Last Tales (42 page)

He raised his glass high up in the air, emptied it and stood immovable. His guest, obedient as a reflection in a mirror, followed every one of his movements.

This last glass, over and above what earlier in the evening the two had gulped down, had a powerful and mysterious effect upon them. It caused both small figures to grow, and sent a deep, noble flush into both pale faces and a radiating light into two pairs of big eyes. Host and guest beamed on each other, and for a moment came so close together as if they were in for a wrestling match or an embrace.

“
Ô
tez-moi donc,”
the guest said suddenly in a low voice,
“ce manteau qui me pèse!”

He stood still, his chin a little in the air, his eyes on his host’s face, while the latter fumbled with the clasp and got the heavy cloak off him. Under the cloak the stranger wore a pearl-gray silk coat and waistcoat with water-blue embroidery; the lace at the neck and wrists was torn. The pale costume gave to his whole figure something immaterial and flickering, as if he were a young angel on a visit to the hot and close room. But as, in its fall backwards, the cloak unfolded itself over the back and seat of the armchair, its deep-golden velvet lining seemed to collect in it all the colors of the room and to uplift them into a glow and gleam of pure ore. The young man who had called himself Yorick saw the room round him suddenly gilt, and in a kind of rapture squeezed his guest’s delicate fingers.

“O you most welcome!” he cried out. “You long hoped for! Our lord and master, we are yours! See, we offer you now our best chair, and can then offer you none better. Lise never allows herself to sit in it, so as not to weigh down the
upholstering with her charms. Deign now, Sire, for this one night to turn it into a throne!”

Under the speaker’s mighty gaze the hearer’s features for a second shivered, then cleared into serene composure. His being, which lately, in its search for a foothold, had run so wildly in all directions, was collected and uplifted into sublime harmony. Yes, he was among friends—such as he had read about and looked for but had never found, such as would understand who he really was. He allowed himself to be led, by the ceremoniously raised hand of his host, a step backwards toward the chair, and sat down in it somewhat abruptly, but without his dignity being in any way impinged upon. Erect against the golden velvet, with his exquisite hands on the arms of the chair, as if he did indeed hold the scepter and orb, he turned his gaze toward the room as from a great height.

Yet as he spoke he was changed once more. He had uttered his short French sentences in a particularly melodious and sonorous voice. As now he changed into Danish, it became evident that he had been learning the language principally from valets and hound-boys, and in their company had mimicked and mocked his tutors.

“Indeed,” he said, “indeed, Poet! That is what I want. I want to hear with my own ears the complaints of my people. But I never could get at you, with the old foxes spying on me on all sides. Tonight I have had to run a long way, through dark, stinking places and up dreadful stairs to find you. It was good that you locked the door, so that we can keep them out.”

He had spoken quickly, now for a moment he searched for his words, then went on, slowly and in a raised voice:

“Dans ces lieux, sans manquer de respect,
chacun peut désormais jouir de mon aspect,
car je vois avec mépris ces maximes terribles,
qui font de tant de rois des tyrans invisibles!”

“Come along then,” he said again, “complain away. Are you unhappy?”

The young man who had called himself Yorick considered for a moment, then raised his hand and pressed it against his collarbone, where his shirt lay open.

“Unhappy,” he repeated slowly, “unhappy we shall certainly never be, after tonight. Neither do we, in our relation to you, wish to make ourselves pitiable. A true courtier does not insult his King by depreciating himself in his presence, as if such a thing were needed to uphold a monarch’s dignity! Nay, he makes himself as tall as possible, and says to the world: ‘Look what grand people are the servants of this master!’ It furthers the glory of his Catholic Majesty of Spain to have got servants grand enough to have the right to remain covered before his throne, just as we further the glory of our God, not by crouching, but by holding up our heads!

“All the same,” he continued, “a few small human, foolish griefs we have still got, seeing that we are both humans and fools. Do you want to hear of them?”

“Yes, that is what I told you,” said he who had been called Orosmane.

