The Schulrath raised his clenched fist in wrath, and exclaimed, sawing the air with it, "You child of h.e.l.l! you robber-captain and filibuster!
You silken Catiline and mischief-maker! Does it ever strike you that you"ll have to answer for this and your other pranks one day? Mr.
Siebenkaes, this, at all events, I _do_ expect of you, that if ever he comes here again asking for hair, you will turn him out by the hair of his own head, or hit this fur-maggot (as you call him yourself) across the shoulders with a boot-jack, and squeeze his hand with a pair of pincers--in fact, the long and the short of it is, _I will not_ have him come here any more."
And here Siebenkaes, to cool down his own emotions and other people"s, mentioned the fact of his having already taken steps in the matter, and served the necessary letter of inhibition upon the Venner. Stiefel clucked his tongue in a joyful manner, and nodded his head approvingly.
He considered any person high in office to be a vicegerent of Christ on earth, a count to be a demiG.o.d, and an emperor as a whole one;--but a single one of the deadly sins committed by any of them all would at once cost them the whole of his deferential good will,--and a slip in Latin grammar, though committed by a head crowned with gold, he would at once have done battle with in a whole Latin Easter programme. Men of "the world have straight bodies and crooked souls; scholars often have neither the one nor the other. The last of Lenette"s clouds cleared away when she heard that a paper escarpment and _cheval de frise_ against the Venner had been constructed at her door. "Then he will trouble me no more! Thanks be to Heaven! He goes about lying and deceiving everyone he comes across."[28]
"We don"t employ these words, Madame Siebenkaes, if we care to speak grammatically," said Stiefel; "irregular verbs such as "_kriechen_, _trugen_, _lugen_," though they are _verba anomala_, and as such have "_kroch_, _log_, _trog_," and so on in the imperfect tense, are still always inflected quite regularly in the present by the best German grammarians--although the poets permit themselves a poetical license in such cases, as, I am sorry to say, they do in most others--and therefore we say, if we care to be grammatically correct, "_lugt_, _trugt_, _kriecht_," &c., at the present day, that is."
"Don"t find fault with my dear Augspurger"s Lutheran inflections," said Siebenkaes; "there"s something touching to me about these irregular verbs of hers; they are the Schmalkaldian article of the Augspurg confession." Here she drew her husband"s ear softly down to her lips and said, "What would you like me to get for supper? Tell the gentleman that you know I mean no offence, whatever words I use. And I wish you would ask his reverence, Firmian dear, when I"m out of the room, whether our marriage is really all right according to the Bible." He asked this question on the spot. Stiefel answered it deliberately as follows:--"We have only to look at the case of Leah, who was conducted to Jacob"s tent under the pseudonym of Rachel on her marriage night, and whose marriage the Bible holds to be perfectly valid. Is it names or bodies that exchange rings? And can a name fulfil the marriage vow?"
Lenette answered these questions, and spoke her thanks for this consistorial decision by a bashful glance of restored content and a beaming face upturned towards him. She went to the kitchen, but kept constantly coming back and snuffing the candle, which was on the table at which the two gentlemen sat talking; and probably n.o.body, except the advocate and I, will consider this to be any indication of a more than ordinary liking for Stiefel. The latter always took the snuffers from her, saying "it was _his_ duty." Siebenkaes clearly perceived that both the apples of his eyes revolved, satellite-fashion, round his own planet, Lenette; but he did not grudge the Latin knight his little glimpse of an age of chivalry thus sweetened by a Dulcinea; like most men, he could far sooner pardon the rival lover than the unfaithful fair; women, on the other hand, hate the rival more than the unfaithful lover. Moreover, he knew perfectly that Stiefel had not the least idea himself whom or what he cared for or sighed for, and that he was a far better hand at reviewing schoolmen and authors than himself. For instance, his own anger he called professional zeal; his pride, the dignity due to his office; his pa.s.sions, sins of weakness; and on this occasion love appeared to him disguised as mere philanthropy. The arch of Lenette"s troth was firmly finished off in the keystone of religion, and the Venner"s a.s.sault upon it had not shaken this sacred masonry in the slightest degree.
