Hesperus or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days Volume I Part 12

But fortunately never is rehea.r.s.ed to us the pa.s.sion-history of those womanly victims, whose hearts are tossed to the mint, and, like other jewels, cast among the throne-insignia,--who, as flowers with souls, hung upon an ermine-clad dead man's heart, fall to pieces, unenjoyed, on the bed of state, mourned by no one, save by a distant, tender soul, which finds no place in the Court-almanac....

This Act consists of nothing but _goings_: in fact, this whole comedy resembles the life of a child. In the first Act, there was _providing of household furniture_ for the coming existence; in the second, the _arrival_; in the third, _talking_; in the fourth, _learning to walk_, &c.

When Germany had delivered discourses enough to Italy, and Italy to Germany, then Germany, or rather Flachsenfingen, or properly a piece of it, the Minister Schleunes, took the Princess by the hand and led her out of the torrid zone into the frigid; I mean, not from the bridal bed to the wedded bed, but--from the Italian territory of the apartment into the Flachsenfingenite, away over the silken Rubicon. The Flachsenfingen court stands over yonder as right wing, and has not yet gone into the fight. So soon as she had pa.s.sed the silken line, then it was well that the first thing she did in her new land should be something memorable; and in fact she did, before the eyes of her new court, take 4 paces and--sit down in the Flachsenfingen chair, which I set out vacant for that purpose in the very first Act. Now, at last, the right wing marched into fire, for the kissing of hands and sleeves.

Each one in the right wing--the left not at all--felt the dignity of what he entered upon, and this feeling which melted into one with personal pride came--as according to Plattner pride is akin to the sublime--quite _apropos_ to my Benefit-farce, in which I cannot succeed in being sublime enough. Great and silent, embarked in silken bow-nets, buried in a gulf of robes, the court-dames sail up with their lips to the still hand which is fastened with conjugal manacles to a stranger's. Less stately, but still stately, is urged on, also, the Adamitish portion of the _Dramatis Personae_, among whom, unfortunately, I see the apothecary Zeusel.

We know no one among them but the minister, his son Mat, who does not observe anything whatever of our hero, the Physician in ordinary to the Princess, Culpepper, who, transformed by fat and his doctor's beaver into a heavy Lot's-pillar-of-salt, pushes himself like a turtle into the presence of the Regent and Patient.

No mortal knows how Zeusel torments me. Contrary to all order of precedence, I prefer to present, sooner than I do him, the fat livery-servants, swollen into knavish stupidity, whose coats consist less of threads than of laces, and who bend themselves like yellow ribbon-preparations before weary eyes, wont to look on fairer forms.

Victor regarded, through his English opera-gla.s.s, the Italian glazed court-faces as at least picturesquely beautiful; on the contrary, he found the German parade-masks so worn out and yet so starched, so languid and yet so on the stretch, their looks so evaporated and yet so brimstone-smoked!... I still keep Zeusel back by means of some Easter-lambs or _agnus Dei's_ of pages' faces, soft and white as mites; a nurse would like to lay them with their nipple-gla.s.s-mouths to her breast.

Zeusel was no longer to be restrained; he has broken through and has the Princess by the wing--the whole joke of this play, I mean the whole serious meaning of it, is now once for all spoiled. This gray fool has in his old days--his nights are still older--b.u.t.toned himself into a complete historical copper-plate, that is to say, into a zoological fas.h.i.+onable waistcoat, wherein, with his four variegated rings, too, he looks for all the world like a green game-wagon, on which the animal pieces of the whole chase are painted, and four rings for the ringing of the swine's snouts are there _in natura_.[129] I must now see and suffer it,--as he does everything in the past,--while he, fuddled with vanity and hardly able to distinguish watch-chains from gala-coats, runs up and catches at some silken stuff to kiss it. It was easy to foresee that the man would spoil my whole altar-piece with his historical figure; I would absolutely have suppressed the ninny and covered him up behind the frame of the picture, had he not with his flappers and skippers stood out too prominently and made too much of a chattering; and then, too, my correspondent has expressly introduced and designated him among the benefit-confederates. It hardly pays for the trouble to write--

