Like a true youth, he forgot himself and all around him, half-stretched out his arms, and said, with an eye in which one saw a soul longingly laboring at a portrait of Emanuel: "Now I know thee, thou nameless one! thou art the lofty man, who is so rare.... I assure you, Herr Von Schleunes, this Mr. Emanuel has something in him ... No, amidst this life on the wing, a thing which darts so _prestissimo_ out of one rain-shower into another,[52] and from cloud to cloud, should not keep its bill open on the stretch for one continued peal of laughter.... I have read today somewhere: Man has only two and a half minutes, and only one for a smile...." He had quite lost himself in the thicket of his feelings, else he would have kept back more than he did, especially the last line of the leaf found in the garden. Clotilda was startled at something or other. He would now gladly have read the leaf through. She related to him now those characteristics of her teacher into which she knew better how to enter; that he was a Pythagorean, went only in white robes, had himself put to sleep and waked with flute-music, ate no leguminous fruits or animal food, and often walked half the night under the stars. Lost in mute rapture over the teacher, he hung with enthusiastic eyes upon the friendly lips of the pupil, who was ennobled by her interest in a sublime and singular genius. She found here the first man whom she had ever put into an unfeigned enthusiasm for her Pythagorean favorite; and all her chasms turned themselves, blooming, towards Emanuel's image, like flowers toward the sun. Two fair souls discover their affinity first of all by the like love which binds them to a third. The full, inspired heart loves to hush and hide itself in a finery-room, which holds only heterogeneous persons, but when it finds therein its second, then in its joy at that its silence and secrecy and the finery-room are all forgotten. The quicksilver of Victor's morning gayety had fallen ten degrees. In the twilight of his soul nothing peered forth but the paper which he wanted to read, and in fact presently read out in the avenue; and so he took an early leave. The leaf had blown out of Clotilda's loose Album, and was written by--Emanuel. "Man has here two and a half minutes,--one to smile, one to sigh, and half a one to love; for in the midst of this minute he dies. "But the grave is not deep, it is the gleaming footmark of an angel who seeks us. When the unknown hand sends the last arrow at the head of man, he bends his head in anticipation, and the arrow merely takes off the crown of thorns from his wounds.[53] "And with this hope, go forth from Maienthal, noble soul! but neither continents nor graves nor the second world can sunder or bind together two human beings: but only thoughts part or marry hearts.