have great gifts, as they think, for growing wise. Ah ! 
 and then I shall see thee no more, thou dear Zerina ! Yet 
 it is with us as with the fruit-tree flowers ; how glorious the 
 blossoming apple-tree, with its red bursting buds ! It looks 
 so stately and broad ; and every one that passes under it 
 thinks surely something great will come of it; then the sun 
 grows hot, and the buds come joyfully forth ; but the wicked 
 kernel is already there, which pushes off and casts away 
 
384 , TIECK. 
 
 the fair flower's dress ; and now, in pain and waxing, it can 
 do nothing more, but must grow to fruit in harvest. An 
 apple, to be sure, is pretty and refreshing; yet nothing to 
 the blossom of spring. So is it also with us mortals; I am 
 not glad in the least at growing to be a tall girl. Ah ! could 
 I but once visit you !*' 
 
 "Since the King is with us," said Zerina, " it is quite 
 impossible ; but 1 will come to thee, my darling, often, 
 often, and none shall see me either here or there. I will 
 pass invisible through the air, or fly over to thee like a bird. 
 Oh ! we will be much, much together, while thou art still 
 little. What can I do to please thee ? " 
 
 " Thou must like me very dearly," said Elfrida, " as 
 I like thee in my heart ; but come, let us make another 
 rose." 
 
 Zerina took the well-known box from her bosom, threw 
 two grains from it on the ground ; and instantly a green 
 bush stood before them, with two deep-red roses, bending 
 their heads, as if to kiss each other. The children plucked 
 them smiling, and the bush disappeared. "O that it would 
 not die so soon !" said Elfrida ; "this red child, this wonder 
 of the Earth!" 
 
 "Give it me here," said the little Elf; then breathed 
 thrice upon the budding rose, and kissed it thrice. " Now," 
 said she, giving back the rose, " it will continue fresh and 
 blooming till winter." 
 
 " I will keep 'it," said Elfrida, " as an image of thee ; I 
 will guard it in my little room, and kiss it night and morn- 
 ing, as if it were thyself." 
 
 " The sun is setting," said the other, " I must home." 
 They embraced again, and Zerina vanished. 
 
 In the evening, Mary clasped her child to her breast, 
 with a feeling of alarm and veneration. She henceforth 
 allowed the good little girl more liberty than formerly ; and 
 
THE ELVES. 
 
 385 
 
 often calmed her husband, when he came to search for the 
 child ; which for some time he was wont to do, as her 
 retiredness did not please him, and he feared, that, in the 
 end, it might make her silly, or even pervert her understand- 
 ing. The mother often glided to the chink ; and almost 
 always found the bright Elf beside her child, employed in 
 sport, or in earnest conversation. 
 
 " VVouldst thou like to fly ? " inquired Zerina once. 
 
 " Oh, well ! How well ! " replied Elfrida ; and the fairy 
 clasped her mortal playmate in her arms, and mounted with 
 her from the ground, till they hovered above the grove. 
 The mother, in alarm, forgot herself, and pushed out her 
 head in terror to look after them ; when Zerina, from the 
 air, held up her finger, and threatened yet smiled ; then 
 descended with the child, embraced her, and disappeared. 
 After this, it. happened more than once that Mary was ob- 
 served by her ; and every time, the shining little creature 
 shook her head, or threatened, yet with friendly looks. 
 
 Often in disputing with her husband, Mary had said in 
 her zeal : " Thou doest injustice to the poor people in the 
 hut. n But when Andres pressed her to explain why she 
 differed in opinion from the whole village, nay, from his 
 Lordship himself; and how she could understand it better 
 than the whole of them, she still broke off embarrassed, 
 and became silent. One day, after dinner, Andres nrew 
 more violent than ever; and maintained, that, by one means 
 or another, the crew must be packed away, as a nuisance 
 to the country ; when his wife, in anger, said to him : 
 " Hush ! for they are benefactors to thee and to every one 
 of us." 
 
 " Benefactors ! " cried the other, in astonishment ; 
 " these rogues and vagabonds ! " 
 
 In her indignation, she was now at last tempted to relate 
 to him, under promise of the strictest secrecy, the history 
 
 vol. i. 33 
 
386 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 of her youth ; and as Andres at every word grew more in- 
 credulous, and shook his head in mockery, she took him by 
 the hand, and led him to the chink ; where, to his amaze- 
 ment, he beheld the glittering Elf sporting with his child, 
 and caressing her in the grove. He knew not what to say ; 
 an exclamation of astonishment escaped him, and Zerina 
 raised her eyes. On the instant she grew pale, and trem- 
 bled violently ; not with friendly, but with indignant looks, 
 she made the sign of threatening, and then said to Elfrida : 
 " Thou canst not help it, dearest heart ; but they will never 
 learn sense, wise as they believe themselves." She em- 
 braced the little one with stormy haste ; and then, in the 
 shape of a raven, flew with hoarse cries over the garden, 
 towards the Firs. 
 
 In the evening, the little one was very still, she kissed 
 her rose with tears ; Mary felt depressed and frightened ; 
 Andres scarcely spoke. It grew dark. Suddenly there 
 went, a rustling through the trees ; birds flew to and fro with 
 wild screaming, thunder was heard to roll, the Earth shook, 
 and tones of lamentation moaned in the air. Andres and 
 his wife had not courage to rise ; they shrouded themselves 
 within the curtains, and with fear and trembling awaited the 
 day. Towards morning it grew calmer ; and all was silent 
 when the Sun, with his cheerful light, rose over the wood. 
 
 Andres dressed himself, and Mary now observed that the 
 stone of the ring upon her finger had become quite pale. 
 On opening the door, the sun shone clear on their faces, but 
 the scene around them they could scarcely recognize. The 
 freshness of the wood was gone ; the hills were shrunk, the 
 brooks were flowing languidly with scanty streams, the sky 
 seemed grey ; and when you turned to the Firs, they were 
 standing there no darker or more dreary than the other trees. 
 The huts behind them were no longer frightful ; and several 
 inhabitants of the village came and told about the fearful 
 
THE ELVES. 
 
 387 
 
 night, and how they had been across the spot where the 
 gypsies had lived ; how these people must have left the 
 place at last, for their huts were standing empty, and within 
 had quite a common look, just like the dwellings of other 
 poor people ; some of their household gear was left behind. 
 
 Elfrida in secret said to her mother : " I could not sleep 
 last night ; and in my fright at the noise, I was praying 
 from the bottom of my heart, when the door suddenly 
 opened, and my playmate entered to take leave of me. 
 She had a travelling-pouch slung round her, a hat on her 
 head, and a large staff in her hand. She was very angry 
 at thee ; since on thy account she had now to suffer the 
 severest and most painful punishments, as she had always 
 been so fond of thee ; for all of them, she said, were very 
 loath to leave this quarter." 
 
 Mary forbade her to speak of this ; and now the ferry- 
 man came across the river, and told them new wonders. 
 As it was growing dark, a stranger man of large size had 
 come to him, and hired his boat till sunrise ; and with this 
 condition, that the boatman should remain quiet in his house, 
 at least should not cross the threshold of his door. " I was 
 frightened," continued the old man, "and the strange bar- 
 gain would not let me sleep. I slipped softly to 'the window, 
 and looked towards the river. Great clouds were driving 
 restlessly through the sky, and the distant woods were rust- 
 ling fearfully ; it was as if my cottage shook, and moans 
 and lamentations glided round it. On a sudden, I perceived 
 a white streaming light, that grew broader and broader, like 
 many thousands of falling stars ; sparkling and waving, it 
 proceeded forward from the dark Firground, moved over the 
 fields, and spread itself along towards the river. Then I 
 heard a trampling, a jingling, a bustling, and rushing, nearer 
 and nearer ; it went forwards to my boat, and all stept into 
 it, men and women, as it seemed, and children ; and the 
 
38S 
 
 TIKCK 
 
 tall stranger ferried them over. In the river were by the 
 boat swimming many thousands of glittering forms; in the 
 air white clouds and lights were wavering; ; and all lamented 
 and bewailed that they must travel forth so far, far away, 
 and leave their beloved dwelling. The noise of the rudder 
 and the water creaked and gurgled between whiles, and 
 then suddenly there would be silence. Many a time the 
 boat landed, and went back, and was again laden ; many 
 heavy casks, loo, they took along with them, which multi- 
 tudes of horrid-looking little fellows carried and rolled ; 
 whether they were devils or goblins, Heaven only knows. 
 Then came, in waving brightness, a stately freight ; it seem- 
 ed an old man, mounted on a small white horse, and all 
 were crowding round him. I saw nothing of the horse but 
 its head ; for the rest of it was covered with costly glitter- 
 ing cloths and trappings ; on his brow the old man had a 
 crown, so bright, that, as he came across, I thought the sun 
 was rising there, and the redness of the dawn glimmering 
 in my eyes. Thus it went on all night ; I at last fell asleep 
 in the tumult, half in joy, half in terror. Tn the morn- 
 ing all was still ; but the river is, as it were, run off, and I 
 know not how I am to steer my boat in it now." 
 
 The same year there came a blight ; the woods died away, 
 the springs ran dry; and the scene, which had once been 
 the joy of every traveller., was in autumn standing waste, 
 naked, and bald ; scarcely showing here and there, in the 
 sea of sand, a spot or two where grass, with a dingy green- 
 ness, still grew up. The fruit-trees all withered, the vines 
 faded away, and the aspect of the place became so melan- 
 choly, that the Count, with his people, next year left the 
 castle, which in time decayed and fell to ruins. 
 
 Elfrida gazed on her rose day and night with deep long- 
 ing, and thought of her kind playmate; and as it drooped 
 and withered, so did she also hang her head ; and before 
 
THE ELVES. 
 
 389 
 
 the spring, the little maiden had herself faded away. Mary 
 often stood upon the spot before the hut, and wept for the 
 happiness that had departed. She wasted herself away like 
 her child, and in a few years she too was gone. Old Mar- 
 tin, with his son-in-law, returned to the quarter where he 
 had lived before. 
 
V. 
 THE GOBLET 
 
 The forenoon bells were sounding from the high cathe- 
 dral. Over the wide square in front of it were men and 
 women walking to and fro, carriages rolling along, and 
 priests proceeding to their various churches. Ferdinand 
 was standing on the broad stair, with Ins eyes over the mul- 
 titude, looking at them as they came up to attend the service. 
 The sunshine glittered on the white stones, all were seeking 
 shelter from the heat. He alone had stood for a long time 
 leaning on a pillar, amid the burning beams, without regard- 
 ing them ; for he was lost in the remembrances which 
 mounted up within his mind. He was calling back his by- 
 gone life ; and inspiring his soul with the feeling which had 
 penetrated all his being, and swallowed up every other 
 wish in itself. At the same hour, in the past year, had he 
 been standing here, looking at the women and the maidens 
 coming to mass; with indifferent heart, and smiling face, he 
 had viewed the variegated procession ; many a kind look had 
 roguishly met his, and many a virgin cheek had blushed ; 
 his busy eye had observed the pretty feet, how they mounted 
 the steps, and how the wavering robe fell more or less aside, 
 to let the dainty little ancles come to sight. 
 
 Then a youthful form had crossed the square ; clad in black ; 
 slender, and of noble mien, her eyes modestly cast down 
 before her, carelessly she hovered up the steps with lovely 
 grace ; the silken robe lay round that fairest of forms, and 
 
THE GOBLET. 391 
 
 rocked itself as in music about the moving limbs; she was 
 mounting the highest step, when by chance she raised her 
 head, and struck his eye with a ray of the purest azure. 
 He was pierced as if by lightning. Her foot caught the robe ; 
 and quickly as he darted towards her, he could not prevent 
 her having, for a moment, in the most charming posture, 
 lain kneeling at his feet. He raised her; she did not look 
 at him, she was all one blush ; nor did she answer his in- 
 quiry whether she was hurt. He followed her into the 
 church ; his soul saw nothing but the image of that form 
 kneeling before him, and that loveliest of bosoms bent 
 towards him. Next day he visited the threshold of the 
 church again ; for him that spot was consecrated ground. 
 He had been intending to pursue his travels, his friends 
 were expecting him impatiently at home ; but from hence- 
 forth his native country was here, his heart and its wishes 
 were inverted. He saw her often, she did not shun him ; 
 yet it was but for a few separate and stolen moments ; for 
 her wealthy family observed her strictly, and still more a 
 powerful and jealous bridegroom. They mutually confessed 
 their love, but knew not what to do ; for he was a stranger, 
 and could offer his beloved no such splendid fortune as she 
 was entitled to expect. He now felt his poverty ; yet when 
 he reflected on his former way of life, it seemed to him 
 that he was passing rich ; for his existence was rendered 
 holy, his heart floated forever in the fairest emotion ; Nature 
 was now become his friend, and her beauty lay revealed to 
 him ; he felt himself no longer alien from worship and re- 
 ligion ; and he now crossed this threshold, and the myste- 
 rious dimness of the temple, with far other feelings than in 
 former days of levity. He withdrew from his acquaint- 
 ances, and lived only to love. When he walked through her 
 street, and saw her at the window, he was happy for the day. 
 He had often spoken to her in the dusk of the evening ; her 
 
392 TIECK. 
 
 garden was adjacent to a friend's, who, however, did not 
 know his secret. Thus a year had passed away. 
 
 All these scenes of his new existence again moved 
 through his remembrance. He raised his eyes ; that noble 
 form was even then gliding over the square ; she shone out 
 of the confused multitude like a sun. A lovely music 
 sounded in his longing heart ; and as she approached, he 
 retired into the church. He offered her the holy water ; her 
 white fingers trembled as they touched his, she bowed with 
 grateful kindness. He followed her, and knelt down near 
 her. His whole heart was melting in sadness and love ; it 
 seemed to him as if, from the wounds of longing, his being 
 were bleeding away in fervent prayers ; every word of the 
 priest went through him, every tone of the music poured 
 new devotion into his bosom ; his lips quivered, as the fair 
 maiden pressed the crucifix of her rosary to her ruby 
 mouth. How dim had been his apprehension of this Faith 
 and this Love before ! The priest elevated the Host, and 
 the bell sounded ; she bowed more humbly, and crossed her 
 breast ; and, like a flash, it struck through all his powers 
 and feelings, and the image on the altar seemed alive, and 
 the colored dimness of the windows as a light of paradise ; 
 tears flowed fast from his eyes, and allayed the swelling 
 fervor of his heart. 
 
 The service was concluded. He again offered her the 
 consecrated font ; they spoke some words, and she withdrew. 
 He staid behind, in order to excite no notice ; he looked 
 after her till the hem of her garment vanished round the 
 corner ; and he felt like the wanderer, weary and astray, from 
 whom, in the thick forest, the last gleam of the setting sun 
 departs. He awoke from his- dream, as an old withered 
 hand slapped him on the shoulder, and some one called him 
 by name. 
 
 He started back, and recognized his friend, the testy old 
 
THE GOBLET. 393 
 
 Albert, who lived apart from men, and whose solitary house 
 was open to Ferdinand alone. " Do you remember our 
 engagement ? " said the the hoarse, husky voice. " O yes," 
 said Ferdinand. u And will you perform your promise to- 
 day ? " 
 
 " This very hour," replied the other, " if you like to 
 follow me." 
 
 They walked through the city to a remote street, and 
 there entered a large edifice. " To-day," said the old man, 
 " you must push through with me into my most solitary 
 chamber, that we may not be disturbed." They passed 
 through many rooms, then along some stairs ; they wound 
 their way through passages ; and Ferdinand, who had 
 thought himself familiar with the house, was now aston- 
 ished at the multitude of apartments, and the singular ar- 
 rangement of the spacious building; but still more that the 
 old man, a bachelor, and without family, should inhabit it by 
 himself, with a few servants, and never let out any part of 
 the superfluous room to strangers. Albert at length unbolted 
 a door, and said : " Now, here is the place." They entered 
 a large, high chamber, hung round with red damask, which 
 was trimmed with golden listings; the chairs were of the 
 same stufT; and, through heavy red silk curtains covering 
 the windows, came a purple light. " Wait a little," said 
 the old man, and went into another room. Ferdinand took 
 up some books ; he found them to contain strange, unintelli- 
 gible characters, circles, and lines, with many curious 
 plates ; and from the little he could read, they seemed to be 
 works on alchemy ; he was aware already that the old man 
 had the reputation of a gold-maker. A lute was lying on 
 the table, singularly overlaid with mother-of-pearl, and 
 colored wood ; and representing birds and flowers in very 
 splendid forms. The star in the middle was a large piece of 
 mother-of-pearl, worked in the most skilful manner into 
 
394 
 
 T1ECK. 
 
 many intersecting circular figures, almost like the centre of 
 a window in a Gothic church. " You are looking at my 
 instrument," said Albert, coming back ; " it is two hundred 
 years old ; I brought it with me as a memorial of my jour- 
 ney into Spain. But let us leave all that, and do you take a 
 seat." 
 
 They sat down beside the table, which was likewise 
 covered with a red cloth ; and the old man placed upon it 
 something which was carefully wrapped up. " From pity to 
 your youth," he began, " I promised lately to predict to you 
 whether you could ever become happy or not ; and this 
 promise I will in the present hour perform, though you hold 
 the matter only as a jest. You need not be alarmed, for 
 what I purpose will take place without danger ; no dread 
 invocations shall be made by me, nor shall any horrid 
 apparition terrify your senses. The business I am on may 
 fail in two ways ; either if you do not love so truly as you 
 have been willing to persuade me; for then my labor is in 
 vain, and nothing will disclose itself; or, if you shall disturb 
 the oracle and destroy it by a useless question, or a hasty 
 movement, should you leave your seat and dissipate the 
 figure ; you must therefore promise me to keep yourself 
 quite still." 
 
 Ferdinand gave his word, and the old man unfolded 
 from its cloths the packet he had placed on the table. It 
 was a golden goblet, of very skilful and beautiful work- 
 manship. Round its broad foot ran a garland of flowers, 
 intertwined with myrtles, and various other leaves and fruits, 
 worked out in high chasing with dim and with brilliant gold. 
 A corresponding ring, but still richer, with figures of chil- 
 dren, and wild little animals playing with them, or flying 
 from them, wound itself about the middle of the cup. The 
 bowl was beautifully turned ; it bent itself back at the top as 
 if to meet the lips ; and within, the gold sparkled with a red 
 
THE GOBLET. 395 
 
 glow. Old Albert placed the cup between him and the 
 youth, whom he then beckoned to come nearer. " Do you 
 not feel something," said he, " when your eye loses itself in 
 this splendor ? " 
 
 " Yes," answered Ferdinand, " this brightness glances 
 into my inmost heart ; I might almost say I felt it like a kiss 
 in my longing bosom. 1 ' 
 
 " It is right, then ! " said the old man. " Now let not 
 your eyes wander any more, but fix them steadfastly on the 
 glittering of this gold, and think as intensely as you can of 
 the woman whom you love." 
 
 Both sat quiet for a while, looking earnestly upon the 
 gleaming cup. Ere long, however, Albert, with mute ges- 
 tures, began, at first slowly, then faster, and at last in rapid 
 movements, to whirl his outstretched finger in a constant 
 circle round the glitter of the bowl. Then he paused, and 
 recommenced his circles in the opposite direction. After 
 this had lasted for a little, Ferdinand began to think he 
 heard the sound of music ; it cams as from without, in some 
 distant street, but soon the tones approached, they quivered 
 more distinctly through the air ; and at last no doubt re- 
 mained with him that they were flowing from the hollow of 
 the cup. The music became stronger, and of such piercing 
 power, that the young man's heart was throbbing to the 
 notes, and tears were flowing from his eyes. Busily old 
 Albert's hand now moved in various lines across the mouth 
 of the goblet ; and it seemed as if sparks were issuing from 
 his fingers, and darting in forked courses to the gold, and 
 tinkling as they met it. The glittering points increased ; 
 and followed, as if strung on threads, the movements of his 
 finger to and fro ; they shone with various hues, and crowded 
 more and more together till they joined in unbroken lines. 
 And now it seemed as if the old man, in the red dusk, were 
 stretching a wondrous net over the gleaming gold ; for he 
 
396 TIECK. 
 
 drew the beams this way and that at pleasure, and wove 
 up with them the opening of the bowl ; they obeyed him, 
 and remained there like a cover, wavering to and fro, and 
 playing into one another. Having so fixed them, he again 
 described the circle round the rim ; the music then moved 
 off, grew fainter and fainter, and at last died away. While 
 the tones departed, the sparkling net quivered to and fro as 
 in pain. In its increasing agitation it broke in pieces ; and 
 the beaming threads rained down in drops into the cup ; but 
 as the drops fell, there arose from them a ruddy cloud, 
 which moved within itself in manifold eddies, and mounted 
 over the brim like foam. A bright point darted with ex- 
 ceeding swiftness through the cloudy circle, and began to 
 form the Image in the midst of it. On a sudden there 
 looked out from the vapor as it were an eye ; over this 
 came a playing and curling as of golden locks ; and soon 
 there went a soft blush up and down the shadow, and Fer- 
 dinand beheld the smiling face of his beloved, the blue eyes, 
 the tender cheeks, the fair red mouth. The head waved to 
 and fro, rose clearer and more visible upon the slim white 
 neck, and nodded towards the enraptured youth. Old Albert 
 still kept casting circles round the cup; and out of it 
 emerged the glancing shoulders ; and as the fair form 
 mounted more and more from its golden couch, and bent 
 in lovely kindness this way and that, the soft, curved, parted 
 breasts appeared, and on their summits two loveliest rose- 
 buds glancing with sweet, secret red. Ferdinand fancied he 
 felt the breath, as the beloved form bent waving towards 
 him, and almost touched him with its glowing lips ; in his 
 rapture he forgot his promise and himself; he started up 
 and clasped that ruby mouth to him with a kiss, and meant 
 to seize these lovely arms, and lift the enrapturing form 
 from its golden prison. Instantly a violent trembling quiv- 
 ered through the lovely shape ; the head and body broke 
 
THE GOBLET. 
 
 397 
 
 away as in a thousand lines ; and a rose was lying at the 
 bottom of the goblet, in whose redness that sweet smile still 
 seemed to play. The longing young man caught it and 
 pressed it to his lips ; and in his burning ardor it withered 
 and melted into air. 
 
 u Thou hast kept thy promise badly," said the old man, 
 with an angry tone ; "thou hast none but thyself to blame." 
 He again wrapped up the goblet, drew aside the curtains, 
 and opened a window ; the clear daylight broke in ; and 
 Ferdinand, in sadness, and with many fruitless excuses > left 
 old Albert still in anger. 
 
 In an agitated mood, he hastened through the streets of 
 the city. Without the gate, he sat down beneath the trees. 
 She had told him in the morning that she was to go that 
 night with some relations to the country. Intoxicated with 
 love, he rose, he sat, he wandered in the wood ; that fair, 
 kind form was still before him, as it flowed and mounted 
 from the glowing gold ; he looked that she would now step 
 forth to meet him in the splendor of her beauty, and again 
 that loveliest image broke away in pieces from his eyes ; 
 and he was indignant at himself, that, by his restless passion 
 and the tumult of his senses, he should have destroyed the 
 shape, and perhaps his hopes, forever. 
 
 As the walk in the afternoon became crowded, he with- 
 drew deeper into the thickets; but he still kept the distant 
 highway in his eye ; and every coach that issued from the 
 gate was carefully examined by him. 
 
 The night approached. The setting sun was throwing 
 forth its red splendor, when from the gate rushed out the 
 richly gilded coach, gleaming with a fiery brightness in the 
 glow of evening. He hastened towards it. Her eye had 
 already seized him. Kindly and smilingly she leaned her 
 glittering bosom from the window ; he caught her soft salu- 
 tation and signal; he was standing by the coach, her full 
 
 vol. i. 34 
 
398 TIECK. 
 
 look fell on his, and as she drew back to move away, the 
 rose which had adorned her bosom flew out and lay at his 
 feet. He lifted it, and kissed it; and he felt as if it pre- 
 saged to him that he should not see his loved one any more, 
 that now bis happiness had faded away from him forever. 
 
 Hurried steps were passing up stairs and down ; the 
 whole house was in commotion ; all was bustle and tumult, 
 preparing for the great festivities of the morrow. The 
 mother was the gladdest and most active ; the bride heeded 
 nothing, but retired into her chamber to meditate upon her 
 changing destiny. The family were still looking for their 
 elder son, the captain, with his wife ; and for two elder 
 daughters, with their husbands ; Leopold, the younger, was 
 maliciously busied in increasing the disorder, and deepening 
 the tumult; perplexing all, while he pretended to be fur- 
 thering it. Agatha, his still unmarried sister, was in vain 
 endeavoring to make him reasonable, and to persuade him 
 simply to do nothing, and to let the rest have peace ; but 
 her mother said : " Never mind him and his folly ; for 
 to-day a little more or less of it amounts to nothing ; only 
 this I beg of one and all of you, that, as I have so much to 
 think about already, you would trouble me with no fresh 
 tidings, unless it be of something that especially concerns 
 us. I care not whether any one have let some china fall, 
 whether one spoon or two spoons are wanting, whether 
 any of the stranger servants have been breaking windows ; 
 with all such freaks as these I beg you would not vex me 
 by recounting them. Were these days of tumult over, we 
 will reckon matters ; not till then." 
 
 " Bravely spoken, mother ! " cried her son ; " these senti- 
 ments are worthy of a governor. And if it chance that 
 
THE GOBLET. 399 
 
 any of the maids should break her neck ; the cook get tipsy, 
 or set the chimney on fire ; the butler, for joy, let all the 
 malmsey run upon the floor, or down his throat, you shall 
 not hear a word of such small tricks. If, indeed, an earth- 
 quake were to overset the house ! That, my dear mother, 
 could not be kept secret." 
 
 u When will he leave his folly! "said the mother. " What 
 must thy sisters think, when they find thee every jot as 
 riotous as when they left thee two years ago ? " 
 
 " They must do justice to my force of character," said 
 Leopold ; " and grant that I am not so changeable as they 
 or their husbands, who have altered so much within these 
 few years, and so little to their advantage." 
 
 The bridegroom now entered, and inquired for the bride. 
 Her maid was sent to call her. " Has Leopold made my 
 request to you, my dear mother ? " said he. 
 
 " I did, forsooth," said Leopold. " There is such con- 
 fusion here among us, not one of them can think a reason- 
 able thought." 
 
 The bride entered, and the young pair joyfully saluted 
 one another. " The request I meant," continued the bride- 
 groom, " is this ; that you would not take it ill, if I should 
 bring another guest into your house, which, in truth, is full 
 enough already." 
 
 " You are aware yourself," replied the mother, " that, 
 extensive as it is, I could scarcely find another chamber." 
 
 "Notwithstanding, I have partly managed it already," 
 cried Leopold ; " I have had the large apartment furbished 
 up." 
 
 " Why, that is quite a miserable place," replied the 
 mother ; " for many years it has been nothing but a lumber- 
 room." 
 
 "But it is splendidly repaired," said Leopold; "and our 
 friend, for whom it is intended, does not mind such matters ; 
 
400 
 
 TIEGK. 
 
 he desires nothing but our love. Besides, he has no wife, 
 and likes to be alone ; it is the very place for him. We 
 have had enough of trouble in persuading him to come, and 
 show himself again among his fellow-creatures." 
 
 " Not your dismal conjuror and gold-maker, certainly ? " 
 cried Agatha. 
 
 " No other," said the bridegroom, " if you will still call 
 him so." 
 
 " Then do not let him, mother," said the sister. " What 
 should a man like that do here ? I have seen him on the 
 street with Leopold, and I was positively frightened at his 
 face. The old sinner, too, almost never goes to church; 
 he loves neither God nor man ; and it cannot come to good 
 to bring such infidels under the roof, on a solemnity like 
 this. Who knows what may be the consequence ? " 
 
 " To hear her talk!" said Leopold, in anger. "Thou 
 condemnest without knowing him ; and because the cut of 
 his nose does not please thee, and he is no longer young 
 and handsome, thou concludest him a wizard, and a servant 
 of the Devil." 
 
 u Grant a place in your house, dear mother," said the 
 bridegroom, " to our old friend, and let him take a part in 
 our general joy. He seems, my dear Agatha, to have en- 
 dured much suffering, which has rendered him distrustful 
 and misanthropic ; he avoids all society, his only exceptions 
 are Leopold and myself. I owe him much ; it was he that 
 first gave my mind a good direction ; nay, I may say, it is 
 he alone that has rendered me perhaps worthy of my Julia's 
 love." 
 
 " He lends me all his books," continued Leopold ; " and, 
 what is more, his old manuscripts ; and, what is more still, 
 his' money, on my bare word. He is a man of the most 
 Christian turn, my little sister. And who knows, when thou 
 hast seen him better, whether thou wilt not throw off thy 
 
THE GOBLET. 401 
 
 coyness, and take a fancy to him, ugly as he now appears 
 to thee ? " 
 
 " Well, bring him to us," said the mother; "I have had 
 to hear so much of him from Leopold already, that I have 
 a curiosity to be acquainted with him. Only you must 
 answer for it, that I cannot lodge him better." 
 
 Meantime, strangers were announced. They were mem- 
 bers of the family, the married daughters, and the officer ; 
 they had brought their children with them. The good old 
 lady was delighted to behold her grandsons ; all was wel- 
 coming, and joyful talk ; and Leopold and the bridegroom, 
 having also given and received their greeting, went away 
 to seek their ancient, melancholic friend. , 
 
 The latter lived most part of the year in the country, 
 about a league from town ; but he also kept a little dwelling 
 for himself in a garden near the gate. Here, by chance, 
 the young men had become acquainted with him. They 
 now found him in a coffeehouse, where they had previously 
 agreed to meet. As the evening had come on, they brought 
 him, after some little conversation, directly to the house. 
 
 The stranger met a kindly welcome from the mother; 
 the daughters stood a little more aloof from him. Agatha 
 especially was shy, and carefully avoided his looks. But 
 the first general compliments were scarcely over, when 
 the old man's eye appeared to settle on the bride, who 
 had entered the apartment later ; he seemed as if trans- 
 ported, and it was observed that he was struggling to con- 
 ceal a tear. The bridegroom rejoiced in his joy, and hap- 
 pening sometime after to be standing with him by a side 
 at the window, he took his hand, and asked him: "Now, 
 what think you of my lovely Julia? Is she not an an- 
 gel?" 
 
 " O, my friend ! " replied the old man, with emotion, 
 " such grace and beauty I have never seen ; or rather, I 
 34* 
 
402 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 should say (for that expression was not just), she is so fair, 
 so ravishing, so heavenly, that I feel as if I had long known 
 her ; as if she were to me, utter stranger though she is, the 
 most familiar form of my imagination, some shape which 
 had always been an inmate of my heart." 
 
 " I understand you," said the young man ; " yes, the 
 truly beautiful, the great, and sublime, when it overpowers 
 us with astonishment and admiration, still does not surprise 
 us as a thing foreign, never heard of, never seen; but, on 
 the other hand, our own inmost nature in such moments 
 becomes clear to us, our deepest remembrances are awak- 
 ened, our dearest feelings made alive." 
 
 The stranger, during supper, mixed but little in the con- 
 versation ; his looks were fixed on the bride, so earnestly 
 and constantly, that she at last became embarrassed and 
 alarmed. The captain told of a campaign which he had 
 served in ; the rich merchant of his speculations and the 
 bad times ; the country gentleman of the improvements 
 which he meant to make in his estate. 
 
 Supper being done, the bridegroom took his leave, re- 
 turning for the last time to his lonely chamber ; for in future 
 it was settled that the married pair were to live in the 
 'mother's house; their chambers were already furnished. 
 The company dispersed, and Leopold conducted the stranger 
 to his room. " You will excuse us," said he, as they went 
 along, " for having been obliged to lodge you rather far 
 away, and not so comfortably as our mother wished ; but 
 you see, yourself, how numerous our family is, and more 
 relations are to come to-morrow. For one thing, you will 
 not run away from us ; there is no finding of your course 
 through this enormous house. 1 ' 
 
 They went through several passages, and Leopold at last 
 took leave, and bade his guest good-night. The servant 
 placed two wax-lights on the table ; then asked the stranger 
 
THE GOBLET. 403 
 
 whether he should help him to undress, and as the latter 
 waived his help in that particular, he also went away, and 
 the stranger found himself alone. 
 
 " How does it chance, then," said he, walking up and 
 down, " that this Image springs so vividly from my heart 
 to-day ? I forgot the long past, and thought I saw herself. 
 I was again young, and her voice sounded as of old ; I 
 thought I was awakening from a heavy dream ; but no, I 
 am now awake, and those fair moments were but a sweet 
 delusion." 
 
 He was too restless to sleep ; he looked at some pictures 
 on the walls, and then round on the chamber. " To-day," 
 cried he, " all is so familiar to me, I could almost fancy I 
 had known this house and this apartment of old." He tried 
 to settle his remembrances, and lifted some large books 
 which were standing in a corner. As he turned their leaves, 
 he shook his head. A lute-case was leaning on the wall ; 
 he opened it, and found a strange old instrument, time-worn, 
 and without the strings. " No, I am not mistaken ! " cried 
 he, in astonishment; " this lute is too remarkable ; it is the 
 Spanish lute of my long-departed friend, old Albert ! Here 
 are his magic books ; this is the chamber where he raised 
 for me that blissful vision ; the red of the tapestry is faded, 
 its golden hem is become dim ; but strangely vivid in my 
 heart is all pertaining to those hours. It was for this the 
 fear went over me as I was coming hither, through these 
 long, complicated passages where Leopold conducted me. 
 O Heaven ! On this very table did the Shape rise budding 
 forth, and grow up as if watered and refreshed by the redness 
 of the gold. The same image smiled upon me here, which 
 has almost driven me crazy in the hall to-night ; in that hall 
 where I have walked so often in trustful speech with Al- 
 bert ! " 
 
 He undressed, but slept very little. Early in the morn- 
 
404 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 ing he was up, and looking at the room again ; he opened 
 the window, and the same gardens and buildings were ly- 
 ing before him as of old, only many other houses had been 
 built since then. " Forty years have vanished," sighed he, 
 " since that afternoon ; and every day of those bright times 
 has a longer life than all the intervening space." 
 
 He was called to the company. The morning passed in 
 varied talk ; at last the bride entered in her marriage-dress. 
 As the old man noticed her, he fell into a state of agitation, 
 such that every one observed it. They proceeded to the 
 church, and the marriage-ceremony was performed. The 
 party was again at home, when Leopold inquired : n Now, 
 mother, how do you like our friend, the good, morose old 
 gentleman ? " 
 
 " I had figured him, by your description," said she, " much 
 more frightful ; he is mild and sympathetic, and might gain 
 from one an honest trust in him." 
 
 "Trust?" cried Agatha; "in these burning, frightful 
 eyes, these thousand-fold wrinkles, that pale, sunk mouth, 
 that strange laugh of his, which looks and sounds so mock- 
 ingly ? No ; God keep me from such friends ! If evil 
 spirits ever take the shape of men, they must assume some 
 shape like this." 
 
 " Perhaps a younger and more handsome one," replied 
 the mother ; " but I cannot recognize the good old man in 
 thy description. One easily observes that he is of a violent 
 temperament, and has inured himself to lock up his feelings 
 in his own bosom ; perhaps, too, as Leopold was saying, he 
 may have encountered many miseries ; so he is grown mis- 
 trustful, and has lost that simple openness which is espe- 
 cially the portion of the happy." 
 
 The rest of the party entered, and broke off their con- 
 versation. Dinner was served up ; and the stranger sat be- 
 tween Agatha and the rich merchant. When the toasts 
 
THE GOBLET. 405 
 
 were beginning, Leopold cried out : " Now, stop a little, 
 worthy friends ; we must have the golden goblet down for 
 this, then let it travel round." 
 
 He was rising, but his mother beckoned him to keep his 
 seat. " Thou wilt not find it," said she, " for the plate is 
 all stowed elsewhere." She walked out rapidly to seek it 
 herself. 
 
 " How brisk and busy is our good old lady still ! " ob- 
 served the merchant. " See how nimbly she can move, 
 with all her breadth and weight, and reckoning sixty by this 
 time of day. Her face is always bright and joyful, and to- 
 day she is particularly happy, for she sees herself made 
 young again in Julia." 
 
 The stranger gave assent, and the lady entered with the 
 goblet. It was filled with wine, and began to circulate, 
 each toasting what was dearest and most precious to him. 
 Julia gave the welfare of her husband, he the love of his 
 fair Julia ; and thus did every one as it became his turn. 
 The mother lingered, as the goblet came to her. 
 
 " Come, quick with it," said the captain, somewhat hastily 
 and rudely ; " we know, you reckon all men faithless, and 
 not one among them worthy of a woman's love. What, 
 then, is dearest to you ? " 
 
 His mother looked at him, while the mildness of her brow 
 was on a sudden overspread with angry seriousness. " Since 
 my son," said she, "knows me so well, and can judge my 
 mind so rigorously, let me be permitted not to speak what 
 I was thinking of, and let him endeavor, by a life of constant 
 love, to falsify what he gives out as my opinion." She 
 pushed the goblet on, without drinking, and the company 
 was for a while embarrassed and disturbed. 
 
 " It is reported," said the merchant, in a whisper, turning 
 to the stranger, " that she did not love her husband ; but 
 another, who proved faithless to her. She was then, it 
 seems, the finest woman in the city." 
 
406 
 
 TIECK. 
 
 When the cup reached Ferdinand, he gazed upon it with 
 astonishment; for it was the very goblet out of which old 
 Albert had called forth to him the lovely shadow. He 
 looked in upon the gold, and the waving of the wine ; his 
 hand shook ; it would not have surprised him, if from the 
 magic bowl that glowing Form had again mounted up, and 
 brought with it his vanished youth. " No ! " said he, after 
 some time, half-aloud, " it is wine that is gleaming here ! " 
 
 " Ay, what else ? " cried the merchant, laughing : " Drink 
 and be merry." 
 
 A thrill of terror passed ever the old man ; he pronounced 
 the name "Francesca" in a vehement tone, and set the 
 goblet to his lips. The mother cast upon him an inquiring 
 and astonished look. 
 
 " Whence is this bright goblet ? " said Ferdinand, who 
 also felt ashamed of his embarrassment. 
 
 " Many years ago, long ere I was born," said Leopold, 
 " my father bought it, with this house and all its furniture, 
 from an old, solitary bachelor ; a silent man, whom the 
 neighbors thought a dealer in the Black Art." 
 
 The stranger did not say that he had known this old 
 man ; for his whole being was too much perplexed, too like 
 an enigmatic dream, to let the rest look into it, even from 
 afar. 
 
 The cloth being withdrawn, he was left alone with the 
 mother, as the young ones had retired to make ready for 
 the ball. " Sit down by me," said the mother ; " we will 
 rest, for our dancing years are past ; and if it is not rude, 
 allow me to inquire whether you have seen our goblet else- 
 where, or what it was that moved you so intensely ? " 
 
 M O my lady," said the old man, " pardon my foolish 
 violence and emotion ; but ever since I crossed your thresh- 
 old, I feel as if I were no longer myself; every moment I 
 forget that my head is grej*, that the hearts which loved me 
 
THE GOBLET. 407 
 
 are dead. Your beautiful daughter, who is now celebrating 
 the gladdest day of her existence, is so like a maiden whom 
 I knew and adored in my youth, that I could reckon it a 
 miracle. Like, did I say ? No, she is not like ; it is she 
 herself! In this house, too, I have often been; and once I 
 became acquainted with this cup in a manner I shall not 
 forget." Here he told her his adventure. " On the evening 
 of that day," concluded he, "in the park, I saw my loved 
 one for the last time, as she was passing in her coach. A 
 rose fell from her bosom ; this I gathered, she herself was 
 lost to me, for she proved faithless, and soon after married." 
 " God in Heaven ! " cried the lady, violently moved, and 
 starting up, " thou art not Ferdinand ? " 
 " It is my name," replied he. 
 "I am Francesca," said the lady. 
 
 They sprang forward to embrace, then started suddenly 
 back. Each viewed the other with investigating looks; both 
 strove again to evolve from the ruins of Time those line- 
 aments which of old they had known and loved in one 
 another ; and as, in dark, tempestuous nights, amid the flight 
 of black clouds, there are moments when solitary stars 
 ambiguously twinkle forth, to disappear next instant, so to 
 these two was there shown now and then from the eyes, 
 from the brow and lips, the transitory gleam of some well- 
 known feature ; and it seemed as if their Youth stood in the 
 distance, weeping smiles. He bowed down, and kissed her 
 hand, while two big drops rolled from his eyes. They then 
 embraced each other cordially. 
 
 u Is thy wife dead ? " inquired she. 
 
 u I was never married," sobbed the other. 
 
 " Heavens ! " cried she, wringing her hands, " then it is 
 
 I who have been faithless ! But no, not faithless. On 
 
 returning from the country, where I stayed two months, I 
 
 heard from every one, thy friends as well as mine, that thou 
 
408 TIECK. 
 
 wert long ago gone home, and married in thy own country. 
 They showed me the most convincing letters, they pressed 
 me vehemently, they profited by my despondency, my in- 
 dignation ; and so it was that I gave my hand to another, a 
 deserving husband ; but my heart and my thoughts were 
 always thine." 
 
 " I never left this town," said Ferdinand ; u but after a 
 while, I heard that thou wert married. They wished to part 
 us, and they have succeeded. Thou art a happy mother ; 
 I live in the past, and all thy children I will love as if they 
 were my own. But how strange that we should never once 
 have met ! " 
 
 " I seldom went abroad," said she ; " and as my hus- 
 band took another name, soon after we were married, from 
 a property which he inherited, thou couldst have no sus- 
 picion that we were so near together." 
 
 " I avoided men," said Ferdinand, " and lived for solitude. 
 Leopold is almost the only one that has attracted me, and 
 led me out amongst my fellows. O my beloved friend ! it 
 is like a frightful spectre-story, to think how we lost, and 
 have again found each other." 
 
 As the young people entered, the two were dissolved in 
 tears, and in the deepest emotion. Neither of them told 
 what had occurred, the secret seemed too holy. But ever 
 after, the old man was the friend of the house ; and Death 
 alone parted these two beings, who had found each other 
 so strangely, to reunite them in a short time, beyond the 
 power of separation. 
 
 END OF VOLUME FIRST. 
 
GERMAN ROMANCE. 
 
GERMAN ROMANCE 
 
 SPECIMENS 
 
 OF 
 
 ITS CHIEF AUTHORS; 
 
 WITH 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL 
 
 NOTICES. 
 
 BY THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 N TWO VOLUMES 
 
 VOLUME II. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY- 
 
 MDCCCXLI. 
 
CAMBRIDGE PRESS t 
 MFTCALF, TORRY, AND BALLOU. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 E. T. W. HOFFMANN. 
 Biographical Notice ........ 1 
 
 The Golden Pot 23 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICII RICHTER. 
 
 Biographical Notice 123 
 
 Army-Chaplain Schmelzle's Journey to Flatz ; with a 
 
 Running Commentary of Notes .... 141 
 Life of Quintus Fixlein. Extracted from Fifteen Letter- 
 
 Boxes 213 
 
E. T. W. HOFFMANN 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
GERMAN ROMANCE. 
 
 E. T. W. HOFFMANN. 
 
 Hoffmann's Life and Remains have been published, 
 shortly after his decease, and with an amplitude of detail 
 corresponding rather to the popularity than to the intrinsic 
 merit of the subject ; for Hoffman belongs to that too nu- 
 merous class of vivid and gifted literary men, whose genius, 
 never cultured or elaborated into purity, finds loud and 
 sudden rather than judicious or permanent admiration ; and 
 whose history, full of error and perplexed vicissitude, ex- 
 cites sympathizing regret in a few, and unwise wonder in 
 many. From this Work, which is honestly and modestly 
 enough written, and has, to all appearance, been extensively 
 read and approved of, I borrow most of the following par- 
 ticulars. 
 
 Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann was born at Konigs- 
 berg, in Prussia, on the 24th of January, 1776. His father 
 occupied a post of some dignity in the administration of 
 Justice ; the mother's relatives were also engaged in the 
 profession of Law ; most of them respectably, some of 
 them with considerable influence and reputation. The elder 
 Hoffmann is said to have been a man of talent ; but his 
 
4 HOFFMANN. 
 
 temper and habitudes were irregular ; his wife was sickly, 
 sensitive, and perhaps querulous and uncompliant. In our 
 Ernst their second child's third year, the parents discovered 
 that they could not live together ; and, apparently by mutual 
 consent, dissolved their ill-assorted union. The father with- 
 drew from Konigsberg, to prosecute his legal and judicial 
 engagements elsewhere; and seems to have troubled himself 
 no farther about his offspring or old connexions. He died, 
 several years after, at Insterburg, where he had been sta- 
 tioned as a Judge in the Criminal Court of the Oberland. 
 The other parent retired with young Ernst to her mother's 
 house, also in Konigsberg ; and there, in painful inaction, 
 wore out seventeen sick and pitiable years, before death put 
 a period to her sufferings. Prior to the separation, the elder 
 child, also a boy, had gone astray into wicked courses, and 
 at last set forth as an infant prodigal into the wide world. 
 The two brothers never met, though the elder is said to be 
 still in life. 
 
 Cut off from his natural guardians and directors, young 
 Hoffmann seems to have received no adequate compensation 
 for the want of them, and his early culture was but ill con- 
 ducted. The grandmother, like her daughter, was perpet- 
 ually sick, neither of the two almost ever stirring from 
 their rooms. An uncle, retired with the barren title of Jus- 
 tizrath from an abortive practice of Law, took charge of the 
 boy's education ; but little Otto had no insight into the en- 
 dowments or perversities of his nephew, and spent much 
 fruitless effort in endeavoring to train the frolicsome urchin 
 to a clockwork life like his own ; for Otto lived by square 
 and rule; his history was a rigid, strenuous, methodical 
 procedure ; of which, indeed, except the process of digest- 
 ion, faithfully enough performed, the result, in Otto's case, 
 was nothing. An unmarried aunt, the only other member 
 of the family, the only member of it gifted with any share 
 
HOFFMANN. O 
 
 of sense, appears to have had a truer view of young Hoff- 
 mann ; but she loved the little rogue too well ; and her 
 tenderness, though repaid by equal and continued tenderness 
 on his part, perhaps hurt him more than the leaden con- 
 straint of his uncle. For the rest, the boy did not let the 
 yoke lie too heavy on his shoulders. Otto, it is true, was 
 his teacher, his chamber-mate, and bed-mate ; but every 
 Thursday, the little Justizrath went out to pay visits, and the 
 pupil could then celebrate a day of bedlam jubilee. In a 
 little while, too, by superiority of natural cunning, he had 
 sounded the Justizrath ; and from his twelfth year, we are 
 told, he scarcely ever spoke a word with him, except for 
 purposes of mystification. In this prim circle, he grew up 
 in almost complete isolation ; for, by reason of its fantastic 
 strictness, the household was visited by few ; and except 
 one boy, a nephew of the Author HippePs, with whom he 
 accidentally became acquainted, Hoffmann had no compan- 
 ion but his foolish uncle and his too fond aunt. With young 
 Hippel his intimacy more and more increased ; and it is 
 pleasant to record of both, that this early connexion contin- 
 ued unbroken, often warm and helpful, through many 
 changes of fortune ; Hoffman's school-friend stood by his 
 death-bed, and look his farewell of him with true, heart-felt 
 tears. 
 
 For classical instruction, he was early sent to the public 
 school of Konigsberg ; but till his thirteenth or fourteenth 
 year, he acquired no taste for these pursuits ; and remained 
 unnoticed by his teacher, and by all his schoolfellows, except 
 Hippel, rather disrespected and disliked. Music and paint- 
 ing, in which also he had masters, were more to his taste ; 
 in a short while, he could fantasy to admiration on the harp- 
 sichord ; and there was no comic visage in Konigsberg 
 which he had not sketched in caricature. His tiny stature 
 (for in youth, as in manhood, he was little, and " incredibly 
 1* 
 
6 HOFFMANN. 
 
 brisk "), giving him an almost infantine appearance, added 
 new wonder to these attainments ; and so young Ernst be- 
 came a musical and pictorial prodigy ; to the no small com- 
 fort of Justizrath Otto, who delighted to observe that the 
 little imp, who had played him so many sorry tricks, and so 
 often overset the steady machinery of his household economy, 
 was turning out, not a blackguard, but a genius. 
 
 With more prudence and regularity than could have been 
 expected, Hoffmann betook himself, in due time, to prepar- 
 ing for the legal profession ; to which, as if by hereditary 
 destiny, he was appointed. In the Konigsberg University, 
 indeed, he confessed that Kant's prelections were a dead 
 letter to him, though it was at that time the fashion both for 
 the wise and simple to be metaphysically transcendental ; but 
 he abstained from the riotous practices of his fe\\ow-Burs- 
 chen, and pursued with strict fidelity the tasks by which he 
 hoped ere long to gain an independent livelihood, and be 
 delivered from the thraldom of his grandmother and Justiz- 
 rath Otto. In this hope he labored ; allowing himself no 
 recreation, except once a-week an evening of literary talk 
 with his fellow-student Hippel, and an occasional glance 
 into Winkelmann, or other works on Art, to which, as for- 
 merly, the better part of his nature was passionately devoted. 
 In 1795 he passed his first professional trial, and was 
 admitted Auscultator of the Court of Konigsberg ; an estab- 
 lishment administrative as well as judicial ; in which, how- 
 ever, owing to the pressure of applicants, it was impossible 
 to give him full employment. This leisure, which, with so 
 hot and impatient a spirit, hung heavy enough on his hands, 
 he endeavored to fill up with subsidiary pursuits. He gave 
 private lessons in music ; he painted wild landscapes, or 
 grotesque figures, to which u a bold alternation of color and 
 shade " gave a specific character ; he talked of men and 
 things, with the most sportful fancy, or the most biting sar- 
 
HOFFMANN. 7 
 
 casm ; in fine, he wrote two Novels. One of these, at least, 
 lie had hoped to see in print; for a bookseller had received 
 it with some expressions of encouragement ; but after half 
 a year, his fair manuscript was returned to him, all soiled 
 and creased, with an answer, that " the anonymity of the 
 work was likely to hurt its sale." In the mean time, his 
 situation had become still more perplexed by a private inci- 
 dent in the style of the Nouvelle Heloise. One of his fair 
 music-pupils was too lovely and too soft-hearted ; no mar- 
 riage could be thought of between the parties, for she was 
 far above him in rank ; and the contradictions and entangle- 
 ments of this affair so pained and oppressed him, that he 
 longed with double vehemence to be out of Konigsberg. 
 At last, after much wavering and consulting, he snatched 
 himself away, with a resolute, indeed almost heroic effort, 
 from the unpropitious scene ; and proceeded, in the summer 
 of 1796, to Great Glogau in Silesia, where another uncle, 
 a brother of Otto's, occupied a post in the Administration, 
 and had promised to procure him employment. 
 
 In Great Glogau he did not find the composure which he 
 was in search of; his uncle and his cousins treated him 
 with great affection, and his labor was not irksome or un- 
 profitable ; but, in his letters, he complains incessantly of 
 tedium, and other spiritual maladies ; and, in 1798, he 
 joyfully took leave of Silesia, following his uncle, who was 
 now promoted to a higher legal post in Berlin. Here, too, 
 the young jurist continued only for a short time. Having 
 passed his third and last trial, the examen rigorosum, and 
 this with no common applause, he was soon afterwards ap- 
 pointed Assessor of the Court at Posen, in South Prussia 
 (Poland) ; whither he proceeded in March, 1800. 
 
 With Hoffmann's removal to Poland begins a new era 
 of his life; he was now director of his own actions, but 
 unhappily he did not direct them well. At Berlin, and 
 
8 HOFFMANN. 
 
 even at Great Glogau, he had been accustomed to enliven 
 the routine of legal duty by the study of Art ; for which 
 the public collections of pictures, and the numerous profes- 
 sors of music, had in both cities afforded considerable oppor- 
 tunity. In Posen, these resources were abridged ; there 
 was little music, little painting ; his official associates were 
 dry, week-day men, who worked hard at their desks, and 
 lived hard when enfranchised from them ; without taste for 
 literature, or art of any kind, except it were the art of cook- 
 ery and brewing. The Poles also were a lively, jolly peo- 
 ple, and much addicted to " strong Hungary wine." Hoff- 
 mann yielded too far to the custom of the land ; and here, 
 it would seem, contracted habits of irregularity, from which 
 he could never after get delivered. Another refuge against 
 tedium, derived from his own peculiar resources, was even 
 less to be excused. In private hours, he had condescended 
 to become the scandalous chronicle of Posen, and to sketch 
 a series of caricatures, exhibiting, under the most ludicrous, 
 yet recognizable aspects, a great number of individuals and 
 transactions ; sparing no rank or relation, where he fancied 
 himself to have been provoked, or thought his satire might 
 be expected to tell. On occasion of a masquerade, a gay 
 companion, his future brother-in-law, equipped himself like 
 an Italian hawker ; and proceeding to the ball with his pes- 
 tilent ware in his basket, distributed the pictures, each pic- 
 ture to some ill-wisher of the person whom it represented ; and 
 then vanished from the room. For the first half hour, there was 
 a general triumph ; which, on comparing notes, passed into a 
 general wail. The author was speedily detected ; his talent, 
 the only thing admirable in the transaction, betrayed him, 
 and the punishment followed close on the offence. Intelli- 
 gence was sent to Berlin ; and the patent, lying ready for 
 signature, which should have made him Rath (Councillor) at 
 Posen, was changed for a similar appointment at Plozk; a 
 
HOFFMANN. \f 
 
 change which, in all points, he regarded as an exile, but 
 which his best friends could not help admitting that he had 
 richly merited. 
 
 From Plozk he failed not to emit his Tristia ; soliciting, 
 with pressing earnestness, deliverance from his Polish To- 
 mos. What was more to the purpose, he seems to have 
 amended his conduct; he had married while in Posen ; 
 his wife, a fair Poless, was possessed of many graces, and 
 of contentment and submissiveness without limit; and the 
 husband was beginning to substitute the duties and enjoy- 
 ments of domestic and studious life, for the revelry and riot 
 in which of late he had much too deeply mingled. In his 
 official capacity, his assiduity and perseverance so far 
 gained on his superiors, that at length, by the influence of 
 Hippel and other friends, he was transferred from Plozk to 
 Warsaw; after having spent two regretful, but diligent and 
 not unprofitable years, in this provincial seclusion. In the 
 summer of 1804 he hastened to his new destination, which 
 his fancy had decked for him in all the colors of hope. 
 
 To Hoffmann the Polish capital was like a vast, perpetual 
 masquerade ; and for a time he enjoyed its exotic, many- 
 colored aspect, the more from its contrast with his late way 
 of life. Bis public duty was not difficult, and he performed 
 it punctually; his salary sufficed him ; there were theatres 
 and music on every hand ; and the streets were peopled 
 with a motley tumult of the strangest forms; "gay, silken 
 Polesses, talking and promenading over broad, stately squares; 
 the ancient, venerable Polish noble, with moustaches, cafian, 
 sash, and red or yellow boots; the new race equipped as 
 Parisian Incroyables ; with foreigners of every nation ; " not 
 excluding long-bearded Jews, puppetshow-men, monks, and 
 dancing-bears. In a little while, Hoffmann had formed 
 some acquaintances among the human part of the throng; 
 with one Hitzig, his colleague in office, he established a 
 
10 HOFFMANN. 
 
 lasting intimacy. It began oddly enough. One day the 
 two were walking home together from the Court, and en- 
 gaged in laborious, stinted, and formal conversation, when 
 Hoffmann, asking the character of some individual, the 
 other answered, in the words of FalstafF, that he was " a 
 fellow in buckram ; " a phrase which enlightened the caustic 
 visage of Hoffmann, at all times shy to strangers, and at 
 once raised him into one of his brilliant, communicative 
 moods. This Hitzig, himself a man of talent and energy, 
 was of great service in assisting Hoffman's intellectual cul- 
 ture while at Warsaw, and stood by him afterwards in many 
 difficult emergencies. 
 
 An enthusiast dilettante prepared a new source of interest 
 to Hoffmann, by a scheme which he proposed of erecting a 
 Musical Institution. By dint of great effort the dilettante 
 succeeded in procuring subscribers ; first one deserted pal- 
 ace, then a larger one, was purchased for a hall of meeting ; 
 and Hoffmann, seeing that the scheme was really to take 
 effect, now entered into it with heart and hand. He planned 
 the arrangement of the rooms in the New Ressource ; for 
 their decorations he sketched cartoons, part of which were 
 painted by other artists, part he himself painted ; not for- 
 getting to introduce caricature portraits of many honest 
 subscribers, whom, by wings and tails, he disguised as 
 sphinxes, gryphons, and other mythological cattle. His time 
 was henceforth divided between his Court and this Musical 
 Ressource. Here, perched on his scaffold, among his paint- 
 pots, with the brush in his hand, and a bottle of Hungary 
 by his side, he might, in free hours, be seen diligently work- 
 ing, and talking in the mean while to his friends assembled 
 below. If called to any juridical function by an extraordi- 
 nary mandate from the President, he would doff his painter's- 
 jacket, clamber down from his scaffold, wash his hands, 
 and, to the surprise of parties, transact their business as 
 
HOFFMANN. 11 
 
 rapidly and correctly as if he had known no other em- 
 ployment. 
 
 The Musical Ressource prospered beyond expectation. 
 Brilliant concerts were given; all that was fairest and grace- 
 fullest in Warsaw attending, or even assisting. Hoffmann 
 officiated as leader in their performance ; and, especially 
 in Mozart's pieces, was allowed to perform his part with 
 consummate skill. Ere long, however, these melodious 
 festivities were abruptly closed. News came of the battle 
 of Jena ; Russian foreposts entered the city ; Tartars, Cos- 
 sacks, Bashkirs increased the chaos of its population. In 
 due time, arrived French envoys to treat of a surrender ; 
 the Prussians mounted guard with their knapsacks on ; and 
 one morning tidings spread over the city that the Praga 
 bridge of boats was on fire, that the Russians and Prussians 
 were retiring on the one side, and Murat's advanced-guard 
 entering by the other. The rest is easy to conceive ; the 
 Prussian government was at an end in Warsaw ; Hoffmann's 
 Collegium honestly divided the contents of their strong-box, 
 then closed the partnership, and dispersed, each whither he 
 listed, to seek safety and new employment. 
 
 To most of them this was a grievous stroke ; not to 
 Hoffmann. For him, Warsaw was still a fine, variegated 
 spectacle ; he had money enough for present wants ; of 
 the future he took little heed, or thought loosely that he 
 could live by Art, and that Art was far better than Law. 
 Leaving his large house, where his purse seemed hardly 
 safe from military violence, he took refuge in the garret of 
 the Musical Ressource. Here was his pianoforte and a library, 
 here his wife and only child ; without, were Napoleon and 
 his generals, reviews, restaurateurs, theatres, churches with 
 musical works ; and abundance of fellow-loungers to attend 
 him in these amusements. It was not till after a severe 
 attack of fever, and the most visible contraction of his 
 
12 HOFFMANN. 
 
 purse, that he seriously bethought him what he wa sto do. 
 A sad enough outlook! For Art, which had seemed so 
 benignant at a distance, was shy and inaccessible when 
 actually applied to for bread. Hitzig had hastened off to 
 Berlin, and there opened a book-shop, in hope of better 
 times ; but his accounts of musical profits in that city were 
 discouraging; and for the journey to Vienna, which he ad- 
 vised and gave letters to forward, Hoffmann had now no 
 funds. His uncle in Berlin was dead ; from little Otto noth- 
 ing could be drawn ; the perplexity was thickening, and the 
 means of unravelling it were daily diminishing. For the 
 present, he resolved to leave his wife and daughter at Posen, 
 with their relations, and to visit Berlin himself in quest of 
 some employment. 
 
 In Berlin he could find no employment whatever, either 
 as a portrait-painter, a teacher, or a composer of music ; 
 meanwhile the last remnant of his cash, his poor six Fried- 
 erichs d'or, were one night filched from his trunk ; and 
 news came from Posen, that his little Cecilia was dead, and 
 his wife dangerously ill. In this extremity, his heart for a 
 while had nigh failed him ; but he again gathered courage, 
 and made a fresh attempt. He published in the newspapers 
 an advertisement, offering himself as Music-director, on the 
 most moderate terms, in any theatre ; and was happy 
 enough, soon afterwards, to make an engagement of the 
 kind he wished, with the managers of the Bamberg stage, 
 at that time under the patronage of the Count von Soden. 
 
 To an ordinary temper, this very humble preferment 
 would have offered but a mortifying contrast with former 
 affluence and official respectability. Hoffmann, however, 
 saw in it the means of realizing his long-cherished wish, a 
 life devoted to Art ; and hastened to his Bamberg musical 
 appoinlment with gayer hopes than he had ever fixed on 
 any other prospect. Had money or economical comfort 
 
HOFFMANN. gj 
 
 been his chief object, he must have felt himself cruelly dis- 
 appointed ; mischance on mischance befell the Bamberg 
 theatre ; contradiction on the back of contradiction awaited 
 the new Music-director, whose life, for the next seven years, 
 differs in no outward respect from that of the most unpros- 
 perous strolling player. Nevertheless, he made no com- 
 plaint; perhaps he really felt little sorrow. "This must 
 do," writes he in his Diary, u and it will do ; for now I shall 
 never more have a Relatio ex Actis to write while I live, 
 and so the Fountain of all Evil is dried up." In a weal- 
 thier station he might have composed more operas and 
 painted more caricatures ; but it is possible enough the 
 world might never have heard of him as a writer. The 
 fate of his first two novels had perhaps disgusted him with 
 authorship ; his studies at least had long pointed to other 
 objects ; nor was it choice, but necessity, which now led 
 him back to literature. After many stagnations, the Bam- 
 berg theatrical cash-box had at length become entirely insol- 
 vent ; portrait-painting and music-teaching were inadequate 
 to the support of even a frugal household. Hoffmann, who, 
 in all his straits, appears to have disdained pecuniary assis- 
 tance, now wrote to Rochlitz of Leipzig, Editor of the Mu- 
 sicalische Zeitung (Musical Chronicle), soliciting employ- 
 ment in this Work ; and, by way of testimonial, transmitting 
 some of his recent performances. The letter itself, written 
 with the. most fantastic drollery, was testimonial enough. 
 Hoffmann was instantly and gladly accepted ; and in ten 
 days two essays were prepared and dispatched ; the first of 
 a long series, afterwards collected, enlarged, and given to 
 the world under the title of Fantasiestucke, in Callous 
 Manier (Fantasy-pieces, in the style of Callot*), with a pre- 
 
 * Some of my readers may require to be informed that Jacques 
 Callot was a Lorraine painter of the seventeenth century ; a wild 
 VOL. II. 2 
 
14 
 
 HOFFMANN. 
 
 face by Jean Paul Fried rich Richter, to whom Hoffmann 
 had paid a visit while at Bamberg. 
 
 The incipient author was delighted with his new task ; 
 and Rochlitz and his readers no less so with its execution. 
 These Fantasiestucke turning chiefly on Music, exclusively 
 on Art, were afterwards to make him known to the world 
 as a brilliant and peculiar writer ; and they served for the 
 present to augment his scanty funds, to bring him into favor 
 and employment as a musical composer, and at last to de- 
 liver him from Bamberg. In 1813, by the management of 
 Rochlitz, he formed an engagement at Dresden, again as 
 Music-director, in the theatre of one Seconda. This appoint- 
 ment he hailed as a most propitious change ; but his thea- 
 trical career was not destined anywhere to be smooth. Mis- 
 fortunes, almost destruction, overtook him even on his 
 journey; Seconda he soon found to be a driveller; the 
 opera shifted from Dresden to Leipzig, and from Leipzig to 
 Dresden ; the country was full of Cossacks and Gens 
 d'artnes, and Hoffmann's operatic melodies were drowned 
 in the loud clang of Napoleon's battles. Till the end of 
 1814 he led a life more chequered by hard vicissitudes than 
 ever ; now quarrelling with Seconda, now sketching cari- 
 catures of the French ; now writing Fantasies ; now looking 
 at Battles ; sometimes sick, often in danger, generally light 
 of heart, and always short of money. The Golden Pot, 
 one of the Fantasiestucke, which follows this Introduction, 
 was begun in Dresden, shortly before the Battle of Leipzig, 
 while the cannon of the Allies was bombarding the city ; 
 with grenadoes bursting at the writer's very hand, nay at 
 last driving him from his garret into some safer shelter. 
 
 The revolution of Europe, which restored so many sove- 
 
 genius, whose" Temptation of St. Anthony is said to exceed, in chaotic 
 incoherence, that of Teniers himself. 
 
HOFFMANN. 1 5 
 
 reigns to their thrones, restored Hoffmann to his chair of 
 office. He arrived at Berlin in September, 1814 ; was pro- 
 vided with employment ; reinstated in his former rights of 
 seniority ; and two years afterwards promoted, in conse- 
 quence, to be Rath in the Kammergericht, or Exchequer 
 Court of the capital. 
 
 Hoffmann's situation, after all his buffettings, might now 
 be considered enviable ; the income of his post was amply 
 sufficient, and its labor not excessive ; his best friends were 
 in his neighborhood ; Hitzig was working with him at the 
 same table ; his public conduct was irreprehensible, and his 
 literary fame was rapidly spreading. The Fantasiestucke 
 were already universally popular ; the Elixiere des Teufels 
 (Devil's Elixir, a novel in two volumes, since translated into 
 English) had just been given to the circulating libraries ; 
 and his opera of Undine, which Fouque had versified for 
 Hoffmann's music, was brought out on the Berlin stage 
 with loud plaudits, and reviewed with praises by Weber 
 himself. Hoffmann was happy ; and had he been wise, 
 might still have continued happy ; but he was not wise, 
 and in this cup of joy there lurked for him a deadly 
 poison. 
 
 Berlin, like most other cities, prides itself in being some- 
 what of a modern Athens ; and Hoffmann, the wonder of 
 the day, was invited with the warmest blandishments to par- 
 ticipate in its musical and literary tea. But in these pol- 
 ished circles Hoffmann prospered ill ; he was sharp-tem- 
 pered ; vain, indeed, but transcendently vain ; he required 
 the wittiest talk, or the most entire^audience ; and had a 
 heart-hatred to inanity, however gentle and refined. When 
 his company grew tiresome, he " made the most terrific 
 faces ; " would answer the languishing raptures of some per- 
 fumed critic by an observation on the weather ; would 
 transfix half a dozen harmless dilettanti through the vitals, 
 
16 HOFFMANN. 
 
 each on his several bolt ; nay, in the end, give vent to his 
 spleen by talking like a sheer maniac ; in short, never cease 
 till, one way or other, the hapless circle was reduced to utter 
 desolation. To this intellectual beverage he was seldom 
 twice invited ; and ere long the musical and literary Tea- 
 urn was for him a closed fountain. 
 
 Yet Hoffmann could not do without society, without ex- 
 citement, and now not well without exclusive admiration. 
 His old friends he had not forsaken, for he seldom, and 
 with difficulty, got intimate with a stranger ; but their quiet 
 life could not content him ; it was clear that the enjoyment 
 he sought was only to be found among gay, laughter-loving 
 topers, as a guest at their table, or, still better, as their 
 sovereign in the wine-house. " The order of his life, from 
 1816 downwards," says his Biographer, " was this : on 
 Mondays and Thursdays he passed his forenoons at his post 
 in the Kammergericht ; on other days at home, in working ; 
 the afternoons he regularly spent in sleep, to which, in 
 summer, perhaps he added walking ; the evenings and 
 nights were devoted to the tavern. Even when out in com- 
 pany, while the other guests went home, he retired to the 
 tavern to await the morning, before which time it was next 
 to impossible to bring him home." Strangers who came to 
 Berlin went to see him in the tavern ; the tavern was his 
 study, and his pulpit, and his throne ; here his wit flashed 
 and flamed like an Aurora Borealis, and the table was for- 
 ever in a roar ; and thus, amid tobacco-smoke, and over 
 coarse, earthly liquor, was Hoffmann wasting faculties which 
 might have seasoned the nectar of the gods. 
 
 Poor Hoffmann was on the highway to ruin ; and the 
 only wonder is, that, with such fatal speed, he did not reach 
 the goal even more balefully and sooner. His official 
 duties were to the last punctually and irreproachably per- 
 formed. He wrote more abundantly than ever; no Maga- 
 
HOFFMANN. 
 
 17 
 
 zine Editor was contented without his contributions; the 
 Nachtstucke (Night-pieces) were published in 1817 ; two 
 years afterwards Klein Zaches, regarded (it would seem 
 falsely) as a local satire ; and at last, between 1819 and 
 1821, appeared in four successive volumes, the Serapions- 
 bruder, containing most of his smaller tales, collected from 
 various fugitive publications, and combined together by 
 dialogues of the Serapion-brethren, a little club of friends, 
 which for some time met weekly in Hoffmann's house. 
 The Prinzessin Brambilla (1821) is properly another Fan- 
 tasy-piece; The Lebensaussichten des Kater Murr (Tom- 
 cat Murr's Philosophy of Life), published in 1820 and 1821, 
 was meant by the author as his master-work ; but the third 
 volume is wanting; and the wild anarchy, musical and 
 moral, said to reign in the first two, may forever remain 
 unreconciled. 
 
 Meanwhile, Hoffmann's tavern orgies continued unabated, 
 and his health at last sank under them. In 1819 he had 
 suffered a renewed attack of gout ; from which, however, 
 he had recovered by a journey to the Silesian baths. On 
 his forty-fifth birthday, the 24th of January, 1822, he saw 
 his best and oldest friends, including Hitzig and Hippel, 
 assembled round his table ; but he himself was sick ; no 
 longer hurrying to and fro in hospitable assiduity, as was 
 his custom, but confined to his chair, and drinking bath 
 water, while his guests were enjoying wine. It was his 
 death that lay upon him, and a mournful, lingering death. 
 The disease was a Tabes dorsalis ; limb by limb, from his 
 feet upwards, for five months, his body stiffened and died. 
 Hoffmann bore his sufferings with inconceivable gayety ; so 
 long as his hands had power he kept writing ; afterwards 
 he dictated to an amanuensis ; and four of his Tales, the 
 last, Der Feind (The Enemy), discontinued only some few 
 days before his death, were composed in this melancholy 
 2* 
 
18 
 
 HOFFMANN. 
 
 season. He would not believe that he was dying, and 
 he longed for life with inexpressible desire. On the even- 
 ing of the 24th of June, his whole body to the neck had 
 become stiff and powerless ; no longer feeling pain, he 
 said to his Doctor: "I shall soon be through it now." — 
 " Yes," said the Doctor, " you will soon be through it." 
 Next morning he was evidently dying ; yet about eleven 
 o'clock he awoke from his stupor ; cried that he was well, 
 and would go on with dictating the Feind that night ; at the 
 same time calling on his wife to read him the passage where 
 he had stopt. She spoke to him in kind dissuasion ; he was 
 silent ; he motioned to be turned towards the wall ; and 
 scarcely had this been done, when the fatal sound was 
 heard in his throat, and in a few minutes Hoffmann was no 
 more. 
 
 Hoffmann's was a mind for which proper culture might 
 have done great things ; there lay in it the elements of much 
 moral worth, and talents of almost the highest order. Nor 
 was it weakness of Will that so far frustrated these fine 
 endowments ; for in many trying emergencies he proved 
 that decision and perseverance of resolve were by no means 
 denied him. Unhappily, however, he had found no sure 
 principle of action ; no Truth adequate to the guidance of 
 such a mind. What in common minds is called Prudence 
 was not wanting, could this have sufficed ; for it is to be 
 observed, that, so long as he was poor, so long as the fetters 
 of every-day duty lay round him, Hoffmann was diligent, un- 
 blamable, and even praiseworthy ; but these wants once sup- 
 plied, these fetters once cast off, his wayward spirit was with- 
 out fit direction or restraint, and its fine faculties rioted in wild 
 disorder. In the practical concerns of life he felt no interest ; 
 in religion he seems not to have believed, or even disbelieved ; 
 he never talked of it, or would hear it talked of; to politics 
 
HOFFMANN. 19 
 
 he was equally hostile, and equally a stranger. Yet the 
 wages of daily labor, the solace of his five senses, and the 
 intercourse of social or gregarious life, were far from com- 
 pleting his ideal of enjoyment; his better soul languished in 
 these barren scenes, and longed for some worthier home. 
 This home, unhappily, he was not destined to find. He 
 sought for it in the Poetry of Art ; and the aim of his 
 writings, so far as they have any aim, as they are not mere 
 interjections, expressing the casual moods of his mind, was 
 constantly the celebration and unfolding of this the best and 
 truest doctrine which he had to preach. But here too his 
 common failing seems to have beset him ; he loved Art with 
 a deep but scarcely with a pure love ; not as the fountain of 
 Beauty, but as the fountain of refined Enjoyment ; he de- 
 manded from it not heavenly peace, but earthly excitement ; 
 as indeed through his whole life, he had never learned the 
 truth that for human souls a continuance of passive pleasure 
 is inconceivable, has not only been denied us by Nature, 
 but cannot, and could not be granted. 
 
 From all this there grew up in Hoffmann's character 
 something player-like, something false, brawling, and taw- 
 dry, which we trace both in his writings and his conduct. 
 His philosophy degenerates into levity, his magnanimity 
 into bombast ; the light of his fine mind is not sunshine, 
 but the glitter of an artificial fire-work. As in Art, so in 
 Life, he had failed to discover that " agreeable sensations" 
 are not the highest good. His pursuit of these led him into 
 many devious courses, and the close of his mistaken pil- 
 grimage was — the tavern. 
 
 Yet if, in judging Hoffmann, we are forced to condemn 
 him, let it be with mildness, with justice. Let us not for- 
 get, that, for a mind like his, the path of propriety was diffi- 
 cult to find, still more difficult to keep. Moody, sensi- 
 tive, and fantastic, he wandered through the world like 
 
20 HOFFMANN. 
 
 a foreign presence, subject to influences of which 
 common natures have happily no glimpse. A whole 
 scale of the most wayward and unearthly humors stands 
 recorded in his Diary ; his head was forever swarming 
 with beautiful or horrible chimeras ; a common incident 
 could throw his whole being into tumult, a distorted face or 
 figure would abide with him for days, and rule over him 
 like a spell. It was not things, but " the shows of things," 
 that he saw ; and the world and its business, in which he 
 had to live and move, often hovered before him like a per- 
 plexed and spectral vision. Withal it should be remembered, 
 that, though never delivered from Self, he was not cruel or 
 unjust, nor incapable of generous actions and the deepest 
 attachment. His harshness was often misinterpreted ; for 
 heat of temper deformed the movements of kindness ; mock- 
 ery also was the dialect in which he spoke and even thought ; 
 and often, under a calm or bitter smile, he could veil the 
 wounds of a bleeding heart. A good or a wise man we 
 must not call him ; but to others his presence was benefi- 
 cent, his injuries were to himself; and among the ordinary 
 population of this world to note him with the mark of repro- 
 bation were ungrateful and unjust. 
 
 His genius formed the most important element of his 
 character, and of course participated in its faults. There 
 are the materials of a glorious poet, but no poet has been 
 fashioned out of them. His mind was not cultivated or 
 brought under his own dominion ; we admire the rich ingre- 
 dients of it, and regret that they were never purified, and 
 fused into a whole. His life was disjointed ; he had to la- 
 bor for his bread, and he followed three different arts ; what 
 wonder that in none of them he should attain perfection ? 
 Accordingly, except perhaps as a musician, the critics of 
 his country deny him the name of an Artist ; as a poet, he 
 aimed but at popularity, and has attained little more. H is 
 
HOFFMANN. 21 
 
 intellect is seldom strong, and that only in glimpses ; his 
 abundant humor is too often false and local ; his rich and 
 gorgeous fancy is continually distorted into crotchets and 
 caprices. In fact, he elaborated nothing ; above all, not 
 himself. His knowledge, except in the sphere of Art, is 
 not extensive ; for an author, he had read but little ; criti- 
 cisms, even of his own works, he never looked into ; and 
 except Richter, whom he saw only once, he seems never to 
 have met with any individual whose conversation could in- 
 struct or direct him. Human nature he had studied only as 
 a caricature painter; men, it is said, in fact interested him 
 chiefly as mimetic objects ; their common doings and des- 
 tiny were without beauty for him, and he observed and 
 copied them only in their extravagancies and ludicrous dis- 
 tortions. His works were written with incredible speed, 
 and they bear many marks of haste ; it is seldom that any 
 piece is perfected, that its brilliant and often genuine ele- 
 ments are blended in harmonious union. On the largest of 
 his completed Novels, the Elixiere des Teufels, he himself 
 set no value ; and the Kater Murr, which he meant for a 
 higher object, he did not live to finish, nor is it thought he 
 could have finished it. His smaller pieces were mostly 
 written for transitory publications, and too often with only a 
 transitory excellence. We do not read them without inter- 
 est, without high amusement, but the second reading pleases 
 worse than the first ; for there is too little meaning in that 
 bright extravagance ; it is but the hurried copy of the 
 phantasms which forever masqueraded through the author's 
 mind ; it less resembles the creation of a poet, than the 
 dream of an opium-eater. 
 
 With these faults a rigorous criticism may charge Hoff- 
 mann, and this the more strictly, the greater his talent, the 
 more undoubted his capability and obligation to avoid them. 
 At the same time to reject his claim, as has been done, to 
 
22 
 
 HOFFMANN. 
 
 what the poets call their immortality, seems hard measure. 
 If Callot and Teniers, his models, still figure in picture 
 galleries ; if Rabelais continues, after centuries, to be read, 
 and even the Caliph Vathek, after decades, still finds admir- 
 ers, the products of a mind so brilliant, wild, and singular, 
 as that of Hoffmann, may long hover in the remembrance 
 of the world, as objects of curiosity, of censure, and, on 
 the whole, compared with absolute Nonentity, of entertain- 
 ment and partial approval. For the present, at least, as a 
 child of his time and his country, he is not to be overlook- 
 ed in any survey of German Literature, and least of all by 
 the foreign student of it. 
 
 Among Hoffmann's shorter performances, I find Meister 
 Martin noted by his critics as the most perfect ; it is a story 
 of ancient Nurnberg, and worked up in a style which even 
 reminds us of the Author of Waverley. Nevertheless, I 
 have selected this Goldne Topf, as likelier to interest the 
 English reader; it has more of the faults, but also more of 
 the excellencies peculiar to its author, and exhibits a much 
 truer picture of his individuality. To recommend it, criti- 
 cisms would be unvailing; there is no deep art involved in 
 its composition ; to minds alive to the graces of Fancy, and 
 disposed to pardon even its aberrations when splendid and 
 kindly, this Mahrchen will speak its whole meaning for 
 itself, and to others it has little or nothing to say. The 
 most tolerant will see in it much to pardon ; but even under 
 its present disadvantages they may perhaps recognize in it 
 the erratic footsteps of a poet, and lament with me that his 
 course has ended so far short of the goal. 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 
 
 FIRST VIGIL. 
 
 The Mishaps of the Student Anselmus. Conrector Paul- 
 manrCs Tobacco-box, and the Gold-green Snakes. 
 
 On Ascension-day, about three o'clock in the afternoon, 
 there came a young man running through the Schwarzthor, 
 or Black Gate, out of Dresden, and right into a basket of 
 apples and cakes, which an old and very ugly woman was 
 there exposing to sale. The crash was prodigious ; all that 
 escaped being squelched to pieces was scattered away, and 
 the street-urchins joyfully divided the booty which this quick 
 gentleman had thrown them. At the murder-shriek which 
 the crone set up, her gossips, leaving their cake and brandy 
 tables, encircled the young man, and with plebeian violence 
 stormfully scolded him ; so that, for shame and vexation, he 
 uttered no word, but merely held out his small, and by no 
 means particularly well-filled purse, which the crone eagerly 
 clutched, and stuck into her pocket. The firm ring now 
 opened ; but as the young man started off, the crone called 
 after him : " Ay, run, run thy ways, thou Devil's bird ! To 
 the Crystal run ! to the Crystal ! " The squealing, creaking 
 voice of the woman had something unearthly in it ; so that 
 the promenaders paused in amazement, and the laugh, which 
 at first had been universal, instantly died away. The Stu- 
 dent Anselmus, for the young man was no other, felt him- 
 
24 hoff?:ann. 
 
 self, though he did not in the least understand these singular 
 phrases, nevertheless seized with a certain involuntary 
 horror ; and he quickened his steps still more, to escape the 
 curious looks of the multitude, which were all turned to- 
 wards him. As he worked his way through the crowd of 
 well-dressed people, he heard them murmuring on all sides: 
 " Poor young fellow ! Ha ! what a cursed beldam it is ! n 
 The mysterious words of the crone had oddly enough given 
 this ludicrous adventure a sort of tragic turn ; and the youth, 
 before unobserved, was now looked after with a certain 
 sympathy. The ladies, for his fine shape and handsome 
 face, which the glow of inward anger was rendering still 
 more expressive, forgave him this awkward step, as well as 
 the dress he wore, though it was utterly at variance with all 
 mode. His pike-gray frock was shaped as if the tailor had 
 known the modern form only by hearsay ; and his well- 
 kept, black satin lower habiliments gave the whole a certain 
 pedagogic air, to which the gait and gesture of the wearer 
 did not at all correspond. 
 
 The Student had almost reached the end of the alley 
 which leads out to the Linke Bath ; but his breath could 
 stand such a rate no longer. From running he took to 
 walking ; but scarcely did he yet dare to lift an eye from 
 the ground ; for he still saw apples and cakes dancing round 
 him ; and every kind look from this or that fair damsel was 
 to him but the reflex of the mocking laughter at the 
 Schwarzthor. In this mood, he had got to the entrance of the 
 Bath ; one group of holiday people after the other were 
 moving in. Music of wind-instruments resounded from the 
 place, and the din of merry guests was growing louder and 
 louder. The poor Student Anselmus was almost on the 
 point of weeping ; for he too had expected, Ascension-day 
 having always been a family-festival with him, to participate 
 in the felicities of the Linkean paradise; nay, he had pur- 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 25 
 
 posed even to go the length of a half portion of coffee with 
 rum, and a whole bottle of double beer ; and that he might 
 carouse at his ease, had put more money in his purse than 
 was entirely convenient or advisable. And now, by this 
 fatal step into the apple-basket, all that he had about him 
 had been swept away. Of coffee, of double or single beer, 
 of music, of looking at the bright damsels, in a word, of 
 all his fancied enjoyments, there was now nothing more to 
 be said. He glided slowly past ; and at last turned down 
 the Elbe road, which at that time happened to be quite 
 solitary. 
 
 Beneath an elder-tree, which had grown out through the 
 wall, he found a kind, green resting-place ; here he sat 
 down, and filled a pipe from the Sanitatsknaster, or Health- 
 tobacco-box, of which his friend the Conrector Paulmann 
 had lately made him a present. Close before him rolled 
 and chafed the gold-dyed waves of the fair Elbe-stream ; 
 behind this rose lordly Dresden, stretching, bold and proud, 
 its light towers into the airy sky ; which again, farther off, 
 bent itself down towards flowery meads and fresh springing 
 woods; and in the dim distance a range of azure peaks 
 gave notice of remote Bohemia. But, heedless of this, the 
 Student Anselmus, looking gloomily before him, blew forth 
 his smoky clouds into the air. His chagrin at length be- 
 came audible, and he said : " Of a truth, I am born to losses 
 and crosses for my life long ! That in boyhood, at Odds 
 or Evens, I could never once guess the right way; that my 
 bread and butter always fell on the buttered side ; of all 
 these sorrows I will not speak ; but is it not a frightful 
 destiny, that now, when, in spite of Satan, I have become 
 a student, I must still be a jolthead as before ? Do I ever 
 put a new coat on without the first day smearing it with 
 tallow, or on some ill-fastened nail or other tearing a cursed 
 hole in it ? Do I ever bow to any Councillor or any lady 
 
 VOL. II. 3 
 
26 HOFFMANN. 
 
 without pitching the hat out of my hands, or even sliding 
 away on the smooth pavement, and shamefully oversetting? 
 Had I not every market-day while in Halle a regular sum 
 of from three to four groschen to pay for broken pottery, 
 the Devil putting it into my head to walk straight forward, 
 like a leming-rat ? Have I ever once got to my college, 
 or any place I was appointed to, at the right time ? What 
 availed it that I set out half an hour before, and planted 
 myself at the door, with the knocker in my hand ? Just as 
 the clock is going to strike, souse ! some Devil pours a 
 wash-basin down on me, or I bolt against some fellow com- 
 ing out, and get myself engaged in endless quarrels till the 
 time is clean gone. 
 
 "Ah ! well-a-day ! whither are ye fled, ye blissful dreams 
 of coming fortune, when I proudly thought that here I might 
 even reach the height of Privy Secretary ? And has not 
 my evil star estranged from me my best patrons ? I learn, 
 for instance, that the Councillor, to whom I have a letter, 
 cannot suffer cropt hair; with immensity of trouble the 
 barber fastens me a little cue to my hindhead ; but at the 
 first bow his unblessed knot gives way, and a little shock, 
 running snuffing about me, frisks off to the Privy Councillor 
 with the cue in its mouth. I spring after it in terror ; and 
 stumble against the table, where he has been working while 
 at breakfast ; and cups, plates, ink-glass, sand-box, rush 
 jingling to the floor, and a flood of chocolate and ink over- 
 flows the Relation he has just been writing. • Is the Devil 
 in the man?' bellows the furious Privy Councillor, and 
 shoves me out of the room. 
 
