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Updated: May 6, 2025
The friends, forming a semicircle round the picture, clinked their glasses together. "And then," said Vincenz, "it won't matter whether he is Private Secretary, Abbé, or Privy Councillor, Cardinal, or the very Pope; or even a Bishop in partibus infidelium, that's to say, of Paphos!"
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.
"Don't forget," said Ottmar, "that the point of a story is very often completely untranslatable." "Or is badly translated," said Vincenz. "It so happens that I just think of a very amusing thing which happened quite recently, and which I will tell you, if you care to hear it." "Tell us, tell us! delightful fabulist! valued anecdotist!" cried the friends.
Another man of importance with whom I remember dining was General Bem, whose artillery had made such a gallant stand at Ostrolenka. Many other exiles passed through this hospitable house, some of whom impressed us by their melancholy, warlike bearing, others by their refined behaviour. Vincenz Tyszkiewitcz, however, remained my ideal of a true man, and I loved him with a profound adoration.
"Ha!" cried Vincenz, very loudly and pathetically, "how the froth seethes! now that is a quotation from the 'Kreuz an der Ostsee, where the heathen priests sing it in fearful and horrible strains.
But I think he is wanting in that brilliant lire of profound humour which coruscates in the writings of Sterne and Swift." "I am just in your position, Ottmar," said Vincenz. "'Guy Mannering' is the only work of Scott's which I have read.
In April, 1799, the people of Schwyz took four hundred French prisoners; those of Uri, under their leader, Vincenz Schmid, stormed and burned Altorf, the seat of the French and their adherents; those of Valais, under the youthful Count Courten, drove the French from their valleys, and those of the Grisons surprised and cut to pieces a French squadron at Dissentis.
"A young man," related Vincenz, "whom nature had endowed with a splendid bass voice, and who had gone upon the operatic stage, was making his first appearance as Sarastro, in the 'Magic Flute. As he was mounting the car, in which he first comes on, he was seized with such a terrible attack of stage-fright that he trembled and shook nay, when the car got into motion to come forward, he shrunk into himself, and all the manager's efforts to induce him to reassure himself, and, at all events, stand upright, were useless.
Who shall cast the first stone at one who has grown defenceless because his strength has ebbed away with the heart's-blood flowing from wounds inflicted by his own self-deception? My end is gained now. Even you Lothair, Ottmar, Vincenz, severe inflexible critics and judges, have quite altered your opinions now that you have seen my poet face to face. His face speaks truth.
When the friends had done laughing, Vincenz said: "Suppose we now bid adieu to the subject of French conversation, with all its bon mots, calembours, and other ingredients, and come to the conclusion that it really is an immense pleasure when, amongst intellectual Germans, a conversation, inspired by their humour, rushes up skyward like a coruscating firework, in a thousand hissing light-balls, crackling serpents, and lightning-like rockets."
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