German Fiction · Theodor Fontane
THE BANNER OF THE UPRIGHT SEVEN
"Nevertheless, although we are not eminent marksmen, we couldn't keep away; we have come not to win trophies, but to present a modest little cup, an almost immodestly joyful heart, and a new banner that trembles in my hand with eagerness to fly from your fortress of flags. But we shall take our little banner home with us again, it is only here to receive its consecration. See, what it bears in golden letters: 'Friendship in Freedom'! Yes, it is friendship personified so to speak, that we bring to this festival, friendship based on patriotism, friendship rooted in the love of liberty. Friendship it was that brought together these seven hoary heads that glisten here in the sunlight, thirty, no forty years ago, and it has held them together through every storm, in good and evil days. It is a society that has no name, no president and no statutes; its members neither bear titles nor hold offices, it is unmarked timber from the forest depths of the nation, and it now steps forth for a moment into the sunlight of the national holiday only to return presently to its place, to rustle and roar with thousands of other tree-tops in the hidden forest-dusk of the people, where only a few can know and call each other by name, and yet all are familiar and acquainted.
"Look at them, these old sinners! None of them stands in the odor of particular sanctity! Rarely is one of them seen at church! They do not speak well of ecclesiastical matters. But here, beneath the open sky, I can confide something strange to you, my countrymen: as soon as their fatherland is in danger they begin quite gradually to believe in God; first each one cautiously in his own heart, then ever more boldly, till one betrays his secret to another and they then, all together, cultivate a remarkable theology, the first and only doctrine of which is: 'God helps him who helps himself! On days of rejoicing too, like this, when crowds of people are assembled and a clear blue sky smiles above them, they again fall a prey to these religious thoughts and then they imagine that God has hung the Swiss standard aloft and made the beautiful weather especially for us. In both cases, in the hour of danger and in the hour of joy, they are suddenly satisfied with the words that begin our constitution: 'In the name of God Almighty'! And such a gentle tolerance pervades them then--cross-grained though they are at other times--that they do not even ask whether it is the Roman Catholic or the Protestant God of Hosts that is meant.
"In short, a child who has been given a little Noah's ark filled with painted animals and tiny men and women, cannot be more pleased with it than they are with their beloved little fatherland and all the thousands of good things that are in it, from the moss-covered old pike lying at the bottom of its lakes to the wild bird that flutters round its icy peaks. Oh, what different kinds of people swarm here in this little space, manifold in their occupations, in manners and customs, in costume and language! What sly rascals and what moonstruck fools we see running around, what noble growth and what weeds thrive here merrily side by side, and it is all good and fine and dear to our hearts, for it is in our fatherland. "So, considering and weighing the value of earthly things, they grow to be philosophers; but they can never get beyond the wonderful fact of the fatherland. True, they traveled in their youth and have seen many countries, not with arrogance, but honoring every land in which they found people of worth; but their motto remained ever the same: respect every man's mother country, but love your own! "And how graceful and rich it is! The closer one looks at it the finer does its warp and woof appear, beautiful and durable, a model piece of handiwork!
"How diverting it is that there is not just one monotonous type of Swiss, but that there are various stamps of people from Zurich and Bern, Unterwalden and Neuenburg, the Orisons and Basle, and even two kinds of Baslers; and that Appenzell has a history of its own and Geneva another! This variety in unity--which God preserve--is the proper school in which to learn friendship, and it is only where political homogeneousness is transformed into the personal friendship of a whole people that the highest plane has been attained; for where the sense of citizenship fails, friendship will be successful and both will combine to form a single virtue. "These old men have spent their years in toil and labor; they are beginning to feel the frailty of all flesh, it pinches one in one place, one in another. Yet, when summer comes, they go, not to the baths, but to the national festival. The wine of the Swiss festival is the healing spring that refreshes their hearts, the outdoor summer life of the nation is the air that strengthens their old nerves, surging waves of happy fellow-countrymen are the sea that bathes their stiff limbs and makes them active again. You will presently see their white heads disappear in this sea. So now, fellow Helvetians, give us the cup of welcome! Long live friendship in the fatherland! Long live friendship in freedom!"
"Son, you have revealed a fine but dangerous gift. Nurse it, cultivate it with loyalty, with a sense of duty, with modesty. Never lend it to the false and the unjust, to the vain and the trivial; for it may become as a sword in your hand that turns against you yourself, or against the good as well as the evil. Or it may become a mere fool's bauble. Therefore, look straight ahead, be modest, studious, but firm and unswerving. As you have done us honor to-day, remember always to do honor to your fellow-citizens, to your country, to give them joy; think of this and so you will be best preserved from false ambition! Unswerving! Don't think that you must always speak, let some opportunities pass, and never speak for your own sake, but always for some worthy cause. Study men, not in order to outwit and plunder them, but in order to awaken and set in motion the good in them, and, believe me, many who listen to you will often be better and wiser than you who speak. Never use sophisms and petty hair-splitting which only move the chaff; the heart of the people can only be stirred by the full force of truth. Do not, therefore, court the applause of the noisy and restless, but fix your eye unswervingly on the cool-headed and the firm."
