IN
COUNTESS
IRMA'S DIARY
From On the Heights'
Y
ESTERDAY was a year since I lay at the foot of the rock.
From On the Heights'
Y
ESTERDAY was a year since I lay at the foot of the rock.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v02 - Aqu to Bag
"You won't have such bad thoughts again?
"
"No, never. But don't talk now: my voice pains me, and
so does yours too. Good-night! leave me alone. "
Irma sat by the window and gazed out into the dark night.
Was it only a day since she had passed through such terrors?
Suddenly she sprang from her seat with a shudder. She had
seen Black Esther's head rising out of the darkness, had again
heard her dying shriek, had beheld the distorted face and the
wild black tresses. Her hair stood on end. Her thoughts car-
ried her to the bottom of the lake, where she now lay dead.
―
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She opened the window and inhaled the soft, balmy air. She
sat by the open casement for a long while, and suddenly heard.
some one laughing in the room above her.
"Ha! ha! I won't do you the favor! I won't die! I won't
die! Pooh, pooh! I'll live till I'm a hundred years old, and then
I'll get a new lease of life. "
It was the old pensioner. After a while he continued:-
"I'm not so stupid; I know that it's night now, and the free-
holder and his wife are come. I'll give them lots of trouble.
I'm Jochem. Jochem's my name, and what the people don't
like, I do for spite. Ha ha! I don't use any light, and they
must make me an allowance for that. I'll insist on it, if I have
to go to the King himself about it. "
Irma started when she heard the King mentioned.
"Yes, I'll go to the King, to the King! to the King! " cried
the old man overhead, as if he knew that the word tortured
Irma.
―――
She heard him close the window and move a chair. The old
man went to bed.
Irma looked out into the dark night. Not a star was to be
seen. There was no light anywhere; nothing was heard but the
roaring of the mountain stream and the rustling of the trees.
The night seemed like a dark abyss.
"Are you still awake? " asked a soft voice without.
the grandmother.
It was
"I was once a servant at this farm," said she.
"That was
forty years ago; and now I'm the mother of the freeholder's wife,
and almost the head one on the farm. But I keep thinking of
you all the time. I keep trying to think how it is in your heart.
I've something to tell you. Come out again. I'll take you where
it'll do you good to be. Come! "
Irma went out into the dark night with the old woman. How
different this guide from the one she had had the day before!
The old woman led her to the fountain. She had brought a
cup with her and gave it to Irma. "Come, drink; good cold
water's the best. Water comforts the body; it cools and quiets.
us; it's like bathing one's soul. I know what sorrow is too.
One's insides burn as if they were afire. "
Irma drank some of the water of the mountain spring. It
seemed like a healing dew, whose influence was diffused through
her whole frame.
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The grandmother led her back to her room and said, "You've
still got the shirt on that you wore at the palace. You'll never
stop thinking of that place till you've burned that shirt. "
The old woman would listen to no denial, and Irma was as
docile as a little child. The grandmother hurried to get a coarse
shirt for her, and after Irma had put it on, brought wood and a
light and burnt the other at the open fire. Irma was also obliged
to cut off her long nails and throw them into the fire. Then
Beate disappeared for a few moments, and returned with Irma's
riding-habit. "You must have been shot; for there are balls in
this," said she, spreading out the long blue habit.
A smile passed over Irma's face, as she felt the balls that had
been sewed into the lower part of the habit, so that it might
hang more gracefully. Beate had also brought something very
useful, a deerskin.
"He
"Hansei sends you this," said she.
thinks that maybe you're used to having something soft for your
feet to rest on. He shot the deer himself. "
-
Irma appreciated the kindness of the man who could show
such affection to one who was both a stranger and a mystery to
him.
The grandmother remained at Irma's bedside until she fell
Then she breathed thrice on the sleeper and left the
asleep.
room.
It was late at night when Irma awoke.
"To the King! to the King! to the King! " The words had
been uttered thrice in a loud voice. Was it hers, or that of the
man overhead? Irma pressed her hand to her forehead and felt
the bandage. Was it sea-grass that had gathered there? Was
she lying alive at the bottom of the lake? Gradually all that
had happened became clear to her.
Alone, in the dark and silent night, she wept. And these
were the first tears she had shed since the terrible events
through which she had passed.
It was evening when Irma awoke. She put her hand to her
forehead. A wet cloth had been bound round it. She had been
sleeping nearly twenty-four hours. The grandmother was sitting
by her bed.
"You've a strong constitution," said the old woman,
that helped you. It's all right now. "
Irma arose.
She felt strong, and guided by the grandmother,
walked over to the dwelling-house.
« and
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"God be praised that you're well again," said Walpurga, who
was standing there with her husband; and Hansei added, "yes,
that's right. "
Irma thanked them, and looked up at the gable of the house.
What words there met her eye?
"Don't you think the house has a good motto written on its
forehead? " asked Hansei.
Irma started. On the gable of the house she read the fol-
lowing inscription:-
EAT AND DRINK: FORGET NOT GOD: THINE HONOR GUARD:
OF ALL THY STORE,
THOU'LT CARRY HENCE
A WINDING-SHEET
AND NOTHING MORE.
Translation of S. A. Stern.
THE COURT PHYSICIAN'S PHILOSOPHY
From On the Heights'
GⓇ
UNTHER Continued, "I am only a physician, who has held
many a hand hot with fever or stiff in death in his own.
The healing art might serve as an illustration.
