A scarce audible murmur from the yet motionless lips of the lady
here startled her attendants. After several ineffectual attempts at
articulation, the word "COSMO!" burst from her. Then she lay still as
before; but only for a moment. With a wild cry, she sprang from the
couch erect on the floor, flung her arms above her head, with clasped
and straining hands, and, her wide eyes flashing with light, called
aloud, with a voice exultant as that of a spirit bursting from a
sepulchre, "I am free! I am free! I thank thee!" Then she flung herself
on the couch, and sobbed; then rose, and paced wildly up and down the
room, with gestures of mingled delight and anxiety. Then turning to her
motionless attendants--"Quick, Lisa, my cloak and hood!" Then lower--"I
must go to him. Make haste, Lisa! You may come with me, if you will."
In another moment they were in the street, hurrying along towards one
of the bridges over the Moldau. The moon was near the zenith, and the
streets were almost empty. The Princess soon outstripped her attendant,
and was half-way over the bridge, before the other reached it.
"Are you free, lady? The mirror is broken: are you free?"
The words were spoken close beside her, as she hurried on. She turned;
and there, leaning on the parapet in a recess of the bridge, stood
Cosmo, in a splendid dress, but with a white and quivering face.
"Cosmo!--I am free--and thy servant for ever. I was coming to you now."
"And I to you, for Death made me bold; but I could get no further. Have
I atoned at all? Do I love you a little--truly?"
"Ah, I know now that you love me, my Cosmo; but what do you say about
death?"
He did not reply. His hand was pressed against his side. She looked more
closely: the blood was welling from between the fingers. She flung her
arms around him with a faint bitter wail.
When Lisa came up, she found her mistress kneeling above a wan dead
face, which smiled on in the spectral moonbeams.
And now I will say no more about these wondrous volumes; though
I could tell many a tale out of them, and could, perhaps, vaguely
represent some entrancing thoughts of a deeper kind which I found within
them. From many a sultry noon till twilight, did I sit in that grand
hall, buried and risen again in these old books. And I trust I have
carried away in my soul some of the exhalations of their undying leaves.
In after hours of deserved or needful sorrow, portions of what I read
there have often come to me again, with an unexpected comforting;
which was not fruitless, even though the comfort might seem in itself
groundless and vain.