Jean Paul

“ Emanuel showed him God and love everywhere mirrored, but everywhere transformed,—in the light, in—colors, in the scale of living creatures, in the blossom and in human beauty, in the pleasures of animals, in the thoughts of men and in the circles of worlds; for either everything or nothing is his shadow. So the sun paints its image on all creatures,—great in the ocean, many-colored in the dew-drop, small on the human retina, as mock-sun on the cloud, red on the apple, silvery on the stream, seven-colored in the falling rain, and gleaming over the whole moon and over all its other worlds. ”

“ He could only talk his way into love, not see it. Only words winged by virtue and sensibility are the bees which, in such cases, carry the pollen of love from one soul into another. But such a love, of the better kind, is annihilated by the least immoral alloy. How could it form and filter up in a defiled heart, filled with high-treason against a friend?
Victor would have gone to the palace as early as half past nine, but the Lady Chamberlain had not yet combed out her eyebrows and the King Charles's spaniel.
Seebass brought a billet to Flamin:—
I cannot see you, my dearest, to-day. ”

“ There are certain precious minutes of rapture—ah, why not years?—when an inexpressible love towards all human creatures flows through thy whole life, and opens thy arms softly to every brother. The least that Victor could do, whose heart was on the sunny side of love, was, if any one met him near a mountain, to turn out for him toward the steep side,—not to pass by any one who was fishing, for fear of throwing a frightening shadow on the water,—to wander slowly through a flock of sheep, and, if a child was shy of him, to make a long circuit aside. ”

“ But to you, ye good, seldom requited female souls,—ye who have a second conscience of your own, beside the first, for pure manners,—whose single virtue, when one looks at it nearly, is seen to bloom up into one wreath made of all the virtues, as nebulous stars, seen through glasses, fall into millions,—ye who, so changeable in all purposes, so unchangeable in the noblest one, go from the earth with unrecognized wishes, with forgotten worth, with eyes full of tears and love, with hearts full of virtue and grief,—to you, dear ones, I gladly tell the little dream and my long story!... ”

“ The best wedded love is not what the maidenly was; and so, too, is there in inspiration and delineation a maiden muse. Ah, all first things in poesy, as in life, whatever else may be wanting to them, are so innocent and good; and all blossoms come so pure-white into the world, in which by and by,—as Goethe says, [2] even of material colors, "The sun tolerates no white." Therefore shall all the ardent words of my inspiration for Emanuel's dying and Victor's loving and weeping, and for Clotilda's sorrow and silence, stand evermore in Hesperus uncooled and unchanged. ”

“ He staggered, without following any path, down into the village, with the pewit in its great circles, and the may-chafer in its little ones, sweeping around him. At the foot of the mountain the hybrid day grew darker,—in the starry heaven the curtain rose,—the vapor of evening, which had gone up hot, fell cold, as men do, back to the earth: one more loud lark went circling upward, as the last echo of day, over the mountain.
At last he neared Emanuel's linden. He would rather have embraced him under the great heavens than under the close ceiling of a room. ”

“ The good, dying Victor, crushed with the anguish of affection, melting into pity, longed to—fall upon the dear, desolated bosom, and to say more than the sigh, "O God, my good father!" But his Lordship gently repelled him, and the tear of gall, unshed, was stifled by the eyelids. His Lordship resumed, but more coldly: "Think not that I am specially affected; think not that I desire a joy or deprecate a sorrow: I live now without hope, and without hope I die." ”

“ The shadow of this great man stood, as it were, projected upon the night, hovering and erect before him, and saying, "Dear one, I see thy inward weeping, thy sacred longing, thy desolate heart, and thy outstretched, trembling arms; but all is in vain; thou wilt never find me, nor I thee." He gazed at the stars, whose exalting science his teacher had even then instilled into his youthful soul; he said to Clotilda: "The topography of the heavens should be a piece of our religion; a woman ought to learn the catechism and Fontenelle by heart." ”

