Jean Paul

“ Once after midnight, the dying lady pointed with her finger to her own lips. Thiennette understood her not; but rose and bent over her face. The Enfeebled tried to lift her head, but could not,—and only rounded her lips. At last, a thought glanced through Thiennette, that the Departing, whose dead arms could now press no beloved heart to her own, wished that she herself should embrace her. O then, that instant, keen and tearful, she pressed her warm lips on the colder,—and she was silent like her that was to speak no more,—and she embraced alone and was not embraced. ”

“ Man shudders at this oil of our life's lamp where he finds it shed; to him it is the red death-signature of the Destroying Angel. Fixlein hurried apprehensively into the grove; and found here his paler benefactress leaning on the flower-bushes; her hands with her knitting-ware sunk into her bosom, her eyes lying under their lids as if in the bandage of slumber; her left arm in the real bandage of bloodletting; and with cheeks to which the twilight was lending as much red, as late woundings--this day's included--had taken from them. ”

“ But when I am grown old, and in the obstruction of death, will not all that now rustles so bloomingly and livingly about me appear gray and dull? Just when man is approaching that heaven which he has so long contemplated, Death holds the telescope inverted before his dim eye, and lets him see only what is empty, distant, shadowy. But is this indeed true? Shall I be more likely to be right when I only feel and think and hope, with half a life, incapable of a keen glance or an intense sensation,--or am I right now, that my whole heart is warm, that my whole head is clear, and my strength fresh? ”

“ Human blood paints the fluid figure called man on the monument, as oil on marble forms forests; Death wipes away the man, and leaves the stone. O Gione! I would have some consolation, if thou wert but far away from us all, on a clouded forest, in a cave of the Earth, or on the most distant world in space. But thou art gone, thy soul is dead, not only thy life and thy body.
See, Nadine, on the judgment-seat of Time lies the crushed angel, with the death color of the spirit-world. ”

“ Then, behold, the earth rose out of the deep beneath, on her course, and the Spring had covered her with his blossoms and buds. As she drew nearer to the Isle of the Blest, a voice full of love cried, "Look down, ye dead, on your old home, and see the beloved who have lost, but not forgotten you."
For in the spring the earth always passes by the eternal World of the Blest, whose off-cast husk sinks into its clods; and therefore it is, that in the spring poor mortals experience such a profound longing, so powerful a presentiment, and so many haunting recollections of their lost beloved. ”

“ At this moment the steeple-clock struck twelve; but, from the breaking of a pin, the weights kept rolling down, and the clock-hammer struck without stopping,--and he heard with horror the chains and wheels rattling along; and he felt as if Death were hurling forth in a heap all the longer hours which he might yet have had to live,--and now, to his eyes, the churchyard began to quiver and heave, the moonlight flickered on the church-windows, and in the church there were lights flitting to and fro, and in the charnel-house was a motion and a tumult. ”

“ As Montaigne, Rousseau, and the sea-nettle only shine when they move on. By Heaven! it is no wonder that man rises and will go on; for does not the sun follow the pedestrian from tree to tree? does not its reflected likeness swim after him in the water? do not landscapes, mountains, hills, men, rapidly changing, come and go? and does not Freedom's breath blow on the ever-varying Eden, when, released from the neck and heart-breaking chains of narrow circumstances, we fly freely and gladly, as in dreams, over ever-new scenes. ”

“ Smile away, Fixlein, at this astonishment over thy today's Ovation, which is leading on to-morrow's Triumph; on thy dissolving countenance quivers happy Self, feeding on these incense-fumes; but a vanity like thine, and that only, which enjoys without comparing or despising, can one tolerate, will one foster. But what flowed over all his heart, like a melting sunbeam over wax, was his mother, who after much persuasion had ventured in her Sunday's clothes humbly to place herself quite low down, beside the door of the Prima class-room. ”

“ I cannot tell you how this glance, turned from the vast whole on to a beautiful small portion, gave a warmer glow to our hearts and to nature. Instead of the hand, we could only hold, like children, the fingers of the great mother of life, and reverently kiss them. By the creation, God became human for men, as therefore for angels an angel,--like the sun whose bright immensity the painter gently divides into the beauties of a human face.
Wilhelmi said, that, to rise into Eden or Arcadia, he would need no larger wings than the four of a butterfly. ”

