Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces Part 23

The plain seemed to be one great mosaic of gardens; the hills seemed to crouch closer to the earth, as if to let men the more readily climb up upon their backs and humps. The groves of deciduous trees were like garlands, twined and placed to adorn Nature on some great festal day; and the setting sun often glowed through the trellis-work of some leafy bal.u.s.trade on a hill-side, like a purple apple in some perforated fruit-vase. In one valley one longed to take one's mid-day sleep; in another, one's breakfast; in this stream, to see the moon reflected when she stood in the zenith; to see her rise behind this group of trees; to see the sun rise out of that green trellised bed of trees at the _Streitberg_.

When he arrived the next day at Streitberg, where all those delights could be indulged in at once, he might easily have seen the top of the spire of Bayreuth put on the blus.h.i.+ng tints of the evening Aurora--unless he was a much worse walker than his historian; however, he did not care to do so. He said to himself, "I should be an a.s.s were I to go rus.h.i.+ng, all dog-tired and dried up as I am, upon the first hour of a delicious reunion and meeting of this sort; neither he (Leibgeber) nor I would get a wink of sleep; and what should we have time to talk about at this hour in the evening? No, no, better wait, and get there the first thing in the morning, about six o'clock, and so have the whole day before us for our millennium."

Accordingly he pa.s.sed the night in Fantaisie, an artificial pleasure, rose, and flower-valley, half a mile from Bayreuth. I find it a very hard and difficult matter to reserve the erection of my paper model of this Seifersdorf miniature valley (which I should so much like to introduce at this point), until I find a roomier place for it than the present; however, I can't help it, and should I not find such a place, there is sure to be ample s.p.a.ce in the blank pages at the end of the book.

Firmian started, then, in company with a body of bats and beetles--the advanced guard of a beautiful bright day--and bringing up the rear (so to speak) of the people of Bayreuth, who had just finished their Sunday and Feast of the Ascension (it was the 7th of May): and he walked so late that the moon, in her first quarter, was casting deep, strong shadows of the blossoms and branches upon the greensward. Thus late in the evening, then, Firmian climbed a height from whence he could look down, with tears of joy, to Bayreuth--where the beloved brother of his soul was waiting for him and thinking of him--as it lay softly veiled in the bridal night of spring, and broidered over with s.h.i.+ning flakes of Luna's radiance. I can affirm in his name with a "Verily" that he nearly did what _I should_ have done myself; that is to say, _I_, with a heart welling up in such a warm sort of manner as _his_ was, and on a night all so adorned and pranked out with gold and silver, should have made but one bound into the Sun Hotel, and into my Leibgeber's arms.

However, he went back again into his odour-breathing Capua (Fantaisie), and there, in the brief intervening s.p.a.ce of time between his return and supper and evening prayer time, he met--beside a dried-up water-basin or fish-pond, peopled by a race of deities transformed into stone--he met with nothing less than an exceedingly charming adventure.

I proceed to give an account of it.

Beside the wall which surrounded the little lake in question, there was a lady standing; she was dressed all in black except her veil, which was white; she had a bouquet of faded flowers in her hand, and was turning it over with her fingers. She was looking towards the west, that is to say, away from him, and seemed to be contemplating partly the confused ma.s.s of stone _Suisseries_, and the coral-reef of sea-horses, tritons, and so on, and partly a temple, in artificial ruins, which was close by. As he pa.s.sed slowly on he saw, by a side glance, that she threw a flower, not so much _at_ as _over_ him, as if this sign of exclamation were meant to rouse a pre-occupied person from his _reverie_. He looked round a little, just to show that he was really awake and observant, and went up to the gla.s.s-door of the artificially-ruined temple, in order to linger a little longer in the vicinity of this enigma. Inside the temple, facing him, there was a mirrored pillar, which reflected all the foreground and middle distance (including the fair unknown) in the green perspective of a long background. Firmian saw, in the mirror, the lady throw her bouquet at him bodily, and then roll an orange (which would not fly so far as the flowers) towards his feet. He turned round with a smile. A soft voice cried in an eager, hasty way, "Don't you know me?" He said, "No;" and ere he had added, more slowly, "I am a stranger," the unknown Lady Abbess had drawn near to him, and lifted the Moses veil rapidly from her face, and asked, in a louder tone, "Don't you, _now_?" And a female head which might have been sawn from the shoulders of the Vatican Apollo (only softened by some eight or ten feminine traits, and a narrower brow) glowed upon him like some bust illumined by the flare of a torch. But, on his repeating that he was a stranger, and when she examined him more closely, and without her veil, and let her gauze portcullis down again (which movements took altogether about as long as one beat of the pendulum of an astronomical clock), she turned away saying, "I beg your pardon," in a tone which expressed more womanly annoyance than embarra.s.sment.

