passionately wringing his hands, or pressing them upon his hot brow, knelt the student alone in his chamber. he muttered wild tones. he had yearned after the tree of knowledge; he had penetrated within its shadow, and it had darkened his soul, yet he had not tasted of its delicious fruit for which he so longed.
“it is vain,——it is vain!” cried basil; “i strive, but i cannot attain. i have cast all human bliss to the winds; i have poisoned my youth,——and thine, too, isilda, joy of my life!——and all in vain. no immortal gifts are mine,——i would fain pierce into nature’s depths, but she hides her face from me. o my master! thou didst tell me of the world of spirits which would surely be revealed unto me. i look up into the air, but no sylphs breathe soft zephyrs upon my hot cheek; i wander by the streams, but no sweet eyes, looking out from the depths of the fountains, meet my own; i am poor, but the gnomes of the earth answer not my bidding with treasures of silver and gold. and thou, o fire, glorious element! art thou indeed peopled with these wonderful beings; or are they deaf to my voice, and invisible to my eyes alone, of all my brethren?”
and lo! as the student spoke, a bright pyramid of flame darted upward, and a voice, like that of the fire when it answers the soft breathing of the winds, replied,——
“i hear thee,——what wouldst thou with me?”
a paleness came over the young man’s cheek, and he drew back involuntarily.
[100]
“dost thou then fear me, o mortal!” said the voice again, sadly. “look again.”
suddenly the pyramidal flame was cloven asunder, and there appeared in its centre a form, smaller than that of humanity, but perfect in feminine loveliness. wavy wreaths of golden flame fell around her like a woman’s beautiful hair, and about her semi-transparent form twined an amber vesture, resembling in hue and airy substance the fire from which she sprung. her hands were folded submissively on her breast, and her eyes were fixed earnestly on the young student’s face as she again repeated,——
“dost thou fear me now?”
“how should i fear thee, beautiful vision?” cried basil in ecstasy; “and what am i, that thou shouldst deign to visit me thus?”
“thinkest thou that this is the first time i have visited thee?” said the form. “i have been with thee, unseen, from thy childhood. when, in thy boyish days, thou wouldst sit gazing on the beautiful element which i rule, and from which i proceed, it was i who made it assume in thy fancy strange and lovely shapes. it was my voice thou heardest in the musical breathing of the flames, until thou didst love the beautiful fire; and it became to thee the source of inspiration. all this was my doing.”
“and now at last i behold thee, glorious creature!” exclaimed the student with rapture. “how shall i thank thee for thus watching over me invisibly, and at last revealing thyself to me!”
“we do but the will of our creator,” answered[101] the salamandrine. “i and my kindred are his offspring, even as man; but our being differs from thine; superior and yet how inferior! we tend thee, we influence thee, we guide thee,——in this doing alike his command who made us, and our own pleasure; for our natures are purer and better than thine.”
“i feel it,” said basil. “i cannot look upon thy all-perfect loveliness without knowing that such a form must be the visible reflection of a soul equally pure and beautiful.”
“a soul!” sighed the fire-spirit; “alas! this blessing is not ours. we see generation after generation of men perish from the face of earth; we watch them from their cradles into their graves, and still we are the same, our beauty unfaded, our power unchanged. yet we know there must come a time when the elements from which we draw our being must vanish away, and then we perish with them, for we have no immortal souls: for us there is no after-life!”
as the salamandrine ceased, the vapors of the fire encircled her as with a mist, and a wailing came from the red caverns of flame, as of spirits in grief, the burden of which was ever,——
“alas for us!——we have no after-life.”
“is it even so?” said the student. “then are ye unhappy in the midst of your divine existence.”
the mist which veiled the salamandrine floated aside, and she stood once more revealed in her superhuman beauty.
“not unhappy,” she answered, with a radiant and celestial smile,——“not unhappy, since we are the servants[102] of our beneficent creator; we perform his will, and in that consists our happiness. we suffer no pain, no care; doing no sin, we have no sorrow; our life is a life of love to each other and to man, whose ministers we are. are we not then happy?”
“it may be so,” said basil, thoughtfully. “ye are the creatures of him who never made aught but good.” and he bowed his head in deep meditation, while there arose from the mystic fire an ethereal chorus; melodiously it pealed upon the opened ears of the enraptured student.
the spirits sang of praise; of the universal hymn which nature lifts up to the origin of all good; of the perfect harmony of all his works, from the mighty planets that roll through illimitable space, down to the fresh green moss that springs up at the foot of the wayfaring child; of the world of spirits,——those essences which people the earth and float in the air like motes in the sunbeam, invisible, but yet powerful; how the good spirits strive with the fallen ones for dominion over man, and how the struggle must continue until evil is permitted to be overcome of good, and the earth becomes all holy, worthy to be the habitation of glorified beings.
“happy art thou, o man!” they sang. “even in thy infirmity, what is like unto thee? and earthly life is thine, half the sorrow of which thou mayst remove by patience and love; an earthly death is thine, which is the entrance to immortality. it is ours to guide thee to that gate of heaven which we ourselves may never enter.”
[103]
and all the spirits sang in a strain that died away as the fire sunk smouldering down, “blessed art thou, o man!——strong in thy weakness, happy in thy sufferings. thrice blessed art thou!”
the student was roused from his trance by a light footstep. a hand was laid on his shoulder, and a soft woman’s voice whispered,——
“art thou then here all alone, and in darkness, my basil?”
“all was light with me,——the darkness came with thee,” answered the student, harshly, like one roused from delicious slumbers by an unwelcome hand;——and yet the hand was none other than isilda’s.
“once thou used to call me thy light of life, basil,” murmured the girl. “i would not come to anger thee.”
it was too dark to discern faces; but as isilda turned to depart, basil thought she was weeping, and his heart melted. what would he not have given, at the moment, for the days of old,——the feelings of old, when he would have drawn her to his bosom, and soothed her there with the assurances of never-ending love. but now he dared not; the link between him and earth was broken. he thought of the immortal gift just acquired, and he would not renounce its ecstatic joys,——no, not even for isilda. he took her hand kindly, but coldly, saying,——
“forgive me; i have been studying,——dreaming; i did not mean to say thou wert unwelcome.”
“bless thee for that, my basil, my beloved!” cried the girl, weeping, as she pressed his hand passionately to her heart and her lips. “thou couldst not be unkind to me,——to thy betrothed wife.”
[104]
basil turned away; he could not tell her that the tie was now only a name; and isilda went on,——
“thou hast not looked the same of late; thou art too anxious; or thou hast some hidden sorrow upon thee. tell it to me, my basil,” she continued, caressingly. “who should share and lighten it but i, who love thee so?”
“dost thou indeed love me so well, isilda?”
“thou art my all,——my life,——my soul! it were death itself to part from thee,” cried the girl, in a burst of impassioned feeling, as she knelt beside the bending form of her lover, and strove to wind her arms round his neck. she hardly dared to do so now to him who had once wooed that fondness with so many prayers.
“woe is me, alas!” muttered the student. “must thou also be sacrificed, isilda?”
she did not hear his words, but she felt him unclasp her arms from his neck; and isilda sank insensible at basil’s feet.
the die was cast. slowly the student laid her down,——her, the once beloved,——on the cold floor. he called “margareta!” and before his sister entered, went out into the open air.
