I have found it rather difficult to devise for our different offices different verbal-virtues; but I should think there might many such divisions of Virtue (at this moment, Love of Freedom, Public-spirit, Sincerity and Uprightness occur to me) be hunted out; were but some well-disposed minister of state to appoint a Virtue-board or Moral Address Department, with some half dozen secretaries, who, for a small salary, might devise various virtues for the various posts. Were I in their place, I should hold a good prism before the white ray of Virtue, and divide it completely. Pity that it were not crimes we wanted--their subdivision I mean;--our country Judges might then be selected for this purpose. For in their tribunals, where only inferior jurisdiction, and no penalty above five florins Frankish, is admitted, they have a daily training how out of every mischief to make several small ones, none of which they ever punish to a greater amount than their five florins. This is a precious moral _Rolfinkenism_, which our Jurists have learned from the great Sin-cutters, St. Augustin and his Sorbonne, who together have carved more sins on Adam's Sin-apple than ever Rolfinken did faces on a cherry-stone. How different one of our Judges from a Papal Casuist, who, by side-sc.r.a.pings, will rasp you down the best deadly sin into a venial!--

School-offices (to come to these) are a small branch of traffic certainly; yet still they are monarchies,--school-monarchies, to wit,--resembling the Polish crown, which, according to Pope's verse, is twice exposed to sale in the century; a statement, I need hardly say, arithmetically false, Newton having settled the average duration of a reign at twenty-two years. For the rest, whether the city Council bring the young of the community a Hameln _Rat_-and-Child-_catcher_; or a Weisse's _Child's-friend_,--this to the Council can make no difference; seeing the Schoolmaster is not a horse, for whose secret defects the horse-dealer is to be responsible. It is enough if Town-Syndic and Co.

cannot reproach themselves with having picked out any fellow of genius; for a genius, as he is useless to the State, except for recreation and ornament, would at the very least exclude the duller, cooler head, who properly forms the true care and profit of the State; as your costly carat-pearl is good for show alone, but coa.r.s.e grain-pearls for medicine. On the whole, if a schoolmaster be adequate to flog his scholars, it should suffice; and I cannot but blame our Commission of Inspectors when they go examining schools, that they do not make the schoolmaster go through the duty of firking one or two young persons of his cla.s.s in their presence, by way of trial, to see what is in him.

_End of the Extra-word on Appointment-brokers in general._

Now again to our history! The Councillor Heads of the Firm had conferred the Conrectorate on my hero, not only with a view to the continued consumpt of candles and beans, but also on the strength of a quite mad notion: they believed, the Quintus would very soon die.

--And here I have reached a most important circ.u.mstance in this History, and one into which I have yet let no mortal look: now, however, it no longer depends on my will whether I shall shove aside the folding-screen from it or not; but I must positively lay it open, nay hang a reverberating-lamp over it.

In medical history, it is a well-known fact that in certain families the people all die precisely at the same age, just as in these families they are all born at the same age (of nine months); nay, from Voltaire, I recollect one family, the members of which at the same age all killed themselves. Now, in the Fixleinic lineage, it was the custom that the male ascendants uniformly on Cantata-Sunday, in their thirty-second year, took to bed and died: every one of my readers would do well to insert in his copy of the _Thirty-Years War_, Schiller having entirely omitted it, the fact, that in the course thereof, one Fixlein died of the plague, another of hunger, another of a musket-bullet; all in their thirty-second year. True Philosophy explains the matter thus: "The first two or three times, it happened purely by accident; and the other times, the people died of sheer fright: if not so, the whole fact is rather to be questioned."

But what did Fixlein make of the affair? Little or nothing: the only thing he did was, that he took little or no pains to fall in love with Thiennette; that so no other might have cause for fear on his account.

He himself, however, for five reasons, minded it so little, that he hoped to be older than Senior Astmann before he died: First, because three Gipsies, in three different places and at three different times, had each shown him the same long vista of years in her magic mirror.

Secondly, because he had a sound const.i.tution. Thirdly, because his own brother had formed an exception, and perished before the thirties.

