Chapter 8 - Page 2

not to be aware of that; perhaps you have
not read The Bazaar either?"

"Was it the Bosphorus?" said he, with his own peculiar smile; "yes, I
had quite forgotten that, and, you see, people do not remember it
either; the object in this case was only to give you a stab."

This confession sounded so natural, so like him, that I was obliged to
smile. I looked into his clever eyes, thought how many beautiful things
he had written, and I could not be angry with him. The conversation
became more lively, more free, and he said many kind things to me; for
example, he esteemed my stories very highly, and entreated me
frequently to visit him. I have become more and more acquainted with
his poetical temperament, and I fancy that he too will understand mine.
We are very dissimilar, but we both strive after the same object.
Before we separated he conducted me to his little observatory; now his
dearest world. He seems now to live for poetry and now for philosophy,
andùfor which I fancy he is least of all calculated--for astronomy. I
could almost sigh and sing,

Thou wast erewhile the star at which them gazest now!

My dramatic story came at length on the stage, and in the course of the
season was performed seven times.

As people grow older, however much they may be tossed about in the
world, some one place must be the true home; even the bird of passage
has one fixed spot to which it hastens; mine was and is the house of my
friend Collin. Treated as a son, almost grown up with the children, I
have become a member of the family; a more heartfelt connection, a
better home have I never known: a link broke in this chain, and
precisely in the hour of bereavement, did I feel how firmly I have been
engrafted here, so that I was regarded as one of the children.

If I were to give the picture of the mistress of a family who wholly
loses her own individual _I_ in her husband and children, I must
name the wife of Collin; with the sympathy of a mother, she also
followed me in sorrow and in gladness. In the latter years of her life
she became very deaf, and besides this she had the misfortune of being
nearly blind. An operation was performed on her sight, which succeeded
so well, that in the course of the winter she was able to read a
letter, and this was a cause of grateful joy to her. She longed in an
extraordinary manner for the first green of spring, and this she saw in
her little garden.

I parted from her one Sunday evening in health and joy; in the night I
was awoke; a servant brought me a letter. Collin wrote, "My wife is
very ill; the children are all assembled here!" I understood it, and
hastened thither. She slept quietly and without pain; it was the