[63] The Wild Hunter, Wilde Jäger, is a popular spectre of Germany.—Ed.
FOURTEENTH LETTER-BOX.
O, so is it ever! So does Fate set fire to the theatre of our little plays, and our bright-painted curtain of Futurity! So does the Serpent of Eternity wind round us and our joys, and crush, like the royal-snake, what it does not poison! Thou good Fixlein!—Ah! last night, I little thought that thou, mild soul, while I was writing beside thee, wert already journeying into the poisonous Earth-shadow of Death.
Last night, late as it was, he opened the lead box found in the old steeple-ball; a catalogue of those who had subscribed to the last repairing of the church was there; and he began to read it now; my presence and his occupations having prevented him before. O, how shall I tell that the record of his birth-year, which I had hidden in the new Ball, was waiting for him in the old one? that in the register of contributions he found his father's name, with the appendage, "given for his new-born son Egidius"?—
This stroke sank deep into his bosom, even to the rending of it asunder: in this warm hour, full of paternal joy, after such fair days, after such fair employments, after dread of death so often survived, here, in the bright smooth sea, which is rocking and bearing him along, starts snorting, from the bottomless abyss, the sea-monster Death; and the monster's throat yawns wide, and the silent sea rushes into it in whirlpools, and hurries him along with it.
But the patient man, quietly and slowly, and with a heart silent, though deadly cold, laid the leaves together;—looked softly and firmly over the churchyard, where, in the moonshine, the grave of his father was to be distinguished;—gazed timidly up to the sky, full of stars, which a white overarching laurel-tree half screened from his sight;—and though he longed to be in bed, to settle there and sleep it off, yet he paused at the window to pray for his wife and child, in case this night were his last.
At this moment the steeple-clock struck twelve; but from the breaking of a pin, the weights kept rolling down, and the clock-hammer struck without stopping,—and he heard with horror the chains and wheels rattling along; and he felt as if Death were hurling forth in a heap all the longer hours which he might yet have had to live,—and now to his eyes, the churchyard began to quiver and heave, the moonlight flickered on the church-windows, and in the church there were lights flitting to and fro, and in the charnel-house there was a motion and a tumult.
His heart fainted within him, and he threw himself into bed, and closed his eyes that he might not see;—but Imagination in the gloom now blew aloft the dust of the dead, and whirled it into giant shapes, and chased these hollow fever-born masks alternately into lightning and shadow. Then at last from transparent thoughts grew coloured visions, and he dreamed this dream: He was standing at the window looking out into the churchyard; and Death, in size as a scorpion, was creeping over it, and seeking for his bones. Death found some arm-bones and thigh-bones on the graves, and said: "They are my bones;" and he took a spine and the bone-legs, and stood with them, and the two arm-bones and clutched with them, and found on the grave of Fixlein's father a skull, and put it on. Then he lifted a scythe beside the little flower-garden, and cried: "Fixlein, where art thou? My finger is an icicle and no finger, and I will tap on thy heart with it." The skeleton, thus piled together, now looked for him who was standing at the window, and powerless to stir from it; and carried in the one hand, instead of a sandglass, the ever-striking steeple-clock, and held out the finger of ice, like a dagger, far into the air....
Then he saw his victim above at the window, and raised himself as high as the laurel-tree to stab straight into his bosom with the finger,—and stalked towards him. But as he came nearer, his pale bones grew redder, and vapours floated woolly round his haggard form. Flowers started up from the ground; and he stood transfigured and without the clam of the grave, hovering above them, and the balm-breath from the flower-cups wafted him gently on;—and as he came nearer, the scythe and cloak were gone, and in his bony breast he had a heart, and on his bony head red lips;—and nearer still, there gathered on him soft, transparent, rosebalm-dipt flesh, like the splendour of an Angel flying hither from the starry blue;—and close at hand, he was an Angel with shut snow-white eyelids....
The heart of my friend, quivering like a Harmonica-bell, now melted in bliss in his clear bosom;—and when the Angel opened its eyes, his were pressed together by the weight of celestial rapture, and his dream fled away.——