Part 25 (1/2)
The Clemens family is in grand gala, and awaits the guests who are to come. The Clemens family consists of four persons: father, mother, and two grown daughters. Rector Clemens is a man of fifty years, who must have been very handsome in his youth, and who may still pa.s.s for very good-looking. He wears his curly brown hair very long, and, contrary to all fas.h.i.+on, his collar turned down _a la Byron_ over a loosely-tied handkerchief, which gives him, in connection with a somewhat vague softness of his features, an ideal, not to say an effeminate expression. He is fully conscious of the soft character of his appearance, and does all he can to heighten the effect. His speech is soft, his voice is soft, his movements are soft. ”I am called Clemens, and I try to do honor to my name,” he is accustomed to say, modestly, whenever anybody compliments him on the ”perfect humanity” of his manner and his appearance. ”Humanity” is his pet word. The learned world knows him as the author of a moral philosophical work ”Purification of Man towards Perfect Humanity;” and the public at large through his dramatic poem, ”John at Patmos,” which has appeared in a second edition in the bookstores of the University of Grunwald, and bears the motto, ”_h.o.m.o sum, nihil humani mihi alienum puto_.”
Mrs. Rector Clemens is, at least in her outward appearance, a perfect contrast to her husband. Her figure rises far beyond the ordinary size, and is broad and strong. The features of her face are proportionately heavy and ma.s.sive; her voice is a tolerably deep ba.s.s, and her movements and manners remind you forcibly of a vessel rolling in a trough of the sea. She is indeed the daughter of a captain of a mail steamer, and has made in her young days twice the voyage to the Indies.
It is hard to understand why her etherealizing husband with his enthusiasm for Hogarth's line of beauty, should have chosen her above all others, and the only explanation is to be found in that mysterious affinity which unites the strong and the weak, the stern and the gentle. The contrast between the two characters, however, does not appear quite so striking upon closer observation. The husband has succeeded in lending short wings to the somewhat clumsy psyche of his wife. He has talked to her so much about true humanity, that she is determined to become aesthetic in spite of her colossal size, and to be refined in spite of her defective education. She reads a good deal, although she does not understand it all; and she is the founder and manager of a dramatic club, although she has never been able to distinguish very clearly between a dative and an accusative.
The two Misses Clemens are eighteen and nineteen years old, and enjoy the beautiful old German names of Thusnelda and Fredegunda. The latter resembles her mother, Thusnelda her father, but the difference in character, which the common longing after humanity has nearly effaced in the parents, is still very perceptible in the daughters. They quarrel very frequently, are almost always of different opinions, and resemble each other only in one point--the very high opinion they entertain of themselves.
”It seems to me our dear guests keep us waiting rather long,” said Rector Clemens, looking at his watch for the twelfth time in the last twelve minutes, as he nervously walked up and down in the room.
”I cannot comprehend why the good people don't come,” said Mrs. Rector Clemens, sitting down for a moment on the sofa and wiping her heated brow with her handkerchief. ”I had asked Doctor Stein expressly to be sure to come before seven, because I wanted to read his part over with him.”
”Will he be able to read the Captain?” said Miss Fredegunda Clemens from the adjoining room, where she was busy with her dress before a mirror.
”He'll read it at least as well as Broadfoot,” replied Miss Thusnelda in an irritated tone.
”But, children, surely you are not going to quarrel now,” said the mother, trying to appease them.
”Fredegunda cannot stop teasing me,” said Thusnelda.
”And you are always trying to be better than everybody else,” said Fredegunda, appearing in the door.
”For heaven's sake, children, I pray you, keep quiet,” cries Doctor Clemens, with imploring voice, raising his hands as if in prayer; ”I hear somebody in the pa.s.sage.”
The door was really opened at that moment by a maid, and in walk Professor Snellius, Mrs. Professor Snellius, and Miss Ida Snellius.
The broken peace of the Clemens family is immediately restored. They receive the new-comers as heartily as people who have worked their way to genuine humanity are apt to welcome their friends.
