T.
Trouble, Tribulation.—Now, as I write these distressful sounds, which announce to me that Nature makes only thorn-hedges, but men crowns of thorns, all pleasure in lashing about me with the thorns of satire dies away, and I would rather draw some thorns out of your hands or feet.
[21. DOG-POST-DAY.]
Victor's Professional Visits.—Concerning Houses full of Daughters.—The Two Fools.—The Carrousel.
The following remark comes not from the dog's knapsack, but from my own head: One needs not to be a panegyrist of our times, to see with pleasure that authors, princes, women, and others have now mostly laid aside the unnatural false masks of virtue (e. g. bigotry, pietism, ceremonial behavior), and have entirely assumed instead the genuine tasteful show of virtue. This improvement of our character-masks, whereby we hit more finely the exterior of virtue, is contemporaneous with a similar one on the stage, where they play their antics and their tragics no longer, as once, with paper clothes and badly imitated laces, but with the true ones.—
"The Princess wanted you yesterday," said the Prince to the Court-Physician, almost as soon as he had entered with his exhausted face. The inflammation of Agnola's eyes had, in consequence of the autumn weather, night-feasts, and Culpepper's bold practice and her own—for the red capital letters of beauty (namely, painted cheeks) she was always putting on afresh—very much increased. Properly, Victor was too proud to let himself be sent for as a mere physician; nay, he was too proud to let himself be in demand for anything else (and though it were philosophy or beauty) than his character; for his father, who had just as much delicate pride, had taught him that we must not serve any one who does not respect us, or whom we ourselves do not respect,—nay, that one must not accept a favor from any one to whom one can only return outward, but not inward thanks. But this tender sense of honor, which never came into an unequal conflict with his self-interest, though it might well with his humanity, could never bind the hands wherewith he might relieve an unhappy Princess—unhappy, like himself, from a famine of love—at least of the pains of her eyes; perhaps, also, of younger pangs; for his good-heartedness suggested to him nothing but reconciliations,—of the Prince with Le Baut, with the Princess, with the Minister. Nothing is more dangerous than to reconcile two persons,—unless, indeed, one is himself one of them; to set them at variance is much safer and easier.
He found Agnola, even in the afternoon, still in her chamber, because its green tapestries flattered (not the face, to be sure, but) the hot eye. A thick veil over the face was her screen from daylight. When she, like a sun, lifted her veil, he could not comprehend how in Tostato's shop he could make, out of this Italian fire and these quick court-eyes, the face, red with weeping, of a blonde. A part of this fire belonged, to be sure, to her sickness. Her first word was a decided disobedience to his first; meanwhile she flew in the face of the Messrs. Pringle and Schmucker, as well as himself; for the whole triune College advised leeches round the eyes; but those were disgusting to her. The medicus then suggested cupping-glasses at the back of the head; but her hair was more precious to her than her eyes.
"Must, then, everything be bought with blood?" said she, with Italian vivacity.
"Realms and religions ought not to be, but health should," said he, with English freedom of speech.