The Serapion Brethren. Vol. II

Excerpt

The ever-fluctuating vicissitudes of human life had once more scattered our little group of friends asunder. Sylvester had gone back to his country home; Ottmar had travelled away on business, and so had Cyprian; Vincent was still in the town, but (after his accustomed fashion) he had disappeared in the turmoil, and was nowhere to be seen; Lothair was nursing Theodore, who had been laid on a bed of sickness by a malady long struggled against, which was destined to keep him there for a considerable time.

Indeed, several months had gone by, when Ottmar (whose sudden and unlooked-for departure had been the chief cause of the breaking up of the "Club") came back, to find, in place of the full-fledged "Serapion Brotherhood," one friend, barely convalescent, and bearing the traces of a severe illness in his pale face, abandoned by the Brethren, with the exception of one, who was tasking him severely by constant outbreaks of a grim and capricious "humour."

For Lothair was once more finding himself in one of those strange and peculiar moods of mind in which all life seemed to him to have become weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, by reason of the everlasting mockery ("chaff" might be the modern expression of this idea) of the inimical daemonic power which, like a pedantic tutor, ignores and contemns the nature of men; giving man (as a tutor of the sort would do) bitter drugs and nauseous medicines, instead of sweet and delicious macaroons, to the end that his said pupil, man, may take a distaste at his own nature, enjoy it no more, and thus keep his digestion in good order.

"What an unfortunate idea it was," Lothair cried out, in the gloomiest ill-humour, when Ottmar came in and found him sitting with Theodore--"what an unfortunate idea it was of ours to insist on binding ourselves together again so closely, jumping over all the clefts which time had split between us! It is Cyprian whom we have to thank for laying the foundation-stone of Saint Serapion, on which we built an edifice which seemed destined to last a lifetime, and tumbled down into ruin in a few moons. One ought not to hang one's heart on to anything, or give one's mind over to the impressions of excitements from without; and I was a fool to do so, for I must confess to you that the way in which we came together on those Serapion evenings took such a hold on my whole being that, when the brethren so suddenly dispersed themselves over the world, my life felt to me as weary, stale, flat and unprofitable as the melancholy Prince Hamlet's did to him."

"Forasmuch as no spirit has arisen from the grave, revisiting the glimpses of the moon, to incite you to revenge," said Ottmar, with a laugh, "and as you are not called upon to send your sweetheart to a nunnery, or to thrust a poisoned rapier into the heart of a murderer-king, I think you ought not to give way to Prince Hamlet's melancholy, and should consider that it would be the grossest selfishness to renounce every league of alliance into which congenially-minded people enter because the storms of life possess the power of interfering with it. Human beings ought not to draw in their antennas at every ungentle touch, like supersensitive insects. Is the remembrance of hours passed in gladsome kindly intercourse nothing to you? All through my journeyings I have thought of you continually. On the evenings of the meetings of the Serapion Club (which, of course, I supposed to be still in full swing) I always took my place amongst you, in spirit; assimilated all the delightful and entertaining things going on amongst you (entertaining you, at the same time, with whatever the spirit moved me to contribute to you)....