"I think of that," she replied, "as often as I walk through meadows; in the distance are flowers upon flowers, but, near at hand, they are all scattered apart, and separated by the grass. But yet, after all, _memory is enjoyed only in the present_." Victor continued to think only of the flowers, and said, abstractedly, "And in the _night_ the flowers themselves look like grass,"--when it began suddenly to sprinkle. They all stepped, in solemn mood, into the summerhouse, on whose roof the rain pattered down, while through the open windows the alternately shutting and opening moon's eye threw in like a glacier its snow-glances,--the tepid blossom-breath of the whole glistening landscape stole with healing balm on every human sigh, every burdened bosom. In this confined circle, separated from nature by the alternation of night and moonshine, one must needs take refuge in something near and familiar, in the old harpsichord. Clotilda's voice might make a flute-accompaniment to the whispering rain without. The Parson's wife begged--her to favor them, and with her favorite _aria_ from Benda's Romeo,--"Perchance, my lost repose! perchance one day in the grave I may find thee!" &c.,--a song whose tones like fine dissolving perfumes penetrate the heart through a thousand entrances, and tremble there, and tremble more and more intensely, till at last they shiver it to atoms, and leave nothing of it behind in the harmonious annihilation but tears. Clotilda without any hesitating vanity consented to sing. But for Sebastian, in whom all tones came in contact with naked, quivering feelers, and who could work himself into sadness at the very songs of the herdsmen in the fields--this, on such an evening, was too much for his heart; under cover of the general musical attentiveness, he had to steal out of the door....