"It is full midnight; I must now go to church, to hold my vesper-devotions.
"Three weeks later.
"Nota Bene!
"I had been, since thy departure, in a manner damnably unlucky until about one o'clock this morning. At two o'clock I took up my resolution; I have just (at five) taken the pen; and at six, when I have drunken myself full and written myself empty, I take my travelling cane, the point of which, after two months, shall stand sticking in the Pyrenees. O heavens! there must have been something thorny this long time standing by me, which I so long took for a hedgehog, whereas it is the best musical barrel full of pins, out of which I can get nothing less (I turned it a few hours ago) than the best arrangement of flute-pipes, unadulterated music of the spheres, and rotatory music for the bravura-airs of the three men in the furnace, a whole living Vaucanson's wooden flute-player, and unheard-of things wherewith the machine blows till it bursts—not itself, but certain knaves, whereof need I particularly name the Baldhead?
"O listen, youth! It concerns thee. I will now, for thy sake, be what the world calls frank, namely, shameless, for verily I had rather uncover my haunch than my heart, and am less red when I do so.
"There was, once on a time, in old times, a young time, one full of fire and roses, when old Schoppe, for his part, was also young enough; when the alert, contriving bird easily nosed out where the hare lay, and the female hare, too; when the man could still put himself on good terms with the well-known four quarters of the world; or else, just as easily as a steer, thrust with his horn at every fly; when he (now a silver pheasant of cool times) still strode or flew up and down through all Italy as a warm gold pheasant, perched now on Buanorotti's Moses, now on the Colosseum, now on Ætna, now on the dome of St. Peter's, and crowed for joy, flapped his wings, and soared toward heaven.
"It was at this time that the still unpicked storm-bird, hovering one day to and fro through the waterfalls of Tivoli, preciously blest, saw there occasionally, suddenly, overhead, in Vesta's temple, for the first time, nothing more than—the Princess di Lauria, afterward, I conjecture, carried off by a Knight of the Fleece, as his golden fleece. To see her,—to transform one's self from a storm-bird into a cock-pigeon to the chariot of Venus; to tear one's self loose from team and bridle; to fly before that goddess; to float round her in narrower and narrower circles,—all this was not one thing, but three things. I had first to grow and paint myself up into a bird of Paradise, in order to fly into a Paradise; that is to say, I had to learn painting, in order to be permitted her presence.
"When at length I had the portrait-pencil and profile-scissors in my power, and one morning appeared with both before the Princess and the old Prince, I had to paint and cut the Prince himself; his daughter had already been married and secretly travelled off; for thy grandfather (unlike others who prophesy their movements beforehand), prophesies his only afterward, and opens his mouth merely to hear.
"I soon cut out the man,—packed up,—went out into all the world. After nearly three years I stood again on the tenth terrace of Isola Bella, quite unexpectedly, before the Countess Cesara. Heaven and hell! what a woman was thy mother! She threw everybody into both of those places at once; I know not whether she did thy father, too. The writer of this stood in his last ornithological transformation before her, as silent pearl-cock (guinea-peacock), (tears must be the pearls), and got a likeness of her after a few weeks.
"She had two children, thee—I clearly remember thy then already sharpened contour—and thy sister, the so-called Severina. Thy father was not there, but his wax image was, by which I instantly recognized him eighteen years later in Rome. Thy sister, too, was repeated in wax; only thou not. A wax figure, like thee at a distance, which illusively prefigured thee as a man always held up before thee, the brother of thy father, who was there, too, as a file-leader of thy future, saying, 'Here thou art, cubed beforehand, and already forced up into full size, filled out from flask into cask,'—seeking thus to enkindle thee, so that thou mightest grow up and be a man. They had a uniform put on thee, like that which the wax man wore,—I know not of what sort. Then didst thou, striding around thine own micromegas, boldly call him out, out of the future into the present. Now thou knowest what thou hast become, and mayst well, and with more right, look down in thy turn as proudly upon the little one, as the little one formerly looked up to the great one. I could never approve in thy uncle this machine for spiritual ductility; besides, I have for all wax puppets such an abominating, shuddering dread.