It was near midnight. The heavens glittered nearer to the earth; the Swan, the Lyre, Hercules,[[211]] beamed from where they had gone down through another blue of heaven. Great heaven,—said every heart,—dost thou belong to the human spirit, dost thou one day receive it, or art thou only like the ceiling-picture of a minster, which hides the limiting walls, and opens out with colors the prospect of a heaven which does not exist?—Ah, every Present makes our soul so small, and only a Future makes it so great.
Victor was beside himself, and said again: "Repose! neither joy nor sorrow can give thee, but only hope. Why is not all at rest within us, as around us?"
At that moment the knell of a shot, repeated by all the echoing woods, rang through the silent night,—and the Isle of Union swam up in the night-blue, and its white temple hung over it,—and beside the mourning-thicket, which grew up over the mouldering remains of a youthful heart, nine slender flames, which ran up on the nine crape-veils, shot up toward heaven, as if they were feux de joie to a festival of peace.
Pale, hurrying, sighing, and silent, we touched the first shore of the island. The water was sucked up dry by the ground. The black Eastern gate had flung itself wide open, and leaned and hid its white painted sun against the trees. Many funeral torches, on white lustres, attached themselves to the Eastern gate, went in through the long green avenue, flickered over ruins, sphinxes, and marble torsos, and ended darkly in the mourning-thicket.
Fluttering music of Æolian harps was permeated at the entrance by long tones. Under the Eastern gateway the blind one rested quietly and played joyously on his flute,—just as a dove flies into the thunder.
He fell joyfully on the neck of his Victor, and said: "It is good that thou comest; a tall, still man has lain a quarter of an hour on my heart, and wept into my hand, and given me a leaf for thee."
Victor snatched the leaf; it read: "You have all sworn to fulfil my requests until such time as you hear my voice again; but uncover not the black marble."—His Lordship had given it to the blind son. Victor cried: "O father! O father! I could not then make thee any requital!" and sank upon the breast of the son. He was about to tear himself away again, but the blind youth hung around him, and smiled with glad unconsciousness into the night.—We hastened into the mourning-thicket,—and, by the dim light of the two funeral torches that were burning down therein, we saw that a second grave had been scooped out there, the fresh earth of which lay near by,—that a black marble covered the hollow, and that the black dress of his Lordship peeped out a little way from the opening, and that in there he had killed himself.—And on his black marble stood, as upon the marble of his beloved, an ashy-pale heart, and below the heart stood in white letters the words:
"It is at rest."
THE END.
