CHAPTER XXV.
When I reached home it was one o'clock--a fact which I could scarcely comprehend. It seemed to me as if not hours but weeks had elapsed since I parted from Hermine. I went on tip-toe to her room and bent over her bed, where she lay sleeping, one arm beneath her head, like a slumbering child. And like that of a child was the expression of her face, as though a happy dream were passing through her spirit. It seemed to me like a crime to sit watching, with a world of sorrow and anguish in my soul, by the side of this blessed peace; and yet slumber was impossible to me. So I put the shade before the night-lamp again, and went to my own bed-chamber where I had already lighted a lamp.
In the dim light of this lamp which only made a few objects in the room visible while the rest were plunged in darkness, I sat for hours before the hearth in which the last spark had long died out from the ashes, revolving in my breast thoughts indescribably painful. In vain did I endeavor to recall my old cheerful courage; it seemed to have died out, like the embers in the ashes before me, which had once glowed as brightly and sparkled as cheerfully: in vain did I try to bring to my memory all the goodness and kindness that life had brought me hitherto, and in which it still was rich; nothing would appear to me in the old light: all was empty, gray, and dead, as though the world were but a scene of devastation and decay, and I were wandering comfortless and alone, among the ruins of splendors long passed away.
A reaction from my excessive excitement must have overcome me at last. I dreamed that there was a gray twilight that was neither night nor day. I was wandering alone upon the bleak ridge of the promontory at Zehrendorf, and a bitter piercing wind was blowing from the sea. All was waste and desolate, and there was nothing to be seen but the ruin of the old Zehrenburg, which rose dumb and defiant in the twilight. But when I looked at it, it was not the old castle, but a gigantic statue of stone, which was the Wild Zehren looking with dull glazed eyes towards the west, where his sun had set forever in the eternal sea. And though no light illuminated the gray twilight, a bright glitter flashed from a golden chain which was on the neck of the stone giant who was the Wild Zehren, and spurs of gold gleamed upon his feet of stone, and brightly flashed the bare blade of the broad knight's sword which lay across his knees of stone. And as, full of inward terror, I watched the statue, a small figure came through the tall broom and drew near the stone giant, which it crept lurkingly around, and watched from all sides. And the queer small figure was the commerzienrath, and he made the oddest faces and cut the strangest capers when he found the giant was so fast asleep. Suddenly he began to clamber up the knees, then stood upon tip-toe and took the golden chain from the giant's neck and hung it around his own, then sprang down and took the sword, and lastly the golden spurs, which he buckled on. Then with ridiculous pomposity he strode backwards and forwards in the knight's accoutrements, and tried to brandish the sword, but could not lift it, while his spurs kept catching in the high broom and tripping him, and the heavy chain upon his shoulders pressed him down, so that he suddenly became a decrepit and bowed old man who could scarcely stand upon his feet, and still tried to balance himself like a rope-dancer, upon the sharp edge of the precipice where the chalk-cliff fell perpendicularly to the sea. I strove to call to him to have a care for Hermine's sake, but I could neither speak nor move; and suddenly he fell over the cliff. I heard the heavy fall of his body upon the pebbly beach, and the giant begun to laugh, a laugh so loud, so terrible that I awakened in fright, and with wildly-beating heart looked around the room, into which, through the curtains, there fell a gray twilight which was neither night nor day, just as it had been in my dream, and I still heard the resonant peals of laughter, but they were blows with which some impatient hand was battering at the house-door. I hastened to open it myself.
"What is the matter?" I asked.
"A message for Herr Hartwig, and--and--ah! you are there yourself, Herr Hartwig, I see."
It was a servant from the hotel at which for many years my father-in-law had been in the habit of stopping whenever he came to the town.
"Yes; what is the matter?"
"My master sends his respects, and--and the Herr Commerzienrath has just been found dead in his bed."
I stared aghast into the face of the man: he probably thought that I had not understood him, and stammered out his awkward message again; but I had perfectly well understood him at first; that is, I had understood the meaning of his words. The commerzienrath has been found dead in his bed. That is very easily said, and as easily understood. The commerzienrath had been found dead in his bed.