—But all was, at once, above, below, and contrary to his expectation. The Princess had laid aside the face of sensibility with her travelling-dress, and had put on instead a fine, firm gala-face. The crowned bridegroom January was received by her with as much warm decorum as if he were his own ambassador of the first rank. For January, the disk of whose heart charged itself full of sparks on the electrizing-cushion of a fair cheek or a bosom-handkerchief, had for that very reason towards Agnola, with whom merely from policy he had concluded the concordats of marriage, all the warmth of the month after which he was named. Towards Victor, the son of her hereditary foe, the successor to the house-thief of princely favor, she cherished, as is easy to guess, true tenderness. Our poor hero, surprised at January's coldness, which seemed to promise on the part of the wife no special warmth toward himself, demeaned himself as gravely as the elder and younger Cato at once. He thanked God (and so do I) that he came away.
But all the way back he kept thinking: "If I could only have got my missive out of the watch-case! Ah, then I would have done everything, poor Agnola, to reconcile thee to thy fate and thy husband!—Ah, St. Luna," he added, as they passed along before the city parson's house, "thou peaceful spot, full of flowers and of love! The masters of the hunt send thy Bastian from one baiting-house to another!"
For he must also, for politeness' sake, go at least to the actual Minister's, and January took him along with him. Thither he went with gusto, as if into a sea-fight, or into a quarantine hospital, or into the Russian ice-palace.
Furniture and persons in the house of Schleunes were in the finest taste. Victor found there, from the wabble-headed figures[[199]] and court-people, even to the basaltic busts of old philosophers, and to the dolls in the shape of Schleunes's daughters, from the polished floor to the polished faces, from the powdering cabinet to the reading cabinet,—both of which painted the head in the mere passage through them,—in short, everywhere he found all that the sumptuary laws have ever forbidden. His first embarrassment with the Princess gave him the pitch for a second. It was no longer the old Victor at all. I see beforehand that the worthy schoolmasters at the Marianum in Scheerau will be hard upon him for it,—especially the rector,—that he should have so little knowledge of the world as to be, while in this company, witty without vivacity, constrainedly free without complaisance, too constantly in motion with his eyes, too immovable in his other members. But one must suggest to these courtly and scholarly people, that he could not help it. The rector himself would have been embarrassed as well as Victor before the bel-esprit of a minister's lady, whom, though, to be sure, Meusel has not introduced her into his, the court has into its Learned Germany,—before her quizzing daughters, especially the handsomest, who was named Joachime,—before a number of strangers,—before so many people who hated him on his father's account, and who watched him in order to explain and verify his relations with the Prince,—before the Princess herself, whom the Devil had also brought hither,—before Matthieu, who here was in his element, and in his leading character and bravura air,—and before the Minister,—especially before this last. Victor found in him a man full of dignity, from whom business did not take away politeness, nor thinking wit; and whom a little irony and coldness only the more exalted, but who seemed to despise feeling, scholars, and mankind. Victor generally imagined to himself a minister—e. g. Pitt—as a Swiss glacier, on which the clouds and dew that nourish it freeze overhead, which oppresses the low places, and, in its alternation between melting and congealing, sends out great torrents down below, and out of whose clefts corpses are drifted.
January himself was not quite comfortable among them: what availed him the finest dishes, if they were embittered by the finest conceits? The card-table was, therefore, especially upon the peaceful arrival of his spouse, his quiet place of anchorage; and his Victor was for this once also glad to anchor beside him. My correspondent thinks that the tuning-key to this over-fine, demi-semi-tone was turned by the Minister's lady merely, who had all sciences in her head, and to be sure at-her tongue's end, and for that reason held a weekly bureau-d'esprit. In this ridiculous position, Sebastian played away his evening and gobbled down his souper; he could tell a good story, but he had no story to tell,—in the few contes which stayed by him all was anonymous, and to the circle about him the names were precisely the things of the first importance; nor could he make use of his humor either, because a humor like his places the possessor himself in a mild comic light, and because, therefore, only among good friends whose respect one cannot lose, but not among bad friends whose respect one must hold by defiance, can it venture out in its sock and harlequin's-collar,—he did not even enjoy the happiness of inwardly laughing at them all, because he had no time for it, and because he never found people ridiculous till their backs were turned.
