Part 24

Emanuel was more quiet and almost troubled, but it was not the anxiety of fear, but that uneasiness of expectation with which we always look upon the folds and flutterings of the curtain of great scenes. The stinging sun kept the couple at home. To Emanuel, oppressed by the sultry atmosphere, the last afternoon was almost too long. But his friend saw all the time hanging in this atmospheric vault a mouldering countenance, which seemed to work its way into the beloved fresh one, and he continually heard the crazy skeleton repeating in his ear, "His eyes are out!"

In the sultry stillness, when the sun dug and charged the mining pits of the thunder, and when the two friends ventured before the ears of the blind Julius to speak only with looks of to-day's future, towards four o'clock a fanning, evening-breeze came up, which refreshed all drooping wings and heads. Emanuel let in these cool waves, which ran lullingly and comfortingly over the bent flowers at the window, and flowed down along the wavering folds of the curtains, and strayed and plashed through the fragrant foliage of the room. Then came an infinite stillness, a dissolving bliss, an inexpressible yearning into Emanuel's heart. The joys of his childhood, the features of his mother, the images of Indian fields, all beloved, mouldering forms, the whole gliding reflection of his youth's morning, flowed along glimmeringly before him;--a melancholy longing for his native land, for his dead friends, distended his bosom with sweet, distressful emotions. That evergreen palm-grove of youthful memory he laid as a cooling herb around his own and Horion's brows, and brought over the whole first circle of his existence out of the Indian Eden into this narrow housing before the two latest objects of his affection. But as he thus heaped up the ashes of the Phœnixes of joy on the altar of the evening-sun,--as he thus at his exodus looked back over all the Elysian fields of his life as they lay behind each other,--as the whole of earth and life, overspread with morning dew and morning redness, transformed themselves before him into the glimmering playground of humanity;--then was he unable to master any longer his emotion and his melted heart, and in a blissful agitation, in a trembling gratitude to the Eternal, he begged the blind youth to take his flute and let the _Song of Ecstasy_, which he always had played for himself on the morning of the new year and of his birthday, sound after him as an echo of his dying life.

Julius took the flute. Horion went out under a loud-rustling tree and looked into the setting sun. Emanuel placed himself at the breezy window opposite the purple stream of the evening light, and the song of rapture began and flowed in streams into his heart and round the sinking sun.

And as the tones of the spheres seemed to well out from the sun, which in the evening redness, like a swan dissolved in melodies, died of rapture before God in gold-haze and dew of joy,--and as all the flowers wherewith the Eternal goodness covers our heart, and all the blissful fields through which its gentle hand conducts uncertain man, flew by before Emanuel like angels,--and as he saw the future heavens, into which the way of life leads, drawing nearer,--and as he saw these infinite arms cover all wounded hearts, stretch over all millenniums, bear all worlds and yet even him too, him, puny son of earth;--O then was it impossible for him longer to restrain his full heart; it burst with gratitude, and from his eyes again fell the first tear-drops after long, long years. These holy drops he wiped not away; in them the evening-red ran to a blazing sea; the flute died away; Victor found his eyes still glistening; Emanuel said, "O see, I weep for joy at the thought of my Maker!"----Then were there between these exalted men, on this holy spot, no more words,--death had lost his form,--a sublime sorrow deadened the pangs of separation,--the sun, over which the earth had rolled, touched with his erect beams the heavens and the night and the bottom of the clouds,--the earth glimmered magically like a dream-landscape, and yet it was easy to quit it, for the other dream-landscapes covered the sky.

The earths of night (the planets) had already come out, the suns of night (the fixed stars) had already come forth after them, the moon had already enveloped itself in the southeast storm: when Emanuel saw that it was time to end the scenes of the valley and go up to his Tabor, to give Death the wing-casing of his soul. Hesitating, he begged Victor to go forward a little, that he might not see his parting with the blind one, and haply betray himself by sympathy; for Victor had represented: to the blind one the journey into the other world as only one upon this earth. He stationed himself unhappily out before the hushed sultry fields through which once had passed the rivers of paradise of his love, on which he had once at Clotilda's side seen fairer evenings; on the earth was the stillness of death, as in a church by night, only a leaden cloud, bent down toward the earth, blustered round the heavens, and Death seemed to go from cloud to cloud and array them for battle.

At last he heard Julius weeping. Emanuel came flying out, but in his eyes stood heavier drops than his former ones. And as the forsaken blind one turned away his dark head from his friends in the house-door-way, either because he knew not which way they had gone or would listen to know, then was Victor barely able, for inward sadness, to call back to the bowed form, which dwelt in a double night, that he would return after twelve o'clock.

In the bald evening greeting, "Good night, a pleasant sleep," which Emanuel gave and received, there was more stuff for tears than in whole elegies and farewell-speeches; so true it is that words are only the inscriptions upon our hour,[153] and the ripieno[154]-voices of the scoring of our keynotes.

So soon as Emanuel came out before the night heavens, before the hurricane chained thereto and before his death-mountain, angels lifted up again his softened soul,--he saw death descend from heaven and set up the liberty-tree on his grave,--he saw the friendly stars draw nearer, and they were the heavenly eyes of his friends and of all blessed beings. Victor dared not disturb his poetic hopes by any reasons; much rather was he himself from hour to hour drawn deeper into the belief of his death; at least he feared that to-day's storm of rapture might rend asunder the frail dwelling of this fair heart and of its sighs, and that death would creep about the noble soul till by its very wings, as it rose in its ecstasy, he could pluck it away from life, as children go round and round the butterfly till at last it lifts its wings folded on one another into their predatory fingers.

Emanuel delayed by circuitous paths the ascent of the mountain, in order to raise his broken friend, whose eyes were no longer dry, from one sun to the other, so that in that high position he might look down from the midst of lights upon this shadowy earth and hardly notice the corpse of his friend on account of its littleness. "Yes, this is the reason," said he, "why the earth is every day darkened, like the cages of birds, that we may in the dark more easily catch the higher melodies.--Thoughts which the day makes a dark smoke and vapor stand round about us in the night as flames and lights, as the column which floats over Vesuvius appears a pillar of cloud by day and is a pillar of fire by night." Victor perceived the design, namely, of consoling him, and became the more disconsolate and continued silent.

They did not go up on the side of the mountain to the weeping-birch, but over its slowly ascending ridge. They overlooked the theatre of night, over which the moon and the storm were coming up under a veil; Emanuel stopped and said: "O look up and see the eternally sparkling morning-meadows which lie around the throne of the Eternal! Had never a star shone out of heaven, only then would man lay himself down with anguish in his last sleep, on a dark earth built over like a burial vault without an opening." Before eyes which were fastened on suns, flashing glowworms trailed by, and a bat whizzed after a gray night-butterfly,--three St. John's day fires; lighted by superstition, brought three distant hills out of night,--all life slept under its leaf, under its twig, nearer to its mother, and in the dreams that were strewed about lay storms,--fishes tumbled up like corpses on the surface of the water as forerunners of the thunder.

Suddenly Emanuel began, with an ill-fitting, not sufficiently controlled voice: "Verily we should stand more composedly beside the genius who lets fall the last sands of slumber on the eyes of our loves, if they did not afterward sleep out their last sleep in church vaults, in churchyards, but upon meadows, under the open heavens, or as mummies in chambers.... Now then, my beloved," they heard already the waving of the weeping-birch, "control thy fantasy; thou wilt see near the birch-tree my resting-pit open; I have for four weeks sown and clothed it with flowers which are now mostly in bloom,--thou wilt lay me thus to-morrow, without any _other_ preparation, in my night-dress among the flowers,--and cover it up to-morrow,--but do not, thou good man, give my little flower-piece such hard names as other men do,--to-morrow, I say; to-day go immediately home to thy Julius, when I...." (_am dead_, he would have said, but could not find for emotion the soft paraphrase).--

Ah! Horion with a sigh tore his agonized eyes out from the cold open grotto of his beloved, and could not look down to its blooming flowers. He sobbed aloud and looked out through tears faintly into Emanuel's face, to see whether he was living or dying. Two glowworms crossed one another in glimmering curves above the grave, they settled down beside it, and were extinguished, for their light ceases with their motion.

The thunder now struck into Victor's wounds with its first clap,--a dissolving lightning covered the Eastern horizon, and the flame ran over the Alpine ridges,--the lightning-rod on the powder-house glowed, its alarm-bells rang, the ignes-fatui played about the tower, and in mid-air a hovering luminous point moved fearfully towards it.

In Maienthal eleven o'clock was called,--at twelve Emanuel believed he should be gone hence. At last Emanuel, unmanned himself by another's sorrow, fell upon his friend and said: "What hast thou further to say to me, my beloved, my inexpressibly dear friend?--by hours are fled,--our farewell approaches,--say thine, and then disturb not my dying. Be still, when death climbs the mountain, and send no lamentations after me, when he takes me up.--What hast thou more to say to me, my eternally beloved?"--"Nothing more, thou angel of heaven! nor can I," said Victor with bleeding and exhausted heart, and laid his oppressed head with streams of tears on Emanuel's shoulder.

"Now then break off thy heart from mine, and farewell,--be happy, be good, be great. I have loved thee very much, I shall love thee once more and then forever. Good, faithful one,--mortal like me, immortal like me!"

The storm-bells tolled more violently,--the hovering luminous point advanced upon the powder-house,--all the covered cloud-volcanoes bellowed side by side and flung their flames together, and the thunders passed like alarm-bells between them,--the two friends lay in each other's arms, close, mute, gasping, clasping, trembling before the last word.

"O speak once more, my Horion, and take leave of thy friend,--only say to me, Rest well! and leave the dying."

Horion said, "Rest well!" and left him. His tears ceased and his sighs were hushed. The thunder came to a fearful pause. Nature was mutely ordering her chaos in the tempest. Not a flash gleamed through the funeral pile in heaven. Only the funeral tolling of the alarm-bells on the lightning-rod continued to speak, and the luminous point to creep onward.

Under the wide stillness lay sleep, dreams, and a friend's inconsolable heart.

In this stillness of eternity Emanuel went up without any other hand in his to the high gate which soars away in black darkness above time.

Silence is the speech of the world of spirits, the starry heaven its nunnery-grating,--but behind this nunnery-grating appeared now no spirit, not even God.

The moment was coming when man looks upon his body and then on his individual self, and then shudders.--The _I_ stands alone beside its shadow,--a foam-globe of being trembles, snaps, and collapses, and one hears the bubble vanish and _is_ one himself.

Emanuel peered into Eternity, it looked like a long night.

He looked round him to see whether he cast a shadow,--a shadow casts no shadow.

Ah! a mute lays man in the cradle, a mute stretches him out in the grave.--When he has a joy, it looks as if a sleeper smiled,--when he weeps and wails, it looks like weeping in one's sleep.--We all look up to heaven and pray for solace; but overhead in the endless blue there is no voice for our heart,--nothing appears, nothing consoles us, nothing answers us.--

And so we die....

--O All-gracious One! we die more happily; only the poor Emanuel wrestled in the silent darkness with fierce thoughts which for so long a time he had not seen, and which clutched at his paling countenance. But these masks flee away, when a friendly fraternal face appears before thee and embraces thee.--Horion raised himself up and warmed again his bowed friend by a mute farewell. A storm-wind precipitated itself out of the clear west into the dumb, laboring hell, and chased out all the lightnings and all the thunders. Lo, at that moment the bright moon flew out from the backward-drifted mass of cloud like an angel of peace into the unstained blue,--_then in the light Emanuel stood distinguished from his shadow_,--then did the moon illuminate a rainbow of pale color grains, which in the Southeast (the gate to the East Indies) penetrated through the dark water-columns, and arched itself over the Alps,--then Emanuel saw again, as previously, the Jacob's ladder leaning against the earthly night,--then came rapture without measure, and he cried with outspread arms: "Ah, yonder in the _East_, in the East, over the road to my _native land_, there glows the arch of triumph, there opens the gate of glory, there the dying march through." ...

