"'I am unable to explain it; I tell you what is about to happen, that is all that I can do. In a few minutes Flaminia will be present, and in seeing her you will believe me. For the rest,' added he, after a moment's pause, 'all is a mystery in this world, but the grand end of all is sufficient to enlighten our paths. Do you think that it would be more easy for me to tell you how it is that, notwithstanding we have never said anything to each other that could divulge the mutual state of our hearts, we have yet, in spite of our separation, lived by the same life and the same love? That you cannot believe me, I know, but only wait a little time, and you shall see.'
"In truth, Adolphus did not believe, although the evidently profound conviction of Albert shook his mind and caused in him an impression that he would gladly have shaken off, so contrary to reason did it seem to him. 'Let us make haste, the time presses,' said Albert. He then arranged in order, with rapidity and calm, several important affairs with which he was charged, relating to the principal commanderies of Germany; then, kneeling down, he offered up a short prayer; scarcely had he finished, than, rising up quickly, he seized the hand of his brother, and cried: 'Look! she is come.' Adolphus turned round, and saw Flaminia standing by the side of Albert. You who have lost some one who was dear to you, Frederick, you have remarked that, at the moment when the last sigh escapes and before the work of decay begins, the face is possessed of a calm beauty, supernatural and indefinable in its expression, that inspires an awed respect for that now lifeless form which just a moment before contained a soul. Such looked Flaminia; her figure, surrounded by a luminous atmosphere, had received from immortality an august expression. It was perfectly the form of Flaminia, such as Adolphus had known her, but it was no longer the creature that is imperfect, and subject to the attacks of time and life. It was the being imperishable who, coming forth victorious from her many trials, bore in her all the splendors of her glory. Her beauty was not that which charms by the uniformity, more or less complete, of its lineaments; no, it was the celestial beauty whose type is graven in ourselves; the beauty a single ray of which suffices to illuminate the face that hides a pure soul: this was the beauty sublime that enveloped her with its divine wings, and transfigured her face while changing its lineaments. Adolphus bent his knee before the vision. 'Had I not told you that she would come?' said Albert to his brother. 'Yes!' replied a harmonious voice, which issued from the then incorruptible lips of Flaminia. 'Yes! our love was too pure not to merit its recompense. God has permitted it; you waited for me, and I am come.' She bent slightly toward him to whom she at length was about to be united, and, surrounding him with her arms, she drew his face closer to her own, that gleamed with a celestial joy. Behind them, and contemplating them, stood Death, not under the form of fleshless skeleton, but as a radiant angel who changes bitterness into joy, and tears into smiles. His beautiful face bore the impress of grave majesty rather than of severity, softened by that infinite mercy which gives hope to repentance. The mercy and goodness of the Master who sends him shone in his look, which is so sweet to the contemplation of the soul wearied by the painful journey of life. The hour was come! At the moment when Flaminia, in a manner, took possession of Albert, the angel of Death drew near him, and while with one hand he touched his shoulder, with the other he pointed toward heaven. Albert's body fell back into the arm-chair, which, living, he had just occupied; and when Adolphus, drawn forward by an instinctive motion, ran to support him, he saw by the side of Flaminia the form of his brother, that shone forth surrounded by the same glory and the same joy. He passed the rest of the night by the side of his brother's body, and wept, though not over him whom he had just seen pass away to heaven. The man whom faith sustains with its sweet consolation weeps not the loss of his friend, but his absence. He wept because every separation, even the shortest, is a grief, and his tears were dried by the certainty that Albert was in the possession of a happiness that could neither diminish nor fade, and which he hoped one day to share with him."
The count here left off his story. The baron had listened to him with a sustained attention, and although he preserved his imperturbable calm, yet the recital had so much moved him, that he remained silent; and the count, after waiting a few minutes, continued: "Such is the history of my great-uncle Albert, as it has been transmitted to us by him who was the witness. Do you find it, then, surprising that the faith should be hereditary in a family where such facts happen? What can you reply to this history?"
"Nothing," answered the baron, "except that, to draw the consolations which it contains, one must have the faith; and besides, in supposing that God, if he exists, interferes with the affairs of this world, he is unjust, since he refuses to me the consolation that he gives to others."
"Have you ever asked him for it?" answered the count with a friendly severity. "Have you not, on the contrary, repulsed by a determined obstinacy the solicitations of divine Providence? Pardon me, my friend, if I awaken a painful recollection for you, but have you not even resisted the awful voice of Death?"
"What is the good of my asking?" replied the baron, eluding the second part of his friend's demand. "If faith be necessary, God owes it to me without asking him."
"Food is also necessary," answered the count, "and does man find it ready for him, unless he works? No, no, my friend; labor and prayer, such is the destiny of man upon the earth. His material life is bought by the sweat of his brow, as his spiritual life is the price of his efforts. 'Seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you,' has said the divine Master. Ah! if you had ever knelt before that God whom you blaspheme; if you had with perseverance exposed to him your doubts, your miseries, you would have known that he never leaves without help the soul that sincerely implores him; you would have known that he never hides himself from him who seeks him with a humble and contrite spirit and a pure heart. Pray, my dear Frederick, pray, I tell you, and you will feel that he is near to you; that his arms are open to receive you, and his hands ready to shed on you all the sweet consolations and hopes with which they are filled!"
It was now late; the two friends then separated, and, without doubt, the count that night in his prayers demanded with more than usual fervor the conversion of the man he so warmly loved. Ordinarily, on gaining his room, the baron was accustomed to install himself as comfortably as possible in an immense old leathern arm-chair, whose age dated back for two or three centuries, which he placed in front of the wood fire that burnt noisily on the hearth; and after having again lit his pipe, that inseparable friend, he used to take a book, and, stretching out his feet upon the copper fire-dogs, wait until he felt sleepy, which invariably occurred as soon as there remained no more tobacco in the sculptured wooden bowl of his pipe.