Seldwyla Folks: Three Singular TalesKeller, Gottfried
General
Seldwyla Folks: Three Singular Tales
Keller, Gottfried
Switzerland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
enormous deal of trouble and skill had been wasted on this pasteboard
temple, and its ground plan was just as correct as the work itself. And
when this monument of a year passed jointly so pleasantly had been duly
accepted, Zues Buenzlin encouraged the good bookbinder, doing violence
to her own well-regulated heart, to tear himself away from the town and
to set once more his staff for a wandering life. She pointed out with
perfect justice that the whole world stood open to him, and she assured
him that now, having schooled and ennobled his heart by improving his
acquaintance with herself, happiness elsewhere would certainly be in
store for him. She would never forget him and retire into solitude. And
indeed, the young fellow was so much affected by these moral
exhortations that he shed a few melancholy tears in passing the town
gate on his way. His masterpiece, however, since stood on top of Zues'
old-fashioned clothes press, daintily covered by a veil of green gauze,
thus defying dust and profane gaze. She considered it so much of a
sacred relic that she kept it intact and without even placing anything
whatever into those many tiny recesses of the temple. In her memory he
continued to live as "Emmanuel," although his real name had been Veit.
And she told everyone with whom she discussed the case that Emmanuel
alone had completely understood her inner self. This she said now that
he was gone, but while he had been with her in the flesh she had been
of different opinion, for she had rarely admitted to him that he was
right, deeming it wiser to thus urge him on to higher and ever higher
endeavor in his search of a perfect agreement of mind with his idol.
Indeed, she had more than once intimated to him, at times when he hoped
he had at last fully entered the arcana of her soul, that he was
farther and farther from it.
But he, too, Veit-Emmanuel, played her a little trick. He had placed in
a false bottom, in one of the diminutive apartments of his pasteboard
fairy palace, the most touching of all love letters, bedewed with his
tears, wherein he confessed his bitter grief at parting from her, his
love, his worship and his sublime steadfastness, and in such passionate
and sincere terms had he done this as only genuine feeling can find,
even if it has lost itself in a cul-de-sac. Such touching, such moving
things he had never said to her, simply because she never would give
him the chance, having always interrupted him when he was on the point
of doing so. But as she had not the slightest suspicion that any such
document had been put away within the temple, she never found the
missive and thus fate for once dealt justly and did not let a false
beauty see that which she was not worthy of. And it was also a symbol
that she it was who had not fathomed the somewhat silly, but devoted
and sincere heart of the youth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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