Just when man is approaching that heaven which he has so long contemplated, Death holds the telescope inverted before his dim eye, and lets him see only what is empty, distant, shadowy. But is this indeed true? Shall I be more likely to be right when I only feel and think and hope, with half a life, incapable of a keen glance or an intense sensation,--or am I right now, that my whole heart is warm, that my whole head is clear, and my strength fresh? I acknowledge that the present is the fittest season, and that precisely because I do acknowledge it to be the fittest. I will then live through this daytime of truth attentively, and bear it away with me to the evening dusk, that it may lighten my end."
In these sweetest May-hours of youth, when heaven and earth and his own heart were beating together in harmony, he gave ardent words to his ardent thoughts, and kept them written down under the t.i.tle of "_Reminiscences of the best Hours of Life for the Hour of Death_." He meant to cheer himself at his last hour with these views of his happy life, and to look back from the glow of the evening to the brightness of the morning of his youth.
Thus lived these three beings, ever rejoicing more deeply in one another and in their genial happiness, when at last the chariots of the struggle and the victories of the holy War[77] began to roll over the land.
Now Gottreich became another man; like a young bird of pa.s.sage, which, though it know nothing of summer climates, frets in its warm cage that it cannot fly away with the older birds of its kind. The active powers of his nature, which had heretofore been the quiet audience of his poetical and oratorical powers, arose; and it seemed to him as if the spirit of energy, which hitherto had wasted itself like the flames of a bituminous soil on the empty air, were now seeking an object to lay hold of. He dared not, however, risk to propose a separation to his father, but he by turns tormented and refreshed himself inwardly with the idea of laboring and combating with the rest. To Justa alone he confided his wishes, but she did not give them encouragement, because she thought the old man"s solitude would be too great for him to bear.
At last the old man himself, inspirited for war by Gottreich and his betrothed one, said that his son had better go, that he had long desired it, and had only been silent through love for him. He hoped, with G.o.d"s aid, to be able to discharge his pastoral duties for a twelvemonth; so that he, too, should be doing something for his country.
Gottreich departed, trusting to the autumnal strength of his father"s life. He enlisted as a common soldier, and preached also wherever he was able. The entrance on a new career awakens new energies and powers, which rapidly unfold into life and vigor. Although fortune spared him the wounds which he would so willingly have brought back with him into the peaceful future of his life, in memory as it were of the focus of his youth, yet it was happiness enough to take part in the battles, and, like an old republican, to fight together with a whole nation for the common cause.
When at length, in the most beautiful month of May which ever Germany had won by conquest, the festivals of victory and of peace began in more than one nation. Gottreich was unwilling to pa.s.s those days of rejoicing so far from those who were dearest to him; he longed for their company, that his joy might be doubled: so he took the road to Heim. Thousands, before and after him, journeyed at that time over the liberated land, from a happy past to a happy future; but few there were who saw, like Gottreich, so pure a firmament over the mountains of his native valleys, in which not a star was missing, but every one of them was twinkling and bright. Justa had already sent him the little annals of the parsonage; had told him how she longed for his return, and how his father rejoiced; how well the old man stood the labors of his office, and how she had still better secrets of joy in store for him.
To these latter belonged, perhaps, one which he had not forgotten, namely, her promise to give him her hand after the great peace.
With such prospects he enjoyed in thought, ever from Whitsuntide forwards, that holy evening when he should unexpectedly relieve the old man from all his labors, and begin to prepare the tranquil festivities of the village.
As he was thus thinking upon that day"s meeting, and as the mountains above his father"s village, in which he was so soon to clasp those fond hearts to his own, were seen more and more clearly in relief against the blue sky, his "Reminiscences of the best Hours of Life for the Hour of Death" re-echoed in his soul, and he could not refrain from noting amongst them, as he went along, the joy of meeting again here below.
Behind him there was coming up a storm from the east, in the direction of his home, before which he seemed to come a happy messenger; for the storms of war, which he had seen upon the earth, had reconciled to him and made him love those of heaven; and the parched ground, the dropping flowers, and the ears of corn had long been thirsting for the waters of the warm clouds. A parishioner of Heim, who was laboring in the fields, saluted him as he pa.s.sed, and expressed his joy that the rain and Gottreich had both come at last together.
And now he caught sight of the low church-steeple, peeping from the cl.u.s.tered trees, and he entered upon that tract of the valley where the parsonage lay, all reddened by the evening sun. At every window he hoped to see his betrothed one, if perchance she might be looking out on the sunset before the storm came on; and as he came nearer, he hoped to see the lattice open, and Whitsuntide brooms in the chief apartment; but he found nothing of all this.
