esignate by
your right names,--I was first about to tell your short history, my
friends and I walked into an English garden.[1] We went by a
new-painted coffin, on the foot-board of which was written: "I pass
away." Above the verdant garden rose a white obelisk, with which two
sister-princesses had marked the spot where they now met and embraced,
and the inscription on which was: "Here we have found each other
again." The point of the obelisk was glittering in the full moon, and
here I told my simple story. But do thou, gentle reader, draw--which
is as much as coffin and obelisk--draw, I say, the inscription on the
coffin into the ashes of oblivion, and write the letters of the obelisk
with pure human heart's blood in thy inmost self.

Many souls drop from heaven like flowers; but, with their white buds,
they are trodden down into the mud, and lie soiled and crushed in the
print of a hoof. You also were crushed, Eugenius and Rosamond. Tender
souls like yours are attacked by three robbers of their joys--the mob,
whose rough gripe gives to such soft hearts nothing but scars; destiny,
which does not wipe away the tear from a fair soul full of brilliancy,
but the lustre should perish also, as we do not wipe a wet diamond,
lest it should grow dim; your own hearts which rejoice too much, and
enjoy too little, have too much hope, and too little power of
endurance. Rosamond was a bright pearl, pierced by anguish--parted
from all that belonged to her, she only quivered in her sorrows like a
detached twig of the sensitive plant at the approach of night--her life
was a quiet warm rain and that of her husband was a bright lost
sunshine. In his presence she averted her eyes, when they had just
been fixed on her sick child, that was only two years old, and was in
this life a wavering thin-winged butterfly, beneath a pelting shower.
The imagination of Eugenius, with its too large wings shattered his
slight, delicate frame; the lily bell of his tender body could not
contain his mighty soul; the place whence sighs originate, his breast,
was destroyed like his happiness. He had nothing left in the world but
his affectionate heart, and for that heart there were but two human
beings.

These persons wished, in the spring-time, to quit the whirlpool of
mankind, which beat so hardly and so coldly against their hearts. They
had a quiet cottage prepared for them on one of the high Alps opposite
to the silver chain of the Staubbach.