Go, dear Firmian, with that softened heart of yours, to your deeply-moved friend, whose inner being, too, stretches its arms out towards its likeness; for, to-day, you are nowhere so happy as together. When Firmian entered their common chamber (which, was dark save for the glow of the red twilight in the west), Heinrich turned to meet him; they fell silently into each other’s arms and forgot all the tears which burned within them, even those of joy. Their embrace ended, but their silence did not. Heinrich threw himself on his bed, in his clothes, and covered himself up. Firmian sank upon the other bed and wept there, with closed lids. After an hour or two of excited fancy, heated by visions and by pangs of pain, a soft light fell upon his burning eyelids; he opened them, and there hung the pale, glowing moon over against his window. He rose up; but when he saw his friend standing pale and motionless, like a shadow cast by the moon upon the wall—and suddenly there came up from a neighbouring garden (like a nightingale’s voice awaking), Rust’s melody to the words—
“’Tis not for this earthly land
That Friendship weaves her holy band”—
he fell back under the load of bitter memory; an emotion, too great to bear, a spasm, closed his sad eyes, and he said, in hollow accents,
“Heinrich! oh believe in immortality. How can we love, if we perish!”
“Peace, peace!” said Heinrich. “To-day I am keeping my name-day, and that is enough; for man, certainly, has no birth-day, and, consequently, no death-day either.”
CHAPTER XIII.
A CLOCK OF HUMAN BEINGS—A COLD SHOULDER—THE VENNER.
When, in my last chapter, I spoke of ladies who were given to brevity of sleep, and awoke six hours before their sisters at the Antipodes, I think I did well not to cram into my twelfth chapter (among the numerous events so tightly packed there) a model of a certain clock, composed of men and women, which I invented a considerable time ago, but to reserve it for this thirteenth chapter, where I shall now introduce it, and set it up. I believe this humanity clock of mine was suggested to me by Linnæus’ flower clock at Upsal, whose wheels were the earth and the sun, and the figures on its dial were flowers, whereof one always awoke and opened later than another. I was living at the time in Scheerau, in the middle of the market-place, and had two rooms. From the front room I was able to see all the market-place and the palace buildings, while my back room looked into the Botanical Gardens. Whoever may be living in these rooms now is in possession of a delightful, ready-tuned harmony between the flower clock in the garden and the mankind clock in the market-place.
At 3 A.M. the yellow meadow goatsbeard awakes—also brides—and then, too, the stable-boy begins rattling and feeding the horses under the lodger. At 4 (on Sundays) awake the little hawksweed, and ladies who are going to the Holy Communion (chiming clocks these may be called) and the bakers. At 5, kitchen-maids and dairy-maids awake, and buttercups; at 6, sowthistles and cooks. By 7, a good many of the wardrobe women of the palace, and the salad in the Botanical Gardens, are awake, as well as several tradeswomen. At 8, all their daughters and the little yellow mouse-ear—all the colleges and the leaves of flowers, piecrust, and law-papers, are open. At 9, the female aristocracy begin to stir, and the marygolds, to say nothing of a number of young ladies from the country, in town on a visit, glance out of their windows. At 10 and 11, the Court ladies, the whole staff of lords of the bedchamber, the green colewort and pippau of the Alps, and the Princesses’ reader, arouse themselves from their morning slumber; and (so brightly is the morning sun breaking in through the many-tinted silken curtains) the whole Court curtails a morsel or so of its sleep. At 12, the Prince; at 1, his consort, and the carnation in her flower-vase—have their eyes open. What gets up at later hours in the afternoon—about 4 o’clock, say—is nothing but the red hawksweed and the night, watchman (a cuckoo clock), and these two are but evening dials, or moon clocks. From the hot eyes of the poor devil who opens them only at 5 (with the jalap), we turn our own away in sorrow; he is a sick man, who has taken some of it (the jalap), and only passes from fever-fancies of being griped with hot pincers to genuine, waking spasms.
I could never tell when it was 2 o’clock, because I, and a thousand other stout gentlemen and the yellow mouse-ear, were always asleep at that hour; though I awoke, with the regularity of an accurate repeater, at 3 in the afternoon and at 3 in the morning.