Gun-Foundery of Love; e. g. Printed Gloves, Quarrels, Dwarf-Flasks, and Stabs.–A Title from the Digests of Love.–Marie.–Court-Day.– Giulia's dying Epistle.

The reader will be vexed with this Dog-Post-Day; I, for my part, have already been vexed about it. My hero is evidently becoming entangled in the meshes of two female trains, and even in the bonds of the princely friendship... Nothing more is wanting than that Clotilda should actually be joined to the hurly-burly.—And something of this kind it becomes necessary for a mining-superintendent, an islander, to communicate confidentially to the people on the mainland.

Besides, it must be done chronologically. I will dissect this Dog-Post-Day, which reaches from November to December, into weeks. Thereby more order will be observed. For I understand the Germans. They want, like the metaphysician, to know everything from the beginning onward, very exactly, in royal octavo, without excessive brevity, and with some citata. They furnish an epigram with a preface, and a love-madrigal with a table of contents; they determine the zephyr by compass and the heart of a maiden by conic sections; they mark everything, like merchants, in black-letter, and prove everything, like jurists; their cerebral membranes are living parchments, their legs private surveyors'-poles and pedometers; they cut up the veil of the Nine Muses, and apply to the hearts of these damsels turners'-compasses, and insert gauging-rods in their heads; poor Clio (the muse of history) looks, for all the world, like the Consistorial Counsellor BÜsching, who trudges along slowly, bent up under a land freight of surveyors'-chains, clocks to calculate thirds, and Harrison's longitude-watches, and interleaved writing-almanacs, so that I specially weep for the poor BÜsching as often as I see him striding along, since all Germany, (from which I should have expected something different,)–every magistrate, every stupid justice of the peace, (only we of Scheerau have never saddled him,)–has loaded down the good topographical carrier and Christopher (cross-bearer), like a statue hung with pledges, from knee to nostril, (so that the good man is hardly to be seen, and I wonder how he stays on his feet,)–has palisaded, I say, and built him in with all sorts of cursed devil's whisks, with village inventories, with advertising sheets, with heraldic works, with books of ground-plats and perspective plans of pigsties.

They have even–that I may only relate an example out of my own history of the German statistic stupidity, although in the very doing of it I give one–infected Jean Paul. Is it not an old story that he has approximately assigned in degrees, by means of a Saussure's cyanometer,^[241] the blueness of the fairest eyes into which an amoroso ever looked, and inspected the fairest drops that fell from them during the measurement, correctly enough, with a dew-measurer?–And has not his attempt to catch and prove female sighs by a Stegmann's measurer of the purity of the atmosphere found more than too many imitators among us?—

WEEK OF THE 22d POST-TRINITATIS, OR FROM NOV. 3d to 11th (EXCLUSIVE).

Almost the whole of this week he sat out at the Minister's. Many people, when they have been only four times in a house, come again daily, like the quotidian fever,–in the beginning, like the spring sun, every day earlier; afterward, like the autumn sun, every day later. He saw, indeed, that he could not contribute anything at this court-and-ministerial party, either a mystery, or property, or a heart, because it would resemble honest courts of justice, which–just as the monks call their property a deposit, and say nothing belongs to them–inversely promote every deposit into a piece of property, and say all belongs to them. But he made no account of that. "I come indeed only for fun," thought he, "and no harm can be done to me."—

The Minister, whom he met only over the table, had all the civility towards him which can be united with a face full of persiflage, and with a class of society in whose eyes all the world is divided into spies and thieves; but Sebastian perceived, nevertheless, that he looked upon him as a smatterer in medicine and the serious sciences,–as if they were not all serious,–and as an adept merely in wit and in the liberal arts. He was, however, too proud to turn to him any other than the empty new-moon-side, and concealed from him all that might convert him. Consequently, Victor must needs, in the eyes of the stupidest government-officer who had seen it, have deprived himself of all respect by the fact that, when the Minister started an interesting conversation with his brother, the Regency-President, about imposts, alliances, or the exchequer, he either did not attend, or ran off, or looked up the women.—Then, too, he loved in the Prince only the man; the Minister loved only the Prince. Victor could himself, when with January, deliver discourses on the advantages of republics, and the latter would often, in his enthusiasm, (if the supreme courts and his stomach had allowed it,) gladly have raised Flachsenfingen to a free state, and himself to the President of Congress therein. But the Minister hated all this with a mortal hatred, and fastened on all political free-thinkers–on a Rousseau, on all Girondists, all Feuillants, all Republicans, and all philosophers–the name of Jacobin, as the Turks call all foreigners, Britons, Germans, Frenchmen, etc., Franks. Meanwhile this was a reason why Victor now took a greater liking to Mat, who thought better on this subject, and why he fled from the father to the daughter.

