Strictly speaking, it was not quite so: but the swift emerging and reabsorption of the beloved forms, the aggravated longing for them, the touching contrast between the din of morning and the pause of night, between the fire of the sun and the moon's twilight, and the dreary exhaustion of sleeplessness joined to the weariness of the fancy and the body, all these things wrung from the heart and the tear-glands of our somnambulist involuntary sweet tears, which had no object, which flowed neither for joy nor for sorrow, but for yearning.
All at once the fair, cloudless first May-day made to pass before him the remembrance of the one a year ago, when, like a spring and an Homeric god, he arrived in a cloud,—and the good man looked with dew-drops in his eyes upon the dew-drops in the flowers, and said, inexpressibly touched: "Ah! a year ago I came so happy, became so unhappy, and now am so happy again,—O ye flying, playing, echoing, trembling years of man!"—and the holiday-hum of bells from all the villages (it was St. Philip's and St. James's day) with the soft thrill of an echo set all his mourning-strings into a responsive quiver.
"O, a year ago," all the bells sang to him, "we escorted Giulia, as we now do thee, out of Maienthal." Then, as the sun unfolded his white blossoms in the sky, the warm thought dissolved his heart: "A year ago this morning thy Flamin went to meet thee, and shed on thy glowing breast so many tears of joy,—and at the end of this very day he drew thee again to his heart, and said as if with a presentiment, 'Forget me not, betray me not, and if thou wilt forsake me, then let me perish with thee!'—
"O thou faithful one," said all his thoughts, "how it consoles me to-day, that I once gladly sacrificed all my wishes to thine, in order to continue true to thee.[[72]]—No, I cannot conceal anything from him, I will go to him at once."—He went straight to Flamin, in order (though without perjury towards his Lordship, and with forbearance toward jealousy) to confess that he was going at Whitsuntide to Maienthal. His dismembered heart needed so much an eye that should weep responsive to it,—his delicate sense of honor scorned so much to make another's journey the screen of his own,—his renewed love was pained so at the thought of the least concealment from his friend,—Matthieu was so completely thrust out from this heavenly-blue Eden under the walls of the brain,—that the longer he thought and ran, the more would he lay open. He would, namely, even disclose to his Flamin that he had this very night delivered with his own hands the note of invitation to the blind youth: by an illusion, the future Whitsuntide journey was made more certain through to-day's, and this his own point of view he looked upon as another's.
But his dreamy and night-intoxicated soul did not carry so far its dangerous effusion, which might do so much the more harm, as Flamin in his anger was unable to listen any longer to distinctions and justifications, and even rejected again old ones which he had before allowed. For at his entrance a May-frost on Flamin's face closed a little the opening blossom-cup of his heart. He begged Flamin with his contrasting warmth of face to take a walk on this bright day. Out of doors the contrast grew still more sharp, as Flamin thrust his cane into the ground even to the point of cracking it, beheaded flowers, whipped off leaves, stamped out footprints with the heel of his boot, while Victor sought to discourse in one steady stream, in order to maintain his soul in the warmth which he had brought with him.
One thing about him gratifies me, that he was going to pour out his heart, overrunning with to-day's renunciations, into the very one which he had to charge with those renunciations. At last he said, hurriedly, just for the sake of throwing off from his soul the confession which hall become so hard to utter, "At Whitsuntide I am going to Maienthal,"—and then flyingly passed over to the words, "O just a year ago to-day thou wentest with me."
Flamin interrupted him, and his icy face, like a Hecla, was cloven with flames: "So! so!—at Whitsuntide? Thou dost not go with us to Kussewitz!—Let me once for all speak right out, Victor!"—Then they stopped. Flamin stripped the blossoms and leaves from the branch of a wild plum-tree with bloody hand, and looked not at his gentle friend, lest he should be softened himself. "A year ago to-day, sayest thou? Yes, that very evening I went with thee up to the watch-tower, and we promised each other either truth or death. Thou sworest to me to throw thyself headlong with me, whenever thou shouldst have taken all from me, all,—or, say, her love; for in thy presence she hardly looks at me any more.—By the Devil, am I then blind? Do I not see, then, that the machinery of her journey and thine has been all planned out?—What hast thou to do just now with the Maienthal landscapes? To whom does the hat belong?—And what am I to infer from all this?—To whom, whom? say, say!—O God, if it were true!—Help me, Victor!"—In the eyes of the misused, to-day exhausted Victor stood the bitterest tears, which Flamin, however, who exasperated himself by his own talking, could now bear. Never did the latter in a rage accept remonstrances: nevertheless he expected them, and was astounded at his being in the right, and at the other party's silence, and desired to be contradicted. He crushed in his bleeding hand the sloe-thorns. His eye burned into the weeping one. Victor bewailed his firm oath to his father, and looked on the trembling balance wherein the oath and indulgent friendship hung in equipoise. He collected once more all his love into his breast, and spread his arms wide open, and fain would draw with them the struggling one to himself, and yet could say nothing but "I and thou are innocent; but till my father comes, before that I cannot justify myself."—Flamin repelled him from him: "What is this for?—So it was at the garden-concert, too, and thou hast since that been daily with her, and at Easter-balls and in sleighs, without me. Say rather outright, wilt thou marry her?—Swear that thou wilt not?—O God, hesitate not,—swear, swear!—Ay, ay, Matthieu!—Canst thou not yet!—Well, then, lie at least!"
"Oh!" said Victor,—and eclipsing blood-streams shot through his brain and over his face,—"thou shalt not insult me quite too much; I am as good as thou, I am as proud as thou,—before God my soul is pure"—But Flamin's blood on the sloe-bush repressed Victor's indignant exaltation, and he merely lifted a sympathetic eye full of the tears of friendship to the brighter, softer heaven.—"Only marriage, forsooth, dost thou not forswear?—Good, good, thou hast strangled me,—my heart hast thou trampled on, and my whole happiness.—I had none but thee, thou wast my only friend, now will I go to the Devil without one.—Thou dost not swear?—Oh, I tear myself away from thee bloody and wretched, and as thy foe—we part—only go—away! it is all up—all!—Adieu!" He rushed away, striking his stick into the ground as he went, and his distracted friend, lying at the feet of Truth, who lifts the flaming sword against Perjury, and dying in tears before Friendship, who casts upon the soft heart the melting look full of entreaties,—Victor, I say, cried, as with dying voice, after the fleeing friend of his soul: "Farewell, my faithful Flamin! my never-to-be-forgotten friend! I was indeed true to thee!—But an oath lies between us.—Dost thou still hear me?—do not hasten so!—Flamin, dost thou hear me? I love thee still, we shall find each other again, and come when thou wilt." ... He cried after him more vehemently, although with stifled, smothered tones: "Honest, precious, precious soul, I have loved thee very much, and do still and still,—only be right happy.—Flamin, Flamin, my heart breaks now that thou art my enemy."—Flamin looked round no more, but his hand seemed to be on his eyes. The friend of his youth vanished from his sight like youth itself, and Victor sank down unhappy under the fairest heaven, with the consciousness of innocence, with all the feelings of friendship!—O, Virtue itself gives no consolation, if thou hast lost a friend, and the heart of a man, stabbed by friendship, bleeds on mortally, and all the balm of love avails not to heal or to soothe!—