Fourthly, on this ground: When a boy he had fallen sick of sorrow, on the very Cantata-Sunday when his father was lying in the winding-sheet, and only been saved from death by his playthings; and with this Cantata-sickness, he conceived that he had given the murderous Genius of his race the slip. Fifthly, the church-books being destroyed, and with them the certainty of his age, he could never fall into a right definite deadly fear: "It may be," said he, "that I have got whisked away over this wh.o.r.eson year, and no one the wiser." I will not deny that last year he had fancied he was two-and-thirty: "however," said he, "if I am not to be so till, G.o.d willing, the next (1792), it may run away as smoothly as the last; am I not always in _His_ keeping? And were it unjust if the pretty years that were broken off from the life of my brother should be added to mine?"--Thus, under the cold snow of the Present, does poor man strive to warm himself, or to mould out of it a fair snow-man.

The Councillor Oligarchy, however, built upon the opposite opinion; and, like a Divinity, elevated our Quintus all at once from the Quintusship to the Conrectorate; swearing to themselves, that he would soon vacate it again. Properly speaking, by school-seniority, this holy chair should have belonged to the Subrector Hans von Fuchslein; but he wished it not; being minded to become Hukelum Parson; especially, as Astmann's Death-angel, according to sure intelligence, was opening more and more widely the door of this spiritual sheepfold. "If the fellow weather another year, 'tis more than I expect," said Hans.

This Hans was such a churl, that it is pity he had not been a Hanoverian Postboy; that so, by the Mandate of the Hanoverian Government, enjoining on all its Post-officers an elegant style of manners, he might have somewhat refined himself. To our poor Quintus, whom no mortal disliked, and who again could hate no mortal, he alone bore a grudge; simply because _Fixlein_ did not write himself _Fuchslein_, and had not chosen along with him to purchase a Patent of n.o.bility. The Subrector, on this his Patent triumphal chariot, drawn by a team of four specified ancestors, was obliged to see the Quintus, who was related to him, clutching by the lackey-straps behind the carriage; and to hear him, in the most despicable raiment, saying to the train: "He that rides there is my cousin, and a mortal, and I always remind him of it." The mild compliant Quintus never noticed this large wasp-poisonbag in the Subrector, but took it for a honeybag; nay, by his brotherly warmness, which the n.o.bleman regarded as mere show, he concreted these venomous juices into still feller consistency. The Quintus, in his simplicity, took Fuchslein's contempt for envy of his pedagogic talents.

A Catherinenhof, an Annenhof, an Elizabethhof, Stralenhof and Petershof, all these Russian pleasure palaces, a man can dispense with (if not despise), who has a room, in which on Christmas-eve he walks about with a Presentation in his hand. The new Conrector now longed for nothing but--daylight: joys always (cares never) nibbled from him, like sparrows, his sleep-grains; and tonight, moreover, the registrator of his glad time, the clock-ape, drummed out every hour to him, which, accordingly, he spent in gay dreaming, rather than in sound snoring.