This week he got into Joachime's good graces. She gave to the fine and fragrant duo of fools, as we do to virtue, only the second prize, and to my hero, as we do to inclination, the prize-medal. But as he respected, at most, merely a certain sentimentalism in friendship and in love, he could, he thought, have ridden through the moon with this waggish girl, without sighing for her (though he might, indeed, over her). But these jolly ones, my Bastian, have seen the old Harry; for whenever they change to anything else, one changes with them to the same thing. She told him she wanted to give pleasure, like a Lutheran holy picture, but she would not be adored, like a Catholic one. She prepossessed him most by the gift peculiar to her sex, of understanding tender allusions,–women are so easy at guessing the meaning of others, because they always oblige others to guess their meaning, and complete and conceal each half with equal success. But among her attractions I reckon also her constraint before the Princess, and before those who listened with their–eyes. For the rest, his heart, which Clotilda had rejected, was now in the situation of children who have made a bet that they will receive blows upon their hands without crying, and who still continue to smile when the tears already flow.

WEEK OF THE 23d POST-TRINITATIS, OR 46th OF THE YEAR 179-.

Now he is there even in the forenoon. It is worthy of notice, that on St. Martin's day he scraped her powdered forehead with the powder-knife, and that he applied to her for some court offices in connection with the toilet. "I can be your rouge-box bearer, as the Great Mogul has tobacco-pipe and betel-bearers, or else your cravatier ordinaire, or your sommier (i. e. prayer-cushion-bearer).–I would, if you did not kneel yourself on the cushion, myself do it before you.—I knew in Hanover a handsome Englishman who had his left knee stuffed and padded, because he did not know whom he should to-day have to adore, and how long."

It is something quite as important, that on St. Jonas's day he forced her to accept a pair of fine gloves, on which a very simple face was painted. "It was his own," he said; "she should have the face only by night, in bed, in, or on, her hand, that it might look as if he kissed her hand through the whole November night."

I go on with my pragmatic extracts from this siege-journal, and find recorded on Leopold's day that, as early as in the forenoon, Joachime said she would have her parrot, if she kept a master of languages for him, repeat nothing out of the whole dictionary except the word perfide! "Every lover," said she, "should keep a poll for himself, which should incessantly cry out to him, perfide!"–"The ladies," said my hero, "are alone to blame: they want to be loved too long; often whole weeks, whole months. The like of that is beyond our powers. Have not the Jesuits made even love to God periodical? Scotus limits it to Sunday, others to the festival days.–Coninch says, it is enough if one loves Him once every four years.–Henriquez adds a year more to it.–Suarez says, it is enough if it is only done before one's death.—To many ladies the intermediate times have hitherto fallen; but the hours of the day, the seasons of the year, the days of betrothal, of burial, form just as many different sects among the Jesuits of Love."–Joachime made a beginning of putting on an angry look. The court-physician loved nothing better with a fair one than a quarrel, and added: "C'est À force de se faire haÏr qu'elles se font aimer–c'est aimer que de bouder–ah, que je vous prie de vous fÂcher!"–His humor had carried him beyond the mark.–Joachime had reason enough to fulfil his prayer for her wrath.–He wanted to continue the quarrel in order to settle it, but as there are cases where the aggravation of an offence brings about forgiveness quite as little as the taking of it back step by step, he did wisely in coming away.

He wondered that he should think of her all day long. The feeling of having done her wrong brought her face with a suffering expression before his softened soul, and all her features were at once ennobled. Tacitus says, we hate another when we have offended him; but good men often love another merely on that account.

The day following, Ottomar's day,–Ottomar! great name, which makes the long funeral procession of a great past sweep by all at once before me in the dark,–he found her serious, neither seeking nor shunning him. The two fools remained in her eyes the two fools, and gained nothing in any way. As, therefore, he clearly perceived that out of a transient resentment there had grown true repentance for her previous openness,–of which he seemed to have made too free a use and too selfish an interpretation,–it was now his duty to do in earnest that which he had hitherto done in joke, namely, to seek her and get her to be reconciled.

But she stood all the time by the Princess, and nothing was done.

