Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Natalia

  “ ‘Now I will relate this act of folly in a sensible woman, to show that folly often is nothing but reason under another exterior. It is true that one will find a strange contradiction between the noble character of the pilgrim and the comical cunning of which she availed herself; but we already know two of her inconsistencies — the pilgrimage itself and the ballad.”

  “It is probably clear that Herr von Revanne had fallen in love with the stranger. Now, he could not altogether rely upon his face, which was fifty years old, although he looked as fresh and robust as a man of thirty; but perhaps he hoped to please by his pure, childlike health, by the goodness, cheerfulness, gentleness, generosity of his character; perhaps also by his fortune, although he had delicacy enough to feel, that one does not buy what is priceless.

  “But the son, on the other hand, amiable, tender, high-spirited, without taking more thought than his father, rushed headlong into the venture. First he tried prudently to win the unknown one who had first become really appreciated by him through the praise and the friendship of his father and aunt. He made sincere efforts to gain an amiable woman, whom his passion seemed to have raised far above her present condition. Her severity more than her merits and her beauty, inflamed his love; he ventured to speak, to undertake, to promise.

  “The father, without wishing it himself, always gave to his wooing a somewhat paternal aspect. He knew himself, and when he had become aware of his rival, he could not hope to conquer him, unless he were willing to adopt means which do not beseem a man of principle. Nevertheless he pursued his course, although it was not unknown to him that kindness, nay, even fortune, are only attractions to which a young woman yields herself with caution; but which remain ineffectual as soon as love reveals itself with the charms of, and accompanied by, youth. Herr von Revanne also made other mistakes, which he repented later. In the midst of a friendship full of esteem, he spoke of ‘a lasting, secret, legal union.’ He even complained, and uttered the word ‘ingratitude.’ Surely he did not know her whom he loved, when one day he said to her, that many benefactors received back evil for good. The Unknown answered him with frankness: Many benefactors would like to acquire all the rights of their protégés at the price of a lentil. The beautiful stranger, involved in the courtship of two rivals, induced by unknown motives, seems to have had no other intention but to spare herself and others any foolish pranks, and in these doubtful circumstances adopted a wonderful expedient. The son pressed her with the boldness of his age, and threatened, as usual, to sacrifice his life to the inexorable one. The father, somewhat less unreasonable, was still equally pressing; both were in earnest. This amiable creature might now probably have assured herself of a well-deserved position of life; for both the Herren von Revanne aver that it had been their intention to marry her.

  “But from the example of this girl let woman learn that an honest soul, even if the mind should have given way to vanity or to real derangement, does not cherish the wounds of the heart which it is not willing to heal. The pilgrim felt that she was standing at a critical point, where it would not be so easy for her to defend herself long. She was in the power of two lovers, who could excuse every pressure with the purity of their motives, inasmuch as they intended to justify their boldness by a sanctified tie. So it was, and so she understood it.

  “She could shelter herself behind Fräulein von Revanne; but she omitted to do so, no doubt from consideration, from esteem for her benefactors. She is not put out of countenance; she thinks out a method for preserving to each his virtue, whilst she allows her own to be suspected. She is mad with a fidelity which her lover certainly does not deserve, if he feels not all her sacrifices, even if they should remain unknown to him.

  “One day, as Herr von Revanne returned somewhat too impetuously the friendship, the gratitude, which she showed towards him, she assumed on a sudden a simple manner, which struck him. ‘Your goodness, sir, alarms me; and allow me frankly to confess why. I feel indeed that only to you I owe my whole gratitude; but in fact — ’

  “ ‘Cruel girl!’ said Herr von Revanne. ‘I understand you; my son has touched your heart — ’

  “ ‘Alas! sir, it has not stopped there. I can only express by my confusion — ’

  “ ‘How? Mademoiselle, you would — ’

  “ ‘Indeed, I think so,’ said she, as she bent low down and dropped a tear — for women are never at a loss for a tear in their artifices, nor for an excuse for their evil-doing.

  “Smitten with love as Herr von Revanne was, still he was forced to wonder at this new kind of innocent sincerity in such circumstances, and he found the lowly posture very much in place.

  “ ‘But, mademoiselle, it is quite incomprehensible to me.’

  “ ‘To me too,’ said she, and the tears flowed more abundantly. They flowed so long that at last Herr von Revanne, after a very unpleasant reverie, again broke silence with a quiet air, and said:

  “ ‘This enlightens me! I see how ridiculous are my pretensions. I bestow on you no reproaches; and, as the only penalty for the grief which you cause me, I promise you so much of his inheritance as is necessary to show whether he loves you as much as I.’

  “ ‘Alas, sir, have pity on my innocence, and tell him nothing about it.’

  “To ask for secrecy is not the means to obtain it. After these steps, the fair Unknown now expected to see her lover before her full of anger and highly incensed. He soon appeared with a look which augured annihilating words. However, he was choked, and could bring out no more than, ‘How, mademoiselle, is it possible?’

