FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[45]One who dedicated a new house (somewhat as we name a ship). Theglass fire-bucketwhichquenched the inner conflagrationwas probably the wine-glass or beer-tumbler.—Tr.[46]Collegians.—Tr.[47]Provincial Physician.—Tr.[48]According to Camper, hectic patients have very white and fair teeth.[49]Derham (in his Physico-Theology, 1750) observes that the deaf hear best under a noise; e. g. one hard of hearing, under the sound of bells; a deaf housewife, under the drumming of the house-servant. Hence when princes and ministers, who for the most part hear badly, are passing through the country, kettle-drums are beat and cannon fired, so that they can hear the people more easily.[50]In whose wall the lady with the souvenir sits.[51]A kind of gray fur.—Tr.[52]Baireuth.—Tr.[53]This precocious completion of growth I have observed in many distinguished women, just as if these Psyches should resemble butterflies, which do not grow after coming out of the chrysalis state.[54]Cloth is roughened with thistles, i.e. scratched up, in order to the better shearing of it afterwards.[55]A distinguished actor of tragedy.[56]He means here their divorce, which was only deferred by the mutual wish to keep Liana.[57]Poor dinners, just as cat-silver is an inferior metal.—Tr.[58]A weak-nerved lady (I know not whether it is the same) who had much religion, fancy, and suffering, became, as she tells me, blind in the same way, and was cured in the same way.[59]The eternal pricking of the sensitive finger-nerves by knitting, tambour, and other needles, perhaps as much as the touching of the harmonica-bells, makes one, by stimulating, weak in the nerves.[60]Tartarus is the melancholy part of Lilar.[61]Kursus—corso.—Tr.[62]Pride of the meadows quickens the circulation of the blood even to frenzy. This whole observation on the pharmaceutic value of pride of the meadows is taken from Tissot's "Traité sur les Nerfs."

[45]One who dedicated a new house (somewhat as we name a ship). Theglass fire-bucketwhichquenched the inner conflagrationwas probably the wine-glass or beer-tumbler.—Tr.

[46]Collegians.—Tr.

[47]Provincial Physician.—Tr.

[48]According to Camper, hectic patients have very white and fair teeth.

[49]Derham (in his Physico-Theology, 1750) observes that the deaf hear best under a noise; e. g. one hard of hearing, under the sound of bells; a deaf housewife, under the drumming of the house-servant. Hence when princes and ministers, who for the most part hear badly, are passing through the country, kettle-drums are beat and cannon fired, so that they can hear the people more easily.

[50]In whose wall the lady with the souvenir sits.

[51]A kind of gray fur.—Tr.

[52]Baireuth.—Tr.

[53]This precocious completion of growth I have observed in many distinguished women, just as if these Psyches should resemble butterflies, which do not grow after coming out of the chrysalis state.

[54]Cloth is roughened with thistles, i.e. scratched up, in order to the better shearing of it afterwards.

[55]A distinguished actor of tragedy.

[56]He means here their divorce, which was only deferred by the mutual wish to keep Liana.

[57]Poor dinners, just as cat-silver is an inferior metal.—Tr.

[58]A weak-nerved lady (I know not whether it is the same) who had much religion, fancy, and suffering, became, as she tells me, blind in the same way, and was cured in the same way.

[59]The eternal pricking of the sensitive finger-nerves by knitting, tambour, and other needles, perhaps as much as the touching of the harmonica-bells, makes one, by stimulating, weak in the nerves.

[60]Tartarus is the melancholy part of Lilar.

[61]Kursus—corso.—Tr.

[62]Pride of the meadows quickens the circulation of the blood even to frenzy. This whole observation on the pharmaceutic value of pride of the meadows is taken from Tissot's "Traité sur les Nerfs."

The Ten Persecutions of the Reader.—Liana's Eastern Room.—Disputation upon Patience.—The Picturesque Cure.

PPostulates—apothegms—philosophems—Erasmian adages—observations of Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, Lavater, do I in one week invent in countless numbers, more than I can in six months get rid of by bringing them into my biographicalpetits soupésas episode-dishes. Thus does the lottery-mintage of myunprintedmanuscripts swell higher and higher every day, the more extracts and winnings I deal out to my reader therefrom in print. In this way I creep out of the world without having, while in it, said anything. Lavater takes a more rational course; he lets the whole lottery-wheel, filled with treasures, under the title of manuscripts (just as we, inversely, despatch manuscripts to the publishers by mail under the title of printed matter) circulate even among theliterati.

Postulates—apothegms—philosophems—Erasmian adages—observations of Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, Lavater, do I in one week invent in countless numbers, more than I can in six months get rid of by bringing them into my biographicalpetits soupésas episode-dishes. Thus does the lottery-mintage of myunprintedmanuscripts swell higher and higher every day, the more extracts and winnings I deal out to my reader therefrom in print. In this way I creep out of the world without having, while in it, said anything. Lavater takes a more rational course; he lets the whole lottery-wheel, filled with treasures, under the title of manuscripts (just as we, inversely, despatch manuscripts to the publishers by mail under the title of printed matter) circulate even among theliterati.

But why shall I not do the same, and let at least one or two lymphatic veins of my water-treasure leap up and run out? I limit myself to ten persecutions of the reader,—calling my ten aphorisms thus, merely because I imagine the readers to be martyrs of their opinions,and myself the Regent who converts them by force. The following aphorism, if one reckons the foregoing as the first persecution, is, I hope, the

Nothing sifts and winnows our preferences and partialities better than an imitation of the same by others. For a genius there are no sharper polishing-machines and grinding-disks at hand than his apes. If, further, every one of us could see running along beside him a duplicate of himself, a complete Archimimus[63]and repeater in complimenting, taking off the hat, dancing, speaking, scolding, bragging, &c.; by Heaven! such an exact repeating-work of our discords would make quite other people out of me and other people than we are at present. The first and least step which we should take toward reflection and virtue would be this, that we should find our bodily methodology, e. g. our walk, dress, dialect, our oaths, looks, favorite dishes, &c., no better than those of all others, but just the same. Princes have the good fortune that all courtiers around them station themselves as faithful supernumerary copyists and pier-mirrors oftheirselves, and propose to improve them by this Helot-mimicry. But they seldom attain their good end, because the Prince,—and that were also to be feared of me and the reader,—like the principle ofnon-distinguendum, does not believe in any real twins, but imagines that in morals, as in catoptrics, every mirror and mock rainbow shows everythinginverted.

It is easier and handier for men to flatter than to praise.

In the centuries before us humanity appears to us to be growing up; in those which come after us, to be fading away; in our own, to burst forth in glorious bloom: thus do the clouds, only when in our zenith, seem to move straight forward, those in front of us come up from the horizon, the others behind us sail downward with fore-shortened forms.