On Christmas-morn, he looked at his Cla.s.s-prodromus, and thought but little of it; he scarcely knew what to make of his last night's foolish inflation about his Quintusship: "the Quintus-post," said he to himself, "is not to be named in the same day with the Conrectorate; I wonder how I could parade so last night before my promotion; at present, I had more reason." Today he ate, as on all Sundays and holydays, with the Master-Butcher Steinberger, his former Guardian. To this man, Fixlein was, what common people are _always_, but polished philosophical and sentimental people very _seldom_ are,--_thankful_: a man thanks you the less for presents, the more inclined he is to give presents of his own; and the beneficent is rarely a grateful person. Meister Steinberger, in the character of store-master, had introduced into the wire-cage of a garret, where Fixlein, while a Student at Leipzig, was suspended, many a well-filled trough with good canary-meat, of hung-beef, of household bread and _Sauerkraut_. Money indeed was never to be wrung from him: it is well known that he often sent the best calfskins gratis to the tanner, to be boots for our Quintus; but the tanning-charges the Ward himself had to bear.--On Fixlein's entrance, as was at all times customary, a smaller damask table-cloth was laid upon the large coa.r.s.er one; the armchair; silver implements, and a wine-stoup were handed him; mere waste, which, as the Guardian used to say, suited well enough for a Scholar; but for a Flesher not at all. Fixlein first took his victuals, and then signified that he was made Conrector. "Ward," said Steinberger, "if you are made that, it is well.--Seest thou, Eva, I cannot buy a tail of thy cows now; I must have smelt it beforehand." He was hereby informing his daughter that the cash set apart for the fatted cattle must now be applied to the Conrectorate; for he was in the habit of advancing all instalment-dues to his ward, at an interest of four and a half per cent. Fifty gulden he had already lent the Quintus on his advancement to the Quintusship: of these the interest had to be duly paid; yet, on the day of payment, the Quintus always got some abatement; being wont every Sunday after dinner to instruct his guardian's daughter in arithmetic, writing and geography. Steinberger with justice required of his own grown-up daughter that she should know all the towns, where he in his wanderings as a journeyman had slain fat oxen; and if she slipped, or wrote crookedly, or subtracted wrong, he himself, as Academical Senate and Justiciary, was standing behind her chair, ready, so to speak, with the forge-hammer of his fist to beat out the dross from her brain, and at a few strokes hammer it into right ductility. The soft Quintus, for his part, had never struck her. On this account she had perhaps, with a few glances, appointed him executor and a.s.signee of her heart. The old Flesher--simply because his wife was dead--had constantly been in the habit of searching with mine-lamps and pokers into all the corners of Eva's heart; and had in consequence long ago observed--what the Quintus never did--that she had a mind for the said Quintus. Young women conceal their sorrows more easily than their joys: today at the mention of this Conrectorate, Eva had become unusually _red_.

When she went after breakfast to bring in coffee, which the Ward had to drink down to the grounds: "I beat Eva to death if she but look at him,"

said he. Then addressing Fixlein: "Hear you, Ward, did you never cast an eye on my Eva? She can suffer you, and if you want her, you get her; but _we_ have done with one another: for a learned man needs quite another sort of thing."

"Herr Regiments-Quartermaster," said Fixlein (for this post Steinberger filled in the provincial Militia), "such a match were far too rich, at any rate, for a Schoolman." The Quartermaster nodded fifty times; and then said to Eva, as she returned,--at the same time taking down from the shelf a wooden crook, on which he used to rack out and suspend his slain calves: "Stop!--Hark, dost wish the present Herr Conrector here for thy husband?"

"Ah, good Heaven!" said Eva.

"Mayst wish him or not," continued the Flesher; "with this crook, thy father knocks thy brains out, if thou but think of a learned man. Now make his coffee." And so by the dissevering stroke of this wooden crook was a love easily smitten asunder, which in a higher rank, by such cutting through it with the sword, would only have foamed and hissed the keenlier.

Fixlein might now, at any hour he liked, lay hold of fifty florins Frankish, and clutch the pedagogic sceptre, and become coadjutor of the Rector, that is, Conrector. We may a.s.sert, that it is with debts, as with proportions in Architecture; of which Wolf has shown that those are the best, which can be expressed in the smallest numbers. Nevertheless, the Quartermaster cheerfully took learned men under his arm: for the notion that his debtor would decease in his thirty-second year, and that so Death, as creditor in the first rank, must be paid his Debt of Nature, before the other creditors could come forward with their debts--this notion he named stuff and oldwifery; he was neither superst.i.tious nor fanatical, and he walked by firm principles of action, such as the common man much oftener has than your vapouring man of letters, or your empty dainty man of rank.

As it is but a few clear Ladydays, warm Mayday-nights, at the most a few odorous Rose-weeks, which I am digging from this Fixleinic Life, embedded in the dross of week-day cares; and as if they were so many veins of silver, am separating, stamping, smelting and burnishing for the reader,--I must now travel on with the stream of his history to Cantata-Sunday, 1792, before I can gather a few handfuls of this gold-dust, to carry in and wash in my biographical gold-hut. That Sunday, on the contrary, is very metalliferous: do but consider that Fixlein is yet uncertain (the ashes of the Church-books not being legible) whether it is conducting him into his thirty-second or his thirty-third year.

From Christmas till then he did nothing, but simply became Conrector.

The new chair of office was a Sun-altar, on which, from his Quintus-ashes, a young Phoenix combined itself together. Great changes--in offices, marriages, travels--make us younger; we always date our history from the last revolution, as the French have done from theirs. A colonel, who first set foot on the ladder of seniority as corporal, is five times younger than a king, who in his whole life has never been aught else except a--crown-prince.

FIFTH LETTER-BOX.

_Cantata-Sunday. Two Testaments. Pontac; Blood; Love._

The Spring months clothe the earth in new variegated hues; but man they usually dress in black. Just when our icy regions are becoming fruitful, and the flower-waves of the meadows are rolling together over our quarter of the globe, we on all hands meet with men in sables, the beginning of whose Spring is full of tears. But, on the other hand, this very upblooming of the renovated earth is itself the best balm for sorrow over those who lie under it; and graves are better hid by blossoms than by snow.

In April, which is no less deadly than it is fickle, old Senior Astmann, our Conrector's teacher, was overtaken by death. His departure it was meant to hide from the Rittmeisterinn; but the unusual ringing of funereal peals carried his swan-song to her heart; and gradually set the curfew-bell of her life into similar movement. Age and sufferings had already marked out the first incisions for Death, so that he required but little effort to cut her down; for it is with men as with trees, they are notched long before felling, that their life-sap may exude. The second stroke of apoplexy was soon followed by the last: it is strange that Death, like criminal courts, cites the apoplectic thrice.

Men are apt to postpone their _last_ will as long as their _better_ one: the Rittmeisterinn would perhaps have let all her hours, till the speechless and deaf one, roll away without testament, had not Thiennette, during the last night, before from sick-nurse she became corpse-watcher, reminded the patient of the poor Conrector, and of his meagre hunger-bitten existence, and of the scanty aliment and board-wages which Fortune had thrown him, and of his empty Future, where, like a drooping yellow plant in the parched deal-box of the schoolroom between scholars and creditors, he must languish to the end.

Her own poverty offered her a model of his; and her inward tears were the fluid tints with which she coloured her picture. As the Rittmeisterinn's testament related solely to domestics and dependents, and as she began with the male ones, Fixlein stood at the top; and Death, who must have been a special friend of the Conrector's, did not lift his scythe and give the last stroke till his protegee had been with audible voice declared testamentary heir; then he cut all away, life, testament and hopes.

When the Conrector, in a wash-bill from his mother, received these two Death's-posts and Job's-posts in his cla.s.s, the first thing he did was to dismiss his cla.s.s-boys, and break into tears before reaching home.

Though the mother had informed him that he had been remembered in the will (I could wish, however, that the Notary had blabbed how much it was), yet almost with every O which he masoretically excerpted from his German Bible, and entered in his Masoretic Work, great drops fell down on his pen, and made his black ink pale. His sorrow was not the gorgeous sorrow of the Poet, who veils the gaping wounds of the departed in the winding-sheet, and breaks the cry of anguish in soft tones of plaintiveness; nor the sorrow of the Philosopher, who, through one open grave, must look into the whole catacomb-Necropolis of the Past, and before whom the spectre of a friend expands into the spectral Shadow of this whole Earth: but it was the woe of a child, of a mother, whom this thought itself, without subsidiary reflections, bitterly cuts asunder: "So I shall never more see thee; so must thou moulder away, and I shall never see thee, thou good soul, never, never any more!"--And even because he neither felt the philosophical nor the poetical sadness, every trifle could make a division, a break in his mourning; and, like a woman, he was that very evening capable of sketching some plans for the future employment of his legacy.

