She shook her head earnestly. "No, no, no!" she said. "No self-imposed banishments! It is a good thing I have my thirty-one years behind me. Else this youthful enthusiast might succeed in the end in carrying me off with him, and we should make a great mistake that would soon make both him and me very unhappy. The land across the ocean is no place for you, my beloved master. You have never cared to take part in the modern, sentimental nonsense in our Old World; what sort of a figure would you cut in the midst of all the humbug of the New? And as for your giving up your art, and living only for your wife and child--how long do you suppose you could bear that? How long would it take for the woman for whose sake you had done this to become a burden to you? And even if you could rest content with such a life, do you think I would be satisfied with it? True, I have confessed that I love this man--this violent, wicked, good, precious Hans Jansen--but I want to see him as great, as famous, as proud, and as happy as it is possible for any one to be in this wretched world; to love in him not only the husband and father, but also the great master, who compels the whole world to join with me in love and admiration. Oblige me, my dearest friend, by throwing that correspondence there into the stove, and promise me not to write any more. In return I promise you that I will ponder day and night upon the best way for us to free ourselves. And if our year of probation should pass away without our having succeeded before God and man--here is my hand upon it! I will be yours--if not in the eyes of men, certainly in the sight of God; and I believe I am old enough to know what an honorable woman ought to do and to answer for."
CHAPTER VII.
Our other friends, too, had lost in the autumn mists more and more of that sunny, paradisiacal frame of mind which they enjoyed when we first knew them.
Rosenbusch went daily to his studio; but he did little there except to feed his mice, and to take his flute out of its case, oil and clean it, without making any attempt to call forth a sound. He would stand for an hour before the "Battle of Lützen," which was now completed, and heave sighs that sounded anything but triumphant. He had long since prepared a new canvas, on which he was intending to paint the entry of Gustavus Adolphus into Munich, a theme which he hoped would interest even the "Art Association." But not a stroke of the brush had he done as yet. To tell the truth, the temperature in his studio was well calculated to scare away the muses, and to freeze up the sweet tones of his flute. Even the mice, who were more accustomed to it, squealed uncomfortably in their little wire cage; while their friend and master, wrapping the mediæval horse-blanket about his painter's jacket, strode thoughtfully up and down, casting a look of displeasure at the cold stove every time he passed it, as if he despised it as a friend who only remained faithful as long as it was kept warm itself. The money he had last received, for illustrating a book of soldiers' songs, had long since been spent. It is true, a dealer in antiquities had made him a very considerable offer for an old casket with a skillfully-ornamented silver cover, which was said to have originally belonged to no less a person than General Illo. But he could not make up his mind to barter this valuable old relic for vulgar fire-wood. He was too proud to borrow of Elfinger, who had hard work to live himself; or to reveal the state of his circumstances to the other inmates of the house. If any one chanced to come across him wandering about alone in his strange disguise, he declared, with a beaming face, that he was too full-blooded to bear the heat of a stove. Besides, he was in one of his poetical moods, and was brooding over an epic poem which was to treat of the astonishing and pitiful love-adventure of the Swedish commander with Gustel von Blasewitz. And composing a poem was a very heating occupation, unless the "shade of a laurel-wreath" was there to cool the forehead on which stood the anxious sweat of the muses.
Toward noon he threw aside his horse-blanket and went around to Angelica's room, where it was warm and cozy. The good girl led the same quiet, industrious life now as before; sold one flower-piece after another, cheaply but surely; painted the children of tender parents who had no money to spare for art, but yet liked to see their salon adorned with the red-cheeked curly-heads of their own flesh and blood; and had certainly no good cause for mourning over the pining away of the beautiful summer. And yet, she too was perceptibly depressed in spirits. Whether it was her righteous anger at the flirting and profitless pangs of her red-bearded neighbor, who since the excursion on the water had only been permitted to exchange a few hasty glances and notes with his sweetheart (her father having found out about the Starnberg adventure, and had a scene with Aunt Babette); or whether the clouded happiness of her beautiful friend caused her silent pain, or awakened in her breast a very pardonable longing for a similar fulfillment of her own earthly mission--who shall say?
