Mystery, a mockery

§397 "Mystery has now become common property, the mystery of the whole world and of every individual. Either it is my art or my instinct, or I can buy it as a purchasable commodity."

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§398 What mystery has now become the common property of the world? Is it the mystery of rightlessness in the state, or the mystery of educated society, or the mystery of adulterating wares, or the mystery of making eau-de-cologne, or the mystery of "Critical Criticism"? None of all these, but Mystery in abstracto, the category Mystery!

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§399 Herr Szeliga intends to depict the servants and the porter Pipelet and his wife as the incarnation of Absolute Mystery. He wants speculatively to construct the servant and the porter of "Mystery”. How does he manage to make the headlong descent from pure category down to the "servant" who "spies at a locked door”, from Mystery as the Absolute Subject, which is enthroned above the roof in the cloudy heavens of abstraction, down to the ground floor where the porter's lodge is situated?

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§400 First he subjects the category Mystery to a speculative process. When by the aid of means for abortion and poisoning Mystery has become the common property of the world, it is

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§401 "therefore by no means any longer concealment and inaccessibility itself, but it conceals itself, or better still" (always better!) "I conceal it, I make it inaccessible”.

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§402 With this transformation of Absolute Mystery from essence into concept, from the objective stage, in which it is concealment itself, into the subjective stage, in which it conceals itself, or better still, in which I conceal it, we have not made a single step forward. On the contrary, the difficulty seems to grow, for a mystery in man's head or breast is more inaccessible and concealed than at the bottom of the sea. That is why Herr Szeliga comes to the aid of his speculative progress directly by means of an empirical progress.

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§403 "It is behind locked doors" - hark! hark! - "that henceforth” - henceforth! - "Mystery, is hatched, brewed and perpetrated."

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§404 Herr Szeliga has "henceforth" changed the speculative ego of Mystery into a very empirical, very wooden reality - a door.

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§405 "But with that” - i.e., with the locked door, not with the transition from the closed essence to the concept - "there exists also the possibility of my overhearing, eavesdropping, and spying on it."

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§406 It is not Herr Szeliga who discovered the "mystery" that one can eavesdrop at locked doors. The mass-type proverb even says that walls have ears. On the other hand it is a quite Critical speculative mystery that only "henceforth”, after the descent into the hell of the criminals' hide-outs and the ascent into the heaven of educated society, and after Polidori's miracles, mysteries can be brewed behind locked doors and overheard through closed doors. It is just as great a Critical mystery that locked doors are a categorical necessity for hatching, brewing and perpetrating mysteries - how many mysteries are hatched, brewed, and perpetrated behind bushes! - as well as for spying them out.

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§407 After this brilliant dialectical feat of arms, Herr Szeliga naturally goes on from spying itself to the reasons for spying. Here he reveais the mystery that malicious gloating is the reason for it. From malicious gloating he goes on to the reason for malicious gloating.

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§408 "Everyone wishes to be better than the others," he says, "because he keeps secret the mainsprings not only of his good actions, but of his bad ones too, which he tries to hide in impenetrable darkness."

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§409 The sentence should be the other way round: Everyone not only keeps the mainsprings of his good actions secret, but tries to conceal his bad ones in impenetrable darkness because he wishes to be better than the others.

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§410 Thus it seems we have gone from Mystery that conceals itself to the ego that conceals it, from the ego to the locked door, from the locked door to spying, from spying to the reason for spying, malicious gloating; from malicious gloating to the reason for malicious gloating, the desire to be better than the others. We shall soon have the pleasure of seeing the servant standing at the locked door. For the general desire to be better than the others leads us directly to this: that "everyone is inclined to find out the mysteries of another", and this is followed easily by the witty remark:

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§411 "In this respect servants have the best opportunity."

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§412 Had Herr Szeliga read the records from the Paris police archives, Vidocq's memoirs, the Livre noir and the like, he would know that in this respect the police has still greater opportunity than the "best opportunity" that servants have; that it uses servants only for crude jobs, that it does not stop at the door or where the masters are in neglige, but creeps under their sheets next to their naked body in the shape of a femme galante or even of a legitimate wife. In Sue's novel the police spy "Bras rouge" plays a leading part in the story.

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§413 What "henceforth" annoys Herr Szeliga in servants is that they are not "disinterested" enough. This Critical misgiving leads him to the porter Pipelet and his wife.

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§414 "The porter's position, on the other hand, gives him relative independence so that he can pour out free, disinterested, although vulgar and injurious, mockery on the mysteries of the house."

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§415 At first this speculative construction of the porter is put into a great difficulty because in many Paris houses the servant and the porter are one and the same person for some of the tenants.

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§416 The following facts will enable the reader to form an opinion of the Critical fantasy concerning the relatively independent, disinterested position of the porter. The porter in Paris is the representative and spy of the landlord. He is generally paid not by the landlord but by the tenants. Because of that precarious position he often combines the functions of commission agent with his official duties. During the Terror, the Empire and the Restoration, the porter was one of the main agents of the secret police. General Foy, for instance, was watched by his porter, who took all the letters addressed to the general to be read by a police agent not far away (see Froment, La police dèvoilèe). As a result "portier" and "èpicier" are considered insulting names and the porter prefers to be called "concierge”.

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§417 Far from being depicted as "disinterested" and harmless, Eugene Sue's Madame Pipelet immediately cheats Rudolph when giving him his change; she recommends to him the dishonest money-lender living in the house and describes Rigolette to him as an acquaintance who may be pleasant to him. She teases the major because he pays her badly and haggles with her - in her vexation she calls him a "commandant de deux liards" - "ca t'apprendra à ne donner que douze francs par mois pour ton mènage." - and because he has the "petitesse” as to keep a check on his firewood, etc. She herself gives the reason for her "independent" behaviour: the major only pays her twelve francs a month.

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§418 According to Herr Szeliga, "Anastasia Pipelet has, to some extent, to declare a small war on Mystery".

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§419 According to Eugene Sue, Anastasia Pipelet is a typical Paris Portière. He wants "to dramatise the Portière, whom Henri Monier portrayed with such mastery". But Herr Szeliga feels bound to transform one of Madame Pipelet's qualities - "médisance" - into a separate being and then to make her a representative of that being.

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§420 "The husband," Herr Szeliga continues, "the porter Alfred Pipelet, helps her, but with less luck."

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§421 To console him for this bad luck, Herr Szeliga makes him also into an allegory. He represents the "objective" side of Mystery, "Mystery as Mockery".

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§422 "The mystery which defeats him is a mockery, a joke, that is played on him."

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§423 Indeed, in its infinite pity divine dialectic makes the "unhappy, old, childish man" a "strong man" in the metaphysical sense, by making him represent a very worthy, very happy and very decisive factor in the life-process of Absolute Mystery. The victory over Pipelet is

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§424 "Mystery's most decisive defeat." "A cleverer, courageous man would not let himself be duped by a joke."

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