Leaning his head on his hand, he let his tears flow, without thinking or looking, till nature was spent. Then he went to the harpsichord, and sang over to its accompaniment the most passionate passages of his letter; what strongly moved him always impelled him to singing, especially the emotion of longing. What can it matter to us that it was prose?
At the last line of his epistolary song the door slowly opened.
"Is it thou?" said a voice.
"Ah, come in, Flamin!" he answered.
"I only wanted to see whether you had come back," said Flamin, and went away.
I think it is necessary that I should here insert at least the following, namely, that Victor possessed too much fancy, humor, and thoughtfulness not to give out, when these three strings were violently struck at once, pure dissonances, which, with more harmonious intervals between these faculties,[[84]] would not have appeared; that he had, therefore, more leaning to enthusiasms and enthusiasts than disposition that way; that his negative-electrical philosophy had always to contend with his positive-electrical enthusiasm for the balance of power, and that from the effervescing of these two spirits came nothing but humor; that he wanted to have all his carnations of joy on the same bed, although one adulterated the colors of the rest (e. g. refinement and enthusiasm, exaltation above the world and familiarity with the tone of the world); that from all this, beside irony and the highest tolerance, must also result a heavy, immovable feeling of the nothingness of our inner moods, so fleeting and sketched with such a contrariety of colors; and that he, whom the bad man regards as two-sided and the well-disposed one as changeable, needs nothing, for the gracing and rounding off of his Adam or Palladium buried up in so much wood, but the scythe of Time. Time then be it.
[8. DOG-POST-DAY.]
Examinatorium and Dehortatorium of Conscience.—The Studious Honeymoon of a Scholar.—The Cabinet of Natural History.—Answer from Emanuel.—The Packed-up Chin.—Arrival of the Prince.—First Intercalary Day.
I wish the story were done, so that I might get it printed; for I have already too many subscribers to it among the common folk. An author in our days accepts advance payment for his book from the lowest fellow,—the tailor makes his pre-payment in clothes, the hair-dresser in powder, the landlord in rooms.