I have not said it myself, because I knew the reader would see it without me,–that my hero thinks Joachime regards him as the image-worshipper of her charms, and as the moon-man, or satellite attracted by her. My hero has, therefore, long since made up his mind to leave her in this error. As to removing such an error,–for that a man or a woman seldom has strength enough; but Victor had, besides, several reasons for indulging her with faith in his love (that is, himself, also, with faith in hers). In the first place, he wanted to conceal the reason of his coming; secondly, he knew that in the great world, and among the Joachimes, a lover is sought for only as third man in the game,–with them there is no dying of love, one does not even live on it; thirdly, he reserved for himself in all cases the sheet-anchor of making earnest out of jest; "when the knife is at my throat," thought he, "then I will set myself down and fall truly in love with her, and then all will be well"; fourthly, a coquette makes a coquet.^[242] ... Here I began already, as is well known, to be vexed about the 22d Post-Day, although I know as well as anybody why all mankind, even the most sincere, even the male kind, incline to little intrigues towards their beloved; that is to say, not merely because they are little and reciprocated, but because one thinks by his intrigues to give more than he steals. Only the highest and noblest love is without real trickery.

WEEKS OF THE 24th AND 25th POST-TRINITATIS.

On Sunday there was a ball. "Very naturally," said he, "she will not look on me. In ball-dress the fair sex are more implacable than in morning dress." Hardly had she seen him when she came to meet him, like an agitated heaven, with her fixed stars of brilliants and her pearl-planets, and in this splendor begged of him the forgiveness of her freak. She had at first made believe angry, she said, then had actually become so; and not until the next day had seen that she did wrong to appear so and had a right to be so. This prayer for forgiveness made our Medicus more humble than was necessary. She begged him sportively to beg her pardon, and made him acquainted with her percussion-gold of sudden resentment.

For a space of two days this Westphalian peace was kept.

But one quarrel with a maiden, like one fool, makes ten; and unfortunately one only likes the angry one so much the better (at least, better than the indifferent), just as people run most after those Methodist preachers who damn them the most roundly. Joachime grew daily more susceptible of anger,–which he ascribed to an increasing love,–but so did he, too. Let them have spent the whole visit in the finest imperial and domestic peace, at the leave-taking all was put upon a war-footing again, ambassadors and furloughed ones (if I may be allowed these poetical expressions) recalled. Then with the angry sediments in his heart he withdrew, and could hardly wait for the moment of the next interview,–i. e. of his or her justification. Thus did they spend their hours in the writing of peace-instruments and manifestoes. The matter of dispute was as singular as the quarrel itself: it concerned their demands of friendship; each party proved that the other was the faulty one, and demanded too much. What most enraged our Medicus was, that she allowed the fine and the fragrant fools to kiss her hand, which she forbade him to do, and in truth without any reasons for the decision. "If she would only lie to me, and say, such or such is the reason,–that at least would be something," said he; but she did him not the pleasure. To my sex, refusal without reasons, even conjecturable ones, is a pit of brimstone, a threefold death; upon Joachime, reasons and cabinet-sermons had equal influence.

EXTRA-LEAF ON THE ABOVE.

I have a hundred times, with my legal burden of proof on my back, thought of women who are able, with a certain effort, to act as well as to believe without any reasons. For surely, in the end, everybody must (according to all philosophers) reconcile himself to actions and opinions for which reasons are entirely wanting; for, since every reason appeals to a new one, and this again rests upon one which refers us to one, which again must have its own reason, it follows that (unless we mean to be forever going and seeking) we must finally arrive at one which we accept without any reason whatever. Only the scholar fails in this, that precisely the most important truths–the highest principles of morals, of metaphysics, &c.–are the ones which he believes without reasons, and which, in his agony,–thinking to help himself out thereby,–he names necessary truths. Woman, on the contrary, makes lesser truths–e. g. there must be drives, invitations, washing to-morrow, &c.–the necessary truths, which must be accepted without the insurance and reinsurance of reasons;–and just this it is which gives her such an appearance of soundness. For them it is easy to distinguish themselves from the philosopher, who thinks, and into whose eyes the sun of truth flames so horizontally that he cannot see, for it, either road or landscape. The philosopher is obliged, in the weightiest actions,–the moral,–to be his own lawgiver and law-keeper, without having the reasons therefor given him by his conscience. With a woman, every inclination is a little conscience, and hates Heteronomies,^[243] and beyond that pronounces no reasons, just as the great conscience does. And it is precisely this gift, of acting more from private sovereignty than from reasons, which makes women so very suitable for men; for the latter would rather give them ten commands than three reasons.

End of the Extra-Leaf on the above.

What was full as bad was, that Joachime at last, only for the sake of removing his documentary piles of complaints and imperial grievances, allowed him her fingers, without giving him the least reason for it. He could, therefore, show no title of possession, and, in case of need, would have had no one who could protect him therein.