At last he entered quietly the parsonage-house, and slowly opened the well-known door. The room was empty, but he heard a noise overhead.
When he opened the door of his upper chamber, which was filled with a glow from the west, Justa was kneeling before the bed of his father, who, sitting half upright, was looking with a haggard, stiff, and bony countenance toward the setting sun before him. A clasp of her lover to her breast, and one exclamation, was all his reception. But his father stretched his wizened hand slowly out, and said, with difficulty, "Thou art come at the right time!" without adding whether he spoke of the preachings or of their separation.
Justa hastily related how the old man had overworked himself, till body and spirit had given way together,--so that he no longer took a share in anything, though he longed to be with the sharers,--and how he lay prostrate with broken wings, looking upwards like a needy child. The old man was grown hard of hearing, and she could say all this in his presence.
Gottreich soon confirmed it to himself. He would fain have infused the fire of conquest, reflected in his own bosom, which, like a red evening cloud, was announcing a fair dawn to Europe, into that old and once strong heart; but he heard neither wish nor question of it. The old man gazed steadily upon the sun, until at last it was hid by the storm.
Nevertheless the war of the elements seemed to touch him but little; the glare of life broke dimly through the thickening ice of death. A dying man knows no present,--nothing but the future and the past.
On a sudden the landscape grew dark, all the winds stood pent, the earth oppressed; then there came a gush of rain and a crash of thunder.
The lightning streamed around the old man, and he looked up altered and astonished. "Hist!" said he; "I hear the rain once more;--speak quickly, children, for I shall soon depart."
Both his children clung to him, but he was too weak to embrace them.
And now, as the warm, healing springs of the clouds bathed the sick earth, down from the dripping tree to the blades of gra.s.s, and as the sky glistened mildly as with a tear of joy, and the thunder went warring away behind the distant mountains, the sick man pointed upwards, and said, "Seest thou the lordliness of G.o.d? My son, strengthen now at the last my weary soul with something holy, in the spirit of love, and not of penance; for if our hearts condemn us not, then have we confidence toward G.o.d. Say something rich in love to me of G.o.d and of his works."
Then the eyes of his son overflowed, to think that he should read the Reminiscences which he had prepared for his own death-bed at the death-bed of his father. When he said this to him, the old man answered, "Hasten, my son!" and with a faltering voice, Gottreich began to read:--
"Remember, in the darkening hour, that the glow of the universe once filled thy breast, and that thou hast acknowledged the magnitude of existence. Hast thou not looked forth into one half of infinity by night, and into the other half by day? Think away the nothingness of s.p.a.ce, and the earth which is around thee; worlds above, around, and beneath arch thee about as a centre, all impelling and impelled, splendor within splendor, magnitude within magnitude; all brightness centring in the universal Sun. Carry thy thoughts forwards through eternity, toward that universal Sun; thou shalt not arrive at darkness nor emptiness. What is empty dwells only between the worlds, not around the world.
"Remember, in the dark hour, those times when thou hast prayed to G.o.d in ecstasy, and when thou hast thought on him,--the greatest thought of finite man,--the Infinite One!"
Here the old man clasped his hands, and prayed low.
"Hast thou not known and felt the existence of that Being, whose infinity consists not only in his strength, in his wisdom, and his eternity, but also in his love and in his justice? Canst thou forget the time when the blue sky by day and the blue sky by night opened on thee, as if the mildness of G.o.d was looking down on thee? Hast thou not felt the love of the Infinite, when it veiled itself in its image, in loving hearts of men; as the sun, which casts its light not on our moon alone, for our nights, but on the morning and evening star also, and on every little twinkler, even to the farthest from the earth?
"Remember, in the dark hour, how in the spring of thy life the mounds of earth which are graves appeared to thee only as the mountain-tops of another far and new world; and how in the midst of the fulness of life thou didst acknowledge the value of death. The snow of the grave shall warm the frost-bitten limbs of age to life again. As a navigator who suddenly disembarks from the cold, wintry, and lonely sea, upon a coast which is laden with the warm, rich blossoms of spring, so with one leap from our little bark we pa.s.s at once from winter to an eternal springtime.
