When she raised her head, a radiant expression of happiness rested on her features; her lips were crimson, her eyes shone lustrously, and the death-roses on her cheeks burned brightly. Death had, perhaps, been touched by the supreme happiness of these two beings, who had been wandering under a thunder-cloud of sorrow for long years, and who now fondly believed that they had at last found a refuge from the storms of life, and a balsam for all pain. Death, who comes from God, had, perhaps, been moved with divine pity, and had lain concealed behind these flushed cheeks and crimson lips, permitting joy to illumine Marie’s countenance with a last golden ray of the setting sun, and to give her for a brief moment the appearance of health and strength.
Philip, at least, did not see the grim messenger; he was deceived by these death-roses, by this ray of sunshine. He had expected to find Marie in a much worse condition. Gedicke’s letter had carried the conviction to his heart that he would find her in a hopeless, in a dying condition, and that nothing buoyed her up, and withheld her from the clutches of the grave, but her longing to see him once more. Now she stood before him with rosy cheeks, with a bright smile on her lips, and with eyes that sparkled with joy.
“Marie, my jewel, my longed-for happiness, how lovely, how beautiful you are! Why speak of illness and of pale cheeks! I see nothing of all this; I see you healthy, happy, and beautiful—as beautiful as when I often saw you in my dreams in the long nights of the past—as beautiful as I have ever conceived you to be when standing before the Madonnas of Raphael and Giulio Romano in Rome and Florence. ‘Gaze at me with your dark eyes,’ I said to them. ‘You would ask me whether I admire and adore you. True, you are lovely, but I know a Marie who is lovelier and purer than you all! I know a Marie whose eyes are radiant with the light of womanhood, purity, and virtue. She is not so coquettish as you are, Maria della Ledia; her eyes are not so dreamy as yours, Maria di Fuligno. But they are resplendent with holy love, and noble thoughts dwell on her chaste brow!’ And now I have thee, and now will I hold thee, my Marie, and nothing can separate us more!”
“No,” she said, thoughtfully, “nothing henceforth can now separate us but death!”
“Death has nothing to do with us, my darling. We shall live, and live a joyous, happy life!”
“Yes, live, live!” she cried, in such longing, passionate tones, and with so sad an expression of countenance, that Moritz’s heart quaked. It seemed to him as though a string had broken on the harp on which she had just begun to play the joyous song of life and of love, and at this moment he saw grim death peering forth from behind the roses on her cheeks, and the smile on her crimson lips.
“Come, my darling, let us be seated. There is your throne, and here at your feet lies he who adores you, looking up at his Madonna, at his Marie, with ecstacy.”
He bore her tenderly to the arm-chair, and then seated himself at her feet. He looked up at her with an expression of deep devotion, his folded hands resting on her lap. She bowed down over him and stroked with her pale little hand his black, curly hair, and the broad forehead she had once seen so gloomy and clouded, and which was now as clear and serene as the heaven in her own breast.
“I have thee at last once more, thou star of my life! When I regard thee, I feel that life is, indeed, beautiful, and that one hour of bliss is not too dearly purchased with long years of suffering and want. We paid dearly, Philip, but now we have the longed-for happiness. We have it and will hold it fast; nothing on earth shall tear it from us?”
“No, nothing on earth, my beloved! Like Odysseus, I have now returned from my wanderings through life, and here I lie at the feet of my Penelopeia; like him, I have driven off the suitors who aspired to the favor of my fair one. Was it not a suitor, who slipped out at the door when I entered?”