In Paradise: A Novel. Vol. II

by Paul Heyse

To Elfinger's most eloquent attempts at dissuasion, the poor child had only replied by tears and shakes of the head, and had answered the long letters which her lover sent to her almost daily, by nicely-written little notes, not altogether free from orthographical blunders, in which she besought him in the most touching terms not to make her heart still heavier, but rather to move to some other lodgings and never to meet her again.

This correspondence had, of course, merely poured oil upon the fire, on this as well as on the other side of the street. Nevertheless it really did seem, after all, as though their love was not destined to overcome the evil powers; and in his grief at this Elfinger began more and more to lose his taste for the joys of Paradise, generally spending his evenings at home, brooding over plans for the overthrow of the priesthood--which resulted in his toiling through all the pamphlets against the Vatican Council, and in his composing for some of the smaller newspapers violent articles favoring the abolition of convents.

But, while his fate was trembling in the balance, his next-door neighbor was still worse off; and, sad to relate, solely because of the incredible worldly-mindedness of his sweetheart. Through his trusty ally, the servant-girl, he learned that the only son of a rich brewer, from one of the smaller cities of the region, was paying his attentions to her; and the pretty little witch appeared to have refrained from doing any of those things by which even the most obedient daughter may show her aversion to a hated suitor. Rosenbusch, whose soul still clung fondly to his romantic elopement project, refused, at first, to believe in such villainous treachery. But when his letters remained unanswered, the last one indeed being returned unopened by the post, he fell into a terrible passion, spent whole nights in composing the most insulting poems against brewers' sons and Philistines' daughters, and gave himself up more and more to the most extravagant melancholy, misanthropy, and dislike for work. He began to neglect his person too in the most terrible way, wore, as his daily clothing, that ample dress-coat of Edward Rossel's, which the latter had formally made over to him after the wedding evening; and over this a coarse red-and-blue plaid shawl, and a cap which he had cut out himself from his old slouch hat, whose rim had been nibbled and considerably diminished by his white mice, one night when he had left the door of the cage open.

It is true, he still went regularly to the studio and shut himself in under the pretense of laboring at some great, mysterious work; yet he never touched a brush all day long, but cowered over the stove, in which he managed to keep up a wretched little fire made out of fragments of old fences that he had picked up here and there. There he sat wrapped in his shawl, an unlighted cigar in his mouth, spying around among his antiquities, to see which piece he should next tear from his soul and deliver to the shop-keepers.

For a very considerable payment that he had to make had exhausted his last penny of ready money. In his emotion over the martyrdom of the faithful dog, Rosenbusch had determined to give Jansen a pleasant surprise by ordering a grave-stone for the little mound in the garden, bearing the following profound inscription:

Hic jacet Homo,

Nihil humani a se alienum putans.

It was merely a plain block of granite ornamented by a dog's head cut in profile, and the letters were not even gilded. Yet the stone-cutter's bill proved to be twice as large as the first estimate of the cost; so that he had been obliged to sell the sword and scabbard of a Walloon cuirassier, a rusty snaffle-bit of the time of the Swedish war, and his last halberds; and besides this, to paint an oil-portrait of the stone-cutter's wife, in order to complete this act of respect without incurring any debts.

He never said a word about his troubles to any of his friends, not even to Elfinger, and at the dedication of the monument, over which he presided, he conducted himself with so much ease and dignity that they all thought he had really found some unknown patron who advanced him money on his great new picture. The fact that he appeared in a dress-coat, in spite of the bitter winter cold, was attributed to the formality with which he insisted upon treating the whole affair.

He himself tried hard at first to keep up his spirits. He composed an account of the ceremony in his most feeling verses, and accompanied them with a sketch of the grave-stone and other illustrations relating to the dedication, and sent the document to Florence, where Jansen and Julie were then sojourning.