The Fifteenth Section.
Before our departure I gave back to all, particularly the Resident Lady
von Bouse, the music I had borrowed of them; and to her, who had lent
me so much that came from Italy, I lent something still better from
Germany, namely, my sister Philippina: the same is to help train there
the little daughter of the Lady Resident, though, under the delicate
fingers of so talented a dame, she will herself receive more training
than she gives. Only may she there never transform her lively,
tremulous, gay, and yet sensitive, heart into a coquettish one! May she
lighten for her Laura (the name of the lady's daughter) the yoke of a
coquettish breeding, inasmuch as the poor child continually pines under
the glass-bell of the window, wedges her body under the bedclothes in
two ounces of whalebone, squeezes her little hands again, even at
night, into the casing of gloves, and trains her little head backward,
with lead on her locks. As is well known, her mother, the Lady
Resident, lives half a league from town, at Marienhof, in the so-called
New Palace, adjoining an old one, which, I believe, is let.
... But my retinue in this biography is, I perceive, becoming swollen
with every sheet by more and more personages, so that my driving and
turning are made more and more disagreeable. I would rather have been a
Diet of the Empire and had millions of subjects and income, than this
plaguy heptagon of characters, which it is so hard to drive into the
right sections, and in which I myself am the most cross-grained. For I,
as mere biographer, have the aid neither of Imperial Chamber nor of
Executive-posse against my heptagon; but were I an Imperial Diet they
would soon give me many a--promise.
Around our parting-carriage in Scheerau crowded: the jolly coldness of
the Professor--the busy scream of his lady stoic--the delicate smile of
the Pestilentiary with the fitchew-tails--the good heart of his sonny,
who could hardly by any lies be torn from Gustavus--and my own grateful
remembrances of invisible hours, of beloved beings and of all my dear
school-girls. Alas, that man here below must see so much pass away
before he himself passes!
On the way Gustavus's weeping continued to sound in upon our pensive
silence; but the old man, whose own heart, indeed, was melted, at last
grew wild about it, and said to me: "I see more and more that the
Moravian" (he meant the Genius) "has softened him to a milk-sop; if
you, Mr. Tutor, don't make him a bit tough, I shall one day have him a
lachrymose soldier, who will hardly be fit for a chaplain; for even
_he_ must many a time know how to bring out a good round oath."
He carried the Moravian in his head as far as the little town of Issig,
where the following soliloquy went on beside our carriage: "I am an ass
and a regular out and out villain, a miserable varlet. Oh, I am a
rascal altogether, and a notorious, reprobate old hell-brand! Ought I
not to be sawed in halves and roasted, the devil that I am, the
blockhead and beast!" All this came from a school-boy, around whom all
his schoolfellows swarmed and clapped. "He talks," (said my Patron)
"like a Moravian beast, who runs himself down, in order to run all
others down still more." But not in the least: it was a poor devil who
was hungry and humorous, and for whom the whole school had contributed
bread crumbs and apples, on condition that he would do them the favor
to abuse himself outrageously....
... Lovely Auenthal! is thy snow already gone?