e played, talked, and observed the dancing. The music undulated
through the hall like a pleasure-sea, and bore along the enraptured
youth upon its surface.

Henry felt the rapturous presages of the first buoyancy of love.
Matilda also willingly suffered herself to be carried away by the
flattering waves, and only concealed from him her tender trust, her
budding inclination, behind a light flower veil. The old Swaning
noticed the growing intimacy between them, and teazed them both about
it. Klingsohr had taken a liking to Henry, and was pleased with his
tenderness towards his daughter.--The other young men and girls soon
noticed it. They brought the sober Matilda forward with the young
Thuringian, and did not conceal that they were glad no longer to be
obliged to shun Matilda's observation of the secrets of their hearts.

It was late in the evening when the company separated. "The first and
only feast of my life," said Henry, when he was alone, and his mother
had retired wearied to rest. "Do I not feel as I felt in that dream
about the blue flower? What peculiar connexion is there between Matilda
and that flower? That face, which bowed towards me from the petals, was
Matilda's heavenly countenance, and I also now remember that I saw it
in that book. But why did it not there thus move my heart? O! she is
the visible spirit of song, the worthy daughter of her father. She will
dissolve me into music. She will become my inmost soul, the guardian
spirit of my holy fire. What an eternity of faithful love do I feel
within me? I was born only to revere her, to serve her forever, to
think of and to feel her. Does there not belong a peculiar, undivided
existence to her contemplation and worship? Am I the happy one, whose
being may be the echo, the mirror of her's? It is not owing to chance
that I have seen her at the end of my journey, that a happy feast has
encircled the highest moment of my life. It could not have been
otherwise; for does not her presence render every thing a feast?"

He stepped to the window. The choir of the stars stood in the dusky
sky, and in the east a white glimmer announced the coming day.

Full of rapture, Henry exclaimed, "Ye eternal stars, ye silent
wanderers, I call upon you as witnesses of my sacred oath. For Matilda
will I live, and eternal constancy shall bind her to my heart. The
morning of eternal day is also opening for me. The night is past. I
kindle myself to the rising sun, for an inexting