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BOOK THE FIRST.
Who ne'er the mournful, midnight hours
Weeping upon his bed has sate,
He knows you not, ye Heavenly Powers.”
1. BOOK THE FIRST.
1. CHAPTER I.
THE HERO.
In John Lyly's Endymion, Sir Topas is made
to say; “Dost thou know what a Poet is? Why,
fool, a Poet is as much as one should say,—a
Poet!” And thou, reader, dost thou know what
a hero is? Why, a hero is as much as one should
say,—a hero! Some romance-writers, however,
say much more than this. Nay, the old Lombard,
Matteo Maria Bojardo, set all the church-bells
in Scandiano ringing, merely because he had
found a name for one of his heroes. Here, also,
shall church-bells be rung, but more solemnly.
The setting of a great hope is like the setting
of the sun. The brightness of our life is gone.
seems but a dim reflection,—itself a broader shadow.
We look forward into the coming, lonely
night. The soul withdraws into itself. Then stars
arise, and the night is holy.
Paul Flemming had experienced this, though
still young. The friend of his youth was dead.
The bough had broken “under the burden of the
unripe fruit.” And when, after a season, he
looked up again from the blindness of his sorrow,
all things seemed unreal. Like the man,
whose sight had been restored by miracle, he beheld
men, as trees, walking. His household gods
were broken. He had no home. His sympathies
cried aloud from his desolate soul, and there came
no answer from the busy, turbulent world around
him. He did not willingly give way to grief. He
struggled to be cheerful,—to be strong. But he
could no longer look into the familiar faces of his
friends. He could no longer live alone, where he
had lived with her. He went abroad, that the sea
might be between him and the grave. Alas! between
but that of time.
He had already passed many months in lonely
wandering, and was now pursuing his way along
the Rhine, to the south of Germany. He had
journeyed the same way before, in brighter days
and a brighter season of the year, in the May of
life and in the month of May. He knew the
beauteous river all by heart;—every rock and
ruin, every echo, every legend. The ancient
castles, grim and hoar, that had taken root as it
were on the cliffs,—they were all his; for his
thoughts dwelt in them, and the wind told him
tales.
He had passed a sleepless night at Rolandseck,
and had risen before daybreak. He opened the
window of the balcony to hear the rushing of the
Rhine. It was a damp December morning; and
clouds were passing over the sky,—thin, vapory
clouds, whose snow-white skirts were “often spotted
with golden tears, which men call stars.” The
day dawned slowly; and, in the mingling of daylight
made together but one broad, dark shadow
on the silver breast of the river. Beyond,
rose the summits of the Siebengebirg. Solemn
and dark, like a monk, stood the Drachenfels, in
his hood of mist, and rearward extended the Curtain
of Mountains, back to the Wolkenburg,—the
Castle of the Clouds.
But Flemming thought not of the scene before
him. Sorrow unspeakable was upon his spirit in
that lonely hour; and, hiding his face in his hands,
he exclaimed aloud;
“Spirit of the past! look not so mournfully at
me with thy great, tearful eyes! Touch me not
with thy cold hand! Breathe not upon me with
the icy breath of the grave! Chant no more
that dirge of sorrow, through the long and silent
watches of the night!”
Mournful voices from afar seemed to answer,
“Treuenfels!” and he remembered how others
had suffered, and his heart grew still.
Slowly the landscape brightened. Down the
spread, and darted like a swallow through the narrow
pass of God's-Help. The boatmen were
singing, but not the song of Roland the Brave,
which was heard of old by the weeping Hildegund,
as she sat within the walls of that cloister,
which now looked forth in the pale morning from
amid the leafless linden trees. The dim traditions
of those gray old times rose in the traveller's
memory; for the ruined tower of Rolandseck was
still looking down upon the Kloster Nonnenwerth,
as if the sound of the funeral bell had changed the
faithful Paladin to stone, and he were watching still
to see the form of his beloved one come forth, not
from her cloister, but from her grave. Thus the
brazen clasps of the book of legends were opened,
and, on the page illuminated by the misty rays
of the rising sun, he read again the tales of Liba,
and the mournful bride of Argenfels, and Siegfried,
the mighty slayer of the dragon. Meanwhile
the mists had risen from the Rhine, and the whole
air was filled with golden vapor, through which he
blood. Even thus shone the sun within him, amid
the wintry vapors, uprising from the valley of the
shadow of death, through which flowed the stream
of his life,—sighing, sighing!
2. CHAPTER II.
THE CHRIST OF ANDERNACH.
Paul Flemming resumed his solitary journey.
The morning was still misty, but not cold. Across
the Rhine the sun came wading through the reddish
vapors; and soft and silver-white outspread
the broad river, without a ripple upon its surface,
or visible motion of the ever-moving current. A
little vessel, with one loose sail, was riding at anchor,
keel to keel with another, that lay right under
it, its own apparition,—and all was silent,
and calm, and beautiful.
The road was for the most part solitary; for
there are few travellers upon the Rhine in winter.
Peasant women were at work in the vineyards;
climbing up the slippery hill-sides, like
beasts of burden, with large baskets of manure
a band of apprentices, with knapsacks, passed
by, singing, “The Rhine! The Rhine! a blessing
on the Rhine!”
O, the pride of the German heart in this noble
river! And right it is; for, of all the rivers of
this beautiful earth, there is none so beautiful as
this. There is hardly a league of its whole course,
from its cradle in the snowy Alps to its grave in
the sands of Holland, which boasts not its peculiar
charms. By heavens! If I were a German I
would be proud of it too; and of the clustering
grapes, that hang about its temples, as it reels onward
through vineyards, in a triumphal march,
like Bacchus, crowned and drunken.
But I will not attempt to describe the Rhine; it
would make this chapter much too long. And to
do it well, one should write like a god; and his
style flow onward royally with breaks and dashes,
like the waters of that royal river, and antique,
quaint, and Gothic times, be reflected in it. Alas!
this evening my style flows not at all. Flow,
the Rhine! out of thy prison-house,—out of
thy long-necked, tapering flask, in shape not unlike
a church-spire among thy native hills; and,
from the crystal belfry, loud ring the merry tinkling
bells, while I drink a health to my hero, in
whose heart is sadness, and in whose ears the bells
of Andernach are ringing noon.
He is threading his way alone through a narrow
alley, and now up a flight of stone steps, and
along the city wall, towards that old round tower,
built by the Archbishop Frederick of Cologne in
the twelfth century. It has a romantic interest in
his eyes; for he has still in his mind and heart
that beautiful sketch of Carové, in which is described
a day on the tower of Andernach. He
finds the old keeper and his wife still there; and
the old keeper closes the door behind him slowly,
as of old, lest he should jam too hard the poor
souls in Purgatory, whose fate it is to suffer in the
cracks of doors and hinges. But alas! alas! the
daughter, the maiden with long, dark eyelashes!
trees of Feldkirche, with rosemary in her folded
hands!
Flemming returned to the hotel disappointed.
As he passed along the narrow streets, he was
dreaming of many things; but mostly of the keeper's
daughter, asleep in the churchyard of Feldkirche.
Suddenly, on turning the corner of an
ancient, gloomy church, his attention was arrested
by a little chapel in an angle of the wall. It
was only a small thatched roof, like a bird's nest;
under which stood a rude wooden image of the
Saviour on the Cross. A real crown of thorns was
upon his head, which was bowed downward, as if
in the death agony; and drops of blood were
falling down his cheeks, and from his hands and
feet and side. The face was haggard and ghastly
beyond all expression; and wore a look of unutterable
bodily anguish. The rude sculptor had given
it this, but his art could go no farther. The
sublimity of death in a dying Saviour, the expiring
God-likeness of Jesus of Nazareth was not there.
his theme. All was coarse, harsh, and revolting
to a sensitive mind; and Flemming turned away
with a shudder, as he saw this fearful image gazing
at him, with its fixed and half-shut eyes.
He soon reached the hotel, but that face of
agony still haunted him. He could not refrain
from speaking of it to a very old woman, who
sat knitting by the window of the dining-room, in
a high-backed, old-fashioned arm-chair. I believe
she was the innkeeper's grandmother. At all
events she was old enough to be so. She took off
her owl-eyed spectacles, and, as she wiped the
glasses with her handkerchief, said;
“Thou dear Heaven! Is it possible! Did you
never hear of the Christ of Andernach?”
Flemming answered in the negative.
“Thou dear Heaven!” continued the old woman.
“It is a very wonderful story; and a true
one, as every good Christian in Andernach will
tell you. And it all happened before the death
yes, four years ago, come Christmas.”
Here the old woman stopped speaking, but
went on with her knitting. Other thoughts seemed
to occupy her mind. She was thinking, no
doubt, of her blessed man, as German widows
call their dead husbands. But Flemming having
expressed an ardent wish to hear the wonderful
story, she told it, in nearly the following words.
“There was once a poor old woman in Andernach
whose name was Frau Martha, and she lived
all alone in a house by herself, and loved all the
Saints and the blessed Virgin, and was as good as
an angel, and sold pies down by the Rheinkrahn.
