Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/flowerfruitthornOOjean Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces OR THE MARRIED LIFE, DEATH, AND WEDDING OF THE ADVOCATE OF THE POOR, FIRMIAN STANISLAUS SIEBENKÄS. BY JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN * By EDWARD HENRY NOEL With a Memoir of the Author, By THOMAS CARLYLE. In Two Volumes. II. 3? BOSTON: TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 1 8 6 3. Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 1863, by TICKNOR AND FIELDS, the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. University Press: Welch, Bigelow, and Company, Cambridge. Contents of Vol. ii CHAPTER IX. PAGB Potato-War with Women, and with Men. — The Decem- ber Walk. — Tinder of Jealousy. — War of Succession about the striped calico. — quarrel with stiefel. — The Sorrowful Evening Music . . . , . 1 CHAPTER X. The Solitary New-Year's Day. — The Learned Scha- laster. — Wooden Leg of Appeal. — Post in the Room. — The 11th February, and Birth-Day 1786 ... 52 CHAPTER XI. Leibgeber's Letter upon Fame. — Firmian's Evening Chronicle . . . 80 CHAPTER XII. Flight out of Egypt. — The Glory of Travelling. — The Unknown. — Baireuth. — Baptism in the Storm. — Natalie and Hermitage. — The most important Con- versation in this Book. — The Evening of Friendship 94 CHAPTER XIII. The Human Clock. — The Refusal. — The Venner . . 134 CHAPTER XIV. Dismissal of a Lover. — Fantaisie. — The Child with the Nosegay. — The Eden of Night, and the Angel at the Gate of Paradise 149 iv CONTENTS. CHAPTER XV. Rosa von Meyern. — After-Tones and After-Pains of the Loveliest Night. — Letters of Natalie and Fir- mian. — Leibgeber' s Table-Talk 171 CHAPTER XVI. Departure. — Pleasures of Travel. — Arrival . . 194 CHAPTER XVII. The Butterfly Rosa in the Character of Mining-Grub. — Thorn-Crowns and Thistle-Heads of Jealousy . . 203 CHAPTER XVIII. After-Summer of Marriage. — Preparations for Dying 210 CHAPTER XIX. The Ghost. — Going Home of the Storms in August, or the Last Quarrel. — Clothes of the Children of Israel. CHAPTER XX. The Apoplectic Stroke. — The Upper Board of Health. — The Public Notary. — The Will. — The Knight's- Leap. — The Preacher Reuel. — The Second Stroke . CHAPTER XXI. Dr. Oelhafen and the Medical Ciiaussure. — Mourning Administration. — The Saving Death's-Head. — Fred- erick II. and Funereal Elegy 264 CHAPTER XXII. journev through fantaisie — reunion upon the blnd- locher Mountain. — Berneck. — Man-doubling. — Ge- frees. — Exchange of Clothes. — Münchberg. — Pfeif- stück. — Hof. — The Stone of Gladness, and Double Parting in Topen 278 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXIII. Days at Vaduz. — Natalie's Letter. — A New-Year's Wish. — Wilderness of Destiny and of the Heart . 302 CHAPTER XXIV. News from Kuhschnappel. — Anticlimax of Girls. — Opening of the Seventh Seal 316 CHAPTER XXV. The Journey — The Churchyard. — The Ghost. — The End of the Misery, and of the Book .... 329 Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces. chapter IX. Potato-War with Women, and with Men. — The December Walk. — Tinder of Jealousy. — War of Succession about the Striped Calico. — Quarrel with Stiefel. — The Sor- rowful Evening Music. SHOULD like to make a short digression, but I have not the courage. For there are few readers now-a-days who do not un- derstand everything, — at least, among the young and noble, — and these exact of their favorite authors (not that I take it ill in them) that they shall know more than themselves, which is a sheer impossi- bility. By means of the English machinery of encyclo- paedias, encyclopedic dictionaries, extracts from the lexicon of conversation, general dictionaries of all the sciences by Ersch and Gruber, a young man transforms himself in a few months — only using the days, too, and not the nights, which are quite superfluous — into a whole col- lege-senate full of faculties, which he represents in his VOL. II. 1 A 2 FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. single person, and to whom, in some sort, he himself ^jands in the relation of pupil. I have never seen any wonder equal to such a young man, unless it be the man I heard in the harmony of Baireuth, who represented in his own person a whole " Academie royale de Musique" a whole orchestra, by carrying and playing all the instruments on his own body. This Panharmonist blew before us, partial har- monists, a bugle, which he held beneath the right arm ; with the latter he scraped a fiddle, which was held be- neath the left ; and with his left arm again he struck, at the proper moment, a drum, which he carried on his back. On his head he wore a cap with bells, which he easily shook, like a janizary; and he had cymbals buckled on both his ankles, which he struck together pow- erfully with his legs. Thus, from toe to toe, the whole man was one long sound, so that I am tempted to com- pare this simile-man in turn to something else, — to a prince, who represents in his own person all the instru- ments of the state, all the state-members, and all its rep- resentatives. Now, in presence of such inhabitants of chief towns, and readers who, as all-knowers, resemble such all- players, how is a poor devil like me, who, to say the best of myself, am only a Heidelberg professor of a few arts, and doctor of some philosophy, to take courage to make clever and happy digressions ? It is much safer to continue my story. We find the Advocate Siebenkäs once more full of hopes, but with fruitless blossoms. He had indulged the hope, that after the royal shot he would enjoy at least as many happy days as the money lasted, namely, CHAPTER IX. 3 fourteen ; but the mourning-black, which is now the unifbfm of travellers, was also to be his on his night- journey, — this voyage pittoresque for poets. Marmots and squirrels, but not men, know how to stop up the hole in their dwelling that stands opposed to the coming weather, at the right moment. Firmian thought that, if the hole in his purse were mended, nothing more would be wanted. Alas ! he now lost something better than money, — love. His good Lenette retreated every day further from his heart, and he from hers. Her concealment of the garland returned by Rosa collected sand round it in his bosom, as is always the case when any extraneous substance lodges in any vessel of the body ; but that was a trifle ; for She swept, scrubbed, and scoured, in the morning, let him whistle as he pleased. She despatched all dissolutions of the diet and other decrees to the errand-girl in several duplicates and revised copies, let him protest as much as he pleased. She asked him several times about the same thing, indifferent as to whether he bawled out beforehand like a market-crier, or swore afterwards like one of the lat- ter's customers ; she still continued to say, " It