Title: The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 07 - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. in Twenty Volumes
Author: Various
Language: English
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VOLUME VII


GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL

BETTINA VON ARNIM

KARL LEBRECHT IMMERMANN

KARL FERDINAND GUTZKOW

ANASTASIUS GRÜN

NIKOLAUS LENAU

EDUARD MÖRIKE

ANNETTE ELISABETH VON DROSTE-HÜLSHOFF

FERDINAND FREILIGRATH

MORITZ GRAF VON STRACHWITZ

EMANUEL GEIBEL

GEORG HERWEGH



THE GERMAN CLASSICS

Masterpieces of German Literature

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH



PATRONS' EDITION
IN TWENTY VOLUMES


ILLUSTRATED



1914



THE GERMAN PUBLICATION SOCIETY

CONTRIBUTORS AND TRANSLATORS


VOLUME VII

       *       *       *       *       *



CONTENTS OF VOLUME VII


#Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel#

The Life of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. By J. Loewenberg.

Introduction to the Philosophy of History. Translated by J. Sibree.

The Philosophy of Law. Translated by J. Loewenberg.

Introduction to the Philosophy of Art. Translated by J. Loewenberg.

#Bettina von Arnim#

The Life of Bettina von Arnim. By Henry Wood.

Goethe's Correspondence with a Child. Translated by Wallace Smith Murray.

#Karl Lebrecht Immermann#

 Immermann and His Drama _Merlin_. By Martin Schütze.

 Immermann's _Münchhausen_. By Allen Wilson Porterfield.

 The Oberhof. Translated by Paul Bernard Thomas.

#Karl Ferdinand Gutzkow#

 Gutzkow and Young Germany. By Starr Willard Cutting.

 Sword and Queue. Translated by Grace Isabel Colbron.

German Lyric Poetry from 1830 to 1848. By John S. Nollen.

#Anastasius Grün#

 A Salon Scene. Translated by Sarah T. Barrows.

#Nikolaus Lenau#

 Prayer. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.

 Sedge Songs. Translated by Kate Freiligrath-Kroeker.

 Songs by the Lake. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.

 The Postilion. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.

 To the Beloved from Afar. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.

 The Three Gipsies. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.

 My Heart. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.

#Eduard Mörike#

 An Error Chanced. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.

 A Song for Two in the Night. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.

 Early Away. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork.

 The Forsaken Maiden. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

 Weyla's Song. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

 Seclusion. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

 The Soldier's Betrothed. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

 The Old Weathercock: An Idyll. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

 Think of It, My Soul. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

 Erinna to Sappho. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

        *        *        *        *        *

Mozart's Journey from Vienna to Prague. Translated by Florence Leonard

#Annette Elizabeth von Droste-Hülshoff#

 Pentecost. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

 The House in the Heath. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

 The Boy on the Moor. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

 On the Tower. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

 The Desolate House. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

 The Jew's Beech-Tree. Translated by Lillie Winter

#Ferdinand Freiligrath#

 The Duration of Love. Translated by M.G. in _Chambers' Journal_

 The Emigrants. Translated by C.T. Brooks

 The Lion's Ride. Translated by C.T. Brooks

 The Spectre-Caravan. Translated by J.C. Mangan

 Had I at Mecca's Gate been Nourished. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

 Wild Flowers. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

 The Dead to the Living. Translated by Bayard Taylor

 Hurrah, Germania! In _Pall Mall Gazette_, London

 The Trumpet of Gravelotte. Translated by Kate Freiligrath-Kroeker

#Moritz Graf von Strachwitz#

 Douglas of the Bleeding Heart. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork

#Georg Herwegh#

The Stirrup-Cup. Translated by William G. Howard

#Emanuel Geibel#

 The Watchman's Song. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman

 The Call of the Road. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman

 Autumn Days. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman

 The Death of Tiberius. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman



ILLUSTRATIONS--VOLUME VII

Arco. By Benno Becker

Georg Wilhelm Frederich Hegel. By Schlesinger

Royal Old Museum in Berlin. By Schinkel

Bettina von Arnim

The Goethe Monument. By Bettina von Arnim

Karl Lebrecht Immermann. By C.T. Lessing

The Master of the Oberhof. By Benjamin Vautier

The Oberhof. By Benjamin Vautier

The Freemen's Tribunal. By Benjamin Vautier

Lisbeth. By Benjamin Vautier

Oswald, the Hunter. By Benjamin Vautier

Karl Ferdinand Gutzkow

The Potsdam Guard. By Adolph von Menzel

King Frederick William I of Prussia. By R. Siemering

King Frederick William I and His "Tobacco Collegium". By Adolph von Menzel

Anastasius Grün

Nikolaus Lenau

Evening on the Shore. By Hans am Ende

Eduard Mörike. By Weiss

Annette von Droste-Hülshoff

The Farm House. By Hans am Ende

Ferdinand Freiligrath. By J Hasenclever

Dusk on the Dead Sea. By Eugen Bracht

Death on the Barricade. By Alfred Rethel

George Herwegh

Emanuel Geibel. By Hader

Journeying. By Ludwig Richter



THE LIFE OF GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL

BY J. LOEWENBERG, PH.D.

Assistant in Philosophy, Harvard University


Among students of philosophy the mention of Hegel's name arouses at once
a definite emotion. Few thinkers indeed have ever so completely
fascinated the minds of their sympathetic readers, or have so violently
repulsed their unwilling listeners, as Hegel has. To his followers Hegel
is the true prophet of the only true philosophic creed, to his
opponents, he has, in Professor James's words, "like Byron's corsair,
left a name 'to other times, linked with one virtue and a thousand
crimes.'"

The feelings of attraction to Hegel or repulsion from him do not emanate
from his personality. Unlike Spinoza's, his life offers nothing to stir
the imagination. Briefly, some of his biographical data are as follows:
He was born at Stuttgart, the capital of Würtemberg, August 27, 1770.
His father was a government official, and the family belonged to the
upper middle class. Hegel received his early education at the Latin
School and the Gymnasium of his native town. At both these institutions,
as well as at the University of Tübingen which he entered in 1788 to
study theology, he distinguished himself as an eminently industrious,
but not as a rarely gifted student. The certificate which he received
upon leaving the University in 1793 speaks of his good character, his
meritorious acquaintance with theology and languages, and his meagre
knowledge of philosophy. This does not quite represent his equipment,
however, for his private reading and studies carried him far beyond the
limits of the regular curriculum. After leaving the University he spent
seven years as family tutor in Switzerland and in Frankfurt-on-the-Main.
Soon after, in 1801, we find him as _Privat-Docent_; then, in 1805, as
professor at the University of Jena. His academic activities were
interrupted by the battle of Jena. For the next two years we meet him as
an editor of a political journal at Bamberg, and from 1808 to 1816 as
rector of the Gymnasium at Nuremberg. He was then called to a
professorship of philosophy at Heidelberg. In 1818 he was called to
Berlin to fill the vacancy left by the death of Fichte. From this time
on until his death in 1831, he was the recognized dictator of one of the
most powerful philosophic schools in the history of thought.

It is no easy task to convey an adequate idea of Hegel's philosophy
within the limits of a short introduction. There is, however, one
central thought animating the vast range of his whole philosophic system
which permits of non-technical statement. This thought will be more
easily grasped, if we consider first the well-known concept of
permanence and change. They may be said to constitute the most
fundamental distinction in life and in thought. Religion and poetry have
always dwelt upon their tragic meaning. That there is nothing new under
the sun and that we are but "fair creatures of an hour" in an
ever-changing world, are equally sad reflections. Interesting is the
application of the difference between permanence and change to extreme
types of temperament. We may speak loosely of the "static" and the
"dynamic" temperaments, the former clinging to everything that is
traditional, conservative, and abiding in art, religion, philosophy,
politics, and life; the latter everywhere pointing to, and delighting
in, the fluent, the novel, the evanescent. These extreme types, by no
means rare or unreal, illustrate the deep-rooted need of investing
either permanence or change with a more fundamental value. And to the
value of the one or the other, philosophers have always endeavored to
give metaphysical expression.

[Illustration: SCHLIESINGER GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL]

Some thinkers have proclaimed change to be the deepest manifestation of
reality, while others have insisted upon something abiding behind a
world of flux. The question whether change or permanence is more
essential arose early in Greek philosophy. Heraclitus was the first one
to see in change a deeper significance than in the permanence of the
Eleatics. A more dramatic opposition than the one which ensued between
the Heracliteans and the Eleatics can scarcely be imagined--both schools
claiming a monopoly of reason and truth, both distrusting the senses,
and each charging the other with illusion. Now the significance of
Hegel's philosophy can be grasped only when we bear in mind that it was
just this profound distinction between the permanent and the changing
that Hegel sought to understand and to interpret. He saw more deeply
into the reality of movement and change than any other philosopher
before or after him.

Very early in his life, judging by the recently published writings of
his youth, Hegel became interested in various phases of movement and
change. The vicissitudes of his own inner or outer life he did not
analyze. He was not given to introspection. Romanticism and mysticism
were foreign to his nature. His temperament was rather that of the
objective thinker. Not his own passions, hopes, and fears, but those of
others invited his curiosity. With an humane attitude, the young Hegel
approached religious and historical problems. The dramatic life and
death of Jesus, the tragic fate of "the glory that was Greece and the
grandeur that was Rome," the discrepancies between Christ's teachings
and the positive Christian religion, the fall of paganism and the
triumph of the Christian Church--these were the problems over which the
young Hegel pondered. Through an intense study of these problems, he
discovered that evil, sin, longing, and suffering are woven into the
very tissue of religious and historical processes, and that these
negative elements determine the very meaning and progress of history and
religion. Thereupon he began a systematic sketch of a philosophy in
which a negative factor was to be recognized as the positive vehicle in
the development of the whole world. And thus his genius came upon a
method which revealed to him an orderly unfolding in the world with
stages of relative values, the higher developing from the lower, and all
stages constituting an organic whole.

The method which the young Hegel discovered empirically, and which the
mature rationalist applied to every sphere of human life and thought, is
the famous Dialectical Method. This method is, in general, nothing else
than the recognition of the necessary presence of a negative factor in
the constitution of the world. Everything in the world--be it a
religious cult or a logical category, a human passion or a scientific
law--is, so Hegel holds, the result of a process which involves the
overcoming of a negative element. Without such an element to overcome,
the world would indeed be an inert and irrational affair. That any
rational and worthy activity entails the encounter of opposition and the
removal of obstacles is an observation commonplace enough. A
preëstablished harmony of foreseen happy issues--a fool's paradise--is
scarcely our ideal of a rational world. Just as a game is not worth
playing when its result is predetermined by the great inferiority of the
opponent, so life without something negative to overcome loses its zest.
But the process of overcoming is not anything contingent; it operates
according to a uniform and universal law. And this law constitutes
Hegel's most central doctrine--his doctrine of Evolution.

In order to bring this doctrine into better relief, it may be well to
contrast it superficially with the Darwinian theory of transformation.
In general, Hegel's doctrine is a concept of value, Darwin's is not.
What Darwinians mean by evolution is not an unfolding of the past, a
progressive development of a hierarchy of phases, in which the later is
superior and organically related to the earlier. No sufficient criterion
is provided by them for evaluating the various stages in the course of
an evolutionary process. The biologist's world would probably have been
just as rational if the famous ape-like progenitor of man had chanced to
become his offspring-assuming an original environment favorable for such
transformation. Some criterion besides the mere external and accidental
"struggle for existence" and "survival of the fittest" must be furnished
to account for a progressive evolution. Does the phrase "survival of the
fittest" say much more than that those who happen to survive _are_ the
fittest, or that their survival proves their fitness? But that survival
itself is valuable: that it is better to be alive than dead; that
existence has a value other than itself; that what comes later in the
history of the race or of the universe is an advance over what went
before-that, in a word, the world is subject to an immanent development,
only a comprehensive and systematic philosophy can attempt to show.

The task of Hegel's whole philosophy consists in showing, by means of
one uniform principle, that the world manifests everywhere a genuine
evolution. Unlike the participants in the biological "struggle for
existence," the struggling beings of Hegel's universe never end in
slaying, but in reconciliation. Their very struggle gives birth to a new
being which includes them, and this being is "higher" in the scale of
existence, because it represents the preservation of two mutually
opposed beings. Only where conflicts are adjusted, oppositions overcome,
negations removed, is there advance, in Hegel's sense; and only where
there is a passage from the positive through its challenging negative to
a higher form inclusive of both is there a case of real development.

The ordinary process of learning by experience illustrates somewhat
Hegel's meaning. An individual finds himself, for instance, in the
presence of a wholly new situation that elicits an immediate, definite
reaction. In his ignorance, he chooses the wrong mode of behavior. As a
consequence, trouble ensues; feelings are hurt, pride is wounded,
motives are misconstrued. Embittered and disappointed with himself, he
experiences great mental sorrow. But he soon learns to see the situation
in its true light; he condemns his deed and offers to make amends. And
after the wounds begin to heal again, the inner struggles experienced
commence to assume a positive worth. They have led him to a deeper
insight into his own motives, to a better self-comprehension. And he
finally comes forth from the whole affair enriched and enlightened. Now
in this formal example, to which any content may be supplied, three
phases can be distinguished. First, we have the person as he meant to be
in the presence of the new situation, unaware of trouble. Then, his
wrong reaction engendered a hostile element. He was at war with himself;
he was not what he meant to be. And finally, he returned to himself
richer and wiser, including within himself the negative experience as a
valuable asset in the advance of his development.

This process of falling away from oneself, of facing oneself as an enemy
whom one reconciles to and includes in one's larger self, is certainly
a familiar process. It is a process just like this that develops one's
personality. However the self may be defined metaphysically, it is for
every self-conscious individual a never-ceasing battle with conflicting
motives and antagonistic desires--a never-ending cycle of endeavor,
failure, and success through the very agency of failure.

A more typical instance of this rhythmic process is Hegel's view of the
evolution of religion. Religion, in general, is based on a dualism which
it seeks to overcome. Though God is in heaven and man on earth, religion
longs to bridge the gulf which separates man and God. The religions of
the Orient emphasize God's infinity. God is everything, man is nothing.
Like an Oriental prince, God is conceived to have despotic sway over
man, his creature. Only in contemplating God's omnipotence and his own
nothingness can man find solace and peace. Opposed to this religion of
the infinite is the finite religion of Greece.

Man in Greece stands in the centre of a beautiful cosmos which is not
alien to his spirit. The gods on high, conceived after the likeness of
man, are the expression of a free people conscious of their freedom. And
the divinities worshiped, under the form of Zeus, Apollo,
Aphrodite--what are they but idealized and glorified Greeks? Can a more
complete antithesis be imagined? But Christianity becomes possible after
this struggle only, for in Christianity is contained both the principle
of Oriental infinity and the element of Hellenic finitude, for in a
being who is both God and man--a God-man--the gulf between the infinite
and finite is bridged. The Christian, like the Greek, worships
man--Jesus; but this man is one with the eternal being of the Orient.
Because it is the outcome of the Oriental and Greek opposition, the
Christian religion is, in Hegel's sense, a higher one. Viewing the
Oriental and the Hellenic religions historically in terms of the
biological "struggle for existence," the extinction of neither has
resulted. The Christian religion is the unity of these two struggling
opposites; in it they are conciliated and preserved. And this for Hegel
is genuine evolution.

That evolution demands a union of opposites seems at first paradoxical
enough. To say that Christianity is a religion of both infinity and
finitude means nothing less than that it contains a contradiction.
Hegel's view, strange as it may sound, is just this: everything includes
a contradiction in it, everything is both positive and negative,
everything expresses at once its Everlasting Yea and its Everlasting No.
The negative character of the world is the very vehicle of its progress.
Life and activity mean the triumph of the positive over the negative, a
triumph which results from absorbing and assimilating it. The myth of
the Phoenix typifies the life of reason "eternally preparing for
itself," as Hegel says, "a funeral pile, and consuming itself upon it;
but so that from its ashes it produces the new, renovated, fresh life."
That the power of negativity enters constitutively into the rationality
of the world, nay, that the rationality of the world demands negativity
in it, is Hegel's most original contribution to thought. His complete
philosophy is the attempt to show in detail that the whole universe and
everything it contains manifests the process of uniformly struggling
with a negative power, and is an outcome of conflicting, but reconciled
forces. An impressionistic picture of the world's eternal becoming
through this process is furnished by the first of Hegel's great works,
the _Phenomenology of Spirit_. The book is, in a sense, a cross-section
of the entire spiritual world. It depicts the necessary unfolding of
typical phases of the spiritual life of mankind. Logical categories,
scientific laws, historical epochs, literary tendencies, religious
processes, social, moral, and artistic institutions, all exemplify the
same onward movement through a union of opposites. There is eternal and
total instability everywhere. But this unrest and instability is of a
necessary and uniform nature, according to the one eternally fixed
principle which renders the universe as a whole organic and orderly.

Organic Wholeness! This phrase contains the rationale of the restless
flow and the evanescent being of the Hegelian world. It is but from the
point of view of the whole that its countless conflicts, discrepancies,
and contradictions can be understood. As the members of the body find
only in the body as a whole their _raison d'être_, so the manifold
expressions of the world are the expressions of one organism. A hand
which is cut off, as Hegel somewhere remarks, still looks like a hand,
and exists; but it is not a real hand. Similarly any part of the world,
severed from its connection with the whole, any isolated historical
event, any one religious view, any particular scientific explanation,
any single social body, any mere individual person, is like an amputated
bodily organ. Hegel's view of the world as organic depends upon
exhibiting the partial and abstract nature of other views. In his
_Phenomenology_ a variety of interpretations of the world and of the
meaning and destiny of life are scrutinized as to their adequacy and
concreteness. When not challenged, the point of view of common sense,
for instance, seems concrete and natural. The reaction of common sense
to the world is direct and practical, it has few questions to ask, and
philosophic speculations appear to it abstract and barren. But, upon
analysis, it is the common sense view that stands revealed as abstract
and barren. For an abstract object is one that does not fully correspond
to the rich and manifold reality; it is incomplete and one-sided.

Precisely such an object is the world of common sense. Its concreteness
is ignorance. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt
of by common sense. Its work-a-day world is not even a faint reflex of
the vast and complex universe. It sees but the immediate, the obvious,
the superficial. So instead of being concrete, it is, in truth, the very
opposite. Nor is empirical science with its predilection for "facts"
better off. Every science able to cope with a mere fragmentary aspect of
the world and from a partial point of view, is forced to ignore much of
the concrete content of even its own realm. Likewise, art and religion,
though in their views more synthetic and therefore more concrete, are
one-sided; they seek to satisfy special needs. Philosophy
alone--Hegelian philosophy--is concrete. Its aim is to interpret the
world in its entirety and complexity, its ideal is to harmonize the
demands of common sense, the interests of science, the appeal of art,
and the longing of religion into one coherent whole. This view of
philosophy, because it deals with the universe in its fulness and
variety, alone can make claim to real concreteness. Nor are the other
views false. They form for Hegel the necessary rungs on the ladder which
leads up to his own philosophic vision. Thus the Hegelian vision is
itself an organic process, including all other interpretations of life
and of the world as its necessary phases. In the immanent unfolding of
the Hegelian view is epitomized the onward march and the organic unity
of the World-Spirit itself.

The technical formulation of this view is contained in his _Logic_.
This book may indeed be said to be Hegel's master-stroke. Nothing less
is attempted in it than the proof that the very process of reasoning
manifests the same principle of evolution through a union of opposites.
Hegel was well aware, as much as recent exponents of anti-intellectualism,
that through "static" concepts we transmute and falsify the "fluent"
reality. As Professor James says "The essence of life is its continuously
changing character; but our concepts are all discontinuous and
fixed ... When we conceptualize we cut out and fix, and exclude everything
but what we have fixed. A concept means a _that-and-no-other_." But are
our concepts static, fixed, and discontinuous? What if the very
concepts we employ in reasoning should exemplify the universal flow of
life? Hegel finds that indeed to be the case. Concepts we daily use,
such as quality and quantity, essence and phenomenon, appearance and
reality, matter and force, cause and effect, are not fixed and
isolated entities, but form a continuous system of interdependent
elements. Stated dogmatically the meaning is this: As concavity and
convexity are inseparably connected, though one is the very opposite
of the other--as one cannot, so to speak, live without the other, both
being always found in union--so can no concept be discovered that is
not thus wedded to its contradiction. Every concept develops, upon
analysis, a stubbornly negative mate. No concept is statable or
definable without its opposite; one involves the other. One cannot
speak of motion without implying rest; one cannot mention the finite
without at the same time referring to the infinite; one cannot define
cause without explicitly defining effect. Not only is this true, but
concepts, when applied, reveal perpetual oscillation. Take the terms
"north" and "south." The mention of the north pole, for example,
implies at once the south pole also; it can be distinguished only by
contrast with the other, which it thus _includes_. But it is a north
pole only by _excluding_ the south pole from itself--by being itself
and not merely what the other is not. The situation is paradoxical
enough: Each aspect--the negative or the positive--of anything appears
to exclude the other, while each requires its own other for its very
definition and expression. It needs the other, and yet is independent
of it. How Hegel proves this of all concepts, cannot here be shown.
The result is that no concept can be taken by itself as a
"that-and-no-other." It is perpetually accompanied by its "other" as
man is by his shadow. The attempt to isolate any logical category and
regard it as fixed and stable thus proves futile. Each category--to
show this is the task of Hegel's _Logic_--is itself an organism, the
result of a process which takes place within its inner constitution.
And all logical categories, inevitably used in describing and
explaining our world, form one system of interdependent and
organically related parts. Hegel begins with an analysis of a concept
that most abstractly describes reality, follows it through its
countless conflicts and contradictions, and finally reaches the
highest category which, including all the foregoing categories in
organic unity, is alone adequate to characterize the universe as an
organism. What these categories are and what Hegel's procedure is in
showing their necessary sequential development, can here not even be
hinted at.

That the logical development of the categories of thought is the same as
the historical evolution of life--and _vice versa_--establishes for
Hegel the identity of thought and reality. In the history of philosophy,
the discrepancy between thought and reality has often been emphasized.
There are those who insist that reality is too vast and too deep for man
with his limited vision to penetrate; others, again, who set only
certain bounds to man's understanding, reality consisting, they hold, of
knowable and unknowable parts; and others still who see in the very
shifts and changes of philosophic and scientific opinion the delusion of
reason and the illusiveness of reality. The history of thought certainly
does present an array of conflicting views concerning the limits of
human reason. But all the contradictions and conflicts of thought prove
to Hegel the sovereignty of reason. The conflicts of reason are its own
necessary processes and expressions. Its dialectic instability is
instability that is peculiar to all reality. Both thought and reality
manifest one nature and one process. Hence reason with its "dynamic"
categories can comprehend the "fluent" reality, because it is flesh of
its flesh and bone of its bone. Hegel's bold and oft quoted words "What
is rational is real; and what is real is rational," pithily express his
whole doctrine. The nature of rationality and the nature of reality are,
for Hegel, one and the same spiritual process, the organic process of
triumphing over and conquering conflicts and contradictions. Where
reality conforms to this process it is rational (that which does not
conform to it is not reality at all, but has, like an amputated leg,
mere contingent existence); the logical formula of this process is but
an abstract account of what reality is in its essence.

The equation of the real and the rational, or the discovery of one
significant process underlying both life and reason, led Hegel to
proclaim a new kind of logic, so well characterized by Professor Royce
as the "logic of passion." To repeat what has been said above, this
means that categories are related to one another as historical epochs,
as religious processes, as social and moral institutions, nay, as human
passions, wills, and deeds are related to one another. Mutual conflict
and contradiction appear as their sole constant factor amid all their
variable conditions. The introduction of contradiction into logical
concepts as their _sine qua non_ meant indeed a revolutionary departure
from traditional logic. Prior to Hegel, logical reasoning was reasoning
in accordance with the law of contradiction, i. e., with the assumption
that nothing can have at the same time and at the same place
contradictory and inconsistent qualities or elements. For Hegel, on the
contrary, contradiction is the very moving principle of the world, the
pulse of its life. _Alle Dinge sind an sich selbst widersprechend_, as
he drastically says. The deeper reason why Hegel invests contradiction
with a positive value lies in the fact that, since the nature of
everything involves the union of discrepant elements, nothing can bear
isolation and independence. Terms, processes, epochs, institutions,
depend upon one another for their meaning, expression, and existence; it
is impossible to take anything in isolation. But this is just what one
does in dealing with the world in art or in science, in religion or in
business; one is always dealing with error and contradiction, because
one is dealing with fragments or bits of life and experience. Hence--and
this is Hegel's crowning thought--anything short of the whole universe
is inevitably contradictory. In brief, contradiction has the same sting
for Hegel as it has for any one else. Without losing its nature of
"contradictoriness," contradiction has logically this positive meaning.
Since it is an essential element of every partial, isolated, and
independent view of experience and thought, one is necessarily led to
transcend it and to see the universe in organic wholeness.

Thus, as Hegel puts his fundamental idea, "the truth is the whole."
Neither things nor categories, neither histories nor religions, neither
sciences nor arts, express or exhaust by themselves the whole essence of
the universe. The essence of the universe is the _life_ of the totality
of all things, not their _sum_. As the life of man is not the sum of his
bodily and mental functions, the whole man being present in each and all
of these, so must the universe be conceived as omnipresent in each of
its parts and expressions. This is the significance of Hegel's
conception of the universe as an organism. The World-Spirit--Hegel's
God--constitutes, thinks, lives, wills, and is _all_ in unity. The
evolution of the universe is thus the evolution of God himself.

The task of philosophy, then, as Hegel conceives it, is to portray in
systematic form the evolution of the World-Spirit in all its necessary
ramifications. These ramifications themselves are conceived as
constituting complete wholes, such as logic, nature, mind, society,
history, art, religion, philosophy, so that the universe in its onward
march through these is represented as a Whole of Wholes--_ein Kreis von
Kreisen_. In Hegel's complete philosophy each of these special spheres
finds its proper place and elaborate treatment.

Whether Hegel has well or ill succeeded in the task of exhibiting in
each and all of these spheres the one universal movement, whether or no
he was justified in reading into logic the same kind of development
manifested by life, or in making life conform to one logical
formula--these and other problems should arouse an interest in Hegel's
writings. The following selections may give some glimpse of their
spirit.

In conclusion, some bare suggestions must suffice to indicate the reason
for Hegel's great influence. Hegel has partly, if not wholly, created
the modern historical spirit. Reality for him, as even this inadequate
sketch has shown, is not static, but is essentially a process. Thus
until the history of a thing is known, the thing is not understood at
all. It is the becoming and not the being of the world that constitutes
its reality. And thus in emphasizing the fact that everything has a
"past," the insight into which alone reveals its significant meaning,
Hegel has given metaphysical expression and impetus to the awakening
modern historical sense. His idea of evolution also epitomizes the
spirit of the nineteenth century with its search everywhere for geneses
and transformations--in religion, philology, geology, biology. Closely
connected with the predominance of the historical in Hegel's philosophy
is its explicit critique of individualism and particularism. According
to his doctrine, the individual as individual is meaningless. The
particular--independent and unrelated--is an abstraction. The isolation
of anything results in contradiction. It is only the whole that animates
and gives meaning to the individual and the particular. This idea of
subordinating the individual to universal ends, as embodied particularly
in Hegel's theory of the State, has left its impress upon political,
social, and economic theories of his century. Not less significant is
the glorification of reason of which Hegel's complete philosophy is an
expression. Reason never spoke with so much self-confidence and
authority as it did in Hegel. To the clear vision of reason the universe
presents no dark or mysterious corners, nay, the very negations and
contradictions in it are marks of its inherent rationality. But Hegel's
rationalism is not of the ordinary shallow kind. Reason he himself
distinguishes from understanding. The latter is analytical, its function
is to abstract, to define, to compile, to classify. Reason, on the other
hand, is synthetic, constructive, inventive. Apart from Hegel's special
use of the term, it is this synthetic and creative and imaginative
quality pervading his whole philosophy which has deepened men's insight
into history, religion, and art, and which has wielded its general
influence on the philosophic and literary constellation of the
nineteenth century.

       *       *       *       *       *



GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL

INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY[1] (1837)

TRANSLATED BY J. SIBREE, M.A.


The subject of this course of lectures is the Philosophical History of
the World. And by this must be understood, not a collection of general
observations respecting it, suggested by the study of its records and
proposed to be illustrated by its facts, but universal history itself.
To gain a clear idea, at the outset, of the nature of our task, it seems
necessary to begin with an examination of the other methods of treating
history. The various methods may be ranged under three heads:

   I. Original History.
  II. Reflective History.
 III. Philosophical History.

I. Of the first kind, the mention of one or two distinguished names will
furnish a definite type. To this category belong Herodotus, Thucydides,
and other historians of the same order, whose descriptions are for the
most part limited to deeds, events, and states of society, which they
had before their eyes and whose spirit they shared. They simply
transferred what was passing in the world around them to the realm of
re-presentative intellect; an external phenomenon was thus translated
into an internal conception. In the same way the poet operates upon the
material supplied him by his emotions, projecting it into an image for
the conceptive faculty.

These original historians did, it is true, find statements and
narratives of other men ready to hand; one person cannot be an
eye-and-ear witness of everything. But, merely as an ingredient, they
make use only of such aids as the poet does of that heritage of an
already-formed language to which he owes so much; historiographers bind
together the fleeting elements of story, and treasure them up for
immortality in the temple of Mnemosyne. Legends, ballad-stories, and
traditions must be excluded from such original history; they are but dim
and hazy forms of historical apprehension, and therefore belong to
nations whose intelligence is but half awakened. Here, on the contrary,
we have to do with people fully conscious of what they were and what
they were about. The domain of reality--actually seen, or capable of
being so-affords a very different basis in point of firmness from that
fugitive and shadowy element in which were engendered those legends and
poetic dreams whose historical prestige vanishes as soon as nations have
attained a mature individuality.

Such original historians, then, change the events, the deeds, and the
states of society with which they are conversant, into an object for the
conceptive faculty; the narratives they leave us cannot, therefore, be
very comprehensive in their range. Herodotus, Thucydides, Guicciardini,
may be taken as fair samples of the class in this respect. What is
present and living in their environment is their proper material. The
influences that have formed the writer are identical with those which
have molded the events that constitute the matter of his story. The
author's spirit and that of the actions he narrates are one and the
same. He describes scenes in which he himself has been an actor, or at
any rate an interested spectator. It is short periods of time,
individual shapes of persons and occurrences, single, unreflected
traits, of which he makes his picture. And his aim is nothing more than
the presentation to posterity of an image of events as clear as that
which he himself possessed in virtue of personal observation, or
lifelike descriptions. Reflections are none of his business, for he
lives in the spirit of his subject; he has not attained an elevation
above it. If, as in Cæsar's case, he belongs to the exalted rank of
generals or statesmen, it is the prosecution of his own aims that
constitutes the history.

Such speeches as we find in Thucydides, for example, of which we can
positively assert that they are not _bona fide_ reports, would seem to
make against our statement that a historian of his class presents us no
reflected picture, that persons and people appear in his works in
_propria persona_ ... Granted that such orations as those of
Pericles--that most profoundly accomplished, genuine, noble
statesman--were elaborated by Thucydides, it must yet be maintained that
they were not foreign to the character of the speaker. In the orations
in question, these men proclaim the maxims adopted by their countrymen
and formative of their own character; they record their views of their
political relations and of their moral and spiritual nature, and publish
the principles of their designs and conduct. What the historian puts
into their mouths is no supposititious system of ideas, but an
uncorrupted transcript of their intellectual and moral habitudes.

Of these historians whom we must make thoroughly our own, with whom we
must linger long if we would live with their respective nations and
enter deeply into their spirit--of these historians to whose pages we
may turn, not for the purposes of erudition merely, but with a view to
deep and genuine enjoyment, there are fewer than might be imagined.
Herodotus, the Father, namely the Founder, of History, and Thucydides
have been already mentioned. Xenophon's _Retreat of the Ten Thousand_ is
a work equally original. Cæsar's _Commentaries_ are the simple
masterpiece of a mighty spirit; among the ancients these annalists were
necessarily great captains and statesmen. In the Middle Ages, if we
except the bishops, who were placed in the very centre of the political
world, the monks monopolize this category as naïve chroniclers who were
as decidedly isolated from active life as those elder annalists had been
connected with it. In modern times the relations are entirely altered.
Our culture is essentially comprehensive, and immediately changes all
events into historical representations. Belonging to the class in
question, we have vivid, simple, clear narrations--especially of
military transactions--which might fairly take their place with those of
Cæsar. In richness of matter and fulness of detail as regards strategic
appliances and attendant circumstances, they are even more instructive.
The French "Memoirs" also fall under this category. In many cases these
are written by men of mark, though relating to affairs of little note;
they not unfrequently contain such a large amount of anecdotal matter
that the ground they occupy is narrow and trivial. Yet they are often
veritable masterpieces in history, as are those of Cardinal Retz, which,
in fact, trench on a larger historical field. In Germany such masters
are rare, Frederick the Great in his _Histoire de mon temps_ being an
illustrious exception. Writers of this order must occupy an elevated
position, for only from such a position is it possible to take an
extensive view of affairs--to see everything. This is out of the
question for him who from below merely gets a glimpse of the great world
through a miserable cranny.

II. The second kind of history we may call the _Reflective._ It is
history whose mode of representation is not really confined by the limits
of the time to which it relates, but whose spirit transcends the
present. In this second order a strongly marked variety of species may
be distinguished.

1. It is the aim of the investigator to gain a view of the entire
history of a people, of a country, or of the world in short, what we
call universal history. In this case the working up of the historical
material is the main point. The workman approaches his task with his own
spirit--a spirit distinct from that of the element he is to manipulate.

Here a very important consideration is the principles to which the
author refers the bearing and motives of the actions and events which he
describes, as well as those which determine the form of his narrative.
Among us Germans this reflective treatment and the display of ingenuity
which it affords assume a manifold variety of phases. Every writer of
history proposes to himself an original method. The English and French
confess to general principles of historical composition, their viewpoint
being more nearly that of cosmopolitan or national culture. Among us,
each labors to invent a purely individual point of view; instead of
writing history, we are always beating our brains to discover how
history ought to be written.

This first kind of Reflective history is most nearly akin to the
preceding, when it has no further aim than to present the annals of a
country complete. Such compilations (among which may be mentioned the
works of Livy, Diodorus Siculus, Johannes von Müller's _History of
Switzerland_) are, if well performed, highly meritorious. Among the best
of the kind may be included such annalists as approach those of the
first-class writers who give so vivid a transcript of events that the
reader may well fancy himself listening to contemporaries and
eye-witnesses. But it often happens that the individuality of tone which
must characterize a writer belonging to a different culture is not
modified in accordance with the periods which such a record must
traverse. The spirit of the writer may be quite apart from that of the
times of which he treats. Thus Livy puts into the mouths of the old
Roman kings, consuls, and generals, such orations as would be delivered
by an accomplished advocate of the Livian era, and which strikingly
contrast with the genuine traditions of Roman antiquity--witness, for
example, the fable of Menenius Agrippa. In the same way he gives us
descriptions of battles as if he had been an actual spectator; but their
salient points would serve well enough for battles in any period, for
their distinctness contrasts, even in his treatment of chief points of
interest, with the want of connection and the inconsistency that prevail
elsewhere. The difference between such a compiler and an original
historian may be best seen by comparing Polybius himself with the style
in which Livy uses, expands, and abridges his annals in those periods of
which Polybius' account has been preserved. Johannes von Müller, in the
endeavor to remain faithful in his portraiture to the times he
describes, has given a stiff, formal, pedantic aspect to his history. We
much prefer the narratives we find in old Tschudi; all is more naïve and
natural than when appearing in the garb of a fictitious and affected
archaism.

A history which aspires to traverse long periods of time, or to be
universal, must indeed forego the attempt to give individual
representations of the past as it actually existed. It must foreshorten
its pictures by abstractions, and this includes not merely the omission
of events and deeds, but whatever is involved in the fact that Thought
is, after all, the most trenchant epitomist. A battle, a great victory,
a siege no longer maintains its original proportions, but is put off
with a mere allusion. When Livy, for instance, tells us of the war with
the Volsci, we sometimes have the brief announcement: "This year war was
carried on with the Volsci."

2. A second species of Reflective history is what we may call the
pragmatical. When we have to deal with the past and occupy ourselves
with a remote world, a present rises into being for the mind--produced
by its own activity, as the reward of its labor. The occurrences are,
indeed, various; but the idea which pervades them-their deeper import
and connection--is one. This takes the occurrence out of the category of
the past and makes it virtually present. Pragmatical (didactic)
reflections, though in their nature decidedly abstract, are truly and
indefeasibly of the present, and quicken the annals of the dead past
with the life of today. Whether, indeed, such reflections are truly
interesting and enlivening depends on the writer's own spirit. Moral
reflections must here be specially noticed--the moral teaching expected
from history; the latter has not infrequently been treated with a direct
view to the former. It may be allowed that examples of virtue elevate
the soul and are applicable in the moral instruction of children for
impressing excellence upon their minds. But the destinies of people and
states, their interests, relations, and the complicated tissue of their
affairs, present quite another field. Rulers, statesmen, nations, are
wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience
offers in history; yet what experience and history teach is this-that
peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, nor
have they acted on principles deduced from it. Each period is involved
in such peculiar circumstances, exhibits a condition of things so
strictly idiosyncratic, that its conduct must be regulated by
considerations connected with itself, and itself alone. Amid the
pressure of great events a general principle gives no help.

It is useless to revert to similar circumstances in the past. The pallid
shades of memory struggle in vain with the life and freedom of the
present. Looked at in this light nothing can be shallower than the
oft-repeated appeal to Greek and Roman examples during the French
Revolution; nothing is more diverse than the genius of those nations and
that of our times. Johannes von Müller, in his _Universal History_ as
also in his _History of Switzerland_, had such moral aims in view. He
designed to prepare a body of political doctrines for the instruction of
princes, governments, and peoples (he formed a special collection of
doctrines and reflections, frequently giving us in his correspondence
the exact number of apothegms which he had compiled in a week); but he
cannot assert that this part of his labor was among the best he
accomplished. It is only a thorough, liberal, comprehensive view of
historical relations (such for instance, as we find in Montesquieu's
_L'Esprit des Lois_) that can give truth and interest to reflections of
this order. One Reflective history, therefore, supersedes another. The
materials are patent to every writer; each is prone to believe himself
capable of arranging and manipulating them, and we may expect that each
will insist upon his own spirit as that of the age in question.
Disgusted by such reflective histories, readers have often returned with
pleasure to narratives adopting no particular point of view--which
certainly have their value, although, for the most part, they offer only
material for history. We Germans are content with such; but the French,
on the other hand, display great genius in reanimating bygone times and
in bringing the past to bear upon the present condition of things.

3. The third form of Reflective history is the _Critical_. This deserves
mention as preeminently the mode, now current in Germany, of treating
history. It is not history itself that is here presented. We might more
properly designate it as a History of History--a criticism of historical
narratives and an investigation of their truth and credibility. Its
peculiarity, in point of fact as well as intention, consists in the
acuteness with which the writer extorts from the records something
which was not in the matters recorded. The French have given us much
that is profound and judicious in this class of composition, but have
not endeavored to make a merely critical procedure pass for substantial
history; their judgments have been duly presented in the form of
critical treatises. Among us, the so-called "higher criticism," which
reigns supreme in the domain of philology, has also taken possession of
our historical literature; it has been the pretext for introducing all
the anti-historical monstrosities that a vain imagination could suggest.
Here we have the other method of making the past a living reality; for
historical data subjective fancies are substituted, whose merit is
measured by their boldness--that is, the scantiness of the particulars
on which they are based and the peremptoriness with which they
contravene the best established facts of history.

4. The last species of Reflective history announces its fragmentary
character on its very face. It adopts an abstract position; yet, since
it takes general points of view (such, for instance, as the History of
Art, of Law, of Religion), it forms a transition to the Philosophical
History of the World. In our time this form of the history of ideas has
been especially developed and made prominent. Such branches of national
life stand in close relation to the entire complex of a people's annals;
and the question of chief importance in relation to our subject is,
whether the connection of the whole is exhibited in its truth and
reality, or is referred to merely external relations. In the latter
case, these important phenomena (art, law, religion, etc.), appear as
purely accidental national peculiarities. It must be remarked, if the
position taken is a true one, that when Reflective history has advanced
to the adoption of general points of view, these are found to constitute
not a merely external thread, a superficial series, but are the inward
guiding soul of the occurrences and actions that occupy a nation's
annals. For, like the soul-conductor, Mercury, the Idea is, in truth,
the leader of peoples and of the world; and Spirit, the rational and
necessitated will of that conductor, is and has been the director of
the events of the world's history. To become acquainted with Spirit in
this, its office of guidance, is the object of our present undertaking.

III. The third kind of history is the _Philosophical_. No explanation
was needed of the two previous classes; their nature was self-evident.
It is otherwise with the last, which certainly seems to require an
exposition or justification. The most general definition that can be
given is, that the philosophy of history means nothing but the
thoughtful consideration of it. Thought is, indeed, essential to
humanity. It is this that distinguishes us from the brutes. In
sensation, cognition, and intellection, in our instincts and volitions,
as far as they are truly human, thought is a constant element. To insist
upon thought in this connection with history may, however, appear
unsatisfactory. In this science it would seem as if thought must be
subordinate to what is given, to the realities of fact--that this is its
basis and guide; while philosophy dwells in the region of self-produced
ideas, without reference to actuality. Approaching history thus
prepossessed, speculation might be supposed to treat it as a mere
passive material, and, so far from leaving it in its native truth, to
force it into conformity with a tyrannous idea, and to construe it, as
the phrase is, _a priori_. But as it is the business of history simply
to adopt into its records what is and has been-actual occurrences and
transactions; and since it remains true to its character in proportion
as it strictly adheres to its data, we seem to have in philosophy a
process diametrically opposed to that of the historiographer. This
contradiction, and the charge consequently brought against speculation,
shall be explained and confuted. We do not, however, propose to correct
the innumerable special misrepresentations, whether trite or novel, that
are current respecting the aims, the interests, and the modes of
treating history and its relation to philosophy.

The only thought which philosophy brings with it to the contemplation
of history, is the simple conception of Reason; that Reason is the
sovereign of the world; that the history of the world, therefore,
presents us with a rational process. This conviction and intuition is a
hypothesis in the domain of history as such; in that of philosophy it is
no hypothesis. It is there proved by speculative cognition that
Reason--and this term may here suffice us, without investigating the
relation sustained by the universe to the Divine Being--is substance, as
well as Infinite Power; its own Infinite Material is that underlying all
the natural and spiritual life which it originates, as also the Infinite
Form--that which sets this material in motion. On the one hand, Reason
is the substance of the universe--viz., that by which and in which all
reality has its being and subsistence. On the other hand, it is the
infinite energy of the universe; since Reason is not so powerless as to
be incapable of producing anything but a mere ideal, a mere
intention--having its place outside reality, nobody knows where;
something separate and abstract in the heads of certain human beings. It
is the _infinite complex of things_, their entire essence and truth. It
is its own material which it commits to its own active energy to work
up--not needing, as finite action does, the conditions of an external
material of given means from which it may obtain its support and the
objects of its activity. It supplies its own nourishment and is the
object of its own operations. While it is exclusively its own basis of
existence and absolute final aim, it is also the energizing power
realizing this aim, developing it not only in the phenomena of the
natural, but also of the spiritual universe--the history of the world.
That this "Idea" or "Reason" is the _true_, the _eternal_, the
absolutely _powerful_ essence; that it reveals itself in the world, and
that in that world nothing else is revealed but this and its honor and
glory--is the thesis which, as we have said, has been proved in
philosophy and is here regarded as demonstrated.

In entering upon this course of lectures, I may fairly presume, at
least, the existence in those of my hearers who are not acquainted with
philosophy, of a belief in Reason, a desire, a thirst for acquaintance
with it. It is, in fact, the wish for rational insight, not the ambition
to amass a mere heap of acquirements, that should be presupposed in
every case as possessing the mind of the learner in the study of
science. If the clear idea of Reason is not already developed in our
minds, in beginning the study of universal history, we should at least
have the firm, unconquerable faith that Reason does exist there, and
that the world of intelligence and conscious volition is not abandoned
to chance, but must show itself in the light of the self-cognizant Idea.
Yet I am not obliged to make such a preliminary demand upon your faith.
What I have said thus provisionally, and what I shall have further to
say, is, even in reference to our branch of science, not to be regarded
as hypothetical, but as a summary view of the whole, the result of the
investigation we are about to pursue--a result which happens to be known
to _me_, because I have traversed the entire field. It is only an
inference from the history of the world that its development has been a
rational process, that the history in question has constituted the
rational necessary course of the World-Spirit--that Spirit whose nature
is always one and the same, but which unfolds this, its one nature, in
the phenomena of the world's existence. This must, as before stated,
present itself as the ultimate result of history; but we have to take
the latter as it is. We must proceed historically--empirically. Among
other precautions we must take care not to be misled by professed
historians who (especially among the Germans, and those enjoying a
considerable authority) are chargeable with the very procedure of which
they accuse the philosopher--introducing _a priori_ inventions of their
own into the records of the past. It is, for example, a widely current
fiction that there was an original primeval people, taught directly by
God, endowed with perfect insight and wisdom, possessing a thorough
knowledge of all natural laws and spiritual truth; that there have been
such or such sacerdotal peoples; or, to mention a more specific claim,
that there was a Roman Epos, from which the Roman historians derived the
early annals of their city, etc....

I will mention only two phases and points of view that concern the
generally diffused conviction that Reason has ruled, and is still ruling
in the world, and consequently in the world's history; because they give
us, at the same time, an opportunity for more closely investigating the
question that presents the greatest difficulty, and for indicating a
branch of the subject which will have to be enlarged on in the sequel.

1. One of these points is that passage in history which informs us that
the Greek Anaxagoras was the first to enunciate the doctrine that
[GREEK: nous],--Understanding in general, or Reason, governs the world.
It is not intelligence as self-conscious Reason--not a spirit as such
that is meant; and we must clearly distinguish these from each other.
The movement of the solar system takes place according to unchangeable
laws. These laws are Reason, implicit in the phenomena in question; but
neither the sun nor the planets which revolve around it according to
these laws can be said to have any consciousness of them.

A thought of this kind--that nature is an embodiment of Reason, that is,
unchangeably subordinate to universal laws--appears nowise striking or
strange to us. We are accustomed to such conceptions and find nothing
extraordinary in them; and I have mentioned this extraordinary
occurrence partly to show how history teaches that ideas of this kind,
which may seem trivial to us, have not always been in the world; that,
on the contrary, such a thought makes an epoch in the annals of human
intelligence. Aristotle says of Anaxagoras, as the originator of the
thought in question, that he appeared as a sober man among the drunken.
Socrates adopted the doctrine from Anaxagoras, and it forthwith became
the ruling idea in philosophy--except in the school of Epicurus, who
ascribed all events to chance. "I was delighted with the sentiment,"
Plato makes Socrates say, "and hoped I had found a teacher who would
show me Nature in harmony with Reason, who would demonstrate in each
particular phenomenon its specific aim, and, in the whole, the grand
object of the universe. I would not have surrendered this hope for a
great deal. But how very much was I disappointed, when, having zealously
applied myself to the writings of Anaxagoras, I found that he adduces
only external causes, such as atmosphere, ether, water, and the like."
It is evident that the defect which Socrates complains of respecting
Anaxagoras' doctrine does not concern the principle itself, but the
shortcoming of the propounder in applying it to nature in the concrete.
Nature is not deduced from that principle; the latter remains, in fact,
a mere abstraction, inasmuch as the former is not comprehended and
exhibited as a development of it--an organization produced by and from
Reason. I wish, at the very outset, to call your attention to the
important difference between a conception, a principle, a truth limited
to an abstract form, and its determinate application and concrete
development. This distinction affects the whole fabric of philosophy;
and among other bearings of it there is one to which we shall have to
revert at the close of our view of universal history, in investigating
the aspect of political affairs in the most recent period.

We have next to notice the rise of this idea that Reason directs the
world, in connection with a further application of it well known to
us--in the form, viz., of the religious truth that the world is not
abandoned to chance and external contingent causes, but that a
Providence controls it. I stated above that I would not make a demand on
your faith in regard to the principle announced. Yet I might appeal to
your belief in it, in this religious aspect, if as a general rule, the
nature of philosophical science allowed it to attach authority to
presuppositions. To put it in another shape--this appeal is forbidden,
because the science of which we have to treat proposes itself to furnish
the proof, not indeed of the abstract truth of the doctrine, but of its
correctness as compared with facts. The truth, then, that a Providence
(that of God) presides over the events of the world consorts with the
proposition in question; for Divine Providence is wisdom, endowed with
an infinite power, which realizes its aim, viz., the absolute rational
design of the world. Reason is thought conditioning itself with perfect
freedom. But a difference--rather a contradiction--will manifest itself
between this belief and our principle, just as was the case in reference
to the demand made by Socrates in the case of Anaxagoras' dictum. For
that belief is similarly indefinite; it is what is called a belief in a
general providence, and is not followed out into definite application,
or displayed in its bearing on the grand total--the entire course of
human history. But to explain history is to depict the passions of
mankind, the genius, the active powers, that play their part on the
great stage; and the providentially determined process which these
exhibit constitutes what is generally called the "plan" of Providence.
Yet it is this very plan which is supposed to be concealed from our
view, which it is deemed presumption even to wish to recognize. The
ignorance of Anaxagoras as to how intelligence reveals itself in actual
existence was ingenuous. Neither in his consciousness, nor in that of
Greece at large, had that thought been further expanded. He had not
attained the power to apply his general principle to the concrete, so as
to deduce the latter from the former; it was Socrates who took the first
step in comprehending the union of the concrete with the universal.
Anaxagoras, then, did not take up a hostile position toward such an
application; the common belief in Providence does; at least it opposes
the use of the principle on a large scale, and denies the possibility of
discerning the plan of Providence. In isolated cases this plan is
supposed to be manifest. Pious persons are encouraged to recognize in
particular circumstances something more than mere chance, to acknowledge
the guiding hand of God; for instance, when help has unexpectedly come
to an individual in great perplexity and need. But these instances of
providential design are of a limited kind, and concern the
accomplishment of nothing more than the desires of the individual in
question. But in the history of the world, the individuals we have to do
with are peoples, totalities that are States. We cannot, therefore, be
satisfied with what we may call this "peddling" view of Providence, to
which the belief alluded to limits itself. Equally unsatisfactory is the
merely abstract, undefined belief in a Providence, when that belief is
not brought to bear upon the details of the process which it conducts.
On the contrary our earnest endeavor must be directed to the recognition
of the ways of Providence, the means it uses, and the historical
phenomena in which it manifests itself; and we must show their
connection with the general principle above mentioned. But in noticing
the recognition of the plan of Divine Providence generally, I have
implicitly touched upon a prominent question of the day, viz., that of
the possibility of knowing God; or rather--since public opinion has
ceased to allow it to be a matter of question--the doctrine that it is
impossible to know God. In direct contravention of what is commanded in
holy Scripture as the highest duty--that we should not merely love, but
know God--the prevalent dogma involves the denial of what is there
said--namely, that it is the Spirit, _der Geist_, that leads into truth,
knows all things, penetrates even into the deep things of the Godhead.
While the Divine Being is thus placed beyond our knowledge and outside
the limit of all human things, we have the convenient license of
wandering as far as we list, in the direction of our own fancies. We are
freed from the obligation to refer our knowledge to the Divine and True.
On the other hand, the vanity and egoism which characterize our
knowledge find, in this false position, ample justification; and the
pious modesty which puts far from itself the knowledge of God can well
estimate how much furtherance thereby accrues to its own wayward and
vain strivings. I have been unwilling to leave out of sight the
connection between our thesis--that Reason governs and has governed the
world--and the question of the possibility of a knowledge of God,
chiefly that I might not lose the opportunity of mentioning the
imputation against philosophy of being shy of noticing religious truths,
or of having occasion to be so; in which is insinuated the suspicion
that it has anything but a clear conscience in the presence of these
truths. So far from this being the case, the fact is that in recent
times philosophy has been obliged to defend the domain of religion
against the attacks of several theological systems. In the Christian
religion God has revealed Himself--that is, He has given us to
understand what He is, with the result that He is no longer a concealed
or secret existence. And this possibility of knowing Him, thus afforded
us, renders such knowledge a duty. God wishes for His children no
narrow-hearted souls or empty heads, but those whose spirit is of itself
indeed, poor, but rich in the knowledge of Him, and who regard this
knowledge of God as the only valuable possession. That development of
the thinking spirit, which has resulted from the revelation of the
Divine Being as its original basis, must ultimately advance to the
intellectual comprehension of what was presented, in the first instance,
to feeling and imagination. The time must eventually come for
understanding that rich product of active Reason which the history of
the world offers to us. It was for a while the fashion to profess
admiration for the wisdom of God, as displayed in animals, plants, and
isolated occurrences. But if it be allowed that Providence manifests
itself in such objects and forms of existence, why not also in universal
history? This is deemed too great a matter to be thus regarded. But
divine wisdom, i. e., Reason, is one and the same in the great as in the
little; and we must not imagine God to be too weak to exercise his
wisdom on the grand scale. Our intellectual striving aims at realizing
the conviction that what was intended by eternal wisdom is actually
accomplished in the domain of existent, active Spirit, as well as in
that of mere Nature. Our mode of treating the subject is, in this
aspect, a Theodicaea--a justification of the ways of God--which Leibnitz
attempted metaphysically in his method, i. e., in indefinite abstract
categories--so that the ill that is found in the world may be
comprehended, and the thinking Spirit reconciled with the fact of the
existence of evil. Indeed, nowhere is such a harmonizing view more
pressingly demanded than in universal history; and it can be attained
only by recognizing the positive existence, in which that negative
element is a subordinate and vanquished nullity. On the one hand, the
ultimate design of the world must be perceived, and, on the other, the
fact that this design has been actually realized in it, and that evil
has not been able permanently to establish a rival position. But this
conviction involves much more than the mere belief in a superintending
[GREEK: nous] or in "Providence." "Reason," whose sovereignty over the
world has been maintained, is as indefinite a term as "Providence,"
supposing the term to be used by those who are unable to characterize it
distinctly, to show wherein it consists, so as to enable us to decide
whether a thing is rational or irrational. An adequate definition of
Reason is the first desideratum; and whatever boast may be made of
strict adherence to it in explaining phenomena, without such a
definition we get no farther than mere words. With these observations we
may proceed to the second point of view that has to be considered in
this Introduction.

2. The inquiry into the essential destiny of Reason, as far as it is
considered in reference to the world, is identical with the question
_What is the ultimate design of the world?_ And the expression implies
that that design is destined to be realized. Two points of consideration
suggest themselves: first, the _import_ of this design--its abstract
definition; secondly, its _realization_.

It must be observed at the outset that the phenomenon we
investigate--universal history--belongs to the realm of "spirit." The
term "World" includes both physical and psychical nature. Physical
nature also plays its part in the world's history, and attention will
have to be paid to the fundamental natural relations thus involved. But
Spirit, and the course of its development, is our substantial object.
Our task does not require us to contemplate nature as a rational system
in itself--though in its own proper domain it proves itself such-but
simply in its relation to _Spirit_. On the stage on which we are
observing it--universal history--Spirit displays itself in its most
concrete reality. Notwithstanding this (or rather for the very purpose
of comprehending the general principles which this, its form of concrete
reality, embodies) we must premise some abstract characteristics of the
nature of Spirit.

We have therefore to mention here

  (1) The abstract characteristics of the nature of
  Spirit.

  (2) What means Spirit uses in order to realize its
  Idea.

  (3) Lastly, we must consider the shape which the
  perfect embodiment of Spirit assumes--the
  State.

(1) The nature of Spirit may be understood by a glance at its direct
opposite--Matter. As the essence of Matter is gravity, so, on the other
hand, we may affirm that the substance, the essence of Spirit is freedom.
All will readily assent to the doctrine that Spirit, among other
properties, is also endowed with freedom; but philosophy teaches that
all the qualities of Spirit exist only through freedom; that all are but
means for attaining freedom; that all seek and produce this and this
alone. It is a result of speculative philosophy that freedom is the sole
truth of Spirit. Matter possesses gravity in virtue of its tendency toward
a central point. It is essentially composite, consisting of parts that
_exclude_ one another. It seeks its unity; and therefore exhibits itself
as self-destructive, as verging toward its opposite--an indivisible point.
If it could attain this, it would be Matter no longer; it would have
perished. It strives after the realization of its Idea; for in unity it
exists ideally. Spirit, on the contrary, may be defined as that which has
its centre in itself. It has not a unity outside itself, but has already
found it; it exists in and with itself. Matter has its essence out of
itself; Spirit is self-contained existence (Bei-sich-selbst-seyn). Now
this is freedom, exactly. For if I am dependent, my being is referred to
something else which I am not; I cannot exist independently of something
external. I am free, on the contrary, when my existence depends upon
myself. This self-contained existence of Spirit is none other than
self-consciousness-consciousness of one's own being. Two things must be
distinguished in consciousness; first, the fact _that I know_;
secondly, _what I know_. In self-consciousness these are merged in
one; for Spirit knows itself. It involves an appreciation of its own
nature, as also an energy enabling it to realize itself; to make itself
actually what it is potentially. According to this abstract definition it
may be said of universal history that it is the exhibition of Spirit in
the process of working out the knowledge of that which it is potentially.
And as the germ bears in itself the whole nature of the tree and the taste
and form of its fruits, so do the first traces of Spirit virtually contain
the whole of that history. The Orientals have not attained the knowledge
that Spirit--Man _as such_--is free; and because they do not know
this, they are not free. They only know that one is free; but on this
very account, the freedom of that one is only caprice; ferocity--brutal
recklessness of passion, or a mildness and tameness of the desires, which
is itself only an accident of nature--is mere caprice like the former.
That _one_ is therefore only a despot, not a _free man_. The
consciousness of freedom first arose among the Greeks, and therefore they
were free; but they, and the Romans likewise, knew only that _some_ are
free, not man as such. Even Plato and Aristotle did not know this. The
Greeks, therefore, had slaves, and their whole life and the maintenance
of their splendid liberty was implicated with the institution of
slavery--a fact, moreover, which made that liberty, on the one hand,
only an accidental, transient and limited growth, and on the other, a
rigorous thraldom of our common nature--of the Human. The Germanic
nations, under the influence of Christianity, were the first to attain
the consciousness that man is free; that it is the freedom of Spirit
which constitutes its essence. This consciousness arose first in
religion, the inmost region of Spirit; but to introduce the principle
into the various relations of the actual world involves a more extensive
problem than its simple implantation--a problem whose solution and
application require a severe and lengthened process of culture. In
proof of this we may note that slavery did not cease immediately on the
reception of Christianity. Still less did liberty predominate in States;
or governments and constitutions adopt a rational organization, or
recognize freedom as their basis. That application of the principle to
political relations, the thorough molding and interpenetration of the
constitution of society by it, is a process identical with history
itself. I have already directed attention to the distinction here
involved, between a principle as such and its application--that is, its
introduction and fulfilment in the actual phenomena of Spirit and life.
This is a point of fundamental importance in our science, and one which
must be constantly respected as essential. And in the same way as this
distinction has attracted attention in view of the Christian principle
of self-consciousness--freedom, it also shows itself as an essential one
in view of the principle of freedom generally. The history of the world
is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom--progress
whose development, according to the necessity of its nature, it is our
business to investigate.

The general statement given above of the various grades in the
consciousness of freedom-which we applied in the first instance to the
fact that the Eastern nations knew only that one is free, the Greek and
Roman world only that _some_ are free, while we know that all men
absolutely (man as man) are free--supplies us with the natural division
of universal history, and suggests the mode of its discussion. This is
remarked, however, only incidentally and anticipatively; some other
ideas must be first explained.

The destiny of the spiritual world, and--since this is the substantial
world, while the physical remains subordinate to it, or, in the language
of speculation, has no truth as against the spiritual--the final cause
of the world at large we allege to be the consciousness of its own
freedom on the part of Spirit, and, _ipso facto_, the reality of that
freedom. But that this term "freedom" is, without further
qualification, an indefinite, incalculable, ambiguous term, and that,
while what it represents is the _ne plus ultra_ of attainment, it is
liable to an infinity of misunderstandings, confusions, and errors, and
to become the occasion for all imaginable excesses--has never been more
clearly known and felt than in modern times. Yet, for the present, we
must content ourselves with the term itself without further definition.
Attention was also directed to the importance of the infinite difference
between a principle in the abstract and its realization in the concrete.
In the process before us the essential nature of freedom--which involves
absolute necessity--is to be displayed as coming to a consciousness of
itself (for it is in its very nature, self-consciousness) and thereby
realizing its existence. Itself is its own object of attainment and the
sole aim of Spirit. This result it is at which the process of the
world's history has been continually aiming, and to which the sacrifices
that have ever and anon been laid on the vast altar of the earth,
through the long lapse of ages, have been offered. This is the only aim
that sees itself realized and fulfilled, the only pole of repose amid
the ceaseless change of events and conditions, and the sole efficient
principle that pervades them. This final aim is God's purpose with the
world; but God is the absolutely perfect Being, and can, therefore, will
nothing other than Himself--His own will. The nature of His will--that
is His nature itself--is what we here call the idea of freedom,
translating the language of religion into that of thought. The question,
then, which we may next put, is What means does this principle of
freedom use for its realization? This is the second point we have to
consider.

(2) The question of the means by which freedom develops itself to a
world conducts us to the phenomenon of history itself. Although freedom
is, primarily, an undeveloped idea, the means it uses are external and
phenomenal, presenting themselves in history to our sensuous vision. The
first glance at history convinces us that the actions of men proceed
from their needs, their passions, when the occasion seems to call for
it--is that what we call principle, aim, destiny, or the nature and idea
of Spirit, is something merely general and abstract. Principle--Plan of
Existence--Law--is a hidden, undeveloped essence which, as such--however
true in itself--is not completely real. Aims, principles, etc., have a
place in our thoughts, in our subjective design only, but not as yet in
the sphere of reality. That which exists for itself only is a
possibility, a potentiality, but it has not emerged into existence. A
second element must be introduced in order to produce actuality--viz.,
actuation, realization; and its motive power is the will--the activity
of man in the widest sense. It is only by this activity that that Idea,
as well as abstract characteristics generally, are realized, actualized;
for of themselves they are powerless. The motive power that puts them in
operation and gives them determinate existence, is the need, instinct,
inclination, and passion of man. That some conception of mine should be
developed into act and existence, is my earnest desire; I wish to assert
my personality in connection with it; I wish to be satisfied by its
execution. If I am to exert myself for any object, it must in some way
or other be _my_ object. In the accomplishment of such or such designs I
must at the same time find _my_ satisfaction; although the purpose for
which I exert myself includes a complication of results, many of which
have no interest for me. This is the absolute right of personal
existence--to find _itself_ satisfied in its activity and labor. If men
are to interest themselves for anything, they must, so to speak, have
part of their existence involved in it and find their individuality
gratified by its attainment. Here a mistake must be avoided. We intend
blame, and justly impute it as a fault, when we say of an individual
that he is "interested" (in taking part in such or such
transactions)--that is, seeks only his private advantage. In
reprehending this we find fault with him for furthering his personal
aims without any regard to a more comprehensive design, of which he
takes advantage to promote his own interest or which, with this view,
he even sacrifices. But he who is active in promoting an object is not
simply "interested," but interested in that object itself. Language
faithfully expresses this distinction. Nothing therefore happens,
nothing is accomplished, unless the individuals concerned seek their own
satisfaction in the issue. They are particular units of society--that
is, they have special needs, instincts, and interests generally,
peculiar to themselves. Among these needs are not only such as we
usually call necessities--the stimuli of individual desire and
volition--but also those connected with individual views and
convictions; or--to use a term expressing less decision--leanings of
opinion, supposing the impulses of reflection, understanding, and
reason, to have been awakened. In these cases people demand, if they are
to exert themselves in any direction, that the object should commend
itself to them, that, in point of opinion-whether as to its goodness,
justice, advantage, profit they should be able to "enter into it"
(_dabei sein_). This is a consideration of special importance in our
age, when people are less than formerly influenced by reliance on
others, and by authority; when, on the contrary, they devote their
activities to a cause on the ground of their own understanding, their
independent conviction and opinion.

We assert then that nothing has been accomplished without interest on
the part of the actors; and--if interest be called passion, inasmuch as
the whole individuality, to the neglect of all other actual or possible
interests and claims, is devoted to an object with every fibre of
volition, concentrating all its desires and powers upon it--we may
affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished
without passion. Two elements, therefore, enter into the object of our
investigation--the first the Idea, the second the complex of human
passions; the one the warp, the other the woof of the vast arras-web of
universal history. The concrete mean and union of the two is liberty,
under the conditions of morality in a State. We have spoken of the idea
of freedom as the nature of Spirit, and the absolute goal of history.
Passion is regarded as a thing of sinister aspect, as more or less
immoral. Man is required to have no passions. Passion, it is true, is
not quite the suitable word for what I wish to express. I mean here
nothing more than human activity as resulting from private interests,
special, or if you will, self-seeking designs--with this qualification,
that the whole energy of will and character is devoted to their
attainment, and that other interests (which would in themselves
constitute attractive aims), or, rather, all things else, are sacrificed
to them. The object in question is so bound up with the man's will that
it entirely and alone determines the "hue of resolution" and is
inseparable from it; it has become the very essence of his volition. For
a person is a specific existence--not man in general (a term to which no
real existence corresponds); but a particular human being. The term
"character" likewise expresses this idiosyncrasy of will and
intelligence. But character comprehends all peculiarities whatever, the
way in which a person conducts himself in private relations, etc., and
is not limited to his idiosyncrasy in its practical and active phase. I
shall, therefore, use the term "passion," understanding thereby the
particular bent of character, as far as the peculiarities of volition
are not limited to private interest but supply the impelling and
actuating force for accomplishing deeds shared in by the community at
large. Passion is, in the first instance, the subjective and therefore
the formal side of energy, will, and activity--leaving the object or aim
still undetermined. And there is a similar relation of formality to
reality in merely individual conviction, individual views, individual
conscience. It is always a question of essential importance--what is the
purport of my conviction, what the object of my passion--in deciding
whether the one or the other is of a true and substantial nature.
Conversely, if it is so, it will inevitably attain actual existence--be
realized.

From this comment on the second essential element in the historical
embodiment of an aim, we infer--glancing at the institution of the State
in passing--that a State is well constituted and internally powerful when
the private interest of its citizens is one with the common interest of
the State, when the one finds its gratification and realization in the
other--a proposition in itself very important. But in a State many
institutions must be adopted, and much political machinery invented,
accompanied by appropriate political arrangements--necessitating long
struggles of the understanding before what is really appropriate can be
discovered--involving, moreover, contentions with private interest and
passions and a tedious discipline of the latter in order to bring about
the desired harmony. The epoch when a State attains this harmonious
condition marks the period of its bloom, its virtue, its vigor, and its
prosperity. But the history of mankind does not begin with a conscious
aim of any kind, as is the case with the particular circles into which
men form themselves of set purpose. The mere social instinct implies a
conscious purpose of security for life and property; and when society has
been constituted this purpose becomes more comprehensive. The history of
the world begins with its general aim--the realization of the idea of
Spirit--only in an implicit form (_an sich_), that is, as nature--a
hidden, most profoundly hidden, unconscious instinct; and the whole
process of history (as already observed) is directed to rendering this
unconscious impulse a conscious one. Thus appearing in the form of
merely natural existence, natural will--that which has been called the
subjective side--physical craving, instinct, passion, private interest,
as also opinion and subjective conception, spontaneously present
themselves at the very commencement. This vast congeries of volitions,
interests, and activities, constitute the instruments and means of the
World-Spirit for attaining its object, bringing it to consciousness and
realizing it. And this aim is none other than finding itself--coming to
itself--and contemplating itself in concrete actuality. But that those
manifestations of vitality on the part of individuals and peoples, in
which they seek and satisfy their own purposes, are, at the same time,
the means and instruments of a higher and broader purpose of which they
know nothing-which they realize unconsciously might be made a matter of
question-rather has been questioned, and, in every variety of form,
negatived, decried, and contemned as mere dreaming and "philosophy." But
on this point I announced my view at the very outset and asserted our
hypothesis--which, however, will appear in the sequel in the form of a
legitimate inference--and our belief that Reason governs the world and
has consequently governed its history. In relation to this independently
universal and substantial existence all else is subordinate, subservient
to it, and the means for its development. The union of universal
abstract existence generally with the individual--the subjective--that
this alone is truth belongs to the department of speculation and is
treated in this general form in logic. But in the process of the world's
history itself--as still incomplete--the abstract final aim of history
is not yet made the distinct object of desire and interest. While these
limited sentiments are still unconscious of the purpose they are
fulfilling, the universal principle is implicit in them and is realizing
itself through them. The question also assumes the form of the union of
freedom and necessity, the latent abstract process of Spirit being
regarded as necessity, while that which exhibits itself in the conscious
will of men, as their interest, belongs to the domain of freedom. As the
metaphysical connection (i. e., the connection in the Idea) of these
forms of thought, belongs to logic, it would be out of place to analyze
it here. The chief and cardinal points only shall be mentioned.

Philosophy shows that the Idea advances to an infinite antithesis--that,
namely, between the Idea in its free, universal form, in which it exists
for itself, and the contrasted form of abstract introversion, reflection
on itself, which is formal existence-for-self, personality, formal
freedom, such as belongs to Spirit only. The universal Idea exists thus
as the substantial totality of things on the one side, and as the
abstract essence of free volition on the other. This reflection of the
mind on itself is individual self-consciousness--the polar-opposite of
the Idea in its general form and therefore existing in absolute
limitation. This polar-opposite is consequently limitation,
particularization for the universal absolute being; it is the side of
the definite existence, the sphere of its formal reality, the sphere of
the reverence paid to God. To comprehend the absolute connection of this
antithesis is the profound task of metaphysics. This limitation
originates all forms of particularity of whatever kind. The formal
volition (of which we have spoken) wills itself and desires to make its
own personality valid in all that it purposes and does; even the pious
individual wishes to be saved and happy. This pole of the antithesis,
existing for itself, is--in contrast with the Absolute Universal
Being--a special separate existence, taking cognizance of speciality
only and willing that alone. In short, it plays its part in the region
of mere phenomena. This is the sphere of particular purposes, in
effecting which individuals exert themselves on behalf of their
individuality--give it full play and objective realization. This is also
the sphere of happiness and its opposite. He is happy who finds his
condition suited to his special character, will, and fancy, and so
enjoys himself in that condition. The history of the world is not the
theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for
they are periods of harmony--periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.
Reflection of self--the freedom above described--is abstractly defined
as the formal element of the activity of the absolute Idea. The
realizing activity of which we have spoken is the middle term of the
syllogism, one of whose extremes is the universal essence, the _Idea_,
which reposes in the penetralia of Spirit; and the other, the complex of
external things--objective matter. That activity is the medium by which
the universal latent principle is translated into the domain of
objectivity.

I will endeavor to make what has been said more vivid and clear by
examples. The building of a house is, in the first instance, a
subjective aim and design. On the other hand we have, as means, the
several substances required for the work--iron, wood, stones. The
elements are made use of in working up this material--fire to melt the
iron, wind to blow the fire, water to set the wheels in motion in order
to cut the wood, etc. The result is that the wind, which has helped to
build the house, is shut out by the house; so also are the violence of
rains and floods and the destructive powers of fire, so far as the house
is made fire-proof. The stones and beams obey the law of gravity--press
downward--and so high walls are carried up. Thus the elements are made
use of in accordance with their nature, and yet are made to coöperate
for a product by which their operation is limited. It is thus that the
passions of men are gratified; they develop themselves and their aims in
accordance with their natural tendencies and build up the edifice of
human society, thus fortifying a position for Right and Order _against
themselves_.

The connection of events above indicated involves also the fact that, in
history, an additional result is commonly produced by human actions
beyond what they aim at and obtain what they immediately recognize and
desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is
thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not
present to their consciousness and not included in their design. An
analogous example is offered in the case of a man who, from a feeling of
revenge--perhaps not an unjust one, but produced by injury on the
other's part--burns that other man's house. A connection is immediately
established between the deed itself, taken abstractly, and a train of
circumstances not directly included in it. In itself it consisted in
merely bringing a small flame into contact with a small portion of a
beam. Events not involved in that simple act follow of themselves. The
part of the beam which was set afire is connected with its remote
portions, the beam itself is united with the woodwork of the house
generally, and this with other houses, so that a wide conflagration
ensues which destroys the goods and chattels of many other persons
besides those belonging to the person against whom the act of revenge
was first directed, perhaps even costs not a few men their lives. This
lay neither in the deed intrinsically nor in the design of the man who
committed it. But the action has a further general bearing. In the
design of the doer it was only revenge executed against an individual in
the destruction of his property, but it is, moreover, a crime, and that
involves punishment also. This may not have been present to the mind of
the perpetrator, still less in his intention; but his deed itself, the
general principles it calls into play, its substantial content, entail
it. By this example I wish only to impress on you the consideration
that, in a simple act, something further may be implicated than lies in
the intention and consciousness of the agent. The example before us
involves, however, the additional consideration that the substance of
the act, consequently, we may say, the act itself, recoils upon the
perpetrator--reacts upon him with destructive tendency. This union of
the two extremes--the embodiment of a general idea in the form of direct
reality and the elevation of a speciality into connection with universal
truth--is brought to pass, at first sight, under the conditions of an
utter diversity of nature between the two and an indifference of the one
extreme toward the other. The aims which the agents set before them are
limited and special; but it must be remarked that the agents themselves
are intelligent thinking beings. The purport of their desires is
interwoven with general, essential considerations of justice, good,
duty, etc.; for mere desire--volition in its rough and savage
forms--falls not within the scene and sphere of universal history. Those
general considerations, which form at the same time a norm for directing
aims and actions, have a determinate purport; for such an abstraction
as "good for its own sake," has no place in living reality. If men are
to act they must not only intend the Good, but must have decided for
themselves whether this or that particular thing is a good. What special
course of action, however, is good or not, is determined, as regards the
ordinary contingencies of private life, by the laws and customs of a
State; and here no great difficulty is presented. Each individual has
his position; he knows, on the whole, what a just, honorable course of
conduct is. As to ordinary, private relations, the assertion that it is
difficult to choose the right and good--the regarding it as the mark of
an exalted morality to find difficulties and raise scruples on that
score--may be set down to an evil or perverse will, which seeks to evade
duties not in themselves of a perplexing nature, or, at any rate, to an
idly reflective habit of mind--where a feeble will affords no sufficient
exercise to the faculties--leaving them therefore to find occupation
within themselves and to expand themselves on moral self-adulation.

It is quite otherwise with the comprehensive relations with which
history has to do. In this sphere are presented those momentous
collisions between existing, acknowledged duties, laws, and rights, and
those contingencies which are adverse to this fixed system, which assail
and even destroy its foundations and existence, and whose tenor may
nevertheless seem good--on the large scale, advantageous--yes, even
indispensable and necessary. These contingencies realize themselves in
history; they involve a general principle of a different order from that
on which depends the permanence of a people or a State. This principle
is an essential phase in the development of the creating Idea, of Truth
striving and urging toward (consciousness of) itself. Historical
men--world-famous individuals--are those in whose aims such a general
principle lies.

Cæsar, in danger of losing a position--not perhaps at that time of
superiority, yet at least of equality with the others who were at the
head of the State, and of succumbing to those who were just on the point
of becoming his enemies--belongs essentially to this category. These
enemies--who were at the same time pursuing their own personal aims--had
on their side the form of the constitution, and the power conferred by
an appearance of justice. Cæsar was contending for the maintenance of
his position, honor, and safety; and, since the power of his opponents
included the sovereignty over the provinces of the Roman Empire, his
victory secured for him the conquest of that entire Empire; and he thus
became--though leaving the form of the constitution--the autocrat of the
State. What secured for him the execution of a design, which in the
first instance was of negative import--the autocracy of Rome--was,
however, at the same time an independently necessary feature in the
history of Rome and of the world. It was not, then, his private gain
merely, but an unconscious impulse that occasioned the accomplishment of
that for which the time was ripe. Such are all great historical men,
whose own particular aims involve those large issues which are the will
of the World-Spirit. They may be called heroes, inasmuch as they have
derived their purposes and their vocation, not from the calm, regular
course of things, sanctioned by the existing order, but from a concealed
fount--one which has not attained to phenomenal, present existence--from
that inner Spirit, still hidden beneath the surface, which, impinging on
the outer world as on a shell, bursts it in pieces, because it is
another kernel than that which belonged to the shell in question. They
are men, therefore, who appear to draw the impulse of their life from
themselves, and whose deeds have produced a condition of things and a
complex of historical relations which appear to be only their own
interest and their own work.

Such individuals had no consciousness of the general Idea they were
unfolding, while prosecuting their aims; on the contrary, they were
practical, political men. But, at the same time, they were thinking men,
who had an insight into the requirements of the time--_what was ripe
for development_. This was the very truth for their age, for their
world--the species next in order, so to speak, and which was already
formed in the womb of time. It was theirs to know this nascent
principle, the necessary, directly sequent step in progress, which their
world was to take, to make this their aim, and to expend their energy in
promoting it. World-historical men--the heroes of an epoch--must,
therefore, be recognized as its clear-sighted ones; their deeds, their
words are the best of that time. Great men have formed purposes to
satisfy themselves, not others. Whatever prudent designs and counsels
they might have learned from others would be the more limited and
inconsistent features in their career; for it was they who best
understood affairs, from whom others learned, and approved, or at least
acquiesced in, their policy. For that Spirit which had taken this fresh
step in history is the inmost soul of all individuals, but in a state of
unconsciousness which the great men in question aroused. Their fellows,
therefore, follow these soul-leaders; for they feel the irresistible
power of their own inner Spirit thus embodied. If we go on to cast a
look at the fate of these world-historical persons, whose vocation it
was to be the agents of the World-Spirit, we shall find it to have been
no happy one. They attained no calm enjoyment; their whole life was
labor and trouble; their whole nature was naught else but their
master-passion. When their object is attained they fall off like empty
husks from the kernel. They die early, like Alexander; they are
murdered, like Cæsar; transported to St. Helena, like Napoleon. This
fearful consolation--that historical men have not enjoyed what is called
happiness, and of which only private life (and this may be passed under
various external circumstances) is capable--this consolation those may
draw from history who stand in need of it; and it is craved by envy,
vexed at what is great and transcendent, striving, therefore, to
depreciate it and to find some flaw in it. Thus in modern times it has
been demonstrated _ad nauseam_ that princes are generally unhappy on
their thrones; in consideration of which the possession of a throne is
tolerated, and men acquiesce in the fact that not themselves but the
personages in question are its occupants. The free man, we may observe,
is not envious, but gladly recognizes what is great and exalted, and
rejoices that it exists.

It is in the light of those common elements which constitute the
interest and therefore the passions of individuals that these historical
men are to be regarded. They are great men, because they willed and
accomplished something great--not a mere fancy, a mere intention, but
whatever met the case and fell in with the needs of the age. This mode
of considering them also excludes the so-called "psychological" view,
which, serving the purpose of envy most effectually, contrives so to
refer all actions to the heart, to bring them under such a subjective
aspect, that their authors appear to have done everything under the
impulse of some passion, mean or grand, some morbid craving, and, on
account of these passions and cravings, to have been immoral men.
Alexander of Macedon partly subdued Greece, and then Asia; therefore he
was possessed by a morbid craving for conquest. He is alleged to have
acted from a craving for fame, for conquest; and the proof that these
were the impelling motives is that he did what resulted in fame. What
pedagogue has not demonstrated of Alexander the Great, of Julius Cæsar,
that they were instigated by such passions, and were consequently
immoral men? From this the conclusion immediately follows that he, the
pedagogue, is a better man than they, because he has not such
passions--a proof of which lies in the fact that he does not conquer
Asia, or vanquish Darius and Porus, but, while he enjoys life himself,
lets others enjoy it too. These psychologists are particularly fond of
contemplating those peculiarities of great historical figures which
appertain to them as private persons. Man must eat and drink; he
sustains relations to friends and acquaintances; he has passing
impulses and ebullitions of temper. "No man is a hero to his
valet-de-chambre," is a well-known proverb; I have added--and Goethe
repeated it ten years later--"but not because the former is no hero, but
because the latter is a valet." He takes off the hero's boots, assists
him to bed, knows that he prefers champagne, etc. Historical personages
waited upon in historical literature by such psychological valets come
poorly off; they are brought down by these their attendants to a level
with, or, rather, a few degrees below the level of, the morality of such
exquisite discerners of spirits. The Thersites of Homer who abuses the
kings is a standing figure for all times. Blows--that is, beating with a
solid cudgel--he does not get in every age, as in the Homeric one; but
his envy, his egotism, is the thorn which he has to carry in his flesh;
and the undying worm that gnaws him is the tormenting consideration that
his excellent views and vituperations remain absolutely without result
in the world. But our satisfaction at the fate of Thersitism also, may
have its sinister side.

A world-famous individual is not so unwise as to indulge a variety of
wishes to divide his regards. He is devoted to the one aim, regardless
of all else. It is even possible that such men may treat other great,
even sacred interests, inconsiderately--conduct which is deserving of
moral reprehension. But so mighty a form must trample down many innocent
flowers and crush to pieces many an object in its path.

The special interest of passion is thus inseparable from the active
development of a general principle; for it is from the special and
determinate, and from its negation, that the universal results.
Particularity contends with its like, and some loss is involved in the
issue. It is not the general idea that is implicated in opposition and
combat, and that is exposed to danger. It remains in the background,
untouched and uninjured. This may be called the cunning of reason--that
it sets the passions to work for itself, while that which develops its
existence through such impulsion pays the penalty and suffers loss. For
it is _phenomenal_ being that is so treated, and, of this, a portion is
of no value, another is positive and real. The particular is, for the
most part, of too trifling value as compared with the general;
individuals are sacrificed and abandoned. The Idea pays the penalty of
determinate existence and of corruptibility, not from itself, but from
the passions of individuals.

But though we might tolerate the idea that individuals, their desires,
and the gratification of them, are thus sacrificed, and their happiness
given up to the empire of chance, to which it belongs, and that, as a
general rule, individuals come under the category of means to an
ulterior end, there is one aspect of human individuality which we should
hesitate to regard in that subordinate light, even in relation to the
highest, since it is absolutely no subordinate element, but exists in
those individuals as inherently eternal and divine--I mean morality,
ethics, religion. Even when speaking of the realization of the great
ideal aim by means of individuals, the subjective element in them--their
interest and that of their cravings and impulses, their views and
judgments, though exhibited as the merely formal side of their
existence--was spoken of as having an infinite right to be consulted.
The first idea that presents itself in speaking of means is that of
something external to the object, yet having no share in the object
itself. But merely natural things--even the commonest lifeless
objects--used as means, must be of such a kind as adapts them to their
purpose; they must possess something in common with it. Human beings,
least of all, sustain the bare external relation of mere means to the
great ideal aim. Not only do they, in the very act of realizing it, make
it the occasion of satisfying personal desires whose purport is diverse
from that aim, but they share in that ideal aim itself, and are, for
that very reason, objects of their own existence--not formally merely,
as the world of living beings generally is, whose individual life is
essentially subordinate to that of man and its properly used up as an
instrument. Men, on the contrary, are objects of existence to
themselves, as regards the intrinsic import of the aim in question. To
this order belongs that in them which we would exclude from the category
of mere means--morality, ethics, religion. That is to say, man is an
object of existence in himself only in virtue of the Divine that is in
him--the quality that was designated at the outset as Reason, which, in
view of its activity and power of self-determination, was called
freedom. And we affirm--without entering at present on the proof of the
assertion--that religion, morality, etc., have their foundation and
source in that principle, and so are essentially elevated above all
alien necessity and chance. And here we must remark that individuals, to
the extent of their freedom, are responsible for the depravation and
enfeeblement of morals and religion. This is the seal of the absolute
and sublime destiny of man--that he knows what is good and what is evil;
that his destiny is his very ability to will either good or evil--in one
word, that he is the subject of moral imputation, imputation not only of
evil, but of good, and not only concerning this or that particular
matter, and all that happens _ab extra_, but also the good and evil
attaching to his individual freedom. The brute alone is simply innocent.
It would, however, demand an extensive explanation--as extensive as the
analysis of moral freedom itself--to preclude or obviate all the
misunderstandings which the statement that what is called innocence
imports the entire unconsciousness of evil--is wont to occasion.

In contemplating the fate which virtue, morality, even piety experience
in history, we must not fall into the Litany of Lamentations, that the
good and pious often, or for the most part, fare ill in the world, while
the evil-disposed and wicked prosper. The term prosperity is used in a
variety of meanings--riches, outward honor, and the like. But in
speaking of something which in and for itself constitutes an aim of
existence, that so-called well or ill faring of these or those isolated
individuals cannot be regarded as an essential element in the rational
order of the universe. With more justice than happiness--or a fortunate
environment for individuals--it is demanded of the grand aim of the
world's existence that it should foster, nay, involve the execution and
ratification of good, moral, righteous purposes. What makes men morally
discontented (a discontent, by the way, on which they somewhat pride
themselves), is that they do not find the present adapted to the
realization of aims which they hold to be right and just--more
especially, in modern times, ideals of political constitutions; they
contrast unfavorably things as they are, with their idea of things as
they ought to be. In this case it is not private interest nor passion
that desires gratification, but reason, justice, liberty; and, equipped
with this title, the demand in question assumes a lofty bearing and
readily adopts a position, not merely of discontent, but of open revolt
against the actual condition of the world. To estimate such a feeling
and such views aright, the demands insisted upon and the very dogmatic
opinions asserted must be examined. At no time so much as in our own,
have such general principles and notions been advanced, or with greater
assurance. If, in days gone by, history seems to present itself as a
struggle of passions, in our time--though displays of passion are not
wanting--it exhibits, partly a predominance of the struggle of notions
assuming the authority of principles, partly that of passions and
interests essentially subjective but under the mask of such higher
sanctions. The pretensions thus contended for as legitimate in the name
of that which has been stated as the ultimate aim of Reason, pass
accordingly for absolute aims--to the same extent as religion, morals,
ethics. Nothing, as before remarked, is now more common than the
complaint that the ideals which imagination sets up are not realized,
that these glorious dreams are destroyed by cold actuality. These ideals
which, in the voyage of life, founder on the rocks of hard reality may
be in the first instance only subjective and belong to the idiosyncrasy
of the individual, imagining himself the highest and wisest. Such do not
properly belong to this category. For the fancies which the individual
in his isolation indulges cannot be the model for universal reality,
just as universal law is not designed for the units of the mass. These
as such may, in fact, find their interests thrust decidedly into the
background. But by the term "Ideal" we also understand the ideal of
Reason--of the good, of the true. Poets--as, for instance,
Schiller--have painted such ideals touchingly and with strong emotion,
and with the deeply melancholy conviction that they could not be
realized. In affirming, on the contrary, that the Universal Reason does
realize itself, we have indeed nothing to do with the individual,
empirically regarded; that admits of degrees of better and worse, since
here chance and speciality have received authority from the Idea to
exercise their monstrous power; much, therefore, in particular aspects
of the grand phenomenon, might be criticized. This subjective
fault-finding--which, however, only keeps in view the individual and its
deficiency, without taking notice of Reason pervading the whole--is
easy; and inasmuch as it asserts an excellent intention with regard to
the good of the whole, and seems to result from a kindly heart, it feels
authorized to give itself airs and assume great consequence. It is
easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in States, and in
Providence, than to see their real import and value. For in this merely
negative fault-finding a proud position is taken--one which overlooks
the object without having entered into it, without having comprehended
its positive aspect. Age generally makes men more tolerant; youth is
always discontented. The tolerance of age is the result of the ripeness
of a judgment which, not merely as the result of indifference, is
satisfied even with what is inferior, but, more deeply taught by the
grave experience of life, has been led to perceive the substantial,
solid worth of the object in question. The insight, then, to which--in
contradistinction to those ideals--philosophy is to lead us, is, that
the real world is as it ought to be--that the truly good, the universal
divine Reason, is not a mere abstraction, but a vital principle capable
of realizing itself. This Good, this Reason, in its most concrete form,
is God. God governs the world; the actual working of His government, the
carrying out of His plan, is the history of the world. This plan
philosophy strives to comprehend; for only that which has been developed
as the result of it possesses _bona fide_ reality. That which does not
accord with it is negative, worthless existence. Before the pure light
of this divine Idea--which is no mere Ideal--the phantom of a world
whose events are an incoherent concourse of fortuitous circumstances,
utterly vanishes. Philosophy wishes to discover the substantial purport,
the real side of the divine idea, and to justify the so much despised
reality of things; for Reason is the comprehension of the divine work.
But as to what concerns the perversion, corruption, and ruin of
religious, ethical, and moral purposes and states of society generally,
it must be affirmed that, in their essence, these are infinite and
eternal, but that the forms they assume may be of a limited order, and
consequently may belong to the domain of mere nature and be subject to
the sway of chance; they are therefore perishable and exposed to decay
and corruption. Religion and morality--in the same way as inherently
universal essences--have the peculiarity of being present in the
individual soul, in the full extent of their Idea, and therefore truly
and really; although they may not manifest themselves in it _in extenso_
and are not applied to fully developed relations. The religion, the
morality of a limited sphere of life, for instance that of a shepherd or
a peasant, in its intensive concentration and limitation to a few
perfectly simple relations of life has infinite worth--the same worth as
the religion and morality of extensive knowledge and of an existence
rich in the compass of its relations and actions. This inner focus, this
simple region of the claims of subjective freedom, the home of
volition, resolution, and action, the abstract sphere of
conscience--that which comprises the responsibility and moral value of
the individual--remains untouched and is quite shut out from the noisy
din of the world's history--including not merely external and temporal
changes but also those entailed by the absolute necessity inseparable
from the realization of the idea of freedom itself. But, as a general
truth, this must be regarded as settled, that whatever in the world
possesses claims as noble and glorious has nevertheless a higher
existence above it. The claim of the World-Spirit rises above all
special claims.

These observations may suffice in reference to the means which the
World-Spirit uses for realizing its Idea. Stated simply and abstractly,
this mediation involves the activity of personal existences in whom
Reason is present as their absolute, substantial being, but a basis, in
the first instance, still obscure and unknown to them. But the subject
becomes more complicated and difficult when we regard individuals not
merely in their aspect of activity, but more concretely, in conjunction
with a particular manifestation of that activity in their religion and
morality--forms of existence which are intimately connected with Reason
and share in its absolute claims. Here the relation of mere means to an
end disappears, and the chief bearings of this seeming difficulty in
reference to the absolute aim of Spirit have been briefly considered.

(3) The third point to be analyzed is, therefore: What is the object to
be realized by these means--that is, What is the form it assumes in the
realm of reality? We have spoken of means; but, in carrying out of a
subjective, limited aim, we have also to take into consideration the
element of a material either already present or which has to be
procured. Thus the question would arise: What is the material in which
the Ideal of Reason is wrought out? The primary answer would be:
Personality itself, human desires, subjectivity generally. In human
knowledge and volition as its material element Reason attains positive
existence. We have considered subjective volition where it has an object
which is the truth and essence of reality--viz., where it constitutes a
great world-historical passion. As a subjective will, occupied with
limited passions, it is dependent, and can gratify its desires only
within the limits of this dependence. But the subjective will has also a
substantial life, a reality, in which it moves in the region of
essential being and has the essential itself as the object of its
existence. This essential being is the union of the subjective with the
rational will; it is the moral whole, the _State_, which is that form of
reality in which the individual has and enjoys his freedom, but on the
condition of his recognizing, believing in, and willing that which is
common to the whole. And this must not be understood as if the
subjective will of the social unit attained its gratification and
enjoyment through that common will, as if this were a means provided for
its benefit, as if the individual, in his relations to other
individuals, thus limited his freedom, in order that this universal
limitation, the mutual constraint of all, might secure a small space of
liberty for each. Rather, we affirm, are law, morality, government, and
these alone, the positive reality and completion of freedom. Freedom of
a low and limited order is mere caprice, which finds its exercise in the
sphere of particular and limited desires.

Subjective volition, passion, is that which sets men in activity, that
which effects "practical" realization. The Idea is the inner spring of
action; the State is the actually existing, realized moral life. For it
is the unity of the universal, essential will, with that of the
individual; and this is "morality." The individual living in this unity
has a moral life and possesses a value that consists in this
substantiality alone. Sophocles in his _Antigone_ says, "The divine
commands are not of yesterday, nor of today; no, they have an infinite
existence, and no one could say whence they came." The laws of morality
are not accidental, but are the essentially rational. It is the very
object of the State that what is essential in the practical activity of
men and in their dispositions should be duly recognized; that it should
have a manifest existence and maintain its position. It is the absolute
interest of Reason that this moral whole should exist; and herein lies
the justification and merit of heroes who have founded States, however
rude these may have been. In the history of the world, only those
peoples can come under our notice which form a State; for it must be
understood that the State is the realization of freedom, i. e., of the
absolute final aim, and that it exists for its own sake. It must further
be understood that all the worth which the human being possesses--all
spiritual reality--he possesses only through the State. For his
spiritual reality consists in this, that his own essence, Reason, is
objectively present to him, that it possesses objective immediate
existence for him. Thus only is he fully conscious; thus only is he a
partaker of morality, of a just and moral social and political life. For
truth is the unity of the universal and subjective will; and the
universal is to be found in the State, in its laws, and in its universal
and rational arrangements. The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on
earth. We have in it, therefore, the object of history in a more
definite shape than before--that in which freedom obtains objectivity
and lives in the enjoyment of this objectivity. For law is the
objectivity of Spirit, volition in its true form. Only that will which
obeys law is free; for it obeys itself--it is independent and,
therefore, free. When the State or our country constitutes a community
of existence, when the subjective will of man submits to laws, the
contradiction between liberty and necessity vanishes. The rational has
necessary existence, as being the reality and substance of things, and
we are free in recognizing it as law and following it as the substance
of our own being. The objective and the subjective will are then
reconciled and present one identical homogeneous whole. For the
morality (_Sittlichkeit_) of the State is not of that ethical
(_moralische_) reflective kind, in which one's own conviction bears
sway; the latter is rather the peculiarity of the modern time, while the
true antique morality is based on the principle of abiding by one's duty
(to the State at large). An Athenian citizen did what was required of
him, as it were from instinct; but if I reflect on the object of my
activity I must have the consciousness that my will has been called into
exercise. But morality is duty--substantial right, a "second nature," as
it has been justly called; for the first nature of man is his primary,
merely animal, existence.

The development _in extenso_ of the idea of the State belongs to the
philosophy of jurisprudence; but it must be observed that in the
theories of our time various errors are current respecting it, which
pass for established truths and have become fixed prejudices. We will
mention only a few of them, giving prominence to such as have a
reference to the object of our history.

The error which first meets us is the direct opposite of our principle
that the State presents the realization of freedom--the opinion--that
man is free by nature, but that in society, in the State, to which
nevertheless he is irresistibly impelled, he must limit this natural
freedom. That man is free by nature is quite correct in one sense,
namely, that he is so according to the idea of humanity; but we imply
thereby that he is such only in virtue of his destiny--that he has an
undeveloped power to become such; for the "nature" of an object is
exactly synonymous with its "idea." But the view in question imports
more than this. When man is spoken of as "free by nature," the mode of
his existence as well as his destiny is implied; his merely natural and
primary condition is intended. In this sense a "state of nature" is
assumed in which mankind at large is in the possession of its natural
rights with the unconstrained exercise and enjoyment of its freedom.
This assumption is not raised to the dignity of the historical fact; it
would indeed be difficult, were the attempt seriously made, to point
out any such condition as actually existing or as having ever occurred.
Examples of a savage state of life can be pointed out, but they are
marked by brutal passions and deeds of violence; while, however rude and
simple their, conditions, they involve social arrangements which, to use
the common phrase, "restrain freedom." That assumption is one of those
nebulous images which theory produces, an idea which it cannot avoid
originating, but which it fathers upon real existence without sufficient
historical justification.

What we find such a state of nature to be, in actual experience, answers
exactly to the idea of a merely natural condition. Freedom as the ideal
of that which is original and natural does not exist as original and
natural; rather must it first be sought out and won, and that by an
incalculable medial discipline of the intellectual and moral powers. The
state of nature is, therefore, predominantly that of injustice and
violence, of untamed natural impulses, of inhuman deeds and feelings.
Limitation is certainly produced by society and the State, but it is a
limitation of the mere brute emotions and rude instincts, as also, in a
more advanced stage of culture, of the premeditated self-will of caprice
and passion. This kind of constraint is part of the instrumentality by
which only the consciousness of freedom and the desire for its
attainment, in its true--that is, its rational and ideal form--can be
obtained. To the ideal of freedom, law and morality are indispensably
requisite; and they are, in and for themselves, universal existences,
objects, and aims, which are discovered only by the activity of thought,
separating itself from the merely sensuous and developing itself in
opposition thereto, and which must, on the other hand, be introduced
into and incorporated with the originally sensuous will, and that
contrarily to its natural inclination. The perpetually recurring
misapprehension of freedom consists in regarding that term only in its
formal, subjective sense, abstracted from its essential objects and
aims; thus a constraint put upon impulse, desire, passion--pertaining to
the particular individual as such--a limitation of caprice and
self-will is regarded as a fettering of freedom. We should, on the
contrary, look upon such limitation as the indispensable proviso of
emancipation. Society and the State are the very conditions in which
freedom is realized.

