Once in the depths etern of darkness lying,
This mighty world
Waited expectantly the moments flying
When light should be unfurled.
The world was nothing then, which now is given
To crowds of busy men;
And all our beautiful star-spangled heaven
Was desolate darkness then;
Yet He was there, who before time existed,
Who will endure for ever.
The creation of the world ceased with this faint glimmering of light, and was probably destined under Petrea's hand never to be brought forth from chaos. Petrea had an especially great inclination for great undertakings, and the misfortune to fail in them. This want of success always wounded her deeply, but in the next moment the impulse of an irresistibly vigorous temperament raised her above misfortune in some new attempt. The blood rushed up to her young head, and filled it with a mass of half-formed thoughts, fancies, and ideas; her mind and her character were full of disquiet. At times joyous and wild beyond bounds, she became on the other hand wretched and dispirited without reason. Poor Petrea! She was wanting in every kind of self-regulation and ballast, even outwardly; she walked ill—she stood ill—she curtseyed ill—sate ill—and dressed ill; and occasioned, in consequence, much pain to her mother, who felt so acutely whatever was unpleasing; and this also was very painful to Petrea, who had a warm heart, and who worshipped her mother.
Petrea also cherished the warmest affection and admiration for Sara, but her manner even of evidencing her affection was commonly so entirely without tact, as rather to displease than please the object of it. The consciousness of this fact embittered much of Petrea's life; but it conducted her by degrees to a love in which tact and address are of no consequence, and which is never unreturned.
Sometimes Petrea was seized with a strong consciousness of the chaoticness of her state; but then, again, at other times she would have a presentiment that all this would clear itself away, and then that something which was quite out of the common way would come forth; and then she was accustomed to say, half in jest and half in earnest, to her sisters, "You'll see what I shall turn out sometime!" But in what this extraordinary turning out should consist nobody knew, and least of all poor Petrea herself. She glanced full of desire towards many suns, and was first attracted by one and then by another.
Louise had for Petrea's prophesyings great contempt, but the little Gabriele believed in them all. She delighted herself, moreover, so heartily in all that her sister began, that Petrea sacrificed to her her most beautiful gold-paper temple; her original picture of shepherdesses and altars; and her island of bliss in the middle of peaceful waters, and in the bay of which lay a little fleet of nut-shells, with rigging of silk, and laden with sugar-work, and from the motion of which, and the planting of its wonderful flowers, and glorious fruit-bearing trees, Petrea's heart had first had a foretaste of bliss.
Petrea's appearance imaged her soul;—for this too was very variable; this too had its "raptures;" and here too at times also a glimmering light would break through the chaos. If the complexion were muddled, and the nose red and swollen, she had a most ordinary appearance; but in cooler moments, and when the rose-hue confined itself merely to the cheeks, she was extremely good-looking; and sometimes too, and that even in her ugly moments, there would be a gleam in her eye, and an expression in her countenance, which had occasioned Henrik to declare that "Petrea was after all handsome!"
To a chaotic mind, the desire for controversy is in-born; it is the conflict of the elements with each other. There was no subject upon which Petrea had not her conjectures, and nothing upon which she was not endeavouring to get a clear idea; on this account she discussed all things, and disputed with every one with whom she came in contact; reasoned, or more properly made confusion, on politics, literature, human free-will, the fine arts, or anything else; all which was very unpleasant to the tranquil spirit of her mother, and which, in connexion with want of tact, especially in her zeal to be useful, made poor Petrea the laughing-stock of every one; a bitter punishment this, on earth, although before the final judgment-seat of very little, or of no consequence at all.
LEONORE.
Spite of the mother's embraces, and the appellation, "thou beloved, plain child!" the knowledge by degrees had come painfully to Leonore that she was ugly, and that she was possessed of no charm—of no fine endowment whatever; she could not help observing what little means she had of giving pleasure to others, or of exciting interest; she saw very plainly how she was set behind her more gifted sisters by the acquaintance and friends of the family; this, together with feeble health, and the discomfort which her own existence occasioned to her, put her in a discordant state with life and mankind. She was prone to think everything troublesome and difficult; she fell easily into a state of opposition to her sisters, and her naturally quick temper led her often into contentions which were not without their bitterness. All this made poor Leonore feel herself very unhappy.
But none, no! none, suffer in vain, however for a while it may appear so. Suffering is the plough which turns up the field of the soul, into whose deep furrows the all-wise Husbandman scatters his heavenly seed; and in Leonore, also, it already began to sprout, although, as yet, only under the earth. She was not aware of it herself yet; but all that she experienced in life, together with the spirit which prevailed in her family, had already awakened the beauty of her soul. She was possessed of deep feeling, and the consciousness of her many wants made her, by degrees, the most unpretending and humble of human beings; and these are virtues which, in private life, cannot be exceeded. If you come near a person of this character, the influence on you is as if you came out of the sun's heat into refreshing shadow: a soft coolness is wafted over your soul, which refreshes and tranquillises you at the same time.