What makes old age so sad is, not that our joys, but that our hopes then cease.[64]

The old age of women is sadder and more solitary than that of men; spare, therefore, in them their years, their sorrows, and their sex! In fact, life often resembles the trap-tree with its spines directed upward, on which the bear easily clambers up to the honey-bait, but from which he can slide down again only under severe stings.

Have compassion on Poverty, but a hundred times more on Impoverishment! Only the former, not the latter, makes nations and individuals better.

Love lessens woman's delicacy and increases man's.

When two persons, in suddenly turning a corner, knocktheir heads together, each begins anxiously to apologize, and thinks only the other feels the pain and that he himself has all the blame. (Only I excuse myself without any embarrassment, for the very reason that I know, by my persecutions, how the other party thinks.) Would to God we did not invert this in the case of moral offences!

Deluded and darkened man, living on from the mourning veil to the corpse-veil, thinks there is no further evil beyond that which he has immediately to overcome; and forgets that after the victory the new situation brings a new struggle. Hence, as before swift ships there swims a hill of water and a corresponding billowy abyss glides along close behind, so always before us is there a mountain, which we hope to climb, and behind us still a deep valley out of which we seem to have ascended.

Thus does the reader vainly hope now, after having stood out ten persecutions, to ride into the haven of the story, and there to lead a peaceable life, free from the troubled one of my characters; but can any spiritual or worldly arm, then, protect him against scattered similes,—against hemispherical headaches,—whimsies,—reviews,—curtain-lectures,—rainy months,—or in fact honey-moons, which come in at the end of every volume?—

Now for our History! In the evening Albano and Augusti went with the paternal letter of credit to the Minister's. The frostiness and pride of that individual the Lector endeavored, on their way, to varnish over by praising his laboriousness and discernment. With a knocking at his heart the Count seized the door-knocker to the heaven- or hell-gate of his future destiny. In the antechamber—that higher servant's apartment andLimbusinfantum et patrum—there were still people enough, for Froulay regarded an antechamber as a stage, which must never be empty, and on which, as in the Jewish temple, according to the Rabbins, for those who kneel and pray, it is never too close. The Minister's lady was not present as a patient here, merely because she was looking after one of her own elsewhere. The Minister also was not here,—because he made few ceremonies, and only demanded uncommonly many,—but in his working-cabinet; he had heretofore had his head under the warm throne-canopy and taken a deep bite into the forbidden apple of the Empire, therefore he willingly made a sacrifice (nottoothers, butofothers), and let himself, as a saintly statue, be hung round with votive limbs, without having to bestir his own, and, like St. Franciscus at Oporto, with letters of thanks and petitions which he never opens.

Froulay came, and was—as ever,asidefrom business—as courteous as a Persian. For Augusti was his home friend,—i. e. the Minister's lady washishome-friend,—and Albano was not a good person to run against; because one had occasion for his foster-father in the votes of the Province, and because the youth by a peculiar and proper pride of his own commanded men. There is a certain noble pride through which merits shine brighter than through modesty. Froulay had not the most comfortable part before him; for the Court of Haarhaar was as disaffected toward the Knight of the Fleece, as he was toward it;[65]but Haarhaar was to be without doubt (according to all Italiansurgicalreports) and in a few years(according to allnosologicalones) the heir of his inheritance and throne. Now the bad thing about it was, that the Minister, who, like a good Christian, looked mainly to the future, had to creep along between the German Herr von Bouverot, on the one hand, who was secretly a creature of Haarhaar, and the demands of the present moment, on the other.

He received the Count, I said, in an uncommonly obliging manner, as well as the Lector, and disclosed to the two that he must present to them his lady, who desired their acquaintance. He sent word to her, but, without waiting an answer, conducted them both into her apartment. Now was it to the youth as if the heavy door of a still and holy temple turned on its hinges. Even I too, at this moment, during their passage through the rooms, share so in his foolishness that I fall into full as great anxiety, as if I went in behind them. When we entered the eastern room, which was extended out at pleasure by picturesque paper-tapestry into a latticed arbor of woodbine, there sat merely the Minister's lady, who received us pleasantly, with firm and cold reserve in look and tone. Her severely closed and faintly-marked lips mutely spoke a seriousness which is the gift of a good heart, and a stillness which is the ornament of beauty,—as many wings, only when they are folded, shower down peacocks'-eyes,—and her eye gleamed with the good-will of reason; but the eyelids had been, by stern years, drawn deeply in, with a sickly expression, over the mild sight. Ah, as oftentimes between newly-married people a dividing sword was laid, so did Froulay grind daily at a three-edged one which separated him and her! Singularly did the impure roil on his face contrast with the aftersummer serenity onhers, although before witnesses, as it seemed, he took away the irony from his courteousness towards her, and kept hatred, as others do love, only for solitude.

Fortunately this nut-tree, which threw an unwholesome, frosty nut-shadow on the whole flowerage of love and poetry, soon transplanted itself back again among more congenial guests. The Minister's lady, after the first expressions of courtesy, directed herself more to the Lector, whose correct, civilian's measure accorded entirely with her religious one; especially as only he could ask and condole with her about Liana. She replied, that this room of Liana's had been left exactly as it was the evening the blindness came on, in order that, when she recovered, it might remain for her a pleasant remembrancer, or a mournful one for others, if she did not. O, deeply moved Albano, if every absence glorifies, how much more must it do so with so many traces of the beloved object's presence! I confess, except a loved one, I know of nothing lovelier than her sitting-room in her absence.

On Liana's work-table lay a sketched outline of a Christ's head near the open Messiah,—a folded walking-veil, together with the green walking-fan, with inscribed wishes of female friends,—some cut-out envelopes,—the gossiping letter of one of Froulay's tenants,—a whole lacquerwork sheep-fold, with wagon, stalls, and house, with whose Lilliputian Arcadia she had proposed to please Dian's children,[66]—a plucked leaf from the thinning album of a female friend, which she had trimmed with an India-ink flower border and then planted full of fair wishes, of which fate had robbed her own life. Ah, beautiful heart, how fondly wouldI sketch and hand round something like a tabular view of all the little mosaic of thy lightsome past, had the fee-provost entered more intimately into these matters! But what moves me and the Count more deeply is a framed embroidery, on which her needle, like an ingrafting-knife, had, on that dark day, ingrafted a rose with two buds, and which wanted nothing more but the thorns. O,thesehad destiny only too fully developed on thy roses of joy, and then pressed them so deeply through thy breast even to the heart!

At no hour of his life was Albano's love so tender and holy as at this, or his sympathy so fervent. Fortunately, the Minister's lady was all the time looking out of the window into the garden, and did not perceive his emotion. At last she went on to point out Liana's harmonica, which stood near; then was his heart too full and visible; he started with the hasty words,he had never yet heard one, and stepped before it. Ah, he was fain to touch something whereon her finger had so often rested. He laid his hand, as upon a sacred thing, on those prayer-bells which had so often trembled under hers for pious thoughts; but they gave him no answer, till the Lector, a connoisseur in the A B C as in the technology of all arts, gave him in three words the indispensable instructions. Now did he drink into his soul, full of sighs and struggles, the first tri-clang, the first plaintive syllables of that mother-tongue of the pining breast,—ah, of thosemutes'-bellswhich the inner man shakes in his hand, because he has no tongue! and his veins beat wildly like wings which wafted him up from the ground, and bore him to a higher prospect than that which opens into the last joy or the last agony. For in strong men great pains and joys become overlooking heights of the whole road of life.

