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Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Travels, Vol. I (of 2)
CHAPTER VIII
At length the prince arrived, with all his generals, staff-officers, and suite accompanying him. These, and the multitude of people coming to visit or do business with him, made the castle like a beehive on the point of swarming. All pressed forward to behold a man no less distinguished by his rank than by his great qualities, and all admired his urbanity and condescension: all were astonished at finding the hero and the leader of armies also the most accomplished and attractive courtier.
By the count's orders, the inmates of the castle were required to be all at their posts when the prince arrived: not a player was allowed to show himself, that his Highness might have no anticipation of the spectacle prepared to welcome him. Accordingly, when at evening he was led into the lofty hall, glowing with light, and adorned with tapestries of the previous century, he seemed not at all prepared to expect a play, and still less a prelude in honor of himself. Every thing went off as it should have done: at the conclusion of the show, the whole troop were called and presented individually to the prince, who contrived, with the most pleasing and friendly air, to put some question, or make some remark, to every one of them. Wilhelm, as author of the piece, was particularly noticed, and had his tribute of applause liberally paid him.
The prelude being fairly over, no one asked another word about it: in a few days, it was as if it never had existed; except that occasionally Jarno spoke of it to Wilhelm, judiciously praised it, adding, however, "It is pity you should play with hollow nuts, for a stake of hollow nuts." This expression stuck in Wilhelm's mind for several days: he knew not how to explain it, or what to infer from it.
Meanwhile the company kept acting every night, as well as their capacities permitted; each doing his utmost to attract the attention of spectators. Undeserved applauses cheered them on: in their old castle they fully believed, that the great assemblage was crowding thither solely on their account; that the multitude of strangers was allured by their exhibitions; that they were the centre round which, and by means of which, the whole was moving and revolving.
Wilhelm alone discovered, to his sorrow, that directly the reverse was true. For although the prince had waited out the first exhibitions, sitting on his chair, with the greatest conscientiousness, yet by degrees he grew remiss in his attendance, and seized every plausible occasion of withdrawing. And those very people whom Wilhelm, in conversation, had found to be the best informed and most sensible, with Jarno at their head, were wont to spend but a few transitory moments in the hall of the theatre; sitting for the rest of their time in the ante-chamber, gaming, or seeming to employ themselves in business.
Amid all his persevering efforts, to want the wished and hoped for approbation grieved Wilhelm very deeply. In the choice of plays, in transcribing the parts, in numerous rehearsals, and whatever further could be done, he zealously co-operated with Melina, who, being in secret conscious of his own insufficiency, at length acknowledged and pursued these counsels. His own parts, Wilhelm diligently studied, and executed with vivacity and feeling, and with all the propriety the little training he had yet received would allow.
At the same time, the unwearied interest the baron took in their performances obliterated every doubt from the minds of the rest of the company: he assured them that their exhibitions were producing the deepest effect, especially while one of his own pieces had been representing; only he was grieved to say, the prince showed an exclusive inclination for the French theatre; while a part of his people, among whom Jarno was especially distinguished, gave a passionate preference to the monstrous productions of the English stage.
If in this way the art of our players was not adequately noticed and admired, their persons on the other hand grew not entirely indifferent to all the gentlemen and all the ladies of the audience. We observed above, that, from the very first, our actresses had drawn upon them the attention of the young officers: in the sequel they were luckier, and made more important conquests. But, omitting these, we shall merely observe, that Wilhelm every day appeared more interesting to the countess; while in him, too, a silent inclination towards her was beginning to take root. Whenever he was on the stage, she could not turn her eyes from him; and, erelong, he seemed to play and to recite with his face towards her alone. To look upon each other, was to them the sweetest satisfaction; to which their harmless souls yielded without reserve, without cherishing a bolder wish, or thinking about any consequence.
As two hostile outposts will sometimes peacefully and pleasantly converse together across the river which divides them, not thinking of the war in which both their countries are engaged: so did the countess exchange looks full of meaning with our friend, across the vast chasm of birth and rank; both believing for themselves that they might safely cherish their several emotions.
