—The good Victor walks hastily, Ah, men whom sorrow has often chilled have neither in their bodily nor moral motions the slow symmetry of prosperous fortune, just as people who wade in the water take great broad strides.—Poor Victor! why dost thou now weep so, that thou absolutely canst not dry thy tears?...
* * * * *
FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING, IN THE ISLAND OF REUNION.
Ah, it is long ago that I asked, "Will this book close with a tear?"—Victor came back at eight o'clock last night with two great immovable tears on the brink of his eyelid, and said: "We will just hasten back somewhat rapidly to the island. Clotilda herself begs us to do so, and to take another time for seeing her."—"A misfortune," I have dreamed, "is just now rearing itself large and high like a sea-serpent, and flinging itself upon human hearts, as that does upon ships, and crushing them under." She had grown every minute more anxious and oppressed, as one becomes in a damp spot over which the lightning darts and hisses. What else did this imply, than that his Lordship had disclosed to his faithful friend things which we feared this night to experience? And we could none of us any longer conceal from ourselves the fear that his weary spirit meant perhaps, like Lycurgus, to stamp the seal of his corpse upon his assurance that we were January's sons, and, moreover, on our oath to be good, and on that of the Prince to obey my brothers, till he should return.
"Weep not so sorely, Victor," said I; "it is not, after all, yet certain." He quietly dried his eyes, and merely said: "We will, then, now go to the island,—it is already nine o'clock."
We went along, far, far aside from the spotted weeping-birch, which threw its torn-off leaves toward the wasted remains of the great man. Victor could not look that way for sorrow; but I looked with a chill trembling where it swayed in the serene night-heavens. Not until after some days, when Victor had become happier; had the dust of Emanuel contracted itself again, as it were, into a pale form, and erected itself out on the burial-green, and opened wide its arms for its old darling,—and Victor moaned and pined, and sought vainly to press the white shadow to his dying breast.
He smiled sadly, as he sought to divert us and himself by the words, "Foolish man ducks like a bird, if calamity only approaches him from afar off." His tears made him a blind man, and Flamin and I were his guides; nevertheless he greeted in his pain a night-express.
I have said nothing (for I cannot) of the garden of termination, of the withered scene of faded, leafless days of joy.
Over the stubble and over the chrysalides of night-butterflies (the jugglers of future spring-nights), and over the steadfast, subterranean winter sleep, swept the solitary night-winds.—Ah, man might well think, "Breezes, come ye not hither over graves, over precious, precious graves?—"
I said, "How slender is the pale-green interval of earth between human bodies and human skeletons!"—Victor said, "Ah, Nature has so much repose, and why has our heart so little?"