But the old man is a poor stick to lean on; does he not creep round through all Lower Scheerau, voting in beforehand all advocates into his judiciary, in order to draw off us counsellors, by the hope of serving under him, from the purpose of serving against him? Meanwhile, however, he must deal honestly with one, and that is myself.
When the Bohemian chivalry and I went from the esplanade into the palace, they and I stumbled upon something very lovely and something very absurd. The absurd was sitting by the lovely. The absurd was called Oefel, the lovely was named Beata. Heaven should give an author a time to paint her and an eternity to love her; Oefel I can have done painting and loving in three seconds. It was an honor to me and to her, that she at once recognized in her old piano-teacher the old acquaintance; but it did not afford me any pleasure that she did not detect in the well-known one a something unknown, and that she did not remember at the sight of me, that she, from a child had become a woman. There is an age when one does indeed forgive the fair, even if they do not notice and do not accept us. Oh, I forgive thee everything, and the greatest proof of it is this, that I speak of it. The young youth admires and desires at once; the older youth is capable of merely admiring. Beata's words and feelings are still the dazzling white and pure fresh snow, just as they have fallen from heaven: no footprint and no step of age have yet smutched this splendor. She was to-day still more beautiful than ever, because she was busier than ever and lent her fair shoulders to her mother's burdens; the pale lunar-aurora which once left the whole heaven upon her cheeks white, now suffused it with a rosy reflection; even the joy of others for which she was to-day active, gave her the heightened color which she usually lost by her own. The maidens know not how very much occupation beautifies them, how much upon them as on doves' necks the plumage plays and sparkles when they move about, and how very much we men resemble beasts of prey, who will not seize any creature that keeps a fixed position.
Her mother joyfully communicated to me the reason why the counsellor or legation was sitting there: he had brought Beata an invitation from the Resident Lady von Bouse to come to her country-seat, where my sister also is. The new palace Marienhof lies half a league from the city; as an annex of the new one Oefel occupies the old, which is perhaps connected with it by secret doors. He impolitely gave it to be surmised that without his fine intriguing--i. e. he made, like the advocates, a bridge instead of a leap over the slenderest brook--the thing would have gone lamely. It is impossible that such a vain fool should stamp a slate-impression of his heart on so precious a stone as Beata. Even though the ninny should in future besiege her every afternoon in the new palace, as he will do, nevertheless I can rely upon what I say--nay I would swear to it. A coxcomb of his magnitude may, to be sure, force one or two angular, mossy, country-damsels (as happened this very day) into an amorous amazement at his bell-polypus gyrations, at his audacity, his sense (i. e., wit) and his immodesty in saying, instead of ladies and the fair sex, merely women: that he can do, and more too, I say; but from Beata's heart all her virtues will eternally separate him; she will, by the side of his love for the minister's lady, not see nor believe his love for her at all; she will open her soul to no sentimental flourishes of an Oefel, which, like counterfeit gold, are now too large and now too small. She will find, rather, there is more chance with an honest Jean Paul; she will, I hope, readily forgive the said Jean Paul the resemblance he may bear in some traits to Oefel, as he is free from the faults of the latter, and stands before her with a true, modest heart, which has hardly the courage softly to breathe upon her the finest gold-leaf of praise, and which, even if misunderstood, is silent, and shrinks back even without having made the attempt. She will, in her decision, steer just as widely away from the old country damsels as I from the young country squires, who sat there in the company. For Oefel's appearance took from them all former wit and sense, and his quicksilvery politeness filled all their limbs with lead; in a falcon-baiting where such a bird pounced upon female hearts, they drew their clumsy wings to their sides and in virtue of their manly sincerity admired, instead of the female charms, his: Jean Paul, on the contrary, remained as he was, and did not let himself be put upon.
I should be leading many a German circle to the presumption of a secret jealousy on my part, if I said nothing at all in praise of Oefel: he promised on the same afternoon to do my pupil a great service. I must premise, that, although he rented the old palace near the resident lady's he did not lodge there, but in the Scheerau cadet-house, wherein he moved from room to room, in order--as his high rank did not allow him to dress singularly--that he might at least act singularly; his object was to study men there, in order to have them engraved on copper. That is to say, he was composing a romance as a short encyclopædia for hereditary princes and crown-tutors, and wrote on the title-page "the Great Sultan." This Fenelon made the harem of his Telemachus into a mirror-chamber, which imaged the whole female court of Scheerau; his work was a herbarium vivum, a flora of all that grows on and around the Scheerau throne, from the prince down--if he still remembers me--to me. When it appears, we shall all swallow it, because in it he has swallowed us all. The reviewers will find nothing in it, but will say: "trivial stuff!" As he never did any thing which he did not before and afterward trumpet to the world, of course even my Captain had heard that he had so long and so finely intrigued with the Cadet-General, that he got leave at last, in the place of an inspecting officer, to occupy and exchange chambers in the cadet schoolhouses; and thus our prince came to the help of this natural historian of men with a human menagerie, just as Alexander did to Aristotle with one of beasts. The Captain, therefore, with his victorious good-heartedness, came to him and begged him cleverly to intercede with the Cadet-General for his Gustavus, that the latter might one day come under his standard. Protector Oefel said the thing was already as good as arranged; he was himself enraptured with the vision of getting a singular genius who had been educated under ground for a room-mate and a sitter.
The refraction of light always shows the land to sea-men some hundreds of miles nearer than it really lies, and by a so innocent illusion fortifies them with hope and pleasure. But in the moral world also the beneficial arrangement exists whereby princes and their ministries keep us prayer-offerers (as Campe would say instead of suppliants) cheerful and lively, in that they, by an ocular illusion, make us see the court-places, offices, favors, which we covet, always some hundred miles or months nearer--(so much nearer, we think we can actually touch them)--than they really are. This illusive appearance of approximation is even then useful as well as usual, when the spiritual or secular bench which is shown in such nearness to the sitters on the long bench of expectancy, proves at last to be nothing in fact but a--bank[[51]] of cloud.
The Commercial Agent (the Captain said to me on the way homeward) is after all not so bad a fellow as you make him out--and the legation-counsellor needs in fact only to grow in years.
TWENTIETH SECTION.
The Second Decade of Life.--Ghost Story.--Night-Scene.--Rules of Life.
Oefel kept his word. Fourteen days after this Professor Hoppedizel wrote to us that he was coming to fetch the new cadet. Now, what had been hitherto our wish became our grief. The bond between Gustavus and myself was to be strained and wrenched asunder; every book that we now read together afflicted us with the thought that each would finish it alone; I could hardly bear to teach anything more to my Gustavus, whose building-up I must hand over to strange architects, and every fair flower-ground was to us the garden-gate of the Eden which an armed cherub guarded against us.
The stormy months of his heart were now, too, drawing nearer. Besides, I had not plucked out feathers enough from the wings of his fancy nor driven him often enough out of his solitude. Therein his fancy sent its roots in through all the fibres of his nature and obstructed with the curtain of blossoms which adorned his head, the entrances of the outer light.