A very little thing would have set him off to follow her in a mechanical sort of manner. He immediately set about adorning all Fantaisie with plaster-casts of her head (instead of the stone G.o.ddesses)--of her head, which had but three pleonasms in the face of it--too much colour in the cheeks, too much curve in the nose, and too much wild fire (or rather material for kindling it) in the eyes. "That is the sort of head," he thought, "which would be well in its place in an opera-box, beside the sparkling one of some royal bride (ay, and hold its own there), and might contain all the wisdom it might deprive--other people of."

One carries a magic adventure such as this into one's dreams with one, for it is like a dream itself. The month of May now stuck in little flower-sticks to all Firmian's drooping, trembling, joy-flowers (as she had done to Nature's), and lightly bound them to them. Ah! with what brightness do even little joys beam upon the soul when it stands on some spot all darkened by clouds of sorrow--as stars s.h.i.+ne out in the empty sky when we look up at it from a cellar or deep well.

On the exquisite morning which followed, the earth rose with the sun.

Siebenkaes had his friend of all time in his head and heart more than the unknown of yesterday; although, at the same time, he took care that his path should lead him by the ocean, and the sh.e.l.l out of which that Venus had arisen--for mere curiosity's sake--which led to no result.

And so he waded away through the moist radiance and cloudy vapour of the glittering silver-mine, tearing down in his pa.s.sage the gossamer-wreaths all behung with seed-pearls of dew which hung upon the flowers; brus.h.i.+ng (in his eagerness to reach his Olympus of yesterday) the chilled b.u.t.terflies and dew-drops from off the branches, all a-flutter with the insect swarms (the key-board of a harmonica framed in flowers). He climbed to his place in the great "Auditorium" all delight at length. Bayreuth lay behind a glowing drop-curtain of mist.

The sun (in his character of "king" of this drama) stood on a hill-top, and looked down at this many-tinted curtain, which took fire and blazed, while the morning breezes caught and bore away its fluttering, sparkling, tinder fragments, and scattered them over the gardens and the flowers. And soon nothing save the sun was s.h.i.+ning; nothing round him now except the sky. Amid this radiance Siebenkaes made his entry into his dear friend's camp of recreation and head-quarter city, whereof all the buildings looked as if they were a glittering, solider sort of air-and-magic castles fallen down from the aether. It was strange, but, on noticing certain window-curtains drawn in (which the street breeze had been toying with), he could scarcely help feeling certain that it was the "Unknown" of yesterday who was doing it, although at that time of the morning (it was barely eight o'clock) a Bayreuth lady would have as little got through her flower-sleep as the red mouse-ear, or the Alpine hawksbeard.[62] His heart beat quicker at every street. It was quite a pleasure to him to lose his way a little, as to some extent delaying and adding to his happiness. At length he attained his perihelion--that is to say--reached the Sun (Hotel), where was the metallic sun which had attracted to it _his_ comet, as the astronomical sun does comets in general. He inquired the number of Leibgeber's room; they said it was number 8, at the back of the house, but that he had gone that day on a trip into Swabia, unless he was still upstairs. Fortunately there just then came in from the street an individual who testified to the correctness of the latter hypothesis, and wagged his tail at sight of Siebenkaes--Leibgeber's dog to wit.

To storm up the stairs, to burst open the door of joy, to fall upon the beloved breast, was the work of a single instant; and then the barren minutes of life pa.s.sed unseen and unheard by the close, silent union of two human creatures, who lay clinging together on the waters of life, like two s.h.i.+pwrecked brothers floating, embracing and embraced, on the chill waves, with nothing left them save the heart they die upon....

As yet they had not said a word to one another. Firmian, whom a longer continuance of troubles had made the weaker of the two, wept without disguise at sight of the face of his newly recovered friend. Heinrich's features were drawn as if by pain. They both had their hats still on.

