Bouverot was attached not merely to Froulay the minister, but to Froulay the father; a man like him, who causes to be sent after him from Italy a whole cabinet of Art, and whose acquaintance with the arts has so long knit together even him and the Prince, must know how to prize a Madonna of such carnation as Liana, and of the Romish school, and, what is more, who, detached from the canvas, moved as a full, breathing rose. As to marrying the rose, that he could not propose to himself, because he was a German Herr.
He had not seen her since his Italian tour,—nor had the Count either,—to both the Minister wished to show her as a round pearl of special whiteness and figure. Froulay had—which after all happens oftener than we imagine—quite as much vanity as pride; the latter to repel blame, the former to court praise. But I should have now to write a tournament-chronicle to tell posterity the half of all his raging and racing and lance-thrusts, in a fight wherein he served under the banners of enmity, vanity, and avarice. He was no more to be hunted to death than a wolf. All weapons were alike to him, and he was ever taking sharper and more poisonous ones. In the old judicial duels between man and wife, the man stood commonly up to his stomach in a pit, in order to bring his strength down to a level with the woman's, and she struck at him with a stone tied up in a veil; but in the matrimonial duels the man seems to stand in the free air and the woman in the earth, and she often has only the veil without the stone.
In this combat there stepped between the two a shining peace-angel who caught the wounds, namely, Liana. The daughter, who had an enthusiastic love for her mother, and the womanly reverence for the stronger sex toward her father, and who suffered so endlessly under their strifes, fell upon her mother's neck and begged her to allow her what her father demanded; she would certainly do everything so as not to excite observation; she would take the greatest pains and practise herself specially beforehand,—ah, he would otherwise only be still more unkind to her poor brother,—this discord, merely on her account, was so painful to her, and perhaps more injurious than playing on the harmonica.
"My child, thou knowest," said the mother, for now she had asked, "what the physician said yesterday against the harmonica; the rest is at thine own risk!" Liana kissed her joyfully. She must needs be led to her father, that she might make known to him aloud the gladness of her obedience. "I thank you, and be hanged," said he, softly; "it is simply your cursed duty." She left him with her joy dissipated to atoms, but without any great pangs; she was already accustomed to this.
39. CYCLE.
The Lector, while they were yet on their way to the Minister's, begged Albano to moderate the fire of his assertions and his pantomimes. He made known to him only so much of the family-jar as was necessary, in order that he might not, by a mistaken idea of her restoration, throw Liana into embarrassment. As they entered the card-room, everything was already in full blaze.
As, at this time, no one is presented to him, I must do it; they are disciples (at least twelfth disciples) of the Minister.
And first, I introduce to thee the holy President of Justice, Von Landrok, a good apothecary's-balance of Themis, which weighs out scruples, and wherein no false weights lie; but what is quite as bad, much smut, rubbish, and rust. Those at the ombre-table near by are the lords and ladies of Vey, Flöl, and Kob, sleek, fine souls, like minerals in cabinets, polished off on the show-side, but on the concealed base still jagged and scratching.
Go with me to the entrance of the next apartment; here I have to present to thee the young but fat canon Von Meiler, who, in order to line and stuff out and pad his inner man with a thick, warm, outer one, needs to fleece no more peasants yearly than the number of linden-trees the Russian peels for his bark-shoes, namely, one hundred and fifty.
The apartment into which thou art looking I present to thee as a fly-glass full of courtiers, who, in order to enter into the kingdom of heaven, have become not merely children, but in fact embryons of four weeks, who, as is well known, look like flies; if Swift desires of his servants nothing more than the shutting-to of the doors, these wish nothing of their employer and bread-provider but the leaving-open of the same.