Act Fifth; since all is now thrown into pickle and the reading world is in a grin. In the Fifth Act, which I make without any gusto, there still continued to be nothing done,--whereas Tragedy-makers and Christians turn over the conversion and all important matter into the last Act, as, according to Bacon, a courtier thrust his pet.i.tions into the Postscript,--nothing, I say, except that the Princess let her new maids of honor do their first example in arithmetic and subtraction; namely, the problem of disrobing.... And as undressing concludes the fifth Acts of Tragedies, where Death does it,--and of Comedies, where Love does it,--so, too, would this Benefit-Comedy, which, like our life, wavers between Comedy and Tragedy, wearily end with an undressing.

_End of the Benefit-Comedy_.

I was too much excited yesterday. To be sure the Apothecary is the Dog and Cat, in my picture, biting each other under the table of the Holy Supper; but, upon the whole, the very farce is sublime. Let one just consider that all is carried on in a monarchical form of government, which, according to Beattie, more than the republican form, helps out the comic,--that, according to Addison and Sulzer, precisely the most waggish men are the gravest, and that, consequently, the same thing must hold in regard to the stuff they work;--one must then see at once, from the comic element which my Acts contain, that they are serious....

My hero delivered in the shop a vehement Father Merz's controversial sermon _against_ something which imperial cities and towns preach in favor of: "That men can act so without brains, the white or the gray, and without a particle of taste, as not to be ashamed sinfully and like dogs to fritter away the two or three years in which Pain has them not yet in his game-ticket, nor Death on his night-list,--not in doing absolutely nothing, or in the half bar-rests of chancery-holidays or the whole bar-rests of comitial holidays, or with the whimsicalities of joy,--what were more laudable?--but with the whimsicalities of torture, with twelve Herculean labors to do nothing, in the correction-houses of antechambers, on the _tratto di corda_ of tight-strung ceremonials....

My dear seneschal, my fairest chief-governess, I approve all; but life is so _short_ that it does not repay the trouble to make one's self a _long_ queue[130] therein.--Could we not shake out our hair, and leap over all entrance-halls (or -h.e.l.ls), over all ushers and dancing-masters, away into the very midst of the May-flowers of our days, and into their flower-cups?... I will not express myself abstractly and scholastically; if I did, I should have to say, Like dogs, ceremonies grow mad with age; like dancing-gloves, each serves only for once, and must then be thrown away; but man is such a cursed ceremonious creature, that one must swear he knows no greater or longer day than the diet[131] of Ratisbon."

While Victor was at his meal, Tostato was not present, but in the shop.

Now he had already, the evening before, been unable to get out of his head a design of kissing the pretty dunce. "If I can kiss a saint who is stupid as a cow but _once_, then I have peace for the rest of my life." But, unluckily, the so-called _smallest_ (the sister), whose understanding and nose were too great, had to float round the dunce, as bob to the angle; and the bob would instantly have twitched, had he so much as put a lip to the bait. However, he was cunning, at least: he took our _smallest_ on his knee, and danced her up as Zeusel's coachman did him, and called this _clever_ one sweet names over her head, all of which he dedicated with his eyes to the _stupid_ one (at court he will dedicate with reversed dissimulation). He covered up twice in joke the spying eyes of the _smallest_, merely in order to do it a third time in earnest, when he drew the dunce to himself, and with his right hand brought her into a position, where he could,--especially as she allowed it, because girls do not like to refuse a trick, often from the mere pleasure of guessing it,--amidst his court-services to the blind one, offer the other the hasty kiss, for which he had already contrived so many _avant-propos_ and lines of march. Now was he satisfied and well; if he had been compelled to lie in wait two evenings longer for the kiss, he would have fallen deeply in love.