  “ ‘Well, what is it, sir?’ she said, with a laugh, which on such an occasion can provoke despair.

  “ ‘How? What is it? Away! mademoiselle; you are a nice creature! But at least legitimate children are not to be disinherited; it is quite enough to accuse them. Yes, mademoiselle, I see through your conspiracy with my father. You two give me a son, and he is my brother. Of that I am certain.’

  “With the same quiet cheerful countenance the lovely unwise one answered him, ‘You are certain of nothing: it is neither your son nor your brother. Boys are naughty; I have never wanted one. It is a poor little girl that I will take away, far away, quite far from men — wicked, foolish, faithless men.’

  “Then, giving free vent to her heart: ‘Farewell,’ she continued, ‘farewell, dear Revanne! From nature you have an honest heart; keep to the principles of uprightness. These are not dangerous with well-established wealth. Be kind towards the poor. He who despises the prayer of troubled innocence, will one day himself beg, and not be listened to. He who has no scruple in setting at naught the scruples of an unprotected girl, will himself become the victim of unscrupulous women. He who does not feel what a chaste girl must feel when she is being wooed, deserves not to gain her. He who, against all reason, against the intentions, against the design of his family, constructs schemes in behalf of his own passions, deserves to be deprived of the fruits of his passions, and to lose the esteem of his family. I believe indeed that you have loved me sincerely; but, my dear Revanne, the cat knows well whose beard it licks; and if you ever become the beloved of a worthy wife, then remember the mill of the unfaithful one. Learn from my example to rely on the constancy and discretion of your beloved. You know whether I am unfaithful; your father knows it also. I intended to roam through the world and to expose myself to all dangers; surely the greatest are those which threatened me in this house. But because you are young I tell it to you only and in confidence: men and women are only unfaithful of set purpose; and that I wanted to prove to the friend of the mill, who perhaps will see me again, when his heart will have become sufficiently pure to miss what he has lost.’

  “Young Revanne still listened, though she had finished speaking. He stood as if struck by lightning; tears at last unclosed his eyes, and in this state of emotion he ran to his aunt, his father, to tell them that mademoiselle was going away, that mademoiselle was an angel, or rather a demon, roaming about in the
world in order to torture the hearts of everybody. But the wanderer had taken her measures so well that she was not found again; and when father and son had come to a mutual explanation, her innocence, her talents, and her insanity, were no longer doubted; and, great as were the pains that Herr von Revanne took from that time, he did not succeed in obtaining the least enlightenment in reference to this beautiful person, who had made her appearance as transiently and in as lovely a form as an angel.”

  CHAPTER VI.

  After a long and thorough rest, of which the travellers might well stand in need, Felix jumped actively out of his bed, and made haste to dress himself; and, as his father thought he noticed, with more care than hitherto. Nothing fitted him neatly or smartly enough: he would have liked everything to be newer and less worn. He sprang into the garden, and only tasted on the way a little of the first meal, which the servant had brought for the guests, since the ladies would not appear in the garden for another hour.

  The servant was accustomed to entertain strangers, and to show many of the things in the house; so he conducted our friends also into a gallery, in which only portraits were hung up and exhibited — all of persons who had worked in the eighteenth century — a large and glorious company; pictures and busts as well, when possible, by excellent masters.

  “You will not find,” said the keeper, “in the whole castle, a single picture that points even distantly to religion, tradition, mythology, legend or fable: our master wishes that the imaginative power shall only be required to make present to itself the True. We deal enough in fiction, he is wont to say, without needing to exalt still higher this dangerous quality of our intellect by external stimulants.”

  Wilhelm’s question, when they might expect him down, he answered with the information that his master, according to his habit, had ridden out quite early. He was accustomed to say: “Observation is life!” “You will see this and other maxims, in which he reflects himself, written in the fields above the gates — as for instance we forthwith light upon: ‘From the Useful, through the True, to the Beautiful.’ “

  The women had already prepared the breakfast under the lime-trees; Felix frolicked about them, trying by all sorts of follies and extravagances to bring himself forward so as to get a warning or a reproof from Hersilia. The sisters now tried by frankness and communicativeness to gain the confidence of their taciturn guest, who pleased them; they told him about a favorite cousin, who had been three years absent, and was presently expected home; about a worthy aunt, who lived in her castle at no great distance, and was to be regarded as the tutelary genius of the family. In a state of bodily decay, she was described as being in blooming health of spirit, just as if the voice of a primeval sibyl no longer visible were to utter, quite simply, pure divine words on human things.

  The new guest now turned his conversation and questions to the present. He wished to know the noble uncle more closely in a purely distinctive activity: he thought of the road which he had pointed out, “From the Useful, through the True, to the Beautiful,” and sought to interpret the words after his own fashion — in which, moreover, he succeeded quite well, and had the good fortune to gain Julietta’s approval.

