He came to Emanuel with wet eyes. The latter told him that the first link of yesterday's chain of flowers, namely the Briton with his people, had already loosed itself in the night. But the longer he looked on Emanuel and thought of the morrow,—for to-morrow before day he too would softly close the garden gate of this Paradise behind, and this afternoon he is to take leave of the Abbess and this evening of his beloved, in order not to hinder her in the reading out of the well-known angel's-epistle,—so much the more painful was the straining of his eyes, and he preferred to go out, with a heart bleeding itself full, into the open air, and led the blind one with him, who suspected nothing, saw nothing, and before whom, besides, one loved to lay bare his innermost heart as before a child.
But this time Julius was in the same softened state, because he had all the morning seen the angel playing and hovering in his darkling soul. The yearning for the angel brooded over his reposing heart and warmed it even to beating, and he said with an unaccustomed sorrow, "If I could only see, only something, only my father, or thee!" The dust-covered remembrances of his childhood were shaken up; and out of this cloud-enveloped period emerged before him into special prominence one day, bright with morning, blue and full of song, and bore three forms on its cloud-floor, Julius's own and those of the two children, from whom before their embarkation for Germany he had parted,—drops escaped from him without his perceiving it, when he described to this Victor, the very one who had done what he described, how he had been kissed and hugged and cried after by the one child, that loved him most, and always carried him. "And I think," he continued, "that every one whose voice I love to hear has the face of that good child, and that thou hast too. Often when I contemplate this form alone in my darkness, and feel warm drops on my lips, and fall into a languishing, slumbering rapture, I fancy it is blood trickles from my lips and my heart is boiling,—but my father says if then my eyes were suddenly opened, and I should look upon my angel, or the good child, or a beautiful human being, I should have to die for love."—"O Julius, Julius," cried his Victor, "how noble is thy heart! The good child whom thou lovest so my father will soon lay in thy arms, and he will kiss thee and love thee and clasp thee just as I do now."—
He led him back to dinner; but he himself remained till afternoon under the open heaven, and his heart put on silent mourning under trees full of bees, near thickets full of feeding birds, on all the former walks and ecliptics of this dying festival,—and all the hours of childhood rose out of the winter-sleep of memory and stirred his heart, but it dissolved.—O when far distant moments sound on our ears with their chime, then great drops fall from the softened soul, as the increasing nearness of far-off bells sounding across betokens rain. I blame thee not, Victor,—thou art, after all, only feminine, but not effeminate,—if thy biographer can describe thy emotion and thy reader can feel it, without relaxing the firm muscles of the heart, thou canst do it quite as well, and only a man who can wring bitter tears from others will scorn sweet ones and shed none himself.
At length Victor went to take his last pleasure, to the garden of termination, in order to take leave with tender tears of all his female friends at the Abbey. A singular incident delayed it a little: for as he left Emanuel, he encountered Julius coming from the garden, who told him, "if he wanted to find Emanuel, he was in the garden."—This raised a friendly dispute, because each of them insisted on having just talked with him. Victor went back with him to Emanuel, and Julius related to his teacher every word of the alleged garden-talk with him: "e. g. about Victor, about Clotilda, about the farewell he was to-day taking, about his previous happy days."
During the narration Emanuel's face grew radiant, as if moonlight flowed down from it,—and instead of representing to the beloved child the impossibility of his appearance in the garden, he humored his notion of the apparition, and said with delight: "I shall die, then!—It was my departed father,—his voice sounds like mine,—he promised me when he died to come back from the next world to this before I should go hence.—Ah, ye beloved ones beyond the graves over yonder, ye still then think of me.—O thou good father! break through even now into my presence with thy fatal radiance, and release my spirit in thy lips!"—
He was still more confirmed in his conclusion, because, Julius added that the shape had demanded of him the angel's letter, but given it back again after a short whisper. The seal was uninjured. Emanuel's joyful enthusiasm at these telegraphs of death implied that he had drawn dissatisfying inferences from his previous health. Victor never set himself in opposition to the exalted errors of his teacher; thus, e. g., he never arrayed the reasons he had, and which I will show in the next Intercalary day, against the innocent delusion, that "from dreams, and from the independence of the personal consciousness on the body, one could infer its future independence after death,"—that "in dream the inner diamond dusted itself and drank in light from a fairer sun."—Victor was alarmed about the matter,—but for other reasons, Julius took them both along with him to the place of the interview, which was in the darkened avenue near the blossoming hollow. No one was there, nothing appeared; leaves whispered, but no spirits; it was the place of bliss, but of earthly bliss.—
Victor went into the other place of bliss, the Abbey. Clotilda was not over there, but in the intricate labyrinth of the Park, probably for the purpose of facilitating for its possessor, Julius, the opportunity of hearing read the angel's letter. Just as the sun blazed over against the window-panes, he took leave of the good Abbess with that refined, feeling courtesy to which in her position the highest enthusiasm was limited. The refined Abbess said to him: "The visit was so short, that it would be inexcusable, if Victor did not make it good by persuading her second spring guest (Clotilda) to lengthen hers; for she too was going soon to leave them."—He took his leave of her with a heart-felt respect: for his tender heart knew, quite as well behind the lace mask of refinement and knowledge of the world as behind the leather-crust of roughness, how to feel the tender heart of another.
But as he hastened to the garden, the tears of his heart gushed up higher and warmer,—and he felt as if he must here in the face of the sun embrace the rising moon, as he thought: "Ah, when thy pale fleece hangs this evening brighter overhead there, when thou lookest down alone, I shall have departed or be in the act of departing from my pastoral world."—And below near the nightingale's hedge reposed his Julius, shedding bright streams of tears,—for this whole evening swarmed with greater and greater wonders[[123]] of chance,—he hastens down to him, the letter of the so-called angel is opened in his hand, Victor says softly, "Julius, why weepest thou so?"—"O God," said the latter in broken tones, "guide me under a bower!"—He conducted him to the crape one. Julius said, when they were under cover: "Good! here the sun does not burn!" and flung his right arm around Victor, and gave him the letter, and folded his arm round even to his heart and said: "Thou good soul! tell me when the sun is down, and read me once more the letter of the angel!"
Victor began: "Clotilda!"—"To whom is it?" said he.—"To me!" said Julius, "and Clotilda has already read it to me; but I could not understand her on account of her weeping, and besides I also was too much distressed.—I shall die for sorrow, thou good Giulia, why didst thou not tell me of it before thy death.—The dead one wrote it, read on!"—He read:
"Clotilda!