Ah, it is long ago that I asked, "Will this book close with a
tear?"--Victor came back at eight o'clock last night with two great
immovable tears on the brink of his eyelid, and said: "We will just
hasten back somewhat rapidly to the island. Clotilda herself begs us to
do so, and to take another time for seeing her."--"A misfortune," I have
dreamed, "is just now rearing itself large and high like a sea-serpent,
and flinging itself upon human hearts, as that does upon ships, and
crushing them under." She had grown every minute more anxious and
oppressed, as one becomes in a damp spot over which the lightning darts
and hisses. What else did this imply, than that his Lordship had
disclosed to his faithful friend things which we feared this night to
experience? And we could none of us any longer conceal from ourselves
the fear that his weary spirit meant perhaps, like Lycurgus, to stamp
the seal of his corpse upon his assurance that we were January's sons,
and, moreover, on our oath to be good, and on that of the Prince to
obey my brothers, till he should return.
"Weep not so sorely, Victor," said I; "it is not, after all, yet
certain." He quietly dried his eyes, and merely said: "We will, then,
now go to the island,--it is already nine o'clock."
We went along, far, far aside from the spotted weeping-birch, which
threw its torn-off leaves toward the wasted remains of the great man.
Victor could not look that way for sorrow; but I looked with a chill
trembling where it swayed in the serene night-heavens. Not until after
some days, when Victor had become happier; had the dust of Emanuel
contracted itself again, as it were, into a pale form, and erected
itself out on the burial-green, and opened wide its arms for its old
darling,--and Victor moaned and pined, and sought vainly to press the
white shadow to his dying breast.
He smiled sadly, as he sought to divert us and himself by the words,
"Foolish man ducks like a bird, if calamity only approaches him from
afar off." His tears made him a blind man, and Flamin and I were his
guides; nevertheless he greeted in his pain a night-express.
I have said nothing (for I cannot) of the _garden of termination_, of
the withered scene of faded, leafless days of joy.
Over the stubble and over the chrysalides of night-butterflies (the
jugglers of future spring-nights), and over the steadfast, subterranean
winter sleep, swept the solitary night-winds.--Ah, man might well
think, "Breezes, come ye not hither over graves, over precious,
precious graves?--"
I said, "How slender is the pale-green interval of earth between human
bodies and human skeletons!"--Victor said, "Ah, Nature has so much
repose, and why has our heart so little?"
It was near midnight. The heavens glittered nearer to the earth; the
_Swan_, the _Lyre_, _Hercules_,[211] beamed from where they had gone
down through another blue of heaven. Great heaven,--said every
heart,--dost thou belong to the human spirit, dost thou one day receive
it, or art thou only like the ceiling-picture of a minster, which hides
the limiting walls, and opens out with colors the prospect of a heaven
which does not exist?--Ah, every Present makes our soul so small, and
only a Future makes it so great.
Victor was beside himself, and said again: "Repose! neither joy nor
sorrow can give thee, but only hope. Why is not all at rest within us,
as around us?"
At that moment the knell of a shot, repeated by all the echoing woods,
rang through the silent night,--and the Isle of Union swam up in the
night-blue, and its white temple hung over it,--and beside the
mourning-thicket, which grew up over the mouldering remains of a
youthful heart, nine slender flames, which ran up on the nine
crape-veils, shot up toward heaven, as if they were _feux de joie_ to a
festival of _peace_.
Pale, hurrying, sighing, and silent, we touched the first shore of the
island. The water was sucked up dry by the ground. The black Eastern
gate had flung itself wide open, and leaned and hid its white painted
sun against the trees. Many funeral torches, on white lustres, attached
themselves to the Eastern gate, went in through the long green avenue,
flickered over ruins, sphinxes, and marble torsos, and ended darkly in
the mourning-thicket.
Fluttering music of Æolian harps was permeated at the entrance by long
tones. Under the Eastern gateway the blind one rested quietly and
played joyously on his flute,--just as a dove flies into the thunder.
He fell joyfully on the neck of his Victor, and said: "It is good that
thou comest; a tall, still man has lain a quarter of an hour on my
heart, and wept into my hand, and given me a leaf for thee."
Victor snatched the leaf; it read: "You have all sworn to fulfil my
requests until such time as you hear my voice again; but uncover not
the black marble."--His Lordship had given it to the blind son.
Victor cried: "O father! O father! I could not then make thee any
requital!" and sank upon the breast of the son. He was about to tear
himself away again, but the blind youth hung around him, and smiled
with glad unconsciousness into the night.--We hastened into the
mourning-thicket,--and, by the dim light of the two funeral torches
that were burning down therein, we saw that a second grave had been
scooped out there, the fresh earth of which lay near by,--that a black
marble covered the hollow, and that the black dress of his Lordship
peeped out a little way from the opening, and that in there he had
killed himself.--And on his black marble stood, as upon the marble of
his beloved, an ashy-pale heart, and below the heart stood in white
letters the words:
"IT IS AT REST."