 " What avails it that Conrector Paulmann gave me hopes 
 of a writership ; will my malignant fate allow it, which 
 everywhere pursues me ? To-day even ! Do but think of 
 it ! I was purposing to hold my good old Ascension-day 
 with right cheerfulness of soul ; I would stretch a point for 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 
 
 27 
 
 once ; I might have gone, as well as any other guest, into 
 Linke's Bath, and called out proudly : c Marqueur ! a bottle 
 of double-beer ; best sort, if you please ! ' I might have 
 sat till far in the evening ; and, moreover, close by this or 
 that fine party of well-dressed ladies. I know it, I feel it! 
 heart would have come into me, I should have been quite 
 another man ; uay, I might have carried it so far, that, when 
 one or other of them asked, ' What o'clock may it be ? ' or 
 4 What is it they are playing?' I should have started up 
 with light grace, and without overturning my glass, or stum- 
 bling over the bench, but in a curved posture, moving one 
 step and a half forward, I should have answered, ' Give 
 me leave, Mademoiselle! it is the overture of the Donan- 
 vwibchen;' or, ' It is just going to strike six.' Could any 
 mortal in the world have taken it ill of me? No! I say . 
 the girls would have looked over, smiling so roguishly; as 
 they always do when I pluck up heart to show them that 
 I too understand the light tone of society, and know how 
 ladies should be spoken to. And now the Devil himself 
 leads me into that cursed apple-basket, and now must I 
 sit moping in solitude, with nothing but a poor pipe of — " 
 Here the Student Anselmus was interrupted in his soliloquy 
 by a strange rustling and whisking, which rose close by him 
 in the grass, but soon glided up into the twigs and leaves 
 of the elder-tree that stretched out over his head. It was 
 as if the evening wind were shaking the leaves; as if little 
 birds were twittering among the branches, moving their 
 little wings in capricious flutter to and fro. Then he heard 
 a whispering and lisping; and it seemed as if the blossoms 
 were sounding like little crystal bells. Anselmus listened 
 and listened. Ere long, the whispering, and lisping, and 
 tinkling, he himself knew not how, grew to faint and half- 
 scattered words : 
 
 " 'Twixt this way, 'twixt that ; 'twixt branches, 'twix 
 
28 
 
 HOFFMANN. 
 
 blossoms, come shoot, come twist and twirl we ! Sisterkin, 
 sisterkin ! up to the shine ; up, down, through and through, 
 quick! Sun-rays yellow; evening-wind whispering ; dew- 
 drops pattering ; blossoms all singing ; sing we with branches 
 and blossoms ! Stars soon glitter ; must down ; 'twixt this 
 way, 'twixt that, come shoot, come twist, come twirl we, 
 sisterkin ! " 
 
 And so it went along, in confused and confusing speech. 
 The Student Anselmus thought : " Well, it is but the evening- 
 wind, which to-night truly is whispering distinctly enough." 
 But at that moment there sounded over his head, as it were, 
 a triple harmony of clear, crystal bells; he looked up, and 
 perceived three little Snakes, glittering with green and gold, 
 twisted round the branches, and stretching out their heads 
 to the evening sun. Then, again, began a whispering and 
 twittering in the same words as before, and the little Snakes 
 went gliding and caressing up and down through the twigs ; 
 and while they moved so rapidly, it was as if the elder-bush 
 were scattering a thousand glittering emeralds through the 
 dark leaves. 
 
 " It is the evening sun which sports so in the elderbush," 
 thought the Student Anselmus ; but the bells sounded again ; 
 and Anselmus observed that one Snake held out its little 
 head to him. Through all his limbs there went a shock like 
 electricity ; he quivered in his inmost heart ; he kept gazing 
 up, and a pair of glorious dark-blue eyes were looking 
 at him with unspeakable longing ; and an unknown feeling 
 of highest blessedness and deepest sorrow was like to rend 
 his heart asunder. And as he looked, and still looked, full of 
 warm desire, into these kind eyes, the crystal bells sounded 
 louder in harmonious accord, and the glittering emeralds fell 
 down and encircled him, flickering round him in thousand 
 sparkles, and sporting in resplendent threads of gold. The 
 Elderbush moved and spoke ; " Thou layest in my shadow ; 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 29 
 
 my perfume flowed round thee, but thou understoodst it not. 
 The perfume is my speech, when Love kindles it." The 
 Evening Wind came gliding past, and said : " I played 
 round thy temples, but thou understoodst me not. That 
 breath is my speech, when Love kindles it." The Sun- 
 beam broke through the clouds, and the sheen of it burnt, 
 as in words : " I overflowed thee with glowing gold, but thou 
 understoodst me not. That glow is my speech, when Love 
 kindles it." 
 
 And, still deeper and deeper sunk in the view of these 
 glorious eyes, his longing grew keener, his desire more 
 warm. And all rose and moved around him, as if awakening 
 to glad life. Flowers and blossoms shed their odors round 
 him ; and their odor was like the lordly singing of a 
 thousand softest voices ; and what they sung was borne like an 
 echo on the golden evening clouds, as they flitted away 
 into far-off lands. But as the last sunbeam abruptly sank 
 behind the hill, and the twilight threw its veil over the 
 scene, there came a hoarse, deep voice, as from a great 
 distance : 
 
 " Hey ! hey ! what chattering and jingling is that up 
 there ? Hey ! hey ! who catches me the ray behind the 
 hills ? Sunned enough, sung enough. Hey ! hey ! through 
 bush and grass, through grass and stream. Hey ! hey ! 
 Come dow-w-n, dow-w-w-n ! " 
 
 So faded the voice away, as in murmurs of a distant 
 thunder ; but the crystal bells broke off in sharp discords. 
 All became mute ; and the Student Anselmus observed 
 how the three Snakes, glittering and sparkling, glided 
 through the grass towards the river ; rustling and hustling, 
 they rushed into the Elbe ; and over the waves where they 
 vanished there crackled up a green flame, which, gleaming 
 forward obliquely, vanished in the direction of the city. 
 3* 
 
30 
 
 HOFFMANN. 
 
 SECOND VIGIL. 
 
 How the Student Anselmus was looked upon as drunk and 
 mad. Tlte crossing of the Elbe. Bandmaster Graun's 
 Bravura. ConradVs Sto?nachic Liqueur, and the bronzed 
 Apple-woman. 
 
 " The gentleman is ailing some way ! " said a decent 
 burgher's wife, who, returning from a walk with her family, 
 had paused here, and, with crossed arms, was looking at 
 the mad pranks of the Student Anselmus. Anselmus had 
 clasped the trunk of the elder-tree, and was calling incessantly 
 up to the branches and leaves : " O glitter and shine once 
 more, ye dear gold Snakes ; let me hear your little bell- 
 voices once more ! Look on me once more, ye kind eyes ; 
 O once, or I must die in pain and warm longing ! " And 
 with this he was sighing and sobbing from the bottom of 
 his heart most pitifully ; and in his eagerness and impa- 
 tience shaking the elder-tree to and fro; which, however, 
 instead of any reply, rustled quite stupidly and unintelligibly 
 with its leaves ; and so rather seemed, as it were, to make 
 sport of the Student Anselmus and his sorrows. 
 
 " The gentleman is ailing some way ! " said the burgh- 
 er's wife ; and Anselmus felt as if you had shaken him out 
 of a deep dream, or poured ice-cold water on him, that he 
 might awaken without loss of time. He now first saw 
 clearly where he was ; and recollected what a strange 
 apparition had assaulted him, nay, so beguiled his senses 
 as to make him break forth into loud talk with himself. In 
 astonishment he gazed at the woman ; and at last snatching 
 up his hat, which had fallen to the ground in his transport, 
 was fox making off in all speed. The burgher himself had 
 come forward in the mean while ; and, setting down the 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 3 1 
 
 child from his arm on the grass, had been leaning on his 
 staff, and with amazement listening and looking at the 
 Student. He now picked up the pipe and tobacco-box 
 which the Student had let fall, and, holding them out to 
 him, said : " Don't take on so dreadfully, my worthy Sir, or 
 alarm people in the dark, when nothing is the matter, after 
 all, but a drop or two of Christian liquor ; go home, like a 
 pretty man, and take a nap of sleep on it." 
 
 The Student Anselmus felt exceedingly ashamed ; he 
 uttered nothing but a most lamentable " Ah ! " • 
 
 " Pooh ! Pooh ! " said the burgher, u never mind it a jot ; 
 such a thing will happen to the best ; on good old Ascen- 
 sion-day a man may readily enough forget himself in his 
 joy, and gulp down a thought too much. A clergyman 
 himself is no worse for it ; I presume, my worthy Sir, you 
 are a Candidatus. — But, with your leave, Sir, I shall fill 
 my pipe with your tobacco ; mine went done a little while 
 ago." 
 
 This last sentence the burgher uttered while the Student 
 Anselmus was about putting up his pipe and box ; and now 
 the burgher slowly and deliberately cleaned his pipe, and 
 began as slowly to fill it. Several burgher girls had come 
 up ; these were speaking secretly with the woman and each 
 other, and tittering as they looked at Anselmus. The Stu- 
 dent felt as if he were standing on prickly thorns and 
 burning needles. No sooner had he got back his pipe 
 and tobacco-box, than he darted off at the height of his 
 speed. 
 
 All the strange things he had seen were clean gone from 
 his memory ; he simply recollected having babbled all man- 
 ner of foolish stuff beneath the elder-tree. This was the 
 more frightful to him, as he entertained from of old an 
 inward horror against all soliloquists. It is Satan that 
 chatters out of them, said his Rector; and Anselmus had 
 
32 HOFFMANN. 
 
 honestly believed him. But to be regarded as a Candida- 
 tus Theologice overtaken with drink on Ascension-day ! 
 The thought was intolerable. 
 
 Running on with these mad vexations, he was just about 
 turning up the Poplar Alley, by the Kosel garden, when a 
 voice behind him called out : " Herr Anselmus ! Herr Ansel- 
 mus ! for the love of Heaven, whither are you running in 
 such haste?" The Student paused, as if rooted to the 
 ground ; for he was convinced that now some new mis- 
 chance Would befall him. The voice rose again : " Herr 
 Anselmus, come back, then ; we are waiting for you here 
 at the water ! " And now the Student perceived that it 
 was his friend Conrector Paulmann's voice ; he went back 
 to the Elbe ; and found the Conrector, with his two daugh- 
 ters, as well as Registrator Heerbrand, all on the point of 
 stepping into their gondola. Conrector Paulmann invited 
 the Student to go with them across the Elbe, and then to 
 pass the evening at his house in the Pima suburb. The 
 Student Anselmus very gladly accepted this proposal ; think- 
 ing thereby to escape the malignant destiny which had 
 ruled over him all day. 
 
 Now, as they were crossing the river, it chanced, that, on 
 the farther bank, in the Anton garden, a firework was just 
 going off. Sputtering and hissing, the rockets went aloft, 
 and their blazing stars flew to pieces in the air, scattering a 
 thousand vague shoots and flashes round them. The Stu- 
 dent Anselmus was sitting by the steersman, sunk in deep 
 thought ; but when he noticed in the water the reflection of 
 these darting and wavering sparks and flames, he felt as if 
 it was the little golden Snakes that were sporting in the 
 flood. All the wonders that he had seen at the elder-tree 
 again started forth into his heart and thoughts; and again 
 that unspeakable longing, that glowing desire, laid hold of 
 him here, which had before agitated his bosom in painful 
 spasms of rapture. 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 33 
 
 "Ah! is it you again, my little golden Snakes? Sing 
 now, O sing ! In your song let the kind, dear, dark-blue 
 eyes again appear to me — Ah ! are ye under the waves, 
 then ? " 
 
 So cried the Student Anselmus, and at the same time 
 made a violent movement, as if he were for plunging from 
 the gondola into the river. 
 
 " Is the Devil in you, Sir?" exclaimed the steersman, 
 and clutched him by the coat-breast. The girls, who were 
 sitting by him, shrieked in terror, and fled to the other side 
 of the gondola. Registrator Heerbrand whispered some- 
 thing in Conrector Paulmann's ear, to which the latter 
 answered at considerable length, but in so low a tone, that 
 Anselmus could distinguish nothing but the words: " Such 
 attacks more than once ? — Never heard of it." Directly 
 after this, Conrector Paulmann also rose ; and then sat 
 down, with a certain earnest, grave, official mien, beside 
 the Student Anselmus, taking his hand, and saying : 
 "How are you, Herr Anselmus?" The Student An- 
 selmus was like to lose his wits, for in his mind there 
 was a mad contradiction, which he strove in vain to re- 
 concile. He now saw plainly that what he had taken 
 for the gleaming of the golden Snakes was nothing but the 
 image of the fireworks in Anton's garden ; but a feeling 
 unexperienced till now, he himself knew not whether it was 
 rapture or pain, cramped his breast together; and when the 
 steersman struck through the water with his helm, so that 
 the waves, curling as in anger, gurgled and chafed, he heard 
 in their din a soft whispering: "Anselmus! Anselmus 
 seest thou not how we still skim along before thee ? Sister 
 kin looks at thee again ; believe, believe, believe in us ! ' 
 And he thought he saw in the reflected light three green 
 glowing streaks ; but then, when he gazed, full of fond sad 
 ness, into the water, to see whether these gentle eyes would 
 
34 HOFFMANN. 
 
 not again look up to him, he perceived too well that the 
 shine proceeded only from the windows in the neighboring 
 houses. He was sitting mute in his place, and inwardly- 
 battling with himself, when Conrector Paulmann repeated, 
 with still greater emphasis : " How are you, Herr Ansel- 
 mus ? " 
 
 With the most rueful tone, Anselmus replied: "Ah! 
 Herr Conrector, if you knew what strange things I have 
 been dreaming, quite awake, with open eyes, just now, 
 under an elder-tree at the wall of Linke's garden, you would 
 not take it amiss of me that I am a little absent or so." 
 
 "Ey, ey, Herr Anselmus! " interrupted Conrector Paul- 
 mann, " I have always taken you for a solid young man ; 
 but to dream, to dream with your eyes wide open, and then, 
 all at once, to start up for leaping into the water ! This, 
 begging your pardon, is what only fools or madmen could 
 do." 
 
 The Student Anselmus was deeply affected at his friend's 
 hard saying ; then Veronica, Paulmann's eldest daughter, 
 a most pretty, blooming girl of sixteen, addressed her 
 father : " But, dear father, something singular must have 
 befallen Herr Anselmus ; and perhaps he only thinks he 
 was awake, while he may have really been asleep, and so 
 all manner of wild stuff has come into his head, and is still 
 lying in his thoughts." 
 
 " And, dearest Mademoiselle ! Worthy Conrector ! " 
 cried Registrator Heerbrand, " may one not, even when 
 awake, sometimes sink into a sort of dreaming state? I 
 myself have had such fits. One afternoon, for instance, 
 during coffee, in a sort of brown study like this, in the 
 special season of corporeal and spiritual digestion, the place 
 where a lost Act was lying occurred to me, as if by inspira- 
 tion ; and last night, no farther gone, there came a glorious 
 large Latin paper tripping out before my open eyes in the 
 very same way." 
 
THE GCLDEN POT. 35 
 
 "Ah! most honored Registrator," answered Conrector 
 Paulmann, "you have always had a tendency to the 
 Poetica; and thus one falls into fantasies and romantic hu- 
 mors." 
 
 The Student Anselmus, however, was particularly grati- 
 fied that in this most troublous situation, while in danger 
 of being considered drunk or crazy, any one should take his 
 part ; and though it was already pretty dark, he thought he 
 noticed, for the first time, that Veronica had really very 
 fine dark-blue eyes, and this too without remembering the 
 strange pair which he had looked at in the elder-bush. On 
 the whole, the adventure under the elder-bush had once 
 more entirely vanished from the thoughts of the Student 
 Anselmus ; he felt himself at ease and light of heart; nay, 
 in the capriciousness of joy, he carried it so far, that he 
 offered a helping hand to his fair advocate, Veronica, as she 
 was stepping from the gondola ; and without more ado, as 
 she put her arm in his, escorted her home with so much 
 dexterity and good luck, that he only missed his footing 
 once, and this being the only wet spot in the whole road, only 
 spattered Veronica's white gown a very little by the incident. 
 Conrector Paulmann failed not to observe this happy 
 change in the Student Anselmus ; he resumed his liking for 
 him, and begged forgiveness for the hard words which he 
 had let fall before. "Yes," added he, "we have many 
 examples to show that certain fantasms may rise before a 
 man, and pester and plague him not a little ; but this is 
 bodily disease, and leeches are good for it, if applied to the 
 right part, as a certain learned physician, now deceased, has 
 directed." The Student Anselmus knew not whether he 
 had been drunk, crazy, or sick ; but at all events the leeches 
 seemed entirely superfluous, as these supposed fantasms had 
 utterly vanished, and the Student himself was growing hap- 
 pier and happier, the more he prospered in serving the pret- 
 ty Veronica with all sorts of dainty attentions. 
 
36 HOFFMANN. 
 
 As usual, after the frugal meal, came music ; the Student 
 Anselmus had to take his seat before the harpsichord, and 
 Veronica accompanied his playing with her pure, clear 
 voice. " Dear Mademoiselle," said Registrator Heerbrand, 
 " you have a voice like a crystal bell ! " 
 
 " That she has not ! " ejaculated the Student Anselmus, 
 he scarcely knew how. " Crystal bells in elder-trees sound 
 strangely! strangely!' 1 continued the Student Anselmus, 
 murmuring half aloud. 
 
 Veronica laid her hand on his shoulder, and asked : 
 " What are you saying now, Herr Anselmus ? " 
 
 Instantly Anselmus recovered his cheerfulness, and began 
 playing. Conrector Paulmann gave a grim look at him ; 
 but Registrator Heerbrand laid a music-leaf on the frame, 
 and sang with a ravishing grace one of Bandmaster Graun's 
 bravura airs. The Student Anselmus accompanied this, and 
 much more ; and a fantasy duet, which Veronica and he 
 now fingered, and Conrector Paulmann had himself com- 
 posed, again brought all into the gayest humor. 
 
 It was now pretty late, and Registrator Heerbrand was 
 taking up his hat and stick, when Conrector Paulmann went 
 up to him with a mysterious air, and said: "Hem! — 
 Would not you, honored Registrator, mention to the good 
 Herr Anselmus himself — Hem! what we were speaking 
 of before ? " 
 
 " With all the pleasure in nature,'' said Registrator Heer- 
 brand, and having placed himself in the circle, began, with- 
 out farther preamble, as follows : 
 
 " In this city is a strange, remarkable man, people say he 
 follows all manner of secret sciences ; but as there are no 
 such sciences, I rather take him for an antiquary, and along 
 with this, for an experimental chemist. I mean no other 
 than our Privy Archivarius Lindhorst. He lives, as you 
 know, by himself, in his old sequestered house ; and when 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 37 
 
 disengaged from his office, he is to be found in his library, 
 or in his chemical laboratory, to which, however, he admits 
 no stranger. Besides many curious books, he possesses a 
 number of manuscripts, partly Arabic, Coptic, and some of 
 them in strange characters, which belong not to any known 
 tongue. These he wishes to have copied properly ; and for 
 this purpose be requires a man who can draw with the pen, 
 and so transfer these marks to parchment, in Indian ink, 
 with the highest strictness and fidelity. The work is car- 
 ried on in a separate chamber of his house, under his own 
 oversight ; and besides free board during the time of busi- 
 ness, he pays his man a speziesthaler, or specie-dollar, 
 daily, and promises a handsome present when the copying 
 is rightly finished. The hours of work are from twelve to 
 six. From three to four you take rest and dinner. 
 
 "Herr Archivarius Lindhorst having in vain tried one 
 or two young people for copying these manuscripts, has at 
 last applied to me to find him an expert drawer ; and so I 
 have been thinking of you, dear Herr Anselmus, for I know 
 that you both write very neatly, and likewise draw with the 
 pen to great perfection. Now, if in these bad times, and 
 till your future establishment, you could like to earn a spez- 
 iesthaler in the day, and this present over and above, you 
 can go to-morrow precisely at noon, and call upon the Arch- 
 ivarius, whose house no doubt you know. But be on your 
 guard against any blot ! If such a thing falls on your copy, 
 you must begin it again ; if it falls on the original, the Arch- 
 ivarius will think nothing to throw you over the window, for 
 he is a hot-tempered gentleman." 
 
 The Student Anselmus was filled with joy at Registrator 
 Heerbrand's proposal ; for not only could the Student write 
 well and draw well with the pen, but this copying with 
 laborious calligraphic pains was a thing he delighted in be- 
 
 VOL. II. 4 
 
38 HOFFMANN. 
 
 yond aught else. So he thanked his patron in the most 
 grateful terms, and promised not to fail at noon to-morrow. 
 
 All night the Student Anselmus saw nothing but clear 
 speziesthalers, and heard nothing but their lovely clink. 
 Who could blame the poor youth, cheated of so many hopes 
 by capricious destiny, obliged to take counsel about every 
 farthing, and to forego so many joys which a young heart 
 requires! Early in the morning he brought out his black- 
 lead pencils, his crow-quills, his Indian ink ; for better mate- 
 rials, thought he, the Archivarius can find nowhere. Above all, 
 he mustered and arranged his calligraphic masterpieces and 
 his drawings, to show them to the Archivarius, in proof of 
 his ability to do what he wished. All prospered with the 
 Student ; a peculiar, happy star seemed to be presiding over 
 him ; his neckcloth sat right at the very first trial; no tack 
 burst ; no loop gave way in his black silk stockings"; his hat did 
 not once fall to the dust after he had trimmed it. In a 
 word, precisely at half past eleven, the Student Anselmus, 
 in his pike-grey frock, and black satin lower habiliments, 
 with a roll of calligraphies and pen-drawings in his pocket, 
 was standing in the Schlossgasse, or Castle-gate, in Con- 
 radi's shop, and drinking one — two glasses of the best sto- 
 machic liqueur ; for here, thought he, slapping on the 
 still empty pocket, for here speziesthalers will be chinking 
 soon. 
 
 Notwithstanding the distance of the solitary street where 
 the Archivarius Lindhorst's antique residence lay, the Stu- 
 dent Anselmus was at the front-door before the stroke of 
 twelve. He stood here, and was looking at the large, fine 
 bronze knocker ; but now when, as the last stroke tingled 
 through the air with loud clang from the steeple-clock of 
 the Kreuzkirche, or Cross-church, he lifted his hand to grasp 
 this same knocker, the metal visage twisted itself, with horrid 
 rolling of its blue-gleaming eyes, into a grinning smile. 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. OlJ 
 
 Alas, it was the Apple-woman of the Schwarzthor ! The 
 pointed teeth gnashed together in the loose jaws, and in 
 their chattering through the skinny lips there was a growl 
 as of: " Thou fool, fool, fool ! — Wait, wait ! — Why didst 
 run ! — Fool ! w Horror-struck, the Student Anselmus flew 
 back ; he clutched at the door-post, but his hand caught 
 the bell-rope, and pulled it, and in piercing discords it rung 
 stronger and stronger, and through the whole empty house 
 the echo repeated, as in mockery : " To the crystal fall ! " 
 An unearthly terror seized the Student Anselmus, and quiv- 
 ered through all his limbs. The bell-rope lengthened down- 
 wards, and became a white, transparent, gigantic serpent, 
 which encircled and crushed him, and girded him straiter 
 and straiter in its coils, till his brittle, paralyzed limbs went 
 crashing in pieces, and the blood spouted from his veins, 
 penetrating into the transparent body of the serpent, and 
 dyeing it red. "Kill me! Kill me!" he would have 
 cried, in his horrible agony ; but the cry was only a stifled 
 gurgle in his throat. The serpent lifted its head, and laid 
 its long peaked tongue of glowing brass on the breast of 
 Anselmus; then a fierce pang suddenly cut asunder the 
 artery of life, and thought fled away from him. On return- 
 ing to his senses, he was lying on his own poor truckle-bed ; 
 Conrector Paulmann was standing before him, and saying : 
 " For Heaven's sake, what mad stuff is this, dear Herr An- 
 selmus?" 
 
 THIRD VIGIL. 
 
 Notices of Archivarius Lindhorsfs Family. Veronica's 
 blue Eyes. Registrator Heerbrand. 
 
 " The Spirit looked upon the water, and the water moved 
 itself, and chafed in foaming billows, and plunged thunder- 
 
40 
 
 HOFFMANN. 
 
 ng down into the Abysses, which opened their black throats, 
 and greedily swallowed it. Like triumphant conquerors, 
 the granite Rocks lifted their cleft, peaky crowns, protecting 
 the Valley, till the Sun took it into his paternal bosom, and 
 clasping it with his beams as with glowing arms, cherished 
 it and warmed it. Then a thousand germs, which had 
 been sleeping under the desert sand, awoke from their deep 
 slumber, and stretched out their little leaves and stalks 
 towards the Sun their father's face ; and, like smiling infants 
 in green cradles, the flowerets rested in their buds and 
 blossoms, till they too, awakened by their father, decked 
 themselves in lights, which their father, to please them, 
 tinted in a thousand varied hues. 
 
 " But in the midst of the Valley was a black Hill, which 
 heaved up and down like the breast of man when warm 
 longing swells it. From the Abysses mounted steaming 
 vapors, and rolled themselves together into huge masses, 
 striving malignantly to hide the father's face ; but he called 
 the Storm to him, which rushed thither, and scattered them 
 away ; and when the pure sunbeam rested again on the 
 bleak Hill, there started from it, in the excess of its rapture, 
 a glorious Fire-Lily, opening its fair leaves like gentle lips 
 to receive the kiss of its father. 
 
 "And now came a gleaming Splendor into the Valley; 
 it was the youth Phosphorus ; the Lily saw him, and begged, 
 being seized with warm, longing love : 4 Be mine forever 
 thou fair youth! For I love thee, and must die if thou 
 forsake me!' Then spake the youth Phosphorus: 'I will 
 be thine, thou fair flower ; but then wilt thou, like a naughty 
 child, leave father and mother; thou wilt know thy play- 
 mates no longer, wilt strive to be greater and stronger Mhan 
 all that now rejoices with thee as thy equal. The longing, 
 which now beneficently warms thy whole being, will be 
 scattered into a thousand rays, and torture and vex thee 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 41 
 
 for sense will bring forth senses ; and the highest rapture, 
 which the Spark I cast into thee kindles, will be the hope- 
 less pain wherein thou shalt perish, to spring up anew in 
 foreign shape. This spark is Thought ! ' 
 
 "'Ah!' mourned the Lily, 'can I not be thine in this 
 glow, as it now burns in me ; not still be thine ? Can I 
 love thee more than now ; could I look on thee as now, if 
 thou vvert to annihilate me ? ' Then the youth Phosphorus 
 kissed the Lily ; and as if penetrated with light, it mounted 
 up in flame, out of which issued a foreign Being, that, hast- 
 ily flying from the Valley, roved forth into endless Space, 
 no longer heeding its old playmates, or the youth it had 
 loved. This youth mourned for his lost beloved ; for he 
 too loved her, it was love to the fair Lily that had brought 
 him to the lone Valley ; and the granite Rocks bent down 
 their heads in participation of his grief. 
 
 "But one of these opened its bosom, and there came a 
 black-winged Dragon flying out of it, and said : ' My breth- 
 ren, the Metals are sleeping in there ; but I am always 
 brisk and waking, and will help thee.' Dashing up and 
 down on its black pinions, the Dragon at last caught the 
 Being which had sprung from the Lily ; bore it to the Hill, 
 and encircled it with his wing ; then was it the Lily again ; 
 but Thought, which continued with it, tore asunder its 
 heart ; and its love for the youth Phosphorus was a cutting 
 pain, before which, as if breathed on by poisonous vapors, 
 the flowerets, which had once rejoiced in the fair Lily's 
 presence, faded and died. 
 
 "The youth Phosphorus put on a glittering coat of mail, 
 sporting with the light in a thousand hues, and did battle 
 with the Dragon, who struck the cuirass with his black wing, 
 till it rung and sounded ; and at this loud clang the flowerets 
 again came to life, and like variegated birds fluttered round 
 the Dragon, whose force departed ; and who, thus being 
 4* 
 
42 
 
 HOFFMANN. 
 
 vanquished, hid himself in the depths of the Earth. The 
 Lily was freed ; the youth Phosphorus clasped her, full of 
 warm longing, of heavenly love ; and in triumphant chorus, 
 the flowers, the birds, nay even the high granite Rocks, did 
 reverence to her as the Queen of the Valley." 
 
 "By your leave, worthy Herr Archivarius, this is Oriental 
 bombast," said Registrator Heerbrand ; " and we beg very 
 much you would rather, as you often do, give us something 
 of your own most remarkable life, of your travelling adven- 
 tures, for instance ; above all, something true." 
 
 "What the deuce, then ?" answered Archivarius Lind- 
 horst. " True? This very thing I have been telling, is the 
 truest I could dish out for you, good people, and belongs to 
 my life too, in a certain sense. For I come from that very 
 Valley ; and the Fire-Lily, which at last ruled as queen 
 there, was my great-great-great-great-grandmother; and so, 
 properly speaking, I am a prince myself." All burst into a 
 peal of laughter. " Ay, laugh your fill," continued Ar- 
 chivarius Lindhorst ; " to you this matter which I have 
 related, certainly in the most brief and meagre way, may 
 seem senseless and mad ; yet, notwithstanding this, it is 
 meant for anything but incoherent, or even allegorical, and 
 it is, in one word, literally true. Had I known, however, 
 that the glorious love-story, to which I owe my existence, 
 would have pleased you so ill, I might have given you a 
 little of the news my brother brought me on his visit yes- 
 terday." 
 
 "How, how is this? Have you a brother, then, Herr 
 Archivarius ? Where is he ? Where lives he ? In his 
 Majesty's service too ? Or perhaps a private scholar ? M 
 cried the company from all quarters. 
 
 "No!" replied the Archivarius, quite cool, and com- 
 posedly taking a pinch of snuff, " he has joined the bad 
 side ; he has gone over to the Dragons." 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 43 
 
 " What do you please to mean, dear Herr Archivarius ? " 
 cried Registrator Heerbrand. " Over to the Dragons ? " — 
 " Over to the Dragons ? " resounded like an echo from all 
 hands. 
 
 " Yes, over to the Dragons," continued Archivarius Lind- 
 horst ; " it was sheer desperation, I believe. You know, 
 gentlemen, my father died a short while ago ; it is but three 
 hundred and eighty-five years since, at most, and I am still 
 in mournings for it. He had left me, his favorite son, a 
 fine onyx ; this onyx, right or wrong, my brother would 
 have ; we quarrelled about it, over my father's corpse, in 
 such unseemly wise, that the good man started up, out of all 
 patience, and threw my wicked brother down stairs. This 
 stuck in our brother's stomach, and so without loss of time 
 he went over to the Dragons. At present, he keeps in a 
 cypress wood, not far from Tunis; he has got a famous 
 mystic carbuncle to watch there, which a dog of a necro- 
 mancer, who has set up a summer-house in Lapland, has 
 an eye to ; so my poor brother only gets away for a quarter 
 of an hour or so, when the necromancer happens to be out 
 looking after the salamander-bed in his garden, and then he 
 tells me in all haste what good news there are about the 
 Springs of the Nile." 
 
 For the second time, the company burst out into a peal 
 of laughter ; but the Student Anselmus began to feel quite 
 dreary in heart ; and he could scarcely look in Archivarius 
 Lindhorst's parched countenance, and fixed, earnest eyes, 
 without shuddering internally in a way which he could not 
 himself understand. Moreover, in the rude and strangely 
 metallic sound of Archivarius Lindhorst's voice there was 
 something mysteriously piercing for the Student Anselmus, 
 and he felt his very bones and marrow tingling as the Archi- 
 varius spoke. 
 
 The special object, for which Registrator Heerbrand had 
 
44 HOFFMANN. 
 
 taken him into the coffee-house, seemed at present not to be 
 attainable. After that accident at Archivarius Lindhorst's 
 door, the Student Auselmus had withstood all inducements 
 to risk a second visit; for, according to his own heart-felt 
 conviction, it was only chance that had saved him, if not 
 from death, at least from the danger of insanity. Con- 
 rector Paulmann had happened to be passing through the 
 street at the time when Anselmus was lying quite senseless 
 at the door, and an old woman, who had laid her cake and 
 apple-basket to a side, was busied about him. Conrector 
 Paulmann had forthwith called a chair, and so got him 
 carried home. " Think of me what you will," said the 
 Student Anselmus, " consider me a fool or not; I say, the 
 cursed visage of that witch at the Schwarzthor grinned on 
 me from the door-knocker. What happened after I would 
 rather not speak of; but had I recovered from my swoon 
 and seen that infernal Apple-wife beside me, (for the old 
 woman whom you talk of was no other,) I should that instant 
 have been struck by apoplexy, or have run stark mad." 
 All persuasions, all sensible arguments, on the part of Con- 
 rector Paulmann and Registrator Heerbrand, profited noth- 
 ing ; and even the blue-eyed Veronica herself could not 
 raise him from a certain moody humor, in which he had 
 ever since been sunk. In fact, these friends regarded him 
 as troubled in mind, and meditated expedients for diverting 
 his thoughts ; to which end, Registrator Heerbrand thought, 
 there could nothing be so serviceable as this employment of 
 copying Archivarius Lindhorst's manuscripts. The busi- 
 ness, therefore, was to introduce the Student in some proper 
 way to Archivarius Lindhorst ; and so Registrator Heer- 
 brand, knowing that the Archivarius used to visit a certain 
 coffee-house almost nightly, had invited the Student Ansel- 
 mus to come every evening to that same coffee-house, and 
 drink a glass of beer and smoke a pipe, at his the Regis- 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 45 
 
 trator's charges, till such time as Archivarius Lindhorst 
 should in one way or another see him, and the bargain for 
 this copying work be settled ; which offer the Student An- 
 selmus had most gratefully accepted. "God will reward 
 you, worthy Registrator, if you bring the young man to 
 reason ! " said Conrector Paulmann. " God will reward 
 you ! " repeated Veronica, piously raising her eyes to 
 heaven, and vividly thinking that the Student Anselmus 
 was already a most pretty young man, even without any 
 reason. 
 
 Now accordingly, as Archivarius Lindhorst, with hat and 
 staff, was making for the door, Registrator Heerbrand 
 seized the Student Anselmus briskly by the hand, and with 
 him stepping in the way, he said : " Most esteemed Herr 
 Archivarius, here is the Student Anselmus, who has an un- 
 common talent in calligraphy and drawing, and will under- 
 take the copying of your rare manuscripts." 
 
 " I am most particularly glad to hear it," answered Ar- 
 chivarius Lindhorst sharply ; then threw his three-cocked 
 military hat on his head ; and shoving Registrator Heer- 
 brand and the Student Anselmus to a side, rushed down 
 stairs with great tumult, so that both of them were left 
 standing much bamboozled, gaping at the room-door, which 
 he had slammed in their faces, till the bolts and hinges of it 
 rung again. 
 
 " It is a very strange old gentleman," said Registrator 
 Heerbrand. "Strange old gentleman," stammered the Stu- 
 dent Anselmus, with a feeling as if an ice-stream were 
 creeping over all his veins, and he were stiffening into a 
 statue. All the guests, however, laughed, and said : " Our 
 Archivarius has got into his high key to-day ; to-morrow, 
 you shall see, he is mild as a lamb again, and speaks not a 
 word, but looks into the smoke-vortexes of his pipe, or 
 reads the newspapers ; you must not mind these freaks." 
 
46 
 
 HOFFMANN. 
 
 "That is true too," thought the Student Anselmus ; 
 " who would mind such a thing, after all ? Did not the 
 Archivarius tell me he was most particularly glad to hear 
 that I would undertake the copying of his manuscripts ; and 
 why did Registrator Heerbrand step directly in his way, 
 when he was going home ? No, no, he is a good man at 
 bottom, this Privy Archivarius Lindhorst, and surprisingly 
 liberal. A little curious or so in his figures of speech : but 
 what is that to me ? To-morrow by the stroke of twelve 
 I go to him, though fifty bronzed Apple-wives should try to 
 hinder me ! " 
 
 FOURTH VIGIL. 
 
 • 
 
 Melancholy of the Student Anselmus. The Emerald Mir- 
 ror. How Archivarius Lindhorst flew off in the shape 
 of a Kite, and the Student Anselmus met nobody. 
 
 To thee thyself, favorable reader, I may well venture the 
 question, whether thou in thy time hast not had hours, nay 
 days and weeks, in which all thy customary trading and 
 transacting raised a most vexing dissatisfaction in thy soul ; 
 and all that thou wert wont to look upon as worthy and 
 important now seemed paltry and unprofitable? Thou 
 knewest not, at this season, what to do, or whither to turn ; 
 a dim feeling that somewhere, and sometime or other, there 
 must be a higher wish fulfilled, a wish overstepping the 
 circle of all earthly joys, and which the spirit, like a strictly- 
 nurtured and timid child, durst not even utter, still swelled 
 thy breast ; and in this longing for the unknown Somewhat, 
 which, wherever thou wentest or stoodest, hovered round 
 thee like an airy dream, with thin translucent forms, melting 
 away in thy sharper glance, thou wert mute for all that 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 47 
 
 environed thee here below. Thou glidedst to and fro with 
 troubled look, like a hopeless lover ; and all that thou sawest 
 men attempting or attaining, in the noisy vortex of their 
 many-colored existence, awakened in thee no sorrow and 
 no joy, as if thou hadst neither part nor lot in this sublunary 
 world. 
 
 If such, favorable reader, has at any time been thy hu- 
 mor, then from thy own experience thou knowest the state 
 into which the Student Anselmus had now fallen. On the 
 whole, I could wish much, courteous reader, that it were in 
 my power to bring the Student Anselmus with proper vivid- 
 ness before thy eyes. For in the Night-watches, which I 
 spend in recording his highly singular history, I have still 
 so much of the marvellous, which like a spectral vision may 
 remove into faint remoteness the week-day life of common 
 mortals, to lay before thee, that I fear thou wilt come, in 
 the end, to believe neither in the Student Anselmus, nor in 
 Archivarius Lindhorst ; nay, wilt even entertain some un- 
 founded doubts as to Registrator Heerbrand and Conrector 
 Paulmann, though the last two estimable persons, at least, 
 are yet walking the pavement of Dresden. Make an effort, 
 favorable reader — while in the Fairy region full of glorious 
 Wonders, which with subduing thrills calls forth the highest 
 rapture and the deepest horror ; nay, where the Earnest 
 Goddess herself will waft aside her veil, so that we seem to 
 look upon her countenance (but a smile often glimmers 
 through her earnest glance ; and this is that jestful teasing, 
 which sports with us in all manner of perplexing enchant- 
 ments, as mothers in nursing and dandling their dearest 
 children) — in this region, which the spirit so often, at least 
 in dreams, lays open to us, do thou make an effort, favora- 
 ble reader, again to recognize the well-known shapes which, 
 even in common life, are daily, in fitful brightness, hovering 
 round thee. Thou wilt then find that this glorious kingdom 
 
48 HOFFMANN. 
 
 lies much closer at hand than thou wert wont to suppose ; 
 which I now very heartily desire, and am striving to show 
 thee in the singular story of the Student Anselmus. 
 
 So, as was hinted, the Student Anselmus, ever since that 
 evening when he met with Archivarius Lindhorst, had been 
 sunk in a dreamy musing, which rendered him insensible to 
 every outward touch from common life. He felt how an 
 unknown Something was awakening his inmost soul, and 
 calling forth that rapturous pain which is even the mood of 
 Longing that announces a loftier existence to man. He 
 delighted most when he could rove alone through meads 
 and woods ; and, as if loosened from all that fettered him to 
 his necessitous life, could, so to speak, again find himself in 
 the manifold images which mounted from his soul. 
 
 It happened once, that, in returning from a long ramble, 
 he passed by that notable elder-tree ; under which, as if 
 taken with faery, he had formerly beheld so many marvels. 
 He felt himself strangely attracted by the green, kindly 
 sward ; but no sooner had he seated himself on it than the 
 whole vision which he had then seen as in a heavenly trance, 
 and which had since as if by foreign influence been driven 
 from his mind, again came floating before him in the liveli- 
 est colors, as if he had a second time been looking on it. 
 Nay, it was clearer to him now than ever, that the gentle 
 blue eyes belonged to the gold-green Snake, which had 
 wound itself through the middle of the elder-tree ; and that 
 from the turnings of its taper body all those glorious crystal 
 tones, which had filled him with rapture, must needs have 
 broken forth. As on Ascension-day, he now again clasped 
 the elder-tree to his bosom, and cried into the twigs and 
 leaves: "Ah, once more shoot forth, arid turn and wind 
 thyself among the twigs, thou little, fair, green Snake, that I 
 may see thee ! Once more look at me with thy gentle 
 eyes ! Ah, I love thee, and must die in pain and grief, if 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 49 
 
 thou return not ! " All, however, remained quite dumb and 
 still ; and, as before, the elder-tree rustled quite unintelli- 
 gibly with its twigs and leaves. But the Student Anselmus 
 now felt as if he knew what it was that so moved and work- 
 ed within him, nay, that so tore his bosom in the pain of an 
 infinite longing. " What else is it," said he, " but that I 
 love thee with my whole heart and soul, and even to the 
 death, thou glorious, golden, little Snake ; nay, that without 
 thee I cannot live, and must perish in hopeless woe, unless 
 I find thee again, unless I have thee as the beloved of my 
 heart ? But I know it, thou shalt be mine ; and then all 
 that glorious dreams have promised me of another higher 
 world shall be fulfilled." 
 
 Henceforth the Student Anselmus, every evening, when 
 the sun was scattering its bright gold over the peaks of the 
 trees, was to be seen under the elder-bush, calling from the 
 depths of his heart in most lamentable tones into the 
 branches and leaves, for a sight of his beloved, of his little 
 gold-green Snake. Once, as, according to custom, he was 
 going on with this, there stood before him suddenly a tall, 
 lean man, wrapped up in a wide, light-grey surtout, who, 
 looking at him with his large, fiery eyes, exclaimed : " Hey, 
 hey, what whining and whimpering is this ? Hey, hey, 
 this is Herr Anselmus that was to copy my manu- 
 scripts." The Student Anselmus felt not a little terrified at 
 this strong voice, for it was the very same which on Ascen- 
 sion day had called : " Hey, hey, what chattering and jing- 
 ling is this," and so forth. For fright and astonishment, he 
 could not utter a word. " What ails you then, Herr Ansel- 
 mus," continued Archivarius Lindhorst, " for the stranger was 
 no other ; " what do you want with the elder-tree, and why 
 did you not come to me, and set about your work ? " 
 
 In fact, the Student Anselmus had never yet prevailed 
 upon himself to visit Archivarius Lindhorst's house a second 
 
 VOL. II. 5 
 
50 HOFFMANN. 
 
 time, though that evening he had firmly resolved on doing 
 it. But now at this moment, when he saw his fair dreams 
 torn asunder, and that too by the same hostile voice which 
 had once before snatched away his beloved, a sort of des- 
 peration came over him, and he broke out fiercely into these 
 words : "You may think me mad or not, Herr Archivarius; 
 it is all one to me ; but here in this bush, on Ascension-day, 
 I saw the gold-green Snake — ah ! the forever beloved of 
 my soul ; and she spoke to me inglorious crystal tones; 
 and you, you, Herr Archivarius, cried and shouted so hor- 
 ribly over the water." 
 
 "How is this, sweet Sir?" interrupted Archivarius 
 Lindhorst, smiling quite inexpressibly, and taking snuff. 
 
 The Student Anselmus felt his breast getting great ease, 
 now that he had succeeded in beginning this strange story ; 
 and it seemed to him as if he were quite right in laying the 
 whole blame upon the Archivarius, and that it was he, and 
 no other, who had so thundered from the distance. He 
 courageously proceeded : " Well, then, I will tell you the 
 whole mystery that happened to me on Ascension-evening ; 
 and then you may say and do, and withal think of me, 
 whatever you please.'" He accordingly disclosed the whole 
 miraculous adventure, from his luckless oversetting of the 
 apple-basket, till the departure of the three gold-green 
 Snakes over the river ; and how the people after that had 
 thought him drunk or crazy. " All this," so ended the Stu- 
 dent Anselmus, " I actually saw with my eyes ; and deep 
 in my bosom are those dear voices which spoke to me, still 
 sounding in clear echo ; it was nowise a dream ; and if I 
 am not to die of longing and desire, I must believe in these 
 gold-green Snakes ; though I see by your smile, Herr 
 Archivarius, that you hold these same Snakes as nothing 
 more than creatures of my heated and overstrained imagi- 
 nation." 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 51 
 
 " Not at all," replied the Archivarius, in the greatest peace 
 and composure ; " the gold-green Snakes which you saw 
 in the elder-bush, Herr Anselmus, were simply my three 
 daughters ; and that you have fallen over head and ears in 
 love with the blue eyes of Serpentina the youngest is now 
 clear enough. Indeed, I knew it on Ascension-day myself; 
 and as I, on that occasion, sitting busied with my writing at 
 home, began to get annoyed with so much chattering and 
 jingling, I called to the idle minxes that it was time* to get 
 home, for the sun was setting, and they had sung and basked 
 enough." 
 
 The Student Anselmus felt as if he now merely heard in 
 plain words something he had long dreamed of; and though 
 he fancied he observed that elder-bush, wall, and sward, and 
 all objects about him were beginning slowly to whirl round, 
 he took heart, and was ready to speak ; but the Archivarius 
 prevented him ; for sharply pulling the glove from his left 
 hand, and holding the stone of a ring, glittering in strange 
 sparkles and flames before the Student's eyes, he said : 
 " Look here, Herr Anselmus ; what you see may do you 
 good." 
 
 The Student Anselmus looked in, and, O wonder! the 
 stone threw a beam of rays round it, as from a burning 
 focus ; and the rays wove themselves together into a clear, 
 gleaming, crystal mirror ; in which, with many windings, 
 now flying asunder, now twisted together, the three gold- 
 green Snakes were dancing and bounding. And when 
 their taper forms, glittering with a thousand sparkles, touched 
 each other, there issued from them glorious tones, as of 
 crystal bells ; and the midmost of the three stretched forth 
 her little head from the mirror, as if full of longing and 
 desire, and her dark-blue eyes said : " Knowest thou me, 
 then ; believest thou in me, Anselmus ? In Belief alone is 
 Love ; canst thou love ? " 
 
52 IIOFFMAiNN. 
 
 " O Serpentina ! Serpentina ! " cried the Student Ansel- 
 mus in mad rapture ; but Archivarius Lindhorst suddenly 
 breathed on the mirror, and with an electric sputter the rays 
 sank back into their focus ; and on his hand there was now 
 nothing but a little emerald, over which the Archivarius 
 drew his glove. 
 
 " Did you see the golden Snakes, Herr Anselmus ? " said 
 the Archivariys. 
 
 " ArT, good Heaven, yes ! " replied the Student, " and the 
 fair, dear Serpentina." 
 
 " Hush ! " continued Archivarius Lindhorst, " enough 
 at one time ; for the rest, if you resolve on working with 
 me, you may see my daughter often enough ; or rather I 
 will grant you this real satisfaction, if you slick tightly and 
 truly to your task, that is to say, copy every mark with the 
 greatest clearness and correctness. But you do not come 
 to me at all, Herr Anselmus, though Registrator Heerbrand 
 promised I should see you forthwith, and I have waited sev- 
 eral days in vain." 
 
 Not till the mention of Registrator Heerbrand's name, 
 did the Student Anselmus again feel as. if he were really 
 standing with his two legs on the ground, and he were really 
 the Student Anselmus, and the man talking to him really 
 Archivarius Lindhorst. The tone of indifference with 
 which the latter spoke, in such rude contrast with the strange 
 sights which, like a genuine necromancer, he had called 
 forth, awakened a certain horror in the Student, which the 
 piercing look of these fiery eyes, beaming from their bony 
 sockets in the lean, puckered visage, as from a leathern case, 
 still farther aggravated ; and the Student was again forcibly 
 seized with the same unearthly feeling which had before 
 gained possession of him in the coffee-house, when Archiva- 
 rius Lindhorst had talked so wildly. With a great effort he 
 retained his self-command, and as Archivarius again asked : 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 
 
 53 
 
 " Well, why have you not come to me ? " the Student ex- 
 erted his whole energies, and related to him all that had 
 happened at the street-door. 
 
 "Dear Herr Ansel mus," said the Archivarius, when the 
 narrative was finished : " dear Herr Anselmus, I know this 
 Apple-wife of whom you speak; she is a fatal slut of a 
 creature that plays all manner of freaks on me ; but that 
 she should have bronzed herself, and taken the shape of a 
 door-knocker, to deter pleasant visitors from calling, is in- 
 deed very bad, and truly not to be endured. Would you 
 please, however, worthy Herr Anselmus, if you come to- 
 morrow at noon, and notice aught more of this grinning and 
 growling, just to be so good as to drop me a driblet or two 
 of this liquor on her nose ; it will put all to rights immedi- 
 ately. And now, adieu, dear Herr Anselmus ! I go some- 
 what fast, therefore I would not advise you to think of return- 
 ing with me. Adieu, till we meet! — To-morrow at noon !" 
 
 The Archivarius had given Student Anselmus a little vial 
 with a gold-colored fluid in it; and he walked rapidly off; 
 so rapidly, that in the dusk, which had now come on, he 
 seemed rather to be floating down to the valley than step- 
 ping down to it. Already he was near the Kosel garden ; 
 the wind got within his wide great-coat, and drove the 
 breasts of it asunder ; so that they fluttered in the air like 
 a pair of large wings ; and to the Student Anselmus, who 
 was looking full of amazement at the course of the Archi- 
 varius, it seemed as if a large bird were spreading out 
 its pinions for rapid flight. And now, while the Student 
 kept gazing into the dusk, a white-grey kite with creaking 
 cry soared up into the air ; and he now saw clearly that the 
 white flutter which he had looked upon, as the retiring Ar- 
 chivarius, must have been this very kite, though he still could 
 not understand where the Archivarius had vanished so 
 abruptly. 
 
54 HOFFMANN. 
 
 u Perhaps he may have flown away in person, this Herr 
 Archivarius Lindhorst," said the Student Anselmus to him- 
 self; " for I now see and feel clearly that all these foreign 
 shapes of a distant wondrous world, which formerly I never 
 saw except in quite peculiarly remarkable dreams, have now 
 come forth into my waking life, and are making their sport 
 of me. But be this as it will ! Thou livest and glowest 
 in my breast, thou lovely, gentle Serpentina ; thou alone 
 canst still the infinite longing which now rends my soul 
 in pieces. Ah, when shall I see thy kind eyes, dear, dear 
 Serpentina ! " So cried the Student Anselmus quite aloud. 
 — "That is a vile, unchristian name!" murmured a bass 
 voice beside him, which belonged to some home-going 
 promenader. The Student Anselmus, reminded in right 
 season where he was, hastened off at a quick pace ; think- 
 ing to himself: "Were it not a proper misfortune now if 
 Conrector Paulmann or Registrator Heerbrand were to meet 
 me ? " — But neither of these gentlemen met him. 
 
 FIFTH VIGIL. 
 
 Die Frau Hofrathinn Anselmus. Cicero de Officiis. Meer- 
 cats, and other vermin. The Equinox. 
 
 " There is nothing in the world to be made of this An- 
 selmus," said Conrector Paulmann ; " all my good advices, 
 all my admonitions, are fruitless ; he will apply himself to 
 nothing ; though he is a fine classical scholar too, and that 
 is the foundation of all." 
 
 But Registrator Heerbrand, with a sly, mysterious smile, 
 replied : " Let Anselmus have his time, dear Conrector ! he 
 is a strange subject, this Anselmus, but there is much in 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 55 
 
 him ; and when I say much, I mean a Privy Secretary, or 
 even a Court-councillor, a Hofrath." 
 
 " Hof — " began Conrector Paulmann, in the deepest 
 amazement ; the word stuck in his throat. 
 
 "Hush! hush!" continued Registrator Heerbrand, "I 
 know what I know. These two days he has been with 
 Archivarius Lindhorst, copying manuscripts; and last night 
 the Archivarius meets me at the coffee-house, and says : 
 1 You have sent me a proper man, good neighbor! There 
 is stuff in him !' And now think of Archivarius Lindhorst's 
 influence — Hush ! hush ! we will talk of it this time twelve- 
 month." And with these words the Registrator, his face 
 still wrinkled into the same sly smile, went out of the room ; 
 leaving the Conrector speechless from astonishment and 
 curiosity, and fixed, as if by enchantment, in his chair. 
 
 But on Veronica this dialogue had made a still deeper 
 impression. " Did I not know all along," thought she, " that 
 Herr Anselmus was a most clever and pretty young man, 
 out of whom something great was to come ? Were I but 
 certain that he really liked me ! But that night when we 
 crossed the Elbe, did he not twice press my hand ? Did 
 he not look at me, in our duet, with such particular glances, 
 that pierced into my very heart? Yes, yes! he really likes 
 me ; and I — " Veronica gave herself up, as young maidens 
 are wont, to sweet dreams of a gay future. She was Mrs. 
 Hofrath, Frau Hofrathinn ; she occupied a fine house in 
 the Schlossgasse, or in the Neumarkt, or in the Moritz- 
 strasse ; the fashionable hat, the new Turkish shawl, became 
 her admirably ; she was breakfasting in the balcony in an 
 elegant negligee, giving orders to her cook for the day : 
 "And see, if you please, not to spoil that dish ; it is the Hof- 
 rath's favorite." Then passing beaux glanced up, and she 
 heard distinctly : " Well, it is a heavenly woman, that 
 Hofrathinn ; how prettily the lace cap sets her ! " Mrs. 
 
56 
 
 HOFFMANN. 
 
 Privy Councillor Ypsilon sends her servant to ask if it would 
 please the Frau Hofrathinn to drive as far as the Linke 
 Bath to-day ? " Many compliments ; extremely sorry I am 
 engaged to tea already with the Presidentinn Tz. Then 
 comes the Hofrath Anselmus back from his office; he is 
 dressed in the top of the mode : " Ten, I declare," cries he, 
 making his gold watch repeat, and giving his young lady 
 a kiss. " How goes it, little wife ? Guess what I have 
 here for thee ? " continues he, roguishly toying ; and draws 
 from his waistcoat-pocket a pair of beautiful earrings, fash- 
 ioned in the newest style, and puts them on in place of the 
 old ones. "Ah ! the pretty, dainty earrings ! " cried Veron- 
 ica aloud ; and started up from her chair, throwing aside 
 her work, to see these fair earrings with her own eyes in 
 the glass. 
 
 " What is this, then ? " said Conrector Paulmann, roused 
 by the noise from his deep study of Cicero de Officiis^ and 
 almost dropping the book from his hand; "are we taking 
 fits, like Anselmus ? " But at this moment, the Student 
 Anselmus, who, contrary to his custom, had not been seen 
 for several days, entered the room, to Veronica's astonish- 
 ment and terror ; for, in truth, he seemed altered in his 
 whole bearing. With a certain precision, which was far 
 from usual in him, he spoke of new tendencies of life which 
 had become clear to his mind, of glorious prospects which 
 were opening for him, but which many a one had not the 
 skill to discern. Conrector Paulmann, remembering Regis- 
 trator Heerbrand's mysterious speech, was still more struck, 
 and could scarcely utter a syllable, till the Student Ansel- 
 mus, after letting fall some hints of urgent business at 
 Archivarius Lindhorst's, and with elegant adroitness kissing 
 Veronica's hand, was already down stairs, off, and away. 
 
 "This was the Hofrath already," murmured Veronica 
 to herself; "and he kissed my hand, without sliding on the 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 
 
 57 
 
 floor, or treading on my foot, as he used ! He threw me 
 the softest look too ; yes, he really likes me ! " 
 
 Veronica again gave way to her dreaming ; yet now it 
 was as if a hostile shape were still coming forward among 
 these lovely visions of her future household life as Frau 
 Hofrathinn, and the shape were laughing in spiteful mock- 
 ery, and saying : " This is all very stupid and trashy stuff', 
 and lies to boot ; for Anselmus will never, never, be Hof- 
 rath, and thy husband ; he does not love thee in the least, 
 though thou hast blue eyes, and a fine figure, and a pretty 
 hand." Then an ice-stream poured over Veronica's soul ; 
 and a deep sorrow swept away the delight with which, a 
 little while ago, she had seen herself in the lace cap and 
 fashionable earrings. Tears almost rushed into her eyes, 
 and she said aloud : "Ah ! it is too true ; he does not love 
 me in the least ; and I shall never, never, be Frau Hofra- 
 thinn ! " 
 
 " Romance crotchets ! Romance crotchets ! " cried Con- 
 rector Paulmann ; then snatched his hat and stick, and 
 hastened indignantly from the house. " This was still want- 
 ing," sighed Veronica ; and felt vexed at her little sister, 
 a girl of twelve years, because she sat so unconcerned, and 
 kept sewing at her frame, as if nothing had happened* 
 
 Meanwhile it was almost three o'clock ; and now time 
 to trim the apartment, and arrange the coffee-table ; for the 
 Mademoiselles Oster had announced that they were corning. 
 But from behind every work-box which Veronica lifted aside, 
 behind the note-books which she laid away from the harp- 
 sichord, behind every cup, behind the coffee-pot which she 
 took from the cupboard, that shape peeped forth, like a little 
 mandrake, and laughed in spiteful mockery, and snapped 
 its little spider fingers, and cried : " He will not be thy 
 husband! he will not be thy husband!" And then, when 
 she threw all away, and fled to the middle of the room, 
 
58 HOFFMANN. 
 
 it peered out again, with long nose, in gigantic bulk, from, 
 behind the stove, and snarled and growled : " He will not 
 be thy husband ! " 
 
 " Dost thou hear nothing, sister ? dost thou see noth- 
 ing ? " cried Veronica, shivering with affright, and not 
 daring to touch aught in the room. Franzchen rose, quite 
 grave and quiet, from her broidering-frame, and said : 
 " What ails thee to-day, sister ? Thou art throwing all 
 topsyturvy, and jingling and tingling. I must help thee, 
 I see." 
 
 But here the lively visitors came tripping in with brisk 
 laughter; and the same moment, Veronica perceived that it 
 was the stove-handle which she had taken for a shape ; and 
 the creaking of the ill-shut stove-door for those spiteful 
 words. Yet, thus violently seized with an inward horror, 
 she could not so directly recover her composure, that the 
 strange excitement, which even her paleness and agitated 
 looks betrayed, was not noticed by the Mademoiselles Oster. 
 As they at once cut short their merry narratives, and 
 pressed her to tell them what, in Heaven's name, had hap- 
 pened, Veronica was obliged to admit that certain strange 
 thoughts had come into her mind ; and suddenly, in open 
 day, a dread of spectres, which she did not use to feel, had 
 got the better of her. She described in such lively colors 
 how a little grey mannikin, peeping out of all the corners 
 of the room, had mocked and plagued her, that the Made- 
 moiselles Oster began to look round with timid glances, and 
 start all manner of unearthly notions. But Franzchen 
 entered at this moment with the steaming coffee-pot ; and 
 the whole three, taking thought again, laughed outright at 
 their folly. 
 
 Angelica, the elder of the Osters, was engaged to an 
 officer ; the young man had joined the army ; but his friends 
 had been so long without news of him, that there was too 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 59 
 
 little doubt of his being dead, or at least grievously wounded. 
 This had plunged Angelica into the deepest sorrow ; but to- 
 day she was merry, even to extravagance ; a state of things 
 which so much surprised Veronica, that she could not but 
 speak of it, and inquire the reason. "Dear girl," said 
 Angelica, M dost thou fancy that my Victor is not still in my 
 heart and my thoughts ? It is for him lam so gay — O 
 Heaven ! so happy, so blessed in my whole soul ! For my 
 Victor is well ; in a little while he comes, advanced to be 
 Rittmeister, and adorned with the honors which his bound- 
 less courage has won him. A deep, but by no means dan- 
 gerous wound, in the right arm, which he got too by a sword- 
 cut from a French hussar, prevents him from writing ; and 
 the rapid change of quarters, for he will not consent to 
 leave his regiment, still makes it impossible for him to send 
 me tidings. But to-night he receives a fixed order to with- 
 draw, till his wound be cured. To-morrow he sets out for 
 home ; and just as he is stepping into the coach, he learns 
 his promotion to be Rittmeister." 
 
 " But, dear Angelica," interrupted the other, " how know- 
 est thou all this already ? " 
 
 " Do not laugh at me, my friend," continued Angelica ; 
 " and surely thou wilt not laugh ; for might not the little 
 grey mannikin, to punish thee, peep forth from behind the 
 mirror there ? In a word, I cannot lay aside my belief in 
 certain mysterious things, since often enough in life they 
 have come before my eyes, I might say, into my very 
 hands. For example, I cannot reckon it so strange and 
 incredible as many others do, that there should be people 
 gifted with a certain faculty of prophecy, which, by sure 
 means known to themselves, they may put in action. In the 
 city, here, is an old woman, who possesses this gift to a high 
 degree. It is not, as with others of her tribe, by cards, or 
 melted lead, or grounds of coffee, that she divines to you ; 
 
60 HOFFMANN. 
 
 but after certain preparations, in which you yourself bear 
 a part, she takes a polished metallic mirror, and there 
 rises in it the strangest mixture of figures and forms, all 
 intermingled ; these she interprets, and so answers your 
 question. I was with her last night, and got those tidings 
 of my Victor, in which I have not doubted for a moment.'" 
 
 Angelica's narrative threw a spark into Veronica's soul, 
 which instantly kindled with the thought of consulting this 
 same old prophetess about Anselmus and her hopes. She 
 learned that the crone was called Frau Rauerin, and lived 
 in a remote street near the Seethor ; that she was not to be 
 seen except on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, from 
 seven o'clock in the evening, but then, indeed, through the 
 whole night till sunrise ; and that she liked best if her 
 customers came alone. It was Thursday even now, and 
 Veronica determined, under pretext of accompanying the 
 Osters home, to visit this old woman, and lay the case be- 
 fore her. 
 
 Accordingly, no sooner had her friends, who lived in 
 the Neustadt, parted from her at the Elbe-bridge, than she 
 hastened with winged steps towards the Seethor ; and ere 
 long she had reached the remote narrow street described 
 to her, and at the end of it perceived the little red house in 
 which Frau Rauerin was said to live. She could not rid 
 herself of a certain dread, nay of a certain horror, as she 
 approached the door. At last she summoned resolution, in 
 spite of inward terror, and made bold to pull the bell ; 
 the door opened, and she groped through the dark passage 
 for the stair which led to the upper story, as Angelica had 
 directed. " Does Frau Rauerin live here ? " cried she, 
 into the empty lobby, as no one appeared ; and instead of 
 answer, there rose a long clear " Mew !" and a large black 
 Cat, with its back curved up, and whisking its tail to and 
 fro in wavy coils, stept on before her, with much gravity 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 61 
 
 to the door of the apartment, which, on a second mew, was 
 opened. 
 
 " Ah, see ! Art thou here already, daughter? Come in, 
 love ; come in ! " exclaimed the advancing figure, the as- 
 pect of which was rooting Veronica to the floor. A long, 
 lean woman, wrapped in black rags ; while she spoke, her 
 peaked, projecting chin wagged this way and that ; her 
 toothless mouth, overshadowed by the bony hawk-nose, 
 twisted itself into a ghastly smile, and gleaming cat's-eyes 
 flickered in sparkles through the large spectacles. From a 
 party-colored clout wrapped round her head, black, wiry 
 hair was sticking out; but what deformed her haggard 
 visage to absolute horror was two large burnmarks which 
 ran from the left cheek over the nose. Veronica's breath- 
 ing stopped ; and the scream, which was about to lighten 
 her choked breast, became a deep sigh, as the witch's 
 skeleton hand took hold of her, and led her into the cham- 
 ber. Here all was awake and astir; nothing but din and 
 tumult, and squeaking, and mewing, and croaking, and 
 piping all at once, on every hand. The crone struck the 
 table with her fist, and screamed : " Peace, ye vermin ! " 
 And the meer-cats, whimpering, clambered to the top of 
 the high bed ; and the little meer-swine all ran beneath the 
 stove, and the raven fluttered up to the round mirror ; and 
 the black Cat, as if the rebuke did not apply to him, kept 
 sitting at his ease on the cushion-chair, to which he had leapt 
 directly after entering. 
 
 So soon as quiet was obtained, Veronica took heart ; she 
 felt less dreary and frightened than without in the lobby ; 
 nay, the crone herself seemed not so hideous. For the first 
 time, she now looked round the room. All manner of 
 odious stuffed beasts hung down from the ceiling; strange, 
 unknown household implements were lying in confusion on 
 the floor; and in the grate was a blue, scanty fire, which 
 
 VOL. II. 6 
 
62 
 
 HOFFMANN. 
 
 only now and then sputtered up in yellow sparkles ; and at 
 every sputter there came a rustling from above, and mon- 
 strous bats, as if with human countenances, in distorted 
 laughter, went flitting to and fro; at times, too, the flame 
 shot up, licking the sooty wall, and then there sounded 
 cutting, howling tones of woe, which shook Veronica with 
 fear and horror. " With your leave, Mamsell ! " said the 
 crone, knitting her brows, and seizing a brush ; with which, 
 having dipt it in a copper skillet, she then besprinkled the 
 grate. The fire went out ; and, as if filled with thick smoke, 
 the room grew pitch-dark ; but the crone, who had gone 
 aside into a closet, soon returned with a lighted lamp ; and 
 now Veronica could see no beasts or implements in the 
 apartment ; it was a common, meanly furnished room. The 
 crone came up to her, and said with a creaking voice : " I 
 know what thou wantest here, little daughter; tush, thou 
 wouldst have me tell thee whether thou shalt wed Anselmus, 
 when he is Hofrath." 
 
 Veronica stiffened with amazement and terror ; but the 
 crone continued : " Thou hast told me the whole of it at home, 
 at thy papa's, when the coffee-pot was standing before thee ; 
 I was the coffee-pot; didst thou not know me ? Daughterkin, 
 hear me ! Give up, give up this Anselmus ; 't is a nasty crea- 
 ture ; he trod my little sons, my dear little sons, the Apples 
 with the red cheeks, that glide away, when people have bought 
 them, whisk! out of their pockets again, and roll back into 
 my basket. He trades with the Old One ; 't was but the 
 day before yesterday he poured that cursed Auripigment 
 on my face, and I had nigh gone blind with it. Thou 
 mayest see the burnmarks yet. Daughterkin, give him up, 
 give him up ! He loves thee not, for he loves the gold- 
 green Snake ; he will never be Hofrath, for he has joined 
 the Salamanders, and he means to wed the green Snake ; 
 give him up, give him up ! " 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 63 
 
 Veronica, who had a firm, steadfast spirit of her own, 
 and could soon conquer girlish terror, now drew back a step, 
 and said, with a serious, resolute tone : " Old dame I 
 I heard of your gift of looking into futurity ; and wished, 
 perhaps too curiously and thoughtlessly, to learn from you 
 whether Anselmus, whom I love and value, could ever be 
 mine. But if, instead of fulfilling my desire, you keep vexing 
 me with your foolish, unreasonable babble, you are doing 
 wrong ; for I have asked of you nothing but what, as I well 
 know, you grant to others. Since, as it would seem, you 
 are acquainted with my inmost thoughts, it might perhaps 
 have been an easy matter for you to unfold to me much 
 that now pains and grieves my mind ; but after your silly 
 slander of the good Anselmus, I care not for talking farther 
 with you. Good night ! " 
 
 Veronica was hastening away ; but the crone, with tears 
 and lamentation, fell upon her knees; and holding the 
 young lady by the gown, exclaimed : " Veronica ! Veron- 
 ica ! hast thou forgot old Liese, then ? Her who has so 
 often carried thee in her arms, and nursed and dandled 
 thee?" 
 
 Veronica could scarcely believe her eyes ; for here, in 
 truth, was her old nurse, defaced only by greater age, and 
 chiefly by the two burns ; old Liese in person, who had 
 vanished from Conrector Paulmann's house, some years ago, 
 no one knew whither. The crone, too, had quite another 
 look now; instead of the ugly, many-pieced clout, she had 
 on a decent cap ; instead of the black rags, a gay printed 
 bedgown ; she was neatly dressed, as of old. She rose 
 from the floor; and taking Veronica in her arms, proceeded : 
 u What I have just told thee may seem very mad ; but, 
 unluckily, it is too true. Anselmus has done much mischief, 
 though against his will ; he has fallen into Archivarius Lind- 
 horst's hands, and the Old One means to marry him with 
 
64 
 
 HOFFMANN. 
 
 his daughter. Archivarius Lindhorst is my deadliest enemy ; 
 I could tell thee thousands of things about him ; which, 
 however, thou wouldst not understand, or,, at best, be too 
 much frightened at. He is the Wise Man, it seems; but I 
 am the Wise Woman ; let this stand for that ! I see now 
 thou lovest this Anselmus heartily ; and I will help thee 
 with all my strength, that so thou mayest be happy, and wed 
 him like a pretty bride, as thou wishest." 
 
 " But tell me, for Heaven's sake, Liese " interrupted 
 
 Veronica. 
 
 " Hush ! child, hush!" cried the old woman, interrupt- 
 ing in her turn; U I know what thou wouldst say ; I have 
 become what I am, because it was to be so ; I could do no 
 other. Well, then ! I know the means which will cure 
 Anselmus of his frantic love for the green Snake, and lead 
 him, the prettiest Hofrath, into thy arms ; but thou thyself 
 must help." 
 
 " Speak it out, Liese ; I will do aught and all, for I love 
 Anselmus much ! " whispered Veronica, scarce audibly. 
 
 " I know thee," continued the crone, " for a courageous 
 child ; I could never frighten thee to sleep with the Wau- 
 wau ; for that instant, thy eyes were open to what the Wau- 
 wau was like. Thou wouldst go without a light into the 
 darkest room ; and many a time, with papa's powder-mantle, 
 hast thou terrified the neighbors' children. Well, then, if 
 thou art in earnest about conquering Archivarius Lindhorst 
 and the green Snake by my art ; if thou art in earnest 
 about calling Anselmus by the name of Hofrath and thy 
 husband ; then, at the next Equinox, about eleven at night, 
 glide from thy father's house, and come hither ; I will go 
 with thee to the crossing of the roads, which cut the fields 
 hard by here; we shall provide the needful; and whatever 
 wonders thou mayest see shall do thee no whit of harm. 
 And now, love, good night; Papa is waiting for thee to 
 supper." 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 
 
 65 
 
 Veronica hastened away ; she had the firmest purpose not 
 to neglect the night of the Equinox; "for," thought she, 
 " old Liese is right ; Anselmus has got entangled in strange 
 fetters ; but I will free him from them, and call him mine 
 forever and aye ; mine he is, and shall be, the Hofrath An- 
 selmus." 
 
 SIXTH VIGIL. 
 
 Archivarius LindhorsPs Garden, with some Mock-birds. 
 The Golden Pot. English current-hand. Pot-hooks. 
 The Prince of the Spirits. 
 
 " It may be, after all," said the Student Anselmus to 
 himself, " that the superfine, strong, stomachic liqueur, which 
 I took somewhat freely in Monsieur Conradi's, might really 
 be the cause of all these shocking fantasms, which so tor- 
 tured me at Archivarius Lindhorst's door. Therefore I 
 will go quite sober to-day ; and so bid defiance to whatever 
 farther mischief may assail me." On this occasion, as be- 
 fore when equipping himself for his first call on Archiva- 
 rius Lindhorst, the Student Anselmus put his pen-drawings, 
 and calligraphic masterpieces, his bars of Indian ink, and 
 his well-pointed crow-pens, into his pockets ; and was just 
 turning to go out, when his eye lighted on the vial with the 
 yellow liquor, which he had received from Archivarius Lind- 
 horst. All the strange adventures he had met with ao-ain 
 rose on his mind in glowing colors ; and a nameless emotion 
 of rapture and pain thrilled through his breast. Involun- 
 tarily he exclaimed, with a most piteous voice: " Ah, am 
 not I going to the Archivarius solely for a sight of thee, 
 thou gentle, lovely Serpentina ! " At that moment he felt 
 as if Serpentina's love might be the prize of some laborious, 
 6* 
 
66 HOFFMANN. 
 
 perilous task which he had to undertake ; and as if this task 
 were no other than the copying of the Lindhorst manu- 
 scripts. That at his very entrance into the house, or, more 
 properly, before his entrance, all manner of mysterious 
 things might happen, as of late, was no more than he antici- 
 pated. He thought no more of Conradi's strong water; 
 but hastily put the vial of liquor in his waistcoat-pocket, that 
 he might act strictly by the Archivarius's directions, should 
 the bronzed Apple-woman again take it upon her to make 
 faces at him. 
 
 And did not the hawk-nose actually peak itself, did not the 
 cat-eyes actually glare from the knocker, as he raised his 
 hand to it, at the stroke of twelve ? But now, without 
 farther ceremony, he dribbled his liquor into the pestilent 
 visage ; and it folded and moulded itself, that instant, down 
 to a glittering bowl-round knocker. The door went up ; 
 the bells sounded beautifully over all the house : " Kling- 
 ling, youngling, in, in, spring, spring, klingling." In good 
 heart he mounted the fine broad stair ; and feasted on the 
 odors of some strange perfumery, that was floating through 
 the house. In doubt he paused on the lobby ; for he knew 
 not at which of these many fine doors he was to knock. 
 But Archivarius Lindhorst, in a white damask night-gown, 
 stept forth to him, and said : " Well, it is a real pleasure to 
 me, Herr Anselmus, that you have kept your word at last. 
 Come this way, if you please ; I must take you straight 
 into the Laboratory." And with this he stept rapidly 
 through the lobby, and opened a little side-door, which led 
 into a long passage. Anselmus walked on in high spirits 
 behind the Archivarius ; they passed from this corridor into 
 a hall, or rather into a lordly green-house ; for on both sides 
 up to the ceiling stood all manner of rare, wondrous flowers, 
 nay, great trees with strangely formed leaves and blossoms. 
 A magic, dazzling light shone over the whole, though you 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 67 
 
 could not discover whence it came, for no window whatever 
 was to be seen. As the Student Anselrnus looked in 
 through the bushes and trees, long avenues appeared to open 
 in remote distance. In the deep shade of thick cypress 
 groves lay glittering marble fountains, out of which rose 
 wondrous figures, spouting crystal jets, that fell with patter- 
 ing spray into the gleaming lily-cups ; strange voices cooed 
 and rustled through the wood of curious trees ; and sweetest 
 perfumes streamed up and down. 
 
 The Archivarius had vanished; and Anselrnus saw noth- 
 ing but a huge bush of glowing fire-lilies before him. Intox- 
 icated with the sight and the fine odors of this fairy-garden, 
 Anselrnus stood fixed to the spot. Then began on all sides 
 of him a giggling and laughing ; and light little voices railed 
 and mocked him : " Herr Studiosus ! Herr Studiosus ! 
 how came you hither ? Why have you dressed so bravely, 
 Herr Anselrnus ? Will you chat with us for a minute, how 
 grandmammy sat squelching down upon the egg, and young 
 master got a stain on his Sunday waistcoat ? — Can you play 
 the new tune, now, which you learned from Daddy Cocka- 
 doodle, Herr Anselrnus? — You look very fine in your glass 
 periwig, and post-paper boots." So cried and chattered 
 and sniggered the little voices, out of every corner, nay, 
 close by the Student himself, who now observed that alt 
 sorts of party-colored birds were fluttering above him, and 
 jeering him in hearty laughter. At that moment the bush 
 of fire-lilies advanced towards him ; and he perceived that 
 it was Archivarius Lindhorst, whose flowered night-gown, 
 glittering in red and yellow, had so far deceived his eyes. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, worthy Herr Anselrnus," said the 
 Archivarius, " for leaving you alone ; I wished, in passing, 
 to take a peep at my fine cactus, which is to blossom to- 
 night. But how like you my little house-garden ? " 
 
 "Ah, Heaven! Immeasurably pretty it is, most valued 
 
68 HOFFMANN. 
 
 Herr Archivarius," replied the Student; "but these party- 
 colored birds have been bantering me a little." 
 
 u What chattering is this? " cried the Archivarius angrily 
 into the bushes. Then a huge grey Parrot came fluttering 
 out, and perched itself beside the Archivarius on a myrtle- 
 bough ; and looking at him with an uncommon earnestness 
 and gravity through a pair of spectacles that stuck on its 
 hooked bill, it creaked out : "Don't take it amiss, Horr Ar- 
 chivarius ; my wild boys have been a little free or so ; but 
 the Herr Studiosus has himself to blame in the matter, 
 for — " 
 
 "Hush! hush !" interrupted Archivarius Lindhorst ; "I 
 know the varlets ; but thou must keep them in better disci- 
 pline, my friend ! — Now, come along, Herr Anselmus." 
 
 And the Archivarius again slept forth, through many a 
 strangely decorated chamber; so that the Student Anselmus, 
 in following him, could scarcely give a glance at all the 
 glittering, wondrous furniture, and other unknown things, 
 with which the whole of them were filled. At last they 
 entered a large apartment ; where the Archivarius, casting 
 his eyes aloft, stood still; and Anselmus got time to feast 
 himself on the glorious sight, which the simple decoration 
 of this hall afforded. Jutting from the azure-colored walls, 
 rose gold-bronze trunks of high palm-trees, which wove 
 their colossal leaves, glittering like bright emeralds, into a 
 ceiling far up; in the middle of the chamber, and resting 
 on three Egyptian lions, cast out of dark bronze, lay a 
 porphyry plate; and on this stood a simple Golden Pot, 
 from which, so soon as he beheld it, Anselmus could not 
 turn away an eye. It was as if in a thousand gleaming 
 reflexes all sorts of shapes were sporting on the bright 
 polished gold ; often he perceived his own form, with arms 
 stretched out in longing — ah! beneath the elder-bush, — 
 and Serpentina was winding and shooting up and down, and 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 
 
 69 
 
 again looking at him with her kind eyes. Anselmus was 
 beside himself with frantic rapture. 
 
 "Serpentina! Serpentina !" cried he aloud; and Archi- 
 varius Lindhorst whirled round abruptly, and said : " How 
 now, worthy Herr Anselmus? If I mistake not, you were 
 pleased to call for my daughter; she is quite in the other 
 side of the house at present, and indeed just taking her 
 lesson on the harpsichord. Let us go along." 
 
 Anselmus, scarcely knowing what he did, followed his 
 conductor ; he saw or heard nothing more, till Archivarius 
 Lindhorst suddenly grasped his hand, and said : " Here is 
 the place!" Anselmus awoke as from a dream, and now 
 perceived that he was in a high room all lined on every 
 side with book-shelves, and nowise differing from a common 
 library and study. In the middle stood a large writing- 
 table, with a stuffed arm-chair before it. " This," said Ar- 
 chivarius Lindhorst, " is your work-room for the present ; 
 whether you may work, some other time, in the blue library, 
 where you so suddenly called out my daughter's name, I 
 yet know not. But now I could wish to convince myself 
 of your ability to execute this task appointed you, in the 
 way I wish it and need it." The Student here gathered full 
 courage; and, not without internal self-complacence in the 
 certainty of highly gratifying Archivarius Lindhorst, pulled 
 out his drawings and specimens of penmanship from his 
 pocket. But no sooner had the Archivarius cast his eye on 
 the first leaf, a piece of writing in the finest English style, 
 than he smiled very oddly, and shook his head. These 
 motions he repeated at every following leaf, so that the 
 Student Anselmus felt the blood mounting to his face ; and 
 at last, when the smile became quite sarcastic and con- 
 temptuous, he broke out in downright vexation : " The Herr 
 Archivarius does not seem contented with my poor talents." 
 44 Dear Herr Anselmus," said Archivarius Lindhorst, 
 
70 HOFFMANN. 
 
 "you have indeed fine capacities for the art of calligraphy; 
 but, in the mean while, it is clear enough, I must reckon 
 more on your diligence and good-will than on you attain- 
 ments in the business." 
 
 The Student Anselmus spoke largely of his often-ac- 
 knowledged perfection in this art, of his fine Chinese ink, and 
 most select crow-quills. But Archivarius Lindhorst handed 
 him the English sheet, and said: " Be judge yourself!" 
 Anselmus felt as if struck by a thunderbolt, to see his hand- 
 writing look so ; it was miserable, beyond measure. There 
 was no rounding in the turns, no hair-stroke where it 
 should be, no proportion between the capital and single 
 letters; nay, villanous, school-boy pot-hooks often spoiled 
 the best lines. "And then, 1 ' continued Archivarius Lind- 
 horst, " your ink will not stand." He dipt his finger in a 
 glass of water, and as he just skimmed it over the lines, they 
 vanished without vestige. The Student Anselmus felt as if 
 some monster were throttling him ; he could not utter a 
 word. There stood he, with the unlucky sheet in his hand ; 
 but Archivarius Lindhorst laughed aloud, and said : " Never 
 mind it, dearest Herr Anselmus ; what you could not per- 
 fect before will perhaps do better here. At any rate, you 
 shall have better materials than you have been accustomed 
 to. Begin, in Heaven's name ! " 
 
 From a locked press Archivarius Lindhorst now brought 
 out a black fluid substance, which diffused a most peculiar 
 odor; also pens, sharply pointed and of strange color, to- 
 gether with a sheet of especial whiteness and smoothness ; 
 then at last an Arabic manuscript; and as Anselmus sat 
 down to work, the Archivarius left the room. The Student 
 Anselmus had often copied Arabic manuscripts already ; the 
 first problem, therefore, seemed to him not so very difficult 
 to solve. " How these pot-hooks came into my fine Eng- 
 lish current-hand, Heaven, and Archivarius Lindhorst, 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 71 
 
 know best," said he ; " but that they are not from my hand 
 I will testify to the death !" At every new word that stood 
 fair and perfect on the parchment, his courage increased, 
 and with it his adroitness. In truth, these pens wrote 
 exquisitely well ; and the mysterious ink flowed pliantly, 
 and black as jet, on the bright white parchment. And as he 
 worked along so diligently, and with such strained attention, 
 he began to feel more and more at home in the solitary 
 room ; and already he had quite fitted himself into his task, 
 which he now hoped to finish well, when at the stroke of 
 three the Archivarius called him into the side-room to a 
 savory dinner. At table, Archivarius Lindhorst was in 
 special gayety of heart; he inquired about the Student An- 
 selmus's friends, Conrector Paulmann, and Registrator Heer- 
 brand, and of the latter especially he had store of merry 
 anecdotes to tell. The good old Rhenish was particularly 
 grateful to the Student Anselmus, and made him more talk- 
 ative than he was wont to be. At the stroke of four he 
 rose to resume his labor ; and this punctuality appeared to 
 please the Archivarius. 
 
 If the copying of these Arabic manuscripts had prospered 
 in his hands before dinner, the task now went forward 
 much better; nay, he could not himself comprehend the 
 rapidity and ease with which he succeeded in transcribing 
 the twisted strokes of this foreign character. But it was as 
 if, in his inmost soul, a voice were whispering in audible 
 words: "Ah! couldst thou accomplish it, wert thou not 
 thinking of Aer, didst thou not believe in her and in her 
 love ? " Then there floated whispers, as in low, low, wav- 
 ing, crystal tones, through the room: "I am near, near, 
 near! I help thee; be bold, be steadfast, dear Anselmus ! 
 I toil with thee, that thou mayest be mine! " And as, in 
 the fulness of secret rapture, lie caught these sounds, the 
 unknown characters grew clearer and clearer to him ; he 
 
72 HOFFMANN. 
 
 scarcely required to look on the original at all ; nay, it was 
 as if the letters were already standing in pale ink on the 
 parchment, and he had nothing more to do but mark them 
 black. So did he labor on, encompassed with dear, inspiring 
 tones, as with soft, sweet breath, till the clock struck six, 
 and Archivarius Lindhorst entered the apartment. He 
 came forward to the table with a singular smile ; Anselmus 
 rose in silence ; the Archivarius still looked at him, with 
 that mocking smile ; but no sooner had he glanced over the 
 copy than the smile passed into deep, solemn earnestness, 
 which every feature of his face adapted itself to express. 
 He seemed no longer the same. His eyes, which usually 
 gleamed with sparkling fire, now looked with unutterable 
 mildness at Anselmus ; a soft red tinted the pale cheeks ; 
 and instead of the irony which at other times compressed 
 the mouth, the softly-curved, graceful lips now seemed to 
 be opening for wise and soul-persuading speech. The whole 
 form was higher, statelier ; the wide night-gown spread 
 itself like a royal mantle in broad folds over his breast and 
 shoulders ; and through the white locks, which lay on his 
 high, open brow, there winded a thin band of gold. 
 
 "Young man," began the Archivarius in solemn tone, 
 u before thou thoughtest of it, I knew thee, and all the secret 
 relations which bind thee to the dearest and holiest of my 
 interests! Serpentina loves thee; a singular destiny, whose 
 fateful threads were spun by enemies, is fulfilled, should she 
 be thine, and thou obtain, as an essential dowry, the Golden 
 Pot, which of right belongs to her. But only from effort 
 and contest can thy happiness in the higher life arise ; hos- 
 tile Principles assail thee ; and only the interior force with 
 which thou shalt withstand these contradictions can save 
 thee from disgrace and ruin. Whilst laboring here, thou 
 art passing the season of instruction. Belief and full know- 
 ledge will lead thee to the near goal, if thou but hold fast 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 73 
 
 what thou hast well begun. Bear her always and truly in 
 thy thoughts, her who loves thee ; then shalt thou see the 
 marvels of the Golden Pot, and be happy forever more. 
 Fare thee well ! Archivarius Lindhorst expects thee to-mor- 
 row at noon in thy cabinet. Fare thee well ! " With these 
 words Archivarius Lindhorst softly pushed the Student An- 
 selmus out of the door, which he then locked ; and An- 
 selmus found himself in the chamber where he had dined, 
 the single door of which led out to the lobby. 
 
 Altogether stupefied with these strange phenomena, the 
 Student Anselmus stood lingering at the street-door; he 
 heard a window open above him, and looked up ; it was 
 Archivarius Lindhorst, quite the old man again, in his light- 
 grey gown, as he usually appeared. The Archivarius 
 called to him: "Hey, worthy Herr Anselmus, what are 
 you studying over there ? Tush, the Arabic is still in your 
 head. My compliments to Herr Conrector Paulmann, if 
 you see him ; and come to-morrow precisely at noon. The 
 fee for this day is lying in your right waistcoat-pocket." 
 The Student Anselmus actually found the clear speziestha- 
 ler in the pocket indicated ; but he took no joy in it. " What 
 is to come of all this," said he to himself, " I know not; but 
 if it be some mad delusion and conjuring work that has laid 
 hold of me, the dear Serpentina still lives and moves in my 
 inward heart; and before I leave her, I will die altogether ; 
 for I know that the thought in me is eternal, and no hostile 
 Principle can take it from me ; and what else is this thought 
 but Serpentina's love. 
 
 VOL. II 
 
74 HOFFMANN. 
 
 SEVENTH VIGIL. 
 
 How Conrector Paulmann knocked the Ashes out. of his 
 Pipe, and went to Bed. Rembrandt and Ho lienor eughel. 
 The Magic Mirror; and Dr. Eckstein's Prescription 
 for an unknown Disease. 
 
 At last Conrector Paulmann knocked the ashes out of his 
 pipe, and said : " Now, then, it is time to go to bed." — 
 " Yes, indeed," replied Veronica, frightened at her father's 
 sitting so late ; for ten had struck long ago. No sooner, 
 accordingly, had the Conrector withdrawn to his study and 
 bed-room, and Franzchen's heavy breathing signified that 
 she was asleep, than Veronica, who, to save appearances, 
 had also gone to bed, rose softly, softly, out of it again ; 
 put on her clothes, threw her mantle round her, and glided 
 out of doors. 
 
