Volume 2 — CHAPTER VI.

WHAT HAPPENED AT THE CHOOSING OF THE CASKETS, AND THE CONCLUSION OF THE TALE.

As may be imagined, Albertine got into a condition of the most utter despair when her father told her about the wretched lottery in which her hand was to be the prize, and all her prayers and tears were powerless to turn him from this idea, when he had once got it fairly into his head. Then, besides this, Lehsen seemed indifferent and indolent, in a way that nobody who really loved could be, not making any attempt to see her privately, or even to send her a message.

On the Saturday night before the fateful Sunday she was sitting alone in her room, as the twilight was deepening into night, her mind full of the misfortune which was threatening her. She was calculating whether or not it would be better to come to a speedy determination to fly from her father's roof, rather than wait till the most fearful destiny conceivable should accomplish itself, that of marrying either the pedantic old Tussmann, or the insufferable Baron Benjie, and then she remembered the mysterious Goldsmith, and the strange, supernatural way in which he had prevented the Baron from touching her. She felt quite sure that he had been on Edmund's side then; wherefore a hope began to dawn in her heart that it must be on him that she should rely for help at this crisis of her affairs. Above all things she wished that she only could just have a little talk with him then and there; and was quite sure that she shouldn't be at all frightened, really, if he were to appear to her suddenly, in some strange, spectral sort of manner.

So that she really was not in the least frightened when she saw that what she had been thinking was the stove was really Leonhard the Goldsmith, who came up to her and said, in a gentle, harmonious voice:--

"My dear child, lay aside all grief and anxiety. Edmund Lehsen, whom, at present at all events, you believe you love, is a special protégé of mine; and I am helping him with all the power at my command. Let me further tell you that it was I who put the lottery idea into your father's head; that I am going to provide and prepare the caskets, and, of course, you see that no one but Edmund will find your portrait."

Albertine felt inclined to shout for joy. The Goldsmith continued:--

"I could have brought about the giving of your hand to Edmund in other ways; but I particularly wish to make the two rivals, Tussmann and the Baron, completely contented at the same time. So that that is going to be done, and you and your father will be quite sure to have no more trouble on their part."

Albertine poured forth the warmest expressions of gratitude. She almost fell at his feet, she pressed his hand to her heart, she declared that, notwithstanding all the magic tricks he had performed, nay, even after the way he had come into her room, she wasn't in the least afraid of him; and she concluded with the somewhat naive request that he would tell her all about himself, and who he really was.

"My dear child," he answered, "it would not be by any means an easy matter for me to tell you exactly who I am. Like many others, I know much better whom I take other people for than what I really and truly am myself. But I may tell you, my dear, that many think I am none other than that Leonhard Turnhäuser the Goldsmith, who was such a famous character at the court of the Elector Johann Georg, in the year 1580, and who disappeared, none knew how or where, when envy and calumny tried to ruin him; and if the members of the imaginative or romantic school say that I am this Turnhäuser, a spectral being, you may imagine what I have to suffer at the hands of the solid and enlightened portion of the community, the respectable citizens, and the men of business, who think they have something better to do than to bother their heads about poetry and romance. Then, even the aesthetic people want to watch me and dog my steps, just as the doctors and the divines did in Johann Georg's time, and try to embitter and spoil whatever little modicum of an existence I am able to lay claim to, as much as ever they can. My dear girl, I see well enough already, that though I take all this tremendous interest in young Edmund Lehsen and you, and turn up at every corner like a regular deux ex machina, there will be plenty of people of the same way of thinking with those of the aesthetic school, who will never be able to swallow me, historically speaking, who will never be able to bring themselves to believe that I ever really existed at all. So that, just that I might manage to get something like a more or less firm footing, I have never ventured to say, in so many words, that I am Leonard Turnhäuser, the Goldsmith of the sixteenth century. The folks in question are quite welcome to say, if they please, that I am a clever conjurer, and find the explanations of every one of my tricks (as they may style the phenomena and the results which I produce) in Wieglieb's 'Natural Magic,' or some book of the kind. I have still one more 'feat,' as they would call it, to perform, which neither Philidor, nor Philadelphia, nor Cagliostro, nor any other conjurer would be able to do, and which, being completely inexplicable, must always remain a stumbling-block to the kind of people in question. But I cannot help performing it, because it is indispensable to the dénouement of this Berlinese tale of the Choice of a Bride by three personages, suitors for the hand of Miss Albertine Bosswinkel. So keep up your heart, my dear child, rise to-morrow morning in good time, put on the dress which you like the best, because it is the most becoming you happen to have; do your hair in the way you think suits you best, and then await, as quietly and patiently as you can, what will happen."

