Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Felix, who was swinging to and fro in the coach, cried up to him: “Father! Come, O come! Look at the pretty clouds, the pretty colours!” “Yes, I come,” cried Wilhelm, springing down-stairs; “and all the glories of the sky, which thou, good creature, so admirest, are as nothing to the moment which I look for.”

  Sitting in the coach, he recalled all the circumstances of the matter to his memory. “So this is the Natalia, then, Theresa’s friend! What a discovery: what hopes, what prospects! How strange that the fear of speaking about the one sister should have altogether concealed from me the existence of the other!” With what joy he looked on Felix! He anticipated for the child, as for himself, the best reception.

  Evening at last came on; the sun had set; the road was not the best; the postillion drove slowly; Felix had fallen asleep, and new cares and doubts arose in the bosom of our friend. “What delusion, what fantasies are these that rule thee!” said he to himself: “An uncertain similarity of handwriting has at once assured thee, and given thee matter for the strangest castles in the air.” He again brought out the paper; in the departing light he again imagined that he recognised the hand of the Countess: his eyes could no longer find in the parts what his heart had at once shown him in the whole. “These horses, then, are running with thee to a scene of terror! Who knows but in a few hours they may have to bring thee back again? And if thou shouldst meet with her alone! But perhaps her husband will be there; perhaps the Baroness? How altered will she be! Shall I not fail, and sink to the earth, at sight of her?”

  Yet a faint hope that it might be his Amazon, would often gleam through these gloomy thoughts. It was now night: the carriage rolled into a courtyard, and halted; a servant with a link stept out of stately portal, and came down the broad steps to the carriage-door. “You have been long looked for,” said he, opening it. Wilhelm dismounted; took the sleeping Felix in his arms: the first servant called to a second, who was standing in the door with a light: “Show the gentleman up to the Baroness.”

  Quick as lightning, it went through Wilhelm’s soul: “What a happiness! Be it by accident or of purpose, the Baroness is here! I shall see her first; apparently the Countess has retired to rest. Ye good spirits, grant that the moment of deepest perplexity may pass tolerably over!”

  He entered the house: he found himself in the most earnest, and, as he almost felt, the holiest place that he had ever trod. A pendent dazzling lustre threw its light upon a broad and softly rising flight of stairs, which lay before him, and which parted into two divisions at a turn above. Marble statues and busts were standing upon pedestals and arranged in niches: some of them seemed known to him. The impressions of our childhood abide with us, even in their minutest traces. He recognised a Muse, which had formerly belonged to his grandfather; not indeed by its form or worth, but by an arm which had been restored, and some new-inserted pieces of the robe. He felt as if a fairy tale had turned out to be true. The child was heavy in his arms; he lingered on the stairs, and knelt down, as if to place him more conveniently. His real want, however, was to get a moment’s breathing time. He could scarcely raise himself again. The servant, who was carrying the light, offered to take Felix; but Wilhelm could not part with him. He had now mounted to an antechamber; in which, to his still greater astonishment, he observed the well-known picture of the sick king’s son hanging on the wall. He had scarcely time to cast a look on it; the servant hurried him along through two rooms into a cabinet. Here, behind a light-screen, which threw a shadow on her, sat a young lady reading. “O that it were she!” said he within himself at this decisive moment. He set down the boy, who seemed to be awakening; he meant to approach the lady; but the child sank together drunk with sleep; the lady rose, and came to him. It was the Amazon! Unable to restrain himself, he fell upon his knee, and cried: “It is she!” He seized her hand, and kissed it with unbounded rapture. The child was lying on the carpet between them, sleeping softly.

  Felix was carried to the sofa: Natalia sat down beside him; she directed Wilhelm to the chair which was standing nearest them. She proposed to order some refreshments; these our friend declined; he was altogether occupied convincing himself that it was she, closely examining her features, shaded by the screen, and accurately recognizing them. She told him of Mignon’s sickness, in general terms; that the poor child was gradually consuming under the influence of a few deep feelings; that, with her extreme excitability, and her endeavouring to hide it, her little heart often suffered violent and dangerous pains; that any unexpected agitation of her mind, this primary organ of life would suddenly stop, and no trace of the vital movement could be felt in the good child’s bosom. That when such an agonising cramp was past, the force of nature would again express itself in strong pulses, and now torment the child by its excess, as she had before suffered by its defect.

  Wilhelm recollected one spasmodic scene of that description, and Natalia referred him to the doctor, who would speak with him at large on the affair, and explain more circumstantially why he, the friend and benefactor of the child, had been at present sent for. “One curious change,” Natalia added, “You will find in her: she now wears women’s clothes, to which she had once such an aversion.”

  “How did you succeed in this?” said Wilhelm.

