Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces Part 22

"Now this deprives a thinker of all pleasure and courage; and, Siebenkaes, hang me if I ever sit down and grow one bit famous, or give myself the trouble either to build up or to pull down any learned or ingenious system whatever, or write anything at all of greater length than a letter.

"Thy (not my) Self,

"L.

"P.S. I wish it would please G.o.d to grant me a second life after this, that I might have the opportunity of dealing with a few _realities_ in the next world; for this one is really altogether too hollow and stupid; a wretched Nurnberg toy; nothing but the falling froth of a life; a jump through the hoop of eternity; a rotten, dusty, apple of Sodom, which, splutter as much as I will, I can't get out of my mouth.

Oh!--"

To readers who think the above piece of humour not sufficiently serious, I shall prove, in another place, that it is _too_ serious, and that it is only an _oppressed_ heart which can jest in this fas.h.i.+on; that it is only an eye which is in much too feverish a condition--with the fireworks of life darting round it like the flying fire-flashes which precede _amaurosis_--which is capable of seeing and picturing such fever-forms.

Firmian understood it all, at the time in question at all events. But I must go back to the 11th of February, in order to half-deprive the reader of his sympathising enjoyment of the re-union of the trefoil of friends which then took place. Lenette's trembling pet.i.tion that her husband would pardon her, was but the forced hot-bed fruit of Zichen's earth-shaking prophecy. She thought that she herself, and the ground she stood upon, were about to be let down; and it was at the near approach of death (whom she thought she already saw wagging his tiger's tail) that she held out to her husband a hand of Christian peace. For (and _to_) that beautiful soul of his (_dis_embodied) hers wept tears of love and of rapture. But very probably she, to some extent, confused her happiness with her love--satisfaction with fidelity; and (it may be suspected) the eagerness with which she was looking forward to enwrapping the Schulrath, that very evening, in a warm and tender--_gaze_, found outward expression in the shape of an unusual degree of affection for her husband. It is here most essential that I should communicate to all and sundry persons one of the most valuable of all my maxims; in dealings with even the very best woman in the world, it is of the utmost importance that we should make excessively certain, and discriminate with the utmost accuracy, what it is which she really wants (at the time being), and particularly _whom_--(this is not always the person who is thus discriminating). There is in the female heart such a rapid coming and going, and fluctuation, of emotions of every kind; such an effusion of many-tinted bubbles which reflect everything, but most particularly whatever chances to be nearest, that a woman, under the influence of emotion, shall, while she sheds a tear for _you_ out of her left eye, go on thinking, and drop another for your predecessor or successor (as the case may be) out of her right. Also a feeling of tenderness for a rival falls half to a husband's share; and a woman, even the most loyally faithful, weeps more at what she thinks than at what she hears.

'Tis very stupid that so many masculine persons among us are stupid precisely on this point; that a woman thinking (as she does) more of other people's feelings than of her own, is, in this matter, neither the deceiver nor the deceived; what she is is the deception itself--the optical deception and the acoustic.

But Firmians seldom make well-digested reflections of this sort concerning elevenths of February until the twelfth. Wendeline was in love with the Schulrath; that was the fact of the matter. Like all women of any sense (in Kuhschnappel), she had believed in the superintendent-general, and in the kick he had administered to the earth, until Peltzstiefel, in the evening, unhesitatingly p.r.o.nounced the idea of such a thing to be simply _impious_, when she abandoned the prophetic superintendent and gave in her adhesion to the incredulous worldling, Firmian. We all know that he had every bit as much of the masculine failing of overdoing consistency as she had of the feminine one of carrying inconsistency too far. It was foolish, therefore, in him to think that he was going to regain, by means of one grand effusion of the heart, an affection embittered by so many small effusions of gall. The grandest benefits, the loftiest manly enthusiasm, are incapable of uprooting, all in an instant, a feeling of ill-will which has rooted itself all over a person's heart with a thousand little spreading fibres. The affection which we have deprived ourselves of by means of a long-continued, gradual process of chilling, is only to be regained by an equally lengthy process of warming.

