A servant seeking the chaplain, roused us both from our reverie. We saw him advance towards a gentleman standing on the banks of the Adour, who slowly turned down his rolled-up shirt-sleeves. It was the chaplain, who had been catching crabs during the storm, and had subsequently fished. As I knew that his hairy hand had worked for the food of the critical, as well as his own philosophy, with trowel and mortar, with pen and ink, I boldly advanced towards him, and told him what I was writing. But the coarse, obstinate, yet timid free-mason, coldly welcomed me in a language as broad as his own frosty visage.
He despises biographers; for the windows of a philosophical audience are too high,--perhaps, as in ancient temples, in the roof,--so that they cannot see into the streets of real life, as, according to Winkelmann, the Roman windows were architecturally as high. Lord Rochester is said to have been continually drunk during a whole quintennium; but such a chaplain is capable of being sober for an entire decennium. A man like this bites the buds of all powerful truths, experiences, and fictions, as ants bite the buds from corn-seeds, that they may not fructify, but wither and die and form building materials.
When the Chaplain left me to join the Baron, as consecrator of the marriage sacrament, I found Karlson in the dustrain of a near cascade. Round him, almost close to our windows, the hermitages of the farmers waded in green foliage, with the fresh harvest wreath roofed by faded ones; and inside, there bloomed families, outside, elms. He showed me Gione's card, which, he said, she had given him before her marriage. But it was not so; he had found it on the moss near the cascade. It represented a Roman landscape, and beside the living fountain was the pictured one of Tivoli, and on a stone in the foreground Gione's name was written. Such a printed trifle, a beloved name shortly before its sublunar annihilation, moves the whole heart with a succession of pleasing reflections.
Karlson went to the ceremony. I remained alone under the splendid blue heaven, and rejoiced that all the inhabitants of Campan wore its livery, the blue, which we had yesterday mistaken for black.
I will not hide from you that during the coupling, softened by the many beauties of spring, I lost myself in Nadine's equally charming ones, which were an undiscovered Central Africa for me, while I wished she were as warm. After eight or ten dreams, I saw the beautiful couples cross my path. How earnestly glad and serene we all stood under the spring music of flutes and pipes, and harps and warbling, which were living around us, with and without wings. Gione and Karlson concealed an equal emotion, as at an almost equal fate. Wilhelmi, who is, as a comet, sometimes in the burning, sometimes in the freezing point of a sun, requires no joys than those of others to make him happy. But a tear stood in Nadine's bright eye, which could not be smiled or looked away. Her heart seemed to me to resemble the earth, whose exterior is cold, but which carries in its centre a latent heat. And yesterday her whole being seemed so mirthful and so gay!
We never make more erroneous conclusions in our opinions on any subject than on woman's cheerfulness. Oh! how many of these charming beings there are, who decay unvalued, who, while jesting, despair, and while joking, bleed to death; who hide their merry laughing eyes behind a wall, as behind a fan, to give glad vent to their long-restrained tears; who pay for a merry day by a tearful night, just as an unusually clear, transparent, and fogless air betokens rain. Remember the beautiful N. N., and also her youngest sister. In the mean time, the charming, sun-variegated dew-drop under Nadine's eye was balanced by a wart of half the size, the solitaire among her personal charms.
Wilhelmi's lyric and dithyrambic head was filled with projects for pleasure, and with the eagerness of delight, he demanded a hasty determination concerning the proper use and enjoyment of the day. "O yes," said I, quickly and impertinently, "life flies to-day on a minute-hand, like an alarum it winds off; but how shall we form a plan, a good plan?" Nadine, who had arranged everything beforehand with the bridegroom, replied: "I think we need none for such a delightful day, and such a charming valley. We will pilgrimize carelessly along the banks of the Adour, the length of the Vale, and rest at every new flower, and at every bud, and in the evening we will sail back by moonlight! That would be quite Arcadian and shepherd-like in this Arcadia. Will you all? You certainly will, dearest sister?" "O yes," said Gione, "for I think we are as yet all strangers to the charms of this paradise." The Baron seemed to hesitate before giving his consent, and said: "It depends whether the ladies can walk two and a quarter miles in one day."[[7]] I was mad with joy, and cried, "Charming!" Such a long horizontal heaven-journey, such a melodious Arpeggio through the chords of delight was an old innate wish of my youth. I imparted my delight to the Chaplain, to whose feelings this voyage pitturesque was as repugnant as a Good Friday procession, and to whom, instead of this heaven-way, that of Höfer[[8]] would have been more acceptable, because he would rather have remained at home to read, and because he did not enjoy the Epopee of nature as a man, nor scan it as a naturalist, but like an usher, separated and divided it, for practice in building up again. I said to him: "If we two will be shepherds, representing the old Myrtil and Phylax, it would be interesting. You know best that whims should be ten times less bold before ladies and refined ears than on print, and that for such people it has to be filtered through so many filtering-papers and strainers, that I would not give a proof-sheet for it after the process."
A hired country-house, at the end of the valley, was the architectural Eden with which Wilhelmi intended to surprise and delight his bride in this botanic one. But Nadine alone knew it.
In as many moments as a swan would take to spread his wings and rise, we were all ready. I do not blame man for making preparations for the examination for death, but for no (shorter) journey. The long hunt destroys the game of enjoyment. I, for my part, never think of starting until I am on the road.
Wilhelmi loaded himself with his bride's guitar; Karlson carried a portable ice-cellar. The ladies had their parasols; the Chaplain and I had nothing. I whispered to the shallow Phylax,--so I can now call him, and myself the old Myrtil,--"Sir Chaplain, we rebel against all good manners if we follow empty-handed." He immediately offered himself to Gione, as pack-horse, wagon, and carrier for her--parasol. But clever genius prompted me to return to Karlson's chamber, and bring two cushions from the sofa, and I returned with these twins in my arms; nothing could have been more appropriate, as the ladies sat down a thousand times on the way, and could not have dipped their silken elbows in the juicy paint of the flowers. To his vexation, Phylax was obliged to carry the soft block in his arms; I hung the other one, like a stick, to my thumb. At last we started.