There is, however, a well-grounded rule of right or Brocardicon^[244] for men: that everything grows firmer with women, when one builds upon it, and that a little stolen favor legitimately belongs to us, so soon as we sue for a greater. This rule of right bases itself upon the fact that maidens always abate with us, as one does to Jews in trade, the half, and give only a couple of fingers when we want the hand. But if one has the fingers, then arises, out of the Institutions, a new title, which adjudicates to us the hand: the hand gives a right to the arm, and the arm to everything that is appended to it, as accessorium. Thus must these things be managed, if right is to remain right. There will, in fact, have to be a little manual written by me, or some other honest man, wherein one shall expound and elucidate to the female sex with the torch of legal learning the modos (or ways) acquirendi (of winning) them. Otherwise many modi may go out of use. Thus, e. g., according to civil law, I am rightful proprietor of a movable thing, if it was stolen thirty years ago (in fact, it should be further back, and I should not be made to suffer for it, that one began the stealing later); so, too, by prescription of thirty minutes (the time is relative) everything belonging to a fair one lawfully falls to me, which (of a movable nature–and everything about her is movable) I may have purloined from her, and therefore one cannot begin soon enough to steal, because before the theft the prescription cannot begin to take effect.

Specification is a good modus. Only one must be, like me, a Proculian,^[245] and believe that a strange article belongs to him who has imparted to it a different form; e. g. to me, the hand which I have put into another shape by pressure.

The late Siegwart said: Confusio (mingling of tears) is my modus. But commixtio (mixture of dry articles, e. g. the fingers, the hair) is now with almost all of us the modus acquirendi.

I was going once to treat the whole thing according to the doctrine of the Servitudes,^[246] where a woman has a thousand things to suffer (though all these servitudes are entirely extinguished by the consolidation^[247] of marriage); but I do not myself any longer rightly retain the doctrine of the Servitudes, and would much rather examine any one in them than be examined myself.—

I return to the Medicus. Since, then, he knew that a kissed hand is a warrant to the cheeks,–but the cheeks the sacrificial tables of the lips,–these of the eyes,–the eyes of the neck;–accordingly he would have proceeded exactly according to his text-book. But with Joachime, as with all antipodes of coquettes, no favor paved the way for another, not even the great one for the small one; you passed from one antechamber to another,–and what said my hero to this? Nothing but "Thank God that for once there is one better than she seemed, who, under the appearance of being our plaything, plays with us, and makes her coquetry the veil of virtue!"

He felt now, as often as her name was mentioned, a soft warmth breathe through his bosom.

FROM THE END OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL YEAR (Dec. 1) TO THE END OF THE CIVIL (Dec. 31).

Flamin, whose patriotic flames found no air in the session-chamber, and stifled himself first, grew shyer and wilder every day. It was something new to him, that it took whole boards and commissions to do what one person might have done,–that the limbs of the state (as is also the case, indeed, with the limbs of the body) are moved by the short arm of the lever, so as to do less with greater power, and a board, particularly, resembles the body, which, according to Borellus,^[248] spends 2,900 times as much strength on a leap as the load which it has to lift requires. He hated all great people, and never went to see any: the page Mat did not even get visits from him. My Sebastian made his visits to him seldomer, because his leisure and his calms of dissipation fell exactly upon Flamin's working hours. This separation, and the eternal sitting at Schleunes's,–which Flamin, from not being acquainted with Joachime's influence, was obliged at all events to ascribe to Clotilda's, for future visits to whom Victor must be creating a pretext by his present ones,–and even the Prince's favor towards the latter, which in Flamin's eyes could not be any result of his spirit of freedom and his sincerity;–all this drew the intertwined bonds of their friendship, which had made life to them hitherto a four-handed piece of music, further and further asunder; the faults and the moral dust which Victor could once brush off from his darling he hardly dared to blow off; they behaved towards each other more delicately and attentively. But my Victor, to whose heart Fate applied so many tongues of vampyres, and who was compelled to shut up in one breast the bitterness of lost love and the woe of failing friendship, was made by it all–really merry. O, there is a certain gayety of stagnation and grief, which is a sign of the soul's exhaustion, a smile like that on men who die of wounds in the diaphragm, or that on the shrivelled, drawn-back lips of mummies! Victor plunged into the stream of amusements, in order, under it, not to hear his own sighs. But often, to be sure, when he had all day long been sprinkling over ruined follies comic salt, which full as often bites the hand of the sower and makes it ache, and when he had not been able all day long to refresh himself with any eye, to which he would have dared to show a tear in his own,–when, thus weary of the present, indifferent to the future, wounded by the past, he had just passed by the last fool, the Apothecary, and when from his bow-window he looked out into the night hanging full of worlds, and into the tranquillizing moon, and upon the eastern clouds over St. Luna,–then were his swollen heart and his swollen eyeball sure to burst, and the tears which night concealed to stream down from his balcony on the hard pavement. "O, only one soul," cried his innermost being with all the tones of melancholy,–"give but one soul, thou eternal, loving, creative nature, to this poor, languishing heart, which seems so hard and is so soft, which seems so joyous and yet is so sad, seems so cold and yet is so warm!"

