‘Tieck and I soon found that we were rivals; for before a week each of us was in love with Caroline. Now, Ludwig was a clever fellow, and had a thousand little ways of ingratiating himself with a pretty woman—and a poetess besides. He could come down every day to breakfast with some ode or sonnet, or maybe a dream; and then he was ready after dinner with his bit of poetry, which sometimes, when he found a piano, he ‘d set to music; or maybe in the evening he’d invent one of those strange rigmarole stories of his, about a blue-bottle fly dying for love of a white moth or some superannuated old drone bee, retiring from public life, and spending his days reviling the rest of the world. You know his nonsense well; but somehow one could not help listening, and, what’s worse, feeling interest in it. As for Caroline, she became crazed about gnats and spiders, and fleas, and would hear for whole days long the stories of their loves and sorrows.
‘For some time I bore up as well as I could. There was a limit—Heaven be thanked!—to that branch of the creation; and as he had now got down to millepedes, I trusted that before the week was over he ‘d have reached mites, beyond which it was impossible he could be expected to proceed. Alas! I little knew the resources of his genius; for one evening, when I thought him running fast aground, he sat down in the midst of us, and began a tale of the life and adventures of the Herr Baron von Beetroot, in search of his lost love the Fräulein von Cucumber. This confounded narrative had its scene in an old garden in Silesia, where there were incidents of real beauty and interest interwoven, ay, and verses that would make your heart thrill. Caroline could evidently resist no longer. The Baron von Beetroot was ever uppermost in her mind; and if she ate Gurken-salat, it brought the tears into her eyes. In this sad strait I wandered out alone one evening, and without knowing it reached the “Rase Mühle,” near Oltdorf. There I went in and ordered a supper; but they had nothing but thick-milk and kalte-schade. *
* Thick-milk—a mess of sour cream thickened with sugar and
crumbs of bread Kallte-schade—the same species of
abomination, the only difference being beer, for cream, for
the fluid.
No matter, thought I—a man in such grief as mine need little care what he eats; and I ordered both, that I might afterwards decide which I’d prefer. They came, and were placed before me. Himmel und Erde! what did I do but eat the two!—beer and cream, cream and beer, pepper and sugar, brown bread and nutmeg! Such was my abstraction, that I never noticed what I was doing till I saw the two empty bowls before me. “I am a dead Hofrath before day breaks,” said I, “and I’ll make my will”; but before I could put the plan into execution I became very ill, and they were obliged to carry me to bed. From that moment my senses began to wander; exhaustion, sour beer, and despair were all working within me, and I was mad. It was a brief paroxysm, but a fearful one. A hundred and fifty thousand ridiculous fancies went at racing speed through my mind, and I spent the night alternately laughing and crying. My pipe, that lay on the chair beside the bed, figured in nearly every scene, and performed a part in many a strange adventure.
‘By noon the others learned where I was, and came over to see me. After sitting for half an hour beside me they were going away, when I called Caroline and Martha back. Caroline blushed; but, taking Martha’s arm, she seated herself upon a sofa, and asked in a timid voice what I wished for.
‘“To hear before I die,” replied I; “to listen to a wonderful vision I have seen this night.”
“A vision,” said Caroline; “oh, what was it?”
‘“A beautiful and a touching one. Let me tell it to you. I will call it ‘The-never-to-be-lost-sight-of, though not-the-less-on-that-account-to-be-concealed, Loves of the Mug and the Meerschaum.’”
‘Caroline sprang to my side as I uttered these words, and as she wiped the tears from her eyes she sobbed forth—
‘“Let me but hear it! let me but hear it!”