Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces Part 37

So that her friend could not but dwell all this evening with feelings of painful fondness upon her memory--the one unclouded star which beamed on him from the overcast heaven of his bygone days. It was deep in the gloaming now, a cooler air was stirring. A storm had spent its force in other regions, and there remained only some broken, lurid clouds, piled in the sky like glowing, half-burned firebrands. He betook himself, for a last time, to the place where death had planted the red carnation, with its little buds snapped so untimely from its stem. But within his soul, as without him, the air breathed less sultrily now, and fresher; tears had blunted the sharp edge of the first bitterness of his sorrow. He felt, with far more of gentleness, that the earth is only our CARPENTER'S YARD, not our BUILDING-GROUND.

In the East, where the stars were rising, a long blue streak shone above the sunken thunder-clouds. The moon (light-magnet of the sky) was lying, like a fount of light, upon the foil of a cleft cloud, and the wide vaporous veil was melting motionlessly away.

When Firmian, approaching the beloved grave, raised up his downcast head, he saw a dark form resting there. He stopped short, and gazed more piercingly. The form was a woman's. Her face, frozen into the ice of death, was fixed on him. As he drew nearer, he saw his dearest Nathalie leaning overpowered against the painted railing of the grave.

The autumnal breath of death had tinted her lips and cheeks with white; her wide eyes were sightless, and nothing but the tear-drops which hung on her lashes gave proof that she was in life, and had taken him for the apparition of which she had heard so much. In the excess of her romantic sorrow at his grave she had longed, in the strength and loneliness of her heart, that his spirit might appear to her; and when she saw him approaching, she thought Heaven had granted her prayer. And then the iron hand of chill terror turned this red rose to a white one.

But ah, her friend was the more wretched of the two. His tender, uns.h.i.+elded heart was crushed motionless between the impact of two worlds which rushed cras.h.i.+ng together. In tones of utter distress he cried out, "Nathalie! Nathalie!" Her lips quivered spasmodically, and a breath of life gave back a shade of brightness to her glance; but the spirit was still there before her, and she closed her eyes again, and said, with a shudder, "Oh G.o.d!" It was in vain that his voice called her back to life; when she looked up at the apparition her heart failed her again, and she could only cry "Oh G.o.d!" Firmian seizing her hand, cried, "Angel of heaven, I am not dead! only look at me! Nathalie, don't you know me? Oh! merciful G.o.d, don't punish me so terribly, don't let me be the cause of her death!" At length she slowly lifted her heavy eyelids, and saw her old friend trembling beside her, with tears of anxiety and terror. His tears were happier, but more abundant, and he smiled sorrowfully upon her as she still kept her eyes open, and said, "Nathalie, I am still upon this earth, in very truth, and suffer as you do yourself; don't you see how I tremble on your account? Take my warm, living hand. Are you still afraid?" "No," she answered faintly; but she still looked at him in an awe-stricken fas.h.i.+on, as at a super-earthly being, and had not courage to ask for an explanation of the riddle. He helped her to rise (gently weeping), and said, "But, dear innocent one, come away from this place of sorrow, where so many tears have been shed already. For _your_ heart mine has no secrets now.

Ah! I can tell _you_ everything, and I _will_ tell you everything." He led her out, above the quiet dead, through the back gate of the churchyard. She leaned on his arm heavily and languidly, shuddering again often as they climbed the little height, and only the tears which joy, relief from terror, grief, and exhaustion combined, had brought to her eyes, fell like warm balsam upon her chilled and wounded heart.

When they reached the top of the height she sat down lo rest, and the black night-woods, railed round by white harvests, and cut across by the moon's silent sea of light, lay before them. Nature had drawn out the "pianissimo lute" organ-stop of midnight, and by Nathalie's side stood one of her beloved dead, new-risen from the grave. He told her now all about Leibgeber's entreaties; the short story of his mock-death; his residence with the Count; all the longings and tears of his long solitude; his firm determination rather to fly from her than to deceive or wound her beloved heart, either by speech or in writing; and the disclosures he had made to her friend's father. She sobbed at the account of his last moments and parting from Lenette, as if it had all been real. She thought on many things as she merely said, "Ah! it was only for other people's happiness that you sacrificed yourself. But you will be able to have done with all this deception _now_, and to make amends for it, will you not?" "I shall," he said, "to the very utmost of my power; and my heart and my conscience shall be free and clear once more. Have I not even kept the vow I made to _you_--that I should not see you again till after my death?" She smiled gently.

