Page:Tales of humour and romance translated by Holcroft.djvu/206

 of bounding and ungovernable thoughts had taken possession of his soul—for the god of dreams had sent his fairies. At length the winding-sheet of sleep was folded double around him, and he sank in the embrace of night, torpid and solitary, like us poor mortals. But then celestial Dream, thou flewest before his soul with thy thousand mirrors; in each mirror thou showedst him a circle of angels, and a radiant heaven; and his terrestrial frame with all its pains, seemed to leave him unencumbered. "Alas!" said he with vain delight, "my falling asleep was my departure from life." But when he again awoke, with a heart oppressed, and full of the sluggish tide of human blood, and looked upon the earth and upon the night, then said he, that was not death, but only its image, although I saw the starry heavens, and the angelic hosts."

The bride of the departed hero observed not that an angel dwelt in the breast of her lover. She loved the noble receptacle of the departed soul, and still affectionately held the band of him who was far removed from her. But the angel returned the feelings of her deluded heart with human affection; proud of his present form, he wished not to die before her, that she taught love him long enough to forgive him one day in heaven, for having caused her to press at once to her bosom an angel and a lover.