Seven Gothic Tales (52 page)

Count Augustus was by nature of a heavy and melancholy disposition. He wanted to be very happy but he had no talent for happiness. He had suffered during his youth. Somewhere, somewhere in the world, he had thought, there must be a great, a wonderful, happiness, the
fons et origo
of the power which manifests itself in the delights of music, of flowers, and friendship. He had collected flowers, studied music, and had many friends. He had tried a life of pleasure and had been made happy many times. But the road leading from it all into the heart of things he had not found. As time went on a dreadful thing had happened to him: one thing had become to him as good as another. Now, later in life, he had accepted the happiness of life in a different way, not as he really believed it to be, but, as in a reflection within a mirror, such as others saw it.

This inner development had begun when he had unexpectedly come into a very large fortune. Left to himself, he would have thought very little of it, for he did not know what he was to do with the money. But upon this occasion he was impressed by the attitude of the world around him: the happening occupied it much; the world thought it a great and splendid thing for him. Count Augustus was by nature very envious himself, and had housed this particular agony many times, mostly toward people in books, so that he was in a position to value the weight of the feeling. Next to painting a picture of which you yourself approve, the most pleasant thing is perhaps to paint a picture about which the whole world agrees to approve. Thus with the happiness of Count Augustus. Slowly he took to living, so to say, upon the envy of the outside world, and to accept his happiness according to the quotation of the day. He never let himself be deceived into
believing that the world was right; he worked upon a system of bookkeeping by double entry. Under the entry of the world he had much to be proud or thankful for; he had hardly anything but assets in this account. He had an old name, one of the greatest estates and finest houses in Denmark, a beautiful wife, four pretty and industrious boys, the eldest twelve years old, a great fortune, a high prestige. He was an unusually handsome man, and became even more so with age, which went well with his type, and at this time of life he was a majestic figure. In the Consultation Chamber he had been called the Alcibiades of the North. He looked stronger than he was, like a man who enjoys his food and wine and sleeps well at night. He did not enjoy his food or wine much, and thought that he slept very badly, but to be envied by his neighbors for these goods of life became to him quite an acceptable substitute for the real goods.

Even the jealousy of his wife was, from this point of view, useful to him. The Countess had no reason to be jealous of her husband. Indeed it was doubtful whether, amongst all the women he had met, he did not like his wife best. But fifteen years of married life and four big sons had not cured her of her watchfulness and distrust, of the tears and long scenes, sometimes ending in her fainting away, which as a young man Count Augustus had thought a heavy cross. Now her jealousy took its place in his scheme of things, suggesting or proving to him the possibility, not of the ladies of the surrounding country seats and of the court falling in love with him—for that they unquestionably did—but of him himself falling in love with them, or with one of them. He came to depend upon her attitude, and had she reformed and done away with her jealousy, he would have missed it. Like to the Emperor in his new clothes, he was walking on, dignified, his life a continual procession, entirely successful in every respect except perhaps to himself. He did not think highly of his system, but it did not work badly, and during the last five years he had been happier than before.

While he had thus, like a coral polyp, been building up his moral world the Councilor could have done him no good whatever. For he had not got it in him to be envious of anybody, and he might have shaken the whole building. But now that it was firmly fastened, and he himself safely encysted within it, with no soft parts exposed, even to the extent of taking the whole matter a bit in jest, he met his old friend again with great pleasure. The Councilor, for his part, would always have been pleased to meet him. So would probably Diogenes always have been pleased to meet Alexander. Alexander was pleased with the moment when he declared that had he not been Alexander he would have been Diogenes. But who knows whether the great conqueror, who was very likely to a certain extent dependent upon the opinion of the world, would at the time have liked to hear the philosopher of the tub declare that had he not been Diogenes he would have liked to be Alexander. Later on in his career he might have allowed himself the luxury of a second meeting, and a real discussion upon the nature of things, with the Cynic. So did Count Augustus.

The two friends might still have passed as Alexander and Diogenes of 1836 as they walked in the woods, along roads strewn with the silky fallen teguments of the young leaves. In their dark clothes they were like two sedate birds, rooks or magpies, out to enjoy the May afternoon with their gayer colleagues.

They sat down upon a rustic seat in the forest and talked.

“As we live,” said Count Augustus, “we become aware of the humiliating fact that as we are dependent upon our subordinates—and without my barber I should be, within a week, socially, politically, and domestically a wreck—so are we, in the spiritual world, dependent upon people stupider than ourselves. I have, as you may know, some time since given up any artistic ambitions and have been occupying myself, within the sphere of the arts, with connoisseurship.” (He was indeed a shrewd critic of all objects of art.) “Here I have learned that it is not possible to
paint any definite object, say, a rose, so that I, or any other intelligent critic, shall not be able to decide, within twenty years, at what period it was painted, or, more or less, at what place on the earth. The artist has meant to create either a picture of a rose in the abstract, or the portrait of a particular rose; it is never in the least his intention to give us a Chinese, Persian, or Dutch, or, according to the period, a rococo or a pure Empire rose. If I told him that this was what he had done, he would not understand me. He might be angry with me. He would say: ‘I have painted a rose.’ Still he cannot help it. I am thus so far superior to the artist that I can mete him with a measure of which he himself knows nothing. At the same time I could not paint, and hardly see or conceive, a rose myself. I might imitate any of their creations. I might say: ‘I will paint a rose in the Chinese or Dutch or in the rococo manner.’ But I should never have the courage to paint a rose as it looks. For how does a rose look?”

He sat for a while in thought, his walking stick upon his knees.

“Thus,” he said, “with the general human idea of virtue, justice, or, if you will, of God. If anybody were to ask me what was the truth about these things, I should answer: ‘My friend, your question is without meaning. The Hebrews conceived their God like this; the Aztecs of America, about whom I have just read a book, like that; the Jansenites again, like that. If you want any details of the various views I shall be pleased to give them, having devoted a certain amount of my time to this study. But let me advise you not to repeat your question in intelligent company.’ But at the same time I should be, for this superior view of mine, in debt to the naïve people who have believed in the possibility of obtaining a direct and absolutely truthful idea of God, and who were mistaken. For had they made it their object only to create a special Hebrew, Aztec or Christian idea of God, where would the presuppositions of the observer have been found? He would be in the position of the Israelites, who were to make bricks without straw. Indeed, my friend, while the fools could have done
without us, we are dependent upon the fools for our better knowledge.

“When,” he went on after a little pause, “you and I, on our morning walk, pass a pawnbroker’s shop, and, pointing at a painted board in the window, on which is written ‘Clothes mangled here,’ you say to me: ‘Look, clothes are mangled here—I shall go and bring my washing,’ I smile at you, and inform you that you will find neither mangle nor mangier here, that the painted board is for sale.

“Most religions are like that board, and we smile at them.

“But I should have no opportunity of smiling, or of feeling or showing my superiority, and, in fact, the painted board would not be there at all, if, at some time or other, some people had not believed firmly in the possibility, in the wisdom, of mangling clothes, had not even been firmly convinced of the existence of their own mangle, with which clothes were indeed mangled.”

The Councilor listened to him. Now that they were out here together in the green wood, he thought that he would like to talk of his marriage plans, of which he had not yet informed anyone, not even Madame Fransine.

“My friend,” he said, “in all this foolishness of which you are speaking, I myself fit in harmoniously.
Alter schützt vor Thorheit nicht
. Under this venerable beaver hat of mine, I, while listening to you, have been harboring little thoughts which came out and fluttered like those two yellow butterflies”—he pointed at them with his stick—“little creeds, if you will forgive me, in absolute virtue, in beauty, even, perhaps, in God. I am seriously contemplating entry into the bonds of Hymen, and had you come to Hirschholm three months later, I might have had a Madame Mathiesen to do the honors to you.”

Count Augustus was much surprised, but he had so much faith in the wisdom of his friend that before the eyes of his mind the image of a mature and pleasant beauty, witty and thrifty, with
an agreeable dowry, was instantly formed. Smiling, he hastened to congratulate the Councilor.

