The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 04

BUGBEAR (suddenly changes into a mouse and sits in a corner).

OFFICER

Why, where has the Bugbear gone?

BUGBEAR (in a delicate voice).

Just put the money down there on the table; I will sit here to avoid frightening you.

OFFICER

Here. (He lays the money down.) Oh, this justice is a splendid thing—how can one be afraid of such a mouse!

[Exit.]

BUGBEAR (assumes his natural form).

A pretty good purse—of course one must sympathize with human weakness.

[Enter HINZE.]

HINZE

With your permission—(aside) Hinze, you must pluck up courage—(aloud) Your Excellency!

BUGBEAR

What do you wish?

HINZE

I am a scholar traveling through this region and wished to take the liberty of making your excellency's acquaintance.

BUGBEAR

Very well, then, make my acquaintance.

HINZE

You are a mighty prince; your love of justice is known all over the world.

BUGBEAR

Yes, I don't doubt it. Do sit down!

HINZE

They tell many wonderful things about Your Highness—

BUGBEAR

Yes, people always want something to talk about and so the reigning monarchs must be the first to be discussed.

HINZE

But still, there is one thing I cannot believe, that Your Excellency can transform yourself into an elephant and a tiger.

BUGBEAR

I will give you an example of it at once. (He changes into a lion.)

HINZE (draws out a portfolio, trembling).

Permit me to make note of this marvel—but now would you also please resume your natural charming form? Otherwise I shall die of fear.

BUGBEAR (in his own form).

Those are tricks, friend! Don't you think so?

HINZE

Marvelous! But another thing—they also say you can transform yourself into very small animals—with your permission, that is even far more incomprehensible to me; for, do tell me, what becomes of your large body then?

BUGBEAR

I will do that too.

[He changes into a mouse. HINZE leaps after him, the Bugbear flees into another room, HINZE after him.]

HINZE (coming back).

Freedom and Equality! The Law is devoured! Now indeed the

Tiers—Etat! Gottlieb will surely secure the government.

SCHLOSS

Why, a revolutionary play after all? Then for heaven's sake, you surely shouldn't stamp!

[The stamping continues, WIESENER and several others applaud, HINZE creeps into a corner and finally even leaves the stage. The playwright is heard quarreling behind the scenes and then enters.]

PLAYWR

What am I to do? The play will be over directly—everything would perhaps have run smoothly—now just in this moral scene I had expected so much applause. If this were only not so far away from the king's palace, I would fetch the peacemaker; he explained to me at the end of the second act all the fables of Orpheus—but am I not a fool? I became quite confused—why, this is the theatre here, and the peacemaker must be somewhere behind the scenes—I will look for him—I must find him—he shall save me! (Exit, returns again quickly.) He is not there, Sir Peacemaker! An empty echo mocks me—he has deserted me, his playwright. Ha! there I see him—he must come forward.

[The pauses are always filled by stamping in the pit and the playwright delivers this monologue in recitative, so that the effect is rather melodramatic.]

PEACEMAKER (behind the scenes).

No, I will not appear.

PLAYWR

But why not, pray?

PEACEMAK

Why, I have already undressed.

PLAYWR

That doesn't matter. (He pushes him forward by force.)

PEACEMAKER (appearing in his ordinary dress, with, the set of bells).

Well, you may take the responsibility. (He plays on the bells and sings.)

  These sacred halls of beauty  Revenge have never known.  For love guides back to duty  The man who vice has sown.  Then he is led by friendly hand,  Glad and content, to a better land.

[The pit begins to applaud; meanwhile the scene is changed, the fire and water taken from the MAGIC FLUTE begin to play, above appears the open temple of the sun, the sky is clear and Jupiter sits within it, beneath Hell with Terkaleon, cobalds and witches on the stage, many lights, etc. The audience applauds excessively, everything is astir.]

WIESENER

Now the cat has only to go through fire and water and then the play is finished.

[Enter the KING, the PRINCESS, GOTTLIEB, HINZE and servants.]