He disappeared exactly as he had come.

On the next day--the Sunday--at eleven o'clock--the appointed time--there arrived at the place of rendezvous old Manasseh with his hopeful nephew--Tussmann--and Edmund Lehsen with the Goldsmith. The wooers, not excepting the Baron, were almost frightened when they saw Albertine, who had never seemed so lovely and taking. I am in a position to assure every lady, married or otherwise, who attaches the proper amount of importance to dress, that the way in which Albertine's was trimmed, and the material of the trimmings, were most elegant; that the frock itself was just the right length to show her pretty little feet in their white satin shoes; that the arms of it (short, of course), and the corsage were bordered with the richest Point; that her white French gloves came up to just the least little bit above her elbows, showing her beautiful arm; that the only thing she had on her head was a lovely gold comb set with jewels; in short, that her dress was quite that of a bride, except that she had no myrtle wreath in her bonny brown hair. But the reason why she was so much more beautiful than she ever had been before was that love and hope beamed in her eyes and bloomed on her cheeks.

Bosswinkel, in a burst of hospitality, had provided a splendid lunch. Old Manasseh glowered at the table laid out for this repast with malignant glances askance, and when the Commissionsrath begged him to fall to, on his countenance could be read the answer of Shylock:--

"Yes, to smell pork, to eat of the habitation which your prophet, the Nazarite, conjured the devil into. I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you."

The Baron was less conscientious, for he ate more beefsteak than was seemly, and talked a great deal of stupid nonsense, as was his wont.

The Commissionsrath behaved wholly contrarily to his nature on this important occasion. Not only did he pour out bumpers of Port and Madeira, regardless of expense, and even told the company that he had some Madeira in his cellar a hundred years old; but when the luncheon was over he explained to the suitors the method in which his daughter's hand was to be disposed of in a speech much better put together than anybody would ever have expected of him. They were given to understand most clearly that the successful one must find her portrait in the casket which he chose.

When twelve o'clock struck the door of the hall opened, and there was seen in the middle of it a table with a rich cover on it, bearing the three caskets.

One was of shining gold, with a circle of glittering ducats on its lid, and the inscription inside them--

"Who chooseth me doth gain that which he much desires."

The second was of silver, richly chased. On its lid were many words and letters of foreign languages, encircling this inscription--

"Who chooseth me doth find more than he hopes."

The third, plainly carved of ivory, was inscribed--

"Who chooseth me doth gain his dreamed-of bliss."

Albertine took her place on a chair behind the table, her father by her side. Manasseh and the Goldsmith drew away into the background.

The lots were drawn, and, Tussmann having the first choice, the Baron and Edmund had to go into the other room.

The Clerk of the Privy Chancery went carefully and considerately up to the table, looked at the caskets with much minuteness of observation, read the inscriptions on them one after another. Soon he found himself irresistibly attracted by the beautiful characters of foreign languages so charmingly intertwined on the cover of the silver casket.

"Good heavens!" he cried, "what beautiful lettering, with what skill those Arabic characters are brought in amongst the Roman letters, and 'Who chooseth me doth gain more than he hopes.' Now have I gone on cherishing the slightest hope that Miss Albertine would be so gracious as to honour me with her hand? wasn't I going to throw myself into the basin? Evidently here is comfort, here is good fortune. Commissionsrath! Miss Albertine! I choose the silver one."

Albertine rose and handed him a little key, with which he opened the casket. Great was his consternation to find, not Albertine's portrait, but a little book bound in parchment, which, when he opened it, appeared to consist of blank white pages. Beside it lay a little scrap of paper, with the words--

"Good heavens!" cried Tussmann, "it's a book. Yet, no, it's not a book, and there's nothing in the shape of a portrait. It's merely a lot of paper bound up together; my hopes are dashed to earth, all is over with me now. All I have got to do is to be off to the frog-pond as quickly as I can."

But as he was hurrying away the Goldsmith stopped him, and said--

"Tussmann, you're very foolish; you've got hold of the most priceless treasure you could possibly have come across. Those lines of verse ought to have told you so at once. Do me the favour to put that book which you found in the casket into your pocket."

