It is almost impossible to quote portions of the "Blind Man" without marring the whole. The story is so condensed--only four pages in length; it is one of the most striking examples of my sister's favourite rule in composition, "never use two words where one will do." But from these four brief pages we learn as much as if four volumes had been filled with descriptions of the characters of the Mayor's son and Aldegunda,--from her birthday, on which the boy grumbled because "she toddles as badly as she did yesterday, though she's a year older," and "Aldegunda sobbed till she burst the strings of her hat, and the boy had to tie them afresh,"--to the day of their wedding, when the Bridegroom thinks he can take possession of the Blind Man's Talking Dog, because the latter had promised to leave his master and live with the hero, if ever he could claim to be perfectly happy--happier than him whom he regarded as "a poor wretched old beggar in want of everything."
As they rode together in search of the Dog:
Aldegunda thought to herself--"We are so happy, and have so much, that I do not like to take the Blind Man's dog from him"; but she did not dare to say so. One--if not two--must bear and forbear to be happy, even on one's wedding-day.
And, when they reached their journey's end, Lazarus was no longer "the wretched one ... miserable, poor, and blind," but was numbered amongst the blessed Dead, and the Dog was by his grave:
"Come and live with me, now your old master is gone," said the young man, stooping over the dog. But he made no reply.
"I think he is dead, sir," said the gravedigger.
"I don't believe it," said the young man, fretfully. "He was an Enchanted Dog, and he promised I should have him when I could say what I am ready to say now. He should have kept his promise." But Aldegunda had taken the dog's cold head into her arms, and her tears fell fast over it.
"You forget," she said; "he only promised to come to you when you were happy, if his old master was not happier still: and perhaps--"
"I remember that you always disagree with me," said the young man, impatiently. "You always did so. Tears on our wedding-day, too! I suppose the truth is, that no one is happy."
Aldegunda made no answer, for it is not from those one loves that he will willingly learn that with a selfish and imperious temper happiness never dwells.