But they arrived at the foot of the weeping-birch, and grief still held possession of his eye and his voice. "Ah!" thought he, "how great and glad was the first night here, and how painful is this!" They reclined on the earth beside each other on the grassy bank, solitary, silent, sad, before the darkly glimmering universe. Victor could hear the labored breathing of the diseased breast, and the future grave on this mountain seemed to open at his side. Oh! if it is bitter to stand by the bed wherein a loved and fading countenance lies with the hues of death, far more bitter is it, in the midst of the scenes of health, behind the erect form of the dear one, to hear the grave-digger Death softly at his work, and to think, as often as the loved face looks joyful, "Ah, be still more joyful! in a short time he will have gnawed round the roots of thy life, and thou wilt have passed away with thy joys and with mine!"--But ah! there is indeed no friend, man or woman, with whom we should not be obliged to think the same!-- He knew not why Dahore was so long silent.--He foresaw not that the moon would illumine the mountain sooner than the valley. The moon, that Pharos on the coast of the second world, now encircled men with pale fields, taken from dreams, with wan, gleaming meadows born of a super-terrestrial perspective, and the Alps and woods it resolved into immovable mists; _above_ the hemisphere of earth stood deep the Lethe-flood of slumber, _below_ the green crust stood the dead sea, and two loving men lived between the wide domains of sleep and death.... At this moment Victor thought to himself, indeed, still more keenly, "Here, beside this birch-tree, under this cold sod, will _his_ crumbling breast be forever hidden, and his heart will bleed no more; but ah! it will beat no more." He thought, indeed, upon gloomy resemblances, as the _immovable_ stars appeared to go _up_ and _down_, merely because the playing _earth_ turned itself about them, now _showing_ and now _hiding_ them; he turned, indeed, his melancholy glance away from the _ignes fatui_, that, gliding over valleys, danced only on the solemn darkness and on the graves, and which described round a solitary powder-house their deceptive circles.---- But still he was silent, and thought, "Ah, well! we have each other yet."