The Potato-form-Cutter.–Drag-chains in St. Luna.–Wax Embossments.–Chess according to the Regula Falsi.–The Thistle of Hope.–Escort to Flachsenfingen.

One would certainly want to sleep in one's clothes, like old Fritz, so soon as ever one came to understand that in his shirt he is beset and attacked, as Victor and I sometimes are, by the vampires of midnight melancholy. They stay away when one sits up and has all his clothes on; especially do boots and hat retain for us the feeling of day in the greatest degree.–

A warm hand lifted up Victor's bedewed head from the sleeping-board,^[179] and directed it towards the whole surging flood of morning-light. His eyes opened (as always) with indescribable mildness, and without night-clouds, before Agatha, and beamed on her with full radiance. But she hurried him away with his radiance out of the leafy bedchamber; for he must look himself up a dressing-comb and a morning-blessing, and, secondly, the table-couch was to be a tea-table for Clotilda, who liked to take warm drinks in cool places.

–And so he stands out there between parsonage and palace in mid-morning. All seemed to him to have been just built and painted during his journey; for all that dwelt therein seemed to have changed and made him melancholy. "The parents in there," he said to himself, "have no son, my friend has no sweetheart, and I–no tranquil heart." And now, when at last he entered the house, and became once more a bright triumphal arch of the loving family-circle,–when he was compelled to contemplate with sympathetic and yet enlightened eyes the tender illusions of the parents, the groundless hopes of his friend, and the coming up of stormy days,–then stood one fixed tear for the future in his eye; and it grew not less when his adoptive mother would justify it by tender glances.... Partly, however, this veil was wafted over his soul merely from the preceding night, whose glimmering scenes were separated from him only by a short interval of sleep; for a night spent in the watches of emotion always ends with a melancholy forenoon.

The Chaplain was just making butter-vignettes; I mean, he was cutting, with no other etching-tool than a penknife, and into no other copperplate except potatoes, printers' tail-pieces and quadrats, which were to be stamped on the July butter by way of ornament. One might have supposed that Victor would have helped himself out greatly by having wit enough to remark that the old printed things were, to be sure, quite worthy of long books upon them, and long universal German literary reviews of the books, but of no human thought, and were ten times more unenjoyable than these newest butter-incunabula;^[180] for, if there could be anything wretcheder than the world's history (i. e. the history of rulers), whose contents consisted of wars, as the theatre-journal of other puppets does of cudgellings, it could only be the history of littÉrateurs and printers.^[181] This, too, must have stood him in stead,–that he was, finally, philosophical, and demanded that man should be called neither a laughing nor a reasoning, but a prinking animal; to which remark the Chaplain's lady added nothing, except the application of it to her daughters.

But in men of his sort, sadness, satire, and philosophy have place beside each other. To the potato-medal-coiner and the Chaplainess, who reckoned all women on earth among her daughters, and pronounced similar castigatory sermons against them all, he described his journey with as many satires and rasures as were needful for both parties; but when he heard the wishes of the family expressed that his Lordship might have a happy journey back with the beloved son of the Prince, and the intelligence that the Regency-Counsellor had already everything packed up to start for the city any hour that he might choose, then had Victor nothing to do but to take the secretive tear-ducts in his eye-sockets out of the way.

But whither? Into the garden! That was not well-considered. Flamin followed, and they arrived together at the embowered closet in the presence of the tea-drinkers. Never did its branches overshadow a more embarrassed face, softer eyes, fuller looks, and livelier or lovelier dreams than Victor carried with him beneath them. He thought of Clotilda as now a wholly new being, and thought, therefore,–as he knew not whether she loved him,–very stupidly. Man, when he has climbed over the mountain, always regards the coming hill as nothing; Flamin had been his mountain, and Clotilda was his hill.–In all the shallows of conversation, where one is already half stranding or sinking, there is no grander ship's-pump than a story which one has to tell. Give me embarrassment, and the largest circle, and only one disaster,–that is, the anecdote of it, which no one knows but myself,–and I will soon save myself. Victor therefore brought out his, life-preserver,–that is, his log-book,–from which he made for the bower a practical extract. I confess, a newspaper-writer might have falsified more, might have been guilty of more sins of commission, but hardly of more sins of omission.

He gave himself, I fancy, a lift again with the Chaplainess, and injured himself unquestionably with Clotilda,–however much, out of good-will towards his hearers, and too strong a hatred of the court, he offended against Clotilda's satire-embargo in her letter,–when, without reflecting, too, that maidens love only the jest, not the jesters, he represented the benefit-drama of the Princess, not on the sublime side, as I did, but on the comic side. Clotilda smiled, and Agatha laughed.

But when he named the name of Emanuel, and his house, and his mountain, then did friendship and memory diffuse over the fairest eye above which an eyebrow-arch, drawn by a line of beauty, ever yet flowed, a soft glimmer which wanted, every moment, to grow to a tear of joy. But it had to become one of another nature, when, in answer to the question about his health which Clotilda hopefully put to him as an adept in science, Victor was compelled to give the (faintly paraphrased) history of his nocturnal bleeding. He could not conceal the pang of sympathy, nor could Clotilda conquer it. O ye two good souls! what sore wounds will your hearts yet receive from your great friend!