  “If it was indeed a thing to be desired,” said she, “We owe it all to chance. Hear how it happened. Perhaps you are aware that I have constantly about me a number of little girls, whose opening minds I endeavour, as they grow in strength, to train to what is good and right. From my mouth they learn nothing but what I myself regard as true: yet I cannot and would not hinder them from gathering, among other people, many fragments of the common prejudices and errors which are current in the world. If they inquire of me about them, I attempt, as far as possible, to join these alien and intrusive notions to some just one, and thus to render them, if not useful, at least harmless. Some time ago, my girls had heard among the peasants’ children many tales of angels, of Knecht Rupert and such shadowy characters, who, they understood, appeared at certain times in person, to give presents to good children, and to punish naughty ones. They had an idea that these strange visitants were people in disguise: in this I confirmed them; and without entering into explanations, I determined on the first opportunity, to let them see a spectacle of that sort. It chanced that the birthday of two twin-sisters, whose behaviour had been always very good, was near; I promised that, on this occasion, the little present they had so well deserved should be delivered to them by an angel. They were on the stretch of curiosity regarding this phenomenon. I had chosen Mignon for the part; and accordingly, at the appointed day, I had her suitably equipt in a long light snow white dress. She was, of course, provided with a golden girdle round her waist, and a golden fillet on her hair. I at first proposed to omit the wings; but the young ladies who were decking her, insisted on a pair of large golden pinions, in preparing which they meant to show their highest art. Thus did the strange apparition, with a lily in the one hand, and a little basket in the other, glide in among the girls: she surprised even me. ‘There comes the angel!’ said I. The children all shrank back; at last they cried: ‘It is Mignon!’ yet they durst not venture to approach the wondrous figure.

  ‘Here are your gifts,’ said she, putting down the basket. They gathered around her, they viewed, they felt, they questioned her.

  ‘Art thou an angel?’ asked one of them.

  ‘I wish I were,’ said Mignon.

  ‘Why dost thou bear a lily?’

  ‘So pure and so open should my heart be; then were I happy.’

  ‘What wings are these? Let us see them!’

  ‘They represent far finer ones, which are not yet unfolded.’

  “And thus significantly did she answer all their other child like, innocent inquiries. The little party having satisfied their curiosity, and the impression of the show beginning to abate, we were for proceeding to undress the little angel. This, however, she resisted: she took her cithern; she seated herself he
re, on this high writing-table, and sang a little song with touching grace:

  Such let me seem till such I be;

  Take not my snow-white dress away!

  Soon from this dusk of earth I flee

  Up to the glittering lands of day.

  There first a little space I rest,

  Then wake so glad, to scene so kind;

  In earthly robes no longer drest,

  This band, this girdle left behind.

  And those calm shining sons of morn

  They ask not who is maid or boy;

  No robes, no garments there are worn,

  Our body pure from sin’s alloy.

  Through little life not much I toil’d,

  Yet anguish long this heart has wrung,

  Untimely woe my blossom spoil’d;

  Make me again forever young!

  “I immediately determined upon leaving her the dress,” proceeded Natalia; “and procuring her some others of a similar kind. These she now wears; and in them, I think, her form has quite a different expression.”

  As it was already late, Natalia let the stranger go: he parted from her not without anxiety. “Is she married or not?” asked he within himself. He had been afraid, at every rustling, that the door would open, and her husband enter. The serving-man, who showed him to his room, went off, before our friend had mustered resolution to inquire regarding this. His unrest held him long awake; he kept comparing the figure of the Amazon with the figure of his new acquaintance. The two would not combine: the former he had, as it were, himself fashioned; the latter seemed as if it would almost new-fashion him.

  CHAPTER III

  NEXT morning, while all was yet quiet, he went about viewing the house. It was the purest, finest, stateliest piece of architecture he had ever seen. “True art,” cried he, “is like good company: it constrains us in the most delightful way to recognise the measure by which, and up to which, our inward nature has been shaped by culture.” The impression which the busts and statues of his grandfather made upon him was exceedingly agreeable. With a longing mind, he hastened to the picture of the sick king’s son; and he still felt it to be charming and affecting. The servant opened to him various other chambers: he found a library, a museum, a cabinet of philosophical instruments. In much of this he could not help perceiving his extreme ignorance. Meanwhile Felix had awakened, and come running after him. The thought of how and when he might receive Theresa’s letter gave him pain; he dreaded seeing Mignon, and in some degree Natalia. How unlike his present state was his state at the moment when he sealed the letter to Theresa, and with a glad heart wholly gave himself to that noble being!

  Natalia sent for him to breakfast. He proceeded to a room, where several tidy little girls, all apparently below ten years, were occupied in furnishing a table, while another of the same appearance brought in various sorts of beverage.

  Wilhelm cast his eye upon a picture, hung above the sofa; he could not but recognise in it the portrait of Natalia, little as the execution satisfied him. Natalia entered, and the likeness seemed entirely to vanish. To his comfort, it was painted with the cross of a religious order on its breast; and he now saw another such upon Natalia’s.

  “I have just been looking at the portrait here,” said he; “and it seems surprising that a painter could have been at once so true and so false. The picture resembles you in general extremely well, and yet it neither has your features nor your character.”

  “It is rather matter of surprise,” replied Natalia, “that the likeness is so good. It is not my picture; but the picture of an aunt, whom I resembled even in childhood, though she was then advanced in years. It was painted when her age was just about what mine is: at the first glance every one imagines it is meant for me. You should have been acquainted with that excellent lady. I owe her much. A very weak state of health, perhaps too much employment with her own thoughts, and withal a moral and religious scrupulosity, prevented her from being to the world what, in other circumstances, she might have become. She was a light that shone but on a few friends, and on me especially.”

