I would even now--for I still recollect how I hung with streaming eyes over these two loved ones, as over their corpses--address myself, and say: Far too soft, _Jean Paul_, whose chalk still sketches the models of Nature on a ground of Melancholy; harden thy heart like thy frame, and waste not thyself and others by such thoughts. Yet why should I do it, why should I not confess directly what, in the softest emotion, I said to these two beings? "May all go right with you, ye mild beings," I said, for I no longer thought of courtesies, "may the arm of Providence bear gently your lacerated hearts, and the good Father, above all these suns which are now looking down on us, keep you ever united, and exalt you still undivided to his bosom and his lips!" "Be you, too, right happy and glad!" said Thiennette. "And to you, Thiennette," continued I, "Ah! to your pale cheeks, to your oppressed heart, to your long cold maltreated youth, I can never, never wish enough. No! But all that can soothe a wounded soul, that can please a pure one, that can still the hidden sigh--O, all that you deserve--may this be given you; and when you see me again, then say to me, 'I am now much happier!'" We were all of us too deeply moved. We at last tore ourselves asunder from repeated embraces; my friend retired with the soul whom he loves,--I remained alone behind him with the Night. And I walked without aim through woods, through valleys, and over brooks, and through sleeping villages, to enjoy the great Night like a Day. I walked, and still looked like the magnet to the region of midnight, to strengthen my heart at the gleaming twilight, at this upstretching Aurora of a morning beneath our feet. White night-butterflies flitted, white blossoms fluttered, white stars fell, and the white snow-powder hung silvery in the high Shadow of the Earth, which reaches beyond the Moon, and which is our Night. Then began the Æolian Harp of the Creation to tremble and to sound, blown on from above, and my immortal soul was a string in this Harp.--The heart of a brother everlasting Man swelled under the everlasting Heaven, as the seas swell under the Sun and under the Moon.--The distant village-clocks struck midnight, mingling, as it were, with the ever-pealing tone of ancient Eternity.--The limbs of my buried ones touched cold on my soul, and drove away its blots, as dead hands heal eruptions of the skin.--I walked silently through little hamlets, and close by their outer churchyards, where crumbled upcast coffin-boards were glimmering, while the once bright eyes that had lain in them were mouldered into gray ashes.--Cold thought! clutch not like a cold spectre at my heart; I look up to the starry sky, and an everlasting chain stretches thither, and over and below; and all is Life, and Warmth, and Light, and all is godlike or God....