The Lost Manuscript: A Novel. Gustav Freytag

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 both dwellings, the scent of the pine-trees and the perfumes of the lime-flowers. And yet the intense aversion of the inhabitants has not diminished. The house of Hahn objects to singed hair, and the family of Hummel cough indignantly in their garden whenever they suspect sulphur in the oxygen of the air.

      It is true that decorous behavior to the neighborhood was not quite ignored; and though the felt was inclined to be quarrelsome, the straw was more pliant, and showed itself tractable in many cases. Both men were acquainted with a family in which they occasionally met, nay, both had once been godfathers to the same child, and care had been taken that one should not give a smaller christening gift than the other. This unavoidable acquaintance necessitated formal greetings whenever they could not avoid meeting each other. But there it ended. Between the shopmen who cleaned the straw hats with sulphur, and the workmen, who presided over the hare-skins, there existed an intense hatred. And the people who dwelt in the nearest houses in the street knew this, and did their best to maintain the existing relation. But, in fact, the character of both would scarcely harmonize. Their dialect was different, their education had been different, the favorite dishes and the domestic arrangements that were approved by one displeased the other. Hummel was of North German lineage; Hahn had come hither from a small town in the neighborhood.

      When Mr. Hummel spoke of his neighbor Hahn, he called him a man of straw and a fantastical fellow. Mr. Hahn was a thoughtful man, quiet and industrious in his business, but in his hours of recreation he devoted himself to some peculiar fancies. These were undoubtedly intended to make a favorable impression on the people who passed by the two houses on their way to the meadow and the woods. In his little garden he had collected most of the contrivances of modern landscape-gardening. Between the three elder-bushes there rose up a rock built of tufa, with a small, steep path to the top. The expedition to the summit could be ventured upon without an Alpenstock by strong mountain climbers only, and even they would be in danger of falling on their noses on the jagged tufa. The following year, near the railing, poles were erected at short intervals, round which climbed creepers, and between each pole hung a colored glass lamp. When the row of lamps was lighted up on festive evenings they threw a magic splendor on the straw hats which were placed under the elder bushes, and which challenged the judgment of the passers-by. The following year the glass lamps were superseded by Chinese lanterns. Again, the next year, the garden bore a classical aspect, for a white statue of a muse, surrounded by ivy and blooming wall-flowers, shone forth far into the wood.

      In the face of such novelties Mr. Hummel remained firm to his preference for water. In the rear of his house a small stream flowed toward the town. Every year his boat was painted the same green, and in his leisure hours he loved to go alone in his boat and to row from the houses to the park. He took his rod in his hand and devoted himself to the pleasure of catching gudgeons, minnows, and other small fish.

      Doubtless, the Hummel family were more aristocratic, – that is, more determined, more out of the common, and more difficult to deal with. Of all the housewives of the street, Mrs. Hummel displayed the greatest pretensions by her silk dresses and gold-watch and chain. She was a little lady with blonde curls, still very pretty; she had a seat at the theatre, was accomplished and kind-hearted, and very irascible. She looked as if she did not concern herself about anything, but she knew everything that happened in the street. Her husband was the only one who, at times, was beyond her control. Yet, although Mr. Hummel was tyrannical to all the world, he sometimes showed his wife great consideration. When she was too much for him in the house, he quietly went into the garden, and if she followed him there, he ensconced himself in the factory behind a bulwark of felt.

      But also Mrs. Hummel was subject to a higher power, and this power was exercised by her little daughter, Laura. This was the only surviving one of several children, and all the tenderness and affection of the mother were lavished upon her. And she was a splendid little girl; the whole town knew her ever since she wore her first red shoes; she was often detained when in the arms of her nurse; and had many presents given her. She grew up a merry, plump little maiden, with two large blue eyes and round cheeks, with dark, curly hair, and an arch countenance. When the little, rosy daughter of Mr. Hummel walked along the streets, her hands in the pockets of her apron, she was the delight of the whole neighborhood. Sprightly and decided, she knew how to behave toward all, and was never backward in offering her little mouth to be kissed. She would give the woodcutter at the door her buttered roll, and join him in drinking the thin coffee out of his cup; she accompanied the letter-carrier all along the street, and her greatest pleasure was to run with him up the steps, to ring and deliver his letters; she even once slipped out of the room late in the evening, and placed herself by the watchman, on a corner-stone, and held his great horn in impatient expectation of the striking of the hour at which it was to be sounded. Mrs. Hummel СКАЧАТЬ