But here is still something quite different to love--three maiden communicants were listening at the open garden gate, and reinforced the audience at a distance; in a word, Regina was down below, and her brother was already in the party above; the gallery or the boxes must needs at last--since calling up availed nothing--drag up the female parterre. I myself narrate now with more fire; no wonder that Gustavus did so too. Regina seated herself farthest off from him, but opposite to him. He began an entirely fresh history, because the bureau d'esprit had become much stronger. He depicted a poor, miserable little girl--children love best stories about children--one without supper, without parents, without bed, without a hood, and without sins, but who, when a star had dressed itself in finery and journeyed down, found on the ground a bright dollar, on which was set a silver angel, which angel grew even brighter and broader, till he actually spread his wings and flew up from the dollar to heaven, and then brought down to the little one from all the stars up there everything she wanted, and indeed magnificent things, whereupon the angel set himself back on the silver again, and very neatly pressed himself down there. What flames, during this creation, burst forth from Gustavus's words, from his eyes and features into his auditory! And then, too, the moon meanwhile embroidered the linden-night on the floor with wavering points of silver--a belated bee cruised through the glowing circle, and a bumming hawk-moth around a crowned head--on the double ground of linden-green and sky-blue leaves quivered among stars--the night-breeze rocked itself on their foliage, and on gold-spangles of the decorated Regina, and washed with cool waves her fiery cheek and Gustavus's breath of flame.... But, verily, I assert, the pulpit he needed not, so magnificent were pulpit and orator. How could that be necessary for him, when he was narrating to the bride of Christ and his own; when the whole past day rose again with its dazzling nimbus; when he infused pity into the breasts of the unpreoccupied and unsophisticated children, and wrung it forth again from their eyes; and when he saw certain maidenly ones grow moist.... His own melted into ecstasy, and he expanded his smile more and more broadly, in order to cover therewith his eye, which had already veiled itself more tenderly.... "Gustavus!" the call had twice come from the Castle; but in this blissful hour no one heard it, till the voice rang out for the third time, nearer down in the garden. The stupefied Secret Society rolled down the steps--only Regina still lingered by the side of Gustavus, under the dark foliage, in order, as hastily as possible, to remove with her apron the traces of the story from her eyes, and to pin herself up a little--he stood so near to the face on which so many fair evening twilights of his life had gone down--so near and so dumb, and held her back a little when she offered to follow the rest--had she stood still, he could not have held her, but when she tore herself away, then he clasped her more tightly and in a larger embrace--her struggling drew both more closely together, but to his intoxicated soul nearness supplied the place of the kiss--the struggle brought his trembling lips to hers--but still it was not till, as she pushed back his breast from hers, and pricked his with the pin, that with inexpressible love, intensified by his own blood, he clasped her to himself, as if he would fain drain out her soul from her lips and pour in his own--they stood on two distant heavens, leaning over to each other above the abyss, and clinging to each other on the trembling ground, in order not, by letting go, to plunge down headlong between the heavens into the abyss beneath....
.... Could I depict his first kiss in a thousand times more burning colors, I would do it; for it is one of the first impressions taken of the soul, one of the May-flowers of love; it is the best dephlegmation [or distillation] known to me of the earthly man. Only in this German and Belgic life is it impossible to bring it about that man shall take the first kiss for more than five or six times. By and bye he always consults his technical definition, which he carries in his head, of a kiss, and cites the paragraph in which it is found; but the sum and substance of the stupid paragraph is, that the thing is properly a mutual pressure of red skins. Verily, an author of feeling cannot sit down and reflect that a kiss is one of the few things that can be enjoyed only when the bodily taste does not make itself prominent under the spiritual--but that such an author of feeling (who is no other than myself)--falls to upbraiding those who have not so much understanding as himself;--he upbraids not merely Messrs. Veit Weber and Kotzebue, in whose writings so many kisses occur, but other people also, in whose lives so many occur, especially whole picnic-parties who, after the blessing, wipe and cup each other's cheeks with their lips. If the thing is carried so far, that this fine lip-bloom of one face must be rumpled against skins of sheep and of silk-worms, against gloves (hand-sandals)[[40]]--then will an author of so much sensibility want to cut off the hands of the suffering party and the lips of the acting one....
My reason for showering the reader whom the last kiss has heated with this cold douche is not, assuredly, that I may deal with him as fate does with me; for she has made it a rule, every time that I find myself in the midst of the oil of gladness with which such scenes as that of Gustavus--or even the mere description of them--anoints me, to plunge me forthwith into brine and oil of vitriol. But I would do precisely the reverse, and halve with the reader the odious feeling at the exchange of opposite scenes, which poor Gustavus experienced to the full, when the voice called down: "Will you instantly--!" The Captain's lady threw into her tone a more offensive gravity than my innocent Gustavus had as yet understanding enough to feel. The loving maiden, in such surprises, loses the courage which the lover gains. The first verses of the fulminated penal psalm pierced the ear of the guiltless Regina, who stole, mute and weeping, out of the garden, and thus closed in darkness her day of joy. The softer verses took hold of the narrative-poet, who had it in mind to wind up his contes moraux æsthetically and pathetically,[[41]] and was now himself arrested by another's pathos.
Ernestina's heart, lips and oars had been trained behind the strictest grating; hence her soul, melodious as it was, lapsed (at a mere kiss) into a strange, harsh key; she admitted, in regard to the most beautiful maiden no more than: "She is a good girl." In general, the woman who judges very indulgently certain missteps of a sister is with all her toleration suspicious; a perfectly pure female soul puts on, at most, the air of this tolerance for one less pure.
On innocent lips Gustavus imprinted the first and last kiss; for in Whitsuntide-week the shepherdess went back to Maussenbach as messenger to the castle. We shall hear no more of her. And so it will go on through the book, which, like life, is full of scenes that never occur again. Even now the sun is rising higher in Gustavus's day of life and begins to scorch--one flower of joy after another bows its head already in the forenoon to slumber, and by 10 o'clock at night the drooping flora with its vanished beauty will be asleep.
EIGHTEENTH SECTION.
The Moluccas of Scheehau.--Röper.--Beata.--Medical Female Attire.--Oefel.
I should be doing and writing foolishly,--inasmuch as we all, readers as well as inhabitants of this biography, have so near an interest in Scheerau; since Gustavus, its hero, is going thither as cadet; as I, his tutor, come from there; as Fenk, the Doctor, is already there, and as Fenk may yet be of importance in this history,--if, in defiance of all these reasons, I should not insert three papers of Dr. Fenk's. I refer to two newspaper articles and one letter, which were written by the Pestilentiary.
I am well aware that it is known to a few eminent strangers who have traveled through the higher circles of Scheerau, that the Doctor writes a periodical, which is not printed, namely, a written gazette, or nouvelles à la main, such as several capitals possess. Villages have printed newspapers, small towns oral, capital cities manuscript ones. The paper is Fenk's Marforio and Pasquino, who give out his satirical medicines.
His first newspaper article I weave in, if only on account of the journal for Germany. This so flat and wordy journal--for else it were written neither by nor for Germany--refused to insert a good treatise of mine which I sent in, on the extraordinarily flourishing state of trade in Scheerau, because, perhaps, no government in Germany is less known than that of Scheerau. Verily one would think this principality were hiding itself like a whale under the icy crust of the Polar seas, so unknown are the most weighty pieces of intelligence regarding it; such, e. g., as this, that we Scheerauers since the new dynasty have drawn to ourselves the whole East Indian trade, and annexed the Moluccas, whence we now ourselves fetch our spices, which the Government, by an autographic order, imports from Amsterdam. But this is just what appears in the first newspaper article: