He went away with transpierced heart. The night-watchman, who always reminded him in the higher sense of time, and of eternity too, called up his teacher's form before his weeping soul,—and Clotilda came with her pallid looks and said: "Seest thou not yet why I have such pale cheeks, and hasten so to the holy vale of Emanuel?"—and Joachime danced by and said, "I laugh at you, mon cher!" and the Princess veiled her innocent face, and said from pride, "Defend me not!"
The reader can easily conceive that Victor held the name of Clotilda too great to be so much as suffered to pass his lips in such a neighborhood,—as the Jews only in the holy city, not in the provinces, took on their lips the name of Jehovah. His soul fastened itself now on the after-flora of his love, the Agnola besprinkled by Zeusel. It was the thing he could have wished, that precisely at this time the merchant Tostato was to arrive from Kussewitz to make his Catholic Easter-confession in the city; he could at least insist upon his silence in regard to the masquerade-part in the shop, so that he might spare the abused Princess at least the pain she would feel at a well-meant offence; namely, the declaration of love pasted into the watch.
[27. DOG-POST-DAY.]
Eye-Bandaging.—Picture behind the Bed-curtain.—Two Virtues in Danger.
In Passion-week Clotilda, released by the Princess amidst caresses, went to St. Luna. In Easter-week she is to carry her heart, full of concealed cares, to Maienthal, to more congenial souls, when she has first passed through a purgatory, namely, through a brilliant ball which the Prince gives her—or, to speak more politely, to the Princess—on the third Easter-holiday.... If this flower shall be dug out and transplanted by the melon-lever of death from my biographical beds,—I throw away my pen and cudgel back Spitz,—I have come to be as much accustomed to her as to a betrothed,—where shall I again discover at court a female character which, like hers, unites holy and fine manners, Heaven and this world, virtue and ton,—a heart which (if it is allowable to compare it with anything small) resembles the heart-shaped montre à régulateur so tormenting to our hero, that with the index-hand of the court hours combines an index-hand of the sun's hours and the magnet of love?
Now, we are still together through all the Easter-holidays; for Sebastian must go to Pastor Eymann's, to see him and the three British twins, and his dear Chaplainess, and so much else that was dear. He would gladly have followed the Regency-Councillor thither on holy Easter-eve, (and it would have been as delightful to the biographer as an Easter-pancake, for he is more than sated with cities and courts on paper,) but the genius of the tenderest friendship beckoned to him for the sake of Flamin and Clotilda, who had both so long wanted and so longingly wished each other, and were now reciprocally bringing with them to the meeting new wounds, to stay behind at least only till the first Easter-day, as if he would ask, "Surely, the first glad looks of brother and sister so long held asunder, my unhappy Sebastian will not wish to disturb?"—"No, surely!" answered his tear.
The city was now emptied of his loved ones.—Passion-week was truly one to him, not even the Princess, as it were the electrophorus of his love-flame blown back upon his own heart, had for a long time been visible to him,—for in this mood he could not go to Joachime's—when the father-confessor of the Princess, who to-day had confessed to him (on holy Easter-eve), called upon him and unfolded before him a medical bulletin of the state of her eyes, and scolded at him in a friendly manner, that the Court-Confessor, instead of bringing remission of sins to the Court-Physician, had to bring the sins themselves before his conscience. "I was on the point of making a journey to-morrow," said Victor.—"Very well!" said the Pater, "the Princess desires your help this very day."
On the way he said to himself: "Has, then, Tostato forsworn his Easter confession, that now at evening he still has not arrived? and where the devil will he be to-morrow?"—Here! answered—Tostato behind him.—Such a jolly penitent no sacristy had ever yet seen. The child of fun and deviltry and penance told the reason of his wild delight: "The Princess had to-day, as his countrywoman, bought out half his shop." Before Victor had arrayed on his face in rank and file those serious looks, with which he was going to entreat of him silence on the subject of his mercantile vicariate,—I mean, his shop-keeping,—the skipping penitent gladdened him with the news, that the Princess had inquired after his and her countrymen, his associés, and that he had not at all concealed from her, that somebody had once been of the latter without being of the former, namely, her Court-Physician himself.—"Thunder!" said the ...
The poor fool of a merchant meant it well, and there was nothing further to be done about it than to investigate, whether Agnola's questioning had not been mere accident; whether she still had the watch, or had ever opened it; whether no wind had blown away the declaration of love as a sister-wind!