The Children of the World - Paul Heyse

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a syllable was lost. The right kind of fellow might have made something of it, or at least in time have smuggled in something better, and, in so doing, might himself have found room to grow. But there is the point. After first turning up my nose at this narrowmindedness, I at last discovered that I really could not do much better myself. You know I always believed that if I could once form a correct appreciation of my own powers, a thing not to be accomplished in the intellectual ant-hill of Berlin, the world would be astonished. Well, I have really arrived at this just appreciation, and for a long time have been unable to endure myself! God be thanked, that my good taste yet remains to save me from that."

      "Still the same old Mohr, whose favorite pastime it is to blacken his character instead of washing himself white."

      "Let me go on, and don't suppose that I am making myself out bad in order that you may praise me the more. Besides, I don't wish to make myself out 'bad'; I am really quite a passable fellow, neither stupid nor tedious, with fair acquirements, and powers of judgment by no means ordinary, nota bene, for what others do. If I were a rascal, I might by means of them, accomplish something, open a booth for criticism, for instance, and sell myself as dearly as possible. But the misfortune is that I have, or at least had, the ambition to accomplish something myself, and what is worse, desired to possess all sorts of talents. I have a most decided capacity for becoming a mediocre poet or musician, and in political articles, which appear to mean something and really say nothing, I have yet to find my superior. You will say there are many such wights. Certainly. But not many who have in addition such an honest, devout envy of the real men who can accomplish something genuine, such a loathing of all botching, such disgust when they have caught themselves at it. It was this that drove me away from you. I could not endure to see you all, each in his own field of labor, busy tilling and planting and at last reaping,--real grain, whether much or little--and stand by with my cockle-weed. I felt like spitting in my own face from chagrin at my mediocrity in everything that is worthy to be called work, achievement, getting on in the world, while in talking I was a very hero. Now, however, I have discovered that that is my destiny. A sorry creature, created by Nature through some malicious whim, and condemned always to stick halfway at everything. But I will spoil her jest; I will at least do something completely and well, and in one point, at all events, I will reach virtuosoship."

      "I don't understand why this idea did not occur to you long ago," replied Edwin. "You were born for a critic, and as such can have as much influence on the world and society, as if you were a poet."

      "I should be a fool!" exclaimed the other, tossing his cigarette into the courtyard, as he started up and clasped his hands behind his head. "Attempt to improve the world, tell it plain truths in black and white, which of course every one will apply to his worthy neighbor, try to educate artists who fancy that thinking paralyses the imagination, or tell truths to authors, who upon perusing them fail more signally to comprehend themselves than when they penned their thoughts,--no, my dear fellow, vestigia terrent. A certain Lessing tried all that a hundred years ago, and broke his teeth on the hard wood. All these philanthropic sacrifices make the world no happier, and only render the individual wretched. The only pure and noble calling left for such a superfluous mortal as myself to choose, is pure envy. In that I have hitherto made considerable progress, and, as I said before, I expect to attain in it a tolerable degree of eminence."

      "Upon my word," laughed Edwin, "this is a novel way of attaining happiness."

      "Don't laugh, wiseacre," sighed Mohr, impressively. "You see, my child, everybody in this miserable world, which all about us is so unfinished and incomplete, is endeavoring to the best of his ability, at least to perfect his own perishable self. The really gifted individuals have a surplus, from which they impart a portion to others, and thereby help them to patch up their poverty, and perhaps even scantily to complete themselves. I, for my part, can only obtain repose when I fervently envy every thing that is great, entire, exuberant. Through this envy I shall become, in a certain sense, allied to it; for if I appreciated, tasted, felt, and deserved to possess no portion, how could I envy it? Only those things that are somewhat homogenous attract each other. And when I have sat during an entire morning, thoroughly permeated with the sense of my own insignificance, sincerely envying a Shakespeare, a Goethe, or a Mozart, have I not fulfilled the purpose of my life better than if I had spent the same time in composing a poor tragedy, some wretched love-songs, or a mediocre sonata?"

      He went to the window and gazed at the top of the acacia-tree.

      "You are right," said Balder's clear voice. "Only you ought not to give the name of envy to what is really love, reverence, and the most beautiful and unselfish enthusiasm."

      "Balder has hit the nail on the head, as usual," said Edwin.

      Mohr turned. The brothers noticed that he was winking rapidly, as if desiring to make way with a suspicious moisture.

      "It would be beautiful, if it were true," said he. "But this is only the bright side of my virtuosoship; it has its shadows too, and they grow broader than I like. I can see nothing that is complete and in harmony with itself, without envy; no self-satisfied stupidity, no broad-mouthed falsehood, no snobbish faces. And as if these worthies had really no right to be happy, the demon of envy induces me to say something cutting, merely to show them their own pitifulness. Thus in a short time I had all my worthy fellow-citizens about my ears, and wherever I went was decried, avoided, and warned off like a mad dog. It makes all the blood in my body boil, when I see how everywhere the scamps get on in the world, and how the honest fellows, who don't use their elbows, remain behind. You, for instance, if I had my way, should be driving in a handsome coach with servants at your command, as beseems the aristocracy of the human race. Instead of that, that insignificant fellow, Marquard, whom I met below, has his equipage, and graciously nods as he drives by, after reconnoitering me from top to toe through his gold spectacles. Death and perdition, who can see such things and not go wild--"

      "Don't abuse our medical counsellor," said Edwin. "In spite of all you have said he is a good fellow, and his carriage would suit my trade and Balder's as little as my slow-stepping scientific methods would suit his empirical gallop. Besides--"

      At this moment they heard from the windows below, the first bars of the overture to Glück's "Orpheus."

      Mohr approached the window again, and listened attentively.

      "Who is playing?" he asked after a time, in an undertone.

      "One of the inmates of the house, a young lady of whom we know little more than that she gives music-lessons. Last night--I have not yet told you of it, Balder--I found her absorbed in Schopenhauer's Parerga. She spoke enthusiastically about the chapter on 'the sorrows of the world.'

      "Her music bears witness that in those sorrows she had had experience," said Mohr. "Women only play as she does when their hearts have been once broken and then pieced together again. It is with them as it is with old violins, which must be shattered several times before they have the right resonance. But hush, it is growing still more beautiful."

      He sat down on the window-sill, and, gazing without, became completely absorbed in listening. Balder worked noiselessly at his little boxes, while Edwin had taken a book though his gaze became fixed upon one page. It was so quiet in the room, that during the pauses in the music, they could hear the stealthy footsteps of the cat, which had just previously leaped into the chamber, and eaten the remnants of the breakfast.

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      About the same time that these things were occurring in the back building, the master of the house was in the shop talking with a customer, who had just brought to be mended a pair of embroidered slippers, carefully wrapped in an old newspaper.

      It was somewhat unusual for the shoemaker to be absent from the workroom at this time of day. But it was also, as the reader will remember, an unusual occasion, Reginchin's birthday, and her mother, who generally attended to the management of everything in the shop, was obliged to give

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