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Title: Titan: A Romance
Vol. II (of 2)
Author: Jean Paul
Translator: Charles T. Brooks
Release Date: June 12, 2011 [eBook #36403]
[Most recently updated: November 23, 2021]
Language: English
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TITAN:
A ROMANCE.
FROM THE GERMAN OF
_JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER_.
TRANSLATED BY
CHARLES T. BROOKS.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
TRÜBNER & CO., 60 Paternoster Row.
1863.
Contents of Vol. II.
SEVENTEENTH JUBILEE.
Princely Nuptial-Territion.--Illumination of Lilar.
EIGHTEENTH JUBILEE.
Gaspard's Letter.--The Blumenbühl Church.--Eclipse of the Sun and of
the Soul.
NINETEENTH JUBILEE.
Schoppe's Office of Comforter.--Arcadia.--Bouverot's Portrait-painting.
TWENTIETH JUBILEE.
Gaspard's Letter Partings.
TWENTY-FIRST JUBILEE.
The Trial-lesson of Love.--Froulay's Fear of Fortune.--The Biter
Bit.--Honors of the Observatory.
TWENTY-SECOND JUBILEE.
Schoppe's Heart.--Dangerous Spiritual Acquaintances.
TWENTY-THIRD JUBILEE.
Liana.
TWENTY-FOURTH JUBILEE.
The Fever.--The Cube.
TWENTY-FIFTH JUBILEE.
The Dream.--The Journey.
TWENTY-SIXTH JUBILEE.
The Journey.--The Fountain.--Rome.--The Forum.
TWENTY-SEVENTH JUBILEE.
St. Peter's.--Rotunda.--Colosseum.--Letter to Schoppe.
--The War.--Gaspard.--The Corsican.--Entanglement with the
Princess.--Sickness.--Gaspard's Brother.--St. Peter's Dome,
and Departure.
TWENTY-EIGHTH JUBILEE.
Letter From Pestitz.--Mola.--The Heavenly Ascension of a
Monk.--Naples.--Ischia.--The New Gift of the Gods.
TWENTY-NINTH JUBILEE.
Julienne.--The Island.--Sundown.--Naples.--Vesuvius.--Linda's
Letter.--Fight.--Departure.
THIRTIETH JUBILEE.
Tivoli.--Quarrel.--Isola Bella.--Nursery of
Childhood.--Love.--Departure.
THIRTY-FIRST JUBILEE.
Pestitz.--Schoppe.--Dread of Marriage.--Arcadia.--Idoine.--Entanglement
THIRTY-SECOND JUBILEE.
Roquairol.
THIRTY-THIRD JUBILEE.
Albano And Linda.--Schoppe and the Portrait.-The Wax Cabinet.--The
Duel.--The Madhouse.--Leibgeber.
THIRTY-FOURTH JUBILEE.
Schoppe's Discoveries.--Liana.--The Chapel of the Cross.--Schoppe and
the "I" and the Uncle.
THIRTY-FIFTH JUBILEE.
Siebenkäs.--Confession of the Uncle.--Letter from Albano's Mother.--The
Race for the Crown.--Echo and Swan-song of the Story.
TITAN.
SEVENTEENTH JUBILEE.
Princely Nuptial-territion.[1]--Illumination of Lilar.
77. CYCLE.
What a universal joy of the people could now ring and roar, for a space
of eight days, from one frontier of the land to the other! For so long
was the public sorrow suspended; the bells sounded for something better
than a march to the grave; music was again allowed to all musical
clocks and people; all theatres would have been opened, had there been
one there, or had the court been shut up, which was a continual
play-house; and now one could walk and visit and promulgate decrees in
high places, without the black border. By and by, when this refreshing
interlude was over, during which one enjoyed orchestra, punch, and
cakes, they were to go back again with the more zest to weeping and
tragedies.
On the morning of the tedious procession of carriages going forth to
form the escort, the Prince rode out beforehand over the limits, with
Bouverot and Albano,--all three as being the only people in the land
who were independent and uninterested in the festival. Poor Luigi! I
have already very distinctly stated, in the first volume of "Titan,"
that the princely bridegroom who to-day mounts the bridal bed can only
be a father of his _country_, not father of a family. Under the heaven
of his princely throne, as on the first row of the chess-field, all is
to be made and regenerated,--officers, even the queen of chess, but not
the Schach[2] himself. It were to be wished, since the circumstance
makes the festival shade into the ridiculous, that the bridegroom could
only, by way of shaming many _old_ families that laugh at him,--old so
often, even in the heraldic and medical sense at once,--show them some
dozen of the princes ranged around the nuptial altar, whom he has
seated in Calabria, Wales, Asturia, in _Dauphiny_,--all Europe was a
Dauphiny to him,--in short, in so many _active_[3] hereditary
lands,--that is, the heirs, not heirlooms, of foreign princes. Could he
do that, then would he look more contentedly into this day's
congratulations, because some dozen fulfilments would be already
standing by, and awaiting his nod. But as the Marchioness of Exeter can
transform the bed of the Marquis in London, which costs three thousand
pounds, into a throne, so must the Princess also do with hers, without
being able, like her, to reverse the transformation.
I will therefore introduce and lead him out on the dancing-floor of
to-day's joy, not at all as bridegroom, but, in every instance,--just
as we speak of the crown without the crowned head,--merely as
Bridegroom's-coat, so as not to make him ridiculous. Albano rode along
with a breast full of indignation, scorn, and pity beside this victim
of dark state policy, and simply could not comprehend how it was that
Luigi did not send the German gentleman, that hired axe and uprooter of
his family tree, with one kick far behind him howling. Good youth! a
prince more easily sets himself free from men whom he loves, than from
such as he has full long hated; for his fear is stronger than his love.
The great-hearted, never narrow-chested, always broad-breasted youth
found to-day, in his solemn, painful frame of mind, everything
tragical, noble and ignoble, greater than it was. He showed, indeed,
only a fiery eye and animated countenance, because he was too young and
modest to make a display of personal grief; but beneath the eye, which
was fixed on the spot of blue in the heavens where his dark clouds were
this day to break away or fall upon him, stood the glistening
tear-drop. The coming evening, into which he had so often looked as
into a hell, and full as often as into a heaven, stood now, as a
confused medium between the two, so near,--ah, hard by him! A throng of
kindred feelings attended him to the (in his opinion unhappy) bride
of--his father and this prince.
A quarter of a mile the other side of Hohenfliess might already be seen
jogging on her _Gibbon_, well known among all natural historians--not
among the politicians--by the long arms which this owner of the
Moluccas and Ape notoriously carries. "Where is my Gibbon?" the
Princess usually asked (even supposing she had in her hand, at the
moment, the English namesake,--the historian with long nails and short
sentences against the Christians) when she wanted her Longimanus.
At last she came prancing along--all plumed and in riding-habit--on the
finest English steed,--a tall, majestic figure, who, indifferent to her
court-retinue, although freighted with relatives, would much rather
have looked a welcome to the blue morning sun behind a rearing horse's
and swan's neck. She gave the Bridegroom's-coat with propriety greeting
and kiss, but neither with emotion nor dissimulation nor embarrassment,
but freely and frankly and cordially, too far exalted above the
ridiculousness of her genealogical disproportion to do otherwise; yes,
even above every thought of that disproportion which necessity or
tyranny created. In her otherwise fairly built--rather than finely
drawn--face, her nose alone was not so, but angularly cut and
presenting more bones than cartilage in contrast to the commonplace
character of regents. With women, marked, irregular noses, e. g. with
deep indenture of the bridge, or with concave or convex archings, or
with _facettes_ at the knob, &c., signify far more for talent than with
men; and--except in the case of a few whom I myself have seen--beauty
must always sacrifice something to genius, although not so much as
afterward the genius of others sacrifices to beauty, as we men in
general have, unfortunately perhaps, done.
The Count was presented to the Princess; she had not known
him,--although she had heard of him and seen his father so long,--but
had rather fancied him to resemble the Bridegroom's-coat. The coat
could not--or should not--have failed to be flattered by this blooming
likeness. The likeness entirely explains the beautiful interest which
she now must needs take in both, because it always takes a couple of
people to make a resemblance.
She spoke with the son without any embarrassment about the Knight of
the Fleece having been presented by her and her Court with a (flower-)
basket,[4] and extolled his knowledge of art. "Art," said she, "makes
in the end all lands alike and agreeable. When that is once had, one
thinks of nothing further. At Dresden, in the inner gallery, I really
believed I was in joyous Italy. Yes, if one should go to Italy itself,
one would forget even Italy in the midst of all that one finds there."
Albano answered, "I know, I too shall one day intoxicate myself with
the old wine of art, and glow under it; but for the present it is to me
merely a beautiful, blooming vineyard, whose powers I certainly know
beforehand, without as yet feeling them." The Princess won his esteem
so exceedingly, that he put the question to her, when the Prince, a few
steps onward, was surveying from the window the swelling flood of the
Pestitz escort, how the German ceremonies of her rank struck her
artistic taste. "Tell me," said she, lightly, "what station among us
has not full as many, and where, in the whole range of situations, do
not priests and advocates play their part? Just look for once at the
marriages of the imperial cities. The Germans are herein no better nor
worse than any other nation, old or new, wild or polished. Think of
Louis Fourteenth. Once for all, such is man; but I do not, of course,
respect him for that."
The Prince reminded them now of the hour of march; and the Princess
mustered together, by way of attiring herself for the grand _entrée_,
more, dressing-maids and toilet-boxes than Albano, according to her
words, or we, according to the cartilages of her nose,--which seemed
spiritual wing-bones,--should have expected. Her hurrying people
followed her with more dread than reverence for her rank or character;
and some, who occasionally ran by out of the dressing-chamber, had
downcast faces.
At last she appeared again, but much fairer than before. There must
surely belong to the manliest woman more charming womanliness than we
think, since such a one gains by female finery, by which the most
effeminate man would only lose. "Rank," said she to Albano, showing a
great candor in opinions, which easily consists with a quite as great
reserve in emotions, "oppresses and confines a great soul oftentimes
less than sex." Her calling herself a great soul could not but strike
the Count, because he now saw before him the first example--another man
knows innumerable examples--of the fact, that distinguished women
praise themselves outright, and far more than distinguished men.
The grand movement began. On a boundary bridge, which, like the
printer's hyphen, was at once sign of separation and of connection
between the two principalities, half Hohenfliess already sat halting in
carriages and on horseback, until an upset, shabby old vehicle, with
village comedians, could be raised again on the fourth wheel, and the
mythological household furniture which they had in hand packed in. But
when the Princess made her way by main force on to the bridge, suddenly
passengers and packers converted themselves into muses, gods of music,
gods of love, and a pretty little Hymen, and, in theatrical decoration
and apparatus, flooded the encircled bride with their poetic effusions,
representing the war of the other gods against the virgin-stealer
Hymen. The son of the muses who had versified the matter acted a part
himself, as father of the muses. I dare say that this original
invention of the Minister was very favorably received, as well by
Haarhaar as by Hohenfliess.
Froulay, all prinked and powdered, as if he were stretching himself out
on the bed of state between funeral-gueridons,[5] marched out before
her as spokesman of the country, which wished to testify its happy
participation in her marriage to the Bridegroom's-coat. The Princess
abridged and clipped short all festal lying with a fine pair of ladies'
scissors.
Froulay had, among other carriages, brought with him also one
containing several trumpeters and kettle-drummers, levied from all
quarters, in which, for joke's sake, Schoppe stood, too, who did not
often stay away from great processions of men, for this reason, because
men never looked more ridiculous than when they did anything in mass
and multitude. By way of bringing salt to the solemnities, he set up in
his carriage the hypothesis that they were doing all this merely, with
the best intention, for the sake of driving the bride back again to
where she had come from, partly by way of sparing her the sham- and
stage-marriage, partly by way of sparing the land the new court-state.
Her ear, he assumed, when the cannon drawn up on the surrounding hills
mingled with the trumpeting of his thunder-car, and three postmasters,
with fifteen postilions, who had not been posted there _for nothing_,
with their best horns and lungs, blew their horns at the same
moment,--her ear must be very much tortured, and she somewhat repelled,
by such a welcome. Hence they even send empty state-coaches with the
rest, just for the sake of the rattling, even as, in the province of
Anspach, the farmer, merely by frightful screaming, without ammunition
or dogs, drives the stags from his crops.[6] As ships do in the fog by
lanterns and drums, so would states fain keep themselves apart by
illumination and firing.
She still, however, I see, moves onward, said he, on the
way,--sometimes taking into his hands with profit the diphthong of the
kettle-drum,--and we must all accordingly follow after; but perhaps her
ear is already dead, and she is now only to be come at through the eye.
In this hope he was exceedingly delighted with the dapple uniform of
the assembled officers and feather scarecrows of the court-liveries.
Now there is still to come, he predicted, joyfully, the gold-spangled,
triumphal arch, with vases and pipers, through which she must directly
pass; and do not people scare away sparrows from the cherry trees,
then, with gold leaf and Selzer pitchers?
O, thought he, when she was through, if that Gothic tyrant suffered
himself to be led back from his plundering expedition into holy Rome by
the suppliant procession of the Pope that came to meet him, then
certainly it must prevail with her, when the orphan children in the
suburbs come imploringly to meet her with their foster-father, then
the schoolmasters with their pages, then the gymnasium and the
university,--all which, however, to be sure, is only a skirmish with
the outposts; for the gate is occupied with infantry, the whole market
with citizens capable of bearing arms, the cathedral is guarded by the
clergy, the council-house by the magistracy, all ready, if she does not
turn back, to march after her at a certain distance, as police-patrol
and choirs of observation; and are there not seven bridal couples
stationed at the palace-gate, as seven prayers and penitential psalms?
and do they not bring to meet her--upon a pillory of satin, quite
unconscious of the effect--a dismal Pereat-Carmen[7] composed by
myself, a decree of the 19th June?
All right! said he, when the whole train, by way of affording an
easier inspection to the powers and principalities clustered at the
palace-windows, rode twice through the palace-yard; this double dose
must take hold. Schoppe's hopes were farthest from falling when he
found that, because it was gala, they kept themselves up-stairs long
concealed and silent; and at length the Prince, as victor, but
exhausted, was brought down by court-cavaliers into the chapel, in
order publicly to give thanks for the retreat of the hostile forces.
Nay, when presently the bride, too, pressed after, held back, however,
by the arms of chamberlains,--even drawn back by her court-dames
holding her train,--then could the Librarian easily afford to dismiss
all anxiety.
Albano's tossing soul imaged the confused court world as still more
wild and misshapen than it was. He heard the princely cousins, even the
future successor to chair and throne, wish their cousin Luigi health, a
happy marriage, and sequel thereto, although they, through their
friend,--a living succession-poison,[8]--had caused so much of these
three things to be taken away from him that they could assign him
precisely their cold-blooded kinswoman as crown-guard of their next
succession. He heard the same marriage-songs from all court Pestitzers,
who, like a muscle, manifested a special effort to make themselves
short. He saw how lightly, coldly, and with what malicious pleasure,
the Prince, although with the feeling that he should soon drown in his
dropsy, his water or fat in the limbs, carried off all the lies. O,
must not princes themselves lie, because they are eternally cheated?
themselves learn to flatter, because they are forever flattered? He
himself could not bring himself to cast so much as the smallest mite of
a lying congratulation into the general treasury of lies.
The Princess flung the Count--as often as it would do, and almost
oftener--two or three looks or words; for this blooming one, among the
throne-coasters, from whom one more easily hears an echo than an
answer, was reminded only of his powerful father. The Captain--who,
like all enthusiasts, and like moths and crickets, loved _warmth_ and
shunned _light_, and because all people of mere understanding were
tedious to him--complained several times to Albano, that the Princess
displeased him with her cold, witty understanding; but the Count--out
of regard for the beloved of his father, and out of hatred toward her
sacrificial priests and butchers--could only pity a being, who perhaps
must hate now, because her greatest love had set. How many noble women,
who would otherwise have held it a higher thing to admire than to be
admired, have become powerful, rich in knowledge, almost great, but
unhappy and coquettish and cold, because they found only a pair of
arms, but no heart between them, and because their ardently devoted
souls met with no likeness of themselves, by which a woman means an
unlike image, namely one higher than her own! Then the tree with its
frozen blossoms stands there in autumn high, broad, green, and fresh,
and dark with foliage, but with empty, fruitless twigs.
At last they came out of the sweltry dining-halls into the fresh
evening of Lilar, into the open air and freedom. Half indignant, half
bewildered with love, Albano went to meet a veiled hour, in which so
many a riddle and his dearest one were to be solved. What does man see
before him, when with the thread in his hand he steps out of the
subterranean labyrinth? Nothing but the open entrances into other
labyrinths, and the choice among them is his only wish.
78. CYCLE.
On the loveliest evening, when the heavens were transparent to the very
bottom of all the stars, the Prince let the weary assembly drive to
Lilar, in order to make a better illusion with his two invisibilities,
with the Illumination and with Liana's _tableau vivant_. With what
growing anxiety and tenderness did the honest Albano's susceptible
heart beat, as, during the rolling down from the woodland bridge into
the expectant throng of the tumultuous populace, he thought to
himself,--_She_, too, went this way into the Lilar which used to be so
dear to her. His whole realm of ideas became an evening rain before the
sun, of which one half trembles glistening before the sun and the other
vanishes in a gray mist. Ah, before Liana it had rained without
sunshine, when she to-day secretly went over merely into the Temple of
_Dream_, in order only to personate a beloved being, but not to be one.
Not a lamp was yet burning. Albano looked into every green depth after
his angel of light. Even the Prince himself, who kept the sudden
kindling up of the St. Peter's dome still awaiting his nod and beck,
anticipated the pleasure, so rare at courts, of giving a twofold
surprise. The Princess had spared the Minister the dilemma of a lie or
an answer, for she had not inquired at all after her future court-dame
Liana, like the whole of that strong class of women, indifferent to her
sex, but attaching herself so much the more fixedly to a select one.
Albano espied, in the dark, driving whirl, his foster-parents and
Rabette; but in this reeling of the ground and of the soul he could
only, like others, direct his eyes toward the veil (itself veiled)
behind which he had more than all others to find and to lose. In the
years of youth, however, no black veil, only a motley one, hangs down,
and in all its sorrows are still hopes!
The people awaited the splendor and the music. The Prince at last led
his bride toward the Temple of Dream; Charles, to-day blind to his
Rabette, not _for_ her, took with him the glowing Count. In the outer
temple nothing could be detected corresponding to its magic name; only
the windows went from the roof of this Pavilion down to the very
ground; and, instead of frames and window-sills, were set in twigs and
leaves. But when the Princess had gone in through a glass door, the
Pavilion seemed to her to have vanished away; one seemed to stand on a
solitary, open spot, guarded with some tree-stems, which all vistas of
the garden met and crossed. Wondrously, as if by sportive dreams, were
the regions of Lilar intermingled, and opposites drawn together; beside
the mountain with the thunder-house stood the one with the altar, and
hard by the enchanted wood the high, dark Tartarus reared itself.
The near and the far swallowed each other up; a fresh rainbow of
garden-hues and a faded mock-rainbow ran on beside each other, as, when
one wakes, the shadow of the dream-image glides away, still visible,
before the glittering present. While the Princess was still sinking
away into the dreamy illusion,[9] Liana--as if gliding out of the air
through a glass side-door, in Idoine's favorite attire,--in a white
dress with silver flowers, and in unadorned hair, with a veil, which,
fastened only on the left side, flowed down at full length--came
tremulously forth, and when the deceived Princess cried out, "Idoine!"
she whispered, with a trembling and scarcely audible voice: "_Je ne
suis qu'un songe_."[10] She was to say more and offer a flower; but
when the Princess, with emotion, went on to exclaim: "_Sœur
chérie!_"[11] and folded her passionately in her arms, then she forgot
all, and only wept out her heart upon another heart, because to her
another's vain languishing after a sister was so touching. Albano stood
near to the sublime scene; the bandage was torn off from all his
wounds, and their blood flowed down warmly out of them all. O, never
had she, or any other form, been so ethereally beautiful, so
heavenly-blooming, and so meek and lowly!
When she raised her eyes out of the embrace, they fell upon Albano's
pale countenance. It was pale, not with sickness, but with emotion. She
started back, quivering, and embraced the Princess again; the pale
youth had wrung from her agitated heart one tear after another; but the
two did not greet each other,--and thus began their evening.
During the illusion and the embrace, at a nod from the Prince, all
twigs and gates of the garden were involved in a glistening
conflagration; all water-works of the enchanted wood started up, and
fluttered aloft with golden wings; in the inverted rain played a white,
green, golden, and gloomy world, and the jets of water and of flame
flew up mischievously against each other, like silver and gold
pheasants. And the splendor of the burning Eden embraced the Temple of
Dream, and the reflection fell on its inner green foliage-work, and
turned it to gold.
Liana, holding the hand of the admiring Princess, stepped out, with
downcast, bashful eyes, into the bright, busy city of the sun, into the
din of the music and of the exultant spectators. Upon Albano the stormy
scene came shooting like a torrent; such opposite and strangely
intermingled parts played before such opposite persons, the splendor of
the evening's gladness, and the nightly bewilderment in his bosom, made
it hard for him to walk through this evening with a firm step.
The Princess soon drew him onward in her wake and vortex; Liana she let
not go from her side. The Minister daubed and starched up with old
gallantries the erotic slave; but to every one he appeared, as the
Princess settles with creditors after the death of the Prince, to
imitate only the manner of ministers, whose spirit loves to proceed
from Father and Dauphin--_filioque_[12]--at once, in order to seat
itself, not between, but upon two princely chairs. She seemed, however,
since his manœuvring with Liana, to receive him more haughtily. He
was sufficiently blessed in the good fortune of his daughter, as his
step-son Bouverot was by her nearness, and this pair of knaves lay
deeply buried and revelling in nothing but flowers. Albano could divine
nothing more than that even a cold dragon, an orang-outang of souls,
was darkly spying out the charms of this angel.
The Minister's lady and the Lector took turns, with an easy
alternation, in guarding Liana from every word--of Albano. The Princess
let herself be conducted through the sparkling pleasure-avenues,
through the enchanted wood which was standing in moist lightnings, and
finally to the thunder-house, by way of taking the burning garden from
all points into her picturesque eye; Liana and Albano attended her
through all the walks of her withered, stale Arcadia, and held their
shattered hearts mutely and steadfastly together. True to her word
with her parents, she gave him no warmer look or tone than any other,
but no colder one neither; for her soul would not torment, but only
suffer and obey. He made--he thought--all his looks and tones gentle,
nor did the noble man avenge himself by a single manifestation of
coldness, or in fact of any insincere making-of-friends with the
princely female-recruiting-officer of crowns and hearts.
The Princess began to be unintelligible to him. They passed from the
romantic to romance, then to the question, why it did not portray
marriage. "Because," she replied, "it [romance] cannot be without
love." "And marriage?" asked Albano, uncourteously. "Cannot exist
without a friend," said she; "but Love is a god, _nec Deus intersit,
nisi dignus vindice nodus inciderit_,"[13] she added, for she had
learned Latin for the sake of the poets.
Bouverot finished the verse, in order to make the sense
ambiguous,--"_Nec quarta loqui persona laboret_."[14] No one understood
this last but the Lector and the Princess.
"Why are there no lamps in that house?" she inquired. "Who lives
there?" She meant Spener's house. Liana answered only the latter
question, and concluded her glowing picture with the words, "He lives
for immortality." "What does he write?" inquired the Princess,
misunderstanding her; and Liana must needs give a Christian explanation
of the matter, whereupon the unbelieving woman smiled. There arose
forthwith a dispute for and against the eternal sleep, which took up
not much less time than they needed for making the circle of the
thunder-house. The Princess began: "We should have quite as much to say
against our every-day sleep, if it were not a fact, as against the
eternal one." "More, too, however, against our ever waking out of it,"
said Albano, striking in, and cut short the religious disturbances.
The Princess came back again with her inquiries after Spener, who had
interested her by his long mourning for her deceased father-in-law; and
Liana, sure of her mother's concurrence, poured herself out into a
stream of speech and emotion,--her eyes were forbidden to shed one,--on
which was borne along a sublime image of her teacher. How the
exaltation of this so delicate, tender soul thrilled her friend! So in
the pale, small moon and evening star do higher mountains rear
themselves than on our larger earth! "She was once inspired for thee,
too, but now no more," said Albano to himself, and stayed behind after
all the rest had gone on, because his soul had been long since full of
pains, and because now the Princess began to displease him.
He posted himself alone, and looked at the ringing, gleaming war-dance
of joy. The children ran illuminated through the uproar and in the
bright green foliage. The tones hovered and hung twining together into
one wreath, high in their ether above the noisy swarm of men, and sang
down to them their heavenly songs. Only in me, said he to himself, do
the tones and the lights toss a sea of agony to and fro, in no one
else, in her not at all; she has brought with her for all others her
old gladdening heart of love, not for me; she has not thus far
suffered, she blooms in health. He considered not, however, that in
fact his struggles also had shed not a drop of water into the dark red
glow of his youth; in Liana well might wounds from such conflicts, like
those of the scratched Aphrodite, only dye the white roses red.
But he determined to remain a man before so many eyes, and to await the
crisis and Liana's solitude. He therefore exchanged several rational
words with his foster relatives from Blumenbühl;--he said to Rabette:
"It pleases you, does it not?" He startled, unintentionally, the
Captain, who was hovering about some new faces from Haarhaar, with the
unmeaning question, "Why dost thou leave my sister so alone?"
But as often as he looked at Liana, who to-day went in her long veil,
as the only one without any thick, heavy gala-wrappage, as if she were
a young, breathing, tender form among painted stone statues, so
bashfully putting others to the blush, glistening and trembling like an
egrette,--so often did masses of flame fly wildly to and fro within
him. Passion, as the epilepsy often does with its victims, hurries us
away, precisely at the dangerous crises of life, to shores and
precipices. He leaned his head against a tree, slightly bowed down;
then Charles came along out of his waltzes of joy, and asked him, with
alarm, what provoked him so; for his bending down had cast gloomy, wild
shadows upon his tense, muscular face; "Nothing," said he, and the face
gleamed mildly when he lifted it up. At this moment, also, came the
unreflecting Rabette, and would fain draw him into the general joy, and
said, "Does anything ail thee?" "Thou!" he replied, and looked at her
very indignantly.
"Go into the gloomy oak-grove to Gaspard's rock!" cried his heart. "Thy
father never bowed; be his son!" Thereupon he strode away through the
world of brilliancy; but when, far within, amidst the darkness, he
leaned his head upon the rock, and the tones came toyingly and
teasingly in after him, and he thought to himself, how he could have
loved such a noble soul,--O how exceedingly!--then it was as if
something said within him, "Now thou hast thy _first_ sorrow on earth!"
As during an earthquake doors fly open and bells ring, so at the
thought, "first sorrow," was his soul rent asunder, and hard tears
dashed down. But he wondered at hearing himself weep, and indignantly
wiped his face on the cool moss.
Weakened, not hardened, he stepped out into the enchanted land,
besprinkled with glimmering jewels, and among the tones which came
dancing more rapturously to meet him, and would fain snatch his soul
away and lift it up and set it on high places, so that it might look
down into far and wide spring-times of life! Here on this once blessed
soil he saw lying the shattered, trampled pearl-string of his future
days. "O how happy we might have been this evening!" thought he, and
looked into the bright Feast of Tabernacles, into the gilded but
living branchwork,--into the green, flitting reflection, rocked
by the night-wind, and into the wild-fire of burning bushes in the
flowing waters. On the arched triumphal gates stood lights like
heaven-descended constellations of the wain, and behind him the dark
cloister-wall of Tartarus, which showed sublimely in its summits
only single small lights; and, over beyond, the silent mountains
sleeping in night, and here the noisy life of men, playing with the
night-butterflies about the lamps!
Thus does the fire within us of itself create in us the storm-wind
which fans it still higher. The tones that floated by him spoke to him
every thought which he would fain kill. As man sees himself, so does he
often hear himself, in the presence of a sound of music.
At this moment Liana went off some distance from the crowd with
Augusti. "I will speak with her, then it will be over," said he to
himself, as he drew near her, battling and wrestling with himself: he
saw plainly that she wanted to be back again among strange listeners.
"Liana, what have I then done to thee?" said he, with the deep-souled
tone of a tender heart, bitterly despising the Lector's presence and
powers. "Only do not desire an answer to-day, dear Count," said she,
turning back, and took in haste Augusti's arm; but he remarked not that
she did it to avoid sinking. Upon this he cast at the Lector a fiery
look, hoping to be offended and then avenged,--left her in haste and
silence;--the sweetest wine of love a hot ray had sharpened into
vinegar;--and he slipped away, without knowing it, into the temple of
dream.
He went up and down therein, murmuring, "_Je ne suis qu'un songe_"; but
was soon driven out into Tartarus by his disgust at so many copies of
himself moving round with him, and by the eternal spring of tones
flying after him, which just now beside the upturned flower-bed of life
was so intolerable.
In Tartarus all the apparatus of horror seemed to him now very
diminutive and ridiculous. Just then, not far from the Catacomb avenue,
Roquairol and Rabette came to meet him. Roquairol's flaming face was
extinguished and Rabette's turned backward, when Albano passionately
strode forth to meet them, and, still more imbittered by the
remembrance of the time when their heavens were contemporaneous, and
flaming up under the wind which blew upon his glowing ruins, attacked
the Captain with: "Art thou a friend? Art thou no devil? Thou hast
referred me to this evening: never, never say a word more of it!" Both
trembled, confused and colorless; Albano, without further reflection,
ascribed the growing pale and turning away to their sympathy for his
martyrdom. What a confounding, hostile night!
He roved onward and onward, the licking fire of the joy and music that
pursued him tormented him unspeakably,--the tones were to him mocking
tropical birds of fairer, warmer zones that came fluttering to meet
him. "I will just go to my bed, so soon as it once becomes still within
there!" He was half a mile off, when the music of Lilar still continued
to sound after him; he sternly stopped his ears, but Lilar still
sounded on within them,--then he perceived that he was only listening
to himself. But all the time it seemed to him as if the merry ringing
must, as in _Don Juan_, resolve itself into a cry of murder at the
presence of ghosts.
The avenue of coming days ran to a frightful point before him, when he
now snatched out from them the moon of his heaven, which had once
gleamed upon his childish heart and upon the paths of Blumenbühl. The
blooming, dancing genius of his past, all unseen, with only the wreath
of joy in its hand, stole away behind him, while he struggled with the
dark angel of futurity going before him, who dragged him along after
him through sounding thickets,--through sleepy villages,--through
moist, trickling valleys. At last Albano looked up to heaven, beneath
the innumerable eternal stars, to the hanging blossom-garden of God. "I
am not ashamed before you," said he, "because I weep on this ball, and
am oppressed before your immensity. Up there ye stand, all of you, far
asunder,--and on all great worlds every poor spirit has, after all,
only one little spot beneath its feet where it is happy or miserable.
When only this night has once gone by, and I am gone to my bed;
to-morrow I shall certainly be a man and stand fast!"
Suddenly he heard several times an almost exasperated cry of
lamentation. At length he beheld, near a stream, outstretched white
sleeves or arms; he went to the female form. "Alas! I am blind of God,"
said she; "I too was at the illumination, and have strayed away; I am
generally acquainted with road and lane; over yonder lies our village;
I hear the shepherd dog, but I cannot find the bridge over the water."
It was the grown-up blind girl of the herdsman's hut. "Does it still go
on pleasantly there?" he asked, as he guided her along. "All over!"
said she. On the bridge of the Rosana she would not, out of vanity, let
herself be directed any farther.
He returned through the pleasant bushes, which were already dripping
with the dew of morning, to an eminence before Lilar. All was still
down below there; a few scattered lamps flickered in the flute-dell,
and in Tartarus a couple, like deadly tiger-eyes, still lingered. He
went down into the vacant land away over the silent, flat grave,--up
through his gloomy, downward-ascending cavern-avenue,--and into his
bed. "To-morrow!" said he with energy, and meant his vow of
steadfastness.
EIGHTEENTH JUBILEE.
Gaspard's Letter.--The Blumenbühl Church.--Eclipse of
the Sun and of the Soul.
79. CYCLE.
If in the foregoing night a strange, hostile spirit cruelly drove
against each other and away from each other human beings with bandaged
eyes, so will that spirit on the morning after, when from a cold cloud
he surveyed his battle-field with sparkling eyes, have almost smiled at
all the joys and harvests which lie prostrate round about him down
below there.
In Blumenbühl, Rabette, in lonely corners, wrings her hands with
trembling arms, and breathes upon the wall-plaster, to wipe away the
redness of wet eyes; out of Lilar comes Albano, gloomily looks upon the
earth instead of its inhabitants, and from the astronomical tower gazes
eagerly into the heavens, and seeks no friend; Roquairol musters up
horses and riders, and makes himself, out in the country, a merry,
drunken evening; Augusti shakes his head over letters from Spain,
and reflects upon them disagreeably, but deeply; Liana leans in an
easy-chair, all crushed, with her face falling towards her shoulder,
and nothing blooming in it any longer save innocence; her father
strides up and down, with a reddish-brown complexion; she answers but
faintly, lifting from time to time her folded hands a little. Before
the night-spirit on the cloud men's time goes swiftly by, as a fleeting
pair of wings without beak or tail; the spirit has near him the distant
week when Albano shall see by night from the observatory how in the
Blumenbühl church there burns an altar-light, how Liana kneels therein
with uplifted hands, and how an old man lays his own on her serene,
shining brow, which directs itself with tearless eyes toward heaven.
The spirit looks down deeper into the months; he writhes around himself
for delight, and grins over all dwelling-places and pleasure-haunts of
men which lie about him; often a laugh runs round along all his open
hell-teeth, only sometimes he gnashes them under the cover of the
lip-flesh.
Look away,--for he too sees and wills it,--and step down from the
wintry spectre among the warm children of men, and on the firm ground
of reality, where flying time, like the flying earth, seems to rest
upon steadfast roots, and where only eternity, like the sun, seems to
rise.
Albano's wound, which cut through his whole inner man, you can best
measure by the bandage which he sought to bind around it. Our grief may
be guessed from the solace and self-deception we resort to. The next
morning he let his griefs discourse across one another, and lay still,
before their funeral wail, as a corpse; then he rose up, and spoke thus
to himself: "Only one of two things is possible,--either she is still
true to me, and only her parents now constrain her,--then they again
must be constrained, and there is nothing at all to be lamented,--or
else, from some weakness or other, perhaps towards her tyrannical and
beloved parents, she is no longer true to me, or it may be out of
coldness toward me, or from religious scruples, error, and so on; in
that case I see," he continued, and tried to tread his two feet deeper
and firmer into the ground, without, however, having any _purchase_,
"nothing else to be done than to do nothing; not to be a crying
suckling, a groaning sickling, but an iron man; not to weep blood over
a past heart, over the ashes of death lying deep upon all fields and
plantations of my youth, and over my monstrous grief." Thus did he
delude himself, and mistake the necessity of consolation for its actual
presence.
Every evening he visited the star-tower out of the city, on the
Blumenbühl heights. He found the old, solitary, meagre,
eternally-reckoning, wifeless, and childless keeper, always friendly
and unembarrassed as a child, making no inquiries after war-news,
journals of fashion, and poesies, and never paying money for his
pleasure, except on the coach to Bode and Zach. But the old eye
sparkled when it looked from under the sparse eyebrows into heaven, and
his heart and tongue rose to poetry when he spoke of the highest
mundane spot, the light heaven over the dark, low earth,--of the
immense, universal sea without shore, wherein the spirit, which in vain
seeks to fly across it, sinks exhausted, and whose ebb and flow only
the Infinite One sees at the foot of his throne,--and of the hope of a
starry heaven after death, which then no earthly disk, as now, shall
intersect, but which shall arch itself around itself, without beginning
and without end.
If Socrates humbled the proud Alcibiades with a map of the world, so,
when this in turn is annihilated by a chart of the heavens, must our
pride and sorrow on the earth be still more put to the blush. Albano
was ashamed to think of himself, when he looked up into the immense
ascending night above him, wherein days and morning twilights abide and
move. He edified himself and his teacher when he spoke of _this_: how
even now overhead, in the immensity, spring-times and paradises of
new-born worlds and thundering[15] suns and earths burning up are flying
across each other's paths, and we stand here below like deaf men under
the sublime hurricane, and the roaring tempest and torrent shows itself
to us, so far off, only as a still, stationary, white rainbow on the
brow of night.
As often as Albano's great eye came back from heaven, it found the
earth brighter and lighter. But at length the night came, which the
hostile spirit had already so long lived in anticipation. It was
already very late, and the heavens quite serene; the nebulæ crowded
down nearer, as higher market-towns;[16] the sky seemed more white than
blue. Albano thought of the hidden loved one, who, were she by his
side, would still more consecrate the heavens and himself with her
heartful of unceasing prayers; when suddenly, through his lowered
telescope, he espied light in the Blumenbühl church,--the princely
vault open,--Liana kneeling at the altar, with uplifted hands,--and an
old man near her, as if blessing her. Fearfully stood the torch-flames
and Liana's face and arms upside down; for the telescope caused
everything to appear inverted.
Albano, shuddering, begged the astronomer to look that way. He too saw
the apparitions, to him, however, nameless. "There are probably people
in the church," said he, indifferently. But Albano rushed down,--hardly
allowing the astonished astronomer time to call out after him with an
invitation to the total eclipse of the sun tomorrow,--and ran toward
Blumenbühl. How his heart wore itself out in the race, and most of all
in the hollows, where he lost sight of the illuminated church, must
remain a secret, because it was hidden even from himself in the tempest
of his feelings. At last he saw the white church before him, but the
church-windows were without any light. He knocked hard at the iron
church-door, and cried, "Open!" he heard only the echo in the empty
church, and nothing more.
So he went back, with a stormy past in his bosom, through the sleeping
night: the earth was to him a spirit-island, the spirit-islands were to
him earths; his being, his city of God was burning up, he felt.
It lay on the morrow still in full glow, when the Lector came to him,
and brought him the incomprehensible message from Liana, that she
wished, about noon, to speak with him alone in Lilar. He was not this
time enraged against the suspected messenger, and said, full of wonder,
"Yes." With what bold, adventurous forms does our life-cloud rise to
heaven, ere it disappears!
80. CYCLE.
Let us go to Liana, with whom the riddles dwell! On the morning after
the illuminated night she felt, upon reflection, for the first time,
the horrible effort with which she had kept the promise of silence made
to her parents; she sank down with unstrung energies, but also with
renewed and ardent fidelity. "What," she kept continually saying to
herself,--"what then had this noble man done to deserve that I should
cause him a whole evening full of pangs? How often he looked at me
imploringly and judgingly! O that I might have been permitted to hold
up thy beautiful head, when thou leanedst it heavily against the rough
pine-bark!" What had made her most melancholy in the heavy midnight had
been his silent disappearance; how often had she looked up at his
thunder-house outwardly illuminated with lamps, while within only
darkness lay at the window! Now she felt how near he dwelt to her soul;
and she wept the whole morning over the night, and the ray of love
stung her more and more hotly, just as burning-glasses bring the sun
before us more potently when it looks down just after rain. The mother
showed her gratitude to her to-day for her yesterday's sacrifice in
keeping her word by returning love and confidence; though the father
did not by any means, since with him one was as little saved by good
works as with the elder Lutherans, but only damned for the want of
them; even now, however, when the parents had drawn from the previous
night the newest hopes of renunciation, the daughter could not humor a
single one of them.
How often she thought of Gaspard's letter! Is it a shot-off arrow,
which, with a wound on its poisonous point, is on its slow way from
Spain to Germany, or the friendly light of a never yet seen fixed star,
just entered upon its distant track towards our lower world?
Augusti had, however, received the letter even before the night of the
illumination, only he had not found good reasons for delivering it.
Here it is:--
"I must needs value your anxiety very much, without, however, adopting
it. Albano's love for Mademoiselle von Fr., in whom I have already
formerly remarked, with great pleasure, a certain _virtuosity_[17] in
virtue, so to speak, secures us and him against the influence of the
ghostly machinery, and against connections of other kinds which might
well be more dangerous for his studies and his warm blood. Only one
must leave this kind of youthful plays to their own course. If he
becomes too closely attached to her, then he may see to the
_dénouement_ of the affair. Why shall we cut this pleasure still
shorter for him, when you, too, already complain to me of the
sickliness of the fair one? In the latter part of autumn I shall see
him. His brave, vigorous nature will know well how to bear privation.
Assure the Froulay house of my best sentiments.
G. d. C."
The Lector would gladly have thrown this letter into the paper-mill, so
little was there in it that was "_ostensible_." To be sure, Gaspard's
murderously polished and pointed irony about Liana's sickliness, if he
showed her the letter, would still remain, to this innocent,
unsuspecting peace-princess, a sheathed blade. The north-wind of
egotism, too, which ran through the communication would not, as it was,
after all, a favorable side-wind for Albano's prosperous passage
through life, be felt or heeded by the lovers; but that was the very
rub; for she might look upon Gaspard's disguised "No" as a "Yes," and
just fatally entangle herself in the thread whereby a friend would draw
her up over her steep precipice.
Meanwhile the letter must be delivered; but he did it with long,
hesitating evasions, which were intended apparently to withdraw the
veil for her from the covered "No." She read it with fear, smiled,
weeping, at the murderous irony, and said, softly, "Yes indeed!" The
Lector had already half a hope in his eye. "If the knight," said she,
"thinks so, can I do less? No, good Albano; now I remain true to thee.
My life is so short, therefore let it be cheering and devoted to him as
long as is in my power."
She thanked the Lector so warmly and pleasantly for the arrow from
Spain, that he had not the capacity of being hard enough to thrust home
its darkly poisoned end into the fair heart. She begged him, for the
sake of sparing him, not to be present at her firm explanation with her
father, but rather, at most, out of indulgence to her own and her
mother's feelings, to take upon himself the task of making her
explanation to her mother. He consented simply to--both, instead of
one, of these things.
The gentle form stepped quietly into her father's presence, and there,
shrinking not before thunder and lightning, carried her explanation
through to a close, saying that she severely rued her disapproved love,
that she would bear all penalties, and do and suffer all, both here and
with the Princess, as "_cher père_" should demand, but that she dared
not longer offend the innocent Count of Zesara by the show of a most
undutiful desertion. At this address the Minister, who had suffered
himself, in consequence of her recent submissive self-denial, to be
lifted up by refreshing expectations, now stretched prostrate on the
ground, dashed down from his Tarpeian rock, could not utter a single
sound but this: "Imbécille! thou marriest Herr von Bouverot; he takes
thy picture tomorrow; thou sittest to him." He took her, with stern
hand and three terribly long strides, to his lady. "She will remain,"
said he, "under guard in her chamber; no one may visit her except my
son-in-law; he will paint the Imbécille _en miniature_." "Go,
Imbécille!" said he, beside himself. Her entire want of womanly cunning
had actually, to the statesman, drawn a curtain over her deep, sharp
eye. A straightforward man and mind resembles a straight alley, which
appears only half as long as one which runs by crooks and turns.
The Lector, who never meant to be regarded as a special amateur of
connubial sham-fights, had already taken himself off. The thirty years'
war of the spouses--for it only wanted a few years of that--gained life
and reinforcement. The old bridegroom diffused over his face that
convulsive smile which, with some men, resembles the convulsive quiver
of the cork when it announces the bite of the fish. He asked whether he
were now wrong in trusting neither daughter nor mother, both of whom he
charged with a partisan understanding against him, and insisted that
now, after such proofs, he ought not to be blamed either for stricter
measures or for a straightforward march to his object; and with the
sitting, for which the German gentleman had twice begged him, he
commenced the campaign. The Minister's lady, as a punishment for Liana,
remained silent on the subject of so excessively great a present to
Bouverot as a miniature likeness would be.
The tender daughter, jammed and crushed in the meeting between two
stone statues, represented to her mother, that she could not possibly
hold out under so long inspection of a man's eye, and least of all Herr
von Bouverot's, whose looks often went like thorns into her soul.
Hereupon the father replied and retorted in the mother's name, by
drawing a chair up to the desk, and inviting, on the spot, the German
gentleman to come to-morrow and paint. Then Liana was sent away with a
word which drew even from this delicate flower the lightning-spark of a
momentary hatred.
The Imperial peace-protocol lay open now before the two spouses, and
there merely wanted some one to dictate, when the Minister's lady rose
up, and said, "You must learn to respect me more."
She had the coach tackled, and drove off to the Court Chaplain,
Spener's. She knew Liana's respect for him, and his omnipotence over
her pious disposition. Even to herself he was still imposing. Down from
that earlier theological age in which the Lutheran Father-confessor
still reigned nearer to the Catholic, he had, through the power and
magnanimity of his character, brought a shepherd's staff, which was
distinguished from a bishop's staff only by being made of better wood.
She must needs narrate to him twice over Liana's relations; the ardent,
indignant old man could not at all comprehend or believe a love which
must have been spun out right under his old eyes without his knowledge.
"Your excellence," he at length answered, "has, indeed, committed a
mistake in not communicating to me this important circumstance before
to-day. How easily, with God's help, would I have conducted all to a
blessed issue! However, there is nothing lost. Let your excellence send
the maiden this very night to me, but alone, without you; that must be
done; then I stand pledged for the rest!"
Objections and cautions would merely have inflamed the old man's
ambition and anger,--both which still worked on beneath the ice of his
hoary hair; she therefore confidently promised him all, with that
submissiveness, which she had also transmitted as an inheritance to
Liana.
Right hopefully did Liana receive the command of a night ride to the
good, pious father. She started off with only her devoted maiden. With
deeply agitated soul she appeared before her father-confessor. She
opened herself to him as to a God; he decided just as if he were one.
What a sight for another eye less proud than Spener's would have been
this lowly, but composed saint, whose heart, like a sunbeam, always
appeared loveliest in its breaking asunder.
But here the history moves in veils! The old man commanded her maiden
to stay behind, and took her alone over into the silent Blumenbühl. He
unlocked for her the church, lighted a torch at the altar, in order
that the desolate darkness might not play any prelude to her timid eye,
and completed what her parents could not.
How he extorted from her the promise to renounce her Albano forever is
a mystery watched and hidden by the Great Sphinx of the oath which she
swore to him,--only the far-off man, who lost the fair soul, had from
the observatory of the suns gazed at the bright church-windows and
discovered behind them disturbing apparitions, without knowing that
they were true, and decided his life.
She went back again coldly across the meadows and mountains of old
days, which had once been so bright, to the dwelling of the old man,
who dismissed her with greater reverence than had marked his reception
of her. On the night-journey she was mute, and wrapped up in herself,
and exchanged not a word with her maiden. Her parents still awaited
her; the mother looked anxiously out into the night and into the
future. At length the living carriage rolled into the court. Great and
mighty as one who, having been executed in innocence, starts up into
life again before the dissector and, regarding him as the judge on
high, speaks with unfettered freedom and gladness, so did she come into
the presence of her parents: like the cold marble of a god's form, she
stood there, pale, tearlessly cold and calm. She knew it not, and she
willed it not, but she soared high over life, even beyond a child's
love,--she could not kiss her mother so fervently as once,--she stood
undismayed before her blustering father, and said, then, without a
tear, without emotion, without a blush, and with soft voice, "I have
this night renounced my love before God. The pious father has convinced
me." "And had the man better reasons for it _in petto_ than I?" said
Froulay. "Yes," said she; "but I have sworn in the Temple to keep
silence until time discloses all. Now I pray you by the All-just One
only to allow me to give him back in person his letters, and tell him
that I cease to be his, not, however, from fickleness, but from duty; I
entreat this, dear parents. Then may God dispose of the rest, and I
shall never be disobedient to you again." The wretched father, puffed
up still more by this triumph, would fain have made this last prayer of
the dying heart bitter to her, and even insinuated a flying suspicion
of the motive of the interview; but the mother, smitten in her fair
soul by the fairest, interceded warmly, and contemptuously and
arbitrarily decided in the affirmative. Nor did Liana seem to take much
notice of the paternal No. When he had gone, the mother, weeping for
bliss, snatched the silent form to her embrace; but Liana wept not so
easily upon her bosom as once out of love, whether it was that her
heart was too much exalted, or that it came back just as slowly into
the old condition as it went out of it. "Receive thanks, daughter,"
said the mother; "I shall now make thy life more happy." "It was happy
enough. I was to die; therefore I must needs love," said she. So she
went smiling into the arms of sleep, with hard-beating heart. But in
dream it appeared to her as if she were sinking away in a swoon, losing
her mother, and struggling up again fearfully out of the grasp of
flying death, and then weeping for joy that she lived again. Thereupon
she awoke, and the glad drops, softly released by the dream, still
flowed from her open eyes, and softened like a thawing-wind the stiff
soil of life.
Ye great or blessed spirits above us! When man here, under the poor
clouds of life, throws away his fortune, because he prizes it less than
his heart, then is he as blessed and as great as you. And we are all
worthy of a holier earth, because the sight of the sacrifice exalts,
and does not oppress us, and because we shed burning tears, not from
pity, but from the deepest, holiest love and joy.
81. CYCLE.
Warmly and brilliantly did the sun, who today, like the unhappy one,
was to be eclipsed, begin his morning race. Liana awoke on the
burial-day of her love, not with yesterday's strength, but faint and
languid, somewhat cheered, however, by the prospect of a return of her
peaceful time. The mother, although herself sickly, pressed her, early
in the morning, to her heart, in order to prove the pulse of the heart
most precious to her. Liana looked affectionately and yearningly, with
moist eye, into her moist eye a long time, and was silent. "What wilt
thou?" asked her mother. "Mother, love me more now, as I am alone,"
said she. Then in her mother's presence she bound together all Albano's
letters, without reading them, except the one in which he begs her
brother for his love. She sported with her mother, as fate does with us
and as poor parents do with their children, who at first give them
bright, gay garments, because these are more easily dyed into dark
ones.
Her mother sought gradually to take away from her her spiritual
fantasies, the death-moss, as it were, which clung sucking to her
green, young life. "Thou seest," said she, "how thy angel can err,
since he approved thy love, which thou now condemnest." But she had an
answer: "No, the pious father said, it had been right until the time
when he told me the secret, and that the Bible says, one must forsake
everything for love." Thus, then, does this poor creature, as they tell
of the bird of Paradise, soar straight upward in heaven, until she
drops down dead.
She manifested to her mother almost a feverish gayety,--a sunshine on
the last day of the year. She said, how it refreshed her, that she
could now speak freely with her dear mother of her former lovely days.
She portrayed to her Albano's great, glowing heart, and how he deserved
the sacrifice, and the "pearly hours" which they had lived together.
"After all," said she, cheerfully, but in such a way that tears came
into the hearer's eyes, "nothing of it has really passed away.
Remembrances last longer than present reality, as I have conserved
blossoms many years, but never fruits." Yes, there are tender female
souls which intoxicate themselves only among the blossoms of the
vineyard of joy, as others do only with the berries of the vine-hill.
The Lector's note arrived with the intelligence that Albano was
awaiting her in Lilar.
Now, as the hour of interview drew so near, she grew more and more
uneasy. "If I can only persuade him," said she, "that I have acted as
an upright maiden!" Before exchanging her morning chamber for the
mourning-carriage, she set all things to rights there for drawing, when
she should return; she had, she said, had a very bad dream, but she
hoped it would not come to pass.
With her work-basket on her arm, in which the letters lay, she stepped
into the carriage, which they had to open, because its sultry air
oppressed her. But the sultriness was the breath and atmosphere of her
own spirit, and everything beautiful which met her became to her to-day
a benumbing poison-flower. Fearfully she kept grasping and pressing the
hand of her mother, because every cry, every form that darted by,
fluttered over her like a rustling storm-bird; a crier, with his rough
tone, cut across her nerves; they trembled more gently again, only when
a pastor and his servant passed by with the sick-cup for the evening
drink of weary people. O, the fair way was long to her! She had so long
to hold together with fainting powers the breaking heart, which was to
speak so firmly and decidedly and distinctly with her beloved.
The sky was blue, and yet neither of them remarked that it was
beginning to be dark without clouds, since the moon already stood with
her night upon the sun. As they passed over the woodland bridge into
the living Lilar, where on all branches hung the old bridal-dresses of
a decorated past, Liana said, with intense earnestness, to her mother:
"For God's sake, not into the old castle of the dead!"[18] "But
which way then? That is his rendezvous," said the mother. "Anywhere
else,--into the Dream-temple. He sees us already; yonder he goes over
the gates," said she. "God Almighty be with thee, and speak not long,"
said the weeping mother, as she went from her into the temple, in whose
mirrors she could behold the parting of the innocent beings.
Albano came slowly along down through the walks; he had cleared
his eye of tears and his heart of storms. O, how had he hitherto,
like a long-tossed mariner, peered into his dark clouds, in order
between their misty peaks to discover the mountain-peaks of a green
continent!--that he was to-day to lose so much, namely all, his most
mournful conclusions had not gone so far as that; nay, he maintained so
much tranquillity, that he sent back overhead the little Pollux, who
came dancing after, not with threats, but with presents.
At last he stood with quivering lips before the beloved, beautiful
form, who, childlike, pale, trembling, and watching her work-basket,
looked upon him a little, and then struggled with her sinking eyes.
Then his heart melted; the flood of old love rushed back high into his
life. "Liana," said he, in the softest tone, and drops fell from his
eyes, "art thou still my Liana? I am still the same as ever; and hast
thou too not changed?" But she could not say no. A gash was made into
the arteries of her life, and tears sprang up instead of blood. His
good form, his familiar, brotherly voice stood again so near to her,
and his hand held hers again, and yet all was over; a hot sun-glance
flashed across her former flowery garden-life, and showed it in a
melancholy illumination, but it lay far from her. "Let us," he went on,
"be strong now at this singular meeting again. Tell me very briefly
everything, why thou hast hitherto been so silent and done so. I have
nothing to say,--then let all be forgotten." He had unconsciously
raised her hand, but the hand pressed itself down and trembled withal.
"Dost thou tremble, or do I?" said he. "I, Albano," said she, "but not
from any fault: I am true, O God, I am true even unto death!" He looked
upon her with a wild, wondering look. "To you, to you I am so, but it
is all over," she cried, confounded and confounding. "No," she added,
commandingly, as he was accidentally on the point of going with her out
of the perspective range of the Dream-temple,--"no, my mother wishes to
see us from the Dream-temple yonder."
He grew red at the maternal espionage; his eye flashed into hers a
certain resentment against the "you," and his hot looks wanted to draw
out of her agitated face the delaying riddle. Necessity commanded
strength; she began.
"Here"--she stammered, and could hardly raise the basket for trembling,
"your letters to me!" He took them gently. "I have resigned you," she
continued; "my parents are not to blame, although they did not like our
love. There is a mystery, which concerns merely you and your happiness,
that has constrained me to part from you and from every joy." "Do you
wish your letters too?" said he. "My parents--" said she. "The mystery
about me?" said he. "An oath binds me," said she. "Last night in the
church at Blumenbühl before the priest?" he asked. She covered her eyes
with her hand and nodded slowly.
"O God!" cried he, weeping aloud, "is it thus with life and joy and all
truth? So? How ye have lied"--he looked at his letters--"about eternal
fidelity and love! Whom did you mean then, ye hellish liars?" He flung
them away. Liana was about to pick them up; he trod on them violently,
and looked bitterly upon the affrighted one. Now he fell into a storm,
and drew and poured out, like a water-wheel during the influx of the
floods, his tumultuous, suffering breast, and ceased not his cruel
pictures of his love, her weakness, her coldness, his pain, her former
oaths, and her present violated one about his mysterious fortune, which
he said he did not want at all. Her silence wrought him up to a wilder
whirl. Her quick, intense breathing he heard not.
"Do not torment thyself. It is all impossible now," she answered,
imploringly. "O," said he indignantly, "I will not re-change the
change, for the Lector and the Pope would again change that!" He fell
now into that induration and palsy of the heart which is peculiar to
man; the stream of love hung as a frozen, jagged waterfall over the
rocks.
"I did not think thou wert so hard," said she, and smiled strangely. "I
am harder still," said he; "I speak as thou actest." "Leave off, leave
off, Albano,--it grows so dark to me. O, I will instantly to my
mother!" she cried suddenly. The two old black spiders, let down by
Fate, stood again over her fair eyes and overspun them, busily
spinning, with a closer and closer web; and over the golden strips of
life already grew a gray mould.
"It is the solar eclipse," said he, ascribing the blindness to the
faintly gleaming sickle of the quarter-sun. He saw overhead in the blue
heaven the lunar lump cast like a gravestone into the pure sun. Not so
much as a real shadow, but only enervated shadows lived in the
uncertain gray light; the birds fluttered timidly around; cold shudders
played like ghosts of the noonday hour in the little, faint lustre
which was neither sunlight nor moonlight. Gloomy, gloomy lay life
before the youth; through the long black marble colonnade of the years
sorrows came stalking on like panthers, and grew brightly spotted under
the retreating sun-glances of the past.
"This is indeed very fitting for to-day," he continued; "such a sudden
night without evening-twilight. Lilar must be covered up to-day. Look
up at the moon,--how darkly it has rolled over the sun; once she too
was our friend. O, make it still gloomier, utter night!" "Albano,
forbear; I am innocent, and I am blind. Where is the temple and my
mother?" she cried, moaning; the spiders had fast closed the wet,
tearful eyes.
"By the Devil, it is the eclipse of the sun!" said he, and gazed into
the blindly groping, timid face, and guessed all; but he could not
weep, he could not console. The black tiger of the most cruel anguish
hung clambering on his breast and carried him away. "No, no," said
Liana, "I am blind, and I am innocent too."
Little Pollux, made happy by his presents, had led along a begging
mute, who followed with the ringing mute's-bell. "The dumb man cannot
say anything," said Pollux. Liana cried, "Mother, mother! my dream
comes, the death-bell tolls."
The Minister's lady rushed out. "Your daughter," said Albano, "is blind
again, and God send the father and the mother, and whoever is to blame
for it, their retribution of misery." "What is the matter?" cried
Spener, suddenly stepping out, who had previously seen the meeting, and
had come to the mother. "A wretched maiden; your work too!" replied
Albano.
"Farewell, unhappy Liana!" said he, and was about to depart; but
stopped, and after gazing wildly on the beautiful, tortured countenance
which wept with its blind eyes, he cried, "Dreadful!" and went away.
Long did he lie, up in the thunder-house, with his eyes buried in his
arms, and when he at last, and quite late, without knowing where he
was, roused himself, as from a dream, he saw the whole landscape
illumined by a serene day, the sunshine unveiled and warm in the pure
blue, and the close carriage with the blind one rolled rapidly across
the woodland bridge. Then Albano sank down again on his arms.
NINETEENTH JUBILEE.
Schoppe's Office of Comforter.--Arcadia.--Bouverot's
Portrait-painting.
82. CYCLE.
Now that Albano lived without love or hope; now that he had seen the
polar-star of his life fall like a shooting-star into a wilderness
still as death; now that every one of his actions and every
recollection darted out a scorpion-sting, and he sent back Liana's
letters, forsook Lilar, the house of the Doctor, the Lector, Liana's
relatives, and the pious father; now that he directed his face,
gradually growing pale, only to books and stars; men who know no higher
sorrow than selfish sorrow must needs imagine that nothing weighs upon
his bosom but the ruins and rubbish of the shattered air-castles of his
hope and youthful love. But he was more nobly unhappy and disconsolate:
he was so, because he had for the first time made a human creature and
the best of beings miserable,--his beloved blind! Into this abyss of
his heart all neighboring fountains of sorrow flowed together. The
smallest gayly-painted shards of his urn of fortune were as if
shattered afresh, when he heard from day to day that the poor girl,
although daily stationed in the bath-house before the healing
fountains, was nevertheless brought back each time without a ray of
light or hope, and that she now feared nothing more, lamented nothing
more on this robbers' earth, than that death might perhaps close her
eyes before they had seen her mother again.
O, the wound of conscience is no sear, and time cools it not with his
wing, but merely keeps it open with his scythe! Albano called back to
remembrance Liana's bitter entreaty for indulgence; and then it was no
consolation to him, that, during that eclipse of the sun, he had not
wished to sacrifice her eyes, but only her heart. In the burning-glass
and magnifying-mirror of consequences fate shows us the light, playing
worms of our inner man as grown-up and armed furies and serpents. How
many sins pass through us unseen and with soft looks, like nightly
robbers, because, like their sisters in dreams, they steal not out from
the circle of the breast, and get no outward object to fall upon and
strangle. The fair soul readily detects in an accident a sin. Only
those hard stormers of heaven and earth before whose triumphal chariots
there starts up beforehand a wagon-rampart full of wounds and
corpses,--that is, the fathers of war, which, in the long course of
history, ministers have oftener been than princes,--only these
can calmly kindle all the volcanoes of earth, and let all their
lava-torrents stream down, merely that they may have--fair prospects.
They manure Elysian fields into a battle-field, in order to raise
therein a redder rose-bush for a mistress.
The first thing Albano did, when he arrived at the Doctor's house, was
to trudge out of it down into the remote valley town, in order neither
to see the suspected Lector, still less to hear daily the malicious
Doctor Sphex upon the relapse of the blindness. Only the faithful
Schoppe jogged off with him, especially as he, by a well-adapted course
of behavior, had contrived to get up an opposition party against
himself in the Sphex family, which could no longer suffer him in the
house. The Librarian's warmth toward the Count had grown very much with
the Lector's coldness, and on similar grounds. The bold march out to
Lilar and the passionate wildness of the youth had fastened him more
closely to Albano's side. "I thought at first," said Schoppe, "the
young man was coming to be nothing but an elderly one, when I saw him
stalking along so to school. I often held the man in the moon--where
notoriously, from an absence of thirst and atmosphere, there is nothing
to drink--to be a greater tippler than he. But at last he strikes out.
A youth must not, like old Spener, represent everything in bird's-eye
perspective, from the apex downward. He must, in the beginning, like
incipients in authors' studies and painters' studios, make all lines a
little too large, because the little ones come of themselves. There are
thunder-steeds, but no thunder-asses and thunder-sheep; as, however,
the tutors and lectors would be glad if there were, and would be glad
to have such to drive along before them,--they who, like the
billiard-markers, suffer no open fire in the pipe, but only one under
cover."
Albano lived alone now among books. Liana's brother came to him seldom,
and then ice-cold, and said nothing of the patient, although he always
stayed for her sake. As he himself had once woven the first web of her
blindness, he must, of course, especially with his _un_painted fire of
love for his sister, have a real hatred for him who had drawn it over
her again; so Albano thought, and gladly bore it as a punishment. So
much the oftener did the Captain let himself be drawn to the German
gentleman's, upon whose good graces he now, contrary to what was to be
expected, always won. It is a question--that is to say, there can be no
question--whether his talent and inclination for winding himself around
the most unlike men was not mere coldness toward all hearts, all of
which he only travels over, because he does not mean to dwell in any
one.
Rabette, also, wrote the Count several bills of impeachment about the
Captain's growing coolness. In one she even says, "Could I only see
thee, in order for once to have some one who would let me weep, for
laughter I have not for a considerable time any longer known." The good
Albano entered this desertion also upon his sin-register, as if it were
grandchild to his devil's children.
The Princess prevailed occasionally to allure him out of solitude, when
she put the gentle bird-whistle to her fair lips. She seemed, for the
father's sake, to take a veritable interest in the melancholy son, who
showed no grief, to be sure, but also no joy. Besides, the masculine
woman, more helmeted than hooded, loves to place the pillow of rest
under the sick head, and under the faint head her arm as a chair-back;
and such a one consoles fondly and tenderly, often more tenderly than
the too feminine woman. Almost every day she visited her future
court-dame and visionary sister[19] at the Minister's, and could
therefore tell the lover all about her. Meanwhile, she acted as if she
knew nothing of Albano's relations to the blind one;--the very
dissembling betrays tender forbearance toward two beings at once, Albano
said;--so she could freely give him all the medical reports of the fair
sufferer's case, as well as the opinions entertained about her in
general. After the manner of the strong women, she bestowed upon her
all just praise, without any petty womanish deduction, and wished
nothing so much as her restoration and future company.
"I am capable of doing everything _for_ an uncommon woman, as well as
everything _against_ a common one," said she, and asked whether his
father had already written him about her plan with Liana. He said no,
and begged her for it. She referred him, however, to the paternal
letter, which must soon come. She found fault only with Liana's
propensity to be always embroidering fantasy-flowers into the
groundwork of her life, and called her a rich Baroque pearl.
But from all these conversations Albano returned only more confused to
Schoppe; he heard only lip-solace, and the death-sentence, that the
long-suffering soul from whom he had stolen creation was becoming more
and more immured in the deepest cavern of life, near which only the
deeper one of the grave lies bright and open. Every soft, soothing,
warm gale wafted to him by the sciences or by human beings passed over
that cold cavern, and became to him a sharp norther. O, had he been
called to release her from his sinking arms amidst lovely days, into a
long, eternal Paradise, and had she forgotten him in the intoxication
of rapture, he too could have forgotten that; but that he should have
thrust her away into a cold realm of shadows, and that she must needs
remember him for sorrow,--this must he forever remember.
Schoppe knew no "plaster" for all this distress (to use his own fine
play on words) "except the plaster of Paris,"[20] namely, an excursion.
At least, he concluded, when one is out in the country, all inquiries
about one's health are done with, and all these poisonous anxieties
about the answer; and on return one finds much pain spared or in fact
all the trouble gone.
Albano obeyed his last friend; and they rode off into the Principality
of Haarhaar.
83. CYCLE.
Whoever thinks that Schoppe, on the way, was to Albano a flying
field-lazaretto of consolation,--an _antispasmodicum_,--a Struve's
table of ailments and remedies,--a pulverized _Fox's lung_ for the
hectic of the heart, &c., and that at every milestone he delivered a
consolatory sermon,--whoever thinks so, Schoppe himself laughs him to
scorn.
"What then," said he, "if misfortune does knead a young man thoroughly
and soundly in her kneading-trough? The next time, he, who is now in
the power of grief, will have her in his power. Whoso has never borne
anything, never learns to bear up under anything."[21] As regards
weeping, he, as a Stoic, was, as may well be imagined, an enemy to it
at least; Epictetus, Antonine, Cato, and several such, men made less of
ice than of iron, would very willingly, as he so often said, have
allowed the body these extreme unctions of sorrow, provided only the
spirit beneath and behind all had kept itself dry. The true
disconsolateness is to desire and to accept consolation; why will not
one then for once just go through with the pang out and out without any
physic?
But his view of things and his actual life became, without his express
intention, powerful over the Count, whom everything great only
enlarged, as it belittles others. Schoppe sat like a Cato upon ruins,
but, to be sure, upon the greatest of all; if the wise man ought to be
a barometer-tube at the Equator, in which even the tornado produces
little displacement, he was a wise man. Accidentally he tore open the
Count's glued-up wings at an inn by means of the _Hamburg Impartial
Correspondent_, which he found lying there. Schoppe read aloud out of
it two extensive battles, wherein, as by an earthquake, lands instead
of houses were buried, and whose wounds and tears only the evil genius
of the earth could be willing to know; thereupon he read,--after the
death-marches of whole generations, and the rending open of the craters
of humanity,--with uninterrupted seriousness, the notices, under the
head of Intelligence, where one solitary individual mounts upon an
unknown little grave and announces and asseverates to the world, which
surely condoles with him,--"Frightful was the blow which laid our child
of five weeks--"; or, "In the bitterest anguish which ever--"; or,
"Overwhelmed with the loss of our father in the eighty-first year of
his age," &c.
Schoppe said, he pronounced that to be right; for every distress, even
a universal one, after all, housed itself only in one individual
breast; and were he himself lying on a red battle-field full of fallen
sheaves, he would sit up among them, if only he could, and deliver to
those lying around him a short funeral sermon upon his shot-wound. "So
has Galvani observed," he said, "that a frog which stands in electrical
relations quivers as often as thunder rolls over the earth."
He adhered to this position, also, out of doors. He cited with
disapprobation what Matthison remarks,--as a traveller's note by the
way,--that in the modern town, _Avenches_, in Switzerland, on the site
of the Helvetian capital, _Aventicum_, which was laid in ruins by the
Romans, the plan of the streets and walls may be traced by the thinner
strips of grass; whereas, in fact, the same stereographic projections
of the past lay manifestly all about in every meadow,--every mountain
was the shore of a deluged old world; every spot here below was
actually six thousand years old and a relic; all was churchyards and
ruins on the earth, particularly the earth itself; "Heavens!" he
continued, "what is there, in fact, which is not already gone
by,--nations, fixed stars, female virtue, the best Paradises, many just
men, all Reviews, Eternity a _parte ante_, and just now even my feeble
description of all this? Now, if life is such a game of nothingness,
one must prefer to be _card-painter_ rather than _king of cards_."
A vigorous, high-minded man, like Albano, will hardly, then, in the
midst of thirty-years' wars, last days, emigrating nations, crumbling
suns, strip off his coat, and exhibit to himself or the universe the
ruptured vein which bleeds on his breast.
So stood matters, when the two friends at evening climbed a half-open
woodland height, from which they saw below them a wonderful glory-land,
so friendly and foreign, as if it were the remains of a time when the
whole earth was still warm, and an ever-green orient land. It seemed,
so far as they could see for the trees and the evening-sun, to be a
valley formed by the angle of mutually approaching mountains, and
stretching away immeasurably toward the west. A party-colored windmill,
flinging round its broad wings before the sun, confused the eye, which
would fain analyze the throng of evening lights, gardens, sheep,
and children; on both steeps white-clad children, with long, green
hat-ribbons flowing behind them, were keeping watch; a motley Swissery
ran through the meadow-green along the dark brook; on a high-arched
hay-wagon there drove along a peasant-woman, dressed as if for a
marriage festival, and at the side went country-people in Sunday
finery; the sun withdrew behind a colonnade of round, leafy
oaks,--those German liberty-trees and temple-pillars,--and they
soared aloft, transfigured and magnified in the golden blue. At this
moment the surprised travellers saw the shaded Dutch village near
below,--composed, as it were, of neat, painted garden-houses clustered
together, with a linden-circle in the middle, and a young, blooming
hunter not far off, or an Amazon, who with one hand took off her hat,
stuck full of twigs, and with the other let the crossbeam with the
bucket mount high over the well.
"My friend," inquired Schoppe of an official messenger who came behind
them with tin-plate and knapsack, "what do you call this village?"
"Arcadia," was the reply. "But to speak without any poetic white-heat
or culminating of fancy, my poetic friend, how is that canton down
below there properly named?" asked Schoppe again. Petulantly the
official messenger answered, "Arcadia, I say, if you cannot retain
it,--it is an old crown-domain; our Princess Idone (Idoine) keeps
herself there year in and year out for constancy, and does everything
there at her own pleasure; what will you have more?" "Are you, too, in
Arcadia?"[22] "No, in Sowbow," answered the messenger, very loud, over
his shoulders, for he was already five steps ahead.
The Librarian, who saw his friend in great commotion at the messenger's
discourse, put to him joyfully the question, whether they could have
found better night-quarters than these, except these very same in the
moon of May. But how was he astounded at Albano's plunging back into
the limbo which conscience and his love had kindled! Idoine's illusive
resemblance to Liana had suddenly flashed across his thoughts. "Know'st
thou," said he, continuing to tremble more violently in his agitation
by reason of the magic of evening, "wherein Idoine is unlike her? She
_can_ see," he himself added, "for she has not seen _me_ yet. O
forgive, forgive, firm man! truly I am not always so. She is dying at
this moment, or some calamity or other draws near to her; like a smoke
before a conflagration, it mounts up duskily and in long clouds within
my soul. I must absolutely go back."
"Believe me," said Schoppe, "I shall one day tell you all that I now
think; for the present, however, I will spare you." Neither did this,
however, produce any effect; he turned about; but through the whole of
the next day's journey his cup of sorrow, which Schoppe had scoured so
shiny, continued to be stained with moisture and blackness. They could
not arrive till evening, when a magic mist of twilight, moonlight,
smoke, vapor, and cloud-red made the city a somewhat strange place.
Albano's eagle eye clove the smoke in twain, and it vanished. He saw
only the blind Liana, on the high Italian roof, run against the
statues, or headlong down over the edge. Wildly, and without uttering a
sound, he ran through the deep streets,--lost sight of the Palace
buried in buildings, and ran so much the more furiously; he imagined to
find her crushed to atoms on the pavement,--he sees the white statues
again, she holds one entwined within her arms, and the old gardener, he
of the _Cereus serpens_, stands with his hat on his head before her.
When, at length, he arrived directly under the walls of the Palace,
there stood overhead a strange maiden beside her, and below women,
running together, looked up, asking one another, "God, what is the
matter now?" Liana looked (so it seemed) to the heavens, wherein only a
few stars burned, and then for a long space into the moon, and then
down upon the people; but directly she stepped back from the statues.
The gardener came out of the court, and said, as he passed, to his
inquiring wife, "She can see." "O my good man," said Albano, "what do
you say?" "Only just go up there!" he replied, and strode busily away.
At this moment came Bouverot on foot,--Albano, with a short bow and
greeting, stepped across his path. Bouverot looked at him a moment: "I
have not the honor of your acquaintance," said he, wildly, and hurried
off.
84. CYCLE.
Take now a nearer look at the blind Liana! From the day when her mother
bore her home, a ruined creature, there gradually began for her, under
her solar eclipse, a cooler and a tranquil life. Earth had changed; her
duties towards it seemed rolled off from her; the silver-glance of
youth, like a human look, now blinded; her short joys, those little
May-flowers, plucked off already under the morning-star; the object of
her first love, alas! as her mother had predicted, not so tender as she
had thought, but very masculine, rough, and wild, like her father, time
and the future extinguished, and the coming days for her only a blind,
painted show-gate, which men's hands do not open, and through which she
can no longer force her way, except with her unencumbered soul, when it
has thrown back on the earth the heavy trailing mantle of the flesh.
Her heart clung now--as Albano did to a man's--more than ever to a
female heart, which beat more tenderly and without the fever of the
passions; just as the compass-needle shows itself as a spiral lily, so
did virtue show itself to her as female beauty.
Her mother never left her blind-chair; she read to her, even the French
prayers, and kept her up by consolation; and she was easily consoled,
for she saw not her mother's distressed face, and heard only the quiet
tones of her voice. Julienne, since the burial of the first love, had
thrown off an old crust, and a fresh flame for her friend sprang up in
her heart. "I have dealt by thee honestly," said she, upon one
occasion; then they secretly declared themselves to each other, and
then their souls, like flower-leaves, linked themselves together to
form one sweet cup. The Princess spoke seriously about studies and
sciences, and gained even the mother, whom in men's society she had
pleased less. At evening, before retiring, Caroline flew down, still,
as from the heaven of joy, into her realm of shadows, and grew daily in
brilliancy and beauty of complexion, but spoke no more; and Liana fell
softly to sleep, while they looked upon each other.
At times a pang came to her when she thought that she should perhaps
never see her precious parents, especially her mother, any more; then
it seemed to her as if she were herself invisible and already making
her pilgrimage alone down the deep, dark avenue to the next world and
heard her friends and companions at the gate far behind calling after
her. Then she tenderly sent her love over, as if out of death, and
rejoiced in the great reunion. Spener visited his pupil daily; his
manly voice, full of strengthening and solace, was, in her darkness,
the evening-prayer-bell, which leads the traveller out of the dusky
thicket back to the more cheerful lights. Thus was her holy heart drawn
up to still greater heights of holiness, and the dark passion-flowers
of her sorrows shut themselves up to sleep in the tepid night of
blindness. How different are the sufferings of the sinner and those of
the saint! The former are an eclipse of the moon, by which the dark
night becomes still blacker and wilder; the latter are a solar eclipse,
which cools off the hot day, and casts a romantic shade, and wherein
the nightingales begin to warble.
In this way Liana maintained, in the midst of the sighs of others
around her, and in the tempestuous weather that enveloped her, a
tranquil, healing bosom. So does the tender white cloud often in the
beginning hurry away, a torn and tattered fugitive through the heavens,
but at last move along in rounded form and slow pace overhead there,
when down below the storm still sweeps over the earth, and whirls and
tears everything. But, good Liana, all the thirty-two winds, let them
waft pleasant days to thee or blow them away, hold on longer than the
dead calm of repose!
85. CYCLE.
The Minister, when she came home from Lilar with murdered eyes, had set
in _his_ right eye a hell, and into his left a purgatory, for no
fatality had ever before so cheated him, namely, so completely upset
all his projects and prospects,--the office of court-dame for his
daughter, that ring guard on the finger of the Princess, and finally
every chance of a haul with his double-woven net.
Unspeakably did the man struggle against the spoon in which fate
offered him the powder wherein he was to let the swallowed diamonds of
his plans go down; he delivered the strongest sermons,--so did he, like
Horace, name his Satires against "his women"; he was a war-god, a
hell-god, a beast, a monster, a satan,--everything;--he was in a frame
now to undertake anything and everything,--but what availed it?--Much,
when the German gentleman surprised him just in this mood of moral
feeling. He made no scruple of refreshing the paternal memory on the
subject of the promised sitting of the daughter for a miniature, and
asserting his claim to it; for the rest he was all-knowing, and seemed
to know nothing. For the sitting-scene of a blind girl he had cut out
certain original, romantic situations, according to the notices which
he had drawn out of the Captain. His artistic love for Liana had
hitherto suffered little, and his slow, stealthy advances and
reconnoitrings were in accordance with his viper-coldness and his
worldsman-like energy. The old father--who in life, as in an imperial
advertiser, always sought a partner with 60-80,000 dollars for his
business--declared himself anything but averse to the match. These two
falcons on one pole, trained by one falcon-master, the Devil,
understood and agreed with each other excellently well. The German
gentleman gave to understand that her miniature-likeness would, through
her striking resemblance to Idoine, who, like her, had never been
willing to sit, be serviceable for many a piece of pleasantry with the
Princess, but still more indispensable to his "flame" for Liana, and
just now, in her blindness, one might, indeed, sketch her without her
knowledge,--and he would write under the picture, _La belle aveugle_,
or something of the kind. The old Minister, as was said, swallowed
the idea with perfect _goût_. As the Italian female singers carry a
so-called mother instead of a passport on their journeys, so did he
regard himself as in a similar sense a so-called father; he thought to
himself: at all events there is little more to be done with the girl;
she lies there as so much dead capital, and pays a miserable interest;
I can take the god-penny-medal which the German gentleman in his
godfatherly capacity offers to me as the father like a name for the
child, and just put it in my pocket.
This duplicate of rogues was held back in mid-current merely by a
drag-rake, which threatened to draw the prey out of their pike-like
teeth. An old, scolding, but true-souled chambermaid from Nuremberg was
the rake; she could not be drawn away from Liana, or reduced to
silence. Bouverot, to be sure, a Robespierre and destroying angel to
his servants, would, in Froulay's place, have caused the Nuremberg
dame, a couple of days beforehand, to be furnished by a servant with
some complex fractures, and then thrown upon the street; but the
Minister--his heart was soft--could not do that. All that was possible
for him was this: He sent for her to his chamber; represented to her
that she had stolen his Magdeburg ear; remained, in his present state
of hearing, deaf to every objection, but not to every incivility, and
at last found himself under the necessity (a word and a blow) of
driving the thievish wench out of service. With every successor to the
office, as being a new one, money would have weight, he knew.
He proposed thereupon to beg of the Princess an invitation for himself
and his lady to tea and supper, to bespeak the miniature-painter, to
instruct the new chambermaid, and put all things in a right train.
Two tigers, according to the legend, digged the Apostle Paul's grave;
so do our two men here scratch away at one for a saint. So much the
more confidently do I say this, as I do not otherwise see through--if
nothing is to be made but a picture--the meaning of so many
circumstances. But the father I could almost excuse. In the first
place, he said expressly to the German gentleman, the Abigail might, in
his opinion, as well stay in the chamber, or in the adjoining one, in
case the patient wanted anything; secondly, the otherwise soft man had
contracted, from his ministerial commerce with justice, a certain grit,
a certain barbarity, which is so much the more natural to Themis,
passing sentence behind the bandage, and, as an Areopagus, without the
sight of the pains, as even Diderot[23] asserts that blind people are
more cruel than others; and, thirdly, no one could well be more ready
than he to pity the more deeply, in case she should die, the very child
whom he, as it was once pretended Jews and witches did with Christian
children, crucified, in order, like them, to do something with the
blood (as parents generally, and particularly human parents, can indeed
get over easily the misfortunes of those who are near and dear to them,
but hardly their loss, just as we, in the case of the hair of the head,
which is still nearer to us, feel not the singeing or cutting of it,
but very painfully the tearing of it up by the root); and, fourthly,
Froulay had always the misfortune that thoughts which in his head had a
tolerable, innocent hue, became, like muriate of silver or good ink,
black on the spot, when they once came to light.
Otherwise, and without taking these alleviating circumstances into
view, there remains, indeed, much in his conduct which I do not
vindicate.
The evening appeared. The Minister's lady went on her husband's arm to
the court. The new chambermaid had, as Bouverot's bridesmaid, already,
three days beforehand, made the most necessary arrangements or
manœuvres. She had, with great ease, borrowed for him Liana's
letters to Albano, as the mother, from habit, forgot that a present eye
was not necessarily a seeing one; and he could extract from them the
historical touches or watercolors, wherewith he could assume, before
the blind one, in case of a recognition on the stage, the semblance of
her hero,--namely, Albano's. With Roquairol he had played often enough
to have his voice, consequently Albano's, in his power. Methinks his
preparation-days for the festal evening were suitably spent.
He could, as little residences drink tea earlier than others, make his
appearance quite as early as a miniature-painter in September
absolutely must. When he beheld the silent form in the easy-chair, with
the discolored flower-cups of the cheeks, but more firmly rooted in
every purpose, a more coldly commanding saint, then did the
exasperation and inflammation which he had imbibed at once from her
letters kindle each other into a higher flame. Only in such chests,
strung at once with metal and catgut, with cruelty and sensuality, is
such an alliance of lust and gall conceivable. Bouverot's whole past,
the books of his life's history, ought, as those of Herodotus are to
the nine Muses, to have been dedicated to the three Fates, one to each.
He stole to the window, seated himself, set down his paint-box, and
began hastily to dot. Meanwhile Liana heard her very cultivated,
well-read chambermaid read to her out of the second volume of Fénelon's
_Œuvres Spirituelles_. Zefisio was not affected by the Archbishop in
the least,--what he caught about pure love (_sur le pur amour de Dieu_)
he perverted into an impure by applications, and let himself be
devilishly inflamed by the divine,--for the rest what there was
touching in Liana's relations he left as it was, as he had now to
paint. Odiously did his motley-colored panther-eyes lick like red,
sharp tiger-tongues over the sweet, soft countenance!--"Dear Justa,
stop, the reading is disagreeable to thee, thou breathest so short!"
said she at last, because she heard the portrait-painter breathe. It
was no sacrifice to him, but a foretaste, a sweet early-bit, to put off
the kiss of this tender little hand and lip and the whole exhibition
of his burning heart, until he saw her outline dotted off with the
poison-tints on the white ivory by the rapid dotting machine of his
hand. At length he had her, many-colored[24] on white. "Very well, dear
Justa," said she, "the prayer bell tolls; thou canst not see any
longer. Rather lead me to the instrument,"--namely the harmonica. She
did so. Bouverot gave Justa a sign to retire. She did that too. The
yellow garden-spider now ran up to the tender, white flower. The spider
heard her evening choral not without enjoyment, and the devout
upcasting of her ruined eyes seemed to him a right picturesque idea,
which the true _painter_[25] resolved to transfer to the ivory leaf, if
it could be done.
"Lovely goddess!" cried he, suddenly, with Albano's stolen voice, into
the midst of those holy tones, which Albano had once, in a happier
hour, but more nobly, interrupted. She listened with alarm, but hardly
believing her own ear in this night. The astonishment did not displease
the prospect painter--for her face was his prospect--by any means
whatever; "remember this harmonica in the thunder-house." He confounded
it with the water-house. "You here, Count?--Justa! where art thou?"
cried she distressfully. "Justa, come here!" he added, calling after
her. The maiden followed his voice and his--eye. "Gracious damsel?"
asked she. But now Liana had not the heart to ask about the door and
the admission-ticket of the Count. To speak French with her lover
would not do, as the maid understood it; hence it was that in Vienna in
the years of the Revolution they forbade this language very
judiciously, because it so surely and pestilentially spreads a certain
_equality_,--_freedom_ follows,--between the nobility and the servile
orders.
Maliciously and joyfully did Bouverot, to whom she now seemed to betray
a serviceable mistrust about the Count, which pointed out a freer
play-room for his character mask, remind the perplexed maiden of her
commands for Justa; she must now cause her to bring a light.
"_Infidèle_," he thereupon began, "I have overcome all obstacles, in
order to throw myself at your feet and supplicate your forgiveness. _Je
m'en flatte à tort pent être, mais je l'ose_," he went on, made more
passionate through her. "_O cruelle! de grace, pourquoi ces régards,
ces mouvements? Je suis ton Alban et il t'aime encore,--Pense à
Blumenbühl, cé sejour charmant,--Ingrate, j'esperais te trouver un peu
plus reconnaisante. Souviens-toi de ce que tu m'a promis_," said he, by
way of sounding her, "_quand tu me pressas contre ton sein divin_." ...
A pure soul mirrors, without staining itself, the unclean one and feels
darkly the distressing neighborhood, just as doves, they say, bathe
themselves in limpid water, in order to see therein the images of the
hovering birds of prey. The short breath, the wavering tone of speech,
every word, and an indefinable something, drove the frightful spectre
close before her soul, the suspicion that it was not Albano. She
started up; "Who are you? God, you are not the Count. Justa, Justa!"
"Who else could it be," replied he, coldly, "that would dare to assume
my name? _O, je voudrais que je ne le fusse pas. Vous m'avez écrit, que
l'esperance est la lune de la vie. Ah, ma lune s'est couchée, mais
j'adore encore le soleil, qui l'éclaire_."
Here he grasped the hand of this eclipsed sun fighting with a dragon.
Then his gnawed finger-nails and dry fingers, and a passing touch of
his order-cross, discovered to her the real name. She tore herself
loose with a shriek, and ran away without seeing whither, and fell into
his hands again. He snatched her violently to his meagre hot lips:
"Yes, it is I," said he, "and I love you more than does your Count with
his _étourderie_."
"You are wicked and godless toward a blind maiden; what will you?
Justa! is there no one then to help me? Ah, good God, give me my eyes,"
she cried, flying, without knowing whither, and again overtaken.
"Bouverot! Thou evil spirit!" she cried, warding off in places where he
was not. He, like gunpowder, cooling on the tongue, and singeing and
shattering when greed kindled him, placed himself at a considerable
darting-distance from her, threw a painter's eye at the charming waves
and bendings of her tempest-struck flowerage, and said quietly, with
that mildness which resembles the eating and devouring milk of spunges:
"Only be calm, fairest; it is I still; and what would it all avail
thee, child?"
Giddy with the snake-breath of distress, wandering nature began
to sing, but only beginnings: "Joy, thou spark of Heaven-born
fire!"--"I am a German maiden." She ran round and sang again: "Know'st
thou the land?" "Thou evil spirit!"
At this moment the giant snake, thus charmed, reared himself aloft on
his cold rings, with darting tongue, to spring and to coil; "_Mon
cœur_," said the snake, who always in passion spoke French, "_vole
sur cette bouche qui enchante tous les sens_." "Mother!" cried
she, "Caroline! O God, let me see, O God--my eyes!" Then did the
All-gracious give them back to her once more; the agony of nature, the
noisy preparations for the burial, opened again the eye of the tranced
victim.
How eagerly she flew out of the chamber of torture! The disappointed,
mortified beast of prey was still reckoning on blindness and
distraction. But when Bouverot saw that she ran lightly up the stairway
to the Italian roof, then he merely sent the maid, who came running in,
after her, to see that she received no injury; and now again he held
her previous blindness for dissimulation. He himself took from the
chamber the miniature sketch, and dragged himself like a hungry,
wounded monster sullenly and slowly out of the house.
TWENTIETH JUBILEE.
Gaspard's Letter.--Partings.
86. CYCLE.
"She can see again," cried Charles to the Count the morning after, in
the intoxication of joy, without concerning himself at all about the
cold relations of the recent period; and was entirely his old self. His
enmity was more frail and fleeting than his love, for the former dwelt,
in his case, on the ice, which soon melted and ran away, the latter
upon the fluid element, on which he always sailed. Coloring, Albano
asked who had been the ophthalmist. "A well-meant fright," said he;
"the German gentleman made as if he would paint her, when my parents,
according to appointment, were not there,--or he really painted
her,--at this moment I have but a confused idea of the whole,--all at
once she heard a strange man's voice, and terror and fright worked
naturally like electric shocks!" Although the Captain heard, down on
the bottom of his billowy sea, all voices only confusedly, nevertheless
he had this time heard correctly; for Liana had extorted from her
mother the concealment of the martyrology, in order to take away from
her brother the occasion of proving his love to her by a duel with her
adversary.
