Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/28

 in their first rose-honey days, as they had probably waited for the mild late spring. He divined my intention; but his promise to come to-morrow dragged him by chains. Right gladly would I have missed the new spring-filled Eden, and drawn from my friend's feet the Jacob's ladder from which he might gaze on his former glad heaven, but could not ascend to it. On the other hand, I rejoiced at his firm, promise-keeping character, which opposed its strong nature to the thorns and boring-worms of sorrow; as with the increase of moonlight, tempests decrease. Unperceived, I now added Gione, not only Karlson, to the list of rare beings, who, like Raphael's and Plato's works, uncloud themselves only on earnest contemplation, and who, as both, resemble the Pleiades, which to the naked eye seems only to have seven suns, but with a telescope discloses more than forty.

On the 20th, we started towards the Yale. On the way, I looked too often into Karlson's faithful, heavenly, deep-blue eyes. I descended into his heart, and sought the scene of the day on which the holy church tie would tear the noble Gione forever from out his pure muse and goddess-warmed heart. I confess I can imagine no day on which I regard my friend with deeper emotion that on that never-to-be-forgotten one, on which Fate gives him the brother kiss, the hand-pressure, the land of love and Philadelphia and Vaucluse's spring, united in one female heart.

The day before yesterday, at ten in the evening, we arrived at Wilhelmi's Arcadian dwelling, which pressed its straw roof against a green marble wall. Karlson found it easily from its proximity to the famed Campan Cave, from which he had often broken stalac-