He heard the little one go and say, "I will fetch thee a larger pillow to put under thy head." Clotilda stood up and clasped his hand,--he turned round again toward the earth,--and she looked on him with eyes worn with weeping, yet tender, whose drops were too pure for this unclean world, but in those large eyes stood something like the terrible question, "Do we not love each other in vain for this world?" And her beating heart shook the bloody pink. The moon and the evening star gleamed solitary, like a past, in heaven.--Julius lay mute and prostrate, with outspread arms, on the low mound which had been rolled upon the dust of his shattered paradise. The tones of the nightingale throbbed now like high waves on the night,--then he gathered up his courage to bid her farewell.... Reader! raise not thy spirit to any pitch of rapture, for it will soon stiffen in a spasm,--but I raise my soul thereto, because even the fatal stumble at the gate of paradise is not unlovely when one is going out of it! The first call of the confiding nightingale was suddenly answered still-higher by a new nightingale that had fluttered along and whose voice was muffled by thick blossoms, who kept flying as she sang, and now made her languishing melody flow out of the blossoming hollow. The two lovers, who delayed and dreaded parting, wandered confusedly after the receding nightingale, and were on the way to the blessed blooming hollow; they knew not that they were alone; for in their hearts was God; before their sight shone the whole second world full of risen souls. At last Clotilda recovered herself, turned round before the nightingale, and gave the mournful sign of separation.--Victor stood on the shore of his late blissful island,--all, all was now over,--he lingered, took both her hands, could not yet look upon her for anguish, bowed down with tears, raised himself up again, when he was able to say softly: "Farewell,--my heavy heart can say no more,--fare thee right well, far better than I,--weep not so often as thou usedst to do, that thou mayest not perchance have to leave me utterly.--For then I too should go."--Louder and more solemnly he continued: "For we can no more be separated,--here under Eternity I deliver to thee my heart,--and when it forgets thee, then--may a sorrow crush it which shall reach over the two worlds." ... In a lower and tenderer tone, "Weep not to-morrow, angel,--and Providence give thee rest." Like a transfigured one to a transfigured he inclined himself modestly to her holy lip, and in a gentle, devout kiss, in which the hovering souls only glide tremulously from afar to meet each other with fluttering wings, with a light touch he took from the yielding, dissolving lips the seal of her pure love, the repetition of his late Eden, and her heart and his all----