Albano laid up many questions about the dark history in his breast; and
broke off the conversation by a description of his journey.
After some days he heard that Liana with her mother had left the city,
and gone to visit the mountain-castle of a solitary old noble widow,
which lay above Blumenbühl. Out in the clean country, it was hoped
light would fall again upon her life, and the maternal hand was to
paint over anew its fading colors. The Minister, who, like other old
men and like old hair, was hard to frizzle and to shape, was, in this
last and deepest pitfall of fate, struck quite spiritless, so that he
did not devour Liana, who was also caught therein, but let her go. The
whole story was to the public eye very much covered over and beflowered
like the wall of a park. Only the Lector knew it in full, but he could
hold his tongue. He demanded back the miniature from the German
gentleman, in the name of the mother; that personage gave in its stead
cold, hollow lies; nevertheless Augusti, at the entreaty of mother and
daughter, knew how to control himself, and sacrifice to them the
challenge wherewith he was going to take satisfaction for all.
Our friend was now, since his conscience had been appeased with respect
to accidental consequences, smitten with new and unmingled sorrow over
the emptiness of his present condition; the most precious soul was
nothing to him any longer; his hours were no more harmoniously
sounded out by the chime of love and poesy, but monotonously by the
steeple-clock of every-day routine. Therefore he took refuge with men
and friendship, as under trees still blooming in greenness near the
smouldering ruins of a conflagration; women he shunned, because
they--as strange children do a mother who has lost hers--too painfully
reminded him of his loss. How gayly, on the contrary, does a general
lover, who celebrates only all-souls' and all-saints' days, go about
like one new-born, when he has happily slipped the noose of a heart
which had caught him, and now can reckon up all female forms again with
the prospect of a redeemed estate! The very feeling of this freedom may
animate him to surrender himself the oftener, by way of tasting it
again, as prisoner to a female heart.
Albano let himself be drawn by the hands of Roquairol and Schoppe to
wild festivals of men,--which would fain render the sphere-music of joy
on the kettle-drum;--they were only the thorn-festivals after the
feasts of roses. So there is a despair which relieves itself by
revelry; as, for example, during the plague at Athens,--or in the
expectation of the last day,--or in the anticipation of a Robespierre's
butcher-knife. The Captain went back deeper into his old labyrinth and
wilderness, and drew, so far as he could, the innocent youth into his
popular festivals with so-called sons of the muses, into his recruiting
places of pleasure, just as if he had need on his own account to bring
his friend down to himself a little.
Albano fancied, with these Dithyrambics, his weeping soul would be
quite sung to sleep, and he only gave it in addition a gentle rocking.
Meanwhile, although he would not have confessed it, his young rosy
cheeks grew as pale as a forehead, and his face fell in like a
piano-forte key upon the snapping of a string. It was touching and hard
at once, when he sat laughing among his friends and their friends with
a colorless face,--with higher, sharper bones of eyes and nose,--with a
wilder eye, which blazed out of a darker socket. From music, especially
Roquairol's, wherein under the hackneyed, artistical alternation of
damper and thunder, the passionate rolling and plunging of our ship
were too vividly represented, his ear and heart fled as from a
destroying siren. The broken-off lance-splinter of the wound rankled
and festered in his whole being. O, as, in the years of childhood, when
the rosy cloud in heaven seemed to him to lie directly on the mountain
where it was so easy to be reached, the magnificent pile retired far
into the sky so soon as he had climbed the mountain, so now did the
aurora of life and the spirit, which he would fain seize and hold near
to him, stand so high and far overhead beyond his reach in the blue!
Painfully does man attain the alp of ideal love; still more painful and
dangerous--as in the case of other alps--is the descent from it.
One day Chariton came into town, merely to hand him at last a letter of
her husband's,--for Dian, like all artists, much more easily and
agreeably executed a work of art than a letter,--wherein he expressed
his joy that he should see Albano so soon. "Is he coming back, then?"
asked the Count. She exclaimed, with a sad tone: "Body o' me!--that
indeed!--according to his former letter he has still to stay his year
longer." "I do not understand him so," said Albano.
The same evening he was invited by the Princess to see the engravings
of Herculaneum, which had come by the same post with Chariton's letter.
She welcomed him with that animated look of love which we put on before
one who will immediately, as we hope, pour out before us the unmeasured
thanks of his heart. But he had nothing to pour out from his. She asked
at length, somewhat surprised, whether he had received no letters
to-day from Spain. She forgot that the post is courteous and
expeditious toward no house except the princely house. As, however, his
letter must certainly be already lying in his chamber, she allowed
herself to take upon herself the part of Time, who brings all things to
daylight, and told what was in the letter, namely, "that she should in
autumn undertake a little artistic journey to Rome, upon which his
father would accompany her, and he him if he liked; that was the whole
secret." It was only the half; for she soon added, that she should be
most glad to extend the pleasure of this tour to the best draughtsman
in the city, as soon as she recovered,--Liana.
As the whole heart is suddenly illuminated with joy, when, after a
long, dark rainy day, at last in the evening the sun arches for himself
under the heavy water a golden, open western gate, stands therein pure
and brilliant as in a rose-bower before the mirroring earth, announces
to her a fairer day, and then, with warm looks, disappears from the
open rose-bower, so was it with our Albano.
The fair day had not yet come, but the fair evening had. He left the
Herculanean pictures under their rubbish, and hastened, as quickly as
gratitude allowed, back to the letter of his father, who so seldom sent
such a favor.
Here it is:--
"Dearest Albano: My affairs and my health are at length in such order,
that I can conveniently carry out my plan, which I have proposed, in
conjunction with the Princess, of making a short artistical tour to
Rome this very autumn, to which I invite thee, and will come myself to
take thee in October. The rest of the travelling party will not
displease thee, as it consists entirely of clever connoisseurs, Herr
von Bouverot, Mr. Counseller of Arts Fraischdörfer, Mr. Librarian
Schoppe (if he will). Unfortunately Herr von Augusti must stay behind
as Lector. Thy teacher in Rome (Dian) is expecting thee with much
eagerness. They have written to me that thou art particularly partial
to the new court-dame of the good Princess, Madlle. von Fr., whom I
recollect as a very capital draughtsman. It will interest thee,
therefore, to know, that the Princess takes her, too, with her,
especially since, as I hear, a journey for health is as needful to her
as to me. In spring, which, besides, is not the pleasantest season of
the year in Italy, thou wilt return to Germany to thy studies. One
thing more, in confidence, my best one! They have unreservedly
communicated to my ward, the Countess of Romeiro, thy ghost-visions in
Pestitz. Now, as she is to spend the autumn and winter during my
absence with her friend, the Princess Julienne, and besides will arrive
earlier than I, let it not strike thee as strange that she shuns thy
acquaintance, because her female and personal pride has been mortified
by the juggling use of her name, and feels itself challenged to a
direct refutation of the juggler. In fact, if the game has really
a serious object, one could not well choose worse means to effect
it.--Thou wilt do what honor bids, and, although she is my ward, not
insist upon seeking her company. All this between ourselves. Adio!
"G. v. C."
These prospects,--the elevating one of being so long with his father;
the healing one of wading out from this deep ashes into a freer,
lighter land; the flattering one that the sick, tormented heart in the
mountain-castle might perhaps, in citron and laurel groves, find, yes,
and haply give back, too, joy and health again,--these prospects
were, what the joys of human beings are, very pleasant walks in a
prison-yard.
On this happy walk he was soon disturbed by the image of the coming
Linda, not, however, on his own account, but on that of his poor sister
and his friend. How malignantly must this strange _ignis fatuus_,
thought he, dance into the nightly conflict of all these clashing
relations! Roquairol seemed, besides, to leave the too intensely loving
Rabette alone with her solitary wishes. She sent him weekly, under
cover to Albano,--once it was the reverse,--her epistolary sighs and
tears, all which he coldly pocketed, without speaking of them or of the
forlorn one.
Albano, weighing in silence Liana and Rabette, compassionated, himself,
the unequal lot of his over-hasty friend, over whose sun-steeds only an
Amazon and Titaness, but not a good country-girl, could fling the
bridle, and whose Psyche's-chariot and thunder-car seemed to him too
good for a mere connubial post-chaise or child's carriage. What a
strangling struggle of all feelings will there be, thought he, when he,
kneeling at the nuptial altar with Rabette, accidentally looks up, and
discovers among the spectators the never-to-be-forgotten lofty bride of
his whole youth, and must stammer out the renouncing "Yes!"
He was therefore in doubt whether he might venture to disclose to him
the contents of the letter, but not long indeed. "Shall I," said he,
"dissemble and juggle before a friend? May I dare to presuppose him
weak, and shun the acceleration of connections, which, after all, must
come with her?"
So soon as Charles came to him, he spoke to him first of the intended
journey, and even added the request for his company, moved by the
thought of the first parting with his youthful friend. The Captain,
whose heart always needed the sounding-board of fancy for musical
utterance, was not able, on the spot, to have or to picture any
considerable emotions about the farewell. Then Albano, who could not
get it over his lips, gave him the whole letter.
During the reading, Roquairol's whole face became hateful, even in his
friend's eye. He darted then such a flaming look of indignation at
Albano, that the latter involuntarily and unconsciously returned it.
"O, verily, I understand it all," said Charles; "so was the thing to be
solved. Only wait till to-morrow!" All muscles in him were alive, all
features distorted, everything in commotion, just as, in a violent
tempest, little cloudlets whirl around each other. Albano would fain
question and detain him. "To-morrow, to-morrow!" he cried, and went off
like a storm.
87. CYCLE.
On the morrow, Albano received a singular letter from Roquairol, for
the understanding of which some notices of his connection with Rabette
must be prefixed.
Nothing is harder, when one really loves one's friend, than scarcely to
look at that friend's sister. Nothing is easier (except only the
converse) than, after being disenchanted by city hearts, to be
enchanted by country hearts. Nothing is more natural for a general
lover, who loves all, than to love one among them. It needs not be
proved that the Captain had been in all three cases at once, when he,
for the first time, told Rabette she had his heart, as he was pleased
to call it. She, of course, should not have worshipped, at such a
nearness, the Hamadryad in such a Upas-tree, with whose sap so many of
Cupid's arrows are poisoned; but she and most of her sisters are so
dazzled by men's advantages as not to see men's misuse of them.
In the beginning many things went well; the pure innocence of his
sister and his friend threw a strange magic light upon the unnatural
union. The prominent advantage was, that he, as concert-master of his
love, needed little more of Rabette than her ears; loving was with him
talking, and he looked upon actions merely as the drawing of our soul;
words being the colors. There is a twofold love,--love of the feeling
and love of the object. The former is more man's love; it wishes the
enjoyment of its own being, the foreign object is to it only the
microscopic object-bearer, or much rather subject-bearer, whereupon it
beholds its "I" magnified; it can therefore easily let its objects
change, if only the flame into which they are thrown as fuel continues
to blaze up high; and it enjoys itself less through actions, which are
always long, tedious, and troublesome, than by words, which picture and
promote it at the same time. The love of the object, on the contrary,
enjoys and desires nothing but its welfare (such is for the most part
female and parental love), and only deeds and sacrifices give it peace
and satisfaction; it loves for the sake of blessing, whereas the other
only blesses for the sake of loving.
Roquairol had long since devoted himself to the love of the feeling.
Hence it was that he must make so many words; at the Rhine-fall of
Schaffhausen he would not have been in the best, that is, the most
excited mood, merely because he could not--since the flood out-thunders
everything--have delivered anything himself in praise thereof, on
account of the sublime uproar.
His Romance with Rabette after the declaration of love was divided into
distinct chapters.
The first chapter he sweetened for himself in her society, by the
consideration that she was new and belonged to him and yielded him an
admiring obedience. He painted for her therein great pieces of
beautiful nature, mixed therewith some nearer emotions, and thereupon
kissed her; so that she really enjoyed his lips in two forms, that of
action and that of speech; from her, as has been said, he wanted only a
pair of open ears. In this chapter he assumed also some possibility of
their marriage; men so easily confound the charm of a new love with the
worth and duration of it.
He set himself about his second chapter, and swam therein blissfully in
the tears with which he sought to write it out. In fact, this ocular
pleasure afforded him more true joy than almost the best chapters.
When, in such mood, he sat and drank by her side,--for, like a dead
prince's heart, he loved to bury his living one in cups,--and then
began to describe his life, particularly his death, and his sorrows and
errors in the interval, and his suicide and infanticide at the
masquerade, and his rejected and spurned love for Linda: who was
then more moved to tears than himself? No one but Rabette, whose
eyes,--having been, through her father and brother, as little
acquainted with men's tears as with elephants', stags', or crocodiles'
tears,--so much the more richly, but not so sweetly as bitterly,
streamed over into his sorrow and love. This poured fresh oil again
into his flame and lamp, until he at last, like that pupil of Goethe's
master wizard, with the brooms that carried water, could no longer
govern his spirits. Poetic natures have a sympathetic one; like
justice, they keep a surgeon in their pay near the rack, who
immediately sets again the broken limbs, yes, even regulates beforehand
the places for the crushing fractures.[26]
A man should never weep on his own account, except for ecstasy. But
poets and all people of much fancy are magicians who--exact
counterparts of the burnt enchantresses--weep more easily, although
more at images, than at the rough, sore calamity itself, in order to
put the poor enchantresses to the worst water-ordeal. Trust them not!
On the machinelle-poison-tree the rain-drops are poisonous which roll
from its leaves.
Meanwhile it must never be concealed, that the Captain in this second
chapter strengthened his resolution of really marrying the good and so
tender Rabette. "Thou knowest," he said to himself, "what upon the
whole there is in and about women, one or two deficiencies, more or
less, make little difference; thy man-like folly of requiring her, as
they do hired animals, to be warranted without fault, may surely be
regarded as gone by, friend."
Now he set himself down to dip into the ink for his third chapter,
wherein he merely sported. His lip-omnipotence over the listening heart
refreshed him to such a degree, that he made frequent experiments to
see whether she could not laugh herself almost to death. Women in love,
by reason of weakness and fire, take the laughter-plant most easily;
they hold the comic heroic-poet still more as their hero, and prove
therewith the innocence of their laughing at him. But Roquairol loved
her less when she laughed.
In his fourth chapter,--or sector, or Dog-Post-day, or letter-box,[27]
or in whatever other way I have (ludicrously enough) made my divisions,
instead of using the Cycle,--in his fourth Jubilee, I say, it went, so
to speak, harder with him. Rabette grew at last sated and sick of his
eternally jumping off and opening the pot of the lachrymal glands that
hung between the wheels, to grease his mourning-coach. Deep emotion was
every day made more disagreeable and bitter to him; he must be ever
giving longer and more vivid tragedies. Then he began to perceive
that the tongue of the country maiden is not the very greatest
landscape-painter, soul-portrayer, and silhouettiste, and that she
hardly knew how to say much more to him than, "Thou, my heart!" He
made, on that account, in the fourth chapter, rarer visits; that again
helped him considerably, but only for a short time. Fortunately, the
half-mile from Pestitz to Blumenbühl counted in with Rabette's lines
and rays of beauty; in the city, in the same street, or in fact under
the same roof, he would have remained too cold from very nearness.
The most natural consequence of such a chapter is the fifth, or the
chapter of alternations, which still blows up some flames by the
ever-swifter interchange of reproaches and reconciliations, so that the
two, as electrical bodies do little ones, alternately attract and repel
each other. Sometimes he drank nothing, and merely treated her harshly.
Sometimes he took his glass, and said to her: "I am the devil, thou the
angel." The greatest offence to his love his father gave, by the
approbation which, most unexpectedly, he bestowed upon it. It was to
the Captain exactly as if he should realize the silver-wedding if he
ever solemnized the golden one. In the service of the goddess of love
one more easily grows bald than gray; he was already morally bald
toward the silver-bride. Fortunately, a short time before the
illumination Sunday in Lilar,[28] he carried all sins of omission and
commission so far, that on Sunday he was in a condition to curse them;
only after scolding and sinning could he with comparative ease love and
pray, as the grovelling spring-scarabee snaps up only when turned over
on his back. It has probably slipped, or at least escaped, the memory
of few readers, among the events of that Sunday, that Roquairol sat in
the morning with Rabette in the flute-dell, that Rabette sang there in
a depressed and lonesome mood, and how he, dissolved thereby,
encountered his friend glorified by love. The dell affair is
natural; after so long coolness (not coldness) on this breezy, free
Otaheite-day, with all that he had in his hands (another's hand--and a
flask) beside that heart of hers, as warm and yet as tranquil as the
sun in the heavens,--and then the solitary orphan flute which he made
play its call,--and with his most hearty wish to profit somewhat by
such a day and sky,--under these circumstances he found himself
actually compelled to draw upon his genuine emotions, to give himself
vent on the subject of his past life (he resembled the old languages,
which, according to Herder, have many Preterites and no Present),--yes,
even on the subject of his death (also a fragment of the past),--and
then as on a heavenly way to move forward. Of course he went not far;
he let his blood of St. Januarius, namely, his eyes, become fluid
again, (his own blood having previously become so,) and then demanded
of the enraptured soul, whirled about in the fairest heaven nothing
less than--since she was mute before the pocket-handkerchief thrown to
her as the canary-bird is under the one thrown over him,--a faint
singing. Rabette could not sing; she said so, she declined, at last she
sang; but during the empty singing she thought of nothing save him and
his wild, wet face.
The most miserable chapter of all, which he brought out in his Romance,
may well be the sixth, which he wrote down on the night of the
illumination in Lilar. In the beginning he had left Rabette to stand
alone a mute, inglorious[29] spectator, while he ran, jumping up behind
the car of Venus full of strange goddesses. Gradually one pleasure
after another crept along toward him and gave him the Tarantula bite,
which was followed by a sick raving. As moderation is a true
strengthening medicine of life, so did he uncommonly seldom resort to
this powerful medicine, in order not to be obliged to use it in
stronger and stronger doses, and he did not accustom himself to it at
all. At last, when he was full, forms appeared in him as in Chinese
porcelain;[30] he stepped sympathizingly and lovingly to Rabette, and
fancied, as she did, that he was tender or affectionate towards her,
when he merely was so towards all.
He would fain draw her away from the hostile array of eyes, to seek
from her the kiss to which interdiction and privation lent honey again;
but she refused, because there, where the eye stops, suspicion begins,
when he unfortunately caught sight of the blind girl from Blumenbühl,
and could call her as a pretended guard of Rabette, in order to lead
her out of the temptation among men to the temptation in the
wilderness. Pressing her to him with such a passionate impetuosity of
love as he had never showed before,--so that the poor soul who had been
so forsaken and forlorn this evening wept over the return of all her
joys,--and speaking to her like an angel, who acts like none, he
involuntarily arrived with her at the silent Tartarus, where all was
blind and dumb.
Rabette had not suffered the blind girl to leave her; but when they
entered the catacomb-avenue, which holds only two persons, unless the
third will creep along in the water, the eyeless maid was stationed at
the gate, and so much the more, because he would not willingly let
himself be checked by a superfluous listener. And besides, what then
was there to fear in the very raree-show of the grave?
Within there he spoke about the everywhere stretched-out index-finger
of death,--how "it indicated that life, stupid as it is, should not be
made by us more stupid, but joyous." He seated himself by her side,
caressing her,--as the destroying angel sits invisible beside the
blooming child that plays in the old masonry, and into whose tender
hands he presses the black scorpion. It was the very spot where he had
sat in that first covenant-night, with Albano, opposite the skeleton
with the Æolian-harp, when his friend swore to him his renunciation of
Linda. His tongue streamed like his eye. He was tender, as, according
to the popular superstition, corpses are tender which mourners die
after. He threw fire-wreaths into Rabette's heart, but she had not,
like him, streams of words to quench them withal. She could only sigh,
only embrace; and men fall into sin most easily from weariness of good,
but tedious hearts. More swiftly did laughter and weeping, death and
drollery, love and wantonness, spring over into each other; moral
poison makes the tongue as light as physical makes it heavy. Poor girl!
the maidenly soul is a ripe rose, out of which, so soon as one leaf is
plucked, all its mates easily fall after. His wild kisses broke out the
first leaves; then others fell. In vain the good genius wafts holy
tones from the harp of death, and sends up angry murmurs in the
orcus-flood of the catacomb,--in vain! The darkest angel, who loves to
torture, but rather innocent ones than the guilty, has already torn
from heaven the star of love, to bear it as a murder-brand into the
cavern. The poor, narrow little life-garden of the defenceless maid,
wherein but little grows, stands over the long mine-passage which runs
away under Roquairol's wide-extended pleasure-camp; and the darkest,
angel has the lint-stock already lighted. With fiery greediness the
spark-point eats its way onward; as yet her garden stands full of
sunshine, and its flowers wave; the spark gnaws a little into the black
powder. Suddenly it tears open a monstrous flame-throat; and the green
garden reels, then flies, blown up, scattered to atoms, falls in black
clods out of the air down upon far distant places; and the life of the
poor maiden is all smoke and ruin.
But Roquairol's wide-spread and jointly rooted pleasure-parks withstood
the earthquake much more vigorously. Both then came up out of the
mine-passage sorrowfully, for the Captain had lost a little arbor in
the explosion; but they found no more the blind girl, who, in her
search for them, had lost herself. They encountered only the roving
Albano, who himself was sorely wailing and raving, although he this
evening had lost nothing but--pleasures.
Let us lead up the deluded maiden and her million companions with some
words before a mild judge! This is not the only thing which that judge
will weigh, that she, stupefied by the blossom-dust of a reeking spring
season of joys, smothered into dumbness with the virgin's veil,
prostrate before the storm of fancy (as women fall so much the more
easily before another's fancy and a poetic one, the seldomer their own
blows upon them, and accustoms them to standing firmly), suffered the
reward of a whole virgin life to die; but this is what most strongly
mitigates the sentence, that she bore love in her heart. Why, then, do
not the male sex recognize that the loving female, in the hour of love,
will really do nothing less than all for her beloved, that woman has
all power _for_ love, _against_ which she has so little, and that she,
with the same soul and at the same moment, would just as readily
sacrifice her life as her virtue, and that only the demanding and
taking party is bad, deliberately and selfishly?
The last or seventh chapter of his robber romance is very short and
contradictory. The third day he visited her in her garden, was
delicate, rational, temperate, reserved, as if he were a married man.
As he found her full of trouble, which she, however, only half
expressed, he accordingly, out of anxiety for her health, came again
several times; and, when he found that she had not suffered in the
least, he stayed--away. Towards Albano, during the aforesaid anxiety,
he behaved meekly, and, after it, he was the same as ever, but not
long; for when his sister, whom of all human beings he perhaps loved
most purely, became blind through Albano's wildness, he then, even on
account of a similarity of guilt, flung at him a real hatred, and
something like it at all his (Albano's) relations. Rabette got nothing
from him now but--letters and apologies, short pictures of his wild
nature, which must, he said, have free play-room, and which, fastened
to another, must beat and bruise and gall that one with the chain quite
as much as itself. All objections of Rabette's he knew how to remove so
well, as they consisted only in words, and not in looks and tears, that
he at last himself began to perceive he was right; and almost nothing
was left to the poor May-flower, crushed by the fall of this smooth
May-pole, than the real last word,--namely, the mute life, which is not
the first thing to announce to the murderer that he has smitten and
destroyed a heart.
88. CYCLE.
Here is Roquairol's letter to Albano:--
"It must once be, and be over; we must see each other as we are, and
then hate each other, if it must be so. I make thy sister unhappy; thou
makest mine unhappy and me too; these things just balance each other.
Thou distortedst thyself out of an angel to me more and more
passionately into a destroying angel. Strangle me, then, but I grapple
thee too.
"Now look upon me, I draw off my mask, I have convulsive movements on
my face, like people who live after drinking sweet poison. I have made
myself drunk with poison, I have swallowed the poison-pill, the great
poison globule, the earth-globe. Out with it freely! I exult no more, I
believe nothing more, I do not even lament right valiantly. My tree is
hollowed out, burnt to a coal by fantastic fire. When, occasionally, in
this state, the intestinal worms of the soul, exasperation, ecstasy,
love, and the like, crawl round again, and gnaw and devour each other,
then do I look down from myself to them; like polypuses, I cut them in
twain and turn them wrong end foremost and stick them into each other.
Then I look again at my own act of looking, and as this goes on _ad
infinitum_, what then comes to one from it all? If others have an
idealism of faith, so have I an idealism of the heart, and every one
who has often gone through with all sensations on the stage, on paper,
and on the earth, is in the same case. What boots it? If thou shouldst
die at this moment, I often say to myself, then, as all radii of life
run together into the minute point of a moment, all would verily be
wiped out, invisible; to me, then, it is as if I had been nothing.
Often I look upon the mountains and floods and the ground about me, and
it seems to me as if they could at any and every moment flutter asunder
and melt away in smoke, and I with them. The future life (as even the
present is hardly to be called a life), and all that hangs thereupon,
belongs to the ecstasies which one winks at; especially it belongs to
the ecstasy of love.
"As thou so readily assumest every difference from thyself to be
enervation, so do I say to thee outright: Only ascend farther, only
knead thyself more thoroughly, only lift thy head higher out of the hot
waves of the feelings, then wilt thou no longer lose thyself in them,
but let them billow on alone. There is a cold, daring spirit in man,
which nothing touches at all,--not even virtue; for it alone chooses
that, and is its creator, not its creature. I once experienced at sea a
storm, in which the whole element furiously and jaggedly and foamingly
lashed itself into commotion, and flung its waters pell-mell through
each other, while overhead the sun looked on in silence;--so be thou!
The heart is the storm; self is the heaven.
"Believest thou that the romancers and tragedians, that is, the men of
genius among them, who have a thousand times aped, and aped their own
apings of everything, divine and human, are other than I? What keeps
them and the world's people still real is the hunger after money and
praise; this eating gastric-juice is the animal glue, the salient
point in the soft floating and fleeting world. The apes are geniuses
among beasts; and the geniuses are--not merely before higher beings,
as Pope says of Newton, but even here below--apes, in aesthetic
imitation, in heartlessness, malignity, malicious pleasure, sensuality,
and--merriment.
"The last and last but one I reserve for myself. Against the
_longueurs_ (lengthy passages) in life's book,--a book which no man
understands,--there is no remedy except some merry passages, of which I
think no more so soon as I have read them. In order only to get over
this cold, hobbly life, I will surely sooner scatter below me rose-cups
than thistles. Joy is of itself worth something, if only that it crowds
out something worse before one lays down his heavy head and sinks into
nothingness.
"Such am I; such was I; then I saw thee, and would be thy _Thou_--but
it serves not, for I cannot go back; thou, however, goest forward, thou
becomest my very self one day,--and then I _would_ have loved thy
sister! May she forgive me for it! Here drink pure wine! I know best
how one fares with the women,--how their love blesses and robs,--how
all love, like other fire, _kindles_ itself with much better wood than
that which _feeds_ it,-and how, universally, the Devil gets all he
brings.
"O, why then can no woman love but just so far as one will have her,
and no further,--absolutely none? Hear me now: everywhere lazy
preachers would fain hold us back from all transitory pleasure by
telling us of the discomfort that comes after. Is not then the
discomfort transitory too? Rabette meant well with me, on the same
ground of desire upon which I meant well with her and myself. But does
any one know, then, what purgatorial hours one wades through with a
strange heart, which is full, without making full, and whose love one
at last hates,--_before_ which, but not _with_ which, one weeps, and
never about the same thing, and to which one dreads to unveil any
emotion, for fear of seeing it transmuted into nourishment of
love,--from whose anger one imbibes the greater wrath, and from its
love the lesser! And now to have absolutely the more joyous relations
screwed down forever to this state of torment, when they ought rather
to exalt us above the tormenting ones, the long wished for gods'-bliss
of life perverted forever into a flat show and copper-plate
engraving,--the heart into a breast and mask,--the marrow of existence
into sharp bones,--and yet, as to all reproaches of coldness, chained
only to silence, bound innocent and dumb to the rack,--and that, too,
without end!
"No, sooner give me the frenzy which one draws from the temple of love
as well as from that of the Eumenides! Better burn up in a real flame
of misery, without hope, without utterance, even to paleness and
madness, than be so loving and not loved! He who has once burned in
this hell, Albano, continues to frequent it forevermore: that is the
last misery. Can I not worry down life and death, and wounds and stings
beforehand?--and certainly I am not weak. Nevertheless, I am not the
man to put restraints upon a sentimental discourse, or harpsichord
fantasy, or reading or singing, not though sorrow in person should hold
before me a menace, undersigned by all the gods, that a female listener
whom I cannot endure would immediately thereupon become my lover, and
from that my mistress and my hell.
"The Greeks gave Love and Death the same form, beauty, and torch; for
me it is a murderous torch; but I love Death, and therefore Cupid. Long
has life been to me a tragic muse; willingly to the dagger of a muse do
I offer my breast; a wound is almost half a heart.
"Hear further! Rabette has a fine nature, and follows it; but mine is
for her a cloud of empty, transitory form and structure; she does not
understand me. Could she, then would she be the first to forgive me. O,
I have indeed treated her hardly, as if I were a destiny, and she I.
Resent, but hear![31] On the night of the Illumination her longing and
my emptiness brought us in the fiery rain of joy more warmly together;
among the shiningly mailed and smoothly polished court-faces her
ingenuous one bloomed lovely and living as a fresh child on the stage
or at court; we happened into Tartarus,--we sat down in the place where
thou didst swear to me thy resignation of Linda; in my senses wine
glowed, in hers the heart. O, why is it that, when one speaks and
streams, she has no other words than kisses, and makes one sensual from
ennui, and forces one to speak her speech? My mad boldness, which fancy
and intoxication breathe into me, and which I see coming on and yet
await, seized me and drove me like a night-walker. But always is there
in me something clear-seeing, which itself weaves the drag-net of
delusion, throws it over me, and carries me away entangled in its
meshes. So behold me on that night with the burning net-work about my
head; the rivulet of death murmurs to me, the skeleton sweeps across
the harp-strings,--but, enveloped, imprisoned, darkened, dazzled with
the fiery hurdle-work of pleasure, I heed neither annihilation nor
heaven, nor thyself and _that_ evening, but I drag all together and
into the hurdle,--and so sank thy sister's innocence into the grave,
and I stood upright on the royal coffin, and went down with it.
"I lost nothing,--in me there is no innocence; I gained nothing,--I
hate sensual pleasure. The black shadow, which some call remorse, swept
broadly along after the vanished motley-colored pleasure-images of the
magic-lantern; but is the black less optical than the motley?
"Condemn not thy poor sister; she is now more miserable than I, for she
was happier; but her soul remains innocent. Her innocence lay treasured
up in her heart as a kernel in the stony peach; the kernel itself burst
its mail-coat in the warm, nourishing earth, and forced a way for its
green leaves to the light.
"I visited her afterward. All her soul's pangs passed over into me; for
all actions and sacrifices on her account, I felt myself ready; but for
no feelings. Do what you will, thou and my father, I will positively,
in this stupid stubble-field of life, where one reaps so little in
freedom, not banish myself into the narrow thirty-years' hedge of
marriage. By Heaven! for the miserable, forced intoxication of the
senses, and under it, I have already endured more than it is worth.
"Not that which I yesterday read in thy presence gives me this
resolution,--as to that, ask Rabette about it,--and my frankness toward
thee is a voluntary offering, since the mystery between two might, but
for me, have remained a mystery still: but I will not be misapprehended
by thee,--by thee, the very one who, with so little reflection upon thy
inner being, so easily makest unfavorable comparisons, and dost not
perceive that thou didst sacrifice my sister in Lilar precisely so,
only with more spiritual arms, and didst cast her eyes and joys into
Orcus. I blame thee not; fate makes man a sub-fate to woman. The
passions are poetic liberties, which the moral liberty takes to itself.
Thou didst not, I assure thee, have too good an opinion of me; I am all
for which thou tookest me, only, however, still _more too_; and the
_more too_ is still wanting to thyself.
"O, how much swifter my life flies since I know that _she_[32] is
coming! Fate, which so oft plays weight and wheels, and swings the
pendulum of life with its own hand, heaves off mine, and all wheels
roll unrestrainedly to meet the blissful hour. _She_ is my first love;
before _her_ I tore up all my blooming years, and flung them to her on
her path as flowers; for _her_ I sacrifice, I dare, I do all, when she
comes. O, whoso fears nothing in the empty froth-and-sham-love, what
should he dread or decline in the real, living sun-love? Thou angel,
thou destroying angel, thou camest flying down into my stale, flat
life, thou fleest and appearest, now here, now there, on all my paths
and pastures: O tarry only long enough for me to dig my grave at thy
feet, while thou lookest down upon me!
"Albano, I behold the future and anticipate it; I see full clearly the
long net stretched over the whole stream which is to catch, entangle,
and strangle thee; thy father and others, too, are drawing you both
toward one another therein, God knows for what. It is for that _she_
comes now, and thy tour is only show. My poor sister is soon conquered,
that is, murdered; particularly, as one needs for the purpose, with her
belief in spirits, no other voice than that incorporeal one, which over
the old Prince's heart pointed out to thine its limits!
"What lights burn in the future, between dark situations and bushes, in
murderous corners! Be it as it may, I march forward into the caverns; I
thank God, that this impotent _cold-sweating_ life gains again a
pulsation of the heart, a passion; and then or now do to me, who
_could_ act safely and secretly and dishonestly, what thou choosest.
Fight with me to-day or to-morrow. It shall rejoice me, if thou layest
me on my back in the last, long sleep. O the opium of life makes one in
the beginning lively, then drowsy, how drowsy! Willingly will I love no
more, if I can die. And so without a word further, hate or love me, but
farewell!
"Thy Friend, Or Thy Foe."
89. CYCLE.
"My foe!" cried Albano. The second hot pain darted from Heaven into his
life, and the lightning-flash blazed up fiercely again. As a heartless
carcass of the former friendship, Roquairol had been thrown at his
feet; and he felt the first hatred. That poison-mixing of sensual and
spiritual debauchery, that fermenting-vat of the dregs of the senses
and the scum and froth of the heart,--that conspiracy of lust and
bloodthirstiness, and against the same guiltless heart,--that spiritual
suicide of the affections, which left behind only an airy, roaming
spectre, ever changing its forms of incarnation, upon which there no
longer remains any dependence, and which a brave man already begins to
hate for the very reason that he cannot lay hold of this yielding
poison-cloud and give it battle,--all this seemed to the Count, who,
without the transitions and mezzotintos of habit and fancy, had
been ushered over out of the former light of friendship into this
evening-twilight, still blacker than it was. Beside the superficial
wound which his family pride received in the maltreatment of his
sister, came the deep, poisonous one that Roquairol should compare him
with himself, and Liana's ruin with Rabette's. "Villain!" said he,
gnashing his teeth; even the least shadow of resemblance seemed to him
a calumny.
Most assuredly Roquairol had miscalculated upon him, and set out his
poetic self-condemnation too much on the reckoned strength of a poetic
sentence from the judge. As in an uproar one unconsciously speaks
louder, so he, when fancy with her cataracts thundered around him, did
not justly know what he cried and how strongly. As he often, to be
sure, found less that was black in himself than he depicted, so he
presumed that another must find even still less than he himself. He
had, too, in his poetic and sinful intoxication, made for himself at
last the moral dial-plate itself movable, so that it went with the
index; in this confusion it was never indicated to him where innocence
was.
Had he foreseen that his epistolary confessions would bound and rebound
in more hostile corners than his oral ones did aforetime, he would have
prepared them otherwise.
For agitation Albano could not directly write the short
parting-letter--not a challenge--to the abandoned one, but delayed, in
the certainty that the Captain would not come himself,--when all at
once he came. For procrastination he could not bear; bodily and
spiritual wounds he received as theatrical ones; too much accustomed to
win men, he too easily brought himself to lose men. A terrible
apparition for Albano; it was but the long coffin of his murdered
favorite set upright!--that now over that powerfully-angular face, once
the stronghold of their souls, furrows of weeds should wind, that this
mouth, which friendship had so often laid upon his, should have become
a plague-cancer, a concealing rose to the tongue-scorpion for the good
Rabette when she approached so trustingly,--to see and think of _that_
was clear anguish.
Hardly audible were greeting and thanks; silently they walked up and
down, not beside but against each other. Albano sought to get the
mastery over his wrath, so as to say nothing but the words: "Begone
from me, and let me forget thee!" He meant to spare Liana in her
brother, who had reproached him with being sacrificial-knife to her;
unjust suspicions keep us better in the time immediately following,
because we are not willing to let them grow into just ones. "I am
candid, thou seest," Roquairol began, with moderation, because his
ebullitions had been half distilled and dropped away from the point
of his pen; "be thou so, too, and answer the letter." "I was thy
friend,--now, no more," said Albano, choking. "I have not surely done
anything to _thee_," was the reply.
"Heavens! Let me not say much," said Albano. "My miserable sister,--my
innocence of the coming of the Countess,-my wretched, abandoned sister!
O God! drive me not to frenzy,--I respect thee no more, and so go!"
"Then fight!" said the Captain, half drunk with emotion and half with
wine. "No," said Albano, drawing in a long breath, as if for a sigh of
indignation; "to thee nothing is sacred, not so much as a life!" This
pupil of death so easily threw after his own life-days and joys and
plans all those of another into the tomb with them; that was what
Albano meant, and thought of the sick Liana, so easily dying of others'
wounds; love (_instead of friendship_) had passed along like a soothing
woman before his provoked soul; but the foe misunderstood him.
"Thou must," said the Captain, wildly mocking; "thine shall be precious
to me!"
"Heaven and Hell! I meant a better one," said he; "slanderer, toward
thy sister I have _not_ acted as thou hast against mine,--I have not
wished to make her miserable, _I am not as thou!_--and I shall not
fight; I spare _her_, not thee." But the hell-flood of wrath, which he
through Liana had wished to turn off into a flat land, and make more
shallow, swelled up thereby as if under an enchanter's hand, because
Roquairol's lie about her being sacrificed came so near home in that
connection.
"Thou art afraid," said the exasperated Roquairol, and still took down
two swords from the wall. "I respect thee not, and will not fight,"
said Albano, only stimulating him and himself the more, while he meant
to control himself.
Just then Schoppe stepped in. "He is afraid," repeated Roquairol,
weapon in hand. Albano, reddening, gave, in three burning words, the
history. "You must fight a little before me!" cried the Librarian, full
of his old hatred for Roquairol's dazzling and juggling heart. Albano,
thirsting for cold steel, grasped at it involuntarily. The fight began.
Albano did not attack, but parried more and more furiously; and as,
while so doing, he beheld the angry ape of his former friend with the
dagger in his hand, which had been ploughed up out of the blooming
garden-beds of the loveliest days, and upon which he had trodden with
his wounds: and as the Captain with increasing storminess flashed away
at him like lightning, unavailingly: then did he see on the grim face
that dark hell-shadow standing again, which had stood and played
thereon, when he had strangled Rabette struggling in his grasp;--the
drawbridge of countenances, whereupon once the two souls met, stood,
suddenly raised high in the air. More fiery grew Albano's glance; more
drunk with indignation, he set upon the were-wolf of devoured
friendship;--suddenly he severed his weapon from him like a claw: when
Schoppe, indignant at the unequal forbearing and fighting, would fain
invoke vengeance with Rabette's name, and cried, "The sister, Albano!"
But Albano understood by that Charles's sister, and hurled one sword
after the other, and fiery drops stood in his eye, and hideously
distorted the face of the foe before him. "Albano!" said Roquairol, his
wrath exhausted, relying on the tear-built rainbow of peace,--"Albano?"
he asked, and gave him his hand. "Farewell; live happily, but go; I am
still innocent,--go!" replied Albano, who felt bitterly the tempest of
the first wrath overhead, which having settled down, between his
mountains, continued to beat upon him. "In the Devil's name, go! I too
shall be roused at last," said Schoppe, interfering. "In such a name
one goes willingly!" said the Captain, whose tongue-muscles always
stiffened in Schoppe's presence, and silently departed; but Albano had
for some time ceased to look upon him, because he could never endure
another's humiliation, but, like every strong soul, felt himself bowed
down at the same time with any abasement of humanity, just as great
thrones tolerate no distinguishing marks of servility in their
neighborhood.[33]
Schoppe began now to remind him of his own earliest predictions about
Roquairol, and to name himself the Great Prophet-Quartette,--to
denounce the fellow's incurable scurvy of mouth and heart,--to compare
his theatrical firmness with the Roman marble and porphyry, which has
on the outside a stone rind, but inwardly only wood,[34]--to remark how
his internal possession might be said to be, like that of the German
Order, only a _tongue_,--and in general to declare himself so
vehemently against self-decomposition through fancy, against all
poetical contempt of the world, that any other but Albano might well
have taken his zeal for a defence of himself against the slight feeling
of a similarity.
Schoppe had strong hopes Albano would listen to him believingly, and
would grow angry, laugh and answer; but he became more grave and
silent;--he looked at the honest Librarian--and fell passionately and
silently on his neck--and speedily dried his heavy eye. O, it is the
gloomy day of mourning, the burial-day of friendship, when the outcast,
orphan heart goes home alone, and it sees the death-owl fly screaming
from the death-bed of old feeling over the whole creation.
Albano had, in the beginning, inclined to go this very day to
Blumenbühl and lead his forsaken sister to the mausoleum of truth; but
now his heart was not strong enough to sustain his own words to his
sister or her immeasurable and inconsolable tears.
TWENTY-FIRST JUBILEE.
The Trial-lesson of Love.--Froulay's Fear of Fortune.--The
Biter Bit.--Honors of the Observatory.
90. CYCLE.
Since the extinction of the engagement, and since Gaspard's letters,
Albano's eye had been directed toward the fairest ruins of
time,--unless one excepts the earth itself,--to Italy; and his injured
vision held fast to this new portal of his life, which was to usher him
into the presence of the fairest and greatest which nature and man can
create. How did the fire-mountains, and Rome's ruins, and her warm,
golden-blue heavens, already unfold to him their splendor, when in
fancy he led the suffering Liana before them, and her holy eyes
refreshed themselves with measuring the heights! A man who travels with
his beloved to Italy has in the very fact that he might do without one
of the two, both double. And Albano hoped for this felicity, since all
testimonies which he met with of Liana's restoration to health promised
as much. As to Dr. Sphex,--the only one who opened a pit for her, and
in it cast a death-bell, and swore to everybody, she would fall with
the leaves of autumn,--him he saw no more. He wished, however,--he said
to himself,--in this whole joint-tour, only her happiness, not at all
her love. So did he see himself always in his self-mirror, namely, only
veiled; so did he regard himself often as too stern, although he was so
little of that; so did he take himself to be conqueror of his own
heart, when his fair countenance already wore pale, sickly hues.
The present stood as yet dark above him, but its neighboring times, the
future and the past, lay full of light. What a journey, in which a
beloved, a father, a friend, a female friend, are of themselves, on the
very road, the curiosities which others find only when they reach the
end!
The Princess was the female friend. Since Gaspard's letters to her and
to him, since the hope of a longer and nearer enjoyment of his society,
she found more and more pleasure in subduing all clouds round about
her, so as to smile and shine upon her friend only out of a blue
heaven. She alone at court seemed to take mildly and rightly the blunt
youth, whose proud frankness so often ran against the disguised pride
of the Count, and particularly against the open pride of the Prince;
she alone seemed--as nothing is seldomer guessed in and by _circles_
than fair sensibility, especially by courtly ones and especially manly
sensibility--softly to spy out his, and to increase its warmth by her
sympathy. She alone honored him with that strict, significant attention
which mankind so seldom give, as well as can so seldom appreciate,
because they never have occasion but for love and passion, in order
to--render justice, incapable, otherwise than by comet-light, by
warm-flames and fires of joy, to read the best hand. All that he was,
she simply presupposed in him; his pre-eminent qualities were only her
demands and his passports; she made his individuality neither her model
nor her reflection; both were painters, no pictures. He heard often,
indeed, that she had a masculine severity, especially in her
dictatorial capacity, but not, however, that she was womanishly
inhuman. To the customary vermin of courtlings, which gives itself
elevation on its worm-rings only by crawling, she was repulsive and
torturing; although, as a new-comer, she should, it would seem, have
been a new-born child, that brings with it raisins to the older
children. On Sunday, when at courts, as on the stage in Berlin,
spiritual popular pieces are always brought out, she was (among the
Sunday-born-children, who see more spirits than they have) a Monday's
child, which wishes to find for itself one, who, whether he has
ever been dubbed noble or not, at all events knows how to distinguish
an original from the copy, as well in his own self as in a
picture-gallery. On that account many lords, and still more ladies,
thanked God, if they had occasion to say nothing more to her than "God
bless you!"
In this way she appeared to the Count every day more worthy of his
father. As into a warm spring sunshine did he enter for the first time
into the flattering magic circle of female friendship, which even here
cast and moulded two wings for love out of the wax-cells of the enjoyed
honey; it was, however, with him love for Liana, to whom the friend
could most easily give wings for Italy. He felt that soon an hour of
overflowing esteem would strike, when he could confidingly open the
high-walled cloister-garden of his former love. For she made room for
him to be near her as often as the narrow compass of a throne and the
all-betraying height of its location would admit. But something
disturbed, watched, beset both,--a rival neighbor, as it seemed. It was
the singular Julienne, who always, when things were getting on, stepped
out of her box on to the stage of the Princess, and confounded the
play. Frequently she came after him; sometimes he had gotten
invitations from her just the moment before others from the Princess
followed, which hers, therefore, as it seemed, must have anticipated.
What did she mean? Would she possibly win from a youth whom she had so
often provoked by her contempt of men, and by the lightning-like
dartings of her indignation, his love, merely, perhaps, because he had
always so warmly reciprocated her friendly glances, as those of so dear
a--friend of his beloved? Or did she want of him only hatred for the
honored Princess, and that indeed out of envy and the usual resemblance
of women to ivory, whose _white_ hue so readily becomes _yellow_, and
which only by a thorough warming gets the fair color again?
These questions were rather repeated than answered by an evening which
he and Julienne spent at the Princess's. A good reading was to give the
picture-exhibition of Goethe's Tasso. Fine art, and nothing but art,
was with the Princess the art of Passau[35] against court- and
life-wounds; and, in general, the world-system was to her only a
complete picture-gallery and Pembroke cabinet and gallery of antiques.
The reading parts were so distributed by the manager, the Princess,
that she herself got the Princess, Julienne the _confidente_ Leonore,
Albano the Poet Tasso, a youthful-cheeked Chamberlain the Duke, and
Froulay Alphonso. This latter, who had learned to prefer works of
artifice to works of art, and the princely cabinet to any cabinet of
art, in spite of his heart stood ready there for a journey to the
mountain of the muses, arrayed for that purpose by the Princess in a
mountain-habit. Thus forced more and more every day into the poetical
fashion, he looked, of course, like any other abortion, which has
come into the world with pantaloons, queue, and the like all born on
him, on purpose to condemn the modish way of the world, just like a
street-sweeper in Cassel.
Albano read with outward and inward glow, not toward the reading
Princess, but toward the Princess she personated, from a habit of his
heart which life always set a-glow; and the Princess read the _rôle_ of
her _rôle_ very well, of course. Her artistic feeling told her, even
without the prompting of tender sensibility, that in Goethe's
Tasso,--which, for the most part, is related to the Italian Tasso, as
the heavenly Jerusalem to the Jerusalem delivered,--the Princess is
almost Princess of Princesses. Never did the god of the muses and of
the sun pass more beautifully through the constellation Virgo than
here. Never was veiled love more radiantly unveiled.
The Minister read off the powerful proser Alphonso, as he scolds at
Tasso and Albano, as well as a trumpeter of cavalry reads the notes
which are affixed to his sleeve; in fact, he found the man quite
sensible.
The younger[36] Princess might, in the general poetic concert, have
done her share of the talking some quarter of an hour, more or less,
when she suddenly threw down, in a lively manner, the beautiful volume
of Goethe's works, of which there were three copies there, and said,
with her impetuosity, "A stupid part! I cannot abide it!" All the world
was silent. The senior[37] Princess looked at her significantly; the
junior Princess looked at _her_ still more significantly, and went out,
without coming back again. A court dame took up the reading, and went
calmly on.
To most of those present this interlude was properly the most
interesting; and they willingly continued to think of it during the
reading of the latter part. The Princess, who had long believed the
Princess loved the Count, was delighted with the inconsiderateness of
her adversary. Albano, although her warm eye had struck him of old,
explained to himself the absconding on the ground of chagrin at the
subordinateness of her part in the reading, and the general
incompatibility of the two women; for while Julienne, at her own
expense, slighted the Princess, and took little pains to conceal her
opinion, so also did that of the Princess appear involuntarily. So soon
as one party manifests its hatred, the second can hardly conceal its
from the third.
When Albano came home, he found the following leaf on his table:--
"The P---- decoys thee; she loves thee. With _éclat_ she will send in
the next place the M---- back, in order to give bold relief to her
virtue, and produce an imposing effect upon thee. Shun her! I love
thee, but differently and eternally.
"_Nous nous verrons un jour, mon frère_."
Who wrote it? Not even as to the admission-ticket of this cartel could
the servant make any deposition. Who wrote it? Julienne; to this point,
at least, all roads of probability converged; only in that case
mysteries lay round about him. Significant was the French subscription,
which stood in like manner exactly under the picture of his sister,
which his father had given him on Isola Bella;[38] but that might
be a coincidence. He investigated now these new silver-veins of his
Diana-[39] and family-tree by the touchstone of his whole history. His
mother and Julienne's had gone to Italy with his father in one and the
same year; both had been uncommon women and mutual friends, and his
father the friend of both. There was the possibility of a false step on
the part of his father, which had been concealed. Quite as easily might
the traces of this error have been shown to Julienne. Then, further,
the hypothesis of her sisterly love would throw light on her whole
previous winding course; her affectionate interest in Albano; her
love-race with the Princess; her correspondence with his father; her
enlisting of the Count's affection for Romeiro, which, as it seemed,
heated her quite as much against the Princess as it chilled her toward
Liana; above all, the singularity of her love for him, which never
unfolded itself further and more openly;--all this gave ground to
suspect that it might be only a sister's kindred blood which blazed so
often on her round cheeks, when she had unconsciously gazed at him too
long. After this step he made forthwith the leap; he now suspected,
also, that she alone had sought to dazzle and delude him into the love
of her Linda with the magic mirror of spiritual existences.
As respects the relation of the Princess to the Minister, every word
upon that subject was to him a lie. He was quite as reluctant to let
himself part with a good opinion of others as a bad one. Ordinary men
readily give the good opinion away and hold the bad one fast; weaker
ones are easily reconciled, and hardly parted. He was unlike either.
Hitherto he had so easily ascribed in his own mind the Princess's
friendship for the Minister, her visitation journeys with him through
the land, and the like, to her manly prudence and foresight, which
would fain at once keep watch over the future hereditary land of her
brother and hold the key to it; and to this probability, as the
Minister accommodated himself equally well to the related parts of a
cicerone and an overseer, he still adhered.
The following week brought along a circumstance, which seemed to throw
a greater light into the dark billet.
91. CYCLE.
The promised circumstance has its root again in older circumstances
which occurred between the Princess and the Minister; these I here
premise.
The Minister had been very soon furnished by his friend Bouverot--whose
clammy woodpecker's tongue licked off unseen the vermin of all
mysteries out of all musty cracks in the throne--with a description of
all that the Princess concealed in herself in the shape of Phoenix
ashes and rubbish: he had instructed him that she, cold as a piece of
ice ground into a convex lens, never would melt herself, but only
others; that she was one of those more rare coquettes who, like sweet
wines, become sour through warmth, and only sweeter by cold; and that
she therefore had about her one of the worst habits,--which made the
most grievous jobs for every one. It was, namely, the following: She
had a heart, and would never suffer it to lie in her bosom as dead
capital; but it must pay interest, and circulate. So the lover became,
in the beginning, more wide awake and gay from day to day, then from
hour to hour; he knew all by-ways through wood and hollow, all thieves'
paths and shorter cuts in this love-garden regularly by heart, and
would foretell the critical[40] quarter of an hour on his repeating
watch when he should arrive at the summer-house. It was not by any
means unknown to him (but comical) what it signified, that the said
lover would pass with her from sentences to glances, from these to
kissing of the hand, then to kissing of the mouth, whereupon he would
find himself caught, entrapped, and imprisoned in the Whistonian
comet's-train of her ell-long (or mile-long) hair as in a bird-net (in
which, however, the noose was also the berry-bait), and bent up in his
prison to such a degree as to know what o'clock it had struck on his
repeater. But just then, when all clouds seemed fallen from heaven, he
himself would fall out of both into a basket from her;--that was the
bad point. In fact, German princes of the oldest houses, who had made
all other experiments, saw themselves made immoral, ay, ridiculous, and
knew not at all what to think about it; for the Princess openly
wondered at such monsters, gave all the world a copy of her challenge,
showed all the world the redness and the loftiness of her
turkey-hen's-neck, and suffered such an old tempter of a Prince, or
whoever it was, never more in her haughty presence.
As princes (in such cases) know what they want, so of course they
spread it about that she knew not what _she_ would have; and often not
till long after an hereditary prince came the apanaged brother of the
same court, and later the legitimated one. However, the thing remained
the same; namely, she remained like the spherical concave mirror, which
indeed images behind itself what stands close before it, as large and
upright, but so soon as it comes into its focus, makes it invisible, and
then out beyond that point hangs it quite diminished and topsy-turvy
in the air. Her love was a fever of debility, in which Darwin, Weikard,
and other Brownists, by _stimulating_ means--wine, for instance--produce
a _slower_ pulse, and even promise therefrom a cure. So far Bouverot to
the Minister!
But to the Minister came thereby an inexpressible favor. For princes'
sins jumped not at all with his professional studies and trade. When,
therefore, she had decided upon having his understanding and powerful
physiognomy near her, and had named him Minister of her most intimate
relations in Haarhaar, then was it solemnly laid down and sworn to
within him, never, though she were kindness itself, to be the robber of
her honor to her straw-widower. In the beginning, like all his
predecessors, he got on easily with mere pure feelings and discourses;
as yet there was nothing desired of him, except that he should
sometimes unexpectedly dart at her a sly look full of loving
tenderness; and he must also have a longing. He darted the look; he
also got up longings; and so he felt himself comfortably enough insured
for such a successful love affair.
But it stopped not here. Hardly had her Albano appeared, when the
thorn-girdle and hair-shirt of the pure Minister was made
disproportionately more rough and thorny, and the strongest
requirements, namely, gifts, redoubled, in order that the poor Joseph
might the more speedily assail her honor and therefore run into his
ruin, which should be bait for the Count. By this time he had
been already brought along so far that he wove and knotted in her
flying hair (to him poisonous snake-hair),--he must needs blow out
soap-bubbles of sighs from his pipe,--he must needs quite often be
beside himself; yes, he must even (if he would not see himself chased
away as a hypocritical rascal) be half-sensual, although still decent
enough. Meanwhile he was not to be tempted into a temptation by the
Devil himself. Whenever he even thought of the subject, shuddering, how
the least misstep might hurl him from his ministerial post, then he
would as soon have let himself be impaled and quartered as bewitched.
For a third party, not for these two,--they were the sufferers,--it
would perhaps have been a feast, to have seen how they (if I may use a
too low comparison) resembled a pair of silk stockings drawn over each
other, which for and by each other, when one keeps them distended[41]
at a certain distance, ethereally blow themselves and fill, but
immediately collapse, flat and flabby, when they touch each other.
Of course, in the long run, it fell heavily upon the old statesman to
have to leap along before the dancing pageantry of love-gods as their
arch-master, tackled into the triumphal car of the Cyprian,--a
flower-garland on his state-peruke, in his eyes two Vauclusa fountains,
the cavity of his breast a choked-up Dido's cave, wearing in his
button-hole an arrow in a heart, or a heart on an arrow, and faring
toward the capitol, in order there, after the Roman fashion, not so
much to sacrifice as to be sacrificed. Nothing except the tin boxes
which the government officers and exchequer messengers stowed away for
him at home could fan fresh and cool again the stalemated man, who
would fain be a checkmated one.
He read with her Catullus, she with him the better pictures out of the
Prince's cabinet; it was allowed him to reward her by his Latinity for
her artistic favors: but he remained, nevertheless, as he was.
When women wish to carry a point, and find hindrances constantly
recurring, they grow at last blind and wild, and dare anything
and everything. The tour to Italy approached so fast; still the
Minister was no nearer to letting go his high consideration for his
beloved,--although from just her own motive, that of the tour, with the
nearness of which he animated himself to a cheerful endurance of so
short a flame. Her passion for the Count increased with the Count's
tranquillity, because coldness strengthens strong love, just as
physical coldness makes strong people more vigorous and weak ones more
puny. Froulay, as an old man, was, as it seemed, capable of creeping
along so for a whole age to his object, without making one unnecessary
leap, since old people, like ships, always move slower the longer they
have been going, and on similar grounds, namely, that both, by the
adhesion of filth, weeds, barnacles, and the like, have become
unwieldy. In short, the Princess at last ceased to ask for anything,
but matters went thus:--
The Prince had gone a journey, the Princess had been invited as
god-mother out into the country. The castellain on one of her country
castles, who had already the year before invited the Minister, had not
been restrained by bashfulness from making his way still farther up on
this rope-ladder, with his descendant under his arm, and up there on
the throne laying his child of the land in the arms of her, the
Princess herself. Princes love to let themselves down--on thin
silk-worm threads--(as well as up); they value the good-natured, stupid
people, and would fain in this way raise somewhat the poor creeping
dwarf-beans,--for they well know how little it matters,--and, so to
speak, pole them and boot them by means of the leg of the princely
chair. Beside this, the Minister had been invited as grand-god-father
(so called). The autumn day was only a brighter, more perfect spring,
and the autumnal night stood under a brilliant full moon. Courts always
long so exceedingly to be away in the country, among the idyls of
murmuring rivulets, sighing branches, and tree-tops, and bleating
Swisseries, and farmers; Courts--that is, courtiers, court-dames and
official chamberlains'-staves, and others--yearn so for the society of
human beings; as beasts are driven by the December hunger, so does a
noble hunger drive them down from the throne-mountains into the flat
plains; not that they would fly from _ennui_, but they desire only a
different kind, as their very pastime consists in the abbreviation and
alternation of their _ennui_.
Hardly had the Court appeased its first longing for the people with
whom it stood for half a quarter of an hour on a confidential,
conversational footing, when it came to itself again, and dispersed
itself through the princely garden, in order to consume full as long a
time in satisfying its longing after nature. A sponsoress of the
sponsoress promised Christianity in the stead of Princess and child.
The Princess herself attached the Minister to her as a chamberlain. The
grand-god-father looked out into the prospect of a d--d long evening,
in which he should be obliged to parade round her procession-banner.
For the enjoyment of the evening there was a concert, and for the
enjoyment of the concert card playing had been arranged; and for the
enjoyment of the latter, the Princess had seated herself alone with
Froulay, in order, during the general playing of cards and instruments,
to have some inaudible conversation with him. Suddenly the two pounds
which were hung up in his breast--for no heart, according to the
anatomists, weighs more than that--became two hundred-weight heavier,
when she asked him whether he was steadfast and could confide in her
and dare for her. He swore that, if only as Princess, she might expect
of his two-pounder any and every sacrifice and mark of veneration. She
went on: she had some weighty things to intrust him with to-day about
herself and the Prince; she wished, when the _Foule_ was gone, to speak
with him alone; he need only go up the little stairway from the side of
the garden to the door of the library-chamber; this was open; in the
poetical bookcase on the left side was a spring in the wall, the
pressure of which would open to him the tapestry door of the apartment,
where he was to await her.
Immediately she rose, presuming upon an affirmative. How it fared now
with the two pounds of his sixty-four-ounce-heart can gratify none but
his deadly enemy to realize. So much lay written before him with long,
thick, stony letters, as on an epitaphium, namely, that after a few
hours, when the other lords, in other respects still greater sinners
than he, could snore away quietly in the pleasant ministerial houses
which formed the court of the Palace, that then for him, innocent
knave, the wolf-hour, that is to say, the shepherd's hour,[42] would so
soon strike, when he on the most flowery meadow must kneel beneath the
butcher's knife. But he--angry that his faith in female and princely
impudence should prove a soothsayer--made silently all kinds of oaths
to himself, that, even if as much were imposed upon him as on the
greatest saints and universal philosophers, he would nevertheless
behave like both, for instance, like old Zeno and Franz.
The Princess sought him all the evening less than usual. At last he
took his respectful leave of the whole court, but with the prospect
of creeping, not, like them, under silk quilts, but under cold
bowers. He even marched--sure of himself--up the stairway, opened the
library-chamber, found the spring, touched it, and stepped through the
tapestry door into the princely--bedchamber. "It is certain, then,"
said he, and cursed about him inwardly to his heart's content, lying
prostrate and crushed quite flat beneath the love-letter weight. In the
side chamber on the left hand he already heard her and a chambermaid,
who was undressing her. On the right the door of a second but lighted
chamber stood ajar. He stood long in doubt whether he should step into
that, or stay where he was under the light-screen of a dark corner. At
last he laid hold of the protection of night. During his suspense and
her disrobing, he had time to rehearse or read over his part; now he
came to an agreement with himself, in case of necessity,--and if he
should find himself pushed too hard--and all the more, as the place
would speak more against _her_ than against _him_, inasmuch as every
one must needs ask, whether he could otherwise have possibly gained
admission,--in such a case of necessity, where only the choice between
a satire and a satyr was left him, he determined to transform himself
on the spot into a respectful--Faun.
Directly the Princess strode in, but in the direction of the
illuminated chamber. "I have no further occasion for thee," she called
back to the chambermaid. "_Diable!_" screamed she, in the bedchamber,
spying out the tall Minister; "who stands there? Hanna, a light!
_Ciel!_" she continued, recognizing him, but continuing to speak
French, because Hanna understood nothing of that. "_Mais, Monsieur! Me
voila donc compromise! Quelle méprise! Vous vous etes trompé de
chambres! Pardonnéz, Monsieur, que je sauve les déhors de mon sexe et
de mon rang. Comment avez-vous-pu_--" She uttered all this, perhaps,
by way of blinding the German witness, with an angry accent. The
grand-godfather--who, after all previous gratifications, felt like a
cock, who has gulped down many live chafers, and is now threatened with
his life by their sticking in his distressed crop--kept not silence,
but replied in German, opening the tapestry door, meanwhile, that he
had, even as she commanded, laid the books out of the library in the
lighted chamber, and had been caught _in transitu_. He went immediately
through the tapestry; but she could hardly contain herself for terror,
had the physician called in the morning, and sent back her retinue.
Froulay--however much like the Spanish he found his romances, among
which, according to Fisher's assertion, the thieves' literature is the
best--at last did not know, himself, what to make of it.
The chambermaid had to make profession with the vow of silence, which
she kept as strictly as she could, but not more so. Next morning very
few alighted before their own doors, most before the doors of others,
in order to land the news together with the injunction of the Princess
not to make the thing _éclatant_, because in that case the Prince would
hear of it.
If ever the nobility of Pestitz was happy _en masse_, it was this very
morning. Nothing was wanting to universal joy but a chambermaid who
should have only understood as much French as a hunting-dog.
92. CYCLE.
Albano heard the report; the Minister had long appeared to him
contaminating, like a cold corpse of a soul; now he hated him still
more as a tormenting, blood-sucking dead man. For the Princess his
heart had hitherto stood security to him. She was to him a blue
day-sky, wherein to others only a hot sun blazes, wherein he, however,
through the mysterious depths of the soul and of friendship, had found
soft constellations beaming. But now since the rumor, which, like the
magicians in the presence of Moses, threw soot into her heaven, she
stood, to his eyes, shining under new lights. The hatred which he by
his very nature, i. e. from pride, had of all rumor, because it
controls and is not to be controlled, worked in him with fresh fire; he
resolved, even because Liana must be the daughter either of her
hereditary foe or of her lover, and the Princess _her_ rival, to
venture freely on the strength of his heart and what it knew, and at
this very juncture to communicate openly to the Princess his prayer for
her mediation in favor of Liana's company upon the journey,--in other
words, of his heaven.
On the morning after, the Prince came back,--the Princess immediately
had her carriage tackled,--toward evening she came with one carriage
more into town. The report ran through all card-tables that the Spanish
Countess Romeiro had arrived at the Palace. Reports are polypuses;
wounding and mutilating only multiplies them; only sticking them into
each other makes one out of two: the report of Linda's arrival
swallowed up the report of Froulay's disgraceful attempt.
But Albano! Like the discovery of a new world, this turned his old one
topsy-turvy. Linda, that foreign tropical bird, came flying in advance
of his approaching father, who rose before him like a rich land out of
the distance,--the soil where he had found so many thorns and flowers
soon sank behind him, with all its treasures and days, below the
horizon. Only Liana could not vanish with it; that muse of his youth
must he lead with him into the land of youth. By those usual magic arts
of the heart had Linda's nearness awakened in him an insuperable
longing for Liana.
He was now decided to remind the Princess of her earlier promise to
pour the life-balsam of a southern tour upon Liana's sick nerves, and
through her now, betimes, before the confusion of the last pressing
moments should prostrate anything, to put the Minister's lady in tune,
and gain her over, who, like all court people, would certainly hardly
resist a princely wish and a happy prospect.
If, however, Liana, from any fault of her own or of others, stayed
behind, then was it his sworn determination, for no power, not even his
father's, to stir from the native land of his eternal bride; but to
root himself before her sick-cloister, until she either passed out
therefrom free and cheerful again into open life, or buried herself,
darkly veiled, in the gloomy nun-choir of the dead. O, to come back to
seek her in the romantic grounds of olden time, and to find her nowhere
but behind the speech-grating of the hereditary vault,--this was a
thought his heart could not endure!
The Princess herself furnished him an opportunity of making his
request; she sent him an invitation to an astronomical party at the
observatory, through her faithful court-dame Haltermann: "I have to
write to you, verbally, merely the following," wrote she. "Come this
evening to the observatory; I and my good Haltermann are going
thither." This Haltermann, a Fraülein of few charms of spiritual
flag-feathers, but of many dogmas and premature wrinkles, had already
for years hung indissolubly upon the Princess, keeping everything
secret, and favoring all her "make-your-appearances" (_rendez-vous_) by
merely saying, "My princess is as pure as gold, and only few know her
as I do."
Nothing could happen more propitious to Albano's wishes. He stood
earliest of all on the noble observatory, in the midst of the lovely
night. It was some days after the full moon; that shining world was as
yet hidden behind the earth, but the let-on jets of its rays shot up by
fits and starts. On all mountain-peaks glimmered even now a pale light,
as if the distant morning of super-terrestrial worlds were falling upon
them. Through the valleys the light-shunning, black, earthly beast,
Night, still stretched himself out, and reared himself up against the
mountains. The mountain-castle of Liana was invisible, and showed, like
a fixed star, only a light. Suddenly the autumnal purple upon all
summits around the castle was bedewed with silver by the moon, and a
shower of light came down on the white walls and along the white
avenues of the garden; at last, a strange, pale morning, glimmering
through all bowers, lay in the garden, as it were the tender gleaming
of a high, perfectly pure spirit, who only in the holy, silent night
trod the low earth, and then and there sought nothing but the pure,
still Liana.
As Albano looked and dreamed and longed, the Princess came up, with her
Haltermann. The Professor almost broke himself in two with his salam
before them, and allowed the fixed suns no astrological influence upon
his erect posture. Albano and the Princess met each other again with an
increase of reciprocal warmth. But the first question of the Princess
was, whether he had seen the Spanish countess. Indifferently he said,
he had been invited by the Princesse since her arrival, but had not
gone. "_Ma belle sœur_ admires her most," continued the Princess;
"but she deserves it somewhat. She is majestically built, taller than
I, and fair, especially her head, her eye, and her hair. She is,
however, more plastically than picturesquely beautiful, rather
resembling a Juno or Minerva than a Madonna. But she has her
peculiarities. She cannot endure any women, except such as are simple,
straightforward, and blindly good; hence her chamber-women live and die
for her. Men she holds to be poor creatures, and says she should
despise herself if she should ever become the wife or slave of a man;
but she seeks them for the sake of information. To the Prince she has
unnecessarily, though she was in the right as to the matter of fact,
said bitter things. He laughs at it, and says there is nothing she does
love, not even children and lap-dogs. You must see her. She reads much;
she lives only with the Princesse, and seems, if one may judge by her
dress, to count little upon any conquests, at least at our court."
Albano said, many of these traits were truly grand, and broke short
off. During the conversation the Professor had diligently arranged and
screwed up everything, and was now ready to commence. He remarked upon
the bright, bland, summer-like night,--proceeded, after some
introductory observations, into the moon, in order to lead the six eyes
to the most considerable lunar spots,--foreshadowed, in a preliminary
way, several shadows overhead there,--introduced them to the Crater of
Bernoulli ("I make use of Scröter's nomenclature," said he),--the
highest mountain range Dörfel ("it consists, of course, of three
summits," said he),--the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel ("Hevel, however,
calls it Mount Horeb," said he),--then Mont Blanc, and the
ring-mountains in general; and concluded with the sly assurance, that
the observatory was, to be sure, still very deficient in instruments.
The Haltermann longed indescribably after the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel
in the moon, and endeavored to get at the telescope. "It is only a spot
in the planet, my child!" said the Princess. "And is the Mont Blanc
overhead, then, nothing but a spot, too?" asked she, disappointed. The
Princess nodded, and looked into the telescope; the magic moon hung
like a piece of day-world close to the glass. "How its fair, pale light
and all its magic passes away when it is brought near! as when the
future becomes present!" said she, to the astonishment of the
Professor, who could never make anything out of the planet excepting
precisely when it _was_ near. She interrogated him about Saturn's ring.
"There are properly two, your Highness; but the observatory just at
this time wants an instrument to see it," said he, and aimed again in
the direction of the former shot.
Albano saw his life-gardens sparkling round about him with the warm
glimmer of an after-spring; and his inner being trembled sweetly and
sadly. He took a comet-seeker, and flew round among the stars, towards
Blumenbühl, into the city, up the mountains, only not to the white
castle with the illuminated corner-chamber and the little garden. His
whole heart turned backward for shame and love before the gate of
Paradise.
At this moment, the Haltermann, at a hint to retire, led the way down
with the astronomer, in order to favor the Princess with a moment free
from witnesses. Albano stood before her, noble in the moonlight; his
eye was radiant; his features showed emotion. She grasped his hand, and
said, "We certainly do not misunderstand each other, Count?" He pressed
her hand, and his eyes gushed full. "No, Princess!" said he, softly.
"You give me your friendship. I do not deserve it, if I do not trust it
entirely. I give you now the proof of my open confidence. You know,
perhaps, the history of my fortunes and my loss; you know the
Minister." "Alas, alas!" said she; "even your hard history, noble man,
has become familiar to me."
"No!" replied he, passionately; "I was more cruel than my fate. I
tormented an innocent heart; I made an obedient daughter miserable,
sick, and blind. But I have lost her," he continued, with rising
emotion, and turned sidewise, in order not to see the glimmering
heights of Liana's residence, "and bear it as I can, but without any
secret way to repossession. Only the victim cannot be permitted to
bleed to death over yonder, with her stern, narrow-hearted mother. O,
the honey-drops of the pleasures, they and Italy's heaven, might well
heal _her_. She dies if she stays, and I stay to look on. Friend, O how
great is the favor I ask!"
"Gladly shall it be granted you! Day after to-morrow I visit the mother
and daughter, and certainly will decide the latter for the journey, in
so far as it depends upon me. I do it, however,--to be frank,--merely
out of genuine friendship for you; for the girl does not please me
entirely with her mysticism, and certainly does not love as you do. She
does everything for people merely from love to God; and that I do not
like."
"Ah, so thought I, too, once; but whom should the pious love, except
God?" said he, absorbed in himself and the night, and in too
hyberbolical a style for the taste of the Princess. His glimmering eye
hung fast on the white mountain-palace, and spring-times floated down
from the moon, and glided to and fro on the illuminated track of his
vision; and the beautiful youth wept and pressed ardently the hand of
the Princess, without being conscious of either. She respected his
heart, and disturbed it not.
At last, they both came down the high stairway, where the astronomer
joyfully awaited them, and confessed to both how very much, to speak
freely, their attachment and devotion to astronomy not only gladdened,
but even animated and inspired him.
"Day after to-morrow, certainly!" With these words, the Princess
departed, in order to grant the pensive, full-hearted youth consolation
and dreams.
TWENTY-SECOND JUBILEE.
Schoppe's Heart.--Dangerous Spiritual Acquaintances.
93. CYCLE.
Albano was now again lashed to the Ixion's wheels of the clock. The
setting off of the Princess and her answer were to suddenly set up
lights in the dark, wide cavern in which he had so long travelled,
without knowing whether it harbored frightful formations and venomous
beasts, or whether it was vaulted, and filled with glistening
arches and subterranean pillared halls. Over Liana's condition two
hands--Augusti's and that of the Minister's lady--had hitherto held
fast the veil. Both were persons who never liked to answer the
question, How do you do? However, he now let his whole soul rest upon
the Princess, since the astronomical evening, in remembering which, he
could hardly comprehend how it was that he was able at that time to
speak to a female friend about his love as much and more than ever to a
friend of his own sex. But man does not love to speak of his feelings
before a man, and does love to before a woman. A woman, however, loves
best to do so before a woman. Meanwhile, the Princess held him in bonds
by the finest flattery which can be,--by decided and silent attention.
He was as sick and sated of verbal praise as he was partial and
tributary to that which came in a practical shape.
Pending the arrival of the decision, a confused time elapsed; like a
man who travels in the night, he heard voices and saw lights; and it
needed morning to decide upon their hostile or friendly significance.
Rabette lay sick and bleeding away her faint heart; for not he had
drawn out of it the astringent dagger,--namely, Charles's love,--but
the latter had himself anticipated him with bitter-sweet tears over the
bitterest.
Charles had met him once, with his hat drawn down over his brows, and
grimly-stinging look, without a greeting. Everywhere he heard that
Charles in vain besieged and blockaded Linda's and Julienne's double
gate. This and Liana's illness made the tropical savage like a grownup
wild boy of the woods. Even in the present state of separation,--on the
death-field of _friendship_,--Albano felt it as a wound to _humanity_,
that Charles did not take for granted--for to the contrary presumption
he imputed the street-grimness--that he would not seek to see the
Countess.
Even in the Librarian, for several days, a mystery seemed to have been
lurking. He, however, since it had been growing lighter and lighter to
Alban in Schoppe's depths, and he had looked in behind his comic mask,
even to the honest eye and loving lips, became very near to his heart,
especially after so many partings; for even the Lector, according to
his custom never to court the love of any man, or, at least, faithless
friend, kept himself aloof from him,--a thing which afflicted the very
same youth, who inwardly approved it.
For several days, I say, Schoppe had been transposed into an entirely
new tune, and become his own remainder and after-summer. It began with
his blowing away at a miserable haying song a whole half-day on the
bugle; the remaining half he sang it off vocally. Instead of reading
and writing, he went up and down in the city and in his chamber. All
that which he had formerly despatched with rapidity,--running,
swallowing of victuals, speaking, smoking, starting up,--all this went
now club-footed, and finally stood fast. His slow rousing up, and his
tender, gentle step, might have seemed ludicrous to those who were
acquainted with his former days. His large, noble wolf-dog, whom he had
ten times a day suffered to hug him round the neck with his fore-paws,
and whose breast, drawn up on the skin, he so fondly pressed to his
own, when he held with him a Lange's and consistorial colloquy, he now
neglected to such a degree that the dog became attentive, and did not
know what to think of it. How little could he once endure the yelp of a
cudgelled hound without sallying out of his house-door as protector and
patron, because he conceived one might well treat men like dogs, but
not dogs themselves so! Now he could hear their screaming, merely
because, as it seemed, he did not hear it.
As he formerly often went to Albano merely to walk up and down, without
a loud word,--because he said, "By this I recognize my friend, that he
does not undertake to entertain me or himself, but will merely sit
there,"--so now he came still more mute, often touched tenderly, like a
playful child, the shoulder of Albano as he sat reading, and said, when
the latter looked behind him, "Nothing!" Meanwhile, Albano inquired not
about the change; for he knew he would surely unveil it to him in good
time. Their hearts stood over against each other like open mirrors.
So lay the dark wood of life before Albano, with its paths running
through each other and deep into the thicket, as he stood upon the
cross-way of his future and waited for his genius, who, either as a
hostile or as a good one, was to bring him Liana's decision. At last
there came from the gloomy wood a genius, but it was the dark genius,
and gave him this note from the Princess:--
"Dear Count: I am always true, and would rather be unsparing than
_un_true. The sick Mademoiselle v. F. is no longer in a condition to
make a tour or profit by it. I take a lively interest in the case.
However fondly I could wish to-day myself to speak consolation to you,
I hope, nevertheless, after this intelligence, not to have occasion to
do so.
"Your Friend."
What a dark cloud-break out of the morning redness of youth! So then
the secret joy which he had hitherto nourished had been the forerunner
of the dreadful blow,[43] the soft murmuring before the waterfall.[44]
That his very love was to be the blazing sword which pierced through
her life: O, he dwelt upon that so constantly; _that_ pained him so!
But there was no moisture in his eye; the wormwood of conscience
embitters even sorrow.
When man is no longer his own friend, then he goes to his brother, who
is a friend still, in order that _he_ may softly speak to him and
restore his heart and soul; Albano went to his Schoppe.
He found not him, but something else. Schoppe, namely, kept a diary
about "himself and the world," wherein his friend might read whatever
and whenever he wished; only he must pardon it, if he carried away with
him from the reading, since it was written throughout just as if no one
were to see it again,--angry slaps of the fan, and that, too, with the
hard end. "Why should I spare thee any more than myself?" said Schoppe.
To this _thou_ they had come without being able to say when, chary as
they generally were of this official style of the heart, this holiest
dual of souls toward others; "for I thank God," said Schoppe, "that I
live in a language in which I can sometimes say you, yes even (if men
and monkeys are subjects for it) between every two commas, your
Well-born, as well as your High-born, or Otherwise-born."
Albano found the diary open, and read with astonishment
this:--"_Amandus-day_. A stupid and extremely remarkable day for the
well-known Hesus or Hanus![45] I can hardly persuade myself that the
poor Thunder-god deserved to walk along behind the tall Proserpine,[46]
and at last to peep into her face, her brow, her lips, her neck! O
God! If such a god had stayed now on the spot! As _Pastor fido_ he
by good fortune rose up again and went on his way. O hell-goddess,
heaven-stormer of Hesus, thou hast made thyself his heaven! Can he ever
let thee go?
"_Afternoon_. The _Pastor_ becomes his own baiting-house, he knows not
how to stay; he lives now in all streets, in order to behold his
_Jeanne d'Arc-en-ciel_,[47] and suffers enough. But, Hesus, are not
sorrows the thorns, wherewith the buckle of love fastens? To-day
Friday[48] went with the Princess to the observatory. The wind is
south-east-east,[49]--read thirteen monthlies in one hour,--Spener sees
life transfigured and poetic in the shining magnifying-mirror God, as
well as another man.
"_Sabina's day_. With the _Pastor_ it grows worse, if I see right. He
is in the way to work himself over into a _billet-doux-presser_, to
powder himself by night in bed; and the knave already raises in the
heat, like milk which is kept warm, poetic cream. Only may Heaven never
grant him to fall into a rational discourse with his hell-goddess, face
to face, breath to breath, and the two souls be confounded together!
Verily, Flins[50] would snatch him away, Hesus would devour a
millennial kingdom at once; I fear he would become too wild with the
nectar, and too hard for me to control.
"_Evening_. Is it not already so far gone with the _Pastor_, that he
has borrowed him an author out of the whining decade of the age (he is
ashamed to name him), and will fain let himself be affected by the
stupid stuff, while he muses upon the effect which the author had upon
him in his fourteenth year. Of course he stumbles at him, in his
present period of life, like a night-watchman by day; but still he
cries back his cry, and has a new affection on the subject of his old.
So does the declension of _cornu_ in the grammar still smile upon me,
even to this hour, because I recollect how easily and glibly in the
golden moons of childhood I retained the whole of the _Singular_.
"_Simon Jud_.[51] Curse on it! A fair face and a false Maxd'or make, in
the course of a year, a couple of hundred knaves, who differ from each
other only in this, that one wishes to keep and the other to get
rid of the article. Hesus frowns, and charges home upon a million
rivals already. Like button- and lace-makers, or like copper- and
brass-founders, two so nearly of a trade cannot let each other get
on.[52] Right! hell-goddess, that thou hatest all men! That is, to be
sure, something for the _Pastor_,--a wound-salve! Scioppius, the two
Scaligers, and the vigorous Schlegels, &c.--"
Here the diary passes to other matters. An old portrait, for which
Schoppe had sat to himself, he had retouched. A notice to be inserted
in the "Pestitz Weekly Advertiser" announced the purpose of the
picture:--
"The undersigned, a portrait-painter of the Flemish school, makes known
that he has taken up his residence in Pestitz, and that he is ready to
paint all of every station and sex that may sit to him. As a sample of
his execution may be seen at his studio a portrait of himself, which
represents him sneezing, and which may be compared with the original on
the spot. I also cut profiles.
"Peter Schoppe,
"No. 1778."
Probably that was to move the hell-goddess to sit for once to the
sneezing painter. Albano could not but be astonished in the midst of
deep pain. In the beginning, he had imagined, according to the
simplicity of his nature, that he himself was meant by Hanus.
At this moment, Schoppe appeared. Albano spoke first, and said, softly,
"I, too, have read thy diary." The Librarian started back with an
exclamatory curse, and looked glowingly out of the window. "What is the
matter, Schoppe?" asked his friend. He whirled round, stared at him,
and said, twisting the skin of his face apart, like one who is cleaning
his teeth, and drawing up his upper lip, like a boy who bites into his
bread and butter, "I am in love," and ran up and down the chamber in a
flame, bewailing, at the same time, that he must live to experience
such a thing in himself in these his oldest days. "Read my diary no
more," he continued. "Ask not about the name, brother; no devil, no
angel, not the hell-goddess, shall know it. One day, perhaps, when I
and she lie in Abraham's bosom, and I on hers--thou art so troubled,
brother!"
"Fly gayly in the sun-atmosphere of love!" said his friend, in that
sadness of conscience which makes man simple, calm, and lowly; "I will
never ask nor disturb thee! Read that!" He gave him the note of the
Princess, and said to him also, while he read, "Cursed be every joy
where she has none! I stay here till it is decided whether she lives or
not." "I stay here too," rejoined Schoppe, with an involuntarily comic
expression. "Be serious!" said Albano. "Once I could," said he,
tearfully; "since day before yesterday no more!"
Meanwhile, Albano approved Schoppe's separation from the travelling
company; both secured to each other, even in friendship, the most
precious freedom. Of tutors' attendance neither made account. Schoppe
often ridiculed tutors of much information and manners, when they
assumed he educated anything out of Albano or into him. He said: "The
age educated, not a ninny; millions of men, not one; properly, at most,
a pedagogical group of Pleiades sent their light after him,--namely,
the seven ages of man, every age into the next following. The
individual resembled very much the entire humanity, whose revolutions
and improvements were nothing more than retouchings of a Schickaneder's
magic flute by a Vulpius. Meanwhile, however, there hovered around the
silly, discordant piece a melody of Mozart, in respect to which one
outstrips father and language-master."
"Wherefore do we sinners creep and buzz about here? Let us to Ratto's!"
said Schoppe. With extreme reluctance, Albano agreed to it; he said the
cellar had in it for him something uncomfortable, and a sultry
foreboding oppressed his bosom. Schoppe referred the presentiment to
the pressure of the rafters of his ruined pleasure-castle, which still
lay upon his breast, and the remembrance of that Roquairol, now flying
in the abyss, who had once drunk his health in the cellar, and
afterwards confessed to him in Lilar. Albano followed at last, but
reminded him of the fulfilment of another presentiment, which he had
had on the hill above Arcadia.
"We neither of us play the best personages in love; meanwhile let us go
into the cellar," said Schoppe, on the way, and, with a quite unwonted
hardness, stretched his favorite upon the rack of his drollery. Once,
when he was not himself in love, he was so capable of a tender,
indulgent, serious silence on that subject; but now no more.
94. CYCLE.
In the cellar there was the old running in and out of strange and
familiar faces. Albano and Schoppe climbed together those pure heights
of the mountains of the Muses, where, as on natural ones, the
atmosphere of life rests lighter, and the ether draws nearer to the
shortening column of air. Men comfort each other more easily on their
Ararat than women in their vales of Tempe. After Schoppe, made more
fiery by the tempestuous atmosphere of punch and love, had for a
considerable time played off the lightning-spark of his humor in
zigzag, and with a calcining effect, through the world-edifice,
suddenly an unknown person, like a death's-head, perfectly bald and
even without eyebrows, but with a rosy hue on his withered cheeks,
stepped up to their table and said, with iron mien, to Schoppe:
"Within fifteen months this day you will have become crazy, my merry
cock-sparrow!"
"O ho!" Schoppe broke out, inwardly shrinking up the while. Albano grew
pale. Schoppe collected himself again, stared sharply and courageously
at the repulsive shape, which rolled its withered but rosy skin to and
fro upon sharp, high cheek-bones, and said: "If you understand me,
prophetic gallows-bird and cock-sparrow, and are not yourself
crack-brained, then am I in a condition to prove that one can make
very little of a case out of such a thing as madness." Hereupon he
showed--but as one cooled-down, burnt-out, and deserted by his host of
images--that madness, like epilepsy, gave more pain to the spectator
than the performer; for it was only an earlier death, a longer dream, a
day-walking instead of night-walking; for the most part, it gave what
the whole of life and virtue and wisdom could not,--an _enduring_
agreeable idea.[53] Even if, which was rare, it chained a man to a
tormenting one, still this became, nevertheless, a panoply against all
bodily sufferings. He had, therefore, for himself, never feared madness
any more than dreaming, but could not bear to hear others speak, or
even to see them, in either of these states. "We shudder," said Albano,
"at a man who talks to us in his sleep as to an absent person, or who,
when awake, talks only to himself alone; and whenever I hear myself
soliloquize, it is just the same."
"I am no philosopher," said the Baldhead, indifferently, whose perfect,
shining baldness was more frightful than hateful. Schoppe asked
angrily, "Who he was, then, _quis_ and _quid_ and _quibus auxiliis_,
and _cur_ and _quomodo_ and _quando_."[54] "_Quando?_--After fifteen
months I come again. _Quis?_--Nothing; God uses me only when he has to
make some one unhappy," said the bald one, and begged a glass and the
liberty of drinking with them. Albano, freely granting it, said, in an
inquiring tone, he had probably just arrived? "Just from the great
Bernhard," said the bald one, growing more repulsive with every word,
because his old rosy face was a zigzag of convulsive distortions, so
that at every moment a different man seemed to be standing there. He
went out a moment. Schoppe, quite beside himself, said: "I grow more
and more exasperated with him, as with a hideous, hovering fever-image.
For God's sake, let us go. I have a feeling behind me all the time, as
if a wicked fist were thrusting me upon him, that I should strangle
him. He grows, too, more and more familiar to me, like an old
moss-grown deadly foe."
Albano answered softly: "See, my presentiment! But now that I have not
hearkened to it, I must even see where it will come out." His
courageous nature, his romantic history and position, would not let him
draw back from a prospect so full of adventure.
"But why," inquired Schoppe of the bald one, when he came back, "do you
cut so many faces, which do not present you exactly in the most
favorable light?" "They come," said he, "from poison which was given me
ten years ago. Have you observed how _aqua toffana_, taken in
quantities, distorts? In Naples, I forced it down the throat of a
beautiful girl of sixteen, who had for some years dealt in it, and
caused her to die before my eyes. I fancy there is nothing more godless
than poison-mixing." "Abominable!" cried Albano, seized with the
deepest repugnance for the man; as to Schoppe, _his_ fury had actually
relieved him.
At this moment a poor, meagre joiner's wife came in for liquor, who
kept her eyes cast down and half closed with shame and weakness; she
ventured not to look up, because the whole town knew that she was
forcibly driven out of her bed at night into the street to see a
funeral procession, which some days after was really to move through
it, already in prelude and prefiguration pass before her. Hardly had
the bald one beheld her, when he covered his face. "There is only a
single innocent one among us," said he, all pale and uneasy; "this
youth here," pointing to Albano. Just then a carriage with six horses
thundered by overhead. Schoppe jumped up, twice in succession put the
question to Albano, who was lost in thought: "Wilt thou go with me?"
turned angrily away at the word No, stepped close up to the bald one,
and said furiously: "Dog!" and turning on his heel went out. On the
pale, bloodless skin of the Baldhead no expression stirred, only his
hand twitched a little, as if there were near it a stiletto to lay hold
of, but he sent after him that look at which the maiden in Naples died.