In a word, it became evident in the course of a day or two that things were just as they had been three weeks before. Lenette's love had flourished and grown to such an extent, by reason of Stiefel's absence, that there was not room for it any longer under its bell-gla.s.s--it was shooting out leaves beyond the edge of it into the open-air. The _Aqua Toffana_ of jealousy at last permeated every vessel in Firmian's body, flowed into his heart, and gnawed it slowly in pieces. He was but the tree on which Lenette had inscribed her love for another, and was withering by reason of the incisions. He _had so_ hoped that the Schulrath, recalled to them on Lenette's birthday, would have healed all wounds, however deep; or at all events cicatrized them over: whereas, what he really had done was to open them all wider than ever--all unconscious as he was of it. Ah! what pain this was to the wretched husband! He grew poorer and weaker, and more miserable--both outwardly and inwardly--as the days went by, and gave up all hope of ever seeing the First of May and Bayreuth. February, March, and April pa.s.sed over head--all heavy, dripping clouds, without a single break of blue sky or blink of evening-red.

On the 1st of April he lost his law-suit for the second time; and on the 13th (Maunday Thursday) he finished, for ever, his 'Evening Paper'

(this was the name he gave to his diary, because he wrote it of an evening), meaning to consign _that_, along with his 'Selections from the Devil's Papers' (as far as they were completed) into Leibgeber's most faithful hands (at Bayreuth), in place of his body, so soon to vanish and be resolved into its elements. For, he thought, those hands would fainer clasp his soul (which was in the papers) than his poor meagre body--of which, _du reste_, Liebgeber always possessed a second unaltered edition (a perfect _facsimile_ copy, so to speak) at all times at hand, in the shape of his own. I have no hesitation in here quoting, without emendation, the whole of this concluding page of the 'Evening Paper'--Firmian's 'Swan Sung,' which--which went off by the following post.

"Yesterday, my law-suit was wrecked on the shoal of the Court of Appeal of the second instance. The defendant's counsel, and the Court, brought to bear upon me an old Statute, of force in Kuhschnappel as well as in Bayreuth, which enacts that a deposition made before a notary is not valid--depositions having to be made before the Court. These two hearings of my case render the uphill path to the third a little easier. For my poor Lenette's sake I have appealed to the Lower House, my kind Stiefel advancing me the necessary cash. Truly, in applying to the oracles of Justice we have to fast and mortify, just as much as was _de rigueur_ in consulting the heathen oracles of old. I have reason to hope that I shall be able to effect my escape from the clutches of the knaves of the State;[58] or (shall I say), from these game-keepers and their _couteaux de cha.s.se_, and hunting-spears or swords of Themis. I think I shall get through their hunting-tackle of legal proceedings, the toils, nets, and gins of their Acts of Parliament--not by my purse (which is fallen away to the thickness of an insect's feeler, and could be drawn, like a leather _queue_, through the smallest mesh in any of their legal nets)--but with my body, which, as it approaches the topmost of their nets will be turned into dust of death, and will then fly free through and over every trap they can set.

"I desire to lift my hand away from this, my evening paper, to-night for the last time, ere it becomes an absolute martyrology. If one could give away his life as a gift, I should be very happy to give mine to any dying person who would care to accept it. At the same time, let n.o.body suppose that because there chances to be a total eclipse of the sun above my head, I think, for a moment, that there must be one in America as well; or that I imagine the Gold Coast must be snowed up for the winter because a snowflake or two happen to be falling in front of my own nose. Life is warm and beautiful; even mine was so once. If it must be that I am to melt away, even before these snowflakes, I beg of my heirs, and of all Christian people, that they will not publish any part of my selection from the 'Devil's Papers,' except that which I have copied out fair, which extends as far as the 'Satire upon Women'

(inclusively). And as regards this diary of mine, in which one or two satirical fancies crop out here and there, I beg, also, that not a single one of these may be put into print.

