CHAPTER VII.
I left Skogstad at once, and without taking leave of the parents, who were with their children. I got a horse to the next station, and was soon slowly driving along the chaussée. The snow which had fallen made the road heavier than when I had come that way. A few atoms still swept about through the air but the fall was lightening more and more, so that the moonlight gradually gained in force. It fell on the snow-clad forest, which still stood unchanged, with fantastic power; for although the details were lost the contrasts were striking.
I was weary, and the mood I was in harmonized with my fatigue. In the still subdued moonlight the forest looked like a bowed-down, conquered people; its burden was greater than it could bear. Nevertheless, it stood there patiently, tree after tree, without end, bowed to the ground. It was like a people from the far-distant past to the present day, a people buried in dust. Yonder "heaven-fallen, merciful snow"—
And just as all symbols, even those from the times of old, which mythology dimly reveals to us, became fixed in the imagination, and gradually worked their way out to independence, so it was now with mine. I saw the past generations enveloped in a cloud of dust, in which they could not recognize one another, and that was why they fought against one another, slaying one another by the millions. Dust was being continually strewed over them. But I saw that it was the same with all those who were wounded, or who must die. I saw in the midst of these poor sufferers many kind, refined souls, who in thus strewing dust were rendering the highest, most beautiful service they knew, like those priestly physicians of Egypt, who offered to the sick and dying magic formulas as the most effectual preventive of death, and placed on the wounds a medicine, the greater part of which was composed of mystic symbols.
And I saw all the relations of life, even the soundest, strewed over with a coating of dust, and the attempt at deliverance to be the world's most complete revolution, which would wholly shatter these relations themselves.
And as I grew more and more weary and these fancies left me, but what I had recently experienced kept rising uppermost in my mind, then I plainly heard weeping in among the snow-flakes that were no longer falling; it was the boys I heard. They wept so sorely, they lamented so bitterly, while we tenderly bore them from dust to more dust.
I passed through the forest and drove along its margin up to the station. When I had nearly reached this I cast one more look downward over the tree-tops, which were radiant in the moonlight. The forest was magnificent in its snowy splendor.
The majesty of the view struck me now, and the symbol presented itself differently.
A dream hovering over all people, originating infinitely long before all history, continually assuming new forms, each of which denoted the downfall of an earlier one, and always in such a manner that the most recent form lay more lightly over the reality than those just preceding it, concealing less of it, affording freer breathing-space—until the last remnants should evaporate in the air. When shall that be?
The infinite will always remain, the incomprehensible with it; but it will no longer stifle life. It will fill it with reverence; but not with dust.