And as just then it struck twelve o'clock, he spread out his hand ecstatically towards heaven, which was blue above the mountains, and toward the moon, which reposed serenely beside the tempest, and cried, breaking into blissful tears, "Thanks, Eternal One, for my first life, for all my joys, for this fair earth."--

The flute tones of Julius floated around Maienthal, and he looked down upon the earth.

"And be thou ever blest, thou good earth, thou good mother-land, bloom, ye fields of Hindostan, farewell, thou glowing Maienthal, with thy flowers and with thy people,--and ye brothers, all of you, after a long smile, come and blissfully follow me. Now, O Eternal One, take me up, and console the _two_ survivors."

The death angels stood on all the clouds, and drew their glittering swords out of the nights,--one thunder clapped after another, as if one prison-door of this earthly life after another were flung open.

The terrible luminous point had crept out of mid-air into the powder-house.

The death-hour had already passed, and yet life had not.

Emanuel trembled with yearning and apprehension, because he felt as yet no sign of dying,--moved his hands as if he would give them to some one,--stared into the lightnings as if he would draw them upon him....

"Death! seize me," he cried, beside himself,--"ye dead friends! O father! O mother! tear my heart away, take me,--I cannot--cannot live any longer."----

At that moment a blazing, rattling globe flew up into the tempest, and the powder-house shot itself to pieces like an undermined hell.--The explosion threw the flaming Emanuel pale into his flowery grave; the whole thundering east trembled; the moon and the rainbow were darkened....

THE BLISSFUL AFTER-MIDNIGHT.

Victor, cast headlong, senseless, at last bestirred his arm and felt therewith the cold face, on which to-day the crazy skeleton had read this night beforehand, and which projected above the grave, turned toward heaven. He threw himself upon it and pressed his face to the pale one. Before his tears had forced their way through the hard grief, the clouds carried back their fire-buckets and their funeral torches, and transparent foam-fleeces softly overflowed the moon and settled down at last over the whole valley and over the still couple in a thousand warm drops, which so easily remind man of his own tears. The blowing up of the powder-house by one of the three Englishmen had broken up the naval engagement of the burning clouds.

The dismembered tempest had drifted about in little clouds and stood above the midnight-red in the northeast, when the cold numbness of the shock still held the two men fastened together; at last a hot hand glided down from above between their faces, and a timid voice asked, "Are you asleep?"

"O Julius," said Horion, "come down unto the grave, thy Emanuel is dead." ...

I care not to count the dismal minutes that let two wretched beings lie bound by the thorn-girdle of anguish to a pallid one. But brighter moments came, which first drove every smallest cloud out of the sky and wiped clean the tarnished moon, and then opened the hot eyes before the cleansed and cooled silvery night.

"Ah, he has perhaps only fainted," said Victor after a long while. They raised themselves up with a sigh. Wearily they drew their beloved out of the grave. They would fain carry him down to his dwelling, in order there to bring back again from its _solstice_ this fair soul, as the St. John's sun would return from his. With the slight energies which grief had still spared them, and with the little light which still entered into two wet eyes, they struggled along with the crippled angel, while two laboring shadows beside them frightfully carried a third in the glimmer, from the mountain down into the meadows. Here Victor went alone into the village, in order, perhaps, to provide a more cheerful carriage than a hearse. The blind one stayed himself by a birch-tree, Emanuel slept like the other flowers, and upon them, before the moon.... But suddenly Julius heard the dead man speak and graze him as he passed through the grass; and, pursued by terror, he fled....

--Genius of dreams! thou that walkest through the nebulous sleep of mortals and bringest up before the lonely soul imprisoned in a corpse the happy islands of childhood! O thou that therein restorest to our mouldered friends the bloom of the cheek and showest to our poor frenzied heart past heavens and reflections of Eden and undulating lawns, on clouds!----Magic Genius! enter into this holy night before a man who is not asleep, and turn thy crape-covered glass to my open eye, that I may see therein, and paint, the Elysian world of light which struggles with our earthly shadow, as a pale Luna, in the double eclipse![155]----

The enraptured voice of the dead man cried: "Hail to thee, thou still Elysium!--O thou glimmering land of rest! receive the new shade. Ah, how softly thou glowest,--how softly thou breathest,--how softly thou reposest!" ...