But her house was very old, and the roof-tiles
were broken, and she was too poor to get new ones,
and the rain kept coming in, and no Christian soul
in Andernach would help her. But the Frau
Martha was a good woman, and never did anybody
any harm, but went to mass every morning, and
sold pies by the Rheinkrahn. Now one dark,
windy night, when all the good Christians in Andernach
Martha, who slept under the roof, heard a great
noise over her head, and in her chamber, drip!
drip! drip! as if the rain were dropping down
through the broken tiles. Dear soul! and sure
enough it was. And then there was a pounding
and hammering overhead, as if somebody were at
work on the roof; and she thought it was Pelz-Nickel
tearing the tiles off, because she had not
been to confession often enough. So she began to
pray; and the faster she said her Pater-noster
and her Ave-Maria, the faster Pelz-Nickel pounded
and pulled; and drip! drip! drip! it went all
round her in the dark chamber, till the poor
woman was frightened out of her wits, and ran to
the window to call for help. Then in a moment
all was still,—death-still. But she saw a light
streaming through the mist and rain, and a great
shadow on the house opposite. And then somebody
came down from the top of her house by a
ladder, and had a lantern in his hand; and he took
the ladder on his shoulder and went down the
the window was streaked with rain. And in the
morning the old broken tiles were found scattered
about the street, and there were new ones on the
roof, and the old house has never leaked to this
blessed day.
“As soon as mass was over Frau Martha told the
priest what had happened, and he said it was not
Pelz-Nickel, but, without doubt, St. Castor or St.
Florian. Then she went to the market and told
Frau Bridget all about it; and Frau Bridget said,
that, two nights before, Hans Claus, the cooper,
had heard a great pounding in his shop, and in
the morning found new hoops on all his old hogsheads;
and that a man with a lantern and a ladder
had been seen riding out of town at midnight on a
donkey, and that the same night the old windmill,
at Kloster St. Thomas, had been mended up, and
the old gate of the churchyard at Feldkirche made
as good as new, though nobody knew how the
man got across the river. Then Frau Martha
went down to the Rheinkrahn and told all these
said he could tell something about it; for, the very
night that the churchyard-gate was mended, he
was lying awake in his bed, because he could not
sleep, and he heard a loud knocking at the door,
and somebody calling to him to get up and set
him over the river. And when he got up, he saw
a man down by the river with a lantern and a ladder;
but as he was going down to him, the man
blew out the light, and it was so dark he could not
see who he was; and his boat was old and leaky,
and he was afraid to set him over in the dark; but
the man said he must be in Andernach that night;
and so he set him over. And after they had
crossed the river, he watched the man, till he
came to an image of the Holy Virgin, and saw
him put the ladder against the wall, and go up and
light his lamp, and then walk along the street.
And in the morning he found his old boat all
caulked, and tight, and painted red, and he could
not for his blessed life tell who did it, unless it were
strange it was!
“And so it went on for some time; and, whenever
the man with the lantern had been seen walking
through the street at night, so sure as the
morning came, some work had been done for the
sake of some good soul; and everybody knew he
did it; and yet nobody could find out who he was,
nor where he lived;—for, whenever they came
near him, he blew out his light, and turned down
another street, and, if they followed him, he suddenly
disappeared, nobody could tell how. And
some said it was Rübezahl; and some, Pelz-Nickel;
and some, St. Anthony-on-the-Health.
“Now one stormy night a poor, sinful creature
was wandering about the streets, with her babe
in her arms, and she was hungry, and cold, and
no soul in Andernach would take her in. And
when she came to the church, where the great
crucifix stands, she saw no light in the little chapel
at the corner; but she sat down on a stone at the
foot of the cross and began to pray, and prayed,
her bosom. But she did not sleep long; for a
bright light shone full in her face; and, when she
opened her eyes, she saw a pale man, with a lantern,
standing right before her. He was almost
naked; and there was blood upon his hands and
body, and great tears in his beautiful eyes, and
his face was like the face of the Saviour on the
cross. Not a single word did he say to the poor
woman; but looked at her compassionately, and
gave her a loaf of bread, and took the little babe
in his arms, and kissed it. Then the mother
looked up to the great crucifix, but there was no
image there; and she shrieked and fell down as
if she were dead. And there she was found with
her child; and a few days after they both died,
and were buried together in one grave. And nobody
would have believed her story, if a woman,
who lived at the corner, had not gone to the window,
when she heard the scream, and seen the
figure hang the lantern up in its place, and then
set the ladder against the wall, and go up and nail
moved again. Ach! Herr Je!”
Such was the legend of the Christ of Andernach,
as the old woman in spectacles told it to
Flemming. It made a painful impression on his
sick and morbid soul; and he felt now for the
first time in full force, how great is the power of
popular superstition.
The post-chaise was now at the door, and
Flemming was soon on the road to Coblentz, a city
which stands upon the Rhine, at the mouth of the
Mosel, opposite Ehrenbreitstein. It is by no
means a long drive from Andernach to Coblentz;
and the only incident which occurred to enliven
the way was the appearance of a fat, red-faced
man on horseback, trotting slowly towards Andernach.
As they met, the mad little postilion gave
him a friendly cut with his whip, and broke out
into an exclamation, which showed he was from
Münster;
“Jesmariosp! my friend! How is the Man in
the Custom-House?”
Now to any candid mind this would seem a fair
question enough; but not so thought the red-faced
man on horseback; for he waxed exceedingly angry,
and replied, as the chaise whirled by;
“The devil take you, and your Westphalian
ham, and pumpernickel!”
Flemming called to his servant, and the servant
to the postilion, for an explanation of this short
dialogue; and the explanation was, that on the
belfry of the Kaufhaus in Coblentz, is a huge
head, with a brazen helmet and a beard; and
whenever the clock strikes, at each stroke of the
hammer, this giant's head opens its great jaws and
smites its teeth together, as if, like the brazen
head of Friar Bacon, it would say; “Time was;
Time is; Time is past.” This figure is known
through all the country round about, as “The
Man in the Custom-House”; and, when a friend in
the country meets a friend from Coblentz, instead
of saying, “How are all the good people in Coblentz?”—he
says, “How is the Man in the
Custom-House?” Thus the giant has a great part
of Flemming's Rhine-journey; and the only good
deed he had done was to give an alms to a poor
beggar woman, who lifted up her trembling hands
and exclaimed;
“Thou blessed babe!”
3. CHAPTER III.
HOMUNCULUS.
After all, a journey up the Rhine, in the mists
and solitude of December, is not so unpleasant as
the reader may perhaps imagine. You have the
whole road and river to yourself. Nobody is on
the wing; hardly a single traveller. The ruins
are the same; and the river, and the outlines of
the hills; and there are few living figures in the
landscape to wake you from your musings, distract
your thoughts, and cover you with dust.
Thus, likewise, thought our traveller, as he continued
his journey on the morrow. The day is
overcast, and the clouds threaten rain or snow.
Why does he stop at the little village of Capellen?
Because, right above him on the high cliff, the glorious
ruin of Stolzenfels is looking at him with its
finger, as if to say; “Come up hither, and I will
tell thee an old tale.” Therefore he alights, and
goes up the narrow village lane, and up the stone
steps, and up the steep pathway, and throws himself
into the arms of that ancient ruin, and holds
his breath, to hear the quick footsteps of the falling
snow, like the footsteps of angels descending
upon earth. And that ancient ruin speaks to him
with its hollow voice, and says;
“Beware of dreams! Beware of the illusions
of fancy! Beware of the solemn deceivings of thy
vast desires! Beneath me flows the Rhine, and,
like the stream of Time, it flows amid the ruins of
the Past. I see myself therein, and I know that
I am old. Thou, too, shalt be old. Be wise in
season. Like the stream of thy life, runs the
stream beneath us. Down from the distant Alps,
—out into the wide world, it bursts away, like a
youth from the house of his fathers. Broad-breasted
and strong, and with earnest endeavours, like
manhood, it makes itself a way through these difficult
age, its stops, and its steps are weary and slow,
and it sinks into the sand, and, through its grave,
passes into the great ocean, which is its eternity.
Thus shall it be with thee.
“In ancient times there dwelt within these halls
a follower of Jesus of Jerusalem,—an Archbishop
in the church of Christ. He gave himself up
to dreams; to the illusions of fancy; to the vast
desires of the human soul. He sought after the
impossible. He sought after the Elixir of Life,
—the Philosopher's Stone. The wealth, that
should have fed the poor, was melted in his crucibles.
Within these walls the Eagle of the clouds
sucked the blood of the Red Lion, and received
the spiritual Love of the Green Dragon, but alas!
was childless. In solitude and utter silence did
the disciple of the Hermetic Philosophy toil from
day to day, from night to night. From the place
where thou standest, he gazed at evening upon
hills, and vales, and waters spread beneath him;
and saw how the setting sun had changed them all
own. He saw the world beneath his feet; and
said in his heart, that he alone was wise. Alas!
he read more willingly in the book of Paracelsus,
than in the book of Nature; and, believing
that `where reason hath experience, faith hath
no mind,' would fain have made unto himself a
child, not as Nature teaches us, but as the Philosopher
taught,—a poor homunculus, in a glass bottle.
And he died poor and childless!”
