On the Heights: A Novel. Auerbach Berthold
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result from great education and innate mental power.
"But there is one thing more. Let me confide it to you.
"I feel sure that the queen meditates a step which must needs be fraught with evil to the king, to herself, and to who knows how many more. I would have liked to acquaint him with my fears, but I dared not speak of the queen at that time, and Doctor Gunther, the king's physician, had made me afraid to utter a word on the subject. I am talking in riddles, I know. I will explain all to you at some future day, if you remind me of it. In a few weeks, all will be decided. My lips are not sealed, for the queen has confided nothing to me. I have simply reasoned from appearances. But enough of this. I shall no longer torment you with riddles.
"My best friend, after all, is Doctor Gunther. He is great by nature, and still more so by education. He is always up to his own high standard. I have never yet seen him confused or uncertain. The old-fashioned phrase, a 'wise man,' is, indeed, applicable to him. He is not fond of so-called 'spirituality' or 'intellectuality,' for he is truly wise. He has great command of language. His hands are beautiful, almost priestly, as if formed for blessing. He never loses his equanimity and, what is best of all, never indulges in superlatives. When I once mentioned this to him, he agreed with me, and added: 'I should like to deprive the world of its superlatives for the next fifty years; that would oblige men to think and feel more clearly and distinctly than they now do.'
"Do you not, dear Emma, perfectly agree with this? Let us found an anti-superlative society. I admire the man, but will never be able successfully to imitate him. Through him, I have learned to believe that there have been great and wise men on earth. While yet a surgeon in the army, he was my father's friend. Afterward, he filled a professorship in Switzerland, and, for the last eighteen years, has been physician to the king. You would be delighted with him. To know him, is to enrich one's life. If I were to write down all his sayings, half the charm were lost, for you would lose the spell of his presence. He has a most convincing air and a sonorous voice, and I have heard that he used to sing very well. He is a perfect man, and loves me as if I were his niece. I shall have much more to tell you about him. Above all things, I am glad that he has a fine vein of humor. This furnishes the salt and prevents him from being included among the class of sugar-water beings.
"Colonel Bronnen is his best, perhaps his only intimate, friend, and the doctor recently told me that the colonel's manner and appearance greatly resemble that of my father while a young man."
"Ah, how hateful, how horrible is the thought of man's birth and death! To die-to be laid in the earth, and to know that the eyes that once glowed with life, and the lips that once smiled, are to decay. The very idea is a barbarous one. Why do we know of death? We must be immortal, or else it were terrible that we human beings should alone know that we must die. The moth-fly did not know it. It simply thought the burning light was a lovely flower, and died in that belief.
"Since last evening, we have been greatly concerned for the queen, indeed, for a double life. She was so good, so angelic. – But no, she still is, and will remain so. She will live. I have prayed for it with all my heart. Away with doubts! My prayer must avail.
"When I met the king to-day he scarcely looked at me, and it is better for me, that it should be thus. A feeling was beginning to bud within me, and now I pluck it out by the roots. It dare not be. I will be his comrade; his good, his best comrade.
"My piano, my music, my pictures, my statuettes, my bird-all seem strange to me. A human being, a two-fold life, is in mortal danger. What does all the trumpery in the world amount to now? All of it together cannot save a human life. Is original sin a truth, and is it because of that, that man must pass through the throes of death before he can behold the light?
"I would like to read, but there is no book that can serve one in such moments. One cannot even think. Nothing, nothing can be done. All the wisdom in all the books is of no avail."
"Hallelujah! I have just come from church. Oh, that my song could reach you. I have just sung the Hallelujah as if I were pouring out my whole soul to God above.
"Hallelujah!
"All is well!
"The crown prince is born!
"The queen is doing well. The king is happy! the world is bright, and the blue sky overhead is cloudless.
"God be praised, that I have so soon escaped from my perplexing doubts. Perhaps it was all imagination, after all. There was not the slightest ground for my alarm.
"I am but a silly cloister plant, after all, and do not yet understand the ways of the court. Is it not so? I see you laughing at me, and see the dimples in your cheeks. I send you many kisses. Ah, all are so good and pious, and holy, and happy, and- If I could only compose, I should produce some great work. A mute Beethoven dwells within my soul."
"The crown prince's nurse is a peasant woman from the Highlands. At the king's desire, I paid her a visit. I was standing by the prince's cradle, when the king approached.
"Softly he whispered to me: 'It is indeed true; there is an angel standing by my child's cradle.'
"My hand was on the rail, and his hand rested on mine.
"The king left the room, and just imagine what happened afterward.
"The nurse, a fresh and hardy-looking peasant woman, with shrewd blue eyes-a perfect rustic beauty, indeed, to whom I had been kind in order to cheer up, and prevent her from growing homesick-now turned upon me and told me harshly, and to my face: 'You're an adulteress; you've been exchanging love-glances with the king!'
"Emma, I now feel the force of what you have often said to me: 'You idolize the people; but they are just as sinful and corrupt as the great world, and without education to curb and restrain them.'
"But what is the peasant woman to me, after all? Certain persons exist, only in so far as they serve our purposes.
"No, she is a good and sensible woman, and has asked me to forgive her boldness. I shall remain her friend. I shall, indeed."
"The king evinces the greatest kindness toward me. It is only yesterday that he remarked to me, while passing:
"'Should you ever have a secret, confide it to me.'
"He knows full well that I could hardly go to my brother, as a sister should, and that my father is so far away.
"Colonel Bronnen, of the queen's regiment, is very attentive to me. He is usually quite reserved. Ah, how I envy those who possess such self-control. I have none. The demonstrative are always flattering themselves that their irrepressibility is simple honesty, whereas it is nothing but weakness.
"Bronnen tells me that you write to him at times. Can it be possible that a single thought of yours enters this palace, without being mine?
"I am delighted to know that we return to the summer palace in a fortnight from now. Cities ought to vanish during the summer. We ought to be able to transport our houses into the woods, among the mountains, or in the valleys, and in the winter they might be brought together again.
"Last evening, while we were sitting on the verandah, we were greatly amused by a joke of my brother Bruno's. He gave us a description of what might happen if the feet of all the four-post bedsteads in the city were endowed with life and, with their contents, were to come stalking along the garden-walks. It was very droll. Of course, there was some little that was scarcely proper; but Bruno, with all his impertinence, has so charming a manner that he knew how to couch his descriptions in most discreet yet piquant terms.
"It was this that suggested the idea of a migration of houses.
"It was a lively evening, full of merry jests that still seem to ring in my ears while I write to you.
"The king has a new walking-stick-he has quite a collection of such-and this one pays court to me.
"I am said to be intellectual, and this walking-stick is intellectual par excellence, and 'birds of a feather flock together,' you know.
"It is Baron Schnabelsdorf, privy