Chapter 37

"Mourir! c'est un instant de supplice: mais vivre?"--FRÉDÉRIC SOULIE.

The physician from Nyborg, who had been on a visit to a sick person in the neighborhood, took this opportunity of calling on the family and inquiring after Eva's health. They had prayed him to stay over the night there, and rather to drive hone in the early morning than so late in the evening. He allowed himself to be persuaded. Otto, on his return, found him and the family in deep conversation. They were talking of the "Letters of a Wandering Ghost."

"Where have you been?" asked Sophie, as Otto entered.

"You look so pale!" said Louise; "are you ill?"

"I do not feel well!" replied Otto; "I went therefore down into the garden a little. Now I am perfectly recovered." And he took part in the conversation.

The overwhelming sorrow had dissolved itself in tears. His mind had raised itself up again from its stupefaction, and sought for a point of light on which to attach itself. They were talking of the immense caves of Maastricht, how they stretch themselves out into deep passages and vast squares, in which sound is lost, and where the light, which cannot reach the nearest object, only glimmers like a point of fire. In order to comprehend this vacuity and this darkness, the travellers let the guide extinguish his torch, and all is night; they are penetrated, as it were, with darkness; the hand feels after a wall, in order to have some restraint, some thought on which to repose itself: the eye sees nothing; the ear hears nothing. Horror seizes on the strongest mind: the same darkness, the same desolate emotion, had Heinrich's words breathed into Otto's soul; therefore he sank like the traveller to the earth: but as the traveller's whole soul rivets itself by the eye upon the first spark which glimmers, to kindle again the torch which is to lead him forth from this grave, so did Otto attach himself to the first awakening thought of help. "Wilhelm? his soul is noble and good, him will I initiate into my painful secret, which chance had once almost revealed to him."

But this was again extinguished, as the first spark is extinguished which the steel gives birth to. He could not confide himself to Wilhelm; the understanding which this very confidence would give birth to between them, must separate them from each other. It was humiliating, it was annihilating. But for Sophie? No, how could he, after that, declare the love of his heart? how far below her should he be placed, as the child of poverty and shame! But the mother of the family? Yes, she was gentle and kind; with a maternal sentiment she extended to him her hand, and looked upon him as on a near relation. His thoughts raised themselves on high, his hands folded themselves to prayer; "The will of the Lord alone be done!" trembled involuntarily from his lips.