They both sunk into a dreamy and blissful silence. At last, seeing her lay a mourning-cloak b.u.t.terfly[115] (disabled by the night-dew) down upon her lap, the fact that she was in mourning herself struck him for the first time, and he hastily asked, "_You_ are not in mourning for any one, are you?" Alas! she had put it on for _him_. "Not _now_,"

Nathalie answered, and, looking at the b.u.t.terfly, she said pityingly, "a few _drops_ and a little _chilliness_ have benumbed the poor thing."

Her friend reflected how easily Fate might have punished _his_ temerity by benumbing the even more beautiful, black-attired creature by his side, who had, moreover, had her full share already of s.h.i.+vering in the night-frosts of life and the night-dew of tears. But he could not answer her for love and pain.

They kept silence now, reading each other's thoughts, lost, half in their hearts, half in the grandeur of night. The wide aether had absorbed all the clouds (only those of the sky, alas!); Luna bent down, with her saintly halo, like a glorified Madonna, from the tranquil blue, to greet her pale sister of the earth. The voice of the stream was heard, as it flowed on its course unseen, hidden by a light mist--like the stream of time, hidden from sight by the haze of countries and nations. Behind them the night-breeze had laid itself to rest upon a swelling, rus.h.i.+ng bed of corn, bestreaked with blue corn-flowers; and before them lay the reaped harvest of the world to come--precious stones (as it were) in their coffin-settings, cold and heavy in death.[116] The pious and humble ones (forming an ant.i.thesis to the sunflower and the mote in the sunbeam) turned as moon-flowers to the moon, and played as moonbeam-motes in her cool rays, feeling that there is nothing under the starry sky so great as hope.

Nathalie leant on Firmian's hand, that he might help her to rise, and said, "I feel quite able to go home now." He kept hold of her hand, but did not rise nor speak. He was gazing at the dry, p.r.i.c.kly stalk of the old rose-twig which she had given him. Unwittingly, and without feeling what he was doing, he pressed the thorns into his fingers. His laden bosom heaved with deeper, warmer sighs; burning tears stood in his eyes, and the moon's light trembled before them like a shower of falling light. A whole universe lay upon his soul and upon his tongue, and kept both motionless.

"Firmian," said Nathalie, "what would you have?" He bent his fixed eyes widely opened upon her gentle form, and pointed down to his grave in the valley. "My house down there," he answered, "which has been empty so long. For the bed on which we dream this dream of life is terribly hard."

He lost command of himself, for she wept so terribly--and her face, all heavenly kindness, was so near--and he burst forth, with the bitterest and strongest emotion, "Are not all my loved ones gone, and are not _you_ going too? Ah! why has torturing destiny laid the waxen image of an angel upon all our b.r.e.a.s.t.s,[117] and lowered us into the chill life?

Oh! the soft image melts away, and there is no angel. Yes, _you_ HAVE appeared to me, it is true, but you disappear, and time will crush to atoms your image on my heart, ay, and my heart with it. For when I have lost _you_, I _shall_ be alone in earnest. But, fare you well! I _shall_ actually die one day, and _then_ I shall appear to you; but not as I have done to-night. Ah! nowhere but in eternity, and then I shall say to you, 'Oh! Nathalie, I loved you there below with infinite, unending grief and sorrow; make amends to me _here_!'" She strove to answer, but her voice broke and failed her. She raised her great eyes to the starry sky, but they were full of tears. She tried to rise, but her friend held her, with his hand all thorns and blood, and said, "_Can_ you leave me, Nathalie?"

She arose here, sublime and grand, bent her head back, looking upward to the sky, rapidly swept away the tears from her eyes; her soaring soul found words, and, clasping her hands in prayer, she said, "Oh!

THOU who art all love, and lovest ALL, he has been lost to me, I have found him again; eternity is here on earth; make THOU him happy through me!" And her head sank down on his, tenderly and languidly, and she said,

"_We are going to be always_ TOGETHER."

"Oh G.o.d!" stammered Firmian; "Oh angel! you are going to be always _with_ me--in this world and the next!"

