ad long been dead. Then I suddenly looked up to the stars
with their blinking eyes, which went their way so quietly--and it
seemed to me that they were only for the lighting and consolation of
men, and then I thought of two heavenly stars which had risen in my
dark heaven so unexpectedly, and a thanksgiving rang through my
breast--a thanksgiving for the love of my angel.

LAST MEMORY.

The sun was already looking into my window over the mountains when I
awoke. Was it the same sun which looked upon us the evening before with
lingering gaze, like a departing friend, as if it would bless the union
of our souls, and which set like a lost hope? It shone upon me now, like
a child which bursts into our room with beaming glance to wish us good
morning on a joyful holiday. And was I the same man who, only a few
hours before, had thrown himself upon his bed, broken in body and spirit?
Immediately I felt once more the old life-courage and trust in God and
myself, which quickened and animated my soul like the fresh morning,
breeze. What would become of man without sleep? We know not where this
nightly messenger leads us; and when he closes our eyes at night who can
assure us that he will open them again in the morning--that he will bring
us to ourselves? It required courage and faith for the first man to
throw himself into the arms of this unknown friend; and were there not in
our nature a certain helplessness which forces us to submission, and
compels us to have faith in all things we are to believe, I doubt whether
any man, notwithstanding all his weariness, could close his eyes of his
own free will and enter into this unknown dream-land. The very
consciousness of our weakness and our weariness gives us faith in a
higher power, and courage to resign ourselves to the beautiful system of
the All, and we feel invigorated and refreshed when, in waking or in
sleeping, we have loosened, even for a short time only, the chains which
bind our Eternal Self to our temporal Ego.

What had appeared to me, only yesterday, dark as an evening cloud flying
overhead, became instantly clear. We belonged to one another, that I
felt; be it as brother and sister, father and child, bridegroom and
bride, we must remain together now and forever. It only concerned us to
find the right name for that which we in our stammering speech call Love.

"Thy elder brother I would be,
Thy father--anything to thee."

It was this "anything" fo