has struck four quarters to four " ; and after he had taken the great- est pains to prove that Augsburg was not situated in the island of Cyprus, she still always returned him the well-grounded answer : — " Neither is it situated in Romania, nor in Bulgaria, nor in the principality of Jauer ; nor near Vaduz, nor in the neighborhood of Husten," — two very insignificant towns. He could never bring her to agree with him openly, FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. when he quite unconditionally asserted, "It lies with the Devil in Swabia ! " She would only granPthus much, that it lay somewhere between Franconia, Bavaria, and Switzerland, and to the bookbinder's wife alone she acknowledged that it was situated in Swabia. Such loads and overloads could, however, be borne tolerably well by a soul which fortified itself by the example of great sufferers, — by the example of a Ly- curgus, who patiently let himself be deprived of an eye by Alcander ; or by that of an Epictetus, who endured the loss of a leg from his master. And I have -already mentioned all these ironmoulds of Lenette in former chapters; but I have now to speak of new faults, and I leave it to impartial husbands to declare, whether or not they belong to the failings which a husband can and ought to tolerate. In the first place, Lenette washed her hands at least forty times a day. Whatever she touched, she must needs immediately undergo this holy re-baptism. Like a Jew, she was made unclean by everything around her, and she would have imitated rather than admired the imprisoned Rabbi Akiba, who once, when he was in the greatest distress for water and afflicted with the most terrible thirst, preferred using the little he obtained for washing rather than for drinking. " She ought to be clean," said Siebenkäs, " and cleaner than myself ; but there is a measure in all things. Why does she not wipe herself with a towel whenever another person's breath has passed over her? Why does she not wash her lips with soap every time a fly and something more has settled upon them ? Has she not turned our room into an English man-of-war, which CHAPTER IX. 5 is daily washed all over, outside and inside ; and have I not Tooked on at the scouring as peaceably as any one upon deck ? " If ever a he^y Irish cloud or thunder-Jbearing water- spout passed over his and her days, she knew how to put her husband and his courage, like a Dutch fortress, quite under water, and gave free vent to all her tears. If, on the contrary, the sun of fortune cast a gleam of December sunshine, not broader than a window, into their room, then Lenette was sure to have a hundred other things to do and to see, sooner than remark the more lovely one. Firmian had made a special resolution that, now that he was in possession of a .florin or two, he would winnow or take the cream off these few days to his heart's content, and that he would closely cover over the second Janus-face, that might look or weep over the past or future : but Lenette tore down the veil, and pointed to everything. Her husband said, beseechingly, more than once, " Dear one, do but wait until we are again as poor as rats, and once more lead the life of a dog, and then I will sigh and groan with you with pleasure." It was of little avail. Only once she returned him a decent an- swer : " How long will it be before we are again without . a penny in the house ? " But to this he knew how to return a still more reason- able answer. "It seems, then, you are determined not to enjoy a cheerful, quiet day until one can swear to you on the Gospel that no miserable, dark, cloudy day will follow it. In that case, you can never enjoy one. What king and emperor even, had he thrones upon his head and crowns to sit on, can be assured that his post-day 6 FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. or diet-day will not bring him some cloud ? and yet he enjoys his bright day in Sans Souci, or Bellevue, or else- where, without further question, and thus rejoices in his life." She shook her head. " I can^prove the same thing to you in Greek and in print," said he ; upon which he took down the Testament, and, opening it, in- serted the following passage, which he read off extem- pore. " If thou deferrest the heart's celebration qf a period of bliss until another cometh, when all the hopes of thy future years shall lie spread out before thee in unclouded sequence and beauty, then is there no joy conceivable upon our ever-changing sphere, for after ten days or ten years a sorrow shall surely come ; and thus thou canst not take delight in a May-day, even though it were to rain blossoms and nightingales upon thee, since the winter shall most assuredly cover thee with its snow-flakes and nights. But if thou wilt enjoy thy warm youth, not terrified by the ice-pit of old age, which awaits thee in the background, and in which, under an ever-increasing cold, thou wilt be preserved for a season, then look upon the glad to-day as a long youth, and upon the sad to-morrow as a short old age." " The Greek or the Latin," answered she, " have in- deed a more spiritual sound, and the thing is often preached from the pulpit, and I always return home much consoled, until the money is gone again." It was still more difficult to bring her to leap properly for joy at the dinner-table at mid-day. If anything bet- ter than their ordinary mess smoked upon the table, — any particular Egyptian fleshpot, a rare piece of roast meat, such as without disgrace to themselves might have been provided by the Counts of Wratislau and carved CHAPTER IX. 7 by the Counts of Waldstein,* — if such a feast, I say, smoked upon their table-cloth, Siebenkäs might be cer- tain that his wife had a hundred things more than usual to do and put away before she could come to dinner. The husband sits there ready to stick in his fork ; he looks around him, first quietly, then grimly, but yet man- ages to contain himself for a few minutes. In the mean time, having such good leisure near the roast beef, he reflects upon his misery. At last out bursts the first clap of thunder from his storm, and he screams out, " Thun- der and lightning ! here have I been sitting a whole sec- ulum, and everything is getting cold. Wife ! wife ! " In Lenette, as in other women, it was neither ill-nature, nor stupidity, nor stubborn indifference to the matter it- self, or to her husband ; but it was quite out of her power to do otherwise, and that is a sufficient explanation. But my friend - Siebenkäs, who will get this representa- tion into his hands even sooner than the compositor, must not take it ill of me that I also reveal his breakfast-fault to the world. I have it from his own mouth. When he was lying stretched out in his trellis-bed in the morning, with his eyes closed, he fell upon ideas and forms of expression for his book which would never have entered his head while he was standing or sitting ; and indeed, I have read of many scholars, such, for instance, as Des Cartes, the Abbe Galiani, and Basedow (not to count myself), who belong to the bug species of back-swim- mers {Noctonectce), and thus make most progress when they are lying down, and who find the bed the best brewing-pan of the most witty and unheard-of thoughts. * The former fills the office of Lord High Steward, the latter of Chief Carver, to the Crown of Bohemia. 