The baroness, in the mean time, had selected Laertes, who, being a spirited and lively young man, pleased her very much; and who, woman-hater as he was, felt unwilling to refuse a passing adventure. He would actually on this occasion have been fettered, against his will, by the courteous and attractive nature of the baroness, had not the baron done him accidentally a piece of good, or, if you will, of bad, service, by instructing him a little in the habits and temper of this lady.
Laertes, happening once to celebrate her praises, and give her the preference to every other of her sex, the baron, with a grin, replied, "I see how matters stand: our fair friend has got a fresh inmate for her stalls." This luckless comparison, which pointed too clearly to the dangerous caresses of the Circe, grieved poor Laertes to the heart: he could not listen to the baron without spite and anger, as the latter continued without mercy, —
"Every stranger thinks he is the first whom this delightful manner of proceeding has concerned, but he is grievously mistaken; for we have all, at one time or another, been trotted round this course. Man, youth, or boy, be who he like, each must devote himself to her service for a season, must hang about her, and toil and long to gain her favor."
To the happy man just entering the garden of an enchantress, and welcomed by all the pleasures of an artificial spring, nothing can form a more unpleasant surprise, than if, while his ear is watching and drinking in the music of the nightingales, some transformed predecessor on a sudden grunts at his feet.
After this discovery, Laertes felt heartily ashamed that vanity should have again misled him to think well, even in the smallest degree, of any woman whatsoever. He now entirely forsook the baroness; kept by the Stallmeister, with whom he diligently fenced and hunted; conducting himself at rehearsals and representations as if these were but secondary matters.
The count and his lady would often in the mornings send for some of the company to attend them, and all had continual cause to envy the undeserved good fortune of Philina. The count kept his favorite, the Pedant, frequently for hours together, at his toilet. This genius had been dressed out by degrees: he was now equipped and furnished, even to watch and snuff-box.
Many times, too, particularly after dinner, the whole company were called out before the noble guests, – an honor which the artists regarded as the most flattering in the world; not observing, that on these very occasions the servants and huntsmen were ordered to bring in a multitude of hounds, and to lead strings of horses about the court of the castle.
Wilhelm had been counselled to praise Racine, the prince's favorite, and thereby to attract some portion of his Highness's favor to himself. On one of these afternoons, being summoned with the rest, he found an opportunity to introduce this topic. The prince asked him if he diligently read the great French dramatic writers, to which Wilhelm answered with a very eager "Yes." He did not observe that his Highness, without waiting for the answer, was already on the point of turning round to some one else: he fixed upon him, on the contrary, almost stepping in his way, and proceeded to declare that he valued the French theatre very highly, and read the works of their great masters with delight; particularly he had learned with true joy that his Highness did complete justice to the great talents of Racine. "I can easily conceive," continued he, "how people of high breeding and exalted rank must value a poet who has painted so excellently and so truly the circumstances of their lofty station. Corneille, if I may say so, has delineated great men; Racine, men of eminent rank. In reading his plays, I can always figure to myself the poet as living at a splendid court, with a great king before his eyes, in constant intercourse with the most distinguished persons, and penetrating into the secrets of human nature, as it works concealed behind the gorgeous tapestry of palaces. When I study his "Britannicus," his "Bérénice," it seems as if I were transported in person to the court, were initiated into the great and the little, in the habitations of these earthly gods: through the fine and delicate organs of my author, I see kings whom a nation adores, courtiers whom thousands envy, in their natural forms, with their failings and their pains. The anecdote of Racine's dying of a broken heart, because Louis Fourteenth would no longer attend to him, and had shown him his dissatisfaction, is to me the key to all his works. It was impossible that a poet of his talents, whose life and death depended on the looks of a king, should not write such works as a king and a prince might applaud."
Jarno had stepped near, and was listening with astonishment. The prince, who had made no answer, and had only shown his approbation by an assenting look, now turned aside; though Wilhelm, who did not know that it was contrary to etiquette to continue a discussion under such circumstances, and exhaust a subject, would gladly have spoken more, and convinced the prince that he had not read his favorite poet without sensibility and profit.
