Siebenkæs remarked to the company in general that in the upper circles of society people are much graver, and more tedious, and empty than in the lower; that in the former, if any party happens to come to an end without accursed tedium, people talk of it for a whole week, whereas in the latter everyone contributes so much to the merry picnic of conversation that the only thing there generally is not enough of, is beer. “Oh!” he went on, “if everyone of our condition would but think of it, he would but envy those of a lower; how accurately, in a figurative sense too, does that old truth hold good, that coarse linen keeps one much warmer than fine linen, or even silk, just as a wooden house is easier warmed than a stone one—and the stone one again doesn’t get cool so soon as the wooden in summer—or as coarse brown flour is much more nourishing than the fine white, as all the doctors tell us. And I cannot bring myself to believe that ladies in Paris who wear diamond hairpins, lead half such happy lives as the women there who get their living by picking up old hairpins out of the street sweepings; and many a one whose fuel is nothing but dry fir-cones, gathered by himself as a substitute for fir-fuel” (here the fuel economising company thought vividly of their own case), “is often quite as well off on the whole as people who can preserve green cones in sugar and eat them.”
“Friend Parish Advocate,” said Leibgeber, “there you hit it! In the tap-room and the bar-parlour the worst is at the beginning, the blow, the kick, the angry word come first of all; the pleasure swells with the reckoning. The reverse is the case in the palace; in a ‘palais’ for the ‘palais’ everybody’s enjoyment goes into his mouth at the same instant; just as the little Aphides on the leaves all lift up their tail-ends, and squirt out the honey at the same moment,[[12]] in the palace it is absorbed with like simultaneousness and sociability. Tediousness, again, annoyance and satiety, are only mixed up ingeniously among the various pleasures which are served up and administered in the course of a great entertainment, just as we give a dog an emetic by rubbing him all over with it, so that he may bring it to operate by licking it slowly off.”
And other similar sayings were spoken. When once any pleasure has reached a considerable height, its natural tendency is to become greater. Many of the lower class members of the sitting exercised the privilege of drink, and of the special inquisition, to say “Thou” to one another. Even the gentleman in the red plush coat (the Schulrath was given to wear one in the dog-day holidays) screwed up his lips, and smiled in a seductive manner, as elderly maiden ladies do in the presence of elderly single gentlemen, and gave hints that he had got at home a couple of real Horatian bottles of champagne. “Not sparkling then, I’m sure?” Leibgeber answered inquiringly. The Schulrath, who thought the best kind of champagne exactly the worst, replied with some self-consciousness, “If it isn’t sparkling, well and good, I swear I’ll drink every drop of it myself.” The bottles appeared. Leibgeber, taking the first one, carefully filed through its barrier chain, removed the cork and opened it as if it had been a last will and testament.
What I maintain is, that, even should the two balsam-trees of life, namely wit and the love of our fellow men, be withered away up to the very topmost twig, they can still be brought to life by a proper shower out of the watering pot of these said bottles—in three minutes they will begin to sprout. As the glad, wild essence, the wine of the silver foam, touched the heads of the guests, every brain began to seethe and glow while fair air-castles rose in each amain. Brilliant and many tinted were the floating bubbles blown and set free by the Schulrath Stiefel’s ideas of all categories, his simple as well as his compound ideas, his innate ideas, and also his fixed. And can it ever be forgotten that he ceased to make learned statements, except on the subject of Lenette’s perfections, and that he told Leibgeber in confidence, that he should really like to marry, not indeed, “the tenth Muse, or the fourth Grace, or the second Venus—for it was clear who had got her already but some step-sister goddess, a distant relation or other of hers.” During the whole journey, he said, he had preached from the coachbox, as from a pulpit, enlarging to the bride on the subject of the blessedness of the married state, painting it to her in the brightest colours, and drawing such a lively picture of it, that he quite longed to enter into it himself: and the bridegroom would have thanked him if he had seen how gratefully she had looked at him in return. And, indeed, the bride was a great success, and happy in all she did that day, and particularly that evening; and what became her best of all was that on such a high day as this, she waited upon others more than she let herself be waited upon—that she put on a light every-day dress—that even at this advanced stage of her own education she took private lessons in cookery and household matters from her female guests, who aired their own theories on these subjects—and that she already began to think about to-morrow. Stiefel, in his inspired state, ventured upon exploits which were all but impossible. He placed his left arm under his right, and thus supporting its weight and that of its plush sleeve, in a horizontal position, snuffed the candle before the whole company, and did it rather skilfully on the whole; somewhat like a gardener on a ladder holding out his pruning shears at arm’s length to a high branch and snipping off the whole concern by a slight movement of his hand at the bottom. He asked Leibgeber plump out to give him a profile of Lenette, and later on, when he was going away, he even made an attempt (but this was the only one of his ventures which failed) to get hold of her hand and kiss it.