Professor Snellius, teacher of the first form and con-rector, a man of some forty years, aspired, like Rector Clemens, and perhaps even more energetically, to the ideal, and was perhaps even more favored in these efforts by his outward appearance. While the beauty of Rector Clemens had something vague about it, the character imprinted on the clear features of Professor Snellius was unmistakable; even the most malicious critic could not have denied that he bore a more than pa.s.sing resemblance to his favorite poet, Schiller. His admirers found in him the same boldly-curved nose, with the electric spasms around the nostrils, the same earnestness, the same majesty, the same tall form, which, however, was not dressed in ideal costume, but yielded so far to the demands of the time as to submit to a plain black suit, in which the painful neatness is interrupted only by the spotless white of a somewhat tight cravat. Professor Snellius is a pedagogue in the fullest sense of the word. His erudition is literally overwhelming. He teaches all the modern languages, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Sanscrit, and is not quite unacquainted even with Chinese, which he reads in his leisure hours. He is enthusiastic about the young and his vocation as a teacher of the young. He has proclaimed his views on this most important task, and his propositions how to solve its problems in the best manner, in his voluminous work: ”History of Education among the West Asiatic Nations prior to the times of Rhamses the Great.” The motto of this work, and at the same time the professor's own motto, is: ”Through struggle to victory!” Professor Snellius looks soberly upon life, and stammers a little whenever he becomes excited, as very frequently happens to him, about the want of ideal enthusiasm in his pupils, or about any other of his favorite subjects.
Mrs. Professor Snellius is a little lady who would be insignificant if she were not the wife of such a very great scholar. Miss Ida Snellius is an exceedingly tall and exceedingly awkward girl of sixteen, who looks marvellously like her father, and has the reputation of having inherited largely the erudition of her father. She likes to converse with highly-educated gentlemen--with others she does not speak at all--of comparative philology, and of Wilhelm von Humboldt, and is reported to have read through the twelve volumes of her father's famous work. This report, however, is so monstrous, that its truth may well be doubted.
The long-drawn salutations between the families Clemens and Snellius had not yet come to an end, when the door opened once more to admit Dr.
Kubel with wife and daughter. Kubel teaches the third form, and is a round, jovial little man, with a smoothly-shaven face, and white, well-kept hands--so round and so jovial that our days no longer produce the like, and that they were found only in the peaceful, stagnant waters of the period from the Congress of Vienna to the year 1848, in out-of-the-way colleges and other quiet districts of quiet Germany. His voice is loud and squeaking, and reminds you, as the figure of the man himself does, of the harmless dwellers in mora.s.ses. His erudition is not remarkable. Scoffers maintain that his only merit as a philologist consists in his having a very pretty daughter. Mary Kubel is indeed a very pretty, brown-eyed girl, ever cheerful and ready to laugh, who is unspeakably despised by the Misses Snellius and Clemens; by the former because she has once confounded Alexander and William von Humboldt; and by the latter because she has no idea of reading dramatic compositions.
To-day she especially roused the indignation of Thusnelda and Fredegunda, because she arrived at the same time with the two doctors, Winimer and Broadfoot, and therefore has the appearance of having them in her train. Now Thusnelda and Fredegunda are accustomed to claim the attentions of these two gentlemen as their own exclusive right, and that not without reason, for Mr. Winimer has already worn a lock of Thusnelda's hair near his heart for about six months, and exhibits it in sentimental moments to his intimate friends, threatening them with fearful disgrace if they should ever, ever betray him; and Mr.
Broadfoot has lost at least a dozen philippines, and, some say, his heart with them, to Fredegunda, during the six months since he received his appointment at the college. Doctor Winimer is a slender young man of medium size, whose tact in the intercourse with the fair s.e.x is a proverb among his colleagues, and who is always in more or less nervous excitement--thanks, no doubt, to the many delicate relations in which he stands, and of which he speaks in mysterious terms. Doctor Broadfoot is a gentleman whom a stranger might take for a butcher, and who is the continual b.u.t.t of his friends, on account of his enormous hands and feet, and his ordinary manners.
”Now, our club is nearly a.s.sembled,” says Rector Clemens, rubbing his hands softly and raising his voice moderately. ”Our dear guests alone have not come yet.”
”Our guests, dear _collega_?” says Professor Snellius. ”I thought the question was in the singularis of _hospes_?”
”_Minime!_” smiled the rector. ”I have prepared a dual, yes, I may say a plural of surprises for you to-night, gentlemen and ladies. There will be two new guests here, besides our new colleague, of whom I expect great things for our social intercourse. Can you guess who they are?”
”But, Moritz, it was to be a surprise!” says Mrs. Clemens, in a reproachful tone.
”I think, my dear, it is better to prepare the club beforehand. Is it not our wish to receive the persons in question, not only as our guests for to-night, but to win them permanently over for our little club; and for that purpose, you know, we must have the consent of all the members, according to the regulations which you have prepared yourself.”
”Who is it, rector.” asked Doctor Winimer. ”You torture us.”
”A gentleman whose name has a good sound in the republic of letters, and a lady who will be of special interest for you, _Collega_ Winimer, in your capacity as lyric poet?”