  “Can it be possible,” said Wilhelm, after thinking for a moment, while so many circumstances seemed to correspond so well, “can it be possible that the fair and noble Saint, whose meek Confessions I had liberty to study, was your aunt?”

  “You read the manuscript?” inquired Natalia.

  “Yes,” said Wilhelm, “with the greatest sympathy, and not without effect upon my life. What most impressed me in this paper was, if I may term it so, the purity of being, not only of the writer herself, but of all that lay round her; that self-dependence of nature, that impossibility of admitting anything into her soul which would not harmonise with its own noble lovely tone.”

  “You are more tolerant to this fine spirit,” said Natalia, “nay I will say more just, than many other men, to whom the narrative has been imparted. Every cultivated person knows how he has had to strive against a certain rudeness both in himself and others; how much his culture costs him; how apt he is, after all, in certain cases, to recollect himself alone, forgetting what he owes to others. How often has a worthy person to reproach himself for having failed to act with proper delicacy! And when a fair nature too delicately, too conscientiously cultivates, nay, if you will, overcultivates itself, there seems to be no toleration, no indulgence for it in the world. Yet such persons are, without us, what the ideal of perfection is within us: models not for being imitated, but for being aimed at. We laugh at the cleanliness of the Dutch: but would our friend Theresa be what she is, if some such notion were not always present to her in her housekeeping?”

  “I see before me then,” cried Wilhelm, “in Theresa’s friend, the same Natalia whom her amiable relative was so attached to; the Natalia, who from her youth was so affectionate, so sympathising and helpful! It was only out of such a line that such a being could proceed. What a prospect opens before me, while I at once survey your ancestors, and all the circle you belong to!”

  “Yes,” replied Natalia, “in a certain sense, the story of my aunt would give you the faithfulest picture of us. Her love to me, indeed, has made her praise the little girl too much: in speaking of a child, we never speak of what is present, but of what we hope for.”

  Wilhelm, in the mean time, was rapidly reflecting that Lothario’s parentage and early youth were now likewise known to him. The fair Countess, too, appeared before him in her childhood, with the aunt’s pearls about her neck: he himself had been near those pearls, when her soft lovely lips bent down to meet his own. These beautiful remembrances he sought to drive away by other thoughts. He ran through the characters to whom that manuscript had introduced him. “I am here then,” cried he, “in your worthy uncle’s house! It is no house, it is a temple, and you are the priestess, nay the Genius of it: I shall recollect for life my impression yesternight, when I entered, and the old figures of my earliest days were again before me. I thought of the compassionate marble statues in Mignon’s song: but these figures had not to lament about me; they looked upon me with a lofty earnestness, they brought my first years into immediate contact with the present moment. That ancient treasure of our family, the joy of my grandfather, I find here placed among so many other noble works of art; and myself, whom nature made the darling of the good old man, my unworthy self I find here also, Heavens! in what society, in what connexions!”

  The girls had by degrees gone out to mind their little occupations. Natalia, left alone with Wilhelm, asked some farther explanation of his last remark. The discovery, that a number of her finest paintings and statues had at one time been the property of Wilhelm’s grandfather, did not fail to give a cheerful stimulus to their discourse. As by that manuscript he had got acquainted with Natalia’s house, so now he found himself too, as it were, in his inheritance. At length he asked for Mignon. His friend desired him to have patience till the Doctor, who had been called out into the neighbourhood, returned. It is easy to suppose that the Doctor was the same little active man, whom w
e already know, and who was spoken of in the Confessions of a Fair Saint.

  “Since I am now,” said Wilhelm, “in the middle of your family circle, I presume the Abbé, whom that paper mentions, is the strange inexplicable person, whom, after the most singular series of events, I met with in your brother’s house? Perhaps you can give some more accurate conception of him?”

  “Of the Abbé there might much be said,” replied Natalia: “what I know best about him is the influence which he exerted on our education. He was, for a time at least, convinced that education ought in every case to be adapted to the inclinations: his present views of it I know not. He maintained that with man the first and last consideration was activity, and that we could not act on anything, without the proper gifts for it, without an instinct impelling us to it. ‘You admit,’ he used to say, “that poets must be born such; you admit this with regard to all professors of the fine arts; because you must admit it, because those workings of human nature cannot very plausibly be aped. But if we consider well, we shall find that every capability, however slight, is born with us: that there is no vague general capability in men. It is our ambiguous dissipating education that makes men uncertain: it awakens wishes, when it should be animating tendencies; instead of forwarding our real capacities, it turns our efforts towards objects which are frequently discordant with the mind that aims at them. I augur better of a child, a youth who is wandering astray on a path of his own, than of many who are walking aright upon paths which are not theirs. If the former, either by themselves, or by the guidance of others, ever find the right path, that is to say, the path which suits their nature, they will never leave it; while the latter are in danger every moment of shaking off a foreign yoke, and abandoning themselves to unrestricted license.”‘