At this juncture the postman stumped up stairs with a new constellation which he set in their serene family sky, namely, the following letter from Leibgeber.
"Bayreuth, 21 Sept., 1785.
"My dear Brother, Cousin, and Uncle, Father and Son!
"For the two auricles and the two ventricles of thy heart const.i.tute my entire genealogical tree:--as Adam, when he went for a walk, carried about with him the whole of his blood relations that were to be, and his long line of descendants--which is not wholly unreeled and wound up even at this day--till he became a father, and his wife bare a child. I wish to goodness I had been the first Adam! Siebenkaes, I do adjure you, let me, let me, follow up this idea which has struck me and taken hold of me with such power; let me not write a word in this letter that does not add a touch to the three-quarter-length portrait which I shall draw of myself as the first father of mankind!
"Men of learning are much mistaken who suppose my reason for wishing I were Adam to be, that Puffendorf and many other writers very properly award me the whole of this earth as a kind of European colony in the India of the universe, as my _patrimonium Petri_, _Pauli_, _Judae_ and the rest of the Apostles; inasmuch as I, being the sole Adam and man, and consequently the first and last of universal monarchs (although as yet without any subjects), might of course lay claim to the entire earth. It might occur to the pope, indeed (he being holy father, though not our first father), to make a similar claim, or rather it did occur to him some centuries ago, when he const.i.tuted himself the guardian and the heir of all the countries of the earth, and indeed made bold to set two other crowns on the top of his earthly one, a crown of heaven and a crown of h.e.l.l.
"How small a thing it is that I desire! All that I wish I had been the old Adam (in fact, the oldest Adam) for, is merely that I might have strolled up and down with Eve among the espaliers of Eden on our marriage night, in our ap.r.o.ns and beasts" skins, and delivered an address in Hebrew to the mother of all living.
"Before commencing my address I beg to observe that, while I was yet unfallen, it fortunately occurred to me to note down the more important heads of my universal knowledge. For I had, in my condition of innocence, a perfect and intuitive knowledge of all the sciences, of history, both universal and literary, the various criminal and other codes of law, all the dead languages as well as the living, and was a kind of live Pindus and Pegasus, a portable Lodge of Light and learned society, a pocket university, and miniature golden _Siecle de Louis XIV_. Considering what my mental powers were at that juncture it is a miracle (and what"s more, a very lucky job) that in my leisure moments I put down the cream of my universal knowledge on paper, because when I subsequently fell, and became simple and ignorant, I had these excerpts, or _Catalogues raisonnes_, of my former wisdom by me, so that I could refer to them.
""Virgin!" (it was thus that the sermon delivered outside Paradise commenced) "it is true we are the first of parents, and are minded to originate all the subsequent parents; though all that you think about is sticking your spoon into a forbidden apple. However, I, being a man and protoplast, reflect and ponder, and as we walk to and fro, I shall undertake the office of preacher of the sermon on this, the occasion of our entering into the bonds of wedlock (not having as yet, unfortunately, begotten anybody else to do it), and, in a brief wedding exhortation, direct your attention to the doubts affecting and the reasons deciding, the protoplasts, or the first parents and first of wedded couples (that is to say, you and me), in the act of reflecting and considering, and how--
""In the first place, they consider the reasons why they should not people the earth, but emigrate this very day, the one into the old world, the other into the new; and
""In the second place, the reasons why they should do nothing of the kind, but marry.
""After which a short elench, or _usus epanorthoticus_, will be adduced, and will conclude the lecture and the night."
IN THE FIRST PLACE
""My dearly beloved!