Whither could she now turn her loving and sorrowing eye, but to her good brother Flamin, towards whom her demeanor, in consequence of the double constraint which her silence and his interpretations imposed upon her, had been hitherto so indescribably mild?–As, now, Victor saw all this with such wholly different eyes,–as he stood before his poor friend, who with his present happiness was perhaps accumulating the poisonous nourishment of his future jealousy, and gazed openly and fixedly into the firm countenance which some time bitter days might rend with agony,–and as, generally, past or future sorrows of another took a stronger hold of him than present ones, because fancy had him more in its power than the senses,–in this state of things, he could not for a moment assert the mastery over his eyes, but they bent their look, encircled with compassionate tears, tenderly on his friend. Clotilda was embarrassed about the resting-place of his look; so was he too, because man is less ashamed of the most vehement signs of hatred than of the smallest signs of love. Clotilda understood not the coquettish double art of throwing others into embarrassment or drawing them out of it; and the good Agatha always confounded the latter with the former.... "Ask him what ails him, brother!" said Agatha to Flamin....

The latter led him out with like good intention behind the nearest gooseberry-bushes, and asked him in his firm way, which always held an assertion as a question,–

"Something has happened to thee?"

"Just come this way!" said Victor, and pulled him along behind some higher Spanish walls^[182] of foliage.

"Nothing has happened to me," he began, at last, with brimming eye-sockets and smiling features,–"nothing more than that I have been a fool for some twenty-six years" (that was his age). "I know thou art unfortunately a jurist, and perhaps a worse oculist than I myself am, and hast, perhaps, read very little in Herr Janin.^[183]–Am I right?"

Flamin's shaking of his head meant something more than No.

"Very naturally; but if thou hadst, thou couldst have it from himself, or from the translation by Selle, very finely shown, that not merely the lachrymal gland secretes our tear-drops, but also the crystalline body,^[184] the Meibomian^[185] glands, the lachrymal caruncle,^[186] and–our afflicted heart, I add to the rest.–Nevertheless, of these aqueous globules, which are made for the sorrows of poor, poor mortals, not more than (if things go rightly) four ounces are filtered in twenty-four hours.... But, my dear one, the fact is just this,–that things do not go rightly, especially with me; and it vexes me to-day, not that thou hast never peeped into Herr Janin, but that thou dost not observe my confounded, cursed, stupid way."

"What one?"

"Yes, indeed,–what one? but I mean this of to-day,–namely, that my eyes–thou mayst boldly ascribe it merely to a too feeble tear-siphon, under which head Petit comprehends all absorbing tear-ducts–run over, when, e. g., any one does me an injustice, or when I merely desire anything too strongly, or imagine to myself an approaching pleasure, or only, in fact, a strong sensation, or human life, or the mere weeping itself." ...

His good-natured eye stood full of water as he said it, and justified all.

"Dear Flamin, I wish I had been a lady, or a Moravian, or a player;–truly, if I wanted to make the spectators believe I was going about it (namely, weeping), it would be actually a fact, too, on the spot."–

And here he fell softly and fondly, with tears which had an excuse for flowing, upon the beloved breast.... But for the viper-cure and iron-cure of his manliness he needed nothing but a "Hm!" and a shrug of the whole body; thereupon the youths went back as men to the arbor.

There was nothing left there: the girls had stolen away to the meadows, where nothing was to be avoided, except high grass and bedewed shadows. The empty arbor was the best absorbing tear-siphon for his eyes; nay, I gather from reports of the epistolary Spitz that he was vexed. As the sister came back by-and-by alone, his companion was vexed too. In fact, if somehow or other my hero–which would be a misfortune for me and him–should in time fall in love with Clotilda, then will the heroine make us both warm enough,–him in acting, me in copying,–for the very reason that she herself will not be warm, because she has neither superfluous warmth nor superfluous coldness, but always the alternating temperature which changes with the subject of conversation, but not with the speaker; because she takes away from a tenderly disposed fellow-man all pleasure in praising her, as she pays out no tithe thereof, or at least in offending her, as she issues no letters of indulgence; and because one really, in his agony, assumes at last that one can commit no other sins against her except such as are sins against the Holy Ghost. Jean Paul, who has been in such cases, and has often stood for whole years in one spot before such mountain-fortresses with his storming-ladders and labarums and trumpeters, and, instead of the garrisons, taken himself off by an honorable retreat,–this Paul, I say, can form a conception of what an amount of parchment, time, and printer's ink may have to be used up in the case of Sebastian contra Clotilda, before we get things even to a war-footing. In fact, with a perfectly rational woman a man never feels himself quite well; and only with a merely fine, fanciful, ardent, capricious one is he truly at home. One like Clotilda can make the best man, from mere distress and respect, frosty, stupid, and enraptured; and in most cases there comes in the additional misfortune, that the poor, worn-out, fond fool, by whom such an earthly angel absolutely will not let herself be worshipped, as the Apocalyptic one would not by the disciple John, can still seldom muster courage to say to the angel,–somewhat as one might to an angel of an opposite nature with the kingdoms of the world, demanding to be worshipped,–"Take thyself out of my sight!" Paul always in such cases takes himself away.—

