"I have just come in out of the open air from a little garden-feast at my Agatha's; and never is any fair bit of deep-blue sky exactly right to me, if it does not stand over your weeping-birch, where your eye counts up all its treasures and suns, and shows my heart all the tokens of Infinite Power and Love. To-day, in the garden, I thought with almost too sad a longing on your Maienthal; Herr Sebastian reminded me of it still oftener, because he seems to have had a teacher who resembled mine.[[171]] He talked very well to-day, and seemed to be made up of two halves,—a British and a French. Some of his fine observations have not gone from me,—e. g., 'Sorrows are like thunder-clouds: in the distance they look black, over our heads hardly gray.—As sad dreams betoken a glad future, so may it be with the so-often-tormenting dream of life when it is over.—All our strong feelings, like ghosts, hold sway only up to a certain hour; and if a man would always say to himself, This passion, this grief, this rapture, will in three days certainly be gone from this soul,—then would he become more and more tranquil and composed.' I report all this to you so exactly, in order, as it were, to punish myself for a too hasty judgment which I passed some days since (though within myself) on his propensity to satire.—Satire, also, seems to be merely for the stronger sex; I have never yet found one of my own who had found in the works of Swift or Cervantes or Tristram anything to her taste.—
"Two days later.—I and my letter are still here; but to-day it starts four days in advance of me. I cannot help thinking, This last time every flower in Maienthal, and every word my best teacher says to me, will give me still greater and deeper joy than ever, because I journey thither right from the turmoil of visiting, and with such a melancholy heart. The morning after that lovely night of the church-going festival I sat alone in an arbor near the great pond, and made myself sadder with all that I saw and thought; for during that whole morning, by reason of a dream I had had, my faded friend[[172]] stood before my soul,—her grave lay transparent above her, and I looked down through it, and saw that lily of heaven lying within there pale and still,—I reflected, indeed, as the gardener buried flowers with their pots in the earth, that the body in which we are planted must, in like manner, go down into the earth for future blooming, but, nevertheless, I could no longer control my tears.—In vain did I look upon the sparkling spring, which draws every day new colors, new insects, new flowers out of the earth,—I only grew sadder, since it rejuvenates everything, but not man.[[173]]—And when I saw Herr von Schleunes with a frog-bow approaching the pond, I was obliged, as he could see my eyes at a great distance as he passed by, to make believe asleep, in order not to betray them.... But before my dearest teacher I would have opened them as now, because he forgives me my weaknesses.
"Clotilda v. L. B."
Victor had kept his left hand, with which he held the letter, too near to his heart, and his arm and letter began to tremble with the thumping heart, and he could hardly read and comprehend it for emotion. "Such a teacher! such a pupil!"—beyond that his looks could say nothing more.
There was a struggle within him whether he should tell his friend his love for Clotilda. In favor of the confession was Emanuel's request to seek her society,—that eye of his beholding, as if out of fixed stars, all trifles of earth,—Victor's grateful desire to repay one secret with another, and, most of all, oh! this love for his teacher, this love of his teacher for him.... And this, too, conquered, however much there was otherwise to be said per contra. For if Victor's whole nature glowed in the fire of friendship, so did his heart mount higher and higher, and burn to lay itself open,—he still wrestled with it, and still it was silent,—it loved boundlessly,—it lifted itself up as if by an invisible power,—at last it burst asunder,—his bosom opened wide as before God,—and now, beloved, look in, but forgive him all!
He was still in this inward conflict, when the moon, which had gone up behind their backs, projected their two shadowy knee-pieces before them.—He was reminded, by Emanuel's outstretched shadow, of a passage in his letter,[[174]] and of his sickly life and early passing away.... This clove open his inner being; he gently turned his Emanuel round toward the moon, now pouring down its radiance, and told him and showed him everything,—not merely his love, however, but his whole history, his whole soul, all his faults, all his follies,—everything; he was, at this moment, as eloquent as an angel, and full as great; his heart undulated in the melting glow of love; and the more he said, the more he wanted to have to say.
No sublimer and more blessed hour strikes on this earth than that in which a man erects himself, exalted by virtue, softened by love, and despises all dangers, and shows a friend how it is with his heart. This trembling, this dissolving, this exaltation, is more precious than the itching of vanity to disguise itself in idle refinings. But perfect sincerity comports only with virtue. Let the man in whom suspicion and darkness dwell by all means apply to his bosom night-screws and night-bolts,—let the bad man spare us his opening of coffins,—and whoso has no heaven's door about him to open, let him keep the hell-gate shut!
Emanuel felt the divine or motherly joy which a friend experiences at the virtue and improvement of a friend, and forgot in his joy the different occasions of it.
Reluctantly do I tear myself away for a night from this virtuous pair. May I get many more days of Maienthal to paint, and may Victor spend there many days more!
