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Updated: June 9, 2025
At a tea-party where Ottmar and I were, there was present a certain pretty and clever lady, as to whom you are in the habit of maintaining that she interests me more than is right and proper. I went to talk to her, and I admit that I was a little at a loss how exactly to begin, and she was wicked enough to gaze at me with questioning eyes.
Friend Ottmar told me a day or two ago that he had written a story in which the celebrated poet-painter Salvator Rosa played a leading part. I hope he will read it to us now." "I am a little afraid," said Ottmar, as he took the manuscript from his pocket, "that you won't think my story Serapiontic.
In the first place, Ottmar, I should like to trace out for you the germ of that unpleasant or, better, 'uncanny' feeling which you were conscious of when you were at first beginning to see what you have called the 'amusing naïveté' of it.
If you, Ottmar, say my tale is a mosaic, you might admit that it has something of a Kaleidoscope character, in spite of its crackiness, and that its matters, though most adventitiously shaken together, do ultimately form more or less interesting combinations.
"Enough, enough," said Ottmar. "Sylvester is so inspired by his success that he is favouring us with a scene of a comedy instead of like a proper Serapion Brother reading us a tale, the most interesting subject of which he told me of, in writing, and which I know he has finished and brought with him."
"On the other hand," said Ottmar, "I know another young man and you all know him who, particularly with ladies, is never at a loss for the first word of a talk; in fact, my belief is that he has severely thought out, in private, a regular system, of the most comprehensive kind, as to conversation with ladies, which is by no means likely ever to find him left in the lurch.
The principal fault which I have to find with it is that, instead of a story rounding itself into a whole in all its parts, he has merely given us a series of pictures, although they are often delightful enough." "Can I do otherwise than fully agree with you?" said Ottmar. "Still, you will all admit that it requires very skilful navigation to keep clear of the rocks upon which I have run."
Of a truth I feel myself more and more drawn to this mystic, who grows the more human the longer one looks at him." "We all feel the same," cried Lothair and Vincenz. "Yes, yes," cried the latter, "those sorrowful, gloomy eyes get brighter. You are right, Ottmar, he grows human homo factus est.
"There," said Ottmar, "spoke my dear kind-hearted Sylvester, who does not know the meaning of the word 'vanity, that vanity which has stifled many a great and true talent. There is one writer for the stage who once said, without the slightest hesitation, that there are no actors capable of understanding the soul which dwells within him, or of representing the characters which he creates.
In those he had welded up the accounts of this curious conduct of the Devil with a horrible case of misbirth, and a gruesome trial for witchcraft, into an ensemble of the most delightful and entertaining description. I have got those pages here; I brought them in my pocket to amuse you with them." He took them out of his pocket and handed them to Ottmar.
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