Souper and Cow-Bells.
To-day I am working in my shirt-sleeves like a blacksmith, so
abominably long and heavy is this thirtieth section. When Gustavus
learned from Oefel that a little _souper_ at the Resident Lady's meant
as much as the greatest does with us, he had already distributed in his
head, before he began to dress it, persons and parts, and to himself
the longest of all;--this single fault he always committed, that when,
at last, he came upon the stage and had to play, he did not play.
Before going into a large company he knew word for word what he meant
to say; when he came out again he knew also (in the green-room) what he
should have said--but in the salon itself he had really said nothing.
It arose not from fear of man, for it was almost easier to him to say
anything bold than anything witty; but it came from this, that he was
the opposite of a woman. A woman lives more out of than in herself; her
feeling snail of a soul, attaches itself almost _externally_ to her
variegated bodily conchylia, never draws back its threads and horns of
feelers into itself, but touches with them every breath of air and
curls up around every smallest leaflet--in three words, the sense which
Dr. Stahl ascribes to the soul, of the whole constitution and condition
of its body, is with her so lively, that she _feels continuously_ how
she sits or stands, how the lightest ribbon lies or sits upon her, what
are the curves her hat-feather describes; in two words, her soul feels
not only the _tonus_ of all perceptible parts of the body, but also of
the imperceptible, the hair and the dress; in _one_ word, her inner
world is only a hemisphere, an impression, of the outer.
But not so with Gustavus; his inner world stands far apart and abruptly
separated from the outer; he cannot pass from either to the other; the
outer is only the satellite and companion-planet of the inner. From his
soul--imprisoned in the earthly globe which the hat covers--the
diversified individual growths on which it cradles and forgets itself,
shut out the view of objects external to its body, which cast only
their shadows upon its fields of thought; it therefore _sees_ the outer
world then only when it _remembers_ it; then the latter is transposed
and transformed into the inner world. In short, Gustavus observes only
what he thinks, not what he feels. Hence he never knows how to
amalgamate his words and ideas with the words and ideas of other people
that fly by him. The courtier winds up and turns his screws, and the
cascades of his wit leap and sparkle--Gustavus, on the other hand,
first throws the bucket into the well and proposes to draw up the
draught at a proper time. A finer reason I assign below.
On the morning of this momentous _souper_ Oefel boasted to him so much
about Beata, how he would today see her _c[oe]ur_ so perfectly balanced
against the _esprit_ of the Resident Lady--that he cursed all _seeing_,
and got a second reason for carrying his heavy heart into the _Still
Land_. His first was, that he always prepared himself for a great
company by going first into the greatest--under the broad, blue
heavens. Here, beneath the colossal stars, on the bosom of Infinity,
one learns to exalt himself above metallic stars, sewed on beside the
button-hole; from the contemplation of the earth one brings back with
him thoughts through which one hardly sees the particles of dust,
called men, whirling about; and the colored gold-bugs wherewith the
realm of vegetable nature is mosaically spangled, are not surpassed by
the gold-and-gem-embroidery of court splendor, but only imitated. The
present author always paid a visit to the great terrestial and
celestial circle _before_ and _after_ paying one to a smaller circle,
that the great one might prevent and extinguish the impressions of the
little.