I know not whether many readers will believe the faultpossible, which he nowactuallycommitted. The Minister's wife, in the course of conversation, had very naturally—aproposof Liana and Roquairol—fallen upon the proposition that no school is more necessary to children than that of patience, because, either the will must be broken in childhood or the heart in old age. Ah, she and her daughter themselves knelt, indeed, full of patience, before fate, whether loading or armed; although the mother's was a pious patience, which looked more to Heaven than to the wound, Liana's a loving patience, which resigns itself to new sorrows as to old sicknesses, as a queen does on coronation-day to the pains and friction of her heavy jewelry, and like a child that sweetly sleeps away and more sweetly dreams away his scars. But Zesara, who like a wolf fled the very clanking of a chain, and new, exasperated, against everything of the kind, from the light carcanets and chains of knighthood even to the heavy harbor-chains which obstruct the passage of youth out into the laboring sea, could not restrain himself, especially with that heart of his so full of emotions, from saying, in too great warmth: "Man must defend himself; sooner would I, in a free struggle, empty all my veins on the stirring battle-field than shed one drop from them bound to the rack."—"Patience," said the Minister's lady, who was full of it, "contends and conquers also, only in the heart."—"Dear Count," said Augusti, alluding not merely to Arria,[67]"the women must always say to the men, 'It does not hurt!'"

I have not till now had an opportunity to make known this fault of Albano, that he never spoke his opinionmore freely and strongly than just then when he had reason to fear losing one or two heavens of his life by the stake; in cases of less danger he could be more yielding. Although, therefore, he observed that the Minister's lady was painfully reminded thereby of the muscular, but also hard-grasping, hand of her wild son,—or much ratherfor the very reasonthat he observed it, and because he proposed to be armor-bearer to this future friend,—he stuck to his opinion, threw all instruments for breaking in the young manly will out of the school-rooms into the street, and said, in his strongly relieved style: "The Goths preferred never to send their children to school, in order that they might remain lions. Even if maidens must be soaked in milk a day before planting them out in the civil world, boys, however, must be stuck, like apricots, with the stony shell in the earth, because they will soon enough throw off and forsake the stone by their rooting and growth."—The Lector, with his fine openness,—a crystal vase with golden edge,—remarked, with a gentle reprimand of Alban's impetuosity, that at least the way in which they had severally adduced their proofs was one of those very proofs themselves; and women needed and showed more patience with persons, and we more with things.

The Minister's wife, who imagined herself listening more to her son than to his friend, was silent, and stepped nearer to the window. Amid these war-troubles the evening had wheeled her resplendent moon up over the eastern mountains, and the streams of her light flowed in at this moment, from all quarters, through the whole garden that lay stretched out before the eastern room, and lay in its broad alleys and flower-circles, when all at once a little round house appeared through upshootingwater-jets, kindled into triumphal arches by the moon-light, and stood, even to its Italian trellised roof, all in a blaze. With soft emotion, the Minister's lady said: "On that water-house stands my Liana; she is trying the evaporation of the fountain; the physician promises himself much therefrom. And Providence grant it!"

But the agitated Zesara, with all his sharp eyes, could not, however, in the full dazzling light of the level moon, and behind the quivering nunnery-grate of confined silver-or lymphatic-veins, individualize anything at this moment from the glimmering Eden, except an undistinguishable, still, white form. But it was enough for a weeping and burning heart. "Thou angel of my youthful dreams," thought he, "may it be thou! I greet thee with a thousand woes and joys. Ah! can there then be sorrows in thee, thou heavenly soul!" And it came over him, that if she were here in the room, with her afflicted and enchanting form, she would melt his whole being with sympathy, and he could now have cast off the embrace of the brother, by whose hand fate had closed her soft eyes in that long dream.

The stifling air of the most painful sympathy caused him to look away, and turn round, and fasten on the open Messiah those eyes whose drops he would not show; but the recollection that he was repeating her last reading-pleasure made them fall only hotter and thicker. Suddenly something darkening, which fluttered down before the window like a falling raven, directed his look again to Liana, over whom stood a fully illuminated little cloud, as if it were a risen or descending saintly halo. Immortals seemed to dwell thereupon as on Ossian's clouds, awaiting their sister; and when she at length moved and slowly sank down into the water-house, seemed it notthen as if her garment of flesh were passing into the earth, and her peaceful spirit into the cloud?

Here Augusti, as the mother had to follow the returning invalid into the sick-chamber, gave him the hint for departure, which he took willingly; his love contented itself for the present with solitude, and with the hope of another meeting. Young love and young birds need, in the beginning, only to bewarmedbycovering, and not till later to benourished.

But a paraclete or comforter whispered softly in the ear of the youth's heart as they departed: to-morrow thou wilt see her only a few steps from thee in the garden! And that is very easily brought about; he has only, at evening-twilight to-morrow, when the evening-walker makes use of her eye-medicine, to repair to the alley, and from among the leaves look freely up into the magic countenance, and then drink in the whole doctrine of felicity in one paragraph, one passage, breath, moment;—but what a prospect!

The Count begged the Lector not to sit long with the busy Minister. When they found him again, he hardly—behind a pile of public documents—remembered, after considerable (perhaps counterfeited) thought, that they had been there, and deeply regretted that they were going away. Ah, the comforter is whispering all the evening and all night,—To-morrow, Albano!

As the juggling night threw our Albano from one side and vision to the other,—for not the near past but the near future wearies us with rehearsals of our waking acts, with dreams,—how glad he was, in themorning, that his fairest future had not yet gone by. Two very Eulenspiegelish wishes often lodge in man: I often form the wish with my whole heart, that some real joy of mine, e. g. a master-work, a pleasure-journey, &c., might yet at last have an end; and, secondly, the wish above referred to, that one or another pleasure might stay away a little longer.

The evening came with the greatest pleasure of all, when Zesara, like Le Gentil starting for the East Indies, set off for the eastern park of the Minister, to observe the transit of his evening star Venus; but only through the moon. Before the lighted windows of the palace he stopped among the people, and reflected, whether it were quite allowable thus to run into the garden; but really, had he been turned back, his thirsting heart would have carried him in through a whole Clerus and Diplomatic Congress posted before the gate. Boldly he strode along through the noisy palace before a barricade of tackled carriages, turned the iron lattice-gate, and stepped hastily into the nearest leafy avenue. Here, attended by a torch-dance of gleaming hopes, he went to and fro, but his eye was a telescope, and his ear was a hearing-trumpet. The green avenue wound up over the garden till it grew into another near the bath-house; into this he entered so as not to meet the blind one, or rather her attendant.

