During the week-day prayer-hour of Wednesday, two carriages rolled along. Out of the full one stepped his Lordship and the Prince; out of the empty one, nobody. Old Appel had dressed herself up splendidly, and locked herself into the pantry. The Chaplain was happier,—he taught in the Temple. Seldom does one make a clever face when one is presented, or a stupid one when one presents. His Lordship led his son to the Prince's hand and heart, as a collateral security for his future loyalty, but with a dignity which won as much reverence as it showed. My good hero behaved himself like a—fool; he had far more wit than our deference for higher persons, or theirs towards us, allows. A talent which expresses itself outside the limits of feudal service may be regarded as high-treason.
His wit was only a covered embarrassment, into which he was thrown by two faces and a third cause. First, the Prince's....
—If the reading world complains that so gradually, as they observe, one new name and actor after another steals into this star Venus, and makes it so full, that, at last, the historical picture-gallery becomes a regular gallery of vocables, in which they must wander round with a directory in their hands, they have really only too much ground for the complaint, and I have myself already complained the most bitterly of the same thing; for, after all, the greatest load remains on my shoulders, inasmuch as every fresh ninny is a new organ-stop drawn out, which I have to take into my performance, and which makes the pressing down upon the keys more disagreeable to me; but my correspondent forwards to me in the gourd-flask, without leave asked, all these people to be quartered on me, and the rogue actually writes me I have only to tell the world, There are still more people coming.—
The Prince's face threw our hero into embarrassment, not from anything imposing about it, but because everything of that kind was discharged from it. It was a week-day and current face, that belonged on coins, but not on prize-medals,—with arabesque lines, which mean neither good nor evil,—tinged with a little dead gold of court-life,—anointed with a soft oil, which might stifle the strongest waves,—a sort of sweet wine, more drinkable for women than men. Of the finest turns, which Victor had intended to reciprocate, there was nothing to be heard or seen; but of apt and easy ones so much the more. Victor was embarrassed by the conflict and interchange of politeness and truth. Social embarrassments arise not from the uncertainty and impracticableness of the path, but from the crossways of choice and the perplexity of the scholastic ass between his two bundles of hay. Victor, whose politeness always sprang from philanthropy, must to-day let it spring from self-interest; but this was precisely what he could not get into him. Beside the paternal face, before which, with most children, the whole wheelwork of a free behavior grates and sticks, a third cause made him disconcerted and witty,—namely, that he was after something. I can tell by the look of every one,—except a courtier, whose life, like a Christian's, is a constant prayer for something,—the moment he enters the door, whether he calls as an alms-beggar and saint-by-works, or as merely a member of the joy-club.
Long before the people left the church, Victor already conceived a hearty love for the Prince,—the reason was, he was determined to love him, though the Devil himself stood before him there incarnate. He often said, Give me two days, or one night, and I will fall in love with whomsoever you propose. He was delighted to find on January's face no second-hands, no minute-hands, of those assignation-hours with which a good Cæsar generally seeks gladly to interleave, as with honeymoons, the tedious years of wedlock; but on his face nothing was displayed but continence, and Victor would rather swear by the face than by the reputation. He misses the mark; for on the male face—although it is made of mere printed characters of physiognomy, as certain pictures are of written letters—Nature has, nevertheless, written the matres lectionis[[107]] and signs of sensuality very small, but upon the female larger, which is really lucky for the former and stronger and less chaste sex. In fact, adultery is, with princes of the January stamp, nothing but a milder sort of ruling and conquering. And yet honest regents always return—with pleasure the wives, so soon as they have conquered them, to their former lords. This, however, is only the same greatness which led the Romans to deprive the greatest kings of their realms, in order afterward to present them with them again.
As princes are not, like jurists, bad Christians, but prefer to be none at all, January prepossessed our Victor by sundry sparks of religion, and by some hatred of the French Encyclopedists; although he saw that for a prince religion has indeed its good, but also its bad side, since only a crowned Atheist, but no Theist, possesses the invaluable privilegium de non appellando, which consists in this, that the accused party is not permitted (per saltus or by a salto mortale) to appeal to the highest jurisdiction beyond the pale of earth.
The conversation was indifferent and empty, as in such cases it always is. In fact, men deserve, for their conversation, to be dumb; their thoughts are always better than their talk; and it is a pity that one could not apply to good heads some barometrograph, or compositor's harpsichord, which should write off outwardly what is thought within. I would bet that every great head goes to the grave with a whole library of unprinted thoughts, and lets only some few book-shelves of printed ones go out to the world.
Victor submitted to the Prince the usual medical interrogatories, not merely as physician-in-ordinary, but also as a man, for the sake of loving him. Although people from the great world and the greatest have, like the sub-man, the orang-outang, lived out and died out in their twenty-fifth year,—for which reason, perhaps, in many countries kings are placed under guardianship as early as their fourteenth,—nevertheless January had not ante-dated his life so far, and was really older than many a youth. The Prince won the good, warm heart of Sebastian most by the unpretending simplicity which served neither vanity nor pride, and whose ingenuousness differed from the usual sort only in refinement. Victor had seen vassals stand in such a manner beside the mouth[[108]] of their liege-lord; that the latter looked like a shark carrying a man crosswise in his jaws; but January resembled a Peter-fish, which holds forth in its jaws a fine stater.
The Court-Chaplain, when he arrived, in his astonishment at a crowned guest, found it impossible to stir lip or foot; he remained immovable in the broad water-spout of the priestly frock, which was thrown around him like a sheet of royal paper round marchpane. The only thing in which he indulged, and on which he ventured, was—not to put away the Bible (the mouse-trap), but—to send his eyes secretly round the room, to spy out whether it had been properly stitched, folded, and superscribed by the registresses of rooms.
The Prince proceeded at once on his journey with his Lordship, who had to reserve his leave-taking of his son and his farewell sermons till the solitary day they were to spend on the Isle of Union. The son contracted a liking for the company of the Prince, when he thought over his demeanor towards his father; he had a double joy, a filial and a human, as that father transformed his own happiness into the happiness of the poor country, and only for the sake of doing good made foot-tracks for himself in the rock of the throne, as in Italy the footsteps of angels who have appeared and left a blessing are shown in the rocks. Other favorites resemble the executioner who hollows out for himself foot-holes in the sand, so as to stand steadier when he—beheads.