When she did join me, she wanted to talk immensely. She had all manner of questions to ask about where my treasure came from; how often I went back there to replenish it; was I quite sure that it could never, never be exhausted, and such-like? But I was in no gracious mood for such inquiries, and, telling her that I wished to follow my own thoughts without interruption, I walked along in silence.
I cannot tell the weight I felt at my heart I am not speaking figuratively. No; it was exactly as though a great mass of heavy metal filled my chest, forced out my ribs, and pressed down my diaphragm; and though I held my hands to my sides with all my force, the pressure still remained.
“What a bitter mockery it is,” thought I, “if the only false thing in all the world should be the human heart! There are diamonds that will resist fire, gold that will stand the crucible; but the moment you come to man and his affections, all is hollow and illusory!”
Why do we give the name worldliness to traits of selfish advancement and sordid gain, when a young creature like this, estranged from all the commerce of mankind, who knows nothing of that bargain-and-barter system which we call civilization, reared and nurtured like a young fawn in her native woods, should, as though by a very instinct of corruption, have a heart as venal as any hackneyed beauty of three London seasons?
Let no man tell me now, that it is our vicious system of female training, our false social organization, our spurious morality, laxity of family ties, and the rest of it. I am firmly persuaded that a young squaw of the Choctaws has as many anxieties about her parti as any belle of Belgravia, even though the settlements be only paid in sharks' teeth and human toupees.
And what an absurdity is our whole code on this subject! A man is actually expected to court, solicit, and even worship the object that he is after all called upon to pay for. You do not smirk at the salmon in your fishmonger's window, or ogle the lamb at your butcher's; you go in boldly and say, “How much the pound?” If you sighed outside for a week, you 'd get it never the cheaper. Why not then make an honest market of what is so salable? What a saving of time to know that the splendid creature yonder, with the queenly air, can only be had at ten thousand a year, but that the spicy article with the black ringlets will go for two! Instead of all the heart-burnings and blank disappointments we see now, we should have a practical, contented generation; and in the same spirit that a man of moderate fortune turns away from the seductions of turtle and whitebait, while he orders home his mutton chop, he would avert his gaze from beauty, and fix his affections on the dumpy woman that can be “got a bargain.”
Why did not the poet say, Venality, thy name is Woman? It would suit the prosody about as well, and the purpose better. The Turks are our masters in all this; they are centuries—whole centuries in advance of us. How I wish some Babbage would make a calculation of the hours, weeks, years, centuries of time, are lost in what is called love-making! Time, we are told, is money; and here, at once, is the fund to pay off our national debt. Take the “time that's lost in wooing” by a nation, say of twenty-eight or thirty millions, and at the cheapest rate of labor—take the prison rate if you like—and see if I be not right. Let the population who now heave sighs pound oyster-shells, let those who pick quarrels pick oakum, and we need no income-tax!
“I'll not sing any more,” broke in Catinka. “I don't think you have been listening to me.”
“Listening to you!” said I, contemptuously; “certainly not. When I want a siren, I take a pit ticket and go to the opera; seven-and-sixpence is the price of Circe, and dear at the money.” With this rude rebuff I waved her off, and walked along once more alone.
At a sudden bend in the road we found Vaterchen seated under a tree waiting for us, and evidently not a little uneasy at our long absence.