He was confoundedly badly off. "You'll not catch me here again very soon," he thought to himself; and when, through the two tall glass doors of the balcony, which looked out upon the garden, the moon stole in with its dreamy light, which out there fell upon stiller dwellings, fairer prospects, and calmer hearts,—then he stole out upon the balcony (as his partnership at the card-table was broken up by the Prince after supper), and the night that glistened on the earth and in the heavens exalted his bosom with greater scenes. With what love thought he then of his father, whose philosophic coldness was like the January snow, which covers the seed from the frost, whereas that of the court resembles the snow of March, which devours the buds! How sorely did he reproach himself for every discontented thought about his honest Flamin's slight want of refinement! O, how his inner man erected itself like a fallen and forgiven angel, when he imagined to himself Emanuel leading Clotilda by the hand, and rapturously asking him, "Where hast thou found to-day an image of this my friend?" At this moment he yearned inexpressibly to be back again in his St. Luna....
His quickening heart-beats were all at once checked by Joachime, who came out with a burst of laughter directed toward the parlor. As it was a burden to her to sit for a single hour, (I wonder how she could lie in bed a whole night,) she extricated herself as often as she could from the curb-bit of the card-table. The Princess released her this time, who suspended this night-work of great people on account of the weakness of her eyes. Joachime was no Clotilda, but still she had two eyes polished like two rose-diamonds, two lips like painted ones, two hands like casts, and, in fact, all the duplicate members were very pretty.... And with these a court-physician can keep house well enough, though the single ones (heart, head, nose, forehead) are not those of a Clotilda. As now under the open heaven he recovered his spirits, and on the balcony, which for him was always a parlor, the use of his tongue,—as Joachime's tone attuned him again to his own,—as she assailed the taciturnity of the English, and he defended the exceptions,—as he could now run, like a spider, up and down along the thread of the conversation, and was no more to be disturbed by the Princess, who had followed after to cool off in the night-air her inflamed eyes,—and as one complains of feeling ennui only when one himself inflicts it,—and as I transcribe all this, I do enough (I think) for a reviewer, who stands up behind the coach-body of the Prince, and reflects and wonders what he shall have to hold on to (except the footmen's straps), in case Victor, sitting before him in the carriage, does not during the ride home wish the Minister's house at the Devil, but thinks more contentedly,—Well, it's tolerable enough![[200]]
Victor's society agreed so well with the Prince, that he fancied he could as little do without him as a canoness out of the house can think of taking the badge of her order off her person. He always plunged into the sacred cup and welcome of the warm spring of a new friendship as immoderately as a guest at Carlsbad does into his. When he felt ennui, the Medicus was besought to come and drive it away; when he experienced an inward jubilee, that person was again entreated to appear, that he might participate in the jubilation. Only those times at which January felt neither ennui nor the contrary were left to his friend to spend entirely at his own pleasure. Victor had sworn beforehand to make an easy matter of refusing, and had broken out upon people of easy consent; now, however, he said, "The Devil may say, No! Just let a man find himself in the same situation first!" ... And so must our poor Victor describe nothing but empty, dizzying gyres in the court-circle of the throne, among people for whose tone he could more easily have an ear than a tongue, and whom he could read, but could not win.
A youth in whose breast hang the night-pieces of Maienthal and St. Luna,—or one who has just arrived from a watering-village,—or one who has it in mind to fall in love,—or one who, in great cities or in their great circles, must be an idle spectator,—every such one is also, for that very reason, a dissatisfied spectator therein, and blows into his critical pipe against the trifling company, till he himself is drawn in. But when all these causes actually meet in one and the same man, then can he find no relief against his gall-bladder nor any biliary duct, except to take some fine paper and send off to the Eymanns in St. Luna a confounded satirical letter upon what he has seen.
My hero despatched the following to the Parson:—