--O All-gracious One! we die more happily; only the poor Emanuel wrestled in the silent darkness with fierce thoughts which for so long a time he had not seen, and which clutched at his paling countenance. But these masks flee away, when a friendly fraternal face appears before thee and embraces thee.--Horion raised himself up and warmed again his bowed friend by a mute farewell. A storm-wind precipitated itself out of the clear west into the dumb, laboring hell, and chased out all the lightnings and all the thunders. Lo, at that moment the bright moon flew out from the backward-drifted mass of cloud like an angel of peace into the unstained blue,--_then in the light Emanuel stood distinguished from his shadow_,--then did the moon illuminate a rainbow of pale color grains, which in the Southeast (the gate to the East Indies) penetrated through the dark water-columns, and arched itself over the Alps,--then Emanuel saw again, as previously, the Jacob's ladder leaning against the earthly night,--then came rapture without measure, and he cried with outspread arms: "Ah, yonder in the _East_, in the East, over the road to my _native land_, there glows the arch of triumph, there opens the gate of glory, there the dying march through." ... And as just then it struck twelve o'clock, he spread out his hand ecstatically towards heaven, which was blue above the mountains, and toward the moon, which reposed serenely beside the tempest, and cried, breaking into blissful tears, "Thanks, Eternal One, for my first life, for all my joys, for this fair earth."-- The flute tones of Julius floated around Maienthal, and he looked down upon the earth. "And be thou ever blest, thou good earth, thou good mother-land, bloom, ye fields of Hindostan, farewell, thou glowing Maienthal, with thy flowers and with thy people,--and ye brothers, all of you, after a long smile, come and blissfully follow me. Now, O Eternal One, take me up, and console the _two_ survivors." The death angels stood on all the clouds, and drew their glittering swords out of the nights,--one thunder clapped after another, as if one prison-door of this earthly life after another were flung open. The terrible luminous point had crept out of mid-air into the powder-house. The death-hour had already passed, and yet life had not. Emanuel trembled with yearning and apprehension, because he felt as yet no sign of dying,--moved his hands as if he would give them to some one,--stared into the lightnings as if he would draw them upon him.... "Death! seize me," he cried, beside himself,--"ye dead friends! O father! O mother! tear my heart away, take me,--I cannot--cannot live any longer."---- At that moment a blazing, rattling globe flew up into the tempest, and the powder-house shot itself to pieces like an undermined hell.--The explosion threw the flaming Emanuel pale into his flowery grave; the whole thundering east trembled; the moon and the rainbow were darkened....