"Certainly, but what comfort is that thought, if one no longer breaks the daily bread of life with another? I have known, however, that this separation must occur, I have recognized it as necessary; and still, for the first time, I see how almost constantly, for a long while, I have thought of nothing, felt nothing, experienced nothing, but that I forthwith connected Roland with it,—living only for him. Now the whole bent of my thoughts must be changed, a new object found, for the old chain is crushed, severed, cast off, and I feel so homeless and forlorn."
"I understand that perfectly," said Manna, as Eric paused for a moment.
She sipped the wine that stood before her.
Eric continued:—
"I have a poetic friend, a peculiar man, who takes everything terribly hard: he is a man, who, with his whole soul, unreservedly and exclusively, forgetful of all else, loves his calling. He complained to me once how empty, lonely and forsaken he seemed to himself, when he had put the finishing stroke to a work which was then about to go forth from him into the wide world, to find its home everywhere, and to remain with him no more. He had devoted all his thought and feeling, night and day, to the creations of his fancy, and now they had wandered across the sea into another world, there to be no longer his. He could not withdraw his thoughts from them, and yet he could do nothing more for them, for their clearer presentation, for their perfect development. Yes, my dear Fräulein, and these are only creations of the fancy that forsake the man and make him so lonely. How much stronger must the feeling be then, when a living man, who has taken root in our soul, has forsaken us."
Manna was gazing full at him; big tears hung on her long eye-lashes, and she saw a dewy lustre in his; she folded her hands on the table, and quietly looked into Eric's countenance.
He felt this look, and said confusedly:—
"Forgive my egotism in speaking only of myself. I would not put any further burden upon the sister, and I can straightway give you the consolation which I have found for myself, and which will serve for you too. We have no right to give our soul one exclusive interest, and in that way lose sight of all the world beside; our soul must be satisfied to feel that there are other things in the world, of which account must be taken. Only, in the sense of desertion, while this inevitable wound still bleeds, one can do nothing else than wait quietly, and compose one's self in the thought of the fullness of the powers of the world, and the fullness of the duties and joys which lie in our fitness to use those powers. Ah, my dear Fräulein," he said, interrupting himself, "my mother likes to tell of an old parson, who cried out to his congregation:—'Children, I preach not for you alone, I preach also for myself; I have need of it.'"
A smile flitted across Manna's countenance, and Eric smiled too.
"Yes, so it is!" he continued, "it is not to the isolated, to the wandering, to the changeable, but to the Everlasting, we should devote our service; to the Spirit abiding in the universal, that we should be submissive, until he calls us to another post. Whither? Wherefore? Who can say? We experience the death of sweet individual relations, to enter anew into the grand community of the eternal whole."