I grow red, when I think how helplessly my Gustavus may have suffered
himself to be ushered through two ante-chambers into a salon, where
already sat opponents around at least seven card tables. Refinement of
thought is a soil, refinement of expression is a fruit, to which not
exactly court-gardeners are necessary; but finish of external behavior
is nowhere to be gained but there, where it tells for everything--in
the _great_ world, full of _microcosms_. Should I have more to show up
of the latter refinement than one commonly looks for in my legal class,
I am never so vain as to trace it to any other source than my life at
the Court of Scheerau. The Resident Lady (Beata never) played seldom,
and very properly: a lady who can with her face take other hearts than
those painted on cards, and who can take from men other heads than
those stamped on metal, does ill if she contents herself with the
lesser, unless she can shuffle and cut with the fairest fingers that I
have yet seen in female gloves and rings. No lady should play before
fifty, and after that only she whom her husband and daughter had cause
to lose in the game. On the contrary, the poetical gladiator, Herr von
Oefel, served in the army which (according to the _Journal des Modes_)
every winter night is 12,000 strong in the front German Imperial
Circles--namely with and against L'Hombre players. The Resident Lady
was a brilliant _Sun_, whom Beata ever followed as _Evening Star_. Soft
and gracious Hesper in Heaven! thou throwest the silver spangles of thy
rays upon our earthly foliage and gently openest our hearts to charms
which are as tender as thine! All the summer evenings which my eye has
in dreams and remembrances lived through on thy lawns of innocence
stretching high over my head, I repay thee for, fairest silvered
dew-drop in the blue ethereal bell-flower of Heaven, when I make thee a
type of the beautiful Beata! Oh! could I only project her saintly form
out of my heart and present it here on these pages, that the reader
might see, and not merely conceive, how from the Junonian Bouse, from
whom all womanly charms stream forth, even rare disinterestedness, but
not, however, _innocence_ nor modest womanly _reserve_,--how all these
wooden rays fall off from her, when by her side Beata not so much shows
as veils herself,--Beata, who has gained the inner victory over the
most passionate female wishes and yet betrays neither victory nor
conflict,--who, without the Bouse's mourning array, and play of grief,
gives thee a softened heart and irresistibly enchains thy sight, and
with whom thou canst walk by moonlight, without enjoying _her_ or the
night-heavens upon the earth one whit the less! Gustavus felt even more
than I; and I feel all again in my biographical hours more than I did
once in my musical ones.
All in good time! When they are at table I shall take the opportunity
to describe also the remaining guests. Amidst the social tumult, which
bewildered Gustavus's senses as well as ideas, of course only half the
sunny image of Beata sank into his soul. But afterward to be sure! At
first, however, they were both standing under the arch of the window
with the Resident Lady (who ironically excused Gustavus before Beata
for not having brought his brush with him to-day),--not to mention a
crowd of accidental interlocutors. Presently the Resident Lady was
snatched away from them; their mutual nearness and the solitude of
their position obliged both to talk, and Beata to stay. Gustavus, who
had already, before the Assemblee, had it in his head what he would
say, said nothing. But Beata finished the previous conversation about
the sketching, and said: "Unless _you_ have already excused me, I
cannot excuse myself." Another person of more presence of mind would
have said directly, "No," and so, in jest, which would have allowed no
embarrassment, have wound the threads of the bird-spider around the
poor humming-bird. Gustavus's feelings were too strong to let him jest
here. With a multitude of weighty materials, of which you find all the
handles break off, only that of jest holds fast, and with that you can
manage them; particularly when you are talking with young women under a
window arch.
Gustavus had long sought an opportunity to show other sides of his soul
than had come to light in that affair of the corn; now he would have
had the opportunity, but not the means, had not the park, with its
evening splendors, lain encamped before the window. But the beauty of
Nature was the only thing of which he could speak with inspiration with
other _beauties_;--and he could with the most freshness compress all
the charms of the universe into one morning, if he should describe his
coming up out of the earth into the lofty world-mansion. Upon every
word and image he uttered, or she uttered in reply, was stamped a soul
which they had confided to each other. Suddenly he remained silent,
with wide open, radiant eyes--it seemed to him as if in his soul a
magic moon rose and shone over a broad twilight-land, and an angel of
his childhood took him in his arms and clasped him so tightly to his
bosom, that the heart of him dissolved.... And whereon rested this
inner landscape-piece? Upon what the famed Strassburg clock-work rests
on--namely, on the neck of an animal; the latter rests, as is well
known, on the back of a Pegasus; his own was borne upon the necks of
the herd of cows just then happening to pass by the palace on their way
homeward, upon which hung bells that sounded like those of Regina's
herd, and that consequently brought back the whole scene of youthful
days with its tones before his soul.... In such a mood he could have
_discoursed_ in the National Assembly; the tumult also which enclosed
them made both more solitary and confidential: in short, he narrated to
her, with fire and with historical omissions, his pastoral time with
one lamb on the mountain. This enthusiasm infected her (as all
enthusiasm does all women) to such a degree that she began--to be
silent.
Necessity now compelled both to bring some outward object (like a sword
in the princely bed) between their confluent souls--they looked down at
the two children of the gardener below, and indeed so eagerly did they
gaze at them, that they saw nothing. The boy was saying: "The young
lady [Beata] loves _me_ so much," stretching apart his two arms to
their full extent. The girl said: "The young gentleman [Gustavus] loves
me with a love as big--as the palace." "And me," he replied, "with one
as big as the garden." "And me," the girl rejoined, "with one as big as
the whole world." Beyond that the boy's wings could not soar, though
his tail-feathers had surmounted the eyrie of the Cathedral. Each
enumerated to the other the love tokens which they had received from
the party who were the delighted overhearers of their own several
praises, and each said at every article: "Canst thou beat that?"