But nothing came. To be sure he had not, like the moon,—as was, indeed, to have been expected of him,—come a half-hour too late, but in fact a half-hour too early. The moon, that star which leads wise men full of incense to the adoration, at last let fall broad, long, silver-leaves, like festive tapestry, into Liana's eastern room,—the Madonna on the palace was arrayed in thehalo and nun's-veil of her rays,—the Minister's wife stood already at the window,—Nature played the larghetto[68]of an enchanted evening in deeper and deeper strains,—when Albano caught nothing further except a smaller one, made up of mere tones, which came from the bath-house, the pleasure-seat of all his wishes, and which, dying, would fain breathe its last with the spring-day. But he could not guess who played it. One might have inferred that it was Roquairol, merely because he afterward, as I shall relate, according to the April-like nature of his musical temperament, sprang up out of pianissimo into a too wild fortissimo. The brother, exiled by his father, could at least in the bath-house see and console his dear sister, and show her his love and his penitence; although his stormy repentance makes a second necessary, and at last became only a more pious repetition of his fault.

Although Albano's fancy was a retina of the universe, on which every world sharply pictured itself, and his heart the sounding-board of the sphere-music, in which each revolved, yet neither the evening nor the larghetto, with their rays and tones, could pierce through the high waves which expectation as well as anxiety (both obscure nature and art) dashed up within him. The bank of the fountains is entwined around with a green ring of orange-trees, whose blossoms, in the East, according to the Selam-cipher, signifyhopes; but really one after another was short-lived, when he thought of the cold, clear mother, or of his perhaps vain waiting. The fountains leaped not yet,—he kept plucking away, like a premature autumn, more and more of the broad fan-leavesfrom his blooming Spanish wall, and still, through all his widening windows, saw no Liana coming down along the pebbly path (which was impossible, for the very reason that she had been long standing in the bath-house with her brother), and he began to despair of her appearance, when the brother suddenly stormed into the above-mentioned fortissimo, and all the fountains sent up before the moon murmuring wreaths of sparkling silver. Albano looked out....

Liana stood up there in the glimmer of the moon, behind the fluttering water. What an apparition! He tore asunder the twigs of the foliage before his face, and gazed, uncovered and breathless, upon the sacredly beautiful form! As Grecian gods stand and look unearthly before the torch, so shone Liana before the moon, overshadowed with the myriad glancing reflections of the silvery rainbows, and the blest youth saw irradiated the young, open, still Mary's-brow, upon which no vexation and no effort had as yet cast a wave,—and the thin, tender, scarcely-arched line of the eyebrows,—and the face like a perfect pearl, oval and white,—and the loosely flowing ringlets lying on the May-flowers over her heart,—and the delicate grace's-proportions, which, like the white attire, seemed to exalt the form,—and the ideal stillness of her nature, which made her place, instead of an arm, only a finger upon the balustrade, as if the Psyche only floated over the lily-bells of the body, and neither shook nor bowed them,—and the large blue eyes, which, while the head sank a little, opened upward with such inexpressible beauty, and seemed to lose themselves in dreams and in distant plains reflecting the evening-twilight's glow!

Thou too fortunate man!—to whom the only visiblegoddess, Beauty, appears so suddenly, in her omnipotence, and attended by all her heavens! The present, with its shapes, is unknown to thee,—the past fades away,—the near tones seem to steal from the depth of distance,—the unearthly apparition overflows and overpowers with splendor the mortal breast!

Ah, why must a deep, cold cloud steal through this pure and lofty heaven? Ah, why didst thou not find the heavenly one earlier or later?—and why must she herself remind thee of her sorrow?

For Liana—into whose veiled eye only a strong light could trickle through—was looking for the moon, which was a little overhung by its own aurora, and she turned her head around gropingly, because she thought a linden-top concealed it;—and this uncertain inclination so suddenly pictured to him her misfortune in a thousand colors! A quick pang pressed his eyes, so that tears and sparks darted from them, and pity cried within him: "O thou innocent eye! why art thou veiled? Why from this grateful, good soul is May and the whole creation taken away? And she sends round in vain a look of love after her mother and her companion, and—O God! she knows not where they stand."

But the curtain of the moon soon floated aside, and she smiled serenely on its radiance, as the blind Milton in his immortal song smiles upon the sun, or as an inhabitant of earth smiles upon the earliest splendor of the next life.

A nightingale, who hitherto, while hopping after a glow-worm among the distant flowers, had responded to the tones in the chamber only with single game-calls and complemental notes of joy, flew nearer to Liana, and the winged miniature-organ drew out at once all its flute-stops, so that Liana, forgetting her blindness, lookeddown, and Albano started back alarmed, as if she were looking upon him. Then was her pale face, upon the cheeks of which a light redness played, as upon the white pink, tenderly suffused with the faint red bloom of emotion under the mingling tones of the brother and of the nightingale,—the eyelids quivered oftener over the gleaming eyes,—and at last the gleam became a quiet tear,—it was not a tear of pain nor of joy, but that soft tear in which the longing of the heart overflows; as, in spring, overfull twigs, though unwounded, weep.

There dwells in man a rough, blind cyclops, who in our storms always begins to speak, and gives us fatal counsel. Frightfully at this moment, in Zesara, did the whole awakened energy of his bosom bestir itself,—that wild spirit which drags us on condor's wings to the brink of the precipice; and the cyclops cried aloud in him: "Rush out,—kneel before her,—tell her thy whole heart;—what though thou then art lost forever, if thou hast only caught one sound of this soul!—and then cool and sacrifice thyself in the cold waters at her feet." Verily he thirsted for the fresh basin in which the fountains leaped back. But ah! before this gentle, this afflicted and pure one? "No," said the good spirit in him, "wound her not again, as her brother did. O spare her! be silent, respectful: then thou lovest her."

Here he stepped out on the illuminated earth as into a heavenly hall, and took the open sun-path, but softly, along before the fountains. As he passed by her, all at once the arcade of drops, which had half latticed her round, collapsed, and Liana stood cloudless, as a pure Luna, without her cloud-court, in the deep blue of heaven; a shining lily[69]from the next world, which, to herself, isa sign that she is soon to pass thither. O his heart, full of virtue, felt with trembling the nearness of virtue in another; and, with all signs of the deepest veneration, he walked along by the quiet being, who could not observe them.

Not till, at every step, a heaven had escaped from him, and he at last had none but the one above his head, did he become quite gentle; and then he was glad that he had not been bolder. How the earth now shines to him, how the heaven of suns approaches him, how his heart loves! O, at some future time after yet many years, when thisglowingrose-garden of rapture already lies far behind thy back, how softly and magically will it, when thou turnest round and lookest toward it, glimmer after thee as awhiterose-parterre of memory!

