At our departure he presented all of us with handsome gifts. To me he gave the cross of my order, more beautifully and artfully worked and enamelled than I had ever seen it before. It was hung upon a large brilliant, by which also it was fastened to the chain: this he gave me, he said, "as the noblest stone in the cabinet of a collector."
My sister, with her husband, went to their estates, the rest of us to our abodes; appearing to ourselves, so far as outward circumstances were concerned, to have returned to quite an every-day existence. We had been, as it were, dropped from a palace of the fairies down upon the common earth, and were again obliged to help ourselves as we best could.
The singular experiences which this new circle had afforded left a fine impression on my mind. This, however, did not long continue in its first vivacity: though my uncle tried to nourish and renew it by sending me certain of his best and most pleasing works of art; changing them, from time to time, with others which I had not seen.
I had been so much accustomed to be busied with myself, in regulating the concerns of my heart and temper, and conversing on these matters with persons of a like mind, that I could not long study any work of art attentively without being turned by it back upon myself. I was used to look at a picture or copper-plate merely as at the letters of a book. Fine printing pleases well, but who would read a book for the beauty of the printing? In like manner I required of each pictorial form that it should tell me something, should instruct, affect, improve me; and, after all my uncle's letters to expound his works of art, say what he would, I continued in my former humor.
Yet not only my peculiar disposition, but external incidents and changes in our family, still farther drew me back from contemplations of that nature; nay, for some time even from myself. I had to suffer and to do more than my slender strength seemed fit for.
My maiden sister had, till now, been as a right arm to me. Healthy, strong, unspeakably good-natured, she had managed all the housekeeping; I myself being busied with the personal nursing of our aged father. She was seized with a catarrh, which changed to a disorder of the lungs: in three weeks she was lying in her coffin. Her death inflicted wounds on me, the scars of which I am not yet willing to examine.
I was lying sick before they buried her: the old ailment in my breast appeared to be awakening; I coughed with violence, and was so hoarse I could not speak beyond a whisper.
My married sister, out of fright and grief, was brought to bed before her time. Our old father thought he was about to lose at once his children and the hope of their posterity; his natural tears increased my sorrow: I prayed to God that he would give me back a sufferable state of health. I asked him but to spare my life till my father should die. I recovered: I was what I reckoned well, being able to discharge my duties, though with pain.
My sister was again with child. Many cares, which in such cases are committed to the mother, in the present instance fell to me. She was not altogether happy with her husband; this was to be hidden from our father: I was often made judge of their disputes, in which I could decide with the greater safety, as my brother trusted in me; and the two were really worthy persons, only each of them, instead of humoring, endeavored to convince, the other, and, out of eagerness to live in constant harmony, never could agree. I now learned to mingle seriously in worldly matters, and to practise what of old I had but sung.
My sister bore a son: the frailty of my father did not hinder him from travelling to her. The sight of the child exceedingly enlivened and cheered him: at the christening, contrary to his custom, he seemed as if inspired; nay, I might say like a Genius with two faces. With the one, he looked joyfully forward to those regions which he soon hoped to enter; with the other, to the new, hopeful, earthly life which had arisen in the boy descended from him. On our journey home he never wearied talking to me of the child, its form, its health, and his wish that the gifts of this new denizen of earth might be rightly cultivated. His reflections on the subject lasted when we had arrived at home: it was not till some days afterwards that I observed a kind of fever in him, which displayed itself, without shivering, in a sort of languid heat commencing after dinner. He did not yield, however: he went out as usual in the mornings, faithfully attending to the duties of his office, till at last continuous serious symptoms kept him within doors.