With the sudden jump children always take to a new game, the little
girl said: "Now thou must be the gentleman [Gustavus]; and I will be
the lady [Beata]. Now I will make love to thee; afterward thou must to
me." She softly stroked his cheeks and then his eye-brows and finally
his arm, and manipulated the gentleman. "Now me!" she said, suddenly
dropping her arms. The youth threw his arms round her neck so tightly,
that the two elbows crossed each other and formed a knot and extended
beyond the love-knot as superfluous bows; he gave her a sound smack.
Suddenly her critical file found a confounded anachronism in this
historical play, and she said, inquiringly: "Yes, are not the young
gentleman and lady really in love with each other?"
That was too much for the front box overhead, which was at once the
auditory and the _original_ of the little players, and was in great
danger of becoming a _copy_ of the same. Gustavus kept his eyelids open
with all his might, in order that the water which stood in his eyes
might not form into a visible tear and roll down his cheek, and the
agitated Beata, with or without design, let her rose, broken off, fall
fluttering to the ground; he stooped down for it and remained in that
position long enough to let his tear melt away unobserved; but, as he
handed the rose back to her, and both timidly hid and buried their
sunken eyes in the flower, and when a ninny dancing along suddenly
interrupted them--then, all at once, their uplifted eyes stood over
against each other like the rising full moon confronting the setting
sun, and then sank into each other, and in a moment of inexpressible
tenderness their souls saw that they--were seeking each other.
The dancing ninny was Oefel, who wanted Beata's arm, to conduct her to
the dining-room. And now, Reader, I serve up to thee, instead of living
roses (such as our pair of souls is), nothing but roses seethed in
butter. Twenty-six or twenty-seven covers, I think, there were. I will
here furnish, instead of a bill of fare, a way-bill of the passengers.
First; there were at table and in the palace two chaste persons--Beata
and Gustavus; a proof that fair souls grow in all places, even the
_highest_: thus the Emperor Joseph had several nightingales thrown
every year into the park, that something might be heard there.
No. 2 was the Prince, who in his short life had seen more women around
him than the _ox apis_, whose own life was as long as the Egyptian
alphabet. He was, at this table, what he could not be at many a _table
d'hote_ on his travels, Brother Orator and Cardinal Wind among
sixty-three other side-winds. His crown had upon it ladies in mass.
No. 3 was his appanaged brother, whom the crowned one hated, not
because he had and deserved too much love from his people, but because
he was once mortally sick and did not die but lived on upon his
portion. The skeleton of this brother would have persuaded the Prince,
as every skeleton did the Greeks and Egyptians, to a more cheerful
enjoyment of the banquet.
No. 4 was a Knight of the Order of St. Michael from Spa (Herr von D.),
whose star of order still sent out rays in Scheerau after it had long
been extinguished in Paris. So, according to Euler, a fixed star in the
heavens may still, on account of its distance, continue to transmit its
light, though it has long since been consumed to ashes.
No. 5 was Cagliostro, who, among so many playing heads, shared the fate
of physicians and ghosts and lawyers, that his public deriders were at
the same time his secret _disciples_ and clients.
No. 6 was my manor Lord, von Roeper, who, because he had something to
say to the Prince, had remained behind. He was the only one in the
whole gastronomic assembly who did these two things: first, he had
submitted to him every sort of wine in the Bousian wine inventory, in
order to convey to his stomach that distinct and clear idea, whereon
the older logics so much insist, of all vinous goods of the Resident
Lady--secondly, he made as much account of the fricasseed, pickled and
the like viands, as if he gave instead of receiving the dinner, and he
grew more and more courteous and obeisant in proportion as his obesity
increased, like a sausage which crooks up when it is _filled_.
Nos. 7, 8 and 9 were two coarse government councillors * * * and a
coarse president of exchequer * * * whereof the first two despised the
whole court, because it had no other than literary Pandects, and the
third because he pictured to himself how many pensions and salaries the
whole court would have without the Chamber of Finance, _i. e_., without
him, and all three because in their own opinion, they upheld the
throne, though in reality they could have borne nothing except, in
Solomon's Temple, the--Brazen sea.
No. 10 was the Resident Lady, who tuned herself after every one else's
tone, and yet by her own was distinguished from all women;--like King
Mithridates, she spoke the _languages_ of all her _subjects_.
