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"The truth is," said Lothair, "that you, my very fine fellow and at the same time my very lazy-as-to-writing fellow have never yet paid your entrance-money into the Serapion Guild, and the only mode of payment is a Serapiontic story." "Hush!" cried Vincenz.
Yet, unless you mean to condemn everything without the slightest remorse, like so many Rhadamanthuses you must admit, yourselves, that there is much in Ottmar's story which must be allowed to pass as genuinely Serapiontic; the beginning, for instance."
"Strictly speaking," said Vincenz, "it is a breach of all Serapiontic rule to keep chattering in this sort of style; and not only that, but, moreover, without any especial motive or inducement, the most unseemly things about gruesome vampires, and other such matters, are brought forward, so that I am obliged to shut my mouth just as I have got it opened. But go on, my Ottmar.
"I had meant," said Sylvester, "to read you this evening a story, for the idea of which I am indebted to a strange chance, or rather, to a strange remembrance. But it is so late that Serapiontic hours would be long over before I had finished it."
So they fixed upon the last day of May which was only a few days off for the time; and on a pretty public-garden in the neighbourhood, not too much frequented, for the place, of their next Serapiontic meeting. A thunderstorm, passing quickly over, and merely sprinkling the trees and bushes with a few drops of Heaven's balsam, had relieved the sultry oppressiveness of the day.
He bares his bosom to the partizan-pike, and therefore, as magnanimous adversaries, we withhold our thrust, and are bound to have mercy." "More than that," said Cyprian, "to console his pain, we feel ourselves permitted to bestow a certain limited amount of praise. For my part, I see a good deal in this work that is pleasant and Serapiontic.
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.
"I bow my knee in deep reverence before Saint Serapion," said Lothair; "and before the most worthy of his disciples, and I am quite sure that a Serapiontic account of the important incidents of the war, as seen by him, if given in his characteristic style, would be exceedingly interesting, as well as very instructive, to imaginative members of the profession of arms.
Ottmar and Vincenz agreed in this, and added that Theodore had committed a breach of Serapiontic rule by speaking so fully on a subject to some extent strange to the other brethren, in this manner giving himself up to impulses of the moment, and damming up the flow of other communications.
It is past twelve: our parting hour has struck some time ago." The friends agreed to have another Serapiontic meeting at an early date, and dispersed. The dreary late autumn had arrived, and Theodore was sitting in his room beside the crackling fire, waiting for the worthy Serapion Brethren, who came dropping in, one by one, at the appointed hour.
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