HINZE

This is the palace of the Count of Carabas. Why, the dickens, how this has changed!

KING

A beautiful palace!

HINZE

As long as matters have gone thus far (taking Gottlieb by the hand) you must first walk through the fire here and then through the water there.

GOTTLIEB (walks through fire and water to the sound of flute and drum.)

HINZE

You have stood the test; now, my prince, you are altogether worthy of the government.

GOTTLIEB

Governing, Hinze, is a curious matter.

KING

Accept, now, the hand of my daughter.

PRINCESS

How happy I am!

GOTTLIEB

I, likewise. But, my king, I would desire to reward my servant.

KING

By all means; I herewith raise him to the nobility. (He hangs an order about the cat's neck.) What is his actual name?

GOTTLIEB

Hinze. By birth he is of but a lowly family—but his merits exalt him.

LEANDER (quickly stepping forward).

  After the King I rode with due submission,  And now implore his Majesty's permission  To close with laudatory lines poetic  This play so very wondrous and prophetic.  In praise of cats my grateful anthem soars—  The noblest of those creatures on all fours  Who daily bring contentment to our doors.  In Egypt cats were gods, and very nice is  The Tom-cat who was cousin to Great Isis.  They still protect our cellar, attic, kitchen,  And serve the man who this world's goods is rich in.  Our homes had household gods of yore to grace them.  If cats be gods, then with the Lares place them!

[Drumming. The curtain falls.]

FAIR ECKBERT (1796)

BY LUDWIG TIECK

TRANSLATED BY PAUL B. THOMAS

In a region of the Hartz Mountains there lived a knight whom people generally called simply Fair Eckbert. He was about forty years old, scarcely of medium height, and short, very fair hair fell thick and straight over his pale, sunken face. He lived very quietly unto himself, and was never implicated in the feuds of his neighbors; people saw him but rarely outside the encircling wall of his little castle. His wife loved solitude quite as much as he, and both seemed to love each other from the heart; only they were wont to complain because Heaven seemed unwilling to bless their marriage with children.

Very seldom was Eckbert visited by guests, and even when he was, almost no change on their account was made in the ordinary routine of his life. Frugality dwelt there, and Economy herself seemed to regulate everything. Eckbert was then cheerful and gay—only when he was alone one noticed in him a certain reserve, a quiet distant melancholy.

Nobody came so often to the castle as did Philip Walther, a man to whom Eckbert had become greatly attached, because he found in him very much his own way of thinking. His home was really in Franconia, but he often spent more than half a year at a time in the vicinity of Eckbert's castle, where he busied himself gathering herbs and stones and arranging them in order. He had a small income, and was therefore dependent upon no one. Eckbert often accompanied him on his lonely rambles, and thus a closer friendship developed between the two men with each succeeding year.

There are hours in which it worries a man to keep from a friend a secret, which hitherto he has often taken great pains to conceal. The soul then feels an irresistible impulse to impart itself completely, and reveal its innermost self to the friend, in order to make him so much the more a friend. At these moments delicate souls disclose themselves to each other, and it doubtless sometimes happens that the one shrinks back in fright from its acquaintance with the other.

One foggy evening in early autumn Eckbert was sitting with his friend and his wife, Bertha, around the hearth-fire. The flames threw a bright glow out into the room and played on the ceiling above. The night looked in darkly through the windows, and the trees outside were shivering in the damp cold. Walther was lamenting that he had so far to go to get back home, and Eckbert proposed that he remain there and spend half the night in familiar talk, and then sleep until morning in one of the rooms of the castle. Walther accepted the proposal, whereupon wine and supper were brought in, the fire was replenished with wood, and the conversation of the two friends became more cheery and confidential.

After the dishes had been cleared off, and the servants had gone out, Eckbert took Walther's hand and said:

"Friend, you ought once to let my wife tell you the story of her youth, which is indeed strange enough."

"Gladly," replied Walther, and they all sat down again around the hearth. It was now exactly midnight, and the moon shone intermittently through the passing clouds.