"Should any curious inquirer into the history of this day-and-night-book of mine be anxious to discover what the heavy weights, the nests, the clothes hung out to dry upon my branches, really consisted of, that they should so bend my top shoot and my branches down (and all the more curious to know it, inasmuch as I have written humorous satires)--(though, indeed, my sole object has been to nourish and support myself by help of these satire p.r.i.c.kles of mine, absorbent vessels, to me, like those of the torch-thistle), I beg to inform him that he seeks to know more than I know myself, and more than I mean to tell. For man and the horseradish are most biting when grated; and the satirist is sadder than the jester, for the same reason that the Urang-Utang is more melancholy than the ape, namely, because he is n.o.bler. If this paper does really reach your hands, my Henry, my beloved, and you wish to hear somewhat concerning the hail which has kept falling deeper and deeper upon my young seed-crop--count not the melted hailstones, but the broken stalks. I have nothing left to give me joy, save your affection--everything else is battered down into ruin. Since, for more reasons than one,[59] it is most unlikely that I shall ever come to you at Bayreuth, let us part, on this page, like spirits, giving each other hands of air. I detest the sentimental, but Fate has wellnigh grafted it on to me at last, in spite of myself, and I swallow great spoonsful of that satiric Glauber's salt, which is generally so good a remedy for it--as sheep, who have caught the rot from feeding in damp meadows, are cured by licking salt. I say I swallow great spoonsful, about the size of my prizes at the bird-shooting, without the least perceptible effect. But, on the whole, it matters little. Fate, unlike our Sheriffs' Courts, does not wait until we are well before she inflicts her sentence. My giddiness and other premonitory symptoms of apoplexy, give me to understand, with sufficient clearness, that I shall soon be subjected to a good Galenian blood-letting,[60] by way of remedy for the nose-bleedings of this life. I cannot say that I am particularly glad of it, or anxious for it. On the contrary, I am annoyed with people who demand that Fate shall at once unswaddle them (for we are swaddled in our bodies, the nerves and arteries being the swaddling-bands)--as a mother does her infant just because it cries, and has a little pain in its stomach. I should be glad to remain swaddled for a while to come among the rest of the 'Children of the Rope,'[61] particularly as I cannot but fear that, in the next world, I shall be able to make little or no use of my satirical humour. However, I shall have to go. But when that comes to pa.s.s, I should like to ask you, Henry, to come some day to this town, and make them uncover your friend's quiet face, which will scarce manage to put on the Hippocratic mien again. Then, my Henry, when you gaze long upon the grey, spotty, new moon-face there, and think that very little suns.h.i.+ne ever fell thereon--no suns.h.i.+ne of love, of fame, or fortune--you will not be able to look up to heaven, and cry out to G.o.d, 'And now, at last, after all his sorrows and troubles, Thou, O G.o.d, hast annihilated him altogether; when he stretched his arms, in death, towards Thee, and that world of thine, Thou hast broken him in sunder as he lies there--poor soul!' No, Henry, when I die, _you_ will be compelled to believe in Immortality.

