A soft, thin vapor floated in the air. In the sunbeams flashed the hoar-frost like silver stars, and through a long avenue of trees, whose dripping branches bent and scattered pearls before him, Paul Flemming journeyed on in triumph.

The man in the play who wished for »some forty pounds of lovely beef, placed in a Mediterranean Sea of brewis,« might have seen his ample desires almost realized at the table d'hôte of the Rheinischen Hof, in Mayence, where Flemming dined that day. At the head of the table sat a gentleman with a smooth, broad forehead and large, intelligent eyes. He was from Baireuth in Franconia; and talked about poetry and Jean Paul to a pale, romantic-looking lady on his right. There was music all dinner-time, at the other end of the hall, – a harp and a horn and a voice, – so that a great part of the fat gentleman's conversation with the pale lady was lost to Flemming, who sat opposite to her, and could look right into her large, melancholy eyes. But what he heard so much interested him, – indeed, the very name of the beloved Jean Paul would have been enough for this, – that he ventured to join in the conversation, and asked the German if he had known the poet personally.

»Yes, I knew him well,« replied the stranger. »I am a native of Baireuth, where he passed the best years of his life. In my mind, the man and the author are closely united. I never read a page of his writings without hearing his voice, and seeing his form before me. There he sits, with his majestic, mountainous forehead, his mild blue eyes, and finely cut nose and mouth; his massive frame clad loosely and carelessly in an old green frock, from the pockets of which the corners of books project, and perhaps the end of a loaf of bread and the nose of a bottle; a straw hat, lined with green, lying near him; a huge walking-stick in his hand, and at his feet a white poodle, with pink eyes, and a string round his neck. You would sooner have taken him for a master-carpenter than for a poet. Is he a favorite author of yours?« Flemming answered in the affirmative.

»But a foreigner must find it exceedingly difficult to understand him,« said the gentleman. »It is by no means an easy task for us Germans.«

»I have always observed,« replied Flemming, »that the true understanding and appreciation of a poet depend more upon individual than upon national character. If there be a sympathy between the minds of writer and reader, the bounds and barriers of a foreign tongue are soon overleaped. If you once understand an author's character, the comprehension of his writings becomes easy.«

»Very true,« replied the German; »and the character of Richter is too marked to be easily misunderstood. Its prominent traits are tenderness and manliness, – qualities which are seldom found united in so high a degree as in him. Over all he sees, over all he writes, are spread the sunbeams of a cheerful spirit, – the light of inexhaustible human love. Every sound of human joy and of human sorrow finds a deep-resounding echo in his bosom. In every man, he loves his humanity only, not his superiority. The avowed object of all his literary labors was to raise up again the down-sunken faith in God, Virtue, and Immortality; and, in an egotistical, revolutionary age, to warm again our human sympathies, which have now grown cold. And not less boundless is his love for Nature, – for this outward, beautiful world. He embraces it all in his arms.«

»Yes,« answered Flemming, almost taking the words out of the stranger's mouth, »for in his mind all things become idealized. He seems to describe himself when he describes the hero of his Titan, as a child, rocking in a high wind upon the branches of a full-blossomed apple-tree, and as its summit, blown abroad by the wind, now sunk him in deep green, and now tossed him aloft in deep blue and glancing sunshine, – in his imagination stood that tree gigantic; – it grew alone in the universe, as if it were the tree of eternal life; its roots struck down into the abyss; the white and red clouds hung as blossoms upon it; the moon as fruit; the little stars sparkled like dew, and Albano reposed in its measureless summit; and a storm swayed the summit out of Day into Night, and out of Night into Day.«

»Yet the spirit of love,« interrupted the Franconian, »was not weakness, but strength. It was united in him with great manliness. The sword of his spirit had been forged and beaten by poverty. Its temper had been tried by a thirty years' war. It was not broken, not even blunted, but rather strengthened and sharpened, by the blows it gave and received. And, possessing this noble spirit of humanity, endurance, and self-denial, he made literature his profession; as if he had been divinely commissioned to write. He seems to have cared for nothing else, to have thought of nothing else, than living quietly and making books. He says that he felt it his duty, not to enjoy, nor to acquire, but to write; and boasted that he had made as many books as he had lived years.«

»And what do you Germans consider the prominent characteristics of his genius?«

»Most undoubtedly, his wild imagination and his playfulness.