Thus one memory follows another until the waves dash together over our heads, and a deep sigh swells the breast, which warns us that we have forgotten to breathe in the midst of these pure thoughts. Then all at once, the whole dream-world vanishes, like uprisen ghosts at the crowing of the cock.
As I passed by the old castle and the lindens, and saw the sentinels upon their horses, how many memories awakened in my soul, and how everything had changed! Many years had flown since I was at the castle. The Princess was dead. The Prince had given up his rule and gone back to Italy, and the oldest prince, with whom I had grown up, was regent. His companions were young noblemen and officers, whose intercourse was congenial to him, and whose company in our early days had often estranged us. Other circumstances combined to weaken our young friendship. Like every young man who perceives for the first time the lack of unity in the German folk-life, and the defects of German rule, I had caught up some phrases of the Liberal party, which sounded as strangely at court as unseemly expressions in an honest minister's family. In short, it was many years since I had ascended those stairs, and yet a being dwelt in that castle whose name I had named almost daily, and who was almost constantly present in my memory. I had long dwelt upon the thought that I should never see her again in this life. She was transformed into an image which I felt neither did nor could exist in reality. She had become my good angel—my other self, to whom I talked instead of talking with myself. How she became so I could not explain to myself, for I scarcely knew her. Just as the eye sometimes pictures figures in the clouds, so I fancied my imagination had conjured up this sweet image in the heaven of my childhood, and a complete picture of phantasy developed itself out of the scarcely perceptible outlines of reality. My entire thought had involuntarily become a dialogue with her, and all that was good in me, all for which I struggled, all in which I believed, my entire better self, belonged to her. I gave it to her. I received it from her, from her my good angel.
I had been at home but a few days, when I received a letter one morning. It was written in English, and came from the Countess Marie:
Dear Friend: I hear you are with us for a short time. We have not met for many years, and if it is agreeable to you, I should like to see an old friend again. You will find me alone this afternoon in the Swiss Cottage. Yours sincerely, MARIE.
I immediately replied, also in English, that I would call in the afternoon.
The Swiss Cottage constituted a wing of the castle, which overlooked the garden, and could be reached without going through the castle yard. It was five o'clock when I passed through the garden and approached the cottage. I repressed all emotion and prepared myself for a formal meeting. I sought to quiet my good angel, and to assure her that this lady had nothing to do with her. And yet I felt very uneasy, and my good angel would not listen to counsel. Finally I took courage, murmuring something to myself about the masquerade of life, and rapped on the door, which stood ajar.
There was no one in the room except a lad whom I did not know, and who likewise spoke English, and said the Countess would be present in a moment. She then left, and I was alone, and had time to look about.
The walls of the room were of rose-chestnut, and over an openwork trellis, a luxuriant broadleaved ivy twined around the whole room. All the tables and chairs were of carved rose-chestnut. The floor was of variegated woodwork. It gave me a curious sensation to see so much that was familiar in the room. Many articles from our old play-room in the castle were old friends, but the others were new, especially the pictures, and yet they were the same as those in my University room—the same portraits of Beethoven, Handel and Mendelssohn, as I had selected—hung over the grand piano. In one corner I saw the Venus di Milo, which I always regarded as the masterpiece of antiquity. On the table were volumes of Dante, Shakspeare, Tauler's Sermons, the "German Theology," Ruckert's Poems, Tennyson and Burns, and Carlyle's "Past and Present,"—the very same books—all of which I had had but recently in my hands. I was growing thoughtful, but I repressed my thoughts and was just standing before the portrait of the deceased Princess, when the door opened, and the same two servants, whom I had so often seen in childhood, brought the Countess into the room upon her couch.
What a vision! She spoke not a word, and her countenance was as placid as the sea, until the servants left the room. Then her eyes sought me—the old, deep, unfathomable eyes. Her expression grew more animated each instant. At last her whole face lit up, and she said:
"We are old friends—I believe; we have not changed. I cannot say 'You,' and if I may not say 'Thou,' then we must speak in English. Do you understand me?"