36. CYCLE.
If the Feudal-Provost Von Hafenreffer had no existence except as a creature of my fancy, I should certainly proceed with my history, and tell the world, as matter of fact (and the whole romance-writing set would go to the death upon it[70]), that Albano was sitting there the next morning, blind and deaf, behind the broad bandage which the bandage-maker Cupid had bound before his eyes,—that he had not been able to count more than five, except at evening, when he cast up the strokes of the clock, in order, afterward, to run in a magic circle round the Froulay water-house, like one who sets out to charm the fire which glides snake-like after him,—that he had, through those two blow-holes[71] wherewith sentimental whales blubber right out in bookstores, spouted out considerable streams,—for the rest, had never looked at another book (except some leaves in the book of Nature), nor at another human being (except a blind man),—"and to this my surgeon's certificate of erotic wound-fevers (I would say at the conclusion of my lies) Nature manifestly sets her privy seal."
That she does not, says Hafenreffer; these are nothing but confounded lies; the case is quite otherwise, thus:—
Zesara never stole a second time into Froulay's garden; a proud blush of shame darted over him at the very thought of the painful blush with which he should come in contact, for the first time, with a mistrustful or inquiring eye.
But in this wise the dear soul remained hid from him until her recovery, as the May-month did from her; and he silently tormented himself with reckonings up of her sufferings and doubts of her cure. He was ashamed to be taking any pleasure during her period of sadness, and forbade himself the enjoyment of spring and the visiting of Lilar: ah! he knew too, full well, that the loving spring and Lilar, where she had received so many joys and the last wound, would make his heart too ungovernable and too full.
His thirst for knowledge and worth, his pride, which bade him stand in a glorious light with his father and his two friends, impelled him onward in his career. With all his native fire he threw himself upon jurisprudence, and took no longer any other walks than between the lecture-room and his study-chamber. To this zeal he was driven by a characteristic passion for completeness; everything imperfect was to him almost a physical horror; he was shocked at defective collections, broken sets of monthly magazines, lawsuits left to sleep, libraries, because he could never read them out, people who died as aspirants for office, or in the midst of building-plans, or without a rounded system of thought, or as journeymen clothiers' boys or shoemakers' apprentices, and even Augusti's flute-playing, which he only took up by the way. It was the same energy which made him hold the bridle of Psyche's winged horse tight, and stick the rowel of the spur into him; even when a child he had experimented on this kind of force, in the holding of his breath, or in the painful pressure of a sore spot,—and, by Heaven! he now, figuratively, did both again. There dwelt in him a mighty will, which merely said to the serving-company of impulses, Let it be! Such a will is not stoicism, which rules merely over internal malefactors, or knaves, or prisoners of war, or children, but it is that genially energetic spirit, which conditions and binds the healthy savages of our bosoms, and which says more royally to itself, than the Spanish regent to others, I, the king!
Ah, of course (how could his warm soul do otherwise?) he often stood, at midnight, before the breezy window, and looked tearfully at the white Madonna of the ministerial palace, silvered by the pure moon. Yes, in the daytime, he often sketched in his souvenir (it happened to be a fountain and a form behind it, nothing more), or he read in the Messiah (naturally going on with the canto which he had already begun at the house of the Minister's lady), or he informed himself about nervous maladies, (was he, perhaps, with all his studying, guarded against them?) or he let the fire of his fingers run over the strings,—nay, he would have plucked nothing but roses, although with thorns, had this been their blooming season.
And this sighing, stifled soul must shut itself up! O, he began already to fear every key of the harpsichord would become a stylus, the instrument itself a box of letters, and all actions treacherously legible words. For he must keep silent. The first young love, like that of business people (those of the Electorate of Saxony excepted), needs no instruments of speech, at most only a portable inkstand and pen. Only worldly people, who repeat their declarations of love quite as often as the players, are in a situation—and on similar grounds—to publish them, just as the players do. But in the holier season of life the image of the most beloved soul is hung, not in the parlor and antechamber, but in the dim, silent oratory: only with loved ones do we speak of loved ones. Ah, it was with reluctance that he even heard others speak of his saint; and he often stole (with the altar of incense in his bosom) out of the room where people were carrying round for her a censer more full of coal-smoke than of frankincense.