The Tales of Hoffmann, page 34
‘He is a goldsmith, a jeweller, then,’ Tusmann murmured to himself. He also reflected that his first sight of the stranger in the brightly lit wine-house ought to have told him that the man could not possibly be a genuine privy counsellor, since he was clad in an old-fashioned German coat, cape and cap, which was not customary among privy counsellors.
The two of them, Tusmann and Leonhard, then sat down at the table with old man, who greeted them with a grin. When, after much prompting by Leonhard, Tusmann had drunk a couple of glasses, his pale cheeks began to acquire some colour; gazing before him, cheerfully consuming the wine, he smiled and smirked in the friendliest way, as if the most pleasant images were passing before his mind’s eye.
‘And now’, Leonhard began, ‘tell me frankly, my good Herr Tusmann, why you behaved so very strangely when the bride appeared at the tower window, and what it is that is now engrossing your attention so completely. You and I are, whether you believe it or not, old friends, and you need not be afraid to speak before this good man.’
‘O God,’ replied the chancellery private secretary, ‘most respected Herr Professor – allow me to bestow on you this title, for since you are, I am convinced, an absolutely first-rate artist, you could with every right and justification be a professor at the Academy of Arts – how can I possibly keep silent? Of what the heart is full the mouth speaketh. Hear, then! – I am, to use a common expression, courting and expect at the next vernal equinox to lead home a happy little bride. How could I then fail to be profoundly stirred when you, most respected Herr Professor, were pleased to display to me such a happy bride?’
‘What?’ the old man interposed in a shrill, croaking voice, ‘What? You intend to get married? But you are much too old for it and as ugly as a baboon.’
Tusmann was so startled at the old Jew’s dreadful coarseness he was bereft of speech.
‘Do not mind the old man, my dear Herr Tusmann,’ Leonhard said, ‘he doesn’t mean to be half as rude as he sounds. But, to speak honestly, I too cannot help feeling you have left it rather late to think of marriage: you seem to me to be almost in your fifties.’
‘On 9 October, on St Denis’s Day, I shall attain my forty-eighth year,’ Tusmann put in somewhat irritably.
‘Be that as it may,’ Leonhard went on, ‘it is not age alone that speaks against you. You have hitherto lived the simple, solitary life of a bachelor; you do not know the female sex; you will not know how to behave or what to do.’
‘How to behave, what to do,’ Tusmann interrupted. ‘You must regard me as uncommonly thoughtless and imprudent, my good Herr Professor, if you believe me capable of acting blindly in such a matter, without first seeking counsel and reflecting upon it. I never take a step without weighing and considering it carefully; when I felt the dart of the dissolute god the ancients called Cupid, would I not exert all my faculties towards preparing myself suitably for this condition? Would anyone who hopes to pass a difficult examination not diligently study all the subjects he is to be asked questions on? Very well, most respected Herr Professor, my marriage is an examination for which I am preparing myself suitably and which I believe I shall pass. Behold, my dear man, this little book, which since I resolved on love and marriage I have carried everywhere with me and studied continually; behold it, and be assured that I am setting about this matter in a thorough and sensible fashion, and that when it comes to it, I shall not seem in the least inexperienced, notwithstanding the fact that I have, as I confess, to this moment been a stranger to the whole female sex.’
With these words the chancellery private secretary had drawn from his pocket a small, parchment-bound book and opened it at the title page, which read as follows: A Short Treatise of the Politic Art of Correct Behaviour in Society of every Description: for the attainment of Judicious Comportment; translated, to meet the urgent needs of, and of the most exceptional utility to all who believe themselves sagacious, or who wish to become so, out of the Latin of Herr Thomasius. With an exhaustive index. Frankfurt and Leipzig. Johann Gross. 1710.
‘Notice’, said Tusmann with a sweet smile, ‘what the worthy author expressly says in paragraph six of the seventh chapter, which deals purely with marriage and with how best to be the father of a family: This is not a thing that should be hurried. He who marries when he has attained to the years of full manhood will be the more prudent in that he will be so much wiser. Marriages entered into too early in life make those who have entered into them shameless or deceitful, and exhaust the energies of both the body and the mind. The years of manhood are naturally not the beginning of youth, but the end of the latter should not arrive before that of the former.