"Now that I have finished this 'Evening Paper' of mine, I am going to put out the light, for the full moon is shedding broad, imperial sheets of brightness into the room. Then, as there is no one else awake in the house, I will sit down in the twilight stillness, and, while I gaze at the moon's white magic amid the black magic of night, and listen to great flocks of birds of pa.s.sage as they come flying hither from warmer lands through the blue, clear moonlight--while I am pa.s.sing away into a sister country--I will stretch my feelers out from my snail's sh.e.l.l once more before the last frost closes it up for ever. Henry, I want to picture to myself to-night, clearly and brightly, all that is now over and past; the May of our friends.h.i.+p--every evening when we were too much moved by emotion and could not but fall into each other's arms--my hopes, so old and grey now that I hardly know them to be mine--five old, but bright and happy, springs which I still remember--my dead mother, who, when she was dying, gave me a lemon, which she thought would be put into her coffin, and said, 'Ah, I wish it were going into my bridal garland.' And I will picture to myself, also, that moment, now so near, of my _own_ death, when thy image will rise before the broken sight of my soul for the last time--when I shall part from thee, and, with a dark, inward pang, which can no more bring a tear into my cold and glazing eyes, sink away from thy shadowy form into the dark, and from amid the thick and heavy clouds of death, call to thee with a faint and hollow cry, 'Henry, good-night! good-night! Ah, fare thee well! for I can say no more.'"

END OF THE 'EVENING PAPER.'

CHAPTER XII.

THE FLIGHT OUT OF EGYPT--THE GLORIES OF TRAVEL--THE UNKNOWN-- BAYREUTH--BAPTISM IN A STORM--NATHALIE AND THE HERMITAGE--THE MOST IMPORTANT CONVERSATION IN ALL THIS BOOK--AN EVENING OF FRIENDs.h.i.+P.

Once, in the Easter week, when Firmian came home from a half-hour's pleasure-trip full of forced marches, Lenette linked him why he had not come back sooner, because the postman had been with a great, enormous packet, and had said that the husband must sign the receipt for it himself. In a small establishment like Siebenkaes' an occurrence such as this ranks among the world's greatest events, or the princ.i.p.al revolutions in its history. The moments of waiting lay on their souls like cupping-gla.s.ses and drawing plasters. At length the postman, in his yellow uniform, put an end to the bitter-sweet hemp beating of their arteries. Firmian acknowledged the receipt of fifty dollars, while Lenette asked the postman who had sent them, and where they came from. The letter commenced thus:--

"My dear Siebenkaes,

"I have received your 'Evening Paper' and 'Devil's Selections' all safely. The rest by word of mouth.

"_Postscript_.

"But listen! If the future course of my waltz of life is a matter of the slightest interest to you--if you care in the least degree about my happiness, my plans, or ideas--if it is anything to you but a matter of the supremest indifference that I frank you as far as Bayreuth, providing you with board, lodging, and travelling expenses all on account of a project whose yarn the spinning-mills of the future must either manufacture into gin-snares and gallows-ropes (for my life), or else into rope-ladders and best bower anchor-cables--if this, and other matters more momentous still, have the smallest power over you, Firmian, for heaven's sake, on with a pair of boots and start!"

"And, by thy holy friends.h.i.+p!" said Siebenkaes, "I will on with a pair, though the bolt of apoplexy should flash out of the blue sky of Swabia, and strike me down beneath a cherry-tree in full blossom. Nothing shall prevent me now!"

He kept his word, for in six days from thence we find him, at eleven o'clock at night, ready for his journey, with clean linen on his back, and in his pockets--with a hat-cover on his head (secretly freighted and stuffed with an old soft hat)--his newest boots (the antediluvian pair s relieved from duty, being left behind in garrison)--and a tower-clock, borrowed from Peltzstiefel, in his pocket--and fresh bathed, shaven, and kempt, standing by his wife and friend--both of whom kept their eyes fixed, with a gladsome, courteous watchfulness upon the departing traveller only, and did not, for the time being, look at all at one another. He took his leave of the pair while it was still night, being minded to pa.s.s the rest of it in his arm chair (of many sorrows), and be off about three o'clock, while Lenette should still be snoring. He committed to the Schulrath the office of treasurer-in-chief of the widow's fund to his gra.s.s-widow, and the managers.h.i.+p, or, at least, the "leading business," of his miniature Covent Garden full of Gay's Beggar's Operas, the theatrical journal whereof I am here writing for the edification of a full half of the world. "Lenette," he said, "when you want any counsel, apply to the counsellor here; he is going to do me the favour to come and see you very often indeed." Peltzstiefel made the most solemn promises to come every day. Lenette did not go down stairs to the door with the Schulrath when he went away, as she usually did, but remained above, and drawing her hand out of her replenished money-bag (the starved stomachic coats of which had hitherto been rubbing together), snapped it to. It is not of sufficient importance to be recorded that Siebenkaes asked her to put out the light, and go to her bed, and that he gave her charming face his long parting kiss, and said good night, and took the tender farewell, almost within the Eden-gate of the land of dreams with that redoublement of fondness with which we take our leave of those we love, and greet them when we come back to them again.

