And with that she went up to him and began rummaging in the knapsack.
"Why, what a prosaic nature is yours!" said Valentine reproachfully to the lady. "At such a sublime moment, too, in the presence of such a glorious spectacle! Just look at that magnificent scene! The whole of the cloud of mist is rising like a stage curtain. The gigantic theatre appears like magic from behind the hanging cloudy tapestries. Behold the sunlit heights, the white shimmering houses. And now a fresh mountain-chain emerges crowned with dim forests. Just as if they were of massive gold...."
"Give me the bacon, I say."
"My heart, my blood is thine, but ask me not for bacon! Look how the earth rises up before us; nothing but mountains, mountains, mountains! Still nothing to be seen of the dome of Heaven! And that deep divine calm around us! Only from the distant forge resounds the measured thud of the sledge hammer, as though one heard the throbbing of the heart of the universe! And does not thine own heart beat faster in this sublime place?"
"It throbs, it throbs! Right sorely does it throb! But we'll look at the august spectacle a little later."
"What! Not look when an instant like this is worth a world?"
The natural phenomenon before us really was very fine, as the whole misty cloud rose swiftly from the mountains, covering with a deep shadow the sky that up to that moment had been shining bright and blue before us, and at the same time unfolding before us the muffled panorama of hill behind hill beneath our feet; the solar rays, like the broad diverging spokes of a huge wheel, shot down from the cloudy rifts with a milky sort of glare. It would really have been a majestic scene but for the false, disturbing pathos of friend Valentine.
"Nay, nay! I cannot view it standing on my feet! Here one should go down upon one's knees. Here the gods themselves walk abroad!"
Valentine plumped down upon his knees, and because Bessy would not follow his example, he wound his arm around her and clasped her to his breast. She, however, was impatient at his insipid vapourings.
"You are just like that professor," said she, "who held up his oil-lamp against the moon that his guests might see her better."