The Invisible Lodge Part 18

THIRTY-SIXTH, OR II ADVENT, SECTION.

Conic Sections of the Bodies of Eminent Persons.--Birthday-Drama.-- Rendezvous (or, as Campe Expresses it, "Make Your Appearance") in the Looking-gla.s.s.

In the causeway to the new palace Beata feared she should find there her Gustavus; in the palace itself she wished the contrary, so soon as she heard he was in the Place of Rest. Her mother, while with her a.s.sistance she partly cut down, partly over-completed regiments of robes, mantles, etc., had meantime proved to her this much, that Beata was deceived by her _own_ feelings and that the paradise of her most innocent love was, according to her _maternal_ feeling, desperately bad, and, in fact, a Pontine marsh--the blossoming trees thereon were upas trees--the flower-carpet consisted partly of poisonous copper, partly of false porcelain flowers--on the gra.s.s banks therein one caught cold by sitting, and the gentle rocking of the enchanted ground was an earthquake. This forewarning against the oath _after_ the oath of love might yet be heard; but when she went on to object Beata's youth--the most common, most simple, most ineffectual, and most exasperating objection to a live feeling--this began to weaken the slight impression of her week-day sermon, which the _practical application_ entirely washed away; namely, that her father had already half and half chosen for her the object of her affections.... My manor-lady was very clever; but when she undertook to please my manor-lord, she was also very stupid.

Beata therefore brought with her over the causeway to Gustavus a heart which this dissection had made extremely soft and tender, and he, too, came with one of those wounded ones, on which not a trace of a callus longer remains. Ottomar's sermons-of-Solomon upon and against life had filled his veins and arteries with an infinite longing to love poor perishable human beings, and with his two arms, before they fell to the earth, to draw and press the fairest heart to his bosom, ere it sank under the earthly clods. Love fastens its parasitical roots to all other feelings.

It was time they came, on account of Herr von Oefel. For at Court one missed them, and in fact anyone, very little. A Russian Prince von * * *--a mestizzo and deponent between courtier and beast, whose visible extremes ended in the invisible extremes of culture and savageness--had been there, together with a herd of Frenchmen and Italians, who as a body had, like their head-master, the common-place singularity of the great world, that they--were not _whole_; for a man of the world now-a-days nothing is harder than not to make of his person what I properly make in my biography--a sector or section. In fact, this fragmentary division looked like a phalanx of cripples on their journey to a wonder-worker. Of the princ.i.p.al members which we do not recover at the resurrection, _e. g_., hair, stomach, flesh, etc.,[82]--whence, of course, the great Connor can easily demonstrate that a risen Christian will turn out no longer than a gad-fly--of such members the amputated Junta had already before the resurrection wholly, or in great part, relieved themselves.

