The whole of the company entreated him to explain what this was that was so hard to frame.
“’Tis a crown prince,” he answered, quietly; “even a reigning sovereign finds it no easy matter to produce an appanaged prince—but, let him try as he will, even in the best days of his life, he can never produce more than one specimen of a crown prince; for a Seminarist of that sort is none of your accessory-works, but the prime mover, the regulator, the striking and driving-wheel of the whole nation. On the other hand, gentry, counts, barons, chamberlains, staff-officers, and above all, common people and subjects of the altogether every-day sort—to be brief, a scurvy crew of that description—a generatio æquivoca—can be brought into being by a prince with such wonderful ease that he creates these lusus naturæ and virgin swarms, or protoplasmata, in considerable numbers even in his earlier days, although in riper years he may not manage to turn out an heir to his throne. Yet, after so much preliminary drill, so many trial-shots, one would have taken one’s oath the other way!”
END OF LEIBGEBER’S TABLE-TALK.
In the afternoon they paid a visit to that verdant, pleasure place, the Hermitage, and the alley leading thither seemed to their happy hearts to be a path cut through some beauteous grove of gladness. That young bird of passage, Spring, was encamped all over the plain around, her unladen floral treasures scattered about the meadows, and floating down the streams, while the birds were drawn up into air upon long sunbeams, and the world of winged creatures hovered all about in intoxication of bliss amid the exquisite scents shed abroad by kind Nature.
Leibgeber determined to pour out his heart and his secret at the Hermitage that day, and (by way of preliminary) a bottle of wine or so to begin with.
He begged and constrained Siebenkæs first of all to deliver a diary-lecture concerning his adventures by land and by water up to the present time. Firmian complied, but with discretion. Over his stomach’s barren year, over his hard times, over the (metaphorical) winter of his life (upon whose snow he had had to make his nest, icebird-like), and over all the bitter northerly wind, which drives a man to BURY himself in the earth (as soldiers do)—over all these he passed lightly and quickly. I myself must approve of him for so doing; firstly, because a man would be none who should shed a bigger tear over wounds of poverty than a young lady drops at the piercing of her ears, for in both cases the wounds become points of suspension for jewels; secondly, because Siebenkæs would not cause his friend the slightest pain on the score of their change of names, the main source of all his hunger-springs. However, his friend knew, and sympathised with him sufficiently to consider that his pale, faded face and his sunken eyes constituted a sufficient almanac month-emblem of his frost-month or winter-picture of the snowed-up tracts of his life-road.
But when Siebenkæs came to speak of the deep and secret wounds of his soul, it was all he could do to keep back the drops of blood-water which pressed to his eyes; I mean the subject of Lenette’s hatred and love. But while he drew a very indulgent picture of her little love for him, and her great love for Stiefel, he used much brighter colours for the historical piece which he painted of her admirable behaviour to the Venner, and of that gentleman’s wickedness in general.
“As soon as you have done,” said Leibgeber, “you must allow yourself to be informed that women are not fallen angels, but FALLING ones. By all the heavens! while we stand patient, like sheep being shorn, they stick the shears oftener into our skins than into our wool. I should think of the fair sex if I were to cross the bridge of St. Angelo at Rome, for there are twelve statues of angels there, holding the implements of the Passion, each a different one; one has the nails, another the reed, another the dice, and similarly each woman has a peculiar torture-instrument of her own to apply to us poor lambs. Whom, think you, for instance now, is the Palladium of yesterday, your unknown beauty, going to tether to her bed-post with the nose-ring of a wedding-ring? But I must tell you about her. She is altogether glorious: she is poetic; full of romantic, enthusiastic admiration for the British, and for intellectual people in general (consequently for me), and lives with an aristocratic English lady, a sort of companion to Lady Craven and the Margrave at Fantaisie yonder. She has nothing, and accepts nothing; is poor and proud, daring to rashness, and pure as the day; and she signs herself ‘Nathalie Aquiliana.’ Do you know who’s going to be her husband? A horrible, burnt-out, used-up wretch—a feeble, puny creature, whose egg-shell was chipped a week or two before its time, and who now goes cheeping about our toes like a chicken with the pip; a fellow who copies Heliogabalus (who put on a new ring every day) in the matter of wedding-rings; a hop-o’-my-thumb whom I could sneeze over the North Pole (and I should like very much to do it), and whom I have the less need to give you any description of, inasmuch as you have just given me one of him yourself: when I tell you his name, you will see that you know him pretty well. This magnificent creature is going to be married to the Venner Rosa von Meyern!”
Firmian fell, not from the clouds, but right into them. To make a long tale short, this Nathalie is the Heimlicher’s niece, of whom Leibgeber wrote some account in our first volume. “But, listen,” continued Leibgeber, “I will let myself be hewn and hacked into crumbs smaller than those of Poland—into clippings not big enough to cover a Hebrew vowel—if this affair comes to anything; for I am going to put a stop to it.”
Since Leibgeber (as we know) was in the habit of talking to the lady every day (his spotless soul and his bold mind having unspeakable attractions for her), all he had to do in order to break the marriage off, was simply to repeat to her what Siebenkæs had told him concerning her bridegroom elect. It was his intimacy with her, and his resemblance to Siebenkæs which had led to her mistaking Firmian for him on the evening of his arrival.