There is a sorrow which lays itself with a great sucker-sting to the heart and thirstily drains its tears,—the whole heart runs and gushes and spasmodically contracts its innermost fibres, in order to become a stream of tears, and does not feel the wrench of grief under the deadly-sweet effusion.... Such a deadly-sweet pang our Victor felt at Clotilda's letter.
But deadly bitter was that of his Lordship. "O this tormented and worn-out spirit," he exclaimed, "longed, indeed, even on the Isle of Union, for the repose of the dead;—ah! it has surely fled already from the sweltry earth, which seemed to it so small and oppressive." If this were so, then all the oaths, on whose remission Flamin's life hung, were made eternal, and he was lost. If it was not so, then was there at least no hope of his return, since Emanuel's death and confession, Flamin's imprisonment, and all the previous occurrences, all of which his Lordship might learn, had wiped out his whole finely delineated plan. Now a voice cried aloud in Victor's soul, "Save the brother of thy beloved!"—Yes, a way to do it was at hand;—but it was perjury. If, namely he committed that crime by disclosing to the Prince who Flamin was, then he was rescued. But his conscience said, "No!—The downfall of a virtue is a greater evil than the downfall of a man,—only death, but not sin, must be;—shall it cost me still more to break my word, than it has hitherto cost me to keep it?"
It is well known that on the day of this year's equinox, when he had received the two London leaves, there was a cold storm of snow and rain, from which the summer afterward seemed to bloom out a second time.—Victor went on in his, pondering. He called up before him once more, with all its moments, that great day on the Isle of Union, and found that he had absolutely sworn to his Lordship forever to be silent, except an hour before his own death. We may still remember that he had at the time reserved this very condition, because he had once sworn to Flamin to throw himself down with him from the observatory, if they should be obliged to part as enemies; and because now, when Clotilda's sisterly relation was announced to him, he feared beforehand it might come to that separation and suicide. In that case, he would at least reserve to himself the liberty, only an hour before his death, of saying to his friend that he was innocent, and that Flamin's beloved was only a—sister.
"So then, an hour before my death, I may disclose all?—O God!—Yes!—Yes!—I will die, that so I may speak!" he cried, enkindled, throbbing, fluttering, exalted above life.—The tempest hurled the torrents of heaven and the powdered glaciers against the windows, and the day sank gloomily in the whelming flood.... "O," said our friend, "how I long to escape out of this black storm of life,—into the still, bright ether,—to the steadfast, immovable breast of death, which does not disturb sleep...."
If he disclosed to the Prince that Flamin was his own son, then was the latter delivered, and he needed only an hour after that to—destroy himself.
And that would he gladly do; for what had he left on earth except—recollections? O, too many recollections, too few hopes—Who would be grieved at his fall?—the loved one, who, after all, resigns him,—or her brother, whom he saves and flies from,—or his good lord, who perhaps rests already in the earth,—or his Emanuel, whose loving arms are already crumbling to dust?—"Yes, him only will my dying affect," said he, "for he will long for his faithful scholar, he will on some sun open his arms and look down along the way to the earth, and I shall come up with a great wound on my breast, and my streaming heart will lie naked on the wound.—O Emanuel, despise me not, I shall cry; I was truly unhappy, after thou hadst died; receive me and heal the wound!"
—"Seest thou my father?" said the blind Julius, and his face approached a smile of rapture. Victor started and said, "I talk with him, but I do not see him."—But this checked his exaltation. He had been hitherto the paraclete and nurse of the poor blind charge; he could not leave him, he must needs put off the retreating-shot of life till the arrival of Clotilda, that she might protect the helpless one. Ah, the good night-walker and night-sitter (in the proper sense) had at first every day prayed Victor to operate upon his eye, and give him back the light, before his dear father should crumble to pieces, that he might see once more, only once more, the fair countenance not yet undermined by worms; yes, he would at least touch blindly the cold mask,—this he had in the beginning implored; but in a few weeks he had drawn his arms away from under the dead man, and folded them entirely (like a true child) with all his caressing love around Victor, who always stayed at home with him. And in the night they reached out to each other their warm hands out of their adjoining beds, and thus linked together went into the evening-lands of dreams. To the childlike blind one, even the continuous din of the city turmoil, which his village had wanted, had been a comfort....
Victor, therefore, waited first for the arrival of Clotilda;—ah! he would have done it even without reference to the blind youth.—Must he not see once more his good mother, hear once more the voice of his never-to-be-forgotten beloved?—For the rest, I cannot disguise the fact, that not merely the salvation of Flamin, but a real disgust at life, guided his hand in his death-sentence. The verdict of murderous disgust had, for its grounds of decision, the sunset of Emanuel,—Victor's oft-recurring night-thoughts upon this our lucubration of life,—his entire revolution of his social relations,—the corresponding past or future example of his Lordship,—his panting for a deed full of energy,—and, most of all, the death-chill about his forlorn and naked bosom, which once was covered by so many warm hearts. One can do without love and friendship only so long as one has not yet enjoyed them;—but to lose them, and that without hope, this one cannot do without dying. Upon his conscience he played off the optical deception and stage-trick of asking it whether he might not draw his friend out of the water at the hazard of his life; whether he might not leap from the plank, which could hold only one, into the waves, in order to make his death the purchase-money of another's life.—Two singular ideas sweetened for him his deadly purpose more than all.
The first was, that on his death-day (after the disclosure to the Prince) he could repair to Flamin's prison, and grasp his hand, and boldly say: "Come out,—to-day I die for thee, that I may prove to thee that Clotilda was thy sister, and I thy friend.—I quench the black word, which can only be forgiven on the death-day, with my innocent blood, and death folds me again to thy arms.—-O, I do it gladly, so that I may only love thee once more right heartily, and say to thee, My good, precious, never-to-be-forgotten youthful friend!"—Then would he fall upon his neck with a thousand tears, and forgive him all; for in the neighborhood of death, and after a great deed, man can and may forgive man everything, everything.
Every tenderer soul will easily divine the second thought that sweetened that of death.—It was this, that he could go once more to his beloved and think, though not say, before her, "I fall for thee." For he now felt, after all, that the resolve of a parting for life was too hard, and only that of doing so by death was easy.—O right easy and sweet it is, he felt, to close the wet eye in the presence of the loved one, then to see nothing more on the earth; but with the high flames of the heart, and with the dear image pressed to the bosom, like the encoffined mother with the dead darling, to step blindfold to the brink of this world, and throw one's self headlong into the still, deep, dark, cold sea of the dead.... "Thou art," he often said, "painted on my conscious being, and nothing can sever thy image from my heart; both must, as in Italy the wall and the picture upon it, be transported together."—And as now there was no longer any need to care for his body, he could call forth, of his own accord, the tears which agitated him. He wanted really to offer something of his life to Clotilda: therefore he rehearsed, for some days in succession, the part of the bloodiest farewell scene, even to exhaustion, and made pen-and-ink sketches of his sorrow, and said to himself, when thereby headaches and heart-beatings came upon him, "I can thus at least suffer something for her, though she knows nothing of it."