"Oh, then it's Karl August that she almost bumped into!" thought Herr Kosch. To be sure, there by the house stood the hunting-coach which he had seen in pictures. His eyes eagerly sought further. Quite near him he caught sight of a dignified old gentleman in a dark-gray coat, a snowy white neckerchief about his throat in which a reddish-yellow stone glowed, his hat in his hand, his hair like a well-arranged gray mist above his lofty forehead, which rose in lines pure as the dome of a temple--and those eyes! He had danced himself up to the very goal of his pilgrimage.
But he did not go up to this man and say, "Brother!" He just stood and stared. "God in heaven, what a man!" he murmured to himself. "He has built up his manhood like a throne. He stands alone among them all--they are simply wiped out by his presence."
The engraver saw his friend, for whom he had so longed in his lonely hours, standing now at an immense distance from him. "Yes--a man must build such a wall about him if he means to create and express himself as he has. No--he has nothing to do or to seek among the wretched. What a plebeian I am that I couldn't understand this!"
Then he saw the prince take Beate Rauchfuss, whose beauty dazzled Kosch at this moment, so great and strong was it, and lead her with a smile to the distinguished old man, saying, "This is the red-haired beauty from the Rauchfuss farm, who crossed our path so often as a wild youngster when we used to make excursions up to the Ettersberg. Our hills produce such wonders."
The girl bowed before the dignified old man and kissed his hand respectfully. He patted her auburn hair softly. "Happy man for whom this sunny head shall shine! Joy and love beam in her eyes." He turned to his princely friend. "What an ocean of beneficent happiness lies in the young creatures of the earth!"
"If it only didn't dribble away in such cursed little drops!" growled the prince, raising his blunt nose and beckoning to the coach to draw near.
"Ah, but from another point of view that means watering the earth! Have no care, pretty child--whichever way it comes!"
The grave, distinguished man followed his prince into the coach, and both waved a farewell to the pretty girl, who made the deep curtesy she had learned so thoroughly from Frau Kummerfelden. Every girl in Weimar who had ever been to the old actress's sewing-classes understood how to make a proper court reverence; "for," said the good woman, "in a little town like this, where there are so many princes both of the blood and of the intellect, a certain savoir vivre should prevail, even in the streets." In things of this kind she was a past mistress.
The engraver had stood as if under a spell; his meeting with his "brother," the old master, had come and gone. But he had played no part in it. He looked at his rough, sinewy hands. "Those are hands for you!" he cried in his heart. "To gain nothing but a halfway-decent suit of clothes, four shirts, two pairs of shoes, and a miserable hole to live in, they have become as rough and lined as if they had conquered a world. He has conquered a world--and his hands, at his age, have remained soft, moved by the soul. Ah, plebeian, you won't go and knock at his window! But the girl whom he caressed with his eyes and passed his hand over her hair--this little goose--!" He grasped angrily at Beate's hand. "Let us go, Mamsell," he cried--"let us go!"
And amidst all the still May greenness, under the shelter of the tender shrubs, he caught the startled girl to him, kissed her and buried his face in the glory of her hair, which his "brother" had stroked and the perfume of whose young life intoxicated him. "Into thy hands, O Lord ...!" he almost sobbed.