Иоганн Вольфганг фон Гёте
German Fiction
"Long may it live! Bravo!" rang out from all sides, and the welcoming speaker replied to the address and saluted the old men, who made an odd and touching appearance as they stood before him.
"Yes," he concluded, "may our festivals never become anything worse than a school of manners for the young, and, for the old, the reward of a clear public conscience, of faithful civic loyalty, and a fountain of pleasure! May they ever celebrate inviolable and vigorous friendship in our country, between district and district and between man and man! May your nameless and statuteless society, my venerable friends, live long!"
Again the toast was echoed all around and amid general applause the little banner was added to the others. Hereupon the little troop of the Seven wheeled about and made straight for the great festival hall to refresh themselves with a good luncheon and they were scarcely there before they all shook hands with their speaker and cried:
"Spoken from our hearts! Hediger, Kaspar! your boy is made of good stuff, he'll turn out well, let him go his own way. Just like us, but cleverer, we are a lot of old donkeys; but steadfast and unflinching, stand firm, Karl!" and so on.
But Frymann was quite dumbfounded; the boy had said just what he ought to have thought of, instead of banging away at the Jesuits. He too gave Karl his hand in friendship and thanked him for his help in time of need. Last of all, old Hediger came up to his son, took his hand also, fixed his eye keenly and firmly upon him and said:
"Son, you have revealed a fine but dangerous gift. Nurse it, cultivate it with loyalty, with a sense of duty, with modesty. Never lend it to the false and the unjust, to the vain and the trivial; for it may become as a sword in your hand that turns against you yourself, or against the good as well as the evil. Or it may become a mere fool's bauble. Therefore, look straight ahead, be modest, studious, but firm and unswerving. As you have done us honor to-day, remember always to do honor to your fellow-citizens, to your country, to give them joy; think of this and so you will be best preserved from false ambition! Unswerving! Don't think that you must always speak, let some opportunities pass, and never speak for your own sake, but always for some worthy cause. Study men, not in order to outwit and plunder them, but in order to awaken and set in motion the good in them, and, believe me, many who listen to you will often be better and wiser than you who speak. Never use sophisms and petty hair-splitting which only move the chaff; the heart of the people can only be stirred by the full force of truth. Do not, therefore, court the applause of the noisy and restless, but fix your eye unswervingly on the cool-headed and the firm."
Scarcely had he finished this speech and released Karl's hand when Frymann seized it and said:
"Try to acquire an equal knowledge of all branches and enrich your store of principles that you may not sink into the use of empty phrases. After this first dash allow considerable time to pass without thinking of such things again. If you have a good idea, never speak just in order to air it but rather lay it aside; the opportunity will come more than once later for you to use it in a more developed and better form. But should someone else forestall you in uttering it, be glad instead of annoyed, for that is a proof that you have felt and thought something universal. Train and develop your mind and watch over your nature and study in other speakers the difference between a mere tongue-warrior and a man of truthfulness and feeling. Do not travel about the country nor rush through all the streets, but accustom yourself to understand the course of the world from your own hearth, in the midst of tried friends; then, when it is time for action, you will come forward with more wisdom than the hounds and tramps. When you speak, speak neither like a facetious hostler nor like a tragic actor, but keep your own natural character unspoilt and then speak as it dictates. Avoid affectation, don't strike attitudes, do not look about you like a field marshal before you begin, or, worse, as if you were lying in wait to spring upon the audience. Never say that you are not prepared when you are, for people will know your style and will perceive it at once. When you have done, do not walk about collecting compliments, or beam with self-satisfaction, but sit quietly down in your seat and listen attentively to the next speaker. Save your harsh phrases as you would gold, so that when, on occasion, you use them in just indignation, it will be an event, and they will strike your opponent like a bolt from the blue. But if you think you may ever associate with an opponent again and work with him, beware of letting your anger carry you into the use of extreme expressions, that the people may not say,
'Rascals fight, and when the fight is o'er,
They're greater friends than e'er before'."
Thus spake Frymann, and poor Karl sat astonished and bewildered by all these speeches and did not know whether to laugh or to be puffed up. But Syfrig, the smith, cried:
"Now look at these two who didn't want to speak for us and can talk like books, as you see."
"Just so," said Bürgi, "but that has been the means of our gaining new growth; we have put forth a vigorous young shoot. I move that the lad be taken into the circle of us old fellows and from now on attend our meetings."