  Hersilia, who up to this time had remained silently smiling, replied on the other hand: “We women are in a peculiar position. We hear the maxims of men continually repeated, nay, we have to behold them in gilt letters above our heads, and yet we girls might be able in private to say the very reverse, which would also pass current, as is precisely the case in the present instance. The Beautiful maiden finds admirers, also suitors, and probably at last a husband; then she arrives at the True, which may not prove to be the pleasantest possible, and if she is wise she will devote herself to the Useful, attend to house and children, and in this abide. At least I have often found it so. We girls have time to observe, and then we generally find what we did not look for.”

  A messenger from the uncle arrived with the news that the whole party was invited to dinner at a neighboring hunting-box; they could either ride or drive thither.

  Hersilia chose to ride. Felix also begged urgently that they would give him a horse. It was agreed that Julietta should drive with Wilhelm, and that Felix as a page should be indebted for his first ride to the lady of his young heart.

  In the meantime Julietta drove with her new friend through a series of plantations that all pointed to utility and enjoyment; nay, the innumerable fruit-trees made it doubtful whether the fruit could ever all be consumed.

  “You have passed through such a wonderful ante-chamber into our society, and have found so much that is really uncommon and strange, that I may suppose that you wish to know the connection of all this. All depends on the spirit and sense of my excellent uncle. The vigorous years of this noble person’s manhood fell in the time of Beccaria and Filangieri; the maxims of a universal humanitarianism prevailed at that time on all sides. But his striving spirit and severe character transformed this general ideal into ideas which occupied themselves with the practical. He did not conceal from us, how according to his own fashion he had transformed that liberal motto: ‘The Best for the largest number,’ and destined ‘For the Many, the Desirable.’ The most cannot find or know what is the best, still less procure it. But many are always around us: what they wish, we learn to know; what they ought to wish, we reflect on; and thus something of importance can always be effected and created. With this view,” she continued, “everything that you see here has been planted, constructed and arranged; and simply for a quite close, easily-attainable purpose; all this has come to pass from love to the great neighboring mountain range.

  “The excellent man, endowed with both strength and the means, said to himself: No child up yonder shall want a cherry or an apple, for which with good reason they are so greedy; the housewife shall not lack cabbage or turnips or any other vegetable for her saucepan, so that to some degree the unwholesome consumption of potatoes may be counterbalanced. To this end and in this manner he tries to achieve what his possessions give him an opportunity of doing; and thus for many years carriers, men and women, have been organized, who take the fruit for sale into the deepest clefts of the mountain rocks.”

  “I have enjoyed it myself like any child,” replied Wilhelm; “there, where I never hoped to meet with anything of the sort, among pines and rocks, I was less surprised at finding pure simplicity of mind than new refreshing fruit! The gifts of the spirit are at home everywhere, but the gifts of nature are only sparely distributed over the earth’s surface.”

  “Moreover, our worthy man has brought many things from distant places nearer to the mountain; in the buildings below here you will find salt laid up, and stores of spices. For tobacco and brandy he lets others provide; these are not necessaries, he says, but lusts, and consequently they have providers enough already.”

  Arrived at the appointed place, a roomy huntsman’s house in the forest, the party found themselves assembled, and a small table ready laid out.

  “Let us sit down,” said Hersilia. “Here, to be sure, stands our uncle’s chair, but as usual he is sure not to come. In a certain manner it gives me satisfaction, that our new guest, as I hear, is not going to stay long with us; for he might be wearied when he became acquainted with our company. The composition of it is what is everlastingly repeated in novels and plays: a wonderful uncle, one gentle and one lively niece, a sensible aunt, domestics of the well-known sort; and if our cousin were now to return, he would learn to recognize a fantastic traveller, who perhaps would bring with him a still more eccentric companion, and then the trite theatrical piece would be composed, and transformed into reality.”

  “The peculiarities of our uncle we must needs revere,” replied Julietta; “they are not a burden to any one, but rather a convenience to everybody. He detests, as he always will, a fixed dinner-hour, but he rarely interferes with it, for indeed he maintains that one of the finest inventions of modern times is dinner à la carte.”

  Amidst much other conversation they a
lso discussed the worthy man’s taste to affect inscriptions everywhere.

  “My sister,” said Hersilia, “knows how to interpret them all, and she vies with the keeper in making them out; but I find they can all be reversed, and that then they are just as true, and perhaps more so.”

  “I do not deny,” replied Wilhelm, “that there are mottoes among them which seem to neutralize themselves. Thus, for instance, I saw written up very strikingly, ‘Ownership and Common-property.’ Do not these two ideas exclude one another?”

  Hersilia interrupted him: “Such inscriptions, it seems, our uncle has borrowed from the Orientals, who on all their walls do honor to, rather than understand, the maxims of the Koran.”

  Julietta, not to be put off, replied to the preceding question: “If you paraphrase the few words, their sense will at once become clear.”

  After some discussion, Julietta continued to explain how it was meant: “Every one should try to dignify, to keep, and to increase the possession which has been granted to him by fate or by nature; with all his faculties he should grasp as far around him as he can reach, but should at the same time always think how he shall let others have a share in it; for people of means are only valued in so far as others enjoy through them.”