Leibgeber, in his embarra.s.sment, could think of nothing to hold on to except the bell-rope. The waiter came running in. "Oh! it's nothing!"

said Leibgeber; "except, by the way, that I shan't go out now. Heaven grant," he added, "that we may get fairly into the thick of a long talk! Drag me into one, brother!"

He had no difficulty in beginning one with the pragmatic detailing of the _Nouvelle du Jour_--or rather _de la Nuit_--in short, the town (or, more properly speaking, the country) news of what had taken place on the previous day in the vicinity of the veil of the beautiful _Je ne sais quoi_.

"I know her" (Leibgeber answered), "as I know my own pulse; but I don't intend to say anything whatever about her just now. I should be obliged to sit still and wait here for such a time. Put the whole thing off till we are sitting in Abraham's warm bosom in the Hermitage, which is the second heaven of Bayreuth, next to Fantaisie,--for Fantaisie is the first heaven, and the whole country is the third."

They then made an ascent into heaven in every fresh street they came to, and also in every subject of conversation which they fell upon.

"You shall knock my head off its stalk like a poppy," said Leibgeber, on Firmian's betraying (I regret to say) as great a curiosity as the reader's own to know the secret, "before I transform _my_ mysteries into _yours_, either to-day, or to-morrow, or the day after that. Thus much I will tell you, that your 'Selections from the Devil's Papers'

(your 'Evening Journal' contains matter more morbific) are perfectly divine, and very heavenly indeed, and not at all bad, and by no means without beauties; but, on the whole (let us say), pa.s.sable enough."

Leibgeber then told him how delighted he was with the work, and how it surprised him that he, a lawyer in a little country town, with n.o.body in it but a parcel of shopkeepers and juristic souls, with a sprinkling of higher officialities, should have managed to rise in these satires to such a freedom and purity of art; and, indeed, when _I_ first read the 'Selections from the Devil's Papers,' I said, myself now and then, "I am sure _I_ couldn't have written anything of the kind in Hof in Voigtland, and I _have_ written one or two pretty good things there, too."

Leibgeber placed a crown on the top of the laurel wreath by declaring that it was much easier for him to laugh at the world aloud, and with both lips, than under his breath and with the pen, and this in accordance with well-tried rules of art. Siebenkaes was beyond himself with delight at his friend's praise. But let no one grudge a pleasure of this sort to our advocate, or to any other worker who, in solitude, and without a single soul to give him a word of praise, has gone steadfastly forward along the path of art which he has honestly chosen, unsupported, una.s.sisted by the smallest encouragement of any kind, whom, at last, on reaching the goal, the fragrance of a leaf or two of laurel from a friend's hand, penetrates, strengthens, and recompenses, with an aroma as of Araby the Blest. If even the far-famed and the self-satisfied stand in need of a little of the warmth which is derived from other people's opinions, how much more the diffident and the unknown! Ah! lucky Firmian! to what a distance in the far south-south-west did the pa.s.sing thunder-storms of thy life now go drifting away. When the sun fell upon them, nothing of them was to be seen but a gentle fall of rain.

At the _table d'hote_ he observed with delight, in the case of Leibgeber, how wonderfully a constant intercourse with men and cities loosens the tongue though, at the same time, the heart puts on the bridle which has been taken from the lips. Leibgeber thought nothing of talking about himself, and this in the most humorous manner, before all sorts of grand councillors of state and chancery officials dining at the Sun--a thing which he, a cabined, cribbed, confined parish advocate would scarce have dared even after a good bottle of wine. As the discourse which he delivered on this occasion pleased the parish advocate, I shall build it into this history, and place over it the superscription--

LEIBGEBER'S DINNER SPEECH.