He was again sitting at his masthead when the Princess dined. It took place with open doors. She stirred up his wild-fire of love with the gold spoon as often as she pressed it to her small lips; she scattered the fire apart again with the two toothpicks (sweet and sour) as often as she resorted to them. Tostato & Co. disposed to-day of the most costly articles. No man knew the _& Co_.,--only Zeusel looked more sharply into Victor's face, and thought, "I must have seen you before."

Towards half past two in the afternoon, good luck would have it that the Princess herself came to the shop, to look up Italian flowers for a little girl with whom she had fallen in love. In all masquerades, as every one knows, one takes masquerade liberties, and in every journey the freedom of a fair. Victor, who in disguises and on journeys was almost too bold, undertook to speak in the mother-tongue of the Princess, and, in fact, with wit. "The Devil," thought he, "cannot surely catch me for that." He remarked, therefore, with the tenderest complacency toward this fair child in Moloch's arms, simply this in regard to the silk-flowers: "The flowers of joy, too, are unhappily, for the most part, made of velvet and iron wire, and with the _shaping-iron_." It was only a miracle that he was polite enough to leave out the circ.u.mstance that it was just the Italian n.o.bility who elaborated the Italian Flora. She looked, however, at his goods, and bought, instead of flowers, a _montre a regulateur_,[132] which she requested to have brought over to her.

He delivered the watch to her with his own hand; but, unfortunately, no less with his own hand--the reader will be frightened, but at first he himself was frightened, and yet thought over the conceit till at last he approved it--had he previously stuck on, above the _Imperator_ of the watch, a delicate strip of paper, wherein, with his own hand, he had written, in pearl type: "_Rome cacha le nom de son dieu et elle eut tort; moi je cache celui de ma deesse et j'ai raison_."[133]

"I know this people well enough," thought he; "they never open or wind up a watch in their life!" Ha, Sebastian! what will my reader or _thy_ lady reader think?

She started this very evening for the country she had obtained by marriage, the future string-floor of her sceptre. Our Victor felt almost as if he had transferred another heart than the metal one with the billet, and thought with pleasure of the Flachsenfingen court.

Before her ran her copied bridegroom or his litter, from which he alighted on the wall of the bedchamber. As he was her G.o.d, I can compare him or his image with the images of the ancient G.o.ds, who were carried round on a peculiar _vis-a-vis_, called a _thensa_,[134]--or in a portrait-box, called [Greek: naos],[135]--or in a cage, called [Greek: kadiskon].[136]

Thereupon Victor went with his commercial consul round behind the coulisses of the benefit theatre. He untied the silken demarcation-line and barring-chain,--drew it up like a disgusting hair,--felt of it,--held it first far from his eye, then near to it,--and pulled it apart, before he said: "The power may lie where it will,--a silk ribbon may insulate bodies politic as well as electrical, or it may be with princes as with c.o.c.ks, who never can get a step farther, if one takes chalk and draws therewith a straight line from their bill to the ground,--nevertheless this much you see, partner,--if an Alexander should displace the boundary-stones, such a string would be, in opposition thereto, the best epitome of the natural law and a _barriere-alliance_ of the same nature." He went into her bedroom, to the empty sepulchre,--that is, to the bed of the risen bride,--into which the _sponsus_ could look down as he lay at anchor on the wall.

Whole divisions of conceits marched mutely through his head, which, thus full, he pressed sidewise with his cheek against a silken pillow, as large as a lap-dog's, or the side-cus.h.i.+on of a carriage. Thus reclining and kneeling, he said, speaking half into the feathers:[137]

"Would that on the other pillow also there lay a face looking into mine! Dear Heaven! two human faces opposite each other,--each drawing the other into its eyes,--listening to each other's sighs,--breathing away from each other the soft, transparent words,--that were what you and I absolutely could not stand, partner!"--He sprang up, gently patted down his hare's form smooth again, and said, "Lay thyself softly around the heavy head which sinks upon thee; smother not its dreams; betray not its tears." Had even the Count of O----, with his fine, ironical look, come in at this moment, he would not have minded this.

