Ah, when he reached his chamber, a happy and consoling thought embraced his soul. Clotilda's dirge, and all, fixed before his sight the form of the exalted Emanuel,--and it seemed to say: "In a year I shall be already under the ground, only come to me, poor child, I will love thee till I die!" Without desiring a light, he wrote with streaming eyes, which no light could have helped, this letter to Emanuel:-- "EMANUEL! "Say not to me, I know thee not! How can man, on this little grain of sun-dust called the earth, on which he warms himself, and during the swift moments which he counts off on his pulse between the flash of life and the stroke of death, still make a distinction between acquaintances and non-acquaintances? Why do not these little creatures, who have wounds of the same kind, and for whose coffins Time takes the same measure, fall without hesitation into each other's arms, and sigh, 'Ah, we are doubtless like each other and acquainted!' Why must first these fleshly statues into which our spirits are chained move towards and touch each other, before the beings disguised therein can imagine and love each other? And yet it is so human and so true a thought: what then does Death take from us except fleshly statues, what from our eyes but the loved countenance, what from our ears but the dear voice, and the warm bosom from our own? Ah, Emanuel! be to me no dead man! Accept me! Give me thy heart! I will love it! "I am not very happy, my Emanuel! When my great teacher, Dahore,--that shining Swan of heaven, who, fastened to life by his broken wing-joint, looked up wistfully at other Swans, as they winged their way toward the warmer latitudes of the second life,--ceased to write to me, he did it in these words: 'Seek my duplicate! Thy breast will continue to bleed, until thou coverest its scar with another, and the earth will agitate thee more and more violently, if thou standest alone,--and only around the solitary do ghosts creep.'