She came from Maienthal. This sudden illumination eclipsed all the tables of the law hung up in his soul, and he could not at once read the tables. She looked upon him with softer rays than ever, and the sun lent some too. With a smile, as if she anticipated his first questions, she gave him a—letter from Emanuel. A shrinking "Ah!" was his answer; and before he could accommodate himself to two ecstasies,[[102]] the carriage was already at the top of the hill, and she in it, and all had gone off.
He hesitated with trembling to gaze, absorbed, into the still, blue paradise of the fairest soul that ever overflowed. At last he looked upon the traces of a beloved human hand which he had not as yet touched, and read:—
"Horion!
"Man climbs a mountain, as the child does a chair, in order to stand nearer the face of the infinite Mother, and to reach her with his puny embrace. Around my height the earth lies sleeping, with all its eyes of flowers under the soft mist; but the heavens already lift themselves up with the sun under the eyelid; under the paled Arcturus mists begin to glow, and colors extricate themselves from colors; the globe of earth rolls, vast and full, to rapture, of blossoms and living creatures, into the burning lap of morning.
"So soon as the sun comes, I look into it, and my heart lifts itself up and swears to thee that it loves thee, Horion!... Glow, Aurora, through the human heart as through thy field of cloud, illuminate the human eye like thy dew-drops, and send up into the dark breast, as into thy heaven, a sun!...
"I have now sworn to thee, I give thee my whole soul and my little life, and the sun is the seal on the bond betwixt me and thee.
"I know thee, beloved; but knowest thou whose hand thou hast taken into thine? Lo, this hand has closed in Asia eight noble eyes,—no friend survives me,—in Europe I veil myself,—my sad history lies near the ashes of my parents, in the waters of the Ganges, and on the 24th of June of the coming year I go out of the world.... O Eternal One, I go; on the longest day the happy spirit wings its way out of this temple of the sun, and the green earth opens and closes with its flowers over my sinking chrysalis, and covers the heart that is gone with roses....
"Waft greater waves upon me, morning-air! Draw me into thy broad floods that stand over our lawns and woods, and bear me in clouds of blossoms over sparkling gardens and over glimmering streams; and dizzied between flying blossoms and butterflies, melting away under the sun with outspread arms, faintly floating over the earth, let me die, and let the bloody garment, dissolved into a red morning-vapor, like the ichor of the butterfly[[103]] just released, fall into the flowers, and let a hot sunbeam absorb the azure-bright spirit out of the rose-chalice of the heart up into the next world.... Ah, ye beloved, ye departed, are ye indeed departed? are ye, then, moving along as dark waves[[104]] in the quivering blue of heaven? even, now, in that abyss, full of veiled worlds, do your ethereal garments billow around the hidden suns? Ah, come back, sweep hitherward; in a year I melt and flow into your heart!
"—And thou, my friend, seek me soon! No one on earth can love thee so truly as a man who must soon die. Thou good heart, which these mild days press into my hands, even at this last moment, for a farewell, I will love and warm thee inexpressibly. During this year in which I am not yet taken away, I will stay with thee entirely; and when Death comes and demands my heart, he shall find it only on thy breast.
"I know my friend, his life and his future. In thy coming years stand open dark chambers of martyrdom; and when I die, and thou art with me, I shall sigh, Why can I not take him with me, before he sheds his tears?