"I think I may venture to say that of all the Christians and persons of name and t.i.tle seated at this table, not one was made into one with such wonderful difficulty as I was. My mother, a native of Gascony, was on her way to Holland, by sea, from London, where she had left my father as diocesan of a German community. But, never since there has been such a thing on the face of the earth as a councillor of the German empire, did the German Ocean rage and insurge so terrifically as upon the occasion in question when it was my mother's lot to be crossing it. Pour all h.e.l.l, hissing lakes of brimstone, boiling copper, splattering devils, and all, into the cold ocean, and observe the crackling, the roaring, and the seething of the h.e.l.l-flames and ocean-waves contending, till one of these hostile elements swallow up the other, and you have a faint (but, at dinner-time, a sufficient) idea of the infernal storm in which I came upon the sea, and into the world. When I tell you that the main braces, the topsail sheets, and the main topgallant stays (to say nothing of the crossjack braces and fore topgallant halyards, which were in a worse state still)--and when, moreover, the mizen topsail, and the foretop mast staysail rigging, and the flying jib (to say nothing of the spanker)--when things so accustomed to the sea as these (I say) felt as if their _last hour_ was come, it was a real ocean miracle that a creature so tender as I was at that time should have managed to commence his _first_. I had about as much flesh on my body then as I have fat now, and may have weighed, at the outside, about four Nurnberg pounds, which (if we may credit the authority of the best anatomical theatres) is at the present moment about the weight of my brain alone. Besides which, I was the merest of beginners. I had seen absolutely nothing of the world, except this infernal gale. I was a creature, not so much of _few_ years as of _none_ at all (though everybody's life commences some nine months sooner than the parish registers indicate), excessively tender and delicate--having been (in opposition to all the rules of hygiene) kept much too warm, swaddled, and coddled during these very first nine months in question, when I ought rather to have been undergoing a preparation of some kind to enable me to bear the chill atmosphere of this world. And thus, quarter-grown, a tender flower-bud, liquidly soft as first love, when I made my appearance during a storm such as was raging (I added one or two feeble squeaks, with some difficulty, to its roar), what was to be expected was, that I should be extinguished altogether, even before it calmed down. People didn't like the idea of my going without something in the shape of a name--without some little vestige of Christianity of some kind--out of this world, which is a place whence we _do_ carry away even less than we bring into it with us. But the grand difficulty experienced was that of _standing_ G.o.dfather, in a rolling, plunging vessel, which pitched everything and everybody higgledy-piggledy that wasn't made fast. The chaplain was (luckily) lying in a hammock, and he baptized down out of thence. My G.o.dfather was the boatswain, who held me for five whole minutes; but inasmuch as he couldn't, without help, stand steady enough to enable the chaplain to touch my brow with the water without missing me, he was held by the barber's mate, who was made fast to a marine, who was made fast to a boatswain's mate, who was made fast to the master-at-arms, who sat upon the knee of an old bluejacket, who held on to him like grim death.

"However, neither the s.h.i.+p nor the child (as I afterwards ascertained) came to any detriment; but you all see, do you not, that, hard as it is for any one amid the storms of life, to become, and continue, a Christian, or to get a name--be it in a directory, in a literary gazette, in a herald's college, or upon a medal--yet there are few who have had the same difficulty as I have had in acquiring the mere _first elements_ of a name--the groundwork, the binomial root, of a Christian name, whereon, at a subsequent period, the other _great_ name might be engrafted--and to get hold of a faint smattering of Christianity, as much as a catechumen and candidate as yet in a speechless and sucking condition might be capable of. There is but one thing more difficult to make; the greatest princes and heroes can only do it once in their lives--the mightiest geniuses--even the three electors of the Church, the Emperor of Germany himself, with all their united efforts, can't do more, were they to sit for years, stamping in the mint with all the latest improvements in coining machinery."

The whole of the company entreated him to explain what this was that was so hard to frame.

"'Tis a crown prince," he answered, quietly; "even a reigning sovereign finds it no easy matter to produce an appanaged prince--but, let him try as he will, even in the best days of his life, he can never produce more than one specimen of a crown prince; for a Seminarist of that sort is none of your accessory-works, but the prime mover, the regulator, the striking and driving-wheel of the whole nation. On the other hand, gentry, counts, barons, chamberlains, staff-officers, and above all, common people and subjects of the altogether every-day sort--to be brief, a scurvy crew of that description--a _generatio aequivoca_--can be brought into being by a prince with such wonderful ease that he creates these _lusus naturae_ and virgin swarms, or _protoplasmata_, in considerable numbers even in his earlier days, although in riper years he may not manage to turn out an heir to his throne. Yet, after so much preliminary drill, so many trial-shots, one would have taken one's oath the other way!"

END OF LEIBGEBER'S TABLE-TALK.

