IX
Midnight was once more chiming from all the brazen tongues of thecity when he awoke, and, all being still around him, ventured toput his head out of the brass door of the stove to see why such astrange bright light was round him.
It was a very strange and brilliant light indeed; and yet, whatis perhaps still stranger, it did not frighten or amaze him, nordid what he saw alarm him either, and yet I think it would havedone you or me. For what he saw was nothing less than all the_bric-a-brac_ in motion.
A big jug, an Apostel-Krug, of Kruessen, was solemnly dancing aminuet with a plump Faenza jar; a tall Dutch clock was goingthrough a gavotte with a spindle-legged ancient chair; a verydroll porcelain figure of Littenhausen was bowing to a very stiffsoldier in _terre cuite_ of Ulm; an old violin of Cremona wasplaying itself, and a queer little shrill plaintive music thatthought itself merry came from a painted spinet covered withfaded roses; some gilt Spanish leather had got up on the wall andlaughed; a Dresden mirror was tripping about, crowned withflowers, and a Japanese bonze was riding along on a griffin; aslim Venetian rapier had come to blows with a stout Ferrarasabre, all about a little pale-faced chit of a damsel in whiteNymphenburg china; and a portly Franconian pitcher in _gres gris_was calling aloud, "Oh, these Italians! always at feud!" Butnobody listened to him at all. A great number of little Dresdencups and saucers were all skipping and waltzing; the teapots,with their broad round faces, were spinning their own lids liketeetotums; the high-backed gilded chairs were having a game ofcards together; and a little Saxe poodle, with a blue ribbon atits throat, was running from one to another, whilst a yellow catof Cornelis Lachtleven's rode about on a Delft horse in bluepottery of 1489. Meanwhile the brilliant light shed on the scenecame from three silver candelabra, though they had no candles setup in them; and, what is the greatest miracle of all, Augustlooked on at these mad freaks and felt no sensation of wonder! Heonly, as he heard the violin and the spinet playing, felt anirresistible desire to dance too.
No doubt his face said what he wished; for a lovely little lady,all in pink and gold and white, with powdered hair, andhigh-heeled shoes, and all made of the very finest and fairestMeissen china, tripped up to him, and smiled, and gave him herhand, and led him out to a minuet. And he danced it perfectly,--poorlittle August in his thick, clumsy shoes, and his thick, clumsysheepskin jacket, and his rough homespun linen, and his broadTyrolean hat! He must have danced it perfectly, this dance ofkings and queens in days when crowns were duly honored, for thelovely lady always smiled benignly and never scolded him at all,and danced so divinely herself to the stately measures the spinetwas playing that August could not take his eyes off her till,their minuet ended, she sat down on her own white-and-goldbracket.
"I am the Princess of Saxe-Royale," she said to him, with abenignant smile; "and you have got through that minuet veryfairly."
Then he ventured to say to her,--
"Madame my princess, could you tell me kindly why some of thefigures and furniture dance and speak, and some lie up in acorner like lumber? It does make me curious. Is it rude to ask?"
For it greatly puzzled him why, when some of the _bric-a-brac_was all full of life and motion, some was quite still and had nota single thrill in it.
"My dear child," said the powdered lady, "is it possible that youdo not know the reason? Why, those silent, dull things are_imitation_!"
This she said with so much decision that she evidently consideredit a condensed but complete answer.
"Imitation?" repeated August, timidly, not understanding.
"Of course! Lies, falsehoods, fabrications!" said the princess inpink shoes, very vivaciously. "They only _pretend_ to be what we_are_! They never wake up: how can they? No imitation ever hadany soul in it yet."
"Oh!" said August, humbly, not even sure that he understoodentirely yet. He looked at Hirschvogel: surely it had a royalsoul within it: would it not wake up and speak? Oh dear! how helonged to hear the voice of his fire-king! And he began to forgetthat he stood by a lady who sat upon a pedestal of gold-and-whitechina, with the year 1746 cut on it, and the Meissen mark.
"What will you be when you are a man?" said the little lady,sharply, for her black eyes were quick though her red lips weresmiling. "Will you work for the _Koenigliche Porcellan-Manufactur_,like my great dead Kandler?"
"I have never thought," said August, stammering; "at least--thatis--I do wish--I do hope to be a painter, as was Master AugustinHirschvogel at Nuernberg."
"Bravo!" said all the real _bric-a-brac_ in one breath, and thetwo Italian rapiers left off fighting to cry, "_Benone!_" Forthere is not a bit of true _bric-a-brac_ in all Europe that doesnot know the names of the mighty masters.
August felt quite pleased to have won so much applause, and grewas red as the lady's shoes with bashful contentment.
