... At length the Bouse's birthday fête has arrived.... O my Gustavus! To this very day thy eyes are wet with the remembrance!
The fête breaks into three courses--_Comédie_, _Souper_, and _Bal paré_. In reality, there is still a fourth course--a fall.
On the day of the performance, the new palace emptied itself into that of the Prince at Ober-Scheerau. Gustavus thought, while on the way (in Oefel's carriage), of his letter which he was going to deliver, and of good Doctor Fenk a little; but the shortened days gave him no time for visiting. His fault was, that for him the present, like a cataract, always drowned all distant sounds; and he would not perhaps even have come to me if my crowded legal work-table had allowed me to go to town.
He saw his Marie--ten hundred thousand new charms ... but I will restrain himself. So much is physiologically true, that a maiden of our familiar acquaintance in a strange place will appear to us somewhat as a stranger, but only the more interesting. Beata had this in common with the brilliant Lady Resident, but a certain breath of modest shyness adorned her alone with its veil. In what was Gustavus at this time distinguished from her? In this: man's bashfulness lies merely in his training and his circumstances; woman's lies deep in her nature--man has internal courage and often merely external helplessness; woman has not this, and is nevertheless shy--the former expresses his respect by pressing forward; the latter hers by drawing backward.
The Fainting Lady, the so-called _Défaillante_, the Ministress, to-day excepted! Her winking and blinking, her lisping and whispering, her wriggling and giggling, her fearing and daring, her coquetry and mockery--how shall the one-legged Jean Paul biographically copy all this in poor, common prose? Nevertheless, it is absolutely not otherwise to be done, and he must. If the variegated heads of _women_ had to represent, in the great garden of nature, the blue, red, _glass-globes_ on lacquered pedestals (which not one man in a hundred believes), I would go on in my portrayal thus: that of the Minister's Lady was hot bad, not gay; this head was a short, practical extract of ten other heads, that is to say, which had contributed hair, teeth, features, to the making-up of it. She was an antique of great beauty, but one which after the devastations of years and men was no more to be had in a sound state; she had, therefore, to be restored by skilful sculptors with new members--such as bosom, teeth, etc.