“Yes, but I do not know yet if she will have me,” said the old man, “which is the worst of it. For she is not more than a third of my age, and, to the best of my belief, a romantic little devil. She can neither make a pancake nor darn a sock, and she will not read the philosophy of Hegel. If I get her I shall have to buy the French fashion papers, carry my wife’s shawl at the balls of Hirschholm, study the language of flowers, and take to narrating ghost stories in the winter evenings.”

Count Augustus at these words received quite a little shock, so much was he reminded of old days. It was indeed as if he saw young Augustus Schimmelmann playing chess with his tutor at the open window of the library of Lindenburg. For this had always been a particular little trick of the Councilor’s whenever you brought out anything for his inspection. When you were most confident in your aces and kings he would put down a tiny little trump to knock them on the head, and that at a moment when you had not been aware that there were any trumps in. He had been the same as a little boy. When the other children had, in the autumn, been playing under the trees, pretending that the chestnuts were horses, he would come out with a little cage of white mice, really alive and thus much more like horses; or, as they were comparing their various treasures of knives, wooden soldiers and fishing hooks, he would pull out of his pocket a bit of gunpowder, which might blow up the whole lot in a very fine flash. He did not run down his friends’ acquisitions; there was nothing negative in his argument. But he had a little familiar devil which at the right moment put out its head and conjured the weight out of your things, so that you would feel a little flat about them. Those who have no taste for devils disliked this quality in the man. The opposite type, the chess player for one, was attracted by it. Here Count Augustus had been promenading before him, serenely, his superiority to life, his secure and
unassailable relation to it, when pat! the Councilor took out of his pocket a little bright bit of risk and made it sparkle between his fingers like a jewel. The younger man had been uttering words of wisdom, and the old man produced a little flute and played three notes on it, just to remind him that there was such a thing as music, and also such a thing as folly, and alas for the heart of his old pupil.

The Councilor’s eyes followed the dance of the butterflies as they disappeared between the trees. “But light,” he said, “terrible as an army with banners.”

Count Augustus took off his hat and put it on his knees. The calm sweet air of the May evening ran like caressing fingers through his locks. All this was so much like old days, this little gentle shock of envy, as if the wings of the yellow butterflies had touched his heart. Young Augustus was again walking, and meditating upon heroism and the fun of life, in the cool and sweet-smelling air, under a light and silky young foliage. He let his silver-headed walking stick describe circles on the ground. What was his reputation for enjoying his wine and sleeping well at night—what was even the genuine enjoyment of these things? he asked himself now as he remembered words that he had heard long ago: “Who never ate his bread with tears, and never through the sorrowful night sat weeping on his bed, he knows ye not, ye heavenly powers.” Those heavenly powers—he had not thought of them for so long. His heart swelled a little at the remembrance of the way in which hearts do swell.

A figure came toward them down one of the forest paths, drew nearer, and was recognized by the Councilor as that of his protégé. The Councilor introduced him to his influential friend, and after a few remarks asked him to recite a poem for them.

Anders found it difficult to think of anything. His heart, in this particular spring, was moving in circles as large as those of the planets around the sun. Still he wanted to oblige this majestic, cold elderly gentleman. For he was not deceived by the Emperor’s
new clothes, but saw him at once as the center of a procession, shivering, in his shirt. In the end he found a little ballad to recite, a little gay drop of overflow from all that happiness and pain which had filled him lately. It was about a young man who goes to sleep in the forest and is taken into fairyland. The fairies love him and look after him with great concern, puzzling their little brains to make him happy. The delights of forest life were in-spiredly painted, a long line running out at the end of each stanza giving it something of the babbling of a spring in the woods. But the fairies never sleep and have no knowledge of sleep. Whenever their young friend, fatigued by exquisite pleasure, dozes off, they lament “He dies, he dies!” and strain all their energy to keep him awake. So in the end, to their deep regret, the boy dies from lack of sleep.