Amandus's Eyes.--Blindman's Buff.
That sympathy which grafts, by approach, grown up people in the first
quarter of an hour, often draws children also to each other. Our couple
flew into each other's arms and hugged each other over forty times a
day. You good children! Be glad that you can venture to express your
love still more strongly than by letters. For culture restricts the
bodily domain of love's expression within narrower and narrower
limits--this haggard Duenna took away from us first the whole body of
the one we love--then the hand, which we are no longer allowed to
press--then the buttons and the shoulders, which we are no more
permitted to touch--and of a whole woman she has given us nothing to
kiss, except (as a kind of hair) the glove--we all now manipulate each
other at a distance. Amandus with his more feminine heart hung upon
Gustavus's more manly one with all the love which the weaker gives the
stronger, more richly than it wins back from it love in return. Hence
woman loves man more purely; she loves in him the present object of her
heart, he in her, oftentimes, the image of his fancy; hence comes his
fickleness and vacillation. This little preface must be taken only as
an introduction to a little passage of arms between our little Castor
and Pollux.
Namely: they could not bear to be so long apart, as it took to unbind
and bind up the eyes. As often as the bandage came off, Gustavus stood
before him and absolutely demanded that he should see him, and put his
finger up to his own nose and said: "Where do I touch now?" But he
examined the blind boy without seeing. After a week's absence Amandus
ran up to him, saying: "Shove up my bandage, I can certainly see thee
too as well as my cat Harry!" When Gustavus had lifted[25] it up, and
when it proved that he actually passed into the eye of his cured
friend, just as he was, coat, shoes and stockings, then was he gladder
than a patriot whose Prince opens his eyes or his bandage and sees him.
He inventoried his picture-cabinet before his eyes with a perpetual
"look!" at every piece. But yet further! The world will know little of
it--except those minute particles thereof, the children, of whom it is
that I am just going to speak--that these latter played blindman's buff
at Hoppedizel's. A disagreeable game!--when there are girls in the
case, as there were here, especially such naughty ones as the
Professor's were. Amandus introduced himself into the game, and ran
round the room, behind the handkerchief, which female cunning had
folded over his eyes, catching nothing but disembodied clothes.
Unfortunately, crawling, contrary to all proper rules of the game,
under the stove, they came against the milk-pan of the dog Spitz. As,
now, they had read at that time too few moral philosophers, although
they had seen enough of them, accordingly, for want of pure _practical
reason_, they softly pushed the pan so far forward that the groping
catch-poll easily trampled upon and tipped it over. Gustavus, as a
child, could not help laughing a little. The little sinners threw the
blame on him and cried: "O you! if now Amandus had received an injury?"
The latter extricated himself from the wet fragments and slightly
thumped Gustavus, who was holding him by the hands to comfort him
behind on the shoulder-blade, just where according to the Compends the
chyle (or milk-juice) joins the blood. "I didn't set it there, indeed I
didn't," said he. "Yes, yes! and didn't tell me of it," replied the
blindman and gave him another push, only more _violently_ and yet less
_angrily_. "Strike away, I did not do anything to thee," and my good
hero's voice broke--the other struck at him again and said: "I will
never be friends with you any more," but said it as if he was just on
the point of weeping. "Ah, thou hast surely run a splinter into thy
hand?" asked Gustavus with the most sympathetic voice--in the midst of
attempting a fresh punch the thin crust of ice melted down from the
warmed heart of Amandus, he embraced the innocent one, and said with
glistening tears: "No, indeed! thou hast not done anything, and I will
give thee all my playthings; I pray thee, beat me right hard," and so
saying he beat himself. It is only the feeling of love that struggles
with such bitter-sweet singularities. Amandus often confessed that
whenever he had done injustice to any one, in the midst of his grief
about it, the propensity always seized him to keep on offending, in
order to continue grieving himself so far that at last for very anguish
he must needs throw himself with the most ardent love upon the heart of
the injured one. But, oh dear Amandus, if a pedagogue in the form of a
moral code had happened to open the door!
It must never be supposed that I would vent here personal resentment
upon tutors in a body, for, in the first place, I never had any tutor
at all, and, secondly, I have been one myself, and a proper one.