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Page 49
When I again had returned to full consciousness, the young man
embraced me several times with military vehemence.
"Do you then no longer know me?" cried he indignantly, as he saw
me petrified body and soul. "Have you then forgotten August D--,
whose life a short time since you saved at the peril of your own?
whom you so handsomely fished up, with danger to yourself, from
having for ever to remain in the uninteresting company of fishes?
See here, my father, my mother, my sister, Wilhelmina!"
I pressed his hand; and now the parents embraced me. With a stout
blow of the fist upon the table, August's father exclaimed, "And
because you have saved my son's life, and because you are such a
downright honest and good fellow, and have suffered hunger
yourself--that you might give others to eat--you shall really have
the parsonage at H--. Yes, you shall become clergyman, I say!--I
have jus patronatum, you understand!"
For a good while I was not at all in a condition to comprehend, to
think, or to speak; and before all had been cleared up by a
thousand explanations, I could understand nothing clearly
excepting that Wilhelmina was not--that Wilhelmina was August's
sister.
He had returned this evening from a journey of service, during
which, in the preceding summer, chance had given to me the good
fortune to rescue him from a danger, into which youthful heat and
excess of spirit had thrown him. I had not seen him again since
this occurrence; earlier, I had made a passing acquaintance with
him, had drunk brotherhood with him at the university, and after
that had forgotten my dear brother.
He had now related this occurrence to his family,
with the easily kindled-up enthusiasm of youth, together with
what he knew of me beside, and what he did not know. The father,
who had a living in his gift, and who (as I afterwards found) had
made from his window some compassionate remarks upon my meagre
dinner-table, determined, assailed by the prayers of his son, to
raise me from the lap of poverty to the summit of good fortune.
August would in his rapture announce to me my good luck instantly,
and in order, at the same time, to gratify his passion for merry
jokes, made himself known upon my stairs in a way which occasioned
me a severe, although not dangerous, contusion on the temples, and
the unexpected removal across the street, out of the deepest
darkness into the brightest light. The good youth besought a
thousand times forgiveness for his thoughtlessness; a thousand
times I assured him that it was not worth the trouble to speak of
such a trifling blow. And, in fact, the living was a balsam which
would have made a greater wound than this imperceptible also.
Astonished, and somewhat embarrassed, I now perceived that the ear
and the shoulder, whose possessor had seized so horribly upon the
contents of the rusk basket, and over whom I had poured out my
gall belonged to nobody else than to August's father, and my
patron. The fat gentleman who sat upon the sofa was Wilhelmina's
uncle.
The kindness and gayety of my new friends made me soon feel at
home and happy. The old people treated me like a child of the
house, the young ones as a brother, and the two little ones seemed
to anticipate a gingerbread-friend in me.
After I had received two cups of tea from Wilhelmina's pretty
hand, to which I almost feared taking, in my abstraction of mind,
more rusks than my excellent patron, I rose up to take my leave.
They insisted absolutely upon my passing the night there; but I
abode by my determination of spending the first happy night in my
old habitation, amid thanksgiving to the lofty Ruler of my fate.
They all embraced me afresh; and I now also embraced all rightly,
from the bottom of my heart, Wilhelmina also, although not without
having gracious permission first. "I might as well have left that
alone," thought I afterwards, "if it is to be the first and last
time!" August accompanied me back.
My host stood in my room amid the overturned chairs and tables,
with a countenance which alternated between rain and sunshine; on
one side his mouth drew itself with a reluctant smile up to his
ear, on the other it crept for vexation down to his double chin;
the eyes followed the same direction, and the whole had a look of
a combat, till the tone in which August indicated to him
that he should leave us alone, changed all into the most friendly,
grinning mien, and the proprietor of the same vanished from the
door with the most submissive bows.
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