Gun-Foundery of Love; e. g. Printed Gloves, Quarrels, Dwarf-Flasks,
and Stabs.--A Title from the Digests of Love.--Marie.--Court-Day.--
Giulia's dying Epistle.
The reader will be vexed with this Dog-Post-Day; I, for my part, have
already been vexed about it. My hero is evidently becoming entangled in
the meshes of two female trains, and even in the bonds of the princely
friendship... Nothing more is wanting than that Clotilda should
actually be joined to the hurly-burly.----And something of this kind it
becomes necessary for a mining-superintendent, an islander, to
communicate confidentially to the people on the mainland.
Besides, it must be done chronologically. I will dissect this
Dog-Post-Day, which reaches from November to December, into weeks.
Thereby more order will be observed. For I understand the Germans. They
want, like the metaphysician, to know everything from the beginning
onward, very exactly, in royal octavo, without excessive brevity, and
with some _citata_. They furnish an epigram with a preface, and a
love-madrigal with a table of contents; they determine the zephyr by
compass and the heart of a maiden by conic sections; they mark
everything, like merchants, in black-letter, and prove everything, like
jurists; their cerebral membranes are living parchments, their legs
private surveyors'-poles and pedometers; they cut up the veil
of the Nine Muses, and apply to the hearts of these damsels
turners'-compasses, and insert gauging-rods in their heads; poor Clio
(the muse of history) looks, for all the world, like the Consistorial
Counsellor Büsching, who trudges along slowly, bent up under a land
freight of surveyors'-chains, clocks to calculate _thirds_, and
Harrison's longitude-watches, and interleaved writing-almanacs, so that
I specially weep for the poor Büsching as often as I see him striding
along, since all Germany, (from which I should have expected something
different,)--every magistrate, every stupid justice of the peace, (only
we of Scheerau have never saddled him,)--has loaded down the good
topographical carrier and Christopher (cross-bearer), like a statue
hung with pledges, from knee to nostril, (so that the good man is
hardly to be seen, and I wonder how he stays on his feet,)--has
palisaded, I say, and built him in with all sorts of cursed devil's
whisks, with village inventories, with advertising sheets, with
heraldic works, with books of ground-plats and perspective plans of
pigsties.
They have even--that I may only _relate_ an example out of my own
history of the German statistic stupidity, although in the very
doing of it I _give one_--infected Jean Paul. Is it not an old
story that he has approximately assigned in degrees, by means of a
Saussure's cyanometer,[241] the blueness of the fairest eyes into
which an _amoroso_ ever looked, and inspected the fairest drops that
fell from them during the measurement, correctly enough, with a
dew-measurer?--And has not his attempt to catch and prove female sighs
by a Stegmann's measurer of the purity of the atmosphere found more
than too many imitators among us?----
WEEK OF THE 22D POST-TRINITATIS, OR FROM
NOV. 3d to 11th (EXCLUSIVE).
Almost the whole of this week he sat out at the Minister's. Many
people, when they have been only four times in a house, come again
daily, like the quotidian fever,--in the beginning, like the spring
sun, every day earlier; afterward, like the autumn sun, every day
later. He saw, indeed, that he could not contribute anything at this
court-and-ministerial party, either a mystery, or property, or a heart,
because it would resemble honest courts of justice, which--just as
the monks call their property a deposit, and say nothing belongs to
them--inversely promote every deposit into a piece of property, and say
all belongs to them. But he made no account of that. "I come indeed
only for fun," thought he, "and no harm can be done to me."----
The Minister, whom he met only over the table, had all the civility
towards him which can be united with a face full of persiflage, and
with a class of society in whose eyes all the world is divided into
spies and thieves; but Sebastian perceived, nevertheless, that
he looked upon him as a smatterer in medicine and the serious
sciences,--as if they were not all serious,--and as an adept merely in
wit and in the liberal arts. He was, however, too proud to turn to him
any other than the empty new-moon-side, and concealed from him all that
might convert him. Consequently, Victor must needs, in the eyes of the
stupidest government-officer who had seen it, have deprived himself of
all respect by the fact that, when the Minister started an interesting
conversation with his brother, the Regency-President, about imposts,
alliances, or the exchequer, he either did not attend, or ran off, or
looked up the women.----Then, too, he loved in the Prince only the man;
the Minister loved only the Prince. Victor could himself, when with
January, deliver discourses on the advantages of republics, and the
latter would often, in his enthusiasm, (if the supreme courts and his
stomach had allowed it,) gladly have raised Flachsenfingen to a free
state, and himself to the President of Congress therein. But the
Minister hated all this with a mortal hatred, and fastened on all
political free-thinkers--on a Rousseau, on all Girondists, all
Feuillants, all Republicans, and all philosophers--the name of
_Jacobin_, as the Turks call all foreigners, Britons, Germans,
Frenchmen, etc., _Franks_. Meanwhile this was a reason why Victor now
took a greater liking to Mat, who thought better on this subject, and
why he fled from the father to the daughter.