""Here, in my sheepskin, as I appear before you, grave, thoughtful, and wise, it is nevertheless the fact that I am fall to the very brim of--not so much follies as _fools_, with a good many wise men stuck in here and there between them by way of parentheses. I am of short stature, it is true, and the ocean[29] came a good deal above my ancles, and besprinkled my new beasts" skin; and yet, as I walk up and down here, I am girt about with a seed cloth, containing the seeds of all nations, and carrying the repertory of the whole human race, an entire world in miniature and _orbis pictus_, round my middle like a pedlar"s stock in trade. For BONNET, who is in me among the rest, will sit down at his desk (when he comes out), and prove that they are all one inside the other, like a nest of boxes or a set of parentheses, that the father contains the son, that the grandfather contains them both, the great-grandfather consequently the grandfather and all the contents of him, the great-great-grandfather the great-grandfather and the contents of his contents and all his episodes, all sitting waiting one inside the other. Are there not then here embodied in thy bridegroom--this is a point, dear bride, which cannot be made _too_ intelligible to you--all religious sects, excepting the Preadamites, but including the Adamites,[30] and all giants, the great Christopher himself among them every individual of every nation of all the earth--all the shiploads of negroes destined for America, and the packets marked with red containing the soldiers promised by England to Ans.p.a.ch and Bayreuth? Eve, am I not, as I stand here before you, a whole Jews"-quarter--a Louvre of all the crowned heads of the earth--since I can bring them all into existence if I please, and if I am not induced by this first head of my discourse to refrain from doing so? You will admire me, and yet laugh at me at the same time if you but look at me well, lay your hand on my shoulder, and say to yourself: "Now, in this man and protoplast are contained all mankind, all the learned faculties, all schools of philosophy, and of sewing and spinning, cheek by jowl in peace and harmony, the highest and n.o.blest royal families and princely houses (though not yet sorted out from among the common ship"s company), all free imperial orders of knighthood, packed higgledy-piggledy with their va.s.sals, cottiers, and tenants, it is true--monasteries and nunneries next door to each other--barracks and members of Parliament, to say nothing of cathedral chapters, with all their provosts, deans, priors, sub-priors, and canons! What a man! What an Anak!" you will add. You are right, dear, I am indeed--the very nest dollar of the human coin-cabinet, the universal court of a.s.sembly of all judicatures, with all the members of all a.s.semblies, not one out of its place, the walking _corpus juris_ of all civil, canon, criminal, feudal, and munic.i.p.al law. Haven"t I Meusel"s "Learned Germany" and Jocher"s "Scholastic Lexicon" within me all complete, and Jocher and Meusel themselves, to say nothing of their supplementary volumes? I wish I could just let you see Cain--who, if head second of this discourse should determine me, would be our first offshoot and sucker, our Prince of Wales, Calabria, Asturias and the Brazils. You would see, if he were transparent--as I believe him to be--how he contains all the rest, one inside the other, like beer gla.s.ses--all [oe]c.u.menical councils, inquisitions, and propaganda, and the devil and his grandmother. But, loveliest, thou didst not write down any of thy _scientia media_ before thy fall, as I did, and consequently thou starest into the future as blind as a bat. I, however, who see into it quite clearly, am enabled by my chrestomathy to perceive that, where other men beget perhaps some ten fools, I shall beget whole millions of tens, and units into the bargain, seeing that the Bohemians, Parisians, Viennese, Leipzigers, Bayreuthers, Hofians, Dublinese, Kuhschnappelers (and their wives and daughters over and above) have all got to come into existence through me, and that in every million of them there will always be at least five hundred who neither have, nor will listen to, reason. Duenna, as yet you know little of the human race, but two in fact, for the serpent is not one; but I know what sort of race I am going to produce, and that in opening my _limbus infantum_, I open at the same time a Bedlam. By heaven, I weep and lament when I merely peep in between the leaves of the centuries in their long course, and see nothing there but gouts of gore, and a congeries of idiots--when I think of the trouble and pain to be undergone before a century shall learn to write a legible hand, a