Читать книгу Essential Novelists - Paul Heyse - Paul Heyse, August Nemo, John Dos Passos - Страница 28

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SHE HAD NOT LEFT A line for him, not even a note to say farewell; it was too much kindness to say: 'I'm going for such and such reasons, to such and such a place.' He was of so little importance to her, she was so utterly indifferent to what he must feel at her sudden disappearance. No nomad who strikes his tent, leaves his camping ground without casting a glance toward the fire where he prepared his meals, the spring that refreshed him, although he knows he shall find the same friendly elements everywhere. And he, whom she had called "friend";—what a horribly cold heart, that can prize the best treasures so lightly, leave the most unselfish devotion in the lurch so carelessly, like a bottle of perfume, which was pleasant to the senses, but which can be bought in any shop.

And on a creature of such a shallow mind, such an icy heart, he had for weeks lavished his thoughts and opinions; nay his very anguish when he had determined to break loose from her bonds, told him only too distinctly that it would be long ere the task could be accomplished. The more violently he strove to accuse her, the more victoriously the image of his upbraided friend, with her artless expression and the last earnest gaze the dark eyes had fixed upon him, rose before his fancy, and he at last perceived that he only reproached her in order to have a pretext for constantly occupying himself with her. He at last concluded a sort of truce with his passionate grief. It was still possible that she might write as soon as she was settled again. Had she not one of his books, Hafiz, from which he had last read aloud to her at table? To be sure, she might think he had given it to her, like the little copy of Hermann and Dorothea. And if not, why should the possession of a borrowed book disturb her, when she was in the habit of not even returning hearts into which she had glanced once or twice?

For the first time, he failed to tell Balder all that was occupying his thoughts, and merely said that she had given up her rooms, but would probably send him her new address.

This intelligence did not seem to trouble Balder much. He avoided saying so, but in his heart he almost wished that this might be the end of the adventure, for from what Edwin had said of the lady, it seemed more and more doubtful whether this passion, which made the grave, self-contained man so helpless, would ever compensate for the sacrifice of his repose. Much as he desired to do so, he could feel no affection for this singular being. His beau ideal of loveliness was in every respect the exact opposite of this dazzling vision. But he said nothing, for he was well aware that words would be spoken in vain.

"A little note from the Frau Professorin Valentin came while you were away. The zaunkönig left it in the shop himself."

Edwin absently opened and read it. It contained a request to visit the writer in the course of the day if possible, as she wished to speak to him about a very important matter.

He threw down the sheet, took up a volume of some work on physical science, and began to read. Balder, who was working industriously at his turning lathe—he had reason to be industrious, since of late, unnoticed by Edwin, the state of their strong box had become very critical—saw plainly that he did not turn the page, but did not venture to rouse him from his reverie. What could he have said to console him?

Evening came. The Frau Professorin's note seemed forgotten. But when Balder reminded him of it, Edwin started up and said he would attend to the matter at once; he was curious to know what important news could come to him from that quarter. So he left the room, with a dry "Adieu!" Seldom, as we know, did he part from Balder without a jest or a brotherly caress, but the spell of melancholy was too strong for him.

Since his first visit, he had only seen the estimable lady a few times in the zaunkönig's studio, from which she instantly retreated when he came to give his lesson. She seemed very kindly disposed toward him, with a motherly cheerfulness, which often, on her brightest days, reminded him of his own mother; so he noticed it the more plainly, when she now met him with anxious seriousness and a certain degree of formality.

"Dear Herr Doctor," said she, "I begged you to come to see me because I wished to discuss a matter which has caused me grave anxiety. Do you know that you've cost me a sleepless night?"

"You're too kind," he answered smiling.

"I'm entirely in earnest. I should have to like you much less than I do if my opinion of you could be a matter of indifference to me. Tell me, is it true? Are you really the author of this essay, or have you a namesake, for whose opinions you are not responsible?"

She took out a green volume, which she had carefully locked up in her writing desk. It was a number of a philosophical magazine, to which for several years Edwin had been a contributor.

"So far as I'm aware," he answered in a jesting tone, "my parents have had but one son Edwin, who devotes himself to philosophy. Let me see. 'Examination of the proofs of the existence of God.' Certainly that's mine. It's to be continued. It was left unfinished on account of my foolish prize essay."

He laid the book on the table, and now looked at his companion, who was sitting opposite to him with the most heartfelt expression of pitying surprise.

"So it's really yours!" said she. "And these views, these principles—you've not yet renounced them?"

"I don't know of what principles you speak, Madame. So far as I can remember, I refrain from making any hypothesis of my own, and limit myself entirely to a critical investigation of the opinions that have been advanced by others."

"Yes. So it appears! But can he who so coolly, in his own opinion, annihilates the logical proofs of an eternal truth, be expected to cherish the desire, to say nothing of the conviction, that this truth will endure, difficult as it might be to find reasons for it, or proofs which would incontestably establish to the reason its indisputable existence?"