“ Then Victor awoke as out of a dream and out of life, and clasped the harmonious, fleeting airs to his languishing bosom, and, amidst the gushing tears which, like a rain-cloud, veiled from him the whole landscape, he cried out, beside himself: "Ah, Emanuel, come!—Ah, I thirst for thee—Float no more in sound, thou blessed one; take thy deposed human face, and appear to me, and slay me by a shudder, and keep me in thy arms!" ”

“ They reclined on the earth beside each other on the grassy bank, solitary, silent, sad, before the darkly glimmering universe. Victor could hear the labored breathing of the diseased breast, and the future grave on this mountain seemed to open at his side. Oh! if it is bitter to stand by the bed wherein a loved and fading countenance lies with the hues of death, far more bitter is it, in the midst of the scenes of health, behind the erect form of the dear one, to hear the grave-digger Death softly at his work, and to think, as often as the loved face looks joyful, "Ah, be still more joyful! ”

“ Emanuel, art thou not tranquil and gentle and indulgent? Does not thy soul yearn to love all men, and is not a single heart too narrow for it to shut itself up therein with its love, as a bee is shut up in a tulip when it folds itself to sleep? Hast thou not had enough of the repeating-work of our merry bells and mourning-bells, and art thou not weary of the family likeness of all evenings and times? Dost thou not look, out from this fleeting earth over the long way above thee, that thou mayst not grow nauseous and giddy, as one for the same reason looks out of a carriage into the road? ”

“ Victor saw beside him the happy one, who was his friend, looked upon him with moist eyes, and said, "Of that thou wast worthy!" But now twenty rowels spurred him to follow Agatha to the palace;—the pen-and-ink drawing of the artist; the arrangement of dresses; the relationship; the desire which every man has to see the Grace and Infanta of his friend; the desire which not every one has, but he had, to speak with any one for the first time (rather than for the eighth time) ; and, most of all, the evening of yesterday. ”

“ The feeling for the beloved of a friend carries with it an unspeakable sweetness and moral tenderness. For Victor I answer, in this matter, that he understood, indeed, how a friend can sacrifice his love to another, but not how the other can accept the offering; but for Flamin I cannot stand security that he is cool enough, and a sufficient connoisseur of men, to regard the prize-medals which Victor stamps upon Clotilda, and upon which he sets her beautiful face and his coat of arms, as only just so many coins de confiance, and as pledges of brotherly fidelity. ”

“ And this morning renewed in his heart the painful likeness of four things,—life, a day, a year, a journey, which resemble each other in their fresh, exultant beginning, in the oppressive interlude, in the weary, sated close.—
Outside in the copse, in the background of the woodland, Nature unrolled before him her altar-piece, miles long, with its chains of hills, with its dazzling country-houses, which had decked themselves with gardens as with festoons, and with the miniature-colors of the flowerets which played on the silver line of beauty traced by the brooks. ”

“ The crowned bridegroom January was received by her with as much warm decorum as if he were his own ambassador of the first rank. For January, the disk of whose heart charged itself full of sparks on the electrizing-cushion of a fair cheek or a bosom-handkerchief, had for that very reason towards Agnola, with whom merely from policy he had concluded the concordats of marriage, all the warmth of the month after which he was named. Towards Victor, the son of her hereditary foe, the successor to the house-thief of princely favor, she cherished, as is easy to guess, true tenderness. ”

“ Ah, that man should receive the fairest love precisely at the time when he does not yet understand it!—alas that not until late in life's year, as he contemplates with a sigh the love of other parents and children, he should say hopefully to himself, "Ah, thus did mine certainly love me too!"—alas that then the bosom to which thou wouldst hasten with thy thanks for half of a life, for a thousand unappreciated anxieties, for an inexpressible, never returning love, is already lying crushed under an old grave, and has lost the warm heart which so long loved thee!... ”

