AUERBACH'S NEW STORY.*
BERTHOLD AUERBACH'S stories are something more than mere works of fiction. They profess to be faithful pictures of a kind of life, new to us, of which he has been one of the chief revealers. Auerbach, with many other contemporary authors and artists in revolt against the arrogance of the German nobility, and a morbid idealism which prevailed through the first half of the present century among the better educated section of German society, early turned his whole attention to the peasantry, as the only class among whom any real, robust human nature remained. He was eminently well fitted to make the scenes he had chosen for his stories attractive, having been born and brought up in the Black Forest, among an intelligent population, easily affording, from the phy- sical character of the country, romantic episodes, amid. which he could paint healthy peasant society with a certain amount of truth, without becoming tedious. And notwith- standing that his narrative certainly is often somewhat ill put together, and that he is apt to introduce matter which appears exasperatingly extraneous to it, his success as a painter of this life is not to be questioned, and in fact is perhaps a justification for his taking occasional liberties with the reader's patience. So those who look for artistic cohesion in Auerbach, and do not find it, must console themselves with the reflection that his de- scriptions are really one of our chief sources of knowledge of a class which is changing its character, and may become some day a great political force in a new country, destined to arouse more interest just as the consciousness of its existence extends among its component parts.
This must serve also in his new story as an excuse for much. Many incidents in it are improbable, episodes and persons are introduced who confuse the reader by drawing him off on a wrong tack, and there is even a little awkwardness in the development of the prevailing idea. But the dia- logue is always sprightly, and the pictures always vivid and charming. All the village dignitaries and. notabili- ties, the district doctor, the magistrates, the clergymen, are trotted out with delightful humour ; the reader, too, will not lay aside the book without having a clear idea of the meaning of an extraordinary and dominant quality of the German peasant, —a pride of wealth and descent, transcending anything of the kind to be found in other classes. The events referred te, moreover, are fresh in everybody's mind, and one is now and then confronted with the feelings which have arisen out of the Franco-German war. Most of the younger generation in the village had served in the army during that momentous time, and the widening of their views resulting from contact with the outer world is shown with great nicety in the contrast of the young men with their fathers.
The story opens with preparations for the consecration of the newly obtained banner of the Kriegerverein,—that is, the asso- ciation of those who served in the war, an institution without which a German village now-a-days would be incomplete. Thoma, the beautiful and proud daughter of the wealthy peasant, Landolin, had been solicited to fill a post of honour at the ceremony by a deputation of three young men, two of whom are sons of other rich peasants, and the third of the saw-miller, Armbruster, a young man who had dis- • Landoll?* vox Reutershafen. Brzlihlung you Berthold Auerbach. Berne. 185. tinguished himself before Paris, had received the Iron Cross, and would have been promoted to the rank of lieutenant, had he not preferred to return to his well-beloved Heimath, where he had left lovely eyes behind him. Anton Armbruster had been in love with Thoma, and indeed, she with him, but they knew at that time nothing of each other's feelings. Thoma was of marriageable age, and her father had wished her to make her choice from the other two of the three, these being the most eligible young men -of the district. Thoma, of course, refused both, and declared her preference for Anton ; and her father was obliged to yield -to her choice, for her character is as unbending as his own. Anton, as it happens, is not very acceptable to Landolin, for his father is far from an equal in wealth with the majestic Grossbauer of Rentershofen. He submits, however, reflecting that it is even a kind of distinction to be able to put up with a son-in-law of lower degree. So the young people are engaged, and their betrothal is to be made known on the market-day at the market-town, whither all the peasants of the district repair, among them Landolin, in very bad humour, for he is by no means pleased, after all, at his daughter's being en- gaged to a minderer, as he calls a person of lower position than himself, though that person might have been made an officer, had he remained in the army. Landolin is a dreadful man. He is of great physical strength and majestic stature, con- temptuous in his treatment of every one, unbending in his resolutions, and consequently feared by all beneath him. When he speaks, it is not to say pleasant things, and to speak much is beneath the dignity of a wealthy peasant, whose fore- fathers for hundreds of years had worked the broad fields he owns. But he dearly loves his daughter, and is honest, though as overbearing in his honesty as in everything else. Such a man does not rejoice in overflowing good-will towards him on -the part of his neighbours, and there were indeed many who did long for an opportunity of repaying him for his ill-treatment and arrogance. Landolin was exceptionally disagreeable to every one at the market on this occasion ; and the congratu- lations, and the