Paul Heyse

“ He had to pass by Irene's hotel, and he looked up at her dark windows, and felt surprised that this parting look brought no tears to his eyes. Indeed he felt as if he were one who had bidden farewell to life; and only he who lives can sympathize. The dog slept patiently at his feet. When the carriage jolted over a stone, the strings of the guitar sounded, and the sleeping animal growled wonderingly in his dreams.
It was on the stroke of nine when the carriage drew up before the back entrance to the little garden of Paradise. ”

“ But even now I was still very far from feeling anything like love, not even as much as I had sometimes felt in the most trivial of my adventures. In the midst of my sportive chat with this woman I felt at the bottom of my soul an unconquerable aversion toward her, indeed something almost like a secret horror of her--as if a presentiment were warning me who it was that sat opposite me. But a demon drove me on to play to the end of the rôle I had once undertaken, for, as I persuaded myself--mad fool that I was!--my honor was at stake! ”

“ Why, I do not dare even to go out to the lake! I am to be cut off from light and air, and left to smother in the Munich dust! In other words, I am to condemn myself to perpetual imprisonment for a crime of which I do not even repent. No! I owe something to myself as well. Why shouldn't I show that I have put the whole affair behind me once for all, and go on living as though certain eyes were no longer in the world? Cannot one person ignore another? ”

“ Do you know a more terrible enemy of human happiness than this lie--this cold, rouged, heartless, unnatural lie? If she only hated me as immeasurably as she pretends to love me, truly, I myself should think it too soon to despair. A mortal can become satiated even with hate; and malice, too, is something of which one can get tired. But what is to be hoped when it is all merely a game, and the innermost nature of one's enemy is the nature of a comedian? Every spark of conscience has been extinguished in this wretched woman since her girlhood; her life is to her nothing but a rôle ”

“ Didn't I drag you put here to this tiresome summer retreat because your aspect had become positively unbearable to a flesh-painter, your skin having dried to a respectable parchment, and you standing in danger of composing yourself into an early grave? And now you don't do anything better out here; but consume one yard of paper after another, while the shadows in your face grow blacker from day to day. Why are you in such haste, my dear Kohle, to produce things for which no one in the world is waiting? ”

“ But on the stairs, to which the baron escorted her, she whispered to him:
"Why don't you want to let Irene into the secret? Unless I am very much mistaken, she already knows the first half; you owe it to her to tell her the other half, which truly does you honor."
"Do you think so?" answered the baron. "Irene have a suspicion? Good God, these young girls nowadays! One takes great credit to one's self for the profound innocence and ignorance in which one has brought them up, and they are wiser than we ourselves! ”

“ It had seemed as if heaven had opened to her when she heard Felix's voice. And now, all of a sudden, she felt quite light at heart. How had he happened to come along just at the right time, and how was he getting on, and was he really quite well again?
She began to laugh again as she asked these questions, with her old happy, light-hearted laugh. All her wretchedness seemed of a sudden to have vanished, and to be forgotten.
"Zenz," he said, "you must not go back to this black devil of a woman. She will bring you to ruin sooner or later; you can no longer have any doubt of that. ”

“ Even in those days I was not possessed by the demon of ambition, and on the pictures that I painted, as well as on the frescoes that I helped to execute, you will not find even my monogram. From the very first, I had too great a respect for true genius to form an exalted idea of my own humble qualifications for an artist. By the side of my master, Cornelius, I felt like the sparrow that soared up to the sun under the eagle's wing, and was permitted to enjoy himself royally up there so long as he did not forget that he was, after all, only an insignificant sparrow. ”

“ After all, it is your proper calling; and if the wise saying of our friend Rossel is correct, that real happiness is merely that condition in which we are most keenly conscious of our individuality, you certainly must be esteemed happy, and will make happy the noble heart that has surrendered to you. Dear old fellow, what a splendid prize each of us has drawn! That we had to work hard to deserve it, is all the better. All that is not deserved humiliates. And we still have an excess of happiness given us by the gods, whom we ought not to be too proud to thank. ”

“ I deluded myself with the idea that although I was not phenomenal as a man or as an artist, I was, on the other hand, something no less rare--a perfectly normal citizen of the world, a truly model specimen of honesty and excellence, especially selected by fate to be a source of joy and imitation for less favored mortals. My good wife, too, who did not at first chime in with my lofty tone, was gradually converted to this state of self-exaltation, until she came to believe that not a single flaw could be found in her husband, her children, her friends, her home life, or even in her pets. ”

“ Old Schoepf stayed away altogether; Rossel did not speak a word; Jansen did not make his appearance until nearly midnight, and sat brooding with a dark look in his bright eyes, while he emptied glass after glass without being warmed by his potations. Elfinger, whose relations to his pious sweetheart grew every day more hopeless, and had begun to seriously tell upon his spirits, was scarcely more talkative, and the jokes with which Rosenbusch favored the company had, in Rossel's opinion, a biting flavor, like preserved fruit that has begun to ferment. ”

“ Not a soul was to be seen in the dimly-lighted hall above; but all the doors stood open on account of the heat, and poured forth a mixture of lamp-light, smoke, and noise, while the floor creaked under the regular tread of the dancers, and the air trembled with the surly grumbling of a gigantic bass-viol. The dancing-hall lay at the extreme end of the corridor. Felix walked along it without looking into any of the other rooms until he reached the end door, where he found that, by standing behind the spectators, he could comfortably overlook all that was going on within. ”

