It was now that grief and the after effects of the excitement of weeks, began to tell severely upon my poor friend. He was in such utter despair that I at first feared for his reason; not because of his frantic outbursts, or delirious grief, but from a certain suppressed wildness that tried to smile while the teeth chattered, a quite aimless way now of walking, now standing still; speaking to himself and laughing loud, while the tears, of which he seemed unconscious, rolled down his cheeks. It was the first time that I had ever seen the elemental throes of a true and deep passion, and I was so shocked that I forgot all besides, and at all events never presumed to attempt consoling the poor fellow by commonplaces.
I remained with him the whole day and a good part of the night. It was only about midnight, when I saw that he was quite exhausted (he had not closed his eyes the previous night), that I yielded to his entreaties, and consented to leave him alone, after exacting a solemn promise from his landlady to listen how he went on, for that he was very ill. I knew he had no weapons of any kind, and I hoped that sleep would do him some good.
The next morning, however, I could not rest, reproached myself for having left him, and anxiously hurried to his lodgings. But there he was no longer to be found. His landlady gave me a note of two lines, in which he bade me farewell for the present. He could not rest till he had found her, but he would do nothing rash, for he was not unmindful of his other duties, and so I might confidently expect his return.
He had packed his knapsack, and taken his walking-stick with him. And the landlady told me he seemed to have had two or three hours sleep, for that his eyes looked clearer.
This was but meagre information, but I had to content myself with it. And moreover I was about to accompany my parents on a tour which kept me absent for several weeks. To the letters I wrote--for I was always thinking of him--no answers ever came, so on my return when my first walk led me to his lodgings, I was fully prepared to find an empty nest. I was the more rejoiced, therefore, when he himself opened the door, and I met a sad face, it is true, but free from the morbidly strained expression which had so much pained me.
That he had failed to meet with any traces of the lost one I guessed rather than actually heard from him. A melancholy indifference seemed to pervade him; he set about whatever was proposed, as one who took no part in it, whether for or against,--and what to me was most striking of all, his passion for music seemed completely over. He never sang a single note, never alluded to any composition, and would willingly have given up his music-lessons, had he been able to live without them. The mainspring of his nature seemed hopelessly broken, something had got wrong which there was no repairing.
In the following spring, when we both went to the University, I used to see him almost daily. He regularly attended law lectures, and had become member of a society in which his admirable fencing and his now proverbial taciturnity rendered him prominent, and I was hoping that the incident which had so deeply affected him would after all leave no bad results in his healthy nature, when something occurred that tore open every wound anew.
I will for the sake of brevity relate the sad tale consecutively, and not as I learned it from him, bit by bit, and at long intervals.
It was the Christmas of 1847. He had resolved upon spending the holidays--not as usual, in paying a visit to his parents, but in the strenuous study of his law-books, a long indisposition having thrown him back considerably. I had in vain attempted to coax him to come to us for this Christmas Eve. Indeed as a rule he avoided parties, and if he ever did appear at a social gathering, he usually made an unfavourable impression, especially on ladies, because of his silence and his obstinate refusal to sing.