Scarcely had he finished this speech and released Karl's hand when Frymann seized it and said: "Try to acquire an equal knowledge of all branches and enrich your store of principles that you may not sink into the use of empty phrases. After this first dash allow considerable time to pass without thinking of such things again. If you have a good idea, never speak just in order to air it but rather lay it aside; the opportunity will come more than once later for you to use it in a more developed and better form. But should someone else forestall you in uttering it, be glad instead of annoyed, for that is a proof that you have felt and thought something universal. Train and develop your mind and watch over your nature and study in other speakers the difference between a mere tongue-warrior and a man of truthfulness and feeling. Do not travel about the country nor rush through all the streets, but accustom yourself to understand the course of the world from your own hearth, in the midst of tried friends; then, when it is time for action, you will come forward with more wisdom than the hounds and tramps. When you speak, speak neither like a facetious hostler nor like a tragic actor, but keep your own natural character unspoilt and then speak as it dictates.
Avoid affectation, don't strike attitudes, do not look about you like a field marshal before you begin, or, worse, as if you were lying in wait to spring upon the audience. Never say that you are not prepared when you are, for people will know your style and will perceive it at once. When you have done, do not walk about collecting compliments, or beam with self-satisfaction, but sit quietly down in your seat and listen attentively to the next speaker. Save your harsh phrases as you would gold, so that when, on occasion, you use them in just indignation, it will be an event, and they will strike your opponent like a bolt from the blue. But if you think you may ever associate with an opponent again and work with him, beware of letting your anger carry you into the use of extreme expressions, that the people may not say, 'Rascals fight, and when the fight is o'er, They're greater friends than e'er before'." Thus spake Frymann, and poor Karl sat astonished and bewildered by all these speeches and did not know whether to laugh or to be puffed up. But Syfrig, the smith, cried: "Now look at these two who didn't want to speak for us and can talk like books, as you see." "Just so," said Buergi, "but that has been the means of our gaining new growth; we have put forth a vigorous young shoot. I move that the lad be taken into the circle of us old fellows and from now on attend our meetings."
"So be it!" they all cried and clinked glasses with Karl, who somewhat unthinkingly drained his to the bottom, which lapse however the old men let pass without a murmur in view of the excitement of the moment. When, thanks to a good lunch, the party felt sufficiently recovered from its adventure, the members scattered. Some went to try a few shots, some to see the trophy-hall and other arrangements, and Frymann went to fetch his daughter and the women whose guest she was; for they were all to meet again for dinner at the same table which stood nearly in the centre of the hall and not far from the platform. They took note of its number and separated in the best of spirits and free from all care. Exactly at twelve o'clock the dinner guests, who were different ones every day and numbered several thousand people, sat down at the table. Country and city people, men and women, old and young, scholars and the unlearned--they all sat joyfully side by side and waited for the soup, opening bottles and cutting bread meanwhile. Not a single malicious face, not a scream or shrill laugh was seen or heard among them, nothing but the steady hum of a glad wedding feast magnified a hundredfold, the tempered wave-beat of a happy and self-contained ocean. Here a long table filled with marksmen, there a double row of blooming country girls, at a third table a meeting of so-called "old fellows" from all parts of the country, who had finally passed their examinations, and at a fourth a whole "immigrated" hamlet, men and women together. Yet these seated hosts formed only half of the assemblage; an equally numerous crowd of spectators streamed uninterruptedly through the aisles and spaces and circled ceaselessly about the diners.
They--praise and thanks be to God!--were the careful and economical ones who had counted the cost and satisfied their hunger elsewhere for even less money, that half of the nation that always manages things so much more cheaply and frugally, while the other half flings away money right and left; then there were also the over-fastidious ones who did not trust the cooking and thought the forks were too cheap; and finally there were the poor and the children, who were involuntary spectators. But the former made no unkind remarks and the latter displayed neither torn clothes nor jealous looks; on the contrary, the thrifty ones took pleasure in the spendthrifts, and the super-refined who thought the dishes of green peas in July ridiculous, walked about as good-humoredly as the poor who found their fragrance most tempting. Here and there, to be sure, a piece of culpable selfishness appeared as, for instance, when some tight-fisted young peasant succeeded in slipping unseen into a vacated place and eating away with the rest without having paid; and, what was still worse in the eyes of those who love order and discipline, this reprehensible act did not even result in an altercation and forcible ejection.