"I knew all the Hirschvoegel, from old Veit downwards," said a fat_gres de Flandre_ beer-jug: "I myself was made at Nuernberg." Andhe bowed to the great stove very politely, taking off his ownsilver hat--I mean lid--with a courtly sweep that he couldscarcely have learned from burgomasters. The stove, however, wassilent, and a sickening suspicion (for what is such heart-breakas a suspicion of what we love?) came through the mind of August:_Was Hirschvogel only imitation_?
"No, no, no, no!" he said to himself, stoutly: though Hirschvogelnever stirred, never spoke, yet would he keep all faith in it!After all their happy years together, after all the nights ofwarmth and joy he owed it, should he doubt his own friend andhero, whose gilt lion's feet he had kissed in his babyhood? "No,no, no, no!" he said, again, with so much emphasis that the Ladyof Meissen looked sharply again at him.
"No," she said, with pretty disdain; "no, believe me, they may'pretend' forever. They can never look like us! They imitate evenour marks, but never can they look like the real thing, never canthey _chassent de race_."
"How should they?" said a bronze statuette of Vischer's. "Theydaub themselves green with verdigris, or sit out in the rain toget rusted; but green and rust are not _patina_; only the agescan give that!"
"And _my_ imitations are all in primary colors, staring colors,hot as the colors of a hostelry's sign-board!" said the Lady ofMeissen, with a shiver.
"Well, there is a _gres de Flandre_ over there, who pretends tobe a Hans Kraut, as I am," said the jug with the silver hat,pointing with his handle to a jug that lay prone on its side in acorner. "He has copied me as exactly as it is given to moderns tocopy us. Almost he might be mistaken for me. But yet what adifference there is! How crude are his blues! how evidently doneover the glaze are his black letters! He has tried to givehimself my very twist; but what a lamentable exaggeration of thatplayful deviation in my lines which in his becomes actualdeformity!"
"And look at that," said the gilt Cordovan leather, with acontemptuous glance at a broad piece of gilded leather spread outon a table. "They will sell him cheek by jowl with me, and givehim my name; but look! _I_ am overlaid with pure gold beaten thinas a film and laid on me in absolute honesty by worthy Diego delas Gorgias, worker in leather of lovely Cordova in the blessedreign of Ferdinand the Most Christian. _His_ gilding is one partgold to eleven other parts of brass and rubbish, and it has beenlaid on him with a brush--_a brush!_--pah! of course he will beas black as a crock in a few years' time, whilst I am as brightas when I first was made, and, unless I am burnt as my Cordovaburnt its heretics, I shall shine on forever."
"They carve pear-wood because it is so soft, and dye it brown,and call it _me_!" said an old oak cabinet, with a chuckle.
"That is not so painful; it does not vulgarize you so much as thecups they paint to-day and christen after _me_!" said a CarlTheodor cup subdued in hue, yet gorgeous as a jewel.
"Nothing can be so annoying as to see common gimcracks aping_me_!" interposed the princess in the pink shoes.
"They even steal my motto, though it is Scripture," said a_Trauerkrug_ of Regensburg in black-and-white.
"And my own dots they put on plain English
china creatures!"sighed the little white maid of Nymphenburg.
"And they sell hundreds and thousands of common china plates,calling them after me, and baking my saints and my legends in amuffle of to-day; it is blasphemy!" said a stout plate of Gubbio,which in its year of birth had seen the face of Maestro Giorgio.
"That is what is so terrible in these _bric-a-brac_ places," saidthe princess of Meissen. "It brings one in contact with such low,imitative creatures; one really is safe nowhere nowadays unlessunder glass at the Louvre or South Kensington."
"And they get even there," sighed the _gres de Flandre_. "Aterrible thing happened to a dear friend of mine, a _terre cuite_of Blasius (you know the _terres cuites_ of Blasius date from1560). Well, he was put under glass in a museum that shall benameless, and he found himself set next to his own imitation bornand baked yesterday at Frankfort, and what think you themiserable creature said to him, with a grin? 'Old Pipe-clay,'--thatis what he called my friend,--'the fellow that bought _me_ gotjust as much commission on me as the fellow that bought _you_,and that was all that _he_ thought about. You know it is only thepublic money that goes!' And the horrid creature grinned againtill he actually cracked himself. There is a Providence above allthings, even museums."
"Providence might have interfered before, and saved the publicmoney," said the little Meissen lady with the pink shoes.
"After all, does it matter?" said a Dutch jar of Haarlem. "Allthe shamming in the world will not _make_ them us!"
"One does not like to be vulgarized," said the Lady of Meissen,angrily.
