And that would he gladly do; for what had he left on earth except--recollections? O, too many recollections, too few hopes--Who would be grieved at his fall?--the loved one, who, after all, resigns him,--or her brother, whom he saves and flies from,--or his good lord, who perhaps rests already in the earth,--or his Emanuel, whose loving arms are already crumbling to dust?--"Yes, him only will my dying affect," said he, "for he will long for his faithful scholar, he will on some sun open his arms and look down along the way to the earth, and I shall come up with a great wound on my breast, and my streaming heart will lie naked on the wound.--O Emanuel, despise me not, I shall cry; I was truly unhappy, after thou hadst died; receive me and heal the wound!" --"Seest thou my father?" said the blind Julius, and his face approached a smile of rapture. Victor started and said, "I talk with him, but I do not see him."--But this checked his exaltation. He had been hitherto the paraclete and nurse of the poor blind charge; he could not leave him, he must needs put off the _retreating-shot_ of life till the arrival of Clotilda, that she might protect the helpless one. Ah, the good night-walker and night-sitter (in the proper sense) had at first every day prayed Victor to operate upon his eye, and give him back the light, before his dear father should crumble to pieces, that he might see once more, only once more, the fair countenance not yet undermined by worms; yes, he would at least touch blindly the cold mask,--this he had in the beginning implored; but in a few weeks he had drawn his arms away from under the dead man, and folded them entirely (like a true child) with all his caressing love around Victor, who _always_ stayed at home with him. And in the night they reached out to each other their warm hands out of their adjoining beds, and thus linked together went into the evening-lands of dreams. To the childlike blind one, even the continuous din of the city turmoil, which his village had wanted, had been a comfort....