Paul Heyse

“ Her lips were parted, she breathed quickly, and her nostrils quivered, while her eyes were tightly shut, as if it were all a dream from which she did not wish to wake.
"We could lead a life like that in Paradise," continued he, gently stroking with his own the two little hands that she had laid side by side on the table. "We are both of us two stray children for whom no one cares. If we should stay at home a year and a day, and never let ourselves be seen, who would inquire what had become of us? All about us people live and love and think only about themselves! ”

“ Perhaps you will not believe me, or will consider me a raving madman for betraying to you, after so short an acquaintance, a passion that has carried me beyond all bounds of propriety and decorum. But you would judge differently, if you knew in what dreariness and isolation of heart I have passed the five years since I came to Munich; that not an hour's happiness has been vouchsafed to me; that no womanly being capable of awakening a single deeper thought has come near me. It is true I have not thought it worth my while to seek for such companionship. ”

“ At last, when he really had to go--it was already past noon, but no one had taken any heed of the time--Angelica too rose in great haste.
"I will go on ahead," said she; "lovers don't go through with their leave-takings quite as quickly as we single people."
But Julie detained her. She merely gave Jansen her hand to kiss, and closed the door behind him. Then she fell on her friend's neck and kissed her, her eyes overflowing with tears.
"Forgive me my happiness!" she whispered. "It is so great I am almost afraid of it, as though I had stolen a crown!" ”

“ But it is my most serious earnest, dear old Hans. I am going to stay here with you, if you have nothing against it, in your most intimate daily companionship; and, if some day you strike your tent and wander away somewhere else, I will go too. In one word, I have put my whole past career behind me, and broken up all my old associations, so that I may begin, as I said, my whole life over again, and not be anything but what I care most to be--a free man; not make myself anything but what I have always secretly longed to be, an artist, as good or as bad a one as mother Nature will let me. ”

“ And although in the work of the artist nothing was finished but the head, her fancy saw the finished statue, and, for the first time in her life, she looked upon her own beauty, in her thoughts, with other eyes than her own, which could find nothing new or especial in it. The cruel lot that had held her apart from life in her girlish years, and the early experiences that had given her a contemptuous, if not a hostile opinion of men, had kept her mind isolated from all those feelings that usually agitate a girl's soul in its spring-time. ”

“ A fortunate man, one who lives openly and uprightly, has a right to give himself up to that noblest of all luxuries, the luxury of sacrificing himself to his convictions. If I had had a wife with a pure and noble soul, then it would have been glorious to have accepted even poverty and want in order to remain true to my ideals, and never to have moved a finger except in the service of true art. But as it was--a broken man, a disgraced life--that very stolidity that helped me to bear my fate alone, dulled my susceptibility to all that was base in my money-getting. ”

“ And suddenly it struck him as so absurd and idiotic for him to be wandering about alone in this utterly strange city, among people who cared nothing for him, separated from her who was his only love, that he could not help bursting out into a laugh, only to sigh all the more sadly the next minute.
He felt the impossibility, in his present mood, of joining his friends, who were waiting for him at a beer-cellar. Jansen was generally one of the party. But, even if everything between them had remained just as it was in the old times, Felix would have avoided him to-day. ”

“ Some cactus-plants, with great red blossoms, stood in full bloom in the window, and among them was a delicate little wire-cage, containing two white mice, who ran restlessly up and down, squeaking and looking shyly at the new faces out of their little red eyes.
The battle of Lützen stood on the easel; it was quite a vigorous work, and Felix could praise it with a good conscience. The horses, especially, reared and plunged, full of life and spirits; and the young baron could hardly believe it when the painter confessed that he had never mounted a horse in his life. ”

“ But even there not a syllable appeared to be lost.
"I know I have no right to hope for any great happiness," whispered Elfinger. "I am a poor cripple. If you reply by saying that it is a piece of audacity for me to hope, with my single eye, to find favor in the most beautiful pair of eyes that ever read in a prayer-book, I find it very natural. Yes, you will even do me a favor, Fräulein Fanny, if you will tell me so--if you will confess to me that a man who looks as I do can never win your heart. ”

“ That broke the ice between us, and, since then, I take the most inconceivable liberties with him, although my heart still continues to thump if he chances to look at me in his quiet, steady way, for a minute at a time."
Julie was silent. After some time she said, suddenly:
"It is true he has eyes such as I have never before seen in a man. One can read in those eyes that he is not happy; all his genius cannot make him glad. Don't you find it so, too? Wonderfully lonely eyes! Like a man who has lived long, years in a desert, and has seen no living soul--nothing but earth and sun. ”

