Nearly two years have passed since then. A terrible war is raging, and Germans look with gloomy apprehension to the future of their fatherland. At such a time, when the strongest political feelings agitate the life of every individual, that spirit of cheerful tranquillity, so needful to an author for the artistic moulding of his creations, readily forsakes his writing-table. It is long, alas! since the German author has enjoyed it. He has far too little interest in home and foreign life; he wants that composure and proud satisfaction which the writers of other countries feel in dwelling on the past and present of their nation, while he has enough and to spare of humiliation on account of his country, of wishes unfulfilled and passionate indignation. At such a time, in drawing an imaginative picture, not love alone, but hatred too, flows freely and readily from the pen—practical tendencies are apt to usurp the place of poetic fancy; and, instead of a genial tone and temper, the reader is apt to find an unpleasing mixture of blunt reality and artificial sentiment.
Surrounded by such dangers, it becomes twofold the duty of an author carefully to avoid distortion in the outline of his pictures, and to keep his own soul free from unjust prepossession. To give the highest expression to the beautiful in its noblest form is not the privilege of every time; but, in all times alike, it is the duty of the writer of fiction to be true to his art and to his country. To seek for this truth, and where found to exhibit it, I hold to be the duty of my own life.
And now let me dedicate, with deepest reverence, my unimportant work to you, my honored lord. I shall rejoice if this novel leaves on the mind of your highness the impression that its conception is in faithful keeping with the laws of life and of art, without ever being a slavish copy of the accidental occurrences of the day.
Gustav Freytag.
Leipsic, April, 1855.
DEBIT AND CREDIT.
CHAPTER I.
Ostrau is a small town near the Oder, celebrated even as far as Poland for its gymnasium and its gingerbread. In this patriarchal spot had dwelt for many years the accountant-royal, Wohlfart, an enthusiastically loyal subject, and a hearty lover of his fellow-men—with one or two exceptions. He married late in life, and his wife and he lived in a small house, the garden of which he himself kept in order. For a long time the happy pair were childless; but at length came a day when the good woman, having smartened up her white bed-curtains with a broad fringe and heavy tassels, disappeared behind them amid the approbation of all her female friends. It was under the shade of those white bed-curtains that the hero of our tale was born.
Anton was a good child, who, according to his mother, displayed remarkable peculiarities from the very day of his birth. For instance, he had a great objection to going to bed at the proper hour; he would pore time untold over his picture-alphabet, and hold lengthy conversations with the red cock depicted upon its last page, imploring him to exert himself in the cause of his young family, and not allow the maid-servant to carry them off and roast them. Lastly, he would often run away from his playfellows, and sit lost in thought in a corner of the room. His greatest delight, however, was to perch himself on a chair opposite his father, cross his legs in the same way, and smoke a mimic pipe in emulation. Moreover, he was so seldom naughty, that all such of the female population of Ostrau as took a gloomy view of things in general held it doubtful that he could live to grow up, till one day Anton publicly thrashed the councilor's son, which in some degree modified the opinions concerning him. In short, he was just the boy that the only child of warm-hearted parents might be expected to prove. At school he was an example of industry; and when the drawing-master began to declare that he must be a painter, and the classical teacher to devote him to Philology, the boy might have been in some danger of being diverted from the serious pursuit of any one specific calling but for an accident which determined his choice.
Every Christmas evening the mail brought to the house of the paternal Wohlfart a box containing a loaf of the finest sugar and a quantity of the best coffee. This sugar the good man himself broke into squares: the coffee was roasted by his wife's own hands; and the complacency with which they sipped their first cup was pleasant to behold. These were seasons when, to the childish soul of Anton, the whole house seemed pervaded with poetry, and his father was never weary of telling him the history of this periodical present. Many years ago, he had chanced to find, in a dusty bundle of law-papers, a document of great importance to a well-known mercantile house in the capital. This document he had at once forwarded, and, in consequence of it, the firm had been enabled to gain a long-pending lawsuit, which had previously threatened to go against them; upon which the young head of the concern had written his acknowledgments, and Wohlfart had refused to be thanked, having, he said, only done his duty. From that time forth the box we have described made its appearance every Christmas evening, accompanied by a few cordial lines, to which Wohlfart responded in a masterpiece of caligraphy, expressing his surprise at the unexpected arrival, and wishing a happy new year to the firm. The old gentleman persisted, even to his wife, in treating this Christmas box as a mere accident, a trifle, a whim of some clerk in the house of T. O. Schröter, and yearly protested against the expectation of its arrival, by which the good woman's household purchases were more or less influenced. But its arrival was, in reality, of the utmost importance in his eyes; and that, not for the sake of the actual coffee and sugar themselves, but of the poetry of this connecting link between him and the life of a perfect stranger. He carefully tied up all the letters of the firm, together with three love-letters from his wife. He became a connoisseur in colonial produce, an oracle in coffee, whose decision was much deferred to by the Ostrau shopkeepers. He began to interest himself in the affairs of the great firm, and never failed to note the ups and downs reported in a certain corner of the newspapers, wholly mysterious to the uninitiated. Nay, he even indulged in fancy speculations and an ideal partnership, chafed when sugars fell, and chuckled at the rise of coffee.
A strange, invisible, filmy thread it was, this which connected Wohlfart's quiet household with the activity of the great mercantile world, and yet it was by this that little Anton's whole life was swayed; for when the old gentleman sat in his garden of an evening in his satin cap, and pipe in his mouth, he would dilate upon the advantages of trade, and ask his son whether he should like to be a merchant; whereupon a kind of kaleidoscope-picture suddenly shaped itself in the little fellow's mind, made up of sugar-loaves, raisins, and almonds, golden oranges, his father's smile, and the mysterious delight which the arrival of the box always occasioned him, and he replied at once, "Yes, father, that I should!"
Let no one say that our life is poor in poetical influences; still does the enchantress sway us mortals as of old. Rather let each take heed what dreams he nurses in his heart's innermost fold, for when they are full grown they may prove tyrants, ay, and cruel ones too.
In this way the Wohlfart family lived on for many a year; and whenever the good woman privately entreated her husband to form some decision as to the boy's way of life, he would reply, "It is formed already; he is to be a merchant." But in his own heart he was a little doubtful as to how this dream of his could ever be realized.
Meanwhile a dark day drew on, when the shutters of the house remained late unclosed, the servant-girl with red eyes, ran up and down the steps, the doctor came and shook his head, the old gentleman stood in prayer near his wife's bed, and the boy knelt sobbing by, while his dying mother's hand still tried to stroke his curls. Three days later came the funeral, and father and son sat together alone. Both wept, but the boy's red cheeks returned. Not so the old man's health and strength. Not that he complained; he still sat and smoked his pipe as before, and still concerned himself about the price of sugars, but there was no heart in the smoking or the concern; and he would often look anxiously at his young companion, who wondered what his father could have on his mind. One evening, when he had for the hundredth time asked him whether he would really like to be a merchant, and received the unvarying answer, he rose from his seat with an air of decision, and told the servant-girl to order a