hand even as good as a minister"s or an elephant"s trunk--before poor humanity gets through its dame"s school, and private tutors, and French governesses, so as to be fit for Latin grammar schools, public schools, Jesuit seminaries, and next for fencing cla.s.ses, dancing cla.s.ses, dogmatic and clinical courses. By old Harry, I feel hot. n.o.body will think of you as the brood-hen of the coming flock of starlings, as the sp.a.w.ning codfish in whom Leuwenhack will count 9 millions of eggs; not you, my little Eve, but your husband, will get all the blame, who should have known better, and rather begotten nothing than such a rabble of thieves and robbers, crowned emperors on the Roman throne, and vicegerents on the Roman chair, the former of whom will call themselves after Antoninus and Caesar, the latter after Christus and Petrus, and among whom there are men whose thrones shall be Luneburg torture chairs for the human race, if not the converse of a Place de Greve, where the ma.s.ses shall be put to death, and the single individual feted and amused.[31] And I shall be taken to task on account of Borgia, Pizarro, St. Dominic, and Potemkin. Even supposing I should manage to evade being blamed for black exceptions such as these, I should be obliged to admit that my descendants really cannot get through the s.p.a.ce of half-an-hour without either thinking or doing something foolish, that the war of giants, waged in them by their pa.s.sions, is never broken by a peace, seldom even by a truce that the greatest of all man"s faults is that he has such a number of little ones; that his conscience serves for scarcely anything but _hating his neighbours and being morbidly sensitive to their transgressions_; that he never leaves off evil ways till he is on his deathbed; that, he learns and loves the language of virtue, but is at enmity with the virtuous--just as the English employ French language teachers, though they detest the French themselves. Eve, Eve, we shall have little to congratulate ourselves upon if we marry; Adam means in the original "red earth," and truly my cheeks will consist entirely thereof, and will blush scarlet at the mere thought of the indescribable and unparalleled conceit and vanity of our great-grandchildren, increasing as the centuries go on. n.o.body will tweak _himself_ by the nose--unless perhaps when he is shaving. Critics will set themselves up above authors, authors above critics--Heimlicher von Blaise will give his hand to be kissed by orphans; ladies theirs to be kissed by all and sundry; mighty ones the embroidered hems of their garments. Eve, I had only got as far on with my prophetic extracts from the world"s history as the sixth century, when you bit the apple under the tree, and I, like a fool, did as you did, and everything slipped out of my head: G.o.d only knows what sort of a set the fools and foolesses of the subsequent centuries may turn out to be. Virgin, wilt thou now put into action thy _Sternocleidomastoideum_, as Sommering styles the muscle which nods the head, and so express your "yes" when I put to you the question, "Wilt thou have the marriage-preacher to thy wedded husband?"
""You will no doubt reply, let us first hear the second head of the discourse, in which the subject is considered from another point of view. And indeed, dearly beloved, we had almost forgotten that we must proceed to the
SECOND PLACE,
and consider the reasons which may persuade first parents to become such, and to marry, and serve Destiny in the capacity of sewing and spinning machines of linseed, hemp, flax, and tow, to be wound by her in endless networks and coils around the earthly sphere. My strongest reason, and, I trust, yours also, is the thought of the Day of Judgment. For, in the event of our becoming the _entrepreneurs_ of the human race, I shall see all my descendants, when they ascend from the calcined earth like vapour, at the last day, into the nearest planet, and fall into order for the last review; and among this harvest of children and grandchildren, I shall hit upon a few sensible people with whom one may be able to exchange a rational word or two--men whose whole lives were pa.s.sed, as well as lost, amid thunder and lightning (as according to the Romans those whom the G.o.ds loved were killed by lightning), and who never closed their eyes or their ears, however wild the storm. I see the four heathen evangelists among them too, Socrates, Cato, Epictetus, and Antoninus, men who went through the world, using their voices like fire-engine pipes, two hundred feet long, to save people from being burnt out of house and home by the fire of their own pa.s.sions, sluicing them all over with pure, cold, Alp-water. And there