He saw now St. Luna lying before him, but, as it were, withdrawn from him in a moonlight. He passed not through, in order not to see the wax statue, whose funeral sermon he had delivered, and for which he also possessed a heart of wax; but he went round along the outskirts. "Grow ever broader and more bustling, fair spot: never may an enemy beleaguer thee around!" He said no more. For as he passed by the church-yard he thought, "Have not all these, then, also taken leave of the place; and am I the only one who does it?"—The mere backward glance at the slated roof of the parsonage kindled one more lightning flash of pain at the thought of a mother's tears for his death; but he soon whispered to himself the consolation, that the maternal heart of the parson's wife, never weaned from Flamin, would cure its sorrow for the victim by its joy over the rescued favorite.

He went now towards Maienthal, and carefully kept away his dreaming thoughts from its exalted places, in order (at evening on the arrival) to enjoy so much the more—sorrow. But now his conscious soul spun itself into a new ideal web. He thought over the pleasure of sinking without any sick nights into the earth, bright and erect, not prostrate, but upright like the giant Cænæus,[[180]]—he felt himself shielded against all disasters of life, and purged from the fear perpetually gnawing on in every heart,—all this, and the joy of having fulfilled his duties and controlled his impulses, and the lights of the blue day standing as if in flower-dust, so cleared his turbid life-stream, that at last he could have wished (had not his determination forbidden it) to play longer in the bright stream.... So great does contempt of death render the beauty of life,—so sure is every one, who in cold blood renounces life, of being able to endure it,—so sound is the advice of Rousseau, before death to undertake a good deed, because one can then do without dying.... —As Victor thought thus, Fate stepped before him and asked him sternly, "Wilt thou die?"—He answered, "Yes!"—as, just before sundown, he beheld again in Upper Maienthal Clotilda's carriage, which he had seen there at its starting upon the journey. Now the death-cloud fell upon the landscape. He hurried by,—at the window he saw his mother and the lady, the mother of Flamin,—his inner being was in a tumult,—his eyes glowed, but remained dry,—for he was choosing among the instruments of death.—-Why did he go, so late, in the dark, with a stormy soul, which obscured all sweet dreams, to Maienthal?—He would go to Emanuel's grave; not to mourn there, not to dream there, but to seek for himself a hollow there, namely, the last. His impetuous grief had sketched a picture of his dying, and he had approved the sketch; namely, so soon as fate had decided the necessity of his death by the disappearance of his father and by the peril of Flamin, he meant to scoop out his grave near the weeping birch, lay himself down in it, kill himself therein, and then let the blind Julius, who could not know nor see anything of it, fling the earth over him, and so, veiled, unknown, nameless, flee out of life to the side of his mouldering Emanuel....

Black funeral processions of ravens flew slowly like a cloud through the sunless heavens, and settled down like a cloud into the woods,—the half-moon hung above the earth,—a strange, little shadow, as big as a heart, ran fearfully beside him. He looked up: it was the shadow of a slowly hovering hawk; he rushed through Maienthal; he saw not the leafless garden nor Dahore's closed house, but ran through the chestnut alley toward the weeping birch.—

But under the chestnuts, at the place where Flamin would have killed him, he saw Clotilda's withered pink, with the bloody drop in its chalice, lying on the ground.... And as a lark, the last songstress of Nature, still quivered over the garden, and called with too ardent tones after all the spring-times of life, and pierced the heart with an infinite, deathly yearning, then did my Victor look up and weep aloud; and when, up on the grave, he had wiped away the great, dark tears, there stood—Clotilda before him.

One thrill ran through him, and he was dumb.... She hardly recognized the paled form, and asked, trembling, "Is it you? Do we see each other again?"—His soul was torn asunder, and he said, but in another sense, "We see each other again." She was in the bloom of health, having been restored by the journey. But there was blood on her handkerchief;—it was the blood which Emanuel's bosom had shed during the duel in the alley. He stared inquiringly at the blood. She pointed to the grave, and veiled her weeping eyes.—With the question, "Has your honored father come?" the good soul sought gently to lead him aside; but she led him to his grave,—his eye sought wildly the place for the last cool grotto of life,—she had never seen her gentle lover thus, and would fain soothe his soul by quiet remembrances of Emanuel,—she filled out the chasm in her letter, and related how quietly and composedly the dead man went from England, and previously at his departure lowered down into an extraordinarily deep hollow of the fallen temple all his East-Indian flowers, three pictures, written palm-leaves, and collections of loved ashes....

Victor was beside himself,—he supported himself by his hand on the dew-cold, wet, yellow grave,—he wept in one steady stream, and could no longer see his beloved,—he threw himself upon her quivering lips, and gave her the farewell-kiss of death. He could venture to kiss her; for there is no rank among the dead. He felt her streaming tears, and a cruel longing seized him to provoke these tears forth; but he could only not speak. He choked her words with kisses and his own with grief. At last he was able to say, "Farewell!" She extricated herself with terror, and looked on him with greater tears, and said, "What is it with you? You break my heart!"—He said, "Only mine must break!" and hurriedly drew out the heart of wax, and crushed it to pieces on the grave, and said, "I offer my heart to thee, Emanuel; I offer thee my heart." And when Clotilda had fled with alarm, he could only call after her, with exhausted tones, "Farewell! farewell!"

[43. DOG-POST-DAY.]

Matthieu's Four Whitsuntide Days and Jubilee.

It is a stroke of art in me to write down true scenes of villany in the higher classes in French first, and then interpret them into the vernacular, as Boileau composed his insipid verses originally in prose.—As I attach great importance to the Forty-Third Dog-Post-Day,—because therein the noble Mat seeks to save his Flamin even at the sacrifice of his virtue and of Lord Horion,—accordingly I meditate to translate it so faithfully into German out of the French, in which I have written it, that my French author himself shall bestow on me his approbation.