The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano. Ludwig Tieck

spirits, and beautiful vallies, and how the miller finds his love in the mill-stream, who by and by turns out to be a princess and makes him a king, or how the fisherman jumps into the river, and at the bottom finds the most glittering and gorgeous wonders. Or a little shepherdess is playing with her lambs on the meadow, and a handsome prince, sitting upon a great horse, rides by and falls in love with her. And then, if the evening bells chance to peal through the dusk, and the wind brings the noise of the hammering and knocking from yon black mountain, or I hear the sledge-hammer from afar, I could cry, and yet in fact am glad at my very heart. But our surly gloomy Eleazar, one day that I was telling him of this, abused me bitterly, and said that busying oneself with such thoughts is the very pitch of sin and wickedness. And yet I can't help it; for it all comes into my head just of its own accord."

      "Dear innocent creature!" said Edward, and seized the blooming girl's hand.

      "To you," she went on, "one may talk of all this, and you understand everything in the right way: but other people immediately begin scolding me, because they put a wrong meaning into everything. It was just the same with my old nurse, who is now dead. You had been a long time in the house before I ever thought I could tell you anything or trust you; I was so very little then and used to play with my doll. Dear Heaven, it is now full ten years since the last time I dandled my Clary, as we called her. To my old Bridget, and my father, and Eleazar, and the cook, I thought I might say everything, because they were so grave: you were always laughing; and this made me fancy that you did not rightly belong to us. Now when prayer time came, they would not let me look at Clary, or carry her with me; but she was shut up in the cupboard. This made me very sorry; for I fancied she must be crying after me. So I found out a way, and took her along with me hid under my pinafore, and held her close to my heart to keep her warm; and when we came into the prayer-room I began by praying in private to God that he would forgive me if I was too fond of my Clary, that he would pardon me too, great and mighty as he was, for having brought her in secret into his high presence, and that he would not think I meant to deceive him or to treat him with disrespect, for he knew it was not so. After this preface I fancied I had made my peace, and repeated my usual prayers very devoutly. Thus all went on well for a week: then Bridget found me out. O gracious! then there was a great to do: even my good father said, this shewed how the human heart from its very infancy is so corrupt and wicked as to give itself up to the idolatry of worthless and contemptible things. I cannot understand even now what he meant by these words. Whenever one loves anything, is it not very beautiful and perfectly right that one does not pry into it and finger it too closely? What is a rose, when I pull it to pieces? It is so perishable, and therefore so dear. Was it my poor Clary's fault, that she was only a leather doll? Last week I was looking at her again one day, and could not make out myself how I came to be so fond of her formerly; and yet I could almost have cried to think that none of the feelings of those days will ever come back to me again. But surely this cannot be fickleness in me now, any more than my love ten years ago was idolatry and wickedness."

      "Dear angel," said Edward tenderly, "our heart is trained by the love of visible perishable objects for the love of the invisible and eternal. When I see a child playing thus fondly and innocently with puppets of its own making, and crying for love and delight over the lifeless toy, I could fancy that at such hours angels gather about the little creature and sport lovingly around it."

      "Ah," exclaimed Rose, "that is a beautiful notion!"

      "When however," continued Edward, "heart truly bends to heart, when two souls meet and give up themselves to each other in love, this faith and feeling of theirs invests the invisible with a palpable reality, and brings it for all eternity before them."

      "That again I don't understand," said the maiden pondering; "but if you mean that sort of love which is necessary for a wedding, and to make a truly happy marriage, I think very differently on that score."

      "How so?" asked the young man.

      "That is a hard matter to explain," answered the girl, putting on a look of deep thought.

      "Supposing now," said Edward, forcing himself to laugh, that he might hide his emotion, "you had to marry tomorrow, whom would you choose? Which of all the men you have hitherto met with, do you like the best? Have you enough confidence in me to answer me this question honestly?"

      "Why should not I?" she replied: "for I need not even spend a moment in considering the point."

      "And … and the man you have already chosen?"

      "Is of course our Eleazar."

      Edward started back in utter amazement. "A moment ago you did not understand me, he said after a pause; and now you have told me a riddle that terrifies me."

      "And yet," she answered with perfect simplicity, "it is the most natural thing in the world. My father too, I fancy, has already made up his mind, that our honest Eleazar is to be my future husband. Were I to love and choose you, there would be nothing remarkable in it; for I like you, and so does every body else; no one can help feeling confidence in you; and at the same time you are very handsome, and always friendly and good-humoured, so that, when one has once become acquainted with you, one hardly knows how to live without you. Such persons as our William would find a thousand girls to grow fond of them; and it is a pity that he has already run away from us again. Even old Conrad, and my father himself, must have been good-looking when they were younger: but only look at poor Eleazar, who is not so very old yet, and whom not a creature in the house, nay in the whole world can endure;—what is to become of him, if I do not marry him."

      "How!" said Edward interrupting her; "is your fair life to fall a victim to this fantastical delusion? Can the perplexity in which dark spirits involve themselves, entangle the purity of innocence in its snares? and must love itself devise a robe to deck out the most frantic extravagance as an act of noble self-sacrifice and reasonable resignation?"

      "We are quite at cross purposes today," she continued calmly. "It is not that I really love him: I have not even a notion yet what this love they talk of is, or what it means. Let me tell you again about the sorrows of my youth, with which we began. In the days when I was still very fond of my Clary, I had also a cat in the house here, that was no less dear to my childish heart. I even fancied to myself that the doll and the little white playful creature must be very jealous of each other on my account. Now Herr Eleazar detested and persecuted everything that even looked like a cat; for he says they are malicious. This seems to be a general superstition. Wherever the sleek animals shew their faces, everybody, even the best-natured people, will begin shouting, puss! puss! and will worry and hunt them, as if, in pursuing the harmless things, they were driving away Antichrist himself. And this it is that makes them, as no doubt they are, so mistrustful and wary. My cat had kittens, which were just nine days old, and opening their little blue eyes. What fun and pleasure it is for children, to see the mother with her young ones, and the droll sports of the kittens, and their skipping and tumbling and jumping about, nobody who is grown up can understand. On the very same day master Eleazar had just got a new airgun, which he wanted to try. Complaints had for some time been made to my father, that my cat used to hunt the singing birds and eat them. It was taking the air behind the house, in the garden, and amusing itself by running up and down the big orange-tree. On the sudden Eleazar shot at it and it fell dead; and now the kittens too were to be drowned. Never before had I thought him so brown and nasty, so unlike a human being. In the night I prayed that God would let him too die; but the very next morning, though I was still such a mere child, it struck me to the heart, how very, very unhappy he must be, that there was no creature he could love, and neither man nor beast could love him; and so I think still. Such an odious creature as he is, he will never find a heart on earth, if I were to blot him out of mine."

      "Dear little Rose," said Edward, somewhat calmer, "you must not be too hasty, and assuredly you will change your mind on this point by and by."

      "My fate," she again began, while the tears mounted into her bright eyes, "has in fact been just like that of the poor little kittens; only that God Almighty did not let me be drowned in the same wretched manner. But I too never knew my mother; she had never the happiness of bringing me up; she died shortly after my birth. My foster-father here is very kind to me; still it must be quite a different feeling to have a real father; but he too is in his grave. Now, reckoning