The sisters departed silently, and full of high remembrance and satisfaction. Schoppe found him still kneeling, but looking away enraptured, like a storm-sick mariner on tropical seas, who, after long sleep, opens his eyes on a still, rosy-red evening, just before the going down of the blazing sun; and the dashing wake travels on, like a bed of roses and flames, into the sun, and the flashing cloud flies asunder in mute fire-balls, and the distant ships float high in the evening-red, and swim far away over the waves. So was it with the youth.
"I have my peace now, good Schoppe," he said, softly, "and now I will sleep in quiet." Transfigured, but pale, he rose, laid himself on the bed, and in a few minutes a heart wearied with so long a wading in the hot fever-sands sank down on the fresh, green oasis of slumber.
[TWENTY-FIFTH JUBILEE.]
The Dream.—The Journey.
99. CYCLE.
It was late when the Knight of the Fleece arrived. Schoppe showed him joyfully the sleeping countenance, whose rose-buds seemed to burst as in a moist, warm night. The Knight manifested great exhilaration at this, and still more did Doctor Sphex, who looked in quite late. The latter found the pulse not only full, but even slow, and on the way to a still greater repose. He appealed, at the same time, to Chaudeson, and several other professional examples, that great mental sufferings had often been relieved and removed very successfully by the internal opium of lethargy.
At last Schoppe acquainted the father with Idoine's whole method of cure. Gaspard haughtily replied, "You still, however, knew my opinion, Mr. Librarian?" "Certainly, but my own too," said, with bitterness, the disturbed Schoppe. The Knight, however, entered no further into anything,—quite after his manner of never giving the least light upon his real self, however much it might gain thereby,—but gave the friend a very cold signal of retreat.
The next morning, Schoppe found his beloved still in the soul's cradle of sleep. How he budded and bloomed! How slowly, yet strongly, like a freeman's, moved the breath in his unchained breast! Meanwhile, Gaspard's packed carriage, which was to trundle the youth away to Italy, stopped already, at this early hour, before the door, with its snorting, pawing horses, and the Knight expected every minute the waking up and the—jumping in.
The physician came also, praised crisis and pulse, added that the cream-o'-tartar (which he had prescribed among the rest) was the cream of life, and said, right to the father's face, when the latter was about to wake the youth for starting, he had never yet, in all his praxis, known any one who had so little acquaintance with critical points as he; any waker would be in this case a murderer, and, as physician, he most expressly forbade it.