In my chamber, I have a hundred times determined to smile at solemnities, in the midst of which I afterwards, while assisting at them, involuntarily wore a petrified countenance, full of dignity and seriousness. For, as the Schoolmaster, just before the baptism, began to sound the organ--an honor never paid to any other child in Hukelum,--and when I saw the wooden christening-angel, like an alighted Genius, with his painted timber arm spread out under the baptismal ewer, and I myself came to stand close by him, under his gilt wing, I protest the blood went slow and solemn, warm and close, through my pulsing head, and my lungs full of sighs; and to the silent darling lying in my arms, whose unripe eyes Nature yet held closed from the full perspective of the Earth, I wished, with more sadness than I do to myself, for his Future also as soft a sleep as to-day; and as good an angel as to-day, but a more living one, to guide him into a more living religion, and, with invisible hand, conduct him unlost through the forest of Life, through its falling trees, and Wild Hunters,[[65]] and all its storms and perils.... Will the world not excuse me, if when, by a side-glance, I saw on the paternal countenance prayers for the son, and tears of joy trickling down into the prayer; and when I noticed on the countenance of the grandmother far darker and fast-hidden drops, which she could not restrain, while I, in answer to the ancient question, engaged to provide for the child if its parents died,--am I not to be excused if I then cast my eyes deep down on my little godson, merely to hide their running over?--For I remembered that his father might perhaps this very day grow pale and cold before a suddenly arising mask of Death; I thought how the poor little one had only changed his bent posture in the womb with a freer one, to bend and cramp himself erelong more harshly in the strait arena of life; I thought of his inevitable follies, and errors, and sins; of these soiled steps to the Grecian Temple of our Perfection; I thought that one day his own fire of genius might reduce himself to ashes, as a man that is electrified can kill himself with his own lightning.... All the theological wishes, which, on the godson-billet printed over with them, I placed in his young bosom, were glowing written in mine.... But the white feathered-pink of my joy had then, as it always has, a bloody point within it,--I again, as it always is, went to nest, like a woodpecker, in a skull.... And as I am doing so even now, let the describing of the baptism be over for to-day, and proceed again to-morrow....
[FOURTEENTH LETTER-BOX.]
Oh, so it is ever! So does Fate set fire to the theatre of our little plays, and our bright-painted curtain of Futurity! So does the Serpent of Eternity wind round us and our joys, and crush, like the royal-snake, what it does not poison! Thou good Fixlein!--Ah! last night, I little thought that thou, mild soul, while I was writing beside thee, wert already journeying into the poisonous Earth-shadow of Death.
Last night, late as it was, he opened the lead box found in the old steeple-ball; a catalogue of those who had subscribed to the last repairing of the church was there; and he began to read it now; my presence and his occupations having prevented him before. O, how shall I tell that the record of his birth-year, which I had hidden in the new Ball, was waiting for him in the old one; that in the register of contributions he found his father's name, with the appendage, "given for his new-born son Egidius?"--
This stroke sunk deep into his bosom, even to the rending of it asunder; in this warm hour, full of paternal joy, after such fair days, after such fair employments, after dread of death so often survived, here, in the bright, smooth sea, which is rocking and bearing him along, starts snorting, from the bottomless abyss, the sea-monster Death; and the monster's throat yawns wide, and the silent sea rushes into it in whirlpools, and hurries him along with it.
But the patient man, quietly and slowly, and with a heart silent, though deadly cold, laid the leaves together; looked softly and firmly over the churchyard, where, in the moonshine, the grave of his father was to be distinguished; gazed timidly up to the sky, full of stars, which a white overarching laurel-tree screened from his sight;--and though he longed to be in bed, to settle there and sleep it off, yet he paused at the window to pray for his wife and child, in case this night were his last.
At this moment the steeple-clock struck twelve; but, from the breaking of a pin, the weights kept rolling down, and the clock-hammer struck without stopping,--and he heard with horror the chains and wheels rattling along; and he felt as if Death were hurling forth in a heap all the longer hours which he might yet have had to live,--and now, to his eyes, the churchyard began to quiver and heave, the moonlight flickered on the church-windows, and in the church there were lights flitting to and fro, and in the charnel-house was a motion and a tumult.
His heart fainted within him, and he threw himself into bed, and closed his eyes that he might not see;--but Imagination in the gloom now blew aloft the dust of the dead, and whirled it into giant shapes, and chased these hollow, fever-born masks alternately into lightning and shadow. Then at last from transparent thoughts grew colored visions, and he dreamed this dream. He was standing at the window looking out into the churchyard; and Death, in size as a scorpion, was creeping over it, and seeking for his bones. Death found some arm-bones and thigh-bones on the graves, and said, "They are my bones"; and he took a spine and the bone-legs, and stood with them, and the two arm-bones and clutched with them, and found on the grave of Fixlein's father a skull, and put it on. Then he lifted a scythe beside the little flower-garden, and cried: "Fixlein, where art thou? My finger is an icicle and no finger, and I will tap on thy heart with it." The Skeleton, thus piled together, now looked for him who was standing at the window, and powerless to stir from it; and carried in the one hand, instead of a sand-glass, the ever-striking steeple-clock, and held out the finger of ice, like a dagger, far into the air....
Then he saw his victim above at the window, and raised himself as high as the laurel-tree to stab straight into his bosom with the finger,--and stalked towards him. But as he came nearer, his pale bones grew redder, and vapors floated woolly round his haggard form. Flowers started up from the ground; and he stood transfigured and without the clamm of the grave, hovering above them, and the balm-breath from the flower-cups wafted him gently on;--and as he came nearer, the scythe and clock were gone, and in his bony breast he had a heart, and on his bony head red lips;--and nearer still, there gathered on him soft, transparent, rosebalm-dipped flesh, like the splendor of an Angel flying hither from the starry blue;--and close at hand, he was an Angel with shut snow-white eyelids....
The heart of my friend, quivering like a Harmonica-bell, now melted in bliss in his clear bosom;--and when the Angel opened its eyes, his were pressed together by the weight of celestial rapture, and his dream fled away.----