At home he made his brain-fibres Ariadne's threads to extricate himself from the labyrinth of the causes of her trouble, and particularly of the new one which had seemed to come upon her at his disclosure. But he remained in the labyrinth; undoubtedly grief begat the sickness, but who begat the grief? It would be hard for these poor, tender butterflies, if there were more than one mortal affliction; in every lane, in every house, thou wilt find a wife or a daughter who has to go to church or to the Tragedy to sigh, and who must go up into the upper story to weep; but this aggregated trouble is worried away with smiles, and years increase for a long time side by side with the tears. On the contrary, there is a grief which breaks them off,—think of that, dear Victor, in the joyful hours of thy general love,[[279]] and think of it, all ye who with warm, loving hands draw the throbbing heart of such a delicate creature out of its breast, to take it into your own by the side of your own heart, and warm it forever! When you then throw away this hot heart, which you have torn out like a butterfly's honey-proboscis: still, like that, it continues to quiver, but then it grows cold, and erelong beats no more.
Unhappy love, then, was the gnawing honey-dew on this flower, Sebastian concluded. Naturally he thought of himself first; but all his nicest observations, his now so familiar ricochet-glances out of the corner of his eye had long since convinced him that he had to ascribe the distinction, which she did not deny him, more to her impartiality than to her inclination. Who else it could be at Court,—that was a thing which he in vain applied one electrometer after another to draw out. And he knew beforehand that he should experiment in vain, since Clotilda would baffle all auscultation of her inner state, if she had an unreciprocated inclination; reason was with her the wax, which they stick to one end of the magnetic needle, in order to obviate or conceal the sinking (inclination) of the other. Nevertheless, he made up his mind the next time to hold some divining-rods to her soul.—
I must here utter a thought, which may discover some sense and my general speculation in the matter. My Dog-Post-Master Knef did not probably foresee that I should calculate the year and the duration of this whole story merely from the lunar eclipse of the 25th of February, which he announced, just as, in fact, great astronomers, by means of the moon's phases, found out so much about the earth's geographical longitude. 1793 was the year in which what is related in this chapter occurred: I am good for that; for as, at all events, the whole story, as is well known, takes place in the ninth decade of the eighteenth century, and as no lunar eclipse of a 25th of February is to be found there at all, except in the year 1793, i. e. the present year, my proposition is made out. To make assurance doubly sure, I have compared all the changes of moon and weather occurring in this book with those of 1792 and 1793; and all fitted together beautifully;—the reader should also reckon it after me. It is uncommonly gratifying to me, that, consequently, as I write in July, the history follows in a half-year from my description.—
Victor delayed not his visit to the Princess's, that he might there announce the reserved Clotilda as a complete nervous patient. He himself laughed inwardly at the expression,—and at the Doctors,—and at their nervous cures,—and said, that, as formerly the French kings in their treatment of the goitre had to say, "The King touches thee, but God heals thee," so should physicians say, The city and country physician feels thy pulse, but God works the cure. Here, however, he had three good intentions in giving out that she was a nervous sufferer: first, that of gaining for her the abolition of her Court-vassalage,—at least her deliverance from the precise office of maid of honor, because the splinter of the reproach was continually festering in his heart, "It is my fault that she is obliged to be here"; further, of securing for her in advance permission to take the spring and country air, in case she should by and by sue for it; finally, of releasing her from her compulsory resemblance to those ladies on whose lead-colored faces, as on the leaden soldiers of children, the red daily wears off and is daily renewed. But as Agnola herself painted, he was obliged, out of courtesy, as physician, to forbid it to both at once. The Princess countersigned all his petitions very graciously: only as to the rouge-article she gave, in regard to herself, no resolution at all, and in regard to Clotilda the following: she had nothing to say against her appearing in her presence, except on court days and at the play, without rouge; and she would willingly grant her a dispensation from both, unless her health was restored.
He could hardly wait for the moment of taking leave, so impatient was he to carry this imperial-recess or resolution to the beloved patient. He himself wondered at this complaisance of the Princess, with whom, generally, petitions were sins, and who refused nothing—except what was asked. His perplexity was now only this,—how to communicate to Clotilda the indulgences of the Princess, without the offensive confession of having made a plea of her illness. But out of this slight evil a great one extricated him: when he came into her presence, she looked ten times as sick as she had day before yesterday, at the disclosure of her relationship: her blossoms, heavy with cold dew, drooped to the earth.
