exclusively to her son; and many hours
full of rich enjoyment were spent by these two, who soon, perhaps--must
separate for so long!

Every strong mental excitement was interdicted to Henrik; his very
illness would not admit of it. He must renounce his beloved studies: but
his living spirit, which could not sleep, refreshed itself at the
youthful fountains of art. He occupied himself much with the works of a
poet who, during his short life, had suffered much and sung much also,
and from amid whose crown of thorns the loveliest "Lilies of Sharon" had
blossomed. The works of Stagnelius[18] were his favourite reading. He
himself composed many songs, and his mother sang them to him during the
long winter evenings. According to his opinion, his mother sang better
than his sisters; and he rejoiced himself in the pure strength which
triumphantly exalted him in this poet above the anguish and fever of
life.

It was observed that about this time he often turned the conversation,
in the presence of his mother, to the brighter side of death. It seemed
as if he wished to prepare her gradually for the possibly near
separation, and to deprive it beforehand of its bitterness. Elise had
formerly loved conversations of this kind; had loved whatever tended to
diffuse light over the darker scenes of life: but now she always grew
pale when the subject was introduced; uneasiness expressed itself in her
eyes, and she endeavoured, with a kind of terror, to put an end to it.

One evening as the family, together with the Assessor, were assembled in
the confidential hour of twilight, they began to speak about dreams, and
about the nature of sleep. Henrik mentioned the ancient comparison of
sleep and death, which he said he considered less striking as regarded
its unconsciousness than in its resemblance in the awaking.

"And in what do you especially consider this resemblance to consist?"
asked Leonore.

"In the perfect retention and re-animation of consciousness, of memory,
of the whole condition of the soul," replied he, "which is experienced
in the morning after the dark night."

"Good," said the Assessor, "and possible; but what can we _know_ about
it?"

"All that revelation has made known to us," replied Henrik, with an
animated look: "do we really need any stronger light on this subject
than that afforded us by one of our own race, who was dead, and yet rose
again from the grave, and who exhibited himself after his sleep in the
dar