The first chapter he sweetened for himself in her society, by the consideration that she was new and belonged to him and yielded him an admiring obedience. He painted for her therein great pieces of beautiful nature, mixed therewith some nearer emotions, and thereupon kissed her; so that she really enjoyed his lips in two forms, that of action and that of speech; from her, as has been said, he wanted only a pair of open ears. In this chapter he assumed also some possibility of their marriage; men so easily confound the charm of a new love with the worth and duration of it. He set himself about his second chapter, and swam therein blissfully in the tears with which he sought to write it out. In fact, this ocular pleasure afforded him more true joy than almost the best chapters. When, in such mood, he sat and drank by her side,--for, like a dead prince's heart, he loved to bury his living one in cups,--and then began to describe his life, particularly his death, and his sorrows and errors in the interval, and his suicide and infanticide at the masquerade, and his rejected and spurned love for Linda: who was then more moved to tears than himself? No one but Rabette, whose eyes,--having been, through her father and brother, as little acquainted with men's tears as with elephants', stags', or crocodiles' tears,--so much the more richly, but not so sweetly as bitterly, streamed over into his sorrow and love. This poured fresh oil again into his flame and lamp, until he at last, like that pupil of Goethe's master wizard, with the brooms that carried water, could no longer govern his spirits. Poetic natures have a sympathetic one; like justice, they keep a surgeon in their pay near the rack, who immediately sets again the broken limbs, yes, even regulates beforehand the places for the crushing fractures.[26] A man should never weep on his own account, except for ecstasy. But poets and all people of much fancy are magicians who--exact counterparts of the burnt enchantresses--weep more easily, although more at images, than at the rough, sore calamity itself, in order to put the poor enchantresses to the worst water-ordeal. Trust them not! On the machinelle-poison-tree the rain-drops are poisonous which roll from its leaves. Meanwhile it must never be concealed, that the Captain in this second chapter strengthened his resolution of really marrying the good and so tender Rabette. "Thou knowest," he said to himself, "what upon the whole there is in and about women, one or two deficiencies, more or less, make little difference; thy man-like folly of requiring her, as they do hired animals, to be warranted without fault, may surely be regarded as gone by, friend."