Whether it were worth while to climb the Stolzenfels
to hear such a homily as this, some persons
may perhaps doubt. But Paul Flemming doubted
not. He laid the lesson to heart; and it would
have saved him many an hour of sorrow, if he had
learned that lesson better, and remembered it
longer.
In ancient times, there stood in the citadel of
Athens three statues of Minerva. The first was
of olive wood, and, according to popular tradition,
had fallen from heaven. The second was of
bronze, commemorating the victory of Marathon;
of art, in the age of Pericles. And thus in the
citadel of Time stands Man himself. In childhood,
shaped of soft and delicate wood, just fallen
from heaven; in manhood, a statue of bronze,
commemorating struggle and victory; and lastly,
in the maturity of age, perfectly shaped in gold
and ivory,—a miracle of art!
Flemming had already lived through the oliveage.
He was passing into the age of bronze, into
his early manhood; and in his hands the flowers
of Paradise were changing to the sword and
shield.
And this reminds me, that I have not yet described
my hero. I will do it now, as he stands
looking down on the glorious landscape;—but in
few words. Both in person and character he resembled
Harold, the Fair-Hair of Norway, who
is described, in the old Icelandic Death-Song of
Regner Hairy-Breeches, as “the young chief so
proud of his flowing locks; he who spent his mornings
among the young maidens; he who loved to
an amiable weakness; and it sometimes led him
into mischief. Imagination was the ruling power
of his mind. His thoughts were twin-born; the
thought itself, and its figurative semblance in the
outer world. Thus, through the quiet, still waters
of his soul each image floated double, “swan and
shadow.”
These traits of character, a good heart and a
poetic imagination, made his life joyous and the
world beautiful; till at length Death cut down the
sweet, blue flower, that bloomed beside him, and
wounded him with that sharp sickle, so that he
bowed his head, and would fain have been bound
up in the same sheaf with the sweet, blue flower.
Then the world seemed to him less beautiful, and
life became earnest. It would have been well if
he could have forgotten the past; that he might not
so mournfully have lived in it, but might have
enjoyed and improved the present. But this his
heart refused to do; and ever, as he floated upon
the great sea of life, he looked down through the
shade, into the vast chambers of the mighty deep,
in which his happier days had sunk, and wherein
they were lying still visible, like golden sands,
and precious stones, and pearls; and, half in despair,
half in hope, he grasped downward after
them again, and drew back his hand, filled only
with seaweed, and dripping with briny tears!—
And between him and those golden sands, a radiant
image floated, like the spirit in Dante's Paradise,
singing “Ave-Maria!” and while it sang,
down-sinking, and slowly vanishing away.
The truth is, that in all things he acted more
from impulse than from fixed principle; as is the
case with most young men. Indeed, his principles
hardly had time to take root; for he pulled them
all up, every now and then, as children do the
flowers they have planted,—to see if they are
growing. Yet there was much in him which was
good; for underneath the flowers and green-sward
of poetry, and the good principles which would
have taken root, had he given them time, there
freshened by living springs of feeling, and enriched
by many faded hopes, that had fallen upon it like
dead leaves.
4. CHAPTER IV.
THE LANDLADY'S DAUGHTER.
“Allez Fuchs! allez lustig!” cried the impatient
postilion to his horses, in accents, which, like
the wild echo of the Lurley Felsen, came first from
one side of the river, and then from the other,—
that is to say, in words alternately French and
German. The truth is, he was tired of waiting;
and when Flemming had at length resumed his
seat in the post-chaise, the poor horses had to
make up the time lost in dreams on the mountain.
This is far oftener the case, than most people
imagine. One half of the world has to sweat and
groan, that the other half may dream. It would
have been a difficult task for the traveller or his
postilion to persuade the horses, that these dreams
were all for their good.
The next stopping-place was the little tavern of
the Star, an out-of-the-way corner in the town of
Salzig. It stands on the banks of the Rhine; and,
directly in front of it, sheer from the water's edge,
rise the mountains of Liebenstein and Sternenfels,
each with its ruined castle. These are the Brothers
of the old tradition, still gazing at each other
face to face; and beneath them in the valley
stands a cloister,—meek emblem of that orphan
child, they both so passionately loved.
In a small, flat-bottomed boat did the landlady's
daughter row Flemming “over the Rhine-stream,
rapid and roaring wide.” She was a beautiful girl
of sixteen; with black hair, and dark, lovely eyes,
and a face that had a story to tell. How different
faces are in this particular! Some of them speak
not. They are books in which not a line is written,
save perhaps a date. Others are great family
bibles, with all the Old and New Testament written
in them. Others are Mother Goose and nursery
tales;—others bad tragedies or pickle-herring
farces; and others, like that of the landlady's
songs of the affections. It was on that account,
that Flemming said to her, as they glided out into
the swift stream;
“My dear child! do you know the story of the
Liebenstein?”
“The story of the Liebenstein,” she answered,
“I got by heart, when I was a little child.”
And here her large, dark, passionate eyes looked
into Flemming's, and he doubted not, that she had
learned the story far too soon, and far too well.
That story he longed to hear, as if it were unknown
to him; for he knew that the girl, who had got it
by heart when a child, would tell it as it should
be told. So he begged her to repeat the story,
which she was but too glad to do; for she loved
and believed it, as if it had all been written in the
Bible. But before she began, she rested a moment
on her oars, and taking the crucifix, which
hung suspended from her neck, kissed it, and
then let it sink down into her bosom, as if it were
an anchor she was letting down into her heart.
heaven. Perhaps her soul was walking with the
souls of Cunizza, and Rahab, and Mary Magdalen.
Or perhaps she was thinking of that Nun, of whom
St. Gregory says, in his Dialogues, that, having
greedily eaten a lettuce in a garden, without making
the sign of the cross, she found herself soon
after possessed with a devil.
The probability, however, is, that she was looking
up to the ruined castles only, and not to
heaven, for she soon began her story, and told
Flemming how, a great, great many years ago, an
old man lived in the Liebenstein with his two
sons; and how both the young men loved the Lady
Geraldine, an orphan, under their father's care;
and how the elder brother went away in despair,
and the younger was betrothed to the Lady Geraldine;
and how they were as happy as Aschenputtel
and the Prince. And then the holy Saint
Bernard came and carried away all the young men
to the war, just as Napoleon did afterwards; and
the young lord went to the Holy Land, and the
waited for her lover's return, while the old father
built the Sternenfels for them to live in when
they were married. And when it was finished, the
old man died; and the elder brother came back
and lived in the Liebenstein, and took care of the
gentle Lady. Ere long there came news from
the Holy Land, that the war was over; and the
heart of the gentle Lady beat with joy, till she
heard that her faithless lover was coming back
with a Greek wife,—the wicked man! and then
she went into a convent and became a holy nun.
So the young lord of Sternenfels came home, and
lived in his castle in great splendor with the Greek
woman, who was a wicked woman, and did what
she ought not to do. But the elder brother was
angry for the wrong done the gentle Lady, and
challenged the lord of Sternenfels to single combat.
And, while they were fighting with their great
swords in the valley of Bornhofen behind the castle,
the convent bells began to ring, and the Lady
Geraldine came forth with a train of nuns all
again, and told them she was the bride of Heaven,
and happier in her convent than she could have
been in the Liebenstein or the Sternenfels. And
when the brothers returned, they found that the
false Greek wife had gone away with another
knight. So they lived together in peace, and were
never married. And when they died—”
“Lisbeth! Lisbeth!” cried a sharp voice
from the shore, “Lisbeth! Where are you taking
the gentleman?”
This recalled the poor girl to her senses; and
she saw how fast they were floating down stream.
For in telling the story she had forgotten every
thing else, and the swift current had swept them
down to the tall walnut trees of Kamp. They
landed in front of the Capucin Monastery. Lisbeth
led the way through the little village, and
turning to the right pointed up the romantic, lonely
valley which leads to the Liebenstein, and
even offered to go up. But Flemming patted her
cheek and shook his head. He went up the
valley alone.
5. CHAPTER V.
JEAN PAUL, THE ONLY-ONE.
The man in the play, who wished for `some
forty pounds of lovely beef, placed in a Mediterranean
sea of brewis,' might have seen his ample
desires almost realized at the table d'hôte of the
Rheinischen Hof, in Mayence, where Flemming
dined that day. At the head of the table sat a
gentleman, with a smooth, broad forehead, and
large, intelligent eyes. He was from Baireuth in
Franconia; and talked about poetry and Jean
Paul, to a pale, romantic-looking lady on his
right. There was music all dinner-time, at the
other end of the hall; a harp and a horn and a
voice; so that a great part of the fat gentleman's
conversation with the pale lady was lost to Flemming,
who sat opposite to her, and could look right
into her large, melancholy eyes. But what he
name of the beloved Jean Paul would have been
enough for this,—that he ventured to join in the
conversation, and asked the German if he had
known the poet personally.
“Yes; I knew him well,” replied the stranger.
