The 20th of August, 179-, was the great day when he took up his march to Flachsenfingen. Flamin had already trotted off at four o'clock in the afternoon, in order to avoid a leave-taking which he hated. But our Victor loved to bid farewell, and loved to tremble in the last silences of parting. "O ye poor, egoistic mortals!" he said,—"besides; this polar life is but so bald and cold; besides, we stand weeks and years near each other without stirring with the heart anything better than our blood,—only two or three glowing moments hiss and go out on the glaciers of life,—why do you still avoid everything that draws you out of your commonplace, and that reminds you how man loves? No! and if I went to the bottom, and if I could thenceforward no longer console myself, I would still, with bare heart and with all my wounds bleeding, dissolved and sinking, I would still press to my bosom the beloved being who must leave me, and would still say, It does me good!" Cold, self-seeking, comfortable persons avoid leave-taking, just as unpoetic ones of too intense sensibilities do; women, on the contrary, who alleviate all their sorrows by talking, and people of poetic temperament, who relieve all theirs by fantasying, court it.

At six o'clock in the evening,—for it was only a skip to Flachsenfingen,—when the cattle came home, he sallied forth, accompanied by the whole family. On his more fortunate arm—mine has to bestir itself only for the good of science—hung the Britoness, and on his left Agatha; to the sister the poor house-poodle (Apollonia) had buckled herself, who thought, nevertheless, she might touch and enjoy, despite the sisterly interpolation and mediating spirit, the dear Doctor. So do the sparks of love, like the electric and magnetic element, dart through a medium of twenty interposed bodies. A philosopher, who sits down and considers that our fingers come not, in fact, a thumb nearer to the beloved soul, whether only the globe of the brain or that of the earth lie between them and it, will of course say, "All very natural!" Hence this sedentary philosopher explains why maidens half-love at the same time the male acquaintances of their beloved,—why the cane-chair of Shakspeare, the clothes-drawer of Frederick II., the bob-wig of Rousseau, content our yearning hearts.—

But no one, except the queen-bee of this streaming swarm, wanted to go back again. "Only just as far as the six trees," said Agatha. When they had arrived at these frontier posts and boundary-trees of to-day's pleasure, there were seven of them, and there was a general agreement that they were not meant, and they must go farther. The one who is escorted grows generally more and more nervous, and the escort more and more delighted, the longer it lasts. "Do let us go as far as that ploughman!" said the sharp-sighted Britoness. But at last our hero observed, that this Pillar of Hercules of their journey was itself a moving column, and that the ploughman was only a wayfarer. "The best thing is," said he, and turned about, "for me to go back, and not start till to-morrow." The Chaplain said: "As far as the old palace" (i. e. there was still one wall of it remaining); "besides, I usually go there evenings!" But beyond this frontier fort of the loveliest of evenings the chattering column deceptively extended its march, and the eyes were forgotten for the ears. As, consequently, in these boundary disputes, one main article after another was broken by separate articles, there was really nothing further to be done, except to make the following attempt. "Only so far did I mean to have you go," said Victor;—"now you must keep on with me and spend the night at the apothecary's." "In fact," said the Chaplain's wife, coolly, "we'll go along together till sundown; we surely are not going to turn our backs upon this lovely sun." And certainly the evening had kindled nothing but feux-de-joie in the sun, in the clouds, on the earth, and on the water.

On the hill they saw already the spires of the city; the sun, that chosen turnstile of the escort, poured out of his deep hiding-place his gold-trailing purple streams over the beds of shadow. There, on the hill, as the sun vanished, Victor folded his arms round the married couple, and said, "O, make yourselves as happy as you do me, and return to your home in gladness!"—and then he took the sisters to his enraptured heart, and said, "Good, good night! I love you!"—and then he saw them all going back with their hidden sighs and tears; and then he called out, "Truly, I shall soon come back; it is really only a jump from one place to the other"; and then he cried after them, "I shall be a poor devil, if we are separated!"—and then his heavy eye followed them through all branches and hollows, and only when the loving company had sunk into the last valley, as into a grave, did he close his eyes and think on the ceaseless separations of man....

At last he opened his eyes toward the outspread, obscured city, and thought: "Amidst that raised-work, in which men nestle with their little life, thy little days, too, are shut in,—this is the veiled birthplace of thy future tears, thy future raptures;—ah! with what eyes shall I look down again, years hence, over this misty environment,—and ... I am a fool! are, then, 2,300 houses standing only on my account?"

Postscript. This sixteenth post-day the Mining-Superintendent has concluded in regular order at the end of June.

FOURTH INTERCALARY DAY,

AND

PREFACE TO THE SECOND PART.

I am going to weld Intercalary Day and Preface together. Therefore, unless there is to be mere trifling with the matter of the Preface, the Second Part must be here, in some measure at least, touched upon. It deserves to be noticed by critics, that an author who in the beginning has before him for his domain eight pages of white paper—just as, according to Strabo, the territory of Rome was eight leagues broad—gets on by degrees so far, and peoples the scribbled paper with so many Greek colonists,—for such our German characters are,[[190]]—that at last he has often marched through and settled a whole alphabet. This puts him into a condition to begin the Second Part. My second is, as I know for certain, much better than the first, although it is, to be sure, ten times worse than the third. I shall be amply rewarded, if my work is the occasion of one review more being made in the world; nor can I conceive of anything, unless it be this very thought, that books must be written, so that the learned notices of them may go on, which could keep an author up to the unspeakable labor of standing all day at the inkstand, and dyeing whole pounds of paper-rags Berlin-blue.... And now let this cool, serious, hocus-pocus of a Preface—an expression which Tillotson maintains to be an abridgment of the Catholic formula, hoc est corpus—suffice for good reviewers and universities.