Page:Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter, Volume 1.djvu/199

 I lost,” moaned he in his solitude; “I shall never see his face again.”

Whilst he so lamented, there came tottering towards him a gray-haired man; endeavouring to get down the rocks; and seeming, at every step, to fear that he should stumble into the abyss. Seeing the old man’s feebleness, Eckart held out his hand to him, and helped him to descend in safety.

“Which way come ye?” inquired Eckart.

The old man sat down, and began to weep, so that the tears came running over his cheeks. Eckart tried to soothe him and console him with reasonable words; but the sorrowful old man seemed not at all to heed these well-meant speeches, but to yield himself the more immoderately to his sorrows.

“What grief can it be that lies so heavy on you as to overpower you utterly?” said Eckart.

“Ah, my children!” moaned the old man.

Then Eckart thought of Conrad, Heinz and Dietrich, and was himself altogether comfortless. “Yes,” said he, “if your children are dead, your misery in truth is very great.”

“Worse than dead,” replied the old man, with his mournful voice; “for they are not dead, but lost forever to me. O, would to Heaven that they were but dead!”

These strange words astonished Eckart, and he asked the old man to explain the riddle; whereupon the latter answered: “The age we live in is indeed a marvellous age, and surely the last days are at hand; for the most dreadful signs are sent into the world, to threaten it. Every sort of wickedness is casting off its old fetters, and stalking bold and free about the Earth; the fear of God is drying up and dispersing, and can find no channel to unite in; and the Powers of Evil are rising audaciously from their dark nooks, and celebrating their triumph. Ah, my dear sir! we are old, but not old enough for such prodigious things. You have doubtless seen the Comet, that wondrous light in the sky, that shines so prophetically down upon us? All men predict evil; and no one thinks of beginning the reform with himself, and so essaying to turn off the rod. Nor is this enough; but portents are also issuing from the Earth, and breaking mysteriously from the depths below, even as the light shines frightfully on us from above. Have you never heard of the Hill, which people call the Hill of Venus?”