Part 5 (1/2)
”May be, child,” said the other with a grin, ”and we will soon take measures for sobering me again. Our good prince has placed me in a sort of affluence, which, if I have discretion, may be lasting; for he protects me admirably, means to buy still more of me, and even orders things from my own pencil. He thinks that in this town I am not in my place, that my merits are not sufficiently recognized, and that I lack encouragement. Perhaps he may take me with him, and improve me still into a genuine artist, for he has the best of inclinations for it, and I precisely taste and talent enough to understand him, and let myself be advised by him.”
”Rogue that thou art!” said his young friend, ”I could not help laughing at thy having disposed so advantageously of thy Julio Romano; but still I should not like to be in thy place.”
The old man went up to him, stared at him, and said, ”And why not, chuck, if thou hadst but the gift required for it? Every man paints and tricks himself out, to put himself off for better than he really is, and to pa.s.s for a wonderfully precious original, when most of them are but daubed copies of copies. Hadst thou but heard my patron a.n.a.lyse the picture, then mightest thou have learnt something! Now I begin to understand all the technical designs of Julio Romano; thou wilt not believe how many excellences I had overlooked in the picture, how many pa.s.sages of his racy pencil. Ay, it is delightful to penetrate so thoroughly into such an artist; and when one comprehends him entirely, and in all his parts alike, there creeps over us in the full sense of his high merit a feeling of self-complacency, as though we ourselves had some share in the display of his genius; for fully to understand a work of art, they say, is in some measure to produce it. What deep grat.i.tude I owe to my serene patron and critic, for having, beside the money, poured into me such a flood of inspiration!”
”If I had not seen the man at the canvas painting,” exclaimed Edward smiling, ”he might make me believe the picture was genuine.”
”What hast thou seen?” answered the old man warmly: ”what dost thou understand of the magic of art, and of those invisible spirits which are attracted and embodied by means of colour and design? These are very mysteries for the profane. Dost believe then that a man only paints to make a picture, and that the pallet, the pencil and the good purpose are sufficient? O my dear simpleton, there must concur besides strange conjunctures, astral influxes, and the favour of a variety of spirits, in order to bring about a work as it should be! Did it never fall within thy experience, that an artist of fine perceptions and great depth of thought has spread his canvas, and dipped his pencil into the best colours, to lure and entice the most lovely ideal into his net? He has proposed to himself in the simplicity of his heart to paint an Apollo, he draws and touches, and rubs and brushes, and smiles enamoured and with the sweetest complacency at the creature which is to issue from the void and mist; and now when it is finished, behold all his skilfully-laid nets have caught a mere 'lob of spirits,' that grins and mows at us out of the Arcadian landscape! Now come the ignoramuses, and bawl and rave: 'The painter fellow has no talent, he has not properly understood the antique, he has produced a daub instead of an ideal,' and more such crude judgments. So is justice refused to the susceptible heart of the artist, because an absolute devil, an imp of darkness has fallen into the snare of his art, instead of an angel of light. For these spirits also range about, and only watch for an opportunity to embody themselves. Works of former painters, which have somehow been lost, often wander about a long while distressed in empty s.p.a.ce, till a kind and able man again affords them an opportunity of descending in a visible shape. It has cost me labour enough to recover that composition of the excellent Roman artist; it requires more study than thou didst spend in thy boyhood to kidnap thy neighbour's pigeons.
If thou art of opinion that, to paint a sacred history, a man is not obliged to bring all his devotion to bear upon the subject, thou art under a great error, from which our talented young friend Dietrich would be best able to relieve thee.”
Dietrich, who had just entered, and heard only the last sentiment, took occasion directly to enlarge on this theme. In the meanwhile, Eulenbock had the cloth laid, and arranged the wines in the order according to which they were to be tasted; after this he addressed himself to Edward with the question: ”And what dost thou think of setting about now for the future?”
”In the first instance not much,” answered he: ”in the meanwhile I mean to resume and carry on my neglected studies, and in particular to apply myself to history and the modern languages. I shall retrench, let the other parts of my house, which now stand empty without being of use to me, and retain only this little saloon and the adjoining rooms. In this way I hope, with a prudent style of living, to make s.h.i.+ft easily for the first years, and in the meanwhile to render myself fit for some place or other.”
”Here then will be thy study?” said Eulenbock, shaking his head. ”This place does not at all please me, for I do not think these walls are adapted to lucubration; they have not the proper repercussion; the room itself has not the right quadrature; the thoughts rebound too violently and make a clatter; and if ever you want to continue them in a fugue, they will be sure all to clash in a hubbub together. It was another whim of your poor papa to spoil as he did this fine saloon in his latter years by his caprice. Formerly one looked upon the street on the one side, and here, on the other, over the garden and the park, away to the hills and distant mountains. He not only blocked up this fine view, but even covered the window niches to a great depth with boards and wainscotting, and so destroyed the symmetry of the room. If I were in thy place, I would tear all that stuff, tapestry, and wainscotting open again, and if any of the windows are to be lost, block up those which look on the street.”
