On the Heights: A Novel

Among the peasants, it is just the same as elsewhere. Only the great ones know each other. But their intercourse is beautiful and impressive, and, although they exchange no friendly words, they serve each other by friendly actions.

The family have been made happy, for Grubersepp has said that the farm was in good order; and when Grubersepp says that, it is as much as if the intendant should say: "divine."

During the two days Grubersepp spent here, there was no rest in the house; that is, every one was busy thinking of him. Now everything is running in its accustomed groove, and every face is radiant with joy. No matter how well satisfied one may be with himself, it is something quite different to receive words of approval from the lips of another, and especially so, when the words of commendation come from a man so exalted as Grubersepp.

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I am still trembling with fright. I was in the woods to-day. I was sitting on my bench, and saw some one walking among the trees. Now and then he would stop to gather a flower or pick up a stone. He came near and-who was it?

It was Gunther, the friend for whose presence I had so often longed. He asked me, in his deep, clear voice: "Child, does this road lead down to the village?"

I felt as if choking, and could not utter a word. I pointed to the footpath and, in fear and trembling, arose from my seat. He asked me: "Are you dumb, poor child?" – This saved me. I am dumb; I cannot speak. Without uttering a word, I fled from him and, when I found myself alone, I wept longer than I have for many years. I wanted to hurry after him, but he had gone. I could not support myself. My limbs gave way under me. At last I was calm-all is over-all must be over.

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I have had long and troubled days. My work did not go as smoothly as it should have done, and much went amiss with me. The world without has aroused me.

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I thank fate that I have learned to use my eyes. Wherever I look, I see something that delights me and gives me food for thought. The noblest joys and the most widely diffused are those the eye affords us.

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I am delighted to find that the little pitchman knows every bird by its song. The proverb says: "A bird is known by its feathers." That is a matter of course, for few know them by their song. Their plumage is permanent; their song is fleeting and fitful. The former is fixed; the latter is not.

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I now listen, with perfect unconcern, to the groaning of the forest trees, which so alarmed me during that night of terrors. And how strange! as soon as a bird begins to sing, the groaning ceases. What causes this?

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I have received fresh orders, and am all right again. But my little pitchman keeps ailing. At first, it almost vexed me, but I conquered the selfish habits that tyrannized over me. I have served him faithfully, in requital for the services he has done me. I nursed him carefully, and now he is quite well again.

I am not so selfish, after all; for I have gained the friendship of good human beings. But I cannot do good to those who do not concern me. I belong to myself and to an infinitely small circle; beyond that I cannot go.

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When I sit here in silence and solitude, and look at the one room in which I live and hope to die, I sometimes give way to horrible fits of depression. Here is my chair, my table, my workbench, my bed. These are mine until I am laid in the grave; but there is not one human soul that belongs to me.

I feel so oppressed, at such moments, that I would like to cry out aloud, and it is with difficulty that I regain my composure. Work, however, aids me.

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For one brief hour, I have imagined myself possessed of omniscience.

It was yesterday morning, during the hour from eleven until twelve. A light sun-shower passed over us, and then all grew bright again, and, in my mind's eye, I saw how thousands of beings were spending that hour. I saw the laborer in the forest, the king in his cabinet, the sewing-woman in her garret, the miner in the shaft, the bird on the tree, the lizard on the rock. I saw the child sitting in school, and the dying old man drawing his last breath. I saw the ship, the coquette rouging herself, and the poor working-woman weeding in the fields. I saw all-everything. I passed one hour of infinity.

And now I am fettered again-a small, isolated, miserable, stammering child. The one great thought of eternity passes like a fugitive through my mind, and finds no resting-place there. I must again hold fast to trifles.

I shall return to my workbench.

I have read, somewhere, that the Arabians wash their hands before prayer; when in the desert, where they can find no water, they wash them in sand and dust. The dust of labor purifies us.

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The masses should have no books, but should talk with, and listen to, each other.

Books serve to isolate man; that which is told us by word of mouth is far more potent.