"Have you never," said Jarno, taking him aside, "read one of Shakspeare's plays?"
"No," replied Wilhelm: "since the time when they became more known in Germany, I have myself grown unacquainted with the theatre; and I know not whether I should now rejoice that an old taste, and occupation of my youth, has been by chance renewed. In the mean time, all I have heard of these plays has excited no wish to become acquainted with such extraordinary monsters, which appear to set probability and dignity alike at defiance."
"I would advise you," said the other, "to make a trial, notwithstanding: it can do one no harm to look at what is extraordinary with one's own eyes. I will lend you a volume or two; and you cannot better spend your time, than by casting every thing aside, and retiring to the solitude of your old habitation, to look into the magic-lantern of that unknown world. It is sinful of you to waste your hours in dressing out these apes to look more human, and teaching dogs to dance. One thing only I require, – you must not cavil at the form: the rest I can leave to your own good sense and feeling."
The horses were standing at the door; and Jarno mounted with some other cavaliers, to go and hunt. Wilhelm looked after him with sadness. He would fain have spoken much with this man, who, though in a harsh, unfriendly way, gave him new ideas, – ideas he had need of.
Oftentimes a man, when approaching some development of his powers, capacities, and conceptions, gets into a perplexity, from which a prudent friend might easily deliver him. He resembles a traveller who, at but a short distance from the inn he is to rest at, falls into the water: were any one to catch him then, and pull him to the bank, with one good wetting it were over; whereas, though he struggles out himself, it is often at the side where he tumbled in; and he has to make a wide and dreary circuit before reaching his appointed object.
Wilhelm now began to have an inkling that things went forward in the world differently from what he had supposed. He now viewed close at hand the solemn and imposing life of the great and distinguished, and wondered at the easy dignity which they contrived to give it. An army on its march, a princely hero at the head of it, such a multitude of co-operating warriors, such a multitude of crowding worshippers, exalted his imagination. In this mood he received the promised books; and erelong, as may be easily supposed, the stream of that mighty genius laid hold of him, and led him down to a shoreless ocean, where he soon completely forgot and lost himself.
CHAPTER IX
The connection between the baron and the actors had suffered various changes since the arrival of the latter. At the commencement it had been productive of great satisfaction to both parties. As the baron for the first time in his life now saw one of those plays, with which he had already graced a private theatre, put into the hands of real actors, and in the fair way for a decent exhibition, he showed the benignest humor in the world. He was liberal in gifts: he bought little presents for the actresses from every millinery hawker, and contrived to send over many an odd bottle of champagne to the actors. In return for all this, our company took every sort of trouble with his play; and Wilhelm spared no diligence in learning, with extreme correctness, the sublime speeches of that very eminent hero, whose part had fallen to his share.
But, in spite of all these kind reciprocities, some clouds by degrees arose between the players and their patron. The baron's preference for certain actors became daily more observable: this of necessity chagrined the rest. He exalted his favorites quite exclusively, and thus, of course, introduced disunion and jealousy among the company. Melina, without skill to help himself in dubious junctures, felt his situation very vexing. The persons eulogized accepted of their praise, without being singularly thankful for it; while the neglected gentlemen showed traces of their spleen by a thousand methods, and constantly found means to make it very disagreeable for their once much-honored patron to appear among them. Their spite received no little nourishment from a certain poem, by an unknown author, which made a great sensation in the castle. Previously to this the baron's intercourse with the company had given rise to many little strokes of merriment; several stories had been raised about him; certain little incidents, adorned with suitable additions, and presented in the proper light, had been talked of, and made the subject of much bantering and laughter. At last it began to be said that a certain rivalry of trade was arising between him and some of the actors, who also looked upon themselves as writers. The poem we spoke of was founded upon this report: it ran as follows: —
"Lord Baron, I, poor devil, own
With envy, you your rank and state;
Your station, too, so near the throne;
Of heirs your possessions great;
Your father's seat, with walls and mounds,
His game-preserves, and hunting-grounds.
