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Oh yes, I think we met over a game of chess. Then we wrote an essay on Pope together. Dear Gotthold! What do I not owe him? My position in Berlin, my feeling for literature for we Jews have all stifled our love for the beautiful and grown dead to poetry." "Well, but what is a poet but a liar?" "Ah, my dear Herr Maimon, you will grow out of that. I must lend you Homer.
We must give his father the credit of having done his best, in a well-meaning paternal fashion, to make his son over again in his own image, and to thwart the design of nature by coaxing or driving him into the pinfold of a prosperous obscurity. But Gotthold, with all his gifts, had no talent whatever for contented routine.
'You see you are ashamed, retorted Gotthold. 'And so you bought a farm in the hour of our country's need doubtless to be ready for the abdication; and I put it that you stole the funds. There are not three ways of getting money: there are but two: to earn and steal. And now, when you have combined Charles the Fifth and Long- fingered Tom, you come to me to fortify your vanity!
"It was one of your own trade a writer: one Roederer," said Otto. "Roederer! an ignorant puppy!" cried the librarian. "You are ungrateful," said Otto. "He is one of your professed admirers." "Is he?" cried Gotthold, obviously impressed. "Come, that is a good account of the young man. I must read his stuff again. It is the rather to his credit, as our views are opposite.
"Otto, are you insane?" cried Gotthold, leaping up. "Because I ask you how you came by certain moneys, and because you refuse " "Herr von Hohenstockwitz, I have ceased to invite your aid in my affairs," said Otto. "I have heard all that I desire, and you have sufficiently trampled on my vanity.
To this poor waif of a soldier of fortune we may seem respectable gentlemen; but to ourselves, what are we unless a pasteboard portico and a deliquium of deadly weaknesses within?" "I? yes," said Otto; "but you, Gotthold you, with your interminable industry, your keen mind, your books serving mankind, scorning pleasures and temptations! You do not know how I envy you."
"Your Highness, I am unaware," answered Greisengesang, true to his policy. "The disposition of the guards is a matter distinct from my functions." Otto turned upon the old man fiercely, but ere he had time to speak, Gotthold touched him on the arm. He swallowed his wrath with a great effort. "It is well," he said, taking the roll. "Follow me to the Flag Tower."
Gotthold was already at his desk in the library; and with a small cup of black coffee at his elbow, and an eye occasionally wandering to the busts and the long array of many-coloured books, was quietly reviewing the labours of the day before. He was a man of about forty, flaxen-haired, with refined features a little worn, and bright eyes somewhat faded.
Ay, as my poor fellow-sot there said, and as I vaingloriously denied, we are all miserable sinners, put here for a moment, knowing the good, choosing the evil, standing naked and ashamed in the eye of God." "Is it so?" said Otto. "Why, then, what are we? Are the very best " "There is no best in man," said Gotthold. "I am not better, it is likely I am not worse, than you or that poor sleeper.
'And yet I have heard of you, Colonel, as a duellist, said Gotthold. 'A different thing, sir, replied the soldier. 'Professional etiquette. And I trust without unchristian feeling. Presently after the Colonel fell into a deep sleep and his companions looked upon each other, smiling. 'An odd fish, said Gotthold. 'And a strange guardian, said the Prince. 'Yet what he said was true.
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