“I am a native of Baireuth, where he passed the
best years of his life. In my mind the man and
the author are closely united. I never read a page
of his writings without hearing his voice, and seeing
his form before me. There he sits, with his
majestic, mountainous forehead, his mild blue eyes,
and finely cut nose and mouth; his massive frame
clad loosely and carelessly in an old green frock,
from the pockets of which the corners of books
project, and perhaps the end of a loaf of bread,
and the nose of a bottle;—a straw hat, lined with
green, lying near him; a huge walking-stick in his
hand, and at his feet a white poodle, with pink
eyes and a string round his neck. You would
sooner have taken him for a master-carpenter than
for a poet. Is he a favorite author of yours?”
Flemming answered in the affirmative.
“But a foreigner must find it exceedingly difficult
to understand him,” said the gentleman. “It
is by no means an easy task for us Germans.”
“I have always observed,” replied Flemming,
“that the true understanding and appreciation of
a poet depend more upon individual, than upon
national character. If there be a sympathy between
the minds of writer and reader, the bounds
and barriers of a foreign tongue are soon overleaped.
If you once understand an author's character,
the comprehension of his writings becomes
easy.”
“Very true,” replied the German, “and the
character of Richter is too marked to be easily
misunderstood. Its prominent traits are tenderness
and manliness,—qualities, which are seldom found
united in so high a degree as in him. Over all
he sees, over all he writes, are spread the sunbeams
of a cheerful spirit,—the light of inexhaustible
human love. Every sound of human
joy and of human sorrow finds a deep-resounding
humanity only, not his superiority. The avowed
object of all his literary labors was to raise up
again the down-sunken faith in God, virtue, and
immortality; and, in an egotistical, revolutionary
age, to warm again our human sympathies, which
have now grown cold. And not less boundless is
his love for nature,—for this outward, beautiful
world. He embraces it all in his arms.”
“Yes,” answered Flemming, almost taking the
words out of the stranger's mouth, “for in his mind
all things become idealized. He seems to describe
himself when he describes the hero of his Titan,
as a child, rocking in a high wind upon the branches
of a full-blossomed apple-tree, and, as its summit,
blown abroad by the wind, now sunk him in
deep green, and now tossed him aloft in deep blue
and glancing sunshine,—in his imagination stood
that tree gigantic;—it grew alone in the universe,
as if it were the tree of eternal life; its roots
struck down into the abyss; the white and red
clouds hung as blossoms upon it; the moon as
reposed in its measureless summit; and a storm
swayed the summit out of Day into Night, and out
of Night into Day.”
“Yet the spirit of love,” interrupted the Franconian,
“was not weakness, but strength. It was
united in him with great manliness. The sword
of his spirit had been forged and beaten by poverty.
Its temper had been tried by a thirty years'
war. It was not broken, not even blunted; but
rather strengthened and sharpened by the blows it
gave and received. And, possessing this noble spirit
of humanity, endurance, and self-denial, he made
literature his profession; as if he had been divinely
commissioned to write. He seems to have cared
for nothing else, to have thought of nothing else,
than living quietly and making books. He says,
that he felt it his duty, not to enjoy, nor to acquire,
but to write; and boasted, that he had made
as many books as he had lived years.”
“And what do you Germans consider the prominent
characteristics of his genius?”
“Most undoubtedly his wild imagination and
his playfulness. He throws over all things a
strange and magic coloring. You are startled at
the boldness and beauty of his figures and illustrations,
which are scattered everywhere with a reckless
prodigality;—multitudinous, like the blossoms
of early summer,—and as fragrant and beautiful.
With a thousand extravagances are mingled ten
thousand beauties of thought and expression, which
kindle the reader's imagination, and lead it onward
in a bold flight, through the glow of sunrise and
sunset, and the dewy coldness and starlight of summer
nights. He is difficult to understand,—intricate,—strange,—drawing
his illustrations from every
by-corner of science, art, and nature,—a comet,
among the bright stars of German literature.
When you read his works, it is as if you were
climbing a high mountain, in merry company, to
see the sun rise. At times you are enveloped in
mist,—the morning wind sweeps by you with a
shout,—you hear the far-off muttering thunders.
Wide beneath you spreads the landscape,—field,
distant church-bells, or the sound of solemn village
clock, reaches you;—then arises the sweet and
manifold fragrance of flowers,—the birds begin to
sing,—the vapors roll away,—up comes the glorious
sun,—you revel like the lark in the sunshine
and bright blue heaven, and all is a delirious
dream of soul and sense,—when suddenly a friend
at your elbow laughs aloud, and offers you a piece
of Bologna sausage. As in real life, so in his
writings,—the serious and the comic, the sublime
and the grotesque, the pathetic and the ludicrous
are mingled together. At times he is sententious,
energetic, simple; then again, obscure and diffuse.
His thoughts are like mummies embalmed
in spices, and wrapped about with curious envelopements;
but within these the thoughts themselves
are kings. At times glad, beautiful images,
airy forms, move by you, graceful, harmonious;—
at times the glaring, wild-looking fancies, chained
together by hyphens, brackets, and dashes, brave
and base, high and low, all in their motley dresses,
that sweep the streets of Rome, where
you may chance to see the nobleman and the
peasant manacled together.”
Flemming smiled at the German's warmth, to
which the presence of the lady, and the Laubenheimer
wine, seemed each to have contributed
something, and then said;
“Better an outlaw, than not free!—These are
his own words. And thus he changes at his will.
Like the God Thor, of the old Northern mythology,
he now holds forth the seven bright stars in
the bright heaven above us, and now hides himself
in clouds, and pounds away with his great
hammer.”
“And yet this is not affectation in him,” rejoined
the German. “It is his nature, it is Jean
Paul. And the figures and ornaments of his style,
wild, fantastic, and oft-times startling, like those
in Gothic cathedrals, are not merely what they
seem, but massive coignes and buttresses, which
support the fabric. Remove them, and the roof
these wild faces, carved upon spouts and gutters,
flow out, like gathered rain, the bright, abundant
thoughts, that have fallen from heaven.
“And all he does, is done with a kind of serious
playfulness. He is a sea-monster, disporting
himself on the broad ocean; his very sport is earnest;
there is something majestic and serious about
it. In every thing there is strength, a rough good-nature,
all sunshine overhead, and underneath the
heavy moaning of the sea. Well may he be
called `Jean Paul, the Only-One.' ”
With such discourse the hour of dinner passed;
and after dinner Flemming went to the Cathedral.
They were singing vespers. A beadle, dressed in
blue, with a cocked hat, and a crimson sash and
collar, was strutting, like a turkey, along the aisles.
This important gentleman conducted Flemming
through the church, and showed him the choir,
with its heavy-sculptured stalls of oak, and the
beautiful figures in brown stone, over the bishops'
tombs. He then led him, by a side-door, into the
the low gothic arches the sunshine streamed upon
the pavement of tombstones, whose images and
inscriptions are mostly effaced by the footsteps
of many generations. There stands the tomb of
Frauenlob, the Minnesinger. His face is sculptured
on an entablature in the wall; a fine, strongly-marked,
and serious countenance. Below it is
a bas-relief, representing the poet's funeral. He
is carried to his grave by ladies, whose praise he
sang, and thereby won the name of Frauenlob.
“This then,” said Flemming, “is the grave,
not of Praise-God Bare-bones, but of Praise-the-Ladies
Meissen, who wrote songs `somewhat of
lust, and somewhat of love.' But where sleeps
the dust of his rival and foe, sweet Master Bartholomew
Rainbow?”
He meant this for an aside; but the turkey-cock
picked it up and answered;
“I do not know. He did not belong to this
parish.”
It was already night, when Flemming crossed
the town of Bingen. He stopped at the White
Horse; and, before going to bed, looked out into
the dim starlight from his window towards the
Rhine, and his heart leaped up to behold the bold
outline of the neighbouring hills crested with Gothic
ruins;—which in the morning proved to be
only a high, slated roof with fantastic chimneys.
The morning was bright and frosty; and the
river tinged with gay colors from the rising sun.
A soft, thin vapor floated in the air. In the sunbeams
flashed the hoar-frost, like silver stars; and
through a long avenue of trees, whose dripping
branches bent and scattered pearls before him,
Paul Flemming journeyed on in triumph.
I will not prolong this journey, for I am
weary and way-worn, and would fain be at Heidelberg
with my readers, and my hero. It was
already night when he reached the Manheim gate,
and drove down the long Hauptstrasse so slowly,
that it seemed to him endless. The shops were
faces at the windows here and there, and figures
passing in the lamp-light, visible for a moment
and then swallowed up in the darkness. The
thoughts that filled his mind were strange; as are
always the thoughts of a traveller, who enters for
the first time a strange city. This little world had
been going on for centuries before he came; and
would go on for centuries after he was gone. Of
all the thousands who inhabited it he knew nothing;
and what knew they, or thought, of the
stranger, who, in that close post-chaise, weary with
travel, and chilled by the evening wind, was slowly
rumbling over the paved street! Truly, this
world can go on without us, if we would but think
so. If it had been a hearse instead of a post-chaise,
it would have been all the same to the people of
Heidelberg,—though by no means the same to
Paul Flemming.
But at the farther end of the city, near the
Castle and the Carls-Thor, one warm heart was
heart of his friend, the Baron of Hohenfels, with
whom he was to pass the winter in Heidelberg.
