And then, to be sure, the thought before which he shrank into himself sprang up like a storm: "I will tell her to-day how good she is,—O, I shall certainly never see her again, and she will die, otherwise unknown to herself! I will fall at her feet and confess my inexpressible love. She cannot be angry; God knows I crave not her holy heart, which no man deserves; I will only say, Mine shall never forget thee, but it desires not thine, only it will break more gently when it has trembled and bled and wept and spoken before thee." ...
Close behind this thought came to him Clotilda herself, hand in hand with her step-mother, and, the face robbed of its color by the warmth as roses are by the sun, the tired and more sick-looking features put forth the silent prayer to come out into the fresh air and go home.
She went; her step-mother followed her at a distance. What a change of scene! Under the eastern gate of heaven stood the moon, who had taken off the funeral veil of cloud from the milky-way and the whole blue abyss. She gradually laid out a ground of silver, and sketched upon it with gleams and shadows a growing night-piece. The frost seemed to condense her light into body, into white meadows, into tumbling streams, into floating flakes; it hung glistering as white blossoming foliage on the bushes, it glimmered up the eastern mountains, which the sun had cast into ice-mirrors. And all above man and around man was sublimely still,—sleep played with death,—every heart rested in its own night.
And here, at this entrance, as it were, out of the turmoil of earth into the still twilight-shrouded underworld, cold thrills and after them glowing thrills ran over Victor's nerves. This happens when the soul of man is too full and too sorely agitated, and all the threads of the trembling web of the fleshly organism sway with it. His sleigh became now a flying gondola. The night-air blowing against him kindled all his flames. O the stream full of ice-points, if it had only swept over him! the cool coverlet of snow, if it were only laid upon him! A voice was continually crying within him: "Thou art bearing the still, the patient one with her black veil to death; it is her hearse: the noble pearl-diver has given heaven her sign that she has collected here below enough sorrows and virtues, that it may draw her up again to itself." The procession of mountains gliding by, the trees that whirled past, the fields that fled away, this flight of nature seemed to form together one great cataract that carried all before it, and man first of all, and left nothing behind it but time. And as he rolled down into the valley, where the city disappears, as did a year ago his female escort, and the moon behind the trees began seemingly to scud through the heavens, then he lifted his eyes toward the stars, and, bent backward in a rigid gaze, spoke aloud as out of a shattered heart to the heavens: "Deep blue grave over men, thou hidest thy broad nights behind crowded suns! Thou drawest us and our tears upward like vapors. Ah, cast not poor short-sighted mortals so far asunder, so infinitely far! And why cannot man look up to thee without thinking: who knows what loved heart I may not a year hence have to seek up yonder!"
His darkened eyes fell painfully from heaven—upon Clotilda's, which were lifted over against his. The tear which had just fallen from her eye down to her cheek she could neither conceal through the veil, nor make believe to be a snow-flake which had melted on her face, since the veil kept off the flakes; but such a tear needed no veil. Clotilda had thought lie meant merely Emanuel, and therefore she was touched and softened.... Like two parting angels, the two now beheld each other with tearful eyes. But Clotilda withdrew hers, and her sinking head bent. Nevertheless, she turned round again, and with her heavenly face and heavenly voice presented to him the sweet prayer: "Bestow this warm friendship upon my brother also; and forgive his sister today this prayer, as I may not for a long time have an opportunity to renew it." He bowed himself down low, and could not answer.
But when now her place of residence and her castle, from which the silver rain of the moon ran down, gleamed before their eyes,—as the moment came on, darker and darker, in which the parting (perhaps the mask of death) was to take this still angel from his side,—as every indifferent formula of leave-taking which he could imagine to himself lacerated his sick heart,—as he saw how she leaned her head on her hand and on the veil, in order, unobserved, to remove or check the first signs of her farewell,—then did the whole cloud which had so long been letting fall single drops into his eyes, rent asunder, rush down upon him and flood his heart.... Suddenly he stopped.... He looked with still gushing eyes toward St. Luna.... Clotilda turned round, and beheld a colorless face, a brow full of sorrows, and a quivering lip, and said bashfully, "Your soul is too good and too tender." Ay, then his over-full heart burst in twain. Then gushed up all the depths of his soul in which old tears had been so long accumulating, and lifted up from the roots his swimming heart, and he sank down before Clotilda, radiant with heavenly love and streaming sorrow,—mantled with the flame of virtue,—transfigured by the moonlight,—with his true, helpless breast, with his veiled eyes,—and the dissolving voice could only utter the words: "Angel of heaven! the heart breaks at last which loves thee inexpressibly. O, long indeed have I been silent. No, thou noble form, never canst thou pass out of my soul.—O soul from heaven, why have thy sufferings and thy goodness, and all that thou art, inspired me with an eternal love, and with no hope, but with an eternal sorrow?" Her agitated face lay bent aside from him in her right hand, and the left covered only her eyes, but not her tears. A dying sound implored him to rise. They heard the second sleigh far off. "Never-to-be-forgotten one! I torment thee, but I will remain where I am till thou hast granted me a token of forgiveness." She extended to him her left hand, and the gesture disclosed a holy countenance full of emotion. He pressed the warm hand to his flaming face, into his hot streams of tears. Trembling, he again asked: "O, my fault grows greater every moment! Will you, then, wholly forgive it?" ...
Then did the blushing face bury itself in the folded veil, and, turning away, stammered: "Ah, then I must share it, noble friend of my teacher."
Blessed, blessed man! After this word, the whole of earthly life has no greater heaven to offer thee! Rest now in silent rapture with thy overpowered face upon the angelic hand, into which the noblest of hearts pours the blood that kindles for virtue! Shed all thy tears of joy upon the dear hand which has given them to thee! And then,—if thou canst for rapture or for reverence,—then lift up thy pure, glistening eye, and show her therein the look of sublime love, the look of the love which is eternal and speechless and blissful and unspeakable!
Ah! he, who had ever been loved by a Clotilda, could now read no farther,—write no farther,—for ecstasy ... or else for pain!
Silent and sanctified he now sped along the fair road; the moon hung down from heaven like a dewy morning overlaid with white blossoms; spring stirred its meadows and its flowers under the veil of snow; rapture throbbed in Victor's heart, swelled in his breast, shone in his eye; but speechless reverence controlled his rapture.... They arrived. And when, in the harmonica-chamber, where in the evening he had grasped her hand for anguish, they now stood alone face to face, so changed, so blest for the first time, two such hearts,—she like an angel who had descended from heaven, he like a mortal who had risen from the earth, to fill on the heart of the timid angel, and, speechless, to go back with her to heaven.... What an hour! O, only for you, ye fair souls, who have never experienced such an hour, and yet have deserved it, do I go on picturing this one!... Like two risen ones before God, they look into each other's eyes and souls,—like a zephyr, which two swaying roses prolong, breathes between the trembling lips the speechless sigh of bliss, drunk in by the bosom in quick inspirations, and issuing with a tremulous thrill of glad awe in long expirations,—they continue silent, to look at each other, they lift their eyes, to see through the drop of joy, and cast them down again to dry it away with the eyelid.... No, it is enough: O, there is another tear that now lies heavily on the fair heart, which is silent and would say, I was never happy, nor ever shall be!