Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 329, March, 1843
IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
SANDT AND KOTZEBUE
Sandt.—Generally men of letters in our days, contrary to the practice of antiquity, are little fond of admitting the young and unlearned into their studies or their society.
Kotzebue.—They should rather those than others. The young must cease to be young, and the unlearned may cease to be unlearned. According to the letters you bring with you, sir, there is only youth against you. In the seclusion of a college life, you appear to have studied with much assiduity and advantage, and to have pursued no other courses than the paths of wisdom.
Sandt.—Do you approve of the pursuit?
Kotzebue.—Who does not?
Sandt.—None, if you will consent that they direct the chase, bag the game, inebriate some of the sportsmen, and leave the rest behind in the slough. May I ask you another question?
Kotzebue.—Certainly.
Sandt.—Where lie the paths of wisdom? I did not expect, my dear sir to throw you back upon your chair. I hope it was no rudeness to seek information from you?
Kotzebue.—The paths of wisdom, young man, are those which lead us to truth and happiness.
Sandt.—If they lead us away from fortune, from employments, from civil and political utility; if they cast us where the powerful persecute, where the rich trample us down, and where the poorer (at seeing it) despise us, rejecting our counsel and spurning our consolation, what valuable truth do they enable us to discover, or what rational happiness to expect? To say that wisdom leads to truth, is only to say that wisdom leads to wisdom; for such is truth. Nonsense is better than falsehood; and we come to that.
Kotzebue.—How?
Sandt.—No falsehood is more palpable than that wisdom leads to happiness—I mean in this world; in another, we may well indeed believe that the words are constructed of very different materials. But here we are, standing on a barren molehill that crumbles and sinks under our tread; here we are, and show me from hence, Von Kotzebue, a discoverer who has not suffered for his discovery, whether it be of a world or of a truth—whether a Columbus or a Galileo. Let us come down lower: Show me a man who has detected the injustice of a law, the absurdity of a tenet, the malversation of a minister, or the impiety of a priest, and who has not been stoned, or hanged, or burnt, or imprisoned, or exiled, or reduced to poverty. The chain of Prometheus is hanging yet upon his rock, and weaker limbs writhe daily in its rusty links. Who then, unless for others, would be a darer of wisdom? And yet, how full of it is even the inanimate world? We may gather it out of stones and straws. Much lies within the reach of all: little has been collected by the wisest of the wise. O slaves to passion! O minions to power! ye carry your own scourges about you; ye endure their tortures daily; yet ye crouch for more. Ye believe that God beholds you; ye know that he will punish you, even worse than ye punish yourselves; and still ye lick the dust where the Old Serpent went before you.
Kotzebue.—I am afraid, sir, you have formed to yourself a romantic and strange idea, both of happiness and of wisdom.
Sandt.—I too am afraid it may be so. My idea of happiness is, the power of communicating peace, good-will, gentle affections, ease, comfort, independence, freedom, to all men capable of them.
Kotzebue.—The idea is, truly, no humble one.
Sandt.—A higher may descend more securely on a stronger mind. The power of communicating those blessings to the capable, is enough for my aspirations. A stronger mind may exercise its faculties in the divine work of creating the capacity.
Kotzebue.—Childish! childish!—Men have cravings enow already; give them fresh capacities, and they will have fresh appetites. Let us be contented in the sphere wherein it is the will of Providence to place us; and let us render ourselves useful in it to the utmost of our power, without idle aspirations after impracticable good.
Sandt.—O sir! you lead me where I tremble to step; to the haunts of your intellect, to the recesses of your spirit. Alas! alas! how small and how vacant is the central chamber of the lofty pyramid?
Kotzebue.—Is this to me?
Sandt.—To you, and many mightier. Reverting to your own words; could not you yourself have remained in the sphere you were placed in?
Kotzebue.—What sphere? I have written dramas, and novels, and travels. I have been called to the Imperial Court of Russia.
Sandt.—You sought celebrity.—I blame not that. The thick air of multitudes may be good for some constitutions of mind, as the thinner of solitudes is for others. Some horses will not run without the clapping of hands; others fly out of the course rather than hear it. But let us come to the point. Imperial courts! What do they know of letters? What letters do they countenance—do they tolerate?