We must notice a second view, contravening the principle of the
development of moral relations into a legal form. The patriarchal
condition is regarded, either in reference to the entire race of man or
to some branches of it, as exclusively that condition of things in which
the legal element is combined with a due recognition of the moral and
emotional parts of our nature, and in which justice, as united with
these, truly influences the intercourse of the social units. The basis
of the patriarchal condition is the family relation, which develops the
primary form of conscious morality, succeeded by that of the State as
its second phase. The patriarchal condition is one of transition, in
which the family has already advanced to the position of a race of
people, where the union, therefore, has already ceased to be simply a
bond of love and confidence and has become one of plighted service.

We must first examine the ethical principle of the Family, which may be
reckoned as virtually a single person, since its members have either
mutually surrendered their individual personality and consequently their
legal position toward one another, with the rest of their particular
interests and desires, as in the case of the parents, or, in the care of
children who are primarily in that merely natural condition already
mentioned, have not yet attained such an independent personality. They
live, therefore, in a unity of feeling, love, confidence, and faith in
one another, and, in a relation of mutual love, the one individual has
the consciousness of himself in the consciousness of another; he lives
out of self; and in this mutual self-renunciation each regains the life
that had been virtually transferred to the other--gains, in fact, the
other's existence and his own, as involved with that other. The ultimate
interests connected with the necessities and external concerns of life,
as well as the development that has to take place within their circle,
i. e., of the children, constitute a common object for the members of the
family. The spirit of the family--the _Penates_--form one substantial
being, as much as the spirit of a people in the State; and morality in
both cases consists in a feeling, a consciousness, and a will, not
limited to individual personality and interest, but embracing the common
interests of the members generally. But this unity is, in the case of
the family, essentially one of feeling, not advancing beyond the limits
of the merely natural. The piety of the family relation should be
respected in the highest degree by the State; by its means the State
obtains as its members individuals who are already moral (for as mere
persons they are not) and who, in uniting to form a State, bring with
them that sound basis of a political edifice--the capacity of feeling
one with a whole. But the expansion of the family to a patriarchal unity
carries us beyond the ties of blood-relationship--the simply natural
elements of that basis; and outside of these limits the members of the
community must enter upon the position of independent personality. A
review of the patriarchal condition, _in extenso_, would lead us to give
special attention to the theocratical constitution. The head of the
patriarchal clan is also its priest. If the family in its general
relations is not yet separated from civic society and the State, the
separation of religion from it has also not yet taken place; and so much
the less since the piety of the hearth is itself a profoundly subjective
state of feeling.

We have considered two aspects of freedom--the objective and the
subjective; if, therefore, freedom is asserted to consist in the
individuals of a State, all agreeing in its arrangements, it is evident
that only the subjective aspect is regarded. The natural inference from
this principle is, that no law can be valid without the approval of all.
It is attempted to obviate this difficulty by the decision that the
minority must yield to the majority; the majority therefore bears sway;
but long ago J.J. Rousseau remarked that, in that case, there would no
longer be freedom, for the will of the minority would cease to be
respected. At the Polish Diet each individual member had to give his
consent before any political step could be taken; and this kind of
freedom it was that ruined the State. Besides, it is a dangerous and
false prejudice that the people alone have reason and insight, and know
what justice is; for each popular faction may represent itself as the
people, and the question as to what constitutes the State is one of
advanced science and not of popular decision.

If the principle of regard for the individual will is recognized as the
only basis of political liberty, viz., that nothing should be done by or
for the State to which all the members of the body politic have not
given their sanction, we have, properly speaking, no constitution. The
only arrangement found necessary would be, first, a centre having no
will of its own, but which should take into consideration what appeared
to be the necessities of the State, and, secondly, a contrivance for
calling the members of the State together, for taking the votes, and for
performing the arithmetical operations of reckoning and comparing the
number of votes for the different propositions, and thereby deciding
upon them. The State is an abstraction, having even its generic
existence in its citizens; but it is an actuality, and its simply
generic existence must embody itself in individual will and activity.
The want of government and political administration in general is felt;
this necessitates the selection and separation from the rest of those
who have to take the helm in political affairs, to decide concerning
them, and to give orders to other citizens, with a view to the execution
of their plans. If, for instance, even the people in a democracy resolve
on a war, a general must head the army. It is only by a constitution
that the abstraction--the State--attains life and reality; but this
involves the distinction between those who command and those who obey.
Yet obedience seems inconsistent with liberty, and those who command
appear to do the very opposite of that which the fundamental idea of the
State, viz., that of freedom, requires. It is, however, urged that
though the distinction between commanding and obeying is absolutely
necessary, because affairs could not go on without it, and indeed, this
seems only a compulsory limitation, external to and even contravening
freedom in the abstract--the constitution should be at least so framed
that the citizens may obey as little as possible and the smallest
modicum of free volition be left to the commands of the superiors; that
the substance of that for which subordination is necessary, even in its
most important bearings, should be decided and resolved on by the
people, by the will of many or of all the citizens; though it is
supposed to be thereby provided that the State should be possessed of
vigor and strength as a reality--an individual unity. The primary
consideration is, then, the distinction between the governing and the
governed, and political constitutions in the abstract have been rightly
divided into monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy; this gives occasion,
however, for the remark that monarchy itself must be further divided
into despotism and monarchy proper; that in all the divisions to which
the leading idea gives rise, only the generic character is to be made
prominent, it being not intended thereby that the particular category
under review should be exhausted as a form, order, or kind in its
concrete development. But it must especially be observed that the above
mentioned divisions admit of a multitude of particular modifications--not
only such as lie within the limits of those classes themselves but also
such as are mixtures of several of these essentially distinct classes
and which are consequently misshapen, unstable, and inconsistent forms.
In such a collision, the concerning question is: What is the best
constitution--that is, by what arrangement, organization, or mechanism
of the power of the State can its object be most surely attained? This
object may indeed be variously understood; for instance, as the calm
enjoyment of life on part of the citizens, or as universal happiness.
Such aims have suggested the so-called ideals of constitutions, and,
as a particular branch of the subject, Ideals of the education of
princes (Fénelon), or of the governing body, the aristocracy at large
(Plato); for the chief point they treat of is the condition of those
subjects who stand at the head of affairs, and in these ideals the
concrete details of political organization are not at all considered.
The inquiry into the best constitution is frequently treated as if not
only the theory were an affair of subjective independent conviction,
but as if the introduction of a constitution recognized as the best,
or as superior to others, could be the result of a resolve adopted in
this theoretical manner, as if the form of a constitution were a matter
of free choice, determined by nothing else but reflection. Of this
artless fashion was that deliberation--not indeed of the Persian people,
but of the Persian grandees, who had conspired to overthrow the
pseudo-Smerdis and the Magi, after their undertaking had succeeded
and when there was no scion of the royal family living--as to what
constitution they should introduce into Persia; and Herodotus gives an
equally naïve account of this deliberation.

In the present day, the constitution of a country and people is not
represented as so entirely dependent on free and deliberate choice. The
fundamental, but abstractly and therefore imperfectly, entertained
conception of freedom, has resulted in the republic being very generally
regarded--in theory--as the only just and true political constitution.
Even many who occupy elevated official positions under monarchical
constitutions, so far from being opposed to this idea are actually its
supporters; only they see that such a constitution, though the best,
cannot be realized under all circumstances, and that, while men are what
they are, we must be satisfied with less freedom, the monarchical
constitution, under the given circumstances and the present moral
condition of the people, being even regarded as the most advantageous.
In this view also the necessity of a particular constitution is made to
depend on the condition of the people as though the latter were
non-essential and accidental. This representation is founded on the
distinction which the reflective understanding makes between an idea and
the corresponding reality. This reflection holding to an abstract and
consequently untrue idea, not grasping it in its completeness, or--which
is virtually, though not in point of form, the same--not taking a
concrete view of a people and a State. We shall have to show, further,
on, that the constitution adopted by a people makes one substance, one
spirit, with its religion, its art, and its philosophy, or, at least,
with its conceptions, thoughts and culture generally--not to expatiate
upon the additional influences _ab extra_, of climate, of neighbors, of
its place in the world. A State is an individual totality, of which you
cannot select any particular side, although a supremely important one,
such as its political constitution, and deliberate and decide respecting
it in that isolated form. Not only is that constitution most intimately
connected with and dependent on those other spiritual forces, but the
form of the entire moral and intellectual individuality, comprising all
the forces it embodies, is only a step in the development of the grand
whole, with its place pre-appointed in the process--a fact which gives
the highest sanction to the constitution in question and establishes its
absolute necessity. The origin of a State involves imperious lordship on
the one hand, instinctive submission on the other. But even
obedience--lordly power, and the fear inspired by a ruler--in itself
implies some degree of voluntary connection. Even in barbarous states
this is the case; it is not the isolated will of individuals that
prevails; individual pretensions are relinquished, and the general will
is the essential bond of political union. This unity of the general and
the particular is the Idea itself, manifesting itself as a State, and
which subsequently undergoes further development within itself. The
abstract yet necessitated process in the development of truly
independent states is as follows: They begin with regal power, whether
of patriarchal or military origin; in the next phase, particularity and
individuality assert themselves in the form of aristocracy and
democracy; lastly, we have the subjection of these separate interests to
a single power, but one which can be absolutely none other than one
outside of which those spheres have an independent position, viz., the
monarchical. Two phases of royalty, therefore, must be distinguished--a
primary and a secondary. This process is necessitated to the end that
the form of government assigned to a particular stage of development
must present itself; it is therefore no matter of choice, but is the
form adapted to the spirit of the people.

In the constitution the main feature of interest is the self-development
of the rational, that is, the political condition of a people, the
setting free of the successive elements of the Idea, so that the several
powers in the State manifest themselves as separate, attain their
appropriate and special perfection, and yet, in this independent
condition, work together for one object and are held together by
it--i. e., form an organic whole. The State is thus the embodiment of
rational freedom, realizing and recognizing itself in an objective form.
For its objectivity consists in this--that its successive stages are not
merely ideal, but are present in an appropriate reality, and that in
their separate and several workings they are absolutely merged in that
agency by which the totality, the soul, the individuate unity, is
produced, and of which it is the result.

The State is the Idea of Spirit in the external manifestation of human
will and its freedom. It is to the State, therefore, that change in the
aspect of history indissolubly attaches itself; and the successive
phases of the idea manifest themselves in it as distinct political
principles. The constitutions under which world-historical peoples have
reached their culmination, are peculiar to them, and therefore do not
present a generally applicable political basis. Were it otherwise the
differences of similar constitutions would consist only in a peculiar
method of expanding and developing that generic basis, whereas they
really originate in diversity of principle. From the comparison
therefore of the political institutions of the ancient world-historical
peoples, it so happens that, for the most recent principle of a
constitution for the principle of our own times, nothing, so to speak,
can be learned. In science and art it is quite otherwise--that is, the
ancient philosophy is so decidedly the basis of the modern that it is
inevitably contained in the latter and constitutes its basis. In this
case the relation is that of a continuous development of the same
structure, whose foundation-stone, walls, and roof have remained what
they were. In art, the Greek itself, in its original form, furnishes us
the best models, but in regard to political constitution it is quite
otherwise; here the ancient and the modern have not their essential
principle in common. Abstract definitions and dogmas respecting just
government--importing that intelligence and virtue ought to bear
sway--are, indeed, common to both, but nothing is so absurd as to look
to Greeks, Romans, or Orientals, for models for the political
arrangements of our time. From the East may be derived beautiful
pictures of a patriarchal condition, of paternal government, and of
devotion to it on the part of peoples; from Greeks and Romans,
descriptions of popular liberty. Among the latter we find the idea of a
free constitution admitting all the citizens to a share in deliberations
and resolves respecting the affairs and laws of the commonwealth. In our
times, too, this is its general acceptation; only with this
modification, that--since our States are so large, and there are so many
of "the many," the latter (direct action being impossible) should by the
indirect method of elective substitution express their concurrence with
resolves affecting the common weal--that is, that for legislative
purposes generally the people should be represented by deputies. The
so-called representative constitution is that form of government with
which we connect the idea of a free constitution; and this notion has
become a rooted prejudice. On this theory people and government are
separated. But there is a perversity in this antithesis, an
ill-intentioned ruse designed to insinuate that the people are the
totality of the State. Besides, the basis of this view is the principle
of isolated individuality--the absolute validity of the subjective
will--a dogma which we have already investigated. The great point is
that freedom, in its ideal conception, has not subjective will and
caprice for its principle, but the recognition of the universal will,
and that the process by which freedom is realized is the free
development of its successive stages. The subjective will is a merely
formal determination--a _carte blanche_--not including what it is that
is willed. Only the rational will is that universal principle which
independently determines and unfolds its own being and develops its
successive elemental phases as organic members. Of this Gothic-cathedral
architecture the ancients knew nothing.

At an earlier stage of the discussion we established the two elemental
considerations: First, the _idea_ of freedom as the absolute and final
aim; secondly, the _means_ for realizing it, i. e., the subjective side
of knowledge and will, with its life, movement, and activity. We then
recognized the State as the moral whole and the reality of freedom, and
consequently as the objective unity of these two elements. For although
we make this distinction in two aspects for our consideration, it must
be remarked that they are intimately connected, and that their
connection is involved in the idea of each when examined separately. We
have, on the one hand, recognized the Idea in the definite form of
freedom, conscious of and willing itself, having itself alone as its
object, involving at the same time the pure and simple Idea of Reason
and, likewise, what we have called Subject, self-consciousness, Spirit,
actually existing in the world. If, on the other hand, we consider
subjectivity, we find that subjective knowledge and will is thought. But
by the very act of thoughtful cognition and volition, I will the
universal object--the substance of absolute Reason. We observe,
therefore, an essential union between the objective side--the Idea, and
the subjective side--the personality that conceives and wills it. The
objective existence of this union is the State, which is therefore the
basis and centre of the other concrete elements of the life of a
people--of art, of law, of morals, of religion, of science. All the
activity of Spirit has only this object--the becoming conscious of this
union, i. e., of its own freedom. Among the forms of this conscious union
_religion_ occupies the highest position. In it Spirit-rising above the
limitations of temporal and secular existence--becomes conscious of the
Absolute Spirit, and, in this consciousness of the Self-Existent Being,
renounces its individual interest; it lays this aside in devotion--a
state of mind in which it refuses to occupy itself any longer with the
limited and particular. By sacrifice man expresses his renunciation of
his property, his will, his individual feelings. The religious
concentration of the soul appears in the form of feeling; it
nevertheless passes also into reflection; a form of worship (_cultus_)
is a result of reflection. The second form of the union of the objective
and subjective in the human spirit is art; this advances farther into
the realm of the actual and sensuous than religion. In its noblest walk
it is occupied with representing, not, indeed, the Spirit of God, but
certainly the Form of God; and, in its secondary aims, that which is
divine and spiritual generally. Its office is to render visible the
divine, presenting it to the imaginative and intuitive faculty. But the
true is the object not only of conception and feeling, as in
religion--and of intuition, as in art--but also of the thinking faculty;
and this gives us the third form of the union in question--philosophy.
This is consequently the highest, freest, and wisest place. Of course we
are not intending to investigate these three phases here; they have only
suggested themselves in virtue of their occupying the same general
ground as the object here considered the _State._



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LAW (1832)

BY GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL

TRANSLATED BY J. LOEWENBERG, PH.D. Assistant in Philosophy, Harvard
University

THE STATE

IDEA AND AIM OF THE STATE


The State is the realization of the ethical idea. It is the ethical
spirit as revealed, self-conscious, substantial will. It is the will
which thinks and knows itself, and carries out what it knows, and in so
far as it knows. The unreflected existence of the State rests on custom,
and its reflected existence on the self-consciousness of the individual,
on his knowledge and activity. The individual, in return, has his
substantial freedom in the State, as the essence, purpose, and product
of his activity.

The true State is the ethical whole and the realization of freedom. It
is the absolute purpose of reason that freedom should be realized. The
State is the spirit, which lives in the world and there realizes itself
consciously; while in nature it is actual only as its own other or as
dormant spirit. Only as present in consciousness, knowing itself as an
existing object, is it the State. The State is the march of God through
the world, its ground is the power of reason realizing itself as will.
The idea of the State should not connote any particular State, or
particular institution; one must rather consider the Idea only, this
actual God, by itself. Because it is more easy to find defects than to
grasp the positive meaning, one readily falls into the mistake of
emphasizing so much the particular nature of the State as to overlook
its inner organic essence. The State is no work of art. It exists in the
world, and thus in the realm of caprice, accident, and error. Evil
behavior toward it may disfigure it on many sides. But the ugliest man,
the criminal, the invalid, and the cripple, are still living human
beings. The affirmative, life, persists in spite of defects, and it is
this affirmative which alone is here in question.

In the State, everything depends upon the unity of the universal and the
particular. In the ancient States the subjective purpose was absolutely
one with the will of the State. In modern times, on the contrary, we
demand an individual opinion, an individual will and conscience. The
ancients had none of these in the modern sense; the final thing for them
was the will of the State. While in Asiatic despotisms the individual
had no inner self and no self-justification, in the modern world man
demands to be honored for the sake of his subjective individuality.

The union of duty and right has the twofold aspect that what the State
demands as duty should directly be the right of the individual, since
the State is nothing but the organization of the concept of freedom. The
determinations of the individual will are given by the State
objectivity, and it is through the State alone that they attain truth
and realization. The State is the sole condition of the attainment of
the particular end and good.

Political disposition, called patriotism--the assurance resting in truth
and the will which has become a custom--is simply the result of the
institutions subsisting in the State, institutions in which reason is
actually present.

Under patriotism one frequently understands a mere willingness to
perform extraordinary acts and sacrifices. But patriotism is essentially
the sentiment of regarding, in the ordinary circumstances and ways of
life, the weal of the community as the substantial basis and the final
end. It is upon this consciousness, present in the ordinary course of
life and under all circumstances, that the disposition to heroic effort
is founded. But as people are often rather magnanimous than just, they
easily persuade themselves that they possess the heroic kind of
patriotism, in order to save themselves the trouble of having the truly
patriotic sentiment, or to excuse the lack of it.

Political sentiment, as appearance, must be distinguished from what
people truly will. What they at bottom will is the real cause, but they
cling to particular interests and delight in the vain contemplation of
improvements. The conviction of the necessary stability of the State in
which alone the particular interests can be realized, people indeed
possess, but custom makes invisible that upon which our whole existence
rests; it does not occur to any one, when he safely passes through the
streets at night, that it could be otherwise. The habit of safety has
become a second nature, and we do not reflect that it is the result of
the activity of special institutions. It is through force this is
frequently the superficial opinion-that the State coheres, but what
alone holds it together is the fundamental sense of order, which is
possessed by all.

The State is an organism or the development of the idea into its
differences. These different sides are the different powers of the State
with their functions and activities, by means of which the universal is
constantly and necessarily producing itself, and, being presupposed in
its own productive function, it is thus always actively present. This
organism is the political constitution. It eternally springs from the
State, just as the State in turn maintains itself through the
constitution. If these two things fall asunder, if both different sides
become independent of each other, then the unity which the constitution
produces is no longer operative; the fable of the stomach and the other
organs may be applied to it. It is the nature of an organism that all
its parts must constitute a certain unity; if one part asserts its
independence the other parts must go to destruction. No predicates,
principles, and the like suffice to express the nature of the State; it
must be comprehended as an organism.

The State is real, and its reality consists in the interest of the whole
being realized in particular ends. Actuality is always the unity of
universality and particularity, and the differentiation of the universal
into particular ends. These particular ends seem independent, though
they are borne and sustained by the whole only. In so far as this unity
is absent, no thing is real, though it may exist. A bad State is one
which merely exists. A sick body also exists; but it has no true
reality. A hand, which is cut off, still looks like a hand and exists,
but it has no reality. True reality is necessity. What is real is
internally necessary.

To the complete State belongs, essentially, consciousness and thought.
The State knows thus what it wills, and it knows it under the form of
thought.

The essential difference between the State and religion consists in that
the commands of the State have the form of legal duty, irrespective of
the feelings accompanying their performance; the sphere of religion, on
the other hand, is in the inner life. Just as the State, were it to
frame its commands as religion does, would endanger the right of the
inner life, so the church, if it acts as a State and imposes punishment,
degenerates into a tyrannical religion.

In the State one must want nothing which is not an expression of
rationality. The State is the world which the spirit has made for
itself; it has therefore a determinate and self-conscious course. One
often speaks of the wisdom of God in nature, but one must not believe
that the physical world of nature is higher than the world of spirit.
Just as spirit is superior to nature, so is the State superior to the
physical life. We must therefore adore the State as the manifestation of
the divine on earth, and consider that, if it is difficult to comprehend
nature, it is infinitely harder to grasp the essence of the State. It is
an important fact that we, in modern times, have attained definite
insight into the State in general and are much engaged in discussing and
making constitutions; but that does not advance the problem much. It is
necessary to treat a rational matter in the light of reason, in order to
learn its essential nature and to know that the obvious does not always
constitute the essential.

When we speak of the different functions of the powers of the State, we
must not fall into the enormous error of supposing each power to have an
abstract, independent existence, since the powers are rather to be
differentiated as elements in the conception of the State. Were the
powers to be in abstract independence, however, it is clear that two
independent things could never constitute a unity, but must produce war,
and the result would be destruction of the whole or restoration of unity
by force. Thus, in the French Revolution, at one time the legislative
power had swallowed up the executive, at another time the executive had
usurped the legislative power.


THE CONSTITUTION

The constitution is rational, in so far as the State defines and
differentiates its functions according to the nature of its concept.

Who shall make the constitution? This question seems intelligible, yet
on closer examination reveals itself as meaningless, for it presupposes
the existence of no constitution, but only a mere mass of atomic
individuals. How a mass of individuals is to come by a constitution,
whether by its own efforts or by those of others, whether by goodness,
thought, or force, it must decide for itself, for with a disorganized
mob the concept of the State has nothing to do. But if the question does
presuppose an already existing constitution, then to make a constitution
means only to change it. The presupposition of a constitution implies,
however, at once, that any modification in it must take place
constitutionally. It is absolutely essential that the constitution,
though having a temporal origin, should not be regarded as made. It (the
principle of constitution) is rather to be conceived as absolutely
perpetual and rational, and therefore as divine, substantial, and above
and beyond the sphere of what is made.

Subjective freedom is the principle of the whole modern world--the
principle that all essential aspects of the spiritual totality should
develop and attain their right. From this point of view one can hardly
raise the idle question as to which form is the better, monarchy or
democracy. One can but say that the forms of all constitutions are
one-sided that are not able to tolerate the principle of free
subjectivity and that do not know how to conform to the fully developed
reason.

Since spirit is real only in what it knows itself to be, and since the
State, as the nation's spirit, is the law permeating all its affairs,
its ethical code, and the consciousness of its individuals, the
constitution of a people chiefly depends upon the kind and the character
of its self-consciousness. In it lies both its subjective freedom and
the reality of the constitution.

To think of giving a people a constitution _a priori_, though according
to its content a more or less rational one--such a whim would precisely
overlook that element which renders a constitution more than a mere
abstract object. Every nation, therefore, has the constitution which is
appropriate to it and belongs to it.

The State must, in its constitution, permeate all situations. A
constitution is not a thing just made; it is the work of centuries, the
idea and the consciousness of what is rational, in so far as it is
developed in a people. No constitution, therefore, is merely created by
the subjects of the State. The nation must feel that its constitution
embodies its right and its status, otherwise the constitution may exist
externally, but has no meaning or value. The need and the longing for a
better constitution may often indeed be present in individuals, but that
is quite different from the whole multitude being permeated with such an
idea--that comes much later. The principle of morality, the inwardness
of Socrates originated necessarily in his day, but it took time before
it could pass into general self-consciousness.


THE POWER OF THE PRINCE

Because sovereignty contains in ideal all special privileges, the common
misconception is quite natural, which takes it to be mere force, empty
caprice, and synonymous with despotism. But despotism means a state of
lawlessness, in which the particular will as such, whether that of
monarch or people (_ochlocracy_), is the law, or rather instead of the
law. Sovereignty, on the contrary, constitutes the element of ideality
of particular spheres and functions under lawful and constitutional
conditions.

The sovereignty of the people, conceived in opposition to the
sovereignty residing in the monarch, stands for the common view of
democracy, which has come to prevail in modern times. The idea of the
sovereignty of the people, taken in this opposition, belongs to a
confused idea of what is commonly and crudely understood by "the
people." The people without its monarch and without that whole
organization necessarily and directly connected with him is a formless
mass, which is no longer a State. In a people, not conceived in a
lawless and unorganized condition, but as a self-developed and truly
organic totality--in such a people sovereignty is the personality of the
whole, and this is represented in reality by the person of the monarch.

The State must be regarded as a great architectonic edifice, a
hieroglyph of reason, manifesting itself in reality. Everything
referring merely to utility, externality, and the like, must be excluded
from its philosophic treatment. That the State is the self-determining
and the completely sovereign will, the final decision being necessarily
referred to it--that is easy to comprehend. The difficulty lies in
grasping this "I will" as a person. By this it is not meant that the
monarch can act arbitrarily. He is bound, in truth, by the concrete
content of the deliberations of his council, and, when the constitution
is stable, he has often nothing more to do than to sign his name--but
this name is important; it is the point than which there is nothing
higher.

It may be said that an organic State has already existed in the
beautiful democracy of Athens. The Greeks, however, derived the final
decision from entirely external phenomena, from oracles, entrails of
sacrificial animals, and from the flight of birds. Nature they
considered as a power which in this wise made known and gave expression
to what was good for the people. Self-consciousness had at that time not
yet attained to the abstraction of subjectivity; it had not yet come to
the realization that an "I will" must be pronounced by man himself
concerning the decisions of the State. This "I will" constitutes the
great difference between the ancient and the modern world, and must
therefore have its peculiar place in the great edifice of the State.
Unfortunately this modern characteristic is regarded as merely external
and arbitrary.

It is often maintained against the monarch that, since he may be
ill-educated or unworthy to stand at the helm of the State, its fortunes
are thus made to depend upon chance. It is therefore absurd to assume
the rationality of the institution of the monarch. The presupposition,
however, that the fortunes of the State depend upon the particular
character of the monarch is false. In the perfect organization of the
State the important thing is only the finality of formal decision and
the stability against passion. One must not therefore demand objective
qualification of the monarch; he has but to say "yes" and to put the dot
upon the "i." The crown shall be of such a nature that the particular
character of its bearer is of no significance. Beyond his function of
administering the final decision, the monarch is a particular being who
is of no concern. Situations may indeed arise in which his particularity
alone asserts itself, but in that case the State is not yet fully
developed, or else is ill constructed. In a well-ordered monarchy the
law alone has objective power to which the monarch has but to affix the
subjective "I will."

Monarchs do not excel in bodily strength or intellect, and yet millions
permit themselves to be ruled by them. To say that the people permit
themselves to be governed contrary to their interests, aims, and
intentions is preposterous, for people are not so stupid. It is their
need, it is the inner power of the idea, which, in opposition to their
apparent consciousness, urges them to this situation and retains them
therein.

Out of the sovereignty of the monarch flows the prerogative of pardoning
criminals. Only to the sovereignty belongs the spiritual power to undo
what has been done and to cancel the crime by forgiving and forgetting.

Pardon is the remission of punishment, but does not abolish right. Right
remains, and the pardoned is a criminal as he was before the pardon. The
act of mercy does not mean that no crime has been committed. This
remission of punishment may be effected in religion, for by and in
spirit what has been done can be made un-done. But in so far as
remission occurs in the world, it has its place only in majesty and is
due only to its arbitrary decision.


THE EXECUTIVE

The main point upon which the function of the government depends is the
division of labor. This division is concerned with the transition from
the universal to the particular and the individual; and the business is
to be divided according to the different branches. The difficulty lies
in harmonizing the superior and the inferior functions. For some time
past the main effort has been spent in organizing from above, the lower
and bulky part of the whole being left more or less unorganized; yet it
is highly important that it should become organic, for only thus is it a
power and a force; otherwise it is but a heap or mass of scattered
atoms. Authoritative power resides only in the organic state of the
particular spheres.

The State cannot count on service which is capricious and voluntary (the
administration of justice by knights-errant, for instance), precisely
because it is capricious and voluntary. Such service presupposes acting
according to subjective opinion, and also the possibility of neglect and
of the realization of private ends. The opposite extreme to the
knight-errant in reference to public service would be the State-servant
who was attached to his task solely by want, without genuine duty and
right.

The efficiency of the State depends upon individuals, who, however, are
not entitled to carry on the business of the State through natural
fitness, but according to their objective qualification. Ability, skill,
character, belong to the particular nature of the individual; for a
particular office, however, he must be specially educated and trained.
An office in the State can, therefore, be neither sold nor bequeathed.

Public service demands the sacrifice of independent self-satisfaction
and the giving up of the pursuit of private ends, but grants the right
of finding these in dutiful service, and in it only. Herein lies the
unity of the universal and the particular interests which constitutes
the concept and the inner stability of the State.

The members of the executive and the officials of the State form the
main part of the middle class which represents the educated intelligence
and the consciousness of right of the mass of a people. This middle
class is prevented by the institutions of sovereignty from above and the
rights of corporation from below, from assuming the exclusive position
of an aristocracy and making education and intelligence the means for
caprice and despotism. Thus the administration of justice, whose object
is the proper interest of all individuals, had at one time been
perverted into an instrument of gain and despotism, owing to the fact
that the knowledge of the law was hidden under a learned and foreign
language, and the knowledge of legal procedure under an involved
formalism.

In the middle class, to which the State officials belong, resides the
consciousness of the State and the most conspicuous cultivation: the
middle class constitutes therefore the ground pillar of the State in
regard to uprightness and intelligence. The State in which there is no
middle class stands as yet on no high level.


THE LEGISLATURE

The legislature is concerned with the interpretation of the laws and
with the internal affairs of the State, in so far as they have a
universal content. This function is itself a part of the constitution
and thus presupposes it. Being presupposed, the constitution lies, to
that degree, outside the direct province of the legislature, but in the
forward development of the laws and the progressive character of the
universal affairs of government, the constitution receives its
development also.

The constitution must alone be the firm ground on which the legislature
stands; hence it must not be created for purposes of legislation. But
the constitution not only is, its essence is also to _become_--that is,
it progresses with the advance of civilization. This progress is an
alteration which is imperceptible, but has not the form of an
alteration. Thus, for example, the emperor was formerly judge, and went
about the empire administering justice. Through the merely apparent
advance of civilization it has become practically necessary that the
emperor should gradually yield his judicial function to others, and thus
came about the transition of the judicial function from the person of
the prince to a body of judges; thus the progress of any condition is an
apparently calm and imperceptible one. In this way and after a lapse of
time a constitution attains a character quite different from what it had
before.

In the legislative power as a whole are operative both the monarchical
element and the executive. To the former belongs the final decision; the
latter as advisory element possesses concrete knowledge, perspective
over the whole in all its ramifications, and acquaintance with the
objective principles and wants of the power of the State. Finally, in
the legislature the different classes or estates are also active. These
classes or estates represent in the legislature the element of
subjective formal freedom, the public consciousness, the empirical
totality of the views and thought of the many.

The expression "The Many" [Greek: oi polloi] characterizes the empirical
totality more correctly than the customary word "All." Though one may
reply that, under this "all," children, women, etc., are obviously meant
to be excluded, yet it is more obvious that the definite expression
"all" should not be used when something quite indefinite is in question.

There are, in general, current among the public so unspeakably many
distorted and false notions and phrases about the people, the
constitution, and the classes, that it would be a vain task to mention,
explain, and correct them. The prevalent idea concerning the necessity
and utility of an assembly of estates amounts to the assumption that the
people's deputies, nay, the people itself, best understand what would
promote the common weal, and that they have indubitably the good will to
promote it. As for the first point, the case is just the reverse. The
people, in so far as this term signifies a special part of the citizens,
stands precisely for the part that does not know what it wills. To know
what one wills, and, what is more difficult, to know what the absolute
will, viz., reason, wills, is the fruit of deep knowledge and insight;
and that is obviously not a possession of the people. As for the
especially good will, which the classes are supposed to have for the
common good, the usual point of view of the masses is the negative one
of suspecting the government of a will which is evil or of little good.

The attitude of the government toward the classes must not be
essentially a hostile one. Belief in the necessity of this hostile
relation is a sad mistake. The government is not one party in opposition
to another, so that both are engaged in wresting something from each
other. When the State is in such a situation it is a misfortune and not
a mark of health. Furthermore, the taxes, for which the classes vote,
are not to be looked upon as gifts, but are consented to for the best
interests of those consenting. What constitutes the true meaning of the
classes is this--that through them the State enters into the subjective
consciousness of the people and thus the people begin to share in the
State.

In despotic countries, where there are only princes and people, the
people assert themselves, whenever they act, as a destructive force
directed against the organization, but the masses, when they become
organically related to the State, obtain their interests in a lawful and
orderly way. When this organic relation is lacking, the self-expression
of the masses is always violent; in despotic States the despot shows,
therefore, indulgence for his people, and his rage is always felt by
those surrounding him. Moreover, the people of a despotic State pay
light taxes, which in a constitutional State are increased through the
very consciousness of the people. In no other country are taxes so heavy
as they are in England.

There exists a current notion to the effect that, since the private
class is raised in the legislature to a participation in the universal
cause, it must appear in the form of individuals--either that
representatives are chosen for the function, or that every individual
exercises a vote. This abstract atomic view prevails neither in the
family nor in civic society, in both of which the individual appears
only as a member of a universal. The State, however, is in essence an
organization of members, and these members are themselves spheres; in it
no element shall show itself as an unorganized mass. The many, as
individuals, whom one chooses to call the people, are indeed a
collection, but only as a multitude, a formless mass, whose movement and
action would be elemental, irrational, savage, and terrible.

The concrete State is the whole, organized into its particular spheres,
and the member of the State is a member of such a particular class.
Only in this objective determination can the individual find recognition
in the State. Only in his coöperate capacity, as member of the community
and the like, can the individual first find a real and vital place in
the universal. It remains, of course, open to him to rise through his
skill to any class for which he can qualify himself, including even the
universal class.

It is a matter of great advantage to have among the delegates
representatives of every special branch of society, such as trade,
manufacture, etc.--individuals thoroughly familiar with their branch and
belonging to it. In the notion of a loose and indefinite election this
important matter is left to accident; every branch, however, has the
same right to be represented as every other. To view the delegates as
representatives has, then, an organic and rational meaning only if they
are not representatives of mere individuals, of the mere multitude, but
of one of the essential spheres of society and of its large interests.
Representation thus no longer means substitution of one person by
another, but it means, rather, that the interest itself is actually
present in the representative.

Of the elections by many separate individuals it may be observed that
there is necessarily an indifference, especially in large States, about
using one's vote, since one vote is of such slight importance; and those
who have the right to vote will not do so, no matter how much one may
extol the privilege of voting. Hence this institution turns into the
opposite of what it stands for. The election becomes the business of a
few, of a single party, of a special interest, which should, in fact, be
neutralized.

Through the publicity of the assembly of classes public opinion first
acquires true thoughts and an insight into the condition and the notion
of the State and its affairs, and thus develops the capacity of judging
more rationally concerning them; it learns, furthermore, to know and
respect the routine, talents, virtues, and skill of the authorities and
officers of the State. While publicity stimulates these talents in
their further development and incites their honorable display, it is
also an antidote for the pride of individuals and of the multitude, and
is one of the greatest opportunities for their education.

It is a widespread popular notion that everybody already knows what is
good for the State, and that it is this common knowledge which finds
expression in the assembly. Here, in the assembly, are developed
virtues, talents, skill, which have to serve as examples. To be sure,
the ministers may find these assemblies onerous, for ministers must
possess large resources of wit and eloquence to resist the attacks which
are hurled against them. Nevertheless, publicity is one of the best
means of instruction in the interests of the State generally, for where
publicity is found the people manifest an entirely different regard for
the State than in those places where there are no assemblies or where
they are not public. Only through the publication of every one of their
proceedings are the chambers related to the larger public opinion; and
it is shown that what one imagines at home with his wife and friends is
one thing, and what happens in a great assembly, where one feat of
eloquence wrecks another, is quite a different thing.


PUBLIC OPINION

Public opinion is the unorganized way in which what a people wants and
thinks is promulgated. That which is actually effective in the State
must be so in an organic fashion. In the constitution this is the case.
But at all times public opinion has been a great power, and it is
particularly so in our time, when the principle of subjective freedom
has such importance and significance. What shall now prevail, prevails
no longer through force, little through use and custom, but rather
through insight and reasons.

Public opinion contains, therefore, the eternal substantial principles
of justice, the true content, and the result of the whole constitution,
legislation, and the universal condition in general. The form
underlying public opinion is sound common sense, which is a fundamental
ethical principle winding its way through everything, in spite of
prepossessions. But when this inner character is formulated in the shape
of general propositions, partly for their own sake, partly for the
purpose of actual reasoning about events, institutions, relations, and
the recognized wants of the State, there appears also the whole
character of accidental opinion, with its ignorance and perversity, its
false knowledge and incorrect judgment.

It is therefore not to be regarded as merely a difference in subjective
opinion when it is asserted on the one hand--

"Vox populi, vox dei";

and on the other (in Ariosto, for instance)--[2]

  "Che'l Volgare ignorante ogn' un riprenda
    E parli piü di quel che meno intenda."

Both sides co-exist in public opinion. Since truth and endless error are
so directly united in it, neither one nor the other side is truly in
earnest. Which one is in earnest, is difficult to decide--difficult,
indeed, if one confines oneself to the direct expression of public
opinion. But as the substantial principle is the inner character of
public opinion, this alone is its truly earnest aspect; yet this insight
cannot be obtained from public opinion itself, for a substantial
principle can only be apprehended apart from public opinion and by a
consideration of its own nature. No matter with what passion an opinion
is invested, no matter with what earnestness a view is asserted,
attacked, and defended, this is no criterion of its real essence. And
least of all could public opinion be made to see that its seriousness is
nothing serious at all.

A great mind has publicly raised the question whether it is permissible
to deceive a people. The answer is that a people will not permit itself
to be deceived concerning its substantial basis, the essence, and the
definite character of its spirit, but it deceives itself about the way
in which it knows this, and according to which it judges of its acts,
events, etc.

Public opinion deserves, therefore, to be esteemed as much as to be
despised; to be despised for its concrete consciousness and expression,
to be esteemed for its essential fundamental principle, which only
shines, more or less dimly, through its concrete expression. Since
public opinion possesses within itself no standard of discrimination, no
capacity to rise to a recognition of the substantial, independence of it
is the first formal condition of any great and rational enterprise (in
actuality as well as in science). Anything great and rational is
eventually sure to please public opinion, to be espoused by it, and to
be made one of its prepossessions.

In public opinion all is false and true, but to discover the truth in it
is the business of the great man. The great man of his time is he who
expresses the will and the meaning of that time, and then brings it to
completion; he acts according to the inner spirit and essence of his
time, which he realizes. And he who does not understand how to despise
public opinion, as it makes itself heard here and there, will never
accomplish anything great.


FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

The freedom of public utterance (of which the press is one means, having
advantage over speech in its more extended reach, though inferior to it
in vivacity), the gratification of that prickling impulse to express and
to have expressed one's opinion, is directly controlled by the police
and State laws and regulations, which partly hinder and partly punish
its excesses. The indirect guarantee lies in its innocuousness, and
this again is mainly based on the rationality of the constitution, the
stability of the government, and also on the publicity given to the
assemblies of the classes. Another security is offered by the
indifference and contempt with which insipid and malicious words are, as
a rule, quickly met.

The definition of the freedom of the press as freedom to say and write
what one pleases, is parallel to the one of freedom in general, viz., as
freedom to do what one pleases. Such views belong to the uneducated
crudity and superficiality of naïve thinking. The press, with its
infinite variety of content and expression, represents what is most
transient, particular, and accidental in human opinion. Beyond the
direct incitation to theft, murder, revolt, etc., lies the art of
cultivating the expression which in itself seems general and indefinite
enough, but which, in a measure, conceals a perfectly definite meaning.
Such expressions are partly responsible for consequences of which, since
they are not actually expressed, one is never sure how far they are
contained in the utterances and really follow from them. It is this
indefiniteness of the content and form of the press which prevents the
laws governing it from assuming that precision which one demands of
laws. Thus the extreme subjectivity of the wrong, injury, and crime
committed by the press, causes the decision and sentence to be equally
subjective. The laws are not only indefinite, but the press can, by the
skill and subtlety of its expressions, evade them, or criticise the
judgment of the court as wholly arbitrary. Furthermore, if the utterance
of the press is treated as an offensive deed, one may retort that it is
not a deed at all, but only an opinion, a thought, a mere saying.
Consequently, impunity is expected for opinions and words, because they
are merely subjective, trivial, and insignificant, and, in the same
breath, great respect and esteem is demanded for these opinions and
words--for the opinions, because they are mine and my mental property,
and for the words, because they are the free expression and use of that
property. And yet the basic principle remains that injury to the honor
of individuals generally, abuse, libel, contemptuous caricaturing of the
government, its officers and officials, especially the person of the
prince, defiance of the laws, incitement to revolt, etc., are all
offenses and crimes of different grades.

However, the peculiar and dangerous effect of these acts for the
individuals, the community, and the State depends upon the nature of the
soil on which they are committed, just as a spark, if thrown upon a heap
of gunpowder, has a much more dangerous result than if thrown on the
mere ground, where it vanishes and leaves no trace. But, on the whole, a
good many such acts, though punishable by law, may come under a certain
kind of nemesis which internal impotence is forced to bring about. In
entering upon opposition to the superior talents and virtues, by which
impotence feels oppressed, it comes to a realization of its inferiority
and to a consciousness of its own nothingness, and the nemesis, even
when bad and odious, is, by treating it with contempt, rendered
ineffectual. Like the public, which forms a circle for such activity, it
is confined to a harmless malicious joy, and to a condemnation which
reflects upon itself.


MEANING OF WAR

There is an ethical element in war. It must not be regarded as an
absolute ill, or as merely an external calamity which is accidentally
based upon the passions of despotic individuals or nations, upon acts of
injustice, and, in general, upon what ought not to be. The recognition
of the finite, such as property and life, as accidental, is necessary.
This necessity is at first wont to appear under the form of a force of
nature, for all things finite are mortal and transient. In the ethical
order, in the State, however, nature is robbed of its force, and the
necessity is exalted to a work of freedom, to an ethical law. The
transient and negative nature of all things is transformed in the State
into an expression of the ethical will. War, often painted by edifying
speech as a state in which the vanity of temporal things is
demonstrated, now becomes an element whereby the ideal character of the
particular receives its right and reality. War has the deep meaning that
by it the ethical health of the nations is preserved and their finite
aims uprooted. And as the winds which sweep over the ocean prevent the
decay that would result from its perpetual calm, so war protects the
people from the corruption which an everlasting peace would bring upon
it. History shows phases which illustrate how successful wars have
checked internal unrest and have strengthened the entire stability of
the State.

In peace, civic life becomes more extended, every sphere is hedged in
and grows immobile, and at last all men stagnate, their particular
nature becoming more and more hardened and ossified. Only in the unity
of a body is health, and, where the organs become stiff, there is death.
Eternal peace is often demanded as an ideal toward which mankind should
move. Thus Kant proposed an alliance of princes, which should settle the
controversies of States, and the Holy Alliance probably aspired to be an
institution of this kind. The State, however, is individual, and in
individuality negation is essentially contained. A number of States may
constitute themselves into a family, but this confederation, as an
individuality, must create an opposition and so beget an enemy. Not only
do nations issue forth invigorated from their wars, but those nations
torn by internal strife win peace at home as a result of war abroad. War
indeed causes insecurity in property, but this real insecurity is only a
necessary commotion. From the pulpits much is preached concerning the
insecurity, vanity, and instability of temporal things, and yet every
one, though he may be touched by his own words, thinks that he, at
least, will manage to hold on to his possessions. Let the insecurity
finally come, in the form of Hussars with glistening sabres, and show
its earnest activity, and that touching edification which foresaw all
this now turns upon the enemy with curses. In spite of this, wars will
break out whenever necessity demands them; but the seeds spring up anew,
and speech is silenced before the grave repetitions of history.

The military class is the class of universality. The defense of the
State is its privilege, and its duty is to realize the ideality
contained in it, which consists in self-sacrifice. There are different
kinds of bravery. The courage of the animal, or the robber, the bravery
which arises from a sense of honor, the chivalrous bravery, are not yet
the true forms of it. In civilized nations true bravery consists in the
readiness to give oneself wholly to the service of the State, so that
the individual counts but as one among many. Not personal valor, but the
important aspect of it, lies in self-subordination to the universal
cause.

To risk one's life is indeed something more than mere fear of death, but
this is only negative; only a positive character--an aim and
content--gives meaning to bravery. Robbers and murderers in the pursuit
of crime, adventurers in the search of their fanciful objects, etc.,
also possess courage, and do not fear death. The principle of the modern
world--the power of thought and of the universal--has given to bravery a
higher form; the higher form causes the expression of bravery to appear
more mechanical. The brave deeds are not the deeds of any particular
person, but those of the members of a whole. And, again, since hostility
is directed, not against separate individuals, but against a hostile
whole, personal valor appears as impersonal. This principle it is which
has caused the invention of the gun; it is not a chance invention that
has brought about the change of the mere personal form of bravery into
the more abstract.


INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Just as the individual is not a real person unless related to other
persons, so the State is no real individuality unless related to other
States. The legitimate power of a State, and more especially its
princely power, is, from the point of view of its foreign relations, a
wholly internal affair. A State shall, therefore, not interfere with the
internal affairs of another State. On the other hand, for a complete
State, it is essential that it be recognized by others; but this
recognition demands as a guarantee that it shall recognize those States
which recognize it, and shall respect their independence. Hence its
internal affairs cannot be a matter of indifference to them.

When Napoleon, before the peace of Campoformio, said, "The French
Republic requires recognition as little as the sun needs to be
recognized," his words suggest nothing but the strength of existence,
which already carries with it the guarantee of recognition, without
needing to be expressed.

When the particular wills of the State can come to no agreement their
controversy can be decided only by war. What offense shall be regarded
as a breach of a treaty, or as a violation of respect and honor, must
remain indefinite, since many and various injuries can easily accrue
from the wide range of the interests of the States and from the complex
relations of their citizens. The State may identify its infinitude and
honor with every one of its single aspects. And if a State, as a strong
individuality, has experienced an unduly protracted internal rest, it
will naturally be more inclined to irritability, in order to find an
occasion and field for intense activity.

The nations of Europe form a family according to the universal principle
of their legislation, their ethical code, and their civilization. But
the relation among States fluctuates, and no judge exists to adjust
their differences. The higher judge is the universal and absolute Spirit
alone--the World-Spirit.

The relation of one particular State to another presents, on the largest
possible scale, the most shifting play of individual passions,
interests, aims, talents, virtues, power, injustice, vice, and mere
external chance. It is a play in which even the ethical whole, the
independence of the State, is exposed to accident. The principles which
control the many national spirits are limited. Each nation as an
existing individuality is guided by its particular principles, and only
as a particular individuality can each national spirit win objectivity
and self-consciousness; but the fortunes and deeds of States in their
relation to one another reveal the dialectic of the finite nature of
these spirits. Out of this dialectic rises the universal Spirit, the
unlimited World-Spirit, pronouncing its judgment--and its judgment is
the highest--upon the finite nations of the world's history; for the
history of the world is the world's court of justice.



INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART (1820-21)

BY GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL

TRANSLATED BY J. LOEWENBERG, PH.D. Assistant in Philosophy, Harvard
University

THE MEANING OF ART


The appropriate expression for our subject is the "Philosophy of Art,"
or, more precisely, the "Philosophy of Fine Arts." By this expression we
wish to exclude the beauty of nature. In common life we are in the habit
of speaking of beautiful color, a beautiful sky, a beautiful river,
beautiful flowers, beautiful animals, and beautiful human beings. But
quite aside from the question, which we wish not to discuss here, how
far beauty may be predicated of such objects, or how far natural beauty
may be placed side by side with artistic beauty, we must begin by
maintaining that artistic beauty is higher than the beauty of nature.
For the beauty of art is beauty born--and born again--of the spirit. And
as spirit and its products stand higher than nature and its phenomena,
by so much the beauty that resides in art is superior to the beauty of
nature.

To say that spirit and artistic beauty stand higher than natural beauty,
is to say very little, for "higher" is a very indefinite expression,
which states the difference between them as quantitative and external.
The "higher" quality of spirit and of artistic beauty does not at all
stand in a merely relative position to nature. Spirit only is the true
essence and content of the world, so that whatever is beautiful is truly
beautiful only when it partakes of this higher essence and is produced
by it. In this sense natural beauty appears only as a reflection of the
beauty that belongs to spirit; it is an imperfect and incomplete
expression of the spiritual substance.

[Illustration: ROYAL OLD MUSEUM IN BERLIN _By Schinkel_]

Confining ourselves to artistic beauty, we must first consider certain
difficulties. The first that suggests itself is the question whether art
is at all worthy of a philosophic treatment. To be sure, art and beauty
pervade, like a kindly genius, all the affairs of life, and joyously
adorn all its inner and outer phases, softening the gravity and the
burden of actual existence, furnishing pleasure for idle moments, and,
where it can accomplish nothing positive, driving evil away by occupying
its place. Yet, although art wins its way everywhere with its pleasing
forms, from the crude adornment of the savages to the splendor of the
temple with its marvelous wealth of decoration, art itself appears to
fall outside the real aims of life. And though the creations of art
cannot be said to be directly disadvantageous to the serious purposes of
life, nay, on occasion actually further them by holding evil at bay, on
the whole, art belongs to the relaxation and leisure of the mind, while
the substantial interests of life demand its exertion. At any rate, such
a view renders art a superfluity, though the tender and emotional
influence which is wrought upon the mind by occupation with art is not
thought necessarily detrimental, because effeminate.

There are others, again, who, though acknowledging art to be a luxury,
have thought it necessary to defend it by pointing to the practical
necessities of the fine arts and to the relation they bear to morality
and piety. Very serious aims have been ascribed to art. Art has been
recommended as a mediator between reason and sensuousness, between
inclination and duty, as the reconcilor of all these elements constantly
warring with one another. But it must be said that, by making art serve
two masters, it is not rendered thereby more worthy of a philosophic
treatment. Instead of being an end in itself, art is degraded into a
means of appealing to higher aims, on the one hand, and to frivolity and
idleness on the other.

Art considered as means offers another difficulty which springs from
its form. Granting that art can be subordinated to serious aims and that
the results which it thus produces will be significant, still the means
used by art is deception, for beauty is appearance, its form is its
life; and one must admit that a true and real purpose should not be
achieved through deception. Even if a good end is thus, now and then,
attained by art its success is rather limited, and even then deception
cannot be recommended as a worthy means; for the means should be
adequate to the dignity of the end, and truth can be produced by truth
alone and not by deception and semblance.

It may thus appear as if art were not worthy of philosophic
consideration because it is supposed to be merely a pleasing pastime;
even when it pursues more serious aims it does not correspond with their
nature. On the whole, it is conceived to serve both grave and light
interests, achieving its results by means of deception and semblance.

As for the worthiness of art to be philosophically considered, it is
indeed true that art can be used as a casual amusement, furnishing
enjoyment and pleasure, decorating our surroundings, lending grace to
the external conditions of life, and giving prominence to other objects
through ornamentation. Art thus employed is indeed not an independent or
free, but rather a subservient art. That art might serve other purposes
and still retain its pleasure-giving function, is a relation which it
has in common with thought. For science, too, in the hands of the
servile understanding is used for finite ends and accidental means, and
is thus not self-sufficient, but is determined by outer objects and
circumstances. On the other hand, science can emancipate itself from
such service and can rise in free independence to the pursuit of truth,
in which the realization of its own aims is its proper function.

Art is not genuine art until it has thus liberated itself. It fulfils
its highest task when it has joined the same sphere with religion and
philosophy and has become a certain mode of bringing to consciousness
and expression the divine meaning of things, the deepest interests of
mankind, and the most universal truths of the spirit. Into works of art
the nations have wrought their most profound ideas and aspirations. Fine
Art often constitutes the key, and with many nations it is the only key,
to an understanding of their wisdom and religion. This character art has
in common with religion and philosophy. Art's peculiar feature, however,
consists in its ability to represent in _sensuous form_ even the highest
ideas, bringing them thus nearer to the character of natural phenomena,
to the senses, and to feeling. It is the height of a supra-sensuous
world into which _thought_ reaches, but it always appears to immediate
consciousness and to present experience as an alien _beyond_. Through
the power of philosophic thinking we are able to soar above what is
merely _here_, above sensuous and finite experience. But spirit can heal
the breach between the supra-sensuous and the sensuous brought on by its
own advance; it produces out of itself the world of fine art as the
first reconciling medium between what is merely external, sensuous, and
transient, and the world of pure thought, between nature with its finite
reality and the infinite freedom of philosophic reason.

Concerning the unworthiness of art because of its character as
appearance and deception, it must be admitted that such criticism would
not be without justice, if appearance could be said to be equivalent to
falsehood and thus to something that ought not to be. Appearance is
essential to reality; truth could not be, did it not shine through
appearance. Therefore not appearance in general can be objected to, but
merely the particular kind of appearance through which art seeks to
portray truth. To charge the appearance in which art chooses to embody
its ideas as deception, receives meaning only by comparison with the
external world of phenomena and its immediate materiality, as well as
with the inner world of sensations and feelings. To these two worlds we
are wont, in our empirical work-a-day life, to attribute the value of
actuality, reality, and truth, in contrast to art, which is supposed to
be lacking such reality and truth. But, in fact, it is just the whole
sphere of the empirical inner and outer world that is not the world of
true reality; indeed it may be called a mere show and a cruel deception
in a far stricter sense than in the case of art. Only beyond the
immediacy of sense and of external objects is genuine reality to be
found. Truly real is but the fundamental essence and the underlying
substance of nature and of spirit, and the universal element in nature
and in spirit is precisely what art accentuates and makes visible. This
essence of reality appears also in the common outer and inner world, but
it appears in the form of a chaos of contingencies, distorted by the
immediateness of sense perception, and by the capriciousness of
conditions, events, characters, etc. Art frees the true meaning of
appearances from the show and deception of this bad and transient world,
and invests it with a higher reality, born of the spirit. Thus, far
removed from being mere appearances, the products of art have a higher
reality and a more genuine being than the things of ordinary life.


THE CONTENT AND IDEAL OF ART

The content of art is spiritual, and its form is sensuous; both sides
art has to reconcile into a united whole. The first requirement is that
the content, which art is to represent, must be worthy of artistic
representation; otherwise we obtain only a bad unity, since a content
not capable of artistic treatment is made to take on an artistic form,
and a matter prosaic in itself is forced into a form quite opposed to
its inherent nature.

The second requirement demands of the content of art that it shall be no
abstraction. By this is not meant that it must be concrete, as the
sensuous is alleged to be concrete in contrast to everything spiritual
and intellectual. For everything that is genuinely true, in the realm
of thought as well as in the domain of nature, is concrete, and has, in
spite of universality, nevertheless, a particular and subjective
character. By saying, for example, that God is simply One, the Supreme
Being as such, we express thereby nothing but a lifeless abstraction of
an understanding devoid of reason. Such a God, as indeed he is not
conceived in his concrete truth, can furnish no content for art, least
of all for plastic art. Thus the Jews and the Turks have not been able
to represent their God, who is still more abstract, in the positive
manner in which the Christians have represented theirs. For in
Christianity God is conceived in his truth, and therefore concrete, as a
person, as a subject, and, more precisely still, as Spirit. What he is
as spirit appears to the religious consciousness as a Trinity of
persons, which at the same time is One. Here the essence of God is the
reconciled unity of universality and particularity, such unity alone
being concrete. Hence, as a content in order to be true must be concrete
in this sense, art demands the same concreteness; because a mere
abstract idea, or an abstract universal, cannot manifest itself in a
particular and sensuous unified form.

If a true and therefore concrete content is to have its adequate
sensuous form and shape, this sensuous form must--this being the third
requirement--also be something individual, completely concrete, and one.
The nature of concreteness belonging to both the content and the
representation of art, is precisely the point in which both can coincide
and correspond to each other. The natural shape of the human body, for
example, is a sensuous concrete object, which is perfectly adequate to
represent the spiritual in its concreteness; the view should therefore
be abandoned that an existing object from the external world is
accidentally chosen by art to express a spiritual idea. Art does not
seize upon this or that form either because it simply finds it or
because it can find no other, but the concrete spiritual content itself
carries with it the element of external, real, yes, even sensuous,
representation. And this is the reason why a sensuous concrete object,
which bears the impress of an essentially spiritual content, addresses
itself to the inner eye; the outward shape whereby the content is
rendered visible and imaginable aims at an existence only in our heart
and mind. For this reason alone are content and artistic shape
harmoniously wrought. The mere sensuously concrete external nature as
such has not this purpose for its only origin. The gay and variegated
plumage of the birds shines unseen, and their song dies away unheard;
the torch-thistle which blossoms only for a night withers without having
been admired in the wilds of southern forests; and these forests, groves
of the most beautiful and luxuriant vegetation, with the most odorous
and fragrant perfumes, perish and waste, no more enjoyed. The work of
art is not so unconsciously self-immersed, but it is essentially a
question, an address to the responsive soul, an appeal to the heart and
to the mind.

Although the sensuous form in which art clothes its content is not
accidental, yet it is not the highest form whereby the spiritually
concrete may be grasped. A higher mode than representation through a
sensuous form, is thought. True and rational thinking, though in a
relative sense abstract, must not be one-sided, but concrete. How far a
definite content can be adequately treated by art and how far it needs,
according to its nature, a higher and more spiritual form, is a
distinction which we see at once if, for example, the Greek gods are
compared with God as conceived in accordance with Christian notions. The
Greek god is not abstract but individual, closely related to the natural
human form. The Christian God is also a concrete personality, but he is
pure spiritually, and can be known only as spirit and in spirit. His
sphere of existence is therefore essentially inner knowledge, and not
the outer natural shape through which he can be represented but
imperfectly and not in the whole depth of his essence.

But the task of art is to represent a spiritual idea to direct
contemplation in sensuous form, and not in the form of thought or of
pure spirituality. The value and dignity of such representation lies in
the correspondence and unity of the two sides, of the spiritual content
and its sensuous embodiment, so that the perfection and excellency of
art must depend upon the grade of inner harmony and union with which the
spiritual idea and the sensuous form interpenetrate.

The requirement of the conformity of spiritual idea and sensuous form
might at first be interpreted as meaning that any idea whatever would
suffice, so long as the concrete form represented this idea and no
other. Such a view, however, would confound the ideal of art with mere
correctness, which consists in the expression of any meaning in its
appropriate form. The artistic ideal is not to be thus understood. For
any content whatever is capable, according to the standard of its own
nature, of adequate representation, but yet it does not for that reason
lay claim to artistic beauty in the ideal sense. Judged by the standard
of ideal beauty, even such correct representation will be defective. In
this connection we may remark that the defects of a work of art are not
to be considered simply as always due to the incapacity of the artist;
defectiveness of form has also its root in defectiveness of content.
Thus, for instance, the Chinese, Indians, Egyptians, in their artistic
objects, their representations of the gods, and their idols, adhered to
formlessness, or to a vague and inarticulate form, and were not able to
arrive at genuine beauty, because their mythological ideas, the content
and conception of their works of art, were as yet vague and obscure. The
more perfect in form works of art are, the more profound is the inner
truth of their content and thought. And it is not merely a question of
the greater or lesser skill with which the objects of external nature
are studied and copied, for, in certain stages of artistic consciousness
and artistic activity, the misrepresentation and distortion of natural
objects are not unintentional technical inexpertness and incapacity, but
conscious alteration, which depends upon the content that is in
consciousness, and is, in fact, demanded by it. We may thus speak of
imperfect art, which, in its own proper sphere, may be quite perfect
both technically and in other respects. When compared with the highest
idea and ideal of art, it is indeed defective. In the highest art alone
are the idea and its representation in perfect congruity, because the
sensuous form of the idea is in itself the adequate form, and because
the content, which that form embodies, is itself a genuine content.

The higher truth of art consists, then, in the spiritual having attained
a sensuous form adequate to its essence. And this also furnishes the
principle of division for the philosophy of art. For the Spirit, before
it wins the true meaning of its absolute essence, has to develop through
a series of stages which constitute its very life. To this universal
evolution there corresponds a development of the phases of art, under
the form of which the Spirit--as artist--attains to a comprehension of
its own meaning.

This evolution within the spirit of art has two sides. The development
is, in the first place, a spiritual and universal one, in so far as a
gradual series of definite conceptions of the universe--of nature, man,
and God--finds artistic representation. In the second place, this
universal development of art, embodying itself in sensuous form,
determines definite modes of artistic expression and a totality of
necessary distinctions within the sphere of art. These constitute the
particular arts.

We have now to consider three definite relations of the spiritual idea
to its sensuous expression.


SYMBOLIC ART

Art begins when the spiritual idea, being itself still indefinite and
obscure and ill-comprehended, is made the content of artistic forms. As
indefinite, it does not yet have that individuality which the artistic
ideal demands; its abstractness and one-sidedness thus render its shape
defective and whimsical. The first form of art is therefore rather a
mere search after plasticity than a capacity of true representation. The
spiritual idea has not yet found its adequate form, but is still engaged
in striving and struggling after it. This form we may, in general, call
the _symbolic_ form of art; in such form the abstract idea assumes a
shape in natural sensuous matter which is foreign to it; with this
foreign matter the artistic creation begins, from which, however, it
seems unable to free itself. The objects of external nature are
reproduced unchanged, but at the same time the meaning of the spiritual
idea is attached to them. They thus receive the vocation of expressing
it, and must be interpreted as if the spiritual idea were actually
present in them. It is indeed true that natural objects possess an
aspect which makes them capable of representing a universal meaning, but
in symbolic art a complete correspondence is not yet possible. In it the
correspondence is confined to an abstract quality, as when, for example,
a lion is meant to stand for strength.

This abstract relation brings also to consciousness the foreignness of
the spiritual idea to natural phenomena. And the spiritual idea, having
no other reality to express its essence, expatiates in all these natural
shapes, seeks itself in their unrest and disproportion, but finds them
inadequate to it. It then exaggerates these natural phenomena and shapes
them into the huge and the boundless. The spiritual idea revels in them,
as it were, seethes and ferments in them, does violence to them,
distorts and disfigures them into grotesque shapes, and endeavors by the
diversity, hugeness, and splendor of such forms to raise the natural
phenomena to the spiritual level. For here it is the spiritual idea
which is more or less vague and non-plastic, while the objects of nature
have a thoroughly definite form.

The incongruity of the two elements to each other makes the relation of
the spiritual idea to objective reality a negative one. The spiritual as
a wholly inner element and as the universal substance of all things, is
conceived unsatisfied with all externality, and in its _sublimity_ it
triumphs over the abundance of unsuitable forms. In this conception of
sublimity the natural objects and the human shapes are accepted and left
unaltered, but at the same time recognized as inadequate to their own
inner meaning; it is this inner meaning which is glorified far and above
every worldly content.

These elements constitute, in general, the character of the primitive
artistic pantheism of the Orient, which either invests even the lowest
objects with absolute significance, or forces all phenomena with
violence to assume the expression of its world-view. This art becomes
therefore bizarre, grotesque, and without taste, or it represents the
infinite substance in its abstract freedom turning away with disdain
from the illusory and perishing mass of appearances. Thus the meaning
can never be completely molded into the expression, and, notwithstanding
all the aspiration and effort, the incongruity between the spiritual
idea and the sensuous form remains insuperable. This is, then, the first
form of art-symbolic art with its endless quest, its inner struggle, its
sphinx-like mystery, and its sublimity.


CLASSICAL ART

In the second form of art, which we wish to designate as the
_classical_, the double defect of symbolic art is removed. The symbolic
form is imperfect, because the spiritual meaning which it seeks to
convey enters into consciousness in but an abstract and vague manner,
and thus the congruity between meaning and form must always remain
defective and therefore abstract. This double aspect disappears in the
classical type of art; in it we find the free and adequate embodiment of
the spiritual idea in the form most suitable to it, and with it meaning
and expression are in perfect accord. It is classical art, therefore,
which first affords the creation and contemplation of the completed
ideal, realizing it as a real fact in the world.

But the congruity of idea and reality in classical art must not be
taken in a formal sense of the agreement of a content with its external
form; otherwise every photograph of nature, every picture of a
countenance, landscape, flower, scene, etc., which constitutes the aim
of a representation, would, through the conformity of content and form,
be at once classical. The peculiarity of classical art, on the contrary,
consists in its content being itself a concrete idea, and, as such, a
concrete spiritual idea, for only the spiritual is a truly essential
content. For a worthy object of such a content, Nature must be consulted
as to whether she contains anything to which a spiritual attribute
really belongs. It must be the World-Spirit itself that _invented_ the
proper form for the concrete spiritual ideal--the subjective mind--in
this case the spirit of art--has only _found_ it, and given it natural
plastic existence in accordance with free individual spirituality. The
form in which the idea, as spiritual and individual, clothes itself when
revealed as a temporal phenomenon, is _the human form_. To be sure,
personification and anthropomorphism have frequently been decried as a
degradation of the spiritual; but art, in so far as its task is to bring
before direct contemplation the spiritual in sensuous form, must advance
to such anthropomorphism, for only in its body can mind appear in an
adequately sensuous fashion. The migration of souls is, in this respect,
an abstract notion, and physiology should make it one of its fundamental
principles that life has necessarily, in its evolution, to advance to
the human shape as the only sensuous phenomenon appropriate to the mind.

The human body as portrayed by classical art is not represented in its
mere physical existence, but solely as the natural and sensuous form and
garb of mind; it is therefore divested of all the defects that belong to
the merely sensuous and of all the finite contingencies that appertain
to the phenomenal. But if the form must be thus purified in order to
express the appropriate content, and, furthermore, if the conformity of
meaning and expression is to be complete, the content which is the
spiritual idea must be perfectly capable of being expressed through the
bodily form of man, without projecting into another sphere beyond the
physical and sensuous representation. The result is that Spirit is
characterized as a particular form of mind, namely, as human mind, and
not as simply absolute and eternal; but the absolute and eternal Spirit
must be able to reveal and express itself in a manner far more
spiritual.

This latter point brings to light the defect of classical art, which
demands its dissolution and its transition to a third and higher form,
to wit, the _romantic_ form of art.


ROMANTIC ART

The romantic form of art destroys the unity of the spiritual idea and
its sensuous form, and goes back, though on a higher level, to the
difference and opposition of the two, which symbolic art left
unreconciled. The classical form of art attained, indeed, the highest
degree of perfection which the sensuous process of art was capable of
realizing; and, if it shows any defects, the defects are those of art
itself, due to the limitation of its sphere. This limitation has its
root in the general attempt of art to represent in sensuous concrete
form the infinite and universal Spirit, and in the attempt of the
classical type of art to blend so completely spiritual and sensuous
existence that the two appear in mutual conformity. But in such a fusion
of the spiritual and sensuous aspects Spirit cannot be portrayed
according to its true essence, for the true essence of Spirit is its
infinite subjectivity; and its absolute internal meaning does not lend
itself to a full and free expression in the confinement of the bodily
form as its only appropriate existence.

Now, romantic art dissolves the inseparable unity which is the ideal of
the classical type, because it has won a content which goes beyond the
classical form of art and its mode of expression. This content--if
familiar ideas may be recalled--coincides with what Christianity
declares to be true of God as Spirit, in distinction to the Greek
belief in gods which constitutes the essential and appropriate subject
for classical art. The concrete content of Hellenic art implies the
unity of the human and divine nature, a unity which, just because it is
merely _implied_ and _immediate_, permits of a representation in an
immediately visible and sensuous mold. The Greek god is the object of
naïve contemplation and sensuous imagination; his shape is, therefore,
the bodily shape of man; the circle of his power and his essence is
individual and confined. To man the Greek god appears as a being and a
power with whom he may _feel_ a kinship and unity, but this kinship and
unity, are not reflected upon or raised into definite knowledge. The
higher stage is the _knowledge_ of this unconscious unity, which
underlies the classical form of art and which it has rendered capable of
complete plastic embodiment. The elevation of what is unconscious and
implied into self-conscious knowledge brings about an enormous
difference; it is the infinite difference which, for example, separates
man from the animal. Man is an animal, but, even in his animal
functions, does not rest satisfied with the potential and the
unconscious as the animal does, but becomes conscious of them, reflects
upon them, and raises them--as, for instance, the process of
digestion--into self-conscious science. And it is thus that man breaks
through the boundary of his merely immediate and unconscious existence,
so that, just because he knows himself to be animal, he ceases in virtue
of such knowledge to be animal, and, through such self-knowledge only,
can characterize himself as mind or spirit.

If in the manner just described the unity of the human and divine nature
is raised from an _immediate_ to a _conscious,_ unity, the true mold for
the reality of this content is no longer the sensuous, immediate
existence of the spiritual, the bodily frame of man, but
self-consciousness and internal contemplation. For this reason
Christianity, in depicting God as Spirit--not as particularized
individual mind, but as absolute and universal Spirit--retires from the
sensuousness of imagination into the sphere of inner being, and makes
this, and not the bodily form, the material and mold of its content; and
thus the unity of the human and divine nature is a conscious unity,
capable of realization only by spiritual knowledge. The new content, won
by this unity, is not dependent upon sensuous representation; it is now
exempt from such immediate existence. In this way, however, romantic art
becomes art which transcends itself, carrying on this process of
self-transcendence within its own artistic sphere and artistic form.

Briefly stated, the essence of romantic art consists in the artistic
object being the free, concrete, spiritual idea itself, which is
revealed in its spirituality to the inner, and not the outer, eye. In
conformity with such a content, art can, in a sense, not work for
sensuous perception, but must aim at the inner mood, which completely
fuses with its object, at the most subjective inner shrine, at the
heart, the feeling, which, as spiritual feeling, longs for freedom
within itself and seeks and finds reconciliation only within the inner
recesses of the spirit. This _inner_ world is the content of romantic
art, and as such an inner life, or as its reflection, it must seek
embodiment. The inner life thus triumphs over the outer world--indeed,
so triumphs over it that the outer world itself is made to proclaim its
victory, through which the sensuous appearance sinks into worthlessness.

On the other hand, the romantic type of art, like every other, needs an
external mode of expression. But the spiritual has now retired from the
outer mode into itself, and the sensuous externality of form assumes
again, as it did in symbolic art, an insignificant and transient
character. The subjective, finite mind and will, the peculiarity and
caprice of the individual, of character, action, or of incident and
plot, assume likewise the character they had in symbolic art. The
external side of things is surrendered to accident and committed to the
excesses of the imagination, whose caprice now mirrors existence as it
is, now chooses to distort the objects of the outer world into a bizarre
and grotesque medley, for the external form no longer possesses a
meaning and significance, as in classical art, on its own account and
for it own sake. Feeling is now everything. It finds its artistic
reflection, not in the world of external things and their forms, but in
its own expression; and in every incident and accident of life, in every
misfortune, grief, and even crime, feeling preserves or regains its
healing power of reconciliation.

Hence, the indifference, incongruity, and antagonism of spiritual idea
and sensuous form, the characteristics of symbolic art, reappear in the
romantic type, but with this essential difference. In the romantic
realm, the spiritual idea, to whose defectiveness was due the defective
forms of symbolic art, now reveals itself in its perfection within mind
and feeling. It is by virtue of the higher perfection of the idea that
it shuns any adequate union with an external form, since it can seek and
attain its true reality and expression best within itself.

This, in general terms, is the character of the symbolic, classical, and
romantic forms of art, which stand for the three relations of the
spiritual idea to its expression in the realm of art. They consist in
the aspiration after, and the attainment and transcendence of, the ideal
as the true idea of beauty.


THE PARTICULAR ARTS

But, now, there inhere in the idea of beauty different modifications
which art translates into sensuous forms. And we find a fundamental
principle by which the several particular arts may be arranged and
defined--that is, the species of art contain in themselves the same
essential differences which we have found in the three general types of
art. External objectivity, moreover, into which these types are molded
by means of a sensuous and particular material, renders them independent
and separate means of realizing different artistic functions, as far as
each type finds its definite character in some one definite external
material whose mode of portrayal determines its adequate realization.
Furthermore, the general types of art correspond to the several
particular arts, so that they (the particular arts) belong each of them
_specifically_ to _one_ of the general types of art. It is these
particular arts which give adequate and artistic external being to the
general types.


ARCHITECTURE

The first of the particular arts with which, according to their
fundamental principle, we have to begin, is architecture. Its task
consists in so shaping external inorganic nature that it becomes
homogeneous with mind, as an artistic outer world. The material of
architecture is matter itself in its immediate externality as a heavy
mass subject to mechanical laws, and its forms remain the forms of
inorganic nature, but are merely arranged and ordered in accordance with
the abstract rules of the understanding, the rules of symmetry. But in
such material and in such forms the ideal as concrete spirituality
cannot be realized; the reality which is represented in them remains,
therefore, alien to the spiritual idea, as something external which it
has not penetrated or with which it has but a remote and abstract
relation. Hence the fundamental type of architecture is the _symbolical_
form of art. For it is architecture that paves the way, as it were, for
the adequate realization of the God, toiling and wrestling in his
service with external nature, and seeking to extricate it from the chaos
of finitude and the abortiveness of chance. By this means it levels a
space for the God, frames his external surroundings, and builds him his
temple as the place for inner contemplation and for reflection upon the
eternal objects of the spirit. It raises an inclosure around those
gathered together, as a defense against the threatening of the wind,
against rain, the thunder-storm, and wild beasts, and reveals the will
to gather together, though externally, yet in accordance with the
artistic form. A meaning such as this, the art of architecture is able
to mold into its material and its forms with more or less success,
according as the determinate nature of the content which it seeks to
embody is more significant or more trivial, more concrete or more
abstract, more deeply rooted within its inner being or more dim and
superficial. Indeed, it may even advance so far as to endeavor to create
for such meaning an adequate artistic expression with its material and
forms, but in such an attempt it has already overstepped the bounds of
its own sphere, and inclines towards sculpture, the higher phase of art.
For the limit of architecture lies precisely in this, that it refers to
the spiritual as an internal essence in contrast with the external forms
of its art, and thus whatever spirit and soul are possessed it must
point to as something other than itself.


SCULPTURE

Architecture, however, has purified the inorganic external world, has
given it symmetric order, has impressed upon it the seal of mind, and
the temple of the God, the house of his community, stands ready. Into
this temple now enters the God himself. The lightning-flash of
individuality strikes the inert mass, permeates it, and a form no longer
merely symmetrical, but infinite and spiritual, concentrates and molds
its adequate bodily shape. This is the task of sculpture. Inasmuch as in
it the inner spiritual element, which architecture can no more than hint
at, completely abides with the sensuous form and its external matter,
and as both sides are so merged into each other that neither
predominates, sculpture has the _classical_ form of art as its
fundamental type. In fact, the sensuous realm itself can command no
expression which could not be that of the spiritual sphere, just as,
conversely, no spiritual content can attain perfect plasticity in
sculpture which is incapable of being adequately presented to perception
in bodily form. It is sculpture which arrests for our vision the spirit
in its bodily frame, in immediate unity with it, and in an attitude of
peace and repose; and the form in turn is animated by the content of
spiritual individuality. Therefore the external sensuous matter is here
not wrought, either according to its mechanical quality alone, as heavy
mass, nor in forms peculiar to inorganic nature, nor as indifferent to
color, etc., but in ideal forms of the human shape, and in the whole of
the spatial dimensions. In this last respect sculpture should be
credited with having first revealed the inner and spiritual essence in
its eternal repose and essential self-possession. To such repose and
unity with itself corresponds only that external element which itself
persists in unity and repose. Such an element is the form taken in its
abstract spatiality. The spirit which sculpture represents is that which
is solid in itself, not variously broken up in the play of contingencies
and passions; nor does its external form admit of the portrayal of such
a manifold play, but it holds to this one side only, to the abstraction
of space in the totality of its dimensions.


THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ROMANTIC ARTS

After architecture has built the temple and the hand of sculpture has
placed inside it the statue of the God, then this sensuously visible God
faces in the spacious halls of his house the _community_. The community
is the spiritual, self-reflecting element in this sensuous realm, it is
the animating subjectivity and inner life. A new principle of art begins
with it. Both the content of art and the medium which embodies it in
outward form now demand particularization, individualization, and the
subjective mode of expressing these. The solid unity which the God
possesses in sculpture breaks up into the plurality of inner individual
lives, whose unity is not sensuous, but essentially ideal.

And now God comes to assume the aspect which makes him truly spiritual.
As a hither-and-thither, as an alternation between the unity within
himself and his realization in subjective knowledge and individual
consciousness, as well as in the common and unified life of the many
individuals, he is genuinely Spirit--the Spirit in his community. In his
community God is released from the abstractness of a mysterious
self-identity, as well as from the naïve imprisonment in a bodily shape,
in which he is represented by sculpture. Here he is exalted into
spirituality, subjectivity, and knowledge. For this reason the higher
content of art is now this spirituality in its absolute form. But since
what chiefly reveals itself in this stage is not the serene repose of
God in himself, but rather his appearance, his being, and his
manifestation to others, the objects of artistic representation are now
the most varied subjective expressions of life and activity for their
own sake, as human passions, deeds, events, and, in general, the wide
range of human feeling, will, and resignation. In accordance with this
content, the sensuous element must differentiate and show itself
adequate to the expression of subjective feeling. Such different media
are furnished by color, by the musical sound, and finally by the sound
as the mere indication of inner intuitions and ideas; and thus as
different forms of realizing the spiritual content of art by means of
these media we obtain painting, music, and poetry. The sensuous media
employed in these arts being individualized and in their essence
recognized as ideal, they correspond most effectively to the spiritual
content of art, and the union between spiritual meaning and sensuous
expression develops, therefore, into greater intimacy than was possible
in the case of architecture and sculpture. This intimate unity, however,
is due wholly to the subjective side.

Leaving, then, the symbolic spirit of architecture and the classical
ideal of sculpture behind, these new arts in which form and content are
raised to an ideal level borrow their type from the _romantic_ form of
art, whose mode of expression they are most eminently fitted to voice.
They form, however, a totality of arts, because the romantic type is the
most concrete in itself.


PAINTING

The first art in this totality, which is akin to sculpture, is painting.
The material which it uses for its content and for the sensuous
expression of that content is visibility as such, in so far as it is
individualized, viz., specified as color. To be sure, the media employed
in architecture and sculpture are also visible and colored, but they are
not, as in painting, visibility as such, not the simple light which
contrasts itself with darkness and in combination with it becomes color.
This visibility as a subjective and ideal attribute, requires neither,
like architecture, the abstract mechanical form of mass which we find in
heavy matter, nor, like sculpture, the three dimensions of sensuous
space, even though in concentrated and organic plasticity, but the
visibility which appertains to painting has its differences on a more
ideal level, in the particular kinds of color; and thus painting frees
art from the sensuous completeness in space peculiar to material things
only, by confining itself to a plane surface.

On the other hand, the content also gains in varied particularization.
Whatever can find room in the human heart, as emotion, idea, and
purpose, whatever it is able to frame into a deed, all this variety of
material can constitute the many-colored content of painting. The whole
range of particular existence, from the highest aspirations of the mind
down to the most isolated objects of nature, can obtain a place in this
art. For even finite nature, in its particular scenes and aspects, can
here appear, if only some allusion to a spiritual element makes it akin
to thought and feeling.


MUSIC

The second art in which the romantic form finds realization, on still a
higher level than in painting, is music. Its material, though still
sensuous, advances to a deeper subjectivity and greater specification.
The idealization of the sensuous, music brings about by negating space.
In music the indifferent extension of space whose appearance painting
admits and consciously imitates is concentrated and idealized into a
single point. But in the form of a motion and tremor of the material
body within itself, this single point becomes a concrete and active
process within the idealization of matter. Such an incipient ideality of
matter which no longer appears under the spatial form, but as temporal
ideality, is sound the sensuous acknowledged as ideal, whose abstract
visibility is transformed into audibility. Sound, as it were, exempts
the ideal from its absorption in matter.

This earliest animation and inspiration of matter furnishes the medium
for the inner and intimate life of the spirit, as yet on an indefinite
level; it is through the tones of music that the heart pours out its
whole scale of feelings and passions. Thus as sculpture constitutes the
central point between architecture and the arts of romantic
subjectivity, so music forms the centre of the romantic arts, and
represents the point of transition between abstract spatial
sensuousness, which belongs to painting, and the abstract spirituality
of poetry. Within itself music has, like architecture, an abstract
quantitative relation, as a contrast to its inward and emotional
quality; it also has as its basis a permanent law to which the tones
with their combinations and successions must conform.


POETRY

For the third and most spiritual expression of the romantic form of art,
we must look to poetry. Its characteristic peculiarity lies in the power
with which it subjugates to the mind and to its ideas the sensuous
element from which music and painting began to set art free. For sound,
the one external medium of which poetry avails itself, is in it no
longer a feeling of the tone itself, but is a sign which is, by itself,
meaningless. This sign, moreover, is a sign of an idea which has become
concrete, and not merely of indefinite feeling and of its _nuances_ and
grades. By this means the tone becomes the _word_, an articulate voice,
whose function it is to indicate thoughts and ideas. The negative point
to which music had advanced now reveals itself in poetry as the
completely concrete point, as the spirit or the self-consciousness of
the individual, which spontaneously unites the infinite space of its
ideas with the time-element of sound. But this sensuous element which,
in music, was still in immediate union with inner feelings and moods,
is, in poetry, divorced from the content of consciousness, for in poetry
the mind determines this content on its own account and for the sake of
its ideas, and while it employs sound to express them, yet sound itself
is reduced to a symbol with out value or meaning. From this point of
view sound may just as well be considered a mere letter, for the
audible, like the visible, is now relegated to a mere suggestion of
mind. Thus the genuine mode of poetic representation is the inner
perception and the poetic imagination itself. And since all types of art
share in this mode, poetry runs through them all, and develops itself
independently in each. Poetry, then, is the universal art of the spirit
which has attained inner freedom, and which does not depend for its
realization upon external sensuous matter, but expatiates only in the
inner space and inner time of the ideas and feelings. But just in this,
its highest phase, art oversteps the bounds of its own sphere by
abandoning the harmoniously sensuous mode of portraying the spirit and
by passing from the poetry of imagination into the prose of thought.


SUMMARY

Such, then, is the organic totality of the several arts the external art
of architecture, the objective art of sculpture, and the subjective arts
of painting, music, and poetry. The higher principle from which these
are derived we have found in the types of art, the symbolic, the
classical, and the romantic, which form the universal phases of the
idea of beauty itself. Thus symbolic art finds its most adequate reality
and most perfect application in architecture, in which it is
self-complete, and is not yet reduced, so to speak, to the inorganic
medium for another art. The classical form of art, on the other hand,
attains its most complete realization in sculpture, while it accepts
architecture only as forming an inclosure round its products and is as
yet not capable of developing painting and music as absolute expressions
of its meaning. The romantic type of art, finally, seizes upon painting,
music, and poetry as its essential and adequate modes of expression.
Poetry, however, is in conformity with all types of the beautiful and
extends over them all, because its characteristic element is the
esthetic imagination, and imagination is necessary for every product of
art, to whatever type it may belong.

Thus what the particular arts realize in individual artistic creations
are, according to the philosophic conception, simply the universal types
of the self-unfolding idea of beauty. Out of the external realization of
this idea arises the wide Pantheon of art, whose architect and builder
is the self-developing spirit of beauty, for the completion of which,
however, the history of the world will require its evolution of
countless ages.



THE LIFE OF BETTINA VON ARNIM

BY HENRY WOOD, PH.D. Professor of German, Johns Hopkins University


The ten years succeeding the publication of _Goethe's Briefwechsel mit
einem Kinde_ (1835) coincided in point of time with the awakening in
England, through Thomas Carlyle, and in America as well, of an intense
if not yet profound interest in German Literature. It must remain a
tribute to the ideal enthusiasm of the movement that, among the first
German works to receive a permanent welcome and become domiciled in
American literary circles, was that strange and glittering mass, flotsam
of a great poet's life dislodged and jettisoned from his personality by
the subtle arts of the "Child" who had now gathered it up again and was
presenting it to the astonished world. At a time when the _Foreign
Quarterly Review_ in England (1838) was vainly endeavoring to persuade
"Madame von Arnim" not to undertake the translation of her work, "whose
unrestrained effusions far exceed the-bounds authorized by English
decorum," Margaret Fuller was preparing in Boston to translate Bettina's
_Günderode_, and soon felt herself in a position to state[3] that
"_Goethe's Correspondence with a Child_ is as popular here as in
Germany." In one respect, indeed, Bettina's vogue in America remained
for the rest of her lifetime more secure than in her own country, where
the publication of her later politico-sociological works, _Dies Buch
gehört dem König_ (1843) and _Gespräche mit Dämonen_ (1852), was
followed by a temporary eclipse of her popularity, and where also her
fate, in persistently associating her with Rahel, the wife of Varnhagen,
as a foil for Rahel's brilliant but transitory glitter, had
tarnished her own fame.[4]

[Illustration: BETTINA VON ARNIM]

For these things American readers of the _Correspondence_ seem to have
cared but little. While German critics were deliberating as to what
grouping of characteristics could best express Bettina as a type, the
American public had already discovered in her a rare personality--the
recipient and custodian of Frau Rat's fondest memories of Goethe's
childhood; the "mythological nurse-maid,"[5] to whom, though in her
proper name as well as to her first-born son, successive editions of
Grimm's _Fairy Tales_ had been dedicated; the youthful friend of
Beethoven, from whom she had received treasured confidences as to the
influence exerted by Goethe's verse upon his mind and art; at times the
haunting Muse of Germany's greatest poet and, since 1811, the wife of
the most chivalrous of German poets, Achim von Arnim. If we add to these
characteristics the circumstance that, as Arnim's wife and as the mother
of their rarely endowed children, she had become the centre of a
distinguished and devoted circle in the Mark Brandenburg and in the
Prussian capital, the distance separating us from Ben Jonson's attitude
in his Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke is no longer very great:
"Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother."[6]

It is, nevertheless, not through the aid of Ben Jonson's line, "fair and
wise and good as she," that Bettina may be described. She suggests far
rather an electrical, inspired, lyrical nature. The spokesman of this
literary estimate of Bettina was Margaret Fuller, and it is interesting
to note that this best of American critics at once instituted a
comparison between Bettina and Karoline von Günderode, in which the
former was made to stand for Nature and the latter for Art. But it
appears to have escaped notice that Margaret Fuller, in presenting her
example of the artistic type, has, with no express intention, given us a
picture of herself.[7] The subtle harmonies, the soft aerial grace, the
multiplied traits, the soul delicately appareled, the soft dignity of
each look and gesture, the silvery spiritual clearness of an angel's
lyre, drawing from every form of life its eternal meaning--these are all
lineaments of the Countess of Pembroke type, and these characteristics
Margaret Fuller herself shared. How different is her description of
Bettina!

"Bettina, hovering from object to object, drawing new tides of vital
energy from all, living freshly alike in man and tree, loving the breath
of the damp earth as well as the flower which springs from it, bounding
over the fences of society as well as over the fences of the field,
intoxicated with the apprehension of each new mystery, never hushed into
silence by the highest, flying and singing like a bird, sobbing with the
hopelessness of an infant, prophetic, yet astonished at the fulfilment
of each prophecy, restless, fearless, clinging to love, yet unwearied in
experiment--is not this the pervasive vital force, cause of the effect
which we call Nature?"

On the part of both Goethe and Bettina, there was always a recognition
of such a natural force operating in her. As Günderode once put it,
"Bettina seems like clay, which a divine artificer, preparing to fashion
it into something rare, is treading with his feet." On the 13th of
August, 1807, Bettina wrote: "Farewell, glorious one, thou who dost both
dazzle and intimidate me. From this steep cliff [Goethe] upon which my
love has risked the climb, there is no possible path down again. That is
not to be thought of; I should simply break my neck." Goethe's reply, in
this as in other cases, was characteristic: "What can one say or give
to thee, which thou hast not after thy own fashion already appropriated?
There is nothing left for me but to keep still, and let thee have thy
way." In this passage-at-arms, the whole of the _Correspondence_, though
not its charm, is concentrated. Goethe was intent on keeping the
relationship within its first limitations, that is to say, as a
friendship in which his mother, Frau Rat, was included as a necessary
third party. The impetuous young _confidante_ was already transmitting
to Goethe chapters from the history of his childhood, as seen through
the communications of his mother to her. These had given the poet the
purest pleasure, and he intended making use of them for his
Autobiography.[8] But, on the other hand, as soon as Bettina risked
independent judgments on his creations, as in the case of the _Elective
Affinities_ (1809), her inadequacy and her presumption in claiming for
herself the rôle of a better Ottilie were both painfully apparent. Her
attitude toward the adored object was a combination of meekness and
pretension, the latter predominating as time went on. "It was sung at my
cradle, that I must love a star that should always remain apart. But
thou [Goethe] hast sung me a cradle song, and to that song, which lulls
me into a dream on the fate of my days, I must listen to the end of my
days." To this humility succeeded the self-deception of the so-called
later Diary. Under date of March 22, 1832, Bettina relates that Goethe,
at their last interview in the early days, had called her his Muse.
Hence, on learning of his death, she reproached herself for ever having
left him--"the tree of whose fame, with its eternally budding shoots,
had been committed to my care. Alas for the false world, which separated
us, and led me, poor blind child, away from my master!" Margaret
Fuller[9] called Goethe "my parent." But how sharp is the contrast
between her tone of reverent affection and the umbrageous jealousy of
Bettina!

And Goethe? While the poet safeguarded his fatherly relation to Bettina,
up to the break in 1811, in a hundred ways, we find him already, in
1807, inclosing in a letter to his mother the text of Sonnet I., which
had been inspired, in the first instance, by his friendship with Minna
Herzlieb. Bettina, left to draw her own conclusions, at once identified
herself with "Oreas" in the sonnet, and reproached herself for having
plunged, like a mountain avalanche, into the broad, full current of the
poet's life. From the letter of September 17th it is plain that Bettina
indulged, in all seriousness, the fanciful notion that her inspiration
was, in a sense, necessary to Goethe's fame. In her fond, mystical
interpretation of the sonnets, her heart seems to her the fruitful
furrow, the earth-womb, in which Goethe's songs are sown, and out of
which, accompanied by birth-pangs for her, they are destined to soar
aloft as heavenly poems. She closes with a partial application to
herself of the Biblical text (Luke 1. 40): "Blessed art thou among
women."

Goethe's detractors, particularly among the literary school called Young
Germany, were fond of repeating the insinuation of Fanny Tarnow (1835),
that the poet prized in Bettina only her capacity for idolizing him. But
Goethe's attitude toward the "Child" was far removed from that of
poet-pasha, and Bettina had nothing of the vacuous odalisque in her
composition. G. von Löper has well said of her composite traits: "The
tender radiance of first youth hovers over her descriptions; but, while
one is beholding, Bettina suddenly changes into a mischievous elf, and,
if we reach out to grasp the kobold, lo! a sibyl stands before us!"
Behind all Bettina's mobility there is a force of individuality, as
irresistible and as recurrent as the tides. Her brother Clemens and her
brother-in-law Savigny tried in vain to temper the violence of her
enthusiasm for the insurgent Tyrolese, of her flaming patriotism,
of her hatred of philistinism in every form, of her scorn for the
then fashionable neutrality and moderation in the expression of
political opinion.

[Illustration: THE GOETHE MONUMENT (BY BETTINA NON ARNIM)]

She was by nature and choice the advocate of the oppressed, whenever
and wherever met with. The aristocratic _élégant_ Rumohr was obliged
to put up with the following from her: "Why are you not willing to
exchange your boredom, your melancholy caprices, for a rifle? With
your figure, slender as a birch, you could leap over abysses and
spring from rock to rock; but you are lazy and infected with the
disease of neutrality. You cannot hear the voices saying: 'Where is the
enemy? On, on, for God, the Kaiser, and the Fatherland!'" Even Goethe's
Wilhelm Meister, who is, according to Bettina, merely a supine hero,
fails to elude her electric grasp: "Come, flee with me across the Alps
to the Tyrolese. There will we whet our swords and forget thy rabble of
comedians; and as for all thy darling mistresses, they must lack thee
awhile."

The end of poets' friendships with literary women is not always marked
by an anticlimax. Of Margaret Fuller, Emerson wrote in the privacy of
his Journal: "I have no friend whom I more wish to be immortal than she.
An influence I cannot spare, but would always have at hand for
recourse." Words like these Bettina was continually listening for from
her poet-idol, but she heard instead only the disillusioning echo of her
own enthusiasms. Possessing neither stability of mind nor any consistent
roundness of character, she was incapable of rendering herself necessary
to Goethe. In her case, however, the gifts that were denied at her
cradle seem to have been more than made up to her. Her ardent and
aspiring soul, shutting out "all thoughts, all passions, all delights"
else, was distilled into longing to share in the unending life of
Goethe's poesy.[10]

Through the possession of this quality, Bettina, though not herself of
heroic mold, enters the society of the great heroines and speaks to
posterity. Ariadne on the island of Naxos lives not more truly in Ovid's
poetical _Epistles_, than Bettina in the _Correspondence_. But Bettina
has not, like Ariadne, had immortality conferred upon her through the
verses of two great poets. She has rather taken it for herself, as
Goethe said she was wont to do, in anticipating every gift. It is
accordingly not in the _Elegiacs_ of Ovid, flowing as a counter-stream
to Lethe, that we may discern Bettina's gesture of immortal repose as a
metamorphosed heroine. She is a type of the inspired lyrical nature, a
belated child of the Renaissance. A graceful English song-writer of the
Elizabethan period, Thomas Campion, who was as fond as Bettina of the
figure of the flower and the sun, through which she symbolized her
relation to Goethe, has in his verses anticipated her pose and her tone
of agitated expectancy:

             "Is [he] come? O how near is [he]?
             How far yet from this friendly place?
             How many steps from me?
             When shall I [him] embrace?

  These armes I'll spread, which only at (his) sight shall close,
  Attending, as the starry flower that the sun's noone-tide knowes."

Campion termed his verses _Light Conceits of Lovers_. It is difficult to
weigh Bettina's fancies, for she has, as it were, taken the scales with
her when she closed the _Correspondence:_ but it is only just to say of
her Letters, that they realize, as a whole, Tasso's description of the
permanent state of the true lover: "Brama assai, poco spera e nulla
chiede" (Desire much, hope little and nothing demand).



GOETHE'S CORRESPONDENCE WITH A CHILD (1835)

BY BETTINA VON ARNIM TRANSLATED BY WALLACE SMITH MURRAY

LETTERS TO GOETHE'S MOTHER


May 11, 1807.

Dear Frau Rat:

I have been lying in bed for some time, but shall get up now to write
you all about our trip. I wrote you that we passed through the military
lines in male attire. Just before we reached the city gate my
brother-in-law made us get out, because he wanted to see how becoming
the clothes were. Lulu looked very well in them, for she has a splendid
figure and the fit was perfect, whereas all my clothes were too loose
and too long and looked as if I had bought them at a rag fair. My
brother-in-law laughed at me and said I looked like a Savoyard boy and
could be of great service to them. The coachman had driven us off the
road through a forest, and when we came to a cross-road he didn't know
which way to turn. Although it was only the beginning of the four weeks'
trip, I was afraid we might get lost and then arrive in Weimar too late.
I climbed up the highest pine and soon saw where the main road lay. I
made the whole trip on the driver's box, with a fox-skin cap on my head
and the brush hanging down my back. Whenever we arrived at a station, I
would unharness the horses and help hitch up the fresh ones, and would
speak broken German with the postilions as though I were a Frenchman. At
first we had beautiful weather, just as though spring were coming; but
soon it turned very cold and wintry. We passed through a forest of huge
pines and firs all covered with frost; everything was spotless, for not
a soul had driven along the road, which was absolutely white. Moreover
the moon shone upon this deserted paradise of silver; a death-like
stillness reigned-only the wheels creaked from the cold. I sat up on the
box and wasn't a bit cold; winter weather strikes sparks from me! Along
toward midnight we heard some one whistling in the forest. My
brother-in-law handed me a pistol out of the carriage and asked whether
I should have the courage to shoot in case robbers came along. I said
"Yes," and he answered, "But don't shoot too soon." Lulu, who was inside
the carriage, was frightened nearly to death, but where I was, out under
the open sky, with my pistol cocked and my sabre buckled on, countless
stars twinkled above me, the glistening trees casting their gigantic
shadows on the broad, moon-lit way--all that made me brave away up on my
lofty seat! Then I thought of _him_ and wondered, if he had met me under
such circumstances in his youthful years, whether it would not have made
so poetic an impression on him that he would have composed sonnets to me
and never have forgotten me. Now perhaps he thinks differently, and has
probably risen above such a magic impression. It may be that higher
qualities--how shall I ever attain them?--will maintain a right over
him, unless eternal fidelity, cleaving to his threshold, finally wins
_him_ for me! Such was my mood on that cold, clear, winter night, in
which I found no occasion to shoot off my pistol. Not until daybreak did
I receive permission to fire it. The carriage stopped and I ran into the
forest and bravely shot it off into the dense solitude, in honor of your
son. In the meantime our axle had broken; we felled a tree with an axe
we had with us and bound it securely with ropes; then my brother-in-law
discovered how handy I was and complimented me. Thus we went on to
Magdeburg. Precisely at seven o'clock in the evening the fortress gates
are closed; we arrived just a minute late and had to wait outside till
seven the next morning. It wasn't very cold, and the two inside the
chaise went to sleep. In the night it began to snow; I had pulled my
cloak over my head and sat quietly in my exposed seat. In the morning
they peeped out of the carriage at me and beheld a snow man; but before
they could get thoroughly frightened I threw off the cloak under which I
had kept quite warm. In Berlin I was like a blind man in a throng and
was so absent-minded that I could take no interest in anything. I only
longed for a dark place where I shouldn't be disturbed and could think
of the future that was so near at hand. Oh, mother, mother, think of
your son! If you knew you were to see him in a short time, you too would
be like a lightning-rod attracting every flash of lightning. When we
were only a few miles from Weimar, my brother-in-law said he did not
wish to make the detour through Weimar, but would rather take another
road. I remained silent, but Lulu would not hear of it; she said it had
been promised me and he would have to keep his word. Oh, mother, the
sword hung by a hair over my head, but I managed to escape from under
it.

