When Cyprian finished reading, the friends congratulated him on the pleasant, healthy tone which pervaded his story. Only Theodore thought the fair sex might find a good deal to take exception to in it, and that not only the blonde Christina with her well scoured pots and pans, but the mystification of the hero, Mrs. Mathesius the police magistrate's wife and all the latter part of the story, with its profound irony, would much displease them.
"If you are going to model your work," said Lothair, "according to what pleases women, you must, of course, leave out irony altogether--although it is the source of the most delicate and delightful kind of humour--because they have not, as a general rule, the smallest sense of it."
"Which I, for one, am thoroughly glad is the case," said Theodore. "You'll admit that humour, which, in us, takes its source in striking contrasts, is quite foreign to feminine nature. And we are vividly conscious of this, though we may not often clearly account to ourselves for it. For, tell me, though you may take pleasure for a time in the conversation of a witty and humorous woman, would you like her as a sweetheart or a wife?"
"Not at all," said Lothair, "although there is a great deal to be said on the extensive question of how far humour is a feminine quality or otherwise; and I hereby reserve the privilege of hereafter addressing my worthy Serapion Brethren, at a suitable opportunity, on this important question, with a fulness and wisdom with which no psychologist has as yet discussed it. But, as a general query, let me ask you, Theodore, if you consider it essentially necessary to think of every superior woman, with whom one may have a little rational conversation, in the light of a sweetheart or wife?"
"I think," said Theodore, "that any feminine being can only really interest one if one, at all events, does not shrink from the idea of her as a sweetheart or wife, and that, the more this idea finds comfortable room in one's mind, the greater is the interest."
"That," said Ottmar, laughing, "is one of Theodore's most daring theories, which I know well of old. He has always acted up to it, and often coolly turned his back upon many a charming creature, because he couldn't manage to fancy himself in love with her for an hour or two. Even as a dancing student, he used to declare, earnestly, that he gave his heart to every girl he danced with, at all events while the waltz or quadrille lasted; and he used to try to express in his 'steps' what his lips were forbidden to utter, and sigh as profoundly as his stock of breath would let him."
"Allow me," said Theodore, "to interrupt this un-Serapiontish conversation. It is late; and I should be sorry not to read you, to-night, a tale which I finished yesterday. The spirit moved me to treat, rather more fully than has been done previously, a well-known thema concerning a miner at Falun; and you must decide whether I have done well to yield to the spirit's prompting, or not. I have had to keep my colouring down to a melancholy tone, which may perhaps contrast unfavourably with Cyprian's more cheerful picture. Forgive me this, and lend me a favourable ear."
Theodore read:--
"[THE MINES OF FALUN.]
"One bright, sunny day in July the whole population of Goethaborg was assembled at the harbour. A fine East-Indiaman, happily returned from her long voyage, was lying at anchor, with her long, homeward-bound pennant, and the Swedish flag fluttering gaily in the azure sky. Hundreds of boats, skiffs, and other small craft, thronged with rejoicing seafolk, were going to and fro on the mirroring waters of the Goethaelf, and the cannon of Masthuggetorg thundered their far-echoing greeting out to sea. The gentlemen of the East-India Company were walking up and down on the quay, reckoning up, with smiling faces, the plentiful profits they had netted, and rejoicing their hearts at the yearly increasing success of their hazardous enterprise, and at the growing commercial importance of their good town of Goethaborg. For the same reasons everybody looked at these brave adventurers with pleasure and pride, and shared their rejoicing; for their success brought sap and vigour into the whole life of the place.