 Ever since the moment when Veronica had left old Liese, 
 Anselmus had continually stood before her eyes; and it 
 seemed as if a foreign voice, unknown to herself, were ever 
 and anon repeating in her soul that his reluctance sprang 
 from a hostile person holding him in bonds, which, by secret 
 means of magical art, Veronica might break. Her confi- 
 dence in old Liese grew stronger every day ; and even the 
 impression of unearthliness and horror by degrees softened 
 down, so that all the mystery and strangeness of her relation 
 to the crone appeared before her only in the color of some* 
 thing singular, romantic, and so not a little attractive. Ac- 
 cordingly, she had a firm purpose, even at the risk of being 
 missed from home, and encountering a thousand incon- 
 veniences, to front the adventure of the Equinox. And 
 now, at last, the fateful night, in which old Liese had 
 
THE GOLDEN PCT. (O 
 
 promised to afford comfort and help, was come ; and Vero- 
 nica, long used to thoughts of nightly wandering, was full 
 of heart and hope. With winged speed, she flew through 
 the solitary streets; heedless of the storm which was howl- 
 ing in the air, and dashing thick rain-drops in her face. 
 
 With stifled, droning clang, the Kreuzthurm clock struck 
 eleven, as Veronica, quite wetted, reached old Liese's 
 house. " Art come, dear ! wait, love ; wait, love — " cried 
 a voice from above ; and instantly the crone, laden with a 
 basket, and attended by her Cat, was also standing at the 
 door. " We will go, then, and do what is proper, and can 
 prosper in the night, which favors the work." So speaking, 
 the crone with her cold hand seized the shivering Veronica, 
 to whom she gave the heavy basket to carry, while she 
 herself produced a little cauldron, a trevet, and a spade. 
 On their reaching the open fields, the rain had ceased, but 
 the storm had become louder ; howlings in a thousand tones 
 were flitting through the air. A horrible, heart-piercing 
 lamentation sounded down from the black clouds, which 
 rolled themselves together, in rapid flight, and veiled all 
 things in thickest darkness. But the crone stept briskly 
 forward, crying in a shrill, harsh voice: " Light, light, my 
 lad ! " Then blue, forky gleams went quivering and sputter- 
 ing before them ; and Veronica perceived that it was the 
 Cat emitting sparks, and bounding forward to light the way ; 
 while his doleful, ghastly screams were heard in the momen- 
 tary pauses of the storm. Her heart was like to fail ; it 
 was as if ice-cold talons were clutching into her soul ; but, 
 with a strong effort, she collected herself; pressed closer to 
 the crone, and said : " It must all be accomplished now, 
 come of it what may ! " 
 
 " Right, right, little daughter ! " replied the crone ; u be 
 steady, like a good girl ; thou shalt have something pretty, 
 and Anselmus to boot." 
 
76 HOFFMANN. 
 
 At last the crone paused, and said : M Here is the place ! " 
 She dug a hole in the ground, then shook coals into it, put 
 the trevet over them, and placed the cauldron on the top of 
 it. All this she accomplished with strange gestures, while 
 the Cat kept circling round her. From his tail there sput- 
 tered sparkles, which united into a ring of lire. The coals 
 began to burn ; and at last blue flames rose up round the 
 cauldron. Veronica was ordered to lay off her mantle and 
 veil, and to cower down beside the crone, who seized her 
 hands, and pressed them hard, glaring with her fiery eyes 
 at the maiden. Ere long the strange materials (whether 
 flowers, metals, herbs, or beasts, you could not determine), 
 which the crone had taken from her basket, and thrown 
 into the cauldron, began to seethe and foam. The crone 
 quitted Veronica; then clutched an iron ladle, and plunged 
 it into the glowing mass, which she began to stir; while 
 Veronica, as she directed, was to look steadfastly into the 
 cauldron, and fix her thoughts on Anselmus. But now the 
 crone threw fresh ingredients, glittering pieces of metal, a 
 lock of hair which Veronica had cut from her head, and a 
 little ring which she had long worn, into the pot ; while she 
 howled in dread yelling tones through the gloom, and the 
 Cat, in quick, incessant motion, whimpered and whined. 
 
 I could wish much that thou, favorable reader, hadst on 
 this twenty-third of September been thyself travelling to- 
 wards Dresden. In vain, when late night sank down, did 
 the people try to retain thee at the last stage ; the friendly 
 host represented to thee that the storm and the rain were 
 too bitter; and, moreover, that it was not safe, for unearthly 
 reasons, to rush away in the dark, in the night of the 
 Equinox ; but thou regardedst him not, thinking within 
 thyself: "I will give the postilion a whole thaler of drink- 
 money, and so, at latest, by one o'clock reach Dresden ; 
 where, in the Golden Angel, or in the Helmet, crinthe 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 77 
 
 City of Naumburg, a well-readied supper and a soft bed 
 await me." And now, as thou art driving hither through 
 the dark, thou suddenly observest in the distance a most 
 strange flickering light. Coming nearer, thou perceivest a 
 ring of fire ; and in the midst of it, beside a pot, out of 
 which thick vapor is mounting with quivering red flashes and 
 sparkles, sit two most diverse forms. Right through the 
 fire goes thy road ; but the horses snort, and stamp, and 
 rear ; the postilion curses and prays, and scourges his cattle 
 withal ; they stir not from the spot. Involuntarily thou 
 leapest out of thy carriage, and hurriest a few steps for- 
 ward. And now thou clearly beholdest the dainty, gentle 
 maiden, who, in her white, thin night-dress, is kneeling by 
 the cauldron. The storm has loosened her braids, and the 
 long chesnut-brown hair is floating free in the wind. Full 
 in the dazzling fire of the flame flickering up under the 
 trevet, stands the angelic face ; but in the horror which has 
 overflowed it with an ice-stream, it is stiffened to the pale- 
 ness of death ; and by the updrawn eye-brows, by the mouth 
 in vain opened for the shriek of anguish, which cannot find 
 its way from the bosom compressed with nameless torture, 
 thou perceivest her affright, her horror ; her soft, small 
 hands she holds aloft spasmodically pressed together, as if 
 she were calling with prayers her guardian angel, to deliver 
 her from the monsters of the Pit, which in obedience to this 
 potent spell are forthwith to appear ! There kneels she, 
 motionless as a figure of marble. Over against her sits 
 cowering on the ground, a long, shrivelled, copper-yellow 
 crone, with peaked hawk-nose, and glistering cat-eyes ; from 
 the black cloak, which is huddled round her, stick forth her 
 naked skinny arms ; stirring the Hell-broth, she laughs and 
 cries with creaking voice, through the raging, bellowing 
 storm. I can well believe that in thee too, favorable reader, 
 though otherwise unacquainted with fear and dread, there 
 
78 
 
 HOFFMANN. 
 
 might have arisen, at the aspect of this Rembrandt or H61I- 
 enbreughel picture, here standing forth alive, some unearthly 
 feelings; nay, that for very horror the hairs of thy head 
 might have risen on end. But thy eye could not turn away 
 from the gentle maiden, entangled in these infernal doings ; 
 and the electric stroke, that quivered through all thy nerves 
 and fibres, kindled in thee with the speed of lightning the 
 courageous thought of defying the mysterious powers of the 
 fire-circle; and in this thought, thy horror disappeared; 
 nay, the thought itself sprang up from that very horror as 
 its product. Thy heart felt as if thou thyself wert one of 
 those guardian angels, to whom the maiden, terrified to 
 death, was praying ; nay, as if thou must instantly lug forth 
 thy pocket-pistol, and without more ceremony blow the hag's 
 brains out. But while thou wert thinking all this most vivid- 
 ly, thou criedst aloud "Holla!" or "What's the matter 
 here ? " or " What 's a-doing there ? " The postilion blew a 
 clanging blast on his horn ; the witch ladled about in her 
 b re wage, and in a trice the whole had vanished in thick 
 smoke. Whether thou wouldst then have found the maiden, 
 whom with most heartfelt longing thou wert groping for in 
 the darkness, I cannot say ; but the spell of the witch thou 
 hadst of a surety destroyed, and undone the magic circle 
 into which Veronica had thoughtlessly entered. 
 
 Alas ! Neither thou, favorable reader, nor any other man 
 either drove or walked this way, on the twenty-third of Sep- 
 tember, in the tempestuous witch-favoring night ; and Veron- 
 ica must abide by the cauldron, in deadly terror, till the 
 work was near its close. She heard, indeed, what howling 
 and raging there was around her ; how all sorts of hateful 
 voices bellowed and bleated, and yelled and hummed ; but 
 she opened not her eyes, for she felt that the sight of the 
 abominations and the horrors with which she was' encircled 
 might drive her into incurable, destroying madness. The 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 
 
 79 
 
 hag had ceased to stir the pot; its smoke grew fainter and 
 fainter ; and at last, nothing but a light spirit-flame was 
 burning in the bottom. Then the beldam cried : " Veron- 
 ica, my child ! my darling ! look into the grounds there ! 
 What seest thou ? What seest thou ? " 
 
 Veronica could not answer, yet it seemed as if all manner 
 of perplexed shapes were dancing and whirling in the caul- 
 dron ; and on a sudden, with friendly looks, and reaching 
 her his hand, rose the Student Anselmus from the cavity 
 of the vessel. She cried aloud: "It is Anselmus! It is 
 Anselmus ! " 
 
 Instantly the crone turned the cock fixed at the bottom of 
 the cauldron, and glowing metal rushed forth, hissing and 
 bubbling, into a little mould which she had placed beside it. 
 The hag now sprang aloft ; and shrieked, capering about 
 with wild, horrific gestures : u It is done ! It is done ! Thanks, 
 my pretty lad ; hast watched ? — Pooh, pooh, he is coming! 
 Bite him to death ! Bite him to death ! " But there sounded 
 a strong rushing through the air ; it was as if a huge eagle 
 were pouncing down, striking round him with his pinions; 
 and there shouted a tremendous voice : " Hey, hey, ver- 
 min ! — It is over ! It is over ! — Home with ye ! " The 
 crone sank down with bitter howling ; but Veronica's sense 
 and recollection forsook her. 
 
 On her returning to herself, it was broad day, she was 
 lying in her bed, and Franzchen was standing before her 
 with a cup of steaming tea, and saying to her : " But tell 
 me then, sister, what in all the world ails thee ? Here have 
 I been standing this hour, and thou lying senseless, as if in 
 the heat of a fever, and moaning and whimpering till we 
 are frightened to death. Father has not gone to his class, 
 this morning, because of thee ; he will be here directly with 
 the Doctor." 
 
 Veronica took the tea in silence ; and while drinking it, 
 
80 HOFFMANN. 
 
 the horrid images of the night rose vividly before her eyes. 
 " So it was all nothing but a wild dream that tortured me ? 
 Yet last night I surely went to that old woman ; it was the 
 twenty-third of September too ? Well, I must have been 
 very sick last night, and so fancied all this ; and nothing 
 has sickened me but my perpetual thinking of Anselmus, 
 and the strange old wife who gave herself out for Liese, 
 but was no such thing, and only made a fool of me with 
 that story." 
 
 Franzchen, who had left the room, again came in with 
 Veronica's mantle, all wet, in her hand. " Do but look, 
 sister," said she, " what a sight thy mantle is ! There has 
 the storm over night blown up the window, and overset the 
 chair where thy mantle was hanging ; and so the rain has 
 come in, and wetted it all for thee." 
 
 This speech sank heavy on Veronica's heart ; for she now 
 saw that it was no dream which had tormented her; but 
 that she had really been with the witch. Anguish and horror 
 took hold of her at the thought ; and a fever-frost quivered 
 through all her frame. In spasmodic shuddering, she drew 
 the bed-clothes close over her ; but with this, she felt some- 
 thing hard pressing on her breast, and on grasping it with 
 her hand, it seemed like a medallion ; she drew it out, so 
 soon as Franzchen went away with the mantle ; it was a 
 little, round, bright-polished, metallic mirror. " This is a 
 present from the woman," cried she eagerly ; and it was as 
 if fiery beams were shooting from the mirror, and penetrat- 
 ing into her inmost soul with benignant warmth. The fever- 
 frost was gone ; and there streamed through her whole 
 being an unutterable feeling of contentment and cheerful 
 delight. She could not but remember Anselmus ; and as 
 she turned her thoughts more and more intensely on him, 
 behold he smiled on her with friendly looks out of the 
 mirror, like a living miniature portrait. But ere long she 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 81 
 
 felt as if it were no longer the image which she saw ; no! 
 but the Student Anselmus himself alive and in person. He 
 was sitting in a stately chamber, with the strangest furniture 
 and diligently writing. Veronica was about to step forward, 
 to pat his shoulder, and say to him : " Herr Anselmus, look 
 round ; it is I ! " But she could not ; for it was as if a 
 fire-stream encircled him ; and yet when she looked more 
 narrowly, this fire-stream was nothing but large books with 
 gilt leaves. At last Veronica so far succeeded that she 
 caught Anselmus's eye; it seemed as if he needed, in gaz- 
 ing at her, to bethink himself who she was; but at last he 
 smiled and said : " Ah ! Is it you, dear Mademoiselle Paul- 
 mann ! But why do you please now and then to take the 
 form of a little Snake ? " At these strange words, Veronica 
 could not help laughing aloud ; and with this she awoke as 
 from a deep dream ; and hastily concealed the little mirror, 
 for the door opened, and Conrector Paulmann with Doctor 
 Eckstein entered the room. Doctor Eckstein stept for- 
 ward to the bedside ; felt Veronica's pulse with long, pro- 
 found study, and then said : u Ey ! Ey ! " Thereupon he 
 wrote out a prescription ; again felt the pulse ; a second 
 time said : " Ey ! Ey ! " and then left his patient. But 
 from these disclosures of Doctor Eckstein's, Conrector Paul- 
 mann could not clearly make out what it was that partic- 
 ularly ailed Veronica. 
 
 EIGHTH VIGIL. 
 
 The Library of the Palm-trees. Fortunes of an unhappy 
 Salamander. How the Black Quill caressed a Pars- 
 nip, and Registrator Heerorand was much overtaken with 
 Liquor. 
 
 The Student Anselmus had now worked several days with 
 
82 
 
 HOFFMANN. 
 
 Archivarius Lindhorst. These working hours were for him 
 the happiest of his life ; still encircled with lovely tones, 
 with Serpentina's encouraging voice, he was filled and over- 
 flowed with a pure delight, which often rose to highest rap- 
 ture. Every strait, every little care of his needy existence, 
 had vanished from his thoughts; and in the new life which 
 had risen on him, as in serene, sunny splendor, he compre- 
 hended all the wonders of a higher world, which before had 
 filled him with astonishment, nay, with dread. His copy- 
 ing proceeded rapidly and lightly ; for he felt more and 
 more as if he were writing characters long known to him ; 
 and he scarcely needed to cast, his eye upon the manuscript, 
 while copying it all with the greatest exactness. 
 
 Except at the hour of dinner, Archivarius Lindhorst sel- 
 dom made his appearance ; and this always precisely at the 
 moment when Anselmus had finished the last letter of some 
 manuscript ; then the Archivarius would hand him another, 
 and directly afler, leave him, without uttering a word ; hav- 
 ing first stirred the ink with a little black rod, and changed 
 the old pens with new sharp-pointed ones. One day, when 
 Anselmus, at the stroke of twelve, had as usual mounted 
 the stair, he found the door, through which he commonly 
 entered, standing locked ; and Archivarius Lindhorst came 
 forward from the other side, dressed in his strange, flower- 
 figured night-gown. He called aloud : " To-day come this 
 way, good Herr Anselmus; for we must to the chamber 
 where Bhogovotgita's masters are waiting for us." 
 
 He stept along the corridor, and led Anselmus through 
 the same chambers and halls as at the first visit. The 
 Student Anselmus again felt astonished at the marvellous 
 beauty of the garden ; but he now perceived that many of 
 the strange flowers, hanging on the dark bushes, were in 
 truth insects glancing with lordly colors, hovering up and 
 down with their little wings, as they danced and whirled in 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 83 
 
 clusters, caressing one another with their antennae. On the 
 other hand again, the rose and azure-colored birds were 
 odoriferous flowers ; and the perfume, which they scattered, 
 mounted from their cups in low, lovely tones, which, with 
 the gurgling of distant fountains, and the sighing of the high 
 groves and trees, mingled themselves into mysterious ac- 
 cords of a deep, unutterable longing. The mock-birds, 
 which had so jeered and flouted him before, were again 
 fluttering to and fro over his head, and crying incessantly 
 with their sharp small voices: u Herr Studiosus, Herr Studi- 
 osus, do n't be in such a hurry ! Don't peep into the clouds 
 so! They may fall about your ears — He! He! Herr 
 Studiosus, put your powder-mantle on ; cousin Screech-Owl 
 will frizzle your toupee." And so it went along, in all 
 manner of stupid chatter, till Anselmus left the garden. 
 
 Archivarius Lindhorst at last stept into the azure cham- 
 ber ; the porphyry, with the Golden Pot, was gone ; instead 
 of it, in the middle of the room, stood a table overhung 
 with violet-colored satin, upon which lay the writing-ware 
 already known to Anselmus ; and a stuffed arm-chair, cov- 
 ered with the same sort of cloth, was placed beside it. 
 
 "Dear Herr Anselmus," said Archivarius Lindhorst 
 u you have now copied me a number of manuscripts, rapidly 
 and correctly, to my no small contentment ; you have gained 
 my confidence ; but the hardest is yet behind ; and that is 
 the transcribing or rather painting of certain works, written 
 in a peculiar character ; I keep them in this room, and they 
 can only be copied on the spot. You will, therefore, in 
 future, work here ; but I must recommend to you the great- 
 est foresight and attention ; a false stroke, or, which may 
 Heaven forefend, a blot let fall on the original, will plunge 
 you into misfortune." 
 
 Anselmus observed that from the golden trunks of the 
 palm-trees little emerald leaves projected ; one of these 
 
84 HOFFMANN. 
 
 leaves the Archivarius took hold of; and Anselmus could 
 not but perceive that the leaf was in truth a roll of parch- 
 ment, which the Archivarius unfolded, and spread out be- 
 fore the Student on the table. Anselmus wondered not a 
 little at these strangely intertwisted characters; and as he 
 looked over the many points, strokes, dashes, and twirls in 
 the manuscript, he almost lost hope of ever copying it. He 
 fell into deep thoughts on the subject. 
 
 44 Be of courage, young man!" cried the Archivarius; 
 " if thou hast continuing Belief and true Love, Serpentina 
 will help thee." 
 
 His voice sounded like ringing metal; and as Anselmus 
 looked up in utter terror, Archivarius Lindhorst was standing 
 before him in the kingly form which, during the first visit, 
 he had assumed in the library. Anselmus felt as if in his 
 deep reverence he could not but sink on his knee ; but the 
 Archivarius stept up the trunk of a palm-tree and vanished 
 aloft among the emerald leaves. The Student Anselmus 
 perceived that the Prince of the Spirits had been speaking 
 with him, and was now gone up to his study; perhaps 
 intending, by the beams which some of the Planets had 
 dispatched to him as envoys, to send back word what was to 
 become of Anselmus and Serpentina. 
 
 " It may be too," thought he farther, "that he is expect- 
 ing news from the Springs of the Nile ; or that some magi- 
 cian from Lapland is paying him a visit ; me it behoves to 
 set diligently about my task." And with this, he began 
 studying the foreign characters in the roll of parchment. 
 
 The strange music of the garden sounded over to him, and 
 encircled him with sweet, lovely odors ; the mock-birds too 
 he still heard giggling and twittering, but could not distinguish 
 their words, a thing which greatly pleased him. At limes 
 also it was as if the leaves of the palm-trees were rustling, 
 and as if the clear, crystal tones, which Anselmus on that 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 85 
 
 fateful Ascension-day had heard under the elder-bush, were 
 beaming and flitting through the room. Wonderfully 
 strengthened by this shining and tinkling, the Student An- 
 selmus directed his eyes and thoughts more and more in- 
 tensely on the superscription of the parchment roll; and ere 
 long he felt, as it were from his inmost soul, that the char- 
 acters could denote nothing else than these words : Of the 
 marriage of the Salamander with the green Snake. Then 
 resounded a louder triphony of clear crystal bells; "Ansel- 
 mus ! dear Anselmus !" floated to him from the leaves; 
 and, O wonder! on the trunk of the palm-tree the green 
 Snake came winding down. 
 
 "Serpentina! Serpentina!" cried Anselmus, in the mad- 
 ness of highest rapture ; for as he gazed more earnestly, 
 it was in truth a lovely, glorious maiden that, looking at him 
 with those dark blue eyes, full of inexpressible longing, as 
 they lived in his heart, was hovering down to meet him. 
 The leaves seemed to jut out and expand; on every hand 
 were prickles sprouting from the trunk ; but Serpentina 
 twisted and winded herself deftly through them ; and so 
 drew her fluttering robe, glancing as if in changeful colors, 
 along with her, that, plying round the dainty form, it nowhere 
 caught on the projecting points and prickles of the palm- 
 tree. She sat down by Anselmus on the same chair, clasp- 
 ing him with her arm, and pressing him towards her, so 
 that he felt the breath which came from her lips, and the 
 electric warmth of her frame. 
 
 " Dear Anselmus !" began Serpentina, "thou shalt now 
 soon be wholly mine ; by thy Belief, by thy Love, thou shalt 
 obtain me, and I will bring thee the Golden Pot, which shall 
 make us both happy for evermore." 
 
 " O thou kind, lovely Serpentina ! " said Anselmus, " if I 
 have but thee, what care I for all else ! if thou art but mine, 
 
 VOL. II. 8 
 
86 
 
 HOFFMANN. 
 
 I will joyfully give in to all the wondrous mysteries that have 
 beset me ever since the moment when I first saw thee." 
 
 " I know," continued Serpentina, " that the strange and 
 mysterious things, with which my father, often merely in 
 the sport of his humor, has surrounded thee, have raised 
 distrust and dread in thy mind ; but now, I hope, it shall be 
 so no more ; for I come at this moment to tell thee, dear 
 Anselmus, from the bottom of my heart and soul, all and 
 sundry to a tittle that thou needest to know for under- 
 standing my father, and so for seeing clearly what thy 
 relation to him and to me really is." 
 
 Anselmus felt as if he were so wholly clasped and encir- 
 cled by the gentle, lovely form, that only with her could he 
 move and live, and as if it were but the beating of her pulse 
 that throbbed through his nerves and fibres ; he listened to 
 each one of her words till it sounded in his inmost heart, 
 and, like a burning ray, kindled in him the rapture of 
 Heaven. He had put his arm round that daintier than 
 dainty waist ; but the changeful, glistering cloth of her robe 
 was so smooth and slippery that it seemed to him as if she 
 could at any moment wind herself from his arms, and glide 
 away. He trembled at the thought. 
 
 "Ah, do not leave me, gentlest Serpentina !" cried he; 
 44 thou art my life." 
 
 " Not now," said Serpentina, " till I have told thee all 
 that in thy love of me thou canst comprehend : 
 
 "Know then, dearest, that my father is sprung from the 
 wondrous race of the Salamanders ; and that I owe my ex- 
 istence to his love for the green Snake. In primeval times, 
 in the Fairyland Atlantis, the potent Spirit-prince Phospho- 
 rus bore rule ; and to him the Salamanders, and other 
 Spirits of the Elements, were plighted. Once on a time, 
 the Salamander, whom he loved before all others (it was 
 my father), chanced to be walking in the stately garden, 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 87 
 
 which Phosphorus's mother had decked in the lordliest fash- 
 ion with her best gifts ; and the Salamander heard a tall 
 Lily singing in low tones: 'Press down thy little eyelids, 
 till my Lover, the Morning-wind, awake thee.' He stept 
 towards it; touched by his glowing breath, the Lily opened 
 her leaves ; and he saw the Lily's daughter, the green 
 Snake, lying asleep in the hollow of the flower. Then was 
 the Salamander inflamed with warm love for the fair Snake; 
 and he carried her away from the Lily, whose perfumes 
 in nameless lamentation vainly called for her beloved daugh- 
 ter throughout all the garden. For the Salamander had 
 borne her into the palace of Phosphorus, and was there 
 beseeching him : ' Wed me with my beloved, and she shall 
 be mine for evermore.' — ' Madman, what askest thou ?' said 
 the Prince of the Spirits. ' Know that once the Lily was my 
 mistress, and bore rule with me ; but the Spark, which I 
 cast into her, threatened to annihilate the fair Lily ; and 
 only my victory over the black Dragon, whom now the 
 Spirits of the Earth hold in fetters, maintains her, that her 
 leaves continue strong enough to enclose this Spark, and 
 preserve it within them. But when thou ciaspest the green 
 Snake, thy fire will consume her frame; and a new Being, 
 rapidly arising from her dust, will soar away and leave 
 thee.' 
 
 " The Salamander heeded not the warning of the Spirit- 
 prince ; full of longing ardor he folded the green Snake 
 in his arms; she crumbled into ashes; a winged Being, 
 born from her dust, soared away through the sky. Then 
 the madness of desperation caught the Salamander ; and he 
 ran through the garden, dashing forth fire and flames; and 
 wasted it in his wild fury, till its fairest flowers and blossoms 
 hung down, blackened and scathed ; and their lamentation 
 filled the air. The indignant Prince of the Spirits, in his 
 wrath, laid hold of the Salamander, and said: 'Thy fire 
 
HOFFMANN. 
 
 has burnt out, thy flames are extinguished, thy rays dark- 
 ened ; sink down to the Spirits of the Earth ; let these 
 mock and jeer thee, and keep thee captive, till the Fire- 
 element shall again kindle, and beam up with thee as with 
 a new being from the Earth.' The poor Salamander sank 
 down extinguished ; but now the testy old Earth-spirit, who 
 was Phosphorus's gardener, came forth and said : 'Master! 
 who has greater cause to complain of the Salamander than 
 I ? Had not all the fair flowers, which he has burnt, been 
 decorated with my gayest metals? had I not stoutly nursed 
 and tended them, and spent many a fair hue on their 
 leaves? And yet I must pity the poor Salamander; for it 
 was but love, in which thou, O Master, hast full often been 
 entangled, that drove him to despair, and made him desolate 
 the garden. Remit him the too harsh punishment!' — 'His 
 fire is for the present extinguished,' said the Prince of the 
 Spirits ; ' but in the hapless time, when the Speech of Na- 
 ture shall no longer be intelligible to degenerate man ; when 
 the Spirits of the Elements, banished into their own regions, 
 shall speak to him only from afar, in faint, spent echoes ; 
 when, displaced from the harmonious circle, an infinite 
 longing alone shall give him tidings of the land of Marvels, 
 which he once might inhabit while Belief and Love still 
 dwelt in his soul ; in this hapless time, the fire of the Sala- 
 mander shall again kindle ; but only to manhood shall he be 
 permitted to rise, and entering wholly into man's necessitous 
 existence, he shall learn to endure its wants and oppressions. 
 Yet not only shall the remembrance of his first state con- 
 tinue with him, but he shall again rise into the sacred har- 
 mony of all Nature ; he shall understand its wonders, and 
 the power of his fellow-spirits shall stand at his behest. 
 Then, too, in a Lily-bush shall he find the green Snake 
 again ; and the fruit of his marriage with her shall be three 
 daughters, which, to men, shall appear in the form of their 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 89 
 
 mother. In the spring season these shall disport them in 
 the dark Elder-bush, and sound with their lovely crystal 
 voices. And then if, in that needy and mean age of inward 
 stuntedness, there shall be found a youth who understands 
 their song ; nay, if one of the little Snakes look at him with 
 her kind eyes; if the look awaken in him forecastings of 
 the distant, wondrous Land, to which, having cast away the 
 burden of the Common, he can courageously soar ; if, with 
 love to the Snake, there rise in him belief in the Wonders 
 of Nature, nay, in his own existence amid these Wonders, 
 then the Snake shall be his. But not till three youths of 
 this sort have been found and wedded to the three daugh- 
 ters, may the Salamander cast away his heavy burden, and 
 return to his brothers.' — ■ Permit me, Master,' said the 
 Earth-spirit, ' to make these three daughters a present, which 
 may glorify their life with the husbands they shall find. 
 Let each of them receive from me a Pot, of the fairest 
 metal which I have ; I will polish it with beams borrowed 
 from the diamond ; in its glitter shall our Kingdom of Won- 
 ders, as it now exists in the Harmony of universal Nature, 
 be imaged back in glorious, dazzling reflection ; and from 
 its interior, on the day of marriage, shall spring forth a 
 Fire-lily, whose eternal blossoms shall encircle the youth 
 that is found worthy with sweet wafting odors. Soon 
 too shall he learn its speech, and understand the wonders 
 of our kingdom, and dwell with his beloved in Atlantis 
 itself.' 
 
 " Thou perceivest well, dear Anselmus, that the Salaman- 
 der of whom I speak is no other than my father. Spite of 
 his higher nature, he was forced to subject himself to the 
 paltriest contradictions of common life ; and hence, indeed, 
 often comes the wayward humor with which he vexes many. 
 He has told me now and then, that, for the inward make of 
 mind, which the Spirit-prince Phosphorus required as a con- 
 8* 
 
90 
 
 HOFFMANN. 
 
 dition of marriage with me and my sisters, men have a 
 name at present, which, in truth, they frequently enough 
 misapply ; they call it a childlike, poetic character. This 
 character, he says, is often found in youths, who, by reason 
 of their high simplicity of manners, and their total want of 
 what is called knowledge of the world, are mocked by the 
 populace. Ah, dear Anselmus! beneath the Elder-bush, 
 thou understoodest my song, my look ; thou lovest the green 
 Snake, thou believest in me, and wilt be mine for evermore ! 
 The fair Lily will bloom forth from the Golden Pot ; and 
 we shall dwell, happy, and united, and blessed, in Atlantis 
 together ! 
 
 " Yet I must not hide from thee, that, in its deadly battle 
 with the Salamanders and Spirits of the Earth, the black 
 Dragon burst from their grasp, and hurried off through the 
 air. Phosphorus, indeed, again holds him in fetters ; but 
 from the black Quills, which, in the struggle, rained down 
 on the ground, there sprung up hostile Spirits, which on all 
 hands set themselves against the Salamanders and Spirits of 
 the Earth. That woman who so hates thee, dear Anselmus, 
 and who, as my father knows full well, is striving for 
 possession of the Golden Pot ; that woman owes her exis- 
 tence to the love of such a Quill ( plucked in battle from 
 the Dragon's wing) for a certain Parsnip beside which it 
 dropped. She knows her origin and her power; for, in the 
 moans and convulsions of the captive Dragon, the secrets 
 of many a mysterious constellation are revealed to her ; 
 and she uses every means and effort to work from the Out- 
 ward into the Inward and unseen ; while my father, with the 
 beams which shoot forth from the spirit of the Salamander, 
 withstands and subdues her. All the baneful principles, 
 which lurk in deadly herbs and poisonous beasts, she col- 
 lects ; and, mixing them under favorable constellations, 
 raises therewith many a wicked spell, which overwhelms the 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 91 
 
 soul of man with fear and trembling, and subjects him to 
 the power of those Demons produced from the Dragon 
 when it yielded in battle. Beware of that old woman, dear 
 Anselmus! She hates thee, because thy childlike, pious 
 character has annihilated many of her wicked charms. 
 Keep true, true to me ; soon art thou at the goal ! " 
 
 " O my Serpentina ! my own Serpentina ! " cried the 
 Student Anselmus, " how could I leave thee, how should I 
 not love thee forever ! " A kiss was burning on his lips ; 
 he awoke as from a deep dream ; Serpentina had vanished ; 
 six o\:lock was striking, and it fell heavy on his heart that 
 to-day he had not copied a single stroke. Full of anxiety, 
 and dreading reproaches from the Archivarius, he looked 
 into the sheet ; and, O wonder ! the copy of the mysterious 
 manuscript was fairly concluded ; and he thought, on view- 
 ing the characters more narrowly, that the writing was 
 nothing else but Serpentina's story of her father, the favorite 
 of the Spirit-prince Phosphorus, in Atlantis, the Land of 
 Marvels. And now entered Archivarius Lindhorst, in his 
 light-grey surtout, with hat and staff; he looked into the 
 parchment on which Anselmus had been writing; took a 
 large pinch of snuff, and said with a smile : " Just as I 
 thought! — Well, Herr Anselmus, here is your spezies- 
 thaler ; we will now to the Linke Bath ; do but follow me! V 
 The Archivarius st.ept rapidly through the garden, in which 
 there was such a din of singing, whistling, talking, that the 
 Student Anselmus was quite deafened with it, and thanked 
 Heaven when he found himself on the street. 
 
 Scarcely had they walked twenty paces, when they met 
 Registrator Heerbrand, who companionably joined them. 
 At the Gate, they filled their pipes, which they had about 
 them ; Registrator Heerbrand complained that he had left 
 his tinder-box behind, and could not strike fire. "Fire!" 
 cried Archivarius Lindhorst, scornfully ; " here is fire 
 
92 HOFFMANN. 
 
 enough, and to spare ! " And with this he snapped his 
 fingers, out of which came streams of sparks, and directly- 
 kindled the pipes. — " Do but observe the chemical knack 
 of some men ! " said Registrator Heerbrand ; but the Stu- 
 dent Anselmus thought, not without internal awe, of the 
 Salamander and his history. 
 
 In the Linke Bath, Registrator Heerbrand drank so much 
 strong double beer, that at last, though usually a good-na- 
 tured, quiet man, he began singing student songs in squeak- 
 ing tenor; he asked every one sharply, whether he was his 
 friend or not; and at last had to be taken home by the 
 Student Anselmus, long after Archivarius Lindhorst had 
 gone his ways. 
 
 NINTH VIGIL. 
 
 How the Student Anselmus attained to some Sense. The 
 Punch Party. How the Student Anselmus took Conrec- 
 tor Paulmann for a Screech- Owl, and the latter felt 
 much hurt at it. The Ink-blot, and its Consequences. 
 
 The strange and mysterious things, which day by day- 
 befell the Student Anselmus, had entirely withdrawn him 
 from his customary life. He no longer visited any of his 
 friends, and waited every morning with impatience for the 
 hour of noon, which was to unlock his paradise. And yet, 
 while his whole soul was turned to the gentle Serpentina, 
 and the wonders of Archivarius Lindhorst's fairy kingdom, 
 lie could not help now and then thinking of Veronica ; nay, 
 often it seemed as if she came before him and confessed 
 with blushes how heartily she loved him ; how much she 
 longed to rescue him from the phantoms which were mock- 
 ing and befooling him. At times he felt as if a foreign 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 93 
 
 power, suddenly breaking in on his mind, were drawing him 
 with resistless force to the forgotten Veronica ; as if he must 
 needs follow her whither she pleased to lead him, nay, as if 
 he were bound to her by ties that would not break. That 
 very night after Serpentina had first appeared to him in the 
 form of a lovely maiden, after the wondrous secret of the 
 Salamander's nuptials with the green Snake had been dis- 
 closed, Veronica came before him more vividly than ever. 
 Nay, not till he awoke, was he clearly aware that he had 
 but been dreaming ; for he had felt persuaded that Veronica 
 was actually beside him, complaining, with an expression of 
 keen sorrow, which pierced through his inmost soul, that he 
 should sacrifice her deep, true love to fantastic visions, 
 which only the distemper of his mind called into being, 
 and which, moreover, would at last prove his ruin. Vero- 
 nica was lovelier than he had ever seen her; he could not 
 drive her from his thoughts ; and in this perplexed and con- 
 tradictory mood he hastened out, hoping to get rid of it by 
 a morning walk. 
 
 A secret, magic influence led him on to the Pirna gate ; 
 he was just turning into a cross street, when Conrector Paul- 
 raann, coming after him, cried out: "Ey! Ey ! — Dear 
 Herr Anselmus ! — Amice ! Amice ! Where, in Heaven's 
 name, have you been buried so long ? We never see you 
 a.t all. Do you know, Veronica is longing very much to 
 have another song with you ? So come along ; you were 
 just on the road to me, at any rate." 
 
 The Student Anselmus, constrained by this friendly 
 violence, went along with the Conrector. On entering 
 the house, they were met by Veronica, attired with such 
 neatness and attention, that Conrector Paulmann, full of 
 amazement, asked her: " Why so decked, Mamsell? 
 Were you expecting visitors } Well, here I bring you Herr 
 Anselmus," 
 
94 HOFFMANN. 
 
 The Student Anselmus, in daintily and elegantly kiss- 
 ing Veronica's hand, felt a soft pressure from it, which shot 
 like a stream of fire over all his frame. Veronica was 
 cheerfulness, was grace itself; and when Paulmann left 
 them for his study, she contrived, by all manner of rogueries 
 and waggeries, so to uplift the Student Anselmus, that he at 
 last quite forgot his bashful ness, and jigged round the room 
 with the light-headed maiden. But here again the Demon 
 of Awkwardness got hold of him ; he jolted on a table, and 
 Veronica's pretty little work-box fell to the floor. Anselmus 
 lifted it; the lid had started up; and a little round metallic 
 mirror was glittering on him, into which he looked with 
 peculiar delight. Veronica glided softly up to him, laid 
 her hand on his arm, and pressing close to him, looked over 
 his shoulder into the mirror also. And now Anselmus felt 
 as if a battle were beginning in his soul ; thoughts, images 
 flashed out — Archivarius Lindhorst, — Serpentina, — the 
 green Snake — at last the tumult abated, and all this chaos 
 arranged and shaped itself into distinct consciousness. It 
 was now clear to him that he had always thought of Veron- 
 ica alone ; nay, that the form which had yesterday appeared 
 to him in the blue chamber had been no other than Veron- 
 ica ; and that the wild legend of the Salamander's marriage 
 with the green Snake had merely been written down by 
 him from the manuscript, but nowise related in his hearing. 
 He* wondered not a little at all these dreams ; and ascribed 
 them solely to the heated state of mind into which Veron- 
 ica's love had brought him, as well as to his working with 
 Archivarius Lindhorst, in whose rooms there were, besides, 
 so many strangely intoxicating odors. He could not but 
 laugh heartily at the mad whim of falling in love with a little 
 green Snake ; and taking a well-fed Privy Archivarius for a 
 Salamander. " Yes, yes ! It is Veronica ! " cried he aloud ; 
 but on turning round his head, he looked right into Veron- 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 95 
 
 ica's blue eyes, from which warmest love was beaming. A 
 faint, soft Ah ! escaped her lips, which at that moment were 
 burning on his. 
 
 " O happy I ! " sighed the enraptured Student ; " what 
 I yesternight but dreamed is in very deed mine to-day." 
 
 " But wilt thou really wed me, then, when thou art Hof- 
 rath ? " said Veronica. 
 
 " That I will," replied the Student Anselmus ; and just 
 then the door creaked, and Conrector Paulmann entered with 
 the words : 
 
 "Now, dear Herr Anselmus, I will not let you go to-day. 
 You will put up with a bad dinner; then Veronica will make 
 us delightful coffee, which we shall drink with Registrator 
 Heerbrand, for he promised to come hither." 
 
 "Ah, best Herr Conrector ! " answered the Student An- 
 selmus, "are you not aware that I must go to Archivarius 
 Lindhorst's, and copy ?" 
 
 " Look you, Amice /" said Conrector Paulmann, holding 
 up his watch, which pointed to half past twelve. 
 
 The Student Anselmus saw clearly that he was much too 
 late for Archivarius Lindhorst ; and he complied with the 
 Conrector's wishes the more readily, as he might now hope 
 to look at Veronica the whole day long, to obtain many a 
 stolen glance, and little squeeze of the hand, nay, even to 
 succeed in conquering a kiss. So high had the Student Ansel- 
 mus's desires now mounted ; he felt more and more con- 
 tented in soul, the more fully he convinced himself that he 
 should soon be delivered from all the fantastic imaginations, 
 which really might have made a sheer idiot of him. 
 
 Registrator Heerbrand came, as he had promised, after 
 dinner; and coffee being over, and the dusk come on, the 
 Registrator, puckering his face together, and gaily rubbing 
 his hands, signified that he had something about him, which, 
 if mingled and reduced to form, as it were, paged and titled, 
 
96 HOFFMANN. 
 
 by Veronica's fair hands, might be pleasant to them all, on 
 this October evening. 
 
 " Come out, then, with this mysterious substance which 
 you carry with you, most valued Registrator," cried Con- 
 rector Paulmann. Then Registrator Heerbrand shoved his 
 hand into his deep pocket, and at three journeys brought 
 out a bottle of arrack, two citrons, and a quantity of 
 sugar. Before half an hour had passed, a savory bowl of 
 punch was smoking on Paulmann's table. Veronica drank 
 their health in a sip of the liquor ; and ere long there was 
 plenty of gay, good-natured chat among the friends. But 
 the Student Anselmus, as the spirit of the drink mounted 
 into his head, felt all the images of those wondrous things, 
 which for some time he had experienced, again coming 
 through his mind. He saw the Archivarius in his damask 
 night-gown, which glittered like phosphorus ; he saw the 
 azure room, the golden palm-trees ; nay, it now seemed to 
 him as if he must still believe in Serpentina; there was a 
 fermentation, a conflicting tumult in his soul. Veronica 
 handed him a glass of punch ; and in taking it, he gently 
 touched her hand. " Serpentina ! Veronica ! " sighed he 
 to himself. He sank into deep dreams ; but Registrator 
 Heerbrand cried quite aloud : " A strange old gentleman, 
 whom nobody can fathom, he is and will be, this Archiva- 
 rius Lindhorst. Well, long life to him ! Your glass, Herr 
 Anselmus ! " 
 
 Then the Student Anselmus awoke from his dreams, and 
 said, as he touched glasses with Registrator Heerbrand : 
 11 That proceeds, respected Herr Registrator, from the cir- 
 cumstance, that Archivarius Lindhorst is in reality a Sala- 
 mander, who wasted in his fury the Spirit-prince Phospho- 
 rus's garden, because the green Snake had flown away 
 from him." 
 
 " How ? what? " inquired Conrector Paulmann. 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 
 
 97 
 
 " Yes," continued the Student Anselmus ; " and for this 
 reason he is now forced to be a Royal Archivarius; and to 
 keep house here in Dresden with his three daughters, who, 
 after all, are nothing more than little, gold-green Snakes, 
 that bask in elder-bushes, and traitorously sing, and seduce 
 away young people, like as many syrens." 
 
 " Herr Anselmus! Herr Anselmus!" cried Conrector 
 Paulmann, " is there a crack in your brain ? In Heaven's 
 name, what monstrous stuff is this you are babbling ? " 
 
 " He is right," interrupted Registrator Heerbrand ; "that 
 fellow, that Archivarius, is a cursed Salamander, and strikes 
 you fiery snips from his fingers, which burn holes in your 
 surtout like red-hot tinder. Ay, ay, thou art in the right, 
 brotherkin Anselmus ; and whoever says No is saying No 
 to me ! ■" And at these words Registrator Heerbrand struck 
 the table with his fist, till the. glasses rung again. 
 
 " Registrator ! Are you frantic ? " cried the wroth Con- 
 rector, " Herr Studiosus, Herr Studiosus! what is this you 
 are about again ? " 
 
 Ah ! " said the Student, " you too are nothing but a bird, 
 a screech-owl, that frizzles toupees, Herr Conrector!" 
 
 " What ? — I a bird ? — A screech-owl, a frizzier ? " 
 cried the Conrector, full of indignation ; u Sir, you are mad, 
 horn mad I " 
 
 " But the crone will get a clutch of him, 11 cried Registra- 
 tor Heerbrand. 
 
 " Yes, the crone is potent,' 1 interrupted the Student An- 
 selmus, " though she is but of mean descent; for her father 
 was nothing but a ragged wing-feather, and her motner a 
 dirty parsnip ; but the most of her power she owes to all 
 sorts of baneful creatures, poisonous vermin which she keeps 
 about her. 11 
 
 " That is a horrid calumny," cried Veronica, with eyes 
 
 VOL. II. 9 
 
98 
 
 HOFFMANN. 
 
 all glowing in anger: "old Liese is a wise woman ; and the 
 black Cat is no baneful creature, but a polished young gen- 
 tleman of elegant manners, and her cousin german." 
 
 " Can he eat Salamanders without singing his whiskers, 
 and dying like a candle-snuff?" cried Registrator Heer- 
 brand." 
 
 "No! no!" shouted the Student Anselmus, "that he 
 never can in this world ; and the green Snake loves me, 
 and I have looked into Serpentina's eyes." 
 
 " The Cat will scratch them out," cried Veronica. 
 
 " Salamander, Salamander beats them all, all," hallooed 
 Conrector Paulmann, in the highest fury. " But am I in a 
 madhouse ? Am I mad myself? What unwise stuff am I 
 chattering ? Yes, I am mad too ! mad too ! " And with 
 this, Conrector Paulmann started up ; tore the peruke from 
 his head, and dashed it against the ceiling of the room ; till 
 the battered locks whizzed, and, tangled into utter disorder, 
 rained down the powder far and wide. Then the Student 
 Anselmus and Registrator Heerbrand seized the punch-bowl 
 and the glasses; and, hallooing and huzzaing, pitched 
 them against the ceiling also, and the shreds fell jingling 
 and tingling about their ears. 
 
 M Vivat the Salamander ! — Pereat, pereat the crone ! — 
 Break the metal mirror ! — Dig the cat's eyes out ! — Bird, 
 little Bird, from the air — Eheu — Eheu — Evoe — Evoe, 
 Salamander!" So shrieked, and shouted, and bellowed 
 the three like utter maniacs. With loud weeping, Franz- 
 chen ran out ; but Veronica lay whimpering for pain and 
 sorrow on the sofa. 
 
 At this moment the door opened ; all was instantly still ; 
 and a little man, in a small grey cloak, came stepping in. 
 His countenance had a singular air of gravity ; and espe- 
 cially the round, hooked nose, on which was a huge pair of 
 spectacles, distinguished itself from all the noses ever seen. 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 99 
 
 He wore a strange peruke too ; more like a feather-cap than 
 a wig. 
 
 " Ey, many good evenings ! " grated and cackled the 
 little comical mannikin. " Is the Student Herr Anselmus 
 among you, gentlemen ? — Best compliments from Archiva- 
 rius Lindhorst; he has waited to-day in vain for Herr An- 
 selmus; but to-morrow he begs most respectfully to request 
 that Herr Anselmus would not miss the hour." 
 
 And with this he went out again ; and all of them now 
 saw clearly that the grave little mannikin was in fact a grey 
 Parrot. Conrector Paulmann and Registrator Heerbrand 
 raised a horse-laugh, which reverberated through the room ; 
 and in the intervals, Veronica was moaning and whimpering, 
 as if torn by nameless sorrow ; but, as to the Student An- 
 selmus, the madness of inward horror was darting through 
 him ; and unconsciously he ran through the door, along the 
 streets. Instinctively he reached his house, his garret. Ere 
 long Veronica came in to him, with a peaceful and friendly 
 look, and asked him why, in the festivity, he had so vexed 
 her ; and desired him to be upon his guard against imagina- 
 tions, while working at Archivarius Lindhorst's. " Good 
 night, good night, my beloved friend !" whispered Veronica 
 scarce audibly, and breathed a kiss on his lips. He stretch- 
 ed out his arms to clasp her, but the dreamy shape had van- 
 ished, and he awoke cheerful and refreshed. He could not 
 but laugh heartily at the effects of the punch ; but in think- 
 ing of Veronica, he felt pervaded by a most delightful feel- 
 ing. " To her alone," said he within himself, " do I owe 
 this return from my insane whims. In good sooth, I was 
 little better than the man who believed himself to be of 
 glass; or he who durst not leave his room for fear the hens 
 should eat him, as he was a barleycorn. But so soon as I 
 am Hofrath, I marry Mademoiselle Paulmann, and be happy, 
 and there 's an end of it " 
 
100 
 
 HOFFMANN. 
 
 At noon, as he walked through Archivarius Lindhorst's 
 garden, he could not help wondering how all this had once 
 appeared so strange and marvellous. He now saw nothing 
 past common ; earthen flowerpots, quantities of geraniums, 
 myrtles, and the like. Instead of the glittering, party-col- 
 ored birds which used to flout him, there were nothing but a 
 few sparrows, fluttering hither and thither, which raised an 
 unpleasant, unintelligible cry at sight of Anselmus. The 
 azure room also had quite a different look ; and he could 
 not understand how that glaring blue, and those unnatural 
 golden trunks of palm-trees, with their shapeless, glistening 
 leaves, should ever have pleased him for a moment. The 
 Archivarius looked at him wilh a most peculiar ironical 
 smile, and asked : " Well, how did you like the punch last 
 night, good Anselmus? " 
 
 " Ah, doubtless you have heard from the grey Parrot 
 
 how " answered the Student Anselmus, quite ashamed ; 
 
 but he stopt short, bethinking him that this appearance of 
 the Parrot was all a piece of jugglery. 
 
 " I was there myself," said Archivarius Lindhorst ; 4 ' did 
 you not see me ? But, among the mad pranks you were 
 playing, I had nigh got lamed ; for I was sitting in the 
 punch-bowl, at the very moment when Registrator Heer- 
 brand laid hands on it, to dash it against the ceiling; and I 
 had to make a quick retreat into the Conrector's pipe-head. 
 Now, adieu, Herr Anselmus! Be diligent at your task; 
 for the lost day also you shall have a speziesthaler, because 
 you worked so well be fore. M 
 
 " How can the Archivarius babble such mad stuff? " 
 thought the Student Anselmus, sitting down at the table to 
 begin the copying of the manuscript, which Archivarius 
 Lindhorst had as usual spread out before him. But on the 
 parchment roll he perceived so many strange, crabbed 
 Strokes and twirls all twisted together in inexplicable con- 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 101 
 
 fusion, offering no resting-point for the eye, that it seemed 
 to him well nigh impossible to copy all this exactly. Nay, 
 in glancing over the whole, you might have thought the 
 parchment was nothing but a piece of thickly veined marble, 
 or a stone sprinkled over with lichens. Nevertheless he 
 determined to do his utmost, and boldly dipt in his pen ; 
 but the ink would not run, do what^, he liked ; impatiently 
 he spirted the point of his pen against his nail, and — Heav- 
 en and Earth ! — a huge blot fell on the outspread original ! 
 Hissing and foaming, rose a blue flash from the blot ; and, 
 crackling and wavering, shot through the room to the ceil- 
 ing. Then a thick vapor rolled from the walls ; the leaves 
 began to rustle, as if shaken by a tempest; and down out of 
 them darted glaring basilisks in sparkling fire ; these kindled 
 the vapor, and the bickering masses of flame rolled round 
 Anselmus. The golden trunks of the palm-trees became 
 gigantic snakes, which knocked their frightful heads together 
 with piercing, metallic clang; and wound their scaly bodies 
 round Anselmus. 
 
 "Madman! suffer now the punishment of what, in 
 capricious irreverence, thou hast done ! " So cried the 
 frightful voice of the crowned Salamander, who appeared 
 above the snakes like a glittering beam in the midst of the 
 flame ; and now the yawning jaws of the snakes poured 
 forth cataracts of fire on Anselmus ; and it was as if the fire- 
 streams were congealing about his body, and changing 
 into a firm ice-cold mass. But while Anselmus's limbs, 
 more and more pressed together, and contracted, stiffened 
 into powerlessness, his sense passed away. On returning 
 to himself, he could not stir a joint ; he was as if surrounded 
 with a glistening brightness, on which he struck if he but 
 tried to lift his hand. — Alas! He was sitting in a well- 
 corked crystal bottle, on a shelf, in the library of Archiva- 
 rius Lindhorst. 
 
 9* 
 
102 HOFFMANN. 
 
 TENTH VIGIL. 
 
 Sorrows of the Student Anselmvs in the Glass Bottle. 
 Happy Life of the Cross Church Scholars and Law 
 Clerks. The Battle in the Library of Archivarius 
 Lindhorst. Victory of the Salamander, and Deliverance 
 of the Student Ansehnus. 
 
 Justly may I doubt whether thou, favorable reader, wert 
 ever sealed up in a glass bottle ; or even that any vivid 
 tormenting dream ever oppressed thee with such necroman- 
 tic trouble. If so were the case, thou wilt keenly enough 
 figure out the poor Student Anselmus's woe ; but shouldst 
 thou never have even dreamed such things, then will thy 
 quick fancy, for Anselmus's sake and mine, be obliging 
 enough still to enclose itself for a few moments in the 
 crystal. Thou art drowned in dazzling splendor ; all objects 
 about thee appear illuminated and begirt with beaming rain- 
 bow hues ; all quivers and wavers, and clangs and drones, 
 in the sheen; thou art swimming, motionless and powerless, 
 as in a firmly congealed ether, which so presses thee together 
 that the spirit in vain gives orders to the dead and stiffened 
 body. Weightier and weightier the mountain burden lies on 
 thee ; more and more does every breath exhaust the little 
 handful of air, that still played up and down in the narrow 
 space ; thy pulse throbs madly ; and cut through with 
 horrid anguish, every nerve is quivering and bleeding in 
 this deadly agony. Have pity, favorable reader, on the 
 Student Anselmus ! Him this inexpressible torture laid hold 
 of in his glass prison ; but he felt too well that death could 
 not relieve him ; for did he not awake from the deep swoon 
 into which the excess of pain had cast him, and open his 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 103 
 
 eyes to new wretchedness, when the morning sun shone 
 clear into the room ? He could move no limb ; hut. his 
 thoughts struck against the glass T stupefying him with dis- 
 cordant clang ; and instead of the words which the spirit 
 used to speak from within him, he now heard only the 
 stifled din of madness. Then "he exclaimed in his despair: 
 " O Serpentina! Serpentina! save me from this agony of 
 Hell ! " And it was as if faint sighs breathed around him, 
 which spread like green, transparent elder-leaves over the 
 glass ; the clanging ceased ; the dazzling, perplexing glitter 
 was gone, and he breathed more freely. 
 
 " Have not I myself solely to blame for my misery ? 
 Ah ! Have not I sinned against thee, thou kind, beloved 
 Serpentina ? Have not I raised vile doubts of thee ? Have 
 not I lost my Belief; and with it, all, all that was to make 
 me so blessed ? Ah ! Thou wilt now never, never be 
 mine ; for me the Golden Pot is lost, and I shall not be- 
 hold its wonders any more. Ah ! But once could I see 
 thee ; but once hear thy kind, sweet voice, thou lovely 
 Serpentina ! " 
 
 So wailed the Student Anselmus, caught with deep pier- 
 cing sorrow ; then spoke a voice close by him : " What the 
 devil ails you, Herr Studiosus ? What makes you lament so, 
 out of all compass and measure? " 
 
 The Student Anselmus now perceived that on the same 
 shelf with him were five other bottles, in which he perceived 
 three Cross Church Scholars, and two Law Clerks. 
 
 " Ah, gentlemen, my fellows in misery," cried he, " how 
 is it possible for you to be so calm, nay so happy, as I read 
 in your cheerful looks ? You are sitting here corked up 
 in glass bottles, as well as I,* and cannot move a finger ; 
 nay, not think a reasonable thought, but there rises such a 
 murder-tumult of clanging and droning, and in your head 
 itself a tumbling and rumbling enough to drive one mad. 
 
104 HOFFMANN. 
 
 But doubtless you do not believe in the Salamander, or the 
 green Snake." 
 
 " You are pleased to jest, Mein Herr Studiosus," replied a 
 Cross Church Scholar ; " we have never been belter off 
 than at present ; for the speziesthalers, which the mad 
 Archivarius gave us for all manner of pot-hook copies, are 
 chinking in our pockets ; we have now no Italian choruses 
 to learn by heart ; we go every day to Joseph's or other 
 houses of call, where the double-beer is sufficient ; 
 and we can look a pretty girl in the face ; so we sing like 
 real Students, Gaudeamus igitur, and are contented in 
 spirit! " 
 
 " They of the Cross are quite right," added a Law 
 Clerk ; " I too am well furnished with speziesthalers, like 
 my dearest colleague beside me here ; and we now diligently 
 walk about on the Weinberg, instead of scurvy Act-writing 
 within four walls." 
 
 "But, my best, worthiest masters!" said the Student 
 Anselmus, " do you not observe, then, that you are all and 
 sundry corked up in glass bottles, and cannot for your hearts 
 walk a hairsbreadth ? " 
 
 Here the Cross Church Scholars and the Law Clerks set 
 up a loud laugh, and cried : " The Student is mad ; he 
 fancies himself to be sitting in a glass bottle, and is standing 
 on the Elbe-bridge and looking right down into the water. 
 Let us go along ! " 
 
 " Ah ! " sighed the Student, u they have never seen the 
 kind Serpentina ; they know not what Freedom, and life in 
 Love, and Belief, signifies ; and so, by reason of their folly 
 and low-mindedness, they feel not the oppression of the 
 imprisonment into which the Salamander has cast them. 
 But I, unhappy I, must perish in want and woe, if she, whom 
 I so inexpressibly love, do not deliver me ! " 
 
 Then, waving in faint tinkles, Serpentina's voice flitted 
 
1'HE GOLDEN POT. 105 
 
 through the room; " Anselmus ! believe, love, hope!" 
 And every tone beamed into Anselmus's prison ; and the 
 crystal yielded to his pressure, and expanded, till the breast 
 of the captive could move and heave. 
 
 The torment of his situation became less and less, and he 
 saw clearly that Serpentina still loved him ; and that it was 
 she alone who had rendered his confinement tolerable. 
 He disturbed himself no more about his inane companions in 
 misfortune ; but directed all his thoughts and meditations 
 on the gentle Serpentina. Suddenly, however, there arose 
 on the other side a dull, croaking, repulsive murmur. Ere 
 long he could observe that it proceeded from an old coffee- 
 pot, with half broken lid, standing over against him on a 
 little shelf. As he looked at it more narrowly, the ugly 
 features of a wrinkled old woman by degrees unfolded them- 
 selves ; and in a few moments the Apple-wife of the 
 Schvvarzthor stood before him. She grinned and laughed at 
 him, and cried with screeching voice : " Ey, Ey, my pretty 
 boy, must thou lie in limbo now ? To the crystal thou hast 
 run ; did not I tell thee long ago ? " 
 
 " Mock and jeer me ; do, thou cursed witch ! " said the 
 Student Anselmus, " thou art to blame for it all; but the 
 Salamander will catch thee, thou vile Parsnip ! " 
 
 " Ho, ho ! " replied the crone, " not so proud, good ready 
 writer ! Thou hast squelched my little sons to pieces, thou 
 hast burnt my nose ; but I must still like thee, thou knave, 
 for once thou wert a pretty fellow ; and my little daughter 
 likes thee too. Out of the crystal thou wilt never come un- 
 less I help thee; up thither I cannot clamber; but my 
 cousin gossip the Rat, that lives close behind thee, will eat 
 the shelf in two ; thou shalt jingle down, and I catch thee 
 in my apron, that thy nose be not broken, or thy fine, sleek 
 face at all injured ; then I carry thee to Mamsell Veronica ; 
 and thou shalt marry her, when thou art Hofrath." 
 
106 HOFFMANN. 
 
 " Avaunt, thou devil's brood ! " cried the Student Ansel- 
 mus, full of fury; " it was thou alone and thy hellish arts 
 that brought me to the sin which I must now expiate. But 
 I bear it all patiently ; for only here can I be, where the 
 kind Serpentina encircles me with love and consolation. 
 Hear it, thou beldam, and despair! Ibid defiance to thy 
 power ; I love Serpentina and none but her forever ; I will 
 not be Hofrath, will not look at Veronica, who by thy means 
 entices me to evil. Can the green Snake not be mine, I 
 will die in sorrow and longing. Take thyself away, thou 
 filthy rook ! Take thyself away ! " 
 
 The crone laughed, till the chamber rung: "Sit and die 
 then," cried she ; " but now it is time to set to work ; for I 
 have other trade to follow here." She threw off her black 
 cloak, and so stood in hideous nakedness ; then she ran 
 round in circles, and large folios came tumbling down to 
 her; out of these she tore parchment leaves, and rapidly 
 patching them together in artful combination, and fixing 
 them on her body, in a few instants she was dressed as if 
 in strange, party-colored harness. Spitting fire, the black 
 Cat darted out of the ink-glass, which was standing on the 
 table, and ran mewing towards the crone, who shrieked in 
 loud triumph, and along with him vanished through the 
 door. 
 
 Anselmus observed that she went towards the azure 
 chamber ; and directly he heard a hissing and storming in 
 the distance ; the birds in the garden were crying ; the Par- 
 rot creaked out : " Help ! help ! Thieves ! thieves ! " That 
 moment the crone returned with a bound into the room, 
 carrying the Golden Pot on her arm, and, with hideous ges- 
 tures, shrieking wildly through the air: "Joy! joy, little 
 son ! — Kill the green Snake ! To her, son ! To her ! " 
 
 Anselmus thought he heard a deep moaning, heard Ser- 
 pentina's voice. Then horror and despair took hold of 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 107 
 
 him ; he gathered all his force, he dashed violently, as if 
 nerve and artery were bursting, against the crystal ; a pierc- 
 ing clang went through the room, and the Archivarius in his 
 bright damask nightgown was standing in the door. 
 
 " Hey, hey ! vermin ! — Mad spell ! — Witchvvork ! — 
 Hither, holla ! " So shouted he ; then the black hair of 
 the crone started up in tufts ; her red eyes glanced with 
 infernal fire, and clenching together the peaked fangs of 
 her abominable jaws, she hissed : " Hiss, at him ! Hiss, at 
 him ! Hiss ! " and laughed and neighed in scorn and mock- 
 ery, and pressed the Golden Pot firmly towards her, and 
 threw out of it handfuls of glittering earth on the Archi- 
 varius ; but as it touched the nightgown, the earth changed 
 into flowers, which rained down on the ground. Then the 
 lilies of the nightgown flickered and flamed up ; and the 
 Archivarius caught these lilies blazing in sparky fire and 
 dashed them on the witch ; she howled for agony, but still 
 as she leapt aloft and shook her harness of parchment, the 
 lilies went out, and fell away into ashes. 
 
 " To her, my lad ! " creaked the crone ; then the black 
 Cat darted through the air, and soused over the Archivarius's 
 head towards the door ; but the grey Parrot fluttered out 
 against him ; caught him with his crooked bill by the nape, 
 till red, fiery blood burst down over bis neck ; and Serpen- 
 tina's voice cried : " Saved ! Saved ! " Then the crone, 
 foaming with rage and desperation, darted out upon the 
 Archivarius; she threw the Golden Pot behind her, and 
 holding up the long talons of her skinny fists, was for clutch- 
 ing the Archivarius by the throat ; but he instantly doffed 
 his nightgown, and hurled it against her. Then, hissing, 
 and sputtering, and bursting, shot blue flames from the 
 parchment leaves, and the crone rolled round in howling 
 agony, and strove to get fresh earth from the Pot, fresh 
 parchment leaves from the books, that she might stifle the 
 
108 HOFFMANN. 
 
 blazing flames ; and whenever any earth or leaves came 
 down on her, the flames went out. But now, from the inte- 
 rior of the Archivarius issued fiery, crackling beams, and 
 darted on the crone. 
 
 "Hey, hey! To it again! Salamander! Victory!" 
 clanged the Archivarius's voice through the chamber ; and 
 a hundred bolls whirled forth in fiery circles round the 
 shrieking crone. Whizzing and buzzing flew Cat and Par- 
 rot in their furious battle ; but at last the Parrot, with his 
 strong wing, dashed the Cat to the ground ; and with his 
 talons transfixing and holding fast his adversary, which, in 
 deadly agony, uttered horrid mews and howls, he, with his 
 sharp bill pecked out his glowing eyes, and the burning 
 froth spouted from them. Then thick vapor streamed up 
 from the spot where the crone, hurled to the ground, was 
 lying under the nightgown ; her howling, her terrific, pierc- 
 ing cry of lamentation, died away in the remote distance. 
 The smoke, which had spread abroad with irresistible smell, 
 cleared off; the Archivarius picked up his nightgown ; and 
 under lay an ugly Parsnip. 
 
 " Honored Herr Archivarius, here let me offer you the 
 vanquished foe," said the Parrot, holding out a black hair in 
 his beak to Archivarius Lindhorst. 
 
 " Very right, my worthy friend," replied the Archivari- 
 us ; " here lies my vanquished foe too ; be so good now as 
 to manage what remains. This very day, as a small douceur, 
 you shall have six cocoa-nuts, and a new pair of spectacles 
 also, for I see the Cat has villanously broken the glasses of 
 these old ones." 
 
 " Yours forever, most honored friend and patron ! " an- 
 swered the Parrot, much delighted ; then took the Parsnip 
 in his bill, and fluttered out with it by the window, which 
 Archivarius Lindhorst had opened for him. 
 
 The Archivarius now lifted the Golden Pot, and cried, 
 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 109 
 
 with a strong voice, " Serpentina ! Serpentina ! " But as 
 the Student Anselmus, joying in the destruction of the vile 
 beldam who had hurried him into misfortune, cast his eyes 
 on the Archivarius, behold ! here stood once more the high, 
 majestic form of the Spirit-prince, looking up to him with 
 indescribable dignity and grace. " Anselmus," said the 
 Spirit-prince, " not thou, but a hostile Principle, which 
 strove destructively to penetrate into thy nature, and divide 
 thee against thyself, was to blame for thy unbelief. Thou 
 hast kept thy faithfulness ; be free and happy." A bright flash 
 quivered through the spirit of Anselmus ; the royal triphony 
 of the crystal bells sounded stronger and louder than he had 
 ever heard it ; his nerves and fibres thrilled ; but, swelling 
 higher and higher, the melodious tones rang through the 
 room ; the glass which enclosed Anselmus broke ; and he 
 rushed into the arms of his dear and gentle Serpentina. 
 
 ELEVENTH VIGIL. 
 
 Conrector Paulmann's anger at the Madness which had 
 broken out in his Family. How Registrator Heerbrand 
 became Hofrath ; and, in the keenest Frost, walked about 
 in Shoes and silk Stockings. Veronica's Confession. 
 Betrothment over the steaming Soup-plate. 
 
 " But tell me, best Registrator! how the cursed punch 
 last night could so mount into our heads, and drive us to all 
 manner of allotria ? " So said Conrector Paulmann, as he 
 next morning entered his room, which still lay full of brok- 
 en sherds, with his hapless peruke, dissolved into its original 
 elements, floating in punch among the ruin. For after the 
 Student Anselmus ran out of doors, Conrector Paulmann 
 and Registrator Heerbrand had still kept trotting and hob- 
 
 VOL. II. 10 
 
UO HOFFMANN. 
 
 bling up and down the room, shouting like maniacs, and 
 butting their heads together: till Franzchen, with much 
 labor, carried her vertiginous papa to bed ; and Registrator 
 Heerhrand, in the deepest exhaustion, sunk on the sofa, 
 which Veronica had left, taking refuge in her bedroom. 
 Registrator Heerbrand had his blue handkerchief tied about 
 his head ; he looked quite pale and melancholic, and moan- 
 ed out : " Ah, worthy Conrector, not the punch which 
 Mamsell Veronica most admirably brewed, no ! but simply 
 that cursed Student is to blame for all the mischief. Do 
 you not observe that he has long been mente captus ? And 
 are you not aware that madness is infectious? One fool 
 makes twenty ; pardon me, it is an old proverb ; especially 
 when you have drunk a glass or two, you fall into madness 
 quite readily, and then involuntarily you manoeuvre, and go 
 through your exercise, just as the crackbrained fugleman 
 makes the motion. Would you believe it, Conrector ? I am 
 still giddy when I think of that grey Parrot ! " 
 
 44 Grey fiddlestick!" interrupted the Conrector; " it was 
 nothing but Archivarius Lindhorst's little old Famulus, who 
 had thrown a grey cloak over him, and was seeking the 
 Student Anselmus." 
 
 44 It may be," answered Registrator Heerbrand ; " but T 
 must confess I am quite downcast in spirit ; the whole night 
 through there was such a piping and organing." 
 
 44 That was I,* 1 said the Conrector, 44 for I snore loud." 
 
 44 Well, may be," answered the Registrator; 44 but, Con- 
 rector, Conrector! Ah, not without cause did I wish to 
 raise some cheerfulness among us last night — And that 
 Anselmus has spoiled all ! You know not — O Conrector, 
 Conrector ! " And with this, Registrator Heerbrand started 
 up ; plucked the cloth from his head, embraced the Conrec- 
 tor, warmly pressed his hand, and again cried, in quite 
 heart-breaking tone: 44 O Conrector, Conrector!" and 
 snatching his hat and staff', rushed out of doors. 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. Ill 
 
 " This Anselmus comes not over my threshold again," 
 said Conrector Paulmann ; " for I see very well, that, with 
 this moping madness of his, he robs the best gentlemen of 
 their senses. The Registrator is now over with it too ; I 
 have hitherto kept safe ; but the Devil, who knocked hard 
 last night in our carousal, may get in at last, and play his 
 tricks with me. So Apage, Satanas ! Off with thee, An- 
 selmus ! " Veronica had grown quite pensive ; she spoke no 
 word ; only smiled now and then very oddly, and liked best 
 to be alone. " She too has Anselmus in her head," said the 
 Conrector, full of spleen ; " but it is well that he does not 
 show himself here; I know he fears me, this Anselmus, 
 and so he never comes." 
 
 These concluding words Conrector Paulmann spoke aloud ; 
 then the tears rushed into Veronica's eyes, and she said, 
 sobbing: "Ah! how can Anselmus come? He has long 
 been corked up in the glass bottle." 
 
 " How ? What ? " cried Conrector Paulmann. " Ah Heav- 
 en ! Ah Heaven ! she is doting too, like the Registrator ; the 
 loud fit will soon come ! Ah, thou cursed, abominable, thrice- 
 cursed Anselmus! " He ran forth directly to Doctor Eck- 
 stein ; who smiled, and again said: " Ey ! Ey ! " This 
 time, however, he prescribed nothing ; but added, to the 
 little he had uttered, the following words, as he walked 
 away: "Nerves! Come round of itself. Take the air; 
 walks ; amusements ; theatre ; playing Soutagskind, Schives- 
 tern von Prag. Come round of itself." 
 
 " So eloquent I have seldom seen the Doctor," thought 
 Conrector Paulmann : " realty talkative, I declare ! " 
 
 Several days and weeks and months were gone ; Ansel- 
 mus had vanished ; but Registrator Heerbrand also did not 
 make his appearance ; not till the fourth of February, when 
 the Registrator, in a new, fashionable coat of the finest cloth, 
 in shoes and silk stockings, notwithstanding the keen frost, 
 
112 HOFFMANN. 
 
 and with a large nosegay of fresh flowers in his hand, did 
 enter precisely at noon into the parlor of Conrector Paul- 
 mann, who wondered not a little to see his friend sodizened. 
 With a solemn air, Registrator Heerbrand stept forward to 
 Conrector Paulmann ; embraced him with the finest elegance, 
 and then said : w Now at last, on the Saint's-day of your 
 beloved and most honored Mamsell Veronica, I will tell you 
 out, straight forward, what I have long had lying at my 
 heart. That evening, that unfortunate evening, when I put 
 the ingredients of our noxious punch in my pocket, I pur- 
 posed imparting to you a piece of good news, and celebrat- 
 ing the happy day in convivial joys. Already I had learned 
 that I was to be made Hofrath ; for which promotion I have 
 now the patent, cum nomine et sigillo Principis, in my 
 pocket." 
 
 "Ah! Herr Registr — Herr Hofrath Heerbrand, I 
 meant to say," stammered the Conrector. 
 
 " But it is you, most honored Conrector," continued the 
 new Hofrath, "it is you alone that can complete my 
 happiness. For a long time, I have in secret loved your 
 daughter, Mamsell Veronica ; and I can boast of many a 
 kind look which she has given me, evidently showing that 
 she would not cast me away. In one word, honored Con- 
 rector ! I, Hofrath Heerbrand, do now entreat of you the 
 hand of your most amiable Mamsell Veronica, whom I, if 
 you have nothing against it, purpose shortly to take home 
 as my wife." 
 
 Conrector Paulmann, full of astonishment, clapped his 
 hands repeatedly, and cried : ' Ey, Ey, Ey ! Herr Registr — 
 Herr Hofrath I meant to say — who would have thought it? 
 Well, if Veronica does really love you, I for my share can- 
 not object; nay, perhaps her present melancholy is nothing 
 but concealed love for you, most honored Hofrath ! You 
 know what freaks they have ! 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 113 
 
 At this moment Veronica entered, pale and agitated, as 
 she now commonly was. Then Ho f rath Heerbrand stept 
 towards her ; mentioned in a neat speech her Saint's day, 
 and handed her the odorous nosegay, along with a little 
 packet; out of which, when she opened it, a pair of glitter- 
 ing earrings beamed up to her. A rapid, flying blush tinted 
 her cheeks ; her eyes sparkled in joy, and she cried : " O 
 Heaven! These are the very earrings which I wore some 
 weeks ago, and thought so much of." 
 
 " How can this be, dearest Mamsell," interrupted Hofrath 
 Heerbrand, somewhat alarmed and hurt, "when I bought 
 these jewels not an hour ago, in the Schlossgasse, for cur- 
 rent money ? " 
 
 But Veronica heeded him not ; she was standing before 
 the mirror to witness the effect of the trinkets, which she 
 had already suspended in her pretty little ears. Conrector 
 Paulmann disclosed to her, with grave countenance and 
 solemn tone, his friend Heerbrand's preferment and present 
 proposal. Veronica looked at the Hofrath with a searching 
 look, and said: "I have long known that you wished to 
 marry me. Well, be it so ! I promise you my heart and 
 hand ; but I must now unfold to you, to both of you, I 
 mean, my father and my bridegroom, much that is lying 
 heavy on my heart ; yes, even now, though the soup 
 should get cold, which I see Franzchen is just putting on 
 the table." 
 
 Without waiting for the Conrector's or the Hofrath's reply, 
 though the words were visibly hovering on the lips of both, 
 Veronica continued: " You mny believe me, best father, 
 I loved Anselmus from my heart ; and when Registrator 
 Heerbrand, who is now become Hofrath himself, assured 
 us that Anselmus might probably enough get some such 
 length, I resolved that he and no other should be my hus- 
 band. But then it seemed as if alien, hostile beings were 
 10* 
 
114 
 
 HOFFMANN. 
 
 for snatching him away from me. I had recourse to old 
 Liese, who was once my nurse, but is now a wise woman, 
 and a great enchantress. She promised to help me, and 
 give Anselmus wholly into my hands. We went at midnight 
 on the Equinox to the crossing of the roads ; she conjured 
 certain hellish spirits, and by aid of the black Cat, we 
 manufactured a little metallic mirror, in which I, directing 
 my thoughts on Anselmus, had but to look, in order to rule 
 him wholly in heart and mind. But now I heartily repent 
 having done all this; and here abjure all Satanic arts. The 
 Salamander has conquered old Liese ; I heard her shrieks; 
 but there was no help to be given ; so soon as the Parrot 
 had eaten the Parsnip, my metallic mirror broke in two with 
 a piercing clang." Veronica took out both the pieces of 
 the mirror and a lock of hair from her work-box, and hand- 
 ing them to Hofrath Heerbrand she proceeded : " Here, 
 take the fragments of the mirror, dear Hofrath ; throw them 
 down, to-night, at twelve o'clock, over the Elbe-bridge, 
 from the place where the Cross stands; the stream is not 
 frozen there ; the lock, however, do you wear on your 
 faithful breast. I here abjure all magic ; and heartily wish 
 Anselmus joy of his good fortune, seeing he is wedded with 
 the green Snake, who is much prettier and richer than I. 
 You, dear Hofrath, I will love and reverence as becomes a 
 true, honest wife." 
 
 "Alake! Alake!" cried Conrector Paulmann, full of sor- 
 row ; " she is cracked, she is cracked ; she can never be 
 Frau Hofrathinn ; she is cracked ! " 
 
 " Not in the smallest," interrupted Hofrath Heerbrand ; 
 "I know well that Mamsell Veronica has had some kindness 
 for the loutish Anselmus ; and it may be that in some fit 
 of passion she has had recourse to the wise woman, who, 
 as I perceive, can be no other than the card-castor and 
 coffee-pourer of the Seethor ; in a word, old Rauerin. Nor 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 115 
 
 can it be denied that there are secret arts, which exert their 
 influence on men but too balefully ; we read of such in the 
 Ancients, and doubtless there are still such ; but as to what 
 Mamsell Veronica is pleased to say about the victory of the 
 Salamander, and the marriage of Anselmus with the green 
 Snake, this, in reality, I take for nothing but a poetic alle- 
 gory ; a sort of song, wherein she sings her entire farewell 
 to the Student." 
 
 "Take it for what you will, best Hofrath ! " cried Veron- 
 ica ; " perhaps for a very stupid dream." 
 
 " That I nowise do," replied Hofrath Heerbrand ; " for 
 I know well that Anselmus himself is possessed by secret 
 powers, which vex him and drive him on to all imaginable 
 mad freaks." 
 
 Conrector Paulmann could stand it no longer; he broke 
 loose: "Hold! For the love of Heaven, hold! Are we 
 again overtaken with the cursed punch, or has Anselmus's 
 madness come over us too ? Herr Hofrath, what stuff is 
 this you are talking? I will suppose, however, that it is 
 love which haunts your brain; this soon comes to rights in 
 marriage ; otherwise I should be apprehensive that you too 
 had fallen into some shade of madness, most honored Herr 
 Hofrath ; then what would become of the future branches 
 of the family, inheriting the malum of their parents ? But 
 now I give my paternal blessing to this happy union ; and 
 permit you as bride and bridegroom to take a kiss." 
 
 This happened forthwith ; and thus before the presented 
 soup had grown cold, was a formal betrothment concluded. 
 In a few weeks, Frau Hofrathinn Heerbrand was actually, 
 as she had been in vision, sitting in the balcony of a fine 
 house in the Neumarkt, and looking down with a smile 
 on the beaux, who passing by turned their glasses up to 
 her and said : " She is a heavenly woman, the Hofrathinn 
 Heerbrand." 
 
116 HOFFMANN. 
 
 TWELFTH VIGIL. 
 
 Account of the Freehold Property to which Anselmus re- 
 moved, as Son-in-law of Archivarius Lindhorst ; and 
 how he lives there with Serpentina. Conclusion. 
 
 How deeply did I feel in the centre of my spirit the 
 blessedness of the Student Anselmus, who now, indissolubly 
 united with his gentle Serpentina, has withdrawn to the 
 mysterious Land of Wonders, recognized by him as the 
 home towards which his bosom, filled with strange forecast- 
 ings, had always longed. But in vain was all my striving 
 to set before thee, favorable reader, those glories with which 
 Anselmus is encompassed, or even in the faintest degree to 
 shadow them forth to thee in words. Reluctantly I could 
 not but acknowledge the feebleness of my every expression. 
 I felt myself enthralled amid the paltrinesses of every-day 
 life ; I sickened in tormenting dissatisfaction ; I glided about 
 like a dreamer; in brief, I fell into that condition of the 
 Student Anselmus, which, in the Fourth Vigil, I have en- 
 deavored to set before thee. It grieved me to the heart, 
 when I glanced over the Eleven Vigils, now happily accom- 
 plished, and thought that to insert the Twelfth, the keystone 
 of the whole, would never be vouchsafed me. For when- 
 soever, in the night season, I set myself to complete the 
 work, it was as if mischievous Spirits (they might be rela- 
 tions, perhaps cousins-german, of the slain witch) held a 
 polished, glittering piece of metal before me, in which I 
 beheld my own mean Self, pale, overwatched, and melan- 
 cholic, like Registrator Heerbrand after his bout of punch. 
 Then I threw down my pen, and hastened to bed, that I 
 might behold the happy Anselmus and the fair Serpentina 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 117 
 
 at least in ray dreams. This had lasted for several days 
 and nights, when at length quite unexpectedly I received a 
 note from Archivarius Lindhorst, in which he addressed me 
 as follows : 
 
 " Respected Sir, — It is well known to me that you have 
 written down, in Eleven Vigils, the singular fortunes of my 
 good son-in-law Anselmus, whilom Student, now Poet ; and 
 are at present cudgelling your brains very sore, that in the 
 Twelfth and Last Vigil you may tell somewhat of his happy 
 life in Atlantis, where he now lives with my daughter, on 
 the pleasant Freehold which I possess in that country. 
 Now, notwithstanding I much regret that hereby my own 
 peculiar nature is unfolded to the reading world ; seeing it 
 may, in my office as Privy Archivarius, expose me to a 
 thousand inconveniences ; nay, in the Collegium even give 
 rise to the question, how far a Salamander can justly, and 
 with binding consequences, plight himself by oath, as a 
 Servant of the State ; and how far, on the whole, important 
 affairs may be intrusted to him, since, according to GabaUs 
 and Svvedenborg, the Spirits of the Elements are not to be 
 trusted at all ; notwithstanding my best friends must now 
 avoid my embrace ; fearing lest, in some sudden anger, I 
 dart out a flash or two, and singe their hair-curls, and Sun- 
 day frocks; notwithstanding all this, I say, it is still my 
 purpose to assist you in the completion of the Work, since 
 much good of me and of my dear married daughter (would 
 the other two were off my hands also!) has therein been 
 said. Would you write your Twelfth Vigil, therefore, then 
 descend your cursed five pair of stairs, leave your garret, 
 and come over to me. In the blue palmtree-room, which 
 you already know, you will find fit writing materials ; and 
 you can then, in few words, specify to your readers what 
 you have seen ; a better plan for you than any long-winded 
 
118 HOFFMANN. 
 
 description of a life which you know only by hearsay. 
 With esteem, 
 
 "Your obedient servant, 
 
 " The Salamander Lindhorst, 
 "P. T. Royal Archivarius." 
 
 This truly somewhat rough, yet on the whole friendly 
 note from Archivarius Lindhorst gave me high pleasure. 
 Clear enough it seemed, indeed, that the singular manner in 
 which the fortunes of his son-in-law had been revealed to 
 me, and which I, bound to silence, must conceal even from 
 thee, favorable reader, was well known to this peculiar old 
 gentleman ; yet he had not taken it so ill as I might readily 
 have apprehended. Nay, here was he offering me his 
 helpful hand in the completion of my work; and from this I 
 might justly conclude that at bottom he was not averse to 
 have his marvellous existence in the world of spirits thus 
 divulged through the press. 
 
 " It may be," thought I, " that he himself expects from 
 this measure, perhaps, to get his two other daughters the 
 sooner married ; for who knows but a spark may fall in this 
 or that young man's breast, and kindle a longing for the 
 green Snake ; whom, on Ascension-day, under the elder- 
 bush, he will forthwith seek and find? From the woe 
 which befell Anselmus, when inclosed in the glass bottle, 
 he will take warning to be doubly and trebly on his guard 
 against all Doubt and Unbelief." 
 
 Precisely at eleven o'clock I extinguished my study- 
 lamp ; and glided forth to Archivarius Lindhorst, who was 
 already waiting for me in the lobby. 
 
 " Are you ihere, my worthy friend ? Well, this is what 
 I like, that you have not mistaken my good intentions ; do 
 but follow me ! " 
 
 And with this he led the way through the garden, now 
 filled with dazzling brightness, into the azure chamber 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 119 
 
 where I observed the same violet table at which Anselmus 
 had been writing. 
 
 Archivarius Lmdhorst disappeared ; but soon came back, 
 carrying in his hand a fair, golden goblet, out of which a 
 high blue flame was sparkling up. "Here," said he, u I 
 bring you the favorite drink of your friend the Bandmaster, 
 Johannes Kreisler.* It is burning arrack, into which I 
 have thrown a little sugar. Sip a touch or two of it ; 
 I will doff my night-gown, and, to amuse myself, and 
 enjoy your worthy company while you sit looking and 
 writing, I shall just bob up and down a little in the 
 goblet." 
 
 "As you please, honored Herr Archivarius," answered 
 I; " but if I am to ply the liquor, you will get none." 
 
 "Don't fear that, my good fellow," cried the Archi- 
 varius ; then hastily threw off his night-gown, mounted, 
 to my no small amazement, into the goblet, and vanished in 
 the blaze. Without fear, softly blowing back the flame, I 
 partook of the drink ; it was truly precious ! 
 
 Stir not the emerald leaves of the palm-trees in soft sigh- 
 ing and rustling, as if kissed by the breath of the morning 
 
 * An imaginary musical enthusiast, of whom Hoffmann has 
 written much ; under the fiery, sensitive, wayward character of this 
 crazy Bandmaster, presenting, it would seem, a shadowy likeness 
 of himself. The Krelsleriana occupy a large space among these 
 Fantasy-pieces; and Johannes Kreisler is the main figure in Kaler 
 Murr, Hoffmann's favorite but unfinished work. In the third and 
 last volume, Kreisler was to end, not in composure and illumina- 
 tion, as the critics would have required, but in utter madness. A 
 sketch of a wild, flail-like scarecrow, dancing vehemently and blow 
 ing soap-bubbles, and which had been intended to front the last title- 
 page, was found among Hoffmann's papers, and engraved and pub- 
 lished in his Life and Remains. — Ed. 
 