No sooner had the carriage stopped at the irongrated
gate, and the postilion blown his horn, to
announce the arrival of a traveller, than the Baron
was seen among the servants at the door; and, a
few moments afterwards, the two long-absent
friends were in each other's arms, and Flemming
received a kiss upon each cheek, and another on
the mouth, as the pledge and seal of the German's
friendship. They held each other long by the
hand, and looked into each other's faces, and saw
themselves in each other's eyes, both literally and
figuratively; literally, inasmuch as the images
were there; and figuratively, inasmuch as each was
imagining what the other thought of him, after the
lapse of some years. In friendly hopes and questionings
and answers, the evening glided away at
the supper-table, where many more things were
discussed than the roasted hare, and the Johannisberger;
of the thoughts and feelings and delights, which
fill the hearts of young men, who have already
enjoyed and suffered, and hoped and been disappointed.
6. CHAPTER VI.
HEIDELBERG AND THE BARON.
High and hoar on the forehead of the Jettenbühl
stands the Castle of Heidelberg. Behind it
rise the oak-crested hills of the Geissberg and the
Kaiserstuhl; and in front, from the broad terrace
of masonry, you can almost throw a stone upon
the roofs of the city, so close do they lie beneath.
Above this terrace rises the broad front of the
chapel of Saint Udalrich. On the left, stands the
slender octagon tower of the horologe, and, on the
right, a huge round tower, battered and shattered
by the mace of war, shores up with its broad
shoulders the beautiful palace and garden-terrace
of Elisabeth, wife of the Pfalzgraf Frederick. In
the rear are older palaces and towers, forming a
vast, irregular quadrangle;—Rodolph's ancient
the Giant's Tower, guarding the drawbridge
over the moat; the Rent Tower, with the linden-trees
growing on its summit, and the magnificent
Rittersaal of Otho-Henry, Count Palatine of the
Rhine and grand seneschal of the Holy Roman
Empire. From the gardens behind the castle, you
pass under the archway of the Giant's Tower
into the great court-yard. The diverse architecture
of different ages strikes the eye; and curious
sculptures. In niches on the wall of Saint Udalrich's
chapel stand rows of knights in armour, all
broken and dismembered; and on the front of
Otho's Rittersaal, the heroes of Jewish history
and classic fable. You enter the open and desolate
chambers of the ruin; and on every side are
medallions and family arms; the Globe of the
Empire and the Golden Fleece, or the Eagle of
the Cæsars, resting on the escutcheons of Bavaria
and the Palatinate. Over the windows and door-ways
and chimney-pieces, are sculptures and
mouldings of exquisite workmanship; and the eye
arabesques, and rosettes, and fan-like flutings, and
garlands of fruits and flowers and acorns, and bullocks'-heads
with draperies of foliage, and muzzles
of lions, holding rings in their teeth. The cunning
hand of Art was busy for six centuries, in raising
and adorning these walls; the mailed hands of Time
and War have defaced and overthrown them in
less than two. Next to the Alhambra of Granada,
the Castle of Heidelberg is the most magnificent
ruin of the Middle Ages.
In the valley below flows the rushing stream of
the Neckar. Close from its margin, on the opposite
side, rises the Mountain of All Saints, crowned
with the ruins of a convent; and up the valley
stretches the mountain-curtain of the Odenwald.
So close and many are the hills, which eastward
shut the valley in, that the river seems a lake.
But westward it opens, upon the broad plain of
the Rhine, like the mouth of a trumpet; and like
the blast of a trumpet is at times the wintry wind
through this narrow mountain pass. The blue
strip of level land, between the Neckar and the
mountains, right under the castle, stands the city of
Heidelberg; as the old song says, “a pleasant
city, when it has done raining.”
Something of this did Paul Flemming behold,
when he rose the next morning and looked from
his window. It was a warm, vapory morning, and
a struggle was going on between the mist and the
rising sun. The sun had taken the hill-tops, but
the mist still kept possession of the valley and the
town. The steeple of the great church rose
through a dense mass of snow-white clouds; and
eastward, on the hills, the dim vapors were rolling
across the windows of the ruined castle, like the
fiery smoke of a great conflagration. It seemed
to him an image of the rising of the sun of Truth
on a benighted world; its light streamed through
the ruins of centuries; and, down in the valley of
Time, the cross on the Christian church caught its
rays, though the priests were singing in mist and
darkness below.
In the warm breakfast-parlour he found the
Baron, waiting for him. He was lying upon a
sofa, in morning gown and purple-velvet slippers,
both with flowers upon them. He had a guitar in
his hand, and a pipe in his mouth, at the same
time smoking, playing, and humming his favorite
song from Goethe;
A fisher sat thereby.”
Flemming could hardly refrain from laughing at
the sight of his friend; and told him it reminded
him of a street-musician he once saw in Aix-la-Chapelle,
who was playing upon six instruments
at once; having a helmet with bells on his head,
a Pan's-reed in his cravat, a fiddle in his hand, a
triangle on his knee, cymbals on his heels, and
on his back a bass-drum, which he played with his
elbows. To tell the truth, the Baron of Hohenfels
was rather a miscellaneous youth, rather a universal
genius. He pursued all things with eagerness,
but for a short time only; music, poetry, painting,
pleasure, even the study of the Pandects. His
His great defect was, that he was too much in love
with human nature. But by the power of imagination,
in him, the bearded goat was changed to a
bright Capricornus:—no longer an animal on
earth, but a constellation in heaven. An easy and
indolent disposition made him gentle and childlike
in his manners; and, in short, the beauty of his
character, like that of the precious opal, was owing
to a defect in its organization. His person was tall
and slightly built; his hair light; and his eyes
blue, and as beautiful as those of a girl. In the
tones of his voice, there was something indescribably
gentle and winning; and he spoke the German
language, with the soft, musical accent of his native
province of Curland. In his manners, if he
had not `Antinous' easy sway,' he had at least
an easy sway of his own. Such, in few words,
was the bosom friend of Flemming.
“And what do you think of Heidelberg and the
old castle up there?” said he, as they seated
themselves at the breakfast-table.
“Last night the town seemed very long to me,”
replied Flemming; “and as to the castle, I have
as yet had but a glimpse of it through the mist.
They tell me there is nothing finer in its way, excepting
the Alhambra of Granada; and no doubt I
shall find it so. Only I wish the stone were gray
and not red. But, red or gray, I foresee that I
shall waste many a long hour in its desolate halls.
Pray, does anybody live up there now-a-days?”
“Nobody,” answered the Baron, “but the man,
who shows the Heidelberg Ton, and Monsieur
Charles de Grainberg, a Frenchman, who has
been there sketching ever since the year eighteen-hundred
and ten. He has, moreover, written a
super-magnificent description of the ruin, in which
he says, that during the day only birds of prey
disturb it with their piercing cries, and at night,
screech-owls, and other fallow deer. These are
his own words. You must buy his book and his
sketches.”
“Yes, the quotation and the tone of your voice
will certainly persuade me so to do.”
“Take his or none, my friend, for you will find
no others. And seriously, his sketches are very
good. There is one on the wall there, which is
beautiful, save and except that straddle-bug figure
among the bushes in the corner.”
“But is there no ghost, no haunted chamber in
the old castle?” asked Flemming, after casting a
hasty glance at the picture.
“Oh, certainly,” replied the Baron; “there
are two. There is the ghost of the Virgin Mary
in Ruprecht's Tower, and the Devil in the Dungeon.”
“Ha! that is grand!” exclaimed Flemming,
with evident delight. “Tell me the whole story,
quickly! I am as curious as a child.”
“It is a tale of the times of Louis the Debonnaire,”
said the Baron, with a smile; “a mouldy
tradition of a credulous age. His brother Frederick
lived here in the castle with him, and had a
flirtation with Leonore von Luzelstein, a lady of
the court, whom he afterwards despised, and was
consequently most cordially hated by her. From
petty German tyrants, who, in order to effect his
ruin, accused him of heresy. But his brother
Louis would not deliver him up to their fury, and
they resolved to effect by stratagem, what they
could not by intrigue. Accordingly, Leonore
von Luzelstein, disguised as the Virgin Mary,
and the father confessor of the Elector, in the costume
of Satan, made their appearance in the Elector's
bed-chamber at midnight, and frightened
him so horribly, that he consented to deliver
up his brother into the hands of two Black
Knights, who pretended to be ambassadors from
the Vehm-Gericht. They proceeded together to
Frederick's chamber; where luckily old Gemmingen,
a brave soldier, kept guard behind the arras.
The monk went foremost in his Satanic garb; but,
no sooner had he set foot in the prince's bed-chamber,
than the brave Gemmingen drew his
sword, and said quaintly, `Die, wretch!' and
so he died. The rest took to their heels, and
were heard of no more. And now the souls of
midnight crime. You will find the story in Grainberg's
book, worked up with a kind of red-morocco
and burnt-cork sublimity, and great melo-dramatic
clanking of chains, and hooting of owls, and other
fallow deer!”
“After breakfast,” said Flemming, “we will go
up to the castle. I must get acquainted with this
mirror of owls, this modern Till Eulenspiegel.
