Victor, before the end of his rural day, went sadly home. Saturday (the 16th of June[[98]]) sped softly by, and in its flight shook out a whole flower-head of winged seed for new flowers of joy.
The stars glided lightly over its night. A friendly, blue Sunday morning hung floating over the village in its finery, and held its breath lest it should snatch off a ripe, linden-blossom, or the down of a marsh-marigold. Victor could hear the forte-pianissimo sounding down from the palace over the reposing village, and must needs sigh with the asthma of blissful longing, "Ah, when shall I have to cease swimming upon this still, shining sea, over this fair anchorage of life?" ... When Fate answered, "To-day!" For this very day, on Sunday, there came from the residence-city of Flachsenfingen a light-headed fool (in fact, two) in a no less light-bodied Berlin, and took out of his package a letter to him from his Lordship.
"On the 21st of June (Thursday), the Italian Princess makes her entry into Kussewitz. On Wednesday, I leave here, and present thee in St. Luna to the Prince, who accompanies me to that place. I pray thee, however, to repair on the Saturday following to the Island of Union,[[99]] because the little which, for want of opportunity, I cannot say to thee in St. Luna, I shall reserve for the island. Thou wilt find me there. The bearer of this is our respected court-apothecary Zeusel, in whose house thou wilt, as court-physician, have thy future residence. Farewell!" H.
"Zeusel?" asks the reader, and ponders the matter. "I know not the Zeusels." No more do I; but I say to myself, Is not this carrying things too far? And is it not a regular imposition, that the correspondent of this work cannot, by all the representations made to him by me through the dog, be induced even to arrange things in this history in as orderly a manner as they are, indeed, in every wretched romance, and even in—a house of correction, where every new correctioner rehearses neatly to the old ones, in the very first hour, his total Fata, even to the introductory cudgelling on entering, from which the historian has freshly arrived. By Heaven! people actually rush and leap into my work, as into a passengers' room, and neither reader nor Devil knows who their dogs and cats are.
"I wish..." said Victor, and made six circumflexes upon it as apostrophes of the same number of omitted curses. For he was now to pass over from the Idyl of country life into the travestied Æneid of city life, and no road is surely more wretchedly paved than that from the study into the court smelting-houses and chambres ardentes,[[100]] from peace to turmoil. Besides, Emanuel had not yet written. Clotilda, the Hesper of those two fair evenings, was like the Hesperus in the sky, not to be seen over St. Luna. As we said, it was a wretched state for him. And now, in addition to all this, that Zeusel, his future landlord, the Court Apothecary, was, so to speak, a fool, full as light as his Berlin, or as the court-fourier, with whom he came, but fifty-three years older than the carriage, that is to say, fifty-four years old, and, taken for all in all, a human diminutive and vinegar-eel in body and soul, peaked in all respects, in chin, nose, wit, head, lips, and shoulder. This fine vinegar-eel—for the eel contends that he understands a certain refinement, which never could belong to any Roturier,[[101]] and he does not deny that his great ancestors wrote themselves, not Zeusels, but Von Swobodas—was travelling with the court-fourier, who administered the quartermastership in Kussewitz for the princely bride, toward that place, in order to remain there just so long as he was not wanted. Zeusel meant absolutely to have influence on the Flachsenfingen court by something beside his clyster-hydraulics, and to work upon the court household with something more than senna-leaves; therefore he bought up at a high price all private intelligence (he improved it forthwith into public) which he could collect of new meteorological phenomena in the court-atmosphere, and then, when certain people turned somersets down from the steps of the throne, he smiled finely enough, and remarked that he hoped such persons had regarded him as their friend, and not noticed the leg which he had thrust out of his shop-door by way of giving them a sly lift. He was, in spite of some good-heartedness, a liar from the beginning, not because he wanted to be malicious, but refined; and he evaporated his sound understanding, that it might drop in wit.
Towards Victor, as future courtier and patron, he knew not, for all that, how to assume the upright court-dignity which respects at once itself and others; but towards the people of the parsonage he amply observed the regular courtly contempt, and showed them well enough how little, without designs upon the Lord's son, he should have thought of even looking over their garden-wall or window-sill, to say nothing of coming over. Victor never hated anything else in his neighbor but hatred of other neighbors; and his respect for all classes, his contempt for all eminent fools, his disgust at ceremonies, and his inclination as a humorist for the little theatres of life, formed the greatest contrast to the pharmaceutic infusorium, and to its disgust with men and deference for grandees.
Victor gave his landlord thirty greetings to carry with him to the Italian Tostato in Kussewitz, who had travelled with him, laughing and dancing, a day and a half out of Göttingen. The Apothecary, at his departure, left behind in Victor an annoying, sour sediment; even at the organ-blower, who brought up the coffee every Sunday, he could not laugh as usual. I will explain why he used to laugh at him.
On that day the coachman was shaved, and, in fact, at first hand,—namely, by his own. Now the chin of this lazy box-incumbent had thrown up more mole-hills—so I euphoniously name warts—than are necessary for shaving and mowing. Among these the old man hacked and planed on Sunday morning,—for then it is that the common people put off at once the old Adam and the old shirt, and leave sins and beard to grow only on working-days,—boldly slipping his knife up and down among the warty chagrin and cutting away. Now the man would have looked pitifully, with his ploughed-up facial foreground,—so that one must needs have wept blood at that which ran in red lines down over the chin of this stone river-god,—if the Prosector, like a Roman, had, out of stupidity, exhibited his wounds. But he showed nothing,—he had more sense than that; he picked tobacco-spunk into small caps, and put the headpieces upon the sore warts, and so made his appearance.
"Let a Spener, a Cato the younger," said Victor, "just come into my study, and not laugh when a bellows-blower follows with coffee-cups, and with sixteen scalped warts and his chin bound up in spunk, looking like a garden-rockery overgrown with beautifully distributed moss,—let a Spener, I say, help laughing, if he can."
To-day he could help it himself. Weary of the day, he went out into the peaceful evening, and laid himself on his back on the summit of a steep hill; and when the sun, dissolved into a cloud of gold, tremulously flowed away over the liquid gloss of the flowers, and swam down on the grassy sea of the mountains, and as he lay nearer to the warm, throbbing heart of Nature, sunk down upon the soft earth as if in the repose of death, drawing down the clouds into him with sighs, fanned by winds coming from afar, lulled by bees and larks,—then did remembrance, that after-summer of human joy, steal into his soul, and a tear into his eye, and longing into his breast, and he wished that Emanuel might not reject him.—Suddenly slight steps drew nigh to his reclining ears; he started up, alarmed and causing alarm. A heavy travelling carriage came staggering lazily up the hill; behind, instead of servants, three pale foot-soldiers had thrust their hands into the footmen's straps, who had only a single leg among them which was of flesh, while they footed it on five wooden stilt-legs or boot-makers' signs, which, with something still longer, made of wood,—namely, three well-wrought beggar's staffs,—they had taken from the enemy; a coachman walked beside the carriage, and a gentlewoman, and close by Victor, as he sprang up, stood—Clotilda.