All in good time! When they are at table I shall take the opportunity to describe also the remaining guests. Amidst the social tumult, which bewildered Gustavus's senses as well as ideas, of course only half the sunny image of Beata sank into his soul. But afterward to be sure! At first, however, they were both standing under the arch of the window with the Resident Lady (who ironically excused Gustavus before Beata for not having brought his brush with him to-day),--not to mention a crowd of accidental interlocutors. Presently the Resident Lady was snatched away from them; their mutual nearness and the solitude of their position obliged both to talk, and Beata to stay. Gustavus, who had already, before the Assemblée, had it in his head what he would say, said nothing. But Beata finished the previous conversation about the sketching, and said: "Unless you have already excused me, I cannot excuse myself." Another person of more presence of mind would have said directly, "No," and so, in jest, which would have allowed no embarrassment, have wound the threads of the bird-spider around the poor humming-bird. Gustavus's feelings were too strong to let him jest here. With a multitude of weighty materials, of which you find all the handles break off, only that of jest holds fast, and with that you can manage them; particularly when you are talking with young women under a window arch.
Gustavus had long sought an opportunity to show other sides of his soul than had come to light in that affair of the corn; now he would have had the opportunity, but not the means, had not the park, with its evening splendors, lain encamped before the window. But the beauty of Nature was the only thing of which he could speak with inspiration with other beauties;--and he could with the most freshness compress all the charms of the universe into one morning, if he should describe his coming up out of the earth into the lofty world-mansion. Upon every word and image he uttered, or she uttered in reply, was stamped a soul which they had confided to each other. Suddenly he remained silent, with wide open, radiant eyes--it seemed to him as if in his soul a magic moon rose and shone over a broad twilight-land, and an angel of his childhood took him in his arms and clasped him so tightly to his bosom, that the heart of him dissolved.... And whereon rested this inner landscape-piece? Upon what the famed Strassburg clock-work rests on--namely, on the neck of an animal; the latter rests, as is well known, on the back of a Pegasus; his own was borne upon the necks of the herd of cows just then happening to pass by the palace on their way homeward, upon which hung bells that sounded like those of Regina's herd, and that consequently brought back the whole scene of youthful days with its tones before his soul.... In such a mood he could have discoursed in the National Assembly; the tumult also which enclosed them made both more solitary and confidential: in short, he narrated to her, with fire and with historical omissions, his pastoral time with one lamb on the mountain. This enthusiasm infected her (as all enthusiasm does all women) to such a degree that she began--to be silent.
Necessity now compelled both to bring some outward object (like a sword in the princely bed) between their confluent souls--they looked down at the two children of the gardener below, and indeed so eagerly did they gaze at them, that they saw nothing. The boy was saying: "The young lady [Beata] loves me so much," stretching apart his two arms to their full extent. The girl said: "The young gentleman [Gustavus] loves me with a love as big--as the palace." "And me," he replied, "with one as big as the garden." "And me," the girl rejoined, "with one as big as the whole world." Beyond that the boy's wings could not soar, though his tail-feathers had surmounted the eyrie of the Cathedral. Each enumerated to the other the love tokens which they had received from the party who were the delighted overhearers of their own several praises, and each said at every article: "Canst thou beat that?"
With the sudden jump children always take to a new game, the little girl said: "Now thou must be the gentleman [Gustavus]; and I will be the lady [Beata]. Now I will make love to thee; afterward thou must to me." She softly stroked his cheeks and then his eye-brows and finally his arm, and manipulated the gentleman. "Now me!" she said, suddenly dropping her arms. The youth threw his arms round her neck so tightly, that the two elbows crossed each other and formed a knot and extended beyond the love-knot as superfluous bows; he gave her a sound smack. Suddenly her critical file found a confounded anachronism in this historical play, and she said, inquiringly: "Yes, are not the young gentleman and lady really in love with each other?"
That was too much for the front box overhead, which was at once the auditory and the original of the little players, and was in great danger of becoming a copy of the same. Gustavus kept his eyelids open with all his might, in order that the water which stood in his eyes might not form into a visible tear and roll down his cheek, and the agitated Beata, with or without design, let her rose, broken off, fall fluttering to the ground; he stooped down for it and remained in that position long enough to let his tear melt away unobserved; but, as he handed the rose back to her, and both timidly hid and buried their sunken eyes in the flower, and when a ninny dancing along suddenly interrupted them--then, all at once, their uplifted eyes stood over against each other like the rising full moon confronting the setting sun, and then sank into each other, and in a moment of inexpressible tenderness their souls saw that they--were seeking each other.
The dancing ninny was Oefel, who wanted Beata's arm, to conduct her to the dining-room. And now, Reader, I serve up to thee, instead of living roses (such as our pair of souls is), nothing but roses seethed in butter. Twenty-six or twenty-seven covers, I think, there were. I will here furnish, instead of a bill of fare, a way-bill of the passengers. First; there were at table and in the palace two chaste persons--Beata and Gustavus; a proof that fair souls grow in all places, even the highest: thus the Emperor Joseph had several nightingales thrown every year into the park, that something might be heard there.
No. 2 was the Prince, who in his short life had seen more women around him than the ox apis, whose own life was as long as the Egyptian alphabet. He was, at this table, what he could not be at many a table d'hôte on his travels, Brother Orator and Cardinal Wind among sixty-three other side-winds. His crown had upon it ladies in mass.
No. 3 was his appanaged brother, whom the crowned one hated, not because he had and deserved too much love from his people, but because he was once mortally sick and did not die but lived on upon his portion. The skeleton of this brother would have persuaded the Prince, as every skeleton did the Greeks and Egyptians, to a more cheerful enjoyment of the banquet.
No. 4 was a Knight of the Order of St. Michael from Spa (Herr von D.), whose star of order still sent out rays in Scheerau after it had long been extinguished in Paris. So, according to Euler, a fixed star in the heavens may still, on account of its distance, continue to transmit its light, though it has long since been consumed to ashes.
No. 5 was Cagliostro, who, among so many playing heads, shared the fate of physicians and ghosts and lawyers, that his public deriders were at the same time his secret disciples and clients.