We help
all who need our help, and do not stop to ask who they are,
whence they come, or whether when restored to health they per-
sist in their evil courses. Our actions are incomplete, fragment-
ary; thought alone is complete and all-embracing. Our deeds
and ourselves are but fragments-the whole is God. "
"I think I grasp your meaning [replied the Queen]. But our
life, as you say, is indeed a mere fraction of life as a whole; and
how is each one to bear up under the portion of suffering that
falls to his individual lot? Can one - I mean it in its best sense
-always be outside of one's self? "
-
"I am well aware, your Majesty, that passions and emotions
cannot be regulated by ideas; for they grow in a different soil,
or, to express myself correctly, move in entirely different spheres.
It is but a few days since I closed the eyes of my old friend
Eberhard. Even he never fully succeeded in subordinating his
temperament to his philosophy; but in his dying hour he rose
beyond the terrible grief that broke his heart-grief for his
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child. He summoned the thoughts of better hours to his aid,—
hours when his perception of the truth had been undimmed by
sorrow or passion,- and he died a noble, peaceful death. Your
Majesty must still live and labor, elevating yourself and others,
at one and the same time. Permit me to remind you of the
moment when, seated under the weeping ash, your heart was
filled with pity for the poor child that from the time it enters
into the world is doubly helpless. Do you still remember how
you refused to rob it of its mother? I appeal to the pure and
genuine impulse of that moment. You were noble and forgiving
then, because you had not yet suffered. You cast no stone at
the fallen; you loved, and therefore you forgave. "
"O God! " cried the Queen, "and what has happened to
me? The woman on whose bosom my child rested is the most
abandoned of creatures. I loved her just as if she belonged to
another world-a world of innocence. And now I am satisfied
that she was the go-between, and that her naïveté was a mere
mask concealing an unparalleled hypocrite. I imagined that
truth and purity still dwelt in the simple rustic world-but
everything is perverted and corrupt. The world of simplicity is
base; aye, far worse than that of corruption! "
"I am not arguing about individuals. I think you mistaken
in regard to Walpurga; but admitting that you are right, of this
at least we can be sure: morality does not depend upon so-called
education or ignorance, belief or unbelief. The heart and mind.
which have regained purity and steadfastness alone possess true
knowledge. Extend your view beyond details and take in the
whole that alone can comfort and reconcile you. "
"I see where you are, but I cannot get up there. I can't
always be looking through your telescope that shows naught but
blue sky. I am too weak. I know what you mean; you say in
effect, Rise above these few people, above this span of space
known as a kingdom: compared with the universe, they are but
as so many blades of grass or a mere clod of earth. › »
Gunther nodded a pleased assent: but the Queen, in a sad
voice, added:-
"Yes, but this space and these people constitute my world.
Is purity merely imaginary? If it be not about us, where can it
be found? "
――――
"Within ourselves," replied Gunther.
it is everywhere; if not, it is nowhere.
"If dwell within us,
He who asks for more
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has not yet passed the threshold. His heart is not yet what it
should be. True love for the things of this earth, and for God,
the final cause of all, does not ask for love in return. We love
the divine spark that dwells in creatures themselves unconscious
of it: creatures who are wretched, debased, and as the church
has it, unredeemed. My Master taught me that the purest joys
arise from this love of God or of eternally pure nature. I made
this truth my own, and you can and ought to do likewise. This
park is yours; but the birds that dwell in it, the air, the light,
its beauty, are not yours alone, but are shared with you by all.
So long as the world is ours, in the vulgar sense of the word,
we may love it; but when we have made it our own, in a purer
and better sense, no one can take it from us. The great thing
is to be strong and to know that hatred is death, that love
alone is life, and that the amount of love that we possess is the
measure of the life and the divinity that dwells within us. "
Gunther rose and was about to withdraw. He feared lest
excessive thought might over-agitate the Queen, who, however,
motioned him to remain. He sat down again.
"You cannot imagine—” said the Queen after a long pause,
"—but that is one of the cant phrases that we have learned by
heart. I mean just the reverse of what I have said.
You can
imagine the change that your words have effected in me. "
"I can conceive it. "
sure
"Let me ask a few more questions. I believe-nay, I am
that on the height you occupy, and toward which you
would fain lead me, there dwells eternal peace. But it seems so
cold and lonely up there. I am oppressed with a sense of fear,
just as if I were in a balloon ascending into a rarer atmosphere,
while more and more ballast was ever being thrown out. I don't
know how to make my meaning clear to you. I don't understand
how to keep up affectionate relations with those about me, and
yet regard them from a distance, as it were,-looking upon their
deeds as the mere action and reaction of natural forces.
It seems
to me as if, at that height, every sound and every image must
vanish into thin air. "
――
"Certainly, your Majesty. There is a realm of thought in
which hearing and sight do not exist, where there is pure thought
and nothing more. "
"But are not the thoughts that there abound projected from
the realm of death into that of life, and is that any better than
monastic self-mortification? »
>>
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"It is just the contrary. They praise death, or at all events
extol it, because after it life is to begin. I am no one of those
who deny a future life. I only say, in the words of my Master,
'Our knowledge is of life and not of death,' and where my
knowledge ceases my thoughts must cease. Our labors, our
love, are all of this life. And because God is in this world
and in all that exist in it, and only in those things, have we to
liberate the divine essence wherever it exists. The law of love
should rule. What the law of nature is in regard to matter, the
moral law is to man. "
"I cannot reconcile myself to your dividing the divine power
into millions of parts. When a stone is crushed, every fragment
still remains a stone; but when a flower is torn to pieces, the
parts are no longer flowers. "
"Let us take your simile as an illustration, although in truth
no example is adequate. The world, the firmament, the creat-
ures that live on the face of the earth, are not divided — they
are one; thought regards them as a whole. Take for instance
the flower. The idea of divinity which it suggests to us, and
the fragrance which ascends from it, are yet part and parcel of
the flower; attributes without which it is impossible for us to
conceive of its existence. The works of all poets, all thinkers,
all heroes, may be likened to streams of fragrance wafted through
time and space.
