their
cottage stood, the eternal mountains stepped before the sun;--the earth
then veiled her graces and her cities, adoring heaven, before it looked
upon her with all its star-eyes, while the waterfalls laid aside their
rainbows,--and the earth spread higher for heaven, which was bending
over her with out-stretched cloud-arms, a gauze of golden exhalations,
and hung it from one mountain to another, and the icebergs were set on
fire, so that they glared even to midnight, while opposite to them on
the grave of the sun was raised a towering funeral pile of clouds,
forming the evening glow and the evening ashes. But through the
glimmering veil kind heaven let its evening tears fall deep into the
earth, even upon the humblest grass and the smallest flower.

Oh, Eugenius, how great then did thy soul become! The life of earth
lay at a distance and far below thee, free from all the distortions
which we see in it, because we stand too near it, as the decorations of
shorter scenes change from landscapes to mis-shapen strokes when we
look at them closely.

The two living ones embraced each other with a long and gentle embrace,
as they stood before the cottage, and Eugenius said: "Oh, thou quiet,
eternal heaven, take nothing more from us!" But his pale child with
its snapped lily-head was before him; he looked at the mother, and she
lay with her moistened eye reaching into heaven, and said softly: "O
take us all at once!"

The angel of futurity, whom I will call the angel of rest, wept as he
smiled, and his wings swept away the sighs of the parents with an
evening breeze, that they might not sadden each other.

The transparent evening flowed round the red mountain like a bright
lake, and washed it with the circles of cool evening waves. The more
the evening and earth grew, still the more did the two souls feel that
they were in the right place. They had no tears too many, none too
few, and their bliss needed no other increase than its repetition.
Eugenius sent the first harmonious tones floating like swans through
the pure Alpine sky. The weary child, twined in a flowery wreath,
leaned against a sun-dial, and played with the flowers which it drew
around it, to entwine them in its circle. The mother at last awoke
from her harmonious transport; her eye fell on the large eyes of her
child, which opened wide upon her; singing and smiling, and, with
overflowing motherly love, she stepped to the little angel, which was
cold