Tussmann did so.

"Now," said the Goldsmith, "think of some book or other which you would wish that you had in your pocket at this moment."

"Oh, my goodness," said Tussmann, "I went and shied Thomasius's little treatise on 'Diplomatic Acumen' into the frog-pond, like an utter fool as I was."

"Put your hand in your pocket," said the Goldsmith, "and take out the book."

Tussmann did so, and lo, the book which he brought out was none other than Thomasius's treatise!

"Ha!" cried Tussmann, "what is this? Why it is Thomasius's treatise, my beloved Thomasius, rescued from the congregation of frogs in the pond, who would never have learned diplomatic acumen from him."

"Keep yourself calm," the Goldsmith said; "put the book into your pocket again."

Tussmann did so.

"Think of some other rare work," the Goldsmith said: "one which you have never been able to come across in any library."

"Oh, good gracious!" cried Tussmann in melancholy accents. "I have been, you see, in the habit of sometimes going to the opera, so that I have wanted, very much, to ground myself a little in the theory of music, and I have been trying in vain hitherto to get hold of a copy of a certain little treatise which explains the arts of the composer and the performer, in an allegorical form. I mean Johann Beer's 'Musical War,' an account of the contest between composition and harmony, which are represented under the guise of two heroines, who do battle with each other, and end by being completely reconciled."

"Feel in your pocket," said the Goldsmith; and the Clerk of the Privy Chancery shouted with joy when he found that his paper book now consisted of Johann Beer's 'Musical War.'

"You see now, do you not," said the Goldsmith, "that in the book which you found in the casket you possess the finest and most complete library that anybody ever had? and more than that, you take it about with you in your pocket. For, while you have this remarkable book in your pocket, it will always be whatever book you happen to want to read, as soon as you take it out."

Without wasting a thought on Albertine or the Commissionsrath, Tussmann went and sat down in an armchair in a corner, stuck the book into his pocket, pulled it out again, and it was easy to see, by the delight in his countenance, how completely the Goldsmith's promise had been fulfilled.

It was the Baron's turn next. He came strolling up to the table in his foolish, loutish manner, looked at the caskets through his eyeglass, and murmured out the inscriptions one after the other. But soon a natural, inborn, irresistible instinct drew him to the gold casket, with the shining ducats on its lid. "Who chooseth me doth gain that which he much desires." "Certainly ducats are what I much desire, and Albertine is what I much desire. I don't see much good in bothering over this."

So he grasped the golden casket; took its key from Albertine, opened it, and found a nice little English file! Beside it lay a piece of paper with the words:--

"And what the Devil's the use of this thing?" Benjie cried, surveying the file. "It isn't Albertine's picture, you know; however, I shall hold on to the casket; it'll be a wedding-present to Albertine. Come to me, dearest child!" With which he was making straight for Albertine; but the Goldsmith held him back by the shoulders, saying--

"Stop, my good sir; that's not in the bargain: you must content yourself with the file. And you will be content with it, when you find out what a treasure it is. In fact, the paper tells you, if you can understand it. Have you got a worn ducat in your pocket?"

"Well," said Benjie, angrily, "and what then?"

"Out with it," the Goldsmith said, "and try the file on the edge of it."

The Baron did so, with an amount of skill which told of much previous practice; and the more ducats he filed at--for he tried a good many, one after another--the fresher the edges of them came out.

Up to this point Manasseh had been looking on in silence at what was transpiring; but here he jumped up, with eyes sparkling wildly, and dashed at his nephew, crying, in a hollow, terrible voice--

"God of my Fathers! what do I see? Give me that file!--here with it instantly! It is the piece of magic-work for which I sold my soul more than three hundred years ago. God of my Fathers!--hand it over to me!"

And he made at his nephew to take it from him; but Benjie pushed him back, crying, "Go to the Deuce, you old idiot! It was I who found the file, not you!"

To which Manasseh responded, in fury: "Viper! Worm-eaten fruit of my race!--Here with that file! All the Demons of Hell be upon you, accursed thief!"