Kotzebue.—Plays.
Sandt.—Playthings.
Kotzebue.—Travels.
Sandt.—On their business. O ye paviours of the dreary road along which their cannon rolls for conquest! my blood throbs at every stroke of your rammers. When will ye lay them by?
Kotzebue.—We are not such drudges.
Sandt.—Germans! Germans! Must ye never have a rood on earth ye can call your own, in the vast inheritance of your fathers?
Kotzebue.—Those who strive and labour, gain it; and many have rich possessions.
Sandt.—None; not the highest.
Kotzebue.—Perhaps you may think them insecure; but they are not lost yet, although the rapacity of France does indeed threaten to swallow them up. But her fraudulence is more to be apprehended than her force. The promise of liberty is more formidable than the threat of servitude. The wise know that she never will bring us freedom; the brave know that she never can bring us thraldom. She herself is alike impatient of both; in the dazzle of arms she mistakes the one for the other, and is never more agitated than in the midst of peace.
Sandt.—The fools that went to war against her, did the only thing that could unite her; and every sword they drew was a conductor of that lightening which fell upon their heads. But we must now look at our homes. Where there is no strict union, there is no perfect love; and where no perfect love, there is no true helper. Are you satisfied, sir, at the celebrity and the distinctions you have obtained?
Kotzebue.—My celebrity and distinctions, if I must speak of them, quite satisfy me. Neither in youth nor in advancing age—neither in difficult nor in easy circumstances, have I ventured to proclaim myself the tutor or the guardian of mankind.
Sandt.—I understand the reproof, and receive it humbly and gratefully. You did well in writing the dramas, and the novels, and the travels; but, pardon my question, who called you to the courts of princes in strange countries?
Kotzebue.—They themselves.
Sandt.—They have no more right to take you away from your country, than to eradicate a forest, or to subvert a church in it. You belong to the land that bore you, and were not at liberty—(if right and liberty are one, and unless they are, they are good for nothing)—you were not at liberty, I repeat it, to enter into the service of an alien.
Kotzebue.—No magistrate, higher or lower, forbade me. Fine notions of freedom are these!
Sandt.—A man is always a minor in regard to his fatherland; and the servants of his fatherland are wrong and criminal, if they whisper in his ear that he may go away, that he may work in another country, that he may ask to be fed in it, and that he may wait there until orders and tasks are given for his hands to execute. Being a German, you voluntarily placed yourself in a position where you might eventually be coerced to act against Germans.
Kotzebue.—I would not.
Sandt.—Perhaps you think so.
Kotzebue.—Sir, I know my duty.
Sandt.—We all do; yet duties are transgressed, and daily. Where the will is weak in accepting, it is weaker in resisting. Already have you left the ranks of your fellow-citizens—already have you taken the enlisting money and marched away.
Kotzebue.—Phrases! metaphors! and let me tell you, M. Sandt, not very polite ones. You have hitherto seen little of the world, and you speak rather the language of books than of men.
Sandt.—What! are books written by some creatures of less intellect than ours? I fancied them to convey the language and reasonings of men. I was wrong, and you are right, Von Kotzebue! They are, in general, the productions of such as have neither the constancy of courage, nor the continuity of sense, to act up to what they know to be right, or to maintain it, even in words, to the end of their lives. You are aware that I am speaking now of political ethics. This is the worst I can think of the matter, and bad enough is this.
Kotzebue.—You misunderstand me. Our conduct must fall in with our circumstances. We may be patriotic, yet not puritanical in our patriotism, not harsh, nor intolerant, nor contracted. The philosophical mind should consider the whole world as its habitation, and not look so minutely into it as to see the lines that divide nations and governments; much less should it act the part of a busy shrew, and take pleasure in giving loose to the tongue, at finding things a little out of place.
