Linda was received by the Princess with such a deep tenderness that Julienne wondered, since the two generally lived in an alternation of coldness and love. There stood the Minister's lady, Froulay, so old with mourning, so cold, still, and courteous, so cold towards the occasion and the company (except the fac-simile of her daughter), particularly towards Linda, whose bold, decided, philosophical tone seemed to her unwomanly, and like a trumpet on two female lips.
The future hereditary Prince of Hohenfliess fortunately withdrew himself soon from so inconvenient a place, where he navigated a shipwreck plank instead of a gondola. After inquiring of Julienne with interest about the state of her brother, his present predecessor, and reminding her and Linda of her and his Italian tour, he became so fretful and out of tune at Julienne's frigidity, and at the moral discourses of the women, and at a certain oppressiveness premonitory of a moral tempest,—which sensualists experience in the presence of women, where everything rude, selfishness, arrogance, screams like discord,—and at the general, plaguy hypocrisy,—which he could not but immediately take it all to be,—that he was glad to break away, and relieve this pastoral life of the only wolf who had crept into it. Voluptuaries can never hold out long among many noble women, tormented as they are by their many-sided, sharp observations, although they can more easily with one, because they hope to ensnare her. What made him feel worst of all was, that he was compelled to pronounce them all hypocrites. He found no good women, because he had faith in none; since we must believe in them in order to see them where they are, just as one must exercise virtue in order to be acquainted with it, though not the reverse.
With him a black cloud seemed to draw off out of this Eden and ether. The Minister's lady received a card from her son Roquairol, who had just arrived, and she went too, to the joy of Julienne, who found in her a little obstacle to her plan of conversion for Linda, because the latter looked upon the Minister's lady as a one-sided, narrow, anxious, unyielding nature. Idoine begged the two maidens to travel over her little kingdom with her. They went down into the clean, wide village. On the steps they were met by cheerful, obliging faces. From the distant apartments of the palace was heard now singing, now blowing of wind instruments. As on the bird the shining feathers slide swiftly and smoothly under each other and out again, so did all occupations move around Idoine; her economical machine was no clumsy, jarring steeple-clock, but a musical picture-watch, which conceals the hours behind tones, the wheels behind images.
In a meadow-garden the youngest children were playing wildly with each other. Moravian and Dutch neatness had scoured and painted the village to a sleek, bright fancy-shop. New and shiny hung the bucket over the well; under the linden-rotunda of the village the earth-floor was swept clean; everywhere were seen clean, whole, fair clothes, and happy eyes; and Idoine showed, under the unusual gayety, an earnest meaning in the looks with which she inspected her Arcadia, flower after flower.
She led her friends over the various Sunday dancing-places of the different ages, along before the house of the steward,—wherein the Minister's lady resided, and now, to Julienne's fear, her son was,—to the bright, plain church. Soon came the parson and steward, for whom her passing by had been a hint, following her into the church, and received commissions from her. Both were fair young men, with open brow and a little youthful pride. When the party were out of the church, she said through these young men she ruled over the place, and them she guided gently; that only young people were furnished with hatred and spirit against conventionalism, and with enthusiasm and faith. She added, jocosely, she governed nothing but a school of girls, upon which she laid more stress than upon the other, because education was the formation of habits and manners, and these a girl needed more than a boy, whom the world, after all, would not allow to have any; and she had, she said, some inclination to be a la Bonne, because she had, even when a girl, often been obliged to be one with her sisters.
Thereupon she introduced the two to several houses; everywhere they found well-whitened, neatly-ordered apartments, flowers and vine-clusters over the windows, fair women and children, and now a flute, now a violin, and nowhere a spinning child. In all she had charges to give, and what seemed a mere walk was also business. She showed a sharp insight through people, and their perverted, crooked ways, and a talent for business, which possessed and united at once the universal and the particular. "I should be glad, of course," said she, "to have only pleasures and amusements about me; but without labor and seriousness the best good of the world dies: not so much as a real play is possible without real earnestness." Linda commended her for training all to music,—that real moonlight in every gloomy night of life. "Without poesy and art," she added, "the spirit grows mossy and wooden in this earthly clime." "O what were mine without tones!" said Idoine, glowingly.
Linda inquired about the right of citizenship in this pleasant state. "It is mostly possessed by Swiss families," said Idoine, "with whom I became acquainted at hearth and home on my travels. Immediately after the French women I rank my Swiss." Julienne replied, "You repeat to me riddles." She solved them for her; and Linda, who had been in France shortly after her, confirmed it, that there, among the women of a certain higher tone, to whom no Crebillon had ever come up, a development prevailed, unusual in Germany, of the most delicate morality, almost holiness. "Only," added Linda, "they had in morality, as in art, prejudices of fine taste, and more delicacy than genius."
They went out through the village, toward the loveliest evening sun; Alpine horns responded to each other on the mountains, and in the vale gay old men went to light employments. These Idoine greeted with peculiar love. "Because," she said, "there was nothing more beautiful than cheerfulness on an old face; and among country people it was always the sign of a well-regulated and pious life."
Linda opened her heart to the golden scene before her, and said: "How must all this delight in a poem! But I know not what I have to object to the fact that it now exists so in the real reality."
"What has this same reality," said Idoine, playfully, "taken away from you or done to you? I love it; where then are you to be found for us except in reality?" "I," said Julienne, "am thinking of something quite different; one is ashamed here, that one has yet done so little with all one's willing. From willing to doing is, however, to be sure, a long step here," she subjoined, while she placed her little finger on her heart, and stretched the fore-finger as if vainly attempting to span from there to her head. "Idoine, tell me, how then can one think of what is great and what is little at once?" "By thinking of the greatest first," said she; "when one looks into the sun, the dust and the midges become most visible. God is, surely, the sun of us all."