"You must forgive me," began Bertha, "but my husband says your thoughts are so noble that it is not right to conceal anything from you. Only you must not regard my story as a fairy-tale, no matter how strange it may sound.

"I was born in a village, my father was a poor shepherd. The household economy of my parents was on a humble plane—often they did not know where they were going to get their bread. But what grieved me far more than that was the fact that my father and mother often quarreled over their poverty, and cast bitter reproaches at each other. Furthermore I was constantly hearing about myself, that I was a simple, stupid child, who could not perform even the most trifling task. And I was indeed extremely awkward and clumsy; I let everything drop from my hands, I learned neither to sew nor to spin, I could do nothing to help about the house. The misery of my parents, however, I understood extremely well. I often used to sit in the corner and fill my head with notions—how I would help them if I should suddenly become rich, how I would shower them with gold and silver and take delight in their astonishment. Then I would see spirits come floating up, who would reveal subterranean treasures to me or give me pebbles which afterward turned into gems. In short, the most wonderful fantasies would occupy my mind, and when I had to get up to help or carry something, I would show myself far more awkward than ever, for the reason that my head would be giddy with all these strange notions.

"My father was always very cross with me, because I was such an absolutely useless burden on the household; so he often treated me with great cruelty, and I seldom heard him say a kind word to me. Thus it went along until I was about eight years old, when serious steps were taken to get me to do and to learn something. My father believed that it was sheer obstinacy and indolence on my part, so that I might spend my days in idleness. Enough—he threatened me unspeakably, and when this turned out to be of no avail, he chastised me most barbarously, adding that this punishment was to be repeated every day because I was an absolutely useless creature.

"All night long I cried bitterly—I felt so entirely forsaken, and I pitied myself so that I wanted to die. I dreaded the break of day, and did not know what to do. I longed for any possible kind of ability, and could not understand at all why I was more stupid than the other children of my acquaintance. I was on the verge of despair.

"When the day dawned, I got up, and, scarcely realizing what I was doing, opened the door of our little cabin. I found myself in the open field, soon afterward in a forest, into which the daylight had hardly yet shone. I ran on without looking back; I did not get tired, for I thought all the time that my father would surely overtake me and treat me even more cruelly on account of my running away.

"When I emerged from the forest again the sun was already fairly high, and I saw, lying ahead of me, something dark, over which a thick mist was resting. One moment I was obliged to scramble over hills, the next to follow a winding path between rocks. I now guessed that I must be in the neighboring mountains, and I began to feel afraid of the solitude. For, living in the plain, I had never seen any mountains, and the mere word mountains, whenever I heard them talked about, had an exceedingly terrible sound to my childish ear. I hadn't the heart to turn back—it was indeed precisely my fear which drove me onwards. I often looked around me in terror when the wind rustled through the leaves above me, or when a distant sound of chopping rang out through the quiet morning. Finally, when I began to meet colliers and miners and heard a strange pronunciation, I nearly fainted with fright.

"You must forgive my prolixity. As often as I tell this story I involuntarily become garrulous, and Eckbert, the only person to whom I have told it, has spoiled me by his attention.

"I passed through several villages and begged, for I now felt hungry and thirsty. I helped myself along very well with the answers I gave to questions asked me. I had wandered along in this way for about four days, when I came to a small foot-path which led me farther from the highway. The rocks around me now assumed a different, far stranger shape. They were cliffs, and were piled up on one another in such a way that they looked as if the first gust of wind would hurl them all together into a heap. I did not know whether to go on or not. I had always slept over night either in out-of-the-way shepherds' huts, or else in the open woods, for it was just then the most beautiful season of the year. Here I came across no human habitations whatever, nor could I expect to meet with any in this wilderness. The rocks became more and more terrible—I often had to pass close by dizzy precipices, and finally even the path under my feet came to an end. I was absolutely wretched; I wept and screamed, and my voice echoed horribly in the rocky glens. And now night set in; I sought out a mossy spot to lie down on, but I could not sleep. All night long I heard the most peculiar noises; first I thought it was wild beasts, then the wind moaning through the rocks, then again strange birds. I prayed, and not until toward morning did I fall asleep.

