"So ascends the spirit even here in this dark life, as the barometer ascends even during thick weather, and feels the influence of the brighter life even under the clouds.
"But I obey thy love, and will write to thee no more, except once in winter, when I describe to thee the great night wherein I told my blind Julius, for the first time, that there is an Eternal One.—In that night, my beloved, rapture and devotion bore me too high, and came near to rending my thin life. I bled a long time. In winter, when the charms of heaven take the place of those of earth,[[225]] forbid me not to paint the summer picture.
"O my son!—I was compelled, indeed; to write to thee, because my friend Clotilda complains that the new year will draw her out of the green bower of solitude to the crowded market-place of the court; her soul is dark with sorrow, and stretches out its arms after the tranquil life which is being taken away from her. I know not what a court is; thou wilt know, and, I conjure thee, release my friend, and turn aside the hand that would draw her from St. Luna. If thou canst not do it, still forsake not at court the beloved soul; be her only, her most ardent friend; draw the bee-stings of earthly hours from her gentle heart. When cold words, like snow-flakes, fall upon this flower, then let the breath of love melt them to tears that shall flow before thy sight; when a tempest shall come up, over her life, then show her the angel who stands in the sun, and draws over our tempests the rainbow of hope. O thou whom I so love, my sister also will so love thee; and when my friend discovers to her his gentle heart, his tender eye, his virtue, his soul, the home of Nature and of the Eternal, then will he see my sister grow happy before him, and the exalted countenance which melts into tears and smiles and love before him will remain forever in his heart.
"Emanuel."
* * *
Lo! in this glowing moment the exalted form which he had seen yesterday appeared again before his heart, with the sadly smiling lips and the eyes full of tears; and as the form continued floating before him, and gleamed and smiled, his soul rose up before her as before one dead, and during the uplifting of himself all his wounds began to bleed again, and he cried, "Now, then, never do thou vanish from my heart, thou sublime shape, but rest forever on its wounds!" Disconsolateness, exhaustion, and sleep overwhelmed his spirit, as well as his latest thought,—to go back shortly to St. Luna, and persuade her parents not to force her to court...
The long sleep of death closes our scars, and the short sleep of life our wounds. Sleep is the half of time which heals us. On awaking, Victor, whose fever of love had yesterday been so aggravated by sleeplessness, saw today that his sorrow had been unmoderated because his hope had been immoderate. At first he had wished,—then observed,—then assumed,—then seen,—then interpreted,—then hoped,—then sworn to it. Every little circumstance, even his share in Clotilda's nomination as maid-of-honor, had poured mild oil of love into his flame. "Oh, fool that I am!" said he, with the three swearing-fingers placed upon his forehead; and, like all energetic men, he was so much the more spirited in proportion as he had been spiritless. Nay, he felt himself all at once too light; for a too sudden cure betokens, in the case of souls also, a relapse. A new consolation was his yesterday's resolve, that he would render Clotilda a service,—namely, save her from the court-service. He still reflected upon his determination to see her again.—Feelest thou, haply, Victor, that everything which Love does, in order to die, is only an expedient for rising again from the dead, and that its epilogues are only prologues to the Second Act?
But a basket of apples in the market confirmed him again in his resolution. That is to say, Flamin came in. He began immediately with questions about the disappearance on Sunday, and with reports of the general uneasiness about the dear runaway. Victor, heated again by the whole recollection, and almost a little enraged against the image-breaker and government-attorney of a vain love, gave him the true answer:—"Thou tookest away from me in part my pleasure; and why should I, at so late an hour, come upon the stage?" The more vividly Flamin painted the affectionate concern of the Parson's wife and Clotilda about his disappearing, so much the more painful grew the maze of contending feelings within him. But for his conscience calling him back, it would now have been easier for him to confess the love that was hopeless, than formerly the love that was hopeful.—Accidentally Flamin wondered at the ripeness of the apples down below in the market, and desired some. A lightning beam now darted before Victor's eye at the inherited fruit-pieces on Flamin's shoulders, which always appeared in the after-summer at the time of the apples' ripening, but which, in the previous whirl of his feelings, he had forgotten. Heaven knows whether it has not escaped the reader himself, that Flamin bears this winter-fruitage (his maternal mole) on his back, which may become a Sodom-apple and Eve's-apple for him. Might not Matthieu, who until now could not examine upon Flamin this seal of his princely relationship, suddenly become convinced of all that which, with his thievish glances at his Lordship's letter, he had only been able to guess? And might he not afterward go to the Prince, and there mix for all our friends the most poisonous broths?—As, however, the magic image generally faded in one week, Victor needed for only so long a time to keep its wearer out of sight; he therefore laid before his friend, thus tattooed by Nature, the request to take for once a social walk to St. Luna, as they had day before yesterday missed each other.
"I can't do it," said Flamin, who had the lesser delicacy not to avail himself of the request for company on account of the reproaches in Le Baut's garden, and forgot in that the greater delicacy of not imputing such a reference to his Victor.
The latter, in a passionate hurry to avert two such evils (Clotilda's court-office and Matthieu's inspection), seized upon the singular expedient of proposing to the page to share the journey with him.