"I might take that as a compliment to my essay," he answered, "although coming from a woman's mouth, it cannot of course be understood in that sense. Among scientific men, an investigation is thought the more worthy of credence, the fewer traces it bears that its author set about the task with a desire to find a certain result, or with even a previously formed conviction. In my department, especially, much greater progress would have been made, if even in the minds of its masters passion and prejudice had not dimmed the pure mirror of experience and clearness of thought."

"Greater progress!" cried the excited lady, letting both hands fall into her lap in sudden horror. "But for Heaven's sake, what progress can be made, to what can you wish to turn your attention after you have so successfully reached absolute nothingness?"

"And suppose I expected to prove," he answered smiling, "that this nothingness is just as fruitful as the other nothingness, from which, as pious men tell us, God created the world? But I'll not begin to philosophize here. Even if I could hope, in a short conversation, to make you understand that to which I have devoted the labor of a life, I should still prefer to keep silence. You're in harmony with yourself—what more can you desire? I, whose wants are so different, am also at peace with myself. Is it not better to rest satisfied with that, each respecting the other's mode of thought and feeling? Wherefore drag to light the differences about which we can never agree, instead of rejoicing over what we possess in common? It's so easy to dispute, and so difficult to become reconciled again."

"You think me intolerant," she replied eagerly, while a faint color tinged her pretty, delicate face. "But my Creator knows I am not. I confidentially believe that in our heavenly father's house there are many mansions. I honor every true, genuine conviction, even if ever so widely different from mine. My best friend, Leah's mother, was a jewess. My daily visitor, the Herr Candidat—"

"Herr Lorinser?" Edwin dryly interrupted. "Ah! yes, now I understand."

"What?"

"It's a matter of very little consequence; I know the people with whom I'm dealing. There are persons who take special delight in denouncing others, of course for the greater honor of God, of Christian love, and of eternal truth."

"You wrong him; to be sure he brought me your essay, but it was in consequence of a conversation in which I was compelled to admit that I was wholly in the dark about your opinions, and had not become much wiser from Leah's very guarded remarks. Do not suppose I'm blind to the faults and weaknesses of this singular man. I do not share his exaggerated mystical views. But even his errors, which arise from an ardent heart, seem more honorable, or to express myself more plainly, are more in sympathy with my nature, than—"

"Than a man's honest confession that he knows nothing at all about certain things."

"If it were only that! But must he, who knows nothing, or desires to know nothing about that which is revealed to all who thirst for information, makes a business of shaking the faith, rendering the ground unsteady beneath the feet of those who do have the knowledge, or think they have?"

"If he really believes he is serving humanity, why should he not do what he thinks productive of good? To be sure, I should not undertake this business. I've not the temperament for it, the friendly importunity, nor any of the other qualities that are necessary to make proselytes."

"You have not? And this treatise—"

"Is not written for those who know or think they know, but for persons, who like me, are still seeking truth, perhaps doubting whether it will ever be possible certainly to know, and meantime think themselves justified in using the boundaries between knowledge and faith for a work which must tend to the advantages of both provinces."

"No," she said, as she suddenly rose, "we shall make no progress in that way. You're my superior in dialectics, and I see it's only chivalrous in you to avoid the contest. But answer one question plainly: is it really true that you not only have no God, but do not even feel any sorrow for it, any sense of something wanting, of cheerless desolation and loneliness, when you survey a world, from which to you the breath of a personal Creator has vanished?"

"And suppose I really did feel neither sorrow nor want, and yet did not find the world utterly cheerless?"

She gazed at him with a steady look, as if she were obliged to weigh such an answer before she could fully understand it. Her eyes grew dim, she retreated a step and sank down on the chair which stood beside the sofa.

"You poor, poor mortal!"

"We agreed not to philosophize, Madame," he answered smiling. "But, even in ordinary conversation, I suppose one may be permitted to remind the other of contradictions in which he has involved himself. Does he who has just told you that he feels no want, needs no consolation, seem poor in your eyes? Then see how ill it fares with the toleration of which you boasted. You allow every form of faith to exist, except that which acknowledges it has nothing that resembles a creed. The jew, the mussulman, the fire-worshipper, the idolater, who sees his God in a stock or stone—all seem respectable to you, and none so poor as an honest seeker after truth, who studies nature and his own heart, and cannot think all the signs and wonders he there beholds explained, when he uses for them a formula which means anything or nothing. Can you really consider it of any importance, that I should use the same word, if to me it expresses something totally different? Do you feel allied to an idolater, because in his language he gives a block of wood the same name that to you in yours, means the creator of heaven and earth? Would you not, though you might respect his conviction, have greater reason to say to him: 'Poor, poor mortal!'—?"

