The Invisible Lodge

by Jean Paul

Then we rested, changing our position from one shaded grassy bank of the island to another, fanned by birch-leaves and Indian waves--then we made music--then dined; first, at the table of a host who knows how to be refined and delicate, in a jovial manner; secondly, at the windows which opened to all four points of the compass, and drew us more than ever into all the vortices of joyous nature, and thirdly, each of us by himself, with a hand that knew how to pluck the soft berry of enjoyment without crushing it. At evening comes Ottomar--the two maidens have lost themselves among flowers and Gustavus among shadows--the biographer lies here, like the jurist Bartolus, on the tossing grass depicting it all--Fenk is arranging for the evening. Not till evening does our to-day's joy come out into full light; and I thank heaven that I have now overtaken, with my biographical pen, the actual course of things, and that no one knows more than I report; whereas heretofore I always knew more, and embittered for myself the biographical enjoyment of the happiest scenes by the knowledge of the most mournful. But now, though in the next quarter of an hour the sea might swallow us all up, in the present one we looked out on it with a smile.

As I am so quiet and care not to go to walk, I will talk about taking walks--a thing which so often occurs in my work--and not without keenness. A man of understanding and logic would, in my opinion, distribute all walkers, like the East Indians, into four castes.

In the first caste trot along the most miserable ones, who do it from vanity or fashion, and want to show either their feeling or their clothes or their gait.

In the second caste run the fat and the scholarly, who do it for the sake of getting a motion, and not so much to enjoy as to digest what they have enjoyed already; into this innocent, passive department they are also to be thrown, who do it without reason and without enjoyment, or as companions, or from an animal satisfaction with fine weather.

The third caste comprise those in whose heads are the eyes of the landscape-painter, whose hearts are penetrated by the grand outlines of the universe, and whose eyes trace the immeasurable line of beauty which flows with ivy-tendrils around all created things--which rounds the sun and the drop of blood and the pea, and cuts out all leaves and fruits into circles. Oh, how few such eyes rest on the mountains and on the setting sun and the closing flower!

A fourth and better caste, one would think, could hardly be produced after the third; but there are persons who look upon creation not merely with an artistic but with a holy eye--who transplant into this blooming world the world to come, among the creatures find the Creator--who kneel down amidst the rustling and roaring of the thousand-twigged, thickly-leaved tree of life, and are fain to speak with the genius whose presence pervades it, they themselves being only leaves that tremble thereon--who use the profound temple of Nature--not as a villa full of pictures and statues, but as a holy place of worship--in snort, who go to walk not merely with the eye, but with the heart....

I know no greater praise than being able to glide over easily from such persons to our loving couple--their love is such a walk; the life of high-minded persons is also such a walk. I will only add, before rising from the crushed grass, the single remark, that Gustavus's love quite fits the practical definition of it which is to be made in a rapturous summer-midnight. The noblest love (as one may define it) is simply the tenderest, deepest, most substantial respect, revealed less by what is done than by what is left undone, which is divined by both parties mutually, which stretches across both souls (in an astonishing degree) the same chords, which exalts the noblest feelings with a new glow, which will always sacrifice, never gain, which takes away nothing from love for the whole sex, but gives all through the individual; this love is a respect, in which the pressure of hand and lips are not indispensable constituents and good actions are quite essential; in short, a respect which must be laughed to scorn by the majority of men and profoundly honored by the smallest part. Such a heart-exalting respect was the love of Gustavus, which not only endured, but even gladdened and warmed noble eye-witnesses, because it was without that innocently-sensuous toying with lips and hands, in which the spectator can take no more interest than in the artificial, theatrical viands of the players. A sign of virtuous esteem or love is this, when the spectator takes the more interest in it, the greater it is. Gustavus's love had--since his Peter's-fall, and still more since the forgiveness of this fall (for many faults one feels most deeply, only when they are pardoned)--gained such an access of tenderness, of reserve, and sense of another's worth, that he won more hearts than the tenderest one, and ruled other eyes than the fairest, those of Beata, before which his glances fell, like snow-flakes in the blue under the cloudless sun, pure, sparkling, trembling and melting away.

All have just arrived, Ottomar and the rest.

My clock strikes two in the morning, and still the birthday festival of Beata and of paradise is not yet closed; for I am just come over to this position to describe it; that is to say, if I remain in my chair and do not sally forth again into the blue vault, which throws over the so great multitude of to-day's joys its starry rays.

Towards evening Ottomar flew hither over the water. He always looks like a man who is thinking of something distant, who is just now only resting, who plucks the flower of joy that hangs over his path, because his flying gondola hurries him along by it, not because he is thinking of it at all. He still retains his sublimely-low voice and that eye of his which has seen death. He is still as much of a Zahouri[^[96]] as ever, who sees through all flower-beds and grass-plots of the earth and down to the motionless dead, who sleep beneath it. So soft and stormy, so humorous and melancholy, so obliging and unconstrained and free! He asserted that most vices were owing to the flying from vices--for fear of acting badly we did nothing and had no longer courage for anything great--we all had so much love for man that we had no longer any honor--out of humane tolerance and love we had no sincerity, no uprightness, we could not hurl down a traitor, a tyrant or the like.