But here is still something quite different to love--three maiden communicants were listening at the open garden gate, and reinforced the audience at a distance; in a word, Regina was down below, and her brother was already in the party above; the gallery or the boxes must needs at last--since calling up availed nothing--drag up the female parterre. I myself narrate now with more fire; no wonder that Gustavus did so too. Regina seated herself farthest off from him, but opposite to him. He began an entirely fresh history, because the _bureau d'esprit_ had become much stronger. He depicted a poor, miserable little girl--children love best stories about children--one without supper, without parents, without bed, without a hood, and without sins, but who, when a star had dressed itself in finery and journeyed down, found on the ground a bright dollar, on which was set a silver angel, which angel grew even brighter and broader, till he actually spread his wings and flew up from the dollar to heaven, and then brought down to the little one from all the stars up there everything she wanted, and indeed magnificent things, whereupon the angel set himself back on the silver again, and very neatly pressed himself down there. What flames, during this creation, burst forth from Gustavus's words, from his eyes and features into his auditory! And then, too, the moon meanwhile embroidered the linden-night on the floor with wavering points of silver--a belated bee cruised through the glowing circle, and a bumming hawk-moth around a crowned head--on the double ground of linden-green and sky-blue leaves quivered among stars--the night-breeze rocked itself on their foliage, and on gold-spangles of the decorated Regina, and washed with cool waves her fiery cheek and Gustavus's breath of flame.... But, verily, I assert, _the_ pulpit he needed not, so magnificent were pulpit and orator. How could that be necessary for him, when he was narrating to the bride of Christ and his own; when the whole past day rose again with its dazzling nimbus; when he infused pity into the breasts of the unpreoccupied and unsophisticated children, and wrung it forth again from their eyes; and when he saw certain maidenly ones grow moist.... His own melted into ecstasy, and he expanded his smile more and more broadly, in order to cover therewith his eye, which had already veiled itself more tenderly.... "Gustavus!" the call had twice come from the Castle; but in this blissful hour no one heard it, till the voice rang out for the third time, nearer down in the garden. The stupefied Secret Society rolled down the steps--only Regina still lingered by the side of Gustavus, under the dark foliage, in order, as hastily as possible, to remove with her apron the traces of the story from her eyes, and to pin herself up a little--he stood so near to the face on which so many fair evening twilights of his life had gone down--so near and so dumb, and held her back a little when she offered to follow the rest--had she stood still, he could not have held her, but when she tore herself away, then he clasped her more tightly and in a larger embrace--her struggling drew both more closely together, but to his intoxicated soul nearness supplied the place of the kiss--the struggle brought his trembling lips to hers--but still it was not till, as she pushed back his breast from hers, and pricked his with the pin, that with inexpressible love, intensified by his own blood, he clasped her to himself, as if he would fain drain out her soul from her lips and pour in his own--they stood on two distant heavens, leaning over to each other above the abyss, and clinging to each other on the trembling ground, in order not, by letting go, to plunge down headlong between the heavens into the abyss beneath....