Page:Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter, Volume 2.djvu/153

Rh man, pouring wine, and drinking health to both, and who traces in his veins a burning lava-stream, which is boiling through his heart, and threatening piece by piece to melt it and bear it away.—A candle stood without among the three bottles, like Reason among the Passions; on this account the Conrector looked without intermission at the window-panes, for on them (the darkness of the room served as mirror-foil) was painted, among other faces which Fixlein liked, the face he liked best of all, and which he dared to look at only in reflection, the face of Thiennette.

Every minute was a Federation-festival, and every second a Preparation-Sabbath for it. The Moon was gleaming from the evening dew, and the Pontac from their eyes, and the beanstalks were casting a shorter grating of shadow.—The quicksilver-drops of stars were hanging more and more continuous in the sable of night.—The warm vapour of the wine set our two friends (like steam-engines) again in motion.

Nothing makes the heart fuller and bolder than walking to and fro in the night. Fixlein now led the Fräulein in his arm without scruple. By reason of her lancet-wound, Thiennette could only put her hand, in a clasping position, in his arm; and he, to save her the trouble of holding fast, held fast himself, and pressed her fingers as well as might be with his arm to his heart. It would betray a total want of polished manners to censure his. At the same time, trifles are the provender of Love; the fingers are electric dischargers of a fire sparkling along every fibre; sighs are the guiding tones of two approximating hearts; and the worst and most effectual thing of all in such a case is some misfortune; for the fire of Love, like that of naphtha, likes to swim on water. Two tear-drops, one in another’s, one in your own eyes, compose, as with two convex lenses, a microscope which enlarges everything, and changes all sorrows into charms. Good sex! I too consider every sister in misfortune as fair; and perhaps thou wouldst deserve the name of the Fair, even because thou art the Suffering sex.

And if Professor Hunczogsky in Vienna modelled all the wounds of the human frame in wax, to teach his pupils how to cure them, I also, thou good sex, am representing in little Rh