In the afternoon they paid a visit to that verdant, pleasure place, the Hermitage, and the alley leading thither seemed to their happy hearts to be a path cut through some beauteous grove of gladness. That young bird of pa.s.sage, Spring, was encamped all over the plain around, her unladen floral treasures scattered about the meadows, and floating down the streams, while the birds were drawn up into air upon long sunbeams, and the world of winged creatures hovered all about in intoxication of bliss amid the exquisite scents shed abroad by kind Nature.

Leibgeber determined to pour out his heart and his secret at the Hermitage that day, and (by way of preliminary) a bottle of wine or so to begin with.

He begged and constrained Siebenkaes first of all to deliver a diary-lecture concerning his adventures by land and by water up to the present time. Firmian complied, but with discretion. Over his stomach's barren year, over his hard times, over the (metaphorical) winter of his life (upon whose snow he had had to make his nest, icebird-like), and over all the bitter northerly wind, which drives a man to BURY himself in the earth (as soldiers do)--over all these he pa.s.sed lightly and quickly. I myself must approve of him for so doing; firstly, because a man would be none who should shed a bigger tear over wounds of poverty than a young lady drops at the piercing of her ears, for in both cases the wounds become points of suspension for jewels; secondly, because Siebenkaes would not cause his friend the slightest pain on the score of their change of names, the main source of all his hunger-springs.

However, his friend knew, and sympathised with him sufficiently to consider that his pale, faded face and his sunken eyes const.i.tuted a sufficient almanac month-emblem of his frost-month or winter-picture of the snowed-up tracts of his life-road.

But when Siebenkaes came to speak of the deep and secret wounds of his soul, it was all he could do to keep back the drops of blood-water which pressed to his eyes; I mean the subject of Lenette's hatred and love. But while he drew a very indulgent picture of her little love for him, and her great love for Stiefel, he used much brighter colours for the historical piece which he painted of her admirable behaviour to the Venner, and of that gentleman's wickedness in general.

"As soon as you have done," said Leibgeber, "you must allow yourself to be informed that women are not _fallen_ angels, but FALLING ones. By all the heavens! while we stand patient, like sheep being shorn, they stick the shears oftener into our skins than into our wool. I should think of the fair s.e.x if I were to cross the bridge of St. Angelo at Rome, for there are twelve statues of angels there, holding the implements of the Pa.s.sion, each a different one; one has the nails, another the reed, another the dice, and similarly each woman has a peculiar torture-instrument of her own to apply to us poor lambs. Whom, think you, for instance now, is the Palladium of yesterday, your unknown beauty, going to tether to her bed-post with the nose-ring of a wedding-ring? But I must tell you about her. She is altogether glorious: she is poetic; full of romantic, enthusiastic admiration for the British, and for intellectual people in general (consequently for me), and lives with an aristocratic English lady, a sort of companion to Lady Craven and the Margrave at Fantaisie yonder. She has nothing, and accepts nothing; is poor and proud, daring to rashness, and pure as the day; and she signs herself '_Nathalie Aquiliana_.' Do you know who's going to be her husband? A horrible, burnt-out, used-up wretch--a feeble, puny creature, whose egg-sh.e.l.l was chipped a week or two before its time, and who now goes cheeping about our toes like a chicken with the pip; a fellow who copies Heliogabalus (who put on a new ring every day) in the matter of wedding-rings; a hop-o'-my-thumb whom I could sneeze over the North Pole (and I should like very much to do it), and whom I have the less need to give you any description of, inasmuch as you have just given _me_ one of him yourself: when I tell you his name, you will see that you know him pretty well. This magnificent creature is going to be married to the Venner Rosa von Meyern!"

Firmian fell, not _from_ the clouds, but right _into_ them. To make a long tale short, this Nathalie is the Heimlicher's niece, of whom Leibgeber wrote some account in our first volume. "But, listen,"

continued Leibgeber, "I will let myself be hewn and hacked into crumbs smaller than those of Poland--into clippings not big enough to cover a Hebrew vowel--if this affair comes to anything; for I am going to put a stop to it."

Since Leibgeber (as we know) was in the habit of talking to the lady every day (his spotless soul and his bold mind having unspeakable attractions for her), all he had to do in order to break the marriage off, was simply to repeat to her what Siebenkaes had told him concerning her bridegroom elect. It was his intimacy with her, and his resemblance to Siebenkaes which had led to her mistaking Firmian for him on the evening of his arrival.

