“You will see, my dear sir, they will trumpet it in all the papers, and—even if it is all false—if the General’s position were untenable, the mob goes by outward appearance, judges by outward appearance, and—outward appearance is against us.”
The rug slipped from his knees, but he never seemed to observe it.
“And if that were all! But we, of whom our illustrious sovereign has so rightly said that we are appointed by fate to eat our bread in the sweat of our brow, we begin to desire to live for show, for glittering useless show. Take this railway business; it is all show whichever way you look at it—good high roads, decent communal roads are all that we need for the moderate requirements of our island, which the prospectus boastfully calls the ‘granary of Germany.’ Show is the security upon the ground of which alone the concession can be obtained; I know that they could not raise even the few hundred thousand thalers. The subscriptions according to rule from ‘good and substantial houses,’ are show—shameful show; the only real subscription is from Prince Prora, through whose territory nearly a third of the railway passes; the other ten million are from Count Golm, and Co.—and not one thaler is paid up, or ever will be paid. So it goes on, so it must go on. You can’t gather figs from thistles, and as to what is to be expected from that magnificent harbour which is to crown the whole, well, you know all about that as well as or better than I do.”
The President stood up and went to the window, through which the lights of the town were already disappearing. Then he came back to his place and said as he leant over towards Reinhold, in an almost mysterious voice:
“Do you remember a conversation on the evening when I had the pleasure of making your acquaintance at the Count’s table at Golmberg? I have so often thought of it lately. Your storm—I hope to God it may not come—but if it comes as you have prophesied, I should take it for a parable of what is hanging over us. Yes! for a sign from heaven! to awaken us, to startle us out of our criminal intoxication, out of our empty, visionary life, to withdraw the glittering show from our eyes, to show us, as Fichte says, ‘that which is.’ Ah! where is the hand which would now write us ‘Speeches to the German nation?’ I would bless that hand. Instead of it our philosophers prate about the intellect, which is meant for nothing but to lead the will into absurdities, and to crush and destroy all joy and cheerfulness which is yet the mother of all virtues; and our poets are disciples of the French school, and learn how to be frivolous and disreputable to the heart’s core without offending external proprieties, or wander, poor creatures, with their beggar’s staves in the ruins of the age, and try to make us believe that the clouds of dust that they raise are creatures of flesh and blood; and our composers show forth the blasé impudence, the shameless sensuality of the age in music which fairly bewilders the moral and aesthetic feelings of the great and small world, or heats the fevered blood to madness.
“It cannot remain so. It is impossible; a nation cannot continue to dance before the golden calf and sacrifice to Moloch. Either it will be overwhelmed in the flood of its sins, or it must cling to the saving Ararat of honest, manly, and middle-class virtue. God grant that our people may have strength for the latter. There are times when I despair of it.”
The President leant back and closed his eyes. Did he wish to break off the conversation? Was he too much exhausted to pursue it further? At any rate, Reinhold did not venture to express the thoughts with which his heart was full. Each sat silent in his corner. The last lights of the town had long disappeared. Over the broad, dark plain, through which the train rushed, lay a light covering of snow, from which the woods rose up gloomily. Above, in the darkening sky, sparkled and shone, in countless numbers, the eternal stars.
Reinhold’s eyes were gazing upwards. How often had he so gazed from the deck of his ship on stormy winter nights with an anxious, fearful heart! And his heart had again beat high with courage, if only one of the loved and trusted lights illuminated his lonely path. And now, when they all beamed upon him, those silver stars—and greater, mightier than all, the star of his love—now, should he lose courage? Never! The storm might come—it would find him ready; it would find him at his post.
Book V
I
Dinner had been over an hour at Castle Warnow. Frau von Wallbach, Elsa, and Count Golm, who had been invited to dinner, were sitting in the drawing-room round the hearth, on which but a small fire was burning. Although only just the end of , the day had been wonderfully sultry. François even had to