The head festival-host stood in front of the broad kitchen door and blew on a hunting horn the signal for a course to be served, whereupon a company of waiters rushed forward and dispersed to the right, to the left and straight ahead, executing a well practised man[oe]uvre. One of them found his way to the table at which sat the Upright and Staunch, among them Karl, Hermine, and her friends, cousins or whatever they were. The old men were just listening eagerly to one of the principal speakers who had mounted the platform after a loud roll on the drum. There they sat, grave and composed, with forks laid down, stiff and upright, all their seven heads turned towards the platform. But they blushed like young girls and looked at each other when the speaker began with a phrase from Karl's speech, told of the coming of the seven greybeards, and made that the starting-point for his own speech. Karl alone heard nothing, for he was joking quietly with the women, until his father nudged him and expressed his disapproval. As the orator finished amid great applause, the old men looked at one another again; they had been present at many assemblies, but for the first time they themselves had been the subject of a speech and they dared not look around, so embarrassed were they, though at the same time more than happy. But, as the way of the world is, their neighbors all around did not know them, nor suspect what prophets were in their midst, and so their modesty was not offended. With all the greater satisfaction did they press one another's hands after each of them had gently rubbed his own to himself, and their eyes said: Forward unswervingly! That is the sweet reward of virtue and enduring excellence!
"That's doing pretty well!" She laughed too, but only with her eyes, while her lips said earnestly: "You must win a cup." "I can't do that," answered Karl, "to get twenty-five numbers I should have to use at least fifty cartridges and I only have twenty-five with me." "Oh," she said, "there's powder and lead enough for sale here." "But I don't want to buy any more; that would make the cup a pretty expensive prize! Some fellows, to be sure, do spend more money on powder than the trophy is worth, but I'm not such a fool." "You're very high-principled and economical," she said almost tenderly, "I like that. But it's the best fun of all to accomplish with a little just as much as the others with their elaborate preparations and terrible exertions. So pull yourself together and win with your twenty-five cartridges. If I were a marksman I'd make myself succeed." "Never! Such a thing never occurs, you little goose!" "That's because you are all only Sunday marksmen. Go ahead, begin and try it." He shot again and got a number and then a second. Again he looked at Hermine and she laughed still more with her eyes and said still more earnestly: "There, you see! It can be done, now go ahead."
He looked at her steadily, and could scarcely withdraw his gaze, for he had never seen her eyes look as they did now; there was a stern and tyrannical gleam in the smiling sweetness of her glance, two spirits spoke eloquently out of its radiance: one was her commanding will, but with that was fused the promise of reward and out of that fusion arose a new mysterious being. "Do my will, I have more to give than you suspect," said those eyes, and Karl gazed into them searchingly and eagerly until he and the girl understood each other, there, surrounded by the tumult and surge of the festival. When he had satisfied his eyes with this radiance, he turned again, aimed calmly and scored once more. Now he himself began to feel that it was possible; but as people were beginning to gather about him, he went away and sought a quieter and emptier range, and Hermine followed him. There he again made several hits without wasting a shot; and so he began to handle his cartridges as carefully as gold coins, and Hermine accompanied every one with avaricious, shining eyes as it disappeared into the barrel; but each time, before Karl took his aim without haste or agitation, he looked into the beautiful face beside him. As soon as people began to notice his luck and collect round him, he went on to another range; nor did he stick the checks he received in his hatband, but gave them to his companion to keep; she held the whole little pack and never did a marksman have a more beautiful number-bearer. Thus he actually did fulfill her wish and made such fortunate use of his twenty-five cartridges that not one of them struck outside the prescribed circle.
They counted over the checks and found this rare good fortune confirmed. "I've done it once, but I'll never be able to again as long as I live," said Karl, "and it's you who are responsible, with your eyes. I am only wondering what all else you intend to accomplish with them!" "Wait and see," she answered, and now her lips laughed too. "Now go back to the party," he said, "and ask them to come and fetch me from the trophy-hall, so that I may have an escort, as there is no one else with me, or do you want to march with me?" "I'd almost like to," said she, but hurried away nevertheless. The old men were sitting deep in pleasant conversation; most of the crowd in the hall had changed but they stuck fast to their table and let life surge about them. Hermine went up to them laughing and cried: "Karl wants you to come and get him; he's won a cup!" "What! How's that?" they cried and rejoiced loudly; "so that's what he's up to?" "Yes," said an acquaintance who had just come up, "and, moreover, he won the cup with twenty-five shots, that doesn't happen every day! I was watching the young couple and saw how they did it." Master Frymann looked at his daughter in astonishment. "You didn't shoot too, did you? I hope not. Women sharpshooters are all right in general, but not in particular."
