How deeply now, before the infinite Eternity's-countenance of Night, did the cutting of this thought pass through Fixlein's warm soul: "O thou forsaken one beside me! No happy accident, no twilight hast thou, like that now glimmering in the heavens, to point to the prospect of a sunny day; without parents art thou, without brother, without friend; here alone on a disblossomed, emptied corner of the Earth; and thou, left Harvest-flower, must wave lonely and frozen over the withered stubble of the Past." That was the meaning of his thoughts, whose internal words were: "Poor young lady! Not so much as a half-cousin left; no nobleman will seek her, and she grows old so forgotten, and she is so good from the very heart,—Me she has made happy,—Ah, had I the presentation to the parish of Hukelum in my pocket, I should make a trial." … Their mutual lives, which a straitcutting bond of Destiny was binding so closely together, now rose before him overhung with sable,—and he forthwith conducted his friend (for a bashful man may in an hour and a half be transformed into the boldest, and then continues so) back to the last flask, that all these upsprouting thistles and passion-flowers of sorrow might therewith be swept away. I remark, in passing, that this was stupid; the torn vine is full of water-veins as well as grapes; and a soft oppressed heart the beverage of joy can melt only into tears.
If any man disagree with me, I shall desire him to look at the Conrector, who demonstrates my experimental maxim like a very syllogism.—One might arrive at some philosophic views, if one traced out the causes, why liquors—that is to say, in the long run, more plentiful secretion of the nervous spirits—make men at once pious, soft, and poetical. The Poet, like Apollo his