“ The good youth often seeks, by acts of sacrifice, to reconcile his conscience again with his thoughts. With heart-beatings of enthusiasm he awaited the moment of solitude. A garden detaches and draws together people in the easiest manner, and only in such a place should one impart secrets; Victor could soon, in an arbor which wove itself on four chestnut-trees with its blooming vein-work nest-wise over their heads, embrace his father with trembling emotion, and speak and glow for his friend with tongue and heart. His Lordship's surprise was greater than his emotion. ”

“ We stand now in the evening and see at the close of our dark day the sun go down with a red-hot glory, and promise us behind the last cloud the still, serene sabbath-day of humanity; but our posterity have yet to travel through a night full of wind, and through a cloud full of poison, till at last over a happier earth an eternal morning-wind full of blossom-spirits, moving on before the sun, expelling all clouds, shall breathe on men without a sigh. Astronomy promises the earth an eternal vernal equinox ”

“ Oppressed mortal! thou that art at once a son and a slave of the dust, how slight is the thought, the moment, the drop of blood or tear-drop, that is required to overflow thy wide brain, thy wide heart! And if a couple of blood-globules can become, now thy Montgolfier's globes and now thy Belidor's percussion-balls, [17] ah, how little earth it takes to exalt or to crush thee!
"Victor! thou? Is it thou who hast cured me, my son?" ”

“ Are we, then, all not happy?—Do not say so!—Ah, man, who, even from childhood up, has been calling after an unknown soul that grew up in one heart with his own,—that entered into all the dreams of his years, and therein gleamed from afar, and, after his waking, started his tears,—that in spring sent him nightingales, that he might think of her and long for her,—that in every tender hour visited his soul, with so much virtue, so much love, that he would so gladly have offered in his heart, as in a sacrificial chalice, all his blood to the beloved,—but who, alas! ”

“ Luna, and persuade her parents not to force her to court...
The long sleep of death closes our scars, and the short sleep of life our wounds. Sleep is the half of time which heals us. On awaking, Victor, whose fever of love had yesterday been so aggravated by sleeplessness, saw today that his sorrow had been unmoderated because his hope had been immoderate. At first he had wished,—then observed,—then assumed,—then seen,—then interpreted,—then hoped,—then sworn to it. Every little circumstance, even his share in Clotilda's nomination as maid-of-honor, had poured mild oil of love into his flame. ”

“ And as she thought so, he did it, with a hand trained by the couching-needle.
Meanwhile, if (according to Pliny) a kiss on the eye is one on the soul, the opening of a vein in that organ is no joke; but one may, while he inflicts a wound, himself get one. The poor Court-Medicus must, with his swimming, friendly eye, from which only within a few days the tear of love has been dried away, boldly gaze into the sun pent up in an eye-socket, and, what is more, softly rest his finger on the warm face, and from the fountain of tears make bright blood spurt out.... ”

“ Flamin had already trotted off at four o'clock in the afternoon, in order to avoid a leave-taking which he hated. But our Victor loved to bid farewell, and loved to tremble in the last silences of parting. "O ye poor, egoistic mortals!" he said,—"besides; this polar life is but so bald and cold; besides, we stand weeks and years near each other without stirring with the heart anything better than our blood,—only two or three glowing moments hiss and go out on the glaciers of life,—why do you still avoid everything that draws you out of your commonplace, and that reminds you how man loves? ”

“ Victor said, when in Hanover, "that poets and magistri legentes, when they pass by a chateau, make, with an envious, malicious pleasure, the remark, In there as much bread of sorrow is baked, perhaps, as in fishermen's huts. O yes, doubtless greater and harder loaves! But is the eye, out of which in the badger's kennel of a Scotchman nothing extorts a tear but the smoke of the room, worthy of a greater compassion than the tender one which, like that of an Albino, smarts at the very rays of joy, and which the spirit fills with spiritual tears? ”