Every tenderer soul will easily divine the second thought that sweetened that of death.--It was this, that he could go once more to his beloved and think, though not say, before her, "I fall for thee." For he now felt, after all, that the resolve of a parting for life was too hard, and only that of doing so by death was easy.--O right easy and sweet it is, he felt, to close the wet eye in the presence of the loved one, then to see nothing more on the earth; but with the high flames of the heart, and with the dear image pressed to the bosom, like the encoffined mother with the dead darling, to step blindfold to the brink of this world, and throw one's self headlong into the still, deep, dark, cold sea of the dead.... "Thou art," he often said, "painted on my conscious being, and nothing can sever thy image from my heart; both must, as in Italy the wall and the picture upon it, be transported together."--And as now there was no longer any need to care for his body, he could call forth, of his own accord, the tears which agitated him. He wanted really to offer something of his life to Clotilda: therefore he rehearsed, for some days in succession, the part of the bloodiest farewell scene, even to exhaustion, and made pen-and-ink sketches of his sorrow, and said to himself, when thereby headaches and heart-beatings came upon him, "I can thus at least suffer something for _her_, though _she_ knows nothing of it." Here is one such mournful leaf. "O thou angel! Were it not that it would affect thee too sadly, I would go to thee, and before thy eyes fill my heart with tears, with images of the fairer time, with the bitterest sorrows, until it broke and sank,--or I would slay myself in thy presence. Ah! it were sweet to pierce my heart with lead, as it leaned on thy bosom, and to let my blood and life flow out on thy breast.--But, O God! no, no! Smiling will I go to thee, good soul, when thou comest back again, as if it were merely for joy at thy return,--only the pink with the red drop will I beg of thee, that my heart, adorned with it, may moulder under the last flower of life. I will, indeed, bleed so near thee, heavenly murderess, as the corpse does before its murderess, but yet only inwardly; and every drop of blood will fall merely from one thought to another.--Then, at last, will I be silent for a long time, and go, and that forever, only saying this and no more: 'Think of me, beloved, but be happier than heretofore.'----Whither then will I go, after an hour? I shall take the dumb, dreary road to the poisonous Buo-upas-tree,[176] to where death stands solitary, and there die all alone, all alone.----The dead are mutes, they have bells, and in the blue a mute will hover, and toll the death-bell.... Clotilda, Clotilda! then our love on earth is over!"