Sandt.—We will leave the shrew where we find her: she certainly is better with the comedian than with the philosopher. But this indistinctness in the moral and political line begets indifference. He who does not keep his own country more closely in view than any other, soon mixes land with sea, and sea with air, and loses sight of every thing, at least, for which he was placed in contact with his fellow men. Let us unite, if possible, with the nearest: Let usages and familiarities bind us: this being once accomplished, let us confederate for security and peace with all the people round, particularly with people of the same language, laws, and religion. We pour out wine to those about us, wishing the same fellowship and conviviality to others: but to enlarge the circle would disturb and deaden its harmony. We irrigate the ground in our gardens: the public road may require the water equally: yet we give it rather to our borders; and first to those that lie against the house! God himself did not fill the world at once with happy creatures: he enlivened one small portion of it with them, and began with single affections, as well as pure and unmixt. We must have an object and an aim, or our strength, if any strength belongs to us, will be useless.
Kotzebue.—There is much good sense in these remarks: but I am not at all times at leisure and in readiness to receive instruction. I am old enough to have laid down my own plans of life; and I trust I am by no means deficient in the relations I bear to society.
Sandt.—Lovest thou thy children? Oh! my heart bleeds! But the birds can fly; and the nest requires no warmth from the parent, no cover against the rain and the wind.
Kotzebue.—This is wildness: this is agony. Your face is laden with large drops; some of them tears, some not. Be more rational and calm, my dear young man! and less enthusiastic.
Sandt.—They who will not let us be rational, make us enthusiastic by force. Do you love your children? I ask you again. If you do, you must love them more than another man's. Only they who are indifferent to all, profess a parity.
Kotzebue.—Sir! indeed your conversation very much surprises me.
Sandt.—I see it does: you stare, and would look proud. Emperors and kings, and all but maniacs, would lose that faculty with me. I could speedily bring them to a just sense of their nothingness, unless their ears were calked and pitched, although I am no Savonarola. He, too, died sadly!
Kotzebue.—Amid so much confidence of power, and such an assumption of authority, your voice is gentle—almost plaintive.
Sandt.—It should be plaintive. Oh, could it be but persuasive!
Kotzebue.—Why take this deep interest in me? I do not merit nor require it. Surely any one would think we had been acquainted with each other for many years.
Sandt.—What! should I have asked you such a question as the last, after long knowing you?
Kotzebue, (aside.)—This resembles insanity.
Sandt.—The insane have quick ears, sir, and sometimes quick apprehensions.
Kotzebue.—I really beg your pardon.
Sandt.—I ought not then to have heard you, and beg yours. My madness could release many from a worse; from a madness which hurts them grievously; a madness which has been and will be hereditary: mine, again and again I repeat it, would burst asunder the strong swathes that fasten them to pillar and post. Sir! sir! if I entertained not the remains of respect for you, in your domestic state, I should never have held with you this conversation. Germany is Germany: she ought to have nothing political in common with what is not Germany. Her freedom and security now demand that she celebrate the communion of the faithful. Our country is the only one in all the explored regions on earth that never has been conquered. Arabia and Russia boast it falsely; France falsely; Rome falsely. A fragment off the empire of Darius fell and crushed her: Valentinian was the footstool of Sapor, and Rome was buried in Byzantium. Boys must not learn this, and men will not. Britain, the wealthiest and most powerful of nations, and, after our own, the most literate and humane, received from us colonies and laws. Alas! those laws, which she retains as her fairest heritage, we value not: we surrender them to gangs of robbers, who fortify themselves within walled cities, and enter into leagues against us. When they quarrel, they push us upon one another's sword, and command us to thank God for the victories that enslave us. These are the glories we celebrate; these are the festivals we hold, on the burial-mounds of our ancestors. Blessed are those who lie under them! blessed are also those who remember what they were, and call upon their names in the holiness of love.
Kotzebue.—Moderate the transport that inflames and consumes you. There is no dishonour in a nation being conquered by a stronger.
Sandt.—There may be great dishonour in letting it be stronger; great, for instance, in our disunion.
Kotzebue.—We have only been conquered by the French in our turn.
Sandt.—No, sir, no: we have not been, in turn or out. Our puny princes were disarmed by promises and lies: they accepted paper crowns from the very thief who was sweeping into his hat their forks and spoons. A cunning traitor snared incautious ones, plucked them, devoured them, and slept upon their feathers.
