Part Two: The Present Age
Part Two: The Present Age
Just as Claudine’s trusty perseverance has been fidelity’s triumphant path to the final reunion with Lusard, so this fidelity repeats itself in a rememorative perseverance that in its noble-minded wistfulness harks back to the union to which Claudine looked forward. The son, Charles Lusard de Montalbert, now fifty years old, lives in the magnificent old castle (‘where for ten summers now the two big chestnut trees by the church wall have strewn their blossom’) 5 – itself a reminding of the departed. After much travelling in the New World as well as the Old, having let the time of love pass by, having turned off at the point where a person’s future really begins, [he] has beautifully installed himself in remembrance and chosen the past, wanting only to secure a memory for himself in making one member of his family happy.
Lusard comes to Copenhagen, visits Commercial Counsellor Waller, who lives in the old Waller house. Through the counsellor we are introduced to his marital confusions and to the stage upon which the present age reveals itself in its various representatives. The present age has nothing foreign with which to captivate, no legation of Frenchmen letting one virtually forget that the setting is Copenhagen and not the mighty upsurge of a world-historical denouement. Life in the present age is undisturbed by the energetic passion whose form is in its very energy – yes, even in its vehemence – and isn’t hiding the power of a secret and forbidden passion. On the contrary, everything is manifestly nondescript, and thus trivial, formless, knowing, coquettish, and openly so. Here there is no great revelation and no deep secret, but superficiality all the more.
Just one flower, constrained by all these externalities, grows in concealment: Miss Mariane, a daughter of Counsellor Waller’s first marriage, called in stepmotherly fashion ‘Maren’6 in the second marriage, even by the servants. Offended and ignored by the stepmother, vain object of her father’s powerless protection, as good as insulted by young dandies whom the stepmother coquettishly flatters, and worried by her younger sister Colette’s schoolgirl irresponsibility, she secretly loves and is loved by Ferdinand Bergland, a grandson of Ferdinand Waller (author of Primula veris), a bit of an eccentric yet proud and refined.
Lusard soon discovers this girl’s endearing character and is confirmed in his judgement by the old Counsellor of State Dalund, who now visits the house of Waller, an elderly man of whom one cannot say he had not chosen remembrance – that of Madame Waller – but that he preserved it; an elderly man who, just as he once vainly tried to maintain his neutral position as observer, now with his mild yet somewhat sarcastic outlook vainly takes up the cause as ‘advocate for a vanished age – or against a present one’.7
No one knows where Ferdinand Bergland is. After a falling-out and misunderstanding with Counsellor Waller, he is thought to have left for Geneva. Mariane now becomes the designated object of Lusard’s attention (misconstrued by some as if he himself were the wooer); her lover is earmarked as Lusard’s heir. Despondently Lusard discovers, as he thinks, that Mariane is in love with Arnold, a law student whose emptiness repels Lusard. But Dalund denies that it is possible.
Lusard accidentally overhears a conversation between Mariane and her beloved – it is in fact Ferdinand Bergland, who has come home to say goodbye – whom he cannot see because he is hidden by the trees in the arbour, but whose voice and a signet ring catch his attention. Lusard learns from the conversation that the love affair is on the brink of breaking up; that the lover, fearing for his ability to provide, does not want to risk marriage but will give her up, hoping that Lusard will propose to her.
But who is this man? At a book auction Lusard buys the little volume, Primula veris, for twenty-five rix-dollars,8 and his curiosity is aroused as to who could be the second bidder at that exorbitant price. From the voice and signet ring he now recognizes the lover from the arbour – it is none other than Ferdinand Bergland, the man they are looking for.
Just as a separation similar to that in Part One is about to occur; just as a loyal womanly soul (like Claudine) is about to be abandoned by her lover, not one who wishes to go to war (like [the first] Lusard) but one who helplessly dare not risk marriage for fear of his inability to provide; and just as the horoscope might indeed be set in such a way that Mariane would, like Claudine, remain faithful to herself over the years, but with less enthusiasm and animation and in silent, secret suffering – Lusard comes on stage. The remembrance of Part One once more casts its illuminating light. What filial piety wistfully remembers, the noble spirit now sees before him in a rejuvenated repetition.
Mariane is united with F. Bergland; they live in the old castle, the children and heirs of the solitary Lusard.
(1) In the arbour the candles are alight while in the twilight the star of love twinkles. Claudine is sitting with Lusard, and Ferdinand Waller is reading aloud a poem from Primula veris. (2) In the arbour the candles are alight – Ferdinand W. is sitting with little Madame Johansen and remembering what has never been forgotten. (3) In the arbour the candles are alight, and the shimmering stars look in through the leaves. Ferdinand Bergland is reading aloud to his wife, and Lusard is listening – he is reading from Primula veris.
Why is autumn the most beautiful time to fall in love? Why should ‘September be called the love-month’ (see Part One, p. 55)? Because it is in tune straight away with remembrance!
Ferdinand has finished reading; memories that linked him personally to that little book, and of the age whose ideas influenced it, have been reawakened. The two ages touch each other once again at the conclusion. Ferdinand B. says: ‘I am happy to live in an age that despite its deficiencies makes such great advances in so many directions. I subscribe to the faith that the human race, no doubt through many fluctuations, will with steady stride nevertheless approach the goal of that perfection that can be imagined for an earthly existence.’ And Lusard says: ‘Amen, yes, we would hope for that.’9
The age of revolution’s reflection in domestic life, the reflection of the present age in domestic life, is depicted but not judged, and hope is therefore not denied it either.