They went in ecstasy through the cool garden to the hall. O, when sisterly love, filial love, maternal love, love of lovers, and friendship burn side by side on the altars, then does it make a good man feel glad that the human heart is so noble, and preserves the material for so many flames, and that we feel love and warmth only when we dispense them out of ourselves, just as our blood never appears to us warm, until it flows, outside of our veins, in the open air.—O love! how happy are we that thou, when contemplated by a second soul, regeneratest and redoublest thyself,—that warm hearts attract and create warm ones, as suns do planets, the greater the lesser, and God, all,—and that even the dark planet is only a lesser, veiled, monœcian[[194]] sun!... All these souls stood today high on their Alp, and saw—as on a natural one—the rainbow of human fortune hanging as a great completed magic circle between the earth and the sun.—In the hall the Lady begged her daughter to go alone into the dark Jew's-harp chamber; she wanted to give her her birthday present. Clotilda's eye bade her friend, as she left him, with a second expression of thanks for his soul, a tender farewell.
After her departure, the Lady gave him a sign to stay with her behind the rest,—then he gladly fell on his knee before Clotilda's mother, who had not yet been asked her consent to his love, with the words, "If you do not guess my prayer, I have not the courage to begin it." She raised him up and said, "Prayers that are made so silently are quite as silently fulfilled; but rather come now and see what present I make to my daughter."—He must first, however, for a long time, moisten and kiss the hand which is about to offer him the lime-blossom honey of a whole life.
The two proceeded now, in this evening sent over out of the millennial kingdom, to the dark chamber of the daughter. Why did tears flow from Clotilda's eyes for rapture, even before her mother spoke?—Because she could already guess everything. The mother conducted the lover to his beloved, and said to the bride: "Take here thy birthday present. Few mothers are rich enough to give such a one; but then few daughters good enough to receive such a one."—The bridal pair were brought to their knees before her by the weight of overwhelming bliss and great, dumb gratitude, and took respectively the two beneficent hands of the mother; but she gently drew them out of theirs, and laid those of the loving ones in each other, and slipped away with the whisper, "I will bring our guests hither!"—
—O ye two good souls, kneeling beside each, blest at last! how unhappy must a man be who, without a tear of joy, or how happy one who, without a tear of longing, can see you now fall speechless and weeping into each other's arms,—after so many painful partings, at last linked together,—after so many exhaustive bleedings, at last healed,—after thousands and thousands of sighs, yet at last blest,—and inexpressibly blest by innocence of heart and peace of soul and God!—No, I cannot to-day take my wet eyes away from you,—I cannot to-day behold and sketch the other good souls,—but I lay my eyes, with the two tears which belong to the happy and the unhappy man, softly and steadfastly on my two still lovers in the dusky chamber, where once the breath of the harmonica tones wafted their two souls together like gold- and silver-leaves.—O, as my book now ends, and my beloved vanish from me,—withdraw thyself, dim Holy of Holies, with thy two angels,—send back a long echo, when thou fliest upward with thy melodious souls, as swans in the night glide with flute-tones through the heavens.—But, alas! does not the Holy of Holies already stand far away and high above me, and hang as a little silver cloud on the horizon of dream?—O these good souls, this good Victor, this good Emanuel, this good Clotilda, all these vernal dreams have gone up, and my heart looks up sorrowfully and calls after them without hope, "Dreams of spring, when will ye return?"
O why should I do it, were it not that the friends whom we firmly grasp by the hand are also dreams that soar upward? But the convulsive, prostrate, moaning heart on the gravestone does not call after these, "Dreams of spring-time, when will ye return?"—
SUPPLEMENT TO THE 44TH DOG-POST-DAY.
Nothing.
As this supplement to a little Post-Day was too small, I kept waiting for the dog and for new biographical pipe-clay and dough.—Since, however, the post-aux-chiens still delays, I will just score down the few cat-tones which I left out of the concert of love in the former chapter. It is nothing but vexatious stuff that I have still to supply here, and just these creaking tones may topple down again a new avalanche and institute new mischief. It is simply stupid that in this way the book is done, and yet not done, since the dog of a—dog is quite unexpectedly out of the way, like snuff.
The step-mother, the Chamberlain's lady, who has been long since banished the country by the biographical conjurer of spirits and bodies out of these leaves, had, on the advent of her Ladyship, from a very natural antipathy, marched off to a little country-seat. Speed on; besides, thou art not my Amancebada![[195]]—Matthieu had, in the former chapter, conformably to his old audacity, stayed awhile among none but antagonists of his dark nature, and was sitting in the hall as the happy procession marched in from the garden. He knew not yet that the courtier Victor was in reality nothing but a mere, flat parson's son. At first he continued to carry on the antique joke of his declaration of love to Agatha, and set the Parson up to compliments and addresses of thanks for the services which he had rendered all to-day. But when he found there was too much indifference to his cold malice, he took away from his contempt its ambiguity. In fact, his heart was sincere, and rather made itself out more malicious, than more virtuous, than it was; he hated a dissimulation, whereby many a courtling easily gives himself that look of the virtuous man, which is best to be explained by Lavater's observation, that the angry person transfers to his own face the looks of the one whom he hates.
At last, Matthieu guessed the secrets, and the Parson ratified his guess. Such a water for his saw-mill, on which he cut men straight for his throne-scaffolding, had never before flowed in upon him.—If he represents to the Prince this falsehood, this new, terrible, abominable fraud, which his Lordship has played upon him, then—he concludes—must January go beside himself with amazement at Lord Horion's lies and at Matthieu's truths.—Now, he held it for his duty to smile, indeed, but no more with malicious pleasure, like Mat, but with a regular contemptuousness, as a court-vassal should; he felt, too, how much beneath his dignity it was to let himself any longer be twisted into this citizenly quodlibet, without at least making a fool of it. He went accordingly,—for the sake of throwing out the news from his seed-apron into good ground,—after a short but sincere congratulation upon the marriage, the very same night back to the court,—and the Devil, following him as attendant blackamoor, decorously brought up the rear.