‘And then, as regards the choice of the object one intends to love and to marry, the excellent Thomasius says in paragraph nine: The middle course is the safest: do not select a woman too beautiful nor toc ugly, one very rich nor one very poor, one more exalted nor one baser, but one who is of the same rank as yourself, and so in the case of most of the other qualities will the middle course also prove to be the best course.
‘This course I have taken and, following the advice given by Herr Thomasius in paragraph seventeen, have conducted conversation with the charming person of my choice not only once – since you can easily be deceived by the dissimulation of faults and the pretence of non-existent virtues – but frequently, since in the long run it is impossible to conceal completely what one is.’
‘But,’ said the goldsmith, ‘my worthy Herr Tusmann, it is precisely this traffic or, as you like to call it, conversation with women that seems to me to require lengthy practice and experience if one is not to be basely deceived by them.’
‘In this, too,’ Tusmann replied, ‘the great Thomasius stands by me, through his exhaustive instruction in how to contrive an intelligent and pleasant conversation and how, when conversing with women, one can best introduce a delightful humorous element. But, as my author says in his fifth chapter, one should employ humour as a cook employs salt; indeed even piquant remarks should be employed as a weapon not for harming others but for our own defence, as a hedgehog uses its spikes. And one should, as a prudent man, pay almost more attention to one’s gestures than to one’s words, in as much as what one conceals in what one says is often revealed by one’s gestures, and words are commonly less capable of evoking friendship or enmity than are the other elements of one’s appearance and behaviour.’
‘I perceive already,’ the goldsmith put in, ‘that there is no confounding you: you are armed against everything. I will therefore wager that your comportment has gained for you completely the love of the lady of your choice.’
‘I study,’ said Tusmann, ‘following the counsel of Thomasius, a deferential and amicable courteousness, for this is at once the most natural mark of love and the most natural means of engendering love in return, just as yawning will incite an entire company to yawn in imitation. Yet I do not take this deference too far, for I bear in mind that, as Thomasius teaches, women are not angels, good or bad, but merely humans and, indeed, in bodily and spiritual strength weaker creatures than we are, as the difference between the sexes sufficiently shows.’
‘A year of bad luck to you,’ cried the old man furiously, ‘for going on with such rubbish and ruining what I intended to be an hour of relaxation after the completion of my great work!’
‘Quiet, old man,’ the goldsmith said, raising his voice. ‘You should be glad we put up with you here at all: your uncouthness makes you an unwelcome guest who ought really to be thrown out. – Do not be put off by the old man, my worthy Herr Tusmann. You are well disposed towards the old days, you admire Thomasius; for my own part, I go much further back and admire only that age to which, as you see, my dress in part belongs. Yes, my dear sir, that age was surely more glorious than ours; moreover, it gave birth to that sorcery which you witnessed today in the Town Hall tower.’
‘How so, most worthy Herr Professor?’ asked the chancellery private secretary.
