understand what it really was, being new-born
by the joyful news that you are well again. For you are well again
now, as good as entirely well--that I infer from all the reports, with
the same confidence with which a few days ago I pronounced our
death-sentence.

I did not think of it as about to happen in the future, or even in
the present. Everything was already past. For a long time you had been
wrapt in the bosom of the cold earth; flowers had started to grow on
the beloved grave, and my tears had already begun to flow more gently.
Mute and alone I stood, and saw nothing but the features I had loved
and the sweet glances of the expressive eyes. The picture remained
motionless before me; now and then the pale face smiled and seemed
asleep, just as it had looked the last time I saw it. Then of a sudden
the different memories all became confused; with unbelievable rapidity
the outlines changed, reassumed their first form, and transformed
themselves again and again, until the wild vision vanished. Only your
holy eyes remained in the empty space and hung there motionless, even
as the friendly stars shine eternally over our poverty. I gazed
fixedly at the black lights, which shone with a well-known smile in
the night of my grief. Now a piercing pain from dark suns burned me
with an insupportable glare, now a beautiful radiance hovered about as
if to entice me. Then I seemed to feel a fresh breath of morning air
fan me; I held my head up and cried aloud: "Why should you torment
yourself? In a few minutes you can be with her!"

I was already hastening to you, when suddenly a new thought held me
back and I said to my spirit: "Unworthy man, you cannot even endure
the trifling dissonances of this ordinary life, and yet you regard
yourself as ready for and worthy of a higher life? Go away and do and
suffer as your calling is, and then present yourself again when your
orders have been executed."

Is it not to you also remarkable how everything on this earth moves
toward the centre, how orderly everything is, how insignificant and
trivial? So it has always seemed to me. And for that reason I
suspect--if I am not mistaken, I have already imparted my suspicion to
you--that the next life will be larger, and in the good as well as in
the bad, stronger, wilder, bolder and more tremendous.

The duty of living had conquered, and I found myself again amid the
tumult of human life, and of my and its weak efforts and faulty deeds.
A f