Edelweiss

A Story. By BEKTHOLD AUERBACH. Translated by ELLEN FROTHINGHAAM. Boston : Roberts Brothers.

WE think the first charm the reader will find in this most charming book is the fact that the story seems to tell itself. From the beginning it goes alone, and one does not think of the author till the end, when perhaps one’s homage is all the more devout in recognition of the genius that could produce such an exquisite fiction, and nowhere in it betray a consciousness of creation. It is the minor work of a master, and we hardly know whether it is to be most enjoyed by those who first make his acquaintance through it, or by those who read it in the reflected light of his great romance. The scene is not among courtly people here ; in fact it is always in one little clock-making neighborhood in the Black Forest, and the characters of the story are the clock-makers and their friends and kinsfolk ; — a doctor is the highest in dignity amongst them. It is simply the story of Lenz, who makes musical clocks, and marries Annele, the worldly-minded but not bad-hearted daughter of the innkeeper, who leads him a very miserable life indeed, both before and after her father’s bankruptcy, until she is somewhat precipitately brought to a sense of her errors and to repentance by being buried with Lenz under the avalanche which overwhelms their house. They escape of course, and the reader takes leave of them in the assurancc that they will be happy after that, but not without a lurking suspicion, which is perhaps also the author’s, that it was almost too bad a match to begin with. Lenz is full of generous sympathies; Annele’s happiness is in proportion to the discomfiture of somebody. Such different kinds of pride, — pride in others’ regard, and pride in others’ envy, make life a battle. Annele despises Lenz’s clock-making, and longs to be the mistress of a hotel; Lenz is mildly immovable in his old attachments, in his love for the art taught him by his father, in his tenderness for the hill-side homestead, in his devotion to his mother’s memory. Annele hates all his friends, and in one horrible quarrel she accuses him of having illtreated his mother, — his mother, whose death he has never ceased to lament, with whom, while she lived, he dwelt in such perfect love that it was the wonder of all who knew of it. “ His breath came shore as she spoke, and there fell a stone upon his heart, which nevermore departed, but lay there like a dead weight.” “Annele,” said Lenz’s hard old uncle Petrovitsch, as the three sat together awaiting their death in the house buried under the avalanche, “if Lenz had throttled you when you said those words, he would have been hung, but he would have been innocent in the sight of God.There is my hand, Lenz; you are a beggar for kind words, which is pitiful; but you have not deserved a punishment like this, to be driven mad by a devil in your house.”

Petrovitsch is not a principal character of the story, but he is one of the most entertaining, with his past of loveless exile and success, his return to the little Black Forest village through pure homesickness and love of the brother he supposed himself to hate, his present of selfish and cynical ease, and his reconciliation with his nephew Lenz just in time to share his peril and escape ; and it is quite in keeping with all the rest that he should be found after death to have had only an annuity, and to have gambled the remainder of his fortune away. The glimpses of sweet, simple, refined life in the doctor’s family, and of the tender esteem in which all Lenz’s friends and neighbors hold him, are almost the only cheerful lights in the picture ; the humorous passages, though abundant, are for the most part only varied expressions of the gloom of the story, for it is, indeed, as the author premises, “a sad, cruel history,” though “ the sun of love breaks through at last.” Nothing can be at once droller and more pathetic than the adieu of Franzl, the old servant whom Annele drives out of Lenz’s house : —

“Lenz comforted her as well as he could, assuring her she should soon come back, and promising her a yearly sum as long as she lived. But she shook her head, and said, weeping: ‘The Lord God will soon put me beyond want. Never did I think to leave this house, where I have lived for eight-and-twenty years, till I was carried out. There are my pate, and my copper kettles, and my pans, and my tubs ; howmany thousand times I have taken them in my hand, and polished them up ! They are ray witnesses. No one can say I have not been neat and orderly. The nozzle of every pot, if it could speak, would tell who and what I have been. But God knows all. He sees what goes on in the great room, and in the kitchen, and in each of our hearts. That is my comfort and my viaticum and — Enough; I am glad to get out of this place; rather would I spin thistles than stay here a day longer. I don’t want to make you unhappy, Lenz. You might hunt me down like a rat before I would bring ill-will into the house. No, no, I will not do that. Have no anxiety about me; you have cares enough of your own. Gladly would I be crushed under the weight of them, if I could but take them from you, and bear them on my own shoulders. Have no fear for me. I shall go to my brother in Knuslingen. There was I born, and there will I wait till I die. If I join your mother in Paradise, I will tend upon her as she was used to being tended here. For her sake, our Lord God will admit me, and for her sake you shall still be blessed in this world. Goodby ; forgive me, if I have ever grieved you. Good-by, — a thousand times goodby ! ’ ”

Franzl makes most of the laughing in the book, but, as our readers can see, she is not altogether a comical character. We deride without compunction, however, the father of Annele, who by dint of prodigious personal dignity, a great deal of silence, and a habit of talking, when he did speak, of honor, had so won the awe and confidence of his neighbors that he was able to involve them all in ruin when he failed. He sold the forest on the mountain-side which protected Lenz’s house, and which, being cut away, gave the avalanche free course. The landlord in after years had charge of a water-cure, and received one of Lenz’s friends ns a patient: —

“ He spoke handsomely of Lenz, and enjoined upon Faller to tell him that he must never allow himself to be goaded into any undertaking that he did not feel himself thoroughly fitted for. This sentence he made Faller repeat over and over again, word for word, till he knew it by heart, when the landlord put on his spectacles to see how a man actually looked who had such a sentence in his head.”