It was well that, on such an evening, no chamberlain, no man of the world, stood in the balcony, just as poor Marie–on whom her former life has been precipitated like a crushing avalanche–came to desire his breakfast-orders; for he would get up, without wiping away a drop, and advance kindly to meet her, and grasp her soft, but red and hard-worked hand, which from fear she did not draw back,–although from fear she did turn away her face, hardened into stone against hope,–and say, as he softly stroked her eyebrows horizontally, with a voice rising from a heart full of the deepest emotion, "Thou poor Marie, tell me–I am sure thou hast little comfort–is it not so? There seldom comes any longer into thy gentle eyes anything that they love to see, unless it is thy own tears? Dear girl, why hast thou no courage before me? why dost thou not tell me thy woe? Thou good, tortured heart,–I will speak for thee, act for thee: tell me what weighs on thee, and if ever of an evening thy heart is too heavy, and thou mayest not venture to weep down below, then come up to me ... look at me now frankly ... truly I will shed tears with thee, let them say what they will and be hanged." Although she held it to be uncourteous to weep before so distinguished a gentleman, nevertheless, it was impossible for her, by a forcible bending away of her face, to thrust aside all the tears which his voice, full of love, drew in rivers from her eyes.... Take it not ill of his over-boiling soul, that he then pressed his hot mouth to her cold, despised, and unresistingly trembling lips, and said to her: "Oh, why are we mortals so unhappy, when we are too soft-hearted?"–In his chamber she seemed to take all as jest,–but all night long she heard the echo of the humane man;–even as jest, so much love would have been a comfort to her; then her past flowers once more crystallized in the window-frost of her present wintry-time; then she felt as if she were to-day, for the first time, unhappy.–In the morning she said nothing to any one, and towards Sebastian she was merely more devoted, but not more courageous; only, at times, she would concur with the dispenser down below, when he praised him, and say, but without further explanation, "One should cut up one's own heart into little bits, and sacrifice it for the English gentleman."

Poor Marie! my own innermost heart repeats after the Doctor, and adds besides: Perhaps at this very moment, just such an unhappy woman, just such an unhappy man, is reading me. And I feel as if; now that I have struck the funeral bells of their past sad hours, I must also write them a word of consolation. But for one who has to be ever striding across new gaping ice-chasms of life, I know no resource but my own: the moment things grow bad, fling all possible hopes to the Devil, and with utter renunciation fall back upon thyself, and ask, How now, if even the worst should come, what then? Never reconcile thy fancy to the next misfortune, but to the greatest. Nothing relaxes one's spirits more than the alternation of warm hopes with cold anguish. If this method is too heroic for thee, then seek for thy tears an eye that shall imitate them, and a voice that shall ask thee why thou art thus. And reflect: the echo of the next life, the voice of our modest, fairer, holier soul, is audible only in a sorrow-darkened bosom, as the nightingales warble when one veils their cage.

Often did Sebastian worry himself about this, that he could here exert so little his noble powers in behalf of humanity; that his dreams of preventing evil and accomplishing good through the Prince remained fever-dreams, because, e. g., even the best men at the helm of the state filled offices entirely according to circumstances and recommendations merely, and held offices, whether those of others or their own, never as obligations, but as mining-curacies. He was troubled about his uselessness; but he consoled himself with its necessity: "in a year, when my father comes, I set myself free and rise to something better," and his conscience added, that his own personal uselessness was serviceable to the virtue of his father, and that it was better to be, in a wheel, with all one's fitness for a pendulum, a tooth, without which the machinery would stop, than to be the pendulum of a toothless wheel.

In such cases he always asked himself afresh: "Is Joachime, perhaps, like me, better, tenderer, less coquettish than she seems? and why wilt thou condemn her on the strength of an outward appearance, which is, to be sure, the same as thine own?" Her conduct seldom confirmed these favorable suppositions, nay, it often absolutely refuted them; nevertheless, he went on to expose himself to new refutations and to desire confirmation still. The necessity of loving drives one to greater follies than love itself; every week Victor let himself abate one perfection more from the female ideal, for which, as for the unknown god, he had already for years had the altar set up in his brain. During this haggling the whole of December would have slipped away, had it not been for the first day of Christmas.

