The splendour died away, leaving the blood-like track of the sunken sun in the blue; the earth with her gardens seemed to stand out brighter and clearer. Then suddenly Firmian came on the green Tempè Vale of Fantaisie, lying before him all loveliness of sight and of sound, tinted with the red of the evening clouds and with the white of blossoming boughs. But over it stood an angel with a gleaming cloud streak for sword, saying, “Here enter thou not! Knowest thou not the Eden from whence thou hast gone out?”
Firmian turned him about, and there, in the gloaming of spring, leaned upon the wall of the first of the Bayreuth houses he reached on his homeward way; so that the wounds of his eyes might have a chance to grow whole—that he might not meet his friend bearing scars which would have to be “explained.” Leibgeber was not in, however, but there was something there of a very unexpected kind—a letter from Nathalie to him.
Ye who have keenly felt—or deeply regretted—that there is a Moses-veil, an altar-railing, a prison-grating, made both of body and earth—stretched out for ever and aye, between one soul and another—ye cannot well blame this poor, deep-touched, solitary FRIEND, that he took up the cold paper unseen, and pressed it to his burning lips, and to his trembling heart. For of a truth, every body—even the human body, is, from the soul’s point of view, merely the sacred reliquiæ of an invisible spirit; and not only the letter, which you kiss, but the hand which wrote it, too, is, like the lips, whose kiss you think, assures you—(but it is a deceptive assurance)—of the closeness of your union, your flowing or fusing into one, only the sacred outward and visible sign of a something higher and dearer; and these deceptions differ only in their sweetness.
Leibgeber came in, opened the letter, and read it aloud:
“To-morrow morning at five o’clock, I shall be turning my back upon your beautiful town. I am going to Schraplau. But I cannot leave this lovely valley, oh dear friend, without once again giving you the assurance of my unchanging friendship, and conveying to you my thanks and wishes for yours. I should so have liked to say good-bye to you in a more living manner; but my long leave-taking from my English friend is not yet over, and I have now her wishes to combat (as I had my own before) before I can bury myself in, or rather, wing my flight to my village solitude. This beautiful spring has sorely wounded me, and that with joys as well as with sorrows. But (if I may go so far afield for a comparison), my heart, like Cranmer’s, is left for those I love, unconsumed amid the ashes of my funereal pyre. May all go well! well! with you—better than can ever be the case with me, a woman. Fate cannot take much from you, nay, nor give you much either. There are smiling eternal rainbows playing around all the waterfalls for you; but the rain-clouds of a woman’s heart must drop for many a long day ere they are brightened by the sad, yet cheering tints of the Iris which memory casts upon them at length. Your friend is with you still, no doubt. Press him warmly to your heart, and tell him, all that yours wishes, and gives him, mine wishes him; and never will he, or you, whom he loves, be forgotten by me. Always
“Your Nathalie.”
During the reading of this, Firmian stood with his face pressed to the window, and lifted towards the evening sky. Heinrich, with a true friend’s delicacy of perception, took the answer out of his lips, and said, looking to him, “Yes, this Nathalie is good and kind, in very truth, and a thousand times better than thousands of other people are; but I will let myself be driven over by her carriage, and crushed beneath the wheels of it, if I don’t wait for her at four o’clock in the morning, get into the carriage, and sit down beside her. Ay, verily! I will get her to lend me both her ears, and I will fill them full—or my own are longer than any elephant’s, though he does use his for fly-flappers.”
“Yes, do, dear Henry,” said Firmian, in the most cheerful tones he could force from his oppressed throat. “I shall give you three lines to take in your hand, just that you may have something to give her, since I am never to see her again.”
There is a certain lyric intoxication of heart, during which people never ought to write letters, because, in the course of fifty years or so they may, perhaps fall into the hands of people who are without either the heart or the intoxication. However, Firmian wrote, and did not seal; and Leibgeber did not read.
“I bid you farewell, too! But I cannot say ‘Don’t forget me.’ Ah! forget me! But leave me the forget-me-not which you gave me—to keep for evermore. Though Heaven is past and over, death has yet to come. And mine is now very near, and it is for this reason alone that I, and my dear Leibgeber even more urgently, have a favour to beg of you; but such a strange favour. Nathalie, do not refuse. Your soul’s sphere is far, far above that of the feminine souls which are shocked and frightened at everything out of the commonplace track. You can dare, and can venture, nor need you fear to risk that great heart of yours (and happiness) on any cast. And now, as I spoke to you on that night, for the last time, this is the last time I shall write to you.