The majority of my readers will urge against me and Leibgeber the same objection which Siebenkaes brought forward--that, Nathalie's love and marriage for money were quite out of harmony with her character, and her disregard for riches. But, in one word, all she had ever as yet seen of that gaudy flycatcher, Mr. Rosa, was his Esau's hand, that, is to say, his writing, _i. e_. his Jacob's voice; he had only written her a few irreprehensible, sentimental letters of a.s.surance (pin-papers, stuck full of Cupid's darts and st.i.tching-needles), and so given guarantee of the _doc.u.mentary_ n.o.bility of his heart.... The Heimlicher, moreover, had written to his niece, saying, on St.

Pancrasius' day (May 12th, that is in four days' time), the Venner would come and present himself, and if she refused him, let her never call herself his niece again, and starve in her native village for all he cared.

But, speaking as a man of honour, I really have never had above three of Rosa's letters in my hands for two or three minutes, and in my pocket for about an hour; and they were really not so very bad--far more moral than their author.

Just as Leibgeber said he would a.s.sume the office of consistory, and divorce Nathalie from Rosa before their marriage, she came driving up, with one or two lady friends, and got out of the carriage; but instead of going with them to where the company were a.s.sembling, she went away alone, by a solitary side walk, to the so-called Temple. In her haste she had not noticed her friend Leibgeber sitting opposite the stables.

I ought to explain here that when the Bayreuthians go to the Hermitage they have been in the habit, ever since the days of the Margrave, of sitting in a little wood, all breezes and cool shade, in front of the extensive farm-buildings and stables, but having the loveliest of prospects just at their backs, which they could easily subst.i.tute for the blank wall upon which they feast their gaze, by merely getting up and going a little way out of the wood on either side.

Leibgeber told Siebenkaes he could take him to her in a moment, as she would be sure to sit down in the temple (as she usually did) to enjoy the enchanting view of the city towers and the hills, as they lay in the light of the evening sun beyond the shrubberies. He added that, unfortunately, she cared too little about appearances; and _would_ go to the summer-house all by herself, greatly to the distress of the English lady, who, after the manner of her countrywomen, didn't like going anywhere alone, and wouldn't trust herself to go near even a gentleman's clothes cupboard without an Insurance Company and Bible Society of women with her to protect her. He said he had it on good authority that a British lady never permitted the _idea_ of a _man_ to enter her head without at once surrounding it with the number of ideas of _women_, necessary to bridle and restrain him, should he begin behaving (in the four chambers of her brain) with that amount of freedom which he might employ if _at home_ there.

They found Nathalie in the open temple, with some papers in her hand.

"I bring you our author of the 'Selections from the Devil's Papers,'"

said Leibgeber, "which I see you are just reading; will you allow me to introduce him to you?" After a pa.s.sing blush at having mistaken Siebenkaes for Leibgeber, in Fantaisie, she said to him, very kindly and pleasantly, "It would take very little to make me mistake you for your friend again, Mr. Siebenkaes; and you seem almost exactly alike in mind, as well as in body. Your satire is often exactly like his; it is only your graver 'Appendices' which I was just reading, and which I like very much, that seem to me as if they hadn't been written by him."

I have not at present time to make--(for Leibgeber's unauthorized communication to one friend of the papers of another)--excuses occupying long pages of print to readers who may insist upon extreme delicacy in matters of this description. Suffice it to say that Leibgeber took it for granted that every one who liked _him_ would join with him in liking his friends, and that Siebenkaes (and even Nathalie) would see nothing in his unhesitatingly communicating these papers, but a mere pa.s.sing on of a friendly circular letter, pre-supposing, as he did, the existence between them of a triple elective affinity.

Nathalie scanned the pair--particularly Leibgeber, whose big dog she was stroking--with a kindly and observant look of comparison, as if she were trying to find out dissimilarities between them; for, in fact, Siebenkaes seemed to her to be scarcely as like his friend as she had thought. He was taller and slighter, and younger in the face; but this was because Leibgeber, whose shoulders and chest were more strongly built, bent his strange, earnest face more forward when he talked, as if he were speaking into the earth. He himself said he never _had_ looked really young, not even at his baptism--as his baptismal certificate would prove--and wasn't likely to grow much younger now till he arrived at his second childhood. But when Leibgeber straightened his back somewhat, and Siebenkaes bent his a little, they looked very much like one another; however, this is more a hint for the drawer-up of their pa.s.sports than anything else.