Victor did not do this; he absolutely now could not get away from the house, i. e. from the village. The summer days seemed to him to rest in St. Luna, softly breathing, fragrant, blissful; and he was going to be cast out of this softly straying gondola into the slave-ship of the Court,–out of the milk-house of the Parsonage into the princely arsenic-house,–out of the kindergarten of household love into the ice-field of court love. That was a sore thing to him here in the arbor,–and so sweet a thing in Tostato's shop!–When man's wishes and situations exchange places, he accuses the situations, not the wishes. He could laugh at himself for it, he said, but he had a hundred reasons for lingering in St. Luna from one day to another: he was so much disgusted now with his intention of pleasing a man (the Prince) from any other motive than love; it was still more improbable that he should himself please than that he should be pleased; he would rather humor his own whims than those of crownÉd heads, and he knew for certain that in the first month he should tell the Minister von Schleunes satirical things to his very face, and in the second even the Prince; and, in fact, now in midsummer he should just be fit to act the complete court-knave, whereas in winter, &c.

Beside these hundred reasons, he had still weaker ones which he did not at all mention,–for instance, some such as these: He would gladly be about Clotilda, because he must necessarily, as it were, to justify his conduct,–but which, then, my dear, thy past or thy future?–disclose to her his knowledge about her consanguinity to his friend. To this disclosure there was wanting, what in Paris is dearest, place,–and then, too, the exordium. Clotilda was nowhere to be met alone. Connoisseurs say that every secret one tells to one of the fair sex is a sticking-plaster which attaches him to her, and often begets a second secret: was it for some such reason that Victor was so eager to contrive a way of showing to Clotilda his acquaintance with her sisterly relation?–

He stayed day after day, as, besides, the butter-week^[187] of the marriage must go by first. He had already marriage-medals in his pocket. But he never could see Clotilda except a second at a time; and, according to Bonnet, one needs half a second for a clear idea,–according to Hooke, a whole one, in fact. Therefore, before he could form a complete conception of this still goddess, she was always gone.

At last more serious arrangements were made, not for departure, but for forming the purpose of it.... The sweetest minutes of a visit are those which once more postpone its close; the sweetest of all, those in which one already has cane or fan in hand, and yet does not go. Such minutes now encircled our Fabius of love; softer eyes said to him, "Hurry not!" warmer hands drew him back, and the mother's tear asked him, "Wilt thou rob me of my Flamin so soon as to-morrow?"

"By no means," he answered, and kept his seat. Did not, I ask, the Chaplainess thrust for his sake her lingual executioner's sword into its sheath, because there was nothing he so hated as loud or silent defamations of a sex which, more unhappy than ours, sees itself maltreated by two sexes at once? For he often took maidens by the hand, and said: "Woman's faults, particularly evil reports, moodiness, and sensitiveness, are knot-holes, which in the green tree please us even into the honeymoon^[188] as fine marble-veined circles, but which, in the dry, in the marriage-furniture, when the plug has shrunk and fallen out, gape open as ugly holes." Agatha now screwed her sewing-cushion to his writing-table and kissed him, whether he chose to look pleasant or sullen; Even the Chaplain sought to sweeten for him, if not the last days, which he dreamed away at his house, yet at least the last nights, for which purpose he needed nothing but a drum and a foot. The most fiery nocturnal witch-dances of the mice the Chaplain interdicted with his heel, that they might not wake up his guest; that is to say, he kept up against the foot-board of the bed from time to time a moderate cannonading, which knelled into the ear-trumpets of the dancers the more in proportion as it startled the ears of humanity. Against the Euler's knight's-moves of the rats he took the field with only a mallet, wherewith, breaking in like a day of judgment on their pleasure-parties and hunting-parties, he merely thumped once or twice on a drum, extemporized out of the bed-quilt.

Matthieu was invisible, and, as courtiers mimic princes in everything, was parodying the nuptial days of his prince at least by little nuptial hours of his own. The powder which issued out of cannons and the cornucopias of the firework-makers, the vivat which was prayed from pulpits and shouted from taverns, and the expenses one incurred for all this, were, I think, so considerable, that the greatest prince need not have been ashamed to illustrate therewith his marriage and his–ennui. Coldness has forever a speaking-trumpet, and sensitiveness an ear-trumpet. The arrival of an unloved princely corpse or bride is heard of at the polar circles; on the contrary, when we inferiors fill our graves or our arms with loved beings, there fall only a few, unheard tears, disconsolate or blissful.

