The Lost Manuscript: A Novel. Gustav Freytag
Читать онлайн книгу.
large and small-many also in folio. When I dust the library there is no end to the Romans of all sizes, and some are books thicker than the Bible, only they are all difficult to read; but one who knows the language may learn much."
"The Romans are an extinct people," replied Mr. Hummel. "When they disappeared, the Germans came. The Romans could never exist with us. The only thing that can help us is the Hanseatic league. That is the thing to look to. Powerful at sea, Gabriel," he exclaimed, taking hold of his coat by a button, "the cities must form alliances, invest money, build ships, and hoist flags; our trade and credit are established, and men are not wanting."
"And would you venture on the mighty ocean in that vessel?" asked Gabriel, pointing to a little rowboat which lay in the rear of the garden tilted over on two planks. "Shall I go to sea with the Professor?"
"That is not the question," answered Mr. Hummel; "let the young people go first-they are useless. Many could do better than stay at home with their parents. Why should not the doctor up there serve his country in the capacity of a sailor?"
"What do you mean, Mr. Hummel?" cried Gabriel, startled; "the young gentleman is nearsighted."
"That's nothing," muttered Mr. Hummel, "for they have telescopes at sea, and for aught I care he may become a captain. I am not the man to wish evil to my neighbor."
"He is a man of learning," replied Gabriel, "and this class is also necessary. I can assure you, Mr. Hummel, I have meditated much upon the character of the learned. I know my Professor thoroughly, and something of the Doctor, and I must say there is something in it-there is much in it. Sometimes I am not so sure of it. When the tailor brings the Professor home a new coat he does not remark what everybody else sees, whether the coat fits him or wrinkles. If he takes it into his head to buy a load of wood which has very likely been stolen, from a peasant, he pays more in my absence than any one else would. And when he grows angry and excited about matters that you and I would discuss very calmly, I must say I have my doubts. But when I see how he acts at other times-how kind and merciful he is, even to the flies that buzz about his nose, taking them out of his coffee-cup with a spoon and setting them on the window-sill-how he wishes well to all the world and begrudges himself everything-how he sits reading and writing till late at night-when I see all this, I must say his life affects me powerfully. And I tell you I will not allow any one to underrate our men of learning. They are different from us; they do not understand what we do, nor do we understand what they do."
"Yet we also have our culture," replied Mr. Hummel. "Gabriel, you have spoken like an honorable man, but I will confide this to you-that a man may have great knowledge, and yet be a very hard-hearted individual, who loans his money on usurious interest and deprives his friends of the honor due them. Therefore I think the main point is to have order and boundaries, and to leave something to one's descendants. Regularity here," he pointed to his breast, "and a boundary there," pointing to his fence, "that one may be sure as to what belongs to one's self and what to another, and a secure property for one's children on which they may settle themselves. That is what I understand as the life of man."
The householder locked the gate of the fence and the door of the house. Gabriel also sought his bed, but the lamp in the Professor's study burned late into the night, and its rays intermingled on the windowsill with the pale moonshine. At length the Scholar's light was extinguished, and the room left empty; outside, small clouds coursed over the disk of the moon, and flickering lights reigned paramount in the room, over the writing-table, over the works of the old Romans, and over the little book of the defunct Brother Tobias.
CHAPTER II.
THE HOSTILE NEIGHBORS
We are led to believe that in future times there will be nothing but love and happiness; and men will go about with palm branches in their hands to chase away the last of those birds of night, hatred and malice. In such a chase we would probably find the last nest of these monsters hanging between the walls of two neighboring houses. For they have nestled between neighbor and neighbor ever since the rain trickled from the roof of one house into the court of the other; ever since the rays of the sun were kept away from one house by the wall of the other; ever since children thrust their hands through the hedge to steal berries; ever since the master of the house has been inclined to consider himself better than his fellow-men. There are in our days few houses in the country between which so much ill-will and hostile criticism exist as between the two houses near the great city park.
Many will remember the time when the houses of the town did not extend to the wooded valley. Then there were only a few small houses along the lanes; behind lay a waste place where Mrs. Knips, the washwoman, dried the shirts, and her two naughty boys threw the wooden clothes'-pins at each other. There Mr. Hummel had bought a dry spot, quite at the end of the street, and had built his pretty house of two stories, with stone steps and iron railing, and behind, a simple workshop for his trade; for he was a hatter, and carried on the business very extensively. When he went out of his house and surveyed the reliefs on the roof and the plaster arabesques under the windows, he congratulated himself on being surrounded by light and air and free nature, and felt that he was the foremost pillar of civilization in the primeval forest.
Then he experienced what often happens to disturb the peace of pioneers of the wilderness-his example was imitated. On a dark morning in March, a wagon, loaded with old planks, came to the drying-ground which was opposite his house. A fence was soon built, and laborers with shovels and wheelbarrows began to dig up the ground. This was a hard blow for Mr. Hummel. But his suffering became greater when, walking angrily across the street and inquiring the name of the man who was causing such injury to the light and reputation of his house, he learned that his future neighbor was to be a manufacturer by the name of Hahn. That it should of all men in the world be he, was the greatest vexation fate could inflict upon him. Mr. Hahn was respectable; there was nothing to be said against his family; but he was Mr. Hummel's natural opponent, for the business of the new settler was also in hats, although straw hats. The manufacture of this light trash was never considered as dignified, manly work; it was not a guild handicraft; it never had the right to make apprentices journeymen; it was formerly carried on only by Italian peasants; it had only lately, like other bad customs, spread through the world as a novelty; it is, in fact, not a business-the plait-straw is bought and sewed together by young girls who are engaged by the week. And there is an old enmity between the felt hat and straw hat. The felt hat is an historical power consecrated through thousands of years-it only tolerates the cap as an ordinary contrivance for work-days. Now the straw hat raises its pretensions against prescribed right, and insolently lays claim to half of the year. And since then approbation fluctuates between these two appurtenances of the human race. When the unstable minds of mortals wavered toward straw, the most beautiful felts, velveteen, silk, and pasteboard were left unnoticed and eaten by moths. On the other hand, when the inclinations of men turned to felt, every human being-women, children, and nurses-wore men's small hats; then the condition of straw was lamentable-no heart beat for it, and the mouse nestled in its most beautiful plaits.
This was a strong ground for indignation to Mr. Hummel, but worse was to come. He saw the daily progress of the hostile house; he watched the scaffolding, the rising walls, the ornaments of the cornice, and the rows of windows-it was two windows higher than his house. The ground floor rose, then a second floor, and at last a third. All the work-rooms of the straw hat manufacturer were attached to the dwelling. The house of Mr. Hummel had sunk into insignificance. He then went to his lawyer and demanded redress for the obstruction of his light and the view from his residence; the man of law naturally shrugged his shoulders. The privilege of building houses was one of the fundamental rights of man; it was the common German custom to live in houses, and it was obviously hopeless to propose that Hahn should only erect on his piece of ground a canvas tent. Thus there was absolutely nothing to do but to submit patiently, and Mr. Hummel might have known that himself.
Years had passed away. At the same hour the light of the sun gilds both houses; there they stand stately and inhabited, both occupied by men who daily pass each other. At the same hour the letter-carrier enters both houses, the pigeons fly from one roof to the other, and the sparrows hop around on the gutters of both, in the most cordial relations. About one house there is sometimes a faint smell of sulphur, and about the other, of singed hair; but the same summer wind wafts from the wood, through the doors of