FOOTNOTES:[63]The title of a man, among the Romans, who walked behind the corpse and acted out the looks and character which the deceased had when living.—Pers., Sat. 3.[64]As Solomon says, "Desire shall fail."—Tr.[65]It had formerly refused to give the Spanish knight the hand of the Princess; but I have had the promise of satisfactory documents on this weighty article.[66]Dian's family reside at Lilar.[67]Roman Arria, who stabbed herself to show her Poetus how to die.—Tr.[68]A movement in music a little more than two degrees quicker than adagio.—Tr.[69]It used to be believed that a lily lying in the singing-seats signified the death of the person to whom it belonged.

[63]The title of a man, among the Romans, who walked behind the corpse and acted out the looks and character which the deceased had when living.—Pers., Sat. 3.

[64]As Solomon says, "Desire shall fail."—Tr.

[65]It had formerly refused to give the Spanish knight the hand of the Princess; but I have had the promise of satisfactory documents on this weighty article.

[66]Dian's family reside at Lilar.

[67]Roman Arria, who stabbed herself to show her Poetus how to die.—Tr.

[68]A movement in music a little more than two degrees quicker than adagio.—Tr.

[69]It used to be believed that a lily lying in the singing-seats signified the death of the person to whom it belonged.

Albano's Peculiarity.—The intricate Interlacings of Politics.—The Herostratus of Gaming-Tables.—Paternal "Mandatum sine Clausula."—Good Society.—Mr. Von Bouverot.—Liana's Spiritual and Bodily Presence.

IIf the Feudal-Provost Von Hafenreffer had no existence except as a creature of my fancy, I should certainly proceed with my history, and tell the world, as matter of fact (and the whole romance-writing set would go to the death upon it[70]), that Albano was sitting there the next morning, blind and deaf, behind the broad bandage which the bandage-maker Cupid had bound before his eyes,—that he had not been able to count more thanfive, except at evening, when he cast up the strokes of the clock, in order, afterward, to run in a magic circle round the Froulay water-house, like one who sets out tocharm the firewhich glides snake-like after him,—that he had, through those two blow-holes[71]wherewith sentimental whales blubber right out in bookstores, spouted out considerable streams,—forthe rest, had never looked at another book (except some leaves in the book of Nature), nor at another human being (except a blind man),—"and to this my surgeon's certificate of erotic wound-fevers (I would say at the conclusion of my lies) Nature manifestly sets her privy seal."

If the Feudal-Provost Von Hafenreffer had no existence except as a creature of my fancy, I should certainly proceed with my history, and tell the world, as matter of fact (and the whole romance-writing set would go to the death upon it[70]), that Albano was sitting there the next morning, blind and deaf, behind the broad bandage which the bandage-maker Cupid had bound before his eyes,—that he had not been able to count more thanfive, except at evening, when he cast up the strokes of the clock, in order, afterward, to run in a magic circle round the Froulay water-house, like one who sets out tocharm the firewhich glides snake-like after him,—that he had, through those two blow-holes[71]wherewith sentimental whales blubber right out in bookstores, spouted out considerable streams,—forthe rest, had never looked at another book (except some leaves in the book of Nature), nor at another human being (except a blind man),—"and to this my surgeon's certificate of erotic wound-fevers (I would say at the conclusion of my lies) Nature manifestly sets her privy seal."

That she does not, says Hafenreffer; these are nothing but confounded lies; the case is quite otherwise, thus:—

Zesara never stole a second time into Froulay's garden; a proud blush of shame darted over him at the very thought of the painful blush with which he should come in contact, for the first time, with a mistrustful or inquiring eye.

But in this wise the dear soul remained hid from him until her recovery, as the May-month did from her; and he silently tormented himself with reckonings up of her sufferings and doubts of her cure. He was ashamed to be taking any pleasure during her period of sadness, and forbade himself the enjoyment of spring and the visiting of Lilar: ah! he knew too, full well, that the loving spring and Lilar, where she had received so many joys and the last wound, would make his heart too ungovernable and too full.

His thirst for knowledge and worth, his pride, which bade him stand in a glorious light with his father and his two friends, impelled him onward in his career. With all his native fire he threw himself upon jurisprudence, and took no longer any other walks than between the lecture-room and his study-chamber. To this zeal he was driven by a characteristic passion for completeness; everything imperfect was to him almost a physical horror; he was shocked at defective collections, broken setsof monthly magazines, lawsuits left to sleep, libraries, because he could never read them out, people who died as aspirants for office, or in the midst of building-plans, or without a rounded system of thought, or as journeymen clothiers' boys or shoemakers' apprentices, and even Augusti's flute-playing, which he only took upby the way. It was the same energy which made him hold the bridle of Psyche's winged horse tight, and stick the rowel of the spur into him; even when a child he had experimented on this kind of force, in the holding of his breath, or in the painful pressure of a sore spot,—and, by Heaven! he now, figuratively, did both again. There dwelt in him a mighty will, which merely said to the serving-company of impulses, Let it be! Such a will is not stoicism, which rules merely over internalmalefactors, orknaves, orprisoners of war, orchildren, but it is that genially energetic spirit, which conditions and binds the healthysavagesof our bosoms, and which says more royally to itself, than the Spanish regent to others, I, the king!

Ah, of course (how could his warm soul do otherwise?) he often stood, at midnight, before the breezy window, and looked tearfully at the white Madonna of the ministerial palace, silvered by the pure moon. Yes, in the daytime, he often sketched in his souvenir (it happened to be a fountain and a form behind it, nothing more), or he read in the Messiah (naturally going on with the canto which he had already begun at the house of the Minister's lady), or he informed himself about nervous maladies, (was he, perhaps, with all his studying, guarded against them?) or he let the fire of his fingers run over the strings,—nay, he would have plucked nothing but roses, although with thorns, had this been their blooming season.

And this sighing, stifled soul must shut itself up! O, he began already to fear every key of the harpsichord would become a stylus, the instrument itself a box of letters, and all actions treacherously legible words. For he must keep silent. The first young love, like that of business people (those of the Electorate of Saxony excepted), needs no instruments of speech, at most only a portable inkstand and pen. Only worldly people, who repeat their declarations of love quite as often as the players, are in a situation—and on similar grounds—to publish them, just as the players do. But in the holier season of life the image of the most beloved soul is hung, not in the parlor and antechamber, but in the dim, silent oratory: only with loved ones do we speak of loved ones. Ah, it was with reluctance that he even heard others speak of his saint; and he often stole (with the altar of incense in his bosom) out of the room where people were carrying round for her a censer more full of coal-smoke than of frankincense.