Albano was enraged at the look, and said: "Sir, this man is a
thoroughly honest, true, vigorous nature; but you have exasperated him
even against himself, and must acquit him of blame." With soft,
flattering voice he replied: "My acquaintance with him dates not from
to-day, and he knows me, too." Albano asked whether, when he spoke of
the great Bernhard some time since, he meant the Swiss mountain of that
name. "Certainly!" replied he. "I travel thither yearly to spend a
night with my sister." "So far as I know, there are only monks
there," said Albano. "She stands among the frozen ones in the
cloister-chapel,"[55] he replied. "I stay all night before her, and
look upon her, and sing Horæ."
Albano, while listening, felt himself singularly changed, which he
could ascribe only to the punch,--it was less intoxication than glow; a
flying blaze roared over his inner world, and the red lustre hovered
about on its farthest borders; now did it seem to him as if he stood
entirely on the same ground with the Baldhead, and could wrestle with
this evil genius. "I had a sister, too," said Albano; "can one call up
the dead?" "No, but the dying," said the Baldhead. "Ugh!" said Albano,
shuddering. "Whom would you see?" asked the Baldhead. "A living sister,
whom I never have seen yet," said Albano, in a glow. "It requires,"
said the Baldhead, "a little sleep, and your knowing also where your
sister was on her last birthday." Luckily Julienne, whom he took for
his sister, had, on _hers_, been at the Palace in Lilar. He told him
so. "Then come with me!" said the Baldhead.
At this moment Schoppe's servant brought Albano a sword-cane and the
following note:--
"Brother, brother, trust him not. Here is a weapon, for thou art quite
too foolhardy. Run him right through, if he does so much as make faces.
All sorts of unknown people have this evening asked after thee and thy
whereabouts. It is to me as if no life at all were safe to me from the
beast,--thine or hers. Be on thy guard, and come! Schoppe.
"Run him through, however, I pray thee."
"Are you afraid, perhaps?" asked the Baldhead. "That will appear," said
Albano, angrily, and, taking the sword-cane, went with him. As the two
passed through the little, dark anteroom of the cellar, Albano saw in a
mirror his own head set in a fiery ring. They passed out of the city
into the open country. The bald one went ahead. The sky was bright with
stars. It seemed to the Count as if he heard the subterranean waters
and fires of the globe and the creation. Hardly did he recognize out
there the way to Blumenbühl. Suddenly the bald one ran into a field on
the left. The lean joiner's wife stood on the Blumenbühl road quite
stiff, and saw abstractedly a corpse move along invisible, and heard
the far-off bell, which is borne by the mute Death. So it seemed.
Then did Albano follow the Baldhead more daringly: the fear of spirits
kills the fear of man. Both moved along in silence beside each other.
In the depth of the distance, it seemed as if a man floated, without
walking or stirring, slowly and steadily onward through the air. The
white skin on the bald one twitched incessantly, and one invisible fist
after another thrust itself forth from the clay of his face, as in the
act of striking. Once there flitted over it the look of the Father of
Death.[56]
Suddenly Albano heard around him the smothered murmur and confused talk
of a throng. There was nothing on either side. "Do you hear nothing?"
he asked. "All is still," said the Baldhead. But the swarm kept on
murmuring and whispering eagerly and hotly, as if it could not be ready
and agreed. The bold youth shuddered. The gates of the shadowy kingdom
stood far open into the earth; dreams and shadows swarmed in and out,
and flew near to bright life.
The two stepped up to the thicket before Lilar. There came a boy out of
the wood with an enormously big head, helping himself along on two
crutches, and holding a rose, which he offered, with a nod, to the
youth. Albano took it, but the little fellow nodded incessantly, as if
he would say he should like to have him smell of it. Albano did so; and
suddenly the sinking of the stage of life, a bottomless slumber, drew
him down into the dark, unfathomable depths.
When he awoke heavily, he was alone and unarmed, in an old dusty Gothic
chamber. A faint little light scattered only shadows around. He looked
through the window; it seemed to be Lilar, but on the whole landscape
snow had fallen, and the heavens were white with cloud, and yet the
stars singularly pierced through. "What is this? Am I standing in the
mask-dance of dreams?" he asked himself.
Then an arras went up; a covered female form, with innumerable veils on
the face, stepped in, stood a moment, and flew to his heart. "Who is
it?" he asked. She pressed him to her bosom more passionately, and wept
clear through the veil. "Knowest thou me?" he asked. She nodded. "Art
thou my unknown sister?" he asked. She nodded, and with a sister's
close embrace, with hot tears of love, with rapturous kisses, held him
fast to herself. "Say, where livest thou?" She shook her head. "Art
thou dead or a dream?" She shook her head. "Is thy name Julienne?" She
shook her head. "Give me a sign of thy truth!" She showed him half of a
gold ring on a table that stood near. "Show thy face, that I may
believe thee!" She drew him away from the window. "Sister, by Heaven,
if thou liest not, then raise thy veil!" She pointed with her long,
outstretched, enveloped arm to something behind him. He kept on
intreating. She motioned vehemently toward a certain place, and
repelled him from herself. At length he obeyed, and turned sidewards;
then he saw in a mirror how she suddenly threw up the veils, and how,
beneath them, the superannuated form appeared whose image, with the
signature, his father had given him on Isola Bella. But when he turned
round again, he felt on his face a warm hand and a cold flower; and a
second slumber drew downward his conscious being.
When he awoke, he was alone, but with his weapon, and on the wooded
spot where he had first sunk to sleep. The sky was blue, and the light
constellations glimmered; the earth was green, and the snow gone; the
half-ring he no longer held in his hand; around him was no sound, and
no human being. Had all been but the fleeting cloud-procession of
dreams, the brief whirl and shaping that goes on in their magic smoke?
But life and truth had burned so livingly into his breast, and the
tears of a sister still lay on his eye. "Or might they be only my
brotherly tears!" said his perplexed spirit, as he rose, and in the
bright night went homeward. All was as still as if life were yet
sleeping on; he heard himself, and feared to waken it; he looked upon
his own body as he walked along. Yes, thought he, this thick bed in
which we are wrapped plays off before us even the woes and joys of
life. Just as, in our sleep, we seem to stifle under falling mountains
when the coverlet settles over our lips, or to stride over sticky,
melted metal when it oppresses the feet with too great a thickness of
feathers, or to freeze, like naked beggars, when it is shoved off, and
exposes us to the night-chill, so does this earth, this body, throw
into the seventy years' sleep of the immortal lights and sounds and
chills, and he shapes to himself therefrom the magnified history of his
joys and sorrows; and, when he once awakes, only a little of it proves
true!
"Heavens! why comest thou so late, and so pale?" asked Schoppe, who had
been a long time in Albano's chamber, waiting for him. "O, ask me not
to-day!" said Albano.
TWENTY-THIRD JUBILEE.
Liana.
95. CYCLE.
Ever did Schoppe let fly at himself more curses than on the morrow,
during Albano's recital, and on this account, to be sure, that he had
not stayed so as to arrest the Baldhead, the fly-wheel of so many
ghostly movements, in the midst of the revolutions, by dashing right at
the spokes. He earnestly besought the Count, at the next appearance, at
least,--especially in Italy,--to tear off, without mercy, the
Baldhead's mask, though life hung upon it. The youth had been moved too
intensely by the events of the night. He therefore spoke of them
reluctantly, and without dwelling upon them. As in him all sensations
stirred more intensely and overpoweringly than in Roquairol, he had
not, like him, pleasure in portraying them, but shrank from it. He
looked up the little old likeness of his sister which his father had
given him on the island. What a striking reflection of the nightly
image in the mirror! This moss of age on a sister must have been
artificially produced there, merely for the purpose of hiding the
resemblance. The presumption of its being Julienne he gave up again,
after the denial of the veiled one, and from the improbability of such
a nocturnal performance, and postponed measuring the altitudes of all
these incomprehensible airy apparitions till he should have the aid of
his daily expected father.
Ah, over all his thoughts swept incessantly in vulture-circles a
distant, dark form, the destroying angel, that would fain stoop
greedily upon the helpless Liana! The staring stiffness of the
corpse-seeress on the Blumenbühl road--especially since the sad billet
of the Princess--now in the dark intersecting thicket paths, into which
his life's course had entangled itself, danced on before him as a
juggling phantom of terror.
A new and single resolve stood now in his soul like a rigid arm fast by
the way-side, pointing ever in one direction, up the Blumenbühl road.
"Thou must go to her," said the resolve; "she must not die in the
delusive belief of thy anger and thy old severity; thou must see her
again, to ask her pardon, and then shalt thou weep till her grave opens
and takes her away." "O, how I then," he said to himself, "before the
dying-throne of this angel, shall bruise with contrition my hard,
haughty, wild heart, and take back everything, everything whereby I
blinded and wounded the tender soul in Lilar, that she may not despise
too much the short days of her love, and that her heart may at least
part from me with one little farewell pleasure! And that, O God, grant
us!"
In vain did Schoppe propose thereupon, that he should seek with him the
business-office of the night-wonders, which so probably must be found
in the Gothic-temple; this very day he would force his way into the
presence of his pale loved one. Schoppe continued to insist vehemently
on the visit to Lilar, and at last demanded it, and commanded
compliance; but now it was a lost case, and Albano's refusal was
panoplied. "Plague take it! why let myself, then, be boiled in these
tear-pots?" said Schoppe, and marched out.
But after a short time he came back with a billet from--Gaspard,
wherein the latter demanded for to-day relay-horses from the
post-house, and with a proposition from himself that they should go to
meet his father. How refreshingly did the nearness of his father
breathe over Albano's sultry waste! Nevertheless, he said No the second
time; his long willing and warring and every hour's lapse veiled Liana
more and more darkly from him in her cloud, and he thought anxiously of
his dream about her on Isola Bella;[57] and finally he had his
suspicions aroused by Schoppe's holding him back so significantly.
And herein he erred not. Schoppe acted upon quite other grounds than
Albano had yet learned. The Lector, namely, who with wise old honesty
kept a distant watch, through Schoppe's agency, over the rebellious
youth, whom, however, he took every occasion to praise, had pointed out
to his proxy the up-towering, leaden-heavy cloud-pile which was moving
onward and lowering over the head of the youth; namely, Liana's
impending death.
At first, for some time the quarrel with her parents, that poetic
hardening, as it were, of Liana's nerves, had been to them wine of
iron, but afterward they melted in the soft water of renunciation,
autumnal rest and devotion. There is a bland calm which loosens men as
well as ships; a warmth in which the wax-figure of the spirit melts
down. Every day, too, came the pious father and spread her wings,
loosed her from earthly hopes and earthly anxieties, and led her up
into the glory of the throne of God. The fair spring-breezes of her
ended love she let breathe again, but in a higher region; they were now
thin, mild, ethereal zephyrs, breaths of flowers. She knew now, at
once, that she was dying and loved God. She stood already like a sun,
tranquil and far away in her heaven, but like a sun she seemed to
move obediently around the little day of her mother, and shed on her a
soft warmth. Her tears flowed out as sweetly as sighs, as evening dew
out of evening redness. As one sinks, blissfully cradled, in joyous
dreams, so she floated, long borne up, drawn slowly onward, with
buoyant fleshly-garment, on the flood of death.
Only a single earthly obstacle had hitherto broken the gentle
fall,--the ardent expectation of the coming of the Romeiro, whom she so
dearly loved as the friend of her friend Julienne. At last she made her
appearance, and took too powerful a hold of Liana's fancy; for it was
just the wings of fantasy which, in this tender, constant swan,[58]
were too strong. How did the sick one humble herself at the feet of
this shining goddess! How unworthy did she find herself of her former
love for Albano! So little had Spener, humble only before God, been
able to prevent her taking up with her two jewels out of her former
life into her present glorified state, her old lowliness before men and
her old anxiety for those she loved.
Julienne sought again and again to dissuade her; but one evening--when
she learned that Albano was to be taken to Italy--she twined herself
around Linda's heart, and told her, with her wonted over-fulness of
feeling, only Albano deserved her. Linda answered with astonishment;
she could not comprehend a self-annihilating love; in _her_ case she
should die. "And am not I, then, dying?" said Liana.
Julienne, thereupon, immediately begged Liana to spare the
embarrassment of the noble Countess on this subject. Liana, without
being offended, remained silent; but the new desire now possessed her
to see once more her lost Albano, and show him her former fidelity and
his error, and with dying heart to make over to him a new and great
one. She was very frank in uttering all the last wishes of her holy
soul. Her mother and Augusti held her from her purpose as long as they
could, that she might not take so dark, poisonous a flower as the
pleasure of such a meeting must be to her sick heart. But she entreated
her mother: How could it harm her this year, as it was not till the
next--according to Caroline's prediction--she was to go hence?
Meanwhile they sought to put farther and farther off from her the last
purpose, in the hope that Gaspard would carry away the Count, and with
the intention, only in the extreme case of having to give up all hopes,
of gratifying for her this fatal wish.
Then she turned with her request to her brother; but he, partly from
mortified vanity and partly from love for his sister, depicted Albano
on the colder side, said he was going off to a gay country, would
easily cease to regret her, &c. How did it almost provoke the gentle
soul, because, with a woman's sharpsightedness, she detected in this an
approaching breach of love towards Albano and Rabette, and a return of
partiality for Linda, who was to be left behind! She had already for
some time been curious about Rabette's being so long invisible. For the
poor soul had not, since her fall, since the burial of her innocence,
been in a state to be prevailed upon, by prayers or commands, to appear
with her downcast, sinful eye before the friend of eternal purity; and
now it was absolutely impossible for her, since Linda's arrival and
visits had crushed even the lightest, lingering gossamer-web of her
flying summer, and her throat, full of anguish, was stifled and choked
with the closeness of the funeral-veil. "Brother, brother," said Liana,
with inspiration, "think what our poor parents get from us children! I
fulfil no hope of theirs; every hope rests on thee! Ah, how angry will
our father be!" she added, with her old dread and love. Her brother
held it right to keep from her the truth (about Rabette's degradation
and concealment), which would this time wear the form of an armed fate,
and so he put in the place of the truth his brotherly love. Hence he
had hitherto denied himself the only opportunity of speaking with the
Countess--by Liana's sick chair. "Thou must die," he once said to her
in enthusiasm; "it is well that thy web is so delicate, that the
cross-play of so many talons may rend it asunder. What mightest thou
not have suffered, even to thy seventieth year, from the world and men!"
He, too, believed--from his own experience--that there are more sorrows
of women than of men, just as, in heaven, there are more eclipses of the
moon than of the sun.
So things stood till the night when Albano saw the Baldhead, the
playing of the eclipses, and his veiled sister. That night one string
after another snapped in Liana's life; a rapid change came over her;
and early the next morning she had already received the last sacrament
from her Spener's hands. The Lector got this sad intelligence from the
Minister's lady at nine of the morning. Hence it was that he sought so
eagerly through Schoppe to hold back the youth from the sight of a
dying bride.
Subsequently came Gaspard's billet, which put it into the heads of
both to try to induce him to go meet his father, and--by a message to
him--to persuade the latter, at least for some days, to turn back with
Albano from the approaching earthquake, that the ground might sink
before the son should tread upon it.
But this, too, as has been already related, missed the mark. Albano
acquainted Schoppe directly with his suspicion of some unpleasant
event. The latter was just on the point of giving an answer, when he
was spared the necessity by a panting messenger from Blumenbühl, who
handed Albano the following note from Spener:--
"P. P.
"Your highborn grace must with all speed be informed that the mortally
sick Fraülein von Froulay desires most earnestly this very day to speak
with your highness _in person_; and you have so much the more need to
haste, as, according to her own representation, she can hardly with the
least probability be expected, especially as patients of this _genre_
can always foresee their death accurately, to survive the present
evening, but must pass out of this mortality into the eternal glory. In
my own person, I need hardly admonish your grace as a Christian, that a
soft, still, pious, and devout demeanor would be far more suitable and
seemly than cruel worldly sorrow beside the dying-bed of this glorious
bride of Christ, in regard to whose death every heart will wish, 'Lord,
be my death like that of this just one!' With this suggestion, I
remain, with distinguished respect,
"Your highborn grace's submissive
"Joachim Spener, _Court Chaplain_.
"P. S. If your highness does not come directly with the messenger, I
beg earnestly the favor of a few lines in reply."
Albano said not a word, gave the note to his friend, pressed his hand
gently, took his hat, and went slowly and with dry eyes out into the
road that led up to the mountain-castle.
96. CYCLE.
He hurried along with a shudder round by the spot where the
corpse-seeress had stood the previous night, in order to behold her
dreams, transformed into dark-clad human beings, wind slowly down from
the mountain-road. It was a still, warm, blue after-summer afternoon.
The evening red of the year, the ruddy-glowing foliage, stole from
mountain to mountain; on dead pastures the poisonous saffron-flowers
stood together untouched; on the overspun stubble spiders were still
working away at the flying summer, and setting up a few threads as the
ropes and sails wherewith it was to hasten its flight. The wide circle
of air and earth was still, the whole heaven cloudless, and the soul of
man heavily overcast.
Albano's heart rested upon the season as a head rests upon the
executioner's block. Naught did he see in the wide blue of heaven but
Liana soaring therein; nothing, nothing on the earth, but her
prostrate, empty form.
He felt a sharp pang when suddenly, on the heights of Blumenbühl, the
white mountain-palace flashed upon his sight. He ran down wildly along
by the abhorred, the transformed, and deformed Blumenbühl, and hurried
away up into the deep hollow pass which leads to the mountain-castle.
But where this splits into two ascending defiles, the young man, with
the veil of sorrow over his eyes, took by mistake the left, and hurried
on between its walls more and more eagerly, till, after the long chase,
he came out on the heights, and beheld the gleaming palace of sorrow
behind him. Then did it seem to him as if the landscape stretching far
away below him heaved to and fro confusedly, like a stormy sea, with
billowing fields and swimming mountains; and the heavens looked down
still and serene on the commotion. Only down below on the western
horizon slept a long, dark cloud.
He stormed down again, and in a few minutes arrived at the little
flower-garden of the house of mourning. As he strode impetuously
through it, he saw, up at the castle-windows, the backs of several
people. If they should turn round, said he, the word would immediately
go round, There comes the murderer! At this moment, the Minister's lady
came to a window, but quickly turned round when she saw him. Heavily he
went up the stairs; the Lector came feelingly to meet him, and said to
him, "Composure for yourself and forbearance for others! You have no
witness of your interview, but your own conscience," and opened to the
speechless youth the silent chamber of sickness.
Burdened and bowed down with grief, he softly entered. In an easy-chair
reclined a white-clad figure, with white, sunken cheeks, and hands laid
in one another, leaning her head, which was encircled with a variegated
wreath of wild-flowers, on the arm of the chair. It was his former
Liana. "Welcome to me, Albano!" said she, with feeble voice, but with
the old smile, like sunrise, and stretched out to receive him her hand
which she raised with difficulty; her heavy head she could not raise at
all. He drew near, sank on his knee and held the precious hand, and his
lip quivered and was dumb. "Thou art right welcome to me, my good
Albano!" she repeated, still more tenderly, with the impression that he
had not probably heard it the first time; and the well-known voice
coming back to him started all the tears of his heart into one gushing
rain. "Thou, too, Liana!" he stammered, still more softly. Wearily she
let her head fall over on the other arm of the chair, which was nearer
to her; then did her life-tired blue eyes look right closely upon his
wet and fiery ones; how did each find the other's countenance paled and
ennobled by one and the same long sorrow! Red-cheeked and in full
bloom, and with a load of sorrows, had Liana entered the strange, cold
death-realm of sore probation for the higher world, and without color
and without sorrows had she come back again, and with heavenly beauty
on the face from which earthly bloom had faded. Albano stood before
her, pale and noble also, but he brought back on his young, sick,
sunken countenance the pangs and the conflicts, and in his eye the glow
of life.
"O God, thou hast changed, Albano," she began, after a long gaze. "Thou
lookest quite hollow: art thou so sick, love?" she asked, with that old
anxiety of affection which neither the pious father nor the last
genius, who makes man cold towards life and love, ere he withdraws
them, had been able to take from her heart. "O, would to God!--No, I am
not," said he, and stifled, out of forbearance, the internal storm; for
he would so gladly have poured out his woe, his love, his death-wish
before her in one mortal cry, as a nightingale sings herself to death
and falls headlong from the branch.
Her chilled eye long rested, warming itself, upon his face, full of
inexpressible love, and at last she said with a heavy smile, "So, then,
thou lovest me again, Albano! Thou wast even in Lilar wholly in error.
After a long time my Albano will begin to learn why I separated from
him,--only for his good. On this, this my dying-day, I tell thee that
my heart has been ever true to thee. Believe me! My heart is with God,
my words are true. See, this is why I begged thee to come to me
to-day,--for thou shalt mildly, without remorse, without reproach, in
thy long-coming life, look over upon thy first youthful love. To-day
thou wilt not take it ill of thy little Linda[59] that she speaks of
dying,--seest thou haply that I was then in the right? Bring me the
leaf yonder!"
He obeyed; it was a sketch which she had made with trembling hand to
represent Linda's noble head. Albano did not look upon the leaf. "Take
it to thyself," said she; he did so. "How kind and compliant thou art!"
said she. "Thou deservest her,--I name her not to thee,--as the reward
of thy fidelity towards me. She is more worthy of thee than I; she is
blooming, like thyself, not sick, like me; but never do her wrong; it
is my last wish that thou shouldst love her. Wilt thou distress me,
determined spirit, by a vehement No?"
"Heavenly soul!" he cried, and looked upon her beseechingly, and
presented her the stifled No as an offering to the dead. "I answer thee
not. Ah, forgive, forgive that earlier time!" For now he saw for the
first time, how meekly, gently, and yet fervently, the still, tender
soul had loved him, who even yet, in the dissolution of the body, spoke
and loved as in the beautiful days of Lilar, just as the melting bell
in the burning steeple still continues, from the midst of the flames,
to sound out the hours.
"Now, then, farewell, beloved!" she said, calmly, and without a tear,
and her feeble hand offered to press his; "a happy journey into the
beautiful land! Accept eternal thanks for thy love and truth, for the
thousand joyous hours which I will, up yonder, at length deserve;[60]
for Lilar's fair flowers.... The children of my Chariton have put them
on me.[61] ... _Je ne suis qu'un songe_.[62] What was I going to say to
thee, Albano? My farewell! Forsake not my brother! O how thou weepest!
I will still pray for thee!"
The dying have dry eyes. The tempestuous weather of life ends with cold
air. They know not how their babbling tongue cuts into widely rent
hearts. This most gentle soul knew not how she thrust sword upon sword
through Albano, who now felt that to the saint whom already the
spring-gales, the spring-fragrances of the eternal shore were floating
to meet and welcome, he could be nothing more, give nothing more, nor
even so much as take from her her humility.
When she had said it, her head, with the crown of flowers, raised
itself upright; inspired, she drew her hand out of his, and prayed
aloud with fervor: "Hear my prayer, O God! and let him be happy till he
enters into thy glory. And should he err and waver, then spare him, O
God, and let me appear to him and exhort him. But to thee alone, O
all-gracious one, be praise and thanks uttered for my pleasant,
peaceful life on the earth; thou wilt, after I have rested, bestow
on me up yonder the fair morning in which I may work.... Wake me
early from the sleep of death.... Wake me, wake!... Mother, the
morning-red[63] lies already upon the trees."
At this moment, her mother, with other persons, rushed into the
chamber. Her vision, bewildered with the drowsiness of death and the
wandering of her speech, announced that the cold sleep with open eyes
was now at hand. "Appear to me, thou art indeed with God!" cried
Albano, distracted. In vain would Augusti have led him away; without
answering, without stirring, he stood fast-rooted there. Liana grew
paler and paler; death arrayed her in the white bridal garment of
Heaven; then his eye ceased its weeping, grief froze, and the broad,
heavy ice of anguish filled his breast.
Liana's eye was fixed steadily on a light spot of the softly veiled
evening heavens, as if seeking and waiting for the heavens to lift and
show the sun. Indifferent to all present, her brother stormed in with
his lamentation: "Go not to God, or I shall see thee no more! Look on
me, bless, sanctify me, give me thy peace, sister!" She was silently
lost in the lightening and breaking sun-cloud. "She takes thee for me,"
said Albano to Charles, on account of the similarity of their voices,
"and gives thee not her peace." "Steal not my voice!" said Charles,
angrily. "O, leave her in peace," said the mother, out of whose
downcast eyes only a few light tears fell trembling on the garland of
the daughter, whose faint head, upturned toward heaven, she held,
leaning against herself, with both hands.
All at once, when the sun opened the clouds like eyelids, and looked
serenely from beneath, the still form quivered. The dying see double;
she saw two sun-balls, and cried, clinging to her mother, "Ah, mother,
how large and fiery his eyes are!" She saw Death standing in heaven.
"Cover me with the pall," she begged, distressfully,--"my veil!" Her
brother caught it up, and covered with it the wandering eyes and the
flowers and locks. The sun, too, mercifully veiled himself again with
clouds.
"Think on Almighty God!" said the pious father to her, in a loud voice.
"I think of him," answered the veiled one, in a low tone. The aurora of
the second world stands black before mortals. They all trembled. Albano
and Roquairol grasped and pressed each other's hands, the latter from
hatred, Albano from agony, as one gnashes at metal. The chamber was
full of uncongenial, discordant people, whom death made equal. At one
side Albano saw that a strange form, repulsive to him, had stolen in.
It was his impenetrable father, whose great, dark eyes were fastened
sharply and sternly on his son. Out of a second chamber two tall,
veiled female forms gazed at the third, and saw no face, and no one saw
theirs.
Liana played with her fingers at the veil. Evening stood in the
chamber, and the silence between the lightning-flash and the
thunder-clap. "Think upon Almighty God!" cried Spener. She answered
not. He continued: "Of our source, and of our sea; he alone stands by
thee now in the dark, when the earth, and its dwellers, and all lights
of life, are sinking away beyond thy reach!" Suddenly she began, and
said, with a low tone of gladness, and with words swiftly following
each other, as when one talks in sleep, and with increasing rapture and
rapidity, "Caroline! here, here, Caroline! This is my hand,--how
beautiful thou art!" The invisible angel who had consecrated her first
love, who had attended her whole life, gleamed again, like a new-risen
moon, over the whole dark scene of death; and the splendor gently
melted the little May night into the great spring morning of the second
world.
Now the veiled nun of heaven leaned, quite still, on her mother. The
death-angel stood invisible and wrathful among his victims. With great
wings hung the screech-owl of anguish over mortal eyes, and pecked with
black beak down into the breast, and nothing was heard in the stillness
but the owl. More darkly rolled the Knight's melancholy eyes to and fro
in their deep sockets between the still bride and the still son; and
Gaspard and the destroying angel gazed upon each other gloomily.
At that moment Liana's harp sent out a clear, high, ringing tone far
into the silence. The Fatal Sister who spun at her life knew the
signal, checked herself, and stood up; and the sister with the scissors
came. Liana's fingers ceased to play, and beneath the veil all became
still and motionless.
"Thy head is heavy and cold, my daughter," said the disconsolate
mother. "Tear the veil away!" cried the brother; and when he drew it
down, there lay Liana, peaceful and smiling beneath it, but dead,--the
blue eyes open toward heaven, the transfigured mouth still breathing
love, the maidenly lily-brow encircled with the flower-wreath which had
sunk down around it; and pale and glorified with the moonlight of the
higher world was the strange form which passed majestically forth from
the midst of the puny living among its lofty dead.
Then gushed the golden sun through the clouds and through all the
tears, and circumfused with the blooming evening twilight, with the
youthful rose-oil of his evening clouds, the faded sister of heaven;
and the transfigured countenance wore again the bloom of youth. In
heaven all the clouds, touched with her wings as she swept through
them, burst out into long, red blossoms; and through the high, misty
veil, fluttering up over the earth, glowed the thousand roses which had
been strown about or sprung up on the cloud-path on which the virgin
passed up over the earth to the Eternal.
But Albano, the forsaken Albano, stood without tears or eyes or words
among the commonplaces of sorrow, in the crimson evening fire of the
holy chamber of transfiguration, amidst the earthly bustle that went on
round the still form. In the depths of the past, Sorrow showed him a
Medusa's-head; and he still looked upon it when his heart was already
petrified by it, and he heard continually the gloomy head murmur the
words, "How bitterly did the dead one, when in Lilar, weep at the harsh
Albano!" Her brother, upon his rack, said many barbarous words to him.
He heard or heeded them not, because he was listening to the horrible
Gorgon head.
"Son," cried Gaspard Cesara, earnestly,--"son, dost thou not know me?"
Through the heavy, deathly heart a life-voice flashes upon him. He
looks round, and sees his father, with terror arranges him into a
shape, and falls upon his breast, and cries only, "Father!" and again
and again, "Father!" He continued to cry out, grasping him violently
like a foe, and said: "Father, that is Liana!" Still more passionate
grew the embrace, not from love, only from agony. "Come to thyself, and
to me, dear Albano," said the Knight. "O, I will do so; she is dead
now, father!" said he, with a choked voice; and now his grief broke
upon his father like a cloud upon a mountain, into one incessant
tear,--it streamed forth as if the innermost soul would bleed itself to
death out of all the open veins,--but the weeping only stirred up his
sorrows, as a rain-storm does a battle-field: he became more
inconsolable and impetuous, and sullenly repeated the previous
exclamation.
"Albano!" said Gaspard, after some time, with stronger voice, "wilt
thou accompany me?" "Gladly, my father!" said he, and followed him, as
a bleeding child with its wound follows its mother. "To-morrow I will
speak," said Albano, in the carriage, and took his father's hand. His
wide-open eyes hung swollen and blind upon the warm evening-sun, which
already rested on the mountains; he continued smiling and pale, and
weeping softly; nor did he mark when the sun went down, and he arrived
in the city.
"To-morrow, my father!" said he languidly and beseechingly to the
Knight; and shut himself in. Nothing more was heard from him.
TWENTY-FOURTH JUBILEE.
The Fever.--The Cure.
97. CYCLE.
Albano for a long time remained mute in a by-chamber. His father left
him to the healing influence of quiet. Schoppe waited for him
patiently, that he might console him by looking upon and listening to
him. At last they heard him in there praying fervently: "Liana, appear
to me and give me peace!" Directly after he stepped out strong and free
as an unchained giant, with all the blood-roses on his face,--with
lightnings in his eyes,--with hasty tread. "Schoppe," said he, "come
with me to the observatory; there hangs high in heaven a bright star;
on that she is buried: I must know that, Schoppe!"
The noble soul lay in the violent hands of a fever. He was just going
out with him, when he beheld the Knight, who gazed upon him intently.
"Only do not become numb and palsied again, my father!" said he,
embraced him but gently, and forgot what he had been going to do.
Schoppe went for Doctor Sphex. Albano returned to his chamber, and
walked slowly up and down there with bowed head and folded hands, and
said to himself consolingly, "Only wait, however, till it strikes
again." Sphex came and saw and--said, "It is simply an inflammatory
fever." But no force could bring him to the point of undressing himself
for bed, or even for a bleeding. "What!" said he, modestly; "she may
surely appear to me at any moment and give me peace. No! no!" The
physician prescribed a whole cooling snow-heaven for the purpose of
snowing the crater full. These coolings and frost-conductors also the
wild youth refused. But then the Knight assailed him with that
thundering voice of his, and with that fury in his eye which revealed
the ever-enduring but covered wrath-fire of the haughty breast:
"Albano, take it!" Then the patient became considerate and compliant,
and said: "O my father, I do indeed love thee!"
Through the whole night, of which the faithful Schoppe remained watcher
and physician, the crazed body kept on playing its feverish part,
driving the youth up and down, and at every stroke of the clocks
constraining him to kneel down and pray: "Liana, do appear, and give me
peace!" How often did Schoppe, otherwise so poor in expression, hold
him fast with a long embrace, only to beguile the harassed one into a
short repose. Incomprehensible to the physician the next morning were
the energies of this iron and white-hot nature, which fever, pain, and
walking had not yet bowed, and on which all prescribed ice-fields
hissed and dried up,--and frightful appeared to him the consequences,
as Albano continued to be his own incendiary, and, at every striking of
the hour, fell on his knees and languished and looked for the heavenly
apparition.
His father, however, left him, like a humanity, to his own energies; he
said he was glad to see such a rare case of unenfeebled youthful vigor,
and felt no fear at all; and he gave, too, with perfect calmness, his
orders about packing up everything for the journey to Italy. He visited
the court, i. e. everybody. Upon any one who knew what he was wont to
demand of men and deny to them, this general complaisance towards all
the world inflicted the pang of wounded honor, even if Gaspard
addressed him too. He first visited the Prince, who, although the
Knight, when in Italy, had quietly administered to him the poisoned
Host of love, together with her poison-chalice, always hung upon him
familiarly. The Knight inspected with him the new accessions to the
works of art; the two sharply and freely compared their opinions in
regard to them, and gave each other commissions for the approaching
absence.
Thereupon he went to his travelling companion, the Princess, towards
whom, indeed, his galling pride had not left behind one particle of
flower-dust from his former love, who, however, in the smooth, cold
mirror of his epic soul, in which all figures moved about freely and in
clear conception, occupied, by virtue of her powerful individuality,
the foreground, as a central figure. As he placed freedom, unity, even
license of spirit, far above sickly pietism, hypocritical imitation of
other people's talents and penitent warfare with one's self, he held
the Princess, even with her cynicism of tongue, as "in her way dear and
deserving." She inquired with much interest after his son's condition
and prospect of travelling with them; he gave her, with his old
calmness, the best hopes.
The Princess Julienne was inaccessible. She had been compelled to see
how the faithful playmate of her youth had been drawn by a harsh,
hostile arm from the flowery shore into the flood of death, and how the
poor girl had drifted away exhausted; this completely prostrated her,
and gladly would she have plunged headlong after the victim. She had
not been, the day before, in a condition to go with the two veiled ones
to the castle.
Gaspard now hastened to one of these, the Countess Romeiro, with whom
he found the other also, the Princess Idoine. The latter had not been
able to read so much in every letter about the sister of her face and
soul, without travelling from her Arcadia in person to see her and
prove the fair relationship; but when she arrived in her veil at the
house of mourning, her kinswoman had already drawn hers over her dying
eye; and when it arose, she saw herself extinguished, and beheld, in
the deep mirror of time, her own dying image. She kept silence within
herself, as if before God, but her heart, her whole life, was stirred.
The resemblance was so striking that Julienne begged her never to
appear before the afflicted mother. Idoine was, it is true, taller,
more sharply cut and less rosy than Liana in her days of bloom; but the
last pale hour, wherein the latter appeared beside her, made the
whitened form taller and the face nobler, and withdrew the flowery veil
of maidenhood from the sharp outline.
Idoine said little to the Knight, and only looked on and saw how her
friend Linda overflowed with real childlike love in return for his
almost paternal affection. Both maidens he treated with a respectful,
warm, and tender morality, which must have appeared wonderful to an eye
(for example, the Prince's) which had often witnessed the unmerciful
irony wherewith he so loved to draw downward in a slow spiral of
licentious discourses, rotten, worm-eaten hearts,--half installed in
God's church and half in the Devil's chapel,--shy, soft, sensitive
sinners, inwardly-bottomless Fantasts, the Roquairols, for instance,
more and more deeply and with ever-increasing pleasure to the centre of
infamy. The Prince thought, in such cases, "He thinks exactly as I do;"
but Gaspard did with him just so.
Even the trembling, pale Julienne stole in, at last, to see him. They
avoided, so far as they could, for her sake, the open grave of her
friend; but she asked, herself, after the sick lover of that friend
very urgently. The Knight, who for most answers of moment had provided
himself with an original phrase-book of nothings, particularly with
ice-flowers of speech, such as, "It is going on as well as can be
expected under the circumstances," or, "Such things are to be looked
for," or, "It will all come right," made use on this occasion of the
last-named flower of rhetoric, and replied, "It will all come right."
When he reached home, nothing had come right, but the flood of the
evil was at its highest. There lay the youth--dressed, in bed,--unable
to walk any longer,--in a burning heat,--talking wildly,--and yet at
every stroke of the clock uttering his old prayer to the high, shut-up
heavens. Hitherto his firm, vigorous brain had been able to hold fast
its reason, at least for all that did not touch Liana; but gradually
the whole mass went over into the fermentation of the fever. In vain
did his father, once, when he knelt and prayed for the apparition of
the dead, arm himself with all the wrath and thunder of his
personality. "Give me peace!" Albano continued to pray, softly, and, as
he said it, looked him softly in the face.
Schoppe, at this point, with the look of one who has a weighty mystery,
took the father aside, and said he knew an unfailing remedy. Gaspard
evinced curiosity. "The Princess Idoine," said he, "must not concern
herself at all about miserable childish trifles, but just when it
strikes and he kneels, boldly present herself to him as the blessed
spirit, and conclude the plaguy peace." Contrary to what might have
been presumed, the Knight said, ill-humoredly, "It is improper." In
vain Schoppe sought to preach him over to the sunny side,--he only went
farther over to the wintry side at the appearance of another's
intention; no one could bring him to a gentle warmth but himself.
At last Gaspard, after his manner, let so much drift-ice of
above-mentioned phrases drive over the permanent ground-ice of his
character, that Schoppe proudly and indignantly held his peace.
Besides, the preparations for the journey went on as if the father
meant to snatch his son as a brand from the fever-burning, and tear him
distractedly out of the old circles of love. Schoppe made known to him
his intention of staying at home; he said he had nothing against it.
Now did Schoppe feel on his own scratched-up face the cutting North of
this character, to which he had generally been partial: "'Trust no
long, lank Spaniard,' was the just saying of Cardanus,"[64] said he.
Albano was sick, and therefore not inconsolable. He drew from the Lethe
of madness the dark draught of oblivion of the present; only when he
knelt did he see mirrored in the stream his lacerated form and a cloudy
heaven. He heard nothing of this,--how the poor named their names, that
they might weep gratefully around their sleeping benefactress, and how
under their lamentations the once healing music of their countenances
now lay deaf and dumb. He heard nothing of the raving of her brother,
nor of the loud (acoustically arranged) grief of her father, nor of the
stiff mother wrapped in dull anguish. He knew not beforehand that the
pale Charis would appear one evening in her coronation-chamber in the
midst of lights for the last time on earth, crowned, decked, and
slumbering. To him, indeed, at every hour died an infinite hope, but
each hour bore him also a new one.
"Poor brother," said Schoppe the next day, in noble indignation, "I
swear to thee, thou shalt get thy peace to-day." The pale patient
looked upon him imploringly. "Yes, by Heaven!" Schoppe swore, and
almost wept.
98. CYCLE.
Schoppe had resolved not to trouble himself at all about the
Knight,--who divided his evening between the Minister and Wehrfritz in
Blumenbühl,--but to betake himself at once to the presence of the
Princess Idoine with the great petition. First, however, he would get
the Lector as porter or _billeteur_ of the locked court-doors, and as
surety for his words. But Augusti was indescribably alarmed; he
insisted the thing would not do,--a Princess and a sick young man,
and an absolutely ridiculous ghost-scene, &c.; and his own father,
indeed, already saw through it. Schoppe upon this became a spouting
fire-engine, and left few curses or comparisons unused upon the
man-murdering nonsense of courtly and female decorum,--said it was as
beautifully shaped as a Greek fury,--it bound up the wound on a man's
neck as the cook-women did on a goose's, not till after it had bled to
death, so that the feathers might not be stained,--and he was as much
of a _courtisan_, he concluded ambiguously, as Augusti, and knew what
decency was. "May I not propose it to the Fürstinn, then, who certainly
esteems him so highly?" Augusti said, "That does not alter the case."
"Nor yet to Julienne?" "Nor yet to her," said he. "Nor yet to the most
satanic Satan?" "There is surely a good angel between," replied
Augusti, "whom you can at least with more propriety use as an
intercessor, because she is under obligations to the Knight of the
Fleece,--the Countess of Romeiro." "O, why not, indeed?" said Schoppe,
struck with the idea.
The Lector--who was one of those men that never use their own hands,
but love to do everything by a third, sixth, farthest possible one,
after a system of _handing_ analogous to the fingering-system--urged
upon the reflecting Schoppe his ready willingness to introduce him to
Linda, and her ability to do something in this "_épineuse affaire_."
Schoppe went up and down in a state of unusual distraction between two
opinions,--shook his head often and vehemently, and yet stopped
suddenly,--fluttered and shook still more violently,--looked at the
Lector with a glance of sharper inquiry,--at length he stood fast,
struck down with both arms, and said: "Thunder and lightning seize the
world! Done, then! So be it! I go right to her. Heavens, why am I then,
so to speak, so ridiculous in your eyes--I mean just now?" The courtly
Lector had, however, transformed the smile of the lips into a smile of
the eyes only. On Schoppe's face stood the warmth and haste of the
self-conqueror. As men can be at once hard of hearing amidst the common
din of life, and yet open to the finest musical tones,[65] so were
Schoppe's inner ears hardened against the vulgar noise of ordinary
impulse, but drank in thirstily all soft, low melodies of holier souls.
The Lector--loving the Count far more heartily than he was loved by
him--was for taking the Librarian by storm at once to the castle,
because just now was the most favorable hour, of court-recess, from
half past four to half past five. Schoppe said he was on hand. In the
castle Augusti commanded a servant, who understood him, to usher
Schoppe into the mirror-room. He did so; brought lights immediately
after; and Schoppe went slowly up and down, with his annoying retinue
of dumb, nimble orang-outangs-of-the-looking-glass, rehearsing his part
and calculating the future. Singularly did he feel himself seized now
with his young, fresh sense of that former freedom which he was just
suspending. He recognized Liberty, held her fast, looked upon her, and
said to her, "Go away, only for a little while; save him, and then come
back again!"
The multiplication of himself in the mirrors disgusted him. "Must ye
torment me, ye I's?" said he, and he now represented to himself
how he was standing before the richest, brightest moment and finest
gold-balance of his existence, how a grave and a great life lay in this
balance, and how his "I" must vanish from him, like the copied glass
I's round about him. Suddenly a joy darted through him, not beyond the
worth of his resolve, but greater than its occasion.
At last, near doors flew open, and then the nearest. Then entered a
tall form, with head still half turned back, all enveloped in long,
black silk. Like an enraptured moon on high tops of foliage, there
stood before him, on the dark, silken cloud, a luxuriantly blooming,
unadorned head, full of life, with black eyes full of lightnings, with
dark roses on the dazzling face, and with an enthroning, snowy brow
under the brown, overhanging locks. It seemed to Schoppe, when she
looked upon him, as if his life lay in full sunshine; and he felt, with
embarrassment, that he stood very near the queen of souls. "Herr von
Augusti," she began, earnestly, "has told me that you wished to put
into my hands a petition for your sick friend. Name it to me clearly
and freely. I will give you, with pleasure, a frank and decided
answer."
All recollections of his part were sunk to the bottom, and dissolved
within him; but the great guardian-genius, who flew along invisible
beside his life, plunged with fiery wings into his heart, and he
answered, with inspiration, "So, too, will I answer you. My Albano is
mortally sick; he has been in a fever since last evening. He loved the
departed Fraülein Liana. He lies bound to the condor's-wing of fever,
and is swept to and fro. He falls upon his knees at every knell of the
clock, and, lying close to the sunny side of fancy, prays more and more
fervently, 'Appear to me, and give me peace!' He stands upright and
dressed on the high pyre of the fantastic flame-circle, and pants and
bakes with thirst, and dries and shrivels up dreadfully, as I can
plainly see ..."
"_O, finissez donc?_" said the Countess, who had bent back with a
shudder, and slowly shaken her Venus head. "Frightful! Your petition?"
"Only the Princess Idoine," said he, coming to himself, "can fulfil it,
and rescue him, by appearing to him, and whispering him peace, since
she is said to be such a near ass-[66], cos-[67], copy, and mock-sun of
the deceased." "Is that your petition?" said the Countess. "My
greatest," said Schoppe. "Has his father sent you hither?" said she.
"No, I," said he; "his father, to be clear and free and explicit with
you, disapproves of it."
"Are you not the painter of the sneezing self-portrait?" she asked.
He bowed, and said, "Most certainly." Having replied that in an
hour he should hear the decision, she made him a short, respectful,
leave-taking obeisance, and the simple, noble form left him gazing
after her in rapture; and he was provoked that the childish mirrors
round about should dare to send after the rare goddess so many shadows
of herself.
At home he found, indeed, the crazed young man, whose ears alone lived
any longer among realities, again on his knees at the sixth stroke of
the clock; but his hope bloomed now under a warmer heaven. After an
hour, the Lector appeared, and said, with a significant smile, the
thing was going on right well; he was to get an opinion from the
physician, and then the decision would be accordingly.
Herr von Augusti gave him, with courtier-like explicitness, the more
definite intelligence, that the Countess had flown to the Princess,
whose regard for her future travelling companion she knew, and told her
she would, in Idoine's case, do it without hesitation. The Princess
considered with herself a little, and said this was a thing which only
her sister could decide. Both hastened to her, pictured to her the
whole case, and Idoine asked, with alarm, how she could help her
resemblance and her well-meant journey hither, that they should wish to
draw her so deeply into such fantastic entanglements. At this moment
Julienne came in, pale, and said she had only since morning received
intelligence of this, and it was the duty of such a good soul to grant
the apparition. Then Idoine, considering herself and everything,
answered, with dignity, it was not at all the unusualness and
impropriety of the thing which she dreaded, but the untruthfulness and
unworthiness, as she would have to play false with the holy name of a
departed soul, and cheat a sick man with a superficial similarity. The
Countess said she knew of no answer to that, and yet her feelings were
not against the thing. All were silent and perplexed. The conscientious
Idoine was moved in the tenderest heart that ever hung trembling under
the weight of such a decision upon a life. At last Linda said, with her
sharp-sightedness, "Properly speaking, however, after all, there is no
moral man to be deceived in the case, but a sleeper, a dreamer; and
imagination and delusion are not, in fact, going to be strengthened in
him, but to be subdued." Julienne drew Idoine aside, probably to
portray to her more nearly the youth, whom she had not seen any more
than Linda. Soon after, Idoine came back with her decision.
"If the physician will give a certificate that a human life hangs upon
this, then I must conquer my feeling. God knows," she added, with
emotion, "that I am quite as willing to do as to forbear, if I only
know first what is right. It is my first untruth."
The Lector hastened from Schoppe to the Doctor, in order to bring back
with him from the latter, among many turns of expression, just the most
convenient certificate.
Schoppe waited long and anxiously. After seven o'clock came a note from
Augusti: "Hold yourself in readiness; punctually at eight o'clock comes
the privy person." Forthwith, by way of sparing the patient's feverish
eyes, he put out the wax-candles, and lighted the magic hanging-lamp of
isinglass in the chamber.
He kindled the sick youth to new fever with stories of people who had
come back from the tomb, and advised him to kneel with long, ardent
prayers before the fast gate of death, in order that her mild, merciful
spirit might open it, and healingly touch him on the threshold.
Just before eight, the Princess and her sister came in their sedans.
Schoppe was himself seized with a shudder at the sight of this risen
Liana. With sparkling eye and firmly shut mouth, he led the fair
sisters into the _coulisse_, whence they already heard, out on the
adjoining stage, the youth praying. But Idoine's tender limbs trembled
at the unpractised part in which her truthful spirit must belie itself.
She wept upon it, and her fair, holy mouth was full of mute sighs. Her
sister had to embrace her often in order to encourage her heart.
The clock struck. With a frightful fervor the frantic one within prayed
for peace. The tongue of the hour was imperative. Idoine sent up a look
as a prayer to God. Schoppe slowly opened the door.
Within, blooming in the magic dusk, with arms and eyes uplifted to
heaven, knelt a beautiful son of the gods in the enchanted circle of
madness, whose only and continual cry was, "O peace! peace!" Then, with
inspiration, as if sent by God, the virgin stepped in, clothed in
white, like the deceased in the dream-temple and on the bier, with the
long veil at her side, but taller in stature, less rosy, and with a
sharper, brighter starlight in the blue ether of the eye, and more
resembling Liana among the blest, and sublimely, as if, like a
renovated spring, she had come back again from the stars, so she
appeared before him. His enchaining, fiery look terrified her. In a low
and faltering tone, she stammered, "Albano, have peace!" "Liana?"
groaned his whole breast, and, sinking down, he covered his weeping
eyes. "Peace!" cried she, more strongly and courageously, because his
eye no longer smote and staggered her; and she disappeared as a
superhuman spirit vanishes from men.
The sisters departed silently, and full of high remembrance and
satisfaction. Schoppe found him still kneeling, but looking away
enraptured, like a storm-sick mariner on tropical seas, who, after long
sleep, opens his eyes on a still, rosy-red evening, just before the
going down of the blazing sun; and the dashing wake travels on, like a
bed of roses and flames, into the sun, and the flashing cloud flies
asunder in mute fire-balls, and the distant ships float high in the
evening-red, and swim far away over the waves. So was it with the
youth.
"I have my peace now, good Schoppe," he said, softly, "and now I will
sleep in quiet." Transfigured, but pale, he rose, laid himself on the
bed, and in a few minutes a heart wearied with so long a wading in the
hot fever-sands sank down on the fresh, green oasis of slumber.
TWENTY-FIFTH JUBILEE.
The Dream.--The Journey.
99. CYCLE.
It was late when the Knight of the Fleece arrived. Schoppe showed him
joyfully the sleeping countenance, whose rose-buds seemed to burst as
in a moist, warm night. The Knight manifested great exhilaration at
this, and still more did Doctor Sphex, who looked in quite late. The
latter found the pulse not only full, but even slow, and on the way to
a still greater repose. He appealed, at the same time, to _Chaudeson_,
and several other professional examples, that great mental sufferings
had often been relieved and removed very successfully by the internal
opium of lethargy.
At last Schoppe acquainted the father with Idoine's whole method of
cure. Gaspard haughtily replied, "You still, however, knew my opinion,
Mr. Librarian?" "Certainly, but my own too," said, with bitterness, the
disturbed Schoppe. The Knight, however, entered no further into
anything,--quite after his manner of never giving the least light upon
his real self, however much it might gain thereby,--but gave the friend
a very cold signal of retreat.
The next morning, Schoppe found his beloved still in the soul's cradle
of sleep. How he budded and bloomed! How slowly, yet strongly, like a
freeman's, moved the breath in his unchained breast! Meanwhile,
Gaspard's packed carriage, which was to trundle the youth away to
Italy, stopped already, at this early hour, before the door, with its
snorting, pawing horses, and the Knight expected every minute the
waking up and the--jumping in.
The physician came also, praised crisis and pulse, added that the
cream-o'-tartar (which he had prescribed among the rest) was the cream
of life, and said, right to the father's face, when the latter was
about to wake the youth for starting, he had never yet, in all his
praxis, known any one who had so little acquaintance with critical
points as he; any waker would be in this case a murderer, and, as
physician, he most expressly forbade it.
From hour to hour Schoppe grew more and more out of humor with the
father; he thanked God now--when he considered how the Knight's
treatment had beat upon and washed over this fruit-bearing island--that
Albano had not only the heat, but also the hardness of a rock.
Dr. Sphex, equally fond of his art and his reputation, watched like a
threatening Esculapius-serpent over the pillow, and grew more
hilarious. Schoppe lingered there, nerved against any degree of
severity. The Knight took leave of every one in his son's name, and
sent all soft hearts home; for the foster-mother, Albina and others,
were not suffered so much as to see the sleeper,--because tears were to
him a cold, disagreeable Scotch mist. The Princess and her retinue were
already streaming along with the gay pennons of hope on their way to
the shining Italy.
The evening was now irrevocably set for departure, especially as, in
the night, the sleeping Liana was to be carried into the bed-chamber,
which men never again open.
Already was the blooming Endymion overspread with smiles and radiance
of joy, as a precursive morning-star of his waking day. His soul
roamed, smiling, through the sparkling-cave of subterranean treasures,
which the genius of dream unlocks; while the common waking eye stood
blind before the spirit's Eldorado, so near and yet walled round by
sleep. At last an unknown over-measure of bliss opened Albano's
eye,--the youth immediately rose with vigor,--threw himself with the
rapture of a first recognition on his father's breast, and seemed, in
the first dreamy intoxication, not to remember the spent storm behind
him, but only the blissful dream,--and in ecstasy related it thus:--
"I sailed in a white skiff on a dark stream which shot along between
smooth, high marble walls. Chained to my solitary wave, I flew
anxiously through the winding, rocky narrows, into which, at times, a
thunderbolt darted. Suddenly the stream whirled round and descended,
growing broader and wilder, over a winding stairway. There lay a broad,
flat, gray land around me, tinged by the sickle of the sun with a
loathsome, lurid, earthy light. Far from me stood a coiled-up
Lethe-flood, which crawled round and round itself. On an immense
stubble-field innumerable Walkyres,[68] on spider's-threads, shot by to
and fro with arrowy swiftness, and sang, 'The fight of life 'tis we
that weave'; then they let one flying summer after another soar
invisibly to heaven.
"Overhead swept great worlds; on every one dwelt a human being; he
stretched out his arms imploringly after another, who also stood on his
world and looked across; but the globes ran with the hermits round the
sun-sickle, and the prayers were in vain. I, too, felt a yearning.
Infinitely far before me reposed an outstretched mountain-ridge, whose
entire back, looming out of the clouds, glittered with gold and
flowers. Painfully dragged the skiff through the flat, lazy waste of
the shallow stream. Then came a sandy tract, and the stream squeezed
through a narrow channel with my jammed-up skiff. And near me a plough
turned up something long; but when it came up it was covered with a
pall--and the dark cloth melted away again into a black sea.
"The mountain-ridge stood much nearer, but longer and higher before me,
and cut through the lofty stars with its purple flowers, over which a
green wild-fire flew to and fro. The worlds, with the solitary beings,
swept away over the mountains, and came not back; and the heart yearned
to mount up and soar away after them. 'I must, I will,' cried I,
rowing. After me came stalking an angry giant, who mowed away the waves
with a sharp moon-sickle; over me ran a little condensed tempest made
out of the compressed atmosphere of the earth; it was called the
poison-ball of heaven, and sent down incessant pealings.
"On the high mountain-ridge a friendly flower called me up; the
mountain waded to meet and dam up the sea, but it almost reached now to
the worlds that were flying over, and its great fire-flowers seemed
only like red buds scattered through the deep ether. The water
boiled,--the giant and the poison-ball grew grimmer,--two long clouds
stood pointing down like raised drawbridges, and the rain rushed down
over them in leaping waves; the water and my little bark rose, but not
enough. 'No waterfall,' said the giant, laughing, 'runs _upward_ here!'
"Then I thought of my death, and named softly a holy name. Suddenly
there came swimming along high in heaven a white world under a veil, a
single glistening tear fell from heaven into the sea, and it rose with
a roar,--all waves fluttered with fins, broad wings grew on my little
skiff, the white world went over me, and the long stream snatched
itself up thundering, with the skiff on its head, out of its dry bed,
and stood on its fountain and in heaven, and the flowery mountain-ridge
beside it, and lightly glided my winged skiff through green
rosy splendor and through soft, musical murmuring of a long
flower-fragrance, into an immense radiant morning-land.
"What a broad, bright, enchanted Eden! A clear, glad morning sun, with
no tears of night, expanded with an encircling rose-wreath, looked
toward me and rose no higher. Up and down sparkled the meadows, bright
with morning dew. 'Love's tears of joy lie down below there,' sang the
hermits overhead on the long, sweeping worlds, 'and we, too, will shed
them!' I flew to the shore, where honey bloomed, while on the other
bloomed wine; and as I went, my gayly decorated little skiff, with
broad flowers puffed out for sails, followed, dancing after me over the
waves. I went into high blooming woods, where noon and night dwelt side
by side, and into green vales full of flower-twilights, and up sunny
heights, where blue days dwelt, and flew down again into the blooming
skiff, and it floated on, deep in wave-lightnings, over precious
stones, into the spring, to the rosy sun. All moved eastward, the
breezes and the waves, and the butterflies and the flowers, which had
wings, and the worlds overhead; and their giants sang down, 'We fondly
look downward,--we fondly glide downward, to the land of love, to the
golden land.'
"Then I saw my face in the waves, and it was a virgin's, full of
high rapture and love. And the brook flowed with me, now through
wheat-fields; now through a little, fragrant night, through which the
sun was seen behind sparkling glow-worms; now through a twilight,
wherein warbled a golden nightingale. Now the sun arched the tears of
joy into a rainbow, and I sailed through, and behind me they sank down
again, burning like dew. I drew nearer to the sun, and he wore already
the harvest-wreath. 'It is already noon,' sang the hermits over my
head.
"Slowly, as bees over honey-pastures, swam the thronging clouds in the
dark blue, over the divine region. From the mountain-ridge a milky-way
arched over, which sank into the sun. Bright lands unrolled themselves.
Harps of light, strung with rays, rang in the fire; a tri-clang of
three thunders agitated the land. A ringing storm-rain of dew and
radiance filled with glitter the wide Eden; it dissolved in drops, like
a weeping ecstasy. Pastoral songs floated through the pure blue air,
and a few lingering, rosy clouds danced out of the tempest after
the tones. Then the near morning-sun looked faintly out of a pale
lily-garland, and the hermits sang up there, 'O bliss, O bliss! the
evening blooms!' There was stillness, and twilight. The worlds held
themselves in silence round the sun, and encircled him with their fair
giants, resembling the human form, but higher and holier. As on the earth
the noble form of man creeps downward by the dark mirror-chain of animal
life, so did it, overhead there, mount up along a line of pure, bright,
free gods, sent from God. The worlds touched the sun, and dissolved
upon it; the sun, too, fell to pieces, in order to flow down into the
land of love, and became a sea of radiance. Then the fair gods and the
fair goddesses stretched out their arms towards each other, and touched
each other, trembling for love; but, like vibrating strings, they
disappeared from sight in their blissful trembling, and their being
became only an invisible melody; and the tones sang to each other, 'I
am with thee, and am with God'; and others sang, 'The sun was God.'
"Then the golden fields glistened with innumerable tears of joy, which
had fallen during the invisible embrace; eternity grew still, and the
breezes slept, and only the lingering, rosy light of the dissolved sun
softly stirred the flowers.
"I was alone, looked round, and my lonely heart longed dyingly for
a death. Then the white world with the veil passed slowly up the
milky-way; like a soft moon, it still glimmered a little; then it sank
down from heaven upon the holy land, and melted away upon the ground;
only the high veil remained. Then the veil withdrew itself into the
ether, and an exalted, godlike virgin, great as the other goddesses,
stood upon the earth and in heaven. All rosy radiance of the swimming
sun collected in her, and she burned in a robe of evening-red. All
invisible voices addressed her, and asked, 'Who is the Father of men,
and their Mother, and their Brother, and their Sister, and their Lover,
and their Beloved, and their Friend?' The virgin lifted steadfastly her
blue eye, and said, 'It is God!' And thereupon she looked at me
tenderly out of the high splendors, and said, 'Thou knowest me not,
Albano, for thou art yet living.' 'Unknown virgin,' said I, 'I gaze
with the pangs of a measureless love upon thy exalted countenance. I
have surely known thee; name thy name.' 'If I name it, thou wilt
awake,' said she. 'Name it!' I cried. She answered, and I awoke."
100. CYCLE.
"Thou canst surely keep awake and travel one night?" With this
question, his father hastily conducted him to the carriage that stood
ready for the journey, in order to steal him away while yet in the
midst of the glowing dream, with his recollections lulled to slumber,
and in order especially to get the start of the pale bride, who this
very night, by the same road, was to go home to the last heritage of
humanity. "In the carriage thou shalt hear all," replied Gaspard to his
son's mild question respecting their destination. Still entranced with
the light of the shining land of dreams, Albano willingly and blindly
obeyed. He still saw Liana in lofty, divine form, standing on the
evening-red ground of the sun, which was bespangled with the dew-drops
of joy, and his eye, full of splendor, reached not down into the
earth-cellar, and to the narrow cast-off chrysalis-shell of the
liberated and soaring Psyche.
Schoppe accompanied him to the torch-lighted carriage, but in perfect
silence, in order not to awaken his heart by intimating the destination
of the journey. He pressed with warmth the hand of the beautiful and
beloved youth, which returned the pressure, and said nothing but "We
shall see each other again, brother!" Thereupon, honored by no parting
look from the imperious father, he stepped back with emotion from his
friend, who continued to wave his warm farewells; and the carriage
rolled off, and, leaving a long gleam of torch-light behind it, flew
out into the high, starry night.
Freshly and meaningly did the glimmering creation broaden out before
the convalescent. Saturn was just rising, and the god of time set
himself, as a soft, flashing jewel, in the glittering magic belt of
heaven. With sealed eyes was the unconscious youth conducted down from
the pastoral cottage of his early years, and out of the shepherd's vale
of his first love, away where the great, eternal constellations of art
beckoned, into the divine land, where the dark ether of heaven is
golden, and the lofty ruins of the earth are clothed with grace, and
the nights are days. No eye looked over to the heights of Blumenbühl,
from which, at this very moment, a black train of coaches was passing
slowly down, with upright-burning funeral torches, like a moving
shadow-realm, to convey the still, good heart, wherein Albano and God
lived, with its dead wounds, to the soft place of rest. Flaming rolled
the torch-carriage up the mountain-road towards Italy.
Tearless and far-gazing, Albano's eye rested on the glimmering,
ceaselessly moving fountain-wheel of time, eternally drawing up
constellations in the east, and pouring them out in the west; and his
childlike hand gently clasped his father's.
TWENTY-SIXTH JUBILEE.[69]
The Journey.--The Fountain.--Rome.--The Forum.
101. CYCLE.
So long as the night lasted, the images of Albano's dream went on
gleaming with the constellations, and not until the bright morning rose
were they all extinguished. Gaspard told him, smilingly, he was on his
way to Italy. He received the intelligence of his going abroad with an
unexpected composure. He merely asked where his Schoppe was. When told
that _he_ had not been disposed to join them, then did he seem to see
all at once in fancy's eye the Linden-city come following after him
over the mountains and valleys, and his last friend standing in the
middle of the market-place all alone, engaged in mock-play with
himself, by way of quieting his true, strong heart, which would fain
worry down its grief and hold fast its love. With this friend, whom he
would not let go out of his soul, Albano drew after him, as by a
Jupiter's-chain, the whole stage and world of his past, and every sad
scene came close up to him. Cities and lands rolled along before him
unseen. The waves which sorrow lashes up around us, stand high between
us and the world, and make our ship solitary in the midst of a haven
full of vessels. He turned away with a shudder from every beautiful
virgin; she reminded him, like a dirge, of her who was pale in death;
forever did Liana's white face, uncovered,--like a corpse in
Italy,[70]--seem to be travelling along on the endless way to the
grave, and only indistinguishable forms with masks followed after her
alive. So is it with man and his grief; by a process the reverse of
ship-drawing, in which the living drag the dead along with them, here
the dead takes the living with him, and draws them after him far into
his cold realm.
Time gradually unfolded his grief, instead of weakening it. His life
had become a night, in which the moon is under the earth, and he could
not believe that Luna would gradually return with an increasing bow of
light. Not joys, but only actions,--those remote stars of night,--were
now his aim. He held it unjust to keep back in the presence of his
father the tears which often forced themselves from him in the midst of
conversation, merely because his father took no interest in them; still
he showed him, nevertheless, by the energy of his discourses and
resolves, the vigorous youth. Only the reproach which he had cast upon
himself for his guilt in Liana's death had suffered itself to be
swallowed up in the peace which Idoine had given him, although he now
held her apparition to have been only a feverish waking dream about
Liana.
His father kept a profound silence about Idoine's appearance on the
stage of action, as well as all disagreeable recollections. He spoke
much, however, of Italy and of the spoils of art which Albano would
acquire there, especially through the company of the Princess, the
Counsellor of Arts, and the German gentleman, who had gone on before
them, and whom one might soon overtake. The son turned to him at last
with the bold inquiry whether he really had a sister still, and related
the adventure with the Baldhead. "It might well be," said Gaspard, with
a disagreeable jocosity, "that thou hadst still more sisters and
brothers than I knew of. But what I know is, that thy twin-sister
Severina died this year in her cloister. For what, then, dost thou take
the night-adventure?" "I should almost think it a dream," he replied.
Here, accidentally, his hand found its way to his pocket, and to his
astonishment struck upon the half-ring which his sister had presented
him. The strangeness of the whole thing sank deep among his sensations,
and that night of horror passed swiftly and coldly through his noon. He
and his father examined the ends of the divided ring, on each of which
a broken-off signature ended abruptly. "There is _nothing_ miraculous,
however," said the Knight. "How do we know, then, that there is
anything natural?" said Albano. "Mystery," replied Gaspard, "or the
spirit-world, dwells only in the spirit." "We must," the son continued,
"even in the case of the commonest optical tricks, derive our pleasure
from something else than the resolving of the deception of fancy into a
deception of the senses, because otherwise the magic would necessarily
please us more _after_ the solution than before. These are the points
and poles of human nature, upon which the eternal polar clouds hang.
Our maps of the kingdom of truth and spirits are the map-stones, which
stand for ruins and villages; these are _lies_, but still they are
_likenesses_. The spirit, forever an exile among bodies, desires
spirits." "That is just about what I meant, too," said Gaspard.
Albano, however, insisted more distinctly upon his decision respecting
the Baldhead and the sister. "Anything else," said the Knight, quite
petulantly; "it is to me a very disagreeable conversation. Take the
world in _thy_ way and be quiet!" "Dear father," asked Albano, with
surprise, "do you mean at some future time to definitely enlighten me
on the subject?" "So soon as I can," said the Knight, abruptly, with
such sharp and stinging glances at the son, that the latter, flinching
from them, as from arrows, hastily bent away his head out of the
carriage; when he for the first time observed that his father did not
mean him at all; for he still continued to look as sharply in the same
direction as if he were close upon the point of falling into his old
torpor.
Gaspard's expression about the indwelling of the spiritual world within
the spirit, and his look, and the thought of his palsy lent a romantic
awfulness to the hour and the silence in Albano's eyes. Down below on
the bank of the stream stood a concourse of people, and one came
running like a fugitive or a spokesman out of the crowd. A boy at
some distance threw himself down on a hill, and laid his ear to the
earth, in order to hear somewhat accurately the rolling of their
carriage-wheels. In the village where they made their noonday halt
there was an incessant tolling. Their host was at the same time a
miller; the din of waves and wheels filled the whole house; and
canary-birds sent their additional jargoning through the jargon.
There are moments when the two worlds, the earthly and the spiritual,
sweep by near to each other, and when earthly day and heavenly night
touch each other in twilights. As the shadows of the shining clouds of
heaven run along over the blossoms and harvests of earth, so does
heaven universally cast upon the common surface of reality its light
shadows and reflections. So did Albano find it now. The ring and the
mystic word of his cold father had dazzled him like lightning. Below at
the house-door he found a maiden, who carried along before her a box of
citrons. Suddenly and unpleasantly the tolling stopped; he looked
up to the belfry, and a white hawk sat upon the vane. Soon came the
bell-ringer himself, to get something to drink, and began upon the
chamberlain with strong and yet not ill-meant curses, for having kept
him tolling there these three weeks, and said he only wished that such
a one as that distinguished personage himself had been the previous
year had only been obliged to toll regularly three days after the
decease of the blessed daughter. He urged the miller to "buy some of
the citrons, because they were good, juicy, and had a thin rind; and he
and the 'parson's boy'[71] must recognize them as coming from the
burial of the gracious Fräulein; and in fourteen days, at all events,
he would need some for the assembled clergy, as bride-father!" "What
are the customs here?" asked Albano.
"Why, you see, when any one dies," said the sexton, very respectful and
friendly, "then the parson and my littleness get a citron, and so does
the corpse too; but if any one is married, then the clergy get the
same, and so also the bride. This is the fashion with us, my most
gracious master."
Albano went out into the garden back of the house, into which the
exposed mill-wheels threw their silver sparks, and which was as if
swallowed up in the splendor and uproar of the open water. While he
looked into the glimmering, flying whirlpools, the citrons which the
corpse as well as the bride got hovered before his excited mind.
Emotion is full of similes. Time was, thought he, when Liana should
have journeyed to the citron-land, and into the low woods where the
snow of blossoms and the gold of fruits play together between green and
blue, and there she was to have gained health and refreshment; now she
holds the citron in her cold, dead hand, and she is not quickened.
He looked round, and seemed to stand in a strange world. In the blue of
heaven an invisible storm without clouds swept along like a spirit;
long rows of hills shifted and sparkled with red fruits and red leaves;
out of the gay trees glowing apples were flung; and the storm flew from
summit to summit, and down upon the earth, and roared along down the
whole course of the disturbed stream. One could fancy spirits played
around the earth, or would appear upon it, so singularly seemed the
bright welkin stirred and illuminated. By this time, Albano had come
unconsciously into a dark, wooded wilderness; therein leaped, unseen,
unheard, a pure, light fountain out of the earth upon the earth; the
storm without was still, only the fountain was heard. "The holy one is
near me," said his heart. "Is not the fountain her image? Is it not the
very image of her eternal tears? Does she not press upward out of the
earth, where she dwells?" All at once he saw in his hand, as if
another's hand had laid it therein, the sketch of Linda's head which
Liana, with dying hands, had made and presented; but his fancy
powerfully impressed upon the picture the resemblance to the artist, so
clearly did he see Liana's soft face upon the paper.
He went forth again into the shining world. "How poor I am!" he cried.
"I see her upon the golden cloud which sails from the evening sun
toward morning; I see her in the cool fountain of the vale, and on the
moon, and on the flower. I see her everywhere; and she rests only on
one spot. O, how poor!" And he looked up to heaven, and a single long
cloud was floating therein, swiftly and far away.
102. CYCLE.
Thus did the days, with their cities and landscapes, fly by, and the
world mirrored itself in Albano's life as in a poem. One faculty after
another, the whole bowed harvest of his inner being, gradually rose up
again green and dripping; but, at the same time, the thorn of grief
also grew strong. While his eye and spirit were filling themselves with
the world and all spoils of knowledge, the evil spectre of pain still
kept his abode in the ruins, and came forth when the heart was alone,
and seized it.
He touched Vienna, where he must needs be pleased to be introduced to
several distinguished friends of Gaspard, who here, for the first time,
disclosed to him that he belonged not to the _Cavalleros del Turone_,
but was an Austrian Knight of the Fleece. "It is so singularly familiar
to me here," said Albano; "whence can this arise?" "From some
resemblance to another city," said Gaspard; "whoever travels much comes
out of like cities into like." Every day his father grew more dear and
intelligible to him, and yet no more confidential or intimate. After a
warm day and familiar conversation with Gaspard, one stood, at the
next succeeding interview, again in the very antechamber of his
acquaintance; as in the case of hard-natured maidens, after every
May-month's day the melted May-frost begins to fall anew. Age respects
love, but, unlike youth, it respects little the signs of love. However,
Albano maintained the pride of letting his father see him wholly and
with all his differences, without hiding his summer from the face of
winter.
From day to day Gaspard found letters to himself at the post-offices,
particularly from Pestitz, as Albano saw externally by the post-marks,
for not one was handed over to him. He desired more and more to
overtake the Princess, who was now only one day's journey in advance of
them. They saw already those giants of winter, the Swiss and Tyrolese
Alps, in their encampment; those sons of the gods stood, armed with
avalanches and cataracts and winters, sentinels around the divine land
where gods and men reciprocally imitated each other. How often did
Albano, when the sun at evening glowingly blended with the snow-clad
Alpine heights, gaze with a pang of sadness at those thrones, which he
had once beheld quite otherwise, much more golden, so hopefully and
trustingly, from _Isola Bella_! The heights of thy past life, said he
to himself, are also white, and no Alpine horns any longer sound up
there, among serene, sunny days, and thou art deep in the valley!
They passed, even now, the popular festival of a belated vintage. The
Knight informed himself about everything with the curiosity of a
wine-dealer, and with the science of a vine-dresser. So did he botanize
universally upon the earth after every spear and sprig of knowledge.
Albano wondered at this, since he had heretofore believed that Gaspard
sought and strove after nothing but the Paris--and Hesperides-apples of
art, because, in his station, he could have no occasion for any other
fruits, or need their meat and their kernel, either to enjoy or to
plant them.
They sank into the depths of the mountains of Tyrol. The heights stood
already wrapped in the close, white bier-cloth of winter, and through
the valleys the cold storm went to and fro, the only living thing.
Albano's longing after the mild land of youth grew, between the storms
and the Alps, higher and higher; and Rome's image, the nearer it
approached him, assumed more colossal dimensions. Gaspard made the
journey go on wings, in order to anticipate the rain-clouds of autumn.
In a dark travelling night they worked their passage, as it were, away
through the mountains, like their companion, the river Adige, which
tears up a giant rock, and heaves it into the mild plain, and softly
speeds on its level way. The sun appeared,--and Italy.
It had rained. A bland air fluttered from the cypress hills through the
valley, and through the vine-festoons of the mulberry-trees, and had
forced its way along between blossoms and the fruits of the Seville
oranges. The Adige seemed to rest, like a curling giant-snake, upon the
motley-colored landscape of country-houses and olive-groves, and to set
rainbows upon one another. Life played in the ether; only summer birds
floated in the light blue; only the Venus-chariot of pleasure rolled
over the soft hills.
Albano's full soul gushed out, as it were, into the broad bed which led
him from the mild plain to the magnificent Rome! "When we journey
back," said Gaspard, "then remember thy approach." They stopped at a
village with great stone houses. Albano was looking upon the warm
out-o'-door life around him, the uncovered head, the naked breast, and
the sparkling eyes of the men, the great sheep with silken wool, the
little, black, lively pigs, and the black turkey-cocks, when he
suddenly heard his name and a German greeting from a balcony overhead.
It was the Princess; her carriages stood just aside; Bouverot and
Fraischdöfer were with her. How like balsam it steals through the
heart, in a strange land, and though it were the loveliest, to meet
again a brother or a sister inhabitant of a rougher land, as if one
were meeting in the second world a kindred son of earth! The Adige,
too, that had previously in the wild mountains accompanied him under
the name of the Etsch, followed him with its fairer designation into
the plain. The Princess seemed to him, he knew not why, to have become
milder, more maidenly in form and look, and he reproached himself with
his earlier error. But he only committed a later one. Beyond Vienna her
strongly drawn physiognomy was surpassed by sharper southern ones, and
the striking[72] colors in which she loved to array herself were
outshone by the Italian. A strange soil is a masquerade ball-room or a
watering-place hall, where only human relations, and no political ones,
prevail, and in a strange land men are least strangers. All touched
each other in friendliness, as strange hands feel after and grasp each
other during the ascent of mountains. With what veneration did Albano
look upon the Princess! For he thought, "She would fain have taken the
departed one with her into the healing Eden. O, the saint would indeed
be happy this morning, and her blue eye would weep for bliss." Then his
did so, but not for bliss; and thus are the fire-works of life, like
others, built always by and upon water. Then was the oath solemnly
sworn within him before the beautiful face of the dead Liana: "I will
be truly the friend of this her friend!" Man plays a new part in the
drama of life most warmly and best; over our introductory sermons the
Holy Spirit floats, brooding with the wings of a dove; only by and by
do the eggs lie cold. Albano, never yet initiated into any friendship
but a man's, worshipped that of woman as a rising star, and for this,
as for the former, he found far more capacities of sacrifice treasured
up in his warm soul than for love. Man is in friendship what woman is in
love, and the reverse; namely, more covetous of the object than of the
feeling for it.
With new swelling sails and flying streamers, in gayly decorated
singing-vessels, with propitious side winds, did the gay passage fly
through cities and pastures.
Nothing hangs out over the _corso_ of a long journey a finer festoon of
fruits and flowers, for a carriage which goes before, than a couple of
carriages coming after. What fellowship of joy and danger in night
quarters! What bespeaking of lines of march! What joy over the
adventures past and to come, namely, over the reports of the same! And
how each loves the others!
Only toward Bouverot Albano showed a steady coldness; but the Knight
was friendly. Albano, brought up more among books than among men, often
wondered within himself, that in the former the same difference of
sentiments passed by him so lightly, which among the latter assailed
him so sharply. At last his father asked him upon one occasion, "Why
dost thou demean thyself so strangely toward Herr von Bouverot? Nothing
exasperates more than a considerate, quiet hatred; a passionate hatred
does so far less." "Because it is my law," he answered, "to flee and to
hate the everlasting untruthfulness of men in their connections with
each other. Out of mere humanity to place one's self on a par with
unlike persons, designedly to make a friendly face to any one, to have
such a feeling towards a man, that one is not at liberty to speak it
out to him on the spot, that may well be deemed complete slavery, and
confounds the purest." "Whoso will love nothing but his likeness,"
replied Gaspard, "has nothing but himself to love. Von Bouverot," he
added, laughing, "is, after all, a brave host and travelling
_compagnon_." Albano, who could withstand even people whom he
respected, made no inquisition upon his father, but thought the German
gentleman only the more despicable.
That gentleman, born a pettifogger and pedler, had, it must be
observed, cleared a pathway of deep footprints for himself in the snow
of the Knight and the Princess,--both of whom, like all long
travellers,[73] were uncommonly avaricious,--by overseeing and
overreaching all hosts and Italians in settling up the _Patto_,[74] and
even by his understanding the art of being profoundly coarse just at
the right time, whereas upon turning from the host to the Princess he
would become as much a man of the world again as Fontenelle or any
Frenchman, who in such cases always counts up and curses longer than he
eats. The Knight of the Fleece, who, as he confessed, had never
travelled so cheaply, covered him, therefore, with the laurel which
grew all about here, and looked as gay as he had never looked before.
Only to his son was the cold, wrathful, coarse man a volcano, ejecting
slime and water. Ride a mile ahead of a crowned head or a classic
author, who is also one, and in general before people who have money,
but not to spare, and only save them a few gold pieces a day,--never
shall you have seen the said heads more glad or grateful than in such a
case!
Everywhere Albano would fain have alighted, and stepped in among great
ruins and into the splendor of the scattered insignia, which had been
lost by the conquerors of the world out of their triumphal chariots on
the way to Rome. But the Knight advised him to spare and save his eyes
and inspiration for Rome itself. How his heart beat, when at last in
the waste _Campagna_, which lay full of lava-eruptions around the nest
of the Roman eagles, those world-driven storm-birds, they rolled along
over the Flaminian road! But he and Gaspard felt themselves wonderfully
oppressed. One seemed to be wading through the stagnant lake of a
sultry sulphurous atmosphere, which his father ascribed to the
brimstone huts at Baccano,--he thirsted for the snow on the distant
mountains,--the heavens were dark-blue and still,--single lofty clouds
flew arrow-swift through the silent wilderness. A man in the distance
set down again an urn which he had dug up, and prayed, anxiously
looking to heaven, and telling his beads. Albano turned toward the
mountains, to which the evening sun was sinking, as if dissolved in
piercing splendor. All at once the Knight ordered the postilion to
stop, who passionately threw up his arms toward heaven, while it went
on rumbling under the carriage, and exclaimed, "Holy mother of God, an
earthquake!" But Gaspard touched his son, who seemed intoxicated with
the splendors of sunset, and said, pointing, "_Ecco Roma!_" Albano
looked, and saw in the depths of the distance the dome of St. Peter's
gleaming in the sun. The sun went down, the earth quaked once more, but
in his spirit nothing was save Rome.
103. CYCLE.
Half an hour after the earthquake, the heavens swathed themselves in
seas and dashed them down in masses and in torrents. The naked
_Campagna_ and heath were covered with the mantle of rain. Gaspard was
silent,--the heavens black,--the great thought stood alone in Albano,
that he was hastening on towards the bloody scaffold and the throne
scaffolding of humanity, the heart of a cold, dead, heathen-world, the
eternal Rome; and when he heard, on the _Ponte Molle_, that he was now
going across the Tiber, he felt as if the past had risen from the
dead,--as if the stream of time ran backward, and he were sailing on
it; under the streams of heaven he heard the seven old mountain-streams
rushing and roaring, which once came down from Rome's hills, and with
seven arms uphove the world from its foundations.
At length the constellation of the mountain city of God, that stood so
broad before him, opened out into nights; cities with scattered lights
lay up and down, and the bells (which to his ear were alarm-bells)
sounded out the fourth[75] hour, when the carriage rolled through the
triumphal gate of the city, the _Porta del Popolo_; then the moon rent
her black heavens, and poured down out of the cleft clouds the splendor
of a whole sky. There stood the Egyptian obelisk of the gateway, high
as the clouds in the night, and three streets ran gleaming apart. "So,"
said Albano to himself, as they passed through the long _corso_ to the
Tenth Ward, "thou art veritably in the camp of the god of war; here,
where he grasped the hilt of the monstrous war-sword, and with the
point made the three wounds in three quarters of the world." Rain and
splendor gushed through the vast, broad streets,--occasionally he
passed suddenly along by gardens and into broad city-deserts and
market-places of the past. The rolling of the chariot amidst the rush
and roar of the rain resembled the thunder, whose days were once holy
to this heroic city, like the thundering heaven to the thundering
earth; muffled-up forms, with little lights, stole through the dark
streets; often there stood a long palace with colonnades in the fire of
the moon, often a solitary gray column, often a single high fir-tree,
or a statue behind cypresses. Once, when there was neither rain nor
moonshine, the carriage went round the corner of a large house, on
whose roof a tall, blooming virgin, with an uplooking child on her arm,
herself directed a little hand-light, now toward a white statue, now
toward the child, and so alternately illuminated the whole group. The
friendly company made its way to the very centre of his exalted soul
and brought with it to him many a recollection; particularly was a
Roman child to him a wholly new and mighty idea.
They alighted at last at the Prince di Lauria's, Gaspard's
father-in-law, and old friend. Near his palace lay the _Campo Vaccino_
(the ancient Forum), and the radiant moon shone on the broad steps and
the three wondrous edifices of the Capitol; in the distance stood the
Colosseum. Albano ascended hesitatingly into the lighted house, before
which the carriage of the Princess stood, reluctantly turning his eye
from those heights of the world, from which once a light word like a
snow-flake rolled far and wide, and grew and grew, till at last in a
strange land it crushed a city with the weight of an avalanche.
The Princess, with her company, saw with pleasure the new-comers. The
old Prince Lauria welcomed his grandson courteously and with reserve.
His innumerable servants spoke among them almost all the languages of
Europe. Albano immediately asked the Knight after his teacher Dian,
that graft of a Greek upon a Roman; but the most human thing was
precisely that which Gaspard, as is always the case with great men, had
not thought of. They sent to his residence, which was near; he was not
at home.
They sat down to dine. The Prince immediately entertained them with his
favorite show-dish, the political progress of the world, and gave the
latest news of the French Revolution. Gazettes of the times were to him
Eternities, news was his antiques; he took all the newspapers of
Europe, and therefore kept for each a German, Russian, English, Polish
servant, to translate it for him. By the side of his satirical coldness
toward all men and things, the political and Italian zeal appeared the
stronger, with which he defended the French against the Knight, who
composedly despised them; and, indulging himself after his manner, even
in bad puns, conceded to the old Romans the _Forum_ and to the modern
the _Campo Vaccino_, and even to the ancient Gauls the field of Mars,
and to the modern French a field of March.
Albano could not conceive of there being any joking so near the
_Forum_, and thought every word must be great in this city. The cold
Lauria spoke warmly for France, like a minister, regarding only
nations, not individuals, and his sentiment pleased the youth.
Then the Princess led the stream of conversation to Rome's high art.
Fraischdörfer dissected the Colossus into limbs, and weighed them in
the narrowest scales. Bouverot engraved the giant in historical
copperplate. The Princess spoke with much warmth, but without point.
Gaspard melted all up together, as it were, into a Corinthian brass,
and comprehended all without being comprehended. On his coldly but
strongly up-shooting life-fountain he let the world play and dance like
a ball.
Albano, dissatisfied with all, kept his inspiration, sacrificing to the
unearthly gods of the past round about him, after the old fashion,
namely, with silence. Well might and could _he_ have discoursed also,
but quite otherwise, in odes, with the whole man, with streams which
mount and grow upwards. He looked more and more longingly out of the
window at the moon in the pure rain-blue and at single columns of the
Forum; out of doors there gleamed for him the greatest world. At last
he rose up, indignant and impatient, and stole down into the glimmering
glory and stepped before the Forum; but the moonlit night, that
decorative painter, which works with irregular strokes, made almost the
very stage of the scene irrecognizable to him.
What a broad, dreary plain, loftily encompassed with ruins, gardens and
temples, covered with prostrate capitals of columns, and with single
upright pillars, and with trees and a dumb wilderness! The heaped-up
ashes out of the emptied urn of time, and the potshards of a great
world flung around! He passed by three temple columns,[76] which the
earth had drawn down into itself even to the breast, and along through
the broad triumphal arch of Septimius Severus; on the right stood a
chain of columns without their temple; on the left, attached to a
Christian church, the colonnade of an ancient heathen temple deep sunk
into the sediment of time; at last the triumphal arch of Titus, and
before it, in the middle of the woody wilderness, a fountain gushing
into a granite basin.
He went up to this fountain, in order to survey the plain out of which
the thunder-months of the earth once arose; but he went along as over a
burnt-out sun, hung round with dark, dead earths. "O man, O the dreams
of man!" something within him unceasingly cried. He stood on the
granite margin turning toward the Colosseum, whose mountain-ridges of
wall stood high in the moonlight, with the deep gaps which had been
hewn in them by the scythe of Time. Sharply stood the rent and jagged
arches of Nero's golden house hard by, like murderous cutlasses. The
palatine hill lay full of green gardens, and on crumbling temple-roofs
the blooming death-garland of ivy was gnawing, and living Ranunculæ
still glowed around sunken capitals. The fountain murmured babblingly
and eternally, and the stars gazed steadfastly down with imperishable
rays upon the still battle-field, over which the winter of time had
passed without bringing after it a spring,--the fiery soul of the world
had flown up, and the cold, crumbling giant lay around;--torn asunder
were the gigantic spokes of the fly-wheel which once the very stream of
ages drove. And in addition to all this, the moon shed down her light
like eating silver-water upon the naked columns, and would fain
dissolve the Colosseum and the temples and all into their own shadows!
Then Albano stretched out his arms into the air, as if he could
therewith embrace and flow away, as with the arms of a stream, and
exclaimed: "O ye mighty shades, you who once strove and lived here, ye
are looking down from heaven, but scornfully, not sadly, for your great
fatherland has died and gone after you! Ah, had I on the insignificant
earth (full of old eternity), which you have made great, only done one
action worthy of you! Then were it to me a sweet privilege to open my
heart by a wound, and to mix earthly blood with the hallowed soil, and
to hasten away out of the world of graves to you, eternal and immortal
ones! But I am not worthy of it!"
At this moment there came suddenly along up the _Via Sacra_ a tall man,
deeply enveloped in his mantle, who drew near to the fountain; without
looking round threw down his hat, and held a coal-black, curly, almost
perpendicular hindhead under the stream of water. But hardly had he,
turning upward, caught a glimpse of the profile of Albano absorbed in
his fancies, when he started up all dripping, stared at the Count, fell
into amazement, threw his arms high into the air, and said, "_Amico?_"
Albano looked at him. The stranger said, "_Albano!_" "My Dian!" cried
Albano. They clasped each other passionately, and wept for love.
Dian could not comprehend it at all. He said, in Italian, "But it
surely cannot be you; you look old." He thought he was speaking German
all the time, till he heard Albano answer in Italian. Both gave and got
only questions. Albano found the Architect merely browner, but there
was the lightning of the eyes and every faculty in its old glory. With
three words he described to him the journey and the company. "How does
Rome strike you?" asked Dian, pleasantly. "As life does," replied
Albano, very seriously; "it makes one too tender and too hard. I
recognize here absolutely nothing at all," he continued; "do those
columns belong to the magnificent Temple of Peace?" "No," said Dian,
"to the Temple of Concord; of the other there stands yonder nothing but
the vault." "Where is Saturn's Temple?" asked Albano. "Buried in St.
Adrian's Church," said Dian, and added, hastily, "close by stand the
ten columns of Antonine's Temple; over beyond there, the Baths of
Titus; behind us, the Palatine Hill, and so on. Now tell me--"
They walked up and down the Forum, between the arches of Titus and
Severus. Albano--especially beside the teacher who in the days of
childhood had so often conducted him hitherward--was yet full of the
stream which had swept over the world, and the all-covering water sank
but slowly. He went on to say, "To-day, when he beheld the obelisk, the
soft, tender brightness of the moon had seemed to him eminently
unbecoming the giant city; he would rather have seen a sun blazing on
its broad banner; but now the moon was the proper funeral torch beside
the dead Alexander, who at a touch collapses into a handful of dust."
"The artist does not get far with feelings of this kind," said Dian;
"he must look upon everlasting beauties on the right hand and on the
left." "Where," Albano went on asking, "is the old Lake of Curtius, the
Rostrum, the _pila Horatia_, the Temple of Vesta, of Venus, and of all
those solitary columns?" "And where is the marble Forum itself?" said
Dian; "it lies thirty span deep under our feet." "Where is the great,
free people, the senate of kings, the voice of the orators, the
procession to the Capitol? Buried under the mountain of potshards. O
Dian, how can a man, who loses a father, a beloved in Rome, shed a
single tear, or look round him with consternation, when he comes out
here before this battle-field of time, and looks into the charnel-house
of the nations? Dian, one would wish here an iron heart, for fate has
an iron hand!"
