"Our wisdom," said Mrs. Astrid, as she looked smilingly around, "has not in the mean time prevented Susanna from being more sensible than us, for she has thought of the wedding-guests, while we have quite forgotten them. But we will now follow her!"
After the wedding-dinner spiced with skåls and songs, and especially with hearty merriment, Mrs. Astrid retired to her own room, and Alette assumed the hostess's office in the company.
Sitting at her writing-table, Mrs. Astrid, with an animated air, and quick respiration, sketched the following lines:
"Now come, come, my paternal friend, and behold your wishes, your prognostications fulfilled; come and behold happiness and inexpressible gratitude living in the bosom which so long was closed even to hope. Come, and receive my contrition for my pusillanimity, for my murmurings; come and help me to be thankful! I long to tell you orally how much is changed within me; how a thousand germs of life and gladness, which I believed to be dead, now spring up in my soul restored to youth. I wonder daily over the feelings, the impressions which I experience; I scarcely know myself again. Oh, my friend! how right you were—it is never TOO LATE!
"Ah! that I could be heard by all oppressed, dejected souls! I would cry to them—'Lift up your head, and confide still in the future, and believe that it is never TOO LATE!' See! I too was bowed down by long suffering, and old age had moreover overtaken me, and I believed that all my strength had vanished; that my life, my sufferings were in vain—and behold; my head has been again lifted up, my heart appeased, my soul strengthened; and now, in my fiftieth year, I advance into a new future, attended by all that life has of beautiful and worthy of love!
"The change in my soul has enabled me better to comprehend life and suffering, and I am now firmly convinced that there is no fruitless suffering, and that no virtuous endeavour is in vain. Winter days and nights may bury beneath their pall of snow the sown corn; but when the spring arrives, it will be found equally true, that 'there grows much bread in the winter night.' It has pleased Providence to remove the covering from my eyes here upon earth; for many others will this only be removed when their eyes have closed on the earthly day; all will, however, one day see what I now see, and acknowledge what I now acknowledge with joy and thankfulness.
"Clear and bright now lies my way before me. In concert with my beloved children, with the teacher of my youth, and my friend, who I hope will spend in my house the evening of his days, I will convert this place into a vale of peace. And when I shall leave it and them, may peace still remain amongst them with my memory! And now, thou advancing age, which already breathes coldly on my forehead; thou winter twilight of earthly life, in which my days will sink more and more, come and welcome! I fear thee no longer; for it has become warm and light in my heart. Even under bodily spasms and pains, I will no more misconceive the value of life; but with an eye open to all the good upon earth, I will say to my dear ones:
Bewail me not, for I am still so blest,
The peace of heaven doth dwell within my breast."
Mrs. Astrid laid down her pen, and lifted up her tear-bright and beaming eyes; she caught sight of Harald and Susanna, who arm-in-arm wandered down the dale. They went on in gladness, and yet seemed to contend; and the question between them was, indeed, upon a most important matter—namely, which of them should hereafter have in their house the last word. Harald wished that this should hereafter be, as lord and master, his exclusive prerogative. Susanna declared that she should not trouble herself about his prerogative; but when she was in the right intended to persist in it to the uttermost. In the mean time they had unconsciously advanced to the spring—the Water of Strife—which had witnessed their first contention, and over which now doves, as at the first time, circled with silver-glancing wings. And here Harald seized Susanna's hand, led her to the spring, and said solemnly—