Tell me fair and fine,
How long must I unmarried pine!' "
It was the voice of an evil spirit, that spoke in the person of Madeleine; and the pale and shrinking figure, that walked by her side, and listened to those words, was Emma of Ilmenau. A young man joined them, where the path turns into the thick woodlands; and they disappeared among the shadowy branches. It was the Polish Count.
The forget-me-nots looked up to heaven with their meek blue eyes, from their home in the Angel's Meadow. Calmly stood the mountain of All-Saints, in its majestic, holy stillness;--the river flowed so far below, that the murmur of itswaters was not heard;--there was not a sigh of the evening wind among the leaves,--not a sound upon the earth nor in the air;--and yet that night there fell a star from heaven!
[CHAPTER X. THE PARTING.]
It was now that season of the year, which an old English writer calls the amiable month of June, and at that hour of the day, when, face to face, the rising moon beholds the setting sun. As yet the stars were few in heaven. But, after the heat of the day, the coolness and the twilight descended like a benediction upon the earth, by all those gentle sounds attended, which are the meek companions of the night.
Flemming and the Baron had passed the afternoon at the Castle. They had rambled once more together, and for the last time, over the magnificent ruin. On the morrow they were to part, perhaps forever. The Baron was going to Berlin, to join his sister; and Flemming, drivenforward by the restless spirit within him, longed once more for a change of scene, and was going to the Tyrol and Switzerland. Alas! he never said to the passing hour; "Stay, for thou art fair!" but reached forward into the dark future, with unsatisfied longings and aimless desires, that were never still.
As the day was closing, they sat down on the terrace of Elisabeth's Garden. The sun had set beyond the blue Alsatian hills; and on the valley of the Rhine fell the purple mist, like the mantle of the departing prophet from his fiery chariot. Over the castle walls, and the trees of the garden, rose the large moon; and between the contending daylight and moonlight there were as yet no shadows. But at length the shadows came; transparent and faint outlines, that deepened into form. In the valley below only the river gleamed, like steel; and here and there the lamps were lighted in the town. Solemnly stood the leafy lindentrees in the garden near them, their trunks in darkness and their summits bronzed with moonlight; and in his niche in the great round tower, overhung with ivy, like a majestic phantom, stood the gray statue of Louis, with his venerable beard, and shirt of mail, and flowing mantle; and the mild, majestic countenance looked forth into the silent night, as the countenance of a seer, who reads the stars. At intervals the wind of the summer night passed through the ruined castle and the trees, and they sent forth a sound as if nature were sighing in her dreams; and for a moment overhead the broad leaves gently clashed together, like brazen cymbals, with a tinkling sound; and then all was still, save the sweet, passionate song of nightingales, that nowhere upon earth sing more sweetly than in the gardens of Heidelberg Castle.
The hour, the scene, and the near-approaching separation of the two young friends, had filled their hearts with a pleasant, though at the same time not painless excitement. They had been conversing about the magnificent old ruin, and the ages in which it had been built, and the vicissitudesof time and war, that had battered down its walls, and left it "tenantless, save to the crannying wind."
"How sorrowful and sublime is the face of that statue yonder," said Flemming. "It reminds me of the old Danish hero Beowulf; for careful, sorrowing, he seeth in his son's bower the wine-hall deserted, the resort of the wind, noiseless; the knight sleepeth; the warrior lieth in darkness; there is no noise of the harp, no joy in the dwellings, as there was before."