Dear Victor! there is in man a mighty wish which was never fulfilled: it has no name, it seeks its object, though all that thou namest it and all joys are not its reality; but it recurs, when in a summer night thou lookest to the north or towards distant mountains, or when moonlight is on the earth, or the heavens are studded with stars, or when thou art very happy. This great, vast wish lifts our soul aloft, but with sorrow: ah! here below we are thrown upward in a prostrate position like epileptics. But this wish, to which nothing can give a name,—our strings and tones name it to the human spirit; the yearning soul then weeps more profusely and can no longer comprehend itself, and calls inward in rapture of lamentation between the tones: "Ay, all that ye name to me is what I want!" ...
Mortal man, the enigmatical creature, has also a nameless, monstrous dread, which has no object, which awakes at hearing of spiritual apparitions, and which one sometimes feels when one only speaks of it....
Horion yielded up his bruised heart, with quiet tears which no one saw flow, to the high adagios which laid themselves with warm wings of eider-down over all his wounds. All that he loved entered now into his shady arbor,—his oldest friend and his youngest; he hears the thunder-storm-bells of life toll, but the hands of friendship stretch forth to meet each other, and they clasp each other, and even in the second life they hold each other fast in withering grasp. All tones seemed the unearthly echoes of his dream, sent back by beings whom one neither saw nor heard....
He could not possibly stay longer in this dark inclosure with his burning fancies, at this too great distance from the Pianissimo. He went—almost too boldly and too closely—through a leafy avenue up to the tones, and pressed his face far through the leaves, in order at last to see Clotilda in the dim and distant green glimmer....
Ah, and he saw her! But in too angelic, too paradisiacal a form! He saw not the thinking eye, the cold mouth, the calm person, that forbade so much and desired so little; but he saw for the first time her mouth encircled by a sweet harmonious sorrow, with an inexpressibly touching smile,—for the first time her eye weighed down under a brimming tear, as a forget-me-not bows itself beneath a tear-drop of rain. O, this good soul surely concealed her fairest feelings most of all! But the first tear in a beloved eye is too mighty for a soft heart.... Victor knelt down, overpowered by reverence and rapture, before the noble soul, and lost himself in the darkling, weeping form, and in the weeping tones. And when he saw at length her features turned to paleness, because the green foliage overspread her lips and cheeks with a deathly hue from the reflection of the lamps,—and when his dream came back to him, with Clotilda sunk under the flowery hill,—and when his soul, dissolved into dreams, into sorrows, into joys, and into wishes for her who consecrated her birthday festival with devout tears,—oh, was there then any need, for the completion of his euthanasia, that the violin should die away, and that the second harmonica, the viole d'amour, should send its music-of-the-spheres to his naked, enkindled, palpitating heart? O, the pang of bliss quieted him, and he thanked the Creator of this melodious Eden, that He, with the highest tones of His harmonica, which with unknown forces shiver the heart of man to tears, as high tones shatter glasses, had at last exhausted his bosom, his sighs, and his tears: amidst these tones, after these tones, there were no more sounds; the full soul was wrapped up in foliage and night and tears; the speechless swelling heart drank the tones into itself, and took the outer ones for inner ones; and at last the tones played like zephyrs around the head that was drowsy with bliss, and only in the innermost part of the dying soul still stammered the too happy wish: "Ah, Clotilda, could I surrender to thee to-day this mute, glowing heart!—ah, that I might on this imperishable heavenly evening, with this trembling soul, sink dying at thy feet, and say the words, 'I love thee!'"
And as he thought of her festive anniversary, and of her letter to Maienthal, which had given him the greatest praise, that of being a scholar of Emanuel, and of little tokens of her regard for him, and of the sweet fraternization of his heart with hers,—ay, then did the heavenly hope of winning this ennobled heart for the first time draw near to him amidst the music, and that hope caused the sounds of the harmonica, like dying echoes, to float far and wide over the whole future of his life....
"Victor!' said some one, in a slowly lengthened tone. He sprang up and turned his exalted features toward the—brother of his Clotilda, and embraced him with joy. Flamin, into whom all music flung war-flames and more open sincerity, looked at him wonderingly, inquiringly, and with an imperceptible suspicion, and with that friendliness which resembled scorn, but which was never anything but the smarting of injuries received.
"Why didst thou not take me, too, with thee to-day?" said Flamin, in a friendly tone.
Victor pressed his hand, and was silent.
"No! speak!" said he.