It is in the flower that they live forever. Al-
though the eternal spirit dwells in the cell of every tree or
flower and in every human heart, it is undivided and in its unity.
fills the world. He whose thoughts dwell in the infinite regards
the world as the mighty corolla from which the thought of God
exhales. "
Translation of S. A. Stern.
IN COUNTESS IRMA'S DIARY
From On the Heights'
Y
ESTERDAY was a year since I lay at the foot of the rock.
I could not write a word. My brain whirled with the
thoughts of that day; but now it is over.
* * *
I don't think I shall write much more. I have now experi
enced all the seasons in my new world.
The circle is complete.
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I know all that
There is nothing new to come from without.
exists about me, or that can happen. I am at home in my new
world.
*
**
Unto Jesus the Scribes and Pharisees brought a woman who
was to be stoned to death, and He said unto them, "Let him
that is without sin among you cast the first stone. "
Thus it is written.
But I ask: How did she continue to live-she who was saved
from being stoned to death; she who was pardoned—that is,
condemned to live? How did she live on? Did she return to
her home? How did she stand with the world? And how with
her own heart?
No answer. None.
I must find the answer in my own experience
* * *
"Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone. "
These are the noblest, the greatest words ever uttered by human
lips, or heard by human ear. They divide the history of the
human race into two parts. They are the "Let there be light"
of the second creation. They divide and heal my little life too,
and create me anew.
Has one who is not wholly without sin a right to offer pre-
cepts and reflections to others?
What are you?
Look into your own heart.
Behold my hands. They are hardened by toil. I have done
more than merely lift them in prayer.
* * *
Since I am alone I have not seen a letter of print. I have
no book and wish for none; and this is not in order to mortify
myself, but because I wish to be perfectly alone.
* * *
She who renounces the world, and in her loneliness still
cherishes the thought of eternity, has assumed a heavy burden.
Convent life is not without its advantages. The different
voices that join in the chorale sustain each other; and when the
tone at last ceases, it seems to float away on the air and vanish
by degrees. But here I am quite alone. I am priest and church,
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BERTHOLD AUERBACH
organ and congregation, confessor and penitent, all in one; and
my heart is often so heavy, as if I must needs have another to
help me bear the load. "Take me up and carry me, I cannot
go further! " cries my soul. But then I rouse myself again, seize
my scrip and my pilgrim's staff and wander on, solitary and
alone; and while I wander, strength returns to me.
It often seems to me as if it were sinful thus to bury myself
alive. My voice is no longer heard in song, and much more that
dwells within me has become mute.
Is this right?
If my only object in life were to be at peace with myself, it
would be well enough; but I long to labor and to do something
for others. Yet where and what shall it be?
*
*
When I first heard that the beautifully carved furniture of the
great and wealthy is the work of prisoners, it made me shudder.
And now, although I am not deprived of freedom, I am in much
the same condition. Those who have disfigured life should, as
an act of expiation, help to make life more beautiful for others.
The thought that I am doing this comforts and sustains me.
*
My work prospers.
But last winter's wood is not yet fit for
use. My little pitchman has brought me some that is old, excel-
lent, and well seasoned, having been part of the rafters of an old
house that has just been torn down. We work together cheer-
fully, and our earnings are considerable.
*
*
Vice is the same everywhere, except that here it is more open.
Among the masses, vice is characterized by coarseness; among
the upper classes, by meanness.
The latter shake off the consequences of their evil deeds,
while the former are obliged to bear them.
* * *
The rude manners of these people are necessary, and are far
preferable to polite deceit. They must needs be rough and rude.
If it were not for its coarse, thick bark, the oak could not with-
stand the storm.
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I have found that this rough bark covers
and sincerity than does the smoothest surface.
more tenderness
Jochem told me, to-day, that he is still quite a good walker,
but that a blind man finds it very troublesome to go anywhere;
for at every step he is obliged to grope about, so that he may
feel sure of his ground before he firmly plants his foot on the
earth.
Is it not the same with me? Am I not obliged to be sure of
the ground before I take a step?
Such is the way of the fallen.
Ah! why does everything I see or hear become a symbol of
my life?
I have now been here between two and three years. I have
formed a resolve which it will be difficult to carry out. I shall
go out into the world once more. I must again behold the
scenes of my past life. I have tested myself severely.
May it not be a love of adventure, that genteel yet vulgar
desire to undertake what is unusual or fraught with peril? Or is
it a morbid desire to wander through the world after having
died, as it were?
No; far from it. What can it be? An intense longing to
roam again, if it be only for a few days. I must kill the desire,
lest it kill me.
Whence arises this sudden longing?
Every tool that I use while at work burns my hand.
I must go.
I shall obey the impulse, without worrying myself with specu-
lations as to its cause. I am subject to the rules of no order.
My will is my only law. I harm no one by obeying it. I feel
myself free; the world has no power over me.
I dreaded informing Walpurga of my intention. When I did
so, her tone, her words, her whole manner, and the fact that she
for the first time called me child," » made it seem as if her
mother were still speaking to me.
"Child," said she, "you're right! Go! It'll do you good. I
believe that you'll come back and will stay with us; but if you
don't, and another life opens up to you—your expiation has been
a bitter one, far heavier than your sin. ”
II-63
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Uncle Peter was quite happy when he learned that we were
to be gone from one Sunday to the Sunday following. When I
asked him whether he was curious as to where we were going,
he replied:-
"It's all one to me. I'd travel over the whole world with
you, wherever you'd care to go; and if you were to drive me
away, I'd follow you like a dog and find you again. "
I shall take my journal with me, and will note down every
day.
*
*
[By the lake. ]-I find it difficult to write a word.
