Ludwig Tieck

“ The Spaniard laught, and askt:
— Has he never been in love?
— After his fashion, replied Emilius very gravely; as if he were making game of love and of himself, with a dozen women at a time, and, if you would believe his words, raving after every one of them: but ere a week passes over his head, they are all spunged out of it, and not even a blot is left behind. ”

“ Clouds were rolling along over the pinnacles of the tower and the high roof of the church; the everlasting stars lookt down through the midst of them gleaming with mild serenity; and Emilius drew his thoughts resolutely away from these nightly abominations, and mused on the beauty of his unknown. He again entered the peopled streets, and bent his steps toward the brightly illuminated ballroom, from which voices, and the rattling of carriages, and now and then, when there was a pause, the clamorous music, came sounding to his ears. ”

“ Whom should he love? whom could he love? answered Roderick. He despises all the daughters of earth; and if he had a favorite, and were ever to suspect that she had not an angelical contempt for dress, or liked dancing at times as well as star-gazing, it would break his heart: still more tremendous would it be, if she were ever so unlucky as to sneeze.
Meanwhile Emilius was again standing among the crowd: but on a sudden he was seized by that heart-burning, that shivering, which had already so often come over him in the midst of a multitude in a like state of excitement. ”

“ Emilius came forth from the dark niche shuddering, and lifted his looks to the image of the Virgin with the Child.
— Before thine eyes, thou mild and blessed one, he said half aloud, are these miscreants audaciously holding their market and trafficking in their infernal drugs. But as thou embracest thy child with thy love, so doth heavenly Love encircle us all with its protecting arms; we feel their touch; and our poor hearts beat joyously and tremulously toward a greater heart that will never forsake us. ”

“ This poor wretch is better and worthier than I; and misery is his nurse, and mockery and venomous scorn alone wish him joy on his wedding. Every delicacy that is placed before me, every draught out of my costly goblets, the soft luxury of my bed, my wearing gold and rich garments, will seem to me like so many sins, now that my eyes have seen how the world hunts down many thousand thousand miserable beings, who are hungering after the dry bread I throw away, and who never know what a good meal is. ”

“ We shall meet again tomorrow; good bye; a pleasant evening to you.
He did not wait for an answer, but ran down stairs.
When Emilius was alone, he tried to forget his anger, and to look only at the laughable side of his friend's behaviour. His eyes rested on the shining, finely wrought dagger, and he said:
— What must be the feelings of a man who could thrust this sharp iron into the breast of an enemy! ”

“ How tiresome it is when a man is made up of nothing but whims!
— Doubtless! replied his irritated friend; and you afford me ample opportunity for finding that it is so. I fancied that after our agreement you would have given me this one evening; but ——
— But it is the carnival, you know, interposed the other; and all my acquaintances, and divers fair ladies are expecting me at the grand ball tonight. Rely upon it, my dear friend, it is mere disease in you that makes you so unreasonably averse to all such amusements. ”

“ The stranger, who was well-bred and saw Emiliuses meaning, withdrew: but Roderick with the utmost indifference put on his mask again, took his stand before the glass, and exclaimed:
— Verily, I am a most hideous figure, am I not? After all my pains it is a tasteless, disgusting device.
— That there can be no question about! answered Emilius in vehement displeasure. Making a caricature of yourself, and stupefying your senses, are among the pleasures you are the fondest of driving at. ”

“ Some mischief-loving servants, lads and girls, tittered and laught, and jeered the bridal couple, especially the ladies' maids, who thought themselves far handsomer, and saw themselves infinitely better drest, and wondered how people could be so vulgar.
A shudder came over Emilius: he lookt round for Roderick; but the latter as usual had already run away. An impertinent fop, with a head pilloried in a high starcht neckcloth, a footman to one of the visitors, eager to shew off his wit, shoved up to Emilius, giggling, and cried:
— There your honour, what says your honour to this grand couple? ”

