CHAPTER XIV.
FROM SIBYLLINE BOOKS.
On the way Manna said:--
"Do you know that I had an aversion for you, when I came here?"
"Yes indeed, I knew it."
"And why didn't you try to convert me from it?"
Eric was silent, and Manna asked him once more:--
"Is it then a matter of so much indifference to you what people thinkof you?"
"No, but I am a servant of your house, and have no right to seek forany special consideration in your sight."
"You are very proud."
"I do not deny it."
"Don't you know that pride is a fault?"
"To be sure, when one makes pretensions and detracts from the worth ofothers. But I keep my pride for myself alone, or rather, I say withSt. Simon:--'If I consider myself I feel dejected, if I consider myfellow-men I feel proud.'"
"You are too: clever for me," said Manna, banteringly.
"I don't like to hear you say so, for those are only empty words. Noman is too clever for another, if each one says to himself: 'I havesomething in my own way too. You should not make use of suchexpressions. My respect for you rests upon the very fact that I neverbefore heard from you an empty phrase. What you say is not alwayslogically true, but it is true for you."
"I thank you." Said Manna quickly, resting the tips of her fingers uponhis hand; and, as if recollecting herself, she added hastily oncemore:--
"I thank you."
"I know not why it is; I have been delivered from an oppressivemelancholy, and I feel as if it was a whole year since I was so sad. Wehave the good fortune to understand each other in the highest,thoughts, and thought in the highest strain admits no measurement oftime."
"Ah yes," rejoined Manna, "in the very midst of all my sorrows thethought has been present to me all day: 'Something is coming that willgive you joy.' Now I know what it was. You were the friend andinstructor of Roland; take me instead of him; be my friend andinstructor. Will you?"
She stretched out her hand to him, and both gazed at each other with alook of joy.
"Ah, there sits your mother," cried Manna all at once; with a swiftstep she hastened to the Professorin, and kissed her passionately.
The Professorin was astonished to see her. Is this the same maiden atwhose bedside she had sat the evening before, whose chilled hands shehad warmed, to whom she had spoken the words of encouragement? Youth isan everlasting riddle.
Manna held her hand to her eyes for some time, and as she opened themonce more, she said:--
"Ah, if I only were the bird up there in the air!"
The mother made no answer, and Manna continued:--
"I see everything to-day for the first time; there is the Rhine,there are the mountains, there the houses, there the men; a bird ofpassage,--yes, one that has been hatched in Asia.--is coming towardsus, towards you. I am really so sorrowful, so sad; and still there issomething within me singing lustily and singing always; 'Thou artmerry, do not seek to be otherwise.' Ah, mother, it is dreadfullysinful to be as I am."
"No, my child, you are still a child, and a child, they say, has smilesand tears in the same bag. Rejoice that you are so young; perhapssomething of childhood has been repressed in you, and now it is comingout. No one can say when, and no one can say where. We take things toohard altogether; things are not quite so frightful as we women imagine.I am quite cheerful since the Doctor was here. We may become accustomedto look at everything in a gloomy way; then it is well if some onecomes and says: 'But just see the world is neither so wicked not sogood as we persuade ourselves it! is, and things run on either well orill, and not in their logical course.' My blessed husband said thatmany and many a time."
Manna seemed not to have heard what the Mother said; she exclaimed in amerry tone:--
"At this moment we are all ennobled, and still I do not perceiveanything of the nobility in me, and yet one ought to be able toperceive something."
There was an unusually light-hearted tone in everything she said, andshe continued:--
"Tell me now, how did you feel on the day you laid aside yournobility?"
"No trace of sorrow; it only pained me when my lady friends assured mestrongly that they would always remain the same to me; and in this veryassurance lay the conviction that it was otherwise; and they were allthe time telling me how they had loved me, as if I were no longerliving, and indeed to many I was already dead, for to them a humanbeing that has lost the rank of noble, is, as it were, sunk into therealm of the departed spirits."
The Mother and Manna sat trustfully beside each other; for a time everysorrow was forgotten, every care, every anxiety.
Eric had left the Mother and Manna alone; he was standing near arose-bush and observing how the rose leaves were falling off, sosoftly, so quietly, as if plucked by a spirit-hand. He gazed at theleaves on the ground, he knew not his thoughts. Roland, Manna, hismother, the terrible past of Sonnenkamp, all was confusion in his mind;he believed that he no longer saw the world as it is. If he only hadsome one to call him to himself. He felt how his cheeks were glowing,and how he was trembling.
You love and are beloved by this maiden, by the daughter of this man.
What is a daughter?
Every one exists for himself alone.
On the ground floor was his father's library; the windows were open; hewent in.
It entered into his mind that there must be something in themanuscripts left by his father that would give him consolation andsupport; perhaps the spirit of his father would speak to his joyful andsorrowful perplexity. He began to search amongst the papers; everythingseemed to be ready for his hand that was not wanted. He untied a bundleof pieces, the superscription of which bore the title, "SibyllineBooks;" he took up a leaf.
"That's the thing!" he exclaimed.
He was standing with his back leaned against the open window; he heardhis mother advising Manna to adhere right steadfastly and faithfully toher religious convictions. There were, it is true, forms andobservances in it which she did not recognize as her own, but there wasalso in it the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, which alone gives usstrength to bear misfortune and sustain joy.