can be no doubt after all, that I may really be the arch-papa, and you the arch-mamma, of some very great and celebrated people, that"s to say, if we choose. I tell you, Eve, that I have it here in black and white among my excerpts and collectanea that I shall be the forefather, ancestor, and Bethlehem of an Aristotle, Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, Rousseau, Goethe, Kant, Leibnitz, people, take them for all in all, who are as able thinkers as their protoplast himself, if not abler. Eve, thou active and important member of the fruit-bearing jointstock company, or productive cla.s.s of the state (consisting of thyself and this marriage-preacher), I a.s.sure you I expect to pa.s.s a few hours of exquisite enjoyment when on that neighbouring star I survey in a cursory manner that cla.s.sic concourse newly risen from the dead, and at length kneel down, and cry, "Good morning, my children! Such of you as are Jews were wont to utter an ejaculatory prayer when ye met a wise man; but what such utterance would suffice for me, now that I behold all the wise and all the faculties at once, all of them my own blood relations too, who amid the wolfish hunger of their desires have stedfastly refrained from forbidden apples, pears, and pine apples, and, deep as their thirst for wisdom might be, committed no orchard-robbery on the tree of knowledge, though their first parents seized upon the forbidden fruit, although they had never known what hunger was, and upon the tree of knowledge, although they possessed all knowledge, except knowledge of the serpent nature." And then I shall arise from the ground, pa.s.s into the angelic crowd, fall on the bosom of some distinguished descendant, and, throwing my arms around him, say, "Thou, true, good, contented-minded, gentle son! If I could just have shown _thee_ only, sitting in thy brood-cell, to my Eve, the queen-bee of this great swarm here present, at the time when I was delivering the second head of my marriage sermon, I"m sure she would have listened to reason, and given a favourable answer.""
"And thou, Siebenkaes, art that same, true, good son, and thou restest ever on the warm, heaving breast of
"Thy Friend.
"_Postscript and Clausula Salutaris_.
"Please to forgive me this merry private ball and witches" dance upon cheap and nasty letter-paper, notwithstanding that you are unfortunately an infinitesimal fractional part of the German race, and as such, can"t be expected either to stand, or to understand, such a dance of ideas. This is why I never print anything for the unwieldy German intellect; entire sheets which I have sp.a.w.ned full of playful idea-fishes of this sort I consign at once to regions where such productions do not usually arrive till they attain the evening of their days, having previously exercised the right of transit through the booksellers" shops. I was eight days in Hof, and am at present living a retired life at Bayreuth; in both of these towns I have made faces, that is, other people"s profiles; but most of the heads which sat or stood to my scissors opined that all was not quite right in mine. Tell me the real truth of the matter; it"s not altogether a matter of indifference to me, because if I should turn out not to be quite "all there," I should be incapable of devising my property by will, or of exercising various civil functions.
"In conclusion, I send a thousand kind remembrances and kisses to your dear, good Lenette, and my compliments to Herr Schulrath Stiefel, and will you please ask him if he is any relation to Magister Stiefel, the rector of Holzdorf and Lochau (in Wittemberg), who prophesied (incorrectly, as I consider) that the end of the world would take place on the 1st January, 1533, at 8 o"clock in the morning, and lived to die in his own bed after all. I also send, for you and the "Advertiser," a couple of programmes of Professor Lang"s of this place, relative to the General Superintendent of Bayreuth, and one of Dr. Frank"s of Pavia.
There is a very charming young lady, exceedingly clever and intellectual, living here at the Sun Hotel (she is in the front rooms, and I in the back). She has been very much pleased with me and my face, I am happy to tell you, seeing how exactly you and I are alike, the only difference between us being my lame foot. So that the things I pride myself upon in ladies" society are my likeness to you and my weaknesses. Unless I have been misinformed, this lady is a poor niece of your old uncle"s with the broken gla.s.s wig, and is being brought up at his expense, and destined for a marriage with some Kuhschnappeler of the upper ten thousand. Perhaps she may soon be forwarded to you, entered in the way-bill as bridegroom"s effects.
