Sartor Resartus | Page 9

Schlosskirche weather-cock, no biped stands so high. Couriers arrive
bestrapped and bebooted, bearing Joy and Sorrow bagged up in
pouches of leather: there, top-laden, and with four swift horses, rolls in
the country Baron and his household; here, on timber-leg, the lamed
Soldier hops painfully along, begging alms: a thousand carriages, and
wains, cars, come tumbling in with Food, with young Rusticity, and
other Raw Produce, inanimate or animate, and go tumbling out again
with produce manufactured. That living flood, pouring through these
streets, of all qualities and ages, knowest thou whence it is coming,
whither it is going? _Aus der Ewigkeit, zu der Ewigkeit hin_: From
Eternity, onwards to Eternity! These are Apparitions: what else? Are
they not Souls rendered visible: in Bodies, that took shape and will lose
it, melting into air? Their solid Pavement is a Picture of the Sense; they
walk on the bosom of Nothing, blank Time is behind them and before
them. Or fanciest thou, the red and yellow Clothes-screen yonder, with
spurs on its heels and feather in its crown, is but of To-day, without a
Yesterday or a To-morrow; and had not rather its Ancestor alive when
Hengst and Horsa overran thy Island? Friend, thou seest here a living
link in that Tissue of History, which inweaves all Being: watch well, or

it will be past thee, and seen no more."
"_Ach, mein Lieber_!" said he once, at midnight, when we had
returned from the Coffee-house in rather earnest talk, "it is a true
sublimity to dwell here. These fringes of lamplight, struggling up
through smoke and thousand-fold exhalation, some fathoms into the
ancient reign of Night, what thinks Bootes of them, as he leads his
Hunting-Dogs over the Zenith in their leash of sidereal fire? That
stifled hum of Midnight, when Traffic has lain down to rest; and the
chariot-wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant
streets, are bearing her to Halls roofed in, and lighted to the due pitch
for her; and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like nightbirds,
are abroad: that hum, I say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber of sick
Life, is heard in Heaven! Oh, under that hideous coverlet of vapors, and
putrefactions, and unimaginable gases, what a Fermenting-vat lies
simmering and hid! The joyful and the sorrowful are there; men are
dying there, men are being born; men are praying,--on the other side of
a brick partition, men are cursing; and around them all is the vast, void
Night. The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed saloons, or
reposes within damask curtains; Wretchedness cowers into buckle-beds,
or shivers hunger-stricken into its lair of straw: in obscure cellars,
_Rouge-et-Noir_ languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard
hungry Villains; while Councillors of State sit plotting, and playing
their high chess-game, whereof the pawns are Men. The Lover
whispers his mistress that the coach is ready; and she, full of hope and
fear, glides down, to fly with him over the borders: the Thief, still more
silently, sets to his picklocks and crowbars, or lurks in wait till the
watchmen first snore in their boxes. Gay mansions, with supper-rooms
and dancing-rooms, are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts;
but, in the Condemned Cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous and faint,
and bloodshot eyes look out through the darkness, which is around and
within, for the light of a stern last morning. Six men are to be hanged
on the morrow: comes no hammering from the _Rabenstein_?--their
gallows must even now be o' building. Upwards of five hundred
thousand two-legged animals without feathers lie round us, in
horizontal position; their heads all in nightcaps, and full of the
foolishest dreams. Riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers in his
rank dens of shame; and the Mother, with streaming hair, kneels over

her pallid dying infant, whose cracked lips only her tears now
moisten.-- All these heaped and huddled together, with nothing but a
little carpentry and masonry between them;--crammed in, like salted
fish in their barrel;--or weltering, shall I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of
tamed vipers, each struggling to get its head above the others: such
work goes on under that smoke-counterpane!--But I, mein Werther, sit
above it all; I am alone with the stars."
We looked in his face to see whether, in the utterance of such
extraordinary Night-thoughts, no feeling might be traced there; but with
the light we had, which indeed was only a single tallow-light, and far
enough from the window, nothing save that old calmness and fixedness
was visible.
These were the Professor's talking seasons: most commonly he spoke in
mere monosyllables, or sat altogether silent and smoked; while the
visitor had liberty either to say what he listed, receiving for answer an
occasional grunt; or