Four weeks after, to wit, on the 5th of May, the testament was unsealed; but not till the 6th (Cantata-Sunday) did he go down to Hukelum. His mother met his salutations with tears; which she shed, over the corpse for grief, over the testament for joy.--To the now Conrector Egidius Zebedaus was left: _In the first place_, a large sumptuous bed, with a mirror-tester, in which the giant Goliath might have rolled at his ease, and to which I and my fair readers will by and by approach nearer, to examine it; _secondly_, there was devised to him, as unpaid Easter-G.o.dchild-money, for every year that he had lived, one ducat; _thirdly_, all the admittance and instalment dues, which his elevation to the Quintate and Conrectorate had cost him, were to be made good to the utmost penny. "And dost thou know, then," proceeded the mother, "what the poor Fraulein has got? Ah Heaven! Nothing! Not one bra.s.s farthing!" For Death had stiffened the hand which was just stretching itself out to reach the poor Thiennette a little rain-screen against the foul weather of life. The mother related this perverse trick of Fortune with true condolence; which in women dissipates envy, and comes easier to them than congratulation, a feeling belonging rather to men. In many female hearts sympathy and envy are such near door-neighbours that they could be virtuous nowhere except in h.e.l.l, where men have such frightful times of it; and vicious nowhere except in Heaven, where people have more happiness than they know what to do with.

The Conrector was now enjoying on Earth that Heaven to which his benefactress had ascended. First of all, he started off--without so much as putting up his handkerchief, in which lay his emotion--up-stairs to see the legacy-bed unshrouded; for he had a _female_ predilection for furniture. I know not whether the reader ever looked at or mounted any of these ancient chivalric beds, into which, by means of a little stair without bal.u.s.trades, you can easily ascend; and in which you, properly speaking, sleep always at least one story above ground. n.a.z.ianzen informs us (_Orat. XVI._) that the Jews, in old times, had high beds with c.o.c.k-ladders of this sort; but simply because of vermin. The legacy bed-Ark was quite as large as one of these; and a flea would have measured it not in Diameters of the Earth, but in Distances of Sirius.

When Fixlein beheld this colossal dormitory, with the curtains drawn asunder, and its canopy of looking-gla.s.s, he could have longed to be in it; and had it been in his power to cut from the opaque hemisphere of Night, at that time in America, a small section, he would have established himself there along with it, just to swim about, for one half hour, with his thin lath figure, in this sea of down. The mother, by longer chains of reasoning and chains of calculation than the bed was, had not succeeded in persuading him to have the broad mirror on the top cut in pieces, though his large dressing-table had nothing to see itself in but a mere shaving-gla.s.s: he let the mirror lie where it was for this reason: "Should I ever, G.o.d willing, get married," said he, "I shall then, towards morning, be able to look at my sleeping wife, without sitting up in bed."

As to the second article of the testament, the G.o.dchild Easter-pence, his mother had, last night, arranged it perfectly. The Lawyer took her evidence on the years of the heir; and these she had stated at exactly the teeth-number, two-and-thirty. She would willingly have lied, and pa.s.sed off her son, like an Inscription, for older than he was: but against this _venia aetatis_, she saw too well, the authorities would have taken exception, "that it was falsehood and cozenage; had the son been two-and-thirty, he must have been dead some time ago, as it could not but be presumed that he then was."

And just as she was recounting this, a servant from Schadeck called, and delivered to the Conrector, in return for a discharge and ratification of the birth-certificate given out by his mother, a gold bar of two-and-thirty ducat age-counters, like a helm-bar for the voyage of his life: Herr von Aufhammer was too proud to engage in any pettifogging discussion over a plebeian birth-certificate.