Nos. 11 and 12 were an abbess temporarily stopping on a journey and a
widowed Princess von * *, who by virtue of their rank were monosyllabic
and _hautain_.
No. 13 was the _Defaillante_ whose greatest charms and powers of
attraction were reduced to her small feet, where they resided, as in
the two feet of an armed magnet. The head, her second pole, repelled
what the lower attracted.
Nos. 00000 do not interest me; they were old female visages pickled in
the saltpetre of rouge, to whom nothing was left from the shipwreck of
their sunken life but a hard board on which they still sit and cruise
round--namely, the gaming-table.
Nos. 00000 also have no interest for me, they were a sheaf of court
dames, trimmed wall-plants on the tapestry, or rather borders set
around fruit-bearing beds--they had wit, beauty, taste and behavior,
and when one was out of the folding-doors, one had already forgotten
them.
Nos. 0000 were a company of courtiers intersected with the red and blue
order ribbons, which served a similar purpose on them to that of the
red and blue colors of the spirit in the thermometer, that one might
better see the height to which they rose,--who, like silver, _shone_
and made everything they touched _black_--who could not imagine any
higher or broader canopy of heaven than the throne canopy, or any
greater day in the year than a court day--who were never in their lives
fathers or children or husbands or brothers, but merely courtiers,--who
had understanding without principles, knowledge without faith, passions
without powers, complaisance without love and free-thinking as a
joke--whose genuineness is tested like that of the emerald, by
remaining _cold_, when one would warm it with the lips--and whom, to
tell the truth, Satan may depict, not I....
Oefel was wedged in between Beata and the Swooning Sister; Gustavus sat
opposite to them between two little witty ladies: but he forgot the
neighborhood of his arms in that of his eyes. From Oefel's limbs shot
sparks of wit, as if the silk in which he was enclosed helped electrize
him. The Swooning Sister was so sure of her liege lordship over him,
that she counted it no violation of allegiance, if her vassal said to
Beata, his next-plate neighbor, the sweetest things; "He will," she
thought, "be vexed enough, that out of politeness he cannot do
otherwise." As to Herr von Oefel, he was concerned at bottom about
nothing except Herr von Oefel; he praised, not in order to display his
regard, but only his wit and taste; he suppressed neither flatteries
nor satires, when they were good and groundless; he censured women,
because he wanted to prove that he saw through them, and because he
held that to be a difficult matter; and I held him to be a fool.
He generally applied to a maiden's heart three mountain-borers, in
order to drill a hole into it, where he might insert the gunpowder with
which he proposed to blow the mineralized vein of love into the air.
His first mining-pit which he to-day, as always, loaded in the female
heart, in the case of Beata, was, to talk with her a long time about
her dress--it is all one to them, he asserted, whether one talks of
their limbs or their clothes; but I affirm, the ugly woman wears her
dress as her _fruit_, the coquette as the mere _garden-ladder_ or the
_fruit-gatherer_, and the good woman as the protecting _foliage_,
Beata, like Eve, wore hers as leaf-work.
Secondly, he set up around Beata the cloth-and-yarn-walls of metaphor,
in order to chase her into them--he asserted that maidens would _sing_
what they never would say, (like those who cease to stutter the moment
they begin to sing); thus they suffer in figures and allegories all
those confessions of their inner being to be wormed out of them, which
one could never bring from them with literal words, although they
meant the same thing--I, on the contrary assert that such women are
good-for-nothings, and that those who are worth as much as Beata cannot
be caught with words, because their thoughts are never worse than their
words. Of course, from a chamber (or heart) where there is fire and
smoke within, the flame will blaze out through the first opening you
make for it.