8 FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. I could myself refer to much that I have written imme- diately after getting up. He who is desirous of giv- ing a satisfactory explanation of this circumstance may adduce the morning vigor of the brain, which follows the guidance of the spirit more easily and energetically after the internal and external holidays; let him add to this, the freedom of the brain both in thought and motion, the day not having as yet impressed its numerous directions upon it ; and lastly, he may adduce the strength of the first-born, with which the first thought in the morning, like the first impressions of youth, is endowed. Now, in, accordance with the above explanation, noth- ing could be more unpleasant to the Advocate, while he was thus growing in the warm forcing-house of the pillows, and bearing the best blossoms and fruits, than to hear Lenette call out from the sitting-room, " Come in, the coffee is ready ! " He generally .contrived, never- theless, to give bi^th in his haste to one or two happy, lively thoughts in his childbed, though in continual dread of a second order to march. But as Lenette was already aware that he allowed himself a few minutes' grace or respite before getting up, she called to him in the bed- chamber when the coffee was only just beginning to boil, " Get up ; it will be quite cold ! " The satirical back-swimmer, on his side, soon learnt this advance of the equinoxes ; and he remained quite snug and happy, laboring in the feathers, and went on breeding after Lenette's first call, and merely answered, " This minute ! " availing himself of the double usance* allowed by law. * Technical term for the period fixed for the payment of bills of exchange. — Tk. CHAPTER IX. 9 This, in turn, again obliged the wife to go still further back, and to call out, while the coffee was yet cold at the fire, " Come, it will get cold ! " But in this way, mutually getting earlier and later, the matter became evejc day more ticklish, and there was no seeing how it waÄ» end ; indeed, it was to be feared Lenette would call him to his coffee a whole day beforehand, though eventually it would come to the same thing, and both would act exactly as before, — just as the suppers of the present day threaten to become early breakfasts, and the breakfasts early and unfashionable dinners. Unfortunate- ly Siebenkäs could not hold by the sheet-anchor of hearing the coffee ground, and then by an easy calcu- lation get up, so as to be ready by the time it had reached the boiling-point ; for, having no coffee-roaster and coffee-mill, nothing but ready-ground coffee was bought in the whole house. To be sure, coffee-roaster and coffee-mill might have been dispensed with, could Lunette have been induced not to call him to his coffee one moment before it boiled and smoked upon the table ; but to this she was not to be induced. Little disputes before marriage are great ones after it ; as northerly winds, which are warm in summer, blow keen and cold in winter. The zephyr-breeze from mar- ried lungs resembles the zephyr in Homer, about the cut- ting cold of which the poet sings so much. From this time forward Firmian set about looking for new cracks, feathers, ashes, clouds, in the bright diamond of Le- nette's heart. Poor fellow ! in this way one stone after another must fall down from the crumbling altar of thy love, and thy flame of sacrifice must waver and be extinguished. He now discovered that Lenette was far 1* io FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. from being as learned as the Miss Burmanns and Miss Reiskas. It is true no book caused her ennui, but neither did anyone afford her pleasure; and she could read her book of sermons as often as scholars read Ho- mer and Kant. The whole of her profane library^jp- sisted of one married pair of authors ; the authored of the cookery-book and her husband, whose works, how- ever, she never read. She paid the tribute of the great- est admiration to his essays, but never looked into them. Three sensible words with the bookbinder's wife were of more value to her than all the printed words of the bookbinder and bookmaker. A scholar, who makes noth- ing all the year long but new arguments and new ink, cannot imagine how a person can exist who never has a book or a pen in his hand, and has no other ink but the borrowed rusty ink of the village schoolmaster. He often undertook a new professorship, and ascended the pulpit in order to initiate her into some of the ele- mentary principles of astronomy ; but either she had ho pineal gland as the castle of the soul and its thoughts, or the chambers of her brain were already so crammed and satiated and stuffed to the very skin with lace, caps, shirts, saucepans, and frying-pans, that, in a word, it was quite out of his power to put a star into her head which was bigger than a ball of thread. With pneumatology (psychology), on the contrary, he had exactly the reverse difficulty to contend with. In this science, where the infinitesimal calculation applied to the small would have been as serviceable to him as the calculation of the infinitely great in the science of a-tronomy, Lenette pulled and stretched angels, souls, and everything else, and put the most subtle spirits on CHAPTEE IX. the stretching-machine of her imagination. Angels, of which a scholiast would have invited whole companies to a private ball on the tip of a needle, or which he could have threaded in pairs exactly in the same spot,* — these expanded so in her hands that she was obliged to put every angel into a separate cradle, and the Devil swelled out to such a size that at last he grew as big as her husband. He also found a terrible ironmould, or pock-mark, or wart, in her heart. He could never in- spire her with a lyrical enthusiasm of lov^ in which she could forget heaven and earth, and everything else. She could count the strokes of the town-clock between his kisses, and could listen and run off to the saucepan that was boiling over with all the big tears in her eyes which he had pressed out of her melting heart by a touching story or a sermon. She accompanied in her devotion the Sunday hymns, which echoed loudly from the neighboring apartments, and in the midst of a verse she would interweave the prosaic question, " What shall I warm up for supper ? " and he could never banish from his remembrance that once when she was quite touched, and listening to his cabinet discourse upon death and eternity, she looked at him thoughtfully, but to- wards his feet, and at length said, " Don't put on the left stocking to-morrow, I must first darn it. " The author of this history declares that he has some- times almost lost his wits at such feminine interludes, against which there is no security for one who loves to mount up into the ether with these pretty birds of para- dise, and rocks himself up and down near them, and * The scholiasts believe that two angels have room in one and the same spot: Ocean. 