"The above is my oldest news, but my newest news, namely your own self, I shall not expect to arrive here at Bayreuth till I and the spring get back to it together (for the day after to-morrow I am off to meet it in Italy), and we, I and the spring, together beautify the world to such a degree that you will certainly enjoy a happy time of it in Bayreuth, the houses and the hills of that place being so particularly charming.
And so, fare thee somewhat well."
They all felt certain that the Kuhschnappeler of rank for whom the Heimlicher"s niece was being brought up could be none other than the Venner Rosa, whose little burnt-down stump of a heart--what was left of it after being hitherto made use of to set fire to the bosoms of female humanity in general (as the lamp in a smoking-room serves to kindle the pipes of the collective frequenters thereof)--would be the marriage torch to light her to her new home.
As there were three heavens in this letter--one for each of the party--kind remembrances for Lenette, the programmes for Peltzstiefel, the letter itself for Siebenkaes--I shouldn"t have been astonished if the terzetto of them had danced for joy. The Schulrath, intoxicated with delight--for the glad blood rose to his sober head--opened the papers sent him upon the square patterned supper-cloth (which was laid already), and hungrily began to devour his three printed "relishes before supper," and literary pet.i.ts soupers, upon the tin plate without even saying grace, until an invitation to stay and have some supper reminded him that he must be off. But before leaving, he pet.i.tioned that, by way of fee for having acted as middleman and court of arbitration between them, or as an alkali to promote the blending of his oil with her water--he might have a new profile of Lenette. The old one cut out by Leibgeber (which the letter brought to his recollection), and which, as we may remember, Leibgeber let him have, happened to have been put into the pocket of his dressing-gown and sent to the wash with it (being of much the same colour, moreover). "It shall be put on the stocks to-night," said Siebenkaes.
When the Schulrath was going, as he could see that the ring upon Lenette"s finger didn"t squeeze it so uncomfortably as it had done (and gave _himself_ credit for having been the means of filing it smoother and padding it softer), he shook her hand with much warmth, and said--
"I shall always be delighted to come whenever there"s the slightest thing the matter with you two charming people."
Lenette answered, "Oh yes, do come very often."
And Siebenkaes added, "The oftener the better."
And yet, when he had gone, the ring seemed to be not quite so comfortable again, and medical students who may be working at psychology may be a little surprised that during supper the advocate said very little to his wife, and she very little to him. The reason was that he had Leibgeber"s letter lying by his plate in the place where the bread normally is, and the image of his beloved friend shone bright before his mental vision from Bayreuth all athwart the far misty darkness between--their first happy meeting to come floated magically before him. Hope shot down a pure clearing ray into the dark mephitic cave where he was panting and toiling now--and the coming spring stood like some cathedral tower all hung with lamps lofty and bright in the distance, beaming through the dark night sky.
At length he "came to himself," _i. e_. to his wife; the strong image of Leibgeber had buoyed him up from the sharp stones which strewed the present; the dear old friend, who had clipped out the bride"s profile up in the choir on the wedding-day, and been with them in the early weeks of their honeymoon, seemed to fling a chain of flower-wreaths about him and draw him closer to the silent form by his side. "Well darling, and how are you getting on?" he said, awaking from his reverie and taking her hand, now that all was peace again between them. She had, however, the feminine peculiarity or foible, habit at all events, of being much quicker to show that she was vexed than that her anger was over; of, at all events, being slow to show the latter; and of commencing a reconsideration of all the matters in dispute at the very moment that amends have been made and accepted, and pardon begged and granted. There are very few married women indeed who will put their hand into their husbands", and say "There, I"m good again," without a very considerable hesitation and delay; unmarried women are much more ready to do it. Wendeline _did_ hold hers out, but did it too coldly, and drew it away again in a great hurry, to take up the table-cloth, which she asked him to help her to smooth and fold up. He did this smilingly--she gravely giving her whole attention to the process of folding the long white parallelogram into exact squares--and at length, when the last and thickest square was arrived at, he held it fast there--she pulled, trying to look very serious--he looked at her very fondly and tenderly--she couldn"t help smiling at this and then he took the tablecloth from her, pressed it and himself with it to her heart, and said, in her arms, "Little thief! how can you be so naughty to your old ragam.u.f.fin of a Siebenkaes, or whatever his name may be?" And now the rainbow of a brighter future appeared shining above the fast ebbing flood which had risen as high as their hearts so lately---- But, my dears, rainbows now-a-days very often mean just the reverse of what the first was said to signify.