Kotzebue.—I would rather turn back with you to the ancient glories of our country than fix my attention on the sorrowful scenes more near to us. We may be justly proud of our literary men, who unite the suffrages of every capital, to the exclusion of almost all their own.
Sandt.—Many Germans well deserve this honour, others are manger-fed and hirelings.
Kotzebue.—The English and the Greeks are the only nations that rival us in poetry, or in any works of imagination.
Sandt.—While on this high ground we pretend to a rivalship with England and Greece, can we reflect, without a sinking of the heart, on our inferiority in political and civil dignity? Why are we lower than they? Our mothers are like their mothers; our children are like their children; our limbs are as strong, our capacities are as enlarged, our desire of improvement in the arts and sciences is neither less vivid and generous, nor less temperate and well-directed. The Greeks were under disadvantages which never bore in any degree on us; yet they rose through them vigorously and erectly. They were Asiatic in what ought to be the finer part of the affections; their women were veiled and secluded, never visited the captive, never released the slave, never sat by the sick in the hospital, never heard the child's lesson repeated in the school. Ours are more tender, compassionate, and charitable, than poets have feigned of the past, or prophets have announced of the future; and, nursed at their breasts and educated at their feet, blush we not at our degeneracy? The most indifferent stranger feels a pleasure at finding, in the worst-written history of Spain, her various kingdoms ultimately mingled, although the character of the governors, and perhaps of the governed, is congenial to few. What delight, then, must overflow on Europe, from seeing the mother of her noblest nation rear again her venerable head, and bless all her children for the first time united!
Kotzebue.—I am bound to oppose such a project.
Sandt.—Say not so: in God's name, say not so.
Kotzebue.—In such confederacy I see nothing but conspiracy and rebellion, and I am bound, I tell you again, sir, to defeat it, if possible.
Sandt.—Bound! I must then release you.
Kotzebue.—How should you, young gentleman, release me?
Sandt.—May no pain follow the cutting of the knot! But think again: think better: spare me!
Kotzebue.—I will not betray you.
Sandt.—That would serve nobody: yet, if in your opinion betraying me can benefit you or your family, deem it no harm; so much greater has been done by you in abandoning the cause of Germany. Here is your paper; here is your ink.
Kotzebue.—Do you imagine me an informer?
Sandt.—From maxims and conduct such as yours, spring up the brood, the necessity, and the occupation of them. There would be none, if good men thought it a part of goodness to be as active and vigilant as the bad. I must go, sir! Return to yourself in time! How it pains me to think of losing you! Be my friend!
Kotzebue.—I would be.
Sandt.—Be a German!
Kotzebue.—I am.
Sandt, (having gone out.)—Perjurer and profaner! Yet his heart is kindly. I must grieve for him! Away with tenderness! I disrobe him of the privilege to pity me or to praise me, as he would have done had I lived of old. Better men shall do more. God calls them: me too he calls: I will enter the door again. May the greater sacrifice bring the people together, and hold them evermore in peace and concord. The lesser victim follows willingly. (Enters again.)
Turn! die! (strikes.)
Alas! alas! no man ever fell alone. How many innocent always perish with one guilty! and writhe longer!
Unhappy children! I shall weep for you elsewhere. Some days are left me. In a very few the whole of this little world will lie between us. I have sanctified in you the memory of your father. Genius but reveals dishonour, commiseration covers it.
THE JEWELLER'S WIFE
A PASSAGE IN THE CAREER OF EL EMPECINADO
When the Empecinado, after escaping from the Burgo de Osma, rejoined his band, and again repaired to the favourite skirmishing ground on the banks of the Duero, he found the state of affairs in Old Castile becoming daily less favourable for his operations. The French overran the greater part of the province, and visited with severe punishment any disobedience of their orders; so that the peasantry no longer dared to assist the guerillas as they had previously done. Many of the villages on the Duero had become afrancesados, not, it is true, through love, but through dread of the invaders, and in the hope of preserving themselves from pillage and oppression. However much the people in their hearts might wish success to men like the Empecinado, the guerillas were too few and too feeble to afford protection to those who, by giving them assistance or information, would incur the displeasure of the French. The clergy were the only class that, almost without an exception, remained stanch to the cause of Spanish independence, and their purses and refectories were ever open to those who took up arms in its defence.