I have often reflected upon the question, why the great folks do this and make them in a physical sense the small; but I was too ignorant to guess any other reasons than the following: The seat of anger (which, according to Winckelmann, the Greeks held to be the nose), cannot decay soon enough, because neither a courtier nor a Christian should show anger. Secondly, diminutive bodies are little different from crooked ones, even in size; but the latter, as we see in Esop, Pope, Scarron, Lichtenberg and Mendelssohn, have much wit. Now the man of the world ingeniously draws off the _spirit_ out of the strong vessels of our progenitors into little corporeal bottles, and such sections and optical abridgements and _electorates_ of the body make it impossible to be otherwise than witty, or at most stupid; so a flute which has become _cracked_, can give out no other tones but _fine_ and _high_ ones. But in the great world wit is notoriously prized, if not more, certainly not less than immorality. Thirdly, as the old patriarchs received a _long_ life in order that they might people the earth, so with the same design have these cosmopolites proposed to themselves a _short_ one, and cheerfully purchased the life of other beings by a Curtius'-leap into the fatal abyss. But it may still be questioned whether I am right. The fourth reason I learn from certain secret and mystic societies, whence these very segments of humanity have themselves derived it. Now-a-days every soul of rank must be _disorganized_ and _disembodied_. For this now there are only two entirely different operations. The shortest and worst, in my opinion, is for a man--to hang himself, and for the soul thus to separate the body from itself like a wen. I should not blame any great man for this, did I not know that he has in view the far better and easier operation, whereby he can detach his body, as if it were the mould wherein the spiritual statue is cast, piece by piece. I will not fall here into the fault of brevity, but rather into the opposite. Thus, the body is, according to philosophers, who have also a soul, merely an instrument for developing their own and ours, and accustoming them to the renunciation of this instrument. The soul must gradually nibble off all the threads that bind it to the clod. This is to the soul what the cork cuira.s.s[83] is to children learning to swim: it must seek daily to lessen this cuira.s.s and finally to swim without it. The philosophic man of the world and the fellow of secret _deorganizing societies_ at first therefore puts off of this swimming-panoply only the flesh on his legs and cheek-bones. Thus far little is done. Thereupon he burns away in a _furnace-fire_ nerves and other stuff, because they have withstood the _kitchen-fire_. The hair or human fur every one gets rid of without difficulty. The most important step in this cuira.s.s-reduction is this, that one can without Origen's razor effect as much as he did--only more gently. When this is done, one is not far from that perfect extinction, in which the whole cuira.s.s is clean gone and the soul has learned at last to swim in the sea of existence, without the necessity of having on even so much of the swimming dress as one needs to cork a bottle.

After that one is buried. Thus at least they set forth in secret societies of _ton_ the process of human disembodiment.

This broken society covered our and every court as beautifully as broken porcelain vessels do Dutch garden beds; secondly, it had the politest way in the world of being coa.r.s.e. If a certain _je ne sais quoi_ did not const.i.tute the difference in this gentry between humor and coa.r.s.eness, between politeness and impudence, then there was none at all.

I said above that it was time our couple arrived, on Herr von Oefel's account. For the birthday _fete_ of the Lady Resident was drawing near, and yet not a soul had memorized a page of his part. The reader, too, has quite as little of the birthday drama in his head as the players; therefore a thin decoction of this plant of Oefel's shall be set before him.

_Decoction from the Birthday Drama_.

"In a French village were two sisters, so good that each deserved to be the Rose-girl, and so disinterested that each wished the other to be.

The day before the distribution of the prize-medal of roses they contended together who should--reject it; for they knew from good authority that to one of them alone the rose-crown would fall.

Jeanne--played by the Minister's Lady--slipped away from under the leafy crown by the pretty conceit that she had her lover, _Perrin_--represented by Oefel--too often and too openly about her to ent.i.tle her to be a rose-compet.i.tor. Marie (Beata's part) could not therefore, it seemed, avert the crown from her head; however she begged her brother Henri (that was Gustavus) who was particularly fond of her, and who since his childhood had been away from their home on his travels,--she begged him to get her the victory in this disinterested rivalry. He sought to persuade her to the opposite victory; but at last, seeing the inexorableness of her sisterly love so decided, he promised, for a proper reward,--to spare her own feelings. 'But thou must have still greater love for me,' he said;--'a sister's,' said she;--'a still stronger,' said he;--'the most friendly affection,' said she;--'a far stronger yet,' said he;--'there cannot be a greater,' said she;--'O surely! I am not really thy brother,' said he, and with love-intoxicated eyes fell flown before her and gave her a paper, which relieved her of her former error and plunged her instead into a little swoon of joy. They all four appeared before the lord of the manor and crown-bestower (the Prince played this part even on the--boards) and each antic.i.p.ated his choice by a pet.i.tion and eulogy for her sister, and by neat invectives upon herself. The coquettish wight, Perrin, inquired: Could love need other roses than her own?--Marie gave a flying delineation of the merits to which such a coronation belonged, and which were in fact fine traits from the image of the Bouse. His Lords.h.i.+p said: 'This sisterly impartiality, which is as much to be admired as the merits which it seeks to reward, deserved two rose-crowns, one to receive, and one to confer, as a reward;' (no one, remarked Oefel seemingly in flattery of the ladies, but really of the Prince, more fitly distributes crowns than he who himself wears them and they would be distinguished from him in nothing but _impartiality_ and beauty, if they in his place should happily choose as he would, upon whom the rose-wreath, ere the b.u.t.terfly flew from it)--(one of the brilliants had been stuck with an egrette into the largest rose)--should be placed.... 'Upon our Rose Queen!' cried the sisters, and presented the crown to the lady Resident."

