But I must hasten on more speedily to the festal day of the Resident Lady, whose web touches and entangles our Gustavus with so many kinds of threads.
He committed to memory with great delight his part in the Drama, of which much will yet have to be said, and wished nothing, except that he did not yet know it by heart. Beata had the same feeling about hers: the reason was, that their parts on the stage were directed to each other, consequently their thoughts, now, were so, too; and for the shy Beata it was especially delicious, that she could with good conscience memorize tender thoughts of love for him, which she hardly dared to have, not to say express. In order not to be always thinking of him, she often diverted her mind by the labor of learning by heart the aforesaid part. Good soul! try always to deceive thyself; it is better to will it, than not to care about it at all! Her adoptive brother had hitherto been utterly unable to devise any way of meeting her; the Resident Lady had forgotten him and thereby the means of bringing it about, in her attention to the Russian section and torso; he himself had not persistency enough, still less the dignity which would make it piquant and charming--till Herr von Oefel said to him with a significant expression of countenance, that the Lady Resident wished to have him see some pictures which Knäse had left there. "Yes, I have been wanting this long time to begin copying in the cabinet," said he, and deceived hardly anyone except himself. Noticing his blush of confusion, Oefel said to himself: "I know all, my dear man!"
At last a fine forenoon brought the two souls, that could more easily find each other than their bodies could, together at the Lady Resident's. The light of day, their previous separation, the new situation, and love, made all the charms of both new, all their features fairer, and their heaven greater than their expectations--but do not look at each other too much, nor yet too little, for they are glancing at your glances! Well, do it as much as you like; thou canst not hide it from a Bouse, Gustavus, that thine eye which is not contracted by penetration, but opened wide with love, always detains itself among objects in the neighborhood of one at whom it would fain steal side glances;--nor does it help thee, Beata, that thou avoidest more than usual standing near him or giving him occasion for his voice and cheeks to be his traitors! It availed thee, naught, as thou thyself sawest, to seek to escape the repetition of the _idolo del mio_ at his arrival; for did not the Lady Resident beg him to glide after thy voice with his fingers on the harpsichord, and to publish his inner storm of joy by the gleam of the eye and the pressure of the keys and the sins against time? Those of my readers who have frizzled or served or spoken with the Resident Lady, or actually loved her, can testify for me against other readers, that among other mantel-ornaments of her toilette-chamber--inasmuch as the grandees like nothing but finery to eat, occupy, wear, sit on and sleep on--there were also Swiss scenes, and among these a tragacanth copy of the hermitage-mountain; this Olympus of joy, before the eyes of Gustavus, Beata's could no longer climb, often as they had formerly shone upon this very mountain--at last the eyes of both grew moist, when the name of Amandus rang through both of them, with a sweeter and livelier emotion than one feels for a departed soul. In short, like all lovers, they would have betrayed themselves less, if they had concealed themselves less. The Lady Resident seemed to-day, what she always seemed; she had in her power a still, thoughtful, not impassioned dissimulation, and one saw not on her face the false looks chase away the true ones. The finest picture in the collection left by the Russian was not at home, but under the copying-paper of the Prince.