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160 such strange blendings of joy and pain. The melancholy shadow of death falls on their happiest hours, and consoles them lovingly in adversity. They can weep. What poetry there is in mortal tears!"

"Dost thou hear," I said to Jadviga, "how they judge of us? Let us embrace, so that they may pity us no longer, and may envy us!" But she the beloved looked at me with infinite love, and without speaking a word. I had kissed her into silence. She grew pale, and a cold shiver thrilled her lovely form. She lay stiff as white marble in my arms, and I had deemed her dead if streams of tears had not poured from her eyes, and these tears flooded me while I held the loved image ever more firmly in my arms.

All at once I heard the keen shrill voice of my landlady, who wakened me from my dream. She stood before my bed with a dark lantern in her hand, and bade me rise quickly and follow her. She absolutely never looked so ugly before! Without knowing what she wanted, and still half asleep, I went after to where her husband lay, poor man, with night-cap over his eyes, apparently dreaming. He moved his limbs and his lips smiled as if with ineffable happiness, while he rattled and stammered, "Vashti! Queen Vashti! Your Majesty—fear not Ahasuerus—beloved Vashti!"