She herself never suffered a word of complaint to escape her; and exhibited, particularly to her secretly-betrothed friend, the most contented face in the world. But the change in her spirits did not escape Rosenbusch. He had to submit to be lectured by her oftener than ever, and in a far sharper tone, not only because of his inactivity, but also more particularly because of the aimless and unmanly way in which he carried on his love affair. She would say such harsh things to him about it, that any one else would have run out of the room. But he, meanwhile, would water her flowers with the most penitent and humble mien, would wash her brushes, and end by assuring her that he never felt so well as when she was blowing him up; he felt then that he had no better friend in the world than she was. But he would not be such a fool as to improve, for he only interested her because of his faults. She had no appreciation of his praiseworthy qualities, inasmuch as she could not abide poems, adagios, and mice. Whereupon she used first to laugh, and then, with a shrug of the shoulders and a meaning sigh, to subside into silence.
Nor did "Edward the Fat" pass his days any more cheerfully, though he was surrounded once more by his city comforts, and was relieved of the hated task of enjoying Nature. For the first time in his life this spoiled child of fortune had a wish unfulfilled, and, what sharpened the sting of the privation, a wish that by no means aspired to far-off clouds and stars, but lay apparently within reach of his hands. Heretofore he had had no cause to complain of the unkindness and cruelty of women. The singular contrast between his indolent, sluggish, and phlegmatic manner, and the keen intellectual power that flashed from his eyes and played about his lips, to say nothing of the contemptuous way in which he was in the habit of treating the proudest and most exacting women, provoked them to enter the lists with him, and to challenge and abuse him, until, very unexpectedly, they found themselves worsted. But now, for the first time, he had encountered a being to whom he was forced to stoop in every sense of the word; for she was neither beautiful, nor educated, nor particularly prudish, nor even of good birth. And this strange creature treated him with the most persistent coldness, remained as insensible as a stick to his tenderest words and most heart-felt homage, and, finally, slipped out of his hands altogether. For, in spite of all their endeavors, neither he nor old Schoepf succeeded in discovering the girl's hiding-place.
Ever since Schnetz had let him into the secret, Rossel had become more and more intimate with the old grandfather, and had even proposed to him to accept of a room in his house. The old man, who, in the mean while, had moved into somewhat larger quarters, so as to be ready to receive the girl the moment she should knock at his door, declined this offer, but was very glad to pass his lonely hours in the company of his brilliant young friend. They would spend hours--for neither of them had anything to do--deep in discussions about what was really the main thing in art, or what should or should not be painted; and it was only when they heard the door-bell ring at some unusual time that they would both start up and listen eagerly, hoping it might possibly be the lost girl returning penitently to her best friends.
The only ones whose spirits remained unaffected were Kohle and Schnetz; the latter, because his Thersites disposition had struck its roots too deeply into his nature for him to be either elated or depressed by anything he experienced; Kohle, on the other hand, because, like the happy genii of his Hölderlin, he "soared in the celestial light above," and was incapable of giving his heart to the fate of mortals, no matter how closely he might be bound to them by ties of friendship, for more than a few hours at a time. During these misanthropical November days, Schnetz, when not engaged in the service of his little highness, sat in his den of silhouettes, cut out bitter satires, smoked, read Rabelais at Rossel's suggestion, and, for whole days at a time, spoke to no one except his pale little wife; while Kohle, in a far more wretched, unheated room, passed his days making new designs which, with fingers stiff with cold, but with a heart all aglow with happiness, he sketched on the back of a large fire-screen instead of on paper, which he had not the money to buy.
Under these circumstances it was not to be wondered at that the two meetings of the Paradise Club, which took place before the end of the year, were not attended by that festal flow of spirits that had characterized most of their predecessors. Old Schoepf stayed away altogether; Rossel did not speak a word; Jansen did not make his appearance until nearly midnight, and sat brooding with a dark look in his bright eyes, while he emptied glass after glass without being warmed by his potations. Elfinger, whose relations to his pious sweetheart grew every day more hopeless, and had begun to seriously tell upon his spirits, was scarcely more talkative, and the jokes with which Rosenbusch favored the company had, in Rossel's opinion, a biting flavor, like preserved fruit that has begun to ferment. The younger and less prominent members felt the weight that rested on the whole circle, but were either too modest or too poorly supplied with brains to succeed in enlivening matters at all; and an uncomfortable feeling began to creep over first one and then the other, that perhaps in the life of their society, as in that of every human alliance, the moment had arrived when a sudden decline succeeds to a period of highest prosperity, and when a swift dissolution appears more dignified and more welcome than a long era of gradual decline and decay.