Noways deterred by this unfavourable aspect of affairs, the Empecinado resolved to carry on the war in Old Castile, even though unaided and alone. He established his bivouac in the pine-woods of Coca, and sent out spies towards Somosierra and Burgos, to get information of some convoy of which the capture might yield both honour and profit.
It was on the second morning after the departure of the spies, and a few minutes before daybreak, that the little camp was aroused by a shot from a sentry, placed on the skirt of the wood. In an instant every man was on his feet. It was the Empecinado's custom, when outlying in this manner, to make one-half his band sleep fully armed and equipped, with their horses saddled and bridled beside them; and a fortunate precaution it was in this instance. Scarcely had the men time to untether and spring upon their horses, when the sentry galloped headlong into the camp.
"Los Franceses! Los Franceses!" exclaimed he, breathless with speed.
One of the Empecinado's first qualities was his presence of mind, which never deserted him even in the most critical situations. Instantly forming up that moiety of his men which was already in the saddle, he left a detachment in front of those who were hastily saddling and arming, and with the remainder retired a little to the left of the open ground on which the bivouac was established. Almost before he had completed this arrangement, the jingling of arms and clattering of horses' feet were heard, and a squadron of French cavalry galloped down the glade. The Empecinado gave the word to charge, and as Fuentes at the head of one party advanced to meet them, he himself attacked them in flank. The French, not having anticipated much opposition from a foe whom they had expected to find sleeping, were somewhat surprized at the fierce resistance they met. A hard fight took place, rendered still more confused by the darkness, or rather by a faint grey light, which was just beginning to appear, and gave a shadowy indistinctness to surrounding objects. The Spaniards were inferior in number to their opponents, and it was beginning to go hard with them, when the remainder of the guerillas, now armed and mounted, came up to their assistance. On perceiving this accession to their adversaries' force, the French thought they had been led into an ambuscade, and retreating in tolerable order to the edge of the wood, at last fairly turned tail and ran for it, leaving several killed and wounded on the ground, and were pursued for some distance by the guerillas, who, however, only succeeded in making one prisoner. This was a young man in the dress of a peasant, who being badly mounted, was easily overtaken. On being brought before the Empecinado, the latter with no small surprize recognized a native of Aranda, named Pedro Gutierrez, who was one of the emissaries he had sent out two days previously to get information concerning the movements of the enemy.
With pale cheek and faltering voice, the prisoner answered the Empecinado's interrogatories. It appears that he had been detected as a spy by the French, who had given him his choice between a halter and the betrayal of his countrymen and employers. With the fear of death before his eyes, he had consented to turn traitor.
The deepest silence prevailed among the guerillas during his narrative, and remained unbroken for a full minute after he had concluded. The Empecinado's brow was black as thunder, and his features assumed an expression which the trembling wretch well knew how to interpret.
"Que podia hacer, señores?" said the culprit, casting an appealing, imploring glance around him. "The rope was round my neck; I have an aged father and am his only support. Life is very sweet. What could I do?"
"Die!" replied the Empecinado, in his deep stern voice—"Die like a man then, instead of dying like a dog now!"
He turned his back upon him, and ten minutes later, the body of the unfortunate spy was dangling from the branches of a neighbouring tree, and the guerillas marched off to seek another and a safer bivouac.
A few days after this incident the other spies returned, and after receiving their report, and consulting with his lieutenant, Mariano Fuentes, the Empecinado broke up the little camp, and led his band in the direction of the camino réal.
Along that part of the high-road, from Madrid to the Pyrenees, which winds through the mountain range of Onrubias, an escort of fifty French dragoons was marching, about an hour before dusk, on an evening of early spring. Two carriages, and three or four heavily-laden carts, each drawn by half-a-dozen mules, composed the whole of the convoy; the value of which, however, might be deemed considerable, judging from the strength of the escort, and the precautions observed by the officer in command to avoid a surprise—precautions which were not of much avail; for, on reaching a spot where the road widened considerably, and was traversed by a broad ravine, the party was suddenly charged on either flank by double their number of guerillas. The dragoons made a gallant resistance, but it was a short one, for they had no room or time to form in any order, and were far overmatched in the hand-to-hand contest that ensued. With the very first who fled went a gentleman in civilian's garb, who sprang out of the most elegant of the two carriages, and mounting a fine Andalusian horse led by a groom, was off like the wind, disregarding the shrieks of his travelling companion, a female two or three-and-twenty years old, of great beauty, and very richly attired. The cries and alarm of the lady thus deserted were redoubled, when an instant later a guerilla of fierce aspect presented himself at the carriage-door.
