The friends, forming a semicircle round the picture, clinked their glasses together. "And then," said Vincenz, "it won't matter whether he is Private Secretary, Abbé, or Privy Councillor, Cardinal, or the very Pope; or even a Bishop in partibus infidelium, that's to say, of Paphos!"
As was usually the case with Vincenz, he had without intending it, or even being aware of it, stuck a comic tail on to a serious subject. But the friends felt too strangely moved to pay particular attention to this. They sat down again in silence at the table, while Theodore carried the poet's picture back into the next room.
"I had meant," said Sylvester, "to read you this evening a story, for the idea of which I am indebted to a strange chance, or rather, to a strange remembrance. But it is so late that Serapiontic hours would be long over before I had finished it."
"That is very much my case too," said Vincenz, "with my long-promised tale, which I have got pressed against my heart here in the breast-pocket of my coat (that usual boudoir of literary productions) like a pet child. It has sucked itself fat and lusty at the mother's milk of my imagination, and has thereby got so forward and so talkative that if I were to let it begin, it would go on till daybreak. So that it must wait till the next meeting. To talk, I mean to converse, appears dangerous to-night; for, before one knows where one is, some heathen king, or Pater Molinos (or some mauvais sujet or another of the sort), suddenly sits in the midst of us, talking all kinds of unintelligible nonsense. So that if either of us can out with a manuscript with something amusing in it, I hope he will let us hear it."
"If anything which any one of us may be able to produce to-night," said Cyprian, "must seem to be nothing more than a stop-gap, or an intermezzo between other melodies, I may pluck up courage to read to you a trifle which I wrote down many years ago, when I had been passing through a period of much mystery and some danger. I had completely forgotten the existence of the pages in question, until they accidentally came into my hands a short time ago, vividly recalling the times to which they relate. My belief is that what led to the production of this rather chimerical story is much more interesting than the thing itself; and I shall have more to say on that subject when I have finished it."
Cyprian read:
[PHENOMENA].
When any allusion was made to the last siege of Dresden, Anselmus turned even paler than he ordinarily was. He would fold his hands in his lap--he would gaze before him, lost in melancholy memories--he would murmur to himself,
"God of Heaven, were I to put my legs into my new riding-boots at the proper time, and run across the bridge towards Neustadt, paying no attention to burning straw, and the bursting shells, I have no doubt that this great personage and the other would, put his head out of his carriage window and say, with a polite bow, 'Come along, my good sir, without any ceremony. I have room for you.' But there was I shut up and hemmed in in the middle of the accursed Marmot's-burrow, all ramparts, embankments, trenches, star-batteries, covered ways, &c., suffering hunger and misery as much as the best of them. Didn't it come to this, that if one happened to turn over the pages of a Roux's dictionary by way of passing the time, and came upon the word 'Eat,' one's exhausted stomach cried out in utter amazement, 'Eat? Now what does that mean?' People who had once on a time been fat buttoned their skin over them, like a double-breasted coat, a natural Spencer! Oh, heavens, if only that Master of the Rolls--that Lindhorst--hadn't been there! Popowicz of course wanted to kill me, but the Dolphin sprinkled marvellous life-balsam out of its silver-blue nostrils. And Agafia!" When he spoke this name, Anselmus was wont to get up from his seat, jump just a little, once, twice, three times; and then sit down again. It was always quite useless to ask him what he really meant, on the whole, by those extraordinary sayings and grimaces. He merely answered, "Can I possibly describe what happened with Popowicz and Agafia without being supposed to be out of my mind?" And every one would laugh gently, as much as to say, "Well, my good fellow, we suppose that whether or not."
One drear, cloudy October evening, Anselmus, who was understood to be somewhere a long way off--came in at the door of a friend of his. He seemed to be moved to the depths of his being, he was kindlier and tenderer than at other times--almost pathetic. His humour (often perhaps too wildly discursive, too universally antagonistic) was bowing itself, tamed and bridled, before the mighty Spirit which had possession of his inner soul. It had grown quite dark, the friend wanted to send for lights. But Anselmus, taking hold of both his arms, said: "If you would, for once, do me a real favour, don't have lights brought. Let's be content with the dim shining of that Astral lamp which is sending its glimmer from the closet there. You can do what you please--drink tea, smoke tobacco, but don't smash any cups, or throw lighted matches on to my new trousers. Either of those things would not only pain me, but would make an unnecessary noise and disturbance in the enchanted garden into which I have at last managed to get to-day, and in which I am enjoying myself to my soul's content. I shall go and lie on that sofa."