‘Why,’ the goldsmith continued, ‘in those days there were many merry weddings at the Town Hall, and such weddings looked a little different from the weddings of today. Many a happy bride used to gaze down from that window, and so it is a pleasing piece of magic if an airy form now prophesies from what happened long ago what is yet to be. In general, I have to confess that in those days our Berlin used to be a much more colourful and cheerful place than it is now, when everything comes out of one mould and in order not to be bored people seek and find pleasure in boredom itself. There were festivals then, festivals such as cannot be imagined nowadays. Let me merely recall how in the spring of 1581 the Elector Augustus of Saxony and his lady and son Christian were taken across to Kölln in a glorious procession of some hundred horses. And the citizens of both towns, Berlin and Kölln, with those of Spandau, lined the road from the Köpenick Gate to the castle in full armour. The next day there was a magnificent joust and tournament, in which the Elector and Count Jost von Barby, with many more of the nobility, appeared clad in gold, with tall golden crests, golden lions’-heads at their shoulders, elbows and knees, and their arms and legs encased in flesh-coloured silk as though they were bare, like painted heathen warriors. Minstrels and musicians sat hidden in a golden Noah’s Ark, and on top sat a little boy dressed in flesh-coloured silk, with wings, bow, quiver and blindfold like a picture of Cupid. Two more boys clad in white ostrich feathers, with gold-painted eyes and beaks like doves’, guided the Ark, from which music sounded whenever the Elector won at the tilt. Thereupon certain doves were released from the Ark, and one of them settled on the pointed sable hat of our gracious Elector and beat its wings and sang a very lovely Italian aria, much finer than those our court singer Bernardo Pasquino Gross of Mantua used to sing seventy years later, though not as charming as those sung by the prima donnas of the present day – who are, to be sure, when they demonstrate their art, more comfortably situated than that little dove. Then there was a tournament on foot, for which the Elector and the Count von Barby entered in a ship decorated in yellow and black and with a sail of gold taffeta. And the little boy who had been Cupid the day before sat behind the lords wearing a long, many-coloured coat and a pointed hat decorated in yellow and black and a long grey beard. Minstrels and musicians were clad in the same way. But around the ship there danced and leaped many nobles bedecked with the heads and tails of salmon, herrings and other fish, which made a very gay sight. At ten o’clock at night came a firework display using several thousand fireworks: there was a square fortress manned by soldiers all made of fireworks, and there was much fighting and fencing, and fiery horses and riders and strange birds and animals were shot off into the sky with a terrible banging and crackling. The display lasted for two hours.’
While the goldsmith was recounting all this the chancellery private secretary evidenced every sign of rapt attention and high delight. He punctuated the narration with little cries of ‘Oh!’ and ‘Ah!’, smirked, rubbed his hands together, fidgeted on his seat and gulped down one glass of wine after another as he did so.
‘My excellent Herr Professor,’ he cried at last in the falsetto that great pleasure always extorted from him, ‘my dear, excellent Herr Professor, what marvellous things – and you describe them as vividly as if you had been there yourself.’
‘Well,’ the goldsmith replied, ‘and is it not possible I was there myself?’
Failing to grasp the meaning of this strange remark, Tusmann was about to resume, when the old man said to the goldsmith morosely: ‘Do not forget the fairest of the festivals enjoyed by the Berliners in that age you praise so highly, when the pyres blazed in the Neumarkt and there flowed the blood of the unfortunate sacrifices, who, martyred in the most fearful fashion, confessed to whatever the maddest lunacy and grossest superstition could dream up.’
‘Ah,’ the chancellery private secretary interposed, ‘you allude to the iniquitous witch-trials that took place in the old days, my dear sir! Yes, yes, that was a bad thing, to be sure, but our Enlightenment has put an end to it.’
The goldsmith cast a strange glance at the old man and at Tusmann, and at length asked the latter with a mysterious smile: ‘Do you know the story of the Jewish coiner Lippold, which happened in the year 1572?’
Before Tusmann could reply, the goldsmith went on: ‘People accused the Jewish coiner Lippold of perpetrating gigantic frauds and of being in general an arrant knave, but he enjoyed the trust of the Elector and had control of the country’s entire coinage and could moreover always lay his hands on any amount of money, so that, whether it was because he knew how to plead his cause or whether he had other means at his command to clear himself of guilt in the eyes of the Elector or whether some people with influence over his lord had, as they used to say, been squared – whatever the reason, he was on the point of being declared innocent of everything he was accused of, and only a few citizens were keeping watch on him in his little house in the Stralauerstrasse. One day, however, he had an angry scene with his wife, and she shouted at him in rage: “If the gracious Herr Elector only knew what a wicked rogue you are and what knavish tricks you can play with your magic book, you would be done for!” These words were retailed to the Elector, who had Lippold’s house searched from top to bottom for the magic book, which was at length discovered and which, when those who understood it had read it, brought his knavery clearly to light. He had practised the black arts with a view to bringing the Elector wholly under his control and to ruling the entire country, and it was only through his Highness’s godliness that the satanic magic had failed of its effect. Lippold was burned to death on the Neumarkt, but as the flames consumed his body and his magic book, a large mouse came out from under the scaffolding and ran into the fire. Many people regarded the mouse as Lippold’s familiar.’