"So be it!" they all cried and clinked glasses with Karl, who somewhat unthinkingly drained his to the bottom, which lapse however the old men let pass without a murmur in view of the excitement of the moment.
When, thanks to a good lunch, the party felt sufficiently recovered from its adventure, the members scattered. Some went to try a few shots, some to see the trophy-hall and other arrangements, and Frymann went to fetch his daughter and the women whose guest she was; for they were all to meet again for dinner at the same table which stood nearly in the centre of the hall and not far from the platform. They took note of its number and separated in the best of spirits and free from all care.
Exactly at twelve o'clock the dinner guests, who were different ones every day and numbered several thousand people, sat down at the table. Country and city people, men and women, old and young, scholars and the unlearned-they all sat joyfully side by side and waited for the soup, opening bottles and cutting bread meanwhile. Not a single malicious face, not a scream or shrill laugh was seen or heard among them, nothing but the steady hum of a glad wedding feast magnified a hundredfold, the tempered wave-beat of a happy and self-contained ocean. Here a long table filled with marksmen, there a double row of blooming country girls, at a third table a meeting of so-called "old fellows" from all parts of the country, who had finally passed their examinations, and at a fourth a whole "immigrated" hamlet, men and women together. Yet these seated hosts formed only half of the assemblage; an equally numerous crowd of spectators streamed uninterruptedly through the aisles and spaces and circled ceaselessly about the diners. They-praise and thanks be to God! – were the careful and economical ones who had counted the cost and satisfied their hunger elsewhere for even less money, that half of the nation that always manages things so much more cheaply and frugally, while the other half flings away money right and left; then there were also the over-fastidious ones who did not trust the cooking and thought the forks were too cheap; and finally there were the poor and the children, who were involuntary spectators. But the former made no unkind remarks and the latter displayed neither torn clothes nor jealous looks; on the contrary, the thrifty ones took pleasure in the spendthrifts, and the super-refined who thought the dishes of green peas in July ridiculous, walked about as good-humoredly as the poor who found their fragrance most tempting. Here and there, to be sure, a piece of culpable selfishness appeared as, for instance, when some tight-fisted young peasant succeeded in slipping unseen into a vacated place and eating away with the rest without having paid; and, what was still worse in the eyes of those who love order and discipline, this reprehensible act did not even result in an altercation and forcible ejection.
The head festival-host stood in front of the broad kitchen door and blew on a hunting horn the signal for a course to be served, whereupon a company of waiters rushed forward and dispersed to the right, to the left and straight ahead, executing a well practised manœuvre. One of them found his way to the table at which sat the Upright and Staunch, among them Karl, Hermine, and her friends, cousins or whatever they were. The old men were just listening eagerly to one of the principal speakers who had mounted the platform after a loud roll on the drum. There they sat, grave and composed, with forks laid down, stiff and upright, all their seven heads turned towards the platform. But they blushed like young girls and looked at each other when the speaker began with a phrase from Karl's speech, told of the coming of the seven greybeards, and made that the starting-point for his own speech. Karl alone heard nothing, for he was joking quietly with the women, until his father nudged him and expressed his disapproval. As the orator finished amid great applause, the old men looked at one another again; they had been present at many assemblies, but for the first time they themselves had been the subject of a speech and they dared not look around, so embarrassed were they, though at the same time more than happy. But, as the way of the world is, their neighbors all around did not know them, nor suspect what prophets were in their midst, and so their modesty was not offended. With all the greater satisfaction did they press one another's hands after each of them had gently rubbed his own to himself, and their eyes said: Forward unswervingly! That is the sweet reward of virtue and enduring excellence!
After this Kuser cried: "Well, we have to thank our young Master Karl for this pleasure. I think we shall have to promise him Bürgi's canopy bed after all and lay a certain doll in it for him. What do you think, Daniel Frymann?"
"And I am afraid," said Pfister, "that he is going to lose his bet and will have to buy my Swiss blood."
But Frymann suddenly frowned and said:
"A clever tongue alone isn't always rewarded with a wife! At least in my house a skilful hand has to go with it. Come, my friends, don't let us try to include in our jokes things that don't rightly belong there."
Karl and Hermine were blushing and looking away into the crowd with embarrassment. Just then came the boom of the cannon-shot that announced the recommencement of the shooting and for which a long line of marksmen were waiting, rifle in hand. Immediately their rifle-fire crackled all down the line; Karl rose from the table saying that he too now wanted to try his luck, and betook himself to the range.