And thus, by a proud open-handedness, was one of the best lawsuits thrown to the dogs: seeing this gold bar might, in the wire-mill of the judgment-bench, have been drawn out into the finest threads. From such a tangled lock, which was not to be unravelled--for, in the first place, there was no doc.u.ment to prove Fixlein's age; in the second place, so long as he lived, the necessary conclusion was, that he was not yet thirty-two[47]--from such a lock, might not only silk and hanging-cords, but whole dragnets have been spun and twisted. Clients in general would have less reason to complain of their causes, if these lasted longer: Philosophers contend for thousands of years over philosophical questions; and it seems an unaccountable thing, therefore, that Advocates should attempt to end their juristical questions in a s.p.a.ce of eighty, or even sometimes of sixty years. But the professors of law are not to blame for this: on the other hand, as Lessing a.s.serts of Truth, that not the _finding_ but the _seeking_ of it profits men, and that he himself would willingly make over his claim to all truths in return for the sweet labour of investigation, so is the professor of Law not profited by the finding and deciding, but by the investigation of a juridical truth,--which is called pleading and practising,--and he would willingly consent to approximate to Truth forever, like an hyperbola to its asymptote, without ever meeting it, seeing he can subsist as an honourable man with wife and child, let such approximation be as tedious as it likes.

[47] As, by the evidence at present before us, we can found on no other presumption, than that he must die in his thirty-second year; it would follow, that, in case he died two-and-thirty years after the death of the testatrix, no farthing could he claimed by him; since, according to our notion, at the making of the testament he was not even one year old.

The Schadeck servant had, besides the gold legacy, a farther commission from the Lawyer, whereby the testamentary heir was directed to sum up the mint-dues which he had been obliged to pay while lying under the coining-press of his superiors, as Quintus and Conrector; the which, properly doc.u.mented and authenticated, were forthwith to be made good to him.

Our Conrector, who now rated himself among the great capitalists of the world, held his short gold-roll like a sceptre in his hand; like a basket-net lifted from the sea of the Future, which was now to run on, and bring him all manner of fed-fishes, well-washed, sound and in good season.

I cannot relate all things at once; else I should ere now have told the reader, who must long have been waiting for it, that to the moneyed Conrector his two-and-thirty G.o.dchild-pennies but too much prefigured the two-and-thirty years of his age; besides which, today the Cantata-Sunday, this Bartholomew-night and Second of September of his family, came in as a farther aggravation. The mother, who should have known the age of her child, said she had forgotten it; but durst wager he was thirty-two a year ago; only the Lawyer was a man you could not speak to. "I could swear it myself," said the capitalist; "I recollect how stupid I felt on Cantata-Sunday last year." Fixlein beheld Death, not as the poet does, in the up-towering, asunder-driving concave-mirror of Imagination; but as the child, as the savage, as the peasant, as the woman does, in the plane octavo-mirror on the board of a Prayer-book; and Death looked to him like an old white-headed man, sunk down into slumber in some latticed pew.--

And yet he thought oftener of him than last year: for joy readily melts us into softness; and the lackered Wheel of Fortune is a cistern-wheel that empties its water in our eyes.... But the friendly Genius of this terrestrial, or rather aquatic Ball,--for, in the physical and in the moral world, there are more tear-seas than firm land,--has provided for the poor water-insects that float about in it, for us namely, a quite special elixir against spasms in the soul: I declare this same Genius must have studied the whole pathology of man with care; for to the poor devil who is no Stoic, and can pay no Soul-doctor, that for the fissures of his cranium and his breast might prepare costly prescriptions of simples, he has stowed up cask-wise in all cellarages a precious wound-water, which the patient has only to take and pour over his slashes and bone-breakages--gin-twist, I mean, or beer, or a touch of wine.... By Heaven! it is either stupid ingrat.i.tude towards this medicinal Genius on the one hand, or theological confusion of permitted tippling with prohibited drunkenness on the other, if men do not thank G.o.d that they have something at hand, which, in the nervous vertigos of life, will instantly supply the place of Philosophy, Christianity, Judaism, Paganism and _Time_;--liquor, as I said.