”It was not caprice,” said Edward; ”it was done, this being his favourite room, on account of his health; the east wind hurt him, and caused him twinges of the gout. The verdant prospect he could enjoy in the other rooms.”
”If old Walther was not a fool,” proceeded Eulenbock, ”you were easily relieved. He might give you the girl, who must at all events be settled, and all would be right again.”
”Silence!” cried Edward, with the greatest vehemence: ”only to-day let me forget what I hoped and dreamt. I would cease to think of her, since to my horror I have begun to feel that I love her. I will not remind myself how stupidly and foolishly I behaved to her father; not a thought shall cross me to-day, not even her incomprehensible behaviour.
No, a glorious lot was prepared for me, I have become aware of it too late; the punishment of my heedlessness is that I must renounce it for ever! But how I can live without her, the future must teach me.”
Here the young man, who till now had played the part of Edward's librarian, came in. ”Here is the catalogue you ordered,” said he, presenting a few leaves to the youth, who received them with shame.
”How!” he exclaimed, ”not more than about six hundred volumes remaining of that fine collection, and among these only the most ordinary works?”
The librarian shrugged his shoulders. ”As from the beginning,” he replied, ”you paid me my salary in books, I was forced to take those which found the readiest purchasers; nor am I a sufficient judge of curiosities, and probably did not set a sufficient value on these; besides books, particularly rarities, vary in their value at different times; and if the seller is hard prest to raise a sum, he must take almost whatever is offered to him.”
”At this rate then,” said Edward, half in sadness, half with laughter, ”I should certainly have done better to engage no librarian at all, or have sold the collection at first; I should then have had money in lieu of it, or have kept the books. And what a collection! With what affection my father cherished It! What a joy it was to him, when he obtained the rare Petrarch, the first edition of Dante and Boccacio.
How could I forget that in most of these books there are notes from his hand! How would I prize these works, if I still possessed them!
However, as I have no longer a library, you will suppose, as indeed I lately gave you notice, that I have no farther occasion for a librarian. In the mean while, we will spend one more merry day together.”
Now came in the man who had often taken part in these wild bouts, and whom, on account of his turn of character, they never called by any other name but that of the Puritan. This name they had given him, because he never chimed in with the cheerful mirth or frolicsome extravagance of the rest, but amidst mutterings and moral reflections consumed his share of the feast. ”Now we only want the Crocodile,”
cried Eulenbock, ”and we are all met.” This was a little hypochondriac bookseller, pale and shrivelled, but one of the hardest drinkers. They had given him this singular name, because as soon as the slightest fumes of the liquor mounted into his brain he burst into tears, and continued to shed them in the greater abundance, the longer the carouse lasted, and the more extravagant the gaiety of the rest. The door opened, and the rueful figure completed the odd circle of the guests.
The table was covered with Perigord pies, oysters, and other savory viands; the company took their seats, and Eulenbock, whose purple face between the tapers cast a reverend sheen, thus solemnly began: ”My a.s.sembled friends, a stranger who should suddenly step into this room might be induced, by these arrangements, which have the appearance of a feast, if he was not intimately acquainted with the members of the company, to conceive the opinion, that preparations had here been made for guzzling, drinking, riot and extravagant jollity, such as befits only the rude mult.i.tude. Even a young artist named Dietrich, who is now for the first time sitting among us at this table, darts wondering glances at the mult.i.tude of these bottles and dishes, at these goose-liver pies, at these oysters and muscles and at the whole apparatus of a solemnity, which to him seems to promise an excess of sensual enjoyment, and he too will be surprized when he learns in how entirely different and directly opposite a sense all this is meant.
Gentlemen, I beg you to give me your attention and not to let my words drop too lightly on your ears. If countries solemnize the birth of a prince, if in Arabia a whole tribe hails with festive rejoicings the epoch, when a poet makes his appearance and distinguishes himself; if the installation of a Lord Mayor is celebrated with a banquet; if even the birth of horses of generous breed is with good cause signalized in an impressive manner: it surely concerns us still more closely (not to end with an anti-climax) to look up, to feel an emotion and to touch gla.s.ses a little, when the immortal spirit discovers itself to us, when virtue deigns to appear before us in corporeal shape. Yes, my friends, with affected heart I announce it to you, a young candidate for virtue is among us, who this very evening, like an emergent b.u.t.terfly, will burst his case, and unfold his wings in a new state of being. It is no other person than our generous host, who has given us so many a feast, and so often filled our gla.s.ses. But an ardent purpose, not to mention that he is himself on the shallows, that impetus of inspiration, of which the ancients sang, now tears him from us aloft into fields of light, and we, from this table and these bottles and dishes, his earthly burial-place, gaze after him in dizzy amazement, to see to what unknown regions he will now steer his flight. I tell you, my dearest friends, he is revolving innumerable and excellent resolutions in his bosom: and what cannot man, even the weakest and most inconsiderable, resolve? Did you ever consider, (but in your levity you think not of such things), that in a miserable map, if it contain only about a hundred places marked on it, a tract of a thousand miles may be concealed, and that yet it occupies itself no more room than a moderate folio? For there perspective lies by the side of perspective, and hill and dale and stream and wide, immeasurable prospects. So with purposes.
