What a pleasant little dinner we had that day! It was laid out in a
little summer-house of the inn-garden. All overgrown with a fine old
fig-tree, through whose leaves the summer wind played deliciously,
while a tiny rivulet rippled close by, and served to cool our
“Achten-thaler,”--an amount of luxury that made Tintefleck quite wild
with laughter.
“Is it cold enough?” she asked archly, in her peasant dialect, each time
the old man laid down his glass.
As I came gradually to pick up the occasional meaning of her words,--a
process which her expressive pantomime greatly aided,--I was struck by
the marvellous acuteness of a mind so totally without culture, and I
could not help asking Vaterchen why he had never attempted to instruct
her.
“What can I do?” said he, despondently; “there are no books in the only
language she knows, and the only language she will condescend to
speak. She can understand Italian, and I have read stories for her,
and sonnets, too, out of Leopardi; but though she will listen in all
eagerness till they are finished, no sooner over than she breaks out
into some wild Calabrian song, and asks me is it not worth all the fine
things I have been giving her, thrice told.”
“Could you not teach her to write?”
“I tried that. I bought a slate, and I made a bargain with her that she
should have a scarlet knot for her hair when she could ask me for it in
written words. Well, all seemed to go on prosperously for a time; we
had got through half the alphabet very successfully, till we came to the
letter H. This made her laugh immediately, it was so like a scaffold we
had in the circus for certain exercises; and no sooner had I marked down
the letter, than she snatched the pencil from me, and drew the figure
of a man on each bar of the letter. From that hour forth, as though
her wayward humor had been only imprisoned, she burst forth into every
imaginable absurdity at our lessons. Every ridiculous event of our daily
life she drew, and with a rapidity almost incredible. I was not very
apt, as you may imagine, in acquiring the few accomplishments they
thought to give me, and she caricatured me under all my difficulties.”
“_Si, si,_” broke she in at this; for, with a wonderful acuteness,
she could trace something of a speaker's meaning where every word was
unknown to her. As she spoke, she arose, and fled down the garden at top
speed.
“Why has she gone? Is she displeased at your telling me all these things
about her?” asked I.
“Scarcely that; she loves to be noticed. Nothing really seems to pain
her so much as when she is passed over unremarked. When such an event
would occur in the circus, I have seen her sob through her sleep all the
night after. I half suspect now she is piqued at the little notice you
have bestowed upon her. All the better if it be so.”
“But here she comes again.”
With the same speed she now came back to us, holding her slate over her
head, and showing that she rightly interpreted what the old man had said
of her.
“Now for my turn!” said Vaterchen, with a smile. “She is never weary of
drawing me in every absurd and impossible posture.”
“What is it to be, Tintefleck?” asked he. “How am I to figure this
time?”
She shook her head without replying, and, making a sign that she was
not to be questioned or interrupted, she nestled down at the foot of the
fig-tree, and began to draw.
The old man now drew near me, and proceeded to give me further details
of her strange temper and ways. I could mark that throughout all he
said a tone of intense anxiety and care prevailed, and that he felt her
disposition was exactly that which exposed her to the greatest perils
for her future. There was a young artist who used to follow her through
all the South Tyrol, affecting to be madly in love with her, but of
whose sincerity and honor Vaterchen professed to have great misgivings.
He gave her lessons in drawing, and, what was less to be liked, he made
several studies of herself. “The artless way,” said the old man, “she
would come and repeat to me all his raptures about her, was at first a
sort of comfort to me. I felt reassured by her confidence, and also by
the little impression his praises seemed to make, but I saw later
on that I was mistaken. She grew each day more covetous of these
flatteries, and it was no longer laughingly, but in earnest seriousness,
she would tell me that the 'Fornarina' in some gallery had not such eyes
as hers, and that some great statue that all the world admired was far
inferior to her in shape. If I had dared to rebuke her vanity, or to
ridicule her pretensions, all my influence would have been gone forever.
