in order, among so many possible reasons why they everywhere--on
tapestry, on the _dessus des portes, des trumeaux_,[26] _des
cheminées_, on vases, on candle-sticks, on _plats de menage_,[27] on
snuffer-stands, in their gardens, on every trifle--love to see a
landscape which they never tread, a Salvator-Rosa rock which they never
climb ... I say, because among so many reasons why they do this and
concede to old Nature this _jus imaginum_, the true one could be picked
out only by an Extra-Leaf, as only such could fully decide whether it
arose from the fact that Nature, at the eternal parting had given them
her picture, as a mistress does to her lover,--or from the fact that
the artists love best to offer them, as to the old gods, precisely what
they hate,--or that they resemble the Emperor Constantine, who at the
selfsame time abolished the true cross, and multiplied and consecrated
images of the same,--or that from a finer feeling they fancy less
the enduring but mosaic pictures of Nature, in which whole mountain
ridges are the mosaic-pebbles, than the more delicate, but smaller
puzzle-pictures of the artists,--or that they would resemble people (if
there were such) who should cause to be painted on the theatre curtain
the whole opera with all the decorations, in order to spare themselves
the raising of the curtain and the seeing of the acts----and yet, if
the Extra-Leaf were in the very midst of deciding, every one would,
from canine hunger after mere incidents, take French leave and run out
after nothing but the confirmation of the incidents, and the
_End of the Extra-Leaf_.
The Princess had two coverings, of which he loved the one and hated the
other very much. The beloved one was a veil, which was a healing-bandage
to her inflamed eyes; but such a thing was to him the foil and
setting of the female face, and he pledged himself to defend, as
Respondent and Præses at once, the proposition, that virtue was never
better rewarded with beauty than in St. Ferieux[28] at Besançon; for at
the feast of morals there the best maiden gets a veil worth six
livres.--The hated covering was the gloves, against which he
universally threw down his glove of defiance. "Let a lady," he said in
Hanover, "once dare to draw against me, that is her hand, and fight
with that without the help of the Esau's hands against the Esau's
hands, and say, one must not take them off except in bed.--There, at
most, must she put them on, I might reply; but I will ask: Of what use
then; finally, are the loveliest hands which I see, if they always lie
under their wing-sheaths, as if we men were Persian kings? And is it
then too severe, if one tells those persons to their faces, who wear
such imitation-hands of silk or leather, that they resemble the Venus
de' Medici, even to the very hands?[29] I pause for a reply!"
In fact, in this dark green cabinet, almost everything--except Agnola's
beautiful Roman shoulders--is covered up; even two images of saints
were so. For a painted image of Mary with a real metallic crown--it was
not meant for an emblem of princes with mock-heads under genuine
crowns--was hidden by the cedars of the bed-plumes, and over a very
fine St. Sebastian by Titian--copied from the Barbarigo palace in
Venice--(the man looked, with his arrows, like a hedgehog, and yet hung
close by her pillow)--she had drawn the bed-curtain, when his namesake
without the arrows arrived, who rather adored than was adored. Many
have assured me since, that it was a Sebastian of Vandyk's, from the
Düsseldorf gallery; but farther on I shall show why not.
Except a female eye reposing behind a veil, no finer specimen of
nature's loveliness visits, methinks, us mortals (the Devil has got in
here six final _S's_ in succession) than one which is just in the act
of laying it aside. The poor Doctor had to meet the out-flashing of
such a lovely glow--when he was about to proceed as oculist--that he at
once proceeded as Protomedicus[30] of her head, in order to take her
hand and thereby save himself. For while she stripped off from her hand
the glove-callus--they were, however, only half-gloves with bare
fingers, or semi-wing-sheaths, i. e. _hemiptera_,--then was the Doctor,
because she had to look down at what she was doing, in the greatest
possible security, and the Greek fire shot quite by him. Hence has
there been inserted with just forethought in the fire-regulations of
morality a whole, almost too long article, which forbids young girls to
go about with their eyes exposed, as if with an uncovered light, in a
parlor of company, because there is so much inflammable stuff lodged
there,--all of _us_ in a body,--but they must bury them in a stocking,
which they are knitting, or an embroidery frame, or a thick book--e. g.
the Dog-Post-Days--as in a lantern.