“Hear then,” said Yorick, “our first grief. You would find, if you looked closer, that Lise’s salt tears have drawn two noble gutters down through that rose-red of her cheeks which has lately, with so much care, been laid upon them. And this only because another maiden in the house, in a squabble, has called her an alabaster whore! Had I but now got two florins—but I have them not—I should this very night go down in the town to procure some object of alabaster for my Lise, in order that she might realize with what true feminine genius this friend of hers, Nille, has portrayed her person. Fain would I like to console Lise. For verily, Orosmane, I owe this maiden much, and more than the paltry four shillings which her goodness had allowed me to have chalked up against me. It is a good and blessed thing for such people as
me—it is balm to our souls as to our bodies—that there are such people as she!”

Orosmane looked at Lise, who tossed her head and looked the other way.

“Your debt to Lise, Poet,” he said with a noble movement of the hand, “we herewith take upon ourselves. She will tomorrow receive an alabaster jar with a hundred florins in it. For never shall a whore weep in our kingdoms. Nay, they shall hold there a high official station—
comme d’un peuple poli des femmes adorées
. It is a good and blessed thing for such as us, too, that there be such as she.”

“Bénissons le Seigneur
, Lise,” said Yorick.

“And let, then,” said Orosmane, “the prudes, the virtuous ladies shed their tears into their prayer books in resentment of our goodness to Lise. For they have themselves no goodness whatever in them. They mince and wag their rumps and smirk, only to dupe and ruin us. And,” he exclaimed, his face suddenly distorted with rage, “and in a bed they will talk!”

“You have said it, Sire,” said Yorick. “In a bed they will talk, the furies out of hell! At the moment when up to, and above, the limit of our strength we have gifted them with our full being, our life and our eternity, then they will talk! Then, full-fed and complacently ignorant of man’s, of the human being’s infinite longing for silence, they insist on being told whether the
adrienne
they had on yesterday did become them, and whether there is life after death!”

Orosmane thought the matter over, and again the little grin ran over his face.

“I will tell you something, you there,” he said, “which I myself have been told by Kirchhoff. In Paradise Adam and Eve did walk on all fours, even as the dumb animals they lived among. In those days Adam hid his sex beneath him, in the shelter of his body, such as was in accordance with his sense of
les décences
, which by a long way exceeds that of a
female. But his lady wife could hide nothing, and was entirely bared and exposed to his gaze. Therefore one day Madame Eve raised herself up on her two legs, and assured her husband that only such carriage and gait was consistent with the dignity of human beings. From that same moment she concealed her own sex, and was in a position to deny all knowledge of it. But see now! Adam from that day had to make a full display of his, and to proclaim and acknowledge before the whole world how accurately his creator had cast and adjusted him to his wife’s little secret crucible. So Madame could at her ease strut and swoon and shriek out:
‘Um Gottes willen, was bedeutet dies!’
—What, what, is it not so? And therefore,” he finished with a quick, keen grimace, “therefore: the more a female, in the goodness of her heart, is prepared to resemble the dumb animal, and to go down upon all fours, the greater ease does man find in her company. Is it not so, Poet?”

“Why, of course it is so,” Yorick answered with a laugh. “You have said it! And in fact I have thought of the same thing before tonight. For see now you, Orosmane! I have never had the honor of contemplating Lise at her meals. But to myself I have pictured her at them, and I have clearly realized the impossibility of that sweet creature taking dinner or supper like the rest of us. Nay, she must of necessity graze daintily, like a little white lamb in a meadow—down by the babbling brook, down in the live, green shades.”

Orosmane looked at Yorick for a while, and his young face smoothened.

“Not in this place,” he said with dignity, “Not tonight will we speak of Kirchhoff. He is a Schlingel, a
valet de chambre
. No word of his shall be laid in Lise’s, in yours or in our own ear! What were we speaking of?”

“Of our griefs,” said Yorick, “and of your loving-kindness, which has wiped away Lise’s grief.”

“Why, yes,” said Orosmane, “Lise’s grief. And now yours. How many griefs have you?”