Dian, who nowhere stayed more reluctantly than upon such tragic cliffs,
hanging over, as it were, into the sea of eternity, always leaped off
from them with a jest. Like the Greeks, he blended dances with tragedy.
"Many a thing is conserved here, friend," said he; "in Adrian's church
yonder they will still show you the bones of the three men that walked
in the fire." "That is just the frightful play of destiny," replied
Albano, "to occupy the heights of the mighty ancients with monks shorn
down into slaves."
"The stream of time drives new wheels," said Dian; "yonder lies Raphael
twice buried.[77] How are Chariton and the children doing?" "They are
blooming on," said Albano, but in a sombre tone. "Heavens!" cried Dian,
with all a father's terror, "is it really so?"[78] "Verily, Dian!" said
Albano, softly. "Does Liana," said Dian, "still come often to
Chariton's? And how fares the sweet one?" Albano answered, in a low
tone, "She is dead." "What! dead? Impossible! Froulay's daughter,
Albano? The gold-rose? O speak!" he cried. Albano nodded affirmatively.
"Ah! thou good maiden!" said he, piteously, with tears in his black
eyes, "so friendly, so enchantingly lovely, so fine an artist! But how
did it come to pass? Have you, then, not been acquainted at all with
the lovely child?" "One spring only," said Albano, hurriedly. "My good
Dian, I will now go back to my father, and I can answer no more
questions." "O certainly! But I must learn more," Dian concluded. And
so they climbed silently and speedily over rubbish and torsos of
columns, and neither gave heed to the mighty emotion of the other.
TWENTY-SEVENTH JUBILEE.
St. Peter's.--Rotunda.--Colosseum.--Letter to Schoppe.--The
War.--Gaspard.--The Corsican.--Entanglement with the
Princess.--Sickness.--Gaspard's Brother.--St. Peter's Dome,
and Departure.
104. CYCLE.
Rome, like the creation, is an entire wonder, which gradually
dismembers itself into new wonders, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, St.
Peter's Church, Raphael, &c.
With the passage through the Church of St. Peter the knight began the
fair race through immortality. The Princess let herself be bound by the
tie of art to the circle of the men. As Albano was more smitten with
edifices than with any other work of art, so did he see from afar with
holy awe the long mountain-chain of art, which again bore upon itself
hills; so did he stand before the plain, around which two enormous
colonnades run like Corsos, bearing a people of statues; in the centre
shoots up the obelisk, and on its right and left an eternal fountain,
and from the lofty steps the proud church of the world, inwardly filled
with churches, rearing upon itself a temple toward heaven, looks down
upon the earth. But how enormously, as they drew near, had its columns
and its rocky wall mounted up and flown away from the vision!
He entered the magic church, which gave the world blessings, curses,
kings, and popes, with the consciousness that, like the world-edifice,
it was continually enlarging and receding more and more, the longer one
remained in it. They went up to two children of white marble, who held
an incense-muscle-shell of yellow marble; the children grew by nearness
till they were giants. At length they stood before the main altar and
its hundred perpetual lamps;--what a stillness! Above them the heaven's
arch of the dome, resting on four inner towers; around them an
overarched city, of four streets, in which stood churches. The temple
became greatest by walking in it; and when they passed round one
column, there stood a new one before them, and holy giants gazed
earnestly down. Here was the youth's large heart, after so long a time,
filled. "In no art," he said to his father, "is the soul so mightily
possessed with the sublime as in architecture; in every other the giant
stands in it and in the depths of the soul, but here he stands out of
it and close before it." Dian, to whom all images were more clear than
abstract ideas, said: "He is perfectly right." Fraischdörfer replied:
"The sublimity here also lies only in the brain: for the whole church
stands, after all, in something greater, namely, in Rome, and under the
heavens, in the presence of which latter we certainly should not feel
anything." He also complained, "That the place for the sublime in his
head was very much narrowed by the innumerable volutes and monuments
which the temple shut up therein at the same time with itself." Gaspard
said, taking everything in a large sense: "When the sublime once really
appears, it then, by its very nature, absorbs and annihilates all
little circumstantial ornaments." He adduced as evidence the tower of
the minster,[79] and nature itself, which is not made smaller by its
grasses and villages.
The Princess, among so many connoisseurs of art, enjoyed in silence.
The ascent of the dome Gaspard recommended to defer to a dry and
cloudless day, in order that they might behold the queen of the world,
Rome, upon and from the proper throne; he therefore proposed very
earnestly the visiting of the Pantheon, because he was eager to let
this follow immediately after the impression of St. Peter's Church.
They went thither. How simply and grandly the Hall opens upon one!
Eight yellow columns sustain its brow, and majestically, as the head of
the Homeric Jupiter, its temple arches itself! It is the Rotunda or
Pantheon. "O the pygmies," cried Albano, "who would fain give us new
temples! Raise the old ones higher out of the rubbish, and then you
have built enough."[80] They stepped in; there reared itself around
them a holy, simple, free world-structure with its heavenly arches
soaring and striving upward, an odeum of the tones of the sphere-music,
a world in the world! And overhead[81] the eye-socket of the light and
of the sky gleamed down, and the distant rack of clouds seemed to touch
the lofty arch over which it shot along! And round about them stood
nothing but the temple-bearers, the columns! The temple of _all_ gods
endured and concealed the diminutive altars of the later ones.
Gaspard questioned Albano about his impressions. He said he preferred
the larger church of St. Peter. The Knight approved, and said that
"youth, like nations, always more easily found and better appreciated
the sublime than the beautiful, and that the spirit of the young man
ripened from strength to beauty, as his body ripens from beauty to
strength; however, he himself preferred the Pantheon." "How could the
moderns," said the Counsellor of Arts, Fraischdörfer, "build anything,
except some little Bernini's towers?" "That is why," said the offended
Provincial Architect, Dian, who despised the Counsellor of Arts,
because he never made a good figure, except in the æsthetic hall of
judgment as critic, never in the exhibition-hall as painter, "we
moderns are, beyond contradiction, stronger in criticism, though in
practice we are collectively and individually blockheads." Bouverot
remarked, "The Corinthian columns might be higher." The Counsellor of
Arts said, "After all, he knew nothing more like this fine hemisphere
than a much smaller one, which he had found in Herculaneum, moulded in
ashes--of the bosom of a fair fugitive." The Knight laughed, and Albano
turned away in disgust, and went to the Princess.
He asked her for her opinion about the two temples. "Here Sophocles,
there Shakespeare; but I comprehend and appreciate Sophocles more
easily," she replied, and looked with new eyes into his new
countenance. For the supernatural illumination through the zenith of
Heaven--not through a hazy horizon--transfigured in her eyes the
beautiful and excited countenance of the youth, and she took for
granted that the saintly halo of the dome must also exalt her form.
When he answered her: "Very good! But in Shakespeare Sophocles also is
contained; not, however, Shakespeare in Sophocles; and on Peter's
Church stands Angelo's rotunda!" Just then the lofty cloud all at once,
as by the blow of a hand out of the ether, broke in two, and the
ravished sun, like the eye of a Venus, floating through her ancient
heavens,--for she once stood even here,--looked mildly in from the
upper deep; then a holy radiance filled the temple, and burned on the
porphyry of the pavement, and Albano looked around him in an ecstasy of
wonder and delight, and said, with low voice: "How transfigured at this
moment is everything in this sacred place! Raphael's spirit comes forth
from his grave in this noontide hour, and everything which its
reflection touches brightens into godlike splendor!" The Princess
looked upon him tenderly, and he lightly laid his hand upon hers, and
said, as one vanquished, "Sophocles!"
On the next moonlit evening Gaspard bespoke torches, in order that the
Colosseum with its giant-circle might, the first time, stand in fire
before them. The Knight would fain have gone around alone with his son
dimly through the dim work, like two spirits of the olden time, but the
Princess forced herself upon him, from a too lively wish to share with
the noble youth his moments,--and perhaps, in fact, to have her heart
and his own common property. Women do not sufficiently comprehend that
an idea, when it fills and elevates man's mind, shuts it up against
love, and crowds out persons, whereas with woman all ideas easily
become human beings.
They passed over the Forum by the _Via Sacra_ to the Colosseum, whose
lofty, cloven forehead looked down pale under the moonlight. They stood
before the gray rock-walls, which reared themselves on four colonnades,
one above another, and the flames shot up into the arches of the
arcades, gilding the green shrubbery high overhead; and deep in the
earth had the noble monster already buried his feet. They stepped in,
and ascended the mountain full of fragments of rock, from one seat of
the spectators to another; Gaspard did not venture to the sixth, or
highest, where the men used to stand, but Albano and the Princess did.
Then the youth gazed down over the cliffs, upon the round, green crater
of the burnt-out volcano, which once swallowed nine thousand beasts at
once, and which quenched itself with human blood; the lurid glare of
the flames penetrated into the clefts and caverns, and among the
foliage of the ivy and laurel, and among the great shadows of the moon,
which, like recluses, kept themselves in cells; toward the south, where
the streams of centuries and barbarians had stormed in, stood single
columns and bare arcades,--temples and three palaces had the giant fed
and lined with his limbs, and still, with all his wounds, he looked out
livingly into the world.
"What a world!" said Albano. "Here coiled the giant snake five times
about Christianity! Like a smile of scorn lies the moonlight down
below there upon the green arena, where once stood the colossus of the
sun-god. The star of the north[82] glimmers low through the windows,
and the serpent and the bear crouch. What a world has gone by!" The
Princess answered, that twelve thousand prisoners built this theatre,
and that a great many more had bled in it. "O, we too have building
prisoners," said he, "but for fortifications; and blood, too, still
flows, but with sweat! No, we have no present; the past without it must
bring forth a future."
The Princess went off to break a laurel-twig and pluck a blooming
wall-flower. Albano sank away into musing,--the autumnal wind of the
past swept over the stubble,--on this holy eminence he saw the
constellations, Rome's green hills, the glimmering city, the Pyramid of
Cestius; but all became past, and on the twelve hills dwelt, as upon
graves, the lofty old spirits, and looked sternly into the age as if
they were still its kings and judges.
"This in remembrance of the place and the time!" said the Princess,
returning and handing him the laurel and the flower. "Thou mighty one,
a colosseum is thy flower-pot; for thee nothing is too great, and
nothing too small!" said he, and threw the Princess into considerable
confusion, till she observed that he meant not her, but Nature. His
whole being seemed newly and painfully moved, and as it were removed to
a distance,--he looked down after his father and went to find him,--he
looked at him sharply, and spoke of nothing more this evening.
105. CYCLE.
Albano, like a world, was wonderfully changed by Rome. After he had
thus, for several weeks, lain encamped among Rome's creations and
ruins; after he had drunk out of Raphael's crystal magic goblet, whose
first draughts only cool, while the last send an Italian fire through
all the veins; after he had seen the mountain-stream of Michael Angelo,
now as a succession of cataracts, now as a mirror of the ether; after
he had bowed and consecrated himself before the last greatest
descendants of Greece, before her gods, who, with calm, serene
countenance, stand looking into the inharmonious world, and before the
Vatican Apollo, who is indignant at the prose of the age, at the abject
Pythonian serpent, which is ever renewing its youth;--after he had
stood so long in splendor before the full moon of the past, all at once
his whole inner world was overcast, and became one great cloud. He
sought solitude; he ceased to draw or to practise music; he spoke
little of Rome's magnificence. By night, when the daily rain ceased, he
visited alone the great ruins of the earth, the Forum, the Colosseum,
the Capitol; he became more passionate, unsocial, sharp; a deep,
brooding seriousness reigned on the lofty brow, and a sombre spirit
burned through the eye.
Gaspard, unobserved, kept his eye upon all secret unfoldings of the
youth. A mere sorrow for Liana did not seem to be his case. In the
northern winter this wound would only have frozen up, and not healed
up; but here, in the temple of the world, where gods lie buried, a noble
heart gathered strength, and beat for older graves. The Princess, who,
under the mask of friendship for the father, aspired after the son, he
sought less than the old, cold Lauria and the fiery Dian.
At this same period, he longed sadly for his Schoppe; on that breast,
he thought, would the secret of his own have found the right place and
comfort. It was to him as if he had, since this separation, lived with
him uninterruptedly, and become bound to him by a faster fraternal
bond. Thus do spirits dwell and melt together in the invisible land;
and when the bodies again meet each other in the visible, the hearts
find each other again mutually more acquainted. Unfortunately, among
all the letters that his father received from Pestitz, he heard not one
sound from his friend over the mountains, whom he had left behind in
the dark relations of a strange, perplexing passion. He never reckoned
silence as a fault against Schoppe, whose hatred and spite against all
letter-writing he well knew. However, his own heart could not bear it
any longer, and he wrote to him as follows:--
"We were torn from each other sleeping, Schoppe. That time has veiled
itself, and remains so. Very wide awake will we be when we look on each
other again. Of thee I know nothing; if Rabette does not write to me, I
shall have to bear about with me and endure this burning impatience
till our meeting in summer. Of myself what is there to write? I am
changed even to my innermost being, and by an ingrasping giant-hand.
When the sun passes over the zenith of countries, they all wrap
themselves in a deep cloud; so am I now beneath the sun at its highest
point, and I am also shrouded. How a man in Rome, in actual Rome, can
merely enjoy and weakly melt away before the fire of art, instead of
starting up red with shame, and striving and struggling for power and
exploits, is what I cannot comprehend. In painted Rome, in the Rome of
poetry, there laziness may luxuriate; but in the real Rome, where
obelisks, Colosseum, Capitol, triumphal arches, incessantly behold and
reproach thee,--where the history of ancient deeds, all day long, like
an invisible storm-wind, sweeps and sounds through the city, and impels
and lifts thee,--O, who can stretch himself out in inglorious ease and
contemplation before the magnificent stirring of the world? The spirits
of saints, of heroes, of artists, follow after the living man, and ask,
indignantly, 'What art thou?' With far other feelings dost thou go down
out of the Vatican of Raphael, and over the steps of the Capitol, than
thou comest out of any German picture-gallery or antique cabinet. There
thou seest, on all hills, old, eternal majesty. Even a Roman woman is,
in shape and pride of stature, still related to her city. The dweller
beyond the Tiber is a Spartan, and thou wilt no more find a Roman than
a Jew stupid; whereas in Pestitz thou must become impatient with the
very contrast of the mere form. Even the calm Dian maintains that the
odious masks of the ancients look like the faces in the German streets,
and their Fauns and other bestial gods like nobler court-faces, and
that their copy-pictures of Alexander, of the philosophers, of the
Roman tyrants, however pointedly and prosaically they stand out in
contrast to their poetical statues of the gods, resemble the present
ideals of the painters.
"Is it enough, here, to creep around the giants with eyes full of
astonishment and folded hands, and then languidly and pusillanimously
to lie pining at their feet? Friend, how often in the days of
discontent did I pronounce the artists and poets happy, who at least
may appease their longing by light and joyous creations, and who with
beautiful plays celebrate the mighty dead,--Archimimes of the heroic
age. And yet, after all, these voluptuous plays are only the jingling
of the bells on the lightning-conductor: there is something higher;
action is life; therein the whole man bestirs himself, and blooms with
all his twigs. Not of the narrow, timid achievements of littleness
on the oar-bank and the lolling-bank of the times are we speaking
here. There still stands a gate open to the coronation-city of the
spirit,--the gate of sacrifice, the door of Janus. Where else on earth
than on the battle-field is the place to be found in which all
energies, all offerings, and virtues of a whole life, crowded into an
hour, play together in divine freedom with thousand sister powers
and offerings? Where else do all faculties--from the most rapid
sharp-sightedness even to all bodily capacities of despatch and of
endurance, from the highest magnanimity down to the tenderest pity,
from all contempt of the body even up to the mortal wound--find the
lists so freely open for a covenant-rivalry? although, for the very
same reason, the play-room of all the gods stands open also to the
mask-dance of all the furies. Only take war in a higher sense, where
spirits, without relation of gain and loss, only by force of honor and
of object, bind themselves over to destiny, that it shall select from
among their bodies the corpses, and draw the lot of victory out of the
graves. Two nations go out on the battle-plain, the tragic stage of a
higher spirit, in order to play against one another, without any
personal enmity, their death-parts; still and black hangs the
thunder-cloud over the battle-field; the nations march on into the
cloud and all its thunders; they strike, and gloomily and alone burns
the death-torch above them; at last it is light, and two triumphal
gates stand built up,--the gate of death and the gate of victory,--and
the host has divided and passed through both, but through both with
garlands of honor. And when it is over, the dead and the living stand
exalted in the world, because they had not cared for life. But when the
great day is to be still greater, when the most costly thing is to come
to the spirit which can hallow life, then does God place an
Epaminondas, a Cato, a Gustavus Adolphus, at the head of the
consecrated host, and freedom is at once the banner and the palm. O,
blessed he who then lives or dies at once for the god of war and for
the goddess of peace!
"Let me not profane this by speaking of it. But take here my softly
spoken but firmly meant word, and lay it up in thy bosom, that so soon
as the probable war of Gallic freedom breaks out, I take my part
decidedly in it, for it. Nothing can hold me back, not even my father.
This resolution belongs to my peace and existence. Not from ambition do
I form it; though I do from an honorable self-love. Even in my earlier
years I could never enjoy the flat praise of an eternal domestic
felicity, which certainly beseems women rather than men. Of course
hardly any one else has _thy_ strength or disposition to take
everything great quietly, and silently to melt down the world into an
internal dream. Thou gazest upon the coming clouds and along the
milky-way, and sayest coldly, Cloudy! But dost thou not, prithee, allow
thyself too deeply in this feeling, in this cold vault? It is true, the
poison of this feeling will, in all parts of Rome particularly, that
churchyard of such remote nations, such opposite centuries, consume one
more sweetly than anywhere else; but couldst thou know the changeable,
except by contrast with the unchangeable, standing side by side with
it? and where does death dwell but in life? Let decay and dust reign!
there are, after all, three immortalities; although in the first, the
superterrestrial, thou dost not believe; then the subterranean, for the
universe may decay, but not its dust; and the immortality which ever
worketh therein, namely, this, that every action becomes more certainly
an eternal mother than it is an eternal daughter. And this union with
the universe and with eternity encourages the ephemera, in their
flying-moment, to carry and sow still farther abroad the blossom-dust,
which in the next thousand years will perhaps appear as a palm-grove.
"Whether I disclose myself to my father is to me still a matter of
doubt, because I am still in doubt on the subject, whether I am to take
his previous expressions against the modern French for sharp earnest,
or only as another instance of the sportive coldness wherewith he was
formerly wont to treat his very divinities,--Homer, Raphael, Cæsar,
Shakespeare,--from disgust at the mimicking idolatry which the vulgar
show to true elevation and to false. Greet my brave, manly Wehrfritz,
and remind him of our union-festival on the day when the news comes of
the demolition of the Bastille. Farewell, and stay by me!
"Albano."
On the evening of writing this letter he went with his father to a
_Converzatione_ in the _Palazzo Colonna_; here they found the dark
marble gallery, full of antiques and pictures, perverted from a chamber
of art and a parlor into a fencing-school; all arms and tongues of
Romans were in commotion and in conflict about the latest developments
of the French Revolution, and most in its favor. It was at the time
when almost all Europe forgot for some days, what it had been for
centuries learning from the political and poetic history of France,
that this same France could more easily become a magnified than a great
nation. The Knight alone gave himself up rather to the works of art
than to the sham-fight in his neighborhood. At length, however, he
heard distant words which announced how Albano, like all the youth of
that day, was marching exultingly after the _Queen of Heaven_,
_Liberty_, following on in the train of eternal freemen and eternal
slaves after the _equality_ of the times; then he drew nearer and
remarked, in his manner, "That the Revolution was something very great;
but that he found, however, in great works, e. g. in a Colosseum or
obelisk, in the bloom of a science, in war, in the heights of
astronomy, of physics, less to admire than others, for it was merely a
mass in time or space that created it, a considerable multitude of
_little_ forces. But only great ones a man should respect.[83] In
revolution he saw more of the former than of the latter. Freedom was as
little gained as lost in _one_ day; as weak individuals in a state of
intoxication were exactly the opposite of themselves, so too there was
a sort of intoxication of the multitude by multitude."
Hereupon Bouverot replied, "That is exactly my sentiment, too." Albano
made answer, and very visibly only to his father, because he profoundly
despised the German gentleman, and held him utterly unworthy of
enjoying high works of art, for which he had brought with him an
eminent _taste_, although no sense, and said: "Dear father, the twelve
thousand Jews did not design the Colosseum which they built, but the
idea was, after all, at some time or other, entirely in _one_ man, in
Vespasian; and so universally must there preside over the concentric
directions of little forces some great one, and though it were God
himself." "To that source," said Gaspard, "to which everything godlike
is referred, thou mayst transfer it if thou wilt." Bouverot smiled.
"The Gallic intoxication," replied Albano, warmly, "is surely and
verily no accidental one, but an enthusiasm grounded at once in
humanity and in time, for whence otherwise the universal interest in
it? They may perhaps sink, but only to soar higher. Through a red sea
of blood and war humanity wades toward the promised land, and the
wilderness is _long_; with gashed hands, gluing themselves in their
own blood, they, like the chamois-hunters, climb upward." "The
chamois-hunters themselves," said the Knight, "do the same still more,
when they undertake to come _down from the Alps_; meanwhile such hopes
are charming, and we will gladly wish their fulfilment." "_Signor
Conte_," added Bouverot, "was very happy in naming the outbreak a fit
of intoxication. One sleeps it out; but in the morning there is a great
deal broken and to pay." "Intoxication?" said Albano; "what best thing
has not occurred in a state of enthusiasm, and what worst thing has not
been done in cold blood? Say, Herr von Bouverot? Yes, there is a grim,
dreadful frost of the soul, as well as a similar physical frost, which,
like the greatest heat, makes one black and blind and sore;[84]
something like French tragedy, _cold_, and yet _barbarous_."
"Thou approachest the tragic, son," said Gaspard, interrupting him, and
reinforcing the German gentleman; "we may expect of the French very
much political sagacity, especially in distress; that is their forte.
Therein they match women. They are, too, like women, either uncommonly
tender, moral, and humane, when they are good, or, like them, quite as
cruel and rough, when they are beside themselves. It may be predicted,
that, in a liberation-war, if one should break out, they will, in
valor, take precedence of all parties. That will dazzle exceedingly,
since, after all, nothing is rarer than a cowardly people. One learns
to estimate military courage very moderately, when one sees that the
Roman Legions, precisely when they were mercenary, bad, slavish, and
half freedmen, namely, under the Triumvirate, fought more courageously
than ever. The citizens fought and died to the very last man for that
insignificant incendiary, Catiline, and only slaves were made
prisoners."
This speech set a hot seal upon Albano's mouth; it seemed exactly as if
his father had found him out, and took his old pleasure in damping,
like a fate, all enthusiasm, and giving all expectations, even gloomy
ones, the lie. The offended, self-inflaming spirit remained now fast
covered from Gaspard and Bouverot.
But to his Dian he showed all on the morning after. He knew how this
friend, with the arm of an artist and a youth at once, bore and waved
the banner of freedom, and therefore he broke before him the dark seal
of his previous melancholy. He confessed to his most beloved teacher
his full-grown purpose, so soon as the unholy war against Gallic
liberty, which now hung out its pitchy torch in all streets of the city
of God, burst into flames, to repair to the side of freedom, and to
fall himself sooner than see her fall. "Truly, you are a brave man,"
said Dian. "Had I not child and profession hanging upon my neck, by
Heaven, I myself would join you. An old fellow like that yonder sees
much and hears badly. He shall not nose out anything, nor his beast of
a _Barigello_ neither." He meant the Counsellor of Arts, Fraischdörfer,
whom he, with an artist's obstinacy, eternally abominated, because the
Counsellor painted worse and criticised better than himself. "Dian,
your word is finely said; yes, indeed, age makes one physically and
morally _far-sighted_ for one's self, and _deaf_ to others," said
Albano. "Have I spoken well, Albano? But truly such is the fact," said
he, very much pleased, in his diffidence with respect to his language,
at the praise of its beauty.
After some time, the Knight, just as if he saw away through the seal,
uttered some words which took hold of the youth on all sides. "There
are," said he, "some vigorous natures which stand exactly on the
boundary-line of genius and talent, fitted out, half for active, half
for ideal effort, and, withal, of burning ambition. They feel forcibly
all that is beautiful and great, and would fain create it again out of
themselves; but they succeed only very feebly in doing so. They have
not, like genius, one direction toward the centre of gravity, but they
stand themselves at the gravitating point, so that the directions
destroy each other. They are now poets, now painters, now musicians;
most of all do they love in youth bodily courage, because in that
strength most easily and expeditiously expresses itself through the
arm. Hence, in early life, everything great which they see enraptures
them, because they think to create it anew, but later in life quite
annoys them, because, after all, they have not the power. They should,
however, perceive that it is just they, if they know early how to guide
their ambition, who have drawn the finest lot of various and
harmonizing powers. They seem to be rightly fitted for the enjoyment of
all that is beautiful, as well as for moral development and for the
care of their being, for _whole_ men,--something like what a prince
must be, because in that office one must have for his all-sided
destination all-sided directions of effort and kinds of knowledge."
They stood, as he said this, just on Mount Aventine; before them the
Pyramid of Cestius, that epitaphium of the Heretics' Churchyard,
wherein so many an undeveloped artist and youth sleeps, and, near by,
the lofty potshard mountain[85] (_monte testaccio_), before which
Albano always passed along with a miserable, sickly feeling of stale
dreariness. The shock which his father's ideas gave his own, and the
relationship of the potshard mountain to the strangers' churchyard,
caused Albano to answer rather himself than his father, with a melted
ice-drop of displeasure in his eye: "Such a nameless mountain of pots
is, upon the whole, also the history of nations. But one would much
rather kill one's self on the spot than, after a long life, to bury
one's self so namelessly and ingloriously in the mass at last."
After his union with himself, he grew more happy. Already he began with
zeal to set himself to work, agreeably to his nature, which, as in the
seed-corn, put forth out of one seed-point stem and root, thoughts and
actions.
He threw all other pursuits away, and studied the art of war, ancient
and modern, for which Dian borrowed and supplied him the books and the
study-chamber. With unspeakable delight and exaltation, he ran over
again the sun-charts of the Roman history, here on the very body of the
burnt-out sun itself, and often, when he read descriptions of its
volcanic eruptions, he stood in the very craters where they had
occurred.
Dian gave, into the bargain, his knowledge of the small service, and
gladly gave himself for bodily exercises, when he had previously
ushered him up to divine service under the heaven of Raphael's art,
where graces, like constellations, walk in the lofty ether; for with
Dian body and soul were _one_ casting; the most delicate ocular nerve
and the hardest brachial muscle were _one_ band. At last, as a word was
much more disagreeable to him than an action, and as he had much rather
bestir the whole body than the tongue, he introduced to the Count an
oratorical brother-in-arms, a young Corsican, all alive, as if formed
out of the clear marrow of life.
The two young men loved and exercised each other for a time in romantic
freedom, without so much as asking each other's name. They fought,
read, swam. The Corsican almost idolized Albano's form, strength, head,
and soul, and poured his whole heart into one which he could not wholly
comprehend; as many maidens do only when in love, so did he only when
playing war show soul and sense. Albano's clear gold complacently
reflected back the strange form, without, like glass, annihilating its
own at the same time.
On one occasion the glow of the Corsican grew into a flame, which
showed up the whole character of his life to his friend in a bright
illumination, and his peculiar aim and thirst, namely, for Frenchmen's
blood, "which," he said, "he hoped to quench in the approaching war."
Had Albano been like him, then would they, like fighting stags, have
mortally entangled themselves in each other's antlers; for the
obstinate, inflexible courage of the Corsican--more a sensual courage
as Albano's was more a spiritual--could not endure a contradiction.
Like his class, he desired of Albano a right strong backing word to his
speech; but Albano said: "This is the very greatness in war, that one
can and dare do without exasperated passion, without personal enmity,
all that which the weakling can do only by such means; verily it were
nobler," said he, "to kill in battle a loved than a hated one." "Silly
chimeras!" said the Corsican, angrily; "what? Thou wilt kill the French
and yet love them?" Albano's magnanimity threw off at once every timid
mask, and he said: "In one word, I shall some time fight _for_ the
French and with them." "Thou, false one?" said the Corsican,
"impossible! Against me?" "No," replied Albano, "I pray God that we may
never meet in that hour!" "And I will supplicate Him right earnestly,"
said the Corsican, "that we never may meet again at all except one day
at the point of the bayonet. Adio!" So saying, he turned on his heel in
a fury and never came back again.
106. CYCLE.
Unlike other fathers, Gaspard had been, since the first battle about
war, the same as ever, yes, almost better than ever; with his old
respect for every strong individuality, he took it quite agreeably that
the sun of the youth entered so perceptibly into the signs of summer,
and soared above the earth higher as well as warmer.
He gave him the nearest proof of his undiminished regard in the fact,
that, amidst the gradual preparations for returning to Pestiz, he
answered in the affirmative to a quite unexpected wish of his son's
for--separation. That is to say, Albano, who now, like ivy, wandered
with all his blossoms and twigs among the monuments of the heroic past,
and twined himself faster and faster around them, would not part from
Rome without having seen Naples. To reinforce his own longing came also
Dian's inspiration for the daughter-land of his father-land, for the
splendor of its sky and earth, for its Grecian ruins, which the
Architect preferred to the Roman. "In Rome," Dian had said, "you have
the past; in Naples, on the other hand, the bold present. I will
accompany you to and fro, and we will go home together. For you are
not, to be sure, as yet, properly speaking, versed in the beautiful,
but in nature, in the heroic and in effect. Naples is the place, then."
The Knight--although the whole object of the journey had been already
gained by Albano's having regained his spirits--consented without
hesitation to the appendix of a second, on the condition that he should
not stay behind longer than a month.
But just at this time, when his inner world seemed at liberty to tune
itself so harmoniously, came hostile discords nearer and nearer, which
at a distance he still took for harmonies. The discord evolved itself
slowly out of his indefinite connection with the Princess, because
every such connection with women decided itself uncomfortably at last,
seldomer ending in love than in hatred.
The Princess hitherto had done and suffered everything, in order to be
dangerous to him, even before she became intelligible. She played Liana
as well as she knew how, and took out of her theatrical wardrobe the
nun's veil of a religious virginity, although women of genius are
mostly sceptical, as men of genius are credulous. She made him the
confidant of her past life, and gave the history of those who had died
for her, or at least pined away, and she told all this, after the
manner of women, with more satisfaction than remorse; only her
connection with his father she indulgently let rise from its grave
behind a touching nun's veil, and in fact imitated the son in his
respect for the Knight, whom in her soul she bitterly hated. When
Albano for hours forgot the present, and steadfastly gazed into the
sacrificial fire of the past and of art, and showed her on the
mountains of his world flames which burned not on her altar, then did
she patiently accompany him on this road of art, and only stopped when
she could, before spots where one had a view of the--present.
He became daily her warmer friend, without so much as dreaming of her
intentions. Only a man--no woman--can wholly overlook another's love;
the love which is long overlooked seldom, if ever, becomes a
reciprocated love. Albano was too delicate to presuppose in the beloved
of his father, and in the wife of another, and in a friend of his own
beloved, this desire of an impropriety. Moreover, he always placed
quite as small a reliance upon his desert as he did a great reliance on
his right.
She doubted, but despaired not of a warmer feeling on his part. A woman
hopes as long as a second does not hope with her. Albano's nocturnal
visits to the Capitol and the Colosseum were always found by the eyes
which followed him to be worthy of his noble character. Daily did the
firm youth become dearer to her by his new bloom and by his manly
development. Sometimes she strongly hoped, beguiled by his friendly
sincerity and by that heroic melancholy which was not to be explained
by her on any other principle, far or near. This to her so unusual
rising and sinking on her waves shook her health and her character, and
she became involuntarily more like Liana, with whose dove's plumage she
had in the beginning been fain only to array herself in white; the
sparkling sun-rainbow became a moon-rainbow; with her strong powers she
flung half of her former self away,--her mania for decoration, art, and
pleasing,--and she became intensely uneasy when a Roman fair one, with
southern liveliness exclaimed, as often happened, behind the Count, as
he walked before her, "How beautiful he is!" Sorely was she punished
for her earlier malicious sportings with others' hearts and sorrows by
her own; but such dark days are the very ones in which love more
especially roots itself, as trees are best grafted in cloudy days.
Albano observed her change. The charming melancholy of her once
vigorous countenance, this reflection of her silent cloud, moved him to
a sympathizing inquiry into her health and happiness. She answered him
so confusedly and confoundingly,--sometimes even imputing to Albano,
with all his sharp-sightedness, dissimulation and wickedness,--that she
led him into the strangest error.
Namely, under so great a certainty that some earth-shadow had passed
across her whole life, and would not stir, he must needs seek the body
which cast it,--which was, in his mind, Gaspard, whom she, as he
imagined, still loved. He carried this presumption back very reasonably
through all her earlier conversations and looks. It was so natural that
they who were at an earlier period separated by a throne should now, in
this lovely land of free connections, long for each other again. Beside
all this, the Knight had, according to his inexorable irony, received
her show of courting him with show on his part,--that is to say, with
seriousness,--and therefore always served himself up as a side-dish to
her enjoyment of his son, and carried over an after-winter into the
spring. This double show Albano recalled to himself as double truth.
Then, too, fate stepped in suddenly among his new conclusions. His
father was taken dangerously sick of an unnerving spring-fever, caught
from the sirocco-wind. "Take no special interest," said Gaspard to him,
"either in my sufferings or expressions. I have, in such situations, a
weakness which I am afterwards ashamed of, and yet cannot avoid."
Albano was moved, by many an unexpected outbreak of the sick man's
heart, even to the warmest love. If the ruins of a temple inspire
melancholy, thought he, why shall not the ruins of a great soul affect
me so still more? There are men full of colossal relics, like the earth
itself. In their deep heart, already grown cold, lie fossil flowers of
a fairer period; they resemble northern rocks, on which are found the
impress of Indian flowers.
The sickness undermined itself. Gaspard remained without sympathy for
himself; only his affairs, not his end, troubled him. He held private
interviews with his step-father Lauria, by way of impressing the
finishing black seal of justice on his life. An express must stand in
readiness to fly, the moment after his death, with a letter to Linda;
his son must himself break one open, and deliver a sealed one to the
Princess. Very harshly and imperiously did he demean himself toward the
son, when he demanded of him an oath, immediately after his death, to
travel off to Pestitz; for when Albano, who so longed to see Naples,
and upon whom all these conditions, presupposing his father's death,
fell hard, hesitatingly declined, Gaspard said, "That is so really
human and common, to bewail the pains of others immoderately, and
sympathize with them sincerely, and yet ungraciously to sharpen them so
soon as the smallest thing must be done." Albano gave his word and
oath, and never let himself be seen by his father again, when he wept
out of a child's love.
Unexpectedly there presented himself before this sickbed Gaspard's
nearest and earliest kinsman, his brother. Albano stood by when the
strange being came up and spake to the mortally sick man, and turned
two stiff, glassy eyes, which looked as if they had been set in, quite
away from him with whom he spake,--so fantastic, and yet full of the
cold world toward his dying brother,--with loosely hanging face-skin
upon significant face-bones,--a gray were-wolf on his hind legs, just
charmed out of the beastly hide into the human skin,--like the
destroying angel, a destroying man, and yet without passion. It
stretched out toward Albano its long hand, but he, repelled by
something unnamable, could not grasp it. This brother said he had come
from Pestitz,--handed over two letters from there, one to Gaspard, one
for the Princess,--and began to say something about his travels, which
seemed uncommonly acute, fantastical, learned, incredible, and oft
really unintelligible. Once Albano said, "That is a downright
impossibility." He began the narration again, made it still more
incredible, and insisted it was actually so. Thereupon he went away, to
Greece, as he said, and took the coolest leave imaginable of his dying
brother.
Gaspard now said to Albano, "I should like to have you, after my death,
rightly estimate this strangeling, if he ever comes near you, or rather
avoid him altogether, as he never says a true word, and that from a
pure and disinterested delight in pure lies; still more," he continued,
"shun the deep, deadly scorpion-sting of Bouverot, as well as his
cheating hand at play." Albano was surprised at the aspect of this
speech (agreeably so at its moral sharpness), for he had hitherto
imagined that he found in his father quite other sentiments regarding
Bouverot.
The next day he found his father already with his foot on the steps to
come up out of the tomb. The express had been discharged,--all letters
remanded,--the Prince Lauria stood there with beaming face. "Simply
another's sickness has cured me of mine," said the father. The letter
which his brother had brought him from Pestitz had contained the
intelligence that his old friend, the reigning Prince, was swiftly
approaching his last hour, because they had held his dropsy to be
_embonpoint_, and had delayed the treatment of it. "I hope," said
Gaspard, "to have been so wholesomely agitated by my sympathies in this
matter, that I shall still be able to make the journey in season for
the last hour of friendship." He added, that then this journey would
make way again for Albano's to Naples.
Then came the Princess in consternation about the letter, which
announced her husband's danger and her own departure. Gaspard answered
by giving his son a hint expressive of his desire for a private
interview with her. They remained alone together for a long time. At
last the Princess came back quite changed, and begged him, with almost
stammering hesitation, to accompany her to the _opera seria_. She was
moved and embarrassed, her eyes glistening, her features inspired; his
father, too, he found excited, but apparently strengthened.
Here a long beam of noonday shot through his whole previous
labyrinthine wood, namely, the confirmed presumption of his father's
love, which now, through the approaching dissolution of the marriage
chain of the Princess, and in the debility of sickness had broken out
more strongly; hence Gaspard's letter to the Princess, hence their
keeping together in Rome and on the way thither, &c.
Never did Albano love his energetic father more than after this
discovery of a tender sentiment; and toward the Princess his heart now
grew from a friend to be all at once a son. Besides, as among the five
prizes of hereditary human love he had gained only one,--a father (no
mother, no brother, no sister, and no child),--so was he filled with
this new delight at the gain of a mother. All that respect could do,
warmth express, and hope betray, he indulged.
It was a night when in Rome spring already threw flowers again through
the clouds of winter. At the theatre they gave Mozart's _Tito_. How on
a foreign soil is one carried away by a strain from one's native land,
which has followed him hither! The lark that sings over Roman ruins
exactly as over German fields is the dove which, with her well-known
song, brings us the olive-branch from our native land. Up to this time,
Albano, on the Alpine road over ruins, had sent his eye eagerly forward
only along the future race-ground of war, and had seldom raised it
toward the heaven where the glorified Liana was, and he had forcibly
dashed away every rising tear. But now his sick father had lifted the
curtain of the bed under the ground where her remains slept; now did
the clear stream of tones which had passed through the lands of his
youth and his paradises come all at once strongly over the mountains,
and murmur down so near to him with its old waters. At first his spirit
defended itself against the old, slumbering days, which spoke in their
sleep; but when at length the tones which Liana herself had once played
and sung before him came across over the bier of the mountains, and
hung down as shining tapestries of golden days,--when he reflected what
hours he and Liana might have found here, but had not found,--then his
dark grief ran up the scale of tones as an evil, plundering genius, and
Albano saw his dreadful loss stand clearly in heaven. Then he turned
not his eye toward the Princess, but in the consecration of music
pressed the hand by which the departed saint was once to have come into
these fields. By and by he said, "I shall, in the rich Naples, long
more and more after my only female friend, and envy the happy man who
is permitted to accompany her." She fell into great emotion at this new
intelligence of his intended separation, and into a still greater at
his passionate transformation, which she knew how to deduce, with the
richest dowry for her tenderest hopes, from her departure, and even the
approaching departure of her spouse. But she concealed the greater
emotion behind the lesser. They parted from each other with mutual joys
and errors. Albano was made more and more happy by the improvement of
his father's health; the Princess was made so by the increase of the
son's warmth, and her life mounted out of the ship of war into an
express-balloon, an air-vessel winged with tidings of peace. Thus did
both approach closer and closer to the curtain, whose pictures they
took for the scenery of the stage itself, only to be so much the more
astonished when it rose.
107. CYCLE.
The dried-up bed of the Knight's life had been richly inundated again
by the agitations of his heart. Even because, in well days, he held
himself together, like mountains, with ice and moss, so in sick days,
it seemed, did a real, internal commotion more easily restore his old
energy and repose. He armed and equipped himself for travelling, which
best built up and built upon his capricious body. The Princess put off
her departure from day to day, merely in the firm and ardent
expectation that Albano would impart to her, to take with her on her
way, the fairest concluding word of her whole life. In Albano this
blooming land awakened longings for--Spain, and Naples, he hoped,
would appease them. Spring was already dawning upon Rome, and rising
in Naples; the nightingale and man sang all night long, and the
almond-trees were everywhere in bloom. But it seemed as if the three
travellers were waiting for each other. Could the Princess hurry away
from the heart upon which her being bloomed and took root,--she, like a
torn-up rosemary twig, whose roots, at the same time with those of a
germinating wheat-grain, take a double hold of the earth? Albano, too,
would not hasten the hour which cast him into remote corners of the
earth, far away at once from his father and his friend,--them into an
after-winter, him into an early and latter spring,--and least of all
just now. His spirit had appeased itself, and become reconciled with
itself, by the resolution of war. His Portici was gloriously built up
on the buried Herculaneum of his past.
A letter from Pestitz decided matters. The mortally sick Prince wrote
to the Princess, and begged to see her again; the letter was like a
fire, bursting the common ground and scattering all that stand
thereupon; the three confederates formed the purpose to set off on one
and the same day,--on one morning,--so that one dawn might shed its
gold into three travelling-carriages at once.
Yet one thing the Princess desired on the evening previous to the
departure, namely, Albano's company to the dome of St. Peter's in the
morning; she wished to take Rome once more into her parting soul, when
the dawn in its redness and splendor gilded the city. Albano, too, was
glad to drink the must of a fiery hour, which might clear itself up
into an eternal wine for the whole of life; for he knew not that the
lively Princess,--made still more lively by Italy,--after waiting so
long and impatiently for the fairest word from his lips, at last
ventured indignantly upon a parting hour, in which it must escape from
him.
Early before sunrise, when, in Rome, many more go to bed than get up,
he waited upon her; only her faithful Haltermann accompanied them. She
still glowed with her night-long vigils, and seemed very much moved.
Rome still slept; occasionally they were met by coaches and families,
which were just finishing their night. The sky stood cool and blue over
the dawning morn, the fresh son of the fair night.
The wide circus before St. Peter's Church was solitary and dumb as the
saints upon the columns; the fountains spoke: one constellation more
went out above the obelisk. They went up by the winding stairway of a
hundred and fifty steps to the roof of the church, and came out through
a street of houses, columns, little cupolas and towers, through four
doors into the monstrous dome,--into a vaulted night. In the depths
below the temple rested, like a broad, gloomy, lonesome valley with
houses and trees, a holy abyss, and they walked along close by the
mosaic-giants, the broad colored clouds on the heaven of the dome.
While they were ascending in the high vault, Aurora's golden foam
glistened redder and redder on the windows, and fire and night swam
into each other among the arches.
They hastened yet higher and looked out, just as a single living ray
darted upon the world, as out of an eye, from behind the mountains;
around the old Alban mountain smoked a hundred glowing clouds, as if
his cold crater was again bringing forth a flame-day, and the eagles
with golden wings baptized in the sun flew slowly along over the
clouds. All at once the sun-god stood upon the fair ridge; he stood
erect in heaven, and rent away the network of night from the covered
earth; then burned the Obelisks and the Colosseum and Rome from hill to
hill, and on the solitary Campagna sparkled in manifold windings the
yellow giant snake of the world, the Tiber,--all clouds dissipated
themselves into the depths of heaven, and golden light ran from
Tusculum and from Tivoli, and from the vine-hills into the many-colored
plains, over the scattered villas and cottages, into the citron and oak
groves; low in the far west the sea was again as at evening, when the
hot god visits it, full of splendor, ever kindled by him, and became
his eternal dew.[86]
In the morning world below lay far and wide the great, still Rome,--no
living city, a solitary, enormous, enchanted garden of the old, hidden,
heroic spirits, laid out on twelve hills. The unpeopled pleasure-garden
of spirits announced itself by its green meadows and cypresses between
palaces, and by its broad, open stairways and columns and bridges, by
its ruins and high fountains and garden of Adonis, and its green
mountains and temples of the gods; the broad city avenues had passed
away; the windows were barred up; on the roofs the stony dead looked
steadfastly at each other; only the glistening fountain waters were
awake and alive and active, and a single nightingale sighed, as if she
would die at last.
"That is great," said Albano, at length, "that all is solitary down
below and one sees no present. The old heroic spirits can pursue their
existence in the vast vacuity, and march through their old arches and
temples and play, up on the columns, with the ivy."
"Nothing," replied the Princess, "is wanting to the magnificence but
this dome, which from the Capitol we might in fact see besides. But
never shall I forget this spot."
"What were all beside?" said he. "The flat regions of life in general
pass by without a memorial; from many a long past no echo reverberates,
because no mountain breaks the broad surface! But Rome and this hour
with you will live within us forever."
"Albano," said she, "why must we find each other so late and part so
early? Yonder goes your way along by the Tiber,--God grant into no
devouring sea!"
"And yonder goes yours over the bright mountains," said he. She took
his hand, for his tone expressed and excited so much emotion. Divinely
gleamed the world from the dark spring flowers even up to the lofty
Capitol, and the bells sounded down the hours; the festal fires of day
blazed on all heights; life was broad and high as the prospect; his eye
stood under a tear,--no sad one, however, but such a tear as when the
world's eye glances sunnily under the water, and has higher hues, which
the dry world destroys. He pressed her hand, she his. "Princess,
friend," said he, "how I esteem you! After this holy hour we separate.
I would fain give you a sign that shall not pass away, and say a bold
word to my father, which should express myself and my respect, and
which, perhaps, might solve many a riddle."
Her eye fell, and she merely said, "May you venture?" "O forbid it
not!" said he; "so many a divine bliss has been lost by one hour's
hesitation. When shall man act extraordinarily, then, except in
extraordinary situations?" She was silent, awaiting the morning-sound
of love, and in a continued pressure of hands they went down from the
lofty place. Alban's being was a trembling flame. The Princess
comprehended not why he still deferred this spring-tone; no more did he
see through her, unskilled in reading women and their broken words,
those picture-poems, half form and only half speech. Just as if an
eagle had flown down from his morning splendor, and, as a predatory
genius, flapped his wings over his eyes; so had the flashing morn
dazzled him so exceedingly that he meant to venture, now in the parting
hour, to be mediator between his father and the Princess, by a word
which should take away the partition-wall between their loves. His
delicacy made many an objection against this proceeding, but when a
weighty object was in sight, there was nothing he so abhorred as
quailing caution; and daring he held to be worth as much to a man as
winning.
The Princess, misunderstanding, but not mistrusting, followed him into
his father's house with an expectation--bolder than his--that he would
perhaps actually confess to the Knight his love for her. They found the
father alone and very serious. Albano, although aware of his aversion
to bodily signs of the heart, fell on his neck with the half-choked
words of the wish: "Father! a mother!" To this childlike relation had
his previous feelings raised and refined themselves. "Heavens, Count!"
cried the Princess, astounded and enraged at Albano's assumed
insinuation. The Knight, sparkling with wrath, and full of horror,
seized a pistol, saying, "Unlucky--" but before one knew at which of
the three he would shoot it off, his numbness seized and held him like
a coiling snake imprisoned in a murderous embrace. "Count, did I
understand you?" said the Princess, flinging the word at him,
indifferent toward the petrified foe. "O God," said Albano, moved by
the sight of the paternal form, "I meant no one!" "None were capable of
that," said she, "but a base creature. Farewell. May I never meet you
again!" So saying, she went off.
Albano stayed, unconcerned as to whether he himself was not meant by
the pistol at the side of the sick man, who had stiffened exactly
opposite to a man's corpse across the way which they were just busied
in painting. Gradually life wrestled again out of winter, and the
Knight, as cataleptics must, finished the address which he had begun
with the word "Unlucky--" "woman, of whom art thou mother?" He came to
himself and looked wakefully around; but soon the lava of wrath ran
again through his snow: "Unlucky boy, what was the talk about?" Albano
disclosed to him, with innocent soul, that he had cherished the hope,
in the probable event of the Prince's death, of a union between his
father and the Princess, and for himself, of the good fortune of having
a mother.
"You young people always imagine one cannot have any genuine love
without carrying it out and directing it to some one," replied Gaspard,
and began to laugh hard and to find something very comic in the
"sentimental misunderstanding"; but Albano asked him now very seriously
about the origin of his misunderstanding. Gaspard gave him the
following account: Lately, in his sickness, he had, upon the first news
of the Prince's approaching death, a desperate battle with the
Princess, who in the event of this death desired a regency,--or
guardianship,--even on the bare ground of the possibility of an heir to
the princely hat. The Knight said to her decidedly this _possibility_
was an impossibility, and he would, without further preamble, attack
her with new proofs yet unknown to her. He gave her directly to
understand that he was even armed against the case of an ocular
demonstration of the contrary (a Hereditary Prince) being presented to
him. The Princess replied with bitterness, she could not conceive why
he need in the least concern himself any more about the Haarhaar line
and succession, or take any more care for it than for that of
Hohenfliess. He brought her even to tears, for he could unsparingly
hurl the most barbarous words, like harpoons, deep into her heart; he
had the perfect resolution of a statesman, who, like a great bird of
prey, drives the victim, which he can neither conquer nor draw away, to
a precipice, and beats it over the brink with his wings, in order that
he may find it subdued for him down below. A life which even as it
passes away, like the sinking glaciers, discovers old corpses! Just as
the happy one spreads out his love of an individual warmingly over
humanity, so does the misanthrope hold the stinging focus (or
freezing-point) of his broad and general coldness toward humanity at
_one_ great foe alone, whereas previously every smaller offence was
forgiven the individual, and imputed only to mankind in a mass.
This, then, was that secret interview whose traces Albano had taken for
fairer emotions than of hatred. "And now," said the Knight openly, in
order to punish his high feeling with cutting impudence, "when thou
madest to me the concise and obscure speech: 'A mother!' I could not
but take thee for the father, and from this thou mayst easily explain
the rest." "Father," said he, "that was a crying injustice to each";
and departed with three hot wounds, torn in him by the trident of fate.
At his departure Gaspard reminded him to keep his word of returning in
a month, and added jokingly, that the old man whom they were painting
over yonder was a German gentleman, with whom he once carried on the
joke of a sudden conversion.[87]
Before an hour Albano was travelling with his Dian out of the
illuminated Rome. The blue heavens, floating down, undulated on the
heights and on the dome of St. Peter's, and long shadows, begemmed with
pearls of dew, still slept on the flowers; but the blessed morn had
flown far back out of the hard day. They met before the gate a circular
crowd, who stood around the beautiful form of one murdered, and who
repeated, with a pleased expression, over the prostrate body, instead
of casting the word with indignation in the teeth of the murderer,
"_Quanto e' bello!_"[88] And Albano thought how often they had
exclaimed behind his back, "_Quanto e' bello!_"
TWENTY-EIGHTH JUBILEE.
Letter From Pestitz.--Mola.--The Heavenly Ascension
of a Monk.--Naples.--Ischia.--The New Gift of the Gods.
108. CYCLE.
A little light in our apartment can screen us against the blinding
effect of the whole heaven-broad lightning-glare; so it needs in us
only a single, constantly shining idea and tendency, that the rapid
alternation of flame and light in the outer world may not dizzy us. Had
not Albano had an end in view which could be seen far-off,--had he not
kept before his eye an obelisk in his life-path,--how long would the
last scene, with its pangs cutting through each other, have confounded
him! Now he was like the kindled olive--and laurel-leaves around him,
whose flames grow green as they are themselves. Dian, who drove away
the pains of others, because he, being easily movable, soon grew from a
spectator to a sharer of them, made Albano and himself gay by his
ardent interest in every beautiful form, every ruin, every little joy.
He had the rare and beautiful gift of being cheerful upon journeys, of
plucking every flower, but no thistle; whereas the majority jog along
with the night-cap under the hat; from station to station, gaping as
they go on, and in grumbling war with every face, they travel through
whole paradises as if they were antechambers of hell.
In the waste Pontine marshes, wherein only buffaloes thrive and men
grow pale, Dian sought for all sorts of amusement, and even drew forth
his letter-case, in order to get over the last fishing-water of the
papal territory, out of the reach of Peter's fisherman successors,
without falling into a deadly sleep. There he stumbled, with a modern
Greek curse, upon a letter to Albano, which had been enclosed in one
from Chariton, and which in Rome he had forgotten, in the hurry of
departure, to hand over; but he soon laughed about it, and found it
good that in this "Devil's-dale" one had something to read against
sleep.
It was the following from Rabette:--
"Heartily loved brother, one longs to know whether thou still thinkest
a little bit of thy friends in Blumenbühl, now that in the magnificent
Italy thou art certainly quite in thy _essée_.[89] That thou livest in
all our hearts, _that_ thou hast long known, and thou shouldst only
know how long after thy departure we all wept for thee, as well thy
mother as myself; and a certain one[90] thinks now-a-days quite
differently of thee from what he did in old times. Much has happened
this winter. The Minister's lady has separated from her husband, and
lives on her estate, sometimes in Arcadia with the Princess Idoine. Our
Prince is dangerously sick with the dropsy, and father can get a scrap
of business from the province by this, as he says. Thy Schoppe has gone
on a journey of a couple of months, leaving behind a letter to thee,
which he has intrusted to father's care. He stayed latterly with us,
and in thy room, and visited attentively the Countess Romeiro. It is a
shame for him, for he means well; but Master Wehmeier and all of us in
the place are convinced that he is, in short, mad, and he believes it,
too, and says he shall therefore soon set his house in order. As
touching the Countess Romeiro, she has gone off with Princess Julienne;
none, however, knows whither. They say the Prince has shown her too
marked attentions, and she would rather be off to Spain. Others talk of
Greece, but the _certain one_ assures me she is gone to Rome to her
guardian: of that now thou wilt know better than myself. The certain
one undertook all that was within human possibility in order to win
her, partly by letters, partly in person, to no purpose; not one smile
could he gain as often as ever he addressed her even at _cour_. All
this I have (wilt thou believe it?) from his mouth, for he is again
often with me, and reveals to me his whole heart. Mine, however, I hold
together fast, that not so much as the smallest drop of blood may
trickle out from it, and God alone sees how it passes, and what a
weeping there is therein. Ah, Albano, a poor girl who is in strong
health must endure much before she can die. Often my eye can no longer
remain dry, and I then say his talk does it, which, to be sure, is
partly true, but to thee I show the _dessous des cartes_. Never, never
more can I be his, for he has not dealt ingenuously with me, but
altogether recklessly, and he knows it too. Nor is a single kiss
allowed him; and I tell him, only for God's sake, not to take that as a
coquette's manner to draw him to me. My good parents do not rightly
know what they are to make of our intercourse, and I fear father may
break out; then I shall have very bitter days. But shall I repel the
poor, sick, pale spirit from myself, too? shall the glowing soul,
exhaling like smoke, rise to heaven, and consume itself? Whose heart
will not break when he is at a _Festin_, and she immediately, offended
at his presence, goes home again?--as lately happened, and he said to
me, in a perfect rage, 'Well, very well, Linda, _one day_, be sure,
thine eye will be wet for me.' Then I know well that he means no good,
and I spare him from an anxious dread on that account; for shall two,
brother and sister, sink in their bloom? He would long ago have
travelled after her, had he not daily hoped she was coming back. Ah,
could I tear my loving heart out of my breast, and put it into hers
instead of the other, that so she might love him with all my love,
Albano, right gladly would I do it. But the paper comes to an end on
this side, and mother wishes on the other to write a greeting.
Farewell! is the wish of Thy faithful sister,
Rabette."
"How goes it with my most precious son? Is he prosperous, still good
and well? Does he still think of his true foster-parents? This in the
name of his father and in her own, asks and wishes,
His faithful mother,
Albina von W."
"P. S. His old teacher, Wehmeier, likewise greets his darling in
strange lands; and we all rejoice in the prospect of his return. A."
"P. S. Brother, I, too, must make a P. S. Schoppe has painted _you know
who_, and _scenes_, even, have arisen out of the circumstance. But more
of this when we meet. The Princesse Idoine has visited our Princess
often this winter. R."
As letters accommodate themselves more to the place, where they were
born, than to that where they are delivered, it often happens that what
went out as seed, arrives, after its long journey, already in a
germinating state, and with roots, and inversely in the shape of
blossoms rather than of dry seed; and every sheet is a double birth of
two distant times, that of writing and that of reading. Thus was
Albano, now under this serener sky, on this soil of a greater world of
the past, and with a soul full of new springs, the less overtaken and
darkened by Rabette's letter, through which the northern winter clouds
had passed. The ingenuous Rabette, the mild Albina came after him in
fancy but softly over the strange mountains and through the strange
climes, and laid a cooling hand on his hot brow; his old Schoppe stood
in his old worth before him, and Liana floated again through the lofty
blue. Toward the weather-beaten Roquairol he felt not so much as
compassion, but a hard contempt; and Linda's steadfast mind was exactly
after his, like the proud look and gait of Roman women. He now thought
over many things more cheerfully than ever, and even wished to look
once in the magic-face of that Heroine.
In _Fondi_ the Neapolitan world-garden began, and when they entered
upon the road to _Mola_, they went deeper and deeper into blossoms and
flowers. In flying sheets--addressed, perhaps, to his father, still
more probably to his Schoppe--his bliss and his soul expressed
themselves; it treasured up, as it were, some stray orange-blossoms
dropped out of the Eden through which they had so rapidly flown. Here
they are:--
"Shortly before sundown on Ascension-day we arrived in Mola; the native
Dian was full as much overcome with the green majesty, which he had not
seen for a long time, as I, and I do not yet believe him when he says
that it blooms and smells more finely about Naples. I did not go at all
into the city, for the sun hung already toward the sea. Around me
streams the incense smoke of reeking flowers from citron-woods and
meadows of jessamin and narcissus. On my left the blue Apennine flings
his fountain-waters from mountain to mountain, and on my right the
mighty sea presses upon the mighty earth, and the earth stretches out a
firm arm and holds a shining city[91] hung with gardens, far out into
the multitudinous waves,--and into the unfathomable sea lofty islands
have been cast as unfathomable mountains;[92] low in the south and east
a glimmering mist-land, the coast of Sorrento, grasps round the sea
like a crooked-up Jupiter's-arm, and behind the distant Naples stands
Vesuvius, with a cloud in heaven under the moon. 'Fall on thy knees,
fortunate one,' said Dian, 'before the sumptuous prospect!' O God, why
not do it in earnest? For who can behold in the glow of evening the
monstrous realm of waters, how yonder busy and restless motion grows
still in the distance, and only sparkles, and at last, blue and golden,
blends with the sky, and how the earth here shuts in the delicate,
floating fire with her long lands into a rosy, steady earth-shadow, who
can behold the fire-rain of infinite life, the weaving magic circle of
all forces in the water, in the sky, on the earth, without kneeling
down before the infinite spirit of Nature and saying, 'How near to me
thou art, O Ineffable!' O here he is both near and far, bliss and hope
come glimmering from the misty coast, and also from the neighboring
fountains, which the hills pour down into the sea, and in the white
blossoms over my head. O does not, then, this sun, around which burning
waves flutter, and the blue overhead and over yonder, and the kindling
lands of men, worlds within the world,--does not this distance call out
the heart and all its aspiring wishes? Will it not create and grasp
into the distance and snatch its life blossoms from the highest peak of
heaven? But when it looks around itself upon its own ground, there too
again is the girdle of Venus thrown around the blooming circumference,
brightly green grows the tall myrtle-tree near its little dark myrtle,
the orange glimmers in the high, cold grass, and overhead hangs its
fragrant blossom, the wheat waves with broad leaves between the enamels
of the almond and the narcissus, and far off stands the cypress, and
the palm towers proudly;[93] all is flower and fruit, spring and
harvest. 'Shall I go this way? shall I go that way?' asks the heart in
its bliss.
"Thus did I see the sun go down under the waves,--the reddening coasts
fled away under their misty veils,--the world went out, land after
land, from one island to another,--the last gold-dust was wafted away
from the heights,--and the prayer-bells of the convents led up the
heart above the stars. O how happy and how wistful was my heart, at
once a wish and a flame, and in my innermost being a prayer of
gratitude went forth for this, that I was and am upon this earth.
"Never shall I forget that! If we throw away life as too small for our
wishes, still do they not belong to life itself, and did they not come
from it? If the crowned earth rears around us such blossoming shores,
such sunny mountains, would she fain enclose therewith unhappy beings?
Why is our heart narrower than our eye? why does a cloud hardly a mile
long oppress us, when that very cloud stands itself under the stars of
immensity? Is not every morning and every hope a beginning of spring?
What are the thickest prison-walls of life but vine-trellises built up
for the ripening of the wine-glow? And as life always cuts itself up
into quarters, why must it be merely the last, and not quite as often
the first, upon which a full-beaming moon follows? 'O God,' said I, as
I went back through the green world which next morning becomes a
glowing one, 'never let me ascribe thy eternity to any one time, except
the most blissful; joy is eternal, but not pain, for this last thou
hast not created.'
"'Friend,' said Dian to me, on the way, when I could not well conceal
from him my inner commotion, 'what may not your feelings be, then, when
you look back upon Naples on the passage over to Ischia! For it is
plain to perceive that you were born in a northern land.' 'Dear
friend,' said I, 'every one is born _with_ his north or south; whether
in an outer one beside, that is of little consequence.'"
So far his leaf upon Mola. But a wonderful circumstance seemed this
very night to take him at his word in respect to the last assurance
contained in his letter. In the yard of the inn were assembled many
boatmen and others; all were contending violently about an opinion, and
the most were continually saying: "To-day, to be sure, is Ascension
Day, and _he_, too, has wrought miracles." "Ascension?" thought Albano,
and remembered his birthday, which often fell on this festival. Dian
came up and related, laughing, how the people were expecting down below
the ascension of a monk, who had promised it this night, and many
believed him for this reason, because he had already done a wonderful
work, namely, given a dead man his speech for two hours, before all
Mola. They both were agreed to witness the work. The multitude
swelled,--the promised man came not, who was to lead them to the place
of ascension,--all became angry rather than incredulous. At length late
at night a mask appeared and gave, with a motion of the hand, a sign to
follow it. All streamed after, even Albano and his friend. The pure
moon shone fresh out of blue skies, the wide garden of the country
slept in its blossoms, but all breathed fragrance, the slumbering and
the waking flowers.
The mask led the crowd to the ruins of Cicero's house, or tower, and
pointed upward. Overhead, on the wall, stood a trembling man. Albano
found his face more and more familiar. At last the man said: "I am a
father of death: may the Father of life be merciful to me. How it goes
with me I know not. There stands one among you," he added at once in a
strange, namely, in the Spanish language, "to whom I appeared one Good
Friday on Isola Bella, and announced the death of his sister; let him
journey on to Ischia, there will he find his sister."
Albano could not hear these words without excitement and indignation.
The form of the Father of Death upon that island he saw now right
clearly upon these ruins; and his promise to appear to him on a Good
Friday came again to his mind. He tried now to work his way up to the
ruins, so as to attack the monk. An inhabitant of Mola cried, when he
heard the strange language: "The monk is talking with the Devil." The
ascensionist said nothing to the contrary,--he trembled more
violently,--but the people sought for him who had said it, and cried,
"It is he with the mask, for he is no more to be found." At last the
monk, quaking, begged they would be still when he vanished, and pray
for him, and never seek his body. Albano was now close behind his back,
unseen by Dian. Just then, high in the dark blue, came a flock of
quails flying slowly along. The monk swiftly and staggeringly flung
himself up, scattered the birds, cried out in the dark distance,
"Pray!" and vanished away into the broad air.
The people cried and shouted with exultation, and part prayed; many
believed now the Devil was in the play. Among the spectators lay a man
with his face to the earth, and continually cried, "God have mercy on
me!" But no man brought him to an explanation. Dian, privately a little
superstitious, said his understanding was at a stand-still here. But
Albano explained how a complot of ghosts had been long twitching and
drawing at his life's curtain, but some day he should yet certainly
thrust his hand successfully through the curtain, and he was firmly
resolved immediately to cross over from Naples to Ischia, to see his
sister. "Verily," he added, "in this mother country of wonder, fantasy,
and everything great, one as easily believes in fair, enriching
miracles of fate, as one does in the north in dreadful robbing miracles
of spirits."
Dian was also for the earliest visit to the island of Ischia; "Because
otherwise," he added, "when Albano had delivered his letters in Naples,
and had been drawn in to the _Ricevimenti_,[94] or on Posilippo and
Vesuvius, then there would be no getting away."
On the day following they departed from Mola. The lovely sea played
hide-and-seek with them on their way, and only the golden sky never
veiled itself. Naples' goblet of joy already intoxicated one from afar
with its fragrance and spirit. Albano cast inspired looks at _Campania
Felice_, at the Colosseum in Capua, and at the broad garden, full of
gardens, and even at the rough Appian Way, which its old name made
softer.
But he sighed for the island of Ischia, that Arcadia of the ocean, and
that wonderful place where he was to find a sister. It was not in their
power earlier than in the early part of Saturday night--if indeed
waking and glancing life can be called night, particularly an Italian
Saturday night--to reach _Aversa_. Albano insisted upon their
continuing on in the night toward Naples. Dian was still reluctant. By
chance there stood in the post-house a beautiful girl, who might be
about fourteen years old, very much troubled at having missed the
coach, and determined this very night to go on to Naples, in order to
reach Ischia, where her parents were, early enough on the holy Sabbath.
"She had come," she said, "from _Santa Agata_; her name was only
_Agata_, and not _Santa_." "Probably her old joke," said Dian, but he
was now--with his love of hovering about every fair form--himself quite
in a mood for the night-ride, that so they might carry the black-eyed
one along with them, who looked joyously and brightly into the fire of
strange eyes. She accepted the invitation cheerfully, and prattled
familiarly, like a naturalist, about Epomeo and Vesuvius, and predicted
for them innumerable pleasures on the island, and altogether showed an
intelligence and thoughtfulness far above her years. At last they all
flew along under the bright stars out into the lovely night.
109. CYCLE
Albano goes on in the description of his journey thus:--
"A night of unrivalled serenity! The stars alone of themselves
illuminated the earth, and the milky-way was silvery. A single avenue,
intertwined with vine-blossoms, led to the magnificent city. Everywhere
one heard people, now near, talking, now distant, singing. Out of dark
chestnut woods, on moonlit hills, the nightingales called to one
another. A poor, sleeping maiden, whom we had taken with us, heard the
melodies even down into her dream, and sang after them; and then, when
she awoke herself therewith, looked round confusedly and with a sweet
smile, with the whole melody and dream still in her breast. On a
slender, light two-wheeled carriage, a wagoner, standing on the pole
and singing, rolled merrily along by. Women were already bearing in the
cool of the hour great baskets full of flowers into the city; in the
distance, as we passed along, whole Paradises of flower-cups sent
their fragrance; and the heart and the bosom drank in at once the
love-draught of the sweet air. The moon had gone up bright as a sun in
the high heaven, and the horizon was gilded with stars; and in the
whole cloudless sky stood the dusky cloud-column of Vesuvius, alone, in
the east.
"Far into the night, after two o'clock, we rolled in and through the
long city of splendor, wherein the living day still bloomed on. Gay
people filled the streets; the balconies sent each other songs; on the
roofs bloomed flowers and trees between lamps, and the little bells of
the hours prolonged the day; and the moon seemed to give warmth. Only
now and then a man lay sleeping between the colonnades, as if he were
taking his siesta. Dian, at home in all such matters, let the carriage
stop on the southern side, toward the sea, and went far into the city,
in order to arrange, through old acquaintances, the passage across to
the island, so that we might have exactly at sundown out on the sea,
the richest view of the stately city, with its bay and its long coasts.
The Ischian girl wrapped herself up in her blue veil, to keep off the
flies, and fell asleep on the black, sandy shore.
"I walked up and down alone; for me there was no night and no house.
The sea slept, the earth seemed awake. In the fleeting glimmer (the
moon was already sinking towards Posilippo) I looked up over this
divine frontier city of the world of waters, over this rising mountain
of palaces, to where the lofty Castle of St. Elmo looks, white, out of
the green foliage. With two arms the earth embraced the lovely sea; on
her right, on Posilippo, she bore blooming vine-hills far out into the
waves, and on the left she held cities, and spanned round its waters
and its ships, and drew them up to her breast. Like a sphinx lay the
jagged Capri darkly on the horizon in the water, and guarded the gates
of the bay. Behind the city the volcano smoked in the ether, and
occasionally sparks played between the stars.
"Now the moon sank down behind the elms of Posilippo,--the city grew
dark,--the din of the night died away,--fishermen disembarked, put out
their torches, and laid themselves down on the bank,--the earth seemed
to sink to sleep, but the sea to wake up. A wind from the coast of
Sorrento ruffled the still waves; more brightly gleamed Sorrento's
sickle with the reflection at once of the moon and of morning, like
silver meadows; the smoke column of Vesuvius had blown away, and from
the fire-mount streamed a long, clear morning redness over the coasts
as over a strange world.
"O, it was the morning twilight, full of youthful omens! Do not
landscape, mountain, coasts, like an echo, speak so many the more
syllables to the soul the farther off they are? How young did I feel
the world and myself, and the whole morning of my life was crowded into
this!
"My friend came; all was arranged; the boatmen had arrived; Agata was
awakened to the joy, and we embarked, just as the dawn kindled the
mountains, and, her sails swelling with the morning breezes, our little
vessel flew out into the sea.
"Before we had yet doubled the promontory of Posilippo, the crater of
Vesuvius threw up its glowing child, the sun, slowly into the sky,
and sea and earth blazed. The half earth-girdles of Naples, with
morning-red palaces, its market-place of fluttering ships, the swarm of
its country-houses on the mountains and up along the shore, and its
green throne of St. Elmo, stood proudly between two mountains, before
the sea.
"When we came round Posilippo, there stood Ischia's Epomeo, like a
giant of the sea, in the distance, girdled about with a wood, and with
bald, white head. Gradually appeared on the immeasurable plain the
islands, one after another, like scattered villages, and wildly pressed
and waded the promontories into the sea. Now, mightier and more alive
than the dried-up, parcelled out, stiff land, the watery kingdom
opened, whose powers all, from the streams and waves even to the drops,
join hands and move in concert. Almighty, and yet gentle element!
grimly thou leapest upon the lands, and swallowest them up, and, with
thy undermining polypus-arms, liest stretching around the whole globe.
But thou reinest the wild streams, and meltest them down into waves;
softly thou playest with thy little children, the islands, and playest
on the hand which hangs out of the light gondola, and sendest out thy
little waves which play before us, then bear us along, and play behind
us.
"When we came along by the little Nisita, where Brutus and Cato once
sought shelter after Cæsar's death; when we passed by the enchanted
Baja and the magic castle where once three Romans determined upon the
division of the world, and before the whole promontory, where the
country-seats of great Romans stood; and when we looked down towards
the mountain of Cuma, behind which Scipio Africanus lived in his
Linternum and died; then did the lofty life of the great ancients take
possession of me, and I said to my friend: 'What men were those!
Scarcely do we learn incidentally in Pliny or Cicero that one of them
has a country-house yonder, or that there is a lovely Naples. Out of
the midst of nature's sea of joys their laurels grow and bear as well
as out of the ice-sea of Germany and England, or out of Arabia's sand.
Alike in wildernesses and in paradises, their mighty hearts beat on.
And for these world-souls there was no dwelling except the world; only
with such souls are emotions worth almost more than actions. A Roman
might here weep nobly for joy! Dian, say, what can a modern man do for
it, that he lives so late after their ruins?'
"Youth and ruins, tottering, crumbling past and eternal fulness of
life, covered the shore of Misenum and the whole far-stretching coast.
On the broken urns of dead gods, on the dismembered temples of Mercury
and Diana, the frolicsome, light wave played, and the eternal sun; old,
lonely bridge-posts in the sea, solitary temple-columns and arches,
spoke, in the luxuriant splendor of life, a sober word; the old, holy
names of the Elysian Fields, of Avernus, of the Dead Sea, lived still
along the coast; ruins of rocks and temples lay in confusion upon the
motley-colored lava; all bloomed and lived; the maidens and the boatmen
sang; the mountains and the islands stood great in the young, fiery
day; dolphins chased sportively along beside us; singing larks went
whirling up in the ether above their narrow islands; and from all ends
of the horizon ships came up and flew down again with arrowy speed. It
was the divine over-fulness and intermingling of the world before me.
Sounding-strings of life were stretched over the string-bridge of
Vesuvius, even to Epomeo.
"Suddenly one peal of thunder passed along through the blue heaven over
the sea. The maiden asked me, 'Why do you grow pale? it is only
Vesuvius.' Then was a god near me; yes, heaven, earth, and sea stood
before me as three divinities. The leaves of life's dream-book were
murmuringly ruffled up by a divine morning-storm; and everywhere I read
our dreams and the interpretations thereof.
"After some time, we came to a long land swallowing up the north, as it
were the foot of a single mountain; it was already the lovely Ischia,
and I went on shore intoxicated with bliss, and then, for the first
time, I thought of the promise that I should there find a sister."
110. CYCLE.
With emotion, with a sort of festive solemnity, Albano trod the
cool island. It was to him as if the breezes were always wafting to
him the words, "The place of rest." Agata begged them both to stay
with her parents, whose house lay on the shore, not far from the
suburb-town.[95] As they went over the bridge, which connects the green
rock wound round with houses to the shore and the city, she pointed out
to them joyfully in the east the individual house. As they went along
so slowly, and the high, round rock and the row of houses stood
mirrored in the water; and upon the flat roofs the beautiful women who
were trimming the festal lamps for evening spoke busily over to each
other, and greeted and questioned the returning Agata; and all faces
were so glad, all forms so comely, and the very poorest in silk; and
the lively boys pulled down little chestnut-tops; and the old father of
the isle, the tall Epomeo, stood before them all clad in vine-foliage
and spring-flowers, out of whose sweet green only scattered, white
pleasure-houses of happy mountain-dwellers peeped forth;--then was it
to Albano as if the heavy pack of life had fallen off from his
shoulders into the water, and the erect bosom drank in from afar the
cool ether flowing in from Elysium. Across the sea lay the former
stormy world, with its hot coasts.
Agata led the two into the home of her parents, on the eastern
declivity of Epomeo; and immediately, amidst the loud, exulting
welcome, cried out, quite as loudly: "Here are two fine gentlemen, who
wish to come home with me." The father said, directly: "Welcome, your
excellencies! You shall, with pleasure, keep the chambers, though many
bathing-guests will come by and by. You will find nowhere better
quarters. I was formerly only a _turner_ in the Fayence manufactory,
but have been for these eight years a vine-dresser, and can afford to
do a favor. When was there ever a better December and March[96] than
this year? Your commands, excellencies!" Suddenly Agata wept; her
mother had announced to her the interment of her youngest sister, for
which solemnity, according to the fashion of the island, an eve of joy
was appointed to-day, because they loved to congratulate each other
upon the eternal, bliss-insuring ratification of a child's innocence by
death. The old man would fain have gone at once right into narrations,
when Dian begged his Albano, after so long a commotion of souls and
bodies, to go to sleep till sunset, when he would wake him. Agata
showed him the way to his cool chamber, and he went up.
Here, before the cooling sea-zephyr, the going to sleep was itself the
slumber, and the echoing dream itself the sleep. His dream was an
incessant song, which sang itself,--"The morning is a rose, the day a
tulip, night is a lily, and evening is another morning."
He dreamed himself at last down into a long sleep. Late, in the dark,
like an Adam in renovated youth, he opened his eyes in Paradise, but
he knew not where he was. He heard distant, sweet music; unknown
flower-scents swam through the air. He looked out; the dark heaven was
strewed with golden stars, as with fiery blossoms; on the earth, on the
sea, hovered hosts of lights; and in the depths of distance hung a
clear flame steadily in the midst of heaven. A dream, of which the
scene was unknown, confounded still the actual stage with one that had
vanished; and Albano went through the silent, unpeopled house, dreaming
on, out into the open air, as into an island of spirits.
Here nightingales, first of all, with their melody drew him into the
world. He found the name Ischia again, and saw now that the castle on
the rock and the long street of roofs in the shore-town stood full of
burning lamps. He went up to the place whence the music proceeded,
which was illuminated and surrounded with people, and found a chapel
standing all in fires of joy. Before a Madonna and her child, in a
niche, a night-music was playing, amidst the loquacious rustling of joy
and devotion. Here he found again his hosts, who had all quite
forgotten him in the jubilee; and Dian said, "I would have awaked you
soon; the night and the pleasures last a great while yet."
"Do hear and see yonder the divine Vesuvius, who joins in celebrating
the festival in such right good earnest," cried Dian, who plunged as
deeply into the waves of joy as any Ischian. Albano looked over toward
the flame, flickering high in the starry heaven, and, like a god,
having the great thunder beneath it, and he saw how the night had made
the promontory of Misenum loom up like a cloud beside the volcano.
Beside them burned thousands of lamps on the royal palace of the
neighboring island Procida.
While he looked out over the sea, whose coasts were sunk into the
night, and which lay stretching away like a second night, immeasurable
and gloomy, he saw now and then a dissolving splendor sweep over it,
which flowed on ever broader and brighter. A distant torch also showed
itself in the air, whose flashing drew long, fiery furrows through the
glimmering waves. There drew near a bark, with its sail taken in,
because the wind blew off shore. Female forms appeared on board, among
which, one of royal stature, along whose red, silken dress the
torch-glare streamed down, held her eyes fixed upon Vesuvius. As they
sailed nearer, and the bright sea blazed up on either side under the
dashing oars, it seemed as if a goddess were coming, around whom the
sea swims with enraptured flames, and who knows it not. All stepped out
on shore at some distance, where by appointment, as it seemed, servants
had been waiting to make everything easy. A smaller person, provided
with a double opera-glass, took a short farewell of the tall one, and
went away with a considerable retinue. The red-dressed one drew a white
veil over her face, and went, accompanied by two virgins, gravely and
like a princess, to the spot where Albano and the music were.
Albano stood near to her; two great black eyes, filled with fire and
resting upon life with inward earnestness, streamed through the veil,
which betrayed the proud, straight forehead and nose. In the whole
appearance there was to him something familiar and yet great; she stood
before him as a Fairy Queen, who had long ago with a heavenly
countenance bent down over his cradle and looked in with smiles and
blessings, and whom the spirit now recognizes again with its old love.
He thought perhaps of a name, which spirits had named to him, but that
presence seemed here not possible. She fixed her eye with complacency
and attention on the play of two virgins, who, neatly clad in silk,
with gold-edged silken aprons, danced gracefully, with modestly
drooping heads and downcast eyes, to the tambourine of a third; the two
other virgins, whom the stranger had brought with her, and Agata, sang
sweetly with Italian half-voice[97] to the graceful joy. "It is all
done in fact," said an old man to the strange lady, "to the honor of
the Holy Virgin and St. Nicholas." She nodded slowly a serious yes.
At this moment there stood, all at once, Luna, played about with the
sacrificial fire of Vesuvius, over in the sky, as the proud goddess of
the sun-god, not pale, but fiery, as it were a thunder-goddess over the
thunder of the mountain, and Albano cried, involuntarily, "God! the
great moon!" The stranger quickly threw back her veil, and looked round
significantly after the voice as after a familiar one; when she had
looked upon the strange youth for a long time, she turned toward the
moon over Vesuvius.
But Albano was agitated by a god, and dazzled by a wonder; he saw here
Linda de Romeiro. When she raised the veil, beauty and brightness
streamed out of a rising sun; delicate, maidenly colors, lovely lines
and sweet fulness of youth played like a flower-garland about the brow
of a goddess, with soft blossoms around the holy seriousness and mighty
will on brow and lip, and around the dark glow of the large eye. How
had the pictures lied about her,--how feebly had they expressed this
spirit and this life!
As if the hour would fain worthily invest the shining apparition, so
beautifully did heaven and earth with all rays of life play into each
other,--love-thirsty stars flew like heaven-butterflies into the
sea,--the moon had soared away over the impetuous earth-flame of
Vesuvius, and spread her tender light over the happy world, the sea and
the shores,--Epomeo hovered with his silvered woods, and with the
hermitage of his summit high in the night blue,--near by stirred the
life of the singing, dancing ones, with their prayers and their festal
rockets which they were sending aloft. When Linda had long looked
across the sea toward Vesuvius, she spoke, of herself, to the silent
Albano, by way of answering his exclamation, and making up for her
sudden turning round and staring at him. "I come from Vesuvius," said
she; "but he is quite as sublime near at hand as afar off, which is so
singular." Altogether strange and spirit-like did it sound to him, that
he really heard this voice. With one that indicated deep emotion he
replied: "In this land, however, everything is great indeed, even the
little is made great by the large,--this little human pleasure here
between the burnt-out volcano[98] and the burning one,--all is at one,
and therefore right and so godlike." At once attracted and distracted,
not knowing him, although previously struck with the resemblance of his
voice to that of Roquairol, gladly reflecting on his simple words, she
looked longer than she was aware at the ingenuous, but daring and warm
eye of the youth, made no reply, turned slowly away, and again looked
silently at the sports.
Dian, who had already for a long time been looking at the fair
stranger, found at last in his memory her name, and came to her with
the half-proud, half-embarrassed look of artists toward rank. She did
not recognize him. "The Greek, Dian," said Albano, "noble Countess!"
Surprised at the Count's recognition of her, she said to him: "I do not
know you." "You know my father," said Albano, "the Knight Cesara." "O
Dio!" cried the Spanish maiden, startled, became a lily, a rose, a
flame, sought to collect herself, and said, "How singular! A friend of
yours, the Princess Julienne, is also here."
The conversation flowed now more smoothly. She spoke of his father, and
expressed her gratitude as his ward. "That is a mighty nature of his,
which guards itself against everything common," said she, at once,
against the fashion of the quality, speaking even partially of persons.
The son was made happy by this praise of a father; he enhanced it, and
asked in pleased expectation how she took his coldness.
"Coldness?" said she, with liveliness, "I hate the word cordially. If
ever a rare man has a whole will and no half of one, and rests upon his
power, and does not, like a crustaceous animal, cleave to every other,
then he is called cold. Is not the sun, when he approaches us, cold
too?" "Death is cold," cried Albano, very much moved, because he often
imagined that he himself had more force than love; "but there may well
be a sublime coldness, a sublime pain, which with eagle's talon
snatches the heart away on high, but tears it in pieces in mid-heaven
and before the sun."
She looked upon him with a look of greatness. "Truly you speak like a
woman," said she; "they alone have nothing to will or to do without the
might of love; but it was prettily said." Dian, good for nothing as to
general observations, and apt only at individual ones, interrupted her
with questions about particular works of art in Naples; she very
frankly communicated her characteristic views, although with tolerable
decision. Albano thought at first of his artistic friend, the
draughtsman Schoppe, and asked about him. "At my departure," said she,
"he was still in Pestitz, though I cannot comprehend what such an
extraordinary being would fain do there; that is a powerful man, but
quite jumbled up and not clear. He is very much your friend." "How
does," asked Dian, half joking, "my old patron, the Lector Augusti?"
She answered concisely, and almost with a certain sensitiveness at the
familiarity of his question: "It goes well with him at court. Few
natures," she continued, turning to Albano, on the subject of Augusti,
"are doomed to meet so much injustice of judgment as such simple, cool,
consistent ones as his." Albano could not entirely say yes, but he
recognized with satisfaction in her respect for the strangest
individuality of character the pupil of his father, who prized a plant,
not according to the smoothness or roughness of its skin, but according
to its bloom. Never does a man portray his own character more vividly
than in his manner of portraying another's. But Linda's lofty candor on
the subject, which is as often wanting in finely cultivated females as
refinement and reserve are in powerful men, took the strongest hold of
the youth, and he thought he should be sinning if he did not exercise
his great natural frankness towards her in a twofold degree.
She called her maidens to depart with her. Dian went off. "These are
more necessary to me," said she to Albano, "than they seem." She had,
namely, she related, something of the ocular malady[99] of many Spanish
women, of being infinitely short-sighted in the night. He begged to be
permitted to accompany her, and it was granted; he would have guided
her, after what she had said, but she forbade it.
During the walk she often stood still, to look at the beautiful flame
of Vesuvius. "He stands there," said Albano, "in this pastoral poem of
Nature, like a tragic muse, and exalts everything, as a war does the
age." "Do you believe that of war," said she. "A man must have," he
replied, "either great men or great objects before him, otherwise his
powers degenerate, as the magnet's do, when it has lain for a long time
without being turned toward the right corners of the world." "How
true," said she: "what say you to a Gallic war?" He owned his wish that
it might break out, and his own disposition to take part in it. He
could not help, even at the expense of his future liberty, being
open-hearted towards her. "Blessed are you men," said she; "you dig
your way down through the snow of life, and find at last the green
harvest underneath. That can no woman do. A woman is surely a stupid
thing in nature. I respect one and another head of the Revolution,
particularly that political monster of energy, Mirabeau, although I
cannot like him."
During these discoursings they came upon the ascent of Epomeo. Agata
accompanied the two playmates of her earlier days with full tongue and
hungry ear for so many mutual news-tellings. As he now went along
beside the beautiful virgin, and occasionally looked in her face, which
was made still more beautiful by mental energy, and became at once
flower, blossom, and fruit (whereas generally the converse holds, and
the head gains by the face): then did he pass a severe judgment upon
his previous deportment toward this noble being, although he as well as
she, out of delicacy, remained silent about the former juggling play
with her name, as well as about the wonderfulness of to-day's meeting.
Silently they went on in the rare night and region. All at once she
stopped on an eminence, around which the dowry of Nature was heaped up
on all sides in mountains. They looked round in the splendor; the Swan
of Heaven, the moon, floated high over Vesuvius in the ether,--the
giant serpent of the world, the sea, lay fast asleep in his bed that
stretches from pole to pole,--the coasts and promontories glimmered
only, like midnight dreams,--clefts full of tree-blossoms overflowed
with ethereal dew made of light, and in the vales below stood dark
smoke-columns upon hot fountains, and overhead they floated away in
splendor,--all around lay, high up, illuminated chapels, and low around
the shore dark cities,--the winds stood still, the rose-perfumes and
the myrtle-perfumes stole forth alone,--soft and bland floated the blue
night around the ravished earth; from around the warm moon the ether
retired, and she sank down love-intoxicated out of mid-heaven larger
and larger into the sweet earth-spring. Vesuvius stood now, without
flame or thunder, white with sand or snow, in the east,--in the
darkening blue the gold grains of the fiery stars were sowed far
abroad.
It was the rare time when life has its transit through a
superterrestrial sun. Albano and Linda accompanied each other with holy
eyes, and their looks softly disengaged themselves from each other
again; they gazed into the world, and into the heart, and expressed
nothing. Linda turned softly round and walked silently onward.
Just then, all at once, one of the prattling maidens behind them called
out: "There is really an earthquake coming; I actually feel it; good
night!" It was Agata. "God grant one," said Albano. "O why?" said
Linda, eagerly, but in a low tone. "All that the infinite mother wills
and sends is to me to-day childishly dear, even death;--are not we,
too, part and parcel of her immortality?" said he. "Yes, man may feel
and believe this in joy; only in sorrow let him not speak of
immortality; in such impotency of soul he is not worthy of it."
Albano's spirit here rose up from its princely seat to greet its lofty
kinswoman, and said, "Immortal one! and though no one else were so!"
She silently smiled and went on. His heart was an asbestos-leaf written
over and cast into the fire, burning, not consuming; his whole former
life went out, the leaf shone fiery and pure for Linda's hand.
When they reached the last eminence below which Linda's and Julienne's
dwelling lay, and they stood near each other on the point of
separation, then the maiden suddenly cried out below: "An earthquake!"
Out of hell a thunder-car rolled on in the subterranean ways,--a broad
lightning flapped its wings up and down in the pure heaven under the
stars,--the earth and the stars trembled, and affrighted eagles flew
through the lofty night. Albano had grasped the hands of the tottering
Linda. Her face had faded before the moon to a pale, godlike statue of
marble. By this time it was all over; only some stars of the earth
still shot down out of the steadfast heavens into the sea, and wondrous
clouds went up round about from below. "Am I not very timid?" said she,
faintly. Albano gazed into her face livingly and serenely as a sun-god
in morning-redness, and pressed her hands. She would have drawn them
away violently. "Give them to me forever!" said he, earnestly. "Bold
man," said she, in confusion, "who art thou? Dost thou know me? If thou
art as I, then swear and say whether thou hast always been true!"
Albano looked toward Heaven, his life was balanced; God was near him;
he answered softly and firmly: "Linda, always!" "So have I!" said she,
and inclined modestly her beautiful head upon his breast, but
immediately raised it again, with its large moist eyes, and said,
hurriedly: "Go now! Early to-morrow come, Albano! Adio! Adio!"