On that day, when he saw through every window laughing faces and gardens of Hesperides, he too would fain be joyful, and flew amidst the church-chorals to Joachime's toilet-chamber, in order there to make himself a Christmas pleasure. He had brought her for a present, he said, a bottle-case of liqueurs, a whole cellar of Rataffia, because he knew how ladies drank. When, at last, he drew his gantry full of bottles out of his–pocket: it was a miserable little box full of cotton-wool, in which stood imbedded neat little bottles of sweet-smelling waters, almost as long as wrens'-eggs. What is neat always pleases girls–as well as what is splendid. He delivered a long discourse to Joachime upon the temperance of her sex, who ate as little as humming-birds and drank as little as eagles: with a few show-dishes and a smelling-bottle he would feast an army of the female sex five thousand men strong, and there should still be something left. The physicians observed that they who had borne hunger longest had been women,–even in the middle classes the whole bee-flora on which these saints lived consisted of a colored ribbon, which they wore as sash or scarf, by way of a nourishing poultice and portable soup, and to which they attached nothing further, except at most a lover. Joachime, during the eulogy, drew out a bottle, because she thought it wax. Victor, by way of refuting her–or for some other reason–pressed it tightly into her hand, and fortunately crushed it. A mining-superintendent of my disposition would hardly introduce the crushing of a bottle, not big enough to cover one of Eymann's cucumbers with, into his Dog-Post-Days,–because he loves to serve up things of importance,–did not the bottle itself acquire an importance from the fact that it cut the softest hand upon which the hardest jewel ever yet threw lustre, till it ran blood. The Doctor was startled,–the patient smiled,–he kissed the wound, and these three drops fell like Jason's blood, or like a blood rectified by an alchemist, as three sparks into his inflammable veins, and the blood-coal of love assumed three glowing points;–nay, a little more, and he would have obeyed her, when she playfully commanded him (in order to spare him a greater embarrassment than he had) to revive the antiquated fashion of the Parisians, of writing to ladies with rose-colored ink, and here on the spot to despatch three lines to her in her own blood. Thus much is, at least, certain, that he told her he wished he were the Devil. To the last-named personage, as is well known, the warranty-deed or rather partition-treaty of the soul is despatched with the blood of the proprietor as fist-^[249]pledge and consideration. Blood is the seed of the Church, the Catholic Church says; and here we are speaking of nothing less than the temple of the fair.

So it was–and so it stood–when the Court of the Princess was announced for to-day. This was, in the first place, plaguily awkward for him, because this evening was spoiled; and, secondly, it was agreeable to him, because Joachime was obliged to-day to put away the hat which he and she so loved. Since, as is customary, ladies had the robes and frisures prescribed to them by the Princess, in which they must celebrate in her presence the court-day, i. e. the incendiary Sunday of their freedom: accordingly, she could not to-day keep on the crape-hat which she so loved, and Victor too, but not on her; for it was just the mate of that which Clotilda had worn when, during the concert, she covered her moist eyes with the black-lace veil, which from that time always hung down over his bereaved eyes.

I will describe the Court-day.

The main object of the Court in setting forth at six o'clock in the evening was, to drive home again at ten o'clock in a right sulky mood. I can, however, deliver this ten times as copiously:–

At six o'clock Victor, with the rest of the communion of brethren and sisters under orders, drove to the Paullinum. He envied, or rather blessed, the weaver, the boot-polisher, the wood-cutter, who had at evening his jug of beer, his prayers, his Johnny-^[250]cakes and his trumpeting children; likewise their wives, who already had foretaste of the morrow, namely, of the marbled, speckled dresses which were to array them for the second holiday. In the May-colored atmosphere and zodiac stood the Princess as a sun, full as unhappy as her unhappy planets; only dream (thought he) can make a king happy or a poor man unhappy. When he saw how they all, after a scanty frog-rain of words; and after refreshments, i. e. beatings and exhaustions, were harnessed, one post-team after another, according to the Court almanac and directory, to the card-tables,–to every board came the same motley set of old faces,–he wondered first of all at the universal patience; on a negro of the gold coast of the court (he swore to himself) if one only considers what he has to hear and to endure, the ears and the skin are certainly, as in the case of roasted sucking-pigs, the best parts. Here the lion must beg that animal to let him have his skin for a domino, which has usually borrowed his of him. Here among these forms bent up by small souls (as leaves also crook up when leaf-lice live on them) no great, no bold thought can be carried: like wheat which is beaten down, they can yield only empty grains.

