The Romance of the Canoness. Paul Heyse

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СКАЧАТЬ I am ignorant whether you have retained any recollection of the uncourteous person who had no other reply to a friendly question than to quit you so abruptly. You are living in the current of the world, which washes away so many trivial things, and effaces old impressions with a thousand new ones. An inhabitant of the provinces, of my temperament, has nothing to interrupt him in the unpleasant task of thrusting still deeper into his flesh, in the endeavor to withdraw them, the thorns implanted by a fleeting moment.

      Directly after leaving you I had, it is true, no other unpleasant feeling than that a total stranger had disturbed me amid the indulgence of a fresh sorrow. But at the end of an hour, when I recalled your words and tones, and the gestures accompanying them, I was seized with shame for my boorish conduct. You had been present at the funeral, had even gazed with deep interest at the face of the dead: what was more natural than that you should marvel how that queenly head could rest on the hard pillow of an almshouse coffin, though the mourning of a whole city followed it? And how could you suspect that the man to whom you applied for information suffered most keenly from the universal loss, and at that hour had so bitter a taste of the earth-mold on his tongue that he could not have uttered a word, had his own brother accosted him?

      When I clearly perceived this, and had partly regained my calmness, I hurried to the hotel, firmly intending to apologize for my incivility and tell you at least enough to have enabled you to understand my sorrowful obduracy. You had already continued your journey. I only found your name in the landlord's book, and doubly regretted my unseemly conduct. I was familiar with some of your books, and said to myself that you, of all men, could not have spoken from mere empty curiosity, but from genuine interest in everything relating to human nature, and you, if any one, would have been capable of feeling with me that the death of such a woman is a loss to the whole world.

      What had happened could not be altered, but, to somewhat alleviate the discomfort of my regrets, I began the very next day to write down, for my justification and penance, everything I had left unsaid, intending to lay it before you and thereby obtain absolution for the sin of silence I had formerly committed.

      I meant to be very brief. But my heart took possession of my pen, and the short narrative of this remarkable life has become a shapeless "history in detail," whose swelling daily alarmed me, though I was unable to confine the overflowing torrent of memories into a narrower channel.

      I have spent a whole year in writing, as I only found leisure for it during a few evening hours, and often for weeks together could not find courage to summon up the spirits of the departed. Will you have patience to read to the end? Far more important persons and destinies have passed before your notice, and you will more than once have occasion to smile at the value attached to apparently trivial incidents by a person whose horizon is so limited as that of my insignificant self. Besides, I am a clumsy writer, and do not understand the literary art of polishing even a pebble till in the sunlight it looks like a costly gem.

      Yet, even if you merely cast a pitying glance at these memoranda, I think I can venture to promise that the principal character in this true story will fix your interest and win from you the acknowledgment that it was worth while to follow her unusual life-path with the care of a truth-loving chronicler.

      So I trustfully commit to you the clumsy manuscript, which I entreat you to burn after you have read it. It owes its existence solely to my purpose of paying my debt to you, and with sincere respect, I am

      Your devoted

      Johannes Theodor Weissbrod,

      ex-Cand. Theol.

      I confess that, in spite of this letter, whose simple, amiable style recalled to me every feature of the writer's face, so full of feeling, I took up the bulky manuscript with a certain dread. More than three hundred closely written pages--who could tell with how much theological speculation the simple life-history had been garnished. But the very first pages dispelled the doubt, and the farther I read the more eager was my interest in both contents and narrative. When I laid the last sheets down, I said to myself aloud: Yes, it was indeed worth while.

      With this opinion I instantly wrote to the author, begging him not to confine this confession to ourselves, but by its publication edify all who, in our hurried and corrupt age, had preserved minds capable of appreciating simple grandeur of soul and the natural nobility of humanity.

      He did not keep me waiting long for his answer.

      "Dearest sir and friend," he wrote--"for the friends of our friends are ours, and the warmth with which you speak of my departed friend justifies me in believing that you cherish a kindly feeling toward me also--no, I can not bring myself to regard this account of my most private experiences as a literary production, and appear in it before the cold eyes of the public. Apart from all other considerations, however, the careless, thoroughly untrained literary style appears to me an unconquerable obstacle. Yet, if you would undertake to subject these pages to a thorough revision, provide the splendid kernel which is no merit of mine, with a new and more fitting husk! But, even then, I could not wholly conquer my secret reluctance. I live in complete seclusion; those who know me best, with the exception of one friend of my youth, regard me as a mere commonplace day-laborer in the shape of a pedagogue. The publication of such a work would suddenly render me an 'object of notice,' and nothing is less readily forgiven in a provincial sphere than any departure from the every-day routine of existence.

      "But I will say this, my honored friend: If my unpretending story really seems to you so valuable that you desire to save it from a fiery death, keep the volume till I am no more. You will then be at liberty to publish it--of course, with the abridgment necessary where my personal interest has made me unwarrantably garrulous, and the omission of the guide-posts that would point out persons still living, or the descendants of certain families. The names of cities and communities ought also in justice to be suppressed. Nothing appears to me more contemptible than the modern effort to attain, by the disclosure of actual events, a success which mere skillful literary invention could not have hoped to secure.

      "For the rest, I am entirely of your opinion that a life like the one described here is well fitted to set an example, and that it seems almost a duty to transmit the memory of so rare and lofty a human character to future generations."

      This was the last direct communication I had from the admirable man. I did not venture to make any further effort to shake his resolution, and for two decades his manuscript was carefully treasured in my desk.

      Early this year I received a letter, written by an unknown hand, and bearing the postmark of the city in the Mark. The principal of the grammar-school there informed me that his friend, after having enjoyed the best possible health to the last, had been found one morning dead in his bed! He had been buried, according to the directions of his will, in the almshouse church-yard, by the side of the Canoness, amid the sincere grief of the whole community. Among his papers had been found the request that I should be informed of his demise.

      So I may doubtless consider myself as his executor in at least bringing the following pages from their concealment. While re-reading them I have made only the most modest use of the authority to erase and alter at pleasure--only here and there a certain inequality of style will show that another hand has interposed to make some obscure passage clearer, or correct some awkward expression. In the main, I have left everything as I found it; for it seems to me that the unassuming series of pictures in this biographical romance, as it may be called, would scarcely have gained greater vivacity and charm by a more careful grouping or more artistic execution, while the impression of simple truthfulness might have been impaired. With little art, clear wit and sense suggest their own delivery; and, I may add, that as the love of a warm and noble heart transfigures even the most insignificant countenance from whose eyes it shines, much more does it illuminate features as expressive and beautiful as those that look forth at us from between the СКАЧАТЬ