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 than _five_, 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 to _charm the fire_
which 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,--for the 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 sets of 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 up _by 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 internal _malefactors_, or
_knaves_, or _prisoners of war_, or _children_, but it is that genially
energetic spirit, which conditions and binds the healthy _savages_ of
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.