Flamin's shaking of his head meant something more than No.
"Very naturally; but if thou hadst, thou couldst have it from himself, or from the translation by Selle, very finely shown, that not merely the lachrymal gland secretes our tear-drops, but also the crystalline body,[[184]] the Meibomian[[185]] glands, the lachrymal caruncle,[[186]] and—our afflicted heart, I add to the rest.—Nevertheless, of these aqueous globules, which are made for the sorrows of poor, poor mortals, not more than (if things go rightly) four ounces are filtered in twenty-four hours.... But, my dear one, the fact is just this,—that things do not go rightly, especially with me; and it vexes me to-day, not that thou hast never peeped into Herr Janin, but that thou dost not observe my confounded, cursed, stupid way."
"What one?"
"Yes, indeed,—what one? but I mean this of to-day,—namely, that my eyes—thou mayst boldly ascribe it merely to a too feeble tear-siphon, under which head Petit comprehends all absorbing tear-ducts—run over, when, e. g., any one does me an injustice, or when I merely desire anything too strongly, or imagine to myself an approaching pleasure, or only, in fact, a strong sensation, or human life, or the mere weeping itself." ...
His good-natured eye stood full of water as he said it, and justified all.
"Dear Flamin, I wish I had been a lady, or a Moravian, or a player;—truly, if I wanted to make the spectators believe I was going about it (namely, weeping), it would be actually a fact, too, on the spot."—
And here he fell softly and fondly, with tears which had an excuse for flowing, upon the beloved breast.... But for the viper-cure and iron-cure of his manliness he needed nothing but a "Hm!" and a shrug of the whole body; thereupon the youths went back as men to the arbor.
There was nothing left there: the girls had stolen away to the meadows, where nothing was to be avoided, except high grass and bedewed shadows. The empty arbor was the best absorbing tear-siphon for his eyes; nay, I gather from reports of the epistolary Spitz that he was vexed. As the sister came back by-and-by alone, his companion was vexed too. In fact, if somehow or other my hero—which would be a misfortune for me and him—should in time fall in love with Clotilda, then will the heroine make us both warm enough,—him in acting, me in copying,—for the very reason that she herself will not be warm, because she has neither superfluous warmth nor superfluous coldness, but always the alternating temperature which changes with the subject of conversation, but not with the speaker; because she takes away from a tenderly disposed fellow-man all pleasure in praising her, as she pays out no tithe thereof, or at least in offending her, as she issues no letters of indulgence; and because one really, in his agony, assumes at last that one can commit no other sins against her except such as are sins against the Holy Ghost. Jean Paul, who has been in such cases, and has often stood for whole years in one spot before such mountain-fortresses with his storming-ladders and labarums and trumpeters, and, instead of the garrisons, taken himself off by an honorable retreat,—this Paul, I say, can form a conception of what an amount of parchment, time, and printer's ink may have to be used up in the case of Sebastian contra Clotilda, before we get things even to a war-footing. In fact, with a perfectly rational woman a man never feels himself quite well; and only with a merely fine, fanciful, ardent, capricious one is he truly at home. One like Clotilda can make the best man, from mere distress and respect, frosty, stupid, and enraptured; and in most cases there comes in the additional misfortune, that the poor, worn-out, fond fool, by whom such an earthly angel absolutely will not let herself be worshipped, as the Apocalyptic one would not by the disciple John, can still seldom muster courage to say to the angel,—somewhat as one might to an angel of an opposite nature with the kingdoms of the world, demanding to be worshipped,—"Take thyself out of my sight!" Paul always in such cases takes himself away.—
Victor did not do this; he absolutely now could not get away from the house, i. e. from the village. The summer days seemed to him to rest in St. Luna, softly breathing, fragrant, blissful; and he was going to be cast out of this softly straying gondola into the slave-ship of the Court,—out of the milk-house of the Parsonage into the princely arsenic-house,—out of the kindergarten of household love into the ice-field of court love. That was a sore thing to him here in the arbor,—and so sweet a thing in Tostato's shop!—When man's wishes and situations exchange places, he accuses the situations, not the wishes. He could laugh at himself for it, he said, but he had a hundred reasons for lingering in St. Luna from one day to another: he was so much disgusted now with his intention of pleasing a man (the Prince) from any other motive than love; it was still more improbable that he should himself please than that he should be pleased; he would rather humor his own whims than those of crownéd heads, and he knew for certain that in the first month he should tell the Minister von Schleunes satirical things to his very face, and in the second even the Prince; and, in fact, now in midsummer he should just be fit to act the complete court-knave, whereas in winter, &c.
Beside these hundred reasons, he had still weaker ones which he did not at all mention,—for instance, some such as these: He would gladly be about Clotilda, because he must necessarily, as it were, to justify his conduct,—but which, then, my dear, thy past or thy future?—disclose to her his knowledge about her consanguinity to his friend. To this disclosure there was wanting, what in Paris is dearest, place,—and then, too, the exordium. Clotilda was nowhere to be met alone. Connoisseurs say that every secret one tells to one of the fair sex is a sticking-plaster which attaches him to her, and often begets a second secret: was it for some such reason that Victor was so eager to contrive a way of showing to Clotilda his acquaintance with her sisterly relation?—