In Hof, Siebenkæs engaged two rooms at the inn, thinking Leibgeber would not part from him till the morning. However, he (whom his own pre-determination to say good-bye, and his dread of saying it, had fretted and annoyed immensely for a considerable time) had taken a mental vow that their two spirits should be torn asunder that day, and that, immediately thereupon, he should be off into Saxony as hard as he could, though it should want but a quarter of an hour to midnight; but, at all events, before that particular day should come to a close. He went into his room, smiling and pleasant, and thought of the airs he had been whistling (which were still running in both their heads, if not in their hearts). But he soon enticed him out of that empty deaf-mute of a room into the diverting tumult and stir of the coffee-room—not remaining long there, however, either—but as the moon, in her first quarter, was standing like a lighted lamp just above a post in the market-place, he asked him to go for a cruise round the town with him. So they went, and climbed up the avenue, and looked down at the gardens in the city-moat (which, perhaps, deserve to take the pas over other artificial meadows, inasmuch as they are more specially sown for cattle than others). I presume this was the reason why Leibgeber (who had been in Switzerland) remarked late at night (when the country, adorned and adopted by Nature, but disinherited by Art, lay extended before him) that the people of Hof were like the Swiss, whose whole country was a garden, except the few gardens in it.
The pair went on drawing wider and wider parallels around the town. They crossed a bridge, from which they saw a gallows-hill overgrown with grass, which reminded them of that other ice-region, with its crater, where, exactly a year ago, they had bidden each other good-bye at night, but with the sweeter hope of an earlier meeting. Two friends such as they are always struck with the same ideas in the same circumstances. Each is—if not the unison—at all events the octave, fifth, or fourth to the other. Henry tried to rekindle a little light in his friend’s dark house of sorrow and mourning by aid of the bird-pole, which stood like a commandant’s flag-staff, or a burning stake, not far from the Supreme Criminal Court’s place of judicature. He said, “A shooter-king has his Sinai, where he can both promulgate his laws and vindicate them, close at his hand here, in a delightful manner, beside his lever and leaping-pole, such as you heaved yourself up by to the dignity of Great Negus and Grand Mogul of Kuhschnappel. Button’s law—that every elevation has another of equal height and similar composition opposite to it—applies to a great number of eminences which correspond to one another; gallows-hills and thrones, for instance, in this case; the two sides of the choir in churches; the fifth story and Pindus: show-booths, and the Chairs of Professors Extraordinary.”
As Firmian did not speak, but remained sunk in sadder similes, Henry, too, held his peace. He led him towards another stone (for he was intimately acquainted with the whole country), one with a prettier name, the “Stone of Joy.” At last, while they were toiling up the hill towards this stone, Firmian took heart and said, “Tell me right out—I am quite prepared—tell me at once, on your honour, when are you going away from me for ever?” “Now,” answered Henry. On the pretence of its being easier so to climb the hill-side, all flowers and perfumed mountain-plants, they were holding each other by the hand, and as they went they pressed hands sometimes, as if from accidents of mechanical motion. But pain struck great roots that waxed amain into Firmian’s heart, roots that split it asunder as the roots of trees split rocks. Firmian laid himself down on the grey projecting rock, which divided the green slope like a boundary-stone, and he drew his departing friend down to his breast. “Sit down very close beside me this once more,” he said. As the manner of friends is, each pointed out to the other everything he saw. Henry showed him the camp of the town pitched all about the foot of the hill, and looking as if fallen into a deep sleep, nothing moving in it but some flickering lights. The river went coiling along beneath the moon round the town like a great serpent with a sparkling back, then stretched itself out through two bridges. The half-shimmer of the moon, and the white transparent vapour of the night, lifted the hills, the woods, and the earth, up to the heavens; and the water on the earth was spangled with stars like the blue night above, and the Earth, like Uranus, had a doubled moon, as it wore a child in either hand.
“In reality,” Leibgeber began, “we can both always see each other whenever we please. All we have to do is to look into a looking-glass. That is our moon-mirror.”[[101]] “No,” said Firmian, “we will fix on a time when we will think of each other—on our birthdays—and on the day of my pantomime death, and on this.” “Very well,” said Leibgeber, “these shall be our four quarter-days.”
