I ought to have attempted a climax, have begun with Sebastian's soul, which to-day out of its own melancholy, out of its sorrows, out of its love for Agnola magnified by Zeusel's calumny, made nothing but lines of beauty and flowing tints in order to paint into his own face as beautiful a new one as ever a fair soul created on canvas, or on its own head or on another's.
Agnola may well have had this perception sooner than I.
It furnished, of course, to the couple slender assistance that they were (not under four eyes—for Agnola's were darkened—but) under only two eyes; for the two other eyes, of the Court-dame in the cabinet, about which Victor could not be sure, till now when the princely ones were shut, and he could without questions investigate by glances and smiles the stiff thing on the chair in there in the cabinet, were really painted, and so was the body which bore them.
It struck him as singular now, that, against all Court-order, he was suffered to be alone with the Princess; but, he said to himself, she is an Italian,—a patient,—a lovely little child of fancy—(this last was perceptible even in the unusual winter negligé and Sicilian fire). He could not possibly, therefore, (even to-day before the bandaging of the eyes,) hit the right tone with her; for as she was too fine for a German,—not tender enough for an Englishwoman,—too lively for a Spaniard, he would certainly have written on her p. p. p. (passé par Paris, which is inscribed on letters that come via Paris), he would have done it, I say, had she not again been too impassioned for a Parisienne. There was the rub.—But as two persons converse more courageously and freely when one or both sit in the dark—and that was Agnola's case:—Victor was, after all, to-day not absolutely as simple as a sheep. Add to this that he took heart from the jewel-cupboard, in which to his joy—she could not see him look round so impolitely—he discovered among twenty watches no montre à régulateur. She asked him whether she should be so far restored by the third holiday, that she might contribute something to the Prince's pleasure at the ball. He answered affirmatively, though he knew that she would contribute still more to it by staying away, and although she knew it, too. Here he began to pity her, and he would fain make a clean heart. He would not exactly say plumply: "In Gross-Kussewitz I let the Devil so abuse my good nature as to prevail on me to smuggle into your Highness's watch a declaration of love"; but he would, in the finest outpouring of soul, fall down with his beating bosom and say: "Not from fear of punishment, but from fear lest the confession of my fault may contract some similarity to a repetition of the offence, I have hitherto concealed the fact that I once expressed, not so much too strongly as too boldly, a profoundness of esteem in which I am permitted to imitate only your Court, and not its sovereign; but the strength of feelings is easily confounded with their lawfulness."
He still delayed this falling down, because he perceived behind the curtain a gold strip which seemed to be the beginning of a picture-frame. This border-work must surely run round something,—round a picture, I fancy: and this was what he would like to know.
The cursed Court-Apothecary with his calumny had it to answer for, that he had this wish; not as if he supposed that Mat's face hung in a gilded frame behind the bed, but because to-day all sorts of things had startled him. He could do it very easily, as the arras-door and nunnery-grating of her eye was hung with black; he needed only to support his left hand softly on the edge of the bed, and thus, bending forward and hovering over her with suspended breath, reach across with his right over the bed (it was narrow, and he tall) and pull the curtain a little,—and then he would know what hung behind there. I repeat, but for the Apothecary it would never have entered his head. A slanderer causes one to demand of every action at least its passport,—one does it merely to effect a most patent refutation of the slanderer,—and as, often, the most innocent act has no certificate of health, one shakes one's head and says, It is a real calumny, but then I will still be on the watch.
He had made several attempts to reach over, but as she always had something to say and he to answer, it would not do, unless he chose to betray his nearness to her ears. The conversation related to the ball,—the presence and illness of her maid of honor, Clotilda,—the substitute of the latter, Joachime, upon whose appointment Victor expressed himself with decided coldness; he could never, with Agnola, get beyond court-news; all that was abstract and metaphysical she seemed to hate or to ignore; and as to talking of emotions with her,—which he generally loved best to do with women, and for which the husband's would have given him ample occasion and material,—that seemed to him not much better than actually to have them.
When he had given his cold answer about the promotion of Joachime,—a coldness which formed a flattering contrast to his present enthusiastic warmth and fulness of feeling for the Princess,—he would fain insert in the half-bar-rest which followed, and which Agnola filled out with thinking, the raising of the curtain. He rested on his hand, held his breath, drew the curtain,—but the St. Sebastian was behind it, which I have already mentioned above, and which was most certainly by Titian, and not by Vandyk, because he looked so like our Victor,[[31]] that it was credible to him that the Pater had copied it from his wax-statue at St. Luna. The Saint appeared to him still worse than the Evangelist,—not because he thought the portrait was his namesake, but because it occurred to him why the women in Italy sometimes veil the pictures of saints. Tho reason can, notoriously, form the subject of a wood-cut for the ten commandments—(Göschen and Unger ought to edit the catechism with more tasteful cuts to the prohibitions than the old ones are). Even the Mary over the bed was veiled with plumes and everything.... Zeusel! Zeusel! hadst thou not calumniated, this whole biography (so far as I can foresee) might well have had a different course!
He supported himself by resting his right hand against the wall, in a hovering posture above the blind fair one, because a little world-globe attracted his centripetal force and drew him out of his returning orbit.—For as the patient rested on her right side, one cloud after another of dishevelled hair had flowed down over the heart and over the lily hill which is lifted by sighs, and the locks falling towards the other hill had not been able there to cover up so much as they had here disclosed. The lace-veil sank slowly after the tresses, and the heart-leaves and the ripe blossoms fell away from the protruding apple-fruit.... Dear æsthetic hero of these Post-days, wilt thou remain a moral one, hanging, as thou art, unseen over this veritable Belidor's globe de compression,[[32]]—over this waxing moon-globe, whereof one never sees the other half,—near this commanding eminence, which, like other eminences, one should not suffer round a fortification,—and that too at a court where generally the dress-regulations suppress everything elevated?
When he is once away from the bed and the Paullinum, I will have a good quarrel with the reader about the whole occurrence,—but now it must first be related continuously and with a good deal of fire.