We reached Weimar at twelve o'clock and sat down to dinner, but I
couldn't eat. The other two lay down on the sofa and went to sleep, for
we hadn't slept in three nights. "I advise you," said my brother-in-law,
"to take a rest too; it won't make much difference to Goethe whether you
go to see him or not, and there's nothing remarkable to see in him
anyway." Can you imagine how these words discouraged me? Oh, I didn't
know what to do, all alone in a strange town. I had changed my dress and
stood at the window and looked at the town clock; it was just striking
half-past two. It seemed to me, too, that Goethe wouldn't care
particularly about seeing me; I remembered that people called him proud.
I compresses my heart to quell its yearning. Suddenly the clock struck
three, and then it seemed exactly as though he had called me. I ran down
for the servant, but there was no carriage to be found. "Will a sedan
chair do?" "No," I said, "that's an equipage for the hospital"--and we
went on foot. There was a regular chocolate porridge in the streets and
I had to have myself carried over the worst bogs. In this way I came to
Wieland, not to your son. I had never seen Wieland, but I pretended to
be an old acquaintance. He thought and thought, and finally said, "You
certainly are a dear familiar angel, but I can't seem to remember when
and where I have seen you." I jested with him and said, "Now I know that
you dream of me, for you can't possibly have seen me elsewhere!" I had
him give me a note to your son which I afterwards took with me and kept
as a souvenir. Here's a copy of it: "Bettina Brentano, Sophie's sister,
Maximilian's daughter, Sophie La Roche's granddaughter wishes to see
you, dear brother, and pretends that she's afraid of you and that a note
from me would serve as a talisman and give her courage. Although I am
pretty certain that she is merely making sport of me, I nevertheless
have to do what she wants and I shall be astonished if you don't have
the same experience. W.

April 23, 1807."

With this note I sallied forth. The house lies opposite the
fountain--how deafening the waters sounded in my ears! I ascended the
simple staircase; in the wall stand plaster statues which impose
silence--at any rate I couldn't utter a sound in this sacred hallway.
Everything is cheery and yet solemn! The greatest simplicity prevails in
the rooms, and yet it is all so inviting! "Do not fear," said the modest
walls, "he will come, and he will be, and he will not claim to be _more_
than you." And then the door opened and there he stood, solemnly
serious, with his eyes fixed upon me. I stretched out my hands toward
him, I believe, and soon I knew no more. Goethe caught me up quickly to
his heart. "Poor child, did I frighten you?"--those were the first words
through which his voice thrilled my heart. He led me into his room and
placed me on the sofa opposite him. There we sat, both mute, until at
last he broke the silence. "You have doubtless read in the paper that
we suffered a great bereavement a few days ago in the death of the
Duchess Amalia."

"Oh," I said, "I do not read the papers."

"Why, I thought everything that goes on in Weimar interests you."

"No, nothing interests me but you alone, and therefore I'm far too
impatient to pore over the papers."

"You are a kind child." A long pause--I, glued in such anxiety to the
odious sofa; you know how impossible it is for me to sit up in such
well-bred fashion. Oh, mother, is it possible for any one to forget
herself thus?

Suddenly I said, "I can't stay here on this sofa any longer," and jumped
up.

"Well," said he, "make yourself comfortable;" and with that I flew into
his arms. He drew me on his knee and pressed me to his heart. Everything
was quiet, oh, so quiet, and then all vanished. I hadn't slept for so
long--years had passed in longing for him--and I fell asleep on his
breast. When I awoke a new life began for me. I'll not write you more
this time.

BETTINA.

May, 1807.

 * * * Yes, man has a conscience; it exhorts him to fear nothing and to
leave no demand of the heart unsatisfied. Passion is the only key to the
world and through it the spirit learns to know and feel everything, for
how could he enter the world otherwise? And so I feel that only through
my love for him am I born into the spirit, that only through him the
world is opened to me where the sun shines and day becomes distinct from
night. The things I do not learn through this love, I shall never
comprehend. I wish I were a poor beggar girl and might sit at his
door-step, and take a morsel of bread from him, and that in my glance my
soul would be revealed to him. Then he would draw me close to him and
wrap me in his cloak, that I might grow warm. Surely he would not bid me
depart; I could remain, wandering on and on in his home. And so the
years would roll by and no one would know who I am and no one would know
what had become of me, and thus the years and life itself would go by.
The whole world would be mirrored in his face, and I should have no need
of learning anything more.* * *

                                                       October, 1808.

* * * I hadn't yet seen him at that time when you used to while away for
me those hours of ardent longing by picturing to me in a thousand
different ways our first meeting and his joyous astonishment. Now I know
him and I know how he smiles and the tone of his voice--how calm it is
and yet so full of love; and his exclamations--how they come swelling
from the depths of his heart like the tones of a melody, and how gently
he soothes and affirms what surges forth in wild disorder from an
overflowing heart. When I met him so unexpectedly again last year, I was
so beside myself and wanted to speak, but simply could not compose
myself. Then he placed his fingers on my lips and said, "Speak with your
eyes--I understand it all"; and when he saw that they were full of tears
he pressed my eyelids down and said; "Quiet, quiet, that is best for
both of us!" Yes, dear mother, quiet was instantly suffused through my
whole being, for didn't I possess everything for which I had longed for
years! Oh, mother, I shall never cease thanking you for bearing this
friend; where else could I have found him? Now don't laugh at me, but
remember that I loved him before I knew the least thing about him, and
if you had not borne him what would have become of him? That is a
question you cannot answer.

 * * * Thus a part of the winter passed. I was in a very happy frame of
mind--others might call it exaltation, but it was natural to me. By the
fortress wall that surrounded the large garden there was a watch-tower
with a broken ladder inside. A house close by had been broken into, and
though the thieves could not be traced it was believed they were
concealed in the tower. I had examined it by day and seen that it would
be impossible for a strong man to climb up this very high ladder, which
was rotten and lacked many rungs. I tried it, but slid down again after
I had gone up a short distance. In the night, after I had lain in bed
awhile and Meline was asleep, the thought left me no peace. I threw a
cloak about my shoulders, climbed out of the window, and walked by the
old Marburg castle, where the Elector Philip and Elizabeth peeped
laughingly out of the window. Often enough in the daytime I had observed
this marble couple leaning far out of the window arm in arm, as though
they wanted to survey their lands; but now at night I was so afraid of
them that I jumped quickly into the tower. There I seized the ladder and
helped myself up, heaven knows how; what I was unable to do in the
daytime I accomplished at night with anxiously throbbing heart. When I
was almost at the top, I stopped and considered that the thieves might
really be up there and that they might attack me and hurl me from the
tower. There I hung, not knowing whether to climb up or down, but the
fresh air I scented lured me to the top. What feelings came over me when
I suddenly, by snow and moonlight, surveyed the landscape spread out
beneath me and stood there, alone and safe, with the great host of stars
above me! Thus it is after death; the soul, striving to free itself,
feels the burden of the body most as it is about to cast it off, but it
is victorious in the end and relieved of its anguish. I was conscious
only of being alone and nothing was closer to me at that moment than my
solitude; all else had to vanish before this blessing. * * *

LETTERS _to_ GOETHE.

May 25, 1807.

 * * * Ah, I can impart nothing else to thee than simply that which goes on
in my heart! "Oh, if I could be with him now!" I thought, "the sunlight
of my joy would beam on him with radiance as glowing as when his eye
meets mine in friendly greeting. Oh, how splendid! My mind a sky of
purple, my words the warm dew of love; my soul must issue like an
unveiled bride from her chamber and confess: "Oh, lord and master, in
the future I will see thee often and long by day, and the day shall
often be closed by such an evening as this."

This I promise--that whatever goes on in my soul, all that is untouched
by the outer world, shall be secretly and faithfully revealed to him who
takes such loving interest in me and whose all-embracing power assures
abundant, fruitful nourishment to the budding germs within my breast!

Without faith the lot of the soul is hard; its growth is slow and meagre
like that of a hot-plant between rocks. Thus am I--thus I was until
today--and this fountain of my heart, always without an outlet, suddenly
finds its way to the light, and banks of balsam-breathing fields,
blooming like paradise, accompany it on its way.

Oh, Goethe! My longing, my feelings, are melodies seeking a song to
cling to! May I cling to thee? Then shall these melodies ascend high
enough to accompany _thy_ songs!* * *

June 20, 1807.

* * * I cannot resist telling thee what I have dreamed of thee at
night--as if thou wert in the world for no other purpose. Often I have
had the same dream and I have pondered much why my soul should always
commune with thee under the same conditions. It is always as though I
were to dance before thee in ethereal garments. I have a feeling that I
shall accomplish all. The crowd surrounds me. Now I seek thee, and thou
sittest opposite me calm and serene as if thou didst not observe me and
wert busy with other things. Now I step out before thee with shoes of
gold and my silvery arms hanging down carelessly--and wait. Then thou
raisest thy head, involuntarily thy gaze is fixed upon me as I describe
magic circles with airy tread. Thy eye leaves me no more; thou must
follow me in my movements, and I experience the triumph of success! All
that thou scarcely divinest I reveal to thee in the dance, and thou art
astonished at the wisdom concealed in it. Soon I cast off my airy robe
and show thee my wings and mount on high! Then I rejoice to see thy eye
following me, and I glide to earth again and sink into thy embrace. Then
thou sighest and gazest at me in rapture. Waking from these dreams I
return to mankind as from a distant land; their voices seem so strange
and their demeanor too! And now let me confess that my tears are flowing
at this confession of my dreams. * * *

March 15, 1808.

When in a few weeks I go into the Rhine country, for spring will be here
then, I shall write thee from every mountain; I am always so much nearer
thee when I am outside the city walls. I sometimes seem to feel thee
then with every breath I take. I feel thee reigning in my heart when it
is beautiful without, when the air caresses; yes, when nature is good
and kind like thee, then I feel thee so distinctly! * * *

 * * * All other men seem to me as one and the same--I do not distinguish
between them, and I take no interest in the great universal sea of human
events. The stream of life bears thee, and thou me. In thy arms I shall
pass over it, and thou wilt bear me until the end--wilt thou not? And
even though there were thousands of existences yet to come, I can not
take wing to them, for with thee I am at home. So be thou also at home
in me--or dost thou know anything better than me and thee in the magic
circle of life? * * *

March 30, 1808.

 * * * The vineyards were still partially covered with snow. I was sitting
on a broken window-bar and freezing, yet my ardent love for thee
permeated my being. I was trembling for fear of falling, yet I climbed
still higher because it occurred to me too venturesome for thy sake;
thus thou often inspirest me with daring. It was fortunate that the wild
wolves from the Odenwald[11] did not appear, for I should have grappled
with them had I thought of thy honor. It seems foolish, but it's
true.--Midnight, the evil hour of spirits, awakens me, and I lie at the
window in the cold winter wind. All Frankfurt is dead, the wicks in the
street lamps are on the point of expiring, and the old rusty
weather-vanes cry out to me, and I ask myself, is that the eternal tune?
Then I feel that this life is a prison where we all have only a pitiful
vision of real freedom; that is one's own soul. Then a tumult rages in
my breast and I long to soar above these old pointed gabled roofs that
cut off heaven from me. I leave my chamber, run through the wide halls
of our house, and search for a way through the old garrets. I suspect
there are ghosts behind the rafters, but I do not heed them. Then I seek
the steps to the little turret, and, when I am at last on top, I look
out through the small window at the wide heavens and am not at all cold.
It seems to me then as if I must give vent to all my pent-up tears, and
the next day I am so cheerful and feel new-born, and I look with cunning
for a prank to play. And--canst thou believe it?--all this is--thou!

May, 1808.

If it pleases thee to see me at thy feet in deep shame and confusion,
then look down upon me now. Thus does the poor shepherd-maiden fare, on
whose head the king places a crown; even though her heart be proud to
love him, yet the crown is too heavy and her little head staggers under
the burden. And besides, she is intoxicated with the honor and the
homage which her beloved pays her.

Oh, I shall be careful never to complain again or to pray for fine
weather, for I cannot bear the blinding sunbeams! No, rather sigh in
silent darkness than be led by thy muse into the brilliant daylight,
confused and crowned--that breaks my heart. O, do not gaze on me so
long; remove the crown and press me to thy heart! Teach me to forget
in thee that thou returnest me, glorified, to myself.

July 7, 1808.

 * * * Ah, the rainbow even now setting its diamond foot on the meadow at
Ingelheim and reaching over the house to Mount St. John is just like the
blissful illusion I have of thee and me! The Rhine, spreading out its
net to catch the vision of its banks of paradise, is like this flame of
life nourished by reflections of the unattainable. Let it then win
nothing more from reality than this illusion; it will give to me the
peculiar spirit and the character expressive of my own self, just as the
reflection does to the river in which it is mirrored. * * *

July 18, 1808.

 * * * Yesterday evening I went up the Rochus mountain alone and wrote thee
thus far; then I dreamed a little, and when I came to myself I thought
the sun was just going down, but it was the rising moon. I was
astonished and should have been afraid, but the stars wouldn't let
me--these hundreds of thousands and _I_ together on that night. Who am
I, then, that I should be of raid? Am I not numbered with them? I didn't
dare descend and, besides, I shouldn't have found a boat to cross in.
The nights aren't so very long now, anyway, so I turned over on the
other side, said "good night" to the stars and was soon fast asleep. Now
and then I was awakened by flitting breezes, and then I thought of thee.
As often as I awoke I called thee to me and always said in my heart:
"Goethe be with me, that I may not be afraid." Then I dreamed that I was
floating along the reedy banks of the Rhine, and where it is deepest
between black rocky cliffs the ring thou gavest me slipped off. I saw it
sinking deeper and deeper till it reached the bottom. I wanted to call
for help, but then I awoke in the radiance of the morning, rejoicing
that the ring was still on my finger. Ah, prophet, interpret my dream
for me! Anticipate fate, and let no dangers beset our love after this
beautiful night when, betwixt fear and joy, in counsel with the stars, I
thought of thy future!

* * * No one knows where I was--and, even if they did, could they
imagine why I was there? Thou tamest toward me through the whispering
forest, enveloped in a soft haze, and when thou wert quite near me my
tired senses could not endure it, so strong was the fragrance of the
wild thyme. Then I fell asleep--it was so beautiful--all blossoms and
fragrance! And the great boundless host of stars and the flickering
silver moon that danced near and far upon the stream, the intense
stillness of nature in which one hears all that stirs--ah, I feel my
soul implanted here in this nocturnal trembling! Future thoughts are
blossoming here; these cold dew-pearls that weigh down grass and herbs,
from these the spirit grows! Oh, it hastens to blossom for _thee_,
Goethe! It will unfold its gayest colors before thee! It is for love of
thee that I wish to think, that I struggle with the inexpressible. Thou
lookest upon me in spirit and thy gaze draws thoughts from me, and then
I am often compelled to say things I do not understand but only see.

The spirit also has senses. Just as there is much that we only hear, or
only see, or only feel, so there are thoughts which the spirit also
perceives with only one of these senses. Often I only see what I am
thinking; often I only feel it, and when I hear it I experience a shock.
I do not know how I come by this knowledge which is not the fruit of my
own meditation. I look about me for the author of this opinion and then
conclude that it is all created from the fire of love. There is warmth
in the spirit; we feel it; the cheeks glow from our thoughts and cold
chills come over us, which fan our inspiration into new flame. Yes, dear
friend, this morning when I awoke it seemed to me as though I had
experienced great things, as though the pledges of my heart had wings
and soared over hill and dale into the pure, serene, radiant ether. No
vow, no conditions--nothing but appropriate motion, pure striving for
the divine. This is my pledge: Freedom from all ties, and that I will
have faith only in that spirit which reveals the beautiful and
prophesies eternal bliss. * * *

We were on the road five days, and since then it has rained incessantly.
The whole house full of guests, and not even a little corner where I
could enjoy solitude and write thee!

As long as I have anything to tell thee, I firmly believe that thy
spirit is fixed upon me as upon so many enigmas of nature. In fact, I
believe that every human being is such an enigma, and that the mission
of love between friends is to solve that enigma so that each shall learn
to know his deeper nature through and in his friend. Yes, dearest, it
makes me happy that my life is gradually developing through thee, and
for that reason I do not want to seem what I am not; I should prefer to
have all my faults and weaknesses known to thee rather than give thee a
false conception of what I am, for then thy love would not concern me
but rather an illusion that I had substituted for myself. For that
reason, also, a feeling often warns me that I must avoid this or that
for love of thee, because I should deny it in thy presence.

From the Rochusberg.

 Oh, Goethe, thy letters are so dear to me that I have tied them up
in a silk kerchief embroidered with bright flowers and golden ornaments.
The last day before our Rhine trip I did not know what to do with them.
I did not want to take them along, since we had only one portmanteau
between us, and I did not want to leave them in my little room, which I
could not lock because it was being used; I thought the boat might sink
and I drown--and then these letters, one after the other of which has
reposed close to my heart, would fall into strange hands. At first I
wanted to leave them with the nuns in Vollratz (they are St. Bernard
nuns who were driven from their convent and are now living there), but I
changed my mind afterwards. The last time I was up here on the mountain
I found a spot. Beneath the confession-chair still standing in the
Rochus chapel, in which I'm also in the habit of keeping my writings, I
dug a hole and lined it on the inside with shells from the Rhine and
beautiful little pebbles that I found on the mountain. I placed the
letters in it, wrapped in their silken covering, and before the spot
planted a thistle which I had pulled up carefully by the roots together
with the earth about them. On the journey I was often worried about
them; what a shock it would have been if I had not found them again! My
heart stands still at the very thought of it!

August 24, 1808.

 * * * It was midnight; the moon rose dim. The ship, whose shadow sailed
along beside it, like a monster, upon the illuminated Rhine, cast a
dazzling light upon the woody meadow of Ingelheim along which it was
moving. The moon appeared behind the meadow, mild and modest, and
gradually wrapped itself in a thin cloud of mist as in a veil. Whenever
we contemplate nature in calm meditation, it always lays hold of our
heartstrings. What could have turned my senses more fervently to God,
what could have more easily freed me from the trivial things that
oppress me? I am not ashamed to confess to thee that at that moment thy
image flamed up impetuously in my soul. It is true: Thy radiance pierces
me as the sun pours into the crystal of the grape and, like the sun,
thou dost ripen me with ever increasing fire and ever increasing
purity. * * *

February 23, 1809.

If thy imagination is supple enough to accompany me into all the
recesses of ruined walls, over mountains and chasms, then I shall
venture farther and introduce thee to the recesses of my heart.

I beg thee, therefore, to climb up here, still higher, up three flights
to my room; sit on the blue stool by the green table opposite me. I
merely want to gaze at thee--and, Goethe--does thy imagination still
follow me?--then thou must discover the most constant love in my eyes,
and must draw me lovingly into thy arms, and say, "Such a faithful child
is given me as a reward, as amends, for much! This child is dear to me,
'tis a treasure, a precious jewel that I do not wish to lose." Dost thou
understand? And thou must kiss me, for that is what _my_ imagination
bestows on thine!

I shall lead thee still farther! Step softly into the chamber of my
heart-here we are in the vestibule--utter stillness--no Humboldt--no
architect--no barking dog. Thou art not a stranger; go up and knock; it
will be alone and call to thee "Come in!" Thou wilt find it on a cool,
quiet couch, and a friendly light will greet thee. All will be peace and
order, and thou wilt be welcome! What is that? Heavens! See the flames
shooting up over him! Whence this conflagration? Who can save here? Poor
heart! Poor, suffering heart! What can reason accomplish here? It knows
everything better and yet can not help; its arms drop helpless by its
side. * * *

Good night, good night until tomorrow! Everything is quiet and all in
the house are asleep dreaming of the things they desire when awake; but
I alone am awake with thee. Outside, on the street, all is still. I
should like to be assured that at this moment no soul besides mine is
thinking of thee, that no other heart gives a throb for thee, and that I
alone in the wide world am sitting at thy feet, my heart beating with
full strokes. And while all are asleep I am awake in order to press thy
knee to my breast--and thou?--the world need not know that thou lovest
me!

October 23, 1809.

The moon is shining from afar over the mountains and winter clouds drive
by in droves. I have been standing at the window awhile and watching the
tumult in the heavens. Dear Goethe! Good Goethe! I am all alone; it has
taken me out of myself again and up to thee. I must nurse this love
between us like a new-born babe. Beautiful butterflies balance
themselves on the flowers I have planted about his cradle, golden fables
adorn his dreams; I jest and play with him, and employ all my cunning to
gain his favor. But thou dost master it without effort by the splendid
harmony of thy spirit; with thee there is no need of tender outbursts,
of protestations. While I look after each moment of the present, the
power of blessing emanates from thee that transcends all reason and all
the universe. * * *

Last night I dreamed of thee! What could have been more beautiful? Thou
wast serious and very busy and didst ask me not to disturb thee. That
made me sad and then thou didst press my hand tenderly to my bosom and
didst say, "Be quiet; I know thee and understand all." Then I awoke, and
thy ring, which I had pressed to myself in my sleep, had left its
imprint on my bosom. I pressed it more firmly against the same spot,
since I could not embrace thee. Is there nothing, then, in a dream? To
me it is everything, and I will gladly give up the activities of the day
if I can be with thee and speak with thee at night. Oh, be thou my
happiness in my dreams!

Munich, November 9, 1809.

 * * * This is my vow: I will gather flowers for thee and bright garlands
shall adorn thy entrance; should thy foot stumble, it will be over the
wreaths which I have laid on thy threshold, and shouldst thou dream, it
is the balsam of magic blossoms that intoxicates thee--flowers of a
strange and distant world where I am at home and not a stranger as in
this book[12] where a ravenous tiger devours the delicate image of
spiritual love. I do not understand this cruel riddle; I cannot
comprehend why they all make themselves unhappy and why they all serve a
malicious demon with a thorny sceptre, why Charlotte, who strews incense
before him daily, yes, hourly, should prepare misfortune for them all
with mathematical precision! Is not love free? Are those two not
affinities? Why should she prevent them from living this innocent life
with and near each other? They are twins; twined round each other they
ripen on to their birth into the light, and she would separate these
seedlings because she cannot believe in innocence, which she inoculates
with the monstrous sin of prejudice! O what a fatal precaution!

Let me tell you: No one seems to comprehend ideal love; they all believe
in sensual love, and consequently they neither experience nor bestow any
happiness that springs from that higher emotion or might be fully
realized through it. Whatever may fall to my lot, let it be through this
ideal love that tears down all barriers to new worlds of art,
divination, and poetry. Naturally it can live only in a noble element
just as it feels at home only in a lofty mind.

Here thy Mignon occurs to me--how she dances blindfolded between eggs.
My love is adroit; you can rely thoroughly on its instinct; it will also
dance on blindly, and will make no misstep. * * *

November 29, 1809.

I had written thus far yesterday, when I crept into bed from fear, but I
could not succeed yesterday in falling asleep at thy feet, lost in
contemplation of thee as I do every evening. I was ashamed that I had
chattered so arrogantly, and perhaps all is not as I mean it. Maybe it
is jealousy that excites me so and impels me to seek a way to draw thee
to me again and make thee forget _her_.[13]

Well, put me to the test, and, be it as it may, do not forget my love.
Forgive me also for sending thee my diary. I wrote it on the Rhine and
have spread out before thee my childhood years and shown thee how our
mutual affinity drove me on like a rivulet hastening on over crags and
rocks, through thorns and mosses, till thou, mighty stream, didst engulf
me. Yes, I wanted to keep this book until I should at last be with thee
again, so that I might tell by looking into thy eyes in the morning what
thou hadst read in it the evening before. But now it torments me to
think of thee substituting my diary for Ottilie's, and loving the living
one who remains with thee more than the one who has departed from thee.

Do not burn my letters, do not tear them up, for it might give thee
pain--so firmly, so absolutely, am I joined to thee. But do not show
them to any one; keep them concealed like a secret beauty, for my love
is becoming to thee; thou art beautiful because thou feelest thyself
loved!

February 29, 1810.

I will confess to thee and honestly acknowledge all my sins--first,
those for which thou art partly responsible and which thou too must
expiate with me, then those which weigh most heavily on me, and finally
those in which I actually rejoice.

First: I tell thee too often that I love thee, yet I know nothing else,
no matter how, much I turn it one way or the other; that's all there is.

Secondly: I am jealous of all thy friends, the playmates of thy youth,
the sun that shines into thy room, thy servants, and, above all, thy
gardener that lays out the asparagus-beds at thy command.

Thirdly: I begrudge thee all pleasure because I am not along. When any
one has seen thee and speaks of thy gaiety and charm, it does not please
me particularly; but when he says thou wast serious, cool, and reserved,
then I am delighted!

Fourthly: I neglect every one for thy sake; nobody is anything to me,
and I don't care anything about their love; indeed, if any one praises
me, he displeased me. That is jealousy of thee and me, and by no means a
proof of a generous heart; it is a sign of a wretched character that
withers on one side when it would blossom on the other.

Fifthly: I have a great inclination to despise everybody, especially
those that praise thee, and I cannot bear to hear anything good said of
thee. Only a few simple persons can I allow to speak of thee, and it
need not be praise at that. No, they may even make fun of thee a little,
and then, I can tell thee, an unmerciful roguishness comes over me when
I can throw off the chains of slavery for a brief spell.

Sixthly: I have a deep resentment in my soul that it is not thee with
whom I live under the same roof and with whom I breathe the same air. I
am afraid to be near strangers. In church I look for a seat on the
beggars' bench, because they are the most neutral; the finer the people,
the stronger my aversion. To be touched makes me angry, ill, and
unhappy, and so I cannot stand it long in society at dances. I am fond
of dancing, could I but dance alone in the open where the breath of
strangers would not touch me. What influence would it have on the soul
if one could always live near one's friend?--all the more painful the
struggle against that which must remain forever estranged, spiritually
as well as physically.

Seventhly: When I have to listen to any one reading aloud in company, I
sit in a corner and secretly hold my ears shut or, at the first word
that comes along, completely lose myself in thoughts. Then, when some
one does not understand, I awaken out of another world and presume to
supply the explanation, and what the rest consider madness is all
reasonable enough to me and consistent with an inner knowledge that I
cannot impart. Above all, I cannot bear to hear anything read from thy
works, nor can I bear to read them aloud; I must be alone with me and
thee.

Vienna, May 28, 1810.

It is Beethoven of whom I want to speak now, and in whom I have
forgotten the world and thee. I may not be qualified to judge, but I am
not mistaken when I say (what perhaps no one now realizes or believes)
that he is far in advance of the culture of all mankind, and I wonder
whether we can ever catch up with him! I doubt it. I only hope that he
may live until the mighty and sublime enigma that lies in his soul may
have reached its highest and ripest perfection. May he reach his highest
ideal, for then he will surely leave in our hands the key to a divine
knowledge which will bring us one step nearer true bliss!

To thee I may confess that I believe in a divine magic which is the
element of spiritual nature, and this magic Beethoven employs in his
music. All he can teach thee about it is pure magic; every combination
of sounds is a phase of a higher existence, and for this reason
Beethoven feels that he is the founder of a new sensuous basis in the
spiritual life. Thou wilt probably be able to feel intuitively what I am
trying to say, and that it is true. Who could replace this spirit? From
whom could we expect anything equivalent to it? All human activity
passes to and fro before him like clockwork; he alone creates freely
from his inmost self the undreamed of, the untreated. What would
intercourse with the outside world profit this man, who is at his sacred
work before sunrise and scarcely looks about him before sunset, who
forgets bodily nourishment, and who is borne in his flight by the stream
of inspiration past the shores of superficial, everyday life. He himself
said to me, "Whenever I open my eyes I cannot but sigh, for all I see is
counter to my religion and I must despise the world which does not
comprehend that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and
philosophy. It is the wine which inspires new creations, and I am the
Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for men and intoxicates their
spirit! * * * I have no friend and must ever be alone, but I know that God
is nearer to me in my art than to others, and I commune with him
without fear; I have always recognized Him and understood Him. Nor have
I any fears for my music; it can meet no evil fate, for he to whom it
makes itself intelligible will be freed from all misery with which
others are burdened."

All this Beethoven said to me the first time I saw him, and I was
penetrated with a feeling of reverence when he expressed himself to me
with such friendly candor, since I must have seemed very unimportant to
him. Besides, I was astonished, for I had been told that he was
exceedingly reticent and avoided conversation with any one; in fact,
they were afraid to introduce me to him, so I had to look him up alone.
He has three dwellings in which he alternately conceals himself--one in
the country, one in the city, and the third on the bastion, in the third
story of which I found him. I entered unannounced and mentioned my name.
He was seated at the piano and was quite amiable. He inquired whether I
did not wish to hear a song that he had just composed. Then he sang, in
a shrill and piercing voice, so that the plaintiveness reacted upon the
listener, "Knowest thou the land?" "It is beautiful, isn't it, very
beautiful!" he cried, enraptured; "I'll sing it again;" and was
delighted at my ready applause. "Most people are stirred by something
good, but they are not artistic natures; artists are fiery--they do not
weep." Then he sang one of thy songs that he had composed lately, "Dry
not, Tears of Eternal Love."

Yesterday I went for a walk with him through a beautiful garden at
Schönbrunn that was in full blossom; all the hothouses were open and the
fragrance was overpowering. Beethoven stopped in the burning sun and
said, "Goethe's poems exercise a great power over me, not alone through
their content, but also through their rhythm, and I am incited and moved
to compose by his language, which is built up as if by the aid of
spirits into a sublime structure that bears within it the mystery of
harmonies. Then from the focus of my inspiration I must let the melody
stream forth in every direction; I pursue it, passionately overtake it
again, see it escaping me a second time and disappearing in a host of
varying emotions; soon I seize it with renewed ardor; I can no longer
separate myself from it, but with impetuous rapture I must reproduce it
in all modulations, and, in the final moment, I triumph over the musical
idea--and that, you see, is a symphony! Yes, music is truly the mediator
between the spiritual and the sensuous world. I should like to discuss
this with Goethe; I wonder whether he would understand me! Melody is the
sensuous life of poetry. Does not the spiritual content of a poem become
sensuous feeling through melody? Do we not in the song of Mignon feel
her whole sensuous mood through melody, and does not this sensation
incite one in turn to new creations? Then the spirit longs to expand to
boundless universality where everything together forms a channel for the
_feelings_ that spring from the simple musical thought and that
otherwise would die away unnoted. This is harmony; this is expressed in
my symphonies; the blending of manifold forms rolls on to the goal in a
single channel. At such moments one feels that something eternal,
infinite, something that can never be wholly comprehended, lies in all
things spiritual; and although I always have the feeling of success in
my compositions, yet with the last stroke of the drum with which I have
driven home my own enjoyment, my musical conviction, to my hearers, I
feel an eternal hunger to begin anew, like a child, what a moment before
seemed to me to have been exhausted.

"Speak to Goethe of me; and tell him to hear my symphonies. Then he will
agree with me that music is the sole incorporeal entrance into a higher
world of knowledge which, to be sure, embraces man, but which he, on the
other hand, can never embrace. Rhythm of the spirit is necessary to
comprehend music in its essence; music imparts presentiments,
inspirations of divine science, and what the spirit experiences of the
sensuous in it is the embodiment of spiritual knowledge. Although the
spirits live upon music as man lives upon air, it is a very different
matter to _comprehend_ it with the spirit. But the more the soul draws
its sensuous nourishment from it, the riper the spirit becomes for a
happy mutual understanding.

"But few ever attain this understanding, for just as thousands marry for
love and yet love is never once revealed to them, although they all
pursue the trade of love, so do thousands hold communion with music and
yet do not possess its revelation. For music also has as its foundation
the sublime tokens of the moral sense, just as every art does; every
genuine invention indicates moral progress. To subject oneself to its
inscrutable laws, to curb and guide one's spirit by means of these laws,
so that it will pour forth the revelations of music--this is the
isolating principle of art. To be dissolved by its revelation--that is
the surrender to the divine, which quietly exercises its mastery over
the delirium of unbridled forces and thus imparts the greatest efficacy
to the imagination. Thus art always represents divinity, and the human
relationship to art constitutes religion. Whatever we acquire through
art comes from God; it is a divine inspiration, which sets up an
attainable goal for human capacities.

"We do not know whence our knowledge comes; the firmly inclosed seed
requires the warm, moist, electric soil to sprout, to think, to express
itself. Music is the electric soil in which the soul lives, thinks,
invents. Philosophy is a precipitation of its electric spirit, and the
need that philosophy feels of basing everything on an ultimate principle
is in turn relieved by music. Although the spirit is not master of what
it creates through the mediation of music, yet it experiences ecstasy in
this creation. In this way every genuine creation of art is independent,
mightier than the artist himself, and through its expression it returns
to its divine source; it is concerned with man only insomuch as it bears
witness to divine mediation in him.

"Music gives the spirit its relation to harmony. A thought, even when
isolated, still senses the totality of relationship in the spirit; thus
every thought in music is most intimately and inseparably related to the
totality of harmony, which is unity. Everything electric stimulates the
spirit to fluent, precipitous, musical creation. I myself am of an
electrical nature."  * * *

He took me to a grand rehearsal with full orchestra, and I sat back in a
box all alone in the large, unlighted hall, and saw this mighty spirit
wield his authority. Oh, Goethe I No emperor, no king, is so conscious
of his power, so conscious that all power radiates from him, as this
same Beethoven is, who only now in the garden was searching for the
source of his inspiration. If I understood him as I feel him, I should
be omniscient. There he stood, so firmly resolved, his gestures and
features expressing the perfection of his creation, anticipating every
error, every misconception; every breath obeyed his will, and everything
was set into the most rational activity by the superb presence of his
spirit. One might well prophesy that such a spirit will reappear in a
later reincarnation as ruler of the universe!

November 4, 1810.

Dost thou want me to tell thee of bygone days, how, when thy spirit was
revealed to me, I gained control over my own spirit in order the more
perfectly to embrace and love thine? And why should I not become dizzy
with ecstasy? Is the prospect of a fall so fearful after all? Just as
the precious jewel, touched by a single ray of light, reflects a
thousand colors, so also thy beauty, illumined only by the ray of my
enthusiasm, will be enriched a thousandfold.

It is only when everything is comprehended that the Something can prove
its full worth, and so thou wilt understand when I tell thee that the
bed in which thy mother brought thee into the world had blue checkered
hangings. She was eighteen years old at the time, and had been married a
year. In this connection she remarked that thou wouldst remain forever
young and that thy heart would never grow old, since thou hadst received
thy mother's youth into the bargain. Thou didst ponder the matter for
three days before thou didst decide to come into the world, and thy
mother was in great pain. Angry that necessity had driven thee from thy
nature-abode and because of the bungling of the nurse, thou didst arrive
quite black and with no signs of life. They laid thee in a so-called
butcher's tray and bathed thee in wine, quite despairing of thy life.
Thy grandmother stood behind the bed, and when thou didst open thine
eyes she cried out, "Frau Rat, he lives!" "Then my maternal heart awoke
and it has lived in unceasing enthusiasm to this very hour," said thy
mother to me in her seventy-fifth year. Thy grandfather, one of the most
honored citizens of Frankfurt and at that time syndic, always applied
good as well as bad fortune to the welfare of the city, and so thy
difficult birth resulted in an accoucher being appointed for the poor.
"Even in his cradle he was a blessing to mankind," said thy mother. She
gave thee her breast but thou couldst not be induced to take
nourishment, and so a nurse was procured for thee. "Since he drank from
her with such appetite and comfort and we discovered that I had no
milk," she said, "we soon noticed that he was wiser than all of us when
he wouldn't take nourishment from me."

Now that thou art born at last I can pause a little; now that thou art
in the world, each moment is dear enough to me to linger over it, and I
have no desire to call up the second moment, since it will drive me away
from the first. "Where'er thou art are love and goodness, where'er thou
art is nature too." Now I shall wait till thou writest me again, "Pray
go on with thy story." Then I shall first ask, "Well, where did we leave
off?" and then I shall tell thee of thy grandparents, thy dreams, thy
beauty, pride, love, etc. Amen.

"Frau Rat, he lives!" These words always thrilled me through and
through whenever thy mother uttered them in exultant tones. Of thy birth
we may well say:

  The sword that threatens danger
    Hangs often by a thread;
  But the blessing of eternity
    On us one gracious glance may shed.

Extract from a letter written in 1822, ten years after the breach in
their relations.

To give perfect expression to thee would probably be the most powerful
seal of my love, indeed, being a creation of divine nature, it would
prove my affinity to thee. It would be an enigma solved, like unto a
long restrained mountain torrent which at last penetrates to the light,
enduring the tremendous fall in voluptuous rapture, at a moment of life
through which and after which a higher existence begins.

Thou destroyer, who hast taken my free will from me; thou creator, who
hast produced within me the sensation of awakening, who hast convulsed
me with a thousand electric sparks from the realm of sacred nature!
Through thee I learned to love the curling of the tender vine, and the
tears of my longing have fallen on its frost-kissed fruits; for thy sake
I have kissed the young grass, for thy sake offered my open bosom to the
dew; for thy sake I have listened intently when the butterfly and the
bee swarmed about me, for I wanted to feel _thee_ in the sacred sphere
of thy enjoyments. Oh, thou; toy in disguise with thy beloved--could I
help, after I had divined thy secret, becoming intoxicated with love for
thee?

Canst thou divine the thrills that shook me when the trees poured down
their fragrance and their blossoms upon me? For I thought and felt and
firmly believed that it was _thy_ caressing of nature, _thy_ enjoyment
of her beauty, that it was _her_ yearning, _her_ surrender to thee, that
loosened these blossoms from their trembling boughs and sent them gently
whirling into my lap.

BETTINA.



IMMERMANN AND HIS DRAMA "MERLIN"

BY MARTIN SCHÜTZE, PH.D. Associate Professor of German Literature,
University of Chicago


Karl Lebrecht Immermann was born in Magdeburg, in April, 1796. His
father, who held a good position in the Civil Service, was a very severe
and domineering man; his mother, imaginative and over-indulgent. Karl's
childhood and early youth were uneventful. After passing through the
regular course of preparatory education in a "Gymnasium," he entered, in
1813, the University of Halle. During his first year there, Germany rose
up to throw off the yoke of Napoleon, and the King of Prussia issued a
proclamation calling the nation to arms, to which the people responded
with unprecedented unanimity and enthusiasm. Schoolboys and bearded men,
laborers and professional men, merchants and soldiers, united in one
patriotic purpose. The regular army was everywhere supplemented by
volunteer organizations. An epoch began which in its enthusiasm, its
idealism, the force and richness of its inspiration, and its
overwhelming impetus deserved, more than any other in modern history,
its title: "The Spring of Nations."

Immermann's sensitive and responsive nature thrilled with the general
impulse, and he asked his father to let him join the army, but was told,
peremptorily, not to interrupt the first year of his studies. He
submitted, and plunged into the study of the literature of the
Romanticists, which, in its remoteness from actuality, offered
distraction from his disappointment. During this time he fell ill of
typhoid fever, from which he did not fully recover until the campaign
had victoriously ended in the battle of Leipzig. He joined, however,
after Napoleon's escape from Elba, the second campaign, in which he took
part in two battles. At the end of the war, having retired as an officer
of the reserves, he returned to Halle to finish his study of the law.

He found a new spirit dominant among the students. This spirit,
characterized by a strongly democratic desire for national unity, pride
of race, and impatience with external and conventional restraints, had a
rich network of roots in the immediate past: in the individualism and
the humanism of the Storm and Stress Movement and the Classic Era of the
eighteenth century; in the subjective idealism of the Romantic school;
in the nationalism of Klopstock, Herder, Schiller, and Fichte, and in
the self-reliant transcendentalism of Kant's philosophy and
Schleiermacher's theology. This spirit had received its political
direction principally through the genius of the Baron von Stein, the
Prussian statesman, whose aim was the restoration of German national
unity. He believed that the political unity of Germany must rest on the
soundness of the common people, rather than on the pretensions of the
aristocracy whose corruption he held responsible for the decadence of
the nation. Following the example of Frederick the Great, he tried to
foster the simple virtues of the common man. He was, however, opposed to
radicalism, seeing permanent progress only in order, self-discipline,
and moderation. His leading idea, which was shared by such men as
Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Niebuhr, and others, was that the principal task
of the time was to arouse the whole nation to independent political
thinking and activity, in order to develop self-confidence, courage, and
devotion to a great unselfish ideal. These ideas became a national
ideal, an active passion, under the pressure and stress of the
Napoleonic usurpation and in the heat and fervor of war and victory.

[Illustration: C.T. LESSING KARL LERRECHT IMMERMANN]

It was unavoidable that this spirit produced among the younger men,
and especially among the university students, traditionally unaccustomed
to patience with restraints, many excesses, absurdities and follies.
An extreme and tyrannical nativism, a tasteless archaism in dress,
manner, and speech, an intolerant and aggressive democratic propaganda
offended and bullied the more conservative. This spirit spread
particularly through the agencies of the student fraternities called
"Burschenschaften," and the athletic associations, the "Turners,"
advocated and fostered by Jahn.

Immermann became the mouthpiece of the conservatives among the students,
and he went so far as to publish some pamphlets denouncing specific acts
of violence of the leading radical fraternity, the "Teutonia." When the
university authorities, who to a considerable extent sympathized with
the radicals, neglected to act, Immermann addressed a complaint to the
King. This move resulted in the dissolution of the accused fraternity
and in governmental hostility to all fraternities, and brought the
hatred and contempt of the radicals on Immermann.

Immermann acted undoubtedly from sincere motives, yet deserved much of
the condemnation he suffered. He had not sufficient vision to penetrate
through the objectionable and tasteless externalities of the liberal
movement--with which he was unfairly preoccupied even at the time of
_Die Epigonen_, a score of years later--to the greater and enduring core
of the aspirations of the modern age. The petty things were too near to
his eye and obscured the greater things which were further removed. He
thought he upheld a higher principle of morality by applying the
principles of von Stein to a new situation; but be failed to see the
new, larger morality imbedded in much confusion. History has reversed
his judgment.

After completing his studies he received a government appointment in the
provincial capital of Westphalia, Muenster. Here, in this conservative
old town, began one of the most extraordinary relations between man and
woman in modern German literary history. Immermann fell in love with
Countess Elisa von Luetzow-Ahlefeldt, wife of the famous old commander
of volunteers, Brigadier-General von Luetzow. Elisa, an extremely gifted
and spirited woman, had formed a circle of interesting people, in which
her husband, a dashing soldier but a man of uninteresting mentality,
played a very subordinate part. Immermann and Elisa struggled along
against the tyranny of the affinity that drew them together. Immermann
wrote a number of dramas, highly romantic, in which the passion and
strife within him found varied expression. The play which made him known
beyond his immediate circle, was _Cardenio and Celinde_, the conflict of
which was suggested by his own.

Elisa was finally divorced from Luetzow. Immermann was appointed a judge
in Magdeburg, and later in Duesseldorf. He asked Elisa to marry him. She
refused, but offered to live with him in free companionship. They joined
their lives, pledging themselves not to enter other relations. They
remained together until 1839, less than a year before Immermann's death,
when he married a young girl of nineteen. Elisa left his house in sorrow
and bitterness. Immermann characterized his relation to her thus in a
letter to his fiancée, in 1839: "I loved the countess deeply and purely
when I was kindled by her flame. But she took such a strange position
toward me that I never could have a pure, genuine, enduring joy in this
love. There were delights, but no quiet gladness. I always felt as if a
splendid comet had appeared on the horizon, but never as if the dear
warm God's sun had risen."

His life with Elisa in Duesseldorf was rich in friends and works. The
sculptor Schadow, the founder of the art school there, the dramatists
von Uechtritz and Michael Beer, brother of Meyerbeer, were among his
friends. He had intimate relations with Mendelssohn during the years of
the latter's stay in Duesseldorf. He tried to assist Grabbe, the erratic
and unfortunate dramatist. During three years he was manager of the
Duesseldorf theatre, trying many valuable and idealistic experiments.
He died August 25, 1840.

The most important of his works are _Das Trauerspiel in Tirol_, 1826,
treating of the tragic story of Andreas Hofer; _Kaiser Friedrich II_.,
1827, a drama of the Hohenstaufen; the comic heroic epic,
_Tulifaentchen_, 1830, a satiric version of an heroic Tom Thumb;
_Alexis_, 1832, a trilogy setting forth the destruction of the reforms
begun by Peter the Great; _Merlin_, 1832; and his two novels, _Die
Epigonen_, 1836, and _Münchhausen_, 1838-9.

In _Die Epigonen_, one of the long list of representatives of the
species of novels which began with Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister_, Immermann
tried to present the development of a young man and a picture of the
principal social forces of his period. But he was too imitative in
following his great model, and too much confused by subjective
preoccupations, to comprehend and to state clearly the substance of the
matter.

Only two of his works have enduring value, his mystical tragedy
_Merlin_, and the part of _Münchhausen_ called "Der Oberhof" (The Upper
Farm), which deals with the lives and types of the small freehold
farmers. Immermann, following Baron von Stein, believed that the health
and future of society, endangered by the corrupt and dissipated
nobility, rested, on the sturdy, self-reliant, individualistic yet
severely moral and patriotic, small peasant. In the main character of
the story, the rugged, proud, inflexibly honorable old farmer, who has
inherited the sword of Charles the Great, he has drawn one of the most
living characters in early modern German fiction. The other figures,
too, are full of life and reality. The story has, aside from its
importance in the history of the German novel, an enduring value of its
own.

Immermann, in spite of his unremitting endeavor, failed to attain
literary or moral greatness. He lacked the fundamental and organic unity
of great natures. He had more qualities of mind than most of his
important contemporaries, but in not one of these qualities did he
attain to the degree which assures distinction. In his _Merlin_ he
treated a conflict which was fundamentally similar to that of
Grillparzer's _Libussa_. Yet Grillparzer, much more one-sided than he,
possessed the true Romantic-mystic quality, whereas Immermann had to
elaborate his symbolism with the patchwork of careful, allegoric
analysis. He had a richer contact with social forces than Heine, yet his
realizations of them were awkward and meagre, his humor wooden, his
imagery derived. He had much greater intellectual force than Platen, yet
he lacked the incisive and controlled critical sense of the latter.
Having no one faculty to a distinguished degree, he constantly had to
substitute the strained labor of one faculty for the spontaneous
production of another. Predominantly rationalistic, he labored at the
symbolistic vision of Romanticism; preëminently a man of prose, he
endeavored all his life to be a great poet. He mistook the responsive
excitement produced by the ideas and visions of others for authentic
inspiration, the vivacity of a sociable and conversational gift for the
creative force of genius, and the immobility of obvious and established
conventional judgments for an extraordinary soundness and incisiveness
of fundamental analysis.

There was in him, as he himself once said, a certain "aftertaste of a
worthy philistinism." The dominant bent of his mind was toward the
immediate actualities, and this bent in the end, as in his antagonism
against the radical students in Halle, always overcame his endeavor to
grasp the more remote realities of a larger vision.

The purposes of his literary works, like the beginning and purpose of
his intimacy with Elisa, are always large, comprehensive, and
idealistic, but they always, even in his most important work, _Merlin_,
dwindle to petty details of actuality. His significance for the present
age does not so much rest on his objective achievement, as on some of
his qualities which prevented achievement. He was perhaps the most
considerable representative of the literary "Epigones" intervening
between the esthetic individualistic humanism of the eighteenth, and the
economic-coöperative humanism of the nineteenth century. He, more fully
perhaps than any of his contemporaries, represented the peculiar
border-type of literary personality which is both compounded and torn
asunder by all the principal conflicting forces of a period of historic
transition. He was a victim of the manifold division of impulses, the
ill-related patchwork of impressions, and the disconcerting refractions
of vision, which characterized his contemporaries. It is in the fact
that he united in himself the principal factors which made up the
complexion of his age, to an extraordinary degree, that he has his
strongest claim upon the sympathetic and studious interest of the modern
age.


MERLIN: A MYTH

The principal dramatic agencies in _Merlin_ are Satan, Klingsor,
Titurel, King Artus and his Round Table, Niniana, and Merlin. In them,
Immermann tried to embody the dominant moral and intellectual
tendencies, as he saw them in history and his own times. Satan, the
demiurgos, is to him no theological devil, but a princely character, the
"Lord of Necessity," the non-moral, irresistible, cosmic force of
physical creation. He demands, expressing the faith of Young-Germany:

  "O! naked bodies, insolent art,
  O! wrath of heroes, and heroic voice!"

The pride of life in him and in Lucifer, who personifies the creative
fire, is aroused against the narrow asceticism of orthodox Christianity,
embodied in the wan and feeble Titurel. Satan decides to imitate the
Lord of Christianity, by begetting upon a virgin, Candida, a son who is
to save the world from the sterility of asceticism. Candida is briefly
introduced, acknowledging the power of the mighty spirit and bewailing
her fate in one of the finest passages in the play. Merlin is born,
combining the supernatural creative powers of his father with the
tenderness and sympathy of his mother. His purpose is to reconcile the
true principles of primitive Christianity with the natural impulses of
life. Merlin thus is opposed to his father as well as to Titurel and his
dull and narrow "guild" who keep the true spirit of humanity captive. He
is both anti-Satan and anti-Christ.

He next comes into conflict with the third fundamental force, Klingsor.
The latter is really only a variant of Satan and, while interesting, is
somewhat less fundamental, being more a philosophic and literary, than
an active, antagonist. His symbol is the circled serpent, the embodiment
of permanence within the changing world of actuality. He represents the
nature-philosophy of Romanticism and especially of Schelling, a
philosophy so vast and unsubstantial that all values of conduct and all
incentives to action disappeared in its featureless abyss. Immermann
intensely disliked it. He was, as he said, a lover of men; the worship
of nature drained and exhausted the sympathies, the wills and the
spirits of men. The passages in which Klingsor himself, in his moments
of despair, and Merlin expose the emptiness of this philosophy, are
among the best philosophic statements of the play. They are, how ever,
too exhaustive. But they are good philosophy, if they are bad drama and
poetry. Klingsor says of the "nature book"

"It asserts: all is vain; nought but stale mediocrity--while we are
shaken from, shell to core by the breath of the times." He is worshipped
by the dwarfs because he has opened the mysteries of inanimate nature,
and he commands the spirits of classical life represented by Antinous,
and the pagan' gods and demi-gods, the personifications of the naïve
impulses of nature. But he realizes that his wisdom, while it makes
dwarfs happy, is inadequate for human beings.

The teaching of Merlin is essentially the humanism of the moderate
liberalism of Baron von Stein and his followers. Klingsor, voicing the
sentiments of Romantic aristocratism, accuses him:

"You tell the mob: Be your own Savior; seek inspiration in your own
work. The people like to be told of their majesty. Keep on bravely
lying, sweetly flattering, and the prophet is complete."

Merlin retorts:

"You describe yourself, not me. Men have a deep sense of truth, and pay
in false coin only him that offers them false gifts." He then continues,
lashing the transcendent egotism of the Romantic conception of man in
the universe: "To you the earth, the ocean, the firmament, are nothing
but a ladder for your own elevation, and you must absolutely reject the
thing called humility. In order to maintain yourself strong and whole
you have to find men weak and only partial beings," etc. Later, in lines
_1637ff_., he proceeds, in what are probably the finest and richest
passages in the work, to state his own purpose of combining all that is
great, true, beautiful, human, and noble, into one comprehensive and
rational faith of humanity.

Merlin tries to teach his faith to King Artus and his circle, who embody
the frivolous, irresponsible, though refined, conduct of the nobility,
essentially the same nobility whom von Stein accused of injuring the
nation and Immermann satirized and exposed in _Münchhausen_. They decide
to seek salvation in the primitive idealism of India, appointing Merlin
their guide. Merlin, however, succumbs to the silly Niniana, the
personification of wanton desire. She makes him tell her a fated word,
after promising not to repeat it. She thoughtlessly repeats it. He now
loses his superhuman power, i. e., the power of absolute spiritual
integrity, and becomes subject to the limitations of earth, like a
common man. He can no longer lead Artus and his court, who perish of
their own spiritual vacuity.

The end of the play is unsatisfactory. The hero's surrender to the lust
of the flesh, undoubtedly suggested by Goethe's _Faust_ and consistent
in Goethe's poem, is foreign to the conflict of this play, which, not
being human, as is that of _Faust_, but an abstract antagonism of
general historic principles, should have been solved without the
interference of the mere creature weaknesses of the hero and the mere
creature sympathies of the reader. Immermann planned to untie the knot
in a second part, which was to treat of the salvation of Merlin; but he
never carried his purpose beyond a few slight introductory passages.



IMMERMANN'S "MÜNCHHAUSEN"

BY ALLEN WILSON PORTERFIELD, PH.D. Instructor in German, Columbia
University


Immermann first thought of writing a new _Münchhausen_ in 1821, the year
of his satirical comedy, _The Princes of Syracuse_, which contains the
embryonic idea of this "history in arabesques." Conscientious
performance of his duties as a judge and incessant activity as a writer
along other lines forced the idea into the background until 1830, the
year of his satirical epic, _Tulifäntchen_, in which the theme again
received attention. In 1835 he finished _Die Epigonen_, a novel
portraying the social and political conditions in Germany from 1815 to
1830, and in 1837 he began systematic work on _Münchhausen_, continuing,
from a different point of view and in a different mood, his delineation
of the civic and intellectual status of Germany of his own time. The
last part of the entire work was published in 1839, having occupied,
intermittently, eighteen of his twenty years of literary productivity.
The first edition was exhausted one year after publication, a second
appeared in 1841, a third in 1854, and since 1857 there have been many
of all kinds, ranging from the popular "Reclam" to critical editions
with all the helps and devices known to modern scholarship.

In so far as the just appreciation of a literary production is dependent
upon a study of its genesis, the reading of _Die Epigonen_ is necessary
to a complete understanding of _Münchhausen_, for through these two
works runs a strong thread of unbroken development. Hermann, the
immature hero of the former, and his associates, bequeath a number of
characteristics to the title-hero and his associates of the latter; but
where the earlier work is predominantly sarcastic, political, and
pessimistic, the later one is humorous, intellectual, and optimistic. It
would seem, therefore, that, in view of its bright outlook, mature view,
and sympathetic treatment, Immermann's greatest epic in prose was
destined to be read in its entirety, frequently, and with pleasure.

This is, however, not the case. Starting from a long line of models,
Sterne's _Tristram Shandy_ among others, _Münchhausen_ resembles the
diffusive works of similar title by Raspe (1785) and Bürger (1787). It
takes its name from Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Baron of Münchhausen
(1720-1797), and satirizes many of the whimsicalities of Herman Ludwig
Heinrich, Prince of Pückler-Muskau (1785-1871). And it flagellates again
and again such bizarre literary and intellectual phenomena of the time
as Raupach's Hohenstaufen dramas, Görres' mysticism, Menzel's
calumniations, Eduard Gans' liberalism, Bettina's pretensions, Young
Germany's reaction, even the Indian studies of the Schlegels and
Alexander von Humboldt's substantial scholarship, so that, for the
general reader, the larger part of the work is a sealed book. Its
references are obscure, its satire abstruse, its humor vague. Even
Ferdinand Freiligrath, Immermann's contemporary and friend, declined, on
the ground of lack of familiarity with the allusions, to write a
commentary to it.

According to Immermann's own statement, he began _Münchhausen_ without a
shimmer of an idea as to how he would finish it; but he finished it,
having in the meantime gone through a complete inner transformation, in
a way that surprised even himself and greatly pleased his readers. We
have here, consequently, a novel which, though written as a whole, falls
naturally into two parts, the one negative and satirical, the other
positive and human. And odd indeed is the situation in the negative
part.

As in _Die Epigonen_, the scene is laid in Westphalia. The impoverished
Baron Schnuck-Puckelig-Erbsenscheucher, a faithful representative of the
narrow-minded and prejudiced nobility, lives with his prudish,
sentimental daughter, Emerentia, in the dilapidated castle, Schnick
Schnack-Schnurr. Their sole companion is the daft school-teacher,
Agesel, who, having lost, from too much study of phonetics, the major
part of his never gigantic mind, imagines that he is a direct descendant
of the Spartan King Agesilaus. With these occupants and no more, the
castle resembles a harmless home for the insane. But one day
Münchhausen, the prince of liars and chief of swindlers, accompanied by
his servant, Karl Buttervogel, the Sancho Panza of the story, comes to
the castle. His presence enlivens; his interminable stories, through
which Immermann satirizes the tendencies of the time, delight at first,
then tire, then become intolerable. To maintain his influence, he
suggests to the old Baron the establishment of a stock company for the
selling of compressed air, assuring this gullible old soul that hereby
his fortunes can be retrieved and his appointment as Privy Councilor can
be realized. The Baron, though pleased, enters into the proposition with
caution. But Münchhausen, unable to execute his scheme, finds himself in
an embarrassing dilemma from which he disentangles himself by mysteriously
disappearing and never again coming to light. Emerentia has
in the meantime fallen in love with Karl Buttervogel, whom she
erroneously looks upon as a Prince in disguise. At the prospect of so
humble a son-in-law, the Baron becomes frantic, violently removes
Buttervogel from the castle, which, as a result of the Baron's ravings,
falls to the ground with a crash and a roar--a catastrophe which reminds
one of Poe's _Fall of the House of Usher_--and the Baron and Agesel are
restored to their senses.

The chief trouble with this fantastic story is that it lacks artistic
measure and objective plausibility. Immermann, omnivorous reader that he
was, wrote this part of his book, not from life, but from other books.
And even granting that he carried out his plan with a reasonable degree
of cleverness, the average reader is not sufficiently acquainted with
Kerner and Platen and their long line of queer contemporaries to see the
point, so he skips over this part of the work and turns at once to _Der
Oberhof_.

It is needless to state that Immermann never wrote a work with such a
title. Editors and publishers have simply followed the lead of readers
and brought out separately the best parts of the complete novel under
the heading of the third chapter of the second book. There is not even
final agreement as to how much of the original work should be included
in order to make a well-rounded story. The editions, of which there are
many, vary in size from seventy-five to three hundred and seventy-five
octavo pages. The best arrangement is that which includes the second,
fifth, seventh and eighth books.

Here again we meet with three leading characters--the very honest and
reliable Hofschulze, the owner of the "Upper Farm," in whom are
personified and glorified the best traditions of Westphalia; Lisbeth,
the daughter of Münchhausen and Emerentia, the connecting link between
romantic and realistic Germany; and Oswald, the Suabian Count disguised
as a hunter, a thoroughly good fellow. But this by no means exhausts the
list of pleasing personalities. The good Deacon, who had lost interest
in life and faith in men while tutoring a young Swedish Count, and who
was made over by his new work among the solid middle class of
Westphalia, is a character of real charm; his ideals are humanitarian in
the best sense, his wisdom is sound, his help generous. Jochem, Oswald's
servant, is the incarnation of fidelity; the old Captain, who finds
himself today in a French and tomorrow in a Prussian mood, is
instructive at least, for such dualistic patriotism was not unknown at
the time; the Collector follows his vocation with inspiring avidity, the
Sexton is droll without knowing it, and each of the Hofschulze's
servants has something about him that separates him from his
confederates even though he be nameless. There are no supernumeraries
among the characters.

By reason of her common sense and energy, Lisbeth had for some time kept
the old Baron's head above water. One of her duties was to collect
taxes, a business which frequently brought her to the "Upper Farm,"
where she was always sure of a kind reception. Oswald, too, came to the
Farm one day to settle an affair of honor with Münchhausen. Instead of
finding him, however, he meets Lisbeth, and here the love story begins.

While waiting at the Farm for Jochem to find Münchhausen, Oswald agrees
to recompense the Hofschulze for his hospitality by keeping the wild
deer away from the grain fields. His duties are nominal; he exchanges
views with the men of the Farm, corresponds with his friends in Suabia,
wanders over the fields and occasionally shoots at some game without
ever hitting. His room must have been occupied before his arrival by a
beautiful girl, for in it he finds a tidy hood and kerchief that betray
the charms of their wearer, and he dreams of her at night. And one day,
while wandering through the woods, he catches sight of a lovely girl
looking into the calyx of a wonderful forest flower. He is on the point
of going up to her when her very charm holds him back, and that night he
dreams again of his beautiful predecessor in the Hofschulze's corner
room.

And then, while wandering again through the pathless woods, he shoots at
a roe but hits Lisbeth, the girl of his dreams. The wound is, however,
slight, and by the time it has healed their love has become perfect, so
that, immediately after the wedding of the Hofschulze's daughter, for
whom Lisbeth had been a bridesmaid, and before the same altar at which
the ceremony had just been performed, the good Deacon pronounces the
blessing upon the newly betrothed pair.

With the Deacon's official act over, imaginary troubles cease and real
ones begin. Oswald, grieved beyond expression to learn that Lisbeth is
the daughter of Münchhausen and Emerentia, is on the point of leaving
the Farm immediately and Lisbeth forever; Lisbeth, having thought all
the time that her lover was a plain hunter, is in complete despair when
told that he is a real Count; the Hofschulze does not take kindly to the
idea of their marriage, for Oswald has not always revered Westphalian
traditions, the secret tribunal, for example, as he should have done;
Oswald's friends in Suabia object to his marrying a foundling, and
advise him to come home and straighten out a love affair he has there
before entering into a new and foreign one; the doctor is not even
certain that the wedding is hygienically wise. But love dispels all
fears and doubts, and the good Deacon makes Oswald and Lisbeth man and
wife.

Immermann's lifelong attempts at the studied poetizations of
traditional, aristocratic, high-flown themes brought him but scant
recognition even in his day, and they have since been well-nigh
forgotten. But when, one year before his death, he wrote an
unpretentious love story taken from the life of simple people whom he
met on his daily walks, he thereby assured himself of immortality. Few
works prove more convincingly than _Der Oberhof_ that great literature
is neither more nor less than an artistic visualization and faithful
reflection of life. The reading of this unassuming "village story," the
first of its kind in German literature, warms the heart and stirs the
springs of living fancy, simply because it relates in terse and direct
language a series of incidents in the lives of very possible and very
real human beings.

       *       *       *       *       *



KARL LEBRECHT IMMERMANN

THE OBERHOF (1839) TRANSLATED BY PAUL BERNARD THOMAS


CHAPTER I

THE JUSTICE OF THE ESTATE


With the sleeves of his shirt rolled up the old Justice of the estate
was standing in the yard between the barns and the farm buildings and
gazing attentively into a fire which he had kindled on the ground
between stones and logs, and which was now crackling merrily. He
straightened around a small anvil which was standing beside it, laid
down a hammer and a pair of tongs so as to have them ready to grasp,
tested the points of some large wheel-nails which he drew forth from the
breast-pocket of a leather apron he had tied around him, put the nails
down in the bottom of the rack-wagon, the wheel of which he was about to
repair, carefully turned the rim around until the place where the tire
was broken was on top, and then made the wheel fast by putting stones
under it.

After he had again looked into the fire for a few moments, but not long
enough to cause his bright, sharp eyes to blink, he quickly thrust the
tongs into it, lifted out the red-hot piece of iron, laid it on the
anvil, pounded it with the hammer so that the sparks flew in all
directions, clapped the still glowing piece of iron down on the broken
place in the tire, hammered and welded it fast with two heavy blows, and
then drove the nails into their places, which was easily done, as the
iron was still soft and pliable.

A few very sharp and powerful blows gave the inserted piece its
finishing touch. The Justice kicked away the stones with which he had
made the wheel fast, seized the wagon by its tongue in order to test the
mended tire, and in spite of its weight hauled it without exertion
diagonally across the yard, so that the hens, geese and ducks, which had
been quietly sunning themselves, flew, with loud cries, before the
rattling vehicle, and a couple of pigs jumped up, grunting, from their
mud-holes.

Two men, the one a horse-dealer, the other a tax-collector or receiver,
who were sitting at a table beneath the large linden in front of the
house and imbibing their drink, had been watching the work of the robust
old man.

"It must be true!" one of them, the horse-dealer, called out. "You would
have made an excellent blacksmith, Judge!"

The Justice washed his hands and face in a pail of water which was
standing beside the anvil, poured the water into the fire to extinguish
it, and said:

"He is a fool who gives to the blacksmith what he can earn himself!"

He picked up the anvil as if it were a feather, and carried it, along
with the hammer and tongs, under a little shed which stood between the
house and the barn, and in which there were standing, or hanging, a
work-bench, saws, chisels, and whatever other tools pertain to the
carpenter's or joiner's trade, as well as a quantity of wood and boards
of many kinds.

While the old man was still busying himself under the shed, the
horse-dealer said to the receiver:

"Would you believe it that he also repairs with his own hands all the
posts, doors, thresholds, boxes, and cases in the house, or if luck
favors him makes new ones himself? I believe that he could be an expert
joiner, if he wanted to, and put together a first-class cabinet."

"You are wrong there," said the Justice, who had overheard the latter
remark and who, having taken off his leather apron, now emerged from the
shed in a smock-frock of white linen and sat down at the table with the
two men.

[Illustration: The Master of the Oberhof]

A maid brought a glass to him also, and, after drinking the health of his
guests, he continued: "To make a post or a door or a threshold, all you
need is a pair of sound eyes and a steady hand, but a cabinet-maker has
to have more than that. I once allowed my conceit to deceive me into
thinking that I could put together, as you call it, a first-class
cabinet, because I had handled plane and chisel and T-square more or
less doing carpenter's work. I measured and marked and squared off the
wood and had everything fitted down to the inch. Yes, but now when it
came to the joining and gluing together, everything was all wrong; the
sides were warped and wouldn't come together, the lid in front was too
large, and the drawers too small for the openings. You can still see the
contraption; I let it stand on the sill to guard me from future
temptation. For it always does a man good to have a reminder of his
weakness constantly before his eyes."

At this moment a loud neigh was heard from the stable across the yard.
The horse-dealer cleared his throat, spat, struck a light for his pipe,
blew a dense cloud of smoke into the receiver's face, and looked first
longingly toward the stable, and then thoughtfully down at the ground.
Then he spat once more, removed the varnished hat from his head, wiped
his brow with his sleeve, and said: "Still this sultry weather!"
Thereupon he unbuckled his leather money-pouch from his body, threw it
down on the table with a bang, so that its contents rattled and jingled,
untied the strings, and counted out twenty bright gold pieces, the sight
of which caused the receiver's eyes to sparkle, while the old Justice
did not even look at them.

"Here is the money!" cried the horse-dealer, bringing his clenched fist
down on the table with a thump. "Do I get the brown mare for it? God
knows, she's not worth a penny more!"

"Then keep your money, so that you won't suffer any loss!" replied the
Justice cold-bloodedly. "Twenty-six is my price, as I have already said,
and not a farthing less! You've known me a good many years, Mr. Marx,
and you ought to realize by this time that dickering and beating down
don't work with me, because I never take back what I say. I ask for a
thing what it is worth to me, and never overcharge. So an angel with a
trumpet might come down from heaven, but he wouldn't get the bay mare
for less than twenty-six!"

"But," exclaimed the horse-dealer, provoked, "business consists of
demanding and offering, doesn't it? I'd overcharge my own brother! When
there is no more overcharging in the world, business will come to an
end."

"On the contrary," replied the Justice, "business will then take much
less time, and for that very reason will be more profitable. And besides
that, both parties always derive much benefit from a transaction
involving no overcharge. It has always been my experience that, when an
overcharge is made, one's nature gets hot, and it results in nobody's
knowing exactly what he is doing or saying. The seller, in order to put
an end to the argument, often lets his wares go for a lower price than
that which he had quietly made up his mind to charge, and the buyer, on
the other hand, just as often, in the eagerness and ardor of bidding,
wastes his money. Where there is absolutely no talk of abatement, then
both parties remain beautifully calm and safe from loss."

"Inasmuch as you talk so sensibly, you have, I presume, thought better
of my proposal," broke in the receiver. "As I, have already said, the
government wants to convert into cash all the corn due from the farms in
this region. It alone suffers a loss from it, for corn is corn, whereas
money is worth so much today and so much tomorrow. Meanwhile, you see,
it is their wish to free themselves from the burden of storing up corn.
Kindly do me the favor, then, to sign this new cash-contract, which I
have brought with me for that purpose."

"By no means!" answered the Justice vehemently. "For many hundreds of
years corn, and only corn, has been paid over from the Oberhof to the
monastery, and the receiver's office will have to content itself with
that, just as the monastery has done. Does cash grow in my fields? No!
Corn grows in them! Where, then, are you going to get the cash?"

"You're not going to be cheated, you know!" cried the receiver.

"We must always stand by the old ways of doing things," said the Justice
solemnly. "Those were good times when the tablets with the lists of
imposts and taxes of the peasantry used to hang in the church. In those
days everything was fixed, and there were never any disagreements, as
there are nowadays all too often. Afterwards it was said that the
tablets with the hens and eggs and bushels and pecks of grain.
interfered with devotion, and they were done away with." With that he
went into the house.

"There is a stubborn fellow for you!" cried the horse-dealer, when he
could no longer see his business friend. He put his varnished hat back
on his head again with an air of vexation. "If he once makes up his mind
not to do something, the devil himself cannot bring him around. The
worst of it is that the fellow rears the best horses in this region, and
after all, if you get right down to it, lets them go cheap enough."

"An obstinate, headstrong sort of people it is that lives hereabouts,"
said the receiver. "I have just recently come from Saxony and I notice
the contrast. There they all live together, and for that reason they
have to be courteous and obliging and tractable toward one another. But
here, each one lives on his own property, and has his own wood, his own
field, his own pasture around him, as if there were nothing else in the
world. For that reason they cling so tenaciously to all their old
foolish ways and notions, which have everywhere else fallen into disuse.
What a lot of trouble I've had already with the other peasants on
account of this stupid change in the mode of taxation! But this fellow
here is the worst of all!" "The reason for that, Mr. Receiver, is that
he is so rich," remarked the horse-dealer. "It is a wonder to me that
you have put it through with the other peasants around here without him,
for he is their general, their attorney and everything; they all follow
his example in every matter and he bows to no one. A year ago a prince
passed through here; the way the old fellow took off his hat to him,
really, it looked as if he wanted to say: 'You are one, I am another.'
To expect to get twenty-six pistoles for the mare! But that is the
unfortunate part of it, when a peasant acquires too much property. When
you come out on the other side of that oak wood, you walk for half an
hour by the clock through his fields! And everything arranged in first
rate order all the way! The day before yesterday I drove my team through
the rye and wheat, and may God punish me if anything more than the
horses' heads showed up above the tops. I thought I should be drowned."

"Where did he get it all?" asked the receiver.

"Oh!" cried the horse-dealer, "there are a lot more estates like this
around here; they call them Oberhofs. And if they do not surpass many a
nobleman's, my name isn't Marx. The land has been held intact for
generations. And the good-for-nothing fellow has always been economical
and industrious, you'll have to say that much for him I You saw, didn't
you, how he worked away merely to save the expense of paying the
blacksmith a few farthings? Now his daughter is marrying another rich
fellow; she'll get a dowry, I tell you! I happened to pass the linen
closet; flax, yarn, tablecloths and napkins and sheets and shirts and
every possible kind of stuff are piled up to the ceiling in there. And
in addition to that the old codger will give her six thousand thalers in
cash! Just glance about you; don't you feel as if you were stopping with
a count?"

During the foregoing dialogue the vexed horse-dealer had quietly put his
hand into his money-bag and to the twenty gold pieces had added, with an
air of unconcern, six more. The Justice appeared again at the door, and
the other, without looking up, said, grumbling; "There are the
twenty-six, since there is no other way out of it."

The old peasant smiled ironically and said: "I knew right well that you
would buy the horse, Mr. Marx, for you are trying to find one for thirty
pistoles for the cavalry lieutenant in Unna, and my little roan fills
the bill as if she had been made to order. I went into the house only to
fetch the gold-scales, and could see in advance that you would have
bethought yourself in the meantime."

The old man, who one moment displayed something akin to hurry in his
movements and the next the greatest deliberation, depending upon the
business with which he happened to be occupied, sat down at the table,
slowly and carefully wiped off his spectacles, fastened them on his
nose, and began carefully to weigh the gold pieces. Two or three of them
he rejected as being too light. The horse-dealer raised a loud objection
to this, but the Justice, holding the scales in his hands, only listened
in cold-blooded silence, until the other replaced them with pieces
having full weight. Finally, the business was completed; the seller
deliberately wrapped the money in a piece of paper and went with the
horse-dealer to the stable, in order to deliver the horse over to him.

The receiver did not wait for them to return. "One can't accomplish
anything with a clod-hopper like that," he said. "I But in the end if
you don't come around and pay us up regularly, we will--" He felt for
the legal documents in his pocket, realized by their crackling that they
were still there, and left the yard.

Out of the stable came the horse-dealer, the Justice, and a farm-hand
who was leading behind him two horses, the horse-dealer's own and the
brown mare which he had just bought. The Justice, giving the latter a
farewell pat, said "It always grieves one to sell a creature which one
has raised, but who can do otherwise?--Now behave well, little brownie!"
he added, giving the animal a hearty slap on her round, glossy
haunches. In the meantime the horse-dealer had mounted. With his gaunt
figure, his short riding-jacket under the broad-brimmed, varnished hat,
his yellow breeches over his lean thighs, his high leather boots, his
large, heavy spurs, and his whip, he looked like a highwayman. He rode
away cursing and swearing, without saying good-by, leading the brown
mare by a halter. He never once glanced back at the farm-house, but the
mare several times bent her neck around and emitted a doleful neigh, as
if complaining because her good days were now over. The Justice remained
standing with the laborer, his arms set akimbo, until the two horses had
passed out of sight through the orchard. Then the man said: "The animal
is grieving."

"Why shouldn't she?" replied the Justice. "Aren't we grieving too? Come
up to the granary--we'll measure the oats."


CHAPTER II

ADVICE AND SYMPATHY


As he turned around toward the house with the laborer, he saw that the
place under the linden had already been reoccupied by new guests. The
latter, however, had a very dissimilar appearance. For three or four
peasants, his nearest neighbors, were sitting there, and beside them sat
a young girl, as beautiful as a picture. This beautiful girl was the
blond Lisbeth, who had passed the night at the Oberhof.

I shall not venture to describe her beauty; it would only result in
telling of her red cheeks and blue eyes, and these things, fresh as they
may be in reality, have become somewhat stale when put down in black and
white.

The Justice, without paying any attention to his long-haired neighbors
in blouses, approached his charming guest and said:

"Well, did you sleep all right, my little miss?" "Splendidly!" replied
Lisbeth.

"What's the matter with your finger?--you have it bandaged," inquired
the old man.

"Nothing," answered the young girl, blushing. She wanted to change the
subject, but the Justice would not allow himself to be diverted;
grasping her hand, the one with the bandaged finger, he said: "It's
nothing serious, is it?"

"Nothing worth talking about," answered Lisbeth. "Yesterday evening when
I was helping your daughter with her sewing, the needle pricked my
finger and it bled a little. That is all."

"Oho!" exclaimed the Justice, smirking. "And I notice that it is the
ring-finger too! That augurs something good. You doubtless know that
when an unmarried girl helps an engaged one to sew her bridal linen, and
in doing it pricks her ring-finger, it means that she herself is to
become engaged in the same year? Well, you have my best wishes for a
nice lover!"

The peasants laughed, but the blond Lisbeth did not allow herself to be
disconcerted; she cried out joyfully: "And do you know my motto? It runs:

  As far as God on lily fair
  And raven young bestows his care,
  Thus far runs my land;
  And, therefore, he who seeks my hand
  Must have four horses to his carriage
  Before I'll give myself in marriage.

"And," broke in the Justice--

  And he must catch me like a mouse,
  And hook me like a fish,
  And shoot me like a roe.

The report of a gun rang out nearby. "See, my little miss, it's coming
true!"

"Now, Judge, make an end of your frivolous talk," said the young girl.
"I have called to get your advice, and so give it to me now without any
more foolish nonsense." The Justice settled himself in an attitude of
dignity, ready to talk and listen. Lisbeth drew forth a little
writing-tablet and read off the names of the peasants among whom she had
been going around during the past few days for the purpose of collecting
back-rent due her foster-father. Then she told the Justice how they had
refused to pay their debts and what their excuses had been. One claimed
to have paid up long ago, another said that he had only recently come
into the farm, a third knew nothing about the matter, a fourth had
pretended that he couldn't hear well, and so forth and so forth; so that
the poor girl, like a little bird flying about in the winter in search
of food and not finding a single grain of corn, had been turned away
empty-handed from one door after another. But any one who thinks that
these futile efforts had plunged her into grief is mistaken, for nothing
greatly disturbed her and she related the story of her irksome
wanderings with a cheerful smile.

The Justice wrote down on the table with chalk several of the names
mentioned, and, when she had reached the end of her list, said:

"As far as the others are concerned, they do not live with us and I have
no authority over them. If they are base enough to refuse to do their
duty and to meet their obligations, then simply strike out the names of
the scamps, for you can never get anything out of a peasant by a
law-suit. But as against those who live in our precinct, I will help you
to secure your rights. We still have means of accomplishing that."

"Oho, Squire!" said one of the peasants to him, half-aloud. "You talk as
if you always carried the rope around with you in your coat-sleeve. When
is the secret court to be held?"

"Be still, tree-warden!" interrupted the old man with earnestness.
"Sneering remarks like that might get you into trouble!"

The man addressed was disconcerted; he cast down his eyes and made no
reply. Lisbeth thanked the old man for his offer of help, and inquired
about the roads and paths to the other peasants whose names she still
had left on her writing-tablet. The Justice pointed out to her the
shortest way to the nearest farm, which led across the Priests' Meadow,
past the three mills and over the Holle Hills. When she had put on her
straw hat, taken her staff, expressed her thanks for the hospitality
shown her, and had thus made herself ready to leave, he begged her to
make her arrangements such that on her return she could stay for the
wedding and a day thereafter. He hoped that he would be able to give her
by that time definite assurance in regard to the rents, or, perhaps,
even to give her the money itself to take home with her.

When the young girl's slender and graceful form had disappeared behind
the last walnut-trees at the farther end of the orchard, the peasants
broached the subject which had brought them to the Justice. The building
of a new road, which was to establish a connection with the main
highway, threatened, if the idea were carried out, to deprive them of a
few strips of their land over which it was necessary to lay the new
road. Against this loss, although the project would redound to the
advantage of all the surrounding peasantry, they were anxious to protect
themselves; and how to avert it was the question about which they were
anxious to secure the advice of the owner of the Oberhof.

"Good day! How are you?" called out a voice, well known in this
locality. A pedestrian, a man in respectable attire, but covered with
dust from his gray gaiters to his green, visored cap, had entered
through the gate and approached the table, unnoticed at first by the
conversers.

"Ah, Mr. Schmitz, so we see you too, once more, eh?" said the old
peasant very cordially, and he had the servant bring the fatigued man
the best there was in the wine-cellar. The peasants politely moved
closer together to make room for the new arrival. They insisted upon
his sitting down, and he lowered himself into a chair with great care
and deliberation, so as not to break what he was carrying. And this
procedure was indeed very necessary, for the man was loaded down like an
express-wagon, and the outlines of his form resembled a conglomeration
of bundles tied together. Not only did his coat-pockets, which were
crammed full of all sorts of round, square and oblong objects, bulge out
from his body in an astonishing manner, but also his breast and side
pockets, which were used for the same purpose, protruded in a manifold
variety of swellings and eminences, which stuck out all the more sharply
as the Collector, in order not to lose any of his treasures, had, in
spite of the summer heat, buttoned his coat tightly together. Even the
inside of his cap had been obliged to serve for the storing of several
smaller articles, and had acquired from its contents the shape and
semblance of a watermelon. He sipped, with manifest relish, the good
wine that was put before him, and his elderly countenance, bloated and
reddened with heat and fatigue, gradually acquired its natural color and
form again.

"Been doing good business, Mr. Schmitz?" inquired the Justice, smiling.
"Judging from appearances, one might think so."

"Oh, fairly good," replied the Collector. "There is a rich blessing
hidden in the dear earth. It not only brings forth corn and vegetables
constantly and untiringly--an alert searcher may secure a harvest of
antiquities from it all the time, no matter how much other people have
scratched and dug for them. So I have once more taken my little trip
through the country, and this time I got as far as the border of the
Sieg valley. I am on my way back now and intend to go on as far as the
city today. But I had to stop over a while at your place on the way,
Justice, in order to rest myself a bit, for I am certainly tired."

"What are you bringing with you?" asked the Justice.

The Collector tapped gently and affectionately on all the swellings and
protuberances of his various pockets, and said:

"Oh, well, some very nice things--all sorts of curiosities. A
battle-axe, a pair of thunderbolts, some heathen rings--beautiful things
all covered with green rust--ash-urns, tear-bottles, three idols and a
pair of valuable lamps." He struck the nape of his neck with the back of
his hand and continued: "And I also have here with me a perfectly
preserved piece of bronze--I had no other place to put it, so I tied it
fast here on my back under my coat. Well, it will probably not look
amiss, once it is all cleaned up and given its proper place."

The peasants displayed some curiosity to see a few of the articles, but
old Schmitz declared himself unable to satisfy it, because the
antiquities were so carefully packed and put away with such ingenious
use of every bit of space that it would be difficult, if it were once
taken out, to get the entire load back in again. The Justice said
something into the servant's ear, and the latter went into the house. In
the meanwhile the Collector told in detail all about the places where he
had come across the various acquisitions; then he moved his chair nearer
to his host and said confidentially:

"But what is by far the most important discovery of this trip--I have
now really found the actual place where Hermann defeated Varus!"

"You don't mean it?" replied the Justice, pushing his cap back and
forth.

"They have all been on the wrong track--Clostermeier, Schmid, and
whatever the names of the other people may be who have written about
it!" cried the Collector ardently. "They have always thought that Varus
withdrew in the direction of Aliso--the exact situation of which no man
has ever discovered--well, anyway, in a northerly direction, and in
accordance with that theory the battle is supposed to have taken place
between the sources of the Lippe and the Ems, near Detmold, Lippspring,
Paderborn, and God knows where else!"

The Justice said: "I think that Varus had to try with all his might to
reach the Rhine, and that he could have done only by gaining the open
country. The battle is said to have lasted three days, and in that
length of time you can march a good distance. Hence I am rather of the
opinion that the attack in the mountains which surround our plain did
not take place very far from here."

"Wrong, wrong, Justice!" cried the Collector. "Here below everything was
occupied and blocked up by the Cherusci, Catti, and Sigambri. No the
battle was much farther south, near the region of the Ruhr, not far from
Arnsberg. Varus had to push his way through the mountains, he had no
egress anywhere, and his mind was bent on reaching the middle Rhine,
whither the road leads diagonally across Sauerland. That is what I have
always thought, and now I have discovered the most unmistakable evidence
of it. Close by the Ruhr I found the bronze and bought the three idols,
and a man from the village told me that hardly an hour's walk from there
was a place in the woods among the mountains where an enormous quantity
of bones were piled up in the sand and gravel. Ha! I exclaimed, the day
is beginning to break. I went out there with a few peasants, had them
excavate a little, and, behold! we came across bones to my heart's
content. So that is the place where Germanicus had the remnants of the
Roman legions buried six years after the battle of Teutoburg Wood, when
he directed his last expeditions against Hermann. And I have therefore
discovered the right battlefield."

"Bones do not ordinarily preserve themselves for a thousand years and
more," said the Justice, shaking his head doubtfully.

"They have become petrified among the minerals there," said the
collector angrily. "I'll have to put an evidence of my theory in your
hand--here is one I have brought with me." He drew forth a large bone
from his shirt and held it before his opponent's eyes. "Now, what do
you call that?" he asked triumphantly.

The peasants stared at the bone in amazement. The Justice, after he had
examined it, replied: "A cow's bone, Mr. Schmitz! You discovered a
carrion-pit, not the battlefield of Teutoburg."

The Collector indignantly put the discredited antiquity back into its
place and uttered a few violent imprecations, to which the old peasant
knew the most effective way to reply. It seemed as if a quarrel might
ensue between the two men, but as a matter of fact the appearances were
of no significance. For it was a common thing for them, whenever they
got together, to disagree about this and similar matters. But in spite
of these controversies they always remained good friends. The Collector,
who, in order to follow up his hobbies, even begrudged himself bread,
was in the habit all the year round of feeding himself for weeks at a
time out of the full meat-pots of the Oberhof, and in return for it he
helped along his host's business by doing all kinds of writing for him.
For the Collector had formerly been, by profession, a sworn and
matriculated Imperial Notary.

Finally, after a great deal of fruitless argument on both sides, the
Justice said: "I won't wrangle with you over the battlefield, although I
still persist in my belief that Hermann defeated Varus somewhere around
this neighborhood. As a matter of fact it doesn't make any particular
difference to me where it happened--the question is one for the
scholars. For if the other Roman general, six years afterwards, as you
have often told me, marched into this region with another army, then the
whole battle had but little significance."

"You don't know anything about it!" exclaimed the Collector. "The
present existence and position of Germany rests entirely upon the battle
won by Hermann. If it had not been for Hermann 'the liberator,' you
would not be occupying these extensive premises now, marked off by your
hedges and stakes. But you people simply live along from one day to the
next, and have no use for history and antiquity."

"Oho, Mr. Schmitz, you do me great injustice there," replied the old
peasant proudly. "God knows what pleasure it gives me to sit down of a
winter evening and read the chronicles and histories, and you yourself
know that I treat the sword of Carolus Magnus (the old man pronounced
the second syllable long), which has now for a thousand years and more
been in the possession of the Oberhof, as I do the apple of my eye, and
consequently--"

"The sword of Charles the Great!" exclaimed the Collector scornfully.
"Friend, is it impossible to get these notions out of your head?
Listen--"

"I say and maintain that it is the genuine and actual sword of Carolus
Magnus with which he here at the Oberhof located and established the
'Freemen's Tribunal.' And even today the sword still performs and
fulfils its office, although nothing further may be said about it." The
old man uttered these words with an expression on his features and a
gesture which had something sublime in them.

"And I say and maintain that all that is sheer nonsense!" exclaimed the
Collector with emphasis. "I have examined the old toasting-iron no less
than a hundred times, and it isn't five hundred years old! It comes down
perhaps from the time of the feud of Soest, when very likely one of the
Archbishop's cavalrymen crawled into the bushes here and left it."

"The devil take you!" cried the Justice, pounding his fist on the table.
Then he mumbled softly to himself "Just wait; you'll get your punishment
for that this very day!"

The servant came out of the door. He was carrying a terra-cotta jug with
a rather large circumference and a strange, exotic appearance, gripping
it firmly and carefully by the handles with both hands.

"Oh!" cried the Collector, when he had obtained a closer view of it.
"What a splendid large amphora! Where did it come from?"

The Justice replied with an air of indifference: "Oh, I found the old
jug in the ditch a week ago when we were digging out gravel. There was
a lot more stuff around there, but the men smashed it all to pieces
with their picks. This jug was the only thing they spared, and, inasmuch
as you are here, I wanted you to see it."

The Collector looked at the large, well-preserved vessel with moist
eyes. Finally he stammered: "Can't we strike a bargain for it?"

"No," replied the peasant coldly. "I'll keep the pot for myself." He
motioned to the servant, and the latter started to carry the amphora
back into the house. He was prevented from doing so, however, by the
Collector, who, without turning his eyes away from it, besought its
owner with all kinds of lively arguments to turn the longed-for wine-jug
over to him. But it was all in vain; the Justice, in the face of the
most urgent entreaties, maintained an attitude of unshakable composure.
In this way he formed the motionless centre-figure of the group, of
which the peasants, listening to the business with open mouths, the
servant tugging the jug with both handles toward the house, and the
antiquarian holding on to the lower end, constituted the excited lateral
and secondary figures. Finally the Justice said that he had been of a
mind to give the jug to his guest along with several other pieces which
he had previously discovered, because he himself would take pleasure in
seeing the old things arranged in order on the shelves of the collection
around the room, but that the constant attacks made by the Collector
against the sword of Carolus Magnus had annoyed him, and that he had
decided, therefore, to keep the jug after all.

Thereupon, after a pause, the Collector said in a dejected tone that to
err was human, that medieval weapons could not always be distinguished
with certainty as to their age, that he himself was less of an expert
in these than in Roman relics, and that there were after all many things
about the sword which seemed to indicate a more remote age, before the
feud of Soest. Whereupon the Justice replied that general statements of
that kind were of no use to him; he wanted to have the dispute and doubt
regarding his sword settled once and for all, and there was only one way
for the Collector to gain possession of the old jug, namely, by writing
out on the spot a signed statement, wherein he should formally recognize
the sword kept in the Oberhof as the actual sword of Charles the Great.

On hearing this a severe conflict ensued in the Collector's mind between
his antiquarian conscience and his antiquarian longing. He pouted his
lips and tapped with his fingers about the spot where he had concealed
the bone from the battlefield of Teutoburg. Evidently he was striving to
subdue the exhortations of a desire which was seducing him into signing
an untruthful statement. Finally, however, passion, as is always the
way, got the upper hand; suddenly demanding pen and paper, he made out
in hot haste, now and then casting furtive glances at the amphora, a
direct statement to the effect that he, after frequent examinations of
it, recognized and declared the sword in the Oberhof as one formerly
belonging to the Emperor, Charles the Great.

This document the Justice had signed by the two peasants as witnesses;
then he folded the paper several times and put it into his pocket. Old
Schmitz, on the other hand, made a quick grab for the amphora which he
had purchased at the expense of his better judgment. The Justice said
that he would deliver the jug to him in the city on the following day.
But what collector could ever get along, even for a minute, without the
actual possession of a piece of property acquired at so high a price?
Our Collector resolutely declined to submit to any delay; he had a
string brought to him, ran it through the handles, and suspended the
large wine-jug over his shoulders. After that, the Collector having
first been invited to the wedding, the two men parted in the best of
humor; and the latter with his bulging angularities, his swelled-up,
protruding coat-tails, and with the amphora bobbing back and forth at
his left side, made a remarkable spectacle as he walked away.

The peasants wished their adviser a good morning, promised to bear his
advice in mind, and departed, each one to his own farmstead. The
Justice, who, dealing with all the people who had come to him in the
course of an hour, had successfully handled everything undertaken, first
took the newly-acquired document of recognition to the room where he
kept the sword of Charles the Great, and then went with the servant to
the granary to measure out oats for the horses.


CHAPTER III

THE OBERHOF


"Westphalia formerly consisted of individual estates, each one of which
had its own free possessor. Several such estates constituted a
Bauerschaft (peasant community), which, as a rule, bore the name of the
oldest estate. It lay in the original character of the peasant
communities that the oldest estate should also stand first in rank and
come to be the most aristocratic, and here from time to time the
children, grandchildren and house-inmates, ceasing work for a few days,
came together and feasted. The beginning, or else the end, of the summer
was the usual time for this event, and then every estate-owner brought
along with him for the feast some of the fruits which he himself had
raised, and perhaps a calf or lamb as well. Then all sorts of matters
were discussed, opinions were exchanged, marriages performed, deaths
made known, and then the son, as the succeeding head of his father's
estate, was sure to make his first appearance in the company with fuller
hands and a choicer animal. Disagreements were unavoidable on these
days of joy, and in the event of one, the father, as the head of the
oldest estate, stepped in and, with the approval of the rest, put an end
to the quarrel. If during the previous year any of the estate-owners had
disagreed about some matter, both of them brought forward their
grievances before the next gathering, and both were satisfied with
whatever decision their fellows deemed right and just. After all the
eatables had been devoured, and the tree set aside for the occasion had
been burned up, the feast, or the gathering, came to an end. Each one
returned home, related the events of the occasion to the waiting members
of his household, and came to be a living and continuing authority
regarding all the happenings of their peasant community.

These gatherings were called Conferences, Peasant Conferences, because
all the estate-owners of a peasant community came together to confer
with one another, and also Peasant Tribunals, because here the
conflicting claims of the men, already by tacit agreement combined in a
union, were either settled or rejected. Inasmuch as the Peasant
Conferences or Peasant Tribunals were held at the oldest and most
aristocratic estate, such an estate was called Court Estate, and the
Peasant Conferences and Peasant Tribunals were called Court Conferences
and Court Tribunals; and the latter, even at the present day, have not
entirely disappeared. The oldest estate, the Court Estate, was called by
way of distinction simply the Estate, the name whereby the people
designated the Main Estate or the Oberhof of the peasant community, and
its owner as the head or chief of the rest.

Thus in a general way we account for the origin of the first association
and the first judicial arrangement of the Westphalian Estates or peasant
communities. It is the less surprising when we consider that the former
condition of Westphalia permitted only a slow increase of population
and a gradual development of agriculture; and precisely this gradual
progress led to those simple and uniform arrangements, as also to the
similarity of culture, manners and customs, which we find among the
ancient inhabitants of Westphalia."

[Illustration: THE OBERHOF BY BENJAMIN VAUTIER]

This passage from Kindlinger's _Contributions to the History of the
Diocese of Münster_ conducts us to the scene of our story. It throws a
light on our hero, the Justice. He was the owner of one of the largest
and wealthiest of the Main Estates, or Oberhofs, which still exist in
those regions, but which, to be sure, have now fused together to a small
number.

There is something remarkable about the first traditions of a tribe, and
the people as a whole have just as long a memory as the individual
persons, who are wont to retain faithfully to extreme old age the
impressions of early childhood. When now we consider that an individual
human life may last as long as ninety years, and, furthermore, that the
years of a people are as centuries, it is no longer a matter of wonder
to us that, in the regions where the events of our story took place, we
still here and there come across much that points back to the time when
the great Emperor of the Franks succeeded, by means of fire and sword,
in converting the obstinate inhabitants.

And so if, in the place where once the Supreme Justice and the heir of
the region lived, Nature once more awakens special qualities in a
person, there may grow up amid these thousand-year-old memories and
between the boundaries and ditches which are, after all, still
recognizable, a figure like our Justice, whose right of existence is not
acknowledged by the powers of the present, to be sure, but which for its
own self, and among its own kind, may temporarily restore a condition
which disappeared long ago.

Let us look around in the Oberhof itself. If the praise of a friend is
always very ambiguous, then surely one may trust the envy of an enemy;
and the person most worthy of credit is a horse-dealer, who calls
special attention to the comfortable circumstances of a peasant with
whom he could not agree in a matter of business. To be sure, one could
not say, as the horse-dealer Marx did, that the surroundings reminded
one of a count's estate; on the other hand, in whatever direction one
looked there was an atmosphere of peasant prosperity and opulence which
could not but call out to the hungriest stranger: Here you can eat your
fill; the plate is never empty.

The estate lay entirely alone on the border of the fertile plain, at the
point where it passes over into hilly woodland; indeed, the Justice's
last fields lay on a gentle slope, and a mile away were the mountains.
The nearest neighbor in the peasant community lived a quarter of an hour
away from the estate, around which were spread out all the possessions
which a large country household had need of--fields, woods and meadows,
all in compact uninterrupted continuity.

From the foot of the hills the fields ran down in beautiful order across
the plain. It was, moreover, about the time when the rye was in blossom;
its exhalation, as a thank-offering of the soil, rose from the spikelets
and was wafted aloft on the warm summer breezes. Single rows of
high-trunked ashes and knotty elms, planted on either side of the old
boundary ditches, inclosed a part of the cornfields, and, being visible
from afar, indicated, more definitely than stones and stakes can do, the
limits of the inheritance. A deep road ran between dikes of earth
diagonally across the fields, branched off into paths at several places
on both sides, and led, at the point where the grain ceased, into a
vigorous and well-kept oak grove, under which a number of hogs were
comfortably imbedded in the soil, the shade of which, however, was
equally refreshing to human beings. This grove, which supplied the
Justice with wood, extended to within a few paces of the farmhouse and
inclosed it on two sides, thus, at the same time, affording it
protection against the east and north winds.

The house, which had two stories, and the walls of which were of
panel-work painted white and yellow, was roofed only with straw; but,
as the latter was always kept in the very best condition, it did not
produce an impression of poverty, but, on the contrary, rather increased
the general effect of comfort which the house imparted. Of the inside we
shall learn more anon; suffice it to say for the present that on the
other side of the house there was a large yard, surrounded by barns and
stables, in the plastered walls of which the keenest eye could not
detect a faulty spot. Large lindens stood before the front door, and
there too, but not on the wall side, seats were placed, as we have
already seen. For the Justice, even when he was resting, wanted to keep
an eye on his household.

Directly opposite the house one looked through a lattice gate into the
orchard, where strong and healthy fruit-trees spread their leafy
branches out over the fresh grass, vegetables and lettuce. Here and
there, in between, little beds of red roses and fire-lilies were
thriving. Of the latter, however, there were very few, for a true
peasant devotes his ground only to necessary things, even when his
circumstances permit him to cultivate some of nature's luxuries.

Everything beyond the orchard, as far as the eye could see, was green.
For on the other side of the garden lay the extensive meadows of the
Oberhof, in which the Justice had room and fodder for his horses. Their
breeding, carried on with great industry, was one of the most lucrative
sources of income the estate enjoyed. These verdant meadows were also
surrounded by hedges and ditches; one of them, moreover, contained a
pond in which well-fed carp swam about in shoals.

On this rich estate, surrounded by full barns, full lofts and stables,
dwelt the old, widely respected Justice. But if one climbed the highest
hill on the border of his land, one could see from there the towers of
three of the oldest cities in Westphalia.