"'Blessed are the poor in spirit!'" she replied. "You certainly will not question those words, neither will you deny that every religious feeling springs from the consciousness of our own incompleteness, that he who lacks nothing, who is sufficient unto himself, cannot know the loftiest emotion: devotion to something loftier, richer, stronger—the ideal of what is highest and noblest, which we call God. And therefore the idolater stands nearer to me than the atheist. He shares with me the human need of worshipping, of bowing before some powerful, inscrutable being. Is he to blame if his ideas of this dim power are so narrow and gloomy, that in order to be able to reverence something, he forgets that he carved these gods himself?"

"Certainly not," replied Edwin gravely. "As little as you are to blame, for adoring a God you have carved yourself or rather suffered others to fashion. Oh! my honored friend, do not be angry with me, but the difference between the poor doll that the south sea islander believes to be the creator of the world, and the God of our ordinary christianity, does not seem to me great enough to create such a stir. Are not both carved after our pattern, one more rudely, the other more delicately, the former bedecked with barbaric finery and painted in gaudy hues, the latter, according to the taste of our times, adorned with more or less art and fantastic splendor, but always a work of our own minds? I will not speak of those really poor mortals, whom you also will hardly call blessed or think specially well fitted for their heavenly kingdom: of those who, under the forms of the Christian faith, practise the grossest idolatry, the merest image worship. But how do even the most enlightened, the most intellectual, who take the scriptural words 'God is a spirit' in the most solemn sense, imagine this spirit? In their holy zeal, they ascribe to it every quality that seems worthy of honor and love in themselves or others. And this ideal being, which they have created in their own image, and only endowed with the thoughtlessly collected attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, this God-man or man-God, they set on a throne somewhere in space, give him the world for a globe, and the lightning for a sceptre, and are perfectly convinced that in the fullest power and majesty, he will guide the stars on their courses, and decide the destinies of mortals with mercy and justice. And meantime the sorrows of the world take their course, evil reigns, the unequal distribution of blessings still exists, and the all-merciful, omniscient, all-righteous, and omnipotent God, does not move his little finger to effect a change; his most eager devotees must seize upon very common place, earthly means to keep the world in its grooves; but where these are not enough, where the whole cannot sufficiently protect the individual, then arises the old sardonic consolation: 'Help yourself, and God will help you.' So we're again thrown back on ourselves. It is still our strength, our intellect, our good purposes! And yet earnest men, who have their doubts about the contradictory stories concerning the government of the world by a God who is just and good according to human ideas, are blamed if they seek to help themselves through life by their own efforts, and at the same time try whether they cannot make things harmonize without nursery tales." He had risen and was pacing up and down the room in increasing excitement.

"You reject the good with the bad," she replied shaking her head. "Who denies the imperfection of our ideas of the supreme being? Who asserts that our human images and comparisons describe his real nature? They are all mere make-shifts, a species of flying machine to enable us, who are denied wings on earth, to approach as near him as possible? Do you wish to deprive the poor mortals who languish in the dust, of this solace?"

"I? You're again forgetting that I wish to deprive no one of his religion, nor arouse in any one who is satisfied higher desires; nor to seek to guide him to what affords me happiness. Let them soar as high as they wish and can; but they, too, ought to permit the plain pedestrian, who climbs the rough path to the summit step by step, to move quietly on his way, and not throw stones at him from their balloons."

"Who does so? Who, that has understood the law of love, the most sacred tenet of our religion?"

He approached her and took her hand, exclaiming eagerly: "Not you, my honored friend. You will not cease to include in your prayers, the man who acknowledges that he does not join in the words, 'we all believe in one God.' Perhaps you will prefer not to associate with him, as with all our love for our neighbor, we do not choose an outcast for a companion. But ask yourself, how many of your brothers and sisters in faith have advanced so far in toleration that they will not only permit every one to be happy in his own way, but even endure those who feel no desire for what is called heavenly bliss, who see the circle of their duties and privileges, toils and joys, coupled here on earth, and do not wish to be more perfect, wiser, or more immortal than one can become with human intellect and powers? Yet the word 'godless' is still the harshest that can be said of a fellow man, and people speak of envy, hatred, revenge, and malice, as traits natural to humanity. But all neighborly love is refused the poor fellow creature, who confesses that he can form no idea of a personal ruler of the world, according to the human pattern, and the one word 'atheist' is sufficient to forever brand the most peaceful citizen, the noblest philanthropist, the most earnest seeker after truth. Yet we talk of an age of enlightenment! We boast of our freedom of thought, our scientific triumphs, and even men of science fear to express their deepest thoughts in their works, even those which are not even intended for the masses, in order to be sure of their peace, if not of their lives! Their real, inmost conviction, they whisper like some guilty secret into the ears of those whom they have recognized as kindred spirits, while childish folly, criminal stupidity, are permitted to display themselves in every street, and the holiest things are used by cunning speculators for very worldly purposes."