So far the Drama. To Oefel nothing was more agreeable and felicitous than the foil afforded by flattery bestowed on another. For the rest his piece looked like an idyl of Fontanelle's. The fancy that is to please people ground thin by culture must sparkle, but not burn; must tickle, but not move the heart; the boughs of such a fancy are not bowed down by the heavy ma.s.s of _fruits_, but by the weight of _snow_.

In such court-poets and in _earwigs_ the wings are, one may say, invisible and minute, but both find more easily the way to the ear. In German poems there is nothing; on the contrary most of the French smell not of the study lamp and economical light, but rather of perfumed garters, gloves, etc., and the less they have in them that interests man, so much the more they have that charms the man of the world, because they no longer depict Nature and Heaven and h.e.l.l, but one or two salons, and so not without ingenuity draw themselves back into narrower and narrower windings of the snail-house.

Oefel was at once theatre-poet, player and writer of the parts. He gave prominence in the drama to the role of Beata, which he had, with the most delicate allusions to their mutual understanding (he thought), or to his individual understanding (I think), set forth to the world. The most delicate hints he had disguised in those pa.s.sages where he and Beata played together. He drew, therefore, in the transcribing, under many a fine declaration of love, or kindred sentiment, an exegetic line, and figured intelligently his thoroughba.s.s. "The cunning jade will read this over a thousand times," he said to himself.

Thereupon, soon after her arrival he handed her her part, with far more respectful shyness than he was himself aware. Unfortunately for our good dramatizing poltroon, Beata fell into two faults at once, for a reason. The reason simply was, that Cupid had set up in her heart his laboratory and put in his chemical stoves and all; hence must needs arise her first fault, that she looked more beautiful than formerly without this glow; for every emotion and every inner conflict a.s.sumed on her face the form of a charm. From love came also her second mistake, that she demeaned herself to-day towards Oefel far more familiarly and frankly than usual; for a maiden who is in love has, in regard to other objects (_i. e_., from her own feelings in regard to them) nothing more to fear. But Herr von Oefel figured out on his parchment a quite different result; he took all as a sign of joy, that he was now again--to be had. He went on accordingly with a heart which Cupid had shot as full with his Lilliputian arrows as a pin-cus.h.i.+on with needles.

He said that very day: "When once the heart of a woman is so wide open, one has nothing to do, but just let her do." That was a charming thing for him; for it saved him--what might cause him some scruples--the trouble of inveigling her. As often as he read Lovelace's or the Chevalier's[84] letters, he wished his simple conscience would allow him to lead away a perfectly innocent and resisting maiden after a fine plan. But his conscience would hear no reason, and he was obliged to confine his piratical or privateering pleasures to the beguiling of such innocent persons as he caused to act in his head or in his romance; to such a degree, in weak people, does feeling prevail over the decisions of reason, even in philosophical women. Consequently Oefel's knowledge of women left him only the power of laying snares, not for innocence, but for guilt, and the only thing in which he could labor with renown was to be the seducer of seductresses.