1 qu. qusest. and others. 12 FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. expects to hatch the eggs of his imagination there aloft on the backs of these birds.* Suddenly, as if by en- chantment, the winged female glimmers greenly down below on a clod of earth. I grant this is nothing but an additional excellence ; for in this they resemble the hens, whose eyes are so well ground by the Optician of the universe, that they see the furthest sparrowhawk in the sky and the nearest grain of barley on the dunghill. It is, indeed, devoutly to be wished that the author of this history, in case he marry, may get a wife to whom he can read t^fe first principles and dictata of the sciences of psychology and astronomy, and who will not introduce his stockings just at the moment when he is carried away by his enthusiasm. But he would be content, even if one should fall to his lot who were less gifted, but who would nevertheless be able to fly with him as far as he went ; into whose expanded eye and heart the blooming earth and the bright heavens do not enter infinitesimally but in sublime masses ; for whom the universe is something more than a nursery and a ball- room ; and who, with a feeling that is at once tender and delicate, and with a heart that is at the same time pious and large, continually improves and hallows the man she weds. This is the utmost limit to which the author of this history extends his wishes. He desires no more. While the blossom, if not the leaves, fell off from Fir- mian's love, Lenette's was like a full-blown rose past its bloom, the beauty of which is scattered to the winds on the slightest touch. The everlasting argumentation * It was fabulously said, that the male of the birds of paradise batched the eggs of the female on her back while hovering in the air. CHAPTER IX. J 3 of her husband at length wearied her heart. She be- longed, moreover, to that class of women whose loveliest blossoms remain dormant and unfruitful unless children throng about to enjoy them, — even as the blossoms of the vine produce no grapes unless bees swarm amongst them. She resembled the same women also in being born to be the spiral spring of a domestic machine, — the theatrical directress of a great household drama ; but in what condition the principal shares and state shares and theatrical treasury of his household were, that we all know from Hamburg to Ofen. Like phcenixes and giants, they had no children, and they stood apart, like separate columns, not united by any garland of fruit or flowers, Firmian, in imagination, had already rehearsed the parts of father and godfather-seeker in his humorous way, but it never came to a representation. What did him the most injury in Lenette's heart was, every point of character in which he differed from Pelz- stiefel. The Schulrath was as tiresome, as pomnous, as grave and reserved, as pedantic and stiff, puffed up and ungainly, as — these three lines. All this pleased our born housekeeper. Siebenkäs, on the contrary, was all day long a harlequin. She often said to him, " The peo- ple will think you are not in your right senses " ; to which he would answer, " And ami?" He disguised his beau- tiful heart beneath the grotesque comic mask, and con- cealed his height by the trodden-down sock ; turning the short game of his life into a farce and comic epic poem. He was fond of grotesque actions from higher motives than mere vanity. In the first place, he delighted in the sense of freedom experienced by a soul unshackled by the trammels of circumstance ; and secondly, he enjoyed the 14 FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. satirical consciousness of caricaturing rather than imitat- ing the follies of humanity. While acting, he had a two- fold consciousness, — that of the comic actor and of the spectator. A humorist in action is but a satirical impro- visators Every male reader understands this ; but no female reader. I have often wished to give a woman who beheld the white sunbeam of wisdom decomposed, checkered, and colored from behind the prism of humor, a well-ground glass which would bum this variegated row of colors white again ; but it would not answer. The woman's delicate sense of the becoming is scratched and wounded, so to say, by everything angular and unpolished. These souls, bound up to the pole of conventional propriety, can- not comprehend a soul which opposes itself to these rela- tions ; and therefore in the hereditary realms of women, the courts, and in their kingdom of shadows, France, there are seldom any humorists to be found, either of the pen or jn real life. It was quite natural that Lenette should fret and be angry with her whistling, singing, dancing husband, who did not even assume an official mien before his clients ; . who, alas ! (so it was currently reported) often went walking about in a circle round the Rabenstein (gallows- hill) ; of whose understanding very clever people spoke dubiously ; and in whose behavior she complained, no one would discover that he resided in an imperial city ; and lastly, who was only shy and abashed before one single person in the world, '■ — himself. Did not chambermaids, for instance, often come with caps to be sewed from the most respectable houses into his, and behold him — the devil-may-care fellow that he was — standing at his CHAPTER IX. '5 worn-out piano, which still possessed all its keys, and almost as many strings as keys, while he held a yard- measure in his mouth, along which, as- a let-down draw- bridge, the tones came up to him from the sounding-board through the portcullis of his teeth, and at last through the eustachian-tube over the drum-skin of the ear into the soul ? He held the yard between his teeth like a stork's bilHn his own, in order jto elevate the increasing pianis- simo of his instrument into a fortissimo. But the humor, it is true, assumes a milder tone of coloring in the reflec- tion of a narration than it possessed in the brightness of reality. The ground upon which these two good creatures were standing was rent by so many shocks ever further asun- der into two separate islands. Time again brought an earthquake. # The Heimlicher again came