The threshold I am obliged to cross, in order to go out into
the world, is my own gravestone.
I am equal to it.
How pleasant it was to descend toward the valley. Uncle
Peter sang; and melodies suggested themselves to me, but I did
not sing. Suddenly he interrupted himself and said:
"In the inns you'll be my niece, won't you? »
"Yes. "
"But you must call me 'uncle' when we're there? "
"Of course, dear uncle. "
He kept nodding to himself for the rest of the way, and was
quite happy.
We reached the inn at the landing. He drank, and I drank
too, from the same glass.
"Where are you going? " asked the hostess.
To the capital," said he, although I had not said a word to
him about it. Then he said to me in a whisper:-
"If you intend to go elsewhere, the people needn't know
everything. "
I let him have his own way.
I looked for the place where I had wandered at that time.
There there was the rock-and on it a cross, bearing in golden
characters the inscription:
HERE PERISHED
IRMA, COUNTESS VON WILDENORT,
IN THE TWENTY-FIRST YEAR
OF HER LIFE.
Traveler, pray for her and honor her memory.
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I never rightly knew why I was always dissatisfied, and
yearning for the next hour, the next day, the next year, hoping
that it would bring me that which I could not find in the pres-
ent. It was not love, for love does not satisfy. I desired to live
in the passing moment, but could not. It always seemed as if
something were waiting for me without the door, and calling me.
What could it have been?
I know now; it was a desire to be at one with myself, to
understand myself. Myself in the world, and the world in me.
*
The vain man is the loneliest of human beings. He is con-
stantly longing to be seen, understood, acknowledged, admired,
and loved.
I could say much on the subject, for I too was once vain. It
was only in actual solitude that I conquered the loneliness of
vanity. It is enough for me that I exist.
How far removed this is from all that is mere show.
*
*
Now I understand my father's last act. He did not mean to
punish me. His only desire was to arouse me; to lead me to
self-consciousness; to the knowledge which, teaching us to become
different from what we are, saves us.
*
I understand the inscription in my father's library:- "When
I am alone, then am I least alone. "
Yes; when alone, one can more perfectly lose himself in the
life universal, I have lived and have come to know the truth.
I can now die.
* * *
He who is at one with himself, possesses all.
I believe that I know what I have done.
passion for myself. This is my full confession.
I have sinned—not against nature, but against the world's
rules. Is that sin? Look at the tall pines in yonder forest.
The higher the tree grows, the more do the lower branches die
away; and thus the tree in the thick forest is protected and shel-
tered by its fellows, but can nevertheless not perfect itself in all
directions.
I have no com-
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I desired to lead a full and complete life and yet to be in the
forest, to be in the world and yet in society. But he who means
to live thus, must remain in solitude. As soon as we become
members of society, we cease to be mere creatures of nature.
Nature and morality have equal rights, and must form a compact.
with each other; and where there are two powers with equal
rights, there must be mutual concessions.
Herein lies my sin.
He who desires to live a life of nature alone, must withdraw
himself from the protection of morality. I did not fully desire
either the one or the other; hence I was crushed and shattered.
My father's last action was right. He avenged the moral law,
which is just as human as the law of nature. The animal world
knows neither father nor mother, so soon as the young is able to
take care of itself. The human world does know them and must
hold them sacred.
I see it all quite clearly. My sufferings and my expiation are
deserved. I was a thief! I stole the highest treasures of all:
confidence, love, honor, respect, splendor.
How noble and exalted the tender souls appear to themselves
when a poor rogue is sent to jail for having committed a theft!
But what are all possessions which can be carried away, when
compared with those that are intangible!
Those who are summoned to the bar of justice are not always
the basest of mankind.
I acknowledge my sin, and my repentance is sincere.
My fatal sin, the sin for which I now atone, was that I dis-
sembled, that I denied and extenuated that which I represented
to myself as a natural right. Against the Queen I have sinned.
worst of all. To me she represents that moral order which I
violated and yet wished to enjoy.
To you, O Queen, to you-lovely, good, and deeply injured
one do I confess all this!
-
If I die before you,- and I hope that I may,— these pages
are to be given to you.
I can now accurately tell the season of the year, and often
the hour of the day, by the way in which the first sunbeams fall
into my room and on my work-bench in the morning. My chisel
hangs before me on the wall, and is my index.
**
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The drizzling spring showers now fall on the trees; and thus
it is with me. It seems as if there were a new delight in store
for me. What can it be? I shall patiently wait!
*
A strange feeling comes over me, as if I were lifted up from
the chair on which I am sitting, and were flying, I know not
whither! What is it? I feel as if dwelling in eternity.
Everything seems flying toward me: the sunlight and the
sunshine, the rustling of the forests and the forest breezes, beings
of all ages and of all kinds- all seem beautiful and rendered
transparent by the sun's glow.
I am!
*
―
-
I am in God!
If I could only die now and be wafted through this joy to
dissolution and redemption!
But I will live on until my hour comes.
Come, thou dark hour, whenever thou wilt! To me thou art
light!
I feel that there is light within me. O Eternal Spirit of the
universe, I am one with thee!
I was dead, and I live- I shall die and yet live.
Everything has been forgiven and blotted out. -There was
dust on my wings. I soar aloft into the sun and into infinite
space. I shall die singing from the fullness of my soul. Shall
I sing!
Enough.
*
I know that I shall again be gloomy and depressed and drag
along a weary existence; but I have once soared into infinity and
have felt a ray of eternity within me.
"No, never. But don't talk now: my voice pains me, and
so does yours too. Good-night! leave me alone. "
Irma sat by the window and gazed out into the dark night.
Was it only a day since she had passed through such terrors?