“ You unite the aristocracy of blood and talent, and the fact that you have decided in favor of sculpture sets the crown to your happiness. What is life, what is all other happiness in life, but an endless series of excitements? What are all other arts but oil to the fire, fuel for the passionate soul that yearns to free itself from the trammels of the world, and seeks repose in the ideal, and, instead of repose, finds merely more inspired emotions? ”

“ It is so seldom one finds people capable of comprehending one, and from whom one need have no secrets. It is a privilege of all sovereign natures that they dare to confess all to one another--the highest as well as the lowest thoughts--for, even when we confess our weakness, we are ennobled by the boldness and daring with which we do it. Oh, my dear friend! if you knew how hard a woman has to struggle to attain that freedom which you men claim as a birthright! For how long a time do we throw away the best years of our life because of false shame, and a thousand other considerations! ”

“ Julie paused for a while with downcast eyes. "It is strange," said she, with a sigh, "how we happened to come upon these old stories! You must know, my dear, they are really very old--older than you think. I shall soon be thirty-one years old! When I first began to make these observations I was eighteen--now you can subtract for yourself. If I had married then, I might now have had a daughter twelve years old. Instead of that I am a well-preserved old maid, and my only admirer is a silly painter, who has fallen in love with me merely out of a whim for color." ”

“ If you only knew how a man felt who was yesterday in Paradise, and to-day is forced to get himself up in such a toilet as this, as if he were going to his execution. The executioner's minion, who cut my hair, has just left me. Whoever wishes to have a lock of hair of the celebrated battle-painter Maximilian Rosenbusch will find them lying about, like useless wool, on the floor of the adjoining room. O Delila, for whom I have suffered this! O Nanny, for whose sake I cut my noble hair!--for whom I dress myself in this Philistine fashion! ”

“ The moment I saw you afar off--no, you must not turn away, dear Fräulein. How can you help it, and what sin is it, if an honest artist-soul--of your own sex, too--expresses its delight in and admiration for your beauty? It seems petty to me, the way that many people keep such a gift of God hidden--or pretend to. There are some little doll-like faces, it is true, whose chief charm lies in the fact that they always seem to be ashamed of their own prettiness. ”

“ All unhappiness arises from the fact that men try to do things for which they are not fitted. If you give a million to a man born with a genius for begging, you will make him an unhappy millionaire. He can no longer exercise his talent. A virtuoso in suffering, a Stylites, or a sister of charity, for whom you should suddenly provide a healthy and comfortable life, would at once lose all individuality and so all happiness. For it is undeniable that there are men who are only conscious of their individuality when they are torturing themselves, in the coarser or finer sense of the expression. ”

“ In short, in his moments of reflection, when he neither cared to forget nor to deceive himself, he was forced to admit, with a kind of shame, that he was no longer young enough to goon looking upon life as a brilliant adventure amid shifting scenes, and that, in riper years, more depended upon the piece and the rôle which one played in it than upon the scenes and the spectators who sit before the footlights.
True, he had from the first devoted himself zealously to his new apprenticeship. But his conscience was too delicate to forget what Jansen had said in regard to his fitness for art. ”

“ Here the whole glorious creation swarms unadorned and vigorous as on the seventh day after chaos; and all that we conceal and pamper in our dapper civilization appears here in all innocence in the open light of day. Look at this brown, lusty peasant and this beautiful woman--these sleeping nymphs watched by the satyrs--this glorious throng of the blessed and the damned--all this unveiled humanity is living and acting for itself alone, and never dreams whether prudish and pedantic fools are looking on and taking umbrage at it. You know that nothing is really good or bad in itself ”

“ Self-respect is one of the most important requisites even in the acting of a comedy. When we have once taken our place among the nations of Europe, when we have rid ourselves of our dullness and tactlessness in our dealings with the outside world, when we cease to be such wretched crawlers that we will go through any humiliation for our daily-bread's sake, and cannot conduct ourselves like gentlemen, then you will see how quickly we shall find the art of acting infused into our blood--we who have been for so many centuries mere zealous animals. ”

“ My name is Aloys von Schnetz, a first-lieutenant on the retired list; as a friend of the seven liberal arts, I am allowed the honor of entering this Paradise. Inasmuch as amphibious creatures undoubtedly existed even in the garden of God, therefore a being like myself, who occupies a middle place, at once an aristocrat and a proletarian, no longer a soldier, for good reasons, and also not an artist--unfortunately for still better reasons--may be said not to be out of place among good people, of whom each has some pretty definite aims and powers. ”

