They did not go up on the side of the mountain to the weeping-birch, but over its slowly ascending ridge. They overlooked the theatre of night, over which the moon and the storm were coming up under a veil; Emanuel stopped and said: "O look up and see the eternally sparkling morning-meadows which lie around the throne of the Eternal! Had never a star shone out of heaven, only then would man lay himself down with anguish in his last sleep, on a dark earth built over like a burial vault without an opening." Before eyes which were fastened on suns, flashing glowworms trailed by, and a bat whizzed after a gray night-butterfly,--three St. John's day fires; lighted by superstition, brought three distant hills out of night,--all life slept under its leaf, under its twig, nearer to its mother, and in the dreams that were strewed about lay storms,--fishes tumbled up like corpses on the surface of the water as forerunners of the thunder. Suddenly Emanuel began, with an ill-fitting, not sufficiently controlled voice: "Verily we should stand more composedly beside the genius who lets fall the last sands of slumber on the eyes of our loves, if they did not afterward sleep out their last sleep in church vaults, in churchyards, but upon meadows, under the open heavens, or as mummies in chambers.... Now then, my beloved," they heard already the waving of the weeping-birch, "control thy fantasy; thou wilt see near the birch-tree my resting-pit open; I have for four weeks sown and clothed it with flowers which are now mostly in bloom,--thou wilt lay me thus to-morrow, without any _other_ preparation, in my night-dress among the flowers,--and cover it up to-morrow,--but do not, thou good man, give my little flower-piece such hard names as other men do,--to-morrow, I say; to-day go immediately home to thy Julius, when I...." (_am dead_, he would have said, but could not find for emotion the soft paraphrase).-- Ah! Horion with a sigh tore his agonized eyes out from the cold open grotto of his beloved, and could not look down to its blooming flowers. He sobbed aloud and looked out through tears faintly into Emanuel's face, to see whether he was living or dying. Two glowworms crossed one another in glimmering curves above the grave, they settled down beside it, and were extinguished, for their light ceases with their motion. The thunder now struck into Victor's wounds with its first clap,--a dissolving lightning covered the Eastern horizon, and the flame ran over the Alpine ridges,--the lightning-rod on the powder-house glowed, its alarm-bells rang, the ignes-fatui played about the tower, and in mid-air a hovering luminous point moved fearfully towards it.