120 HOFFMANN. 
 
 wind ? Awakened from their sleep, they move, and myste- 
 riously whisper of the wonders which from the far distance 
 approach like tones of melodious harps ! the azure rolls 
 from the walls, and floats like airy vapor to and fro ; but 
 dazzling beams shoot through it ; and whirling and dancing, 
 as in jubilee of childlike sport, it mounts and mounts to im- 
 measurable height, and vaults itself overthe palm-trees. But 
 brighter and brighter shoots beam on beam, till in boundless 
 expanse opens the grove where I behold Anselmus. Here 
 glowing hyacinths, and tulips, and roses, lift their fair heads ; 
 and their perfumes, in loveliest sound, call to the happy youth : 
 " Wander, wander among us, our beloved ; for thou under- 
 standest us ! Our perfume is the Longing of Love ; we 
 love thee, and are thine for evermore! " The golden rays 
 burn in glowing tones : " We are Fire, kindled by Love. 
 Perfume is Longing ; but Fire is Desire; and dwell we not 
 in thy bosom ? We are thy own ! " The dark bushes, the 
 high trees, rustle and sound : " Come to us, thou loved, thou 
 happy one ! Fire is Desire ; but Hope is our cool Shadow. 
 Lovingly we rustle round thy head ; for thou understandest 
 us, because Love dwells in thy breast !" The brooks and 
 fountains murmur and patter : " Loved one, walk not so 
 quickly by ; look into our crystal! Thy image dwells in 
 us, which we preserve with Love, for thou hast understood 
 us." In the triumphal choir, bright birds are singing : 
 " Hear us ! Hear us ! We are Joy, we are Delight, the 
 rapture of Love ! " But anxiously Anselmus turns his eyes 
 to the glorious Temple, which rises behind him in the dis- 
 tance. The fair pillars seem trees; and the capitals and 
 friezes acanthus leaves, which in wondrous wreaths and 
 figures form splendid decorations. Anselmus walks to the 
 Temple; he views with inward delight the variegated mar- 
 ble, the steps with their strange veins of moss. " Ah, no! " 
 cries he, as if in the excess of rapture, " she is not far from 
 
THE GOLDEN POT. 121 
 
 me now ; she is near ! " Then advances Serpentina, in the 
 fulness of beauty and grace, from the Temple ; she bears 
 the Golden Pot, from which a bright Lily has sprung. The 
 nameless rapture of infinite longing glows in her meek 
 eyes ; she looks at Anselmus, and says : " Ah ! Dearest, 
 the Lily has sent forth her bowl ; what we longed for is ful- 
 filled. Is there a happiness to equal ours ? " Anselmus 
 clasps her with the tenderness of warmest ardor ; the Lily 
 burns in flaming beams over his head. And louder move 
 the trees and bushes ; clearer and gladder play the brooks ; 
 the birds, the shining insects dance in the waves of perfume ; 
 a gay, bright, rejoicing tumult, in the air, in the water, in 
 the earth, is holding the festival of Love ! Now rush spark- 
 ling streaks, gleaming over all the bushes ; diamonds look 
 from the ground like shining eyes ; strange vapors are 
 wafted hither on sounding wings ; they are the Spirits of 
 the Elements, who do homage to the Lily, and proclaim the 
 happiness of Anselmus. Then Anselmus raises his head, 
 as if encircled with a beamy glory. Is it looks ? Is it 
 words ? Is it song ? You hear the sound : " Serpentina ! 
 Belief in thee, Love of thee has unfolded to my soul the 
 inmost spirit of Nature ! Thou hast brought me the Lily, which 
 sprung from Gold, from the primeval Force of the world, 
 before Phosphorus had kindled the spark of Thought ; this 
 Lily is Knowledge of the sacred Harmony of all Beings ; 
 and in this do I live in highest blessedness for evermore. 
 Yes, I, thrice happy, have perceived what was highest ; 
 I must indeed love thee forever, O Serpentina ! Never shall 
 the golden blossoms of the Lily grow pale ; for, like Belief 
 and Love, this Knowledge is eternal." 
 
 VOL. II. 11 
 
122 HOFFMANN. 
 
 For the vision, in which I had now beheld Anselmus 
 bodily, in his Freehold of Atlantis, I stand indebted to the 
 arts of the Salamander ; and most fortunate was it, that, 
 when all had melted into air, I found a paper lying on the 
 violet-table, with the foregoing statement of the matter, 
 written fairly and distinctly by my own hand. But now I 
 felt myself as if transpierced and torn in pieces by sharp 
 sorrow. " Ah, happy Anselmus, who hast cast away the 
 burden of week-day life, who in the love of thy kind Ser- 
 pentina fliest with bold pinion, and now livest in rapture and 
 joy on thy Freehold in Atlantis ! while I — poor I ! — must 
 soon, nay, in few moments, leave even this fair hall, which 
 itself is far from a Freehold in Atlantis ; and again be 
 transplanted to my garret, where, enthralled among the petti- 
 nesses of necessitous existence, my heart and my sight are 
 so bedimmed with thousand mischiefs, as with thick fog, 
 that the fair Lily will never, never be beheld by me." 
 
 Then Archivarius Lindhorst patted me gently on the 
 shoulder, and said : " Soft, soft, my honored friend ! La- 
 ment not so ! Were you not even now in Atlantis ; and 
 have you not at least a pretty little copyhold Farm there, as 
 the poetical possession of your inward sense ? And is the 
 blessedness of Anselmus aught else but a Living in Poesy ? 
 Can aught else but Poesy reveal itself as the sacred Har- 
 mony of all Beings, as the deepest secret of Nature ? " 
 
JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, one of the chosen men 
 of Germany and of the World, whom I hoped, in my vanity, 
 perhaps to gratify by this introduction of him to a people 
 whom he knew and valued, has been called from his earthly 
 sojourn since the commencement of my little task, and no 
 voice, either of love or censure, shall any more reach his 
 ear. 
 
 The circle of his existence is thus complete ; his works 
 and himself have assumed their final shape and combination, 
 and lie ready for a judgment, which, when it is just, must 
 now be unalterable. To satisfy a natural and rational 
 curiosity respecting such a character, materials are not 
 wanting ; but to us in the mean time they are inaccessible. 
 I have inquired in his own country, but without effect ; hav- 
 ing learned only that two Biographies of Richter are in 
 the press, but that nothing on the subject has hitherto been 
 published. For the present, therefore, I must content my- 
 self with such meagre and transitory hints as were in circu- 
 lation in his lifetime, and compress into a few sentences a 
 history which might be written in volumes. 
 
 Richter was born at Wunsiedel in Bayreuth, on the 21st 
 of March, 1763. His father was clergyman of the place, 
 and afterwards of Schwarzbach on the Saale. The young 
 man also was destined for the clerical profession ; with a 
 view to which, having finished his school studies in the Hof 
 Gymnasium, he in 1780 proceeded to the University of 
 11 * 
 
126 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 Leipzig, with the highest testimonials from his former mas- 
 ters. Theology as a profession, however, he could not 
 relish ; poetry, philosophy, and general literature, were his 
 chief pursuits while at Leipzig ; from which, apparently 
 after no long stay, he returned to Schwarzbach to his pa- 
 rents, uncertain what he should betake him to. In a little 
 while he attempted authorship ; publishing various short 
 miscellaneous pieces, distinguished by intellectual vigor, 
 copious fancy, the wildest yet truest humor, the whole con- 
 cocted in a style entirely his own, which, if it betrayed the 
 writer's inexperience, could not hide the existence in him of 
 a highly-gifted, strong, and extraordinary mind. The re- 
 ception of his first performances, or the inward felicity of 
 writing, encouraged him to proceed ; in the midst of an un- 
 settled and changeful life, his pen was never idle, its 
 productions never otherwise than new, fantastic, and power- 
 ful. He lived successively in Hof, in Weimar, Berlin, Mein- 
 ingen, Coburg, " raying forth, wherever he might be sta- 
 tioned, the wild light of his genius over all Germany. 1 ' At 
 last he settled in Bayreuth, having here, in testimony of his 
 literary merit, been honored with the title of Legations-Rath, 
 and presented with a pension from his native Prince. In 
 Bayreuth his chief works were written ; he had married, 
 and been blessed with two children ; his intellectual labors 
 had gained him esteem and love from all ranks of his coun- 
 trymen, and chiefly from those whose suffrage was of most 
 value ; a frank and original, yet modest, good, and kind 
 deportment, seems to have transferred these sentiments to 
 his private circle. With a heart at once of the most earnest 
 and most sportful cast ; affectionate, and encompassed with 
 the objects of his affection; diligent in the highest of all 
 earthly tasks, the acquisition and the diffusion of Truth ; 
 and witnessing from his sequestered home the working of 
 his own mind on thousands of fellow-minds, Richter seemed 
 
RICHTER. 
 
 127 
 
 happy and at peace ; and his distant reader loved to fancy 
 him as in his calm privacy enjoying the fruit of past toils, 
 or amid the highest and mildest meditations, looking forward 
 to long, honorable years of future toil. For his thoughts were 
 manifold ; thoughts of a moralist and a sage, no less than of 
 a poet and a wit. The last work of his I saw advertised was 
 a little volume, entitled, On the Ever-green of our Feel- 
 ings ; and in November, 1825, news came that Richter was 
 dead ; and a heart, which we had figured as one of the 
 truest, deepest, and gentlest that ever lived in this world, 
 was to beat no more. 
 
 Of Richter's private character I have learned little ; but 
 that little was all favorable, and accordant with the indica- 
 tions in his works. Of his public and intellectual character 
 much might be said and thought ; for the secret of it is by 
 no means floating on the surface, and it will reward some 
 study. The most cursory inspection, even an external one, 
 will satisfy us that he neither was, nor wished to be consid- 
 ered as a man who wrote or thought in the track of other 
 men, to whom common practice is a law, and whose excel- 
 lencies and defects the common formulas of criticism will 
 easily represent. The very titles of his works are startling. 
 One of his earliest performances is named Selection from 
 the Papers of the Devil; another is, Biographical Recre- 
 ations under the Cranium of a Giantess. His novels are 
 almost uniformly introduced by some fantastic narrative ac- 
 counting for his publication and obtainment of the story. 
 Hesperus, his chief novel, bears the secondary title of Dog- 
 post-days, and the chapters are named Dog-posts, as having 
 been conveyed to him in a letter-bag, round the neck of a 
 little nimble Shock, from some unknown Island in the South 
 Sea. 
 
 The first aspect of these peculiarities cannot prepossess 
 us in his favor; we are too forcibly reminded of theatrical 
 
128 R1CHTER. 
 
 clap-traps and literary quackery ; nor on opening one of 
 the works themselves is the case much mended. Piercing 
 gleams of thought do not escape us ; singular truths conveyed 
 in a form as singular ; grotesque and often truly ludicrous 
 delineations; pathetic, magnificent, far-sounding passages; 
 effusions full of wit, knowledge, and imagination, but difficult 
 to bring under any rubric whatever ; all the elements, in 
 short, of a glorious intellect, but dashed together in such 
 wild arrangement that their order seems the very ideal of 
 confusion. The style and structure of the book appear 
 alike incomprehensible. The narrative is every now and 
 then suspended to make way for some " Extra-leaf," some 
 wild digression upon any subject but the one in hand ; the 
 language groans with indescribable metaphors and allusions 
 to all things human and divine; flowing onward, not like a 
 river, but like an inundation ; circling in complex eddies, 
 chafing and gurgling, now this way, now that, till the proper 
 current sinks out of view amid the boundless uproar. We 
 close the work with a mingled feeling of astonishment, 
 oppression, and perplexity ; and Richter stands before us 
 in brilliant, cloudy vagueness, a giant mass of intellect, but 
 without form, beauty, or intelligible purpose. 
 
 To readers who believe that intrinsic is inseparable from 
 superficial excellence, and that nothing can be good or 
 beautiful which is not to be seen through in a moment, 
 Richter can occasion little difficulty. They admit him to 
 be a man of vast natural endowments, but he is utterly 
 uncultivated, and without command of them ; full of mon- 
 strous affectation, the very High Priest of bad taste; knows 
 not the art of writing, scarcely that there is such an art; an 
 insane visionary floating forever among baseless dreams, 
 which hide the firm Earth from his view ; an intellectual 
 Polyphemus ; in short, a monstrum horrendum, informe, in- 
 gens, (carefully adding) cuilumen ademptum ; and they close 
 
RICHTER. 129 
 
 their verdict reflectively, with his own praiseworthy maxim : 
 " Providence has given to the English the empire of the 
 sea, to the French that of the land, to the Germans that of 
 — the air." 
 
 In this way the matter is adjusted ; briefly, comfortably, 
 and wrong. The casket was difficult to open ; did we know 
 by its very shape that there was nothing in it, that so we 
 should cast it into the sea ? Affectation is often singularity, 
 but singularity is not always affectation. If the nature and 
 condition of a man be really and truly, not conceitedly 
 and untruly, singular, so also will his manner be, so also 
 ought it to be. Affectation is the product of Falsehood, a 
 heavy sin, and the parent of numerous heavy sins ; let it be 
 severely punished, but not too lightly imputed. Scarcely 
 any mortal is absolutely free from it, neither, most probably, 
 is Richter; but it is in minds of another substance than his 
 that it grows to be the ruling product. Moreover, he is 
 actually not a visionary ; but, with all his visions, will be 
 found to see the firm Earth in its whole figures and relations 
 much more clearly than thousands of such critics, who too 
 probably can see nothing else. Far from being untrained 
 or uncultivated, it will surprise these persons to discover 
 that few men have studied the art of writing, and many other 
 arts besides, more carefully than he; that his Vorschule 
 der Msthetik (Introduction to ^Esthetics) abounds with deep 
 and sound maxims of criticism ; in the course of which, 
 many complex works, his own among others, are rigidly 
 and justly tried, and even the graces and minutest qualities 
 of style are by no means overlooked or unwisely handled. 
 
 Withal, there is something in Richter that incites us to a 
 second, to a third perusal. His works are hard to under- 
 stand, but they always have a meaning, and often a true 
 and deep one. In our closer, more comprehensive glance, 
 their truth steps forth with new distinctness, their error 
 
130 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 dissipates and recedes, passes into venality, often even 
 into beauty ; and at last the thick haze which encircled the 
 form of the writer melts away, and he stands revealed to us 
 in his own steadfast features, a colossal spirit, a lofty and 
 original thinker, a genuine poet, a high-minded, true, and 
 most amiable man. 
 
 I have called him a colossal spirit, for this impression 
 continues with us ; to the last we figure him as something 
 gigantic ; for all the elements of his structure are vast, and 
 combined together in living and life-giving, rather than in 
 beautiful or symmetrical order. His Intellect is keen, 
 impetuous, far-grasping, fit to rend in pieces the stubbornest 
 materials, and extort from them their most hidden and 
 refractory truth. In his Humor he sports with the highest 
 and the lowest, he can play at bowls with the sun and 
 moon. His Imagination opens for us the Land of Dreams ; 
 we sail with him through the boundless abyss, and the se- 
 crets of Space, and Time, and Life, and Annihilation, hover 
 round us in dim, cloudy forms, and darkness, and immensity, 
 and dread, encompass and overshadow us. Nay, in hand- 
 ling the smallest matter, he works it with the tools of a 
 giant. A common truth is wrenched from its old combi- 
 nations, and presented us in new, impassable, abysmal con- 
 trast with its opposite error. A trifle, some slender charac- 
 ter, some weakling humorist, some jest, or quip, or spirit- 
 ual toy, is shaped into most quaint, yet often truly living 
 form ; but shaped somehow as with the hammer of 
 Vulcan, with three strokes that might have helped to forge 
 an jEgis. The treasures of his mind are of a similar de- 
 scription with the mind itself; his knowledge is gathered 
 from all the kingdoms of Art, and Science, and Nature, and 
 lies round him in huge, unwieldy heaps. His very language 
 is Titanian ; deep, strong, tumultuous, shining with a thou- 
 sand hues, fused from a thousand elements, and winding in 
 labyrinthic mazes. 
 
RICHTER. 131 
 
 Among Richter's gifts, perhaps the first that strikes us as 
 truly great is his Imagination ; for he loves to dwell in the 
 loftiest and most solemn provinces of thought ; his works 
 abound with mysterious allegories, visions, and typical 
 adumbrations ; his Dreams, in particular, have a gloomy 
 vastness, broken here and there by wild, far-darting splen- 
 dor, and shadowy forms of meaning rise dimly from the 
 bosom of the void Infinite. Yet, if I mistake not, Humor 
 is his ruling quality, the quality which lives most deeply in 
 his inward nature, and most strongly influences his manner 
 of being. In this rare gift, for none is rarer than true hu- 
 mor, he stands unrivalled in his own country ; and, among 
 late writers, in every other. To describe humor is difficult 
 at all times, and would perhaps be still more difficult in 
 Richter's case. Like all his other qualities, it is vast, rude, 
 irregular ; often perhaps overstrained and extravagant ; yet 
 fundamentally it is genuine humor, the humor of Cervantes 
 and Sterne, the product not of Contempt, but of Love, not of 
 superficial distortion of natural forms, but of deep though 
 playful sympathy with all forms of Nature. It springs not 
 less from the heart than from the head ; its result is not 
 laughter, but something far kindlier and better; as it were, 
 the balm which a generous spirit pours over the wounds of 
 life, and which none but a generous spirit can give forth. 
 Such humor is compatible with tenderest and sublimest feel- 
 ings, or rather, it is incompatible with the want of them. 
 In Richter, accordingly, we find a true sensibility ; a soft- 
 ness, sometimes a simple, humble pathos, which works its 
 way into every heart. Some slight incident is carelessly 
 thrown before us ; we smile at it perhaps, but with a smile 
 more sad than tears; and the unpretending passage in its 
 meagre brevity sinks deeper into the soul than sentimental 
 volumes. 
 
 It is on the strength of this and its accompanying endow- 
 
132 RICHTER. 
 
 ments, that his main success as an artist depends. His 
 favorite characters have always a dash of the ridiculous in 
 their circumstances or their composition, perhaps in both ; 
 they are often men of no account; vain, poor, ignorant, 
 feeble ; and we scarcely know how it is that we love them ; 
 for the author all along has been laughing no less heartily 
 than we at their ineptitudes ; yet so it is, his Fibel, his Fix- 
 lein, his Siebenkas, even his Schmelzle, insinuate them- 
 selves into our affections ; and their ultimate place is closer 
 to our hearts than that of many more splendid heroes. This 
 is the test of true humor ; no wit, no sarcasm, no knowledge 
 will suffice ; not talent, but genius, will accomplish the result. 
 It is in studying these characters that we first convince our- 
 selves of Richter's claim to the title of a poet, of a true 
 creator. For, with all his wild vagueness, this highest 
 intellectual honor cannot be refused him. The figures and 
 scenes which he lays before us, distorted, entangled, inde- 
 scribable as they seem, have a true poetic existence ; for we 
 not only hear of them, but we see thern, afar off, by the 
 wondrous light, which none but the Poet, in the strictest 
 meaning of that word, can shed over them. 
 
 So long as humor will avail him, his management even of 
 higher and stronger characters may still be pronounced 
 successful ; but whenever humor ceases to be applicable, his 
 success is more or less imperfect. In the treatment of 
 heroes proper he is seldom completely happy. They shoot 
 into rugged exaggeration in his hands, their sensibility be- 
 comes too copious and tearful, their magnanimity too fierce, 
 abrupt, and thorough-going. In some few instances they 
 verge towards absolute failure ; compared with their less 
 ambitious brethren, they are almost of a vulgar cast ; with 
 all their brilliancy and vigor, too like that positive, deter- 
 minate, choleric, volcanic class of personages whom we 
 meet with so frequently in novels ; they call themselves 
 
RICHTER. 133 
 
 Men, and do their utmost to prove the assertion, but they 
 cannot make us believe it ; for after all their vaporing and 
 storming we see well enough that they are but Engines, 
 with no more life than the Freethinkers' model in Martinus 
 Scriblerus, the Nuremberg Man, who operated by a com- 
 bination of pipes and levers, and though he could breathe 
 and digest perfectly, and even reason as well as most coun- 
 try parsons, was made of wood and leather. In the general 
 conduct of such histories and delineations, Richter seldom 
 appears to advantage ; the incidents are often startling and 
 extravagant ; the whole structure of the story has a rugged, 
 broken, huge, artificial aspect, and will not assume the air 
 of truth. Yet its chasms are strangely filled up with the 
 costliest materials ; a world, a universe, of wit and knowl- 
 edge and fancy and imagination has sent its fairest pro- 
 ducts to adorn the edifice ; the rude and rent cyclopean 
 walls are resplendent with jewels and beaten gold ; rich, 
 stately foliage screens it, the balmiest odors encircle it; we 
 stand astonished if not captivated, delighted if not charmed, 
 by the artist and his art. 
 
 By a critic of his own country Richter has been named 
 a Western Oriental, an epithet which Goethe himself is at 
 the pains to reproduce and illustrate in his West-bstlichter 
 Divan. The mildness, the warm, all-comprehending love 
 attributed to Oriental poets may in fact be discovered in 
 Richter; not less their fantastic exaggeration, their brilliant 
 extravagance ; above all, their overflowing abundance, their 
 lyrical diffuseness, as if writing for readers who were alto- 
 gether passive, to whom no sentiment could be intelligible, 
 unless it were expounded and dissected and presented under 
 all its thousand aspects. In this last point Richter is too 
 much an Oriental ; his passionate outpourings would often 
 be more effective were they far briefer. Withal, however, 
 he is a Western Oriental ; he lives in the midst of cultiva- 
 
 VOL. II 12 
 
134 R1CHTER. 
 
 ted Europe in the nineteenth century ; he has looked with 
 a patient and piercing eye on its motley aspect ; and it is 
 this Europe, it is the changes of its many-colored life, that 
 are held up to us in his works. His subject is Life ; his 
 chosen study has been Man. Few have known the world 
 belter, or taken at once a clearer and a kindlier view of its 
 concerns. For Richter's mind is at peace with itself; a 
 mild, humane, beneficent spirit breathes through his works. 
 His very contempt, of which he is by no means incapable 
 or sparing, is placid and tolerant; his affection is warm, 
 tender, comprehensive, not dwelling among the high places 
 of the world, not blind tp its objects when found among the 
 poor and lowly. Nature in all her scenes and manifesta- 
 tions he loves with a deep, almost passionate love ; from the 
 solemn phases of the starry heaven to the simple floweret of 
 the meadow, his eye and his heart are open for her charms 
 and her mystic meanings. From early years, he tells us, 
 he may be said to have almost lived under the open sky ; 
 here he could recreate himself, here he studied, here he 
 often wrote. It is not with the feeling of a mere painter 
 and view-hunter that he looks on Nature ; but he dwells 
 amid her beauties and solemnities as in the mansion of a 
 Mother ; he finds peace in her majestic peace ; he worships, 
 in this boundless Temple, the great original of Peace, to 
 whom the Earth and the fulness thereof belongs. For 
 Richter does not hide from us that he looks to the Maker of 
 the Universe as to his Father ; that in his belief of man's 
 Immortality lies the sanctuary of his spirit, the solace of all 
 suffering, the solution of all that is mysterious in human des- 
 tiny. The wild freedom with which he treats the dogmas 
 of religion must not mislead us to suppose that he himself is 
 irreligious or unbelieving. It is Religion, it is Belief, in 
 whatever dogmas expressed, or whether expressed in any, 
 that has reconciled for him the contradictions of existence, 
 
RICHTER. 135 
 
 that has overspread his path with light, and chastened the 
 fiery elements of his spirit by mingling with them Mercy 
 and Humility. To many of my readers it may be surpris- 
 ing, that in this respect Richter is almost solitary among 
 the great minds of his country. These men too, with few 
 exceptions, seem to have arrived at spiritual peace, at full 
 harmonious. development of being; but their path to it has 
 been different. In Richter alone, among the great (and 
 even sometimes truly moral) writers of his day,* do we find 
 the Immortality of the Soul expressly insisted on, nay so 
 much as incidentally alluded to. This is a fact well merit- 
 ing investigation and reflection, but here is not the place for 
 treating it. 
 
 Of Richter's Works I have left myself no room for speak- 
 ing individually ; nor, except with large details, could the 
 criticism of them be attempted with any profit. His Novels, 
 published in what order I have not accurately learned, are 
 the Unsichtbare Loge (Invisible Lodge); Flegeljahre (Wild 
 Oats) ; Leben Fibels, Verfassers der Beinrodischen Fibel 
 (Life of Fibel ; or, to translate the spirit of it, Life of Primer, 
 Author of the Christ-church Primer) ; Leben des Quintus 
 Fixlein, and Schmelzle's Reise, here presented to the Eng- 
 lish reader ; Katzenbcrger^s Badereise, and the Jubel- 
 senior ; with two of much larger and more ambitious struc- 
 ture, Hesperus and Titan, each of which I have in its 
 turn seen rated as his masterpiece. The former only is 
 
 * The two venerable Jacobis belong, in character, if scarcely in 
 date, to an older school ; so also does Herder, from whom Richter 
 learned much, both morally and intellectually, and whom he seems 
 to have loved and reverenced beyond any other. Wieland is in- 
 telligible enough ; a skeptic in the style of Bolingbroke and Shaftes- 
 bury, what we call a French or Scotch skeptic, a rather shallow 
 species. Lessing also is a skeptic, but of a much nobler sort; a 
 doubter who deserved to believe. 
 
136 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 known to me. His work on Criticism has been mentioned 
 already ; he has also written on Education a volume named 
 Levana ; the Campanerthdl (Campanian Vale) I understand 
 to turn upon the Immortality of" the Soul. His miscellane- 
 ous and fugitive writings were long to enumerate. Essays, 
 fantasies, apologues, dreams, have appeared in various peri- 
 odicals ; the best of these performances, collected and re- 
 vised by himself, were published some years ago, under the 
 title of Herbst-B famine (Autumnal Flora). There is also 
 a Chrestomathie (what we should call Beauties) of Richter, 
 in four volumes. 
 
 To characterize these works would be difficult after the 
 fullest inspection ; to describe them to English readers 
 would be next to impossible. Whether poetical, philosophi- 
 cal, didactic, or fantastic, they seem all to be emblems, 
 more or less complete, of the singular mind where they orig- 
 inated. As a whole, the first perusal of them, more partic- 
 ularly to a foreigner, is almost infallibly offensive ; and 
 neither their meaning, nor their no-meaning, is to be dis- 
 cerned without long and sedulous study. They are a trop- 
 ical wilderness, full of endless tortuosities; but with the 
 fairest flowers, and the coolest fountains; now overarching 
 us with high, umbrageous gloom, now opening in long, gor- 
 geous vistas. We wander through them enjoying their 
 wild grandeur ; and by degrees our half-contemptuous 
 wonder at the Author passes into reverence and love. His 
 face was long hid from us ; but we see him, at length, in 
 the firm shape of spiritual manhood; a vast and most singu- 
 lar nature, but vindicating his singular nature by the force, 
 the beauty, and benignity which pervade it. In fine, we 
 joyfully accept him for what he is, and was meant to be. 
 The graces, the polish, the sprightly elegancies which belong 
 to men of lighter make, we cannot look for or demand from 
 him. His movement is essentially slow and cumbrous, for 
 
RICHTER. 137 
 
 he advances not with one faculty, but with a whole mind ; 
 with intellect, and pathos, and wit, and humor, and imagi- 
 nation, moving onward like a mighty host, motley, ponder- 
 ous, irregular, and irresistible. He is not airy, sparkling, 
 and precise ; but deep, billowy, and vast. The melody of 
 his nature is not expressed in common note-marks, or writ- 
 ten down by the critical gamut ; for it is wild and manifold ; 
 its voice is like the voice of cataracts and the sounding of 
 primeval forests. To feeble ears it is discord, but to ears 
 that understand it, deep, majestic music. 
 
 In his own country, we are told,* " Richter has been in 
 fashion, then out of fashion, then in it again; till at last he 
 has been raised far above all fashion," which indeed is his 
 proper place. What his fate will be in England is now to 
 be decided. Could much respected counsels from admirers 
 of Richter have availed with me, he had not at present been 
 put upon his trial. Predictions are unanimous that here he 
 will be condemned or even neglected. Of my countrymen, 
 in this small instance, I have ventured to think otherwise. 
 To those, it is true, " the space of whose Heaven does not 
 extend more than three ells," and who understand and per- 
 ceive that with these three ells the Canopy of the Universe 
 terminates, Richter will justly enough appear a monster, 
 
 * Franz Horn's Poesie und Bcredsamkeit der Deutschen (Poetry 
 and Eloquence of the Germans, from Luther's time to the present); 
 a woik which I am bound to recommend to all students of German 
 literature, as a valuable guide and indicator. Bating a certain not 
 altogether erroneous sectarianism in regard to religion ; and a cer- 
 tain janty priggishness of style, nay, it must be owned, a corre- 
 sponding priggishness of character, they will find in Horn a lively, 
 fair, well-read, and on the whole interesting and instructive critic. 
 The work is in three volumes ; to which a prior publication, entitled 
 Umrisse (Outlines), forms a fourth ; bringing down the History, or 
 rather Sketch, to the borders of the year 1819. 
 12* 
 
138 RICHTER. 
 
 from without the verge of warm three-ell Creation ; and 
 their duty with regard to him will limit itself to chasing 
 him forth of the habitable World, back again into his native 
 Chaos. If we judge of works of art, as the French do of 
 language, with a Cela ne se dit pas, Richter will not escape 
 his doom ; for it is too true that he respects not the majesty 
 of Use and Wont, and has said and thought much which 
 is by no means usually said and thought. In England, 
 however, such principles of literary jurisprudence are rarer. 
 To many, I may hope, even this dim glimpse of a spirit 
 like Richter's will be gratifying ; and if it can hardly be ex- 
 pected that their first judgment of him will be favorable, 
 curiosity may be awakened, and a second and a truer judg- 
 ment, on ampler grounds and maturer reflection, may follow. 
 His larger works must ultimately become known to us. 
 They deserve it better than thousands which have had that 
 honor. 
 
 Of the two Works here offered to the reader, little special 
 explanation is required. SchmelzWs Journey I have not 
 found noticed by any of his German critics; and must give 
 it on my own responsibility, as one of the most finished, as it 
 is at least one of the simplest, among his smaller humorous 
 performances. The Life of Fixlein, no stepchild in its own 
 country, seems nevertheless a much more immature, as it is 
 a much earlier composition. I select it not without reluc- 
 tance ; rather from necessity than preference. Its faults, I 
 am too sure, will strike us much sooner than its beauties ; 
 and even by the friendliest and most patient critic, it must 
 be admitted, that, among the latter, many of our Author's 
 highest qualities are by no means exhibited in full concen- 
 tration, nay, that some of them are wanting altogether, or, 
 at best, indicated rather than evinced. Let the reader ac- 
 cept it with such allowances ; not as Richter's best novel, 
 which it is far from being, but simply as his shortest com- 
 
RICHTER. 
 
 139 
 
 plete one ; not as a full impress of him, but as a faint out- 
 line, intended rather to excite curiosity than to satisfy it. 
 On the whole, Richter's is a mind peculiarly difficult to rep- 
 resent by specimen ; for its elements are complex and vari- 
 ous, and it is not more by quality than by quantity that it 
 impresses us. 
 
 Both Works I have endeavored to present in their full 
 dimensions, with all their appurtenances, strange as some of 
 these may appear. If the language seem rugged, hetero- 
 geneous, perplexed, the blame is not wholly mine. Richter's 
 style may be pronounced the most untranslatable, not in 
 German only, but in any other modern literature.* Let the 
 English reader fancy a Burton writing, not an Anatomy of 
 Melancholy, but a foreign romance, through the scriptory 
 organs of a Jeremy Bentham ! Richter exhausts all the 
 powers of his own most ductile language ; what in him was 
 overstrained and rude would naturally become not less but 
 more so in the hands of his translator. 
 
 For this, and many other offences of my Author, apolo- 
 gies might be attempted ; but much as I wish for a favor- 
 able sentence, it is not meet that Richter, in the Literary 
 Judgment-hall, should appear as a culprit ; or solicit suf- 
 
 * The following long title of a little German Book I may quote 
 by way of premunition : " K. Reinhold's Lexicon for Jean Paul's 
 Works, or Explanation of all the foreign Words and unusual Modes 
 of Speech which occur in his Writings ; with short Notices of the his- 
 torical Persons and Facts therein alluded to ; and plain German 
 Versions of the most difficult Passages in the Context. A necessary 
 Assistant for all who would read those Works icith Profit. First 
 volume, containing Levana. Leipzig, 1808." Unhappily, with 
 this First Volume, K. Reinhold seems to have stopped short. More 
 than once, in the following pages, have I longed for his help; and 
 been forced at last to rest satisfied with a meaning, and too imper- 
 fect a conviction that it was the right one. 
 
140 RICHTEH. 
 
 frages, which, if he cannot claim them, are unavailing. 
 With the hundred real, and the ten thousand seeming weak- 
 nesses of his cause, a fair trial is a thing he will court rather 
 than dread. 
 
ARMY-CHAPLAIN SCHMELZLE'S 
 JOURNEY TO FLATZ; 
 
 WITH 
 
 A RUNNING COMMENTARY OF NOTES. 
 BY JEAN PAUL. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This, I conceive, may be managed in two words. 
 
 The first word must relate to the Circular Letter of Army- 
 chaplain Schmelzle, wherein he describes to his friends his 
 Journey to the metropolitan city of Flatz ; after having, in 
 an Introduction, premised some proofs and assurances of 
 his valor. Properly speaking, the Journey itself has been 
 written purely with a view that his courageousness, impugn- 
 ed by rumor, may be fully evinced and demonstrated by 
 the plain facts which he therein records. Whether, in the 
 mean time, there shall not be found certain quick-scented 
 readers, who may infer, directly contrariwise, that his 
 breast is not everywhere bomb-proof, especially in the left 
 side ; on this point I keep my judgment suspended. 
 
 For the rest, I beg the judges of literature, as well as 
 their satellites, the critics of literature, to regard this Jour- 
 ney, for whose literary contents I, as Editor, am answerable, 
 solely in the light of a Portrait (in the French sense), a 
 little Sketch of Character. It is a voluntary or involuntary 
 comedy-piece, at which I have laughed so often, that I pur- 
 pose in time coming to paint some similar Pictures of Char- 
 acter myself. And, for the present, when could such a 
 little comic toy be more fitly imparted and set forth to the 
 world than in these very days, when the sound both of 
 heavy money and of light laughter has died away from 
 among us ; when, like the Turks, we count and pay merely 
 
144 R1CHTER. 
 
 with sealed purses^ and the coin within them has van- 
 ished ? 
 
 Despicable would it seem to me, if any clownish squire 
 of the goose-quill should publicly and censoriously demand 
 of me, in what way this self-cabinetpiece of Schmelzle's 
 has come into my hands. I know it well, and do not dis- 
 close it. This comedy-piece, for which I, at all events, as 
 my Bookseller will testify, draw the profit myself, I got hold 
 of so unblamably, that I await, with unspeakable composure, 
 what the Army-chaplain shall please to say against the pub- 
 lication of it, in case he say anything at all. My conscience 
 bears me witness, that I acquired this article, at least by 
 more honorable methods than are those of the learned per- 
 sons who steal with their ears, who, in the character of 
 spiritual auditory-thieves, and classroom cutpurses and 
 pirates, are in the habit of disloading their plundered Lec- 
 tures, and vending them up and down the country as pro- 
 ductions of their own. Hitherto, in my whole life, I have 
 stolen little, except now and then in youth some — glances. 
 
 The second word must explain or apologize for the singu- 
 lar form of this little Work, standing as it does on a sub- 
 stratum of Notes. I myself am not contented with it. Let 
 the World open, and look, and determine, in like manner. 
 But the truth is, this line of demarcation, stretching through 
 the whole book, originated in the following accident; certain 
 thoughts (or digressions) of my own, with which it was not 
 permitted me to disturb those of the Army-chaplain, and 
 which could only be allowed to fight behind the lines, in the 
 shape of Notes, I, with a view to conveniency and order, 
 had written down in a separate paper; at the same time, as 
 will be observed, regularly providing every Note with its 
 Number, and thus referring it to the proper page of the 
 main Manuscript. But, in the copying of the latter, I had 
 forgotten to insert the corresponding numbers in the Text 
 
 
schmelzle's journey to flaetz. 145 
 
 itself. Therefore, let no man, any more than I do, cast a 
 stone at my worthy Printer, in as much as he (perhaps in 
 the thought that it was my way, that I had some purpose in 
 it) took these Notes, just as they stood, pellmell, without ar- 
 rangement of Numbers, and clapped them under the Text ; 
 at the same time, by a praiseworthy, artful computation, 
 taking care at least, that, at the bottom of every page in 
 the Text, there should some portion of this glittering Note- 
 precipitate make its appearance. Well, the thing at any 
 rate is done, nay perpetuated, namely printed. After all, I 
 might almost partly rejoice at it. For, in good truth, had I 
 meditated for years (as I have done for the last twenty) 
 how to provide for my digression-comets new orbits, if not 
 focal suns, for my episodes new epopees, — I could scarce 
 possibly have hit upon a better or more spacious Limbo for 
 such Vanities than Chance and Printer here accidentally 
 offer me ready-made. I have only to regret that the thing 
 has been printed before I could turn it to account. Heav- 
 ens ! what remotest allusions (had I known it before print- 
 ing) might not have been privily introduced in every Text- 
 page and Note-number ; and what apparent incongruity in 
 the real congruity between this upper and under side of the 
 cards ! How vehemently and devilishly might one not have 
 cut aloft, and to the right and left, from these impregnable 
 casemates and covered-ways ; and what Icesio ultra dimi- 
 dium (injury beyond the half of the Text) might not, 
 with these satirical injuries, have been effected and com- 
 pleted ! 
 
 But Fate meant not so kindly with me ; of this golden 
 harvest-field of satire I was not to be informed till three 
 days before the Preface. 
 
 Perhaps, however, the writing world, by the little blue 
 flame of this accident, may be guided to a weightier acquisi- 
 tion, to a larger subterranean treasure, than I, alas, have 
 
 VOL. II. 13 
 
146 RICHTER. 
 
 dug up ! For, to the writer, there is now a way pointed out 
 of producing in one marbled volume a group of altogether 
 different works ; of writing in one leaf, for both sexes at the 
 same time, without confounding them, nay, for the five 
 faculties all at once, without disturbing their limitations ; 
 since now, instead of boiling up a vile, fermenting shove- 
 together, fit for nobody, he has nothing to do but draw his 
 note-lines or partition-lines ; and so on his five-story leaf 
 give board and lodging to the most discordant heads. Per- 
 haps one might then read many a book for the fourth time, 
 simply because every time one had read but a fourth part 
 of it. 
 
 On the whole, this Work has at least the property of 
 being a short one ; so that the reader, I hope, may almost 
 run through it, and read it at the bookseller's counter, with- 
 out, as in the case of thicker volumes, first needing to buy 
 it. And why, indeed, in this world of Matter should any- 
 thing whatever be great, except only what belongs not to it, 
 the world of Spirit ? 
 
 Jean Paul Fr. Richter. 
 
 Bayreuth, in the Hay and Peace Month, 1807. 
 
 
SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FLATZ. 
 
 Circular Letter of the proposed Catechetical Professor 
 Attila Schmelzle to his Friends ; containing some 
 Account of a Holidays' Journey to Flatz, with an Intro- 
 duction, touching his Flight, and his Courage as former 
 Army -chaplain. 
 
 Nothing can be more ludicrous, my esteemed Friends, 
 than to hear people stigmatizing a man as cowardly and 
 hare-hearted, who perhaps is struggling all the while with 
 precisely the opposite faults, those of a lion ; though indeed 
 the African lion himself, since the time of Sparrmann's 
 Travels, passes among us for poltroon. Yet this case is 
 mine, worthy Friends ; and I purpose to say a few words 
 thereupon, before describing my Journey. 
 
 You in truth are all aware that, directly in the teeth of 
 this calumny, it is courage, it is desperadoes (provided they 
 be not braggarts and tumultuous persons), whom I chiefly 
 venerate ; for example, my brother-in-law, the Dragoon, 
 who never in his life bastinadoed one man, but always a 
 whole social circle at the same time. How truculent was 
 my fancy, even in childhood, when I, as the parson was 
 toning away to the silent congregation, used to take it into 
 
 103. Good princes easily obtain good subjects ; not so easily good 
 subjects good princes ; thus Adam, in the state x>f innocence, ruled 
 over animals all tame and gentle, till simply through his means 
 they fell and grew savage. 
 
148 RICHTER. 
 
 my head : " How now, if thou shouldst start up from thy pew, 
 and shout aloud, I am here too, Mr. Parson !" and to paint 
 out this thought in such glowing colors, that, for very dread, 
 I have often been obliged to leave the church ! Anything 
 like Rugenda's battle-pieces ; horrid murder-tumults, sea- 
 fights or Stormings of Toulon, exploding fleets; and, in 
 my childhood, Battles of Prague on the harpsichord ; nay, 
 in short, every map of any remarkable scene of war ; these 
 are perhaps too much my favorite objects; and I read — 
 and purchase nothing sooner ; and doubtless, they might 
 lead me into many errors, were it not that my circumstances 
 restrain me. Now, if it be objected that true courage is 
 something higher than mere thinking and willing, then you, 
 my worthy friends, will be the first to recognize mine, when 
 it shall break forth into not barren and empty, but active 
 and effective words, while I strengthen my future Catechet- 
 ical Pupils, as well as can be done in a course of College 
 Lectures, and steel them into Christian heroes. 
 
 It is well known that, out of care for the preservation of 
 my life, I never walk within at least ten fields of any shore 
 full of bathers or swimmers ; merely because I foresee to a 
 certainty, that, in case one of them were drowning, I should 
 that moment (for the heart overbalances the head) plunge 
 after the fool to save him, into some bottomless depth or 
 other, where we should both perish. And if dreaming is 
 the reflex of waking, let me ask you, true Hearts, if you 
 have forgotten my relating to you dreams of mine, which no 
 Caesar, no Alexander or Luther, need have felt ashamed 
 of? Have I not, to mention a few instances, taken Rome 
 by storm ; and done battle with the Pope and the whole 
 elephantine body of the Cardinal College, at one and the 
 
 5. For a good Physician saves, if not always from the disease, at 
 least from a bad Physician. 
 
schmelzle's journey to flaetz. 149 
 
 same time ? Did I not once on horseback, while simply 
 looking at a review of military, dash headlong into a iatail- 
 lon quarre ; and then capture, in Aix-la-Chapelle, the 
 Peruke of Charlemagne, for which the town pays yearly 
 ten reichsthalers of barber-money ; and carrying it off to 
 Halberstadt von Gleim, there in like manner seize the Great 
 Frederick's Hat ; put both Peruke and Hat on my head, 
 and yet return home, after I had stormed their batteries and 
 turned the cannon against the cannoneers themselves? Did 
 I not once submit to be made a Jew of, and then be regaled 
 with hams ; though they were ape-hams on the Orinocco 
 (see Humboldt) ? And a thousand such things ; for I have 
 thrown the Consistorial President of Flatz out of the Palace 
 window ; those alarm-fulminators, sold by Heinrich Backo- 
 fen in Gotha, at six groschen the dozen, and each going off 
 like a cannon, I have listened to so calmly that the ful- 
 minators did not even awaken me ; and more of the like 
 sort. 
 
 But enough ! It is now time briefly to touch that farther 
 slander of my chaplainship, which unhappily has likewise 
 gained some circulation "in Flatz, but which, as Caesar did 
 Alexander, I shall now by my touch dissipate into dust. 
 Be what truth in it there can, it is still little or nothing. 
 Your great Minister and General in Flatz (perhaps the very 
 greatest in the world, for there are not many Schabackers) 
 may indeed, like any other great man, be turned against 
 me ; but not with the Artillery of Truth; for this Artillery 
 I here set before you, my good Hearts, and do you but fire 
 it off for my advantage ! The matter is this. Certain foolish 
 
 100. In books lie the Phoenix-ashes of a past Millennium and Par- 
 adise } but War blows, and much ashes are scattered away. 
 
 102. Dear Political or Religious Inquisitor! Art thou aware that 
 Turin tapers never rightly begin shining till thou breakest them, 
 and then they take fire ? 
 
 13* 
 
510 RICHTER. 
 
 rumors are afloat in the Flatz country, that I, on occasion 
 of some important battles, took leg-bail (such is their ple- 
 beian phrase), and that afterwards, on the chaplain's being 
 called for to preach a Thanksgiving sermon for the victory, 
 no chaplain whatever was to be found. The ridiculousness 
 of this story will best appear, when I tell you that I never 
 was in any action ; but have always been accustomed, sev- 
 eral hours prior to such an event, to withdraw so many 
 miles to the rear, that our men, so soon as they were beaten, 
 would be sure to find me. A good retreat is reckoned the 
 masterpiece in the art of war ; and at no time can a retreat 
 be executed with such order, force, and security, as just 
 before the battle, when you are not yet beaten. 
 
 It is true, I might perhaps, as expectant Professor of 
 Catechetics, sit still and smile at such nugatory speculations 
 on my courage ; for if by Socratic questioning I can ham- 
 mer my future Catechist Pupils into the habit of asking 
 questions in their turn, I shall thereby have tempered them 
 into heroes, seeing they have nothing to fight with but chil- 
 dren — (Catechists at all events, though dreading fire, have 
 no reason to dread light, since in our days, as in London 
 illuminations, it is only the unlighted windows that are 
 battered in ; whereas, in other ages, it was with nations and 
 light as it is with dogs and water ; if you give them none 
 for a long time, they at last get a horror at it) ; — and on 
 the whole, for Catechists, any park looks kindlier, and 
 smiles more sweetly, than a sulphurous park of artillery ; 
 and the Warlike Foot, which the age is placed on, is to 
 them the true Devil's cloven-foot of human nature. 
 
 But for my part I think not so ; almost as if the party 
 spirit of my Christian name, Attila, had passed into me 
 
 86. Very true! In youth we love and enjoy the most ill-assorted 
 friends, perhaps more than^ in old age, the best assorted. 
 
schmelzle's journey to flaetz. 151 
 
 more strongly than was proper, I feel myself impelled still 
 farther to prove my courageousness ; which, dearest Friends! 
 I shall here in a few lines again do. This proof I could 
 manage by mere inferences and learned citations. For 
 example, if Galen remarks that animals with large hind- 
 quarters are timid, I have nothing to do but turn round, and 
 show the enemy my back and what is under it, in order to 
 convince him that I am not deficient in valor, but in flesh. 
 Again, if by well-known experiences it has been found that 
 flesh-eating produces courage, I can evince that in this 
 particular I yield to no officer of the service ; though it is 
 the habit of these gentlemen not only to run up long scores 
 of roastmeat with their landlords, but also to leave them 
 unpaid, that so at every hour they may have an open doc- 
 ument in the hands of the enemy himself (the landlord), 
 testifying that they have eaten their own share (with some 
 of other people's too), and so put common butcher-meat on 
 a War-footing, living not like others by bravery, but for 
 bravery. As little have I ever, in my character of chaplain, 
 shrunk from comparison with any officer in the regiment, 
 who may be a true lion, and so snatch every sort of plun- 
 der, but yet, like this King of the Beasts, is afraid of fire ; 
 or who, — like King James of England,* that scampered off 
 at sight of drawn swords, yet so much the more gallantly, 
 before all Europe, went out against the storming Luther 
 with book and pen, — does, from a similar idiosyncrasy, 
 attack all warlike armaments, both by word and writing. 
 And here I recollect, with satisfaction, a brave sub-lieutenant, 
 whose confessor I was (he still owes me the confession- 
 
 128. In Love there are Summer Holidays; but in Marriage also 
 there are Winter Holidays, I hope. 
 
 * The good Professor of Catechetics is out here. Indignor quan- 
 doque bonus dormitat Schmelzlc. — Ed. 
 
152 RICHTEIl. 
 
 money), and who, in respect of stout-heartedness, had in 
 him perhaps something of that Indian dog which Alexander 
 had presented to him, as a sort of Dog-Alexander. By- 
 way of trying this crack dog, the Macedonian made various 
 heroic or heraldic beasts be let loose against him ; first a 
 stag; but the dog lay still ; then a sow ; he lay still ; then 
 a bear; he lay still. Alexander was on the point of con- 
 demning him ; when a lion was let forth ; the dog rose, and 
 tore the lion in pieces. So likewise the sub-lieutenant. A 
 challenger, a foreign enemy, a Frenchman, are to him only 
 stag, and sow, and bear, and he lies still in his place ; but 
 let his oldest enemy, his creditor, come and knock at his 
 gate, and demand of him actual smart-money for long by- 
 gone pleasures, thus presuming to rob him loth of past and 
 present ; the sub-lieutenant rises, and throws his creditor 
 down stairs. I, alas, am still standing by the sow ; and 
 thus, naturally enough, misunderstood. 
 
 Quo, says Livy, xii. 5, and with great justice, quo timoris 
 minus est, eo minus ferme periculi est, The less fear you 
 have, the less danger you are likely to be in. With equal 
 justice I invert the maxim, and say, The less the danger, 
 the smaller the fear; nay, there may be situations in which 
 one has absolutely no knowledge of fear ; and, among 
 these, mine is to be reckoned. The more hateful, therefore, 
 must that calumny about hare-heartedness appear to me. 
 
 To my Holidays' Journey I shall prefix a few facts, 
 which prove how easily foresight — that is to say, when a 
 person would not resemble the stupid marmot, that will 
 even attack a man on horseback — may pass for cowardice. 
 
 143. Women have weekly at least one active and passive day of 
 glory, the holy day, the Sunday. The higher ranks alone have more 
 Sundays than work-days ; as in great towns, you can celebrate 
 your Sunday on Friday with the Turks, on Saturday with the Jews, 
 and on Sunday with yourself. 
 
153 
 
 For the rest, I wish only that I could with equal ease wipe 
 away a quite different reproach, that of being a foolhardy 
 desperado ; though I trust, in the sequel, I shall be able to 
 advance some facts which invalidate it. 
 
 What boots the heroic arm, without a hero's eye ? The 
 former readily grows stronger and more nervous ; but the 
 latter is not so soon ground sharper, like glasses. Never- 
 theless, the merits of foresight obtain from the mass of men 
 less admiration (nay, I should say, more ridicule) than those 
 of courage. Whoso, for instance, shall see me walking 
 under quite cloudless skies with a wax-cloth umbrella over 
 me, to him I shall probably appear ridiculous, so long as he 
 is not aware that I carry this umbrella as a thunder-screen, 
 to keep off any bolt out of the blue heaven (whereof there 
 are several examples in the history of the Middle Ages) 
 from striking me to death. My thunder-screen, in fact, is 
 exactly that of Reimarus. On a long walking-stick I carry 
 the wax-cloth roof; from the peak of which depends a 
 string of gold-lace as a conductor; and this, by means of a 
 key fastened to it, which it trails along the ground, will lead 
 off every possible bolt, and easily distribute it over the 
 whole superficies of the Earth. With this Paratonnerre 
 Portatif in my hand, I can walk about for weeks under 
 the clear sky, without the smallest danger. This Diving- 
 bell, moreover, protects me against something else; against 
 shot. For who, in the latter end of Harvest, will give me 
 black on white that no lurking ninny of a sportsman some- 
 where, when I am out enjoying Nature, shall so fire off his 
 piece, at an angle of 45°, that, in falling down again, the 
 
 21. Schiller and Klopstock are Poetic Mirrors held up to the 
 Sun-god; the Mirrors reflect the Sun with such dazzling bright- 
 ness that you cannot find the Picture of the World imaged forth in 
 them. 
 
154 RICHTER. 
 
 shot needs only light directly on my crown, and so come 
 to the same as if I had been shot through the brain from a 
 side ? 
 
 It is bad enough, at any rate, that we have nothing to 
 guard us from the Moon ; which at present is bombarding 
 us with stones like a very Turk ; for this paltry little Earth's 
 train-bearer and errand-maid thinks, in these rebellious 
 times, that she too must begin, forsooth, to sling somewhat 
 against her Mother ! In good truth, as matters stand, any 
 young Catechist of feeling may go out o' nights, with whole 
 limbs, into the moonshine, a-meditating ; and ere long (in 
 the midst of his meditation the villanous Satellite hits him) 
 come home a pounded jelly. By Heaven ! new proofs of 
 courage are required of us on every hand ! No sooner have 
 we, with great effort, got thunder-rods manufactured, and 
 comet-tails explained away, than the enemy opens new 
 batteries in the Moon, or somewhere else in the Blue ! 
 
 Suffice one other story to manifest how ludicrous the 
 most serious foresight, with all imaginable inward courage, 
 often externally appears in the eyes of the many. Eques- 
 trians are well acquainted with the dangers of a horse that 
 runs away. My evil star would have it that I should once 
 in Vienna get upon a hack-horse ; a pretty enough honey- 
 colored nag, but old and hard-mouthed as Satan ; so that 
 the beast, in the next street, went off with me ; and this in 
 truth — only at a walk. No pulling, no tugging, took 
 effect ; I, at last, on the back of this Self-riding-horse, made 
 signals of distress, and cried : " Stop him, good people, for 
 God's sake stop him, my horse is off! " But these simple 
 persons seeing the beast move along as slowly as a Reichs- 
 hofrath law-suit, or the Daily Postwagen, could not in the 
 
 34. Women are like precious carved works of ivory ; nothing is 
 whiter and smoother, and nothing sooner grows yellow. 
 
155 
 
 least understand the matter, till I cried as if possessed : 
 " Stop him then, ye blockheads and joltheads ; don't you 
 see that I cannot hold the nag? " But now, to these noo- 
 dles the sight of a hard-mouthed horse going off with its 
 rider step by step seemed ridiculous rather than otherwise ; 
 half Vienna gathered itself like a comet-tail behind my 
 beast and me. Prince Kaunitz, the best horseman of the 
 century (the last), pulled up to follow me. I myself sat and 
 swam like a perpendicular piece of drift-ice on my honey- 
 colored nag, which stalked on, on, step by step ; a many- 
 cornered, red-coated letter-carrier was delivering his letters, 
 to the right and left, in the various stories, and he still 
 crossed over before me again, with satirical features, be- 
 cause the nag went along too slowly. The Schwanzschleu- 
 derer, or Train-dasher (the person, as you know, who 
 drives along the streets with a huge barrel of water, and 
 besplashes them with a leathern pipe of three ells long from 
 an iron trough), came across the haunches of my horse, 
 and, in the course of his duty, wetted both these and my- 
 self in a very cooling manner, though, for my part, I had 
 too much cold sweat on me already, to need any fresh 
 refrigeration. On my infernal Trojan Horse (only I myself 
 was Troy, not beridden but riding to destruction), I arrived 
 at Malzlein (a suburb of Vienna), or perhaps, so confused 
 were my senses, it might be quite another range of streets. 
 At last, late in the dusk, I had to turn into the Prater ; and 
 here, long after the Evening Gun, to my horror, and quite 
 against the police-rules, keep riding to and fro on my honey- 
 colored nag ; and possibly I might even have passed the 
 night on him, had not my brother-in-law, the Dragoon, ob- 
 
 72. The Half-learned is adored by the Quarter-learned ; the latter 
 by the Sixteenth-part-learned ; and so on ; but not the Whole- 
 learned by the Half-learned. 
 
156 RICHTER. 
 
 served my plight, and so found me still sitting firm as a 
 rock on my runaway steed. He made no ceremonies ; 
 caught the brute ; and put the pleasant question, why I 
 had not vaulted, and come off by ground-and-lofty tumb- 
 ling; though he knew full well that for this a wooden- 
 horse, which stands still, is requisite. However, he took me 
 down ; and so, after all this riding, horse and man got 
 home with whole skins and unbroken bones. 
 But now at last to my Journey ! 
 
 Journey to Flatz. 
 
 You are aware, my friends, that this Journey to Flatz 
 was necessarily to take place in Vacation time ; not only 
 because the Cattle-market, and consequently the Minister 
 and General von Schabacker, was there then ; but more 
 especially because the latter (as I had it positively from a 
 private hand) did annually, on the 23d of July, the market- 
 eve, about five o'clock, become so full of gaudium and 
 graciousness, that in many cases he did not so much snarl 
 on people, as listen to them, and grant their prayers. The 
 cause of this gaudium I had rather not trust to paper. In 
 short, my Petition, praying that he would be pleased to in- 
 demnify and reward me, as an unjustly deposed Army- 
 chaplain, by a Catechetical Professorship, could plainly be 
 presented to him at no better season than exactly about 
 five o'clock in the evening of the first dog-day. In less 
 than a week I had finished writing my Petition. As I 
 spared neither summaries nor copies of it, I had soon got so 
 
 35. Bien icouter c'est presque rdpondre, says Marivaux justly 
 of social circles ; but I extend it to round Councillor-tables and 
 Cabinet-tables, where reports are made, and the Prince listens. 
 
schmelzle's journey to flaetz. 157 
 
 far as to see the relatively best lying completed before me ; 
 when, to my terror, I observed that in this paper I had 
 introduced above thirty dashes, or breaks, in the middle of 
 my sentences ! Nowadays, alas, these stings shoot forth in- 
 voluntarily from learned pens, as tails of wasps. I debated 
 long within myself whether a private scholar could justly 
 be entitled to approach a minister with dashes, — greatly as 
 this level interlineation of thoughts, these horizontal note- 
 marks of poetical mimc-pieces, and these rope-ladders or 
 Achilles'-tendons of philosophical see-pieces, are at present 
 fashionable and indispensable ; but, at last, I was obliged 
 (as erasures may offend people of quality) to write my best 
 proof-petition over again ; and then to afflict myself for 
 another quarter of an hour over the name Attila Schmelzle, 
 seeing it is always my principle that this and the address of 
 the letter, the two cardinal points of the whole, can never 
 be written legibly enough. 
 
 First Stage ; from Neusattel to Vierstadten. 
 
 The 22d of July, or Wednesday, about five in the after- 
 noon, was now, by the way-bill of the regular Post-coach, 
 irrevocably fixed for my departure. I had still half a day 
 to order my house ; from which, for two nights and two 
 days and a half, my breast, its breast-work and palisado, 
 was now, along with my Self, to be withdrawn. Besides 
 this, my good wife Bergelchen, as I call my Teutoberga, 
 was immediately to travel after me, on Friday the 24th, in 
 order to see and to make purchases at the yearly Fair ; nay, 
 
 17. The Bed of Honor, since so frequently whole regiments lie 
 on it, and receive their last unction, and last honor but one, really 
 ought from time to time be new-filled, beaten, and sunned. 
 
 VOL. II.* 14 
 
158 RICHTER. 
 
 she was ready to have gone along with me, the faithful 
 spouse. I therefore assembled my little knot of domestics, 
 and promulgated to them the Household Law and Valedic- 
 tory Rescript, which, after my departure, in the first place 
 before the outset of my wife, and in the second place 
 after this outset, they had rigorously to obey ; explaining 
 to them especially whatever, in case of conflagrations, house- 
 breakings, thunder-storms, or transits of troops, it would 
 behove them to do. To my wife I delivered an inventory 
 of the best goods in our little Registership ; which goods 
 she, in case the house took fire, had, in the first place, to 
 secure. I ordered her in stormy nights (the peculiar thief- 
 weather) to put our Eolian harp in the window, that so any 
 villanous prowler might imagine I was fantasying on my 
 instrument, and therefore awake ; for like reasons, also, to 
 take the house-dog within doors by day, that he might sleep 
 then, and so be livelier at night. I farther counselled her to 
 have an eye on the focus of every knot in the panes of the 
 stable-window, nay, on every glass of water she might 
 set down in the house ; as I had already often recounted 
 to her examples of such accidental burning-glasses hav- 
 ing set whole buildings in flames. I then appointed 
 her the hour when she was to set out on Friday morn- 
 ing to follow me ; and recapitulated more emphatically 
 the household precepts which, prior to her departure, 
 she must afresh inculcate on her domestics. My dear, 
 heart-sound, blooming Berga answered her faithful lord, 
 as it seemed very seriously: "Go thy ways, little old 
 one ; it shall all be done as smooth as velvet. Wert thou 
 but away ! There is no end of thee ! " Her brother, my 
 brother-in-law, the Dragoon, for whom, out of complaisance, 
 
 120. Many a one becomes a free-spoken Diogenes, not when he 
 dwells in the Cask, but when the Cask dwells in him. 
 
schmelzle's journey to flaetz. 159 
 
 I had paid the coach-fare, in order to have in the vehicle 
 along with me a stout swordsman and hector, as spiritual 
 relative and bully-rock, so to speak; the Dragoon, I say, on 
 hearing these my regulations, puckered up (which I easily 
 forgave the wild soldier and bachelor) his sun-burnt face 
 considerably into ridicule, and said : " Were I in thy place, 
 sister, I should do what I liked, and then afterwards take a 
 peep into these regulation papers of his." 
 
 " Oh ! " answered I, " misfortune may conceal itself like 
 a scorpion in any corner ; I might say, we are like children, 
 who, looking at their gaily painted toy-box, soon pull off 
 the lid, and, pop ! out springs a mouse who has young ones. 11 
 
 " Mouse, mouse ! " said he, stepping up and down. " But, 
 good brother, it is five o'clock; and you will find, when you 
 return, that all looks exactly as it does to-day; the dog like 
 the dog, and my sister like a pretty woman ; allons done ! " 
 It was purely his blame that I, fearing his misconceptions, 
 had not previously made a sort of testament. 
 
 I now packed in two different sorts of medicines, heating 
 as well as cooling, against two different possibilities ; also 
 my old splints for arm or leg breakages, in case the coach 
 overset; and (out of foresight) two times the money I was 
 likely to need. Only here I could have wished, so uncertain 
 is the stowage of such things, that I had been an Ape with 
 cheek-pouches, or some sort of Opossum with a natural 
 bag, that so I might have reposited these necessaries of 
 existence in pockets which were sensitive. Shaving is a 
 task I always go through before setting out on journeys ; 
 having a rational mistrust against stranger blood-thirsty 
 barbers ; but, on this occasion, I retained my beard ; since, 
 however close shaved, it would have grown again by the 
 
 3. Culture makes whole lands, for instance Germany, Gaul, and 
 others, physically warmer, but spiritually colder. 
 
160 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 road to such a length that I could have fronted no Minister 
 and General with it. 
 
 With a vehement emotion, I threw myself on the pith- 
 heart of my Berga, and with a still more vehement one, tore 
 myself away ; in her, however, this our first marriage-sep- 
 aration seemed to produce less lamentation than triumph, 
 less consternation than rejoicing ; simply because she turned 
 her eye not half so much on the parting, as on the meeting, 
 and the journey after me, and the wonders of the Fair. 
 Yet she threw and hung herself on my somewhat long and 
 thin neck and body, almost painfully, being, indeed, a too 
 fleshy and weighty load, and said to me : " Whisk thee off 
 quick, my charming Attel (Attila), and trouble thy head 
 with no cares by the way, thou singular man ! A whiff or 
 two of ill luck we can stand, by God's help, so long as my 
 father is no beggar. And for thee, Franz," continued she, 
 turning with some heat to her brother, " I leave my Attel 
 on thy soul; thou well knowest, thou wild fly, what I will 
 do, if thou play the fool, and leave him anywhere in the 
 lurch." Her meaning here was good, and I could not take 
 it ill ; to you also, my Friends, her wealth and her open- 
 heartedness are nothing new. 
 
 Melted into sensibility, I said : " Now, Berga, if there be 
 a reunion appointed for us, surely it is either in Heaven or 
 in Flatz ; and I hope in God, the latter." With these words, 
 we whirled stoutly away. I looked round through the back- 
 window of the coach at my good little village of Neusattel, 
 and it seemed to me, in my melting mood, as if its steeples 
 were rising aloft like an epitaphium over my life, or over 
 my body, perhaps to return a lifeless corpse. " How will 
 it all be," thought I, " when thou at last, after two or three 
 
 1. The more Weakness the more Lying. Force goes straight; 
 any cannon-ball with holes or cavities in it goes crooked. 
 
SCHMELZLE S JOURNEY TO FLAETZ. 
 
 161 
 
 days, comest back ? " And now I noticed my Bergelchen 
 looking after us from the garret-window. I leaned far out 
 from the coach-door, and her falcon eye instantly distin- 
 guished my head ; kiss on kiss she threw with both hands 
 after the carriage, as it rolled down into the valley. " Thou 
 true-hearted wife," thought I, " how is thy lowly birth, by 
 thy spiritual new-birth, made forgetable, nay, remarkable !." 
 I must confess, the assemblage and conversational picnic 
 of the stagecoach was much less to my taste ; the whole of 
 them suspicious, unknown rabble, whom (as markets usually 
 do) the Flatz cattle-market was alluring by its scent. I 
 dislike becoming acquainted with strangers ; not so my 
 brother-in-law, the Dragoon ; who now, as he always does, 
 had in a few minutes elbowed himself into close quarters 
 with the whole ragamuffin posse of them. Beside me sat a 
 person, who, in all human probability, was a Harlot ; on her 
 breast a Dwarf intending to exhibit himself at the Fair ; 
 on the other side was a Ratcatcher gazing at me ; and a 
 Blind Passenger,* in a red mantle, had joined us down in 
 the valley. No one of them, except my brother-in-law, 
 pleased me. That rascals among these people would not 
 study me and my properties and accidents, to entangle me 
 in their snares, no man could be my surety. In strange 
 places, I even, out of prudence, avoid looking long up at 
 any jail-window ; because some losel, sitting behind the bars, 
 may in a moment call down out of mere malice : " How 
 goes it, comrade Schmelzle ? " or farther, because any lurk- 
 ing catchpole may fancy I am planning a rescue for some 
 
 88. Epictetus advises us to travel, hecause our old acquaintances 
 by the influence of shame impede our transition to higher virtues ; 
 as a bashful man will rather lay aside his provincial accent in some 
 
 * Passenger so placed in the huge German Postwagen, that he 
 cannot look out. — Ed. 
 
 14* 
 
162 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 confederate above. From another sort of prudence, little 
 different from this, I also make a point of never turning 
 round when any booby calls, Thief! after me. 
 
 As to the Dwarf himself, I had no objection to his travel- 
 ling with me whithersoever he pleased ; but he thought to 
 raise a particular delectation in our minds, by promising 
 that his Pollux and Brother in Trade, an extraordinary Giant 
 who was also making for the Fair to exhibit himself, would 
 by midnight, with his elephantine pace, infallibly overtake 
 the coach, and plant himself among us, or behind on the 
 outside. Both these noodles, it appeared, are in the habit 
 of going in company to fairs, as reciprocal exaggerators of 
 opposite magnitudes : the Dwarf is the convex magnifying- 
 glass of the Giant, the Giant the concave diminishing-glass 
 of the Dwarf. Nobody expressed much joy at the prospec- 
 tive arrival of this Anti-dwarf, except my brother-in-law, 
 who (if I may venture on a play of words) seems made, 
 like a clock, solely for the purpose of striking, and once 
 actually said to me, that " if in the Upper world he could 
 not get a soul to curry and towzle by a time, he would 
 rather go to the Under, where most probably there would 
 be plenty of cuffing and to spare." The Ratcatcher — be- 
 sides the circumstance that no man can prepossess us much 
 in his favor, who lives solely by poisoning, like this De- 
 stroying Angel of rats, this mouse-Atropos ; and also, which 
 is still worse, that such a fellow bids fair to become an in- 
 creaser of the vermin kingdom, the moment he may cease 
 to be a lessener of it — besides all this, I say, the present 
 Ratcatcher had many baneful features about him First, his 
 
 foreign quarter, and then return wholly purified to his own country- 
 men. In our days, people of rank and virtue follow this advice, 
 but inversely ; and travel because their old acquaintances, by the 
 influence of shame, would too much deter them from new sins. 
 
163 
 
 stabbing look, piercing you like a stiletto ; then the lean, 
 sharp, bony visage, conjoined with his enumeration of his 
 considerable stock of poisons ; then (for I hated him more 
 and more) his sly stillness, his sly smile, as if in some cor- 
 ner he noticed a mouse, as he would notice a man ! To me, 
 I declare, though usually I lake not the slightest exception 
 against people's looks, it seemed at last as if his throat were 
 a Dog-grotto, a Grotta del cane, his cheek-bones cliffs and 
 breakers, his hot breath the wind of a calcining furnace, 
 and his black, hairy breast a kiln for parching and roast- 
 ing. 
 
 Nor was I far wrong, I believe ; for soon after this, he 
 began quite coolly to inform the company, in which were a 
 dwarf and a female, that, in his time, he had, not without 
 enjoyment, run ten men through the body ; had with great 
 convenience hewed off a dozen men's arms ; slowly split 
 four heads, torn out two hearts, and more of the like sort; 
 while none of them, otherwise persons of spirit, had in the 
 least resisted. " But why ? " added he with a poisonous 
 smile, and taking the hat from his odious baldpate ; " I am 
 invulnerable. Let any one of the company that chooses lay 
 as much fire on my bare crown as he likes, I shall not 
 mind it." 
 
 My brother-in-law, the Dragoon, directly kindled his 
 tinder-box, and put a heap of the burning matter on the 
 Ratcatcher's pole ; but the fellow stood it, as if it had been 
 a mere picture of fire, and the two looked expectingly at 
 one another ; and the former smiled very foolishly, saying : 
 " It was simply pleasant to him, like a good warming- 
 
 32. Our Age (by some called the Paper Age, as if it were made 
 from the rags of some better dressed one) is improving in so far as 
 it now tears its rags rather into Bandages than into Papers ; although, 
 or because, the Rag-hacker (the Devil as they call it) will not alto- 
 
164 RICHTER. 
 
 plaster ; for this was always the wintry region of his 
 body." 
 
 Here the Dragoon groped a little on the naked scull, and 
 cried with amazement, that " it was as cold as a knee-pan." 
 
 But now the fellow, to our horror, after some preparations, 
 actually lifted off the quarter-scull and held it out to us, 
 saying : " He had sawed it off a murderer, his own having 
 accidentally been broken ;" and withal explained, that the 
 stabbing and arm-cutting he had talked of was to be under- 
 stood as a jest, seeing he had merely done it in the char- 
 acter of Famulus at an Anatomical Theatre. However the 
 jester seemed to rise little in favor with any of us ; and for 
 my part, as he put his brain-lid and sham-scull on again, I 
 thought to myself: " This dungbed-bell has changed its place, 
 indeed, but not the hemlock it was made to cover." 
 
 Farther, I could not but reckon it a suspicious circum- 
 stance, that he as well as all the company (the Blind Pas- 
 senger too) were making for this very Flatz, to which I 
 myself was bound. Much good I could not expect of this ; 
 and, in truth, turning home again would have been as pleas- 
 ant to me as going on, had I not rather felt a pleasure in 
 defying the future. 
 
 I come now to the red-mantled Blind Passenger; most 
 probably an Emigre or Refugie ; for he speaks German 
 not worse than he does French ; and his name, I think, 
 was Jean Pierre or Jean Paul, or some such thing, if 
 indeed he had any name. His red cloak, notwithstanding 
 this his identity of color with the Hangman, would in itself 
 have remained heartily indifferent to me ; had it not been 
 for this singular circumstance, that he had already five 
 
 gether be at rest. Meanwhile, if Learned Heads transform them- 
 selves into Books, Crowned Heads transform and coin themselves 
 into Government-paper. In Norway, according to the Universal 
 Indicator, the people have even paper-houses; and in many good 
 
schmelzle's journey to flaetz. 165 
 
 times, contrary to all expectation, come upon me in five 
 different towns (in great Berlin, in little Hof, in Coburg, 
 Meiningen, and Bayreuth), and, each of these times, had 
 looked at me significantly enough, and then gone his ways. 
 Whether this Jean Pierre is dogging me with hostile intent 
 or not, I cannot say ; but to our fancy, at any rate, no ob- 
 ject can be gratifying that thus, with corps of observation, 
 or out of loop-holes, holds and aims at us with muskets, 
 which for year after year it shall move to this side and that, 
 without our knowing on whom it is to fire. Still more 
 offensive did Redcloak become to me, when he began to 
 talk about his soft mildness of soul ; a thing which seemed 
 either to betoken pumping you or undermining you. 
 
 I replied : "Sir, I am just come, with my brother-in-law 
 here, from the field of battle (the last affair was at Pimpel- 
 stadt), and so perhaps am too much of a humor for fire, 
 pluck, and war-fury ; and to many a one, who happens to 
 have a roaring waterspout of a heart, it may be well if 
 his clerical character (which is mine) rather enjoins on him 
 mildness than wildness. However, all mildness has its 
 iron limit. If any thoughtless dog chance to anger me, in 
 the first heat of rage I kick my foot through him ; and after 
 me, my good brother here will perhaps drive matters twice 
 as far, for he is the man to do it. Perhaps it may be 
 singular ; but I confess, I regret to this day, that once when 
 a boy I received three blows from another, without tightly 
 returning them ; and I often feel as if I must still pay them 
 to his descendants. In sooth, if I but chance to see a child 
 running off like a dastard from the weak attack of a child 
 like himself, I cannot for my life understand his running, 
 
 German States, the Exchequer Collegium (to say nothing of the 
 Justice Collegium) keeps its own paper-mills, to furnish wrappage 
 enough for the meal of its wind-mills. I could wish, however, that 
 our Collegiums would take pattern from that Glass Manufactory at 
 
166 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 and can scarcely keep from interfering to save him by a 
 decisive knock." 
 
 The Passenger meanwhile was smiling, not in the best 
 fashion. He gave himself out for a Legations-Rath, and 
 seemed fox enough for such a post ; but a mad fox will, in 
 the long run, bite me as rabidly as a mad wolf will. For 
 the rest, I calmly went on with my eulogy on courage ; 
 only that, instead of ludicrous gasconading, which directly 
 betrays the coward, I purposely expressed myself in words 
 at once cool, clear, and firm. 
 
 " I am altogether for Montaigne's advice," said I : **.« Fear 
 nothing but fear.' " 
 
 "I again," replied the Legations-man, with useless wire- 
 drawing, "I should fear again that I did not sufficiently fear 
 fear, but continued too dastardly." 
 
 " To this fear also," replied I coldly, " I set limits. A 
 man, for instance, may not in the least believe in or be 
 afraid of ghosts ; and yet by night may bathe himself in 
 cold sweat, and this purely out of terror at the dreadful 
 fright he should be in (especially with what whiffs of epilep- 
 sies, falling-sicknesses, and so forth, he might be visited), in 
 case simply his own too vivid fancy should create any wild 
 fever-image, and hang it up in the air before him." 
 
 " One should not, therefore," added my brother-in-law 
 the Dragoon, contrary to his custom, moralizing a little, 
 "one should not bamboozle the poor sheep, man, with any 
 ghost-tricks; the henheart may die on the spot." 
 
 A loud storm of thunder overtaking the stagecoach 
 altered the discourse. You, my Friends, knowing me as a 
 
 Madrid, in which (according to Baumgfirtner) there were indeed 
 nineteen clerks stationed, but also eleven workmen. 
 
 2. In his Prince, a soldier reverences and obeys at once his Prince 
 and his Generalissimo; a Citizen only his Prince. 
 
167 
 
 man not quite destitute of some tincture of Natural Philo- 
 sophy, will easily guess my precautions against thunder. I 
 place myself on a chair in the middle of the room (often, 
 when suspicious clouds are out, I stay whole nights on it), 
 and by careful removal of all conductors, rings, buckles, 
 and so forth, I here sit thunder-proof, and listen with a cool 
 spirit to this elemental music of the cloud-kettledrum. These 
 precautions have never harmed me, for I am still alive at 
 this date ; and to the present hour I congratulate myself on 
 once hurrying out of church, though I had confessed but 
 the day previous; and running, without more ceremony, 
 and before I had received the sacrament, into the charnel- 
 house, because a heavy thunder-cloud (which did, in fact, 
 strike the churchyard lindentree) was hovering over it. So 
 soon as the cloud had disloaded itself, I returned from the 
 charnel-house into the church, and was happy enough to 
 come in after the Hangman (usually the last), and so still 
 participate in the Feast of Love. 
 
 Such, for my own part, is my manner of proceeding ; 
 but in the full stagecoach I met with men to whom Natural 
 Philosophy was no philosophy at all. For when the clouds 
 gathered dreadfully together over our coach-canopy, and 
 sparkling, began to play through the air, like so many fire-flies, 
 and I at last could not but request that the sweating coach- 
 conclave would at least bring out their watches, rings, money, 
 and such like, and put them all into one of the carriage- 
 pockets, that none of us might have a conductor on his 
 body ; not only would no one of them do it ; but my own 
 
 45. Our present writers shrug their shoulders most at those on 
 whose shoulders they stand; and exalt those most who crawl up 
 along them. 
 
 103. The Great perhaps take as good charge of their posterity as 
 the Ants; the eggs once laid, the male and female Ants fly about 
 their business, and confide them to the trusty working-Ants. 
 
168 RICHTER. 
 
 brother-in-law the Dragoon even sprang out, with naked 
 drawn sword, to the coach-box, and swore that he would 
 conduct the thunder all away himself. Nor do I know 
 whether this desperate mortal was not acting prudently ; for 
 our position within was frightful, and any one of us might 
 every moment be a dead man. At last, to crown all, I got 
 into a half altercation with two of the rude members of our 
 leathern household, the Poisoner and the Harlot ; seeing, by 
 their questions, they almost gave me to understand, that, in 
 our conversational picnic, especially with the Blind Passen- 
 ger, I had not always come off with the best share. Such 
 an imputation wounds your honor to the quick; and in my 
 breast there was a thunder louder than that above us. How- 
 ever, I was obliged to carry on the needful exchange of 
 sharp words as quietly and slowly as possible ; and I quar- 
 relled softly, and in a low tone, lest in the end a whole 
 coachful of people, set in arms against each other, might get 
 into heat and perspiration ; and so, by vapor steaming 
 through the coachroof, conduct the too near thunderbolt 
 down into the midst of us. At last I laid before the com- 
 pany the whole theory of Electricity in clear words, but 
 low and slow (striving to avoid all emission of vapor) ; and 
 especially endeavored to frighten them away from fear. 
 For, indeed, through fear, the stroke — nay, two strokes, 
 the electric or the apoplectic — might hit anyone of us; 
 since in Erxleben and Reimarus it is sufficiently proved 
 that violent fear, by the transpiration it causes, may attract 
 the lightning. I accordingly, in some fear of my own and 
 other people's fear, represented to the passengers that now, 
 in a coach so hot. and crowded, with a drawn sword on the 
 
 10. And does Life offer us, in regard to our ideal hopes and 
 purposes, anything but a prosaic, unrhymed, unmetrical Transla- 
 tion ? 
 
169 
 
 coachbox piercing the very lightning, with the thunder- 
 cloud hanging over us, and even with so many transpirations 
 from incipient fear ; in short, with such visible danger on 
 every hand, they must absolutely fear nothing, if they 
 would not, all and sundry, be smitten to death in a few 
 minutes. 
 
 " O Heaven! " cried I, "Courage! only courage! No 
 fear, not even fear of fear ! Would you have Providence 
 to shoot you here sitting, like so many hares hunted into a 
 pinfold ? Fear, if you like, when you are out of the coach ; 
 fear to your heart's content in other places, where there is 
 less to be afraid of; only not here, not here ! " 
 
 I shall not determine — since among millions scarcely 
 one man dies by thunder-clouds, but millions perhaps by 
 snow-clouds, and rain-clouds, and thin mist — whether 
 my Coach-sermon could have made any claim to a prize 
 for man-saving; however, at last, all uninjured, and driving 
 towards a rainbow, we entered the town of Vierstadten, 
 where dwelt a Postmaster, in the only street which the place 
 had. 
 
 Second Stage ; from Vierstadten to Niederschona. 
 
 The Postmaster was a churl and a striker ; a class of 
 mortals whom I inexpressibly detest, as my fancy always 
 whispers to me, in their presence, that by accident or dis- 
 like I might happen to put on a scornful or impertinent 
 
 78. Our German frame of Government, cased in its harness, 
 had much difficulty in moving, for the same reason why Beetles 
 cannot fly, when their wings have wing-shells, of very sufficient 
 strength, and — grown together. 
 
 8. Constitutions of Government are like highways ; on a new 
 and quite untrodden one, where every carriage helps in the pro- 
 
 VOL. II. 15 
 
170 RICHTER. 
 
 look, and hound these mastiffs on my own throat ; and so, 
 from the very first, I must incessantly watch them. Hap- 
 pily, in this case (supposing I even had made a wrong 
 face), I could have shielded myself with the Dragoon ; for 
 whose giant force such matters are a tidbit. This brother- 
 in-law of mine, for example, cannot pass any tavern where 
 he hears a sound of battle, without entering, and, as he 
 crosses the threshold, shouting: "Peace, dogs!" — and 
 therewith, under show of a peace deputation, he directly 
 snatches up the first chair-leg in his hand, as if it were an 
 American peace-calumet, and cuts to the right and left 
 among the belligerent powers, or he gnashes the hard heads 
 of the parties together (he himself takes no side), catching 
 each by the hind-lock. In such cases the rogue is in 
 Heaven ! 
 
 I, for my part, rather avoid discrepant circles than seek 
 them ; as I likewise avoid all dead or killed people. The 
 prudent man easily foresees what is to be got by them ; 
 either vexatious and injurious witnessing, or often even 
 (when circumstances conspire) painful investigation, and 
 suspicions of your being an accomplice. 
 
 In Vierstadten nothing of importance presented itself, 
 except — to my horror — a dog without tail, which came 
 running along the town or street. In the first fire of pas- 
 sion at this sight, I pointed it out to the passengers, and then 
 put the question, whether they could reckon a system of 
 Medical Police well arranged, which, like this of Vierstad:en, 
 allowed dogs openly to scour about, when their tails were 
 
 cess of bruising and smoothing, you are as much jolted and pitched, 
 as on an old worn-out one, full of holes. What is to be done then ? 
 Travel on. 
 
 3. In Criminal Courts, murdered children are often represented 
 as still-born ; in Anticritiques, still-born as murdered. 
 
schmelzle's journey to flaetz. 171 
 
 wanting. u What am I to do," said I, " when this mem- 
 ber is cut away, and any such beast conies running towards 
 me, and I cannot, either by the tail being cocked up or 
 being drawn in, since the whole is snipt off, come to any 
 conclusion whether the vermin is mad or not? In this 
 way, the most prudent man may be bit, and become rabid, 
 and so make shipwreck purely for want of a tail-compass." 
 
 The blind Passenger (he now got himself inscribed as a 
 Seeing one, God knows for what objects) had heard my ob- 
 servation; which he now spun out in my presence almost 
 into ridicule, and at last awakened in me the suspicion, that, 
 by an overdone flattery in imitating my style of speech, 
 he meant to banter me. " The Dog-tail," said he, " is, in 
 truth, an alarm-beacon, and finger-post for us, that we come 
 not even into the outmost precincts of madness ; cut away 
 from Comets their tails, from Bashaws theirs, from Crabs 
 theirs (outstretched it denotes that they are burst) ; and in 
 the most dangerous predicaments of life, we are left without 
 clew, without indicator, without hand in margine ; and we 
 perish not so much as knowing how." 
 
 For the rest, this stage passed over without quarrelling 
 or peril. About ten o'clock, the whole party, including 
 even the Postilion, myself excepted, fell asleep. I indeed 
 pretended to be sleeping, that I might observe whether 
 some one, for his own good reasons, might not also be 
 pretending it. But all continued snoring ; the moon threw 
 its brightening beams on nothing but downpressed eyelids. 
 
 I had now a glorious opportunity of following Lavater's 
 counsel, to apply the physiognomical ellwand specially to 
 sleepers, since sleep, like death, expresses the genuine form 
 
 101. Not only were the Rhodians, from their Colossus, called 
 Colossians; but also innumerable Germans are, from their Luther, 
 called Lutherans. 
 
172 RICHTER. 
 
 in coarser lines. Other sleepers not in stagecoaches I 
 think it less advisable to mete with this ellwand ; having 
 always an apprehension lest some fellow, but pretending to 
 be asleep, may, the instant I am near enough, start up as in 
 a dream, and deceitfully plant such a knock on the physio- 
 gnomical mensurator's own facial structure, as to exclude it 
 forever from appearing in any Physiognomical Fragments 
 (itself being reduced to one), either in the stippled or line 
 style. Nay, might not the most honest sleeper in the world, 
 just while you are in hand with his physiognomical dissec- 
 tion, lay about him, spurred on by honor in some cudgelling- 
 scene he may be dreaming; and in a few instants of clap- 
 perclawing, and kicking, and trampling, lull you into a 
 much more lasting sleep than that out of which he was 
 awakened ? 
 
 In my Adumbrating Magic-lantern, as I have named 
 the Work, the whole physiognomical contents of this same 
 sleeping stagecoach will be given to the world. There I shall 
 explain to you at large how the Poisoner, with the murder- 
 cupola, appeared to me devil-like ; the Dwarf old-child-like ; 
 the Harlot languidly shameless ; my Brother-in-law peace- 
 fully satisfied, with revenge or food ; and the Legations- 
 Rath, Jean Pierre, Heaven only knows why, like a half 
 angel, — though, perhaps, it might be because only the fair 
 body, not the other half, the soul, which had passed away in 
 sleep, was affecting me. 
 
 88. Hitherto I have always regarded the Polemical writings of 
 our present philosophic and aesthetic Idealist Logic-buffers, — in 
 which, certainly, a few contumelies, and misconceptions, and mis- 
 conclusions do make their appearance, — rather on the fair side; 
 observing in it merely an imitation of classical Antiquity, in par- 
 ticular of the ancient Athletes, who (according to Schottgen) be- 
 smeared their bodies with mud, that they might not be laid hold of; 
 and filled their hands with sand, that they might lay hold of their 
 antagonists. 
 
SCHMELZLE S JOURNEY TO FLAETZ. 
 
 173 
 
 I had almost forgotten to mention, that, in a little village, 
 while my Brother-in-law and the Postilion were silting at 
 their liquor, I happily fronted a small terror, Destiny having 
 twice been on my side. Not far from a Hunting Box, be- 
 side a pretty clump of trees, I noticed a white tablet, with a 
 black inscription on it. This gave me hopes that perhaps 
 some little monumental piece, some pillar of honor, some 
 battle memento, might here be awaiting me. Over an 
 untrodden flowery tangle I reach the black on white ; and to 
 my horror and amazement I decypher in the moonshine, 
 Beware of Spring- guns ! Thus was I standing perhaps 
 half a nail's breadth from the trigger, with which, if I but 
 stirred my heel, I should shoot myself off, like a forgotten 
 ramrod, into the other world, beyond the verge of Time ! 
 The first thing I did was to slutch down my toe-nails, to 
 bite, and, as it were, eat myself into the ground with them ; 
 since I might at least continue in warm life so long as I 
 pegged my body firmly in beside the Atropos-scissors and 
 hangman's block, which lay beside me. Then I endeavored 
 to recollect by what steps the Fiend had led me hither un- 
 shot, but in my agony I had perspired the whole of it, and 
 could remember nothing. In the Devil's village, close at 
 hand, there was no dog to be seen and called to, who might 
 have plucked me from the water; and my Brother-in-law 
 and the Postilion were both carousing with full can. How- 
 ever, I summoned my courage and determination ; wrote 
 down on a leaf of my pocket-book my last will, the acciden- 
 tal manner of my death, and my dying remembrance of 
 Berga ; and then, with full sails, flew helterskelter through 
 the midst of it the shortest way ; expecting at every step 
 
 103. Or are all Mosques, Episcopal-churches, Pagodas, Cha- 
 pels-of-Ease, Tabernacles, and Pantheons, anything else than the 
 Ethnic Forecourt of the Invisible Temple and its Holy of Holies? 
 15* 
 
174 RICHTER. 
 
 to awaken the murderous engine, and thus to clap over my 
 still long candle of life the bonsoir, or extinguisher, with my 
 own hand. However, I got off without shot. In the tavern, 
 indeed, there was more than one fool to laugh at me ; be- 
 cause, forsooth, what none but a fool could know, this No- 
 tice had stood there for the last ten years without any gun, 
 as guns often do without any notice. But so it is, my 
 Friends, with our game-police, which warns against all 
 things, only not against warnings. 
 
