last dare pour forth in rapture their long-suppressed notes of pleasure.
But really no nightingale will ever sing so gaily and rejoicingly as Jan Steen has painted. No one ever felt so deeply that, on this earth, life ought to be one endless Kirmes.[1] He knew that our life is only a coloured kiss of God, and that the Holy Ghost reveals Himself most gloriously in light and laughter.
His eyes looked out into light, and the light mirrored itself in his laughing eyes.
And Jan was always a dear good fellow. When the harsh old preacher of Leyden sat down on the other side of the fireplace opposite to him, and gave him a long exhortation as to his jovial life, his laughing, un-Christian ways, his drunkenness and ill-regulated domestic life and reprobate merriment, Jan listened to him two long hours without betraying the least impatience at this preaching of punishment, until he at last interrupted him with the words, "Yes, Domine, but the light would be much better—yes—I beg you, Domine, just turn your stool a little round to the fire, so that your face may get a redder tone, while the rest of the body is in the shadow!"
- ↑ Kirmess, or Kermess, church mass. An annual festival which, as kept in Heine's time in the great cities of Holland, was of such general, roaring debauchery as would seem incredible to people of the present day. These extravagant Kermesses died out about the same time as the Italian carnivals.