They were expecting every day in Pestitz the return of the German gentleman M. de Bouverot, who had been in Haarhaar, putting the last retouching hand to the almost sketched marriage contract between Luigi and a Haarhaar princess, Isabella. Augusti was not partial to him, and even said Bouverot had nohonnêteté;[72]and related the following, but with the soft irony of a man of the world:

Some years before, Bouverot had been sent by the court of Haarhaar[73]to the Pope at Rome, in relation tocertain canonical difficulties; just at the time when Luigi also made the princely procession to Rome, together with his Romish indictions.[74]Now Haarhaar, which in truth already wentchapeau-baswith the princely hat of Hohenfliess, and had every possible officinal prospect of wearing it, would not, for this very reason, present the appearance of looking with cold eyes on the extinction of the race of Hohenfliess, the more, as the very male support of the line, Luigi, even in his first years, was not a hero of any great nervous significance. Nay, it must needs be a matter of some consequence to the court of Haarhaar that the good thin autumn-flowerage should return, if possible,otherwisethan it went out; and even on such grounds it privily instructed the German gentleman to rule and watch over all his pleasures and pains asmaître de plaisirs,—especially withmaîtresses de plaisirs,—in such a manner as to give perfect satisfaction in this respect. Meanwhile, if our princely abiturient[75]had started pure as a fœtus, unhappily he was brought back ground down to apunctum saliens, especially as, by sundry caprioles and other leaps through the hoop of pleasure, he was spoiled for the leap into the knight's saddle. It may be possible that the German gentleman was too sanguine in his expectations of the rejuvenescence of the Prince; yes, he may have imitated the youth-restoring, wondrous essence of the Marquis d'Aymar,[76]whereby an innocent old lady, who anointed herself with the elixir more than her years required, was, through the excessive renovation, reduced to a little child. In short, by this crusade under the Knight of the Cross, Bouverot, the princely seat ofHohenfliess—as is often the consequence of crusades—will be left open at the proper time, and Haarhaar will seat itself thereon.

I confess reluctantly that Albano, in the beginning,—because, with all his sharp-sightedness, his purity was quite as great,—comprehended the fact only confusedly; but when he did get the idea, it was to himpharmaceuticmanna, as it was to SchoppeIsraelitish. "The Knight of the Cross," said the latter, "beareth not his cross in vain,—it does him quite as much service as one daubed on the houses in Italy does to them: not a soul may do on either of them what even in Rome may be done before every antechamber."

Not long after that our three friends were going out into the street just at the hour when the noisy carriages rolled along to tea and play, when a litter was carried by before them with the seatbackward, whereupon, however, a man was sitting. "Holy Father!" cried Schoppe, "in there sits, bodily, Cephisio, from Rome, who must sometime or other give me a sound drubbing."—"Softly, softly!" said Augusti, "that is the German gentleman; Cephisio is his Arcadian name."[77]—"Well, I rejoice so much the more that I once in my life had a hearty, downright set-to with the red-nose," said he, turning round and accompanying the litter, with his arms thrust under it, for almost ten paces, in order to get a better view of the caged bird, before the latter snatched-to the curtains. Albano caught a glimpse within the litter, as it passed swiftly along, only of a sharp eye drawn like a dagger, and a red-glowing nose-bud.

Schoppe came back and related the transactions inRome. He said, against all mortal sinners, blood-guilty men, and imps of iniquity he bore no such bitter and grim wrath as against professional bankers,croupiers,[78]andGrecs; if he had a canker-worm-iron wherewith he might scrape away this vermin from the earth, or a cochineal-mill wherewith he might grind them to powder, he would do it most cordially. "O heavens!" he then broke out, "had I in fact my foot just stretched out over the curling, coiling worm-stalk (and though that foot had the gout in it), I would gladly dash it down upon them, and tread out the vile filth." But what he could, he did. Being his own travelling servant, and a decoy-spider, darting to and fro through all Europe, he had full often the pleasure of getting these faro-leaf-caterpillars and leaf-sappers under his thumb,—of becoming their pretended associate,—learning their tactics,—and then rolling some fire-wheel or other into their hissing snakes'-hole. I am not intimately instructed whether it is known in Leipsic who the ringleader was that, a short time since, at the fair, played a mock-police with mimic-constables, and broke up a bank;—at least the bankers were altogether out on the subject, because they were expecting the real police the next day, and were begging for some indulgences andillegal-benefits; but I am in a condition here to name the thief-catcher: it was Schoppe. The spoils he applied mostly to the purpose of running new mines under the faro-tables.

With Cephisio he had played his cards otherwise. He stepped up before his bank, and looked on for some minutes, and at last presented a card with a shield-louis-d'or. It won, and he showed behind the card a long rollof louis. Bouverot would not pay this roll. "He had not seen anything," he said. "What is yourcroupiersitting there for, then?" said Schoppe, and pronounced them swindlers, if they did not pay. To escape greater damage, they paid him his winnings. He took the money coldly, and departed, with these words to the Pointeurs: "Gentlemen, I assure you, you are playing here with finished cheats; but they have paid me only because I knew them." Amidst the increasing stiffness and paleness of the partners he turned, and slowly, with his broad-shouldered, compact figure, and his knotty cudgel, walked away unscathed.

Augusti wished from his heart—for the persecution's sake—that Bouverot might not know the Librarian again. They found at home an invitation from the Minister to tea and supper. "The poor daughter!" said Augusti; "for the sake of this Bouverot, the half-blind one must go to-morrow to the table." Meanwhile, our youth will then surely see her again at last, and only a spring-day separates him from the dearest object! If Augusti is right, then my observation fits in here, that a good sound villain is always the motive-pike which sets the still, quaker-like carp-tribe in the pond to swimming; the hidden pock-matter, which brings cold children at once to life.

Liana's eyes healed, but only slowly: Nature would not lead her at once out of her sombre prison into the sun; she could now, like the philosophers, just recognize light rather than forms. Nevertheless, the Minister issued cabinet orders that she should day after to-morrow play on the harmonica, appear at thesouper, and even make the salad, and thereby mask her blindness. He sometimes commanded impossible things, in order to meet with as much disobedience as his anger needed for the purpose of venting itself in punishment. Certain people keep themselves all day long full of vexation beforehand for some coming event or other, like urinal phosphate, which always boils under the microscope, or forges, wherein every day fire breaks out.

The Minister's lady pronounced her soft, firm, No. About the harmonica she said she had asked the Doctor, in his name, who had strictly forbidden it; and the rest was an impossibility. Here he could already, he felt so like it, be angry at several things, especially at the asking of the Doctor, which, however, had not yet taken place; he grew mad enough, and swore he should act according tohis ownprinciples, and devil a bit did he care forotherpeople's.

Thisprinciplewas in the present case the German gentleman. That is to say, the above-mentioned anecdote—Bouverot's guardianship of the hereditary Prince on his travels, or the design of the thing—had at both courts come to be the common talk in assemblies and at tables, and was hidden only from the Prince Luigi; for on thrones, there are almost no mysteries to any one excepting him (hardly his wife) who sits thereupon, as in whispering-galleries the people in distant corners hear everything aloud, only not he who stands in the middle. The German gentleman was, therefore, in the Hohenfliess system, the important port-vein and pulmonary artery wherewith even Froulay would water himself. The latter is obliged throughout to serve the present and the future, or two masters, of whom the one of Haarhaar might very soon be his.