While me, poor devil, it appears,
Lord Baron, you with envy view,
Since Nature, from my early years,
Has held me like a mother true,
With heart and head both light, I poor,
But no poor wight grew, to be sure.
My dear Lord Baron, now to me
It seems, we well alone should let,
That you your father's son still be,
And I remain my mother's pet:
Let's free from envy live, and hate;
Nor let's desire each other's title:
No place you on Parnassus great,
No noble rank I in requital."
My dear Lord Baron, now to me
It seems, we well alone should let,
That you your father's son still be,
And I remain my mother's pet:
Let's free from envy live, and hate;
Nor let's desire each other's title:
No place you on Parnassus great,
No noble rank I in requital."
– Editor's Version.
Upon this poem, which various persons were possessed of, in copies scarcely legible, opinions were exceedingly divided. But who the author was, no one could guess; and, as some began to draw a spiteful mirth from it, our friend expressed himself against it very keenly.
"We Germans," he exclaimed, "deserve to have our Muses still continue in the low contempt wherein they have languished so long; since we cannot value men of rank who take a share in our literature, no matter how! Birth, rank, and fortune are no wise incompatible with genius and taste; as foreign nations, reckoning among their best minds a great number of noblemen, can fully testify. Hitherto, indeed, it has been rare in Germany for men of high station to devote themselves to science; hitherto few famous names have become more famous by their love of art and learning; while many, on the other hand, have mounted out of darkness to distinction, and risen like unknown stars on the horizon. Yet such will not always be the case; and I greatly err, if the first classes of the nation are not even now in the way of also employing their advantages to earn the fairest laurels of the Muses, at no distant date. Nothing, therefore, grieves me more than to see the burgher jeering at the noble who can value literature; nay, even men of rank themselves, with inconsiderate caprice, maliciously scaring off their equal from a path where honor and contentment wait on all."
Apparently this latter observation pointed at the count, of whom Wilhelm had heard that he liked the poem very much. In truth, this nobleman, accustomed to rally the baron in his own peculiar way, was extremely glad of such an opportunity to plague his kinsman more effectually. As to who the writer of the squib might be, each formed his own hypothesis; and the count, never willing that another should surpass him in acuteness, fell upon a thought, which, in a short time, he would have sworn to the truth of. The verses could be written, he believed, by no one but his Pedant, who was a very shrewd knave, and in whom, for a long while, he had noticed some touches of poetic genius. By way of proper treat, he therefore caused the Pedant one morning to be sent for, and made him read the poem, in his own manner, in presence of the countess, the baroness, and Jarno, – a service he was paid for by applauses, praises, and a present; and, on the count's inquiring if he had not still some other poems of an earlier time, he cunningly contrived to evade the question. Thus did the Pedant get invested with the reputation of a poet and a wit, and, in the eyes of the baron's friends, of a pasquinader and a bad-hearted man. From that period, play as he might, the count applauded him with greater zeal than ever; so that the poor wight grew at last inflated till he nearly lost his senses, and began to meditate having a chamber in the castle, like Philina.
Had this project been fulfilled at once, a great mishap might have been spared him. As he was returning late one evening from the castle, groping about in the dark, narrow way, he was suddenly laid hold of, and kept on the spot by some persons, while some others rained a shower of blows upon him, and battered him so stoutly, that in a few seconds he was lying almost dead upon the place, and could not without difficulty crawl in to his companions. These, indignant as they seemed to be at such an outrage, felt their secret joy in the adventure: they could hardly keep from laughing, at seeing him so thoroughly curried, and his new brown coat bedusted through and through, and bedaubed with white, as if he had had to do with millers.
The count, who soon got notice of the business, broke into a boundless rage. He treated this act as the most heinous crime, called it an infringement of the Burgfried, or peace of the castle, and caused his judge to make the strictest inquisition touching it. The whited coat, it was imagined, would afford a leading proof. Every creature that possibly could have the smallest trade with flour or powder in the castle was submitted to investigation, but in vain.