It is unfortunate for us Germans that we alone--while to the Englishman even a world's-man sets down his hare's leaps, caprioles, and gambols as so many elegant _pas_, _forward capers_ and _backward capers_ and _side-capers_--cannot possibly march along with sufficient gravity and composure.

At evening he ran in again to the harbor of his beekeeper; and his tossing heart threw out its anchor into the tranquil, blooming nature around him. The old man had meanwhile mustered up all his old papers, baptismal and marriage-certificates, and private doc.u.ments of reference for the Nuremberg Bee-father's case, and said, "Let the gentleman read them!" He wanted himself to hear it all over again. He showed also his "Trinity-ring" from Nuremberg, in which was inscribed:

"Here, by this ring, you see, Father, Son, Spirit, three, Make one sole Deity."

The Bee-father went on to make no secret of it, that he formerly, before he procured this ring in Nuremberg on a court-day, had not been able to believe in the Trinity; "but now one must be a beast, if he could not comprehend it."--The morning before his departure, Victor was in a double embarra.s.sment,--he was very desirous of having a present; secondly, of making one. What he wanted to have was a plump hour-watch,[138] won at a raffle where the ticket was twenty kreutzers.

This piece of work, whose thick hand had measured off the thread of the old man's life on the dirty dial-plate in nothing but gay, joyous bee-hours, he wanted as a Laurence's-box,[139] an amulet, an Ignatius's-plate,[140] against hours of Saul. "A manual laborer," said he, "needs really only a little sun, to go warmly and contentedly through life; but we, with our fantasy, are often as badly off on the sunny side as on the stormy side,--man stands more firmly in mud than on ether and morning-redness." He wanted to press upon the acceptance of the happy veteran of life, as purchase-money for the hour-watch and prize-medal for his lodgings, his own watch that told the seconds.

Lind had not the heart for it, but grew red. At last Victor represented to him that the second-watch was a good fire-ball[141] for the Trinity-ring, a thesis-image of that article of faith, for the _threefold_ hands made, after all, only _one_ hour.--Lind _swapped_.

Victor could neither be the mocker nor the Bunclish[142] reformer of such an erring soul, and his sympathetic whimsicality is nothing but a doubting sigh over the human brain, which has its seventy _normal years_, and over life, which is an interim of faith, and over the theological doctors'-rings, which are just such Trinity-rings, and over the theological lecture-rooms and recitation-rooms, wherein just such second-telling watches indicate and strike.

--At last he leaves Kussewitz at six o'clock in the morning. A very beautiful daughter of the Count of O---- did not come back until seven o'clock; that is fortunate for us all, for otherwise he would be still sitting there.

The Dog-post-day is run out. I know not whether I should make an extra-leaf or not. The Intercalary Day is at the door; I will therefore let it be, and only insert a Pseudo-extra-leaf, which, as is well known, differs from a canonical merely in this,--that in the apocryphal I do not give notice by any superscription, but only slip off from the history in an underhand way to mere irrelevant things.

I take up my historical thread again, and ask the reader what he thinks of Sebastian's flirtations. And how does he explain them to himself?--He replies, and philosophically indeed: "Through Clotilda; she, by her magnetizing, has put him _en rapport_ with the whole female world; she has knocked at this swarm of bees, and now there is no more peace.--A man may sit for twenty-six years cold and sighless in his book-dust; but when he has once breathed the ether of love, then is the oval hole of the heart forever shut, and he must go forth into the air of heaven and be continually gasping at it, as I see by the coming dog-post-days plainly enough." The reader has accustomed himself to a quaint philosophical style, but what he says is true; hence a maiden never sues so eagerly for a second lover for her stage as after the decease of the first, and after her vows to throw away her recruiting-license.

But how could the reader fail to hit upon still weightier reasons,[143]--1. General love, and 2. Victor's maternal marks?