Flamin pined for the session-table, whose labors were now soon to begin, and he could not comprehend this delay.... At last, for once, and with all seriousness, the day of departure was fixed, the 10th of August; and I am sure Victor would not have been on the 14th still in St. Luna, had not the Devil on the 8th brought along a Tyrolese.

It is the same fellow who day before yesterday made his entry among us at Scheerau, with a wax retinue which he had got together, half from the imperial states and half from among the literati, and with the wax hands of these twin brothers of man took money from our purse. It is stupid, that Spitz did not bring me the present dog's-day the day before yesterday; I could myself have asked the churl, who embossed, in St. Luna, Victor and the Chaplain in wax, what was the real name of Victor, and of Eymann, and of St. Luna itself. The result is, that I am still, with an allowable and biographical curiosity about this carpenter of men, who surrounds us with awful reflections of our little being, following on his heels.

Victor must, therefore, again tarry; for he had himself and the Chaplain baked in wax, in order to give, in the first place, to the latter, who had a childish fondness for all casts, dolls, and puppets, and, secondly, to the family, who longed to quarter the waxen mock-Victor in his vacated chamber, a greater pleasure than to himself. For he had a horror of these flesh-colored shadows of himself. Even in childhood, among all ghost-stories, those of people who had seen themselves crept with the coldest hand over his heart. Often at evening, before going to bed, he surveyed his trembling body so long, that at last he detached it from himself, and saw it standing thus alone beside his self and gesticulating as a strange form; then he would lay himself down, quaking, with this strange form, in the grave of sleep, and the darkling soul felt itself like a Hamadryad, grown over by the pliant fleshy bark. Hence he felt deeply the difference and the long interval between his self and its bark, when he looked for some time on another's body, and still more deeply when he contemplated his own.

He sat opposite the embossing-stool and the embossing-tools, but fixed his eyes on a book again, so as not to see the corporeal form, in which he carried himself round, distant and duplicated. The reason why he nevertheless could endure the reduplication of his face in the glass can only be, that he regarded the supernumerary in the glass either merely as a superficial portrait without cubic contents, or as the only archetype with which we compare other duplicates of our person.... Upon these points I can never speak, myself, without a certain tremor....

The wax-copy of Victor, to express his majority, was arrayed in a toga virilis, an overcoat which the original had cast off; likewise the chamber which the living one vacated was cleared out. The Chaplain proposed to himself to place this cheap edition of Horion in the window when the better one was gone, in such a manner that all the school youth, who learned from the chorister manners and mores, should doff their hats to it when they came tearing out of the school-house.

Now at last!–For Mat came. The wrung-out cheeks of the latter, and his whole body, which had been under the lemon-squeezers of night-feasts, gave evidence that he did not lie when he said the princely bridegroom looked even eight times wretcheder, and was prostrate with the gout. He added in his bitter way, which Victor little liked, that these pale great people had in fact no blood except the little they cupped from their subjects or what stuck to their hands, as insects carry no red blood about with them, save what they have sucked from other creatures. This reminded Victor of his medical duties to this prince. Either Mat's wasted form,–for immoral night-life makes features and complexion still more repulsive than the longest confinement to the sick-bed,–or the recollection of his Lordship's warnings, or both, made him quite as odious to our court-physician as the latter through his court-doctorship had become to him: this secret poison of Matthieu's, however, manifested itself, not by an abated, but by an increased, almost ironical courteousness. On the contrary, Mat and Flamin seemed to be more familiar with one another than ever.

In the forenoon, after shaving, Victor jumped up without washing himself again, and immediately packed up his boot-jack, and burst the suspenders of his pantaloons, and bespoke additional hands to discharge his life-ballast, (on account of his miserable packing,) and then stow it again. For he always gave over the whole trusteeship of the lumber of our petty life's furniture to strange hands, and that with such a contempt for the trumpery and such a recklessness of expenditure,–I never mean, indeed, to calumniate my hero, but, notwithstanding, it is proved by Spitz that he never collated the current money of a gold-piece when he changed it into silver, nor ever beat down in trade a Jew, Roman, or Moravian,–to such a degree, I say, did he carry this, that the whole female Hanse in St. Luna cried, "What a fool!" and that the Chaplainess always in the market-square slipped herself into his place. But he was incorrigible, because he made the journey of life, and therefore the luggage of the journey, look so diminutive through his philosophic eyes, and because nothing made him blush like the least appearance of self-interest: he ran off from all arrangements, outriders, and stage-rehearsals, when they appeared on his account; he was ashamed of every pleasure which was not to be divided, at least into two bites, one for a fellow-eater; he said, the forehead of a Hospodar^[189] must have assumed the hardness of his crown, for otherwise such a man could not possibly endure what often, merely on his behalf, was done by a whole county,–the music, the triumphal arches, the odes, the cries of joy in prose, and the frightful cannonades.

