A thrill of ecstatic joy rushed through him,--joy intermingled with an almost supernal pain. For he had not as yet said enough to the world,--the world of many afflictions,--the little Sorrowful Star covered with toiling, anxious, deluded God-forgetting millions, in every unit of which was a spark of Heavenly flame, a germ of the spiritual essence that makes the angel, if only fostered aright.
Lost in a deep reverie, his footsteps had led him unconsciously to the Rhine bridge,--paying the customary fee, he walked about half- way across it, and stood for a while listening to the incessant swift rush of the river beneath him. Lights twinkled from the boats moored on either side,--the moon poured down a wide shower of white beams on the rapid flood,--the city, dusky and dream- like, crowned with the majestic towers of the Dom, looked picturesquely calm and grand--it was a night of perfect beauty and wondrous peace. And he was to die!--to die and leave all this, the present fairness of the world,--he was to depart, with, as he felt, his message half unspoken,--he was to be made eternally happy, while many of the thousands he left behind were, through ignorance, wilfully electing to be eternally miserable! A great, almost divine longing to save ONE,--only ONE downward drifting soul, possessed him,--and the comprehension of Christ's Sacrifice was no longer a mystery! Yet he was so certain that death, sudden and speedy closely, awaited him that he seemed to feel it in the very air,--not like a coming chill of dread, but like the soft approach of some holy seraph bringing benediction. It mattered little to him that he was actually in the very plenitude of health and strength,--that perhaps in all his life he had never felt such a keen delight in the physical perfection of his manhood as now,--death, without warning and at a touch, could smite down the most vigorous, and to be so smitten, he believed, was his imminent destiny. And while he lingered on the bridge, fancy-perplexed between grief and joy, a small window opened in a quaint house that bent its bulging gables crookedly over the gleaming water, and a girl, holding a small lamp, looked out for a moment. Her face, fresh and smiling, was fair to see against the background of dense shadow,--the light she carried flashed like a star,--and leaning down from the lattice she sang half-timidly, half mischievously, the first two or three bars of the old song.. "Du, du, liegst in mein Herzen ... !" "Ah! Gute Nacht, Liebchen!" said a man's voice below.