 For the rest, throughout the whole stage, I had a con- 
 stant source of altercation with the coachman, because he 
 grudged stopping perhaps once in the quarter of an hour, 
 when I chose to come out for a natural purpose. Unhappily, 
 in truth, one has little reason to expect water-doctors among 
 the postilion class, since Physicians themselves have so sel- 
 dom learned from Haller's large Physiology that a postpone- 
 ment of the above operation will precipitate devilish stone- 
 ware, and at last precipitate the proprietor himself; this stone- 
 manufactory being generally concluded, not by the Lithoto- 
 mist, but by Death. Had postilions read that Tycho Brahe 
 died like a bombshell by bursting, they would rather pull up 
 for a moment ; with such unlooked-for knowledge, they 
 would see it to be reasonable that a man, though expecting 
 some time to carry his death-stone on him, should not in- 
 cline, for the time being, to carry it in him. Nay, have I 
 not often, at Weimar, in the longest concluding scenes of 
 Schiller, run out with tears in my eyes ; purely that, while 
 his Minerva was melting me on the whole, I might not by 
 the Gorgon's head on her breast be partially turned to 
 stone ? And did I not return to the weeping play-house, 
 
 40. The common man is copious only in narration, not in reason- 
 ing j the cultivated man is brief only in the former, not in the 
 latter ; because the common man's reasons are a sort of sensations, 
 
175 
 
 and fall into the general emotion so much the more briskly, 
 as now I had nothing to give vent to but my heart ? 
 Deep in the dark we arrived at Niederschona. 
 
 Third Stage ; from Niederschona to Fldtz. 
 
 While I am standing at the Posthouse musing, with my 
 eye fixed on my portmanteau, comes a beast of a watchman, 
 and bellows and brays in his night-tube so close by my ear 
 that I start back in trepidation, I whom even a too hasty 
 accosting will vex. Ts there no medical police, then, against 
 such efflated hour-fulminators and alarm-cannon, by which 
 notwithstanding no gunpowder cannon are saved ? In my 
 opinion nobody should be invested with the watchman-horn 
 but some reasonable man, who had already blown himself 
 into an asthma, and who would consequently be in case to 
 sing out his hour-verse so low that you could not hear it. 
 
 What I had long expected, and the Dwarf predicted, now 
 took place .; deeply stooping, through the high Posthouse 
 door, issued the Giant, and raised in the open air a most 
 unreasonably high figure, heightened by the ell-long bonnet 
 and feather on his huge jobbernowl. My Brother-in-law, 
 beside him, looked but like his son of fourteen years ; the 
 Dwarf like his lap-dog waiting for him on its two hind legs. 
 44 Good friend," said my bantering Brother-in-law, leading 
 him towards me and the stagecoach, "just step softly in, we 
 shall all be happy to make room for you. Fold yourself 
 neatly together, lay your head on your knee, and it will do." 
 
 which, as well as things visible, he merely looks at; by the culti- 
 vated man, again, both reasons and things visible are rather thought 
 than looked at. 
 
 9. In any national calamity the ancient Egyptians took revenge 
 on the god Typhon, whom they blamed for it, by hurling his favor- 
 
176 RICHTER. 
 
 The unseasonable banlerer would willingly have seen the 
 almost stupid Giant (of whom he had soon observed that his 
 brain was no active substance, but in the inverse ratio of his 
 trunk) squeezed in among us in the post-chest, and lying 
 kneaded together like a sand-bag before him. " Won't do ! 
 Won't do ! " said the Giant, looking in. " The gentleman 
 perhaps does not know," said the Dwarf, " how big the 
 Giant is ; and so he thinks that because I go in — But that 
 is another story ; J will creep into any hole, do but tell me 
 where." 
 
 In short, there was no resource for the Postmaster and 
 the Giant, but that the latter should plant himself behind, in 
 the character of luggage, and there lie bending down like a 
 weeping willow over the whole vehicle. To me such a 
 back-wall and rear-guard could not be particularly gratify- 
 ing ; and I may refer it (I hope) to any one of you, ye 
 Friends, if with such ware at your back you would not, as 
 clearly and earnestly as I, have considered what manifold 
 murderous projects a knave of a Giant behind you, a pur- 
 suer in all senses, might not maliciously attempt; say, that 
 he broke in and assailed you by the back-window, or with 
 Titanian strength laid hold of the coach-roof and demolished 
 the whole party in a lump. However, this Elephant (who 
 indeed seemed to owe the similarity more to his overpower- 
 ing mass than to his quick light of inward faculty), crossing 
 his arms over the top of the vehicle, soon began to sleep 
 
 ites, the Asses, down over rocks. In similar wise have countries of 
 a different religion now and then taken their revenge. 
 
 70. Let Poetry veil itself in Philosophy, but only as the latter 
 does in the former. Philosophy in poetized Prose resembles those 
 tavern drinking-glasses, encircled with party-colored wreaths of 
 figures, which disturb your enjoyment both of the drink, and 
 (often awkwardly eclipsing and covering each other) of the carving 
 also. 
 
schmelzle's journey to flaetz. 177 
 
 and snore above us ; an Elephant, of whom, as I more and 
 more joyfully observed, my brother-in-law, the Dragoon, 
 could easily be the tamer and bridle-holder, nay, had al- 
 ready been so. 
 
 As more than one person now felt inclined to sleep, but 
 I, on the contrary, as was proper, to wake, I freely offered 
 my seat of honor, the front place in the coach (meaning 
 thereby to abolish many little flaws of envy in my fellow- 
 passengers), to such persons as wished to take a nap there- 
 on. The Legations-man accepted the offer with eagerness, 
 and soon fell asleep there sitting, under the Titan.* To me 
 this sort of coach-sleeping of a diplomatic charge d'affaires, 
 remained a thing incomprehensible. A man, that in the 
 middle of a stranger and often barbarously-minded company 
 permits himself to slumber, may easily, supposing him to 
 talk in his sleep and coach, (think of the Saxon minister! 
 before the Seven Years War ! ) blab out a thousand secrets, 
 and crimes, some of which, perhaps, he has not committed. 
 Should not every minister, ambassador, or other man of 
 honor and rank, really shudder at the thought of insanity or 
 violent fevers ; seeing no mortal can be his surety that he 
 shall not in such cases publish the greatest scandals, of 
 which, it may be, the half are lies ? 
 
 At last, after the long July night, we passengers, together 
 with Aurora, arrived in the precincts of Flatz. I looked 
 
 158. Governments should not too often change the penny-trumps 
 and child's-drums of the Poets for the regimental trumpet and fire- 
 drum ; on the other hand, good subjects should regard many a 
 
 * Titan is also the title of this Legations-Rath Jean Pierre or 
 Jean Paul (Friedrich Richter)'s chief novel. — Ed. 
 
 t Brilhl, I suppose ; but the historical edition of the matter is, 
 that Bruhl's treasonable secrets were come at by the more ordi- 
 nary means of wax impressions of his keys. — Ed. 
 
178 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 with a sharp yet moistened eye at the steeples. I believe, 
 every man who has anything decisive to seek in a town, 
 and to whom it is either to be a judgment-seat of his hopes, 
 or their anchoring-slation, either a battle-field or a sugar- 
 field, first and longest directs his eye on the steeples of the 
 town, as upon the indexes and balance-tongues of his future 
 destiny ; these artificial peaks, which, like natural ones, are 
 the thrones of our Future. As I happened to express 
 myself on this point perhaps too poetically to Jean Pierre, 
 he answered, with sufficient want of taste : " The steeples 
 of such towns are indeed the Swiss Alpine peaks, on which 
 we milk and manufacture the Swiss cheese of our Future." 
 Did the Legations-Peter mean with this style to make me 
 ridiculous, or only himself? Determine ! 
 
 u Here is the place, the town," said I in secret, " where 
 to-day much and for many years is to be determined, where 
 thou, this evening, about five o'clock, art to present thy pe- 
 tition and thyself. May it prosper ! May it be successful ! 
 Let Flatz, this arena of thy little efforts among the rest, 
 become a building-space for fair castles and air-castles to 
 two hearts, thy own and thy Berga's!" 
 
 At the Tiger Inn I alighted. 
 
 First Day in Flatz. 
 
 No mortal, in my situation at this Tiger-hotel, would 
 have triumphed much in his more immediate prospects. I, 
 as the only man known to me, especially in the way of love 
 
 princely drum-tendency simply as a disease, in which the patient, 
 by air insinuating under the skin, has got dreadfully swoln. 
 
 89. In great towns, a stranger, for the first day or two after his 
 arrival, lives purely at his own expense, in an inn ; afterwards, in 
 
schmelzle's journey to flaetz. 179 
 
 (of the runaway Dragoon anon!), looked out from the win- 
 dows of the overflowing Tnn, and down on the rushing sea 
 of marketers, and very soon began to reflect, that, except 
 Heaven and the rascals and murderers, none knew how 
 many of the latter two classes were floating among the tide ; 
 purposing perhaps to lay hold of the most innocent strang- 
 ers, and in part cut their purses, in part their throats. My 
 situation had a special circumstance against it. My brother- 
 in-law, who still comes plump out with everything, had 
 mentioned that I was to put up at the Tiger. O Heaven, 
 when will such people learn to be secret, and to cover even 
 the meanest pettinesses of life under mantles and veils, were 
 it only that a silly mouse may as often give birth to a moun- 
 tain, as a mountain to a mouse ! The whole rabble of the 
 stagecoach stopped at the Tiger ; the Harlot, the Ratcatcher, 
 Jean Pierre, the Giant, who had dismounted at the Gate of 
 the town, and carrying the huge block-head of the Dwarf 
 on his shoulders as his own (cloaking over the deception by 
 his cloak), had thus, like a ninny, exhibited himself gratis 
 by half a dwarf more gigantic than he could be seen for 
 money. 
 
 And now for each of the Passengers, the question was 
 how he could make the Tiger, the heraldic emblem of the 
 Inn, his prototype ; and so, what lamb he might suck the 
 blood of, and tear in pieces, and devour. My brother-in- 
 law too left me, having gone in quest of some horse-dealer ; 
 
 the houses of his friends, without expense ; on the other hand, if 
 you arrive at the Earth, as for instance I have done, you are courte- 
 ously maintained, precisely for the first few years, free of charges; 
 but in the next and longer series — for you often stay sixty — you 
 are actually obliged (I have the documents in my hands) to pay for 
 every drop and morsel, as if you were in the great Earth Inn, which 
 indeed you are. 
 
 107. Germany is a long lofty mountain — under the sea. 
 
180 RICHTER. 
 
 but he retained the chamber next mine for his sister ; this, 
 it appeared, was to denote attention on his part. I remained 
 solitary, left to my own intrepidity and force of purpose. 
 
 Yet among so many villains, encompassing if not even 
 beleaguering me, I thought warmly of one far distant, faith- 
 ful soul, of my Berga in Neusattel ; a true heart of pith, 
 which perhaps with many a weak marriage-partner might 
 have given protection rather than sought it. 
 
 " Appear, then, quickly to-morrow at noon, Berga," said 
 my heart ; " and if possible before noon, that I may length- 
 en thy market paradise so many hours as thou arrivest ear- 
 lier ! " 
 
 A clergyman, amid the tempests of the world, readily 
 makes for a free harbor, for the church ; the church-wall is 
 his casement-wall and fortification ; and behind are to be 
 found more peaceful and more accordant souls than on the 
 market-place ; in short, I went into the High Church. 
 However, in the course of the psalm, I was somewhat dis- 
 turbed by a Heiduc, who came up to a well-dressed young 
 gentleman sitting opposite me, and tore the double opera- 
 glass from his nose, it being against rule in Flatz, as it is in 
 Dresden, to look at the Court with glasses which diminish 
 and approximate. I myself had on a pair of spectacles, 
 but they were magnifiers. It was impossible for me to re- 
 solve on taking them off; and here again, I am afraid, I 
 shall pass for a fool-hardy person and a desperado ; so much 
 only I reckoned fit, to look invariably into my psalm-book ; 
 not once lifting my eyes while the Court was rustling and 
 
 144. The Reviewer does not in reality employ his pen for wri- 
 ting ; but he burns it, to awaken weak people from their swoons 
 with the smell ; he tickles with it the throat of the plagiary, to 
 make him render back; and he picks with it his own teeth. He is 
 the only individual in the whole learned lexicon that can never 
 exhaust himself, never write himself out, let him sit before the ink- 
 
schmelzle's journey to flaetz. 181 
 
 entering, thereby to denote that my glasses were ground 
 convex. For the rest, the sermon was good, if not always 
 finely conceived for a Court-church ; it admonished the 
 hearers against innumerable vices, to whose counterparts, 
 the virtues, another preacher might so readily have exhorted 
 us. During the whole service, I made it my business to 
 exhibit true, deep reverence, not only towards God, but also 
 towards my illustrious Prince. For the latter reverence I 
 had my private reason. I wished to stamp this sentiment 
 strongly and openly as with raised letters on my counte- 
 nance, and so give the lie to any malicious imp about Court, 
 by whom my contravention of the Panegyric on Nero, and 
 my free German satire on this real tyrant himself, which 
 I had inserted in the Fldtz Weekly Journal, might have 
 been perverted into a secret characteristic portrait of my 
 own Sovereign. We live in such times at present, that 
 scarcely can we compose a pasquinade on the Devil in 
 Hell, but some human Devil on Earth will apply it to an 
 angel. 
 
 When the Court at last issued from church, and were 
 getting into their carriages, J. kept at such a distance that my 
 face could not possibly be noticed, in case I had happened 
 to assume no reverent look, but an indifferent or even proud 
 one. God knows, who has kneaded into me those mad, des- 
 perate fancies and crotchets, which perhaps would sit better 
 on a Hero Schabaeker than on an Army-chaplain under him. 
 
 glass for centuries or tens of centuries. For while the Scholar, the 
 Philosopher, and the Poet, produce their new book solely from new 
 materials and growth, the Reviewer merely lays his old gage of 
 taste and knowledge on a thousand new works; and his light, in 
 the ever-passing, ever-differently-cut glass-world, which he eluci- 
 dates, is still refracted into new colors. 
 
 71. The Youth is singular from caprice, and takes pleasure in it; 
 the Man is so from constraint, unintentionally, and feels pain in it. 
 VOL. II. 16 
 
182 RICHTER. 
 
 I cannot here forbear recording to you, my Friends, one of 
 the maddest among them, though at first it may throw too 
 glaring a light on me. It was at my ordination to be Army- 
 chaplain, while about to participate in the Sacrament, on the 
 first day of Easter. Now, here while I was standing, moved 
 into softness, before the balustrade of the altar, in the middle 
 of the whole male congregation, — nay, I perhaps more 
 deeply moved than any among them, since, as a person 
 going to war, I might consider myself a half-dead man, 
 that was now partaking in the last Feast of Souls, as it were 
 like a person to be hanged on the morrow, — here, then, 
 amid the pathetic effects of the organ and singing, there 
 rose something — were it the first Easter-day which awoke 
 in me what primitive Christians called their Easter-laughter, 
 or merely the contrast between the most devilish predica- 
 ments and the most holy, — in short, there rose something 
 in me (for which reason I have ever since taken the part 
 of every simple person who might ascribe such things to 
 the Devil), and this something started the question: "Now, 
 could there be aught more diabolical than if thou, just in 
 receiving the Holy Supper, wert madly and blasphemously 
 to begin laughing? " Instantly I took to wrestling with this 
 hell-dog of a thought ; neglected the most precious feelings, 
 merely to keep the dog in my eye, and scare him away ; 
 yet was forced to draw back from him, exhausted and 
 unsuccessful, and arrived at the step of the altar with the 
 mournful certainty that in a little while I should, without 
 more ado, begin laughing, let me weep and moan inwardly 
 as I liked. Accordingly, while I and a very worthy old 
 
 198. The Populace and Cattle grow giddy on the edge of no 
 abyss; with the Man it is otherwise. 
 
 11. The Golden Calf of Self-love soon waxes to be a burning 
 Phalaris's Bull, which reduces its father and adorer to ashes. 
 
schmelzle's journey to flaetz. 183 
 
 Biirgermeister were bowing down together before the long 
 parson, and the latter (perhaps kneeling on the low cushion, 
 I fancied him too long) put the wafer in my clenched mouth, 
 I felt all the muscles of laughter already beginning sardoni- 
 cally to contract ; and these had not long acted on the 
 guiltless integument, till an actual smile appeared there; 
 and as we bowed the second time, I was grinning like an 
 ape. My companion the Biirgermeister justly expostulated 
 with me, in a low voice, as we walked round behind the 
 altar : " In Heaven's name, are you an ordained Preacher 
 of the Gospel, or a Merry-Andrew? Is it Satan that is 
 laughing out of you? " 
 
 "Ah, Heaven ! who else ? " said I ; and this being over, 
 I finished my devotions in a more becoming fashion. 
 
 From the church (I now return to the Flatz one), I pro- 
 ceeded to the Tiger Inn, and dined at the table-cThote, being 
 at no time shy of encountering men. Previous to the 
 second course, a waiter handed me an empty plate, on 
 which, to my astonishment, I noticed a French verse scratch- 
 ed in with a fork, containing nothing less than a lampoon 
 on the Commandant of Flatz. Without ceremony, I held 
 out the plate to the company ; saying, I had just, as they 
 saw, got this lampooning cover presented to me, and must 
 request them to bear witness that I had nothing to do with 
 the matter. An officer directly changed plates with me. 
 During the fifth course, I could not but admire the chemico- 
 medical ignorance of the company ; for a hare, out of 
 
 103. The male Beau-crop, which surrounds the female Roses and 
 Lilies, must (if I rightly comprehend its flatteries) most probably 
 presuppose in the fair the manners of the Spaniards and Italians, 
 who offer any valuable, by way of present, to the man who praises 
 it excessively. 
 
 199. But not many existing Governments, I believe, do behead 
 under pretext of trepanning ; or sew (in a more choice allegory) the 
 
184 RICHTER. 
 
 which a gentleman extracted and exhibited several grains 
 of shot, that is to say, therefore, of lead alloyed with arsenic, 
 and then cleaned by hot vinegar, did, nevertheless, by the 
 spectators (I expected) continue to be pleasantly eaten. 
 
 In the course of our table-talk, one topic seized me keenly 
 by my weak side, I mean by my honor. The law custom 
 of the city happened to be mentioned, as it affects natural 
 children ; and I learned that here a loose girl may convert 
 any man she pleases to select into the father of her brat, 
 simply by her oath. "Horrible!" said I, and my hair 
 stood on end. " In this way may the worthiest head of a 
 family, with a wife and children, or a clergyman lodging 
 in the Tiger, be stript of honor and innocence, by any 
 wicked chambermaid whom he may have seen, or who may 
 have seen him, in the course of her employment ! " 
 
 An elderly officer observed : " But will the girl swear 
 herself to the Devil so readily ? " 
 
 What logic ! " Or, suppose," continued I, without answer, 
 " a man happened to be travelling with that Vienna Lock- 
 smith, who afterwards became a mother, and was brought 
 to bed of a baby son ; or with any disguised Chevalier 
 d'Eon, who often passes the night in his company, whereby 
 the Locksmith or the Chevalier can swear to their private 
 interviews ; no delicate man of honor will in the end risk 
 travelling with another ; seeing he knows not how soon the 
 latter may pull off his boots, and pull on his women's-pumps, 
 
 people's lips together, under pretence of sewing the harelips in 
 them. 
 
 67. Hospitable Entertainer, wouldst thou search into thy Guest? 
 Accompany him to another Entertainer, and listen to him. Just so, 
 wouldst thou become better acquainted with Mistress in an hour, 
 than by living with her for a month ? Accompany her among her 
 female friends and female enemies (if that is no pleonasm), and 
 look at her ! 
 
185 
 
 and swear his companion into fatherhood, and himself to 
 the Devil!" 
 
 Some of the company, however, misunderstood my 
 oratorical fire so much, that they, sheep-wise, gave some 
 insinuations as if I myself were not strict in this point, but 
 lax. By Heaven ! I no longer knew what I was eating or 
 speaking. Happily, on the opposite side of the table, some 
 lying story of a French defeat was started. Now, as I had 
 read on the street corners that French and German Pro- 
 clamation, calling before the Court Martial any one who 
 had heard war rumors (disadvantageous, namely), without 
 giving notice of them, — I, as a man not willing ever to 
 forget himself, had nothing more prudent to do in this case, 
 than to withdraw with empty ears, telling none but the land- 
 lord why. 
 
 It was no improper time ; for I had previously deter- 
 mined to have my beard shaven about half past four, that 
 so, towards five, I might present myself with a chin just 
 polished by the razor smoothing-iron, and sleek as wove- 
 paper, without the smallest root-stump of a hair left on it. 
 By way of preparation, like Pitt before Parliamentary de- 
 bates, I poured a devilish deal of Pontac into my stomach, 
 with true disgust, and contrary to all sanitary rules ; not so 
 much for fronting the light stranger Barber, as the Min- 
 ister and General von Schabacker, with whom I had it 
 in view to exchange perhaps more than one fiery state- 
 ment. 
 
 The common Hotel Barber was ushered in to me ; but 
 
 80. In the Summer of life, men keep digging and filling ice- 
 pits, as well as circumstances will admit ; that so, in their Winter, 
 they may have something in store to give them coolness. 
 
 28. It is impossible for me, amid the tendril-forest of allusions 
 (even this again is a tendril-twig), to state and declare on the 
 
 16* 
 
186 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 at first view you noticed in his polygonal, zigzag visage, 
 more of a man that would finally go mad, than of one 
 growing wiser. Now, madmen are a class of persons whom 
 I hate incredibly; and nothing can take me to see any mad- 
 house, simply because the first maniac among them may 
 clutch me in his giant fists if he like ; and because, owing 
 to infection, I cannot be sure that I shall ever get out again 
 with the sense which I brought in. In a general way, I sit 
 (when once I am lathered) in such a posture on my chair 
 as to keep both my hands (the eyes I fix intently on the 
 barbering countenance) lying clenched along my sides, and 
 pointed directly at the midriff of the barber ; that so. on the 
 smallest ambiguity of movement, I may dash in upon him, 
 and overset him in a twinkling. 
 
 I scarce know rightly how it happened ; but here, while 
 I am anxiously studying the foolish, twisted visage of the 
 shaver, and he just then chanced to lay his long whetted 
 weapon a little too abruptly against my bare throat, I gave 
 him such a sudden bounce on the abdominal viscera, that the 
 silly varlet had well nigh suicidally slit his own windpipe. 
 For me, truly, nothing remained but to indemnify the man ; 
 and then, contrary to my usual principles, to tie round a broad 
 stuffed cravat, by way of cloak to what remained unshorn. 
 
 And now at last I sallied forth to the General, drinking 
 out the remnant of the Pontac, as I crossed the threshold. 
 I hope there were plans lying ready within me for answer- 
 ing rightly, nay for asking. The Petition I carried in my 
 
 spot whether all the Courts or Heights, the (Bougouer) Snowline 
 of Europe, have ever been mentioned in my writings or not ; but I 
 could wish for information on the subject, that, if not, I may try to 
 do it still. 
 
 36. And so I should like, in all cases, to be the First, especially 
 in Begging. The first prisoner-of-war, the first cripple, the first 
 man ruined by burning (like him who brings the first fire-engine), 
 
187 
 
 pocket, and in my right hand. In the left, I had a dupli- 
 cate of it. My fire of spirit easily helped over the living 
 fence of ministerial obstructions ; and soon I unexpectedly 
 found myself in the ante-chamber, among his most distin- 
 guished lackeys ; persons, so far as I could see, not inclined 
 to change flour for bran with any one. Selecting the most 
 respectable individual of the number, I delivered him my 
 paper request, accompanied with the verbal one that he 
 would hand it in. He took it, but ungraciously. I waited 
 in vain till far in the sixth hour, at which season alone the 
 gay General can safely be applied to. At last I pitch upon 
 another lackey, and repeat my request ; he runs about seek- 
 ing his runaway brother, or my Petition, to no purpose ; 
 neither of them could be found. How happy was it that 
 in the midst of my Pontac, before shaving, I had written out 
 the duplicate of this paper ; and therefore — simply on the 
 principle that you should always keep a second wooden leg 
 packed into your knapsack when you have the first on your 
 body — and out of fear, that, if the original petition chanced 
 to drop from me in the way between the Tiger and Scha- 
 backer's, my whole journey and hope would melt into water 
 — and therefore, I say, having stuck the repeating work of 
 that original paper into my pocket, I had, in any case, 
 something to hand in, and that something truly a Ditto. I 
 handed it in. 
 
 Unhappily six o'clock was already past. The lackey, 
 
 gains the head-subscription and the heart ; the next comer finds 
 nothing but Duty to address ; and at last, in this melodious man- 
 cando of sympathy, matters sink so far, that the last (if the last but 
 one may at least have retired laden with a rich " God help you ! ") 
 obtains from the benignant hand nothing more than its fist. And 
 as in Begging the first, so in Giving I should like to be the last ; 
 one obliterates the other, especially the last the first. So, however, 
 is the world ordered. 
 
1S8 RICHTER. 
 
 however, did not keep me long waiting; but returned with 
 — I may say, the text of this whole Circular — the almost 
 rude answer (which you, my Friends, out of regard for me 
 and Schabacker, will not divulge), that: " In case I were the 
 Attila Schmelzle of Schabacker's Regiment, I might lift my 
 pigeon-liver flag again, and fly to the Devil, as I did at 
 Pimpelstadt." Another man would have dropt dead on the 
 spot; I, however, walked quite stoutly off, answering the 
 fellow : " With great pleasure indeed, I fly to the Devil ; 
 and so Devil a fly I care." On the road home, I examined 
 myself, whether it had not been the Pontac that spoke out 
 of me (though the very examination contradicted this, for 
 Pontac never examines) ; but I found that nothing but I, my 
 heart, my courage perhaps, had spoken ; and why, after all, 
 any whimpering ? Does not the patrimony of my good 
 wife endow me better than ten Catechetical Professorships ? 
 And has she not furnished all the corners of my book of 
 Life with so many golden clasps, that I can open it forever 
 without wearing it? Let henhearts cackle and pip; I 
 flapped my pinions, and said : " Dash boldly through it, 
 come what may ! " I felt myself excited and exalted ; I 
 fancied Republics, in which I, as a hero, might be at home ; 
 I longed to be in that noble Grecian time, when one hero 
 readily put up with bastinadoes from another, and said : 
 " Strike, but hear ! " and out of this ignoble one, where 
 men will scarcely put up with hard words, to say nothing of 
 more. I painted out to my mind how I should feel, if, in 
 happier circumstances, I were uprooting hollow Thrones, 
 and before whole nations mounting on mighty deeds as on 
 
 136. If you mount too high above your time, your ears (on the side 
 of Fame) are little better off than if you sink too deep below it ; in 
 truth, Charles up in his Balloon, and Halley down in his Diving- 
 bell, felt equally the same strange pain in their ears. 
 
189 
 
 the Temple-steps of Immortality ; and, in gigantic ages, 
 finding quite other men to outman and outstrip, than the 
 mite-populace about me, or, at the best, here and there a 
 Vulcanello. I thought and thought, and grew wilder and 
 wilder, and intoxicated myself (no Pontac intoxication there- 
 fore, which, you know, increases more by continuance than 
 cessation of drinking), and gesticulated openly, as I put the 
 question to myself : " Wilt thou be a mere state-lapdog ? 
 A dog's-dog, a pium desiderium of an impium desiderium, 
 an Ex-Ex, a Nothing's-Nothing ? — Fire and Fury ! " With 
 this, however, I dashed down my hat into the mud of the 
 market. On lifting and cleaning this old servant, I could 
 not but perceive how worn and faded it was ; and I there- 
 fore determined instantly to purchase a new one, and 
 carry the same home in my hand. 
 
 I accomplished this. I bought one of the finest cut. 
 Strangely enough, by this hat, as if it had been a Gradua- 
 tion-hat, was my head tried and examined in the Ziegen- 
 gasse or Goat-gate of Flatz. For as general Schabacker 
 came driving along that street in his carriage, and I (it need 
 not be said) was determined to avenge myself, not by 
 vulgar clownishness, but by courtesy, I had here got one of 
 the most ticklish problems imaginable to solve on the spur 
 of the instant. You observe, if I swung only the fine hat 
 which I carried in my hand, and kept the faded one on my 
 head, — I might have the appearance of a perfect clown, 
 who does not doff at all ; if, on the other hand, I pulled the 
 
 25. In youth, like a blind man just couched, (and what is birth 
 but a couching of the sight ?) you take the Distant for the Near, 
 the starry heaven for tangible room-furniture, pictures for objects ; 
 and, to the young man, the whole world is sitting on his very nose, 
 till repeating bandaging and unbandaging have at last taught him, 
 like the blind patient, to estimate Distance and Appearance. 
 
190 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 old hat from my head, and therewith did my reverence, 
 then two hats, both in play at once (let me swing the other 
 at the same time or not), brought my salute within the verge 
 of ridicule. Now do you, my Friends, before reading 
 farther, bethink you how a man was to extricate himself 
 from such a plight, without losing his presence of mind ! 
 I think, perhaps, by this means ; by merely losing his hat. 
 In one word then I simply dropped the new hat from my 
 hand into the mud, to put myself in a condition for taking 
 off the old hat by itself, and swaying it in needful courtesy, 
 without any shade of ridicule. 
 
 Arrived at the Tiger, — to avoid misconstructions, I first 
 had the glossy, fine, and superfine hat cleaned, and some 
 time afterwards the mud-hat or rubbis-hat. 
 
 And now, weighing my momentous Past in the adjusting 
 balance within me, I walked in fiery mood to and fro. The 
 Pontac must — I know that there is no unadulterated liquor 
 here below — have been more than usually adulterated ; so 
 keenly did it chase my fancy out of one fire into the other. 
 I now looked forth into a wide, glittering life, in which I 
 lived without post, merely on money ; and which I beheld, 
 as it were, sowed with the Delphic caves, and Zenonic 
 walks, and Muse-hills of all the Sciences, which I might now 
 cultivate at my ease. In particular, I should have it in my 
 power to apply more diligently to writing Prize-essays for 
 Academies ; of which (that is to say, of the Prize-essays) 
 
 125. In the long run, out of mere fear and necessity, we shall 
 become the warmest cosmopolites I know of; so rapidly do ships 
 shoot to and fro, and, like shuttles, weave Islands and Quarters 
 of the World together. For let but the political weatherglass fall 
 to-day in South America, to-morrow we in Europe have storm and 
 thunder. 
 
 19. It is easier, they say, to climb a hill when you ascend back 
 foremost. This, perhaps, might admit of application to political 
 
schmelzle's journey to flaetz. 191 
 
 no author need ever be ashamed, since, in all cases, there 
 is a whole crowning Academy to stand and blush for the 
 crownee. And even if the Prize-marksman does not hit the 
 crown, he still continues more unknown and more anony- 
 mous (his Device not being unsealed) than any other author, 
 who indeed can publish some nameless Long-ear of a book, 
 but not hinder it from being, by a Literary Ass-burial 
 (sepultura asinina), publicly interred, in a short time, be- 
 fore half the world. 
 
 Only one thing grieved me by anticipation ; the sorrow 
 of my Berga, for whom, dear tired wayfarer, I on the 
 morrow must overcloud her arrival, and her shortened mar- 
 ket-spectacle, by my negatory intelligence. She would so 
 gladly (and who can take it ill of a rich farmer's Daugh- 
 ter?) have made herself somebody in Neusattel, and over- 
 shone many a female dignitary ! Every mortal longs for 
 his parade-place, and some earlier living honor than the last 
 honors. Especially so good a lowly-born housewife as my 
 Berga, conscious perhaps rather of her metallic than of her 
 spiritual treasure, would still wish at banquets to be mistress 
 of some- seat or other, and so in place to overtop this or that 
 plucked goose of the neighborhood. 
 
 It is in this point of view that husbands are so indispensa- 
 ble. I therefore resolved to purchase for myself, and con- 
 sequently for her, one of the best of those titles which our 
 
 eminences ; if you still turned towards them that part of the body 
 on which you sit, and kept your face directed down to the people ; 
 all the while, however, removing and mounting. 
 
 26. Few German writers are not original, if we may ascribe 
 originality (as is at least the conversational practice of all people) 
 to a man who merely dishes out his own thoughts without foreign 
 admixture. For as, between their Memory, where their reading or 
 foreign matter dwells, and their Imagination or Productive Power, 
 
192 RICHTER. 
 
 Courts in Germany (as in a Leipzig sale-room) stand offer- 
 ing to buyers, in all sizes and sorts, from Noble and Half- 
 noble down to Rath or Councillor ; and once invested there- 
 with, to reflect from my own Quarter-nobility such an 
 Eighth-part-nobility on this true soul, that many a Neusat- 
 telitess (I hope) shall half burst with envy, and say and cry : 
 tl Pooh, the stupid farmer thing ! See how it wabbles and 
 bridles ! It has forgot how matters stood when it had no 
 money-bag, and no Hofrath ! " For to the Hofrathship I shall 
 before this have attained. 
 
 But in the cold solitude of my room, and the fire of my 
 remembrances, I longed unspeakably for my Bergelchen ; 
 I and my heart were wearied with the foreign busy day ; 
 no one here said a kind word to me, which he did not hope 
 to put in the bill. Friends ! I languished for my friend, 
 whose heart would pour out its blood as a balsam for a sec- 
 ond heart ; I cursed my over-prudent regulations, and 
 wished, that, to have the good Berga at my side, I had 
 given up the stupid houseware to all thieves and fires what- 
 soever. As I walked to and fro, it seemed to me easier and 
 easier to become all things, an Exchequer-Rath, an Excise- 
 Rath, any Rath in the world, and whatever she required 
 when she came. 
 
 " See thou take thy pleasure in the town ! " had Bergel- 
 chen kept saying the whole week through. But how, with- 
 
 vvhere their writing or own peculiar matter originates, a sufficient 
 space intervenes, and the boundary-stones are fixed in so conscien- 
 tiously and firmly that nothing foreign may pass over into their own, 
 or inversely, so that they may really read a hundred works without 
 losing their own primitive flavor, or even altering it, — their indi- 
 viduality may, I believe, be considered as secured ; and their spirit- 
 ual nourishment, their pancakes, loaves, fritters, caviare, and meat- 
 balls, are not assimilated to their system, but given back pure and 
 unaltered. Often in my own mind, I figure such writers as living 
 
schmelzle's journey to flaetz. 193 
 
 out her, can I take any ? Our tears of sorrow friends dry 
 up, and accompany with their own ; but our tears of joy we 
 find most readily repeated in the eyes of our wives. Par- 
 don me, good Friends, these libations of my sensibility ; I 
 am but showing you my heart and my Berga. If I need 
 an Absolution-merchant, the Pontac-merchant is the man. 
 
 First Night in Flatz. 
 
 Yet the wine did not take from me the good sense to 
 look under the bed, before going into it, and examine 
 whether any one was lurking there ; for example, the Dwarf, 
 or the Ratcatcher, or the Legations-Rath ; also to shove the 
 key under the latch (which I reckon the best bolting ar- 
 rangement of all), and then, by way of farther assurance, 
 to bore my night-screws into the door, and pile all the chairs 
 in a heap behind it ; and, lastly, to keep on my breeches 
 and shoes, wishing absolutely to have no care upon my 
 mind. 
 
 But I had still other precautions to take in regard to sleep- 
 walking. To me it has always been incomprehensible how 
 so many men can go to bed, and lie down at their ease there, 
 without reflecting that perhaps, in the first sleep, they may get 
 up again as Somnambulists, and crawl over the tops of roofs 
 and the like; awakening in some spot where they may fall 
 in a moment and break their necks. While at home, there 
 is little risk in my sleep ; because, my right toe being fas- 
 
 but thousandfold more artificial Ducklings from Vaucasson's Arti- 
 ficial Duck of Wood. For in fact they are not less cunningly put 
 together than this timber Duck, which will gobble meat and appa- 
 rently void it again, under show of having digested it, and derived 
 from it blood and juices; though the secret of the business is, the 
 VOL. II. 17 
 
194 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 tened every night with three ells of tape (I call it in jest 
 our marriage tie) to my wife's left hand, I feel a certainty 
 that, in case I should start up from this bed-arrest, I must 
 with the tether infallibly awaken her, and so by my Berga, 
 as by my living bridle, be again led back to bed. But here 
 in the Inn, I had nothing for it but to knot myself once or 
 twice to the bed-foot, that I might not wander; though in 
 this way, an irruption of villains would have brought double 
 peril with it. — Alas! so dangerous is sleep at all times, 
 that every man, who is not lying on his back a corpse, must 
 be on his guard lest with the general system some limb or 
 other also fall asleep ; in which case 1he sleeping limb 
 (there are not wanting examples of it in Medical History) 
 may next morning be lying ripe for amputation. For this 
 reason, I have myself frequently awakened, that no part of 
 me fall asleep. 
 
 Having properly tied myself to the bed-posts, and at 
 length got under the coverlid, I now began to be dubious 
 about my Pontac Fire-bath, and apprehensive of the valor- 
 ous and tumultuous dreams too likely to ensue ; which, alas, 
 did actually prove to be nothing better than heroic and mon- 
 archic feats, castle-stormings, rock-throwings, and the like. 
 This point also I am sorry to see so little attended to in 
 medicine. Medical gentlemen, as well as their customers, 
 all stretch themselves quietly in their beds, without one 
 among them considering whether a furious rage (supposing 
 him also directly after to drink cold water in his dream), or 
 a heart-devouring grief, all which he may undergo in vision, 
 does harm to life or not. 
 
 artist has merely introduced an ingenious compound ejective matter 
 behind, with which concoction and nourishment have nothing to 
 do,but'whichthe Duck illusorily gives forth and publishes to the 
 world. 
 
schmelzle's journey to flaetz. 195 
 
 Shortly before midnight, I awoke from a heavy dream, to 
 encounter a ghost-trick much too ghostly for my fancy. 
 My brother-in-law, who manufactured it, deserves for such 
 vapid cookery to be named before you without reserve, as 
 the maltmaster of this washy brewage. Had suspicion been 
 more compatible with intrepidity, I might perhaps, by his 
 moral maxim about this matter, on the road, as well as by 
 his taking up the side-room, at the middle door of which 
 stood my couch, have easily divined the whole. But now, 
 on awakening, I felt myself blown upon by a cold ghost- 
 breath, which I could nowise deduce from the distant bolted 
 window ; a point I had rightly decided, for the Dragoon was 
 producing the phenomenon through the key-hole by a 
 pair of bellows. Every sort of coldness in the night-season 
 reminds you of clay-coldness and spectre-coldness. I sum- 
 moned my resolution, however, and abode the issue ; but 
 now the very coverlid began to get in motion ; I pulled it 
 towards me ; it would not stay ; sharply I sit upright in my 
 bed, and cry : " What is that ? " No answer ; everywhere 
 silence in the Inn; the whole room full of moonshine. And 
 now my drawing-plaster, my coverlid, actually rose up, and 
 let in the air; at which I felt like a wounded man whose 
 cataplasm you suddenly pull off. In this crisis, I made a 
 bold leap from this Devil's-torus, and, leaping, snapped 
 asunder my somnambulist tether. " Where is the silly 
 human fool," cried I, " that dares to ape the unseen sublime 
 world of Spirits, which may, in the instant, open befor 
 
 15. After the manner of the fine polished English folding-knives 
 there are now also folding-war-swords, or, in other words — Treaties 
 of Peace. 
 
 13. Omnibus una salus Sanctis, sed gloria dispar ; that is to 
 say (as Divines once taught), according to Saint Paul, we have all 
 the same Beatitude in Heaven, but different degrees of Honor. 
 Here, on Earth, we find a shadow of this in the writing world ; for 
 
196 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 him ? " But on, above, under the bed, there was nothing 
 to be heard or seen. I looked out of the window ; every- 
 where spectral moonlight and street-stillness ; nothing mov- 
 ing except (probably from the wind), on the distant Gallows- 
 hill, a person lately hanged. 
 
 Any man would have taken it for self-deception as well 
 as I; therefore I again wrapped myself in my passive lit 
 de justice and air-bed, and waited with calmness to see 
 whether my fright would subside or not. 
 
 In a few minutes the coverlid, the infernal Faust's-mantle, 
 again began flying and towing; also, byway of change, 
 the invisible bed-maker again lifted me up. Accursed hour! 
 — I should beg to know whether, in the whole of cultivated 
 Europe, there is one cultivated or uncultivated man, who, in 
 a case of this kind, would not have lighted on ghost-devilry ? 
 I lighted on it, under my piece of (self) movable property, 
 my coverlid ; and thought Berga had died suddenly, and 
 was now, in spirit, laying hold of my bed. However, I 
 could not speak to her, nor as little to the Devil, who might 
 well be supposed to have a hand in the game ; but I turned 
 myself solely to Heaven, and prayed aloud : " To thee I 
 commit myself; thou alone heretofore hast cared for thy 
 weak servant; and I swear that I will turn a new leaf, 1 ' — 
 a promise which shall be kept nevertheless, though the 
 whole was but stupid treachery and trick. 
 
 My prayer had no effect with the unchristian Dragoon, 
 who now, once for all, had got me prisoner in the dragnet 
 of a coverlid ; and heeded little whether a guest's bed 
 
 the Beatitude of authors once beatified by Criticism, whether they 
 be genial, good, mediocre, or poor, is the same throughout; they all 
 obtain the same pecuniary Felicity, the same slender profit. But, 
 Heavens ! in regard to the degrees of Fame, again, how far (in spite 
 of the same emolument and sale) will a Dunce, even in his life- 
 time, be put below a Genius ! Is not a shallow writer frequently 
 
SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FLAETZ. 197 
 
 were, by his means, made a state-bed and death-bed or not. 
 He span out my nerves, like gold-wire through smaller and 
 smaller holes, to utter inanition and evanition, for the bed- 
 clothes at last literally marched off to the door of the room. 
 Now was the moment to rise into the sublime, and to 
 trouble myself no longer about aught here below, but softly 
 to devote myself to death. " Snatch me away," cried I, 
 and, without thinking, cut three crosses ; " quick, dispatch 
 me, ye ghosts ; I die more innocent than thousands of ty- 
 rants and blasphemers, to whom ye yet appear not, but to 
 unpolluted me." Here I heard a sort of laugh, either on 
 the street or in the side-room. At this warm human tone, I 
 suddenly bloomed up again, as at the coming of a new 
 Spring, in every twig and leaf. Wholly despising the wing- 
 ed coverlid, which was not now to be picked from the door, 
 I laid myself down uncovered, but warm and perspiring 
 from other causes, and soon fell asleep. For the rest, I am 
 not the least ashamed, in the face of all refined capital 
 cities, — though they were standing here at my hand, — 
 that, by this Devil-belief and Devil-address, I have attained 
 some likeness to our great German Lion, to Luther. 
 
 Second Day in Fldtz. 
 
 Early in the morning, I felt myself awakened by the 
 well-known coverlid ; it had laid itself on me like a night- 
 mare ; I gaped up ; quiet, in a corner of the room, sat a 
 
 forgotten in a single Fair ? while a deep writer, or even a writer of 
 genius, will blossom through fifty Fairs, and so may celebrate his 
 Twenty-five Years' Jubilee, before, late forgotten, he is lowered 
 into the German Temple of Fame ; a Temple imitating the pecu- 
 liarity of the Padrl Lucchesi churches in Naples, which (according 
 to Volkmann) permit burials under their roofs, but no tombstone. 
 17* 
 
198 RICHTER. 
 
 red, round, blooming, decorated girl, like a full-blown tulip 
 in the freshness of life, and gently rustling with gay ribbons 
 as with leaves. 
 
 "Who's there — how came you in?" cried I, half- 
 blind. 
 
 " I covered thee softly, and thought to let thee sleep," 
 said Bergelchen ; " I have walked all night to be here early; 
 do but look!" 
 
 She showed me her boots, the only remnant of her trav- 
 elling-gear, which, in the moulting process of the toilette, 
 she had not stript at the gate of Flatz. 
 
 " Is there," said I, alarmed at her coming six hours 
 sooner, and the more, as I had been alarmed all night and 
 was still so, at her mysterious entrance; "is there some 
 fresh woe come over us, fire, murder, robbery ? " 
 
 She answered : " The old Rat thou hast chased so long 
 died yesterday ; farther there was nothing of importance." 
 
 "And all has been managed rightly, and according to my 
 Letter of Instructions, at home ? " inquired I. 
 
 "Yes, truly," answered she; "only I did not see the 
 Letter ; it is lost ; thou hast packed it among thy clothes." 
 
 Well, I could not but forgive the blooming, brave pedes- 
 trian all omissions. Her eye, then her heart was bringing 
 fresh cool morning air and morning red into my sultry 
 hours. And yet, for this kind soul, looking into life with 
 such love and hope, I must in a little while overcloud the 
 merited Heaven of to-day, with tidings of my failure in the 
 Catechetical Professorship! I dallied and postponed to the 
 utmost. I asked how she had got in, as the whole chevaux- 
 
 79. Weak and wrong heads are the hardest to change ; and their 
 inward man acquires a scanty covering ; thus capons never moult. 
 
 69. In times of misfortune, the Ancients supported themselves 
 with Philosophy or Christianity ; the moderns again (for example 
 
schmelzle's journey to flaetz. 199 
 
 de-frise barricado of chairs was still standing fast at the 
 door- She laughed heartily, curtseying in village fashion, 
 and said, she had planned it with her brother the day before 
 yesterday, knowing my precautions in locking, that he 
 should admit her into my room, that so she might cunningly 
 awaken me. And now bolted the Dragoon with loud laugh- 
 ter into the apartment, and cried : " Slept well, brother? " 
 
 In this wise truly the whole ghost-story was now solved 
 and expounded, as if by the pen of a Biester or a Hennings. 
 I instantly saw through the entire ghost-scheme which our 
 Dragoon had executed. With some bitterness I told him 
 my conjecture, and his sister my story. But he lied and 
 laughed ; nay, attempted shamelessly enough to palm spec- 
 tre-notions on me a second time, in open day. I answered 
 coldly, that in me he had found the wrong man, granting 
 even that I had some similarity with Luther, with Hobbes, 
 with Brutus, all of whom had seen and dreaded ghosts. He 
 replied, tearing the facts away from their originating causes : 
 U A11 he could say was, that last night he had heard some 
 poor sinner creaking and lamenting dolefully enough ; and 
 from this he had inferred it must be an unhappy brother 
 set upon by goblins." 
 
 In the end, his sister's eyes also were opened to the low 
 character which he had tried to act with me ; she sharply 
 flew at him, pushed him with both hands out of his and 
 my door, and called after him : " Wait, thou villain, I will 
 mind it ! " 
 
 in the reign of Terror) take to Pleasure ; as the wounded Buffalo, 
 for bandage and salve, rolls himself in the mire. 
 
 181. God be thanked that we live nowhere forever except in 
 Hell or Heaven ; on Earth otherwise we should grow to be the 
 veriest rascals, and the World a House of Incurables, for want of 
 the dog-doctor (the Hangman), and the issue-cord (on the Gallows), 
 and the sulphur and chalybeate medicines (on Battle-fields). So 
 
200 RICHTER. 
 
 Then hastily turning round, she fell on my neck, and 
 (at the wrong place) into laughter, and said : " The wild 
 fool ! But I could not keep my laugh another minute, and 
 he was not to see it. Forgive the ninny, thou a learned man, 
 his ass pranks ; what can one expect ? " 
 
 I inquired whether she, in her nocturnal travelling, had 
 not met any spectral persons ; though I knew that to her 
 a wild beast, a river, a half abyss, are nothing. No, she 
 had not; but the gay-dressed town's-people, she said, had 
 scared her in the morning. O ! how I do love these soft 
 Harmonica-quiverings of female fright ! 
 
 At last, however, I was forced to bite or cut the coloquin- 
 ta-apple, and give her the half of it; I mean the news of 
 my rejected petition for the Catechetical Professorship. 
 Wishing to spare this joyful heart the rudeness of the whole 
 truth, and to subtract something from a heavy burden, 
 more fit for the shoulders of a man, I began : " Bergelchen, 
 the Professorship affair is taking another, though still a good 
 enough course ; the General, whom may the Devil and his 
 Grandmother teach sense, will not be taken except by 
 storm ; and storm he shall have, as certainly as I have on 
 my nightcap." 
 
 " Then, thou art nothing yet ? " inquired she. 
 
 " For the moment, indeed, not ! " answered L 
 
 u But before Saturday night ? " said she. 
 
 II Not quite," said I. 
 
 11 Then am I sore stricken, and could leap out of the 
 window," said she, and turned away her rosy face, to hide 
 its wet eyes, and was silent very long. Then, with pain- 
 
 that we too find our gigantic moral force dependent on the Debt of 
 Nature which we have to pay, exactly as your politicians (for exam- 
 ple, the Author of the New Leviathan) demonstrate that the English 
 have their National Debt to thank for their superiority. 
 
201 
 
 fully quivering voice, she began : " Good Christ stand by 
 me at Neusattel on Sunday, when these high-prancing 
 prideful dames look at me in church, and I grow scarlet for 
 shame ! " 
 
 Here in sympathetic woe I sprang out of bed to the dear 
 soul, over whose brightly blooming cheeks warm tears were 
 rolling, and cried : " Thou true heart, do not tear me in 
 pieces so ! May I die, if yet in these dog-days I become 
 not all and everything that thou wishest ! Speak, wilt thou 
 be Mining-rathin, Build-rathin, Court-rathin, War-rathin, 
 Chamber-rathin, Commerce-rathin, Legations-rathin, or 
 Devil and his Dam's rathin ; I am here, and will buy it, and 
 be it. To-morrow I send riding posts to Saxony and 
 Hessia, to Prussia and Russia, to Friesland and Katzenellen- 
 bogen, and demand patents. Nay, I will carry matters 
 farther than another, and be all things at once, Flachsen- 
 fingen Court-rath, Scheerau Excise-rath, Haarhaar Build- 
 ing-rath, Pestitz* Chamber-rath (for we have the cash) ; 
 and thus, alone and single-handed, represent with one podex 
 and corpus a whole Rath-session of select Raths ; and stand, 
 a complete Legion of Honor, on one single pair of legs ; 
 the like no man ever did." 
 
 " O ! now thou art angel-good ! " said she, and glad- 
 der tears rolled down ; " thou shalt counsel me thyself 
 which are the finest Raths, and these we will be." 
 
 " No," continued I, in the fire of the moment, " neither 
 
 63. To apprehend danger from the Education of the People 
 is like fearing lest the thunderbolt strike into the house because 
 it has icindows ; whereas the lightning never comes through these, 
 but through their lead framing, or down by the smoke of the 
 chimney. 
 
 * Cities of Richter's romance kingdom. Flachsenfingen he some- 
 times calls Klein-Wien, Little Vienna. — Ed. 
 
202 RICHTER. 
 
 shall this serve us ; to me it is not enough that to Mrs. 
 Chaplain thou canst announce thyself as Building-rathin, to 
 Mrs. Town-parson as Legations-rathin,to Mrs. Burgermeister 
 as Court-rathin, to Mrs Road-and-toll-surveyor as Com- 
 merce-rathin, or how and where thou pleasest " 
 
 " Ah ! my own too good Attelchen !" said she. 
 
 " — But," continued I, " I shall likewise become corre- 
 sponding member of the several Learned Societies in the 
 several best capital cities (among which I have only to 
 choose) ; and truly no common actual member, but a whole 
 honorary member ; then thee, as another honorary mem- 
 ber, growing out of my honorary-membership, I uplift and 
 exalt." 
 
 Pardon me, my Friends, this warm cataplasm, or decep- 
 tion-balsam for a wounded breast, whose blood is so pure 
 and precious, that one may be permitted to endeavor, with 
 all possible stanching-lints and spiderwebs, to drive it back 
 into the fair heart, its home. 
 
 But now came bright and brightest hours. I had con- 
 quered Time, I had conquered myself and Berga ; seldom 
 does a conqueror, as I did, bless both the victorious and the 
 vanquished party. Berga called back her former Heaven, 
 and pulled off her dusty boots, and on her flowery shoes. 
 Precious morning beverage, intoxicating to a heart that 
 loves ! I felt (if the low figure may be permitted) a double- 
 beer of courage in me, now that I had one being more to 
 protect. In general it is my nature — which the honora- 
 ble Premier seems not to be fully aware of — to grow 
 
 76. Your economical, preaching Poetry apparently supposes that 
 a surgical Stone-cutter is an Artistical one; and a Pulpit or a Sinai 
 a Hill of the Muses. 
 
 115. According to Smith, the universal measure of economical 
 value is Labor. This fact, at least in regard to spiritual and poeti- 
 
schmelzle's journey to flaetz. 2U3 
 
 bolder not among the bold, but fastest among poltroons, the 
 bad example acting on me by the rule of contraries. Little 
 touches may in this case shadow forth man and wife 
 without casting them into the shade. When the trim waiter 
 with his green silk apron brought up cracknels for break- 
 fast, and I told him : " Johann, for two ! " Berga said : 
 M He would oblige her very much," and called him Herr 
 Johann. 
 
 Bergelchen, more familiar with rural burghs than capital 
 cities, felt a good deal amazed and alarmed at the cofFee- 
 trays, dressing-tables, paper-hangings, sconces, alabaster 
 inkholders, with Egyptian emblems, as well as at the gilt 
 bell-handle, lying ready for any one to pull out or to push 
 in. Accordingly, she had not courage to walk through the 
 hall, with its lustres, purely because a whistling, whiffling 
 Cap-and-feather was gesturing up and down in it. Nay, 
 her poor heart was like to fail when she peeped out of the 
 window at so many gay, promenading town's people (I was 
 briskly that in a little while, at my side, she must break 
 into whistling a Gascon air down over them) ; and thought 
 the middle of this dazzling courtly throng. In a case like 
 this, reasons are of less avail than examples. I tried to 
 elevate my Bergelchen, by reciting some of my nocturnal 
 dream-feats ; for example, how, riding on a whale's back, 
 with a three-pronged fork, I had pierced and eaten three 
 eagles; and by more of the like sort; but I produced no 
 effect ; perhaps, because to the timid female heart the battle- 
 field was presented rather than the conqueror, the abyss 
 rather than the overleaper of it. 
 
 cal value, we Germans had discovered before Smith ; and to my 
 knowledge, we have always preferred the learned poet to the poet 
 of genius, and the heavy book full of labor to the light one full of 
 sport. 
 
204 RICHTER. 
 
 At this time a sheaf of newspapers was brought me, full 
 of gallant, decisive victories. And though these happen only 
 on one side, and on the other are just so many defeats, yet 
 the former somehow assimilate more with my blood than 
 the latter, and inspire me (as Schiller's Robbers used to do) 
 with a strange inclination to lay hold of some one, and 
 thrash and curry him on the spot. Unluckily for the waiter, 
 he had chanced even now, like a military host, to stand a 
 triple bell-order for march, before he would leave his 
 ground and come up. " Sir," began I, my head full of 
 battle-fields, and my arm of inclination to baste him ; and 
 Berga feared the very worst, as I gave her the well-known 
 anger and alarm signal, namely, shoved up my cap to my 
 hindhead — " Sir, is this your way of treating guests ? Why 
 don't you come promptly ? Don't come so again ; and now 
 be going, friend ! " Although his retreat was my victory, 
 I still kept briskly cannonading on the field of action, and 
 fired the louder (to let him hear it), the more steps he de- 
 scended in his flight. Bergelchen, — who felt quite horror- 
 struck at my fury, particularly in a quite strange house, 
 and at a quality waiter with silk apron, mustered all her 
 soft words against the wild ones of a man-of-war, and spoke 
 of dangers that might follow. " Dangers," answered I, 
 " are just what I seek ; but for a man there are none; in 
 all cases he will either conquer or evade them, either show 
 them front or back." 
 
 I could scarcely lay aside this indignant mood, so sweet 
 was it to me, and so much did I feel refreshed by the fire 
 of rage, and quickened in my breast as by a benignant 
 
 4. The Hypocrite does not imitate the old practice, of cutting 
 fruit by a knife poisoned only on the one side, and giving the 
 poisoned side to the victim, the cutter eating the sound side him- 
 self; on the contrary, he so disinterestedly inverts this practice, 
 
schmelzle's journey to flaetz. 205 
 
 stimulant. It belongs certainly to the class of Unrecognized 
 Mercies (on which, in ancient times, special sermons were 
 preached), that one is never more completely in his Heaven 
 and Monplaisir (a pleasure-palace), than while in the midst 
 of right hearty storming and indignation. Heavens ! what 
 might not a man of weight accomplish in this new walk of 
 charity ! The gall bladder is for us the chief swimming- 
 bladder and Montgolfier ; and the filling of it costs us noth- 
 ing but a contumelious word or two from some bystander. 
 And does not the whirlwind Luther, with whom I nowise 
 compare myself, confess, in his Table-talk, that he never 
 preached, sung, or prayed so well, as while in a rage ? 
 Truly, he was a man sufficient of himself to rouse many 
 others into rage. 
 
 The whole morning till noon now passed in viewing 
 sights, and trafficking for wares ; and indeed, for the great- 
 est part, in the broad street of our Hotel. Berga needed 
 but to press along with me into the market throng ; needed 
 but to look, and see that she was decorated more accord- 
 ing to the fashion than hundreds like her. But soon, in 
 her care for household gear, she forgot that of dress, and 
 in the potter-market the toilette-table faded from her 
 thoughts. 
 
 I, for my share, full of true tedium, while gliding after 
 her through her various marts, with their long cheapenings 
 and chafferings, merely acted the Philosopher hid within 
 me. I weighed this empty Life, and the heavy value which 
 is put upon it, and the daily anxiety of man lest it, this 
 lightest down-feather of the Earth, fly off, and feather him, 
 and take him with it. These thoughts, perhaps, I owe to 
 
 that to others he shows and gives the sound moral half, or side, 
 and retains for himself the poisoned one. Heavens! compared with 
 such a man, how wicked does the Devil seem ! 
 VOL. II. 18 
 
206 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 the street-fry of boys, who were turning their market-free- 
 dom to account, by throwing stones at one another all round 
 me ; for in the midst of this tumult I vividly figured myself 
 to be a man who had never seen war ; and who, therefore, 
 never having experienced that often of a thousand bullets 
 not one wilt hit, feels apprehensive of these few silly stones 
 lest they beat in his nose and eyes. O ! it is the battle- 
 field alone that sows, manures, and nourishes true courage, 
 courage even for daily, domestic, and smallest perils. For 
 not till he comes from the battle-field can a man both sing 
 and cannonade ; like the canary-bird, which, though so me- 
 lodious, so timid, so small, so tender, so solitary, so soft- 
 feathered, can yet be trained to fire off cannon, though can- 
 non of smaller calibre. 
 
 jg After dinner (in our room) we issued from the Purgatory 
 of the market-tumult, — where Berga, at every booth, had 
 something to order, and load her attendant maid with, — 
 into Heaven, into the Dog Inn, as the best Flatz public and 
 pleasure-house without the gates is named, where, in market 
 time, hundreds turn in, and see thousands going by. On 
 the way thither, my little wife, my elbow-tendril, as it were, 
 had extracted from me such a measure of courage, that, 
 while going through the Gate (where I, aware of the mil- 
 itary order, that you must not pass near the sentry, threw 
 myself over to the other side), she quietly glided on, close 
 by the very guns and fixed bayonets of the City Guard. 
 Outside the wall, I could direct her, with my finger, to the 
 bechained, begrated, gigantic Schabacker-Palace, mounting 
 
 67. Individual Minds, nay, Political Bodies, are like organic 
 bodies ; extract the interior air from them, the atmosphere crushes 
 them together ; pump off under the bell the exterior resisting 
 air, the interior inflates and bursts them. Therefore let every State 
 keep up its internal and its external resistance both at once. 
 
207 
 
 up even externally on stairs, where I last night had called 
 and (it may be) stormed : " I had rather take a peep at the 
 Giant," said she, " and the Dwarf; why else are we under 
 one roof with them ? " 
 
 In the pleasure-house itself we found sufficient pleasure ; 
 encircled, as we were, with blooming faces and meadows. 
 In my secret heart, I all along kept looking down, with 
 success, on Schabacker's refusal ; and till midnight made 
 myself a happy day of it. I had deserved it, Berga still 
 more. Nevertheless, about one in the morning, I was des- 
 tined to find a windmill to tilt with ; a windmill, which truly 
 lays about it with somewhat longer, stronger, and more 
 numerous arms than a giant, for which Don Quixote might 
 readily enough have taken it. On the market place, for 
 reasons more easily fancied than specified in words, I let 
 Berga go along some twenty paces before me ; and I my- 
 self, for these foresaid reasons, retire without malice behind 
 a covered booth, the tent most probably of some rude trader ; 
 and linger there a moment according to circumstances. Lo ! 
 steering hither with dart and spear, comes the Booth-watcher, 
 and coins and stamps me on the spot, into a filcher and 
 housebreaker of his Booth-street ; though the simpleton sees 
 nothing but that I am standing in the corner, and doing 
 anything but — taking. A sense of honor without callosity 
 is never blunted for such attacks. But how in the dead of 
 night was a man of this kind, who had nothing in his head 
 — at the utmost beer, instead of brains — to be enlightened 
 on the truth of the matter ? 
 
 I shall not conceal my perilous resource ; I seized the 
 fox by the tail, as we say ; in other words, I made as if I 
 
 8. In great Saloons, the real stove is masked into a pretty orna- 
 mented sham stove ; so, likewise, it is fit and pretty that a virgin 
 Love should always hide itself in an interesting virgin Friendship. 
 
208 1UCHTER. 
 
 had been muddled, and knew not rightly, in my liquor, 
 what I was about. I therefore mimicked everything I was 
 master of in this department ; staggered hither and thither ; 
 splayed out my feet like a dancing-master; got into zigzag 
 in spite of all efforts at the straight line ; nay, I knocked 
 my good head (perhaps one of the clearest and emptiest 
 of the night) like a full one, against real posts. 
 
 However, the Booth-bailiff, who probably had been 
 oftener drunk than I, and knew the symptoms better, or 
 even felt them in himself at this moment, looked upon the 
 whole exhibition as mere craft, and shouted dreadfully : 
 " Stop, rascal ; thou art no more drunk than I ! I know thee 
 of old. Stand, I say, till I speak to thee! Wouldst have 
 thy long finger in the market, too ? Stand, dog, or I '11 
 make thee ! " 
 
 You see the whole nodus of the matter. I whisked away 
 zigzag among the booths as fast as possible, from the claws 
 of this rude Tosspot ; yet he still hobbled after me. But 
 my Teutoberga, who had heard somewhat of it, came run- 
 ning back ; clutched the tipsy market-warder by the collar, 
 and said (shrieking, it is true, in village wise) : " Stupid sot, 
 go sleep the drink our of thy head, or I '11 teach thee ! Dost 
 know, then, whom thou art speaking to? My husband, 
 Army-chaplain Schmelzle under General and Minister von 
 Schabacker at Pimpelstadt, thou blockhead ! — Fye ! Take 
 shame, fellow !" The watchman mumbled: "Meant no 
 harm," and reeled about his business. u O thou Lioness! " 
 said I, in the transport of love, " why hast thou never been 
 in any deadly peril, that I might show thee the Lion in thy 
 husband ! " 
 
 Thus lovingly we both reached home ; and perhaps in 
 
 12. Nations — unlike rivers, which precipitate their impurities in 
 level places and when at rest — drop their baseness just whilst in 
 
JOURNEY TO FLAETZ. 209 
 
 the sequel of this Fair day might still have enjoyed a glori- 
 ous after-midnight, had not the Devil led my eye to the ninth 
 volume of Lichtenberg's Works, and the 206th page, where 
 this passage occurs : " It is not impossible, that, at a future 
 period, our Chemists may light on some means of suddenly 
 decomposing the Atmosphere by a sort of Ferment. In 
 this way the world may be destroyed." Ah ! true indeed ! 
 Since the Earth-ball is lapped up in the larger Atmospheric 
 ball, let but any chemical scoundrel, in the remotest scoun- 
 drel-island, say in New Holland, devise some decomposing 
 substance for the Atmosphere, like what a spark of fire 
 would be for a powder-wagon ; in a few seconds, the mon- 
 strous devouring world-storm catches me and you in Flatz 
 by the throat; my breathing, and the like, in this choak- 
 air is over, and the whole game ended ! The Earth be- 
 comes a boundless gallows, where the very cattle are hang- 
 ed ; worm-powder, and bug-liquor, Bradly ant-ploughs, and 
 rat-poison, and wolf-traps are, in this universal world-trap 
 and world-poison, no longer specially needful ; and the 
 Devil takes the whole, in the Bartholomew-night, when this 
 cursed " Ferment " is invented. 
 
 From the true soul, however, I concealed these deadly 
 Night Thoughts ; seeing she would either painfully have 
 sympathized in them, or else mirthfully laughed at them. 
 I merely gave orders that next morning (Saturday) she was 
 to be standing booted and ready, at the outset of the return- 
 ing coach ; if so were she would have me speedily fulfil her 
 wishes in regard to that stock of Rathships which lay so 
 
 the most violent motion ; and become the dirtier the farther they 
 flow along through lazy flats. 
 
 28. When Nature takes the huge old Earth-round, the Earth- 
 loaf, and kneads it up again, for the purpose of introducing, under 
 
 18* 
 
210 
 
 RICHTER, 
 
 near her heart. She rejoiced in my purpose, gladly sur- 
 rendering the market for such prospects. 1 too slept sound, 
 my great toe tied to her finger the whole night through. 
 
 The Dragoon next morning twitched me by the ear, and 
 secretly whispered into it that he had a pleasant fairing to 
 give his sister ; and so would ride off somewhat early, on 
 the nag he had yesterday purchased of the horse-dealer. 
 I thanked him beforehand. 
 
 At the appointed hour all gaily started from the Staple, 
 I excepted ; for I still retained, even in the fairest daylight, 
 that nocturnal DeviPs-Ferment and Decomposition (of my 
 cerebral globe as well as of the Earth-globe) fermenting in 
 my head ; a proof that the night had not affected me, or 
 exaggerated my fear. The Blind Passenger, whom I liked 
 so ill, also mounted along with us, and looked at me as usual, 
 but without effect ; for on this occasion, when the destruction 
 not of myself only, but of worlds, was occupying my 
 thoughts, the Passenger was nothing to me but a joke and 
 a show ; as a man, while his leg is a-sawing off, does not 
 feel the throbbing of his heart ; or amid the humming of 
 cannon, does not guard himself from that of wasps ; so to 
 me any Passenger, with all the fire-brands he might throw 
 into my near or distant Future, could appear but ludicrous, 
 at a time when I was reflecting that the " Ferment " might, 
 even in my journey between Flatz and Neusattel, be, by 
 some American or European man of science, quite guilt- 
 lessly experimenting and decomposing, lighted upon by 
 accident and let loose. The question, nay prize-question 
 now, however, were this : " In how far, since Lichtenberg's 
 
 this pie-crust, new stuffing and Dwarfs— she then, for most part,. 
 as a mother when baking will do to her daughters, gives in jest a 
 little fraction of the dough (two or three thousand square leagues of 
 
schmelzle's journey to flaetz. 211 
 
 threatening, it may not appear world-murderous and self- 
 murderous, if enlightened Potentates of chemical nations do 
 not enjoin it on their chemical subjects, — who in their de- 
 compositions and separations may so easily separate the soul 
 from their body and unite Heaven with Earth, — not in future 
 to make any other chemical experiments than those already 
 made, which hitherto have profited the State rather than 
 harmed it ? " 
 
 Unfortunately, I continued sunk in this Doomsday of the 
 Ferment with all my thoughts and meditations, without, in 
 the whole course of our return from Flatz to Neusattel, 
 suffering or observing anything, except that I actually ar- 
 rived there, and at the same time saw the Blind Passenger 
 once more go his ways. 
 
 My Bergelchen alone had I constantly looked at by the 
 road, partly that I might still see her, so long as life and 
 eyes endured ; partly that, even at the smallest danger to 
 her, be it a great, or even albover-sweeping Deluge and 
 World's-doom, I might die, if not for her, at least by her, 
 and so, united with that staunch, true heart, cast away a 
 plagued and plaguing life, in which, at any rate, not half 
 of my wishes for her have been fulfilled. 
 
 So then were my Journey over — crowned with some 
 Historiola ; and in time coming, perhaps, still more re- 
 warded through you, ye Friends about Flatz, if in these 
 pages you shall find any well-ground pruning-knives, where- 
 by you may more readily outroot the weedy tangle of Lies, 
 which for the present excludes me from the gallant Schab- 
 acker — Only this cursed Ferment still sits in my head. 
 
 such dough are enough for a child) to some Poetical or Philosoph 
 ical, or Legislative polisher, that so the little elf may have something 
 to be shaping and manufacturing beside its mother. And when the 
 
212 RICHTER. 
 
 Farewell, then, so long as there are Atmospheres left us to 
 breathe. I wish I had that Ferment out of my head. 
 
 Yours always, 
 
 Attila Schmelzle. 
 
 P. S. — My brother-in-law has kept his promise well, and 
 Berga is dancing. Particulars in my next ! 
 
 other young ones get a taste of sisterkin's baking, they all clap 
 hands, and cry : " Aha, Mother! canst bake like Suky here ? " 
 
LIFE 
 
 or 
 
 QUINTUS FIXLEIN 
 
 EXTRACTED FROM 
 
 FIFTEEN LETTER-BOXES, 
 
 BY 
 
 JEAN PAUL. 
 
LETTER TO MY FRIENDS, 
 
 INSTEAD OF PREFACE. 
 
 Mekchants, Authors, young Ladies, and Quakers, call 
 all persons, with whom they have any business, Friends ; 
 and my readers accordingly are my table and college 
 Friends. Now, at this time, I am about presenting so many 
 hundred Friends with just as many hundred gratis copies ; 
 and my Bookseller has orders to supply each on request, 
 after the Fair, with his copy — in return for a trifling con- 
 sideration and don gratuit to printers, pressmen, and other 
 such persons. But as I could not, like the French authors, 
 send the whole Edition to the binder, the blank leaf in front 
 was necessarily wanting ; and thus to write a complimentary 
 word or two upon it was out of my power. I have therefore 
 caused a few white leaves to be inserted directly after the 
 title-page ; on these we are now printing. 
 
 My Book contains the Life of a Schoolmaster, extracted 
 and compiled from various public and private documents. 
 With this Biography, dear Friends, it is the purpose of the 
 Author not so much to procure you a pleasure as to teach 
 you how to enjoy one. In truth, King Xerxes should have 
 offered his prize-medals not for the invention of new pleas- 
 ures, but for a good methodology and directory to use the 
 old ones. 
 
216 RICHTER. 
 
 Of ways for becoming happier (not happy) I could never 
 inquire out more than three. The first, rather an elevated 
 road, is this : to soar away so far above the clouds of life, 
 that you see the whole external world, with its wolf-dens, 
 charnel-houses, and thunder-rods, lying far down beneath 
 you, shrunk into a little child's garden. The second is : 
 simply to sink down into this little garden ; and there to 
 nestle yourself so snugly, so homewise, in some furrow, 
 that, in looking out from your warm lark-nest, you likewise 
 can discern no wolf-dens, charnel-houses, or thunder-rods, 
 but only blades and ears, every one of which, for the nest- 
 bird, is a tree, and a sun-screen, and a rain-screen. The 
 third, finally, which I look upon as the hardest and cun- 
 ningest, is that of alternating between the other two. 
 This I shall now satisfactorily expound to men at large. 
 The Hero, the Reformer, your Brutus, your Howard, 
 your Republican, he whom civic storm, or genius poetic 
 storm, impels ; in short, every mortal with a great Purpose, 
 or even a perennial Passion (were it but that of writing the 
 largest folios); all these men fence themselves in by their 
 internal world against the frosts and heats of the external, 
 as the madman in a worse sense does ; every fixed idea, 
 such as rules every genius, every enthusiast, at least peri- 
 odically, separates and elevates a man above the bed and 
 board of this Earth, above its Dog's-grottoes, buckthorns, 
 and Devil's-walls; like the Bird of Paradise, he slumbers 
 flying; and, on his outspread pinions, oversleeps uncon- 
 sciously the earthquakes and conflagrations of Life, in his 
 long fair dream of his ideal Mother-land. — Alas! To few 
 is this dream granted ; and these few are so often awakened 
 by Flying Dogs ! * 
 
 This skyward track, however, is fit only for the winged 
 
 * So are the Vampyres called. 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 217 
 
 portion of the human species, for the smallest. What can 
 it profit poor quill-driving brethren, whose souls have not 
 even wing-shells, to say nothing of wings ? Or these teth- 
 ered persons with the best back, breast, and neck-fins, who 
 float motionless in the wicker Fish-box of the State, and 
 are not allowed to swim, because the Box or State, long 
 ago tied to the shore, itself swims in the name of the 
 Fishes ? To the whole standing and writing host of heavy- 
 laden State-domestics, Purveyors, Clerks of all departments, 
 and all the lobsters packed together heels over head into 
 the Lobster-basket of the Government office-rooms, and for 
 refreshments, sprinkled over with a few nettles ; to these 
 persons, what way of becoming happy here can I possibly 
 point out ? 
 
 My second merely ; and that is as follows : to take a 
 compound microscope, and with it to discover, and convince 
 themselves, that their drop of Burgundy is properly a Red 
 Sea, that butterfly-dust is peacock-feathers, mouldiness a 
 flowery-field, and sand a heap of jewels. These micro- 
 scopic recreations are more lasting than all costly watering- 
 place recreations. — But I must explain these metaphors by 
 new ones. The purpose, for which I have sent Fixleiri's 
 Life into the Messrs. Liibeks' Warehouse, is simply that 
 in this same Life — therefore in this Preface it is less need- 
 ful — I may show to the whole Earth that we ought to 
 value little joys more than great ones, the nightgown more 
 than the dress-coat ; that Plutus's heaps are worth less than 
 his handfuls, the plum than the penny for a rainy day; and 
 that not great, but little good-haps can make us happy. — 
 Can I accomplish this, I shall, through means of my Book, 
 bring up for Posterity a race of men finding refreshment 
 in all things ; in the warmth of their rooms and of their 
 night-caps; in their pillows; in the three High Festivals; 
 in mere Apostles' days ; in the Evening Moral Tales of 
 
 VOL. II. 19 
 
218 
 
 RTCIITER. 
 
 their wives, when these gentle persons have been forth as 
 ambassadresses visiting some Dowager Residence, whither 
 the husband could not be persuaded ; in the bloodletting-day 
 of these their newsbringers ; in the day of slaughtering, 
 salting, potting against the rigor of grim winter; and in all 
 such days. You perceive, my drift is that man must become 
 a little Tailor-bird, which, not amid the crashing boughs 
 of the storm-tost, roaring, immeasurable tree of Life, but 
 on one of its leaves, sews itself a nest together, and there 
 lies snug. The most essential sermon one could preach 
 to our century were a sermon on the duty of staying at 
 home. 
 
 The third skyward road is the alternation between the 
 other two. The foregoing second way is not good enough 
 for man, who here on Earth should take into his hand not 
 the Sickle only, but also the Plough. The first is too good 
 for him. He has not always the force, like Rugendas, in 
 the midst of the Battle to compose Battle-pieces ; and, like 
 Backhuisen in the Shipwreck, to clutch at no board but the 
 drawing-board to paint it on. And then his pains are not 
 less lasting than his fatigues. Still oftener is Strength 
 denied its Arena; it is but the smallest portion of life that, 
 to a working soul, offers Alps, Revolutions, Rhine-falls, 
 Worms Diets, and Wars with Xerxes ; and for the whole 
 it is better so ; the longer portion of life is a field beaten 
 flat as a threshing-floor, without lofty Gothard Mountains ; 
 often it is a tedious ice-field, without a single glacier tinged 
 with dawn. 
 
 But even by walking, a man rests and recovers himself 
 for climbing; by little joys and duties, for great. The 
 victorious Dictator must contrive to plough down his battle 
 Mars-field into a flax and carrot field ; to transform his 
 theatre of war into a parlor theatre, on which his children 
 may enact some good pieces from the Children's Friend. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 219 
 
 Can he accomplish this, can he turn so softly from the path 
 of poetical happiness into that of household happiness, — 
 then is he little different from myself, who even now, though 
 modesty might forbid me to disclose it — who even now, 
 I say, amid the creation of this Letter, have been enabled 
 to reflect, that, when it is done, so also will the Roses and 
 Elder-berries of pastry be done, which a sure hand is seeth- 
 ing in butter for the Author of this Work. 
 
 As I purpose appending to this Letter a Postscript (at the 
 end of the Book), I reserve somewhat which I had to say 
 about the Third* half-satirical, half-philosophical part of the 
 Work till that opportunity. 
 
 Here, out of respect for the rights of a Letter, the Author 
 drops his half anonymity ,f and for the first time subscribes 
 himself with his whole true name, 
 
 Jean Paul Friedrich Richter. 
 
 Hofin Voigtland, 29th June, 1795. 
 
 * Fixlein stands in the middle of the volume ; preceded by Einer 
 Mustheil fur Madchen (A Jelly-course for young Ladies) ; and 
 followed by Some Jus de Tablette for Men. A small portion of 
 the Preface relating to the first I have already omitted. Neither of 
 the two have the smallest relation to Fixlein. — Ed. 
 
 t J. P. H , Jean Paul Hasus, Jean Paul, &c, have in succession 
 been Richter's signatures. At present even, his German designa- 
 tion, either in writing or speech, is never Richter, but Jean Paul. 
 — Ed. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN, 
 
 DOWN TO OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 IN FIFTEEN LETTER-BOXES. 
 
 FIRST LETTER-BOX. 
 
 Dog-days Vacation. Visits. An Indigent of Quality. 
 
 Egidius Zebedaus Fixlein had just for eight days been 
 Quintus,* and fairly commenced teaching duties, when For- 
 tune tabled out for him four refreshing courses and collations, 
 besprinkled with flowers and sugar. These were the four 
 canicular weeks. I could find in my heart, at this hour, to 
 
 * For understanding many little hints which occur in this Life of 
 Fixlein, it will be necessary to bear in mind the following partic- 
 ulars : A German Gymnasium, in its complete state, appears to 
 include eight Masters ; Rector, Conrector, Subrector, Quintus, 
 Quartus, Tertius, &c, to the first or lowest. The forms, or classes, 
 again, are arranged in an inverse order; the Primaner (boys of the 
 Prima, or first form) being the most advanced, and taught by the 
 Rector; the Secundaner, by the Conrector, &c. ; and therefore the 
 Quartaner by the Quintus. In many cases, it would seem, the 
 number of Teachers is only six ; but in this Flachsenfingen Gymna- 
 sium we have express evidence that there was no curtailment. — Ed. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 221 
 
 pat the cranium of that good man who invented the Dog-days 
 Vacation. I never go to walk in that season, without think- 
 ing how a thousand down-pressed pedagogic persons are 
 now erecting themselves in the open air ; and the stiff 
 knapsack is lying unbuckled at their feet, and they can 
 seek whatsoever their soul desires ; butterflies, — or roots of 
 numbers, — or roots of words, — or herbs, — or their na- 
 tive villages. 
 
 The last did our Fixlein. He moved not, however, till 
 Sunday, — for you like to know how holidays taste in the 
 city ; and then, in company with his Shock and a Quin- 
 taner, or Fifth-Form boy, who carried his Green nightgown, 
 he issued through the gate in the morning. The dew was 
 still lying; and as he reached the back of the gardens, the 
 children of the Orphan Hospital were uplifting with clear 
 voices their morning hymn. The city was Flachsenfingen, 
 the village Hukelum, the dog Schil, and the year of Grace 
 1791. 
 
 " Mannikin," said he to the Quintaner, for he liked to 
 speak, as Love, children, and the people of Vienna do, in 
 diminutives, " Mannikin, give me the bundle to the village ; 
 run about, and seek thee a little bird, as thou art thyself, 
 and so have something to pet too in vacation-time." For 
 the mannikin was at once his page, lackey, room-comrade, 
 train-bearer, and gentleman in waiting ; and the Shock also 
 was his mannikin. 
 
 He stept slowly along, through the crisped cole-beds, 
 overlaid with colored beads of dew ; and looked at the 
 bushes, out of which, when the morning wind bent them 
 asunder, there seemed to start a flight of jewel-colibri, so 
 brightly did they glitter. From time to time he drew the 
 bell-rope of his — whistle, that the mannikin might not skip 
 away too far; and he shortened his league and half of road, 
 by measuring it not in leagues, but in villages. It is more 
 19* 
 
222 RICHTEK. 
 
 pleasant for pedestrians — for geographers it is not — to 
 count by vversts than by miles. In walking, our Quintus 
 furthermore got by heart the few fields on which the grain 
 was already reaped. 
 
 But now roam slower, Fixlein, through His Lordship's 
 garden of Hukelum ; not, indeed, lest thy coat sweep away 
 any tulip-stamina, but that thy good mother may have time 
 to lay her Cupid's-band of black taffeta about her smooth 
 brow. I am grieved to think my fair readers take it ill of 
 her, that she means first to iron this same band ; they can- 
 not know that she has no maid ; and that to-day the whole 
 Preceptorial dinner — the money purveyances the guest has 
 made over to her three days before — is to be arranged and 
 prepared by herself, without the aid of any Mistress of 
 the Household whatever ; for indeed she belongs to the 
 Tiers Etat, being neither more nor less than a gardener's 
 widow. 
 
 You can figure how this true, warm-hearted mother may 
 have lain in wait all morning for her Schoolman, whom she 
 loved as the apple of her eye ; since, on the whole populous 
 Earth, she had not (her first son, as well as her husband, 
 was dead) any other for her soul, which indeed overflowed 
 with love ; not any other but her Zebedaus. Could she 
 ever tell you aught about him, I mean aught joyful, without 
 ten times wiping her eyes ? Nay, did she not once divide 
 her solitary Kirmes (or Churchale) cake between two 
 mendicant students, because she thought Heaven would 
 punish her for so feasting, while her boy in Leipzig had 
 nothing to feast on, and must pass the cake-garden like 
 other gardens, merely smelling at it ? 
 
 " Dickens ! Thou already, Zebedaus ! " said the mother, 
 giving an embarrassed smile, to keep from weeping, as the 
 son, who had ducked past the window, and crossed the 
 grassy threshold without knocking, suddenly entered. For 
 
LIFE OF QJJ1NTUS FIXLE1N. 223 
 
 joy she forgot to put the heater into the smoothing-iron, as 
 her illustrious scholar, amid the loud boiling of the soup, ten- 
 derly kissed her brow, and even said Mamma ; a name which 
 lighted on her breast like downy silk. All the windows 
 were open ; and the garden, with its flower-essences, and 
 bird-music, and butterfly-collections, was almost half within 
 the room. But I suppose I have not yet mentioned that the 
 little garden-house, rather a chamber than a house, was 
 situated on the western cape of the Castle garden. The 
 owner had graciously allowed the widow to retain this 
 dowager-mansion ; as indeed the mansion would otherwise 
 have stood empty, for he now kept no gardener. 
 
 But Fixlein, in spite of his joy, could not stay long with 
 her ; being bound for the Church, which, to his spiritual 
 appetite, was at all times a king's kitchen ; a mother's. A 
 sermon pleased him simply because it was a sermon, and 
 because he himself had once preached one. The mother 
 was contented he should go ; these good women think they 
 enjoy their guests, if they can only give them aught to 
 enjoy. 
 
 In the choir, this Free-haven and Ethnic Forecourt of 
 stranger church-goers, he smiled on all parishioners ; and, 
 as in his childhood, standing under the wooden wing of an 
 archangel, he looked down on the coifed parterre. His 
 young years now inclosed him like children in their smiling 
 circle ; and a long garland wound itself in rings among 
 them, and by fits they plucked flowers from it, and threw 
 them in his face. Was it not old Senior Astman that stood 
 there on the pulpit Parnassus, the man by whom he had 
 been so often flogged, while acquiring Greek with him from 
 a grammar written in Latin, which he could not explain, 
 yet was forced to walk by the light of? Stood there not 
 behind the pulpit-stairs the sacristy-cabin, and in this was 
 there not a church-library of consequence — no schoolboy 
 
224 RICHTER. 
 
 could have buckled it wholly in his bookstrap — lying 
 under the minever cover of pastil dust ? And did it not 
 consist of the Polyglott in folio, which he, spurred on by 
 Pfeiffer's Critica Sacra^ had turned up leaf by leaf, in his 
 early years, excerpting therefrom the literce, inverses majus- 
 culce, minusculcB, and so forth, with an immensity of toil ? 
 And could he not at present, the sooner the more readily, 
 have wished to cast this alphabetic soft- fodder into the 
 Hebrew letter-trough, whereto your Oriental Rhizophagi 
 (Rooteaters) are tied, especially as here they get so little 
 vowel hard-fodder to keep them in heart ? — Stood there 
 not close by him the organ-stool, the throne to which, every 
 Apostle-day, the Schoolmaster had by three nods elevated 
 him, thence to fetch down the sacred hyssop, the sprinkler 
 of the Church? 
 
 My readers themselves will gather spirits when they now 
 hear that our Quintus, during the outshaking of the poor- 
 bag, was invited by the Senior to come over in the after- 
 noon ; and to them it will be little less gratifying than if he 
 had invited themselves. But what will they say, when they 
 get home with him to mother and dinner-table, both already 
 clad in their white Sunday dress ; and behold the large 
 cake which Fraulein Thiennette (Stephanie) has rolled from 
 her peel ? In the first place, however, they will wish to 
 know who she is. 
 
 She is — for if (according to Lessing), in the very excel- 
 lence of the Iliad, we neglect the personalities of its author ; 
 the same thing will apply to the fate of several authors, for 
 instance to my own ; but an authoress of cakes must not be 
 forgotten in the excellence of her baking — Thiennette is a 
 poor, indigent, insolvent young lady ; has not much, except 
 years, of which she counts five-and-twenty ; no near rela- 
 tions living now ; no acquirements (for in literature she does 
 not even know Werter) except economical ; reads no books, 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 225 
 
 not even mine ; inhabits, that is, watches like a wardeness, 
 quite alone, the thirteen void, disfurnished chambers of the 
 Castle of Hukelum, which belongs to the Dragoon Rittmeis- 
 ter Auf hammer, at present resident in his other mansion of 
 Schadeck ; on occasion, she commands and feeds his 
 soccagers and handmaids ; and can write herself By the 
 grace of God — which, in the thirteenth century, the coun- 
 try nobles did as well as princes, — for she lives by the 
 grace of man, at least of woman, the Lady Rittmeisterinn 
 Auf hammer's grace, who, at all times, blesses those vassals 
 whom her husband curses. But, in the breast of the 
 orphaned Thiennette, lay a sugared marchpane heart, 
 which, for very love, you could have devoured ; her fate 
 was hard, but her soul was soft ; she was modest, courteous, 
 and timid, but too much so; — cheerfully and coldly she 
 received the most cutting humiliations in Schadeck, and 
 felt no pain, and not till some days after did she see it all 
 clearly, and then these cuts began sharply to bleed, and she 
 wept in her loneliness over her lot. 
 
