The Lost Manuscript: A Novel. Gustav Freytag
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placed both boots before the bed, and himself upon it, and said with decision:
"I am ready to respect your humor, even when I cannot quite understand it; but I beg you to take into consideration that we have forced ourselves on the hospitality of these people, and that we ought not to take advantage of it beyond to morrow morning."
"Fritz," cried the Professor, with deep feeling, "you are my dear, true friend; have patience with me to-day!" So saying, he turned round, and breaking off the conversation, approached the window.
Fritz was almost beside himself with anxiety. This noble man, so confident in all he wrote, so full of deliberation, and so firm in decision, even with regard to the obscurest passages-and now some emotion was working in him which shook his whole being. How could this man be so disturbed? He could look back with majestic clearness on a past of many thousand years, and now he was standing at a window looking at a cow-stable, and something like a sigh sounded through the room. And what was to come of it? These thoughts occupied incessantly the Doctor's mind.
Long did the Professor pace up and down the room; Fritz feigned to sleep, but kept peeping from under the bedclothes at his excited friend. At last the Professor extinguished the light and threw himself on his bed. Soon his deep breathing showed that beneficent nature had softened the pulses of that beating heart. But the Doctor's anxiety held its ground more pertinaciously. From time to time he raised his head from his pillow, searched for his spectacles on the nearest chair, without which he could not see the Professor, and spied through them at the other bed, again took off his spectacles, and lay down on the pillow with a gentle sigh. This act of friendship he repeated many times, till at last he fell into a deep sleep, shortly before the sparrows sang their morning song in the vine-arbor beneath.
CHAPTER V.
AMONG HERDS AND SHEAVES
The friends on awakening heard the clock in the courtyard striking, the wagons rolling before the window, and the bells of the herds tinkling. For a moment they looked bewildered at the walls of the strange room, and through the window out on the sunny garden. While the Doctor wrote his memoranda and packed up his bundle, the Professor walked out. The daily work had long begun; the men with their teams were gone to the field; the Inspector hastened busily about the open barns; encircled by the dogs, the bleating sheep thronged before the stable.
The landscape shone in the light of a cloudless sky. The mist hovered over the earth, subduing the clear light of the morning sun, blending it with a delicate grey. The houses and trees still cast long shadows, the coolness of the dewy night still lingered in shady places, and the soft, light breeze fanned the cheeks of the Scholar, now with the warmth of the early daylight, now with the refreshing breath of night.
He walked about the buildings and the farmyard in order to acquaint himself with the place, of which henceforth he was to have mingled recollections in his soul. The persons who dwelt here had with some hesitation disclosed their life to him, and much in their simple pastoral existence appeared to him pleasing and attractive. The influences that here produced activity and energy could everywhere be seen. The tasks for each one and the duties for each day grew in the soil of the farm and the surrounding country. Their views of life and of the world were all in accordance with their surroundings. He felt keenly how worthily and happily men could live whose life was so firmly interwoven with nature and the primitive necessities of man. But for himself his life was regulated by other influences, was actuated by the thousand impressions of ancient and modern times, and not unfrequently by the forms and circumstances of the distant past. For a man's doings in life are more to him than the passing labor of the day, and all that he has done continues to work within him as a living principle. The naturalist, whose desire for rare plants impels him to the towering mountain-top, whence return is impossible; the soldier, whose recollection of the excitement of old battles impels him into new combats-these are both led by the power of thoughts which their past lives have made a part of their being. Man, it is true, is not the slave of what he has done, if he has not stooped to a lower level; his will is free, he chooses as he likes, and casts off what he does not care to preserve; but the forms and ideas that have entered into his soul work on and guide him unceasingly; he has often to guard himself against their mastery, but in a thousand cases he joyfully follows their gentle guidance. All that was and all that is continues far beyond his mere earthly existence in every new being into which it penetrates. It may influence millions, for ages-ennobling, elevating, or degrading individuals and nations. Thus the spirits of the past, the forces of nature, even our own actions and thoughts become an inalienable, component part of the soul, influencing our lives. The learned man smiled as he thus thought how the strange, old reminiscences of thousands of years had brought him among these country people, and how differently the different activity and occupation of the man who ruled here, had shaped his mind and judgment.
Amid these thoughts the lowing of the cattle sounded softly from the stalls. Looking up, he saw a number of maids carrying full milk-pails to the dairy. Behind them went Ilse, in a simple morning dress; her fair hair shone in the sun like spun gold, and her step was brisk and vigorous like the early morn. The Professor felt shy about approaching her; his eyes followed her thoughtfully; she also was one of the forms that henceforth was to live within him, the ideal of his dreams-perhaps of his wishes. For how long? and how powerfully? He did not realize that his Roman emperors were to aid in answering this question within the next hour.
The proprietor came across the farm-yard and, greeting the Professor, invited him to take a short walk into the fields. As the two walked together-both able men, and yet so different in face and figure, in mind and manners-many would have noted the contrast with deep interest, and Ilse not last among them. But no one that did not have the eyes of a treasure-seeker or exorcist could perceive how different were the invisible retinues of tiny spirits that flitted round the temples and shoulders of each, – comparable to swarms of countless birds or bees. The spirits that attended the farmer were in homely working garb, blue blouses and fluttering bandanas, among them a few forms in the misty robes of Faith, Hope, and Charity. On the other hand, round the Professor swarmed an invisible throng of foreign phantoms with togas, and antique helmets, in purple robes and Greek chlamys, athletes also-some with bundles of rods and winged hats. The little retinue of the Proprietor flew incessantly over the fields and back again; the swarm round the Professor remained steadily by him. At last the proprietor stopped at one particular field; he looked at it with great delight, and mentioned that he had here succeeded by deep ploughing in growing green lupines, then newly introduced into cultivation. The Professor seemed surprised; among his spirit-retinue there arose a confused stir; one of the small antique spirits flew to the nearest clod of earth and fastened thereto a delicate web which it had spun from the head of the Professor. Whereupon the Professor told his companion how deep ploughing for green lupines had been the custom of the Romans, and how rejoiced he was that now after more than a thousand years this old discovery had been brought to light again in our farming. They then spoke of the change in agriculture, and the Professor mentioned how striking it was that three hundred years after the beginning of our era, the corn exchanges at the harbors of the Black Sea and Asia Minor were so similar to those of Hamburg and London in modern days, while at present other agricultural produce was principally cultivated in the East. Finally, he told him of a grain tariff that was imposed by a Roman emperor, and that unfortunately the price of wheat and barley, the two products on which then depended other prices and duties, were effaced from the stone tablet that had been preserved. And he explained why this loss was so much to be lamented. Then the heart of the host began to expand, and he assured the Professor that the fact need not be lamented, for the lost value might be fixed from the price of the remaining products bearing straw and husk, because the prices of all agricultural produce taken as a whole bore a firm and ancient ratio among each other. He gave this relation of their productive value in figures, and the Professor discovered with joyful astonishment that they agreed with the tariff of his old Emperor Diocletian.
While the men were carrying on this desultory conversation, a mischievous wide-awake spirit, probably the Emperor Diocletian himself, flew from the Professor, made his way through the peasant spirits of the proprietor, placed himself in his purple robe on the head of the master, stamped with his little feet on his skull; and impressed the farmer with the belief that the Professor was a sensible and worthy man, who might give him further information on the value and price