The watchman's last call at length drew him from his sleeping chair out into the starlight, breezy morning; but, first, he crept once more into the bed-room to the rose-maiden dreaming there, warm and happy, pulled the window to (for there was a cool air from it falling upon her unprotected breast), and would not suffer his lips to touch her in an awakening kiss. He gazed at her by the light of the stars and early blush of dawn, till he turned his eyes away (fast growing dim) at the thought, "perhaps I may never see her again."

As he pa.s.sed through the sitting-room, her distaff seemed to look at him as if it were a thing of life; it was wrapped in broad bands of coloured paper (which she had put on it because she had not got silk); and there was her spinning-wheel, too, which she used to work at in the dark mornings and evenings when there was not light enough for sewing.

As he pictured her to himself working industriously at them while he was away, every wish of his heart cried out, "Ah, poor darling! may all go well with her, always, whether I ever come back to her or not."

This thought of the _last time_ grew more vivid still when he was out in the open air, and felt a slight giddiness produced, in the physical part of his head, by agitation and broken sleep, as well as natural regret at the sight of his home receding from view, and the town growing dimmer, and the foreground changing into background, and the disappearance of all the paths and heights on which he had so often walked a little life into his benumbed heart, frozen by the past winter. The little leaf whereon, like a leaf roller, or miner-worm, he had been crawling and feeding, was falling now to earth behind him, a skeleton leaf.

But the first spot of foreign, unfamiliar soil, as yet unmarked by any "Station of his Pa.s.sion," drew, like a serpent-stone, an acrid drop or two of sorrow-poison out of his heart.

And now the solar flames shot higher and higher up upon the enkindled morning clouds, till, at length, hundreds of suns rose in an instant in the sky, in the streams and pools, and in the dew-cups of the flowers, while thousands of varied colours went flowing athwart the face of earth, and one bright whiteness broke from the sky.

Fate plucked away most of the yellow, faded leaves from Firmian's soul, as gardeners remove those of plants in spring. His giddiness diminished rather than otherwise as he went on; the walking did it good. As the sun rose in heaven, another, a super-earthly sun, rose in his soul. In every valley, in every grove, on every rising ground, he broke and cast away a ring or two of the chrysalis-case of wintry life and trouble (which had been clinging so tightly to him), and unfolded his moist upper and nether wings, and let the breeze of May waft him away, on four outspread pinions, up into the bright air among the b.u.t.terflies, but higher than they, and over loftier flowers.

And then with what a burst of power the life within him began, under this new impetus, to boil and seethe, as, issuing from a diamond-mine of a valley all shade and dewdrops, he walked a pace or two up through the heaven-gate of the spring. It was as if some great earthquake had upheaved a new-created flowery plain, all dripping from the ocean, stretching further than the eye could reach, all rich in youthful powers and impulses. The fire of earth glowed beneath the roots of this great hanging garden, and the fire of heaven flamed above it burning the colours into the trees and flowers. Between the white mountains, as between porcelain towers, stood the bright tinted, flowery slopes like thrones for the fruit G.o.ddesses. And all over the face of this great camp of gladness, the cups of the flowers and the heavy dewdrops were pitched, like peopled tents. The earth teemed with young broods, and sprouting gra.s.ses, and countless little hearts; and heart after heart, life after life, burst forth into being from out the warm brooding-cells of Mother Nature--burst forth with wings, or silken threads, or delicate feelers--and hummed, and sucked, and smacked its lips and sang. And for every one of these countless honeysucking trunks a cup of gladness had long since been filled and ready.