"Mother," he called out, suddenly turning round.
The women started.
"Mother, I bring you something that carries on your idea."
He went out, showed them his father's writing, and said that he wouldread to them.
"Ah yes," exclaimed Manna; "it is good and kind of you to bring yourfather here; how I would have liked to know him. Do you not believethat he is now looking down upon us?"
Eric looked at his mother; he did not know what answer to give, and theMother said:--
"According to the ordinary conception of the word 'looking,' we cannotconceive its being done without eyes. We have no conception how aspirit exists, but there is not a day nor an hour that I do not live incommunion with my departed husband; he has come with me here, he willremain with me wherever I go, till my last breath. But let me see--whatis it, Eric?"
"It has an odd title," answered the latter; "it treats of these things,which I cannot explain, and which perhaps no one can explain."
"Read, I beg of you," entreated Manna.
Eric began to read:--
"Two things there are which stand firm, while the heart of man iskept vacillating between defiance and despondency, haughtiness andfaint-heartedness; they are _nature_ and the _ideal within us_. Thechurch is also a strong-hold of the ideal, firm and secure; althoughfor me and many like me, it is not the only one.
"You say, nature does not help us. What help is she to me, when thecrushing conviction of imperfection, of perdition, of guilt comes uponme and takes me captive? Well, nature does not speak; she simplypermits herself to be explained, understood; she gives back the echo ofwhat we call out to her. The church, on the contrary, speaks to us inour individual griefs, she takes us up into the universal; that is thegreat lesson of the expiato
ry suffering. We lay our grief aside when wethink of the great grief which the greatest of hearts took unto itself.
"And what is the third? you ask.
"A third is, nature and the ideal combined, which together elevate andsustain us.
"What is the third? We call it art, we can also call it love, heroism.In this view of mine, all philosophy also belongs to art. What thegenius of a man has created and fashioned out of himself as theevidence of his existence, insight, and will, appears in art as visibleforms, looks down upon us in marble and in color, makes itself heard byus in word and in melody, allows us to be conscious and to feel surethat our fractional, half-expressed being has fullness and completion.
"These are the images, these are the deeds of genius, wrought inconsecrated moments.
"Art does not console sorrow, it does not heal directly, but it bringsbefore the eyes, it sounds in the ear, saying, 'Attend! there is alife, pure and perfect, that we carry within us. Art is an image ofstrength, of joy, of content, of courage; it does not reach out itshand to us, it simply enables us to compose ourselves in the knowledge,in the consciousness, in the perception of an existence reposing initself outside of us; this we comprehend.'"
Eric interrupted himself, saying:--
"Here the remark is made: 'I knew a woman once, who would neither makenor listen to music during her period of mourning, showing what art wasto her.'"
A pause followed.
Eric continued his reading:--
"In the hours of deepest tribulation I have found consolation, peace,restoration, solely in wandering among ancient works of art; others mayderive the same benefit from music that I have from viewing these formsof antiquity. It was not the thought of the grand world which had herebecome bronze and marble; it was not the remembrance of the soulspeaking out of these forms that held me fast, but something fardifferent from either. Behold here, they seemed to say to me, ablissful repose, which has nothing in common with thee, and yet is withthee. A breath of the Eternal was wafted over me, a peaceful restflowed into my troubled heart, filled my gaze, and calmed my emotions.In listening to music I could always dwell dreamily upon my own lifeand thought, but never here.
"If I were only able to unfold whither this led me, how I wandered inthe infinite, and then how I went abroad into the tumultuous whirl oflife, feeling that I was attended by these steadfast, peaceful, godlikeforms; that I was----"
Eric broke off abruptly.
Manna begged:--
"Do read on."
"There is nothing further. My beloved father, alas! left only fragmentsbehind him."
"This is no fragment, it is complete and perfect. No man could say orwrite anything further," said Manna; "nothing else is needed but toallow it to have its inward work. Ah, I have one request--give me thesheet."
Eric looked towards his mother, who said that she had never yet partedwith a single line of her husband's.
"But you, my child," she said, "you shall have it. Eric shall copy itfor us so that we may not lose it."
She gave the manuscript to Manna, who pressed it to her heaving breast.
"Oh, I never imagined," she cried, "that there was such a world in theworld."
Every drop of blood seemed to have retreated from her face; she beggedthe Mother to be allowed to go into the house; she would like to bealone, she was so weary.
The Mother accompanied her. Manna reclined upon the sofa, and thecurtains were drawn; she fell asleep with the manuscript in her hand.
The Mother and Eric sat together, and Eric determined to make use ofthis first opportunity, when there was no immediate duty binding him,to publish the incomplete and fragmentary writings left by his father,as there would be found many to make them into a whole within their ownsouls.
He now felt all at once free and full of life; now there was somethingfor him to do; and he could fulfil at the same time a pious, filialduty, and his duty as a man. He could make essential additions from hisown knowledge, and from his father's verbal statements.
He went back to the library, and was deeply engaged in the writings,when Manna entered.
"You here?" she said. "I wanted to take one look at the outside of allthe books on which your father's eye has rested. I must now go home,but I have to day received a great deal more than I can tell."
"May I accompany you?"
Manna assented.
They went together across the meadow to the Villa.
Das landhaus am Rhein. English Page 162