A palpitating chrysalis was hanging near him still in her half-shrivelled caterpillar’s case, sleeping away the time till the flower cups all should open; phantasy, that eye of the soul, saw beyond and over the sheaves of autumn the glories of a night in June; every autumn-tinted tree seemed blooming once again; their bright coloured crests, like magnified tulips, painted the autumn mist with rainbow dyes; light breezes of early May seemed chasing each other through the fresh, fluttering leaves; they breathed upon our friend, and buoyed him up, and rose with him on high, and held him up above the harvest and above the hills, till he could see beyond these hills and lands—and lo! the springs of all his life to come, lying as yet enfolded in the bud, lay spread before his sight like gardens side by side—and there, in every spring time, stood his friend.
He left the place, but wandered a long while about the meadows, where at this time of year there was no need to hunt carefully for footpaths—chiefly that his eyes might not betray where his thoughts had been to all the market people who were to be met. It was of little use—for in certain moods the torn and wounded heart, like injured trees, bleeds on and on, and at the slightest touch.
He shunned eye-witnesses, such as Rosa above all, for this reason, that he was (I am sorry to have to say it) in just one of those moods when, whether from modesty or from vividness of feeling, he was most disposed to mask his emotion under the semblance of temper. At last a weapon of victory came to his hand, the thought that he had to apologize and make amends to his guest for so long and so uncourteous an absence.
When he got home what a strange state of matters! The old guest gone—another there in his place—and near the latter his wife in tears. When he came into the room, Lenette went to one of the windows, and a fresh torrent of tears fell down. “Madame Siebenkæs,” said the Schulrath, continuing his address to her, and keeping hold of her hand, “submit yourself to the will of God, I beseech you; nothing has happened but what can be put to rights without difficulty. I am willing to concede you a sorrow of the heart—but it must be a restrained and a subdued one.”
Lenette looked out of the window, not at her husband.
The Schulrath related, in the first place, all that I have already given my account of (Firmian, listening to him and looking at him, took the glowing hand of Lenette, whose face was still averted), and then continued—
“When I came in, merciful Heavens, there was his lordship on his knees before Madame Siebenkæs, with carnal tears, and—I am constrained to have the gravest suspicions—a design upon her precious honour! However, I raised him up, without the least ceremony, and I said to him, with the boldness of St. Paul himself—for which I am ready to answer before God and man—‘Your Lordship, are these the doctrines which I inculcated into your Lordship when I was your private tutor; is it Christian conduct to go down upon your knees in such a manner? Fie, for shame, Herr von Meyern. Fie, for shame, Herr von Meyern!’”
Here the Schulrath got into a terrible heat again, and strode up and down the room with his hands in the pockets of his plush coat.
Firmian said, “It’s a simple matter to set up a scarecrow and plant a hedge to keep off a hare like him; but what ails you, love,” he said, “and what are you crying so bitterly about?”
She cried more bitterly than ever; when the Schulrath planted his hands on his sides, and said to her in much wrath, “Very well, Madame Siebenkæs, this is the way of it, is it? This is all the impression my good counsel and comforting words have made upon your mind, is it? I never should have believed it of you!