llest leaf enfolds,--
That He, whose power sustains the whole
Forgets a world--thy human soul?"

CHAPTER XXXVII

"Mourir! c'est un instant de supplice: mais vivre?"
--FREDERIC SOULIE.

The physician from Nyborg, who had been on a visit to a sick person in
the neighborhood, took this opportunity of calling on the family and
inquiring after Eva's health. They had prayed him to stay over the night
there, and rather to drive hone in the early morning than so late in the
evening. He allowed himself to be persuaded. Otto, on his return,
found him and the family in deep conversation. They were talking of the
"Letters of a Wandering Ghost."

"Where have you been?" asked Sophie, as Otto entered.

"You look so pale!" said Louise; "are you ill?"

"I do not feel well!" replied Otto; "I went therefore down into the
garden a little. Now I am perfectly recovered." And he took part in the
conversation.

The overwhelming sorrow had dissolved itself in tears. His mind had
raised itself up again from its stupefaction, and sought for a point of
light on which to attach itself. They were talking of the immense caves
of Maastricht, how they stretch themselves out into deep passages and
vast squares, in which sound is lost, and where the light, which cannot
reach the nearest object, only glimmers like a point of fire. In order
to comprehend this vacuity and this darkness, the travellers let the
guide extinguish his torch, and all is night; they are penetrated, as it
were, with darkness; the hand feels after a wall, in order to have some
restraint, some thought on which to repose itself: the eye sees nothing;
the ear hears nothing. Horror seizes on the strongest mind: the same
darkness, the same desolate emotion, had Heinrich's words breathed into
Otto's soul; therefore he sank like the traveller to the earth: but as
the traveller's whole soul rivets itself by the eye upon the first spark
which glimmers, to kindle again the torch which is to lead him forth
from this grave, so did Otto attach himself to the first awakening
thought of help. "Wilhelm? his soul is noble and good, him will I
initiate into my painful secret, which chance had once almost revealed
to him."

But this was again extinguished, as the first spark is extinguished
which the steel gives birth to. He could not confide himself to Wilhelm;
the understanding which this very confidence would give birth to between
them, must sepa