He had now nothing more to discharge in St. Luna than a mere flat civility; for thus much may I well assert without vanity, that a hero whom I have chosen for mine will have, I trust, sufficient good-breeding to go to the Chamberlain Le Baut and say, "Au revoir!" Besides, to such state visits he must now accustom himself.

Mat, too, was over there, that image of a Cupid with bristly, plucked, drooping wings, tossed to the Chamberlain's lady: the latter joked with him about those vacant looks, which betrayed the intermittent pulse of his love. Le Baut was playing chess with Mat,–Clotilda sat at her little work-table full of silk-flowers, in the midst of this noble trio.... Ye poor daughters! what people have you not often to welcome and hear through! To Clotilda, however, this family friend was nothing but a stuffed-out mummy, and she knew not whether he came or went.

Sebastian, as adoptive son of Fortune, as heir of the paternal post of favorite, was to-day received at the Chamberlain's with uncommon civility. Verily, if the courtier shuns unfortunates because sympathy for their sufferings comes over him too heavily, so does he gladly seek the society of the fortunate, because he loves to participate in their joy. The Chamberlain, who even continued to bow before one who, in his fall from a throne, hung midway in the air, naturally bent himself still lower before one who was in the act of making the opposite passage.

Victor joined the women, but with an eye that strayed away to the chess-board, in order, if he should be embarrassed, immediately to have at hand a pretext for changing his attention or taking his leave. It was ingenious: for every word which he or the women said was a move at chess; he was obliged to conceal his coldness toward the Le Baut, that is, toward the stepmother,–how much did she know that nothing graces a mother more than a perfect daughter?–and his warmth toward the stepdaughter. The reader must not ask: "What warmth, then, could the old stepmother desire?" For in the higher ranks claims are not altered by blood-relationship or age; merely in the lower is this the case; hence I always fear that what I address to the daughter may weary the mother, and I always cast about, and rightly, when she comes, for a better thread of discourse. Victor easily concealed his coldness by virtue of humanity, which, with him, so often degenerated into a good-natured flattery of immoral hopes; and when a woman wanted to have him fall in love with her, he would say: "I cannot really tell the good little lamb, 'I would rather not.'" His warmth toward Clotilda he concealed–badly, not because it was too strong, but precisely because it was not yet enough so. It is natural: a young man of education can, if he will, conceal and bury in silence his reciprocated love, without making a pulpit announcement, but an unreturned love, one which he himself calls nothing more than mere regard, he lets blaze out from him without cover. For the rest, I beg the world to sit down and consider, that my hero has not the Devil in his skin or sixteen years over his head, but that he cannot possibly feel a love for a person who hangs a Moses' veil over her sentiments and over her charms. Love begins and rises, throughout, only on reciprocal love, and with the lovers' mutual finding-out of each other. He has merely regard, but a very great, a growing and anxious regard; in short, his regard is that cold pulsating point in the yolk of the heart–the metaphor is drawn from an egg–to which the least outward warmth, often after years, imparts growing life and Cupid's wings.

He now at the work-table investigated Clotilda's warmth with the pyrometer; but I cannot go beside myself for joy, that he found, on a scale subdivided into the minutest parts, her warmth to have risen 1/111 of a line. For he is off the track: I would sooner rely on Lavater's forehead-measurer than on the heart- and warmth-measurer of a love-seeking man, who confounds his interpretations with his observations, and accidents with intentions. His pyrometer may, however, be right; for towards good men one is, when bad ones are by, (consider only Mat,) warmer than usual.

Let no one blame Herr Le Baut and Frau Le Baut for congratulating my hero on the good fortune of going to such a court, to see such a prince,–the greatest in Germany, said he,–to such a princess,–the loveliest in Germany, said she. Mat smiled between Yes and No. The old man went on with his chess, the old woman with her praise. Victor saw with contempt how little possible it would be, in the case of two such souls, who held the steps of the throne for a scale of being, and the glacier of the throne for an Olympus and an EmpyrÆum, and knew not where, except on this eminence, to find their happiness,–to give them better ideas of happiness, and worse ones of the eminence. Nevertheless, he was obliged to confess to Clotilda, who had on her face more than a No to the eulogy, that he negatived the whole of it as nobly as she. He therefore kneaded praise and blame together, according to an Horatian mixture, in order to make neither satirical nor flattering allusions to two dismissed court-people.

"It is painful to me," said he, "that there are only pleasures there, and no occupations,–mere baskets of confectionery, and not a single work-bag, not to say no work-table like this one."

"Do you think," asked Clotilda, with striking earnestness, "that all court-feasts pay for a single court-service?"

"No," said he, "for one ought to be paid for the feasts themselves. I maintain there is nothing but drudgery there, and no enjoyment: all their amusements are only the illumination, the interlude, and the decorations, which please the player, who is thinking of his part, less than the spectator."

"It is, at all events, good to have been there," said the old woman.

"Certainly," said he; "for it is good not always to stay there."

"But there are persons," said Clotilda, "who cannot make themselves happy there, simply because they do not love to be there."

