Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/84

 ural rays. It seemed bright as an angel rising towards its kindred stars through the rich dark blue space. An unusual tremor seized on Wilhelmi and Karlson; it was as if they saw their beloved one again carried from them on the wings of the angel of Death.

When she returned to us her eyes were red with weeping; she had ascended, that she might in an unseen moment, shed her old heavy tears near the stars. O the Celestial one! She smiled strangely in the slumber of this life at higher joys than earthly ones, as sleeping children smile when they see Angels.

It was now impossible to repress my longing for the stars, and my petition to be allowed to ascend. Permission to use the western Mongolfière was willingly bestowed. Nadine, emboldened by the safe return of her sister, and by the companion in the danger, skipped into the boat, with her usual impulsive warmth, to refresh her thirsting soul with the majestic immeasurability of night.

And now the suns raised us. The heavy earth sank down as the past; wings such as man has in happy dreams bore us upwards.

The mighty vacancy and silence of space lay stretched before us even up into the stars;—as we rose higher, the dark forests seemed but clouds, and snow-girt mountain-tops like snow-flakes. The ascending globe bore us nearer to the harmless, silent lightning of the moon, in whose bright satellite we seemed cradled, and which stood as a calm Elysium beneath the heavens, and high above the thick fog air, the light heart beating more quickly, seemed to pant with ethereal gladness to have left the earth with out discarding its shell covering. Our ascent was suddenly arrested—we looked down into the valley, half concealed by distance and the darkness of the night.