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The teachings-or, rather, the experiences-of a ruined worldling have two things in their favor. She who has gone astray has become observant of everything, and is, therefore, the best guide. And, besides that, it seems to me that those who receive a precept from the lips of one who is perfectly pure have no, choice left them; for purity is the highest authority, and its teachings must be accepted. But when a ruined being speaks to us, every word must be tested. It will not do to reject it at once; and this is well, for it makes one free.

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The swallows are departing. They gather in flocks which, like thick clouds, darken the air and, with lightning speed, they move in their zig-zag course. How they can keep together in such irregular movements passes our comprehension. When, or by what means, do they signify to each other when a sharp turn is to be taken?

The thought of flying suggests a sphere of life of which we can form no conception. And yet we imagine that we understand the world. What is fixed, we may comprehend; at least, the portion that is fixed. – Beyond that, all is conjecture.

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I overheard Franz, Gundel's lover, saying to her: "A woman who looked just like Irmgard was once with the queen at the military maneuvers; and she wore the uniform of our regiment, and rode up and down the line."

If the soldier were to recognize and betray me?

How the confused feelings that fill the human heart seem to play at hide and seek with each other. With all my misery, it is not without a certain feeling of triumph that I learn that my image has impressed itself on a thousand memories.

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I have not yet accustomed myself to go out alone, and it often seems to me as if a servant must be walking after me. Ah! what an artificial life we all lead.

I have spent a whole day alone in the woods. Oh, how happy I was! I lay on the ground listening to the rustling of the leaves overhead, and the prattling of the brook below. If I could but end my days here like a wounded doe-for I am one, and drops of blood mark my track. – No, I am well again. I was once in the world; that is, in another world; and now I lead a new life.

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The little pitchman knew my father. During one summer, he worked in our forest, gathering pitch, and my father, who understood everything, went up to him and taught him how to boil the pitch in order to obtain a better and purer article than he would otherwise have got.

"Oh, what a man he was! I only wish you'd known him," said the little pitchman to me. "He was so good. Many a one has told me, since then, how he used to help everybody. He knew all about everything. He taught me that you can get the best turpentine from the larches. He never liked to give anything to people, but he wasn't stingy. He helped all who'd work, and showed them how things might be done with less trouble and with greater profit, and that was better than giving them money. Every year he would lend them some money, so that they could buy a pig, and when they'd sold it, they had to pay him back. They often laughed at him and gave him a nickname, too, but it was an honor to him. Yes-and would you believe it? – he had a great misfortune. His children deserted him."

How these words rent my heart!

During the whole evening, the terrible mark on my forehead burned like fire.

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This is the anniversary of my return to the summer palace.

At that time, I dreamt that a star had fallen down on me, and that a man, with averted gaze, was saying: "Thou too, art alone!"

There are depths of the soul, which no safety-lamp ever enters, and where all light is extinguished. I turn away-for naught dwells there but the angry storm-wind.

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My thoughts go back to my childhood. I was three years old when my mother died. I have nothing to remind me of it, except that the moving about and pushing in the next room greatly frightened me. Oh mother! why did you die so soon? How different I would have been-

I? Who is this I? If it could have been different, it were not I. It was to be thus.

They put black clothes on me and my brother, and I only remember that father went with us. He said that it would be better if we did not remain with him, and that it was not well for us to grow up in solitude. He kissed us at parting. He kissed me and my brother, then he kissed me once more. It seemed as if he wished to retain my kiss for the last.

What are the memories of my childhood? A silent convent, my aunt the lady abbess, and my friend Emma. I remember this much, however: when strangers came, they would turn to me and say: "Oh, what a pretty child! what large brown eyes!" Emma told me that I was not pretty, and that the visitors were only laughing at and mocking me; but my mirror told me that I was pretty. I frankly said so to Emma and she confessed that I was. My father came-he had been in America-and he looked at me for a long while. "Father, I am pretty, am I not?" said I to him.

