Poor, fevered human creatures that we are! driven back and repulsed asunder by our own lackings, and those of others, yet continually drawn together again by never-ceasing longings, in whom one hope of finding love falls away to dust after another, whose wishes come to nothing but memories. Our feeble hearts are at all events glowing and right full of love in that hour when we come back and meet again; and in that other hour when we part, disconsolate,—as every star seems milder, larger, and lovelier when it is rising, than when it is overhead. But to souls which always love, and are never angry, these two twilights (when the morning star of meeting, and the evening star of parting shine) are too sad to bear for to them they seem like nights.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE BUTTERFLY ROSA IN THE FORM OF MINING CATERPILLAR—THORN-CROWNS, AND THISTLE-HEADS OF JEALOUSY.
The last chapter was as brief as our delusions. It was one itself, alas! poor Firmian. After the first stormy mutual catechisings, and particularly, after the giving and receiving of all the mutual news, he saw more and more clearly that Lenette’s invisible church, in which Stiefel filled the part of soul’s bridegroom, was become very much of a visible one. It was as if the earthquake of the recent happiness had rent in twain the veil of the Holy of Holies, the inmost sanctuary, wherein Stiefel’s head fluttered by way of cherub. But, to speak the truth, I am telling a lie here, because it was Lenette’s special object to show and display a particular liking for the Schulrath, who, in his delight thereat, went fluttering on from Arcadia to Otaheite, and from thence to Eldorado, and from thence to Walhalla, which was a certain indication, that, up to this point, his good fortune, during Firmian’s absence, had been less. He related that, “Rosa had broken with the Heimlicher; that the Venner, whom the latter had wanted to utilise as a spinning machine, had turned into an engine of war against him. The cause of all this had been the niece in Bayreuth, whose engagement the Venner had broken off, because he had caught her being kissed by a gentleman there.”
Firmian grew red as fire, and cried “Miserable cockroach! It was she who broke off her engagement with that wretched lying scoundrel, not he who broke off his with her. Ah! Herr Schulrath, be that poor lady’s true knight and champion, and run this wretched abortion of a lie through and through wherever you came across it. From whom did you get hold of this evil weed?” Stiefel pointed calmly to Lenette, saying, “From her!” “And where did you get hold of it?” Firmian cried to her in amazement. “Mr. Von Meyern,” she answered, with her face all glowing red, “was here calling, and told it me himself.” “But I was fetched immediately,” Stiefel interrupted, “and I skilfully sent him about his business.” Stiefel then asked for a correct version of what had happened. Firmian thereupon, timidly, and with many changes of tone, made a highly favourable report of the rose-maiden and her conduct of the matter (“rose-maiden” in a threefold sense, on account of the roses in her cheeks, of her victorious virtue, and the green rosebuds she had given to him). But on Lenette’s account he awarded her a proxima accessit only, not the gold medal. He had to bind the Venner, by way of sacrificial ram, to the horns of the altar in place of Nathalie, or, at all events, harness him by way of saddle-horse to her triumphal car, and relate without disguise how Leibgeber had been the person who broke off the engagement, and, as it were, dragged her back by the sleeve, as she was making the first step into the Minotaur’s cave—by means of his satiric sketches of Meyern.
“But it was you, of course,” said Lenette, without any tone of interrogation, “who told Leibgeber all about him, to begin with.”
“Yes,” said he.
We of the human race give to words of one syllable, to “Yes,” and “No,” at all events, more intonations, and shades of intonations, than the Chinese themselves. The yes in question was a rapid, toneless, cold yes, being merely meant for a “What then,” or “Suppose I did.” She interrupted a digressive speech of Stiefel’s with a point-blank, target, bull’s-eye question:
“When had you been with her V”
At last Firmian, with his battle-telescope, saw hostile movements of all kinds going on in her heart; he made a playful diversion, and said, “Herr Schulrath, when did you come to see Lenette?”