 It is hard for me to give a light tone, after this deep 
 one, and to add, that Fixlein had been almost brought up 
 beside her, and that she, his school-moiety over with the 
 Senior, while the latter was training him for the dignities of 
 the Third Form, had learned the Verba Anomala along 
 with him. 
 
 The Achilles'-shield of the cake, jagged and embossed 
 with carved work of brown scales, was whirling round in 
 the Quintus like a swing-wheel of hungry and thankful 
 ideas. Of that philosophy which despises eating, and of 
 that high breeding which wastes it, he had not so much 
 about him as belongs to the ungratefulness of such cultivated 
 persons ; but for his platter of meat, for his dinner of herbs, 
 he could never give thanks enough. 
 
 Innocent and contented, the quadruple dinner-party — for 
 
226 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 the Shock with his cover under the stove cannot be omitted 
 — now began their Feast of Sweet Bread, their Feast of 
 Honor for Thiennette, their Grove-feast in the garden. It 
 may truly be a subject of wonder how a man who has not, 
 like the King of France, four hundred and forty-eight per- 
 sons (the hundred and sixty -one Garpons de la Maison- 
 bouclie I do not reckon) in his kitchen, nor a Fruiterie of 
 thirty-one human bipeds, nor a Pastry-cookery of three-and- 
 twenty, nor a daily expenditure of 387 Livres 21 Sous, — 
 how such a man, I say, can eat with any satisfaction. Never- 
 theless, to me, a cooking mother is as dear as a whole royal 
 cooking household, given rather to feed upon me than to 
 feed me. — The most precious fragments which the Biogra- 
 pher and the World can gather from this meal consist of 
 here and there an edifying piece of table-talk. The mother 
 had much to tell. Thiennette is this night, she mentious, 
 for the first time, to put on her morning promenade-dress of 
 white muslin, as also a satin girdle and steel buckle ; but, 
 adds she, it will not sit her ; as the Rittmeisterinn (for this 
 lady used to hang her cast clothes on Thiennette, as Cath- 
 olics do their cast crutches and sores on their patron Saints) 
 was much thicker. Good women grudge each other nothing 
 save only clothes, husbands, and flax. In the fancy of the 
 Quintus, by virtue of this apparel, a pair of angel pinions 
 were sprouting forth from the shoulder-blades of Thien- 
 nette ; for him a garment was a sort of hollow half-man, to 
 whom only the nobler parts and the first principles were 
 wanting ; he honored these wrappages and hulls of our in- 
 terior, not as an Elegant, or a Critic of Beauty, but because 
 it was not possible for him to despise aught which he saw 
 others honoring. Farther, the good mother read to him, as 
 it were, the monumental inscription of his father, who had 
 sunk into the arms of Death in the thirty-second year of his 
 age, from a cause which I explain not here, but in a future 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 227 
 
 Letter-box, having too much affection for the reader. Our 
 Quintus could not sate himself with hearing of his father. 
 
 The fairest piece of news was, that Fraulein Thiennette 
 had sent word to-day, " he might visit Her Ladyship to- 
 morrow, as My Lord, his godfather, was to be absent in 
 town." This, however, I must explain. Old Aufhammer 
 was called Egidius, and was Fixlein's godfather ; but he — 
 though the Rittmeisterinn duly covered the cradle of the 
 child with nightly offerings, with flesh-tithes and grain-tithes 
 — had frugally made him no christening present, except 
 that of his name, which proved to be the very balefullest. 
 For, our Egidius Fixlein, with his Shock, which, by reason 
 of the French convulsions, had, in company with other em 
 igrants run off from Nantes, was but lately returned from 
 college — when he and his dog, as ill luck would have it, 
 went to walk in the Hukelum wood. Now, as the Quintus 
 was ever and anon crying out to his attendant : " Coosh, 
 Schil" (Couche Gilles), it must apparently have been the 
 Devil that had just then planted the Lord of Aufhammer 
 among the trees and bushes in such a way, that this whole 
 travestying and docking of his name — for Gilles means 
 Egidius — must fall directly into his ear. Fixlein could 
 neither speak French, nor any offence to mortal ; he knew 
 not head or tail of what couche signified ; a word, which, in 
 Paris, even the plebeian dogs are now in the habit of saying 
 to their valets de chiens. But there were three things which 
 Von Aufhammer never recalled ; his error, his anger, and 
 his word. The provokee, therefore, determined that the 
 plebeian provoker and honor-stealer should never more 
 speak to him, or — get a doit from him. 
 
 I return. After dinner he gazed out of the little window 
 into the garden, and saw his path of life dividing into four 
 branches, leading towards just as many skyward Ascen- 
 sions ; towards the Ascension into the Parsonage, and that 
 
228 RICHTER. 
 
 into the Castle to Thiennette, for this day ; and towards the 
 third into Schadeck for the morrow ; and lastly, into every 
 house in Hukelum as the fourth. And now when the mother 
 had long enough kept cheerfully gliding about on tiptoe 
 "not to disturb him in studying his Latin Bible," (the Vul- 
 gata), that is, in reading the Litter aturzeitung, he at last 
 rose to his own feet ; and the humble joy of the mother ran 
 long after the courageous son, who dared to go forth and 
 speak to a Senior, quite unappalled. Yet it was not without 
 reverence that he entered the dwelling of his old, rather 
 grey than bald headed, teacher, who was not only Virtue 
 itself, but also Hunger, eating frequently, and with the ap- 
 petite of Pharoah's lean kine. A schoolman that expects 
 to become a professor will scarcely deign to cast an eye on 
 a pastor ; but one, who is himself looking up to a parsonage 
 as to his working-house and breeding-house, knows how to 
 value such a character. The new parsonage — as if it had, 
 like a Casa Santa, come flying out of Erlang, or the Berlin 
 Friedrichs-strasse, and alighted in Hukelum — was for the 
 Quintus a Temple of the Sun, and the Senior a Priest of 
 the Sun. To be Parson there himself was a thought over- 
 laid with virgin honey ; such a thought as occurs but one 
 other time in History, namely, in the head of Hannibal, 
 when he projected stepping over the Alps, that is to say, 
 over the threshold of Rome. 
 
 The landlord and his guest formed an excellent bureau 
 (Vesprit ; people of office, especially of the same office, 
 have more to tell each other, namely, their own history, 
 than your idle May-chafers and Court-celestials, who must 
 speak only of other people's. — The Senior made a soft 
 transition from his iron-ware (in the stable furniture), to the 
 golden age of his Academic life, of which such people like as 
 much to think, as poets do of their childhood. So good as 
 he was, he still half joyfully recollected that he had once 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 229 
 
 been less so ; but joyful remembrances of wrong actions 
 are their half repetition, as repentant remembrances of good 
 ones are their half abolishment. 
 
 Courteously and kindly did Zebedaus (who could not 
 even enter in his Notebook the name of a person of quality 
 without writing an H. for Herr before it) listen to the Aca- 
 demic Saturnalia of the old gentleman, who in Wittenberg 
 had toped as well as written, and thirsted not more for the 
 Hippocrene than for Gukguk.* 
 
 Herr Jerusalem has observed, that the barbarism, which 
 often springs up close on the brightest efflorescence of the 
 sciences, is a sort of strengthening mud-bath, good for avert- 
 ing the over-refinement wherewith such efflorescence always 
 threatens us. I believe that a man who considers how high 
 the sciences have mounted with our upper classes — for 
 instance with every Patrician's son in Nurnberg, to whom 
 the public must present 1000 florins for studying with, — I 
 believe that such a man will not grudge the Son of the 
 Muses a certain barbarous Middle-age (the Burschen or 
 Student Life, as it is called), which may again so case- 
 harden him that his refinement shall not go beyond the 
 limits. The Senior, while in Wittenberg, had protected 
 the one hundred and eighty Academic Freedoms — so many 
 of them has Petrus RebufTus summed upf — against pre- 
 
 * A university beer. 
 
 t From Peter I will copy one or two of these privileges ; the 
 whole of which were once, at the origin of universities, in full 
 force. For instance, a student can compel a citizen to let him his 
 house and his horse; an injury, done even to his relations, must 
 be made good fourfold ; he is not obliged to fulfil the written com- 
 mands of the Pope ; the neighborhood must indemnify him for 
 what is stolen from him ; if he and a non-student are living at 
 variance, the latter only can be expelled from the boarding-house; 
 a Doctor is obliged to support a poor student ; if he is killed, the 
 
 VOL. II. 20 
 
230 RICHTER. 
 
 scription, and lost none except his moral one, of which truly 
 a man, even in a convent, can, seldom make much. This 
 gave our Quintus courage to relate certain pleasant somer- 
 sets of his own, which at Leipzig, under the Incubus-pres- 
 sure of poverty, he had contrived to execute. Let us hear 
 him. His landlord, who was at the same time Professor 
 and Miser, maintained in his enclosed court a whole com- 
 munity of hens. Fixlein, in company with three roommates, 
 without difficulty mastered the rent of a chamber, or 
 closet. In general their main equipments, like Phoenixes, 
 existed but in the singular number ; one bed, in which al- 
 ways the one pair slept before midnight, the other after 
 midnight, like nocturnal watchmen ; one coat, in which one 
 after the other they appeared in public, and which, like a 
 watch-coat, was the national uniform of the company ; and 
 several other ories, Unities both of Interest and Place. No- 
 where can you collect the stress-memorials and siege-medals 
 of Poverty more pleasantly and philosophically than at 
 College ; the Academic burgher exhibits to us how many 
 humorists and Diogeneses Germany has in it. Our Unita- 
 rians had just one thing four times, and that was hunger. 
 The Quintus related, perhaps with a too pleasurable enjoy- 
 ment of the recollection, how one of this famishing coro 
 invented means of appropriating the Professor's hens as 
 just tribute, or subsidies. He said (he was a Jurist), they 
 must once for all borrow a legal fiction from the Feudal 
 code, and look on the Professor as the soccage tenant, to 
 whom the usufruct of the hen-yard and hen-house belonged ; 
 but on themselves as the feudal superiors of the same, to 
 whom accordingly the vassal was bound to pay his feudal 
 dues. And now, that the Fiction might follow Nature, con- 
 next ten houses are laid under interdict till the murderer is dis- 
 covered ; his legacies are not abridged by falcidia, &c. &c. 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLEIN, 
 
 231 
 
 tinued he — "jictio sequitur naturam,' — it behoved them 
 to lay hold of said Yule-hens, by direct personal distraint. 
 But into the court-yard there was no getting. The feudalist, 
 therefore, prepared a fishing-line ; stuck a bread-pill on the 
 hook, and lowered his fishing-tackle, anglewise, down into 
 the court. In a few seconds the barb stuck in a hen s throat, 
 and the hen, now communicating with its feudal superior, 
 could silently, like ships by Archimedes, be heaved aloft to 
 the hungry air-fishing society, where, according to circum- 
 stances, the proper feudal name and title of possession 
 failed not to be awaiting her ; for the updrawn fowls were 
 now denominated Christmas-fowls, now Forest-hens, Bailiff- 
 hens, Pentecost and Summer-hens. " I begin," said the 
 angling lord of the manor, " with taking Rut c her -dues, for 
 so we call the triple and quintuple of the original quitrent, 
 when the vassal, as is the case here, has long neglected 
 payment." The Professor, like any other prince, observed 
 with sorrow the decreasing population of his hen-yard, for 
 his subjects, like the Hebrews, were dying by enumeration. 
 At last he had the happiness, while reading his lecture — 
 he was just come to the subject of Forest Salt and Coin 
 Regalities — to descry through the window of his audito- 
 rium a quitrent hen suspended, like Ignatius Loyola in 
 prayer, or Juno in her punishment, in middle air. He fol- 
 lowed the incomprehensible direct ascension of the aero- 
 nautic animal, and at last descried at the upper window the 
 attracting artist, and animal-magnetizer, who had drawn his 
 lot for dinner from the hen-yard below. Contrary to all ex- 
 pectation, he terminated this fowling sport sooner than his 
 Lecture on Regalities. 
 
 Fixlein walked home, amid the vesperal melodies of the 
 steeple sounding-holes ; and by the road, courteously took 
 off his hat before the empty windows of the Castle, Houses 
 of quality were to him like persons of quality, as in India 
 
232 
 
 UlCHTEIi. 
 
 the Pagoda at once represents the temple and the god. To 
 the mother he brought feigned compliments, which she 
 repaid with authentic ones ; for this afternoon she had been 
 over, with her historical tongue and nature-interrogating 
 eye, visiting the white-muslin Thiennette. The mother was 
 wont to show her every spare-penny which he dropped 
 into her large empty purse, and so raise him in the good 
 graces of the Fraiilein ; for women feel their hearts much 
 more attracted towards a son, who tenderly reserves for a 
 mother some of their benefits, than we do to a daughter 
 anxiously caring for her father ; perhaps from a hundred 
 causes, and this among the rest, that in their experience of 
 sons and husbands they are more used to find these persons 
 mere six-feet thunder-clouds, forked waterspouts, or even 
 reposing tornadoes. 
 
 Blessed Quintus! on whose Life this other distinction 
 like an order of nobility does also shine, that thou canst tell 
 it over to thy mother ; as, for example, this past afternoon 
 in the parsonage. Thy joy flows into another heart, and 
 streams back from it, redoubled, into thy own. There is a 
 closer approximating of hearts, and also of sounds, than 
 that of the Echo ; the highest approximation melts Tone 
 and Echo into Resonance together. 
 
 It is historically certain that both of them supped this 
 evening ; and that instead of the whole dinner fragments 
 which to-morrow might themselves represent a dinner, noth- 
 ing but the cake-offering or pudding was laid upon the altar 
 of the table. The mother, who for her own child would 
 willingly have neglected not herself only, but all other 
 people, now made a motion that to the Quintaner, who was 
 sporting out of doors and baiting a bird instead of himself, 
 there should no crumb of the precious pastry be given, but 
 only table-bread without the crust. But the Schoolman had 
 a Christian disposition, and said that it was Sunday, and the 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 233 
 
 young man liked something delicate to eat as well as lie. 
 Fixlein — the counterpart of great men and geniuses — 
 was inclined to treat, to gift, to gratify a serving house- 
 mate, rather than a man who is for the first time passing 
 through the gate, and at the next post-stage will forget 
 both his hospitable landlord and the last postmaster. On the 
 whole, our Quintus had a touch of honor in him, and notwith- 
 standing his thrift and sacred regard for money, he willingly 
 gave it away in cases of honor, and unwillingly in cases of 
 overpowering sympathy, which too painfully filled the 
 cavities of his heart, and emptied those of his purse. Whilst 
 the Quintaner was exercising the jus compascui on the 
 cake, and six arms were peacefully resting on Thiennette's 
 free-table, Fixlein read to himself and the company the 
 Flachsenfingen Address-calendar; any higher thing, except 
 MeusePs Gelehrtes Deutschland* he could not figure ; the 
 Kammerherrs and Raths of the Calendar went tickling 
 over his tongue like the raisins of the cake ; and of the 
 more rich church-livings he, by reading, as it were levied a 
 tithe. 
 
 He purposely remained his own Edition in Sunday 
 Wove-paper; I mean, he did not lay away his Sunday coat, 
 even when- the Prayer-bell tolled; for he had still much to 
 do. 
 
 After supper he was just about visiting the Fraiilein, 
 when he descried her in person, like a lily dipt in the red 
 twilight, in the Castle garden, whose western limit his 
 house constituted, the southern one being the Chinese 
 wall of the Castle .... By the way, how I got to the 
 knowledge of all this, what Letter-boxes are, whether I my- 
 self was ever there, &c. &c. — the whole of this shall, upon 
 
 * Literary Germany, a work (I believe of no great merit) which 
 Richter often twitches in the same style. — Ed. 
 20* 
 
34 RICHTER. 
 
 my life, be soon and faithfully communicated to the reader, 
 and that too in the present Book. 
 
 Fixlein hopped forth like a Will-o'-wisp into the garden, 
 whose flower-perfume was mingling with his supper-per- 
 fume. No one bowed lower to a nobleman than he, not 
 out of plebeian servility, nor of self-interested cringing, but 
 because he thought "* a nobleman was a nobleman." But 
 in this case his bow, instead of falling forwards, fell ob- 
 liquely to the right, at it were after his hat ; for he had not 
 risked taking a stick with him ; and hat and stick were his 
 proppage and balance-wheel, in short, his bowing-gear, 
 without which it was out of his power to produce any 
 courtly bow, had you offered him the High Church of Ham- 
 burg for so doing. Thiennette's mirthfulness soon unfolded 
 his crumpled soul into straight form, and into the proper 
 tone. He delivered her a long neat Thanksgiving and 
 Harvest sermon for the scaly cake ; which appeared to her 
 at once kind and tedious. Young women without the polish 
 of high life reckon tedious pedantry, merely like snuffing, 
 one of the necessary ingredients of a man ; they reverence 
 us infinitely ; and as Lambert could never speak to the 
 King of Prussia, by reason of his sun-eyes, except in the 
 dark, so they, I believe, often like belter — also by reason 
 of our sublime air — if they can catch us in the dark too. 
 Him Thiennette edified by the Imperial History of Herr 
 von Aufhammer and Her Ladyship his spouse, who meant 
 to put him, the Quintus, in her will ; her he edified by his 
 Literary History, as relating to himself and the Subrector ; 
 how, for instance, he was at present vicariating in the 
 Second Form, and ruling over scholars as long in stature as 
 himself. And thus did the two in happiness, among red 
 bean-blossoms, red may-chafers, before the red of the 
 twilight burning lower and lower on the horizon, walk to 
 and fro in the garden ; and turn always with a smile as they 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 235 
 
 approached the head of the ancient gardeneress, standing 
 like a window-bust through the little lattice, which opened 
 in the bottom of a larger one. 
 
 To me it is incomprehensible he did not fall in love. 
 I know his reasons, indeed. In the first place, she had 
 nothing ; secondly, he had nothing, and school-debts to 
 boot ; thirdly, her genealogical tree was a boundary tree 
 and warning-post ; fourthly, his hands were tied up by 
 another nobler thought, which, for good cause, is yet re- 
 served from the reader. Nevertheless — Fixlein ! I durst 
 not have been in thy place ! I should have looked at her, 
 and remembered her virtues and our school-years, and then 
 have drawn forth my too fusible heart, and presented it to 
 her as a bill of exchange, or insinuated it as a summons. 
 For I should have considered that she resembled a nun in 
 two senses, in her good heart and in her good pastry ; that, 
 in spite of her intercourse with male vassals, she was no 
 Charles Genevieve Louise Auguste Timothe Eon de Beau- 
 mont,* but a smooth, fair-haired, white-capped dove ; that 
 she sought more to please her own sex than ours ; that she 
 showed a melting heart, not previously borrowed from the 
 Circulating Library, in tears, for which in her innocence 
 she rather took shame than credit. — At the very first 
 cheapening, I should, on these grounds, have been out with 
 my heart. — Had I fully reflected, Quintus ! that I knew 
 her as myself; that her hands and mine (to wit, had I been 
 thou) had both been guided by the same Senior to Latin 
 penmanship; that we two, when little children, had kissed 
 each other before the glass, to see whether the two imao-e- 
 children would do it likewise in the mirror ; that often we 
 had put hands of both sexes into the same mufT, and there 
 played with them in secret ; had I, lastly, considered that 
 
 * See Schmelzle's Journey, p. 184. — Ed. 
 
236 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 we were here standing before the glass-house, now splen- 
 dent in the enamel of twilight, and that on the eold panes of 
 this glass-house we two (she within, I without) had often 
 pressed our warm cheeks together, parted only by the 
 thickness of the glass, — then had I taken this poor gentle 
 soul, pressed asunder by Fate, and seeing, amid her 
 thunder-clouds, no higher elevation to part them and pro- 
 tect her than the grave, and had drawn her to my own soul, 
 and warmed her on my heart, and encompassed her about 
 with my eyes. 
 
 In truth, the Quintus would have done so too, had not the 
 above-mentioned nobler thought, which I yet disclose not, 
 kept him back. Softened, without knowing the cause — 
 (accordingly he gave his mother a kiss) — and blessed 
 without having had a literary conversation ; and dismissed 
 with a freight of humble compliments, which he was to dis- 
 load on the morrow before the Dragoon Rittmeisterinn, he 
 returned to his little cottage, and looked yet a long while 
 out of its dark windows, at the light ones of the Castle. 
 And then, when the first quarter of the moon was setting, 
 that is, about midnight, he again, in the cool sigh of a 
 mild, fanning, moist, and directly heart-addressing night- 
 breeze, opened the eyelids of a sight already sunk in dream- 
 
 Sleep, for to-day thou hast done nought ill ! I, whilst 
 the drooping, shut flower- bell of thy spirit sinks on thy 
 pillow, will look into the breezy night over thy morning 
 footpath, which, through the translucent little wood, is to 
 lead thee to Schadeck, to thy patroness. All prosperity 
 attend thee, thou foolish Quintus ! — 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 237 
 
 SECOND LETTER-BOX. 
 
 Frau von Avf hammer. Child hood- Resonance. Author craft. 
 
 The early piping which the little thrush, last night adopted 
 by the Quintaner from its nest, started for victual about 
 two o'clock, soon drove our Quintus into his clothes ; whose 
 calender-press and parallel-ruler the hands of his careful 
 mother had been, for she would not send him to the Ritt- 
 meisterinn " like a runagate dog." The Shock was incar- 
 cerated, the Quintaner taken with him, as likewise many 
 wholesome rules from Mother Fixlein, how to conduct 
 himself towards the Rittmeisterinn. But the son answered : 
 " Mamma, when a man has been in company, like me, 
 with high people, with a Fraulein Thiennette, he soon 
 knows whom he is speaking to, and what polished manners 
 and Saver di veaver (Savoir vivre) require." 
 
 He arrived with the Quintaner, and green fingers (dyed 
 with the leaves he had plucked on the path), and with a 
 half-nibbled rose between his teeth, in presence of the sleek 
 lackeys of Schadeck. — If women are flowers — though as 
 often silk and Italian and gum-flowers as botanical ones — 
 then was Frau von Aufhammer a ripe flower, with 
 (adipose) neck-bulb, and tuberosity (of lard). Already, in 
 the half of her body, cut away from life by the apoplexy, 
 she lay upon her lard-pillow but as on a softer grave ; 
 nevertheless, the portion of her that remained was at once 
 lively, pious, and proud. Her heart was a flowing cornuco- 
 pia to all men, yet this not from philanthropy, but from 
 rigid devotion ; the lower classes she assisted, cherished, 
 and despised, regarding nothing in them, except it were 
 their piety. She received the bowing Quintus with the 
 back-bowing air of a patroness ; yet she brightened into a 
 
233 RICHTER. 
 
 look of kindliness at his disloading of the compliments from 
 Thiennette. 
 
 She began the conversation, and long continued it alone, 
 and said — yet without losing the inflation of pride from 
 her countenance : " She should soon die ; but the god-chil- 
 dren of her husband she would remember in her will." 
 Farther, she told him directly in the face, which stood there 
 all over-written with the Fourth Commandment before her, 
 that "he must not build upon a settlement in Hukelum ; but 
 to the Flachsenfingen Conrectorate (to which the Burger- 
 meister and Council had the right of nomination) she hoped 
 to promote him, as it was from the then Burgermeister that 
 she bought her coffee, and from the Town-Syndic (he drove 
 a considerable wholesale and retail trade in Hamburg can- 
 dles) that she bought both her wax and tallow lights." 
 
 And now by degrees he arrived at his humble petition, 
 when she asked him sick-news of Senior Astmann, who 
 guided himself more by Luther's Catechism than by the 
 Catechism of Health. She was Astmann's patroness in a 
 stricter than ecclesiastical sense ; and she even confessed 
 that she would soon follow this true shepherd of souls, when 
 she heard, here at Schadeck, the sound of his funeral-bell. 
 Such strange chemical affinities exist between our dross 
 and our silver veins; as, for example, here between Pride 
 and Love ; and I could wish that we would pardon this 
 hypostatic union in all persons, as we do it in the fair, who, 
 with all their faults, are nevertheless by us — as, according 
 to Du Fay, iron, though mixed with any other metal, is, by 
 the magnet — attracted and held fast. 
 
 Supposing even that the Devil had, in some idle minute, 
 sown a handful or two of the seeds of Envy in our Quintus's 
 soul, yet they had not sprouted ; and to-day especially they 
 did not, when he heard the praises of a man who had been 
 his teacher, and who — what he reckoned a Titulado of the 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLE1N. 239 
 
 Earth, not from vanity but from piety — was a clergyman. 
 So much, however, is, according to History, not to he de- 
 nied ; that he now straightway came forth with his petition 
 to the noble lady, signifying that " indeed he would cheer- 
 fully content himself for a few years in the school ; but yet 
 in the end he longed to be in some small quiet priestly 
 office." To her question, " But was he orthodox ? " he an- 
 swered, that " he hoped so ; he had, in Leipzig, not only 
 attended all the public lectures of Dr Burscher, but also had 
 taken private instructions from several sound teachers of 
 the faith, well knowing that the Consistorium, in its exami- 
 nations as to purity of doctrine, was now more strict than 
 formerly " 
 
 The sick lady required him lo make a prr»of-shot, namely, 
 to administer lo her a sick-bed exhortation. By Heaven! 
 he administered to her one of the best. Her pride of birth 
 now crouched before his pride of office and priesthood ; for 
 though he could not, with the Dominican monk, Alanus de 
 Rune, believe that a priest was greater than God, inasmuch 
 as the latter could only make a World, but the former a 
 God (in the mass) ; yet he could not but fall in with Hos- 
 tiensis, who shows that the priestly dignity is seven thousand 
 six hundred and forty-four times greater than the kingly, 
 the Sun being just so many times greater than the Moon. — 
 But a Rittmeisterinn — she shrinks into absolute nothing 
 before a parson. 
 
 In the servants' hall he applied to the lackeys for the last 
 annual series of the Hamburg Political Journal ; perceiv- 
 ing that with these historical documents of the time they 
 were scandalously papering the buttons of travelling rai- 
 ment. In gloomy harvest evenings, he could now sit down 
 and read for himself what good news were transpiring in 
 the political world — twelve months ago. 
 
 On a Triumphal Car, full-laden with laurel, and to which 
 
240 RICHTER. 
 
 Hopes alone were yoked, he drove home at night, and by 
 the road advised the Quintaner not to be puffed up with 
 any earthly honor, but silently to thank God, as himself was 
 now doing. 
 
 The thickset blooming grove of his four canicular weeks, 
 and the flying tumult of blossoms therein, are already 
 painted on three of the sides. I will now clutch blindfold 
 into his days, and bring out one of them ; one smiles and 
 sends forth its perfumes like another. 
 
 Let us take, for instance, the Saint's day of his mother, 
 Clara, the twelfth of August. In the morning, he had 
 perennial, fire-proof joys, that is to say, Employments. 
 For he was writing, as I am doing. Truly, if Xerxes pro- 
 posed a prize for the invention of a new pleasure, any man 
 who had sat down to write his thoughts on the prize-ques- 
 tion had the new pleasure already among his fingers. I 
 know only one thing sweeter than making a book, and that 
 is, to project one. Fixlein used to write little works, of 
 the twelfth part of an alphabet in size, which in their man- 
 uscript state he got bound by the bookbinder in gilt boards, 
 and betilled with printed letters, and then inserted them 
 among the literary ranks of his book-board. Every one 
 thought they were novelties printed in writing types. He 
 had labored — I shall omit his less interesting performances 
 — at a Collection of Errors of the Press, in German wri- 
 tings; he compared Errata with each other; showed which 
 occurred most frequently ; observed that important results 
 were to be drawn from this, and advised the reader to draw 
 them. 
 
 Moreover, he took his place among the German Maso- 
 rites. He observes with great justice in his Preface: "The 
 Jews had their Masora to show, which told them how often 
 every letter was to be found in their Bible ; for example, 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 241 
 
 the Aleph (the A) 42,377 times; how many verses there 
 are in which all the consonants appear (there are 26 verses), 
 or only eighty (there are 3) ; how many verses we have 
 into which 42 words and 160 consonants enter (there is just 
 one, Jeremiah xxi. 7) ; which is the middle letter in certain 
 books (in the Pentateuch, it is in Leviticus xi. 42, the noble 
 V*), or in the whole Bible itself. But where have we 
 Christians any similar Masora for Luther's Bible to show ? 
 Has it been accurately investigated which is the middle 
 word, or the middle letter here, which vowel appears sel- 
 domest, and how often each vowel ? Thousands of Bible- 
 Christians go out of the world, without ever knowing that 
 the German A occurs 323,015 times (therefore above 7 
 times oftener than the Hebrew one) in their Bible." 
 
 I could wish that inquirers into Biblical Literature among 
 our Reviewers would publicly let me know, if on a more 
 accurate summation they find this number incorrect. t 
 
 Much also did the Quintus collect; he had a fine Alma- 
 nack Collection, a Catechism and Pamphlet Collection ; also, 
 a Collection of Advertisements, which he began, is not so 
 incomplete as you most frequently see such things. He 
 puts high value on his Alphabetical Lexicon of German 
 Subscribers for Books, where my name also occurs among 
 the Js. 
 
 * As in the State. — [V. or Von, de, of, being the symbol of the 
 nobility, the middle order of the State. — Ed.] 
 
 tin Erlang, my petition has been granted. The Bible Institution 
 of that town have found instead of the 116,301 As, which Fixlein 
 at first pretended with such certainty to find in the Bible-books 
 (which false number was accordingly given in the first Edition of 
 this Work, p. 81), the above-mentioned 323,015; which (uncom- 
 monly singular) is precisely the sum of all the letters in the Koran 
 put together. See Ludeke's Beschr. dcs Turk. Reichs (Lildeke' s 
 Description of the Turkish Empire. New edition, 1780. 
 
 VOL. II. 21 
 
242 RICHTER. 
 
 But what he liked best to produce were Schemes of 
 Books. Accordingly, he sewed together a large work, 
 wherein he merely advised the Learned of things they ought 
 to introduce in Literary History, which History he rated 
 some ells higher than Universal or Imperial History. In 
 his Prolegomena to this performance, he transiently submitted 
 to the Literary republic that Hommel had given a register 
 of Jurists who were sons of wh — , of others who had 
 become Saints ; that Baillet enumerates the Learned who 
 meant to write something; and Ancillon those who wrote 
 nothing at all ; and the Liibeck Superintendent Gotze, those 
 who were shoemakers, those who were drowned ; and Bern- 
 hard those whose fortunes and history before birth were 
 interesting. This (he could now continue) should, as it 
 seems, have excited us to similar muster-rolls and matricu- 
 lations of other kinds of Learned; whereof he proposed a 
 few ; for example, of the Learned who were unlearned ; 
 of those who were entire rascals ; of such as wore their 
 own hair, — of cue-preachers, cue-psalmists, cue-annalists, 
 and so forth ; of the Learned who had worn black leather 
 breeches, of others who had worn rapiers ; of the Learned 
 who had died in their eleventh year, — in their twentieth — 
 twenty-first, &c, — in their hundred and fiftieth, of which 
 he knew no instance, unless the Beggar Thomas Parr might 
 be adduced ; of the Learned who wrote a more abominable 
 hand than the other Learned (whereof we know only Rol- 
 finken and his letters, which were as long as his hands*) ; 
 or of the Learned who had dipt nothing from each other 
 but the beard (whereof no instance is known, save that of 
 Philelphus and Timotheus.f ) 
 
 * Paravicini Singularia de viris claris. Cent. I. 2. 
 
 t Ejusd. Cent. II. Philelphus quarrelled with the Greek about 
 the quantity of a syllable ; the prize or bet was the beard of the 
 vanquished. Timotheus lost his. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS F1XLEIN. 243 
 
 Such bye studies did he carry on along with his official 
 labors ; but I think the State in viewing these matters is 
 actually mad ; it compares the man who is great in Philo- 
 sophy and Belles Lettres at the expense of his jog-trot 
 officialities, to concert-clocks, which, though striking their 
 hours in flute-melodies, are worse time-keepers than your 
 gross, stupid steeple-clocks. 
 
 To return to St. Clara's day. Fixlein, after such mental 
 exertions, bolted out under the music-bushes and rustling 
 trees ; and returned not again out of warm Nature, till plate 
 and chair were already placed at the table. In the course 
 of the repast, something occurred which a Biographer must 
 not omit; for his mother had, by request, been wont to map 
 out for him, during the process of mastication, the chart of 
 his chird's-world, relating all the traits which in any way 
 prefigured what he had now grown to. This perspective 
 sketch of his early Past he committed to certain little leaves 
 which merit our undivided attention. For such leaves ex- 
 clusively, containing scenes, acts, plays of his childhood, he 
 used chronologically to file and arrange in separate drawers 
 in a little child's-desk of his ; and thus to divide his Biography, 
 as Moser did his Publicistic Materials, into separate letter- 
 boxes. He had boxes or drawers for memorial-letters of 
 his twelfth, of his thirteenth, fourteenth, &c, of his twenty- 
 first year, and so on. Whenever he chose to conclude a 
 day of pedagogic drudgery by an evening of peculiar rest, 
 he simply pulled out a letter-drawer, a register-bar in his 
 Life-hand-organ, and recollected the whole. 
 
 And here must I, in reference to these reviewing Mutes, 
 who may be for casting the noose of strangulation round 
 my neck, most particularly beg, that, before doing so on 
 account of my Chapters being called Letter-boxes, they 
 would have the goodness to look whose blame it was, and 
 to think whether I could possibly help it, seeing the Quintus 
 
244 RICHTEK. 
 
 had divided his Biography into such Boxes himself; they 
 have Christian bowels. 
 
 But about his elder brother he put no saddening question 
 to his mother ; this poor boy a peculiar Fate had laid hold 
 of, and with all his genial endowment dashed to pieces on 
 the ice-berg of Death. For he chanced to leap on an ice- 
 board that had jammed itself among several others ; but 
 these recoiled, and his shot forth with him ; melted away as 
 it floated under his feet, and so sunk his heart of fire amid 
 the ice and waves. It grieved his mother that he was not 
 found, that her heart had not been harrowed by the look of 
 the swoln corpse. — O good mother, rather thank God for 
 it! — 
 
 After breakfast, to fortify himself with new vigor for his 
 desk, he for some time strolled idly over the house, and, 
 like a Police Fire-inspector, visited all the nooks of his cot- 
 tage, to gather from them here and there a live ember from 
 the ash-covered rejoicing-fire of his childhood. He mounted 
 to the garret, to the empty bird-coops of his father, who in 
 winter had been a birder ; and he transiently reviewed the 
 lumber of his old playthings, which were lying in the netted 
 enclosure of a large canary breeding-cage. In the minds 
 of children, it is regular little forms, such as those of balls 
 and dies, that impress and express themselves most forcibly. 
 From this may the reader explain to himself Fixlein's de- 
 light in the red acorn-blockhouse, in the sparwork glued 
 together out of white chips and husks of potatoe-plums, in 
 the cheerful glass-house of a cube-shaped lantern, and other 
 the like products of his early architecture. The following, 
 however, I explain quite differently ; he had ventured, with- 
 out leave given from any lord of the manor, to build a clay 
 house ; not for cottagers, but for flies ; and which, there- 
 fore, you could readily enough have put in your pocket. 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLE1N. 245 
 
 This fly-hospital had its glass windows, and a red coat of 
 coloring, and very many alcoves, and three balconies ; bal- 
 conies, as a sort of house within a house, he had loved from 
 of old so much, that he could scarcely have liked Jerusalem 
 well, where (according to Lightfoot) no such thing is per- 
 mitted to be built. From the glistening eyes with which 
 the architect had viewed his tenantry creeping about the 
 windows, or feeding out of the sugar-trough — for, like the 
 Count St Germain, they ate nothing but sugar, — from this 
 joy an adept in the art of education might easily have pro- 
 phesied his turn for household contraction ; to his fancy, in 
 those times, even gardeners'-huts were like large waste 
 Arks and Halls, and nothing bigger than such a fly-Louvre 
 seemed a true, snug, citizen's-house. He now felt and 
 handled his old high child's-stool, which had in former days 
 resembled the Sedes Exploratoria of the Pope ; he gave 
 his child's-coach a tug and made it run ; but he could not 
 understand what balsam and holiness so much distinguished 
 it from all other child's-coaches. He wondered that the 
 real sports of children should not so delight him as the em- 
 blems of these sports, when the child that had carried them 
 on was standing grown up to manhood in his presence. 
 
 Before one article in the house he stood heart-melted and 
 sad ; before a little angular clothes-press, which was no 
 higher than my table, and which had belonged to his poor 
 drowned brother. When the boy with the key of it was 
 swallowed by the waves, the excruciated mother had made 
 a vow that this toy-press of his should never be broken up 
 by violence. Most probably there is nothing in it but the 
 poor soul's playthings. Let us look away from this bloody 
 urn. — — 
 
 Bacon reckons the remembrances of childhood among 
 wholesome, medicinal things; naturally enough, therefore, 
 they acted like a salutary digestive on the Quintus. He 
 21* 
 
246 RICHTER. 
 
 could now again betake him with new heart to his desk, and 
 produce something quite peculiar — petitions for church 
 livings. He took the Address-calendar, and, for every coun- 
 try parish that he found in it, got a petition in readiness ; 
 which he then laid aside, till such time as the present in- 
 cumbent should decease. For Hukelum alone he did not 
 solicit. — It is a pretty custom in Flachsenfingen, that, for 
 every office which is vacant, you are required, if you want 
 it, to sue. As the higher use of Prayer consists not in its 
 fulfilment, but in its accustoming you to pray ; so likewise 
 petitionary papers ought to be given in, not indeed that you 
 may get the office — this nothing but your money can do — 
 but that you may learn to write petitions. In truth, if, among 
 the Calmucks, the turning of a calabash* stands in place of 
 Prayer, a slight movement of the purse may be as much as 
 if you supplicated in words. 
 
 Towards evening — it was Sunday — he went out roving 
 over the village ; he pilgrimed to his old sporting-places, 
 and to the common where he had so often driven his snails 
 to pasture ; visited the peasant who, from school-times up- 
 wards, had been wont, to the amazement of the rest, to thoui 
 
 * Their prayer-barrel, Kurudu, is a hollowed shell, a calabash, 
 full of unrolled formulas of prayer; they sway it from side to side, 
 and then it works. More philosophically viewed, since in prayer 
 the feeling only is of consequence, it is much the same whether 
 this express itself by motion of the mouth or of the calabash. 
 
 t In German, as in some other languages, the common mode of 
 address is by the third person ; plural, it indicates respect ; singular, 
 command ; the second person is also used j plural, it generally 
 denotes indifference ; singular, great familiarity, and sometimes its 
 product, contempt. Dutzenfreund, Thouing -friend, is the strictest 
 term of intimacy; and among the wild Burschen (Students) many a 
 duel (happily, however, often ending like the Polemo-Middinia in one 
 drop of blood) has been fought, in consequence of saying Du (thou) 
 and Sie (they) in the wrong place. — En. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 247 
 
 him ; went, an Academic Tutor, to the Schoolmaster ; then 
 to the Senior ; then to the Episcopal-barn or church. This 
 last no mortal understands, till I explain it. The case was 
 this. Some three-and-forty years ago a fire had destroyed 
 the church (not the steeple), the parsonage, and — what 
 was not to be replaced — the church-records. (For this 
 reason it was only the smallest portion of the Hukelum 
 people that knew exactly how old they were ; and the mem- 
 ory of our Quintus himself vibrated between adopting the 
 thirty-third year and the thirty-second.) In consequence, 
 the preaching had now to be carried on where formerly 
 there had been threshing ; and the seed of the divine word 
 to be turned over on the same threshing-floor with natural 
 corn-seed. The Chanter and the Schoolboys took up the 
 threshing-floor; the female mother-church-people stood on 
 the one sheaves-loft, the Schadeck womankind on the other ; 
 and their husbands clustered pyramidically, like groschen 
 and farthing-gallery men, about the barn-stairs ; and far up on 
 the straw-loft, mixed souls stood listening. A little flute was 
 their organ, an upturned beercask their altar, round which 
 they had to walk. I confess, I myself could have preached 
 in such a place, not without humor. The Senior (at that 
 time still a Junior), while the parsonage was building, dwelt 
 and taught in the Castle ; it was here, accordingly, that 
 Fixlein had learned the Irregular Verbs with Thien- 
 nette. 
 
 These voyages of discovery completed, our Hukelum 
 voyager could still, after evening prayers, pick leaf-insects, 
 with Thiennette, from the roses ; worms from the beds, and 
 a Heaven of joy from every minute. Every dew-drop was 
 colored as with oil of cloves and oil of gladness ; every 
 star was a sparkle from the sun of happiness ; and in the 
 closed heart of the maiden, there lay near to him, be- 
 hind a little wall of separation, (as near to the Righteous. 
 
248 RICHTER. 
 
 man behind the thin wall of Life,) an outstretched blooming 
 Paradise .... I mean, she loved him a little. 
 
 He might have known it, perhaps. But to his compressed 
 delight he gave freer vent, as he went to bed, by early re- 
 collections on the stair. For in his childhood he had been 
 accustomed, by way of evening-prayer, to go over, under 
 his coverlid, as it were, a rosary, including fourteen Bible 
 Proverbs, the first verse of the Psalm, " All people that on 
 Earth," the Tenth Commandment, and, lastly, a long bless- 
 ing. To get the sooner done with it, he had used to begin 
 his devotion, not only on the stair, but before leaving that 
 place where Alexander studied men, and Semler stupid 
 books. Moored in the haven of the down-waves, he was 
 already over with his evening supplication ; and could now, 
 without farther exertion, shut his eyes and plump into sleep. 
 
 Thus does there lurk, in the smallest homunculus, the 
 
 model of — the Catholic Church. 
 
 So far the Dog-days of Quintus Zebedaus Egidius Fixlein. 
 — I, for the second time, close a Chapter of this Life, as 
 Life itself is closed, with a sleep. 
 
 THIRD LETTER-BOX. 
 
 Christmas Recollections. New Occurrence. 
 
 For all of us the passage to the grave is, alas ! a string 
 of empty, insipid days, as of glass pearls, only here and 
 there divided by an orient one of price. But you die mur- 
 muring, unless like the Quintus, you regard your existence 
 as a drum ; this has only one single tone, but variety of time 
 gives the sound of it cheerfulness enough. Our Quintus 
 taught in the Fourth Class ; vicariated in the Second ; wrote 
 at his desk by night ; and so lived on the usual monotonous 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 249 
 
 fashion — all the time from the Holidays — till Christmas- 
 eve, 1791 ; and nothing was remarkable in his history ex- 
 cept this same eve, which I am now about to paint. 
 
 But I shall still have time to paint it, after, in the first 
 place, explaining shortly how, like birds of passage, he 
 had contrived to soar away over the dim, cloudy Harvest. 
 The secret was, he set upon the Hamburg Political Journal, 
 with which the lackeys of Schadeck had been for papering 
 their buttons. He could now calmly, with his back at the 
 stove, accompany the winter campaigns of the foregoing 
 year ; and fly after every battle, as the ravens did after that 
 of Pharsalia. On the printed paper he could still, with joy 
 and admiration, walk round our German triumphal arches 
 and scaffoldings for fireworks ; while to the people in the 
 town, who got only the newest newspapers, the very frag- 
 ments of these our trophies, maliciously torn down by the 
 French, were scarcely discernible ; nay, with old plans he 
 could drive back and discomfit the enemy, while later read- 
 ers in vain tried to resist them with new ones. 
 
 Moreover, not only did the facility of conquering the 
 French prepossess him in favor of this journal ; but also 
 the circumstance that it — cost him nothing. His attach- 
 ment to gratis reading was decided. And does not this 
 throw light on the fact that he, as Morhof advised, was 
 wont sedulously to collect the separate leaves of waste- 
 paper books as they came from the grocer, and to rake 
 among the same, as Virgil did in Ennius? Nay, for him 
 the grocer was a Fortius (the scholar), or a Frederick (the 
 king), both which persons were in the habit of simply cut- 
 ting from complete books such leaves as contained anything. 
 It was also this respect for all waste-paper that inspired him 
 with such esteem for the aprons of French cooks, which it 
 is well known consist of printed paper ; and he often wished 
 some German would translate these aprons ; indeed I am 
 
250 RICHTER. 
 
 willing to believe that a good version of more than one of 
 such paper aprons might contribute to elevate our Literature 
 (this Muse d belles f esses), and serve her in place of drivel- 
 bib. — On many things a man puts a pretium affectionis, 
 simply because he hopes he may have half stolen them ; on 
 this principle, combined with the former, our Quintus 
 adopted into his belief anything he could snap away from an 
 open Lecture, or as a visitor in class-rooms; opinions only 
 for which the Professor must be paid, he rigorously exam- 
 ined. — I return to the Christmas-eve. 
 
 At the very first, Egidius was glad, because out of doors 
 millers and bakers were at fisty-cuffs (as we say of drifting 
 snow in large flakes), and the ice-flowers of the window 
 were blossoming ; for external frost, with a snug warm 
 room, was what he liked. He could now put fir wood into 
 his stove, and Mocha coffee into his stomach ; and shove 
 his right foot (not into the slipper, but) under the warm side 
 of his Shock, and also on the left keep swinging his pet 
 Starling, which was pecking at the snout of old Schil ; and 
 then with the right hand — with the left he was holding his 
 pipe — proceed, so undisturbed, so entrenched, so cloud- 
 capt, without the smallest breath of frost, to the highest en- 
 terprise which a Quintus can attempt, — to writing the 
 Class-prodromus of the Flachsenfingen Gymnasium, namely 
 the eighth part thereof. I hold the first printing in the 
 history of a literary man to be more important than the 
 first printing in the history of Letters. Fixlein could not 
 sate himself with specifying what he purposed, God willing, 
 in the following year, to treat of; and accordingly, more 
 for the sake of printing than of use, he farther inserted 
 three or four pedagogic glances at the plan of opera- 
 tions to be followed by his schoolmaster colleagues as a 
 body. 
 
 He lastly introduced a few dashes, by way of hooking his 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 251 
 
 thoughts together ; and then laid aside the Opus, and would 
 no longer look at it, that so, when printed, he might stand 
 astonished at his own thoughts. And now he could take the 
 Leipzig Fair Catalogue, which he purchased yearly, instead 
 of the books therein, and open it without a sigh ; he too was 
 in print, as well as I am. 
 
 The happy fool, while writing, had shaken his head, 
 rubbed his hands, hitched about on his chair, puckered his 
 face, and sucked the end of his cue. — He could now 
 spring up about five o'clock in the evening to recreate him- 
 self; and across the magic vapor of his pipe, like a new- 
 caught bird, move up and down in his cage. On the warm 
 smoke the long galaxy of street-lamps was gleaming ; and red 
 on his bed-curtains lay the fitful reflection of the blazing win- 
 dows and illuminated trees in the neighborhood. And now he 
 shook away the snow of Time from the winter-green of 
 Memory; and beheld the fair years of his childhood, un- 
 covered, fresh, green, and balmy, standing afar off before 
 him. From his distance of twenty years, he looked into 
 the quiet cottage of his parents, where his father and his 
 brother had not yet been reaped away by the sickle of 
 Death. He said to himself : " I will go through the whole 
 Christmas-eve from the very dawn, as I had it of old." 
 
 At his very rising he finds spangles on the table ; sacred 
 spangles from the gold-leaf and silver-leaf with which the 
 Christ-child * has been emblazoning and coating his apples 
 
 * These antique Christmas festivities Richter describes with equal 
 gusto in another work (Briefe und Zukilnftige Lebenslemf) ; where 
 the Christ-child (falsely reported to the young ones to have been 
 seen flying through the air, with gold wings) ; the Birch-bough 
 fixed in a corner of the room, and by him made to grow ; the fruit 
 of gilt sweetmeats, apples, nuts, which (for good boys) it sud- 
 denly produces, &c, &c, are specified with the same fidelity as 
 here. — Ed. , 
 
252 RICHTER. 
 
 and nuts, the presents of the night. — On the mint-balance 
 of joy, this metallic foam pulls heavier than the golden cars, 
 and golden Pythagoras'-legs, and golden Philistine-mice of 
 wealthier capitalists. — Then came his mother, bringing him 
 both Christianity and clothes ; for in drawing on his trowsers, 
 she easily recapitulated the Ten Commandments, and, in 
 tying his garters, the Apostles' Creed. So soon as candle- 
 light was over, and day-light come, he clambers to the arm 
 of the settle, and then measures the nocturnal growth of the 
 yellow wiry grove of Christmas-Birch; and devotes far less 
 attention than usual to the little white winter-flowerage, 
 which the seeds shaken from the bird-cage are sending forth 
 in the wet joints of the window-panes. — I nowise grudge 
 J. J. Rousseau his Flora Petrinsularis ; f but let him also 
 allow our Quintus his Window -flora. — There was no such 
 thing as school all day ; so he had time enough to seek his 
 Flescher (his brother), and commence (when could there be 
 finer frost for it?) the slaughtering of their winter-meat. 
 Some days before, the brother, at the peril of his life and of 
 a cudgelling, had caught their stalled-beast — so they called 
 the sparrow — under a window-sill in the Castle. Their 
 slaughtering wants not an axe (of wood), nor puddings, nor 
 potted meat. — About three o'clock the old Gardener, whom 
 neighbors must call the Professor of Gardening, takes his 
 place on his large chair, with his Cologne tobacco-pipe ; and 
 after this no mortal shall work a stroke. He tells nothing 
 but lies ; of the aeronautic Christ-child, and the jingling 
 Ruprecht with his bells. In the dusk, our little Quintus 
 takes an apple ; divides it into all the figures of stereometry, 
 and spreads the fragments in two heaps on the table ; then 
 as the lighted candle enters, he starts up in amazement at 
 
 t Which he purposed to make for his Island of St. Pierre in the 
 Bienne Lake. 
 
LIFE OF QJJ1NTUS FIXLEIN. 253 
 
 the unexpected present, and says to his brother : " Look 
 what the good Christ-child has given thee and me ; and I 
 saw one of his wings glittering." And for this same glitter- 
 ing he himself lies in wait the whole evening. 
 
 About eight o'clock, — here he walks chiefly by the 
 chronicle of his letter-drawer, — both of them, with necks 
 almost excoriated with washing, and in clean linen, and in 
 universal anxiety lest the Holy Christ-child find them up, 
 are put to bed. What a magic night! What tumult of 
 dreaming hopes! — The populous, motley, glittering cave 
 of Fancy opens itself, in the length of the night, and in the 
 exhaustion of dreamy effort, still darker and darker, fuller 
 and more grotesque ; but the awakening gives back to the 
 thirsty heart its hopes. All accidental tones, the cries of 
 animals, of watchmen, are, for the timidly devout Fancy, 
 sounds out of Heaven ; singing voices of Angels in the air, 
 church-music of the morning worship. — 
 
 Ah ! it was not the mere Lubberland of sweetmeats and 
 playthings, which then, with its perspective, stormed like a 
 river of joy against the chambers of our hearts ; and which 
 yet in the moonlight of memory, with its dusky landscapes, 
 melts our souls in sweetness. Ah ! this was it, that then 
 for our boundless wishes there were still boundless hopes ; 
 but now reality is round us, and the wishes are all that we 
 have left ! 
 
 At last came rapid lights from the neighborhood playing 
 through the window on the walls, and the Christmas trum- 
 pets, and the crowing from the steeple hurries both the boys 
 from their bed. With their clothes in their hands, without 
 fear for the darkness, without feeling for the morning-frost, 
 rushing, intoxicated, shouting, they hurry down stairs into 
 the dark room. Fancy riots in the pastry and fruit perfume 
 of the still eclipsed treasures, and paints her air-castles by 
 the glimmering of the Hesperides-fruit with which the 
 
 vol. ii. 22 
 
254 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 Birch-tree is loaded. While their mother strikes a light, 
 the falling sparks sportfully open and shroud the dainties on 
 the table, and the many-colored grove on the wall ; and a 
 single atom of that fire bears on it a hanging garden of 
 Eden.— — — 
 
 — On a sudden all grew light ; and the Quintus got 
 — the Conrectorship, and a table-clock. 
 
 FOURTH LETTER-BOX. 
 
 Office-lrokage. Discovery of the promised Secret. Hans 
 von Fuchslein. 
 
 For while the Quintus, in his vapory chamber was thus 
 running over the sounding-board of his early years, the 
 Rathsdiener, or City-officer, entered with a lantern and the 
 Presentation ; and behind him the courier of the Frau von 
 Aufhammer with a note and a table-clock. The Rittmeis- 
 terinn had transformed her payment for the Dog-days sick- 
 bed-exhortation into a Christmas present ; which consisted, 
 first of a table-clock, with a wooden ape thereon, starting 
 out when the hour struck, and drumming along with every 
 stroke ; secondly, of the Conrectorate, which she had pro- 
 cured for him. 
 
 As in the public this appointment from the private 
 Flachsenfingen Council has not been judged of as it de- 
 served, I consider it my duty to offer a defence for the body 
 corporate ; and that rather here than in the Reichsanzeiger, 
 or Imperial Indicator. — I have already mentioned, in the 
 Second Letter-Box, that the Town-Syndic drove a trade in 
 Hamburg candles ; and the then Burgermeister in coffee- 
 beans, which he sold as well whole as ground. Their joint 
 traffic, however, which they carried on exclusively, was in 
 
LIFE OF OJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 255 
 
 the eight School-offices of Flachsenfingen ; the other mem- 
 bers of the Council acting only as bale-wrappers, shopmen, 
 and accountants in the Council wareroom. A Council- 
 house, indeed, is like an India-house, where not only resolu- 
 tions or appointments, but also shoes and cloth, are exposed 
 to sale. Properly speaking, the Councillor derives his 
 freedom of office-trading from that principle of the Roman 
 law, Cui jus est donandi, eidem et vendendi jus est ; that is 
 to say, He who has the right of giving anything away has 
 also a right to dispose of it for money, if he can. Now as the 
 Council-members have palpably the right of conferring 
 offices gratis, the right of selling them must follow of 
 course. 
 
 Short Extra-word on Appointment-brokers in general. 
 
 My chief anxiety is lest the Academy-product-sale-Com- 
 mission * of the State carry on its office-trade too slackly. 
 And what but the commonweal must suffer in the long run, 
 if important posts are distributed, not according to the cur- 
 rent cash which is laid down for them, but according to 
 connexions, relationships, party recommendations, and bow- 
 ings and cringings ? Is it not a contradiction, to charge 
 titulary offices dearer than real ones ? Should one not 
 rather expect that the real Hofrath would pay higher by the 
 alterum tantum than the mere titulary Hofrath ? — Money, 
 among European nations, is now the equivalent and repre- 
 sentative of value in all things, and consequently in under- 
 standing; the rather as ahead is stamped on it; to pay 
 down the purchase money of an office is therefore neither 
 
 * Borrowed from the " Imperial Mine-product-sale-Commis- 
 sion," in Vienna. In their very names these Vienna people show 
 taste. 
 
256 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 more nor less than to stand an examen rigorosum, which is 
 held by a good schema examinandi. To invert this, to pre- 
 tend exhibiting your qualifications, in place of these their 
 surrogates, and assignates, and monnoie de conjiance, is sim- 
 ply to resemble the crazy philosophers in Gulliver's Travels^ 
 who, for social converse, instead of names of things, 
 brought the things themselves tied up in a bag ; it is, indeed, 
 plainly as much as trying to fall back into the barbarous 
 times of trade by barter, when the Romans, instead of the 
 figured cattle on their leather money, drove forth the beeves 
 themselves. 
 
 From all such injudicious notions I myself am so far re- 
 moved, that often, when I used to read that the King of 
 France was devising new offices, to stand and sell them 
 under the booth of his Baldaquin, I have set myself 1o do 
 something of the like. This I shall now at least calmly 
 propose ; not vexing my heart whether Governments choose 
 to adopt it or not. As our Sovereign will not allow us to 
 multiply offices purely for sale, nay, on the contrary, is day 
 and night (like managers of strolling companies) meditating 
 how to give more parts to one State-actor ; and thus to the 
 Three Stage Unities to add a Fourth, that of Players ; as 
 the above French method, therefore, will not apply, could 
 we not at least contrive to invent some Virtues harmonizing 
 with the offices, along with which they might be sold as 
 titles? Might we not, for instance, with the office of a 
 Referendary, put off at the same time a titular Incorrupti- 
 bility, for a fair consideration ; and so that this virtue, as 
 not belonging to the office, must be separately paid for by 
 the candidate ? Such a market-title and patent of nobility 
 could not but be ornamental to a Referendary. We forget 
 that in former times such high titles were appended to all 
 posts whatsoever. The scholastic Professor then wrote him- 
 self (besides his official designation) "The Seraphic," "The 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 257 
 
 Incontrovertible," " The Penetrating ; v the King wrote 
 himself, " The Great," " The Bald," " The Bold," and so 
 also did the Rabbins. Could it be unpleasant to gentlemen 
 in the higher stations of Justice, if the titles of Impartiality, 
 Rapidity, &c, might be conferred on them by sale, as well 
 as the posts themselves ? Thus with the appointment of a 
 Kammerrath, or Councillor of Revenue, the virtue of Pat- 
 riotism might fitly be conjoined ; and I believe, few Advo- 
 cates would grudge purchasing the title of Integrity (as 
 well as their common one of Government-advocacy), were 
 it to be had in the market. If, however, any candidate 
 chose to take his post without the virtues, then it would 
 stand with himself to do so, and in the adoption of this re- 
 flex morality Government should not constrain him. 
 
 It might be that, as, according to Tristram Shandy, 
 clothes, according to Walter Shandy and Lavater, proper 
 names, exert an influence on men, appellatives would do so 
 still more ; since, on us, as on testaceous animals, the foam 
 so often hardens into shell ; but such internal morality is 
 not a thing the State can have an eye to ; for, as in the fine 
 arts, it is not this but the representation of it which forms 
 her true aim. 
 
 I have found it rather difficult to devise for our different 
 offices different verbal -virtues ; but I should think there 
 might many such divisions of Virtue (at this moment, Love 
 of Freedom, Public-spirit, Sincerity, and Uprightness occur 
 to me) be hunted out; were but some well-disposed minister 
 of state to appoint a Virtue-board or Moral Address Depart- 
 ment, with some half dozen secretaries, who, for a small 
 salary, might devise various virtues for the various posts. 
 Were I in their place, I should hold a good prism before the 
 white ray of Virtue, and divide it completely. Pity that it 
 were not crimes we wanted —their subdivision I mean ; — 
 our country Judges might then be selected for this purpose. 
 22* 
 
258 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 For in their tribunals, where only inferior jurisdiction, and 
 no penalty above five florins Frankish, is admitted, they 
 have a daily training how out of every mischief to make 
 several small ones, none of which they ever punish to a 
 greater amount than their five florins. This is a precious 
 moral Roljinkenism, which our Jurists have learned from 
 the great Sin-cutters, St. Augustin and his Sorbonne, who 
 together have carved more sins on Adam's Sin-apple than 
 ever Rolfinken did faces on a cherrystone. How different 
 one of our Judges from a Papal Casuist, who, by side- 
 scrapings, will rasp you down the best deadly sin into a 
 venial ! — 
 
 School-offices (to come to these) are a small branch of 
 traffic certainly ; yet still they are monarchies, — school- 
 monarchies, to wit, — resembling the Polish crown, which, 
 according to Pope's verse, is twice exposed to sale in the 
 century ; a statement, I need hardly say, arithmetically 
 false, Newton having settled the average duration of a reign 
 at twenty-two years. For the rest, whether the city Council 
 bring the young of the community a Hamel's Rat-and- 
 ChWd-catcher ; or a Weissen's Child's -friend, — this to the 
 Council can make no difference ; seeing the Schoolmaster 
 is not a horse, for whose secret defects the horse-dealer is 
 to be responsible. It is enough if Town-Syndic and Co. can- 
 not reproach themselves with having picked out any fellow of 
 genius ; for a genius, as he is useless to the State, except for 
 recreation and ornament, would at the very least exclude 
 the duller, cooler head, who properly forms the true care 
 and profit of the State ; as your costly carat-pearl is good 
 for show alone, but coarse grain-pearls for medicine. On 
 the whole, if a schoolmaster be adequate to flog his schol- 
 ars, it should suffice ; and I cannot but blame our Commis- 
 sion of Inspectors, when they go examining schools, that they 
 do not make the schoolmaster go through the duly of firk- 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 259 
 
 ing one or two young persons of his class in their presence, 
 by way of trial, to see what is in him. 
 
 End of the Extra-word on Appointment-brokers in 
 general. 
 
 Now again to our history ! The Councillor Heads of the 
 Firm had conferred the Conrectorate on my hero, not only 
 with a view to the continued consumpt of candles and beans, 
 but also on the strength of a quite mad notion ; they be- 
 lieved the Quintus would very soon die. 
 
 — And here I have reached a most important circum- 
 stance in this History, and one into which I have yet let no 
 mortal look ; now, however, it no longer depends on my will 
 whether I shall shove aside the folding-screen from it or not ; 
 but I must positively lay it open, nay, hang a reverberating- 
 lamp over it. 
 
 fn medical history, it is a well-known fact, that in certain 
 families the people all die precisely at the same age, just as 
 in these families they are all born at the same age (of nine 
 months) ; nay, from Voltaire, I recollect one family, the 
 members of which at the same age all killed themselves. 
 Now, in the Fixleinic lineage, it was the custom that the 
 male ascendants uniformly on Cantata-Sunday, in their 
 thirty-second year, took to bed and died ; every one of my 
 readers would do well to insert in his copy of the Thirty 
 Years' 1 War, Schiller having entirely omitted it, the fact, 
 that, in the course thereof, one Fixlein died of the plague, 
 another of hunger, another of a musket-bullet ; all in their 
 thirty-second year. True Philosophy explains the matter 
 thus : "The first two or three times, it happened purely by 
 accident ; and the other times, the people died of sheer 
 fright; if nol so, the whole fact is rather to be question- 
 ed." 
 
260 R1CHTER. 
 
 But what did Fixlein make of the affair ? Little or noth- 
 ing ; the only thing he did was, that he took little or no 
 pains to fall in love with Thiennette ; that so no other might 
 have cause for fear on his account. He himself, however, 
 for five reasons, minded it so little, that he hoped to be 
 older than Senior Astmann before he died. First, because 
 three Gipsies, in three different places, and at three differ- 
 ent times, had each shown him the same long vista of years 
 in her magic mirror. Secondly, because he had a sound 
 constitution. Thirdly, because his own brother had formed 
 an exception, and perished before the thirties. Fourthly, 
 on this ground : When a boy he had fallen sick of sorrow, 
 on the very Cantata-Sunday when his father was lying in 
 the winding-sheet, and only been saved from death by his 
 playthings ; and with this Cantata-sickness, he conceived 
 that he had given the murderous Genius of his race the slip. 
 Fifthly, the church-books being destroyed, and with them 
 the certainty of his age, he could never fall into a right 
 definite deadly fear : " It may be," said he, " that I have 
 got whisked away over this whoreson year, and no one the 
 wiser.'" I will not deny that last year he had fancied he 
 was two-and-thirty ; " however," said he, " if I am not to be 
 so till, God willing, the next (1792), it may run away as 
 smoothly as the last ; am I not always in His keeping ? 
 And were it unjust if the pretty years that were broken off 
 from the life of my brother should be added to mine ? " — 
 Thus, under the cold snow of the Present, does poor man 
 strive to warm himself, or to mould out of it a fair snow- 
 man. 
 
 The Councillor Oligarchy, however, built upon the oppo- 
 site opinion ; and, like a Divinity, elevated our Quintus all 
 at once from the Quintusship to the Conrectorate ; swearing 
 to themselves that he would soon vacate it again. Properly 
 speaking, by school-seniority, this holy chair should have 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLE1N. 
 
 261 
 
 belonged to the Subrector Hans von Fuchslein ; but he 
 wished it not ; being minded to become Hukelum Parson ; 
 especially, as Astmann's Death-angel, according to sure 
 intelligence, was opening more and more widely the door 
 of this spiritual sheepfold. " If the fellow weather another 
 year, 'tis more than I expect," said Hans. 
 
 This Hans was such a churl, that it is pity he had not 
 been a Hanoverian Postboy ; that so, by the Mandate of the 
 Hanoverian Government, enjoining on all its Post-officers 
 an elegant style of manners, he might have somewhat 
 refined himself. To our poor Quintus, whom no mortal 
 disliked, and who again could hate no mortal, he alone 
 bore a grudge ; simply because Fixlein did not write him- 
 self Fuchslein, and had not chosen along with him to pur- 
 chase a Patent of Nobility. The Subrector, on this his 
 Patent triumphal chariot, drawn by a team of four specified 
 ancestors, was obliged to see the Quintus, who was related 
 to him, clutching by the lackey-straps behind the carriage ; 
 and to hear him, in the most despicable raiment, saying to 
 the train : " He that rides there is my cousin, and a mortal, 
 and I always remind him of it." The mild, compliant Quin- 
 tus never noticed this large wasp-poisonbag in the Subrector, 
 but took it for a honeybag ; nay, by his brotherly warmness, 
 which the nobleman regarded as mere show, he concreted 
 these venomous juices into still feller consistency. The 
 Quintus, in his simplicity, took Fiichslein's contempt for 
 envy of his pedagogic talents. 
 
 A Catherinenhof, an Annenhof, an Elizabethhof, Stralen- 
 hof, and Petershof, all these Russian pleasure palaces, a 
 man can dispense with (if not despise), who has a room, 
 in which on Christmas-eve he walks about with a Presenta- 
 tion in his hand. The new Conrector now longed for 
 nothing but — daylight; joys always (cares never) nibbled 
 from him, like sparrows, his sleepgrains ; and to-night, 
 
262 RICHTER. 
 
 moreover, the registrator of his glad time, the clock-ape, 
 drummed out every hour to him, which, accordingly, he 
 spent in gay dreaming, rather than in sound snoring. 
 
 On Christmas-morn he looked at his Class-prodromus, 
 and thought but little of it ; he scarcely knew what to make 
 of his last night's foolish inflation about bis Quintusship. 
 " The Quintus-post," said he to himself, "is not to be named 
 in the same day with the Conrectorate ; I wonder how I 
 could parade so last night before my promotion ; at present, 
 I had more reason." To-day he eat, as on all Sundays 
 and holydays, with the Master-Butcher Steinberger, his 
 former Guardian. To this man Fixlein was, what common 
 people are always^ but polished, philosophical, and senti- 
 mental people very seldom are, — thankful; a man thanks 
 you the less for presents, the more inclined he is to give 
 presents of his own ; and the beneficent is rarely a grateful 
 person. Meister Steinberger, in the character of store- 
 master, had introduced into the wire-cage of a garret, where 
 Fixlein, while a Student at Leipzig, was suspended, many 
 a well-tilled trough with good canary-meat, of hung-beef, 
 of household bread, and Sauerkraut. Money indeed was 
 never to be wrung from him ; it is well known that he often 
 sent the best calfskins gratis to the tanner, to be boots for 
 our Quintus ; but the tanning-charges the Ward himself had 
 to bear. — On Fixlein's entrance, as was at all times cus- 
 tomary, a smaller damask table-cloth was laid upon the 
 large coarser one ; the arm-chair, silver implements, and 
 a wine-soup were handed him ; mere waste, which, as the 
 Guardian used to say, suited well enough for a Scholar ; 
 but for a Flescher not at all. Fixlein first took his victuals, 
 and then signified that he was made Conrector. " Ward," 
 said Steinberger, "if you are made that, it is well. — Seest 
 thou, Eva, I cannot buy a tail of thy cows now ; I must 
 have smelt it beforehand." He was hereby informing his 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 263 
 
 daughter that the cash set apart for the fatted cattle must 
 now be applied to the Conrectorate ; for he was in the habit 
 of advancing all instalment-dues to his Ward, at an interest 
 of four and a half per cent. Fifty gulden he had already 
 lent the Quintus on his advancement to the Quintusship ; 
 of these the interest had to be duly paid ; yet, on the day 
 of payment, the Quintus always got some abatement; being 
 wont every Sunday after dinner to instruct his guardian's 
 daughter in arithmetic, writing, and geography. Steinberger 
 with justice required of his own grown-up daughter that she 
 should know all the towns where he in his wanderings as a 
 journeyman had slain fat oxen ; and if she slipped, or wrote 
 crookedly, or subtracted wrong, he himself, as Academical 
 Senate and Justiciary, was standing behind her chair, ready, 
 so to speak, with the forge-hammer of his fist to beat out 
 the dross from her brain, and at a few strokes hammer it 
 into right ductility. The soft Quintus, for his part, had 
 never struck her. On this account she had perhaps, with a 
 few glances, appointed him executor and assignee of her 
 heart. The old Flescher — simply because his wife was 
 dead — had constantly been in the habit of searching with 
 mine-lamps and pokers into all the corners of Eva's heart ; 
 and had in consequence long ago observed — what the 
 Quintus never did — that she had a mind for the said Quin- 
 tus. Young women conceal their sorrows more easily than 
 their joys ; to-clay, at the mention of this Conrectorate, Eva 
 had become unusually red. 
 
 When she went after breakfast to bring in coffee, which 
 the Ward had to drink down to the grounds : " I beat Eva 
 to death if she but look at him," .said he. Then addressing 
 Fixlein : " Hear you, Ward, did you never cast an eye on 
 my Eva ? She can suffer you, and if you want her, you get 
 her; but we have done with one another; for a learned man 
 needs quite another sort of thing." 
 
261 RICHTER. 
 
 " Herr Regiments-Quartermaster," said Fixlein (for this 
 post Steinberger filled in the provincial Militia), " such a 
 match were far too rich, at any rate, for a Schoolman." 
 The Quartermaster nodded fifty times ; and then said to 
 Eva, as she returned, — at the same time taking down 
 from the shelf a wooden crook, on which he used to 
 rack out and suspend his slain calves : " Stop ! — Hark, 
 dost wish the present Herr Conrector here for thy hus- 
 band ? " 
 
 M Ah, good Heaven ! " said Eva. 
 
 " Mayst wish him or not," continued the Flescher; 
 " with this crook thy father knocks thy brains out, if 
 thou but think of a learned man. Now make his coffee. " 
 And so by the dissevering stroke of this wooden crook was 
 a love easily smitten asunder, which in a higher rank, by 
 such cutting through it with the sword, would only have 
 foamed and hissed the keenlier. 
 
 Fixlein might now, at any hour he liked, lay hold of 
 fifty florins Frankish, and clutch the pedagogic sceptre, 
 and become coadjutor of the Rector, that is, Conrector. 
 We may assert, that it is with debts, as with proportions in 
 Architecture ; of which Wolf has shown that those are the 
 best which can be expressed in the smallest numbers. Nev- 
 ertheless, the Quartermaster cheerfully took learned men 
 under his arm ; for the notion that his debtor would decease 
 in his thirty-second year, and that so Death, as creditor in 
 the first rank, must be paid his Debt of Nature, before the 
 other creditors could come forward with their debts — this 
 notion he named stuff and old-wifery ; he was neither 
 Superstitious nor Fanatical, and he walked by firm princi- 
 ples of action, such as the common man much oftener has 
 than your vaporing man of letters, or your empty, dainty 
 man of rank. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 265 
 
 As it is but a few clear Ladydays, warm Mayday-nights, 
 at the most a few odorous Rose-weeks, which I am digging 
 from this Fixleinic Life, embedded in the dross of week- 
 day cares ; and as if they were so many veins of silver, am 
 separating, stamping, smelting, and burnishing for the 
 reader, — I must now travel on with the stream, his history 
 to Cantata-Sunday, 1792, before I can gather a few hand 
 fuls of this gold-dust, to carry in and wash in my biograph- 
 ical gold-hut. That Sunday, on the contrary, is very 
 metalliferous ; do but consider that Fixlein is yet uncertain 
 (the ashes of the Church-books not being legible) whether 
 it is conducting him into his thirty-second or his thirty-third 
 year. 
 
 From Christmas till then he did nothing, but simply 
 became Conrector. The new chair of office was a Sun- 
 altar, on which, from his Quintus-ashes, a young Phoenix 
 combined itself together. Great changes — in offices, mar- 
 riages, travels — make us younger; we always date our 
 history from the last revolution, as the French have done 
 from theirs. A colonel, who first set foot on the ladder of 
 seniority as corporal, is five times younger than a king, who 
 in his whole life has never been aught else except a — 
 crown-prince. 
 
 FIFTH LETTER-BOX. 
 Cantata- Sunday. Two Testaments. Pontac ; Blood ; Love. 
 
 The Spring months clothe the earth in new variegated 
 hues ; but man they usually dress in black. Just when our 
 icy regions are becoming fruitful, and the flower-waves of 
 the meadows are rolling together over our quarter of the 
 globe, we on all hands meet with men in sables, the begin- 
 
 vol. ii. 23 
 
266 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 ning of whose Spring is full of tears. But, on the other 
 hand, this very upblooming of the renovated earth is itself 
 the best balm for sorrow over those who lie under it; and 
 graves are better hid by blossoms than by snow. 
 
 In April, which is no less deadly than it is fickle, old 
 Senior Astmann, our Conrector's teacher, was overtaken 
 by death. His departure it was meant to hide from the 
 Rittmeisterinn ; but the unusual ringing of funeral peals 
 carried his swan-song to her heart ; and gradually set the 
 curfew-bell of her life into similar movement. A°e and 
 
 o 
 
 sufferings had already marked out the first incisions for 
 Death, so that he required but little effort to cut her 
 down ; for it is with men as with trees, they are notched 
 long before felling, that their life-sap may exude. The 
 second stroke of apoplexy was soon followed by the last ; 
 it is strange that Death, like criminal courts, cites the 
 apoplectic thrice. 
 
 Men are apt to postpone their last will as long as their 
 better one; the Rittmeisterinn would perhaps have let all 
 her hours, till the speechless and deaf one, roll away 
 without testament, had not Thiennette, during the last night 
 before from sick-nurse she became corpse-watcher, re- 
 minded the patient of the poor Conrector, and of his meagre, 
 hunger-bitten existence, and of the scanty aliment and 
 board-wages which Fortune had thrown him, and of his 
 empty Future, where, like a drooping, yellow plant in the 
 parched deal-box of the school-room, between scholars and 
 creditors, he must languish to the end. Her own poverty 
 offered her a model of his ; and her inward tears were the 
 fluid tints with which she colored her picture. As the Ritt- 
 meisterinn's testament related solely to domestics and de- 
 pendents, and as she began with the male one, Fixlein stood 
 r.t the top ; and Death, who must have been a special friend 
 of the Conrector's, did not lift his scythe and give the last 
 
LIFE OF OJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 267 
 
 stroke, till his protegee had been with audible voice declared 
 testamentary heir ; then he cut all away, life, testament, and 
 hopes. 
 
 When the Conrector, in a wash-bill from his mother, 
 received these two Death's-posts and JobVposts in his class, 
 the first thing he did was to dismiss his class-boys, and 
 break into tears before reaching home. Though the mother 
 had informed him that he had been remembered in the will 
 (I could wish, however, that the Notary had blabbed how 
 much it was), yet almost with every O which he masoreti- 
 cally excerpted from his German Bible, and entered in his 
 Masoretic Work, great drops fell down on his pen, and 
 made his black ink pale. His sorrow was not the gorgeous 
 sorrow of the Poet, who veils the gaping wounds of the de- 
 parted in the winding-sheet, and breaks the cry of anguish 
 in soft tones of plaintiveness ; nor the sorrow of the Phi- 
 losopher, who, through one open grave, must look into 
 the whole catacomb-Necropolis of the Past, and before 
 whom the spectre of a friend expands into the spectral 
 Shadow of this whole Earth ; but it was the woe of a child, 
 of a mother, whom this thought itself, without subsidiary 
 reflections, bitterly cuts asunder : "So I shall never more 
 see thee ; so must thou moulder away, and I shall never 
 see thee, thou good soul, never, never any more !" — And 
 even because he neither felt the philosophical nor the poetical 
 sadness, every trifle could make a division, a break in his 
 mourning; and, like a woman, he was that very evening 
 capable of sketching some plans for the future employment 
 of his legacy. 
 
 Four weeks after, to wit, on the 5th of May, the testa- 
 ment was unsealed ; but not till the 6th (Cantata-Sunday) 
 did he go down to Hukelum. His mother met his saluta- 
 tions with tears; which she shed, over the corpse for grief, 
 over the testament for joy. — To the now Conrector Egidius 
 
268 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 Zebedaus was left : In the first place, a large sumptuous 
 bed, with a mirror-tester, in which the giant Goliath might 
 have rolled at his ease, and to which I and my fair readers 
 will by and by approach nearer, to examine it; secondly, 
 there was devised to him, as unpaid Easter-godchild-money, 
 for every year that he had lived, one ducat ; thirdly, all the 
 admittance and instalment dues, which his elevation to the 
 Quintate and Conrectorate had cost him, were to be made 
 good to the utmost penny. " And dost thou know, then," 
 proceeded the mother, " what the poor Fraulein has got ? 
 Ah Heaven ! Nothing ! Not one brass farthing ! " For 
 Death had stiffened the hand, which was just stretching 
 itself out to reach the poor Thiennette a little rain-screen 
 against the foul weather of life. The mother related this 
 perverse trick of Fortune with true condolence ; which in 
 women dissipates envy, and comes easier to them than con- 
 gratulation, a feeling belonging rather to men. In many 
 female hearts sympathy and envy are such near door-neigh- 
 bors that they could be virtuous nowhere except in Hell, 
 where men have such frightful times of it ; and vicious no- 
 where except in Heaven, where people have more happiness 
 than they know what to do with. 
 
 The Conrector was now enjoying on Earth that Heaven 
 to which his benefactress had ascended. First of all, he 
 started off — without so much as putting up his handkerchief, 
 in which lay his emotion — up stairs to see the legacy-bed 
 unshrouded ; for he had a female predilection for furniture. 
 I know not whether the reader ever looked at or mounted 
 any of these ancient chivalric beds, into which, by means 
 of a little stair without balustrades, you can easily ascend ; 
 and in which you, properly speaking, sleep always at least 
 one story above ground. Nazianzen informs us (Orat. 
 XVI.) that the Jews, in old times, had high beds with 
 cock-ladders of this sort ; but simply because of vermin. 
 
LIFE OF Q.UINTUS FIXLEIN. 269 
 
 The legacy bed-Ark was quite as large as one of these ; 
 and a flea would have measured it not in Diameters of the 
 Earth, but in Distances of Sirius. When Fixlein beheld 
 this colossal dormitory, with the curtains drawn asunder, 
 and its canopy of looking-glass, he could have longed to be 
 in it ; and had it been in his power to cut from the opaque 
 hemisphere of Night, at that time in America, a small 
 section, he would have established himself there along with 
 it, just to swim about, for one half hour, with his thin lath 
 figure, in this sea of down. The mother, by longer chains 
 of reasoning and chains of calculation than the bed was, 
 had not succeeded in persuading him to have the broad 
 mirror on the top cut in pieces, though his large dressing- 
 table had nothing to see itself in but a mere shaving-glass ; 
 he let the mirror lie where it was for this reason : " Should 
 I ever, God willing, get married," said he, " I shall then, 
 towards morning, be able to look at my sleeping wife, with- 
 out sitting up in bed." 
 
 As to the second article of the testament, the godchild 
 Easter-pence, his mother had, last night, arranged it per- 
 fectly. The Lawyer took her evidence on the years of 
 the heir ; and these she had stated at exactly the teeth- 
 number, two-and-thirty. She would willingly have lied, and 
 passed off her son, like an Inscription, for older than he 
 was; but against this venia <ztatis^ she saw too well, the 
 authorities would have taken exception, " that it was false- 
 hood and cozenage ; had the son been two-and-thirty, he 
 must have been dead some time ago, as it could not but 
 be presumed that he then was." 
 
 And just as she was recounting this, a servant from 
 Schadeck called ; and delivered to the Conrector, in return 
 for a discharge and ratification of the birth-certificate given 
 out by his mother, a gold bar of two-and-thirty ducat age- 
 counters, like a helm-bar for the voyage of his life ; Herr 
 23* 
 
270 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 von Aufhammer was too proud to engage in any pettifog- 
 ging discussion over a plebeian birth certificate. 
 
 And thus, by a proud open-handedness, was one of the 
 best lawsuits thrown to the dogs; seeing this gold bar might, 
 in the wire-mill of the judgment-bench, have been drawn 
 out into the finest threads. From such a tangled lock, which 
 was not to be unravelled — for in the first place, there was 
 no document to prove Fixlein's age; in the second place, 
 so long as he lived, the necessary conclusion was, that he 
 was not yet thirty-two* — from such a lock, might not only 
 silk and hanging-cords, but whole drag-nets have been spun 
 and twisted. Clients in general would have less reason to 
 complain of their causes, if these lasted longer. Philoso- 
 phers contend for thousands of years over philosophical 
 questions ; and it seems an unaccountable thing, therefore, 
 that Advocates should attempt to end their juristical questions 
 in a space of eighty, or even sometimes of sixty years. But 
 the professors of Law are not to blame for this ; on the 
 other hand, as Lessing asserts of Truth, that not the finding 
 but the seeking of it profits men, and that he himself would 
 willingly make over his claim to all truths in return for the 
 sweet labor of investigation, so is the professor of Law not 
 profited by the finding and deciding, but by the investigation 
 of a juridical truth — which is called pleading and practising 
 — and he would willingly consent to approximate to Truth 
 forever, like an hyperbola to its asymptote, without ever 
 meeting it, seeing he can subsist as an honorable man with 
 
 •As, by the evidence at present before us, we can found on no 
 other presumption, than that he must die in his thirty-second year; 
 it would follow, that, in case he died two-and-thirty years after the 
 death of the testatrix, no farthing could be claimed by him - r since, 
 according to our fiction, at the making of the testament he was not 
 even one year old. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 271 
 
 wife and child, let such approximation be as tedious as it 
 likes. 
 
 The Schadeck servant had, besides the gold legacy, a 
 farther commission from the Lawyer, whereby the testa- 
 mentary heir was directed to sum up the mint-dues which 
 he had been obliged to pay while lying under the coining- 
 press of his superiors, as Quintus and Conrector ; the which, 
 properly documented and authenticated, were forthwith to 
 be made good to him. 
 
 Our Conrector, who now rated himself among the great 
 capitalists of the world, held his short gold-roll like a sceptre 
 in his hand ; like a basket- net lifted from the sea of the 
 Future, which was now to run on, and bring him all manner 
 of fed-fishes, well-washed, sound, and in good season. 
 
 I cannot relate all things at once ; else I should ere now 
 have told the reader, who must long have been waiting for 
 it, that to the monied Conrector his two-and-thirty godchild- 
 pennies but too much prefigured the two-and-thirty years 
 of his age ; besides which, to-day the Cantata-Sunday, this 
 Bartholomew-night and Second of September of his family, 
 came in as a farther aggravation. The mother, who should 
 have kn^wn the age of her child, said she had forgotten it ; 
 but durst wager he was thirty-two a year ago ; only the 
 Lawyer was a man you could not speak to. " I could swear 
 it myself," said the capitalist ; " I recollect how stupid I felt 
 Cantata-Sunday last year." Fixlein beheld Death, not as the 
 poet does, in the uptowering, asunder-driving concave- 
 mirror of Imagination ; but as the child, as the savage, as 
 the peasant, as the woman does, in the plane octavo-mirror 
 on the board of a Prayer-book ; and Death looked to him 
 like an old white-headed man, sunk down into slumber in 
 some latticed pew. — 
 
 And yet he thought oftener of him than last year ; for 
 joy readily melts us into softness ; and the lackered Wheel 
 
272 RICHTER. 
 
 of Fortune is a cistern-wheel that empties its water in our 
 eyes .... But the friendly Genius of this terrestrial, or 
 rather aquatic Ball — for, in the physical and in the moral 
 world, there are more tear-seas than firm land — has pro- 
 vided for the poor water-insects that float about in it, for us 
 namely, a quite special elixir against spasms in the soul ; I 
 declare this same Genius must have studied the whole pa- 
 thology of man with care ; for to the poor devil who is no 
 Stoic, and can pay no Soul-doctor, that for the fissures of 
 his cranium and his breast might prepare costly prescrip- 
 tions of simples, he has stowed up cask-wise in all cellara- 
 ges a precious wound-water, which the patient has only to 
 take and pour over his slashes and bone-breakages — gin- 
 twist, I mean, or beer, or a touch of wine .... By Heaven ! 
 it is either stupid ingratitude towards this medicinal Genius 
 on the one hand, or theological confusion of permitted tip- 
 pling with prohibited drunkenness on the other, if men do 
 not thank God that they have something at hand, which, in 
 the nervous vertigoes of life, will instantly supply the place 
 of Philosophy, Christianity, Judaism, Paganism, and Time ; 
 — liquor, as I said. 
 
 The Corrector had long before sunset given the village 
 post three groschens of post-money, and commissioned — 
 for he had a whole cabinet of ducats in his pocket, which 
 all day he was surveying in the dark with his hand — three 
 thalers' worth of Pontac from the town. u I must have a 
 Cantata merry-making," said he ; u if it be my last day, 
 let it be my gayest too ! " I could wish he had given a larger 
 order ; but he kept the bit r of moderation between his teeth 
 at all times ; even in a threatened sham-death-night, and in 
 the midst of jubilee. The question is^whether he would 
 not have restricted himself to a single bottle, if he had not 
 wished to treat his mother and the Fraulein. Had he lived 
 in the tenth century, when the Day of Judgment was thought 
 
LIFE OP QJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 273 
 
 to be at hand, or in other centuries, when new Noah's Del- 
 uges were expected, and when, accordingly, like sailors in a 
 shipwreck, people boused up all, — he would not have spent 
 one kreuzer more on that account. His joy was, that with 
 his legacy he could now satisfy his head-creditor Steinber- 
 ger, and leave the world an honest man. Just people, who 
 make much of money, pay their debts the most punctually. 
 