"My maker, the Krabbetje,[A] did not trouble his head aboutthat," said the Haarlem jar, proudly. "The Krabbetje made me forthe kitchen, the bright, clean, snow-white Dutch kitchen,wellnigh three centuries ago, and now I am thought worthy thepalace; yet I wish I were at home; yes, I wish I could see thegood Dutch vrouw, and the shining canals, and the great greenmeadows dotted with the kine."
[Footnote A: Jan Asselyn, called Krabbetje, the Little Crab, born1610, master-potter of Delft and Haarlem.]
"Ah! if we could all go back to our makers!" sighed the Gubbioplate, thinking of Giorgio Andreoli and the glad and graciousdays of the Renaissance: and somehow the words touched thefrolicsome souls of the dancing jars, the spinning teapots, thechairs that were playing cards; and the violin stopped its merrymusic with a sob, and the spinet sighed,--thinking of dead hands.
Even the little Saxe poodle howled for a master forever lost; andonly the swords went on quarrelling, and made such a clatteringnoise that the Japanese bonze rode at them on his monster andknocked them both right over, and they lay straight and still,looking foolish, and the little Nymphenburg maid, though she wascrying, smiled and almost laughed.
Then from where the great stove stood there came a solemn voice.
All eyes turned upon Hirschvogel, and the heart of its littlehuman comrade gave a great jump of joy.
"My friends," said that clear voice from the turret of Nuernbergfaience, "I have listened to all you have said. There is too muchtalking among the Mortalities whom one of themselves has calledthe Windbags. Let not us be like them. I hear among men so muchvain speech, so much precious breath and precious time wasted inempty boasts, foolish anger, useless reiteration, blatantargument, ignoble mouthings, that I have learned to deem speech acurse, laid on man to weaken and envenom all his undertakings.For over two hundred years I have never spoken myself: you, Ihear, are not so reticent. I only speak now because one of yousaid a beautiful thing that touched me. If we all might but goback to our makers! Ah, yes! if we might! We were made in dayswhen even men were true creatures, and so we, the work of theirhands, were true too. We, the begotten of ancient days, deriveall the value in us from the fact that our makers wrought at uswith zeal, with piety, with integrity, with faith,--not to winfortunes or to glut a market, but to do nobly an honest thing andcreate for the honor of the Arts and God. I see amidst you alittle human thing who loves me, and in his own ignorant childishway loves Art. Now, I want him forever to remember this nightand these words; to remember that we are what we are, andprecious in the eyes of the world, because centuries ago thosewho were of single mind and of pure hand so created us, scorningsham and haste and counterfeit. Well do I recollect my master,Augustin Hirschvogel. He led a wise and blameless life, andwrought in loyalty and love, and made his time beautiful thereby,like one of his own rich, many-colored church casements, thattold holy tales as the sun streamed through them. Ah, yes, myfriends, to go back to our masters!--that would be the best thatcould befall us. But they are gone, and even the perishablelabors of their lives outlive them. For many, many years I, oncehonored of emperors, dwelt in a humble house and warmed insuccessive winters three generations of little, cold, hungrychildren. When I warmed them they forgot that they were hungry;they laughed and told tales, and slept at last about my feet.Then I knew that humble as had become my lot it was one that mymaster would have wished for me, and I was content. Sometimes atired woman would creep up to me, and smile because she was nearme, and point out my golden crown or my ruddy fruit to a baby inher arms. That was better than to stand in a great hall of agreat city, cold and empty, even though wise men came to gaze andthrongs of fools gaped, passing with flattering words. Where I gonow I know not; but since I go from that humble house where theyloved me, I shall be sad and alone. They pass so soon,--thosefleeting mortal lives! Only we endure,--we, the things that thehuman brain creates. We can but bless them a little as they glideby: if we have done that, we have done what our masters wished.So in us our masters, being dead, yet may speak and live."
Then the voice sank away in silence, and a strange golden lightthat had shone on the great stove faded away; so also the lightdied down in the silver candelabra. A soft, pathetic melody stolegently through the room. It came from the old, old spinet thatwas covered with the faded roses.
Then that sad, sighing music of a bygone day died too; the clocksof the city struck six of the morning; day was rising over theBayerischenwald. August awoke with a great start, and foundhimself lying on the bare bricks of the floor of the chamber, andall the _bric-a-brac_ was lying quite still all around. Thepretty Lady of Meissen was motionless on her porcelain bracket,and the little Saxe poodle was quiet at her side.
He rose slowly to his feet. He was very cold, but he was notsensible of it or of the hunger that was gnawing his little emptyentrails. He was absorbed in the wondrous sight, in the wondroussounds, that he had seen and heard.