"Have no fear, señora," said the Empecinado, "you are in the hands of honourable men, and no harm shall be done you." And having by suchlike assurances succeeded in calming her terrors, he obtained from her some information as to the contents of the carts and carriages, as well as regarding herself and her late companion.
The man who had abandoned her, and consulted his own safety by flying with the escort, was her husband, Monsieur Barbot, jeweller and diamond merchant to the late King Charles the Fourth. Alarmed by the unsettled state of things in Spain, he was hastening to take refuge in France, with his handsome wife and his great wealth—of the latter of which no inconsiderable portion was contained in the carriage, in the shape of caskets of jewellery, diamonds, and other valuables.
Repairing to the neighbouring mountains, the guerillas proceeded to examine their booty, which the Empecinado permitted them to divide among themselves, with the exception of the carriage and its contents, including the lady, which he reserved for his own share.
On the following day came letters from the French military governor of Aranda del Duero, and from Monsieur Barbot, who had taken refuge in that town, and offered a large sum as ransom for his wife. To this application the Empecinado did not vouchsafe any answer, but marched off to his native village of Castrillo, taking with him jewels, carriage, and lady. The latter he established in the house of his brother Manuel, recommending her to the care of his sister-in-law, and commanding that she should be treated with all possible respect, and her wishes attended to on every point.
The Empecinado's exultation at the success of his enterprize was great, but he little foresaw all the danger and trouble that his rich capture was hereafter to occasion him. He had become violently enamoured of his fair prisoner, and in order to have leisure to pay his court to her, he sent off his partida on a distant expedition under the command of Fuentes, and himself remained at Castrillo, doing his utmost to find favour in the eyes of the beautiful Madame Barbot. He was then in the prime of life, a remarkably handsome man, and notwithstanding that the French affected to treat him as a brigand, his courage and patriotism were admitted by the unprejudiced among all parties, and his bold and successful deeds had already procured him a degree of renown that was an additional recommendation of him to the fair sex. It may not, therefore, be deemed very surprising that, after the first few days of her captivity were passed, and she had become a little used to the novelty of her position, the lady began to consider the Empecinado with some degree of favour, and seemed not altogether disposed to be inconsolable in her widowhood. He on his part spared no pains to please her. His very nature seemed changed by the violence of his new passion; and so great was the metamorphosis that his best friends scarcely recognized him for the same man. He seemed totally to have forgotten the career to which he had devoted himself, and the hatred and war of extermination he had vowed against the French. The restless activity and spirit of enterprize which formed such distinguishing traits in his character, were completely lulled to sleep by the charms of the fair Barbot. Nor was the change in his external appearance less striking. Aware that the rude manners and attire of a guerilla were not likely to please the fastidious taste of a town-bred dame, he hastened to discard them. His rough bushy beard and mustaches were carefully trimmed and adjusted by the most expert barber of the neighbourhood; his sheepskin jacket, heavy boots, and jingling double-roweled spurs thrown aside, and in their place he assumed the national garb, so well adapted to show off a handsome person, and which, although now almost disused throughout Spain, far surpasses in elegance the prevailing costumes of the nineteenth century: a short light jacket of black velvet, and waistcoat of the richest silk, both profusely decorated with gold filigree buttons; purple velvet breeches fastened at the knee with bunches of ribands; silk stockings, and falling boots of chamois leather, by the most expert maker in Cordova; a crimson silk sash round his waist, and round his neck a silk handkerchief, of which the ends were drawn through a magnificent jewelled ring. A green velvet cap, ornamented with sables and silver, and an ample cloak trimmed with silver lace, the spoil of a commandant of French gendarmes, completed this picturesque costume.