Suddenly she sprang from her seat with a shudder. She had
seen Black Esther's head rising out of the darkness, had again
heard her dying shriek, had beheld the distorted face and the
wild black tresses. Her hair stood on end. Her thoughts car-
ried her to the bottom of the lake, where she now lay dead.
―
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She opened the window and inhaled the soft, balmy air. She
sat by the open casement for a long while, and suddenly heard.
some one laughing in the room above her.
"Ha! ha! I won't do you the favor! I won't die! I won't
die! Pooh, pooh! I'll live till I'm a hundred years old, and then
I'll get a new lease of life. "
It was the old pensioner. After a while he continued:-
"I'm not so stupid; I know that it's night now, and the free-
holder and his wife are come. I'll give them lots of trouble.
I'm Jochem. Jochem's my name, and what the people don't
like, I do for spite. Ha ha! I don't use any light, and they
must make me an allowance for that. I'll insist on it, if I have
to go to the King himself about it. "
Irma started when she heard the King mentioned.
"Yes, I'll go to the King, to the King! to the King! " cried
the old man overhead, as if he knew that the word tortured
Irma.
―――
She heard him close the window and move a chair. The old
man went to bed.
Irma looked out into the dark night. Not a star was to be
seen. There was no light anywhere; nothing was heard but the
roaring of the mountain stream and the rustling of the trees.
The night seemed like a dark abyss.
"Are you still awake? " asked a soft voice without.
the grandmother.
It was
"I was once a servant at this farm," said she.
"That was
forty years ago; and now I'm the mother of the freeholder's wife,
and almost the head one on the farm. But I keep thinking of
you all the time. I keep trying to think how it is in your heart.
I've something to tell you. Come out again. I'll take you where
it'll do you good to be. Come! "
Irma went out into the dark night with the old woman. How
different this guide from the one she had had the day before!
The old woman led her to the fountain. She had brought a
cup with her and gave it to Irma. "Come, drink; good cold
water's the best. Water comforts the body; it cools and quiets.
us; it's like bathing one's soul. I know what sorrow is too.
One's insides burn as if they were afire. "
Irma drank some of the water of the mountain spring. It
seemed like a healing dew, whose influence was diffused through
her whole frame.
## p. 986 (#412) ############################################
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BERTHOLD AUERBACH
The grandmother led her back to her room and said, "You've
still got the shirt on that you wore at the palace. You'll never
stop thinking of that place till you've burned that shirt. "
The old woman would listen to no denial, and Irma was as
docile as a little child. The grandmother hurried to get a coarse
shirt for her, and after Irma had put it on, brought wood and a
light and burnt the other at the open fire. Irma was also obliged
to cut off her long nails and throw them into the fire. Then
Beate disappeared for a few moments, and returned with Irma's
riding-habit. "You must have been shot; for there are balls in
this," said she, spreading out the long blue habit.
A smile passed over Irma's face, as she felt the balls that had
been sewed into the lower part of the habit, so that it might
hang more gracefully. Beate had also brought something very
useful, a deerskin.
"He
"Hansei sends you this," said she.
thinks that maybe you're used to having something soft for your
feet to rest on. He shot the deer himself. "
-
Irma appreciated the kindness of the man who could show
such affection to one who was both a stranger and a mystery to
him.
The grandmother remained at Irma's bedside until she fell
Then she breathed thrice on the sleeper and left the
asleep.
room.
It was late at night when Irma awoke.
"To the King! to the King! to the King! " The words had
been uttered thrice in a loud voice. Was it hers, or that of the
man overhead? Irma pressed her hand to her forehead and felt
the bandage. Was it sea-grass that had gathered there? Was
she lying alive at the bottom of the lake? Gradually all that
had happened became clear to her.
Alone, in the dark and silent night, she wept. And these
were the first tears she had shed since the terrible events
through which she had passed.
It was evening when Irma awoke. She put her hand to her
forehead. A wet cloth had been bound round it. She had been
sleeping nearly twenty-four hours. The grandmother was sitting
by her bed.
"You've a strong constitution," said the old woman,
that helped you. It's all right now. "
Irma arose.
She felt strong, and guided by the grandmother,
walked over to the dwelling-house.
« and
## p. 987 (#413) ############################################
BERTHOLD AUERBACH
987
"God be praised that you're well again," said Walpurga, who
was standing there with her husband; and Hansei added, "yes,
that's right. "
Irma thanked them, and looked up at the gable of the house.
What words there met her eye?
"Don't you think the house has a good motto written on its
forehead? " asked Hansei.
Irma started. On the gable of the house she read the fol-
lowing inscription:-
EAT AND DRINK: FORGET NOT GOD: THINE HONOR GUARD:
OF ALL THY STORE,
THOU'LT CARRY HENCE
A WINDING-SHEET
AND NOTHING MORE.
Translation of S. A. Stern.
THE COURT PHYSICIAN'S PHILOSOPHY
From On the Heights'
GⓇ
UNTHER Continued, "I am only a physician, who has held
many a hand hot with fever or stiff in death in his own.
The healing art might serve as an illustration.
We help
all who need our help, and do not stop to ask who they are,
whence they come, or whether when restored to health they per-
sist in their evil courses. Our actions are incomplete, fragment-
ary; thought alone is complete and all-embracing. Our deeds
and ourselves are but fragments-the whole is God. "
"I think I grasp your meaning [replied the Queen]. But our
life, as you say, is indeed a mere fraction of life as a whole; and
how is each one to bear up under the portion of suffering that
falls to his individual lot? Can one - I mean it in its best sense
-always be outside of one's self? "
-
"I am well aware, your Majesty, that passions and emotions
cannot be regulated by ideas; for they grow in a different soil,
or, to express myself correctly, move in entirely different spheres.
