Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/160

 father, is forever a youth; and is, what other men are only once, namely, in love,—or only after Pontac, namely, intoxicated,—all his life long. Fixlein, who had been no poet in the morning, now became one at night; wine made him pious and soft; the Harmonica-bells in man, which sound to the tones of a higher world, must, like the glass Harmonica-bells, if they are to act, be kept moist.

He was now standing with her again beside the wavering pond, in which the second blue hemisphere of heaven, with dancing stars and amid quivering trees, was playing: over the green hills ran the white, crooked footpaths dimly along; on the one mountain was the twilight sinking together, on the other was the mist of night rising up; and over all these vapors of life hung motionless and flaming the thousand-armed lustre of the starry heaven, and every arm held in it a burning galaxy.…

It now struck eleven. … Amid such scenes, an unknown hand stretches itself out in man, and writes in foreign language on his heart, a dread Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin. "Perhaps by twelve I am dead," thought our friend, in whose soul the Cantata-Sunday, with all its black funeral piles, was mounting up.

The whole future Crucifixion of his friend lay prickly and bethorned before him; and he saw every bloody trace from which she lifted her foot,—she who had made his own way soft with flowers and leaves. He could no longer restrain himself; trembling in his whole frame, and with a trembling voice, he solemnly said to her: "If the Lord this night call me away, let the half of my fortune be yours; for it is your goodness I must thank that I am free of debts, as few Teachers are."

Thiennette, unacquainted with our sex, naturally mistook this speech for a proposal of marriage; and the