plied: ‘We must not indulge in too happy anticipations; perhaps this year may not yet witness our union.’”
“Bravo!” cried Herrmann, “the old year has belied the prophecy.”
“I was nevertheless anxious,” said the baron.
“Impossible,” interrupted Herrmann; “you were married whilst winter and spring yet strove for mastery.”
“You will agree with me,” continued the baron, “when you have heard all. I could not prevail upon her to explain her enigmatical meaning. Well, time passed on and the subject was gradually forgotten; my mother-in-law coincided in my wish that the marriage should take place immediately; not the shadow of an obstacle presented itself, and in the first days of spring I led my Elisa to my paternal home. As I sat beside her for the first time alone in the twilight, amongst other prattle I jested her upon her false prophecy; she looked down and turned very pale; at length, with deep emotion, she exclaimed, ‘Oh! that we had waited one other year; my dream will be accomplished, but far, far worse for us both.’ There was so much of solemnity in her manner that I tried every persuasion to win her secret from her, and with some difficulty succeeded in doing so. It appeared that that same New Year’s-night Elisa’s vision transported her to the next—namely the present; this was doubtless occasioned by my proposition that we should re-assemble here. Hartenstein was also the scene of her imaginings. She found herself here surrounded by you all, but she was still my betrothed, not my wife. The interpretation the little dreamer put upon this was, either that she should not be my wife at this period, or, if so, would be only as one dead among us.”
“Now I have it,” said Falk; “’tis on that account the amiable Elisa is absent.”
“Yes,” continued the baron; “I endeavoured to reason her out of this persuasion, and to convince her of the very natural connexion between her dream and the previous discussion. At last I succeeded in calming her, and, by the summer, dreams and fears were thought of no more. Meanwhile, we laid down many plans for winter pastime, and repeated our invitation to you. During the last month, the old fantasy has again returned, and I confess it, I myself urged her to pass this portentous night at her mother’s; nor was my mind easy until news arrived that she was well and determined to remain where she is until to-morrow; for the wish that we should pass to-day together having originated with herself, she deemed it a point of honour not to be absent.”
“That I can well believe,” observed Falk. “She is indeed a being full of truth and candour, and would keep her word unto the grave itself.”
“She is so,” replied the baron; “but her romantic turn of mind often causes me great uneasiness.”
“Time will soften that down,” said Herrmann. “Youth, without a tinge of the romantic, is always cold and repulsive.”
“I don’t deny it,” continued the baron, “I only say it makes me uneasy; such natures prey upon themselves; what would only affect the thoughts or feelings of another, attacks them in the very core of life. That dream occasioned my wife a severe fit of illness which it required great care and several little summer excursions to remove.”
“The dream had probably less to do with it than the interpretation,” said Herrmann. “There was nothing in the vision, it is only the conventional idea that dreams are to be explained in a contrary sense, which forces itself unpleasantly upon the mind.”
“That is not a merely conventional idea,” observed Falk. “Love and death, marriage and the grave, bear the same relation to each other as does the spring to the autumn, or morn to the evening. In dreams, the symbolical representation of one may signify the approach of the other in life, even as the rosy clouds of morning portend a storm, or the same in evening a bright and genial day. There is certainly something appalling in that dream, particularly for an imaginative mind prone to tint everything with its own colours.”
“The extraordinary part of the story remains to be told,” said the baron; “it may also serve to prove what
