CHAPTER VII.
STATISTICS OF LOVE.
When they assembled again at the villa, the Doctor chanced to be there.Or was it not mere chance? Did he desire to note accurately, once forall, the relation between Eric and Bella?
He saluted the Professorin with great respect; she said she mustconfess that her husband, who made a point of mentioning frequently hisdistant friends, had never uttered, to the best of her recollection,the name of Doctor Richard.
"And yet I was a friend of his," cried the Doctor in a loud tone.
After a while, he said in a low voice: "I must be honest with you, andtell you that I was only a little acquainted with your husband; butyour father-in-law was my teacher. I introduced myself, however, toyour son as the friend of your husband, because this seemed to me thereadiest way to be of service to him, exposed as he is here, in thehouse and in its connections, to a variety of perils."
The Professorin warmly expressed her obligation to him, but her heartcontracted again. This man had evidently alluded to Bella.
The Artist who had painted the portrait of the Wine-count's daughterwas there; and soon the Priest came too, and regret was expressed thatthe Major could not be present, having gone to celebrate St. John's dayin the neighborhood; he considered everything appertaining to theMasonic order in the nature of a military duty.
The company in general were in a genial mood. The Doctor asked thepainter how he got along with his picture of Potiphar's wife.
The Artist invited the company to visit shortly the studio, which Herrvon Endlich had fitted up for him for the summer months.
"Strange!" cried the Doctor. "We always speak of Potiphar's wife, andwe don't know what her own name was; she takes the name of her husband,and you artists don't refrain from painting nude beauties with more orless fidelity. The chaste Joseph presents always an extremelycontemptible figure, and perhaps because the world thinks that thechaste Joseph is always a more or less contemptible figure. AEneas andDido are just such another constellation, but AEneas is not looked uponin so contemptuous a way as the Egyptian Joseph."
It was painful to hear the Doctor talk in this style.
The Priest said:--
"This narrative in the Old Testament is the correlative to that of theadulteress in the New; and after a thousand years, the harmony isrendered complete. The Old Testament strikes the discordant note; theNew Testament brings it to the accordant pitch."
Clodwig was exceedingly delighted with this exposition; there wassomething of the student-nature in him, and he was always enlivened andmade happy by any new view, and any enlargement of his knowledge.
"Herr Priest, and you also, Frau Professorin," cried the Doctor, whowas to-day more talkative than ever, "with your great experience oflife, you two could render a great service to a friend of mine."
"I?" the priest asked.
"And I?" asked the Professorin.
"Yes, you. Our century has entered upon a wholly new investigation ofthe laws of the world; and things, circumstances, sentiments, which onewould not believe could ever be caught, are now bagged in thestatistical net, and must be shown to be conformable to laws. Nothinghas been esteemed freer and more incalculable, even incomprehensible,than love and matrimony, and yet there are now exact statistical tablesof these; there is an iron law, by which the number of divorces in ayear is determined. My friend now goes a step farther, and from factsof his own observation has deduced the conclusion, that marriages inwhich the man is considerably older than the wife, present a greateraverage of happy unions than so-called love-matches; now, Herr Priest,and you also, Frau Professorin, think over the list of persons you areacquainted with, and ask yourselves whether you find any confirmationof this law."
The Professorin was silent, but the Priest said that religion aloneconsecrated marriage; religion alone gave humility, which was the onlysure basis of all beautiful intercourse between men themselves, andalso between man and God.
The Priest succeeded, continuing the conversation, in diverting itentirely from the subject so flippantly introduced.
Sonnenkamp stated that the Major wished to have a grand masoniccelebration in the spacious knight's hall of the castle, when it wascompleted; he asked in what relation the reigning Prince stood towardsMasonry.
Clodwig replied that he himself had formerly belonged to the order, andthat the Prince was at present a protector of the brotherhood, withoutbeing a member.
The conversation was carried on in groups, and they left the table in acheerful mood. The Doctor took leave.
It was now settled that the Aunt should go to Wolfsgarten; and, inorder to give her time to make preparation for leaving, Clodwig andBella were to remain over night and take her in the carriage with themon the morrow.
Bella was in very good spirits, and, on Sonnenkamp's offering topresent her with a parrot, requested that it might be the wildest one,which she promised to tame.
