Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/23



501st STATION.

Campan, 23d July.

ERE have I been since the day before yesterday. After descent into hell and purgatory, and passage through limbos infantum et patrum, man must at last reach heaven. But I owe you yet our exit from our inn on the 20th. Never can the head have a harder couch than when we hold it in our hands. The reason that this happened to Karlson and myself was, that in the rooms adjoining ours a wedding-dance was taking place, and that below, the youngest daughter of our maître d'hôtel, who had not only the name, but also the charms of Corday, with two white roses on her cheeks, and two red ones in her hair, was being interred, and that human beings with pale faces and heavy hearts waited on happy and blooming ones. When fate harnesses to Psyche's car, the merry and the mourning steed together, the mourning one ever takes the lead; i. e. if the muses of Mirth and Sorrow play on the same stage in the same hour, man does not, like