Allow me to make a shrewd observation. The distinction between _Lovelace_ and the _Chevalier_ is the moral difference between their nations and decades. The Chevalier is a devil with such a philosophic coldness that he is to be ranked among those devils of Klopstock's, who cannot be converted. Lovelace, on the contrary, is a quite different man, a mere vain Alcibiades, whom a position in the State or a nuptial one might half amend. Even then, when his inexorableness to imploring, wrestling, weeping, kneeling innocence seems to give him a nearer likeness to models from h.e.l.l, he softened his hypocritical blackness by a stroke of art which does some credit to his own conscience and the greatest honor to the genius of the poet, namely, that by way of beautifying his inexorableness, he regards the actual object of compa.s.sion, the kneeling, etc., Clarissa, as a theatrical, picturesque work of art, and in order not to be affected will not observe the bitterness of her tears, but only her beauty; not the distress, but only the picturesqueness of her att.i.tude. In this way one can take pleasure in hardening himself against anything; hence _beaux esprits_, painters and their connoisseurs often have no tears or too many for _actual_ misery, for the mere reason that they regard it as _artistic_.

But I must hasten on more speedily to the festal day of the Resident Lady, whose web touches and entangles our Gustavus with so many kinds of threads.

He committed to memory with great delight his part in the Drama, of which much will yet have to be said, and wished nothing, except that he did not yet know it by heart. Beata had the same feeling about hers: the reason was, that their parts on the stage were directed to each other, consequently their thoughts, now, were so, too; and for the shy Beata it was especially delicious, that she could with good conscience memorize tender thoughts of love for him, which she hardly dared to have, not to say express. In order not to be always thinking of him, she often diverted her mind by the labor of learning by heart the aforesaid part. Good soul! try always to deceive thyself; it is better to will it, than not to care about it at all! Her adoptive brother had hitherto been utterly unable to devise any way of meeting her; the Resident Lady had forgotten him and thereby the means of bringing it about, in her attention to the Russian section and torso; he himself had not persistency enough, still less the dignity which would make it piquant and charming--till Herr von Oefel said to him with a significant expression of countenance, that the Lady Resident wished to have him see some pictures which Knase had left there. "Yes, I have been wanting this long time to begin copying in the cabinet," said he, and deceived hardly anyone except himself. Noticing his blush of confusion, Oefel said to himself: "I know all, my dear man!"

At last a fine forenoon brought the two souls, that could more easily find each other than their bodies could, together at the Lady Resident's. The light of day, their previous separation, the new situation, and love, made all the charms of both new, all their features fairer, and their heaven greater than their expectations--but do not look at each other too much, nor yet too little, for they are glancing at your glances! Well, do it as much as you like; thou canst not hide it from a Bouse, Gustavus, that thine eye which is not contracted by penetration, but opened wide with love, always detains itself among objects in the neighborhood of one at whom it would fain steal side glances;--nor does it help thee, Beata, that thou avoidest more than usual standing near him or giving him occasion for his voice and cheeks to be his traitors! It availed thee, naught, as thou thyself sawest, to seek to escape the repet.i.tion of the _idolo del mio_ at his arrival; for did not the Lady Resident beg him to glide after thy voice with his fingers on the harpsichord, and to publish his inner storm of joy by the gleam of the eye and the pressure of the keys and the sins against time? Those of my readers who have frizzled or served or spoken with the Resident Lady, or actually loved her, can testify for me against other readers, that among other mantel-ornaments of her toilette-chamber--inasmuch as the grandees like nothing but finery to eat, occupy, wear, sit on and sleep on--there were also Swiss scenes, and among these a tragacanth copy of the hermitage-mountain; this Olympus of joy, before the eyes of Gustavus, Beata's could no longer climb, often as they had formerly shone upon this very mountain--at last the eyes of both grew moist, when the name of Amandus rang through both of them, with a sweeter and livelier emotion than one feels for a departed soul. In short, like all lovers, they would have betrayed themselves less, if they had concealed themselves less. The Lady Resident seemed to-day, what she always seemed; she had in her power a still, thoughtful, not impa.s.sioned dissimulation, and one saw not on her face the false looks chase away the true ones. The finest picture in the collection left by the Russian was not at home, but under the copying-paper of the Prince.