sentimental remarks of Anton's father on -the approaching alliance of their families, were not cal- culated to improve the humour of the impatient man, so that when he returned home, he was in a more irritable state of mind than ever. He was not, however, destined to be left -undisturbed, for as ill-luck would have it, a servant whom he had dismissed for theft was waiting to claim his wages, which Landolin had refused to pay. Here comes the turning-point of the story. When two angry men quarrel, as everybody knows, ill may come of it. Vetturi, the ex-servant, from demanding, passed on to abusing. Landolin, from ordering him out of his courtyard, went on to threaten to set his dog on Vetturi. Vetturi called Landolin himself a dog. Landolin, flushed with anger, threatened to knock Vetturi down. Vetturi, with oaths, dared him to do so ; and. Landolin, seizing a huge stone which Jay at his feet, became unconscious of what he was doing till he saw Vetturi lying bleeding on the ground, and Anton and his daughter at his side. Confused, unequal to the occasion, instead of making a clean breast of it, he asked what was the matter; and urged on by his revoltful spirit, denied he had struck the man ; and his stand having been taken, he was not the one to -waver. But his daughter's spirit of truthfulness and uncompro- mising honesty was stronger than his own had been. She had seen the deed done, and so had Anton, and that her father should tell a lie was an unendurable blow to her unbending pride. Thoma's unconquerable devotion to the truth, and nothing but the troth, seems to us just a little overdrawn here. 'She breaks on the spot with her father, and with Anton, because he, out of love to her, forthwith assumes the com- placent position of one who was present, and yet saw -nothing. When the deposition of her father is taken down, she acts on her right as daughter to give no evidence, thus implying her father's guilt. Landolin is arrested, and has to defend himself from the charge of manslaughter. The necessity of persisting in the attitude he had assumed changes -the character of the man. One sees him falling, and becoming mean in his thoughts and actions. In his selection of a jury from the list laid before him, he chooses peasants, in order to have in his favour the influence of the ill-will towards servants, for the "greatest plague in life" seems also in the Black Forest Lobe a leading question with the employers of labour. He judged aright by the grace of the author, and is pronounced not guilty, but this only by a majority of one, and everybody is convinced .of his guilt outside the Court. He had not allowed any plea of
extenuating circumstances to be accepted, because he knew the jury would be less lenient, if the penalty were not very great. This seems pretty sharp practice for a Black Forest peasant.
The declaration of "Not guilty," in the face of evidence clear to every one, was worse than imprisonment. As the sagacious old saw-miller, Armbruster, said to his son :—"It would have been better for justice and your haughty Landolin himself, if he had had to go through a few years' imprisonment. Now, you will see, he will be punished much more severely. He will have to plead Not guilty' to every one he meets. If he had gone through the punishment he deserved, he would have come back as honourable as ever, and been just as he was before, for what he did was not an intentional crime. It was rather a calamity,—but now !" So reasoned Anton's father, and soon, indeed, began the punishment which public opinion deals out, when justice fails to do its duty. Landolin, the haughty Landolin, had already been broken in by this trial. He had formed good resolutions. He would no more be any man's enemy. He invites all the jurymen to a banquet, proposed by the sleek-lipped host of the Schwert, who had been one of the jurymen. Only the poorest accept his invitation. He is startled by the dawning conscious- ness that something has changed. His servant, Tobias, who had seen the deed done, but had borne false witness on the sug- gestion of Peter, Landolin's son, who has suddenly claimed independence on his tyrannical father's fall,—Tobias is rude to him, and he must stand it. Peter is rude to him. The host of the Schwert is familiar. He masters his anger, and thinks this will all soon change again. But his blood is boiling, and his good resolutions are vanishing. His trial soon recommences. Vetturi's mother, for whom her only son had been her whole fortune, has suddenly changed from a sharp gossip to a resentful fury. She now begins a systematic per- secution of Landolin. She follows him, she hurls curses after him, and stirs up the passions of others against him. But worst of all, he finds his daughter contemptuous and lost for him. His son had become his master, his servants he dares not rebuke, lest they should ffing insults in his face. He goes to the Kriegerverein fete—why, does not seem very clear—and finds himself avoided by his equals, while his inferiors are familiar and rude. He tries to do without the world, but he finds he cannot. He thought he was greater than his fellows, and had despised them, and now, what would he have given for a friendly word ! From the disdainful Landolin, he is fast becoming a wily but unsuccessful hypocrite, trying to coax a good word from any one, whoever he be. His wife alone remains kind to him, and believes in his innocence, she, whom he had been wont to treat as a secondary part of his inalienable property, and not worthy of more than the scantiest notice. He is not a bad man at the bottom, and is touched by her goodness. But what he most feels is his daughter's pitiless desertion.