The prize he awarded to his queen of the rose-feast of the heart was to ask her to let him take a profile of her pretty face, that Peltzstiefel might find a joy and a present waiting for him on the morrow. I think I shall just trace an outline of his outline-tracing for people of taste in this place; but I must stipulate that n.o.body is to expect a pen to be a painter"s brush--or a painter"s brush to be an engraver"s style--or an engraver"s style a flower anther, generating generation upon generation of lilies and roses.
The advocate borrowed a drawing-board, viz. the facade of a new pigeon-house, from Fecht the cobbler. Lenette"s shoulder fitted into the oval portal of it as a clasp-knife does into its handle; a sheet of white paper was tacked on to the board--her pretty, soft head was pressed on the stiff paper--he applied, with much care and self restraint, his pencil at the upper part of the brow, difficult as it was to catch the shadow in such immediate proximity to the reality--and went slowly down the beautiful, flowery declivity all roses and lilies.
But little or nothing came of it; the _back_ part of the head was pretty good. His eyes would keep turning away from his work to the sitter, so that he drew as vilely as a box-painter.
"Wendeline, your head isn"t still a moment," he said. And indeed her face, an well as her brain-fibres, shook by reason of the heightened beat of her pulse and the quickening of her breathing; while, on the other hand, his pencil stumbled when it came to the delicate _ba.s.so relievo_ of her little nose, fell into the cleft at her lips, and stranded on the shoal of her chin. He kissed those lips which he couldn"t draw, and which she always had either too much open or too tightly closed, and brought a shaving-gla.s.s and said, "See, haven"t you got more faces than Ja.n.u.s, or any Indian G.o.d? The Schulrath will think you were making faces, and I copying them. Look, here"s where you moved, and I sprung after you like a chamois; the effect of the jump is, that the upper part of the face sticks out before the lower like a half mask. Just think how the Schulrath will stare in the morning."
"Try once more, dear; I"ll do just as you tell me; I should like it to be very nice," Lenette said, blushing; and stiffened her neck, and steadied her soft cheek against the drawing-board. And as her husband gently glided his drawing ovipositor over her brow like a segment of some white hemisphere--instead of breathing, he found she was _holding_ her breath this time till she shook again, and till the colour came to her face.
And here jealousy, like some exploding fire-ship, sent hard fragments of the wreck of his shattered happiness crashing on a sudden against his heart.
"Ah!" (he thought) "can it be that she does really love him?" (_i. e._ the Schulrath).
His pencil stood still in the obtuse angle between her nose and her chin as if under a spell; he heard her let go her pent-up breath; his pencil made black zigzags at the edge of the paper, and as he stopped at the closed lips, which nothing warmer than his own, and her morning prayers, had ever touched, and thought "Must _this_ come upon me too?
must _this_ joy be taken from me like all the rest? And am I drawing up my bill of divorce and Uriah-letter here with my own very hands?" He could do no more at it. He took the drawing-board quickly from her shoulder--fell upon her closed lips--kissed away the pent-up sigh--pressed the life out of his jealousy between his heart and hers, and said--
"I can"t do it till to-morrow, Lenette! Don"t be vexed, darling! Tell me, are you quite as you used to be in Augspurg? Don"t you understand me? Have you not the slightest idea what I am driving at?"