“Reinhart, this is some of your German metaphysics.”
“No; though you are at liberty to call it what you please; but I have never read such a theory in any place.”
“Well, it is an absurd idea,” I retorted, “and sounds exactly like some of your humbug philosophers, who never believe in any thing but fantasies; and I would advise you to let them alone.”
This was hardly wise on my part. I should not have allowed myself to express any impatience when I saw it excited him, and only augmented what I was striving to allay. The blood rushed again over his face, but he said nothing; only, rising from his seat, he walked several times across the room.
In the silence that followed, a strain of joyful music broke suddenly upon us. It was the swell of the Cathedral organ, sounding a prelude for some wedding. But if the strain was ever finished, we did not hear it, for the next moment a crash of terrific discord drowned the music, shaking the very ground. Some object flew swiftly past my face, struck the wall and fell upon the floor. I sprang up and shut the window quickly. Half the sky was covered with a black cloud, and from the carpet at my feet I picked up a dead bird, a small bird with red plumes in its wings.
The storm passed over in less than half an hour, leaving the sky perfectly clear again; but for the remainder of the day I could not recover my spirits. Whether Reinhart suffered from a like oppression, I know not; but he seemed possessed by the very demon of unrest. He was not still a moment. He had little to say; and quite late in the evening proposed a walk. Without any remark upon the unusual hour, I acquiesced.
The night was quiet and beautiful, beautiful even for that southern clime. There was no moon, and still the sky was filled with a soft light, brighter than the trembling rays of the stars alone. I remember it because it was a peculiar luminous haze, that I had seen only in Italy, and because, though no clouds swept over the sky, and the haze never paled until lost in the crimson glow of morning, that night, to me, was the blackest night of my life, whose vision sometimes yet rises before me, even at noon-day, with appalling reality. Ah! why were the sky and stars beautiful? O, cruel sky! O, cruel stars! Was the sorrow on earth nothing to you, that you gave no warning?
We had walked perhaps two squares, when Reinhart stopped just as suddenly as if he might have come in contact with a stone wall, invisible to me. Alarmed, I said, quickly, “What is the matter? Are you ill?”
“No,” he replied, still standing motionless. Then, in a moment, without another word, he turned and began retracing his steps.
“Are you going home already?” I inquired, puzzled by his strange conduct.