Manasseh clutched hold of the Baron, with a torrent of Hebrew curses, and foaming and gnashing his teeth, he exerted all the strength at his command to wrest the file from him. But Benjie fought for it as a lioness does for her cubs, till at length Manasseh was worn out; on which his nephew seized him by the shoulders and threw him out of the door, with such force that all his limbs cracked again. Then, coming back like a flash of lightning, he shoved a small table into a corner, and sitting down there, opposite to the Clerk of the Privy Chancery, took a handful of ducats from his pocket, and set to work to file away at them as hard as he could.

"Now," said the Goldsmith, "we have seen the last of that terrible Manasseh. He is off our hands, for good and all. People say he is a second Ahasuerus, and has been going spooking about since the year 1572. That was the year in which he was put to death for diabolical practices and sorcery, under the name of Lippolt, the Jew-coiner. But the Devil saved his body from death at the price of his immortal soul. Many folk who understand those things say they have seen him in Berlin in a good many forms; so that, if all tales are true, there are a good number of Lippolts at the present time about. However, I, who have a certain amount of experience in those mysterious matters, can assure you that I have given him his quietus."

It would weary you very needlessly, dear reader, were I to waste words in telling you what you know quite well; namely, that Edmund Lehsen chose the ivory casket, inscribed--

and found in it a beautiful portrait of Albertine, with the lines--

And Edmund, like Bassanio, followed the counsel of the last line, and pressed his blushing sweetheart to his breast, and kissed her glowing lips; whilst the Commissionsrath greatly rejoiced, and was full of happiness over this happy dénouement of this most involved love-affair.

Meanwhile the Baron had been filing at ducats quite as eagerly and absorbedly as the Clerk of the Privy Chancery had been reading, neither of them taking the slightest notice of what had been going on, till the Commissionsrath announced, in a loud voice, that Edmund Lehsen had chosen the casket containing Albertine's portrait, and was, consequently, to be her husband. Tussmann seemed to be quite delighted to hear it, and expressed his satisfaction in his usual manner, by rubbing his hands, jumping a little way up and down for a moment or two, and giving a delicate little laugh. The Baron seemed to feel no further interest about the matter; but he embraced the Commissionsrath; said he was a real "gentleman" and had made him most utterly happy by his present of the file, and told him that he could always count upon him, in all circumstances. With which he took his departure.

Tussmann, too, thanked him, with tears of the most heartfelt emotion, for making him the happiest of men by this most rare and wonderful of all rare and wonderful books; and, after the most profuse expenditure of politeness to Albertine, Edmund, and the old Goldsmith, he followed the Baron as quickly as ever he could.

Benjie ceased to torture the world of letters with literary abortions, as he had formerly done, preferring to employ his time in filing ducats; and Tussmann no longer made the booksellers' lives a burden to them by pestering them to hunt out old forgotten books for him.

But when a few weeks of rapture and happiness had passed, a great and bitter sorrow took possession of the Commissionsrath's house. For the Goldsmith urged, in the strongest terms, upon Edmund that for his own sake, and for the sake of his art, he was bound to keep his solemn promise and go to Italy.

Edmund, notwithstanding the dreadful parting from Albertine, felt the strongest possible impulse urging him towards the country of the arts; and, although Albertine shed the bitterest tears, she could not help thinking how very nice it would be to be able to take out letters from her lover at Rome, and read them out--or extracts from them--at aesthetic teas of an afternoon.

Edmund has been in Rome now more than a year, and people do say that his correspondence with Albertine languishes, and that the letters are becoming rarer and colder. Who knows whether or not anything will ever come, ultimately, of the engagement between those two people? Certainly Albertine won't be long "in the market" in any case; she is so pretty, and so well off. Just at present, there is young Mr. Gloria (just going to be called to the bar), a very nice young gentleman indeed, with a slim and tightly-girded waist, a couple of waistcoats on at once, and a cravat tied in the English style; and he danced all last season with Albertine, and is to be seen now going continually with her to the Thiergarten, whilst the Commissionsrath trots very complacently after them, looking like a satisfied father. Moreover, Mr. Gloria has passed his second examination at the Supreme Court with flying colours.

"So perhaps he and Albertine may make a match of it, should he get a fairly good appointment. There's no telling. Let us see what happens."

"You have certainly written a wonderfully crack-brained thing in that," Ottmar said, when Lothair had finished. "This 'Tale containing improbable incidents,' as you have called it, appears to me to be a kind of mosaic, composed of all kinds of stones put together at random, which dazzles and confuses one's eyes so that they can't take firm hold of any definite figure."