1. General love is too little understood. There is as yet no description of it extant but mine,--namely, in our days, reading-cabinets, dancing-halls, concert-halls, vineyards, coffee-tables, and tea-tables are the forcing-houses of our hearts and the wire-mills of our nerves; the former are too big, the latter too fine. Now when, in these marriage-seeking and marriageless times, a young man, who still watches like a Jew for his female Messiah, and still is without the highest object of the heart, accidentally reads with a dancing-partner, with a lady member of his club, or an _a.s.sociee_, or sister in office, or other collaboratress, a hundred pages in the "Elective Affinities" or in the Dog-post-days,--or exchanges from three to four letters with her upon the culture of silk or clover, or on Kant's _Prolegomena_,--or sc.r.a.pes the powder from her forehead some five times with the powder-knife,--or with her, and by her side, ties up the intensely fragrant kidney-beans,--or actually at the ghostly hour (which becomes full as often the sentimental hour) quarrels with her on the first principle of morals;--then is this much certain,--that the aforesaid youth (provided _refinement_, _feeling_, and _reflection_ hold a mutual balance within him) must needs behave a little madly, and feel towards the aforesaid collaboratress (that is, if she does not by some higglings of head or heart offend against his feelers) something which is too warm for friends.h.i.+p and too _unripe_ for love,--which borders on the former, because it includes several objects, and on the latter, because of this it dies. And this is, in fact, neither more nor less than my general love, which I have otherwise called simultaneous and Tutti-[144]love. Examples are odious; else I would adduce mine. This universal love is a glove without fingers (or mitten), into which, because no part.i.tions separate the four fingers, any hand easily slips; into the partial love, or the glove proper, only a single and particular hand can squeeze itself. As I was the first to discover this fact and island, I can give it the name wherewith others will have to name and call it. It shall be christened henceforward collective or simultaneous love, though I might also, if I and Kolbe chose, let it be named preluding love,--confederate-tenderness,--general warmth,--the fidelity of adopted childhood.

To please the theologians and humor their fiddle-faddle about final causes, I throw in here the following fixed principle: I should like to see the man who, without this general love, could in our times, when paired love is, by the demands of a greater _metallic_ and _moral_ capital, made more rare, hold out three years.

2. The second cause of Victor's so easily falling in love with women was his maternal mark,--i. e. a resemblance to his own and every mother. Besides, he a.s.serted that his ideas had exactly the pace--that is, the leap--of woman's, and that he had, in fact, a great deal of woman in him; at least, women resemble him in this,--that their love springs up through talking and intercourse. Their love, it may safely be said, has not much oftener begun than ended in hatred and coldness.

An imposed and hated bridegroom makes often a loved husband. "I will,"

he used to say in Hanover, "get into her heart's ears, if not into her heart. Could Nature, then, have built into the female bosom two such s.p.a.cious heart-chambers--one can turn round therein--and two such neat heart's-alcoves--the heart's treasure-bag I have not yet touched upon--merely for this purpose, that a man's soul should hire these four apartments all alone without a mother's son beside, as a female soul inhabits the four cerebral chambers of the head's female suite? Quite impossible! and in fact they do no such thing: but (but whoever is afraid of immoderate wit, let him now step out of my track) in the two wings of this rotunda and in the side-buildings everything takes up its quarters that goes in, i. e. more than comes out--as in a toll-house or pigeon-house there is a constant coming and going--one cannot count, if one is there to see--it is a beautiful _temple_ in which there is _right of thoroughfare_.--Such regard not the few who so shut themselves up as to give the chief box of the heart to only a single lover, and merely the two side boxes to a thousand friends."

Nevertheless Jean Paul never could succeed--though there might be ever so much surplus room--even so far as to get into the heart's ears, which, to be sure, is the very least thing. Because his face looks too meagre, his complexion too sallow, his head is much fuller than his pocket, and his income that of a t.i.tular-mining-superintendency: so they quarter the good rogue merely in the _coldest_ place away up under the eaves of the _head_ not far from the hair-pins,[145]--and there he is still sitting now and laughing out (in writing) his Eleventh Chapter....