The maidens came up. Albano went down, his bosom filled with living
warmth, with living radiance. Nature breathed with fresher perfumes out
of the gardens; the sea murmured again below; and on Vesuvius burned a
Love's-torch, a festal fire of joy. Through the night-skies some eagles
were still sailing toward the moon, as toward a sun; and against the
arch of heaven the Jacob's-ladder stood leaning with golden rounds of
stars.
As Albano was walking along so solitary in his bliss, dissolved in the
rapture of love, the fragrance of the vales, the radiance of the
heights, dreaming, hovering, he saw birds of passage flying across the
sea in the direction of the Apennines, on their way to Germany, where
Liana had lived. "Holy One above!" cried his heart, "thou desiredst
this joy; appear and bless it!" Unexpectedly he stood before a chapel
niche wherein the Holy Virgin stood. The moon transfigured the pale
statue,--the Virgin took life beneath the radiance, and became more
like Liana,--he knelt down, and ardently gave God his prayers of
gratitude and Liana his tears. When he rose, turtle-doves were cooing
in dreams, and a nightingale warbled; the hot fountains smoked
glimmering, and the happy singing of far-off people came up to his
ears.
TWENTY-NINTH JUBILEE.
Julienne.--The Island.--Sundown.--Naples.--Vesuvius.--
Linda's Letter.--Fight Departure.
111. CYCLE.
After a long night, the fresh morning breathed when Albano was to find
again the treasures of the most blessed dream, the flowers of fortune
which the moon had opened, in broad sunlight. Life shouted to him
exultingly, as he climbed again yesterday's heights, which shone
overspread with the varnish of light; not to a rose-feast, but to all
flower and harvest-festivals at once; to feasts of myrtles and lilies;
to gleanings and blossom-gatherings. The sun went forth over the
blessed region, and as a peacock with his trailing rainbow flies into a
blossoming tree, so did the young day, heavy with colors and laden with
gardens and full of reflections, mount the blue heights, and smile like
a child upon the world. Albano looked now from his height down on the
enchanted castle wherein yesterday the mighty enchantress had
disappeared.
He went down to it. A singing maiden on the flowery roof, who seemed to
have been waiting for him, pointed out, leaning over without
interrupting her singing, a near apartment below her into which he was
to enter. He stepped in; it was empty. Through the windows of oiled
paper streamed a wondrous morning light; on the wooden ceiling figures
from Herculaneum were painted; in a Campanian vase stood yellow
butterfly flowers and myrtle-blossoms, which diffused around them a
sweet perfumed atmosphere. The singular environs enclosed him more and
more closely, for he found, in fact, some pictures and articles of
furniture which seemed familiar to him. At last he saw, to his
amazement, on the table a half ring. He took out his half which he had
got from the pretended sister in the Gothic chamber on that ghostly
night, and which, to be ready for the opportunity of a comparison, he
always carried about with him. He pressed the semicircles into one
another; suddenly they closed, clasping, and formed a fast ring. "God!"
thought he, "what arm strikes again into my life?"
Just then the door was hastily opened, and the Princess Julienne
entered hurriedly, smiling and weeping, and exclaimed, flying to him,
"O my brother! my brother!" "Julienne," said he, seriously, and with
deep emotion, "art thou really my sister at last?" "O, long enough has
she been so!" replied she, and looked on him tenderly and blissfully,
and smiled through her tears. Then she again embraced him, and again
looked at him, and said: "Thou dear Albano-brother! So long have I,
like a moon, been sailing around thee, and had, like her, to stay
colder and farther off. Now will I love thee with exceeding fondness;
my love shall run backward, and run forward too!" "Almighty!" Albano
broke out, weeping, when he found himself so suddenly clasped by a
beneficent arm out of the cloud, "all this dost thou now give me at
once?" "Ah!" cried Julienne, with liveliness, "that I were only weeping
for pure joy! But I must eat my bitter crust of sorrow with it too!
Dear brother, Luigi writes me yesterday from Pestitz that I must hasten
back, else he will hardly live to see my return. Did I think of this on
my setting out? Thus what I receive with one hand I must give up with
the other." Albano said nothing to this, because he could not possibly
take the least interest in the Prince. So much the more did he refresh
himself with fresh, clear joy in the open, breathing Orient of his
earliest days of life, in the sight of this young, pure flower, which
grew and played, as it were, in and out of the bright, fresh fountain
of his childhood.
"But, heavens! explain to me," began Albano, "how all came to pass."
"Now, I know, the questioning begins," she replied. "The ostensible sum
and substance thou shalt shortly have; if thou askest for more, if thou
wilt peep into the book of mysteries, then I shut it to, and repeat to
thee some lies. Next October, it may be sooner, all comes to light.
This for the present, and first of all,--my mother was, and remains,
verily pure and holy in this relationship, by the Almighty God!"
"What a riddle!" said he. "Art thou the daughter of my father? Is Luigi
my brother? Is my dead sister Severina thy sister?" asked he.
_Julienne_. "Ask October!"
_Albano_. "Ah, sister!"
_Julienne_. "O brother, trust the daughter of Melchisedec. Further,--I
was indeed the sister in the apparition, whom the man with the bald
head introduced to thee in Lilar. I could not, and yet I felt that I
must, have thee ere thou hadst flown away into foreign parts. The old
age which I then had in the mirror was, as thou seest, made only by an
artificial mirror."[100]
_Albano_. "Truly, I thought then of no one but of thee. Only how comes
there a man like the Baldhead and like the Father of Death, who so
incomprehensibly predicted to me in Mola that I should find thee?"
_Julienne_. "That is impossible. Did he name my name?"
_Albano_. "That only was wanting. The Pater is, for the rest, in all
probability one and the same man with the Baldhead. Immediately after
the announcement he went toward heaven."
_Julienne_. "There let him stay, by all means, and the other too. Does
this dark bond of enchantment concern or disturb me or thee, which, in
its false miracles, has thus far always been interrupted by singular
real ones? It was quite innocently that I happened in Lilar at that
time, and perhaps I prevented something frightful."
_Albano_. "By heavens! I must ask what, then, is his object, who his
leader, his manager?"
_Julienne_. "Probably the father of the Countess, for he lives still, I
hear, unknown and unseen, although thy father is guardian. Be
astonished when thou art at home, and leave the riddles, which, be
assured, are unravelling themselves so agreeably for us both, and await
the October days."
_Albano_. "But one thing, beloved sister, deny me not, I pray thee,--a
clear word about my and thy wonderful relation to the noble Countess!
Only that!"
_Julienne_. "Has my heart, then, already denied it thee? The glorious
one,--well for her and me and thee! Thy first word of love,--which the
gods have now so firmly sealed,--was to be the signal-word for my
annunciation to thee; only from the beloved mightest thou receive the
sister. What jugglers and ghosts have done towards it, and how much of
it, no one knows better than--October; why shall I, meanwhile, be
choosing between lies and perjury? I simply did all, only to bring you
two together; the rest I knew beforehand. Nothing succeeded,--it all
was a stifling snarl; everything went up hill. I saw precious
beings[101] sowing in an unblessed spring dreadful griefs, and withal
smiling so hopefully! and I could not hold their unhappy hands,--I, who
with such certainty foreknew all the coming anguish. O thou pure, pious
soul above!" said she, all at once, with quivering lip, looking towards
heaven.
The brother and sister embraced each other softly, and wept in silence
at the thought of the innocent sacrifice.
"No," said Albano, very warmly, "no hell-conspiracy could have sundered
us had she only stayed with me, or even on the earth." "See, Albano,"
said Julienne, collecting again her more cheerful life-spirits, and
opening all blinds, "how the morning hill sparkles and swims up and
down! Let me speak out! By the very greatest good luck, I learned in
winter that thou wast turning thy thoughts toward Naples. Linda had
already been there once, and her mother at the baths of the
neighborhood. For me, I said to her, Ischia's baths would do as well as
any. Go with me; we will not disturb or go near your triste guardian in
Rome at all. She readily assented. Of course there was no mention made
of thee; previously, however, there had been often enough in letters
and otherwise, when I always praised thee beyond measure. And now _nous
voici donc_. Yesterday I received in Naples the mournful letter of my
brother. Of thy arrival I knew as yet nothing. I let the Countess go
alone to the feast of tones, and hastened home with heavy heart. When
she came back, she opened her glad heart, and told me all; and then I
told her all. Ah, thank God," she added, falling upon his neck, "that
we have now at last disembarked in Elysium, and that the rotten
Charon's-boat has not sent us to the bottom. But for all Europe, even
for thy Dian, mark me, the privy seal remains upon our relationship."
Albano must needs still put a few questions. She kept answering, in a
lively tone, "October! October!" till all at once, as if awaking, she
exclaimed, "O, how can I say that so gayly?" but without explaining
herself on the subject.
"Now will I bring thee, as I have heretofore done, to the Countess,
only by a shorter way," said she, took his hand, led him out, opened
the opposite apartment, where Linda lived, and said, "I present to thee
my brother." Deeply blushing, the noble form came to meet them, and
embraced, without a word, her dear female friend. When her eye met
again Albano's, she was so struck that she sought to draw away the hand
which he kissed, for she had yesterday hardly seen but in a glimmering
light his beautiful eye, and his noble brow, and the lips of love; and
this blooming man stood, inspired with double emotion, so bright and
still and earnest before her, full of noble, real love. Her heart would
gladly have fallen upon his; at least, she gave him back her hand into
his, and wished him joy of this morning. The obvious answer, "and of
yesterday evening," he could not get over his lips, from a peculiar,
modest shyness, of giving as of taking praise. "A third man is found at
last for the travelling-college," said Julienne; "for thou must go off
directly, in a few days; thou, too, must be off to Pestitz, Albano."
"I, too, sister?" said he; "I meant to stay a month, and here is the
visit of Vesuvius, Herculaneum, and Naples crowded into a few days." He
wondered afterwards himself at the sweetness of obedience under the
fair commands of love, since he used once to say, "Command me to
command, and I will not obey." "I accompany my friend," said Linda,
"glad as I should have been to go to Greece, to which I am already, for
the second time, so near."
"This very night I fly away," said he; "I will only wake, see, live,
and love." Julienne had already begun to show a sister's concern about
his health and his objects; divided between two brothers, gladly would
she, had it only been possible, have sacrificed herself to both. "The
good creature has not even yet enjoyed Ischia," said she; "he must have
that to-day."
Albano felt, at the expression of this new female love, that woman
was the human heart in the fairest form. Within him rang a glad
melody,--"What a day lies before thee, and what years!" Sweetly
entwined and overspun with a canopy of double love-blossoms, he saw
life and earth full of fragrance and light; over the morning dew of
youth a sun had now been ushered up, and the dark drops glistened up
and down through all gardens.
He cast, at length, a glance at the place which surrounded him. Niobe's
group, the Genius of Turin, Cupid, and Psyche, stood there in casts,
borrowed from the cabinet of an artist in Naples. The walls were
decorated with rare pictures, among which was--Schoppe sneezing. This
alone rushed with the northern past mightily into his softened heart,
and he expressed his feeling to his beloved. "You," said she, "prefer
friendship to art, for that portrait is the worst in my collection; but
the original deserves, indeed, all regard."
She went into the cabinet, and brought out a miniature likeness of
herself, which represented her, after the Turkish fashion, veiled, and
with only one eye uncovered. How livingly beside the twilight of the
veil did the open, soul-speaking eye look and strike! How did the flame
of its might burn through the covering of mildness! Linda named the
master of the magnificent picture, that very Schoppe, and added, he had
said in this case the master must, out of reciprocal complaisance,
himself praise a work which praised him more partially and powerfully
than any other work of his ever had. She explained this difference of
his pencil by another cause, which he had stated to her almost in these
words: he had, he said, in his earliest youth, loved her mother as long
as he had seen her, and afterwards never any one again; and therefore
he had, as she resembled her mother, painted her _con amore_, and
really striven to bring out something.
"O, honest old man!" said Albano, and could hardly keep tears out of
the eyes which so often were happy. But it was only the holy pang of
friendship; for there darted through him at last, like a beam of
lightning through the clearest sky, a presumption made certain by
everything,--by Schoppe's diary and Linda's words and Rabette's
letter,--that Linda was the soul whom the singular being secretly
loved. A sharp pain cut hastily but deeply through his brow; and he
conquered himself only by his present younger freshness of spirit, by
newly gathered power and force, and by the free thought that a friend
may well and easily give up and sacrifice to his friend a _loved_ one,
but cannot or dares not so easily surrender _one who loves him_.
Julienne said, "The only wonder is that my brother, between two such
fantastical beings as this Schoppe and Roquairol, has not himself
become one of the same feather." A running fire broke out. Linda said,
"Schoppe is only a southern nature in conflict with a northern
climate." "Properly with life itself," said Albano. Julienne simply
remarked, "I love always rules in life; with neither of them is one
ever tranquil and _à son aise_, but only _à leur aise_." She asked him
at once about Roquairol. "He was once my friend, and I speak of him no
more," said Albano, whose tongue was tied by the ruined favorite's
torturing love for Linda, and even his relationship to Liana. Linda
glided over the subject with the mere verdict that he was an
overstrained weakling, and without special mention of his love for her
or of her abhorrence of him. She quite as coldly forgot at a distance
every one who was repulsive to her inner being as she did vehemently
thrust him off when he was near.
Julienne withdrew to make arrangements for the little day's journey
over the island. Albano despatched a note to Dian, containing the
_marche-route_ to Naples. Linda said, in respect to Julienne, "A deeply
and firmly grounded character!" "The stem and twigs all buried in
little fragrant blossoms!" he added. "And exactly what she hates in
books and conversations,--poesy,--that she pursues right earnestly in
action. Individuality is everywhere to be spared and respected, as the
root of everything good. You, too, are very good," she added, with soft
voice. "Truly, I am so at present," said he; "for I love right
heartily; and only a complete being can one really love, and with
entire disinterestedness."
"So must the sun's image strike full and round, in order to burn." "Or
an image which one takes for it," said she; "I am what I am, and cannot
easily become anything else. If man has only a will once for all, which
goes through life, not alternating from minute to minute, from being to
being, that is the main thing." "Linda," cried Albano, "I hear my own
soul. There are words which are actions; yours are." When she thus
spoke out her soul, her beautiful form vanished from before his
enchanted spirit, as the golden string vanishes when it begins to
sound. Wounded and punished by the past for his often hard energy, he
breathed only with a gentle breath--although now life, the world,
and the very region made him bolder, brighter, firmer, and more
ardent--upon the _unisonant_ Æolian strings of this _many-toned_ soul.
But how must she have been charmed with a man at once so mighty and so
tender,--a soft constellation of near suns,--a beautiful war-god with
the lyre,--a storm-cloud full of Aurora,--a spirited, ardent youth,
whose thought was so honest! She said it not, however, but simply
loved, like him.
He threw an accidental glance at her little table-library. "Nothing but
French!" said she. He found _Montaigne_, the life of _Guyon_, the
_Contrat Social_, and, last of all, _Madame de Staël sur l'Influence
des Passions_. He had read this, and said how infinitely pleased he had
been with the articles upon love, parties, and vanity, and, in short,
with her German or Spanish heart of fire, but not with her bald French
philosophy, least of all with her immoral suicide-mania. "Good Heaven!"
cried Linda; "is not life itself a long suicide? Albano, all men are
still somewhere or other pedants, the good in morality so called, and
you especially. Maxims of Kant, great, broad classifications,
principles, must they all have. You are all born Germans, real Germans
of the Germans, even you, friend. Am I right?" she added, softly, as if
she desired a "yes."
"No," said Albano, "so soon as a man once pursues and desires anything
right earnestly and exclusively, then he is called a coxcomb or a
pedant." "O you everlasting readers and readeresses!" cried Julienne,
stepping in and seeing him with a book in his hand. "Never has the
Princess read preface or note," said Linda, "as I have never yet let
any one go." Women who read prefaces and notes are of some
significance; with men, at most the opposite were true. "We can set
out; all is ready," said Julienne.
112. CYCLE.
When they came out into the festive world, how did the cool blue of
heaven come floating, fanning down upon them instead of earthly airs!
How sparkled the world and the day--and the future! How brightly foamed
over in the goblet of life the draught of love made for each of the
three beings out of two intoxicating ingredients!
They followed the path to the summit of Epomeo, but in an elastic,
yielding freedom, and in a rapid variety of nature which is not to be
matched anywhere upon the earth. They met valleys with laurels and
cherries, with roses and primroses at once. There came cool defiles
filled out with ripe oranges and apples, beside high rocks of aloes and
pomegranates, and on the summits of the cherry and apple tree stirred
overhead the vine and orange blossoms. In the blooming clefts warbled
secure nightingales, and out of the crevices poisonless serpents' heads
darted to the light,--sometimes appeared a cloister in a citron-grove,
sometimes a white house attached to a vine-garden, now a cool grotto,
now a kitchen garden near red clover, now a little meadow full of white
rose-flowers and narcissi, and at every turn a man, who went by
singing, dancing, and accosting them. Heights and gardens alternately
hid and revealed the land and the water, and often for a long time the
far-stretching sea and its cloud-coasts glimmered after them like a
second heaven through the green twigs.
They drew nearer and nearer to the hermit's house on the summit,
rocking themselves upon the gay, golden flag-feathers of life. They
spoke to each other now and then a word of joy, not, however, by way of
communicating each other, but because the heart could not help it, and
a word was nothing but a sigh of happiness. They stood at last upon the
throne of the earth, and looked down as from the sun. Round about them
the sea lay camped, melting away into the blue of the horizon,--from
Capua, far in the depths of the distance, stretched the white
Apennines around Vesuvius and over on the long coast of Sorrento still
onward,--and from Posilippo the lands pursued the sea even beyond Mola
and Terracina,--on the opened world-surface appeared everything, the
promontories, the yellow crater-margins on the coasts and the islands
round about, which the terrible, veiled fire-god under the sea had
driven up out of his fiery realm to the light of the sun,--and the
lovely Ischia with its little cities on the shores and with its little
gardens and craters, stood like a green blooming ship in the great sea,
and rested on innumerable waves.
Then vanished the greatnesses of the earth from below, only the earth
was great and the sun with his heavens. "O how happy we are!" said
Albano. Yes, you were happy there; who will be so after you? Cradling
himself upon the tree of life, at which his childish eye had already so
early and longingly gazed upward, he gave utterance to all that exalted
and possessed him. "Therein I recognize the all-powerful mother; angry
and flaming, she comes up from the bottom of the sea, plants a burning
land, and then does she again, smiling, distribute flowers among her
children; so let man be, volcano--then flower." "What in comparison
with this," said Julienne, "are all the winter amusements of the German
May-moon! Is not that a smaller Switzerland only in a greater lake of
Geneva?" The Countess, who through her Spain was more initiated in such
charms, kept herself for the most part still. "Man," said she, "is the
Oread and Hamadryad or some other divinity, and inspires wood and vale,
and man himself, again, is inspired by man."
The Hermit appeared, and said, their meal, which was sent up, had long
since arrived; he also took occasion to praise his situation. "Often,"
said he, and made Julienne laugh, "my mountain smokes like Vesuvius,
and bathing-guests look up, and apprehend something, but it is only
because I am baking my bread up here." They encamped themselves in the
shady open air. They must needs be ever looking down again upon the
lovely, diminished island, which with its gardens planted within
gardens, with its springs intertwined with autumns, lay so whole and so
near, a great family garden, where the people all dwell together,
because there are no different lands to become entangled with each
other, and the bees and the larks fly not far out over the garden of
the sea. Like still, open flowers were the three souls beside each
other; fragrantly flies the flower-dust to and fro, to generate new
flowers. Linda sank away completely into her great deep heart; unused
to love, she would fain gaze therein and find joy, while no word of
Albano's escaped her, for it bespoke its birth of love in the heart.
Overflowing with mildness, and deep in thought she sat there, with her
great eye half under the downcast eyelid,--after her manner, always
long silent as well as long speaking. As the diamond sparkles just like
the dewdrop, but only with steady power and even without the sun, her
heart resembled the softest in all feminine mildness and purity, and
excelled it only in strength. With delight Julienne beheld, when, now
and then, after a childlike forgetting of Albano, (because her stream
of speech had borne her from one world to another,) suddenly and with
unembarrassed joy, she replaced her finely formed hand in the youth's,
to whom a pressure of her hand was nothing less than a tender embrace.
They took the nearest way down back to Albano's residence, which was
ever looking up to them from its vine-shrubbery. They were ever so
little with each other,--in the morning Albano was to travel. He must
write from Portici, a messenger must come to take the letter,--"And he
brings me one, too," said he. "Certainly not!" said Linda. Albano
begged. "She will soon change and write," said Julienne. She said no.
By degrees furrows of shade stole down the mountain along with the dark
lava-streams, and in the poplars nightingales began already their
melodious twilight. They drew near to Albano's house. Dian ran out with
delight to meet the Princess. Albano begged him, without having asked
either, to procure a bark, in order that they might enjoy the evening.
Compulsory proposals of pleasure are precisely those to which maidens
love best to say yes. Dian was immediately at hand with a boat; he
always and quickly joined his pleasure to that of others.
They all embarked and moved along among the sunflowers, which every ray
of the sun planted thicker and thicker upon the watery beds. Albano--in
his present glow, accustomed to the manners of the warm land where the
lover speaks before the mother and she speaks of him with the daughter,
where Love wears no veil, but only hatred and the face, and where the
_myrtle_, in every sense, is the setting of the fields--forgot himself
a moment before Dian, and took Linda's hand; she quickly snatched it
away from him, true to the manner of maidens, which is lavish of the
arm and chary of the finger and the thimble. But she looked on him
softly, when she had repelled him.
They passed along again, on their passage from east to north, before
the rock with houses and before the streets of the suburb town on the
shore. All was glad and friendly,--all sang that did not prattle,--the
roofs were occupied with looms of silk ribbons, and the websters spoke
and sang from roof to roof. Julienne could hardly keep her eye away
from this southern sociableness and harmony. They put out farther into
the sea, and the sun went down nearer to it. The waves and the
breezes played with one another, the former breathing, the latter
undulating,--sky and sea were arched into one blue concave, and in its
centre floated, free as a spirit in the universe, the light skiff of
love. The circle of the world became a golden, swollen harvest-wreath
full of glowing coasts and islands,--gondolas flew singing into the
distance, and had torches already prepared for the night, (sometimes a
flying-fish traced his arc behind them in the air,) and Dian responded
to their familiar songs as they glided along by. Yonder were seen great
ships, proudly and slowly sailing along, fluttering like the sky, with
red and blue plumes, and like conquerors bound to port. Everywhere was
the must of life poured out, and it worked impetuously. So played a
divine world around man! "O here in this great scene," said Albano,
"where everything finds place, Paradises and dark Orcus-coasts of lava,
and the yielding sea, and the gray Gorgon-head of Vesuvius, and the
playing children of men, and the blossoms and all,--here where one must
glow like a lava,--could not one, like the hot lava round about him,
bury himself in the waves, in all his glow, if one knew that anything
of this hour could pass away, even so much as a remembrance thereof, or
a throbbing of the pulse for a loved heart? Were not that better?"
"Perhaps," said Linda. Julienne was carried in thought by the softening
pleasure to the distant sick-bed of her brother, and said, smiling:
"Cannot one do like the fair sun over yonder, and go under the waves
and yet come back again? And yet, after all, if you look upon his going
down rightly, there is no such thing in reality."
The sun stood already big as a great golden shield held from heaven
above the Pontian islands, and gilded their blue,--the white, rocky
crown of thorns, Capri, lay in glowing light, and from Sorrento's
coasts to Gaeta's glimmering gold had shot up along the walls of the
world,--the earth rolled with her axis, as with a music-barrel, near
the sun, and struck from the great luminary rays and tones,--sideward
lay in ambush the giant messenger of night, camped on the sea, the
immense shadow of Epomeo.
At this moment the sun touched the sea, and a golden lightning darted
trembling round through the humid ether,--and he cradled himself on a
thousand fiery wave-wings, and he quivered and hung, burning and
glowing with love, on the sea, and the sea, burning, drank all his
glow. Then it threw, as if he was about to pass away forever, the veil
of an infinite splendor over the pale-growing god. Then it became still
on the earth; a floating evening redness overflowed with rose-oil all
the waves; the holy islands of sundown stood transfigured; the remotest
coasts drew near and showed their redness of delight; on all heights
hung rose-garlands; Epomeo glowed upward even to the ether, and on the
eternal cloud-tree, which grows up out of the hollow Vesuvius, went out
on the summit the last thin glimmering of splendor.
Speechless, the companions turned from the west toward the shore. The
sailors began again to talk. "Make thy brother," Linda softly begged
her friend, "keep himself always turned toward the west." She fulfilled
the request without immediately guessing its motive. Linda looked
continually into his beautifully irradiated face: "Ask him again," said
she a second time, "the twilight is too deep, and my weak eyes see so
poorly without light." It was not done, for they immediately went on
shore. The earth trembled beneath and after them as they trod upon it,
as a sounding-board of the blissful hour. Albano was fastened in
speechless emotion upon the beloved face, which he must soon leave
again. "I'll write to you," said she, unasked, with so touching a
recall of her former threat, that, had he not been among strange eyes,
he must have fallen, intoxicated with gratitude upon her hand, upon her
noble heart. Hard was the parting, and the end of an harmonious day in
which the tone of every single minute had been again a tri-clang. By
this time Dian had already departed. "Not even the roses of evening,"
said Julienne, "are without thorns." "An abrupt leave-taking is always
the best; we will go home," said Linda. Albano begged that he might be
allowed to attend her. "Whither?" said Linda. Softly she added, for the
sake of her eyes, "I can hardly see you any longer; however, only come,
I can hear, nevertheless." "Beautiful inconstant one!" said Julienne.
"I change myself," said she, "but no other does it; only as far as the
chapel, Albano; you sail early in the morning." "Even earlier; perhaps
this very night," said he.
While they thus more and more slowly descended the mountain, and the
nightingales warbled, and the myrtle-blossoms breathed their perfume,
and the tepid breezes fluttered, and overhead the whole second world,
like a veiled nun, looked with a holy eye through the silver-grating of
the constellations, every heart overflowed with faithful love, and the
brother and the sister and the beloved took alternately each other's
hand.
At once Linda stood upon the spot of yesterday's union and said, "Here
he must go, Julienne!" and swiftly drew her hand out of his, and
smoothed lightly his locks and cheek and then his eye, and asked,
"How?" in the confusion of a dream. "Immediately," said Julienne; "one
must, however, wait at least for the Italian winter, for the moon,
before one can even go home." Then the brother fell upon the bosom of
the tender sister, who would fain hereby procure for him a longer
tarrying, and for her friend the privilege of seeing him again by a
stronger illumination, and he exclaimed, with tears, "O sister! how
much hast thou done for me, before I could do anything for thee, or
even thank thee! Thou givest me, indeed, everything,--every joy, the
highest felicity; O, what art thou like!" "There is the moon!" cried
she; "now farewell, and a happy journey!"
Like a silvery day the moon had climbed the mountains, and the
transfigured beloved one saw again the blooming face of her beloved. He
took her hand and said, "Farewell, Linda!" Long looked they upon each
other, their eyes full of soul, and they grew more strange and exalted
in each other's eyes. Then did he, without knowing how, press to his
heart the noble maiden, like a blessed spirit embracing a spring
sun,--and he touched her holy countenance with his, and like the red
mornings of two worlds their lips melted together. Linda closed her
eyes, and kissed with trembling, and only a single life and bliss
rolled and glowed between two hearts and lips. Julienne gently enfolded
the embrace with her own, and desired no other bliss. Thereupon all
parted, without speaking again, or looking round.
113. CYCLE.
Albano, with the new haste which now reigned in his actions, was
already, beneath the cool morning star, flying from the happy soil. He
told the architect, Dian, all his whole blessedness, because he knew
how very much of a youth the man still remained in matters of love.
"Bravo!" answered Dian, "who can escape without love in Italy? At least
none of us. It is to be hoped your magnificent Juno is not so haughty
toward you as toward other people: then there may well be for you a
life of the gods."
In the morning breezes, irradiated with sun and wave, he swept gliding
along on the blue, liquid mirror between two heavens, and his eye was
blest when it looked back at the Olympus of Epomeo, and blest when it
looked back again on the coasts that gleamed up and down on the long,
outspread market-place of the earth.
When they came through the midst of those glimmering palaces, the
ships, to the stationary ones, they found the people in the ecstasy of
a saint's festival. He was compelled to bury the blue day and the sea
in temples, in picture-halls, in fourth stories, where, according to
the custom, several of the grandees dwelt, to whom he delivered letters
from his father, and more beautifully in the subterranean, gloomy
street which arches itself through the blooming Posilippo.
Only the prospect that, in the very next solitude, he should converse
with his distant heart quieted his spirit, which was always flying away
from the present. At evening they ascended the finest of the heights
above Naples, the cloister of Camaldole, where, among the pleasures of
the prospect, he saw, standing in gray distance behind Posilippo, the
lofty Epomeo. He could no longer contain himself, but began, in a spot
more thickly hidden with blossoms than others, which he had sought out
for the purpose, the following letter to Linda:--
"At last, noble soul, I can speak to thee, and behold again thy island,
although only as a sunny-red evening cloud looming in the horizon.
Linda, Linda, O that I have and have had thee! Does, then, the two
days' divine dream last even over into the cold to-day? Thou art now so
far off and dumb, and I hear no yes. When, in Rome, on the dome of St.
Peter's, I looked into the blue morning heavens, and life swelled and
sounded around me as the breezes swept by, then it seemed to me as if I
must fling myself into a flying royal ship, and seek a shore which
grows green under the farthest constellation; as if I must flutter
down, like a cascade, through the heavens, and tear my way below there
through this stony life, pressing onward, and destroying and bearing
everything before me and with me. And so is it with me again at this
moment, and still more emphatically. I could fly over to thee, and say,
'Thou art my glory, my laurel-wreath, my eternity, but I must deserve
thee; I can do nothing for thee, except what I do for myself.' In the
olden time, beloved youths were great, deeds were their graces, and the
coat of mail their festal dress. Today, as I looked across on the Gulf
of Baja, and on the ruins where the gardens and palaces of the great
Romans still lie in ruins or names, and when I saw the old, defying
giants stand in the midst of flowers and oranges, and in tepid,
incense-breathing breezes, refreshed and quickened by them, but not
softened and subdued,--lifting with the hand the heavy trident which
moved three quarters of the globe, and with sinewy breast going forth
to meet winter in the north, burning heat in Africa, and every
wound,--then did my whole heart ask, 'Is it so with thee?' O Linda, can
a man be otherwise? The lion roams over the earth, the eagle sweeps
through the heavens, and the king of these kings should have his path
on the earth and in the heavens at once. I have as yet been and done
nothing; but when life is as yet an empty mist, canst thou overcome it,
or seize it fast and dash it to pieces? Wilt thou one day, thou
Uranide, love a man? then will I shrink back from no one. But words are
to actions only the sawdust of the club of Hercules, as Schoppe says.
So soon as war and freedom clash against each other, then will I
deserve thee in the storm of the times, and bring with me to thee
actions and immortal love.
"Here I stand on the divine heights of the cloister-garden, and look
down into a green, heavenly realm which knows no equal. The sun is
already away over the gulf, and flings his rose-fire among the ships,
and a whole shore full of palaces and full of men burns red. Through
the long, wide-extending streets below me rolls up already the din of
the festival, and the roofs are full of decorated men and women, and
full of music. Balconies and gondolas wait to welcome the divine night
with songs. And here am I alone, and am nevertheless so happy, and
yearn without pain. But had I been standing here four days ago, Linda,
when, as yet, I knew thee not and had thee not, and had I been looking
upon such an evening as this,--upon the golden sea,--the gay Portici,
upon which sun and sea are rippling with flames,--the majestic
Vesuvius, wound round with gold-green myrtles, and with his gray, ashen
head full of the glow of the sun,--and, behind me, the green plain full
of clouds of flower-dust, which rise out of gardens and rain down in
gardens again,--and the whole busy, magic circle of glad energies,--a
world swimming in light and life,--then, Linda, without thee, would a
cold pang have darted through the warm bliss, and remembrances with
mourning masks would have gone about in the golden light of evening.
"O Linda, how hast thou cleansed and widened my world, and I am now
happy everywhere! Thou hast transformed the heavy, sharp ploughshare of
life, which painfully toils at the harvest, into a light brush and
pencil, which plays about till it has wrought out a god's form. Have I
not seen to-day every temple and every hill more glad, as if gilded by
thee, and every beauty, whether it bloomed on a statue, on canvas, on
the singing lip, or on the summits, wear a richer lustre, and felt it
breathe a richer fragrance? and then did I not fly up from the little
flower to the blooming Linda?
"How the dark Power holds sway behind the cloud! It gives us sealed
orders, that we may break them open at a later time, upon a distant
spot. O God! upon Ischia's Epomeo it was for me first to open mine.
Then rose a moment over life, and bore eternity; the butterfly brought
the goddess!
"Evening goes down, and I must be silent. Might I only know how thy
evening is! My life consists now of two hours, thine and mine, and I
can no longer live with myself alone. May this day have stolen away
from thee richly and mildly, and thy evening have been like mine! Only
Vesuvius now reddens in the lingering sun. The islands slowly fade away
in the dark sea. I behold now, without speaking to thee, the great
evening, but, O God, so otherwise than in Rome! Blissfully shall I fix
my eye only on thy island as it is about to be extinguished in the
glittering din of the evening twilight, and yet long shall I look
thitherward, when already the summit of Epomeo is dissolved in night;
and then shall I look cheerfully down into the grave of colors
encircled with lights below me. Happy songs will steal through the
twilight; the stars will glimmer affectionately; and I shall say, 'I am
alone and still, but inexpressibly happy, for Linda has my heart, and I
weep only out of love, because I think of her heart'; and then I shall
go down in blissful rapture through the blossom-smoke of the mountain."
He came slowly back to Naples to his friend Dian; all the festive
merriment which met him, the whole odeum of joy, in which the ringing
wheel of the hurdy-gurdy dizzily rolled round, seemed to him to be
merely his echo; whereas, in general, not till the external, sensitive
chords of man are struck, do the inner ones sound after them. All he
wanted was to be ever hurrying onward, and--if it might be--to proceed
this very night on his way to Vesuvius. For him there was now only one
season of the day. The warmer climate, together with love and May,
seemed to awaken all the spring winds of his powers; they blew with an
impetuosity which made him conscious of them himself. Only before his
beloved was he--still sore from the wounds of the past--merely a
zephyr, which spares the dusting blossoms.
On the next day he proposed to ascend Vesuvius, and on the morning
after await his Dian in Portici, when he had first seen from the top of
the volcano the spectacle of sunrise.
114. CYCLE.
He describes his journey to his beloved.
"In the Hermit's Hut on Vesuvius.
"Why does not man fall on his knees and adore the world, the mountains,
the sea, the all? How it exalts the spirit to think that it is, and
that it is conscious of the immense world and of itself! O Linda, I am
still full of the morning; I still sojourn even on the sublime hell.
Yesterday I rode in the morning with my _Bartolomeo_ through the rich,
full garden avenue to the gay Portici, which links itself to the giant
like Catana to Ætna. Ever the same great epic Greek feature running
through this sublime land,--the same blending of the monstrous
with the beautiful, of nature with men, of eternity with the
moment; country-houses and a laughing plain opposite to the eternal
death-torch; between old, holy temple-columns goes a merry dance, the
common monk and the fisherman; the glowing blocks of the mountain tower
up as a bulwark around vineyards, and beneath the living Portici dwells
the hollow, dead Herculaneum; lava cliffs have grown out into the sea,
and dark battering-rams lie cast among the flowers. The ascent was in
the beginning refreshment to my soul; the long mountain was a conductor
to the full cloud. Late at night, after an eternal ascent, without
having enjoyed the evening sun, through whose red glow upon the ashes
we were obliged to wade rapidly, we arrived here at the hermit's. The
moon was not yet up; thy island was still invisible. Often it thundered
under the floor of the apartment. Then was I all at once pleasantly
reminded by the hermit of my old Schoppe, when he told me that a
limping traveller with a wolf-dog had once said up here, 'In Vesuvius
was the stall of the incessantly stamping thunder-steeds.' That could
certainly after all have been no one but Schoppe.
"At midnight, my Linda, when the moon stood high over the Apennine, and
looked from heaven with a long, enraptured, silvery look, and I thought
of thee, I arose and went softly out, in order to see again where thou
dwellest, my Linda. Out of doors it was all still everywhere; I seemed
to hear the earth thunder along its path in the heavens; the shadows of
the linden-trees around me lay fast asleep on the green turf; the smoke
of Vesuvius streamed up into the pure air; the moon gleamed out
wondrously over the smoking sea, and with difficulty I sought and
found at last the solitary mountain of thy island soaring into the
blue, blooming silvery among the surrounding stars,--a glimmering
temple-pinnacle for my heart. 'Yonder she dwells, and slumbers upon
her Tabor, a glorified one of Elysium!' I said to myself. Around me
was the ashes of centuries, stillness as of a coffin, and only now and
then a rattling, as if they were throwing upon it the earth of the
grave-mound. I was neither in the land of death nor of immortality; the
countries became clouds; Naples and Portici lay hidden; the broad
blue of heaven encompassed me; a high night-wind bent the smoke-column
of Vesuvius downward, and swept it on in long clouds, tinged with
ever-varying hues, through the pure ether. Then I looked after Ischia,
and looked toward heaven. O Linda, I am sincere, hear it; I prayed the
holy Liana, who loved thee so infinitely, now to hover round thee and
prepare for thee the fortune which she once so earnestly wished thee.
All at once the thunders of the mountain became entirely still, the
stars sparkled more brightly. Then did the silence and life send a
shudder through me, and I went back into the hut; but long did I
continue to weep for rapture at the mere thought that thou wast happy.
"The morning rose, and in the midst of its wintry darkness we entered
upon our journey to the fire-flue and smoke-gate. As in a burnt-up,
smoking city, I went along by hollows, around hollows, mountains around
mountains, and over the trembling floor of an everlastingly active
powder-mill up to the powder-house. At last I found the throat of this
land of fire,--a great glowing smoke-valley, containing another
mountain within it,--a landscape of craters, a workshop of the last
day, full of fragments of worlds, of frozen, burst hell-floods,--an
enormous potsherd of time, but inexhaustible, immortal as an evil
spirit, and under the cold, pure heaven bringing forth to itself twelve
thunder-months.
"All at once the broad smoke ascends more darkly red, the thunders roll
more wildly into one another, the heavy hell-cloud smokes more hotly.
Suddenly morning air rushes in, and drags the flaming curtain down the
mountain. There stood the clear, benignant sun on the Apennine, and
Somma and Ottayano and Vesuvius bloomed in peaceful splendor, and the
world came slowly up after the sun with its mountains, islands, and
coasts. The ring of creation lay gilded upon the sea before me, and as
the magic wands of the rays touched the lands, they started up into
life. And the old royal brother of Vesuvius, Ætna, sat on his golden
throne, and looked out over his land and sea. And the light day rolled
like snow from the mountains down into the sea, melting away in
splendors, and flowed over the broad, happy Campania[102] and into the
dark chestnut-vales. And the earth became boundless, and the sun drew,
in the wide net of rays, the sweetly imprisoned world onward in the
fairest ether.
"O Linda, there sparkled thy outspread island, proudly encamped in the
sea, with the morning redness streaming down over it, a high-masted
war-ship; and an eagle, the bird of the thunder-god, flew into the
blessed distance, as if he bore my heart in his breast away to thy
Epomeo. 'O that I could follow him,' said my spirit. The hot earth gave
claps of thunder, and the smoke enveloped me. I could have died, that
so I might follow the eagle in his flight and be at this moment in
Ischia."
Here the intensely excited soul held itself in. He went or glided down
the declivity towards Portici. In a house which had been mutually fixed
upon beforehand he thought to find again his friend. But he found
neither Dian nor the expected letter from Linda. Enervated by walking,
watching, and glowing, he fell, in the cool, still chamber into a
dreamy sleep. When he awoke, the midnight of the Italian day, the
siesta, embosomed him. All rested under the hot, still light; there was
not a lark in heaven; the green parasols near his window, the pines,
stood unmoved in the earth, and only the poplars rocked gently the
new-born blossoms of the vine which lay in their arms; and the ivy,
which hung from summits, swayed a little. Such shadowy twigs played
once in Lilar in Chariton's chamber, when he was expecting Liana, and
then thought of Italy. The great, level, simple garden from Portici to
Naples--a garden web of villages, groves, and country-houses, washed by
waves--carried his eye over blossoms to his paradise in the sea. This
lonely, still time, full of longing, softened infinitely his fair
heart. He ended the interrupted letter thus:--
"In Portici.
"O my Linda! I am nearer to thee again, but the distance between us
seems to me here in the stillness so vast! O Linda, I love thee with
pangs, both when near and when far,--O with what yet unfelt pangs
should I lose thee? Why am I, then, so certain of thy love? Or so
uncertain? Softly does thy heart speak to me. _Soft_ music or love is
like a _distant_,--and the distant again is like the soft. Has the
sublime pedestal of the thunder-god beside me agitated me so much, or
do I think too vividly of the hollow, dead Herculaneum under me, where
one city is one coffin? Weeping and oppressed, I look over the sea to
the still island whereon thou dwellest. O that it is so long before we
see each other again; that thou dost not draw every thought immediately
out of my heart and I out of thine! Why does the delay of thy letter
prefigure at once greater pains, ah, the greatest, before my soul? Why
do I think; the deepest lines of pain upon our brow, the wrinkles of
life, are only little lines out of the monstrous building-plan which
the world-spirit draws, unconcerned what brows and joys his line of
bliss painfully cuts through? If this line should one day go through
our love--O forgive this premature pang! in this life, this alternation
of transient showers and sunbeams, it may well be permitted."
Here he was interrupted by joy and Dian, attended by an Ischian, who
brought a letter from Linda, and came to take his back with him. He
read it passionately, and added to his own these few more words as a
tear of joy: "Day after to-morrow I come upon the island. What is the
earth in comparison with a heart? Thou art mighty; thou holdest my
whole blooming existence high into the heavens, and it falls upon thee,
if it falls. Farewell! I fear verily neither the hot oil nor the flame
of Psyche."
Here is Linda's letter:--
"We have both been living very quietly since our agreeable runaway has
been revelling about on mountains and in palaces. We have talked almost
too much about him, besides sending for the prattling Agata to tell us
something about his journey. Your Julia is full of blessings and helps
for Linda. Never did I see before such a clear, determined, sharply
discerning and yet cold nature, which only loves in giving, rather than
gives in loving. She will never, it is true, feel the pangs which Venus
Urania sends her chosen ones; but she is a born mother, and a born
sister; and I ask her sometimes, why hast thou not all brothers and all
orphans?
"Since the earthquake I have been somewhat ill. I have, perhaps,
not been accustomed to love, and so to die. I take a philosophical
book,--for poets just now take too violent a hold of me,--and fancy I
am still following it, when I have been long since flown away over the
sea. I am reading at this moment the life of the glorious Guyon. She
knows what love is,--that godlike affection for the godlike, that
losing of self in God, that eternal living and abiding steadfast in one
great idea,--that growing sanctification through love, and that growing
love through sanctification! The book falls out of my hands, I close my
eyes, I dream and weep and love thee. O Albano, come earlier. What wilt
thou now seek on mountains and ruins? Shall we not come hither again?
But you roving men! Only women love, whether it be God, or yourselves,
alas! Guyon, the holy Thérèse, the somewhat prosaic Bourignon, loved
God as no man ever did (except the holy Fénelon); man deals with the
highest being not much better than with the fairest. Albano, if thou
hast any other longing than I, if thou desirest more on earth than me,
more in Paradise than me, then say so, that I may leave off and die.
Truly, when thou embracest thy sister, then I am jealous and long to be
thy sister, and thy friend Schoppe, and thy father, and everything that
thou lovest, and thy very self, if thou lovest it, and thy whole heaven
and thy whole thou in me, thy I in thee.
"I will tell you something of my history. I went for a long time in
silence over the earth; I saw courts, nations, and lands, and found
that most _men_ are only _people_. What did it concern me? One must
never say of anything, that is bad, but only, that is stupid, and think
no more of it. What I do not love has for me no existence, and instead
of hating or despising it long, I have forgotten it. I was scolded at
as proud and fantastic, and could not satisfy any one. But I kept and
cherished my inner being, for no ideal must be given up, else the holy
fire of life goes out, and God dies without resurrection. I saw men,
and found always the simple distinction among them, that some were
fine, intelligent, and delicate, without spirit or enthusiasm, and the
rest very hearty and enthusiastic with shallow rudeness, but all
selfish; although when their heart is full, and not on the wane, they,
even like the full moon, show the fewest spots. Beside the teachings of
my great mother, beside your great father, no one of them could hold up
his head. Your Roquairol one could neither love nor hate, nor respect
nor fear, although one could come very near to all these at once.
"It had a great effect, too, that I was always travelling: travelling
often keeps one colder. When I look toward the coast, and think that a
great Roman was now in Baja, now in Germany, now in Gaul, now in Rome,
and that to him the earth was a great city, then I easily comprehend
how to him men became masses. Travelling is an employment that we women
always miss. Men have always something to do, and send the soul
outward; women must stay all day at home with their hearts. In
Switzerland I (as the Princess Idoine does) imposed upon myself a
little economy, and I know how by means of little objects which one
daily attains one consoles one's self for the high one which lies, like
a god's throne, on an eminence.
"So I came just in this still week of life to the mer-de-glace in
_Montanvert_. Of picturesque mountains, plains, dells, I had seen my
fill in Spain, and of ice-mountains in Switzerland. But a sea of ice at
that height, a solitary, primeval, blue-green sea surrounded with red
rocks, a broad waste full of restless, upheaving, tempestuous billows,
which a sudden death, a Medusa's head, had so, in the midst of life,
frozen stiff and fast! At that time a storm, which at any other time
would have been frightful to me, swept up the mountain with flames; I
hardly noticed it, my soul hung musingly on the stillness of a
petrified storm, on the repose of--ice! I shuddered, wept unusually
all the way down the mountain, and the same week laid my economical
play-work aside and continued my travels.
"I made, however, no storm-prayers, but dwelt down below there without
complaint in the rainy hollow of a dark, cold existence. Then fate
brought me to Epomeo, and there the gods willed that the scene should
be changed.
"But now it must remain as it is. When a singular being has said to a
singular being, 'Thou art the one!' then do they exist only through and
for each other. The Psyche with her lamp will not feel it, if the lamp
catches and consumes her locks and her hand and her heart, while she
blissfully gazes upon the slumbering Cupid; but when the hot drop of
oil escapes from the lamp and touches the god, and he awakes and
angrily flies away from her forever--forever--Ah, thou poor Psyche! Of
what avail to thee is death in the dissolved ice-sea? Has, then, no man
ever yet experienced the pain of lost love, that he may know what a
thousand times harder desolation it inflicts upon a woman? Who of them
has fidelity, the genuine, which is neither a virtue nor a sensation,
but the very fire which eternally animates and sustains the kernel of
existence?
"I am sick, Albano, else I know not how I come by these gloomy ideas. I
am so tranquil in my innermost heart; I have shown only the chords, not
the tune. We must work and look, not upon the future, but upon the
next coming present. If the time should ever, ever appear--I have
neither remorse nor patience--the time when thou lovedst me no more,
heartily--ah! I should be stiller, stronger, briefer than now: and
what could there be beyond, except to die either _for_ the loved one
or--_by_ him?
"Come soon, sweet one! It is very beautiful around us; it has rained,
all the world is in jubilee, and sees the sun-drops, and has gathered
itself a heavenly drink. I, too, have set out in haste for thee dishes
and vases. Come; I will bring thee the olive-leaf and the myrtle-twig,
and wind around thy head roses and violets. Come. Once I little thought
that I should look so often toward Posilippo. L."
"P. S.--The rival also looks toward Posilippo, and rejoices in the
thought of thy return. Yet do not hurry anything. _Adio, caro_. J."
Albano found in this character a silent justification and satisfaction
of all demands which at an earlier period, when Liana was still living,
he had always felt compelled to make upon a loved being. He did not,
however, perceive, in the innocence of his love, that this was the very
being whom the longing after war and exploits that reigned in his
letter could not please.
He visited now the subterranean city in its churchyard, near the
Cestius' pyramid, as it were, of the volcano. Dian went through
Herculaneum with him as an antiquarian lexicon, in order to unroll
before him the whole domestic economy of the ancients, up to their very
painting; but Albano was more moved than his friend by this picture of
the past dwelling in the midst of the present,--by the still houses,
and night-like streets, and by the frequent traces of flying despair.
"Would not all these people, then, have been dead now, after all, if it
had not been for Vesuvius?" asked Dian, gayly, in this gay region. "I
ask you, rather," he continued, "whether an architect who comes out of
this chamber or city of art can take any longer much pleasure in
sketching in your Germany, after seeing these ruins of the earth, the
petty, pitiful ones for your princely gardens?" They saw in a dark
vestibule one of those earthern masks which they used to put into
graves, with lamps like eyes behind. Then Albano looked at him
staringly, and said, "Are we not gleaming earth-masks on graves?" "Fie!
what an odious idea!" said Dian.
Yet a long time, out there in the living sunshine, did gloomy forms
follow him. Near the shining Portici stood Vesuvius, like a funeral
pile, and on it the death-angel. He thought of Hamilton's prediction,
that the lovely Ischia would one day perish over the mine of an
earthquake. Even Linda's letter troubled him, with the bare imagination
of the possibility of losing her.
In Naples he examined a few more curiosities; then on the next morning
he embarked for the Eden of the waves.
115. CYCLE.
And when they saw and embraced each other again, they were even more
enraptured and devoted to each other than any happy heart could have
foreseen. Linda sat still and soft, looked upon the fair youth, and let
him and his sister tell their stories, the latter often interrupting
herself to kiss both. He spoke with great joy about Linda's letter. Men
always make more out of what is written than women. Linda spoke
indifferently: "Ah, well, once written and read, let it be forgotten.
In yours, too, there is occasionally a northern _faux brillant_." "The
Countess," said Julienne, "never praises any one to the face, but
herself." Linda bore the joke with characteristic good-nature. Albano,
often pleasing and often offending her when he was not conscious of it,
forgave love ever so easily. Friendship finds it harder to get
forgiveness from offended vanity.
"Yes, indeed!" cried Julienne, suddenly starting under the veil of
mirthfulness for a serious discourse; "thy project of emigrating to
France is a _faux brillant_. Canst thou then believe that they will
allow a princess-sister of Hohenfliess to sign a pass to her brother
for a democratic campaign? Never! And nobody at all will do it who
loves thee!" Albano smiled, but at last grew serious. Linda was silent,
and cast down her eyes. "Can you show me," said he, softly, as half in
earnest and half in jest, "a purer field of spurs on the whole map?"
"A poorer field of spurge!"[103] said she, playing on the words.
"Hardly, I should think!" Now she began to shadow forth, with
aristocratic, feminine, and princely colors at once, with tri-colored
paints, all the flames, smoke-clouds, and waves with which the _Monte
Nuovo_ of the Revolution had come up from the ground, and added,
"Better an idle count than that!" He grew red. Always had this womanly
fettering of man's energy, this affectionate fastening of one down
to flowers, this unrighteous forging over of the love-ring into a
galley-ring, been to him a crying and odious thing. "In a world which
is only a fair-week and mask-ball, not to be able to maintain even the
freedom of fair and masquerade, is tough," Schoppe had once said; and
he had never forgotten it, because it came right out of his own soul
back into it again. "Sister, either thou art not my brother, or I am
not thy sister," said he, "else we should understand each other more
easily." Linda's hand quivered in his, and her eye rose slowly towards
him, and quickly sank again. Julienne seemed to be touched with the
reproach cast upon her sex. Albano thought of the time when he had
crushed a heart of wax with one of iron, and said, more brightly and
coldly, "Julienne, I should be very willing not to say no to thee, if
thou wouldst not take the absence of a negative for an affirmative." He
could, it occurred to him, easily hide his contradiction behind the
future, since in fact no war was as yet decided upon in Europe; but he
did not deem that honorable and dignified enough. "Do not torment!"
said Linda to her. "Certainly," said Julienne, with quickness, "I can,
indeed, only think of this and that; what do I know?" and looked very
serious. "Two days longer," she added, and sought to escape from the
serious mood, "can we spend like gods, yes, like goddesses, upon the
island,--although, at all events, I should answer for a god, only not
for a goddess; that requires a taller person. I am only a foil to the
Countess out of infinite good-nature." For Julienne's stature lost by
the neighborhood of the majestic Linda.
The war of the loving beings had, however, not concluded with a peace,
and therefore remained an armistice. As Vesuvius throws glowing stones,
so does man throw his objections up in himself, alternately flinging
them aloft and swallowing them again, till at last a more lucky
direction sends them out over the brink.
In Albano, as may well be supposed, the question was working, what
Linda's silence in the little war imported respecting and against the
great one; but he did not propose it. Conscious of the unchangeableness
of his purpose, he was milder toward his sister, whom he, as he
believed, should surely one day exceedingly wound by it. Thus had he
become soft by the cold and warm alternation of life, as a precious
stone, by rapid heating and cooling, is transformed into medicine.
Swiftly and sweetly glided the last days of joy over the island, which
after the rain glistened in greenness like a German garden. The soft,
cool air, the fragrance of myrtles and oranges, single clouds of
brightness in the warm sky, the magic-smoke of the coasts, the golden
sun at morning and evening, and love and youth decked and crowned the
rare season. High burned on the blooming earth the sacrificial flame of
love into the still, blue heavens. As two mirrors stand before one
another, and one pictures the other and itself and the world, and the
other represents all this and also the pictures and the painter, so
tranquilly stood Albano and Linda before each other, attracting and
imaging soul within soul. As Mont Blanc majestically mirrors himself
down in the still lake of Chede in a paler heaven, so stood Albano's
whole, sound, light spirit in Linda's. She said he was an honest and an
honorable man at once, and had, what was so rare, a _whole_ will; only,
as is often the case with men, he wanted to love still more than he did
love, and therefore did not sufficiently recognize his quiet, original
sin, from egotism. There was nothing against which he bristled up more
indignantly and excitedly than against this latter charge, and he would
not forgive it in any one save the Countess. He refuted her as strongly
as he could; but her opinion became, under the best annihilation, only
a mock corpse, and came back alive against him the very next hour.
He became through her more nearly acquainted with himself than even
with her. He called her the Uranide, because she seemed to him, like
the heavens, at once so near and so far off; and she had no objection
to this full laurel-wreath. There is a heavenly unfathomableness, which
makes man godlike, and love toward him infinite; so did the ancients
make Friendship the daughter of Night and of Erebus. When Albano thus
looked out over the broad, rich spirit of Linda,--at once living for
her love, and harboring every other's love, and yet, as it were,
intoxicated with the thirst for knowledge; at once a child, a man, and
a virgin; often hard and bold with the tongue for and against religion
and womanhood, and yet full of the tenderest, most childlike love
toward both; melting in her glow before the beloved, and quickly
stiffening at a cold assault; without any vanity, because she always
stood before the throne of a divine idea, and man is never vain before
God, but entirely confiding in herself and submissive to no one,
without, however, any comparison of herself or others; full of bold,
manly uprightness, and full of respect for talent and for shrewd
understanding of the world; so perfectly free from selfishness, and
with such a childlike delight in others' gladness, without special
anxiety or respect for persons; so inconstant and inflexible, the one
in wishing, the other in willing; but with her eye and life ever
directed toward the sun and moon of the spiritual kingdom, character
and love, toward her own and toward a beloved heart;--when Albano saw
all this playing and flitting before him, then did he live, as it were,
on the single and yet immense, the movable and yet almighty sea, whose
limit is only the clear sky, which has itself none.
In the heaven of the three loving ones appeared at length the dawn of
the day of departure. It was determined by the two friends that Albano
might accompany them only as far as Naples, where their people waited
for them, then find them once in Rome accidentally, then on Isola Bella
for the last time accidentally,--a very unfriendly subjection to
worldly appearance, upon which Linda, however, insisted as strongly as
Julienne, and to which Albano himself, who by his birth was more
hardened to the constraints of rank than a plebeian youth of like soul,
easily yielded up the bitter yes, under the heavy veil which hung over
all his connections. Julienne decided upon all lesser ways and means;
she had been during the whole tour the business-agent of the Countess,
who, as she said, had not head enough to buy herself a hat for it, so
impetuous, absent in money matters, and dreamy was she. The sister was
so lively, and entirely restored, but said, all the five and thirty hot
springs of the island could not have done half so much for her recovery
as the same number of tears of joy which she had fortunately shed.
Singular did all around them appear on the morning of departure. A
bright, warm cloud dropped silvery drops; the sun looked in between two
mountains; the enraptured islanders sang a new popular song, amidst the
rain-harvest or drop-gleaning; while their friends were hastily borne
away by the waves out of their circle of joy. Agata stood, in order to
cool herself, on the shore, with a snake in her hand, and Albano felt a
pain at the sight which he knew not how to explain to himself.[104] At
this moment Epomeo parted the cloud-heaven, and shining fragments of
cloud sailed slowly along before them toward the Apennine to the north,
the heavenly dwelling-place of the mist, and swiftly and lightly glided
the shadows of the sky over the swarming peaks of the waves.
"Ever mayest thou," said Albano, looking toward the island, which was
swimming backward to the west, "stand fast with thy mountain; never may
a calamity tear the fairest leaf out of the book of the blest!" "How
will it be with us all," said Linda, "when we meet again, and seek
again the lovely soil?" Just then they espied a high-arched rainbow;
that stood half on the island and half on the waves, which seemed to
fling it out as a gay, arching water-column upon the shore. "We are
going," said Julienne, delighted, "to pass under the arch of peace." At
this word the rain and the wreath of colors disappeared, and the sun
alone shone behind them.
The passage ran through the torch-dance of the waves. The distances
shone and smoked magnificently. "Why do distances take so mighty a hold
of the soul, although painted with the same colors as what is nearer?"
said Albano. "That is the very question," said Dian. Mightily lay the
sea like a monster along the coasts stretched out over their whole way
to Rome, and tossed up and down the scales of waves. Albano said, "When
I saw on Vesuvius the mountain and the sea, I thought how pettily and
falsely narrow man sunders the two Colossi of the earth into little,
familiar members, and acts as if the same sea did not stretch round the
whole earth."
His friends were too deeply and sadly moved to make any reply, and
before strange eyes neither words nor hardly looks were at their
command. When Albano saw again more nearly the battle-field of
time,--the ruin-coasts, which ever grasp and lift the man; the old
temples and Thermæe, like old ships, dying on the land; here a crushed
and crumbling giant temple, there a city street down on the bottom of
the sea;[105] the holy memorial-columns and light-houses of former
greatness deserted and extinguished amidst the eternally youthful
beauty of ancient nature,--he forgot the neighborhood of his own
transitoriness, and said to Linda, whose eye he saw directed thither,
"Perhaps I can guess what you are now thinking of,--that the ruins of
the two greatest times, the Greek and the Roman, remind us only of a
_strange_ past, whereas other ruins, like music, only admonish us of
our _own_. That was perhaps your thought." "We think of nothing at all
here," said Julienne; "it is enough, if we weep that we are obliged to
go away." "Truly the Princess is right," said Linda, and added, as if
displeased at Albano and everything, "and what is life, more than a
glass door to heaven? It shows us what is fairest and every joy, but it
is, after all, not open."
By the accident of strangers' company they were compelled to leave each
other with cold show, and, according to the custom of teasing,
tantalizing fate, to conclude a great past with a little present.
Albano travelled as hastily as his sensibility would allow over the
sublime world round about him. When he arrived in Mola, he heard the
singular intelligence that they had found in Gaeta a whole leathern
dress, with a mask, swimming far out to sea, which must have belonged
to the ascended monk, and in respect to which they found nothing so
inexplicable as the empty casing, without the dead body. In Mola, the
fair island of Ischia at length breathed out its last fragrance; the
high citadel of heaven and the ascending pole hid among other southern
constellations this warm one also, which had so long gleamed over him
with suns of bliss; and the last star of the short spring went down.
Such is life; such is bliss. Like the playing moon, it consists of
first and last quarters, and slowly waxes and slowly wanes. In its
hope, in its fear, a brief flash is the full moon of the deepest
rapture; a short invisibility the new moon of the deepest
desolateness;--and always is the light game, like the moon, beginning
its circle anew.
THIRTEENTH JUBILEE.
Tivoli.--Quarrel.--Isola Bella.--Nursery of Childhood.
--Love.--Departure.
116. CYCLE.
Albano alighted again at the Prince Lauria's, who had hitherto swum in
such a flood-tide of new incidents, that he had hardly been conscious
of the absence, and was disposed to wonder at the return. Meanwhile the
German war against France had been settled upon. This news he brought
to his grandson, full of the joyful expectation what great scenes such
a struggle must unfold. Even Albano was for a long time carried away
with him by this high stream, before he thought that this intelligence
would work otherwise and more dishearteningly on his sister than on
him. But the heroic fire, into which he talked himself with the
political Lauria, preluded to him easy victory over a sister's
affection.
He was going to announce his arrival to his two friends, when he heard
from the Prince that they had both, as he had heard from the Princess
Altieri, with whom they resided, already gone to Tivoli. How happily he
departed, guessing the friendly design of this episode journey, out of
Rome, radiant as it was with love and spring, and looked quite as gayly
towards the future, where his life opened so bloomingly before him, as
toward Tivoli, where he hoped to press two hearts to one.
He found, when he arrived in the town of Tivoli, that the ardent
maidens had already stolen away to the cascade. As a man in the Vale of
Tempe, or before the Lake of Geneva, passes along only in a careless
dream over the shore by the watery images of the heavens and the earth,
because the blooming originals round about seize and kindle him,--even
so the rocks of the thickly peopled landscape, and the round Temple of
Vesta, and the vales dissolving into one another, from the Roman gate
to the temple,--this shining procession glided by only as dream- and
water-images before a heart, in which a living loved one bloomed, and
crowded out a world with a world's fulness.
He roved around amidst the swarm of prospects, without finding the
fairest, when a short, pale-yellow, richly dressed man eyed him with a
shrivelled up face, and with a silken arm pointed unasked the way to
the falls, saying if he were looking after the ladies, he would find
them at the great cascade.
Albano said nothing, went onward, saw two, and recognized Linda by her
tall form. At length the three friends saw, found, embraced each other,
and the magnificent water-storm breathed into the delight. Linda spake
tender words of love, and felt as if she were dumb, for the beautiful
tempest of streams tore the tender syllables to pieces like
butterflies. They had not heard each other, and stood before each
other, pining for their sounds, encompassed with five thunders, with
weeping eyes, full of love and joy. Holy spot, where already so many
thousand hearts have sacredly burned and blissfully wept, and been
constrained to say, Life is great! Serenely and steadily sparkles the
city overhead in the sunshine down over the watery crater; proudly does
the rent Temple of Vesta, garlanded with almond-blossoms, look down
from its rock upon the whirlpools which undermine it; and opposite to
it the tempestuous Anio preludes at once all that earth and heaven have
of greatness,--the rainbow, the eternal lightning and thunder, rain,
cloud, and earthquake.
They gave each other signs to go, and to seek the more quiet vale. How
sounded to them therein the words, brother, sister, Linda, like new
human tones in Paradise! Here, before ascending the hill full of new
waterfalls, lightnings, and colors, they sought to report to each other
their journeys and their news. Julienne made the happy report that her
brother, the Prince, gave again hope of recovery, since he had, with
waking eyes, as he insisted, seen his dead father, who had promised him
a longer life. The fair Linda bloomed in the Paradise like a veiled
goddess who had long been seeking and at last found her beloved on the
earth. She took his hand often, and pressed it against her eyes and
lips, and whispered, hardly audibly, when he spoke to her or Julienne,
"Dear! friendly man!" As to the scenery she was silent, for she never
spoke of any till she had once come out of it.
Julienne, so happy about her brother's recovery, began all manner of
jokes,--said she regretted having sent to her Lewis, from Naples, a
vain specific against his malady, and at length asked Albano, "Dost
thou know a youth named _Cardito_? He wants to know thee." He said,
"No," but related how a little stout man had seemed to know him
hereabouts, and showed him the way to the cascade. Julienne started,
and said it was decidedly the Haarhaar Prince, who so maliciously built
his hopes upon Luigi's death and throne. He lived in Tivoli, in the
house of the Duke of Modena, and was certainly going about as a spy
upon them all. In order to tune herself again after this hated discord,
she continued her question about _Cardito_, and said, "It is a very
beautiful, sound Corsican (that living deformity is surely the Prince),
and he declares very seriously war against thee."
"That shall he verily have," said Albano, who now comprehended all,
and--related all. Cardito was that Corsican with whom he had formerly
split on the subject of the Gallic war. "Brother, that is still thy
serious meaning?" said Julienne, with protracted accent. "Now
especially," said he, with decision, in order immediately to exclude
all strife. Linda with intensity pressed his hand to her eyes, as if
she would cover them with it. "Well, argue thy case with me, as
reasonably as thou canst, and let's hear thy grounds of justification;
but first let us ascend the hill, that one may have something to see at
the same time," said the sister.
On the hill, before the green of the flashing vale, where the stream,
like a wounded eagle, has beat its wings all about on the earth, before
the three lesser cascades that leap down with their lightnings upon the
flowers, Albano began, with emotion and inspiration: "I have only one
reason, dear sister; I am not yet anything,--I am no poet, no artist,
no philosopher,--but nothing, namely, a Count. I have, however, powers
for much; why shall I not say so? Verily, if a Da Vinci is all things,
or a Crichton, or if a Richelieu, though he asserts the political
throne, will yet mount the poetic, also, shall not another be justified
in lesser wishes? And, by Heaven! properly speaking, a man will, after
all, be everything, for he cannot help it; he longs and aspires after
that, and the inner, stifled heart weeps drops of blood, which no human
hand can wipe away,--only the high iron barriers of necessity hold him
back. Sister, Linda, what have I, after all, yet done upon the earth?"
"Thou hast made this question, and this is enough in the sight of God,"
said Julienne, moved by the proud, wounded modesty of the youth, and by
his beautiful voice, which, when indignant, sounded as if he were
tenderly touched. "Words! what are words?" said he. "O one surely may
well be ashamed that one has even to think and speak of anything before
he does it, although poor, imperfect man cannot otherwise, but every
action, like a statue, must first be modelled in the miserable wax of
words. Ah, Linda, do not here deeds lie everywhere around us, instead
of words and wishes? Have not I, also, an arm, a heart, a beloved, and
powers, as well as others, and shall I go out of the world with a
musty, mouldy Spanish or German Count's life? O my Linda, do thou
contend for me!"
"I am not," said she, looking sharply toward the principal little
cascade, which stormed down from among the trees overhead,--"I am not
of many or eloquent words; and, moreover, I do not quite understand
you. I must always translate words for myself into ideas and truths,
and I cannot always do it. In the case of your words, Count, I cannot
form any idea at all. He whom love alone does not satisfy, cannot have
been filled with it. Of course, so all-forgetting with their hearts as
we, so concentrated upon one idea of life, men never are. Ah, and so
little is man to man, an image of man is more to him, and every little
future!"
"Thou, too, Brutus!" said Albano, astonished. "Would you," he
continued, collecting himself, "lay out an eternity of that
elysium-life in Ischia as adequate to a man? Would you send him as a
youth into the cloister of the most blissful repose? Certainly only as
an old man. The former would be like planting the tree top downward in
the dark earth."
"There spoke the German again," said she; "for ever and ever real,
indefatigable industry. The tranquil Neapolitans, the people on the
Apennines or the Pyrenees, on the Ganges, in Otaheite, full of
enjoyment and contemplativeness, are to this Spaniard an abomination. I
should think, if a man were only somewhat for himself, not for others,
that would be all-sufficient. What _great actions_ are I do not know at
all; all I know is a _great life_; for something like them every sinner
can do."
"Verily, that is true," said he; "there is nothing more pitiable than a
man who will show himself by this or that, which appears to himself
great, rare, and without relation to his being, and therefore does not
belong to him at all. Every nature puts forth its own fruit, and cannot
do otherwise; but its child can never seem great to it, but always only
small, or just as it should be. If it be otherwise, then it must be
that an entirely foreign fruit has been hung upon its branches."
"Albano, how true! But you had once never more than half a will; how is
it?" said Linda. "Neither have I now," said he, without severity. "One
is gentlest when one is strongest in a resolution." He endeavored now
carefully to spare and avoid his own words,--which were the oil and
wind to his fire,--and he did it the more because words, after all, are
of no help against anything, but much rather blow up instead of blowing
out the feelings of another. He was also mindful, in this connection,
of the frequent cases in which he had, by a single word, with all
innocence, excited Linda to a flame. They stopped, and he looked out
over the divine land, when Linda, after a silent look into his face, in
spite of her apparently calm philosophizing, at once passionately
grasped his hand and cried, "No, thou canst not!--by my happiness, by
all saints, by the holy Virgin, by the Almighty,--thou canst, thou must
not!" There is a robbery against which man always protests with an
irrepressible fire, and though a goddess committed it out of love, and
offered him in compensation a world of paradises; it is the robbery of
his freedom and free development. Yes, its being love,--despotic,
however, at once exercising and robbing freedom,--only exasperates him
the more, and out of the _cloud_ of error grows by and by the _tempest_
of passion. Linda repeated, "Thou canst not." He looked upon her
excited, brilliant countenance, whose Southern intensity resembled
more, however, an enthusiasm than indignation, and said, firmly, "O
Linda, I shall indeed both dare and do!" "No! I say no!" cried she.
"Brother!" the sister began. "O sister," cried he, "speak softly; I am
a man, and have violent faults." The sublime war of the water with
the earth and with rocks, the intermingling storms of the flashing
rain-constellations around him, drew him as on wings into the
whirl,--the great cascade flung its shower out of high trees, and out
of heaven sprinkled incessantly a glimmering world,--and in the east
the sea showed itself afar in dark sleep, and the setting sun sank
gleaming into the general splendor.
"Certainly I will speak softly," said the Princess, who, much more
sensitive and resonant than Linda, had some trouble in tuning her tone
of speech to her promise; "nothing further is needed than the
consideration that our quarrel is premature; I make merely the request
to adjourn it till October, and the promise that _then_ the issue will
be quite different." "O let it be!" said Albano. Linda nodded softly
and slowly, and, contrary to expectation, laid his hand with both hers
on her heart, and looked upon him weeping, with her large eyes, to
which fire was more usual than water. He was melted at beholding that
this powerful nature had only intensity without hate or wrath, and
infinitely was he refreshed by his former secret suppression of his
passionate flames.
The sister was softened by both, and a minute of the tenderest love
soon entwined the three beings in one embrace. The hyperboles of anger
are never so serious with man as those of love; the former only the
other party must believe, the latter he believes himself. All had been
brightened and cleared up by this free expression.
If generally a cold past moment shuts up to lovers, as a cold night
does to bees, the flowers out of which they take the honey, here,
however, after the storm, the clear blue air of heaven had become purer
and stiller, and the tranquillity became bliss, as the bliss
tranquillity. Through Albano, although rapidly, the Fury of fear had
passed, who holds an inverted telescope, and through it shows man a
very distant, empty heaven, without stars. But not so through Linda;
she had throughout spoken in love and hope, and for her glowing heart
there were no icy places. Therefore was he now so happy and so blessed
by the contemplation of that vigorous nature! A long, deep chain of
valleys, wherein wine and oil flowed in the fragrance of blossoms, led
them all towards the great Rome. For a space the youth could accompany
them; at last, for a long separation, he must tear heart and eye away
from the loved ones, when over the green, glistening vales the mighty
dome of St. Peter's already sparkled, and the cypresses, proudly
encircled only with cypresses, bore the gold of evening on their twigs
without stirring them. All had their eyes on the fair Rome, but their
hearts were only on Isola Bella, where they promised to find each other
again.
117. CYCLE.
On the way to Isola Bella, he thought of his hour of contention with
the vehement Linda, and the character of this war-goddess. He shuddered
at the very recollection of the steep precipice upon which, within a
few days, he had leaned so far over; for Linda is so decided, knows no
alternative between passion and annihilation. And yet, in this time of
cool reflection, he felt her imperious demand upon his liberty more
severely than ever, and said to himself, firmly, "Woman must not be
allowed to circumscribe or rule the holy domain of man's development."
On the other hand, it was, to be sure, all love, and an excess of it;
and the longer he journeyed and compared, so much the darker and
lonelier was it on that spot of his life upon which she alone cast the
great flame. She moved before him much more clearly and nearly in
spirit by his still contemplation of her spirit, than in bodily
presence, because the former presented her at once in harmony, the
latter with the individual dissonances without the solution. Her power
of all-sided impartiality towards all characters had appeared to him,
for a woman, quite as rare as it was great, especially as he himself
let this power work more in the shape of respect for her and in a glad,
free appreciation of great, eccentric, poetical manifestations, but not
of all, even the flat and the worthless.
Alike mighty and full-grown stood Love and Liberty within him, side by
side. They were bound together and reconciled only by a new resolution
to be gentle, not merely strong, to lay before her with all frankness
his right of freedom and his loving soul, and to be to her the noble
character which belonged to her. "Am I not such, if I really will it?"
said he.
In the highest joy of life, in perfect oneness with himself and
destiny, he made his journey to Isola Bella as rapidly as if he were
going to find there a beloved, instead of merely awaiting one. How many
a thing seemed now smaller along his road, to which he applied the
Roman measure, and not the German, and before which he now, as his
father had foretold him, passed along flying!
At last he saw the artificial Alp of Isola Bella standing in the waves,
and disembarked joyfully with his teacher, Dian, in the garden of
childhood, where he was to expect so much, and, with fresh Italian
life-blossoms on his heart, bid farewell to the land of promise.
He waited several long days, yearning and anxious for his two friends,
although his sunny companion was always reminding him to make allowance
for the rapidity of his own journey. His determination to be gentle
grew continually more and more unnecessary and involuntary. The very
island itself, with its springs born of perfumes and with the distant
garland of Alps, melted his soul. In the former year he had seen it
more in leaves than in blossoms. It was, indeed, his land of childhood.
From many places on the lake stars glimmered up to him out of a deep,
early, after-midnight hour of life. Here had he for the first time
found his father, and for the first time seen Linda's form across the
waters; here he finds and loses them again, after the longest
separation, for a still longer one; and here he stands in the gateway
between north and south. The free, fragrant land, full of islands, the
Jacob's-ladder of his life mounts back into the ether, and he goes down
into a cold region full of constraint and eyewitnesses; his love is
judged by his father, it is assailed by the downfallen friend. "Ye days
in Ischia," he sighed, "ye hours in Vesuvius and in Tivoli, can you
reverse your course? can you ever come back again and overflow anew the
insatiable heart, that it may drink, and say, 'It is enough'?"
To his Dian, as if by way of justifying himself and his illimitable
longing, he spoke frequently of Chariton and their children, and asked
him how it was with his heart when he thought of them. "Don't talk to
me so much of them," said he, after his manner, feeling more than he
suspected or betrayed, "we are still so cruelly far off from them; one
only spoils one's journey without cause. But when I have them all....
Well, ah God!" Then he paused, snatched the youth to his arms, and did
not kiss him.
On a fresh, blue morning Albano stood, before the resurrection of the
sun in heaven, on the high, bloom-encircled pyramid of terraces, where
he had once, on awaking, seen his dear father flee without farewell;
and he gazed with emotion down into the vacant, broad lake, and around
on the summits of the glaciers, which already bloomed in the reflection
of Aurora riding down from on high,--and no one was with him but the
past. He looked upon himself and into his breast, and thought: "What
a long, heavy time has already passed through this bosom since that
day! A whole world has become a dream within me! And the heart still
beats fresh and sound within thee!" All at once he saw, in the light
morning-smoke of the lake, a skiff rowing along. Slowly, lazily it
waded, for he saw it from a great distance. At last it glided, it flew;
the sail bloomed up in the morning-blaze, and the green waves became a
wild-fire, playing around it, as formerly in Ischia, on that evening,
around Linda's skiff.
Linda it was, and his sister. They looked up, and motioned a greeting.
He cried, in hasty joy, "Dian! Dian!" and ran down the long flight of
steps, all astonished and enraptured at the wide-spread splendor,
because, on account of the glad apparition, he had not seen the sun
rise, for it was he who was strewing before the loved one the fair
flames, like morning flowers along the path of the waters.
"Is it you again, ye divine ones? O speak, weep for joy, that I am
blest and have you once more. Come ye then again with your real old
love?" Thus he went on speaking in eloquent ecstasy, born of his
long-dreaming expectation. Linda looked with secret angelic pleasure,
with lovely reflection into the high-playing flames of his love; and
his sister enjoyed in a sweet emotion of sympathy the beautiful
mildness on both their countenances, which, in union with energy, is as
enchanting as moonlight on a mountain. Descriptions of travels were
begun by both parties, but ended by neither; arrangements for the day
and plannings out of the island were projected, but none chosen.
Julienne held up before his heart his own word and her stipulation,
that at evening he must pursue his journey, as a slight cooling against
the fire of joy that burned therein; sadly he looked up to the
friendly, serene morning sun, as if it were not mounting higher, but
already going downward.
They went now on a lovely stroll through the island; everywhere bloomed
beside the present a still past, under the rose a forget-me-not. Here,
in this grotto before the leaping waves, had he once played with his
sister Severina, and on this island was her death announced to him.
"But, Julia, thou art my Severina, and more," said he. "I think," said
she, softly, "quite as much." Not far from the arcade was it that he
had for the first time gazed into the face of his father. "But O when
wilt thou find _thy_ father at last? Speak about this, good Linda!"
said he. She blushed, and said, "I shall find him when fate permits."
"But when is that?" "I know nothing about it," said she, with a soft
hesitation. Then Julienne touched him, nodding, and said, in as much
French Latin as she could muster together, but in an indifferent tone,
as if she were soliloquizing to the air, "_Non eam interroga amplius,
nam pater veniet_ (_ut dicitur_) _die nuptiarum_."[106] He looked at
her with astonishment; she nodded repeatedly. "Julia," said Linda,
smiling, "is like women, as cunning in acting as she is open in
speaking. I could not have disguised myself from a brother so long."
"When the brother and sister," replied she, "do not find each other
till they are equally grown up and with all perfections, they can
easily become lovers of each other, while other sisters have first for
many years to conquer the faults of the brother growing up."
Now they came upon the gallery, amid lemon-blossoms, where Gaspard had
let his son see so many veils and masks hanging about the future; then
Albano said, with displeasure, "Here I had to let many riddles be
announced to me,--and there"--he meant the spot in the sea where
Linda's image had first appeared to him on the waves--"even this
precious form was mimicked." "My God!" said Linda, vehemently, "why
speak any more of it at all? O it was so wicked to do it!" "No one,
however, has lost much by it," said Julienne, joking, "except a couple
who have lost their hearts, and I my anonymousness!" "Could we not both
answer, Albano?" said Linda, softly, and raised her eyes. "By Heaven,
that we could!" said he, strongly, for without those preludes they
would have sought and found each other earlier.
Amidst these lookings into a past so singularly interwoven with
futurity, they had stepped into the Borromæan palace, which to-day was
fortunately without occupants; because Albano, at Linda's request,
was to usher them both into the chamber, where he and Severina were
brought up. The palace-keeper, supposing they were only in quest
of a prospect,--for the nursery apartments were in the fifth
story,--would have led them out on the roof; he insisted they were
dusty children's-chambers, and had been locked up from time immemorial.
With difficulty the man turned, with a rusty key, a rust-eaten lock.
They stepped into the bedusted, clear-obscure, high, empty chamber,
wherein a vacant cradle, a flower-pot with a little Chinese rose-bush
dried up like its earth, a child's pewter watch, a girl's baby-kitchen
with old-fashioned utensils, a rolled-up shining harpsichord string, a
German almanack of 1772, many black seals with bare antique heads, a
dried-up twig of the liana, and the like, lay as cast-off lumber round
about. Man looks with emotion down into the far, low-lying time, when
the spindle of his life ran round as yet almost naked without threads;
for his beginning borders more nearly upon his end than the middle, and
the outward bound and the homeward bound coasts of our life hang over
into the dark sea. Albano was touched with melancholy at the scene
around him, and at this glimpse of human life and this out-look upon
his own green fields yet standing in wintry lowness,--and at the sight
of the spot where he had lived with a mother and a sister, who had
vanished from the earth, yes, even out of his imaginings. He took up
the pewter watch, and said, "Is there a better watch for that age which
knows no time but only eternity, than this one with only an index and
no wheel-work?"
Linda was surprised as she drew away a curtain from a glass casket and
a waxen child, of angelic beauty, lying therein, caught the light in
her clear eyes. "It is the dead Severina," said Albano, hastily, with
the harsh adjective "dead," which Linda could not well endure. It
became more and more uncomfortable to him in the clear-obscure
chamber,--a streak of sunshine burned in singularly down through the
lofty window,--animated resurrection-dust played therein,--the spirits
of the sister and of Liana might at any moment flash across the earthly
light,--and the mountains out in real life receded into the distance.
When he looked again upon the blooming Linda, all at once she appeared
to him changed, strange, supernatural, as if she appeared among
spirits, and was going hence again. She looked upon him significantly,
with the words, "One is not at home here, let us go!" "Woman!" said he,
with strong voice, in German, making answer to an inward terror, and
grasped her hand, "we will hold together like a live heart, if one
should try to tear it asunder." Linda replied, "I cannot stay longer,
Julienne!" and they went.
On the threshold it occurred to the Count to look into the next
chamber; he opened it and shrank back, but cried, "You only go on," and
he himself went in. He had, namely, beheld himself twice imaged as in a
mirror. Within the chamber he found himself standing in wax in a niche
in French uniform, but as a youth still, and close by, which the door
had concealed, his father also as a youth, dressed in the old fashion,
but beautiful as a Grecian god; the warm, full, flowery face had not
yet been iced over in the winter of mature life, and still bloomed with
love. He plunged deep into the sea of the past. The colossal statues
out of doors, and the illuminated mountain ridges had risen up out of
the dark waves, and stood in dripping splendor. There was a call from
without. He looked again into his face, but angrily. "Why twice over?"
said he, and crushed his face, but it was to him like suicide and
laying hands upon his very self and soul. The form of his father he
still more begrudged to the strange, unguarded place, but it was to him
too holy for the slightest touch.
He went back, and remained silent on the subject of the images, in
order not to ruffle the great, stubborn wings of Linda's fancy. The
green, glistening, blooming day soon swallowed up the cold shadows
which had fallen in from the heights and grave-mounds of the past. "But
now," said Albano to Linda, "as you have just come out of my nursery,
lead me once into yours." "I will not crown thee until we are at the
right place," said she, and broke off and bound together twigs of the
laurel wood, through whose swarm of light and dark waves they were now
passing, for a garland. Bodily activity gave to this maiden, who, with
more than common ease, knit together tones and colors and ideas, a
peculiarly touching aspect of childlikeness and naive condescension.
She braided the wreath, but with difficulty, confounded once the
arbutus with the laurel that resembles it, put in one more blooming
myrtle-twig, and decked his curled hair with it, but very seriously.
"The garland becomes thee; the high laurels up on the summit thou wilt
one day get for thyself," said she. He thought she was playing behind
this seriousness; but she looked joyfully and searchingly and smilingly
on the crowned one, but like a mother, and said: "It is right so! What
wilt thou more? I will bring it. Albano, I have at this hour a very
peculiar and new love for thee. I could do much for thee, endure much.
My heart is moved with exceeding love. Kiss me not. I will tell thee."
The fair womanliness which loves the beloved more ardently and
intimately when it has for the first time gone over his homestead, the
scenes of his childhood, his dwelling-places, unconsciously filled her
strong heart. He kissed her not; he looked upon her, and wept in the
ecstasy of love. She inclined her head towards him, and said, but
cheerfully, "It is hard for me to weep, dearest! I will tell thee what
thou desiredst to know about my childhood. Of the first places of my
childhood but a very faint impression remains with me,--perhaps because
we were always travelling, and because I look more for persons than for
scenes,--except my having stayed longest in Valencia. Probably from
this early travelling I derive my travelling mania. After all, however,
it lies in my nature. But _you_ always believe, like the Germans, that
you learn that which you properly inherit or create. By my mother I was
more hated and loved than by any one. I am now clear about her. She was
wholly born for art or for the arts, although I believe that she was
originally marked out by the gods for the stage. She was everything
this minute, nothing the next; curses and prayers, belief and unbelief,
hatred and love, alternated in this epic nature. She could have
lavished a world, and she could have stolen one. She once pressed me to
her heart, and said, 'Wert thou not my daughter, I would steal or kill
thee out of mere love'; and that was when I had said, 'I love Medea
more than Creusa.'
"However, she was too inconsistent to be wholly loved; I loved my
invisible father far more. I thought he was _God the Father_. I once
imagined he must dwell in the _Porta Cœli_;[107] for whole hours
together I went round the garden of the dead of the cloister, and
looked longingly through the palms over the roses of the graves; I hung
on every living thing, even to pain. A dying canary-bird once made me
sick, and I thought the mass for the dead was read for him. On God and
spirits also I hung in a sort of intoxication. They once flashed by
before me in the fire which I struck out of sugar in the dark. I never
played, but read early. As I was very serious, and my form developed
itself precociously, I was early treated as a grown person, and I
desired it too. No one was earnest enough for me, except my guardian,
who, with secret hand, governed my development. Over books and in
travelling carriages my early life passed away. I envied men, and their
knowledge, and their freedom, but they did not please me, still less
did women. I passed for proud--and at an earlier period I was so
too--and for fantastical. I took it not ill, and said, 'You have your
way, and I mine.'" The narrative was interrupted by Dian and Julienne.
118. CYCLE.
The first solitary minute which Albano found with his sister he devoted
to an inquiry about her Latin intelligence that Linda's father would
appear precisely on her marriage-day; but she referred him to his own
father, who could tell him all about Linda's, and begged him "to
indulge Linda, not only in her tenderness, but also in her
characteristic shyness of marriage, which went very far. She could not,
upon one occasion, accompany a female friend to the nuptial altar,"
Julienne added; "she called it the place of execution of woman's
liberty, the funeral pile of the fairest, freest love, and said the
heroic poem of love became then, at the highest, the pastoral poem of
marriage. Of course she knows not whither such principles ultimately
lead." "I hope, too, that thou trustest her," said Albano, making other
and higher deductions from this singularity than his strict sister. She
suddenly broke off, to impart to him a piece of advice which he was to
take with him to Pestitz,--namely, to shun the Princess, who was, to
the very core, cold, false, revengeful, and selfish. "She has something
in view with thee, and, indeed, much; and her hatred toward the
Countess must now be added. Linda clearly apprehends her, but yet she
lets herself, out of passionateness, be carried away and made use of by
all whom she foresees and surveys." Albano adhered to his old, milder
judgment of the Princess,--so much the more, as he already knew
Julienne's moral severity towards every woman of genius, from her
misjudgment in the case of Liana,--but he readily gave her his word to
shun the Princess, without telling her the reason,--namely, the love
which the woman had for him, and of which it was so hard to disenchant
her. To his tender feelings, there was no greater rudeness than this
public breaking open and reading of a love-letter, this masculine
catching and proclaiming of a woman's sigh of love through a
speaking-trumpet for the people.
All came together again, encamped themselves upon a spot which
commanded the lake and the Alps, and the shadows of the blossoms. The
day cooled its glow, and sank from beauty to beauty down into evening.
"On this exquisite island," said Dian, "already the Northern nature
begins, and we shall soon find ourselves at home under a peaked roof."
"Well, yes," said Julienne; "but, after all, one is glad too, at last,
when one sees again a neat man, a blonde, and a shadow, and hears a
bird or two."[108] "I think not here of Tivoli and Ischia and
Posilippo," said Albano; "I think of my childhood and of the Alps. Over
on the shore of the long lake (_Lago Maggiore_) of course the two
sugar-loaves may not represent themselves to the best advantage, but,
as a compensation for that, here from the sugar-loaf the shore and the
lake appear so much the better, and for him who stands on this alp of
the lake, it is, after all, made." "All is indifferent to me," said
Linda; "for I find myself here entirely well. Remarking upon fine
landscapes is also a Northern characteristic, because there one can
become acquainted with them only through books. The Italian, who has
them, enjoys them as he enjoys health, and is conscious only of
the deprivation of them; for this reason he is not even a great
landscape-painter."