She would have left us, gone who knows whither, and been lost, so that
I had nothing for it but to seem to credit all she said and yet hold the
matter lightly, and I said beauty had no value except when associated
with rank and station. If queens and princesses be handsome, they are
more fitted to adorn this high estate, but for humble folk it is as
great a mockery as these tinsel gems we wear in the circus.
“'Max says not,' said she to me one evening, after one of my usual
lectures. 'Max says, there are queens would give their coronets to have
my hair; ay, or even one of the dimples in my cheek.'
“'Max is a villain,' said I, before I could control my words.
“'Max is a _vero signor!_' said she, haughtily, 'and not like one of
us; and more, too, I 'll go and tell him what you have called him.' She
bounded away from me at this, and I saw her no more till nightfall.
“'What has happened to you, poor child!' said I, as I saw her lying on
the floor of her room, her forehead bleeding, and her dress all draggled
and torn. She would not speak to me for a long while, but by much
entreating and caressing I won upon her to tell me what had befallen
her. She had gone to the top of the 'Glucksburg,' and thrown herself
down. It was a fearful height, and only was she saved by being caught
by the brambles and tangled foliage of the cliff; and all this for
'one harsh word of mine,' she said. But I knew better; the struggle was
deeper in her heart than she was aware of, and Max had gone suddenly
away, and we saw no more of him.”
“Did she grieve after him?”
“I scarcely can say she did. She fretted, but I think it was for her own
loneliness, and the want of that daily flattery she had grown so fond
of. She became overbearing, and even insolent, too, with all her equals,
and though for many a day she had been the spoiled child of the troop,
many began to weary of her waywardness. I don't know how all this
might have turned out, when, just as suddenly, she changed and became
everything that she used to be.”
When the old man had got thus far, the girl arose, and without saying a
word, laid the slate before us. Vaterchen, not very quick-sighted, could
not at once understand the picture, but I caught it at once, and laughed
immoderately. She had taken the scene where I had presented Vaterchen
and herself to the ladies at the tea-table, and with an intense humor,
sketched all the varying emotions of the incident.' The offended dignity
of the old lady, the surprise and mortification of Miss Herbert, and my
own unconscious pretension as I pointed to the “friends” who accompanied
me, were drawn with the spirit of high caricature. Nor did she spare
Vaterchen or herself; they were drawn, perhaps, with a more exaggerated
satire than all the rest.
The old man no sooner comprehended the subject than he drew his hand
across it, and turned to her with words of anger and reproach. I meant,
of course, to interfere in her behalf, but it was needless; she fled,
laughing, into the garden, and before many minutes were over, we heard
her merry voice, with the tinkle of a guitar to assist it.
“There it is,” said Vaterchen, moodily. “What are you to do with a
temperament like that?”
That was a question I was in no wise prepared to answer. Tintefleck's
temperament seemed to be the very converse of my own. I was over eager
to plan out everything in life; _she_ appeared to be just as impulsively
bent on risking all.
_My_ head was always calculating eventualities; _hers_, it struck me,
never worried itself about difficulties till in the midst of them. Now,
Jean Paul tells us that when a man detects any exaggerated bias in his
character, instead of endeavoring, by daily watching, to correct it,
he will be far more successful if he ally himself with some one of a
diametrically opposite humor. If he be rash, for instance, let him
seek companionship with the sluggish. If his tendency bear to
over-imagination, let him frequent the society of realists. Why,
therefore, should not I and Tintefleck be mutually beneficial? Take the
two different kinds of wood in a bow: one will supply resistance, the
other flexibility. It was a pleasant notion, and I resolved to test it.
“Vaterchen,” said I, “call me to-morrow, when you get ready for the
road. I will keep you company as far as Constance.”
“Ah, sir,” said he, with a sigh, “you will be well weary of us before
half the journey is over; but you shall be obeyed.”