O Horion, does the earth still abide under us, drawing its circle of death-hills round the breadth of life? Do these tones tremble in an earthly air? O Music! thou that bringest the Past and the Future with their flying flames so near to our wounds, art thou the evening-breath of this life, or the morning air of the life to come? Ay, thy sounds are echoes, which angels snatch from the second world's tones of gladness, to convey down into our mute hearts, into our dreary night the faint spring-melodies of heavens flying far above us! And thou, dying harmonica-tone! verily thou comest to us out of an peal of exultation, which, driven from heaven to heaven, dies at last in the remotest mute heaven, which consists of nothing but a deep, broad, tranquil, and eternal bliss.... "Tranquil and eternal bliss," repeats Horion's dissolving soul, whose rapture I have hitherto made my own, "ay, _there_ will lie the region where I shall lift up my eyes toward the All-gracious, and spread out my arms toward _her_, toward this weary soul, toward this great heart. Then shall I fall upon thy heart, Clotilda, then shall I clasp thee forever, and the flood of tranquil and eternal bliss will close around us. Breathe again toward life, earthly tones, between my breast and hers, and then let a little night, an undulating shadowy outline, swim along on your light waves, and I will look toward it and say, That was my life;--then shall I say more softly, and weep more intensely, Ay, man is unhappy, but only on the earth." O, if there is a human being over whom, at these last words, memory draws great rain-clouds, to him, to her, I say, Beloved brother, sister, I am, to-day, as much moved as thou; I respect the sorrow which thou hidest,--ah! thou excusest me, and I thee.... The tune stopped and died away. What stillness now in the dark! Every sigh took the form of a long-drawn breathing. Only the nebulous stars of sensibility sparkled brightly in the darkness. No one saw whose eye had been wet. Victor looked into the still, black air before him, which a few minutes ago had been filled with hanging-gardens of tones, with dissolving air-castles of the human ear, with diminished heavens, and which now remained a naked, black firework-scaffold.