The picture she offered filled Daniel with reverence for the harmony of her being.
II
They frequently took walks after sunset out to the suburbs and up to the castle. Gertrude was pleased to see that Daniel and Eleanore were good friends again.
One time when they walked up the castle hill, Eleanore told Daniel that there was where she had taken leave of Eberhard von Auffenberg. She could recall everything he said, and she confessed with marked candour what she had said in reply. The story about the old herb woman Daniel did not find amusing. He stopped, and said: “Child, don’t have anything to do with spirits! Never interfere with your lovely reality.”
“Don’t talk in that way,” replied Eleanore. “I dislike it. The tone of your voice and the expression on your face make me feel as if I were a woman of worldly habits.”
They went into the Church of St. Sebaldus, and revelled in the beauty of the bronze castings on the tomb of the saint. They also went to the Germanic Museum, where they loved to wander around in the countless deserted passage-ways, stopped and studied the pictures, and never tired of looking at the old toys, globes, kitchen utensils, and armour.
Eleanore’s greatest pleasure, however, was derived from sauntering through the narrow alleys. She like to stand in an open door, and look into the court at some weather-beaten statue; to stand before the window of an antique shop, and study the brocaded objects, silver chains, rings with gaudy stones, engraved plates, and rare clocks. All manner of roguish ideas came to her mind, and around every wish she wove a fairy tale. The meagrest incident sufficed to send her imagination to the land of wonders, just as if the fables and legends that the people had been passing on from hearth to hearth for centuries were leading a life of reality over there.
The tailor sitting with crossed legs on his table; the smith hammering the red-hot iron; the juggler who made the rounds of the city with the trained monkey; the Jewish pawnbroker, the chimney sweep, the one-legged veteran, an old woman who looked out from some cellar, a spider’s nest in the corner of a wall—around all these things and still others she wound her tale of weal or woe. It seemed that what she saw had never been seen by mortal eyes before. It seemed that the things or people that attracted her attention had not existed until she had seen them. For this reason she was never in a bad humour, never bored, never lazy, never tired.
There was something about her, however, that Daniel could not understand. He did not know wherein the riddle lay, he merely knew that there was one. If she gave him her hand, it seemed to him that there was something unreal about it. If he requested that she look at him, she did so, but it seemed that her glance was divided, half going to the left, half to the right, neither meeting his. If she came so close to him that their arms touched, he had the feeling that he could not take hold of her if he wished to.