It is but a few days since I closed the eyes of my old friend
Eberhard. Even he never fully succeeded in subordinating his
temperament to his philosophy; but in his dying hour he rose
beyond the terrible grief that broke his heart-grief for his
## p. 988 (#414) ############################################
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BERTHOLD AUERBACH
child. He summoned the thoughts of better hours to his aid,—
hours when his perception of the truth had been undimmed by
sorrow or passion,- and he died a noble, peaceful death. Your
Majesty must still live and labor, elevating yourself and others,
at one and the same time. Permit me to remind you of the
moment when, seated under the weeping ash, your heart was
filled with pity for the poor child that from the time it enters
into the world is doubly helpless. Do you still remember how
you refused to rob it of its mother? I appeal to the pure and
genuine impulse of that moment. You were noble and forgiving
then, because you had not yet suffered. You cast no stone at
the fallen; you loved, and therefore you forgave. "
"O God! " cried the Queen, "and what has happened to
me? The woman on whose bosom my child rested is the most
abandoned of creatures. I loved her just as if she belonged to
another world-a world of innocence. And now I am satisfied
that she was the go-between, and that her naïveté was a mere
mask concealing an unparalleled hypocrite. I imagined that
truth and purity still dwelt in the simple rustic world-but
everything is perverted and corrupt. The world of simplicity is
base; aye, far worse than that of corruption! "
"I am not arguing about individuals. I think you mistaken
in regard to Walpurga; but admitting that you are right, of this
at least we can be sure: morality does not depend upon so-called
education or ignorance, belief or unbelief. The heart and mind.
which have regained purity and steadfastness alone possess true
knowledge. Extend your view beyond details and take in the
whole that alone can comfort and reconcile you. "
"I see where you are, but I cannot get up there. I can't
always be looking through your telescope that shows naught but
blue sky. I am too weak. I know what you mean; you say in
effect, Rise above these few people, above this span of space
known as a kingdom: compared with the universe, they are but
as so many blades of grass or a mere clod of earth. › »
Gunther nodded a pleased assent: but the Queen, in a sad
voice, added:-
"Yes, but this space and these people constitute my world.
Is purity merely imaginary? If it be not about us, where can it
be found? "
――――
"Within ourselves," replied Gunther.
it is everywhere; if not, it is nowhere.
"If dwell within us,
He who asks for more
## p. 989 (#415) ############################################
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989
has not yet passed the threshold. His heart is not yet what it
should be. True love for the things of this earth, and for God,
the final cause of all, does not ask for love in return. We love
the divine spark that dwells in creatures themselves unconscious
of it: creatures who are wretched, debased, and as the church
has it, unredeemed. My Master taught me that the purest joys
arise from this love of God or of eternally pure nature. I made
this truth my own, and you can and ought to do likewise. This
park is yours; but the birds that dwell in it, the air, the light,
its beauty, are not yours alone, but are shared with you by all.
So long as the world is ours, in the vulgar sense of the word,
we may love it; but when we have made it our own, in a purer
and better sense, no one can take it from us. The great thing
is to be strong and to know that hatred is death, that love
alone is life, and that the amount of love that we possess is the
measure of the life and the divinity that dwells within us. "
Gunther rose and was about to withdraw. He feared lest
excessive thought might over-agitate the Queen, who, however,
motioned him to remain. He sat down again.
"You cannot imagine—” said the Queen after a long pause,
"—but that is one of the cant phrases that we have learned by
heart. I mean just the reverse of what I have said.
You can
imagine the change that your words have effected in me. "
"I can conceive it. "
sure
"Let me ask a few more questions. I believe-nay, I am
that on the height you occupy, and toward which you
would fain lead me, there dwells eternal peace. But it seems so
cold and lonely up there. I am oppressed with a sense of fear,
just as if I were in a balloon ascending into a rarer atmosphere,
while more and more ballast was ever being thrown out. I don't
know how to make my meaning clear to you. I don't understand
how to keep up affectionate relations with those about me, and
yet regard them from a distance, as it were,-looking upon their
deeds as the mere action and reaction of natural forces.
It seems
to me as if, at that height, every sound and every image must
vanish into thin air. "
――
"Certainly, your Majesty. There is a realm of thought in
which hearing and sight do not exist, where there is pure thought
and nothing more. "
"But are not the thoughts that there abound projected from
the realm of death into that of life, and is that any better than
monastic self-mortification? »
>>
## p. 990 (#416) ############################################
BERTHOLD AUERBACH
990
"It is just the contrary. They praise death, or at all events
extol it, because after it life is to begin. I am no one of those
who deny a future life. I only say, in the words of my Master,
'Our knowledge is of life and not of death,' and where my
knowledge ceases my thoughts must cease. Our labors, our
love, are all of this life. And because God is in this world
and in all that exist in it, and only in those things, have we to
liberate the divine essence wherever it exists. The law of love
should rule. What the law of nature is in regard to matter, the
moral law is to man. "
"I cannot reconcile myself to your dividing the divine power
into millions of parts. When a stone is crushed, every fragment
still remains a stone; but when a flower is torn to pieces, the
parts are no longer flowers. "
"Let us take your simile as an illustration, although in truth
no example is adequate. The world, the firmament, the creat-
ures that live on the face of the earth, are not divided — they
are one; thought regards them as a whole. Take for instance
the flower. The idea of divinity which it suggests to us, and
the fragrance which ascends from it, are yet part and parcel of
the flower; attributes without which it is impossible for us to
conceive of its existence. The works of all poets, all thinkers,
all heroes, may be likened to streams of fragrance wafted through
time and space.
It is in the flower that they live forever. Al-
though the eternal spirit dwells in the cell of every tree or
flower and in every human heart, it is undivided and in its unity.
fills the world. He whose thoughts dwell in the infinite regards
the world as the mighty corolla from which the thought of God
exhales. "
Translation of S. A. Stern.
