This melancholy weather harmonized with Oswald's state of mind. Since the day he had passed at Barnewitz a great change had taken place in him, which he could hardly explain himself. He felt as if suddenly a close veil had fallen on his eyes, which made everything look to him discolored and unattractive; he felt as if a hostile hand had mixed a drop of wormwood with his cup of life, from which he had recently drunk so eagerly. Even the image of the beautiful lady who was enthroned in the holiest of his heart seemed to have lost its magic power. Where was now all the happiness he used to feel when he recalled her and the sunny hours he had spent with her? Where the restless longing to see her face, to hear her voice? Where the feverish impatience with which he followed the course of the sun and wished for the night, so he might steal down the narrow stairs that led from his room into the garden and hasten to the forest, to spend hours and hours watching around the forest chapel? And yet he knew that she was mourning for him now in her solitude; that she had long since forgiven his boyish defiance and his childish impatience; that not a word of reproach, not a glance of reproof would receive him if he should return; that she would open her arms wide, and welcome him to her loving heart! Alas! It was not she whom he doubted, nor her love; it was himself and his own love that he doubted! Oldenburg's last words: Who of us is still able to love with all his heart? Who of us still has a whole heart? fell again and again upon his ear like the low tolling of a bell, like the song at the grave. And a voice which he could not silence whispered to him, wherever he went and stood, by night and by day: Not you! Not you!--Is it not written in the lines of your hand? Did not the brown woman in the forest see it at the first glance? Not you! Not you!--And when you fell at Melitta's feet, and when you stammered the vow of love and faithfulness, did she not hastily and anxiously close your lips, as if she wished to save you from the crime of perjury: Oh, do not swear! I may swear to you love now and evermore, but not you! not you! Rainy weather! How the wind drives the big drops against the panes, so that they become dim, like eyes that have wept too much! How heavy and low the clouds are drifting, the gray mourning cloaks, as if they must touch the tops of the poplar trees on the castle wall with their hems! Ah! that I was lying out there beneath the wet black soil, relieved of all anguish of doubt or repentance! Ah! that I could partake of the deep peace of Nature! Be one with the elements! Rush along with the wind, flare up to heaven with the flame, pass away with the water of the stream in the ocean!