"Your Walpurga Andermatten."
While Walpurga, with slow and heavy hand, toiled at her letter, Countess Irma sat at her desk, in the room below, and dashed off the following lines:
"My dearest Emma: What a night I've passed--I must be endowed with herculean strength, or I should not have lived through it. I have looked into the fiery eyes of the glaring monsters who dwell above and below our daily life and who suddenly, and without warning, burst upon us. You must suffer me to return to you,--to write to you once more. I don't know how long it is since I've done so. You are my fortress, my rock, my shelter. You are firm, immovable, steadfast, patient. When in distress, I come to you. I flee to you.
"It was a terrible night. The tree still stands, but a young blossom was broken off. I came from the queen's apartment; I could not pray, but stood by the window, and thought while I looked out into the night: Thou who renewest everything, who awakenest the earth from its wintry sleep, breathing new life into trees and flowers and all that faded and withered last year--suffer a human heart to renew itself; let past deeds be destroyed and forgotten. Suffer a child of man, regenerate and redeemed, to begin life anew. I stood at the casement, while the wind howled without. Suddenly there was a fearful crash. A tall oak before my window had been broken by the angry wind. The tree toppled and, in its fall, dashed a statue of Venus, which stood beneath it, into fragments. It all seemed like a feverish dream, and when I realized what had happened, my only wish was: Oh that I had been in the statue's place! Oh that I had been dashed to atoms--It would have been far better for me.
"I hardly know what to tell you. I only know that I may again be with you--perhaps to-day, to-morrow, at night or in the daytime, I shall fall on my knees to you and you will lift me up. I shall rest on your heart, and you will protect me. You will save me from the demons; you will not question me; you will give food and drink and rest to the stranger soul, and will not ask whence it comes.
"What are we? What is the world? We see and know all, and yet--
"How ingenious the devices with which the world lulls its conscience into slumber--If there were only no awakening! The awakening--the morrow--that is the most terrible thought of all.
"An eternal kiss rests upon a statue at the arsenal, and the stars, the moon and the sun look down upon it. If I could but climb up there, hurl myself to the earth and destroy myself--the world--everything!
"Should you hear the bells tolling loudly, know that it is my funeral. If there be a gentle knock at your door, think that it is a poor soul that was once so rich--might still be--aye, is. Who can restore a human being to himself? Who draws him out of the lake--out of the lake--
"Why is it that the lake is constantly before my eyes? I see myself in it--I sink! Help me! Save me, Emma! Help me, I sink--!"