IN COUNTESS IRMA'S DIARY
From On the Heights'
Y
ESTERDAY was a year since I lay at the foot of the rock.
I could not write a word. My brain whirled with the
thoughts of that day; but now it is over.
* * *
I don't think I shall write much more. I have now experi
enced all the seasons in my new world.
The circle is complete.
## p. 991 (#417) ############################################
BERTHOLD AUERBACH
991
I know all that
There is nothing new to come from without.
exists about me, or that can happen. I am at home in my new
world.
*
**
Unto Jesus the Scribes and Pharisees brought a woman who
was to be stoned to death, and He said unto them, "Let him
that is without sin among you cast the first stone. "
Thus it is written.
But I ask: How did she continue to live-she who was saved
from being stoned to death; she who was pardoned—that is,
condemned to live? How did she live on? Did she return to
her home? How did she stand with the world? And how with
her own heart?
No answer. None.
I must find the answer in my own experience
* * *
"Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone. "
These are the noblest, the greatest words ever uttered by human
lips, or heard by human ear. They divide the history of the
human race into two parts. They are the "Let there be light"
of the second creation. They divide and heal my little life too,
and create me anew.
Has one who is not wholly without sin a right to offer pre-
cepts and reflections to others?
What are you?
Look into your own heart.
Behold my hands. They are hardened by toil. I have done
more than merely lift them in prayer.
* * *
Since I am alone I have not seen a letter of print. I have
no book and wish for none; and this is not in order to mortify
myself, but because I wish to be perfectly alone.
* * *
She who renounces the world, and in her loneliness still
cherishes the thought of eternity, has assumed a heavy burden.
Convent life is not without its advantages. The different
voices that join in the chorale sustain each other; and when the
tone at last ceases, it seems to float away on the air and vanish
by degrees. But here I am quite alone. I am priest and church,
## p. 992 (#418) ############################################
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BERTHOLD AUERBACH
organ and congregation, confessor and penitent, all in one; and
my heart is often so heavy, as if I must needs have another to
help me bear the load. "Take me up and carry me, I cannot
go further! " cries my soul. But then I rouse myself again, seize
my scrip and my pilgrim's staff and wander on, solitary and
alone; and while I wander, strength returns to me.
It often seems to me as if it were sinful thus to bury myself
alive. My voice is no longer heard in song, and much more that
dwells within me has become mute.
Is this right?
If my only object in life were to be at peace with myself, it
would be well enough; but I long to labor and to do something
for others. Yet where and what shall it be?
*
*
When I first heard that the beautifully carved furniture of the
great and wealthy is the work of prisoners, it made me shudder.
And now, although I am not deprived of freedom, I am in much
the same condition. Those who have disfigured life should, as
an act of expiation, help to make life more beautiful for others.
The thought that I am doing this comforts and sustains me.
*
My work prospers.
But last winter's wood is not yet fit for
use. My little pitchman has brought me some that is old, excel-
lent, and well seasoned, having been part of the rafters of an old
house that has just been torn down. We work together cheer-
fully, and our earnings are considerable.
*
*
Vice is the same everywhere, except that here it is more open.
Among the masses, vice is characterized by coarseness; among
the upper classes, by meanness.
The latter shake off the consequences of their evil deeds,
while the former are obliged to bear them.
* * *
The rude manners of these people are necessary, and are far
preferable to polite deceit. They must needs be rough and rude.
If it were not for its coarse, thick bark, the oak could not with-
stand the storm.
## p. 993 (#419) ############################################
BERTHOLD AUERBACH
993
I have found that this rough bark covers
and sincerity than does the smoothest surface.
more tenderness
Jochem told me, to-day, that he is still quite a good walker,
but that a blind man finds it very troublesome to go anywhere;
for at every step he is obliged to grope about, so that he may
feel sure of his ground before he firmly plants his foot on the
earth.
Is it not the same with me? Am I not obliged to be sure of
the ground before I take a step?
Such is the way of the fallen.
Ah! why does everything I see or hear become a symbol of
my life?
I have now been here between two and three years. I have
formed a resolve which it will be difficult to carry out. I shall
go out into the world once more. I must again behold the
scenes of my past life. I have tested myself severely.
May it not be a love of adventure, that genteel yet vulgar
desire to undertake what is unusual or fraught with peril? Or is
it a morbid desire to wander through the world after having
died, as it were?
No; far from it. What can it be? An intense longing to
roam again, if it be only for a few days. I must kill the desire,
lest it kill me.
Whence arises this sudden longing?
Every tool that I use while at work burns my hand.
I must go.
I shall obey the impulse, without worrying myself with specu-
lations as to its cause. I am subject to the rules of no order.
My will is my only law. I harm no one by obeying it. I feel
myself free; the world has no power over me.
I dreaded informing Walpurga of my intention. When I did
so, her tone, her words, her whole manner, and the fact that she
for the first time called me child," » made it seem as if her
mother were still speaking to me.
"Child," said she, "you're right! Go! It'll do you good. I
believe that you'll come back and will stay with us; but if you
don't, and another life opens up to you—your expiation has been
a bitter one, far heavier than your sin. ”
II-63
## p. 994 (#420) ############################################
BERTHOLD AUERBACH
994
Uncle Peter was quite happy when he learned that we were
to be gone from one Sunday to the Sunday following. When I
asked him whether he was curious as to where we were going,
he replied:-
"It's all one to me. I'd travel over the whole world with
you, wherever you'd care to go; and if you were to drive me
away, I'd follow you like a dog and find you again. "
I shall take my journal with me, and will note down every
day.