Of a sudden, the hand of the latter rested upon a dead lark, which had probably been shot. He clasped Firmian’s shoulders, and, raising him from the ground, said, “Stand up; we are men. What is all this fuss about? Fare you well! If ever I let you out of my head, or out of my heart, may God dash me to atoms with a thousand thunderbolts. You are and shall be for ever in my bosom as warmly as my own living heart. And so, good-bye, and all good attend you; and in all the Berghem Seapiece of your life may there not be a single wave the size of a tear. Farewell!” They clung together, and wept heartily, and Firmian did not answer as yet. His fingers stroked and pressed his Henry’s hair. At last he leaned his cheek against the beloved eyes; before his own eyes the wide abyss of night shimmered, and his lips uttered (but with no cadence in the tone), “‘Fare you well,’ do you say to me? Ah! that I cannot, when I have lost my truest, my oldest friend. The earth will always be as dark to me as it is now around us here. It will be hard for me when I am dying, and, in my feverish fancy, think I am only pretending to die again, and stretch out my hand in the darkness to feel for you, and say, ‘Henry, close my eyes again, I cannot die without you!’” Henry whispered, “Tell me what else to say to you, and then may God punish me if I utter another syllable.” Firmian stammered, “Will you always like me, and shall I see you soon again?” “Not soon; not for a long time,” he answered, “and I shall never cease to love you.” As he was starting to go, Firmian held him back. “We will look at each other once more,” he said. And they bent back, their faces channelled by streams of emotion, and looked at each other for the last time, while the night-wind, like the arm of a stream, mingled with the deep river, and then rushed on united with it in deeper billows, while the great mountain-range of creation trembled before the tearful eyes. But Henry tore himself away, made a sign with his hand as if to say all was over, and took his flight down the hill.
After a little, Firmian was impelled after him—not knowing why—by the goad of pain and sorrow. His inner man, compressed by the tourniquet into insensibility, did not feel the amputation of his limb just then. They both hurried along the same road, though separated by hills and valleys. Whenever Henry stopped and looked back, so did Firmian. Alas! after a sultry storm, such as this, the waves all freeze to spikes of ice, and the heart lies upon them transfixed. As Firmian went on broken-hearted, by unknown, darkling paths, it seemed to him as if all the death-bells on earth were tolling behind him, as if the stream of life were running dry before him fast; and when he saw the blue of the sky cut across by a black storm-tree[[102]] which lay upon the stars like the bier of the future, a voice seemed to cry, “With this foot-rule of vapour, Fate is measuring you, your world, and your love, for your last coffin.”
From the circumstance that the distance between him and the other figure kept always the same, Henry at last became aware that it was following him, and halted only when he halted. So he made up his mind that he would lie in wait in the next village for the coming up of this form which was creeping after him. In the next village then, Töpen (which lies deep in a valley), he awaited, in the broad shadow of a gleaming church, the arrival of this unknown being which was on his track. Firmian came hastening along the broad white street, dazed with sorrow—blind in the moonlight—and stopped, as if frozen, close by Henry from whom he had so recently been severed. There they stood facing each other, like two spirits above their corpses, each taking the other for a ghost (just as the superstitious think the noises made by the buried-alive are caused by spirits). Firmian trembled lest Leibgeber should be vexed with him, and opened his arms and stammered out, “It is I, Henry,” and went to him. Henry gave a cry of pain, and threw himself upon the faithful breast; but his vow sealed his lips. And thus these two miserable, or blessed beings, speechless, blind and weeping, pressed their beating hearts close together once more. And when this moment—wordless, full of torture, full of bliss—was over and past, an iron, cold one, tore them asunder, and Fate seized them with two almighty arms, and hurled the one bleeding heart to the south, and the other to the north; while the dejected, bleeding corpses passed slowly and alone, along the widening path of parting, in the night.
And why is it that my own heart breaks in twain with such a pang? Why should it be that, long ere I came to their parting, I could not keep my own tears back? Ah! my dear Christian, is it not because in this church those who once lay upon your heart and mine are mouldering into dust? No, no, I am used to it now; in the black magic of our lives to see skeletons suddenly start up in our friends’ places; that of every two who put their arms about each other one has to die;[[103]] that an unknown breath blows the brittle glass which we call a human breast, and a cry, which we know not of, shatters it in a moment. It does not pain me now so much as of old, ye two brothers sleeping in the church, that the hard, cold hand of death struck you away so soon from the honey-dew of life, and that ye stretched your wings and have vanished away. Oh! either your sleep is sounder than ours, or your dreams are happier, or your awaking is blither. But what agonises us in every grave-hillock is this thought. “Alas! beloved heart, how I would have loved you had I known you were going to die!”
But, since none of us can take a corpse’s hand and say, “Pale one! at all events I have sweetened thy transitory life a little; I have, at any rate, never given that faded heart of thine anything but love and happiness;” and as when time, sorrow, and the loveless winter of life have beautified our hearts, at length we must all go up, with unavailing sighs, to the overthrown forms which are lying beneath the landslip of the grave, and say to them, “Oh! that, now that I am better and gentler, I have thee with me no longer, and can no longer love thee! Oh! that the beloved breast is transparent and broken in, and no heart in it which I would love more fondly, and gladden as I never did before.” What have we left but an unavailing sorrow, a dumb repentance, and never-ending bitter tears?