To-day I present Emanuel's last day (which now lies cooled off and extinguished among the days of eternity) with pale outlines to the fantasies of men. My hand trembles and my eye burns before the scenes which in funeral veils glide around me and lift their veils so near to me.----I shut myself up to-night,--I hear nothing but my thoughts,--I see nothing but the night-suns which move across the heavens,--I forget the weaknesses and the stains of my heart, that I may get the courage to lift up my head as if I were good, as if I dwelt on the height where around the great man like constellations lie only God, Eternity, and Virtue. But I say to them who are better,--to the silent great heart, which _increases_ its obligations in _fulfilling_ them, and which satisfies itself _as its conscience grows_ only with daily increasing merits,--to the lofty men who have warmly pressed the hand of death, who can calmly ask him, when he walks round on morning-meadows, "Seekest thou me to-day?"--to the panting soul which cools itself under the _cypress-tree_,--to the men with tears, with dreams, with wings,--to all these I say, "Kinsmen of my Emanuel, your brother stretches out his hand after you through the shortest night; grasp it, he would fain bid you farewell!" THE SUBLIME HOUR BEFORE MIDNIGHT. Victor rose sadly from his dreams, in which he had seen nothing but graves and funeral piles for his friend; but he gathered secret hopes at the morning-greeting, as he saw him step forth into his alleged death-morning without fever, without oppression, without change. His only concern was about the impression which the disappointed hope of departure would make upon the heart of the beloved friend, already half torn from the earthly soil and laid bare from earthly environment. The latter, on the contrary, still held fast to his dreams, to which even his nightly ones gave nourishment; and he looked yearningly into the starless blue, and calculated the long road to the twelfth night-hour, when, out of heaven should peer forth the stars, and death with that dark, immense mantle of his, in which he bears us through his cold realm. His heart lay in a sweet siesta, which proceeded partly from bodily exhaustion and from the beauty of the day. His inner calm, never so great and magical as in souls in which whirlwinds and hurricanes have swept to and fro, overspread his whole being with a bliss of yearning which in other eyes than his would have melted in tear-drops. O Rest! thou soft word!--autumnal bloom of Eden! Moonlight of the spirit! Rest of the soul, when wilt thou hold our head, that it may be still, and our heart, that it may cease beating? Ah, ere the one grows pale and the other stiff, thou comest often and goest often, and only down below with sleep and with death thou abidest, whereas above, men with the greatest wings, like birds of paradise, are whirled about most of all by the storms!