“So much for playing Providence! You were right, and I _was_ rash to try
it. Goethe could make his Satan as he liked; but Fate was stronger than
I, and so comes ignominious failure. Margaret dies, and Faust suffers,
but Mephistopheles cannot go with him on his new wanderings. Still, it
holds—it holds even to the last! My end comes too soon; yet it is true.
In loving the angel I lose the soul I had nearly won; the roses turn to
flakes of fire, and the poor devil is left lamenting.”
Olivia thought him wandering, and listened in alarm; for his thoughts
seemed blown to and fro, like leaves in a fitful gust, and she had no
clew to them. Presently, he broke out again, still haunted by the real
tragedy in which he had borne a part; still following Canaris, whose
freedom was like the thought of water to parched Tantalus.
“He will do it! he will do it! When or how, who shall say? but, soon or
late, she will save him, since he believes in such salvation. Would that
I did!”
Perhaps the despairing wish was the seed of a future hope, which might
blossom into belief. Olivia trusted so, and tried to murmur some
comfortable, though vague, assurance of a love and pity greater even
than hers. He did not hear her; for his eyes were fixed, with an
expression of agonized yearning, upon the sky, serene and beautiful, but
infinitely distant, inexorably dumb; and, when he spoke, his words had
in them both his punishment and her own,—
“Life before was Purgatory, now it is Hell; because I loved her, and _I_
have no hope to follow and find her again.”
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