"Don't be alarmed," said Hermine, "I didn't shoot, I only ordered him to shoot straight." Hediger, however, paled with wonder and satisfaction to think that he should have a son gifted with eloquence, and famous in the use of arms, who would go forth with deeds and actions from his obscure tailor-shop into the world. Inwardly he began to sing small, and decided that he would no longer try to act the guardian. But now they all started for the trophy-temple where they really found the young hero, standing beside the buglers, the shining cup already in his hand, waiting for them. And so to the tune of a merry march off they went with him to the festival hall to christen the cup, as the saying goes, and again their steps were short and firm, their fists were clenched and they looked triumphantly about them. Arrived again at their headquarters, Karl filled the cup, set it in the middle of the table and said, "I herewith dedicate this cup to the Band of Seven, that it may never leave their banner."
"Accepted!" they shouted. The cup began to go the round and new merriment rejuvenated the old men, who had now been in good spirits since dawn. The evening sun streamed in under the countless beams of the hall and gilded thousands of faces already transfigured with pleasure, while the resounding tones of the orchestra filled the room. Hermine sat in the shadow of her father's broad shoulders, as modest and quiet, as if she couldn't count three. But golden lights from the sun, falling across the cup before her and flashing on its golden lining and the wine, played about her rosy and glowing face and danced with every movement of the wine when the old men in the heat of discussion pounded on the table; and then one could not tell whether she herself was smiling or only the playing lights. She was now so beautiful that young men, looking about the hall, soon discovered her. Merry groups settled themselves near her in order to keep her in sight and people asked one another: "Where is she from? Who is the old man? Doesn't anyone know him?" "She's from St. Gallen; they say she's a Thurgovian," answered one. "No, all the people at that table are from Zurich," said another. Wherever she looked, merry young fellows raised their hats in respectful admiration and she smiled modestly and without affectation. But when a long procession of young men passed the table and all took off their hats she had to cast down her eyes, and still more when a handsome student from Berne suddenly appeared beside her, cap in hand, and with courteous audacity said that he had been sent by thirty friends who were sitting at the fourth table from there, to inform her, with her father's permission, that she was the most charming girl in the hall. In short, everyone did regular homage to her, the sails of the old men swelled with new triumph, and Karl's fame was almost obscured by Hermine's. But he too was to come to the front once more.
"Laddie, keep quiet! Orderly, laddie, orderly!" and at the same time pushing and pulling him in accordance with his words. So he steered him with able hand through the angry sea until, just as they reached the table of the Seven, a dangerous stoppage occurred, as a group of peasants came up who wanted to call the quarrelsome fellow to account and attack him from both sides. Fearing that his laddie might do some fiendish damage, the father looked about for a place of refuge and saw the old men. "He'll be quiet among these old baldpates," he growled to himself, grasped his son with one fist in the small of his back and steered him in between the benches, while with the other he fanned the air behind him to keep off the irritated pursuers, for several of them had already been properly pinched, in all haste. "With your permission, gentlemen," said the octogenarian to the younger old men, "let me sit down here a minute so that I can give my laddie another glass of wine. Then he will grow sleepy and be as quiet as a little lamb." So he wedged himself into the party with his offspring, and the son really did look about him meekly and respectfully. But presently he said: "I want to drink out of the little silver mug over there."
"Will you be quiet, or I'll knock the senses out of you before you can turn round," said his father. But when Hediger pushed the full cup towards him he said: "Well, then, if the gentlemen will allow it, take a drink, but don't guzzle it all." "That's a lively youngster you've got there, my good man," said Frymann, "how old is he?" "Oh," replied the father "around New Year's he'll be about fifty-two; at least he was screaming in his cradle in 1798 when the French came, drove away my cows and burnt my house. But because I took a couple of them and knocked their heads together, I had to fly, and my wife died of misery in the meantime. That's why I have to bring up my boy alone." "Didn't you get a wife for him who could have helped you?" "No, he's still too clumsy and wild; it won't do, he smashes everything to pieces." In the meantime the youthful ne'er-do-well had drained the fragrant cup. He filled his pipe and looked round the circle blinking most happily and peacefully. Thus he discovered Hermine and the womanly beauty that radiated from her suddenly rekindled ambition in his heart and the desire to show his strength. As his eye fell simultaneously on Karl who was sitting opposite him, he invitingly stretched out his crooked middle finger across the table.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.