In Paradise: A Novel. Vol. II

by Paul Heyse

But much as he liked to disparage German sentiment, he could not find it in his heart to refuse the widow of the landscape-painter when she offered him the house on the lake for a price that could hardly be called low. Without any further inspection of the place he concluded the bargain, and, without changing a muscle, quietly suffered the malicious laughter which burst upon him from all sides to die out. "To possess something," he said, calmly, "was not at all the same thing as to be possessed by something." For that reason he would not need to join in their raving, merely because he found himself among people who were crazy and enraptured. And, true to his theory, whenever he was at his villa he pursued his usual comfortable sybarite life, and maintained that Nature had very great charms if one only looked at it with one's back.

He had had the house, which was built in a rustic style, most comfortably fitted up, with a great variety of sofas, rugs, and easy-chairs, and always had this or that friend with him as a guest; so that even the studio above the tree-tops, in which he himself never set foot, was not altogether lost to its proper use. Heavenly repose, he used to say, would not be nearly as sublime if there were not mortals in the world to bestir themselves and cultivate the field of art with the sweat of their brows.

Now, this year he had taken his æsthetical opposite, good Philip Emanuel Kohle, out with him; had quartered him in the chamber to the left of the little dining-room--he himself occupying the one on the right--and it is almost unnecessary to add, had given him the exclusive use of the studio. For the rest, they only met at dinner and supper, since the morning slumbers of the host lasted too long for the industrious guest to wait breakfast for him. Moreover, they could never come together without getting into some discussion, which was always welcome to Rossel, and, as he asserted, highly favorable to his digestion at any time of the day except in the morning. The more he saw of him the more pleasure Rossel took in this singular, self-communing man, who, bloodless, insignificant-looking, and unsophisticated as he seemed, bore about with him a truly royal self-respect, and the consciousness of immeasurable joys and possessions, without for a moment demanding that any mortal being should acknowledge his inherent sovereign rights.

Then, too, though he was so unassuming and so thankful for proffered friendship, he conducted himself toward his host with perfect freedom, for he held the most sublime doctrines in regard to the earthly goods that were lacking in his own case, but were so richly at the disposal of his friend.

A little veranda, with a roof supported on wooden pillars and overgrown with wild grape-vines, had been built out into the lake. A table and a few garden-chairs stood upon it, and from it one could look far away over the beautiful, unruffled water and the distant mountains. At night it was delicious to lean over the balustrade and see the moon and stars dancing in the waves. The nights were still warm, and the scent of the roses was wafted over from the garden; on a day like this one could sit in the open air until midnight.

Fat Rossel had seated himself in an American rocking-chair, with his back toward the lake; a narghili stood by his side, and on the table, in a cooler, was a bottle of Rhine wine, from which he filled his own and his friend's glass from time to time. Kohle sat opposite him, his elbows resting on the table, his shabby black hat pulled down over his forehead, from beneath which his eyes gleamed fixedly and earnestly out of the shadow like those of some night-bird. They appeared to be magically attracted by the lines of silver that furrowed the lake, and it was only when he spoke that he slowly raised them to the level of his friend's high, white forehead, from which the fez was pushed back. Rossel wore his Persian dressing gown, and his silky black beard hung picturesquely down upon his breast. Even in the moonlight Kohle looked very shabby in comparison with him, like a dervish by the side of an emir. The truth was, Kohle had but one coat for all times of the day and year.

"You may say what you like, my dear friend," said Fat Rossel, concluding a rather long dispute about the difference in character between the North and South Germans--he himself was from Passau and Kohle from Erfurth--"there is one talent you people on the other side of the Main are lacking in; you can swim excellently, but you can't lie on your back and let yourself drift. Didn't I drag you put here to this tiresome summer retreat because your aspect had become positively unbearable to a flesh-painter, your skin having dried to a respectable parchment, and you standing in danger of composing yourself into an early grave? And now you don't do anything better out here; but consume one yard of paper after another, while the shadows in your face grow blacker from day to day. Why are you in such haste, my dear Kohle, to produce things for which no one in the world is waiting?"

Kohle's pale face never moved a muscle. He slowly drank a few drops of wine from his glass, and then said, calmly:

"Forbid the silkworm to spin!"

"You forget, my dear godfather, that the worm you cite as your model has at least the excuse that it spins silk. If you could get so far as to do that, the thing would have a practical purpose. But your spinning--"