12. DOG-POST-DAY.

Polar Fantasies.--The singular Isle of Union.--One more Bit from previous History.--The Stettin-Apple as Coat-of-Arms.

We are living now in the dark middle-ages of this Biography, and reading on toward the enlightened eighteenth century or Dog's-day.

Still, even in this twelfth, as in the night before a fair day, great sparks fly. "Spitz," said I, "eat me out of what thou wilt, only enlighten the world."

Sebastian hastened on Sat.u.r.day with joyful soul under an overclouded heaven to the island of Union. He could arrive there, if he did not delay, before the cloudiness was absorbed. Under a blue heaven, like Schickaneder[146] he brought out the Tragedies, but under an ashen-gray one the comedies, of his inner man. When it rained, he absolutely laughed out. Rousseau built up in his brain an _emotional_ stage, because he cared neither to go out of the coulisse nor into a box of actual life; but Victor had in his pay between the bony walls of his head a _comic_ theatre of the Germans, merely for the sake of not ridiculing _actual_ men; his humor was as ideal as the virtue and sensibility of other people. In this mood he delivered (like a ventriloquist) purely internal discourses to all Potentates;--he posted himself on the bench of Knights with church-visitation-discourses,--on the bench of the cities with funeral-discourses,--in the Papal chair he held forth in straw-wreath[147]-discourses to the _virgin_ Europe and the Ecclesiastical _bride_. The potentates had all, to answer him again, but one may imagine _how_--when he, like a minister from his prompter's hole put everything into their mouths;--and then, to be sure, he went his way and made fun of every one of them.

Mandeville says in his Travels, that at the North Pole in the winter-half of the year every word freezes, but in the summer-half thaws out again and is audible. This intelligence Victor pictured out to himself on the way to the island; we will lay our ears to his head and listen to the inner buzzing.

"Mandeville and I are not at all obliged to explain why at the North Pole words, as well as spittle, turn to ice as they fall, just as quicksilver does there; but we are obliged to reason from the phenomenon. If a laughing heir wishes there long years to his testator: the good man does not hear the wish sooner than the following spring, which may already have laid him dead. The best Christmas sermons do not edify good souls before haying-time. Vainly does the Polar court lay its New-Year's wishes before _Serenissimo_; he hears them not, till warm weather, and by that time half of them have already miscarried.

They ought, however, to place a _circular stove_ as speaking-trumpet in the antechamber, so that one might hear in the _warmth_ the court speaker. An oratorical brother, without a stove-heater, would there be a defeated man. The faro-player, to be sure, vents his curses on St.

Thomas's day; but not until St. John's day, when he has already won again, do they begin to travel;[148] and one might make summer-concerts out of the winter ones without any instruments: all one has to do is to seat one's self in the hall. From what other cause can it arise that the Polar wars are often carried on half-years before the declaration of war, except from this, that the declaration issued in winter does not make itself heard till _good weather_?--And so, too, one cannot hear anything of the winter-campaigns of the Polar armies till during the summer-campaigns. I, for my part, should prefer to travel to the Pole so as to be there only in winter, merely for the sake of uttering real insults to the people's, particularly the court-retinue's, face; by the time they came at last to hear them, the defamer would be snugly ensconced again at Flachsenfingen.--Their winter-amus.e.m.e.nts are not to blame for it, if the Northern administration fails to propose and decide a mult.i.tude of the weightiest things: but only during the canicular holidays is the voting to be heard; and then, too, can the decisions of the chamber upon matters of grace and _forest-law_ take shape in speech. But, O ye saints, if I at the Pole--while the sun was in Capricorn and my heart in the sign of the Crab--should fall down before the fairest woman, and in the longest night make to her declarations of love all night long, which, however, in a third of a third[149] a.s.sumed the form of ice and reached her in a frozen state,--i. e. did not reach her ears at all,--what should I do in summer, when I had already grown cold and already possessed her, if at the very hour in which I was hoping to have a good quarrel with her, now, in the midst of the scolding, my Capricorn-love-declarations should begin to thaw out and to utter themselves? I could do nothing with any composure, but to make the rule, Let any one be tender at the Pole, but only in Aries or Cancer. And if, finally, the transfer of a Princess should take place at the Pole, and, in fact, at that point where the earth does not move, which is best suited to the twofold inactivity of a Princess and a lady, and if the transfer should actually occur in a hall, where every one, particularly Zeusel, had in the long winter evenings slandered her; then, when the air in the hall began to repeat the slanders, and Zeusel in his distress sought to escape,--then would I pat his shoulder in a friendly manner and say, Whither away, my friend?"--