"Yes, my child, you are, and much is required of one who is beautiful. Beauty is a heavy charge. Always bear yourself that others may justly feel proud of you."

I did not know what he meant at the time, but now I understand it all.

I do not remember how the years passed by. I went back to father. Bruno, who was intended for an agriculturist, entered the army against father's wishes. Father, absorbed by his work and his studies, lived entirely for himself, and left us to do as we pleased. He was proud of this, and often said that he did not wish to exercise his authority over us, and that he meant to allow us to develop our characters freely and without restraint. I returned to the convent, and remained there until my aunt died.

And there-forgive me, great and pure spirit! – there lay your great error. You cast aside your paternal majesty and meant to live in love alone. And we? Bruno would not, and I could not. And thus, while you were lonely, we were miserable.

Bruno went to court. He was handsome, gay and full of life. He presented me at court, also. Father had allowed me to follow my own choice, and there my troubles began. I knew that I was beautiful, and I had the courage to think differently from others. I had become the free nature which my father had meant me to be; but to what purpose?

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When I look over what I have written, I cannot help thinking of how much one has lived and labored during a year, and how small the yield is, after all. But then flowers, too, require a long time before they blossom, and fruit ripens but slowly; many sunny days and dewy nights have helped to perfect them.

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A rainbow! Rest and peace are intangible. They exist nowhere except in our own imagination and in the view we take of things around us. Now I understand why the rainbow that followed the deluge was described as a token of peace. The seven colors have no real existence. They only appear to the eye that receives the broken rays at the proper angle of refraction. Rest and peace cannot be conquered by force; they are free gifts of the heaven within us-smiles and tears meeting like the rain cloud and the sunshine.

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I am often oppressed with a fear that I shall lose what culture I possess, because of my having no one with whom I can speak in my own language, and-I hardly know how to express myself-in whom I can find my own nature reflected. And yet, that which makes man human is possessed by those about me, as much as by the most cultured. This being the case, whence this fear? and of what benefit is culture? Do I still mean to use it in the world? I do not understand myself.

Our fashionable culture cannot supplant religion, because, while religion makes all men equal, education produces inequality. But there must be a system of culture that will equalize all men, and that is the only right and true system. We are, as yet, at the threshold.

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I have a great work before me, and am determined to succeed.

Hansei put little Peter on the white horse and let him ride a few steps. How happy the little fellow was! and how Wodan looked around at father and son! I retained the scene in my memory, and am now working at the group-Hansei, Peter, and the white foal, all together. If I only succeed! I can scarcely sleep for thinking of it.

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The group has proved a success, although not so great a one as I had wished for. The human figures are stiff and without expression; but the horse is full of life, and every one in the house is delighted with my achievement.

Hansei wishes me to accompany him when he goes out hunting, so that I may copy stags, deer, and chamois. Those, he thinks, are the best subjects, after all.

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I have tried to copy the animals in the forest, but did not succeed as I did with the horse. I can only hold fast to that which has no fear of me and which I, therefore, love. I shall stick to my horses and cows.

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All the mountain summits that I see, have such strange and yet appropriate names. Who bestowed them upon them? And who accepted them? What names could we invent nowadays? The earth and language have both become rigid and unyielding. I think I once heard the same thought expressed one evening, while we were at tea with the queen.

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The carnival is a great festival-the very realization of jollity. Peasants from the village come to visit us. They often come on Sundays, but I never heard them speak of anything but cattle, the crops, or the price of grain. I sometimes remain in the room to listen to them, for I love to hear the sound of human voices.

The stories they tell each other seem simple, but, after all, none better are told in the salon.

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Why did I not live out my life in purity? I was intended for a noble and beautiful existence.

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My white foal is running about, while I sit here modeling it. The power of giving permanent shape to impressions received by the eye is the prerogative of man alone. We have words for everything about us and can imitate all objects, and, over and above that, we have music and pure thought. What rich stores of knowledge and delight are at man's disposal.