upon the scene with his action of objection, in which all that he demanded was justice and equity, — namely, the inheritance, unless Sie- benkäs could prove that he was — himself ; that is, the ward, whose patrimony the Heimlicher had, up to this period, preserved in his paternal hands and purse. This judicial river of hell took away our Firmian's breath, and went like ice to his heart, although he had jumped over the previous three petitions for postpone- ment as easily as the crowned lion in the arms of Gotha jumps over the three rivers. The wounds which are cut into us by the instruments of destiny soon close ; but a wound inflicted by the rusty, blunt instrument of torture of an unjust man begins to suppurate, and it is long ere it closes. This cut into exposed nerves, which had already been l6 FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. bared by so many rude grasps and sharp tongues, caused our friend severe pain ; and yet he had foreseen the im- pending blow, and had previously called out to his soul, " Beware !" head aside ! " But alas ! in every sorrow there is something new. He had even taken judicial measures against it beforehand, and had received some weeks before from Leipsic, where he had studied, written evidence to prove that he formerly went under the name of Leibgeber, and consequently was Blaise's ward; A no- tary of that place, of the name of Geigold, an old cham- ber-chum and literary comrade, but who had not yet been matriculated, had done him the favor to take the deposi- tions of all the people who were acquainted with his Leibgeber-ship ; especially of one rusty, mouldy pro- fessor, who had often been present at the arrival of the guardian's register-ships ; also of tb^postman or pilot who piloted them into harbor, and of his landlord, and several other well-informed people, all of whom were ready to take the juramentum credulitatis (tne oath of self- conviction), — of all these, I say, the young Geigold had taken the depositions, and despatched the document to the Advocate. It was easy enough for Siebenkäs to pay the postage while he was king of the hawkers. With this stout club of testimony, he answered and combated his guardian and thief. When the refusal of Blaise appeared, the timid Lenette believed that she and the lawsuit were both lost. In her eyes, stern Poverty now clasped them both with thongs .of ivy ; and they had nothing in view but to wither and crumble into ruins. The first thing she did was to let loose a torrent of abuse against Meyern ; for as he had lately confessed that it was- he who had prevailed upon CHAPTER IX. "7 his future father-in-law to petition three several times for postponement in order to spare her, she in consequence looked upon the refusal of Blaise as the first thorn-sucker proceeding from Rosa's revengeful soul, on account of his having suffered in Firmian's house, firstly, imprisonment and sacking, — all which he ascribed to Lenette, — and secondly, because he had lost so much. He had formerly supposed it was only the husband, and not the wife, whose indignation was roused against him ; but the bird-shooting had convinced him that this was a sweet delusion of his own vanity, and had wounded his pride. But as the Venner was not there to listen to her anger, she was obliged to direct it against her husband, who was the cause of all, she* said, by so sinfully giving away his name Leibgeber. He who has married a wife will be willing to spare me the proof — for it rests with himself — that nothing the husband could bring forward for his defence was of the slightest avail. He adduced the wickedness of Blaise, who, being the greatest Iscariot and arch-Jew in this terrestrial Jerusalem of earth, would equally have robbed him, even if he had preserved the name of Leibgeber; and would have discovered a thousand by-paths of equity to plunder his wards. It had no effect. At last the following words escaped him : — " You are as unjust as I should be were I to lay this document of Blaise to the charge of your behavior to the Venner." Nothing exasperates a woman more than a depreciating comparison, for they accept no distinction. Lenette's ears stretched themselves out, like those of Fame, into tongues. Her husband was at once out-screamed, and no longer listened to. VOL. II. B 18 FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. He was obliged to send off secretly to Pelzstiefel, and ask him where he had hidden himself all this time, and why he had forgotten their house. But Stiefel was not at home, having gone out to walk on such a lovely day. " Lenette ! " suddenly exclaimed Siebenkäs, who fre- quently chose to jump over a morass by the leaping-pole of an idea, rather than to wade laboriously out of it by the help of the long stilts of syllogisms, and who desired to banish from Lenette's memory the innocent remark he had made about Rosa, which she had so misunderstood, — " Lenette," said he, " listen to what we will do this after- noon. We will take a strong cup of coffee and a walk, and enjoy ourselves. True, it is not Sunday in the town to-day ; but it is, at all events, the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, which is celebrated by every Catholic in Kuhschnappel ; and, by Heaven ! the weather is too lovely ! We will go and sit in the unheated room of the shooting-house, — for it is too warm out of doors, — and from thence look down upon all the heterodox of the city, promenading in their gala-dresses ; and perhaps we shall see our Lutheran Stiefel besides." Either I must be very much deceived, or Lenette was very agreeably surprised ; for coffee, which even in the morning is the water of baptism and altar-wine of women, is in the afternoon both a love-potion and water of strife, — although the latter only towards the absent. But what an excellent moving stream upon all the mill-wheels of her ideas a real afternoon cup of coffee on a simple work- day must be for a woman, like poor Lenette, who had seldom drank it except after an afternoon's sermon on Sunday, because, even before the continental blockade, it was too dear for her! CHAPTER I'X. '9 Under a genuine impulse of joy, women require but little time to put on their black-silk bonnets, take their broad church-fan in hand, and, contrary to all their usual habits, be ready dressed and prepared for the walk to the shooting-house in a few minutes ; having even boiled the coffee while they were dressing, that they might take it with them ready-made, together with the milk, into the club-room. The married pair sallied forth at two o'clock in a cheerful mood, and carried warm in their pockets all that was afterwards to be warmed up. A radiance like the flush of sunset was shed thus early in the day by the low December sun over all the mountains to the south and west ; and the cloud-glaciers scattered about the heavens cast a cheerful light upon the whole scene, and everywhere there was a brightness about the world ; and many a dark, confined life uras made lighter. Siebenkäs pointed out to Lenette, while yet at some distance, the bird-pole, which had been the Alpine stick or rudder that had lately helped him out of his most pressing need. Arrived at the shooting-house, he led her to the shooter's stand, — his conclave, or Frankfort Römer of coronation, — where he had raised himself by his rifle to a bird-emperor, and out of the Frankfort Jew- street of creditors, having on ascending the throne given freedom to one debtor at least, — himself. In the spa- cious saloon of the honorable members of the club, they could spread themselves comfortably out, — he at a table placed before the right window occupied with his writing, she at another table in the left window at her sewing. 