He obeyed her; but his soul was still a-swim among his precious thoughts, and as they went down the long, hollow, gravel-way, besprent with the shadows of the shrubs, and moonlight rippling over its white bed (flecked with shadows for stones), he said, “Yes, in an hour like this, when death and sleep send forth their brothers to us, a soul like yours may think of death.[[69]] But I have more cause than you, for I am happier. Oh! of all guests at Joy’s festival-banquet, Death is the one whom she loves best to see; for he is himself a joy, the last and highest rapture upon earth. None but the common herd can associate humanity’s lofty flight of migration into the distant land of spring with ghosts and corpses here below on earth; as when they hear the owls’ voices when they are going away to warmer countries they take them for the cries of goblins. But, oh! dear, dear, Nathalie, I cannot and will not bear to think of what you say as in any shape connected with you. No, no, so rich a soul must come into full bloom in a far nearer, earlier spring than that beyond this life! Oh, God! it must!” They had reached a wall of rock over which a broad cascade of moonlight was falling; against it leant a trellis of roses, whence Natalie gathered a spray, all green and tender, with two young rose-buds just beginning to swell, and, saying “You will never blow,” she placed it on her heart, and said (looking at him with a strange expression), “While they are young they scarcely prick at all.”
And when they got down to the stone water-basin—the sacred spot where they first met—and could as yet find no words to utter what was in their hearts, they saw some one come up out of the dry basin. Though they smiled, it was a smile full of emotion—in all three cases—for this was their Leibgeber, who had been lying in wait for them in hiding, with a bottle of wine, among the imaged water-gods. A certain something there had been in his troubled eyes, but it had been poured out by way of libation to this spring night from our cup of joy. “This port and haven of your first landing here,” said he, “must be properly consecrated, and you (to Nathalie) must join in the pledge. I swear by Heaven that there is more fruit hanging on its blue dome to-night within reach than ever hung on any green one.” They took three glasses, pledged one another, and said (some of them, I imagine, in somewhat subdued tones). “To friendship! may it live for ever! may the spot where it commenced be always green! May every place blossom where it has grown, and, though all its flowers may fade, and its leaves fall and wither, may it live on for ever and for evermore!” Nathalie was obliged to turn her eyes away. Heinrich laid a hand upon the agate head of his stick (but only because his friend’s hand which was holding it was over the top of it, that he might give the latter a warm and hearty pressure), and said, “Give it me; you shall have no clouds in your hand to-night;” for nature had graven cloud-streaks on the agate in her subterranean studio. Any heart—not Nathalie’s only—must have been touched by this bashful cloaking of the warm token of friendship. “Are you not going to stay with us?” she asked somewhat faintly, as he was leaving them. “I’m going up to the landlord,” he said, “to see if I can get hold of a flute or a horn, and if I do I shall come out and musicise over the valley, and play the springtime in.”
When he was gone his friend felt as if his youth had gone with him. Suddenly he saw, high above the whirling may-beetles and the breeze-born night-butterflies, and their arrow-swift pursuers, the bats, a great train of birds of passage winging their way through the blue, like some broken cloud, coming back to our spring. Then flashed upon his open heart the memory of his lodgings in the market-town, and the time when he saw a similar flight of (earlier) birds of passage, and thought that his life would soon be at an end. These recollections, with all their tears, brought back the belief that he was soon to die; and this he must tell Nathalie. He saw the wide expanse of night stretched over the world like some great corpse but her shadowy limbs quiver under the moonlit-branches at the first touches of the morning breeze awaking in the east. She rises towards the coming sun as a dissolving vapour, an all-embracing cloud, and man says “It is day.” Two crape-covered thoughts, like hideous spectres, fought within Firmian’s soul. The one said, “He is going to die of apoplexy, so he never can see her more.” And the other said, “He is going through the farce of a pretended death, and then he never must see her more.” Overborne by the past as well as by the present, he took Nathalie’s hand, and said, “You must pardon my being so deeply moved to-night. I shall never see you more. You are the noblest of your sex that I have ever met, but we shall never meet again. Very soon you must hear that I am dead, or that my name, from one cause or other has passed away, but my heart will still be yours, be thine. Oh! that the present, with its mountain-chains of grave-hillocks, but lay behind me, and the future were come, with all its open graves, and I stood on the brink of my own! For I would look once more on thee, then throw myself into it in bliss.”
Nathalie answered not a word. She faltered suddenly in her walk, her arm trembled, her breath came thick and fast. She stopped, and, with a face as pale as death, said, in trembling accents, “Stay here on this spot; let me sit alone for a minute on that turf-bank. Ah! I am so headlong!” He saw her move trembling away. She sank, as if overwhelmed with some burden, down upon a bank of turf. She fixed her blinded eyes upon the moon (the blue sky around it seemed a night, the earth a vapour); her arm lay rigid on her lap; she did not move, except that a spasm, distantly resembling a smile, played about her lip; her eyes were tearless. But to her friend, life at that moment seemed a realm of shadows, whose outlines were floating and blending in endless changes of confusion; a tract all hollow, sunken mine-shafts full of mists in the likeness of mountain-spirits, with but one single opening of outlet to the heavens, the free air, the spring, the light of day; and that outlet so narrow, so remote, and far above his head.
There sat Nathalie in the white crystal shimmer, like some angel upon an infant’s grave; and, suddenly, the tones of Heinrich’s music broke in, like bells pealing in a storm, upon their souls as they paused, all stunned (like Nature before the thunder breaks), and the warm river of melody bore away their hearts, dissolving them the while. Nathalie made an affirmative sign with her head, as if she had come to some conclusion: she rose and came forward from the green, flowery grave like some enfranchised, glorified spirit; she opened her arms wide, and came towards him. Tear after tear came coursing down her blushing face, but as yet her heart could find no words; sinking under the WORLD which was in her heart, she could totter no further, and he flew to meet her. She held him back that she might speak the first, her tears flowing faster and faster, but when she had cried, “My first friend, and my last—for the first and last time,” she grew breathless and dumb, and, overburdened with sorrow, sank into his arms, upon his lips, upon his heart.
“No! no!” she murmured; “Oh! Heaven, give me but the power to speak. Firmian! my Firmian! Take all my happiness away with you—all that I have on earth. But never, by all you hold most sacred, never see me more in this world. Now” (she added very softly), “you must swear this to me.” She drew her head back, and the tones of Heinrich’s music flowed between and around them like the voice of sorrow. She gazed at him, and his pale care-worn face wrung her heart with agony; with eyes dim with tears, she implored him to swear that he would never see her more.
“Yes, noble, glorious soul,” he answered, in trembling tones; “yes, then, I swear to thee I will never see thee more.” Mute and motionless, as if smitten by the hand of death, she sank with drooping head upon his breast; and once again, like one dying, he said, “I will never see thee more.” Then, beaming like some angel, she raised her face, worn with emotion to him, saying, “All is over now; take the death kiss, and speak no more.” He took it, and she gently disengaged herself from his arms. But as she turned away, she put back her hand and gave him the green rosebuds with the tender thorns, and saying, “Think of to-night,” went resolutely away (trembling, nevertheless), and was soon lost in the dark-green alleys, where but few beams of light struck through.
And the end of this night every soul that has loved can picture for itself without the aid of any words of mine.