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We have passed three sad, sorrowful days. The grandmother was ill. The whole household was in alarm. Hansei feared the worst and did not venture to leave the farm. It was a comfort to me to find that my nursing did the grandmother so much good.

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Hansei, proud as he is of being a great farmer, was so anxious to do something for the mother, that he chopped the wood with which to make a fire in her room, and carried it in, himself.

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He always told the doctor to spare no expense. Nothing was too dear, or too good for the grandmother.

The doctor explained the grandmother's illness to me, just as if I were a physician.

She often sent Uncle Peter out into the woods to me. It was still raw out there, and we soon returned.

The grandmother is well again, and is sitting in the spring sunshine.

"Yes, one must have been out of the world, to be grateful for coming back again," said she. "One who doesn't get away doesn't know what it is to come back." She had much to tell me about the deaths of her five children. "This one would have been so old, and this one so old," she kept on saying. In imagination, they had grown up with her. Then she told me of her husband's death: how he had been dragged into the lake by the driftwood, and drowned; and how Hansei had remained with them afterward. "He was a strange man," she always said of her husband, "but good-hearted."

During his sister's illness, the little pitchman was in great despair.

"She was the pride of our family," he kept on saying, as if she were already dead. But now he is the happiest of us all, and when the grandmother sat on my bench under the maple tree, for the first time, he said: "I'll get a golden seat in heaven for making that bench. The king hasn't got a finer place than that, and he can't get any one to paint bluer skies or greener woods for him than we can see from here."

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I am quite distressed by what the little pitchman tells me. He brings me word that the man who purchases my work intends to pay me a visit. He has just received an order to furnish carved wainscotings for the palace at the king's new hunting-seat, and wishes to see me about them.

How shall I avoid meeting him?

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The good mother has helped me out of my trouble. She received him when he came, and told him that I would see no one. She would not consent to tell a falsehood, a point on which Walpurga would have had less scruples.

I now have the working designs, and beautiful woods with which to carry them out, for I have undertaken to execute a portion of the order.

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It matters little what manner of life one leads, so long as there is self-awakening and self-consciousness. All arts, all science, merely exist in order that our own consciousness may be acted upon and aroused by that of others. He who can do this unaided is fortunate. He who awakes of himself when it is time to go to work in the morning, has no need of a watchman to call him.

Hansei has become a juryman. Walpurga is quite proud of it, and when he took leave of us, it was with a certain air of pride and importance. The idea of appealing to the conscience of the people for the verdict of justice, is a beautiful one.

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Hansei has returned, and had many terrible stories to tell.

It seems to me as if our lives and destinies were nothing more than shadows playing on the wall.

Hansei was deeply affected when he said to us:

"Yes, all my sins came back to me, and I felt as if I were doing penance when I pronounced judgment on others. It's nothing but good luck that prevents us from falling into sinful ways and keeps us off of the anxious bench."

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(Sunday, May 28th.) – The grandmother is dead.

I cannot write of it. My hand seems as if paralyzed.

She kissed my eyes and said: "I kiss your eyes, and hope they may never weep again."

Two hours before her death, she said to Hansei:

"Make a sled for Burgei. She is so anxious to have one. It'll please me if you do. You needn't fear, she won't harm herself. I beg of you, do it."

"Yes, yes, grandmother!" replied Hansei, with thick voice, and deeply affected by the thought that, even then, the grandmother's only care was for Burgei's pleasure.

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The fear of death lies heavily upon me, and yet I feel an inward sense of freedom. I have beheld a beautiful end. My hand closed her eyes in death. I had not believed that I could do it. There was a time when I could not, when I lay on the floor feeling as if I were buried far under the earth, and beside me lay my father, cold in death.

The grandmother's death has relieved me of all fear. I am able to assist Walpurga. Her lamentations are excessive. "Now I'm an orphan like you!" she cried, throwing herself on my bosom. Then she cried to the dead one: "Oh mother! how can you be so cruel as to leave me? Oh God! and there's the bird still hopping about its cage. Yes, you can jump about! but mother never will again!"