This week he got into Joachime's good graces. She gave to the fine and
fragrant duo of fools, as we do to _virtue_, only the second prize, and
to my hero, as we do to _inclination_, the prize-medal. But as he
respected, at most, merely a certain sentimentalism in friendship and
in love, he could, he thought, have ridden through the moon with this
waggish girl, without sighing _for_ her (though he might, indeed,
_over_ her). But these jolly ones, my Bastian, have seen the old Harry;
for whenever they change to anything else, one changes with them to the
same thing. She told him she wanted to give _pleasure_, like a Lutheran
holy picture, but she would not be _adored_, like a Catholic one. She
prepossessed him most by the gift peculiar to her sex, of understanding
tender allusions,--women are so easy at guessing the meaning of others,
because they always oblige others to guess their meaning, and
_complete_ and _conceal_ each _half_ with equal success. But among her
attractions I reckon also her constraint before the Princess, and
before those who listened with their--eyes. For the rest, his heart,
which Clotilda had rejected, was now in the situation of children who
have made a bet that they will receive blows upon their hands without
crying, and who still continue to smile when the tears already flow.
WEEK OF THE 23d POST-TRINITATIS, OR 46th OF
THE YEAR 179-.
Now he is there even in the forenoon. It is worthy of notice, that
on St. Martin's day he scraped her powdered forehead with the
powder-knife, and that he applied to her for some court offices in
connection with the toilet. "I can be your rouge-box bearer, as the
Great Mogul has tobacco-pipe and betel-bearers, or else your _cravatier
ordinaire_, or your _sommier_ (i. e. prayer-cushion-bearer).--I would,
if you did not kneel yourself on the cushion, myself do it before
you.----I knew in Hanover a handsome Englishman who had his left knee
stuffed and padded, because he did not know whom he should to-day have
to adore, and how long."
It is something quite as important, that on St. Jonas's day he forced
her to accept a pair of fine gloves, on which a very simple face was
painted. "It was his own," he said; "she should have the face only by
night, in bed, in, or on, her hand, that it might look as if he kissed
her hand through the whole November night."
I go on with my pragmatic extracts from this siege-journal, and find
recorded on Leopold's day that, as early as in the forenoon, Joachime
said she would have her parrot, if she kept a master of languages for
him, repeat nothing out of the whole dictionary except the word
_perfide_! "Every lover," said she, "should keep a poll for himself,
which should incessantly cry out to him, _perfide_!"--"The ladies,"
said my hero, "are alone to blame: they want to be loved too long;
often whole weeks, whole months. The like of that is beyond our powers.
Have not the Jesuits made even love to God periodical? Scotus limits it
to Sunday, others to the festival days.--Coninch says, it is enough if
one loves Him once every four years.--Henriquez adds a year more to
it.--Suarez says, it is enough if it is only done before one's
death.----To many ladies the intermediate times have hitherto fallen;
but the hours of the day, the seasons of the year, the days of
betrothal, of burial, form just as many different sects among the
Jesuits of Love."--Joachime made a beginning of putting on an angry
look. The court-physician loved nothing better with a fair one than a
quarrel, and added: "_C'est à force de se faire haïr qu'elles se font
aimer--c'est aimer que de bouder--ah, que je vous prie de vous
fâcher!_"--His humor had carried him beyond the mark.--Joachime had
reason enough to fulfil his prayer for her wrath.--He wanted to
continue the quarrel in order to settle it, but as there are cases
where the _aggravation_ of an offence brings about forgiveness quite as
little as the _taking of it back_ step by step, he did wisely in coming
away.
