“To show you, that I do not wish to cherish hope,” replied Flemming, I shall leave Interlachen to-morrow morning.  I am going to the Tyrol.”

“You are right,” said Berkley; “there is nothing so good for sorrow as rapid motion in the open air.  I shall go with you; though probably your conversation will not be very various; nothing but Edward and Kunigunde.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Go to Berlin, and you will find out.  However, jesting apart, I will do all I can to cheer you, and make you forget the Dark Ladie, and this untoward accident.”

“Accident!” said Flemming.  “This is no accident, but God’s Providence, which brought us together, to punish me for my sins.”

“O, my friend,” interrupted Berkley, “if you see the finger of Providence so distinctly in every act of your life, you will end by thinking yourself an Apostle and Envoy Extraordinary.  I see nothing so very uncommon in what has happened to you.”

“What! not when our souls are so akin to each other!  When we seemed so formed to be together,—­to be one!”

“I have often observed,” replied Berkley coldly, “that those who are of kindred souls, rarely wed together; almost as rarely as those who are akin by blood.  There seems, indeed, to be such a thing as spiritual incest.  Therefore, mad lover, do not think to persuade thyself and thy scornful lady, that you have kindred souls; but rather the contrary; that you are much unlike; and each wanting in those qualities which most mark and distinguish the other.  Trust me, thy courtship will then be more prosperous.  But good morning.  I must prepare for this sudden journey.”

On the following morning, Flemming and Berkleystarted on their way to Innsbruck, like Huon of Bordeaux and Scherasmin on their way to Babylon.  Berkley’s self-assumed duty was to console his companion; a duty which he performed like an old Spanish Matadora, a woman whose business was to attend the sick, and put her elbow into the stomach of the dying to shorten their agony.

BOOK IV.

Epigraph

“Mortal, they softly say,

Peace to thy heart!

We too, yes, mortal,

Have been as thou art;

Hope-lifted, doubt-depressed,

Seeing in part,

Tried, troubled, tempted,—­

Sustained,—­as thou art.”

CHAPTER I. A MISERERE.

In the Orlando Innamorato, Malagigi, the necromancer, puts all the company to sleep by reading to them from a book.  Some books have this power of themselves and need no necromancer.  Fearing, gentle reader, that mine may be of this kind, I have provided these introductory chapters, from time to time, like stalls or Misereres in a church, with flowery canopies and poppy-heads over them, where thou mayest sit down and sleep.

No,—­the figure is not a bad one.  This book does somewhat resemble a minster, in the Romanesque style, with pinnacles, and flying buttresses, and roofs,