“I have but two griefs,” answered Yorick, “since now Lise has nearly finished darning my stocking, and has thus kindly rid me of the third one. One of the two is that the sole of my shoe has a hole in it and lets in water badly. And yet to that I have almost got accustomed. But my second grief, Orosmane, is this: that I am not almighty.”

“Almighty,” Orosmane repeated slowly. “Do you want to be almighty?”

“Alas,” said Yorick. “Forgive me, Sire, that I come to you with such a trite and commonplace complaint. For all we sons of Adam have an infinite longing for almightiness, just as if we had been born and bred to it, and then, cruelly and tragically, had had it taken away from us.”

“Do you want almightiness, you?” Orosmane asked as before and stared hard at his host. “Ha, come to me, I have got it. I have got it, according to what they all assure me. Did they not set a crown on my head and a scepter in my hand. Danneskiold and the Lord High Chamberlain bore up the train of the robe! They vowed it in verse too. Wait a moment, and I shall recite it to you!”

He considered for a few seconds and then quietly and clearly declaimed:

“How shall! name you now, our youthful Solomon?
A king? or are you God? ah, you are both of these!
See, stamped within your seal: almightiness and wisdom!
A Monarch Absolute, with character of God.”

“Did you perhaps make that verse yourself, you who are a poet?”

“No, that verse I did not make,” said the poet.

“Will you be me?” Orosmane exclaimed in a high clear voice. “Shall we exchange parts tonight, and see whether we will notice any difference? For look you here: a little while ago, as you were handing me the glass, it came upon me that it was you that were almighty.”

“You are right again, Sire,” said Yorick. “Of all people in
Copenhagen, very likely you and I, the monarch and the poet, are the two who come nearest to being almighty. Nay, we probably should not notice any difference.”

At this point of the conversation Lise got up to take the apples off the stove so that they should not be burnt. She set them on the table and sprinkled sugar on them with her fingers, so that her guests could enjoy them when they wished. From time to time, while the two others talked on, she herself took a mouthful, left a little crimson fard on the flesh of the apple, and carefully licked her fingers. Orosmane followed her movements absent-mindedly, as if he did only half see her.

“All Adam’s sons, you said!” he exclaimed. “What about Mistress Eve’s brood? What about womenfolk? You are not going to tell me that they do not long to be almighty? You may be certain that my sweet Katrine should like to rule the whole world—just as our royal consort’s good Lady of the Bedchamber and
Preneuse de Puces
means to fix the time for us to go to bed.”

“No, they may not exactly long for almightiness,” said Yorick. “But that comes from the fact that every woman already, in her heart, does hold herself to be almighty. And indeed they are right in thinking so. Look at Lise now; she has not said a word during this conversation of ours and will not come to do so either. And yet it is she who has allowed the whole conversation to come into existence, and had she not been in the room with us, it would not have been held at all.”

“Well now,” said Orosmane after a short pause. “What do you want to do with your almightiness? For I myself know well enough,” he declared, his young face for a few seconds strangely wild and snappish, “what I should like to do with mine.”

“Mon Soudane?
said Yorick humbly, “I should like to live.”

Orosmane was silent for an instant. “Why?” he asked.

“Well,” said Yorick.
“Sauf votre respect
, Sire, the fact is that people do want to live.

“First of all they want to keep alive from today till tomorrow, and what they need to this purpose is something to eat. It is not always easy to get something to eat. And when we are hungry we moan and scream, not precisely from pain, but because we feel in our stomachs that our life is threatened. The baby, even, cries for the nipple because it claims to keep alive till tomorrow; poor puss, it does not know what life means.

“But next,” he continued, “we desire to live for a longer space of time than from today till tomorrow, and for a longer time than those scanty years which are called a span of human life. We desire to live down through the ages. To that purpose we claim the embrace! To that purpose we claim the beloved, the mate who will receive, house and bring forth this our never-ending life on earth. This, now, is why the youth moans and storms—in verse even, some of us—because he wills his own blood to greet, in a hundred years’ time, the dawn and the moonrise. And because he feels, in all this blood of his and in every limb, that should the embrace of love be denied him, life itself is denied him.