“ The actual world, with its joys and splendors, was as good as closed against a poor devil like myself. How could such a wretched creature as this Philip Emanuel Kohle, this lean, yellow ragamuffin in poor clothes, who stumbled awkwardly through the world, and who could neither fascinate women nor impress men, have the impudence to take his place at the bounteous table at which the children of fortune felt at home? ”

“ Involuntarily Felix stood still and listened.
As chance would have it, his eyes rested on a little house from which came no sound of song or music, and which was overhung with exquisite roses, while tall hollyhocks nodded over the garden-fence. In the upper story was a room with a balcony, lit by a hanging-lamp. The door stood wide open, but the brightly-lighted apartment beyond seemed to be quite empty. Of a sudden, just as the clarionet was playing a solo, a shadow entered the bright frame made by the balcony door. ”

“ Nothing in the world shall ever force me to have anything to do with him, thought I to myself; and I let him go by as if he had been a perfect stranger. Still, I thought I would leave the letter for him, so I made some inquiries about him of his landlady; And I heard from her that he hides in his lodgings like an owl in a hollow tree; no one comes to see him, and he goes to see nobody; he gets no letters and he writes none. There was a little looking-glass hanging in the landlady's room, and I happened to see my face in it, and it looked to me as if I had an ashy-gray skin and faded hair. ”

“ Irene understood her, and blushed; but she returned the embrace with hearty good-will, and nodded also to Angelica as if she were an old friend. Then she took Felix's arm, and allowed him to escort her to the supper-room.
"Shall we take a seat at the little table again?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"I must be still more alone with you," he said. "Only be brave and follow me. The air here begins to be oppressive."
"Where are you going to?"
"Outside. Not a breath of wind is stirring, and it is the most beautiful spring-like weather. And you are not heated at all! ”

“ The first couple that Felix made out through the blue mist of tobacco-smoke was Rosenbusch with his Nanny. And, to his surprise, he saw Elfinger and his sweetheart waltzing gracefully close behind them; and the future bride of heaven seemed to abandon herself without much resistance to this worldly pleasure.
And now even the young countess herself appeared amid this mixed company, whirled by the young baron, her betrothed, far more rapidly than would have been good ton at a court ball. ”

“ But in a little while the wind began to rise, shaking the soft snow from the branches, and driving the cold drops of rain into their faces.
Even then Irene expressed no desire to be taken back into the house. She would have liked to wander by his side forever, through rain and storm. But he, careful of her health, laughingly insisted upon "bringing his little lamb under cover." "We must take care not to catch cold," he said. "There are certain times when a cold stands very much in the way of lovers. Come, my darling! I feel as if I should like to dance all night long with you. ”

“ Non omnis moriar! Something of me will be left behind; and though you may be right that no glory will come to me during my life, a soft shimmer of posthumous fame will warm my bones under the ground, of that I am certain. For better times are coming, or else may God take pity on this wretched world, and dash it to pieces before it becomes one vast dung-heap from which no living flower will spring. Many a day when I have begun to lose faith, amid the wretchedness of the present, I have repeated to myself those comforting verses of Hölderlin's about the future of mankind. ”

“ But to stay out here awhile in solitude will be of equal service to my slowly-healing breast and to my poor, somewhat discouraged soul. Don't let yourself be deceived, old Hans, by what our friends try to stuff into your head: that my anxiety about whether I shall soon be able to use my hand again in the service of the arts is gnawing at my heart. More has been injured in this case than a finger-muscle or a joint; my hopeful confidence has been shattered--that courage and audacity with which I came to you in the summer. ”

“ The thought of the bare walls inspired him as the happiness of a secret love does others. Meantime, Elfinger had descended again to the bank, from which a little path led to a bathing-house. Soon his friends who had remained behind saw him swim out into the lake, his black, curly bead rising out of the silver path of the moonlight, "like the head of the Baptist on Herodias's charger," said Koble. "Except that he feels himself much better off than that poor devil," remarked Rosenbusch, who was comfortably drinking and smoking. ”

“ The moment the bloody hand released his throat, he slid over the edge of the wharf and immediately vanished in the lake below.
The dull, splashing noise of the fall suddenly brought the victor to his senses. But he felt absolutely indifferent about the fellow's rising again and gaining the shore. He had no other feeling than one of disgust at this wild struggle in such a wretched cause. And now, when he found himself alone on the high wharf, a cold shudder passed over him, as if he had just shaken off a mad dog and hurled him into the water. He peered down into the lake and then tried to laugh ”

“ But he knows that, at a window in the first story of that stately house over yonder, there sits a woman, thin and prematurely old, but whose cheeks, usually so pale, wear a joyous flush to-day, and whose eyes, grown faded through long suffering, beam once more with something of the brightness and hopefulness of youth. It is to this woman that he wants to show himself in his covering of flowers. ”

“ Remember, too, how much better off I am than our friend Felix. As far as the outside world goes, we are both hampered and confined. The age has as little appreciation of high art as of the great personal activity toward which all his powers and wishes urge him. But I can at least put before myself and a half dozen true friends what there is in me, even if it has no fuller life than this; while our friend's special strengths can only reveal themselves in putting him at odds with everybody. ”

“ You will have to curb your impatience until morning, my dear Rosebud; the old woman has taken it into her head to relieve the loneliness of the long winter out here on the lake by making Enzian schnapps, and diligently devotes herself the whole summer long to the consumption of her own manufacture, so that she is good for nothing after eight o'clock. The most tender flute-serenade would not wake her from her deathlike Enzian sleep. ”