At the time of which I speak it was approaching eleven o'clock in the
forenoon. The whole vast estate was so quiet that scarcely any noise was
audible, save the rustling of the leaves in the tree-tops. The Justice
was measuring out oats to his servant, who flung each sack across his
shoulders and trudged slowly over to the stable with it. The daughter
was counting up her dowry of linen and wool, and a maid was working in
the kitchen. All the other dwellers on the estate were lying asleep; for
it was just before the harvest-time, when peasants have the least to do,
and the workmen use every spare minute for sleep, in order to prepare
themselves, in a measure, for the approaching days of toil and sweat.
For in general, country people, like dogs, can, if they wish to, sleep
at all hours of the day and night.


CHAPTER IV

WHEREIN THE HUNTER SENDS HIS COMPANION OUT AFTER A PERSON BY THE NAME OF
SCHRIMBS OR PEPPEL, AND COMES HIMSELF TO THE OBERHOF


From the hills which bordered the Justice's fields there came forth two
men of different appearance and age. The one, clad in a green hunter's
jacket, with a little cap on his curly head and a light Liège gun on his
arm, was a strikingly handsome youth; the other, dressed in more quiet
colors, was an elderly man with a frank and sincere manner. The younger
strode on ahead, as nimbly as a stag, while the older maintained a
somewhat slower gait, like that of a worn-out hunting-dog lagging behind
the master to whom he is still ever faithful. After they had emerged
into an open space at the foot of the hills, they both sat down on a
large stone, which lay there beside several others in the shade of a
mighty linden. The younger man gave some money and papers to the older,
pointed out to him the direction in which he was to continue his way,
and said:

"Go now, Jochem, and be discreet, so that we can get hold of this
confounded Schrimbs or Peppel who has been inventing such monstrous
lies, and as soon as you discover him, let me know."

"I'll be discreet all right," replied old Jochem. "I'll make such sly
and secret inquiries in all the villages and cities about a man who
signs his name Schrimbs or Peppel, that it would have to be the devil's
own fault if I don't succeed in locating the wretch. In the meanwhile
you lie low here _incognito,_ until you receive further news from me."

"Very well," said the young man, "and now, Jochem, be very cautious and
thoughtful all the time in the way you handle the matter, for we are no
longer in dear Suabia, but out among the Saxons and Franks."

"The miserable fellows!" exclaimed old Jochem. "Faith, they have long
talked about Suabian stupidities! They shall see that a Suabian can be a
sly bird too when it is necessary."

"And keep always to the right, my Jochem, for the last tracks of this
Schrimbs or Peppel are headed that way," said the young man, standing up
and giving the old man a cordial parting handshake.

"Always to the right, of course," replied the latter. He handed over to
the other his hunting-bag, which was stuffed full, and which up to now
he had been carrying, lifted his hat and went off, following a side-path
at the right, down toward the region where, in the distance, one could
see towering up one of the steeples mentioned in the foregoing chapter.

The young man, on the other hand, went directly down toward the Oberhof.
He had taken perhaps a hundred steps when he heard somebody running
behind him and panting. He turned around and saw that his old companion
was hurrying after him.

"There was one more thing I wanted to ask and beg of you," the latter
cried. "Now that you are alone and left to yourself, get rid of your
gun; for you certainly won't hit anything and, sure as death, you will
have a mishap again, as you almost did not long ago when you fired at
the hare and came very near killing the child."

"Yes, it is damnable to be always firing at things and never hitting
them," said the young man. "But, truly, I'll put restraint on myself, no
matter how hard it may be to do it, and not a single shot shall fly out
of these barrels as long as you are away from me."

The old man begged him for the gun, but the young man refused to give it
up, saying that, without a gun, it would surely cost no self-restraint
to refrain from shooting, and that his method of procedure would then
lose all its merit.

"That is very true," replied the old man, and, without bidding his
companion a second good-by, inasmuch as the first one still held good,
he went back reassured, along the path which had been pointed out to
him.

The young man stood still, rested the gun on the ground, thrust the
ramrod into the barrel, and said:

"It will be difficult to get the charge out, and yet it can't stay in."
With that he tossed the gun over his shoulder and walked in the
direction of the Justice's oak grove. Just before he got there a drove
of heath fowl started up from a narrow strip of borderland, flapping
their wings and screaming loudly. In exultation the young man snatched
the gun from his shoulder, crying: "Here's my chance to get rid of the
shot forthwith!" and took aim. Both barrels went off with a roar, and
the birds flew away uninjured. The hunter gazed after them in
astonishment and said:

"This time I thought I couldn't have helped hitting something. Well,
from now on I shall certainly restrain myself." With that he continued
his way through the oak grove to the house.

When he entered the door he saw, sitting at dinner in a high and
spacious hall which took up the entire centre of the house, the Justice,
his daughter, his farm-hands and maids, and in a resonant, euphonious
voice he gave them a friendly greeting. The Justice scrutinized him with
care, the daughter with astonishment; as for the men and maids, they
did not look at him at all, but went on eating without paying any
attention to him. The Hunter approached the master of the estate and
inquired about the distance to the nearest city and the way to get
there. At first the Justice did not understand his strange-sounding
language, but the daughter, without once turning her eyes from the
handsome Hunter, helped her father to get the meaning, whereupon he gave
the correct information. Only after three repetitions was the Hunter, on
his part, able to understand the reply; but he finally succeeded in
making out that the city was not to be reached in less than two long
hours, and then only by a path which was difficult to find.

The midday heat, combined with the sight of the tidy meal before him and
his own hunger, prompted the Hunter to ask the question whether for love
or money he could have something to eat and drink and shelter till the
cool of evening.

"For money, no!" replied the Justice, "but for love the gentleman may
have dinner and supper and a place to rest as long as he wants it." He
had a tin plate, as clear and bright as a mirror, a knife, a fork and a
spoon, just as bright as the plate, laid upon the table, and pressed his
guest to sit down. The latter fell upon the well-cooked ham, the big
beans, the eggs and sausages, which constituted the meal, with all the
appetite of youth, and discovered that the food of the country, which
was everywhere decried as Boeotian, was, on the contrary, not at all
bad.

Very little talking was done by the hosts, for peasants do not like to
speak while they are eating. Howsoever, the Hunter, on inquiry, managed
to find out from the Justice that no man by the name of Schrimbs or
Peppel was known anywhere around in that vicinity. The farm-hands and
maids, who sat apart from the seats of honor at the other end of the
long table, kept absolutely silent and looked only at the dishes out of
which they spooned their food into their mouths. After they had
finished eating, however, and had wiped their mouths, they stepped up to
the Justice, one after the other, and said: "Master, my motto;"
whereupon the Justice addressed to each one a proverbial phrase or a
biblical passage. Thus to the first man, a red-haired fellow, he said:
"Proneness to dispute lights a fire, and proneness to fight sheds
blood;" to the second, a slow, fat man: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard,
consider her ways and be wise;" to the third, a small, black-eyed,
bold-looking customer: "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."
The first maid received the motto: "If you have cattle, take care of
them, and if they bring you profit, keep it;" and to the second he said:
"Nothing's ever locked so tight but it will some day come to light."

After each one had been remembered in this way, they all went off to
their work, some looking unconcerned, others embarrassed. The second
girl blushed a deep crimson when she heard her motto. The Hunter, who
was gradually learning to understand the local dialect, listened to this
lesson with astonishment, and after it was over he asked what the
purpose of it was.

"To give them something to think about," said the Justice. "When they
come together here again tonight, each one of them will tell me what he
or she has been thinking relative to the motto. Most of the work in the
country is of such a kind that, in doing it, the people are liable to
think all sorts of things, and they get a lot of bad notions in their
heads, which afterwards break out in the form of wantonness, lies, and
deception. But when a man has such a motto to ponder over, he will not
rest until he has extracted the moral from it, and meanwhile the time
has elapsed without any evil thoughts having entered his mind."

"You are a true philosopher and priest," cried the Hunter, whose
amazement was increasing with every minute.

"One can accomplish a great deal with a person when one brings morality
home to him," said the Justice thoughtfully. "But morality sticks in
short sayings better than in long speeches and sermons. My people keep
straight much longer since I hit upon the morality idea. To be sure it
does not work all the year round; during planting and harvest-time all
thinking ceases. But it isn't necessary then anyway, because they have
no time for wickedness."

"You have, then, regular sections in your teaching?" asked the Hunter.

"In winter," replied the Justice, "the mottoes usually begin after
threshing and last until sowing. In summer, on the other hand, they are
assigned from Walpurgis Night until dog days. Those are the times when
peasants have the least to do."

With that he left the young man, who got up and looked around in the
house, the yard, the orchard, and the meadow. He spent several hours in
this inspection, since everything he saw attracted him. The rural
stillness, the green of the meadows, the prosperity which beamed upon
him from the whole estate, all made a most pleasant impression, and
aroused in him a desire to spend the one or two weeks that might elapse
before he received news from old Jochem there in the open country rather
than in the narrow alleys of a small city. Inasmuch as he wore his heart
on his tongue, he went forthwith to the Justice, who was in the oak
grove marking a pair of trees for felling, and expressed his wish. In
return he offered to assist in anything that might be of use to his
host.

Beauty is an excellent dowry. It is a key which, like that little one of
gold, opens by magic seven locks, each one different from the rest. The
old man gazed for a moment at the youth's slim yet robust figure and at
his honest and at the same time splendidly aristocratic face, and at
first shook his head persistently; then, however, he nodded approvingly,
and, finally growing friendly, granted him his request. He assigned to
the Hunter a corner room on the upper floor of the house, from one side
of which one could see across the oak grove toward the hills and
mountains, and from the other out over the meadows and corn fields. The
guest had, to be sure, in place of paying for his room and board, to
promise to fulfil a very peculiar condition. For the Justice did not
like to have even beauty favored without an equivalent return.


CHAPTER V

THE HUNTER HIRES OUT AS POACHER


He asked the young man, before he promised him quarters, whether he was
a lover of hunting, as his green suit, gun and hunting-bag seemed to
indicate. The latter replied that, as far back as he could remember, he
had always had a passion amounting to real madness for deer-shooting; in
saying which, to be sure, he concealed the fact that, with the exception
of a sparrow, a crow, and a cat, no creature of God had ever fallen
victim to his powder and lead. This was in reality the case. He could
not live without firing a few times a day at something, but he regularly
missed his aim; in his eighteenth year he had killed a sparrow, in his
twentieth a crow, and in his twenty-fourth a cat. And that was all.

After the Justice had received his guest's affirmative answer, he came
out with his proposition, which was, namely, that the Hunter should
every day lie out in the fields a few hours and keep off the wild
animals, which were causing a great deal of injury to his corn fields,
especially those lying on the slope at the foot of the hills.

"Yonder in the mountains," said the old peasant, "the noblemen have
their great hunting-ranges. The creatures have already in past years
eaten up and trampled down enough of my crops, but this is the first
year that it has become serious. The reason is, that the young count
over there is an ardent hunter and has enlarged his stock of game, so
that his stags and roes come out of the forest like sheep and completely
ruin the product of my toil and sweat. I myself do not understand the
business, and I don't like to turn it over to my men because it gives
them an easy chance, under the pretext of lying in wait, to become
disorderly. Consequently the beasts have now and then worked enough
havoc to make a man's heart ache. Your coming now is, therefore, very
opportune, and if for these two weeks before harvest you will keep the
creatures out of my corn for me, we'll call that payment for your room
and board."

"What? I a poacher? I a game thief?" cried the man, and he laughed so
loudly and heartily that the Justice could not help joining in. Still
laughing, the latter ran his hand over the fine cloth of which his
guest's clothing was made.

"That is just why I want you to do it," he said, "because with you there
will be no particular danger even if you are caught. You will know how
to get yourself out of it better than one of these poor farm laborers.
Flies get caught in a cobweb, but wasps flit straight through them. But
what kind of a crime is it anyway to protect your own property against
monsters that eat it up and ruin it?" he cried, the laugh on his face
suddenly changing into an expression of the most fervent anger. The
veins in his brow swelled up, the blood in his cheeks turned deep
crimson, and the whites of his eyes became bloodshot; one might have
taken fright at the sight of the old man.

"You are right, father, there is nothing more unreasonable than the
so-called hunting privileges," said the Hunter, in order to pacify him.
"For that reason I will take upon myself the sin of violating the game
laws of the local nobility in the interest of your estate, although by
so doing I shall really be--"

He was going to add something more, but suddenly broke off and passed
over to other indifferent matters.

But any one who thinks that the conversation between this Westphalian
justice and the Suabian hunter ran as smoothly as my pen has written it
down, is mistaken. On the contrary, it was frequently necessary for them
to repeat several times before a barely sufficient understanding came
about between them. Now and then they were even compelled to resort to
making signs with their fingers. For in all his life the Justice had
never heard _ch_ pronounced after _s_; furthermore he brought all his
sounds up out of his gullet, or, if you will, out of his throat. In the
Hunter, on the other hand, the divine gift which distinguishes us from
beasts was located between his front teeth and his lips, whence the
sounds broke forth in a wonderful sonorous gravity and fulness and a
buzzing sibilancy. But through these strange husks the young man and the
old one soon learned to like each other. Inasmuch as both were men of
full-weight, sterling stuff they could not fail to understand each
other's inmost nature.


CHAPTER VI

THE HUNTER WRITES TO HIS FRIEND


Now I may write about things that are pleasant. I cannot possibly tell
you how happy I am here in the solitude of this hill-girt Westphalian
plain, where I have been quartered for a week among people and cattle.
Among people and cattle is indeed literally the case, for the cows do
actually stand right in the house on both sides of the large
entrance-hall. There is, however, absolutely nothing unpleasant or
unclean about this; on the contrary it rather helps to increase the
impression of patriarchal house-management. In front of my window stand
rustling oak-trees, and beyond them I look out on long, long meadows and
waving cornfields, between which I see here and there a grove of oaks
and a lone farmstead. For here it is as it was in the time of Tacitus:
"_Colunt discreti ac diversi, ut_ _fons, ut campus, ut nemus placuit_."
Consequently even a single farm like this is a small State in itself,
complete and rounded off, and the lord of it is just as much a king in
his small domain as a real king on a throne.

My host is a splendid old fellow. He is called Justice, although he
certainly has another name too; for that name, you see, has reference
only to the ownership of his property. I hear, however, that this is the
custom around here everywhere. For the most part only the estate has a
name--the name of the owner sinks in that of the property; hence the
earth-born, tough and enduring character of the people here. My Justice
is a man of some sixty-odd years perhaps, but he carries a strong,
large, rugged body, as yet unbent by age. In his reddish-yellow face is
deposited the solar heat of the fifty harvests he has gathered in, his
large nose stands out on his face like a tower, and his white, bristly
eyebrows hang out over his glistening, blue eyes like a straw roof. He
reminds me of a patriarch, who erects a monument of unhewn stones to the
god of his ancestors and pours libations and oil upon it, rears his
colts, cuts his corn, and at the same time judges and rules his people
with unlimited authority. I have never come across a more compact
mixture of venerability and cunning, reason and obstinacy; he is a
genuine, old-time, free peasant in the full sense of the word. I believe
that this is the only place where people of this kind are still to be
found, here where precisely this living apart and this stubbornness
peculiar to the ancient Saxons, combined with the absence of large
cities, has perpetuated the original character of Germania. All
governments and powers have merely skimmed over the surface here; they
have perhaps been able to break off the tops of the various growths, but
not to destroy their roots, from which fresh shoots have ever sprouted
up again, even though they may no longer close together into leafy
crowns.

The region is not at all what one would call beautiful, for it consists
solely of billowy risings and fallings of the ground, and only in the
distance does one see the mountains; furthermore, the latter look more
like a dark hill-slope than a beautifully outlined mountain-range. But
just this absence of pretension, the fact that the mountains do not seem
to place themselves in dress parade directly in front of one's eyes and
say: "How do you like me?" but rather, like a dutiful stewardess, to
serve the tilth of human hands even down to the smallest detail--after
all makes me like them very much, and I have enjoyed many a pleasant
hour in my solitary rambles. Perhaps the fact has something to do with
it that my heart can once more swing out its pendulum undisturbed,
without having wise people tinkering and twisting at the clock-works.

I have even become poetic--what do you say to that, old Ernst? I have
jotted down something to which a divinely beautiful Sunday that I spent
some time ago in the wooded glens of the Spessart inspired me. I think
you will like it. It is called: "The Marvels of the Spessart."

What I like best is to sit up on the hill in a quiet spot between the
Justice's cornfields, which terminate there. In front of me there is a
large depression in the ground, grown over with weeds and blackberry
bushes, around which, in a circle, lie a lot of large stones. Over the
largest of these, directly opposite the field, the branches of three old
lindens spread out. Behind me rustles the forest. The spot is infinitely
lonesome, secluded and secret, especially now that the corn is grown up,
as tall as a man, behind it. I spend a great deal of time up there--not
always, to be sure, in sentimental contemplation of nature; it is my
usual evening watchpost, from which I shoot the stags and roes out of
the Justice's corn.

They call the place the "Freemen's Tribunal." Presumably, in days of
yore, the Fehme used to hatch out its sentences there in the darkness of
the night. When I praised the place to my Justice, an expression of
friendliness passed over his face. He made no reply, but after a time
conducted me, without any inducement on my part, to a room on the upper
floor of the house. There he opened an iron-bound trunk, showed me an
old, rusty sword which was lying in it, and said with great solemnity:
"That is a great curiosity; it is the sword of Charles the Great,
preserved for a thousand and more years in the Oberhof, and still in
full strength and power." Without adding any further explanations, he
clapped the cover down again. I wouldn't for anything have shaken his
belief in this sacred relic, although a fleeting glance convinced me
that the broad-sword could scarcely be more than a few hundred years
old. But he showed me too a formal attestation concerning the genuineness
of the weapon, made out for him by an obliging provincial scholar.

[Illustration: THE FREEMEN'S TRIBUNAL _By Benjamin Vautier_]

Well, then, I shall stay here among the peasants until old Jochem sends
me news of Schrimbs or Peppel. To be sure, in the course of my
eighty-mile journey I have cooled down a little, for it makes
considerable difference when two weeks intervene between a project and
its execution. Furthermore the question now is: What sort of revenge
shall I take on him? But all that will take care of itself later on.

Mentor, you shall soon hear more, I hope, from your Not-Telemachus.


CHAPTER VII

HOW THE HUNTER LIVES AT THE OBERHOF


Several days passed at the Oberhof in the usual quiet, monotonous way.
Still no word came from old Jochem, regarding either himself or the
escaped adventurer; and a mild anxiety gradually began, after a while,
to steal over his young master. For nowadays time is so regulated and so
enmeshes us that nobody, no matter how free and independent he may be,
can long endure an existence which does not offer him some occupation
or social relation to fall back on.

As much as he could, to be sure, the Hunter associated with the Justice,
and the man's originality continued to attract him just as strongly as
it had done on the first day of their acquaintance. But the old man was
occupied the greater part of the time with matters pertaining to his
household, and then he had, too, a great many things to discuss with
outsiders, since every day people dropped in at the farm to solicit his
help or advice. On these occasions the Hunter noticed that the Justice,
in the truest sense of the word, never did anything gratis. For
neighbors, relatives, and friends he was ready to do anything, but they
had always to do something for him in return, even were it only an
errand in a neighboring peasant community, or some other small service
of this kind.

Every day something was fired at, but regularly missed; so that the old
man, who invariably hit his mark, no matter what he aimed at, began to
look with astonishment upon these futile efforts. It was a fortunate
thing for our Hunter that the nearest estate-owner happened at that time
to be away on a trip with his family and servants, otherwise the
professional gunners up on the "Open Tribunal" would probably have
caught him sooner or later.

At noon on the following day the Hunter heard a noise under his window;
he looked out and saw that a number of men were standing in front of the
house. Just then the Justice, dressed in his Sunday clothes, stepped out
of the door, and at the same time a two-horse wagon drew up opposite by
the oak grove. In the wagon was a man in black robes, apparently a
clergyman; he was sitting among several baskets, in some of which fowls
seemed to be fluttering. A little behind him sat a woman in _bourgeois_
dress, who was holding another basket rigidly in her lap. In front by
the horses stood a peasant with the whip, his arm resting on the neck of
one of the animals. Beside him was a maid, also holding a basket,
covered with a snow-white napkin, under her arm. A man in a wide brown
overcoat, whose thoughtful gait and solemn face made it at once
unmistakably evident that he was a sexton, walked with dignity from the
wagon to the house, placed himself in front of the Justice, lifted his
hat, and recited the following verses:

  Before your gate you now may see
  The Sexton and the Dominie,
  The Sexton's wife, the house-maid too,
  Who've come to get what is their due,
  By custom old from this domain,
  The hens, the eggs, the cheeses twain;
  So tell us then without delay
  If you are all prepared to pay.

While listening to this little recitation the Justice had respectfully
removed his hat. Afterwards he approached the wagon, bowed to the
clergyman, reverently helped him to alight, and then stood off at one
side with him and held a conversation, which the Hunter could not
overhear, about various matters. In the meantime the woman with the
basket had also stepped down and taken a position beside the Sexton, the
peasant and the maid, and behind the two chief persons, as if for a
procession.

The Hunter, in order to ascertain the significance of this scene, went
downstairs and observed that the entrance-hall was sprinkled with white
sand, and the best room, adjacent to it, decorated with green branches.
Inside, also dressed up in her Sunday best, sat the daughter; she was
spinning as if she meant to turn out an entire skein of yarn that very
day. She looked very red and did not glance up from her work. He entered
the room and was just about to obtain his information from her, when the
procession of strangers, including the Justice, crossed the threshold of
the entrance-hall. At the head marched the clergyman, behind him the
Sexton, then the peasant, then the maid, then the Sexton's wife, and
finally the Justice, each one marching alone. The clergyman approached
the daughter, who had not yet glanced up from her spinning-wheel,
addressed her with a friendly greeting, and said:

"Quite right, Miss! When the bride-to-be makes her wheel go so
industriously beforehand, her sweetheart may hope and expect to have
full chests and boxes afterwards. When is the wedding to be?"

"A week from Thursday, your reverence, if it is permissible," replied
the bride, turning, if possible, even redder than before. She humbly
kissed the clergyman's hand--the latter was still a youngish man--took
his hat and cane from him, and handed him, by way of welcome, a
refreshing drink. The others, after they had formed a circle around the
bride, and had likewise remembered her with a handshake and an
expression of good will, also partook of the refreshing beverage;
thereupon they left the room and went into the entrance-hall. The
clergyman, however, continued to discuss the affairs of the community
with the Justice, who, with his hat in his hand all the time, stood
before him in reverential posture.

The young Hunter, who, unnoticed by the others, had been watching the
scene from a corner of the room, would have liked to greet the clergyman
before now, but he felt that it would be rude to break in upon the
conversation between the strangers and the inmates of the house, a
conversation which, in spite of the rusticity of the scene, had yet an
air of diplomatic ceremony. For in the clergyman he recognized, with
joyful astonishment, a former academic acquaintance.

The Justice now left the room for a moment, and the Hunter went over to
the Pastor and greeted him by name. The clergyman started and passed his
hand across his eyes, but he, likewise, at once recognized the other and
was no less happy to see him.

"But," he added to the first words of greeting, "this is no place nor
time for a talk. Come along with me afterwards when I drive away from
the farm--then we can have a chat together. I am a public character
here and stand under the constraint of a most imperious ceremonial. We
cannot take any notice of each other, and you too, in a passive sort of
way, must conform to the ritual. Above all things don't laugh at
anything that you see--that would offend the good people extremely.
These old established customs, strange as they may seem, always have,
nevertheless, their venerable side."

"Have no fear," replied the Hunter. "But I should like to know--"

"Everything afterwards!" whispered the clergyman, glancing toward the
door, which the Justice was just then re-entering. He retreated from the
Hunter just as from a stranger.

The Justice and his daughter themselves brought in the food and laid it
on the table, which had been set in this room. There were chicken soup,
a dish of French beans and a long sausage, roast pork and plums, butter,
bread, and cheese, and, in addition, a bottle of wine. All this was put
on the table at the same time. The peasant too had left the horses and
come into the room. When everything was steaming on the table, which had
been laid for only two persons, the Justice politely invited the
clergyman to seat himself, and the latter, after saying grace, sat down,
as did likewise, a short distance away from him, the peasant.

"Do I not eat here too?" inquired the Hunter.

"Nay, God forbid!" answered the Justice, and the bride looked at him
from one side in amazement. "Only the Diaconus and the Colonus eat
here--you sit at the table with the Sexton outside."

The Hunter went into another room, opposite, after observing to his
surprise that the Justice and his daughter themselves attended to the
serving of this first and most aristocratic table. In the other room he
found the Sexton, his wife, and the maid, all standing around a table
which had been laid there, and impatiently awaiting, as it seemed, the
arrival of their fourth companion. The same eatables were steaming on
this table, except that the butter and cheese were missing and beer took
the place of the wine. The Sexton stepped with dignity to the head seat
and, keeping his eyes on the dishes, recited aloud the following verses:

  The birds that fly, the beasts that crawl,
  For man's behoof God made them all;
  Chicken soup, beans, pork, plums and veal,
  Are gifts divine--Lord bless the meal!

Thereupon the company sat down, with the Sexton at the head of the
table. The latter did not for a moment forget his solemn dignity, nor
his wife her basket, which she put down close beside her. The Pastor's
maid, on the other hand, had unassumingly set hers aside. During the
meal, which was piled up on the dishes in veritable mountains, not a
word was spoken. The Sexton gravely devoured portions that might be
called enormous, while his wife was not a great way behind him. Here
again it was the maid who showed herself to be most modest. As for the
Hunter, he confined his attention almost entirely to looking on; for the
day's ceremonies were not to his liking.

After the meal was over the Sexton, smirking solemnly, said to the two
maids who had waited on the table:

"Now, if it please God, we will receive our legitimate dues and the
good-will accompanying them."

The maids, who had already cleared off the table, then went out. The
Sexton sat down on a chair in the middle of the room, while the two
women, his wife and the maid, took seats on either side of him, putting
the newly-opened baskets down in front of them. After the expectation
which the faces of the three expressed had lasted for several minutes,
the two maids re-entered, accompanied by their master, the Justice. The
first was holding aloft a roomy basket of wickerwork, in which some hens
were anxiously clucking and flapping their wings. She put it down in
front of the Sexton, who glanced into it and counted:

"One, two, three, four, five, six--it is all right."

Thereupon the second maid counted out from a large piece of cloth into a
basket in front of the Pastor's maid, three score eggs and six round
cheeses, not without the Sexton's carefully counting them all over after
her. After this was done, the Sexton said:

"So then the Pastor is provided for, and now comes the Sexton."

Thereupon thirteen eggs and a single cheese were put into the basket in
front of his wife, who tested the freshness of each egg by shaking and
smelling it, and rejected two. After this proceeding the Sexton stood up
and said to the Justice:

"How is it, Justice, about the second cheese which the Sexton still has
the right to expect from the farm?"

"You yourself know, Sexton, that the right to the second cheese has
never been recognized by the Oberhof," replied the Justice. "This
alleged second cheese was due from the Baumann estate, which more than a
hundred years ago was united under one hand with the Oberhof. Later on,
the two were again divided, and the Oberhof is obligated for only one
cheese."

The Sexton's ruddy brown face took on the deepest wrinkles that it was
capable of producing, and divided itself into several pensive sections
of a square, roundish or angular shape. He said:

"Where is the Baumann estate? It was split up and went to pieces in the
times of disturbance. Is the Sexton's office to be the loser on that
account? It should not be so! Nevertheless, expressly reserving each and
every right in the matter of the second cheese due from the Oberhof, and
contested now for a hundred years, I hereby receive and accept one
cheese. In accordance with which the legitimate dues of the Oberhof to
both Pastor and Sexton are paid, and now comes the good-will."

The latter consisted of freshly-baked rolls, six of which were laid in
the Pastor's basket and two in the Sexton's. With that the entire
ceremony was concluded. The Sexton came closer to the Justice, and
recited the following third effusion:

  I find the six hens all correct,
  The cheeses too without defect;
  The eggs delivered are freshly laid,
  And all the dues were promptly paid.
  And so the Lord preserve your farm
  From famine, fire, and other harm!
  He is beloved of God and man
  Who pays his debts as best he can.

After that the Justice made a deep bow as a sign of thanks. The Sexton's
wife and the maid carried the baskets out and packed them in the wagon.
At the same time the Hunter saw a maid carrying some dishes and plates
out of the room in which the clergyman had eaten, into the
entrance-hall, where she washed them before the eyes of the latter, who
had stepped up to the threshold of the room. After she had finished this
washing she approached the clergyman, who drew a small coin out of a
piece of paper and gave it to her.

In the meanwhile the Sexton was drinking his coffee with relish, and
when a cup was brought for the Hunter too, he sat down with it beside
the Sexton.

"I am a stranger here," said the young man, "and do not entirely
understand the customs which I have been witnessing today. Will you,
sir, be good enough to explain them to me? Is it obligatory for the
peasants to supply the Pastor with these products of nature?"

"It is obligatory as far as the hens, eggs and cheeses are concerned,
but not the rolls. They represent merely goodwill, but have always been
paid without objection," replied the Sexton with great seriousness.
"Three peasant communities are affiliated with the diaconate or head
pastorate in the city, and part of the Pastor's and Sexton's income is
derived from these dues, which are collected every year from the various
farms. In order to do this collecting, as has been done every year since
time immemorial, we make annually two trips or rounds, namely, this
short summer trip, and then a long winter trip, shortly after Advent. On
the summer trip the hens, eggs and cheeses come due, one farm paying so
much, another so much. The first item, namely, the hens, is payable,
however, only _pro Diaconatu_, the Sexton having to content himself with
eggs and cheese only. In the winter, corn, barley, oats and rye fall
due; we come then with two carts, because one would not hold all the
sacks. Thus twice a year we go the rounds of the three communities."

"And where do you go from here?" asked the Hunter.

"Straight home," answered the Sexton. "This community is the last of the
three, and this Oberhof is the last farm in this community where the
customary dues are collected."

The Sexton was then called away, for the horses were hitched to the
cart, and the clergyman, with cordial handshakes and good wishes, was
taking leave of the Justice and his daughter, who were now standing
before him with the same air of friendly reverence that they had shown
for him during all the other proceedings of the day.

The procession now went rocking off between corn fields and high hedges
along another road than the one it had come by. The peasant, with the
whip in his hand, went on foot in front of the horses, and the cart
rolled heavily along behind him. In addition to the two women, the
Sexton now sat in among the baskets with a feather pillow propped
against his stomach for protection. The Hunter, who had modestly stood
back during the preparations for departure, now, when the wagon had
advanced a short distance, hurried after it with hasty steps. He found
the Pastor, who had also remained behind his accumulation of property,
waiting for him in a pleasant spot under some trees. Here, unrestrained
by the ceremonial of the Oberhof, they embraced each other, and the
Pastor said, laughing:

"I'll wager this is something you never expected--to discover in your
former acquaintance, who used to conduct his young Swedish Count so
neatly about on the slippery ground of science and elegant life in the
big city, a figure who must remind you of the Reverend Lopez in
Fletcher's _Spanish Curate_. As for the proceedings which you have
witnessed today, it was absolutely necessary for me to go through with
them in person; my entire relation with the people would be broken if I
manifested any squeamishness about participating in the old custom. My
predecessor in office, who was not a native of these parts, was ashamed
of these regular trips and refused downright to have anything to do with
them. What was the result? He got himself into serious difficulties with
these rural parishes, which even had an influence on the decadence of
school and church affairs. He had finally to petition for his
transference, and I immediately made up my mind, when I received my
appointment, that I would adapt myself in all things to the customs of
the place. In pursuance of this policy I have so far got along very
well, and the appearance of dependency which these trips give me, far
from damaging my prestige, rather enhances and secures it."

"How could it be otherwise?" cried the Hunter. "I must confess to you
that during the entire ceremony, in spite of the comical atmosphere
which your Sexton spread over it, I was really touched and the feeling
never once left me. Somehow I saw on the one hand, in your acceptance of
these most simple and material gifts, and, on the other, in the
reverence with which they were bestowed, the most pious and unpretending
symbol of the church, which must have its daily bread in order to exist,
and of the faithful who supply her earthly needs in the humble
conviction that by so doing they will gain something of high and eternal
value. Hence on neither the one side nor the other does a sense of
servitude arise, but rather on both sides there is a deep feeling of the
most perfect mutuality."

"I am glad," said the Pastor, pressing the Hunter's hand, "that you so
regard it, since another person would perhaps have made fun of the whole
business. For that reason--I can now own up to it--I was at first not at
all pleased to have you appear so unexpectedly as a witness of those
scenes."

"God forbid that I should make fun of anything that I have seen in this
country!" replied the Hunter. "I now rejoice that a mad freak brought me
here to these woods and fields, for otherwise I should probably never
have learned to know the region; for it has very little reputation
abroad, and there is, in fact, nothing here to attract exhausted and
surfeited tourists. But the feeling has gripped me here even more
strongly than in my own home--this is soil which an unmixed race has
trod for more than a thousand years! And the idea of the immortality of
the people was wafted toward me in the rustling of these oaks and of
this surrounding vegetation in an almost, I might say, tangible form."

A long conversation resulted from this remark, which was carried on
alternately by both the Hunter and the Pastor, as they walked slowly
along behind the cart.

When they took leave of each other the young Suabian was obliged to make
his friend a promise that he would visit him for a few days in the city.
After that they separated and went off in opposite directions.


CHAPTER VIII

THE STRANGE FLOWER AND THE BEAUTIFUL GIRL


The sun was still high in the heavens. The Hunter felt no particular
inclination to return to the Oberhof so early in the day, so he stepped
up to one of the highest hedges to obtain a general view of the region.
From there he saw rising, a short distance away, the bushy summits of a
group of hills, through which he thought he could probably make his way
and get back to his quarters before late in the evening.

His foot trod the fresh, damp green of a meadow bordered by bushes,
under which a stream of clear water was flowing. Not far away appeared
some small rocks, over which ran a narrow slippery path. He walked
across, climbed down between the cliffs, tucked up his sleeves, and put
his arm in the water; it sent a pleasant thrill through him and cooled
his hot blood. Thus, half kneeling, half sitting in the damp, dark,
rock-begirt spot, he glanced aside into the open. There his eyes were
fascinated by a glorious sight. Some old tree stumps had rotted in the
grass, and their black forms protruded from the surrounding vivid green.
One of them was entirely hollowed out, and inside of it the rotted wood
had formed a deposit of brown earth. Out of this earth and out of the
stump, as from a crater, a most beautiful flower was growing. Above a
crown of soft, round leaves rose a long, slender stalk which bore large
cups of an indescribably beautiful red. Deep down in the cups of the
flower was a spot of soft, gleaming white which ran out to the edge of
the petals in tiny light-green veins. It was evidently not a native
flower, but an exotic, whose seed some chance--who knows what?--had
deposited here in this little garden-bed, prepared by the putrefactive
powers of Nature, and which a friendly summer sun had caused to grow and
blossom.

The Hunter refreshed his eye in this charming sight. Intoxicated by the
magic of Nature, he leaned back and closed his eyes in sweet reveries.
When he opened them again the scene had changed.

A beautiful girl in simple attire, her straw hat hung over her arm, was
kneeling by the flower, gently embracing its stalk as if it were her
sweetheart's neck, and gazing into its red calyx with the sweetest look
of joyful surprise. She must have approached quietly while the Hunter
was lying back, half asleep. She did not see him, for the cliffs hid him
from her sight; and he was careful not to make any motion that might
frighten the vision away. But after a while, as she looked up from the
flower with a sigh, her sidewise glance fell upon the water, and she
caught sight of a man's shadow! The Hunter saw her color pale, saw the
flower drop from her hands--otherwise she remained motionless on her
knees. He half arose between the cliffs, and four young eyes met! But
only for a moment! The girl, with fire in her face, quickly got up,
tossed her straw hat on her head, and with three swift steps disappeared
into the bushes.

The Hunter now came out from among the cliffs and stretched out his arm
toward the bushes. Had the spirit of the flower become alive? He looked
at it again--it did not seem as beautiful as it had a few minutes
before.

"An amaryllis," he said, coldly. "I recognize it now--I have it in my
green-house."

Should he follow the girl? He wanted to--but a mysterious shyness
shackled his feet. He grasped his forehead. He had not been dreaming--he
was sure of that. "And the occurrence," he cried at last with something
like an effort, "is not so extraordinary that it must necessarily have
been a dream. A pretty girl, who happened along this way, was enjoying a
pretty flower--that is all!"

He wandered about among unknown mountains, valleys and tracts of
country, as long as his feet would carry him. Finally it became
necessary for him to think of returning.

Late, in the dark, and only through the help of a guide whom he came
across by accident, he reached the Oberhof. Here the cows were lowing,
and the Justice was sitting at the table in the entrance-hall with his
daughter, men and maids, about to begin his moral talks. But it was
impossible for the Hunter to enter into them--everything seemed
different to him, coarse and inappropriate. He repaired immediately to
his room, wondering how he could pass away any more time here without
knowing what was going to happen. A letter which he found there from his
friend Ernst in the Black Forest added to his discomfort. In this state
of mind, which robbed him of part of his night's sleep and even the
following morning had not yet left him, he was glad indeed when the
Pastor sent a wagonette to bring him to the city.

Even from a distance, towers, high walls and bulwarks made it evident
that the city, once a mighty member of the Hanseatic League, had seen
its great days of defensive fighting. The deep moat was still extant,
although now devoted to trees and vegetables. His vehicle, after it had
passed under the dark Gothic gate, moved along somewhat heavily on the
rough stone pavement, and finally drew up in front of a
comfortable-looking house, on the threshold of which the Pastor was
standing ready to receive him. He entered a cheerful and cosy household,
which was animated by a sprightly, pretty wife and a couple of lively
boys whom she had presented to her husband.

After breakfast they went for a walk through the city. In the course of
it the Hunter told his friend about his adventure in the woods.

"To judge by your description," said the latter, "it was the blond
Lisbeth whom you saw. The dear child wanders around the country getting
money for her old foster-father. She was at my home a few days ago, but
would not tarry with us. The girl is a most charming Cinderella, and I
only hope that she may find the Prince who will fall in love with her
little shoe."

[Illustration: LISBETH]


CHAPTER IX

THE HUNTER SHOOTS AND HITS THE MARK


After a sojourn of several days in the city the Hunter returned to the
Oberhof, and found the Justice repairing a barn door. The Hunter
informed him that he was going to depart soon, and the old man replied:

"I am rather glad of it; the little woman who had the room before you
sent word to me that she would be back today or tomorrow; you would have
to give way to her and I couldn't make you comfortable anywhere else."

The entire estate was swimming in the red light of evening. A pure
summer warmth pervaded the air, which was uncharged with any
exhalations. It was quite deserted around the buildings; all the men and
maids must have been still busy in the fields. Even in the house he saw
nobody when he went to his room. There he picked up and arranged what he
had from time to time written down during his stay, packed up his few
belongings, and then looked around for his gun. After a short search he
discovered it behind a large cabinet where the peasant had concealed it.
He loaded it, and in two steps he was out of the house and headed for
the "Open Tribunal," bent on shooting the restlessly heaving visions out
of his soul. By the time he was traversing the fragrant, golden oak
grove he had recovered his high spirits.

When he reached the Freemen's Tribunal up on the hill he felt quite
cheerful. The ears of grain, heavy and plentiful, were nodding and
rustling, the large red disk of the full moon was rising over the
eastern horizon, and the reflection of the sun, which had already sunk
in the west, was still lighting up the sky. The atmosphere was so clear
that this reflected light shone a yellowish green.

The Hunter felt his youth, his health, his hopes. He took his position
behind a large tree on the edge of the forest.

"Today," he said, "I will see whether fate can be bent. I'll fire only
when something comes within three paces of the muzzle, and then if I
should miss it, there would needs be magic in it."

Behind him was the forest, before him the low ground of the "Freemen's
Tribunal," with its large stones and trees, and over opposite the
solitary spot was shut in by yellow corn fields. In the tree-tops above
him the turtle-doves were cooing now and then a faint note, and through
the branches of the trees by the "Freemen's Tribunal" the wild
hawk-moths were beginning to whir with their red-green wings. Gradually
the ground in the forest also began to show signs of life. A hedgehog
crept sleepily through the underbrush; a little weasel dragged his
supple body forth from a crevice in the rocks no broader than a quill.
Little hares darted with cautious leaps out from the bushes, stopping in
front of each to crouch down and lay their ears back, until finally,
growing more brave, they mounted the ridge by the cornfield and danced
and played together, using their fore paws to strike one another in
sport. The Hunter took care not to disturb these little animals. Finally
a slender roe stepped out of the forest. Shrewdly thrusting its nose
into the wind and glancing around to the right and left out of its big
brown eyes, it stalked along on its delicate feet with an easy grace.
The gentle, wild, fleet animal now reached a point just opposite the
hidden Hunter's gun, and so close to him that he could hardly fail to
hit it. He was just about to pull the trigger when the deer took fright,
faced about in a different direction, and made a leap straight for the
tree behind which the Hunter was standing. His gun cracked, and the
animal, unwounded, made off with a series of mighty leaps into the
forest. But from amid the corn he heard a loud cry, and a few moments
afterwards a woman's form staggered out of the fields on a narrow path
which lay in the line of his aim. The Hunter threw down the gun and
rushed toward the form; when he saw who it was he nearly collapsed.

[Illustration: OSWALD. THE HUNTER _By Benjamin Vautier_]

It was the beautiful girl of the flower scene in the woods. He had
hit her instead of the roe! She was holding one hand over the region
between her shoulder and left breast, where the blood was gushing out
copiously beneath her kerchief. Her face was pale, and somewhat drawn,
though not distorted, by pain. She drew a deep breath three times and
then said with a soft, weak voice:

"God be praised! The wound can't be very dangerous, for I _can_ draw
breath, even though it hurts me. I will try," she continued, "to reach
the Oberhof, whither I was bound on this short-cut when I had to go and
meet with this accident. Give me your arm."

He had supported her only a few steps down the hill when she collapsed
and said:

"It won't do--the pain is too severe--I might faint on the way. We must
wait here in this place until somebody comes along who can fetch a
stretcher."

In spite of the pain of her wound she was clutching tightly in her left
hand a small package; this she now handed to him and said:

"Keep it for me--it is the money that I have collected for the baron--I
might lose it. We must prepare ourselves," she continued, "to remain
here for some little time. If it were only possible for you to make a
place for me to lie down and to give me something warm, so that the cold
won't penetrate to the wound!"

Thus she had presence of mind both for herself and him. He stood
speechless, pale and immovable, like a statue. Utter dismay filled his
heart and let not a single word escape from his lips.

Her appeal now put new life into him; he hurried to the tree behind
which he had hidden his hunting-bag. There he saw, lying on the ground,
the unfortunate gun. He seized it furiously and brought it down on a
stone with such strength that the stock was shattered to pieces, both
barrels bent, and the lock wrenched from the screws. He cursed the day,
himself, and his hand. Then, rushing back to the girl, who had sat down
on a stone in the "Open Tribunal," he fell at her feet, kissed the hem
of her dress, and with passionate tears flowing from his eyes in a
torrent, besought her forgiveness. She merely begged him to please
arise; he couldn't help doing it, the wound was surely of no
significance, and the thing for him to do now was to help.

He now fitted up a seat for her by laying his bag on the stone, bound
his handkerchief around her neck, and gently and loosely laid his coat
over her shoulders. She sat down on the stone. He took a seat beside her
and invited her to rest her head, for relief, against his breast. She
did so.

The moon, in its full clarity, had risen high in the heavens, and now
shone down with almost daytime brightness on the couple, whom a rude
accident had thus brought so close together. In the most intimate
proximity the strange man sat by the strange girl; she uttered low moans
of pain on his breast, while down his cheeks the tears ran
irrepressibly. Round about them the silent solitude of night was slowly
gathering.

Finally Fortune so willed it that a late wanderer passed through the
cornfields. The Hunter's call reached his ears; he hurried to the spot
and was dispatched at once to the Oberhof. Soon afterwards footsteps
were heard coming up the hill; the men were bringing a sedan chair with
cushions. The Hunter gently lifted the wounded girl into it, and thus,
late at night, she reached the sheltering roof of her old friend, who
was, to be sure, greatly astonished to see his expected guest arrive in
such a condition.


CHAPTER X

THE WEDDING


On a clear morning in August there were so many cooking fires burning at
the Oberhof that it seemed as if they might be expecting the entire
population of all the surrounding towns to dinner. Over the hearth fire,
built up to unusual size with great logs and fagots, there was hanging
on a notched iron hook the very largest kettle that the household
possessed. Six or seven iron pots stood round these fires with their
contents boiling and bubbling. In the space before the house, toward the
oak grove, there were crackling, if history reports the truth, nine
fires, and an equal number, or at the most one less, in the yard near
the lindens. Over all these cooking-places jacks or roasters had been
erected, on which frying-pans were resting, or on which kettles of no
small size were hanging, although none of them could compare in capacity
with the one which was doing duty over the hearth fire.

The maids of the Oberhof were briskly hurrying back and forth with
skimming-spoons or forks between the various cooking-places. If the
guests were to find the food palatable, there could not be any dawdling
over the skimming and turning. For in the large kettle over the hearth
eight hens lent strength to the soup, and in the other twenty-three
or-four pots, kettles, and pans there were boiling or roasting six hams,
three turkeys, and five pigs, besides a corresponding number of hens.

While the maids were exerting themselves, the men too were industriously
attending to their part of the work. The one with the black eyes was
building an immense, long table with stands, blocks, and boards, in the
orchard among the flower-beds, having already completed a similar
construction in the entrance-hall. The fat, slow one was decorating with
green birch twigs the gates of the house, the walls of the
entrance-hall, and the doors of the two rooms in which the Pastor and
his Sexton had once eaten. He sighed deeply over this delightful green
work, and the heat, too, seemed to oppress him greatly. Nevertheless an
easier task had fallen to him than to his fellow-partner, the gruff,
red-haired man. For the former had only flexible May twigs to deal with,
whereas it fell to the latter to decorate the cattle for the festivity.
The red-haired man was, accordingly, gilding with gold tinsel the horns
of the cows and bullocks, which were standing on one side of the
entrance-hall behind their mangers, or else was tying bright-colored
bows and tassels around them. This was, in fact, a provoking task,
especially for an irascible man. For many of the cows and an occasional
bullock would have absolutely nothing to do with the festival, but shook
their heads and butted sideways with their horns, as often as the
red-haired fellow came anywhere near them with the tinsel and brush. For
a long time he suppressed his natural instinct, and merely grumbled
softly once in a while when a horn knocked the brush or the tinsel out
of his hand. These grumbles, however, scarcely interrupted the general
silence in which all the busily occupied people were attending to their
work. But when, finally, the pride of the stable, a large white-spotted
cow, with which he had been struggling in vain for more than a quarter
of an hour, became positively malicious and tried to give the red-haired
fellow a dangerous thrust, he lost all patience. Springing aside, he
seized that fence-pole with which he had once restrained himself from
striking Peter of the Bandkotten, and which happened by chance to be
handy, and gave the obstinate beast such a mighty blow on the groins
with the heavy end of it that the cow bellowed with pain, her sides
began to quiver, and her nostrils to snort.

The slow, fat fellow dropped the twigs which he had in his hand, the
first maid looked up from the kettle, and both cried out simultaneously:

"Heaven help us! What are you doing?" "When a worthless brute like this
refuses to listen to reason and will not be decent and let itself be
gilded, it ought to have its confounded bones smashed!"

He then wrenched the cow's head around and decorated her even more
beautifully than her mates. For the animal, having in her pain become
more tractable, now stood perfectly still and permitted the rough artist
to do anything he wanted to with her.

While the preparations for the wedding were being carried on below in
this energetic manner, the Justice was upstairs in the room where he
kept the sword of Charles the Great, putting on his best finery. The
chief factor in the festive attire which the peasants of that region
wear is the number of vests that they put on under their coats. The
richer a peasant is, the more vests he wears on extraordinary occasions.
The Justice had nine, and all of them were destined by him to be
assembled around his body on this day. He kept them hung up in a row on
wooden pegs behind a seed-cloth, which partitioned off one part of the
room from the other like a curtain. First the under ones of silver-gray
or red woolen damask, adorned with flowers, and then the outside ones of
brown, yellow and green cloth. These were all adorned with heavy silver
buttons.

Behind this seed-cloth the Justice was dressing. He had neatly combed
his white hair, and his yellow, freshly-washed face shone forth under it
like a rape-field over which the snow has fallen in May. The expression
of natural dignity, which was peculiar to these features, was today
greatly intensified; he was the father of the bride, and felt it. His
movements were even slower and more measured than on the day when he
bargained with the horse-dealer. He examined each vest carefully before
he removed it from its peg, and then deliberately put them on, one after
the other, without over-hurrying himself in the process of buttoning
them up.

When the Justice was ready he slowly descended the stairs. In the
entrance-hall he surveyed the preparations--the fires, the kettles,
the pots, the green twigs, the ribboned and gilded horns of his cattle.
He seemed to be satisfied with everything, for several times he nodded
his head approvingly. He walked through the entrance-hall to the yard,
then toward the side of the oak grove, looked at the fires which were
burning there, and gave similar signs of approval, although always with
a certain dignity. When the white sand, with which the entire
entrance-hall and the space in front of the house was thickly sprinkled,
grated and crunched in a lively manner under his feet, this seemed to
afford him a special pleasure.

A maid was asked to put a chair for him in front of the house; he sat
down there, opposite the oak grove, and, with his legs stretched out in
front of him, his hat and cane in his hand, he awaited in sturdy silence
the continuation of the proceedings, while the golden sunlight shone
brightly down on him.

In the meantime two bridesmaids were adorning the bride in her room. All
around her were standing chests and linen bags, gaily painted with
flowers, which contained her dowry of cloth, bedding, yarn, linen and
flax. Even in the door-way and far out into the hall all the space was
occupied. In the midst of all these riches sat the bride in front of a
small mirror, very red and serious. The first bridesmaid put on her blue
stockings with the red clocks, the second threw over her a skirt of fine
black cloth, and on top of this a bodice of the same material and color.
Thereupon both occupied themselves with her hair, which was combed back
and braided behind into a sort of wheel.

During these preparations the bride never once said a word, while her
friends were all the more talkative. They praised her finery, extolled
her piled-up treasures, and every now and then a furtive sigh led one to
suspect that they would rather have been the adorned than the adorning.

Finally both girls, with solemn mien, came bringing in the bride's
crown; for the girls in that region do not wear a wreath on their
wedding-day, but a crown of gold and silver tinsel. The merchant who
provides their adornment merely rents the crown, and after the
wedding-day takes it back. Thus it wanders from one bride's head to
another.

The bride lowered her head a little while her friends were putting on
the crown, and her face, when she felt the light weight of it on her
hair, became, if possible, even redder than before. In her hair, which,
strange enough, was black, although she lived among a blond people, the
gold and silver tinsel glittered gaily. She straightened herself up,
supported by her friends, and the two broad, gold bands which belonged
to the crown hung far down her back.

The men were already standing in front of the door ready to carry her
dotal belongings down into the entrance-hall. The bridesmaids seized
their friend by the hand, and one of them picked up the spinning-wheel,
which likewise had a definite function to perform in the coming
ceremony. And thus the three girls went slowly down the stairs to the
bride's father, while the men seized the chests and bags and started to
carry them down into the entrance-hall.

Then the bride, escorted by both bridesmaids, entered the door, holding
her head stiff and firm under the quivering gold crown, as if she were
afraid of losing the ornament. She offered her hand to her father, and,
without looking up, bade him a good morning. The old man, without any
show of feeling, replied "Thank you," and assumed his previous posture.
The bride sat down at the other side of the door, put her spinning-wheel
in front of her and began to spin industriously, an occupation which
custom required her to continue until the moment the bridegroom arrived
and conducted her to the bridal carriage.

In the distance faint notes of music were heard, which announced the
approach of the bridal carriage. But even this sign that the decisive
moment was at hand, the moment which separates a child from the parental
house and shoves the father into the background so far as his child's
dependence is concerned, did not produce any commotion at all among the
people, who, like models of old usages, were sitting on either side of
the door. The daughter, very red, but with a look of unconcern, spun
away unwearyingly; the father looked steadily ahead of him, and neither
of them, bride or father, said a word to the other.

The first bridesmaid, in the meanwhile, was out in the orchard gathering
a bouquet for the bridegroom. She selected late roses, fire-lilies,
orange-yellow starworts--a flower which in that locality they call
"The-Longer-the-Prettier" and in other places "The Jesus Flowerlet"--and
sage. The bouquet finally grew to such proportions that it could have
sufficed for three bridegrooms of high rank--for peasants must always do
things on a large scale. But all together it did not smell any too sweet,
for the sage emitted a strange odor, and the starworts a positively bad
one. On the other hand, neither of them, especially the sage, could be
left out, if the bouquet was to possess the traditional completeness.
When she had it ready, the girl held it out before her with proud
enjoyment, and tied it together with a broad, dark-red ribbon. She then
went to take her place beside the bride.


CHAPTER XI

THE HUNTER AND HIS PREY


While the ceremony was thus monopolizing the entire Oberhof, there were,
wholly without ceremony, two young people together upstairs in the room
which the Hunter had formerly occupied. The young girl was sitting at a
little table by the window and hemming a beautiful kerchief which the
Hunter had bought for her in the city and given to her for a wedding-day
adornment. She pricked her finger more often today than on the evening
when she was helping the bride with her linen. For when the eyes do not
watch the needle, it is apt to take its own malicious course.

The young man was standing before her and working at something; he was,
namely, cutting out a pen for her. For at last the girl had said she
would of course have to send news as to where she was, and request
permission to remain a few days longer at the Oberhof. He stood on the
opposite side of the little table, and in a glass between him and the
girl a white lily and a rose, freshly cut, were emitting a sweet
perfume. He did not hurry unduly with his work; before he applied the
knife he asked the girl several times whether she preferred to write
with a soft or a hard point, fine or blunt, and whether he should make
the quill short or leave it long. He plied her with numerous other
questions of this kind, as thoroughly as if he were a writing-master
producing a calligraphic work of art. To these detailed questions the
girl, in a low voice, made many indefinite replies; now she wanted the
pen cut so, now so, and every once in a while she looked at him, sighing
each time she did it. The youth sighed even more often, I do not know
whether it was on account of the indefiniteness of her answers, or for
some other reason. Once he handed the pen to her, so that she might
indicate how long she wanted the slit to be. She did so, and when she
handed the pen back to him, he seized something more than the
pen--namely, her hand. His own hand grasped it in such a way that the
pen fell to the floor and for a moment was lost to their memories, all
consciousness on both their parts being directed to their hands.

I will betray a great secret to you. The youth and the girl were the
Hunter and the beautiful, blond Lisbeth.

The wounded girl had been carried to her room on that night, and the
Justice, very much perturbed--something he seldom was--had come out of
his room and sent immediately for the nearest surgeon. The latter,
however, lived an hour and a half's ride from the Oberhof; he was,
moreover, a sound sleeper, and reluctant to go out at night. Thus, the
morning had already dawned when he finally arrived with his meagre
outfit of instruments. He removed the cloth from her shoulders, examined
the wound, and made a very grave face. Luckily, the young Suabian's
charge had merely grazed Lisbeth; only two shot had penetrated her
flesh, and these not very deeply. The surgeon extracted them, bandaged
the wound, recommended rest and cold water, and went home with the proud
feeling that if he had not been summoned so promptly and had not so
cheerfully done his duty, even in the night, gangrene would inevitably
have resulted from the wound.

Lisbeth, while they were waiting for the doctor, had been very calm; she
had scarcely uttered a complaint, although her face, which was deathly
pale, betrayed the fact that she was suffering pain. Even the operation,
which the surgeon's clumsy hand caused to be more painful than was
necessary, she had undergone bravely. She asked for the shot and
presented them jokingly to the Hunter. They were "sure shot," she said
to him--he should keep them, and they would bring him luck.

The Hunter accepted the "sure shot," wrapped them in a piece of paper,
and gently withdrew his beautiful victim's head from his encircling arms
to let her sleep. In these arms Lisbeth had rested with her pain, as up
on the "Open Tribunal," ever since entering the room in the Oberhof.
With sorrowful eyes he had gazed fixedly into her face, and had now and
then met a friendly return-glance, which she directed up to him as if to
comfort him.

He went out into the open. It was impossible for him to leave the
Oberhof now; he had, he said, to await the recovery of the poor wounded
girl, for human nature, he added, demanded that much. In the orchard he
found the Justice, who, having found out that there was no danger, had
gone on about his business as if nothing had happened. He asked the old
man to furnish him with quarters for a longer stay. The Justice
bethought himself, but knew of no room to accommodate the Hunter. "And
even if it is only a corner in the corn-loft!" cried the Hunter, who was
awaiting the decision of his old host as if his fate depended on it.
After much deliberation it finally occurred to the Justice that there
was a corner in the corn-loft, where he stored grain when the harvest
turned out too abundant for the usual storing-places. At that time it
was empty, and to it the old man now conducted his young guest, adding,
however, that he would probably not like it up there. The Hunter went
up, and although the bare and depressing room received its small amount
of light only through a hole in the roof, and there was nothing but a
board and a chest to sit on, nevertheless he was well satisfied. "For,"
he said, "it is all the same to me, if I can only remain here until I
feel certain that I haven't done any lasting damage with my accursed
shooting. The weather is fine, and I shan't need to be up here much of
the time."

And, as a matter of fact, he was not up there in his nook much of the
time, but down with Lisbeth. He begged her forgiveness for his act so
often that she grew impatient, and told him, with a frown of annoyance
which became her very well, to just stop it. After five days the wound
had completely healed, the bandage could be removed, and light reddish
spots on her white shoulder were all that remained to show the place of
the injury.

She remained at the Oberhof, for the Justice had previously invited her
to the wedding. This event was postponed a few days because the dowry
would not be ready at the time appointed. The Hunter remained too,
although the Justice did not invite him. He invited himself to the
wedding, however, by saying to the old man one day that the customs of
the country seemed to him so remarkable that he wished to learn what
they were on the occasion of a wedding.

Soon there were just two times in the day for the Hunter, an unhappy and
a happy one. The unhappy time was when Lisbeth was helping the bride
with her linen--and this she did every day. The Hunter then was
absolutely at a loss what to do with his time. The happy time, on the
other hand, began when Lisbeth rested from her work and took the fresh
air. It was then certain that the two would come together, the Hunter
and she. And were he ever so far away behind the bushes, it would always
seem as if somebody were saying to him, "Lisbeth is now outdoors." Then
he would fly to the place where he suspected she was, and behold! his
suspicions had not deceived him, for even from a distance he would catch
sight of her slender form and pretty face. Then she would always bend
over sideways after a flower, as if she were not aware of his approach.
But beforehand, to be sure, she had looked in the direction from which
he was coming.

And now they would walk together through field and meadow, for he would
beg her so earnestly to do it that it seemed almost sinful to her to
refuse him so small a request. The further away from the Oberhof they
wandered in the waving fields and green meadows, the more free and happy
would their spirits grow. When the red, setting sun lighted up
everything about them, including their own youthful forms, it seemed to
them as if anxiety and pain could never enter into their lives again.

On these walks the Hunter would do everything possible to please Lisbeth
that he could guess from her eyes she wanted him to do. If she happened
accidentally to look toward a cluster of wild field-flowers that were
blooming on a high hedge at some distance from the road, before the wish
to have them had even had time to enter her mind, he had swung himself
up on the hedge. And in places where the road dropped off somewhat
abruptly, or where a stone lay in their way, or where it was necessary
for them to cross an insignificant bit of water, he would stretch out
his arm to lead and support her, while she would laugh over this
unnecessary readiness to help. Nevertheless she would accept his arm,
and permit her own to rest in it for a while, even after the road had
become level again. On these quiet, pleasant walks the young souls had
a great deal to impart to each other. He told her all about the Suabian
mountains, the great Neckar, the Alps, the Murg Valley, and the
Hohenstaufen Mountain on which the illustrious imperial family, whose
deeds he related to her, originated. Then he would speak of the great
city where he had studied, and of the many clever people whose
acquaintance he had made there. Finally, he told her about his mother,
how tenderly he had loved her, and how it was perhaps for that reason
that he afterwards came to cherish and revere all women more, because
each one of them made him think of his own deceased mother.

Lisbeth, on the other hand, had only the story of her own simple life to
tell him. In it there were no big cities, no clever people, and, alas,
no mother! And yet he thought he had never heard anything more
beautiful. For every menial service which she had performed, she had
rendered noble by love. Of the young lady and the Baron she had a
thousand touching things to tell, in all the little haunts in and behind
the castle garden she had had adventures to relate, and she had read in
the books which she had secretly brought down from the garret all sorts
of astounding things about strange peoples and countries and remarkable
occurrences on land and water--and all this she had retained in her
memory.

Thus their days at the Oberhof passed, one after the other. The Justice,
to be sure, looked upon it all with different eyes, but was, of course,
obliged to let things which he could not prevent go on. But he often
shook his head when he saw his young guests walking and talking with
each other so much, and would say to himself: "It isn't right for a
young nobleman like that!"


CHAPTER XII

THE DISTURBANCE. WHAT HAPPENED IN A VILLAGE CHURCH


Finally the Hunter finished cutting the pen. He pushed a sheet of paper
toward her and asked her to try it and see if it would write. She did
so, but could not make it work very well; it had teeth, she said. He
looked at what she had written; it was her own name, in the clearest and
most regular lines. The fine letters delighted him.

Then the door opened and the bridesmaid entered with a dress and a
request that Lisbeth be the third bridesmaid.

Outside the music, varied by the ringing of bells, was coming nearer and
nearer, and now the bridal carriage, drawn by two strong horses, hove
into sight at the farther end of the road leading through the oak grove.
The first bridesmaid stood demurely beside the bride, with her large and
rather malodorous bouquet; the men stood by the chests and bundles in
the entrance-hall, all ready to seize them for the last time; the
Justice was looking about anxiously for the second and third
bridesmaids, for if the latter were not on hand before the appearance of
the bridegroom to take the place which the day assigned to them, the
entire ceremony, according to his notion, was done for. But finally,
exactly at the right time, the two awaited girls came down the steps and
took their stands on either side of the first, just as the carriage
turned in toward the open space in front of the house.

With an expression of unconcern on his face, like that of all the
principal persons of this ceremony, the bridegroom alighted from the
carriage. Some young people, his most intimate friends, followed him,
adorned with ribbons and bouquets. He slowly approached the bride, who
even now did not look up, but went on spinning and spinning. The first
bridesmaid then fastened the large bouquet of sage to the breast of his
wedding-jacket. The bridegroom accepted the bouquet without thanks, for
thanks were not included in the traditional routine. He silently
offered his hand to his father-in-law, then, just as silently, to his
bride, who thereupon arose and placed herself with the bridesmaids,
between the first and second and in front of the third.

In the meanwhile, the servants had carried the dowry to the wagon. The
scene assumed a rather wild aspect, for the people with the baggage, in
hurrying back and forth among the cooking-fires, kicked from its place
many a burning fagot which crackled and showered sparks in the very path
down which the bridal pair were to walk. After the loading of linen, the
flax, and the various pieces of wearing apparel, the bride, with the
three bridesmaids and the spinning wheel, which she carried herself,
took a seat in the carriage. The bridegroom sat down apart from her in
the back part of the vehicle, and the young fellows were obliged to
follow on foot, as the dowry occupied so much room that there was none
left for them. One of them made this the subject of traditional
facetious remarks, which he addressed to the Justice, who replied to
them with a smirk. He walked along behind the young men, and the Hunter
placed himself at his side. Thus two men walked together, who on this
day were cherishing the most radically opposed feelings. For the Justice
was thinking of nothing but the wedding, and the Hunter of anything but
the wedding, although his thoughts were hovering about the bridal
carriage.

Now let us allow the latter to drive slowly to the home of the
bridegroom, where already the entire wedding-company is waiting for
it--men, women, girls and youths from all the surrounding estates, in
addition to friends from the city, the Captain and the Collector. There
the carriage is unloaded. Meanwhile let us go on ahead to the church,
which, shaded by walnut-trees and wild chestnuts, stands on a green hill
in the centre of the entire community.

Inasmuch as it was the proper time, and as the people had already
gathered in the church, the Sexton began to play the customary "Battle
of Prague" on the organ. He knew but one prelude, and this was that
forgotten battle-hymn which perhaps a few elderly people will recollect
if I recall to their memories that the musical picture begins with the
advance of Ziethen's Hussars. From this march the Sexton managed to
swing over, with transitions which, to be sure, were not infrequently
rather bold, into the ordinary church melodies.

While the hymn was being sung the Pastor entered the pulpit, and when he
chanced to cast his eyes over the congregation, they met an unexpected
sight. A gentleman from court, namely, was standing among the peasants,
whose attention he was diverting because they were all constantly
looking up from their hymnals and glancing at his star. The aristocratic
gentleman wanted to share a hymn book with some one of the peasants, in
order to join in the singing, but since each one of them, as soon as the
gentleman drew near to him, respectfully stepped aside, he was unable to
accomplish his purpose, and succeeded only in causing an almost general
unrest. For when he sat down in one of the pews, every one of the
peasants seated in it moved along to the extreme farther end, and when
he moved along toward them they finally deserted the pew altogether.
This moving along and getting up was repeated in three or four pews, so
that the aristocratic gentleman, who was attending this little country
service with the best of intentions, was finally obliged to give up the
idea of taking an active part in it. He had business in the region, and
did not want to miss an opportunity of winning, by means of
condescension, the hearts of these country people for the throne to
which he felt himself so near. For that reason, as soon as he heard of
the peasant wedding, the idea of attending it affably from beginning to
end immediately occurred to him.

The sight of the gentleman did not make a pleasant impression on the
Pastor, who knew him to be a member of one of the brilliant social
circles in the capital. He knew what a peculiar custom would follow the
sermon and feared the gentleman's ridicule. For that reason his thoughts
lost some of their usual clearness, his feelings were somewhat
concealed, and the more he talked the further he digressed from the
subject. His distraction increased when he noticed that the gentleman
was casting appreciative glances at him and occasionally nodding his
head in approval; this last happened usually when the speaker was most
dissatisfied with what he was saying. He consequently cut short certain
parts of the nuptial address and hurried along to the formal ceremony.

The bridal pair were kneeling, and the fateful questions were being put
to them. Then something happened which gave the aristocratic stranger a
violent shock. For, looking to the right and left and before and behind
him, he saw men and women, girls and youths drawing out thick clubs of
twisted sack-cloth. Everybody was standing up and whispering and looking
around, as it seemed to him, with wild and malicious glances. As it was
impossible for him to guess the true meaning of these preparations, he
completely lost his composure; and since the clubs seemed to indicate
incontestably that somebody was to be the recipient of blows, he got the
notion into his head that he himself was going to be the object of a
general maltreatment. He remembered how fearsomely the people had moved
away from him, and he thought to himself how rough the character of
country people was, and how perhaps the peasants, not understanding his
condescending motive, had resolved to get rid of the disagreeable
intruder. All this went through his soul like a streak of lightning, and
he was at a loss to know how he was going to protect his person and
dignity from the horrible attack.

While he was helplessly wrestling for a decision, the Pastor concluded
the ceremonies, and there immediately arose the wildest tumult. All the
bearers of clubs, men and women, rushed forward yelling and screaming
and flourishing their weapons; the aristocratic gentleman, however, in
three sidewise bounds over several pews, reached the pulpit. In a trice
he had ascended it, and from this elevated position called out in a loud
voice to the raging crowd below:

"I advise you not to attack me! I cherish the kindest and most
condescending feelings toward you all, and any injury done to me will be
resented by the King, as one done to himself."

The peasants, however, inspired by the object they had in view, did not
listen to this speech, but ran on up to the altar. On the way this and
that person received some unpremeditated blows before the intended
object of them was reached. This was the bridegroom. Clapping his hands
over his head, the latter with great exertion forced a passage for
himself through the crowd, who rained blows on his back, shoulders and
wherever there was room. He ran, violently pushing people aside, to the
church door; but before he got there he had received certainly more than
a hundred blows, and thus, well covered with black-and-blue marks, he
left the church on his wedding-day. Everybody ran after him; the bride's
father and bride followed, the Sexton closed the door immediately after
the last one had passed through it and betook himself to the vestry,
which had a private exit. In a few seconds the entire church was empty.

All this time the aristocratic gentleman had remained in the pulpit,
while the Pastor stood before the altar, bowing to him with a friendly
smile. The gentleman, when he saw from his Ararat that the blows were
not meant for him, grew calm and dropped his arms. When it was quiet, he
asked the clergyman:

"For heaven's sake, Pastor, tell me what this furious scene meant; what
had the poor man done to his assailants?"

"Nothing, your Excellency," replied the Pastor who, notwithstanding the
dignity of the place, could hardly help laughing at the nobleman in the
pulpit. "This act of beating the bridegroom after the marriage ceremony
is an old, old custom which the people refuse to give up. They say that
it is intended to let the bridegroom feel how much blows hurt, so that
in the future he will not abuse his rights as a husband toward his
wife."

"Well, but that is certainly a most remarkable custom," mumbled his
Excellency, descending from the pulpit.

The Pastor received him very courteously below and conducted his
aristocratic acquaintance into the vestry, in order to let him outdoors
from there. The latter, who was still somewhat frightened, said that he
would have to think it over, whether or not he could take part in the
further proceedings of the ceremony. The clergyman, on the way to the
vestry, expressed profound regret that he had not been previously
advised of his Excellency's design, because he then would have been in a
position to inform him of the beating custom, and thus to avert so great
a fright and shock.

After both had departed, peace and silence reigned once more in the
church. It was a pretty little church, dainty and not too gay--a rich
benefactor had done a great deal for it. The ceiling was painted blue
with gold stars. The pulpit displayed some artistic carving and among
the tablets on the floor, which covered the tombs of former pastors,
there were even two or three of bronze. The pews were kept very tidy and
clean, and to that end the Justice had exerted his strong influence. A
beautiful cloth adorned the altar, above which rose a twisted column
painted to resemble marble.

The light fell brightly into the little church, the trees outside were
rustling, and now and then a gentle breeze coming in by a broken
window-pane stirred the white scarf with which the angel above the
baptismal font was decked, or the tinsel of the wreaths which, having
been taken from the coffins of the maidens who had died, were used to
decorate the surrounding pillars.

Bride and bridegroom were gone, the bridal procession was gone, but
still the peaceful little church was not yet entirely deserted. Two
young people had remained inside of it, without knowing of each other's
presence; and this is how it happened. The Hunter, when the
wedding-party entered the church, had separated from them and quietly
gone up a flight of stairs to a gallery. There, unseen by the rest, he
sat down on a stool all alone by himself, his back to the people and to
the altar. He buried his face in his hands, but that he could not long
endure to do; his cheek and brow were too hot. The hymn with its solemn
tones cooled the heat like falling dew; he thanked God that finally,
finally the supreme happiness had been granted to him:

  In thy sadness, in thy laughter,
  Thou art thine own by law of love! * * *

A little child had crept up to him out of curiosity; he gently grasped
his hand and caressed it. Then he started to give him money, did not do
it, but pressed him against his breast and kissed his forehead. And when
the boy, a bit frightened by his hot caress, moved toward the stairs, he
slowly led him down lest he should fall. Then he returned to his seat
and heard nothing of the sermon, nothing of the noise which followed it.
He was sunk in deep and blissful dreams which revealed to him his
beautiful mother and his white castle on the green hillside and himself
and somebody else in the castle.

Lisbeth, embarrassed in her strange attire, had bashfully walked along
behind the bride. Oh, she thought, just when the good man thinks I am
always natural I must wear borrowed clothes. She longed to have back her
own. She heard the peasants behind her talking about her in a whisper.
The aristocratic gentleman, who met the procession in front of the
church, looked at her critically for a long time through his lorgnette.
All that she was obliged to endure, when she had just been so
beautifully extolled in verse, when her heart was overflowing with
joyful delight. Half dazed she entered the church, where she made up her
mind to desert the procession on the way back, in order to avoid
becoming again the object of conversation or facetious remarks, which
now for a quarter of an hour had been far from her thoughts. She too
heard but little of the sermon, earnestly as she strove to follow the
discourse of her respected clerical friend. And when the rings were
exchanged, the matter-of-course expression on the faces of the bridal
pair aroused a peculiar emotion in her--a mixture of sadness, envy, and
quiet resentment that so heavenly a moment should pass by two such
stolid souls.

Then came the tumult, and she fled involuntarily behind the altar. When
it grew quiet again, she drew a deep breath, adjusted her apron, gently
stroked back a lock of hair that had fallen over on her brow, and took
courage. She was anxious to see how she could make her way back to the
Oberhof unnoticed and get rid of the disagreeable clothes. With short
steps and eyes cast down she walked along a side passage toward the
door.

Having finally awakened from his dreams, the Hunter was descending the
stairs. He too was anxious to quit the church, but where to go he did
not know. His heart throbbed when he saw Lisbeth; she lifted her eyes
and stood still, shy and artless. Then, without looking at each other,
they went in silence to the door, and the Hunter laid his hand on the
latch to open it.

"It is locked!" he cried in a tone of delight, as if the best luck in
the world had befallen him. "We are locked in the church!"

"Locked in?" she said, filled with sweet horror.

"Why does that cause you dismay? Where can one possibly have better
quarters than in a church?" he said soulfully. He gently put his arm
around her waist, and with his other hand grasped her hand. Then he led
her to a seat, gently forced her to sit down and himself sat down beside
her. She dropped her eyes and toyed with the ribbons on the gay-colored
bodice she was wearing.

"This is a horrible dress, isn't it?" she said scarce audibly after a
long silence.

"Oh!" he cried, "I hadn't been looking at the dress!" He seized both of
her hands, pressed them violently to his breast, and then lifted her
from the pew. "I cannot bear to sit so still.--Let's take a look at the
church!" he cried.

"Probably there is not much here worth seeing," she replied trembling.

But his strong arms had already surrounded, lifted, and borne her to the
altar. There he let her down; she lay half-fainting against his breast.

"Lisbeth!" he stammered his voice choking with love. "My only love!
Forgive me! Will you be my wife?--my eternal, sweet wife?"

She did not answer. Her heart was throbbing against his. Her tears were
flowing on his breast. Now he raised her head, and their lips met. For a
long, long time they held them together.

Then he gently drew her down to her knees beside him, and both raised
their hands in prayer before the altar. They could give voice to nothing
save, "Father! Dear Father in Heaven!" And that they did not tire of
repeating in voices trembling with bliss. They said it as confidingly as
if the Father whom they meant were offering them His hand.

Finally the prayer died out and they both silently laid their faces on
the altar-cloth.

Thus united they continued for some time to kneel in the church, and
neither made a sound. Suddenly they felt their hands lightly touched and
looked up. The Pastor was standing between them with a shining face, and
holding his hands on their heads in blessing. By chance he had entered
the church once more from the vestry and, touched and amazed, had
witnessed the betrothal which had been consummated here apart from the
wedding in the presence of God. He, too, said no word, but his eyes
spoke. He drew the youth and the girl to his breast, and pressed his
favorites affectionately to him.

Then, leading the way, he went with the couple into the vestry in order
to let them out. And thus the three left the little, quiet, bright
village church. Lisbeth and the Hunter had found each other--for their
lives!

       *       *       *       *       *



GUTZKOW AND YOUNG GERMANY

By Starr Willard Cutting, Ph.D. Professor of German Literature,
University of Chicago


A group of men, including, among others, Ludwig Börne, Heinrich Heine,
Heinrich Laube, Theodor Mundt, Ludolf Wienbarg, and Karl Gutzkow,
dominate the literary activity of Germany from the beginning of the
fourth decade to about the middle of the nineteenth century. The common
bond of coherence among the widely divergent types of mind here
represented, is the spirit of protest against the official program of
the reaction which had succeeded the rise of the people against Napoleon
Bonaparte. This German phase of an essentially European political
restoration had turned fiercely upon all intelligent, patriotic leaders,
who called for a redemption of the unfulfilled pledges of constitutional
government, given by the princes of Germany, in dire need of popular
support against foreign invasion, and had construed such reminders as
disloyalty and as proof of dark designs against the government. It had
branded indiscriminately, as infamous demagogues, traitors, and
revolutionists, all those who, like Jahn, the _Turners,_ and most of the
members of the earliest _Burschenschaften_ (open student societies),
longed for the creation of a new empire under the leadership of Prussia,
or, like Karl Follen (Charles Follen, first professor of German at
Harvard), preferred the establishment of a German republic on lines
similar to those of the United States of America. Under a policy of
suppression, manipulated by Metternich with consummate skill in the
interest of Austria against Prussia and against German confidence in the
sincerity and trustworthiness of the Prussian government, the reaction
had by arrests, prosecutions, circumlocution-office delays, banishments,
and an elaborate system of espionage, for the most part silenced
opposition and saved, not the state, but, at any rate, the _status quo_.
This "success" had incidentally cost Germany the presence and service of
some of the ablest and best of her own youth, who spent the rest of
their lives in France, England, Switzerland, or the United States. We
Americans owe to this "success" some of the most admirable types of our
citizenship--expatriated Germans like Karl Follen, Karl Beck, Franz
Lieber, the brothers Wesselhoeft, and many others.

Wienbarg dedicated in 1834 his _Esthetic Campaigns_ to Young Germany.
This term has since then served friend and foe to designate the group of
writers of whom we speak. Their slogan was freedom. Freedom from
cramping police surveillance; freedom from the arbitrary control of
government, unchecked by responsibility to the people; freedom from the
narrowing prescriptions of ecclesiastical authority, backed by the power
of the state; freedom from the literary restraint of medievalism in
modern letters--these and various other brands of freedom were demanded
by different members of the school. Just because the birth-throes of
modern Germany, which extend over the first seventy years of the
nineteenth century, were especially violent during the period under
consideration, the program of the school had from the outset a strong
political bias. The broad masses of the people were unacquainted with
political forms and principles. They were by time-hallowed tradition
virtually the wards of their patriarchal princes, sharing with these
protectors a high degree of jealous regard for state sovereignty and of
instinctive opposition towards any and all attempts to secure popular
restraint of the sovereign's will and national unification, that should
demand subordination of the single state to the central government. All
early attempts to awaken popular interest in social and political reform
had fallen flat, because of this helpless ignorance and indifference of
public opinion. But the drastic official measures against early
agitators proved to be a challenge to further activity in the direction
of progress.

[Illustration: KARL FERDINAND GUTZKOW]

The July revolution of 1830 in Paris added fuel to the flame of this
agitation in Germany and intensified the interest of still wider masses
in the question of large nationality and popular control. Then came, on
the twenty-seventh of May, 1832, the German revolutionary speeches of
the Hambach celebration, and, on April third, 1833, the Frankfurt riot,
with its attempt to take the Confederate Council by surprise and to
proclaim the unification of Germany. The resulting persecution of Fritz
Reuter, the tragedy of Friedrich Ludwig Weidig, the simultaneous
withdrawal or curtailment of the freedom of the press and the right of
holding public meetings were most eloquent advocates with the public
mind for a sturdy opposition to the conservatism of princes and
officials.

No wonder, then, that thinking men, like Heine and Gutzkow, were fairly
forced by circumstances into playing the game. No wonder that their
tales, novels, and dramas became in many cases editorials to stimulate
and guide public thought and feeling in one direction or another. This
swirl of agitation put a premium upon a sort of rapid-fire work and
journalistic tone, quite incompatible with the highest type of artistic
performance. While the Young Germans were all politically liberal and
opposed to the Confederate Council and to the Metternich program, they
were in many ways more cosmopolitan than national in temper.

The foregoing may serve to show the only substantial ground for the
charge of didacticism, frequently lodged by their critics against the
writers of the school. For it is beside the mark to speak of their
opposition to romanticism as a ground for the charge in question. They
were all, to be sure, anti-Romanticists. They declined to view life
through roseate-hued spectacles or to escape the world of everyday
reality by fairy-tale flights into the world of the imagination. They
called upon men to discover by clear-eyed vision not only the beauties
but also the defects of contemporary social existence. They would employ
literature, not as an opiate to make us forget such defects, but as a
stimulant to make us remedy them. Hence their repeated exhortations to
use the senses and to trust them as furnishing the best kind of raw
material for legitimate art. Hence also their protests against the
bloodless abstractions of the Nazarene school of painting and to
transcendental idealism in art and literature. They cultivated art, not
for its own sake, but for the sake of a fuller, saner, and freer human
life. In this sense they were didactic; but they were no more didactic
than the Romanticists and the Pseudo-Classicists who had preceded them.
In their earnest contention for an organic connection between German
life and German art and literature they were hewing more closely to the
line of nature and truth than any other Germans since the time of
Herder.

They are usually spoken of as free-thinkers and frequently as
anti-religious in temper and conviction. The charge of irreligion seems
based upon the misconception or the misrepresentation of their orthodox
critics. It is, at any rate, undeserved, as far as Gutzkow, the leader
of the school, is concerned. It is true that they were liberal in the
matter of religious and philosophical thought. They were also skeptical
as to the sincerity and usefulness of many current practises and
institutions of the Catholic and Protestant branches of the church;
their wit, irony, and satire were directed, however, not against
religion, but against the obnoxious externals of ecclesiasticism. This
attack was provoked by the obvious fact that the reaction employed the
institutional state church as a weapon with which to combat the rising
tide of popular discontent with existing social and political forms and
functions. This was especially true after the accession to the throne of
Prussia of that romantic and reactionary prince, Frederick William IV.,
in 1840.

Critics have ascribed the negative, disintegrating, and cosmopolitan
spirit of the group as a whole to the fact that Börne and Heine were
Jews. In addition, however, to the abundant non-racial grounds for this
spirit, already urged as inherent in the historic crisis under
discussion, we should recall the fact that Heine, as a literary
producer, is more closely allied with the Romanticists than with Young
Germany, and that Börne, who in his celebrated _Letters from Paris_
(1830-34) and elsewhere went farther than all other members of the
school in transforming art criticism into political criticism, was no
cosmopolitan but an ardent, sincere, and consistent German patriot.
Moreover, while Börne and Heine belong through sympathy and deliberate
choice to Young Germany, the real spokesmen of the group, Wienbarg,
Laube, Mundt, and Gutzkow, were non-Jewish Germans.

Among the external facts of Gutzkow's life, worth remembering in this
connection, are the following: His birth on the seventeenth of March,
1811, as the son of humble parents; his precocious development in school
and at the University of Berlin; his deep interest in the revolution of
1830 in Paris; his student experiments in journalism and the resulting
association with the narrow-minded patriot, Wolfgang Menzel; his
doctorate in Jena and subsequent study of books and men in Heidelberg,
Munich, Leipzig, Berlin, and Hamburg; his association with Heine, Laube,
Mundt, and Wienbarg and his journey with Laube through Austria and Italy
in 1533; his breach with Menzel at the instance of Laube in the same
year; his publication in 1835 of the crude sketch of an emancipation
novel, _Wally the Skeptic_, compounded of suggestions from Lessing's Dr.
Reimarus, from Saint Simonism, and from the sentimental tragedy of
Charlotte Stieglitz in real life; Menzel's revengeful denunciation of
this colorless and tedious novel, as an "outrageous attack upon ethics
and the Christian religion"; the resulting verdict of the Mannheim
municipal court, punishing Gutzkow by one month's imprisonment, with no
allowance for a still longer detention during his trial; the official
proscription of all "present and future writings" by Gutzkow, Wienbarg,
Laube, Mundt, and Heine; Gutzkow's continued energetic championship of
the new literary movement and editorial direction of the Frankfurt
_Telegraph_, from 1835 to 1837, under the very eyes of the Confederate
Council; his removal in 1837 to Hamburg and his gradual transformation
there from a short story writer and journalist into a successful
dramatist; his series of eleven plays, produced within the space of
fifteen years, from 1839 to 1854; the success of his tragedy, _Uriel
Acosta_, in 1846, and the resulting appointment of the author in the
same year as playwright and critic at the Royal Theatre in Dresden; his
temperate participation in the popular movement of 1848 and consequent
loss of the Dresden position; the death of his wife, Amalia, in the
same-year after an estrangement of seven years, due to his own
infatuation for Therese von Bacharacht; his happy marriage in 1849 with
Bertha Meidinger, a cousin of his first wife; the publication in 1850-51
of his first great novel of contemporary German life, entitled,
_Spiritual Knighthood_; his continuous editorial work upon the journal,
_Fireside Conversations_, from 1849 until the appearance of his other
great contemporary novel, _The Magician of Rome_, 1858-61; his attack of
insanity under the strain of ill health in 1865 and unsuccessful attempt
at suicide; and, finally, his rapidly declining health and frequent
change of residence from Berlin to Italy, thence to Heidelberg, and from
there to Sachsenhausen, near Frankfurt-on-the-Main, and his tragic death
there, either intentional or accidental, in the night of December
fifteenth, 1878, when under the influence of chloral he upset the
candle, by the light of which he had been reading, and perished in the
stifling fumes of the burning room.

This bare outline recalls the personality and career of the best single
embodiment of the spirit of Young Germany. His humble birth, unusual
grasp of intellect, and ambition to secure an adequate education brought
him into early touch with alert representatives of the educated middle
classes, who were the keenest and most consistent critics of the
political, social, and ecclesiastical reaction which gripped German life
at that time. Menzel's student connection with the Jena
_Burschenschaft_, his early published protest against the emptiness of
recent German literature, and his polemic, entitled _German Literature_,
and aimed at the imitators of Goethe and at Goethe's own lack of
interest in German unification, attracted young Gutzkow, who had also
been a member of the _Burschenschaft_, and prompted him to write and
publish in his student paper a defense of Menzel against his critics.
This led Menzel to invite Gutzkow to Stuttgart and to propose a
coöperation which could be but short-lived; for Menzel was timid and
vacillating, whereas Gutzkow was sincere, courageous, and consistent.
This steadfastness and singleness of purpose, combined with a remarkable
power to appreciate, adopt, and express the leading thoughts and
aspirations of his own time, make Gutzkow the most efficient leader of
the whole group. Heine was, as already noted, too much of a Romanticist
to be a thorough-going Young German. Besides, he lacked the sincerity
and the enthusiastic conviction which dedicated practically every work
of Karl Gutzkow to the task of restoring the proper balance between
German literature and German life. Gutzkow felt that literature had, in
the hands of the Romanticists, abandoned life to gain a fool's paradise.
After a brief apprenticeship to Jean Paul and to the romantic ideal,
never whole-hearted, because of the disintegrating influence of his
simultaneous acquaintance with Börne and Heine, Gutzkow utterly
renounced the earlier movement and became the champion of a definite
reform. He aimed henceforth to enrich German literature by abundant
contact with the large, new thoughts of modern life in its relation to
the individual and to the community. He was no less sincere in his
determination to make literature introduce the German people to a
larger, richer, freer, and truer human life for the individual and for
the state. In his eyes statecraft, religion, philosophy, science, and
industry teemed with raw material of surpassing interest and importance
for the literary artist. He accordingly set himself the task in one way
and another to make his own generation share this conviction. It is
quite true that he was not the man to transform with his own hands this
raw material into works of art of consummate beauty and perfection. He was
conscious of his own artistic limitations and would have confessed them in
the best years of his life with the frankness of a Lessing in similar
circumstances. We may agree that he lacked the skill of many greater
poets than he, to compress into artistic shape, with due regard for line,
color, movement, and atmosphere of the original, the material of his
observation. Yet we still have to explain the fact that he wrote novels
and dramas pulsating with the life of his own contemporaries--works that
claimed the attention and touched the heart of thousands of readers and
theatre-goers and inspired many better artists than he to treat themes
drawn from the public and private life of the day.

It would take us too far afield to trace in detail the nature and
sources of Gutzkow's writings, by which he accomplished this important
result. A few suggestions, together with a reminder of his great
indebtedness to the simultaneous efforts of other Young Germans, notably
those of Laube and Wienbarg, must suffice. Practically all of his
earlier writings, like the short story, _The Sadducee of Amsterdam_
(1833), as well as the essays entitled _Public Characters_ (1835), _On
the Philosophy of History_ (1836), and _Contemporaries_ (1837), are
evidence of the intense interest of the author in the social,
philosophical, and political leaders of the time. They are preliminary
studies, to be used by him presently in his work as a dramatist.

In his two powerful novels, _Spiritual Knighthood_ (1850-51) and _The
Magician of Rome_ (1858-61), he states and discusses with great boldness
and skill those problems of the relation between Church and
State--between religion and citizenship--that confronted the thoughtful
men of the day.

The backbone of each of his numerous serious plays is some conflict,
reflecting directly or indirectly the prejudices, antagonisms,
shortcomings, and struggles of modern German social, religious, and
civic life. _King Saul_ (1839) embodies, for instance, the conflict
between ecclesiastical and temporal authority--between the authority of
the church and the claims of the thinker and the poet; _Richard Savage_
(1839) that between the pride of noble birth and the promptings of the
mother's heart; _Werner_ (1840), _A White Leaf_ (1842), and _Ottfried_
(1848), variations of the conflict between a man's duty and his
vacillating, simultaneous love of two women; _Patkul_ (1840), the
conflict between the hero's championship of truth and justice and the
triumphant inertia of authority in the hands of a weak prince; _Uriel
Acosta_ (1846), the best of the author's serious plays, embodies the
tragic conflict between the hero's conviction of truth and his love for
his mother and for his intended wife.

Gutzkow wrote three comedies which in point of continued popularity have
outlived all his other numerous contributions to the German stage:
_Sword and Queue_ (1843), _The Prototype of Tartuffe_ (1844), and _The
Royal Lieutenant_ (1849). The second of the three has the best motivated
plot; the first and third have, by virtue of their national substance,
their witty dialogue, and their droll humor, proved dearer to the heart
of the German people. In _The Prototype of Tartuffe_ we are shown
President La Roquette at the court of Louis XIV., obliged at last, in
spite of his long continued successful efforts to suppress the play, to
witness his own public unmasking in the person of Molière's _Tartuffe_,
of whom he is the sneaking, hypocritical original. We hear him in anger
declare his readiness to join the Jesuits and we join in the laugh at
his discomfiture. The scene of _The Royal Lieutenant_, written to
celebrate the hundredth recurrence of Goethe's birthday, is laid in the
Seven Years' War in the house of Goethe's father in Frankfurt. The
Riccaut-like figure of the Royal Lieutenant himself, Count Thorane, and
his outlandish attempts to speak German, the clever portraits of the
dignified father and the cheerful mother, and the unhistorical sketch of
little Wolfgang, with his pleased and precocious anticipation of his
future laurels, are woven by means of witty dialogue into an amusing,
though not very coherent or logical whole. In Gutzkow's _Sword and
Queue_ an entertaining situation at the court of Frederick William I. of
Prussia is developed by a very free use of the facts of history, after
the manner of the comedy of Scribe. With rare skill the different
characters of the play are sketched and shown upon a background, which
corresponds closely enough to historic fact to produce the illusion of
reality. The comedy pilots the Crown Prince's friend, the Prince of
Baireuth, through a maze of intrigue, including Prussian ambition to
secure an alliance with England by the marriage of the Princess
Wilhelmine to the Prince of Wales; a diplomatic blocking of this plan,
with the help of the English Ambassador Hotham; the changed front of the
old King, who prefers a union of his daughter with an Austrian Archduke
to the hard terms of the proposed English treaty; Hotham's proposal to
the King to bring him a promising recruit for the corps of Royal
Grenadiers; the evening of the Tobacco Parliament, in which the Prince
of Baireuth feigns tipsiness and in a mocking funeral oration, in honor
of the old King, tells the pseudo-deceased some bitter truths,--to a
final scene, in which, as Hotham's proposed grenadier recruit with Queue
and Sword, he wins not only the cordial approval of the King but also
the heart and hand of Wilhelmine.

Karl Gutzkow's life-work was a struggle for freedom and truth. We
recognize in the web of his serious argument familiarity with the best
thought of the poets, theologians, and philosophers of his own day and
of the eighteenth century. In religion a pantheist, he believed in the
immortality of the soul, had unshaken confidence in the tendency of the
world that "makes for righteousness," and recommends the ideal of "truth
and justice" as the best central thought to guide each man's whole life.
He shares in an eminent degree, with other members of the group known as
Young Germany, a significance for the subsequent development of German
literature, far transcending the artistic value of his works. People are
just beginning to perceive his genetic importance for the student of
Ibsen, Nietzsche, and the recent naturalistic movement in European
letters.

       *       *       *       *       *



KARL FERDINAND GUTZKOW

SWORD AND QUEUE (1843)

TRANSLATED BY GRACE ISABEL COLBRON

PREFACE OF THE AUTHOR


The essence of the comic is self-contradiction, contrast. Even
professional estheticians must acknowledge that by the very nature of
its origin the following comedy answers this definition.

A king lacking the customary attributes of his station; a royal court
governed by the rules that regulate any simple middle-class
household--surely here is a contradiction sufficient in itself to
attract the Comic Muse. And it was indeed only when the author was well
along in his work that he felt any inclination to introduce a few
political allusions with what is called a "definite purpose," into a
work inspired by the principles of pure comedy.

Ever since the example set by those great Greeks, Æschylus and
Aristophanes, the stage has claimed the right to deal with extremes. He
who, sinning and laden with the burden of human guilt, has once fallen a
victim to the Eumenides, cannot, as a figure in a drama, go off on
pleasure trips, nor can he go about the usual business of daily life.
Fate seizes him red-handed, causes him to see blood in every glass of
champagne and to read his warrant of arrest on every chance scrap of
paper. And the Comic Muse is even less indulgent. When Aristophanes
would mock the creations of Euripides, which are meant to move the
public by their declining fortunes, he at once turns the tragedian into
a rag-picker.

Comedy may, tragedy must, exaggerate. The exaggerations in _Sword and
Queue_ brought forth many a contemptuous grimace from the higher-priced
seats in the Court Theatres. But it needs only a perusal of the _Memoirs
of the Markgravine of Baireuth, Princess of Prussia_, to give the
grotesque picture a certificate of historical veracity. Not only the
character-drawing, but the very plot, is founded on those Memoirs,
written in a less sophisticated age than our own, and the authenticity
of which is undisputed.

In the case of Seckendorf, the technical, or, I might say, the symphonic
composition of the play, which allots the parts as arbitrarily as in the
_Midsummer Night's Dream_ does Peter Quince, who says to highly
respectable people: "You play the Lion, and you play the Ass,"
necessitates making a victim of a man who was a mediocre diplomat, but
for a time, at least, a fairly good soldier. The author feels no
compunction on this score. Stupidity, as Comus artlessly thinks, is not
wickedness; the Lion or the Ass--each is necessary to different moments
in the play. A Brandenburg-Prussian comedy of 1733 can, _a priori_,
hardly fail to be "unjust" to an Imperial Ambassador of that epoch. Such
injustice belongs to the native wantonness of the Comic Muse. In plays
of a specifically Austrian character, Prussia, and especially the people
of Berlin, have suffered the same necessary injustice of comedy.
Fortunately, according to Chevalier Lang and other more reliable
authorities, this particular Seckendorf was both vain and tyrannous. His
hatred for Frederick II. and his eternal "combinations" went to such
lengths that, during the first Silesian war, he offered the Austrian
Court a detailed plan by which the "Land-hungry conqueror" might be
personally rendered innocuous. (See Arneth, _Maria Theresa_, Vol. I).

However, Puck's manner of writing history may be softened a little. It
is not necessary for the actor to present Seckendorf as an imbecile.
Actors have the unfortunate habit of taking the whole hand when a finger
is offered. In truth I have seen but a very few performances of my play
in which Frederick William I. still retained, beneath his attitude of
stern father, some share of royal dignity; in which Eversmann, despite
his confident impudence, still held his tongue like a trembling lackey;
in which the Hereditary Prince, despite his desire to find everything in
the Castle ridiculous, still maintained a reserve sufficient to save him
from being expelled from Berlin for his impertinent criticisms--or where
the Princess was still proud and witty beneath her girlish simplicity.
And still rarer is it to see a Seckendorf who, in spite of his clumsy
"combinations," did not quite sink to the level of the Marshal von Kalb.
At this point a dramaturgic hint might not come amiss. In cases where
there is danger of degrading the part, the stage manager should take
care to intrust such rôles to the very actors who at first thought might
seem least suited for them--those whose personalities will compel them
to raise the part to a higher level. The buffoon and sometimes even the
finer comedian cannot free Shakespeare from the reproach of having given
two kings of Denmark a clown as Prime Minister. It is very much less
necessary that the audience should laugh at Polonius' quips than that
the quips should in no wise impair his position as courtier, as royal
adviser, as father of two excellent children, and, at the last, as a man
who met death with tragic dignity. In such a case a wise manager
intrusts the comic part to an actor who--is not comic.

The following play was written in the spring of 1843. Some of our
readers may chance to know the little garden of the Hôtel Reichmann in
Milan. In a room which opens out into the oleander bushes, the trickling
fountains, and the sandstone cupids of that garden, the first four acts
ripened during four weeks of work. The fifth act followed on the shores
of Lake Como.

Amid surroundings which, by their beauty, bring to mind only the laws
of the ideal, to hold fast to those burlesque memories from the
history of the sandy Mark Brandenburg was, one may feel sure, possible
only to a mind which turned in love to its Prussian home, however
"treasonable" its other opinions. And yet the romanticism of San
Souci, as well as the estheticism of the Berlin Board of Censors, has
at all times persecuted the play, now forbidding it, again permitting
an occasional performance, and again prohibiting it even after 1848.
When the aged and revered Genast from Weimar had played the king a
dozen times in the Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtisches Theater, Hinckeldey's
messengers brought the announcement that the presentation of the piece
met with disfavor in high places. Frederick William IV. did everything
possible to hamper and curtail the author's ambitions. But to give
truth its due, I will not neglect to mention that this last prohibition
was softened by assigning as its motion the allusion made in the play to
that legend of the Berlin Castle, "The White Lady," who is supposed to
bring a presage of death to the Prussian royal family.

