My departure is postponed, but, in order to recruit my strength after so many sleepless nights, I remove to my aunt's house on the other side of the street, and leave the "rose-red" room. It is a curious fact that in the good old times the torture chamber in Sweden was called the "Chamber of Roses."
At last I spend a night again in a quiet room. The walls are painted white and covered with pictures of saints. Over my bed hangs a crucifix. But when night comes the spirits begin their tricks again.
I light the candles in order to kill the time with reading. There is a weird stillness in which I can hear my heart beating. Then a slight noise startles me, like an electric spark.
What is that?
A large piece of wax has dropped from the candle on the ground. Nothing more, but the people here believe it is a sign of death! It may be, as far as I am concerned. After reading for half an hour, I want to take my handkerchief from under my pillow. It is not there, and when I look for it, I find it on the ground. I stoop to pick it up. Something falls on my head, and when I extricate it from my hair, I find it is another piece of wax. Instead of being alarmed, I cannot help smiling; the whole thing seems a piece of practical joking.
Smiling at death! How could that be possible, were not life essentially comic. Such a fuss about nothing! Perhaps in the depth of our souls there lurks a shadowy consciousness that everything down here is all humbug, a masquerade, a mere pretence, and that all our sufferings afford mirth to the gods.
High over the hill on which the castle is built there towers another, from which a more commanding view over the Inferno-like landscape can be gained than from any other. The way thither lies through the remains of an ancient oak forest, which, according to tradition, was a scene of Druidic worship, and where mistletoe grows luxuriantly on the apple and lime trees. Above this wood the path mounts steeply through pines.
Several times I have tried to reach the summit, but something unforeseen has always hindered me. One time it was a deer which broke the silence with an unexpected leap, another time a hare, which resembled no hare which I had ever seen, and yet another time a magpie with its deafening chatter. But on the last morning, the day before my departure, I pressed in spite of all hindrances through the dark melancholy pine wood up to the summit, whence I obtained a splendid view of the valley of the Danube and the Styrian Alps. I breathe freely for the first time now that I have at last emerged from the gloomy, funnel-shaped valley below. The sun illuminates the landscape to the farthest horizon, and the white crests of the Alps melt into the clouds. The whole scene is one of heavenly beauty. Does the earth comprise at the same time heaven and hell, and is there no other place of punishment and reward? Perhaps. Certainly, the most beautiful moments of my life seem to me heavenly, and the worst, hellish. Has the future still in reserve for me hours or minutes of that happiness which can be won only by tribulation and a tolerably clean conscience?
I feel little inclination to descend into the valley of sorrows again, and walk about on the mountain plateau, wondering at the beauty of the earth. On the summit is a rock shaped by nature like an Egyptian Sphinx. On its gigantic head is a heap of stones in which stands a stick bearing a white piece of linen attached, like a flag. Without troubling myself about its significance, an uncontrollable desire to seize the flag takes possession of me. Despising death, I clamber up the steep rock, and lay hold of it. At the same moment the sound of a bridal march sung by triumphant voices arises from the Danube below. It is a marriage party; I cannot see it, but the musket shots customarily fired on such occasions place it beyond a doubt. Childish enough and unhappy enough to give a poetical colouring to the most ordinary occurrences, I take this as a good omen.