42. CYCLE.
On the May-Saturday-evening, at 7 o'clock, every vapor disappeared from the sky, and the brightly departing sun went to meet a glorious Sunday. Albano, who then, at length, meant to visit the unseen Lilar, was, on the evening before, as sacredly happy as if he were celebrating confession eve before the first holy supper;—his sleep was one constant ecstasy and awaking, and in every dream a mimic Sunday morning rose, and the future became the dark prelude of the present.
Early on Sunday he was about to sally forth, when he had to pass by the half-glass door of the Doctor. "Sir Count, one moment!" cried he. When he entered, the Doctor said, "Directly, dear Sir Count!" and went on with what he was about. To the painters, who, in future centuries, will draw from me as they have hitherto from Homer, I present the following group of the Doctor as a treasure; he lay on his left side; Galen was smoothing down his father's back with a little scratch-brush, while Boerhave stood near him with a broad comb, and kept dragging that instrument perpendicularly (not obliquely) through the hair. He always said he knew nothing that cheered him up so, and was such a good aperient, as brush and comb. Before the bed stood Van Swieten in a thick fur, which the correctioner had to wear when the weather was warm and his behavior bad, in order that he might, thus arrayed, be laughed at, as well as half roasted.
Two girls stood waiting there in full Sunday gala, and were thinking of going out into the country to see a parson's daughter, and to the village church; these he first mauled, limb by limb, with the hammer of the law. He loved to make his children antipodes of Romish defendants, who appear in rags and tatters, and so he set them in the pillory, all ruffled and tasselled, especially before strangers. The Count had already this long time, on the red children's account, been standing with his face turned toward the open window; he could not, however, refrain from saying, in Latin, "Were he his child, he would long ago have made way with himself; he knew nothing more degrading than to be scolded in finery." "It takes so much the deeper hold," said Sphex, in German, and fired only these few farewell shots after the girls: "You are a pair of geese, and will do nothing in church but just cackle about your rags and tags; why don't you mind the parson? He is an ass, but he preaches well enough for you she-asses; in the evening do you tell me every word of the sermon."
"Here is a laxative drink, Sir Count, which, as you are going to Lilar, I beg you to give the Architect's lady for her little toads; but don't take it ill!" By the deuse! that is what precisely those people most frequently say, who, themselves, never take anything ill. The Count,—who at another time would have contemptuously turned his back upon him,—now blushing and silent before the preserver of his Liana, put it into his pocket, because, too, it was for the children of his beloved Dian, to whose spouse he wished to bear greetings and news.