Every morning Victor gave himself a curtain lecture under the bed-quilt for the evening previous; the bed is a good confessional and audience-hall of conscience. He wished that yesterday's garden-club would take him for a veritable fool instead of a lover. "Ah, if Flamin himself should torment himself with jealousy, and if our hearts, once so long parted, should already come to be so again!" Here the bed-box, from a confessional, grew to be a fiery oven. But an angel laid himself in beside him, and blew away the blaze. "But what, then, have I done? Have I not with a thousand-fold pleasure spoken, acted, kept silence for his sake? Not a look, not a word, can be charged against me,—what else then?" The angel of light or fire had now to blow terribly against the shooting flame. "What else? Thoughts, perhaps, which however, like field-mice of the soul, leap under the feet, and stick like adders. But could the disciples of Kant impute to me then, that I took the little image of the loveliest and best form, which I hitherto vainly summoned up in the lands of three lords, and threw such a Raphael's head, such an antique of Paradise, out of the window of the villa of my brain, like apple-parings and plum-stones? I should wonder at the Kantians, if they did. And if it must stay there, am I to be an ox, ye Catechists, and coldly glower[[85]] at it? Not I. Nay, I will trust myself, and demand of the fairest heart even friendship, and yet leave to it its love!" Dear reader, during this whole summary process before the judicial commission of conscience, I have said to myself, over thirty times, "Neither of you, you nor the reader, is a hair more honest with your conscience!"
He drew himself slowly by the bed-cord out of the bed, which he used to quit with a spring; some wheel of his ideas stuck within him. He read his yesterday's letter, and found it too stormy. "That is just our insignificance," said he, "that everything which man holds to be eternal freezes over night; not across our face do the most vehement gales pass more swift and traceless than across our heart. Why then am I not to-day what I was yesterday, and perhaps shall be to-morrow? What does man gain by this boiling up and down? And what has he then within himself to build upon?"
Meanwhile, the fire-wheel of our earthly time, the sun, had whirled up its revolving streams, and burned on the shore of the earth. He flung up the window, and was fain to bathe his naked breast in the fresh morning wind, and his hot eye in the Red Sea of Aurora; but something within him interposed itself like an after-taste between him and the enjoyment of the morning-land. The remorse of conscience for future actions spoils a good man utterly for enjoyment.
There rose slowly within him an overmastering emotion,—the former night passed by again before him with its flashing rain, and brought back to him his passionate heart and Emanuel's shadow,—he ran more and more vehemently, and in fact transversely, through the chamber,—tied his night-gown tighter, shook something from his eye, gave a perpendicular jump, jerked out a "No!" and said, with an inexpressibly serene smile, "No! I will not cheat my Flamin! I will neither seek nor shun her, nor will I desire her friendship till the time of his highest happiness. As I look upon thee[[86]] yonder, so will I upon her glorious, heavenly bust, without desiring that it take on warmth, and turn on me its cold plaster eye. But thou, my friend, be happy and all blessed, and never mayst thou once remark my conflict!"
Now, for the first time, did the church-attire of morning gladden him, and the morning air flowed like a cool necklace over his hot bosom, and threw back the playing hair and shirt-frill. He felt that now he was worthy to have written to Emanuel, and to have looked up at the heavens....
Flamin entered with some coldness, which was increased by the sight of the letter. Victor was not to be made cold; only when, down below, no one reminded him by a word of his yesterday's Dithyrambics, then did he, from fear of being betrayed, make an angry, covert oath, if she came, not to come,—which could be kept, too, for she did not come. She had still to bring away luggage from Maienthal, to besprinkle her friendships, and once more to set foot in the magic circle of her beloved teacher; and had, therefore, gone off.
The following weeks danced now like just so many hours in Anglaises and Cotillons before Sebastian. His forenoons hung full of fruits, his afternoons full of flowers; for in the morning his soul with its exertions lived in his head, towards evening in his heart. In the evening one loves cards, poems, confidential talk, woman, music, very much; in the morning, very little; in the spirit-hour is that love at its highest strength.
Except two other doubts that troubled him,—the first was, whether his Emanuel would write to him soon enough to enable him to visit him before he should be harnessed to the pole of the court and state-carriage; the second was the fear of being so too soon,—now he had hardly anything to do except to be happy or to make others so; for precisely in these weeks fell his holy or Sabbatical weeks...
I know not whether the reader is yet acquainted with them; they are not found in the improved almanac; but they occur regularly (with some men) either immediately after the vernal equinox or in the after-summer.
With Victor the first alternative was the one,—exactly in the middle of spring. I need not inquire whether it is the body, the weather, or who or what, that rings in this truce of God in our breast; but I must describe how they look, the Sabbatical weeks. Their form is precisely this: in a holy or Sabbatical week, many—e. g. I—are put off with mere Sabbatical days or hours. At first, one slumbers lightly, as on balanced clouds,—one awakes like a serene day. At evening one had made a firm resolve beforehand, and had therefore written it down in ciphers on the door, to grow better, and to apply the weeding-knife every day to one bed of weeds at least,—on awaking one is still so minded, and in fact carries it out. The gall, that excitable spirit, which usually, when it is poured, instead of into the duodenum, into the heart or heart's blood, sends up boiling and hissing clouds, is now in a few seconds absorbed or precipitated, and the exalted mind feels calmly the bodily effervescence without any of its own. In this lull of the wings of our lungs, one utters only soft, low words, one clasps lovingly the hand of every one with whom he speaks, and one thinks, with melting heart, "Ah! I could not begrudge it to one of you, if you were still happier than I." On the clean, healthy, tranquil heart, as on the Homeric gods, light wounds immediately close. "No!" thou keepest saying in the Sabbatical week, "I must for some days to come maintain this tranquillity." Thou requirest, as material for joy, hardly anything but existence; nay, the sun-sting of a rapture would condense this cool, magical, transparent morning haze into a tempest. Thou lookest up steadily into the blue, as if thou wouldst fain give thanks and weep, and around upon the earth as if thou wouldst say, "Wherever I might be to-day, there I should be happy!" and a heart full of sleeping storms thou carriest, as a mother does her child sunk into slumber, shyly and watchfully over the soft flowers of joy.... But the storms start up, nevertheless, and assail the heart!...