“ The bride and bridegroom were not present; she being still engaged in dressing, while the young husband was sauntering by himself down an avenue some way off, musing upon his happiness.
— What a pity it is, said Anderson, that we are to have no music! All our ladies are beclouded at the thought, and never in their whole lives longed for a dance so much as today, when it is quite out of the question: it is far too painful to his feelings. ”

“ I hear music in the church over the way, answered Roderick; and some how or other I have mist this hour every evening since we have been here. Today it comes just in the nick: I can cover my dress with your cloak, hiding my mask and turban under it; and so, when the music is over, I may go straight to the ball.
Emilius muttered between his teeth as he went for the cloak to his wardrobe, and then, forcing himself to put on an ironical smile, he gave it to Roderick who was already on his legs. ”

“ Merely to avoid being suspected of stinginess, or of giving unwillingly, or of caring about money, he flings it right and left by handfuls; with all his large fortune he is for ever poor and distrest, and is the bubble of all such as are not gifted with precisely the same sort of magnanimity which for himself he is determined to attain to. To be his friend is the task of all tasks: for he is so touchy, you need only cough, or eat with your knife, or not sip your drink as delicately as a cow, or even pick your teeth, to offend him mortally.
— Was he never in love? askt his country friend. ”

“ Can it be true, Alexia, that certain rites and spells, as those old wild stories, in which I could never put faith, tell us, can fetter the free will of man, and make love and hatred grow up in the heart? ”

“ The whispering of trees, the murmuring of brooks, the soft notes of the harp, and the song that gushes forth in all its richness and sweetness from an overflowing bosom, are the sounds in which love dwells. ”

“ Somebody has said, that to a deaf person who cannot hear the music a party of dancers must look like so many patients for a madhouse: but to my mind this detestable music itself, this twirling and whirling and pirouetting of half a dozen notes, each treading on its own heels, in those odious tunes, which ram themselves into our memory, nay, I might say, mix themselves up with our very blood, so that one cannot get rid of the taint for many a woful day after ”

“ Emilius sank still deeper in thought.
— Come with me to clear up your spirits, said Roderick, down to the village, where you will find another couple; for you must not fancy that yours is the only wedding on which today's sun is to shine. A young clown, finding his time lag heavily in the house with an ugly old maid, for want of something better to do did what makes the booby think himself bound in honour to turn her into his wife. ”

“ It is not these candles alone, moulded beneath the midnight darkness of the new moon, and drencht with human blood, it is not the mere uttering magical words and incantations, that can give you the mastery over the soul of another: there is much more belonging to such works, as the initiated well know. ”

“ But Emilius was become restless and absent; his eyes wandered, more especially toward the upper gallery, where the servants who lived in the top story were engaged in a variety of occupations.
— Who is that ugly old woman? he at length askt, that is so busy up there, and is coming back again every moment in her grey cloak?
— She is one of my servants, said his bride; she is to overlook and manage my chambermaids and other girls.
— How can you endure to have anything so hideous perpetually at your elbow? replied Emilius. ”

“ He started on hearing musical sounds roll down through the air from above, but grew calm again when he found they were only the soft notes of some bugles, travelling along with a pleasant murmur over the shrubs and through the park, and dying away on the distant hills. Roderick had placed the musicians in the gallery overhead, and Emilius was satisfied with this arrangement.
Toward the end of the dinner he called the butler, and, turning to his bride, said:
— My love, let poverty also have a share of our superfluities. ”

“ And frisk caper skip prance dance yourselves out of breath!
For your life is all art,
Love has given you no heart:
So hurrah till you plunge into bottomless death.
He had ended, and was standing by the window. Then she came into the opposite chamber, lovely, as he had never yet seen her: her brown hair floated freely, and played in wanton ringlets about the whitest of necks ”

