He had watched that light of life, until its existence was almost identified with his own. He had seen it flicker--had viewed it reillumed--blaze with increased brilliancy--fade--glimmer--and fade. Now! where was it?
A bitter cry escaped! his limbs trembled convulsively, and could no longer support him.
He fell senseless beside his brother.
Chapter XI
The Student
"What is my being? thou hast ceased to be."
Carl Obers was as enthusiastic a being as ever Germany sent forth. Brought up in a lone recess in the Hartz mountains, with neither superiors nor equals to commune with, he first entered the miniature world, as a student at Heidelberg.
His education had been miserably neglected. He had read much; but his reading had been without order and without system.
The deepest metaphysics, and the wildest romances had been devoured in succession; until the young man hardly knew which was the real, or which was the visionary world:--the one he actually lived in, or the one he was always brooding over:--where souls are bound together by mysterious and hidden links, and where men sell themselves to Satan;--the penalty merely being:--to walk through life, and throw no shadow.
Enrolled amongst a select corps of brüschen, warm and true; his ear was caught by the imposing jargon of patriotism; and his imagination dwelt on those high sounding words, "the rights of man;"--until he became the staunch advocate and unflinching votary of a state of things, which, for aught we know, may exist in one of the planets, but which never can, and which never will exist on this earth of ours.