While the goldsmith was recounting this story, the old man had propped both his arms on the table, held his hands before his face and groaned and moaned like one riven by unendurable suffering. The chancellery private secretary, on the other hand, seemed not to pay very much attention to the goldsmith’s words, but behaved in an immoderately amicable way and appeared at that moment to be preoccupied with something quite other than what the goldsmith was saying: for when the latter had finished, he began to smirk and asked in a sweet lisping voice: ‘But just tell me, most worthy, most respected Herr Professor, was that really Demoiselle Albertine Vosswinkel who was looking down at us with her lovely eyes from the dilapidated window of the Town Hall tower?’
‘What’, the goldsmith rounded on him furiously, ‘have you to do with Albertine Vosswinkel?’
‘Well,’ Tusmann replied meekly, ‘good heavens, that is the charming lady I have undertaken to love and marry.’
‘Sir,’ the goldsmith cried, his face scarlet and his eyes ablaze with rage, ‘I believe you must be possessed of the Devil or totally insane! You – you wretched decrepit old pedant, you who with all your book-learning and politic arts out of Thomasius cannot see three paces in front of your nose – you wish to marry the fair young Albertine Vosswinkel? Banish any such idea, or you could find yourself with your neck broken this equinoctial night.’
The chancellery private secretary was normally a gentle, peaceable, indeed timid man who, even if he was assailed, could never speak sharply to anyone. The goldsmith’s words were, however, too insolent for even him to bear, and there was also the consideration that Tusmann had drunk more strong wine than he was used to, so it happened, unprecedentedly, that he rose up in anger and screamed shrilly: ‘I do not know, my unknown Herr Goldsmith, what gives you the right to address me in that fashion! I even think you have been trying to make a fool of me with all kinds of childish tricks and have the presumption to intend loving the Demoiselle Albertine yourself and have painted the lady’s portrait on glass and by means of a laterna magica hidden under your cloak projected that lovely image on to the Town Hall tower! Oh, my dear sir, I too know all about such things, and if you think your tricks and coarse speeches can make me back down you are barking up quite the wrong tree!’
‘Take care,’ the goldsmith responded calmly with a curious smile, ‘take care, Tusmann: you are dealing with strange people here.’
But at that moment the goldsmith’s face vanished and in its stead a hideous fox’s mask grinned across at the chancellery private secretary, who, seized with profound terror, collapsed back into his seat.
The old man evidenced no surprise whatever at the goldsmith’s transformation: on the contrary, he all at once lost his former air of moroseness and cried with a laugh: ‘An excellent jest! – but there’s no profit in that kind of thing: I know better and can do things that have always been too hard for you, Leonhard.’
‘Let us see,’ said the goldsmith, who had now resumed his human face and was sitting quietly at the table, ‘let us see what you can do.’
The old man drew a large black radish out of his pocket, cleaned and peeled it with a little knife which he had also brought forth, cut it into thin slices and laid them on the table. But when he smote one of the slices of radish with his clenched fist a beautifully stamped glittering gold piece appeared with a metallic clink. He took it up and threw it to the goldsmith, but when the goldsmith caught it the gold piece exploded into a thousand crackling sparks of fire. This seemed to annoy the old man: he began to stamp the slices of radish faster and faster and harder and harder, but they only exploded more and more noisily in the goldsmith’s hand.
The chancellery private secretary was quite beside himself and bewildered with fear and terror, but at last he pulled himself out of the swoon which was threatening to engulf him and said in a trembling voice: ‘I will now bid the most excellent gentlemen a very humble good evening,’ and, seizing his hat and walking-stick, he rushed out of the door.