He wondered that he should think of her all day long. The feeling of
having done her wrong brought her face with a suffering expression
before his softened soul, and all her features were at once ennobled.
Tacitus says, we hate another when we have offended him; but good men
often love another merely on that account.
The day following, Ottomar's day,--_Ottomar_! great name, which makes
the long funeral procession of a great past sweep by all at once before
me in the dark,--he found her serious, neither seeking nor shunning
him. The two fools remained in her eyes the two fools, and gained
nothing in any way. As, therefore, he clearly perceived that out of a
transient resentment there had grown true repentance for her previous
openness,--of which he seemed to have made too free a use and too
selfish an interpretation,--it was now his duty to do in earnest that
which he had hitherto done in joke, namely, to seek her and get her to
be reconciled.
But she stood all the time by the Princess, and nothing was done.
I have not said it myself, because I knew the reader would see
it without me,--that my hero thinks Joachime regards him as the
image-worshipper of her charms, and as the moon-man, or satellite
attracted by her. My hero has, therefore, long since made up his mind
to leave her in this error. As to removing such an error,--for _that_ a
man or a woman seldom has strength enough; but Victor had, besides,
several reasons for indulging her with faith in his love (that is,
himself, also, with faith in hers). In the first place, he wanted to
conceal the reason of his coming; secondly, he knew that in the great
world, and among the Joachimes, a lover is sought for only as third man
in the game,--with them there is no dying of love, one does not even
live on it; thirdly, he reserved for himself in all cases the
sheet-anchor of making earnest out of jest; "when the knife is at my
throat," thought he, "then I will set myself down and fall truly in
love with her, and then all will be well"; fourthly, a coquette makes a
_coquet_.[242] ... Here I began already, as is well known, to be vexed
about the 22d Post-Day, although I know as well as anybody why all
mankind, even the most sincere, even the male kind, incline to little
intrigues towards their beloved; that is to say, not merely because
they are little and _reciprocated_, but because one thinks by his
intrigues to give more than he steals. Only the highest and noblest
love is without real trickery.
WEEKS OF THE 24th AND 25th POST-TRINITATIS.
On Sunday there was a ball. "Very naturally," said he, "she will not
look on me. In ball-dress the fair sex are more implacable than in
morning dress." Hardly had she seen him when she came to meet him,
like an agitated heaven, with her fixed stars of brilliants and her
pearl-planets, and in this splendor begged of him the forgiveness of
her freak. She had at first made believe angry, she said, then had
actually become so; and not until the next day had seen that she did
wrong to appear so and had a right to be so. This prayer for
forgiveness made our Medicus more humble than was necessary. She begged
him sportively to beg her pardon, and made him acquainted with her
percussion-gold of sudden resentment.
For a space of two days this Westphalian peace was kept.
But one quarrel with a maiden, like one fool, makes ten; and
unfortunately one only likes the angry one so much the better (at
least, better than the indifferent), just as people run most after
_those_ Methodist preachers who damn them the most roundly. Joachime
grew daily more susceptible of anger,--which he ascribed to an
increasing love,--but so did he, too. Let them have spent the whole
visit in the finest imperial and domestic peace, at the leave-taking
all was put upon a war-footing again, ambassadors and furloughed ones
(if I may be allowed these poetical expressions) recalled. Then with
the angry sediments in his heart he withdrew, and could hardly wait for
the moment of the next interview,--i. e. of his or her justification.
Thus did they spend their hours in the writing of peace-instruments and
manifestoes. The matter of dispute was as singular as the quarrel
itself: it concerned their demands of friendship; each party proved
that the other was the faulty one, and demanded too much. What most
enraged our Medicus was, that she allowed the fine and the fragrant
fools to kiss her hand, which she forbade him to do, and in truth
without any reasons for the decision. "If she would only lie to me, and
say, such or such is the reason,--that at least would be something,"
said he; but she did him not the pleasure. To my sex, refusal without
reasons, even conjecturable ones, is a pit of brimstone, a threefold
death; upon Joachime, reasons and cabinet-sermons had equal influence.