One evening, as Henrik came down to tea, he was observed to look uncommonly pale, and in answer to the inquiry of his sisters as to the cause, he replied that he had headache, and added, half in jest, half in earnest, that it would be very beautiful to be only once freed from this heavy body—it was so sadly in one's way!
"How you talk!" said Louise; "at all events, it is right to treat it well and rationally; not to go sitting up all night and studying so that one has headache all day!"
"Thank your majesty most submissively for the moral!" said Henrik; "but if my body will not serve my soul, but will subject it, I have a very great desire to contend with it, and to quarrel with it!"
"The butterfly becomes matured in the chrysalis," said Gabriele, smiling sweetly, whilst she strewed rose-leaves upon some chrysalises which were to sleep through the winter on her flower-stand.
"Ah, yes," replied Henrik; "but how heavily does not the shell press down upon the wings of the butterfly! The earthly chrysalis weighs upon me! What would not the soul accomplish? how could it not live and enjoy, were it not for this? In certain bright moments, what do we not feel and think? what brilliancy in conception! what godlike warmth of feeling in the heart!—one could press the whole world to one's bosom at such a time, seeing, with a glance, through all, and penetrating all as with fire. Oh, there is then an abundance, a clearness! Yes, if our Lord himself came to me at such a moment, I should reach forth my hand to him and say, 'Good day, brother!'"
"Dear Henrik!" said Louise, somewhat startled, "now I think you do not rightly know what you say."
"Yes," continued he, without regarding the interruption, "so can one feel, but only for a moment; in the next, the chrysalis closes heavily again its earthly dust-mantle around our being, and we are stupified and sleep, and sink deep below that which we so lately were. Then one sees in books nothing but printed words, and in one's soul one finds neither feeling nor thought, and towards man, for whom so shortly before the very heart seemed to burn, one feels oneself stiff and disinclined. Ah, it were enough to make one fall into despair!"
"It would be far better," said Louise, "that such people went to sleep, and then they would get rid of headache and heaviness."
"But," said Henrik, smiling, "that is a sorrowful remedy according to my notions. It is horrible to require so much sleep! How can any one who is a seven-sleeper become great? 'Les hommes puissans veillent et veulent,' says Balzac with reason; and because my miserable heavy nature requires so much sleep, so certainly shall I never turn out great in any way. Besides, this entrancement, this glorification produces such wakeful moments in the soul, that one feels poor and stripped when they are extinguished. Ah! I can very well comprehend how so many make use of external excitement to recal or to prolong them, and that they endeavour through the fire of wine to wake again the fire of the soul."
"Then," said Louise, "you comprehend something which is very bad and irrational. They are precisely such excitements as these that we have to thank for there being so many miserable men, and so many drunkards in Sweden, that one can scarcely venture to go out in the streets for them!"