"I woke up when the daylight shone in my face. In front of me there was a rock. I climbed up on it, hoping to find a way out of the wilderness, and perhaps to see some houses or people. But when I reached the top, everything, as far as my eye could see, was like night about me—all overcast with a gloomy mist. The day was dark and dismal, and not a tree, not a meadow, not even a thicket could my eye discern, with the exception of a few bushes which, in solitary sadness, had shot up through the crevices in the rocks. It is impossible to describe the longing I felt merely to see a human being, even had it been the most strange-looking person before whom I should inevitably have taken fright. At the same time I was ravenously hungry. I sat down and resolved to die. But after a while the desire to live came off victorious; I got up quickly and walked on all day long, occasionally crying out. At last I was scarcely conscious of what I was doing; I was tired and exhausted, had hardly any desire to live, and yet was afraid to die.

"Toward evening the region around me began to assume a somewhat more friendly aspect. My thoughts and wishes took new life, and the desire to live awakened in all my veins. I now thought I heard the swishing of a mill in the distance; I redoubled my steps, and how relieved, how joyous I felt when at last I actually reached the end of the dreary rocks! Woods and meadows and, far ahead, pleasant mountains lay before me again. I felt as if I had stepped out of hell into paradise; the solitude and my helplessness did not seem to me at all terrible now.

"Instead of the hoped-for mill, I came upon a water-fall, which, to be sure, considerably diminished my joy. I dished up some water from the river with my hand and drank. Suddenly I thought I heard a low cough a short distance away. Never have I experienced so pleasant a surprise as at that moment; I went nearer and saw, on the edge of the forest, an old woman, apparently resting. She was dressed almost entirely in black; a black hood covered her head and a large part of her face. In her hand she held a walking-stick.

"I approached her and asked for help; she had me sit down beside her and gave me bread and some wine. While I was eating she sang a hymn in a shrill voice, and when she had finished she said that I might follow her.

"I was delighted with this proposal, strange as the voice and the personality of the old woman seemed to me. She walked rather fast with her cane, and at every step she distorted her face, which at first made me laugh. The wild rocks steadily receded behind us—we crossed a pleasant meadow, and then passed through a fairly long forest. When we emerged from this, the sun was just setting, and I shall never forget the view and the feelings of that evening. Everything was fused in the most delicate red and gold; the tree-tops stood forth in the red glow of evening, the charming light was spread out over the fields, the forest and the leaves of the trees were motionless, the clear sky looked like an open paradise, and the evening bells of the villages rang out with a strange mournfulness across the lea. My young soul now got its first presentment of the world and its events. I forgot myself and my guide; my spirit and my eyes were wandering among golden clouds.

"We now climbed a hill, which was planted with birchtrees, and from its summit looked down into a little valley, likewise full of birches. In the midst of the trees stood a little hut. A lively barking came to our ears, and presently a spry little dog was dancing around the old woman and wagging his tail. Presently he came to me, examined me from all sides, and then returned with friendly actions to the old woman.

"When we were descending the hill I heard some wonderful singing, which seemed to come from the hut. It sounded like a bird, and ran

  O solitude  Of lonely wood,  Where none intrude,  Thou bringest good  For every mood,  O solitude!

"These few words were repeated over and over; if I were to attempt to describe the effect, it was somewhat like the blended notes of a bugle and a shawm.

"My curiosity was strained to the utmost. Without waiting for the old woman's invitation, I walked into the hut with her. Dusk had already set in. Everything was in proper order; a few goblets stood in a cupboard, some strange-looking vessels lay on a table, and a bird was hanging in a small, shiny cage by the window. And he, indeed, it was that I had heard singing. The old woman gasped and coughed, seemingly as if she would never get over it. Now she stroked the little dog, now talked to the bird, which answered her only with its usual words. Furthermore, she acted in no way as if I were present. While I was thus watching her, a series of shudders passed through my body; for her face was constantly twitching and her head shaking, as if with age, and in such a way that it was impossible for one to tell how she really looked.

