“We have been looking on at the ball, mamma.”
“How did you enjoy yourself? Tell me.”
“To-morrow, dear mamma!”
I kissed my mother and went to rest.
Rest? “Who ne’er distressful nights upon his bed has sat in tears,” runs the well-known poem; but whoever has not through a long night, awaking every ten minutes, kept tossing from one side of the bed to the other, with a beloved name upon his lips, a glowing beatitude in his heart,—he also “knows you not, ye heavenly powers.”
A hundred times I started up from my slumber, and if I was not at once conscious why I was so utterly happy and whom I loved so very dearly, the sandalwood fan, which lay close to me on the stand, quickly told the story. Its fragrance played the Morgenblätter, poured out the hot light of the ballroom chandelier, and pressed a sleeve of black cloth gently and tremblingly against a sleeve of white muslin. Then I would deliciously go to sleep again, only to be reawakened soon by a powerful heart-throb. And so it went till morning.
Once again, just as when I was enamored of Friedrich von Hadeln, I was seized at waking by the consciousness of the rapturous “I love,” and with it the still more rapturous “I am loved.” Warm, almost tangible, it gushes from the heart, sweet, tender, full of yearning and yet glad in possession—for even yearning is a possession. Thus there is on earth something which yesterday was still unknown, still not in existence, and which to-day, so to speak, fills the world,—the unspeakably precious treasure, which is so wholly and completely the “one important thing.”
I was not to see him for three days; he had gone to Paris for that time. I filled these days with studies regarding the Caucasus and its history. Not only what the Dedopali could tell me, but also what I found in the encyclopedia and in Dumas’s book Le Caucase, gave me a glimpse into the distant, fabulous realm whose throne should by right have belonged to my Prince Heraclius.
On the second day I received from Paris a package and a letter. The package contained a full bonbonnière from Boissier, the accompanying letter a few polite lines. There was nothing out of the ordinary in it, but it intoxicated me outright, for it was signed with the name of Heraclius of Georgia, and from its thick paper adorned with a princely crown there exhaled a faint, but peculiarly sweet, fragrance. This letter-sheet and the sandalwood fan—both told me untranslatable things.
On the third day I went over to the Dedopali’s with quick-beating heart. I found her in her usual place in the little drawing-room.