20 FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. How the coffee gave additional warmth to the Decem- ber festival in both may be imagined, but not described ! Lenette drew on one of the Advocate's stockings after the other, — that is, on her left arm, for in the right she held the darning-needle, — and as she thus sat with the stocking, which was frequently quite out at heel, she re- sembled, in one arm at least, a lady of the present day, who is adorned by the long Danish mitten, with holes for the fingers. But she did not pull up the arm-stocking high enough to be seen by those who were promenading on a higher walk of art ; and she nodded her " most humble maid," " most obedient servant," out of the open window almost incessantly. She beheld many of the most genteel heretics below, carrying her own artificial cap-structures along the walks to celebrate the Annuncia- tion of the Virgin Mary ; and more than one was the first to greet obligingly her roof-slater up at the window. In consequence of the religious equality that by law of the empire prevailed in the imperial market-town, Prot- estants of rank likewise went walking on the Catholic festival ; and I rise progressively from the notary Börstel to the morning-preacher Reuel, up to Herr Oelhafen, member of the Board of Health. And yet the Advocate was probably as happy as his wife. He went on writing his Devil's papers, and gazed, at the same time, not at the high ones, but at the heights of the place. On his first entrance into the room he had received great pleasure from a child's trumpet, which had been left there by accident, and from which all the color had not yet been licked off ; it was not so much its squeaking voice as the smell of the paint which delighted him, for it wafted him back on this day of the Christmas month into CHAPTER IX. 21 all the vague raptures of the Christmas festival of child- hood. Thus one pleasure was added to the other. He could get up from his satires, and point out to Lenette, with his forefinger, the large rook's-nests in the naked trees, and the exposed benches and tables in the leafless arbors of the garden, and the invisible guests, who in summer evenings there found their " seats of the blessed," and who yet cherish the event in their memory, and look forward to the time when they shall sit there again. It was easy, too, from his position to draw Lenette's atten- tion to the fields, whence, thus late in the season, volun- teer female gardeners brought away salad, — that is, wild salad or rampions, which, if he pleased, he might eat that evening for supper. And now he gazed from his window upon the ruddy evening mountains, towards which the sun descended, growing larger and larger, and behind which lay the lands where his Leibgeber wandered and sported away his life. " How delightful it is, dear wife," said he, " that I am not parted from Leibgeber by a broad, flat plain, with only little swellings of hills, but by a fine majestic wall of mountains, behind which he stands, as it were, behind the grille of a parlatorio." To her, indeed, this almost seemed as if her husband rejoiced in the wall of separation ; for she herself had little or no liking for Leibgeber, having only found in him the clipper of her husband, -one who cut him rougher and sharper than he was already : however, in such dubious cases she was glad to be silent, in order not to ask questions. He had meant quite the contrary, viz. that we prefer being parted from beloved hearts by the 22 FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. holy mountains, because it is behind these alone, as be- hind higher garden-walls, that we seek and behold the blooming thicket of our Eden, Nvhile on the border of the longest threshing-floor of level country we expect nothing better than a still longer one over again. This holds good even with nations. Neither the heath of Lüneburg nor the Prussian steppes will direct even the Italian's gaze to Italy ; but the inhabitant of the steppes, when in Italy, will gaze upon the Apennines, and yearn to be with his German loved ones behind them. From the sunny mountain-partition of two divided spirits, much, it is true, flowed into the eyes of the Advocate of the Poor, amid his satirical labors, that looked like a tear ; but he moved his chair a little aside, that Lenette might make no inquiry about it, for he was aware of a weakness he had, and therefore endeavored to guard against it, of growing angry when any one asked him, " What ailed him, that he wept ? " Was he not to-day tenderness personified? and did he not ex- press the comic in presence of his wife by the more serious middle tints alone, because he took pleasure in the flourishing growth of her joy, which had been sown by himself? It is true, Lenette did not at all suspect this delicate consideration ; but in the same way as he was perfectly satisfied, when no one but himself — she, least of all — was aware that he made the most delicate sallies upon herself, even so it was when he paid her the most delicate attentions. At length, filled with warmth, they abandoned the spacious apartment just as the sun had dressed them. in purple. As he stepped out of the shooting-house, he pointed out to Lenette the liquid golden glance on the CHAPTER IX. 23 long glass roofs of two greenhouses, and he clung to the sun, now cut in twain by the mountain, in order that he might go with it to his friend, who was far away. Ah, how much we love one another in the distance, whether it be the distance of space, the distance of the future or of the past, or, more than all, that double distance beyond the earth ! And thus the evening might have concluded excellently, had not something intervened. Some sharp-witted evM spirit or other had conducted the Heimlicher Blaise, and posted him out of doors as a promenader, so that the Advocate must needs stumble upon him within shot and greeting distance, just on this festival of annunciation