He heard the little one go and say, "I will fetch thee a larger pillow to put under thy head."
Clotilda stood up and clasped his hand,—he turned round again toward the earth,—and she looked on him with eyes worn with weeping, yet tender, whose drops were too pure for this unclean world, but in those large eyes stood something like the terrible question, "Do we not love each other in vain for this world?" And her beating heart shook the bloody pink. The moon and the evening star gleamed solitary, like a past, in heaven.—Julius lay mute and prostrate, with outspread arms, on the low mound which had been rolled upon the dust of his shattered paradise.
The tones of the nightingale throbbed now like high waves on the night,—then he gathered up his courage to bid her farewell....
Reader! raise not thy spirit to any pitch of rapture, for it will soon stiffen in a spasm,—but I raise my soul thereto, because even the fatal stumble at the gate of paradise is not unlovely when one is going out of it!
The first call of the confiding nightingale was suddenly answered still-higher by a new nightingale that had fluttered along and whose voice was muffled by thick blossoms, who kept flying as she sang, and now made her languishing melody flow out of the blossoming hollow. The two lovers, who delayed and dreaded parting, wandered confusedly after the receding nightingale, and were on the way to the blessed blooming hollow; they knew not that they were alone; for in their hearts was God; before their sight shone the whole second world full of risen souls. At last Clotilda recovered herself, turned round before the nightingale, and gave the mournful sign of separation.—Victor stood on the shore of his late blissful island,—all, all was now over,—he lingered, took both her hands, could not yet look upon her for anguish, bowed down with tears, raised himself up again, when he was able to say softly: "Farewell,—my heavy heart can say no more,—fare thee right well, far better than I,—weep not so often as thou usedst to do, that thou mayest not perchance have to leave me utterly.—For then I too should go."—Louder and more solemnly he continued: "For we can no more be separated,—here under Eternity I deliver to thee my heart,—and when it forgets thee, then—may a sorrow crush it which shall reach over the two worlds." ... In a lower and tenderer tone, "Weep not to-morrow, angel,—and Providence give thee rest." Like a transfigured one to a transfigured he inclined himself modestly to her holy lip, and in a gentle, devout kiss, in which the hovering souls only glide tremulously from afar to meet each other with fluttering wings, with a light touch he took from the yielding, dissolving lips the seal of her pure love, the repetition of his late Eden, and her heart and his all—
—But here let the gentler soul, which the thunderbolts of fate too sorely agitate, turn its eye away from the great yellow flash which suddenly darts through the still Eden!
* * * * *
"Scoundrel!" cried Flamin, rushing out with sparkling looks, with snow-white cheeks, with locks hanging down like a mane, with two pocket-pistols in his hands,—"there take, take; blood I want," and thrust the deadly weapon towards him; Victor forced Clotilda aside, saying, "Innocent one! do not aggravate thy sorrows!"—Flamin cried in a new kindling of fury, "Blood!—Faithless one, take, fire!"—Matthieu fell upon his right arm, but the left, trembling, forced the weapon upon Victor.—Victor snatched it towards him, because the muzzle was swaying about Clotilda.—"Thou art in truth my brother," cried the tortured girl, whose deathly agony alone kept her by its rack from the death of a swoon.—Flamin with both arms flung all from him and said with a horribly low and long-drawn voice in his raving exhaustion, "Blood!—Death!"—Clotilda sank to the ground. Victor looked at her and said, turning to him, "Only fire, here is my life!"—Flamin cried aloud, "Thou first!"—Victor shot, lifting his arm high up, so as to shoot into the air, and the splintered top of a branch was brought down by his ball.—Clotilda came to.—Emanuel flew to the spot,—threw himself on his pupil's heart,—from his breast for the first time in years rent with passion the sickly blood gushed out. Flamin proudly hurled away his pistol and said to Matthieu, "Come!—it isn't worth the trouble," and went off with him.
When Clotilda saw Emanuel's blood on her lover's clothes, she supposed him to have been hit, and laid her handkerchief on the blood and said, "Ah, you have not deserved this of me!"—Emanuel breathed again through his blood, no one could speak any more, no one could think, every one feared to give consolation, the mortally crushed hearts parted with suppressed woe; only Victor, whom the horrible word "scoundrel" at every recollection of it pierced through like a dagger, said to the sister: "I love him no more, but he is unhappier than we; ah! he has lost all and kept nothing but a devil."
Namely, Matthieu. It was he who had to-day imitated the voice of Emanuel, which had seemed to speak with Julius, and whose voice Dahore had taken for his father's, and afterward the voice of the nightingale, which Victor had followed, in order to convince the Regency Counsellor through his own ears and eyes of Victor's love for Clotilda.