"Heigh! Mr. Magistrate," cried my Wutz, coming to meet me; "here again! Hast had fine cases of adultery, harlotry, riots, defamations?"
Other Quarreling.--The Still Land.--Beata's Letter.--The Reconciliation.--The Portrait of Guido.
Up to this present Sunday I have not succeeded in finding out why Gustavus arrived at Scheerau five days later than he might have done; he evaded even my inquiries more distressfully than adroitly. Oefel had all reported to him, and made out of it one or two sections of his romance, which I and the reader, it is to be hoped, may yet see. I could wish his might see the light sooner than mine, then I might refer the reader to it or perhaps extract from it some anecdotes. Gustavus seemed to have a mental wound-fever. He carried his heart chilled with recent bleeding to Amandus, to warm it and let it brood again upon his friend's hot bosom, and to recover the self-respect which he could not get at first hand, from a second, and there he always got it--for a peculiar reason. In his character there was a trait, which, if he had been a member of a Moravian church, would long ago have enrolled him a missionary therefrom to America for the conversion of the savages: he was fond of preaching. I can say it in other words: his gushing soul must either stream or stagnate, but trickle or drop it could not--and then, when once a friendly ear opened to it, it rained down in inspiration upon Virtue, Nature and Futurity.--Then did a fresh, bracing air flow through the world of his ideas--the down-pouring torrents disclosed the fair, bright, deep-blue heaven of his inner-being and Amandus stood under the open heaven enraptured. This youth, to whom the exuberance of his heartily beloved friend was a pedestal, something that did not oppress but uplifted him, enjoyed in another's worth his own; nay, in his less enlightened head there arose a still greater warmth than was in the speaker, somewhat as _dark_ water grows more intensely warm in the sun than that which is _bright_. Gustavus related to him what had happened, and talked with him so long upon his rights and wrongs in the case, that at last all his grief about it had been talked away: such is the way in which friendship _talks out_ the internal fire of anger. It was merely a sign of love and a little weakness, that Amandus wiped away with greater sympathy a tear of sorrow than a tear of joy from the loved eye of another; he, therefore, by way of prolonging his interest in another's affliction, came back again to the old subject, and dropped the casual question where my hero had been the last five days. Gustavus with a troubled and reddening face would have given the question the go-by--his friend pressed it the more eagerly--the other embraced him still more passionately and said: "Ask me not, thou only tormentest thyself for nothing." Amandus, whose hysterical sensibility was less fine than spasmodic, now began to be really fired up--Gustavus's heart was intensely agitated and out of it came the words:--"O my dear friend, thou can'st never learn it, never from me!"--Amandus, like all weaklings, was easily inclined to jealousy in friendship and love, and in an offended mood placed himself at the window. Gustavus, made more indulgent and warmer to-day by the consciousness of his latest mistake in the accusation touching the grain-case, went over to him and said with moist eyes: "If I only had not given my oath to say nothing about it." But in the soul of Amandus not all parts were invested with that nice sense of honor in which is found the _lapis infernalis_ that consumes every breach of word and oath. Moreover in him, as in all weaklings, the emotions of the soul, even when the occasion for them was removed, like the waves of the sea when a long-continued wind is followed by one blowing from the opposite quarter, still retain the old direction. He continued, therefore, looking out of the window, and _meant_ to forgive, but was obliged to let the mechanically heaving waves gradually subside again. If Gustavus had less earnestly begged his forgiveness, he would have obtained it the sooner; both were silent and remained as they were. "Amandus!" he cried at length in the tenderest tone. No answer and no change of position. All at once the lonely and agonized Gustavus, overcome with grief, drew forth the portrait of the lost Guido who so closely resembled himself, which in the fair days of childhood had been hung upon his breast and which he had intended to-day to show him, and said with melting heart: "O thou pictured friend, thou beloved colored nothing, thou bearest under thy painted breast no heart, thou dost not know me, thou requitest me in nothing--and yet I love thee so dearly.