Never perhaps was the heart of man absorbed for so many long hours in
one strange and overwhelming speculation. Suspended between death and
love, I was unable to divine, as I gazed on the angel form that lay
sleeping before me, whether this night in its mystery would bring-forth
endless anguish, or whether undying love would come in the morning,
with returning life and joy. In the convulsive movements of her
troubled sleep she had thrown the sheet off one of her shoulders upon
which fell the long luxuriant curls of her lustrous hair. The neck had
yielded to the weight of the head, which was thrown back on the pillow,
and slightly inclined towards the left shoulder; one of the arms was
disengaged from the cover-lid and was placed beneath the head, showing
the ivory whiteness of the elbow, which stood out on the coarse brown
linen in which the peasant women had dressed her. On one of the fingers
of the hand, which was half concealed in the masses of dark hair, there
was a small gold ring with a sparkling ruby, on which the rays of the
lamp flashed. The girls had lain down on the floor without undressing,
and their mother had fallen asleep with her hands folded on the back of
a wooden chair. As soon as the cock crowed in the yard, they got up,
and taking their wooden shoes in their hands, noiselessly descended the
ladder to go to work. I remained alone.
The first gleams of dawn came through the closed shutter in almost
imperceptible streaks of light. I opened the window in the hope that
the balmy morning air from the lake and mountains, which awakened all
Nature, would have the same effect on one whom I would willingly have
revived at the cost of my own life. The chill air rushed into the room,
and extinguished the expiring lamp. Nothing stirred on the bed. I heard
the poor women below joining in common prayer, before commencing their
day's labor. The thought of praying likewise entered my heart. I felt,
as all do who have exhausted the whole strength of their soul, the wish
to superadd the force of some mysterious and preterhuman power to the
impotent tension of ardent desires. I knelt on the floor, with my hands
clasped on the edge of the bed, and my eyes riveted on the face of the
sleeper. I wept, and prayed long and fervently; the tears chased each
other down my face and hid from my blinded eyes the features of the one
whose recovery I so ardently desired. My whole heart and soul were so
absorbed in one feeling and one sensation, that I might have remained
hours in the same attitude without being aware of the lapse of time, or
the pain of kneeling on the stone floor; when suddenly, while I was
unconsciously wiping away my tears, I felt a hand touch mine, part the
hair from my face, and gently rest upon my head, as if to bless me.
I looked up with a cry of delight; I saw her unclosed eyes, her smiling
lips, her hand extended towards mine, and heard these words: "O God! I
thank thee. I have now a brother!"