--It is really a pity: since the public and I have been in the princely
chamber, one tail--I mean one digression _à la Sterne_--has followed
another.--
The princely pulse went at a somewhat more feverish rate than even his
who here describes it. Shortly before he came, she had taken off from
her eyes a warm bandage of roast apples. She desired a temporary
bandage, while they should be preparing that which the doctor
prescribed. But now in the darkness, in this confusion of the twilight,
he could not, in all the four corners of his brain, or the eight lesser
brains of the fourth central chamber, muster up a single oculist except
Dr. von Rosenstein, who started up within there and advised him to
advise the spreading of powdered saffron, one fifth camphor, and melted
winter-apples on lint of fine linen. The chambermaid was sent to
oversee or order the preparation of the recipe, after she had first
bound a black taffeta ribbon with the apple poultice before two of the
most beautiful eyes, which deserved a more agreeable bandage and
blindness. I am lively, when I write, that the poultice seemed to be
made of the apple of beauty--and the black ribbon of beauty-patches
pounded apart. The Pater also went away, so soon as he got from the
doctor the hope of a speedy recovery. But for the Medicus it was verily
now no child's play to sit opposite an Italian rose-cheek and
Madonna-face,--and that, too, so near that he could hear the breath
whisper, after having been able previously to see it grow,--to keep
himself opposite to a face (methinks, was no sport) on which roses are
engrafted upon lilies, like sunsets upon light lunar clouds, and which
a picturesque shadow, namely a black order ribbon, a priestly fillet, a
true _postillon d'amour_, so beautifully divides and sets off,--a
bandaged face which he can contemplate in one steady gaze, and which
supports itself (in a picturesque half-front) turned towards him, on
the pillow and on the hand....
I ought to have attempted a climax, have begun with Sebastian's soul,
which to-day out of its own melancholy, out of its sorrows, out of its
love for Agnola magnified by Zeusel's calumny, made nothing but lines
of beauty and flowing tints in order to paint into his own face as
beautiful a new one as ever a fair soul created on canvas, or on its
own head or on another's.
Agnola may well have had this perception sooner than I.
It furnished, of course, to the couple slender assistance that they
were (not under four eyes--for Agnola's were darkened--but) under only
two eyes; for the two other eyes, of the Court-dame in the cabinet,
about which Victor could not be sure, till now when the princely ones
were shut, and he could without questions investigate by glances and
smiles the stiff thing on the chair in there in the cabinet, were
really _painted_, and so was the body which bore them.
It struck him as singular now, that, against all Court-order, he was
suffered to be alone with the Princess; but, he said to himself, she is
an Italian,--a patient,--a lovely little child of fancy--(this last was
perceptible even in the unusual winter _negligé_ and Sicilian fire). He
could not possibly, therefore, (even to-day before the bandaging of the
eyes,) hit the right tone with her; for as she was too fine for a
German,--not tender enough for an Englishwoman,--too lively for a
Spaniard, he would certainly have written on her _p. p. p_. (_passé par
Paris_, which is inscribed on letters that come via Paris), he would
have done it, I say, had she not again been too impassioned for a
Parisienne. There was the rub.--But as two persons converse more
courageously and freely when one or both sit in the dark--and that was
Agnola's case:--Victor was, after all, to-day not absolutely as simple
as a sheep. Add to this that he took heart from the jewel-cupboard, in
which to his joy--she could not see him look round so impolitely--he
discovered among twenty watches no _montre à régulateur_. She asked him
whether she should be so far restored by the third holiday, that she
might contribute something to the Prince's pleasure at the ball. He
answered affirmatively, though he knew that she would contribute still
more to it by staying away, and although she knew it, too. Here he
began to pity her, and he would fain make a clean heart. He would not
exactly say plumply: "In Gross-Kussewitz I let the Devil so abuse my
good nature as to prevail on me to smuggle into your Highness's watch a
declaration of love"; but he would, in the finest outpouring of soul,
fall down with his beating bosom and say: "Not from fear of punishment,
but from fear lest the confession of my fault may contract some
similarity to a repetition of the offence, I have hitherto concealed
the fact that I once expressed, not so much too strongly as too boldly,
a profoundness of esteem in which I am permitted to imitate only your
Court, and not its sovereign; but the strength of feelings is easily
confounded with their lawfulness."
He still delayed this falling down, because he perceived behind
the curtain a gold strip which seemed to be the beginning of a
picture-frame. This border-work must surely run round something,--round
a picture, I fancy: and this was what he would like to know.
The cursed Court-Apothecary with his calumny had it to answer for, that
he had this wish; not as if he supposed that Mat's face hung in a
gilded frame behind the bed, but because to-day all sorts of things had
startled him. He could do it very easily, as the arras-door and
nunnery-grating of her eye was hung with black; he needed only to
support his left hand softly on the edge of the bed, and thus, bending
forward and hovering over her with suspended breath, reach across with
his right over the bed (it was narrow, and he tall) and pull the
curtain a little,--and then he would know what hung behind there. I
repeat, but for the Apothecary it would never have entered his head.
A slanderer causes one to demand of every action at least its
passport,--one does it merely to effect a most patent refutation of the
slanderer,--and as, often, the most innocent act has no certificate of
health, one shakes one's head and says, It is a real calumny, but then
I will still be on the watch.