The Dresden Court Theatre was formerly a model of impartiality. And
above all, Emil Devrient's energetic partisanship for the newer dramatic
literature was a great assistance to authors in cases of this kind. This
play, like many another, owes to his artistic zeal its introduction to
those high-class theatres where alone a German dramatist finds his best
encouragement and advance. Unfortunately, the war of 1866 again banished
_Sword and Queue_ from the Vienna Burgtheater, where it had won a place
for itself.

       *       *       *       *       *


SWORD AND QUEUE


DRAMATIS PERSONAE

   FREDERICK WILLIAM I., _King Of
   Prussia, father of Frederick the
   Great._

   THE QUEEN, _his wife._

   PRINCESS WILHELMINE, _their daughter_.

   THE PRINCE HEREDITARY OF BAIREUTH

   GENERAL VON GRUMBKOW }
   COUNT SCHWERIN       } _Councilors and Confidants of the King._
   COUNT WARTENSLEBEN   }

   COUNT SECKENDORF, _Imperial Ambassador_

   BARONET HOTHAM, _Envoy of Great Britain_

   FRAU VON VIERECK

   FRAU VON HOLZENDORF

   _The Queen's Ladies_.

   FRAÜLEIN VON SONNSFELD, _Lady-in-waiting to the Princess._

   EVERSMANN, _the King's valet_.

   KAMKE, _in the Queen's service_.

   ECKHOF, _a grenadier_.

   _A Lackey in the King's service. Generals, Officers, Court Ladies.
    Members of the Smoking-Circle. Grenadiers, Lackeys_.

   _Scene of action: The Royal Castle of Berlin_.

   _First performance, January 1st, 1844, in the Court Theatre in Dresden_.

[Illustration: THE POTSDAM GUARD ADOLPH VON MENZEL]



SWORD AND QUEUE



ACT I



SCENE I


_A room in the Palace. One window and four doors. A table and two
armchairs on the left of the room._

EVERSMANN, _taking snuff comfortably. Two Drummers of the Guard._

_Later_ FRAÜLEIN VON SONNSFELD.

_The drummers take up a position near the door to the left, leading to
the apartments of the_ PRINCESS, _and execute a roll of the drums_.

FRAÜLEIN VON SONNSFELD (_opens the door and looks in_).

That will do.

[_The drummers play a second roll_.]

SONNSFELD (_looks in again_).

Yes, yes. We heard it.

[EVERSMANN _gives the sign again and the drummers play a third long
roll_.]

SONNSFELD (_comes out angrily, speaks when the noise has subsided_).

This is unendurable! It is enough to ruin one's nerves--left
wheel--march--out with you to the parade ground where you be long! [_The
drummers march out still playing. When the noise can no longer be heard
she continues_.] Eversmann, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You
should remind the King of the respect due to ladies.

EVERSMANN.

I obey my royal master's orders, ma'am. And inasmuch as late rising is a
favorite vice of the youth of today, it has been ordered that the
reveille be played at six o'clock every morning before the doors of the
royal Princes and Princesses.

SONNSFELD.

Princess Wilhelmine is no longer a child.

EVERSMANN.

Her morning dreams are all the sweeter for that reason.

SONNSFELD.

Dreams of our final release--of despair--of death--

EVERSMANN.

Or possibly dreams of marriage--and the like--

SONNSFELD.

Have a care, Eversmann! The Crown Prince has won his freedom at last; he
is keeping a most exact record of all that happens in Berlin and in the
immediate environment of his severe father. It is well known that you
influence the King more than do his ministers.

EVERSMANN.

If the poetic fancy of our Crown Prince, who, by the way, is my devoted
young friend Fritz, cannot see the truth more clearly than that, then I
have little respect for the imaginative power of poets. I--and
influence? I twist His Majesty's stately pigtail every morning, clip his
fine manly beard, fill his cozy little Dutch pipe for him each
evening--and if in the course of these innocent employments His Most
Sacred Majesty lets fall a hint, a remark--a little command
possibly--why--naturally--

SONNSFELD.

You pick them up and weave them into a "nice innocent little influence"
for yourself. Eh? An influence that has already earned you three city
houses, five estates, and a carriage-and-four. Have a care that the
Crown Prince does not auction off all these objects under the
gallows-tree some fine day.

EVERSMANN.

Oh, but your Ladyship must have slept badly. Pray spare me
these--predictions and prophesyings, which are made up of whole cloth.
His Royal Highness the Crown Prince is far too much, of a philosopher to
take such revenge on a man who has no more dealings with His Majesty
than to fill his pipe each evening, to braid his pigtail each morning,
and to shave him in the good old German fashion every second day. Have I
made my meaning clear?

[_He goes out._]

SONNSFELD.

Go your way, you old sinner! You may pretend to be ever so honest and
simple--we know you and your like. Oh, what a life we lead here in this
Court! Cannons thunder in the garden under our windows every morning or
else they send up a company of soldiers to accustom us to early rising.
After the morning prayer the Princess knits, sews, presses her linen,
studies her catechism, and, alas! is forced to listen to a stupid sermon
every day. At dinner, we get very little to eat; then the King takes his
afternoon nap. He's forever quarreling with the Queen, they have
scarcely a good word to say to each other, and yet the entire family are
expected to look on at His Majesty's melodious snore-concert, and even
to brush away the flies from the face of the sleeping Father of his
country. If my Princess did not possess so much natural wit and spirit,
the sweet creature would be quite crushed by such a life. If the King
only knew that she is learning French secretly, and can almost write a
polite little note already--! I hear her coming.


SCENE II


PRINCESS WILHELMINE _comes in, carrying a letter_.

WILHELMINE (_timidly_).

Can any one hear us?

SONNSFELD.

Not unless the walls have ears. Is the letter written?

WILHELMINE.

I hardly dare send it, dear Sonnsfeld. I know there are a hundred
mistakes in it.

SONNSFELD.

A hundred? Then the letter must be much longer than Your Highness first
planned it.

WILHELMINE.

I wrote that I fully appreciate the value of the services offered me,
but that my position forces me to refuse any aid to my education which
cannot be attained at least by the help of my mother, the Queen.

SONNSFELD.

Is that what you have written? And made a hundred mistakes? In that case
we are just where we were before. I appreciate that an eighteen-year-old
Princess has to consider history, posterity and so forth--but this
conscientiousness will be your ruin. The King will continue to make a
slave of you, the Queen to treat you as a child. You are the victim of
the conflict between two characters who both perhaps desire what is best
for you, but who are so totally different that you will never know whom
or which one to please. The Crown Prince has made himself free--and how
did he do it? Only by courage and independence. He tore himself loose
from the oppressive bondage imposed on him by the caprice of others, and
won the means to complete his education. And now he sends to you from
Rheinsberg his friend, the Prince Hereditary of Baireuth, to be a
support and protection to you and to the Queen--so that here in this
Court where they drum, trumpet, and parade all day long, you may not
finally, in your despair, seize a musket yourself and join the Potsdam
Guards!

WILHELMINE.

You have a sense of humor, my dear Sonnsfeld. It is all well enough for
my brother to make plans and send out emissaries, when he is safe in
Rheinsberg. He knows that the path to the freedom he has won led past
the very foot of the scaffold. I am of the sex whose duty it is to be
patient. My father is so good at heart, gentler possibly, in his true
self, than is my mother. She indeed, absorbed in her political
ambitions, often turns from me with a harshness that accords ill with
mother-love. It is my fate to endure this life. Ask yourself, dear
friend, how could I trust to a chance adventurous stranger whom my
brother sends to me from out of his wild, artistic circle in
Rheinsberg--sends to me to be my knight and paladin? Such a thought
could have been conceived only in the brains of that group of poets.
I'll confess to you in secret that I should greatly enjoy being in the
midst of the Rheinsberg merriment, disguised of course. But I'm in
Berlin--not in Rheinsberg, and so I have gathered up my meagre scraps of
French and thanked the Prince of Baireuth for his offer in a manner
which is far more a refusal than an acceptance.

[_Hands_ SONNSFELD _the letter_.]

SONNSFELD.

And I am to dispatch this letter? [_With droll pathos_.] No, Your
Highness, I cannot have anything to do with this forbidden
correspondence.

WILHELMINE.

No joking please, Sonnsfeld. It was the only answer I could possibly
send to the Prince's tender epistle.

SONNSFELD.

Impossible!--To become an accomplice to a forbidden correspondence in
this Court might cost one's life.

WILHELMINE.

You will make me angry!--here, dispatch this letter, and quickly.

SONNSFELD.

No, Princess. But I know a better means, an absolutely sure means of
dispatching the letter to its destination, and that is--[_She glances
toward a door in the background_] deliver it yourself.

[_She slips out of a side door_.]


SCENE III


_The_ PRINCE HEREDITARY OF BAIREUTH, _dressed in the French taste of the
period, as different as possible from the king's favorite garb, comes in
cautiously._

WILHELMINE (_aside_).

The Prince of Baireuth!

THE PRINCE (_aside_).

Her very picture! It is the Princess! [_Aloud_.] I crave Your Highness'
pardon that my impatience to deliver the greeting of Your Royal brother
the Crown Prince in person--

WILHELMINE.

The Prince of Baireuth places me in no slight embarrassment by this
early visit.

PRINCE.

The visit was not paid to you, Princess, but to this noble and venerable
castle, these stairways, these galleries, these winding corridors--it
was a visit of recognizance, Your Highness, such as must precede any
important undertaking.

WILHELMINE.

Then you are preparing to do battle here?

PRINCE.

My intentions are not altogether peaceful, and yet, as Princess
Wilhelmine doubtless knows, I am compelled to confine myself to a policy
of defense solely.

WILHELMINE.

And even in this you cannot exercise too much care. [_Aside_.] The
letter is no longer necessary. [_Aloud_.] How did you leave my brother?
In good health? And thoroughly occupied?

PRINCE.

The Crown Prince leads a life of the gayest diversity in his exile. He
has made of Rheinsberg a veritable little Court of the Muses, devoted
now to serious study, now to poetic recreation. We have enjoyed
unforgettably beautiful hours there; one would hardly believe that so
much imagination could be developed and encouraged on the borders of
Mecklenburg! We paint, we build, we model, we write. The regiment which
is under the immediate command of our talented Prince serves merely to
carry out, by military evolutions, the strategic descriptions of
Polybius. In short, I should deeply regret leaving so delightful a spot
had it not been for the flattering and important task intrusted to me.
Princess, the Crown Prince desires full and true information, obtained
at the source, as to the situation of his sister, his mother, here, that
he may, if necessary, advise how this situation be improved, how any
difficulties may be met.

WILHELMINE.

If it became known that I am granting an audience, here in this public
hall, to a Prince who has not yet been presented either to my father or
to my mother--I could prepare myself for several weeks in Fortress
Küstrin.

[_She bows and turns as if to go_.]

PRINCE.

Princess! Then it is really true--that which is whispered, with horror,
at every court in Europe? It is true that the King of Prussia tyrannizes
not only his court, his entire environment, but his own family as well?

WILHELMINE.

Prince, you employ too harsh an expression for what I would rather term
merely our own peculiar ceremonial. In Versailles they glide as on
butterfly wings over the polished floors. Here we tread the earth with
ringing spurs. In Versailles the Royal Family consider themselves but as
a merry company, recognizing no ties as sacred save those of
congeniality, no bond but that of--unfettered inclination. Here the
Court is merely one big middle-class family, where a prayer is said
before meat, where the parents must always be the first to speak, where
strictest obedience must, if necessary, tolerate even absurdities; where
one quarrels, out of one's mutual affection, sometimes--where we even
torture one another and make life harder for one another--all out of
love--

PRINCE.

Princess, I swear to you--this must be changed.

WILHELMINE.

And how, pray?

PRINCE.

The Crown Prince asked me to employ all conceivable means to free you
from this barbarism. I am at your service entirely--command me. His
first thought was for your mental needs. How is it with your knowledge
of French?

WILHELMINE.

The King detests all things foreign, and most of all does he detest
France, her literature, her language.

PRINCE.

The Crown Prince is aware of that. He sends you therefore, as a
beginning, a member of his Rheinsberg circle, a talkative but very
learned little man, a Frenchman, Laharpe by name--

WILHELMINE.

All instructors of the French language have been banished from Berlin by
strictest order.

PRINCE.

Laharpe will come to you without his identity becoming known.

WILHELMINE.

That is impossible. No one dare approach me who cannot first satisfy the
questioning of the Castle Guard.

PRINCE.

Cannot Laharpe instruct you in the apartments of your, Lady-in-waiting,
Fraülein von Sonnsfeld? WILHELMINE. Impossible.

PRINCE.

In the Queen's rooms, then.

WILHELMINE.

Impossible.

THE PRINCE.

By Heaven! Do they never leave you alone for one hour?

WILHELMINE.

Oh yes, two hours every Sunday--in church.

PRINCE.

But this is appalling! Why, in Versailles every Princess has her own
establishment when she is but ten years old--and even her very dolls
have their ladies-in-waiting!

WILHELMINE.

The only place which I may visit occasionally, and remain in
unaccompanied, are those rooms over there, in the lower story of the
palace.

PRINCE.

The King's private library, no doubt?

WILHELMINE.

No.

PRINCE.

A gallery of family portraits?

WILHELMINE.

Do you see the smoke issuing from the open window?

PRINCE.

That is--oh, it cannot be--the kitchen?

WILHELMINE.

Not exactly--but hardly much better. It is, I have the honor to inform
you, the Royal Prussian Laundry. Yes, Prince, the sister of the Prussian
Crown Prince is permitted to remain in that room for an hour or two if
she will, to look on at the washing, the starching, the ironing, the
sorting-out of body and house linen--

PRINCE.

This--for a Princess?

WILHELMINE.

Do you see the little window with the flower pots and the bird in a tiny
cage? The wife of our silver-cleaner lives there, and occasionally, when
the poor daughter of a King is supposed to be busied, like any
serving-maid, among the steaming pots and boilers, this same poor
Princess slips in secretly to the good woman's little room. Ah! there,
behind those flower-pots, I can laugh freely and merrily--there I can
let the little linnet feed from my hand, and I can say to myself that
with all my troubles, with all my sorrows, I am still happier than the
poor little singer in his cage. For he will never regain his freedom no
matter how sweetly he may sing ... in all the tongues of earth.

PRINCE (_aside_).

She is charming. [_Aloud_.] And Laharpe?

WILHELMINE.

If I must dare it--send the learned gentleman to me down there, Prince.
In that little room I will obey my brother's command to perfect my
French style. Among many other things I should really like to learn to
say, in most elegant and modern French, these words: "Yes I _will_ dare
to begin a new life. Remain my brother's friend--and my protector!" But
for the moment--goodby.

[_She hurries out_.]


SCENE IV


PRINCE (_alone_).

Where am I? Was that a scene from the Arabian Nights? Or am I really on
the banks of that homely river Spree which flows into the Havel? Of a
truth this Prussian Court with its queer pigtails and gaiters is more
romantic than I had thought. Laharpe down there behind the flower-pots!
Laharpe tête-à-tête with a Princess who visits the kitchen and with a
linnet which--happy bird--is privileged to bite her fingers. How
beautiful she is--much fairer than the miniature Frederick wears next
his heart! And yet I had fallen in love with this miniature. [_Looks
about him_.] There is a spell that seems to hold me in these rooms,
through which she glides like the Genius of the bower. [_Goes to the
window_.] Down there in the square, the bayonets of the parading troops
flash in the sunlight--and that door over yonder leads to the apartments
of a Princess whose possession would mean the highest bliss earth can
afford. And there--whither leads that door through which the kind
guardian of this paradise disappeared?

[_He turns toward the second door at the back, to his right._]

SONNSFELD (_comes in quickly, excitedly_).

Away Prince--away, the Queen is approaching.

PRINCE.

The Queen? Where shall I go?

SONNSFELD.

Into that room over there--you may find some way out--no one must see
you here.

[_She pushes him to an opposite side-door_.]

PRINCE.

My knowledge of the territory is growing rapidly. [_He goes out_.]


SCENE V


_The_ QUEEN _comes in, followed by two ladies-in-waiting. She motions
them to leave her. They go out. The_ QUEEN _sinks into a chair_.

QUEEN.

Has my daughter risen? I worked so late into the night that I am still
quite fatigued. These wretched politics! Have you seen Kamke?

SONNSFELD.

Your Majesty's lackey? No, Your Majesty.

QUEEN.

He's been gone so long. I sent him to the Prince of Baireuth.

PRINCE (_peeping out from the door, aside_).

To me?

QUEEN.

If I may judge by the letters the Prince brings me from my son, he
himself will one day be one of the best sovereigns of our century.

PRINCE (_aside_).

The field is all in my favor.

QUEEN.

My son, who judges men so keenly, assures me that I may trust this
Prince completely. And I need some one of force and character to aid
me; I need such a one now more than ever.

SONNSFELD (_alarmed_).

Is there--is there anything new in the air, Your Majesty?

QUEEN.

I shall need to display all my strength, all my will-power. I shall have
need of it to uphold the dignity of a monarchy whose natural head
appears to forget more and more that Prussia has recently joined the
ranks of the Great Powers of Europe.

SONNSFELD.

Your Majesty--is laying plots?

QUEEN.

I am consumed with curiosity to make the acquaintance of this Prince
whom my son considers worthy of his friendship. [SONNSFELD _motions to
the Prince_.] As soon as he arrives, dear Sonnsfeld--

SONNSFELD (_pointing to the PRINCE, who comes in_).

Kamke has just shown him in. Here he is, Your Majesty.

QUEEN (_rising_).

This is a surprise, Prince. I did not hear you enter.

PRINCE.

Your Majesty was so deeply absorbed in thought--

QUEEN (_aside_).

He has a pleasing exterior and intelligent eyes. [_Aloud_.] Did my
messenger--

PRINCE.

The good fellow met me just as I was about to leave my hotel. He gave me
Your Majesty's gracious command.

QUEEN. Prince--[_She sits down, motioning him to do the same_.]

My heartiest thanks for the letters from my worthy son. One sentence,
which I reread many times, permits me to assume that he has informed you
of a certain matter, a certain plan of mine--

PRINCE.

Certainly, Your Majesty. [_Aside_.] I haven't heard a word about it.

QUEEN.

It makes me very happy to know that in this matter, as indeed in most
things, my son and I are so completely in accord. Then you, also, think
as we do on this subject?

PRINCE.

Undoubtedly--undoubtedly, Your Majesty. [_Aside_.] If I only knew _what_
subject!

QUEEN.

My son writes me that I may rely entirely on your sympathy in this
affair.

PRINCE.

He did not exaggerate, Your Majesty. When I parted from him, his last
words, called after my moving carriage, were these: "Dear friend, my
gracious mother, the Queen, will inform you as to all further details
concerning the affair in question."

QUEEN.

That sounds very like him. I am quite ready to do as he says.

PRINCE (_aside_).

The plot thickens.

QUEEN.

You know that the Electors of Brandenburg have but recently become Kings
of Prussia. Although a Hanoverian Princess myself, I find my happiness
in Prussia's greatness, my pride in Prussia's fame. No state has such
need to be careful in the choice of its alliances, political or
matrimonial, as our own. And hence there is no subject so interesting
and so important to our country at the moment as a certain question
which is already exciting the Cabinets of Europe, a question--the answer
to which you have doubtless already guessed.

PRINCE.

I think--I may say--that I understand Your Majesty entirely. [_Aside_.]
What can she mean?

QUEEN.

No one can call me unduly proud. But if one belongs to a family which
has recently had the honor of being chosen to fill the throne of
England--if one is the daughter of a King, the wife of a King, the
mother of a future King--you will understand that in this matter of my
daughter's future--there are weighty considerations which force me to
avoid any possible political mésalliance.

PRINCE.

Mésalliance? The Princess? Your daughter [_Bewildered_.] I must
confess--I was but superficially informed of all these matters.

QUEEN.

What I am about to tell you, Prince, under the seal of your utmost
discretion, is a secret and the result of the gravest negotiations and
plans. You know what kind of a Court this is at which I live. I am
denied the influence which should be my right as mother of my country.
The King has surrounded himself with persons who have separated him from
me. I dare not think how this company of corporals and sergeants will
receive my deeply thought-out plans. How will the King be inclined in
regard to a matter that is of such decisive importance for the happiness
of his children and the fair fame of his house? In this, Prince, you see
my need of a man of your intelligence, your insight, that I may know
what to hope--or [_firmly_] if need be--what to dare!

PRINCE.

I shall be most eagerly anxious to justify Your Majesty's confidence.
[_Aside_.] Good Heavens!

QUEEN.

Let me then inform you of a secret but completed negotiation in which
all the nearest relatives of our house have already taken part, and into
the nature of which I now initiate you, too, as my son's friend. My
daughter is to become the wife of my nephew, the Prince of Wales; she
will therefore be the future Queen of England.

PRINCE (_aside_).

Zounds! A nice rival this!

QUEEN.

So you see, Prince, the importance of the issue involved! Will you
consent to mediate this question--a question of such importance to all
Europe--with my husband?

PRINCE.

I? With the King? Mediate? Oh, of course, Your Majesty, with the
greatest pleasure! [_Aside_.] What a detestable errand!

QUEEN.

Very well, then you can begin at once. The King will be here shortly.
Introduce yourself to him. Use this favorable moment to draw from him an
expression of his opinion concerning the throne of England, and let me
know the result at once.

PRINCE.

I am still quite bewildered by this--this flattering commission. And
when may I pay my respects to Your Majesty again?

QUEEN.

At almost any time. But I should prefer the evening hours, when those on
whom I can rely gather around me, while the King is with those persons
whom I mentioned a short time ago. Farewell now, my dear Prince of--oh,
dear me, now my son has forgotten to write me whether it is Ansbach or
Baireuth that you inherit. It is so easy to confuse these little
principalities. Ansbach--Baireuth--Ansbach--yes, that was it. Very well,
my dear Prince of Ansbach, remember, Prussia, Hanover and England!

[_She bows to him with proud condescension and goes out_.]


SCENE VI


PRINCE (_alone_).

The future Queen of England! And I--the Hereditary Prince of Ansbach!
That was a cruel blow of fate. And I am to mediate these matters of
international importance! This angelic being, whom I love more madly
with every breath I draw--this exquisite sister of my dear
Frederick--is destined to become a victim of political intrigue? Oh no,
she cannot possibly love the Prince of Wales; she has never seen him.
But will they consult her inclination? Will cold considerations of
politics heed the cry of her heart?--The parade is over, the suite is
entering the castle; I dare not meet the king now in this excited mood.

[_He looks about as if seeking some means of escape_. EVERSMANN _comes
in carrying a large book. He has a pen stuck in behind one ear. He
crosses to the door through which the_ QUEEN _has gone out_.]

PRINCE (_aside_).

Who's this?

[EVERSMANN _looks the_ PRINCE _over from head to foot, moves forward a
few paces, then halts again_.]

PRINCE (_aside_).

Can any one have seen me?

EVERSMANN (_goes to the door, halts again, looks at the_ PRINCE
_impudently_).

PRINCE.

Why are you looking at me, sirrah? I am the Prince Hereditary of
Baireuth.

EVERSMANN (_is quite indifferent, comes down a few steps, bows very
slightly_).

His Majesty is coming in from the parade, but does not grant audiences
in this room.

PRINCE.

I thank you for the information, my good man.

EVERSMANN.

Don't mention it, pray.

PRINCE.

And who are you?

EVERSMANN. I? [_There is along pause_.]

I am Eversmann. [_He goes out into the_ QUEEN's _room_.]

PRINCE.

Eversmann? The Minister of Finance or the Head Steward, I wonder? He
betrays parsimony in every shred of his garments. [_Drums and the sound
of presented arms is heard back_ _of the rear entrance_.] The King is
coming. The King? Why should I feel so timid, so oppressed, all of a
sudden? Does my courage fail me because I am about to confront this
curiosity of his century? I'd rather observe him from the side at first.

[_He draws back and stands close by the door to the left_.]


SCENE VII


_A loud knocking, as with a cane, is heard at the centre door_.

PRINCE.

Come in.

KING (_outside_).

Eversmann!

PRINCE.

Now, what's that?

KING (_still without, beats the door loudly with his cane_).

Eversmann!

PRINCE.

Surely this castle is haunted!

[_He slips into the door at the right_.]

KING (_knocking again, still outside_).

Eversmann! Doesn't the fellow hear?

EVERSMANN (_coming in hurriedly_).

The door is open, Your Majesty. [_Goes to centre door, opens it_.]

PRINCE (_looking in at his door_).

Your Majesty? Is that the King?

KING (_in corridor but not yet visible_).

Eversmann, have you forgotten that this is the day for revising the
books?

EVERSMANN.

No, indeed, Your Majesty. I was occupied in balancing the books of Her
Majesty the Queen.

QUEEN (_comes out from her door, listens timidly_).

Was that the King's voice?

KING (_outside_).

Eversmann, tell the castellan that eleven o'clock is closing hour for my
wife's apartment, and that, if I see a light again in her rooms until
after midnight, I will come over myself at the stroke of twelve to
search into every corner and to discover what political plot is brewing
there. You'd better tell my wife yourself, sirrah--so that she may obey
orders.

EVERSMANN.

So that she may obey orders.

QUEEN.

Miserable lackey! [_Goes out_.]

PRINCE (_aside_).

Will he go now?

KING (_outside_).

Eversmann!

EVERSMANN.

Your Majesty!

KING.

Now go to my daughter too, the Princess Wilhelmine--

[WILHELMINE _opens her door softly_.]

EVERSMANN.

To Her Royal Highness--

KING.

And tell her to have a care--this Laharpe--is a rascal.

WILHELMINE (_aside_).

Laharpe?

PRINCE (_aside_).

What's that?

KING.

Laharpe is a rascal, I say.

EVERSMANN.

A rascal.

KING.

And tell my daughter that I will teach a lesson to the Crown Prince for
sending these French vagabonds here, who pretend to be teachers of the
language and are merely ordinary, good-for-nothing wigmakers.

WILHELMINE.

How disgusting!

[_She goes out_.]

PRINCE (_aside_).

Wigmakers?

KING (_still outside_).

And now get back to the books!

EVERSMANN.

At once, Your Majesty.

KING.

Eversmann--one thing more, Eversmann!

EVERSMANN.

Your Majesty?

KING.

If you should see the Prince Hereditary of Baireuth--

PRINCE (_aside_).

It's my turn now.

KING.

That French windbag who's been hanging about Berlin since yesterday--

PRINCE (_aside_).

Pleasing description!

EVERSMANN.

I'll tell him Your Majesty will not receive him.


PRINCE (_aside_).

Rascal!

KING.

No, Eversmann, tell him I have something very important to say to
him--something very confidential.

PRINCE (_aside_).

Confidential? To me?

KING.

Concerning an important and pressing matter.

EVERSMANN.

Oh, yes, I know.

KING.

You know, sirrah? What do you know? You know nothing at all.

EVERSMANN.

I thought--one might guess--

KING.

Guess? What right have you to guess? You're not to guess at all.
Understand? Idiot! Shoulder arms, march! [_As he goes off a short roll
of drums is heard_.]

PRINCE (_crosses quickly to_ EVERSMANN).

What do you know? What do you think it is that the King has to say to
me?

EVERSMANN.

Oh, Your Highness is still here?

PRINCE.

The King wishes to speak to me. Do you know why? Tell me what you think.

EVERSMANN.

If Your Highness promises not to betray me--I think it concerns a
certain affair--between Prussia and Austria.

PRINCE.

Austria?

EVERSMANN.

Arch-Duke Leopold is willing, they say--that is if [_with a sly gesture
toward the_ PRINCESS' _room_] if Princess Wilhelmine--

PRINCE (_excited_).

The Princess?

EVERSMANN.

Sh! You will probably be chosen to conduct the negotiations between
Prussia and--

PRINCE (_beside himself_).

The Princess is--destined--

EVERSMANN.

To be the future Empress of Austria.

[_He goes out into the_ QUEEN'S _room_.]

PRINCE (_alone_).

Empress! Queen! And I--I who love her to desperation, I am to help
bring about either of these alliances? That will mean a tragedy or
[_after a pause he continues more cheerfully_]--Courage--courage--it may
turn out a comedy after all, as merry a comedy as ever was played at any
Royal Court. [_He goes out_.]



ACT II



GRUMBKOW _and_ SECKENDORF _come in with_ EVERSMANN. _The latter carries
a wide orange-colored ribbon with many stars and Orders on it, and a
gleaming sword_.


SCENE I


_The_ KING'S _room. A side door on the left; a centre door. A writing
table and chairs_.

GRUMBKOW.

It was a dispatch, you say, Eversmann?

SECKENDORF.

A dispatch from Hanover.

GRUMBKOW.

And all this elegance? The ribbon? The sword of state? What does it
mean?

EVERSMANN.

His Majesty ordered these immediately after the arrival of the dispatch.

SECKENDORF.

A dispatch from Hanover--arrived about an hour ago--_grand cordon_
commanded--sword of state--we must put these facts together,
Grumbkow--find their meaning.

EVERSMANN.

There are to be twelve plates more at table today. [_Meaningfully_.]
Thirty-six thalers are set aside for the dinner--everybody to appear in
full court dress.

SECKENDORF.

A dispatch from Hanover-_grand cordon_--sword of state--twelve plates
extra--thirty-six thalers--the combination, Grumbkow--we must find the
combination!

EVERSMANN.

When he had torn the seal from the dispatch, he wept two big tears and
said: "I'll make them all happy if I have to beat them to a jelly to do
it." And now he's all eagerness and would like to invite the whole city
to dinner.

GRUMBKOW.

On thirty-six thalers?

EVERSMANN.

The orphans in the asylum are to have new clothes.

GRUMBKOW (_startled_).

The orphans? That looks like a wedding.

SECKENDORF.

Dispatch--Hanover--thirty-six thalers--two tears--beat them all--the
meaning of that, Grumbkow?--we must put two and two together and find
it.

EVERSMANN (_startled_).

He's coming! The King!


SCENE II


_The_ KING _looks in from the side door_.

KING.

Good morning! Good morning! Hope you slept well, gentlemen. Well, you
rascal, where's that frippery? What's this--the English orders are
missing? Fasten it on well. I don't want the fol-dols knocking about my
knees.

EVERSMANN (_as if joking_).

Is there something so important on hand? Doesn't Your Majesty want the
crown also?

KING.

The crown! Idiot! [_He comes out_.] You can be glad that you don't have
to wear it, sirrah! Off with you now. Eversmann, and see that everything
is in order. [EVERSMANN _goes out_.] Good morning, Grumbkow and
Seckendorf. No time for you now--my compliments to the State of Prussia
and I beg to be left to myself today. Good morning--good morning.

[_The two ministers prepare reluctantly to depart_.]

GRUMBKOW (_in the door_).

Your Majesty is in such a merry mood--

SECKENDORF.

Could it be the arrival of the courier--? KING (_indifferently_). Oh,
yes. A courier came--

GRUMBKOW.

From Hanover?

KING.

From Hanover.

SECKENDORF.

With news of importance, Your Majesty?

KING.

News of importance!

GRUMBKOW.

Concerning English affairs, doubtless?

KING.

English affairs!

SECKENDORF.

Doubtless the East Indian commercial treaties.

KING.

No--no.

GRUMBKOW.

The Dutch shipping agreement?

KING (_enjoying their curiosity_).

Something of that nature. Good morning, gentlemen.

GRUMBKOW (_aside_).

He is in a desperate mood again.

SECKENDORF (_aside, going out_).

Thirty-six thalers--twelve places--the orphans--we must find the
combination! [_They go out_.]


SCENE III


KING.

They've gone. At last I have a moment to myself. [EVERSMANN _comes in_.]
I am supremely happy.

EVERSMANN.

My respectful congratulations.

KING.

Thankee-now just imagine--oh, yes--no. [_Aside_.] No one must know of
it.

EVERSMANN.

Did Your Majesty intend to--

KING.

Change my clothes? Yes--take this coat off; we'll spare no expense. They
shall see that I possess wealth; they shall see that though I may be
parsimonious ordinarily, still I can spend as well as any of them when
an occasion offers. An occasion like this--[_with an out-burst_.]
Eversmann, just imagine! [_Remembering_.] Oh, yes.

EVERSMANN (_takes off the_ KING'S _coat_).

Will Your Majesty put on the embroidered uniform?

KING.

The embroidered uniform, Eversmann. I am expecting guests to whom all
honor must be shown. Great honor--for when it concerns the arrival of
persons who--[_He sits down_.] Take off my boots. [EVERSMANN _pulls off
the boots with difficulty_.] Has the Prince of Baireuth been here yet?

EVERSMANN.

Is Your Majesty going to all this trouble on his account?

KING.

On his account? Possibly. [_Aside_.] I'll lead them all a dance.
[_Aloud_.] Zounds! Villain! Rascal! My corns! I believe the rogue is
hurting me on purpose--because I won't tell him anything.

EVERSMANN.

But, Your Majesty, I haven't asked any questions yet.

KING.

I'll have you asking questions! Now what are you laughing at, sirrah?
Heh? Fetch me my dressing gown until you have found the uniform.
[EVERSMANN _turns to go_.] Hey, there! Why did you laugh just now?

EVERSMANN.

Because I know--that before I have brought Your Majesty your hat Your
Majesty will have told me all about it.

KING (_threatening him with his cane_).

You rascal--how dare you?

EVERSMANN (_retiring toward the door_).

Your Majesty can't keep a secret. There is only one thing Your Majesty
can hold fast to, and that is--_your money_! Ha! ha! I'll fetch the
dressing-gown. [_He goes out_.]


SCENE IV


KING (_sitting in his shirt-sleeves_).

He's right. It burns my heart out. But they shan't know. Not any of
them--they shan't. They've spoiled my pet plans before now. I'll play a
different game, this time, and I'll send _all_ the camels through the
needle's eye at once. They think I'm on the side of Austria. But no--ha!
ha! England's own offer, brought by the Hanoverian courier, was a great
surprise to me--he! he! England is my wife's idea--therefore I am for
England, too--and soon we'll have the wedding and the christening, ha!
ha!

[_A lackey comes in, announces_.]

LACKEY.

His Highness the Prince Hereditary of Baireuth.

KING.

Pleased to receive him.

[_The lackey goes out and the_ PRINCE _comes in_.]

PRINCE (_aside_).

Are these old crosspatch's apartments? [_To the_ KING.] That's the
King's study in there, isn't it?

KING.

Yes--at your service.

PRINCE.

Go in and announce me. I'm the Prince of Baireuth.

KING (_surprised, aside_).

What does he take me for?

PRINCE.

What fashion is this? Are you in the King's service? Is this the style
in which to receive guests to whom His Majesty has promised an audience?

KING.

Then Your Highness--wishes to speak to--to the King of Prussia?

PRINCE.

You heard me say so, did you not? Announce me.

KING.

At once, Your Highness. [_Turns to go_.]

PRINCE.

Is this the way to go into your master's presence? In your
shirt-sleeves?

KING.

I'm--I'm on a very confidential footing with the King. [_He goes out_.]

PRINCE (_alone_).

This is a strange Royal Household indeed! The servants stand about the
anterooms in their shirt-sleeves--doubtless from motives of economy to
save their liveries. Well, the great hour has arrived--the die will
fall. Wilhelmine--she--she alone I love--and she is to consent to unite
herself to the painted picture of a Prince of Wales--the colored
silhouette of an Austrian Arch-Duke whom she has never seen! Ah, no, my
fate rests on the Genius of Love--on chance, which may be even kinder to
me than I expect. Her parents are of divided minds--thereby do I gain
time to win Wilhelmine's heart--for myself. The King is coming. Now I
can listen to his favorable opinions regarding--Austria.


SCENE V


_The_ KING _comes in, in dress uniform, with the grand cordon_.

PRINCE (_looking at him_).

Is that not--

KING.

You are surprised? It was a slight mistake in identity.

PRINCE (_embarrassed_).

Your Majesty--I am a stranger--

KING.

It's of no consequence. You were deucedly insolent--but my people are
thick-skinned. Well--I want to speak to you, my dear Prince of Baireuth.
Are you just come from Baireuth?

PRINCE.

Yes, Your Majesty--that is, I left Baireuth three years ago.

KING.

And where were you all this time?

PRINCE.

In--in England.

KING.

Ah--you spent much time in England?

PRINCE (_aside_).

I suppose he wants me to help him with Austria, and to disparage
England. [_Aloud_.] In England? Yes, quite time enough to learn all
about that unmannerly and extremely ridiculous country and its ways.

KING:

What's that? England ridiculous? Here, here, young friend--_we_ have
some distance to go yet before we reach the point where England stands
today. H'm--have you been in Italy? Or in Austria--or thereabouts?

PRINCE (_aside_).

Does he favor England? I thought it was Austria--yes, he favors Austria.
[_Aloud_.] Austria? Surely; a wonderful country--such development of
industry--and commerce--such life and activity in all directions!

KING.

Activity? H'm! The activity in Austria isn't dangerous yet!

PRINCE (_aside_).

Then he does not favor Austria. I fancy I'm not ingratiating myself at
all.

KING (_aside_).

Has Seckendorf, or any of the others, been talking to him? Is he trying
to please me? [_Aloud_.] A nice little country, that Baireuth of yours.
Soil somewhat stony, though!--doesn't yield your father much revenue, I
dare say!

PRINCE.

We're learning to improve the soil. [_Aside_.] These geographical
prejudices!

KING.

Trying to improve it by the pleasure palaces your father is building?
What's got into the man? Puts up one gimcrack after another, as if he
were Louis Quatorze--and runs his country into debt meanwhile. About how
much debt does your country carry?

PRINCE (_aside_).

I don't know that myself. [_Aloud, saucily_.] Ten millions.

KING.

Ten millions?

PRINCE.

More or less.

KING.

Good heavens! Who is to pay that debt eventually? And with such a state
of things in the exchequer you're traveling about Europe, taking money
out of the country?

PRINCE.

I'm completing my education, sire.

KING.

In Versailles? In Rheinsburg? Well, never mind, we've had enough of
that. [_He whistles the_ _first bars of the Dessauer March_.] Tell me,
you've taken part in those heathenish performances--at my son's Court, I
mean?

PRINCE.

The part of a confidant, Your Majesty.

KING.

Good! It was about these heathenish performances that I wanted to speak
to you. Prince, they tell me you are a man of taste, a man who is well
acquainted with those godless Greek and Roman doings. As it is in my
mind to celebrate my daughter's wedding with all pomp worthy of my
crown--I want to ask you--to consult with my son--as to how most
gracefully and amusingly to entertain the Courts of Poland, Saxony,
Brunswick and Mecklenburg, who will all be here for an entire week--in a
word, how we can win much honor and glory by this wedding.

PRINCE.

Wedding? The Princess--your daughter's wedding?

KING.

Yes, Prince. My artillery will furnish the salutes, and I will see to the
reviews and parades my self. But it is in the evening that our guests grow
weary in Berlin--they go to sleep in their chairs. Beer drinking and pipe
smoking is not yet to every one's taste. We'll have to swim with the
stream, therefore, and provide suitable amusements--illumination, operas,
allegorical presentations, and such fol-da-rol--all about Prussia and
England.

PRINCE.

England?

KING (_rises_).

Zounds! that ran over my tongue like a hare hurrying across
the highway. H'm--I mean a sort of spectacle--oh, say
unicorn--eagle--eagle--unicorn--leopard--intermingled--Prussia and
England--and it must be in rhyme--in verse, as it were.

PRINCE.

England? This news comes with such a surprise! The whole country,
Europe--the world--will wonder how England came to deserve such honor.

KING.

Oh, ho! don't flatter the old--lackey! It's an old affair, this one with
England; my wife has been working at it for years.

PRINCE.

The Queen? Why, I fancied--that Her Majesty the Queen was much more in
favor of Austria--

KING. Austria? [_Aside_.]

I might have known she would want to put her own will through. [_Aloud
with decision_.] No. I received today a dispatch from our Ambassador,
who assures me that England is thinking seriously of this plan, of this
marriage arranged in all secrecy. The Prince of Wales has taken ship
from England; it is supposed that he is already landed on the Hanoverian
coast. Meanwhile, a plenipotentiary has left London, in strictest
_incognito_, on his way to treat with me concerning all the details of
the marriage. The envoy is likely to arrive at any moment. You would
place me under obligations to you, therefore--

PRINCE (_in despair_).

Shall it be a pastoral masque?

KING.

Yes. And the Crown Prince can play the flute for it, since he has
learned that art behind my back.

PRINCE (_turns to go, but comes back_).

And the ladies and gentlemen of the Court are to act in it?

KING.

Surely. Give every one of them something to say, only not me. But
Grumbkow must act in it. Yes, Grumbkow must be in it--and the ladies
Viereck and Sonnsfeld--and Seckendorf--and--

PRINCE (_as above_).

Must it be in English or in French?

KING.

Neither. In German, good, pure, fiery German--High German, you
understand, not the Berlin flavor. [_Confidentially_.] And if you could
bring in a little Dutch somewhere--certain considerations of commerce
would render that very pleasing to me; it will be spoken of in the
papers and the Ambassador of Holland will be there--you see, it's about
the importation of tobacco. [_Makes gestures as of smoking and whispers
into the_ PRINCE'S _ear_.] But I suppose a fine young gentleman like
yourself doesn't smoke.

PRINCE (_in despair_).

No, Your Majesty--but my imagination is smoking like any volcano
already.

A LACKEY (_coming in_).

The Privy Councilors urgently pray Your Majesty to receive them.

KING.

Gad, but they must be eaten up by curiosity! Bring them in. [_The lackey
goes out_.] Well, as I was saying--an allegorical marriage
masque--that's what. Not quite in the style of Versailles. And yet I
want the pre-marital feast to be fine enough to compare favorably with
the one they rigged up in Dresden. Now--as for Holland. Put in some
verses about the colonies, Prince, about the land where tobacco grows.
You know--it's the land where the--

PRINCE (_beside himself_).

Where the Bong-tree grows! [_He goes out_.]


SCENE VI


GRUMBKOW _and_ SECKENDORF _come in. Each carries under his arm a small
bundle of red-bound books_.

GRUMBKOW.

Forgive us, Your Majesty--but it is incredible that such unprecedented
crimes should occur in the very bosom of the Royal Family!

KING.

What's the matter now?

GRUMBKOW.

Your Majesty has already been informed about the Frenchman who was found
wandering through the streets of Berlin without any proper passport or
identification, the man who had the temerity to say he had come to teach
Princess Wilhelmine his language.

KING.

It was only a wigmaker from Orleans.

SECKENDORF.

Oh, but we have discovered further complications, Your Majesty! Books
were found in this man's possession, books which point to a dangerous
connection with Rheinsberg.

GRUMBKOW.

Convince yourself, Your Majesty. These immoral French writings are all
marked with the initials of His Highness the Crown Prince.

SECKENDORF.

F.P.R.

GRUMBKOW.

Frédéric, Prince Royal.

[_The_ KING _starts in anger, takes up one of the books and then touches
the bell_. EVERSMANN _comes in_.]

KING.

Eversman [_with conscious impressiveness_], my spectacles! [EVERSMANN
_goes out and returns again with a big pair of glasses_.] The
Attorney-General must make a thorough examination of this vagrant's
papers.... I will not have these French clowns in my country. [_He looks
through one of the books_.] The Crown Prince's seal--But no--no ... the
vagabond must have stolen it from him.

GRUMBKOW.

Or else the books were intended for the Princess' instruction.

KING.

This sort of book? These French--hold! hold! what have we here--is this
not the disgusting novel written by the hunchback Scarron, the husband
of the fine Madame Maintenon--his notorious satire upon our Court?

GRUMBKOW AND EVERSMANN (_together_).

Our Court?

KING (_turning the leaves_).

A satire on us all--on me--on Seckendorf, Grumbkow, Eversmann.

EVERSMANN.

On me, too? KING (_serious_).

The Crown Prince has underscored most of it, that it may be better
understood. Here is a Marshal with the nickname _le chicaneur_. You know
that's meant for you, Grumbkow.

GRUMBKOW.

Outrageous!

KING.

The Ambassador, Vicomte de la Rancune, otherwise _le petit combinateur_.
That's you, Seckendorf.

SECKENDORF.

It's--it's an international insult.

KING.

And he called Eversmann _la rapinière_, or, as we would say, Old
Rapacity!

EVERSMANN.

The rogue! And such books find their way into the country--marked
properly by the Crown Prince at that!

KING.

Can Wilhelmine be a party to this? That would indeed be scandalous. The
Attorney-General must make a thorough investigation. [_In extreme
anger_.] Isn't it possible for me to have a single quiet moment?

EVERSMANN.

Your Majesty, shall I take these ungodly books to the executioner, to
have them burned?

KING.

No. I wouldn't use them even to light my pipe--not even as bonfires for
our festivities. Gentlemen, shake this matter off, as I have done. This
evening, over our glowing pipes, and in the enjoyment of a glass of good
German beer, we also can be just as witty at the expense of Versailles
and the entire French cabinet.

GRUMBKOW AND SECKENDORF (_together, aside_).

Bonfires for the festivities?

EVERSMANN.

But the books are to be burned, Your Majesty?

KING.

Yes, in another manner. Send them out to the powder mills by the
Oranienburger gate. They can make cartridges for my grenadiers out of
them. [_He goes out_.]

GRUMBKOW, SECKENDORF, EVERSMANN (_aside_). Festivities?

[_They go out_.]


SCENE VII


_The scene changes to the room of Act I_.

BARONET HOTHAM _comes in cautiously through the centre door, followed
by_ KAMKE.

HOTHAM.

A hall with four doors? Quite right. The Princess' room there? And the
Queen's here? Thanks, good friend. [KAMKE _goes out_.] Baronet Hotham is
preserving his _incognito_ to the extent of becoming entirely invisible.
I've smuggled myself into the country from London--by way of Hanover--as
if I were a bale of prohibited merchandise. [_Wipes his forehead_.] The
deuce take this equestrian official business, where a man needs have the
manners of a dandy with the unfeeling bones of a postilion. For four
days I've scarcely been out of the saddle. [_He throws himself into a
chair_.] Gad! if the nations knew how a man has to win his way through
to the Foreign Office by years of courier-riding, they'd not think it
strange that their statesmen, grown mature, seem disinclined to trip the
light fantastic. Faith, it weighs one's pocket heavily, this carrying a
kingdom about with one. [_He slaps his right coat-pocket_.] Here lies
the crown of England. [_Now the left coat-pocket_.] Here the crown of
Scotland--and here, in my waistcoat pocket, is Ireland. What shall I
take from herein exchange? [_He looks about_.] Is the gilding real? It
looks deuced niggardly and close-fisted. There's space enough in these
great halls, but I'll wager there are many mice here. It's as quiet as
an English Sunday. [_Rises_.] There's some one coming.

[_Rises_ PRINCE _opens the centre door, then halts on the threshold as
if in despair_.]

HOTHAM (_in surprise_).

Well?

[_The_ PRINCE _comes down a step and claps his hand to his forehead_.]

HOTHAM.

I believe he's writing verses.

[_The_ PRINCE _moves as before, toward the_ PRINCESS' _door, then sees_
HOTHAM.]

PRINCE.

What? Who--who is this I see?

HOTHAM (_surprised_).

Do my eyes deceive me?

PRINCE.

Hotham! Is it possible? You here in Berlin, friend?

HOTHAM.

Why, what is the matter, Prince?

PRINCE.

Think of meeting you--you dear, excellent fellow--and just at the very
moment when my despair threatened to overcome me! Is it really true?
Where do you come from? From Paris?

HOTHAM.

I've just come from England, Prince, with the very best greetings from
our mutual friends and a special commission to capture you and bring you
back to the race-track, to the hunting field, and the boxing ring, which
you so enjoyed.

PRINCE.

Alas, Hotham--all those pleasures are over for me!

HOTHAM.

Has your father cut you off from the succession?

PRINCE.

Ah, do not touch that sensitive wound! Fetch me, instead, the Empire of
Morocco.

HOTHAM.

You are ill of a fever, Prince, or else you need a friend to aid you
with his sane mind.

PRINCE.

Hotham, you are a genius--many an intrigue of your country's foes will
be shattered against that brain of yours. But you cannot help me.

HOTHAM.

I wish that I could, Prince. I am so deeply in your debt for a hundred
good services rendered me during your sojourn in England. It was your
influence that put me in touch with our leading statesmen; you opened
the diplomatic career to me. To you I owe all that I am and have--my
brain is at your service, let it think for you; my arm is at your
service, let it act for you.

PRINCE.

Hotham, I'm in a most peculiar situation--

HOTHAM.

I will devote my very life to your service. What would I be without you?
To you I owe this flattering mission, to you I owe my very presence
here.

PRINCE.

Yes--why _are_ you here?

HOTHAM (_looks about_).

It is an affair of the greatest secrecy. But if you desire I shall not
hesitate to tell you what it is.

PRINCE. (_absently_).

I am not curious. Will it keep you here long?

HOTHAM.

That depends upon circumstances--circumstances of a most delicate
nature.

PRINCE.

An affair of honor?

HOTHAM (_low_).

It concerns a possible marriage contract--between Princess Wilhelmine
and the Prince of Wales.

PRINCE (_as if beside himself_).

You? You are the ambassador of whom the King spoke to me just now?

HOTHAM.

Has the King been informed already?

PRINCE.

Then you--you are that irresistibly clever diplomat whom they are
awaiting with open arms?

HOTHAM.

Does the King really look with favor upon this marriage with the Prince
of Wales?

PRINCE.

Horrible! I picked this man for a genius from among a thousand others. I
took him from Paris, and put him into English diplomacy and now I must
suffer because he does honor to my judgment. Let me tell you, then, my
friend, that the King and the Queen, quite ignorant of their mutual
agreement, are both heartily desirous of this marriage and all of its
implications. But you are to know also that Princess Wilhelmine, the
unhappy sacrifice of your political ambitions, is loved by a prince who
cannot compete in power or position with your Prince of Wales, but who
in devotion, love, passion so far outdistances all and any crowned
suitors for the hand of this angel as heaven, nay, as paradise,
outdistances earth--and that this prince is--myself.

HOTHAM.

This is indeed a discovery I did not dream of, and I must, unhappily,
add not a pleasant one. But if you ask in due form, why should they not
grant you the hand of the Princess?

PRINCE.

Grant it to me? A petty German sovereign When they have the choice of
future Kings and Emperors? Speak of me to the Queen and you will
discover that she invariably confuses Baireuth with Ansbach.

HOTHAM.

The discovery is all the less pleasing in that I, as envoy of my
government, must do all I can to bring about the marriage.

PRINCE.

Of course, you must justify my recommendation.

HOTHAM.

And yet I take the liberty of suggesting that possibly--under certain
conditions--this marriage with England might not come about. Of a truth,
Prince, take courage! Circumstances might arise which would not only
give me the right, but would even make it my duty to give up all
thoughts of the match.

PRINCE.

You revive my very soul.

HOTHAM.

Your Highness, it is not the Prince of Wales whom I represent here. The
English nation, the cabinet, the Houses of Parliament send me. You are
aware, Prince, your sojourn in England must have made it plain to you
that the house of Hanover was called to the throne of England under
conditions which make it the duty of that house to subordinate its own
personal desires to the general welfare of the nation. Whether or not
the Prince of Wales feels any personal interest in his cousin is of
little moment. Parliament takes no cognizance of whether they love each
other or not. The Prince of Wales, as future King of England, will
contract any matrimonial alliance that is suggested to him as necessary
to the national welfare. An alliance with the dynasty of the rising
young kingdom of Prussia seems, under the present political
constellation, to be the most favorable.

PRINCE.

And this holds out some hope for me?

HOTHAM.

There lies no hope in this unfortunate mission of mine, but in one of
its clauses which states that the marriage, if all else be favorable,
may be concluded only on this condition [_looking about cautiously_]:
that certain English manufacturers shut out by Prussia be readmitted
into the country [_softly_] on acceptable terms.

PRINCE.

And into this--this mercantile scheming you would mingle a question of
love--an affair of the heart?

HOTHAM.

I am here to speak for the hearts of our merchants, hearts that beat
warmly for the throne, but still more warmly for their balance-sheets.
If our factories have nothing to hope for, then, Prince [_takes his
hands_], my protector, my patron, then I am all yours. And you shall see
that I have other talents besides those of diplomacy.

PRINCE.

Talents to awaken a hope on which the bitterest disappointment must
follow.

HOTHAM.

Wait, Prince, wait and trust--

PRINCE.

To the counting-room?

HOTHAM.

Why not? And when, in case the King will not agree to the new treaties,
I have devoted myself entirely to your cause, when you under stand that
my heart beats high in gratitude to a Prince whom I met by mere chance
and who has been my benefactor--when you have finally won the heart and
hand of the Princess, then all I shall ask of Your Highness, as a German
sovereign at the Diet of Regensburg, in Germany's very heart, is merely
your assistance in obtaining from the German Empire some little
concession for our harmless, innocent--manufactures.

KAMKE (_opens the door to the right_).

HOTHAM.

Everything else later. For the present--trust me. Over there are the
Queen's apartments. Farewell. [_He goes out_.]


SCENE VIII


PRINCE (_alone_).

Land! Land in sight! Something, surely, can be done now! With Hotham at
my right hand, I need only some female reinforcement at my left. The
moment seems favorable. I will try to draw little Sonnsfeld, the
Princess' lady-in-waiting, into the plot. She is waiting in the
anteroom. I'll knock. [_He goes softly to the_ PRINCESS' _door and
knocks_]. I hear a sound. [_He knocks again_.] The rustle of a gown--it
is she. [_He draws back a step and turns_.] First one must take these
little outposts and then--to the main battle.

[WILHELMINE _comes in_.]

PRINCE (_startled_).

Ah, it is you--yourself!

WILHELMINE.

Oh, then it was you, Prince? I have reason to be very angry with you.

PRINCE.

With me, Your Highness? Why with me?

WILHELMINE.

As if you did not know the insult you have offered me.

PRINCE.

Princess, would you drive me mad? I offer _you_ an insult?

WILHELMINE.

Have you not heard what sort of a person this learned Laharpe of yours
really is?

PRINCE.

Princess, Laharpe is one of the most intelligent of men and possessed of
a pretty wit. One might search long among your scholars here in Berlin
before finding his equal in cultivation.

WILHELMINE.

He is a wigmaker from Orleans!

PRINCE.

But I assure you, Princess, he is not a wigmaker. It is true Laharpe
does understand the splitting of hairs, but only in scientific
controversy; it is true he does use paint and powder, in that he paints
his thoughts in words of elegance, and lays on them the powder of
ingenious sophistry--an art that is better understood in France than
here. It is unfortunate enough, Your Highness, that your royal father's
kingdom should be in such bad repute that foreigners of wit, poetry, and
cultivation can be admitted only when they come bearing the passport of
wigmakers.

WILHELMINE.

But our plan has come to naught; Laharpe has been banished.

PRINCE.

A weak reflection of his brilliancy has remained, Princess. Do not think
me quite unworthy of taking his place. Grant me the blessed
consciousness of having aided you to escape a situation which passes all
bounds of filial obedience.

WILHELMINE.

Prince--this language--

PRINCE.

It is the language of a feeling I can no longer control, of an
indignation I can no longer suppress. Princess, do you know that you
are destined as a sacrifice to political and commercial intrigue? That
you are to be sent to England in exchange for the produce of English
factories?

WILHELMINE (_in indignation_).

Who says that?

PRINCE.

Far be it from me to pass judgment on your desires--far be it from me to
inquire if it may not surprise, perhaps even please your ambitions when
you hear that you might win even an Imperial crown--but, if you love the
Prince of Wales--

WILHELMINE.

The Prince of Wales? Who says that I love him?

PRINCE.

Your mother, who presupposes it--your father, who commands it.

WILHELMINE.

The Prince of Wales? My cousin, whom I have never seen? Who has never
betrayed the slightest interest in me? A Prince whose loose living has
made me despise him!

PRINCE.

Then you do not love the Prince?

WILHELMINE.

My heart is free. And no power on earth can force me to give it to any
man but to him whom I shall choose myself.

PRINCE.

Do I hear aright?

WILHELMINE.

I have been obedient and dutiful from the very first stirring of my
personal consciousness. I have never had a will of my own, or dared, if
I had that will, to give it expression. But when they would take the one
thing from me, the one thing that is still mine after all these years of
humiliation, my own inalienable possession, my heart's free choice--then
indeed the bottomless depths of my obedience will be found exhausted. I
feel that my brother was justified in throwing off such a yoke--and I
will show the world that I am indeed his sister.

PRINCE.

Princess! [_Aside._] What can I do--it is too much joy--too much bliss!
[_Aloud._] Princess! the green garlands on the little window down there,
the potted flowers offer a secret retreat--the little linnet in his cage
is impatient for the return of his beautiful and benign mistress.

WILHELMINE (_drawing her hand from his_).

You would--

PRINCE.

I would take the place of that misjudged and slandered scholar. And down
there, alone with you, not worried by threatening footfalls in the
corridors, undisturbed by [_noise of drums outside_] those cruel
guardians of your freedom, I would tell the most charming Princess of
Europe that--

WILHELMINE.

You have nothing to tell me--nothing at all.

PRINCE (_throws himself at her feet_).

I would tell her that there is one Prince who, although he will one day
reign over no more than a tiny plot of German earth, still can gather
from the spell of her beauty, the kindness of her heart, the courage to
say to her--I love you--I worship you.

WILHELMINE.

Prince, what are you doing--please arise--some one is coming!

PRINCE.

Not until you promise me you will meet me there.

WILHELMINE.

Oh--if we should be surprised like this! Please get up!

PRINCE.

You will promise? You will meet me?

WILHELMINE.

Where? [_He points to the window._] There? But I am not alone even
there.

PRINCE.

Those simple people are overjoyed when their Princess consents to linger
an hour with them in their poverty. I have much to say to you, Princess,
very much. I will tell you of the plans concerning England or Austria of
which you are the central figure. And you must tell me again--in the
very best style of Versailles, which I know thoroughly--that you hate
me--that you detest me--

WILHELMINE.

Prince, you torture me--I hear voices. Some one is approaching--Please
get up.

PRINCE.

Will you promise?

WILHELMINE.

Cruel one! You won't get up--

PRINCE.

Not until you promise--

WILHELMINE.

If you promise to talk only about the plans that concern me--and about
French grammar--

PRINCE (_springing up_).

You promise? You will come? By every star in the firmament I swear I
will begin with the verb _J'aime_--I love--and you shall see how, in
comparison with the language of a devoted heart, in comparison with the
art which unadorned nature can practise, even Voltaire is only--a
wigmaker. [_He goes out._]


SCENE IX


_The noise of drums in the distance is no longer heard._ WILHELMINE
_left alone, starts as if to follow the_ PRINCE. _Then she turns back
hesitating, and walks with uncertain steps to the table. She rings the
bell._ SONNSFELD _comes in, looks at the Princess as if surprised,
speaks after a pause._

SONNSFELD.

Your Highness commands?

WILHELMINE (_as if awakening from a dream_).

I? Nothing.

SONNSFELD.

Your Highness rang?

WILHELMINE.

Yes, I did. My mantilla--my fan--the veil.

SONNSFELD.

Your Highness is going out?

WILHELMINE.

I am going out.

SONNSFELD.

Has Your Highness permission?

WILHELMINE.

Permission? Are you beginning to take that tone, too? Fetch the things I
want.

[SONNSFELD _looks at her, astounded, then goes out._]

WILHELMINE (_alone_).

I am tired of all this. I am beginning to be conscious of myself, now
that I know there is some one who recognizes my meagre worth. The
situation here is unbearable. I am weary of this unworthy subordination,
this barrack-room service.

[SONNSFELD _comes back with mantilla, fan and veil._]

WILHELMINE.

You might have chosen the mantilla with the Brussels lace.

SONNSFELD.

Your Highness--what is your purpose?

WILHELMINE.

Throw the veil about my head. Don't question everything I do. Must I
give you an accounting for every trifle?

SONNSFELD.

Good Heavens--have you joined your mother in her revolutionary ideas?

WILHELMINE.

I have joined no one. I want to show the world that a Princess of
Prussia has at least the right to pass from one court of the palace to
another of her own free will. I am tired of being tyrannized in this
way. The Grand Elector lived for me as well as for the others--the
Hohenzollerns are what they are for my sake also. Adieu. [_Holds out her
hand._] You may kiss my hand. And do not forget that I am the daughter
of a king who is forming great and important plans for his child's
future, and that this child, even though she should be stubborn enough
to refuse to acquiesce in his plans, will still be none the less a
Princess of Prussia.

[_She turns to go. The centre door opens and_ ECKHOF _comes in, followed
by three grenadiers. The door remains open._]

ECKHOF.

Halt!

SONNSFELD.

Are you to have a Guard of Honor, Princess?

ECKHOF.

Grenadiers--front!

[_Three more men come in without their muskets. The first carries a
Bible, the second a_ _soup tureen, the third a half-knitted stocking._]

ECKHOF (_comes forward and salutes the_ PRINCESS).

May it please your Royal Highness graciously to forgive me, if by reason
of a special investigation commanded by His Majesty the King, in
consequence of forbidden communication with Castle Rheinsberg, I ask
Your Highness to graciously submit to a strict room-arrest, as ordered
by His Majesty the King.

SONNSFELD.

What's that? Princess!

ECKHOF.

Likewise, His Majesty the King has graciously pleased to make the
following dispositions First grenadier, front! [_The first grenadier
marches forward with the Bible._] Your Royal Highness is to learn
chapters three to five of the Song of Solomon so thoroughly that the
Court Chaplain can examine Your Highness in the same tomorrow morning at
five o'clock. Second grenadier, front! [_The second grenadier comes
forward with the soup tureen._] The food ordered for Your Highness will
be brought up from the garrison kitchen punctually every day.

SONNSFELD (_opens the tureen_).

Dreadful stuff! Boiled beans!

ECKHOF.

Third grenadier, front! [_The third grenadier comes forward with the
half-knitted stocking._] And, finally, His Majesty the King pleases to
command Your Highness to knit, every two days, a pair of woolen
stockings for the worthy Foundling Asylum of Berlin. May it please Your
Royal Highness--this ends my orders.

SONNSFELD (_in a tone of despair_).

Princess, are these the King's plans for your future?

WILHELMINE (_trembling in excitement_).

Calm yourself, dear friend. Yes, this is the beginning of a new life
for me. The battle is on! Go to my father and tell him--

SONNSFELD.

Go to the King and tell him--[_To the_ PRINCESS.] What are they to tell
him?

WILHELMINE (_with tragic decision_).

Tell him that I--

SONNSFELD.

Tell him that we--

WILHELMINE.

That I--[_Her courage begins to fail._] That although we _will_ learn
the chapters--

SONNSFELD.

And although we _will_ eat the beans--

WILHELMINE.

It will not be our fault if [_with renewed courage_] if in the despair
of our hearts--

SONNSFELD (_tragically_).

We let fall the stitches in the orphan's stockings--

WILHELMINE.

And wish that we were merely the Princess of Reuss--

SONNSFELD.

Schleiz--

WILHELMINE.

Greiz and Lobenstein!

[_They go out angrily._]



ACT III



_The_ PRINCESS' _room. Attractive, cozy apartment. An open window to the
right. Doors centre, right and left. A cupboard, a table._


SCENE I


PRINCESS WILHELMINE _leans against the window-casing, deep in thought._
SONNSFELD _sits on the left side of the room, knitting a child's
stocking._

WILHELMINE (_aside_).

Hour after hour passes! What will the Prince think of me? Or can he have
learned my fate already?

SONNSFELD.

Did Your Highness speak?

WILHELMINE.

No, I--I merely sighed.

SONNSFELD.

It seemed as if you were talking to yourself. Don't be too melancholy.
You'll soon learn the Bible verses and I'll relieve you of most of the
knitting.

WILHELMINE.

You are too good--you are kinder to me than I have deserved of you
today. That work is tiring you--give it to me.

SONNSFELD.

No, let me have it. You take the other one that is started. In this way
we will gain time to rest later.

WILHELMINE (_listening toward the door_).

And we aren't even allowed a word with each other in freedom.

SONNSFELD (_rises and looks toward the door_).

It is cruel to let soldiers see a Princess humiliated to the extent of
knitting stockings.

WILHELMINE.

Why complain? It is--of itself, quite nicely domestic. [_She knits._]

SONNSFELD.

What would the Prince of Baireuth say if he could see you now?

WILHELMINE.

The Prince? What made you think of the Prince?

SONNSFELD.

You cannot deny that his attentions to you might be called
almost--tender--

WILHELMINE.

Almost--

SONNSFELD.

Such eyes! Such burning glances! I am very much mistaken or it was Your
Royal brother's intention, in sending this young Prince to you, to send
you at the same time the most ardent lover under the sun.

WILHELMINE.

Lovers hold more with the moon.

SONNSFELD.

And he shows so great an admiration for you that I am again mistaken if
our sentry outside the door there has not already in his pocket a
billet-doux addressed to Your Highness--a billet-doux written by the
Prince.

WILHELMINE.

Sonnsfeld! What power of combination!

SONNSFELD.

Almost worthy of a Seckendorf, isn't it? I'll question the man, in any
case.

WILHELMINE.

Are you crazy?

SONNSFELD (_at the door_).

Hey, there, grenadier!

ECKHOF (_comes in_).

At your service, madam. SONNSFELD. Have you a letter for us?

ECKHOF.

Please Your Honor, yes.

SONNSFELD (_to the_ PRINCESS).

There you are! [_To_ ECKHOF.] From the Prince of Baireuth?

ECKHOF.

Please Your Honor, yes.

WILHELMINE.

Where is it? Did you take it?

ECKHOF.

Please Your Honor, no. [_Wheels and goes out_.]

SONNSFELD.

What a dreadful country! The general heartlessness penetrates even to
the uneducated classes.

WILHELMINE.

But how dare the Prince imagine that our sentry could forget all--all
sense of propriety in this way?

SONNSFELD.

Would you not have accepted it?

WILHELMINE.

Never!

[_A letter, attached to a little stone, is thrown in at the window_.]

SONNSFELD.

A letter? Through the window! Oh, how it frightened me!

WILHELMINE.

Pick it up.

SONNSFELD (_doing so_).

But you won't accept it, you say. It can only be from the Prince--and it
is addressed to Your Highness.

[_Gives her the letter_.]

WILHELMINE.

To me? Why, then--why shouldn't I accept it? [_She opens the letter_.]
It is--it is from the Prince. [_She reads, aside_.] "Adored one! Is
there to be no end to these cruelties? Have they begun to torture you
with England yet? They will come to you and will try to force you into
this marriage. But Baronet Hotham, the English Envoy, is my friend and
your friend, and will work for you while he seems to be working against
you. It is a dangerous game, but it means your freedom and my life. Love
comprehends--Love."

SONNSFELD.

May I hear?

WILHELMINE.

It is a little message of sympathy--from--from one of our faithful
servants.

SONNSFELD.

The good people are all so fond of you. You must answer it, I suppose?

WILHELMINE. Just a word or two-it is really of no importance whatever.

SONNSFELD. But we need not offend any one. [_Aside_.] What clever
pretending! [_Aloud_.] Let me try if our grenadier is still as stubborn
as before.

WILHELMINE.

What are you thinking of?

SONNSFELD.

We'll make the trial. [_She goes to the door_.] Here you--stern
warrior--

ECKHOF (_in the door_).

At your service.

SONNSFELD.

Why didn't you take the letter?

ECKHOF.

It would mean running the gauntlet for me.

SONNSFELD.

We would compensate you for any such punishment.

ECKHOF.

You could not.

SONNSFELD.

Would money be no compensation?

ECKHOF.

Even if shame could be healed by money, that would be the one remedy you
couldn't apply.

WILHELMINE.

And why?

ECKHOF.

Because Your Highness hasn't any money.

SONNSFELD.

Dreadful creature!

WILHELMINE (_aside_).

He knows our situation only too well. We must give up all thought of
sending an answer.

ECKHOF.

May I go now?

SONNSFELD.

Impertinent creature! What is your name?

ECKHOF.

Eckhof.

SONNSFELD.

Where were you born?

ECKHOF. Hamburg.

SONNSFELD.

What have you learned?

ECKHOF. Nothing.

WILHELMINE.

Nothing? That is little enough.

SONNSFELD.

What did you want to make of yourself?

ECKHOF.

Everything.

WILHELMINE (_aside_).

A strange man! Let us cross-examine him. It will afford us a little
amusement at least.

SONNSFELD (_to_ ECKHOF).

We are not clever enough to understand such witty answers. How do you
reconcile nothing with everything.

ECKHOF.

I grew up in a theatre, but all I ever learned there was to clean the
lamps. Our manager discharged his company and I was compelled to take
service with a secretary in the post office. But when my new master's
wife demanded that I should climb up behind her carriage, as her
footman, I took to wandering again. I begged my way to Schwerin and a
learned man of the law made me his clerk. The post office and the
courtroom were just two new sorts of theatre for me. The addresses on
the letters excited my imagination, the lawsuits gave my brain exercise.
The desire to create, upon the stage, true pictures of human greatness
and human degradation, to depict vice and virtue in reality's own
colors, still inspired me, but I saw no opportunity to satisfy it. Then,
in a reckless moment, when I had sought to drown my melancholy in drink,
fate threw me into the hands of the Prussian recruiting officers. I was
dazzled by the handful of silver they offered me; for its sake I
bartered away my golden freedom. Since that day I carry the musket. The
noisy drums drown the longing that awakens a thousand times a day, the
longing for an Art that still calls me as to a sacred mission; the
uniform smothers the impulse to create human nobility; and in these
drilled, unnatural motions of my limbs, my free will and my sense
of personal dignity will perish at last. From such a fate there is no
release for the poor bought soldier--no release but death.

WILHELMINE (_aside, sadly_).

It is a picture of my own sorrow.

SONNSFELD.

That is all very well, but you really should be glad that now you are
_something_--as you were nothing before and had not learned any trade.

ECKHOF.

I learned little from books but much from life. I understand something
of music.

SONNSFELD.

Of music? Ah, then you can entertain this poor imprisoned Princess. Your
Highness, where is the Crown Prince's flute?

ECKHOF.

I play the violin.

SONNSFELD.

We have a violin, too. We have the Crown Prince's entire orchestra
hidden here. [_She goes to the cupboard and brings out a violin._] Here,
now play something for us and we will dance.

WILHELMINE.

What are you thinking of? With the Queen's room over there? And the King
may surprise us at any moment from the other side.

SONNSFELD.

Just a little _Française_ shall be a rehearsal for the torchlight dance
at your wedding.

WILHELMINE.

You know the King's aversion toward music and dancing.

SONNSFELD.

Here, Eckhof, take the violin-and now begin.

ECKHOF (_looks about timidly_).

But if I--[_much moved_] Heavens--it is three years since I have touched
that noble, that magical instrument.

SONNSFELD.

Come now! I'm the cavalier, Princess, and you are the lady.

[ECKHOF _plays one of the simple naïve dance tunes of the day. The two
ladies dance._]

SONNSFELD.

Bravo, Eckhof! This is going nicely--ah, what joy to dance once more!
This way now la--la--la! [_She hums the melody._]


SCENE II


_During the dance the_ KING _comes in softly through the door to the
right. He starts when he sees the dancers and the grenadier playing the
violin. They do not notice him. He comes-nearer and attempts to join the
dance unobserved._

WILHELMINE.

Sonnsfeld, that's not right! Now it's the gentleman's turn. [_Holds her
hand out behind her back_]--Like this.

[_The_ KING _takes her hand gently with one finger and dances a few
steps._]

WILHELMINE.

How clumsy, dear friend. [_Dancing._] And your hand is strangely rough
today.

[_She turns and sees the_ KING, _who had begun to hum the tune in a
gruff voice. The three start in alarm_. ECKHOF _salutes with the
violin._]

KING (_angry_).

Very nice--very pretty indeed! Are these the sayings of Solomon? Music
and dancing in my castle by broad daylight? And a Prussian grenadier
playing the violin to the prisoner he is set to watch?

SONNSFELD.

Pardon, Your Majesty--it was we who forced him.

KING.

Forced him? Forced a soldier? Forced him to violate his duty in this
devilish manner? I'll have to invent a punishment for him such as the
Prussian army has never yet seen.

WILHELMINE.

Have mercy, Your Majesty--have mercy!

KING.

I'll talk to you later. As for you, Conrad Eckhof, I know that is your
name--I will tell you what your punishment shall be. You are discharged
from the army that serves under my glorious flag, discharged in disgrace.
But you are not to be honored by being sent to a convict company or into
the worthy station of a subject. Listen to the fate I have decreed for
you. A troop of German comedians has taken quarters in the Warehouse in
the Cloister street. These mountebanks--_histriones_--are in straits
because their clown--for whom they sent to Leipzig, has not arrived. You
are to take off the honorable Prussian uniform and to join this group of
mountebanks, sent there by me, as a warning to every one. You are to
become an actor, a clown of clowns-and henceforth amuse the German nation
with your foolish and criminal jokes and quips. Shame upon you!

ECKHOF (_with a grateful glance to heaven, trying to conceal his joyful
excitement_).

An actor! Oh, I thank Your Majesty for this most gracious sentence.
Conrad Eckhof will endeavor to do honor to himself and his despised new
profession.

[_Goes out_.]

KING.

And as for you, my Lady Sonnsfeld, you may, the sooner the better, pack
up your belongings and be off to Dresden where my cousin, the Elector of
Saxony, has need of just such nymphs and graces for his court fireworks
and his ballets.

SONNSFELD (_going out, speaks aside_).

In his anger he chooses punishments that can only delight any person of
refinement. [_She goes out_.]

KING.

Wilhelmine!

WILHELMINE.

Your Majesty, what have I done that I am so unhappy as always to arouse
your displeasure?

KING.

You call me "Majesty" because you lack a daughter's heart for your
father. I have brought up my children in the good old German fashion; I
have tried to keep all French vanities and French follies far from their
childish hearts; on my throne I have tried to prove that Kings may set
an example to their subjects, an example of how the simplest honest
household may be ruled. Have I succeeded in this?

WILHELMINE.

You have punished us severely enough for our faults.

KING.

This wigmaker--who was to instruct you in all the ambiguities of the
French language--

WILHELMINE.

He was not a wigmaker.

KING. He was.

WILHELMINE.

Well, if he was, then you dislike him simply because you are so fond of
your horrid pigtail.

KING.

The pigtail is a man's best adornment. In that braided hair lies
concentrated power. A pigtail is not a wild fluttering mass of disorder
about one's head--the seat of the human soul--such as our Hottentot
dandies of today show in their long untidy hair. It expresses, instead,
a simple, pious and well-brushed order, entwined obedience, falling
gently down over the shoulders, fit symbol for a Christian gentleman.
But I am tired of this eternal quarreling with you. This present arrest
shall be the last proof of my fatherly affection. You will soon be free
and mistress of your own actions. I announce herewith that you will
shortly be able to come and go at your own discretion.

WILHELMINE.

Father!

KING.

Is that tone sincere?

WILHELMINE.

It comes from a heart that will never cease to revere the best of men.

KING.

Then you realize that I desire only your happiness? Yes, Wilhelmine, you
will soon be able to do whatever you like, you may read French books,
dance the minuet, keep an entire orchestra of musicians. I have arranged
all things for your happiness and for your freedom.

[Illustration: KING FREDERICK WILLIAM I OF PRUSSIA R. SIEMERING]

WILHELMINE. How may I understand this, father?

KING.

You will have horses and carriages, and footmen, as becomes a future
Queen.

WILHELMINE.

Queen?

KING.

You will see that I do in very truth deserve the name you gave me, the
name of the best of fathers. But still--I hear your mother.

WILHELMINE.

What--what is going to happen--

KING.

Prepare yourself for a weighty moment--the moment of your betrothal.


SCENE III


_The_ QUEEN _comes in, leaning on the arm of the_ PRINCE OF BAIREUTH.
HOTHAM _and several lackeys follow_.

WILHELMINE (_aside, surprised_).

The Prince!

[_The_ QUEEN _bows coldly to the_ KING.]

KING (_equally coldly_).

Good morning.

QUEEN (_to the_ PRINCESS).

My dear child, I here present to you the Envoy of the King of England,
Baronet Hotham.

WILHELMINE (_bows, speaks aside_).

The Prince's friend? How am I to understand all this?

KING.

Pardon me, wife, the Prince of Baireuth should take precedence. My dear
child, I present to you here the Prince Hereditary of Baireuth.

PRINCE (_bows, speaks aside to_ WILHELMINE).

Do not lose courage. It will all work out for the best.

QUEEN.

Have you good news from Ansbach, dear Prince?

PRINCE. (_aside_).

This eternal mistake of hers. [_Aloud_.] Your Majesty, I hear there is a
plan on foot to transplant Ansbach to Baireuth.

KING. (_has been only half listening_).

Hush! Let us cast aside all these earthly thoughts and plans and
prepare ourselves for a work of sacred import. Sit down by your mother,
Wilhelmine.

WILHELMINE.

What is going to happen?

KING.

You, Prince, as my natural aide--here! Baronet Hotham, you are in the
centre.

[_The lackeys place the table in the centre of the room and then go
off._]

PRINCE (_aside_).

Hotham--the commercial treaties--

[HOTHAM _sits down at the centre of the table, opens the portfolio which
he has brought with him, lays out sheets of paper, and examines his
pen._]

KING (_folding his hands_).

In God's name--[_After a pause_] If I should ask you, my faithful
spouse, companion of my life, what a happy marriage is--

QUEEN.

Has that anything to do with our daughter's wedding-contract?

KING.

Do not interrupt me. _You_ may not be conscious of it--but I am fully
aware of how much this solemn moment imports.

HOTHAM.

Please Your Majesty--I have already written "In God's name."

KING (_looks surprised and pleased_).

Did you really write that?

HOTHAM.

It is customary to print it at the head of these and similar contracts.

KING.

Printing is not as good--the letter killeth, saith the Scriptures; but
you may begin now.

HOTHAM.

We are concerned here with an affiliation between two nations which,
although differing in language, manners, and customs, still have so many
points of contact that they should seize every opportunity to come
closer to each other.

KING.

Couldn't you weave in something there about the English being really
descended from the Germans?

HOTHAM.

That would lead us too far afield.

KING.

Oh, very well, as you say. It was a good beginning.

HOTHAM.

Such an opportunity now offers in the mutually expressed wish of the
dynasties of England and Prussia, to unite in the bonds of holy
matrimony two of their illustrious scions. The Prince of Wales sues for
the hand of Princess Wilhelmine.

WILHELMINE.

The Prince of Wales?

HOTHAM.

His suit is accepted attendant upon the conditions here following.

WILHELMINE. _Accepted?_

KING.

Hush! Do not disturb this solemn procedure by idle chatter.

WILHELMINE.

But--but how is this possible--

PRINCE (_to the_ PRINCESS).

Your Highness, the conditions are but just being drawn up.

QUEEN (_aside to the_ PRINCESS).

Do not interrupt. What must the envoy of the elegant court of St. James
think of the manners of our Prussian Princesses!

KING.

These chattering women! Very good, Baronet Hotham; the beginning was
excellent. Don't you think so, Prince?

PRINCE.

Certainly, Your Majesty. [_Aside_] It was odious.

QUEEN.

And the conditions? [_Aside_] I am eager to hear about the dowry.

HOTHAM.

First paragraph--

KING.

Pardon me, I can tell you that in fewer words. I give my daughter as
dowry, forty thousand thalers, and a yearly pin-money of two thousand
thalers. I will bear the expense of the wedding. But that is all.

QUEEN (_rising_).

I trust that this is not Your Majesty's real intention. Baronet Hotham,
I beg you will not include such a declaration in the protocol.

KING (_seated_).

Not include it in the protocol? H'm--h'm--forty thousand thalers in
cash--too little?

HOTHAM.

The question of dowry will offer but little difficulty to a country as
rich as England. Far more important are the political matters which, in
the case of so intimate an alliance, must come up for especial
consideration.

KING.

Political matters?

HOTHAM.

I mean--certain questions and points of discussion which, with your
gracious permission, I would now like to present to you.

KING.

Questions? Points of discussion? Do you see anything to object to in my
daughter? [_He rises._]

HOTHAM.

Your Majesty, there are certain--advantages for both nations--

KING.

Advantages for Prussia? [_He sits down again._] You may speak then.

HOTHAM.

To take up one point. For this marriage England will confirm without
hindrance Your Majesty's investiture of the Duchies Jülich and Berg.

KING.

Very decent; thanks.

PRINCE (_aside_).

Hotham, you fox!

HOTHAM.

And furthermore Parliament declares itself willing--

KING.

Declares itself willing--

WILHELMINE.

What has Parliament to do with it? Am I marrying the two houses of
Parliament?

QUEEN (_half aloud_).

Be quiet. You don't understand. In England, all political parties have
something to say in such matters.

KING (_half aside_). Yes, child, that would be the country for your
mother, wouldn't it? Well?

HOTHAM.

Parliament declares itself willing, in case Your Majesty wishes to
complete the conquest of Swedish Pommerania, to let the matter pass
without an interpellation.

QUEEN (_pleased and excited_).

Very polite indeed. I should not have believed Parliament would be so
amiable. Just think, Wilhelmine, Parliament promises not to
interpellate.

WILHELMINE.

What sort of a new political torture is that?

KING (_to the_ PRINCESS).

To interpellate means to harass and embarrass the government by
continual contradictions, interruptions, and objections. That's why your
mother understood it at once. Much obliged, my gear Hotham. My kindest
greetings to Parliament. But continue--continue!

PRINCE (_aside_).

I am on tenter-hooks.

HOTHAM.

For these many tokens of unselfish cordiality, for further manifold
proofs of political complaisance, to be reviewed by me in detail later,
proofs of a sincere desire to be enduringly united with a brother
nation--

KING.

Well?

HOTHAM.

For all this we ask but one little concession, which would make this
marriage a true blessing for both countries.

KING.

Out with it!

HOTHAM.

Prussian industry has now reached a standard which renders England
desirous of testing its products under certain conditions of
importation. For this--

KING.

For this?

HOTHAM.

England would feel grateful if the former friendly understanding,
interrupted somewhat since Your Majesty's illustrious accession to the
throne, if the former friendly commercial understanding--

KING.

Understanding?

HOTHAM. Could be restored; and if Your Majesty would graciously decide,
on the occasion of this auspicious union, welcomed in England with such
rejoicing, to repeal, in part, the present--prohibitive regulations--

KING.

What?

HOTHAM.

In a word, England asks for a new commercial treaty.

KING.

New commercial treaty? Commercial--[_He rises, there is a slight
pause._] The meeting is adjourned.

QUEEN.

What's that?

KING.

Is it for this then, that I have sought to raise and ennoble the
civilization of my country, that I have furthered commerce and industry,
promoted shipping, given an asylum within the state to thousands of
religious refugees from France--for this, that now, as the price for the
honor of an alliance with England, I should open the door and let in the
forbidden English merchandise--to the ruin of my own subjects?

[_He goes to the table and rings. A lackey appears._]

KING.

My ministers!

QUEEN.

What? You would sacrifice your daughter's happiness?


SCENE IV


GRUMBKOW, SECKENDORF _and three generals come in._

KING.

Step nearer, gentlemen. I have allowed you to remain in uncertainty
concerning a dispatch which arrived this morning from Hanover. You shall
now hear my formal answer to it. Prince, poet, do not be alarmed. Our
festivities will take place for all that, our cannon will thunder, our
lanterns will blaze through the night. Prince, do you want to put me
under eternal obligation to you?

PRINCE (_misunderstanding_).

Your Majesty! Can it be possible?

KING.

Do you want to make me your debtor forever?

PRINCE (_joyfully_).

I? Wilhel--!

KING.

Take to horse, Prince, and ride off within the hour, as my special envoy
to Vienna.

PRINCE, GRUMBKOW AND SECKENDORF (_together_).

To Vienna?

KING.

My daughter's hand is promised to Vienna. Within a fortnight a scion of
the illustrious Imperial House will enter the walls of our capital.

HOTHAM.

Your Majesty compels me, in the eventuality of an Arch-Duke's arrival,
to make a certain declaration herewith--

KING.

And that is?

HOTHAM.

The Prince of Wales--is already here.

ALL.

The Prince of Wales--in Berlin?

HOTHAM.

The Prince of Wales arrived three hours ago.

GRUMBKOW AND SECKENDORF.

Impossible!

QUEEN (_triumphant_).

I breathe again.

KING (_in real consternation, but controling himself_).

Baronet Hotham, I confess that this news surprises, nay, moves me
greatly. But you can lay it to the account of your own egotistical
politics if I declare to you that no stranger in Berlin exists for me,
until he has been properly registered at the gates of the capital. If
you _will_ drive me to the last stand, if you would make the ground of
my own country too hot for me--then tell the Prince of Wales that
although I am deeply touched by his affection for my family, still,
under conditions threatening the peace of my country, the welfare of my
subjects--I must beg of him to return whence he came. Prince, you ride
to Vienna as envoy of this monarchy. Wilhelmine, the Imperial Crown
will console you. And as for you, Madame [_aside to the Queen_], has not
your pride found its limits at last?

QUEEN.

I have pledged my word to England.

KING (_good-naturedly_).

But if it isn't possible--

[_Comes nearer cordially, holds out his hand._]

QUEEN (_touched, hesitating_).

An hour ago, possibly--[_firm and decided again_], but now--the
personal presence of the Prince of Wales has taken the decision out of
our hands.

KING.

Very well--he who _will_ have war--[_To_ HOTHAM] Have you any other
instructions than those we have already heard?

HOTHAM.

None, Your Majesty.

KING.

Then come to me, Prince, for the contract with Vienna. A German state in
England's stead! 'Tis better so, gentlemen, better so. I will cleave to
Germany with all my soul. Foreign egotism shall teach German peoples and
Princes how to be truly united. [_He goes out into his study._ GRUMBKOW,
SECKENDORF _and the generals follow._]

QUEEN (_to_ HOTHAM).

Sir, you have been witness to a scene which confirms for you the truth
as to my position here, the truth that is not yet credited in England.
Wilhelmine, the news of the arrival of the Prince of Wales gives me
fresh hope. Ride to Vienna, Prince--become, if you must, a traitor to a
cause which will conquer, despite the intrigues of my enemies. Give me
your arm, Lord Hotham. The Prince of Wales in Berlin! I can hardly
realize it. Bring him to me and prepare him for everything--but no--do
not mention to him--those revolting forty thousand thalers.

[_She goes out with_ OTHAM.]


SCENE V


WILHELMINE.

What do you say to your friend now? The Prince of Wales in Berlin!

PRINCE.

I do not know where I am in all this tangle. Hotham is a traitor, an
ingrate who has betrayed me, betrayed us all.

WILHELMINE.

Be more cautious in the future when you talk of friendship--and love.
Farewell.

[_She turns to follow the_ QUEEN.]

PRINCE.

Princess, is this your farewell--while I prepare to meet death or
despair?

WILHELMINE.

It's not so easy to die in Vienna.

PRINCE.

And you believe that I will leave you now, when the glamour of the
personal presence of a Prince of Wales may dazzle your eye--perhaps even
your heart?

WILHELMINE.

I must, I realize it now, begin to consider my heart only from the
political point of view.

PRINCE.

You doubt my sincerity, Princess? You distrust a heart which has truly
loved but once--once and for all time--loved you, Wilhelmine!

WILHELMINE (_aside_).

Can such language be deception?

PRINCE.

I realize what I owe to you, Princess. Frankness before the world, an
honest suit for your hand--even in face of the danger of losing you
forever. I will go to the King. I will tell him, yes, I will tell him
now that I cannot do as he wishes. I will throw myself at his feet and
confess with honest sincerity that I love you. Do you wish it?

WILHELMINE (_hesitating_).

No--never, no.

PRINCE.

You are trembling, Princess. Oh, I know your dutiful heart shudders at
the thought of defying your parents, of following the call of your own
inclination. But--tell me, do you trust your father's heart?

WILHELMINE.

It is full of kindness and love.

PRINCE.

Very well, then. He has honored me, he has shown confidence in me; the
arrival of the Prince of Wales provokes him to rebuke such hardiness. I
will show him what is in my heart, and then, Wilhelmine--then? If he
refuse the hand I ask--

WILHELMINE (_turning from him_).

You will--find consolation?

PRINCE.

And if he grant it?

WILHELMINE (_overcome by her emotion, allows her heart full sway, but is
still roguish and maidenly_).


Then--I fear that you will not keep your word--to punish me for
torturing you so cruelly.

[_She goes out quickly._]


SCENE VI


PRINCE (_alone_).

She loves me. Then _one_ thing is sure! I will now take the straight
road into the very jaws of the lion. What else remains? Betrayed by
Hotham, there is naught but Wilhelmine's love--and my own courage.

[_He goes toward the_ KING'S _door._]


SCENE VII


EVERSMANN _comes from the_ KING'S _room._

EVERSMANN.

Whither, Your Highness?

PRINCE.

To the King.

EVERSMANN.

You will find him very angry.

PRINCE.

Angry at whom?

EVERSMANN.

Angry at you, Prince.

PRINCE.

You are joking!

EVERSMANN.

The Duke of Weissenfels is to undertake the mission to Vienna.

PRINCE.

What does that mean?

EVERSMANN.

Investigation by the Attorney-General--just come to the King's ears.
The man _was_ a wigmaker.

PRINCE.

You are quite mad. I must speak to the King. It concerns the most
important affair of my whole life. [_Starts for the door again._]

EVERSMANN.

Pardon me, Prince, His Majesty sends you this letter.

PRINCE (_takes the letter_).

"To my son, the Crown Prince of Prussia, to be delivered personally in
Rheinsberg within twenty-four hours; kindness of the Prince of
Baireuth." Why this--this is a formal decree of banishment from Berlin!
How could it happen just now?

EVERSMANN.

It's merely a polite hint. Everything is discovered--and not only the
matter of _Rapinière._ His Majesty knows you now as the emissary of the
Crown Prince, sent to stir up a revolution here in Berlin and in the
palace. The wigmaker confessed it all. I suspected Your Highness from
the first. Wish you a pleasant journey to Rheinsberg.

[_He goes out._]

PRINCE.

Betrayed--forsaken by all--

HOTHAM (_coming hastily from the_ QUEEN'S _room_).

Good news, Prince. The Princess is under arrest again.

PRINCE.

And you call that good news, traitor!

HOTHAM.

There is more, Prince. The traitor is pleased to hear that you also have
fallen under the ban of the royal displeasure.

PRINCE.

You are pleased to hear that?

HOTHAM.

The traitor assures you on his honor that there could be no better means
of fulfilling your heart's desire.

PRINCE.

Would you drive me mad?

HOTHAM.

To throw a preliminary cold shower on your doubt [_looks about
cautiously_] kindly read this portion of a letter I have but just
received.

PRINCE.

A billet-doux from your Prince of Wales?

HOTHAM.

Read it, please.

PRINCE (_reads_).

"London, June the fifth--"

HOTHAM (_indicating a line lower down_).

There--read there.

PRINCE (_reads_).

"You ask for news from court. We are very poor in such news just now.
The Prince of Wales is still hunting wild boars in the Welsh mountains."
The Prince is--not in Berlin?

HOTHAM (_still cautious, but smiling_).

Just as little as you are in the Palace of St. James at this moment.

PRINCE.

But what am I to think? What am I to believe?

HOTHAM.

You are to believe that you could well afford to place more confidence
in Hotham's friendship, devotion--and cleverness.

PRINCE.

The Prince of Wales is not in Berlin?

HOTHAM.

H'st! _We_ know he is not here--but he _is_ here for all the others. The
Prince of Wales is here, there, behind the screen, up the chimney, in
the air, under the earth, nowhere where he would be in our way, but
anywhere where we might need him for the merriest comedy in all the
world.

PRINCE.

Hotham! Then I am not deceived in your friendship?

HOTHAM.

Just as little, since our commercial treaty is doomed, as I am mistaken
in your chances, despite arrest and displeasure. But come now, come to
that friendly goblin who will work for us--to the mysterious spirit on
whose account we will keep this corner of the world in anxiety and
terror--your doughty rival but your still doughtier ally.

PRINCE (_in laughing surprise_).

You mean?

HOTHAM.

The Prince of Wales. [_They both go out._]



ACT IV



_Anteroom in the_ KING'S _apartments. The same as in_ SCENE I _of_ ACT
II. _Writing materials on the table._


SCENE I


EVERSMANN _comes from the_ KING'S _room._

SECKENDORF (_puts his head in at another door_).

Pst! Eversmann! Have you seen him yet?

EVERSMANN.

Seen whom, Count?

SECKENDORF. The Prince of Wales. He is indeed in Berlin--he has been
seen everywhere. _Unter den Linden_--by the river--even beyond
Treptow--a frail figure of a man, stooping slightly--his left shoulder
higher than the right. When he speaks you see that one eye-tooth is
missing--

EVERSMANN.

The King will not recognize the presence of the Prince of Wales.

SECKENDORF.

We are being deceived, Eversmann. The King has recognized it. [_Low._]
Or can it be that you have not heard of that most strange--most
remarkable command that has gone out to the Castle Guards--a command
which upsets all our deductions and plans? All sentries have orders to
let a white domino, if such a one should appear at night about the
castle, pass unhindered and even unchallenged. Do you not see the
thoughtfulness for the Prince of Wales in that? It is he who is to visit
His Majesty secretly in disguise. Eversmann, all our pro-Austrian plans
are in danger. [_There is a knock at the door._] Every noise startles me
these days.

EVERSMANN.

It is the court tailor most likely, pardon me. [_He goes to the door._]
Ha, ha! the white domino!

SECKENDORF.

The court tailor? What can the court tailor be doing here? And a white
domino? Vienna's interests are in danger. The King does favor England. I
must have certainty. This is the moment when I must show my whole power.


SCENE II


HOTHAM (_comes in, bows_).

His Majesty graciously consented to give me a farewell audience.

[EVERSMANN _returns with a little package which he opens, drawing
out a white domino._]

EVERSMANN (_to_ HOTHAM).

I will announce you at once, sir. [_To_ SECKENDORF, _smiling._] Now,
Count Seckendorf, if you wish to _see_ the Prince of Wales [_Pointing to
the domino_] here he is.

[_He goes out into the_ KING'S _room._]

SECKENDORF (_aside_).

That the Prince of Wales?

HOTHAM (_aside_).

A white domino the Prince of Wales?

SECKENDORF (_aside_).

What's the key to this new riddle?

HOTHAM (_aside_).

Can there be some secret doings here?

SECKENDORF (_aside_).

I will question Baronet Hotham cautiously.

HOTHAM (_aside_).

Mayhap this much-decorated gentleman can give me some information.

SECKENDORF (_clearing his throat_).

May I ask--how His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, is enjoying
himself in Berlin? I am Count Seckendorf.

HOTHAM. Most happy to meet you. As Your Excellency perceives, he is at
this moment in the very best hands. [_Points after_ EVERSMANN.]

SECKENDORF (_startled, aside_).

In the best hands? Is he mocking me or is he deceived himself? It looks
as though he too were in the conspiracy.

HOTHAM (_aside_).

This misunderstanding whets my curiosity.

SECKENDORF.

You are in error, Baronet, if you believe that we have opposed the suit
of the Prince of Wales. Procure me an opportunity to speak to the
Prince, and I will consider it an honor to be allowed to repeat this
assurance in his own presence.

HOTHAM (_pointing to the_ KING's _door_).

The door of His Majesty's Cabinet is, I am told, always open to the
Imperial Envoy.

SECKENDORF (_aside_).

The King's Cabinet! Where the Court tailor has just taken the white
domino [_Aloud_.] H'm! Baronet Hotham, do you happen to be acquainted
with the legend of the White Lady, connected for centuries with the
history of the House of Brandenberg?

HOTHAM.

I am, Your Excellency. And I hear that the White Lady has been seen
again recently.

SECKENDORF (_aside_).

Recently? It _is_ a conspiracy. They are deceiving us under cloak of the
mystery of the White Lady. The Prince of Wales and the King have a
thorough understanding with each other. [_Aloud_.] Baronet Hotham, this
is double-dealing. Be honest! Confess that the Prince is not only here,
but that he is received by the King at any hour.

HOTHAM.

What grounds have you for your belief?

SECKENDORF.

It was neatly done, to bring up the talk about the White Lady just at
this time.

HOTHAM.

The King may have his own reasons for that.

SECKENDORF.

The King? The King has his--ha, ha! And you believe that no one sees
through this fine game? You do not realize that there are eyes which
even at night can see certain persons stealing across the courtyards of
the Royal Palace? That there are ears which can hear plainly how such
persons are let pass unchallenged because--ha, ha, ha!--because these
persons wear white dominos? My dear sir, you must lay your plans more
carefully if you would not have them patent to the simplest deductions.
But do not trust too much to the King's indulgence toward the Prince of
Wales. He is his nephew; he may not wish him compromised. Therefore he
allows him to pass in and out in disguise. But, believe me, that is all
the Prince has to hope for here. And I at least should be very sorry for
a young diplomat, just beginning his career as you are, who cannot
profit by a direct hint from a statesman of twenty years' experience,
whose power of diplomatic manipulation has not yet been excelled. [_He
goes out_.]


SCENE III


HOTHAM (_alone_).

Then the sentries let the white domino pass unchallenged, out of
consideration for a Prince of Wales who does not exist? And the white
domino is taken into the King's study? Here are two definite facts. The
King himself plans some midnight adventure, and does not wish
interference on the part of his sentries. His favorites, prying into
everything, but winning only imperfect knowledge, connect the sentry
order with the ghost of the Prince of Wales, and presuppose a tender
thoughtfulness for the young adventurer on family or political grounds.
Delicious! [_He sits down to write on a paper he has taken from his
portfolio_.] Why, then--with the excuse of introducing the Prince of
Wales, I might bring the poor Prince of Baireuth, banished from the
palace and from the city, back again quite unhindered to his captive
princess--and even to the Queen. The sun shines once more--but there is
another storm to conquer first. The King approaches. [_The KING comes
an, dressed for the street. GRUMBKOW and EVERSMANN follow_.]