"One should," said Dian, "celebrate in song the magnificent Italy, even
upon the boundary-line, if one could get a _guitarre_ from the
Castellain." He went and brought one. He now began to improvisate in
Italian. He sang: "Apollo felt his old love for his former pastoral
land on the earth and for the lost, veiled Daphne, wake again within
him; he came down from heaven to find both. Jupiter had given him Momus
as a companion of his journey, who should show him all that was odious,
that he might flee back. As a beautiful, smiling youth he went over the
islands, through the ruins of the temples, through eternal blossoms; he
passed along before divine paintings of an unknown, exalted virgin with
a child, and before new tones of music, and moved as over the magic
circle of a new and fairer earth. In vain did Momus show him the monks
and pirates, and his temples prostrated by the hand of time, and
quizzingly make him take columns of thermæ for temple-columns. The god
looked up at the high, cold Olympus, and looked down upon this warm
land, upon this great, golden sun, these clear, blue nights, these
ever-blooming perfumes, these cypresses, these myrtle and laurel woods,
and said, 'Here is elysium, not in the subterranean world, not on
Olympus.' Then Momus gave him a laurel-twig from Virgil's grave,[109]
and said, 'That is thy Daphne.' Now did his great sister Diana grow
indignant. She gave Daphne her form and dress, as if she had come over
out of the woods of the Pyrenees; but he recognized his beloved, and
went back with her into Olympus." As Dian sang this, and let the
strains fly with the tones of the strings, there stood high over in
heaven the eternal, radiant mountains of ice; from the mountains
fluttered streams and shadows into the bright lake, and the evening
bestirred itself with kindling and enchanted glow. Then the silent
Albano seized the strings, buried his eye in the gleaming of the
mountains, and blushing, began: "Linger awhile, O singer, among the
lofty spirits who marched, killing, dying, over the battle-field, and
who built up the everlasting temples of humanity; linger among the pure
diamonds that remained firm and bright under the hammer of destiny;
linger in the olden time, in the sea of Rome, which bore upon its bosom
one quarter of the world, and undermined the others; but flee before
the time which sank its summit in its own crater. Linger, singer, on
the heights, and look down into the garden of the world, which is the
play of human life. The ruin becomes a rock, and the rock a ruin; on
the high promontory the blossom breathes fragrance, below lies the sea
with open jaws; over Scylla gleam beautiful houses and streets amidst
the lair of frightful rocks. And the god flies over the land and sees
the child on the temple-column by the shore, and the temples of the
gods full of monks, the marshes full of nameless ruins, and the coasts
full of blossoms and grottoes, and the blooming myrtles and grapes, and
the fire mountains and the islands, and Ischia."
But the storm-swept _guitarre_ sank from his hands, and his voice died
away; his eye lost itself in the depths of heaven and of human life,
and he withdrew himself to still his loud heart. In the cooling
solitude he observed how far already the sun had flown down, as on
Cupid's wings, through a colder heaven; he speedily turned back, and in
the evening redness his parting-hour struck.
When he came back, Linda was alone, for Julienne, under the pretext of
inspecting the picture cabinet, had drawn away his Dian from the
lovers, to whom, besides, only the shortest day of bliss had been
to-day allotted, and his beloved looked on him significantly. "Dian,
strictly speaking, sang better," said she, "and more epically, but your
lyric nature I also hold very dear." She looked at him again and again,
then into his eye; then she embraced him impulsively, and not a sound
betrayed the sudden kiss. "We will go up on the terrace," said she,
softly. They mounted the lovely height of the ten terraces, which fill
the sight with laurel and citron trees, and with pyramids and colossal
statues, and with the prospect of the distant shore surrounded with
villages and alps, and where once Albano had seen his father flee.
"Thou pleasest me more and more, Albano," said Linda. "I almost believe
thou canst really love. Tell me thy first love; I have told thee my
story." "O Linda," said he, "how much thou desirest! But I am true, and
tell thee all. Thou wilt love her as she loved thee. See here thy
picture, which with her dying hand she made and gave me!"
He handed her the little sketch, and her eye grew moist. Thereupon he
began, in a low and solemn tone, the picture of his first love; how he
had reverenced and sought her early, when she was yet unseen, and in
the first morning beams of life, and how he found her; and how she made
him happy, and was not so herself; how gentle she was, and he so wild
and harsh; how he demanded of her his own impetuosity of heart; how
barbarously he took her renunciation, and how she perished through him.
"O, I have dealt hardly, good Linda!" said he. "No," said she, "I weep
for you both." "I have great imperfections," said he. "I forgive thee
all," said she, "if thou canst only love. But the lovely creature also
committed many faults, and against love." She checked herself, then
asked, in a low voice, "Albano, is she still in thy heart?" "Yes,
Linda," said he. "O thou honest and true man!" cried she, with
inspiration, and laid her head upon his breast and prayed, "Holy God,
give thy immortals everything, only leave me forever this man's breast,
that he may be really loved, inexpressibly, and that I may not sink!"
"If thou wilt, dear," she whispered suddenly, and raised herself up,
looking upon him with infinite love and resignation, "that I dwell in
Lilar, only command it."
This womanly, waiting submission of so free, mighty a spirit, made him
speechless. Like an eagle, the flame of love seized him and bore him
aloft. He glowed on her blooming countenance, and the bridal torch of
the setting sun darted in with great flames between the two. "Linda,"
he began at length, with trembling, solemn voice, "if we could know
that we should ever lose or forsake each other! O Linda," he continued,
with difficulty, through his tears and his kisses, "if that were
possible, whether through my fault or through cold fate, were it not
then better that we at this moment plunged into the lake and died in
our love?" The glow of the sun burned in like an aurora, snatching away
youths and virgins to the gods, and the twilight of life was kindled
into a bright morning redness. "If thou knowest that," said Linda,
"then die now with me!" Just then Julienne's distant voice awoke
both; at last she came herself with Dian, to take leave. They looked
round, awaking, dazzled with the sun and with love, and all was
changed. The sun had sunk, the broad lake was overhung with misty
shadows, and the world was chilly; only the lofty glaciers blazed still
with rosy redness into the blue, like memorial pillars of the flaming
covenant-hour.
Before Albano's soul stood even now the form of destiny, so coldly
dividing human beings, the veiled rocky form, whose veil is also of
stone, which no one raises. He would now fain have burst through it,
and directly, without cowardly delay, dashed down into the midst of
winter. "O till Hesperus has gone down, pardon me!" whispered Linda. He
stayed; but neither had words any longer, only eyes; the reined-in
eagles, which had formerly hurried the celestial Venus-car through the
heavens, fluttered wildly in the traces. The evening star went down;
the half-moon, in mid-heaven, touched the earth with her beams, as with
magic wands, and transformed it into a pale, holy world of the heart.
"Only let the great star go down now," said she, and looked upon him
longingly. He did so. The nightingales skipped musically among the
silvery twigs; only the human beings had a voiceless heaven and love.
"Only one little star more!" she begged. He obeyed, touched by the very
expression, but she summoned up her resolution, and said, "No, go!" "We
will, Dian!" said he. Dian, indulgent to love, led the way down the
terraces. Long and ardently lay the brother and sister on each other's
hearts, and wished each other a pleasant, undisturbed reunion. Linda
gave him only her hand, and said not a word. As the still heaven of
night covers its hot sun, so was her flaming heart concealed; and when
he went, without looking after him, she clasped his sister to her
heaving bosom.
Splendor and night and fragrance bestrewed the Jacob's-ladder of the
terraces down which he passed. Lightly flew his boat through the snow
of stars and blossoms, which drifted over the waves,--the nightingales
of the two islands chimed together,--the seamen sang back to them glad
songs,--a favorable wind bore the orange-perfumes after the little
vessel,--but Albano, weeping, had his heart and face turned toward the
sinking pyramid. His sister alone had looked after him from the
eminence; then she, too, was lost to sight,--the nightingales still
called faintly after him,--at last all was veiled. He turned himself
round toward the pale-glimmering glaciers, as toward the light-houses
of his voyage, and of the heaven of this day nothing was now left to
him but the pilot, love, as the seaman follows the magnet, when the
holy stars have concealed themselves and guide him no more.
119. CYCLE.
Albano and Dian flew joyfully over the German fields to meet so many a
precious heart, and nothing was disappointed except their dread of the
length of the countries through which they had to travel. Instead of
the black lava-sand and the burnt soil behind them, a bright, fresh
green now decked the plains and cooled the dazzled eye. The waves of
green grain-fields swept and tossed about as merrily as the waves of
the blue-green sea. In thicker, longer, higher woods floated new
shadows, like lovely little evenings, creeping away from before the
light of day. The dark green of the Italian trees was replaced by the
bright, laughing green of the German gardens, and new feathered choirs
cradled themselves in clouds and in woods, and greeted the heart of
man, and sent down to him their light and guileless joy.
From spring to spring went the happy Albano, with his dreams of love;
as fast as a southern blossom fell behind him, a northern unfolded
itself before him; and his travelling-carriage stopped on the
variegated avenue among the blossom-shadows of a long garden.
At length he stood before the house to which the garden conducted him,
and before the linden-city; so stood he also in a former year on the
heights before it, looking up at the cloud-procession of the future,
without being able to divine to what the clouds were shaping
themselves, whether into an aurora or into an evening tempest. How many
old pangs darted now like shadows of clouds over the old landscape! He
was going now, such was his reflection, to meet his father with the
news of his fortune; to meet his apostate friend with the stolen
beloved; to meet with old and new love his returning Schoppe, whose
heart and fate were to him, now, at once so dark and so weighty; and to
meet the singular time and hour, when the subterranean waters, whose
rush and roar he had hitherto so often experienced, should lie at once
uncovered, and with all their windings and springs laid open to the
light of day; and to meet the sacred spot where he could take boldly to
his heart the beloved, who now, on the German road and in the
neighborhood of former trials, seemed to him still greater and more
unattainable than on Epomeo, in the neighborhood of all that is sublime
in heaven and on earth, and when he might enfold her in his arms
forever without asking again, "Wilt thou love me?" Then he went back in
thought to an image which Vesuvius[110] had furnished him, and said to
Dian: "Behind man there works and travels onward a slow, fiery stream,
which consumes and crushes if it overtakes him; but let man only stride
boldly forward, and often look backward, and he comes off unscathed. My
beloved teacher, so will I now do in my new and momentous relations; do
thou, however, make me turn round toward the lava, if in pleasant
scenes I should sometimes forget it!"
"Speak better and more propitious words," said Dian. "Hail to us; the
gods are already favorable! Yonder comes your father up the palace
hill, and looks more gay and happy than I ever before happened to find
him!"
THIRTY-FIRST JUBILEE.
Pestitz.--Schoppe.--Dread of Marriage.--Arcadia.--
Idoine.--Entanglement.
120. CYCLE.
Gaspard received his son with the usual stately coldness of the first
hour, as letters begin more coldly than they end. Not until this
morning-frost had melted away and it grew warmer around him, did Albano
disclose to him, without fear or pusillanimous blushing, and with
matured manliness, the bond which he had forever concluded with Linda
and with himself, and begged him for the third yes. "So after all,"
replied the Knight, "the old enchanter has carried it through at last;
of course under the reinforcement of a young enchantress. That I shall
never disturb thee in anything which thou seizest upon with whole soul
and forever, that thou knowest already from a similar case in the last
year." Albano grew red at the bitter mention of his first love, but had
gained strength within a half-year to preserve a manly silence, in
cases where he once spoke out like a youth. Gaspard, more glad and warm
than usual towards him to-day, nevertheless went on, when he perceived
his sensitiveness: "I pronounce it good! As the seal-engraver in the
beginning stamps the arms in wax, and then, and not till then, etches
them on the precious stone, so does man essay to impress his upon more
than one heart, until he at last gets the firmest. It must be owned
thou hast not made the worst choice in my ward, and I gladly give my
word of assent to it."
Albano pressed the hand which drew the sweet knot of love still
tighter, and said, in the entrancement of gratitude: "I found my
sister, too, the Princess. I put no question to her, however, as
lately, but count upon time." "Mocker!" said Gaspard, and assumed,
seemingly by way of cooling him off, the cruel appearance of thinking
his pure, noble son had been disposed to retort upon him the bantering
allusion to having many love-affairs. "Only be silent about all in thy
innermost heart, as I myself have hitherto been, and conceal thy
knowledge from the court. Give me thy word of honor."
Albano said he had already given it to Julienne also. He was, however,
driven back, by Gaspard's whole deportment, upon conclusions which
placed moral garlands neither upon his father nor upon Julienne's
mother.
Gaspard added, furthermore, that it was a misfortune for a man to be
entangled with fantastic women,--as Albano already knew his mother to
have been,--and, in fact, with three at once, and advised him to march
on boldly, as hitherto, through all riddles, and leave them to solve
themselves. Thereupon he proposed to him, as a test of the third female
fancy-monger, the question whether he already knew that the Countess,
notwithstanding his guardianship, had still her living father, who
would appear for the first time on her wedding-day. He said, "Yes."
Gaspard then continued: This reason, of itself,--in order that Linda
might find her father, and all of them the peace of clearness at
last,--decided him for an early, secret marriage of the two through the
honorable Spener.
Albano, really terrified at the prospect of the near and speedy
transformation of blissful hours into blissful years, and no more able
to think of his Titaness as wife than to think of her as child,
answered, modestly and with disinterested reference to Linda's dread of
wedlock, that, as to the time of sealing his happiness, no one must or
could decide but Linda herself.
Gaspard was well content. "I only insist upon your adjourning the
matter awhile," he subjoined. "My friend the Prince is again near his
end; the beneficial effect which a spiritual apparition had wrought
upon him has gradually subsided, and he fears daily the return of the
phantom, which has promised to foretell him his last hours. At such a
time your festival does not serve my purpose. To speak in confidence,
the poor patient had himself an eye to the fair bride. It is, after
all, but fair to spare him the highest certainty of his loss. On his
account I also postpone my departure."
As if a man should enter into the new-created paradise, and all birds
at once--nightingales and eagles and owls and birds-of-paradise and
vultures and larks--should beset him, so confusedly did Albano feel
himself excited by these mutually crossing prospects, and he perceived
that there could be no dependence nor defence here, except in his own
heart and Linda's.
Gaspard seemed to be impatient to see the Countess again, whom he
called his only friend. "Unfortunately, I did not believe my brother in
Rome," he added, "when he insisted on having met both ladies in Naples.
_Apropos_, that brother passed through here some time ago, on his way
to Spain; in Rome he asserted he was travelling to Greece. Thou seest
with what poetic pleasure and geniality he carries on pure lying."
Gaspard parted from him very warmly, with the words, "Albano, I am very
well satisfied with thee; I should be infinitely so if the purity of
the youth had passed over into the man; I have not yet found it so."
Albano was about to affirm and swear with emotion. "That is why," he
continued, waving away the oath with a light motion of the hand, "thou
foundest me so glad about thy good fortune, for the Princess's friend
had already announced to me thy love in the morning. Take heed to
thyself before her, for she hates thee without bounds."
With a hard and horrible aspect, like a new and extraordinary beast of
prey behind the grating, does a real though unarmed hatred present
itself for the first time before a good heart. Albano demanded no
confirmation or explanation of this sad intelligence, for the love and
error of the Princess, her acquaintance with his former coldness toward
Linda, her silent bitterness toward Linda herself, were quite flames
enough for her to cook the strongest poison by.
He took up his residence again, at the request of his father, at the
house of Doctor Sphex, situated, unmeaningly to him, down in the
valley; and Gaspard resumed his abode in the palace, near his sick
friend. The Knight speedily presented him to the court, which soon
observed and remarked the brown of travel, the sharper lightning of the
eye, and the whole latest development of his great form. The Princess
received him with the lightest, finest coldness, a sort of _aqua
toffana_, which seems only pure, tasteless water. The Prince sat
upright in his sick-bed, with peevish face, before drawings of
Herculaneum, and was letting himself be informed on the subject by
Bouverot. As a face upon which, in the late, gray years of life, fair
joyousness can still picture itself, announces a fair life and fair
heart, so the saint never wears a more heavenly smile than on his
sick-bed, nor the reprobate a more hard and painful one. Albano turned
his eye away from the sickly, withered _brother of his sister_.
Languishing, he looked back toward the past Hesperia, and forward to
the gate of paradise which was finally to open, and show Linda and his
sister in Eden. "It will certainly meet your approval," Gaspard had
said, "that, under the pretext of Luigi's sickness, I have had them
both quartered in the old palace at Lilar, where thou canst see them
more unobserved." He met the Minister Froulay, and the Lector came to
meet him; with both came a dark, manifold shadowy retinue of hard, old
recollections. He had not yet seen Captain Roquairol, who was now to
him the evening cloud of a sunken spring day.
He carried as speedily as he could his dumb heart--which was an
Æolian-harp in a dead calm--to his childhood's Blumenbühl, to greet the
parental beings, and to read the papers of his soul's nearest neighbor,
Schoppe, for whose promised return he now longed more than ever.
121. CYCLE.
It was a fresh, blue, summer day when Albano went to his old
Blumenbühl, without knowing that he did so precisely on the St. James's
day, or paternal birthday, which he had once, in childhood, spent in
such singular preludes of his life. In the old gardens and on the old
heights round about, even over to Lilar's wood, lay everywhere, even
now, the young, glistening dew of childhood, not yet dried up by the
western sun; many tear-drops, too, stood among the drops of dew on the
flowers; but his fresh, healing spirit was on its guard against
effeminately floating away into soft transport, that Lethe of the
present. In the village he was struck with the sight of a horse whom
they were shoeing, for, by the caparison and all, he recognized it as
Roquairol's festive steed. He introduced a festival into a festival,
when he entered the noisy paternal apartment, full of birthday
electors, blooming, fully developed, erect, a confirmed man, with
determined look and gait. Rabette screamed out; Roquairol cried, "Aha!"
and the old teacher Wehmeier, "God and my master!" and his childhood's
angels, the parents, embraced him just as ever, and out of Albina's
blue eyes ran the bright drops.
But a change had come over the youth of the others, compared with his.
Rabette's countenance, the once full cheeks and blooming lips, had
fallen in, and were overlaid and overgrown with the white veil, and she
had two gray tears instead of eyes ; yet she smiled a great deal. Like
his own Gorgon-head, Roquairol's face appeared pale and hard, as if
chiselled on his gravestone; only naked piers stood in the water,--the
light arches of the beautiful bridge were gone. Albina and Rabette
looked up with a steady gaze at Albano's blooming figure; he seemed to
be an Italian growth, a Neapolitan nerved by daily bathing in the gulf.
Roquairol had his part immediately at command more easily than Albano
his truth; he demeaned himself with the highest courteousness toward
one who had broken in two for him the magic wand of life and thrown it
away as a pair of beggar's sticks,--kissed him on the cheek, kept up
the lightest, often a French tone of conversation, requested the latest
intelligence about Italy, and retailed in turn the most edifying news
from the country, as well, he said, as he could muster it up for a man
with a Hesperian standard of measurement. He related, also, "that the
Knight's brother had been there,--a man full of talent, especially the
mimetic and that sort, and of the most singularly intense fancy with
the highest coldness of character, though perhaps not always
sufficiently true. For my tragedy," added he, "he would be worth his
weight in gold. Dear brother, hold yourself forthwith as invited on the
occasion. The play is called The Tragedian; I give it soon. Rabette is
acquainted with it." She nodded. Albano glowed, but was silent.
Among all parts, the Captain succeeded most perfectly in that of a
world's-man; the show of coldness is more easy and true, also, than the
show of warmth. Albano kept a proud distance. Roquairol could not gain
in any respect by being opposite to the afflicted, faded Rabette, not
even by the intercession of that form of his, full of the ruins of
life. Albano found there something forever confused, and the wax wings
crushed down into a lump; and it was as close and confining to him as
to one who from the bright world creeps down at once into a low, damp
cavern of a cellar.
The Captain rose, reminded him once more of his invitation to the
"Tragedian," and springing on his festive horse rode away.
Behind his back every one was silent about him, as if embarrassed. The
women, a little shy of Albano's brilliant presence, found some
difficulty in venturing forth upon the subject of the old familiar
past, while the foster-father, Wehrfritz, who having steadily grown on
in his opinions and manners, and being still encased in the old cry of
dogs and canary-birds, knew nothing at all about time, expressed his
hearty thanks to his foster-son for the obliging recollection and
choice of his birthday festival, which Albano necessarily and vainly
declined, continued in his old thouing and patronizing, wrought himself
into ecstasies on the subject of the French and their future victories,
and bestowed more premiums of praise now on the older foster-son than
he ever had on the younger, in order thereby, as he hoped, to give him
as great pleasure as ever. The Magister backed the praise from a
distance, although he could not let slip the opportunity, so soon as
his pupil had pronounced Napel, Baia, Cuma, to pronounce Neapel, Baiæ,
Cumæ. Albano was pure, true, human, frank, and hearty toward all; there
was no vanity in his self-forgetting pride.
Rabette found at last a lifting-screw to wind her polished and yet
familiar brother out of the receiving-room up into her or his former
apartment, so as to be alone on his breast. As they stepped in, she
immediately began, as she said, "Dost thou still know the chamber,
Albano?" to weep infinitely, with the tears which had been so long
gathering; and Albano showed her in his own, his long-cherished
sympathy, but tore open thereby all the wounds of the past. She herself
seized upon the remedy, namely, the telling of her story,--however
earnestly he persisted that he knew, and, indeed, could well guess
all,--and drying her eyes, informed him how all stood,--and that
Charles was a good deal with his mother in Arcadia; that the Minister
still acted the old tyrant toward his only child, and did not dole out
to him a farthing more than ever, although he was always heaping up
greater and greater debts, especially since there was no longer any
Liana silently to wipe them away; that he borrowed everywhere, only,
however, he never would accept anything from her; that he still
continued to desire and know nothing but the Countess, and that God
knew what all this would come to. Anticipating all inquiry, she added:
"He knows the whole already, all thy intercourse with that same person.
He behaves quietly and pleasantly about it, but I know him as well as I
want to. Ah!" she sighed, in the fulness of anguish, and added
immediately, with the same voice: "Thou lookest at me; is it not true
thou findest me very haggard to what I once was?" "Yes, indeed, poor
girl!" "I drank much vinegar on his account, because Charles loves
slender figures; and grief has much to do with it too," said she.
Albano would have consoled her with the nearer possibility of a union
of Charles with her, since the impossibility of every other union had
been decided, and readily tendered his services for any prefatory word
or coercive measure. "Before God and us, he is thy husband," said he.
"That he never could have been," replied she, blushing, "for he never
could have been honest; and did I not write thee that I am now too
proud for it, too?" "Then cast him off forever!" said he. "Ah!" said
she, fearfully, "do I know, then, that he meditates no harm against
himself? Then I should reproach myself with it eternally."
Involuntarily he could not but compare with this loving, holy fear, the
hardness of the Princess, who could relate so gladly and proudly how
many a love-smitten life had fallen a victim to her prudish heart and
coquettish face. "What wilt thou do now?" he asked. "I weep," said she.
"Ah, Albano, that is enough, indeed, that thou hast given me hearing
and counsel; I am cheerful again. But be once more his friend."
He was silent, a little angry at the naughtiness of women, which, under
pretence of seeking advice, only desires a hearing. "What is that?" he
asked, showing her a leaf. "That is perfectly my hand, and I never
wrote it!" She looked at it, and said Charles was often trying
experiments with her in this way at handwriting. He wondered, and said:
"Nothing, but imitating and counterfeiting all the time! But how canst
thou think of my forgiving him?" Some descriptions of travels on her
table, formerly so poor in books, met his eye. "I wanted to know, of
course," said she, "how you might probably be faring in this, that, and
the other place, and that is why I read the long stuff." "Thou art
still my sister!" said he, and kissed her heartily. She still asked him
much and urgently about his new connection; but chary of words with his
full heart, he hastened down stairs.
The first word down below to the Provincial Director was a request for
the "deposed letter of Schoppe's." Wehrfritz brought the broad letter,
which had been laid up in the little iron box of bonds, and delivered
it he hoped, he said, in good order. Hardly could Albano keep back his
tears, when he held the crinkled but precious traces of the beloved
hand, which certainly never in its life had swerved or stained itself,
in his own. As he did not break the seal, they all began good-naturedly
to portray to him his friend Schoppe, according to the presumptions and
views which man so boldly and complacently indulges upon every higher
spirit, with all his actions or colors, as if actions or colors were
strokes and outlines. Wehrfritz and Wehmeier deplored that he was
growing mad, if not already so. The Magister held back with his
main-proof, till the Provincial Director should have contributed the
lesser auxiliary ones.
His life beneath this palace-roof was uncovered and showed up, but in a
friendly spirit. "He had hitherto"--so went the reports--"had no real
or solid aim." Wehrfritz swore he had himself seen him reading the
Literary Gazette, just as it was folded together half-sheetwise, and
said he of course ascribed it less to insanity than to absence of mind,
because he knew with what pleasure the man always took into his hands
and understandingly perused the Imperial Advertiser, which the same
declared to be the gate-key to the great imperial city, Germany. In the
midst of company the Librarian had looked upon his hands with the
words: "There sits a gentleman here in bodily presence, and I in him,
but who is the same?" Of work he had done very little, seldom looked
into a book of any importance, as Herr Wehmeier knew, but got along
more easily with the worst of all stuff, for instance, whole volumes of
dream-interpretations. His dearest society had been his wolf-dog, with
whom for whole hours he would carry on regular discourse, and of whose
growling he seriously asserted it sounded like a very distant thunder.
He had been fond of sitting before the looking-glass, and had entered
into a long conversation with himself. Sometimes he had looked into the
camera-obscura, then on a sudden out into the landscape again, to
compare the two, and had asserted, unoptically enough, that the busy,
gliding images of the camera were magnified by the outer world, but
deceptively imitated. "It was a shy bird," added the Director, "for all
that. Divers of my acquaintances in the neighboring estates let him
paint them, because he did it cheap; he always knew, however, how to
slip something into the face so that one's physiognomy should appear
quite ridiculous or simple, and that he called his flattering. Of
course after that, no one could expect in the long run anything
_honnette_ from him."
"Were it permitted me," Wehmeier began, "I would now communicate to Mr.
Count a fact in regard to Mr. Librarian, which, perhaps--such is at
least my opinion--is as _frappant_ as many another. The school-house,
as you certainly still well remember, stands close to the church."
Thereupon he related, in a long narrative, the following: "Once, at
dead of night, he heard the organ going. He listened at the church
door, and distinctly heard Schoppe sing and play a short stanza of a
popular hymn. Thereupon the said Schoppe came down, with a loud noise,
from the choir, and mounted the pulpit, and commenced an occasional
sermon to himself with the words: 'My devout hearer and friend in
Christ.' In the exordium he touched upon the silent, but unhappily so
fleeting bliss which one enjoyed _before_ life, although not according
to correct Homiletic principles, since the second part almost repeated
the introduction. Thereupon he sang a pulpit stanza to himself, and
taking from the 3d chapter of Job, where the writer shows the happiness
of non-existence, the 26th verse as his text, which reads thus: 'Was I
not in safety, had I not rest, was I not quiet? Yet trouble
came,'[111]--he proposed to himself as his theme the joys and sorrows
of a Christian; in the first part the sorrows, in the second the joys.
Thereupon he crowded together concisely, but in a droll style and
speech, and yet with Scriptural expressions, too, all the misery and
distress on earth,--under which he enumerated singular things: long
sermons, the two poles, ugly faces, compliments, games, and the world's
stupidity. Thereupon he passed over abruptly to the consolation in the
second part, and described the future joys of a Christian, which, as he
blasphemously said, consisted in a heavenly ascension into future
nothingness, in the death after death, in an eternal deliverance from
self. Then (shocking it was to hear it) he addressed the neighboring
dead down below under the church and in the princely vault, and asked,
whether they had aught to complain of? 'Arise,' said he; 'seat
yourselves in the pews, and open your eyes, in case they are wet with
weeping. But they are drier than your dust. O how still and lovely lies
the infinite past world, swathed in its own shadow, softly laid on the
bed of its own ashes, without a single remaining dream-limb upon which
a wound can be inflicted. Swift, old Swift, thou who once in thy latter
days wast not so very much in thy head, and didst read through, every
birthday, the whole chapter from which the text of our harvest sermon
is taken,--Swift, how contented thou now art and entirely restored, the
hatred of thy bosom burnt out, the round pearl, thy Self, eaten up, at
last, and dissolved in the hot tear of life, and the tear alone stands
there sparkling! And thou, too, hadst once preached before the Sexton
like me!' Here Schoppe wept, and excused himself for his emotion, God
knows before whom. Thereupon he passed to the practical improvement,
and sharply insisted on both hearer and preacher growing better; upon
downright honest truthfulness; fidelity of friends; high-mindedness,
bitter hatred of suavity, snake-like movements, and weak
lasciviousness. Finally, he had concluded the devotions with a prayer
to God, that, if it should be his lot some day to lose his health or
understanding, or the like, he would still be pleased to let him die
like a man, and darted at once out of the church door. He put me,"
added Wehmeir, "almost out of my senses for terror, when he all at once
flew at me angrily; 'Mock corpse, why creepest thou about the grave?'
and I, pale and hurried, made my way home without having made the least
reply to him. But what says Mr. Count?"
Albano shook his head with vehemence without one enlightening word,
with pain and tears on his face. He merely took a sudden leave of all,
and begged them to pardon his haste; and sought the evening sun and
freedom, in order to read the letter of the noble man, and learn the
purpose of his journey. He struck into the old road to Lilar, where he
hoped to find, on the joyous southern breast of his radiant Dian
Southern gayety and Southern ways again; for his heart had been
upheaved by an earthquake, because, after all, many a wild sign in this
Schoppe, as it were an immoderate lightening and flashing of this star,
seemed to him to announce a setting and doomsday, which to his extreme
pain he was constrained to ascribe to the rising of the new star of
love, which had kindled this world of his nature.
122. CYCLE.
He read the following letter from Schoppe:--
"Thy letter, my dear youth, came duly to hand. I praise thy tears and
flames, which alternately sustain, instead of extinguishing each other.
Only become something, much, too, but not everything, in order that
thou mayest be able, in so extremely empty a thing as life is--(I
should be glad to know who invented it)--to hold out for all the
desolateness. A Homer, an Alexander, who have at length vanquished the
whole world and got it under them, must needs be plagued often with the
most tiresome and annoying hours, because their life, from being a
bride, has now become a wife. Much as I had palisaded and fortified
myself against that, in order not to mount over everybody's head, and
sit up top as Factotum of the world; I nevertheless, after all, came
out at last, unobserved and all standing, on the summit, merely
because, under my long contemplation, the whole circle of the earth,
full of foam-mountains and cloud-giants, had been melting down lower
and lower and crawling together; and now I gazed alone and dry-shod
down from my mountain-peak, wholly possessed with the bloodsuckers of
disgust at the world.
"Brother, it has changed, however, during this year, and I am afloat.
For that reason a long, and to me quite tiresome, letter is written
thee here in February, which shall tell thee about my approaching
grub- and chrysalis-state, where and how; for when I am once a shining
chrysalis, then I can only feebly stir and show myself any longer.
"I will explain myself _more_ clearly,--the Germans add, when they have
explained themselves clearly. It fits and hits most luckily--which I
prize as much as another--that precisely the end of the year is the end
of the paternal property upon which I have thus far lived, and
consequently, if Amsterdam ceases to pay, I also fail, and have nothing
more on hand than weak, chiromantic prophecies, and nothing in my body
except my stomach. I would I could still live by my navel, as in my
earlier times, and make myself such a soft bed.
"What, then, shall I do? As to accepting presents from my lords, men,
year out and year in, I do not respect them enough for that; and the
few, whom one does somewhat respect upon occasions, must in their turn
respect me too highly to make such an offer. What! shall I be a flea,
attached to the thinnest little golden chain, and a gentleman who has
fastened me by it, that I may spring with him but not away from him,
shall draw me up now and then upon his arm and say, 'Suck away, my
little creature!' Devil! I will remain free upon so contemptible an
earth,--no salary will I take, no orders in this great servants'
apartment,--sound to the core, so as not to awaken any sympathy or any
house-doctor,--yes, if one should knock off to me the heart of the
Countess Romeiro on the condition of my kneeling down to it, I would
take the heart, indeed, and kiss it, but immediately thereupon get up
and run away (either into the new world or the next) before she had
time to recapitulate the matter to herself and bring it before me.
"As to being something, and thereby earning in proportion, that I
could, if one should propose it to me, of course undertake, without any
special forfeiture of freedom and disparity. In fact, I see here from
my centre three hundred and sixty roads radiate, and I hardly know how
to choose among them, so that one would choose rather to flatten out
the centre into a circumference, or to seek to draw the latter into the
former, so as only to continue standing upon it. _Serving_, as the
staff-officers of the regiments say, were, to be sure, next to
commanding. Thou wilt thyself, as thou writest, take the field. (I have
duly received thy letter, and found therein thy shyness and passion all
right and good, and thyself entire.) And, in truth, if the Archangel
Michael were to array a holy legion, a _legio fulminatrix_ of some weak
Septuagints, against the commonwealth of the world,--were he to
proclaim a giant war against the domineering populace, in order to
drive four or five quarters of the world out of the world or into
prison by a sixth (on an island there would be good room for it), and
to make all spiritual slaves bodily ones,--be assured, in that happy
case I would plant myself foremost in the van, and would bring on
the cannon, with the short, flying remark, that, as Handel first
introduced cannon into music, so here for the first time, inversely,
they were bringing music into cannon. When we at length came back in a
body,--when the holy militia again swept hitherward,--then would God's
throne stand upon the earth, and holy men, with lofty fires in their
hands, should go up, much less to rule therefrom the world's body than
to sacrifice to the soul of the worlds.
"With the flower of France, then, thou wilt, as thou writest, for thy
individual self, for one man, hereafter stand up. Of course it is hard
for me to think highly of five and twenty millions, of which it is true
the cubic root must have grown and run up freely, but stem and twig
have, after all, for whole centuries, been drying and withering in a
slave's dungeon. He who was not, before the Revolution, a silent
Revolutionist,--somewhat as Chamfort was, against whose fire-proof
breast I once in Paris struck fire with mine, or like Montesquieu and
J. J. Rousseau,--let him not, with his silly spatterings, spread
himself out far beyond his house-door. Freedom, like everything
godlike, is not learned and acquired, but inborn. Of course, all
over France and Germany there sit young authors and sons of the
muses, who admire and proclaim their own sudden worth, only they are
cursedly astonished that they had not earlier felt their sense of
freedom,--soft, sickly knaves, who look upon themselves as complete
blowing whales, because they have found some bone or other of the said
fish, and buckled it to their ribs. I should always, in a war such as
these dead times can furnish, believe that I was fighting against
fools, indeed, but for fools too.
"The cynical, naive, free nature's-men of the present day--Franks and
Germans--are almost like the naked honorables, whom I have seen bathing
in the Pleisse, Spree, and Saale. They were, as was said, very naked,
white, and natural, and savages, but the black cue-tail of culture fell
down over their white backs. Some great, tall men, and fathers of their
times, like Rousseau, Diderot, Sidney, Ferguson, Plato, have laid aside
their worn-out breeches, and their disciples have taken them and worn
them, and because they sat so wide, long, and open upon their
diminutive bodies, have called themselves _sansculottes_ (men without
breeches).
"Truly, instead of the sword, I could also very well grasp the
penknife, and, as writing Cæsar, rise, to better the world, and be
useful to it, and use it. I shall always remember the conversation
which I once held upon this subject with a universal German librarian
of Berlin, as we walked quietly up and down in the menagerie. 'Every
one should surely enrich his native land with his talents, which else
would lie buried,' said the German librarian. 'To constitute a native
land, it is necessary, first and foremost, that there should be some
_land_,' said I. 'The Maltese librarian, however, who here speaks,
first saw the light at sea under a pitch-black storm. Of knowledge I
possess, of course, enough, and know that one has it, like a glassful
of cow-pock rationally taken, only to inoculate one's self withal. The
scholar, for his part, only swallows it again, in order to give it out
from himself, and so it goes on. Thus does the light, like the
glimmering brand in the game, "Kill the Fox, and Sell the Skin," pass
from hand to hand, until, however, to be sure, the brand goes out in
one,--mine,--and there remains.'
"'Droll enough!' said the universal German librarian. 'With such a
humor as this only connect the study of bad men and good models, and
then you create for us a second Rabener, to scourge fools.' 'Sir,'
replied I, in a rage, 'I should prefer to transfer the first blow to
the backs of the wise ones and you. Philosophers suffer themselves to
be enlightened and washed, have always their insight into things, and
are good fools, and just my people. Let a man like a universal German
farrier, who takes the pulse of the muses' horse, holds his out to me,
and I will feel it with great pleasure. But the rest and refuse of the
world, sir? Who can skim off the world sea, if he does not break away
its banks? Is it not a sorrow and a shame that all men of genius, from
Plato even to Herder, have become noisy, and die printed, and
frequently read and studied by the learned rabble and custom-house,
without having the least power to change them? Librarian, call and
whistle out, I pray you, all that lies in the critical dog-kennels on
the watch beside those temples, and ask the whole body of greyhounds,
bulldogs, and boar-hounds whether anything else is stirring in their
souls than a potentiated maw, instead of a poetic and holy heart? In
the mountain-cauldron they see the pudding-pot and brewer's-kettle, in
the leaves the spades[112] on the play-cards, and the thunder has for
them, as a greater electric spark, a very sour taste, which it
afterward infuses into the March beer.'
"'Do you mean any allusion?' he asked. 'Assuredly!' said I. 'But
further, Librarian, suppose we too were so lucky as to turn on our
heels, and, with one whirl of a breath, to blow over all fools, as if
they were infected with an arsenical fume, and lay them dead as a
mouse: I cannot see, for all that, where the blessing is coming out,
because, besides that we are still standing before each other, and have
to breathe on ourselves too, I see, in all corners round about, women
sitting, who will hatch the slain world anew.'
"'My dear fellow, best pair of bellows,[113] full of fire,' I
continued, 'can this, however, call and stamp one very strongly to be
of the satirical handicraft? O no! This is genuine humor with me,
perhaps strange madness, also, perhaps--but O, will not the rare
joke-maker, even in your uncommon library, resemble the porcupine-man
in London (the son) who had the office under the beast-dealer, Brook,
of acting as Cicerone to the stranger among the wild stock and through
the park of outlandish beasts, and who commenced on the threshold with
the observation that he showed himself as one of the species man?
Consider it coolly and first of all! I still swing my satirical
horsetail loosely and merrily, and perhaps against an occasional
horse-fly; but let a book be tied to it, as in Poland they tie a cradle
to the cow's tail, and the beast shall rock the cradle of the readers
and give pleasure; the tail, however, becomes a slave.'
"'To such images,' said the Librarian, 'sure enough, the cultivated
world could never be accustomed by any Rabener or Voltaire, and I now
perceive myself that satire is not your department.' 'O, most true!'
replied I, and we parted on very good terms.
"But to take things seriously, brother, what is there now left for a
man (in the shape of prospects as well as of wishes) to whom the age is
so over-salted and so bitter and briny as it is to me, and to whom life
is made so by living men,--who is annoyed to death with the universal
insipid hypocrisy and the glistening polish of the most poisonous
wood,--and the horrible commonness of the German life-theatre, and the
still greater commonness of the German theatre-life,--and the Pontine
marshes of infamous and immoral Kotzebuean weakliness, which no Holy
Father can drain and make into sound land,--and the murdered pride,
together with the living vanity, that stalk about, so that I, only for
the sake of drawing breath, can betake myself for whole hours to the
plays of children and of cattle, because there I am assured, at least,
that neither of them are coquetting with me, that, on the contrary,
they have nothing in mind and are in love with nothing but their
work,--what is there left, I asked at the top of this page, for one in
whose nostrils, as was said, so many sorts of things stink, and
especially this further particular, that improvement is hard, but
deterioration not so by any means, because even the best do somewhat
impose upon the worst, and thereby on themselves too, and because with
their secret cursings of the age, and trimming and truckling to it,
they dance at least for gold and glory, and in consideration thereof
willingly let themselves be used by the more steady mass, as wine-casks
are used for meat-barrels,--what is there, friend, I say, for a man in
times when, as now, one makes in print, not _black white_, indeed, but
yet gray, and where one, as good catechists must, always avoids
precisely the question, yes or no,--what remains except hatred of
tyrants and slaves at once, and indignation at the maltreated no less
than at the maltreatment? And what shall a man to whom the armor of
life in such situations is worked thin or worn thin, seriously resolve
upon?"
I, for my part, if the question is about myself, resolved, half in
joke, upon inserting a fine-spun, lucid demand in the Imperial
Advertiser, which you perhaps have already read in Rome, without even
guessing the author.
"'TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.
"'It may well be taken for _granted_, that a sound _understanding_ and
_reason_ (_mens sana in c. s._), _next_ to a clear conscience, holds
among the prizeworthy goods of life the _highest_ place,--a proposition
which I venture to assume as an axiom with the readers of this paper.
As to what may further be said on the subject, as well by as against
Kantners, (so Campe writes it, and much more correctly, instead of
_Kantians_,) it does not certainly belong to an entirely _popular paper
for the people_ like this present. The undersigned is now in the
_sorry_ case that he is obliged here to consult the physicians of
Germany and foreign parts. Have sympathy for suffering; send in your
answers; say _when_ he is to be (out with it before all Germany!!)
completely insane, for as to the beginning thereof the fact has already
answered.
"'The _when_, but not the _whether_, it now lies with and upon noble
philanthropists to answer. Here are my reasons, Germans! Leaving out of
sight that many a reason might be deduced from the very publication of
this request,--which, to be sure, decides little,--the following items
are noticeable and sure:--1. The motley style of the author itself,
which is to be known less from this insertion (composed at very
considerable intervals) than from the similarity between his style and
that of a very favorite and tasteless writer,[114] which, denoting a
gay exuberance of the most wild and strange images in the head,
betokens an approaching _crack_, as does a motley play of colors upon
glass; 2. The prediction of a scamp,[115] of which he is always
thinking,--a circumstance which must have bad effects; 3. His love and
study of Swift, whose madness is no novelty to the learned; 4. His
complete loss of memory; 5. His frequent bad trick of confounding
things dreamed of with things really experienced, and _vice versa_; 6.
His misfortune not to know what he writes till he has read it over
afterward, because he now leaves out something bearing upon his
subject, or again puts in something that has nothing to do with it, as
the crossed and blotted manuscript unfortunately best proves; 7. His
whole previous life, all his thinking and joking, the details under
which head it would be tedious here to specify; and, 8. His most
unreasonable dreams. Now the question is, _when_, in such circumstances
(that is to say, if no fevers, or cases of love intervene), complete
distraction (_idea fixa_, _mania_, _raptus_) comes on. With Swift it
fell very late, in old age, when he might already, besides, have been
naturally half foolish, and only showed it more afterward. When one
considers that Professor Busch once reckoned that his weakness of sight
might very well grow upon him from year to year without any serious
consequence, because the period of complete blindness fell quite out
beyond the end of his whole life, merely upon his grave, so must I
assume that my infirmity might swell so gradually, that I should have
no occasion for any other _petites maisons_ than the coffin itself; so
that I might, in the mean time, have married and held an office as well
as any other honest man.
"'My object in this communication is simply to bring myself into
correspondence on the subject with some philanthropist or other (he
must be, however, a philosophical physician!). My address may be had at
the office of the Imperial Advertiser. I make myself, perhaps, more
clearly known, bodily and civilly, in this very paper, in the column
where I inquire after a wife.
"'Pestitz, February. S----s, L----d, L----r, G----l, S----e.'[116]
"Albano, thou knowest under what bush my serious meaning lies hid. The
Advertiser of the Empire and of Schoppe has eight reasons for the
thing, which are not only my serious meaning, but my fun. Since the
Baldhead announced to me the rising of my mad-dog-star after a year, I
have always seen the aurora of this fixed star before me, and seen
myself thereupon blind and cowardly at last; I must speak it out. O I
had in January, brother, eight frightful dreams, one after another,
according to the number of reasons assigned in the Advertiser, and
themselves appertaining to the eighth,--dreams wherein a Wild Huntsman
of the brain went hunting through the mind, and a stream full of
worlds, full of faces, and mountains and hands, billowed along, bearing
all before it--I will not distress thee with the details,--Dante and
his head were heaven to it.
"Then I grew sullen about the matter of cowardice, and said to myself,
'Hast thou hitherto lived so long, and easily flung overboard the
richest cargoes, even this world and the next, and divested thyself so
clean of everything, even of glory and of books and of hearts, and kept
nothing but thyself, in order to stand up therewith free and naked and
cold on the ball of earth before the face of the sun, and now must thou
unexpectedly cringe before the mere crazy fixed thought of a crazy
fixed idea, which any stroke of a feverish pulse, any blow of a fist,
any grain of poison may stamp into thy head, and thus must thou throw
away at once thy old, godlike freedom?--Schoppe, I know not at all what
I am to think of thee! Whoso still fears anything in the universe, and
though it were hell itself, he is still a slave!
"Then the man plucked up his manhood and said, 'I will have what I
feared'; and Schoppe stepped up nearer to the broad, high cloud, and
lo! it was only (one would gladly have put one's self to bed on the
spot) the longest dream of the last, long sleep, no more,--what they
call madness. Now if one should go for some time into a mad-house, for
example, by way of joke, then might one have the dream, if all other
things were as well suited to keep the matter in countenance, as in
the case of many a one already. And now, thereinto will I gradually
sink,--into the dream, where the point of the dagger is broken off
against the future, and the rust rubbed off against the past,--where
man, undisturbed and alone, is the reigning House in the shadow-realm
and Barataria-island of his ideas, and the John Lackland, and, like a
philosopher, _makes_ everything that he _thinks_,--where he also draws
his body out of the waves and surges of the external world, and cold
and heat and hunger and weak nerves and consumption and dropsy and
poverty assail him no more, and no fear, no sin, no error can come near
the mind in the mad-house where the three hundred and sixty-five dreams
of the nights in the year weave themselves together into a single one,
the flying clouds into one great evening red.
"But here lurks something bad! Man must be in a condition to pick out
for himself and appropriate with understanding his dream, his good
fixed idea,--for a high ant-hill of the most grim and bewitching swims
and swarms before him,--otherwise he may fare as ill as if he were
still in his senses. I must now, in particular, make my arrangements to
find and recognize a good-natured, favorable fixed conceit, which shall
deal well with me. If I can bring it about, to be, perhaps, the first
man in the crazy house, or the second Momus, or the third Schlegel, or
the fourth grace, or the fifth king at cards, or the sixth wise virgin,
or the seventh worldly Electorate, or the eighth Wise Man of Greece, or
the ninth soul in the ark, or the tenth muse, or the forty-first
Academician, or the seventy-first Translator,[117] or, in fact, the
universe, or, in fact, the universal spirit himself,--then, certainly,
my fortune is made, and life's scorpion robbed of his whole sting. But
what golden jewel of a fortune does not in addition thereto still stand
open? Can I not be a very highly-favored lover, who sees the sun of a
beloved sail all day long through heaven, and looks up and cries, 'I
see only thy sunny eye, but it contents me!' Can I not be a deceased
person, who, full of disbelief in the next world, has made the journey
into it, and now does not know at all which way to turn there for joy?
O can I not--for the shorter dream and old age do indeed, of
themselves, make one childish--be an innocent child again, that plays
and knows nothing, that takes all men for its parents, and that has now
a tear-drop hanging before him, formed out of the collapsing gay bubble
of life, and again sends out the drop through the pipe, blown up into a
glimmering little world-globe of colors?
"It is full midnight; I must now go to church, to hold my
vesper-devotions.
"Three weeks later.
"Nota Bene!
"I had been, since thy departure, in a manner damnably unlucky until
about one o'clock this morning. At two o'clock I took up my resolution;
I have just (at five) taken the pen; and at six, when I have drunken
myself full and written myself empty, I take my travelling cane, the
point of which, after two months, shall stand sticking in the Pyrenees.
O heavens! there must have been something thorny this long time
standing by me, which I so long took for a hedgehog, whereas it is the
best musical barrel full of pins, out of which I can get nothing less
(I turned it a few hours ago) than the best arrangement of flute-pipes,
unadulterated music of the spheres, and rotatory music for the
bravura-airs of the three men in the furnace, a whole living
Vaucanson's wooden flute-player, and unheard-of things wherewith the
machine blows till it bursts--not itself, but certain knaves, whereof
need I particularly name the Baldhead?
"O listen, youth! It concerns thee. I will now, for thy sake, be what
the world calls frank, namely, shameless, for verily I had rather
uncover my haunch than my heart, and am less red when I do so.
"There was, once on a time, in old times, a young time, one full of
fire and roses, when old Schoppe, for his part, was also young enough;
when the alert, contriving bird easily nosed out where the hare lay,
and the female hare, too; when the man could still put himself on good
terms with the well-known four quarters of the world; or else, just as
easily as a steer, thrust with his horn at every fly; when he (now a
silver pheasant of cool times) still strode or flew up and down through
all Italy as a warm gold pheasant, perched now on Buanorotti's Moses,
now on the Colosseum, now on Ætna, now on the dome of St. Peter's, and
crowed for joy, flapped his wings, and soared toward heaven.
"It was at this time that the still unpicked storm-bird, hovering one
day to and fro through the waterfalls of Tivoli, preciously blest, saw
there occasionally, suddenly, overhead, in Vesta's temple, for the
first time, nothing more than--the Princess di Lauria, afterward, I
conjecture, carried off by a Knight of the Fleece, as his golden
fleece. To see her,--to transform one's self from a storm-bird into a
cock-pigeon to the chariot of Venus; to tear one's self loose from team
and bridle; to fly before that goddess; to float round her in narrower
and narrower circles,--all this was not one thing, but three things. I
had first to grow and paint myself up into a bird of Paradise, in order
to fly into a Paradise; that is to say, I had to learn painting, in
order to be permitted her presence.
"When at length I had the portrait-pencil and profile-scissors in my
power, and one morning appeared with both before the Princess and the
old Prince, I had to paint and cut the Prince himself; his daughter had
already been married and secretly travelled off; for thy grandfather
(unlike others who prophesy their movements beforehand), prophesies his
only afterward, and opens his mouth merely to hear.
"I soon cut out the man,--packed up,--went out into all the world.
After nearly three years I stood again on the tenth terrace of Isola
Bella, quite unexpectedly, before the Countess Cesara. Heaven and hell!
what a woman was thy mother! She threw everybody into both of _those
places_ at once; I know not whether she did thy father, too. The writer
of this stood in his last ornithological transformation before her, as
silent pearl-cock (guinea-peacock), (tears must be the pearls), and got
a likeness of her after a few weeks.
"She had two children, thee--I clearly remember thy then already
sharpened contour--and thy sister, the so-called Severina. Thy father
was not there, but his wax image was, by which I instantly recognized
him eighteen years later in Rome. Thy sister, too, was repeated in wax;
only thou not. A wax figure, like thee at a distance, which illusively
prefigured thee as a man always held up before thee, the brother of thy
father, who was there, too, as a file-leader of thy future, saying,
'Here thou art, cubed beforehand, and already forced up into full size,
filled out from flask into cask,'--seeking thus to enkindle thee, so
that thou mightest grow up and be a man. They had a uniform put on
thee, like that which the wax man wore,--I know not of what sort. Then
didst thou, striding around thine own micromegas, boldly call him out,
out of the future into the present. Now thou knowest what thou hast
become, and mayst well, and with more right, look down in thy turn as
proudly upon the little one, as the little one formerly looked up to
the great one. I could never approve in thy uncle this machine for
spiritual ductility; besides, I have for all wax puppets such an
abominating, shuddering dread.
"My only object on the beautiful island was to get away from it, and
from the fair islander, so soon as I had painted her. 'Stupid century,'
said I, 'do I then want anything more of thee?' She sat to me gladly,
as upon a throne. I, half in tempest, half in rainbow, sketched her,
and naturally had to leave the picture uncopied. But, young man, some
letters, which formed my name at that time, and which I wrote and
concealed on the picture in the region of the heart under the
water-colors, may serve thee as a Tetragrammaton, eleven Dominical
letters and mothers of the reading (_matres lectionis_) of thy
existence, in case I reach Spain safely, and in Valencia wash away on
the likeness the coloring from my letters, and can now read in its
heart, _Löwenskiold_. So was I then called in Danish.
"Then is the Countess Linda de Romeiro, without mercy, thy sister
Severina. God grant only that thou mayst not haply have seen and
married her before the receipt of this letter. She must, according to
what I heard yesterday, have set out for Italy.
"For when I saw the Countess Linda here for the first time, it was to
me, in the market square of Pestitz, as if I were standing up on the
terrace of Isola Bella, and beholding the Alps, thy mother, my youth,
hardly three paces distant from me! By Heaven, just as if in the
pier-mirror of time the white rosy image of thy buried mother had been
snatched at once out of the depths of distance, and brought close to
the glass, and now hung before it in blooming redness, so stood Linda
before me! For the divine resemblance of the two is so great! No Arian
_Homoiousion_[118a] whatever, but a complete Orthodox _Homoousion_[118b]
is to be believed here. Thus would I write to thee, hadst thou the
necessary church-history at hand for the understanding of such an allusion.
"I painted Linda, too, this winter. What she related to me of the
character of her mother was entirely the same, as I had been able to
report to her of the character of the Princess di Lauria.
"Linda's father, or Herr von Romeiro, would never appear, and still, I
hear, has not yet disappeared.
"Linda's mother called herself a Roman and a relative of the Prince di
Lauria.
"In Spain, where I have twice been and inquired, I never could find a
residence of a lady by the name of Cesara.
"Trillion spiders'-strands of probability spin themselves into an
Ariadne's thread in the Labyrinth.
"A new, unknown sister is introduced to thee in the Gothic house with
veils and in mirrors.
"And indeed the illusion is produced upon thee through real mirrors by
the honest Baldhead,--who wants something more to be a Christ's-head
than the locks, and whom I in autumn called a dog.
"The aforesaid Baldhead, or head of Anubis, stood, then, (Heaven and
the Devil best know why, but I believe the fact,) as Father of Death on
Isola Bella; he lay as travelling journeyman on the Prince's grave and
in every sort of ambush, to give thee thy sister for wife--in case I
suffered it; but so soon as ever I have sealed this, I sally forth to
Spain, break into Linda's picture cabinet, look after a certain
likeness of her mother, the place and chamber whereof I have taken
pains clearly to ascertain; and if it is the picture by me, then all is
right and the thunder may strike into the midst of the whole business.
"The Baldhead himself is a fifth quarter of a proof,--he is one of the
few men who, when hardly of a spider's thickness, wickedly made water
in their mothers' womb.
"Perhaps I may find thy uncle, who knew me again here, he said, and who
has actually gone off to Valencia.[119]
"O Heavens! if I should succeed (but why not, since my tongue remains
of iron and this leaf comes, in iron, under charge of the honest
Wehrfritz, whose heart is an old German, and does not _Germany_ rightly
represent the _heart_ in the virgin Europa?)--if, I write, I should
succeed in kindling a fire upon a cursed mystery of a straw-door,
tearing all up and down and away, blind gates and sacrificial gates,
and a strong light should fall in upon the brave Linda and the brave
youth, illuminating the neighboring Baldhead (perhaps somebody else),
who even in the darkness will fain make a slanting thrust with two
grafting and slaughtering knives down into a brother and sister----
"If I should once succeed in this, that is to say, in the harvest
month,--for then I should come back again to Pestitz and have the
likeness in my pocket,--and I should have boldly avenged myself and two
innocent beings upon guilty ones: then would I hold myself fully at
liberty to seize hold of my head and say, '_À bas, gare_, heads off!'
To which, certainly, (since, indeed, the question is not of any stupid
packing off of the body by a Werther-powder, but only of the purpose to
lose, upon occasion, what competent judges call my understanding,) my
friends must agree, because they would still have me (since in this
case the body is still retained), although as the night-piece of a man,
because I would then carry on a rational discourse upon any subject
(only let no one attack the fixed idea!) as well as another man, and
certainly should not forget to sprinkle over it, now and then, a good
moral joke (verily the true spice), and because the state should find
me day and night equipped and saddled to save it, after the example of
the Berlin Bedlamites, who once, upon a fire breaking out in the house,
extinguished it and saved the house in the best style, and I would come
in at the gap and the breach, when the dark intervals of its other
civil servants could not otherwise be filled up than with our lucid
ones.
"Farewell! I break off. The world smiles upon me gayly. In Spain I
shall find a bit of youth again--as in this writing.
"Schoppe.
"Apropos! Has the Baldhead nowhere run against thee? I cannot tell thee
how I labor now daily to impress upon myself and appropriate beforehand
a real horror and dread at the wish of running him down hereafter in my
madness, in order that afterward the possible act may not, as a late
fruit of my previous rational, moral state, be reckoned over against me
into the other.
"_Annihilate this letter!_"
When Albano raised his fiery eyes from the letter, he stood before
Lilar under a high triumphal arch, and the sun went down in splendor
behind Elysium. "Dost thou not know me?" asked Linda, in a low tone,
who stood beside him in travelling dress, weeping in bright love and
bliss; and Julienne came flying out and making a sign of caution to
both, from the entrance thicket of the flute-dell, and cried, as a
cunning pretext: "Linda, Linda, hearest thou not the flutes, then?" And
Albano had forgotten the painful letter.
123. CYCLE.
Like a concert that suddenly flutters up with a hundred wings did the
swift presence of old love and joy break over the forsaken youth (so
troubled about his friend) in beautiful waves; and smitten with
delight, he saw Linda again as on Ischia; but she saw him again as in
another Elysium; she was more soft, tender, ardent, remembering his
past scenes in this garden. She would not relate nor hear anything at
all about her own travelling adventures. Albano buried his mystery of
Schoppe in his mighty but trembling breast; only to his father he
burned to disclose it. He was incessantly representing to himself the
possibility of a relationship, and the facility with which Schoppe
might confound the pretended sister with the true one, Julienne; this
very evening he meant to ask his father.
He imparted to her the paternal consent to their alliance with great
joy, but not with the greatest, because Schoppe's letter echoed in his
bosom. Julienne perceived that only a cascade instead of a cataract
came out of him to-day, and sought with a sly pleasantry to draw him
out, by making him answer, which she easily did, through the whole
range of questions touching important personalities of his and her
acquaintance. She had some inclination to weave and to paint on the
theatre curtain, or even to pierce a prompter's-hole in it. She began
the questions at Idoine,--who shortly after his arrival had taken her
departure back again from the city,--and left off with them at
Schoppe,--inquiring after the object of his journey; but Albano had not
seen the former, and as to the latter, Schoppe, he said, had confided
it to him alone. A beautiful, inflexible marble vein of firmness ran
through his being. Linda's black eye was an open, true German one, and
looked upon him only to love him.
Out of the flute-dell came the rest of the company, the Lector and
others; Julienne constrained the lovers to a separation, saying: "Here
is no Ischia; without me you cannot see each other here in the palace
at all; I will announce it to thee always through thy father, when I am
here."
When he stood alone in Lilar with the heavy thought of Schoppe and
Linda, and surveyed the lovely regions and scenes of fair hours, then
it seemed to him all at once as if, in the twilight, Elysium, like a
charming face, distorted itself into an expression of scorn at him and
at life. Little malicious fays sit on the little children's tables, as
if they were tender children, and very much loved to see men and human
pleasure; anon they start up as wild huntresses, and run through the
blossoms; a thousand hands turn up the garden with its blossoming
trees, and point its black, gloomy thicket of roots like summits up
into heaven; Gorgon heads look out of the twigs, and up in the
thunder-house there is an incessant weeping and laughing;--nothing is
fair and soft but the great, daring Tartarus.
However, as it was the shortest way to his father, Albano went, stern
and angry, through the garden, over the swan bridge, along by the
Temple of Dream, by Chariton's little cottage, by the rose arbors, and
over the woodland bridge, and soon was in the princely palace with his
father, who had just come back from the sick Luigi. With ironical
expression of countenance, his father related to him how the patient
had begun to swell again, merely because he feared that his dead
father, who had promised to appear to him a second time as a sign of
death, would give the sign and immediately call him away. Then Albano
related, without any introduction, and without mention of Schoppe and
of his connections, the hypothesis of the most singular relationship,
without putting, out of respect for his father, any long, searching
questions, or even more than the short, swift one, "Is Linda my
sister?" His father quietly heard him through. "Every man," said he,
angrily, "has a rainy corner of his life, out of which foul weather
proceeds, and follows after him. Mine is the carrying about of
mysteries with me. From whom hast thou the latest?" "On that subject
sacred duty bids me be silent," he replied. "In that case," said
Gaspard, "thou wouldst better have been silent altogether: he who gives
up the smallest part of a secret, has the rest no longer in his power.
How much dost thou suppose that I know of the matter?" "Ah, what can I
suppose?" said Albano. "Didst thou think upon my consent to thy union
with the Countess?" said Gaspard, more angry. "Should I then keep
silence? and did not sister Julienne in the end disentangle herself
from all mysteries?" Here Gaspard looked at him sharply, and asked,
"Canst thou rely upon the earnest word of a man, without wavering,
swerving, however eloquently appearances may discourse to the
contrary?" "I can," said Albano. "The Countess is not thy sister; rely
upon my word!" said Gaspard. "Father, I do so!" said Albano, full of
joy; "and now not a word further on the subject."
But the old man, now more composed, went on to say that this new error
gave him an occasion now earnestly to insist upon Linda's consent to a
speedy union, because her father, perhaps himself the mysterious
wonder-worker who had hitherto baffled all attempts at detection, had
absolutely fixed, as the time of his appearance, the wedding-day. He
indicated yet once more to his son his desire to know the way in which
he had arrived at that hypothesis; but to no purpose: holy friendship
could not be desecrated or deserted, and his breast closed mightily
around his open heart, as the dark rock closes about the bright
crystal.
So he parted, warm and happy, from his silent father. In the hard hour
of the letter-reading, he had only climbed an artificial, rocky region
of life, and there lay the gay gardens again, stretching away even to
the horizon; yet, after all, the vain, painful error of his Schoppe,
and the thought of that spirit so desolated by love and hatred, which,
even in the tone of the letter, seemed to bow itself down, and the
prospect of his madness, passed like a distant funeral chime dolefully
through his fair landscape, and the happy heart grew full and still.
124. CYCLE.
Soon after this, Albano's kind sister again let a Hesperian hour strike
and play on the musical clock of his happiness, whose keeper she
was,--an hour with which his whole life, up and down, sounded in
unison, and cleared away, and in which, as in Switzerland, when a cloud
opens, all at once heights, glaciers, mountain-peaks, now look out from
the sky. He saw his Linda again, but in new light, glowing, but like a
rose before the blushing evening red. Her love was a soft, still flame,
not a leaping of eccentric, stinging sparks. He concluded that his
father, who was a man of his word, had already made his request to her
for a priestly union, and even got her consent. Julienne told him she
wished to speak with him the next evening, at six o'clock, in his
father's chamber; that made him still more sure and glad. With new and
still more tenderly adoring emotions, he parted with Linda: the goddess
had become a saint.
When he came the next day into the paternal apartment, he found no one
there but Julienne. She gave him a slight and almost imperceptible
kiss, in order to be speedily ready with her intelligence, since her
absence was limited to so many minutes as the Princess needed to go
from the sick-bed of her husband to the apartment of the Princesse.
"She will not marry thee," she began, softly, "notwithstanding that thy
father expressed himself so strongly and finely to her, at the first
reception after the journey, upon the new good fortune of his son, for
which he had now nothing more to desire, he said, than the seal of
perpetuity. It was still more finely silvered and gilded; I have
forgotten the precise words. Thereupon she replied in her speech, which
I never can retain, that her will and thine were the real seal; every
other seal of policy imposed chains and slavery upon the fairest life."
Deeply was Albano hurt by an open refusal, which hitherto, coming upon
him as a silent one and as philosophy, had floated about untouched, as
a mere unsubstantial shadow. "That was not right; she might say _a good
while hence_, but not _never_," said he, sensitively. "Moderation,
friend!" said Julienne; "thereupon thy father reminded her, in a
friendly manner, of the conditional appearance of her own, by saying
that he could not but wish very much to transfer her fortunes out of
his own hands into nearer ones. No arbitrary condition could compel or
annihilate a will, she said. Thy father went on calmly, and added, he
had sketched, in that case, the fairest plan of life for you two; but,
in the other case, his approval of their love stood open only as long
as his stay here, which would end at his friend's death. Then he went
coolly and composedly out, as men are wont to do when they have
provoked us to a real rage."
"Hesperia, Hesperia!" cried Albano, angrily. "But did Linda really
repeat her no?" "O, too true! But, brother?" asked Julienne, with
astonishment. "Suffer me," he replied; "for is it not unrighteous, this
meddling of parents with the fairest, tenderest strings, whose
vibration and melody they at once kill, in order to call forth from
them a new tune? Is it not, then, sinful to degrade divine gifts into
state-revenues and match-moneys,--yes, match[120]-moneys indeed? Good
Linda, now we stand again on the ground, where they set up the flowers
of love for sale as hay, and where there are no other trees in paradise
than boundary-trees. No, thou free being! never through me shalt thou
cease to be so!"
Julienne stepped back some paces, and said, "I will only laugh at
thee," which she did, and then added, in earnest, "_She_, then,--is
that thy will?--shall appoint _thee_ the day when the old father is to
become visible?" "That does not follow by any means," said he. She
calmly remarked, that an excited person always complained of the
heat of another, and that Albano, in his very calmness, insisted too
sternly upon his own and others' rights; that such people went on to
demand, in passion, something beyond the right, as a pin, which fits
too nicely into the clock, when warmed stops it by its size. Then she
begged him affectionately just to leave the disentangling of the "whole
snarl" to her fingers, and to remain mild and still, lest yet more
people--perhaps, in fact, her _belle-sœur_--might interfere with
their union. Albano took it in friendship, but begged her earnestly
only not to make any plans, because he should be too honorable toward
Linda for that, and should immediately tell her the whole word of the
charade.
She disclosed to him that she had made no other plan whatever than a
plan for a happy day to-morrow, namely, to visit with Linda the
Princess Idoine in Arcadia, to whom she owed still greater things
beside a visit, particularly half of her heart. "Thou wilt ride
accidentally after us, and find us in the midst of pastoral life," she
added, "and surprise thy Linda." He said very decidedly, "No," both out
of a shrinking from Idoine's resemblance to Liana,--although he only
knew that Liana had personated her in the Dream Temple, and not, also,
that Idoine had counterfeited her before his sick-bed,--and because he
disliked to come into the presence of the Minister's lady, from a dread
as well of bitter as of sweet recollections, of both which, in such a
case, Roquairol would have brought up the rear. Julienne mischievously
objected: "Only have no fear for the Princesse; she was obliged, in
order only to rid herself of the detested bridegroom, to engage with an
oath to all her friends never to choose one below her rank,--and that
she will keep, even with thee." He answered the joke merely with the
serious repetition of his no. Well, then she should insist upon it, she
replied, that he should at least come to meet them half-way, and await
them in the "Prince's Garden,"--a park which had been laid out by Luigi
as hereditary prince, and forgotten when he came into the princely
chair. He assented to this proposition very joyfully.
She still asked, jocosely, as they parted, "Who has been presenting
thee with a new sister, lately?" He said, "That is what my father could
not draw from me." "Brother," said she, softly, "it was a gentleman who
easily takes princesses for countesses, and who, in the next place,
thinks to be still more crazy than he already is,--thy Schoppe," and
flew off.
125. CYCLE.
On the morning after the two friends took their journey to Arcadia,
Julienne, although more troubled on account of the increased illness of
her sick brother, cheered herself by her reliance upon a plan which, in
spite of her assurance, she had sketched for the good fortune of the
_well_ one, and which she was to carry out in Arcadia. She, unlike
others who hide their heads behind the dark, mourning-fan of sorrow and
sensibility, oftener hid her head, with its designs, behind the gay
dress-fan of smiles, which turned to the spectators the painted side;
amidst laughing and weeping she pursued and pondered them. Thus she had
made the request to Albano to join in the visit to Idoine only for
show, and in the certainty that he would refuse, or in case he should
not, that then Idoine would; for she knew, from Idoine's visits in the
previous winter, that she had frequently thought in conversations of
the fair fever-patient who had been restored by her, and that she had
just fled before his arrival, in order not to overshadow his bright,
loving present, which had become known to her in the easiest manner
through the Princess, by coming upon him like a cloud out of the past
full of melancholy resemblances. Julienne had even ascertained that the
Princess had vainly wished to keep and reserve the Princesse longer, in
order, perhaps, by means of her, to remind, terrify, change, or punish
the youth. Julienne's love for the Princesse would perhaps have been
made as warm by that tender flight from Albano, as her love towards
Linda was, had not this very love stood between; at least, this
beautiful flight had given her an unlimited confidence--which is
exactly the true and only kind--in the Princesse.
The day of the journey was a beautiful harvest morning, full of
thickly-peopled cornfields, full of coolness and dew and zest. Linda
expressed a childlike joy in Idoine, and gave the reasons in a glad
tone. "First, because she saved thy brother's life,--and because she
knew, after all, what she wanted, and insisted upon it with spirit, and
did not, like other Princesses, transform herself into a victim to the
Throne,--and because she is the most German Frenchwoman that I know
except Madame Necker. Yes, in my eyes she belongs strictly, with all
her fair youth, among old ladies, and these I have always sought out,
for there is at least something to be learned from them. She loves thee
exceedingly, me, I believe, less. To one who is such a charming medium
between the nun and the married woman, I seem too worldly, though it is
not the case."
The two companions arrived early in the beautiful, enchanted village in
the afternoon before dinner, just as the neat children were already
banding together to go to gleaning, and the wagons were already going
out to meet the gatherers of the sheaves. Idoine's brother, the future
hereditary Prince of Hohenfliess,--the Dwarf of Tivoli,--looked out of
the window, and Julienne almost regretted the journey. Idoine flew to
meet her, and clasped her heartily to her breast. When Julienne had
before and upon her face that great blue eye and every transfigured
feature of the form which once her brother had so blissfully and
painfully loved, she fancied herself, now that she had become his
sister, to receive, as his representative, the love of the
representative of Liana; and she must needs, as she had done every time
since that death at the first reception, weep heartily.
Linda was received by the Princess with such a deep tenderness that
Julienne wondered, since the two generally lived in an alternation of
coldness and love. There stood the Minister's lady, Froulay, so old
with mourning, so cold, still, and courteous, so cold towards the
occasion and the company (except the fac-simile of her daughter),
particularly towards Linda, whose bold, decided, philosophical tone
seemed to her unwomanly, and like a trumpet on two female lips.
The future hereditary Prince of Hohenfliess fortunately withdrew
himself soon from so inconvenient a place, where he navigated a
shipwreck plank instead of a gondola. After inquiring of Julienne with
interest about the state of her brother, his present predecessor, and
reminding her and Linda of her and his Italian tour, he became so
fretful and out of tune at Julienne's frigidity, and at the moral
discourses of the women, and at a certain oppressiveness premonitory of
a moral tempest,--which sensualists experience in the presence of
women, where everything rude, selfishness, arrogance, screams like
discord,--and at the general, plaguy hypocrisy,--which he could not but
immediately take it all to be,--that he was glad to break away, and
relieve this pastoral life of the only wolf who had crept into it.
Voluptuaries can never hold out long among _many_ noble women,
tormented as they are by their many-sided, sharp observations, although
they can more easily with one, because they hope to ensnare her. What
made him feel worst of all was, that he was compelled to pronounce them
all hypocrites. He found no good women, because he had faith in none;
since we must believe in them in order to see them where they are, just
as one must exercise virtue in order to be acquainted with it, though
not the reverse.
With him a black cloud seemed to draw off out of this Eden and ether.
The Minister's lady received a card from her son Roquairol, who had
just arrived, and she went too, to the joy of Julienne, who found in
her a little obstacle to her plan of conversion for Linda, because the
latter looked upon the Minister's lady as a one-sided, narrow, anxious,
unyielding nature. Idoine begged the two maidens to travel over her
little kingdom with her. They went down into the clean, wide village.
On the steps they were met by cheerful, obliging faces. From the
distant apartments of the palace was heard now singing, now blowing
of wind instruments. As on the bird the shining feathers slide swiftly
and smoothly under each other and out again, so did all occupations
move around Idoine; her economical machine was no clumsy, jarring
steeple-clock, but a musical picture-watch, which conceals the hours
behind tones, the wheels behind images.
In a meadow-garden the youngest children were playing wildly with each
other. Moravian and Dutch neatness had scoured and painted the village
to a sleek, bright fancy-shop. New and shiny hung the bucket over the
well; under the linden-rotunda of the village the earth-floor was swept
clean; everywhere were seen clean, whole, fair clothes, and happy eyes;
and Idoine showed, under the unusual gayety, an earnest meaning in the
looks with which she inspected her Arcadia, flower after flower.
She led her friends over the various Sunday dancing-places of the
different ages, along before the house of the steward,--wherein the
Minister's lady resided, and now, to Julienne's fear, her son was,--to
the bright, plain church. Soon came the parson and steward, for whom
her passing by had been a hint, following her into the church, and
received commissions from her. Both were fair young men, with open brow
and a little youthful pride. When the party were out of the church, she
said through these young men she ruled over the place, and them she
guided gently; that only young people were furnished with hatred and
spirit against conventionalism, and with enthusiasm and faith. She
added, jocosely, she governed nothing but a school of girls, upon which
she laid more stress than upon the other, because education was the
formation of habits and manners, and these a girl needed more than a
boy, whom the world, after all, would not allow to have any; and she
had, she said, some inclination to be a _la Bonne_, because she had,
even when a girl, often been obliged to be one with her sisters.
Thereupon she introduced the two to several houses; everywhere
they found well-whitened, neatly-ordered apartments, flowers and
vine-clusters over the windows, fair women and children, and now a
flute, now a violin, and nowhere a spinning child. In all she had
charges to give, and what seemed a mere walk was also business. She
showed a sharp insight through people, and their perverted, crooked
ways, and a talent for business, which possessed and united at once the
universal and the particular. "I should be glad, of course," said she,
"to have only pleasures and amusements about me; but without labor and
seriousness the best good of the world dies: not so much as a real play
is possible without real earnestness." Linda commended her for training
all to music,--that real moonlight in every gloomy night of life.
"Without poesy and art," she added, "the spirit grows mossy and wooden
in this earthly clime." "O what were mine without tones!" said Idoine,
glowingly.
Linda inquired about the right of citizenship in this pleasant state.
"It is mostly possessed by Swiss families," said Idoine, "with whom I
became acquainted at hearth and home on my travels. Immediately after
the French women I rank my Swiss." Julienne replied, "You repeat to me
riddles." She solved them for her; and Linda, who had been in France
shortly after her, confirmed it, that there, among the women of a
certain higher tone, to whom no Crebillon had ever come up, a
development prevailed, unusual in Germany, of the most delicate
morality, almost holiness. "Only," added Linda, "they had in morality,
as in art, prejudices of fine taste, and more delicacy than genius."
They went out through the village, toward the loveliest evening sun;
Alpine horns responded to each other on the mountains, and in the vale
gay old men went to light employments. These Idoine greeted with
peculiar love. "Because," she said, "there was nothing more beautiful
than cheerfulness on an old face; and among country people it was
always the sign of a well-regulated and pious life."
Linda opened her heart to the golden scene before her, and said: "How
must all this delight in a poem! But I know not what I have to object
to the fact that it now exists so in the real reality."
"What has this same reality," said Idoine, playfully, "taken away from
you or done to you? I love it; where then are _you_ to be found for us
except in reality?" "I," said Julienne, "am thinking of something quite
different; one is ashamed here, that one has yet done so little with
all one's willing. From willing to doing is, however, to be sure, a
long step here," she subjoined, while she placed her little finger on
her _heart_, and stretched the fore-finger as if vainly attempting to
span from there to her _head_. "Idoine, tell me, how then can one think
of what is great and what is little at once?" "By thinking of the
greatest first," said she; "when one looks into the sun, the dust and
the midges become most visible. God is, surely, the sun of us all."
The earthly sun stood now looking toward them far down on an
immeasurable plain amid mild roses of Heaven. A distant windmill flung
its arms broadly through the fair purple glow; on the mountain
declivities children sang near the pastured herds, and their smaller
brothers and sisters were playing under their eye; the evening bell,
which in Arcadia was always tolled at the farewell of the sun, rocked
sun and earth to slumber with its vibrations; not only in youthful, but
even in childlike beauty lay the soft little village and its world
round about them. No storm, one said to one's self, can intrude into
this soft land, no winter stalk in in heavy panoply of ice: here, one
thought, only spring winds and rosy clouds come and go: no rains fall,
except early rains, and no leaves, except those of the blossoms: only
dust from the flowers rises here; and the rainbow,--only forget-me-nots
and May-flowers hold it upon their little blue and white leaves; the
landscape and life and all seemed here to be only a continuous morning
twilight, so fresh and new, full of presentiment and contentment,
without glow or glitter, and with a few stars over the morning red.
Children with wreaths of grain in their hands sat on other people's
wagons full of sheaves, and rode proudly in.
Idoine hung with hearty love, as if this evening made it all new, upon
the double groups. "Only the countryman is so fortunate," said she, "as
to live on in all the Arcadian relations of his childhood. The old man
sees nothing around him but implements and labors which as a child he
also saw and plied. At last he goes up into that garden over yonder,
and sleeps it out." She pointed to the churchyard on the hill, which
was a veritable garden, with flower-beds and a wall of fruit-trees.
Julienne looked thither with agitation,--she saw the dark curtain
tremble behind which her sick brother was soon to be borne.
Transparent evening gold-dust was wafted over the garden; the loud
day was muffled, and life peaceful; olive-branches and their blossoms
sank slowly down out of the quiet heavens. "There is the only place,"
said Idoine, "where man concludes an eternal peace with himself and
others, as a French clergyman so beautifully said to me." "Such
Christian-catholic night-thoughts," replied Linda, "are as disagreeable
to me as the clergymen themselves. We can as little experience an
immortality as an annihilation." "I do not understand that," said
Julienne. "Ah, Idoine, if now there were no immortality, what would you
do?" "_J'aimerais_," said she to her, in a low voice.
Suddenly they heard some one singing before them, as at a
great distance: "Taste"--then after some time--"of life's"--at
last--"pleasure."[121] "That is the echo from the churchyard," said
Idoine, and endeavored to persuade the party to return. "Echo and
moonshine and churchyard together," she continued playfully, "may well
be too strong for female hearts." At the same time she touched her eye,
with a hint to Julienne, as much as to say how sorry she was that the
eyes of the Countess could only see through a mist the beautiful
evening coming on afar off. "The singing voice sounds so familiar to
me," said Linda. "It's Roquairol, that's all; shall we go on?" said
Julienne. But Linda begged to stay, and Idoine courteously agreed.
Now did the echo--the moonlight of sound--give back tones like dirges
from the funeral choir; and it was as if the united shades of the
departed sang them over in their holy-week under the ground,--as if the
corpse-veil stirred on the white lip, and out of the last hollows
sounded again a hollow life. The singing ceased; Alpine horns began on
the mountains; then the echo of the concert came over again in
enchanting tones, as if the departed still played behind the breastwork
of the grave-mound, and rehabilitated themselves in echoed tones,[122]
All men bear dead or dying ones in their breast; so did the three
maidens. Tones are the garments of the past fluttering back with a
glimmer, and they excite the heart too much thereby.
They wept, and neither could say whether for sadness or joy. The
hitherto so moderate Idoine grasped Linda's hand, and laid it softly on
her heart, and let it sink again. They turned round silently and with
one accord. Idoine held Linda by the hand. The subterranean waters of
the echoes of the dead and the Alpine horns murmured after them, though
more distantly. It did not escape Julienne how Idoine continually
turned her face, merely in order to withdraw it from _her_, with the
great drops in her large eyes, towards the thickly-veiled Linda; and
she inferred therefrom that Idoine knew and was acquainted with much,
and respected the bride of the youth to whom she had by her fair
resemblance given back a happy life.
"What now do we get from all this?" said Idoine, by and by, and near
the village. "We foresee that we should be too tender, and yet we give
ourselves up. For that very reason men call us weak. They prepare
themselves for their future by mere hardenings, and only we do
it with mere softening processes." "What shall one do, then," said
Julienne,--"leap into rivers, up mountains, on horseback, and so on?"
"No," said Idoine. "For I see it by my peasant-women: they suffer in
their nerves, with all their muscular labor, as well as others. With
the mind, I imagine, we must all do and seek more; but we always let
only the fingers and eyes exercise and stir themselves. The heart
itself knows nothing thereof, and does what it pleases the while: it
dreams, weeps, bleeds, dances. A little philosophizing would be of
service to us; but, as it is, we give ourselves up, bound, to all
feelings, and if we think, it is merely to give them additional aid."
They came back into the village; it was full of busy evening noise.
Children came dancing to meet Idoine; alp-horns sounded in from the
heights, and from the houses flutes and songs. Idoine gave cheerfully
evening commands. "How easily, after all," said she, "outward
tranquillity breaks up the internal. A busied heart is like a vessel of
water swung round; hold it still, and it runs over."
Julienne had already several times, but in vain, snatched at the helm
of the hour and the conversation, to carry out her plan; now, when she
observed Linda's silence, emotion, and dreaminess, she fancied she had
hit upon the long-expected, favorable moment when some words which
Idoine let drop on the subject of marriage would find in Linda a
softened soil for their roots. By the easy turn of a eulogy which she
pronounced upon Idoine for her spirited opposition against launching
into a hated princely marriage, and her gain of a perpetual young life,
she brought the Countess to the point of expressing her heretical
hatred of marriage, and saying that it laid the flower painfully
fastened with a sharp iron ring to its frame; that love without
freedom, and from duty, was nothing but hypocrisy and hatred; and that
acting according to morality, so called, was as much as if one should
choose to think or poetize according to a system of logic which he had
before him, and that the energy, the will, the heart of love, was
something higher than morals and logic.
At this moment came a note from the Minister's lady, wherein she
excused her to-day's absence on the score of the too sad farewell which
her son had this evening so strangely and as if forever bid her.
However many silent thoughts this intelligence left behind in Julienne
and Linda, Idoine was not drawn by it out of the lively emotion into
which the previous discourse had thrown her; but, with a noble
indignation, which made out of the beautiful maiden a beautiful youth,
and put Minerva's helmet on her head, she made to her lofty adversary,
who was less to be roused by others' passions than by opposing
sentiments, this declaration of war: Certainly her aversion to marriage
was chargeable only upon her other aversion to "priests"; for was the
marriage bond anything else than eternal love, and did not every real
love hold itself for an eternal one? A love which thinks to die at some
time or other was already dead, and that which feared to live forever,
feared in vain. If even friends were joined at the altar, as is said to
be somewhere or other the case,[123] they would at most only be more
sacredly attached to each other in love. One might count quite as many
if not more unhappy intrigues than unhappy marriages. One might,
indeed, be a mother, but not a father, without marriage, and the latter
must honor the former and himself by a decent respect for morality. "I
am a German," she concluded, "and respect the old knightly ladies, my
ancestors, highly. Blessed is a woman like Elizabeth and a man like
Götz von Berlichingen, in their holy wedlock." All at once she found
herself surprised by her warmth and her fluency. "I have really," she
added, smiling, "become a pedantic parson's widow. This comes of my
being the highest authority in the village, and from the fact that, as
in almost every cottage a happy refutation of single blessedness
dwells, I do not love to let other sentiments come up here."
"O," said Julienne, pleasantly, because she saw Linda serious, "girls
always talk together about love and marriage a little; they love to
draw flowers for themselves out of a bride's bouquet."
"That, as you know, I could not well do," said Idoine, alluding to the
sworn promise which she had been obliged to give her parents, who were
suspicious of her enthusiastic boldness, never to marry below her
princely rank, which, to her, according to her sharp propensities and
parts, amounted to as much as celibacy. "You were right, however,"
pursued Julienne, and would fain continue in her mirthful mood;
"love without marriage is like a bird of passage, who seats himself
upon a mast, which itself moves along. I praise, for my part, a fine,
green-rooted tree, which stays there and admits a nest."
Contrary to her custom, Linda did not laugh at this, but went alone,
without saying a word, down into the garden and the moonlight.
"The Countess," said Idoine to her friend, troubled about the meaning
of that silent seriousness, "has not, I hope, misunderstood us." "No,"
said Julienne, with glad looks at the thought of having gained her
point so far that the discourse had made an impression on Linda; "she
has the rarest gift to understand, and the most common misfortune not
to be understood." "The two things always go together," said she,
remained a moment in thought, looked at Julienne, and at last said, "I
must be entirely true. I knew the Countess's relation through my
sister. Friend, is he entirely worthy of her?"--a question whose source
the Princesse could seek only in the supposition of revengeful
insinuations on the part of the Princess.
"Entirely!" answered she, strongly. "I gladly believe you," replied
Idoine, with rapidity in her tones, but tranquillity in her looks. She
looked longer and longer upon the sister of Albano; her great, blue
eyes gleamed more and more strongly; Minerva's helmet was removed from
the maidenly head; the soft countenance appeared lovely, tranquil,
clear, not more strongly moved than a prayer to God permits it to be,
and with as little of passionate desire as a glorified saint has, and
yet shining more and more celestially. Julienne's fair heart leaped up;
she saw Liana again, as if she had come from heaven to press the
beloved man with a blessing to a new heart; she said, with tears,
"Thou, thou didst once give him peace." Idoine was surprised; two tears
gushed from her bright eyes; with emphasis she answered, "Gave!" in an
agitated and passionate manner pressed herself to her friend, saying,
"I loved you long ago," and they said nothing further.
Quickly she collected herself, reminded Julienne of Linda's
night-blindness, and begged her to go directly after her as her friend,
although she herself would gladly steal this service from her if she
dared. Julienne hastened into the garden, but remembered with emotion
that Idoine had not reciprocated her _thou_; Idoine avoided the female
_thou_. Unlike the Oriental women, who leave off the veil before
relations, she, like her fair French neighbors, transferred the
delicate laws of _politesse_ into matters of the heart.
Julienne found her friend in the garden in a dark bower, still, with
deep, sunken eyes, buried in dreams. Linda started up: "She loves him!"
said she, with pain and heat. "Hear it, Julienne: she loves him!" The
latter, upon this utterance of a truth with which she had herself come
directly from Idoine's arms, could do nothing but express her terror;
but Linda took it for astonishment, and went on: "By Heaven! my eye has
detected her. O, once she was not by far so lively and earnest and
sensitive and soft. Her deep emotion at beholding me, and her weeping
at Roquairol's voice because it resembles his, and her long and earnest
marriage-sermon, and her soul-like glances at me,--O, did she not see
him in the great, glorious moment when the blooming one knelt weeping,
and lifted his godlike head to heaven, and called down the saint and
peace? O, that she should have so much as ventured to personate either
before him! And can she forget that?"
Julienne at last got the word: "Well, suppose it, then; is not Idoine,
however, noble and good?" "I have nothing to say against her or for
her," answered Linda. "But when he sees her now, when he finds the
saintly one once more like the departed, when his whole first love
returns and triumphs over the second ... By Heaven! No," she added,
proudly and strongly, "no, that I cannot brook; I will not beg, will
not weep nor resign, but I will battle for him. Am not I, too,
beautiful? I am more so, and my spirit is more boldly shaped for his.
What can she give which I cannot offer him three times over? I will
give it to him,--my fortune, my being, even my liberty; I can marry him
as well as she; I will ... O speak, Julienne! But thou art a cold
German, and secretly attached to her from like godliness. O God,
Julienne! am I, then, beautiful? Assure me of it, I pray. Am I not at
all like the glorified one? Should I not look exactly as he would wish!
Why was I not his first love, and his Liana, and even dead too? Good
Julienne, why dost thou not speak?"
"Only _let_ me speak," said she, although not with entire truth. She
had been struck and punished by Linda's home-coming truth, and by her
own consciousness that she had laid out a plan of doing away Linda's
prejudices against marriage, the very supports of which plan had been
anticipated and reckoned over by Linda as justifications of jealousy,
and that she had set a rock in motion on the point of a rock, and
brought it to the point of falling, which she could now no longer
manage. She was confounded, too, yes, angered, by what she felt to be a
strange impetuosity of love, before which she could not at all speak
out the Job's-comfort that Albano would always act according to the
_obligations_ of fidelity. Beautifully was she surprised by the
prospered conversion to a readiness for marriage. With some uncertainty
as to the result, however, on the part of Linda, who by the moonlight
and the mild, distant mountain-music had only been made more stormy,
she continued: "I would not willingly interrupt thee with praise of thy
marriage resolution; in all other particulars thou art wrong. To be
sure, she is now more serious; but she stood at the deathbed of her
likeness, and saw herself grow pale in Liana; that does much to
chasten. Touching him, had he seen thee earlier ..."
"Did he not see early the image on _Lago Maggiore_, but unlike, as he
said?"
"I will, then, confess it to thee, wild one," replied Julienne,
"because one must not surprise thee, that I yesterday begged him to
join us in our visit to the Princesse, and that he, even out of regard
and dislike to all resemblances, gave me a downright refusal; but he
awaits us to-morrow in the Prince's garden."
Changed, softened, with transfigured eyes, and with sinking voice,
Linda said, "Does my friend love me so greatly? But I love him
exceedingly too,--the pure one. To-morrow will I say to him, take my
freedom, and stay forever with me. We will go from the altar, my
Julienne,--thou and I and he,--to Valencia, to Isola Bella, or
whithersoever he will, and stay together. Thanks, dear moon and music!