He had made several attempts to reach over, but as she always had
something to say and he to answer, it would not do, unless he chose to
betray his nearness to her ears. The conversation related to the
ball,--the presence and illness of her maid of honor, Clotilda,--the
substitute of the latter, Joachime, upon whose appointment Victor
expressed himself with decided coldness; he could never, with Agnola,
get beyond court-news; all that was abstract and metaphysical she
seemed to hate or to ignore; and as to _talking_ of emotions with
her,--which he generally loved best to do with women, and for which the
husband's would have given him ample occasion and material,--that
seemed to him not much better than actually to _have_ them.
When he had given his cold answer about the promotion of Joachime,--a
coldness which formed a flattering contrast to his present enthusiastic
warmth and fulness of feeling for the Princess,--he would fain insert
in the half-bar-rest which followed, and which Agnola filled out with
thinking, the raising of the curtain. He rested on his hand, held his
breath, drew the curtain,--but the St. Sebastian was behind it, which I
have already mentioned above, and which was most certainly by Titian,
and not by Vandyk, because he looked so like our Victor,[31] that it
was credible to him that the Pater had copied it from his wax-statue
at St. Luna. The Saint appeared to him still worse than the
Evangelist,--not because he thought the portrait was his namesake, but
because it occurred to him _why_ the women in Italy sometimes _veil_
the pictures of saints. Tho reason can, notoriously, form the subject
of a wood-cut for the ten commandments--(Göschen and Unger ought to
edit the catechism with more tasteful cuts to the prohibitions than the
old ones are). Even the Mary over the bed was veiled with plumes and
everything.... Zeusel! Zeusel! hadst thou not calumniated, this whole
biography (so far as I can foresee) might well have had a different
course!
He supported himself by resting his right hand against the wall, in a
hovering posture above the blind fair one, because a little world-globe
attracted his centripetal force and drew him out of his returning
orbit.--For as the patient rested on her right side, one cloud after
another of dishevelled hair had flowed down over the heart and over the
lily hill which is lifted by sighs, and the locks falling towards the
other hill had not been able there to cover up so much as they had
here disclosed. The lace-veil sank slowly after the tresses, and
the heart-leaves and the ripe blossoms fell away from the protruding
apple-fruit.... Dear æsthetic hero of these Post-days, wilt thou remain
a moral one, hanging, as thou art, unseen over this veritable Belidor's
_globe de compression_,[32]--over this _waxing_ moon-globe, whereof one
never sees the other half,--near this commanding eminence, which, like
other eminences, one should not suffer round a fortification,--and that
too at a court where generally the _dress-regulations_ suppress
everything _elevated_?
When he is once away from the bed and the Paullinum, I will have a good
quarrel with the reader about the whole occurrence,--but now it must
first be related continuously and with a good deal of fire.
He was, as it were, fastened in the air. But at last it was time to
withdraw from a position which was the torrid zone of all the feelings.
Besides, a new circumstance enhanced at once the danger and the charm.
A long sigh seemed to surcharge and heave her whole bosom, and to
undulate like a zephyr through a bed of lilies, and the superincumbent
snow-hill seemed to tremble with the swelling heart that glowed beneath
it, and with the swelling sigh. The hand of the veiled goddess moved
mechanically toward the imprisoned eye, as if it would press away a
tear behind the bandage. Victor, in his fear that she would push aside
the bandage, withdraws his right hand from the wall, and the left from
the bed, in order, on tiptoe, to bend back, without grazing anything,
out of this enchanted heaven.
Too late!--The ribbon is down from her eyes,--perhaps his sigh had been
too near, or his silence too long.
And the unveiled eyes find above them an inspired youth, dissolved into
love, hovering in the beginning of an embrace.... Stiff as a statue he
hung in the petrified posture,--her eyes, inflamed with pain, suddenly
overflowed with the milder light of love,--ardently and softly she
said, _Comment?_ And too lame for apology, trembling, sinking, glowing,
dying, he falls upon the hot lips and the beating bosom. He closed his
eyes for rapture and confusion, and blind and love-intoxicated, bold
and fearful, he grew to her lips with his thirsty ones ... when
suddenly his ear, on the stretch for every approaching sound, heard the
night-watchman calling the hour of twelve, and Agnola, as with a
strange, intruding hand repelled him from her, to throw aside a bloody
chemise-pin.
Like a doomsday in the night-clouds the watchman's homely admonition to
think of death and of the twelfth spirit-hour of this midnight of life,
pealed into his ears, before which the blood-streams of the heart
rushed by. The call in the street seemed to come from Emanuel, and to
say: "Horion! Stain not thy soul, and fall not away from thy Emanuel
and from thyself! Look at the linen over her diseased eye, as if death
veiled it, and sink not!"