"To Grosskussewitz, I help in the catching department," replied the veritable beadle of St. Luna, who behind some masonry had with one hand unclasped a book and with the other b.u.t.toned up a wallet. Victor felt a happy pressure upon his heart at an antique from St. Luna. He asked him about everything with an eagerness that seemed as if he had been away for an eternity _a parte ante_.[150] The reader who b.u.t.toned up his wallet became an author, and drew up at sight for the gentleman the year-books, i. e. hour-books of what had since occurred in the village.

Into twenty questions Victor involved the one he had to put about Clotilda, and learned that she had been hitherto every day at the Parson's. This vexed him. "As if," thought he, "I had not strength of soul enough to look upon a friend's love,--and then too, as if----." In fact, he thought, at such a distance, he was the more at liberty to think of her.

The reading constable was a reader under my jurisdiction: the book which he carried about on his poaching-expeditions after thieves was the _Invisible Lodge_.[151] Victor requested the First Part to be handed to him: the Beadle was in the Second, just at the Pyramid, at the moment of the first kiss. Our hero made more and more rapid strides in reading and in walking, and ended book and walk together.

The island stood before him!--Here, on this island, my reader, open both eyes and ears!... Not that any memorable things presented themselves,--for these would of themselves make their way into half-open ears and pupils,--but for the very reason that only everyday matters are to be recorded.

His Lords.h.i.+p stood alone on the sh.o.r.e of the sea which flowed round the island, and awaited and received him with a seriousness which veiled his friendliness, and with an emotion which still wrestled with his wonted coldness. He was going now to cross over to the island, and yet Victor saw no means of transportation. There was no boat there; nor would it have been practicable to get one off, because iron spikes stood under the water in such numbers and direction that no boat could move. The guard that had hitherto been stationed on the sh.o.r.e to protect the island against the destructive curiosity of the populace was to-day removed. The father went with his son slowly around the sh.o.r.e, and dislodged out of their beds, one after another, twenty-seven stones which lay at equal distances from each other. The island had been constructed _before_ his Lords.h.i.+p's blindness, and _then_ was not yet prohibited to strangers; but during that affliction he had caused its interior to be completed and concealed by unknown nocturnal workmen. During the tour round the island Victor saw its fruit-espaliers of high tree-stems, which seemed to direct their shadows and voices toward the interior of the island, and whose foliage-work the tossing waves sprinkled with their broken suns and stars; bean-trefoils clasped the pine-trees, and round the cones ringlets of purple blossoms played their antics; the silver-poplar bowed down under the enthroned oak; fiery bushes of Arabian beans blazed from farther in out of leafy curtains; trees, grafted by approach, on double stems latticed up the avenues from the eye; and by the side of a fir, which overtopped all the summits, was a taller one, which had been bent down by storms half over the water, and which rocked itself above its grave. White columns lifted up in the middle of the island a Grecian temple, immovable above all the wavering treetops.--Sometimes a stray tone seemed to run through the green Holy of Holies. A tall, black gate reached to the tops of the pines, and, painted with a white sun-disk, looked toward the east, and seemed to say to man, Pa.s.s through me; not only thy Creator, but thy brother, has worked, here!--