awoke every morning, and they haunted me all the day like a song which
one cannot drive away. When I entered the inn at night and sat down
wearied, and the people in the room watched me, and wondered at the
solitary wanderer, it often urged me out into the night again, where no
one could see I was alone. At a late hour I would steal back, go
quietly up to my room and throw myself upon my hot bed, and the song of
Schubert's would ring through my soul until I went to sleep: "Where
thou art not, is happiness." At last the sight of men, whom I
continually met laughing, rejoicing and exulting in this glorious
nature, became so intolerable that I slept by day, and pursued my
journey from place to place in the clear moonlight nights. There was
at least one emotion which dispelled and dissipated my thoughts: it was
fear. Let any one attempt to scale mountains alone all night long in
ignorance of the way--where the eye, unnaturally strained, beholds
distant shapes it cannot solve--where the ear, with morbid acuteness,
hears sounds without knowing whence they come--where the foot suddenly
stumbles, it may be over a root which forces its way through the rocks,
or on a slippery path which the waterfall has drenched with its
spray--and besides all this, a disconsolate waste in the heart, no
memory to cheer us, no hope to which we may cling--let any one attempt
this, and he will feel the cold chill of night both outwardly and
inwardly. The first fear of the human heart arises from God forsaking
us; but life dissipates it, and mankind, created after the image of
God, consoles us in our solitariness. When even this consolation and
love, however, forsake us, then we feel what it means to be deserted by
God and man, and nature with her silent face terrifies rather than
consoles us. Even when we firmly plant our feet upon the solid rocks,
they seem to tremble like the mists of the sea from which they once
slowly emerged. When the eye longs for the light, and the moon rises
behind the firs, reflecting their tapering tops against the bright rock