Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/201

 I confess, the new-painted room, and a gleam of dawn on the wall, made it so light, that he could see his knee-buckles glancing on the chair. He then softly awakened his mother (the other guests were to lie for hours in the sheets), and she had the city cook-maid to awaken, who, like several other articles of wedding-furniture, had been borrowed for a day or two from Flachsenfingen. At two doors he knocked in vain, and without answer; for all were already down at the hearth, cooking, blowing, and arranging.

How softly does the Spring day gradually fold back its nun-veil, and the Earth grow bright, as if it were the morning of a Resurrection!—The quicksilver-pillar of the barometer, the guiding Fire-pillar of the weather-prophet, rests firmly on Fixlein's Ark of the Covenant. The Sun raises himself, pure and cool, into the morningblue, instead of into the morning-red. Swallows, instead of clouds, shoot skimming through the melodious air … O, the good Genius of Fair Weather, who deserves many temples and festivals (because without him no festival could be held), lifted an ethereal, azure Day, as it were, from the well-clear atmosphere of the Moon, and sent it down, on blue butterfly-wings,—as if it were a blue Monday,—glittering below the Sun, in the zigzag of joyful, quivering descent, upon the narrow spot of Earth, which our heated fancies are now viewing .… And on this balmy, vernal spot stand, amid flowers, over which the trees are shaking blossoms instead of leaves, a bride and a bridegroom..… Happy Fixlein! how shall I paint thee without deepening the sighs of longing in the fairest souls?—

But soft! we will not drink the magic cup of Fancy to the bottom at six in the morning; but keep sober till towards night!