I fancy it will fare with the reader as with me, that on the flowery shore amidst the melodies of nature this sea-fight on the great sea of the world and the firing during it seems to create a screaming dissonance.
FIFTY-THIRD, OR GREATEST, SECTION OF JOY, OR BIRTHDAY OR TEIDOR-SECTION.
The Morning.--The Evening.--The Night.
To-day is Beata's festival, and is growing finer and finer--my writing-desk is nine million square miles broad, namely the earth--the sun is my lamp of Epictetus, and instead of the portable library the leaves of the whole book of nature rustle before me.... But to begin at the beginning--merely adding here that I am already ensconced on the island of Teidor.
The days preceding foul weather are, meteorologically also, the fairest. As we to-day--being the most pacific quadruple alliance that exists--went out through our tuneful valley ere yet the morning-rays had entered it, so as to arrive comfortably at the Molucca island before 9 o'clock--a whole crystalline day, clear as a sparkling well, lay stretched out on the broad meadows before us--we had hitherto been used to the beautiful, but not to the most beautiful. The earthly ball seemed a bright lunar globe compacted out of airs and mists--the summits of hills and woods stood bare in the deep blue, unpowdered (so to speak) with fogs--all prospects had drawn nearer to us and the mist was wiped away from the glass through which we looked; the air was not sultry, but it lay in motionless repose on the fragrant meadows and the leaf nodded, but not the twig, and the hanging flower swayed a little, but only under two fighting butterflies.... It was the Sabbath of the Elements--the Siesta of Nature. Such a day, when the very morning has the nature of a rapturous evening and when even it reminds us of our hopes, our past and our longings, comes not often, comes not to many, to the few into whose swelling hearts it does shine may not venture to come often, because it makes the poor human beings, who open their hearts to it like leaves of flowers, too glad, and transports them from the financial feudal soil, where one must mow more flowers than he smells, too suddenly and too far into the magic Arcadia. But ye financiers and economists and leaseholders, if almost all seasons of the year minister to the skin and the stomach, why shall not one day--especially for guests of the springs--belong merely to the too tender heart? If one forgives you for hardness, why will you not forgive any softness? Oh, you offend enough besides, you unfeeling souls! the fairer, finer soul is to you simply insignificant and ridiculous; but you are to it a torment and wound it constantly. Singular it is, that we sometimes concede to others superiority of talents, but never superiority in sentiment, and that we admit errors in our own judgment, but never in our own taste.
A transparent balustrade of forest-trees was now all that remained between us and the Indian Ocean, wherein lay the green Teidor, when our path led through the high grass which grew in over it, along by a hermitage or an isolated house, which lay too enchantingly in this flowery ocean for it to be possible one should walk or ride by it. We reclined on a spot of mown grass, on the right side of the house, to the left of a little round garden, which hid itself away in the middle of the meadow. In this poor little garden were and supported themselves (as in a tolerant state) on the same bed, beans and peas and lettuce and cabbages; and yet in this dwarf-garden a child had also his little infusorial garden. In the little red and dazzling bird-house a nimble woman was just carrying on her fragrant field-bakery; and two children's-shirts hung on the garden-hedge and two stood at the house-door, in which latter couple two brown children played and watched us--nothing gave them pleasure this morning but the sun on their hare feet. O Nature! O Blessedness! thou, like benevolence, lovest to seek out poverty and obscurity!
The cleverest thing I have said, or probably shall say, to-day, was certainly the grass-discourse in the morning beside the little house. As I stood there and observed the steadfast sky, the lull of wind and leaves, in which the vertical wing of the butterfly and the hair of the caterpillar remained unbent, then I said: "We and this little worm stand in and under three almighty seas, the aërial sea, the watery sea and the electric sea; and yet the roaring waves of these oceans, these mile-long waves, that can tear a land to pieces, are so smoothed so tamed, that this Sabbath-day comes forth, in which not a breath of air moves the broad wing of the butterfly or plucks from it a particle of feathered dust, and in which the child toys and smiles so peacefully among the elemental leviathans. If no infinite genius had compelled this, if we may not trust this genius with the harmonious ordering of our future world and our future destiny ...
"O infinite genius of the earth! in thy bosom we will bury our childish eyes, when the tempest breaks loose from its chain--on thy almighty heart will we sink back, when iron death puts us to sleep in passing by!"
So we sauntered on in innocent contentment, without haste or heat, toward the waves which rippled around Fenk's country-seat. Singular it is, there are days, when we willingly let our still, continuous enjoyment of outward objects suffice us (wherewith we rarely repel genuine stoicism)--still more singular is it, that many a day really does this. What I mean is, a certain gentle, water-level contentedness--not earned by virtue, not won by reflection--is sometimes supplied us by a day, by an hour, when all the miserable trifles and ravelings of which our puny and petty life is sewed together, harmonize with our pulses and do not run contrary to our blood--e. g., when (as happened to-day) the sky is cloudless, the wind asleep, the ferryman at hand to carry us over to Teidor, the master of the country-house, Doctor Fenk, ready and waiting for us an hour ago, the water smooth, the boat dry, the landing-haven deep and everything just right.... Verily we are all on such a foolish footing, that among human pleasures, upon which the Consistorial Counsellor of Zerbst, Sintenis, has composed two volumes, may be reckoned--in Germany (though far less in Italy and Poland)--the catching now and then of one or another flea.... If, then, one would experience such a day of paradise, then must there not so much as a trifle, such as one strides over in hours of stoical energy, lie in the way; just as when one will draw down the sun with a burning-glass, not the thinnest cloud must intrude before his face.... I am now on fire, and assure the reader I cannot possibly think of anything more foolish than our life, our earth, and its inhabitants, and our remarking upon this folly....
The Indian Ocean was a noisy market-place, resembling a Chinese river; on every side it was crowded with joy, life and splendor, from its upper surface to its bottom, where the second hemisphere of the heavens with its sun was tremulously reflected. In the country-house the walls were white, because (said Fenk) for a man who comes in from a nature that stands in a blaze of fire and light into a narrow cell, no coloring of this cell can be bright enough to counteract a mournful and confined impression.