Surely not the author of the Fragments, who was filled with like ambition, and whose vanity had been most deeply offended by the conduct of the pedagogues. He became the first pupil of the prophetess.
But a prophetess and one pupil make no congregation; and husband and wife, however clever they my be, do not make a club when they sit at the tea-table. The first condition of their success was, therefore, that prophetess and pupil should go forth as fishers of men; that is to say, of members of the new club. The task was not so easy. Professor Jager knew comparatively little of Grunwald society, which he had only seen at a distance when he was a poor student there. His wife, on the other hand, a native of the town, the seventh daughter of Superintendent Doctor Darkling, knew of course the society well; but the society knew her also as a bugbear of fright and disgust, on account of her eccentricities, long before Jager, then a candidate for holy orders, had courted her, and at last upon his appointment to the curacy of Fashwitz had carried her home under his lowly roof. Although the prophetess, therefore, stood at the shore and cast out her nets day after day, and from morning till night, she had as yet caught but few fish. This would have been extremely painful for a sensitive poetess if her favorite Oswald had not been among the few captives.
His conduct on that evening had won him Primula's heart, a large slice of which he possessed already before, and to a certain degree also the heart of the Fragmentist. Both had urgently requested him not to forget the "hospitable friends of Argos in the plains of the Scamander," and Oswald had accepted the invitation in a fit of malicious curiosity. He had vied during the visit with the professor and the professor's wife in sarcasm against the pedagogues and their wives, and had at last, when Primula revealed to him her plan of a club, entered into her views with the greatest enthusiasm. He had promised to interest the surveyor, Mr. Albert Timm, whom everybody in Grunwald knew as a very clever man, for the plan, and the poetess had in reward for such a happy thought embraced him before the eyes of her husband.
Since that visit not a day had elapsed on which a poetical epistle written by Primula had not reached Oswald. She inquired anxiously after the success of his efforts--little notes which Oswald carefully kept, and then read at night, of course without mentioning names, in the city cellar before the "Rats' Nest." This was the name of a secret society which held every evening its sessions in the above-mentioned rooms, and to which Oswald had the honor to belong as honorary member. His reading invariably provoked a Homeric laughter on the part of the assembled rats.
It was the day after the party at the Grenwitz house, when the professor's servant Lebrecht brought him once more one of these poetical inquiries, written on pink paper. This time, however, it seemed to be of special importance, for Lebrecht, a pale young man of fifteen years, who had been a charity boy a few months before, and still looked more than half-starved, remained standing near the door and said, with his hollow, orphan-house voice, "An answer is requested." Upon the envelope, also, in one of the corners, the letters A. a. i. r. were written daintily, surrounded by a wreath of forget-me-nots. The note was of course in verses, and ran thus:
TO A YOUNG EAGLE FLYING THROUGH THE CLOUDS.
The proud young eagle,
Why does he stay so far,
Amid gray crows and rooks,
He my life's only star?
Oh, how I love to see
The dark-brown eagle's hair,
On your dear noble head,
With the blue eyes fair.
Know not what was done!
Oh glorious conquest!
When in thy eyes I looked,
Was lost fore'er my rest.
But to the stars he soars,
He prizes naught below,
That I, poor Primula,
Am naught to him, I know!