Before the sitting down at table, that part or segment of the–halo^[251] encircling the Italian sun, which was not invited, drove home, disgusted at the tediousness of play, and still more disgusted that certain persons in particular were honored with the tediousness of a seat at the table.

Joachime, in whom the retiring Agnola found little satisfaction, went away with them, but not the Doctor, nor her brother Mat either, who had the honor of making, behind the chair of the Princess, in the column of march formed by herself, her chamberlain, a page, and a court lackey, exactly the central point; he stood, as every one knows, immediately behind the chamberlain, and was the only one who looked like a legible lampoon upon the tout ensemble. About the table, during^[252] which there was little said, at most in a very low tone by two neighbors, here also there shall be nothing said.

After dinner the Prince came and disturbed the stiff ceremonial, which he hated from love of comfort, just as Victor despised it on philosophical grounds. "Verily, an archangel," Victor would often say, "who should remark the wisdom and virtue observed by mortals in all trifles at their session-tables, altars, receptions, must needs bet his heaven and his wings that we are worth a farthing–or at least something–in greater things; but we all know where the conclusion limps; and this very disgust at the stiff, pedantic, decent micrology and machinery of men is the humor of the satirist. Moral deterioration comes about, it is true, through trifles, but not improvement: Satan creeps into us through Venetian blinds and sphincters^[253]; the good angel enters through the front door."–Agnola rewarded our hero to-day for his previous so well meant assiduity with a warmer attention, which was made more beautiful in his eyes by her ornaments–she wore those of the former princess, her own, and those of her mother before her–and by her whole state-attire; for he loved finery on women and hated it on men. His esteem borrowed a tender warmth from the painful fact that she confounded January's selfish intentions in his visits (with reference to the future Clotilda) with fairer ones, and that nevertheless one could not say so to her. How came it that Agnola reminded him then of Joachime; that the latter was the conductor of regard for the former; and that all loving emotions with which the Princess inspired him turned out wishes that Joachime might deserve and receive them?

With a soul full of such longing, he drove back this very day without ceremony to that Joachime on whose hand, as we know, he had left a slight wound. He said to her, "He must, as murderer and Medicus, look once more to-day after the wound"; but a charming new trouble on Joachime's face fell like sunshine with a warming influence into his soul. He was impatient to go out with her on the balcony, to talk about it. Out there, he in a few minutes made the gash and the December chill a pretext for taking the hand and the gash into his own to warm it. "Cold is bad for wounds," he said; but the fine fool would here have had his own comment on the subject. The vacant evening, the remembrances of the childish joys of Christmas, the starry heaven, looking down from overhead, which magically illuminates all dark wishes of man, like flowers in the night,–these and the silence surcharged and burdened his forlorn soul, and he pressed the only hand which human kind at this moment extended to him. He put the question to her directly about her trouble. Joachime answered more softly than usual, "I was going to ask you the same; but with me it is natural." For she had, she related, on her return found the luggage of Clotilda and the news of her arrival, and–which is the precise point–the clothes of her sister Giulia, which Clotilda had hitherto given a place among her own. This Giulia, it will be remembered, had expired on Clotilda's heart, a day before the latter removed from Maienthal to St. Luna.

A chaos shot through his heart; but out of the chaos only the faded Giulia took shape,–for Clotilda daily receded into a duskier sanctuary of his soul; her pale Luna-like image caressed with rays of another world his sore nerves, and he willingly suffered himself to believe that Joachime had her form. In his poetic exaltation, so seldom intelligible to women, the dead threw the halo which Clotilda diffused over her back again upon her sister. Joachime had to-day read over again the letter which Giulia had dictated to her in her last hour through Clotilda, and she still had it with her. Probably a heart full of unrequited love had borne the fair enthusiast down under the earth. Victor with gleaming eyes begged her for the letter; he opened it in the moonlight, and when he saw the beloved handwriting of his lost Clotilda, his whole heart wept.