Weakly as our Puritan or our friend Dietrich look, they still can carry, in good resolutions, more than ten elephants or twenty camels.
How weak I am myself in this virtue, I know better than any one, and hence my reverence for those in whom I perceive such powers.
”Now, as we are not all susceptible of this inspiration, we sit here at this table as at a crossway, whence several roads branch off in various and opposite directions. At leading points of this sort, it is usual for the distances of towns towards all the four quarters of the world to be inscribed on a pyramidal post. The same may be said, under a not unjoyous image, to be the case here. These oysters, taken in excess, lead to sickness; this Burgundy, after a few stages, to red noses; these truffles, with the appurtenances, to dropsy, cardialgy and similar complaints. Our Edward however disdaining all this moves on towards virtue. Fare thee well then on thy lonesome path, and we that are not so much afraid of carbuncled faces, pot-bellies and short breath, proceed along our road. But I too shall shortly leave you, my dearest companions. A generous stranger, whose name I may not yet mention, will animate my genius to the highest performances. He will in distant regions dispose me to receive the unction of idealism, and, if I may so speak, etherialize me. Our pious, warm-hearted Dietrich, with whom we have scarcely become acquainted, pursues his course along painted aisles and decorates his country's altars. What shall I say of thee, librarian, thou who standest before the empty bookcases, and hast not merely read, but literally swallowed, the works? O thou cormorant of erudition, thou of the sect of the Mussulman Omar, canker-worm of libraries, ravager of literature, thou that couldst destroy a new Alexandrian collection, simply by the excellent new device of drawing thy salary, not intellectually, but really, from its books. All the booksellers of the Roman empire ought to send thee round to reduce collections to atoms by thy destructive power, and create a demand for new works. Thou, more than reviewer and worse than Saturn, who only devoured what he had himself begotten: where are they, thy wards, thy pupils, that with their gilt backs and edges so sweetly smiled on thee?
To silver hast thou turned them all, and allowed a short interval between their golden and silver age. Farewell thou too, Puritan, most ingenuous of mortals, thou hater of all poetry and lies. Reach me thy hand at parting, poor Crocodile, that already art swimming in tears. In the mora.s.s of a tavern must thou howl in future. In a better life we shall all see one another again.”
As Edward was pensive, and Dietrich still a stranger in the company, and the librarian and Puritan made no grimaces, there prevailed, during and after this harangue, a profound silence, rendered the more solemn by the sobs and moanings of the bookseller, who had by this time emptied several gla.s.ses. ”This is Twelfth night,” said Edward, ”and as it is the custom in many parts to make presents on this day, so I wish my old companions and friends to pa.s.s another convivial night with me.”
”On this evening,” proceeded Eulenbock, ”there is no impropriety in deviating for once in a way from the usual routine of life. Hence games of chance were formerly customary at this season, though at other times they were forbidden. And how happy would it be for thee, friend Edward, if to-day thy lucky star were to rise again, and the impoverished spendthrift were favoured with a new fortune. One hears strange tales how young men, reduced by poverty to despair, have determined to hang themselves in their family mansion, and behold, down falls the nail with the beam of the ceiling, and with them at the same time many thousand gold pieces, which the prudent father had secreted there.
Closely examined, a silly story. Was it possible then for the father to know that his son would have a particular partiality for hanging? Could he calculate, that the body of the desperate youth would retain substance enough to discover and pull down by its weight the hidden treasure? Might not the prodigal son before have wanted to fix a chandelier there, and so found the money? In short, a thousand solid objections may be made by rational criticism to this ill-contrived tale.”
”Without thy returning constantly to this taunt,” said Edward, nettled, ”my own conscience upbraids my levity and foolish dissipation. Were it not for the unruliness of the pa.s.sions, which take a pride in setting reason at defiance, the preachers of morality would have light work of it. It is quite intelligible, that we poor mortals should believe ourselves possessed by evil spirits. For how is it to be explained, that one follows the bad at the same time that one perceives the better, nay, that often, even in our wildest hours, we feel more impelled towards good than towards evil, and even before the commission of the deed are tormented by our consciences? There must be a deeply-rooted corruption in human nature, and one that will never be perfectly trained to a generous growth, nor changed by grafts of virtue.”
”So it is,” said the Puritan: ”man is in himself good for nothing, he miscarried at his very creation. He can only be patched, and the botches always remain visible in the old rotten cloth.”