At length all the joy-fires of this happy little company burnt down like their candles, and one by one the rivers of Eden fell away into the night. The guests and the candles got fewer and fewer; at last there was only one guest there, Stiefel (for Leibgeber is not a guest), and one long candle. It is a lovely and touching time when the loud clamour of a merry company has finally buzzed itself away into silence, and just one or two, left alone, sit quietly, often sadly, listening to the faint echoes, as it were, of all the joy. Finally, the Schulrath struck the last remaining tent of this camp of enjoyment, and departed; but he would not for a moment suffer that those fingers, which, in spite of all their efforts, his lips could not touch, should be clasped about a cold brass candlestick, for the purpose of lighting him downstairs. So Leibgeber had to do this lighting. The husband and wife, for the first time, were alone in the darkness, hand in hand.
Oh, hour of beauty! when in every cloud there stood a smiling angel, dropping flowers instead of rain, may some faint reflection from thee reach even to this page of mine, and shine on there for ever.
The bridegroom had never yet kissed his bride. He knew, or fancied, that his face was a clever one, with sharp lines and angles, expressing energetic, active effort; not a smooth, regular, “handsome” one: and as, moreover, he always laughed at himself and his own appearance, he supposed it would strike other persons in the same light. Hence it was that, although as an every-day matter he rose superior to the eyes and tongues of a whole street (not even taking the pains mentally to snap his fingers at them), he never, except in extraordinary moments of dithyrambics of friendship, had mustered up the courage to kiss his Leibgeber—let alone Lenette. And now he pressed her hand more closely, and in a dauntless manner turned his face to hers (for, you see, they were in the dark, and he couldn’t see her); and he wished the staircase had as many steps as the cathedral tower, so that Leibgeber might be a long time coming back with the candle. Of a sudden there danced (so to speak) over his lips a gliding, tremulous kiss, and—then all the flames of his affection blazed on high, the ashes blown clean away. For Lenette, innocent as a child, believed it to be the bride’s duty to give this kiss. He put his arms about the frightened giver with the courage of bashfulness, and glowed upon her lips with his with all the fire wherewith love, wine and joy had endowed him; but—so strange is her sex—she turned away her mouth, and let the burning lips touch her cheek. And there the modest bridegroom contented himself with one long kiss, giving expression to his rapture only in tears of unutterable sweetness which fell like glowing naphtha-drops upon Lenette’s cheeks, and thence into her trembling heart. She leant her face further away; but in her beautiful wonder at his love, she drew him closer to her.
He left her before his darling friend came back. The tell-tale powder-snow which had fallen on the bridegroom—that butterfly-dust which the very slightest touch of these white butterflies leaves upon our fingers (and hence it was a good idea of Pitt’s to put a tax on powder in 1795)—told some of the story, but the eyes of the friend and the bride, gleaming in happy tears, told him it all. The two friends looked for some time at each other with embarrassed smiles, and Lenette looked at the ground. Leibgeber said, “Hem! Hem!” twice over, and at length, in his perplexity, remarked, “We’ve had a delightful evening!” He took up a position behind the bridegroom’s chair, to be out of sight, and laid his hand on his shoulder, and squeezed it right heartily; but the happy Siebenkæs could restrain himself no longer; he stood up, resigned the bride’s hand, and the two friends, at last, after the long yearning of the long day, as if celebrating the moment of their meeting, stood silently embracing, united by angels, with Heaven all around them. His heart beating higher, the bridegroom would fain have widened and completed this circle of union, by joining his bride and his friend in one embrace; but the bride and the friend took each one side of him, each embracing only him. Then three pure heavens opened in glory in three pure hearts; and nothing was there but God, love, and happiness, and the little earthly tear which hangs on all our joy-flowers, here below.
In this their great joy and bliss, overborne by unwonted emotion, and feeling almost strange to each other, they had scarce the courage to look into each other’s tearful eyes; and Leibgeber went away in silence, without a word of parting or good night.