Clotilda answered him, that "she was as well as ever; the only thing there was sickly about her," she said, smiling, "namely, her color, was already under the hands of a female surgeon, who, against her inclination, healed her only outwardly." This playful allusion to the rouging decreed by the Princess had the double design of excusing her painting and of diverting the Doctor from his tender-hearted seriousness. But the first was unnecessary,—since in the theatre even ladies who never wore rouge put it on as they entered the box and wiped it off on going out, in order not to hang there as the only quinces on a tree full of glowing Stettin-apples, and as, in fact, mineral cheeks were required of the whole female court-retinue as facial court livery. The second was vain; much more likely were the wounds of his heart to be aggravated by two causes: by that cold, almost fanatical resignation to fading away,—and by something inexpressibly mild and tender which, in the female face, often betokens the breaking heart, the failing life, as fruit by soft yielding to pressure announces its ripeness.
O ye good creatures, ye women, while joy already beautifies you, is the reason why sorrow makes you still more beautiful and too touching this, that it so often overtakes you, or is it because sorrow borrows the dress of joy? Why must I here confess so passingly my pleasure at your endurance and veiling of sorrows, when at this moment before my fancy so many hearts full of tears sweep by with open countenances full of smiles, and win for your sex the praise of opening its heart as gladly to sorrow as to joy, as flowers, although they *unclose only before the sun, yet also burst open when it is overcast by a cloudy heaven?
Victor, without being led off his track by her answer, continued: "Perhaps you cannot wean yourself from fair nature and from exercise,—these late hours, which I myself feel"—She prevented his finishing the sentence, to remind him that she had, he must remember, brought her present complexion with her from home. One sees, however, in this reminder more forbearance than truth; for she would not complain of her court office before the very one who had helped her gain it.—Victor, who saw her sickliness so clearly, and yet knew not how to propound another question, stood there dumfounded. Their own silence loosens reserved people's tongues: Clotilda began of herself, "As I do not know what harms me here, except the rouge, I beg my physician to prohibit me this dietetic fault," i. e. to persuade the Princess into a revocation of her rouge-edict. "I should be glad," she continued, "to gain some resemblance at least to two such good friends as Giulia and Emanuel,"—i. e. a pale color, or else the notion of a speedy death. Victor threw out a hasty "Yes," and turned his smarting eye toward the rising curtain.
Never, haply, were the scenes of players and hearers more like each other. Iphigenia was Clotilda; the wild Orestes, her brother, was her brother Flamin; the soft, radiant Pylades was his friend Victor. And as Flamin stood below in the pit with his cloudy face,—(he came only for the sake of seeing his sister more conveniently,)—then did it seem to our and his friend as if he were addressed by him, when Orestes said to Pylades:—
"Remind me not of those enchanting days,
When a free room thy house afforded me:
Thy noble father wisely, tenderly,
Nursed the half-stiffened blossoms of my youth;
When thou, an ever-gay associate,
Even as a motley, light-winged butterfly
Plays round a dark-hued flower, day after day
Didst dance and hover round me with new life,
And win thy bliss a way into my soul."
Clotilda felt quite as painfully that they were playing her life on the stage, and struggled against her eyes.... But when Iphigenia said to her brother Orestes,—
"O hear me! Look on me! See how my heart
Opens at last, after so long a time,
To the sweet bliss of kissing that dear brow,
Most precious treasure earth yet holds for me, ....
O let me,—let me—for in brighter waves
Not from Parnassus leaps the eternal stream
From rock to rock down to the golden vale,
Than from my bosom joy outgushing flows
And like a sea of bliss enclasps me round";—
and when Clotilda mournfully surveyed the greater interval of sorrows and days between herself and her brother; then gushed up the inner fountains and filled her large eyes, so often fixed upon the heavens, and a quick bending forward hid the sisterly tear from all eyes untouched by emotion. But it did not escape the feeling eyes with which her friend beside her imitated her.... And here a virtuous voice said within Victor: "Disclose to her that thou knowest the secret of her relationship,—lift off from this sorely oppressed heart the load of silence: perhaps she is withering under a grief which a confidant may cool and take away!" Ah, to listen to this voice was indeed the least with which he could content his infinite sympathy! He said in an extremely low tone, and which emotion rendered almost unintelligible to her: "My father has long since disclosed to me, that Iphigenia knows the presence of her brother and of my friend." Clotilda turned suddenly and blushingly towards him; for a more minute explanation he let his eyes glide down to Flamin; turning pale; she looked away and said nothing; but during the whole play her heart seemed to be far more compressed, and she was compelled now to stifle still more tears and sighs than before. At last in the midst of her sadness she gave gratitude its rights, and whispered to him for his sympathy and his confidence, as if with a dying smile, her thanks. He laid upon the distaff of the conversation entirely new and foreign material, because he would fain, during the spinning, get a clearer and more certain light upon the sad impression which his confession seemed to have produced. He inquired after the latest letters from Emanuel. She replied: "I only wrote to him yesterday all through the eclipse of the moon; he cannot answer me often, because writing pains his breast." Now, as the eclipse of the 25th of February began at twenty minutes after ten in the evening, at eleven o'clock and forty-one minutes was at its climax, and at one o'clock and two minutes was over: accordingly Victor, as physician, could fall upon the medical sinner with sermons and hammers of the law and pronounce the verdict; now, it was no wonder. Pass it by, Doctor! These dear creatures can more easily obey a man—the Ten Commandments,—books,—Virtue,—the Devil himself more easily, than the Dietician. Clotilda said: "The midnight hours are simply my only free hours,—and Maienthal, indeed, I can never forget."
"Ah, how could one?" said he.
The music before the last act, and the tragic tone, and the sorrows inspired her, and she continued: "Did not one drink of Lethe, when one trod the shores of Elysium and when one left it?" ... She paused. "I would drink of no Lethe, not in the first case, still less in the last,—no!" And never was "No" said in a lower, softer, more slow-drawn tone. In Victor's heart a three-edged compassion passed painfully to and fro, as he imagined to himself Clotilda mocked by fate, writing and weeping in the midnight under a moon dismembered and beclouded by earth's shadow; he said nothing, he stared rigidly into the mournful scenes of the stage, and still wept on when the joyous ones had, there, already evolved themselves in their place.