In short, my correspondent, from whom I have all this, is almost prepossessed in favor of Little Vienna, and therefore contradicts vehemently the author of the "Travelling Frenchman," who is said to have said somewhere—if I had him in the house, I should know how Little Vienna is properly named—that the Flachsenfingener has not energy enough to be at least a highwayman. Knef says, however, he will not give up the hope that they have been thieves, and backs himself by the cases of those that have been hung.
End of the Extra Fly-Leaf, wherein was sketched the Ridiculous Character of the People of Flachsenfingen,—or of the Perspective Plan of the City of Little Vienna.
But among such people my hero, with all his toleration, could not take any comfort whatever,—he who so hated all selfishness, especially in the sensual form, and who would gladly have attended Dr. Graham's lectures, wherein he taught men to live without eating,—he who so gladly opened his heart to the seed of truth winged by poesy,—who bore an Emanuel in his heart, and held the want of poetic feeling even as a sign that the moral man had not yet laid aside all caterpillar-skins,—he who looked upon this whole life and the whole body politic as the hull in which the kernel of the next life ripens,—O, whoever thinks this is too lonely among them that think otherwise!—
So it stood with the world around him, when he got a line from the good wife of the Parson:—
"The general talk here is that you are dead. But I express my mind against people, that, as you let so little be heard from you, and have forgotten all the world, you must, for that very reason, be still alive. Do confirm my proposition! We all have a fond and foolish longing for you, and I should like to beg you to come on the twenty-first (if the wedding at the senior Parson's hinders you no more than it does my Flamin). We have nothing to offer you here, but the birthday of our Clotilda. O good my Lord, and my beloved Lordship, how has it been possible for you hitherto to remain so long mute and invisible? A true friend, who has nothing at all of the ladies of your court about her, not even their fickleness, wishes heartily to have you before her eyes and beside her ears,—and that lady is myself,—and when I see you come, I shall certainly weep for joy, let me laugh or pout the while as I will.
"E."
When did he receive this letter, so full of soul? And what answer did his make to it?—
It was on the loveliest evening, which announced the coming of the loveliest Sunday morning and of the magic after-summer,—he looked at the evening red under which lay Maienthal's mountains, and his heart beat heavily within him,—he looked toward the dawning red of the full moon which kindled over St. Luna, and his yearning thitherward became inexpressible,—he thought of Clotilda, whose birthday fell upon to-morrow,—and so, very naturally, as to-day closed, he went—to bed.
