Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

nounced almost daily, and whose memory was almost constantly present with me. I had long accustomed myself to the thought that I should never see her again in this world; indeed, she had attained in my mind a form such as I knew did not and could not exist in reality. She had become my good angel, my other self, to whom I spoke instead of speaking with myself. How this had happened I could not explain even to myself, for I really scarcely knew her, and only as the eye at times transforms the clouds into living figures, so, I felt, had my imagination enchanted before me this shadowy apparition in the sky of my childhood, and from the delicately drawn lines of reality my fancy had constructed a complete picture. My whole course of thought had involuntarily become a dialogue with her, and everything which was good in me, everything for which I strove, everything in which I believed, my better self, all this belonged to her, I gave it to her, it came from her lips, from the lips of my good angel.

I had been but a few days in my paternal home, when I received one morning a letter. It was written in English, and came from the Countess Maria.

[blocks in formation]

"I hear you are with us for a short time. We have not met for many years, and if it is agreeable to you, I should like to see an old friend again. You will find me alone this afternoon in the Swiss cottage.

"Yours sincerely,

“MARIA.”

I wrote back immediately, also in English, that I would wait upon her in the afternoon.

The Swiss house formed a wing of the castle, which was towards the garden, and which could be entered without going through the court-yard. It was five o'clock when I went through the garden and approached the house. I struggled to repress all emotion, and prepared myself for

a formal interview. I endeavored to quiet my good angel within me, and to prove to her that this lady had absolutely nothing to do with her. And yet I felt myself very uneasy, and my good angel herself would not inspire me with any courage. At last I took heart, murmured something to myself about the masquerade of life, and knocked at the door which stood half open.

There was no one in the room but a lady whom I did not know, and who immediately addressed me in English, and told me the Countess would be here directly. Then she went away, and I was left alone, and had time to look about me.

The walls of the room were of oak-wood, and there was a twisted lattice-work all around, on which a full, broadleaved ivy was entwined, which went round the whole apartment. The tables and chairs were all of carved oak. The floor was of tessellated wood-work. It made a singular impression to find in this room so much that was familiar to me. Many objects were known to me, being from our old play-room at the castle; but others, namely, the pictures, were new, and yet they were the same pictures which I myself had in my room at the University. On the walls were hanging the portraits of Beethoven, of Handel, and of Mendelssohn, - the very same which I had myself chosen. In one corner I saw the Venus of Milo, which I had always regarded as the finest statue from antiquity. There on the table lay volumes of Dante, of Shakespeare, Tauler's Sermons, the "Germania Theologia,” Rückert's Poems, Tennyson and Burns, Carlyle's "Past and Present," the very books which lay in my study, and which I had just before had in my hands. I began to be perplexed in mind, but I shook off my strange thoughts, and was just standing before the picture of the deceased' Princess, when the doors opened, and two bearers, the same whom I had so often seen when a child, brought the Countess into the room reclining on her couch. 21

VOL. XXIII.

[ocr errors]

[ocr errors]

What a vision! She did not speak, and her face was calm as a lake, until the bearers had left the room. Then she turned her eyes on me, those same deep, impenetrable eyes, her face became every moment more animated, until her whole countenance wore a smile, and she said: "We are old friends; I think we have not changed for each other, I cannot say Sie, and if I may not say Du, we must talk in English. Do you understand me?"

[ocr errors]

[ocr errors]

I was not prepared for this reception, yet I saw there was here no masked ball; here was a soul seeking for a soul; here was a greeting, as when two friends, in spite of their disguise, in spite of their black masks, recognize each other by the mere glance of the eye,—I seized her hand which she held out to me, and said, "When one speaks to an angel, he cannot say Sie."

And yet how peculiar is the force of the forms and customs of life, how difficult is it, even with souls the most closely allied, to speak the language of nature! The intercourse was constrained, and we both felt the embarrassment of the moment. I broke the silence by saying just what came into my head: "Men are accustomed from their infancy to live in a cage, and even when they are in free air they do not venture to move their wings, and are afraid every moment of striking against something should they attempt to fly."

"Yes," said she, "and that is all just right, and cannot be otherwise. We often wish, to be sure, that we could live like the birds, who fly about in the woods, and meet each other on the boughs, and sing together without waiting to be introduced. But, my friend, there are among birds owls and sparrows, and it is well that we may go by these in life as if we did not know them. Yes, it is perhaps in life as in poetry; and as the true poet knows how to say the truest and most beautiful things in a prescribed form, so should men also know how to preserve the freedom of thought and feeling, in spite of the fetters of society."

I could not help reminding her of Plato's lines:

"For what, where'er we find it,

Shows an eternal life,

Is when our bounded language

With boundless thought is rife."

"Yes," said she, with a friendly and almost a roguish smile; "but I have a privilege from my sufferings and my isolation; and I often pity the young girls and the young men, that they cannot have any confidence and any familiarity with each other, without either themselves, or their friends for them, being forced to think of love, or of what is called love. By this means they lose a great deal. The girl does not know what slumbers in her soul, and what might be awakened there by the earnest words of a noble friend, and the young man would regain so many knightly virtues, if women ventured to be the distant spectators of the inward struggles of their spirits. But this does not answer, for love must always come into the game, or what is called love, that quick beating of the heart, that stormy movement of hope, the pleasure in a pretty face, the sweet emotion, perhaps even the prudential calculation,-in short, just everything which disturbs that ocean calmness, which is, after all, the true image of pure human love."

With this she stopped suddenly, and an expression of pain passed over her face. "I must not talk any more to-day," said she; "my physician would not allow it. I should like to hear a song of Mendelssohn,

my young friend used to play that years ago.

[ocr errors]

the duet, Did he not?" I could not answer, for just as she left off speaking, and folded her hands as before, I saw on her hand a ring,she wore it on her little finger; it was the ring which she had given me, and which I had given back to her. The thoughts were too many to be clothed in words, and I placed myself at the harpsichord and played.

[ocr errors]

When I had done, I turned round, looked at her, and said, "If one could only speak so in tones without words!"

"And that may be," said she. "I understand all. But to-day I cannot speak any more, for I grow weaker every day. But we must get used to one another, and a poor, sick solitaire may count upon indulgence. We will meet to-morrow evening at the same hour. Shall we not?"

I took her hand, I would have kissed it. But she held my hand firmly, pressing it, and saying, "That is best. Good by!"

THE IMMEDIATE VISION OF GOD.

A SERMON PREACHED IN THE WEST CHURCH, BY C. A. BARTOL.

REV. 4, 2:"And immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne."

You will bear me witness, that I seldom preach what is called a doctrinal sermon. If I do it to-day, it is because I think it seasonable and useful in the aspects of the times. "I was in the Spirit immediately," says the writer of this book. Whoever he was, he certainly was an inspired man, if anybody ever was inspired, or if a divinely exalted heart and sanctified imagination be essentially what by inspiration we mean." Immediately I was in the Spirit."

But this statement does not fall in with most of the thinking and the popular theology of our day. If we were asked what substantive word of general meaning recurs most frequently in the human speech of this age, we should answer, It is the word, of precisely contrary signification, Medium. This is a material word in Natural Philosophy. Through what medium, light or air, solid or fluid, electric or magnetic, was an observation made, a result reached, a discovery confirmed? It is a sentimental word in society. Through what medium did the acquaintance, introduction,

« VorigeDoorgaan »