Hesperus; or, Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography. Vol. II.Jean Paul
General
Hesperus; or, Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography. Vol. II.
Jean Paul
Fiction
Emanuel opened his eyes at that, sent them through the foliage over to
the churchyard that overlooked the village and said, with a convulsion
of his being, "Horion, wake up; Giulia has left eternity and is
standing on her grave."--Victor cast a feverish glance up thither; and
all the warm thoughts and nerves of life grew hard and stiff in a
cutting ice-cold shudder, as he saw up there a white, veiled form
resting on the grave. Emanuel snatched himself up, and his pupil, and
said: "We will go up to the theatre of the spirits; perhaps the dead
one will lay hold on my soul and take me with her." ... Fearful was the
silence of the regions around their way.... Men start up out of the
ground like dumb-waiters, like serving-machines, and drop down again
when they are emptied.... The human race darts like a flying summer
through the sunshine, and the bedewed web hangs fluttering on two
worlds and in the night it passes away.... So thought both on their
pilgrimage to the dead one; they wondered at their own heavy
incarnation and at the noise of their steps. Emanuel fastened his gaze
on the veiled form that now knelt down; he thought she heard his
thoughts and would fly over to his heart through the moonlight....
The hearts of the two men rose and fell as if under two gravestones, as
they climbed the long, grass-grown steps to the churchyard, and touched
and opened the heavy gate which was painted with forms of risen saints,
half effaced by the weather. The warm earthly blood congeals and the
soft brain runs to a single image of terror, when the great cloud rolls
away from eternity and from the gate of the spiritual world; on the
stage of the dead Emanuel called as if beside himself: "Awful spirit, I
am a spirit like thee, thou too standest below God,--wilt thou kill me,
then kill me not by a stroke of horror, not by a crushing form, but
smile like men and quietly wring off my heart."--Then the veiled form
rose up and came,--Emanuel wildly grasped his friend, buried himself
in his face, and said clinging to him: "On thee I die, on thy warm
heart,--O live happy, unless thou wilt grow cold with me, ah! go with
me!" ...
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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