"When she finally ceased coughing she lighted a candle, set a very small table, and laid the supper on it. Then she looked around at me and told me to take one of the woven cane chairs. I sat down directly opposite her, and the candle stood between us. She folded her bony hands and prayed aloud, all the time twitching her face in such a way that it almost made me laugh. I was very careful, however, not to do anything to make her angry.

"After supper she prayed again, and then showed me to a bed in a tiny little side-room—she herself slept in the main room. I did not stay awake long, for I was half dazed. I woke up several times during the night, however, and heard the old woman coughing and talking to the dog, and occasionally I heard the bird, which seemed to be dreaming and sang only a few isolated words of its song. These stray notes, united with the rustling of the birches directly in front of my window, and also with the song of the far-off nightingale, made such a strange combination that I felt all the time, not as if I were awake, but as if I were lapsing into another, still stranger, dream.

"In the morning the old woman woke me up and soon afterward gave me some work to do; I had, namely, to spin, and I soon learned how to do it; in addition I had to take care of the dog and the bird. I was not long in getting acquainted with the housekeeping, and came to know all the objects around. I now began to feel that everything was as it should be; I no longer thought that there was anything strange about the old woman, or romantic about the location of her home, or that the bird was in any way extraordinary. To be sure, I was all the time struck by his beauty; for his feathers displayed every possible color, varying from a most beautiful light blue to a glowing red, and when he sang he puffed himself out proudly, so that his feathers shone even more gorgeously.

"The old woman often went out and did not return until evening. Then I would go with the dog to meet her and she would call me child and daughter. Finally I came to like her heartily; for our minds, especially in childhood, quickly accustom themselves to everything. In the evening hours she taught me to read; I soon learned the art, and afterward it was a source of endless pleasure to me in my solitude, for she had a few old, hand-written books which contained wonderful stories.

"The memory of the life I led at that time still gives me a strange feeling even now. I was never visited by any human being, and felt at home only in that little family circle; for the dog and the bird made the same impression on me which ordinarily only old and intimate friends create. Often as I used it at that time, I have never been able to recall the dog's strange name.

"In this way I had lived with the old woman for four years, and I must have been at any rate about twelve years old when she finally began to grow more confidential and revealed a secret to me. It was this: every day the bird laid one egg, and in this egg there was always a pearl or a gem. I had already noticed that she often did something in the cage secretly, but had never particularly concerned myself about it. She now charged me with the task of taking out these eggs during her absence, and of carefully preserving them in the vessels. She would leave food for me and stay away quite a long time—weeks and months. My little spinning-wheel hummed, the dog barked, the wonderful bird sang, and meanwhile everything was so quiet in the region round about that I cannot recall a single high wind or a thunder-storm during the entire time. Not a human being strayed thither, not a wild animal came near our habitation. I was happy, and sang and worked away from one day to the next. Man would perhaps be right happy if he could thus spend his entire life, unseen by others.

"From the little reading that I did I formed quite wonderful impressions of the world and of mankind. They were all drawn from myself and the company I lived in; thus, if whimsical people were spoken of I could not imagine them other than the little dog, beautiful women always looked like the bird, and all old women were as my wonderful old friend. I had also read a little about love, and in my imagination I figured in strange tales. I formed a mental picture of the most beautiful knight in the world and adorned him with all sorts of excellences, without really knowing, after all my trouble, what he looked like. But I could feel genuine pity for myself if he did not return my love, and then I would make long, emotional speeches to him, sometimes aloud, in order to win him. You smile—we are all now past this period of youth.

"I now liked it rather better when I was alone, for I was then myself mistress of the house. The dog was very fond of me and did everything I wanted him to do, the bird answered all my questions with his song, my wheel was always spinning merrily, and so in the bottom of my heart I never felt any desire for a change. When the old woman returned from her wanderings she would praise my diligence, and say that her household was conducted in a much more orderly manner since I belonged to it. She was delighted with my development and my healthy look. In short, she treated me in every way as if I were a daughter.