It was very hard for the Judge that he was compelled on this very day to leave home, but pressing business obliged him to do so. He must make a journey that same evening, which would detain him from home for three or four days, and although he left his family in the full bloom of their joy and prosperity, the short separation appeared to him more painful than common.
After he had taken his leave he returned—a circumstance very unusual with him—to the room again; embraced his wife yet a second time, flourished about with his daughters in his wolf's-skin cloak as if out of liveliness, and then went out hastily, giving to the young Baron, who, in his wild joy, had fallen upon his wolf's-skin like a dog, a tolerably heavy cuff. A few minutes afterwards, as he cast from his sledge a glance and a hand-greeting to his wife and daughters at the library window, they saw with astonishment that his eyes were full of tears.
But the joy of the present, and the promises of the future, filled the hearts of those who remained behind to overflowing, and the evening passed amid gaiety and pleasure.
Baron L. drank punch with the domestics till both he and they were quite wrong in the head, and all Louise's good moral preaching was like so many water-drops on the fire. Henrik was nobly gay, and the beaming expression of his animated, beautiful head, reminded the beholder of an Apollo.
"Where now are all your gloomy forebodings?" whispered Leonore, tenderly joyful; "you look to me as if you could even embrace Stjernhök."
"The whole world!" returned Henrik, clasping his sister to his breast, "I am so happy!"
And yet there was one person in the house who was happier than Henrik, and that was his mother. When she looked on the beautiful, glorified countenance of her son, and thought of that which he was and on what he would become; when she thought on the laurels which would engarland his beloved head, on the future which awaited her favourite, her summer child—Oh! then bloomed the high summer of maternal joy in her breast, and she revelled in a nameless happiness—a happiness so great that she was almost anxious, because it appeared to her too great to be borne on earth!
And yet for all that—and we say it with grateful joy—the earth can bear a great degree of happiness; can bear it for long without its either bringing with it a curse or a disappointment. It is in stillness and in retirement where this good fortune blooms the best, and on that account the world knows little of it, and has little faith in it. But, thank God! it may be abundantly found in all times and in all countries; and it is—we whisper this to the blessed ones in order that we may rejoice with them—it is of extremely rare occurrence when it happens in actual life, as, for the sake of effect, it happens in books, that a strong current of happiness carries along with it unhappiness as in a drag-rope.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] Emilie Högquist and Jenny Lind are two great ornaments of the Stockholm theatre; the first an actress, the second a singer.