KING (_still outside_).

Who is it, you say?

GRUMBKOW.

Baronet Hotham.

KING (_coming in_).

Tell him that I send my regards to him and his English price-lists. We
in Berlin are not cottonwards inclined just at present.

GRUMBKOW (_designating the bowing HOTHAM_).

Baronet Hotham desires to pay his respects to Your Majesty personally.

KING.

Tell him Prussia is putting her best foot forward. German manufacturers
need a chance to catch up with what the English already know about
spinning and weaving.

GRUMBKOW.

Baronet Hotham is about to ask Your Majesty in person for his dismissal.

KING (_paying no attention_).

The incident is closed. My ministers can attend to it now. I prefer the
customary procedure. [_He sits down_.]

GRUMBKOW (_in the centre_).

You see, Baronet Hotham--

HOTHAM (_to GRUMBKOW_).

General, will you say to His Majesty that I deeply regret having failed
in my mission? Tell him--

GRUMBKOW.

His Majesty is present.

HOTHAM.

Tell him that a country's industries need centuries of preparation to be
able to sell at the low prices quoted by English merchants. Tell him--

GRUMBKOW.

Will you not address His Majesty in person?

HOTHAM.

I prefer the customary procedure.

KING (_sitting, absorbed in his note-book_).

Very good. And now, Grumbkow, tell him, for the account of the Prince of
Wales--that I'm planning to build a couple of new gates in Berlin, but
for the present he'll have to put up with the old ones through which to
leave the city.

GRUMBKOW. Very good.

HOTHAM.

And kindly add, General von Grumbkow, that as one may suppose the
Princess Wilhelmine to cherish the same feeling for her cousin, the
Prince of Wales, as--

KING.

Pay no attention to that, Grumbkow. But announce to the gentleman that
my children are accustomed to obey my wishes, and that the affair with
Vienna is as good as settled. Understand?

GRUMBKOW.

Very well, Your Majesty.

HOTHAM.

And you might add, General von Grumbkow, that I have a favor to beg of
His Majesty before departing.

KING.

Grumbkow, you might casually inquire what sort of a favor it is he
wants.

HOTHAM.

General--

GRUMBKOW.

Baronet Hotham.

HOTHAM.

If His Majesty should seem inclined, out of the nobility of his heart,
to make amends for the cruel manner in which he has just dismissed an
ardent admirer of his military greatness, then tell him that I know of a
finely-built, strong young man, a close friend of mine, of good family,
who would deem it an honor to serve up from the ranks under His
Majesty's glorious flag.

KING.

Grumbkow, you may tell Baronet Hotham that his personality and manner
have pleased me greatly, and that I most heartily wish all Englishmen
were of his sort. In the matter of the young man, you may ask him if the
recruit will furnish his own equipment.

HOTHAM.

Kindly state, General, that the young man will take service in His
Majesty's army, fully equipped according to regulations, his hair and
his heart in the right place, and that he furthermore brings with him a
neat little inheritance of his own.

KING (_more and more pleased_).

Quite what one might expect from a born Englishman. Grumbkow, ask the
Baronet whether the young man, who is doubtless destined to introduce
Prussian tactics into England, would serve better on foot or to horse.

HOTHAM.

He begs for a place with the Dragoons of the Guard in Potsdam.

KING.

Potsdam? That won't do. They all want to serve in the Guard. No--no....
But he can--for a while, at least--join the Glasenapp Musketiers in
Pasewalk. That's a fine regiment, too.

HOTHAM.

Please express my sincere thanks to His Majesty. The young recruit will
have the honor to present himself personally to His Majesty in a few
days.

KING.

Grumbkow, suppose we offered Baronet Hotham, as a sign of our
friendship, a position as recruiting officer?

HOTHAM.

He would decline this honor, but he would beg another favor.

KING.

And that is--?

HOTHAM.

In all journals, in all records of travel, we read of a certain
gathering in Berlin which goes beyond anything an Englishman can imagine
in the way of clubs or private affairs.

KING.

Dear me--our police permit that sort of thing in Berlin? Really, I am
most curious.

HOTHAM.

A certain genial personage gathers around him several times weekly, in a
small, low-ceilinged room in the palace, a small but select circle of
men on whom be bestows his confidence. Sitting on wooden stools, often
in their shirt-sleeves, beer tankards before them on the great open
table, Dutch clay pipes in their mouths, they entertain each other in
the most unrestrained manner in spite of the exalted position held by
most of these men. Some who do not smoke hold cold pipes between their
teeth, that they may not mar the harmony of the picture. One member of
the circle is singled out nightly as an object for mirth, and the choice
is made by lot. Each and every one can in turn become the butt of merry
satire. To have been present at a meeting of this oddest of all court
gatherings would furnish me with the most notable memory I could carry
away from Berlin.

KING.

Egad, Grumbkow! I believe he means our Smoker.

HOTHAM.

The world-renowned Prussian "tobacco-conference."

KING.

And you have--the gentleman has--no. [_He rises_.] I shan't use the
customary procedure any more. Baronet Hotham, you have heard of my
Smokers? You have said nice things about them. That reconciles me--can
you smoke?

HOTHAM.

Yes, Your Majesty, the light Dutch Varinas, at least.

KING.

I have that--and the Porto-Rican and Hungarian tobaccos as well. In
fact, I'm having quite a good sort grown here in the Mark Brandenberg
now.

HOTHAM.

I fear I should have to decline trying that.

KING.

Give me your hand, Baronet. Come to our conference tonight. We will wash
down our diplomatic disagreement with a good drink of beer, and blue
clouds of smoke from our pipes shall waft away all the intrigues, plots
and counter-plots.

GRUMBKOW.

But--Your Majesty, who is to furnish the source of amusement tonight?

HOTHAM.

Will Your Majesty take me as the scapegoat?

KING.

Oho, Baronet! it will be a hot skirmish. He who has been under fire from
a dozen such old soldiers needs a week or two to recover from the
experience.

HOTHAM (_aside_).

A pleasing fate indeed, to play the fox to such hounds!

KING.

We'll find some one to be the central figure this evening. You must be
among the laughers, and then you can tell us something of the
cock-fights and the boxing-bouts in England. That sort of amusement
pleases me mightily, and I would permit it to come into this country
without excise or other duty. Very well, then, the Smoker is at eight
o'clock. Your pardon for this queer audience of dismissal. Bring a brave
thirst with you. For in the matter of drinking we pay no attention to
the customary procedure.

[_He goes out, followed by all except HOTHAM_.]


SCENE IV


HOTHAM (_alone_).

Excellent! We adapt ourselves to circumstances and circumstances adapt
themselves to us. Now for my letter to the Queen. [_He sits down, takes
a partly written letter from his portfolio and reads it_.] "Exalted
Lady: Your wish to see the Prince of Wales is a command for your devoted
servant. Unless all plans should go awry I will have the honor to lead
the Prince of Wales this very night into the presence of his Royal Aunt.
He hopes not only for the happiness of pressing a kiss on Your Majesty's
hand, but desires, with all the longing of an ardent heart, finally to
look upon his dear affianced, the Princess Wilhelmine. Use all your
power to free the Princess from her imprisonment for this evening." [_He
begins to write_.] "I would suggest that you advise the Princess to wrap
herself in a white domino. This disguise will carry her safely past the
palace sentries." There--the young people can see each other again, can
storm the fortress of the mother's heart, and can win for themselves the
support of public opinion, as represented by the invited guests. [_He
seals the letter_.] Now if I could find the Prince--Ah, there he is!

PRINCE (_looking in cautiously_).

Hotham, I've been looking for you everywhere. What do you think has just
happened to me?

HOTHAM.

Another Royal mission?

PRINCE.

I can scarce believe it myself. Disconsolate, I was preparing for the
journey, and stopped to cast one last look up to the windows behind
which my beloved sits captive--a lackey of the King's suite approached
me. I anticipated some new humiliation. But imagine my astonishment at
the surprise in store for me. You know the value the King sets on his
nightly smoking-bouts. He invites to these gatherings only persons for
whom he has especial plans. Now picture my amazement when I learned that
His Majesty begs me, before my departure tonight, to do him the pleasure
to attend his Smoker!

HOTHAM.

You have an invitation?

PRINCE.

You're--you're laughing. [_HOTHAM laughs heartily_.] What are you
laughing at?

HOTHAM.

It's unspeakably comical.

PRINCE.

Comical? I should consider it rather tragical, when a sovereign first
humiliates us and then suddenly heaps amiabilities upon us. What is the
matter with you.

HOTHAM.

Stand up straight-breast thrown out--head up--hands at your side--no,
more to the back--

PRINCE.

What do you mean?

HOTHAM (_pulling his hair_).

Fine growth--fine strong growth.

PRINCE.

What are you doing to my hair? And you're still laughing!

HOTHAM.

As a consequence of a most droll diplomatic transaction, I also have
been honored with an invitation to the Smoker. And that I may enjoy the
true savor of the customary and, methinks, sometimes strongly realistic
entertainment of such occasions, those in charge have bestirred
themselves to find royal game for the baiting.

PRINCE.

And I am to be--the game? This is too much! I will be there, Hotham; I
will take my place humbly at the foot of the great table, but I warn you
that my patience is exhausted. I will show them that I have weapons to
parry the jibes of rough soldiers, weapons I have not yet brought into
play. I will be there, I will listen with apparent calm to what they are
planning to do to me--but then--then I will draw from _my_ quiver! I
will send arrow after arrow at this brutal despotism--and should the
shafts be too weak to penetrate their leathern harness, then, Hotham,
then out with my sword and at them!

HOTHAM.

Bravo, Prince! Excellent! That's the right mood! That is the language
one must use in this court. The hour draws near. It would take us too
far a-field were I to detail my plans to you now. I will first dispatch
this letter to the Queen. Then, as we set out for the Smoker--but I see
you are in no mood for explanations. Cherish this noble anger, Prince!
Rage as much as you will--snort like an angry tiger. [_Takes him by the
arm and leads him out_.] More--more--heap it up--there, now you are
ready to aid my plan, which is none other than to have you win the King
by forcing him to respect you. [_They go out_.]


SCENE V


_A plain low-ceilinged room in the palace. The walls are gray. The main
entrance is in the centre. One door at the left, a small window at the
right.

Lackeys carry in an oaken table and place a number of wooden stools
around it. Then they bring tankards on wooden platters and set them in a
circle on the table. A brazier with live coals is also brought in. The
lackeys go out.

The_ KING _comes from the door on the left in easy, undress house
uniform. He has a short Dutch pipe in his mouth, he shuts the door
carefully behind him._

KING.

Are they gathering already

EVERSMANN.

There's noise enough outside there.

KING.

My only recreation! While I may keep this little diversion, I am willing
to bear the burdens and cares of government. Are the clay cannons
loaded?

EVERSMANN.

Aye--and some are fuming already outside there.

KING.

Is the beer right fresh? And a little bitter, eh?

EVERSMANN.

It might be better.

KING.

Those Bernau brewers had best have a care--I may pay an unexpected visit
to their brewery. How about the white smock I ordered?

EVERSMANN.

Ready, at hand.

KING.

When the meeting is over--you know what I have planned

EVERSMANN.

Everything is ready for Your Majesty.

KING.

You may go now. The door is to be opened at the stroke of ten.

EVERSMANN.

Yes, Your Majesty. [_He goes out_.]

[_The_ KING _walks to the window, remaining there for a few moments.
There is a pause_.]

KING.

Light in my wife's apartments again! Three rooms illuminated where one
would have been enough--and tallow so expensive now. A dozen women have
been invited there tonight, and a great conspiracy is going forward,
with the Prince of Wales received incognito--all to defy me. But wait a
bit--I'll be with you. This day has begun weightily and shall end
weightily.


SCENE VI


_A small clock strikes ten. The door to the right is thrown open and the
members of the Tobacco-Conference come in, led by_ GRUMBKOW _and_
SECKENDORF. _There are about ten of them besides the principal actors.
They come in solemnly, wearing their hats, carrying pipes in their
mouths. Passing the_ KING _they touch their hats and remove their pipes
for a moment._ HOTHAM _and the_ PRINCE of BAIREUTH _come last of all.
The_ KING _stands to the left and lets the procession move past him
toward the right of the room._

GRUMBKOW (_with the prescribed greeting_).

Good evening, Your Majesty.

KING.

Good evening, Grumbkow.

SECKENDORF.

Good evening, Your Majesty.

KING.

Good evening, Seckendorf.

COUNT SCHWERIN.

Good evening, Your Majesty.

KING.

Good evening, Schwerin. Does it taste good?

SCHWERIN.

Fine! Thanks, Your Majesty.

COUNT WARTENSLEBEN.

Good evening, Your Majesty.

KING.

Good evening, Wartensleben. Pipe draw well?

WARTENSLEBEN.

Yes. Thanks, Your Majesty. [_He moves past the_ KING _. The others pass
one after the other, or sometimes several at once, with similar
greetings_.]

KING.

Take your seats, gentlemen--no formalities--free choice--the smoke of
war levels all rank.

GRUMBKOW.

But the subject, Your Majesty, the subject promised for this evening?

KING.

Ha, ha! The target? There it comes.

[HOTHAM _and the_ PRINCE OF BAIREUTH _come in_.]

ALL.

The Prince of Baireuth?

PRINCE.

Good evening.

KING.

Right, oh! Prince, that you are come. Now, at least, you will have
something good about my family to tell them in Rheinsberg. [_Aside_.]
Spy! [_Aloud_.] But your pipe is cold.

PRINCE (_with suppressed anger_).

I am hoping that I may find fire enough here.

[_The company sit down, the_ KING _and_ GRUMBKOW _at one end of the
table,_ HOTHAM _and the_ PRINCE _at the other_.]

KING.

Lay on, gentlemen--there stand the care-chasers.

SECKENDORF.

To His Majesty's health!

KING.

No, let us rather drink, after such a day of annoyance and sorrow--let
us rather drink to cheer, jollity, and a happy turn of wit!

[_They touch glasses with one another._ EVERMANN _moves about, serving
the guests, passing coal for the pipes, and so forth_.]

KING (_aside_).

Grumbkow, I wager it will be right jolly tonight.

GRUMBKOW (_aside_).

We'll soon begin to tap the Prince.

KING (_aside_).

Be merciful. His brow is already bedewed with the sweat of anxiety.
[_Aloud_.] Tell me. Prince, since you have windbagged yourself about so
much of the world--do they smoke tobacco in Versailles also?

[Illustration: KING FREDERICK WILLIAM I AND HIS "TOBACCO COLLEGIUM"
ADOLPH VON MENZEL]

 PRINCE.

No. Your Majesty, but I've seen sailors in London who chew it.

KING.

Brr! Grumbkow, we'll not introduce that fashion here. It's not because
of the taste, but such meals would be right costly.

HOTHAM.

Our sailors use tobacco as a remedy for scurvy.

SECKENDORF.

What is scurvy?

PRINCE.

The scurvy, Count, is a disease which begins with an evil tongue.

KING (_aside_).

Take notice, Grumbkow, he's pricked. On with the attack.

GRUMBKOW.

Eversmann, have the newest Dutch journals arrived?

EVERSMANN.

Yes, Your Excellency; full of lies, as usual.

KING.

Lies? Then, according to the proverb, that explains why our beer is so
sour.

GRUMBKOW.

Tell me, Eversmann, is there no news from Ansbach in the journals?

HOTHAM (_aside to_ PRINCE).

Arm yourself.

EVERSMANN (_impertinently_).

Why should there be news from such a little country?

KING.

Be quiet! Prussia also was once a little country. Tell me rather, what
do the Dutch write about Prussia?

EVERSMANN.

Outrageous things. They say that many deserters have again fled from
Potsdam.

KING.

That's not a lie, unfortunately.

PRINCE.

But they express themselves with more politeness in Holland.

KING.

How then, Prince?

PRINCE.

They say that Your Majesty's Guards consist mostly of men who suffer
from an abnormal growth. These giants, so they say, have periods where
they shoot up to such an extent that they grow and grow beyond the
tree-tops and disappear altogether from human ken.

KING.

Ha, ha! Wittily expressed. But drink, Prince, drink.

GRUMBKOW.

I imagined that Your Highness read only French journals.

PRINCE.

I would rather read Prussian newspapers. But, thanks to General von
Grumbkow's policies, no newspaper dare appear in Prussia.

KING.

Ha, ha! There you have it! [_Aside_.] See, see, he's not afraid to speak
his mind. 'Twill be a merry night.

HOTHAM (_aside to_ PRINCE).

Not too sharp--be milder at first.

GRUMBKOW (_aside_).

Seckendorf, it's time to exercise your wit.

SECKENDORF (_aside_).

Hush--I'm getting something ready. I will choose my own time.

KING.

But you're not drinking, Prince. You're expected to drink here.
[_Aside_.] Eversmann, keep his glass well filled--

HOTHAM (_aside_).

They want to make you drunk. Push your tankard nearer my place.

KING.

You know the old Dessauer, Prince?

PRINCE (surprised).

Why, Your Majesty--

KING.

But do you know for what great invention mankind is indebted to the old
Dessauer?

PRINCE (_aside_).

Do you know that, Hotham?

HOTHAM.

Damn their cross questioning--say it was gaiters.

PRINCE.

Your Majesty wishes to know what--what the old Dessauer invented?

KING.

Yes, what did the old Dessauer invent?

SECKENDORF (_aside_).

Aha, you see, now we have caught him.

PRINCE.

It can't be gunpowder, because Count Seckendorf has already discovered
that. [_All laugh_.]

SECKENDORF (_aside_).

Never mind, Grumbkow, I'll wait the fitting moment.

KING.

He invented _iron ramrods_. Now, you see, my son in Rheinsberg, for all
his Homers and Voltaires, and whatever their heathen names may be, that
he gathers round him, couldn't think of anything like that. [_Aside_.]
Is he drinking, Eversmann?

HOTHAM (_to_ PRINCE).

Don't let slip your advantage.

PRINCE.

Who the devil could think of iron ramrods!

GRUMBKOW (_rising_).

We'll drink a pleasant journey to His Highness, the Prince Hereditary of
Baireuth. [_They all rise except the_ KING.]

ALL.

A pleasant journey.

HOTHAM (_aside_).

You're done for--you've lost everything.

PRINCE (_aside_).

It was shameful perfidy!

HOTHAM (_aside_).

Make him respect you--be as brutal as he is--pretend to be drunk. [_They
all sit down after having touched glasses amid laughter_.]

PRINCE (_rises, his tankard in his hand. Speaks as if slightly
intoxicated_).

Gentlemen--

KING (_aside_).

I believe he's hipped.

PRINCE.

And--and--and--I thank you. [_He sits down. They all laugh_.]

KING.

Bravo, Prince, you are a most excellent speaker.

GRUMBKOW.

He's done for, Your Majesty: we must have him make a speech now.

KING.

Yes. Give us a speech, Prince.

ALL.

A speech--speech!

[The PRINCE _rests his head in his hands and does not rise_.]

HOTHAM.

The question is--what shall he talk about?

KING.

About anything--whatever he chooses.

HOTHAM.

I could suggest an interesting subject.

KING.

Out with it.

HOTHAM.

What if he were to discuss some member of this merry company?

KING.

'Tis done! And that we need waste no time in choice--let him
discuss--me.

ALL (_startled_).

Your Majesty?

KING.

It's very warm here. [_Opens his coat_.] Let's make ourselves
comfortable, Eversmann. Well, Prince--begin. Give us a speech about me.

HOTHAM.

Please--

KING.

No hesitation--let it be as if I had just died--

HOTHAM.

Your Majesty--

KING.

Quiet! Silence all. The Prince of Baireuth will give us a speech about
me. [_Aside_.] _In vino veritas_. I am curious to know whether such a
French windbag is composed entirely of falsehoods.

HOTHAM (_aside_).

This is the decisive moment.

PRINCE (_steps forward, he staggers slightly then controls himself_).

Merry company!

KING.

Merry? I'm dead.

PRINCE.

No matter, they're merry just the same.

KING.

Gad! is that true?

PRINCE.

Merry company--cheerful mourners--permit me to interrupt your enjoyment
by a few painful remarks on the qualities of the deceased.

KING.

Painful remarks? That's a good beginning.

PRINCE.

Friedrich Wilhelm I., King of Prussia, was a great man, in whose
character were united the strangest contradictions.

KING.

Contradictions!

PRINCE.

As with all those who owe their education to their own efforts, so his
mind, noble in itself, fell under the influence of disturbing emotions,
the saddest of which was distrust.

KING.

These are nice things I hear.

PRINCE.

He brought his country to a high degree of prosperity, he simplified
administration, he improved judicial procedure. But the enjoyment of all
these blessings was spoiled for him by his own fault.

KING.

Well--well--by his own fault!

SECKENDORF (_aside_).

The young man must indeed have been drinking heavily.

PRINCE.

His vivacity of spirit kept him in a continual unrest which was as
painful to others as to himself. When fatigued he could not conceal his
desire for pleasant recreation, but his tastes were sufficiently simple
to let him prefer satisfying this desire in the bosom of his own family.

EVERSMANN.

There'll be a misfortune, surely!

PRINCE.

But even here, where he might have reposed on a couch of roses, this
unfortunate sovereign made for himself a bed of thorns. His son's
unhappy history is so well known that I can pass over it in silence....

KING.

In silence--?

PRINCE.

Friedrich Wilhelm could not understand the freedom of the human will. He
would have grafted stem to stem, son on father, youth on age. In
planning to bestow the hand of his charming daughter, now here, now
there, it never came to his mind that her heart might have a right to
choose--it never occurred to him to ask: "Does my choice make you happy,
child?"

KING.

Eversmann, take this pipe.

PRINCE.

Now he is departed. Those minions who during his lifetime came between
the heart of the mother and the heart of the husband and father, those
minions tremble now. It remains to be seen how the misunderstood son
will dispose of them. The father's deeds will remain the foundation of
this state. But a milder spirit will reign in the land; the arts and
sciences will outdistance the fame of cannon and bullet. And the soaring
eagle of Prussia will now truly fulfil his device, _Nec Soli
Cedis_--or, to put it in German, "Even the sun's glance shall not
dazzle thee! Even the sun shall stand aside from out thy path!" [_He
recollects himself, and after a pause returns to the table, again
pretending drunkenness_.] Hotham, give me something to drink.

KING (_after a pause_).

What hour is it?

EVERSMANN.

Eleven past, Your Majesty. (_Aside_.) If we should meet the Prince of
Wales now, woe unto him.

KING (_taking a tankard from the table_).

Prince, when you have come to your senses tomorrow, let them tell you
that the King touched glasses with you.

PRINCE.

At Your Majesty's service.

KING.

He doesn't understand, Hotham. Translate it into sober language for him.
Good night, gentlemen. [_He turns again and looks at the_ PRINCE
_thoughtfully, repeating the words_.] "Does my choice make you happy,
child?" [_Looking at the_ PRINCE.] Pity he's only a bookish man.

[EVERSMANN _takes up a candlestick with officious haste, brushes angrily
past the triumphant_ HOTHAM _and throws a glance of suppressed rage at
the_ PRINCE.]

EVERSMANN.

May I light Your Majesty--on your visit to--

KING (_interrupts him with the_ PRINCE'S _words_).

"These minions tremble--" [_After a pause, during which he glances over
them all_] I would be alone. [_He goes out_.]



ACT V



_A drawing-room in the_ QUEEN's _apartments. A window to the right.
Three doors, centre, right, and left. Tables and chairs. Candles on the
tables, playing-cards, and tea service_.


SCENE I


KAMKE _stands on a step-ladder fastening a large curtain over the
window. Two lackeys are assisting him_.

KAMKE (_on the ladder_).

There! And now be ready to receive the ladies at the little side
stairway. They will arrive in sedan chairs. No noise, do you
hear--softly--softly. [_The lackeys go out_.]

SONNSFELD (_comes in from the left_).

Ah, at last a festival of which the Prussian Court need not be ashamed.
Kamke, why are you draping that window?

KAMKE.

So that our festival may not be observed. [_Coming down off the
ladder_.] Then you too are concerned in this conspiracy?

SONNSFELD.

The Queen has taken all responsibility. She risks her own freedom for
that of her daughter, and will receive the Prince of Wales tonight in
strictest incognito. Is everything in readiness?

KAMKE.

You're planning to free the Princess from her imprisonment? That is high
treason, remember.

SONNSFELD.

It must succeed, at whatever cost. The Queen wishes to see the Princess
amid the circle of friends whom she has invited this evening for a
secret purpose. The Princess has been instructed. She knows that I will
come to her room and remain there in her place to deceive the sentry.
She will meet you in the Blue Room.

KAMKE.

The Blue Room--where--for the last few nights the White Lady has been
seen?

SONNSFELD.

She will meet you there--

KAMKE (_horrified_).

Me?

SONNSFELD.

She will speak to you--

KAMKE.

Me?

SONNSFELD (_pulling him to the door at the right_).

Yes, me--I mean you--and you will lead her from the Blue Room--you will
take her hand and bring her safely hither by the surest and quickest
route.

KAMKE.

My lady--whom--whom? The Princess Wilhelmine?

SONNSFELD (_going out_).

No, no, Kamke, the White Lady--but come quickly now, quickly.

[_They both go out_.]


SCENE II


FRAU VON VIERECK, FRAU VON HOLZENDORF, _and about six more ladies enter
cautiously, one by one, through the centre door_.

VIERECK.

Hush! Step cautiously!

HOLZENDORF (_whispering_).

It's all quiet here--if only these wretched shoes of mine didn't creak
so.

VIERECK (_whispering_).

What can Her Majesty the Queen be planning for tonight?

HOLZENDORF.

Has His Majesty the King gone from home?

VIERECK.

I heard it said, at the French Embassy, that His Highness, the Crown
Prince, had come from Rheinsberg--

HOLZENDORF.

Doubtless at the same time with His Highness, the Prince of Wales

VIERECK (_low_).

At the moment both are at the King's Smoker.--They say the Crown Prince
has again disagreed with his father on questions concerning the future
administration of the state.

HOLZENDORF.

Is it possible?

VIERECK.

And they say that the Prince of Baireuth tried to bring about a
reconciliation, but that the Prince of Wales took the part of the Crown
Prince.

HOLZENDORF.

The Prince of Wales? Then he has been received?

VIERECK.

And the King, so they say, in the heat of the argument, commanded that
Princess Wilhelmine, the cause of the quarrel, be sent to Küstrin at
once.

HOLZENDORF.

Good Heavens, ladies! There are cards on the table. Hush! I hear a
noise.

VIERECK.

It is the Queen.

[_The_ QUEEN _comes in in full toilet. She is excited and yet timorous.
The ladies bow_.]

QUEEN.

Welcome, ladies. I am happy to have about me once again the circle of
those who, I know, are devoted to me. Pray sit down. I have decided to
be more sociable in future and to have you with me oftener than I have
done of late. Will you have a game of cards, Frau von Viereck?

VIERECK.

Cards, Your Majesty? For eighteen years now I cannot recall having seen
a card in the palace.

QUEEN.

We will change all that. Ladies, you have not yet heard my plans, you do
not yet know what surprises this evening has in store for you--

HOLZENDORF.

Surprises, Your Majesty?

QUEEN (_indicating a card-table near the window_).

Sit down there, my dear Holzendorf. Try your luck with Frau von Viereck.

VIERECK (_aside_).

Heavens--play cards there? When every outline of my shadow can plainly
be seen through that curtain?

QUEEN (_sitting_).

Why do you hesitate?

VIERECK.

Have we Your Majesty's permission to draw the tables nearer together?
There--there is so much air at this window.

[_The lackeys place the table farther from the window_.]

QUEEN.

Yes, ladies, this evening a new era begins for our monarchy. I will
break at last with the established etiquette. [_Lackeys come in with
trays_.] Order what pleases you. The beverages of China and the Levant
shall from now on no longer be strangers to our court.

HOLZENDORF.

What is this? Tea?

VIERECK.

And coffee? These forbidden beverages?

HOLZENDORF.

If His Majesty the King--

QUEEN.

Have no fear. Give your feelings full sway--express yourself without
fear, in assurance of perfect safety--[_There is a knock at the door,
right_.] Was not that a knock?

VIERECK (_aside, trembling_).

What does this mean?

[_The knock is repeated. The ladies all rise as if frightened_.]

QUEEN.

Be calm, ladies. There is no danger. The evening will offer one surprise
after another. Who, do you imagine, is at that door now?

[_The knock is repeated. The ladies all rise as if frightened_.]

HOLZENDORF.

The hand seems none of the most delicate.

QUEEN.

And yet it is. That knock expresses the impetuous longing of a being
whom my courage has freed from a humiliating situation. You may resume
your seats, ladies. Do not allow yourselves to be disturbed by anything
that may occur, not even by any surprise. This is but the beginning of
many things that will come to pass this evening. And so I cry--in
overflowing emotion--[_There is another knock_.] "Moderate your
impatience, beloved being; you shall find here what you seek--your
mother!" [_She opens the door_.]


SCENE III


_The_ KING _steps in. He is wrapped in a white cloak, his hat pulled
down over his face_.

KING.

Yes, your mother.

[_The ladies all rise with exclamations of horror. The_ KING _removes
his hat_.]

QUEEN (_aside, crushed_).

The King!

KING (_angry, but forcing himself to be affable_).

On my word, how fine we are here, very fine indeed! And how nice it does
look with so many lights burning. [_He blows out several_.] Why are you
hiding yourselves, ladies? Did you expect such a visitor?

QUEEN.

Your Majesty

[_The ladies place themselves so that they screen the table. They hide
the cards quickly_.]

KING.

Do not let me disturb you, ladies. What is your particular entertainment
this evening? Enjoying a cup of soup, Frau von Holzendorf? [_Comes
nearer_.] Oho--the silver service? [_He looks into cups_.] What's that?
Tea? Chocolate? Coffee?

QUEEN.

Your Majesty will surely--permit us--to keep pace with our age.

KING.

Frau von Viereck, you, I imagine, have been keeping pace with your age
long enough. About thirty years ago you'd give an old boy like myself a
handshake occasionally.

[_Slyly he holds out his hand to her_.]

VIERECK (_tries to hide the cards behind her back_).

Your Majesty--such graciousness--

[_She holds out one hand_.]

KING.

Both, Fran von Viereck--let me have both.

[VIERECK _lets the cards fall behind her back_.]

KING.

What's that? Did you not drop something? My God! Cards! [_He stands as
if speechless_.] Playing-cards! [_To the_ QUEEN.] Cards, madam--a
Christian court--and cards! I am sure, Frau von Viereck, you were merely
prophesying from those cards. I know, ladies, that you were only telling
your fortunes from the cards. I am quite sure, Frau von Viereck, that
you were merely endeavoring to ascertain whether you would bury your
fifth husband also. Surely--or--is it possible? Money on the tables!
[_He clasps his hands in horror_.] You--have-been-playing?--at my
court?--playing-cards? [_There is a knock at the door to the left_.] Who
knocks there?

QUEEN (_aside_).

It is Wilhelmine or the Prince of Wales! I am lost!

[_Another gentle knock is heard_.]

KING.

You are awaiting more visitors? Come in!

[_He goes to the door himself and opens it_.]


SCENE IV


WILHELMINE, _wearing a white veil and domino, comes in cautiously_.

KING.

A veiled lady! And such mysterious visitors are received here? [_He
lifts the veil_.] What do I see! Wilhelmine!

WILHELMINE (_throwing herself at his feet_).

Father! Forgive me!

KING.

Forgive you! This invasion of the State Prison--this attack on my
sovereign will?

WILHELMINE (_rising, aside_).

This is a nice reception.

[_There is a knock from the left_.]

KING.

Was that not another knock? [_A stronger knock_.] This castle is
haunted, I do believe. And I have indeed been fortunate enough to
prevent the outbreak of a conspiracy! [_A louder knock_.] Who is there
at that door? You will not answer? Then I must open it myself.

QUEEN (_steps before him_).

No, you will not.

KING.

You would hinder me from discovering who are enemies of the Crown? I
will open that door.

QUEEN.

Never!

KING.

You defy me? You set yourself in opposition to the King?

QUEEN.

Yes. I feel within me the power to do it. Ladies, hear now why I invited
you to these rooms tonight--why I asked you to appear before your queen.
Yes, Sire, the purpose of this hour was that the threads of your
political scheming might be torn apart by two hands destined to be
united for life.

WILHELMINE.

_Two_ hands!

QUEEN.

Wilhelmine, I freed you from a captivity unworthy the daughter of a
King. Open that door, Sire; you will find there my nephew, my future
son-in-law, the Prince of Wales.

ALL.

The Prince of Wales!

KING (_when he has gained control of himself_).

Madame, you have achieved your purpose. You have torn asunder the ties
that bound me to my family, that bound me to life. You know that my
honor, that my good name, are more to me than all political
calculations. You know that this scene here at night, this secret
understanding with one who in my eyes is merely an adventurous stranger,
has ruined Wilhelmine's reputation forever. You may enjoy your triumph
at your future widow's-seat, Oranienbaum, to which place I now banish
you, according to our House's laws, for the few remaining years of my
life.

WILHELMINE (_hurrying to the_ KING's _side_).

No--no, not that.

KING.

Madame, admit the Prince of Wales.


SCENE V


_The_ QUEEN, _breathing heavily, staggers to the door. After a moment's
upward glance she opens it. The_ PRINCE OF BAIREUTH _comes in, wrapped
in a white cloak_. HOTHAM _follows, carrying a pointed metal helmet,
such as belonged to the Prussian uniform of that day. The helmet must
not be seen at first_.

WILHELMINE.

What? Whom do I see?

ALL.

The Prince of Baireuth?

QUEEN.

Baronet, what does this mean? Where is the Prince of Wales?

HOTHAM.

Your Majesty, I am all astonishment. I have but just learned that the
prince is now on a journey to Scotland.

ALL.

What's that?

QUEEN.

The Prince is not in Berlin?

HOTHAM.

While some trustworthy witnesses insist that the Prince was actually
here, others again assert that he returned to England the very moment in
which he realized that his patriotic interests--the interests of the
cotton industry--could not be reconciled with the inclinations of his
heart.

KING.

And what is the Prince of Baireuth doing here?

HOTHAM.

He seeks, as we do, the Prince of Wales, with whom he desires a duel to
the death.

[_All exclaim_.]

KING.

A duel? And why?

HOTHAM.

Because this poor Prince of a tiny country does not begrudge the heir to
a World-Power his fleet, his army, nor his treasures; but he refuses to
yield _one_ treasure to him except at the price of his heart's
blood--and that treasure is the hand of Princess Wilhelmine, whom
he loves. [_General emotion_.]

KING.

Whom he loves? My daughter's hand? But does the Prince of Baireuth
understand sword-craft?

[HOTHAM _takes off the_ PRINCE'S _cloak and places the helmet on his
head. The_ PRINCE _stands there in the uniform of a grenadier of the
period. His hair is braided into a long pigtail. He stands motionless in
a military attitude_.]

KING.

What's this I see? The Prince of Baireuth a grenadier?
With--_pigtail--and--sword_--?

HOTHAM.

The equipment of the young recruit of the Glasenapp Regiment. I have the
honor to present him to Your Majesty before his departure for Pasewalk.

KING.

A German Prince, who deems it an honor to serve up from the ranks in my
army? [_Commands_.] Battalion--left wheel! Battalion--forward march!

[PRINCE _executes manoeuvers and marches to_ WILHELMINE.]

KING.

Halt! [_To_ WILHELMINE] Is the enemy yonder disposed to accept the
capitulation on this side?

WILHELMINE.

Until death!

KING.

Entire regiment--right wheel! Forward march--right, left, twenty-one,
twenty-two--

[_All three march over to the_ QUEEN _who stands to the left of the
room_.]

KING.

Halt!

WILHELMINE AND THE PRINCE (_kneeling at the_ QUEEN'S _feet_).

Mother!

KING.

There was no such order given.

PRINCE.

But it was the hearts' impulse.

HOTHAM (_good-naturedly, whispering to the_ QUEEN).

Your Majesty, won't you correct the mistakes of these two young
recruits?

QUEEN.

Out of my sight, you traitor to your Royal House! Arise, Wilhelmine.
[_To the_ KING, _hesitating_.] But we still have Austria....

KING.

But Austria hasn't us. The minions--eh, prince! Tomorrow there'll be
dismissals--dismissals and pensionings! Well, mother, shall we take him
for a son-in-law?

QUEEN.

On the condition that I--that I fix the amount of the dowry.

KING.

And also that you [_embracing the_ QUEEN] remain close to my heart. Now
only Friedrich is lacking. And all this is the result of your--your
cotton industries! Baronet Hotham? Thanks for this splendid recruit.
[_In_ HOTHAM'S _ear, audibly_] How did he sober up so soon?

PRINCE.

I crave your forgiveness Your Majesty--I am still drunk with joy.

KING.

Forgiveness? For your speech, my son? If that which you have said shall
one day be written into the book of history, then my old heart is quite
content, and has but the wish that they might add: "With his Sword he
would be King, but with his Pigtail--merely the first citizen of his
State."

       *       *       *       *       *



GERMAN LYRIC POETRY FROM 1830 to 1848

BY JOHN S. NOLLEN, PH.D.

President of Lake Forest College


The years from 1830 to 1848 were distinctively revolutionary years in
Germany, which until then had remained strongly conservative. The spirit
of political and social reformation, which had caused the great upheaval
of the French Revolution late in the eighteenth century, had made itself
felt much more slowly across the Rhine. Even the generous enthusiasm
that animated the German people in the War of Liberation against
Napoleon in 1813 had ebbed away into disappointment and lethargy when
the German princes forgot their pledges of internal reform. The policy
of the German and Austrian rulers was dominated by the reactionary
Austrian Prime Minister, Prince Metternich, a consistent champion of
aristocratic ideas and of the "divine right of Kings." The "Revolution
of July," 1830, however, which overthrew the Bourbon dynasty in France,
had its counterpart in popular movements that forced the granting of
constitutions or other liberal concessions in several German states;
and, though the policy of Metternich still remained dominant, the
liberal sentiment grew in power until the February revolution of 1848 in
Paris inspired similar upheavals in all Germany. Metternich himself was
now compelled to retire, Frederick William IV. of Prussia granted his
people a constitution, and the other German states seethed with revolt;
but the great liberal plan to unify Germany under the leadership of
Prussia was nullified by Frederick William's refusal to accept the
imperial crown from a democratic assembly.

The lyric poetry of Germany in these years inevitably reflected the
liberal sentiment of the time; it is always the radical emotion of any
revolutionary period that finds the most effective lyric expression, the
conservative state of mind being more characteristically prosaic. For
the group of ardent spirits who made themselves the heralds of the new
day, one of their number, the novelist and dramatist Karl Gutzkow, found
the name "Young Germany." Just as the "Storm and Stress" of 1770 to
1780, and the Romantic movement of the opening nineteenth century,
represented a spirit of sharp revolt against the then dominant
pseudo-classicism and rationalism, so "Young Germany" reacted
passionately against the moonlight sentimentality of the popular
romantic poets, as well as against the stupid political conservatism of
the time. The aim of the Young Germans was to bring literature down from
the clouds into vital contact with the immediate problems of the day.
Thus there was developed a body of literature strongly polemic in
purpose, quite hostile to the ideals of detachment and disinterested
worship of beauty that Goethe and Schiller in their classical period had
preached and practised. This literature took the form of fiction, drama,
and journalism, as well as of poetry. Indeed, the only important lyric
poet of the Young German group was HEINRICH HEINE (1797-1856), who had
begun his career with the most intimate poetry of personal confession,
in which the simplicity of the folk-song and the nature-feeling of the
romanticist are strongly tinged with wit and cynicism. Heine's
impatience with German conditions led him to expatriate himself, and
from his retreat in Paris to aim venomous shafts of satire at his native
land, with its "three dozen masters" and its philistine conservative
nightcaps and dumplings. This brilliant poet, with his marvelous mastery
of German lyric tones, expressed a wide range of poetic inspiration; but
he loved particularly to conceive of himself as an apostle of liberty,
an outpost of the revolutionary army, and none so well as he could tip
the barb with biting sarcasm and satire. Heine's personality was full
of seemingly inconsistent traits. He was both fanciful and rational,
serious and flippant, tender and cynical, reverent and impious; and he
could be at once a patriot and an alien. He was, to use his own phrase,
an "unfrocked romanticist"--at once a brilliant representative of the
poetry of self-expression and personal caprice, and an exemplar and
prophet of a new ideal, the "holy alliance of poetry with the cause of
the nations."

The different attitudes of thoughtful men toward the influences of the
time were variously reflected in the work of three leading poets, all
older than Heine, who contributed largely to the lyric output of the
period. ADELBERT VON CHAMISSO (1781-1835), of aristocratic French
descent, and using all the familiar romantic forms and motives, was yet
thoroughly democratic and prophetically modern in his unalloyed sympathy
with the impoverished victims of the social order. It was something new
for German poetry to find inspiration in the wrath of a beggar who
cannot pay his dog-tax, the sardonic piety of an old widow reduced to
penury by the exactions of the "gracious prince," or the laborious
resignation of an aged washerwoman.--The Silesian nobleman JOSEPH VON
EICHENDORFF (1788-1857), Prussian officer and civil official, was a
consistent conservative in his political attitude, a pious Catholic, and
a romanticist in every fibre of his poetic soul. His lyrics are the
purest echoes of folk-song and folk-lore, and the simplicity and
genuineness of his art give an undying charm to his songs of idyllic
meadows and woodlands, post-chaises, carefree wanderers, and lovely
maidens in picturesque settings; all suffused with gentle yearning and
melting into soft melody. Eichendorff's patriotism was of the
traditional type, echoing faintly the battle-hymns of the War of
Liberation. For the great liberal movement of the thirties and forties
he had neither sympathy nor comprehension.--FRIEDRICH RÜCKERT
(1788-1866), endowed with a fatal facility of lyric expression, a
virtuoso for whom no _tour-de-force_ was too difficult, lived most of
his life aloof from the political and social movements of his time. In
his youth his _Sonnets in Armor_ had done sturdy service in the national
awakening against Napoleon, but his maturer years were devoted to
domestic and academic interests. Every impression of his life, whether
deep or fleeting, was material for a poem or a cycle. He handled with
consummate skill the odd or complicated metres of eastern and southern
lyric forms, and he was most versatile as a translator of foreign
poetry, ancient and modern, occidental and oriental. His unusual formal
talent and mastery of language were a constant temptation to rapid and
superficial versifying; but there are in the vast mass of his production
many genuine poems of great beauty.

Two other poets of quite distinctive quality stood aloof from the
political interests of the time. The talented Westphalian Catholic
poetess ANNETTE VON DROSTE-HÜLSHOFF (1797-1848) has a place apart in her
generation, not only for the fine religious poems of her _Christian
Year_ (similar in plan to Keble's cycle), but also for her nature-lyrics
and songs of common life, which are marked by minute realistic detail
and refreshing originality of observation and sentiment. This pious
gentlewoman, usually so maidenly in her reserve, nevertheless expressed
something of the spirit of emancipation in her quiet protest against the
narrow conventional limits of the feminine life. But she would have
recoiled with horror from the reckless propaganda for sex-freedom that
was a part of the Young German campaign, as she also repudiated the
violence of the revolutionists of 1848.--If there is something masculine
in Fräulein von Droste's firm and plastic touch, there is something
almost feminine in the finely-chiseled lyrics of the Protestant pastor
EDUARD MÖRIKE (1804-1875), whose _Poems_ appeared in the same year
(1838), and blended the folk-song simplicity and melody of an
Eichendorff with the classical form-sense of a Keats. This Suabian
country vicar, the youngest member of the group about Uhland, lived in
the utmost serenity amid the troubles of revolutionary agitation,
devoted to his art, turning the common experiences of every day into
forms of beauty, or reviving with charming naïveté the romantic figures
of medieval poetry.

We emerge completely from the quietude and piety of these individualists
when we come to a group of men who were distinctively political poets.
Here we find the direct lyric expression of the revolutionary movement.
The first in the field was ANASTASIUS GRÜN (the pen-name of Count Anton
von Auersperg, 1806-1876). This Austrian nobleman boldly attacked the
reactionary policy of Metternich in his _Saunterings of a Viennese Poet_
(1831); with biting irony he pictures the fate of the Greek patriot
Hypsilantes, broken in health by the "hospitality" of Austrian
prison-fortresses, or describes the all-powerful minister-of-state
enjoying his social triumphs in the palace ball-room, while Austria
stands outside the gate vainly pleading for liberty. In another
collection entitled _Debris_ (1836) there are whole-hearted protests
against the political martyrdom of the best patriots, and the oppressive
despotism under which Italy groaned, with which Grün contrasts the
blessings of liberty in America.

Anastasius Grün was the forerunner. The period of the real dominance of
political poetry began with 1840, when a petty official in a Rhenish
village, Nikolaus Becker, electrified Germany with a martial poem, _The
German Rhine_, inspired by French threats of war with Prussia and of the
conquest of the Rhine territory. The same events inspired Max
Schneckenburger's _Wacht am Rhein_, which at the time could not compete
in popularity with Becker's poem, but in later years has quite
supplanted it as a permanent national song. German officialdom, which
had looked askance at all political poetry, easily saw the value to the
national defense of such patriotic strains, and now encouraged these
national singers with gifts and honors. But political poetry could not
be kept within officially recognized bounds. Inevitably it became
partisan and revolutionary in character. HEINRICH HOFFMANN (who styled
himself VON FALLERS-LEBEN after his birthplace; 1798-1874), one of the
most prolific lyric poets of Germany, had the knack of expressing the
common feeling in poems that became genuine national songs; the most
famous of these, _Deutschland, Deutschland über alles_ (1841), is still
sung wherever those who love Germany congregate. But from this
expression of the common German tradition Hoffmann went on to espouse
the liberal cause, and he had his taste of martyrdom when he lost his
professorship at Breslau because of his ironical _Unpolitical Songs_
(1840-42). Hoffmann was essentially an improviser, and sang only too
copiously in all the tones and fashions of German verse.

FERDINAND FREILIGRATH (1810-1876) gained immediate fame with the
brilliant color and tropical exuberance of his early oriental lyrics, of
which the much-declaimed _Lion's Ride_ is an excellent example. But
Freiligrath's strongest work was in the field of political poetry. He,
too, made sacrifices for the faith that was in him; he gave up a royal
pension and twice went into voluntary exile in order to be free to
express his liberal sentiments. He began, indeed, with the denial of any
partisan bias; but when the Revolution of 1848 broke, no other poet
found more daring and eloquent words for the spirit of revolt and of
democratic enthusiasm than Freiligrath. And when the war of 1870 again
brought new hope of German unity, Freiligrath sang in stirring measures
this national awakening.

GEORG HERWEGH (1817-1875), also driven into exile by his opposition to
the government, created a sensation with his _Poems of the Living_
(1841), which in ringing refrains incited to revolutionary action. But
when the deed followed the word, and Herwegh led an invading column of
laborers into Baden in 1848, he lacked the courage of the martyr and
fled from the peril of death. _GOTTFRIED KINKEL_ (1815-1882) also took
part in the insurrection in Baden, was captured, and condemned to life
imprisonment, but escaped with the aid of Carl Schurz in 1850. FRANZ
DINGELSTEDT (1814-1881), on the other hand, found his sarcastic _Songs
of a Political Night-Watchman_ (1842) no bar to appointment as director
of the theatres of Munich, Weimar and Vienna.

While the poets of the revolution were busily at work, the conservatives
were not altogether voiceless; nor were the notes of the romantic lyric
silenced. Indeed, men like Hoffmann, Herwegh, and Kinkel could not deny
the strong influence of the romantic motives and tones upon much of
their best poetry. One lyrist greater than any of them was dominated by
the romantic tradition--an Austrian nobleman of mingled German, Slavonic
and Hungarian blood, NIKOLAUS LENAU (the pen-name of Nikolaus Franz
Niembsch Edler von Strehlenau, 1802-1850). A gifted musician, Lenau was
also a master of the melody of words, and his nature-feeling was
unusually deep and true. Abnormally proud, self-centred and sensitive as
he was, Lenau was born to unhappiness and disillusionment; his journey
to America, begun with the most generous anticipations, ended in
homesickness and bitter disappointment. Before he had reached middle
life, his genius went out in the darkness of insanity. The picturesque
and the tragic fascinated Lenau; he could sing with genuine sympathy the
fate of dismembered Poland, or the lawless freedom of Hungarian rebels
and gipsies; but for the great political movements of the day he had
little regard. In the melodious interpretation of nature in sad and
quiet moods he had no rival.

Very different was the wholesome and chivalrous nature of the young
Moravian Count MORITZ VON STRACHWITZ (1822-1847), whose ballads are
unmatched in German literature for spirit and fire. Strachwitz despised
the democratic agitation of the revolutionists, and sang with fine
enthusiasm the coming of the strong man, who, after all the intrigues of
the demagogues, like another Alexander should cut the Gordian knot with
the sword.

With EMANUEL GEIBEL (1815-1884) we come to the voice of fair compromise
between the extremes. Geibel was a conservative liberal, honestly
patriotic without partisanship. Thus his _Twelve Sonnets for
Schleswig-Holstein_ (1846) were broadly German in inspiration, and his
love of liberty was matched by his aristocratic hatred of the mob.
Geibel succeeded in once more gaining the widest popularity, in days
filled with partisan clamor, for the pure lyric of romantic inspiration.
He was in a true sense the poet-laureate of his generation. Lacking in
real originality, he was yet sincere in the expression of his emotion,
and his faultless form clothed the utterance of a soul of rare purity
and nobility.

As in the days after the War of Liberation, so in the years following
the revolutionary movements of 1848, the generous hopes of the people
seemed doomed to perish in weariness and disappointment, and the voice
of democratic poetry was silenced. In the reaction that followed the
intoxication of liberal enthusiasm, with the failure of the attempt to
unify Germany under Prussian leadership, the German lands relapsed into
dull acquiescence in the old regime. But the seed of the new day had
been sown, and the harvest came in due time. Strachwitz's intuition was
justified; the strong man did appear, in the person of Bismarck, and the
"Gordian knot" was cut with the sword of the war of 1870. But the
liberal dream of 1848 was realized, also, in the creation of a unified
and powerful German Empire on a constitutional basis.

       *       *       *       *       *


[Illustration: ANASTASIUS GRÜN]

ANASTASIUS GRÜN


  A SALON SCENE[14] (1831)

  Evening: In the festive halls the light of many candles gleams,
  Shedding from the mirrors' crystal thousand-fold reflected beams.
  In the sea of light are gliding, with a stately, solemn air,
  Honored, venerable matrons, ladies young and very fair.

  And among them wander slowly, clad in festive garments grand,
  Here the valiant sons of battle, there the rulers of the land.
  But on one that I see moving every eye is fixed with fear--
  Few indeed among the chosen have the courage to draw near.

  He it is by whose firm guidance Austrians' fortunes rise or sink,
  He who in the Princes' Congress for them all must act and think.
  But behold him now! How gracious, courteous, gentle he's to all,
  And how modest, unassuming, and how kind to great and small!

  In the light his orders sparkle with a faint and careless grace,
  But a friendly, gentle smile is always playing on his face
  When he plucks the ruddy rose leaves that some rounded bosom wears,
  Or when, like to withered blossoms, kingdoms he asunder tears.

  Equally enchanting is it, when he praises golden curls,
  Or when, from anointed heads, the royal crowns away he hurls.
  Yes, methinks 'tis heavenly rapture, which delights the happy man
  Whom his words to Elba's fastness or to Munkacs' prison ban.

  Could all Europe now but see him, so engaging, so gallant,
  How the ladies, young and old, his winning smiles delight, enchant;
  How the church's pious clergy, and the doughty men of war,
  And the state's distinguished servants by his grace enraptured are.

  Man of state and man of counsel, since you're in a mood so kind,
  Since you're showing to all present such a gracious frame of mind,
  See, without, a needy client standing waiting at your door
  Whom the slightest sign of favor will make happy evermore.

  And you do not need to fear him; he's intelligent and fair;
  Hidden 'neath his homely garments, knife nor dagger does he wear.
  'Tis the Austrian people, open, honest, courteous as can be.
  See, they're pleading: "May we ask you for the freedom to be free?"

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: NICOLAUS LENAU]

NIKOLAUS LENAU


  PRAYER[15] (1832)

  Eye of darkness, dim dominioned,
    Stay, enchant me with thy might,
  Earnest, gentle, dreamy-pinioned,
    Sweet, unfathomable night.

  With magician's mantle cover
    All this day-world from my sight,
  That for aye thy form may hover
    O'er my being, lovely night.

       *       *       *       *       *

  SEDGE SONGS[16] (1832)

  I

  In the west the sun departing
    Leaves the weary day asleep,
  And the willows trail their streamers
    In these waters still and deep.

  Flow, my bitter tears, flow ever;
    All I love I leave behind;
  Sadly whisper here the willows,
    And the reed shakes in the wind.

  Into my deep lonely sufferings
    Tenderly you shine afar,
  As athwart these reeds and rushes
    Trembles soft yon evening star.

  II

  Oft at eve I love to saunter
    Where the sedge sighs drearily,
  By entangled hidden footpaths,
    Love! and then I think of thee.

  When the woods gloom dark and darker,
    Sedges in the night-wind moan,
  Then a faint mysterious wailing
    Bids me weep, still weep alone.

  And methinks I hear it wafted,
    Thy sweet voice, remote yet clear,
  Till thy song, descending slowly,
    Sinks into the silent mere.

  III

  Angry sunset sky,
    Thunder-clouds o'erhead,
  Every breeze doth fly,
    Sultry air and dead.

  From the lurid storm
    Pallid lightnings break,
  Their swift transient form
    Flashes through the lake.

  And I seem to see
    Thyself, wondrous nigh--
  Streaming wild and free
    Thy long tresses fly.

       *       *       *       *       *

  [Illustration: EVENING ON THE SHORE HANS AM ENDE]

  SONGS BY THE LAKE[17] (1832)

  I

  In the sky the sun is failing,
    And the weary day would sleep,
  Here the willow fronds are trailing
    In the water still and deep.

  From my darling I must sever:
    Stream, oh tears, stream forth amain!
  In the breeze the rushes quiver
    And the willow sighs in pain.

  On my soul in silence grieving
    Mild thou gleamest from afar,
  As through rushes interweaving
    Gleams the mirrored evening star.

  IV

  Sunset dull and drear;
    Dark the clouds drive past;
  Sultry, full of fear,
    All the winds fly fast.

  Through the sky's wild rack
    Shoots the lightning pale;
  O'er the waters black
    Burns its flickering trail.

  In the vivid glare
    Half I see thy form,
  And thy streaming hair
    Flutters in the storm.

  V

  On the lake as it reposes
    Dwells the moon with glow serene
  Interweaving pallid roses
    With the rushes' crown of green.

  Stags from out the hillside bushes
    Gaze aloft into the night,
  Waterfowl amid the rushes
    Vaguely stir with flutterings light

  Down my tear-dim glance I bend now,
    While through all my soul a rare
  Thrill of thought toward thee doth tend now
    Like an ecstasy of prayer.

       *       *       *       *       *

  THE POSTILION[18] (1833)

  Passing lovely was the night,
    Silver clouds flew o'er us,
  Spring, methought, with splendor dight
    Led the happy chorus.

  Sleep-entranced lay wood and dale,
    Empty now each by-way;
  No one but the moonlight pale
    Roamed upon the highway.

  Breezes wandering in the gloom
    Soft their footsteps numbered
  Through Dame Nature's sleeping-room
    Where her children slumbered.

  Timidly the brook stole by,
    While the beds of blossom
  Breathed their perfume joyously
    On the still night's bosom.

  My postilion, heedless all,
    Cracked his whip most gaily,
  And his merry trumpet-call
    Rang o'er hill and valley.

  Hoofs beat steadily the while,
    As the horses gamboled,
  And along the shady aisle
    Spiritedly rambled.

  Grove and meadow gliding past
    Vanished at a glimmer:
  Peaceful towns were gone as fast,
    Like to dreams that shimmer.

  Midway in the Maytide trance
    Tombs were shining whitely;
  'Twas the churchyard met our glance--
    None might view it lightly.

  Close against the mountain braced
    Ran the long white wall there,
  And the cross, in sorrow placed,
    Silent rose o'er all there.

  Jehu straight, his humor spent,
    Left his tuneful courses;
  On the cross his gaze he bent
    Then pulled up his horses.

  "Here's where horse and coach must wait--
    You may think it odd, sir:--
  But up yonder, lies my mate
    Underneath the sod, sir.

  "Better lad was never born--
    (Sir 'twas God's own pity!)
  No one else could blow the horn
    Half as shrill and pretty.

  "So I stop beside the wall
    Every time I pass here,
  And I blow his favorite call
    To him under grass here."

  Toward the churchyard then he blew
    One call after other,
  That they might go ringing through
    To his sleeping brother.

  From the cliff each lively note
    Echoing resounded,
  As it were the dead man's throat
    Answering strains had sounded.

  On we went through field and hedge,
    Loosened bridles jingling;
  Long that echo from the ledge
    In my ear kept tingling.

       *       *       *       *       *

  TO THE BELOVED FROM AFAR[19] (1838)

  His sweet rose here oversea
    I must gather sadly;
  Which, beloved, unto thee
    I would bring how gladly!

  But alas! if o'er the foam
    I this flower should carry,
  It would fade ere I could come;
    Roses may not tarry.

  Farther let no mortal fare
    Who would be a wooer,
  Than unwithered he may bear
    Blushing roses to her,

  Or than nightingale may fly
    For her nesting grasses,
  Or than with the west wind's sigh
    Her soft warbling passes.

       *       *       *       *       *

  THE THREE GIPSIES[20]

  Three gipsy men I saw one day
    Stretched out on the grass together,
  As wearily o'er the sandy way
    My wagon brushed the heather.

  The first of the three was fiddling there
    In the glow of evening pallid,
  Playing a wild and passionate air,
    The tune of some gipsy ballad.

  From the second's pipe the smoke-wreaths curled,
    He watched them melt at his leisure.
  So full of content, it seemed the world
    Had naught to add to his pleasure.

  And what of the third?--He was fast asleep,
    His harp to a bough confided;
  The breezes across the strings did sweep,
    A dream o'er his heart-strings glided.

  The garb of all was worn and frayed,
    With tatters grotesquely mended;
  But flouting the world, and undismayed,
    The three with fate contended.

  They showed me how, by three-fold scoff,
    When cares of life perplex us,
  To smoke, or sleep, or fiddle them off,
    And scorn the ills that vex us.

  I passed them, but my gaze for long
    Dwelt on the trio surly--
  Their dark bronze features sharp and strong,
    Their loose hair black and curly.

       *       *       *       *       *

  MY HEART[21] (1844)

  Sleepless night, the rushing rain,
  While my heart with ceaseless pain
  Hears the mournful past subsiding
  Or the uncertain future striding.

  Heart, 'tis fatal thus to harken,
  Let not fear thy courage darken,
  Though the past be all regretting
  And the future helpless fretting.

  Onward, let what's mortal die.
  Is the storm near, beat thou high.
  Who came safe o'er Galilee
  Makes the voyage now in thee.

       *       *       *       *       *

EDUARD MÖRIKE

  AN ERROR CHANCED[22] (1824)

  An error chanced in the moonlight garden
  Of a once inviolate love.
  Shuddering I came on an outworn deceit,
  And with sorrowing look, yet cruel,
  Bade I the slender
  Enchanting maiden
  Leave me and wander far.
  Alas! her lofty forehead
  Was bowed, for she loved me well;
  Yet did she go in silence
  Into the dim gray
  World outside.

  Sick since then,
  Wounded and woeful heart!
  Never shall it be whole.

  Meseems that, spun of the air, a thread of magic
  Binds her yet to me, an unrestful bond;
  It draws, it draws me faint with love toward her.
  Might it yet be some day that on my threshold
  I should find her, as erst, in the morning twilight,
  Her traveler's bundle beside her,
  And her eye true-heartedly looking up to me,
  Saying, "See, I've come back,
  Back once more from the lonely world!"

       *       *       *       *       *

  A SONG FOR TWO IN THE NIGHT[23] (1825)

  _She_. How soft the night wind strokes the meadow grasses
              And, breathing music, through the woodland passes!
              Now that the upstart day is dumb,
              One hears from the still earth a whispering throng
              Of forces animate, with murmured song
              Joining the zephyrs' well-attunèd hum.

  _He_. I catch the tone from wondrous voices brimming,
              Which sensuous on the warm wind drifts to me,
              While, streaked with misty light uncertainly,
              The very heavens in the glow are swimming.

  _She_. The air like woven fabric seems to wave,
              Then more transparent and more lustrous groweth;
              Meantime a muted melody outgoeth
              From happy fairies in their purple cave.
              To sphere-wrought harmony
              Sing they, and busily
              The thread upon their silver spindles floweth.

  _He_. Oh lovely night! how effortless and free
              O'er samite black-though green by day--thou movest!
              And to the whirring music that thou lovest
              Thy foot advances imperceptibly.
              Thus hour by hour thy step doth measure--
              In trancèd self-forgetful pleasure
              Thou'rt rapt; creation's soul is rapt with thee!

       *       *       *       *       *

  [Illustration: EDUARD MÖRIKE WEISS]

  EARLY AWAY[24] (1828)

  The morning frost shines gray
    Along the misty field
  Beneath the pallid way
    Of early dawn revealed.

  Amid the glow one sees
    The day-star disappear;
  Yet o'er the western trees
    The moon is shining clear.

  So, too, I send my glance
    On distant scenes to dwell;
  I see in torturing trance
    The night of our farewell.

  Blue eyes, a lake of bliss,
    Swim dark before my sight,
  Thy breath, I feel, thy kiss;
    I hear thy whispering light.

  My cheek upon thy breast
    The streaming tears bedew,
  Till, purple-black, is cast
    A veil across my view.

  The sun comes out; he glows,
    And straight my dreams depart,
  While from the cliffs he throws
    A chill across my heart.

       *       *       *       *       *

  THE FORSAKEN MAIDEN[25] (1829)

  Early when cocks do crow
    Ere the stars dwindle,
  Down to the hearth I go,
    Fire must I kindle.

  Fair leap the flames on high,
    Sparks they whirl drunken;
  I watch them listlessly
    In sorrow sunken.

  Sudden it comes to me,
    Youth so fair seeming,
  That all the night of thee
    I have been dreaming.

  Tears then on tears do run
    For my false lover;
  Thus has the day begun--
    Would it were over!

       *       *       *       *       *

  WEYLA'S SONG[26] (1831)

  Thou art Orplede, my land
  Remotely gleaming;
  The mist arises from thy sun-bright strand
  To where the faces of the gods are beaming.

  Primeval rivers spring renewed
  Thy silver girdle weaving, child!
  Before the godhead bow subdued
  Kings, thy worshipers and watchers mild.

       *       *       *       *       *

  SECLUSION[27] (1832)

  Let, oh world, ah let me be!
  Tempt me not with gifts of pleasure.
  Leave alone this heart to treasure
  All its joy, its misery.

  What my grief I can not say,
  'Tis a strange, a wistful sorrow;
  Yet through tears at every morrow
  I behold the light of day.

  When my weary soul finds rest
  Oft a beam of rapture brightens
  All the gloom of cloud, and lightens
  This oppression in my breast.

  Let, oh world, all, let me be!
  Tempt me not with gifts of pleasure.
  Leave alone this heart to treasure
  All its joy, its misery.

       *       *       *       *       *

  THE SOLDIER'S BETROTHED[28] (1837)

  Oh dear, if the king only knew
  How brave is my sweetheart, how true!
  He would give his heart's blood for the king,
  But for me he would do the same thing.

  My love has no ribbon or star,
  No cross such as gentlemen wear,
  A gen'ral he'll never become;
  If only they'd leave him at home!

  For stars there are three shining bright
  O'er the Church of St. Mary each night;
  We are bound by a rose-woven band,
  And a house-cross is always at hand.

       *       *       *       *       *

  THE OLD WEATHERCOCK: AN IDYLL[29] (1840, 1852)

  At Cleversulzbach in the Underland
  A hundred and thirteen years did I stand
  Up on the tower in wind and rain,
  An ornament and a weathervane.
  Through night and tempest gazing down,
  Like a good old cock I watched the town.
  The lightning oft my form has grazed,
  The frost my scarlet comb o'erglazed,
  And many a warm long summer's day,
  In times when all seek shade who may,
  The scorching sun with rage unslaked
  My golden body well has baked.
  So in my age all black I'd grown,
  My beauteous glint and gleam was gone,
  Till I at length, despised by all,
  Was lifted from my pedestal.
  Ah well! 'tis thus we run our race,
  Another now must have my place.
  Go strut, and preen, but don't forget
  What court the wind will pay you yet!

  Farewell, sweet landscape, mount and dell!
  Vineyard and forest, fare ye well!
  Belovèd tower, the roof's high ridge,
  Churchyard and streamlet with its bridge;
  Oh fountain, where the cattle throng
  And sheep come trooping all day long,
  With Hans to urge them on their way.
  And Eva on the piebald gray!
  Ye storks and swallows with your clatter,
  And sparrows, how I'll miss your chatter!
  For every bit of dirt seems dear
  Which o'er my form you used to smear.
  Goodby, my worthy friend the pastor,
  And you, poor driveling old schoolmaster.
  'Tis o'er, what cheered my heart so long.
  The sound of organ, bells and song.

  So from my, lofty perch I crew,
  And would have sung much longer too,
  When came a crooked devil's minion,
  The slater 'twas in my opinion.
  Who after many a knock and shake
  Detached me wholly from my stake.
  My poor old heart was broke at last
  When from the roof he pulled me past
  The bells which from their station glared
  And on my fate in wonder stared,
  But vexed themselves no more about me,
  Thinking they'd hang as well without me.

  Then to the scrap-heap I was brought,
  For twopence by the blacksmith bought,
  Which as he paid he said 'twas wonder
  How much folk wanted for such plunder.
  And there at noon of that same day
  In grief before his hut I lay.
  The time being May, a little tree
  Shed snow-white blossoms over me,
  While other chickens by the dozen
  Unheeding cackled round their cousin.
  'Twas then the pastor happened by,
  Spoke to the smith, then smiling, "Hi!
  And have you come to this, poor cock
  A strange bird, Andrew, for your flock!
  He'll hardly do to broil or roast;
  For me though, I may fairly boast
  Things must go hard if I've no place
  For old church servants in hard case.
  Bring him along then speedily
  And drink a glass of wine with me."

  The sooty lout with quick assent
  Laughed, picked me up, and off we went.
  A little more, and from my throat
  Toward heaven I'd sent a joyous note.
  Within the manse the strange new guest
  Astounded all from most to least;
  But soon each face, before afraid,
  The glowing light of joy displayed.
  Wife, maids and menfolks, girls and boys
  Surrounded with a seven-fold noise
  The giant rooster in the hall,
  Welcoming, looking, handling all.
  The man of God with jealous care
  Took me himself and climbed the stair
  To his own study, while the pack
  Came stumbling after at his back.

  Within these walls is peace enshrined!
  Entering, we left the world behind.
  I seemed to breathe a magic air,
  Essence of books and learning rare,
  Geranium scent and mignonette,
  And faint tobacco lingering yet.
  (To me of course all this was new.)
  An ancient stove I noticed, too,
  In the left corner in full view.
  Quite like a tower its bulk was raised
  Until its peak the ceiling grazed,
  With pillared strength and flowery grace,
  O most delightful resting-place!
  On the top wreath as on a mast
  The blacksmith set me firm and fast.

  Behold my stove with reverent eyes!
  Cathedral-like its noble size;
  With store of pictures overwrought,
  And rhymes that tell of pious thought.
  Of such I learned full many a word,
  While the old stove from out its hoard
  Would draw them forth for young and old,
  When the snow fell and winds blew cold.
  Here you may see where on the tile
  Stands Bishop Hatto's towered isle,
  While rats and mice on every side
  Swim through the Rhine's opposing tide.
  The armed grooms in vain wage war,

  The host of tails grows more and more,
  Till thousands ranged in close array
  Leap from the walls on those at bay
  And seize the bishop in his room:
  An awful death is now his doom;
  Devoured straightway shall he be
  To pay the price of perjury.
  --There too Belshazzar's banquet shines,
  Voluptuous women, costly wines;
  But in the amazèd sight of all
  The dread hand writes upon the wall.
  --Lastly the pictures represent
  How Sarah listens in the tent
  While God Almighty, come to earth,
  Foretells to Abraham the birth
  Of Isaac and his seed thereafter.
  Sarah cannot restrain her laughter,
  Since both are well advanced in years.
  God asks when he the laughter hears:
  "Doth Sarah laugh then at God's will,
  And doubt if this he may fulfil?"
  Her indiscretion to recall
  She says, "I did not laugh at all."
  Which commonly would be a lie;
  But God prefers to pass it by,
  Since 'tis not done with malice dark,
  And she's a lady patriarch.

  Now that I'm here, I think with reason
  That winter is the fairest season
  How smooth the daily current flows
  To ev'ry week's belovèd close!
  --Just about nine on Friday night,
  Sole by the lamp's reposeful light
  My master with a mind perplexed
  Sets out to choose his Sunday text.
  Before the stove a while he stands,
  Walks to and fro with twisted hands,
  And vainly struggles to determine
  The theme on which to thread his sermon.
  Now and again amid his doubt
  He lifts the window and looks out.
  --Oh cooling surge of starlit air,
  Pour on my brow your tide so rare!
  I see where Verrenberg doth glimmer,
  And Shepherds' Knoll with snows a-shimmer.
  He sits him down to write at last,
  Dips pen and makes the A and O,
  Which o'er his "Preface" always go.
  I meanwhile from my post on high
  Ne'er from my master turn an eye,
  Look at him now, with far-off gaze
  Pondering, testing every phrase;
  The snuffer once he seizes quick
  And cleans of soot the flaming wick;
  Then oft in deep abstraction, he
  Murmurs a sentence audibly,
  Which I with outstretched bill peck up
  And fill with lore my eager crop.
  So do we come by smooth gradation
  To where begins the "Application."
  "Eleven!" comes the watchman's shout.
  My master hears and turns about.
  "Bedtime!" He rises, takes the light,
  Nor ever hears my shrill "good-night!"
  Alone in darkness then I'd be;
  That has no terrors, though, for me.
  Behind the wainscot sharply picking
  I hear a while the death-clock ticking,
  I hear the marten vainly scoop
  The earth around the chicken-coop.
  Along the eaves the night-wind brushes,
  And through far trees the tempest rushes--

  Bird Wood's the name that forest bears,
  Where rude old Winter raves and tears.
  Now splits a beech with such a crack
  That all the valleys echo it back.
  --My goodness! when these sounds I hear
  I'm glad a pious stove's so near,
  Which warms you so the long hours through
  That night seems fraught with blessings too.
  --Just now I well might feel afraid,
  When thieves and murderers ply their trade;
  'Tis lucky, faith, for those who are
  Secured from harm by bolt and bar.
  How could I call so men would hear me
  If some one raised a ladder near me?
  When thoughts like this attack my brain
  The sweat runs down my back like rain.
  At two, thank God! again at three,
  A cock-crow rises clear and free,
  And with the morning bell at five
  My whole heart, now once more alive,
  High in my breast with rapture springs,
  When finally the watchman sings
  "Arise, good friends, for Jesus' sake,
  For bright and fair the day doth break."

  Soon after this, an hour at most,
  My spurs are growing stiff with frost
  When in comes Lisa, hums some snatches,
  And rakes the fire until it catches.
  Then from below, quite savory too,
  I scent the steam of onion stew.
  At length my master enters gay,
  Fresh for the business of the day.
  On Saturday a worthy priest
  Should keep his room, his house at least;
  Not visit or distract his brain,
  Turning his thoughts to things profane.
  My master was not tempted so,
  But once--don't let it out, you know--
  He squandered all his precious wits
  Making a titmouse trap for Fritz--
  Right here, and talked and had a smoke;
  To me, I'll own, it seemed a joke.

  The blessed Sabbath now is here.
  The church-bells call both far and near,
  The organ sounds so loud to me
  I think I'm in the sacristy.
  There's not a soul in all the house;
  I hear a fly, and then a mouse.
  The sunlight now the window reaches
  And through the cactus stems it stretches,
  Fain o'er the walnut desk to glide,
  Some ancient cabinet-maker's pride.
  There it beholds with searching looks
  Concordances and children's books,
  On wafer-box and seal it dances
  And lights the inkwell with its glances;
  Across the sand it strikes its wedge,
  Is cut upon the penknife's edge,
  Across the armchair freely roams,
  Then to the bookcase with its tomes.
  There clad in parchment and in leather
  The Suabian Fathers stand together:
  Andrea, Bengel, Riegers two,
  And Oetinger are well in view.
  The sun each golden name reads o'er
  And with a kiss he gilds yet more.
  As Hiller's "Harp" his fingers touch--
  Hark! does it ring? It lacks not much.

  With that a spider slim and small
  Begins upon my frame to crawl,
  And, never asking my goodwill,
  Suspends his web from neck to bill.
  I don't disturb myself a whit,
  Just wait and watch him for a bit.
  For him it is a lucky hap
  That I'm disposed to take a nap.--
  But tell me now if anywhere
  An old church cock might better fare.

  A twinge of longing now and then
  Will vex, no doubt, the happiest men.
  In summer I could wish outside
  Upon the dove-cote roof to bide,
  With just beneath the garden bright
  And stretch of greensward too in sight.
  Or else again in winter time,
  When, as today, the weather's prime:--
  Now I've begun, I'll say it out
  We've got a sleigh here, staunch and stout,
  All colored, yellow, black and green;
  Just freshly painted, neat and clean;
  And on the dashboard proudly strutting
  A strange, new-fangled fowl is sitting:
  Now if they'd have me fixed up right--
  The whole expense would be but slight--
  I'd stand there quite as well as he
  And none need feel ashamed of me!
  --Fool! I reply, accept your fate,
  And be not so immoderate.
  Perhaps 'twould suit your high behest
  If some one, for a common jest,
  Would take you, stove and all, away
  And set you up there on the sleigh,
  With all the family round you too:
  Man, woman, child--the whole blest crew!
  Old image, what! so shameless yet,
  And prone on gauds your mind to set?
  Think on your latter end at last!
  Your hundredth year's already past.

       *       *       *       *       *

  THINK OF IT, MY SOUL![30] (1852)

  Somewhere a pine is green,
  Just where who knoweth,
  And in a garth unseen
  A rose-tree bloweth.
  These are ordained for thee--
  Think, oh soul, fixedly--
  Over thy grave to be;
  Swift the time floweth.

  Two black steeds on the down
  Briskly are faring,
  Or on their way to town
  Canter uncaring.
  These may with heavy tread
  Slowly convey the dead
  E'en ere the shoes be shed
  They now are wearing.

       *       *       *       *       *

  ERINNA TO SAPPHO[31] (1863)

  (Erinna was a Greek poetess, a friend and pupil of Sappho of Lesbos.
  She died at the age of nineteen.)

  "Many the paths to Hades," an ancient proverb
  Tells us, "and one of them thou thyself shalt follow,
  Doubt not!" My sweetest Sappho, who can doubt it?
  Tells not each day the old tale?
  Yet the foreboding word in a youthful bosom
  Rankles not, as a fisher bred by the seashore,
  Deafened by use, perceives the breaker's thunder no more.
  --Strangely, however, today my heart misgave me. Attend:
  Sunny the glow of morn-tide, pouring
  Through the trees of my well-walled garden,
  Roused the slugabed (so of late thou calledst Erinna)
  Early up from her sultry couch.
  Full was my soul of quiet, although my blood beat
  Quick with uncertain waves o'er the thin cheek's pallor.
  Then, as I loosed the plaits of my shining tresses,
  Parting with nard-moist comb above my forehead
  The veil of hair--in the glass my own glance met me.
  Eyes, strange eyes, I said, what will ye?
  Spirit of me, that within there dwelled securely as yet,
  Occultly wed to my living senses--
  Demon-like, half smiling thy solemn message,
  Thou dost nod to me, Death presaging!
  --Ha! all at once like lightning a thrill went through me,
  Or as a deadly arrow with sable feathers
  Whizzing had grazed my temples,
  So that, with hands pressed over my face, a long time
  Dumb-struck I sat, while my thought reeled at the frightful abyss.

  Tearless at first I pondered,
  Weighing the terror of Death;
  Till I bethought me of thee, my Sappho,
  And of my comrades all,
  And of the muses' lore,
  When straightway the tears ran fast.

  But there on the table gleamed a beautiful hair-net, thy gift,
  Costly handwork of Byssos, spangled with golden bees.
  This, when next in the flowery festal season
  We shall worship the glorious child of Demeter,
  This will I offer to her for thy and my sake,
  So may she favor us both (for she much availeth),
  That no mourning lock thou untimely sever
  From thy beloved head for thy poor Erinna.

       *       *       *       *       *


MOZART'S JOURNEY FROM VIENNA TO PRAGUE
(about 1850)

A ROMANCE OF HIS PRIVATE LIFE

BY EDUARD MÖRIKE

TRANSLATED BY FLORENCE LEONARD


In the fall of the year 1787 Mozart and his wife undertook a journey to
Prague, where he was to finish and bring out his masterpiece, _Don
Juan_.

Eleven o'clock of the fourteenth of September found them well on their
way and in the best of spirits. They had been traveling two days, and
were about one hundred and twenty miles from Vienna, among the beautiful
Mährische mountains. The splendid coach, drawn by three post-horses,
belonged to an elderly Frau Volkstett, wife of General Volkstett, who
prided herself on her intimacy with the Mozarts and on the favors she
had shown them. The carriage was painted a bright yellowish-red, the
body adorned with garlands of gay-colored flowers, the wheels finished
with narrow stripes of gold. The high top was fitted with stiff leather
curtains, now drawn back and fastened.

The dress of the travelers was simple, for the new clothes to be worn at
court were carefully packed in the trunk. Mozart wore an embroidered
waistcoat of a somewhat faded blue, his ordinary brown coat--with a row
of large, curiously fashioned gilt buttons--black silk stockings and
small-clothes, and shoes with gilt buckles. As the day grew warm,
unusually warm for September, he had taken off both hat and coat and was
sitting in his shirt-sleeves, bare headed, serenely chatting. His thick
hair, drawn back into a braid, was powdered even more carelessly than
usual.

Frau Mozart's hair, a wealth of light brown curls, never disfigured by
powder, fell, half unfastened, upon her shoulders. She wore a
traveling-suit of striped stuff--light green and white.

They were slowly ascending a gentle slope, where rich fields alternated
with long stretches of woodland, when Mozart exclaimed: "How many woods
we have passed every day of our journey, and I hardly noticed them, much
less thought of going into them! Postilion, stop and let your horses
rest a bit, while we get some of those blue-bells yonder in the shade!"

As they rose to leave the coach they became aware of a slight accident
for which the master had to take the blame. Through his carelessness a
bottle of choice perfume had lost its cork, and its contents had run,
unperceived, over clothing and carriage cushions. "I might have known
it," lamented Frau Mozart, "I have smelled it this long while! Oh dear!
A whole bottle of real 'Rosée d'Aurore!' I was as careful of it as if it
had been gold!"

"Never mind, little goose," was Mozart's comforting answer. "This was
the only way that your sacred smelling-stuff would do us any good. The
air was like an oven here, and all your fanning made it no cooler. But
presently the carriage was comfortable--you said it was because I poured
a couple of drops on my _jabot_--and we could talk and enjoy our journey
instead of hanging our heads like sheep in a butcher's cart. It will
last all the rest of the way. Come now, let us stick our two Vienna
noses into this green wilderness!"

They climbed the bank arm-in-arm, and strolled into the shade of the
pines, which grew deeper and deeper, till only here and there a stray
sunbeam lighted up the green mossy carpet. So cool was the air that
Mozart soon had to put on the coat, which, but for his prudent wife, he
would have left behind.

Presently he stopped and looked up through the rows of lofty
tree-trunks. "How beautiful!" he cried. "It is like being
in church! This is a real wood, a whole family of trees! No human
hand planted them, but they seem to have come and stood there just
because it is pleasant to live and grow in company. To think that I have
traveled half over Europe, have seen the Alps and the ocean, and yet,
happening to come into an ordinary Bohemian pine-woods, I am astonished
that such a thing actually exists; not as a poetic fiction like the
nymphs and fauns, but really living, drawn out of the earth by moisture
and sunshine! Imagine the deer, with his wonderful antlers, at home
here, and the mischievous squirrel, the wood-cock, and the jay!" He
stooped and picked a mushroom, praised its deep red color and delicate
white lines, and put a handful of cones into his pocket.

"Any one would think that you had never walked a dozen steps in the
Prater," said his wife; "these same rare cones and mushrooms are to be
found there too!"

"The Prater! Heavens, how can you mention it! What is there in the
Prater but carriages and swords, gowns and fans, music and hubbub! As
for the trees, large as they are--well, even the acorns on the ground
seem like second cousins to the old corks lying beside them! You could
walk there two hours, and still smell waiters and sauces!"

"Oh, what a speech from a man whose greatest pleasure is to eat a good
supper in the Prater!"

After they had returned to the carriage and sat watching the smiling
fields which stretched away to the mountains behind them, Mozart
exclaimed: "Indeed the earth is beautiful, and no one can be blamed for
wanting to stay on it as long as possible. Thank God, I feel as fresh
and strong as ever, and ready for a thousand things as soon as my new
opera is finished and brought out. But how much there is in the outside
world, and how much at home, both wonderful and beautiful, that I know
nothing about! Beauties of nature, sciences, and both fine arts and
useful arts! That black charcoal-burner there by his kiln knows just as
much as I do about many things. And I should like well enough to look
into some subjects that aren't connected with my own trade!"

"The other day," interrupted his wife, "I came across your old
pocket-calendar for '85. There were three or four special memoranda at
the end. One read: 'About the middle of October they are to cast the
great lions at the imperial brass foundry.' Another was underlined twice
'Call on Professor Gottner.' Who is he?"

"Oh Oh yes, I remember! That kind old gentleman in the observatory, who
invites me there now and then. I meant, long ago, to take you to see the
moon and the man in it. They have a new telescope, so strong that they
can see distinctly mountains and valleys and chasms, and, on the side
where the sun does not fall, the shadows of the mountains. Two years ago
I planned to go there! Shameful!"

"Well, the moon will not run away!"

"But it is so with everything. It is too hard to think of all that one
puts off and loses, not duties to God and to man only, but pure
pleasures--those small innocent pleasures which are within one's grasp
every day!"

Madame Mozart could not or would not turn his thoughts into another
channel, and could only agree with him as he went on: "Have I ever been
able to have a whole hour of pleasure with my own children? Even they
can be only half enjoyed! The boys have one ride on my knee, chase me
once around the room, and stop. I must shake them off and go! I cannot
remember that we have had once a whole day in the country together, at
Easter or Whitsuntide, in garden or woods or meadows to grow young again
among the children and flowers. And meanwhile life is gradually slipping
and running and rushing away from us! Dear Lord! To think of it!"

With such self-reproach began a serious conversation. How sad that
Mozart, passionate as he was, keenly alive to all the beauties of the
world, and full of the highest aspirations, never knew peace and
contentment, in spite of all that he enjoyed and created
in his short life. The reason is easily found in those weaknesses,
apparently unconquerable, which were so large a part of his
character. The man's needs were many; his fondness for society
extraordinarily great. Honored and sought by all the families of
rank, he seldom refused an invitation to a fête or social gathering of
any sort. He had, besides, his own circle of friends whom he entertained
of a Sunday evening, and often at dinner at his own well-ordered table.
Occasionally, to the inconvenience of his wife, he would bring in
unexpected guests of diverse gifts, any one whom he might happen to
meet--amateurs, fellow-artists, singers, poets. An idle hanger-on whose
only merit lay in his companionable mood or in his jests, was as welcome
as a gifted connoisseur or a distinguished musician. But the greater
part of his recreation Mozart sought away from home. He was to be found
almost every afternoon at billiards in the Kaffeehaus, and many an
evening at the inn. He enjoyed both driving and riding, frequented balls
and masquerades--a finished dancer--and took part in popular
celebrations also, masquerading regularly on St. Bridget's Day as
Pierrot.

These pleasures, sometimes wild and extravagant, sometimes quieter in
tone, were designed to refresh the severely taxed brain after extreme
labors; and in the mysterious ways of genius they bore fruit in later
days. But unfortunately he was so bent on enjoying to the full every
moment of pleasure that there was room for no other consideration,
whether of prudence or duty, of self-preservation or of economy. Both in
his amusements and in his creative activity Mozart knew no limits. Part
of the night was always devoted to composition; early in the morning,
often even while in bed, he finished his work. Then, driving or walking,
he made the rounds of his lessons, which generally took a part of the
afternoon also. "We take a great deal of trouble for our pupils, and it
is often hard not to lose patience," he wrote to one of his
patrons. "Because we are well recommended as pianists and
teachers of music we load ourselves down with pupils, and
are always willing to add another; if only the bills are
promptly paid it does not matter whether the new student be a
Hungarian mustachio from the engineer corps, whom Satan has tempted to
wade through thorough-bass and counterpoint, or the haughtiest little
countess who receives us in a fury, as she would Master Coquerel, the
hair-dresser, if we do not arrive on the stroke of the hour." So, when
weary with the occupations of his profession, school-work, and
rehearsals as well as private lessons, and in need of refreshment, he
gave his nerves a seeming restorative only in new excitement. His health
began to suffer, and ever-recurring fits of melancholy were certainly
fostered, if not actually induced, by his ill health; and the
premonition of his early death, which for a long time haunted him, was
finally fulfilled. The deepest melancholy and remorse were the bitter
fruits of every pleasure which he tasted; yet we know that even these
troubled streams emptied pure and clear in the deep spring from which
all joy and all woe flowed in marvelous melodies.

The effects of Mozart's illness showed most plainly when at home. The
temptation to spend his money foolishly and carelessly was very great.
It was due, as a matter of course, to one of his most lovely traits. If
any one in need came to him to borrow money or to ask his name as
security, he consented at once with smiling generosity and without
making arrangements to insure the return of the loan. The means which
such generosity, added to the needs of his household, required, were out
of all proportion to his actual income. The sums which he received from
theatres and concerts, from publishers and pupils, together with the
Emperor's pension, were the smaller because the public taste was far
from declaring itself in favor of Mozart's compositions. The very
beauty, depth, and fulness of his music were, in general, opposed to the
easily understood compositions then in favor. To be sure,
the Viennese public could not get enough of _Die Entführung
aus dem Serail_, thanks to its popular element. But, on the
other hand, several years later _Figaro_ made a most unexpected
and lamentable fiasco, in comparison with the success of its
pleasing, though quite insignificant rival _Cosa rara_--and not
alone through the intrigue of the manager. It was the same _Figaro_
which, soon after, the cultivated and unprejudiced people of Prague
received with such enthusiasm that the master, in gratitude, determined
to write his next great opera for them.

But despite the unfavorable period and the influence of his enemies,
Mozart, if he had been more prudent and circumspect, might have received
a very considerable sum from his art. As it was, he was in arrears after
every enterprise, even when full houses shouted their applause to him.
So circumstances, his own nature, and his own faults conspired to keep
him from prosperity.

And what a sad life was that of Frau Mozart! She was young and of a
cheerful disposition, musical, and of a musical family, and had the best
will in the world to stop the mischief at the outset, and, failing in
that, to make up for the loss in great things by saving in small
affairs. But she lacked, perhaps, skill and experience. She held the
purse, and kept the account of the house expenses. Every claim, every
bill, every vexation was carried to her. How often must she have choked
back the tears when to such distress and want, painful embarrassment,
and fear of open disgrace, was added the melancholy of her husband, in
which he would remain for days, accomplishing nothing, refusing all
comfort, and either sighing and complaining, or sitting silent in a
corner, thinking continually of death! But she seldom lost courage, and
almost always her clear judgment found counsel and relief, though it
might be but temporary. In reality she could make no radical change in
the situation. If she persuaded him in seriousness or in jest, by
entreaties or by coaxing, to eat his supper and spend his
evening with his family, she had gained but little. Perhaps,
touched by the sight of his wife's distress, he would curse his bad
habits and promise all that she asked--even more. But to no purpose; he
would soon, unexpectedly, find himself in the old ruts again. One is
tempted to believe that he could not do otherwise, and that a code of
morals, totally different from our ideas of right and wrong, of
necessity controlled him.

Yet Frau Constanze hoped continually for a favorable turn of affairs, a
great improvement in their financial condition, which could hardly fail
to follow Mozart's increasing fame. If the anxiety which always pressed
upon him, more or less, could be lightened; if, instead of devoting half
his strength and time to earning money he could live only for his art,
and, moreover, could enjoy with a clear conscience those pleasures which
he needed for body and mind, then he would grow calmer and more natural.
She hoped, indeed, for an opportunity to leave Vienna, for, in spite of
his affection for the place, she was convinced that he would never
prosper there. Some decisive step toward the realization of her plans
and wishes she promised herself as the result of the new opera, for
which they were now on their way to Prague.

The composition was more than half written. Trusty friends and competent
judges who had heard the beginning of the work talked of it with such
enthusiasm that many of Mozart's enemies, even, were prepared to hear,
within six months, that his _Don Juan_ had taken all Germany by storm.
His more prudent and moderate friends, who took into consideration the
state of the public taste, hardly expected an immediate and universal
success; and with these the master himself secretly agreed.

Constanze, however, was like all women. If once they hope, particularly
in a righteous cause, they are less apt than men are to give heed to
discouraging features. She still held fast to her favorable opinion, and
had, even now, new occasion to defend it. She did so in her gay and
lively fashion, the more earnestly because Mozart's spirits had fallen
decidedly in the course of the previous conversation. She described
minutely how, after their return, she should use the hundred ducats
which the manager at Prague would pay for the score. That sum would
supply their most pressing needs, and they could live comfortably till
spring.

"Your Herr Bondine will make some money with this opera, you may be
sure; and if he is half as honest as you think him, he will give you
later also a fair per cent. of the price that other theatres pay him for
their copies of _Don Juan_. But, even if he doesn't, there are plenty of
other good things that might happen to us; they are more probable too!"

"What, for instance?"

"A little bird told me that the King of Prussia needs a leader for his
orchestra."

"Oh!"

"A general music director, I mean. Let me build you an air-castle! That
weakness I got from my mother."

"Build away! The higher the better!"

"No, my air-castles are very real ones! In a year from now they'll be
reporting--"

"If the Pope to Gretchen comes a-courting!"

"Keep quiet, you ridiculous goose! I tell you by the first of next
September there will be no 'Imperial Court Composer' of the name of Wolf
Mozart to be found in Vienna."

"May the foxes bite you for that!"

"I hear already what our old friends are saying and gossiping about us."

"What, then?"

"Well, a little after nine o'clock one fine morning our old friend and
admirer Frau Volkstett comes sailing at full speed across the Kahlmarkt.
She has been away for three months. That famous visit to her
brother-in-law in Saxony, that we have heard about every day, has at
last come off. She returned yesterday, and cannot wait any
longer to see her dear friend, the Colonel's wife. Upstairs she goes
and knocks at the door, and does not wait for an answer. You may imagine
the rejoicing and the embracing an both sides. 'Now dearest, best Frau
Colonel,' she begins after the greetings are over, 'I have so many
messages for you. Guess from whom? I didn't come straight from Stendal,
but by way of Brandenburg.'

"'What! Not through Berlin! You haven't been with the Mozarts?' 'Yes,
ten heavenly days!' 'Oh, my dear, good Frau General, tell me all about
them! How are our dear people? Do they like Berlin as well as ever? I
can hardly imagine Mozart living in Berlin! How does he act? How does he
look?' 'Mozart! You should see him! This summer the King sent him to
Karlsbad. When would that have occurred to his dear Emperor Joseph? They
had but just returned when I arrived. He is fairly radiant with health
and good spirits, as sound and solid and lively as quicksilver, with
happiness and comfort beaming from his countenance.'"

And then the speaker began to paint in the brightest colors the glories
of the new position. From their dwelling on Unter den Linden, from their
garden and country-house to the brilliant scenes of public activity and
the smaller circle of the court--where he was to play accompaniments for
the Queen--all were vividly described. She recited, with the greatest
ease, whole conversations, and the most delightful anecdotes. Indeed she
seemed more familiar with Berlin, Potsdam, and Sans Souci than with the
palace at Schönbrunn and the Emperor Joseph's castle. She was, moreover,
cunning enough to depict our hero with many new domestic virtues which
had developed on the firm ground of the Berlin life, and among which
Frau Volkstett had perceived (as a most remarkable phenomenon and a
proof that extremes sometimes meet) the disposition of a veritable
little miser--and it made him altogether most charming.

"'Yes, think of it! He is sure of his three thousand thalers,
and for what? For directing a chamber concert once a week, and
the opera twice. Ah, Frau Colonel, I have seen him, our dear, precious
little man, in the midst of his excellent orchestra who adore him! I sat
with Frau Mozart in her box almost opposite the King's box. And what was
on the posters, do you think? Look, please! I brought it for you,
wrapped around a little souvenir from the Mozarts and myself. Look, read
it, printed in letters a yard long!' 'Heaven forbid! Not _Tarare_!'
'Yes! What cannot one live to see! Two years ago, when Mozart wrote _Don
Juan_, and the wretched, malicious, yellow, old Salieri was preparing to
repeat in Vienna the triumph which he had won with his piece, in Paris,
and to show our good plain public, contented with _Cosa rara_, a hawk or
two; while he and his arch-accomplice were plotting to present _Don
Juan_ just as they had presented _Figaro_, mutilated, ruined, I vowed
that if the infamous _Tarare_ was ever given, nothing should hire me to
go to see it. And I kept my word. When everybody else ran to hear
it--you too, Frau Colonel--I sat by my fire with my cat in my lap, and
ate my supper. Several times after that, too. But now imagine! _Tarare_
on the Berlin stage, the work of his deadly foe, conducted by Mozart
himself!' 'You must certainly go,' he said, 'if it is only to be able to
say in Vienna whether I had a hair clipped from Absalom's head. I wish
he were here himself! The jealous old sheep should see that I do not
need to bungle another person's composition in order to show off my
own.'"

"Brava! Bravissima!" shouted Mozart, and taking his wife by the ears he
kissed her and teased her till the play with the bright bubbles of an
imaginary future--which, sad to say, were never in the least to be
realized--ended finally in laughter and jollity.

Meanwhile they had long ago reached the valley, and were approaching a
town, behind which lay the small modern palace of Count Schinzberg. In
this town they were to feed the horses, to rest, and to take their
noonday meal.

The inn where they stopped stood alone near the end of the village
where an avenue of poplar trees led to the count's garden, not six
hundred paces away. After they had alighted, Mozart, as usual, left to
his wife the arrangements for dinner, and ordered for himself a glass of
wine, while she asked only for water and a quiet room where she could
get a little sleep. The host led the way upstairs, and Mozart, now
singing, now whistling, brought up the rear. The room was newly
whitewashed, clean, and fresh. The ancient articles of furniture were of
noble descent; they had probably once adorned the dwelling of the Count.
The clean white bed was covered with a painted canopy, resting upon
slender green posts, whose silken curtains were long ago replaced by a
more ordinary stuff. Constanze prepared for her nap, Mozart promising to
wake her in time for dinner. She bolted the door behind him, and he
descended to seek entertainment in the coffee-room. Here, however, no
one but the host was to be seen, and, since his conversation suited
Mozart no better than his wine, the master proposed a walk to the palace
garden while dinner was preparing. Respectable strangers, he was told,
were allowed to enter the grounds; besides, the family were away for the
day.

A short walk brought him to the gate, which stood open; then he slowly
followed a path overhung by tall old linden-trees, till he suddenly came
upon the palace which stood a little to the left. It was a light,
plaster building, in the Italian style, with a broad, double flight of
steps in front; the slate-covered roof was finished in the usual manner,
with a balustrade, and was adorned with statues of gods and goddesses.

Our master turned toward the shrubbery, and, passing many flower-beds
still gay with blossoms, took his leisurely way through a dark grove of
pines until he came to an open space where a fountain was playing. The
rather large oval basin was surrounded with carefully kept orange-trees,
interspersed with laurels and oleanders; a smooth gravel
walk upon which an arbor opened ran around the fountain. It was a most
tempting resting-place, and Mozart threw himself down upon the rustic
bench which stood by a table within the arbor.

Listening to the splash of the water, and watching an orange-tree which
stood, heavy with fruit, apart from the rest, our friend was carried
away by visions of the South and favorite memories of his childhood.
Smiling thoughtfully, he reached toward the nearest orange, as if to
take the tempting fruit in his hand. But closely connected with that
scene of his youth there flashed upon him a long-forgotten,
half-effaced, musical memory, which he pondered long and tried to follow
out. Then his glance brightened, and darted here and there; an idea had
come to him, and he worked it out eagerly. Absently he grasped the
orange again--it broke from the tree and remained in his hand. He looked
at it, but did not see it; indeed, his artistic abstraction went so far
that, after rolling the fragrant fruit back and forth before his nose,
while his lips moved silently with the melody which was singing itself
to him, he presently took from his pocket an enameled case, and with a
small silver-handled knife slowly cut open the fruit. Perhaps he had a
vague sense of thirst, but, if so, the fragrance of the open fruit
allayed it. He looked long at the inner surfaces, then fitted them
gently together, opened them again, and again put them together.

