Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 01.djvu/157

Rh hard, damask silk, and loaded her arms with the white abundance of her Brabant lace, she looked like a fabulous Chinese puppet—say the goddess of porcelain. And when I, enraptured and inspired, kissed her with a loving smack on both cheeks, she sat in porcelain stillness and sighed porce-languishly, "Mynheer!"—then all the tulips in the garden seemed to feel and wave and sigh in sympathy, "Mynheer!"

This delicate liaison procured me many delicacies. For every love-scene of the kind had an influence on the market-basket, which brought provisions to the house and to me. My table companions, six other students, could judge to a nicety by the roast veal or filet-de-bœuf how much I was loved by the landlady of the Red Cow. When the dinner was bad, then the word was, "Just see how miserably Schnabelewopski looks! how yellow and wrinkled his face is; what a cat's melancholy look there is in his eyes, as if they were coming out of his head; why, it's no wonder that our landlady is vexed with him and gives us poor food!" Or else, "Lord help us! Schnabelewopski is growing weaker and feebler every day, and by and by the landlady will love him no more, and then we shall have short commons every day like this; we must feed him up well, so as to make him look nice and plump and