The Invisible Lodge

by Jean Paul

He wondered at Beata, who took not the customary constrained, but a heightening interest in our talk: for he has a notion that one may talk with a woman about heaven and hell, God and the Fatherland, and yet she will be thinking of nothing all the while she listens, but her figure, her attitude, her dress. "I except," said Fenk, "in the first place, everything, and secondly, physiognomy also; to this they all listen, because they can all immediately apply it."

The magic evening drove more and more shadows before it; at last it took up all creatures into its rocking lap and clasped them to its bosom, in order to make them tranquil, tender and glad. We five islanders became so, too. We went out in a body up to a little artificial eminence that we might escort the sun even to the last stairway, before he sailed across the ocean to America. Suddenly, over in another island, five Alpine horns pealed forth, and went on rising and falling with their simple strains. One's condition has more influence on music, than music on one's condition. In our situation and where one's ear places him already at the Alpine fountain, and his eye on the evening-gilded glacier-peak, and around the hut of the herdsman, lie Arcadia and Tempe and youth's pastures, and when we let these fancies fly before the sinking sun and after the fairest day--in such a case the heart follows an Alp-horn with intenser throbs than a concert hall full of gaily bedizened hearers. Oh the admission ticket to joy is a good, and then a tranquil heart! The dark, cloudy, dimly gleaming ideas, which the universal philosopher demands of all sensations, must glide slowly over the soul or stand perfectly still, if it is to enjoy itself; just as clouds that move slowly betoken fair weather, while flying ones indicate foul. "There are," said Beata, "virtuous days when one pardons everything and has all power over one's self, when joy seems to kneel down in the heart and pray that it may remain there longer, and when all is cleared up and illumined within us;--then when one weeps over it for joy this grows so great that all is gone by again."

"I," said Ottomar, "love better to throw myself into the rocking arms of the tempest. We enjoy only glancing, glowing moments; this coal must be violently whirled round, that the burning circle of rapture may appear."

"And yet," said he, "I am to-day so glad in thy presence, setting sun!... The gladder I have been in any hour, or week, so much the stormier was the next. Like flowers is man: the more violent the tempest is going to be, so much the more perfume do they exhale." "You must not invite us any more, Herr Doctor," said Beata smiling, but her eye swam, however, in something more than joy.

Amidst the deepening red of the heavens the sun stepped upon his last stair, environed with tinted clouds. He and the Alpine horns vanished in the same instant. One cloud paled after another and the highest still hung transfused with the evening-glow. Beata and my sister talked playfully, after the manner of maidens, about what these illuminated clouds might be--the one resolved them into Christmas lambs with rosy-red ribbons, or a red heavenly scarf--the other into fiery eyes or cheeks under a veil--red and white cloud-roses--a red sun-hat, etc....

Punch, I think, was brought at last for the gentlemen, one of whom took it in such moderation that he can even now, at 2½ o'clock, compose this section. Then we sauntered round under the rustling and refreshing tree of night, whose blossoms are suns and its fruits worlds. Our enjoyment now led us apart, now brought us together again, and each was equally capable of enjoying himself greatly, with or without company. Beata and Gustavus forgot their own peculiar love and joy out of respect and sympathy for that of others, and where all were friends became simply friends to each other. O, preach out of the world, I pray, the sadness which makes the heart as thick as blood, but not the joy, which in its dance of ecstasy, stretches out its arms not merely after a partner, but also after a tottering unfortunate, and which, as it flies by, takes the tear from the eye of the weeping spectator! To-day we would fain pardon each other everything, although we found nothing to pardon. There was nothing there to forgive, I say; for as one star after another welled out from the depth of shadow, and when Ottomar and I had turned about before a warbling nightingale in order to hear her wails, softened by distance, and when we stood alone together, encompassed by nothing but tones and shapes of love, and when I could no longer contain myself, but, under the great present and future heavens, opened my heart to him, whose own I had long ago seen and loved; then was such a frame of spirit no forgiveness and reconciliation, but.... of that, day after to-morrow....

In alternating groups--now the two maidens alone, now with a third person, now all together--we walked over the grass-embosomed flowers and passed along between two rival nightingales, the one of which sang the praises and inspired the air of the one island, aim the other of the neighboring one. In this musical pot-pourri the leaves of the flowers had covered the fragrant pot-pourris, but all the birch-leaves had put on their own and we separated from one another on purpose, so as not to be able to embark hurriedly from an enchanting Otaheite.

At last we met by chance under a silver-poplar, whose snow-white leaves had by their gleam through the dark gathered us around it. "It is high time we took our leave!" said Beata. Only just as we were, or should have been, on the eve of doing it, the moon came up; behind a latticed fan of flowers she opened so modestly her cloudy eyelids, as she silently floated across the blind night, and her eye streamed, and she looked upon us like sincerity itself, and sincerity looked upon her too. "If we would only tarry," said Ottomar, in whose hot hand of friendship we would willingly dispense with every female hand--"till it grows lighter on the water and the moon can shine in upon the vales--who knows when we can have things so again?" At length he added: "Besides, Gustavus and I start on our journey early to-morrow morning, and this weather cannot last long." He referred to the unknown seven-weeks' journey, in regard to which I here gladly take back all those conjectures which have hitherto represented it as so weighty and mysterious.

We again postponed our departure; the conversation grew monosyllabic, our thoughts polysyllabic, and our hearts too full, just as the waning moon on the threshold of its rising appeared to us full also. When a company that has once had its hand on the door-latch, draws it away again, this delay excites the expectation of greater enjoyments, and this expectation excites embarrassment; but we were merely more silent about each other, and concealed our sighs over the falcon-flight of joyous hours, and perhaps many an averted eye presented to the moon the offering which the saddest or the gladdest soul finds it so hard to refuse.

Just at this moment I made my way out into its rays and came back again to my writing table, and thank the veil of night, which stretches double around the Universe, that it also folds itself over the greatest sorrows and joys of men.... We were, therefore, on our island as sadly silent as at the gate of a joyous eternity; the land-embracing spring, with its majesty--with its warm, sunken moon--with its twinkling star of Venus--with its sublime midnight-red--with its heavenly nightingales--swept by before five human beings; it flung and heaped up in these five too happy ones, its buds and its blossoms, and its dimly gleaming outlooks and hopes, and its thousand heavens, and took nothing away from them for it, but their speech. O spring! O thou earth of God! O thou boundless sky! O that to-day, in all dwellers upon thee, the heart heaved in joyous throbbings, till we all fell down beside each other beneath the stars, and poured out our hot breath in one jubilant voice and all our joys in prayers, and lifted our aspiring hearts to the lofty blue of heaven, and in our ecstasy sent up sighs, not of sorrow, but of bliss, whose way to heaven was as long as ours to the grave!... O bitter thought! of being often the one happy among none but the unhappy! sweeter thought, of being among only happy ones the sole afflicted!