Julienne, at nine o'clock in the evening, visited the only heart which, in the whole court, beat like hers and for hers,--her good Liana. The latter gladly offered her forehead to her commencing sick-headache, and sought only to feel and to still another's pain. The friends, who, before strangers' eyes, only displayed pleasantry, and before each other only a tender, enthusiastic seriousness, sank more and more deeply into this mood before the severe and religious lady of the Minister, who never found in Julienne so much soul as in the soft hour after weeping, as stock-gilliflowers begin to scent the air when they are sprinkled. Not the struggle, but the flight of pain, beautifies the person; hence the countenance of the dead is transfigured, because the agonies have cooled away. The maidens stood enthusiastically together at the window, the waxing moonlight of their fancy was made full moonlight by that of the outer world; they formed the nun's-plan to live together, and go in and out together for life. Often it seemed to them, in this still hour of emotion (and the thought made them shudder), as if the murmuring wings of departed souls swept by over them (it was only a couple of flies, who, with feet and wings, had caught a few tones on the harp of the Minister's lady); and Julienne thought most bitterly of her dead father in Lilar. At last she begged the sister of her soul to ride with her this night to Lilar, and to share and assuage the last and deepest woe of an orphan. She did it willingly; but the "yes" was hard to extort from the Minister's lady. I see the gentle forms step, from their long embrace in the carriage, out into the mourning chamber at Lilar,--Julienne, the smaller of the two, with quivering eyes and changing color; Liana, more pale with megrim and mourning, and milder and taller than her companion, having completed her growth in her twelfth year.[53] Like supernatural beings the two maidens beamed upon Roquairol's soul, already burning in every corner. A single tear-drop had power to bring into this calcining oven boiling and desolation. Already this whole evening had he been glancing at the old man with fearful shudderings at the childish end of that faded spirit, which once had been as fiery as his own now was; and the longer he looked, so much the thicker smoke-clouds floated from the open crater of the grave over into his green-blooming life, and he heard therein a thundering, and he saw therein an iron hand glowing and threatening to grasp at human hearts.