Part 24 (1/2)
”According to this variation it was not the pupil, but the teacher, whom the young lady looked upon with favor; and the broken arm of the baron was not the effect of a fall, but of a pistol ball, which was applied to his aforesaid extremity in the presence of witnesses, and according to all the rules of art.”
”Well, and which reading do you prefer?”
”Of course the latter, my brave Knight of La Mancha. Here, Oswald--n.o.body hears us in these halls, sacred to friends.h.i.+p and love--fill your gla.s.s and drink! Drink it to the last drop of silvery foam! Her health!--the health of the only one, the sweet, the fair, the beautiful one, with the blueish-black hair and the dark sea-deep eyes!
Drink! I say, by the bones of the eleven thousand virgins at Cologne!
Drink! How, n.o.ble Don, are you ashamed to confess the lady of your overflowing heart? and to deny her before me--me, the wise Merlin, who can hear the gra.s.s grow and the eyes sigh? Have I not heard the sighing of your beautiful eyes in those sunny days which are no more, when you and she, two children of a rare kind, played innocently under the rose-bushes and thought that no one saw you, not even the Creator of heaven and earth who gave you the warm breath with which you playfully whispered to each other the sweet mysteries of love? And did I not hear how serpents' tongues hissed around you? Did I not see with what intense hatred basilisk eyes glared at you? Oh, I have seen and heard all that, and I knew before that it would come thus, but I said nothing; for speech is silver, but silence is gold, and he who meddles with love affairs would do better to go and sit down in a bed of nettles.”
”Tell me, Timm, have you--have you seen her since she has come to Grunwald?”
”I have seen her, my master!--not once, but many times, by the side of other fair beauties, among whom she looked like the rose of Sharon amid dandelions, gliding over the pavement of Grunwald, through dismal streets; and the paving-stones in the streets and the bricks in the houses received speech, and they spoke and sang: Blessed art thou among women!”
”She is at Miss Bear's house, is she not?” Oswald asked, who thought it would be folly to try and conceal his attachment from a man of such sharp observation as Albert.
”Yes, she is at the She Bear's--this pearl of an argus-eyed female.
There she dwells, and sits at the window and sees the clouds drift over the tops of the poplars; and if you pa.s.s by there at noon, between twelve and one, you can see her sit there yourself, as I have seen her every time I have pa.s.sed there at that hour. And always she raised her beautiful eyes, and always she looked at me inquiringly: Can you bring me no news of him--of him, the only man I love dearly? Why, Oswald, I--a prosy old fogy--I speak in verses whenever I think of the maid; and you, who are a poet, mean to deny that you love her with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind? Fie upon you; you do not deserve that I take so much trouble about you--that I have thought of you these last weeks more frequently than you have done during the whole time. But ingrat.i.tude is the reward of the world, and--Carole, another bottle!--I shall hereafter not trouble myself about you and your fate any further.”
Timm rested his head in his hand, as Oswald had been doing these last ten minutes. A pause followed, while bald-headed Charles placed a new bottle of champagne into the wine-cooler, turned it round a few times in the ice, and then left them again as noiselessly as he had come.
This sudden transition from exuberant hilarity into such melancholy silence, in an elastic nature like Surveyor Timm's, was somewhat too sudden to be perfectly natural. Oswald, however, was too busy with his own thoughts to notice this. He thought Timm was sincere, and he was flattered by the lively interest which he had excited in a man whom he had heretofore looked upon as altogether frivolous and selfish. He filled his own gla.s.s and Albert's from the new bottle, and said,
”I am not ungrateful, Timm; I am really not so; and least of all in this case. And if I have heretofore not put full faith in your friends.h.i.+p, it was only because I felt how little I had deserved it.
Let us have another gla.s.s together! You know you must not be exacting with a melancholy man like myself!”
”Well, I should think I knew that,” said Timm, with his usual merry laugh, pus.h.i.+ng back the long fair hair that had fallen down upon his forehead, and emptying his gla.s.s at a single draught. ”And I have often wondered how a man like yourself, who has a right to enjoy life more than any one else, can look upon the world in a way which seems only fit for sick canary birds and like invalids. I should say nothing if you had never commenced to enjoy it from mere bashfulness, or if you had wasted your strength in enjoyment; but as neither the one nor the other is evidently the case with you--as you are not an enthusiastic saint nor a worn-out roue--as you suffer neither from an exuberance of strength nor from too great weakness, I really cannot tell what is the matter with you, except one thing.”
”And what is that?”
Mr. Timm rested his elbows on the table, and the smooth face in his white hands, and smiled craftily at Oswald.
”And that is--what, Timm?”
”Ten thousand dollars annual income.” Oswald laughed.
”A very prosaic remedy for contempt of the world.”
”But a very radical one, and in your case infallible.”
”Why exactly in my case?”
Timm filled the gla.s.ses once more, lighted a fresh cigar, and said:
”Heine, you know, divides men in two cla.s.ses: fat Grecians and lean Nazarenes. I have found this distinction as acute as true. The former believe in Our Lady of Melos, the latter wors.h.i.+p the Virgin Dolorosa.
The former enjoy the good things of life in cheerful happiness; the latter prefer a grumbling resignation and meditative asceticism. In order that both cla.s.ses should be right, that the Grecians should be able to live well and the Nazarenes pray well, the former must have an abundance of money, and the latter must be poor, very poor indeed.”
”Before you go on with your exposition, Timm, tell me first to which of the two cla.s.ses you belong yourself.”