Just then steps approached the arbor. Mozart started, suddenly
remembering where he was and what he had done. He was about to hide the
orange, but stopped, either from pride or because he was too late. A
tall, broad-shouldered man in livery, the head-gardener, stood before
him. He had evidently seen the last guilty movement, and stopped,
amazed. Mozart, likewise, was too much surprised to speak, and, sitting
as if nailed to his chair, half laughing yet blushing, looked the
gardener somewhat boldly in the face with his big, blue eyes. Then--it
would have been most amusing for a third person--with a sort of defiant
courage he set the apparently uninjured orange in the middle of the
table.

"I beg your pardon, sir," began the gardener rather angrily, as he
looked at Mozart's unprepossessing clothing, "I do not know whom I have
the honor--"

"Kapellmeister Mozart, of Vienna."

"You are acquainted in the palace, I presume."

"I am a stranger, merely passing through the village. Is the Count at
home?"

"No."

"His wife?"

"She is engaged and would hardly see you." Mozart rose, as if he would
go.

"With your permission, sir, how do you happen to be pilfering here?"

"What!" cried Mozart. "Pilfering! The devil! Do you believe, then, that
I meant to steal and eat that thing?"

"I believe what I see, sir. Those oranges are counted, and I am
responsible for them. That tree was just to be carried to the house for
an entertainment. I cannot let you go until I have reported the matter
and you yourself have told how it happened."

"Very well. Be assured that I will wait here." The gardener hesitated,
and Mozart, thinking that perhaps he expected a fee, felt in his pocket;
but he found nothing.

Two men now came by, lifted the tree upon a barrow and carried it away.
Meanwhile Mozart had taken a piece of paper from his pocket-book, and,
as the gardener did not stir, began to write:

   "_Dear Madam_.--Here I sit, miserable, in your Paradise, like Adam of
  old, after he had tasted the apple. The mischief is done, and I cannot
  even put the blame on a good Eve, for she is at the inn sleeping the
  sleep of innocence in a canopy-bed, surrounded by Graces and Cupids. If
  you require it I will give you an account of my offense, which is
  incomprehensible even to myself.

  "I am covered with confusion, and remain

  "Your most obedient servant,

  "W. A. MOZART.

  "On the way to Prague."

He hastily folded the note and handed it to the impatient servant.

The fellow had scarcely gone when a carriage rolled up to the opposite
side of the palace. In it was the Count, who had brought with him, from
a neighboring estate, his niece and her fiancé, a young and wealthy
Baron. The betrothal had just taken place at the house of the latter's
invalid mother; but the event was also to be celebrated at the Count's
palace, which had always been a second home to his niece. The Countess,
with her son, Lieutenant Max, had returned from the betrothal somewhat
earlier, in order to complete arrangements at the palace. Now corridors
and stairways were alive with servants, and only with difficulty did the
gardener finally reach the antechamber and hand the note to the
Countess. She did not stop to open it, but, without noticing what the
messenger said, hurried away. He waited and waited, but she did not come
back. One servant after another ran past him--waiters, chambermaids,
valets; he asked for the Count, only to be told "He is dressing." At
last he found Count Max in his own room; but he was talking with the
Baron, and for fear the gardener would let slip something which the
Baron was not to know beforehand, cut the message short with: "Go along,
I'll be there in a moment." Then there was quite a long while to wait
before father and son at last appeared together, and heard the fatal
news.

"That is outrageous," cried the fat, good-natured, but somewhat hasty
Count. "That is an impossible story! A Vienna musician is he? Some
ragamuffin, who walks along the high-road and helps himself to whatever
he sees!"

"I beg your pardon, sir. He doesn't look just like that. I thinks he's
not quite right in the head, sir, and he seems to be very proud. He says
his name is 'Moser.' He is waiting downstairs. I told Franz to keep an
eye on him."

"The deuce! What good will that do, now? Even if I should have the fool
arrested, it wouldn't mend matters. I've told you a thousand times that
the front gates were to be kept locked! Besides, it couldn't have
happened if you had had things ready at the proper time!"

Just then the Countess, pleased and excited, entered the room with the
open note in her hand. "Do you know who is downstairs?" she exclaimed.
"For goodness' sake, read that note! Mozart from Vienna, the composer!
Some body must go at once and invite him in! I'm afraid he will be gone!
What will he think of me? You treated him very politely, I hope, Velten.
What was it that happened?"

"What happened?" interrupted the Count, whose wrath was not immediately
assuaged by the prospect of a visit from a famous man. "The madman
pulled one of the nine oranges from the tree which was for Eugenie.
Monster! So the point of our joke is gone, and Max may as well tear up
his poem."

"Oh, no!" she answered, earnestly; "the gap can easily be filled. Leave
that to me. But go, both of you, release the good man, and persuade him
to come in, if you possibly can. He shall not go further today if we can
coax him to stay. If you do not find him in the garden, go to the inn
and bring him and his wife too. Fate could not have provided a greater
gift or a finer surprise for Eugenie today."

"No, indeed," answered Max, "that was my first thought, too. Come, Papa!
And"--as they descended the staircase--"you may be quite easy about the
verses. The ninth Muse will not desert me; instead, I can use the
accident to especial advantage."

"Impossible!"

"Not at all!"

"Well, if that is so--I take your word for it--we will do the lunatic
all possible honor."

While all this was going on in the palace, our quasi-prisoner, not very
anxious over the outcome of the affair, had busied himself some time in
writing. Then, as no one appeared, he began to walk uneasily up and
down. Presently came an urgent message from the inn, that dinner was
ready long ago and the postilion was anxious to start; would
he please come at once. So he packed up his papers and was just
about to leave, when the two men appeared before the arbor.

The Count greeted him in his jovial, rather noisy fashion, and would
hear not a word of apology, but insisted that Mozart should accompany
him to the house, for the afternoon and evening at least.

"You are so well known to us, my dear Maestro, that I doubt if you could
find a family where your name is spoken more often, or with greater
enthusiasm. My niece sings and plays, she spends almost the whole day at
her piano, knows your works by heart, and has had the greatest desire to
meet you, particularly since the last of your concerts. She had been
promised an invitation from Princess Gallizin, in Vienna, in a few
weeks--a house where you often play, I hear. But now you are going to
Prague, and no one knows whether you will ever come back to us. Take
today and tomorrow for rest; let us send away your traveling carriage
and be responsible for the remainder of your journey."

The composer, who would willingly have sacrificed upon the altar of
friendship or of pleasure ten times as much as was asked of him now, did
not hesitate long. He insisted, however, that very early next morning
they must continue their journey. Count Max craved the pleasure of
bringing Frau Mozart and of attending to all necessary matters at the
inn; he would walk over, and a carriage should follow immediately.

Count Max inherited from both father and mother a lively imagination,
and had, besides, talent and inclination for _belles lettres_. As an
officer he was distinguished rather for his learning and culture than
because of fondness for military life. He was well read in French
literature, and at a time when German verse was of small account in the
higher circles had won appreciation for uncommon ease of style--writing
after such models as Hagedorn and Götz. The betrothal had offered him,
as we already learned, a particularly happy occasion for the exercise
of his gifts.

He found Madame Mozart seated at the table, where she had already begun
the meal, talking with the inn-keeper's daughter. She was too well used
to Mozart's habits of forming acquaintances and accepting impromptu
invitations to be greatly surprised at the appearance and message of the
young officer. With undisguised pleasure she prepared to accompany him,
and thoughtfully and quickly gave all necessary orders. Satchels were
repacked, the inn-keeper was paid, the postilion dismissed, and, without
too great anxiety over her toilet, she herself made ready, and drove off
in high spirits to the palace, never guessing in what a strange fashion
her spouse had introduced himself there.

He, meanwhile, was most comfortably and delightfully entertained. He had
met Eugenie, a most lovely creature, fair and slender, gay in shining
crimson silk and costly lace, with a white ribbon studded with pearls in
her hair. The Baron, too, was presented, a man of gentle and frank
disposition, but little older than his fiancée and seemingly well suited
to her.

The jovial host, almost too generous with his jests and stories, led the
conversation; refreshments were offered, which our traveler did not
refuse. Then some one opened the piano, upon which _Figaro_ was lying,
and Eugenie began to sing, to the Baron's accompaniment, Susanne's
passionate aria in the garden scene. The embarrassment which for a
moment made her bright color come and go, fled with the first notes from
her lips, and she sang as if inspired.

Mozart was evidently surprised. As she finished he went to her with
unaffected pleasure. "How can one praise you, dear child," he said.
"Such singing is like the sunshine, which praises itself best because it
does every one good. It is to the soul like a refreshing bath to a
child; he laughs, and wonders, and is content. Not every day, I assure
you, do we composers hear ourselves sung with such purity
and simplicity--with such perfection!" and he seized her hand
and kissed it heartily. Mozart's amiability and kindness, no less than
his high appreciation of her talent, touched Eugenie deeply, and her
eyes filled with tears of pleasure.

At that moment Madame Mozart entered, and immediately after appeared
other guests who had been expected--a family of distant relatives, of
whom one, Franziska, had been from childhood Eugenie's intimate friend.

When all the greetings and congratulations were over, Mozart seated
himself at the piano. He played a part of one of his concertos, which
Eugenie happened to be learning. It was a great delight to have the
artist and his genius so near--within one's own walls. The composition
was one of those brilliant ones in which pure Beauty, in a fit of
caprice, seems to have lent herself to the service of Elegance, but,
only half disguised in changing forms and dazzling lights, betrays in
every movement her own nobility and pours out lavishly her glorious
pathos.

The Countess noticed that most of the listeners, even Eugenie herself,
were divided between seeing and hearing, although they gave the close
attention and kept the perfect silence which were due to such enchanting
playing. Indeed it was not easy to resist a throng of distracting and
wondering thoughts as one watched the composer--his erect, almost stiff
position, his good-natured face, the graceful movements of his small
hands and curved fingers.

Turning to Madame Mozart, as the playing ceased, the Count began: "When
it is necessary to give a compliment to a composer--not everybody's
business--how easy it is for kings and emperors. All words are equally
good and equally extraordinary in their mouths; they dare to say
whatever they please. And how comfortable it must be, for instance, to
sit close behind Herr Mozart's chair, and, at the final chord of a
brilliant Fantasia, to clap the modest and learned man on the shoulder
and say: 'My dear Mozart, you are a Jack-at-all-trades!' And the word goes
like wild-fire through the hall: 'What did he say?' 'He said Mozart was a
Jack-at-all-trades!' and everybody who fiddles or pipes a song or
composes is enraptured over the expression. In short, that is the way of
the great, the familiar manner of the emperors, and quite inimitable. I
have always envied the Friedrichs and the Josefs that faculty, but never
more than now when I quite despair of finding in my mind's pockets the
suitable coin!"

The Count's jest provoked a laugh, as usual, and the guests followed
their hostess toward the dining-hall, where the fragrance of flowers and
refreshingly cool air greeted them. They took their places at the table,
Mozart opposite Eugenie and the Baron. His neighbor on one side was a
little elderly lady, an unmarried aunt of Franziska's; on the other side
was the charming young niece who soon commended herself to him by her
wit and gaiety. Frau Constanze sat between the host and her friendly
guide, the Lieutenant. The lower end of the table was empty. In the
centre stood two large _epergnes_, heaped with fruits and flowers. The
walls were hung with rich festoons, and all the appointments indicated
an extensive banquet. Upon tables and side-boards were the choicest
wines, from the deepest red to the pale yellow, whose sparkling foam
crowns the second half of the feast. For some time the conversation,
carried on from all sides, had been general. But when the Count, who,
from the first, had been hinting at Mozart's adventure in the garden,
came mysteriously nearer and nearer to it, so that some were smiling,
others puzzling their brains to know what it all meant, Mozart at last
took the cue.

"I will truthfully confess," he began, "how I came to have the honor of
an acquaintance with this noble house. I do not play a very dignified
rôle in the tale; in fact, I came within a hair's breadth of sitting,
not here at this bountiful table, but hungry and alone in the most
remote dungeon of the palace, watching the spider-webs on the wall."

"It must, indeed, be a pretty story," cried Madame Mozart.

Then Mozart related minutely all that we already know, to the great
entertainment of his audience. There was no end to the merriment, even
the gentle Eugenie shaking with uncontrollable laughter.

"Well," he went on, "according to the proverb I need not mind your
laughter, for I have made my small profit out of the affair, as you will
soon see. But first hear how it happened that an old fellow could so
forget himself. A reminiscence of my childhood was to blame for it.

"In the spring of 1770, a thirteen-year-old boy, I traveled with my
father in Italy. We went from Rome to Naples, where I had already played
twice in the conservatory and several times in other places.

"The nobility and clergy had shown us many attentions, but especially
attracted to us was a certain Abbé, who flattered himself that he was a
connoisseur, and who, moreover, had some influence at court. The day
before we left he conducted us, with some other acquaintances, into a
royal garden, the Villa Reale, situated upon a beautiful street, close
to the sea. A company of Sicilian comedians were performing there--'Sons
of Neptune' was one of the many names they gave themselves.

"With many distinguished spectators, among whom were the young and
lovely Queen Carolina and two princesses, we sat on benches ranged in
long rows in a gallery shaded with awnings, while the waves splashed
against the wall below. The many-colored sea reflected the glorious
heavens; directly before us rose Vesuvius; on the left gleamed the
gentle curve of the shore.

"The first part of the entertainment was rather uninteresting. A float
which lay on the water had served as a stage. But the second part
consisted of rowing, swimming, and diving, and every detail has always
remained fresh in my memory.

"From opposite sides of the water two graceful light boats approached
each other, bent, as it seemed, upon a pleasure-trip. The larger one,
gorgeously painted, with a gilded prow, was provided with a
quarter-deck, and had, besides the rowers' seats, a slender mast and a
sail. Five youths, ideally handsome, with bared shoulders and limbs,
were busy about the boat, or were amusing themselves with a like number
of maidens, their sweethearts. One of these, who was sitting in the
centre of the deck twining wreaths of flowers, was noticeable as well
for her beauty as for her dress. The others waited upon her, stretched
an awning to shield her from the sun, and passed her flowers from the
basket. One, a flute player, sat at her feet, and accompanied with her
clear tones the singing of the others. The beauty in the centre had her
own particular admirer; yet the pair seemed rather indifferent to each
other, and I thought the youth almost rude.

"Meanwhile the other boat had come nearer. It was more simply fashioned,
and carried youths only. The colors of the first boat were red, but the
crew of this one wore green. They stopped at sight of the others, nodded
greetings to the maidens, and made signs that they wished to become
better acquainted. Thereupon the liveliest of the girls took a rose from
her bosom, and roguishly held it on high, as if to ask whether such a
gift would be welcome. She was answered with enthusiasm. The red youths
looked on, sullen and contemptuous, but could not object when several of
the maidens proposed to throw to the poor strangers at least enough to
keep them from starving. A basket of oranges--probably only yellow
balls--stood on deck; and now began a charming display, accompanied by
music from the quay.

"One of the girls tossed from light fingers a couple of oranges; back
they came from fingers in the other boat, as light. On they went, back
and forth, and as one girl after another joined in the sport dozens of
oranges were soon flying through the air. Only one, the beauty in the
middle of the boat, took no part, except to look on, curiously, from
her comfortable couch. We could not sufficiently admire the skill on
both sides. The boats circled slowly about, turning now the prow, now
the sides, toward each other. There were about two dozen balls
continually in the air, yet they seemed many more, sometimes falling in
regular figures, sometimes rising high in lofty curves, almost never
going astray, but seeming to be attracted by some mysterious power in
the outstretched hands.

"The ear was quite as well entertained as the eye--with charming
melodies, Sicilian airs, dances, Saltorelli, _Canzoni a ballo_--a long
medley woven together like a garland. The youngest princess, an
impulsive little creature, about my own age, kept nodding her head in
time to the music. Her smile and her eyes with their long lashes I can
see to this day.

"Now let me briefly describe the rest of the entertainment, though it
has nothing to do with my affair in the garden. You could hardly imagine
anything prettier. The play with the balls gradually ceased, and then,
all of a sudden, one of the youths of the green colors drew out of the
water a net with which he seemed to have been playing. To the general
surprise, a huge shining fish lay in it. The boy's companions sprang to
seize it, but it slipped from their hands to the sea, as if it had
really been alive. This was only a ruse, however, to lure the red youths
from their boat; and they fell into the trap. They, as well as those of
the green, threw themselves into the water after the fish. So began a
lively and most amusing chase. At last the green swimmers, seeing their
opportunity, boarded the red boat, which now had only the maidens to
defend it. The noblest of the enemy, as handsome as a god, hastened
joyfully to the beautiful maiden, who received him with rapture,
heedless of the despairing shrieks of the others. All efforts of the red
to recover their boat were vain; they were beaten back with oars and
weapons. Their futile rage and struggles, the cries and prayers of the
maidens, the music--now changed in tone--the waters--all made a scene
beyond description, and the audience applauded wildly. Then suddenly the
sail was loosed, and out of it sprang to the bowsprit a rosy,
silver-winged boy, with bow and arrows and quiver; the oars began to
move, the sail filled, and the boat glided away, as if under the
guidance of the god, to a little island. Thither, after signals of truce
had been exchanged, the red youths hastened after boarding the deserted
boat. The unhappy maidens were released, but the fairest one of all
sailed away, of her own free will, with her lover. And that was the end
of the comedy."

"I think," whispered Eugenie to the Baron, in the pause that followed,
"that we had there a complete symphony in the true Mozart spirit. Am I
not right? Hasn't it just the grace of _Figaro_?"

But just as the Baron would have repeated this remark to Mozart, the
composer continued: "It is seventeen years since I was in Italy. But who
that has once seen Italy, Naples especially, even with the eyes of a
child, will ever forget it? Yet I have never recalled that last
beautiful day more vividly than today in your garden. When I closed my
eyes the last veil vanished, and I saw the lovely spot--sea and shore,
mountain and city, the gay throng of people, and the wonderful game of
ball. I seemed to hear the same music--a stream of joyful melodies, old
and new, strange and familiar, one after another. Presently a little
dance-song came along, in six-eighth measure, something quite new to me.
Hold on, I thought, that is a devilishly cute little tune! I listened
more closely. Good Heavens! That is Masetto, that is Zerlina!" He smiled
and nodded at Madame Mozart, who guessed what was coming.

"It was this way," he went on; "there was a little, simple number of my
first act unfinished--the duet and chorus of a country wedding. Two
months ago, when in composing my score I came to this number, the right
theme did not present itself at the first attempt. It should be a simple
child-like melody, sparkling with joy--a fresh bunch of flowers tucked
in among a maiden's fluttering ribbons. So, because one should not
force such a thing, and because such trifles often come of themselves, I
left that number, and was so engrossed in the rest of the work that I
almost forgot it. Today, while we were driving along, just outside the
village, the text came into my head; but I cannot remember that I
thought much about it. Yet, only an hour later, in the arbor by the
fountain, I caught just the right _motif_, more happily than I could
have found it in any other way, at any other time. An artist has strange
experiences now and then, but such a thing never happened to me be fore.
For to find a melody exactly fitted to the verse--but I must not
anticipate. The bird had only his head out of the shell, and I proceeded
to pull off the rest of it! Meantime Zerlina's dance floated before my
eyes, and, somehow, too, the view on the Gulf of Naples. I heard the
voices of the bridal couple, and the chorus of peasants, men and girls."
Here Mozart gayly hummed the beginning of the song. "Meantime my hands
had done the mischief, Nemesis was lurking near, and suddenly appeared
in the shape of the dreadful man in livery. Had an eruption of Vesuvius
suddenly destroyed and buried with its rain of ashes audience and
actors, the whole majesty of Parthenope, on that heavenly day by the
sea, I could not have been more surprised or horrified. The fiend!
People do not easily make me so hot! His face was as hard as bronze--and
very like the terrible Emperor Tiberius, too! If the servant looks like
that, thought I, what must His Grace the Count be! But to tell the truth
I counted--and not without reason--on the protection of the ladies. For
I overheard the fat hostess of the inn telling my wife, Constanze there,
who is somewhat curious in disposition, all the most interesting facts
about the family, and so I knew--"

Here Madame Mozart had to interrupt him and give them most positive
assurance that he was the one who asked the questions, and a lively and
amusing discussion followed.

"However that may be," he said at last, "I heard something about a
favorite foster-daughter who, besides being beautiful, was goodness
itself, and sang like an angel. '_Per Dio_!' I said to myself, as I
remembered that, 'that will help you out of your scrape! Sit down and
write out the song as far as you can, explain your behavior truthfully,
and they will think it all a good joke.' No sooner said than done! I had
time enough, and found a blank piece of paper--and here is the result! I
place it in these fair hands, an impromptu wedding-song, if you will
accept it!"

He held out the neatly written manuscript toward Eugenie, but the Count
anticipated her, and quickly taking it himself, said: "Have patience a
moment longer, my dear!"

At his signal the folding-doors of the salon opened, and servants
appeared, bringing in the fateful orange-tree, which they put at the
foot of the table, placing on each side a slender myrtle-tree. An
inscription fastened to the orange-tree proclaimed it the property of
Eugenie; but in front of it, upon a porcelain plate, was seen, as the
napkin which covered it was lifted, an orange, cut in pieces, and beside
it the count placed Mozart's autograph note.

"I believe," said the Countess, after the mirth had subsided, "that
Eugenie does not know what that tree really is. She does not recognize
her old friend with all its fruit and blossoms."

Incredulous, Eugenie looked first at the tree, then at her uncle. "It
isn't possible," she said; "I knew very well that it couldn't be saved."

"And so you think that we have found another to take its place? That
would have been worth while! No! I shall have to do as they do in the
play, when the long-lost son or brother proves his identity by his moles
and scars! Look at that knot, and at this crack, which you must have
noticed a hundred times. Is it your tree or isn't it?"

Eugenie could doubt no longer, and her surprise and delight knew no
bounds. To the Count's family this tree always suggested the story of a
most excellent woman, who lived more than a hundred years before their
day, and who well deserves a word in passing.

The Count's grandfather--a statesman of such repute in Vienna that he
had been honored with the confidence of two successive rulers--was as
happy in his private life as in his public life; for he possessed a most
excellent wife, Renate Leonore. During her repeated visits to France she
came in contact with the brilliant court of Louis XIV., and with the
most distinguished men and women of the day. She sympathized with the
ever-varying intellectual pleasures of the court without sacrificing in
the least her strong, inborn sense of honor and propriety. On this very
account, perhaps, she was the leader of a certain naïve opposition, and
her correspondence gives many a hint of the courage and independence
with which she could defend her sound principles and firm opinions, and
could attack her adversary in his weakest spot, all without giving
offense.

Her lively interest in all the personages whom one could meet at the
house of a Ninon, in the centres of cultivation and learning, was
nevertheless so modest and so well controlled that she was honored with
the friendship of one of the noblest women of the time--Mme. de Sévigné.
The Count, after his grandmother's death, had found in an old oaken
chest, full of interesting papers, the most charming letters from the
Marquise and her daughter.

From the hand of Mme. de Sévigné, indeed, she had received, during a
fête at Trianon, the sprig from an orange-tree, which she had planted
and which became in Germany a flourishing tree. For perhaps twenty-five
years it grew under her care, and afterward was treated with the
greatest solicitude by children and grandchildren. Prized for its own
actual worth, it was treasured the more as the living symbol of an age
which, intellectually, was then regarded as little less than divine--an
age in which we, today, can find little that is truly admirable, but
which was preparing the way for events, only a few years distant from
our innocent story, which shook the world.

To the bequest of her excellent ancestor Eugenie showed much devotion,
and her uncle had often said that the tree should some day belong to
her. The greater was her disappointment then, when, during her absence
in the preceding spring, the leaves of the precious tree began to turn
yellow and many branches died. The gardener gave it up for lost, since
he could find no particular cause for its fading, and did not succeed in
reviving it. But the Count, advised by a skilful friend, had it placed
in a room by itself and treated according to one of the strange and
mysterious prescriptions which exist among the country folk, and his
hope of surprising his beloved niece with her old friend in all its new
strength and fruitfulness was realized beyond expectation. Repressing
his impatience, and anxious, moreover, lest those oranges which had
ripened first should fall from the tree, he had postponed the surprise
for several weeks, until the day of the betrothal; and there is no need
of further excuse for the good man's emotion, when, at the last moment,
he found that a stranger had robbed him of his pleasure.

But the Lieutenant had long before dinner found opportunity to arrange
his poetical contribution to the festive presentation, and had altered
the close of his verses, which might otherwise have been almost too
serious. Now he rose and drew forth his manuscript, and, turning to
Eugenie, began to read.

The oft-sung tree of the Hesperides--so ran the story--sprang up, ages
ago, in the garden of Juno on a western island, as a wedding gift from
Mother Earth, and was watched over by three nymphs, gifted with song. A
shoot from this tree had often wished for a similar fate, for the custom
of bestowing one of his race on a royal bride had descended from gods to
mortals. After long and vain waiting, the maiden to whom he might turn
his fond glances seemed at last to be found. She was kind to him and
lingered by him often. But the proud laurel (devoted to the Muses), his
neighbor beside the spring, roused his jealousy by threatening to steal
from the talented beauty all thought of love for man. In vain the myrtle
comforted him and taught him patience by her own example; finally the
absence of his beloved increased his malady till it became well-nigh
fatal.

But summer brought back the absent one, and, happily, with a changed
heart. Town, palace, and garden received her with the greatest joy.
Roses and lilies, more radiant than ever, looked up with modest rapture;
shrubs and trees nodded greetings to her; but for one, the noblest, she
came alas! too late. His leaves were withered, and only the lifeless
stem and the dry tips of his branches were left. He would never know his
kind friend again. And how she wept and mourned over him!

But Apollo heard her voice from afar, and, coming nearer, looked with
compassion upon her grief. He touched the tree with his all-healing
hands. Immediately the sap began to stir and rise in the trunk; young
leaves unfolded; white, nectar-laden flowers opened here and there.
Yes--for what cannot the immortals do-the beautiful, round fruits
appeared, three times three, the number of the nine sisters; they grew
and grew, their young green changing before his eyes to the color of
gold. Phoebus--so ended the poem--

  Phoebus, in his work rejoicing,
    Counts the fruit; but, ah! the sight
  Tempts him. In another moment
    Doth he yield to appetite.

  Smiling, plucks the god of music
    One sweet orange from the tree
  "Share with me the fruit, thou fair one,
    And this, slice shall Amor's be."

The verses were received with shouts of applause, and Max was readily
pardoned for the unexpected ending which had so completely altered the
really charming effect which he had made in the first version.

Franziska, whose ready wit had already been called out by the Count and
Mozart, suddenly left the table, and returning brought with her a large
old English engraving which had hung, little heeded, in a distant room.
"It must be true, as I have always heard, that there is nothing new
under the sun," she cried, as she set up the picture at the end of the
table. "Here in the Golden Age is the same scene which we have heard
about today. I hope that Apollo will recognize himself in this
situation."

"Excellent," answered Max. "There we have the god just as he is bending
thoughtfully over the sacred spring. And, look! behind him in the
thicket is an old Satyr watching him. I would take my oath that Apollo
is thinking of some long-forgotten Acadian dances which old Chiron
taught him to play on the cithern when he was young."

"Exactly," applauded Franziska, who was standing behind Mozart's chair.
Turning to him, she continued, "Do you see that bough heavy with fruit,
bending down toward the god?"

"Yes; that is the olive-tree, which was sacred to him."

"Not at all. Those are the finest oranges. And in a moment--in a fit of
abstraction--he will pick one."

"Instead," cried Mozart, "he will stop this roguish mouth with a
thousand kisses." And catching her by the arm he vowed that she should
not go until she had paid the forfeit--which was promptly done.

"Max, read us what is written beneath the picture," said the Countess.

"They are verses from a celebrated ode of Horace.[32] The poet Ramler,
of Berlin, made a fine translation of them a while ago. It is in most
beautiful rhythm. How splendid is even this one passage:

      "--And he, who never more
  Will from his shoulders lay aside the bow,
  Who in the pure dew of Castalia's fountain
  Laves loosened hair; who holds the Lycian thicket
  And his own native wood--
  Apollo! Delian and Pataréan King."

"Beautiful!" exclaimed the Count, "but it needs a little explanation
here and there. For instance, 'He who will never lay aside the bow,'
would, of course, mean in plain prose, 'He who was always a most
diligent fiddler.' But, Mozart, you are sowing discord in two gentle
hearts."

"How so?"

"Eugenie is envying her friend--and with good reason."

"Ah! you have discovered my weak point. But what would the Herr Baron
say?"

"I could forgive for once."

"Very well, then; I shall not neglect my opportunity. But you need not
be alarmed, Herr Baron. There is no danger as long as the god does not
lend me his countenance and his long yellow hair. I wish he would. I
would give him on the spot Mozart's braid and his very best hair-ribbon
besides."

"Apollo would have to be careful, in future, how he gracefully laved his
new French finery in the Castalian fountain," laughed Franziska.

With such exchange of jests the merriment grew; the wines were passed,
many a toast was offered, and Mozart soon fell into his way of talking
in rhyme. The Lieutenant was an able second, and his father, also, would
not be outdone; indeed, once or twice the latter succeeded remarkably
well. But such conversations cannot well be repeated, because the very
elements which make them irresistible at the time--the gaiety of the
mood and the charm of personality in word and look--are lacking.

Among the toasts was one proposed by Franziska's aunt--that Mozart
should live to write many more immortal works. "Exactly! I am with you
in that," cried Mozart, and they eagerly touched glasses. Then the Count
began to sing--with much power and certainty, thanks to his inspiration:

  "Here's to Mozart's latest score;
  May he write us many more."

  _Max_.

  "Works, da Ponte, such as you
  (Mighty Schikaneder, too),"

  _Mozart_.

  "And Mozart, even, until now
  Never thought of once, I vow."

  _The Count_.

  "Works that you shall live to see,
  Great arch-thief of Italy;
  That shall drive you to despair,
  Clever Signor Bonbonnière."

  _Max_.

  "You may have a hundred years,"

  _Mozart_.

  "Unless you with all your wares,"

  _All three, con forza_.

  "Straight _zum Teufel_ first repair,
  Clever Monsieur Bonbonnière."

The Count was loth to stop singing, and the last four lines of the
impromptu terzetto suddenly became a so-called "endless canon," and
Franziska's aunt had wit and confidence enough to add all sorts of
ornamentation in her quavering soprano. Mozart promised afterward to
write out the song at leisure, according to the rules of the art, and he
did send it to the Count after he returned to Vienna.

Eugenie had long ago quietly examined her inheritance from the
shrubbery of "Tiberius," and presently some one asked to hear the new
duet from her and Mozart. The uncle was glad to join in the chorus, and
all rose and hastened to the piano, in the large salon.

The charming composition aroused the greatest enthusiasm; but its very
character was a temptation to put music to another use, and indeed it
was Mozart himself who gave the signal, as he left the piano, to ask
Franziska for a waltz, while Max took up his violin. The Count was not
slow in doing the honors for Madame Mozart, and one after another joined
in the dance. Even Franziska's aunt became young again as she trod the
minuet with the gallant Lieutenant. Finally, as Mozart and the fair
Eugenie finished the last dance, he claimed his promised privilege.

It was now almost sunset, and the garden was cool and pleasant. There
the Countess invited the ladies to rest and refresh themselves, while
the Count led the way to the billiard room, for Mozart was known to be
fond of the game.

We will follow the ladies.

After they had walked about they ascended a little slope, half inclosed
by a high vine-covered trellis. From the hill they could look off into
the fields, and down into the streets of the village. The last rosy rays
of sunlight shone in through the leaves.

"Could we not sit here for a little," suggested the Countess, "if Madame
Mozart would tell us about herself and her husband?"

Madame Mozart was willing enough, and her eager listeners drew their
chairs close about her.

"I will tell you a story that you must know in order to understand a
little plan of mine. I wish to give to the Baroness-to-be a souvenir of
a very unusual kind. It is no article of luxury or of fashion but it is
interesting solely because of its history."

"What can it be, Eugenie?" asked Franziska. "Perhaps the ink-bottle of
some famous man." "Not a bad guess. You shall see the treasure within
an hour; it is in my trunk. Now for the story and with your permission
it shall begin back a year or more.

"The winter before last, Mozart's health caused me much anxiety, on
account of his increasing nervousness and despondency. Although he was
now and then in unnaturally high spirits when in company, yet at home he
was generally silent and depressed, or sighing and ailing. The physician
recommended dieting and exercise in the country. But his patient paid
little heed to the good advice; it was not easy to follow a prescription
which took so much time and was so directly contrary to all his plans
and habits. Then the doctor frightened him with a long lecture on
breathing, the human blood, corpuscles, phlogiston, and such unheard-of
things; there were dissertations on Nature and her purposes in eating,
drinking, and digestion--a subject of which Mozart was, till then, as
ignorant as a five-year-old child.

"The lesson made a distinct impression. For the doctor had hardly been
gone a half hour when I found my husband, deep in thought but of a
cheerful countenance, sitting in his room and examining a walking-stick
which he had ferreted out of a closet full of old things. I supposed
that he had entirely forgotten it. It was a handsome stick, with a large
head of lapis lazuli, and had belonged to my father. But no one had ever
before seen a cane in Mozart's hand, and I had to laugh at him.

"'You see,' he cried, 'I have surrendered myself to my cure, with all
its appurtenances. I will drink the water, and take exercise every day
in the open air, with this stick as my companion. I have been thinking
about it; there is our neighbor, the privy-councilor, who cannot even
cross the street to visit his best friend without his cane; tradesmen
and officers, chancellors and shop-keepers, when they go with their
families on Sunday for a stroll in the country, carry each one his
trusty cane. And I have noticed how in the Stephansplatz, a quarter of
an hour before church or court, the worthy citizens stand talking in
groups and leaning on their stout sticks, which, one can see, are the
firm supports of their industry, order, and tranquillity. In short, this
old-fashioned and rather homely custom must be a blessing and a comfort.
You may not believe it, but I am really impatient to go off with this
good friend for my first constitutional across the bridge. We are
already slightly acquainted, and I hope that we are partners for life.'

"The partnership was but a brief one, however. On the third day of their
strolls the companion failed to return. Another was procured, and lasted
somewhat longer; and, at any rate, I was thankful to Mozart's sudden
fancy for canes, since it helped him for three whole weeks to carry out
the doctor's instructions. Good results began to appear; we had almost
never seen him so bright and cheerful. But after a while the fancy
passed, and I was in despair again. Then it happened that, after a very
fatiguing day, he went with some friends who were passing through Vienna
to a musical soirée. He promised faithfully that he would stay but an
hour, but those are always the occasions when people most abuse his
kindness, once he is seated at the piano and lost in music; for he sits
there like a man in a balloon, miles above the earth, where one cannot
hear the clocks strike. I sent twice for him, in the middle of the
night; but the servant could not even get a word with him. At last, at
three in the morning, he came home, and I made up my mind that I must be
very severe with him all day."

Here Madame Mozart passed over some circumstances in silence. It was not
unlikely that the Signora Malerbi (a woman with whom Frau Constanze had
good reason to be angry) would have gone also to this soirée. The young
Roman singer had, through Mozart's influence, obtained a place in the
opera, and without doubt her coquetry had assisted her in winning his
favor. Indeed, some gossips would have it that she had made a conquest
of him, and had kept him for months on the rack. However that may have
been, she conducted herself afterward in the most impertinent and
ungrateful manner, and even permitted herself to jest at the expense of
her benefactor. So it was quite like her to speak of Mozart to one of
her more fortunate admirers as _un piccolo grifo raso_ (a little
well-shaven pig). The comparison, worthy of a Circe, was the more
irritating because one must confess that it contained a grain of truth.

As Mozart was returning from this soirée (at which, as it happened, the
singer was not present), a somewhat excited friend was so indiscreet as
to repeat to him the spiteful remark. It was the more amazing to him
because it was the first unmistakable proof of the utter ingratitude of
his protegée. In his great indignation he did not notice the extreme
coolness of Frau Constanze's reception. Without stopping to take breath
he poured out his grievance, and well-nigh roused her pity; yet she held
conscientiously to her determination that he should not so easily escape
punishment. So when he awoke from a sound sleep shortly after noon, he
found neither wife nor children at home, and the table was spread for
him alone.

Ever since Mozart's marriage there had been little which could make him
so unhappy as any slight cloud between his better half and himself. If
he had only known how heavy an anxiety had burdened her during the past
few days! But, as usual, she had put off as long as possible the
unpleasant communication. Her money was now almost spent, and there was
no prospect that they should soon have more. Although Mozart did not
guess this state of affairs, yet his heart sank with discouragement and
uncertainty. He did not wish to eat; he could not stay in the house. He
dressed himself quickly, to go out into the air. On the table he left an
open note in Italian:

  "You have taken a fair revenge, and treated me quite as I deserved.
  But be kind and smile again when I come home, I beg you. I should like
  to turn Carthusian or Trappist and make amends for my sins."

Then he took his hat, but not his cane--that had had its
day--and set off.

Since we have excused Frau Constanze from telling so much of her story
we may as well spare her a little longer. The good man sauntered along
past the market toward the armory--it was a warm, sunshiny, summer
afternoon--and slowly and thoughtfully crossed the Hof, and, turning to
the left, climbed the Mölkenbastei, thus avoiding the greetings of
several acquaintances who were just entering the town.

Although the silent sentinel who paced up and down beside the cannon did
not disturb him, he stopped but a few minutes to enjoy the beautiful
view across the green meadows and over the suburbs to the Kahlenberg.
The peaceful calm of nature was too little in sympathy with his
thoughts. With a sigh he set out across the esplanade, and so went on,
without any particular aim, through the Alser-Vorstadt.

At the end of Währinger Street there was an inn, with a bowling alley;
the proprietor, a master rope-maker, was as well known for his good beer
as for the excellence of his ropes. Mozart heard the balls and saw a
dozen or more guests within. A half-unconscious desire to forget himself
among natural and unassuming people moved him to enter the garden. He
sat down at one of the tables--but little shaded by the small
trees--with an inspector of the water-works and two other Philistines,
ordered his glass of beer, joined in their conversation, and watched the
bowling.

Not far from the bowling-ground, toward the house, was the open shop of
the rope-maker. It was a small room, full to overflowing; for, besides
the necessaries of his trade, he had for sale all kinds of dishes and
utensils for kitchen, cellar, and farm-oil and wagon grease, also seeds
of various kinds, and dill and cheap brandy. A girl, who had to serve
the guests and at the same time attend to the shop, was busy with a
countryman, who, leading his little boy by the hand, had just stepped up
to make a few purchases--a measure for fruit, a brush, a whip. He
would choose one article, try it, lay it down, take up a second and a
third, and go back, uncertainly, to the first one; he could not decide
upon any one. The girl went off several times to wait on the guests,
came back, and with the utmost patience helped him make his choice.

Mozart, on a bench near the alley, saw and heard, with great amusement,
all that was going on. As much as he was interested in the good,
sensible girl, with her calm and earnest countenance, he was still more
entertained by the countryman who, even after he had gone, left Mozart
much to think about. The master, for the time being, had changed places
with him; he felt how important in his eyes was the small transaction,
how anxiously and conscientiously the prices, differing only by a few
kreutzers, were considered. "Now," he thought, "the man will go home to
his wife and tell her of his purchases, and the children will all wait
until the sack is opened, to see if it holds anything for them; while
the good wife will hasten to bring the supper and the mug of fresh
home-brewed cider, for which her husband has been keeping his appetite
all day. If only I could be as happy and independent waiting only on
Nature, and enjoying her blessings though they be hard to win! But if my
art demands of me a different kind of work, that I would not, after all,
exchange for anything in the world, why should I meanwhile remain in
circumstances which are just the opposite of such a simple and innocent
life? If I had a little land in a pleasant spot near the village, and a
little house, then I could really live. In the mornings I could work
diligently at my scores; all the rest of the time I could spend with my
family. I could plant trees, visit my garden, in the fall gather apples
and pears with my boys, now and then take a trip to town for an opera,
or have a friend or two with me--what delight! Well, who knows what may
happen!"

He walked up to the shop, spoke to the girl, and began to examine her
stock more closely. His mind had not quite descended from its idyllic
flight, and the clean, smooth, shining wood, with its fresh smell,
attracted him. It suddenly occurred to him that he would pick out
several articles for his wife, such as she might need or might like to
have. At his suggestion, Constanze had, a long time ago, rented a little
piece of ground outside the Kärnthner Thor, and had raised a few
vegetables; so now it seemed quite fitting to invest in a long rake and
a small rake and a spade. Then, as he looked further, he did honor to
his principles of economy by denying himself, with an effort and after
some deliberation, a most tempting churn. To make up for this, however,
he chose a deep dish with a cover and a prettily carved handle; for it
seemed a most useful article. It was made of narrow strips of wood,
light and dark, and was carefully varnished. There was also a
particularly fine choice of spoons, bread-boards, and plates of all
sizes, and a salt-box of simple construction to hang on the wall.

At last he spied a stout stick, which had a handle covered with leather
and studded with brass nails. As the strange customer seemed somewhat
undecided about this also, the girl remarked with a smile that that was
hardly a suitable stick for a gentleman to carry. "You are right,
child," he answered. "I think I have seen butchers carry such sticks.
No, I will not have it. But all the other things which we have laid out
you may bring to me today or tomorrow." And he gave his name and
address. Then he went back to the table to finish his beer. Only one of
his former companions was sitting there, a master-tinker.

"The girl there has had a good day for once," he remarked. "Her uncle
gives her a commission on all that she sells."

Mozart was now more pleased with his purchase than ever. But his
interest was to become still greater. For, in a moment, as the girl
passed near, the tinker called out, "Well, Crescenz, how is your friend
the locksmith? Will he soon be filing his own iron?" "Oh," she answered
without stopping, "that iron is still growing deep in the mountain."

"She is a good goose," said the tinsmith. "For a long time she kept
house for her stepfather, and took care of him when he was ill; but
after he died it came out that he had spent all her money. Since that
she has lived with her uncle, and she is a treasure, in the shop, in the
inn, and with the children. There is a fine young apprentice who would
have liked to marry her long ago, but there is a hitch somewhere."

"How so? Has he nothing to live on?"

"They both have saved a little, but not enough. Now comes word of a good
situation and a part of a house in Ghent. Her uncle could easily lend
them the little money that they need, but of course he will not let her
go. He has good friends in the council and in the union, and the young
fellow is meeting with all sorts of difficulties."

"The wretches!" cried Mozart, so loud that the other looked around
anxiously, fearing that they might have been overheard. "And is there no
one who could speak the right word or show those fellows a fist? The
villains! We will get the best of them yet."

The tinker was on thorns. He tried, clumsily enough, to moderate his
statements, and almost contradicted himself. But Mozart would not
listen. "Shame on you, how you chatter! That's just the way with all of
you as soon as you have to answer for anything!" And with that he turned
on his heel and left the astonished tinker. He hastened to the girl, who
was busy with new guests: "Come early tomorrow, and give my respects to
your good friend. I hope that your affairs will prosper." She was too
busy and too much surprised to thank him.

He retraced his way to the city at a quick pace, for the incident had
stirred his blood. Wholly occupied with the affairs of the poor young
couple, he ran over in his mind a list of his friends and acquaintances
who might be able to help them. Then, since it was necessary to have
more particulars from the girl before he could decide upon any step, he
dismissed the subject from his thoughts and hastened eagerly toward
home.

He confidently expected a more than cordial welcome and a kiss at the
door, and longing redoubled his haste. Presently the postman called to
him and handed him a small but heavy parcel, which was addressed in a
fair clear hand which he at once recognized. He stepped into the first
shop to give the messenger his receipt, but when once in the street
again his impatience was not to be checked, so he broke the seal, and,
now walking, now standing still, devoured his letter.

"I was sitting at my sewing-table," continued Madame Mozart, in her
story, "and heard my husband come upstairs and ask the servant for me.
His step and tone were more cheerful and gay than I had expected, and
more so than I quite liked. He went first to his room, but came
immediately to me. 'Good-evening!' he said. I answered him quietly,
without looking up. After walking across the room once or twice, with a
smothered yawn he took up the fly-clap from behind the door--a most
unusual proceeding--and remarking, 'Where do all these flies come from?'
began to slap about, as loudly as possible. The noise is particularly
unpleasant to him, and I had been careful not to let him hear it. 'H'm,'
I thought, 'when he does it himself it's another matter.' Besides, I had
not noticed many flies. His strange behavior vexed me much. 'Six at a
blow!' he cried. 'Do you see?' No answer. Then he laid something on the
table before me, so near that I could not help seeing it without lifting
my eyes from my work. It was nothing less than a heap of ducats. He kept
on with his nonsense behind my back, talking to himself, and giving a
slap now and then. 'The disagreeable good-for-nothing beasts! What were
they put in the world for"' _Pitsch_. 'To be killed, I suppose!'
_Patsch_. 'Natural history teaches us how rapidly their numbers
multiply.' _Pitsch, patsch_. 'In my house they are soon dispatched. Ah,
_maledette! disperate_! Here are twenty more. Do you want them?'
And he came and laid down another pile of gold. I had had hard work to
keep from laughing, and could hold out no longer. He fell on my neck and
we laughed as if for a wager.

"'But where did the money come from' I asked, as he shook the last
pieces from the roll. 'From Prince Esterhazy,[33]rough Haydn. Read the
letter.' I read:

  "'Eisenstadt, Etc.

  "'_My good friend_.--His Highness has, to my great delight, intrusted
  me with the errand of sending to you these 60 ducats. We have been
  playing your quartettes again, and his Highness was even more charmed
  and delighted than at the first hearing, three months ago. He said to
  me (I must write it word for word): "When Mozart dedicated these
  works to you, he thought to honor you alone. Yet he cannot take it
  amiss if I find in them a compliment to myself also. Tell him that I
  think as highly of his genius as you do, and more than that he could not
  wish." "Amen," said I. Are you satisfied?

  "'_Postscript_ (for the ear of the good wife).--Take care that the
  acknowledgment be not too long delayed. A note from Mozart himself
  would be best. We must not lose so favorable a breeze.'

"'You angel! You divine creature!' cried Mozart again and again. It
would be hard to say which pleased him most, the letter, or the praise
of the prince, or the money. I confess that just then the money appealed
most to me. We passed a very happy evening, as you may guess.

"Of the affair in the suburb I heard neither that day nor the next. The
whole week went by; no Crescenz appeared, and my husband, in a whirl of
engagements, soon forgot her. One Sunday evening we had a small
musicale. Captain Wasselt, Count Hardegg, and others were there. During
a pause I was called out, and there was the outfit. I went back to the
room and asked, 'Have you ordered a lot of woodenware from the
Alservorsstadt?'

"'By thunder, so I did! I suppose the girl is here? Tell her to come
in.'

"So in she came, quite at ease, with rakes, spades, and all,
and apologized for her delay, saying that she had forgotten the
name of the street and had only just found it. Mozart took the things
from her, one after another, and handed them to me with great
satisfaction. I thanked him and was pleased with everything, praising
and admiring, though I wondered all the time what he had bought the
garden tools for.

"'For your garden,' he said.

"'Goodness! we gave that up long ago, because the river did so much
damage; and besides we never had good luck with it. I told you, and you
didn't object.'

"'What! And so the asparagus that we had this spring--'

"'Was always from the market!'

"'Hear that! If I had only known it! And I praised it just out of pity
for your poor garden, when really the stalks were no bigger than Dutch
quills.'

"The guests enjoyed the fun, and I had to give them some of the
unnecessary articles at once. And when Mozart inquired of the girl about
the prospects of her marriage, and encouraged her to speak freely,
assuring her that whatever assistance we could offer should be quietly
given and cause her no trouble, she told her story with so much modesty
and discretion that she quite won her audience, and was sent away much
encouraged.

"'Those people must be helped,' said the Captain. 'The tricks of the
union do not amount to much. I know some one who will see to that. The
important thing is a contribution toward the expenses of the house and
the furniture. Let us give a benefit concert, admission fee _ad
libitum_!'

"The suggestion found hearty approval. Somebody picked up the salt-box
and said: 'We must have an historic introduction, with a description of
Herr Mozart's purchase, and an account of his philanthropic spirit; and
we will put this box on the table to receive the contributions and
arrange the rakes as decorations.' This did not happen, however, though
the concert came off; and what with the receipts of the concert and
outside contributions, the young couple had more than enough for their
housekeeping outfit, and also the other obstacles were quickly removed.

"The Duscheks, in Prague, dear friends of ours, with whom we are to
stay, heard the story, and Frau Duschek asked for some of the woodenware
as souvenirs. So I laid aside two which I thought were suitable, and was
taking them to her.

"But since we have made another artist friend by the way, one who is,
too, about to provide her wedding furnishings, and who will not despise
what Mozart has chosen, I will divide my gift, and you, Eugenie, may
choose between a lovely open-work rod for stirring chocolate and the
salt-box, which is decorated with a tasteful tulip. My advice is to take
the salt-box; salt, as I have heard, is a symbol of home and
hospitality, and with the gift go the best and most affectionate
wishes."

So ended Madame Mozart's story. How pleased and gratified her listeners
were is easily to be imagined. Their delight was redoubled when, in the
presence of the whole party, the interesting articles were brought out,
and the model of patriarchal simplicity was formally presented. This,
the Count vowed, should have in the silver-chest of its present owner
and all her posterity, as important a place as that of the Florentine
master's famous work.

It was, by this time, almost eight o'clock and tea-time, and soon our
master was pressingly reminded of his promise to show his friends _Don
Juan_, which lay under lock and key, but, happily, not too deep down in
his trunk. Mozart was ready and willing, and by the time he had told the
story of the plot and had brought the libretto, the lights were burning
at the piano.

We could wish that our readers could here realize a touch, at least, of
that peculiar sensation with which a single chord, floating from a
window as we pass, stops us and holds us spellbound--a touch of that
pleasant suspense with which we sit before the curtain in the theatre
while the orchestra is still tuning! Or am I wrong? Can the soul stand
more deeply in awe of everlasting beauty than when pausing before any
sublime and tragic work of art--Macbeth, OEdipus, or whatever it may be?
Man wishes and yet fears to be moved beyond his ordinary habit; he feels
that the Infinite will touch him, and he shrinks before it in the very
moment when it draws him most strongly. Reverence for perfect art is
present, too; the thought of enjoying a heavenly miracle--of being able
and being permitted to make it one's own--stirs an emotion--pride, if
you will--which is perhaps the purest and happiest of which we are
capable.

This little company, however, was on very different ground from ours.
They were about to hear, for the first time, a work which has been
familiar to us from childhood. If one subtracts the very enviable
pleasure of hearing it through its creator, we have the advantage of
them; for in one hearing they could not fully appreciate and understand
such a work, even if they had heard the whole of it.

Of the eighteen numbers which were already written the composer did not
give the half (in the authority from which we have our statement we find
only the last number, the sextet, expressly mentioned), and he played
them in a free sort of transcription, singing here and there as he felt
disposed. Of his wife it is only told that she sang two arias. We might
guess, since her voice was said to be as strong as it was sweet, that
she chose Donna Anna's _Or sai, chi l'onore_, and one of Zerlina's two
arias.

In all probability Eugenie and her fiancé were the only listeners who,
in spirit, taste, and judgment, were what Mozart could wish. They sat
far back in the room, Eugenie motionless as a statue, and so engrossed
that, in the short pauses when the rest of the audience expressed their
interest or showed their delight in involuntary exclamations, she
gave only the briefest replies to the Baron's occasional remarks.

When Mozart stopped, after the beautiful sextet, and conversation began
again, he showed himself particularly pleased with the Baron's comments.
They spoke of the close of the opera, and of the first performance,
announced for an early date in November; and when some one remarked that
certain portions yet to be written must be a gigantic task, the master
smiled, and Constanze said to the Countess, so loudly that Mozart must
needs hear: "He has ideas which he works at secretly; before me,
sometimes."

"You are playing your part badly, my dear," he interrupted. "What if I
should want to begin anew? And, to tell the truth, I'd rather like to."

"Leporello!" cried the Count, springing up and nodding to a servant.
"Bring some wine. Sillery--three bottles."

"No, if you please. That is past; my husband will not drink more than he
still has in his glass."

"May it bring him luck--and so to every one!"

"Good heavens! What have I done," lamented Constanze, looking at the
clock. "It is nearly eleven, and we must start early tomorrow. How shall
we manage?"

"Don't manage at all, dear Frau Mozart."

"Sometimes," began Mozart, "things work out very strangely. What will my
Stanzl say when she learns that the piece of work which you are going to
hear came to life at this very hour of the night, just before I was to
go on a journey?"

"Is it possible! When? Oh! three weeks ago, when you were to go to
Eisenstadt."

"Exactly. This is how it came about. I came in after ten (you were fast
asleep) from dinner at the Richters'. and intended to go to bed early,
as I had promised, for I was to start very early in the morning.
Meanwhile Veit had lighted the candles on the writing-table, as usual. I
made ready for bed mechanically, and then thought I would take just a
look at the last notes I had written. But, cruel fate! with woman's
deuced inconvenient spirit of order you had cleared up the room and
packed the music--for the Prince wished to see a number or two from the
opera. I hunted, grumbled, scolded-all in vain. Then my eye fell on a
sealed envelope from Abbate--his pot-hooks in the address. Yes; he had
sent me the rest of his revised text, which I had not hoped to see for
months. I sat down with great curiosity and began to read, and was
enraptured to find how well the fellow understood what I wanted. It was
all much simpler, more condensed, and at the same time fuller. The scene
in the churchyard and the _finale_, with the disappearance of the hero,
were greatly improved. 'But, my excellent poet,' I said to myself, 'you
need not have loaded me with heaven and hell a second time, so
carelessly.'

"Now, it is never my habit to write any number out of order, be it never
so tempting; that is a mistake which may be too severely punished. Yet
there are exceptions, and, in short, the scene near the statue of the
governor, the warning which, coming suddenly from the grave of the
murdered man, interrupts so horribly the laughter of the revelers--that
scene was already in my head. I struck a chord, and felt that I had
knocked at the right door, behind which lay all the legion of horrors to
be let loose in the _finale_. First came out an adagio--D-minor, only
four measures; then a second, with five. 'There will be an extraordinary
effect in the theatre,' thought I, 'when the strongest wind instruments
accompany the voice.' Now you shall hear it, as well as it can be done
without the orchestra."

He snuffed out the candles beside him, and that fearful choral, "Your
laughter shall be ended ere the dawn," rang through the death-like
stillness of the room. The notes of the silver trumpet fell through the
blue night as if from another sphere--ice-cold, cutting through nerve
and marrow. "Who is here? Answer!" they heard Don Juan ask. Then the
choral, monotonous as before, bade the ruthless youth leave the dead in
peace.

After this warning had rung out its last notes, Mozart went on: "Now, as
you can think, there was no stopping. When the ice begins to break at
the edge, the whole lake cracks and snaps from end to end.
Involuntarily, I took up the thread at Don Juan's midnight feast, when
Donna Elvira has just departed and the ghost enters in response to the
invitation. Listen!"

And then the whole, long, horrible dialogue followed. When the human
voices have become silent, the voice of the dead speaks again. After
that first fearful greeting, in which the half-transformed being refuses
the earthly nourishment offered him, how strangely and horribly moves
the unsteady voice up and down in that singular scale! He demands speedy
repentance; the spirit's time is short, the way it must travel, long.
And Don Juan, in monstrous obstinacy withstanding the eternal commands,
beneath the growing influence of the dark spirits, struggles and writhes
and finally perishes, keeping to the last, nevertheless, that wonderful
expression of majesty in every gesture. How heart and flesh tremble with
delight and terror! It is a feeling like that with which one watches the
mighty spectacle of an unrestrained force of nature, or the burning of a
splendid ship. In spite of ourselves, we sympathize with the blind
majesty, and, shuddering, share the pain of its self-destruction.

The composer paused. For a while no one could speak. Finally, the
Countess, with voice still unsteady, said "Will you give us some idea of
your own feelings when you laid down the pen that night?"

He looked up at her as if waked from a dream, hesitated a moment, and
then said, half to the Countess, half to his wife: "Yes, my head swam at
last. I had written this dialogue and the chorus of demons, in fever
heat, by the open window, and, after resting a moment, I rose to go to
your room, that I might talk a little and cool off. But another thought
stopped me half way to the door." His glance fell, and his voice
betrayed his emotion. "I said to myself, 'If you should die tonight and
leave your score just here, could you rest in your grave?' My eye fell
on the wick of the light in my hand and on the mountain of melted wax.
The thought that it suggested was painful. 'Then,' I went on, 'if after
this, sooner or later, some one else were to complete the opera, perhaps
even an Italian, and found all the numbers but one, up to the
seventeenth--so many sound, ripe fruits, lying ready to his hand in the
long grass-if he dreaded the finale, and found, unhoped for, the rocks
for its construction close by--he might well laugh in his sleeve.
Perhaps he would be tempted to rob me of my honor. He would burn his
fingers, though, for I have many a good friend who knows my stamp and
would see that I had my rights.'

"Then I thanked God and went back, and thanked your good angel, dear
wife, who held his hand so long over your brow, and kept you sleeping so
soundly that you could not once call to me. When at last I did go to bed
and you asked me the hour, I told you you were two hours younger than
you were, for it was nearly four; and now you will understand why you
could not get me to leave the feathers at six, and why you had to
dismiss the coach and order it for another day."

"Certainly," answered Constanze; "but the sly man must not think that I
was so stupid as not to know something of what was going on. You didn't
need, on that account, to keep your beautiful new numbers all to
yourself."

"That was not the reason."

"No, I know. You wanted to keep your treasure away from criticism yet a
little while."

"I am glad," cried the good-natured host, "that we shall not need to
grieve the heart of a noble Vienna coachman to-morrow, when Herr
Mozart cannot arise. The order, 'Hans, you may unharness!' always makes
one sad."

This indirect invitation for a longer stay, which was heartily seconded
by the rest of the family, obliged the travelers to explain their urgent
reason for declining it; yet they readily agreed that the start need not
be made so early as to interfere with a meeting at breakfast.

They stood, talking in groups, a little while longer. Mozart looked
about him, apparently for Eugenie; since she was not there he turned
naïvely with his question to Franziska.

"What do you think, on the whole, of our Don Juan? Can you prophesy
anything good for him?"

"In the name of my aunt, I will answer as well as I can," was the
laughing reply. "My opinion is that if Don Juan does not set the world
mad, the good Lord may shut up his music chests for years to come, and
give mankind to understand--"

"And give mankind," corrected the Count, "the bag-pipes to play on, and
harden the hearts of the people so that they worship Baal."

"The Lord preserve us!" laughed Mozart. "But in the course of the next
sixty or seventy years, long after I am gone, will arise many false
prophets."

Eugenie approached, with the Baron and Max; the conversation took a new
turn, growing ever more earnest and serious, and the composer, ere the
company separated, rejoiced in many a word of encouragement and good
cheer. Finally, long after midnight, all retired; nor, till then, had
any one felt weary.

Next day--for the fair weather still held--at ten o'clock a handsome
coach, loaded with the effects of the two travelers, stood in the
courtyard. The Count, with Mozart, was waiting for the horses to be put
in, and asked the master how the carriage pleased him.

"Very well, indeed; it seems most comfortable." "Good! Then be so kind
as to keep it to remind you of me."

"What! You are not in earnest?"

"Why not?"

"Holy Sixtus and Calixtus! Constanze, here!" he called up to the window
where, with the others, she sat looking out. "The coach is mine. You
will ride hereafter in your own carriage."

He embraced the smiling donor, and examined his new possession on all
sides; finally he threw open the door and jumped in, exclaiming: "I feel
as rich and happy as Ritter Gluck. What eyes they will make in Vienna!"

"I hope," said the Countess, "when you return from Prague, to see your
carriage again, all hung with wreaths."

Soon after this last happy scene the much-praised carriage moved away
with the departing guests, and rolled rapidly toward the road to Prague.
At Wittingau the Count's horses were to be exchanged for post-horses,
with which they would continue their journey.

When such excellent people have enlivened our houses by their presence,
have given us new impulses through their fresh spirits, and have made us
feel the blessings of dispensing hospitality, their departure leaves an
uncomfortable sense of vacancy and interruption, at least for the rest
of the day, and especially if we are left to ourselves. The latter case,
at least, was not true with our friends in the palace. Franziska's
parents and aunt soon followed the Mozarts. Franziska herself, the
Baron, and Max of course, remained. Eugenie, with whom we are especially
concerned, because she appreciated more deeply than the others the
priceless experience she had had--she, one would think, could not feel
in the least unhappy or troubled. Her pure happiness in the truly
beloved man to whom she was now formally betrothed would drown all other
considerations; rather, the most noble and lovely things which could
move her heart must be mingled with that other happiness. So would
it have been, perhaps, if she could have lived only in the present, or
in joyful retrospect. But she had been moved by anxiety while Frau
Mozart was telling her story, and the apprehension increased all the
while that Mozart was playing, in spite of the ineffable charm beneath
the mysterious horror of the music, and was brought to a climax by his
own story of his night work. She felt sure that this man's energy would
speedily and inevitably destroy him; that he could be but a fleeting
apparition in this world, which was unable to appreciate the profusion
of his gifts.

This thought, mingled with many others and with echoes of Don Juan, had
surged through her troubled brain the night before, and it was almost
daylight when she fell asleep. Now, the three women had seated
themselves in the garden with their work; the men bore them company, and
when the conversation, as was natural, turned upon Mozart, Eugenie did
not conceal her apprehensions. No one shared them in the least, although
the Baron understood her fully. She tried to rid herself of the feeling,
and her friends, particularly her uncle, brought to her mind the most
positive and cheering proofs that she was wrong. How gladly she heard
them! She was almost ready to believe that she had been foolishly
alarmed.

Some moments afterward, as she passed through the large hall which had
just been swept and put in order, where the half-drawn green damask
curtains made a soft twilight, she stopped sadly before the piano. It
was like a dream, to think who had sat there but a few hours before. She
looked long and thoughtfully at the keys which _he_ had touched last;
then she softly closed the lid and took away the key, in jealous care
lest some other hand should open it too soon. As she went away, she
happened to return to its place a book of songs; an old leaf fell out,
the copy of a Bohemian folk-song, which Franziska, and she too, had sung
long ago. She took it up, not without emotion, for in her present mood
the most natural occurrence might easily seem an oracle. And the
simple verses, as she read them through again, brought the hot tears to
her eyes:

  "A pine-tree stands in a forest--who knows where?
    A rose-tree in some garden fair doth grow;
  Remember they are waiting there, my soul,
    Till o'er thy grave they bend to whisper and to blow.

  "Far in the pasture two black colts are feeding.
    Toward home they canter when the master calls;
  They shall go slowly with thee to thy grave,
    Perchance ere from their hoofs the gleaming iron falls."

       *       *       *       *       *



[Illustration: ANNETTE VON DROSTE-HÜLSHOFF]

ANNETTE ELIZABETH VON DROSTE-HÜLSHOFF


  PENTECOST[34] (1839)

  The day was still, the sun's bright glare
  Fell sheer upon the Temple's beauteous wall
  Withered by tropic heat, the air
  Let, like a bird, its listless pinions fall.
  Behold a group, young men and gray,
  And women, kneeling; silence holds them all;
  They mutely pray!

  Where is the faithful Comforter
  Whom, parting, Thou didst promise to Thine own?
  They trust Thy word which cannot err,
  But sad and full of fear the time has grown.
  The hour draws nigh; for forty days
  And forty wakeful nights toward Thee we've thrown
  Our weeping gaze.

  Where is He? Hour on hour doth steal,
  And minute after minute swells the doubt.
  Where doth He bide? And though a seal
  Be on the mouth, the soul must yet speak out.
  Hot winds blow, in the sandy lake
  The panting tiger moans and rolls about,
  Parched is the snake.

  But hark! a murmur rises now,
  Swelling and swelling like a storm's advance,
  Yet standing grass-blades do not bow,
  And the still palm-tree listens in a trance.
  Why seem these men to quake with fear
  While each on other casts a wondering glance?
  Behold! 'Tis here!

  'Tis here, 'tis here! the quivering light
  Rests on each head; what floods of ecstasy
  Throng in our veins with wondrous might!
  The future dawns; the flood-gates open free;
  Resistless pours the mighty Word;
  Now as a herald's call, now whisperingly,
  Its tone is heard.

  Oh Light, oh Comforter, but there
  Alas! and but to them art Thou revealed
  And not to us, not everywhere
  Where drooping souls for comfort have appealed!
  I yearn for day that never breaks;
  Oh shine, before this eye is wholly sealed,
  Which weeps and wakes.

       *       *       *       *       *

  THE HOUSE IN THE HEATH[35] (1841)

  Beneath yon fir trees in the west,
    The sunset round it glowing,
  A cottage lies like bird on nest,
    With thatch roof hardly showing.

  And there across the window-sill
    Leans out a white-starred heifer;
  She snorts and stamps; then breathes her fill
    Of evening's balmy zephyr.

  Near-by reposes, hedged with thorn,
    A garden neatly tended;
  The sunflower looks about with scorn;
    The bell-flower's head is bended.

  And in the garden kneels a child,
    She weeds or merely dallies,
  A lily plucks with gesture mild
    And wanders down the alleys.

  A shepherd group in distance dim
    Lie stretched upon the heather,
  And with a simple evening hymn
    Wake the still breeze together.

  And from the roomy threshing hall
    The hammer strokes ring cheery,
  The plane gives forth a crunching drawl,
    The rasping saw sounds weary.

  The evening star now greets the scene
    And smoothly soars above it,
  And o'er the cottage stands serene;
    He seems in truth to love it.

  A vision with such beauty crowned,
    Had pious monks observed it,
  They straight upon a golden ground
    Had painted and preserved it.

  The carpenter, the herdsmen there
    A pious choral sounding;
  The maiden with the lily fair,
    And peace the whole surrounding;

  The wondrous star that beams on all
    From out the fields of heaven--
  May it not be that in the stall
    The Christ is born this even?

[Illustration: HANS AM ENDE THE FARM HOUSE]

       *       *       *       *       *

  THE BOY ON THE MOOR[36] (1841)

  'Tis an eerie thing o'er the moor to fare
    When the eddies of peat-smoke justle,
  When the wraiths of mist whirl here and there
    And wind-blown tendrils tussle,
      When every step starts a hidden spring
      And the trodden moss-tufts hiss and sing
  'Tis an eerie thing o'er the moor to fare
    When the tangled reed-beds rustle.

  The child with his primer sets out alone
    And speeds as if he were hunted,
  The wind goes by with a hollow moan--
    There's a noise in the hedge-row stunted.
      'Tis the turf-digger's ghost, near-by he dwells,
      And for drink his master's turf he sells.
  "Whoo! whoo!" comes a sound like a stray cow's groan;
    The poor boy's courage is daunted.

  Then stumps loom up beside the ditch,
    Uncannily nod the bushes,
  The boy running on, each nerve a twitch,
    Through a jungle of spear-grass pushes.
      And where it trickles and crackles apace
      Is the Spinner's unholy hiding-place,
  The home of the cursèd Spinning-witch
    Who turns her wheel 'mid the rushes.

  On, ever on, goes the fearsome rout,
    In pursuit through that region fenny,
  At each wild stride the bubbles burst out,
    And the sounds from beneath are many.
      Until at length from the midst of the din
      Comes the squeak of a spectral violin,
  That must be the rascally fiddler lout
    Who ran off with the bridal penny!

  The turf splits open, and from the hole
    Bursts forth an unhappy sighing,
  "Alas, alas, for my wretched soul!"
    'Tis poor damned Margaret crying!
      The lad he leaps like a wounded deer,
      And were not his guardian angel near
  Some digger might find in a marshy knoll
    Where his little bleached bones were lying.

  But the ground grows firmer beneath his feet,
    And there from over the meadow
  A lamp is flickering homely-sweet;
    The boy at the edge of the shadow
      Looks back as he pauses to take his breath,
      And in his glance is the fear of death.
  'Twas eerie there 'mid the sedge and peat,
    Ah, that was a place to dread, O!

       *       *       *       *       *

  ON THE TOWER[37] (1842)

  I stand aloft on the balcony,
    The starlings around me crying,
  And let like maenad my hair stream free
    To the storm o'er the ramparts flying.
  Oh headlong wind, on this narrow ledge
    I would I could try thy muscle
  And, breast to breast, two steps from the edge,
    Fight it out in a deadly tussle.

  Beneath me I see, like hounds at play,
    How billow on billow dashes;
  Yea, tossing aloft the glittering spray,
    The fierce throng hisses and clashes.
  Oh, might I leap into the raging flood
    And urge on the pack to harry

  The hidden glades of the coral wood,
    For the walrus, a worthy quarry!
  From yonder mast a flag streams out
    As bold as a royal pennant;
  I can watch the good ship lunge about
    From this tower of which I am tenant;
  But oh, might I be in the battling ship,
    Might I seize the rudder and steer her,
  How gay o'er the foaming reef we'd slip
    Like the sea-gulls circling near her!

  Were I a hunter wandering free,
    Or a soldier in some sort of fashion,
  Or if I at least a man might be,
    The heav'ns would grant me my passion.

  But now I must sit as fine and still
    As a child in its best of dresses,
  And only in secret may have my will
    And give to the wind my tresses.

       *       *       *       *       *

  THE DESOLATE HOUSE[38] (1842)

  Deep in a dell a woodsman's house
    Has sunk in wild dilapidation;
  There buried under vines and boughs
    I often sit in contemplation.
  So dense the tangle that the day
    Through heavy lashes can but glimmer;
    The rocky cleft is rendered dimmer
  By overshadowing tree-trunks gray.

  Within that dell I love to hear
    The flies with their tumultuous humming,
  And solitary beetles near
    Amid the bushes softly drumming.

  And when the trickling cliffs of slate
    The color from the sunset borrow,
    Methinks an eye all red with sorrow
  Looks down on me disconsolate.

  The arbor peak with jagged edge
    Wears many a vine-shoot long and meagre
  And from the moss beneath the hedge
    Creep forth carnations, nowise eager.
  There from the moist cliff overhead
    The muddy drippings oft bedew them,
    Then creep in lazy streamlets through them
  To sink within a fennel-bed.

  Along the roof o'ergrown with moss
    Has many a tuft of thatch projected,
  A spider-web is built across
    The window-jamb, else unprotected;
  The wing of a gleaming dragon-fly
    Hangs in it like some petal tender,
    The body armed in golden splendor
  Lies headless on the sill near-by.

  A butterfly sometimes may chance
    In heedless play to flutter hither
  And stop in momentary trance
    Where the narcissus blossoms wither;
  A dove that through the grove has flown
    Above this dell no more will utter
    Her coo, one can but hear her flutter
  And see her shadow on the stone.

  And in the fireplace where the snow
    Each winter down the chimney dashes
  A mass of bell-capped toad-stools grow
    On viscid heaps of moldering ashes.
  High on a peg above the rest
    A hank of rope-yarn limply dangles
    Like rotted hair, and in the tangles
  The swallow built her last year's nest.

  An old dog-collar set with bells
    Swings from a hook by clasp and tether,
  With rude embroidery that spells
    "Diana" worked upon the leather.
  A flute too, when the woodsman died,
    The men who dug his grave forgot here;
    The dog, his only friend, they shot here
  And laid her by her master's side.

  But while I sit in reverie,
    A field-mouse near me shrilly crying,
  The squirrel barking from his tree,
    And from the marsh the frogs replying--
  Then eerie shudders o'er me shoot,
    As if I caught from out the dingle
    Diana's bells once more a-jingle
  And echoes of the dead man's flute.

       *       *       *       *       *



THE JEW'S BEECH-TREE (1841)

BY ANNETTE ELIZABETH VON DROSTE-HÜLSHOFF

TRANSLATED BY LILLIE WINTER, A.B.


Frederick Mergel, born in 1738, was the son of a so-called _Halbmeier_
or property holder of low station in the village of B., which, however
badly built and smoky it may be, still engrosses the eye of every
traveler by the extremely picturesque beauty of its situation in a green
woody ravine of an important and historically noteworthy mountain chain.
The little country to which it belonged was, at that time, one of those
secluded corners of the earth, without trade or manufacturing, without
highways, where a strange face still excited interest and a journey of
thirty miles made even one of the more important inhabitants the Ulysses
of his vicinage--in short, a spot, as so many more that once could be
found in Germany, with all the failings and the virtues, all the
originality and the narrowness that can flourish only under such
conditions.

Under very simple and often inadequate laws the inhabitants' ideas of
right and wrong had, in some measure, become confused, or, rather, a
second law had grown up beside the official, a law of public opinion, of
custom, and of long uncontested privilege. The property holders, who sat
as judges in the lower courts, meted out punishments or rewards in
accordance with their own notions, which were, in most cases, honest.
The common people did what seemed to them practicable and compatible
with a somewhat lax conscience, and it was only the loser to whom it
sometimes occurred to look up dusty old documents. It is hard to view
that period without prejudice; since it has passed away it has been
either haughtily criticised or foolishly praised; for those who lived
through it are blinded by too many precious recollections, and the newer
generation does not understand it. This much, however, one may assert,
that the shell was weaker, the kernel stronger, crime more frequent,
want of principle rarer. For he who acts according to his convictions,
be they ever so faulty, can never be entirely debased; whereas nothing
kills the soul more surely than appealing to the written law when it is
at variance with one's own sense of what is right.

The inhabitants of the little country of which we speak, being more
restless and enterprising than their neighbors, certain features of life
came out more sharply here than would have been the case elsewhere under
like conditions. Wood stealing and poaching were every-day occurrences,
and in the numerous fights which ensued each one had to seek his own
consolation if his head was bruised. Since great and productive forests
constituted the chief wealth of the country, these forests were of
course vigilantly watched over, less, however, by legal means than by
continually renewed efforts to defeat violence and trickery with like
weapons.

The village of B. was reputed to be the most arrogant, most cunning, and
most daring community in the entire principality. Perhaps its situation
in the midst of the deep and proud solitude of the forest had early
strengthened the innate obstinacy of its inhabitants. The proximity of a
river which flowed into the sea and bore covered vessels large enough to
transport shipbuilding timber conveniently and safely to foreign ports,
helped much in encouraging the natural boldness of the wood-thieves; and
the fact that the entire neighborhood swarmed with foresters served only
to aggravate matters, since in the oft-recurring skirmishes the peasants
usually had the advantage. Thirty or forty wagons would start off
together on beautiful moonlight nights with about twice as many men of
every age, from the half-grown boy to the seventy-year-old village
magistrate, who, as an experienced bell-wether, led the procession
as proudly and self-consciously as when he took his seat in the
court-room. Those who were left behind listened unconcernedly to the
grinding and pounding of the wheels dying away in the narrow passes, and
slept calmly on. Now and then an occasional shot, a faint scream,
startled perhaps a young wife or an engaged girl; no one else paid any
attention to it. At the first gray light of dawn the procession returned
just as silently--every face bronzed, and here and there a bandaged
head, which did not matter. A few hours later the neighborhood would be
alive with talk about the misfortune of one or more foresters, who were
being carried out of the woods, beaten, blinded with snuff, and rendered
unable to attend to their business for some time.

In this community Frederick Mergel was born, in a house which attested
the pretensions of its builder by the proud addition of a chimney and
somewhat less diminutive window panes, but at the same time bespoke the
miserable circumstances of its owner by its present state of
dilapidation. What had once been a hedge around the yard and the garden
had given way to a neglected fence; the roof was damaged; other people's
cattle grazed in the pastures; other people's corn grew in the field
adjoining the yard; and the garden contained, with the exception of a
few woody rose bushes of a better time, more weeds than useful plants.
Strokes of misfortune had, it is true, brought on much of this, but
disorder and mismanagement had played their part. Frederick's father,
old Herman Mergel, was, in his bachelor days, a so-called orderly
drinker--that is, one who lay in the gutter on Sundays and holidays, but
during the week was as well behaved as any one, and so he had had no
difficulty in wooing and winning a right pretty and wealthy girl. There
was great merrymaking at the wedding. Mergel did not get so very drunk,
and the bride's parents went home in the evening satisfied; but the next
Sunday the young wife, screaming and bloody, was seen running through
the village to her family, leaving behind all her good clothes and new
household furniture. Of course that meant great scandal and vexation for
Mergel, who naturally needed consolation; by afternoon therefore there
was not an unbroken pane of glass in his house and he was seen late at
night still lying on his threshold, raising, from time to time, the neck
of a broken bottle to his mouth and pitifully lacerating his face and
hands. The young wife remained with her parents, where she soon pined
away and died. Whether it was remorse or shame that tormented Mergel, no
matter; he seemed to grow more and more in need of "spiritual"
bolstering up, and soon began to be counted among the completely
demoralized good-for-nothings.

The household went to pieces, hired girls caused disgrace and damage; so
year after year passed. Mergel was and remained a distressed and finally
rather pitiable widower, until all of a sudden he again appeared as a
bridegroom. If the event itself was unexpected, the personality of the
bride added still more to the general astonishment. Margaret Semmler was
a good, respectable person, in her forties, a village belle in her
youth, still respected for her good sense and thrift, and at the same
time not without some money. What had induced her to take this step was
consequently incomprehensible to every one. We think the reason is to be
found in her very consciousness of perfection. On the evening before the
wedding she is reported to have said: "A woman who is badly treated by
her husband is either stupid or good-for-nothing; if I am unhappy, put
it down as my fault." The result proved, unfortunately, that she had
overestimated her strength. At first she impressed her husband; if he
had taken too much, he would not come home, or would creep into the
barn. But the yoke was too oppressive to be borne long, and soon they
saw him quite often staggering across the street right into his house,
heard his wild shouting within, and saw Margaret hastily closing doors
and windows. On one such day--it was no longer a Sunday now--they saw
her rush out of the house in the evening, without hood or Shawl, with
her hair flying wildly about her head. They saw her throw herself down
in the garden beside a vegetable bed and dig up the earth with her
hands, then, anxiously looking about her, quickly pick off some
vegetables and slowly return with them in the direction of the house,
but, instead of entering it, go into the barn. It was said that this was
the first time that Mergel had struck her, although she never let such
an admission pass her lips. The second year of this unhappy marriage was
marked by the coming of a son--one cannot say gladdened, for Margaret is
reported to have wept bitterly when the child was handed to her.
Nevertheless, although born beneath a heart full of grief, Frederick was
a healthy, pretty child who grew strong in the fresh air. His father
loved him dearly, never came home without bringing him a roll or
something of that sort, and it was even thought he had become more
temperate since the birth of the boy; at least the noise in the house
decreased.

Frederick was in his ninth year. It was about the Feast of the Three
Kings, a raw and stormy winter night. Herman had gone to a wedding, and
had started out early because the bride's house was three miles away.
Although he had promised to return in the evening, Mistress Mergel
hardly counted on it because a heavy snowfall had set in after sunset.
About ten o'clock she banked the fire and made ready to go to bed.
Frederick stood beside her, already half undressed, and listened, to the
howling of the wind and the rattling of the garret windows.

"Mother, isn't father coming home tonight?" he asked.

"No, child; tomorrow."

"But why not, mother? He promised to."

"Oh, God, if he only kept every promise he makes!--Hurry now, hurry and
get ready."

They had hardly gone to bed when a gale started to rage as though it
would carry the house along with it. The bed-stead quivered, and the
chimney-stack rattled as if there were goblins in it.

"Mother, some one's knocking outside!"

"Quiet, Fritzy; that's the loose board on the gable being shaken by the
wind."

"No; mother, it's at the door."

"It does not lock; the latch is broken. Heavens, go to sleep! Don't
deprive me of my bit of rest at night!"

"But what if father should come now!"

His mother turned angrily in her bed. "The devil holds him tight
enough!"

"Where is the devil, mother?

"Wait, you restless boy! He's standing at the door, ready to get you if
you don't keep quiet!"

Frederick became quiet. A little while longer he listened, and then fell
asleep. A few hours later he awoke. The wind had changed, and hissed
like a snake through the cracks in the window near his ear. His shoulder
was stiff; he crept clear under his quilt and lay still and trembling
with fear. After a while he noticed that his mother was not asleep
either. He heard her weep and moan between sobs: "Hail, Mary!" and "Pray
for us poor sinners!" The beads of the rosary slid by his face. An
involuntary sigh escaped him. "Frederick, are you awake?

"Yes, mother."

"Child, pray a little--you know half of the Paternoster already, don't
you?-that God protect us from flood and fire."

Frederick thought of the devil, and wondered how he looked, anyway. The
confused noise and rumbling in the house seemed strange to him. He
thought there must be something alive within and without. "Listen,
mother! I am sure I hear people knocking."

"Oh, no, child; but there's not an old board in the house that isn't
rattling."

"Hark! Don't you hear? Someone's calling! Listen!"

His mother sat up; the raging of the storm subsided a moment. Knocking
on the shutters, was distinctly audible, and several voices called:
"Margaret!. Mistress Margaret! Hey there! Open the door!" Margaret
ejaculated violently, "There, they're again bringing the swine home to
me!"

The rosary flew clattering down on the wooden chair; hastily she
snatched her clothes; she rushed to the hearth, and soon Frederick heard
her walk across the hall with defiant steps. Margaret did not return;
but in the kitchen there was a loud murmuring of strange voices. Twice a
strange man came into the bedroom and seemed to be nervously searching
for something. Suddenly a lamp was brought in; two men were supporting
his mother. She was white as chalk and her eyes were closed; Frederick
thought she was dead. He emitted a fearful scream, whereupon some one
boxed his ear. That silenced him; and now he gradually gleaned from the
remarks of the bystanders that his father had been found dead in the
woods by his Uncle Franz Semmler and by Huelsmeyer, and was now lying in
the kitchen.

As soon as Margaret regained consciousness she tried to get rid of the
strangers. Her brother remained with her, and Frederick, who was
threatened with severe punishment if he got out of bed, heard the fire
crackling in the kitchen all night and a noise like stroking something
back and forth, and brushing it. There was little spoken and that
quietly, but now and then sobs broke out that went through and through
the child, young as he was. Once he understood his uncle to say,
"Margaret, don't take it so badly; we will all have three masses read,
and at Eastertide we'll make together a pilgrimage to the Holy Virgin of
Werl."

When the body was carried away two days later, Margaret sat on the
hearth and covered her face with her apron. After a few minutes, when
everything had become quiet, she mumbled, "Ten years, ten crosses! But
we carried them together, after all, and now I am alone!" Then louder,
"Fritzy, come here!"

Frederick approached her timidly; his mother had become quite uncanny to
him with her black ribbons and her haggard, troubled face. "Fritzy," she
said, "will you now really be good and make me happy, or will you be
naughty and lie, or drink and steal?"

"Mother, Huelsmeyer steals."

"Huelsmeyer? God forbid! Must I spank you? Who tells you such wicked
things?"

"The other day he beat Aaron and took six groschen from him."

"If he took money from Aaron, no doubt the accursed Jew had first
cheated him out of it. Huelsmeyer is a respectable householder, and the
Jews are all rascals!"

"But, mother, Brandes also says that he steals wood and deer."

"Child, Brandes is a forester."

"Mother, do foresters tell lies?"

Margaret was silent a moment, and then said, "Listen, Fritz! Our Lord
makes the wood grow free and the wild game moves from one landowner's
property into another's. They can belong to no one. But you do not
understand that yet. Now go into the shed and get me some fagots."

Frederick had seen his father lying on the straw, where he was said to
have looked blue and fearful; but the boy never spoke of it and seemed
indisposed to think of it. On the whole, the recollection of his father
had left behind a feeling of tenderness mingled with horror, for nothing
so engrosses one as love and devotion on the part of a person who seems
hardened against everything else; and in Frederick's case this sentiment
grew with the years, through the experience of many slights on the part
of others. As a child he was very sensitive about having any one mention
his deceased father in a tone not altogether flattering to him--a cause
for grief that the none too delicate neighbors did not spare him. There
is a tradition in those parts which denies rest in the grave to a person
killed by accident. Old Mergel had thus become the ghost of the forest
of Brede; as a will o' the wisp he led a drunken man into the pond by a
hair; the shepherd boys, when they crouched by their fires at night and
the owls screeched in the hollows, sometimes heard quite clearly in
broken accents his "Just listen, sweet Lizzie;" and an unprivileged
woodman who had fallen asleep under the broad oak and been overtaken by
nightfall, had, upon awakening, seen his swollen blue face peeping
through the branches. Frederick was obliged to hear much of this from
other boys; then he would howl and strike any one who was near; once he
even cut some one with his little knife and was, on this occasion,
pitilessly thrashed. After that he drove his mother's cows alone to the
other end of the valley, where one could often see him lie in the grass
for hours in the same position, pulling up the thyme.

He was twelve years old when his mother received a visit from her
younger brother who lived in Brede and had not crossed his sister's
threshold since her foolish marriage.

Simon Semmler was a short, restless, lean man with bulging fishlike eyes
and a face altogether like a pike--an uncanny fellow, in whom
exaggerated reserve often alternated with affability no less
affected--who would have liked to pass for a shrewd intellect but was
considered disagreeable instead. He was a quarrelsome chap, and
everybody grew more anxious to avoid him the farther he advanced toward
that age when persons of limited intellect are apt to make up in
pretensions for what they lose in usefulness. Nevertheless poor Margaret
was glad to see him, as she had no other relatives living.

"Simon, is that you?" she asked, trembling so that she had to steady
herself on a chair. "You want to see how I am getting along with my
dirty boy?"

Simon looked at her earnestly and clasped her hand. "You have grown old,
Margaret."

Margaret sighed. "I've had much sorrow and all kinds of bad luck since I
saw you."

"Yes, girl, marry at leisure, repent in haste! Now you are old and the
child is small. Everything has its time. But when an old house is
burning nothing will quench the fire." A flame, red as blood, flashed
across Margaret's care-worn face.

"But I hear your son is cunning and smart," Simon continued.

"Well, rather, but good withal," replied Margaret.

"H'm, some one once stole a cow; he was called 'good' too. But he is
quiet and thoughtful, isn't he? He doesn't run around with the other
boys?"

"He is a peculiar child," said Margaret, as though to herself; "it's not
a good thing."

Simon laughed aloud. "Your boy is timid because the others have given
him a few good thrashings. Don't worry, the lad will repay them!
Huelsmeyer came to see me lately; said the boy was like a deer."

What mother's heart does not rejoice when she hears her child praised?
Poor Margaret seldom had this pleasure; every one called her boy
malicious and close-mouthed. Tears started to her eyes. "Yes, thank God,
his limbs are straight!"

"What does he look like?" continued Simon.

"He's a good deal like you, Simon, a good deal." Simon laughed. "Indeed,
he must be a rare fellow; I'm getting better-looking every day. Of
course he shouldn't be wasting his time at school. You let him pasture
the cows? Just as well; what the teacher says isn't half true anyway.
But where does he pasture? In the Telgen glen? In the Roder woods? In
the Teutoburg forest? At night and early in the morning, too?"

"All through the night; but what do you mean?"

Simon seemed not to hear this. He craned his neck toward the door.
"Look, there comes the youngster! His father's son! He swings his arms
like your departed husband. And just see! The lad actually has my light
hair!"

A proud smile spread secretly over the mother's face; her Frederick's
blond curls and Simon's reddish bristles! Without answering she broke a
branch from the hedge near-by and went to meet her son, apparently to
hurry on a lazy cow, in reality, however, to whisper a few hasty, half
threatening words into his ear; for she knew his obstinate disposition,
and Simon's manner today had seemed to her more intimidating than ever.
But everything ran smoothly beyond expectation; Frederick showed himself
neither obdurate nor insolent-rather, somewhat embarrassed and anxious
to please his uncle. And so matters progressed until, after half an
hour's discussion, Simon proposed a kind of adoption of the boy, by
virtue of which he was not to take him entirely away from his mother but
was, nevertheless, to command the greater part of his time. And for this
the boy was eventually to inherit the old bachelor's fortune, which, to
be sure, couldn't have escaped him anyway. Margaret patiently allowed
her brother to explain how great the advantages of the arrangement would
be to her, how slight the loss. She knew best what a sickly widow misses
in the help of a twelve-year-old boy whom she has trained practically to
replace a daughter. But she kept silent and yielded to everything. She
only begged her brother to be firm, but not harsh, with the boy.

"He is good," she said, "but I am a lonely woman; my son is not like one
who has been ruled by a father's hand."

Simon nodded slyly. "Leave it to me; we'll get along all right; and, do
you know what?--let me have the boy right now; I have two bags to fetch
from the mill; the smallest is just right for him and that's how he'll
learn to help me. Come, Fritzy, put your wooden shoes on!" And presently
Margaret was watching them both as they walked away, Simon ahead with
his face set forward and the tails of his red coat flying out behind him
like flames, looking a good deal like a man of fire doing penance
beneath the sack he has stolen. Frederick followed him, tall and slender
for his age, with delicate, almost noble, features and long blond curls
that were better cared for than the rest of his exterior appearance
would have led one to expect; for the rest, ragged, sunburnt, with a
look of neglect and a certain hard melancholy in his countenance.
Nevertheless a strong family resemblance between the two could not be
mistaken, and as Frederick slowly followed his leader, with his eyes
riveted on the man who attracted him by the very strangeness of his
appearance, involuntarily he reminded one of a person who with anxious
interest gazes on the picture of his future in a magic mirror.

They were now approaching the place in the Teutoburg Forest where the
Forest of Brede extends down the slope of the mountain and fills a very
dark ravine. Until now they had spoken little. Simon seemed pensive, the
boy absent-minded, and both were panting under their sacks. Suddenly
Simon asked, "Do you like whiskey?" The boy did not answer. "I say, do
you like whiskey? Does your mother give you some once in a while?"

"Mother hasn't any herself," answered Frederick.

"Well, well, so much the better! Do you know the woods before us?"

"It is the Forest of Brede."

"Do you know what happened here?" Frederick remained silent. Meanwhile
they came nearer and nearer to the gloomy ravine.

"Does your mother still pray much?" Simon began again.

"Yes, she tells her beads twice every evening."

"Really? And you pray with her?"

Somewhat ill at ease, the boy looked aside slyly and laughed. "At
twilight before supper she tells her beads once--then I have not yet
returned with the cows; and again in bed--then I usually fall asleep."

"Well, well, my boy!" These last words were spoken under the sheltering
branches of a broad beech-tree which arched the entrance to the glen. It
was now quite dark and the new, moon shone in the sky, but its weak rays
served only to lend a strange appearance to the objects they
occasionally touched through an aperture between the branches. Frederick
followed close behind his uncle; his breath came fast and, if one could
have distinguished his features, one would have noticed in them an
expression of tremendous agitation caused by imagination rather than
terror. Thus both trudged ahead sturdily, Simon with the firm step of
the hardened wanderer, Frederick unsteadily and as if in a dream. It
seemed to him that everything was in motion, and that the trees swayed
in the lonely rays of the moon now towards one another, now away. Roots
of trees and slippery places where water had gathered made his steps
uncertain; several times he came near falling. Now some distance ahead
the darkness seemed to break, and presently both entered a rather large
clearing. The moon shone down brightly and showed that only a short
while ago the axe had raged here mercilessly. Everywhere stumps of trees
jutted up, some many feet above the ground, just as it had been most
convenient to cut through them in haste; the forbidden work must have
been interrupted unexpectedly, for directly across the path lay a
beech-tree with its branches rising high above it, and its leaves, still
fresh, trembling in the evening breeze. Simon stopped a moment and
surveyed the fallen tree-trunk with interest. In the centre of the open
space stood an old oak, broad in proportion to its height. A pale ray of
light that fell on its trunk through the branches showed that it was
hollow, a fact that had probably saved it from the general destruction.

Here Simon suddenly clutched the boy's arm. "Frederick, do you know that
tree? That is the broad oak." Frederick started, and with his cold hands
clung to his uncle. "See," Simon continued, "here Uncle Franz and
Huelsmeyer found your father, when without confession and extreme
unction he had gone to the Devil in his drunkenness."

"Uncle, uncle!" gasped Frederick.

"What's coming over you? I should hope you are not afraid? Devil of a
boy, you're pinching my arm! Let go, let go!" He tried to shake the boy
off. "On the whole your father was a good soul; God won't be too strict
with him. I loved him as well as my own brother." Frederick let go his
uncle's arm; both walked the rest of the way through the forest in
silence, and soon the village of Brede lay before them with its mud
houses and its few better brick houses, one of which belonged to Simon.

The next evening Margaret sat at the door with her flax for fully an
hour, awaiting her boy. It had been the first night she had passed
without hearing her child's breathing beside her, and still Frederick
did not come. She was vexed and anxious, and yet knew that there was no
reason for being so. The clock in the tower struck seven; the cattle
returned home; still he was not there, and she had to get up to look
after the cows.

When she reëntered the dark kitchen, Frederick was standing on the
hearth; he was bending forward and warming his hands over the coal fire.
The light played on his features and gave him an unpleasant look of
leanness and nervous twitching. Margaret stopped at the door; the child
seemed to her so strangely changed.

"Frederick, how's your uncle?" The boy muttered a few unintelligible
words and leaned close against the chimney.

"Frederick, have you forgotten how to talk? Boy, open your mouth! Don't
you know I do not hear well with my right ear?" The child raised his
voice and began to stammer so that Margaret failed to understand
anything.

"What are you saying? Greeting from Master Semmler? Away again? Where?
The cows are at home already. You bad boy, I can't understand you. Wait,
I'll have to see if you have no tongue in your mouth!" She made a few
angry steps forward. The child looked up to her with the pitiful
expression of a poor, half-grown dog that is learning to sit up on his
hind legs. In his fear he began to stamp his feet and rub his back
against the chimney.

Margaret stood still; her glances became anxious. The boy looked as
though he had shrunk together. His clothes were not the same either; no,
that was not her child! And. yet--"Frederick, Frederick!" she cried.

A closet door in the bedroom slammed and the real Frederick came out,
with a so-called clog-violin in one hand, that is, a wooden shoe strung
with three or four resined strings, and in his other hand a bow, quite
befitting the instrument. Then he went right up to his sorry double,
with an attitude of conscious dignity and independence on his part,
which at that moment revealed distinctly the difference between the two
boys who otherwise resembled each other so remarkably.

"Here, John!" he said, and handed him the work of art with a patronizing
air; "here is the violin that I promised you. My play-days are over; now
I must earn money."

John cast another timid glance at Margaret, slowly stretched out his
hand until he had tightly grasped the present, and then hid it
stealthily under the flaps of his shabby coat.

Margaret stood perfectly still and let the children do as they liked.
Her thoughts had taken another, very serious, turn, and she looked
restlessly from one to the other. The strange boy had again bent over
the coals with an expression of momentary comfort which bordered on
simple-mindedness, while Frederick's features showed the alternating
play of a sympathy evidently more selfish than good-humored, and his
eyes, in almost glassy clearness, for the first time distinctly showed
the expression of that unrestrained ambition and tendency to swagger
which afterwards revealed itself as so strong a motive in most of his
actions.

His mother's call aroused him from his thoughts which were as new as
they were pleasant to him; again she was sitting at her spinning-wheel.
"Frederick," she said, hesitating, "tell me--" and then stopped.
Frederick looked up and, hearing nothing more, again turned to his
charge. "No, listen!" And then, more softly: "Who is that boy I What is
his name?"

Frederick answered, just as softly: "That is Uncle Simon's swineherd; he
has a message for Huelsmeyer. Uncle gave me a pair of shoes and a
huckaback vest which the boy carried for me; in return I promised him my
violin; you see, he's a poor child. His name is John."

"Well?" said Margaret.

"What do you want, mother?"

"What's his other name?"

"Well--he has none, but, wait--yes, Nobody, John Nobody is his name. He
has no father," he added under his breath.

Margaret arose and went into the bedroom. After a while she came out
with a harsh, gloomy expression on her countenance. "Well, Frederick,"
she said, "let the boy go, so that he may attend to his errand. Boy, why
do you lie there in the ashes? Have you nothing to do at home?" With the
air of one who is persecuted the boy roused himself so hastily that all
his limbs got in his way, and the clog-violin almost fell into the fire.

"Wait, John," said Frederick proudly, "I'll give you half of my bread
and butter; it's too much for me anyhow. Mother always gives me a whole
slice."

"Never mind," said Margaret, "he is going home."

"Yes, but he won't get anything to eat now. Uncle Simon eats at seven
o'clock."

Margaret turned to the boy. "Won't they save anything for you? Tell me!
Who takes care of you?"

"Nobody," stuttered the child.

"Nobody?" she repeated; "then take it, take it!" she added nervously;
"your name is Nobody and nobody takes care of you. May God have pity on
you! And now see that you get away! Frederick, do not go with him, do
you hear? Do not go through the village together."

"Why, I only want to get wood out of the shed," answered Frederick. When
both boys had gone Margaret sank down in a chair and clasped her hands
with an expression of the deepest grief. Her face was as white as a
sheet. "A false oath, a false oath!" she groaned. "Simon, Simon, how
will you acquit yourself before God!"

Thus she sat for a while, motionless, with her lips shut tight, as if
completely unconscious. Frederick stood before her and had already
spoken to her twice.

"What's the matter? What do you want?" she cried, starting up.

"I have some money for you," he said, more astonished than frightened.

"Money? Where?" She moved and the little coin fell jingling to the
floor. Frederick picked it up.

"Money from Uncle Simon, because I helped him work. Now I can earn
something for myself."

"Money from Simon! Throw it away, away!--No, give it to the poor. But
no, keep it!" she whispered, scarcely audibly. "We are poor ourselves;
who knows whether we won't be reduced to begging!"

"I am to go back to Uncle Monday and help him with the sowing."