"Good sister!–

"Forever farewell! Let me say that first, because I know not what moment may close my lips. The tempests of my life are going home.^[254] I speak this farewell and my heartiest wish for thy welfare through my friend Clotilda's pen. Give the enclosed to my dear parents, and join thy prayer to mine, that they will leave me in my beautiful Maienthal, when I am gone. I see now through the window the rose-bush which stands by the sexton's little garden in the churchyard: there a place is given me, which like a scar shall testify that I once existed, and a black cross with the six white letters Gulia,–no more. Dear sister, do not, I beseech thee, allow them to confine my dust in a tomb!–O no! it shall flutter in the shape of Maienthal's roses, which I once so loved to sprinkle!–Let this heart, when it shall have dissolved into the pollen of a new eternal heart, play and hover in the beams of the moon, which has so often in my lifetime made my heart sad and soft. If thou ever drivest, dear sister, along by Maienthal, then will the cross peep out upon the road through the roses; and if it does not make thee too sad, then look over to me.

"It seemed to me just now, for some minutes, as if I drew breath in ether,–in little thin draughts. It will soon be over. But tell my playmates, if they ask for me, that I was glad to go, though I was young. Very glad. Our teacher says, the dying are flying clouds, the living stationary ones, beneath which the former glide away, but verily at evening both are gone. Ah, I thought I should have to yearn for death a long time yet, from one year of sorrow to another; ah! I feared these pale cheeks, these eyes sunk with weeping, would not prevail upon death, that he would let me grow superannuated, and not take away my withered heart until it had throbbed itself to exhaustion: but, lo! he comes sooner. In a few days, perhaps in a few hours, an angel will appear before me and smile, and I shall see that it is death, and I, too, shall smile and say most joyfully, Take my beating heart into thy hand, thou ambassador of eternity, and care for my soul.

"'But art thou not young?' the angel will say; 'hast thou not just stept upon this earth? Shall I recall thee so soon, even before it has its spring?'

"But I shall answer: Look on these sunken cheeks, and these exhausted eyes, and only shut them to. O, lay the snake-stone^[255] on my bosom, that it may suck out all the wounds, and not fall off till they are healed. Ah! I have haply done no good in the world, but also no evil.

"Then will the angel say:' If I touch thee, thou becomest stiff,–spring and mankind and the whole earth vanish, and I alone stand beside thee. Is, then, thy young soul already so weary and so sore? What sorrows, then, can there be thus early in thy breast?'

"Only touch me, good angel!–Now he says, 'If I touch thee, thou crumblest to dust, and all thy loved ones see nothing more of thee–'

"O, touch me!..."

Death touched the bleeding heart, and a human being had passed on....

While Victor read the sorrowful sheet, the sister of the dead one had several times wiped her eyes, because she imagined to herself what he was reading, and when he looked up at her, there glimmered therein the seed-pearls of a tender soul. But he wished now that his face could be invisible, or that he could be in the balcony of his chamber, so as to give way to all sighs and emotions unseen. Had he been in a citizen's house, he might now have gone without being derided to the unpacked clothes, and into the future apartments of Clotilda; and he might have seen again, as it were, the green lawns of Maienthal, if he had seen the romantic dresses, wherein Giulia had roamed through them, locked up amidst the last kisses of a sister. But in such a house it was an impossibility.

He could now, as he seldomer had the enjoyment of another's sensibility, easily pardon its even being carried to excess. That it shatters the body was to him the wretchedest objection, because, indeed, everything of a nobler sort, every effort, all thinking, wears it out; in fact, the body and life were only means, but not an end. "Giulia's heart in Giulia's body," said he, "is a pure dew-drop in a tender flower-cup, which everything crushes, chokes, dries up, and which yet has escaped the noonday sun; such souls, too pliable for a world full of storm, which have too many nerves and too few muscles, deserve for their sensibility's sake not the corroding salt of satire, which gnaws them like snails. Earth and we can give them few joys; why will we take from them the rest?"

But the lines of sorrow which sympathy now drew through Joachime's smiles imprinted themselves distinctly in Victor's heart, and that which she would here conceal made her more charming than all that she had ever sought to show.

Nothing is more dangerous than–as he had done some weeks before–to make believe he was in love: one becomes so forthwith in reality. Thus, the voluptuary Baron, when he had played one of Corneille's heroes, himself was one for some days. Thus Moliere died of a malade imaginaire, and Charles V. of a rehearsal-burial. Thus the paper crown which Cromwell had worn in a school-drama made him covet a harder one.–The second lesson which is to be learned from this (this, however, to be sure, presupposes Joachime's being a coquette) is, that a hero may scent coquetry, and yet run into the trap; a poet, like the nightingale (which he resembles in plumage, throat, and simplicity) sits up on the tree, and sees the snare set, and skips down and–into it.

After some days,–while the question about Joachime's worth and his own love was rising and falling like a wave in Victor's mind,–while he stood on bad terms with Flamin, good ones with the Princess, and better with the Prince, who kept asking every day when Clotilda was coming,–she came.

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