“Ah! poor Nathalie!” Firmian wished unceasingly “May the flowers and blossoms be court-plaister for the wounds of your heart; may the soft æther of spring be a milk-cure for your oppressed panting bosom.” It seemed unspeakably sad to him that an innocent creature like this should be thus tried and punished, as though she were guilty, and be compelled to draw the purifying air of her life from poison plants, and not from wholesome ones.
The next day all Siebenkæs did was to write a letter (in which he signed himself Leibgeber), informing the Count von Vaduz that he was unwell and as grey and yellow as a Swiss cheese. Heinrich had left him no peace until he did this. “The count,” said he, “is accustomed, in my person, to a fine, blooming, sturdy Inspector; but, if he is properly prepared for the thing by a letter, he will really believe you to be me. Luckily we are neither of us men who would be asked to unbutton in any custom-house; nobody would fancy there was anything inside our waistcoats but skin and bone.”[[66]]
On the Thursday Siebenkæs, standing at the hotel-door, saw the Venner, in an Electoral habit, with a full-dress parade head, and a whole Barth’s vineyard in his face, driving to the Hermitage between two young ladies. When he carried this news upstairs, Leibgeber swore—(and also cursed)—to the effect that the scoundrel wasn’t worthy of the society of any young lady, unless her head was a Golgotha and her heart a gorge (or cul) de Paris. He was quite bent on going to see Nathalie then and there, and telling her the news, but Firmian prevented him by main force.
On the Friday she herself wrote to Heinrich as follows:—
“I have mustered up courage to revoke my prohibition, and beg that you and your friend will come to-morrow to beautiful Fantaisie, when (it being Saturday) it will lie depopulated. I keep my arms about Nature and Friendship; there is no room in them for anything besides. Do you know, I dreamt last night that I saw you both in one coffin there was a white butterfly fluttering above you, and it grew larger and larger till its wings were like great white shrouds; and then it covered you both over and hid you with them, and there was no motion beneath. My dear, dear friend arrives the day after to-morrow—and to-morrow, you. And then, I must bid you all adieu.
“N. A.”
The Saturday in question occupies the whole of the next chapter, and I can form some sort of idea of the reader’s eagerness to be at it from my own; and all the better, seeing that I have read (to say nothing about writing) the said chapter already, which he has not.
CHAPTER XIV.
A LOVER’S DISMISSAL—FANTAISIE—THE CHILD WITH THE BOUQUET—THE EDEN OF THE NIGHT, AND THE ANGEL AT THE GATE OF PARADISE.
It was not the deeper blue of the sky (which, on the Saturday, was as rich and pure as in winter, or by night)—nor the thought of actually standing in the very presence of the sorrowing soul whom he had driven from Paradise with the Sodom apple of the serpent (Venner)—nor his own feeble health—nor memories of his own domestic life;—it was none of these matters taken singly, but the combination of all these semitones and minor intervals together which attuned our Firmian to a melting maestoso, and gave to his looks and thoughts (for his afternoon visit) much such a kind and degree of tenderness as he expected he should find in Nathalie’s.