Bouverot was attached not merely to Froulay the minister, but to Froulay the father; a man like him, who causes to be sent after him from Italy a whole cabinet of Art, and whose acquaintance with the arts has so long knit together even him and the Prince, must know how to prize a Madonna of such carnation as Liana, and of the Romish school, and, what is more, who, detached from the canvas, moved as a full, breathing rose. As to marrying the rose, that he could not propose to himself, because he was a German Herr.

He had not seen her since his Italian tour,—nor had the Count either,—to both the Minister wished to show her as a round pearl of special whiteness and figure. Froulay had—which after all happens oftener than we imagine—quite as much vanity as pride; the latter to repel blame, the former to court praise. But I should have now to write a tournament-chronicle to tell posterity the half of all his raging and racing and lance-thrusts, in a fight wherein he served under the banners of enmity, vanity, and avarice. He was no more to be hunted to death than a wolf. All weapons were alike to him, and he was ever taking sharper and more poisonous ones. In the oldjudicialduels between man and wife, the man stood commonly up to his stomach in a pit, in order to bring his strength down to a level with the woman's, and she struck at him with a stone tied up in a veil; but in thematrimonialduels the man seems to stand in the free air and the woman in the earth, and she often has only theveilwithout the stone.

In this combat there stepped between the two a shining peace-angel who caught the wounds, namely, Liana. The daughter, who had an enthusiastic love for her mother, and the womanly reverence for the stronger sex toward herfather, and who suffered so endlessly under their strifes, fell upon her mother's neck and begged her to allow her what her father demanded; she would certainly do everything so as not to excite observation; she would take the greatest pains and practise herself specially beforehand,—ah, he would otherwise only be still more unkind to her poor brother,—this discord, merely on her account, was so painful to her, and perhaps more injurious than playing on the harmonica.

"My child, thou knowest," said the mother, for now shehadasked, "what the physician said yesterday against the harmonica; the rest is at thine own risk!" Liana kissed her joyfully. She must needs be led to her father, that she might make known to him aloud the gladness of her obedience. "I thank you, and be hanged," said he, softly; "it is simply your cursed duty." She left him with her joy dissipated to atoms, but without any great pangs; she was already accustomed to this.

The Lector, while they were yet on their way to the Minister's, begged Albano to moderate the fire of his assertions and his pantomimes. He made known to him only so much of the family-jar as was necessary, in order that he might not, by a mistaken idea of her restoration, throw Liana into embarrassment. As they entered the card-room, everything was already in full blaze.

As, at this time, no one is presented to him, I must do it; they are disciples (at leasttwelfthdisciples) of the Minister.

And first, I introduce to thee the holy President ofJustice, Von Landrok, a good apothecary's-balance of Themis, which weighs out scruples, and wherein no false weights lie; but what is quite as bad, much smut, rubbish, and rust. Those at the ombre-table near by are the lords and ladies of Vey, Flöl, and Kob, sleek, fine souls, like minerals in cabinets, polished off on the show-side, but on the concealed base still jagged and scratching.

Go with me to the entrance of the next apartment; here I have to present to thee the young but fat canon Von Meiler, who, in order to line and stuff out and pad his inner man with a thick, warm, outer one, needs to fleece no more peasants yearly than the number of linden-trees the Russian peels for his bark-shoes, namely, one hundred and fifty.

The apartment into which thou art looking I present to thee as a fly-glass full of courtiers, who, in order to enter into thekingdom of heaven, have become not merelychildren, but in factembryonsof four weeks, who, as is well known, look like flies; if Swift desires of his servants nothing more than theshutting-toof the doors, these wish nothing of their employer and bread-provider but theleaving-openof the same.

I have the honor to set before thee yonder—it is he who is not playing—the holy Church-Counsellor, Schäpe, who would fain be chief chaplain to the court; a soft scoundrel, who soaks and softens the seed-corns of the divine and human word, like melon-seed (they are thereby to spring up sooner in the heart), so long in sugared wine, that they rot in it; a spiritual lord who never in his lifeofferedany other prayers than the two which he always refuses, thefourthandfifth.[79]

But the Lector will soon name to thee, at the window, every one of the lords and dames, coldly, gently, and without pantomime. At present the Minister himself conducts thee to a gentleman, one of the players, with a cross on, who drinks water with saltpetre, and is continually licking his dry mouth; it isBouverot,—he is just rising in thy presence; examine the cold, but impudent and cutting, sharply-ground eye, whose corners resemble a pair of open tinman's-shears, or a trap set,—the red nose, and the hard, lipless mouth, whose reddish crab's-claw, worn off by whetting, pinches together,—the cocked-up chin, and the whole stocky, firm figure. Albano does not surprise him; he has already seen all men, and he inquires about no one.

The Minister refreshed the youth, whose inner being was one snarl, with the promise that at supper he would present to him his daughter. He offered him a game; but Alban replied, with a too youthful accent, he never played.

He could now roam round through the lanes of the card-tables, and survey whatever he wished. In such a case one posts himself, if there is no one of the company whom he can endure, exactly before or beside the face he detests the most, in order inwardly to lash himself into vexation at every word and every feature of the countenance. Albano might have had many visages in his eye which were, at least in a small degree, intolerable, and by which he might have stationed himself;—nay, no sufficient reasons could have been assigned why he should not have given his whole attention to a certain chaffy, dried up paste-eel, a weakling full of impertinence, who was observing through an eye-glass the card constellations as they came up, while Albano could extend thefeelers of his optic nerves even to the spots on the cards in the second apartment;—there would, indeed, have been no reasons, had not the German gentleman been there; before him he must place himself; of him he knew the most and the worst; he stood in distant connection with Schoppe, even with Liana. Furies! in the neighborhood of certain faces the pinions of the soul crumple up and mew themselves as swans' and pigeons' feathers are crushed before eagles' quills; it was as uncomfortable and close for all the innocent feelings in such a roomy breast as Albano's, as it is to a flock of pigeons into whose cote some one has thrown the tail of a polecat.

I cannot disguise the fact, he muttered and growled inwardly at all the man did and had,—whether it was his having fingers whose points were finely shaved for the faro-game, and whose nails had been somewhat peeled off by an altogether worse game ofhazardyet,—or his looking occasionally through the hair of his eyebrows,—or (only once) squashing a fly by a sudden snapping to of his lips like a fly-trap,—or his uttering now a line of German and now of French, which I expect of good circles, whereas only low people never bring out a German word, except a few, such asLansquenet,[80]canif(kneif),birambrot(bier am brod), excepted. Suffice it, he thought always of Schoppe's fine expression: "There are men and times at which and with whom nothing could be more refreshing to an honest man than—to give them a sound drubbing." Duelling is quite as good, thought the Count.