See what a glorious morning we have! It is truly
a wondrous winter! what summer sunshine; what
soft Venetian fogs! How the wanton, treacherous
air coquets with the old gray-beard trees! Such
weather makes the grass and our beards grow
apace! But we have an old saying in English,
that winter never rots in the sky. So he will come
down at last in his old-fashioned, mealy coat. We
shall have snow in spring; and the blossoms will
be all snow-flakes. And afterwards a summer,
which will be no summer, but, as Jean Paul says,
only a winter painted green. Is it not so?”
“Unless I am much deceived in the climate of
have to wait long for snow. We have sudden
changes here, and I should not marvel much if it
snowed before night.”
“The greater reason for making good use of the
morning sunshine, then. Let us hasten to the
castle, after which my heart yearns.”
7. CHAPTER VII.
LIVES OF SCHOLARS.
The forebodings of the Baron proved true. In
the afternoon the weather changed. The western
wind began to blow, and its breath drew a cloud-veil
over the face of heaven, as a breath does over
the human face in a mirror. Soon the snow began
to fall. Athwart the distant landscape it swept
like a white mist. The storm-wind came from the
Alsatian hills, and struck the dense clouds aslant
through the air. And ever faster fell the snow, a
roaring torrent from those mountainous clouds.
The setting sun glared wildly from the summit of
the hills, and sank like a burning ship at sea,
wrecked in the tempest. Thus the evening set
in; and winter stood at the gate wagging his white
and shaggy beard, like an old harper, chanting an
old rhyme:—“How cold it is! how cold it is!”
“I like such a storm as this,” said Flemming,
who stood at the window, looking out into the tempest
and the gathering darkness. “The silent falling
of snow is to me one of the most solemn things
in nature. The fall of autumnal leaves does not
so much affect me. But the driving storm is
grand. It startles me; it awakens me. It is wild
and woful, like my own soul. I cannot help
thinking of the sea; how the waves run and toss
their arms about,—and the wind plays on those
great harps, made by the shrouds and masts of
ships. Winter is here in earnest! Whew! How
the old churl whistles and threshes the snow!
Sleet and rain are falling too. Already the trees
are bearded with icicles; and the two broad branches
of yonder pine look like the white mustache of
some old German Baron.”
“And to-morrow it will look more wintry still,”
said his friend. “We shall wake up and find that
the frost-spirit has been at work all night building
Gothic Cathedrals on our windows, just as
the devil built the Cathedral of Cologne. So
fire.”
“And now,” said Flemming, having done as his
friend desired, “tell me something of Heidelberg
and its University. I suppose we shall lead about
as solitary and studious a life here as we did of
yore in little Göttingen, with nothing to amuse us,
save our own day-dreams.”
“Pretty much so,” replied the Baron; “which
cannot fail to please you, since you are in pursuit
of tranquillity. As to the University, it is, as you
know, one of the oldest in Germany. It was
founded in the fourteenth century by the Count
Palatine Ruprecht, and had in the first year more
than five hundred students, all busily committing to
memory, after the old scholastic wise, the rules of
grammar versified by Alexander de Villa Dei, and
the extracts made by Peter the Spaniard from
Michel Psellus's Synopsis of Aristotle's Organon,
and the Categories, with Porphory's Commentaries.
Truly, I do not much wonder, that Eregina
Scotus should have been put to death by
have been pushed to the very verge of despair.”
“What a strange picture a University presents
to the imagination. The lives of scholars in their
cloistered stillness;—literary men of retired habits,
and Professors who study sixteen hours a day,
and never see the world but on a Sunday. Nature
has, no doubt, for some wise purpose, placed in
their hearts this love of literary labor and seclusion.
Otherwise, who would feed the undying
lamp of thought? But for such men as these, a
blast of wind through the chinks and crannies of
this old world, or the flapping of a conqueror's
banner, would blow it out forever. The light of
the soul is easily extinguished. And whenever I
reflect upon these things I become aware of the
great importance, in a nation's history, of the individual
fame of scholars and literary men. I fear,
that it is far greater than the world is willing to
acknowledge; or, perhaps I should say, than the
world has thought of acknowledging. Blot out
from England's history the names of Chaucer,
much of her glory would you blot out with them!
Take from Italy such names as Dante, Petrarch,
Boccaccio, Michel Angelo, and Raphael, and
how much would still be wanting to the completeness
of her glory! How would the history of
Spain look if the leaves were torn out, on which
are written the names of Cervantes, Lope de Vega,
and Calderon! What would be the fame of Portugal,
without her Camoens; of France, without her
Racine, and Rabelais, and Voltaire; or Germany,
without her Martin Luther, her Goethe, and Schiller!—Nay,
what were the nations of old, without
their philosophers, poets, and historians! Tell
me, do not these men in all ages and in all places,
emblazon with bright colors the armorial bearings
of their country? Yes, and far more than this;
for in all ages and all places they give humanity
assurance of its greatness; and say; Call not this
time or people wholly barbarous; for thus much,
even then and there, could the human mind
achieve! But the boisterous world has hardly
shown itself somewhat ungrateful. Else, whence
the great reproach, the general scorn, the loud derision,
with which, to take a familiar example,
the monks of the Middle Ages are regarded! That
they slept their lives away is most untrue. For in
an age when books were few,—so few, so precious,
that they were often chained to their oaken shelves
with iron chains, like galley-slaves to their benches,
these men, with their laborious hands, copied upon
parchment all the lore and wisdom of the past,
and transmitted it to us. Perhaps it is not too
much to say, that, but for these monks, not one line
of the classics would have reached our day. Surely,
then, we can pardon something to those superstitious
ages, perhaps even the mysticism of the
scholastic philosophy, since, after all, we can find
no harm in it, only the mistaking of the possible
for the real, and the high aspirings of the human
mind after a long-sought and unknown somewhat.
I think the name of Martin Luther, the monk of
Wittemberg, alone sufficient to redeem all monkhood
not, perhaps the vast folios of Thomas Aquinas
will;—or the countless manuscripts, still treasured
in old libraries, whose yellow and wrinkled pages
remind one of the hands that wrote them, and the
faces that once bent over them.”
“An eloquent homily,” said the Baron laughing,
“a most touching appeal in behalf of suffering
humanity! For my part, I am no friend of this
entire seclusion from the world. It has a very injurious
effect on the mind of a scholar. The Chinese
proverb is true; a single conversation across
the table with a wise man, is better than ten years'
mere study of books. I have known some of these
literary men, who thus shut themselves up from
the world. Their minds never come in contact
with those of their fellow-men. They read little.
They think much. They are mere dreamers.
They know not what is new nor what is old. They
often strike upon trains of thought, which stand
written in good authors some century or so back,
and are even current in the mouths of men around
are bringing forward something very original, when
they publish their thoughts.”
“It reminds me,” replied Flemming, “of what
Dr. Johnson said of Goldsmith, when he proposed
to travel abroad in order to bring home improvements;—`He
will bring home a wheelbarrow, and
call that an improvement.' It is unfortunately the
same with some of these scholars.”
“And the worst of it is,” said the Baron, “that,
in solitude, some fixed idea will often take root
in the mind, and grow till it overshadow all one's
thoughts. To this must all opinions come; no
thought can enter there, which shall not be wedded
to the fixed idea. There it remains, and
grows. It is like the watchman's wife, in the
tower of Waiblingen, who grew to such a size,
that she could not get down the narrow stair-case;
and, when her husband died, his successor was
forced to marry the fat widow in the tower.”
“I remember an old English comedy,” said
Flemming laughing, “in which a scholar is described,
morning at his tinder-box,—put on a pair of lined
slippers,—sit ruminating till dinner, and then go to
his meat when the bell rings;—one that hath a
peculiar gift in a cough, and a license to spit;—
or, if you will have him defined by negatives, he
is one that cannot make a good leg;—one that
cannot eat a mess of broth cleanly. What think
you of that?”
“That it is just as people are always represented
in English comedy,” said the Baron. “The
portrait is over-charged,—caricatured.”
“And yet,” continued Flemming, “no longer
ago than yesterday, in the Preface of a work by
Dr. Rosenkranz, Professor of Philosophy in the
University of Halle, I read this passage.”
He opened a book and read.
“Here in Halle, where we have no public garden
and no Tivoli, no London Exchange, no Paris
Chamber of Deputies, no Berlin nor Vienna Theatres,
no Strassburg Minster, nor Salzburg Alps,—
no Grecian ruins nor fantastic Catholicism, in fine,
can divert and refresh him, without his knowing or
caring how,—I consider the sight of a proof-sheet
quite as delightful as a walk in the Prater of Vienna.
I fill my pipe very quietly, take out my ink-stand
and pens, seat myself in the corner of my
sofa, read, correct, and now for the first time
really set about thinking what I have written. To
see this origin of a book, this metamorphosis of
manuscript into print, is a delight to which I give
myself up entirely. Look you, this melancholy
pleasure, which would have furnished the departed
Voss with worthy matter for more than one
blessed Idyl—(the more so, as on such occasions,
I am generally arrayed in a morning gown, though
I am sorry to say, not a calamanco one, with great
flowers;) this melancholy pleasure was already
grown here in Halle to a sweet, pedantic habit.
Since I began my hermit's life here, I have been
printing; and so long as I remain here, I shall
keep on printing. In all probability, I shall die
with a proof-sheet in my hand.”