The Conrector had long before sunset given the village post three groschens of post-money, and commissioned,--for he had a whole cabinet of ducats in his pocket, which all day he was surveying in the dark with his hand,--three thalers' worth of Pontac from the town. "I must have a Cantata merrying-making," said he; "if it be my last day, let it be my gayest too!" I could wish he had given a larger order; but he kept the bit of moderation between his teeth at all times; even in a threatened sham-death-night, and in the midst of jubilee. The question is, Whether he would not have restricted himself to a single bottle, if he had not wished to treat his mother and the Fraulein. Had he lived in the tenth century, when the Day of Judgment was thought to be at hand, or in other centuries, when new Noah's Deluges were expected, and when, accordingly, like sailors in a shipwreck, people bouzed up all,--he would not have spent one kreutzer more on that account. His joy was, that with his legacy he could now satisfy his head-creditor Steinberger, and leave the world an honest man: just people, who make much of money, pay their debts the most punctually.

The purple Pontac arrived at a time when Fixlein could compare the red-chalk-drawings and red-letter-t.i.tles of joy, which it would bring out on the cheeks of its drinker and drinkeresses,--with the Evening-carnation of the last clouds about the Sun....

I declare, among all the spectators of this History, no one can be thinking more about poor Thiennette than I; nevertheless, it is not permitted me to bring her out from her tiring-room to my historical scene, before the time. Poor girl! The Conrector cannot wish more warmly than his Biographer, that, in the Temple of Nature as in that of Jerusalem, there were a special door--besides that of Death--standing open, through which only the afflicted entered, that a Priest might give them solace. But Thiennette's heart-sickness over all her vanished prospects, over her entombed benefactress, over a whole life enwrapped in the pall, had hitherto, in a grief which the stony Rittmeister rather made to bleed than alleviated, swept all away from her, occupations excepted; had fettered all her steps which led not to some task, and granted to her eyes nothing to dry them or gladden them, save down-falling eyelids full of dreams and sleep.

All sorrow raises us above the civic Ceremonial-law, and makes the Prosaist a Psalmist: in sorrow alone have women courage to front opinion. Thiennette walked out only in the evening, and then only in the garden.

The Conrector could scarcely wait for the appearance of his fair friend, to offer his thanks,--and tonight also--his Pontac. Three Pontac decanters and three wine-gla.s.ses were placed outside on the projecting window-sill of his cottage; and every time he returned from the dusky covered-way amid the flower-forests, he drank a little from his gla.s.s,--and the mother sipped now and then from within through the opened window.

I have already said, his Life-laboratory lay in the south-west corner of the garden or park, over against the Castle-Escurial, which stretched back into the village. In the north-west corner bloomed an acacia-grove, like the floral crown of the garden. Fixlein turned his steps in that direction also; to see if, perhaps, he might not cast a happy glance through the wide-latticed grove over the intervening meads to Thiennette. He recoiled a little before two stone steps leading down into a pond before this grove, which were sprinkled with fresh blood. On the flags, also, there was blood hanging. Man shudders at this oil of our life's lamp where he finds it shed: to him it is the red death-signature of the Destroying Angel. Fixlein hurried apprehensively into the grove; and found here his paler benefactress leaning on the flower-bushes; her hands with their knitting-ware sunk into her bosom, her eyes lying under their lids as if in the bandage of slumber; her left arm in the real bandage of blood-letting; and with cheeks to which the twilight was lending as much red, as late woundings--this day's included--had taken from them. Fixlein, after his first terror--not at this flower's-sleep, but at his own abrupt entrance--began to unrol the spiral b.u.t.terfly's-sucker of his vision, and to lay it on the motionless leaves of this same sleeping flower. At bottom, I may a.s.sert, that this was the first time he had ever looked at her: he was now among the thirties; and he still continued to believe, that, in a young lady, he must look at the clothes only, not the person, and wait on her with his ears, not with his eyes.

I impute it to the elevating influences of the Pontac, that the Conrector plucked up courage to--turn, to come back, and employ the resuscitating means of coughing, sneezing, trampling and calling to his Shock, in stronger and stronger doses on the fair sleeper. To take her by the hand, and, with some medical apology, gently pull her out of sleep, this was an audacity of which the Conrector, so long as he could stand for Pontac, and had any grain of judgment left, could never dream.

However, he did awake her, by those other means.