"Rejoice, in this dark hour, that thy life dwells in the midst of a wider and larger life. The earth-clod of the globe has been divinely breathed upon. A world swarms with life,--for the leaf of every tree is a land of souls; and every little life would freeze and perish, if it were not warmed and borne up by the eddies of life about it. The sea of time glitters, like the sea of s.p.a.ce, with countless beings of light: death and resurrection are the valleys and mountains of the ever-swelling ocean. There exists no dead anatomy; what seems to be such is only another body. Without a universal living existence, there would be nothing but a wide, all-encompa.s.sing death. We cling like mosses to the Alps of nature, drawing life from the high clouds. Man is the b.u.t.terfly which flutters up to Chimborazo, but above the b.u.t.terfly soars the condor: however many, small or great, the giant and the child are free wanderers in one garden; and the fly of a day may retrace its infinite series of progenitors to those first beings of its kind which played over the waters of Paradise before the evening sun.
"Never forget the thought, which is now so clear to thee, that the individuality of man lasts out the greatest suffering and the most entrancing joy alike unscathed, while the body crumbles away in the pains and pleasures of the flesh. Herein are souls like marsh-lights, which shine in the storm and the rain unextinguishable.
"Canst thou forget, in the dark hour, that there have been mighty men amongst us, and that thou art following after them? Raise thyself like the spirits which stood upon their mountains, having the storm of life only about and never above them. Call back to thee the kingly race of sages and of poets, who have inspirited and enlightened nation after nation."
"Speak of our Redeemer!" said the father.
"Remember Jesus Christ, in the dark hour,--remember Him who also pa.s.sed through life,--remember that soft Moon of the infinite Sun, given to enlighten the night of the world. Let life be hallowed to thee, and death also, for he shared both of them with thee. May his calm and lofty form look down on thee in the last darkness, and show thee his Father!"
A low roll of thunder was now heard to pa.s.s over the dun clouds which the tempest had left, and the setting sun filled the entire vault of heaven with the magnificence of his fire.
"Remember, in the last hour, how the heart of man can love. Canst thou forget the love wherewith one heart repays a thousand hearts, and the soul during life is nourished and vivified from another soul, as the oak of a hundred years clings fast to the same spot with its roots, and derives new strength, and sends forth new buds during its hundred springs?"
"Dost thou mean me?" said the father.
"I mean my mother also," replied the son.
Justa wept, when she heard how her lover would console himself in his last hours with the reminiscence of the days of her love; and the father said, but very gently, thinking on his wife, "To meet again, to meet again!"
"Remember then, in the last hour," continued Gottreich, "that pure being with whom thy life was beautiful and great,--with whom thou hast wept tears of joy, with whom thou hast prayed to G.o.d, and in whom G.o.d appeared unto thee, in whom thou didst find the first and last heart of love,--and then close thine eyes in peace!"
On a sudden the clouds were cleft into two huge, black mountains, and the deep sun looked forth from between them, as it were out of a valley between b.u.t.tresses of rock, gazing upon the earth with its joy-glistening eye.
"See!" said the dying man, "what a glare!"
"It is the evening sun, father."
"Ay, this day shall we see one another again!" continued the old man; but he spoke of his wife, who was long since dead.
The son was unable, from his emotion, to paint to his father the blessedness of meeting again upon the earth, which he had that very day enjoyed by antic.i.p.ation and described upon his journey; or to say to him how it comes, that meeting again is a renewal of love in a better state; and that, if the first meeting was apt to overflow into the future, reminiscence binds the flowers of the present and the fruits of the past upon one stem.
Who could have courage to speak of the joys of earthly meeting to one who seemed to be already in the contemplation of a meeting in heaven?
Startled, he asked, "Father, what ails thee?"
"I _do_ think thereon in the dark hour; ay, thereon and thereupon again; and death is also beautiful, and the parting in Christ,"
murmured to himself the old man, as he tried to take Gottreich"s hand, which he had not strength to press. It was but the usual nervous s.n.a.t.c.hing of the fingers of the dying. He continued to think that his son was still speaking to him, and said, more and more distinctly and emphatically, "O thou blessed G.o.d!" until all the other luminaries of life were extinguished, and in his soul there stood nothing but the one sun,--G.o.d!
At length he raised himself, and, stretching out his arm forcibly, exclaimed: "There are three fair rainbows over the evening sun; I must go after the sun, and pa.s.s through with him!" He then fell back, and all was over.
At that moment the sun went down, and there glimmered at his setting a broad rainbow in the east.
"He is gone!" said Gottreich to Justa, in a voice choked with grief; "but he is gone from us unto his G.o.d, in the midst of great, pious, and unmingled joy; then weep no more, Justa!"
At that moment his own hitherto restrained tears found a vent, and he pressed the dead hand against his face.
It grew dark, and a warm rain distilled gently over the earth. The children left his motionless form alone, and wept more tranquilly for that sun of their love, which, with its pure light, had withdrawn from the clouds and tempests of the world to another dawn.