How childlike the tones and the rays play with each other! Embrace me,
my beloved; forgive that Linda has been naughty!" Here the storm of her
heart dissolved into sweet weeping. So, in countries upon which the sun
shines vertically down, is the blue sky daily transformed into thunder,
tempest, and black rain, and daily the sun goes down again blue and
golden.
Julienne only replied, "Beautiful! now will we go up!"--being less
capable than Linda of swift transitions. When they saw, above, the
tranquil, bright, contented Idoine again,--always steadfastly and
serenely active,--undisturbed by regret or expectation,--wearing only
the harvest-wreath of action, never the flowery bridal-wreath,--so
many white blossoms at her feet, lying ungathered for garland or
festoon,--her pure, radiant soul like a clear, bright tone, which bears
the charm of its melody through moist, cloudy air, undisturbed and
unbroken,--then did she feel that Idoine was connected with her by a
more sisterly tie than Linda. The former was to her an _ideal_ and a
constellation in her heaven above her; the latter, an unknown one,
which sparkles far off and invisible in a second hemisphere of the
heavens; but in her the womanly power of loving on, almost even to the
degree of hatred, worked on more intensely than in any one woman, and
she remained constant to her old friend. Idoine was one of those female
souls which resemble the moon; pale and faint must she stand in the
magnificent evening sky, which splendor and burning clouds adorn, and
not a single shadow can she dislodge on the earth, and mounts with
invisible rays, but all other light grows pale, and hers grows out of
the shadow, until at last her supernatural radiance invests the earthly
night, and transforms it into a second world, and all hearts love her,
weeping, and the nightingales sing in her beams.
All was now settled and ended. Linda kept herself reserved, and merely
from respect to the law of social propriety, which she never
overstepped. Idoine, guessing a change, softly drew herself back out of
her former familiarity. Early in the dark morning they parted, but
Julienne told not her friend, how, when they left each other, she had
seen Idoine turn away with wet eyes.
126. CYCLE.
Albano had, during Linda's absence, received from Roquairol a request
not to travel long just now, so that he might in a few days see his
tragedy of "The Tragedian." Gaspard, whom he found displeased at
Linda's shyness of marriage, gave him a singular note on a card for
Linda, containing nothing but this, from her invisible father:--
"I approve thy love. I wait for thee to seal it, that I may at length
embrace my daughter.
"The Future One."
So many weighty wishes of others concurring with his own, took away now
from his tender sense of honor the suspicion of selfishness and
importunity, if he should ask of her the fairest festival of his life.
He gave his father great satisfaction by his resolution to do this.
Gaspard communicated to him private war intelligence, and told him,
jokingly, it would be soon time now, that he should help fight for his
friends, the modern French. Albano said it was even his earnest
purpose. He was glad to hear that from a youth, Gaspard said; war
trained one to business, and the right or wrong of it had nothing to do
with the case, and concerned others, namely, those who declared the
war.
Albano took his journey, happy through remembrance, still happier
through hope. He had now courage to imagine to himself the day when
Linda, a queen, should entwine with the shining crown of her spirit the
soft bridal-wreath,--when this sun should rise as a Luna,--when a
father, whom his own father loved, should interrupt the high festival
by one of the highest,--and when for once two beings might say to each
other: Now we love each other forever. So blest, and with an infinite
love and sunny-warm soul, he arrived at the Prince's garden.
He always, in his passionate punctuality, came much too early. No one
was yet there but two--departing ones, Roquairol and the Princess.
These two were now so often and so openly seen together, that the
appearing seemed intentional. Roquairol came courteously to meet him
and reminded him of the received billet. "This is the theatre, dear
friend," said he, "where I next play; most of the preparations I have
already made, particularly to-day. My excellent Princess has granted me
this spot." "You are surely coming, too," said that lady in a friendly
manner to Albano. "I have already promised him as much," said Albano,
who felt two ice-cellars blowing upon him in the midst of his spring.
Fraülein von Haltermann alone showed him great and decided scorn.
"Shall we go first to my sister's?" asked Roquairol of the Princess, as
he escorted her away. Albano did not understand that. The Princess
nodded. They took leave of him. Fraülein von Haltermann seemed to
forget him. They flew away, stopped up on a hill encircled by the whole
blooming landscape, near a little flower-garden, and then rolled along
down.
The Charles's-wain with the beloved maidens came now into the French
princely garden. Ardently did Albano and Linda press each other to
their hearts, which to-day,--just as if those hearts had been a second
time created and adorned for each other by destiny,--they would once
more, with new hopes and worlds, give each other in exchange! All was
so resplendent around them, all new, rare, tranquil; the whole world a
garden full of high, fluttering fountains, which, drunk with splendor,
flung their rainbows through each other in the sun. Julienne drew him
aside to tell him of Linda's fair resolve; but he anticipated her with
the intelligence of his. She strengthened him with her intelligence,
delighted at the singular playing together of the wheels of fortune.
When Albano and the bride were together again, they felt a new warmth
of heart; not such as comes from a dull, consuming coal, which at last
crumbles into blackness, but that of a higher sun, which out of loud
flames makes peaceful rays, and which surrounds men with a warm, mild
spring day. Albano neither delayed nor introduced the matter, but gave
her the note of her father, and said during the reading, with trembling
voice, "Thy father begs with me and for me." Linda's tears gushed,--the
youth trembled,--Julienne cried: "Linda, see how he loves thee!" Albano
took her to his heart,--Linda stammered, "Take, then, my dear freedom,
and stay with me." "Till my last hour," said he. "And till mine, and
thou goest to no war," said she, with a tenderly low voice. He pressed
her confusedly and ardently to his heart. "Am I not right, thou
promisest it, my dear?" she repeated.
"O thou divine one, think of something fairer now," said he. "Only yes!
Albano, yes?" she continued. "All will be solved by our love," said he.
"Yes? Say only yes!" She begged,--he was silent,--she was terrified.
"Yes?" said she, more vehemently. "O Linda, Linda!" he stammered,--they
sank out of each other's arms,--"I cannot," said he. "Human creatures,
understand each other!" said Julienne. "Albano, speak thy word," said
Linda, severely. "I have none," said he. Linda raised herself,
offended, and said, "I, too, am proud,--I am going now, Julienne." No
prayer of the sister could melt the astounded maiden or the astounded
youth. Anger, with its speaking-trumpet and ear-trumpet, spoke and
heard everything too strongly.
The Countess went out, and commanded to harness the horses. "O ye
people, and thou obstinate one," said Julienne; "go, I pray, after her,
and appease her." But the leaves of the sensitive-plant of his honor
were now crushed; this (to him) new excitement, this shower of
indignation had agitated him; he asked not after her. "Look up at that
garden," said his sister, beside herself; "there lies buried thy first
bride; O spare the second!" This worked exactly the opposite effect to
what she had intended. "Liana," said he, coldly, "would not have been
so; just go and attend the Countess!" "O ye men!" cried she, and went.
Soon after he saw the two drive away. Gradually the wild horde of
indignation scattered and vanished. But he could not, he felt, have
done otherwise. He had journeyed to meet her and she him with such new
tenderness,--neither knew of it on the other's part,--and hence the
incomprehensible contrast enraged both so exceedingly. He hated, even
in other men, begging, how much more in himself, and never was he
capable of setting right a person who misunderstood him. He looked
now around him; all sparkling fountains of joy had suddenly sunk, the
skies were desolate, and the water murmured in its depths. He rode up
to the garden where Liana's grave should be. Only flower-beds and a
linden-tree with a circular bench did he see there, but no grave.
Stunned and confounded, he looked in and around over the shining
spaces. Obdurate,--tearless,--with a heart suffocated in the
regurgitating stream of love,--gazing out into the wide future, which
ran between mountains into crooked valleys and hid itself, he rode
gloomily home. Here he lighted upon the following leaf from Schoppe,
which the uncle, hastening on in advance from Spain, had left for him.
"It is all right,--I found the well-known portrait,--I bring it along
with me in my hunting-pouch,--I come in a few days or weeks,--I have
encountered the Baldhead, and killed him dead enough,--I am very
much in my senses. Thy singular uncle travelled with me for a long
time. S."
THIRTY-SECOND JUBILEE.
Roquairol.
127. CYCLE.
Linda had spent the whole subsequent day in silent anguish of spirit,
thinking of the beloved, who seemed to her, as Liana had once seemed to
him, not to live in the whole living fire of love, as she did,--she had
been long besieged by the Princess, and then robbed by her of Julienne,
whom she carried off on a pleasure-drive, and who could only throw her
the intelligence, that Albano had also made an excursion to-day, in
order the earlier to embrace Schoppe,--she had remained quiet,
according to her principle, that female pride commands silence,
calmness, and even oblivion,--when at evening she received by the blind
maiden from Blumenbühl, whom she had taken into her service, the
following letter:--
"Thou once mine! Be so again! I will still die, but only for thee, not
for a people on the battle-field. Forgive yesterday and bless to-day. I
have given up again my purpose of an excursion to meet a friend, in
order to throw myself upon thy heart this very day and draw out of
thy heaven and fill mine. I cannot wait until Julienne comes back;
my heart burns for thee. To-morrow I must at all events be in the
Prince's garden, where Roquairol at last gives his Tragedian. Come this
evening--I implore thee by our love--at eight o'clock, either, if it is
clear, into the cavern of Tartarus, whose gravedigger's finery and
Orcus-furniture will certainly be only ridiculous to thee,--or, if it
is cloudy, to the end of the flute-dell.
"Thou must take only thy blind maiden with thee. Thou well knowest the
espionage that besets us on all sides. I expect and desire no answer
from thee, but at the stroke of eight, I steal through Elysium to see
where stands the goddess, my heaven, my sun, my bliss, thyself.
"Thy Albano."
As by a lightning beam from heaven, her whole being was melted into a
soft, blissful glow; for she believed what the handwriting said, that
the note was from Albano,--however unexpected so sudden a conversion
appeared to her in him;--although it was really written by Roquairol.
Let us go back even to the gloomy source of the rushing hell-flood
which stretches out its ice-cold arm after innocence and heaven.
Roquairol had remained through the winter, with all the mortifications
of his ungovernable wishes, tolerably happy and good; the evening star
of love, although for him it rather waned than waxed, stood, however,
not yet below the horizon, but only under clouds. But so soon as Linda
had travelled off with Julienne--and indeed as he immediately guessed
and early learned--to Italy; then did a new storm sweep through his
life, which tore off his last blossoms and beclouded him with the
long-laid dust; for he now, as he had himself predicted to Albano, saw
the net coming up stream toward _him_ and the Countess, which should
take both prisoners. The eating poison of his old passion for many gods
and many mistresses ran round again hotly in all the veins of his
heart:--he fell into extravagant expense, play, debts, as deeply as he
possibly could,--set luck and life at stake,--threw his iron body into
the jaws of death, who could not immediately destroy it,--and
intoxicated himself with the sorrow of a savage over his murdered life
and hopes in the funeral bowl of debauchery; a league which sensuality
and despair have often before this struck with each other on earth, on
theatres of war, and in great cities.
Only one thing still held the Captain upright, the expectation that
Albano would keep his present distance from Linda, and then, that she
would come back. At this stage the Princess returned, still keeping
fresh all her hatred of the cold Albano, whose "dupe" she held herself
to be. Roquairol easily induced his father to bring him nearer to her,
as he hoped with her to find news about Albano and everything else. He
soon became of consequence to her by the similarity of his voice and
his former friendship for her foe, and still more by his rare tact of
being to a woman always exactly what she desired.
As she had already known long since all his earlier connections and
wishes, accordingly so soon as her telegraphs of Albano had given her
the intelligence of his new love, she readily dropped him a hint on the
subject. Despite the warm part which Roquairol had to play toward her,
he was nevertheless furiously pale in her presence, breathless,
alternately trembling and stiffening; "Is it so?" he asked, in a low
tone. She showed him a letter. "Princess," said he, furiously pressing
her hand to his lips, "thou wast right; forgive me all now."
How great an idea he had had of Albano he now for the first time saw,
by his astonishment at what was the most natural thing in the world.
Never does the heart hate more bitterly than when it is compelled at
length to hate, without respecting, the object which it had formerly
been compelled to respect amidst its very hatred; just as, on the same
ground, the bad man is much more deeply and selfishly provoked by
another's hypocrisy than the good man. Roquairol fancied now he had
leave to make a real foe of the proud friend; he became, instead of a
German ruin, an Italian one, full of scorpions. The Princess was the
hot climate which makes the scorpions for the first time really
poisonous. She related to him how Albano had so long sought to win her,
and to decoy her over his deep-laid mines, merely in order, at their
explosion, to have the enjoyment of coldness and contempt, and how
indifferently he had spoken of the Captain, without condescending so
much as to hate him.
The Princess allowed the Captain to mount up one step after another on
her throne, till not another remained except her own person. She
offered him even the last step on condition of avenging her. He said he
would avenge her and himself, for Albano had solemnly in Tartarus
resigned the Countess to him. Thus did both seem to hide their real
love under the mask of revenge; the Princess hers for the Captain, he
his for Linda.
She brought closer and closer before his eye a plan which he did not
discern, however much she stimulated him by the remark that Albano was
and would be a greater favorite with women than one had hitherto
thought; that even her excellent, discreet sister Idoine, if one might
judge by her silent questions in letters, and other signs, had almost
lost through him both of the things which she had restored to him by
his sick-bed,--health and peace; and that he must never hope to see or
even to make the Countess inconstant.
At last she said, slowly, the fearful words, "Roquairol, you have his
voice, and she has by night no eye." "Heaven and hell!" he exclaimed,
turning alternately red and pale, and looking at once into heaven and
hell, whose doors sprang open before him. "_Va!_"[124] he added,
quickly, without having yet fathomed the black depth of this
white-foaming sea. The Princess embraced him ardently, he her still
more so. "In a poetic fiction," said he, "_thy_ thought would easily
have come to me, but in actual life I have no cunning!" "O knave!" said
she. As soon and as long as he might venture, he said Thou, because he
knew the heart, especially woman's. Soon after, when they had been
still more frank towards each other, said she: "If she remains innocent
with you, then you have offended no one, and no one has lost; if not,
then either she _was not_ so, or she deserved the proof and punishment
of being deluded." "Yes, that is divine,--that fits into the
magnificent _Tragedian_, just before the end," said he, but would not
explain himself on the subject.
Now was an object and centre supplied to the wild circles of his
action. He coldly dissected Albano's love-letters into great and little
characters, merely in order to copy them faithfully; hence it was that
Albano once found at Rabette's his handwriting without his thoughts. He
inquired of Rabette about all Albano's lesser relations, in order to
elaborate his parts, even to the smallest particular, and even so he
read all Italian tourists, in order to speak freely with Linda about
every beautiful spot, where he, as the sham-Albano, had enjoyed with
her Hesperian life. It tickled him that he could thus, with the flame
in his breast, and with the cold ice-light in his head, now for once
lay out and considerately manage, in real life, all theatrical
preparations and complications, just as he had once done for the stage.
He saw Albano, whose haughty treatment he had experienced, come from
his journey; he saw the blooming goddess walk in Lilar; he heard,
through the spies of the Princess, of their engagement; high heaved his
dead sea in heavy waves, and sought to drag down its victims from their
flight, even from heaven. Immediately after the tragedy which he
proposed to enact with Linda, his own was to come in the Prince's
garden, which he from time to time promised and postponed; he had to
wait and spy long till a time should appear into which so many teeth of
a double machinery might catch at once.
At length the time appeared, and he wrote the above-exhibited letter to
Linda. All was reckoned upon and settled, and every assistance of
accident woven in with the plan. His tragedy had long been committed to
memory by his acquaintances, although never rehearsed, because he, as
he said, meant to surprise his fellow-players themselves with his part
in the very midst of the play. The pleasure which he always had in
bidding farewell,--because here the emotion refreshed him at once by
its shortness and by its strength,--he now gave himself with as many as
loved him. From Rabette he parted with so tempestuous a tenderness that
she said to him, with alarm, "Charles, I hope this does not signify
anything evil?" "All is evil in me, just now," said he.
Through the intercession of the Princess the most important spectators
were invited for the next day to his tragedy, even Gaspard and
Julienne, together with the court. The mystery took. Even from the
Princess his part was concealed. Only his father, who would have been
glad to follow the court, he struck off the list by putting him into a
great rage, for he knew of no other way of keeping him back than by
this thorn-hedge. His mother and Rabette he had conjured by their
welfare, by his welfare, not to be spectators of his play.
A new wind of fortune had come to help him raise his flying-machine,
through the singular brother of the Knight, who heard with such joy of
the Iron Mask of his tragic mask, that he came to him with the proposal
of introducing to him a new and wonderful player. "All the parts are
taken up," said the poet. "Make a chorus between the acts, and give it
to one," said the Spaniard. Roquairol asked after the player's name.
The Spaniard led him to his hotel. No sooner had they entered, than a
voice from within his chamber called, in a guttural, animal's voice,
"Back again so soon, my master?" They found within nothing but a black
jay. "Post the bird on the stage, let him be the Chorus; let him repeat
in half-song,[125] _mezza voce_, only two or three lines; the effect
will be felt," said the Spaniard.
Roquairol was astonished at the long recitations of the jay. The
Spaniard begged him to dictate a still longer one, that he might with
his own ears hear him drill it into the bird. Roquairol gave him, "In
life dwells deception, not on the stage." The Spaniard gave out, at
first, merely a word to be repeated, then another, repeated it three
times, then said, snapping his fingers by way of incitement to the
creature, "_Allons diablesse!_" and the animal stuttered out, in a
deep, hollow tone, the whole line. Roquairol found in this comic
bestial-mask something frightful, and accepted the proposal to compose
some lines of a chorus and assign them to the bird, on one unique
condition, namely, that the Spaniard would, the evening previous, draw
away his nephew Albano from Pestitz, under some pretext or other, and
then appear with him in the Prince's garden. The Spaniard said, "Sir
Captain, I need no pretext; I have a true reason. I am to travel with
him to meet his friend Schoppe, who will come to-morrow evening; he,
too, will be one of your spectators."
Albano, in his perplexed frame of mind toward Linda, and in his
impatient expectation of Schoppe, could not have accepted anything so
readily as a little plan for an excursion, by which he might the
earlier have this beloved Schoppe on his breast. Julienne was entreated
by the Princess, in the presence of the sick Prince, to accompany her
to Idoine, who waited for her half-way at a frontier castle, and to go
back the next day into the Prince's garden. She declined. The sick
brother, according to concert between him and the Princess, put in the
petitions which had been requested of him. The sister fulfilled them.
And now all was arranged for the evening on which Roquairol was to see
Linda. So glimmer by night in the sheds of an innocent hamlet the
inserted brands of the incendiary; the storm-wind roars around the
weary, sleeping inmates; the robbers stand on the mountains in the
mists of evening, and look down in expectation of the moment when the
fiery swords of the flames shall gleam out on all sides through the
mist, and rob and murder with them, as they rush down on the dismayed
and defenceless.
128. CYCLE.
Linda read the letter innumerable times over, wept for sweet love, and
never once thought of--forgiving. This breeze of love, which bends all
the flowers and breaks none, she had herself so long wished; and now,
all at once, after the foggy dead-calm of the heart, it came fresh and
living, through the garden of her life. She could hardly wait for eight
o'clock. She helped herself while away the time by selecting her dress,
which at last consisted of the veil, hat, and all the things which she
had worn when she found her lover for the first time on the island of
Ischia.
She placed upon her beating bosom the paradise, or orange-blossoms, the
indexes of that time and world, and went at the appointed hour, with
the blind maiden on her arm, down into the garden. As well from hatred
of Tartarus as from compliance with the letter, she took the road to
the flute-dell. The night was obscure to her eye, and the blind maiden
acted as her guide.
Overhead, on the altar-mount of Lilar, like the evil spirit on the
battlement of Paradise, stood Roquairol, looking sharply down into the
garden, to find Linda and her path. His festive-steed had been fastened
down below in the deep thicket to some foreign shrubbery. Full of fury
he saw Dian and Chariton still walking in the garden with the children,
and up in the thunder-house a little light. He cursed every disturbing
soul, for he was determined to murder this evening, in case of
necessity, every stormer of his heaven. At last he saw Linda's tall,
red-dressed form move toward the flute-dell, go up to the threshold of
bush-work, and disappear behind it.
He hastened down the long, spiral mountain, warm as a poisoned snake.
He heard behind him some one hurrying after in the long windings of the
bushes. In a fury he drew a sword-cane, which, with a pocket-pistol, he
had by him. At last he saw an odious form, like an evil spirit, running
after him; it attacked him. It was the long-armed ape of the Princess.
He run him through on the spot, in order not to be followed by him.
Below, in the open garden, he went slowly, in order not to awaken any
suspicion. He stole softly as death, when on the thunder-car of a cloud
he sails unheard through the air over a blossoming tree, beneath which
a virgin leans, and hid the murderous thunder-bolt in his breast. He
opened the high gate-shrubbery of the flute-dell; all was still within
there and dark; only in the upper heavens a singular, roaring storm
swept along and chased the herd of clouds, but on the earth it sounded
low, and not a leaf stirred. "Is any one there?" asked the blind
gate-keeper. "Good evening, maiden," said Roquairol, in order by the
tone of his speech to pass for Albano.
Deep in the vale, which now grew narrower and more leafy, Linda was
singing softly an old Spanish melody of her childhood's time. At last
she was visible; the giant-snake made the poisonous spring at the sweet
form, and she was entwined in a thousand-fold embrace.
He hung on her speechless, breathless; the cloud of his life broke;
burning tears of passion and pain and joy gushed out; all the arms into
which the stream of his love had hitherto run round in shallows, rushed
together roaring, and grasped and bore _one_ form. "Weep not, my good
Albano; we surely love each other again forever," said Linda, and the
tender, beautiful lip gave him the first, fervent kiss. Then the
fire-wheel of ecstasy whirled round and bore him with it, and around
the head which hung lashed thereto the circling flames waved high. From
a dread of being seen, if he should look, and from pleasure, he had
closed his eyes; now he opened them,--and there, so near to him and in
his arms, he beheld the lofty form, the proud, blooming countenance and
the moist, warm eyes of love. "Thou heavenly one," said he, "kill me in
this hour, that so I may die in heaven. How can I wish to live any
longer after it? O that I could pour my soul into my tears and my life
into thine, and then be no more!"
"Albano," said she, "why art thou to-day so altered, so sad, so
tender?"
"Call me rather," said he, "by _thy_ name, as lovers exchange names in
Otaheite. Perhaps I have drunk a little, too; but I truly repent of
yesterday, and I truly love thee anew. Ah, thou, dost thou, then, also
love my very innermost self, Linda?"
"Sweet youth, can I then, now, choose but love thee eternally? I do,
indeed, henceforth cleave to thee and thou to me."
"Ah, thou dost not know me. When does man know, then, that precisely
he, this very _I_, is meant and loved? Only forms are embraced, only
the fleshly covering is enfolded in the arms; who, then, clasps a
person to a person? _Perchance God_."
"And I do thee," said Linda.
"O Linda, wilt thou still love me in my grave, when the chaff of life
is flown away,--still love me in my hell, when I have deceived thee out
of love to thee? Is love, then, love's justification?"
"I love thee always, so long as thou lovest me. Art thou the
poison-flower; then am I the bee, and die on the sweet cup."
The bride sank on his neck. He clasped her passionately, and grew more
and more like the glacier, which by very warmth rolls further onward,
and in melting desolates. Around him danced the pleasures with heavenly
faces, but showed him in their hands the masks of furies.
"Thou wilt die of love; I am already dead from love. O, thou knowest
not how long ago I loved thee!" he answered.
"Glowing heart," said she, "think of this night when thou one day seest
Idoine!" "Then shall I see only my risen _sister_," said he, but
instantly trembled at the truth's having escaped his lips. "One sees,"
he added, hastily, "the risen Herculaneum, but one dwells overhead in
the blooming Portici. Thou and I saw in Baja's gold, under the sea, the
sunken arches and gates, and we sailed on farther toward living cities.
Is even Roquairol, I pray, like me in so many things, and does he love
thee so much, and has he loved thee so long, and died once, too, like
Liana?"
"But that creature I had never loved, and now am I thy eternal bride."
"Poor fellow! But I did wrong, however, I think, when I once, in the
cavern of Tartarus, renounced thee, the unseen, beforehand, out of love
toward my friend."
"Certainly not. But how have we both fallen upon the subject of this
uncomfortable being?" said she, kissing him.
"_Uncomfortable_,[126] indeed," replied he, with bitter emphasis,
blazing up in revengeful love, in a discord of rage and lust, and
determined now to weave the funeral veil over her whole future. He beat
his dark eagle's wings about his victim, and stifled and awakened
kisses; he tore the orange-blossoms from her bosom and threw them
behind him. "Love is living and dying and heaven and hell," said he;
"love is murder and fire and death and pain and pleasure. Caligula
would have placed his Cæsonia on the rack only for the sake of learning
from her why he so loved her. I could also..."
"Divine Albano, do not drink so any more! Thou art too impetuous; even
thy eyebrows storm! What art thou like?"
"All things at once, like a tempest full of glowing heat,--and my
heaven is luminous with lightning,--and I throw cold hail, and one
destruction after another; and a warm rain falls upon the flowers, and
a still bow of peace knits together heaven and earth."
At this moment he saw in heaven the storm-clouds, like storm-birds,
already flying more brightly between the stars and near the angry,
bloody eye of Mars; the moon, that came to scare and betray him, soon
threw upon him the judging eye of a god. In defiance of fate, he tore
open for his violent kisses the nun's veil and saintly splendor of the
virgin's bosom. Far off stood the beacon-tower of conscience enveloped
in thick clouds. Linda wept, trembling and glowing, on his breast. "Be
my good genius, Albano," said she. "And thy evil one. But call me only
one single time Charles," said he, full of passion. "O, be _called_
Charles, but remain my former Albano, my holy Albano," said she.
Suddenly the flutes in the dell began, which the pious father caused to
play at his evening devotions. Like tones of music on the battle-field,
they called down murder. Then did Linda's golden throne of life and of
happiness melt away, and the white, bridal garment of her innocence was
rent and burnt to ashes.
"Now am I thine until my death!" said she, softly, with streams of
tears. "Only till mine!" said he, and wept now softly with the weeping
flutes. Upon the golden ball on the mountain already glimmered the
moon, which, like an armed comet, like a one-eyed giant, pressed on, to
drive the sinner out of his Eden. "Stay till the moon comes, that I may
look into thy face," she begged. "No, thou divine one, my festive steed
already neighs; the death-torch burns down into my hand," said he, in a
low, tragic tone. The storm had passed from heaven down to the earth.
She replied, "The storm is so loud, what saidst thou, love?" He wildly
kissed again her lips and her bosom. He could not go; he could not
stay. "Go not to-morrow," said he, "to the Tragedian, I entreat thee;
the end, I hear, is too agitating."
"Besides, I never like such things. O, stay, stay longer; I am sure I
shall not see thee again to-morrow." He pressed her to himself, closed
her eyes with his face. The moon had already reared its Gorgon head in
the east; he would let go life when he let her go from his arms; and
yet every stammered word of love consumed the short moment. The storm
labored in the torn trees, and the flute-tones glided away like
butterflies, like innocent children beneath the great wing. Roquairol,
as if confounded by such a presence, was near upon the point of saying,
look at me, I am Roquairol; but the thought quickly placed itself
between, she does not deserve that of thee; no, let her learn it for
the first time in that hour when one forgives everything! Yet once more
he held her passionately clasped to himself; already the moonlight fell
in upon both; he repeated a thousand words of love and tenderness,
thrust her back, turned swiftly round, and stalked away in Albano's
dress through the vale.
"Good night, maiden," said he to the blind girl, in passing. Linda sang
not again as before. The stars looked down upon him; the storm winds
spake to him; the pleasures went along by him, but they had now the
masks of the furies on their faces. An arm struck down from heaven, an
arm grasped up from hell, and both would seize him, to tear him
asunder. "Well, well," said he, "I was fortunate indeed, but I might
have been still more so had I been her curséd Albano," and flung
himself upon his festive horse, and flew the same night to the Prince's
garden.
129. CYCLE.
Albano and his uncle went on to meet the announced Schoppe from village
to village. The uncle continually pushed back the hope before them like
a horizon, farther and farther, as they advanced. Once, at evening, the
Count fancied he heard Schoppe's voice close beside him; in vain, the
beloved man came not yet to his heart, and with longing impatience
Albano saw the clouds in heaven sail along over the way which his
precious one was taking beneath them on the earth. The uncle told him a
long story of a secret trouble which often weighed down the Librarian,
and of his liability to attacks of madness, which had some time ago
repelled him from him, because among all men there was none he dreaded
so much as the madman. Of Romeiro's portrait he seemed to know nothing.
Albano was silent with vexation, for the Spaniard was one of those
insufferable men who, with sleek, steady face, and with screwed-up and
helmed soul, can let another's contradiction flutter around them
without any contradiction on their part, without echo, without a
reflection or alteration, and to whom another's discourse is only a
still dew, the fall of which wears away no stone. To this was added
Albano's exasperation against his new falsehood about Schoppe's
nearness, and against his own incapacity of listening for a good, long
hour incredulously to what a liar is saying.
"Schoppe is, upon my word, already arrived at the Prince's garden by
another route," said the Spaniard at last, in quite a lively mood, and
advised turning back, in the comfortable enjoyment of that cool,
impudent faculty he had of jamming up every one who did not do homage
to him, between sharp, tedious ice-fields.
They arrived before the princely garden in the midst of nothing but
carriages, out of which were alighting the spectators of to-day's
dramatic festival. Albano found among them already his father, the
Princess, and Julienne, and, among the actors, Bouverot, his old
exercise-master Falterle, and the yellow-dressed merchant's lady in the
red shawl, who had once been less _in_ than _on_ Roquairol's heart, and
finally Roquairol himself. The Captain stepped up immediately, first
and foremost, to the well-known Albano, and said, with elaborate ease,
the play would begin soon, only Dian with his wife was still expected.
Dian, always easily moved, most of all by an invitation, could least of
all resist one when art was the occasion; through him Chariton also was
soon gained for the play, but not without one condition,--that she was
to play in the piece the part of a beloved to no one but her spouse.
When Roquairol spoke with Albano, he found it hard to laugh easily, or
to raise his eyelids, as if his face were frozen or swollen; and an
avenging, humiliating spirit inwardly weighed his down to the earth
before the pure and happy friend out of whose spring he had torn and
cast away the bright sun, and over whose life he had hung an eternal
plague-cloud.
Amidst the tumult of garden talk, and in the fruitless wish to impart
to his sister Julienne three soft words for the Linda of whose presence
he had been so long deprived, Albano saw the carriage of the Countess
roll along on the heights up to Liana's last garden, there stop, and
her and Dian and Chariton alight from it.
Then he thought of nothing but to fly to the long-missed loved one,--an
act which, before the many eyes, easily assumed the appearance of a
longing for Dian; and at this moment, in the thirst of love, he, in
fact, asked no question about eyes. "Ah, here I am, after all!" said
Linda, and came to meet him, interweaving the delicate vine-tendrils of
soft glances with his, so shyly and so lovingly; and the evening blush
of bashfulness, like a spring-redness in the night, mantled her heaven,
and the white moon of innocence stood in the midst of it. Albano was
dissolved with the melting wind of this forgiveness, reproached himself
with his sweet joy at her conversion, as if it were a selfish pride in
his victory, and could hardly, in the fair confusion of good fortune,
command his sweet astonishment and his melting heart, which would fain
dissipate itself before her like a tempest into evening dew. He threw
his soul into his eye, and gave it to his beloved. Before Chariton he
felt that he must veil himself. To Dian and Linda he said, as they
looked into the setting sun, only the word, "Ischia!"
"There lies dear Anastasius," said Chariton to Dian, "my good friend
Liana buried, and one knows not properly whereabouts in the garden, for
one sees really nothing but flowers and flowers; however, she so
ordered it." "That is very sad and fine," said Dian; "but let it
be,--gone is gone, Chariton!" and led her aside, out of indulgence to
the lovers. Albano, who overlooked nothing, and overheard everything,
showed plainly enough how much he had been agitated by Chariton's
words. Linda, too, perceived it. "Only speak out thy sadness," said
she; "I do truly love _her_ too." "I am thinking upon the living," said
he, collecting himself, and looked timidly, not upon the flower-garden,
but upon the sun-enchanted[127] evening landscape; "can one, then,
sufficiently forgive, and think no evil upon the earth? Linda, O how
thou forgivest me to-day!"
"Friend," said she, "when you sin you shall receive forgiveness; but
until then, I pray you be quiet!" He looked upon her significantly.
"Hast thou not already forgiven, and have not I too? But couldst
thou have known how intimately I lived with thee during these days on
the way to my Schoppe, and brought over the divine past into the
future--ah, can I then tell thee all in this place?" Fortunately
she--like other women, attending less to words than to looks, gestures,
and actions--heard more with the spiritual than the bodily ear, and
stepped not over the brink of the abyss which his words laid open so
near her. Thus did these two now play, like children, near the cold
thunder-charged lightning-rod, out of which at the smallest nearer
approach must dart the flashing scythe of death.
Both went on with their illusions near the lightning. The sun went down
with his flames by the little mountain and the smooth flowery grave
over into the distant plains. Out of the depths of the princely garden
came tones fluttering up through the long evening rays and deified the
golden landscape. The rays were solitary wings, that sought their
heart, and joined it, and then flew onward--and the loving hearts
became full of wings. The rays sank, the tones soared. Around Linda and
Albano lay a golden circle of gardens and mountains and green valleys,
and every flower rocked with its riches under the last lingering gold,
and became the cradle of the eye, the cradle of the heart. The lovers
looked at each other, and upon the earth, with inspired looks; the
shining world appeared to them only in the magic mirror of their
hearts, and they were, themselves, both, only floating images therein.
"Linda, I will be more gentle," said he. "I swear it by the saint in
whose garden we stand!" "Be so, dear one; in Lilar thou wast not so!"
said she. He understood it of his storminess toward Liana. "Bury this
recollection in thy love!" said he, reddening. She looked upon him like
a virgin,--her inner being had remained virginal and innocent,--as the
peach turns its red and glowing side toward the sun, but keeps under
the leaves the tender white. Her eye drank from his, his drank from
hers; the heavens mingled with her heaven, the purple sun glimmered
back out of the warm dew of loving eyes. "O that I might now kiss
thee!" said Albano. "Ah, that thou mightest!" said Linda. "So goldenly
did the sun once go down into the sea!" said he. "And afterward we gave
each other the first kiss!" said she. "We will see each other now much
oftener," said he. "Yes, indeed, and longer by day; by night I, poor
one, have, indeed, no eye. Even now is my eye already going down
yonder," said she, as the sun sank from sight.
It was a good, gentle spirit, or Liana's own,--that spirit which
conducts man by the gradual transition of twilight over into night,
which pours soothing tears into sorrow and into ecstasy, and which
suffers not the short path of love's evening star to be overcast with
clouds,--this spirit it was which saved their tongues and ears from the
terrible sound which would at once have torn up the golden magic circle
of evening into an all-surrounding blaze of hell.
"Who is that coming so hastily yonder?" said Linda. "My foe," said
Albano. Roquairol had missed him, and had heard of Linda's arrival; in
the hell-torment of anxiety, lest what had happened the night before
might reveal itself before them this evening, he hurried, under the
pretext of going to get Dian as a performer and Albano as a hearer, up
the mountain. Like a centaur, half man, half wild beast, he broke in
upon the melodious souls and joys with the hollow, confused war of his
whole being. But hardly had he perceived in their looks the
consecration of rapture, and seen that the black curtain still lay fast
upon his murder, when the grim spirit of jealousy reared itself within
him. "She is now my betrothed," he said to himself; and the solar
eclipse of confused repentance was eclipsed by the tempest of chagrin.
Linda, kindling into anger from an inward shudder at his similarity of
voice, stood before him like a diamond, clear, sparkling, hard and
cutting; but Albano, amidst the echoes of the harmony, stood gently on
the churchyard of the sister of this brother, and not without some
confusion. Roquairol was haunted again by yesterday's unclean
suspicion, that perhaps Albano and Linda were no longer innocent.
Angrily, he now invited Linda to make one of the spectators at his
tragedy. "You told me," said she to Albano, "it concluded so
tragically; I am no friend of that." "He is not at all acquainted with
it," said Roquairol. "No," said Albano. As the serpent looked down upon
the paradise of the first pair, so looked he with the pleasing
consciousness that he could hand them the apple from the tree of
knowledge which should immediately drive them out from theirs.
"Besides," she subjoined, "I see badly in the evening, or not at all."
Roquairol affected to be surprised at that, joked upon the gain which
it would be to him as first lover in the play, if she only _heard_ him,
and begged Dian to unite in entreating her. Not inborn, but acquired
coldness, has at command the highest falsehood; the former is capable
only of dissimulation, the latter of simulation also, because it at
once knows and uses all ways and means of kindling a fire, and keeps
its firm standing on slippery ice by the ashes of former heat. When
Albano himself at length advised her to take part in the tragic
enjoyment, and grant her friends of both sexes below there the fair,
pure enjoyment of her presence, then she consented, not without
wondering at his retraction.
She took Chariton into her carriage. The men walked on ahead. On the
way Roquairol said to Dian, who had to play the character of Albano in
the piece, "So soon as I have said, in the fourth act, 'Even spiritual
love goes to meet sensual, and, after all, like a seafarer on his way
eastward, arrives at last in the lands of sundown,' then you fall in."
Dian laughed, and said, "I'll fall in. In Italy, however, the passage
begins at once as a southerly and westerly one." Albano was silent for
vexation, and repented having helped persuade Linda to this doubtful
festival. The Princess cast sundry rapid glances of contempt at the
cheated Linda, and she answered them with the like; distinguished women
betray their sex most in hostile contact with distinguished ones.
130. CYCLE.
Most of the spectators had in the beginning come more for the sake of
the spectators and performers than of the play; but soon they were
attracted by the mystery and by the extraordinary stage itself. The
scene was laid on the so-called Island of Slumber in the Prince's
garden, which was covered with a wild, thick tangle of flowers, bushes,
and high trees. Its eastern side showed an open, free foreground, on
which the performance was to take place, with a white Sphinx on an
empty tomb farther in among the green. The wings of the scenes were the
dark leafy parts; pit and boxes the shore opposite, which was separated
from the island by a lake, about as broad as a moderate-sized ship.
From two trees of the two opposite shores hung down like a lantern out
over the middle of the lake the cage of the jay or chorus, suspended
there by way of bringing her deep, dull voice nearer to the spectators.
"I am, to tell the truth, 'curious," said the Knight to his son, "to
know whence you will draw the tragical." "Leave me alone for that!"
said Roquairol, who had hitherto been walking backward and forward
silently and uneasily, with his eyes on the ground; "only I must make a
general request of the company to be pardoned the delay. When I address
the moon in the fifth act, I can very well use the real one, if I only
begin just so that her rising shall coincide with the last scene."
At length he embarked, with a face that was growing pale, in the
Charon's boat, as he said, and ferried over alone. Then the other
players sailed over one after another. All were lost behind the trees;
and now, from behind in the embowered western parts of the island,
the immortal overture from Mozart's Don Juan rose like an invisible
spirit-realm slowly and grandly into the air.
"_Diablesse!_" cried thereupon the brother of the Knight to the jay,
and clapped his hands at the same time as a signal.
"Open the coffin," the creature began, in a hollow voice, accompanied
by single, lugubrious, tones of the orchestra,--"open the coffin in the
churchyard, and show for the last time the breast of the corpse and his
dry eyelid, and then shut it to forever."
At this moment Lilia (Chariton) and Carlos (Dian) stepped forth,--two
lovers yet in the earliest time of the first love. No sad rain of tears
yet swept away the golden morning dew, they are so true to each other.
Lilia rejoices with him that her brother Hiort is just coming back from
his travels to find his youthful friend Carlos her eternal one.
"Perhaps he, too, is right fortunate," said Lilia. "O, certainly so,"
said Carlos; "he is indeed that, and everything else." At times both
were silent in happy contemplation of each other; then tones went up
out of the veiled west of the island and bore the mute joy into the
ether, and showed it to them hovering and glorified. A sweet sympathy
diffused itself among the spectators for Dian's and Chariton's
imitation of their own fair reality, so delicate, yet mingled with
southern glow; they heard and saw Greeks. All at once Lilia fled behind
the flower-bushes, for her enemy, _Salera_, Carlos's father, came,
personated by Bouverot.
Salera angrily announced to his son the arrival of his bride,
_Athenais_. Carlos made known to him now the mystery of his earlier
love, and showed himself armed against a whole future. Salera cried,
with exasperation, "Would that she were not, as she is, beautiful, so
that I might have the pleasant duty of forcing and punishing thee! But
thou wilt see her, and obey me, and yet I shall hate thee." Carlos
replied, "Father, I have already seen Lilia." Salera went off with
angry repetitions, and Carlos wished now still more ardently for
Hiort's return, in order with him more easily to abduct his sister
through his persuasion and attendance. Here closed the first act.
The brother of the Knight called to the jay, "_Diablesse!_" and scraped
with his foot, as a signal.
"Appear, pale man!" spake the creature; "the clock vibrates the hour;
man of sorrow, land upon the still island!"
Hiort stepped forth, with his cheeks painted pale, with open breast,
looked upon the tomb, and said, from his innermost soul, "At last!" The
music played a dance. "Yes, indeed, island of slumber thou may'st well
be called; our days end with a sleep," he added. Now came his Carlos.
"Hiort, art thou dead?" cried he, in terror, over the corpse. "I am
only pale," said he. "O, how dost thou come back so out of the
beautiful, gay earth?" said Carlos. "Exhausted, Charles, with stillborn
hopes; my present is disinherited by the past; the foliage of the
sensual is fallen off; not even beautiful nature do I longer fancy, and
clouds like mountains are more dear to me than real mountains. I have
truly reaped the bitter weeds of life, and yet must I, in this empty
breast, carry about with me a destroying angel, who eternally digs and
writes, and every letter is a wound. No advice! You call it conscience.
But bring me a little sleep-draught hither on the island of sleep,
Charles!"
They brought wine. He now gave his friend an account of his life,--his
faults, among which he adduced the very one in which he was just
persisting, namely, drinking; his self-reproducing vanity, even with
its self-acknowledgment; his conquests of women, which made him a
magnetic mountain, full of the attracted nails from ships that had
thereby fallen to pieces; his propensity, like Cardan, to offend his
friends, to break in upon his own or another's good fortune, as, even
when a child, he longed to interrupt the preacher,[128] or in the midst
of the finest tune to smash the harpsichord, and in a fit of enthusiasm
to think the most licentious thoughts.
"Once I had still, after all, two distinct and different selves,--one
that promised and lied, and one that believed the other; now they both
lie to each other, and neither believes." Carlos answered, "Horrible!
But thy sorrow is verily itself a help and a gift." "Ah, what!" he
replied. "Man condemns less his iniquity than the past situation
wherein he committed it, while, in a fresh situation, he finds it new
and sweet again, and loves it as much as ever. What lies cold yonder,
that is my image [pointing to the Sphinx], that stirs itself, living,
in my bloody breast. Help me! draw out the rending monster!"
Albano fired with rage in his innermost soul at the guilty repetition
of that tender confessional night with him.[129] "He is bold enough,"
said Gaspard, in a whisper to Albano, "because, as I hear, he is really
to personate himself; but when he sees himself so, he is surely better
than he sees himself." "O," said Albano, "so I thought once! But is,
then, the contemplation of a bad condition itself a good condition? Is
he not so much the worse that he bears this consciousness, and so much
the weaker that he sees an incurable cancer-sore growing upon him? The
highest thing he has, at all events, lost,--innocence." "A fleeting
cradle virtue! He has, after all, a bright, bold, reflecting faculty,"
said Gaspard. "Only effeminate, shameless, double-meaning, many-sided
debility of heart he has; talks of power, and cannot tear through the
thinnest mesh of pleasure," said Albano.
"Charles," said Hiort, tenderly, as if answering him, "yes, there is
yet one help. When on the ground of life one fresh color after another
fades,--when existence is now nothing, neither comedy nor tragedy, only
a stale show-piece,--still is there one heaven open to man, which shall
receive him,--love. Let this close against him, and he is damned
forever. Carlos, my Carlos, I could still be happy, for I have seen
_Athenais_; but I can be still more unhappy than I am, for she loves me
not. In my heart lies this blazing, but continually sharp-cutting
diamond, upon which it bleeds as often as it beats." Everywhere now did
Roquairol let Linda's image play in. At this crisis, Carlos at first
threw his friend into an internal uproar, with the intelligence that
Athenais had been selected by his father for _his_ bride, and was
coming soon; but he calmed him, when his sister Lilia appeared, by
quickly taking her hand, and saying, "This one only do I love." They
spoke of the obstacles on the part of old Salera, whom Carlos called a
glacier, which bore fruit under no sun, and could not be built upon.
"Stand by me, Charles," said Hiort; "think what thou wrotest to me:
'Like two streams will we blend together, and grow, and bear, and dry
up together.'"[130] Thus did the three beings mutually understand,
bind, elevate each other; all had one end,--their common welfare.
Carlos swore eternal rebellion against his father; Hiort, to protect
his sister, and cried, "At last the empty cornucopia of Time, which
hitherto has given out nothing but hollow sounds, pours out flowers
again." "O, the women! How common and commonplace are almost all men!
But almost every woman is new." Gaspard said, with a smile, "Women say
the reverse of us and themselves." The second act closed in gladness
and peace.
"_Diablesse!_" cried the Spaniard, and stretched his right hand high in
the air.
"Fleeting," began the black jay, amid tones of music, "is man, more
fleeting is his bliss, but earlier than all dies the friend with his
word."
The third act followed immediately upon the heels of the preceding, and
broke up, by the uninterrupted continuance of the artistic enchantment,
which should belong to every play and every work of art that is to be
read, all cold, prosaic astonishment, even that which arose from the
wonderful speaking of the jay on the lake. A great, beautiful, proud
lady appeared,--Athenais (personated by the merchant's wife,
Roquairol's by-mistress), full of hope in her old friend Lilia, who
called herself "the little Athenais," and, sweetly dreaming over the
dream of former days, Lilia sinks into her arms with twofold tears;
Athenais does indeed bear in her hand three heavens and three hells.
"How beautiful thou returnest! My poor brother!" said Lilia softly.
"Name him not," said she proudly, "he can die for me, but I cannot live
for him." Here Carlos flies in to his Lilia,--stops and stiffens in his
flight,--collects himself, and approaches Lilia. She says, "Count
Salera,--Athenais--" He grew pale, she red. A constraining, painful
confusion entangled them all three; every honey drop was taken from a
thorn-hedge. Lilia, with a shudder, is made more and more strongly
aware of Athenais's sudden victory over her fortune and love. Athenais
went away. The two lovers look upon each other for a long time with
trembling. "Am I right?" asked Lilia. "Am I in fault?" said Carlos.
"No," said she, "for thou art a mortal, and, what is still worse, a
man." "What shall I do, then?" replied Carlos. "Thou shalt," said she,
solemnly, "after one year go into a garden on a hill, and look around
thee and seek me in the garden,--in the garden--under the beds,--deep
below one,--I know not how deep." She hastened away, as if frantic, and
sang, "All over, all over with loving and living!"
Carlos stood some minutes with his wild look on the ground, and said,
in a low, hollow tone, "God, it is thy work!" and went off,--met his
friend, who called out impetuously and joyfully, "She is here!" but he
hastened on proudly, and only called back, "Not now, Hiort!" To him
came Lilia, weeping, and led him onward. "Come," said she, "do not look
upon the tomb; we are both too unhappy."
Then came out old Salera with Athenais,--seized on ice for fire, and
took his cold coin for warm,--praised her like a man, and his son like
a father,--and said, as in a play, There comes himself. "Here, son,"
said he, "I set before thee thy happiness, if thou canst deserve it."
Carlos had lost Lilia's heart,--his father's wish, the might of beauty,
the omnipotence of loving beauty, stood before him, his longing and the
thought of cruelty toward this goddess, and finally a world within him,
which stood so near to her sun, prevailed over a double fidelity;--he
sank on his knee before her, and said, "I am guiltless, if I am happy."
The pair go off on one side; Salera on the other, and encounters Lilia,
whose hand he takes, with the words, "You, as a friend of my house and
son, certainly take the deepest interest in his latest happiness as the
possessor of Athenais." So ended the third act, which, by its unjust,
all-distorting allusions, filled and fired Albano with an exasperated
desire for the end, merely that he might call Roquairol to account for
this assassin-like brandishing of the tragic dagger. "The old
fellow,"[131] said Gaspard, laughing, "fancies he is painting me too
herein; I wish, however, he would take stronger colors."
Before the fourth act commenced, the Spaniard threw up his left hand,
and the black jay spoke immediately: "Sin punishes sin, and the foe the
foe; untamable is love, untamable also vengeance. See, now comes the
man whom they no more love, and brings with him his wounds and his
wrath." There stood Hiort, as if before his grave, which drew down his
head,--weeping and drinking enormously,--soft evening tones of music
melted away with his dissolving life. "Ah, so it is," cried he, out of
a deep, agonized breast,--"only throw them away at length, the two
last roses of life:[132] too many bees and thorns lurk in them; they
draw thy blood and give thee poison-- O, how I loved! thou Almighty One
on high, how I loved!--but ah, not thee! And so now I stand empty and
poor and old: nothing, nothing is left me,-not a single heart,--no, not
my own: that is already gone down into the grave. The wick is drawn out
of my life, and it runs away in darkness. O ye children of men! ye
stupid children of men! why do ye then believe that there is still any
love here below? Look at me, I have none. An airy colored ribbon of
love, a rainbow, draws itself out and winds itself around under us
shifting clouds, as if it would bind the clouds and bear them.
Ridiculous! it is itself cloud and mere falling weather,--in the
beginning glisten gay drops of gladness, then dash down black drops of
rain!"
He was silent,--went slowly up and down,--looked seriously at a
war-dance and masquerade of internal spectres,--then stopped. The
shadows of dark deeds played through each other around him: suddenly he
started up; a lightning-flash of a thought had darted into his heart;
he ran to and fro, cried, "Music! let me have horrible music!" and the
wedding music from Don Juan, which had hitherto accompanied him, raised
the murder-cry of terror. "Divine!" said he; and only single words,
only tiger spots, appeared and vanished on the monster as he passed by.
"Devilish! the rose's being, the blossom's being,--aye, well! I will
bury myself in the avalanche, and roll down; and then I die beautifully
on my slumber-island," he concluded, in a soft, faint voice.
"O Lilia! insure me one prayer!" cried he, going to meet his
approaching sister. "Any one which hinders not my dying," said she. He
laid before her the prayer, that she would this very night persuade her
friend Athenais into the "night-arbor" of the island, under the pretext
that her bridegroom, Carlos, wished to show her to-day two mysteries
about Lilia. "I have," he added, "Carlos's voice; with it I can declare
to her my loving heart, and then, if she loves me, I will call myself
Hiort." "Is thy request sincere?" asked the sister. "As true as that I
will be still alive to-morrow," said he. "Then is it soon fulfilled,
for Athenais expects me even in the night-arbor; only follow me after
seven minutes." She went; he looked after her, and said to himself,
"Hasten, arrange the heaven! Fair slumber-island, at once the
sleeping-place for the bridal-chamber and for the eternal sleep. O, how
few minutes stand between me and her heart!"
"Thou art still here, surely?" said he, and looked for his pistol.
"Now," cried he, solemnly, in departing, "is the time for the
_clear-obscure_ deed, then the bier-cloth is thrown over it," and went
swiftly into the arbor.
The Spaniard threw a twig into the water, and the black jay spake, in a
low tone, "Silent is bliss; silent is death."
"The man," said Gaspard, "has something through the whole play like
real earnest. I will not answer that he does not shoot himself dead
before us all." "Impossible!" said Albano, alarmed; "he has not the
force for such a reality." Nevertheless, he could not, after all,
properly free himself from the anxious thought of this possibility.
Disturbed, impetuous, with dishevelled hair, Hiort came back, and said,
in a low voice, "It is done; I was blest; no one will be so after me."
"With that yellow one,[133] and now in the night-hour, I will answer
for nothing," said Gaspard. Albano reddened with shame at the impudent
presumption, and still more at Roquairol's crime of dishonoring and
seducing, even in the play, his holy beloved. "Music, but tender and
good!" he cried, and let himself be fanned by the zephyr of harmony,
and drank incessantly "funeral draughts," or wine,--both to the
annoyance of the Knight, who abhorred drinking, and shunned music,
because this or both made one weak.
He laid himself down on the turf, and the pistol beside him, and said,
stammering, "So, then, I lie in the warm ashes of my burnt-out life,
and my cold ashes will be added soon." He put his double opera-glass
close to his eyes, and cast sparkling looks over at Linda. "I have had
her on my heart, the divine beauty, my eternal love,--my tulip, which
at evening closes at length over the bee, that he may die in the
flower-cup. On the roses of my life I rest and die; I still look with
bliss on the sweet one; I cannot repent. Only forgive, poor Carlos; I
wipe away the crime with blood, but with tears of penitence I cannot.
Should that which time has washed away from this shore cleave again to
the shore of eternity, then it must fare badly with me there: I can
change there as little as here."
At this moment a cannon-shot was fired in the city to announce a
deserter. He took his pistol into his hand. "Yes, yes, a shot signifies
a fugitive,--a fugitive out of the world, too. O, when shall the sharp
sickle lift itself in the east, and cut life in twain? I am so weary!"
He looked toward the eastern heavens, but a cloud, which already
faintly thundered, overcast the gateway of the moon. He smiled
bitterly.
"Even this little, last joy also destiny begrudges me! I shall see the
moon no more. Well, I shall, perhaps, mount higher than it or its
storm-cloud,--only my dear spectators and auditors of my death are
driven away from me by the rain. Yes, if thou art out, then am I out!"
He pointed to the flask.
"Wild, awful tones, come up from the deep! Bring me my bloody bridal
dress! It is time; declining joy casts behind a long, lengthening
shadow." Albano and Julienne recognized with a shudder, in the little
coat which they brought him, the blood-sprinkled one which he had worn
at the masquerade, when, as a boy, he had meant to murder himself
before Linda. "You must lay it on my cold breast," said he, as he
received it from Falterle. The thunder rolled nearer, the lightnings
became more glowing, and one cloud after another swelled the tempest.
He drank the glasses fast. "Nothing can now harm me," said he;
"even the lightning not specially, although I lie under trees; in this
tube there is a lightning that defies all lightnings,--a real
lightning-rod." The hastening storm drove him, on the spectators'
account, to the conclusion, and he was roused to indignation at the
mockery of Providence over his theatrical preparations.
"Nothing is more pleasant and timely than this tempest," said Gaspard;
"however, talking and waiting seem to gratify him tolerably." The other
spectators were agonized by the scene, and yet not one tore himself
away. Orders had been given to the fellow-performers to take the
shot as the signal-word, and not to come before it. He said, "The
death-snake rattles in the neighborhood; yonder, on the wave of the
future, the corpse comes swimming on." They perceived that he spoke at
random and extempore, vexed by the storm. He looked upon the pistol. "A
glance at thee! So is the look at life taken, and again hidden under
the eyelid. A spark, a single spark, and the theatre-curtain blazes up,
and I see the spectators stand, spirits, or even nothing at all, and
the eternal, heavy cloud fills the wide ether of the world. So stand I,
then, by the dead sea of eternity; so black, still, wide, deep it lies
below me; one step, and I am in there, and sink forever. Let it come! I
swam therein even before my birth. Now, now," said he, while it
sprinkled, and he took the last glass, "the rain will chill the poor
wretch already sinking into the chill of death. Play now something soft
and beautiful, good people!"
Thereupon he cocked his weapon, stood up, said, weeping, "Farewell,
beautiful and hard life! Ye two fair stars, ye that still look down
from above, may I come nearer to you? Thou holy earth, thou wilt still
often quake, but no more shall he quake with thee who sleeps in thy
bosom; and ye good, far-off beings who loved me, and ye near ones whom
I so loved, may you fare better than I, and condemn me not too harshly!
I do verily punish myself, and God immediately judges me. Farewell, my
dear, offended, but very hard Albano, and thou, thou even unto death
ardently loved Liana, forgive me, and weep for me! Liana, if thou still
livest, then stand by thy brother in the last hour, and pray for me
before God!" Here he suddenly pointed the weapon at his forehead,
fired, and fell headlong; some blood flowed from the cloven skull, and
he breathed yet once, and then no more.
Bouverot flew out, according to his part, and began it: "Even now, my
dear Hiort, my Carlos bethinks himself"; but he started back before the
corpse, stammering, "_Mais! mon Dieu! il s'est tué re vera! Diable! il
est mort! Oh! qui me payera?_" Linda sank powerless on Julienne's
bosom, and the latter stammered, "O, the sinner and suicide!" The
Princess exclaimed, indignantly, "_Oh, le traitre!_" Albano cried, "Ah,
Charles! Charles!" and plunged into the lake, and swam over, threw
himself upon the shattered form, and groaned, weeping, "O, had I known
this! Brother and sister dead! and I am to blame! O, had I remained
unsuccessful! Ah, my Charles, Charles, forgive! I was not thy foe. How
deplorably shattered it lies there,--the great temple!" "Be more calm,
I pray," said Gaspard, who had at last come over in the boat, and who
bore every mutilation with an anatomical coldness and curiosity; "he
had his regiment debts also, and feared the investigation which a new
administration would bring about. Now, one can, after all, have respect
for him; he has actually carried through his character."
Albano raised himself up erect, and said, in the deafness of anguish,
"Who spake that? you, miserable Bouverot? you know nothing but debts!"
"Monsieur le Comte!" said he, defyingly. "I said it," said Gaspard to
his son. "O my Dian!" cried Albano, and stretched out his hand toward
him, who, himself weeping, held his weeping Chariton, "come thou
hither; let us bandage him; there may yet be help for it."
The Counsellor of Arts Fraischdörfer stepped up to the astounded
Princess, who remained upon her side of the lake, with the words, by
way of diverting her attention, "Viewed on the side of art merely, it
were a question whether this situation was not borrowed with effect.
One must, as in that wonderful creation of Hamlet, weave a play into
the play, and in that make the pretended death a real one; of course it
were then only a show of show, playing reality in real play, and
thousand-fold, wonderful reflex! But how it rains now!" Something was
whispered in the ear of the Princess by her Haltermann. She flung up
her arms, and cried, "O, monster! homicide! My poor, innocent Gibbon!
Thou monster!" She had heard of the ape's murder, and departed
inconsolable.
All at once the naked moon emerged into the deep blue, and every one
remarked it; but the rain previous no one but Fraischdörfer had been
aware of. Albano saw now full clearly the dead eyes and white, stiff
lips. "No, they stir not," said he. Then it sounded as if out of
Roquairol's breast and iron mouth, "Be still; I am judged!" And
immediately began the jay, as concluding chorus of the last act, "The
poor man now lies fast asleep, and you can cover him up!"
Gaspard looked very earnestly at his brother. "By heavens!" replied the
latter, "it is written so in his part."
The whole starry sky cleared up. The company went homeward. Albano and
Dian, with Chariton, stayed by the corpse.
THIRTY-THIRD JUBILEE.
Albano And Linda.--Schoppe and the Portrait.--The Wax
Cabinet.--The Duel.--The Madhouse.--Leibgeber.
131. CYCLE.
Albano meant to incarcerate himself the next day, weep bitterly, and do
penance, and not cheer himself with the sunshine of love; but he found
at evening the following billet, written by an unknown hand, on his
table:--
"Sir Count: You are hereby informed, that on Friday night, when you
were gone journeying, the deceased Captain R. von Froulay played
your part with the Countess Romeiro through _all_ the acts, in the
flute-dell. You must, for the sake of rivals, get yourself another
voice, and the Countess eyes to use by night, although to her it may
not be altogether disagreeable to be often deceived respecting you in
this manner. Farewell, and be in future a little more discreet!"
With pale face he stared at the skeleton which two giant hands forcibly
held up before him, drawn out all at once from the flesh of blooming,
youthful limbs. But the fire of pain speedily shot up again and
illumined the whole circle of woe. With the might of agony, with bloody
arms, must his spirit hurl back and forth the thought, heavy as a rock,
the tombstone of his life, in order to prove whether it fitted into the
burial vault;--the dreadful thought fell in so completely with
Roquairol's whole play and end and life,--but not, on the other hand,
with Linda's character, and with the divine moment which he had spent
with her in Liana's last garden,--and yet it did, again, very much with
her sudden reconciliation and with single, detached words,--and yet,
perhaps, after all, this poisoned letter was only a fruit of the
vengeance of the Princess, of whose indignation at Roquairol's murder
of himself and the ape Dian had told him.
So painfully did he move himself on his wounds to and fro, and at last
he resolved, this very evening to seek out Linda, wherever she might
be, when he received from her the following billet:--
"Come to me, I pray, this evening, to Elysium; it will certainly be
fair. I give the invitation now, as thou didst lately. Thou shalt lead
me upon the fair mountains, and it shall be enough for me if only thou
canst see and enjoy. Julienne we need less and less. Thy father urges
our union with proposals which you shall this evening hear and weigh.
Come without fail! In my heart there are still standing so many sharp
tears about the evil tragedy. Thou must change them into tears of
another kind, my beloved!
"The Blind One."
He laughed at the _changing_. "Into frozen ones, rather," said he. Hot
love was to him a passionate kiss into his wound. He went to Lilar
gloomily and hastily, deeply enveloped in a red cloak, as if against
foul weather,--blind and deaf to himself and the world,--and like a
dying man who awaits the moment when he either shall vanish in smoke
and be annihilated, or soar away reanimated into divine worlds.
When he entered the precincts of Lilar, the garden did not distort
itself as lately, but it merely disappeared, from him. He went along
close by some disguised people, who seemed to be making a grave. "It's
wrong, I vow," said one of them; "he ought to be buried out in the
meadow, like other cattle." Albano looked that way, saw a covered
corpse, and thought with a shudder it was the suicide, until he heard
the second grave-digger say, "An ape, Peter, if he is kept with
distinction, in clothes, looks more reputable than many a man, and I
believe he, too, would rise again from the dead, if he were only
regularly baptized."
Just as this Gibbon of the Princess, whom they were burying here,
recalled before his soul that stormy Friday, he espied Linda, not far
from the Dream-temple, on the arm of a seeing gentlewoman. She gave
him, according to her manner before others, only a slight greeting, and
said to the woman, "Justa, stay here in the Dream-temple; I am going to
walk up and down here."
By this limitation of herself to the visual range of the Dream-temple
she excluded every fair, visible sign of love, and Albano knew already
that silent contentment of hers, with the mere presence of the beloved
one, just as he did sometimes the wildness of her sweet lips. When he
touched her with trembling, and saw her again near him, then did this
powerful being come back to him with the whole divine past. But he
deferred not the infernal question, "Linda, who was with thee on Friday
evening?" "No one, dearest; where?" replied she. "In the flute-dell,"
he stammered. "My blind maiden," she answered, calmly. "Who else?" he
asked. "God! thy tone distresses me," said she. "Roquairol killed the
ape that night. Did he meet thee?"
"O horrible murderer! Me?" he cried; "I was travelling all night long;
I was not with thee in any flute-dell." "Speak out, man," cried Linda,
grasping him violently with both hands; "didst thou not write to me of
having given up thy journey, and then didst thou not come?" "No,
nothing like it," said he; "all infernal lies. The dead monster
Roquairol used my voice,--thy eyes,--and so it was,--tell the rest."
"_Jesu Maria!_" screamed she, struck by the dashing flood into which
the black cloud burst, and grasped with both arms through the leafy
branches of the wooded avenue, and pressed them to her, and said
supplicatingly, "Ah, Albano, thou wast certainly with me."
"No, by the Almighty, not! Tell the rest," said he.
"Fly from me forever; I am _his_ widow!" said she, solemnly. "That thou
remainest," said he, severely, and called Justa out of the temple of
dream.
"So it must live on,--thy pain, my pain: I see thee nevermore. I will
say a farewell to thee. Say thou none to me!" said he. She was silent,
and he went. Justa came, and he still heard her praying in the arbor:
"Leave me, O God, this eclipse to-morrow; spare the gloomy widow thy
daylight!" The maiden roused her, took her by the hand, and she
rejoiced, when hanging on her arm, in her night-blindness.
Albano went out into the night. All at once he stood as if he had been
carried up on a jagged, rocky peak, below which dashed a foaming
stream. He turned back and said, "Thou mistakest, evil genius; I loathe
suicide; it is too easy, and belongs to ape-murderers,--but there is
something better, and thou shalt attend me."
He lost himself,--could not find his way to the city,--thought he was
in Lilar again, and ran round anxiously without any way of egress,
until at last he sank exhausted, and as if drawn down into the arms of
slumber. When he awoke in the morning, he was in the Prince's garden,
and the slumber island waved with its tree-tops before him. A jagged
rocky peak over a rushing stream there was not in the whole landscape.
He looked upon the heavens, and the day, and his heart. "Yes, such,
then, is life and love," said he. "A good, true fire-work, especially
when one is to have a Linda after many preparations! Long it stands
there with a gay, high scaffolding, full of statues, with smaller
edifices, columns, and wondrous is it, and promises still more than it
hides and betrays. Then comes the night in Ischia; a spark darts, the
moulds burst, white, shining palaces and pyramids and a hanging city of
the sun hover in heaven,--in the night-air a busy, flying world unfolds
itself majestically between the stars, and fills the eye and the poor
heart, and the happy spirit, itself a fire between heaven and earth,
hovers too,--for the space of a whole instant; then it becomes night
again and a blank waste, and in the morning there stands the
scaffolding dull and black."
132. CYCLE
"War,"--this word alone gave Albano peace; science and poetry only
thrust their flowers into his deep wounds. He made himself ready
for a journey to France. Only one thing still delayed his breaking
up,--Schoppe's non-appearance, whom he with his riddles must await and,
if possible, induce to go away with him. He kept himself in the woods
all day so as to avoid his father and Julienne and everybody. Linda's
unhappy night had sunk deep into his breast, and only he alone saw down
into it, no stranger. He hoped that she herself would keep silent
toward Julienne, because the latter, according to the sacred, womanly
rules of her order, knew no indulgence for this sin. His first jealous
ebullition had now given place to a painful sympathy for the deceived
Linda, whose holy temple had been rifled. What pained him insufferably
was the feeling of humiliation with which the proud fair one must now,
as he imagined, think of him, and which he, with his present bitter
contempt of Roquairol, entertained so much the more strongly. "Never,
never, though she were my sister, can we see each other more; I can
well see her bleeding before me, but not bowed down," he said to
himself. Sometimes there came over him a cold fury against a destiny,
which always swept with a sudden whirlwind through his embraces, and
forced all asunder,--then an indignation against Linda, who had not
acted like a Liana, and who was herself partly guilty of the error of
the substitution by her principle of forgiving love everything,--then
again deep sympathy, since she could not have confounded persons
without any spiritual resemblances, as the secret tribunal of
conscience told him, and since she now alone was atoning for it, that
she was willing to sacrifice herself to him, even to him.
Inexpressibly did he hate the dead seducer, because by his act his
death had become only a cowardly flight. The poor deserter, whose
escape had been reported during the tragedy, he saw led along as a
prisoner before him; but his captain had escaped the hand of vengeance
forever. After some days papers of the dead were put into his hands;
but, full of abhorrence, he could not look on them. They contained
justifications, and at the same time additional sins. Roquairol had,
after the pleasure-night, spent the whole morning in the Prince's
garden writing, in order to color the remembrance, which alone (so he
wrote) had rewarded and satisfied him, that he had not that very night
played out the fifth act of the drama of life.
The Lector delivered in Albano's absence short letters from Julienne,
wherein she begged him to make his appearance, and appointed him place
and time at the castle, whither she had gone from Lilar. He went not.
Sometimes it seemed to him as if distant men tracking him stole round
him in wide circles.
Once at evening he was still standing at the foot of a woody hill, when
he espied overhead a wolf stalk out of the thicket; the wolf saw him,
sprang down upon him, and changed into Schoppe's wolf-dog. Soon his
friend himself, with an old man, stepped out from the trees above, saw
him, hurriedly gave the man money, and came down to him slower than he
went up to him. "Ah, a good evening, Albano," said Schoppe, with the
old coldness with which he spoke, when he did not write, and smiled at
the same time with so many lines and wrinkles that he appeared to
Albano altogether strange. Albano pressed him tightly to his heart, and
transformed the hot words which his friend did not love into hot tears.
It was an old star out of the spring morning when his Liana still lived
and loved; it had gone down before him on a grave in that night of his
journey; now it rose, and Albano was again unhappy.
Schoppe surveyed with visible complacency Albano's ripened form, and
drew asunder, as it were, the young man's shining wings. "Thou hast,"
said he, "spread out and colored thyself right well,--hast May and
August on one bough, like an orange-tree." Albano took no pleasure in
this. "Only relate to me thy life, my brother," said he. "Thou shouldst
tell thine first, methinks; I am tired even to stupidity," said
Schoppe, seating himself and unbuckling his hunting-pouch. "Hereafter,"
replied Albano, "what thou hast occasion for I will tell thee. I got
thy letters,--I really loved the well-known one,--a misfortune divided
us,--I am innocent and she is great;--O God, be satisfied with this for
to-day!" Never could he complain of misfortunes to his friends; still
less now expose the misery of a beloved. "And still longer," replied
Schoppe; "only say, does it add new misery if I bring with me from
Spain and proceed to unpack proofs of your being related as brother and
sister?" "No," said Albano, "I need tremble at no past." "Thou art
still going to France?" asked Schoppe. "To-morrow, if thou wilt go
too," replied Albano.
"By all means, as thy regiment chaplaincy. Not for want of the spirit
of art, as thou writest from Rome, but from a superfluity of it, thou
goest among soldiers. I should see it with pleasure, if thou wert to
consider that even Dante, Cæsar, Cervantes, Horace, served before they
wrote so preciously,--only students invert it, and compose something
short and sweet, and take up service afterward. To come to my
travels,--it costs me much, namely, time, merely to tell thee that I
caught thy absurd uncle with a carriage full of baggage in the little
nest of _Ondres_, a post and a half from Bayonne. I owned to him
I was going to Valencia to dissect the silk-stocking-weavers' looms
in that place, to enjoy, at the same time, my drop of ice and a
waistcoat-pocket full of Valencia almonds, and to visit the few
professors who had produced the best compends for three thousand
reals.[134] He should certainly arrive before me, he said. We arranged
to put up at the same inn in Valencia. I found my account in him, as he
could most easily introduce me to Romeiro's house. But I waited and
watched there for him fourteen days in vain. With the steward of the
house I found no hearing, although I cut out his stupid profile five
times, with the request that he would unlock to a travelling painter
the picture cabinet, where I wished to find the maternal picture of the
Countess.
"Now was I half and half resolved to become pregnant, and in this guise
to demand everything for my satisfaction, which even the Spanish King
refuses to no pregnant woman.[135] In Italy they carry the child on the
arm, in order to beg; in Spain it needs not so much as this
visibleness. But fortunately thy uncle came. The picture-gallery door
was thrown open. I set myself to copying a stupid kitchen-piece, and
looked everywhere after my island portrait. But nothing was to be
seen." (Here he drew a wooden case out of his hunting-bag, and
laid it before him and went on.) "Until at last I saw it,--a picture
leaned on the floor against the wall, turning toward me its back- and
wintry-side,--it was the child of my pencil, and I was touched by the
neglect it had suffered,--inwardly vexed, but outwardly calm, I put it
by,--and snapped off short in the kitchen-piece in the middle of a
half-finished pole-cat. Look at the likeness!"
He took off the box-cover, and Linda beamed upon his friend with a
stream of mind and charms, only dressed in older fashion. Albano could
scarcely stammer for emotion. "That were my father's spouse and my dear
mother? And thou knowest assuredly that this picture here is the one
you made of her on Isola Bella?"
"I'll just make it manifest," said he, and scoured away at a rose in
the picture about the region of the heart. "My then Paphos-name
_Loewenskiould_ lies _sub rosa_ and will be immediately forthcoming.
Had I already scraped it open on the road, then you would have believed
I had on the road for the first written myself in." As from a ghostly
writing hand Albano started back shuddering, when actually an L and an
Ö came forth from under the rose: "I shall clear away no further now,"
said Schoppe, "the rest I keep for her." Albano now poured out his
heart before his honest heart's-friend; to him he could say and object
that Julienne was his sister,--"against which I have nothing at all to
say," said Schoppe,--and that Gaspard had approved an intended marriage
between him and Linda. "There is no getting away from it," he added;
"if she is his daughter, then I am not his son,--I cannot possibly make
his sacred word of honor a lie--and, God! into what a monstrous pit and
pool of crime must one then look down!" "Touching the word and the
pool," said Schoppe, quite coldly, "there are specious proofs to be
adduced (although, to be sure, I have before this spoken superfluously
on the subject with thy father, and with the Countess), that
the Baldhead, who, as he confessed to me, has been thy father's
mass-assistant, groomsman, and bear-leader, was not a man of the
freshest morals, but that he--although otherwise upright in many
saddles _except_ the moral--had his hours and centuries when he acted
as such a dog and highwayman, that my hound there is a calendar-saint
and father of the Church to him. Only I ought not to have blown out the
lamp of his life, which of course stank more than it shone."
Albano could not disguise from him his horror at the deed. "I cannot
repent it; listen," said Schoppe, and gave this account: "Even in
Valencia thy uncle told me that he had met in Madrid such and such a
fellow,--exactly like the Baldhead,--who carried round for show a
wax-figure-cabinet of nothing but crazy creatures; often the whole
cabinet would speak, and he himself would sit therein too, and help
discourse; thy superstitious uncle procured and lent him spirits, too,
and made evil and frightful things out of it all.
"Once in a _Posada_[136] I heard in a sleeping chamber near mine all
sorts of voices murmuring through each other and saying, 'Schoppe also
is coming to us.' I rose; the strange chamber was shut. I listen and
hear it again, the devilish cry, 'Schoppe comes in also.' My room had a
balcony out of which I could, through the neighboring window, see by
the moonlight into the noisy chamber. In horrible, frizzled shapes
sat a mass of wax therein and spake, the waxen baldhead in the midst;
but I sought the living one. The wax beasts exchange with one another
their fixed ideas and slip me in among them: 'There is our honorary
fellow-member peeping in,' said the wax baldhead. By Heaven! I must be
short, my blood boils and burns again through my heart. I grow furious,
take my weapon, and petition God for a peaceable, forbearing
disposition. Unfortunately I observe, in a back corner not lighted by
the moon, near a father of death and a pregnant woman of wax, a black
cloak which stirs, and out of which peeps the living tone-leader, the
Baldhead. 'Black master of ventriloquism,' cried I, 'hold thy tongue
for God's sake; I see thee behind there and fire in.' I took it for
ventriloquism.
"Now for the first time the crazy-house properly began; I heard it
laugh,--call me in and dub me a comrade and member of the club.
'_Presses_,' said I, 'I am notoriously a man, and see thee quite
distinctly.' It availed nothing; the waxen baldhead so much the more
replied, 'Yes, there sits brother Schoppe already,' and I actually saw
myself also embossed and modelled on the spot. 'He is to be had here
also,' cried I, grimly, and fired away at the master of the lodge, who
tumbled bleeding to the floor.
"I made off with myself in the same hour. As to the uncle, I came
across his track afterward for a short time. He dreads madmen, and
would not have me long with him, for fear I myself should strike up a
bargain with the aforesaid set. He asked me whether the director of the
wax-figure travelling madhouse had encountered me. I could not place
much confidence in him; I have the secret alone."
"Thou art a wild, true man," said Albano, with such an intense desire
to embrace him; "thou dost much for others, and art, after all, much
for thyself. I can now leave thee no more. My former life-island, with
all its flowers, lies deep under water, and I must cast myself into the
infinite sea of the world. Give me thy hand, and swim with me. We
travel to-morrow to France."
"To-morrow?" said Schoppe. "Well, yes! then I go this evening to the
Countess, and then to Don Cesara." "Tell her," begged Albano, "that I
would not visit her even as a brother, if I were such, not from
coldness, but because I revere her great spirit; say that to her, and
God help thee!" Albano was about to go, and leave him to wander alone
into the neighboring Lilar. "No, accompany me, my master," said
Schoppe, vehemently; "I have discharged the old churl over there
in the woods by fair payment of escort-money, and should now be alone
_vis-à-vis de moi_." "I do not understand thee," said Albano; "what art
thou afraid of?" "Albano," said he, in a low and important tone, and
his generally direct looks glanced shyly sidewise, and innumerable
great wrinkles encircled his smiling mouth, "the 'I' might come; yes,
yes!"
Wondering, and asking who that might be, Albano looked into his face.
"Plague take it!" said Schoppe; "I apprehend you full well; you hold me
to be not one eighth as rational as yourself, but mad. Wolf, come up!
Thou, beast, wast frequently, on lonely roads and lanes, my exorcist
and devil-catcher, against the 'I.' Sir, he who has read Fichte,
and his vicar-general and brain-servant Schelling, out of sport as
often as I, will make serious work enough out of it at last. The thing
called 'I' presupposes itself, and the person called 'I,' together with
that remainder which most call the world. When philosophers deduce
anything--for example, an idea or themselves--out of themselves, so do
they also deduce whatever else there is about them--the remaining
universe--in the same manner. They are exactly that drunken churl who
made water into a fountain, and stood there all night before it,
because he heard no cessation, and of course set down all the
subsequent continuing sound to his own account. The 'I' conceives
itself; it is therefore ob-subject, and at the same time the
residing-place of both. Gadzooks! there is an empiric and a pure 'I.'
The last phrase which the crazy Swift, according to Sheridan and
Oxford, uttered, shortly before his death, was, 'I am I.' Philosophical
enough!"
"And what fearful conclusion dost thou draw from it all?" said Albano,
with the deepest sorrow. "I can bear anything and everything," said
Schoppe, "only not the _me_,--the pure, intellectual _me_,--the god of
gods. How often have I not already changed my name, like my namesake
and cousin in renown, _Scioppius_, or _Schoppe_, and become every year
another person! but still the pure 'I' perceptibly runs after me and
besets me. One sees this best on journeys, when one looks at one's
legs, and sees them stride along, and then asks, Who in the world is
that marching along so with me down below there? I tell you he is
eternally talking with me; if he were once to start up in bodily
presence before me, I should not be the last to grow weak and deadly
pale. To be sure, no dog has occasion to use tooth-powder; but children
one should paint up, it stands to reason and propriety. For my part, I
have observed the age so so, and smile, because I say nothing. Men,
like napkins, are broken up into the finest and greatest variety of
forms,--into night-caps, pyramids, cross-bills--zounds, Albano! into
what shape are they not folded? But the consequence, brother,--O
heavens, the consequence! I say nothing: curse it, I am still as a
mouse,--few as much so; but times may come when a gentleman shall haply
remark, Men and music-notes, music-notes and men; short and sweet and
plain, with both it is now heads up, now tails,--that is to say, when
it has to go quick. These are similes, I am well aware, best friend;
but the bakers announce a slack batch by a stony or clayey one in the
shop, whereas men announce their hardest things, among which belongs
the heart, by their softest, to which appertain words."
Speechless with astonishment at these effusions, Albano led him by the
hand to Lilar before Linda's residence. All was dark therein; not a
light was stirring. "Speak thy word softly up there, my Schoppe, and
to-morrow we journey farther!" said Albano below, in a soft tone at
parting, and left him to go up alone into the gloomy castle of
mourning. "What a meeting!" said Albano, on his way back through the
garden.
133. CYCLE.
Long did Albano wait for his friend on the following day; no one
appeared, no man knew anything of him. On the second morning a report
got wind that the Countess in the night, and Gaspard in the morning,
had travelled off. "Has Schoppe driven both away by the truth?" he
asked himself, forsaken and alone. In vain did he try to track Schoppe
for several days after; not once had he been seen. "Thou, too, dear
Schoppe!" said he, and shuddered at the barbarity of fate toward
himself. As he thus surveyed himself, and looked out over the still,
dark waste of his life, all at once it seemed to him as if his life
suddenly lighted up, and a sun-glance fell upon the whole liquid mirror
of the dark time which had elapsed. A voice, spake within him: "What
has there been then? Men, dreams, blue days, black nights, have flown
hither without me, without me flown away again, like the flitting
summer, which the hand of man can neither weave nor hold fast. What is
there left? A wide woe over the whole heart; but the heart, too,
remains,--empty, of course, but firm, sound, hot. Loved ones are lost,
not love itself; the blossoms are fallen, not the branches. Verily, I
still wish; I still will; the past has not stolen from me the future.
Arms I still have to embrace withal, and a hand to lay upon the sword,
and an eye to survey the world. But what has gone down will come again,
and flee again, and only that will remain true to thee which is
forsaken,--thyself alone. Freedom is the glad eternity; calamity is for
the slave the breaking out of a fire in the prison. No; I will _be_,
not _have_. What! can the holy storm of tones only stir a particle of
dust, while the rude, agitated air displaces mountains of ashes? Only
where like tones and strings and hearts dwell, there do they move
softly and invisibly. Only sound on, then, sacred string-music of the
heart, but wish not to change anything in the rough, hard world, which
owns and obeys only the winds, not tones."
At this moment, he was found by the Lector Augusti, who brought, by
word of mouth, instant entreaties from the Princesse Julienne to go
with him to Gaspard's chamber, where she had the weightiest words to
say to him about Schoppe. He complied readily; he expected, first and
chiefly, to find with her a key to his Schoppe's covered fate; he saw,
too, from the bold choice of a messenger, how important to his poor
sister his appearance must be.
In Gaspard's apartment Augusti suddenly left him to announce him,
and--leave him, alone. Through his life rolled now a slow thunder;
whether it came from heaven, from a stream, or only from a mill, as yet
he knew not. Julienne burst in, weeping, unable to speak for the
violent beating of her heart. "Thou art going away?" asked she. "Yes!"
said he, and besought her to be less passionate; for he knew how easily
another's impetuosity set him on fire, as he could not even play chess
or fence, for any length of time, without becoming angry. She entreated
him still more passionately only to stay till Gaspard came back. "Is he
coming back?" asked Albano. "How otherwise? But not the unworthy
bride," said she. "Julienne," replied he, seriously, "O, be not as hard
against her as fate has been, and let me be silent!" "I hate now all
men, and thee, too," said she. "That comes of your poetical souls. O,
what honest bride would have let herself so easily be blinded by such a
suicide? Who? But I see thou dost not know all." "But is it of any
use?" he asked.
Surprised at this question, she began without reply the narration:--
On the day when Albano found Schoppe, Julienne would fain visit again
her friend Linda whom she had not seen since the evening of the
tragedy. All apartments in Lilar were closely curtained against
daylight. Julienne found her sitting in darkness, with downcast,
half-open eyelids, outwardly very tranquil, only at long intervals a
little tear stole out from her eyes. The sweeping stream went high over
the wheels of her life and they stood far under it and still. "Is it
thou, Julienne?" she said, softly. "Pardon the darkness; night is green
now, to my eyes. It pains me to see anything." The bridal torch of her
existence was quenched; she wished now night for night.
Julienne put anxious questions of astonishment; she gave no answer to
them. "Is there any trouble between thee and my brother?" asked
Julienne, in whom relationship always created a warmer concern than
friendship. "Only wait for the Knight," answered she; "I have sent an
entreaty to him to come hither."
Just at that moment he entered. She begged him to accommodate himself
to this short night. After some silence, she rose proudly from her
seat; her black-dressed, tall form raised, in the presence of the
Knight, whom she saw not, its great eyes to heaven, her proud life,
hitherto enveloped in the winding-sheet, flung back the cloth and rose,
blooming, from the dead, and she addressed the Knight: "Respected
Gaspard, you promised me, as also did my father, that he would appear
to me on my marriage day. The day is gone by. I am a widow: now let him
appear to me."
Here the Knight interrupted her: "Gone by? O quite right! Is he, then,
anything more discreet and moral than a man?" and jested, contrary to
his usual manner, with a glow of indignation, because he supposed it
was of Albano, whom he had so long trusted, that she was speaking.
"You misunderstand me," said Linda; "I speak of a deceased one."
Suddenly before Julienne Roquairol's shadow passed; distant according
tones from the Princess had ushered it in. "Almighty God!" she
screamed, "the cursed suicide's play is true?" "He played what actually
occurred," said Linda calmly. "We separate. I travel. I desire nothing
but my father." Here Gaspard held out toward the Countess an arm
petrified by palsy, as if armed with a drawn dagger,--the darkness made
the apparition blacker and wilder,--but he broke the ice of death
asunder again with cold hands, and stirred and answered with lamed
tongue: "God and the Devil! Thy father is at hand. He will take it
all--as it is. Does _he_ know it?" "Who?" asked Linda. "And what did he
determine? Heavens! I mean Albano." Gaspard had, in a passion, at once
Cromwell's imbecility of tongue and ingenuity of action; and remained
therefore as averse and as far from every ebullition, even of love, as
from tameness, which was to him (as he said) "even more odious than
downright crime."
"I know not," said Linda. "I belong to the dead one alone, who has
twice died for me. Say that to my father. O, I would have followed him
long ago, the monster, into the deep realm; I would not stand here
before the cold reproach of malice or Christian amazement, for there
are still daggers to be used against life!--But I am a _mother_, and
therefore I live!"
"I will see you again this evening," said Gaspard composedly, and
hurried away. "I believe, dear Julienne," said Linda, "we now no longer
quite understand each other, at least not to the highest point, just as
we earlier differed about your _belle-sœur_, and you thought her
coquetry, but I precisely her prudery, great and immoral." "That may
well be true," said Julienne, coldly; "you are so truly poetic,
I am so prosaic and old-maidishly pious and orthodox. To love a
monster for this, because he cheats me as horribly as he does his
regiment-treasury, or because he generally allows himself as much
freedom as his regiment, or because after his death he still leaves
parts for the remaining players, or letters to me, deceived one--" "Did
he so?" asked Albano. "She praised it even as a sign of genius in him,"
replied Julienne. "To love such a one, said I, or such people as love
him, I cannot find it in my heart to do that. Fare you then as well as
may be." Linda answered, "I hate all wishes"; gave her her hand,
pressed not hers, and remained in profound silence, looking into her
night. She knew little of the easy and careless departure of her lost
friend.
That same night Linda, after a long private talk with the Knight,
travelled off entirely alone, wrapped in her veil, in a carriage
without torches, and no one knew whether she had wept or not.--
When Albano had heard his sister out, he said, with a soft voice of
emotion: "Make peace with the past; man cannot assail it. Leave to the
great unhappy one the night into which she of herself has been drawn.
But why were you so eager to have me with you? Particularly if thou
knowest aught of my Schoppe, I entreat thee to impart it." "I will
answer thee," said she, weeping and wondering; "but, brother, assure me
that thy silence is not again the curtain of a new misfortune. I
recognize you men by that, one must hate you all, and I do so, too." "I
have nothing sad in my mind; before God I affirm it. You women, you who
will only quench your hell with tears, and kindle it with the breath of
sighs, comprehend not, that often a single hour's thinking can give a
man a staff or wings, which shall lift him at once out of hell, and
then it may burn on for all him." "Show me, then," said she, in a
tearfully comic manner, "_thy_ wing." "This," replied he, "that I build
not upon man, but upon God in me and above me. The foreign ivy winds
around us, runs up on us, stands as a second summit beside ours, and it
is thereby withered. Spirits should grow beside each other, not upon
each other. We should, like God, as imperishable ones, love the
perishable."
"Very good," said she, "if it only insures thee peace. As touching thy
poor Schoppe, he has been thrust into the madhouse by way of
punishment; but first let me give you a regular account. He dressed up
a story about a second sister of thine before thy already so much
excited father. One could have let this new distraction of intellect
pass; but thy uncle was called, who told him to his face he had
murdered the Baldhead; and the choice was haughtily left him between
imprisonment and the madhouse; so he betook himself to the latter.
Stay, stay! The weightiest is to come. Whatever I may think of him, I
see he is thy honest friend; and to speak out freely, even Linda,
before her departure, inserted in her last letter to me an intercession
for him. He not only made the farcical journey to Spain for thee, he
also effected thy cure; perhaps thou owest him thy life. I wonder that
I, or somebody or other, has never before mentioned it to thee."
She began now upon Idoine's sound and generous character, her Arcadia,
and the last day she had spent with her and looked into her clear soul.
She passed on to his bed of fever and his mourning beside Liana's bier,
and old Schoppe's talks and runnings to and fro, and his noble victory,
when he had brought at length the glorified Liana, in Idoine's form,
before his eye, that she might pronounce the healing words: "Have
peace!"
