Eva was looking up with her calm, bright look. "Thine!" she murmured, "all this is Thine; and we are Thine, and Thou art here! How much happier it is to be able to look up and feel there is no barrier of our own poor ownership between us and Him, the Possessor of heaven and earth! How much poorer we should be if we were lords of this land, like the Elector, and if we said, 'All this is mine!' and so saw only I and mine in it all, instead of God and God's!"
"Yes," I said, "if we ended in saying I and mine; but I should be very thankful if God gave us a little more out of his abundance, to use for our wants. And yet, how much better things are with us then they were!—the appointment of my father as director of the Elector's printing establishment, instead of a precarious struggle for ourselves; and this embroidery of mine! It seems to me, Eva, sometimes, we might be a happy family yet."
"My book," she replied thoughtfully, "says we shall never be truly satisfied in God, or truly free, unless all things are one to us, and One is all, and something and nothing are alike. I suppose I am not quite truly free, Cousin Elsè, for I cannot like this place quite as much as the old Eisenach home."
I began to feel quite impatient, and I said,—"Nor can I or any of us ever feel any home quite the same again, since Fritz is gone. But as to feeling something and nothing are alike, I never can, and I will never try. One might as well be dead at once."
"Yes," said Eva gravely; "I suppose we shall never comprehend it quite, or be quite satisfied and free, until we die."
We talked no more that night; but I heard her singing one of her favourite hymns:[6]—
In the fount of life perennial the parched heart its thirst would slake,
And the soul, in flesh imprisoned, longs her prison-walls to break,—
Exile, seeking, sighing, yearning in her Fatherland to wake.
When with cares oppressed and sorrows, only groans her grief can tell,
Then she contemplates the glory which she lost when first she fell:
Memory of the vanished good the present evil can but swell.
Who can utter what the pleasures and the peace unbroken are
Where arise the pearly mansions, shedding silvery light afar—
Festive seats and golden roofs, which glitter like the evening star?
Wholly of fair stones most precious are those radiant structures made;
With pure gold, like glass transparent, are those shining streets inlaid;
Nothing that defiles can enter, nothing that can soil or fade.