The majority of my readers will urge against me and Leibgeber the same objection which Siebenkæs brought forward—that, Nathalie’s love and marriage for money were quite out of harmony with her character, and her disregard for riches. But, in one word, all she had ever as yet seen of that gaudy flycatcher, Mr. Rosa, was his Esau’s hand, that, is to say, his writing, i. e. his Jacob’s voice; he had only written her a few irreprehensible, sentimental letters of assurance (pin-papers, stuck full of Cupid’s darts and stitching-needles), and so given guarantee of the documentary nobility of his heart.... The Heimlicher, moreover, had written to his niece, saying, on St. Pancrasius’ day (May 12th, that is in four days’ time), the Venner would come and present himself, and if she refused him, let her never call herself his niece again, and starve in her native village for all he cared.
But, speaking as a man of honour, I really have never had above three of Rosa’s letters in my hands for two or three minutes, and in my pocket for about an hour; and they were really not so very bad—far more moral than their author.
Just as Leibgeber said he would assume the office of consistory, and divorce Nathalie from Rosa before their marriage, she came driving up, with one or two lady friends, and got out of the carriage; but instead of going with them to where the company were assembling, she went away alone, by a solitary side walk, to the so-called Temple. In her haste she had not noticed her friend Leibgeber sitting opposite the stables. I ought to explain here that when the Bayreuthians go to the Hermitage they have been in the habit, ever since the days of the Margrave, of sitting in a little wood, all breezes and cool shade, in front of the extensive farm-buildings and stables, but having the loveliest of prospects just at their backs, which they could easily substitute for the blank wall upon which they feast their gaze, by merely getting up and going a little way out of the wood on either side.
Leibgeber told Siebenkæs he could take him to her in a moment, as she would be sure to sit down in the temple (as she usually did) to enjoy the enchanting view of the city towers and the hills, as they lay in the light of the evening sun beyond the shrubberies. He added that, unfortunately, she cared too little about appearances; and would go to the summer-house all by herself, greatly to the distress of the English lady, who, after the manner of her countrywomen, didn’t like going anywhere alone, and wouldn’t trust herself to go near even a gentleman’s clothes cupboard without an Insurance Company and Bible Society of women with her to protect her. He said he had it on good authority that a British lady never permitted the idea of a man to enter her head without at once surrounding it with the number of ideas of women, necessary to bridle and restrain him, should he begin behaving (in the four chambers of her brain) with that amount of freedom which he might employ if at home there.
They found Nathalie in the open temple, with some papers in her hand. “I bring you our author of the ‘Selections from the Devil’s Papers,’” said Leibgeber, “which I see you are just reading; will you allow me to introduce him to you?” After a passing blush at having mistaken Siebenkæs for Leibgeber, in Fantaisie, she said to him, very kindly and pleasantly, “It would take very little to make me mistake you for your friend again, Mr. Siebenkæs; and you seem almost exactly alike in mind, as well as in body. Your satire is often exactly like his; it is only your graver ‘Appendices’ which I was just reading, and which I like very much, that seem to me as if they hadn’t been written by him.”
I have not at present time to make—(for Leibgeber’s unauthorized communication to one friend of the papers of another)—excuses occupying long pages of print to readers who may insist upon extreme delicacy in matters of this description. Suffice it to say that Leibgeber took it for granted that every one who liked him would join with him in liking his friends, and that Siebenkæs (and even Nathalie) would see nothing in his unhesitatingly communicating these papers, but a mere passing on of a friendly circular letter, pre-supposing, as he did, the existence between them of a triple elective affinity.
Nathalie scanned the pair—particularly Leibgeber, whose big dog she was stroking—with a kindly and observant look of comparison, as if she were trying to find out dissimilarities between them; for, in fact, Siebenkæs seemed to her to be scarcely as like his friend as she had thought. He was taller and slighter, and younger in the face; but this was because Leibgeber, whose shoulders and chest were more strongly built, bent his strange, earnest face more forward when he talked, as if he were speaking into the earth. He himself said he never had looked really young, not even at his baptism—as his baptismal certificate would prove—and wasn’t likely to grow much younger now till he arrived at his second childhood. But when Leibgeber straightened his back somewhat, and Siebenkæs bent his a little, they looked very much like one another; however, this is more a hint for the drawer-up of their passports than anything else.
Let us felicitate the Kuhschnappel lawyer on this opportunity of enjoying a few minutes’ conversation with a lady of position, and of such many-sided cultivation as even to be capable of appreciating satires. All he wished was that a phœnix of this sort—such as, hitherto, he had only seen a pinch or so of the ashes of in actual life, or a phœnix-feather or two preserved in a book—might not take wing and disappear instanter; but that he might be lucky enough to listen to a long talk between her and Leibgeber, as well as help to spin it out himself. But suddenly her Bayreuth friends came hurrying up to say that the fountains were just going to play, and there wasn’t a moment to be lost. The whole party, therefore, went towards the waterworks, Siebenkæs’ whole care being to keep as close as he could to the noblest of the spectatresses.
They stood by the basin, and looked at the beautiful water artifices, which, no doubt, have long since played before the reader, either on the spot, or in the pages of the various writers of travels, who have expressed themselves on the subject of them at sufficient length, and in adequate terms of laudation. All kinds of mythologic demigod-ical demibeasts spouted forth streams; and from out this world, peopled with water-gods, there spouted a crystal forest, whose descending branches, liana-like, took root again in the earth. They enjoyed for a long while the sight of this talkative, intercommingling water-world. At length the fluttering, ever-growing water-forms sank down and died; the transparent lily-stems grew shorter and shorter, as they watched them. “Why is it, I wonder?” said Nathalie to Siebenkæs, “that a waterfall lifts up one’s heart; but this dying-down of these springing jets, this visible sinking away of these grand streaming beams of water, always makes me sad and anxious? We never see any such falling in of high things in real life.”
Siebenkæs was thinking out the apt and comprehensive reply to this true and just expression of Nathalie’s feeling, when all at once she jumped into the water to rescue, with as little delay as possible, a child who had fallen in, a few steps away from her; for the water was there about waist-deep. Before the men who were present had so much as thought about it, she had done it; and she was right, for in this case rapidity without reflection was the good and true thing. She lifted the child out, and gave it to the women; but Siebenkæs and Leibgeber took her hands, and lightly raised the fiery creature (all blushes, of body and of soul) on to the bank. “What does it matter?” she said, with a smile, to the alarmed Siebenkæs, “I shall be none the worse,” and hurried away with her friends (who were all shocked into speechlessness), having first begged Leibgeber to come next evening, with his friend, to Fantaisie. “That of course I shall do,” he said; “but first of all, I am coming to see you by myself early in the morning.”