 The purple Pontac arrived at a time when Fixlein could 
 compare the red-chalk-drawings and red-letter-titles of joy, 
 which it would bring out on the cheeks of its drinker and 
 drinkeresses, — with the Evening-carnation of the last 
 clouds about the Sun .... 
 
 I declare, among all the spectators of this History, no one 
 can be thinking more about poor Thiennette than I ; never- 
 theless, it is not permitted me to bring her out from her 
 tiring-room to my historical scene before the time. Poor 
 girl ! The Conrector cannot wish more warmly than his 
 Biographer, that, in the Temple of Nature as in that of 
 Jerusalem, there were a special door — besides that of 
 Death — standing open, through which only the afflicted 
 entered, that a Priest might give them solace. But Thien- 
 nette's heart-sickness over all her vanished prospects, over 
 her entombed benefactress, over a whole life enwrapped in 
 the pall, had hitherto, in a grief which the stony Rittmeister 
 rather made to bleed than alleviated, swept all away from 
 her, occupations excepted ; had fettered all her steps which 
 led not to some task, and granted to her eyes nothing to dry 
 them or gladden them, save down-falling eyelids full of 
 dreams and sleep. 
 
 All sorrow raises us above the civic Ceremonial-law, and 
 
 makes the Prosaist a Psalmist; in sorrow alone have women 
 
 courage to front opinion. Thiennette walked out only in the 
 
 evening, and then only in the garden. 
 
 The Conrector could scarcely wait for the appearance of 
 
214 RICHTER. 
 
 his fair friend, to offer his thanks, — and to-night also — his 
 Pontac. Three Pontac decanters and three wine-glasses 
 were placed outside on the projecting window-sill of his 
 cottage ; and every time he returned from the dusky cov- 
 ered-way amid the flower-forests, he drank a little from his 
 glass, — and the mother sipped now and then from within 
 through the opened window. 
 
 1 have already said, his Life-laboratory lay in the south- 
 west corner of the garden or park, over against the Castle- 
 Escurial, which stretched back into the village. In the 
 north-west corner bloomed an acacia grove, like the floral 
 crown of the garden. Fixlein turned his steps in that di- 
 rection also ; to see if, perhaps, he might not cast a happy 
 glance through the wide-latticed grove over the intervening 
 meads to Thiennette. He recoiled a little before two stone 
 steps leading down into a pond before this grove, which 
 were sprinkled with fresh blood. On the flags, also, there 
 was blood hanging. Man shudders at this oil of our life's 
 lamp where he finds it shed ; to him it is the red death- 
 signature of the Destroying Angel. Fixlein hurried appre- 
 hensively into the grove ; and found here his paler benefac- 
 tress leaning on the flower-bushes ; her hands with her 
 knitting-ware sunk into her bosom, her eyes lying under 
 their lids as if in the bandage of slumber ; her left arm in 
 the real bandage of bloodletting ; and with cheeks to which 
 the twilight was lending as much red, as late woundings — 
 this day's included — had taken from them. Fixlein, after 
 his first terror — not at this flower's sleep, but at his own 
 abrupt entrance — began to unrol the spiral butterfly's- 
 sucker of his vision, and to lay it on the motionless leaves 
 of this same sleeping flower. At bottom, I may assert, that 
 this was the first time he had ever looked at her ; he was 
 now among the thirties ; and he still continued to believe, 
 that, in a young lady, he must look at the clothes only, not 
 
LIFE OF OJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 275 
 
 the person, and wait on her with his ears, not with his eyes. 
 
 I impute it to the elevating influences of the Pontac, that 
 the Conrector plucked up courage to — turn, to come back, 
 and employ the resuscitating means of coughing, sneezing, 
 trampling, and calling to his Shock, in stronger and stronger 
 doses on the fair sleeper. To take her by the hand, and 
 with some medical apology, gently pull her out of sleep, 
 this was an audacity of which the Conrector, so long as he 
 could stand for Pontac, and had any grain of judgment left, 
 could never dream. 
 
 However, he did awake her, by those other means. 
 
 Wearied, heavy-laden Thiennette ! how slowly does thy 
 eye open ! The warmest balsam of this earth, soft sleep 
 has shifted aside, and the night-air of memory is again 
 blowing on thy naked wounds ! — and yet was the smiling 
 friend of thy youth the fairest object which thy eye could 
 light on, when it sank from the hanging garden of Dreams 
 into this lower one round thee. 
 
 She herself was little conscious, — and the Conrector not 
 at all, — that she was bending her flower-leaves impercep- 
 tibly towards a terrestrial body, namely, towards Fixlein. 
 She resembled an Italian flower, that contains cunningly 
 concealed within it a newyear's gift, which the receiver 
 knows not at first how to extract. But now the golden chain 
 of her late kind deed attracted her as well towards him, as 
 him towards her. — She at once gave her eye and her voice 
 a mask of joy ; for she did not put her tears, as Catholics 
 do those of Christ, in relic-vials, upon altars, to be worship- 
 ped. He could very suitably preface his invitation to the 
 Pontac festival with a long acknowledgment of thanks for 
 the kind intervention which had opened to him the sources 
 for procuring it. She rose slowly, and walked with him to 
 the banquet of wine ; but he was not so discreet, as at first 
 to attempt leading her, or rather not so courageous ; he 
 
276 RICHTER. 
 
 could more easily have offered a young lady his hand (that 
 is, with marriage ring) than offered her his arm. One only 
 time in his life had he escorted a female, a Lombard Count- 
 ess from the theatre ; a thing truly not to be believed, were 
 not this the secret of it, that he was obliged ; for the lady, 
 a foreigner, parted in the press from all her people, in a bad 
 night, had laid hold of him as a sable Abbe by the arm, 
 and requested him to take her to her inn. He, however, 
 knew the fashions of society, and attended her no farther 
 than the porch of his Quintus-mansion, and there directed 
 her with his finger to her inn, which, with thirty blazing 
 windows, was looking down from another street. 
 
 These things he cannot help. But to-night he had scarcely, 
 with his fair, faint companion, reached the bank of the pond, 
 into which some superstitious dread of water-spirits had 
 lately poured the pure blood of her left arm, — when, in 
 his terror lest she fell in, with the rest of her blood, over 
 the brink, he quite valiantly laid hold of the sick arm. Thus 
 will much Pontac and a little courage at all times put a 
 Conrector in case to lay hold of a Fraulein. I aver that 
 at the banquet-board of the wine, at the window-sill, he con- 
 tinued in the same conducting position. What a soft group 
 in the penumbra of the Earth, while Night, with its dusky 
 waters, was falling deeper and deeper, and the silver-light 
 of the Moon was already glancing back from the copper 
 ball of the steeple ! I call the group soft, because it consists 
 of a maiden that in two senses has been bleeding ; of a 
 mother again with tears giving her thanks for the happiness 
 of her child ; and of a pious, modest man, pouring wine, 
 and drinking health to both, and who traces in his veins a 
 burning lava-stream, which is boiling through his heart, and 
 threatening piece by piece to melt it and bear it away. — A 
 candle stood without among the three bottles, like Reason 
 among the Passions ; on this account the Conrector looked 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 277 
 
 without intermission at the window-panes, for on them (the 
 darkness of the room served as mirror-foil) was painted, 
 among other faces which Fixlein liked, the face he liked 
 best of all, and which he dared to look at only in reflexion, 
 the face of Thiennette. 
 
 Every minute was a Federation-festival, and every second 
 a Preparation-Sabbath for it. The Moon was gleaming from 
 the evening dew, and the Pontac from their eyes, and the 
 bean-stalks were casting a shorter grating of shadow. — The 
 quicksilver-drops of stars were hanging more and more con- 
 tinuous in the sable of night. — The warm vapor of the 
 wine set our two friends (like steam-engines) again in mo- 
 tion. 
 
 Nothing makes the heart fuller and bolder than walking 
 to and fro in the night. Fixlein now led the Fraulein in his 
 arm without scruple. By reason of her lancet-wound, Thi- 
 ennette could only put her hand, in a clasping position, in 
 his arm ; and he, to save her the trouble of holding fast, 
 held fast himself, and pressed her fingers as well as might 
 be with his arm to his heart. It would betray a total want 
 of polished manners to censure his. At the same time, tri- 
 fles are the provender of Love ; the fingers are electric dis- 
 charges of a fire sparkling along every fibre ; sighs are the 
 guiding tones of two approximating hearts; and the worst 
 and most effectual thing of all in such a case is some mis- 
 fortune ; for the fire of Love, like that of Naphtha, likes to 
 swim on water. Two teardrops, one in another's, one in 
 your own eyes, compose, as with two convex lenses, a mi- 
 croscope which enlarges everything, and changes all sor- 
 rows into charms. Good sex ! I too consider every sister 
 in misfortune as fair; and, perhaps, thou wouldst deserve 
 the name of the Fair, even because thou art the Suffering 
 sex ! 
 
 And if Professor Hunczogsky in Vienna modelled all 
 
 vol. ii. 24 
 
278 RICHTER. 
 
 the wounds of the human frame in wax, to teach his pupils 
 how to cure them, I also, thou good sex, am representing in 
 little figures the cuts and scars of thy spirit, though only to 
 keep away rude hands from inflicting new ones 
 
 Thiennette felt not the loss of the inheritance, but of her 
 that should have left it ; and this more deeply for one little 
 trait, which she had already told his mother, as she now 
 told him. In the last two nights of the Rittmeisterinn, when 
 the feverish watching was holding up to Thiennette's imagi- 
 nation nothing but the winding-sheet and the mourning- 
 coaches of her protectress ; while she was sitting at the foot 
 of the bed, looking on those fixed eyes, unconsciously quick 
 drops often trickled over her cheeks, while in thought she 
 prefigured the heavy, cumbrous dressing of her benefactress 
 for the coffin. Once after midnight, the dying lady pointed 
 with her finger to her own lips. Thiennette understood her 
 not; but rose and bent over her face. The Enfeebled tried 
 to lift her head, but could not, — and only rounded her lips. 
 At last, a thought glanced through Thiennette, that the De- 
 parting, whose dead arms could now press no beloved heart 
 to her own, wished that she herself should embrace her. O 
 then, that instant, keen and tearful she pressed her warm 
 lips on the colder, — and she was silent like her that was to 
 speak no more, — and she embraced alone and was not 
 embraced. About four o'clock, the finger waved again; — 
 she sank down on the stiffened lips — but this had been no 
 signal, for the lips of her friend under the long kiss had 
 «rown stiff and cold 
 
 How deeply now, before the infinite Eternity's-counte- 
 nance of Night, did the cutting of this thought pass through 
 Fixlein's warm soul : " O thou forsaken one beside me ! 
 No happy accident, no twilight hast thou, like that now 
 glimmering in the heavens, to point to the prospect of a 
 sunny day ; without parents art thou, without brother, with- 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 279 
 
 out friend ; here alone on a disblossomed, emptied corner 
 of the Earth ; and thou, left Harvest-flower, must wave 
 lonely and frozen over the withered stubble of the Past. 5 ' 
 That was the meaning of his thoughts, whose internal words 
 were : " Poor young lady ! Not so much as a half-cousin 
 left ; no nobleman will seek her, and she grows old so 
 forgotten, and she is so good from the very heart — Me she 
 has made happy — Ah, had I the presentation to the parish 
 of Hukelum in my pocket, I should make a trial.". . .Their 
 mutual lives, which a straitcutting bond of Destiny was 
 binding so closely together, now rose before him overhung 
 with sable, — and he forthwith conducted his friend (for a 
 bashful man may in an hour and a half be transformed into 
 the boldest, and then continues so) back to the last flask, 
 that all these upsprouting thistles and passion-flowers of 
 sorrow might therewith be swept away. I remark, in pass- 
 ing, that this was stupid ; the torn vine is full of water-veins 
 as well as grapes ; and a soft oppressed heart the beverage 
 of joy can melt only into tears. 
 
 If any man disagree with me, I shall desire him to look 
 at the Conrector, who demonstrates my experimental maxim 
 like a very syllogism. — One might arrive at some philoso- 
 phic views, if one traced out the causes, why liquors — that 
 is to say, in the long run, more plentiful secretion of the 
 nervous spirits — make men at once pious, soft, and poet- 
 ical. The Poet, like Apollo his father, is forever a youth; 
 and is, what other men are only once, namely in love, — 
 or only after Pontac, namely intoxicated, — all his life long. 
 Fixlein, who had been no poet in the morning, now became 
 one at night ; wine made him pious and soft; the Harmon- 
 ica-bells in man, which sound to the tones of a higher world, 
 must, like the glass Harmonica-bells, if they are to act, be 
 kept moist. 
 
 He was now standing with her again beside the wavering 
 
280 KICHTER. 
 
 pond, in which the second blue hemisphere of heaven, with 
 dancing stars and amid quivering trees, was playing ; over 
 the green hills ran the white, crooked footpaths dimly along; 
 on the one mountain was the twilight sinking together, on the 
 other was the mist of night rising up; and overall these 
 vapors of life, hung motionless and flaming the thousand- 
 armed lustre of the starry heaven, and every arm held in it 
 a burning galaxy .... 
 
 It now struck eleven . . . Amid such scenes, an unknown 
 hand stretches itself out in man, and writes in foreign lan- 
 guage on his heart, a dread Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin. 
 " Perhaps by twelve I am dead," thought our friend, in 
 whose soul the Cantata-Sunday, with all its black funeral 
 piles, was mounting up. 
 
 The whole future Crucifixion of his friend lay prickly 
 and bethorned before him ; and he saw every bloody trace 
 from which she lifted her foot, — she who had made his 
 own way soft with flowers and leaves. He could no longer 
 restrain himself; trembling in his whole frame, and with a 
 trembling voice, he solemnly said to her : " If the Lord this 
 night call me away, let the half of my fortune be yours ; for 
 it is your goodness I must thank that I am free of debts, as 
 few Teachers are." 
 
 Thiennette, unacquainted with our sex, naturally mistook 
 this speech for a proposal of marriage ; and the fingers of 
 her wounded arm, to-night for the first time, pressed sud- 
 denly against the arm in which they lay ; the only living 
 mortal's arm, by which Joy, Love, and the Earth, were still 
 united with her bospm. The Conrector, rapturously terri- 
 fied at the first pressure of a female hand, bent over his 
 right to take hold of her left; and Thiennette observing his 
 unsuccessful movement, lifted her fingers, and laid her 
 whole wounded arm in his, and her whole left hand in his 
 
LIFE OF Q,UINTUS FIXLE1N. 281 
 
 right. Two lovers dwell in the Whispering-gallery,* where 
 the faintest breath bodies itself forth into a sound. The 
 good Conrector received and returned this blissful love- 
 pressure, wherewith our poor, powerless soul, stammering, 
 hemmed in, longing, distracted, seeks for a warmer lan- 
 guage, which exists not ; he was overpowered ; he had not 
 the courage to look at her ; but he looked into the gleam of 
 the twilight, and said (and here for unspeakable love the 
 tears were running warm over his cheeks) : " Ah, I will 
 give you all ; fortune, life, and all that I have, my heart and 
 my hand." 
 
 She was about to answer, but casting a side glance, she 
 cried, with a shriek : " Ah, Heaven ! " He started round ; 
 and perceived the white muslin sleeve all dyed with blood ; 
 for, in putting her arm into his, she had pushed away the 
 bandage from the open vein. With the speed of lightning, 
 he hurried her into the acacia grove ; the blood was already 
 running from the muslin ; he grew paler than she, for every 
 drop of it was coming from his heart. The blue-white arm 
 was bared ; the bandage was put on ; he tore a piece of gold 
 from his pocket ; clapped it, as one does with open arteries, 
 on the spouting fountain, and bolted with this golden bar, and 
 with the bandage over it, the door out of which her afflicted 
 life was hurrying. — 
 
 When it was over, she looked up to him ; pale, languid, 
 but her eyes were two glistening fountains of an unspeakable 
 love, full of sorrow, and full of gratitude. — The exhausting 
 loss of blood was spreading her soul asunder in sighs. 
 Thiennette was dissolved into inexpressible softness ; and 
 the heart, lacerated by so many years, by so many arrows, 
 was plunging with all its wounds in warm streams of tears, 
 
 * In St. Paul's Church at London, where the slightest whisper 
 sounds over, across a space of 143 feet. 
 24* 
 
282 RICHTER. 
 
 to be healed ; as chapped flutes close together by lying in 
 water, and get back their tones. — Before such a magic 
 form, before such a pure, heavenly love, her sympathizing 
 friend was melted between the flames of joy and grief; and 
 sank, with stifled voice, and bent down by love and rapture, 
 on the pale, angelic face, the lips of which he timidly 
 pressed, but did not kiss, till all-powerful Love bound its 
 girdles round them, and drew the two closer and closer 
 together, and their two souls, like two tears, melted into 
 one. O now, when it struck twelve, the hour of death, did 
 not the lover fancy that her lips were drawing his soul 
 away, and all the fibres and all the nerves of his life closed 
 spasmodically round the last heart in this world, round 
 the last rapture of existence .... Yes, happy man, thou 
 didst express thy love ; for in thy love thou thoughtest to 
 die. . . . 
 
 However, he did not die. After midnight, there floated 
 a balmy morning air through the shaken flowers, and the 
 whole spring was breathing. The blissful lover, setting 
 bounds even to his sea of joy, reminded his delicate beloved, 
 who was now his bride, of the dangers from night-cold ; 
 and himself of the longer night-cold of Death, which was 
 now for long years passed over. — Innocent and blessed, 
 they rose from the grove of their betrothment, from its 
 dusk hroken by white acacia flowers, and straggling moon- 
 beams. And without, they felt as if a whole wide Past had 
 sunk away in a convulsion of the world ; all was new, light, 
 and young The sky stood full of glittering dewdrops from 
 the everlasting Morning ; and the stars quivered joyfully 
 asunder, and sank, resolved into beams, down into the 
 hearts of men. — The Moon, with her fountain of light, 
 had overspread and kindled all the garden ; and was hanging 
 above in a starless Blue, as if she had consumed the nearest 
 stars ; and she seemed like a smaller wandering Spring, 
 like a Christ's-face smiling in love of man. — 
 
LIFE OF QJIINTUS FIXLEIN. 283 
 
 Under this light they looked at one another for the first 
 time after the first words of love ; and the sky gleamed 
 magically down on the disordered features with which the 
 first rapture of love was still standing written on their 
 faces .... 
 
 Dream, ye beloved, as ye wake, happy as in Paradise, 
 innocent as in Paradise I 
 
 SIXTH LETTER-BOX. 
 
 Office-impost. One of the most important of Petitions. 
 
 The finest thing was his awakening in his European 
 Settlement in the giant Schadeck bed! — With the in- 
 flammatory, tickling, eating fever of love in his breast; with 
 the triumphant feeling that he had now got the introductory 
 program of love put happily by ; and with the sweet resur- 
 rection from his living, prophetic burial ; and with the joy 
 that now, among his thirties, he could, for the first time, 
 cherish hopes of a longer life (and did not longer mean at 
 least till seventy ?) than he could ten years ago ; — with ail 
 this stirring life-balsam, in which the living fire-wheel of his 
 heart was rapidly revolving, he lay here, and laughed at 
 his glancing portrait in the bed-canopy ; but he could not 
 do it long, he was obliged to move. For a less happy man, 
 it would have been gratifying to have measured — as pil- 
 grims measure with the length of their pilgrimage — not 
 so much by steps as by body-lengths, like Earth-diameters, 
 the superficial content of the bed. But Fixlein, for his own 
 part, had to launch from his bed into warm, billowy Life, he 
 had now his dear good Earth again to look after, and a 
 Conrectorship thereon, and a bride to boot. Besides all 
 this, his mother down stairs now admitted that he had last 
 
284 RJCHTER. 
 
 night actually glided through beneath the scythe of Death, 
 like supple grass, and that yesterday she had not told him, 
 merely out of fear of his fear. Still a cold shudder went 
 over him — especially as he was sober now — when he 
 looked round at the high Tarpeian Rock, four hours' dis- 
 tance behind him, on the battlements of which he had last 
 night walked hand in hand with death. 
 
 The only thing that grieved him was, that it was Monday, 
 and that he must back to the Gymnasium. Such a freight- 
 age of joys he had never taken with him on his road to 
 town. After four, he issued from his house, satisfied with 
 coffee (which he drank in Hukelum merely for his mother's 
 sake, who, for two days after, would still have portions of 
 this woman's-wine to draw from the lees of the pot-sedi- 
 ment), into the cooling dawning May-morning (for joy needs 
 coolness, sorrow sun) ; his Betrothed comes — not indeed to 
 meet him, but still — into his hearing, by her distant morn- 
 ing hymn ; he makes but one momentary turn into the bliss- 
 ful haven of the blooming acacia-grove, which still, like the 
 covenant sealed in it, has no thorns ; he dips his warm 
 hand in the cold-bath of the dewy leaves ; he wades with 
 pleasure through the beautifying-water of the dew, which, 
 as it imparts color to faces, eats it away from boots, (" but 
 with thirty ducats, a Conrector may make shift to keep two 
 pairs of boots on the hook "). — And now the Moon, as it 
 were the hanging seal of his last night's happiness, dips 
 down into the West, like an emptied bucket of light, and in 
 the East the other overrunning bucket, the Sun, mounts up, 
 and the gushes of light flow broader and broader. — 
 
 The city stood in the celestial flames of Morning. Here 
 his divining-rod (his gold-roll, which, excepting one six- 
 teenth of an inch broken off from it, he carried along with 
 him) began to quiver over all the spots where booty and 
 silver-veins of enjoyment were concealed ; and our rod- 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 285 
 
 diviner easily discovered that the city and the future were 
 a true entire Potosi of delights. 
 
 In his Conrectorate closet he fell upon his knees and 
 thanked God — not so much for his heritage and bride as 
 — for his life ; for he had gone away on Sunday morning 
 with doubts whether he should ever come back ; and it was 
 purely out of love to the reader, and fear lest he might 
 fret himself too much with apprehension, that I cunningly 
 imputed Fixlein's journey more to his desire of knowing 
 what was in the will, than of making his own will in pres- 
 ence of his mother. Every recovery is a bringing back 
 and palingenesia of our youth ; one loves the Earth and 
 those that are on it with a new love. — The Conrector could 
 have found in his heart to take all his class by the locks, 
 and press them to his breast ; but he only did so to his 
 adjutant, the Quartaner, who, in the first Letter-box, was 
 still sitting in the rank of a Quintaner. . . . 
 
 His first expedition, after school hours, was to the house 
 of Meister Steinberger* where-, without speaking a word ; he 
 counted down fifty florins cash in ducats, on the table : "At 
 last I repay you," said Fixlein, " the moiety of my debt, and 
 give you many thanks." 
 
 " Ey, Herr Conrector," said the Quartermaster, and con- 
 tinued calmly stuffing puddings as before, " in my bond it 
 is said, payable at three months' mutual notice. How could 
 a man like me go on, else? — However, I will change you 
 the gold pieces." Thereupon he advised him that it might 
 be more judicious to take back a florin or two, and buy 
 himself a better hat, and whole shoes : " if you like," added 
 he, "to get a calfskin and half a dozen hareskins dressed, 
 they are lying up stairs." — I should think, for my own part, 
 that to the reader it must be as little a matter of indifference 
 as it was to the Butcher, whether the hero of such a History 
 appeared before him with an old tattered potlid of a hat, 
 
286 RICHTER. 
 
 and a pump-sucker and leg-harness pair of boots, or in 
 suitable apparel. — In short, before St. John's day, the man 
 was dressed with taste and pomp. 
 
 But now came two most peculiarly important papers — 
 at bottom only one, the petition for the Hukelum parsonship 
 — to be elaborated ; in regard to which I feel as if I myself 
 
 must assist It were a simple turn, if now at least the 
 
 assembled public did not pay attention. 
 
 In the first place, the Conrector searched out and sorted 
 all the Consistorial and Councillor quittances, or rather the 
 toll-bills of the road-money, which he had been obliged to 
 pay, before the toll-gates at the Quintusship and Conrec- 
 torship had been thrown open ; for the executor of the 
 Schadeck testament had to reimburse him the whole, as his 
 discharge would express it, " to penny and farthing." An- 
 other would have summed up his post-excise much more 
 readily; by merely looking what he — owed ; as these debt- 
 bills and those toll-bills, like parallel passages, elucidate 
 and confirm each other. But in Fixlein's case, there was 
 a small circumstance of peculiarity at work ; which I can- 
 not explain till after what follows. 
 
 It grieved him a little that for his two offices he had been 
 obliged to pay and to borrow no larger a sum than 135 
 florins, 41 kreutzers, and one half-penny. The legacy, it is 
 true, was to pass directly from the hands of the testamenta- 
 ry executor into those of the Regiments-Quartermaster ; 
 but yet he could have liked well had lie — for man is a fool 
 from the very foundation of him — had more to pay, and 
 therefore to inherit. The whole Conrectorate he had, by a 
 slight deposit of 90 florins, plucked, as it were, from the 
 Wheel of Fortune ; and so small a sum must surprise my 
 reader ; but what will he say, when I tell him that there are 
 countries where the entry-money into school-rooms is even 
 more moderate ? In Scherau, a Conrector is charged only 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 287 
 
 88 florins, and perhaps he may have an income triple of this 
 sum. Not to speak of Saxony (what, in truth, was to be 
 expected from the cradle of the Reformation, in Religion 
 and Polite Literature), where a schoolmaster and a parson 
 have nothing to pay, — even in Bayreuth, for example, in 
 Hof, the progress of improvement has been such that a 
 Quartus — a Quartus, do I say, — a Tertius — a Tertius, 
 do I say, — a Conrector, at entrance on his post, is not re- 
 quired to pay down more than : 
 
 Fl. rhen. Kr. rhen. 
 
 30 49 For taking the oaths at the Consistorium. 
 
 4 To the Syndic for the Presentation. 
 
 2 To the then Burgermeister. 
 45 7J For the Government-sanction. 
 
 Total 81 fl.56£ kr. 
 
 If the printing-charges of a Rector do stand a little higher 
 in some points, yet, on the other hand, a Tertius, Quartus, 
 &c, come cheaper from the press than even a Conrector. 
 Now, it is clear, that in this case a schoolmaster can sub- 
 sist ; since, in the course of the very first year, he gets an 
 overplus beyond this dockmoney of his office. A school- 
 master must, like his scholars, have been advanced from 
 class to class, before these his loans to Government, together 
 with the interest for delay of payment, can jointly amount 
 to so much as his yearly income in the highest class. An- 
 other thing in his favor is, that our institutions do not — as 
 those of Athens did — prohibit people from entering on 
 office, while in debt ; but every man, with his debt-knapsack 
 on his shoulders, mounts up, step after step, without obstruc- 
 tion. The Pope, in large benefices, appropriates the income 
 of the first year under the title of Annates, or First Fruits ; 
 
288 ' R1CHTER. 
 
 and accordingly he, in all cases, bestows any large benefice 
 on the possessor of a smaller one, thereby to augment both 
 his own revenues and those of others ; but it shows, in my 
 opinion, a bright distinction between Popery and Lutheranism, 
 that the Consistoriums of the latter abstract from their 
 school-ministers and church-ministers not perhaps above 
 two-thirds of their first yearly income ; though they too, 
 like the Pope, must naturally have an eye to vacancies. 
 
 It may be that I shall here come in collision with the 
 Elector of Mentz, when I confess, that, in Schmausen's 
 Corp. jur. pub. Germ.,1 have turned up the Mentz-Imperial- 
 Court-Chancery-tax-ordinance of the 6th January, 1659 ; and 
 there investigated how much this same Imperial-Court- 
 Chancery demands, as contrasted with a Consistorium. For 
 example, any man, that wishes to be baked or sodden into a 
 Poet Laureate, has 50 florins Tax-dues, and 20 florins Chan- 
 cery-dues, to pay down ; whereas, for 20 florins more, he 
 might have been made a Conrector, who is a poet of this 
 species, as it were by the bye and ex officio. — The institution 
 of a Gymnasium is permitted for 1000 florins; an extraor- 
 dinary sum, with which the whole body of the teachers in 
 the instituted Gymnasium might with us clear off the entry- 
 monies of their school-rooms. Again, a Freiherr, who, at 
 any rate, often enough grows old without knowing how, 
 must purchase the venia cetatis with 200 hard florins ; while 
 with the half sum he might have become a schoolmaster, 
 and here age would have come of its own accord. — And a 
 thousand such things ! — They prove, however, that matters 
 can be at no bad pass in our Governments and Circles, 
 where promotions are sold dearer to Folly than to Diligence, 
 and where it costs more to institute a school than to serve 
 in one. 
 
 The remarks I made on this subject to a Prince, as well 
 as the remarks a Town-syndic made on it to myself, are 
 
LIFE OF qUINTUS FIXLEIN. 289 
 
 too remarkable to be omitted for mere dread of digressive- 
 ness. 
 
 The Syndic — a man of enlarged views, and of fiery 
 patriotism, the warmth of which was the more beneficent 
 that he collected all the beams of it into one focus, and 
 directed them to himself and his family — gave me (I had 
 perhaps been comparing the School-bench and the School- 
 stair to the bench and the ladder, on which people are laid 
 when about to be tortured) the best reply: "If a school- 
 master consume nothing but 30 reichsthalers ;* if he annu- 
 ally purchase manufactured goods, according as Political 
 Economists have calculated for each individual, namely, to 
 the amount of 5 reichsthalers ; and no more hundredweights 
 of victual than these assume, namely 10 ; in short, if he 
 live like a substantial wood-cutter, — then the Devil must be 
 in it, if he cannot yearly lay by so much net profit, as shall, 
 in the long run, pay the interest of his entry-debts." 
 
 The Syndic must have failed to convince me at that time, 
 since I afterwards told the Flachsonfingen Prince :f " Illus- 
 trious Sir, you know not, but I do — not a player in your 
 Theatre would act the Schoolmaster in Engel's Prodigal 
 Son, three nights running, for such a sum as every real 
 Schoolmaster has to take for acting it all the days of the 
 year. — In Prussia, Invalids are made Schoolmasters; with 
 us, Schoolmasters are made Invalids.". . . . 
 
 But to our story ! Fixlein wrote out the inventory of his 
 
 *So much, according to Political Economists, a man yearly re- 
 quires in Germany. 
 
 t This singular tone of my address to a Prince can only be excused 
 by the equally singular relation wherein the Biographer stands to 
 the Flachsenfingen Sovereign, and which I would willingly unfold 
 here, were it not that, in my Book, which, under the title of Dog- 
 post-days, I mean to give to the world at Easter-fair, 1795, I hoped 
 to expound the matter to universal satisfaction. 
 
 VOL. II. 25 
 
290 RICHTER. 
 
 Crown-debts ; but with quite a different purpose than the 
 reader will guess, who has still the Schadeck testament in 
 his head. In one word, he wanted to be Parson of Huke- 
 lum. To be a clergyman, and in the place where his cradle 
 stood, and all the little gardens of his childhood, his mother 
 also, and the grove of betrothment, — this was an open gate 
 into a New Jerusalem, supposing even that the living had 
 been nothing but a meagre penitentiary. The main point 
 was, he might marry, if he were appointed. For, in the 
 capacity of lank Conrector, supported only by the strength- 
 ening-girth of his waistcoat, and with emoluments whereby 
 scarcely the purchase-money of a — purse was to be come 
 at ; in this way he was more like collecting wick and tallow 
 for his burial torch than for his bridal one. 
 
 For the Schoolmaster class are, in well-ordered states, as 
 little permitted to marry as the Soldiery. In Conringius de 
 Antiquitatibus Academicis, where in every leaf it is proved 
 that all cloisters were originally schools, I hit upon the rea- 
 son. Our schools are now cloisters, and consequently we 
 endeavor to maintain in our teachers at least an imitation of 
 the Three Monastic Vows. The vow of Obedience might 
 perhaps be sufficiently enforced by School-Inspectors ; but 
 the second vow, that of Celibacy, would be more hard of 
 attainment, were it not that, by one of the best political 
 arrangements, the third vow, I mean a beautiful equality in 
 Poverty, is so admirably attended to, that no man who has 
 made it needs any farther testimonium pauperlalis ; — and 
 now let this man, if he likes, lay hold of a matrimonial 
 half, when of the two halves each has a whole stomach, and 
 nothing for it but half-coins and half-beer ! . . . . 
 
 I know well, millions of my readers would themselves 
 compose this Petition for the Conrector, and ride with it to 
 Schadeck to His Lordship, that so the poor rogue might get 
 the sheepfold, with the annexed wedding-mansion ; for they 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 291 
 
 see clearly enough, that directly thereafter one of the best 
 Letter-Boxes would be written that ever came from such a 
 repository. 
 
 Fixlein's Petition was particularly good and striking; it 
 submitted to the Rittmeister four grounds of preference ; 1. 
 " He was a native of the parish ; his parents and ancestors 
 had already done Hukelum service ; therefore he prayed," 
 &c. 
 
 2. " The here documented official debts of 135 florins, 
 41 kreutzers, and one halfpenny, the cancelling of which a 
 never-to-be-forgotten testament secured him, he himself 
 could clear, in case he obtained the living, and so hereby 
 give up his claim to the legacy," &c 
 
 Voluntary Note by me. It is plain he means to bribe his 
 Godfather, whom the lady's testament has put into a fume. 
 But, gentle reader, blame not without mercy a poor, oppress- 
 ed, heavy-laden school-man and school-horse for an indeli- 
 cate insinuation, which truly was never mine. Consider, 
 Fixlein knew that the Rittmeister was a cormorant towards 
 the poor, as he was a squanderer towards the rich. It may 
 be, too, the Conrector might once or twice have heard, in 
 the Law Courts, of patrons by whom not indeed the church 
 and churchyard — though these things are articles of com- 
 merce in England — so much as the true management of 
 them, had been sold, or rather farmed to farming-candidates. 
 I know from Lange,* that the Church must support its pa- 
 tron, when he has nothing to live upon ; and might not a 
 nobleman, before he actually began begging, be justified in 
 taking a little advance, a fore-payment of his alimentary 
 monies, from the hands of his pulpit-farmer ? — 
 
 3. u He had lately betrothed himself with Fraulein von 
 Thiennette, and given her a piece of gold, as marriage- 
 
 * His Clerical Law, p. 551. 
 
292 RICHTER. 
 
 pledge ; and could therefore wed the said Fraulein, were he 
 once provided for," &c. 
 
 Voluntary Note by me. I hold this ground to be the 
 strongest in the whole Petition. In the eyes of Herr von 
 Aufhammer, Thiennette's genealogical tree was long since 
 stubbed, disleaved, worm-eaten, and full of millepedes; she 
 was his (Economa, his Castle-Stewardess, and Legatess a 
 Latere for his domestics ; and with her pretensions for an 
 alms-coffer, was threatening in the end to become a burden 
 to him. His indignant wish that she had been provided for 
 with Fixlein's legacy might now he fulfilled. In a word, if 
 Fixlein become Parson, he will have the third ground to 
 thank for it ; not at all the mad fourth 
 
 4. " He had learned with sorrow, that the name of his 
 Shock, which he had purchased from an Emigrant at Leip- 
 zig, meant Egidius in German ; and that the dog had drawn 
 upon him the displeasure of His Lordship. Far be it from 
 him so to designate the Shock in future ; but he would take 
 it as a special grace, if for the do^, which he at present call- 
 ed without any name, His Lordship would be pleased to 
 appoint one himself." 
 
 My Voluntary Note. The dog then, it seems, to which 
 the nobleman has hitherto been godfather, is to receive its 
 name a second time from him ! — But how can the famish- 
 ing gardener's son, whose career never mounted higher than 
 from the school-bench to the school-chair, and who never 
 spoke with polished ladies, except singing, namely in the 
 church, how can he be expected, in fingering such a string, 
 to educe from it any finer tone than the pedantic one ? And 
 yet the source of it lies deeper ; not the contracted situation, 
 but the contracted eye, not a favorite science, but a narrow 
 plebeian soul, makes us pedantic, a soul that cannot measure 
 and separate the concentric circles of human knowledge and 
 activity, that confounds the focus of universal human life, 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 293 
 
 by reason of the focal distance, with every two or three 
 converging rays ; and that cannot see all, and tolerate all 
 In short, the true Pedant is the Intolerant. 
 
 The Conrector wrote out his Petition splendidly in five 
 propitious evenings ; employed a peculiar ink for the pur- 
 pose ; worked not indeed so long over it as the stupid Ma- 
 nucius over a Latin letter, namely, some months, if Sciop- 
 pius's word is to be taken ; still less so long as another 
 scholar at a Latin epistle, who — truly we have nothing but 
 MorhoPs word for it — hatched it during four whole months ; 
 inserting his variations, adjectives, feet, with the authorities 
 for his phrases, accurately marked between the lines. Fix- 
 lein possessed a more thorough-going genius, and had com- 
 pletely mastered the whole enterprise in sixteen days. 
 While sealing, he thought, as we all do, how this cover was 
 the seed-husk of a great entire Future, the rind of many 
 sweet or bitter fruits, the swathing of his whole after life. 
 
 Heaven bless his cover ; but I let you throw me from the 
 Tower of Babel, if he get the parsonage ; can't you see, 
 then, that Aufhammer's hands are tied ? In spite of all his 
 other faults, or even because of them, he will stand like iron 
 by his word, which he has given so long ago to the Subrec- 
 tor. It were another matter had he been resident at Court ; 
 for there, where old German manners still are, no promise 
 is kept ; for as, according to Moser, the Ancient Germans 
 kept only such promises as they made in the forenoon (in 
 the afternoon they were all dead-drunk), — so the Court 
 Germans likewise keep no afternoon promise ; forenoon 
 ones they would keep if they made any, which, however, 
 cannot possibly happen, as at those hours they are — sleep- 
 ing. 
 
 25 
 
294 RIOHTER. 
 
 SEVENTH LETTER-BOX. 
 Sermon. School- Exhibition. Splendid Mistake. 
 
 The Conrector received his 135 florins, 43 kreutzers, one 
 halfpenny Frankish ; but no answer ; the dog remained 
 without name, his master without parsonage. Meanwhile 
 the summer passed away ; and the Dragoon Ritlmeister had 
 yet drawn out no pike from the Candidate breeding-pond, 
 and thrown him into the feeding-pond of the Hukelum 
 parsonage. It gratified him to be behung with prayers like 
 a Spanish guardian Saint ; and he postponed (though deter- 
 mined to prefer the Subrector) granting any one petition, 
 till he had seven-and-thirty dyers', buttonmakers', tinsmiths' 
 sons, whose petitions he could at the same time refuse. 
 Grudge not him of Aufhammer this outlengthening of his 
 electorial power! He knows the privileges of rank; feels 
 that a nobleman is like Timoleon, who gained his greatest 
 victories on his birth-day, and had nothing niore to do than 
 name some squiress, countess, or the like, as his mother. 
 A man, however, who has been exalted to the Peerage, 
 while still a foetus, may with more propriety be likened to 
 the spinner, which, contrariwise to all other insects, passes 
 from the chrysalis state, and becomes a perfect insect in 
 its mothers womb — 
 
 But to proceed ! Fixlein was at present not without cash. 
 It will be the same as if I made a present of it to the reader, 
 when I reveal to him, that of the legacy, which was clear- 
 ing off old scores, he had still 35 florins left to himself, as 
 allodium and pocket-money, wherewith he might purchase 
 whatsoever seemed good to him. And how came he by so 
 targe a sum, by so considerable a competence ? Simply by 
 this means; every time he changed a piece of gold, and 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 295 
 
 especially at every payment he received, it had heen his 
 custom to throw in, blindly at random, two, three, or four 
 small coins, among the papers of his trunk. His purpose 
 was to astonish himself one day, when he summed up and 
 took possession of this sleeping capital. And, by Heaven! 
 he reached it too, when, on mounting the throne of his Con- 
 rectorate, he drew out these funds from his papers, and 
 applied them to the coronation charges. For the present, 
 he sowed them in again among his waste letters. Foolish 
 Fixlein ! I mean, had he not luckily exposed his legacy to 
 jeopardy, having offered it as bounty-money and luck- 
 penny to the patron, this false clutch of his at the knocker 
 of the Hukelum church door, would certainly have vexed 
 him ; but now, if he had missed the knocker, he had the 
 luckpenny again, and could be merry. 
 
 I now advance a little way in his History, and hit, in the 
 rock of his Life, upon so fine a vein of silver, I mean upon 
 so fine a day, that I must (I believe) content myself even in 
 regard to the twenty-third of Trinity-term, when he 
 preached a vacation sermon in his dear native village, with 
 a brief transitory notice. 
 
 In itself the sermon was good and glorious ; and the day a 
 rich day of pleasure ; but I should really need to have more 
 hours at my disposal than I can steal from May, in which 
 I am at present living and writing ; and more strength than 
 wandering through this fine weather has left me for land- 
 scape pictures of the same, before I could attempt, with any 
 well-founded hope, to draw out a mathematical estimate of 
 the length and thickness, and the vibrations and accordant 
 relations to each other, of the various strings, which com- 
 bined together to form for his heart a Music of the 
 Spheres, on this day of Trinity-term, though such a thing 
 
 would please myself as much as another Do not ask 
 
 me ! In my opinion, when a man preaches on Sunday, 
 
296 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 before all the peasants, who had carried him in their arms 
 when a gardener's boy ; farther, before his mother, who is 
 leading off her tears through the conduit of her satin muff; 
 farther, before His Lordship, whom he can positively com- 
 mand to be blessed ; and finally, before his muslin bride, 
 who is already blessed, and changing almost into stone, to 
 find that the same lips can both kiss and preach ; in my 
 opinion, I say, when a man effects all this, he has some 
 right to require of any Biographer who would paint his 
 situation, that he — hold his jaw; and of the reader who 
 would sympathize with it, that he open his, and preach him- 
 self. 
 
 But what I must ex officio depict, is the day to which this 
 Sunday was but the prelude, the vigil, and the whet ; I 
 mean the prelude, the vigil, and the whet to the Martini 
 Actus, or Martinmas Exhibition of his school. On Sunday 
 was the sermon, on Wednesday the Actus, on Tuesday the 
 Rehearsal. This Tuesday shall now be delineated to the 
 universe. 
 
 I count upon it that I shall not be read by mere people of 
 the world alone, to whom a School-Actus cannot truly appear 
 much better, or more interesting, than some Investiture of a 
 Bishop, or the opera seria of Frankfort Coronation ; but 
 that I likewise have people before me, who have been at 
 schools, and who know how the School-drama of an Actus, 
 and the stage-manager, and the playbill (the Program) 
 thereof are to be estimated, still without overrating their 
 importance. 
 
 Before proceeding to the Rehearsal of the Martini Actus, 
 I impose upon myself, as dramaturgist of the play, the 
 duty, if not of extracting, at least of recording the Conrec- 
 tor's Letter of Invitation. In this composition he said 
 many things ; and (what an author likes so well) made 
 proposals rather than reproaches ; interrogatively reminding 
 
LIFE OF QULNTUS FIXLE1N. 297 
 
 the public, whether, in regard to the well- known head- 
 breakages of Priscian on the part of the Magnates in Pest 
 and Poland, our school-houses were not the best quarantine 
 and lazar-houses to protect us against infectious bar- 
 barisms 7 Moreover, he defended in schools what could be 
 defended (and nothing in the world is sweeter or easier than 
 a defence) ; and said, Schoolmasters, who, not quite justi- 
 fiably, like certain Courts, spoke nothing, and let nothing be 
 spoken to them, but Latin, might plead the Romans in ex- 
 cuse, whose subjects, and whose kings, at least in their 
 epistles and public transactions, were obliged to make use 
 of the Latin tongue. He wondered why only our Greek, 
 and not also our Latin Grammars, were composed in 
 Latin, and put the pregnant question, whether the Ro- 
 mans, when they taught their little children the Latin 
 tongue, did it in any other than in this same. Thereupon 
 he went over to the Actus, and said what follows, in his own 
 words : 
 
 " I am minded to prove, in a subsequent Invitation, that 
 everything which can be said or known about the great 
 founder of the Reformation, the subject of our present 
 Martini Prolusions, has been long ago exhausted, as well by 
 Seckendorf as others. In fact, with regard to Luther's 
 personalities, his table-talk, incomes, journeys, clothes, and 
 so forth, there can now nothing new be brought forward, if 
 at the same time it is to be true. Nevertheless, the field of 
 the Reformation history is, to speak in a figure, by no 
 means wholly cultivated ; and it does appear to me as if the 
 inquirer even of the present day might in vain look about 
 for correct intelligence respecting the children, grandchildren, 
 and children's children, down to our own times, of this great 
 Reformer ; all of whom, however, appertain, in a more remote 
 degree, to the Reformation history, as he himself in a nearer. 
 Thou shalt not perhaps be threshing, said I to myself, alto- 
 
298 RICHTElt. 
 
 gether empty straw, if, according to thy small ability, thou 
 bring forward and cultivate this neglected branch of History. 
 And so have I ventured, with the last male descendant of Lu- 
 ther, namely, with the Advocate Martin Gottlob Luther, who 
 practised in Dresden, and deceased there in 1759, to make 
 a beginning of a more special Reformation history. My 
 feeble attempt, in regard to this Reformationary Advocate, 
 will be sufficiently rewarded, should it excite to better works 
 on the subject ; however, the little which I have succeeded 
 in digging up and collecting with regard to him I here 
 submissively, obediently, and humbly request all friends 
 and patrons of the Flachsenfingen Gymnasium to listen to, 
 on the 14th of November, from the mouths of six well-con- 
 ditioned perorators. In the first place, shall 
 
 u Gottlieb Spiesglass, a Flachsenfinger, endeavor to 
 show, in a Latin oration, that Martin Gottlob Luther was 
 certainly descended of the Luther family. After him 
 strives 
 
 " Friedrich Christian Krabbler, from Hukelum, in Ger- 
 man prose, to appreciate the influence which Martin Gott- 
 lob Luther exercised on the then existing Reformation ; 
 whereupon, after him, will 
 
 " Daniel Lorenz Stenzinger deliver, in Latin verse, an 
 account of Martin Gottlob Luther's lawsuits ; embracing 
 the probable merits of Advocates generally, in regard to the 
 Reformation. Which then will give opportunity to 
 
 " Nikol Tobias Pjizman to come forward in French, and 
 recount the most important circumstances of Martin Gott- 
 lob Luther's school-years, university-life, and riper age. 
 And now, when 
 
 " Andreas Eintarm shall have endeavored, in German 
 verse, to apologize for the possible failings of this represen- 
 tative of the great Luther, will 
 
 " Justus Strobel, in Latin verse according to ability, sing 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 299 
 
 his uprightness and integrity in the Advocate profession ; 
 whereafter I myself shall mount the cathedra, and most 
 humbly thank all the patrons of the Flachsenfingen School, 
 and then farther bring forward those portions in the life of 
 this remarkable man, of which we yet know absolutely 
 nothing, they being spared, Deo volente, for the speakers of 
 the next Martini Actus." 
 
 The day before the Actus offered as it were the proof- 
 shot and sample-sheet of the Wednesday. Persons who on 
 account of dress could not be present at the great school- 
 festival, especially ladies, made their appearance on Tues- 
 day, during the six proof-orations. No one can be readier 
 than I to subordinate the proof-Actus to the Wednesday- 
 Actus ; and I do anything but need being stimulated suitably 
 to estimate the solemn feast of a School ; but, on the other 
 hand, I am equally convinced that no one, who did not go to 
 the real Actus of Wednesday, could possibly figure any- 
 thing more splendid than the proof-day preceding; because 
 he could have no object wherewith to compare the pomp in 
 which the Primate of the festival drove in with his triumphal 
 chariot and six — to call the six brethren-speakers coach- 
 horses — next morning in presence of ladies and Councillor 
 gentleman. Smile away, Fixlein, at this astonishment over 
 thy today's Ovation, which is leading on tomorrow's Tri- 
 umph ; on thy dissolving countenance quivers happy Self, 
 feeding on these incense-fumes; but a vanity like thine, and 
 that only, which enjoys without comparing or despising, can 
 one tolerate, will one foster. But what flowed over all his 
 heart, like a melting sunbeam over wax, was his mother, 
 who after much persuasion had ventured in her Sunday's 
 clothes humbly to place herself quite low down, beside the 
 door of the Prima class-room. It were difficult to say who 
 
300 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 is happier, the mother, beholding how he whom she has 
 borne under her heart can direct such noble young gentle- 
 men, and hearing how he along with them can talk of these 
 really high things and understand them too; — or the son, 
 who, like some of the heroes of Antiquity, has the felicity 
 of triumphing in the lifetime of his mother. I have never 
 in my writings or doings cast a stone upon the late Burch- 
 ardt Grossmann, who, under the initial letters of the stanzas 
 in his song " Brich an, du liebe Morgenrothe" inserted the 
 letters of his own name ; and still less have I ever censured 
 any poor herbwoman for smoothing out her winding-sheet, 
 while still living, and making herself one-twelfth of a dozen 
 of grave-shifts. Nor do I regard the man as wise — though 
 indeed as very clever and pedantic — who can fret his gall- 
 bladder full because every one of us leaf-miners views the 
 leaf whereon he is mining as a park-garden, as a fifth 
 Quarter of the World (so near and rich is it) ; the leaf-pores 
 as so many Valleys of Tempe, the leaf-skeleton as a Lib- 
 erty-tree, a Bread-tree, and Life-tree, and the dewdrops as 
 the Ocean. We poor day-moths, evening-moths, and night- 
 moths, fall universally into the same error, only on different 
 leaves; and whosoever (as I do) laughs at the important 
 airs with which the schoolmaster issues his programs, the 
 dramaturgist his playbills, the classical variation-alms-gath- 
 erer his alphabetic letters, — does it, if he is wise (as is the 
 case here), with the consciousness of his own similar folly ; 
 and laughs, in regard to his neighbor, at nothing but man- 
 kind and himself. 
 
 The mother was not to be detained ; she must off, this 
 very night, to Hukelum, to give the Fraulein Thiennette at 
 least some tidings of this glorious business. — 
 
 And now the World will bet a hundred to one, that I forth- 
 with take biographical wax, and emboss such a wax-figure 
 cabinet of the Actus itself as shall be single of its kind. 
 
LIFE OF ©JJINTUS FIXLEIN. 301 
 
 But on Wednesday morning, while the hope-intoxicated 
 Conrector was just about putting on his fine raiment, some- 
 thing knocked. 
 
 It was the well-known servant of the Rittmeister, carry- 
 ing the Hukelum Presentation for the Subrector Fuchsle'm in 
 his pocket. To the last-named gentleman he had been sent 
 with this call to the parsonage ; but he had distinguished ill 
 betwixt Sub and Corrector; and had besides his own good 
 reasons for directing his steps to the latter ; for he thought, 
 " Who can it be that gets it, but the parson that preached 
 last Sunday, and that comes from the village, and is engaged 
 to our Fraulein Thiennette, and to whom I brought a clock 
 and a roll of ducats already ? " That His Lordship could 
 pass over his own godson, never entered the man's head. 
 
 Fixlein read the address of the Appointment: "To the 
 Reverend the Parson Fixlein of Hukelum." He naturally 
 enough made the same mistake as the lackey ; and broke 
 up the Presentation as his own ; and finding moreover in the 
 body of the paper no special mention of persons, but only 
 of a Schul-unterbefehlshaber or School -undergovernor (in- 
 stead of Subrector), he could not but persist in his error. 
 
 Before I properly explain why the Rittmeister's Lawyer, 
 the framer of the Presentation, had so designated a Sub- 
 rector — we two, the reader and myself, will keep an eye 
 for a moment on Fixlein's joyful salutations — on his grate- 
 fully-streaming eyes — on his full hands so laden with 
 bounty — on the present of two ducats, which he drops into 
 the hands of the mitre-bearer, as willingly as he will soon 
 drop his own pedagogic office. Could he tell what to think 
 (of the Rittmeister), or to write (to the same), or to table 
 (for the lackey)? Did he not ask tidings of the noble 
 health of his benefactor over and over, though the servant 
 answered him with all distinctness at the very first? And 
 was not this same man, who belonged to the nose-upturning, 
 vol. ii. 26 
 
302 R1CHTER. 
 
 shoulder-shrugging, shoulder-knotted, toad-eating species of 
 men, at last so moved by the joy which he had imparted, 
 that he determined, on the spot, to bestow his presence on 
 the new clergyman's School-Actus, though no person of 
 quality whatever was to be there ? Fixlein, in the first 
 place, sealed his letter of thanks ; and courteously invited 
 this messenger of good news to visit him frequently in the 
 Parsonage ; and to call this evening, in passing, at his moth- 
 er's, and give her a lecture for not staying last night, when 
 she might have seen the Presentation from His Lordship 
 arrive to-day. 
 
 The lackey being gone, Fixlein for joy began to grow 
 skeptical — and timorous (wherefore, to prevent filching, he 
 stowed his Presentation securely in his coffer, under keeping 
 of two padlocks); and devout and softened, since he thanked 
 God without scruple for all good that happened to him, and 
 never wrote this Eternal Name but in pulpit characters, and 
 with colored ink ; as the Jewish copyists never wrote it 
 except ornamental letters and when newly washed;* — and 
 deaf also did the parson grow, so that he scarcely heard 
 the soft wooing-hour of the Actus — for a still softer one 
 beside Thiennette, with its rose-bushes and rose-honey, 
 would not leave his thoughts. He who of old, when For- 
 tune made a wry face at him, was wont, like children in 
 their sport at one another, to laugh at her so long till she 
 herself was obliged to begin smiling — he was now flying 
 as on a huge seesaw higher and higher, quicker and quicker 
 aloft. 
 
 But before the Actus, let us examine the Schadeck Law- 
 yer. Fixlein instead of Fitchslein t he had written from 
 
 *Eichhorn's Einleitung ins A. T. (Introduction to the Old Testa- 
 ment), vol. II. 
 
 t Both have the same sound. Ftlchslein means Foxling, Fox- 
 whelp. — Ed. 
 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 303 
 
 uncertainty about the spelling of the name ; the more 
 naturally as in transcribing the Rittmeisterinn's will the 
 former had occurred so often. Von, this triumphal arch, 
 he durst not set up before Fiichslein's new name, because 
 Aufhammer forbade it, considering Hans Fuchslein as a 
 mushroom who had no right to vons and titles of nobility, 
 for all his patents. In fine, the Presentation-writer was 
 possessed with Campe's * whim of Germanizing everything, 
 minding little though when Germanized it should cease to 
 be intelligible; — as if a word needed any better act of 
 naturalization than that which universal unintelligibility im- 
 parts to it. In itself it is the same — the rather as all 
 languages, like all men, are cognate, intermarried and 
 intermixed — whether a word was invented by a savage or 
 a foreigner; whether it grew up like moss amid the German 
 forests, or like street-grass, in the pavement of the Roman 
 Forum. The Lawyer, on the other hand, contended that 
 it was different ; and accordingly he hid not from any of 
 his clients that Tagefarth (Day-turn) meant Term, and that 
 Appealing was Berufen (Becalling). On this principle, he 
 dressed the word Subrector in the new livery of School- 
 under governor. And this version farther converted the 
 Schoolmaster into Parson ; to such a degree does our civic 
 fortune — not our personal well-being, which supports itself 
 
 * Campe, a German philologist, who, along with several others 
 of that class, has really proposed, as represented in the Text, to 
 substitute for all Greek or Latin derivatives corresponding German 
 terms of the like import. Geography, which may be Erdbeschrei- 
 bung (Earth-description), was thenceforth to be nothing else; a 
 Geometer became an Earthmeasurer , &c, &c. School-under governor, 
 instead of Subrector, is by no means the happiest example of the 
 system, and seems due rather to the Schadeck Lawyer than to 
 Campe, whom our Author has elsewhere more than once eulogized 
 for his project in similar style. — Ed. 
 
304 RICHTER. 
 
 on our own internal soil and resources — grow merely on 
 the drift-mould of accidents, connexions, acquaintances, and 
 Heaven or the Devil knows what ! — 
 
 By the bye, from a Lawyer, at the same time a Country 
 Judge, I should certainly have looked for more sense ; I 
 should (I may be mistaken) have presumed he knew that 
 the Acts, or Reports, which in former times (see Hoffmann's 
 German or un- German Laic -practice) were written in Latin, 
 as before the times of Joseph the Hungarian, — are now, if 
 we may say so without offence, perhaps written fully more 
 in the German dialect than in the Latin ; and in support of 
 this opinion, I can point to whole lines of German language, 
 to be found in these Imperial-Court-Confessions. However, 
 I will not believe that the Jurist is endeavoring, because 
 Imliofer declares the Roman tongue to be the mother tongue 
 in the other world, to disengage himself from a language, 
 by means of which, like the Roman Eagle, or later, like 
 the Roman Fish-heron (Pope), he has clutched such abund- 
 ant booty in his talons, 
 
 Toll, toll your bell for the Actus ; stream in, in to the 
 ceremony ; who cares for it ? Neither I nor the Ex-Con- 
 rector. The six pigmy Ciceros will in vain set forth before 
 us in sumptuous dress their thoughts and bodies. The 
 draught-wind of Chance has blown away from the Actus 
 its powder-nimbus of glory ; and the Conrector that was 
 has discovered how small a matter a cathedra is, and how 
 great a one a pulpit : "I should not have thought," thought 
 he now, " when I became Conrector, that there could be 
 anything grander, I mean a parson." Man, behind his 
 everlasting blind, which he only colors differently, and 
 makes no thinner, carries his pride with him from one step 
 to another ; and on the higher step, blames only the pride 
 of the lower. 
 
 The best of the Actus was, that the Regiments-Quarter- 
 
LIFE OF Q.UINTUS FIXLEIN. 305 
 
 master, and Master Butcher, Steinberg, attended there, 
 embaled in a long woollen shag. During the solemnity, the 
 Subrector Hans von Fuchslein cast several gratified and 
 inquiring glances on the Schadeck servant, who did not once 
 look at him. Hans would have staked his head, that, after 
 the Actus, the fellow would wait upon him. When at last 
 the sextuple cockerel-brood had on their dunghill clone 
 crowing, that is to say, had perorated, the scholastic cocker, 
 over whom a higher banner was now waving, himself came 
 upon the stage ; and delivered to the School-Inspectorships, to 
 the Subrectorship, to the Guardianship, and the Lackeyship, 
 his most grateful thanks for their attendance ; shortly 
 announcing to them at the same time, " that Providence 
 had now called him from his post to another ; and com- 
 mitted to him, unworthy as he was, the cure of souls in the 
 Hukelum parish, as well as in the Schadeck chapel of ease." 
 This little address, to appearance, well nigh blew up the 
 then Subrector Hans von Fuchslein from his chair; and his 
 face looked of a mingled color, like red bole, green chalk, 
 tinsel-yellow, and vomissement de la reine. 
 
 The tall Quartermaster erected himself considerably in 
 his shag, and hummed loud enough in happy forgetfulness : 
 
 " The Dickens ! — Parson ? " 
 
 The Subrector dashed by like a comet before the lackey ; 
 ordered him to call and take a letter for his master; strode 
 home, and prepared for his patron, who at Schadeck was 
 waiting for a long thanksgiving psalm, a short satirical 
 epistle, as nervous as haste would permit, and mingled a 
 few nicknames and verbal injuries along with it. 
 
 The courier handed in, to his master, Fixlein's song of 
 gratitude, and Fiichslein's invectives, with the same hand. 
 The dragoon Rittmeister, incensed at the ill-mannered 
 churl, and bound to his word, which Fixlein had publicly 
 announced in his Actus, forthwith wrote back to the new : 
 26* 
 
306 Rfctiffcfe. 
 
 Parson an acceptance and ratification ; and Fixlein is and 
 remains, to the joy of us all, incontestible ordained parson 
 of Hukelum. 
 
 His disappointed rival has still this consolation, that he 
 holds a seat in the wasp-nest of the Neve Allgemeine 
 Deutsche Bibliothek* Should the Parson ever chrysalize 
 himself into an author, the watch-wasp may then buzz out, 
 and dart its sting into the chrysalis, and put its own brood 
 in the room of the murdered butterfly. As the Subrector 
 everywhere went about, and threatened in plain terms that 
 he would review his colleague, let not the public be sur- 
 prised that Fixlein's Errata, and his Masoretic Exercita- 
 liones, are to this hour withheld from it. 
 
 In spring, the widowed church receives her new hus- 
 band ; and how it will be, when Fixlein, under a canopy of 
 flower-trees, takes the Sponsa Christi in one hand, and his 
 own Sponsa in the other — this, without an Eighth Letter- 
 Box, which, in the present case, may be a true jewel-box 
 and rainbow-key ,t can no mortal figure, except the Sponsus 
 himself. 
 
 EIGHTH LETTER-BOX. 
 
 Instalment in the Parsonage. 
 
 CXn the 15th of April, 1793, the reader may observe, far 
 down in the hollow, three baggage-wagons groaning along. 
 These baggage-wagons are transporting the house-gear of 
 
 * New Universal German Library, a reviewing periodical ; in 
 those days conducted by Nicolai, a sworn enemy to what has since 
 been called the New School. (See § Tieck in vol. I.) — Ed. 
 
 t Superstition declares, that, on the spot where the rainbow rises, 
 a gotden key is left. 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 307 
 
 the new Parson to Hukelum ; the proprietor himself, with a 
 little escort of his parishioners, is marching at their side, 
 that of his china sets and household furniture there may be 
 nothing broken in the eighteenth century, as the whole 
 came down to him unbroken from the seventeenth. Fixlein 
 hears the School-bell ringing behind him ; but this chime 
 now sings to him, like a curfew, the songs of future rest ; he 
 is now escaped from the Death-valley of the Gymnasium, 
 and admitted into the abodes of the Blessed. Here dwells 
 no envy, no colleague, no Subrector; here, in the heavenly 
 country, no man works in ihe New Universal German 
 Library ; here, in the heavenly Hukelumic Jerusalem, they 
 do nothing but sing praises in the church ; and here the 
 Perfected requires no more increase of knowledge . . . Here, 
 too, one needs not sorrow that Sunday and Saint's day so 
 often fall together into one. 
 
 Truth to tell, the Parson goes too far ; but it was his 
 way from of old never to paint out the whole and half 
 shadows of a situation, till he was got into a new one ; the 
 beauties of which he could then enhance by contrast with 
 the former. For it requires little reflection to discover that 
 the torments of a schoolmaster are nothing so extraordi- 
 nary ; but, on the contrary, as in the Gymnasium, he 
 mounts from one degree to another, not very dissimilar to 
 the common torments of Hell, which, in spite of their 
 eternity, grow weaker from century to century. Moreover, 
 since, according to the saying of a Frenchman, deux afflic- 
 tions mises ensemble peuvent devenir une consolation, a man 
 gets afflictions enow in a school to console him ; seeing out 
 of eight combined afflictions — reckon only one for every 
 teacher — certainly more comfort is to be extracts J than 
 out of two. The only pity is, that school-people will never 
 act towards each other as court-people do; none but 
 polished men and polished glasses will readily cohere. In 
 
308 RICHTER. 
 
 addition to all this, in schools — and in offices generally — 
 one is always recompensed ; for, as in the second life a 
 greater virtue is the recompense of an earthly one, so, in 
 the Schoolmaster's case, his merits are always rewarded by 
 more opportunities for new merits ; and often enough he is 
 not dismissed from his post at all. — 
 
 Eight Gymnasiasts are trotting about in the Parsonage, 
 setting up, nailing to, hauling in. I think, as a scholar of 
 Plutarch, I am right to introduce such seeming minutice. 
 A man, whom grown-up people love, children love still more. 
 The whole school had smiled on the smiling Fixlein, and 
 liked him in their hearts, because he did not thunder, but 
 sport with them ; because he said Sie (They), to the 
 Secundaners, and the Subrector said Ihr (Ye) ; because his 
 uprearing forefinger was his only sceptre and baculus ; 
 because in the Secunda he had interchanged Latin epistles 
 with his scholars ; and in the Quinta had taught not with 
 Napier's Rods (or rods of a sharper description), but with 
 sticks of barley-sugar. 
 
 To-day his churchyard appeared to him so solemn and 
 festive, that he wondered (though it was Monday) why his 
 parishioners were not in their holiday, hut merely in their 
 weekday drapery. Under ihe door of the Parsonage stood 
 a weeping woman ; for she was too happy, and he was her 
 — son. Yet the mother, in the height of her emotion, con- 
 trives quite readily to call upon the carriers, while disload- 
 ing, not to twist off the four corner globes from the old 
 Frankish chest of drawers. Her son now appeared to her 
 as venerable as if he had sat for one of the copperplates in 
 her pictured Bible ; and that simply because he had cast 
 off his pedagogue hair-cue, as the ripening tadpole does its 
 tail ; and was now standing in a clerical periwig before 
 her; he was now a Comet, soaring away from the profane 
 Earth, and had accordingly changed from a stella caudata 
 into a stella crinita. 
 
LIFE OF GJJ1NTUS FIXLEIN. 309 
 
 His bride also had, on former days, given sedulous assis- 
 tance in this new improved edition of his house, and labored 
 faithfully among the other furnishers and furbishers. But 
 to-day she kept aloof; for she was too good to forget the 
 maiden in the bride. Love, like men, dies oftener of excess 
 than of hunger; it lives on love, but it resembles those 
 Alpine flowers which feed themselves by suction from the 
 wet clouds, and die if you besprinkle them. — 
 
 At length the Parson is settled, and of course he must — 
 for I know my fair readers, who are bent on it as if they 
 were bridemaids — without delay get married. But he may 
 not ; before Ascension-day there can nothing be done, and 
 till then are full four weeks and a half. The matter was 
 this. He wished in the first place to have the murder-Sun- 
 day, the Cantata, behind him ; not indeed because he 
 doubted of his earthly continuance, but because he would 
 not (even for the bride's sake) that the slightest apprehen- 
 sion should mingle with these weeks of glory. 
 
 The main reason was, he did not wish to marry till lie 
 were betrothed ; which latter ceremony was appointed, with 
 the Introduction Sermon, to take place next Sunday. It is 
 the Cantata-Sunday. Let not the reader afflict himself with 
 fears. Indeed, I should not have molested an enlightened 
 century with this Sunday- Wauwau at all, were it not that 
 I delineate with such extreme fidelity. Fixlein himself — 
 especially as the Quartermaster asked him if he was a baby 
 — at last grew so sensible that he saw the folly of it ; nay, 
 he went so far that he committed a greater folly. For as 
 dreaming that you die signifies, according to the exegetic 
 rule of false, nothing else than long life and welfare, so did 
 Fixlein easily infer that his death-imagination was just such 
 a lucky dream ; the rather as it was precisely on this 
 Cantata-Sunday that Fortune had turned up her cornucopia 
 over him, and at once showered down out of it a bride, a 
 
310 
 
 R1CHTEU. 
 
 presentation, and a roll of ducats. Thus can Superstition 
 imp its wings, let Chance favor it or not. 
 
 A Secretary of State, a Peace-treaty writer, a Notary, 
 any such incarcerated Slave of the Desk, feels excellently 
 well how far he is beneath a Parson composing his 
 inaugural sermon. The latter (do but look at my Fixlein) 
 lays himself heartily over the paper — injects the venous 
 system of his sermon-preparation with colored ink — has a 
 Text-Concordance on the right side, and a Song-Concor- 
 dance on the left ; is there digging out a marrowy sentence, 
 here clipping off a song-blossom, with both to garnish his 
 homiletic pastry ; — sketches out the finest plan of opera- 
 tions, not, like a man of the world, to subdue the heart of 
 one woman, but the hearts of all women that hear him, and 
 of their husbands to boot ; — draws every peasant passing 
 by his window into some niche of his discourse, to cooper- 
 ate with the result ; — and, finally, scoops out the butter of 
 the smooth, soft hymn-book, and therewith exquisitely fattens 
 the black broth of his sermon, which is to feed five thousand 
 men. — — 
 
 At last, in the evening, as the red sun is dazzling him at 
 the desk, he can rise with heart free from guilt ; and, amid 
 twittering sparrows and finches, over the cherry-trees en- 
 circling the parsonage, look toward the west, till there is 
 nothing more in the sky but a faint gleam among the clouds. 
 And then when Fixlein, amid the tolling of the evening 
 prayer-bell, sloivly descends the stair to his cooking mother, 
 there must be some miracle in the case, if for him whatever 
 has been done or baked, or served up in the lower regions, 
 is not right and good .... A bound, after supper, into the 
 Castle ; a look into a pure loving eye ; a word without 
 falseness to a bride without falseness ; and then under the 
 coverlid, a soft-breathing breast, in which there is nothing 
 but Paradise, a sermon, and evening prayer .... I swear, 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 311 
 
 with this I will satisfy a Mythic God, who has left his 
 Heaven, and is seeking a new one among us here below ! 
 
 Can a mortal, can a Me in the wet clay of Earth, which 
 Death will soon dry into dust, ask more in one week, 
 than Fixlein is gathering into his heart ? I see not how. 
 At least I should suppose, if such a dust-framed being, after 
 such a twenty-thousand prize from the Lottery of Chance, 
 could require aught more, it would at most be the twenty- 
 one-thousand prize, namely, the inaugural discourse itself. 
 
 And this prize our Zebedaus actually drew on Sunday ; 
 he preached — he preached with unction, he did it be- 
 fore the crowding, rustling press of people; before his 
 Guardian, and before the Lord of Aufhammer, the godfather 
 of the priest and the dog ; — a flock, with whom in childhood 
 he had driven out the Castle herds about the pasture, he was 
 now, himself a spiritual sheep-smearer, leading out to pas- 
 ture ; — he was standing to the ankles among Candidates 
 and Schoolmasters, for to-day (what none of them could) at 
 the altar, with the nail of his finger, he might scratch a large 
 cross in the air, baptisms and marriages not once mention- 
 ed 1 believe, I should feel less scrupulous than I do 
 
 to chequer this sunshiny esplanade with that thin shadow of 
 the grave, which the preacher threw over it, when, in the 
 application, with wet, heavy eyes, he looked round over the 
 mute, attentive church, as if in some corner of it he would 
 seek the mouldering teacher of his youth and of this con- 
 gregation, who without, under the white tombstone, the 
 wrong-side of life, had laid away the garment of his pious 
 spirit. And when he, himself hurried on by the internal 
 stream, inexpressibly softened by the farther recollections of 
 his own fear of death on this day, of his life now overspread 
 with flowers and benefits, of his entombed benefactress rest- 
 ing here in her narrow bed — when he now — before the 
 dissolving countenance of her friend, his Thiennette, — 
 
312 RICHTER. 
 
 overpowered, motionless, and weeping, looked down from 
 the pulpit to the door of the Schadeck vault, and said : 
 " Thanks, thou pious soul, for the good thou hast done to 
 this flock and to their new teacher ; and, in the fulness of 
 time, may the dust of thy god-fearing and man-loving breast 
 gather itself, transfigured as gold-dust, round thy reawaken- 
 ed heavenly heart," — was there an eye in the audience 
 dry? Her husband sobbed aloud, and Thiennette, her be- 
 loved, bowed her head, sinking down with inconsolable 
 remembrances, over the front of the seat., like kindred 
 mourners in a funeral train. 
 
 No fairer forenoon could prepare the way for an after- 
 noon in which a man was to betroth himself forever, and to 
 unite the exchanged rings with the Ring of Eternity. Ex- 
 cept the bridal pair, there was none present but an ancient 
 pair; the mother and the long Guardian The bridegroom 
 wrote out the marriage-contract or marriage-charter with 
 his own hand ; hereby making over to his bride, from this 
 day, his whole movable property (not, as you may suppose, 
 his pocket-library, but his whole library ; whereas, in the 
 Middle Ages, the daughter of a noble was glad to get one 
 or two books for marriage-portion) ; — in return for which, 
 she liberally enough contributed — a whole nuptial coach or 
 car, laden as follows : with nine pounds of feathers, not 
 feathers for the cap such as we carry, but of the lighter sort 
 such as carry us ; — with a sumptuous dozen of godchild- 
 plates and godchild-spoons (gifts from Schadeck), together 
 with a fish-knife ; — of silk, not only stockings (though even 
 King Henry II. of France could dress no more than his 
 legs in silk), but whole gowns; — with jewels and other 
 furnishings of smaller value. Good Thiennette ! in the 
 chariot of thy spirit lies the true dowry ; namely, thy noble, 
 soft, modest heart, the morning-gift of Nature ! 
 
 The Parson, — who, not from mistrust but from " the un- 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 313 
 
 certainty of life," could have wished for a notary's seal on 
 everything ; to whom no security but a hypothecary one 
 appeared sufficient ; and who, in the depositing of every 
 barleycorn, required quittances and contracts, — had now, 
 when the marriage-charter was completed, a lighter heart ; 
 and through the whole evening the good man ceased not to 
 thank his bride for what she had given him. To me, how- 
 ever, a marriage-contract were a thing as painful and repul- 
 sive, — I confess it candidly, though you should in conse- 
 quence upbraid me with my great youth, — as if I had to 
 take my love-letter to a Notary Imperial, and make him 
 docket and countersign it before it could be sent. Heavens ! 
 to see the light flower of Love, whose perfume acts not on 
 the balance, so laid like tulip-bulbs on the hay-beam of 
 Law ; two hearts on the cold councillor and flesh beam of 
 relatives and Advocates, who are heaping on the scales 
 nothing but houses, fields, and tin — this, to the interested 
 party, may be as delightful as, to the intoxicated suckling 
 and nursling of the Muses and Philosophy, it is to carry the 
 evening and morning sacrifices he has offered up to his 
 goddess into the book-shop, and there to change his devotions 
 
 into money, and sell them by weight and measure. 
 
 From Cantata-Sunday to Ascension, that is, to marriage 
 day, are one and a half weeks — or one and a half bliss- 
 ful eternities. If it is pleasant that nights or winter separate 
 the days and seasons of joy to a comfortable distance ; if, 
 for example, it is pleasant that birth-day, Saint's-day, be- 
 trothment, marriage, and baptismal day, do not all occur on 
 the same day (for with very few do those festivities, like 
 Holiday arid Apostle's day, commerge), — then is it still 
 more pleasant to make the interval, the flower-border, 
 between betrothment and marriage, of an extraordinary 
 breadth. Before the marriage-day are the true honey-weeks ; 
 then come the wax-weeks ; then the honey-vinegar-weeks. 
 vol. ii. 27 
 
314 RICHTER. 
 
 In the Ninth Letter-Box our Parson celebrates his wed- 
 ding ; and here, in the Eighth, I shall just briefly skim over 
 his way and manner of existence till then ; an existence, as 
 might have been expected, celestial enough. To few is it 
 allotted, as it was to him, to have at once such wings and 
 such flowers (to fly over) before his nuptials ; to few is it 
 allotted, I imagine, to purchase flour and poultry on the 
 same day, as Fixlein did ; — to stuff the wedding-turkey 
 with hangman-meals; — to go every night into the stall, and 
 see whether the wedding-pig, which his Guardian had given 
 him by way of marriage-present, is still standing and eat- 
 ing ; — to spy out for his future wife the flax-magazines and 
 clothes-press-niches in the house ; — to lay in new wood- 
 stores in the prospect of winter ; — to obtain from the Con- 
 sistorium directly, and for little smart-money, their Bull of 
 Dispensation, their remission of the three-fold proclamation 
 of banns ; — to live not in a city, where you must send to 
 every fool (because you are one yourself), and disclose to 
 him that you are going to be married ; but in a little angular 
 hamlet, where you have no one to tell aught, but simply the 
 Schoolmaster that he is to ring a little later, and put a knee- 
 cushion before the altar. 
 
 ! if the Ritter Michaelis maintains that Paradise was 
 little, because otherwise the people would not have found 
 each other, — a hamlet and its joys are little and narrow, 
 so that some shadow of Eden may still linger on our 
 Ball. 
 
 1 have not even hinted, that, the day before the wedding, 
 the Regiments-Quartermaster came uncalled, and killed the 
 pig, and made puddings gratis, such as were never eaten at 
 any Court. 
 
 And besides, dear Fixlein, on this soft, rich oil of joy there 
 was also floating gratis a vernal sun, — and red twilights, — 
 and flower-garlands, — and a bursting half world of 
 buds ! . . . . 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 3 15 
 
 How didst thou behave thee in these hot whirlpools of 
 pleasure? — Thou movedst thy Fishtail (Reason), and 
 therewith describedst for thyself a rectilineal course through 
 the billows. For even half as much would have hurried 
 another Parson from his study ; but the very crowning felic- 
 ity of ours was, that he stood as if rooted to the boundary- 
 hill of Moderation, and from thence looked down on what 
 thousands flout away. Sitting opposite the Castle-windows, 
 he was still in a condition to reckon up that Amen occurs in 
 the Bible one hundred and thirty times. Nay, to his old 
 learned laboratory he now appended a new chemical stove; 
 he purposed writing to Niirnberg and Bayreuth, and there 
 offering his pen to the Brothers Senft, not only for compos- 
 ing practical Receipts at the end of their Almanacs, but 
 also for separate Essays in front under the copperplate title 
 of each Month, because he had a thought of making some 
 reformatory cuts at the common people's mental habi- 
 tudes . . . And now, when in the capacity of Parson he had 
 less to do, and could add to the holy resting-day of the con- 
 gregation six literary creating-days, he determined (even 
 in these Carnival weeks) to strike his plough into the hither- 
 to quite fallow History of Hukelum, and soon to follow the 
 plough with his drill 
 
 Thus roll his minutes, on golden wheels-of-fortune, over 
 the twelve days, which form the glancing star-paved road to 
 the third heaven of the thirteenth, that is, to the 
 
 NINTH LETTER-BOX, 
 
 Or to the Marriage. 
 
 Rise, fair Ascension and Marriage day, and gladden 
 readers also ! Adorn thyself with the fairest jewel, with 
 
316 RICHTER. 
 
 the bride, whose soul is as pure and glittering as its vesture ; 
 like pearl and pearl-muscle, the one, as the other, lustrous 
 and ornamental ! And so over the espalier, whose fruit- 
 hedge has hitherto divided our darling from his Eden, every 
 reader now presses after him ! — 
 
 On the 9th of May, 1793, about three in the morning, 
 there came a sharp peal of trumpets, like a light-beam, 
 through the dim-red May-dawn ; two twisted horns, with a 
 straight trumpet between them, like a note of admiration 
 between interrogation-points, were clanging from a house in 
 which only a parishioner (not the Parson) dwelt and blew ; 
 for this parishioner had last night been celebrating the same 
 ceremony which the pastor had this day before him. The 
 joyful tallyho raised our Parson from his broad bed (and the 
 Shock from beneath it, who some weeks ago had been exiled 
 from the white, sleek coverlid), and this so early, that in the 
 portraying tester, where on every former morning he had 
 observed his ruddy visage, and his white bedclothes, all was 
 at present dim and crayoned. 
 
 I confess, the new-painted room, and a gleam of dawn 
 on the wall, made it so light, that he could see his knee- 
 buckles glancing on the chair. He then softly awakened 
 his mother (the other guests were to lie for hours in the 
 sheets), and she had the city cook-maid to awaken, who, 
 like several other articles of wedding-furniture, had been 
 borrowed for a day or two from Flachsenfingen. At two 
 doors he knocked in vain, and without answer ; for all were 
 already down at the hearth, cooking, blowing, and arrang- 
 ing. 
 
 How softly does the Spring day gradually fold back its 
 nun-veil, and the Earth grow bright, as if it were the morn- 
 ing of a Resurrection ! — The quicksilver-pillar of the ba- 
 rometer, the guiding Fire-pillar of the weather-prophet, rests 
 firmly on Fixlein's Ark of the Covenant. The Sun raises 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 317 
 
 himself, pure and cool, into the morning-blue, instead of into 
 the morning-red. Swallows, instead of clouds, shoot skim- 
 ming through the melodious air . . . O, the good Genius of 
 Fair Weather, who deserves many temples and festivals 
 (because without him no festival could be held), lifted an 
 setherial, azure Day, as it were, from the well-clear at- 
 mosphere of the Moon, and sent it down, on blue butterfly- 
 wings — as if it were a blue Monday — glittering below the 
 Sun, in the zigzag of joyful, quivering descent, upon the 
 narrow spot of Earth, which our heated fancies are now 
 viewing .... And on this balmy, vernal spot, stand amid 
 flowers, over which the trees are shaking blossoms instead 
 
 of leaves, a bride and a bridegroom Happy Fixlein ! 
 
 how shall I paint thee without deepening the sighs of long- 
 ing in the fairest souls ? — 
 
 But soft ! we will not drink the magic cup of Fancy to the 
 bottom at six in the morning ; but keep sober till towards night! 
 
 At the sound of the morning prayer-bell, the bridegroom, 
 for the din of preparation was disturbing his quiet orison, 
 went out into the churchyard, which (as in many other 
 places), together with the church, lay round his mansion 
 like a court. Here on the moist green, over whose closed 
 flowers the churchyard wall was still spreading broad 
 shadows, did his spirit cool itself from the warm dreams of 
 Earth ; here, where the white flat grave-stone of his Teacher 
 lay before him like the fallen-in door on the Janus'-temple 
 of Life, or like the windward side of the narrow house, 
 turned towards the tempests of the world ; here, where the 
 little shrunk metallic door on the grated cross of his father 
 uttered to him the inscriptions of death, and the year when 
 his parent departed, and all the admonitions and mementos, 
 graven on the lead ; — there, I say, his mood grew softer 
 and more solemn ; and he now lifted up by heart his morn- 
 ing prayer, which usually he read ; and entreated God to 
 27* 
 
318 RICHTER. 
 
 bless him in his office, and tospare his mother's life, and to 
 look with favor and acceptance on the purpose of to-day. — 
 Then over the graves he walked into his fenceless little 
 angular flower-garden ; and here, composed and confident 
 in the divine keeping, he pressed the stalks of his tulips 
 deeper into the mellow earth. 
 
 But on returning to the house, he was met on all hands 
 by the bell-ringing and the Janizary-music of wedding- 
 gladness ; — the marriage guests had all thrown off their 
 nightcaps, and were drinking diligently; — there was a 
 clattering, a cooking, a frizzling ; — tea-services, coffee- 
 services, and warm beer-services, were advancing in suc- 
 cession ; and plates full of bride-cakes were going round 
 like potter's frames or cistern-wheels. — The Schoolmaster, 
 with three young lads, was heard rehearsing from his own 
 house an Arioso, with which, so soon as they were per- 
 fect, he purposed to surprise his clerical superior. — But 
 now rushed all the arms of the foaming joy-streams into 
 one, when the sky-queen besprinkled with blossoms, the 
 bride, descended upon Earth in her timid joy, full of quiver- 
 ing, humble love; — when the bells began; — when the 
 procession-column set forthwith the whole village round and 
 before it ; — when the organ, the congregation, the officiat- 
 ing priest, and the sparrows on the trees of the church- 
 window, struck louder and louder their rolling peals on the 
 drum of the jubilee-festival . . . The heart of the singing 
 bridegroom was like to leap from its place for joy, " that 
 on his bridal-day it was all so respectable and grand. " 
 — Not till the marriage benediction could he pray a little. 
 
 Still worse and louder grew the business during dinner, 
 when pastry-work and marchpane-devices were brought 
 forward, — when glasses, and slain fishes (laid under the 
 napkins to frighten the guests) went round; — and when 
 the guests rose, and themselves went round, and at length 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 319 
 
 danced round ; for they had instrumental music from the 
 city there. 
 
 One minute handed over to the other the sugar-bowl and 
 bottle-case of joy ; the guests heard and saw less and less, 
 and the villagers began to see and hear more and more, 
 and towards night they penetrated like a wedge into the 
 open door, — nay, two youths ventured even, in the middle 
 of the parsonage-court, to mount a plank over a beam, and 
 commence seesawing. — Out of doors, the gleaming vapor 
 of the departed Sun was encircling the Earth, the evening- 
 star was glittering over parsonage and churchyard ; no one 
 heeded it. 
 
 However, about nine o'clock, — when the marriage- 
 guests had well nigh forgotten the marriage-pair, and were 
 drinking or dancing along for their own behoof; when 
 poor mortals, in this sunshine of Fate, like fishes in the 
 sunshine of the sky, were leaping up from their wet, cold 
 element ; and when the bridegroom, under the star of happi- 
 ness and love, casting like a comet its long train of radiance 
 over all his heaven, had in secret pressed to his joy-filled 
 breast his bride and his mother, — then did he lock a slice 
 of wedding-bread privily into a press, in the old supersti- 
 tious belief, that this residue secured cont'iMiance of bread 
 for the whole marriage. As he returned, with greater love 
 for the sole partner of his life, she herself met him with his 
 mother, to deliver him in private the bridal-nightgown and 
 bridal-shirt, as is the ancient usage. Many a countenance 
 grows pale in violent emotions, even of joy ; Thiennette's 
 wax-face was bleaching still whiter under the sunbeams of 
 Happiness. O never fall, thou lily of Heaven, and inay 
 four springs instead of four seasons open and shut thy 
 flower-bells to the sun ! — All the arms of his soul as he 
 floated on the sea of joy were quivering to clasp the soft 
 warm heart of his beloved, to encircle it gently and fast, 
 and draw it to his own .... 
 
320 RICHTER. 
 
 He led her from the crowded dancing-room into the cool 
 evening. Why does the evening, does the night, put warmer 
 love in our hearts? Is it the nightly pressure of helpless- 
 ness ; or is it the exalting separation from the turmoil of 
 life ; that veiling of the world, in which for the soul nothing 
 more remains but souls ; — is it therefore, that the letters in 
 which the loved name stands written on our spirit appear, 
 like phosphorus-writing, by night in Jire, while by day in 
 their cloudy traces they but smoke ? 
 
 He walked with his bride into the Castle-garden ; she 
 hastened quickly through the castle, and past its servants'- 
 hall, where the fair flowers of her young life had been 
 crushed broad and dry, under a long, dreary pressure ; and 
 her soul expanded, and breathed in the free open garden, 
 on whose flowery soil destiny had cast forth the first seeds 
 of the blossoms which to-day were gladdening her existence. 
 Still Eden! Green, flower-chequered chiaroscuro ! — The 
 moon is sleeping under ground like a dead one; but beyond 
 the garden the sun's red evening-clouds have failen down 
 like rose-leaves ; and the evening-star, the brideman of 
 the sun, hovers, like a glancing butterfly, above the rosy red, 
 and, modest as a bride, deprives no single starlet of its light. 
 
 The wandering pair arrived at the old gardener's hut ; 
 now standing locked and dumb, with dark windows in the 
 light garden, like a fragment of the Past surviving in the 
 Present. Bared twigs of trees were folding, with clammy, 
 half-formed leaves, over the thick, intertwisted tangles of the 
 bushes. — The Spring was standing, like a conqueror, with 
 Winter at his feet. — In the blue pond, now bloodless, a 
 dusky evening-sky lay hollowed out, and the gushing waters 
 were moistening the flower-beds. — The silver sparks of 
 stars were rising on the altar of the East, and falling down 
 extinguished in the red sea of the West. 
 