"And at least I want to watch him even if I can't have him," cried Hermine jestingly, and followed him, accompanied by her friends.
But it happened that the women lost sight of one another in the crowd and at last Hermine was left alone with Karl and went with him faithfully from target to target. He began at the extreme end where there was no crowd and, although he shot with no particular earnestness, made two or three hits in succession. Turning round to Hermine who stood behind him he said laughing:
"That's doing pretty well!" She laughed too, but only with her eyes, while her lips said earnestly:
"You must win a cup."
"I can't do that," answered Karl, "to get twenty-five numbers I should have to use at least fifty cartridges and I only have twenty-five with me."
"Oh," she said, "there's powder and lead enough for sale here."
"But I don't want to buy any more; that would make the cup a pretty expensive prize! Some fellows, to be sure, do spend more money on powder than the trophy is worth, but I'm not such a fool."
"You're very high-principled and economical," she said almost tenderly, "I like that. But it's the best fun of all to accomplish with a little just as much as the others with their elaborate preparations and terrible exertions. So pull yourself together and win with your twenty-five cartridges. If I were a marksman I'd make myself succeed."
"Never! Such a thing never occurs, you little goose!"
"That's because you are all only Sunday marksmen. Go ahead, begin and try it."
He shot again and got a number and then a second. Again he looked at Hermine and she laughed still more with her eyes and said still more earnestly:
"There, you see! It can be done, now go ahead."
He looked at her steadily, and could scarcely withdraw his gaze, for he had never seen her eyes look as they did now; there was a stern and tyrannical gleam in the smiling sweetness of her glance, two spirits spoke eloquently out of its radiance: one was her commanding will, but with that was fused the promise of reward and out of that fusion arose a new mysterious being. "Do my will, I have more to give than you suspect," said those eyes, and Karl gazed into them searchingly and eagerly until he and the girl understood each other, there, surrounded by the tumult and surge of the festival. When he had satisfied his eyes with this radiance, he turned again, aimed calmly and scored once more. Now he himself began to feel that it was possible; but as people were beginning to gather about him, he went away and sought a quieter and emptier range, and Hermine followed him. There he again made several hits without wasting a shot; and so he began to handle his cartridges as carefully as gold coins, and Hermine accompanied every one with avaricious, shining eyes as it disappeared into the barrel; but each time, before Karl took his aim without haste or agitation, he looked into the beautiful face beside him. As soon as people began to notice his luck and collect round him, he went on to another range; nor did he stick the checks he received in his hatband, but gave them to his companion to keep; she held the whole little pack and never did a marksman have a more beautiful number-bearer. Thus he actually did fulfill her wish and made such fortunate use of his twenty-five cartridges that not one of them struck outside the prescribed circle.
They counted over the checks and found this rare good fortune confirmed.
"I've done it once, but I'll never be able to again as long as I live," said Karl, "and it's you who are responsible, with your eyes. I am only wondering what all else you intend to accomplish with them!"
"Wait and see," she answered, and now her lips laughed too.
"Now go back to the party," he said, "and ask them to come and fetch me from the trophy-hall, so that I may have an escort, as there is no one else with me, or do you want to march with me?"
"I'd almost like to," said she, but hurried away nevertheless.
The old men were sitting deep in pleasant conversation; most of the crowd in the hall had changed but they stuck fast to their table and let life surge about them. Hermine went up to them laughing and cried:
"Karl wants you to come and get him; he's won a cup!"
"What! How's that?" they cried and rejoiced loudly; "so that's what he's up to?"
"Yes," said an acquaintance who had just come up, "and, moreover, he won the cup with twenty-five shots, that doesn't happen every day! I was watching the young couple and saw how they did it."
Master Frymann looked at his daughter in astonishment. "You didn't shoot too, did you? I hope not. Women sharpshooters are all right in general, but not in particular."
"Don't be alarmed," said Hermine, "I didn't shoot, I only ordered him to shoot straight."
Hediger, however, paled with wonder and satisfaction to think that he should have a son gifted with eloquence, and famous in the use of arms, who would go forth with deeds and actions from his obscure tailor-shop into the world. Inwardly he began to sing small, and decided that he would no longer try to act the guardian. But now they all started for the trophy-temple where they really found the young hero, standing beside the buglers, the shining cup already in his hand, waiting for them. And so to the tune of a merry march off they went with him to the festival hall to christen the cup, as the saying goes, and again their steps were short and firm, their fists were clenched and they looked triumphantly about them. Arrived again at their headquarters, Karl filled the cup, set it in the middle of the table and said,
"I herewith dedicate this cup to the Band of Seven, that it may never leave their banner."
