The Children of the World. Paul Heyse
in connection with those coarse natural sounds, would have disgusted any one else with this Midsummer Night's Dream. But the youth in the straw hat could not seem to make up his mind to exchange the hard seat under the scanty foliage for his usual bed. He had removed his hat and leaned back against the wall, whose damp surface was pleasant to his burning head. He gazed through the roof of poles at the small patch of sky visible between the walls, and began to count the stars. The topmost branches of the acacia gleamed in the moonlight, as if coated with silver, and the opposite wall, as far as it was touched by the pale light, glittered as if covered with thin ice or hoarfrost. "Ah!" said the lonely man in the arbor, "life is still worth the trouble! True, its brightest gift, fair as yonder stars, is as unattainable as they--but what does that matter? Does not what we are permitted to admire, what we can not forget, belong to us as much, nay more, than if we had it in a chest and had lost the key?" The striking of a clock in a neighboring steeple roused him from this half-conscious, dreamy soliloquy. "One!" he said to himself. "It is time to think of going to sleep. If Balder should have kept awake to watch for me, though I expressly forbade it--"
He rose hastily and entered the house. When he had groped his way cautiously up the rickety stairs and reached the landing on the first story, he perceived to his astonishment that the door which led into the rooms stood half open. A small dark ante-chamber led into a larger apartment, lighted by a sleepy little lamp. On the sofa behind the table lay a female figure, still completely dressed, absorbed in a book. The light fell upon a sharply cut, sullen face, past its first youth, with very dark hair and heavy brows, to which an expression of power and defiance lent a certain charm. The reader's thick locks had become unbound, and she wore a plain summer dress of calico, which left her shoulders and arms bare. Not the slightest change of countenance betrayed that she had heard the sound of the loiterer's footsteps, and when he paused a moment in the entry and looked through the door, she did not even raise her eyes from her book, or push back the hair which had fallen over her forehead.
"Are you still up, Fräulein Christiane?" he said at last, advancing to the threshold of the ante-room.
"As you see, Herr Doctor," she replied in a deep voice, without being in the least disturbed. "The heat--and perhaps also this book--will not permit me to sleep. I was so absorbed that I did not even hear you come in. Besides, it is quite time to go to sleep. Good night."
"May I be permitted to ask, Fräulein, what book it is that will not let you sleep?" he said, still in the dark entry.
"Why not?" was the reply, after some little hesitation. "Besides, you have a special right to do so, for it is your book. The proprietor of the house, Meister Feyertag, borrowed it of you several weeks ago, and yesterday told me so much about it, that I begged it of him for a day. Now I can not leave it."
He laughed, and stepped within the room. "So the wicked rat-catcher, to whose pipe all the men and women now dance, even though they often declare his tunes horrible, has seized upon you also. You have certainly just read the chapter on women, whose most striking portions our worthy host daily quotes to his wife; and though it makes you angry, you can not drive it out of your mind. The old sinner knows how to begin: he hasn't read Göthe for nothing.
"'Doch wem gar nichts dran gelegen
Scheinet ob er reizt und rührt,
Der beleidigt, der verführt!"
"You are mistaken," she replied, now sitting erect, so that her face was shaded by the green screen on the lamp. "True, I have read the chapter, but it made no special impression upon me, either favorable or otherwise It is a caricature, very like, and yet utterly false. He seems to have known only the portion of our sex called 'females': 'tell me with whom you associate,' etc. Well, we are used to that. But where I have become inspired with a great respect for him, is from the chapter entitled 'The Sorrows of the World.' I could, at almost every sentence, make a note or quote an example from what I have myself experienced or witnessed in others. And I also know why, notwithstanding this, we like to read it; because he relates it without a murmur, so calmly and in such a matter-of-course manner, that we see it would be foolish to complain of it, or to hope for anything better for our poor miserable selves, than is bestowed upon a whole world. You must lend me his other books."
"My dear Fräulein," he replied, "we will discuss the question further some other time. You must not suppose that I am one of the professors of philosophy who wish to silence this singular man. It is a pity that he is not still alive to be asked the various and numerous questions, from which he carefully retired to his sybarite seclusion in the Swan, at Frankfort-on-the-Main. But be that as it may, it is too warm to-night to philosophize. Throw Schopenhauer aside, Fräulein, and play something for me,--the Moonlight Sonata, or any sweet, pensive harmony. I should like to cleanse my ears from the ballet-music to which I have been compelled to listen."
"You! listen to ballet-music?"
"Yes; it sounds ridiculous, but nevertheless it is true. How did it come about? You know, at least by sight, our tyrant, the so-called medical counsellor, my university friend and physician in ordinary. He comes up to our hen-roost every day. Well, I have overworked myself a little this summer, finishing a prize essay,--a haste that was most unnecessary, since with my heresies I am safe from academical honors. However, I gained the second premium,--a heavy head, with such rebellious nerves that my state almost borders on a disordered brain, or one of the mild forms of lunacy. A journey, or a few weeks on the Rhigi, would be the best cure. But our physician in ordinary, for excellent reasons, prescribed no such luxurious remedy. It would be much cheaper, he thought, to let the manufactory of thought rest for a while. He proposed to me to play cards, make a collection of beetles, train a poodle, or fall in love. Unfortunately I had neither inclination nor talent for any of these very simple and undoubtedly efficacious remedies. So, early this morning, he brought me a ticket to the opera-house: he always has acquaintances before and behind the scenes. A new ballet was to be performed, to hear and see which would repay even an old habitué, let alone a whimsical fellow like myself, who had not entered a theatre for ten years. Well, I could not escape the experiment. He who has a doctor for a friend must occasionally submit to try new remedies, and a ballet is better than a silver tube in one's stomach."
He smiled,--a half-satisfied, half-mysterious smile.
"Play me the Moonlight Sonata," he asked again. "Life is beautiful, Fräulein Christiane, in spite of all the sorrows of the world. What lovely roses you have in that vase! Permit me--"
He took a small bouquet, which was standing on the table, and pressed it against his face. The full-blown flowers suddenly fell apart, and the leaves covered the book.
"Oh! dear," said he, coloring with embarrassment, "I have done a fine thing now. Will you forgive me, dear Fräulein?"
"Certainly, Herr Doctor, if you will be reasonable now, and go up stairs to sleep off your intoxication. For you are in a condition--You must know how it happened."
"I? I did not know--"
"Any better than to ask me to play for you at half-past two o'clock in the morning! We shall wake the people in the house, and others can see us,--me from the opposite windows. And besides--"
She had risen, and now repressed the rest of the words that were on her lips. After pacing several times up and down the heated room, which contained little furniture except her bed, her piano, and a bookcase, she pushed back her hair from her brow and shoulders, and folding her bare arms across her chest, stood quietly at the window. A sigh heaved the breast which had learned to keep a strict guard over its thoughts and feelings. In this attitude she waited, with apparent calmness, for him to take his leave.
"I must really seem a very singular person," he said, in a frank, honest tone. "We have lived in the same house for months, and the only use I have made of this vicinity, was by my first and only visit, when I begged you not to play during certain hours, which I had selected for study. Now I enter your room in the middle of the night, and take the liberties of an old acquaintance. Forgive me, on account of my disordered brain, dear Fräulein, and--may you have a good night's rest."
He bent his head slightly, and left the room.
As soon as she heard