“ Still Eden! Green flower-checkered chiaroscuro!—The moon is sleeping under ground like a dead one; but beyond the garden the sun's red evening-clouds have fallen down like rose-leaves; and the evening-star, the brideman of the sun, hovers, like a glancing butterfly, above the rosy red, and, modest as a bride, deprives no single starlet of its light.
The wandering pair arrived at the old gardener's hut; now standing locked and dumb, with dark windows in the light garden, like a fragment of the Past surviving in the Present. ”

“ Every bench was a church chair, all was peaceful and holy, and the firmament above an infinite church dome.
In many a village and in many a house a true Eden may be hid, which has neither been named nor marked down; for joy is fond of covering over and concealing her tenderest flowers. Gottreich reposed in such a fulness of bliss and love, of poetry and religion, of springtime, of the past and of the future, that he feared in the bottom of his heart to speak his happiness out, save in prayer. In prayer, thought he, man may say all, his happiness and his misery. ”

“ Gione and Karlson concealed an equal emotion, as at an almost equal fate. Wilhelmi, who is, as a comet, sometimes in the burning, sometimes in the freezing point of a sun, requires no joys than those of others to make him happy. But a tear stood in Nadine's bright eye, which could not be smiled or looked away. Her heart seemed to me to resemble the earth, whose exterior is cold, but which carries in its centre a latent heat. And yesterday her whole being seemed so mirthful and so gay!
We never make more erroneous conclusions in our opinions on any subject than on woman's cheerfulness. ”

“ As a navigator who suddenly disembarks from the cold, wintry, and lonely sea, upon a coast which is laden with the warm, rich blossoms of spring, so with one leap from our little bark we pass at once from winter to an eternal springtime.
"Rejoice, in this dark hour, that thy life dwells in the midst of a wider and larger life. The earth-clod of the globe has been divinely breathed upon. A world swarms with life,--for the leaf of every tree is a land of souls; and every little life would freeze and perish, if it were not warmed and borne up by the eddies of life about it. ”

“ There is an inner, heart-contained spirit-world, which breaks through the dark clouds of the body-world as a warm sun. I mean the inner universe of virtue, beauty, and truth; three soul-worlds and heavens, which are neither parts, nor shoots, nor cuttings, nor copies of the outer one. We are less astonished at the inexplicable existence of these three transcendent heavens, because they are ever floating before us, and because we foolishly imagine we create them, while we merely recognize them. ”

“ And now the deeper evening and the nightingale conspire to soften me; and I soften in my turn the mild beings round me, especially the pale Thiennette, to whom, or to whose heart, after the apoplectic crushings of a down-pressed youth, the most violent pulses of joy are heavier than the movements of pensive sadness. And thus beautifully runs our pure transparent life along, under the blooming curtains of May; and in our modest pleasure, we look with timidity neither behind us nor before; as people who are lifting treasure gaze not round at the road they came, or the road they are going. ”

“ Why is our heart tortured, dried, consumed, and at last broken by a slow burning fever of ceaseless love for an unattainable object, only alleviated by the hope that this consumption, like a physical one, must one day be sheltered and raised by the ice cover of death?"
"No," said Gione, with more emotion in her eye than in her voice, "it is not ice, but lightning. When our heart lies a sacrifice on the altar, fire from heaven consumes it as a proof that the offering is accepted." ”

“ A long metal coffin, mounted on the wheels of a gun-carriage, was with difficulty pulled along by iron elephants. On it was inscribed, "The ashes of the tenth army." With frightful exertion it was dragged like a tall tree round the corner of the narrow, rocky valley,--forced to bend by the weight of its contents, and the end of it seeming never to come.
Over the earth, and the sorrow of it, was a round ball of fire like a sun, whence came incessant flashes of lightning. And thirsty people opened vessels full of vipers, which darted out, and stung them to more burning thirst.... ”

“ It marks a strange perversity in human nature, that we are wont to offer nothing but images of terror--no stars of cheering light--to those who lie imprisoned in the darkness of a sick-bed, when the glitter of the dew of life is waxing gray and dim before them. It is indeed hard that lamentations and emotions are frequently vented upon the dying, which would be withheld from the living in all their vigor; as if the sick patient was to console those in health. There stands no spirit in the closeness of a sick-chamber to awaken a cheering smile on that nerveless, colorless countenance ”