That was very fine and forbearing, but intelligible only to Victor's heart.

"I would advise a fine enthusiast" (said he, and made no account, as usual, of the apparent contradiction between Victor's life and Victor's opinions) "or a fiery poet to stay at home,–the flights of either, instead of pas, would be in court-life what an hexameter is in prose, which the critics cannot bear,–and to the soul with the softest sensibilities I would say, Be off with them! the heart is there treated as a superfluous member, as in the six-fingered family in Anjou the sixth finger is." ...

The old woman shook her head quickly to the left.

"And yet," he continued, "I would take all three for a month to court and make them unhappy, in order to make them wise."

The Chamberlain's family could not accommodate themselves to Victor's style so well as my reader, who to my exceeding delight so cleverly distinguishes humor and the talent of looking at all sides of a thing from flattery and skepticism. Clotilda had slowly shaken her head at the last proposition. In fact, all battled to-day for and against him, in that partial tone which women and relatives always assume towards a stranger, when an hour before they had carried on the same suit, but with a practical application, with their own kin.

Victor, who had long been fearing: that he should become disconcerted, went off at last to where he had been so often looking,–to the chess-table, where they were playing with the greatest desire to–lose. The Chamberlain,–we all know how it was with him; he wrote nothing but commendatory letters for the whole world, and the sacramental cup would have been more to his taste, could he have drunk from it a toast to some important man's health,–that personage only promoted as well as he could with the dry chess-statues another's success at the expense of his own; he was glad to lose, provided only Matthieu won. And then, too, he resembled those shamefaced souls who love to bestow their benefits secretly, and he could not find it in his heart to tell his adversary that he was securing him the victory; he took almost greater pains to conceal himself as a courtier than to conquer himself as a Christian. Such a love ought, it would seem, to have been more warmly requited than by open malice; but Mat had the same object in view, and declined the victory which the other threw into his hands, like a real sharper. In vain did Le Baut devise the best moves for checkmating one's self. Mat matched him with still better ones, and threatened every minute to be checkmated too. And every one pities the poor Chamberlain, hunted about on the chess-board, and fearing, like a coquette, that he shall not be conquered. It became at length, for a soft-souled eye, which certainly forgives the weak one sooner than the wicked one, no longer endurable; Victor, with a thousand excuses to the weak one and full of malice toward the malicious one, entered into the steeple-chase, and obliged the Page to accept his advice and his charitable subsidies, and to lay hold of military operations which he proposed of such worth, that the man with the office of Chamberlain's key, at last, in spite of his fears and in spite of the worst prospects,–lost the game. All present saw through all present, as princes do through each other in their public–playbills.

He got at last his farewell audience, but very small solace. The fair form, beneath which all his ideals of beauty stood only as heraldic bearers and caryatides, was even colder than at the reception, and persisted in being only the echo of the parental courtesy. The only thing which still kept him up was a–thistle: namely, an optical one which had been sowed on the mosaic floor. That is to say, he took notice that Clotilda during the farewell avoided with her foot this flower-piece (which she certainly must have known) as if it were the original. In the evening he drew his chains of inferences, as they are taught in the universities; he engrafted upon this mock-thistle all the roses of his destiny. "She was certainly distrait, and why? I ask," he said, speaking into his pillow; "for, besides, they have not yet detected my feelings over yonder," he asserted, as he laid himself on the second pillow. "O thou sweet eye that went down on the thistle, rise again in my sleep, and be the moon of my dreams!" said he, when he was already half-way into both. It was merely out of modesty that he thought he was not discovered, because he did not look on himself as remarkable enough to be observed.

The 20th of August, 179-, was the great day when he took up his march to Flachsenfingen. Flamin had already trotted off at four o'clock in the afternoon, in order to avoid a leave-taking which he hated. But our Victor loved to bid farewell, and loved to tremble in the last silences of parting. "O ye poor, egoistic mortals!" he said,–"besides; this polar life is but so bald and cold; besides, we stand weeks and years near each other without stirring with the heart anything better than our blood,–only two or three glowing moments hiss and go out on the glaciers of life,–why do you still avoid everything that draws you out of your commonplace, and that reminds you how man loves? No! and if I went to the bottom, and if I could thenceforward no longer console myself, I would still, with bare heart and with all my wounds bleeding, dissolved and sinking, I would still press to my bosom the beloved being who must leave me, and would still say, It does me good!" Cold, self-seeking, comfortable persons avoid leave-taking, just as unpoetic ones of too intense sensibilities do; women, on the contrary, who alleviate all their sorrows by talking, and people of poetic temperament, who relieve all theirs by fantasying, court it.