designed only for pure souls. When his guardian had formally greeted him, though with a smile which, thank God, can never appear on a child's face, Siebenkäs politely returned his bow, but accompanied it only by pulling and twisting his hat, and not by taking it off. Lenette sought to make amends for this non-descent of the hat by a doubly profound courtesy on her part; but, .as soon as she had looked behind her, she held her husband a little curtain — that is garden- paling — lecture upon his behavior, saying, that he always purposely made his guardian more malicious. " Really, love, I could not help it," said he ; "I meant no ill, and least of all to-day." The fact was, Siebenkäs had some time before com- plained to his wife that his hat, which was of fine felt, was much injured by continually pulling it off in the little-townish market-town, and that he saw no other means of preserving it than by covering it with the armor of a stiff green oil-skin case, in order that, when packed up in this bandage and roller, he might use it 24 FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. daily for the politeness which men owe to one another out of doors, without the least wear and tear. The first walk he took after he had put on his double hat, or hat-hat, was to a grocer's, where he pulled out his fine under-hat, and changed it into six pounds of coffee, which kept the four chambers of his brain warmer than the hare's-skin. With the coadjutor alone on his head, he returned home tranquilly and undetected, and hence- forth wore the empty case in* the crookedest streets, delighting himself with the secret consciousness of no longer pulling off his true hat or going chapeau has be- fore any living soul, and thinking of other jokes that he might derive in future from his sugar-loaf. It is true, that when he had forgotten, as to-day for instance, when it was most excusable, to stiffen out the hat-case with the necessary artificial rafters, it became impossible to lift off the case straight for the purpose of greeting, and he could therefore only touch it most po- litely, like a very fine gentleman-officer ; but thus he was obliged, much against his will, to assume the character of a rude, ill-bred fellow. And he was forced to bear this imputation this very day of all others, and could not by any possible means lift his couvert from his head, — this love-letter to all who went walking. But the walk was not to conclude even with this ; for one of the above-mentioned sharp-witted evil spirits changed the scenes again so rapidly, that our gaze is directed to a new spectacle. A master-tailor, of the Catholic confession, stalked neatly dressed . before our married couple, in order, like every one else of his con- and pro-fession, to celebrate the Annunciation-festival. Unluckily the tailor had so elevated his coat-tails in the CHAPTER IX. 25 narrow path, whether from fear of the mud or in his festive joy, that the backbone or rather background of his waistcoat was plainly visible from below, which, as every one knows, is executed, like the background of paintings, with less lively colors than the nearer and more brilliant foreground of the front part of the body. " Heh ! master ! " screamed Lenette violently, " how came you by my chintz there behind ? " And, in sooth, the tailor had put aside and reserved for his own particular use as much of an Augsburg green chintz, of which, immediately on becoming queen, she had employed him to make her a pretty spencer or bodice, as, according to the rule of gratuitous wine- samples, he deemed necessary and Christian. This little sample-piece had barely sufficed for a sober background to his bright green waistcoat, for which he had selected so dark a reverse, in the hope that, as under- side of the care, it would not be seen. As the tailor still continued to walk on quietly, after Lenette had bawled out her question behind his back, as if it did not concern him in the least, — the little flame in her grew into a large flame, and, in spite of all her husband's winks and whispers, she screamed out, " It is my own chintz from Augsburg ; do you hear, Master Mouser ? and you have stolen it from me, — you, fellow ! " Hereupon the chintz-robber coolly turned round for the first time, and said, " Prove it — if you can ; but when I get home, I '11 chintz you, if there is a high gov- ernment in Kuhschnappel." She now flared up into a blaze. The prayers and com- mands of the Advocate were but as wind to her. " You riff-raff ! I '11 have my own, you villain ! " screamed she. VOL. 11. 2 26 FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. The only answer the master-tailor made to this epi- logue was by lifting up his coat-tails, with both hands, unusually high, above the endorsed waistcoat ; and, stooping a little, he retorted, " There ! " Whereupon he marched on slowly, keeping in the same focal distance from her, in order to enjoy her warinth so much the longer. Most to be pitied, on so rich a festival, was poor Siebenkäs, who, with all his juridical and theological exorcisms, was unable to cast out the devil of discord, — when, luckily, his guardian angel, Pelzstiefel, taking his evening walk, suddenly emerged from a side path. Gone, for Lenette, was the tailor, — the quarter of a yard of chintz, — gone the apple and the devil of discord, — and, like the evening blue and the evening red, the blue of her eyes and the blush of her cheeks lay cool and serene before him. Ten yards of chintz, and half as many tai- lors to boot, who had withheld it and patched it into their garments, were at this moment but as light feathers in her estimation, and not worth a word or a kreuzer, — so that Siebenkäs instantly perceived that Stiefel drew near her as the true fruit-bearing Mount of Olives, stuck full of the olive-branches of peace ; although, for devils of discord from another quarter, an oil might easily be pressed from its olives which could not be poured with impunity upon any such a matrimonial fire of contention as that which Stiefel, with his bucket, was intended to ex- tinguish. If Lenette, even out of doors, was a soft, white but- terfly which silently fluttered and hovered over the blooming paths of Pelzstiefel, in her own room, to which the Schulrath accompanied her, she became a Greek CHAPTER IX. 27 Psyche ; and I must enter it into this protocol, notwith- standing all my partiality for Lenette, or all the rest will be disbelieved, — that on this evening, alas ! she seemed to be nothing but a winged soul, with its transparent wings detached fr%n the clammy body, — a soul which, in former times, when it was yet clothed with a body, had stood in love-correspondence with the Schulrath, but which now hovered about him with horizontal wings, fanning him with her fluttering feathers, which at length, tired of floating, descended