I was like a grasshopper before, drunk with dew, and then sobered
by a plunge into a clear, cool spring. Besides, I have thought more
about your advice in regard to the lady, you dissembling old rascal!
For you know that in such matters you never mean what you say; and when
you counsel me to fall in love with a coquette, you only wish me to be
warned in time and make good my escape. If it were light enough, I
should see that grizzly moustache of yours curl like a cat's, this
minute. You can grin, you amiable Mephistopheles, but I know you! No,
my dear Easelmann, I am cured. I shall take hold of my pencils with new
energy. I will save money and go abroad, and----I had nearly forgotten
her! I will take a new look at my darling's sweet face in my pocket,
and, like Ulysses, I'll put wax into my ears when I meet the singing
Siren again."
"I hope your rustic _fiancee_ is not clairvoyant?"
"I hope not."
"If she is, she will cry her little eyes out to-night."
"Don't speak of it, I beg of you."
"You are getting lugubrious; we shall have to change the subject. Love
affects people in as many different ways as wine. Some are
exalted,--their feet spurn the earth, their heads are in the clouds;
some pugnacious, walking about with a chip on the shoulder; others are
stupidly happy,--their faces wearing a sickly smile that becomes
painful to look at; others again, like you, melancholy as a wailing
tenor in the last act of 'Lucia.
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