Page:Hyperion, a romance.djvu/49

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A Romance
45

that have fallen from heaven. And all he does is done with a kind of serious playfulness. He is a sea-monster, disporting himself on the broad ocean; his very sport is earnest; there is something majestic and serious about it. In everything there is strength, a rough good-nature, all sunshine overhead, and underneath the heavy moaning of the sea. Well may he be called 'Jean Paul, the Only-One.'"

With such discourse the hour of dinner passed; and after dinner Flemming went to the cathedral. They were singing vespers. A beadle, dressed in blue, with a cocked hat, and a crimson sash and collar, was strutting, like a turkey, along the aisles. This important gentleman conducted Flemming through the church, and showed him the choir, with its heavy-sculptured stalls of oak, and the beautiful figures in brown stone over the bishops' tombs. He then led him, by a side-door, into the old and ruined cloisters of St. Willigis. Through the low Gothic arches the sunshine streamed upon the pavement of tombstones, whose images and inscriptions are mostly effaced by the footsteps of many generations. There stands the tomb of Frauenlob, the Min-