Gottreich soon confirmed it to himself. He would fain have infused the fire of conquest, reflected in his own bosom, which, like a red evening cloud, was announcing a fair dawn to Europe, into that old and once strong heart; but he heard neither wish nor question of it. The old man gazed steadily upon the sun, until at last it was hid by the storm. Nevertheless the war of the elements seemed to touch him but little; the glare of life broke dimly through the thickening ice of death. A dying man knows no present,--nothing but the future and the past. On a sudden the landscape grew dark, all the winds stood pent, the earth oppressed; then there came a gush of rain and a crash of thunder. The lightning streamed around the old man, and he looked up altered and astonished. "Hist!" said he; "I hear the rain once more;--speak quickly, children, for I shall soon depart." Both his children clung to him, but he was too weak to embrace them. And now, as the warm, healing springs of the clouds bathed the sick earth, down from the dripping tree to the blades of grass, and as the sky glistened mildly as with a tear of joy, and the thunder went warring away behind the distant mountains, the sick man pointed upwards, and said, "Seest thou the lordliness of God? My son, strengthen now at the last my weary soul with something holy, in the spirit of love, and not of penance; for if our hearts condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. Say something rich in love to me of God and of his works." Then the eyes of his son overflowed, to think that he should read the Reminiscences which he had prepared for his own death-bed at the death-bed of his father. When he said this to him, the old man answered, "Hasten, my son!" and with a faltering voice, Gottreich began to read:-- "Remember, in the darkening hour, that the glow of the universe once filled thy breast, and that thou hast acknowledged the magnitude of existence. Hast thou not looked forth into one half of infinity by night, and into the other half by day? Think away the nothingness of space, and the earth which is around thee; worlds above, around, and beneath arch thee about as a centre, all impelling and impelled, splendor within splendor, magnitude within magnitude; all brightness centring in the universal Sun. Carry thy thoughts forwards through eternity, toward that universal Sun; thou shalt not arrive at darkness nor emptiness. What is empty dwells only between the worlds, not around the world. "Remember, in the dark hour, those times when thou hast prayed to God in ecstasy, and when thou hast thought on him,--the greatest thought of finite man,--the Infinite One!" Here the old man clasped his hands, and prayed low.