So dumb and yet so near was Gustavus compelled to remain _vis-a-vis_ with his beloved; with only three words, with only a pa.s.sing pressure of the hand; oh, if he only knew how to discharge his soul electrified with emotions!--Why do we long to transfer all our feelings from our own hearts into another's?--And why has the dictionary of sorrow so many quires, and that of rapture and of love so few leaves?--Only a tear, a pressure of the hand and a singing voice the genius of the universe gave to love and to rapture and said: "Speak with these!"--But had Gustavus's love a tongue, when (during a seven seconds' turning aside of the Resident Lady) in the looking-gla.s.s, to which he sat opposite at the harpsichord, with his thirsting eyes he kissed the hovering image of his dear songstress--and when the image looked upon him--and when the shy image under the fire-stream of his eyes shut its eyelids--and when he suddenly wheeled round toward the near original of the colored shadow that was looking away again, and as he sat there penetrated with his love into the drooping eye of his friend standing by him, and when in a moment which languages cannot paint, he dared not pour himself out in _one_, not so much as in one sound?--For there are moments when the treasure upraised, out of the depths of another's soul sinks back again, and disappears in the innermost recesses, if one speaks--nay, in which the tender, tremulous, swimming, burning picture of the whole soul can hardly protect itself _in_ or _beneath_ the transparent eye, as the fading pastel-form does under the gla.s.s....

For this reason he did just right in my view, to sit down at home and compose his love-letter forthwith. By such an insurance-policy of the heart the biographer has always in a proper sense deeded his love. But when Gustavus had finished it, he knew not how he should insinuate it, by what penny-post. He carried it round with him so long that at last he grew dissatisfied with it--then he wrote a new and better one and again carried that round until he had written the best one, which I will insert in the next section. I take this opportunity to announce to the public for next Easter my "expeditious and always ready love-letter-writer," which all parents should procure for their children. Apropos! The fur courier's-boot and the mustard-plaster and the icy-crown have happily sent the blood into my feet, and left no more in my head than it needs, in order to draw up agreeable abstracts or extracts for a German people.

THIRTY-SEVENTH, OR CHRISTMAS-EVE, SECTION.

Love-Letter.--Comedie.--Bal Pake.--Two Dangerous Midnight Scenes.--Practical Application.

I have at this joyous season no very joyous feelings; perhaps because my body, which threatens to fall to pieces, no more goes right than a longitude-watch or sea-chronometer--perhaps also the contents of this section lie on my brain--perhaps, too, at the sight of the universal joy of the children, the blood creeps so mournfully between the evergreen and autumnal flower age of the remembrance how it once was, how the joys of man roll away, how they mark their remoteness from us by a reflection gleaming over from distant sh.o.r.es, and how our longest days seldom give us so much as the shortest or Christmas night gives the child in the way of enjoyment or of hope.

I should not have spoken with so much levity as I did fourteen days ago of Gustavus's hearty letter. It runs thus:

"Before I wrote this, my inexpressibly dear one, you went with Laura up through the park to enjoy a little while the sinking sun, that shone down between two great clouds; at your side shadows of clouds flitted away, but the suns.h.i.+ne went with you. I thanked the foliage that it lay at your feet and could not hide you from me; but I would fain have plucked all the th.o.r.n.y leaves from the holly behind which you disappeared and went from me. 'O could I only'--thought I--'strew her autumnal way with young flowers and b.u.t.terflies, could I encircle her with blossoms and nightingales, and cover the woods and the mountains before her with spring-time--but, if she then should tremble with joy and must needs look upon me and thank me.' ... But these blossoms, these nightingales, these springs you have given me; you have breathed over my life an eternal May, and wrung from a human eye tears of joy--but what have I to give? Ah, Beata, what can I give you for this whole Elysium wherewith you entwine and festoon the dark ground of my life, and for your whole, whole heart?--Mine--_that_ indeed you already had for nothing, and that is all I have to give; for all fair hours, for all your charms, for all your love, for all that you give, have I nothing but this true, happy, warm heart....