"As far as I am concerned," Theodore said, "I must confess that I think a great deal of it is exceedingly delightful, and that it might very likely have been a very superior production, if Lothair hadn't, most imprudently, gone and read Hafftitz. The consequence of this was that those two practitioners of the black art, the Goldsmith and the Jew-coiner, had to be brought into the story somehow, willy-nilly; and thus those two unfortunate revenants make their appearance as heterogeneous elements, working, with their sorceries, in an unnaturally constrained manner among the incidents of the tale. It is well your story hasn't been printed, or you would have been hauled over the coals by the critics."

"Wouldn't it do to light up the pages of a Berlin Almanack?" the Author asked, with one of his ironical smiles. "Of course I should still more localize the localities, and add a few names of celebrities, and so gain a little applause from the literary-aesthetic, if from nobody else.[2]

[Footnote 2: "This speech of Lothair's shows what the Author had in his mind at the time. The tale did appear in the Berlin Almanack of 1820, with additional localities, and names of celebrities in the Art-World, but the publishers told him he ought to try to keep within the bounds of 'probability,' in future."--(Note of Editor of Collected Works.)]

"However, all the same, my dear friends, did you not laugh heartily enough at times, as I was reading it? and ought that not to deprive your criticism of some of its severity? If you, Ottmar, say my tale is a mosaic, you might admit that it has something of a Kaleidoscope character, in spite of its crackiness, and that its matters, though most adventitiously shaken together, do ultimately form more or less interesting combinations. At all events, you surely admit that there are one or two good characters in my story, and at the head of them, the love-stricken Baron Benjie, that worthy scion of the Jew-coiner race of Lippolts; however, we've had far too much of my piece of patchwork, which was only intended to amuse you for a moment as a bizarre jest. What I would have you notice is that I have been faithful to my principle of welding on the Legendary to the every-day life of the present day."

"And," said Theodore, "I am a great adherent of that principle. It used to be supposed to be necessary to localize everything of the legendary kind in the remote East, taking Scheherezade as the model in so doing; and, as soon as we touched upon the manners, the customs, the ways of life of the East, we got into a world which was apparently hovering, adrift, all in a sort of unreality, anchorless, before our eyes, on the point of floating away and disappearing. This is why those tales so often strike coldly on us, and have no power to kindle the inner spirit--the fancy. What I think, and mean, is, that the foot of the heavenly ladder, which we have got to mount in order to reach the higher regions, has to be fixed firmly in every-day life, so that everybody may be able to climb up it along with us. When people then find that they have got climbed up higher and higher into a marvellous, magical world, they will feel that that realm, too, belongs to their ordinary, every-day life, and is, merely, the wonderful and most glorious part thereof. For them it is the beautiful flower-garden beyond the city-wall into which they can go, and in which they can wander and enjoy themselves, if they have but made up their minds to quit the gloomy walls of the city, for a time."

"Don't forget, though, Theodore, my friend," said Ottmar, "that there are quantities of people who won't go up the ladder at all, because it isn't 'proper' or 'becoming.' And many turn giddy by the time they get to the third rung of it. Many never see the ladder at all, though it is facing them in the broad, daily path of their lives, and they pass by it every day. As regards the tales of the 'Thousand and One Nights,' it is remarkable enough that most of those who have tried to imitate them have overlooked that which is just what gives them life and reality--exactly what Lothair's principle is. All the cobblers, tailors, dervishes, merchants, and so forth, who appear as the characters in those tales, are people who are to be met with every day in the streets. And--inasmuch as life is independent of times and manners, but is always the same affair--in its essential conditions (and always must be so), it follows that we feel that all those folks--upon whom, in the middle of their everyday lives, such extraordinary and magical adventures came, and such spells wound themselves--are really the sort of people who are actually walking about amongst us. Such is the marvellous, mighty power of description, characterization, and representation in that immortal book."

As the evening was fast growing colder, it was thought advisable--on account of Theodore's having but half recovered from his late illness--that the friends should go to the great summer-house, and indulge in a cup of refreshing tea, in place of anything more exciting.

And when the urn was on the table, singing its usual little domestic tune, Ottmar said--

"I don't think I could have a better opportunity for reading you a tale which I wrote a long while ago, and which happens to begin with tea-drinking. I mention, to begin with, that it is in Cyprian's style."

Ottmar read--