Withered Leaves Volume I Part 26

"Good-night"--she felt as in a dream, where, wandering through subterranean pa.s.sages, one door is shut noisily after another, and the sneck closes clatteringly--ever farther on into the deep abyss of night.

And no word of elucidation--all shared that secret--all kept silence, even he--was that his love?

Pressing her hand upon her heart, she followed her mother; she looked round once more.

There he stood, his tall figure drawn up erectly, his pale face seemed to quiver with some internal struggle. She forgot her own anguish in his. It was indeed impossible--he could not be lost to her.

The Kalzows and Blanden remained behind, so as not to interrupt the entertainment by a general departure. Kuhl had declared upon his honour that sudden indisposition on the part of the bride's mother had called the former away. Thus people did not allow themselves to be disturbed in their enjoyment, the bride was soon forgotten, as she was merely the chance cause of the gay evening dance. Only the two poets went about in a melancholy frame of mind; the unspoken verses of their _carmina_ pa.s.sed in pieces through their minds, and bitter regret for the laurels which the people of Neukuhren had turned for them, and of which they had been deprived, eat into their souls.

"What does all this mean?" Kuhl asked his friend.

"Follow me to my room, afterwards," replied Blanden.

Early morning which, on the summer's night, dawned with its first streaks of red on the horizon, only put an end to the enjoyment of the dancers.

In the deep silence of that early hour, which brings something sanctifying with it, after refreshing sleep, something gloomy after a watchful night, the two friends sat together in a comfortable room, looking over the wide ocean, whose waves seemed to thrill with kindling rapture at the first greeting of the young day's...o...b..

Kuhl had lighted a cigar, and with a cup of Mocca before him, he listened with unshaken equanimity to the disclosures of his nervously agitated friend.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: A common or moorland covered with heather, merely so-called in East Prussia.--_Translator's Note_.]

[Footnote 2: The art designation of the Nankin Academy. _Wald_ signifies forest or grove; _Pinsel_ paint-brushes and simpletons: hence the joke is lost in translation.--_Translator's note_.]

[Footnote 3:

The lark it was, not the nightingale, Come arise from your quiet-laden slumber,-- The fires are ready on every side, The sacred fires, without number.]

[Footnote 4: The quotations from Heine are borrowed from E. A.

Bowring's, those from Schiller from Lord Lytton's translations.--_Translator's Note_.]

END OF VOL. I.