"For ever, Firmian!" said Nathalie, softly. And our friend's troubles were over and past.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Name of one of the author's other works.]

[Footnote 2: Other works of his.]

[Footnote 3: Second Book in the translation.]

[Footnote 4: The chapters in one of the author's books are called "Dog Post Days," for a reason therein explained.]

[Footnote 5: This means, in German, one who pays no fare. Puns which are not translatable must be "explained," or else the sentence left out.]

[Footnote 6: This is how all these pieces were really arranged in the first, unimproved edition; but I am sure Pauline won't be offended that, in the second edition (so strikingly improved) I have adverted more to the entire German empire, and arranged them very differently.]

[Footnote 7: I earnestly beg that section of the public the description of which is here levelled at the head of the shopkeeper-captain not to suppose it is meant for _them_; they must see that I am only joking, and my intention, of course is clear.]

[Footnote 8: The Koran says, the devils were compelled to serve and obey Solomon. After his death he was stuffed, and, by means of a stick in his hand, and another propping him up about the _os coccygis_, kept on such an apparent footing of being alive, that the devils themselves were taken in by it, until the hinder axis of him was eaten by worms, and the sovereign rolled over topsy-turvy.--See Boysen's Koran in Michaelis' 'Orient. Bibl.']

[Footnote 9: Untranslatable pun.]

[Footnote 10: Or "Poor's Advocate" (more literally). The appointment so named, exists, or lately existed, in Scotland.]

[Footnote 11: The "Grandfather Dance" is equivalent to the English "Sir Roger de Coverley."]

[Footnote 12: Wilhelm's 'Recreations in Natural History. Insects.' Vol.

i.]

[Footnote 13: Siebenkaes means "seven cheeses."]

[Footnote 14: Sky-blue is the colour of the order of the Jesuits, as also of the Indian Krisna, and of anger. The hypothesis of the natural philosopher Marat, that blue and red together make black, should be experimented upon, by mixing the cardinal's red with the Jesuit's blue.

Ho himself, subsequently, during the French Revolution, produced from blue, red, and white the most beautiful ivory black, or the Indian ink with which Napoleon afterwards painted.]

[Footnote 15: He styles mankind his brethren, as many monks, princes, and religious persons are given to do to each other, and perhaps he is right in so doing, seeing that he treats these brethren of his just as many eastern princes treat theirs, and, in fact, more kindly, beheading, blinding, and cutting them up in a spiritual sense only, not in corporeal.]

[Footnote 16: The same robbing, strangling paw is masked in both under the likeness of the track of a man.]

[Footnote 17: 'Sp.' 547, N. Tr.]

[Footnote 18: The Heimlicher of Freyburg is inviolable for three years during his tenure of office, and for three years after it expires.]

[Footnote 19: It consisted chiefly of curious coins, vicariat-dollars, &c.]

[Footnote 20: Plato likens our lower pa.s.sions to animals kicking inside us.]

[Footnote 21: He happened to have the case of one to defend, just then.]

[Footnote 22: The book was published in 1789, by Beckmann of Gera, and was ent.i.tled, 'Selections from the Devil's Papers.' I shall venture to express my opinion on these satires further on.]

[Footnote 23: The fas.h.i.+onable waistcoats of those days had animals and flowers upon them.]

[Footnote 24: For the next six pages or so the original literally _bristles_ with untranslatable puns and plays upon words.--Translator.]

[Footnote 25: Mosheim's 'Ecclesiastical History.']

[Footnote 26: Gold in leaves, of two colours, used by bookbinders.]

[Footnote 27: According to Kluber's notes to Delacurne de Sainte Palaye on Chivalry, this was the t.i.tle of the official who superintended the tourney, or gymnastic practices and exercises. There are at the present day certain private tutors in aristocratic families who are feeble imitations of him.]

[Footnote 28: In this last speech Lenette makes use of several of the obsolete forms of verbs referred to in a previous chapter as "religious antiquities out of Luther's Bible." I cannot give English equivalents.

Of course what follows would be unintelligibly without this explanation.--Translator.]

[Footnote 29: The French academician, N. Beurion, made out that Adam was 123 feet 9 inches high, and Eve 118 feet 9-3/4 inches. The rest is related by the Rabbin, that Adam went through the ocean after his fall.]

[Footnote 30: The members of this celebrated sect went to church without any clothes on them.]