In the evening Roland urged them to take a sail with him on the Rhine.The Aunt and Bella went together; Fraeulein Perini withdrew with FrauCeres; the Professorin remained with Clodwig, and Sonnenkamp excusedhimself to forward some unfinished letters.
On the boat there were laughter and merriment, in which Bella joined,dipping her hand into the water and playing with her wedding-ring,which she moved up and down on the finger, repeatedly immersing herhand in the Rhine.
"Do you understand what the Doctor was aiming at?" she asked Eric.
"If I had been willing to understand, I should have been obliged tofeel offended," he replied.
"Now we are speaking of the Doctor," resumed Bella, "there is one thingI must tell you that I have forgotten to mention before. The Doctor isdoughty, unadulterated virtue; but this rough virtue once wanted to paycourt to me, and I showed him how ridiculous he made himself. It mayvery well be, that the man doesn't speak well of me. You ought to knowthe reason."
Eric was moved in his inmost soul. What does this mean? May this be awily move to neutralize the physician's opinion? He could notdetermine.
After a while, Bella asked,--
"Can you tell me why I am now so often low-spirited?"
"The more highly-endowed natures, Aristotle says, are alwaysmelancholy," replied Eric.
Bella caught her breath; that was altogether too pedantic an answer tosuit her.
They did not succeed in keeping up any continued conversation, butBella said at one time abruptly to Eric,--
"The visit here of your mother vexes me."
"What! vexes you?"
"Yes, it wounds me that this man with his gold should be able to changethe position of people, as he does."
Eric had abundant matter of thought in this casual remark.
"You have the happiness to be greatly beloved," said Bella suddenly.Eric looked up alarmed, glancing towards Roland, and Bella continuedaloud,--
"Your mother loves you deeply." After a time, she said in a low tone toherself, but Eric heard it,--
"Me no one loves; I know why,--no, I don't know why."
Eric looked her full in the face, then seized an oar and made the waterfly with his rowing.
Meanwhile, the mother and Clodwig sat together, and the formerexpressed her joy that Eric had been thrown into the society of men ofsuch well-tried experience; in former times, a man could have completedhis culture by intercourse with women; but now, that end could beattained only by intercourse with noble men.
They soon passed into those mutual unfoldings of views which are like aperpetual greeting, when two persons have pursued the same spiritualends apart from each other, in wholly different relations of life, andyet with the same essential tendencies.
The Professorin had known Clodwig's first wife, and recalled her toremembrance in affectionate words. Clodwig looked round to see if Bellawas near, for he had never spoken before her of his former wife. It waspure calumny, when it was said that he had promised Bella never tospeak of the deceased, for Clodwig was not
so weak, nor Bella so hard,as this; it was only out of consideration for her, that he never didit.
In low, half-whispered tones, the conversation flowed on; and findingin each other the same fundamental trait, they agreed that it was happyfor human beings here below to pass lightly over what was untoward intheir lot, and retain in lively remembrance only what was felicitous.
"Yes," said the Professorin in confirmation, "my husband used often tosay, that a Lethe stream flows through the soul buoyant with life, sothat the past is forgotten."
It was a season of purest, interchange of thought, and of truespiritual communion, for Clodwig and the mother. They were like twobeings in the spirit-world, surveying calmly and clearly what hadpassed in this state of existence. There was nothing painful in themutual awakening of their recollections, but rather an internalperception of the inexhaustible fulness of life; on this elevatedheight the sound of desire and plaint was no longer heard, and theindividual life with all its personal relations was dissolved into theone element of universal being.
But now there was a diversion, and Clodwig expressed regret at havinglived so much a mere spectator, and that he had without throwinghimself into the great current of influence, waited passively in theconfident expectation that the idea which was stirring in the worldwould accomplish, of itself, its own grand fulfilment. He expressed hissatisfaction that the young men of to-day were of a different stamp,and that Eric was to him an inspiring representative of youth asthoughtful as it was bold, as moderate as it was active.
Bella entered just as they happened to refer again to the statistics oflove. She was pale, but Clodwig did not perceive it; sitting down nearthem in silence, she requested them to continue their conversation; butneither the Professorin nor Clodwig resumed the interrupted theme.
Clodwig spoke of Aunt Claudine, asked after her favorite pursuits, andwas glad to own a fine telescope, which she could use at Wolfsgarten.
After a brief rest, Bella left them and went into the park.
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