"I sink not!" said his whole heart; he unwound himself with respectful
forbearance out of the throbbing arms, and stiffening at the
possibility of an imitation of the wretched Matthieu, whom he had so
despised, he sank down outside of the bed on her hand, which he had
drawn out with him, and said with streaming tears: "Forgive a
youth,--forgive his overmastered heart,--his dazzled eyes,--I deserve
all punishments, any one would be to me a pardon,--but I have forgotten
no one except myself."--"_Mais c'est moi, que j'oublie en vous
pardonnant_,"[33] said she with an ambiguous look, and he rose, and as
her answer gave him the choice between the most agreeable and the
most humbling interpretation, he gladly punished himself with the
latter. Agnola's eye flashed with love,--then with anger,--then with
love,--then it closed;--he stepped back to the most respectful
distance,--she opened it again and turned her face coldly to the wall;
and by a secret pressure against the wall which, I suppose, commanded a
private bell in the apartment of the Chambermaid, gave the latter the
order to make haste,--and in a few minutes she came in with the
eye-band. Naturally (as in human life) they played out the fifth act,
just as if there had been no third and fourth.--Then he politely
withdrew.
There!--Now the reader and I begin to quarrel about the matter, and
Victor to think about it. His embrace was not right,--nor were his
voyage of discovery to the wall and his picture-exhibition,--but it was
_discreet_; for he could not, of course, really throw a backward
somerset, and say, "I thought Mat was hanging behind the bed."--To
this, to be sure, people of experience reply, "We do not quarrel with
him here for preferring discretion to virtue, but rather for this, that
he did not do so again after the kiss. That kiss is too small a fault
for Agnola to be able to forgive." I observe, these people of
experience are adherents of the sect who, in my book, reckon the
Princess, on account of so many half-proofs, among those women who, too
proud and hard for the love of the heart, only let the love of the
senses alternate flyingly with the love of domination, and who do it
only for the sake of making out of Cupid's bandage a rein, and out of
his arrows spurs and stirrups. I am very well acquainted, too, with the
half-proofs with which this sect backs itself,--the bigotry of the
Princess,--her confession-eve,--her previous attentions to my
hero,--the covering of the painted Mary, and the exposure of the more
living one,--and all the circumstances of my narration. But I cannot
possibly believe such a thing of a friend of Clotilda (unless the
latter, for this very reason, had taken leave of her, or from goodness
of soul had not at all comprehended those couriers of the temperament
more common with the male sex), until in the sequel manifest traces of
a more _exasperated_ than _afflicted_ woman compel me to it.
I am getting quite away from my promise, to present some
considerations, which would certainly, with impartial persons, if not
justify, yet excuse my hero, for becoming, after the kiss, virtuous
again, so to speak, and not full of the live Devil. I boldly set down
among the grounds of mitigation his want of acquaintance with those
women who, like the Spartans, bravely ask not about the _number_ of the
foes of their virtue, but about their _position_; he was often with
them, indeed, and in their camp, but his virtue hindered them from
showing him theirs. He is less excused by the influence of the
night-watchman, and the remembrance of death; for this needs itself to
be excused;--but then, on the other hand, it is only too certain, that
certain men of a philosophical or even a poetic organization, precisely
then, and in fact always, regard, instead of their own position,
general ideas, when others can understand nothing at all, and be
nothing at all but self: namely, in the greatest dangers, in the
greatest sufferings, in the greatest joys.
A fair man will throw all upon the Apothecary, who was Victor's moral
and mechanical bed-cord, or helper out-of-bed; for as he had prefigured
to him the noble Mat in a similar situation (but without the bed-cord),
of course the abhorrence which Victor, some days before, had felt of
the Evangelist's conduct, became in him a laming incapacity of copying
it in the least a few days after.--O if we could only, a couple of days
beforehand, see every sin, to which we are tempted by ourselves or
others, actually committed by a true scamp, whom we spit upon! Could we
then eagerly imitate the scamp?
Finally, one needs only to cast a glance at Victor in his balcony,
where he now sits in a singular barometrical condition, if one would
pass judgment on his previous state. His present state, namely, is a
mixture of emptiness, discontent (with himself and everybody), of
increased love for Agnola, justification of this Agnola, and yet the
_impossibility_ of imagining her a near friend, of Clotilda's.
For myself, I shall never repent the little which I have hastily
brought together, if I have shown up therein by a few happy hints how
well my hero, in regard to his conduct _after_ the kiss, which must
strike strict people of the world as singular, can plead a disagreeable
combination of constraining circumstances, and if I shall, therefore,
have succeeded in restoring to him, at the end of the twenty-seventh
chapter, the respect which he had forfeited, by not wrapping round the
princely ring; too large for his finger, the long silken threads of
love, so as to make it fit....