Seven Legends

by Gottfried Keller

Before this tribunal the manly Aquilinus now came in the simple toga of his rank. He would much rather have uttered his passion in more intimate and tender fashion; but, when he saw that Eugenia did not dismiss the young men, he took his seat on a chair facing her, and made his request for her hand in words which it cost him an effort to make few and simple, for he kept his eyes fixed immovably upon her, and beheld her great beauty.

Eugenia smiled imperceptibly, and never even blushed, so tightly had learning and culture fettered all the finer impulses of ordinary life in her. Instead, she assumed a serious, profound expression, and made answer to him, "Thy wish, O Aquilinus, to have me for thy wife, honours me in a high degree, but is powerless to induce me to an act of unwisdom; and such it would justly be termed, if we were to follow the first crude impulse without examining ourselves. The first condition which I have to demand from a husband, whoever he be, is that he understand and honour and participate in my intellectual life and aims. So thou wilt be welcome to me if thou choosest to be often in my society, and to exercise thyself in emulation with these my young companions in the investigation of the highest things along with me. By this means we shall not fail to ascertain whether we are suited for each other or not, and, after a period of intellectual activity in common, we shall know each other so as beseems god-created beings who are meant to walk not in the darkness, but in the light."

To this high-flown demand Aquilinus answered, not without secret indignation, but still with proud tranquillity, "If I did not know thee, Eugenia, I would not desire thee for my wife; and, as to myself, great Rome knows me, as well as this province. If thy learning does not suffice to recognize what I am by this time, I fear it will never suffice. Besides, I did not come here to go to school again, but to find a helpmeet; and, as for these two children, my first request, if thou gavest me thy hand, would be that thou wouldest let them go and restore them to their parents at last, that they might help them and be of use to them. Now I entreat thee, give me thy decision, not as a person of learning, but as a woman of flesh and blood!"

This time the fair she-philosopher had indeed turned red, red as a carnation, and said with fast-beating heart, "My answer is soon given, for I gather from thy words that thou dost not love me, Aquilinus. That might be a matter of indifference to me, were it not an outrage for the daughter of a noble Roman to be lied to!"

"I never lie!" said Aquilinus coldly. "Farewell!"

Eugenia turned her back without returning his farewell, and Aquilinus walked slowly out of the house to his own abode. She tried to take up her books as if nothing had happened; but the letters grew blurred before her eyes, and the two Hyacinths had to read to her while she, full of hot indignation, wandered with her thoughts elsewhere.

For, although up to that day she had regarded the consul as the only one among all her suitors whom she might have taken for a husband, supposing she had been so inclined, he was now become a stone of stumbling which she could not get over.

Aquilinus for his part attended calmly to his affairs of state, and sighed in secret over his strange folly, which would not suffer him to forget the pedantic beauty.

Almost two years passed, during which Eugenia became, if possible, more and more notable and a positively brilliant personage, while the two Hyacinths were now two sturdy rustic figures with growing beards. Although people everywhere began to take notice of this strange attachment, and, instead of the admiring epigrams, others in a more satiric vein began to appear, still she could not bring herself to part with her body-guard; for Aquilinus, who had presumed to order her to do so, was still there. He went quietly on his own way, and appeared to concern himself no more about her; but he looked at no other woman, and no other wooing was heard of, so that he also came in for censure, because, being so high an official, he remained unmarried.

Eugenia refrained all the more obstinately from offering any outward sign of reconciliation by dismissing her obnoxious companions. Besides, she was charmed to set ordinary custom and public opinion at defiance and be responsible to herself alone, and to preserve the consciousness of a pure life in circumstances which would have been perilous and impossible for any other woman.