Secondly, this angel once gave Julius a paper, and said, "Conceal it, and after a year, when the birches grow green in the temple, let Clotilda read it to thee; I take my flight, and thou wilt not hear me sooner than a year hence."—
All this fitted Clotilda as if it were moulded on her: she could never unfold to the blind one her dying heart,—she was going just now to Maienthal (how long is it still to Whitsuntide?) to read to him herself the leaf which she had handed to him in the character and mask of an angel,—finally, she was going off precisely then to St. Luna;—in short, everything hits to a hair.
If the Biographer might venture to put in a word, it would be this: The Mining-Superintendent, the Biographer, for his part, believes it all with great pleasure; but as to Clotilda, who hitherto has come forth whitely radiant from every pitchy cloud, and on whom, as on the sun, one has so often confounded clouds with sun-spots, he cannot blame her, until she herself sets the example. Victor, as I myself did in the first edition, has even forgotten many proofs of Clotilda's love for Julius: e. g. her warm interest in his blindness, and her desire of his recovery (in her letter to Emanuel), Flamin's obsolete jealousy in Maienthal, even the rapture with which, in the playhouse, she calls the vale an Eden, and rejects the Lethe.
Victor tore open the packet, and two leaves fell out of a large sheet. One of the notes and the large sheet were from Emanuel, the other from his Lordship. He studied the last, written in double cipher, first; it was as follows:—
"I come in autumn, when the apples ripen,—the Trinity [his Lordship means the Prince's three sons] is found; but the fourth Person [the fourth, merry son] is wanting.—Flee from the Palace of the Empress of all the Russias [with this cipher the two had concerted to designate the Minister Schleunes], but the grand duchess [Joachime] avoid still more: she wants no heart, but a princely hat.—In Rome [he means Agnola] beware of the crucifix, out of which a stiletto springs! Think of the Island, ere thou makest a misstep."
Victor was astonished at first at the accidental appropriateness of these prohibitions; but when he bethought himself that he would have given them to him even on the Island, if they had not referred to his more recent circumstances, then he was still more astonished at the channels through which the espionage-despatches of his present relations might have reached his father,—(as if my correspondent and spy might not have been the father's also!)—and most of all at the warning against Joachime. "Oh! if she were false to me!" he said, sighing, and would not complete the dark picture nor the sigh.—But he drove both away by the little leaf from Emanuel, which read thus:—
"My Son:—
"The dawn of the new year shone on my face across the snow, as I placed before me the paper [Emanuel's second immediately following letter], upon which I sought to impress for the last time my soul with all its images reaching out beyond this globe. But the flames of my soul dart even to the body, and singe the frail thread of life; I was obliged often to turn away my too easily bleeding breast from the paper and from my rapture.
"I have, my son, written to thee with my blood.—Julius has now the thought of God.—The spring glows under the snow, and will soon lift itself up out of the green, and bloom even to the clouds.—My daughter [Clotilda] takes spring by the hand and comes to me,—let her take my son with the other hand, and lay him on my breast, wherein is a failing breath and an everlasting heart.... O how melodiously sound around me the evening bells of life!—Ay, when thou and thy Clotilda and our Julius, when we all, we who love each other, stand together, when I hear your voices, then shall I look to Heaven and say, The evening bells of life sound around me too mournfully; I shall for ecstasy die still earlier than the eve of the longest day, and ere my sainted father has appeared to me.
"Emanuel."