"Yes, I have only this; but if the divine spark of the highest love can glow in the human heart it dwells in mine, and burns for one whom I can only love but not repay. Thou, higher spark, wilt gleam on for her in my heart when tears flood or misfortune crushes it, or death turns it to ashes.... Beata! no human being can, here on earth, tell another how he loves him. Friends.h.i.+p and love go with closed lips over this ball, and the inner man has no tongue. Ah, if man, out in the eternal temple, which arches upward even to infinity, amidst the circle of singing choirs, holy places, altars of sacrifice, will fain fall down dazed before an altar and pray, ah then does he, as well as his tear, sink to the ground and remain speechless! But the good soul knows who loves her and is silent; she overlooks not the still eye which follows her, she forgets not the heart which the more strongly it beats has the less power to speak, nor the sigh which seeks to hide itself. But, Beata, believe me!--when once this eye and this heart have ended their silence, when in the most blissful hour they have dared with all the energies of the loving nature to say to the beloved soul, 'I love thee,' then is it hard and painful to be mute again; so painful to press back again the upheaved, flaming, impetuous heart into a close, cold breast--then in the innermost soul will the silent joy dissolve into silent sorrow and gleam sadly into it, as does the moon into a rainbow which the night uprears.... Beata! I can proffer no pet.i.tions, I dare not have any; I can picture to myself the Eden which Beata's looks and words might give me, but I dare not crave it; I must with all my wishes fasten myself to the sh.o.r.e of the silver shadow, which even in dreams, and at this moment in life, like a broad stream divides us; but, darling, if I do not sometimes hear to whom the most precious heart has given itself, how shall I retain the courage to believe it?

When I behold this gracious heart among so many good and exalted beings, and then am compelled to say to myself, ah, you all, nevertheless, have failed to deserve it; then does a joyful amazement come over me, that it has given itself to my soul, and I can hardly believe it. Beloved! thousands were more worthy of thee; but none could have been made happier by thee than I am!"

The hardest thing now was, to get the letter, on any other wings than those of a carrier-dove--Venus probably harnessed a span of carrier-doves to her gondola--to its destined place. Of such a thing he saw no possibility, because, among all possibilities, such a one is for him the hardest to see,--for my sister such a one is the easiest.

All came about in the rehearsal of the play.

Regular plays, we know, are not, like their sisters, the political ones, produced without rehearsal. I will willingly let as small a paper-interval as possible come between the rehearsal and the performance; but the reader must also, on his part, turn the leaves over nimbly, and not lay his hands in his lap so much as the book.

The rehearsal took place in the old palace. Oefel did his part well enough--Beata still better--and Gustavus the very worst of all. For the faces of the Prince and the Fainting Lady, like salt and nitric acid, almost transformed his heart into an icicle; there are many people before whom one is nerveless and incapable of having inspired feelings.

Singular! only his, but not Beata's, were chilled by this north-wind sweeping over the stage. And yet after all it is not singular; for love throws the young man out of his own self into other personalities around him, but repels the maiden from others back into her own.

Slightly, if at all, did Beata notice the approaches of the reigning actor or acting Regent. Oefel, however, saw it, and antic.i.p.ated his victory over the exalted rival--who made his approaches to him in no very large snail-line, as was his custom with the Court ladies, who only in youth give away their virtue _a la minutia_; in old age, on the contrary, drive a larger business with it _in grosso_. I said just now something about a snail-line, because I had in my head a conceit of this kind, that women of the world and the sun, under the appearance of leading the planets in a circle round their rays, in fact hurry them onward in a fine _spiral_ (or snail-line) to their burning surface.

In the midst of the rehearsal, just as Gustavus (or Henry) handed Marie the blank paper as a certificate declaring their relations.h.i.+p null and void, something occurred to him as Henry which would have occurred to another long before as Gustavus, namely, that something might be written on the blank paper, and in fact the best something--his love-letter, which we have already long since read. In short, he proposed to himself to slip his letter into her hands in the play in the form of that certificate, if it could not be done otherwise. Even the romantic element in the resolve, to insinuate his real part into his theatrical one, and to put upon so many spectators another deception than the poetic one, did not repel, but rather impelled him.