His third assertion and artifice was, that men felt the value of
simplicity and the sublimity of ingenuousness and of the direct
assurance: "I am in love with thee;" whereas maidens wanted tournure
and refinement and circumlocution to be worked into this assurance; the
Turkish mode of correspondence through natural flowers was more
agreeable to them than that by flowers of poetic speech, a practical
flattering more pleasing than a verbal--I, however, assert that--he is
right. Hence, _e. g_., he made his repeating-watch always repeat before
the Fainting Lady the hour of their last rendezvous, and pleased her
thereby infinitely; hence he always looked upon a woman, when it was to
be done and to be noticed, by peeping at her behind her back in the
_mirror_--hence he was with Beata brimfull of deviltries, almost all of
which I ought to name. I mention two only. In the first place he
remembered that he had to forget himself, and in the fire of
conversation to lay his hand on hers; thereupon he made believe
recollect himself, and as if he reduced the weight of his hand half an
ounce at a time with the intention of withdrawing it unobserved, so
soon as it weighed no more than a finger-joint--"thus," he says to
himself, "the finer _delicatesse_ always manages; and I will see what
it catches." His second piece of deviltry was, to squint at her face in
the plate mirror at which he sat (his own he gave instead of the first
prize only the second) and to admire it, when all the while, he had the
original still nearer to him. Above the mirror a porcelain shepherdess
was driving sheep: "I have never yet seen a lovelier shepherdess under
glass," he said with double meaning; "but a lovelier sheep," said the
_Defaillante_, meaning him.
This mirror-plate with its shepherdess, looking across a flowery shore
into the glassy water, and with its lamb and shepherd, came very near
to a likeness of Gustavus's childish play. Beata's eye involuntarily
lost itself among these flowers, and took her ear with it, into which
the Legation Counsellor with his military man[oe]uvres of wit sought
vainly to effect a breach. Gustavus's eyes sought and shunned
only--eyes, not scenes; out of the social whirl under which his inner
wings lay buried, he could fling himself upward only by some outward
leaping-pole. For all, except those who were like him, so sorely tore
and teased his inner being with their table-talk, that he was never in
greater agony of embarrassment than to-day. I will set down the flying
table-talk, so far as related to virtue, in divisions marked off by
dashes, because several speakers joined in it, as in the peasant's
table-grace the whole family pray antiphoniously.
"People have no virtue, but only virtues--Women have it, men wage war
upon it--Virtue is nothing but an _unwonted civility_--Virtue is _un
pen de pavilion joint a beaucoup de culasse_;[71] _mats le moyen de
n'etre que l'un ou que l'autre?_--It is, like Beauty, a different thing
everywhere; here heads are peaked, there broad; so with the hearts that
are below them--Beauty and Virtue scold and love each other like a pair
of sisters and yet give each other their finery (an allusion)--One
never thinks of Virtue with so much pleasure, as when one sees the
rose-girls[72] in Salency." It is also _crowned_ in other places (a
second allusion) etc. In short, every tone and glance, not proved, but
simply assumed, that virtue was nothing more than--the economus of the
stomach, the refectorist of the senses, the officiating priestess and
daughter of the body. Love fared like virtue. "The Julie of Jean
Jacques," said one, "is like a thousand Julies, or like Jean Jacques
himself; she begins with enthusiasm, ends with piety, but the fall is
between the two."
No one but he who has once been in Gustavus's situation, who has once
endured the desolating storm of an assault upon the possibility and
divinity of virtue in a circle of witty and dogmatic people of rank;
who, under such agitations, each of which was a breach into his soul,
has been sickened by his own powerlessness to shame, to say nothing of
converting, such besiegers of virtue and the saints; who under these
Herodian revilings of his Saviour has not had even that pride to uphold
him, which indeed loves to eat with us in our private apartment, but
hurries to the _table d'hote_ out of our inner sanctum--only he, then,
who has gasped and panted in such conditions can conceive the Alpine
load which lay upon Gustavus in his.
Even Beata's countenance, which took the part of love and virtue, could
not shield him from the frosty faces of those men of persiflage, out of
which, as from the fissures of the glaciers at a change of weather,
came blasts of cutting wind, and which philosophized the heart to
pieces and annihilated all self-respect. At Gustavus's age the
Gustavuses make two fundamentally false inferences--they seek, in the
first place, under every virtuous tongue a virtuous heart, but,
secondly, also, under every bad tongue a bad heart.
Gustavus would have been very little troubled at not being able to
answer much, to say nothing of counter-questioning, had there not been
sitting opposite to him two ears, that deserved better things than what
they were compelled to hear. He always slipped off from the right key
and struck consonances where dissonances stood written on the score,
and _vice versa_. Now he was astounded at other people's frank
licenses, and anon his neighbors were astounded at his; and wit would
have been easier for him than to hit a tone which seemed to him now too
bold and now too cowardly. But this was not properly the trouble; his
essential fault, which held his feet like the stocks, was--that his
thoughts were logically correct.