 The wind whirred, like a night-bird, louder through the 
 
LIFE OF Q.UINTUS FIXLE1N. 321 
 
 trees ; and gave tones to the acacia-grove, and the tones 
 called to the pair who had first become happy within it : 
 " Enter, new mortal pair, and think of what is past, and of 
 my withering and your own ; and be holy as Eternity, and 
 weep not only for joy, but for gratitude also ! " — And the 
 wet-eyed bridegroom led his wet-eyed bride under the 
 blossoms, and laid his soul, like a flower, on her heart, and 
 said : " Best Thiennette, I am unspeakably happy, and 
 would say much, and cannot — Ah, thou Dearest, we will 
 live like angels, like children together! Surely I will do 
 all that is good to thee ; two years ago I had nothing, no, 
 nothing ; ah, it is through thee, best love, that I am happy. 
 I call thee Thou, now, thou dear, good soul ! " She drew 
 him closer to her, and said, though without kissing him : 
 " Call me Thou always, Dearest ! " 
 
 And as they stept forth again from the sacred grove into 
 the magic-dusky garden, hfi took off his hat ; first, that he 
 might internally thank God, and secondly, because he 
 wished to look into this fairest evening sky. 
 
 They reached the blazing, rustling marriage-house, but 
 their softened hearts sought stillness ; and a foreign touch, 
 as in the blossoming vine, would have disturbed the flower- 
 nuptials of their souls. They turned rather, and winded up 
 into the churchyard to preserve their mood. Majestic on 
 the groves and mountains stood the Night before man's 
 heart, and made it also great. Over the white steeple- 
 obelisk the sky rested bluer and darker ; and behind it 
 wavered the withered summit of the May-pole with faded 
 flag. The son noticed his father's grave, on which the wind 
 was opening and shutting, with harsh noise, the little door 
 of the metal cross, to let the year of his death be read on 
 the brass plate within. An overpowering sadness seized 
 his heart with violent streams of tears, and drove him to the 
 sunk hillock, and he led his bride to the grave, and said : 
 
322 KICHTER. 
 
 " Here sleeps he, my good father; in his thirty-second year 
 he was carried hither to his long rest. O Thou good, dear 
 father, couldst thou to-day but see the happiness of thy son, 
 like my mother! But thy eyes are empty, and thy breast 
 is full of ashes, and thou seest us not." — He was silent. 
 The bride wept aloud ; she saw the mouldering coffins of 
 her parents open, and the two dead arise and look round for 
 their daughter, who had stayed so long behind them, for- 
 saken on the Earth. She fell upon his heart, and faltered : 
 "O beloved, I have neither father nor mother, do not for- 
 sake me ! " 
 
 O thou who hast still a father and a mother, thank God 
 for it, on the day when thy soul is full of joyful tears, and 
 needs a bosom wherein to shed them. . . . 
 
 And with this embracing at a father's grave, let this day 
 of joy be holily concluded. — 
 
 TENTH LETTER-BOX. 
 
 St. Thomas' s-day and Birth-day. 
 
 An Author is a sort of bee-keeper for his reader-swarm ; 
 in whose behalf he separates the Flora kept for their use 
 into different seasons, and here accelerates, and there re- 
 tards, the blossoming of many a flower, that so in all chap- 
 ters there be blooming. 
 
 The goddess of Love and the angel of Peace conducted 
 our married pair on tracks running over full meadows, 
 through the Spring; and on footpaths hidden by high corn- 
 fields, through the Summer ; and Autumn, as they advanced 
 towards Winter, spread her marble leaves under their feet. 
 And thus they arrived before the low, dark gate of Winter, 
 full of life, full of love, trustful, contented, sound, and ruddy. 
 
LIFE OF Q.UINTUS FlXLEIN. 323 
 
 On St. Thomas's day was Thiennette's birthday as well as 
 Winter's. About a quarter past nine, just when the singing 
 ceases in the church, we shall take a peep through the 
 window into the interior of the parsonage. There is noth- 
 ing here but the old mother, who has all day (the son having 
 restricted her to rest, and not work) been gliding about, and 
 brushing, and burnishing, and scouring, and wiping; every 
 carved chair-leg, and every brass nail of the waxcloth- 
 covered table, she has polished into brightness; — everything 
 hangs, as with all married people who have no children, in 
 its right place, brushes, fly-flaps, and almanacs ; — the 
 chairs are stationed by the room-police in their ancient 
 corners; — a flax-rock, encircled with a diadem, or scarf of 
 azure riband, is lying in the Schadeckbed, because, though 
 it is a half holiday, some spinning may go on ; — the narrow 
 slips of paper, whereon heads of sermons are to be arranged, 
 lie white beside the sermons themselves, that is, beside the 
 octavo paper-book which holds them, for the Parson and 
 his work-table, by reason of the cold, have migrated from 
 the study to the sitting-room ; — his large furred doublet is 
 hanging beside his clean bridegroom-nightgown ; there is 
 nothing wanting in the room but He and She. For he had 
 preached her with him to-night into the empty Apostle's-day 
 church, that so her mother, without witnesses — except the 
 two or three thousand readers who are peeping with me 
 through the window — might arrange the provender-baking, 
 and whole commissariat department of the birthday-festival, 
 and spread out her best table-gear and victual-stores without 
 obstruction. 
 
 The soul-curer reckoned it no sin to admonish, and ex- 
 hort, and encourage, and threaten his parishioners, till he 
 felt pretty certain that the soup must be smoking on the 
 plates. Then he led his birthday helpmate home, and 
 suddenly placed her before the altar of meat-offering, before 
 
324 R1CHTER. 
 
 a sweet title-page of bread-tart, on which her name stood 
 baked, in true monastic characters, in tooth-letters of al- 
 monds. In the background of time and of the room, I yet 
 conceal two — bottles of Pontac. How quickly, under the 
 sunshine of joy, do thy cheeks grow ripe, Thiennette, when 
 thy husband solemnly says : " This is thy birthday ; and 
 may the Lord bless thee, and watch over thee, and cause his 
 countenance to shine on thee, and send thee, to the joy of 
 our mother and thy husband especially, a happy, glad 
 recovery. Amen!" — And when Thiennette perceived that 
 it was the old mistress who had cooked and served up all this 
 herself, she fell upon her neck, as if it had been not her 
 husband's mother, but her own. 
 
 Emotion conquers the appetite. But Fixlein's stomach 
 was as strong as his heart ; and with him no species of 
 movement could subdue the peristaltic. Drink is the fric- 
 tion-oil of the tongue, as eating is its drag. Yet, not till he 
 had eaten and spoken much, did the pastor fill the glasses. 
 Then indeed he drew the corksluice from the bottle, and 
 set forth its streams. The sickly mother, of a being still 
 hid beneath her heart, turned her eyes, in embarrassed 
 emotion, on the old woman only ; and could scarcely chide 
 him for sending to the city wine-merchant on her account. 
 He took a glass in each hand, for each of the two whom he 
 loved, and handed them to his mother and his wife, and 
 said: u To thy long, long life, Thiennette! — And your 
 health and happiness, Mamma ! — And a glad arrival to our 
 jittle one, if God so bless us ! " — " My son," said the gar- 
 deneress, " it is to thy long life that we must drink ; for it is 
 by thee we are supported. God grant thee length of days! 1 ' 
 added she, with stifled voice, and her eyes betrayed her 
 tears. 
 
 I nowhere find a livelier emblem of the female sex, in all 
 its boundless levity, than in the case where a woman is 
 
 
LIFE OF OJJINTTJS FIXLEIN. 325 
 
 carrying the angel of Death beneath her heart, and yet in 
 these nine months full of mortal tokens thinks of nothing 
 more important than of who shall be the gossips, and what 
 shall be cooked at the christening. But thou, Thiennette, 
 hadst nobler thoughts, though these too along with them. 
 The still hidden darling of thy heart was resting before thy 
 eyes like a little angel sculptured on a grave-stone, and 
 pointing with its small linger to the hour when thou shouldst 
 die ; and every morning and every evening thou thoughtest 
 of death with a certainly of which I yet knew not the 
 reasons ; and to thee it was as if the Earth were a dark 
 mineral cave where man's blood like stalaclitic water drops 
 down, and in dropping raises shapes which gleam so tran- 
 siently, and so quickly fade away ! And that was the 
 cause why tears were continually trickling from thy soft 
 eyes, and betraying all thy anxious thoughts about thy child; 
 but thou repaidst the.se sad effusions of thy heart by the 
 embrace in which, with new-awakened love, thou fellest on 
 thy husband's neck, and saidst : u De as it may, God's will 
 be done, so thou and my child are left alive! — But I know 
 well that thou, Dearest, lovest me as I do thee.". . . Lay 
 thy hand, good mother, full of blessings, on the two; and 
 thou kind Fate, never lift thine away from them! — 
 
 It is with emotion and good wishes that I witness the kiss 
 of two fair friends, or the embracing of two virtuous lovers; 
 and from the fire of their altar sparks fly over to me ; but 
 what is this to our sympathetic exaltation, when we see two 
 mortals, bending under the same burden, bound to the same 
 duties, animated to the same care for the same little darlings 
 — fall on one another's overflowing hearts, in some fair 
 hour? And if these, moreover, are two mortals who already 
 wear the mourning-weeds of life, I mean old age, whose 
 hair and cheeks are now grown colorless, and eyes grown 
 dim, and whose faces a thousand thorns have marred into 
 
 vol. ii. 28 
 
326 RICHTER. 
 
 images of Sorrow ; — when these two clasp each other with 
 such wearied, aged arms, and so near to the precipice of 
 the grave, and when they say or think : "All in us is dead, 
 but not our love — O we have lived and suffered long to- 
 gether, and now we will hold out our hands to Death togeth- 
 er also, and let him carry us away together," — does not 
 all within us cry : O Love, thy spark is superior to Time ; 
 it burns neither in joy nor in the cheek of roses ; it dies not, 
 neither under a thousand tears, nor under the snow of old 
 age, nor under the ashes of thy — beloved. It never dies; 
 and Thou, All-good ! if there were no eternal love, there 
 were no love at all 
 
 To the Parson it was easier than it is to me to pave for 
 himself a transition from the heart to the digestive faculty. 
 He now submitted to Thiennette (whose voice at once grew 
 cheerful, while her eyes time after time began to sparkle) 
 his purpose to take advantage of the frosty weather and 
 have the winter meat slaughtered and salted. " The pig can 
 scarcely rise," said he ; and forthwith he fixed the deter- 
 mination of the women, farther the butcher, and the day, 
 and all et ceteras ; appointing everything with a degree of 
 punctuality, such as the war-college (when it applies the 
 cupping-glass, the battle-sword, to the overfull system of 
 mankind) exhibits on the previous day, in its arrangements, 
 before it drives a province into the baiting-ring and slaugh- 
 ter-house. 
 
 This settled, he began to talk and feel quite joyously about 
 the course of winter, which had commenced to-day at two- 
 and-twenty minutes past eight in the morning ; " for," said 
 he, " newyear is close at hand ; and we shall not need so 
 much candle tomorrow-night as to-night." His mother, it is 
 true, came athwart him with the weapons of her five senses ; 
 but he fronted her with his Astronomical Tables, and proved 
 that the lengthening of the day was no less undeniable than 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 327 
 
 imperceptible. In the last place, like most official and 
 married persons, heeding little whether his women took him 
 or not, he informed them in juristico-theological phrase : 
 " That he would put off no longer, but write this very- 
 afternoon to the venerable Consistorium, in whose hands 
 lay the jus circa sacra, for a new Ball to the church-steeple ; 
 and the rather, as he hoped before newyear's-day to raise a 
 bountiful subscription from the parish for this purpose. — 
 If God spare us till spring," added he with peculiar cheer- 
 fulness, " and thou wert happily recovered, I might so 
 arrange the whole that the ball should be set up at thy first 
 church-going, dame ! " 
 
 Thereupon he shifted his chair from the dinner and des- 
 sert table to the work-table ; and spent the half of his 
 afternoon over the petition for the steeple-ball. As there 
 still remained a little space till dusk, he clapped his tackle 
 to his new learned Opus, of which I must now afford a little 
 glimpse. Out of doors among the snow, there stood near 
 Hukelum an old Robber-Castle, which Fixlein, every day 
 in Autumn, had hovered round like a revenant, with a view 
 to gauge it, ichnographically to delineate it, to put every 
 window-bar and every bridle-hook of it correctly on paper. 
 He believed he was not expecting too much, if thereby — 
 and by some drawings of the not so much vertical as hori- 
 zontal walls — he hoped to impart to his " Architectural 
 Correspondence of two Friends concerning the Hukelum 
 Robber-Castle"" that last polish and labor limce which con- 
 tents Reviewers. For towards the critical Starchamber of 
 the Reviewers he entertained not that contempt which some 
 authors actually feel — or only affect, as, for instance, I. 
 From this mouldered Robber- Louvre, there grew for him 
 more flowers of joy than ever in all probability had grown 
 from it of old for its owners. — To my knowledge, it is an 
 anecdote not hitherto made public, that for all this no man 
 
328 
 
 KICHTER. 
 
 but Busching has to answer. Fixlein had, not long ago, 
 among the rubbish of the church letter-room, stumbled on a 
 paper wherein the Geographer had been requesting special 
 information about the statistics of the village. Busching, 
 it is true, had picked up nothing — accordingly, indeed, 
 Hukelum, in his Geography, is still omitted altogether; — 
 but this pestilential letter had infected Fixlein with the 
 spring-fever of Ambition, so that his palpitating heart was 
 no longer to be stilled or held in check, except by the 
 assafoetida-emulsion of a review. It is with authorcraft as 
 with love; both of them for decades long one may equally 
 desire and forbear ; but is the first spark once thrown 
 into the powder-magazine, it burns to the end of the 
 chapter. 
 
 Simply because winter had commenced by the Almanac, 
 the fire must be larger than usual ; for warm rooms, like 
 large furs and bearskin-caps, were things which he loved 
 more than you would figure. The dusk, this fair chiaroscuro 
 of the day, this colored foreground of the night, he length- 
 ened out as far as possible, that he might study Christmas 
 discourses therein ; and yet could his wife, without scruple, 
 just as he was pacing up and down the room, with the 
 sowing-sheet full of divine word-seeds hung round his 
 shoulder, — hold up to him a spoonful of alegar, that he 
 might try the same in his palate, and decide whether she 
 should yet draw it off. Nay, did he not in all cases, though 
 fonder of roe-fishes himself, order a milter to be drawn 
 from the herring-barrel, because his good-wife liked it 
 better ? — 
 
 Here light was brought in ; and as Winter was just now 
 commencing his glass-painting on the windows, his ice 
 flower-pieces, and his snow-foliage, our Parson felt that it 
 was time to read something cold, which he pleasantly named 
 his cold collation ; namely, the description of some unutteiv 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 329 
 
 ably frosty land. On the present occasion, it was the winter 
 history of the four Russian sailors on Nova Zembla. I, for 
 my share, do often in summer, when the sultry zephyr is 
 inflating the flower-bells, append certain charts and sketches 
 of Italy, or the East, as additional landscapes to those among 
 which I am sitting. And yet to-night he farther took up the 
 Weekly Chronicle of Flachsenfingen ; and amid the bomb- 
 shells, pestilences, famines, comets with long tails, and the 
 roaring of all the Hell-floods of another Thirty Years 1 War, 
 he could still listen with the one ear towards the kitchen, 
 where the salad for his roast-duck was just a-cutting. 
 
 Good-night, old Fixlein ! I am tired. May kind Heaven 
 send thee, with the young year 1794, when the Earth shall 
 again carry her people, like precious night-moths, on leaves 
 and flowers, the new steeple-ball, and a thick, handsome — 
 boy, to boot ! 
 
 ELEVENTH LETTER-BOX. 
 
 Spring ; Investiture ; and Childbirth. 
 
 I have just risen from a singular dream ; but the fore- 
 going Box makes it natural. I dreamed that all was ver- 
 dant, all full of odors ; and I was looking up at a steeple- 
 ball glittering in the sun, from my station in the window of 
 a little white garden-house, my eye-lids full of flower-pollen, 
 my shoulders full of thin cherry blossoms, and my ears full 
 of humming from the neighboring bee-hives. Then, me- 
 thought, advancing slowly through the beds, came the Hu- 
 kelum Parson, and stept into the garden-house, and solemnly 
 said to me : " Honored Sir, my wife has just brought me a 
 little boy ; and I make bold to solicit your Honor to do the 
 28* 
 
330 
 
 RICHTEU. 
 
 holy office for the same, when it shall be received into the 
 bosom of the church." 
 
 I naturally started up, and there was — Parson Fixlein 
 standing bodily at my bedside, and requesting me to be 
 godfather ; for Thiennette had given him a son last night 
 about one o'clock. The confinement had been as light and 
 happy as could be conceived ; for this reason, that the 
 father had, some months before, been careful to provide one 
 of those Klapper steins, as we call them, which are found in 
 the aerie of the eagle, and therewith to alleviate the travail ; 
 for this stone performs, in its way, all the service which the 
 bonnet of that old Minorite monk in Naples, of whom Go- 
 rani informs us, could accomplish for people in such circum- 
 stances, who put it on 
 
 — I might vex the reader still longer ; but I willingly give 
 up, and show him how the matter stood. 
 
 Such a May as the present (of 1794), Nature has not> in 
 the memory of man, — begun ; for this is but the fifteenth 
 of it. People of reflection have for centuries been vexed 
 once every year, that our German singers should indite 
 May-songs, since several other months deserve such a poet- 
 ical night-music much better; and I myself have often 
 gone so far as to adopt the idiom of our market-women, and 
 instead of May butter, to say June butter, as also June, 
 March, April songs. — But thou, kind May of this year, 
 thou deservest to thyself all the songs which were ever 
 made on thy rude namesakes ! — By Heaven ! when I now 
 issue from the wavering, chequered acacia-grove of the 
 Castle-garden, in which I am writing this Chapter, and come 
 forth into the broad, living day, and look up to the warming 
 Heaven, and over its Earth budding out beneath it, — the 
 Spring rises before me like a vast full cloud, with a splendor 
 of blue and green. I see the Sun standing amid roses in 
 the western sky, into which he has thrown his ray-brush, 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLE1N. 331 
 
 wherewith he has to-day been painting the Earth; — and 
 when I look round a little in our picture-exhibition, his en- 
 amelling is still hot on the mountains ; on the moist chalk 
 of the moist Earth, the flowers full of sap-colors are laid 
 out to dry, and the forget-me-not with miniature colors ; 
 under the varnish of the streams, the skyey Painter has 
 pencilled his own eye ; and the clouds, like a decoration- 
 painter, he has touched off with wild outlines and single 
 tints ; and so he stands at the border of the Earth, and looks 
 back upon his stately Spring, whose robe-folds are valleys, 
 whose breast-bouquet is gardens, and whose blush is a vernal 
 evening, and who, when she arises, shall be — Summer. 
 
 But to proceed ! Every spring — and especially in such a 
 spring — I imitate on foot our birds of passage ; and travel 
 off the hypochondriacal sediment of winter; but I do not 
 think I should have seen even the steeple-ball of Hukelum, 
 which is to be set up one of these days, to say nothing of 
 the Parson's family, had not I happened to be visiting the 
 Flachsenfingen Superintendent and Consistorialmth. From 
 him I got acquainted with Fixlein's history — every Candi- 
 datus must deliver an account of his life to the Consisto- 
 rium — and with his still madder petition for a steeple-ball. 
 I observed, with pleasure, how gaily the cob was diving and 
 swashing about in his duck-pool and milk-bath of life; and 
 forthwith determined on a journey to his shore. It is sin- 
 gular, that is to say, manlike, that when we have for years 
 kept prizing and describing some original person or original 
 book, yet the moment we see such, they anger us ; we 
 would have them fit us and delight us in all points, as if any 
 originality could do this but our own. 
 
 It was Saturday, the third of May, when I, with the Super- 
 intendent, the Semior Capiluli, and some temporal Raths, 
 mounted and rolled off, and in two carriages were driven to 
 the Parson's door. The matter was, he was not yet — 
 
332 RICHTER. 
 
 invested, and to-morrow this was to be done. I little 
 thought, while we whirled by the white espalier of the 
 Castle-garden, that there I was to write another book. 
 
 I still see the Parson, in his peruke-minever and head- 
 case, come springing to the coach-door and lead us out ; so 
 smiling — so courteous — so vain of the disloaded freight, 
 and so attentive to it. He looked as if in the journey of 
 life he had never once put on the travelling -gauze of Sor- 
 row ; Thiennette again seemed never to have thrown hers 
 back. How neat was everything in the house, how dainty, 
 decorated, and polished! And yet so quiet, without the 
 cursed alarm-ringing of servants' bells, and without the bass- 
 drum tumult of stair-pedaling. Whilst the gentlemen, my 
 road-companions, were sitting in state in the upper room, I 
 flitted, as my way is, like a smell over the whole house, and 
 my path led me through the sitting-room over the kitchen, 
 and at last into the churchyard beside the house. Good 
 Saturday ! I will paint thy hours as I may, with the black 
 asphaltos of ink, on the tablets of other souls ! In the sit- 
 ting-room, I lifted from the desk a volume gilt on the back 
 and edges, and bearing this title : " Holy Sayings, by Fix- 
 lein. First Collection" And as I looked to see where it 
 had been printed, the Holy Collection turned out to be in 
 writing. I handled the quills, and dipped into the negro- 
 black of the ink, and I found that all was right and good. 
 With your fluttering gentlemen of letters, who hold only a 
 department of the foreign, and none of the home affairs, 
 nothing (except some other things about them) can be 
 worse than their ink and pens. I also found a little copper- 
 plate, to which I shall in due time return. 
 
 In the kitchen, a place not more essential for the writing 
 of an English novel than for the acting of a German one, 
 I could plant myself beside Thiennette, and help her to 
 blow the fire, and look at once into her face and her burn- 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS F1XLE1N. 333 
 
 ing coals. Though she was in wedlock, a state in which 
 white roses on the cheeks are changed for red ones, and 
 young women are similar to a similitude given in my Note ;* 
 — and although the blazing wood threw a false rouge over 
 her, I guessed how pale she must have been ; and my sym- 
 pathy in her paleness rose still higher at the thought of the 
 burden which Fate had now not so much taken from her, as 
 laid in her arms and nearer to her heart. In truth, a man 
 must never have reflected on the Creation-moment, when 
 the Universe first rose from the bosom of an Eternity, if he 
 does not view with philosophic reverence a woman, whose 
 thread of life a secret, all-wondrous Hand is spinning to a 
 second thread, and who veils within her the transition from 
 Nothingness to Existence, from Eternity to time; — but 
 still less can a man have any heart of flesh, if his soul, in 
 presence of a woman, who, to an unknown, unseen being, is 
 sacrificing more than we will sacrifice when it is seen and 
 known, namely, her nights, her joys, often her life, does not 
 bow lower, and with deeper emotion, than in presence of a 
 whole nun-orchestra on their Sahara-desert; — and worse 
 than either is the man for whom his own mother has not 
 made all other mothers venerable. 
 
 "It is little serviceable to thee, poor Thiennette," thought 
 I, " that now, when thy bitter cup of sickness is made to run 
 over, thou must have loud festivities come crowding round 
 thee." I meant the Investiture and the Ball-raising. My 
 rank, the diploma of which the reader will find stitched in 
 with the Dog-post-days, and which had formerly been hers, 
 brought about my ears a host of repelling, embarrassed, 
 wavering titles of address from her; which people, to whom 
 they have once belonged, are at all times apt to parade 
 
 * To the Spring, namely, which begins with snow-drops, and 
 ends with roses and pinks. — 
 
334 iuctiTER. 
 
 before superiors or inferiors, and which it now cost me no little 
 trouble to disperse. Through the whole Saturday and Sun- 
 day, I could never get into the right track either with her or 
 him, till the other guests were gone. As for the mother, 
 she acted, like obscure ideas, powerfully and constantly, 
 but out of view ; this arose in part from her idolatrous fear 
 of us ; and partly also from a slight shade of care (probably 
 springing from the state of her daughter), which had spread 
 over her like a little cloud. 
 
 I cruised about, so long as the moon-crescent glimmered 
 in the sky, over the churchyard ; and softened my fantasies, 
 which are at any rate too prone to paint with the brown of 
 crumbling mummies, not only by the red of twilight, but 
 also by reflecting how easily our eyes and our hearts can 
 become reconciled even to the ruins of Death ; a reflection 
 which the Schoolmaster, whistling as he arranged the 
 charnel-house for the morrow, and the Parson's maid sing- 
 ing, as she reaped away the grass from the graves, readily 
 enough suggested to me. And why should not this habitua- 
 tion to all forms of Fate in the other world, also, be a gift 
 reserved for us in our nature by the bounty of our great 
 Preserver ? — I perused the grave-stones ; and I think even 
 now that Superstition* is right in connecting with the read- 
 ing of such things a loss of memory ; at all events, one does 
 forget a thousand things belonging to this world 
 
 The Investiture on Sunday (whose Gospel, of the Good 
 Shepherd, suited well with the ceremony) I must despatch 
 in few words ; because nothing truly sublime can bear to 
 be treated of in many. However, I shall impart the most 
 memorable circumstances, when I say that there was — 
 drinking (in the Parsonage), — music-making (in the Choir), 
 
 * This Christian superstition is not only a Rabbinical, but also a 
 Roman one. Cicero de Senectute. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 335 
 
 — reading (of the Presentation by the Senior, and of the 
 Ratification-rescript by the lay Rath), — and preaching, by 
 the Consistorialrath, who took the soul-curer by the hand, 
 and presented, made over, and guaranteed him to the con- 
 gregation, and them to him. Fixlein felt that he was de- 
 parting as a high-priest from the church, which he had 
 entered as a country parson ; and all day he had not once 
 the heart to ban. When a man is treated with solemnity, 
 he looks upon himself as a higher nature, and goes through 
 his solemn feasts devoutly. 
 
 This indenturing, this monastic profession, our Head- 
 Rabbis and Lodge-masters (our Superintendents) have 
 usually a taste for putting off till once the pastor has been 
 some years ministering among the people, to whom they 
 hereby present him ; as the early Christians frequently 
 postponed their consecration and investiture to Christianity, 
 their baptism namely, till the day when they died. Nay, I do 
 not even think this clerical Investiture would lose much of 
 its usefulness, if it and the declaring-vacant of the office 
 were reserved for the same day ; the rather, as this 
 usefulness consists entirely in two items ; what the Su- 
 perintendent and his Raths can eat, and what they can 
 pocket. 
 
 Not till towards evening did the Parson and I get ac- 
 quainted. The Investiture officials and elevation pully- 
 men, had, throughout the whole evening, been very vio- 
 lently — breathing. I mean thus ; as these gentlemen could 
 not but be aware, by the most ancient theories and the latest 
 experiments, that air was nothing else than a sort of rarefied 
 and exploded water, it became easy for them to infer, that, 
 conversely, water was nothing else than a denser sort of 
 air. Wine-drinking, therefore, is nothing else but the 
 breathing of an air pressed together into proper spissitude, 
 and sprinkled over with a few perfumes. Now, in our 
 
336 RICHTER. 
 
 days, by clerical persons too much (fluid) breath can never 
 be inhaled through the mouth ; seeing the dignity of their 
 station excludes them from that breathing through the smaller 
 pores, which Abernethy so highly recommends under the 
 name of air-bath ; and can the Gullet in their case be aught 
 else than door-neighbor to the Windpipe, the consonant 
 and fellow-shoot of the Windpipe? — 1 am running astray ; 
 I meant to signify that I this evening had adopted the same 
 opinion ; only that 1 used this air or aether, not like the rest 
 for loud laughter, but for the more quiet contemplation of 
 life in general. I even shot forth at my gossip certain 
 speeches which betrayed devoutness. These he at first took 
 for jests, being aware that I was from Court, and of quality. 
 But the concave mirror of the wine-mist at length suspended 
 the images of my soul, enlarged and embodied like spiritual 
 shapes, in the air before me. — Life shaded itself off to my 
 eyes like a hasty summer night, which we little fire-flies 
 shoot across with transient gleam ; — I said to him that man 
 must turn himself like the leaves of the great mallow, at 
 the different day-seasons of his life, now to the rising sun, 
 now to the setting, now to the night, towards the Earth and 
 its graves ; — I said, the omnipotence of Goodness was 
 driving us and the centuries of the world towards the 
 gates of the City of God, as, according to Euler, the resis- 
 tance of the Mtlier leads the circling Earth towards the 
 Sun, &c. &c. 
 
 On the strength of these entremets, he considered me the 
 first theologian of his age ; and had he been obliged to go to 
 war, would previously have taken my advice on the matter, 
 as belligerent powers were wont of old from the theologians 
 of the Reformation. I hide not from myself, however, that 
 what preachers call vanity of the world is something alto- 
 gether different from what philosophy so calls. When I, 
 moreover, signified to him that I was not ashamed to be an 
 
LIFE OF QU1NTUS FIXLEIN. 337 
 
 Author ; but had a turn for working up this and the other 
 biography ; and that I had got a sight of his Life in the 
 hands of the Superintendent ; and might be in case to pre- 
 pare a printed one therefrom, if so were he would assist me 
 with here and there a tint of flesh-color, — then was my 
 silk, which, alas ! not only isolates one from electric fire, 
 but also from a kindlier sort of it, the only grate which 
 rose between his arms and me ; for, like the most part of 
 poor country parsons, it was not in his power to forget the 
 rank of any man, or to vivify his own on a higher one. He 
 said : " He would acknowledge it with veneration, if I 
 should mention him in print ; but he was much afraid his 
 life was too common and too poor for a biography." 
 Nevertheless, he opened me the drawer of his Letter-boxes ; 
 and said, perhaps, he had hereby been paving the way for 
 me. 
 
 The main point, however, was, he hoped that his Errata, 
 his Exercitationes, and his Letters on the Robber- Castle, 
 if I should previously send forth a Life of tho Author, might 
 be better received ; and that it would be much the same as 
 if I accompanied them with a Preface. 
 
 In short, when on Monday the other dignitaries with their 
 nimbus of splendor had dissipated, I alone, like a precipitate, 
 abode with him ; and am still abiding, that is, from the 
 fifth of May (the Public should take the Almanac of 1794, 
 and keep it open beside them) to the fifteenth ; to-day is 
 Thursday, to-morrow is the sixteenth and Friday, when 
 comes the Spinat-Kirmes, or Spinage-Wake, as they call it, 
 and the uplifting of the steeple-ball, which I just purposed to 
 await before I went. Now, however, I do not go so soon ; 
 for on Sunday I have to assist at the baptismal ceremony, 
 as baptismal agent for my little future godson. Whoever 
 pays attention to me, and keeps the Almanac open, may 
 readily guesss why the christening is put off till Sunday ; 
 vol. 11. 29 
 
338 RICHTER. 
 
 for it is that memorable Cantata-Sunday, which once, for 
 its mad, narcotic hemlock-virtues, was of importance in 
 our History ; but is now so only for the fair betrothment, 
 which after two years we mean to celebrate with a 
 baptism. 
 
 Truly it is not in my power — for want of colors and 
 presses — to paint or print upon my paper the soft, balmy 
 flower-garland of a fortnight which has here wound itself 
 about my sickly life ; but with a single day I shall attempt 
 it. Man, I know well, cannot prognosticate either his joys 
 or his sorrows, still less repeat them, either in living or 
 writing. 
 
 The black hour of coffee has gold in its mouth for us and 
 honey ; here, in the morning coolness, we aie all gathered ; 
 we maintain popular conversation, that so the parsoness and 
 the gardeneress may be able to take share in it. The 
 morning service in the church, where often the whole 
 people* are sitting and singing, divides us. While the bell 
 is sounding, I march with my writing-gear into the singing 
 Castle-garden; and seat myself in the fresh acacia-grove, at 
 the dewy two-legged table. Fixlein's Letter-boxes I keep 
 by me in my pocket ; and I have only to look and abstract 
 from his what can be of use in my own. — Strange enough ! 
 so easily do we forget a thing in describing it, I really 
 did not recollect for a moment that I am now sitting at 
 the very grove-table of which I speak, and writing all 
 this. — 
 
 My gossip in the mean time is also laboring for the world. 
 His study is a sort of sacristy, and his printing-press a 
 pulpit, wherefrom he preaches to all men ; for an Author is 
 the Town-chaplain of the Universe. A man who is making 
 a Book will scarcely hang himself; all rich Lords'-sons, 
 
 *For, according to the Jurists, fifteen persons make a people. 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 6S\) 
 
 therefore, should labor for the press ; for, in that case, when 
 you awake too early in bed, you have always a plan, an aim, 
 and therefore a cause before you why you should get out of it. 
 Better off too is the author who collects rather than invents, 
 — for the latter with its eating fire calcines the heart; I 
 praise the Antiquary, the Heraldist, Note-maker, Compiler ; 
 I esteem the Title-perch (a fish called Per ca-Diagr amma, 
 because of the letters on its scales), and the Printer (a 
 chafer, called Scarabceus Typographies, which eats letters in 
 the bark of fir), — neither of them needs any greater or 
 fairer arena in the world than a piece of rag-paper, or any 
 other laying-apparatus than a pointed pencil, wherewith to 
 lay his four-and-twenty letter-eggs. — In regard to the 
 catalogue raisonne, which my gossip is now drawing up of 
 German Errata, I have several times suggested to him, 
 " that it were good if he extended his researches in one 
 respect, and revised the rule by which it has been com- 
 puted, that e. g. for a hundredweight of pica black-letter, 
 four hundred and fifty semicolons, three hundred periods, 
 &c, are required ; and to recount, and see whether, in Politi- 
 cal writings and Dedications, the fifty notes of admiration 
 for a hundredweight of pica black-letter were not far 
 too small an allowance, and if so, what the real quantity 
 was ? " 
 
 Several days he wrote nothing ; but wrapped himself in 
 the slough of his parson's-cloak ; and so in his canonicals, 
 beside the Schoolmaster, put the few A-b-c shooters, which 
 were not, like forest-shooters, absent on furlough by reason 
 of the spring, — through their platoon firing in the Horn- 
 book. He never did more than his duty, but also never 
 less. It brought a soft, benignant warmth over his heart, to 
 think that he, who had once ducked under a School-inspec- 
 torship, was now one himself. 
 
 About ten o'clock we meet from our different museums, 
 
340 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 and examine the village, especially the Biographical furni- 
 ture and holy places, which I chance that morning to 
 have had under my pen or pentagraph ; because I look at 
 them with more interest after my description than before it. 
 
 Next comes dinner. — 
 
 After the concluding grace, which is too long, we both of 
 us set to entering the charitable subsidies, and religious 
 donations, which our parishioners have remitted to the sink- 
 ing or rather rising fund of the church-box for the purchase 
 of the new steeple-globe, into two ledgers ; the one of these, 
 with the names of the subscribers, or (in case they have 
 subscribed for their children) with their children's names 
 also, is to be inurned in a leaden capsule, and preserved in 
 the steeple-ball ; the other will remain below among the 
 parish Registers. You cannot fancy what contributions the 
 ambition of getting into the Ball brings us in ; I declare, 
 several peasants, who had given and well once already, con- 
 tributed again when they had baptisms ; must not little 
 Hans be in the Ball too ? 
 
 After this book-keeping by double entry, my gossip took 
 to engraving on copper. He had been so happy as to 
 elicit the discovery, that, from a certain stroke resembling an 
 inverted Latin S, the capital letters of our German Chan- 
 cery-hand, beautiful and intertwisted as you see them stand 
 in Law-deeds and Letters-of-nobility, may every one of 
 them be composed and spun out. 
 
 " Before you can count sixty," said he to me, " I take 
 my fundamental-stroke and make you any letter out of 
 it." 
 
 I merely inverted this fundamental-stroke, that is, gave 
 him a German S, and counted sixty till he had it done. This 
 line of beauty, when once it has been twisted and flourished 
 into all the capitals, he purposes, by copperplates which he 
 is himself engraving, to make more common for the use of 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 341 
 
 Chanceries ; and I may take upon me to give the Russian, 
 the Prussian, and a few other smaller Courts, hopes of proof 
 impressions from his hand ; to Under-Secretaries they are 
 indispensable. 
 
 Now comes evening ; and it is time for us both, here 
 forking about with our fruit-hooks on the literary Tree of 
 Knowledge, at the risk of our necks, to clamber down again 
 into the meadow-flowers and pasturages of rural joy. We 
 wait, however, till the busy Thiennette, whom we are now 
 to receive into our communion, has no more walks to take 
 but the one between us. Then slowly we stept along (the 
 sick lady was weak) through the office-houses; that is to 
 say, through stalls and their population, and past a horrid 
 lake of ducks, and past a little milk-pond of carps, to both 
 of which colonies, I and the rest, like princes, gave bread, 
 seeing we had it in view, on the Sunday after the christen- 
 ing, to — take them for bread ourselves. 
 
 The sky is still growing kindlier and redder, the swallows 
 and the blossom-trees louder, the house-shadows broader, 
 and men more happy. The clustering blossoms of the 
 acacia-grove hang down over our cold collation ; and the 
 ham is not stuck (which always vexes me) with flowers, but 
 beshaded with them from a distance 
 
 And now the deeper evening and the nightingale con- 
 spire to soften me ; and I soften in my turn the mild beings 
 round me; especially the pale Thiennette, to whom, or to 
 whose heart, after the apoplectic crushings of a down- 
 pressed youth, the most violent pulses of joy are heavier 
 than the movements of pensive sadness. And thus beauti- 
 fully runs our pure transparent life along, under the bloom- 
 ing curtains of May; and in our modest pleasure, we look 
 with timidity neither behind us nor before ; as people who 
 are lifting treasure gaze not round at the road they came, or 
 the road they are going. 
 29* 
 
342 RICHTER. 
 
 So pass our days. To-day, however, it was different ; by 
 this time, usually, the evening meal is over ; and the Shock 
 has got the osseous-preparation of our supper between his 
 jaws ; but to-night I am still sitting here alone in the garden, 
 writing the Eleventh Letter-Box, and peeping out every 
 instant over the meadows, to see if my gossip is not com- 
 ing. 
 
 For he is gone to town, to bring a whole magazine of 
 spiceries ; his coat-pockets are wide. Nay, it is certain 
 enough that oftentimes he brings home with him, simply in 
 his coat-pocket, considerable flesh-tithes from his Guardian, 
 at whose house he alights ; though truly, intercourse with the 
 polished world and city, and the refinement of manners 
 thence arising — for he calls on the bookseller, on school- 
 colleagues, and several respectable shopkeepers — does, 
 much more than flesh-fetching, form the object of these 
 journeys to the city. This morning he appointed me regent 
 head of the house, and delivered me the fasces and curule 
 chair. I sat the whole day beside the young pale mother ; 
 and could not but think, simply because the husband had left 
 me there as his representative, that I liked the fair soul 
 better. She had to take dark colors, and paint out for me 
 the winter landscape and ice region of her sorrow-wasted 
 youth ; but often, contrary to my intention, by some simple 
 elegiac word, I made her still eye wet ; for the too full 
 heart, which had been crushed with other than sentimental 
 woes, overflowed at the smallest pressure. A hundred times 
 in the recital I was on the point of saying : " yes, it was 
 with winter that your life began, and the course of it has 
 resembled winter!" — Windless, cloudless day! Three 
 more words about thee the world will still not take amiss 
 from me ! 
 
 I advanced nearer and nearer to the heart-central-fire of 
 the woman ; and at last they mildly broke forth in censure 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS F1XLEIN. 343 
 
 of the Parson ; the best wives will complain of their hus- 
 bands to a stranger, without in the smallest liking them the 
 lesson that account. The mother and the wife, during dinner, 
 accused him of buying lots at every book-auction ; and, in 
 truth, in such places, he does strive and bid, not so much 
 for good or for bad books — or old ones — or new ones — 
 or such as he likes to read — or any sort of favorite books — 
 but simply for books. The mother blamed especially his 
 squandering so much on copperplates ; yet some hours after, 
 when the Schultheis, or Mayor, who wrote a beautiful hand, 
 came in to subscribe for the steeple-ball, she pointed out to 
 him how finely her son could engrave, and said that it was 
 well worth while to spend a groschen or two on such cap- 
 itals as these. 
 
 They then handed me — for when once women are in 
 the way of a full, open-hearted effusion, they like (only you 
 must not turn the stop-cock of inquiry) to pour out the whole 
 — a ring-case, in which he kept a Chamberlain's key that 
 he had found, and asked me if I knew who had lost it. 
 Who could know such a thing, when there are almost more 
 Chamberlains than picklocks among us ? — 
 
 At last I took heart, and asked after the little toy-press of 
 the drowned son, which hitherto I had sought for in vain 
 overall the house. Fixlein himself had inquired for it, with 
 as little success. Thiennette gave the old mother a per- 
 suading look full of love; and the latter led me up stairs 
 to an outstretched hoop-petticoat, covering the poor press as 
 with a dome. On the way thither, the mother told me she 
 kept it hid from her son because the recollection of his 
 brother would pain him. When this deposit-chest of Time 
 (the lock had fallen off) was laid open to me, and I had 
 looked into the little charnel-house, with its wrecks of a 
 childlike, sportful Past, I, without saying a word, determined, 
 some time ere I went away, to unpack these playthings of 
 
344 RICHTER. 
 
 the lost boy before his surviving brother. Can there be 
 aught finer than to look at these ash-buried, deep-sunk, Her- 
 culanean ruins of childhood, now dug up and in the open 
 air ? 
 
 Thiennette sent twice to ask me whether he was come. 
 He and she, precisely because they do not give their love 
 the weakening expression of phrases, but the strengthening 
 one of actions, have a boundless feeling of it towards one 
 another. Some wedded pairs eat each other's lips and 
 hearts and love away by kisses ; as in Rome, the statues of 
 Christ (by Angelo) have lost their feet by the same process 
 of kissing, and got leaden ones instead ; in other couples, 
 again, you may see, by mere inspection, the number of their 
 conflagrations and eruptions, as in Vesuvius you can discover 
 his, of which there are now forty-three ; but in these two 
 beings rose the Greek fire of a moderate and everlasting 
 love, and gave warmth without casting forth sparks, and 
 flamed straight up without crackling. The evening-red is 
 flowing back more magically from the windows of the 
 gardener's cottage into my grove ; and I feel as if I must 
 say to Destiny : " Hast thou a sharp sorrow, then throw it 
 rather into my breast, and strike not with it three good souls, 
 who are too happy not to bleed by it, and too sequestered 
 in their little dim village not to shrink back at the thunder- 
 bolt which hurries a stricken spirit from its earthly dwell- 
 ing." 
 
 Thou good Fixlein ! Here comes he hurrying over the 
 parsonage-green. What languishing looks full of love 
 already rest in the eye of thy Thiennette ! — What news 
 wilt thou bring us to-night from the town ! — How will the 
 ascending steeple-ball refresh thy soul to-morrow ! — 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 345 
 
 TWELFTH LETTER-BOX. 
 
 Steeple-hall- Ascension. The Toy-press. 
 
 How, on this sixteenth of May, the old steeple-ball was 
 twisted off from the Hukelum steeple, and a new one put 
 on in its stead, will I now describe to my best ability; but 
 in that simple historical style of the Ancients, which, for 
 great events, is perhaps the most suitable. 
 
 At a very early hour, a coach arrived containing Messrs. 
 Court-Guilder Zeddel and Locksmith Wachser, and the new 
 Peter's-cupola of the steeple. Towards eight o'clock the 
 community, consisting of subscribers to the Globe, was vis- 
 ibly collecting. A little later came the Lord Dragoon Ritt- 
 meister von A uf hammer, as Patron of the church and 
 steeple, attended by Mr. Church-Inspector Streichert. Here- 
 upon my Reverend Cousin Fixlein and I repaired, with the 
 other persons whom I have already named, into the Church, 
 and there celebrated, before innumerable hearers, a weekday 
 prayer-service. Directly afterwards, my Reverend Friend 
 made his appearance above in the pulpit, and endeavored to 
 deliver a speech which might correspond to the solemn trans- 
 action ; — and immediately thereafter, he read aloud the 
 names of the patrons and charitable souls, by whose dona- 
 tions the Ball had been put together ; and showed to the 
 congregation the leaden box in which they were specially 
 recorded ; observing, that the book from which he had re- 
 cited them was to be reposited in the Parish Register-office. 
 Next he held it necessary to thank them and God, that he, 
 above his deserts, had been chosen as the instrument and 
 undertaker of such a work. The whole he concluded with 
 a short prayer for Mr. Stechmann the Slater (who was 
 already hanging on the outside on the steeple, and loosening 
 
546 R1CHTER. 
 
 the old shaft) ; and entreated that he might not break his 
 neck, or any of his members. A short hymn was then 
 sung, which the most of those assembled without the church- 
 doors sang along with us, looking up at the same time to 
 the steeple. 
 
 All of us now proceeded out likewise ; and the discarded 
 ball, as it were the amputated cock's-comb of the church, 
 was lowered down and untied. Church-Inspector Streichert 
 drew a leaden case from the crumbling ball, which my Rev- 
 erend Friend put into his pocket, purposing to read it at his 
 convenience ; I, however, said to some peasants : " See, 
 thus will your names also be preserved in the new Ball, and 
 when after long years it shall be taken down, the box lies 
 within it, and the then parson becomes acquainted with you 
 all." — And now was the new steeple-globe, with the leaden 
 cup in which lay the names of the bystanders, at length full- 
 laden, so to speak, and saturated, and fixed to the pulley- 
 rope ; — and so did this the whilom cupping-glass of the 
 community ascend aloft 
 
 By Heaven ! the unadorned style is here a thing beyond 
 my power: for when the Ball moved, swung, mounted, there 
 rose a drumming in the centre of the steeple ; and the 
 Schoolmaster, who, till now, had looked down through a 
 sounding-hole directed towards the congregation, now stept 
 out with a trumpet at a side sounding-hole, which the mount- 
 ing Ball was not to cross. — But when the whole Church 
 rung and pealed, the nearer the capital approached its 
 crown, — and when the Slater clutched it and turned it 
 round, and happily incorporated the spike of it, and deliver- 
 ed down, between Heaven and Earth, and leaning on the 
 Ball, a Topstone-speech to this and all of us, — and when 
 my gossip's eyes, in his rapture at being Parson on this 
 great day, were running over, and the tears trickling down 
 his priestly garment ; — I believe, I was the only man — as 
 
LIFE OF OJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 347 
 
 his mother was the only woman — whose souls a common 
 grief laid hold of to press them even to bleeding ; for I 
 and the mother had yesternight, as I shall tell more largely 
 afterwards, discovered in the little chest of the drowned boy, 
 from a memorial in his father's hand, that, on the day after 
 the morrow, on Cantata-Sunday and his baptismal-Sunday, 
 he would be — two-and-thirty years of age. " Oh ! " 
 thought I, while I looked at the blue heaven, the green 
 graves, the glittering ball, the weeping priest, " so, at all 
 times, stands poor man with bandaged eyes before thy sharp 
 sword, incomprehensible Destiny ! And when thou drawest 
 it and brandishest it aloft, he listens with pleasure to the 
 whizzing of the stroke before it falls ! " — 
 
 Last night I was aware of it ; but to the reader, whom I 
 was preparing for it afar off, I would tell nothing of the 
 mournful news, that, in the press of the dead brother, I had 
 found an old Bible which the boys had used at school, with 
 a white blank leaf in it, on which the father had written 
 down the dates of his children's oirth. And even this it 
 was that raised in thee, thou poor mother, the shade of sor- 
 row which of late we have been attributing to smaller 
 causes; and thy heart was still standing amid the rain, which 
 seemed to us already past over and changed into a rain- 
 bow! — Out of love to him, she had yearly told one false- 
 hood, and concealed his age. By extreme good luck, he 
 had not been present when the press was opened. I still 
 purpose, after this fatal Sunday, to surprise him with the 
 party-colored reliques of his childhood, and so of these old 
 Christmas-presents to make him new ones. In the mean 
 while, if I and his mother can but follow him incessantly, 
 like fishhook- floats, and foot clogs, through to-morrow and 
 next day, that no murderous accident lift aside the curtain 
 from his birth-certificate, — all may yet be well. For now, 
 in truth, to his eyes, this birth-day, in the metamorphotic 
 
348 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 mirror of his superstitious imagination, and behind the 
 magnifying magic vapor of his present joys, would burn 
 forth like a red death-warrant. ... But besides all this, the 
 leaf of the Bible is now sitting higher than any of us, 
 namely, in the new steeple-ball, into which I this morning 
 prudently introduced it. Properly speaking there is indeed 
 no danger. 
 
 THIRTEENTH LETTER-BOX. 
 Christening. 
 
 To-day is that stupid Cantata-Sunday; but nothing now 
 remains of it save an hour. — By Heaven! in right spirits 
 were we all to-day. I believe I have drunk as faithfully 
 as another. — In truth, one should be moderate in all things, 
 in writing, in drinking, in rejoicing; and as we lay straws 
 into the honey for our bees that they may not drown in 
 their sugar, so ought one at all times to lay a few firm 
 Principles and twigs from the tree of Knowledge into the 
 Syrup of life, instead of those same bee-straws, that so one 
 may cling thereto, and not drown like a rat. But now I 
 do purpose in earnest to — write (and also live) with stead- 
 fastness ; and therefore, that I may record the christening 
 ceremony with greater coolness, — to besprinkle my fire 
 with the night-air, and to roam out for an hour into the 
 blossom-and- wave-embroidered night, where a lukewarm 
 breath of air, intoxicated with soft odors, is sinking down 
 from the blossom-peaks to the low-bent flowers, and roaming 
 over the meadows, and at last launching on a wave, and 
 with it sailing down the moonshiny brook. O, without, 
 under the stars, under the tones of the nightingale, which 
 seem to reverberate, not from the echo, but from the far-off 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 349 
 
 down-glancing worlds ; beside that moon, which the gushing 
 brook, in its flickering, watery band, is carrying away, and 
 which creeps under the little shadows of the bank as under 
 clouds — O, amid such forms and tones, the heart of man 
 grows serious ; and as of old an evening bell was rung to 
 direct the wanderer through the deep forests to his nightly 
 home, so in our Night are such voices within us and about 
 us, which call to us in our strayings, and make us calmer, 
 and teach us to moderate our own joys, and to conceive 
 
 those of others. 
 
 # # # 
 
 I return, peaceful and cool enough, to my narrative. All 
 yesternight I left not the worthy Parson half an hour from 
 my sight, to guard him from poisoning the well of his life. 
 Full of paternal joy, and with the skeleton of the sermon 
 (he was committing it to memory) in his hand, he set before 
 me all that he had ; and pointed out to me the fruit-baskets 
 of pleasures which Cantata-Sunday always plucked and 
 filled for him. He recounted to me, as I did not go away, 
 his baptisms, his accidents of office ; told me of his rela- 
 tives ; and removed my uncertainty with regard to the 
 public revenues — of his parish, to the number of his com- 
 municants and expected catechumens. At this point, how- 
 ever, I am afraid that many a reader will in vain endeavor 
 to transport himself into my situation, and still be unable 
 to discover why I said to Fixlein : " Worthy gossip, better 
 
 no man could wish himself." I lied not, for so it is 
 
 But look in the Note.* 
 
 At last rose the Sunday, the present ; and on this holy 
 
 * A long philosophical elucidation is indispensably requisite ; 
 which will be found in this Book, under the title : Natural Magic 
 of the Imagination. [A part of the Jus de Tablette appended to this 
 Biography, unconnected with it, and not given here. — Ed.] 
 
 VOL. II. 30 
 
350 RICHTER. 
 
 day, simply because my little godson was for going over to 
 Christianity, there was a vast racket made ; every time a 
 conversion happens, especially of nations, there is an up- 
 roaring and a shooting ; I refer to the two Thirty Years' 
 Wars, to the more recent one, and to the earlier, which 
 Charlemagne so long carried on with the heathen Saxons ; 
 thus, in the Palais Royal, the Sun, at his transit over the 
 meridian, fires off a cannon.* But this morning the little 
 Unchristian, my godson, was precisely the person least 
 attended to; for, in thinking of the conversion, they had no 
 time left to think of the convert. Therefore I strolled about 
 with him myself half the forenoon ; and, in our walk, 
 hastily conferred on him a private-baptism ; having named 
 him Jean Paul before the priest did so. At midday, we 
 sent the beef away as it had come ; the Sun of happiness 
 having desiccated all our gastric juices. We now began to 
 look about us for pomp ; I for scientific decorations of my 
 hair, my godson for his christening-shirt, and his mother 
 for her dress-cap. Yet before the child's-rattle of the 
 christening-bell had been jingled, I and the midwife, in front 
 of the mother's bed, instituted Physiognomical Travels f on 
 the countenance of the small Unchristian, and returned with 
 the discovery, that some features had been embossed by the 
 pattern of the mother, and many firm portions resembled 
 me ; a double similarity, in which my readers can take 
 little interest. Jean Paul looks very sensible for his years, 
 or rather for his minutes, for it is the small one I am speak- 
 ing of. 
 
 * This pigmy piece of ordinance, with its cunningly devised 
 burning-glass, is still to be seen on the south side of the Paris 
 Vanity-Fair ; and in fine weather, to be heard, on all sides thereof, 
 proclaiming the conversion (so it seems to Richter) of ihe Day from 
 Forenoon to Afternoon. — Ed. 
 
 t See § Musaus, in vol. I. of this Collection. — Ed. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 351 
 
 But now I would ask, what German writer durst take it 
 upon him to spread out and paint a large historic sheet, 
 representing the whole of us as we went to church ? Would 
 he not require to draw the father, with swelling canonicals, 
 moving forward slowly, devoutly, and full of emotion? 
 Would he not have to sketch the godfather, minded this day 
 to lend out his names, which he derived from two Apostles 
 (John and Paul), as Julius Caesar lent out his names to two 
 things still living even now (to a month, and a throne) ? — 
 And must he not put the godson on his sheet, with whom 
 even the Emperor Joseph (in his need of nurse-milk) might 
 become a foster-brother, in his old days, if he were still in 
 them ? — 
 
 In my chamber, I have a hundred times determined to 
 smile at solemnities, in the midst of which I afterwards, 
 while assisting at them, involuntarily wore a petrified coun- 
 tenance, full of dignity and seriousness. For, as the 
 Schoolmaster, just before the baptism, began to sound the 
 organ — an honor never paid to any other child in Hukelum, 
 
 — and when I saw the wooden christening-angel, like an 
 alighted Genius, with his painted timber arm spread out 
 under the baptismal ewer, and I myself came to stand close 
 by him, under his gilt wing, I protest the blood went slow 
 and solemn, warm and close, through my pulsing head, 
 and my lungs full of sighs; and, to the silent darling lying 
 in my arms, whose unripe eyes Nature yet held closed 
 from the full perspective of the Earth, I wished, with more 
 sadness than I do to myself, for his Future also as soft a 
 sleep as to-day ; and as good an angel as to-day, buta more 
 living one, to guide him into a more living religion, and, 
 with invisible hand, conduct him unlost through the forest 
 of Life, through its falling trees, and Wild Hunters,* and 
 
 * The Wild Hunter, Wilde Jdger, is a popular spectre of Germany. 
 
 — Ed. 
 
352 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 all its storms and perils Will the world not excuse 
 
 me, if when, by a side-glance, I saw on the paternal coun- 
 tenance prayers for the son, and tears of joy trickling down 
 into the prayer; and when I noticed on the countenance of 
 the grandmother far darker and fast-hidden drops, which 
 she could not restrain, while I, in answer to the ancient 
 question, engaged to provide for the child if its parents died, 
 
 — am I not to be excused if I then cast my eyes deep down 
 on my little godson, merely to hide their running over ? 
 
 — For I remembered that his father might perhaps this very 
 day grow pale and cold before a suddenly arising mask of 
 Death ; I thought how the poor little one had only changed 
 his bent posture in the womb with a freer one, to bend and 
 cramp himself ere long more harshly in the strait arena of 
 life ; 1 thought of his inevitable follies, and errors, and sins ; 
 of these soiled steps to the Grecian Temple of our Perfec- 
 tion ; I thought that one day his own fire of genius might 
 reduce himself to ashes, as a man that is electrified can kill 
 
 himself with his own lightning All the theological 
 
 wishes, which, on the godson-billet printed over with them, 
 I placed in his young bosom, were glowing written in 
 
 mine But the white feathered-pink of my joy had 
 
 then, as it always has, a bloody point within it, — I again, 
 as it always is, went to nest, like a woodpecker, in a 
 skull And as I am doing so even now, let the describ- 
 ing of the baptism be over for to-day, and proceed again 
 to-morrow 
 
 FOURTEENTH LETTER-BOX. 
 
 Oh, so is it ever ! So does Fate set fire to the theatre of 
 our little plays, and our bright-painted curtain of Futurity ! 
 So does the Serpent of Eternity wind round us and our joys, 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 
 
 353 
 
 and crush, Jike the royal-snake, what it does not poison ! 
 Thou good Fixlein ! — Ah ! last night, I little thought that 
 thou, mild soul, while I was writing beside thee, wert 
 already journeying into the poisonous Earth-shadow of 
 Death. 
 
 Last night, late as it was, he opened the lead box found 
 in the old steeple-ball ; a catalogue of those who had sub- 
 scribed to the last repairing of the church was there ; and he 
 began to read it now ; my presence and his occupations 
 having prevented him before. O, how shall I tell that the 
 record of his birth-year, which I had hidden in the new 
 Ball, was waiting for him in the old one? that in the 
 register of contributions he found his father's name, with the 
 appendage, u given for his new-born son Egidius " ? — 
 
 This stroke sunk deep into his bosom, even to the rending 
 of it asunder; in this warm hour, full of paternal joy, after 
 such fair days, after such fair employments, after dread of 
 death so often survived, here, in the bright, smooth sea, 
 which is rocking and bearing him along, starts snorting, 
 from the bottomless abyss, the sea-monster Death ; and the 
 monster's throat yawns wide, and the silent sea rushes into 
 it in whirlpools, and hurries him along with it. 
 
 But the patient man, quietly and slowly, and with a heart 
 silent, though deadly cold, laid the leaves together ; — 
 looked softly and firmly over the churchyard, where, in the 
 moonshine, the grave of his father was to be distinguished ; 
 — gazed timidly up to the sky, full of stars, which a white 
 overarching laureltree half screened from his sight ; — and 
 though he longed to be in bed, to settle there and sleep it 
 off, yet he paused at the window to pray for his wife and 
 child, in case this night were his last. 
 
 At this moment the steeple-clock struck twelve ; but, from 
 the breaking of a pin, the weights kept rolling down, and 
 the clock-hammer struck without stopping — and he heard 
 30* 
 
354 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 with horror the chains and wheels rattling along • and he 
 felt as if Death were hurling forth in a heap all the longer 
 hours which he might yet have had to live — and now, to his 
 eyes, the churchyard began to quiver and heave, the moon- 
 light flickered on the church-windows, and in the church 
 there were lights flitting to and fro, and in the charnel-house 
 there was a motion and a tumult. 
 
 His heart fainted within him, and he threw himself into 
 bed, and closed his eyes that he might not see ; — but 
 Imagination in the gloom now blew aloft the dust of the 
 dead, and whirled it into giant shapes, and chased these 
 hollow, fever-born masks alternately into lightning and 
 shadow. Then at last from transparent thoughts grew 
 colored visions, and he dreamed this dream. He was stand- 
 ing at the window looking out into the church-yard ; and 
 Death, in size as a scorpion, was creeping over it, and seek- 
 ing for his bones. Death found some arm-bones and thigh- 
 bones on the graves, and said: " They are my bones;" 
 and he took a spine and the bone-legs, and stood with them, 
 and the two arm-bones and clutched with them, and found 
 on the grave of Fixlein's father a skull, and put it on. 
 Then he lifted a scythe beside the little flower-garden, and 
 cried: " Fixlein, where art thou? My finger is an icicle 
 and no finger, and I will tap on thy heart with it." The 
 Skeleton, thus piled together, now looked for him who was 
 standing at the window, and powerless to stir from it; and 
 carried in the one hand, instead of a sand-glass, the ever- 
 striking steeple-clock, and held out the finger of ice, like a 
 
 dagger, far into the air 
 
 Then he saw his victim above at the window, and raised 
 himself as high as the laureltree to stab straight into his 
 bosom with the finger, — and stalked towards him. But as 
 he came nearer, his pale bones grew redder, and vapors 
 floated woolly round his haggard form. Flowers started up 
 
LIFE OF OJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 355 
 
 from the ground ; and he stood transfigured and without the 
 clamm of the grave, hovering above them, and the balm- 
 breath from the flower-cups wafted him gently on ; — and 
 as he came nearer, the scythe and clock were gone, and in 
 his bony breast he had a heart, and on his bony head red 
 lips ; — and nearer still, there gathered on him soft, trans- 
 parent, rosebalm-dipt flesh, like the splendor of an Angel 
 flying hither from the starry blue ; — and close at hand, he 
 was an Angel with shut snow-white eyelids 
 
 The heart of my friend, quivering like a Harmonica-bell, 
 now melted in bliss in his clear bosom ; — and when 
 the Angel opened its eyes, his were pressed together 
 by the weight of celestial rapture, and his dream fled 
 away. 
 
 But not his life ; he opened his hot eyes, and — his good 
 wife had hold of his feverish hand, and was standing in 
 room of the Angel. 
 
 The fever abated towards morning ; but the certainty of 
 dying still throbbed in every artery of the hapless man. 
 He called for his fair little infant into his sick-bed, and 
 pressed it silently, though it began to cry, too hard against 
 his paternal, heavy-laden breast. Then towards noon his 
 soul became cool, and the sultry thunder-clouds within it 
 drew back. And here he described to us the previous 
 (as it were, arsenical) fantasies of his usually quiet head. 
 But it is even those tense nerves, which have not quivered 
 at the touch of a poetic hand striking them to melody of 
 sorrow, that start and fly asunder more easily under the 
 fierce hand of Fate, when with sweeping stroke it smites 
 into discord the firmset strings. 
 
 But towards night his ideas again began rushing in a 
 torch-dance, like fire-pillars round his soul ; every artery 
 became a burning-rod, and the heart drove flaming naphtha- 
 brooks into the brain. All within his soul grew bloody ; the 
 
356 R1CHTER. 
 
 blood of his drowned brother united itself with the blood 
 which had once flowed from Thiermette's arm, into a bloody- 
 rain ; — he still thought he was in the garden in the night of 
 betrothment, he still kept calling for bandages to staunch 
 blood, and was for hiding his head in the ball of the steeple. 
 Nothing afflicts one more than to see a reasonable, moderate 
 man, who has been so even in his passions, raving in the 
 poetic madness of fever. And yet if nothing save this 
 mouldering corruption can soothe the hot brain ; and if, 
 while the reek and thick vapor of a boiling nervous-spirit 
 and the hissing water-spouts of the veins are encircling and 
 eclipsing the stifled soul, a higher Finger presses through 
 the cloud, and suddenly lifts the poor bewildered spirit from 
 amid the smoke to a sun — is it more just to complain, than 
 to reflect that Fate is like the oculist, who, when about to 
 open to a blind eye the world of light, first bandages and 
 darkens the other eye that sees ? 
 
 But the sorrow does affect me, which I read on Thien- 
 nette's pale lips, though do not hear. It is not the distor- 
 tion of an excruciating agony, nor the burning of a dried- 
 up eye, nor the loud lamenting or violent movement of a tor- 
 tured frame that I see in her ; but what I am forced to see in 
 her, and what too keenly cuts the sympathizing heart, is a 
 pale, still, unmoved, undistorted face, a pale, bloodless head, 
 which Sorrow is as it were holding up after the stroke, like 
 a head just severed by the axe of the headsman ; for Oh ! 
 on this form the wounds, from which the three-edged dagger 
 had been drawn, are all fallen firmly together, and the 
 blood is flowing from them in secret into the choking heart. 
 O Thiennette, go away from the sick-bed, and hide that 
 face which is saying io us: " Now do I know that I shall 
 not have any happiness on Earth ; now do I give over 
 hoping — would this life were but soon done." 
 
 You will not comprehend my sympathy, if you know not 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 357 
 
 what, some hours ago, the too loud lamenting mother told 
 me. Thiennette, who of old had always trembled for his 
 thirty-second year, had encountered this superstition with a 
 nobler one ; she had purposely stood farther back at the 
 marriage-altar, and in the bridal-night fallen sooner asleep 
 than he; thereby — as is the popular belief — so to order 
 it that she might also die sooner. Nay, she has determined, 
 if he die, to lay with his corpse a piece of her apparel, that 
 so she may descend the sooner to keep him company in his 
 narrow house. Thou good, thou faithful wife, but thou un- 
 happy one ! — 
 
 CHAPTER LAST. 
 
 I have left Hukelum, and my gossip his bed ; and the 
 one is as sound as the other. The cure was as foolish as 
 the malady. 
 
 It first occurred to me, that, as Boerhaave used to remedy 
 convulsions by convulsions, one fancy might in my gossip's 
 case be remedied by another ; namely, by the fancy that he 
 was yet no man of thirty-two, but only a man of six or 
 nine. Deliriums are dreams not encircled by sleep ; and 
 all dreams transport us back into youth, why not deliriums 
 too ? I accordingly directed every one to leave the patient; 
 only his mother, while the fiercest meteors were darting 
 hissing before his fevered soul, was to sit down by him 
 alone, and speak to him as if he were a child of eight 
 years. The bed-mirror also I directed her to cover. She 
 did so; she spoke to him as if he had the small-pox fever ; 
 and when he cried : " Death is standing with two-and-thirty 
 pointed teeth before me, to eat my heart," she said to him : 
 " Little dear, I will give thee thy roller-hat, and thy copy- 
 book, and thy case, and thy hussar-cloak again, and more 
 
358 
 
 R1CHTER. 
 
 too if thou wilt be good." A reasonable speech he would 
 have taken up and heeded much less than he did this foolish 
 one. 
 
 At last she said — for to women in the depth of sorrow 
 dissimulation becomes easy : " Well, I will try it this once, 
 and give thee thy playthings : but do the like again, thou 
 rogue, and roil thyself about in the bed so, with the small- 
 pox on thee ! " And with this, from her full apron she 
 shook out on the bed the whole stock of playthings and 
 dressing-ware, which I had found in the press of the drown- 
 ed brother. First of all his copy-book, where Egidius in 
 his eighth year had put down his name, which he necessa- 
 rily recognized as his own hand-writing ; then the black 
 velvet fall-hat or roller-cap ; then the red and white lead- 
 ing-strings ; his knife-case, with a little pamphlet of tin 
 leaves; his green hussar-cloak, with its stiff facings ; and a 
 whole orbis pictus or Jictus of Niirnberg puppets 
 
 The sick man recognized in a moment these projecting 
 peaks of a spring-world sunk in the stream of Time, — 
 these half shadows, this dusk of down-gone days, — this 
 conflagration-place and Golgotha of a heavenly time, which 
 none of us forgets, which we love forever, and look back to 
 even from the grave. . . . And when he saw all this, he 
 slowly turned round his head, as if he were awakening from 
 a long, heavy dream ; and his whole heart flowed down in 
 warm showers of tears, and he said, fixing his full eyes on 
 the eyes of his mother : " But are my father and brother 
 still living then ? " — " They are dead lately, 1 ' said the 
 wounded mother ; but her heart was overpowered, and she 
 turned away her eyes, and bitter tears fell unseen from her 
 down-bent head. And now at once that evening, when he 
 lay confined to bed by the death of his father, and was 
 cured by his playthings, overflowed his soul with splendor 
 and lights, and presence of the Past. 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 359 
 
 And so Delirium dyed for itself rosy wings in the Aurora 
 of life, and fanned the panting soul, — and shook down 
 golden butterfly-dust from its plumage on the path, on the 
 flowerage of the suffering man ; — in the far distance rose 
 lovely tones, in the distance floated lovely clouds — O his 
 heart was like to fall in pieces, but only into fluttering flower- 
 stamina, into soft sentient nerves ; his eyes were like to 
 melt away, but only into dew-drops for the cups of joy- 
 blossoms, into blood-drops for loving hearts ; his soul was 
 floating, palpitating, drinking, and swimming in the warm, 
 relaxing rose-perfume of the brightest delusion .... 
 
 The rapture bridled his feverish heart ; and his mad pulse 
 grew calm. Next morning his mother, when she saw that 
 all was prospering, would have had the church-bells rung, 
 to make him think that the second Sunday was already here. 
 But his wife (perhaps out of shame in my presence) was 
 averse to the lying ; and said it would be all the same if 
 we moved the month-hand of his clock (but otherwise than 
 Hezekiah's Dial) eight days forward ; especially as he was 
 wont rather to rise and look at his clock for the day of the 
 month, then to turn it up in the Almanac. I for my 
 own part simply went up to the bedside, and asked him : 
 " If he was cracked — what in the world he meant with his 
 mad death-dreams, when he had lain so long, and passed 
 clean over the Cantata-Sunday, and yet, out of sheer terror, 
 was withering to a lath ? " 
 
 A glorious reinforcement joined me; the Flesher or 
 Quartermaster. In his anxiety, he rushed into the room, 
 without saluting the women, and I forthwith addressed him 
 aloud : M My gossip here is giving me trouble enough, Mr. 
 Regiments-Quartermaster; last night, he let them persuade 
 him he was little older than his own son ; here is the child's 
 fall-hat he was for putting on." The Guardian deuced 
 and devilled, and said : " Ward, are you a parson or a fool ? 
 
360 RICHTER. 
 
 — Have not I told you twenty times, there was a maggot in 
 your head about this ? " — 
 
 At last he himself perceived that he was not rightly wise, 
 and so grew better ; besides the guardian's invectives, my 
 oaths contributed a good deal ; for I swore I would hold 
 him as no right gossip, and edit no word of his Biography, 
 unless he rose directly and got better 
 
 — In short, he showed so much politeness to me that he 
 rose and got better. — He was still sickly, it is true, on Sat- 
 urday ; and on Sunday could not preach a sermon (some- 
 thing of the sort the Schoolmaster read, instead) ; but yet 
 he took Confessions on Saturday, and at the altar next day 
 he dispensed the Sacrament. Service ended, the feast of 
 his recovery was celebrated, my farewell-feast included ; for 
 I was to go in the afternoon. 
 
 This last afternoon I will chalk out' with all possible 
 breadth, and then, with the pentagraph of free garrulity, fill 
 up the outline and draw on the great scale. 
 
 During the Thanksgiving-repast, there arrived consid- 
 erable personal tribute from his catechumens, and fairings 
 by way of bonfire for his recovery ; proving how much the 
 people loved him, and how well he deserved it; for one is 
 oftener hated without reason by the many, than without 
 reason loved by them. But Fixlein was friendly to every 
 child ; was none of those clergy who nevev pardon their 
 enemies except in — God's stead ; and he praised at once 
 the whole world, his wife, and himself. 
 
 I then attended at his afternoon's catechizing ; and looked 
 down (as he did in the first Letter-Box) from the choir, 
 under the wing of the wooden cherub. Behind this angel, 
 I drew out my note-book, and shifted a little under the cover 
 of the Black Board, with its white Psalm-cyphers,* and 
 
 * Indicating to the congregation what Psalm is to be sung. — Ed. 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 361 
 
 wrote down what I was there — thinking. I was well aware, 
 that when I to-day, on the twenty-fifth of May, retired from 
 this Salemic* spinning-school, where one is taught to spin 
 out the thread of life, in fairer wise, and without wetting it 
 by foreign mixtures, — I was well aware, I say, that I 
 should carry off with me far more elementary principles of 
 the Science of Happiness than the whole Chamberlain 
 piquet ever muster all their days. I noted down my first 
 impression, in the following Rules of Life for myself and 
 the press. 
 
 " Little joys refresh us constantly like house-bread, and 
 never bring disgust; and great ones, like sugar-bread, brief- 
 ly, and then bring it. — Trifles we should let, not plague us 
 only, but also gratify us ; we should seize not their poison- 
 bags only, but their honey-bags also ; and if flies often buzz 
 about our room, we should, like Domitian, amuse ourselves 
 with flies, or, like a certain still living Elector,! feed them. 
 
 — For civic life and its micrologies, for which the Parson 
 has a natural taste, we must acquire an artificial one ; must 
 learn to love without esteeming it ; learn, far as it ranks 
 beneath human life, to enjoy it like another twig of this 
 human life, as poetically as we do the pictures of it in ro- 
 mances. The loftiest mortal loves and seeks the same sort 
 of things with the meanest ; only from higher grounds and 
 by higher paths. Be every minute, Man, a full life to thee ! 
 
 — Despise anxiety and wishing, the Future and the Past ! 
 
 — If the Second-pointer can be no road-pointer into an Eden 
 for thy soul, the Month-pointer will still less be so, for thou 
 
 * Salerno was once famous for its medical science ; but here, as 
 in many other cases, we could desire the aid of Herr Reinhold with 
 his Lexicon- Commentary. — Ed. 
 
 t This hospitable Potentate is as unknown to me as to any of my 
 readers. — Ed. 
 
 VOL. II. 31 
 
362 RICHTER. 
 
 livest not from month to month, but from second to second ! 
 Enjoy thy Existence more than thy Manner of Existence, 
 and let the dearest object of thy Consciousness be this Con- 
 sciousness itself ! — Make not the Present a means of thy 
 Future ; for this Future is nothing but a coming Present ; 
 and the Present, which thou despisest, was once a Future 
 which thou desiredst ! — Stake in no lotteries, — keep at 
 home, — give and accept no pompous entertainments, — 
 travel not abroad every year ! — Conceal not from thyself, 
 by long plans, thy household goods, thy chamber, thy acquain- 
 tance ! — Despise Life, that thou mayst enjoy it ! — Inspect 
 the neighborhood of thy life ; every shelf, every nook of thy 
 abode ; and nestling in, quarter thyself in the farthest and 
 most domestic winding of thy snail-house! — Look upon a 
 capital but as a collection of villages, a village as some 
 blind-alley of a capital ; fame as the talk of neighbors at 
 the street-door ; a library as a learned conversation, joy as 
 a second, sorrow as a minute, life as a day ; and three 
 things as all in all; God, Creation, Virtue ! " 
 
 And if I would follow myself and these rules, it will 
 behove me not to make so much of this Biography ; but 
 once for all, like a moderate man, to let it sound out. 
 
 After the Catechizing, I stept down to my wide-gowned 
 and black-gowned gossip. The congregation gone, we 
 clambered up to all high places, perused the plates on the 
 pews — 1 took a lesson on the altar on its inscription in- 
 crusted with the sediment of Time (I speak not metaphor- 
 ically) ; I organed, my gossip managing the bellows ; I 
 mounted the pulpit, and was happy enough there to alight 
 on one other rose-shoot, which, in the farewell minute, I 
 could still plant in the rose-garden of my Fixlein. For I 
 descried aloft, on the back of a wooden Apostle, the name 
 Lavater, which the Zurich Physiognomist had been pleased 
 to leave on this sacred Torso in the course of his wayfaring. 
 
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN. 363 
 
 Fixlein did not know the hand, but I did, for I had seen it 
 frequently in Flachsenfingen, not only on the tapestry of a 
 Court Lady there, but also in his Hand-Library ; * and met 
 with it besides in many country churches, forming, as it 
 were, the Directory and Address-Calendar of this wandering 
 name, for Lavater likes to inscribe in pulpits, as a shepherd 
 does in trees, the name of his beloved. I could now advise 
 my gossip prudently to cut away the name, with the chip of 
 wood containing it, from the back of the Apostle, and to 
 preserve it carefully among his curiosa. 
 
 On returning to the parsonage, I made for my hat and 
 stick; but the design, as it were the projection and contour 
 of a supper in the acacia-grove, had already been sketched 
 by Thiennette. I declared that I would stay till evening, in 
 case the young mother went out with us to the proposed 
 meal .... and truly the Biographer at length got his way, 
 all doctors' regulations notwithstanding. 
 
 I then constrained the Parson to put on his Krautermutze,t 
 or Herb-cap, which he had stitched together out of simples 
 for the strengthening of his memory : " Would to Heaven," 
 said I, " that Princes instead of their Princely Hats, Doc- 
 tors and Cardinals instead of theirs, and Saints 
 instead of martyr-crowns, would clap such memory- 
 bonnets on their heads!" — Thereupon, till the roast- 
 ing and cooking within doors were over, we march- 
 ed out alone over the parsonage meadows, and talked of 
 
 * A little work printed in manuscript types ; and seldom given 
 by him to any but Princes. This piece of print-writing he inten- 
 tionally passes off to the great as a piece of band-writing ; these 
 persons being both more habituated and inclined to the reading of 
 manuscript than of print. 
 
 t Thus defined by Adelung in his Lexicon : " Krmitermiitze, in 
 Medicine, a cap with various dried herbs sewed into it, and which 
 is worn for all manner of troubles in the head." — Ed. 
 
364 RICHTER. 
 
 learned matters, we packed ourselves into the ruined Rob- 
 ber-Castle, on which my gossip, as already mentioned, has 
 a literary work in hand. I deeply approved, the rather as 
 this Kidnapper-tower had once belonged to an Aufhammer, 
 his intention of dedicating the description to the Rittmeister ; 
 that nobleman, I think, will sooner give his name to the 
 Book than to the Shock. For the rest, I exhorted my fel- 
 low-craftsman to pluck up literary heart, and said to him : 
 " A fearless pen, good gossip ! Let Subrector Hans von 
 Fuchslein be, if he like, the Dragon of the Apocalypse, lying 
 in wait for the delivery of the fugitive Woman, to swallow 
 the offspring ; I am there too, and have my friend the Ed- 
 itor of the Litter aturzeitung at my side, who will gladly 
 permit me to give an anticritique, on paying the insertion- 
 dues ! " — I especially excited him to new fillings and re- 
 turn-freights of his Letter-Boxes. I have not taken oath 
 that into this biographical chest-of-drawers I will not in the 
 course of time introduce another Box. " Neither to my 
 godson, worthy gossip, will it do any harm that he is pre- 
 sented, poor child, even now to the reading public, when he 
 does not count more months than, as Horace will have it, a 
 literary child should count years, namely, nine" 
 
 In walking homewards, I praised his wife. " If mar- 
 riage," said I to him, " is the madder, which in maids, as in 
 cotton, makes the colors visible, then I contend, that Thien- 
 nette, when a maid, could scarcely be so good as she is now 
 when a wife. By Heaven ! in such a marriage, I should 
 write Books of quite another sort, divine ones ; in a mar- 
 riage, I mean, where beside the writing-table (as beside the 
 great voting-table at the Regensburg Diets, there are little 
 tables of confectionary) ; where in like manner, I say, a 
 little jar of marmalade were standing by me, namely, a 
 sweetened, dainty, lovely face, and out of measure fond of 
 the Letter-Box-writer, gossip ! Your marriage will resem- 
 
LIFE OF QTJINTUS FIXLEIN. 365 
 
 ble the Acacia-grove we are now going to, the leaves of 
 which grow thicker with the heat of summer, while other 
 shrubs are yielding only shrunk and porous shade." 
 
 As we entered through the upper garden-door into this 
 same bower, the supper and the good mistress were already 
 there. Nothing is more pure and tender than the respect 
 with which a wife treats the benefactor or comrade of her 
 husband ; and happily the Biographer himself was this com- 
 rade, and the object of this respect. Our talk was cheerful, 
 but my spirit was oppressed. The fetters, which bind the 
 mere reader to my heroes, were in my case of triple force ; 
 as I was at once their guest and their portrait-painter. 
 I told the Parson that he would live to a greater age than I, 
 for that his temperate temperament was balanced, as if by a 
 doctor, so equally between the nervousness of refinement and 
 the hot thick-bloodedness of the rustic. Fixlein said that 
 if he lived but as long as he had done, namely, two-and 
 thirty years, it would amount, exclusive of the leap-year- 
 days, to 280,320 seconds, which in itself was something 
 considerable ; and that he often reckoned up with satisfac- 
 tion the many thousand persons of his own age that would 
 have a life equally long. 
 
 At last I tried to get in motion ; for the red lights of the 
 falling sun were mounting up over the grove, and dipping 
 us still deeper in the shadows of night ; the young mother 
 had grown chill in the evening dew. In confused mood, I 
 invited the Parson to visit me soon in the city, where I 
 would show him not only all the chambers of the Palace, 
 but the Prince himself. Gladder there was nothing this 
 day on our old world than the face to which I said so ; and 
 than the other one which was the mild reflexion of the 
 former. — For the Biographer it would have been too hard, 
 if now in that minute, when his fancy, like mirror-telescopes, 
 was representing every object in a tremulous form, he had 
 1 31* 
 
366 
 
 RICHTER. 
 
 been obliged to cut and run ; if, I will say, it had not 
 occurred to him that to the young mother it could do little 
 harm (but much good) were she to take a short walk, and 
 assist in escorting the Author and architect of the present 
 Letter-Box out of the garden to his road. 
 
 In short, I took this couple one in each hand, instead of 
 under each arm, and moved with them through the garden 
 to the Flachsenfingen highway. I often abruptly turned 
 round my head between them, as if I had heard some one 
 coming after us ; but in reality I only meant once more, 
 though mournfully, to look back into the happy hamlet, 
 whose houses were all dwellings of contented still Sabbath- 
 joy, and which is happy enough, though ;^over its wide- 
 parted pavement-stones there passes every week but one 
 barber, every holiday but one dresser of hair, and every 
 year but one hawker of parasols. Then truly I had again 
 to turn round my head, and look at the happy pair beside 
 me. My otherwise affectionate gossip could not rightly 
 suit himself to these tokens of sorrow ; but in thy heart, 
 thou good, so oft afflicted sex, every mourning-bell soon 
 finds its unison ; and Thiennette, ennobled with the thin 
 trembling resonance of a reverberating soul, gave me 
 
 back all my tones with the beauties of an echo. At 
 
 last we reached the boundary, over which Thiennette could 
 not be allowed to walk ; and now must I part from my 
 gossip, with whom I had talked so gaily every morning 
 (each of us from his bed), and from the still circuit of 
 modest hope where he dwelt, and return once more to the 
 rioting, fermenting Court-sphere, where men in bull-beggar 
 tone demand from Fate a root of Life-Licorice, thick as 
 the arm, like the botanical one on the Wolga, not so much 
 that they may chew the sweet beam themselves, as fell 
 others to earth with it. 
 
 As I thought to myself that I would say, Farewell ! to 
 
LIFE OF QJJINTUS FIXLEIN. 367 
 
 them, all the coming plagues, all the corpses, and all the 
 marred wishes of this good pair, arose before my heart ; 
 and I remembered that Httle, save the falling asleep of 
 joy-flowers, would mark the current of their Life-clay, as it 
 does of mine and of every one's. — And yet is it fairer, if 
 they measure their years not by the Water-clock of falling 
 tears, but by the Flower-clock*' of asleep-going flowers, 
 whose bells in our short-lived garden are sinking together 
 before us from hour to hour. — 
 
 I would even now — for I still recollect how I hung with 
 streaming eyes over these two loved ones, as over their 
 corpses — address myself, and say : Far too soft, Jean Paid, 
 whose chalk still sketches the models of Nature on a ground 
 of Melancholy ; harden thy heart like thy frame, and waste 
 not thyself and others by such thoughts. Yet why should 
 I do it, why should I not confess directly what, in the softest 
 emotion, I said to these two beings ? " May all go right 
 with you, ye mild beings," I said, for I no longer thought 
 of courtesies, " may the arm of Providence bear gently your 
 lacerated hearts, and the good Father, above all these suns 
 which are now looking down on us, keep you ever united, 
 and exalt you still undivided to his bosom and his lips ! " — 
 "Be you, too, right happy and glad !" said Thiennette. — 
 "And to you, Thiennette," continued I, "Ah ! to your pale 
 cheeks, to your oppressed heart, to your long cold mal- 
 treated youth, I can never, never wish enough. No! But 
 all that can soothe a wounded soul, that can please a pure 
 one, that can still the hidden sigh — O all that you deserve 
 — may this be given you ; and when you see me again, 
 then say to me, i I am now much happier ! ' " 
 
 We were all of us too deeply moved. We at last tore 
 
 * Linn6 formed in Upsal a flower-clock, the flowers of which, by 
 their different times of falling asleep, indicated the hours of the day. 
 
368 RICHTER. 
 
 ourselves asunder from repeated embraces ; my friend re 
 tired with the soul whom he loves — I remained alone 
 behind him with the Night. 
 
 And I walked without aim through woods, through val- 
 leys, and over brooks, and through sleeping villages, to 
 enjoy the great Night like a Day. I walked, and still 
 looked like the magnet to the region of midnight, to 
 strengthen my heart at the gleaming twilight, at this up- 
 stretching Aurora of a morning beneath our feet. White 
 night-butterflies flitted, white blossoms fluttered, white stars 
 fell, and the white snow-powder hung silvery in the high 
 Shadow of the Earth, which reaches beyond the Moon, and 
 which is our Night. Then began the Eolian Harp of the 
 Creation to tremble and to sound, blown on from above, 
 and my immortal soul was a string in this Harp. — The 
 heart of a brother everlasting Man swelled under the ever- 
 lasting Heaven, as the seas swell under the Sun and under 
 the Moon. — The distant village-clocks struck midnight, 
 mingling, as it were, with the ever-pealing tone of ancient 
 Eternity. — The limbs of my buried ones touched cold on 
 my soul, and drove away its blots, as dead hands heal 
 eruptions of the skin. — I walked silently through little 
 hamlets, and close by their outer churchyards, where crum- 
 bled upcast coffin-boards were glimmering, while the once 
 bright eyes that had lain in them were mouldered into grey 
 ashes. — Cold thought ! clutch not like a cold spectre at my 
 heart ; I look up to the starry sky, and an everlasting chain 
 stretches thither, and over and below ; and all is Life, and 
 Warmth, and Light, and all is godlike or God 
 
 Towards morning I descried thy late lights, little city of 
 my dwelling, which I belong to on this side the grave ; I 
 returned to the Earth ; and in thy steeples, behind the by- 
 advanced great Midnight, it struck half past two; about this 
 hour, in 1794, Mars went down in the west, and the Moon 
 
LIFE OF Q,UINTUS FIXLEIN. 369 
 
 rose in the east ; and my soul desired, in grief for the noble 
 warlike blood which is still streaming on the blossoms of 
 Spring : "Ah retire, bloody War, like red Mars ; and thou, 
 still Peace, come forth like the mild divided Moon ! " — 
 
 END OF VOLUME SECOND.