It may be that many a reader of fine sense has already, from the foregoing, got wind of that which Zeusel will now disclose. I give the Apothecary's exposé in the following abridgment:—
"The Minister had never been able formerly to draw the Prince into his interest, seldom to get him to his house; to be sure, he had sometimes not omitted to give in marriage a daughter who might please him; but either the diverse interest of the daughter's husband was always unpropitious to his own, or else the influence of his Lordship was. Hence he was more to be excused than condemned for espousing the cause of the weaker party, namely, that of the Princess, who at least, in all events, was something, and who perhaps was only concealing still her Italian arts. On the whole, then, it was not unjust, that one should endeavor through Matthieu to attach the Princess, who has much frailty, to the house of Schleunes, wherein they constrained themselves to walk after her external grandioseness of virtue, while they could make up to her by the court page for the coldness of her spouse." ...
If the reader imagines to himself the worst, he will comprehend Victor's incredulous staring and cursing; but he will let Zeusel have his say out first.
"Fortunately the Court-Physician had done the family the honor of often visiting them; and the Schleuneses probably had encouraged him in every way to a more frequent bestowal of his visits, especially as he thereby made the Prince also a familiar guest. Deponent had a variety of information on this subject from good authority." ...
Victor guessed, what Zeusel from politeness concealed, the allusion to Joachime. "Singular,—is it not?" thought he, "that my father writes me almost the same thing! But here is a fine complication of purposes! I make the Minister my cloak of concealment in my designs upon the Princess, and he makes me his in his designs upon the Prince." That is what he ought to have known without me, that bad men never seek good ones out of love, and that Joachime's heart is nothing but a bait in the hands of the Minister; but poetic men, who keep the wings of fancy forever on the stretch, are caught, like larks, by means of their outspread wings, even in nets which have the widest meshes, through which the smooth body of a bird might easily slip. Only one word more: why did Victor demean himself toward the best persons—towards Clotilda, his father, &c.—more finely, handsomely, and properly than the best man of the world; and yet towards mediocre and bad people conduct himself so clumsily; why?—Because he did everything from inclination and regard, and nothing from selfishness and imitation; worldlings, on the contrary, maintain always a uniform demeanor, because they never shape it after other people's merits, but according to their own designs. Hence his father, on the island, among those rules of life which, taken together, were a fine covert prophecy of his faults and fortunes, gave him this one: One commits the most follies among people whom one does not respect.
"Now, as Clotilda pleased the Prince, this Matthieu, who had been a suitor for her some years before, would seek to make her one of his conquests, in order, through her, to achieve much more important ones."
Fie! cried Victor's whole soul, now I see for the first time all the prickles of the crown of thorns which they are pressing upon thy heart, thou poor Clotilda!
"Matthieu would long since have got farther on with his propositions of marriage had he had his present prospects (of—an adulterous act) nearer before him. Perhaps, too, Matthieu was further anxious about the return of her brother (Flamin, on account of her diminished inheritance), although the death of his sister (the source of the inheritance, Giulia) slightly indemnified him. Hence the Princess loved Clotilda, since the marriage of the latter with Matthieu was only a matter of interest. But if it really came to an espousal, as was probable, since Matthieu, if only by coarseness, would extort it from the Chamberlain," ... (it is a peculiar trait of the Evangelist, that towards the weak he was coarse, and often towards the same person rude and then again refined,) ... "then might Matthieu and January exercise themselves in mutual forgiveness; and the band of friendship would bind at once four persons in different knots. This fourfold concatenation no one would then any longer be able to dissolve, and all would go to the Devil. The only Deus ex machinâ who could still prevent the tying of this knot was the Court-Physician. To him, perhaps, Herr Le Baut would not refuse his daughter, as he had helped her get the place of maid of honor, 'which, at that time, when I was not at liberty distinctly to explain myself to you, was precisely my true intention, which you guessed quite as well as you executed,'—and as the fate of the son (Flamin, who, according to the general opinion, was not yet visible and acknowledged) really lay in the hands of his Lordship. Nor did he doubt about gaining the Princess, as he (the Doctor) had hitherto possessed her favor, and she preferred him to Dr. Culpepper. The loss of Clotilda and Agnola would clip the Schleuneses' wings." ...
Scoundrel! was the curse which Flamin would here have vented; but Victor, who believed that only an entire life, not a single action, deserved this moral besom, and who to the greatest intolerance of vice joined a too great toleration of the vicious, simply said,—though with more heat than one will now expect,—"O thou good Princess, the German scorpions sit around thy heart and wound it with their stings, and for balm pour poison into the wound, that it may never heal!—Abominable, abominable calumny!" Victor loved to praise and defend his friends too ardently,—and, in fact, from his very inclination to the opposite; for as, in the matter of his own honor, he calmly and silently opposed to the libels of the world the commendatory letters of his own conscience, his inclination would, indeed, have led him to defend the honor of his friends as coldly as he did his own, but it was obedience to his conscience to do it (despite the feeling of its superfluousness) with the greatest warmth.
The polite and triumphant smile of Zeusel was a second calumny; the blockhead regarded Victor as a dial-plate-wheel or striking-wheel in the matter, and himself as the pendulum. Therefore Victor said, with a chagrin compounded of pride and melancholy: "My soul is too far exalted above your court-littlenesses, above your court-knaveries; your stuff inexpressibly disgusts me.—O thou noble spirit in Maienthal!—"