Like a doomsday in the night-clouds the watchman's homely admonition to think of death and of the twelfth spirit-hour of this midnight of life, pealed into his ears, before which the blood-streams of the heart rushed by. The call in the street seemed to come from Emanuel, and to say: "Horion! Stain not thy soul, and fall not away from thy Emanuel and from thyself! Look at the linen over her diseased eye, as if death veiled it, and sink not!" "I sink not!" said his whole heart; he unwound himself with respectful forbearance out of the throbbing arms, and stiffening at the possibility of an imitation of the wretched Matthieu, whom he had so despised, he sank down outside of the bed on her hand, which he had drawn out with him, and said with streaming tears: "Forgive a youth,--forgive his overmastered heart,--his dazzled eyes,--I deserve all punishments, any one would be to me a pardon,--but I have forgotten no one except myself."--"_Mais c'est moi, que j'oublie en vous pardonnant_,"[33] said she with an ambiguous look, and he rose, and as her answer gave him the choice between the most agreeable and the most humbling interpretation, he gladly punished himself with the latter. Agnola's eye flashed with love,--then with anger,--then with love,--then it closed;--he stepped back to the most respectful distance,--she opened it again and turned her face coldly to the wall; and by a secret pressure against the wall which, I suppose, commanded a private bell in the apartment of the Chambermaid, gave the latter the order to make haste,--and in a few minutes she came in with the eye-band. Naturally (as in human life) they played out the fifth act, just as if there had been no third and fourth.--Then he politely withdrew.