*
*
[By the lake. ]-I find it difficult to write a word.
The threshold I am obliged to cross, in order to go out into
the world, is my own gravestone.
I am equal to it.
How pleasant it was to descend toward the valley. Uncle
Peter sang; and melodies suggested themselves to me, but I did
not sing. Suddenly he interrupted himself and said:
"In the inns you'll be my niece, won't you? »
"Yes. "
"But you must call me 'uncle' when we're there? "
"Of course, dear uncle. "
He kept nodding to himself for the rest of the way, and was
quite happy.
We reached the inn at the landing. He drank, and I drank
too, from the same glass.
"Where are you going? " asked the hostess.
To the capital," said he, although I had not said a word to
him about it. Then he said to me in a whisper:-
"If you intend to go elsewhere, the people needn't know
everything. "
I let him have his own way.
I looked for the place where I had wandered at that time.
There there was the rock-and on it a cross, bearing in golden
characters the inscription:
HERE PERISHED
IRMA, COUNTESS VON WILDENORT,
IN THE TWENTY-FIRST YEAR
OF HER LIFE.
Traveler, pray for her and honor her memory.
## p. 995 (#421) ############################################
BERTHOLD AUERBACH
995
I never rightly knew why I was always dissatisfied, and
yearning for the next hour, the next day, the next year, hoping
that it would bring me that which I could not find in the pres-
ent. It was not love, for love does not satisfy. I desired to live
in the passing moment, but could not. It always seemed as if
something were waiting for me without the door, and calling me.
What could it have been?
I know now; it was a desire to be at one with myself, to
understand myself. Myself in the world, and the world in me.
*
The vain man is the loneliest of human beings. He is con-
stantly longing to be seen, understood, acknowledged, admired,
and loved.
I could say much on the subject, for I too was once vain. It
was only in actual solitude that I conquered the loneliness of
vanity. It is enough for me that I exist.
How far removed this is from all that is mere show.
*
*
Now I understand my father's last act. He did not mean to
punish me. His only desire was to arouse me; to lead me to
self-consciousness; to the knowledge which, teaching us to become
different from what we are, saves us.
*
I understand the inscription in my father's library:- "When
I am alone, then am I least alone. "
Yes; when alone, one can more perfectly lose himself in the
life universal, I have lived and have come to know the truth.
I can now die.
* * *
He who is at one with himself, possesses all.
I believe that I know what I have done.
passion for myself. This is my full confession.
I have sinned—not against nature, but against the world's
rules. Is that sin? Look at the tall pines in yonder forest.
The higher the tree grows, the more do the lower branches die
away; and thus the tree in the thick forest is protected and shel-
tered by its fellows, but can nevertheless not perfect itself in all
directions.
I have no com-
## p. 996 (#422) ############################################
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BERTHOLD AUERBACH
I desired to lead a full and complete life and yet to be in the
forest, to be in the world and yet in society. But he who means
to live thus, must remain in solitude. As soon as we become
members of society, we cease to be mere creatures of nature.
Nature and morality have equal rights, and must form a compact.
with each other; and where there are two powers with equal
rights, there must be mutual concessions.
Herein lies my sin.
He who desires to live a life of nature alone, must withdraw
himself from the protection of morality. I did not fully desire
either the one or the other; hence I was crushed and shattered.
My father's last action was right. He avenged the moral law,
which is just as human as the law of nature. The animal world
knows neither father nor mother, so soon as the young is able to
take care of itself. The human world does know them and must
hold them sacred.
I see it all quite clearly. My sufferings and my expiation are
deserved. I was a thief! I stole the highest treasures of all:
confidence, love, honor, respect, splendor.
How noble and exalted the tender souls appear to themselves
when a poor rogue is sent to jail for having committed a theft!
But what are all possessions which can be carried away, when
compared with those that are intangible!
Those who are summoned to the bar of justice are not always
the basest of mankind.
I acknowledge my sin, and my repentance is sincere.
My fatal sin, the sin for which I now atone, was that I dis-
sembled, that I denied and extenuated that which I represented
to myself as a natural right. Against the Queen I have sinned.
worst of all. To me she represents that moral order which I
violated and yet wished to enjoy.
To you, O Queen, to you-lovely, good, and deeply injured
one do I confess all this!
-
If I die before you,- and I hope that I may,— these pages
are to be given to you.
I can now accurately tell the season of the year, and often
the hour of the day, by the way in which the first sunbeams fall
into my room and on my work-bench in the morning. My chisel
hangs before me on the wall, and is my index.
**
## p. 997 (#423) ############################################
BERTHOLD AUERBACH
997
The drizzling spring showers now fall on the trees; and thus
it is with me. It seems as if there were a new delight in store
for me. What can it be? I shall patiently wait!
*
A strange feeling comes over me, as if I were lifted up from
the chair on which I am sitting, and were flying, I know not
whither! What is it? I feel as if dwelling in eternity.
Everything seems flying toward me: the sunlight and the
sunshine, the rustling of the forests and the forest breezes, beings
of all ages and of all kinds- all seem beautiful and rendered
transparent by the sun's glow.
I am!
*
―
-
I am in God!
If I could only die now and be wafted through this joy to
dissolution and redemption!
But I will live on until my hour comes.
Come, thou dark hour, whenever thou wilt! To me thou art
light!
I feel that there is light within me. O Eternal Spirit of the
universe, I am one with thee!
I was dead, and I live- I shall die and yet live.
Everything has been forgiven and blotted out. -There was
dust on my wings. I soar aloft into the sun and into infinite
space. I shall die singing from the fullness of my soul. Shall
I sing!
Enough.
*
I know that I shall again be gloomy and depressed and drag
along a weary existence; but I have once soared into infinity and
have felt a ray of eternity within me.