“This,” said Flemming, closing the book, “is
no caricature by a writer of comedy, but a portrait
by a man's own hand. We can see by it how
easily, under certain circumstances, one may glide
into habits of seclusion, and in a kind of undress,
slipshod hardihood, with a pipe and a proof-sheet,
defy the world. Into this state scholars have too
often fallen; thus giving some ground for the prevalent
opinion, that scholarship and rusticity are
inseparable. To me, I confess, it is painful to see
the scholar and the world assume so often a hostile
attitude, and set each other at defiance. Surely,
it is a characteristic trait of a great and liberal
mind, that it recognises humanity in all its forms
and conditions. I am a student;—and always,
when I sit alone at night, I recognise the divinity
of the student, as she reveals herself to me in the
smoke of the midnight lamp. But, because solitude
and books are not unpleasant to me,—nay,
wished-for,—sought after,—shall I say to my
brother, Thou fool! Shall I take the world by the
beard and say, Thou art old, and mad!—Shall I
—Heartless! Beware of that word! Life, says
very wisely the good Jean Paul, Life in every
shape, should be precious to us, for the same reason
that the Turks carefully collect every scrap of
paper that comes in their way, because the name
of God may be written upon it. Nothing is more
true than this, yet nothing more neglected!”
“If it be painful to see this misunderstanding
between scholars and the world,” said the Baron,
“I think it is still more painful to see the private
sufferings of authors by profession. How many
have languished in poverty, how many died broken-hearted,
how many gone mad with over-excitement
and disappointed hopes! How instructive
and painfully interesting are their lives!
with so many weaknesses,—so much to pardon,
—so much to pity,—so much to admire! I
think he was not so far out of the way, who said,
that, next to the Newgate Calendar, the Biography
of Authors is the most sickening chapter in
the history of man.”
“It is indeed enough to make one's heart
ache!” interrupted Flemming. “Only think of
Johnson and Savage, rambling about the streets of
London at midnight, without a place to sleep in;
Otway starved to death; Cowley mad, and howling
like a dog, through the aisles of Chichester
Cathedral, at the sound of church music; and
Goldsmith, strutting up Fleet Street in his peach-blossom
coat, to knock a bookseller over the pate
with one of his own volumes; and then, in his
poverty, about to marry his landlady in Green Arbour
Court.”
“A life of sorrow and privation, a hard life, indeed,
do these poor devil authors have of it,”
replied the Baron; “and then at last must get
them to the work-house, or creep away into some
hospital to die.”
“After all,” said Flemming with a sigh, “poverty
is not a vice.”
“But something worse,” interrupted the Baron;
“as Dufresny said, when he married his laundress,
because he could not pay her bill. He
at whose representation the great pun was made;
—I say the great pun, as we say the great ton of
Heidelberg. As one of the performers was singing
the line, `L'amour a vaincu Loth,' (vingt
culottes,) a voice from the pit cried out, `Qu'il en
donne une à l'auteur!' ”
Flemming laughed at the unseasonable jest;
and then, after a short pause, continued;
“And yet, if you look closely at the causes of
these calamities of authors, you will find, that many
of them spring from false and exaggerated ideas
of poetry and the poetic character; and from disdain
of common sense, upon which all character,
worth having, is founded. This comes from
keeping aloof from the world, apart from our fellow-men;
disdainful of society, as frivolous. By
too much sitting still the body becomes unhealthy;
and soon the mind. This is nature's law. She
will never see her children wronged. If the mind,
which rules the body, ever forgets itself so far as
to trample upon its slave, the slave is never generous
smite its oppressor. Thus has many a monarch
mind been dethroned.”
“After all,” said the Baron, “we must pardon
much to men of genius. A delicate organization
renders them keenly susceptible to pain and pleasure.
And then they idealize every thing; and, in
the moonlight of fancy, even the deformity of vice
seems beautiful.”
“And this you think should be forgiven?”
“At all events it is forgiven. The world loves
a spice of wickedness. Talk as you will about
principle, impulse is more attractive, even when
it goes too far. The passions of youth, like unhooded
hawks, fly high, with musical bells upon
their jesses; and we forget the cruelty of the sport
in the dauntless bearing of the gallant bird.”
“And thus doth the world and society corrupt
the scholar!” exclaimed Flemming.
Here the Baron rang, and ordered a bottle of
Prince Metternich. He then very slowly filled
his pipe, and began to smoke. Flemming was lost
in a day-dream.
8. CHAPTER VIII.
LITERARY FAME.
Time has a Doomsday-Book, upon whose pages
he is continually recording illustrious names. But,
as often as a new name is written there, an old one
disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated characters,
never to be effaced. These are the high
nobility of Nature,—Lords of the Public Domain
of Thought. Posterity shall never question their
titles. But those, whose fame lives only in the indiscreet
opinion of unwise men, must soon be as
well forgotten, as if they had never been. To
this great oblivion must most men come. It is
better, therefore, that they should soon make up
their minds to this; well knowing, that, as their
bodies must ere long be resolved into dust again,
and their graves tell no tales of them; so must
most cherished thoughts, purposes, and opinions
have no longer an individual being among men;
but be resolved and incorporated into the universe
of thought. If, then, the imagination can trace
the noble dust of heroes, till we find it stopping a
beer-barrel, and know that
May stop a hole to keep the wind away;”
men, till it finds them mouldered into the common
dust of conversation, and used to stop men's
mouths, and patch up theories, to keep out the
flaws of opinion. Such, for example, are all popular
adages and wise proverbs, which are now resolved
into the common mass of thought; their
authors forgotten, and having no more an individual
being among men.
It is better, therefore, that men should soon
make up their minds to be forgotten, and look
about them, or within them, for some higher motive,
in what they do, than the approbation of men,
should be constantly and quietly at work, each in
his sphere, regardless of effects, and leaving their
fame to take care of itself. Difficult must this indeed
be, in our imperfection; impossible perhaps
to achieve it wholly. Yet the resolute, the indomitable
will of man can achieve much,—at
times even this victory over himself; being persuaded,
that fame comes only when deserved, and
then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.
It has become a common saying, that men of
genius are always in advance of their age; which
is true. There is something equally true, yet not
so common; namely, that, of these men of genius,
the best and bravest are in advance not only of
their own age, but of every age. As the German
prose-poet says, every possible future is behind
them. We cannot suppose, that a period of time
will ever come, when the world, or any considerable
portion of it shall have come up abreast with
these great minds, so as fully to comprehend them.
And oh! how majestically they walk in history;
round him; others wrapped in gloom, yet
glorious as a night with stars. Through the else
silent darkness of the past, the spirit hears their
slow and solemn footsteps. Onward they pass,
like those hoary elders seen in the sublime vision
of an earthly Paradise, attendant angels bearing
golden lights before them, and, above and behind,
the whole air painted with seven listed colors, as
from the trail of pencils!
And yet, on earth, these men were not happy,—not
all happy, in the outward circumstance
of their lives. They were in want, and in pain,
and familiar with prison-bars, and the damp, weeping
walls of dungeons! Oh, I have looked with
wonder upon those, who, in sorrow and privation,
and bodily discomfort, and sickness, which is the
shadow of death, have worked right on to the
accomplishment of their great purposes; toiling
much, enduring much, fulfilling much;—and then,
with shattered nerves, and sinews all unstrung,
have laid themselves down in the grave, and slept
while they sleep!
It would seem, indeed, as if all their sufferings
had but sanctified them! As if the death-angel,
in passing, had touched them with the hem of his
garment, and made them holy! As if the hand of
disease had been stretched out over them only to
make the sign of the cross upon their souls! And
as in the sun's eclipse we can behold the great
stars shining in the heavens, so in this life eclipse
have these men beheld the lights of the great eternity,
burning solemnly and forever!
This was Flemming's reverie. It was broken
by the voice of the Baron, suddenly exclaiming;
“An angel is flying over the house!—Here;
in this goblet, fragrant as the honey of Hymettus,
fragrant as the wild flowers in the Angel's Meadow,
I drink to the divinity of thy dreams.”
“This is all sunshine,” said Flemming, as he
drank. “The wine of the Prince, and the Prince
of wines. By the way, did you ever read that
brilliant Italian dithyrambic, Redi's Bacchus in
poured out of the author's soul, as from a golden
pitcher,
Of the vine
Benign,
That flames so red in Sansavine.'
“Prince Metternich,” said the Baron, “is greater
than any king in Italy; and I wonder, that this
precious wine has never inspired a German poet
to write a Bacchus on the Rhine. Many little
songs we have on this theme, but none very extraordinary.
The best are Max Schenkendorf's
Song of the Rhine, and the Song of Rhine
Wine, by Claudius, a poet who never drank
Rhenish without sugar. We will drink for him a
blessing on the Rhine.”
And again the crystal lips of the goblets kissed
each other, with a musical chime, as of evening
bells at vintage-time from the villages on the Rhine.
