, hung the evening sun, like a bright
burning ruby in the horizon over the violet-coloured mountains. Purple
clouds, edged with gold, shot a glory about it, while the whole western
heavens shone in a sea of flame, and the blaze melted away farther on
into a lovely sea-green, which again in the east was lost in the dark
blue of night. Before the aloe, whose flowers seemed to burn in the
evening red, stood Tausdorf, sunk in its contemplation.--"The plant is
to be envied," he said to Rasselwitz; "he dies well, who, like it, dies
at the moment of reaching the pinnacle of strength and beauty; and I
could almost wish that such a death might one day be to myself."

"How earnestly and gravely you take every thing," replied
Rasselwitz--"nay gloomily too! For my part, it is precisely when I got
to the pinnacle that I should feel most eager to live on, because it is
then that life is gayest. When one is gone, the best pleasure is over;
and in good truth we shall always be dead long enough afterwards."

"In the ten years of experience, which I have beyond you, lies the
difference of our views. Throughout nature nothing stands still. He who
does not go forward goes backward. From the summit the road only leads
down again, and every retracing of our steps has something disconsolate
about it, which I would willingly buy off with a few years of
existence."

He turned about to depart, but Rasselwitz held him back:--"I cannot let
you go thus; you may, perhaps, have got over your accident, but you
still look pale, and the evening wind blows cursedly cool from the
mountains. Let us first, therefore, if agreeable to you, empty a flask
of tokay against the bad air, and then I will myself accompany you home
again."

"You gentlemen can't do without the wine-cup," said Tausdorf jestingly.
"If, however, it is really to be but a single flask, I am contented."

They went accordingly into the larger greenhouse, where at the end,
under an oleander-tree, a little table was neatly set out, covered with
a crimson silk cloth. Upon this was a dish of foreign salad between two
handsome flasks with handles, semi-transparent and edged with silver,
and two glass goblets, ready filled, in which the tokay sparkled like
blood in the last rays of the setting sun. By the table sat Bona in all
the fulness of her charms, seeming to enjoy with silent transport the
splendour of the evening heavens, whose crimson fire gave all the glory
of a seraph to her head an