He posted himself alone, and looked at the ringing, gleaming war-dance of joy. The children ran illuminated through the uproar and in the bright green foliage. The tones hovered and hung twining together into one wreath, high in their ether above the noisy swarm of men, and sang down to them their heavenly songs. Only in me, said he to himself, do the tones and the lights toss a sea of agony to and fro, in no one else, in her not at all; she has brought with her for all others her old gladdening heart of love, not for me; she has not thus far suffered, she blooms in health. He considered not, however, that in fact his struggles also had shed not a drop of water into the dark red glow of his youth; in Liana well might wounds from such conflicts, like those of the scratched Aphrodite, only dye the white roses red. But he determined to remain a man before so many eyes, and to await the crisis and Liana's solitude. He therefore exchanged several rational words with his foster relatives from Blumenbühl;--he said to Rabette: "It pleases you, does it not?" He startled, unintentionally, the Captain, who was hovering about some new faces from Haarhaar, with the unmeaning question, "Why dost thou leave my sister so alone?" But as often as he looked at Liana, who to-day went in her long veil, as the only one without any thick, heavy gala-wrappage, as if she were a young, breathing, tender form among painted stone statues, so bashfully putting others to the blush, glistening and trembling like an egrette,--so often did masses of flame fly wildly to and fro within him. Passion, as the epilepsy often does with its victims, hurries us away, precisely at the dangerous crises of life, to shores and precipices. He leaned his head against a tree, slightly bowed down; then Charles came along out of his waltzes of joy, and asked him, with alarm, what provoked him so; for his bending down had cast gloomy, wild shadows upon his tense, muscular face; "Nothing," said he, and the face gleamed mildly when he lifted it up. At this moment, also, came the unreflecting Rabette, and would fain draw him into the general joy, and said, "Does anything ail thee?" "Thou!" he replied, and looked at her very indignantly. "Go into the gloomy oak-grove to Gaspard's rock!" cried his heart. "Thy father never bowed; be his son!" Thereupon he strode away through the world of brilliancy; but when, far within, amidst the darkness, he leaned his head upon the rock, and the tones came toyingly and teasingly in after him, and he thought to himself, how he could have loved such a noble soul,--O how exceedingly!--then it was as if something said within him, "Now thou hast thy _first_ sorrow on earth!" As during an earthquake doors fly open and bells ring, so at the thought, "first sorrow," was his soul rent asunder, and hard tears dashed down. But he wondered at hearing himself weep, and indignantly wiped his face on the cool moss.