This fault many have; and I myself have had to drill myself many
a forenoon and go through ground and lofty tumblings of the soul,
before I could in some degree think disconnectedly and with a
hop-skip-and-jump, just as if I were half a fool. And even then it
would at last all have come to nothing, had I not gone to school and
sat on the seat of a pupil to women. They think far less logically, and
whoso does not learn under them a good tone is one of whom nothing can
be made--except a German metaphysician. Do they even, haply, answer
Yes or No, instead of what does not pertain to the matter in hand? Do
they express themselves upon the weightiest subject considerately and
with lawyerlike diffuseness, or on the most frivolous subject
frivolously? Do they dislike to use or to hear persiflage, or do they
haply--ball-queens and governesses of the _bureaux d'esprit_ of course
excepted--ever lay the least accent or sign of value on their table
talk, after-dinner talk, looking-glass talk, and the like? Or do they
lay any upon truths? Happily this refinement of tone, which is the
faculty-seal and tradesman's-salutation of women, increases with the
fineness of the materials one has on. One or two little German towns,
such as an Unter-Scheerau, or the like, must not set themselves up as
objections to my position, where, of course, the women of the place,
who would rather be called ladies, give out no audible sound except
with the articulated fan and sweeping train, like insects, whose voice
whizzes forth not out of the mouth, but from the whirring wing-work and
belly-tympanum.
Many will expect of me that I should demonstrate in detail this
resemblance of the female- and the court-tones: indeed, I have the pen
in my hand and need only to dip it into the inkstand. A sopranist in
the good style (I shall for the sake of euphony use the terms court
style and good style interchangeably) will always know how to lead off
and exhaust by _points_ the lightning of truth, as the electric spark
is by metallic ones. The practical sopranist cuts out of the eternal
circle of truth fanciful arcs and segments, which hang and rest upon
nothing, like the many-colored fragments cut out of a rainbow. He it is
of whom one requires, that like the quicksilver of the looking-glass,
he shall shadow forth in its shades of color all that glances by
him; other people's characters and his own opinions; show everything
without and hide everything within. Will it be enough for a man of the
world--let it answer as it may for a man of learning--to be a field
_stuck round_ with satirical thorns, and must not these rather, instead
of the enclosing ditch, fill all furrows and be more the _fruit_ than
the _hedge_ of the lot? And who else but he and the sulphurate of
potash--which, however, confines itself solely to metals--must know how
to precipitate all saints and all devils black? Only, people who dare
to make such lofty demands, do not always consider, that only a
latitudinarian and indifferentist to all truths can satisfy them,
_i. e_., a man who perhaps for years keeps the same opinions and
breeches. Nothing so narrows the playground of wit as when individual
opinions and love of truth stand therein as fixed, solid pillars.
These are just the means whereby the world's people understand how to
represent others as well as themselves in the finest ridiculous light.
The courtier can certainly make it a ground of reproach to the German
theatrical managers, that they for the most part suffer the Attic salt
and the fine comic element, which he contrives always to have about his
person, to evaporate under their sweltering hands. He, the courtier,
always makes himself ridiculous in a refined, never in a low way, and
easily spices his person with a genuine high comic quality, suited to
his high standing; but he may well ask, "Do the German dunces study me,
or does Terence, whom they do study, salt his characters so delicately
as I do my own?" ...
I think I have by my digressions adequately accounted for the
circumstance in my story, that Gustavus at last, because he had to
succumb to such quick-witted dames, and from his modest deference to
other people's talents, and perhaps because the Resident Lady was
withheld from him by her company, and Beata by her respected
father--absolutely took himself away. But out of doors the drooping
flower cannot revive itself under the cooling night-dew; in the Still
Land he passed along before the four-cornered reflections which the
chandeliers threw upon the grass without yearning, and turned round
and round to take in at a full glance all the walls of the broad
darkly-painted ball-room, where fate propels the sun-ball into great,
and the ball of earth into little circles. When he there felt the great
_profile_ of day, the night, like that of a departed female friend,
cool and comforting, on his bosom, then he thought, but without pride:
"O to thee, great Nature, will I always come, when I am saddened in the
midst of men; thou art my oldest friend and my truest, and thou shalt
console me till I fall from thy arms at thy feet and need no solace
more." ...
"Can you not inform me where young Herr von Falkenberg lodges
hereabouts," a night-messenger accosted him. He handed him a letter,
which he hurriedly ran through in the fixed-star-light of the far off
chandeliers. But they seemed to-night to have to illumine only sad
scenes. Amandus had therein written to him on the coverlet of his sick
bed as follows: