Wilhelmine von Hillern

“ In vain! the cold hand could no longer stroke his head; it fell by her side.
"Beata!" he called in her ear. "I abandoned you in life, but in death I will not forsake you, I will die with you."
She still heard, a sigh of rapture answered him as from a happy bride--it was her last--then she bowed her head and slept, softly and peacefully, with a smile on her lips. She was gone like the night-moth whose fate it is never to rejoice in the light of the sun, that is snatched away by the first frosts of winter, without a sound, without a wail--out of darkness into darkness. ”

“ She had studied mankind, but human beings were strangers to her. And as she thought and pondered, she wished herself again the child that ran races with the wind and cradled herself among the storm-tossed boughs. Oh for one breath of hopeful childhood, one throb of that love-thirsty heart, one tear of that wrestling faith! All dead and silent now, every blossom of childhood and youth faded: a woman, old at two-and-twenty, looking down from the heights of passionless contemplation upon a life, lying behind her, that she has never enjoyed, upon a time, now past, that she has never lived. ”

“ There a Magdalen repents with inexhaustible tears; yonder a Roman maiden allures, ever unsuccessfully, with her motionless, half-opened lips; and here an Alva rages in implacable fury, while close by a Huss burns in never-dying flames; below a wolf snaps in unappeasable hunger at a child, which, fortunately, he will never reach; a mother seeks to tear it away, and cannot draw it to her protecting breast; the poor woman is condemned to perpetual dread, and the spectator with her. Not far away is--and will forever remain--a pair of lovers in the act of exchanging a kiss. ”

“ To throw away a fortune for love of a woman is nothing--but to toil year in and year out, with tireless fidelity and sacrifice, to earn a wife's daily bread in the sweat of one's brow, is something! Do you know what it is to a woman to owe her life daily to her beloved husband? An indescribable happiness! You, my friend, would have bestowed a principality upon me, and I should have accepted it as my rightful tribute, without owing you any special gratitude--but the hand which toils for me I kiss every evening with a thrill of grateful reverence. ”

“ It was so fair a dream, Beata, when we wandered on together in innocence, as in Paradise, but original sin has driven us out of it! From the first hour when your sweet charm stirred my soul with earthly longings, from that hour our Paradise was lost. Beata, hell would fain have power over the immortal part of us, let us snatch it from its power. It is yet time; I have as yet withstood that hellish temptation, but now let us part lest the darker deed should follow hard on the dark thought. I gave up my eyes that I might keep myself pure, now I will give you up too. ”

“ An inexhaustible power made itself felt in her bosom, a power for love as for hatred, for joy as for pain, for self-sacrifice as for defiance. All around her breathed more freely; it was as though a spell had been taken off them since Wally's dark repining spirit, that had weighed like a storm-cloud upon everything, had melted away.
"When one is as happy as I am, every one else should rejoice too," she said; and soon it was known everywhere that it was because Joseph had asked her to the dance--which was almost the same as asking her in marriage--that Wally was so changed. ”

“ Johannes was deeply moved. "Poor girl!" he said. "Had you cast yourself on the ground at my feet, bathed in tears, bewailing the death of father, mother, or husband, you could not have inspired me with such pity as those words, 'I have never loved,' awaken within me. You look amazed! The time will come when you will understand me,--when by the depth of your anguish you will learn the heights of bliss from which you have been banished; then he, whom you now regard as your enemy, will be beside you,--to soothe your grief for your lost life,--perhaps to lead you to one nobler and better!" ”

“ You have stripped the bloom from my existence, stolen the most sacred emotions of a young, trusting heart, wished to take from me honor, faith, all that affords support and protection to a woman, torn the wings from my soul to chain me, and then, when you wished to disown me, to say 'fly away.' Oh, treacherous soul-murderer, beautiful and winning as no other can ever be, for whose creation an angel must have mated with a fiend, I love and hate you with equal fervor! ”

“ Wherever it appears human hearts are in a tumult as if death were at hand. Like flying ants bearing away their eggs to a place of safety, the disturbed consciences of worldlings anxiously strive to hide their secret desires and pleasures from the dreaded foe! But whoever dares to meet its eyes sees that it is not the bugbear which the apostles of reason and nature would fain represent it, no fleshless, bloodless shadow which strives to destroy the natural bond between the Creator and creation, but a being with a glowing heart, five wounds, and a brow bedewed with drops of sweat. ”

“ Every day the little one grew stronger and more blooming; a child as sweet and winning as if angels came down from Heaven from time to time to play with him. He was like a ray of sunshine in the gloomy convent and in the closed hearts of the brethren. He could entice a smile from the sternest lips--hardly any one could resist giving him a flower in passing, throwing him a spray, or bringing him some tempting fruit from any more distant walk--a bunch of wood strawberries, an empty bird's-nest, a sparkling pebble--whatever came to hand. ”

“ Meanwhile, thunder-clap after thunder-clap crashed above her, beneath her, and as though heaven had been a leaking cask filled with fire, the lightning struck downwards in fiery streams. Hark!--what was that?--a human voice! A cry for help sounded clearly above the rushing and roaring. Wally who had not trembled at the fury of the thunder and the hurricane, trembled now. A human voice--now!--up here with her in this fearful tumult of nature, in this chaos! It terrified her more than the raging of the elements. ”

“ Love, for poor Ernestine, must attain the light only through the dark night of error and illusion that was around her,--that light in which Gretchen and Hilsborn innocently basked, driven from their Eden by no angel with the flaming sword. Such strong natures as Möllner's and Ernestine's could not unite without a struggle. Each had framed a world for itself, and one of these worlds must be shattered before they could become one world. The farther apart they were, the more powerful the attraction between them, the more certainly would the weaker crumble to pieces in contact with the stronger. ”

“ Time effaces everything, and I seem to myself like a transfigured spirit. I have no longer anxieties or wishes, look upon life calmly and impartially, and love all men. My body, as you see, is no very heavy burden, and thus, thank God, I am not so widely separated from the angels."
There was such a depth of earnestness concealed under these jesting words that Heinrich, strangely moved, passed his hand over his brow. It seemed as if a good genius with a gentle smile had raised him to a height from whence he could view at a single glance all the perishableness and emptiness of life. ”

“ In her swift variations of mood reacting with every changing impression, a different feeling had been evoked by the word "phantom" and the memories it awakened. Even the cleverest man cannot depend upon a woman. The phantom again stood between them--conjured up by himself.
As if by magic, the Kofel with its glittering cross rose before her, and opposite at her right hand the glimmering sunbeams stole up the cliff till, like shining fingers, they rested on a face whose like she had never seen--the eyes, dark yet sparkling, like the night when the star led the kings to the child in the manger! ”

“ I will efface the trace of my steps on earth that fatality may no longer pursue me. Oh, God, my God! will the measure of my sorrows never be full?"
So he stood, his arms uplifted, a dumb image of suffering--like a tree stricken by a storm.
A few stars peeped out from time to time between the driving clouds; the abyss lay in slumberous silence at his feet, and the night-breeze snatched pitilessly at the ragged garments that scarcely sufficed to cover him. The empty windows of the ruined stronghold of faith stared at him like hollow eye-sockets, in dumb reproach. ”

“ High up on the lonely Ferner, near her stony father, once more sits the outcast, solitary child of man--spell-bound, as it were, like a part of the dizzy heights from which she looks down on the little world below, in which no space could be found for the large and alien heart that had matured in the wilderness among the glacier-storms. Men have hunted and driven her forth, and that has been fulfilled that her dream foretold, the mountain has adopted her as its child. ”

“ Who that truly entered into them could help being thrilled with the deepest grief? What a sacrifice, to make himself the bleeding example of his teachings! What a love, which devotes itself to secure the happiness of a world! When I read the history of the passion, it seems as if I had a thousand hearts, so keenly, so painfully, do I feel the death-agony of the One Heart that bore in itself the sorrows of all, suffered for all, bled for all, loved all,--even those who betrayed it,--and was understood and valued by so few. ”

“ Johannes stood silent before her. His mind was filled with the same thoughts, the same memories, and, like an answer to her mute soliloquy, there came from his lips, in tones of melting tenderness, the words, "Poor swan!" Ernestine's hands dropped from her face, she stared at him with wide-open eyes,--then sprang up, and, while her pale cheeks flushed, and her whole frame trembled, gazed at him still, as if she would look him through, her agitation increasing every moment. "There--there is only one person on earth who knows that," she faltered. ”

“ No mother could guide her child, no sister tend her infant brother, no angel lead a soul to Heaven, as she watched over the blind man in his helplessness. The girl's pure breath fanned him like forest-airs when her bosom rose and fell quickly from some steep ascent or the fatigue of guiding him. He neither saw nor heard her; for her little bare feet went on by his side as softly as those of a fairy, he only felt her. He felt as if an angel of pity was walking by his side to cool his deadly pain with the waving of tender wings. ”

“ The mountain opposite towered like a spectral form in the moonlit atmosphere, the peak over which she had driven that day, where she had seen that wondrous apparition, that man with the grief of the universe in his gaze! What manner of man must he have been whose glance, in a single moment, awed the person upon whom it fell as if some higher power had given a look of admiration? Why had it rested upon her with such strange reproach, as if saying: "You, too, are a child of the world, like many who come here, unworthy of salvation." ”

“ And like an enraged bull the strong old man threw himself on the young hunter, who in spite of himself gave way under the sudden and heavy spring. But he only staggered for a moment; his slender form was so firmly knit, was so supple in yielding, so elastic in rising again--like the lofty pines of his native soil, that grow with roots of iron in the naked rock, buffeted by all the winds of heaven and bearing up against their mountain-load of snow. As easily might Stromminger have uprooted one of these trees, as have flung Joseph to the ground. ”

“ It is not the lips that kiss, it is his heart, which lies between them; that is why his caress is so soft, so warm; that is why it penetrates to the inmost soul. And when he speaks they are again only the beautiful, slender banks over which the flood of feeling streams! And those eyes,--oh, they reveal all the wonders of the soul! He might err, nay, he might even be shattered by life, but the look that shines in his eyes is divine; it will raise him above his lower nature, and everything else. ”

“ A cry of horror from the husband and wife answered this frightful sentence, the gentle Abbot had no conception of its cruelty. What could he know--a calm old man whose blood ran so sluggishly in his veins--of the passion and longing and torment of two hearts that have grown into one, when they are torn asunder?
Only one there present understood it; he who stood silent, his nails dug into his crossed arms--and yet of pity he knew nothing, that unsparing zealot who had no mercy on others because he knew of no mercy on himself. ”

“ She fancied that a dark wing brushed by the carriage window, as if the death angel were flying by with the cup of wormwood of which Freyer had once spoken!
She had a horror of the deserted house, the spectres of solitude and grief, which the vanished man might have left behind. When a house is dead, it must be closed by the last survivor, and this is always a sorrowful task. But if he himself has driven love forth, he will cross the deserted threshold with a lagging step, for the ghost of his own act will stare at him everywhere from the silent rooms. ”

“ If I can no longer see your dear face, I can still hear your gentle voice of comfort and feel you by my side; and although I cannot see the sun, I can still warm myself in its beams,--I can inhale the fragrance of the flowers that it calls into life,--enjoy the fruits that it ripens. I can hear the songs of the birds, and with them praise my Creator from the depths of my soul. How much he has left me! We will not be like thankless beggars, showing our gratitude for benefits by complaining that they are not great enough. I have seen the sunlight for sixty-eight years. ”

“ Again the spring time came, and again Wally ascended the Ferner. It was a bitter spring and a stormy summer; rain, snow, and hail succeeded each other in turns, so that her clothes often did not dry the whole day through, and for weeks together she breathed the damp atmosphere of an impenetrable chaos of drizzling clouds, through which, as before the first day of Creation, no ray of light would dawn. And, in her soul, the vast outer chaos reproduced itself in little, gloom reflected gloom. ”

“ For a year I struggled with a disease of the lungs, but my strong, youthful constitution obtained the victory. Yet one tiny flower of happiness bloomed for me upon my lover's grave: his little daughter,--his own flesh and blood,--a part of himself. I had not wholly lost him,--was not entirely alone. Nay, the child resembled him so much that with silent delight I saw his living image always before me, but the double blow had so crushed my soul that I needed and sought seclusion. ”

“ Thus ask the storm and the wild uproar of the elements; and as if even they had pity for the wretched soul, the wind carries the mother's cry of anguish over her starving infant, bears it on its wings to the scattered party of seeking, rescuing monks. "Be quick, make haste before it is too late."
And they hear it, these bold wrestlers with death, themselves half-buried in the snow, and they set out, wading, digging, shovelling, till the sweat of their brows runs down on their frozen beards, ever listening without a word, without a sound after that tremulous wind-borne cry. ”

“ Divine grace pervaded the slender body, and--as eternal beauty reconciles Heaven and hell and transfigures the most terrible things--horror gradually merged into devout admiration of the perfect human beauty revealed in chaste repose and majesty before their delighted gaze. The countess had clasped her hands over her breast. The world lay beneath her as if she was floating above with Him on the cross. She no longer knew whether he was a man or Christ Himself--she only knew that the universe contained nothing save that form. ”

“ Gently Gretchen took the book from the basket, and, opening it where she saw that Johannes had put a mark, she silently pushed it towards Ernestine, who raised her head at the touch, and at first looked absently at the pages before her, then gazed and gazed as if utterly unable to comprehend what she saw. It was her dear old book,--there was the swan that she had burned. "Heavens!" she cried, between laughter and tears, "can this be real? My swan! My swan! Who brought me this? Oh, dreams of my childhood, who has restored you to me?" ”