both of us as well, because we failed to guess at anything just as much as he did. In short, the unknown happy one who makes the fair Clotilda unhappy, and for whom she sighs out her dumb, shy soul, and who for most of her charms has no eye at all, is the blind–Julius in Maienthal. Hence her desire to go thither.

I should like to fill a folio volume with the proofs of this: Victor counted them off on his five fingers. On his thumb he said, "For Julius's sake she seeks little Julia; so, too, is it with Giulia." At the forefinger he said, "The French initial I looks like an S without the cross-stroke." At the middle finger, "Minerva has furnished him, indeed, not merely the flute, but also Minerva's fair face, and in this blind Cupid's-face Clotilda could lose herself without blushing; even from love for his friend Emanuel, she might have loved him." At the ring-finger, "Hence her justification of mis-matches, since his citizenly ring-finger is to be joined to her noble one." At the little finger, "By Heaven! all this proves not the least."

For now, for the first time, all the proofs came upon him in a flood: in the first volume of this book there came often an unknown angel to Julius and said: "Be good, I will hover round thee, I will guard thy veiled soul,–I go back into heaven."–

Secondly, this angel once gave Julius a paper, and said, "Conceal it, and after a year, when the birches grow green in the temple, let Clotilda read it to thee; I take my flight, and thou wilt not hear me sooner than a year hence."—

All this fitted Clotilda as if it were moulded on her: she could never unfold to the blind one her dying heart,–she was going just now to Maienthal (how long is it still to Whitsuntide?) to read to him herself the leaf which she had handed to him in the character and mask of an angel,–finally, she was going off precisely then to St. Luna;—in short, everything hits to a hair.

If the Biographer might venture to put in a word, it would be this: The Mining-Superintendent, the Biographer, for his part, believes it all with great pleasure; but as to Clotilda, who hitherto has come forth whitely radiant from every pitchy cloud, and on whom, as on the sun, one has so often confounded clouds with sun-spots, he cannot blame her, until she herself sets the example. Victor, as I myself did in the first edition, has even forgotten many proofs of Clotilda's love for Julius: e. g. her warm interest in his blindness, and her desire of his recovery (in her letter to Emanuel), Flamin's obsolete jealousy in Maienthal, even the rapture with which, in the playhouse, she calls the vale an Eden, and rejects the Lethe.

Victor tore open the packet, and two leaves fell out of a large sheet. One of the notes and the large sheet were from Emanuel, the other from his Lordship. He studied the last, written in double cipher, first; it was as follows:–

"I come in autumn, when the apples ripen,–the Trinity [his Lordship means the Prince's three sons] is found; but the fourth Person [the fourth, merry son] is wanting.–Flee from the Palace of the Empress of all the Russias [with this cipher the two had concerted to designate the Minister Schleunes], but the grand duchess [Joachime] avoid still more: she wants no heart, but a princely hat.–In Rome [he means Agnola] beware of the crucifix, out of which a stiletto springs! Think of the Island, ere thou makest a misstep."

Victor was astonished at first at the accidental appropriateness of these prohibitions; but when he bethought himself that he would have given them to him even on the Island, if they had not referred to his more recent circumstances, then he was still more astonished at the channels through which the espionage-despatches of his present relations might have reached his father,–(as if my correspondent and spy might not have been the father's also!)–and most of all at the warning against Joachime. "Oh! if she were false to me!" he said, sighing, and would not complete the dark picture nor the sigh.—But he drove both away by the little leaf from Emanuel, which read thus:–

"My Son:–

"The dawn of the new year shone on my face across the snow, as I placed before me the paper [Emanuel's second immediately following letter], upon which I sought to impress for the last time my soul with all its images reaching out beyond this globe. But the flames of my soul dart even to the body, and singe the frail thread of life; I was obliged often to turn away my too easily bleeding breast from the paper and from my rapture.

"I have, my son, written to thee with my blood.–Julius has now the thought of God.–The spring glows under the snow, and will soon lift itself up out of the green, and bloom even to the clouds.–My daughter [Clotilda] takes spring by the hand and comes to me,–let her take my son with the other hand, and lay him on my breast, wherein is a failing breath and an everlasting heart.... O how melodiously sound around me the evening bells of life!–Ay, when thou and thy Clotilda and our Julius, when we all, we who love each other, stand together, when I hear your voices, then shall I look to Heaven and say, The evening bells of life sound around me too mournfully; I shall for ecstasy die still earlier than the eve of the longest day, and ere my sainted father has appeared to me.

"Emanuel."

* * * * *

Dear Emanuel, that, alas! thou wilt do! The heaven of joy presses downward to thy lips, and amidst breezes, amidst tones, amidst kisses, it drinks up thy flickering breath; for the earthly body which will only graze, not pluck, digests only lowly joys, and chills under the beam of a higher sun!–

With emotion I draw aside from Victor's distracted, irrecognizable face the veil which covers his sorrows. Let us look upon thee, disconsolate man, who art going to meet a spring where thy heart is to lose everything: Emanuel by death, Clotilda by love, Flamin by jealousy, even Joachime by suspicion! Let us look upon thee, impoverished one; I know why thy eye is still dry, and why thou sayst brokenly and with a shake of the head, "No, my dear Emanuel, I shall not come, for indeed I cannot."–What ate most deeply into thy heart was, that thy true Emanuel should be the very one who still believed thou wert loved by his friend.–An undeveloped sorrow is without tears or signs; but when man through fancy draws out of his own bosom a heart full of confluent wounds, and counts the gashes, and then forgets that it is his own, then does he weep sympathetically at that which beats so painfully in his hands, and then he bethinks himself and weeps still more. Victor would fain release as it were by warming his stiff soul from frozen tears, and went to the balcony window and pictured to himself, while the suppressed evening-glow of March burned out of the clouds over the hills of Maienthal, Clotilda's marriage to Julius.–O, in order to make himself right sad, he drew a spring day over the vale, the genius of love flung open, above the nuptial altar, the blue heaven, and bore the sun as bridal torch without cloud-smoke through the pure immensity.–There walked, on that day, Emanuel transfigured, Julius blind, but blissful, Clotilda blushing and long since well again, and every one was happy. Only one unhappy one he saw there standing among the flowers, namely, himself; he saw there, how this afflicted one, chary of words for sorrow, joyous from virtue, more familiar and confidential with the bride from coldness, went round among the rest, so unknown, properly so superfluous; how the guiltless pair, with every sign of love, reckoned up before him all that he had lost, or indeed concealed those signs from forbearance, because they guessed his