be, where my father is, in the still grave."----Victor began eagerly the question, "Has Flamin--" but he could not add, "killed him"; for she lifted up her head and looked upon him with a swelling, a laboring, unspeakable sorrow, and that sorrow was her _yes_.---- Exhausted with the bleeding of tears and convulsed amidst remembrances, which, like brain-borers, touched the soul, she was on the point, at last, of sinking down by the wall; but Victor sustained her with inexpressible compassion, and held her upright on his breast and said, "Come, innocent angel, come to my heart, and weep thyself dry thereon,--we are unhappy, but innocent.--O, take thy rest, thou tormented head, rest softly under my tears."----But always in the height of woe a mountain-air began to flutter around him; it seemed to him as if an iron lever lifted up the broken-in skull, as if vital air streamed in through the pierced, inwardly mouldering breast; the reason why he felt so was that the life of men became little to him, death great, and earth dust. "Sleep, harassed one,"--he said to Clotilda, who leaned languidly upon him,--"sleep away the woe,--life is a sleep, an oppressed, sultry sleep; vampyres sit upon it, rain and wind fall upon us sleepers, and we vainly clutch at waking.----O, life is a long, long sigh before the going out of the breath.--But alas that the wretched meteor should be permitted so to torment just this good soul, just thyself!"--"Ah," said Clotilda, "if only the so sad flute would cease! My heart is ready to fly to pieces for agony!" But her friend cruelly tore open again all the springs of her tears and poured his into hers, and depicted to her the past: "Four weeks ago it was otherwise; then the flute-tones passed over a fairer region; through the happy plaints of the nightingale they found their way into our hearts, which were then so joyous.--On the first Whitsuntide-day I found thee, when the nightingale throbbed,--on the second, I sank down before thee for rapture and reverence, when the rain glistened round about us,--on the third, at the evening fountain a broad heaven rose, and I saw a single angel stand sparkling and smiling therein.----Our three days were dreams of fair flowers, for dreams of flowers signify sorrow."--He had hitherto hardened his soft soul against this cruel picture, but when he had actually, with oppressed voice, added, "At that time our Emanuel was still living, and visited at evening his open grave..." then must his heart needs burst, and all his tears gushed out over the deeply buried sword-blade like bloody drops, and he said, straining her more passionately to himself "O, come, we will weep without measure: we will not console ourselves. We shall not be much longer together: O, I could now tear myself to pieces with sorrow.--Exalted Dahore! look upon this dying one and her tears over thee, and requite her mourning, and give the weary soul at length repose, and thy peace, and all that is wanting to man."