Part 22

As it may fare with Gustavus in my book as in real life, I ought to have made even before this the following observation: No one was easier to be misunderstood than he; all rays of his soul were broken by the cloudy veil of mild humility; nay, since Oefel had reproached him with wearing pride upon his countenance he had sought to appear just as humble as he was--his exterior was quiet, simple, full of love, without assumption, but also without any outburst of wit or humor. Fancy and understanding wrought in him, as in a solitary temple, altar-pieces in great masses, and consequently did not, like others, let snuff-box-pictures and medallions drop from the tongue--he was, as Descartes supposes the earth, an incrusted sun, but under the phosphorescing lights of the Court a dark earthly body--he was the extreme opposite of Ottomar, whose sun had burnt through his crust, and now stood before the people glistening, crackling, rending, calcining and hatching, Gustavus's soul was a temperate clime without storms, full of sunshine without solar heat, all overspread with green and blossoms, a magic Italy in Autumn; but Ottomar's was a polar land through which there passed in succession long scorching days, long frozen nights, hurricanes, ice-mountains, and luxuriant vales of Tempe.

To Gustavus's modesty, therefore, nothing appeared more natural than that Beata should place one who knew so well how to show off his mind and person, above him who could do neither, and who besides, had once vexed her father almost to death. Accordingly his blood crept slowly and sadly as he stole to the Resident Lady's. It seemed to him as if he could, to-day, look upon her as his friend--which he actually half did, when she, too, came to meet him with so mournful an air and face, like that in which a woman, a week after the loss of her beloved, with vacant eyes and cold cheeks, touches us most deeply. It was, she said, the anniversary day of her youngest brother's death, whom she most loved, and who loved her the most of all. She had herself painted in her mourning dross. Nothing has a greater effect than a gay person who for once falls into the semitones of sorrow. Gustavus had, indeed, too much predilection for persons in whose ears vibrated the knell of some bereavement; an unhappy person was to him a virtuous one. The Resident Lady told him she hoped he would paint away to-day's grief from her actual face and charm it into the pictured one--she had on that account assigned to-day for this distraction; to-morrow she would certainly be the better--she played carelessly, and merely with her right hand, a few dances, but only one or two measures, and with a vain struggle against her sadness. He must tell her some story before beginning, that he might not give to a face which she wore only one or two days in a year, an eternal life in his colors. But he had not yet acquired at Court either matter or manner for story-telling--at last she came upon the subject of his subterranean education. Only to her _to-day's_ face was he capable, in the cloud-burst of heart-effusion, which since Amandus's grudge had been denied him, of such a narration. When he had ended, she said: "Now paint away; you should have told me something different."

She took her little Laura in her lap. To the Prince, who is an enthusiastic animal-painter, she must sit with a silk-haired poodle instead of the little girl. But what a group now falls upon his eye, his heart and his brush, to distract all three! At least they all tremble, while the mother arranges the little hands of Laura into a picturesque and child-like embrace--while she, silently and sadly, contending with the waves of the lips against the sorrow of the eye, looks pensively into his, and with the nearest hand playfully curls the hair of the little one--verily, he thought, ten times over! if an angel would fain put on a body, the human were not too poor for the purpose, and he might in this _traveling-uniform_ make his appearance on any sun!

This sketch was so striking, that to the Resident Lady one or two unlikenesses would perhaps have been more agreeable--they would have announced a greater resemblance to her second image in him. She now passed on by gentle, not, as usual, sudden and sportive, transitions from his professional compensation and from the disadvantages of his training to his role in the legation--she disclosed to him, but with slow and confidential hand, his want of knowledge of the world--she offered him admission to her society and invited him to _souper_ for to-morrow. But in the forenoon, she added smiling, you must not come; Beata absolutely refuses to be painted.

----The reader has not yet, in the whole book, been allowed to speak or write three words: I will now let him come up to the grating or into the _parloir_ and will write down his questions. "What, then,"--he asks--"is in the Resident Lady's mind? Will she cut out of Gustavus a toothed cog-wheel, which she may put into some unknown machine or other?--Or is she constructing the hunter's screen and twisting the elastic net, to pounce upon and catch him? Is she, as does every coquette, becoming like him, who will not be like her, as, according to Plattner man becomes to such a degree that which he feels, that he bends down with the flower and lifts himself with the rocks?"

Let the reader observe, that the reader himself has wit, and proceed!

"Or," he therefore continues, "does the Resident Lady not go so far, but will she, from magnanimity, for the sake of which one often pardons the optical tricks of her coquetry, seek out and train up the most beautiful and disinterested youth on the most beautiful and disinterested grounds?--Or may not all be mere accidents--(and nothing is so obvious to me)--to which she, as racer through pleasure-groves, fastens, as she flies, the fluttering lasso of a half-formed plan, without taking the least look, the next day after the strangled prey of her snare?--Or am I wholly wrong, dear Author, and is perhaps not one of all these possibilities true?"--Or come, dear Reader, come, are they all true at once, and was this the cause of thy not guessing a capricious woman, that thou givest her credit for fewer contradictions than charms?--The reader confirms me in my observation, that persons who could never have the opportunity to give the great world lessons on the piano-forte (for example, unfortunately, the otherwise excellent reader) are capable, indeed, of pre-calculating all _possible_ cases of any given character, but not of singling out the _real_ one. For the rest, let the reader rely on me (one who would hardly without reason extenuate distinctions which attach to himself)--for the rest, he has far less cause to mourn his poverty in certain conventional graces, in certain light, fashionable and poisonous charms, which a court never denies, than other courtiers--the author could wish he were not reckoned among them--have really to bewail their wealth of the like species of poison; for in this way he remains an honest and healthy man, the respected reader; but whoever knows him would have stood security for it, that, in case all bands and bridles of the great world had tugged and pulled at him, he would, besides his honesty, have retained also his unlikeness to the fashionable gentry, who atone for the maltreatment of the fairest sex with loss of _voice_ and loss of _calves_, as (according to the oldest theologians) that woman-tempter, the serpent, who could previously _speak_ and _walk_, by his seductive industry played away speech and legs....

THIRTIETH, OR XXIV TRINITATIS, SECTION.

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.