These things he cannot help. But to-night he had scarcely, with his fair, faint companion, reached the bank of the pond, into which some superstitious dread of water-spirits had lately poured the pure blood of her left arm,--when, in his terror lest she fell in, with the rest of her blood, over the brink, he quite valiantly laid hold of the sick arm. Thus will much Pontac and a little courage at all times put a Conrector in case to lay hold of a Fräulein. I aver that at the banquet-board of the wine, at the window-sill, he continued in the same conducting position. What a soft group in the penumbra of the Earth, while Night, with its dusky waters, was falling deeper and deeper, and the silver-light of the Moon was already glancing back from the copper ball of the steeple! I call the group soft, because it consists of a maiden that in two senses has been bleeding; of a mother again with tears giving her thanks for the happiness of her child; and of a pious, modest man, pouring wine, and drinking health to both, and who traces in his veins a burning lava-stream, which is boiling through his heart, and threatening piece by piece to melt it and bear it away. A candle stood without among the three bottles, like Reason among the Passions; on this account the Conrector looked without intermission at the window-panes, for on them (the darkness of the room served as mirror-foil) was painted, among other faces which Fixlein liked, the face he liked best of all, and which he dared to look at only in reflection, the face of Thiennette.
Every minute was a Federation-festival, and every second a Preparation-Sabbath for it. The Moon was gleaming from the evening dew, and the Pontac from their eyes, and the bean-stalks were casting a shorter grating of shadow. The quicksilver-drops of stars were hanging more and more continuous in the sable of night. The warm vapor of the wine set our two friends (like steam-engines) again in motion.
Nothing makes the heart fuller and bolder than walking to and fro in the night. Fixlein now led the Fräulein in his arm without scruple. By reason of her lancet-wound, Thiennette could only put her hand, in a clasping position, in his arm; and he, to save her the trouble of holding fast, held fast himself, and pressed her fingers as well as might be with his arm to his heart. It would betray a total want of polished manners to censure his. At the same time, trifles are the provender of Love; the fingers are electric discharges of a fire sparkling along every fibre; sighs are the guiding tones of two approximating hearts; and the worst and most effectual thing of all in such a case is some misfortune; for the fire of Love, like that of naphtha, likes to swim on water. Two tear-drops, one in another's, one in your own eyes, compose, as with two convex lenses, a microscope which enlarges everything, and changes all sorrows into charms. Good sex! I too consider every sister in misfortune as fair; and, perhaps, thou wouldst deserve the name of the Fair, even because thou art the Suffering sex!
And if Professor Hunczogsky in Vienna modelled all the wounds of the human frame in wax, to teach his pupils how to cure them, I also, thou good sex, am representing in little figures the cuts and scars of thy spirit, though only to keep away rude hands from inflicting new ones....
Thiennette felt not the loss of the inheritance, but of her that should have left it; and this more deeply for one little trait, which she had already told his mother, as she now told him. In the last two nights of the Rittmeisterinn, when the feverish watching was holding up to Thiennette's imagination nothing but the winding-sheet and the mourning-coaches of her protectress; while she was sitting at the foot of the bed, looking on those fixed eyes, unconsciously quick drops often trickled over her cheeks, while in thought she prefigured the heavy, cumbrous dressing of her benefactress for the coffin. Once after midnight, the dying lady pointed with her finger to her own lips. Thiennette understood her not; but rose and bent over her face. The Enfeebled tried to lift her head, but could not,--and only rounded her lips. At last, a thought glanced through Thiennette, that the Departing, whose dead arms could now press no beloved heart to her own, wished that she herself should embrace her. O then, that instant, keen and tearful, she pressed her warm lips on the colder,--and she was silent like her that was to speak no more,--and she embraced alone and was not embraced. About four o'clock, the finger waved again; she sank down on the stiffened lips,--but this had been no signal, for the lips of her friend under the long kiss had grown stiff and cold....
How deeply now, before the infinite Eternity's-countenance of Night, did the cutting of this thought pass through Fixlein's warm soul: "O thou forsaken one beside me! No happy accident, no twilight hast thou, like that now glimmering in the heavens, to point to the prospect of a sunny day; without parents art thou, without brother, without friend; here alone on a disblossomed, emptied corner of the Earth; and thou, left Harvest-flower, must wave lonely and frozen over the withered stubble of the Past." That was the meaning of his thoughts, whose internal words were: "Poor young lady! Not so much as a half-cousin left; no nobleman will seek her, and she grows old so forgotten, and she is so good from the very heart,--Me she has made happy,--Ah, had I the presentation to the parish of Hukelum in my pocket, I should make a trial." ... Their mutual lives, which a straitcutting bond of Destiny was binding so closely together, now rose before him overhung with sable,--and he forthwith conducted his friend (for a bashful man may in an hour and a half be transformed into the boldest, and then continues so) back to the last flask, that all these upsprouting thistles and passion-flowers of sorrow might therewith be swept away. I remark, in passing, that this was stupid; the torn vine is full of water-veins as well as grapes; and a soft oppressed heart the beverage of joy can melt only into tears.
If any man disagree with me, I shall desire him to look at the Conrector, who demonstrates my experimental maxim like a very syllogism.--One might arrive at some philosophic views, if one traced out the causes, why liquors--that is to say, in the long run, more plentiful secretion of the nervous spirits--make men at once pious, soft, and poetical. The Poet, like Apollo his father, is forever a youth; and is, what other men are only once, namely, in love,--or only after Pontac, namely, intoxicated,--all his life long. Fixlein, who had been no poet in the morning, now became one at night; wine made him pious and soft; the Harmonica-bells in man, which sound to the tones of a higher world, must, like the glass Harmonica-bells, if they are to act, be kept moist.
He was now standing with her again beside the wavering pond, in which the second blue hemisphere of heaven, with dancing stars and amid quivering trees, was playing; over the green hills ran the white, crooked footpaths dimly along; on the one mountain was the twilight sinking together, on the other was the mist of night rising up; and over all these vapors of life hung motionless and naming the thousand-armed lustre of the starry heaven, and every arm held in it a burning galaxy....
It now struck eleven.... Amid such scenes, an unknown hand stretches itself out in man, and writes in foreign language on his heart, a dread Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin. "Perhaps by twelve I am dead," thought our friend, in whose soul the Cantata-Sunday, with all its black funeral piles, was mounting up.
The whole future Crucifixion of his friend lay prickly and bethorned before him; and he saw every bloody trace from which she lifted her foot,--she who had made his own way soft with flowers and leaves. He could no longer restrain himself; trembling in his whole frame, and with a trembling voice, he solemnly said to her: "If the Lord this night call me away, let the half of my fortune be yours; for it is your goodness I must thank that I am free of debts, as few Teachers are."