Is it not hard, you father of many children, to lose one of them? Do you not grudge Death his prize? But this man had but the one; the love between them was such a love as one meets perhaps once in a life-time. The child’s life had been a mourning to him, the father’s a burden, ever since they had parted.
I felt it strange that I should be trying to comfort him, and yet it was so; it was his brow that leaned on my shoulder; it was he who was faint with anguish, so that he could scarce see or speak—his hand that was cold and nerveless. It was I who said:
“Do not despair, I hope still.”
“If he is dying,” said Eugen, “he shall die in my arms.”
With which, as if the idea were a dreary kind of comfort, he started up, folded Sigmund in a shawl, and lifted him out of bed, infolding him in his arms, and pillowing his head upon his breast.
It was a terrible moment, yet, as I clung to his arm, and with him looked into our darling’s face, I felt that von Francius’ words, spoken long ago to my sister, contained a deep truth. This joy, so like a sorrow—would I have parted with it? A thousand times, no!
Whether the motion and movement roused him, or whether that were the crisis of some change, I knew not. Sigmund’s eyes opened. He bent them upon the face above him, and after a pause of reflection, said, in a voice whose utter satisfaction passed anything I had ever heard: “My own father!” released a pair of little wasted arms from his covering, and clasped them round Eugen’s neck, putting his face close to his, and kissing him as if no number of kisses could ever satisfy him.
Upon this scene, as Eugen stood in the middle of the room, his head bent down, a smile upon his face which no ultimate griefs could for the moment quench, there entered the countess.
Her greeting after six years of absence, separation, belief in his dishonesty, was a strange one. She came quickly forward, laid her hand on his arm, and said:
“Eugen, it is dreadfully infectious! Don’t kiss the child in that way, or you will take the fever and be laid up too.”