"You go back to him? No, no, never!" She embraced her child wildly.
"Yet," she added, and a stream of tears suddenly rushed down her sunken
cheeks, "go; he is the only brother I have, and slander is great! But
keep God before your eyes, and do not forget your daily prayers!"
Margaret pressed her face against the wall and wept aloud. She had borne
many a heavy burden--her husband's harsh treatment, and, worse than
that, his death; and it was a bitter moment when the widow was compelled
top give over to a creditor the usufruct of her last piece of arable
land, and her own plow stood useless in front of her house. But as badly
as this she had never felt before; nevertheless, after she had wept
through an evening and lain awake a whole night, she made herself
believe that her brother Simon could not be so godless, that the boy
certainly did not belong to him; for resemblances can prove nothing.
Why, had she not herself lost a little sister forty years ago who looked
exactly like the strange peddler! One is willing to believe almost
anything when one has so little, and is liable to lose that little by
unbelief!

From this time on Frederick was seldom at home. Simon seemed to have
lavished on his nephew all the more tender sentiments of which he was
capable; at least he missed him greatly and never ceased sending
messages if some business at home kept him at his mother's house for any
length of time. The boy was as if transformed since that time; his
dreamy nature had left him entirely; he walked firmly, began to care for
his external appearance, and soon to have the reputation of being a
handsome, clever youth. His uncle, who could not be happy without
schemes, sometimes undertook important public works--for example, road
building, at which Frederick was everywhere considered one of his best
workmen and his right-hand man; for although the boy's physical strength
had not yet attained its fullest development, scarcely any one could
equal him in endurance. Heretofore Margaret had only loved her son; now
she began to be proud of him and even feel a kind of respect for him,
seeing the young fellow develop so entirely without her aid, even
without her advice, which she, like most people, considered invaluable;
for that reason she could not think highly enough of the boy's
capabilities which could dispense with such a precious means of
furtherance.

In his eighteenth year Frederick had already secured for himself an
important reputation among the village youth by the successful execution
of a wager that he could carry a wild boar for a distance of more than
two miles without resting. Meanwhile participation in his glory was
about the only advantage that Margaret derived from these favorable
circumstances, since Frederick spent more and more on his external
appearance and gradually began, to take it to heart if want of money
compelled him to be second to any one in that respect. Moreover, all his
powers were directed toward making his living outside; quite in
contrast to his reputation all steady work around the house seemed
irksome to him now, and he preferred to submit to a hard but short
exertion which soon permitted him to follow his former occupation of
herding the cattle, although it was beginning to be unsuitable for his
age and at times drew upon him ridicule. That he silenced, however, by a
few blunt reprimands with his fist. So people grew accustomed to seeing
him, now dressed up and jolly as a recognized village beau and leader of
the young folks, and again as a ragged boy slinking along, lonely and
dreamily, behind his cows, or lying in a forest clearing, apparently
thoughtless, scratching the moss from the trees.

About this time, however, the slumbering laws were roused somewhat by a
band of forest thieves which, under the name of the "Blue Smocks,"
surpassed all its predecessors in cunning and boldness to such an extent
that even the most indulgent would have lost patience. Absolutely
contrary to the usual state of affairs, when the leading bucks of the
herd could always be pointed out, it had thus far been impossible, in
spite of all watchfulness, to specify even one member of this company of
thieves. Their name they derived from their uniform clothing which made
recognition more difficult if a forester happened by chance to see a few
stragglers disappear in the thicket. Like caterpillars they destroyed
everything; whole tracts of forest-land would be cut down in a single
night and immediately made away with, leaving nothing to be found next
morning but chips and disordered heaps of brushwood. The fact that there
were never any wagon tracks leading towards a village, but always to and
from the river, proved that the work was carried on under the
protection, perhaps with the coöperation, of the shipowners. There must
have been some very skilful spies in the band, for the foresters could
watch in vain for weeks at a time; nevertheless, the first night they
failed, from sheer fatigue, to watch, the devastation began again,
whether it was a stormy night or moonlight. It was strange that the
country folk in the vicinity seemed just as ignorant and excited as the
foresters themselves.

Of several villages it could be asserted with certainty that they did
not belong to the "Blue Smocks," while no strong suspicion could be
attached to a single one, since the most suspected of all, the village
of B., had to be acquitted. An accident had brought this about--a
wedding, at which almost every resident of this village had notoriously
passed the night, while during this very time the "Blue Smocks" had
carried out one of their most successful expeditions.

The damage to the forest, in the meanwhile, was so enormous that
preventive measures were made more stringent than ever before; the
forest was patrolled day and night; head-servants and domestics were
provided with firearms and sent to help the forest officers.
Nevertheless, their success was but slight, for the guards had often
scarcely left one end of the forest when the "Blue Smocks" were already
entering the other. This lasted more than a whole year; guards and "Blue
Smocks," "Blue Smocks" and guards, like sun and moon, ever alternating
in the possession of the land and never meeting each other.

It was July, 1756, at three o'clock in the morning; the moon shone
brightly in the sky, but its light had begun to grow dim; and in the
East there was beginning to appear a narrow, yellow streak which
bordered the horizon and closed the entrance to the narrow dale as with
a hand of gold. Frederick was lying in the grass in his accustomed
position, whittling a willow stick, the knotty end of which he was
trying to form roughly into the shape of an animal. He seemed to be very
tired, yawned, rested his head against a weather-beaten stump and cast
glances, more sleepy than the horizon, over the entrance of the glen
which was almost overgrown with shrubbery and underbrush. Now and then
his eyes manifested life and assumed their characteristic glassy
glitter, but immediately afterwards be half shut them again, and
yawned, and stretched, as only lazy shepherds may. His dog lay some
distance away near the cows which, unconcerned by forest laws, feasted
indiscriminately on tender saplings and the grass, and snuffed the fresh
morning air.

Out of the forest there sounded from time to time a muffled, crashing
noise; it lasted but a few seconds, accompanied by a long echo on the
mountain sides, and was repeated about every five or eight minutes.
Frederick paid no attention to it; only at times, when the noise was
exceptionally loud or long continued, he lifted his head and glanced
slowly down the several paths which led to the valley.

Day was already dawning; the birds were beginning to twitter softly and
the dew was rising noticeably from the ground. Frederick had slid down
the trunk and was staring, with his arms crossed back of his head, into
the rosy morning light softly stealing in. Suddenly he started, a light
flashed across his face, and he listened a few moments with his body
bent forward like a hunting dog which scents something in the air. Then
he quickly put two fingers in his mouth and gave a long, shrill whistle.
"Fido, you cursed beast!" He threw a stone and hit the unsuspecting dog
which, frightened out of his sleep, first snarled and then, limping on
three feet and howling, went in search of consolation to the very place
from which the hurt had come.

At the same moment the branches of a near-by bush were pushed back
almost without a rustle, and a man stepped out, dressed in a green
hunting jacket, with a silver shield on his arm and his rifle cocked in
his hand. He cast a hurried glance over the glen and stared sharply at
the boy, then stepped forward, nodded toward the shrubbery, and
gradually seven or eight men came into sight, all in the same costume,
with hunting knives in their belts and cocked weapons in their hands.

"Frederick, what was that?" asked the one who had first appeared. "I
wish the cur would die on the spot. For all he knows, the cows could
chew the ears off my head."

"The scoundrel has seen us," said another. "Tomorrow you'll go on a trip
with a stone about your neck," Frederick went on, and kicked at the dog.
"Frederick, don't act like a fool! You know me, and you understand me
too!" A look accompanied these words, which had an immediate effect.

"Mr. Brandes, think of my mother!"

"That's what I'm doing. Didn't you hear anything in the forest?"

"In the forest?" The boy threw a hasty glance at the forester's face.
"Your woodchoppers--nothing else."

"My woodchoppers!" The naturally dark complexion of the forester changed
to a deep brownish red. "How many of them are there, and where are they
doing their job?"

"Wherever you have sent them; I don't know."

Brandes turned to his comrades. "Go ahead; I'll follow directly." When
one by one they had disappeared in the thicket, Brandes stepped close up
to the boy. "Frederick," he said in tones of suppressed rage, "my
patience is worn out; I'd like to thrash you like a dog, and that's no
worse than you deserve. You bundle of rags, without a tile in your roof
to call your own! Thank God, you'll soon find yourself begging; and at
my door, your mother, the old witch, shan't get as much as a moldy
crust! But first both of you'll go to the dungeon!"

Frederick clutched a branch convulsively. He was pale as death, and his
eyes looked as if they would shoot out of his head like crystal
bullets--but only for a moment. Then the greatest calmness, bordering on
complete relaxation, returned. "Sir," he said firmly, in an almost
gentle voice, "you have said something that you cannot defend, and so,
perhaps, have I. Let us call it quits; and now I will tell you what you
wish. If you did not engage the woodchoppers yourself, they must be the
'Blue Smocks,' for not a wagon has come from the village; why, the road
is right before me, and there are four wagons. I did not see them, but
I heard them drive up the pass." He faltered a moment. "Can you say that
I have ever hewn a tree on your land, or even that I ever raised my axe
in any other place but where I was ordered to? Think it over, whether
you can say that?" A confused muttering was the forester's only answer;
like most blunt people, he repented easily. He turned, exasperated, and
started toward the shrubbery. "No, sir," called Frederick, "if you want
to follow the other foresters, they've gone up yonder by the
beech-tree."

"By the beech-tree!" exclaimed Brandes doubtfully. "No, across there,
toward Mast Gorge."

"I tell you, by the beech-tree; long Heinrich's gun-sling even caught on
the crooked branch; why, I saw it!"

The forester turned into the path designated. Frederick had not changed
his position the whole time; half reclining, with his arm wound about a
dry branch, he gazed immovably after the departing man, as he glided
through the thickly wooded path with the long cautious steps
characteristic of his profession, as noiseless as a lynx climbing into
the hen-roost. Here and there a branch sank behind him; the outlines of
his body became fainter and fainter. Then there was one final flash
through the foliage; it was a steel button on his hunting jacket; and
now he was gone. During this gradual disappearance Frederick's face had
lost its expression of coldness, and his features had finally become
anxious and restless. Was he sorry, perhaps, that he had not asked the
forester to keep his information secret? He took a few steps forward,
then stopped. "It is too late," he mused, and reached for his hat. There
was a soft pecking in the thicket, not twenty paces from him. It was the
forester sharpening his flint-stone. Frederick listened. "No!" he said
in a decisive tone, gathered up his belongings, and hastily drove the
cattle down into the hollow.

About noon, Margaret was sitting by the hearth, boiling tea. Frederick
had come home sick; he had complained of a violent headache and had told
her, upon her anxious questioning, how he had become deeply provoked
with the forester--in short, all about the incident just described, with
the exception of several details which he considered wiser to keep to
himself. Margaret gazed into the boiling water, silent and sad. She was
not unaccustomed to hear her son complain at times, but today he seemed
more shaken than ever. Was this perhaps the symptom of some illness?
She, sighed deeply and dropped a log of wood she had just lifted.

"Mother!" called Frederick from the bedroom. "What is it? Was that a
shot?"

"Oh, no! I don't know what you mean."

"I suppose it's the throbbing in my head," he replied. A neighbor
stepped in and related in a low whisper some bit of unimportant gossip
which Margaret listened to without interest. Then she went. "Mother!"
called Frederick. Margaret went in to him. "What did Huelsmeyer's wife
say?"

"Oh, nothing at all--lies, nonsense!" Frederick sat up. "About Gretchen
Siemers; you know the old story well enough!--there isn't a word of
truth in it either."

Frederick lay down again. "I'll see if I can sleep," he said.

Margaret was sitting by the hearth. She was spinning and thinking of
rather unpleasant things. The village clock struck half-past eleven; the
door opened and the court-clerk, Kapp, came in. "Good day, Mrs. Mergel,"
he said. "Can you give me a drink of milk? I'm on my way from M." When
Mrs. Mergel brought what he wished, he asked "Where is Frederick?" She
was just then busy getting a plate out and did not hear the question. He
drank hesitatingly and in short draughts. Then he asked, "Do you know
that last night the 'Blue Smocks' again cleared away a whole tract in
the Mast forest as bare as my hand?"

"Oh, you don't mean it!" she replied indifferently.

"The scoundrels!" continued the clerk. "They ruin everything; if only
they had a little regard at least for the young trees; but they go after
little oaks of the thickness of my arm, too small even to make oars of!
It looks as if loss on the part of other people were just as gratifying
to them as gain on their own part!"

"It's a shame!" said Margaret.

The clerk had finished his milk, but still he did not go. He seemed to
have something on his mind. "Have you heard nothing about Brandes?" he
asked suddenly.

"Nothing; he never enters this house."

"Then you don't know what has happened to him?"

"Why, what?" asked Margaret, agitated.

"He is dead!"

"Dead!" she cried. "What, dead? For God's sake! Why, only this morning
he passed by here, perfectly well, with his gun on his back!"

"He is dead," repeated the clerk, eyeing her sharply, "killed by the
'Blue Smocks.' The body was brought into the village fifteen minutes
ago."

Margaret clasped her hands. "God in Heaven, do not judge him! He did not
know what he was doing!"

"Him!" cried the clerk--"the cursèd murderer you mean?"

A heavy groan came from the bedroom. Margaret hurried there and the
clerk followed her. Frederick was sitting upright in bed, with his face
buried in his hands, and moaning like one dying. "Frederick, how do you
feel?" asked his mother.

"How do you feel?" repeated the clerk.

"Oh, my body, my head!" he wailed.

"What's the matter with him?" inquired the clerk.

"Oh, God knows," she replied; "he came home with the cows as early as
four o'clock because he felt sick." "Frederick, Frederick, answer me!
Shall I go for the doctor?"

"No, no," he groaned; "it is only the colic; I'll be better soon." He
lay down again; his face twitched convulsively with pain; then his color
returned. "Go," he said, feebly; "I must sleep; then it will pass away."

"Mistress Mergel," asked the clerk earnestly, "are you sure that
Frederick came home at four and did not go away again?"

She stared in his face. "Ask any child on the street. And go away?--I
wish to God he could!"

"Didn't he tell you anything about Brandes?"

"In the name of God, yes--that Brandes had reviled him in the woods and
reproached him with our poverty, the rascal! But God forgive me, he is
dead! Go!" she continued; "have you come to insult honest people? Go!"

She turned to her son again, as the clerk went out. "Frederick, how do
you feel?" asked his mother. "Did you hear? Terrible, terrible--without
confession or absolution!"

"Mother, mother, for God's sake, let me sleep. I can stand no more!"

At this moment John Nobody entered the room; tall and thin like a
bean-pole, but ragged and shy, as we had seen him five years before. His
face was even paler than usual. "Frederick," he stuttered, "you are to
come to your Uncle immediately; he has work for you; without delay,
now!"

Frederick turned toward the wall. "I won't come," he snapped, "I am
sick."

"But you must come," gasped John; "he said I must bring you back."

Frederick laughed scornfully. "I'd like to see you!"

"Let him alone; he can't," sighed Margaret; "you see how it is." She
went out for a few minutes; when she returned, Frederick was already
dressed. "What are you thinking of?" she cried. "You cannot, you shall
not go!"

"What must be, must," he replied, and was gone through the door with
John.

"Oh, God," sobbed the mother, "when children are small they trample our
laps, and when they are grown, our hearts!"

The judicial investigation had begun, the deed was as clear as day; but
the evidence concerning the perpetrator was so scanty that, although all
circumstances pointed strongly towards the "Blue Smocks," nothing but
conjectures could be risked. One clue seemed to throw some light
upon the matter; there were reasons, however, why but little dependence
could be placed on it. The absence of the owner of the estate had made
it necessary for the clerk of the court to start the case himself. He
was sitting at his table; the room was crowded with peasants, partly
those who came out of curiosity, and partly those from whom the court
hoped to receive some information, since actual witnesses were
lacking--shepherds who had been watching their flocks that night,
laborers who had been working in near-by fields; all stood erect and
firm,, with their hands in their pockets, as if thus silently
manifesting their intention not to interfere.

Eight forest officers were heard; their evidence was entirely identical.
Brandes, on the tenth day of the month, had ordered them to go the
rounds because he had evidently secured information concerning a plan of
the "Blue Smocks"; he had, however, expressed himself but vaguely
regarding the matter. At about two o'clock at night they had gone out
and had come upon many traces of destruction, which put the
head-forester in a very bad humor; otherwise, everything had been quiet.
About four o'clock Brandes had said, "We have been led astray; let us go
home." When they had come around Bremer mountain and the wind had
changed at the same time, they had distinctly heard chopping in the Mast
forest and concluded from the quick succession of the strokes that the
"Blue Smocks" were at work. They had deliberated a while whether it were
practical to attack the bold band with such a small force, and then had
slowly approached the source of the sound without any fixed
determination. Then followed the scene with Frederick. Finally, after
Brandes had sent them away without instructions they had gone forward a
while and then, when they noticed that the noise in the woods, still
rather far away, had entirely ceased, they had stopped to wait for the
head-forester.

They had grown tired of waiting, and after about ten minutes had
gone on toward the scene of devastation. It was all over; not another
sound was to be heard in the forest; of twenty fallen trees eight were
still left, the rest had been made way with. It was incomprehensible to
them how this had been accomplished, since no wagon tracks were to be
found. Moreover, the dryness of the season and the fact that the earth
was strewn with pine-needles had prevented their distinguishing any
footprints, although the ground in the vicinity looked as if it had been
firmly stamped down. Then, having come to the conclusion that there was
no point in waiting for the head-forester, they had quickly walked to
the other side of the wood in the hope of perhaps catching a glimpse of
the thieves. Here one of them had caught his bottle-string in the
brambles on the way out of the wood, and when he had looked around he
had seen something flash in the shrubbery; it was the belt-buckle of the
head-forester whom they then found lying behind the brambles, stretched
out, with his right hand clutching the barrel of his gun, the other
clenched, and his forehead split with an axe.

These were the statements of the foresters. It was then the peasants'
turn, but no evidence could be obtained from them. Some declared they
had been at home or busy somewhere else at four o'clock, and they were
all decent people, not to be suspected. The court had to content itself
with their negative testimonies.

Frederick was called in. He entered with a manner in no respect
different from his usual one, neither strained nor bold. His hearing
lasted some time, and some of the questions were rather shrewdly framed;
however, he answered them frankly and decisively and related the
incident between himself and the forester truthfully, on the whole,
except the end, which he deemed expedient to keep to himself. His alibi
at the time of the murder was easily proved. The forester lay at the end
of the Mast forest more than three-quarters of an hour's walk from the
ravine where he had spoken with Frederick at four o'clock, and whence
the latter had driven his cows only ten minutes later. Every one had
seen this; all the peasants present did their utmost to confirm it; to
this one he had spoken, to that one, nodded.

The court clerk sat ill-humored and embarrassed. Suddenly he reached
behind him and, presenting something gleaming to Frederick's gaze,
cried: "To whom does this belong?" Frederick jumped back three paces,
exclaiming, "Lord Jesus! I thought you were going to brain me."

His eyes had quickly passed across the deadly tool and seemed to fix
themselves for a moment on a splinter broken out of the handle. "I do
not know," he added firmly. It was the axe which they had found plunged
in the head-forester's skull.

"Look at it carefully," continued the clerk. Frederick took it in his
hand, looked at the top, the bottom, turned it over. "One axe looks like
another," he then said, and laid it unconcernedly on the table. A
blood-stain was visible; he seemed to shudder, but he repeated once more
with decision: "I do not know it." The clerk of the court sighed with
displeasure. He himself knew of nothing more, and had only sought to
bring about a possible disclosure through surprise. There was nothing
left to do but to close the hearing.

To those who are perhaps interested in the outcome of this affair, I
must say that the story was never cleared up, although much effort was
made to throw light upon it and several other judicial examinations
followed. The sensation which the incident had caused and the more
stringent measures adopted in consequence of it, seemed to have broken
the courage of the "Blue Smocks"; from now on it looked as though they
had entirely disappeared, and although many a wood-thief was caught
after that, they never found cause to connect him with the notorious
band. Twenty years afterwards the axe lay as a useless _corpus delicti_
in the archives of the court, where it is probably resting yet with its
rust spots. In a made-up story it would be wrong thus to disappoint the
curiosity of the reader, but all this actually happened; I can add or
detract nothing. The next Sunday Frederick rose very early to go to
confession. It was the day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin and
the parish priests were in the confessionals before dawn. He dressed in
the dark, and as quietly as possible left the narrow closet which had
been consigned to him in Simon's house. His prayer-book, he thought,
would be lying on the mantelpiece in the kitchen, and he hoped to find
it with the help of the faint moonlight. It was not there. He glanced
searchingly around, and started; at the bedroom door stood Simon,
half-dressed; his rough figure, his uncombed, tangled hair, and the
paleness of his face in the moonlight, gave him a horribly changed
appearance. "Can he possibly be walking in his sleep?" thought
Frederick, and kept quite still. "Frederick, where are you going?"
whispered the old man.

"Uncle, is that you? I am on my way to confession."

"That's what I thought; go, in the name of God, but confess like a good
Christian."

"That I will," said Frederick.

Think of the Ten Commandments: 'Thou shalt not bear witness against thy
neighbor.'"

"Not _false_ witness!"

"No, none at all; you have been badly taught; he who accuses another in
his confession is unworthy to receive the Sacrament."

Both were silent. "Uncle, what makes you think of this?" Frederick
finally asked. "Your conscience is not clear; you have lied to me."

"I? How?"

"Where is your axe?"

"My axe? On the barn-floor."

"Did you make a new handle for it? Where is the old one?"

"You'll find it at daylight in the woodshed."

"Go," he continued scornfully. "I thought you were a man; but you are
like an old woman who thinks the house must be on fire as soon as she
sees smoke rising from her pot. See," he went on, "if I know anything
more about this story than that doorpost there, may I never hope for
salvation. I was at home long before," he added. Frederick stood still,
oppressed and doubtful. He would have given much to be able to see his
uncle's face. But while they were whispering, the sky had clouded over.

"I am very guilty," sighed Frederick, "because I sent him the wrong way;
although--but still, I never thought it would come to this, no,
certainly not! Uncle, I have you to thank for a troubled conscience."

"Well, go and confess!" whispered Simon in a trembling voice. "Desecrate
the Sacrament by tale-bearing, and set a spy on poor people who will
manage to find a way to snatch their bit of bread from between their
teeth, even if he is not permitted to talk--go!" Frederick stood,
undecided; he heard a soft noise; the clouds cleared away, the moonlight
again fell on the bedroom door; it was closed. Frederick did not go to
confession that morning.

The impression which this incident had made on Frederick wore off only
too soon. Who doubts that Simon did everything to lead his adopted son
down the same paths that he was following? And Frederick possessed
qualities which made this only too easy: carelessness, excitability,
and, above all, boundless pride, which did not always scorn pretense and
ended by doing its utmost to escape possible disgrace, by trying to
realize what it first had pretended to possess. He was not naturally
ignoble, but he fell into the habit of preferring inward to outward
shame. One need only say that he habitually made a display while his
mother starved.

This unfortunate change in his character was, however, the work of many
years, during which it was noticed that Margaret became more and more
quiet on the subject of her son, and gradually came to a state of
demoralization which once would have been thought impossible. She became
timid, negligent, even slovenly, and many thought her brain had
suffered. Frederick, on the other hand, grew all the more
self-assertive; he missed no fair or wedding, and since his irritable
sense of honor would not permit him to overlook the secret
disapprobation of many, he was, so to speak, up in arms, not so much to
defy public opinion as to direct it into the channel which pleased him.
Externally he was neat, sober, apparently affable, but crafty, boastful,
and often coarse--a man in whom no one could take delight, least of all
his mother, and who, nevertheless, through his audacity, which every one
feared, and through his cunning, which they dreaded even more, had
attained a certain preeminence in the village. The preëminence came to
be acknowledged more and more as people became conscious of the fact
that they neither knew him nor could guess of what he might be capable.
Only one young fellow in the village, Will Huelsmeyer, who realized his
own strength and good circumstances, dared to defy him. Since he was
also readier with his tongue than Frederick, and could always make a
pointed joke, he was the only one whom Frederick did not like to meet.

Four years had passed. It was the month of October; the open autumn of
1760, which filled every barn with corn and every cellar with wine, had
also lavished its riches on this corner of the earth, and more
intoxicated people were seen and more fights and stupid tricks were
heard of than ever before. Everywhere there were festivities; Blue
Mondays were the fashion, and whoever had laid aside a few dollars
quickly wanted also a wife to help him feast today and starve tomorrow.
A big, noteworthy wedding took place in the village, and the guests
could expect more than the one violin, generally out of tune, than the
single glass of whiskey, and higher spirits than they themselves brought
along. Since the early morning all had been astir; clothing had been
aired in front of every door, and all day B. had looked like a
frippery-stall. Since many outsiders were expected, everybody was
anxious to uphold the honor of the village.

It was seven o'clock in the evening and everything was in full swing;
fun and laughter were rampant on every side, and the low rooms were
crowded to suffocation with blue, red, and yellow figures, like
pen-folds into which too large a herd had been huddled. On the barn
floor there was dancing--that is, whoever succeeded in capturing a
two-foot space twirled around on it and tried to make up by shouting for
what was lacking in motion. The orchestra was brilliant, the first
violinist as a recognized artist drowned out the second, and a great
bass-viol with three strings was sounded _ad libitum_ by dilettantes,
whiskey and coffee flowed in abundance, all the guests were dripping
with perspiration--in short, it was a glorious affair.

Frederick strutted about like a cock in his new sky-blue jacket and
asserted his position as the first beau of the village. When the lord of
the manor and his family arrived he happened to be sitting behind the
bass-viol, sounding the lowest string with great strength and much
decorum. "John," he called imperiously, and up stepped his protégé from
the dancing-floor, where he too had tried to swing his awkward legs and
shout a cheer. Frederick handed him the bow, made his wishes known by a
proud nod, and joined the dancers. "Now, strike up, musician, the 'Pape
van Istrup!'" The favorite dance was played, and Frederick cut such
capers before the company that the cows in the barn drew back their
horns and a lowing and a rattling of chains sounded from their stalls. A
foot high above the others, his blond head bobbed up and down like a
pike diving out of the waters, on every side girls screamed as he dashed
his long flaxen hair, by a quick movement of the head, into their faces
as a sign of admiration.

"Now is the time," he said finally, and stepped up to the refreshment
table, dripping with perspiration. "Here's to the gracious lords and
ladies and all the noble princes and princesses; and whoever doesn't
join in the toast will get such a boxing on the ears from me that he'll
hear the angels singing!" A loud _Vivat_ responded to the gallant toast.
Frederick bowed. "Take nothing amiss, gracious lords and ladies; we are
but ignorant peasant people." At this moment a disturbance arose at the
end of the floor--shouting, scolding, laughter, all in confusion.
"Butter-thief, butter-thief!" called a few children; and John Nobody
pushed his way, or rather was pushed, through the crowd, his head sunk
between his shoulders and pressing with all his might toward the door.

"What's the matter? What are you doing to our John!" called Frederick
imperiously.

"You'll find out soon enough," coughed an old woman in a kitchen apron
and with a dish-rag in her hand. "Shame!" John, the poor devil, who had
to put up with the worst at home, had tried to secure for himself a
paltry half pound of butter for the coming time of scarcity, and,
without remembering that he had concealed it in his pocket, neatly
wrapped in his handkerchief, had stepped near the kitchen fire, and now
the grease was disgracing him by running down his coat.

There was general excitement; the girls sprang back from fear of soiling
their clothes, or pushed the culprit forward. Others made room as much
out of pity as of caution. But Frederick stepped forward. "Rogue!" he
cried; and a few hard slaps struck his patient protégé; then he pushed
him toward the door and gave him a good kick on the way. The gallant
came back dejected; his dignity was injured; the general laughter cut
him to the quick, although he tried to bring himself into the swing
again by a bold huzza!--It did not work. He was on the point of taking
refuge behind the bass-viol again, but before that he wanted to produce
still another brilliant effect; he drew out his silver watch, at that
time a rare and precious ornament. "It is almost ten o'clock," he said.
"Now the Bride's Minuet! I will strike up."

"A beautiful watch!" said the swineherd, and leaned forward in
reverential curiosity.

"What did it cost?" cried Will Huelsmeyer, Frederick's rival.

"Will you pay for it?" asked Frederick. "Have you paid for it?"
retorted Will. Frederick threw him a haughty glance and seized the bow
in silent majesty. "Well, well," Huelsmeyer went on, "such things have
happened. As you know well enough, Franz Ebel had a beautiful watch too,
till Aaron the Jew took it away from him." Frederick did not answer, but
nodded proudly to the first violin and they began to play with all their
might and main.

Meanwhile the lord of the manor had stepped into the room where the
women of the neighborhood were investing the bride with the white head
band, the insignia of her new position. The young girl was crying
bitterly, partly because custom so decreed, partly from honest
nervousness. She was to manage a run-down household, under the eye of a
peevish old man, whom, moreover, she was expected to love. He stood
beside her, by no means like the groom in the Song of Solomon who "steps
into the chamber like the morning sun." "You've cried enough now," he
said crossly; "remember, it isn't you who are making me happy; I am
making you happy!" She looked up to him humbly and seemed to feel that
he was right. The business was ended; the young wife had drunk to her
husband's health, some young wags had looked through the tripod to see
if the bride's head band was straight, and they were all crowding again
toward the dancing-floor, whence there still resounded inextinguishable
laughter and noise. Frederick was no longer there. He had met with a
great unbearable disgrace, when Aaron the Jew, a butcher and casual
second-hand dealer from the nearest town, had suddenly appeared, and,
after a short unsatisfactory conversation, had dunned him before the
whole company for the sum of ten thalers in payment of a watch delivered
at Eastertide. Frederick had gone away, as if annihilated, and the Jew
followed him, shouting all the while: "Oh, woe is me! Why didn't I
listen to sensible people! Didn't they tell me a hundred times you had
all your possessions on your back and no bread in your cupboard!" The
room shook with laughter. Some had pushed after them into the yard.
"Catch the Jew! Balance him against a pig!" called some; others had
become serious. "Frederick looked as white as a sheet," said an old
woman, and the crowd separated as the carriage of the lord of the estate
turned into the yard. Herr von S. was out of sorts on the way home, the
usual and inevitable effect when the desire to maintain popularity
induced him to attend such feasts. He looked out of the carriage
silently. "What two figures are those?" He pointed to two dark forms
running ahead of the wagon like two ostriches. Now they sneaked into the
castle. "Another blessed pair of swine out of our own pen!" sighed Herr
von S. Having arrived at home, he found the corridor crowded with all
the domestics standing around two lower-servants, who had sunk down pale
and breathless on the steps.

They declared that they had been chased by old Mergel's ghost, when they
were coming home through the forest of Brede. First they had heard a
rustling and crackling high above them, and then, up in the air, a
rattling noise like sticks beating against one another; then suddenly
had sounded a shrieking yell and quite distinctly the words, "O, my poor
soul!" coming down from on high. One of them even claimed to have seen
fiery eyes gleaming through the branches, and both had run as fast as
their legs could carry them.

"Stupid nonsense!" exclaimed the lord of the estate crossly, and went
into his room to change his clothes. The next morning the fountain in
the garden would not play, and it was discovered that some one had
removed a pipe, apparently to look for the head of a horse's skeleton
which had the reputation of being an attested instrument against any
wiles of witches or ghosts. "H'm," said Baron von S.; "what rogues do
not steal, fools destroy."

Three days later a frightful storm was raging. It was midnight, but
every one in the castle was out of bed. The Baron stood at the window
and looked anxiously out into the dark toward his fields. Leaves and
twigs flew against the panes; now and, then a brick fell and was dashed
to pieces on the pavement of the courtyard. "Terrible weather!" said
Herr von S. His wife looked out anxiously. "Are you sure the fire is
well banked?" she asked; "Gretchen, look again; if not, put it all out
with water! Come, let us read the Gospel of St. John." They all knelt
down and the lady of the house began: "In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." There was a terrible
clap of thunder. All started; then there was a terrible scream and noise
up the stairs. "For God's sake! Is something burning?" cried Frau von
S., and sank down with her face on the chair. The door burst open and in
rushed the wife of Aaron the Jew, pale as death, with her hair wildly
disheveled, dripping with rain. She threw herself on her knees before
the Baron. "Justice!" she cried, "Justice! My husband is murdered!" and
she fell in a faint.

It was only too true, and the ensuing investigation proved that Aaron
the Jew had lost his life by a single blow on the temples delivered by
some blunt instrument, probably a staff. On his left temple was the blue
mark; beyond that there was no other injury. The statement of the Jewess
and her servant, Samuel, ran thus: Three days ago Aaron had gone out in
the afternoon to buy cattle and had said at the time that he would
probably be gone overnight, because there were still several bad debtors
in B. and S., on whom he would call for payment; in this case he would
spend the night with the butcher, Solomon, in B. When he did not return
home the next day his wife had become greatly worried and had finally
set out at three o'clock in the afternoon with her servant and the big
butcher dog. At the house of Solomon the Jew, no one knew anything about
Aaron; he had not been there at all. Then they had gone to all the
peasants with whom they knew Aaron had intended to transact some
business. Only two had seen him, and those on the very day when he had
left home. Meanwhile it had become very late. Her great anxiety drove
the woman back home, where she cherished a faint hope of finding
her husband after all. They had been overtaken by the storm in the
Forest of Brede and had sought shelter under a great beech on the
mountain side. In the meantime the dog had been running about and acting
strangely, and had, in spite of repeated calling, finally run off into
the woods. Suddenly, during a lightning flash, the woman had seen
something white beside her on the moss. It was her husband's staff, and
almost at the same moment the dog had broken through the shrubbery with
something in his mouth; it was her husband's shoe. Before long they
found the Jew's body in a trench filled with dry leaves.

This was the report of the servant, supported only in general by the
wife; her intense agitation had subsided and her senses now seemed half
confused or, rather, blunted. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!"
These were her only words, which she at intervals ejaculated.

The same night the guards were summoned to take Frederick into custody.
They needed no warrant, because Herr von S. himself had been witness to
a scene which inevitably threw the strongest suspicion on him;
furthermore there was the ghost story of that night, the beating
together of the sticks in the forest of Brede, the scream from above.
Since the clerk of the court was at that time absent, Herr von S.
hastened everything faster than would otherwise have been done.
Nevertheless dawn was already breaking when the riflemen as quietly as
possible surrounded poor Margaret's house. The Baron himself knocked; it
was hardly a minute before the door was opened, and Margaret appeared,
fully dressed. Herr von S. started; he scarcely recognized her, so pale
and stony did she look. "Where is Frederick?" he asked in an unsteady
voice.

"Search for him!" she answered, and sat down on a chair. The Baron
hesitated a moment longer.

"Come in, come in," he then said roughly to the guards; "what are we
waiting for?" They stepped into Frederick's room. He was not there, but
the bed was still warm. They climbed to the garret, down the cellar,
examined the straw, looked behind every barrel, even into the oven; he
was not there. Some of them went into the garden, looked behind the
fence and up into the apple trees; he was not to be found.

"Escaped!" said the Baron with conflicting feelings; the sight of the
old woman made a strong impression on him. "Give me the key to that
trunk!" Margaret did not answer. "Give me the key," he repeated, and
noticed now for the first time that the key was already in the lock. The
contents of the trunk were brought into view--the fugitive's best Sunday
clothes and his mother's poor finery, then two shrouds with black
ribbons, one made for a man, the other for a woman. Herr von S. was
deeply affected. Under everything else, at the very bottom of the trunk,
lay the silver watch and some documents in a very legible hand, one of
these signed by a man who was strongly suspected of alliance with the
forest-thieves. Herr von S. took them along to examine them, and the
guards left the house without Margaret's giving another sign of life
than that of incessantly biting her lips and blinking her eyes.

Having arrived at the castle, the Baron found the court clerk, who had
returned the night before and declared he had slept through the whole
affair because his Honor had not sent for him. "You always come too
late," said Herr von S. crossly; "wasn't there any old woman in the
village to tell your maid about it? And why didn't they wake you up
then?"

"Your Honor," replied Kapp, "of course my Anne Marie learned of the
incident an hour before I did; but she knew that your Honor was
directing the matter yourself--and then," he added in a plaintive tone,
"that I was deathly tired!"

"A fine police force!" muttered the Baron. "Every old hag in the village
knows about a thing whenever it's supposed to be conducted in absolute
secrecy." Then he continued angrily: "He'd have indeed to be a stupid
devil of a criminal who would let himself be caught!"

Both were silent a moment. "My driver lost his way in the dark," began
the clerk again; "we were delayed over an hour in the wood; the weather
was awful; I thought the wind would blow the wagon over. At last, when
the rain slackened, we drove on in the name of God, heading toward the
Zellerfeld, unable to see our hands before our eyes. Then the coachman
said: 'If only we don't get too near the stone-quarries!' I was
frightened myself; I had him stop, and struck a light, to find some
comfort at least in my pipe. Suddenly we heard a bell ring very near,
perpendicularly under us. Your Honor will realize that I felt
dreadfully. I jumped out of the wagon, for one can trust one's own
limbs, but not those of a horse. So I stood in the mud and rain without
moving, until presently, thank God, it began to dawn. And where had we
stopped? Right near the Heerse ravine with the tower of Heerse directly
under us! If we had driven on twenty paces farther, we should all have
been children of Death."

"That was indeed no joke!" exclaimed the Baron, half conciliated.
Meanwhile he had examined the papers that he had taken along. They were
dunning letters for money lent, most of them from usurers. "I had not
thought," he muttered, "that the Mergels were so deeply in debt." "Yes,
and that it must come to light in this way," replied Kapp; "that will be
no little cause for vexation to Mistress Margaret."

"Oh, dear me, she does not think of that now!" With these words the
Baron arose and left the room to proceed together with Kapp to the
judicial examination of the body. The examination was short--death by
violence evident; the suspected criminal escaped; the evidence against
him very strong indeed, but not sufficient to establish his guilt
without a personal confession; his flight at all events very suspicious.
So the judicial investigation had to be closed without satisfactory
results.

The Jews in the vicinity had manifested great interest. The widow's
house was never empty of mourners and advisers. Within the memory of man
never had so many Jews been seen together in L. Extremely embittered by
the murder of their co-religionist they had spared neither pains nor
money to trace the criminal. It is even known that one of them, commonly
called "Joel the Usurer," offered one of his customers, who owed him
many hundreds and whom he considered an especially sly fellow, remission
of the entire sum if he could help him to arrest Mergel; for the belief
was general among the Jews that the murderer could not have escaped
without efficient assistance, and was probably still in the vicinity.
When, nevertheless, all this did no good, and the judicial investigation
had been declared closed, a number of the most prominent Israelites
appeared in the castle the next morning to make a business proposition
to the gracious lord. The object was the beech-tree, under which Aaron's
staff had been found and where the murder had probably been committed.
"Do you want to hew it down, now that it is in full leaf?" asked the
Baron.

"No, gracious Sir, it must remain standing winter and summer, as long as
there is a chip of it left."

"But then, if I should have the forest cut down, it would injure the
young trees."

"Well, we do not want it for any ordinary price." They offered two
hundred thalers. The deal was made, and all the foresters were strictly
forbidden to injure the "Jew's Beech" in any way.

Soon after, about sixty Jews with a Rabbi at their head were seen going
toward the Forest of Brede, all silent, with their eyes cast down. They
stayed in the woods over an hour, and then returned just as seriously
and ceremoniously through the village of B. up to the Zellerfeld, where
they separated and each went his own way. The next morning there was a
Hebrew inscription carved on the oak with an axe:[Hebrew:]

And where was Frederick? Without doubt, gone, and far enough away to
find it no longer necessary to fear the short arms of such a weak
police force. Soon he was completely forgotten. His Uncle Simon seldom
spoke of him, and then ill. The Jew's wife finally consoled herself and
took another husband. Only poor Margaret remained without consolation.

About half a year afterward the lord of the estate read in the presence
of the court clerk some letters just received. "Remarkable, remarkable!"
he exclaimed. "Just think, Kapp, perhaps Mergel is innocent of the
murder. The chairman of the court of P. has just written me: 'Le vrai
n'est pas toujours vraisemblable' (Truth does not always bear the marks
of probability). I often find this out in my profession, and now I have
a new proof of it. Do you know that it is possible that your dear trusty
Frederick Mergel killed the Jew no more than you or I? Unfortunately
proofs are lacking, but the probability is great. A member of the
Schlemming band (which, by-the-by, we now have, for the most part, under
lock and key), named Ragged Moses, alleged in the last hearing that he
repented of nothing so much as of murdering one of his co-religionists,
Aaron, whom he had beaten to death in the woods, and had found only six
groschen on him.

"Unfortunately the examination was interrupted by the noon recess and,
while we were at lunch, the dog of a Jew hanged himself with a garter.
What do you say to that? Aaron is a common name, to be sure," etc.

"What do you say to that?" repeated the Baron; "and what reason then did
the fool of a fellow have for running away?"

The court clerk reflected. "Well, perhaps on account of the forest
thefts which we were just then investigating. Isn't it said: 'The wicked
man flees from his own shadow?' Mergel's conscience was dirty enough,
even without this spot."

With these considerations they let the matter drop. Frederick had gone,
disappeared; and John Nobody--poor, neglected John--with him on the same
day. A long, long time had passed--twenty-eight years, almost half a
lifetime. The Baron was grown very old and gray, and his good-natured
assistant, Kapp, had been long since buried. People, animals, and plants
had arisen, matured, passed away; only Castle B., gray and dignified as
of old, still looked down on the cottages which, like palsied old
people, always seemed about to fall, yet always kept their balance.

It was Christmas Eve, December 24, 1788.

The narrow passes were covered with snow, probably about twelve feet
deep, and the penetrating, frosty air froze the window panes in the
heated room. It was almost midnight, and yet faint lights flickered from
the snow mounds everywhere, and in every house the inmates were on their
knees awaiting in prayer the advent of the holy Christmas festival, as
is the custom in Catholic countries, or, at least, as was general in
those times. That night a figure moved slowly down from the heights of
Brede toward the village. The wanderer seemed to be very tired or sick;
he groaned heavily and dragged himself with extreme difficulty through
the snow.

Half the way down he stopped, leaned on his staff, and gazed fixedly at
the lights. Everything was so quiet, so dead and cold; one could not
have helped thinking of will o' the wisps in cemeteries. At that moment
the clock struck twelve in the tower; as the last stroke died slowly
away, soft singing arose in the nearest house and, spreading from house
to house, ran through the whole village:

  A little babe, a worthy child,
    Was born to us today,
  Of Mary Virgin undefiled;
    We all rejoice and say:
  Yea, had the Christ-child ne'er been born,
  To lasting woe we'd all been sworn,
    For He is our salvation.
  O, thou our Jesus Christ adored,
    A man in form but yet our Lord,
  From Hell grant us Redemption.

The man on the mountain slope had sunk to his knees and with a trembling
voice made an effort to join in the song; it turned into nothing but
loud sobbing, and large hot drops fell on the snow. The second verse
began; he prayed along silently; then the third and the fourth. The song
was ended and the lights in the houses began to move. Then the man rose
laboriously and slunk slowly down to the village. He panted past several
houses, then stopped in front of one and knocked on the door softly.

"I wonder what that is!" said a woman's voice inside. "The door is
rattling, and there's no wind blowing!"

He knocked louder. "For God's sake, let in a half-frozen man, who comes
out of Turkish slavery!"

There was whispering in the kitchen. "Go to the inn," answered another
voice, "the fifth house from here!"

"In the name of our merciful God, let me in! I have no money."

After some delay the door opened. A man came out with a lighted lamp.
"Come right in," he then said; "you won't cut our heads off." In the
kitchen there were, besides the man, a middle-aged woman, an old mother,
and five children. All crowded around the newcomer and scrutinized him
with timid curiosity. A wretched figure! Wry-necked, with his back bent,
his whole body broken and powerless; long hair, white as snow, fell
about his face, which bore the distorted expression of long suffering.
The woman went silently to the hearth and added some fresh fagots. "A
bed we cannot give you," she said, "but I will make a good litter of
straw here; you'll have to make the best of that."

"God reward you!" answered the stranger; "indeed I am used to worse than
that."

The man who had returned home was recognized as John Nobody, and he
himself avowed that it was he who had once fled with Frederick Mergel.
The next day the village was full of the adventures of the man who had
so long been forgotten. Everybody wanted to see the man from Turkey,
and they were almost surprised that he should still look like other
people. The young folks, to be sure, did not remember him, but the old
could still recognize his features perfectly, wretchedly disfigured
though he was.

"John, John, how gray you've grown!" said an old woman; "and where did
you get your wry neck?"

"From carrying wood and water in slavery," he replied. "And what has
become of Mergel? You ran away together, didn't you?"

"Yes, indeed; but I do not know where he is; we got separated. If you
think of him, pray for him," he added; "he probably needs it."

They asked him why Frederick had disappeared, inasmuch as he had not
murdered the Jew. "Not killed him!" said John, and listened intently
when they told him what the lord of the estate had purposely spread
abroad in order to erase the spot from Mergel's name. "So all was in
vain," he said musing, "all in vain--so much suffering!"

He sighed deeply and asked, on his part, about many things. He was told
that Simon had been dead a long while, but had first fallen into
complete poverty through lawsuits and bad debtors whom he could not sue
because, it was said, the business relations between them had been
questionable. Finally he had been reduced to begging and had died on the
straw in a strange barn. Margaret had lived longer, but in absolute
mental torpor. The people in the village had soon grown tired of helping
her, because she let everything that they gave her go to ruin; for it
is, after all, characteristic of people to abandon the most helpless,
those whom assistance does not relieve for any length of time and who
are and always will be in need of aid. Nevertheless she had not suffered
any actual want; the family of the Baron had cared for her, sent her
meals daily, and even provided medical treatment for her, when her
pitiable condition had developed into complete emaciation. In her house
now lived the son of the former swineherd, who had so admired
Frederick's watch on that unfortunate night.

"All gone, all dead!" sighed John.

In the evening, when it had grown dark and the moon was shining, he was
seen limping about the cemetery in the snow; he did not pray over any
one grave, nor did he go very close to any, but he seemed to gaze
fixedly at some of them from a distance. Thus he was found by Forester
Brandes, the son of the murdered forester, whom the Baron had sent to
bring John to the castle. Upon entering the living-room he looked about
him timidly, as though dazed by the light, and then at the Baron who was
sitting in his armchair; he had aged greatly but still had his old
bright eyes, and the little red cap was still on his head, as it had
been twenty-eight years ago; beside him was the Baroness, his wife, also
grown old, very old.

"Now, John," said the Baron, "do tell me all about your adventures.
But," as he surveyed him through his glasses, "you wasted away terribly
there in Turkey, didn't you?" John began telling how Mergel had called
him away from the hearth at night and said he must go away with him.

"But why did the foolish fellow ever run away?--I suppose you know that
he was innocent?"

John looked down.

"I don't know exactly; I think it was on account of some forest affairs.
Simon had all kinds of dealings, you know; they never told me anything
about it, but I do not believe everything was as it should have been."

"But what did Frederick tell you?"

"Nothing but that we must run away, that they were at our heels. So we
ran to Heerse; it was still dark then and we hid behind the big cross in
the churchyard until it grew somewhat lighter, because we were afraid of
the stone-quarries at Bellerfeld; and after we had been sitting a while
we suddenly heard snorting and stamping over us and saw long streaks of
fire in the air directly over the church-tower of Heerse. We jumped up
and ran straight ahead in the name of God as fast as we could, and, when
dawn arose, we were actually on the right road to P." John seemed to
shudder at the remembrance even now, and the Baron thought of his
departed Kapp and his adventures on the slope of Heerse.

"Remarkable!" he mused; "you were so near each other! But go ahead."

John now related how they had successfully passed through P. and across
the border, telling how, from that point, they had begged their way
through to Freiburg in Breisgau as itinerant workmen. "I had my
haversack with me, and Frederick a little bundle; so they believed us,"
he went on. In Freiburg they had been induced to enlist in the Austrian
army; he had not been wanted, but Frederick had insisted. So he was put
with the commissariat. "We stayed over the winter in Freiburg," he
continued, "and we got along pretty well; I did, too, because Frederick
often advised me and helped me when I did something wrong. In the spring
we had to march to Hungary, and in the fall the war with the Turks broke
out. I can't repeat very much about it because I was taken prisoner in
the very first encounter and from that time was a Turkish slave for
twenty-six years!"

"God in Heaven, but that is terrible!" exclaimed Frau von S.

"Bad enough! The Turks consider us Christians no better than dogs; the
worst of it was that my strength left me with the hard work; I grew
older, too, and was still expected to do as in former years." He was
silent for a moment. "Yes," he then said, "it was beyond human strength
and human patience, and I was unable to endure it. From there I got on a
Dutch vessel."

"But how did you get there?" asked the Baron.

"They fished me out of the Bosphorus," replied John. The Baron looked at
him in astonishment and raised his finger in warning; but John
continued. "On the vessel I did not fare much better. The scurvy broke
out; whoever was not absolutely helpless was compelled to work beyond
his strength, and the ship's tow ruled as severely as the Turkish whip.
At last," he concluded, "when we arrived in Holland, at Amsterdam, they
let me go free because I was useless, and the merchant to whom the ship
belonged sympathized with me, too, and wanted to make me his porter.
But," he shook his head, "I preferred to beg my way along back here."

"That was foolish enough!" said the Baron.

John sighed deeply. "Oh, sir, I had to spend my life among Turks and
heretics; should I not at least go to rest in a Catholic cemetery?"

The lord of the estate had taken out his purse. "Here, John, now go and
come back soon. You must tell me the whole story more in detail; today
it was a bit confused. I suppose you are still very tired."

"Very tired," replied John; "and"--he pointed to his forehead--"my
thoughts are at times so curious I cannot exactly tell how things are."

"I understand," said the baron; "that is an old story. Now, go.
Huelsmeyer will probably put you up for another night; come again
tomorrow."

Herr von S. felt the deepest sympathy with the poor chap; by the next
day he had decided where to lodge him; he should take his meals in the
castle and his clothing could, of course, be provided for too. "Sir,"
said John, "I can still do something; I can make wooden spoons and you
can also send me on errands."

Herr von S. shook his head sympathetically. "But that wouldn't work so
remarkably well."

"Oh, yes, sir, if once I get started--I can't move very fast, but I'll
get there somehow, and it won't be as hard as you might think, either."

"Well," said the Baron, doubtfully, "do you want to try it? Here is a
letter to P. There is no particular hurry." The next day John moved into
his little room in the house of a widow in the village. He carved
spoons, ate at the castle, and did errands for the Baron. On the whole
he was getting along tolerably well; the Baron's family was very kind,
and Herr von S. often conversed with him about Turkey, service in
Austria, and the ocean. "John could tell many things," he said to his
wife, "if he wasn't so downright simple."

"More melancholic than simple," she replied; "I am always afraid he'll
lose his wits some day."

"Not a bit of it," answered the Baron; "he's been a simpleton all his
life; simple people never go crazy." Some time after, John stayed away
much longer than usual on an errand. The good Frau von S. was greatly
worried and was already on the point of sending out people, when they
heard him limping up the stairs.

"You stayed out a long time, John," she said; "I was beginning to think
you had lost your way in the forest of Brede."

"I went through Fir-tree Hollow."

"Why, that's a long roundabout way! Why didn't you go through the Brede
Woods?"

He looked up at her sadly. "People told me the woods were cut down and
there were now so many paths this way and that way that I was afraid I
would not find my way out. I am growing old and shaky," he added slowly.

"Did you see," Frau von S. said afterwards to her husband, "what a
queer, squinting look there was in his eyes? I tell you, Ernest, there's
a bad ending in store for him!"

Meanwhile September was approaching. The fields were empty, the leaves
were beginning to fall, and many a hectic person felt the scissors on his
life's thread. John, too, seemed to be suffering under the influence of
the approaching equinox; those who saw him at this time said he looked
particularly disturbed and talked to himself incessantly--something which
he used to do at times, but not very often. At last one evening he did
not come home. It was thought the Baron had sent him somewhere. The
second day he was still not there. On the third his housekeeper grew
anxious. She went to the castle and inquired. "God forbid!" said the
Baron, "I know nothing of him; but, quick!--call the forester and his
son William! If the poor cripple," he added, in agitation, "has fallen
even into a dry pit, he cannot get out again. Who knows if he may not
even have broken one of his distorted limbs! Take the dogs along," he
called to the foresters on their way, "and, first of all, search in the
quarries; look among the stone-quarries," he called out louder.

The foresters returned home after a few hours; no trace had been found.
Herr von S. was restless. "When I think of such a man, forced to lie
like a stone and unable to help himself, I--but he may still be alive; a
man can surely hold out three days without food." He set out himself;
inquiry was made at every house, horns were blown everywhere, alarms
were sent out, and dogs set on the trail--in vain! A child had seen him
sitting at the edge of the forest of Brede, carving a spoon. "But he cut
it right in two," said the little girl. That had happened two days
before. In the afternoon there was another clue. Again a child had seen
him on the other side of the woods, where he had been sitting in the
shrubbery, with his face resting on his knees as though he were asleep.
That was only the day before. It seemed he had kept rambling about the
forest of Brede.

"If only that damned shrubbery weren't so dense! Not a soul can get
through it," said the Baron. The dogs were driven to the place where the
woods had just been cut down; the searching-party blew their horns and
hallooed, but finally returned home, dissatisfied, when they had
convinced themselves that the animals had made a thorough search of the
whole forest. "Don't give up! Don't give up!" begged Frau von S. "It's
better to take a few steps in vain than to leave anything undone." The
Baron was almost as worried as she; his restlessness even drove him to
John's room, although he was sure not to find him there. He had the room
of the lost man opened. Here stood his bed still in disorder as he had
left it; there hung his good coat which the Baroness had had made for
him out of the Baron's old hunting-suit; on the table lay a bowl, six
new wooden spoons, and a box. Herr von S. opened the box; five groschen
lay in it, neatly wrapped in paper, and four silver vest-buttons. The
Baron examined them with interest. "A remembrance from Mergel," he
muttered, and stepped out, for he felt quite oppressed in the musty,
close room. The search was continued until they had convinced themselves
that John was no longer in the vicinity--at least, not alive.

So, then, he had disappeared for the second time! Would they ever find
him again--perhaps some time, after many years, find his bones in a dry
pit? There was little hope of seeing him again alive, or, at all events,
certainly not after another twenty-eight years.

One morning two weeks later young Brandes was passing through the forest
of Brede, on his way from inspecting his preserve. The day was unusually
warm for that time of the year; the air quivered; not a bird was
singing; only the ravens croaked monotonously in the branches and opened
their beaks to the air. Brandes was very tired. He took off his cap,
heated through by the sun; and then he put it on again; but one way was
as unbearable as another, and working his way through the knee-high
underbrush was very laborious. Round about there was not a single tree
save the "Jew's beech"; for that he made, therefore, with all his might,
and stretched himself on the shady moss under it, tired to death. The
coolness penetrated to his limbs so soothingly that he closed his eyes.

"Foul mushrooms!" he muttered, half asleep. There is, you must know, in
that region a species of very juicy mushrooms which live only a few days
and then shrivel up and emit an insufferable odor. Brandes thought he
smelt some of these unpleasant neighbors; he looked around him several
times, but did not feel like getting up; meanwhile his dog leaped about,
scratched at the trunk of the beech, and barked at the tree. "What have
you there, Bello? A cat?" muttered Brandes. He half opened his lids and
the Hebrew inscription met his eye, much distorted but still quite
legible. He shut his eyes again; the dog kept on barking and finally put
his cold nose against his master's face.

"Let me alone! What's the matter with you, anyway?" Brandes was lying on
his back, looking up; suddenly he jumped up with a bound and sprang into
the thicket like one possessed.

Pale as death he reached the castle; a man was hanging in the "Jew's
Beech-tree"; he had seen his limbs suspended directly above his face.
"And you did not cut him down, you fool?" cried the Baron.

"Sir," gasped Brandes, "if Your Honor had been there you would have
realized that the man is no longer alive. At first I thought it was the
mushrooms!" Nevertheless Herr von S. urged the greatest haste, and went
out there himself.

They had arrived beneath the beech. "I see nothing," said Herr von S.
"You must step over there, right here on this spot!" Yes, it was true;
the Baron recognized his own old shoes. "God, it is John! Prop up the
ladder!--so--now down--gently, gently! Don't let him fall! Good heaven,
the worms are at him already! But loose the knot anyway, and his
necktie!" A broad scar was visible; the Baron drew back. "Good God!" he
said; he bent over the body again, examined the scar with great care,
and in his intense agitation was silent for some time. Then he turned to
the foresters. "It is not right that the innocent should suffer for the
guilty; just tell everybody this man here"--he pointed to the dead
body--"was Frederick Mergel."

The body was buried in the potter's field.

As far as all main events are concerned, this actually happened during
the month of September in the year 1789.

The Hebrew inscription on the tree read: "When thou comest near this
spot, thou wilt suffer what thou didst to me."

       *       *       *       *       *



FERDINAND FREILIGRATH


  THE DURATION OF LOVE[39] (1831)

  Oh! love while Love is left to thee;
    Oh! love while Love is yet thine own;
  The hour will come when bitterly
    Thou'lt mourn by silent graves, alone!

  And let thy breast with kindness glow,
    And gentle thoughts within thee move,
  While yet a heart, through weal and woe,
    Beats to thine own in faithful love.

  And who to thee his heart doth bare,
    Take heed thou fondly cherish him;
  And gladden thou his every hour,
    And not an hour with sorrow dim!

  And guard thy lips and keep them still;
    Too soon escapes an angry word.
  "O God! I did not mean it ill!"
    But yet he sorrowed as he heard.

  Oh! love while Love is left to thee;
    Oh! love while Love is yet thine own;
  The hour will come when bitterly
    Thou'lt mourn by silent graves, alone.

  Unheard, unheeded then, alas!
    Kneeling, thou'lt hide thy streaming eyes
  Amid the long, damp, churchyard grass,
    Where, cold and low, thy loved one lies,

  And murmur: "Oh, look down on me,
    Mourning my causeless anger still;
  Forgive my hasty word to thee--
    O God! I did not mean it ill!"

  He hears not now thy voice to bless,
    In vain thine arms are flung to heaven!
  And, hushed the loved lip's fond caress,
    It answers not: "I _have_ forgiven!"

  He _did_ forgive--long, long ago!
    But many a burning tear he shed
  O'er thine unkindness--softly now!
    He slumbers with the silent dead.

  Oh! love while Love is left to thee;
    Oh! love while Love is yet thine own;
  The hour will come when bitterly
    Thou'lt mourn by silent graves--alone!

       *       *       *       *       *

  THE EMIGRANTS[40] (1832)

  I cannot take my eyes away
    From you, ye busy, bustling band,
  Your little all to see you lay
    Each in the waiting boatman's hand.

  Ye men, that from your necks set down
    Your heavy baskets on the earth,
  Of bread, from German corn baked brown,
    By German wives, on German hearth.

  And you, with braided tresses neat,
    Black Forest maidens, slim and brown,
  How careful, on the sloop's green seat,
    You set your pails and pitchers down.

[Illustration: J.P. HASENCLEVER FERDINAND FREILIGRATH]

  Ah! oft have home's cool shady tanks
    Those pails and pitchers filled for you;
  By far Missouri's silent banks
    Shall these the scenes of home renew--

  The stone-rimmed fount, in village street,
    Where oft ye stooped to chat and draw--
  The hearth, and each familiar seat--
    The pictured tiles your childhood saw.

  Soon, in the far and wooded West
    Shall log-house walls therewith be graced;
  Soon, many a tired, tawny guest
    Shall sweet refreshment from them taste.

  From them shall drink the Cherokee,
    Faint with the hot and dusty chase;
  No more from German vintage, ye
    Shall bear them home, in leaf-crowned grace.

  Oh say, why seek ye other lands?
    The Neckar's vale hath wine and corn;
  Full of dark firs the Schwarzwald stands;
    In Spessart rings the Alp-herd's horn.

  Ah, in strange forests you will yearn
    For the green mountains of your home;
  To Deutschland's yellow wheat-fields turn;
    In spirit o'er her vine-hills roam.

  How will the form of days grown pale
    In golden dreams float softly by,
  Like some old legendary tale,
    Before fond memory's moistened eye!
  The boatman calls--go hence in peace!
    God bless you, wife and child, and sire!
  Bless all your fields with rich increase,
    And crown each faithful heart's desire!

       *       *       *       *       *

  THE LION'S RIDE [41] (1834)

  King of deserts reigns the lion; will he through his realm go riding,
  Down to the lagoon he paces, in the tall sedge there lies hiding.
  Where gazelles and camelopards drink, he crouches by the shore;
  Ominous, above the monster, moans the quivering sycamore.

  When, at dusk, the ruddy hearth-fires in the Hottentot kraals are
    glowing,
  And the motley, changeful signals on the Table Mountain growing
  Dim and distant--when the Caffre sweeps along the lone karroo--
  When in the bush the antelope slumbers, and beside the stream the gnu--

  Lo! majestically stalking, yonder comes the tall giraffe,
  Hot with thirst, the gloomy waters of the dull lagoon to quaff;
  O'er the naked waste behold her, with parched tongue, all panting
    hasten--
  Now she sucks the cool draught, kneeling, from the stagnant, slimy basin.

  Hark, a rustling in the sedges! with a roar, the lion springs
  On her back now. What a race-horse! Say, in proudest stalls of kings,
  Saw one ever richer housings than the courser's motley hide,
  On whose back the tawny monarch of the beasts tonight will ride?

  Fixed his teeth are in the muscles of the nape, with greedy strain;
  Round the giant courser's withers waves the rider's yellow mane.
  With a hollow cry of anguish, leaps and flies the tortured steed;
  See her, how with skin of leopard she combines the camel's speed!

  See, with lightly beating footsteps, how she scours the moonlit plains!
  From their sockets start the eyeballs; from the torn and bleeding veins,
  Fast the thick, black drops come trickling, o'er the brown and dappled
    neck,
  And the flying beast's heart-beatings audible the stillness make.

  Like the cloud, that, guiding Israel through the land of Yemen, shone,
  Like a spirit of the desert, like a phantom, pale and wan,
  O'er the desert's sandy ocean, like a waterspout at sea,
  Whirls a yellow, cloudy column, tracking them where'er they flee.

  On their track the vulture follows, flapping, croaking, through the air,
  And the terrible hyena, plunderer of tombs, is there;
  Follows them the stealthy panther--Cape-town's folds have known him well;
  Them their monarch's dreadful pathway, blood and sweat full plainly tell.

  On his living throne, they, quaking, see their ruler sitting there,
  With sharp claw the painted cushion of his seat they see him tear.
  Restless the giraffe must bear him on, till strength and life-blood fail
    her;
  Mastered by such daring rider, rearing, plunging, naught avail her.

  To the desert's verge she staggers--sinks--one groan--and all is o'er.
  Now the steed shall feast the rider, dead, and smeared with dust and
    gore.
  Far across, o'er Madagascar, faintly now the morning breaks;
  Thus the king of beasts his journey nightly through his empire makes.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE SPECTRE-CARAVAN[42] (1835)

  'Twas at midnight, in the Desert, where we rested on the ground;
  There my Bedouins were sleeping, and their steeds were stretched around;
  In the farness lay the moonlight on the mountains of the Nile,
  And the camel-bones that strewed the sands for many an arid mile.

  With my saddle for a pillow did I prop my weary head,
  And my caftan-cloth unfolded o'er my limbs was lightly spread,
  While beside me, both as Captain and as watchman of my band,
  Lay my Bazra sword and pistols twain a-shimmering on the sand.

  And the stillness was unbroken, save at moments by a cry
  From some stray belated vulture sailing blackly down the sky,
  Or the snortings of a sleeping steed at waters fancy-seen,
  Or the hurried warlike mutterings of some dreaming Bedouin.

  When, behold!--a sudden sandquake--and atween the earth and moon
  Rose a mighty Host of Shadows, as from out some dim lagoon;
  Then our coursers gasped with terror, and a thrill shook every man,
  And the cry was "_Allah Akbar_!--'tis the Spectre-Caravan!"

  On they came, their hueless faces toward Mecca evermore;
  On they came, long files of camels, and of women whom they bore;
  Guides and merchants, youthful maidens, bearing pitchers like Rebecca,
  And behind them troops of horsemen, dashing, hurrying on to Mecca!

  More and more! the phantom-pageant overshadowed all the Plains,
  Yea, the ghastly camel-bones arose, and grew to camel-trains;
  And the whirling column-clouds of sand to forms in dusky garbs,
  Here, afoot as Hadjee pilgrims--there, as warriors on their barbs!

  Whence we knew the Night was come when all whom Death had sought and
    found,
  Long ago amid the sands whereon their bones yet bleach around,
  Rise by legions from the darkness of their prisons low and lone,
  And in dim procession march to kiss the Kaaba's Holy Stone.

  More and more! the last in order have not passed across the plain,
  Ere the first with slackened bridle fast are flying back again.
  From Cape Verde's palmy summits, even to Bab-el-Mandeb's sands,
  They have sped ere yet my charger, wildly rearing, breaks his bands!

  Courage! hold the plunging horses; each man to his charger's head!
  Tremble not as timid sheep-flocks tremble at the lion's tread.
  Fear not, though yon waving mantles fan you as they hasten on;
  Call on _Allah_! and the pageant, ere you look again, is gone!

  Patience! till the morning breezes wave again your turban's plume;
  Morning air and rosy dawning are their heralds to the tomb.
  Once again to dust shall daylight doom these Wand'rers of the night;
  See, it dawns!--A joyous welcome neigh our horses to the light!

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: DUSK ON THE DEAD SEA EUGEN BRACHT]

  HAD I AT MECCA'S GATE BEEN NOURISHED[43] (1836)

  Had I at Mecca's gate been nourished,
    Or dwelt on Yemen's glowing sand,
  Or from my youth in Sinai flourished,
    A sword were now within this hand.

  Then would I ride across the mountains
    Until to Jethro's land I came,
  And rest my flock beside the fountains
    Where once the bush broke forth in flame.

  And ever with the evening's coolness
    My kindred to the tent would throng,
  When verses with impassioned fulness
    Would stream from me in glowing song.

  The treasure of my lips would dower
    A mighty tribe, a mighty land,
  And as with a magician's power
    I'd rule, a monarch, 'mid the sand.

  My list'ners are a nomad nation,
    To whom the desert's voice is dear;
  Who dread the simoon's devastation
    And fall before his wrath in fear.

  All day they gallop, never idle--
    Save by the spring--till set of sun;
  They dash with loosely swaying bridle
    From Aden unto Lebanon.

  At night upon the earth reclining
    They watch amid their sleeping herds,
  And read the scroll of heaven, shining
    With golden-lettered mystic words.

  They often hear strange voices mutter
    From Sinai's earthquake-shattered, height,
  While desert phantoms rise and flutter
    In wreaths of smoke before their sight.

  See!--through yon fissure deep and dim there
    The demon's forehead glows amain,
  For as with me so 'tis with him there--
    In the skull's cavern seethes the brain.

  Oh, land of tents and arrows flying!
    Oh, desert people brave and wise!
  Thou Arab on thy steed relying,--
    A poem in fantastic guise!

  Here in the dark I roam so blindly--
    How cunning is the North, and cold!
  Oh, for the East, the warm and kindly,
    To sing and ride, a Bedouin bold!

       *       *       *       *       *

  WILD FLOWERS[44] (1840)

  Alone I strode where the broad Rhine flowed,
    The hedge with roses was covered,
  And wondrous rare through all the air
    The scent of the vineyards hovered.
  The cornflowers blue, the poppies too,
    Waved in the wheat so proudly!
  From a cliff near-by the joyous cry
    Of a falcon echoed loudly.

  Then I thought ere long of the old love song:
    Ah, would that I were a falcon!
  With its melody as a falcon free,
    And daring, too, as a falcon.
  As I sang, thought I: Toward the sun I'll fly,
    The very tune shall upbear me
  To her window small with a bolt in the wall,
    Where I'll beat till she shall hear me.

  Where the rose is brave, and curtains wave,
    And ships by the bank are lying,
  Two brown eyes dream o'er the lazy stream--
    Oh, thither would I be flying!

  With talons long and strange wild song
    I'd perch me at her feet then,
  Or bold I'd spread my wings o'er her head,
    And gladly we should greet then.

  Though I gaily sang and gaily sprang,
    No pinions had I to aid me;
  I took my path through the corn in wrath--
    So restless my love had made me.
  Then branch and tree all ruthlessly
    I stripped, nor ceased from my ranting
  Till with hands all torn and heart forlorn
    I sank down, weary and panting.

  While I heard the sound from all around
    Of frolicking lads and lasses,
  Alone for hours I gathered flowers
    And bound them together with grasses.
  O crude bouquet, O rude bouquet!--
    Though many a girl despise it,
  Yet come there may the happy day
    When thou, my love, shalt prize it.

  In fitting place it well might grace
    An honest farmer's dwelling
  These cornflowers mild and poppies wild,
    With others past my telling;
  The osier fine, the blossoming vine,
    The meadow-sweetening clover--
  All vagrant stuff, and like enough
    To him, thy vagrant lover.

  His dark eye beams, his visage gleams,
    His clenched hand--how it trembles!
  His fierce blood burns, his mad heart yearns,
    His brow the storm resembles.

  He breathes oppressed, with laboring breast--
    His weeds and he rejected!
  His flowers, oh, see!--shall they and he
    Lie here at thy door neglected?

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: DEATH ON THE BARRICADE ALFRED RETHEL]

  THE DEAD TO THE LIVING[45] (July, 1848)

  The bullet in the marble breast, the gash upon the brow,
  You raised us on the bloody planks with wild and wrathful vow!
  High in the air you lifted us, that every writhe of pain
  Might be an endless curse to _him_, at whose word we were slain;
  That he might see us in the gloom, or in the daylight's shine,
  Whether he turns his Bible's leaf, or quaffs his foaming wine;
  That the dread memory on his soul should evermore be burned,
  A wasting and destroying flame within its gloom inurned;
  That every mouth with pain convulsed, and every gory wound,
  Be round him in the terror-hour, when his last bell shall sound;
  That every sob above us heard smite shuddering on his ear;
  That each pale hand be clenched to strike, despite his dying fear--
  Whether his sinking head still wear its mockery of a crown,
  Or he should lay it, bound, dethroned, on bloody scaffold down!

  Thus, with the bullet in the breast, the gash upon the brow,
  You laid us at the altar's foot, with deep and solemn vow!
  "Come down!" ye cried--he trembling came--even to our bloody bed;
  "Uncover!" and 'twas tamely done!--(like a mean puppet led,
  Sank he whose life had been a farce, with fear unwonted shaken).
  Meanwhile his army fled the field, which, dying, we had taken!
  Loudly in "_Jesus, thou my trust_!" the anthem'd voices peal;
  Why did the victor-crowds forget the sterner trust of steel?

  That morning followed on the night when we together fell,
  And when ye made our burial, there was triumph in the knell!
  Though crushed behind the barricades, and scarred in every limb,
  The pride of conscious Victory lay on our foreheads grim!
  We thought: the price is dearly paid, but the treasures _must_ be true,
  And rested calmly in the graves we swore to fill for you!

  Alas! for you--we were deceived! Four moons have scarcely run,
  Since cowardly you've forfeited what we so bravely won!
  Squandered and cast to every wind the gain our death had brought!
  Aye, all, we know--each word and deed our spirit-ears have caught!
  Like waves came thundering every sound of wrong the country through:
  The foolish war with Denmark! Poland betrayed anew!
  The vengeance of Vendean men in many a province stern!
  The calling back of banished troops! The Prince's base return!
  Wherever barricades were built, the lock on press and tongue!
  On the free right of all debate, the daily-practised wrong!
  The groaning clang of prison-doors in North and South afar!
  For all who plead the People's right, Oppression's ancient bar!
  The bond with Russia's Cossacks! The slander fierce and loud,
  Alas! that has become your share, instead of laurels proud--
  Ye who have borne the hardest brunt, that Freedom might advance,
  Victorious in defeat and death--June-warriors of France!
  Yes, wrong and treason everywhere, the Elbe and Rhine beside,
  And beat, oh German men! your hearts, with calm and sluggish tide?
  _No war within your apron's folds_? Out with it, fierce and bold!
  The second, final war with all who Freedom would withhold!
  Shout: "The Republic!" till it drowns the chiming minster bells,
  Whose sound this swindle of your rights by crafty Austria tells!

  In vain! 'Tis time your faltering hands should disentomb us yet,
  And lift us on the planks, begirt with many a bayonet;
  Not to the palace-court, as then, that _he_ may near us stand--
  No; to the tent, the market-place, and through the wakening land!
  Out through the broad land bear us--the dead Insurgents sent,
  To join, upon our ghastly biers, the German Parliament.
  Oh solemn sight! there we should lie, the grave-earth on each brow,
  And faces sunken in decay--the proper Regents now!
  There we should lie and say to you: "Ere we could waste away,
  Your Freedom-gift, ye archons brave, is rotting in decay!
  The Corn is housed which burst the sod, when the March sun on us shone,
  But before all other harvests was Freedom's March-seed mown!
  Chance poppies, which the sickle spared, among the stubbles stand;
  Oh, would that Wrath, the crimson Wrath, thus blossomed in the land!"
  And yet, it _does_ remain; it springs behind the reaper's track;
  Too much had been already gained, too much been stolen back;
  Too much of scorn, too much of shame, heaped daily on your head--
  Wrath and Revenge _must_ still be left, believe it, from the Dead!
  It _does_ remain, and it awakes--it shall and must awake!
  The Revolution, half complete, yet wholly forth will break.
  It waits the hour to rise in power, like an up-rolling storm,
  With lifted arms and streaming hair--a wild and mighty form!
  It grasps the rusted gun once more, and swings the battered blade,
  While the red banners flap the air from every barricade!
  Those banners lead the German Guards--the armies of the Free--
  Till Princes fly their blazing thrones and hasten towards the sea!
  The boding eagles leave the land--the lion's claws are shorn--
  The sovereign People, roused and bold, await the Future's morn!
  Now, till the wakening hour shall strike, we keep our scorn and wrath
  For you, ye Living! who have dared to falter on your path!
  Up, and prepare--_keep watch in arms!_ Oh, make the German sod,
  Above our stiffened forms, all free, and blest by Freedom's God;
  That this one bitter thought no more disturb us in our graves:
  "_They once were free--they fell--and now, forever they are Slaves!_"

       *       *       *       *       *

HURRAH, GERMANIA![46] (July 25, 1870)

  Hurrah! thou lady proud and fair,
    Hurrah! Germania mine!
  What fire is in thine eye, as there
    Thou bendest o'er the Rhine!
  How in July's full blaze dost thou
    Flash forth thy sword, and go,
  With heart elate and knitted brow,
    To strike the invader low!
      Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!
      Hurrah! Germania!

  No thought hadst thou, so calm and light,
    Of war or battle plain,
  But on thy broad fields, waving bright,
    Didst mow the golden grain,
  With clashing sickles, wreaths of corn,
    Thy sheaves didst garner in,
  When, hark! across the Rhine War's horn
    Breaks through the merry din!
      Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!
      Hurrah! Germania!

  Down sickle then and wreath of wheat
    Amidst the corn were cast,
  And, starting fiercely to thy feet,
    Thy heart beat loud and fast;
  Then with a shout I heard thee call:
    "Well, since you will, you may!
  Up, up, my children, one and all,
    On to the Rhine! Away!"
      Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!
      Hurrah! Germania!

  From port to port the summons flew,
    Rang o'er our German wave;
  The Oder on her harness drew,
    The Elbe girt on her glaive;
  Neckar and Weser swell the tide,
    Main flashes to the sun,
  Old feuds, old hates are dash'd aside,
    All German men are one!
      Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!
      Hurrah! Germania!

  Suabian and Prussian, hand in hand,
    North, South, one host, one vow!
  "What is the German's Fatherland?"
    Who asks that question now?
  One soul, one arm, one close-knit frame,
    One will are we today;
  Hurrah, Germania! thou proud dame,
    Oh, glorious time, hurrah!
      Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!
      Hurrah! Germania!

  Germania now, let come what may,
    Will stand unshook through all;

  This is our country's festal day;
    Now woe betide thee, Gaul!
  Woe worth the hour a robber thrust
    Thy sword into thy hand!
  A curse upon him that we must
    Unsheathe our German brand!
      Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!
      Hurrah! Germania!

  For home and hearth, for wife and child,
    For all loved things that we
  Are bound to keep all undefiled
    From foreign ruffianry!
  For German right, for German speech,
    For German household ways,
  For German homesteads, all and each,
    Strike home through battle's blaze!
      Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!
      Hurrah! Germania!

  Up, Germans, up, with God! The die
    Clicks loud--we wait the throw!
  Oh, who may think without a sigh
    What blood is doom'd to flow?
  Yet, look thou up, with fearless heart!
    Thou must, thou shalt prevail!
  Great, glorious, free as ne'er thou wert,
    All hail, Germania, hail!
      Hurrah! Victoria!
      Hurrah! Germania!

       *       *       *       *       *

  THE TRUMPET OF GRAVELOTTE[47] (Aug. 16, 1870)

  Death and Destruction they belched forth in vain,
    We grimly defied their thunder;
  Two columns of foot and batteries twain,
    We rode and cleft them asunder.

  With brandished sabres, with reins all slack,
    Raised standards, and low-couched lances,
  Thus we Uhlans and Cuirassiers wildly drove back,
    And hotly repelled their advances.

  But the ride was a ride of death and of blood;
    With our thrusts we forced them to sever;
  But of two whole regiments, lusty and good,
    Out of two men, one rose never.

  With breast shot through, with brow gaping wide,
    They lay pale and cold in the valley,
  Snatched away in their youth, in their manhood's pride--
    Now, Trumpeter, sound to the rally!

  And he took the trumpet, whose angry thrill
    Urged us on to the glorious battle,
  And he blew a blast--but all silent and still
    Was the trump, save a dull hoarse rattle,

  Save a voiceless wail, save a cry of woe,
    That burst forth in fitful throbbing--
  A bullet had pierced its metal through,
    For the Dead the wounded was sobbing!

  For the faithful, the brave, for our brethren all,
    For the Watch on the Rhine, true-hearted!
  Oh, the sound cut into our inmost soul!--
    It brokenly wailed the Departed!

  And now fell the night, and we galloped past,
    Watch-fires were flaring and flying,
  Our chargers snorted, the rain poured fast--
    And we thought of the Dead and the Dying!

       *       *       *       *       *

MORITZ GRAF VON STRACHWITZ


  DOUGLAS OF THE BLEEDING HEART[48] (1842)

  Earl Douglas, don thy helm so bright,
    And buckle thy sword with speed,
  Bind on thy sharpest spurs to-night
    And saddle thy swiftest steed!

  "The death watch ticks in the hall of Scone,
    All Scotland hears its warning,
  King Robert in pains of death does groan,
    He'll never see the morning."

  For nigh on forty miles they sped
    And spoke of words not four,
  And horse and spur with blood were red
    When they came to the palace door.

  King Robert lay at the north tower's turn;
    With death he'd begun to battle:
  "I hear the sword of Bannockburn
    On the stairway clatter and rattle.

  "Ha! Welcome in God's name, gallant lord!
    My end cometh presently,
  And thou shalt harken my latest word
    And write down my will for me:

  "'Twas on the day of Bannockburn,
    When Scotland's star rose high,
  'Twas on the day of Bannockburn
    That a vow to God vowed I;

  "I vowed that, should He defend my right
    And give me the victory there,
  With a thousand lances I'd go to fight
    For His holy sepulchre.

  "I'm perjured, for still my heart doth stand,
    'Twas broken with care and strife;
  The man who would rule o'er the Scottish land
    May scarce lead a pilgrim's life.

  "But thou, when my voice has sunk to rest,
    When grief and glory depart,
  Shalt straightway cut from out my breast
    My battle-o'erwearied heart.

  "Then thou shalt wrap the samite red
    And lock it in yellow gold,
  And when o'er my bier the mass is said,
    Let the flag of the cross be unrolled.

  "Take a thousand steeds at thy command
    And a thousand knights also,
  And carry my heart to the Savior's land
    That peace my soul may know."

         *       *       *       *       *

  "Make ready, gallants, for the start,
    Let plume from helmet sway!
  The Douglas bears the Bruce's heart,
    And who shall bar his way?

  "Now cut the ropes, ye seamen brave
    And hoist the sail so free!
  The king must to his dark, dark grave,
    And we to the dark-blue sea."

  Then into the east they sailed away
    Full ninety days and nine,
  And at the dawn of the hundredth day
    They landed in Palestine.

  Across the yellow desert they wound
    As a shining river might flow,
  The sun it pierced through their helmets' round
    Like an arrow shot from a bow.

  The desert was still, there breathed no gust,
    All limply the flags were streaming,
  When up to the sky rose a cloud of dust
    Whence lightning of spears was gleaming.

  The desert was thronged, the din grew loud,
    The dust was on every side.
  And thick as rain from each bursting cloud
    Did the spear-armed Saracens ride.

  Ten thousand lances glittered to right,
    Ten thousand sparkled to left,
  "Allah il Allah!" they shouted to right,
    "Il Allah!" they echoed to left.

  The Douglas drew his bridle rein,
    And still stood earl and knight;
  "By the cross on which our Lord was slain
    'Twill be a deadly fight!"

  A noble chain his neck embraced
    In golden windings three.
  The locket to his lips he placed
    And kissed it fervently:

  "Since thou hast ever gone before,
    O heart, by night and day,
  E'en so today do thou once more
    Precede me in the fray.

  "And now may God this boon bestow,
    As I to thee have been true,
  That I may strike a Christian blow
    Against this heathen crew."

  He threw his shield o'er his left side,
    Bound on his helm so proud,
  And as to battle he did ride,
    He rose and called aloud:

  "Who brings this locket back to me
    Be his the day's renown!"
  Then 'mid the paynims mightily
    He hurled the king's heart down.

  Each made the cross with his left thumb,
    The right hand held the lance,
  No fear had they though fiends had come
    To check their bold advance.

  A sudden crash, a headlong flight,
    And mad death raging around--
  But when the sun sank in the sea's blue light
    From the desert there came no sound.

  For the pride of the east was there laid low
    In the sweep of the death-strewed plain,
  And the sand so red in the afterglow
    Would never be white again.

  Of all the heathen, by God's good grace
    Not one had escaped that harm,
  Short patience have men of the Scottish race
    And ever a long sword-arm!

  But where had been the fellest strife,
    There lay in the moonlight clear
  The good Earl Douglas, reft of life
    By a hellish heathen spear.

  All cleft and rent was the mail he wore,
    And finished his mortal smart.
  Yet under his shield he clasped once more
    King Robert Bruce's heart.

       *       *       *       *       *

GEORG HERWEGH


  THE STIRRUP-CUP[49] (1840)

  The anxious night is gone at last,
  Silent and mute we gallop past
    And ride to our destiny.
  How keen the morning breezes blow!
  Hostess, one glass more ere we go,
    We go to die!

  Thou soft young grass, why now so green?
  Soon like the rose shall be thy sheen,
    My blood thee red shall dye.
  The first quick sip with sword in hand
  I drink, a toast to our native land,
    For our native land to die.

  Now for the next, the time is short,
  The next to Freedom, the queen we court,--
    The fiery cup drain dry!
  These dregs--to whom shall we dedicate?
  To thee, Imperial German State,
    For the German State to die!

  My sweetheart!--But there's no more wine--
  The bullets whistle, the lance heads shine--
    To her the glass where the fragments lie!
  Up! Like a whirlwind into the fray!
  O horseman's joy, at the break of day,
    At the break of day to die!

[Illustration: GEORG HERWEGH]

       *       *       *       *       *

EMANUEL GEIBEL


  THE WATCHMAN'S SONG[50] (1840)

  Wake--awake! The cry rings out;
  From the high watch-tower comes the shout.
  Awake, imperial German land--
  Ye by distant Danube dwelling,
  And where the infant Rhine is swelling,
  And where the bleak dunes pile their sand!
    For hearth and home keep watch,
    Sword from its scabbard snatch;
      Every hour
    For bitter fight
    Prepare aright--
  The day of combat is in sight!

  Hear in the East the ominous cry
  That tells a greedy foe draws nigh--
  The vulture, thirsting for the strife.
  Hear in the west the serpent's hiss
  Whose siren-fangs are set for this,
  To poison all your virtuous life.
    Near is the vulture's swoop;
    The serpent coils to stoop
      For the stroke;
    Then watch and pray
    Until the day--
  Your swords be sharpened for the fray!

  Pure in life, in faith as strong,
  Let no man do your courage wrong;
  Be one, what time the trump shall sound.

  Cleanse your souls by fervent prayer,
  That so the Lord may find them fair
  When He shall make His questioning round,
    The Cross be still your pride,
    Your banner and your guide
      In the battle!
    Who in the field
    Their fealty yield
  To God, victorious weapons wield.

  Look Thou down from heaven above,
  Thou Whom the angels praise and love--
  Be gracious to our German land!
  Speak from the clouds with thunder-voice;
  Princes and people of Thy choice,
  Unite them with a mighty hand.
    Be Thou our fortress-tower,
    Bring us through danger's hour.
      Hallelujah!
    Thine is today
    And shall alway
  Kingdom, and power, and glory stay!

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: E. HADER EMANUEL GEIBEL]

  THE CALL OF THE ROAD[51] (1841)

  Sweet May it is come, and the trees are in bloom--
  Who wills may sit listless with sorrow at home!
  As the clouds go a-roving up there in the sky,
  So away for a life of adventure am I!

  Kind father, dear mother, God be with you now!
  Who knows what my fortune is waiting to show?
  There is many a road that I never have gone,
  There is many a wine that I never have known.

  Then up with the sun, and away where it leads,
  High over the mountains and down through the meads!
  The brooks they are singing, the trees hear the call;
  My heart's like a lark and sings out with them all.

  And at night, when I come to a cozy old nest,
  "Mine host, now a bottle--and make it your best!
  And you, merry fiddler, tune up for a song,
  A song of my sweetheart--I'll help it along!"

  If I come to no inn, then my slumber I'll snatch
  'Neath the kindly blue sky, with the stars to keep watch.
  The trees with their rustling will lull me to sleep;
  Dawn's kisses will wake me, and up I shall leap.

  Then ho! for the road, and the life that I love,
  And God's pure air to cool your hot brow as you rove.
  The heart sings for joy in the sun's merry beams--
  All, wherefore so lovely, wide world of my dreams?

       *       *       *       *       *

  AUTUMN DAYS[52] (1845)

  Sunny days of the autumn,
    Days that shall make me whole,
  When a balm for wounds that were bleeding
    Drops silently on the soul!

  Now seem the hours to be brooding
    In still, beneficent rest,
  And with a quieter motion
    Heaves now the laboring breast.

  To rest from the world's endeavor,
    To build on the soul's deep base--
  That is my only craving,
    In the stillness of love to gaze.

  O'er the hills, through the dales I wander,
    Where the shy sweet streamlets call,
  Following each clear sunbeam,
    Whether scorching or kind it fall.

  There where the leaves are turning,
    I harken with reverent ear;
  All that is growing or dying,
    Fading or blooming, I hear.

  Blissful I learn my lesson--
    How through the world's wide sweep
  Matter and spirit together
    Their concord eternal keep.

  What blows in the rustling forest,
    Takes life from the sun and rain,
  Is a symbol of truth immortal
    To the soul that can read it plain.

  Each tiniest plant that blossoms
    With the perfume of its birth
  Holds in its cup the secret
    Of the whole mysterious earth.

  It looks down from the cliffs in silence,
    Speaks in the waves' long swell--
  But all its wonderful meaning
    The poet alone can tell.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: LUDWIG RICHTER JOURNEYING]

  THE DEATH OF TIBERIUS[53] (1856?)

  On Cape Misenum shone a palace fair
  Among the laurels by the summer sea;
  Long colonnades, and wondrous artistry,
  And all that should a gorgeous feast prepare.
  Oft saw it scenes of midnight revelry
  Where moved soft boys, their brows with ivy crowned,
  And silver-footed damsels, capering round,
  The thyrsus swung; with merry shouts of glee
  And rippling laughter, and the lyre's soft tone,
  It rang till fell the dew, and night was gone.

  Tonight, how still! But here and there is traced
  A lighted window; in the shadowy space
  About the doors, slaves throng with awestruck face.
  Litters draw nigh, and men spring out in haste;
  And as each comes, a question runs its round
  Through all the quivering circle of the spies
  "What says the leech? How goes it?" Hush--no sound!
  The end is near--the fierce old tiger dies!
  Up there on purple cushion, in the light
  Of flickering lamps, pale Cæsar waits for morn;
  His sallow face, by hideous ulcers torn,
  Looks ghastlier than was e'er its wont tonight;
  Hollow the eyes; the fire of fell disease
  And burning fever runs through every limb;
  None but the aged leech abides with him,
  And Macro, trusted bearer of the keys.

  And now, with stifled cry, by fears oppressed,
  The sick man feebly throws his coverings off
  "Let me, O Greek, a cooling potion quaff!
  Ice--ice! Vesuvius burns within my breast.
  Gods! how it flames! Yet in my anguished brain
  The torturing thoughts burn fiercer far, and worse ...
  A thousand times their tireless strength I curse,
  Yet cannot find refreshment. 'Tis in vain
  I cry for Lethe; where the frankincense
  Sends up its smoke, from all the ancient wars
  The victims lift their faces, seamed with scars,
  In grim reproachful gaze to call me hence.
  Germanicus--Sejanus--Drusus rise ...
  Who brought you hither? Has the grave no bars?
  Ah, 'tis past bearing, how with corpse-cold eyes
  Ye suck the life-blood from me pitilessly!
  I know I slew you--but it had to be.
  Was it my fault ye threw the losing dice?
  Away! Alas--when ends my misery?"

  The grave physician held the cup; he drank
  Its cooling at a draught, then feebly sank
  Among the pillows, still with wandering eye
  About the chamber, from his forehead dank
  Wiping the dews: "They're gone? No more they try
  To fright me? Ah, perchance 'twas but the mist ...
  Yet often have they come, by night--in what dread guise
  None knows but I ... Come, sit thee near me ... hist!
  And let me tell of dim old memories.

  "I too was young once, trusted in my star,
  Had faith in men; but all the glamour of youth
  Vanished too soon--and, piercing to the truth,
  I found some evil each fair show to mar.
  No thing I saw so high and free from blame
  But worms were at its heart; each noble deed
  Revealed self-seeking as its primal seed.
  Love, honor, virtue--each was but a name!
  Naught marked us off, vile creatures of the dust,
  From ravening brutes, save on the smiling face
  A honeyed falseness--in the heart so base
  A craven weakness and a fiercer lust.
  Where was a friend had not his friend betrayed
  A brother guiltless of a brother's death,
  A wife that hid no poisoned sting beneath
  A fond embrace? Of one clay all were made!
  Thus I became as they. Since only fear
  Could tame that crew, I bade its form draw near.
  It was a war I waged; I found a joy
  Undreamed-of in their death-cries, and in blood
  Full ankle-deep I waded--victor stood,
  To find at last that horror too could cloy!
  Now, grimly bearing what I may not mend,
  Remorseless, unconsoled, I wait the end."

  His dull voice sank to silence. Moaning low,
  He met new pains: cold sweat stood on his brow.
  In fearsome change his face the watchers saw
  Grow like some hideous mask; till Macro came
  Nearer the throne-like couch, and spoke a name
  "Shall I thy nephew call--Caligula?
  Thy sickness waxes--"

                          Hissed the prince in scorn:
  "My curse upon thee, viper! What to thee
  Is Caius? Still I live! And he was born
  To ape the others--lies, greed, roguery,
  And aught but manhood. If he had, 'twere vain;
  No hero now Rome's downfall may restrain.
  If gods there were, upon this ruined soil
  No god could bring forth fruit; but that weak lad!
  Nay, nay, not him--the spirits stern and sad
  That dog my steps and mock at all my coil,
  The Furies of the abyss that drive me mad,
  Them--them and chaos--leave I of my toil
  The heritage. For them the sceptre!"

                                       So
  Up leaped he as he was, dire agony
  Twisting his features, from the window high
  Tore back the curtain, cast with frenzied throw
  The wand of empire far into the night--
  Then, senseless, crumbled.

                              In the court below
  A soldier stood at guard--a man of might,
  Fair-haired and long of limb. Straight to his feet
  It rolled, the rounded ivory, and upsprang
  From off the polished marble with a clang

  That seemed to say 'twas minded him to greet.
  He took it up, unknowing what it meant;
  And soon his thoughts pursued their former bent.
  Of far-off, sombre German woods he dreamed;
  He saw the waving tree-tops of the north,
  He saw the comrades to their tryst go forth.
  Each word true as their own sharp weapons seemed,
  As much for friendship as for war their worth.
  Then thought he of his wife; he saw her sit
  In all the glory of her golden hair
  Before their hut, whirling the spindle there
  Send forth her thoughts across the leagues to flit
  And reach him here. In that same woodland shrine
  A merry boy was carving his first spear,
  His blue eyes flashing boldly in scorn of fear,
  As though he said--"A sword--the world is mine!"
  Then swift he saw another vision come
  Unbidden, hide the pictures of his home,
  Press on his soul with irresistible might--
  How once, far in the East, he stood to guard
  The cross where hung a Man with visage marred--
  And at His death the sun was plunged in night.
  Long since, that day had faded in the West;
  Yet could he ne'er the Sufferer's look forget--
  The deep abyss of infinite sorrow, and yet
  The fulness of all blessing it expressed.
  Now (what could this portend?) to his old home
  He saw that cross a conquering symbol come;
  And lo, the assembled tribes of all his race
  Innumerable moved, and o'er their host
  On all their banners, as their proudest boast,
  The same Man's image, a glory round His face ...

  Sudden he started; from the halls above
  Came harsh, quick shouts--the lord of the world was dead!
  Awe struck the soldier stared where dawn hung red,
  And saw the Future's mighty curtain move.

       *       *       *       *       *



FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Permission Macmillan and Co., New York, and George Bell &
Sons, Ltd., London.]

[Footnote 2: Or in Goethe:

  "Zuschlagen kann die Masse,
  Da ist sie respektabel;
  Urteilen gelingt ihr miserabel."]

[Footnote 3: _The Dial_, Vol. II, No. 1.]

[Footnote 4: Cf. _Fanny Tarnow_ (1835), Z. Funck (1836), and _Otto
Berdrow_, 2d Edition, 1902, p. 338 seq.]

[Footnote 5: This is Rahel's expression, the tribute of admiration
forced from the childless woman fresh from the Berlin salons, by the
spectacle of Bettina romping with her children in the nursery.]

[Footnote 6: Cf. Herman Grimm, _Briefwechsel_, 3 Aug. 1881, s. XVII:
"For her circle of relatives and friends in the descending line, Bettina
has remained a near relative of a higher order."]

[Footnote 7: James Freeman Clarke's estimate of Margaret Fuller and her
influence (_Memoirs_, I, 97) supplies interesting, though not specific
confirmation of the point of view here suggested.]

[Footnote 8: In his _Aristeia der Mutter_. Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe, Bd.
29, ss. 231-238, Goethe acknowledged Bettina's faithfulness and complete
credibility for these details. Cf. also Reinhold Steig, _Achim von Arnim
and Clemens Brentano_, Stuttgart, 1894, s. 379.]

[Footnote 9: Translator's Preface to _Eckermann's Conversations with
Goethe_.]

[Footnote 10: According to the investigations of R. Steig, _Achim von
Arnim and Clemens Brentano_ (1894), Bettina was born in the year 1788.
Internal evidence is at hand to support this view. Bettina herself
stated (_Briefwechsel_, 538) that she was sixteen when her enthusiasm
for Goethe first manifested itself as an elemental force. From another
passage we learn that this was three years before her first meeting with
the poet in 1807, "in the heyday between childhood and maidenhood." The
"Child" of the first letters of the Correspondence was, accordingly,
just nineteen. German authorities have accepted 1788 as Bettina's
birth-year, but English publications, including the Encyclopædia
Britannica (1911) still cling to 1785, the old date. Herman Grimm's
account of Bettina's interests at threescore (_Briefwechsel_, XIX, f.)
reveals the same preoccupation with Goethe, Shakespeare, and Beethoven.
She died in the year 1859.]

[Footnote 11: A mountain range between the Neckar and Main rivers.]

[Footnote 12: The reference is to the _Elective Affinities_ of Goethe,
in which Edward, the husband of Charlotte, is obsessed with a passion
for the latter's foster-daughter, Ottilie, which results in the death of
the two lovers.]

[Footnote 13: Ottilie in _Elective Affinities_.]

[Footnote 14: From _Spaziergaenge eines Wiener Poeten_. Translator:
Sarah T. Barrows.]

[Footnote 15: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 16: Translator: Kate Freiligrath Kroeker. (From _A Century of
German Lyrics_.)]

[Footnote 17: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 18: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 19: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 20: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 21: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 22: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 23: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 24: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 25: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 26: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 27: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 28: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 29: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 30: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 31: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 32: _Invocation to Calliope_, Bk. III, Ode IV.]

[Footnote 33: The friend and patron of Haydn, to whose support and
interest we owe many works of art.]

[Footnote 34: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 35: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 36: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 37: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 38: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 39: Translator: M.G. in _Chambers' Journal_. Permission
Bernhard Tauchnitz, Leipzig.]

[Footnote 40: Translator: C.T. Brooks. Permission Bernhard Tauchnitz,
Leipzig.]

[Footnote 41: Translator: J.C. Mangan. Permission Bernhard Tauchnitz,
Leipzig.]

[Footnote 42: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 43: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 44: Translator: Bayard Taylor. Permission Bernhard Tauchnitz,
Leipzig.]

[Footnote 45: _Pall Mall Gazette_, London. Permission Bernhard
Tauchnitz, Leipzig.]

[Footnote 46: Translator: Kate Freiligrath-Kroeker. Permission Bernhard
Tauchnitz, Leipzig.]

[Footnote 47: Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.]

[Footnote 48: Translator: William G. Howard.]

[Footnote 49: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.]

[Footnote 50: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.]

[Footnote 51: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman]

[Footnote 52: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.]

[Footnote 53: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.]





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