It was a sealed paper. When I opened it, out fell the gold chain on which she used to wear around her neck the locket containing her mother's picture.
III.
Several weeks have passed since I wrote the last lines. When I laid the sheet in the portfolio--a music portfolio Frau Luise had left, and in which I usually kept some of the airs from Glück's operas arranged for the piano--I was startled by the bulk of the MS., and asked myself: "Will any one have patience to read all this? And why should you add to it?"
Ah, if you were a professional author, and, instead of a truthful narrative of the life of the woman so dear to you, could transform her fate into a genuine romance, skillfully blending fact and fiction, or if you at least possessed the gift of describing these experiences in hues so fresh and vivid that no one could help finding her as charming as she is to you! But you are only a clumsy, simple chronicler of events, and the man for whom you intend these records will smile at the labor improbus you have bestowed on so superfluous a work and at your innocent idea that you were thereby doing him a favor.
Well, I then thought, even if you are only pleasing yourself by again conjuring up your old joys and sorrows, what harm is there in that? He can let the avalanche of MS. you hurl into his house roll quietly aside with the others the mail brings to importune him. Who compels him to do more than cast a compassionate glance at it?
But, if he forgives the lonely man his volubility, and eats through this biographical mountain, as Klas Avenstak ate through the hill of pancakes, he must expect that I shall not defraud him of the end, especially as the early close the gods decreed to Luise's life was spiced with much that was sweet, to compensate for many bitter things in her previous destiny.
So I will summon courage to again take up my pen, endeavoring, however, to be as brief as possible, especially in the incidents which concern my insignificant self.
Therefore I will say nothing of the state of mind in which I spent the first few days after my friend's secret departure. Fortunately I had a number of disagreeable affairs on my hands, was forced to attend to the questions, complaints, business, and reproaches of the deserted company of actors, undertake the distribution of the money and provide for the sale of the fundus, which latter affair was settled more quickly and profitably than I had feared. Frau Luise's destination was as little known as the distant shore to which the great artist had shaped his course. So I took a sorrowful leave of my colleagues, who, with the exception of the three oldest members, Laban, Gottlieb Schönicke, and the good prompter, who grieved sincerely for the vanished woman, seemed to be tolerably consoled by the considerable sum that fell to the share of each, and, as I was far too sad at heart and dull of brain to form any sensible plan for the future, I sent my trunk to my native town, strapped my knapsack on my back, and wandered through Pomerania and the Mark to my old home. I believe that during those eight or ten days I did not have one sensible thought, for the Orpheus aria constantly rang in my ears:
"Alas, I have lost her,
All my happiness is o'er!"
It will be considered perfectly natural that the news of my return excited no special rejoicing in the small provincial town, and no one felt impelled to kill a fatted calf to do honor to the Prodigal Son. At first I kept out of the way as much as possible, since wherever I appeared I was stared at as though I were some wild animal just escaped from a menagerie, or, still worse, shunned with evident fear of contagion, being regarded as a dangerous sinner who, lured by the lust of the world and the flesh, had exchanged the preacher's calling for a dissipated vagabond life among jugglers and strollers.