Hesperus; or, Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography. Vol. II.Jean Paul
General
Hesperus; or, Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography. Vol. II.
Jean Paul
Fiction
and looked indifferently out of the window; but he ossified himself, as
it were, in his attitude of lifelessness. But only the night and the
distance could conceal from her his trembling, when her tears shed for
his corpse seized like a hot stream his dismembered heart, and softened
and dissolved the little of it which this evening had still left whole
into a burning wave of love. Children's tears flow more freely, when
one shows them sympathy; and in this hour of exhaustion, Victor, who
was generally made more hard by another's sympathy for him, grew
softer; and when Clotilda seated herself at the window, to lean upon it
her weary head, it seemed to him as if something exhorted him now to
verify that which he had said to-day to the statue: Cold form, erect
thyself, and show men the tears which flow from a soft heart.
Clotilda at length closed the curtains and disappeared. But he still
cautiously acted for some time longer the part of his image, and just
when he made less effort to play the statue he succeeded better. All
his thoughts flowed now like balm over the lacerated spots of his inner
man, and he said: "Though thou art only my friend, I am satisfied, and
thou canst appease this bosom's tumultuous yearnings. O, besides, this
full heart would fly to pieces, if it should entertain the thought that
thou lovest me!" For the rest he took home to himself to-day for the
first time the improbability of his recent supposition, that a person
so reserved as she could have demeaned herself in so unreserved a
manner towards the blind Julius, and he asked himself: "Is there not,
then, sufficient explanation of her departure from the court, in
January's and Matthieu's unholy love, and the holy love of Emanuel?"
But that she might not in the morning discover her erroneous
confounding of things, he gave his wax figurant exactly the position
which he had occupied at the window.
THIRD EASTER-HOLIDAY.
F. Koch's double Jews-harp.--The Sleigh-ride.--The
Ball--and....
The reader will wish, with me, that the third Easter-holiday ended
something worse than the long 28th Dog-Post-Day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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