The old fatality which had attended the relationship of the Lichtenbergs and the Saluces was coming to a head. Yes; I was condemned to fight, but Fate could not condemn me to kill.
If this Baron Carl von Lichtenberg were in reality little Carl, then Von Lichtenberg had foreseen the duel; it was with this in view that he had attempted my assassination. "Peace, Von Lichtenberg," said I to myself. "No harm will come to your child through me, unless he flings himself on my sword. Even then I would let the weapon drop from my hand." And I said this not from special goodwill to the living or the dead, but just because I refused to be the instrument of Fate.
I preferred to be the victim, and for this I was prepared; nay, I felt almost certain that I should remain on the ground; and all through that summer the thought filled me with a vague melancholy, a mist that made the landscape of life more beautiful, its distances and its beauties more grand, its trivialities more futile.
Only when we come near the end do we see life as it is, and things in their just proportions. I had seen the splendour of society, the pomp of Royalty, and that thing men call the glory of the world. Did I regret to leave all this? It never even entered into my consideration. It was nothing to me. Nothing beside the passionate appeal of summer, the cry of life that came from all things bright and all things fair; from the roses of Saluce, from the trees of the forest, and the birds I loved.
Ah! that glorious summer! Etiolles was a fire of roses, and the deep, dark heart of the forest a furnace of life. The bees in the limes and the wind in the beech-trees, the chirrup and buzz of a million happy insects, filled the air with a ferment of sound, whilst in the open spaces the pools lay blue as turquoises under the vast blue dome of summer.
I spent most of my time with Franzius and Eloise. We would take our food with us, and spend long days exploring the forest, which, like some mysterious house, had ever some new room to be discovered, some passage which was not there yesterday, some window opened by fairies during the night, and giving upon a new and magic prospect.
They knew nothing of my impending encounter, nothing of the mystery that surrounded me. Happy in their love, they did not guess my sadness, and I, though their happiness filled me with pleasure, could not in the least grasp it. Never having loved, I could not see the paradise which surrounded them.
The blindest people on earth are the people who have never loved, the people who have not yet lived.
But I could not see the paradise that surrounded them; and so the summer passed on, and June drew near July.