Jean Paul

“ This godfather blew in the Unter-Scheerau Concert, in order, with his flute, to accompany the heavenly voice of a very young Fraülein von Röper, whose throat could often hardly be distinguished from the flute. The whole soul of this damsel is a nightingale's tone under an overhanging curtain of blossoms; her body is a falling, heavenly-pure snowflake, which lasts only in the ether and melts away on the filthy ground. The flutist's eyes and heart were arrested, during the pauses, by a beautiful child, who was lost in a dreamy, phantasying gaze of rapturous attention: it was Gustavus. ”

“ Thou teachest me, dear Philippina, that the noblest feelings do not always exclude vanity, and that, except the business of loving thee, I can have no better than that of scolding thee--and thy medical adviser, Fenk, too, who indulges toward thee in too great a degree his reckless humor; fortunately she is still at an age, when maidens always love the one they have talked with longest, and when their heart, like the magnet, lets the old iron drop, when one applies to it a new one.
Beata and Gustavus touched each other's sore souls like two snow-flakes ”

“ For two days he was sick and his fancies transported him into the robbers'-caves and catacombs of the degraded----a new proof that the fever images of poor mortals persecuted by their torments from the sick bed into the grave are not always the warrants and transcripts of their inner selves!--Martyred brothers! how I love you and the tender-hearted Gustavus at this moment, when my fancy peers in among you all and sees how, driven about in the zig-zag of destiny, you stand with your wounds and tears, wearily beside each other, embracing, bewailing--burying one another! ”

“ Death will give me his hand and lead me away--the days beyond the earth will purify me for virtue and thee----then come, Beata, then, when an angel shall have borne thee through thy earthly evening twilight into the second world, then at last will a heart, broken here below, but healed up yonder, meet thine and sink on thy bosom and yet not die with rapture, and I shall say once more: 'Take me again, beloved soul, I, too, am blessed!'--all earthly wounds will vanish, the circle of Eternity will embrace and bind us together!... ”

“ On a table lay the black hand of a dyer, upon whose color the Doctor was about to make experiments.... What a scene for a reconciliation and a leave taking; three looks made and sealed the former,--even looks, in this naked disembodiment of souls, speak too loud a language--but when Gustavus, transported by the finest enthusiasm above fear and suspicion, announced to his friend the latter; when he made known to him, who had till now no idea of it, his new neighborhood and the loss of the old one, the friend had flown away and a black foe sprang up out of the ashes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Angel of tears and of patience! Thou that art oftener about men! Oh, forget my heart and my eye and let them bleed--indeed they do so willingly;--but tranquillize, like death, the heart and the eye of my friend, and show them on the earth nothing but the heavens beyond it. Ah, angel of tears and of patience! Thou knowest the eye and the heart, which pours itself out for him, thou wilt bring his soul before them, as one sets out flowers under the summer rain! But do it not, if it makes him too sad! O, angel of patience! I love thee! I know thee! I shall die in thy arms! ”

“ The dark, cloudy, dimly gleaming ideas, which the universal philosopher demands of all sensations, must glide slowly over the soul or stand perfectly still, if it is to enjoy itself; just as clouds that move slowly betoken fair weather, while flying ones indicate foul. "There are," said Beata, "virtuous days when one pardons everything and has all power over one's self, when joy seems to kneel down in the heart and pray that it may remain there longer, and when all is cleared up and illumined within us;--then when one weeps over it for joy this grows so great that all is gone by again." ”

“ The sun beams, all dew-drops sparkle beneath it, eight tears of joy descend with the milder image of the sun, and four human beings stand blissful and touched with emotion on an earth which lies so far from heaven! Veiled Destiny! will our death be like that of Gustavus? Veiled destiny! that sittest behind our earth and behind a mask and lea vest us time to be--ah! when death dissolves us and a great Genius has lifted us out of the vault into heaven, then when its suns and joys overpower our soul, wilt thou give us also there a familiar human breast, on which we may open our feeble eyes? ”

“ In men of lively fancy, as in hot lands or on high mountains, all extremes lie nearer together: with Gustavus rapture tended every moment to become melancholy; and joy, love, and all the emotions with which the fair dancers inspired him, he would fain bear to his one darling, who staid apart in solitude. It seemed to him, however, as if not all of these made her place good so much as the Resident Lady. Even the play, which was associated with her and in which he had acted for her coronation, made her more dear to him; nay, this her birthday was in his eyes one of her charms. ”

“ 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 façon 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. ”

“ Gustavus awoke, on the morning after the declaration of love, not from his sleep--for into that, after such a royal-shot in human life, only a human badger or badgeress could fall--but from the ring and roar of joy in his ears. Raptures danced a reel around his inner eye, and his consciousness was hardly equal to his enjoyment. What a morning! Never did the earth come before him in such bridal finery. Everything pleased him, even Oefel, even Oefel's bragging about Beata's love. ”

“ The gladder I have been in any hour, or week, so much the stormier was the next. Like flowers is man: the more violent the tempest is going to be, so much the more perfume do they exhale." "You must not invite us any more, Herr Doctor," said Beata smiling, but her eye swam, however, in something more than joy.
Amidst the deepening red of the heavens the sun stepped upon his last stair, environed with tinted clouds. He and the Alpine horns vanished in the same instant. One cloud paled after another and the highest still hung transfused with the evening-glow. ”

“ In Gustavus's eye stood the first tear of joy--his heart turned over--he believed, even now he was dying of the tones.
O music! Lingering echo from a remote world of harmony! Sigh of the angel within us! When the word is speechless, and the embrace and the eye, even the weeping one, and when our dumb hearts lie solitary behind the grating of the breast; O, then it is through thee alone they cry to each other in their prisons, and their distant sighs meet and mingle and cheer them in their wilderness! ”

“ Ottomar received him with a tenderness which one finds in such an irresistible degree only in intense characters, and said with a low voice: "He celebrated the dying day of all the seasons, and to-day was that of the after-summer." On their way to the palace they passed by the gardener, who did not take off his hat--then by the empty clothes on the grave, which still lay under the flowers, and by the pianist who was still playing the song: "O youth adown the brook of time." As we find solemnity almost alone in books, seldom in life, in the latter it leaves so much the stronger an impression. ”

“ O in this winter of sorrow no Jacob's ladder of enthusiasm will lift me to the heights whence I may survey and sketch the blooming landscape of thy life, and I shall write about thee little, in order to take thee the of oftener in my arms!
And you, ye frightful souls, who count a misstep of which Gustavus feels as if he must die, as among your distinctions and delights, you who, not like him, lose you own innocence, but murder that of others, dare I defile him by your neighborhood on my paper? What will you yet make out of our century? ”