The rest of the story is not equal to the first part, and is soon told. A deus ex machind, in the form of the good, beneficent wife of the district magistrate, reconciles the daughter with her father and lover. The mother, who at last discovers her hus- band's guilt, through the good offices of his enemies, dies with a broken heart. Landolin is rescued from his wretchedness by his daughter's recovered love, and strives to deserve it. His daughter, having determined, through the persuasive eloquence of the Frau Kreisgerichtsrathin, not to regard her now, as she 'deems it, unequal position towards Anton as an impediment to their marriage, tells Landolin so. He, in delight, mounts his swiftest but wildest steed, to bring the glad tidings to the sorrowing lover. There is a flood in the valley he must cross to reach the saw-mill. He is met by Vetturi's fiend-mother at the edge of the foaming waters. Excited, scarcely knowing what he is doing, he plunges in, pursued by her curses. His horse succumbs before he reaches land, and he is only rescued by Anton and his men to breathe his last in the arms of Anton and his daughter.
The second half of the story seems unnecessarily spun out. The social punishment Landolin has to endure is painfully de- tailed. Moreover, the intervention of the Kreisgerichtsrathin seems meddlesome, and little calculated to accomplish the good results it serves to bring about. Auerbach also is too fond of sudden modifications in human character through change of circumstances. No doubt, new circumstances do sometimes appear to work wonders in the moral and mental nature of men, but the alteration in Peter's character, consequent on the fall of his father, from a despised, morose non-entity to a sly,
cruel, ill-natured demon, seems only explicable as a striking in- stance of remote atavism, the mild goodness of his mother, the overbearing pride of his father, and. irreproachable antecedents, being little calculated to produce the most repulsive meanness imaginable. Anton, like most good heroes, admired and be- loved by everybody, is more spoken about than active. The silly nonsense he and his bride talk together may be faithful to truth, and his Sinnigkeit, that justifiable sentimentality young German lovers indulge in, may be pleasant to the romantic youth, but Anton is otherwise scarcely seen, and it is difficult from what is seen of him to understand the high opinion everybody has of him. Moreover, the easy way in which he puts up with the rupture of his engagement to Thoma does not raise him even in the un- romantic reader's estimation. Again, the introduction of the Kreisgerichtsrathin to save the author from his favourite menn of reconciliation, namely, the death-bed, is too palpable to be satisfactory. So that the faults of this new story are manifold. But as we have said above, Auerbach's stories are not merely works of fiction, and this is no exception. As a description of village-life, the story is really extremely interesting. There is a delicate vein of satire discoverable in the subjects of the conver- sation of the members of the Casino, the haunt of the notabilities of the district, which is Auerbach all over ; while his real sym- pathy with good, honest human nature is never more telling and lovable than when he makes the Protestant clergyman's wife sing a duet with the jolly Roman Catholic priest. He means more here than he says, and the incident cuts both ways.
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