In this great market-place of this living city of the sun, so full of glory and sounding life, the pet child of the infinite Mother stood solitary--gazing, with bright and happy eyes, delighted, around him into all its innumerable streets. But his eternal Mother wore her veil of immeasurable immensity, and it was only the warmth which pierced to his heart which told him that he was lying upon her breast. Firmian reposed from this two hours' intoxication of heart in a peasant's hut.

The foaming spirit of a cup of joy like this went quicker to the heart of a sick man such as he than to those of the commoner run of sufferers.

When he went out again the glory had sobered down into brightness, and his enthusiasm into simple happiness. Every red ladybird fluttering on its way, every red church-roof, and every sparkling stream as it glittered and glistened with dancing stars, shed joyous lights and brilliant colours upon his soul. When he heard the cries of the charcoal burners in the wood, the resounding cracking of whips, and the crash of falling trees, and then, when coming out into the open, he saw the white chateaux and roads standing out against the dark-green background like constellations and milky ways, and above the s.h.i.+ning cloud specks in the deep blue sky; while lights flashed and darted everywhere, now down from trees, now up from streams, now athwart saws in the distance--there was no such thing as a foggy corner left in his soul, nor a single spot in it all unpenetrated by the spring suns.h.i.+ne: the moss of gnawing, corroding care, which can grow only in damp shade, fell from his bread-trees and trees of liberty out here in the glad, free air, and his soul could not but join in the great chorus of flying and humming creatures which was rising all round him, singing, "Life is beautiful, and youth is lovelier still; but spring is loveliest of all."

The bygone winter lay behind him like the dark, frozen South Pole; the royal burgh of Kuhschnappel like some deep, dreary school-dungeon with dripping walls. The only spot in it over which broad, gladsome sunbeams were intertwining was his own home, and he pictured to himself Lenette in that home as commander-in-chief, free to talk, cook, and wash at her own sweet will, and with her head (and hands, too) full all day long of the delight that was coming in the evening. He was glad from the very depths of his heart that, in that little egg-sh.e.l.l of hers, that sulphur-hut and chartreuse, she should enjoy the glory and brightness which that angel Peltzstiefel would bring with him into her St. Peter's prison. "Ah! in G.o.d's name," thought he, "may she be as happy as I am--nay, and happier, too, if that be possible."

The more villages he came to, with their troupes of strolling players (of inhabitants), the more did life in general seem to a.s.sume a theatrical guise--his past troubles were transformed into leading parts in the drama, or Aristotelian problems--his clothes into stage costumes--his new boots became _cothurna_--and his purse a theatre treasury--while a delicious stage-recognition was awaiting him in the arms of his beloved Henry.

About half-past three in the afternoon, in a Swabian village, whose name he did not inquire, his whole soul melted of a sudden to tears, so that he was completely astonished at the unlooked-for and rapid _attendriss.e.m.e.nt_. His surroundings at the time would have rather led him to antic.i.p.ate a contrary effect. He was standing by an old thorn-tree, rather crooked, and dead at the top; the village women were on the green was.h.i.+ng their clothes, which glistened in the sunlight, and throwing down chopped eggs and nettles to feed the downy, yellow goslings; a gentleman's gardener was clipping a hedge, while a herd-boy was summoning his sheep (clipped already for _their_ part) round the thorn-tree, with his _cornemuse_. It was all so youthful, so pretty, so Italian! The beautiful May had half (or wholly) unclad everything and everyone--the sheep, the geese, the women, the shepherd-minstrel, the hedger, and his hedge....

Why was he thus moved to tenderness in this gladsome and smiling scene?

