In the graveyard at Fashwitz, in the avenue of linden-trees which leads from one end to the other, dividing the graves of the nobles from the graves of the common people, two persons were walking up and down in earnest conversation. At one of the gates of the graveyard which opened immediately upon the high-road, an elegant carriage and two was standing. Near by, a groom was leading two beautiful saddled horses by the bridle. Coachman and groom conversed in subdued tones, as if they did not wish to disturb the meditations of the old man with the long snow-white moustache, who sat on one of the curbstones of the gate, and looking from time to time, from under his heavy, overhanging brows, at the two persons inside.
They were Melitta and Oldenburg. Melitta was not in mourning, but her sweet, fair face had an expression of melancholy which it had never worn before. Even the smile with which she replied to many a remark of her companion was not the old joyous smile; it resembled the glimpses of the sun through the dismal, melancholy clouds.
"And you mean really to go?" she asked, breaking a pause which had occurred in their conversation.
"I rode over to Berkow to pay my farewell visit and to ask if you had any commands for me. You see that it was not an idle ceremony, or I would not have followed you here to the graveyard, although graves and graveyards, you know, are not the places I love particularly to frequent."
"And where are you going now?"
"I do not know yet. What can I do here? As I cannot live for her for whom alone I care to live, and as our miserable age has no great purpose to which a man may devote his life, I mean to go, like another Peter Schlemihl, in search of my own shadow. I only fear I shall never find it, or, if I do find it, it will leave me again at once, like the last time."
"Have you never tried to find the Brown Countess?"
"No. It would have been of no avail. Wandering gypsies leave no traces behind them; they are like ships sailing through the water. If I should not return, Melitta, you must send for your bust, which I ordered from young Goldoni in Rome. It is in my study at Cona; or would you like to have it at once?"
"No," said Melitta, "you had better keep it. Your unbounded kindness deserves a better reward than cold marble."
"Or marble coldness?" asked Oldenburg, smiling.