"Accepted!" they shouted. The cup began to go the round and new merriment rejuvenated the old men, who had now been in good spirits since dawn. The evening sun streamed in under the countless beams of the hall and gilded thousands of faces already transfigured with pleasure, while the resounding tones of the orchestra filled the room. Hermine sat in the shadow of her father's broad shoulders, as modest and quiet, as if she couldn't count three. But golden lights from the sun, falling across the cup before her and flashing on its golden lining and the wine, played about her rosy and glowing face and danced with every movement of the wine when the old men in the heat of discussion pounded on the table; and then one could not tell whether she herself was smiling or only the playing lights. She was now so beautiful that young men, looking about the hall, soon discovered her. Merry groups settled themselves near her in order to keep her in sight and people asked one another: "Where is she from? Who is the old man? Doesn't anyone know him?" "She's from St. Gallen; they say she's a Thurgovian," answered one. "No, all the people at that table are from Zurich," said another. Wherever she looked, merry young fellows raised their hats in respectful admiration and she smiled modestly and without affectation. But when a long procession of young men passed the table and all took off their hats she had to cast down her eyes, and still more when a handsome student from Berne suddenly appeared beside her, cap in hand, and with courteous audacity said that he had been sent by thirty friends who were sitting at the fourth table from there, to inform her, with her father's permission, that she was the most charming girl in the hall. In short, everyone did regular homage to her, the sails of the old men swelled with new triumph, and Karl's fame was almost obscured by Hermine's. But he too was to come to the front once more.
For a stir and a crush arose in the middle aisle caused by two cowherds from Entlibuch who were pushing their way through the throng. They were regular bumpkins with short pipes in their mouths, their Sunday jackets under their brawny arms, little straw hats on their big heads and shirts fastened together across their chests with silver buckles in the shape of hearts. The one who went ahead was a clodhopper of fifty and rather tipsy and unruly; for he wanted to try feats of strength with every man he saw and kept trying to hook his clumsy fingers into everything, at the same time blinking pleasantly, or at times challenging, with his little eyes. So his advance was everywhere marked by offense and confusion. Directly behind him, however, came the second, a still more uncouth customer of eighty, with a shock of short yellow curls, and he was the father of the fifty-year-old. He guided his precious son with an iron hand, without ever letting his pipe go out, by saying from time to time:
"Laddie, keep quiet! Orderly, laddie, orderly!" and at the same time pushing and pulling him in accordance with his words. So he steered him with able hand through the angry sea until, just as they reached the table of the Seven, a dangerous stoppage occurred, as a group of peasants came up who wanted to call the quarrelsome fellow to account and attack him from both sides. Fearing that his laddie might do some fiendish damage, the father looked about for a place of refuge and saw the old men. "He'll be quiet among these old baldpates," he growled to himself, grasped his son with one fist in the small of his back and steered him in between the benches, while with the other he fanned the air behind him to keep off the irritated pursuers, for several of them had already been properly pinched, in all haste.
"With your permission, gentlemen," said the octogenarian to the younger old men, "let me sit down here a minute so that I can give my laddie another glass of wine. Then he will grow sleepy and be as quiet as a little lamb."
So he wedged himself into the party with his offspring, and the son really did look about him meekly and respectfully. But presently he said:
"I want to drink out of the little silver mug over there."
"Will you be quiet, or I'll knock the senses out of you before you can turn round," said his father. But when Hediger pushed the full cup towards him he said: "Well, then, if the gentlemen will allow it, take a drink, but don't guzzle it all."
"That's a lively youngster you've got there, my good man," said Frymann, "how old is he?"
"Oh," replied the father "around New Year's he'll be about fifty-two; at least he was screaming in his cradle in 1798 when the French came, drove away my cows and burnt my house. But because I took a couple of them and knocked their heads together, I had to fly, and my wife died of misery in the meantime. That's why I have to bring up my boy alone."
"Didn't you get a wife for him who could have helped you?"
"No, he's still too clumsy and wild; it won't do, he smashes everything to pieces."
In the meantime the youthful ne'er-do-well had drained the fragrant cup. He filled his pipe and looked round the circle blinking most happily and peacefully. Thus he discovered Hermine and the womanly beauty that radiated from her suddenly rekindled ambition in his heart and the desire to show his strength. As his eye fell simultaneously on Karl who was sitting opposite him, he invitingly stretched out his crooked middle finger across the table.
