“Thanks, my warmest thanks”, whispered the sick man, at the same time handing me the manuscript of his work. “But for the present please take these poetical remains of mine, and read something of them when you get home, even if it is only few pages. Perhaps you will find some spare time for it. And then tell me candidly, what impression it has made on you. You will be the only man whose opinion I shall hear.”
“But I must confess to you,” I objected, “that I do not know very much about poetry.”
“Oh, every educated man can understand a real poem. Anyhow, your opinion will not change my own opinion in any way. Well, will you grant my second request as well?”
“If it means a lot to you,—with pleasure.”
Embarrassed by the strange task which I had undertaken, I turned the leaves over. The first one was blank. “You have not found a title yet?” I could not help asking.
“I have not even thought about it yet. What does a title matter?”
“And here is a dedication: To the Unknown. Of course you have left this Unknown with your heart on the shores of Vltava?”
“Oh, not at all. She really is unknown to me,—and yet known. I cannot tell, how I am to explain this properly to you. While I was still a child, a bewitching form, a beautiful face, hovered before my imagination,—but I never saw it as a real thing. I might call it my ideal of maidenly beauty. And yet I always felt convinced that it is not mere ideal, that this lovely form does actually live, and that one day I shall certainly meet with it. Now of course I have already abandoned this foolish hope. But in dreams and meditations this vision has accompanied me through my whole life. Nay, more than that. I have seen it not only in dreams and in meditations when my eyes were closed, but at times it hovered in the air before me, as if it were woven from sunbeams, mistily fragile and vet visible. I could almost draw her charming features for you,—only those eyes,—no, not the brush of the greatest master could catch the beauty of those eyes, the radiant blue, like the peaceful surface of the sea, when the gleaming sky is reflected in it. Whether I gazed into the shifting clouds, into the dusk of tangled forest branches, into the drab corner of this room,—her beautiful countenance always emerged from there at the last. My spirit had no place for any other besides her. She was the invisible queen of my heart. How often in imagination have I walked with her through the alluring solitude of old parks, amid the festive stir of splendid halls, in enchanted palaces and gardens of a fairy world. I hope that when my last moment comes, her face will emerge from his ceiling above me, that she will tremblingly descend towards me with open embrace, and that I shall die with her kiss upon my brow as it grows numb.”
This is very much like a fixed idea, I thought to myself. In order to end the conversation, which was causing the sick man more and more excitement, I said as I stood up: “Well then, I will read it through, and I will visit you again the day after tomorrow.”
“I shall be very grateful to you,” declared the young man. “But please bring back the manuscript with you. I will let you have it again later,—if it comes to the worst, you will find it here in the bed, in the hiding-place under my pillow. I only want to finish writing the epilogue now.”
“You must write nothing now,” I urged him insistently; “it would do you a great deal of harm. You must keep your mind completely at rest.”
He said nothing.
I made the necessary medical arrangements with regard to his illness, and having comforted his distressed parents, I galloped back to Novorossijsk, with the voluminous manuscript clutched to my chest. As I passed the last cottage of Metodějovka, I caught sight of a girl running amongst the trees of the dense wood which skirts the roadway. Where the thicket hid the village from me at the bend in the road, the girl suddenly stepped out from behind a tree-trunk. Clearly she had run across the wood so as to intercept me and speak to me without being observed from the village. She called out to me in Czech, and jumped nimbly up to my horse. I stopped.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“I wanted,—to ask you, Doctor,—” stammered the girl in embarrassment.
“Well?”
“—How Jan is.”
“Jan? Ah, the sick student? Why do you want to know? Are you a relative of his?”
I looked at her more closely. She was a sturdy village girl of about eighteen. Good-looking and well-made. She had a pleated kerchief, displaying the fiery color of wild poppy, twisted at the back around her fair hair, which was almost of a whitish color, and her lear brown eyes were full of radiance and life. Her full fresh lips resembled the most beautiful cherries. Her body, dressed in the simple garb of Czech village girls, revealed an abounding vitality, but at the same time a symmetry and beauty of figure. In short, she was a guilelessly alluring village girl in the full fresh bloom of youth and beauty. As I looked at her lowered eyes and the glowing blush with which her face was suffused, I easily guessed all.
“Confess,” I said, pointing my finger in playful threat.
She blushed still more vividly and bent her head. She raised the tip of her flower-pattern apron to her eyes, and when she turned them