Gait and posture were unchanged; there was the same external joyousness, but the glance was often too fluttering, often too fixed; across the lily-cheeks darted often a hectic flush, through the lower lip at one moment a subdued convulsion.... At this point sympathy frightened her friend out of the bounds of courtesy, and he told her outright the consent of the Princess. He summoned to the aid of his burdened heart his previous court-boldness, and commanded her to make the coming spring her apothecary's shop, and the flowers her medicinal herbs, and her—fancy her pharmacy. "You seem," said she, smiling, "to count me among the larks, who must always have green turf in their cage. However, that my Princess and you may not have had your kindness for nothing, I will, finally, do it. I confess to you, I am at least a valide imaginaire.[[280]] I feel myself well." ... She interrupted herself to question him, with the frankness of virtue and with an eye swimming in sisterly love, about her brother, whether he was happy and contented, how he worked, how he filled his position? She told him how sad a burden these questions, hitherto locked up so deeply in her soul, had been to her and she thanked him for the gift of his confidence with a warmth which he took as a delicate reproof of his previous silence. Of old she always loved to stand in a flower-garland of children; but in Flachsenfingen she had gathered still more of these little nebulous stars about her brightness, and indeed for a peculiar reason, namely, to cover the fact, that she drew to herself Giulia, a little five-years-old grandchild of the city Senior, with whom her brother resided, as his unwitting biographer and news-carrier. More than three times he felt as if he must fall at the feet of this lily-white angel, borne higher and higher by her cloud, and say with outspread arms: "Clotilda, be my friend, before thy death,—my old love for thee is long since crushed out, for thou art too good for me and for all of us; but I will be thy friend; my heart will I conquer for thee; for thee will I resign my heaven. O, thou wilt, besides, not live to see the evening dew of age, thou wilt soon close thy eyes, and the morning dew still hangs therein!" For he held her soul to be a pearl, whose mussel-body lies open in the dissolving sun, that the pearl may the earlier be dislodged. On leaving, he could with the frankness of the friend, which had taken the place of the lover's reserve, offer a repetition of his visits. Altogether he treated her now more warmly and unconstrainedly; first, because he had so utterly renounced her noble heart, that he wondered at his former bold claims to it; secondly, because the feeling of his disinterested, self-sacrificing honesty towards her poured balm on his previous stings of remorse.
To this sickness was added an evening or an event, which the reader, I think, will not know how to understand. Victor was to take Joachime to the play, and her brother, was to come and fetch him first. I have already twice set it down, that for some weeks Matthieu had no longer been so repulsive to him as a mouse is to an elephant: he had, after all, found out a single good side, dug out some moral yellow mica attaching to him,—namely, the greatest attachment to his sister Joachime, who alone had the key to his whole heart, closed to his parents, the sole claim on his secrets and his services; secondly, he loved in Matthieu what the Minister condemned,—the spirit-of-salt of freedom; thirdly, it is so with us all: when he have heated our heart for some female one out of a family, we afterwards extend the stove-warmth to the whole kin and trenchership,—brothers, nephews, fathers; fourthly, Matthieu was continually praised and excused by his sister. When Victor arrived at Joachime's, she had with her headache and dressing-maids,—finery and pain were increasing; at last she sent off the live fitting-machines, and so soon as she was hardened into a Venus out of the foam of powder and jewel boxes, rouge-rags and mouchoirs de Vénus, poudres d'odeur and lip-pomades, then she sat down and said she should stay at home on account of headache. Victor stayed too, and very gladly. Whoso knows not the framework and cellular work of the human heart will wonder that Victor's friendship for Clotilda brought a whole honey-comb of love for Joachime into his cells; it was delightful to him when they visited and embraced each other; he sought not in the blessing-fingers of the Pope so much healing virtue as in Clotilda's; her friendship seemed to him an excuse for his, and to set Joachime on the pedestal of esteem, to which with all his windlasses he had not been able to raise her. Even the sense of his increasing worth gave him new right to love; and to-day even Clotilda's crape and princely hat would have asserted its helmet ornaments on Joachime's aching and more than commonly patient head. To her continued flirtation with the pair of fools he had long since adapted himself, because he knew very well which one among the three wise men from the East she had not for a fool, but for an adorer. But to return!
Matthieu, who also stayed at home to please his sister,—he and Victor and she made the entire band of this concert spirituel. Joachime on the sofa leaned back her delicate, sick head against the wall and looked at the inlaid floor, and her drooping eyelids made her more beautiful. The Evangelist went out and came in. Victor, as he always did, dashed round the chamber. It was a very fine evening, and I wish this of mine were so. The conversation turned upon love; and Victor asserted the existence of two kinds,—the citizenly, and the distingué or French. He loved the French in books and as a general love, but he hated it the moment it was to be the only love; he described it to-day thus: "Take a little ice,—a little heart,—a little wit,—a little paper,—a little time,—a little incense; pour together and put into two persons of rank; in that way you have a good, true French Fontenellian love." "You forgot," added Mat, "one ingredient,—a small amount of senses, at least a fifth or sixth part, which must be added to the medicine as adjuvans or constituens.[[281]] Meanwhile, it has at least the merit of shortness; love, like a tragedy, should be restricted to unity of time, namely, to the space of one day, that it may not take still more resemblance to the tragic. But describe now common love!"
Victor: "That I prefer."
Matthieu: "Not I. It is merely a longer madness than anger. On y pleure, on y crie, on y soupire, on y ment, on y enrage, on y tue, on y meurt,—enfin, on se donne à tous les diables, pour avoir son ange.[[282]] Our talks are to-day for once full of arabesques and à la grecque: I will make you a cookery-book receipt for a good citizenly love: take two young and large hearts,—wash them clean in baptismal water or printer's ink of German romances,—pour on them warm blood and tears,—set them on the fire and under the full moon, and let them boil,—stir them briskly with a dagger,—take them out and garnish them, like crabs, with forget-me-not or other wild-flowers, and serve them up warm: in that way you have a savory citizenly heart-soup."[[283]]