Let us felicitate the Kuhschnappel lawyer on this opportunity of enjoying a few minutes' conversation with a lady of position, and of such many-sided cultivation as even to be capable of appreciating satires. All _he_ wished was that a ph[oe]nix of this sort--such as, hitherto, he had only seen a pinch or so of the ashes of in actual life, or a ph[oe]nix-feather or two preserved in a book--might not take wing and disappear _instanter_; but that he might be lucky enough to listen to a long talk between her and Leibgeber, as well as help to spin it out himself. But suddenly her Bayreuth friends came hurrying up to say that the fountains were just going to play, and there wasn't a moment to be lost. The whole party, therefore, went towards the waterworks, Siebenkaes' whole care being to keep as close as he could to the n.o.blest of the spectatresses.

They stood by the basin, and looked at the beautiful water artifices, which, no doubt, have long since played before the reader, either on the spot, or in the pages of the various writers of travels, who have expressed themselves on the subject of them at sufficient length, and in adequate terms of laudation. All kinds of mythologic demiG.o.d-ical demibeasts spouted forth streams; and from out this world, peopled with water-G.o.ds, there spouted a crystal forest, whose descending branches, liana-like, took root again in the earth. They enjoyed for a long while the sight of this talkative, intercommingling water-world. At length the fluttering, ever-growing water-forms sank down and died; the transparent lily-stems grew shorter and shorter, as they watched them.

"Why is it, I wonder?" said Nathalie to Siebenkaes, "that a waterfall lifts up one's heart; but this dying-down of these springing jets, this visible sinking away of these grand streaming beams of water, always makes me sad and anxious? We never see any such falling in of high things in real life."

Siebenkaes was thinking out the apt and comprehensive reply to this true and just expression of Nathalie's feeling, when all at once she jumped into the water to rescue, with as little delay as possible, a child who had fallen in, a few steps away from her; for the water was there about waist-deep. Before the men who were present had so much as _thought about_ it, she had _done_ it; and she was right, for in this case rapidity without reflection was the good and true thing. She lifted the child out, and gave it to the women; but Siebenkaes and Leibgeber took her hands, and lightly raised the fiery creature (all blushes, of body and of soul) on to the bank. "What does it matter?" she said, with a smile, to the alarmed Siebenkaes, "I shall be none the worse," and hurried away with her friends (who were all shocked into speechlessness), having first begged Leibgeber to come next evening, with his friend, to Fantaisie. "That of course I shall do," he said; "but first of all, I am coming to see you by myself early in the morning."

The crying need of our two friends was now to be alone with one another. Leibgeber, under the new excitement, could scarce wait to attain the birch wood, where he meant to continue their previous conversation regarding Siebenkaes' domestic and conjugal affairs. With respect to Nathalie, he briefly pointed out to his astonished friend that what so much delighted him in her was just the unhesitating, downright straightforwardness which marked all her thoughts and actions, and her manly cheerfulness, athwart which the world, and poverty, and chances and accidents of every kind merely pa.s.sed floating away, like light, s.h.i.+ning summer clouds, never darkening her day. "Now as regards you and your Lenette," he went on (when they reached the solitude of the little wood), as quietly as if he had been talking continuously up to that instant, "if I were in your place, I should take an alterative, and get rid of the hard gall-stone of matrimony for good and all. You will never really be able to bear the pain of the bonds of wedlock, though you sc.r.a.pe and scratch away at them for years to come with all your finest hair-saws and bone-saws. The Divorce Court will give _one_ grand cut and tear--and there you are, free of one another for ever and ever."

The idea of a divorce terrified Siebenkaes, although he saw very clearly that it was the only possible breaking-point for the storm-clouds of his life. He was far from grudging to Lenette either her freedom, or the marriage with Stiefel, which would infallibly result; but he felt quite sure that, however much she might wish for it, she never would consent to an enforced separation, on account of her strong regard for appearances,--also that on their road to this parting both she and he would have to pa.s.s many a bitter hour of heart-strain and nerve-fever,--and that they could hardly afford to pay for a betrothal, much less for a divorce.

It was likewise an accessory circ.u.mstance, that it was more than he could bear to think of the sight of the poor innocent soul, who had s.h.i.+vered at his side through so many a cold storm of life, going away for ever from his home, and from his arms--ay, and with _that handkerchief_ in her hand, too!