The baron solemnly protested on his honor, that although this sort of jesting had considerably displeased him, and the conduct of his lordship the count had not been the friendliest, yet he had got over the affair; and with respect to the misfortune which had come upon the poet, or pasquinader, or whatsoever his title might be, he knew absolutely nothing, and had not the most remote concern in it.
The operations of the strangers, and the general commotion of the house, soon effaced all recollection of the matter; and so, without redress, the unlucky favorite had to pay dear for the satisfaction of pluming himself, a short while, in feathers not his own.
Our troop, regularly acting every night, and on the whole very decently treated, now began to make more clamorous demands, the better they were dealt with. Erelong their victuals, drink, attendance, lodging, grew inadequate; and they called upon the baron, their protector, to provide more liberally for them, and at last make good those promises of comfortable entertainment, which he had been giving them so long. Their complaints grew louder, and the efforts of our friend to still them more and more abortive.
Meanwhile, excepting in rehearsals and hours of acting, Wilhelm scarcely ever came abroad. Shut up in one of the remotest chambers, to which Mignon and the harper alone had free access, he lived and moved in the Shakspearian world, feeling or knowing nothing but the movements of his own mind.
We have heard of some enchanter summoning, by magic formulas, a vast multitude of spiritual shapes into his cell. The conjurations are so powerful that the whole space of the apartment is quickly full; and the spirits, crowding on to the verge of the little circle which they must not pass, around this, and above the master's head, keep increasing in number, and ever whirling in perpetual transformation. Every corner is crammed, every crevice is possessed. Embryos expand themselves, and giant-forms contract into the size of nuts. Unhappily the black-artist has forgot the counterword, with which he might command this flood of sprites again to ebb.
So sat Wilhelm in his privacy: with unknown movements, a thousand feelings and capacities awoke in him, of which he formerly had neither notion nor anticipation. Nothing could allure him from this state: he was vexed and restless if any one presumed to come to him, and talk of news or what was passing in the world.
Accordingly, he scarce took notice of the circumstance, when told that a judicial sentence was about being executed in the castle-yard, – the flogging of a boy, who had incurred suspicions of nocturnal housebreaking, and who, as he wore a peruke-maker's coat, had most probably been one of the assaulters of the Pedant. The boy indeed, it seemed, denied most obstinately; so that they could not inflict a formal punishment, but meant to give him a slight memorial as a vagabond, and send him about his business; he having prowled about the neighborhood for several days, lain at night in the mills, and at last clapped a ladder to the garden-wall, and mounted over by it.
Our friend saw nothing very strange in the transaction, and was dismissing it altogether, when Mignon came running in, and assured him that the criminal was Friedrich, who, since the rencounter with the Stallmeister, had vanished from the company, and not again been heard of.
Feeling an interest in the boy, Wilhelm hastily arose: he found, in the court-yard of the castle, the preparations almost finished. The count loved solemnity on these occasions. The boy being now led out, our friend stepped forward, and entreated for delay, as he knew the boy, and had various things to say which might, perhaps, throw light on the affair. He had difficulty in succeeding, notwithstanding all his statements: at length, however, he did get permission to speak with the culprit in private. Friedrich averred, that, concerning the assault in which the Pedant had been used so harshly, he knew nothing whatever. He had merely been lurking about, and had come in at night to see Philina, whose room he had discovered, and would certainly have reached, had he not been taken by the way.
For the credit of the company, Wilhelm felt desirous not to have the truth of his adventure published. He hastened to the Stallmeister: he begged him to show favor, and, with his intimate knowledge of men and things about the castle, to find some means of quashing the affair, and dismissing the boy.
This whimsical gentleman, by Wilhelm's help, invented a little story, – how the boy had belonged to the troop, had run away from it, but soon wished to get back, and be received again into his place; how he had accordingly been trying in the night to come at certain of his well-wishers, and solicit their assistance. It was testified by others that his former behavior had been good: the ladies put their hands to the work, and Friedrich was let go.
Wilhelm took him in, – a third person in that strange family, which for some time he had looked on as his own. The old man and little Mignon received the returning wanderer kindly; and all the three combined to serve their friend and guardian with attention, and procure him all the pleasure in their power.