However, Schoppe must here be justified by an authority. Namely, the author himself, otherwise such a soft, warm swan-skin, could never stand behind card-table-chairswithout becoming a complete game-cock, and spreading out his scratching, bristly wing the wider the longer he idly looked on; the reason is this, that in general one finds only those people more and more tolerable and better upon acquaintance, with whom one pursues and purposes the same kind of objects.

Albano wished heartily he had his brother-in-arms Schoppe with him now; he went often, it is true, to Augusti to vent himself; buthealways sought to pacify him; yes, by keeping himself constantly engaged with the church-counsellor, he cut off from him the opportunity of betraying his youthful, inexperienced soul to listeners. Moreover, the Lector chose afterward for half an hour—what familiar friends often do in the absence of familiar female friends—the latter (namely, absence).

The Count stood some time behind Bouverot's seat, and looked into a Chinese mirror, japanned on the inside with grotesque figures, and changed his position constantly, till he brought Cephisio's face to appear therein right beside a painted dragon, just by way of comparison;—all this went on, interrupted, however, by constantly increasing heart-beatings for Liana, when the servants opened the doors to the supper-hall; and now his heart thumped even to pain, and his form, already so blooming with youth, hung all full of the roses of happy and modest confusion.

With beating heart and burning cheek he made his way into the midst of the motley promenading throng with some old lady or other, who, in her vanity, misunderstood him, and at once hung on his armlike a spring-bracelet, and who got nothing from him but—answers. With flying and piercing glances he stepped into the bright hall, which seemed as if it were made of crystallized light, and into the sea of heads. He was just making some answer when he caught, in the tumult behind him, the low words, "I certainly hear my brother,"—and immediately the still lower refutation, "It is my Count." He turned round; between the Lector and her mother stood the dear Liana, a modest, timid, pale-red angel, in a black silk dress, over which ran only the glittering spring-frost of a silver chain, and with a light ribbon in her blond hair. The mother presented her to him, and the tender cheek bloomed more redly,—for she had, indeed, confounded the similar voices of the guest and the brother,—and she cast down those beautiful eyes which could see nothing. Ah, Albano, how violently thy heart trembles now that the past has become present, the moonlit night a spring morning; and this still form, now so near thee, works far more mightily than in any dream! She was too holy in his sight for him to have been able to utter a lie before her about the apparent recovery; he preferred silence;—and thus the warmest friend of her life came to her the first time only veiled and dumb.

The Lector soon led her away to her seat under the second lustre; opposite her sat her mother (probably, for this reason, that the good, unconscious daughter, who surely could not always be letting her eyelids fall, might raise them with friendliness and propriety towards a beloved being); the German gentleman, as an acquaintance, seated himself, without further ceremony, on her right, Augusti on her left,—Zesara, as Count, came far up above beside the highest lady.

Deuse take it! that is, unfortunately, so often my own case! I assert the upper seat of honor,—and observe, a mile below me, the daughter, but, like a myops, only half of her, and can bring about nothing the whole evening. Do pray transpose me without any scruples down beside her,—you have to deal with nothing more than a puffed-up man,—why, on earth, as in the heavens, must, then, the largest planets be placed exactly the farthest from their sun?

I now draw my readers to the Minister's table, not to show them the ministerial pomp ingrafted upon avarice, or his dance of honor hemmed in between the parallel lines of etiquette, or even his family arms, which were carried round on every chafing-dish and salt-cellar, and with the ice and mustard,—enough for us to know the ubiquity of the insignia upon his flower-pots, shirts, bed-clothes, dog's cravats, and all his thoughts; but the reader shall just now look only at my hero.

He is very prominent. Upon such a new-comer, people, in a residence-city, have already, before he has fairly given the driver his drinking-money, got all possible light of nature and revelation; nineteen of the company were fastened upon him as his moral odometers. The boldness of his nature and his rank made up with him for worldly tact, which was missed nowhere except in this, that he never took sides except in the very strongest manner, and always ran off into general and cosmopolitan observations. But see, I pray you!—O, I wish Liana could see it,—how the rosy glow and the fresh green of his healthiness shines among the yellow sicklings of the age, out of whom, as from ships on the African coast of youth, all the pitch that held them together had run out,—and how the cheek-redness of spiritual health, a tender,ever-returning suffusion (from anxiety about Liana) graces him, whereas most of the world's people at the table seem, like cotton wool, to take all colors more easily thanred!

He looked and listened, against the salvation-laws of visiting, too much to Liana. She ate, under the heightened redness of a fear of mistaking, only sparingly, but without embarrassment; the Lector, with easy hand, barred up against her the smallest road to error. What astonished him was, that she covered such a sensitive and easily weeping heart with such an unembarrassed cheerfulness of countenance and conversation. Young man!thatis, with the most delicate maidens, free from pangs of love, no covering and disguise, but an enjoying of the moment and habitual courtesy! She retained so considerately (what she had probably learned beforehand) the relative rank of the familiar voices, that she never directed her answer to the wrong place. She, however, looked often to her mother with full eyes, and smiled then still more serenely, not, however, for the purpose of deceiving, but from real, hearty love.

Touching her salad, the best and most fit to be a prince's table-guest among my female readers, who had seen her mix it, would have taken several fork-loads thereof. Uncommonly charming was it, when, growing more earnest and red, she drew off her glove before the blue, celestial hemisphere of glass; with white hands and supple arms, without a silken fold, worked away in the green, between the blue of the glass and the black of the silk; considerately felt for the vinegar-and oil-castors, and poured out as much as her practice (and the deciphered advice of the Lector,—at least so it seems to me) directed. By heavens! the dressing is, in this case, the salad; andthe vain Minister, who had no understanding of pictures, had a great eye for things that would make good pictures.

The mother seemed scarcely to look at the leaf-mixing. To the Count, the Minister's lady seemed to-day to have only good-breeding and no pious strictness; but he did not yet sufficiently know those polished women, who have refinement without wit, sensibility without fire, clearness without coldness; who borrow of the snail his feelers, his softness, his coolness, and his dumb gait, and who demand and deserve more confidence than they obtain.

At this moment came in Cephisio, like an angel among three men in the fiery furnace, but a dark angel. To the Count, his contiguity of seat, and every word he addressed to Liana, was already a crucifixion,—only to pass with a look from her to him was an agony, little different from that which I should have, if I had spent a day at Dresden in the antique Olympus of ancient gods, and then, on going out, should fall into a refectory full of swollen monks, or into a naturalist's cabinet full of stuffed malefactors' skins and bottled embryo-spiders. However he was pacified—in my opinion, only deceived—by one thing, that the German gentleman did not blaze away in lyrics beside her, was neither in heaven nor out of his head, but in his head, and quite composed and very polite. There are no pigeons, Count,—ask the farmers,—which the hawks oftener pounce upon than theglossy whiteones!

The German gentleman now produced a snuff-box, with a neat picture of Lilar, and asked Liana how it pleased her; he liked the sentimentality of it particularly.

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