No. 6 was my manor Lord, von Röper, who, because he had something to say to the Prince, had remained behind. He was the only one in the whole gastronomic assembly who did these two things: first, he had submitted to him every sort of wine in the Bousian wine inventory, in order to convey to his stomach that distinct and clear idea, whereon the older logics so much insist, of all vinous goods of the Resident Lady--secondly, he made as much account of the fricasseed, pickled and the like viands, as if he gave instead of receiving the dinner, and he grew more and more courteous and obeisant in proportion as his obesity increased, like a sausage which crooks up when it is filled.
Nos. 7, 8 and 9 were two coarse government councillors * * * and a coarse president of exchequer * * * whereof the first two despised the whole court, because it had no other than literary Pandects, and the third because he pictured to himself how many pensions and salaries the whole court would have without the Chamber of Finance, i. e., without him, and all three because in their own opinion, they upheld the throne, though in reality they could have borne nothing except, in Solomon's Temple, the--Brazen sea.
No. 10 was the Resident Lady, who tuned herself after every one else's tone, and yet by her own was distinguished from all women;--like King Mithridates, she spoke the languages of all her subjects.
Nos. 11 and 12 were an abbess temporarily stopping on a journey and a widowed Princess von * *, who by virtue of their rank were monosyllabic and hautain.
No. 13 was the Defaillante whose greatest charms and powers of attraction were reduced to her small feet, where they resided, as in the two feet of an armed magnet. The head, her second pole, repelled what the lower attracted.
Nos. 00000 do not interest me; they were old female visages pickled in the saltpetre of rouge, to whom nothing was left from the shipwreck of their sunken life but a hard board on which they still sit and cruise round--namely, the gaming-table.
Nos. 00000 also have no interest for me, they were a sheaf of court dames, trimmed wall-plants on the tapestry, or rather borders set around fruit-bearing beds--they had wit, beauty, taste and behavior, and when one was out of the folding-doors, one had already forgotten them.
Nos. 0000 were a company of courtiers intersected with the red and blue order ribbons, which served a similar purpose on them to that of the red and blue colors of the spirit in the thermometer, that one might better see the height to which they rose,--who, like silver, shone and made everything they touched black--who could not imagine any higher or broader canopy of heaven than the throne canopy, or any greater day in the year than a court day--who were never in their lives fathers or children or husbands or brothers, but merely courtiers,--who had understanding without principles, knowledge without faith, passions without powers, complaisance without love and free-thinking as a joke--whose genuineness is tested like that of the emerald, by remaining cold, when one would warm it with the lips--and whom, to tell the truth, Satan may depict, not I....
Oefel was wedged in between Beata and the Swooning Sister; Gustavus sat opposite to them between two little witty ladies: but he forgot the neighborhood of his arms in that of his eyes. From Oefel's limbs shot sparks of wit, as if the silk in which he was enclosed helped electrize him. The Swooning Sister was so sure of her liege lordship over him, that she counted it no violation of allegiance, if her vassal said to Beata, his next-plate neighbor, the sweetest things; "He will," she thought, "be vexed enough, that out of politeness he cannot do otherwise." As to Herr von Oefel, he was concerned at bottom about nothing except Herr von Oefel; he praised, not in order to display his regard, but only his wit and taste; he suppressed neither flatteries nor satires, when they were good and groundless; he censured women, because he wanted to prove that he saw through them, and because he held that to be a difficult matter; and I held him to be a fool.
He generally applied to a maiden's heart three mountain-borers, in order to drill a hole into it, where he might insert the gunpowder with which he proposed to blow the mineralized vein of love into the air. His first mining-pit which he to-day, as always, loaded in the female heart, in the case of Beata, was, to talk with her a long time about her dress--it is all one to them, he asserted, whether one talks of their limbs or their clothes; but I affirm, the ugly woman wears her dress as her fruit, the coquette as the mere garden-ladder or the fruit-gatherer, and the good woman as the protecting foliage, Beata, like Eve, wore hers as leaf-work.