I will just confess, dear Gustavus--and though my confession should fall into thine own hands--on thy heavenly modesty the honey-dew of approbation, which in such a place thou wast justified in regarding not even as flattery, but merely as a _facon_ of speech, had fallen with a disturbing influence! Of all things human, modesty is the most fumigated or brimstoned to death, and many a commendation is as harmful as a calumny. In the madhouse we see that man takes other people's word for it that he is crazy,[85] and in palaces we see that he takes their word for it when they call him wise. On the whole Gustavus--(for a man is often destined on an evening not merely to play one wretched part after another, but often also mere thoughtless pranks)--on the dramatic evening, was almost selected for the latter role.

... At length the Bouse's birthday fete has arrived.... O my Gustavus!

To this very day thy eyes are wet with the remembrance!

The fete breaks into three courses--_Comedie_, _Souper_, and _Bal pare_. In reality, there is still a fourth course--a fall.

On the day of the performance, the new palace emptied itself into that of the Prince at Ober-Scheerau. Gustavus thought, while on the way (in Oefel's carriage), of his letter which he was going to deliver, and of good Doctor Fenk a little; but the shortened days gave him no time for visiting. His fault was, that for him the present, like a cataract, always drowned all distant sounds; and he would not perhaps even have come to me if my crowded legal work-table had allowed me to go to town.

He saw his Marie--ten hundred thousand new charms ... but I will restrain himself. So much is physiologically true, that a maiden of our familiar acquaintance in a strange place will appear to us somewhat as a stranger, but only the more interesting. Beata had this in common with the brilliant Lady Resident, but a certain breath of modest shyness adorned her alone with its veil. In what was Gustavus at this time distinguished from her? In this: man's bashfulness lies merely in his training and his circ.u.mstances; woman's lies deep in her nature--man has internal courage and often merely external helplessness; woman has not this, and is nevertheless shy--the former expresses his respect by pressing forward; the latter hers by drawing backward.

The Fainting Lady, the so-called _Defaillante_, the Ministress, to-day excepted! Her winking and blinking, her lisping and whispering, her wriggling and giggling, her fearing and daring, her coquetry and mockery--how shall the one-legged Jean Paul biographically copy all this in poor, common prose? Nevertheless, it is absolutely not otherwise to be done, and he must. If the variegated heads of _women_ had to represent, in the great garden of nature, the blue, red, _gla.s.s-globes_ on lacquered pedestals (which not one man in a hundred believes), I would go on in my portrayal thus: that of the Minister's Lady was hot bad, not gay; this head was a short, practical extract of ten other heads, that is to say, which had contributed hair, teeth, features, to the making-up of it. She was an antique of great beauty, but one which after the devastations of years and men was no more to be had in a sound state; she had, therefore, to be restored by skilful sculptors with new members--such as bosom, teeth, etc.

On the cheeks the _alloying_ was done in _red_, the neighboring parts below were alloyed with _white_.[86]

Those teeth which place man in the cla.s.s of ruminant animals, the incisors, were as white as ivory, and all the more so, because they were really such and came from the mouth of a graminivorous beast;--whether I mean by that an elephant or a common man, who seldom applies the teeth which, as scions, he grafts upon a n.o.bler stem, to anything but vegetables; at all events so much is certain, that no other concluding clause will fit this period but the following: she had once more as many teeth as other Christian women, and two gold threads beside, because the dentist always had one part in the house and under the brush, while the others p.r.o.nounced the dental letters.

As, according to the latest text-books trigonometry--and bosoms--can be divided only into _plane_ and _spherical_, and as she had manifestly the entire alternative before her, her geometrical genius preferred for her those magnitudes which afford geometers the greatest power and the greatest pleasure--the spherical.

Her attire, from shoe-rosettes to hat-rosettes, sought its effect far less in form than in material, and consequently could be less appraised by the eyes than on jeweler's scales, less by lines of beauty than according to carats--there always remained a distinction therefore between her and her legislative doll; for the rest she, like every other woman, had to carry herself according to that standard. I will say just one timely word here on dolls.