She took a cloth and covered the crossbill's cage with it, saying: "I'd like to let you fly, you dear little creature, but I can't. Mother loved you so much that I can't let you go." And then, addressing the corpse, she said: "Oh mother! can there ever be sunshine when you're not here? Yes, the clock ticks and keeps on going, and can be wound up. But, oh! the hours that will come and go without you! God forgive me for the many hours I was away from you!"

The door of the clothes-press suddenly flew open and startled Walpurga. Regaining her self-command, she said: "Yes, yes; I'll wear your clothes. I'll wear them for the sake of good. No evil thought shall enter my heart, no evil word pass my lips. Help me, so that I may always be yours! Oh God! there's no one left to say 'child' to me! I remember how you said: 'So long as you can say, father, and mother, there is yet a love that bears you in its arms. It's only when the parents are gone, that one is set down on the cold ground.' I'll hold fast to all you've told me to do, and so shall my children. And, Irmgard, you remember many other wise sayings, don't you?"

Such was the burden of Walpurga's lament, and I could only reply:

"Yes, and hold fast to one thing she said: 'One may sin even in speech.' Don't give way to your grief."

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Walpurga took down her mother's prayer-book and read the prayer for the soul of the departed.

After that, she handed me the book, and what I read there filled me with gratitude and devotion. When our feelings are most violently agitated, we cannot give definite shape to our ideas. We, too, sing melodies that have been arranged by others. Our lips repeat the words of poets who have sung and suffered for us; for the poet's heart, in truth, contains the New Jerusalem of civilization. The great gulf that separates man from the beast, the plant, or the stone, is the possession of sympathy, by means of which men are enabled to anticipate, or to follow, each other's emotions. From the beginning until now, humanity has been chanting an undying melody in which my voice, too, forms a part. An everlasting sun, of whose rays I am one, has been lighting the path from generation to generation. The silent mountains outlast the races of men and no new one is added to their number; but, from generation to generation, new watch-towers of thought arise from the soul of humanity.

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A happy death is the greatest good. Wondrous power of religion! Over the couch of the sick, there are bell-pulls, reaching into heaven, by which the patient is enabled to draw himself up and support himself. He imagines them there, even in their absence, and, supported by faith, thinks that he is holding fast to them.

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After the grandmother's death, a strange feeling of quiet rested on the house. It was a great comfort to Walpurga to know that there were so many people at the funeral.

"Yes, they all honored her; but they really didn't know her. You and I knew her. Do you remember, Hansei, when the potatoes were stolen from the field, and she said; 'If one only knew who stole them,' and I said: 'Mother, would you inform against them?' 'You foolish thing,' she answered, reproachfully, 'how could you think I'd mean that? What I mean is: if we only knew who the people are that stole our potatoes during the night. They must know that we have but little, ourselves; and they must be very unfortunate people, whom we ought to help as much as we can afford to.' Yes, she said that; was there ever another creature who'd think of such a thing? That's the way the saints must have been who thought so kindly of all. She had no fear of the sick, nor hatred of the wicked. Her only thought was, how much they must have suffered before they got so sick or so wicked. If I could only grow to be like her. Remind me of it all, Irmgard, when I get cross and scold. You'll help me, won't you? to become like my mother, so that, some day, my children will think of me as I do of her. Ah! if one were only always as good as one can be. Yes, she was right when she used to say: 'Wishing in the one hand and blowing into the other, amount to about the same thing.'"

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I shall now return to my work. At such times, there is hardship and yet comfort in labor. Hansei and Walpurga are obliged to work. They cannot afford to give themselves up to grief, for too much depends on them. Be it with king or beggar, poet or peasant, the key-note of the highest emotions is always the same.

Walpurga's lament was pitched in the same key as that of Lear for Cordelia, and yet how different. To a father who loses his child, the future is dead. To a child losing a parent, the past is dead. Ah! how weak is language.

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I was quite alarmed by something that Hansei said to-day. Has doubt entered even these simple hearts? And they do their duty in this world without a firm belief in a future state.