He spoke soon of that in which his heart lived and breathed, but in a singular, half-theological, half-French, Wolfian, and poetic speech. One ought, of many a mystic's poetry and philosophy to give, instead of verbal, real translations, in order that it may be seen how the pure gold of truth glows under all wrappages. Spener says, in my translation: "He had formerly, before he found the right way, tormented himself in every human friendship and love. He had, when he was fervently loved, said to himself, that he could surely never so regard or love himself; and even so the beloved being could not truly so think of itself, as the loving one did, and though it were ever so perfect or so full of self-love. If every one looked upon others as upon himself, there could be no ardent love. But all love demands an object of infinite worth, and dies of every inexplicable and clearly recognized failure; it projects its objects out of all and above all, and requires a reciprocal love without limits, without any selfishness, without division, without pause, without end. Such an object is verily the divine being, but not fleeting, sinful, changeable man. Therefore must the lovesick heart sink into the Giver himself of this and of all love, into the fulness of all that is good and beautiful, into the disinterested, unlimited, universal Love, and dissolve and revive therein, blest in the alternation of contraction and expansion. Then it looks back upon the world and finds everywhere God and his reflection: the worlds are his deeds; every pious man is a word, a look, of the All-loving; for love to God is the Divine thing, and the heart yearns for him in every heart." "But," said Albano, whose fresh, energetic life rebelled against all mystical annihilation, "how, then, does God love us?" "As a father loves his child, not because it is the best child, but because it needs him."[175] "And whence," he further inquired, "comes, then, the evil in man, and whence sorrow?" "From the Devil," said the old man, and pictured out uninterruptedly, with transfigured joy, the heaven of his heart,--how it was always surrounded with the all-beloved, all-loving One, how it never desired any good fortune or any gifts from him at all (which one did not wish even in earthly love), but only a higher and higher love towards himself, and how, while the evening mists of old age were gathering thicker and thicker around his senses, his heart felt itself, in the darkness of life, embraced more and more closely by the invisible arms. "I shall soon be with God!" said he, with a radiance of love on that countenance of his, chilled with life, and breaking in under the weight of years. One could have borne to see him die. So stands Mont Blanc before the rising moon; night veils his feet and his breast, but the light summit hangs high in the dark heaven as a star among the stars.