Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/242



FOURTEENTH LETTER-BOX.

H, so it is ever! So does Fate set fire to the theatre of our little plays, and our bright-painted curtain of Futurity! So does the Serpent of Eternity wind round us and our joys, and crush, like the royal-snake, what it does not poison! Thou good Fixlein!—Ah! last night, I little thought that thou, mild soul, while I was writing beside thee, wert already journeying into the poisonous Earth-shadow of Death.

Last night, late as it was, he opened the lead box found in the old steeple-ball; a catalogue of those who had subscribed to the last repairing of the church was there; and he began to read it now; my presence and his occupations having prevented him before. O, how shall I tell that the record of his birth-year, which I had hidden in the new Ball, was waiting for him in the old one; that in the register of contributions he found his father's name, with the appendage, "given for his new-born son Egidius?"—

This stroke sunk deep into his bosom, even to the rending of it asunder; in this warm hour, full of paternal joy, after such fair days, after such fair employments, after dread of death so often survived, here, in the bright, smooth sea, which is rocking and bearing him along,