The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 10. Коллектив авторов
when the great fields of ice first set themselves massively in motion, with explosions like cannon-shots, shattering themselves against one another; they rear, shoving over and under each other; they pile up house-high, and sometimes build dams obliquely across the Elbe, in front of which the pent stream rises until it breaks through them with rage. Now are they all broken to pieces in the battle—the giants—and the water very thickly covered with ice-cakes, the largest of which measure several square rods, which it bears out to the free sea like shattered chains, with grumbling, clashing noises. This will go on so for about three days more, until the ice that comes from Bohemia, which passed the bridge at Dresden several days ago, has gone by. (The danger is that the ice-cakes by jamming together may make a dam, and the stream rise in front of this—often ten to fifteen feet in a few hours.) Then comes the freshet from the mountains which floods the bed of the Elbe, often a mile in width, and is dangerous in itself, owing to its volume. How long that is to last we cannot tell beforehand. The prevailing cold weather, combined with the contrary sea wind, will certainly retard it. It may easily last so long that it will not be worth while to go to Reinfeld before the 20th. If only eight days should be left me, would you have me undertake it, nevertheless?—or will you wait to have me without interruption after the 20th, or perhaps 18th? It is true that fiancé and dike-captain are almost incompatible; but were I not the latter, I have not the slightest idea who would be. The revenues of the office are small, and the duties sometimes laborious; the gentlemen of the neighborhood, however, are deeply concerned, and yet without public spirit. And even if one should be discovered who would undertake it for the sake of the title, which is, strange to say, much desired in these parts, yet there is no one here (may God forgive me the offence) who would not be either unfit for the business or faint-hearted. A fine opinion, you will think, I have of myself, that I only am none of this; but I assert with all of my native modesty that I have all these faults in less degree than the others in this part of the country—which is, in fact, not saying much.
I have not yet been able to write to Moritz, and yet I must send something to which he can reply, inasmuch as my former letter has not as yet brought a sign of life. Or have you crowded me out of his heart, and do you fill it alone? The little pale-faced child is not in danger, I hope. That is a possibility in view of which I am terrified whenever I think of it—that as a crowning misfortune of our most afflicted friend, this thread of connection with Marie might be severed. But she will soon be a year and a half old, you know; she has passed the most dangerous period for children. Will you mope and talk of warm hands and cold love if I pay a visit to Moritz on my next journey, instead of flying to Reinfeld without a pause as is required of a loving youth?
That you are getting pale, my heart, distresses me. Do you feel well otherwise, physically, and of good courage? Give me a bulletin of your condition, your appetite, your sleep. I am surprised also that Hedwig Dewitz has written to you—such a heterogeneous nature, that can have so little in common with you. She was educated with my sister for several years in Kniephof, although she was four or five years the elder of the two. Either she loves you—which I should find quite easy to explain—or has other prosaic intentions. I fancy that she, as is quite natural, does not feel at home in her father's house; she has, therefore, always made her home with others for long periods and with satisfaction.
In your letter which lies before me I come upon "self-control" again. That is a fine acquisition for one who may profit by it, but surely to be distinguished from compulsion. It is praiseworthy and amiable to wean one's self from tasteless or provoking outbursts of feeling, or to give to them a more ingratiating form; but I call it self-constraint—which makes one sick at heart—when one stifles his own feelings in himself. In social intercourse one may practise it, but not we two between ourselves. If there be tares in the field of our heart, we will mutually exert ourselves so to dispose of them that their seed cannot spring up; but, if it does, we will openly pull it up, but not cover it artificially with straw and hide it—that harms the wheat and does not injure the tares. Your thought was, I take it, to pull them up unaided, without paining me by the sight of them; but let us be in this also one heart and one flesh, even if your little thistles sometimes prick my fingers. Do not turn your back on them nor conceal them from me. You will not always take pleasure in my big thorns, either—so big that I cannot hide them; and we must pull at them both together, even though our hands bleed. Moreover, thorns sometimes bear very lovely flowers, and if yours bear roses we may perhaps let them alone sometimes. "The best is foe to the good"—in general, a very true saying; so do not have too many misgivings about all your tares, which I have not yet discovered, and leave at least a sample of them for me. With this exhortation, so full of unction, I will go to sleep, although it has just struck ten, for last night there was little of it; the unaccustomed physical exercise has used me up a bit, and tomorrow I am to be in the saddle again before daylight. Very, very tired am I, like a child.
Schönhausen, March 14, 1847.
Jeanne la Méchante!—What is the meaning of this? A whole week has passed since I heard a syllable from you, and today I seized the confused mass of letters with genuine impatience—seven official communications, a bill, two invitations, one of which is for a theatre and ball at Greifenberg, but not a trace of Zuckers (the Reinfeld post-office) and "Hochwohlgeboren."15 I could not believe my eyes, and had to look through the letters twice; then I set my hat quite on my right ear and took a two hours' walk on the highway in the rain, without a cigar, assailed by the most conflicting sentiments—"a prey to violent emotions," as we are accustomed to say in romances. I have got used to receiving my two letters from you regularly every week, and when once we have acquired the habit of a thing we look upon that as our well-won right, an injury to which enrages us. If I only knew against whom I should direct my wrath—against Böge, against the post-office, or against you, la chatte la plus noire, inside and out. And why don't you write? Are you so exhausted with the effort you made in sending two letters at a time on Friday of last week? Ten days have gone by since then—time enough to rest yourself. Or do you want to let me writhe, while you feast your eyes on my anxiety, tigress! after speaking to me in your last letters about scarlet and nervous fevers, and after I had laid such stress on my maxim of never believing in anything bad before it forces itself upon me as incontestable? We adhere firmly to our maxims only so long as they are not put to the test; when that happens we throw them away, as the peasant did his slippers, and run off on the legs that nature gave us. If you have the disposition to try the virtue of my maxims, then I shall never again give utterance to any of them, lest I be caught lying; for the fact is that I do really feel somewhat anxious. With fevers in Reddis, to let ten days pass without writing is very horrible of you, if you are well. Or can it be that you did not receive on Thursday, as usual, my letter that I mailed on Tuesday in Magdeburg, and, in your indignation at this, resolved not to write to me for another week? If that is the state of affairs, I can't yet make up my mind whether to scold or laugh at you. The worst of it now is that, unless some lucky chance brings a letter from you directly to Stolp, I shall not have any before Thursday, for, as I remember it, there is no mail leaving you Saturday and Sunday, and I should have received Friday's today. If you have not sworn off writing altogether and wish to reply to this letter, address me at Naugard. * * *
Had another visitor, and he stayed to supper and well into the night—my neighbor, the town-counsellor Gärtner. People think they must call on each other Sunday evening, and can have nothing else to do. Now that all is quiet in the night, I am really quite disturbed about you and your silence, and my imagination, or, if not that, then the being whom you do not like to have me name, shows me with scornful zeal pictures of everything that could happen. Johanna, if you were to fall sick now, it would be terrible beyond description. At the thought of it, I fully realize how deeply I love you, and how deeply the bond that unites us has grown into me. I understand what you call loving much. When I think of the possibility of separation—and possible it is still—I should never have been so lonely in all my dreary, lonely life.
What would Moritz's situation be, compared with that?—for he has a child, a father, a sister, dear and intimate friends in the neighborhood. I have no one within forty miles with whom I should be tempted to talk more than that which politeness demands; only a sister—but a happily married one with children is really one no longer, at least for a brother who is single. For the first time I am looking the possibility straight in the eyes that you might
"Right honorable," a common form of address on letters. B. refers more than once to her distinctive way of writing this title.