glorious Magdalene hair,
and talked a good deal of nonsense about Battoni-like[7] colouring. One
of them, a veritable romanticist, strangely enough likened her eyes to
a lake by Ruisdael,[8] in which is reflected the pure azure of the
cloudless sky, the beauty of woods and flowers, and all the bright and
varied life of a living landscape. Poets and musicians went still
further and said, "What's all this talk about seas and reflections? How
can we look upon the girl without feeling that wonderful heavenly songs
and melodies beam upon us from her eyes, penetrating deep down into our
hearts, till all becomes awake and throbbing with emotion? And if we
cannot sing anything at all passable then, why, we are not worth much;
and this we can also plainly read in the rare smile which flits around
her lips when we have the hardihood to squeak out something in her
presence which we pretend to call singing, in spite of the fact that it
is nothing more than a few single notes confusedly linked together."
And it really was so. Clara had the powerful fancy of a bright,
innocent, unaffected child, a woman's deep and sympathetic heart, and
an understanding clear, sharp, and discriminating. Dreamers and
visionaries had but a bad time of it with her; for without saying very
much--she was not by nature of a talkative disposition--she plainly
asked, by her calm steady look, and rare ironical smile, "How can you
imagine, my dear friends, that I can take these fleeting shadowy images
for true living and breathing forms?" For this reason many found fault
with her as being cold, prosaic, and devoid of feeling; others,
however, who had reached a clearer and deeper conception of life, were
extremely fond of the intelligent, childlike, large-hearted girl But
none had such an affection for her as Nathanael, who was a zealous and
cheerful cultivator of the fields of science and art. Clara clung to
her lover with all her heart; the first clouds she encountered in life
were when he had to separate from her. With what delight did she fly
into his arms when, as he had promised in his last letter to Lothair,
he really came back to his native town and entered his mother's room!
And as Nathanael had foreseen, the moment he saw Clara again he no
longer thought about either the advocate Coppelius or her sensible
letter; his ill-humour had quite disappeared.

Nevertheless Nathanael was right when he told his friend Lothair that
the repulsive vendor of weathe