“ Even the good Angelica, who to the best of our knowledge was not in love, and who rejoiced moreover in that softest of pillows, a good conscience, sat at the open window of her little virgin bower, in which a lamp was dimly burning, half through the night, twining her curls and heavily sighing and dropping into a doze, until her head would strike against the window-sash, when she would start up and begin once more to spin her sorrowful summer-night's thoughts. ”

“ This confession, which she made with her irresistible melodramatic voice, blinded me completely; and I was more convinced than ever that all the rest of the talk about her deceitfulness and coquetry, and her heartless flirting with foolish young admirers, was a lie. 'No,' I cried, folding her in my arms, 'you shall not find yourself disappointed in me, you shall not find a narrow-minded Philistine, when you thought you were giving yourself up to a free artist's soul. What lies behind you shall cast no shadow over our future. ”

“ Fate is not in the least gallant, and draws up its decrees without regard to persons. Now, when I stand before the glass, I always see the same well-known face that has lost its youth. I seem to myself like a silk dress that has hung in the closet for twelve years. When one takes it out it is still silk, but the color has faded, the folds tear when it is touched, and when it is shaken out fly the moths! ”

“ Do you believe, dear friend, that a virtue which one makes in this way out of a necessity--no matter how deserving it may be--can ever make a mortal thoroughly happy at heart?"
"Why not, when all kinds of happiness come with it, as has been the case with you? You visited Italy with that kind old lady about whom you told me such nice stories the other day; you can work at your art here in perfect freedom, without anxiety, thanks to the legacy of your motherly friend; you live in this beautiful city, in the society of friends and colleagues in art by whom you are respected--is all that nothing?" ”

“ Even to become an academic professor need not be an unattainable aim of your ambition. And if, in spite of all that, I should still continue, in my heart, to look upon you as a born dilettante, you could smile down upon me graciously, and heap coals of fire upon my head by proposing me as an honorary member of your academy. Ah! my dear boy, I tell you, if you should make a close examination of many of our most famous great men, you would bring to light little else than a disguised and beautiful dilettantism, made up of humbug, elegant trappings, and perhaps a few so-called ideas. ”

“ On the contrary, I have been continually testing my feeling during your confession, and have found that I love you now even more wholly than I did yesterday, and that I know better why I love you, if this is not a senseless thing to say. My heart is old enough to be wise, and to know why it loves any one, though my head is not quite so ready. And so, my dearest friend, I now seriously declare to you, I have not the slightest intention of ceasing to love you because so and so many years ago you made the mistake of believing another human being to be better than she really was. ”

“ Any one wandering along here by the side of the babbling brook, a small tributary of the Isar, and seeing the low cottages with their little front gardens and courtyards, and picturesque gables, might easily imagine himself transported far away from the city and set down in one of the country towns of the middle ages, so quiet and deserted are the streets and ways, and so freely does every one pursue his occupation under the eye of his neighbor, washing his linen and his salad at the same well and sitting in his shirt-sleeves before his door. ”

“ You really do not know me as I am, or as I know you, because I have seen your art and know your life, and more especially because I, as a woman who has been looking at the world for thirty-one years, know human nature much better than a man like you, who have the additional disadvantage of being an artist, and therefore blinded by a touch of beauty. ”

“ Her face was not striking at first glance; quiet, steel-gray eyes, concealing their brilliancy behind the slightly closed lids; a mouth not exactly full or rosy, but of the most beautiful form and full of character; and a chin and neck worthy of an antique statue. She seemed so completely absorbed in the study of the gallery that she did not look up as the friends approached her. It was only when they entered the alcove, and Angelica began to express her wild admiration (quite secretly, she imagined, but really loud enough to be plainly audible) , that the stranger suddenly noticed them. ”

“ True Art is homeless and without a place to lay her head. A dancing Bacchante is sure to find a lover in some rich man who will put her in some niche in his salon, and think when he looks at her of the ballet-girls who have been his associates. But Adam and Eve, before their fall, in all their rude and vigorous strength, with the fragrance of the fresh earth lingering, as it were, about them--they are as useless for a decoration as they would be for the altar of a chapel. ”

“ For the longer I can study this heavenly face, the happier I shall be. Just see this figure, Jansen. Have you often come across anything like it?"
"The lady has style," remarked Rosenbusch, assuming as cool an air as possible. "However, she doesn't seem to be particularly young, or else your dead coloring gives her ten years too many."
"You are a strange mortal, Herr von Rosebud," answered the painter, angrily. "In art you rave over nothing but old leather, but in life no school-girl's complexion is rosy and satiny enough to suit you. ”