Partly because he had been so happy all day, but chiefly by the shepherd ba.s.soonist calling his flock together with that stage instrument of his beneath the thorn. Firmian had helped a shepherd of this sort, with a crook and a reed-pipe, to drive his own father's sheep home hundreds of times when he was a boy; and the tones of the _Ranz des Vaches_ brought back in an instant his own rose-coloured childhood--it arose from out its dew of the morning, its bowers of budding blossoms and sleeping flowers, and stood before him in heavenly guise, and smiled in all its own innocence dressed in its thousand hopes, saying, "Behold me! see how lovely I am; we used to play together, you and I; how much I used to give you!--grand kingdoms, broad meadows, and gold, and a great, endless Paradise beyond the hills. But it seems you have nothing left now. And how pale you are, and worn! Come and play with me again!"

Who is there amongst us to whom Music has not brought back his childhood a thousand times? She comes and says, "Are not the rosebuds blown yet which I gave you?" Yes, yes, they are blown; they were white roses, though!

The evening made his joy-flowers close, folding their petals together above their nectaries; and an evening dew of melancholy fell ever heavier and thicker upon his soul as he went on his way. Just before sunset he came to a village; I am sorry to say I cannot remember whether it was Honbart, or Houstein, or Jaxheim; but of this I am pretty certain, that it was one of the three, because it was near the River Jagst, and in Ans.p.a.ch, on the borders of Ellw.a.n.gen. His night-quarters lay smoking down in the valley before him. Before going on into them he lay down on the hill-side beneath a tree, whose branches were the cathedral chancel of a choir of singing creatures.

Not far from him gleamed the trembling tinsel of a piece of water, glittering in the evening sun; and above him the golden leaves and the white blossoms rustled like gra.s.ses waving over flowers. The cuckoo (always her own sounding-board and multiplying echo) talked to him from the tree-top in mournful tones of sorrow; the sun was gone; the shadows were throwing thick veils of c.r.a.pe over the brightness of the day. He asked himself, "_What_ is my Lenette doing now? Of whom is she thinking? Who is with her?" And here there fell about his heart, like a band of ice, the thought, "Ah! but _I_ have no loved one whose hand I can clasp!"

After drawing to himself a vivid picture of the tender, delicate, beautiful, woman whom he had so often invoked, but never met--to whom he would have given and sacrificed--oh! so gladly--so much! not only his heart and his life, but his every wish, his every whim--he went down the hill with streaming eyes, which he strove in vain to dry; but, at all events, any kind womanly heart (among the readers of this tale) which has loved in vain, or to its own detriment, will forgive him these burning tears, knowing, from sad personal experience, how the soul seems to journey on through a desolate wilderness, where the deathly Samiel wind blows ceaselessly, while lifeless forms lie scattered around, dashed to earth by the blast, their arms breaking from their crumbling trunks when the living touches them in act to clasp them to his own warm heart. But ye, in whose clasp so many a heart has grown cold, chilled by inconstancy or by the frost of death--ye should not mourn so bitterly as do those lonely souls who have never _lost_, because they have never _found_; who yearn for that immortal and eternal love of which even the mortal and transient reflex has never been vouchsafed to bless them.

Firmian carried with him into his night-quarters a tranquil, though a tender, heart, which healed itself in dreams. When he looked up from his slumbers, the constellations, set in his window as in a picture-frame, twinkled lovingly before his bright and happy eyes, and beamed upon him the astrological prophecy of a happy morrow.

He fluttered, with the earliest lark, up out of the furrow of his bed, with as many trills as he, and quite as much energy. That day, fatigue plucking the bird-of-paradise wings from his fancy, he could not quite get out of the territory of Ans.p.a.ch. The day after, he reached Bamberg, leaving on the right hand Nurnberg--that and its _Pays Coutumiers_ and _Pays de Droit ecrit_. His path led him from one paradise to another.