“ Several persons began making pretty speeches to their host on his kind and charitable heart; and Roderick's neighbour lispt about the sweetness of romantic compassion and sentimental magnanimity.
— O say no more! cried Emilius indignantly: this is no good action; it is no action at all; it is nothing. When swallows and linnets feed on the crumbs that are thrown away from the waste of this meal, and carry them to their young in their nest, shall not I remember a poor brother, who needs my help? ”

“ In good truth one might smile at the unbelievers whose imagination is too barren for ghosts and fearful goblins, and such births of night as we see in sickness, to grow up in it, or who stare and marvel at Dante's descriptions; when the commonest everyday life is perpetually paralysing our eyesight with some of these portentous distorted masterpieces among the works of horrour. ”

“ He never danced at all, and hardly staid ten minutes in the ballroom: for he soon fell in with his friend Anderson, who is just come up from the country: their conversation turned upon books; and as Anderson has never seen the new poem, Roderick would not rest till he had made them open one of the back rooms for him; and there he is now sitting beside a solitary taper, holding his companion fast, and declaiming the whole poem to him, not omitting even the invocation to the muse.
— It's just like him, said Emilius; he is always the child of the moment. ”

“ As though mad, with rolling eyes and wrencht face, she darted along the gallery, and blinded by terrour could find neither door nor staircase; and immediately after dasht Emilius in chase of her, with the sparkling Turkish dagger in his high-uplifted hand.
Now she was at the end of the passage ... she could go no further ... he reacht her. His maskt friends and the grey old woman were running after him. But in his fury he had already pierced her bosom, and cut across her white neck; her blood spouted forth into the radiance of the setting sun. ”

“ No! he said to himself; no heart that loves can willingly expose itself to this dreary hubbub of noise, in which every longing and every tear is scoft and mockt at by the wild laughter of pealing trumpets. ”

“ He will have it that every disease is something different and distinct in every particular patient, that there is no arranging it under any class, and that it is absurd to think of healing it by attending to ancient practice, and still more so by what is called theory: he would much rather apply to an old woman, and make use of sympathetic cures. In like manner he despises all foresight in other matters, and everything like regularity, moderation, and common sense: the last above all he holds in special abhorrence, as the antipode and arch-enemy to all enthusiasm. ”

“ Is this the way to look in the carnival? I am come with my dear young officer here to carry you off: there is a grand ball tonight at the masquerade-rooms; and, as I know you have forsworn ever putting on any other suit than that which you always wear of the devil's own colour, come with us black as you are; for it is getting somewhat late.
Emilius felt angry, and said:
— It seems that according to custom you have totally forgotten your engagement. ”

“ God meant the ugly to live as well as the handsome; and she is such a good honest creature, she may be of great use to us.
On rising from table everybody gathered round the bridegroom, again wisht him joy, and urgently begged him to let them have a ball. The bride too said, breathing a gentle kiss on his forehead:
— You will not deny your wife's first request, my beloved ”

“ He is the best fellow under the sun; but all my painstaking to break him of this perverseness has been utterly vain and thrown away; and if I would not earn scurvy thanks for my goodwill, I must even let him follow his own devices.
— Might not a physician do him good? remarkt Anderson.
— It is one of his whims, replied Roderick, to entertain a supreme contempt for the whole medical art. ”

“ Not that exactly, answered Roderick: he has only been spoilt by the indulgence of his overfond parents and by his own. He has accustomed himself to let his heart ebb and flow as regularly as the sea; and if this motion is ever at a stop, he cries out a miracle! and would offer a prize to the philosopher who should give a satisfactory explanation of so marvellous a phenomenon. ”

“ They had been waiting a long time for him in the hall, that the ceremony might be performed; the bride had grown uneasy; her parents had gone in search of him through the garden and park: at length he returned, lighter for having wept away his agitation; and the solemn knot was tied.
The company then walkt from the hall on the ground floor to the open gallery, to sit down to dinner. The bride and bridegroom led the way, and the rest followed in their train. Roderick offered his arm to a young girl who was lively and talkative. ”