Of a truth, I do not much wonder, that the German
with a bottle of Rhine-wine upon the table. Nor
do I wonder at the worthy schoolmaster Roger
Ascham, when he says, in one of his letters from
Germany to Mr. John Raven, of John's College;
`Tell Mr. Maden I will drink with him now a carouse
of wine; and would to God he had a vessel
of Rhenish wine; and perchance, when I come to
Cambridge, I will so provide here, that every year
I will have a little piece of Rhenish wine.' Nor,
in fine, do I wonder at the German Emperor of
whom he speaks in another letter to the same
John Raven, and says, `The Emperor drank
the best that I ever saw; he had his head in the
glass five times as long as any of us, and never
drank less than a good quart at once of Rhenish
wine.' These were scholars and gentlemen.
“But to resume our old theme of scholars and
their whereabout,” said the Baron, with an unusual
glow, caught no doubt from the golden sunshine,
imprisoned, like the student Anselmus, in the glass
bottle; “where should the scholar live? In solitude
country, where he can hear the heart of nature
beat, or in the dark, gray city, where he can hear
and feel the throbbing heart of man? I will make
answer for him, and say, in the dark, gray city.
Oh, they do greatly err, who think, that the stars
are all the poetry which cities have; and therefore
that the poet's only dwelling should be in
sylvan solitudes, under the green roof of trees.
Beautiful, no doubt, are all the forms of Nature,
when transfigured by the miraculous power of poetry;
hamlets and harvest-fields, and nut-brown
waters, flowing ever under the forest, vast and shadowy,
with all the sights and sounds of rural life.
But after all, what are these but the decorations
and painted scenery in the great theatre of human
life? What are they but the coarse materials
of the poet's song? Glorious indeed is the world
of God around us, but more glorious the world of
God within us. There lies the Land of Song;
there lies the poet's native land. The river of
life, that flows through streets tumultuous, bearing
humanity;—the many homes and households,
each a little world in itself, revolving round its
fireside, as a central sun; all forms of human joy
and suffering, brought into that narrow compass;
—and to be in this and be a part of this; acting,
thinking, rejoicing, sorrowing, with his fellow-men;
—such, such should be the poet's life. If he
would describe the world, he should live in the
world. The mind of the scholar, also, if you
would have it large and liberal, should come in
contact with other minds. It is better that his armour
should be somewhat bruised even by rude
encounters, than hang forever rusting on the wall.
Nor will his themes be few or trivial, because
apparently shut in between the walls of houses, and
having merely the decorations of street scenery.
A ruined character is as picturesque as a ruined
castle. There are dark abysses and yawning gulfs
in the human heart, which can be rendered passable
only by bridging them over with iron nerves
and sinews, as Challey bridged the Savine in Switzerland,
and England, with chain bridges. These are the
great themes of human thought; not green grass,
and flowers, and moonshine. Besides, the mere
external forms of Nature we make our own, and
carry with us into the city, by the power of
memory.”
“I fear, however,” interrupted Flemming, “that
in cities the soul of man grows proud. He needs
at times to be sent forth, like the Assyrian monarch,
into green fields, `a wonderous wretch and
weedless,' to eat green herbs, and be wakened
and chastised by the rain-shower and winter's
bitter weather. Moreover, in cities there is danger
of the soul's becoming wed to pleasure, and
forgetful of its high vocation. There have been
souls dedicated to heaven from childhood and
guarded by good angels as sweet seclusions for
holy thoughts, and prayers, and all good purposes;
wherein pious wishes dwelt like nuns, and every
image was a saint; and yet in life's vicissitudes,
by the treachery of occasion, by the thronging passions
They resemble those convents on the river Rhine,
which have been changed to taverns; from whose
chambers the pious inmates have long departed,
and in whose cloisters the footsteps of travellers
have effaced the images of buried saints, and
whose walls are written over with ribaldry and the
names of strangers, and resound no more with holy
hymns, but with revelry and loud voices.”
“Both town and country have their dangers,”
said the Baron; “and therefore, wherever the
scholar lives, he must never forget his high vocation.
Other artists give themselves up wholly to
the study of their art. It becomes with them almost
religion. For the most part, and in their
youth, at least, they dwell in lands, where the
whole atmosphere of the soul is beauty; laden
with it as the air may be with vapor, till their very
nature is saturated with the genius of their art.
Such, for example, is the artist's life in Italy.”
“I agree with you,” exclaimed Flemming;
“and such should be the Poet's everywhere; for
Italy within the four walls of his library. He has
in his books the ruins of an antique world,—and
the glories of a modern one,—his Apollo and
Transfiguration. He must neither forget nor undervalue
his vocation; but thank God that he is a
poet; and everywhere be true to himself, and to
`the vision and the faculty divine' he feels within
him.”
“But, at any rate, a city life is most eventful,”
continued the Baron. “The men who make, or
take, the lives of poets and scholars, always
complain that these lives are barren of incidents.
Hardly a literary biography begins without some
such apology, unwisely made. I confess, however,
that it is not made without some show of truth; if,
by incidents, we mean only those startling events,
which suddenly turn aside the stream of Time,
and change the world's history in an hour. There
is certainly a uniformity, pleasing or unpleasing,
in literary life, which for the most part makes
to-day seem twin-born with yesterday. But if, by
human mind, (and why not?) noiseless events, that
do not scar the forehead of the world as battles
do, yet change it not the less, then surely the
lives of literary men are most eventful. The
complaint and the apology are both foolish. I do
not see why a successful book is not as great an
event as a successful campaign; only different in
kind, and not easily compared.”
“Indeed,” interrupted Flemming, “in no sense
is the complaint strictly true, though at times apparently
so. Events enough there are, were they
all set down. A life, that is worth writing at all,
is worth writing minutely. Besides, all literary
men have not lived in silence and solitude;—not
all in stillness, not all in shadow. For many
have lived in troubled times, in the rude and adverse
fortunes of the state and age, and could say
with Wallenstein,
And, like the wind's blast, never-resting, homeless,
We stormed across the war convulsed earth.'
Dante, Cervantes, Byron, and others; men of
iron; men who have dared to breast the strong
breath of public opinion, and, like spectre-ships,
come sailing right against the wind. Others have
been puffed out by the first adverse wind that
blew; disgraced and sorrowful, because they could
not please others. Truly `the tears live in an
onion, that should water such a sorrow.' Had
they been men, they would have made these disappointments
their best friends, and learned from
them the needful lesson of self-reliance.”
“To confess the truth,” added the Baron, “the
lives of literary men, with their hopes and disappointments,
and quarrels and calamities, present
a melancholy picture of man's strength and weakness.
On that very account the scholar can make
them profitable for encouragement,—consolation,
—warning.”
“And after all,” continued Flemming, “perhaps
the greatest lesson, which the lives of literary
men teach us, is told in a single word; Wait!—
wait. More particularly in lands, like my native
land, where the pulse of life beats with such feverish
and impatient throbs, is the lesson needful.
Our national character wants the dignity of repose.
We seem to live in the midst of a battle,—there
is such a din,—such a hurrying to and fro. In
the streets of a crowded city it is difficult to walk
slowly. You feel the rushing of the crowd, and
rush with it onward. In the press of our life it is
difficult to be calm. In this stress of wind and
tide, all professions seem to drag their anchors,
and are swept out into the main. The voices of
the Present say, Come! But the voices of the
Past say, Wait! With calm and solemn footsteps
the rising tide bears against the rushing torrent up
stream, and pushes back the hurrying waters.
With no less calm and solemn footsteps, nor less
certainly, does a great mind bear up against public
opinion, and push back its hurrying stream.
Therefore should every man wait;—should bide
his time. Not in listless idleness,—not in useless
steady, cheerful endeavours, always willing
and fulfilling, and accomplishing his task, that,
when the occasion comes, he may be equal to
the occasion. And if it never comes, what matters
it? What matters it to the world whether I,
or you, or another man did such a deed, or wrote
such a book, sobeit the deed and book were well
done! It is the part of an indiscreet and troublesome
ambition, to care too much about fame,—
about what the world says of us. To be always
looking into the faces of others for approval;—
to be always anxious for the effect of what we do
and say; to be always shouting to hear the echo
of our own voices! If you look about you,
you will see men, who are wearing life away in
feverish anxiety of fame, and the last we shall
ever hear of them will be the funeral bell, that tolls
them to their early graves! Unhappy men, and
unsuccessful! because their purpose is, not to accomplish
well their task, but to clutch the `trick
and fantasy of fame'; and they go to their graves
Better for them, and for the world in
their example, had they known how to wait!
Believe me, the talent of success is nothing
more than doing what you can do well; and doing
well whatever you do,—without a thought
of fame. If it come at all, it will come because it
is deserved, not because it is sought after. And,
moreover, there will be no misgivings,—no disappointment,—no
hasty, feverish, exhausting excitement.”
Thus endeth the First Book of Hyperion. I
make no record of the winter. Paul Flemming
buried himself in books; in old, dusty books. He
studied diligently the ancient poetic lore of Germany,
from Frankish Legends of Saint George,
and Saxon Rhyme-Chronicles, down through Nibelungen
Lieds, and Helden-Buchs, and Songs of
the Minnesingers and Mastersingers, and Ships
of Fools, and Reinecke Foxes, and Death-Dances
bright, sunny land of harvests, where, amid the
golden grain and the blue corn-flowers, walk the
modern bards, and sing.
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