At six o'clock in the evening,–for it was only a skip to Flachsenfingen,–when the cattle came home, he sallied forth, accompanied by the whole family. On his more fortunate arm–mine has to bestir itself only for the good of science–hung the Britoness, and on his left Agatha; to the sister the poor house-poodle (Apollonia) had buckled herself, who thought, nevertheless, she might touch and enjoy, despite the sisterly interpolation and mediating spirit, the dear Doctor. So do the sparks of love, like the electric and magnetic element, dart through a medium of twenty interposed bodies. A philosopher, who sits down and considers that our fingers come not, in fact, a thumb nearer to the beloved soul, whether only the globe of the brain or that of the earth lie between them and it, will of course say, "All very natural!" Hence this sedentary philosopher explains why maidens half-love at the same time the male acquaintances of their beloved,–why the cane-chair of Shakspeare, the clothes-drawer of Frederick II., the bob-wig of Rousseau, content our yearning hearts.—

But no one, except the queen-bee of this streaming swarm, wanted to go back again. "Only just as far as the six trees," said Agatha. When they had arrived at these frontier posts and boundary-trees of to-day's pleasure, there were seven of them, and there was a general agreement that they were not meant, and they must go farther. The one who is escorted grows generally more and more nervous, and the escort more and more delighted, the longer it lasts. "Do let us go as far as that ploughman!" said the sharp-sighted Britoness. But at last our hero observed, that this Pillar of Hercules of their journey was itself a moving column, and that the ploughman was only a wayfarer. "The best thing is," said he, and turned about, "for me to go back, and not start till to-morrow." The Chaplain said: "As far as the old palace" (i. e. there was still one wall of it remaining); "besides, I usually go there evenings!" But beyond this frontier fort of the loveliest of evenings the chattering column deceptively extended its march, and the eyes were forgotten for the ears. As, consequently, in these boundary disputes, one main article after another was broken by separate articles, there was really nothing further to be done, except to make the following attempt. "Only so far did I mean to have you go," said Victor;–"now you must keep on with me and spend the night at the apothecary's." "In fact," said the Chaplain's wife, coolly, "we'll go along together till sundown; we surely are not going to turn our backs upon this lovely sun." And certainly the evening had kindled nothing but feux-de-joie in the sun, in the clouds, on the earth, and on the water.

On the hill they saw already the spires of the city; the sun, that chosen turnstile of the escort, poured out of his deep hiding-place his gold-trailing purple streams over the beds of shadow. There, on the hill, as the sun vanished, Victor folded his arms round the married couple, and said, "O, make yourselves as happy as you do me, and return to your home in gladness!"–and then he took the sisters to his enraptured heart, and said, "Good, good night! I love you!"–and then he saw them all going back with their hidden sighs and tears; and then he called out, "Truly, I shall soon come back; it is really only a jump from one place to the other"; and then he cried after them, "I shall be a poor devil, if we are separated!"–and then his heavy eye followed them through all branches and hollows, and only when the loving company had sunk into the last valley, as into a grave, did he close his eyes and think on the ceaseless separations of man....

At last he opened his eyes toward the outspread, obscured city, and thought: "Amidst that raised-work, in which men nestle with their little life, thy little days, too, are shut in,–this is the veiled birthplace of thy future tears, thy future raptures;–ah! with what eyes shall I look down again, years hence, over this misty environment,–and ... I am a fool! are, then, 2,300 houses standing only on my account?"

Postscript. This sixteenth post-day the Mining-Superintendent has concluded in regular order at the end of June.

FOURTH INTERCALARY DAY,

AND

PREFACE TO THE SECOND PART.

I am going to weld Intercalary Day and Preface together. Therefore, unless there is to be mere trifling with the matter of the Preface, the Second Part must be here, in some measure at least, touched upon. It deserves to be noticed by critics, that an author who in the beginning has before him for his domain eight pages of white paper–just as, according to Strabo, the territory of Rome was eight leagues broad–gets on by degrees so far, and peoples the scribbled paper with so many Greek colonists,–for such our German characters are,^[190]–that at last he has often marched through and settled a whole alphabet. This puts him into a condition to begin the Second Part. My second is, as I know for certain, much better than the first, although it is, to be sure, ten times worse than the third. I shall be amply rewarded, if my work is the occasion of one review more being made in the world; nor can I conceive of anything, unless it be this very thought, that books must be written, so that the learned notices of them may go on, which could keep an author up to the unspeakable labor of standing all day at the inkstand, and dyeing whole pounds of paper-rags Berlin-blue.... And now let this cool, serious, hocus-pocus of a Preface–an expression which Tillotson maintains to be an abridgment of the Catholic formula, hoc est corpus–suffice for good reviewers and universities.

I return to that which I properly meant by this whole episode. I have conceived the idea, namely, of not only announcing my intention to give the extra leaflets and side-shoots wherewith the Intercalary Days are to be filled up, in alphabetical order,–for disorder is the death of me,–but also to make a beginning here on the spot, and continue as far as the letter I.

INTERCALARY–AND SIDE-SHOOTS, ALPHABETICALLY ARRANGED.

A.