Emanuel's eyes had opened; but in his brain burned the Elysian delirious idea that he had died and waked up in the second world. O thou over-blest! and indeed a glittering Eden did encircle thee,--ah, this glow, this breath, this fragrance, this repose, was too beautiful for an earth. The moon weaved over with silver threads, as with flying summer-gossamer, the green of night,--from leaf to leaf, from trees to trees stretched the sparkling veil of the illuminated rain,--over all waters floated glimmering banks of vapor,--a gentle fanning threw jewels from the twigs into the silver streams,--the trees and the mountains rose like giants into the night,--the everlasting sky stood over the falling sparks, over the fleeting fragrances; over the playing leaves, it alone unchangeable, with fixed suns, with the eternal world-studded vault, great, cool, radiant and blue.--Never did a valley so glimmer, so exhale, so whisper, so enchant before....

Emanuel embraced the sparkling soil and cried out from a burning breast, subdued and stammering with rapture: "Ah, is it true, then? do I really hold thee, my native land?--Ay, in such fields of rest wounds are healed, tears are stilled, no sighs demanded, no sins committed, here in sooth the little human heart dissolves for overfulness of rapture and creates itself anew to dissolve again.... Thus have I long since imagined thee, blessed, magical, dazzling land, that borderest on my earth.... O dear earth! where mayest thou be?"

He lifted his intoxicated eye to the star-bedewed heaven, and saw the low-sunken moon hanging faint and yellow in the south; this he took for the earth, from which he supposed death had borne him into this Elysium. Here his voice dissolved into emotion at the beloved earliest garden of his life, and he addressed the earth flying overhead above the stars:--

"Globe of tears! Dwelling of dreams! Land full of shadows and spots!--Ah, on thy broad shadowy spots[156] the good children of men will be at this moment trembling and sinking!... A ring of clouds[157] encircles thee, and they see not Elysium.... Ah, how silently thou bearest through the still, blessed heavens thy battle-cry--thy storms--thy graves; thy enveloping atmosphere shuts in like a coffin all the voices of wailing round about thee, and thou glidest with thy bowed and enshrouded ones only as a pale, still ball away above Elysium!...

"Ah, ye precious ones, my Horion! my Julius! Ye are still up yonder in the tempest, ye cover up my corpse, ye look weeping towards Heaven and cannot see Elysium.... O that you were already through the wet cloud of life!--but perhaps ye have already been long sleeping and waking, perhaps time goes otherwise on earth than in eternity.--Ah! that you might come down into the still pastures!" He saw in the magically magnifying glimmer two forms walking. "Oh, who is it?" he cried, flying to meet them. "O father! O mother! Are you here?"--But when he came nearer, he sank into four other arms, and stammered, "Blessed, blessed are we now, my Horion! my Julius!"--At last he said: "Where are my parents and my brothers and Clotilda and the three Brahmins? know they not that their Dahore is in Elysium?"

Victor beheld disconsolately the delirious ecstasy of his beloved, and said neither yes nor no. The latter gazed with a heavenly smile and a stream of love into the face of Julius, and said, "Look on me, thou couldst never see me on the earth."--"Thou knowest well that I am blind, my Emanuel," said the blind one. Here the frenzied man, turning away his quivering eyes suddenly and with a sigh to the moon, fled from his friends, saying to himself in a low voice: "The two forms are only shadowy dreams from the earth,--I will not look upon them, so that they may melt away.--So then the shadowy and dreamy woe of earth reaches over even into Eden. Haply I am still in a dream of death, for the region round about me looks like the landscapes in my life-dreams,--or is this only the fore-court of heaven, as I do not find my parents?" ... He looked toward the lofty stars: "Where do I now stand below you? New heavens lie on new heavens.----Ah, does one yearn then even here?"