towards the material resting- pole of a body ; and, no other female one being at hand, settled upon Lenette's with closed pinions. Thus seemed Lenette ; but why was she so to-day ? Great was Stie- fel's ignorance, and joy at it ; small were both in Fir- mian. But, before I tell the cause, I will first express my pity for thee, poor man, and for thee, poor woman ! for why must either sorrows or sins always break the smooth stream of your (and our) life ? and why, like the Dnieper stream, must it have thirteen waterfalls ere it falls into the Black Sea of the grave ? But the reason why Lenette revealed her affection for the Schulrath, almost without the convent-grating of the breast, more particu- larly to-day, was because she felt her misery to-day, — her poverty. Stiefel was full of treasures of solid gold ; Firmian only of brazen ones (i. e. talents). I am quite sure she would have loved her own Siebenkäs, whom she loved as coldly as a wife before marriage, as warmly as a bride after marriage, if he had only had something to crumble and to bite. Hundreds of times does a bride fancy she loves her betrothed, while it is only in wed- lock itself that the jest becomes earnest, — for good me- tallic and physiological reasons. Lenette would have 28 FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. remained faithful enough to the Advocate in a full room and full kitchen, filled with income and twelve Herculean household labors, and even though a whole learned wreath of Pelzstiefels had beset her; for she would hourly have thought and said coldly ,•" Much obliged ! I am already provided ! " But, as it was, in such an empty room and empty kitchen, the chambers of her wo- man's heart became full: in a word, no good comes of it ; for a woman's soul is by nature a beautiful fresco- painting painted on rooms, tables, clothes, silver waiters, and upon the whole domestic establishment ; and conse- quently, all the splits and cracks of the establishment become so many in herself. A woman has much virtue, but not many virtues ; she requires a confined sphere and social forms, without the flower-stick of which these pure white flowers trail upon the dirt of the border. A man can be a citizen of the world, and when he has nothing else to take in his arms, he can press his bosom upon the whole earth, even though he cannot clasp much more of it than what is contained in a grave. But a female citizen of the world is a giantess, who goes through the earth without having anything but spectators, and without being anything but a dramatic character. I ought to have painted this whole evening much more circumstantially; for, on this evening, after so much friction, the wheels of the vis-a-vis chariot of mar- riage began to smoke, and the fire of jealousy threatened to consume them. It is with jealousy as it was with the ckicken-pox of Maria Theresa, which suffered this prin- cess to pass uninjured through twenty hospitals full of chicken-pox patients, and first attacked her beneath the Hungarian and German crown. Siebenkäs had worn CHAPTER IX. *9 the Kuhschnappel crown (of the bird) for some weeks on his head. After this evening, Stiefel, who every day took greater pleasure in basking in the rays of the continually ascend- ing sun, Lenette, came much oftener, and looked upon himself as the peace-maker, — not as the peace-breaker. It is now my duty to paint very circumstantially to the Germans the last and most important day of this year, the thirty-first of December, with its whole background and foreground, and all its accessories. Before the thirty-first of December came the Christ- mas festivals, which were to be gilded, and these changed his silver age, that followed upon the royal shot, into a brazen and wooden one. The money came to an end ; but what was still worse, poor Firmian had fretted and laughed himself ill. A man who has always passed over the snares and pitfalls of life on the upper wings of the imagination and on the lower wings of humor — such an one, when he chances to be impaled upon the ripe points of the full- blown thistles, above whose sky-blue blossoms and honey-vessels he had formerly hovered, beats about him, bleeding, hungry, and convulsively. A light-hearted, joyous man is withered by the first sunstroke of grief. To the growing heart-polypus of anxiety we must also add Firmian's fervor of authorship ; for he wished to have his selection from the Devil's Papers soon finished, in order to support his life and his lawsuit on the profits. He almost sat through whole nights, and chairs ; and sat astride upon his satirical carving-bench until he wrote himself into an illness, which the author of this history also caught, probably in a similar manner, that is, by too great liberality to the learned world. 30 FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES. He was attacked, like myself, by a sudden interruption of his breathing and of the pulsations of his heart, fol- lowed by a blank, as if the spirit of life were all passing away ; and then there was a violent rush of blood to the brain ; and this occurred most frequently when he was at his literary spinning-wheel and spool. Nevertheless, not a soul offers either of us authors a farthing of indemnification on that account. It would seem that authors are not meant to go down to posterity living, but merely their images, — as delicate trout are boiled before they are sent away. The sprig of laurel, like the lemon in the mouth of the wild boar, is not put into ours until we are shot and dished up. It would do me and my colleagues good, if a reader, who has had his heart and the ears of his heart moved by us, were only to say, " This sweet emotion of my heart was not pro- duced without an hypochondriac palpitation of theirs." Many a head is enlightened and illumined by us, with- out ever considering that pain in our own, headache, and disease of the eyes, is all the reward we get for our pains. Indeed, the reader ought to interrupt me in such satires as the present, and boast, " However much pain his satire occasions me now, he suffered more himself; for my pain at least is only mental." Health of the body only runs parallel with health of the soul, but turns aside from learning, too active an imagination, and great depth of thought ; all which belong as little to spiritual health, as stoutness, a good runner's legs, and good fen- cing-arms, to the health of the body. I often wished that all souls were poured into their bodies, or bottles, like the Pyrmont water. Its best spirit is first suffered to escape, otherwise the bottles would burst. But, if CHAPTER IX. 3» we are to believe Gorani, it seems this precaution is adopted only with the souls of the college of cardinals, many of the chapters of cathedrals, and some others, whose extraordinary spirit, which would otherwise have