An arm out of a river of Paradise lifted and bore this loving trinity into the leafy rooms, and here, for the first time, Victor saw that the spring was on Dahore's cheeks and the summer in his eyes, as well as twelve May months in his heart. The white mourning-roses on his cheeks, which always seemed to bloom like _mural crowns_ of death against St. John's-day, had given place to the red ones,--in short, Emanuel's face gave the hope that he had been, in regard to his death, a false prophet.-- In this waving apartment, whose golden wall borders were linden-boughs, and whose splendid tapestries were linden blossoms, and over whose door, as door-paintings, flickered the reflection and the mock-suns of the flashing water-wheel, in this four-walled island, surrounded by Nature's roaring sea of joy, through whose open windows the zephyrs flung bees and butterflies over the window-flowers among the lindens, my hero, to whom, besides, the noonday hum of bells appeared like a ringing call to a peace-festival of the earth, felt himself wading through flowers of joy up to his heart.--Emanuel's poesy sounded to him, in this epic intoxication, like prose; he was, as it were, sunk in a thicket of flowers, and, lifting his eyes, saw overhead a healed immortal who bent apart the blooming envelopment,--and still higher up an eternal Whitsuntide sun in the infinite blue,--and nearer above him the sprouting of the flower-leaves, and above this the swarming of bees,--and a golden morning-red, wound as a living frame round about the whole variegated incense-breathing woodland.... --By Heaven! only to lie in a _literal_ flower-wood of this kind were of itself something,--to say nothing of lying actually in a _metaphorical_ one!--Victor was devout with joy, still from overfulness, contented from gratitude. The aspect of their common teacher gave, it is true, to Clotilda's image warmer colors, and to his soul higher flames, but imparted to his wishes no insatiableness and no impatience.