Matthieu further added, that "in the ardent commonalty-love there was more agony than amusement; in it, as in Dante's poem, the Hell was worked out best, and the Heaven worst. The older a maiden or a pickled herring was, so much the darker was the eye in both, and the eye was made dark by love. Every lady in one of the higher circles ought to be glad that she needs to retain nothing of the man's to whom she is chained but his portrait in the ring, as Prometheus, when Jupiter had once sworn to leave him soldered for thirty thousand years to Caucasus, wore during the whole period only a small bit of this Bastille on his hand in the shape of a finger-ring." Whereupon Matthieu darted out, as he always did after witty explosions. Victor loved the bitterest and most unjust satire in another's mouth, as a work of art; he forgave all, and continued cheerful.
Joachime then said, jestingly: "If, then, no style of love is good for anything, as you two have proved, there is nothing left for us but to hate."
"Surely not," said he, "your respected brother has simply not said a true word. Imagine to yourself, that I were the poor people's catechist[[284]] and in love. I am in love with the second daughter of the pastor primarius; her part is that of a listening-sister;[[285]] for maidens in citizenly life know not how to talk, at least they can do it better in hatred than in love. The poor's catechist has little bel esprit, but much saint esprit, much honesty, much truth, too much soft-heartedness, and infinite love. The catechist cannot spin out any gallant intrigue for several weeks or months, still less can he dispute the Pastor's second daughter into love, like a roué;—he holds his peace to keep up his hope, but with a heart full of eternal love, full of devoted wishes, trembling and silent, he follows every step of the loved and—loving one; but she guesses not his feelings, nor he hers. And then she dies.... But before she dies, comes the pale catechist disconsolate to the side of her dying bed, and presses her trembling hand ere it relaxes, and gives the cold eye one more tear of joy ere it stiffens, and breaks in even upon the pangs of the wrestling soul with the soft spring sound, 'I love thee.' When he has said it, she dies of the last joy, and then he loves no one on earth any more." ...
The past had come over his soul. Tears hung in his eyes, and confounded in a singular obscurity the image of the sick Clotilda with that of Joachime;—he saw and conceived a form which was not present;—he pressed the hand of the one that looked on him, and thought not that she might refer all to herself.
Suddenly Matthieu entered, smiling, and his sister smiled with him, in order to explain everything, and said, "The court-physician has been taking the trouble to refute thee."
Victor, suddenly chilled, replied ambiguously and bitterly: "You will comprehend, Herr von Schleunes, that it is easiest for me to put you to flight when you are not in the field."
Mat transfixed him with his eyes; but Victor cast his down and repented his bitterness. The sister continued indifferently: "I think my brother is often in the condition of changing with the fashion." He received it with a sunny smile, and thought, as did Victor, that she alluded to his gallant adventures and sham-fights with women of all ranks that sit at the Diet. But when she had sent him off to inquire of her mother who was coming to the cercle this evening, she said to the Medicus: "You do not know what I meant. We have at court a sick lady, who is the very incarnation of your Pastor's daughter,—and my brother has not so much nor so little spirit as to act the poor's catechist." Victor started back, broke off and took his leave.
Why? How so? On what account? But does not the reader perceive, then, that the sick lady must be Clotilda, who seeks to escape Mat's fine approaches within ear-shot and bow-shot of her heart? In fact, Victor had seen well enough that the Evangelist had been hitherto playing a more devoted part towards Clotilda than before her entrance into his Escurial and robber's castle he could carry on; but Victor had ascribed this politeness simply to the fact of her having there her quarters. But now the map of his plan lay open there: he had intentionally met a person who was indifferent towards him with the show of contempt (which, however, he finely directed more at her future small income than at her personal attractions), in order thereby to win her attention,—that next-door neighbor of love,—and afterward, by a sudden change to complaisance, to win something more than attention. "O, thou canst win nothing!" every sigh in Victor exclaimed. And yet it gave him pain, that this noble woman, this angel, must strike such an adversary with her wings. Now there were thirty things at once suspicious to him. Joachime's disclosure and coldness, Matthieu's smile, and—everything.
So far this chapter, to which I have nothing more to append than some mature thoughts. Of course, one sees plainly, that poor Victor mutilates his soul to the size of every female one, as that tyrant did the bedfellows to the length of their bed.[[286]] To be sure, respect is the mother of love; but the daughter is often some years older than the mother. He takes back one hope of female worth after another. Latest of all, indeed, did he give up his demand or expectation of that sublime Indian sense of eternity, which imparts to us, shadowy figures hanging in the magic smoke of life, an inextinguishable luminous point for self-consciousness, and which lifts us above more than one earth; but as he saw that women, among all resemblances to Clotilda, acquired this last, and as he bethought himself that a worldly life grinds down all the greatness in man, as the weather gnaws away from statues and gravestones precisely the relieved parts, there wanted nothing to his handing over to Joachime the declaration of love which had long been fairly written out, nothing except, on her part, a misfortune,—a wet eye, a storm of the soul, a buskin. In more perspicuous words, he said to himself: "I wish she were a sentimental ninny and absolutely intolerable. Then when, some time or other, she had her eyes right full, and her heart too, and then, when I could not tell, for emotion, where my head was standing,—then I could advance and take out my heart and reach it to her and say, It is poor Bastian's, only keep it." It seems to me as if I heard him in thought softly add, "To whom else could I give it?"
That he really had the first thought, we see from the fact that he inserted it in his diary, from which my correspondent draws everything, and which he, with the sincerity of the freest soul, made for his father, in order as it were to atone for his faults by protocolling them. His Italian lackey did hardly anything but engross it.—-Did it not depend on the dog and his news-box, his declaration of love should take place this very day: I would break an arm of Joachime's,—or lay her in the sick-bed,—or blow out the Minister's lamp of life, or bring on some disaster or other in her house,—and then I would conduct my hero to the suffering heroine, and say: "When I have gone, kneel down and hand her thy heart." But in this way the chemical process of his love-making may last full as long as a process at law, and I am prepared for three quires.