Age of Women.–Lombardus (L. 4. Sent. dist. 4) and Saint Augustin (l. 22. de Civit. c. 15) prove that we all rise from the dead at that age at which Christ rose, namely, in the thirty-second year and third month. Accordingly, as in the whole of heaven there is no quadragenarian to be found, a child will be as old there as Nestor, namely, thirty-two years and three months. Knowing this, any one will highly esteem the fine modesty of women, who after the thirtieth year give themselves out (like relics) to be older than they are; for it would be enough, if a quadragenarian, or one of eight-and-forty years, should make herself out as old as good Rhine wine, or, at most, as old as Methuselah; but she thinks it is being more modest, if she ascribes to herself at once, however much her face contradicts it, the extreme old age which she can have only when her face has lain some thousands of years in the earth, namely, thirty-two years and three months. The merest dunce can see that she means only her future resurrection-age, and not any earthly age,–because she does not deviate from that standing year, which in eternity, indeed, when no human being can grow an hour older, is a matter of course. This unity of time they introduce into the Intrigue drama of their life already in the thirtieth year, for the reason that after that time in Paris no woman can any longer dance in public, and (according to Helvetius) no genius can any longer write in a masterly style. This last fact they perhaps took into account in old times in Jerusalem, where any one after his thirtieth year, but no sooner, could get an office as teacher.

B.

Basedow's School System.–Basedow proposes in his Philalethia to hedge up thirty uneducated children in a garden, to leave them to their own development, and to assign them only mute attendants, who should not even wear human clothing, and then to publish in a protocol the results of the experiment. Philosophers are so preoccupied with possibility that they do not see reality; otherwise Basedow must have observed that our country-schools are just such gardens, in which Philosophy would try the experiment of what will at last come of human creatures, if they are absolutely deprived of all culture. I confess, however, that all these attempts must continue uncertain and imperfect so long as the schoolmasters cannot refrain from imparting to these little probationers some instruction, though it were the least possible; and the thing would work better with wholly dumb teachers, as there are deaf and dumb pupils.

C (vide K).

D.

Divine Poet.–The Poet, although he paints the passions, nevertheless will hit them best at that period of life when his own, have slackened,–just as convex mirrors, precisely in those summers when the sun burned the faintest, have acted the most intensely, and in the hot ones the least so. The flowers of poesy are like other flowers, which (according to Ingenhouse) thrive best in a dim, hazy sunlight.

E.

Emotion (Sentimental).–Sentimentality often imparts to the inner man, as apoplexy to the outer, greater sensibility and yet paralysis.

F (see Ph)

G.

Goddess.-As the Romans would rather recognize their monarchs as gods than as masters, so do men like to call the directress of their heart goddess rather than mistress,–because it is easier to adore than to obey.

H.

H.–I have often seen people who had the wherewithal of living and knew how to live,–which are not two different things,–first, flutter about the best and most superior women and suck from the honey-cup of their hearts; and, secondly, I have seen them on the same day fold their wings and light on a miserable ninny, that the ninny might inherit their–heirs. But never have I compared these butterflies to anything but butterflies, which all day long visit and rifle flowers, and yet spawn their eggs on a dirty cabbage-stump.

H.

Holbein's Leg.–I prefer repeating the H in the place of I, because under the Rubric of the I would come the Invalides, of whom I had meant to assert, that, as people who have had limbs taken off become full-blooded, so they have the less bread handed to them the more limbs they have had shot or cut off, and that this is called the Physiology and Dietetics of the military chest.–But I have pitied these (half) poor devils too much to do it.

The famous legs of Holbein afford a better joke than legs that have been taken off. That is to say, this painter used his brush in Basle only upon Basle itself; and the self-same circumstance that drove his genius to this architectural dyeing-business compelled it often to hold recess-hours therein,–namely, he guzzled terribly. A house owner, whose name is wanting in history, often came to the house-door, and swore up at the scaffolding, when the house-stainer's legs–for that was all of the painter that could be seen–were standing or staggering in the neighboring wine-cellar. Then when Holbein by-and-by came stalking along with them across the street, a quarrel came to meet him and went with him up the scaffold. This irritated the painter, who made a study even of his cups, and he proposed to himself to reform the owner. That is to say, as he owed his misfortune wholly to his legs, whose festoons the man wanted to see under the scaffolding, he resolved to make a second edition of his legs, and paint them on the house in a hanging posture, so that the man, when he looked up from the house-door below, should get the idea that the two legs and their boots were painting away up there busily. And the owner took this idea, too; but, as he observed at last that the counterfeit foot-works hung all day in one spot and never moved along, he wanted to see what kept the master so long improving and retouching at one part, and so up he went. Up there in the vacuum he easily saw that the painter ceased where the knee-pieces began, at the knee, and that the trunk, which was wanting, was again guzzling in an alibi.

I do not blame the owner for not at once on the scaffolding drawing a moral from the leg-works; he was too furious.

I meant to have appended a further history of the princely portraits which hang there behind the President in the Session-Chambers instead of the originals, by way of casting-votes,–but I should disturb the connection; here, too, was formerly the end of the First Part.

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