[38. DOG-POST DAY.]
The Sublime Hour before Midnight.—The Blissful After-Midnight.—The Soft Evening.
To-day I present Emanuel's last day (which now lies cooled off and extinguished among the days of eternity) with pale outlines to the fantasies of men. My hand trembles and my eye burns before the scenes which in funeral veils glide around me and lift their veils so near to me.—I shut myself up to-night,—I hear nothing but my thoughts,—I see nothing but the night-suns which move across the heavens,—I forget the weaknesses and the stains of my heart, that I may get the courage to lift up my head as if I were good, as if I dwelt on the height where around the great man like constellations lie only God, Eternity, and Virtue. But I say to them who are better,—to the silent great heart, which increases its obligations in fulfilling them, and which satisfies itself as its conscience grows only with daily increasing merits,—to the lofty men who have warmly pressed the hand of death, who can calmly ask him, when he walks round on morning-meadows, "Seekest thou me to-day?"—to the panting soul which cools itself under the cypress-tree,—to the men with tears, with dreams, with wings,—to all these I say, "Kinsmen of my Emanuel, your brother stretches out his hand after you through the shortest night; grasp it, he would fain bid you farewell!"
THE SUBLIME HOUR BEFORE MIDNIGHT.
Victor rose sadly from his dreams, in which he had seen nothing but graves and funeral piles for his friend; but he gathered secret hopes at the morning-greeting, as he saw him step forth into his alleged death-morning without fever, without oppression, without change. His only concern was about the impression which the disappointed hope of departure would make upon the heart of the beloved friend, already half torn from the earthly soil and laid bare from earthly environment. The latter, on the contrary, still held fast to his dreams, to which even his nightly ones gave nourishment; and he looked yearningly into the starless blue, and calculated the long road to the twelfth night-hour, when, out of heaven should peer forth the stars, and death with that dark, immense mantle of his, in which he bears us through his cold realm. His heart lay in a sweet siesta, which proceeded partly from bodily exhaustion and from the beauty of the day. His inner calm, never so great and magical as in souls in which whirlwinds and hurricanes have swept to and fro, overspread his whole being with a bliss of yearning which in other eyes than his would have melted in tear-drops.
O Rest! thou soft word!—autumnal bloom of Eden! Moonlight of the spirit! Rest of the soul, when wilt thou hold our head, that it may be still, and our heart, that it may cease beating? Ah, ere the one grows pale and the other stiff, thou comest often and goest often, and only down below with sleep and with death thou abidest, whereas above, men with the greatest wings, like birds of paradise, are whirled about most of all by the storms!
The tranquillity with which Emanuel played out the star-part of life, even to the last catch-word,—with which he packed up everything—set all to rights—gave all directions—took leave of all,—stirred up tears and tempests together in his tormented friend. His heart had been, indeed, dragged till it was sore over a stony road, but its inflammations were now softly cooled off by the thought of death; yet he could not—though with the greatest incredulity about Emanuel's death—endure to hear it, when Emanuel committed to him at a distance the blind Julius, from whom this death was concealed, with the low-spoken words, "Hold him dear as I do, protect, provide for the poor child, till thou canst deliver him over to Lord Horion." His trembling hands could hardly take from him a packet to that lord, which the friend handed to him with tender eyes and with the words, "When these seals are opened, then my oaths have ceased and thou wilt learn all." For his tender conscience allowed him to conceal only the import, not the existence of secrets.—It will not astonish us, as Victor's veins received one wound after another, that, in order not to increase their bleeding by agitations, he begged the flute-player not to play to-day; music would, on this day, have had too much power over his dissolved heart.
The morning they spent in farewell-visits to old paths, bowers, and heights; but Emanuel performed not here the sharp, passionate climax-part of the fifth act; he broke not forth, upon an earth where death grazes, into any unphilosophical outcry because he should not see the flowers plucked and the grain cut, nor the green fruit grow yellow; but with a higher rapture, which beyond the earthy spring promised itself still fairer ones, he took his leave of every flower, went through every leafy winding and shadowy night-piece, drew out of every mirroring pond his transfigured form lying as it were in the earth, and showed a more affectionate attentiveness to nature, now that he hoped to-night to come nearer to Him who created it. He sought and Victor shunned every occasion to speak of all this. "Only not for the last time!" said the latter. "Not?" said Emanuel.—"Does not everything happen only once and for the last time?—Do not Autumn and Time, as well as Death, separate us from all?—Does not all part from us, even if we do not part from it?—Time is nothing but a death with softer, thinner sickles; every minute is the autumn of the past one, and the second world will be the spring of a third.—Ah, when I one day retire again from the flowery surface of a second, and when on the heavenly death-day I see the twilight of the memory of two lives,—O in the future lies a groundwork for infinite bliss as well as woe, why does man shrink with awe only before this?"—Victor disputed the immortality of memory. "Without memory," said Emanuel, "there is no life, only existence, no years, only seconds,—no I, only representations of it.—A being breaks up into as many million beings as it has thoughts,—memory is merely consciousness of present existence."[[150]]—Even the Poet philosophizes at least for poetry and against philosophy.—Victor thought: "Thou good man! to myself, not to thee, I made these objections."
It was towards noon; the sky was clear, but sultry; the flowers announced by their shutting up the gathering of the electric fires; all meadows were altars of incense, and fragrances went forth as prophets of the storm-clouds. With the physical stormy material there accumulated in Victor a corresponding moral element;—he reflected that often a hot day ended the life of consumptive patients;—he confounded at times the bitterness of parting with its probability; for man, deceived by the aerial perspective of fear, fancies a shape of terror so much the nearer, the larger it is; he wept at the very thought that he might weep; but nevertheless reason would have held the upperhand of the feelings, had not the following occurrence benumbed both.