"Stop that, Sonny! Has Satan got into you again?" cried his father wrathfully, and was about to take him by the collar, but Karl told him to let the other be and hooked his middle finger into that of the young bear and then they tried, each to pull the other over to him.
"If you hurt the young gentleman or sprain his finger," warned the old father, "I'll take you by the ears so that you'll feel it for three weeks."
The two hands now wavered for a considerable time over the centre of the table; Karl soon ceased laughing and grew crimson in the face, but at last he gradually drew the arm and shoulder of his opponent perceptibly towards his side of the table and with that the victory was won.
The man from Entlibuch looked at him quite bewildered and downcast, but not for long; his old father, now enraged at his defeat, boxed his ears, and much ashamed he looked at Hermine; then he suddenly began to cry and said, sobbingly:
"And now at least I want a wife!"
"Come, come," said his papa, "you're ready for bed now." He grasped him by the arm and marched him off.
After the departure of this odd pair, a silence fell on the old men and they wondered anew at Karl's deeds and achievements.
"That's entirely due to gymnastics," he said modestly; "they give you training, strength, and knack for such things and almost anyone can learn to do them who is not a born weakling."
"That is true," said Hediger, his father, and, after some reflection he continued enthusiastically: "Therefore let us forever and ever praise the new era which is again beginning to train men to be men and which commands not only the country gentleman and the mountain herdsman but the tailor's son as well to train his limbs and develop his body so that it can do something."
"That is true," said Frymann also awaking from meditation, "and we too have all taken part in the struggle to bring on this new era. And to-day, as far as our old heads are concerned, we, with our little banner, are celebrating the final result, the command 'Cease firing!' and the rest we leave to the young ones. But now, no one has ever been able to say of us that we stuck obstinately to our errors and misunderstandings. On the contrary, we have always striven to keep our minds open to all that was rational, true, and beautiful; and so I herewith frankly and openly take back my declaration in regard to the children and invite you, Friend Kaspar, to do the same. For what better memorial of this day could we found, plant, and establish than a living line, springing directly from the loins of our friendship, a family whose children will preserve and transmit the principles and the unswerving faith of the Upright Seven? Well then, let Bürgi bring his canopy-bed that we may equip it. I will lay in it grace and womanly purity; you, strength, resolution and skill, and with that, forward with the waving green banner, because they are young. It shall be left to them and they shall keep it after we are gone. So do not resist longer, old Hediger, but give me your hand as my kinsman."
"Accepted," said Hediger solemnly, "but on the condition that you don't give the boy any money to spend on foolishness and heartless ostentation. For the devil goeth about seeking whom he may devour."
"Accepted," cried Frymann, and Hediger continued:
"Then I greet you as my kinsman, and the Swiss blood may be tapped for the wedding."
All the Seven now rose and Hermine's hand was laid in Karl's amid great jubilation.
"Good luck! There's a betrothal, that's the way it ought to be!" cried some of those sitting near, and at once a throng of people came up to clink glasses with the young couple. As if by arrangement the orchestra struck up, but Hermine managed to slip out of the crowd without letting go of Karl's hand, and he led her out of the hall to the festival grounds where already nocturnal silence reigned. They walked round the fortress of flags and as no one was near they stood still. The flags waved with animation and whispered together but they could not discover the little banner of friendship, for it had disappeared in the folds of a huge neighbor and was well taken care of. But overhead in the starlight the Swiss flag snapped in its constant solitude and the sound of the bunting could plainly be heard. Hermine put her arms round her betrothed's neck, kissed him of her own accord, and said tenderly and with emotion:
"But now we must see that we order our life aright. May we live just as long as we are good and competent, and not a day longer!"
"Then I hope to live long, for I feel that life will be good with you," said Karl and kissed her again; "but what do you think now about who shall rule? Do you really want to hold the reins?"
"As tight as I can. In the meantime, law and a constitution will surely develop between us and it will be a good one whatever it is."
"And I will guarantee the constitution and claim the first chance to be godfather," suddenly rang out a strong bass voice.
Hermine craned her neck and seized Karl's hand; but he went nearer and saw one of the sentries of the Aargau sharpshooters standing in the shadow of a pillar. The metal on his equipment gleamed in the dark. Now the two young men recognized each other and the sentry was a tall, fine-looking fellow, the son of a peasant. Karl and Hermine sat down on the steps at his feet and chatted with him for a good half hour before they returned to their party.