“ O, your Clotilde should know her; she has, excepting her charms, half her soul. No discord exists between her outer and inner harmony; her earnest, generous soul resembles the palm-tree, which has neither bark nor branches, but which bears broad foliage and buds on its summit. "Gione," said Nadine, "these arguments unsettle our minds, instead of removing our doubts." "No one," she replied, "has yet given his opinion; if we even have the firmest convictions, still by their beautiful conformity with another's convictions our own become more beautiful and firm." ”

“ And so Delirium dyed for itself rosy wings in the Aurora of life, and fanned the panting soul,—and shook down golden butterfly-dust from its plumage on the path, on the flowerage of the suffering man;—in the far distance rose lovely tones, in the distance floated lovely clouds—O his heart was like to fall in pieces, but only into fluttering flower-stamina, into soft sentient nerves; his eyes were like to melt away, but only into dew-drops for the cups of joy-blossoms, into blood-drops for loving hearts ”

“ And the storm spread itself over the universe, and scattered balls of fire like suns, and thundered as with the noise of many worlds, and mingled its hot tears of joy with those of the heroes. And from below the sea came a dull echo from the earth. Then the cloud sank upon the island, and with a rushing sound received up into itself the heroes who had prayed to the Father to permit them to sacrifice in higher worlds.
When the storm had disappeared with them behind the stars, the vastness of creation appeared. All being rejoiced in eternity. The worlds lay along the heavens like an Alpine chain ”

“ Gottreich soon confirmed it to himself. He would fain have infused the fire of conquest, reflected in his own bosom, which, like a red evening cloud, was announcing a fair dawn to Europe, into that old and once strong heart; but he heard neither wish nor question of it. The old man gazed steadily upon the sun, until at last it was hid by the storm. Nevertheless the war of the elements seemed to touch him but little; the glare of life broke dimly through the thickening ice of death. A dying man knows no present,--nothing but the future and the past. ”

“ Then my heart comprehended that immortality dwelled in the spaces between the worlds, and death only amongst the worlds. Upon all the suns there walked upright shadows in the form of men: but they were glorified when they quitted these perishable worlds, and when they sank into the sea of light: and the murky planets, I perceived, were but cradles for the infant spirits of the universe of light. In the Zaarahs of the creation I saw—I heard—I felt—the glittering—the echoing—the breathing of life and creative power. ”

“ Turn aside with him, O youth, if thou standest upon his wandering way. This frightful dream will in future be thy judge; but if thou shouldst one day call out, full of grief, "Come again, O beautiful youth!" so shall it never return again.
THE DEATH OF AN ANGEL.
The tenderest and kindest angel, the Angel of the last hour, whom we harshly call Death, is sent to us, that he may mildly and gently pluck away the sinking heart of man from life, and bear it unhurt in his warm hands out of the cold breast into high, warming Eden. ”

“ Nadine, who had arranged everything beforehand with the bridegroom, replied: "I think we need none for such a delightful day, and such a charming valley. We will pilgrimize carelessly along the banks of the Adour, the length of the Vale, and rest at every new flower, and at every bud, and in the evening we will sail back by moonlight! That would be quite Arcadian and shepherd-like in this Arcadia. Will you all? You certainly will, dearest sister?" "O yes," said Gione, "for I think we are as yet all strangers to the charms of this paradise." ”

“ Karlson found it easily from its proximity to the famed Campan Cave, from which he had often broken stalactites. The sky was clouded with colored shadows, and on the green cradle of slumbering children night threw her star-embroidered cradle-cover, fastened to the summits of the Pyrenees. From out Wilhelmi's hermitage advanced some men in black attire, with torches in their hands, who seemed to be waiting for us, and told us the baron was in the Cave. By heaven, under such circumstances, it is easier to imagine the most circumscribed, than the largest and most beautiful Cave! ”

“ But towards night his ideas again began rushing in a torch-dance, like fire-pillars round his soul; every artery became a burning-rod, and the heart drove flaming naphtha-brooks into the brain. All within his soul grew bloody; the blood of his drowned brother united itself with the blood which had once flowed from Thiennette's arm, into a bloody rain;--he still thought he was in the garden in the night of betrothment, he still kept calling for bandages to stanch blood, and was for hiding his head in the ball of the steeple. ”