Now was he in a storm, and Julienne at peace. "Therefore," she
continued, "I hold it to be my duty to interest myself a little in thy
friend. The poor devil is innocent,--through stingings of conscience
and even by his present situation he may completely lose what
understanding he still has,--altogether innocent, I say; for thy uncle,
whom I have long hated, and who only a short time ago for the first
time, but in vain, sought to come as a ghostly and murderous apparition
to my sick brother,--he would also have probably done the same with
Liana, if she had lived to admit of it,--this man is--(why may I not
make it notorious, now that all has changed and revolutionized
itself?)--one and the selfsame person with the Baldhead, and is a
ventriloquist! Brother?"
But Albano had already flown from her.
134. CYCLE.
Albano would fain set his friend free before avenging him; therefore he
would hasten first to Schoppe and then to his uncle. But as he passed
by the lighted apartments of the latter, a sudden indignation seized
him, and he must needs go up. The tall, haggard uncle came slowly to
meet the excited youth, with the jay on his hand. Albano, without any
circumstances, with flaming eyes, charged him with his double part, his
heaven-crying destruction of Schoppe, and the illusory operations
against himself, and demanded answer and satisfaction. "Yes, yes," said
the Spaniard, stroking his _diablesse_; "I have the pistols: I have no
time,--no time for talking." "You must have it," said Albano. "I have
none, _Deo patre et filio et spiritu sancto testibus_; it will soon be
between eleven and twelve, and the gloomy one stands here." "Heavens!
why this silly, tragic scenery? O God, is it not possible, then, that
you are even a man,"--looking with horror at the skin of his face,
which absolutely could not look joyful or loving,--"so that you can
tremble, blush, repent, exult? What knew you of my Schoppe, when you
once in Ratto's cellar made believe as if you knew a frightful deed of
his?" "No one needs know anything," he replied; "one says to a man, 'I
am acquainted with thy villanous deed'; the man sends his thoughts
back, he finds such a one." "But what had he done to you?" asked
Albano, with agitation. Dryly he replied, "He said to me, 'Thou hound!'
It strikes eleven o'clock; I say nothing more than what I will."
Here the Spaniard brought two pistols and a bag, showed him that they
were not loaded, asked him to load one (giving him powder and lead),
but not the other. "Into the bag, each into the bag," said he; "we draw
lots!" The bolder, the better, thought Albano. The Spaniard shook both
up, and requested Albano to tread upon one of them, as a sign of his
choice. He did so. "We shoot at the same time," said the uncle, "as
soon as it has struck the two quarters." "No," said Albano, "you fire
at the first stroke, I at the second." "Why not?" replied he.
They posted themselves over against each other in opposite corners of
the chamber, with the pistols in their hands, awaiting the stroke of
half past eleven. The Spaniard closed his eyes in dumb listening. As
Albano looked into this blind, bust-like face, it seemed to him as if
no sin at all could be committed upon such a being, least of all a
death-stroke. Suddenly there was a murmuring in the still chamber of
five voices among each other, as if they came from the old
philosophers' busts on the walls; the father of death, the Baldhead,
the jay seemed to speak, and an unknown voice, as if it were the
so-called Gloomy One. They said to one another, "Gloomy One, is it not
so, have I told any falsehood? I bring five tears, but cold ones,--I
bear the wheels of the hearse on my head,--I lead the panther by the
noose,--I cut him free,--I point with white finger at _him_,--I bring
the mist,--I bring the coldest frost,--I bring the terrible thing!"
Here the bell sounded the first stroke, and the Spaniard fired,--at
the second Albano blazed away;--both stood there without a wound;
powder-smoke floated round, but nowhere was there any appearance of a
splintering, as if the ball had been only a glass ball filled with
quicksilver. With grim contempt, Albano looked at him on account of the
previous voices. "I was forced to," said the uncle.
Suddenly the Lector broke in, breathless, whom Julienne had despatched
to hinder a probable duel. "Count!" he stammered, "has anything
happened?" "Something," replied the uncle, "must have happened in the
neighborhood, the smoke came in; we were just on the point of embracing
and bidding each other good night." He rang, and commanded the servant
to ask the host who was firing so late at night. Albano was astounded,
and could only say in parting, "So be it! But fear the madman, whom I
unchain!" "Ah, do it not!" said the Spaniard, and seemed to fear.
Augusti waited upon him down to the street, nor did he let him go till
after he had given his word of honor not to go up there again. But
Albano flew, even at this late hour of the night, to the house of woe
and to the tormented heart.
135. CYCLE.
Hardly had Albano made known to the overseer of the madhouse, a young,
sleek, rosy little man, his name, which the little man already knew,
and his petition for Schoppe's liberty, together with his security for
him, when the overseer smiled upon him with uncommon complacency, and
said, "I have quietly watched the whole house for years. I seize
greedily the minutest traits for a future, philosophical public; and so
also did I apply myself very seriously to Mr. Schoppe. But never, Sir
Count, never have I detected in him a trait or trick which would have
promised insanity; on the contrary, he reads all my English and German
works on the subject, and converses with me upon the modes of treatment
in hospitals for the insane. A disciple of Fichte he may be (I infer it
from his 'I'), and a humorist, too; now if each of these is, of itself,
hard to distinguish from craziness, how much more their union! with
what joyful anticipation of the coincidence of our observations I give
you here the key to his chamber, conceive for yourself!" "If he
is not a fool," said his wife, "why then does he smash all the
looking-glasses?" "For that very reason," replied the overseer; "but if
he is a fool, then is thy husband a still greater."
Never did Albano open a door with heavier heart than this to Schoppe's
little chamber. "I am come to take thee away, my brother," he cried
immediately, by way of sparing himself and him the redness of shame.
But when he looked at the old lion more nearly, he found him in this
trap quite altered,--not tame, creeping, wagging, but broken in two,
and with shattered claws weighed down to the earth. The charge of
murder, which he had honestly admitted, united to Gaspard's unmerciful
sentence, had filled and eaten up his proud, free breast with poisonous
shame. "I fare well here, only I feel symptoms of ill health," said
Schoppe, with lustreless eye and toneless voice. Albano could not hide
his tears; he clung around the sick man, and said, "Magnanimous man,
thou gavest me once in my sickness, health and salvation again, and I
knew it not, and thanked thee not. Go with me; I must nurse thee in
this thy sickness, heal and comfort thee as I can; then we travel."
"Dost thou imagine, my Criton," he replied, strengthened by the balsam
of his wounded pride, "that I am not a sort of Socrates, but will
really go out of my _torre del filosopho_? A word of _honor_ is a thick
chain." "Tell me all, spare no one; but I will tell thee thereafter a
piece of news, at which thy chain shall instantly melt down!" said
Albano.
"Ha! Meanwhile, this place here, for its part, is well enough, as
aforesaid, a _torre del filosopho, quai de Voltaire_, and Shakespeare's
street, and whatever else one might, could, would, or should name.
Moreover, I always hear by night one or another man speak close by me,
and so I have no fear at all that the 'I' will come. I throw every day
five little bread-balls: if they form a cross, then it signifies (think
what thou wilt) that I do not yet appear to myself. But they always
make one. I have been, in this Anticyra here, so quieted about so many
a phantom, even by those books,--look at them, nothing but treatises on
madness,--that I, although it touches my Mordian[137] quite as little
as it does me, am glad to have been here. My intercourse is not the
safest, I own, though I talk with the keeper and wife alone (a rhyme),
both of whom cleverly understand the prison-fever that prevails here.
The man has got the fixed idea into his head, and his wife thereby into
hers, that he is our present overseer, and has to assist, oversee, and
read excellent books which fall in with his office. Those treatises are
by the fool. It is to be presumed he has let his overseeing idea peep
out too broadly in the city, and the medical college clapped him in
with his serviceable idea; because, in the end, to be sure, every
overseer must have it in order to exercise his office, whether he is
mad or not. Amongst all here in the house, we two please each other
most. He sounded me to my advantage, and I can make great use of him
for my liberty, only I must not attack his foul, fixed spot. Only I
often improvisate for them an evening blessing,--because they have no
prayer-book,--and weave in with the blessing hints which might be of
medical service to the pair, if they chose. So we two wander round in
the mazes of this labyrinth along before the patients,--behind him, the
incurable hub of the whole wheel, I walk quite tolerant. In the club,
universal polemics and scepticism reign as in no other university hall.
'It is a thing to make one become crazy,' he says to me, in a low tone.
'To make one _be_ crazy,[138] they say in this _palais d'égalité_,' I
reply. I cut him out the profiles of the patients for his manuscript.
As children still have something which appears to them childish, so
have madmen something which seems even to them madness. But I never
become any more pointed with him, and keep sharper jokes to myself. Ah,
what is man, especially a discreet one, and how thin are his sticks and
staves! Is there anything about me that moves thee, Albano? My dull,
pale face, perhaps?"
But Albano could not possibly confess to him, that this wreck of a
noble man, with his delusions, and even with his style, whose wings had
also wheels on them, brought the tears into his eyes, but he said
merely, "Ah, I think of many things, but now, at last, I pray, to thy
story, dear friend!" But Schoppe had already forgotten again what he
was to tell. Albano named the issue of the portrait-affair with the
Countess, and Schoppe began:--
"The Princess Julienne was just jumping into her carriage, when I led
the blind maiden up the steps, to let it be said, the Librarian Schoppe
was here from Spain. I was ushered into a darkened apartment, wherein I
walked quietly up and down waiting or watching for people, until the
Countess greeted me out of the gloom 'This darkness,' said I, 'is just
what I like for the light which I have to give, only I would rather
speak Irish or Lettonian[139] or Spanish, because I don't know who may
be eavesdropping about here.' 'Spanish!' said she, seriously. I related
to her how I had known thy mother, and painted her, and so forth, and
inserted my name indelibly into the likeness; after a long time, had
met her in the market-place of this city, and taken her for the
looking-glass image of thy mother, so like was she to her own. 'I know
not,' said she, breaking in here with heated pride upon the midst of my
narrative, 'how far your secrets can become mine.' 'You may,' said I,
seriously, 'by letting me ring for a light; for I hold here in my hand
the portrait of the Frau von Cesara and von Romeiro, two names of one
person.' She comprehended nothing of it, wanted to know nothing of it,
and I must not ring. I acknowledged to her that I saw myself
necessitated to adorn myself with the rhetorical chessman, generally
called repetition of the narrative, and proceeded to move the piece.
But as soon as in so doing I came upon thy name again, she said I had
probably in my mind relations now entirely done away. 'No,' said I, 'I
have an eternal and restored relation in my mind, and bring with me his
greeting, full of the most profound regard.' The greeting seemed to
touch her sensibilities, just as if one held her to be in need of such
an assurance, and she begged me rather to leave thee out. 'Heavens! he
is your brother, and here I have about me the portrait of your mother,
stolen from Valencia, and only no light to show it by.'
"Light was then ordered. As the flame set the tall, imposing form in
gold, I said right out to myself, she was fully as deserving as her
brother that one should make that long pilgrimage to the family tree of
both, for she is not without her charms. Albano, were I her brother, as
thou hast the honor to be, and had she a gondola, but no river of
paradise for it, my blood would have to be made navigable for her; I
would bear her up not only in my hands, but, like an æquilibrist, on my
nose and mouth, the unfortunate one! She no sooner saw the portrait
than she cried, 'Mother, mother!' and kept passing her hand over her
eyes, complaining that they were now still worse than ever. I resumed
my scraping, and at last dug out before her eyes my whole name,
_Loewenskiould_, even with the addition, which had escaped me, 'Loves
much.'
"'Was that the painter's name?' she asked. 'Are you he? You loved her
too?' 'Beauty is a cliff,' replied I, seriously, 'on which one and
another man seeks to shipwreck himself, because it lies full of pearls
and oysters.' She begged of me, in a friendly manner, the most distinct
repetition of the repetition; she wished to attend better; hearing and
thinking were as hard and heavy for her now as living. Albano, you
should have despatched me to her with more preparatory information. As
it was, I was half confused and cloudy, and when, during my picture of
the Long Lake Isle,[140] something moist sprang from her eyes, I sank
in the drops, and almost drowned therein, and not till after some time
could I rub myself to life. At the end of my discourse, she stood up,
folded her hands, and prayed, with weeping, as if she gave thanks: 'O
God, O God! thou hast spared me!'--which I, after all, do not wholly
understand."
Albano understood it well,--namely, that she thanked fate for the
accidental delay of Schoppe's arrival, which had spared her the short
but fearful transformation of Roquairol into a brother.
"Thereupon she broke out into too many thanks to the painter, robbers
and purveyors of the painted birth-certificate. He whose heart has gone
to sleep like an arm, and is feelingless and hard to move, finds a
something very droll run through and over the awaking member when he
stirs it. 'I could not do less,' said I, 'for your holy brother; the
sunny side is, then, the moon-side.' She turned suddenly to the subject
of thy father, and asked, as he was immediately coming, whether she or
I should propose to him these riddles. 'Or rather both!' I had hardly
replied, when he stepped wildly in.
"Now, Gaspard is, to be sure and decidedly, thy own and thy sister's
natural father, and filial love toward him is never to be set down
against _thee_ as a fault; but if I chose to tell thee he was no bear,
no rhinoceros, no werewolf or other kind of wolf, I should do it more
from singular politeness than from any other cause. He snorted to me a
good evening; so did I to him. Many men resemble glass,--smooth and
slippery and flat so long as one does not break them, but _then_
cursedly cutting, and every splinter stings. The matter was laid before
him with the accompanying frontispiece of the portrait. Wert thou more
distantly related to him, I would let myself out on this subject; for
his face was overspread with the northern light of grim fury; out of
his eyes yellow wasps flew at me; straight lines shot up on his
tempestuous brow like electrical lances, particularly two perpendicular
lines of discomfort. But, as was said, thou art, to my knowledge, his
son. 'My friend,' he thundered away, 'with what _right_ do you steal
pictures, then?' 'That ought to be a hard question for me to answer,'
replied I, gently; 'but I have an _inability_ to look at an unrighteous
deception; I march right in.' 'Countess,' said he, gasping, 'in three
minutes you shall know this _gentleman_ well enough.' O no, no! he used
another word than _gentleman_, but I will one day clasp him to my
breast for it, and though we stood on the highest steps of God's
throne, and wrestled in the glory." "Schoppe!" said Albano. "Don't
excite me!" replied Schoppe, and went on.
"He rang; a servant flew in with a card; we all were silent.
'Indulgence, Countess,' said he, 'only for the space of one minute.' He
thereupon gave her some miserable court-news, but she looked silently
on the ground. Then came thy tall uncle, nodded sixteen times with his
little head, for that he takes to be an obeisance, and stepped far off
from me. 'Brother, simply say, what has this gentleman here done back
of Valencia?' 'Murdered, murdered!' said he, rapidly. 'Under what
circumstances?' asked thy father. Here he began to depose the minutest
particulars of my shot of distress at the Baldhead with such an
incomprehensible sharpness that I said, 'That is true!' and went on
myself, and kept asking, 'Is it not so?' and he hurriedly nodded, till
I had come to the end. Then I asked, 'But, Spaniard, tell me, by
Heaven! whence have _you_, then, derived this knowledge?' 'From me!'
answered a strange, hollow voice, exactly like the Baldhead's.
"My heart grew cold as a dog's nose, and my tongue full of stone.
'As _convictus_ and _confessus_,' began thy father, 'you can now
prophesy your fate.' 'To be sure,' murmured the uncle, pulling out and
putting back his handkerchief, taking the picture up and laying it
away,--'prophesy, prophesy!' 'Meanwhile,' thy father continued, 'it is
freely left with you whether you will, until a nearer investigation,
choose, instead of the prison, which belongs to you in consideration of
the murder and theft, a milder place, the madhouse, which befits you in
consideration of your journey; if you do not choose, then I choose for
you.' 'To the madhouse, to the madhouse!' cried I, 'for the sake of
true sociability, on my honor. But I make no questions about anything;
on the washing-bill of my conscience stands no murder. Do you only burn
yourselves white and clean. Your chariot of the sun and triumphal car
goes up to the very hub in dung. Countess, let, I pray, everything be
cleared up by you in the best manner, and think unceasingly of me, in
order to get a father, like the students' father of his country, to be
sure, who consists in a hole through the hat.'[141] 'Step farther
back!' said thy father to thy uncle, 'the madness is broken out.' Upon
that the hare made eighteen springs down over thresholds and steps. I
executed my own orders of march and halt. Thy father still crawled
after me with a licking, flamy look. I charged my eye with poison, and
saw him, down below at the door, fall headlong at the stroke."
Albano shuddered, and inquired about the how. Then Schoppe was silent,
buried in thought, for a long time, and said, in a troubled tone,
"That, to be sure, was only a dream of mine; but so do I now confound
dream with reality, and the reverse. I ought to be more moved about
Schoppe; he is, after all, an old man, and old men weep like the
jester, when it goes down hill." "I will comfort thee now, my friend,"
said Albano, with distracted breast; "I will remove an error from thy
faithful heart, and then thou wilt certainly go with me. This Baldhead,
our mocker and juggler, is, according to the holy word of my sister,
one and the same person with my uncle, and is a ventriloquist."
Schoppe stood for a long time like one dead, as if he had not heard a
word. Suddenly, with radiant face and sparkling eye, he threw himself
on his knee, and stammered, "Heaven, Heaven! make me mad! The rest I
will do." Here he made a wicked neck-wringing motion with his hands,
and said, in a tone of restored strength, "I can follow thee." He
really could now, but before he had hardly been able to stand. And so
Albano led the unhappy, excited friend with heavy heart to his own
lodgings.
136. CYCLE.
Albano now left no stone unturned which friendship could lift, for the
sake of setting the noble patient to rights again, and renewing his
youth, inwardly and outwardly. Especially did he seek to set up again
the bridge over which all his strings were drawn, and which the Knight
and his brother had overturned in the presence of Linda, namely, his
pride of character, which had been brought so very low by this
barbarous humiliation. As only pure brotherly respect and holy worship
of a divine relic can softly warm and reanimate a wounded pride, the
faithful Albano took this course. But without satisfaction from the
Spaniard, the contriver of the mischief and the misleader of the
Knight, his backbone, Schoppe said, would never run perpendicular
again, and his spinal marrow would remain bent. Only Albano's duel with
the uncle was a fresh draught of cool water to him; he had to have it
told over to him several times. His thirsty wish was to be as well as
he needed to be in order to fight with the Spaniard, and then, as a
madman, to extort from him on a death-bed, whereupon he thought to lay
him, the confession of all his tricks and juggleries. "Then," he added,
all the time smiling, "it can well be _égal_ to me whether the world is
round or angular, and to France is my first step."
Albano had to let this Greek fire of wrath, which in the end worked as
a strengthening cure to a body frozen by humiliation, burn deeper and
deeper under itself, since every attempt to extinguish merely fed it;
only he had to watch, that he did not get a free, solitary moment, to
fly off in a blaze and seek out the Spaniard. Albano stirred not day
nor night from his sofa-bed, and that for other reasons also. For if
Schoppe should be left alone, and his Mordian fall asleep (whom he
never woke, because the dog, he said, evidently dreamed, and then went
flying and nosing about in ideal worlds, snuffing things whereof in the
streets of the actual hardly a trace of a shadow was to be scented),
if, then, he should be alone with the quiet animal (for when it was
awake he had society enough), and his eye should accidentally fall upon
his legs or hands, then would his cold fear creep over him that he
might appear to himself as his own apparition, and see his own "I." The
looking-glass had to be overhung, that he might not come across
himself.
His nights were sleepless, but dreams moved nakedly and boldly round
him. Albano readily devoted to him his own well nights, yet could not
drive away any of his friend's dreams, those spectres which generally
flee or sink before the living. They crept and peeped about in the
shadows of the corners of the room. Once toward midnight Albano had
gone out, and on returning found him just in the act of grasping one
hand with the other, and exclaiming, "Whom have I here, man?" "O good,
best Schoppe," cried Albano, half in anger, "such irrational plays!
Quite as well might one finger catch the other!" "Yes, to be sure,"
replied he. "But listen," said he softly, and squatted, ducked his
head, and pointed with the right index-finger up over his nose into the
air, "thou calledst me Schoppe; that is not my name: but I may not
utter my real name; the 'I' who has been so long seeking me would hear
it, and come stalking along,--a long gravestone lies on the name.
Schoppe or _Scioppius_ I could very well call myself, because my
many-named namesake and name-father (it is all found in Bayle) called
himself, now so, now so, now Junipere d'Amone, now Denig Bargas, or
Grosippe, or Krigsöder, Sotelo, and now Hay. I must appear to have
wholly forgotten that the man was, after all, veritable Titular Prince
of Athens and Duke of Thebes by Ottoman chancery and grace, if I should
choose to remain Maltese Librarian. In fact, I used to go from one
hotel to another with many a name, which magnificently played with and
played upon the 'I,' that forever hunted and haunted me; for example,
Löwenskiould, Leibgeber, Graul, Schoppe, too, Mordian (which I
afterward gave my dog), Sacramentierer, and once _huleu_,--many I may
have entirely forgotten. The true one," said he, shyly whispering, "is
a ss or S--s,[142]--give me a _third_ hand here. The name is cut out of
grave-clothes, and I lie therein already buried in the ground. 'I am
I.' Such were the last words of the fine old Swift, who otherwise
said little in his long madness. I might not venture, however, to
be so much myself as that. Well, courage! Infinite Wisdom has created
all,--madness, too,--in the lump. Only God grant, that God may never
say to himself, 'I!' The universe would tremble to pieces, I believe;
for God finds no third hand."
Albano shuddered at the sense of this nonsense. Schoppe seemed ice;
then he threw himself suddenly on the brotherly bosom; neither said
aught upon the subject, and Albano began sunny descriptions of the
happy Hesperia.
Thus patiently and solitarily did he spend with his sick friend, in
nursing, indulging, caressing, the days which he would gladly have made
use of for his flight out of Germany; and loved him more and more
passionately, the more he did and endured in his behalf. He absolutely
would not suffer it at the hand of fate, that such a world full of
ideas should approach its conflagration, and so free a heart, full of
honesty, its last beating. Schoppe had in the youth's heart even a
greater realm than Dian; for he took life more freely, deeply, greatly,
bravely; and if the law of Dian's life was beauty, his was freedom, and
he tended, like our solar system, to the constellation Hercules.
Notwithstanding all entreaties, he took no medicines from Dr. Sphex;
for he had already, he said, committed his case to an old, well-known
practitioner and circuit-physician, Time. He readily allowed Sphex to
draw up a recipe, to bring it; willingly looked it through, disputed
about the contents, remarked it was easier to _be_ sanitary-counsel
than to give it, and he saw, indeed, that he hit his case, because he
pursued a weakening treatment, which was the first thing with crazy
people; he added, however, that reason was not just the thing he
desired, but only a couple of valiant shanks to walk with and stand
upon, and a couple of arms well filled out to strike home withal; and
for the rest, he told him he did not like him, because he cut up dogs.
Albano, too, at last, took the position, that, if Schoppe could only
get muscular strength again for a social journey with him, then the
frenzy-dream into which the unsocial one had thrown him would readily
fly away of itself.
Schoppe was always flying out at the Doctor particularly. Once the
latter said: "Follow, if not me, at least your second self," and
pointed to Albano. "To the Devil," he replied, "with my second
self,--that may be you: I feel shy enough of you to make it
probable,--but he, there, is certainly, I have every reason to hope,
hardly my sixth, twentieth self, or the like."
Meanwhile Sphex stuck to his opinion, that his sthenic sleeplessness,
which was alternately the daughter and the mother of his fever-visions,
especially of the Baldhead, barred up the way to relief, and must be
conquered by weakening processes. When one day Dian, who often visited
his friend Albano, heard this, he asked, why one would not deceive and
cure him directly with the tidings of the Spaniard having travelled off
for fear of him, say to France. Albano replied: "Truly I should be glad
to say it, but I cannot; I could as soon will to tell a lie to God or
myself." "Whims!" said Dian; "I'll tell him myself." "Just what
I had expected of that Spaniard," replied Schoppe to the official
recipe-falsehood. When Dian had gone out, he asked Albano: "Do I not
sit now much cooler and more icy here? And, truly, since hearing that
the Baldhead is in France, I have become almost a new man. Of course I
am lying, but Dian lied first."
At last the physician resolved to mix at once a sleeping potion in his
drink. Albano allowed it. Schoppe got it; glowed and phantasied for a
space of some minutes; at last the mist of sleep came up and soon
covered the patient over.
Albano, then, after so long a time, visited again the green of the
earth and the blue of heaven, and his Dian in Lilar. What a
transformation had taken place in the interval; how had things been
confounded, and changed places, with each other! How many leaves had
become budgeons again! And many a foam of life which had once gladdened
him with its whiteness and delicacy and lightsomeness, now chilled his
bosom like gray, heavy water, and he had retained almost nothing except
his courage to meet life. At Dian's he heard of new changes, of the
Prince's approaching death, of Idoine's approaching visit to her sister
in anticipation of the bereavement. In what a strange bewilderment did
his soul open its eyes out of its winter-sleep into the warm sunshine
which this image of Liana diffused over his life! In many a still night
by Schoppe's ghostly tent had he already, since Julienne for the first
time let him see the apparition of this peace-angel without the veil,
beheld the olden time and former love come up again like a heaven of
distant stars, and in the clear-obscure of dreams disrobed of sleep he
saw on the sea of time a far, far-off island,--whether behind him or
before him, he knew not,--where a white, averted form, resembling or
suggesting Liana's, hovered and sang as an echo of the olden strain.
Now close upon the death-month of the brother followed the death-month
of the sister Liana. Were it possible that the celestial one would step
out again from the still mirror of the second world and out of its
immeasurable distances, into this earthly atmosphere, and after her
transfiguration again walk embodied here below?
But friendship demanded room for its sorrows, and these cloud-images
were soon covered over or destroyed by it. He could not find courage in
his heart, however much he wished it, to demand of Schoppe, or even to
receive from him, a description of that healing-night, in which Idoine
had been Liana; and yet this form was the only live-playing jewel in
the death-ring on the skeleton of stern time, which stood before him.
What days! What the graves had not stolen from him and swallowed up,
the earth had snatched away, and Gaspard, once his exalted father on a
serene throne of the heavens, had now appeared to his fancy with
frightful hell-powers and weapons down below, sitting on a throne of
the abyss.
So much the more mildly did he feel, flowing around him, when he was in
Dian's house, the stiller presence, the thought of the reposing friend,
the sight of the neighboring Dream-temple, where Liana had once been
Idoine, and the annunciation that the living image of the loved one was
drawing near. He portrayed to himself the sweet and bitter terror of
her apparition before him; for as in the stream the bending flower
sketches not only its _form_, but its _shadow_ also, so is she Liana's
beautiful form and shadow at once, and in the living one would a lost
and a glorified appear to him at the same time.
In this dreamy chiaroscuro and evening twilight, made up of past
and future flowing together, he came back to his house. A sharp
lightning-flash darted white across the dreamy redness. His Schoppe
had, after a few minutes of forced sleep, wildly started up and madly
sprung out, nobody knew whither. The doctor came, and said decisively,
either he had thrown himself overboard or everybody else; he had run
wildly away, and had taken his sword-cane with him, too.
THIRTY-FOURTH JUBILEE.
Schoppe's Discoveries.--Liana.--The Chapel of the
Cross.--Schoppe and the "I" and the Uncle.
137. CYCLE.
As Schoppe had taken with him his great sword-cane, Albano presumed he
had gone after the Spaniard, as destroying-angel. He hurried to his
uncle's hotel. A servant told him a red cloak with a thick cane had
been there, and desired to be admitted to the gentleman, but that they
had despatched him, according to the directions of the latter, to the
palace, and meanwhile the gentleman had posted off to the Prince's
garden to meet his strong brother. Albano asked, "Who is the strong
brother?" "His Excellency your father," replied the servant. Albano
hastened to the palace. Here all was haste and confusion about the
sickbed of the Prince, who threatened soon to exchange it for the bed
of state. Hurrying servants met him. One could tell him he had seen a
red mantle go into the great mirror-room. Albano stepped in; it was
empty, but full of strange traces. A great mirror lay on the floor, an
arras door behind stood open, an open souvenir, wheels, and articles of
female apparel, were scattered about an old waxen head. It seemed to
him he saw something he had seen before, and yet could not name to
himself. Suddenly he beheld in a corner-mirror a second reflection of
himself far in behind the image of his youthful face, but covered with
age, and similar to the waxen head. He looked round him, a relieved
cylindrical mirror unlocked to him, as it were, time itself, and he saw
in its depths his gray old age.
Shuddering, he left the singular apartment. A gentlewoman of Julienne
came across his way. She could tell him that she had seen the
"Profile-cutter," in a red mantle, with a pocket spy-glass in his hand,
go out across the castle yard. He hastened after, when Augusti came to
meet him below the gate, with the request of the Prince, that he would
visit him once more. "Cannot possibly now; I must first have my crazy
Schoppe again," replied he. In his bosom no one lived but his friend;
moreover, he took the Prince, in this case, to be only the mask of his
talkative sister. "I saw him on the way to Blumenbühl," said the
Lector. He darted off. At the gate, Augusti's intelligence was
confirmed by the guard.
On the road to Blumenbühl he was met by the carriage of the court
chaplain, Spener, who was on his way to the Prince. Albano asked after
Schoppe. Spener informed him he had talked with him for some time
before a solitary house, where he had stopped an hour for the sake of a
sick old penitent daughter; had found him well, uncommonly sensible,
only older and more reserved than usual. To the question as to his
route, the court chaplain replied he had gone toward the city. This
appeared to him impossible, but Spener's people confirmed the story,
and spoke of the man as wearing a green coat. Albano spoke of a red
cloak; Spener and all the rest stuck to the green coat.
He turned back to his own house, where, perhaps, he thought, Schoppe
might be seeking and awaiting him. The bondman of the Doctor, the lank
Malt, ran to meet him with the intelligence that Herr von Augusti had
just been looking for him, and that the sick gentleman had gone out at
the old gate in a new green coat. It was the street to the Prince's
garden, which, according to Albano's presumption, he had certainly
taken, so soon as he had been informed of the Spaniard's having taken
the same. Out of doors it was confirmed by Falterle, who related how he
had, in his way out, overtaken him, and immediately inquired: "Whither
so fast, Mr. Librarian?" whereupon he had stood still, looked at him
seriously, and given the answer, "Who are you? You are mad," and then
hastened on. Albano inquired about the dress. "In green," replied
Falterle. Now his way was decided. The loitering rider could even
avouch that the uncle had previously taken the same.
Late in the evening Albano arrived at the Prince's garden. He saw some
carriages at the yard of the little garden castle. At last people of
his father's met him, who could tell him Schoppe had walked about,
tranquil and cheerful, for some time in the garden, with a Mr. von
Hafenreffer of Haarhaar, and had gone with him to the city. "With a man
he has, to be sure, a guardian genius and keeper again," thought
Albano, and the cold rain which had hitherto annoyed him passed away,
although the heavens still remained dull. With his agitated heart,
surrounded as it was in this landscape only by a dark horizon, he
shunned all society, and therefore now the pleasure-castle. Passing by
at a distance, he ventured to cast mournful glance at the island of
slumber, where Roquairol's grave-hill, like a burnt-out volcano, was to
be seen near the white Sphinx. "There, at last, lies the ungovernable
balance-wheel, broken and still, lifted out of the stream of time; only
with the grave closed the Janus-temple of thy life, thou tormented
and tormenting spirit," thought Albano, full of pity, for he had once
loved the dead one so much. Over on the garden-mountain, with the
linden-tree, reposed the gentle sister, the friendly, lovely angel of
peace, amidst the war-din of life,--she, eternal peace, as he, eternal
war. He determined to go up thither, and to be alone with the bride of
heaven, and to seek out, on the soil consecrated to flowers, the bed
beneath which her flower-ashes lay covered up from storms. At the mere
thought of such a purpose, streams of tears, like sorrows, burst from
his eyes; for he had been dissolved into dreaminess by his previous
night-vigils and anxieties, and by so many a misfortune, too, which in
so short a time had pierced through his fair, firm life, from one end
to the other, with poisonous sting and tooth.
As he went up the hill in the yet moonless, but richly starred
twilight, wherein the evening star was the only moon, as it were a
smaller mirror of the sun, he saw a couple of gray-clad persons make
earnest signs out of the Prince's garden, as if they would forbid his
proceeding. He went on unconcerned; indeed, he did not even know
whether his brain, glowing from its vigils and agitated by the shocks
of life, did not cause these forms to flutter before him, as out of a
concave mirror.
As if he were entering a roofless, Grecian temple, so did he step into
the holy cloister-garden of the still nun, wherein the linden-tree
spoke loud, and the silent flowers, like children, played above the
reposing one, and nodded and rocked. High and far stretched the starry
arches, like glimmering triumphal arches, over the little spot of
earth, over the hallowed spot, where Liana's mortal veil, the little
luminous and rosy cloud, had sunk down, when it had no longer to bear
the angel, who had gone up into the ether, and needed no cloud any
more. Suddenly the shuddering Albano beheld the white form of Liana
leaning against the linden, and turned toward the evening star and the
ruddy evening glow. Long did he contemplate, in the averted form, the
heavenly descending facial line with which Liana had so often
unconsciously stood as a saint beside him. He still believed some
dream, the Proteus of man's past, had drawn down the airy image from
heaven, and made it play before him, and he expected to see it pass
away. It lingered, though quiet and mute. Kneeling down, as before the
open gate of the wide, long heaven full of transfiguration and
divinity, and as if he had been caught up out of these earthly vales,
he exclaimed, "Apparition, comest thou from God? art thou Liana?" and
it seemed to him as if he were dying.
Quickly the white form looked round, and saw the youth. She rose
slowly, and said, "My name is Idoine; I am innocent of the cruel
deception, most unhappy youth." Then he covered his eyes, from a
sudden, sharp pang at the return of the cold, heavy reality. Thereupon
he looked at the fair maiden again, and his whole being trembled at her
glorified resemblance to the departed. So smiled once Liana's delicate
mouth in love and sorrow; so opened her mild eye; so fell her fine hair
around a dazzling-white, sweet face; so was her whole beautiful soul
and life painted upon her countenance. Only Idoine stood there greater,
like a risen one, prouder and taller her stature, paler her complexion,
more thoughtful the maidenly brow. She could not, when he looked upon
her so silently and comparingly, repress her sympathy for the deceived
and unhappy one, and she wept, and he too.
"Do I, too, distress you?" said he, in the highest emotion. With the
tone of the virgin who lay beneath the flowers, Idoine innocently said,
"I only weep that I am not Liana." Quickly she added, "Ah, this place
is so holy, and yet the human heart is not enough so." He understood
not her self-reproach. Reverence and openheartedness and inspiration
mastered him; life stood up and stood out shining from the narrow
bounds of troublous reality, as out of a coffin; heaven came down
nearer with its lofty stars, and the two stood in the midst of them.
"Noble Princess," said he, "we have neither of us any apology to make
here; the holy spot, like a second world, takes away all sense of
mutual strangeness. Idoine, I know that you once gave me peace; and,
before the hidden tabernacle of the spirit in whose sense you spoke, I
here thank you."
Idoine answered, "I did it without knowing you, and therefore I could
allow myself the short use or abuse of a fleeting resemblance. Had it
depended upon me, I certainly never would have so painfully awakened
your recollections with so insignificant a resemblance as an external
one is. But her heart deserves your remembrance and your sorrow. They
wrote me you were no longer in the linden city." She sought now to
hasten her departure. "In a few days," he answered, "I, too, shall
travel. I seek comfort in war from the peace of the grave, and the
solitude which makes my life still." "Earnest activity, believe me,
always reconciles one with life at last," said Idoine; but the tranquil
words were borne by a trembling voice, for, by help of her sister, she
had got a sight of the whole gray, rainy land of his present existence,
and her heart was full of deep sympathy for her kind.
Here he looked at her sharply; her nun-like eyelids, which always,
during her speaking, drooped over the whole of her large eyes, made her
so like a slumbering saint. He was reminded by her last words of her
beneficent life in Arcadia, where the gay flower-dust of her ideas and
dreams, unlike the heavy, dead gold-dust of mere riches, lightly
fluttering round in cheerful life, enlivening all with unobserved
influence, at length displayed its fruit in firm woods and gardens on
the earth. Everything within him loved her, and cried, "She only could
be thy last as well as thy first love"; and his whole heart, opened by
wounds, was unfolded to the still soul. But a serious, severe spirit
closed it again: "Unhappy one, love no one again; for a dark,
destroying angel goes behind thy love with a sword, and whatever rosy
lip thou pressest to thine he touches with the sharp edge or poisoned
point, and it withers or bleeds to death!"
He saw already the glitter of this sword glide through the long
darkness; for Idoine had made a vow never to stretch out her hand in
the covenant of love below her princely rank. So stood the two beside
each other, separate in one heaven, a sun and a moon, divided by an
earth. She hastened her departure. Albano thought it not right to
accompany her, as he now divined that the gray-clad persons who had
beckoned him back were her servants, placed there to guard her
solitude. She offered him her hand at the garden-gate, and said, "May
you live to be more happy, dear Count; one day I hope to find you again
as happy as you ought to make yourself." The touch of the hand, like
that of a heavenly one offering itself out of the clouds, streamed
through him with a glorified fire from that world where risen ones
hover, light and luminous, and the lofty, awe-awakening form inspired
his heart. He could not say what he subdued and buried within him, but
neither could he say any other cold, disguised word. He knelt down,
pressed her hand to his bosom, looked with tears to the starry heaven,
and only said, "Peace, all-gracious one!" Idoine turned hastily away,
and, after a few swift steps, passed slowly down the little hill into
the Prince's garden.
A few minutes after, he saw the torches of her carriage fly through the
night, in which she loved to brave the danger of travelling. Around the
hill it was dark; the evening redness and the evening star had gone
down; the earth was a smoke and rubbish-heap of night; a mausoleum of
clouds reared itself on the horizon. But in Albano there was a certain
incomprehensible gladness, a luminous point in the darkness of the
heart; and, as he looked upon the gleaming atom, it spread itself out,
became a splendor, a world, a boundless and endless sun. Now he
recognized it; it was the real infinite and divine love, which can be
still and suffer, because it knows only _one_ good, but not its own.
He was rejoiced at having veiled his breast, and at his resolve not to
see her again in the city. "So silently," he said, half praying, half
aloud, "will I love her forever. Her peace, her bliss, her fair
aspiration, shall be ever holy to me, and her form hidden from me, and
remote as that of her heavenly sister; but when the battle for right
begins, and the tones of music flutter with the banners in the air, and
the heart beats more eagerly, to bleed more profusely, then let thy
form, O Idoine, hover before me in the heavens, and I will fight for
thee; and if, in the tumult, an unknown destroying angel draws the
poisoned edge across my breast, then will I hold thee fast in my
fainting heart till the earth is to me no more.".
He looked round serenely, after this prayer, at the churchyard of the
virgin heart; he felt that Liana alone might be permitted to know, and
that she would bless it.
138. CYCLE.
Albano could not spend a night in a region where the single columns and
arches of the ruined sun-temple of his youth lay scattered round; but
he betook himself, in a mournfully dreamy mood, toward the city. On the
road he found the Provincial Director Wehrfritz on horseback, who was
in quest of him. "Respected son," said he, "there have come to my hands
the weightest things from thy intimate friend Mr. Schoppe, which I, in
turn, have to deliver only into thine own, which I accordingly hereby
make haste to do; for, by Heaven, I have little spare time. The Prince
has dropped off this evening, from fright, because somebody said his
old father, who had promised to appear to him a second time as a sign
of his death, was to be seen in the mirror-room, which, however, I
hear, turned out to be only something of wax. The articles which
I have to deliver up are, first, a perspective-glass, wherewith thou
wilt see thy mother and sister painted (I use carefully Mr. Schoppe's
own expressions); secondly, a written packet addressed to 'Albano,
foster-son of Wehrfritz,' half of which is still enclosed in a black,
broken marble slab; and, thirdly, thy portrait." The portrait resembled
Albano at his present age, it was discovered,--so far as the stars
permitted one to see,--though, in fact, he had never let himself be
painted. The black marble slab and the perspective-glass brought before
his soul his father's prophecy on Isola Bella,[143]--that a female form
would step toward him out of the wall of a picture-gallery, and
describe to him a place where he was to find the black slab, having
previously shown him one where he should find the telescope, of which
the eye-glass would make for him, out of the old image of his sister, a
young recognizable one, and the object-glass, out of the young image of
his mother, an old recognizable one.
Albano put anxious questions about Schoppe and the history of the
finding of the rare freight. "With Herr Schoppe it fares well enough,"
said Wehrfritz; "he must be somewhere in the neighborhood with a
strange gentleman." Albano inquired after his dress; this, to his
astonishment, had grown out of a green into a red again. Hardly had
Wehrfritz begun giving the wonderful history how Schoppe came by those
wonderful things, when Albano, who gathered therefrom the solution of
the paternal prophecy, in the eagerness of his expectation interrupted
the intelligence with the request that he would accompany him to the
neighboring Chapel of the Cross, around which several lanterns stood.
He had both medallions always with him, and was now so curious to see
the face of his mother through the object-glass, as well as to read the
paper.
At the outermost lantern they stopped. Albano took out the medallion of
the decrepit form, under which was inscribed, "_Nous nous verrons un
jour, mon frère_"; he surveyed it through the eye-glass; behold, the
old face was the young one of his Julienne. Confidently he held the
age-imparting glass to the young image, under which was inscribed,
"_Nous ne nous verrons jamais, mon fils_"; there appeared a friendly
old face, smiling across out of a long life, whose original lay, as
having been seen by him, in a deep, dark memory, but nameless; of
Linda's mother it had, however, no feature.
All at once he heard a familiar voice: "_Ecco, ecco!_[144] my
nephew, sir!" It was Albano's uncle, who seemed to drag along the
black-dressed, wailing Schoppe, and weepingly addressed his nephew:
"Ah, _neveu!_ O, I speak the truth, only truth _pour jamais_." He looked
laughing, and thought he wept. The black coat stepped nearer, become a
green coat, and said, "Sir Count, don't let yourself be deceived a
minute; our acquaintance begins with a mutual loss." "My Schoppe," said
Albano, agitated, "knowest thou me no more?" "O that I were he now! My
name is Siebenkäs," replied the green coat, and threw up his hands into
the air in token of lamentation. "He lies there, however, in the
chapel," said the Spaniard; "I will relate all so truly that it is
beautiful." Albano cast a glance into the chapel, and, with a cry of
pain, fell headlong.
139. CYCLE.
Schoppe's history was, according to Wehrfritz's and the uncle's
telling, this: He had started up glowing out of the constrained
slumber; the snorting war-steed of vindictive fury against the Spaniard
had hurried him away. In the hotel-yard of the latter the servant had
directed him with a lie to the castle. Here, amidst the confused tumult
about the suffering Prince, he had reached, unasked, unseen, the
mirror-room where he had once begged of the Countess Linda Idoine's
word of peace for his distracted friend. When the cylindrical mirror
which graves the long years of age on the young face, and shakes
thereon the moss and rubbish of time, threw out at him his image wasted
with madness, said he, "Ho, ho! the old _I_ lurks somewhere in the
neighborhood," and looked grimly round. Out of the mirrors of the
mirrors he saw a whole people of _I_'s looking at him. He sprang upon a
chair, to unhang a long mirror. While he was starting the nail of the
same, a clock in the wall struck twelve times. Here the prediction of
Gaspard came into his head, which his friend had confided to him, and
all the rules which the latter had prescribed to him for the solution
of the riddles. The prediction mentioned, indeed, a picture-gallery,
but a mirror-room is itself one, only more vacillating, and deeper in
behind the wall. He took down the mirror, according to the rules given
by Gaspard, found and opened the arras-door corresponding to the size
of the mirror; the wooden female form, with the open souvenir in her
left hand and the crayon in her right, sat behind there. He pressed,
according to the prescription, the ring on the left middle finger; the
form stood up, with the rolling of an inward machinery, stepped out
into the apartment, stopped at the opposite wall, drew a line down
thereon with the crayon in its hand. He drew up the border of the
wall-hanging; the perspective-glass and the waxen impression of the
coffin-key lay in a compartment behind there. Now he pressed the
ring-finger; the figure set the crayon upon the souvenir, and wrote,
"Son, go into the princely vault in the Blumenbühl church, and open the
coffin of the Princess Eleonore, and thou wilt find the black slab."
When that was done (the Knight had told Albano), if the marble slab,
nevertheless, was not found in the coffin, then he must press the third
ring on the little finger, whereupon something would appear which he
himself did not foreknow. Schoppe tried the pressure of this finger
before going into the Blumenbühl Church,--the figure remained
standing,--but something began to roll inside,--the arms stretched
themselves out and fell down,--wheels rolled out,--at last the whole
form dismembered itself by a mechanical suicide, and there appeared an
old head of wax.
Here Schoppe went off, to run to Blumenbühl and fetch out of the vault
the light required for this night-piece. Though it was noonday, church
and vault were left open,--perhaps because they were making room for
the new cavern-guest who was just dying. Without stopping to transform
the waxen key into an iron one, he violently broke open the coffin with
an iron tool, and quickly snatched out the marble slab and Albano's
portrait. He broke the slab behind a bush. When he read the
superscription, he examined no farther; he hastened to Albano's house
to deliver all. But the two were simultaneously seeking each other in
vain. Meanwhile he lighted upon the honest Wehrfritz, through whom
alone he could despatch such important booty; he himself was now on the
scent after his deadly foe, the Spaniard, and no power could drive him
off the hunting-ground of his wrath.
At sundown Schoppe espied the Spaniard, who, flying out of the Prince's
Garden to escape the fac-simile, Siebenkäs, came running into his
hands. He stiffened at the sight of the madman, cried, "Lord and God,
are you behind me and before me, are you red and green?" and rushed
sidewards into the old Chapel of the Cross, to fall on his knees and
invoke the Holy Virgin. Schoppe stretched out his condor wings, shot
off and dropped them together before the chapel. "Turn thyself round,
Spaniard, I'll devour thee from top to toe," said he. "Holy mother of
God, help me,--good, bad spirit, stand by me, O gloomy one!" prayed the
Baldhead. "Step round, knave, without further trick," said Schoppe,
describing from behind with his sword a horse-shoe in the air. He
turned round piteously on his knees, and his head hung slackly down
from his neck. Schoppe began: "Now I've got thee, villain! thou prayest
to me to no purpose on thy knees; I hold the sword of judgment,--mad am
I, too,--in a few minutes, when we have said our say, I stick this
present cane-sword into thee,--for I am a madman, full of fixed ideas."
"Ah, sir," replied the Baldhead, "you are certainly entirely rational
and in your head and yourself; I beg to live; killing is so great a
deadly sin." Schoppe replied: "As to my understanding, of that another
time! I have already shot thee in effigy, now will I not carry round in
vain the deadly sin and the sting of conscience, but set myself about
it _in naturâ_, thou hangman of souls, thou trepan of hearts!"
"Schoppe, Schoppe!" cried at this moment, several times over, at great
distances, a something with Albano's voice. He looked swiftly round;
nothing was to be seen. "Good Schoppe," it continued, "let my uncle
go!" Now Schoppe blazed up, and raised his dagger for a thrust. "Thou
absolutely too abominably petrified ventriloquist! Should not one
immediately stick the trumpery here as they do a wounded horse? Seest
thou not, then, the hellish, cursed murder- and death-stroke before thy
nose, thy pest-cart already tackled up, the stuffed-out skeleton of
death cased in this flesh of mine, and just lifting the scythe?
Confess, Spaniard, for Jesus' sake, confess! Fly, ere I stick, spit
thee! Thou wilt thereby have some plea with the devils in hell;
otherwise thou art, even down below there, an utterly ruined man."
"Where sits the Pater? I will confess, indeed," said the Spaniard.
"Here stands thy gallows-Pater; behold the shorn poll," said Schoppe,
shaking off the hat from his bending, close-shaven head.
"Hear my confession! But by night the gloomy one suffers me not to tell
the truth,--he comes certainly, he comes to take me, Pater! fumigate
me, baptize me against the devil!"
"Step-penitent and thief, am I not father-confessor and Pater
enough for thee, who will soon baptize thee? Just say all, hound, I
absolve thee, and then strike thee dead for penitence. Say on, thou
coronation-mint of the Devil, art thou not the Baldhead, and the Father
of Death, and the monk at the same time, whose figure full of gas went
up toward heaven in Mola, and hadst ventriloquism and wax-moulding and
considerable knavery at hand?"
"Yes, father, ventriloquism and wax-images and the knave. But the evil
spirit was always by; often I said nothing, and yet it was said, and
the figures ran."
"Mordian," said Schoppe, waxing furious upon this subject, "seize the
hound! Dost thou still lie,--thou cloaca dug in Paradise!--into the ear
of the great Fatal Sister, thou mimic mummery? Does thy death's head
without lip and tongue still bestir itself to lie? O God, what are thy
human creatures!"
"O Pater, they are no lies! but the gloomy one wills them by night; I
have made a league with him,--I have seen him this evening; he looked
like you, and was in green. Holy Mary, O Pater, I have spoken the
truth; there he comes in green,--O Pater, O Mary, and has your form and
a fiery eye in his hand--"
"No one has my form," said Schoppe, agitated, "but the 'I.'"
"O glance round! The evil spirit comes to me--absolve--stab--I will die
off!"
Schoppe at last looked behind him. The striding cast of his form came
moving along towards him,--the fiery eye in the hand ascended into the
face,--the mask of the _I_ was clad in green. "Evil spirit, I am just
in the act of auricular confession; thou canst not come hither; I am
holy," cried the Spaniard, and grasped Schoppe. The dog seized _him_.
Schoppe stared at the green form,--the sword fell from his hand. "My
Schoppe," it cried, "I seek thee, dost thou not know me?"
"Long enough! Thou art the old _I_,--only bring thy face along hither
and put it to mine, and make this stupid existence cold," cried
Schoppe, with a last effort of manly force. "I am Siebenkäs," said the
Fac-simile, tenderly, and stepped quite near. "So am I; I resemble I,"
said he once more, in a low tone; but at that moment the overpowered
man collapsed, and this cleansing storm became a sighing, still breath
of air. With a face growing white, spasmodically shutting-to his stiff
eyes, he fell; the playing fingers seemed still to be calling the dog,
and the lips were just making themselves up for a joke which they did
not utter. His friend Siebenkäs, who could not guess anything of the
matter, raised, weeping, the cold, fast-closed hand to his heart, to
his mouth, and cried: "Brother, look up, thy old friend from Baduz
stands verily beside thee, and sees thee in the pangs of death; he bids
thee a thousand times farewell,--farewell!"
This seemed to convey into the breaking heart, through the ears still
open to life, sweet tones of the dear old times and pleasant dreams of
eternal love;--the mouth began a faint smile, traced at once by
pleasure and death,--the broad breast filled, and heaved once more for
a sigh of pleasure: it was the last sigh of life, and the dead one sank
back, smiling, on the earth.
Now hast thou ended thy course here below, stern, steadfast spirit! and
into the last evening-tempest on thy bosom there still streamed a soft,
playing sun, and filled it with roses and gold. The earth-ball, and all
the earthly stuff out of which the fleeting worlds are formed, was
indeed far too small and light for thee. For thou soughtest behind,
beneath, and beyond life, something higher than life; not thy _self_,
thy _I_,--no mortal, not an immortal, but the Eternal, the Original
One, God! This present _seeming_ was so indifferent to thee, the evil
as well as the good. Now thou art reposing in real _being_,--death has
swept away from the dark heart the whole sultry cloud of life, and the
eternal light stands uncovered which thou didst so long seek, and thou,
its beam, dwellest again in the fire.
THIRTY-FIFTH JUBILEE.
Siebenkäs.--Confession of the Uncle.--Letter from Albano's
Mother.--The Race for the Crown.--Echo and Swan-song of the Story.
140. CYCLE.
Long lay Albano in the solitary, dark abyss, till at length light
illuminated the depths and the green height from which he had been
precipitated. The once life-colored, manly face of his friend lay white
before him; the red mantle only heightened the snow of the corpse. The
dog lay with his head on his breast, as if he would warm and protect
it. When Albano saw the naked blade, he looked round him on all sides,
shuddered at the cold uncle, at the living brotherly image of the dead,
and at the first shadow of a doubt whether it had been murder or
suicide, and asked in a low tone, "How did he die?" "By me," said
Siebenkäs; "our similarity killed him; he thought he saw himself, as
this gentleman here will assure you." The uncle related several
particulars. Albano turned eye and ear away from him, but he buried in
the warm reflection of the friend's face that look to which the
daylight of friendship had sunk below the horizon of earth. Siebenkäs
seemed to assert himself by a rare manly bearing. Even Albano, the
younger friend, concealed his anguish that he had lost so much, and
that his orphan-heart was now exposed, like a helpless child, in the
wilderness of life.
Wehrfritz asked him whether he should still send him a horse to ride
into the city. "Me! I ever go into the city again?" asked Albano. "No,
good father; Schoppe and I go to-day into the Prince's garden." He was
terrified at the mere black churchyard-landscape of the city, where
once had bloomed for him a golden sunshine, and leafy avenues and
heaven's-gates full of flowery festoons. O, the young honey of love,
the old wine of friendship; both were indeed poured by fate into
graves!
The dead man was carried into the new castle of the Prince's garden.
Only Albano and Siebenkäs followed him. When they were alone, Albano
saw for the first time that the friend of his friend trembled and
wavered, and that until now only the spirit had sustained the body.
"Now can we both," said Albano, "mourn before each other; but only in
you do I believe. God, how then was his end?" Siebenkäs described to
him the last looks and tones of the poor man. "O God!" said Albano, "he
died not easily; when the madness of months became one minute,--rending
must have been the hell-flood which snatched away so firm a life."
Siebenkäs could with difficulty admit the belief of his madness,
because the deceased had so often, in his best moments, been similarly
misapprehended; but Albano at last convinced him. He related further,
that on his journey home he had been startled, when the repeated
mistaking of his person for the deceased led him to the presumption
that his long separated Leibgeber must be sojourning here, although he
could not but dread to think of the first appearing and comparison.
"For, Sir Count," said he, "years and business, particularly
juristical, ah! and life itself, always draw man farther down,--at
first out of ether into air, then out of the air on to the earth. 'Will
he know me?' said I. I am truly no more the man that I was, and the
physiognomical likeness might well have still remained the only and
strongest one. But this, too, had passed away; the blessed one there
looks still as he did ten years ago. O, only a free soul never grows
old! Sir Count, I was once a man, who played one and another joke with
life, and with death too, and I would cry out, 'Heavens! if hell should
get loose!' and more of the like. Ah, Leibgeber, Leibgeber! Time has
delicate little waves, but the sharpest-cornered pebble, after all,
becomes smooth and blunt therein at last."[145]
"Enumerate to me every trifle of his former days," begged
Albano,--"every dew-drop out of his morning redness: he was so chary of
his dark history!" "And that to every one," said the stranger. "This
much will I one day prove to you, from dates gathered on the spot, that
he is a Dutchman, like Hemsterhuis, and properly named _Kees_, like
Vaillant's ape, to which he prefixed _Sieben_, or seven; for Siebenkäs
is his first name. He drew his income out of the Bank of Amsterdam.
Every New Year's night he burnt up the papers of the preceding year;
and how his _Clavis Leibgeriana_[146] has become known I do not yet
comprehend." Thereupon he related his first change of name, when
Schoppe took from him the name Leibgeber; then every hour and act of
his true heart toward the (former) poor-man's-attorney; then their
second exchange of names, when Siebenkäs let himself nominally be
buried, and went on as Leibgeber, and their eternal farewell in a
village of Voigtland.
As Siebenkäs here stopped in his narrative, he grasped the cold hand,
with the words: "Schoppe, I thought I should not find thee till I found
thee with God!" and bent weeping over the dead. Albano let his tears
stream down, and took the other dead hand and said: "We grasp true,
pure, valiant hands." "True, pure, valiant," repeated Siebenkäs, and
said, with a Schoppeish smile, "His dog looks on and testifies as
much." But he became pale with emotion, and looked now exactly like the
dead. Then did he and Albano, sinking, touch the cold face to theirs,
and Albano said, "Be thou, too, my friend, Leibgeber; we can love each
other, because he loved us. Pale one, let thy form be the seal of my
love toward thy old friend!"
Albano now pushed up the window, and showed him a grave in the east,
and one in the south, near the third open one, out there in the night,
and said, "Thus have I thrice wept over life." Siebenkäs pressed his
hand, and only said, "The Fates, and Furies, too, glide with linked
hands over life, as well as the Graces and Sirens." He looked upon the
singular, beautiful, fiery youth with the most hearty love; but Albano,
who always imagined himself to be loved but little, and whom the fiery
meteors of a Dian and a Roquairol had accustomed to bad habits of
thinking, knew not how very much he had won this more tranquil heart.
141. CYCLE.
On the morrow more sunshine and strength returned to Albano's breast.
He had now himself to heave up the mountain in the flat-pressed
plain of his life. Only to _see_ Pestitz again, where all the
tournament-pleasures of his shining days had vanished, except the single
Dian,--he abhorred the thought. "When this friend has once his
grave-mound over his breast, then I go, and take leave of no one,"
said he.
Just then the hated uncle arrived, with the carriages full of magic
wands, and said, weepingly, he was going to the Carthusian cloister, to
atone for many sins, and he would first willingly explain to his
nephew, as well with words as by the carriages, all that he desired. "I
believe nothing you say," said Albano. "I can now tell the whole truth,
for the gloomy one has nothing more to do with me, I think, _cousin_,"
replied the Spaniard. "Is not that," he added, in a low tone, with a
shy look at Siebenkäs, "the gloomy one, _cousin?_" Albano would not
know nor hear anything. Siebenkäs asked him who the gloomy one was. It
was the infinite man, he began, very black and gloomy, and had for the
first time stalked over toward him across the sea, when he stood on the
coast before a fog. At night he had often heard him call, and sometimes
had repeated his ventriloquial speeches. He had immediately appeared to
him, with a handful of threatenings, whenever he had told many truths
after sundown. Therefore had he feared exceedingly before the present
gentleman in the Chapel of the Cross; but now, since he had been
converted without suffering any harm in the chapel, he would tell
truths all day long, and in the Carthusian convent he intended to do so
still more.
"Cloisters are the very places where they do not generally dwell; for
this reason, I suppose, the vow of silence is required, the observance
of which is always more favorable to truth than its breach is," replied
Siebenkäs. "O heretic, heretic!" cried the Spaniard, with such an
unexpected anger that Albano at once received, through this sign of
human feeling, pledges of his present sincerity, as well as of his
narrower spiritual circumference. Now, for the first time, he asked him
outright about the soil and the seed which he had hitherto used, in
order to force the swift flowers of his miracles.
At this question he caused a casket to be brought up. "Ask," said he.
"How did Romeiro's form rise out of _Lago Maggiore?_" said Albano. The
uncle unlocked the casket, showed a wax figure, and said, "It was only
her mother." Albano shuddered before this near mock-sun of his sunken
one, and at the presumption of relationship with which Schoppe had
inspired him. "Am I related to her?" he quickly asked. The uncle
replied, with confusion, "It may haply be otherwise." Albano asked
about the monk who made the heavenly ascension in Mola. "He stood
overhead filled with gas;[147] I down below on the wall," said the
uncle. Albano would hear no further. The casket contained, besides,
ear-trumpets and speaking-trumpets, a face-skin, blue glass, through
which landscapes appeared snowed over, silk flowers, with powder of an
_endormeur_, &c. Albano would not see anything more.
"Evil being! who set thee on to this?" asked Albano. "My strong
brother," said the uncle, for so he usually called the Knight. "He gave
me my living, and he would fain shoot me dead; for he laughs very much
when men are very finely cheated." "O, not a syllable of that!" cried
Albano, painfully, whose anger against the Knight made all his veins
spirt out fiery tears and poison. "Wretch! how didst thou become what
thou art?" "So! a wretch am I?" he asked, with icy coldness. He then
stated--but in an abrupt and confused manner, which attended him in
every language in his own part, whereas in a strange name (for
instance, the Baldhead's) he could speak long and well--that he had a
dark-gray and a blue eye, a hidden bald head, and a remarkable memory
since coming to manhood, and had therefore wished to become an actor,
because he had nothing to do, for he had never been in love; but, so
long as he did not improvisate, it had not gone well with him. He had
always had in his mind Joseph Clark, who could counterfeit any grown
person, and the deceiver Price, who went round in a threefold
character. Then the gloomy one had again come over to him one evening
in a shore fog across the water, and had murmured, as out of a belly,
"_Peppo_, _Peppo_,[148] swallow back the true word; I will directly
utter another"; and from that hour forth he had had the faculty of
ventriloquizing. He had thereby caused dead and dumb persons, and
speaking-machines, and parrots, and sleepers, and strange people in the
theatre, to speak well, but never any one in church, and that was
indeed a satisfaction to him. He had often given an unceasing echo to
rocks, so that men did not know at all when to go away. He had also
once caused a whole battle-field full of dead men to talk with itself,
in all languages, to the astonishment of the old general.
"Where was that?" asked Siebenkäs. The Spaniard came to himself, and
replied, "I don't know; is it true, then? '_Omnes homines sunt
mendaces_,' says the Holy Scripture." "As little true," said Albano,
"as your gloomy ghost!" "O Mary, no!" said he, decidedly; "when I
predicted anything, he caused it indeed, after all, to turn out true.
Then he appeared to me, and said, 'Dost thou see, Peppo, mind and only
never speak a truth!' And in the night, when I went by your side to
Lilar, he went down in the valley as a man through the air." "I saw
that too," said Albano; "he floated onward without stirring." "That was
one," said Siebenkäs, smiling, "who stood, with his legs hidden, in a
boat that glided onward, and nothing more." Then the Spaniard looked at
this fac-simile of the corpse with the old horror with which he had
hitherto secretly taken it for the gloomy spirit himself, murmured in
Albano's ear, "See, this being knows it," and said, in justification of
his truths, "The sun is not yet gone down," and, without listening to
human entreaties, whose power had never been known to him, without
sorrow or joy, hurried off to enter before sundown into the neighboring
Carthusian monastery. All the implements of deception he had left where
they were.
"A frightful man!" said Siebenkäs. "Some time ago, when he would fain
rejoice at something, he looked as if a pang seized upon his face. And
that he should stand there so thin and haggard, and look down sidewise,
and swallow his syllables! I am certain he could kill without changing
his look, even to anger." "O, he is the gloomy spirit that he sees;
don't call him up!" said Albano, hurrying away into a wholly new world,
which had now suddenly risen before his spirit.
142. CYCLE.
He thought, namely, of the paper, hitherto hidden by the cloud of
sorrow, which Schoppe had brought out of the princely vault, and of the
maternal image which he was to have found under the ocular glass.
Before he began to read, he held the image under the glass before the
stranger, to see if by any accident he might know it. "Very well! It is
the deceased Princess Eleonore, so far as a frontispiece engraving to
the provincial hymn-book allows one to presume upon resemblances; for
the Princess herself I never saw."
With emotion, Albano drew the paper out of the cracked marble capsule;
but he was still more moved when he read the signature, "Eleonore," and
then the following in French:--
"My Son: To-day have I seen thee again,[149] after long times in thy B.
(Blumenbühl); my heart is full of joy and anxiety, and thy beautiful
image floats before my weeping eyes. Why can I not have thee about me
and in my daily sight? How am I bound and distressed! But always did I
forge for myself fetters, and beg others to fasten them upon me. Hear
thine own history from the mouth of thy mother; from no other will it
come to thee more acceptably and truly.
"The Prince and I lived long in an unfruitful marriage, which flattered
our cousin Hh. (Haarhaar) with more and more lively hopes of the
succession. At a late period thy brother L. (Luigi) annihilated them.
One could hardly forgive us that. The Count C. (Cesara) retains the
proofs of some dark actions (_de quelques noirceurs_) which were to
cost thy poor brother, otherwise weakly, his life. Thy father was with
me in Rome just as we learned it. 'They will surely get the better of
us at last,' said thy father. In Rome we made the acquaintance of the
Prince di Lauria, who would not give his beautiful daughter to the
Count C. (Cesara) till he should have become Knight of the Golden
Fleece. The Prince procured this order for him at the Imperial Court.
"For this Madam Cesara thought she ought to be very grateful to me,
_une femme fort décidée, se repliant sur elle-même, son individualité
exagératrice perca à travers ses vertus et ses vices et son sexe_. We
learned to love each other. Her romantic spirit communicated with mine,
particularly in the Land of Romance. This result was helped by the fact
that she and I found ourselves at the same time in the right condition
of female enthusiasm, namely, the hope of being mothers. She was
confined with an exquisitely beautiful girl, exactly like her,
Severina, or as she was called afterward, Linda. Here we made the
singular contract, that, if I bore a son, we would exchange; I could
educate a daughter without hazard, and with her my son could grow up
without incurring that danger which had always threatened thy brother
in my house. She said, too, I could better guide a daughter, she a son,
as she had little respect for her sex. The Count was well satisfied
with the plan; the Hh. Court had just before refused him the oldest
princess, for whom he had been a suitor, under the ironical and
insulting pretext of her yet childish youth, and he for the sake of
avenging offended honor and injured vanity,--for he was a very handsome
man, and used only to victory,--was ready for any measures and contests
against the haughty court. Only the Prince did not approve of it; he
considered an education abroad, &c., quite ambiguous and critical. But
we women interwove ourselves so much the more deeply into our romantic
idea.
"Two days after I brought forth thee and--Julienne at a birth. On this
rich emergency no one had reckoned. Here much turned up quite otherwise
and more easily than had been expected. 'I keep,' said I to the
Countess, 'my daughter, thou keepest thine; as to Albano (so shall he
be called), let the Prince decide.' Thy father allowed that thou
shouldst be brought up as son of the Count, indeed, but under his eye,
with the honest W. (Wehrfritz). Meanwhile he made provisions whose
solid value I then, in the fanciful enthusiasm of friendship, was not
in a condition wholly to weigh. At present I only wonder that I was
then so full of spirit. The documents of thy genealogy were not only
thrice made out,--I, the Count, and the Court Chaplain Spener, were put
in possession of them,--but subsequently thou wast presented even to
the Emperor Joseph II. as our princely son, and his gracious letter,
which I shall one day commit to thy brothers and sisters, is of itself
sufficiently decisive.
"The Count himself now took an active part in the mystery,--whether out
of love for his daughter or from spite against the H. court,--by
demanding, as a reward for his participation, that one day thou and
Linda should make a match. Here the Countess stepped in again with her
wonders and fancies. 'Linda will certainly resemble me in soul as she
now does in form,--force can then never move her,--but magic of the
heart, of the fairy-world, the charm of wonder, may draw and melt and
bind her.' I know her very words. A singular plan of enchantment was
then sketched, whose limits the Count, through the submissiveness with
which his brother, adept in a thousand arts, let himself be hired for
everything, extended still further, beside making the plan thereby more
agreeable. Linda will, long before thou hast read this, have appeared
to thee; her name will have been named; thy birth mysteriously
announced. May thy spirit, O may it be happily reconciled to it all,
and may the difficult play pour winnings into thy lap when the cards
are turned up. I am anxious; how can I be otherwise? O what tidings
have I not received even from Italy through the Count, before which now
all the hopes I have set upon my Lewis (Luigi) are at once
extinguished! Now would Hh. (Haarhaar) have conquered through the
wicked B. (Bouverot), had it not been that thou livest. And I cannot
but be so happy, that thou livest clear of his poisonous influences.
Yes, it seems as if the Count had intentionally and gladly let the
destruction of thy brother take place in order to strike so much the
stronger terror with thy resurrection. Yet I will not do him injustice.
But whom shall a mother trust, whom mistrust, at court? And which
danger is the greater?
"For the space of three years thou wast obliged, for appearance' sake,
to stay on Isola Bella with thy pretended twin-sister, Severina,
although under the eye of the Prince, while I, with Julienne, went
back to Germany. Longer, however, it could not last, much as thy
foster-mother wished it; thou wast too much like thy father. This
resemblance cost me many tears,--for on this account thou couldst never
go from B. to P. (Pestitz) so long as the Prince still wore youthful
features,--even the portraits of his youthful form I had, therefore,
gradually to steal away and give in charge to the faithful Spener. Yes,
this learned man told me that a convex mirror, which transformed young
faces into old ones, had to be put aside, because thou immediately
stoodst there as the old Prince when thou didst look into it. O, when
my good, pious prince in his feeble days unconsciously prattled all
sorts of things, and made me more and more anxious about the fate of
the weighty secret, how I trembled, when he one morning (fortunately
only Spener and a certain daughter of the Minister von Fr., a gentle,
pure spirit, were by), said right out and joyfully, 'Our dear son,
Eleonore, was up at the altar last evening; he is certainly a good
young man, he knelt down and prayed beautifully, and I said to him
only, for I would not discover myself, Go home, go home, my friend; the
thunder is already near.'[150] I know that several individuals have
already let fall hints about a natural son of the Prince.
"The Countess C. (Cesara) went off with S. (Severina) to V. (Valencia);
previously, however, giving herself the name R. (Romeiro), and her
daughter the name L. (Linda). The Prince di Lauria had to be drawn into
this game, and his consent obtained, for the sake of the inheritance.
By this change of names all could be covered up as closely as it now
stands. Nine years after, the noble R. (Romeiro) died, and the Count
had, under the prerogative of a guardian, the daughter in his sole
protection and care.
"I saw her here shortly after the death of her mother.[151] When the
flower has entirely unfolded itself out of this full bud, it belongs,
as the fullest rose, to thy heart; only may the ghostly game, which I
have too light-mindedly sworn to the Countess, pass over without
mishap! Should I come to my death-bed before the Prince, I must also
draw thy sister and thy brother into thy secret, so as to close my eyes
in perfect assurance. Ah, I shall not live to be permitted openly to
clasp my son in my arms! The symptoms of my decline come more and more
frequent. May it go well with thee, dearest child! Grow up to be holy
and honest as thy father! God guide all our weak expedients for the
best!
"Thy faithful mother,
"Eleonore.
"P. S. Certain other very weighty secrets I cannot trust to paper, but
my dying lips shall let them sink into the heart of thy sister.
Farewell! Farewell!"
143. CYCLE.
Albano stood for a long time speechless, looked to heaven, let the leaf
fall, and folded his hands, and said, "Thou sendest peace,--I must not
choose war,--well, my lot is fixed!" Joy of life, new powers and plans,
delight in the prospect of the throne, where only mental effort tells,
as rather physical does on the battle-field, the images of new parents
and relations, and displeasure at the past, stormed through each other
in his spirit. He tore himself loose from his whole former life, the
ropes of the whole previous death-chime were broken, he must, in order
to win Eurydice out of Orcus, like Orpheus, shun looking back upon the
way which he had past. He unveiled all to his new friend, for he
battled, he said, now at length, on a free open field for his hitherto
concealed right, and should set out immediately for the city. During
the recital, the long and daring game which had been played with his
holiest rights and relations incensed him still more, and his mistrust
of his powers and weapons against the adversaries to whom Luigi fell a
victim, and that very brother himself, who could hitherto embrace him
in so hard and unbrotherly a mask. "How different was the true sister!"
said he. "Why," he went on, "did they oblige me to owe so many thanks
to so many a proud, stern spirit for my mere--birthright? Why did they
not trust my silence quite as well? O, thus was I forced to
misinterpret the poor dead one over yonder,[152] because she, in that
hostile night, at the altar sacrificed her fair heart to my revealed
rank! Thus was I compelled by presumptions and purposes to injure so
many a genuine soul! How innocent might I be but for all this!" "Calm
yourself," said Siebenkäs, with keen resentment, "the strength of the
foe is driven to resistance, and drawn off from the defeat; and what
would a victory have been on an empty battle-field?"
Siebenkäs had, at the revelation of his friend's illustrious rank, and
at seeing the fire of his passionateness, which he knew only in common,
not in noble manifestations, stepped back some paces,--a movement which
Albano did not observe, because he had not presumed upon it. Siebenkäs
sought as well as he could,--for his inner man was gradually unfolding
again its limbs, which had been frozen stiff in the grave of his
friend,--to win back his gentle mirthfulness, and with these flowery
chains to bind the impetuous youth. "I rejoice," said he, "that I am
the first to offer you wishes on your birth- and coronation-day, all
which, however, merge in the single one that you may always assert your
baptismal name,--for Alban is the well-known patron saint of the
peasants. Except the Haarhaar Prince, whom the Knight truly hits off
with the device of the founder of his order, Philip: _ante ferit quam
flamma micet_,[153] no one, perhaps, is to be pitied in this connection
but the financial stamp-cutter, who now receives nothing new to cut, as
the old line continues in power." He added lightly, because he had
never seen the heavy wooded and cloud-bearing rock, Gaspard: "What a
singular game of names, which few _Cavalleros del Tuzone_ have ever
played, it is, that he happens to call himself _De Cesara_, since, as
you know, the Spaniards, like the old Romans, often appropriate to
themselves the names of their actions or accidents. Thus it is
everywhere known from the _Pieces Interassantes_, Tom. I., that
Orendayn, for example, took the name _La Pas_, because he, in 1725,
signed the peace between Austria and Spain,--he baptized himself with a
third name, _Transport Real_, in order to remember and remark that he
had carried away the Infante to Italy. _Cesara_ is of course more
accidental."
Albano was, for the first time, by such resemblances of spirit to the
free Schoppe, really drawn to his heart. He took leave of him, and
said, "Friend of our friend, will we keep together?" "Verily, the doubt
which rests upon the decision of your fate, Prince," replied Siebenkäs,
"were alone sufficient to settle that, if only my heart alone had the
business of settling it; but--" Albano shrugged his shoulders, as if
irritated, but was silent; "meanwhile I will remain here," the other
continued, more softly, "until the earth rests on the deceased; then I
set up the black wooden cross over it, and write all his names
thereupon." "Well, so be it!" said Albano. "But his dog I take, because
he has been longer acquainted with me. I am a young man, still young in
lost years, but already very old in lost times, and understand as well
as many another who is bent by age what it is to lose fellow-creatures.
Singular it is, that I always find on graves mirrors wherein the dead
walk and look, alive again. Thus I found on Liana's grave her living
image and echo; my old prostrate Schoppe I found, also, as you know,
erect and stirring, behind a looking-glass, which my hand could as
little break through. I assure you, even my parents were conjured
before me; my father I can see in a cylindrical mirror, and my mother
through an object-glass. Here, now, there is nothing to do, when one
stands in a night, where all stars of life move downward, but stand
very firm therein. But to my old humorist must I still say _Adio_."
He went into the chamber of death. Silently Siebenkäs followed him,
struck with the unwonted quaintness of his--grief. With dry eyes,
Albano drew the white cloth from the earnest face, whose fixed eyebrows
no longer shaped themselves for any joke, and which slept away in an
iron sleep without time. The dog seemed to be shy of the cold man.
Albano sought, by sharp, vehement, dry looks, to imprint the dead face,
even to every wrinkle, deeply on his brain, as in plaster, especially
as the most living copy, the friend, had escaped him. Then he lifted
the heavy hand, and placed it on the brow which was to wear the
princely hat, as if therewith to bless and consecrate it. At last he
bent down to the face, and lay for a long time on the cold mouth; but,
when he finally raised himself up, his eyes were weeping, and his whole
heart, and he tremblingly held out his hand to the spectator, and said,
"Well, so mayest thou, too, fare well!" "No," cried Siebenkäs; "I
cannot do that, if I go. Schoppe! I stay with thy Albano!"
Just then came Wehrfritz and Augusti, and interrupted the weeping
solemnity of the threefold love with gay looks and words.
144. CYCLE.
The old foster-father called him Prince, indeed, and no longer thou;
but, in patriotic rapture, he fervently pressed the nursling of his
house to his heart. Augusti handed him, with grave courtliness and a
brief congratulation, the following epistle from Julienne:--
"Dearest Brother: Now, at length, I can, for the first time, call thee
rightly brother. I have in one eye tears of mourning, and yet in the
other tears of gladness, now that all clouds are taken from thy birth;
and in Haarhaar, too, all goes tolerably well. The Lector is despatched
to tell thee all: where should I find time? He must also tell thee of
Herr von Bouverot, whose red nose and bent-up chin, and greedy
barbarity toward his few people and many creditors, and whose grossness
and sensuality and dry malice I hate to such a degree. However, he is
now so properly punished by thy manifestation. Of course all is, like
myself, in disorder and confusion. Ludwig's testament was opened this
morning, according to his will, and he gave thee thy whole right. I
will not be angry about this, brother, in the midst of weeping. He was
properly hard toward his brother and sister,--toward me exceedingly so;
for he hated all women, even to his wife, who is only of some use when
it goes well with her, and works of art themselves really hardened him
against men. But let him rest in his peace, of which, indeed, he has
found little! He must this very evening, on account of the nature of
his complaint, and on account of the length of the way to Blumenbühl,
be interred temporarily. Here am I now with thy foster-parents, in the
neighborhood of our buried parents. On this account, come without fail!
Thou art my only solace in the night of sadness. I must hold thee again
to my heart, which will beat hard against thine, and weep and speak, if
it only can. Do come! Now, at length, surely, as all stands ready in
the hall for the dance, God will let no cold spectres or frightful
masks creep in, I pray. Ah, only on thy account am I so happy, and weep
enough.
"Julia."
Hardly had Albano given his foster-father the joyful promise to be this
evening at his house, when the latter, without further words, hastened
off to prepare his "folks" for the joy of the twofold visit.
The Lector was now entreated for his news, with which he seemed to
hesitate cautiously on account of Siebenkäs, till Albano begged him
freely to impart all to him and his new friend. His account, including
some interpolations which came to Albano afterward, was this:--
Bouverot (with whom he began at the questioning of Albano, whose
curiosity was excited) had been hitherto in secret league with the
aspiring Prince of Haarhaar, and had, in the confident calculation of
making through him his permanent fortune, and even an unexpected
marriage, upon his word unhung his order-cross of a German _Herr_,
linked at once to infamy and income, and caused to be delivered to the
sister of this Prince, Idoine, through the Prince himself, who stood
pledged to him for the repeal of her similar vow,[154] a miniature of
her, which he insisted that he had stolen in his flight, together with
half a picture-gallery, and with many fine allusions to his adopted
name _Zefisio_, as that of a Romish Arcadian, and to the name of her
Arcadia. "_Oh la différence de cet homme au diable, comme est-elle
petite!_" said Augusti, with quite an unexpected vehemence. Albano must
needs ask why. "He passed off an entirely different picture for that of
the Princess," said the Lector. Of course it was Liana's own, Albano
concluded, and had easily, by a few questions, drawn out that mournful
history of the blind Liana chased by the tiger Bouverot.
"O wretched me!" cried Albano, half in fury, and half in pain. It
distressed him to think of the sufferings wherewith the holy heart had
had to pay for its short, pure, chary love toward him,--who became
blind the first time because she so loved his father,[155] and the
second time because the son misunderstood and loved her. But he
restrained himself, and spoke not on the subject; the past was to him,
as echo is to bees, hurtful. Siebenkäs testified his joy at Bouverot's
punishment through the miscarriage of all his plans.
Albano heard that even Luigi had assumed the appearance of supporting
Bouverot's connubial intentions, merely for the sake of seeing him fall
from so much the higher elevation. "With what a long, cold, bitter,
malicious pleasure," thought Albano, "could my brother, in the hope of
the ditch which his death would dig for the hostile court and its
adherents, look upon all their expectations, and graciously accept all
their measures, from the marriage of the Princess even to the
congratulations thereto appertaining, while he hated the Princess and
all! And how could he maintain that life-long silent coldness toward
me?" But Albano neglected to consider two reasons,--his own proud
deportment toward the Prince, and the customary avarice of princes,
which is shy of apanage[156] moneys.
Gaspard's transactions in Haarhaar, which the Lector gave, only with
some omissions enjoined by Julienne, were these:--
With characteristic pleasure and silence had the Knight looked, of old,
upon the intricacies of human relations, and given them over to their
own disentanglement or dilaceration. Here he let all the dreams of
others grow more and more lively and wild, until, with one snatch at
the breast, he swept them all from the sleeper at once. His old
indignation at the proud refusal of the princely bride was appeased,
when he could show them, below the glittering triumphal gate of their
wishes and efforts, the documents of Albano's birth, from the hand of
the old Prince down even to that of the brother Luigi, as just the same
number of armed guards, who should drive them back again out of the
gate of victory. A sympathetic astonishment was expressed; nothing was
agreed to. Albano had neither been presented to the country nor the
empire. Gaspard brought on very calmly an early acknowledgment from
Joseph II. This, too, was found out of rule and invalid. Thereupon he
confessed, with the determined anger with whose lightning-sparks he so
often suddenly pierced through men and relations, that he was going to
unveil, without further ceremony, the whole conduct of the court toward
Luigi in his eighth year and in his travelling years to all the courts
of Europe.
Here they broke off in terror the forenoon's negotiations, to prepare
themselves for new ones in the afternoon. In these--which the Lector
was ordered to conceal from Albano--the wish of a continued nearer
union between the two houses was shown at a distance. By the union was
meant Idoine, whose resemblance to Liana, and thereby Albano's love for
the latter, had long been known as gossip. But the involving of this
guiltless angel ran counter to Gaspard's whole plan of his complete
satisfaction; he--who with his high, jagged antlers easily flew through
the confused low brush-wood of worldly life--pushed against the
barriers of his complete power, gave a downright No! and they broke off
in a rage, with the courtly reminder that Herr von Hafenreffer was to
accompany him as plenipotentiary and transact the rest of the business
in Pestitz.
So both arrived. Hafenreffer, quite as fine and cold as he was honest,
easily searched out all the real relations of the case. Gaspard
imparted to Julienne--still fancying that she retained her old love for
his daughter Linda--the wish of the rival Court; but he was astounded
at her disclosures, which spoke as much for Idoine as her former secret
influences upon Albano. In addition to this, she further provoked him,
in the confused twilight of her situation, by the well-meant offer to
make good to him in some measure his paternal outlays upon Albano. "The
Spaniard reads no household accounts, he merely pays them," said he,
and sensitively took leave forever, in order to travel over all the
islands of the earth. Albano he wished not to see any more, from
chagrin at the accident that he had been cheated out of the enjoyment,
by Schoppe's church- and grave-robbery, of punishing and humbling
Albano, by the disclosure that he was only Linda's father and not his,
for cherishing bold doubts of his worth. Whither Linda had gone on that
night of his discovery as father, he coldly concealed from all.
Thereupon he took also solemn leave of his former bride, the Prince's
widow. "He held it as his bounden duty," he said to her, "to let her
into the secret of the newest succession, since he had in some measure
let himself be entangled in the progress of the business." Never was
her look more proud and poisonous. "You seem," said she, composedly,
"to have been led off into more than one error. If it so interests you,
as you seem upon the whole to be interested for this land, then I take
pleasure in telling you, that I dare no longer hesitate about making
known the good fortune which I anticipate, of sparing the country,
perhaps, by a son of their beloved, deceased Prince, the necessity of
any change. At least, we cannot, before time has decided the thing,
admit any foreign admixture." Gaspard, enraged at what he had expected,
spoke in reply merely an infinitely impudent word--because he had a
faculty of more easily forgetting and violating _sex_ than _rank_,--and
thereupon took his courteous leave of her, with the assurance that he
was certain, wherever he might be, to receive confirmation of this
already so agreeable intelligence, and that it would then pain him to
be obliged, out of love for the truth, to make public against her some
extraordinary--judicial papers, which he would not gladly put in
circulation. "You are a real devil," said the Princess, beside herself.
"_Vis-à-vis d'un ange? Mais pourquoi non?_" replied he, and departed
with the old ceremonies.--
Albano, whose heart had in all these depths and abysses naked, wounded
roots and fibres, could not say a word. But his friend Siebenkäs
declared, without further ceremony, that "Gaspard, at every step, and
with his everlasting, fine dallying and hesitating,--as, for example,
about the marriage of his daughter, and other things,--had betrayed
nothing but the incarnate Spaniard, as Gundling, in the first part of
his _Otia_, so well portrays him." Augusti wondered at this openness,
while it seemed to him more tolerable and decorous than Schoppe's
roughness. "What would strike me most," added Siebenkäs, who, as it
seemed, had taken the world's history as a subordinate department,
"would be the long concealment of so weighty a pedigree among so many
partakers of the secret, if I did not know too well from Hume, that the
Gunpowder Plot, under Charles I., had been kept secret for a whole year
and a half by more than twenty conspirators."
Much wounded, and yet thoroughly cleansed, Albano departed, in the
afternoon after these narrations, into the discordant kingdom, but with
cheerful, holy boldness. He was conscious to himself of higher aims and
powers than any of the hard souls would dispute with him; from the
serene, free, ethereal sphere of eternal good he would not let himself
be drawn down into the dirty isthmus of common existence; a higher
realm than what a metallic sceptre sways, one which man first creates,
in order to govern it, opened itself before him; in every, even the
smallest country, was something great,--not population, but prosperity;
the highest justice was his determination, and the promotion of old
foes, particularly of the sensible Froulay. Thus did he now, full of
confidence, leap out of his former slender vessel, propelled only by
strange hands, on to a free earth, where he can move himself alone
without strange rudder, and instead of the empty, bare watery way, find
a firm, blooming land and object. And with this consolation he parted
from the dead Schoppe and the living friend.
145. CYCLE.
In the twilight he came upon the mountain, whence he could overlook,
but with other eyes than once, the city, which was to be the circus and
the theatre of his powers. He belongs now to a German house,--the
people around him are his kinsmen,--the prefiguring ideals, which he
had once sketched to himself at the coronation of his brother, of the
warm rays wherewith a prince as a constellation can enlighten and
enrich lands, were now put into his hands for fulfilment. His pious
father, still blessed by the grandchildren of the country, pointed to
him the pure sun-track of his princely duty: only actions give life
strength, only moderation gives it a charm. He thought of the beings
who lay sunk in graves around him, hard and barren indeed as rocks, but
high as rocks, too,--of the beings whom fate had sacrificed, who would
fain have used the _milky-way_ of _infinity_ and the _rainbow_ of
_fancy_ as a bow in the hand, without ever being able to draw a string
across it. "Why did not, then, I, too, go down like those whom I
esteemed? Did not, in me also, that scum of excess boil up and
overspread the clearness?"
Fate now carried on again games of repetition with him; a flaming
carriage rolled away on a road leading off sidewise from the Prince's
garden; slowly moved the hearse of the brother with dead lights up the
Blumenbühl mountain. "The slow carriage I know; whose is the swift
one?" asked Albano of the Lector. "Herr von Cesara has left us,"
replied he. Albano was silent, but he experienced the last pang which
the Knight would give him. He begged the Lector earnestly to let him go
alone on the way to Blumenbühl, because he should take altogether
circuitous routes.
He wished to visit in Tartarus the grave of the paternal heart without
a breast. As he passed through the noisy suburbs, an old man stared at
him for a long time, suddenly fled away with terror, and cried to a
woman, who met him, "The old man is walking round!" The man had been in
his youth a servant of the Prince, had become blind and had recovered
again a short time since; therefore he took the son for the father
whom he so resembled. In the city the usual public joy at change was
making itself heard. In one house was a children's ball, in another a
group of players at proverbs; while the public mourning shut up every
dancing-hall and every theatre. Strange, merry sons of the muses were
looking out of Roquairol's chamber. In the hotel of the Spaniard a boy
had the jay by a string. He heard some people say in passing, "Who
would have dreamed of it?" "Quite natural," replied the other; "I was
helping make, at the very time, a wall to the princely vault, and saw
him as I see thee." In the upper city all the rows of windows in the
palace of mourning were brightly illuminated, as if there were a
happier festival. In the house of the Minister all were dark; overhead
among the statues on the roof a single little light crept round.
"No," thought Albano, "I need not reflect, why I, too, sank not with
them. O enough, enough has fallen from me into graves. I must surely
yearn forever after all the beings who have flown from me; like divers,
the dead swim along with me below, and hold my life-bark or bear the
anchor." He saw the old corpse-seeress standing out there on the
Blumenbühl road, who once met him in the company of the Baldhead; she
stared up after the lighted hearse and fancied she was seeing dreams
and the future, when she was looking at reality. Everywhere in his path
lay the quivering spider-feet which had been torn out from the crushed
Tarantula of the past. He saw life through a veil, though not a black
but a green one.
Passing through Tartarus, he longingly, but with a shudder, because the
past with its spirits glided after him, arrived at the Moravian
churchyard, where, in a garden without flowers, surrounded by sunken,
slumbering mourning-birches, the white altar with the paternal heart
and the golden inscription glimmered: "Take my last offering,
all-gracious one!" Before the heart shut up in a breast of stone, in
which nothing stirred, not even a particle of dust, he made his
childlike prayer to God, and felt that he would have loved his parents,
and swore to himself to please them, if their lofty eyes still looked
down into the low vale of life. He pressed the cold stone like a breast
to himself; and went away with soft steps, as if the old man were
walking along beside him in this his own form, so like his.
He looked up from his road to the mountain where his father had found
him at evening on Whitsuntide and Sacrament day, as to a Tabor of the
past; and in his walk through the little birch wood he still
recollected well the spot[157] where once two voices (his parents) had
pronounced his name. Thus consecrated by the holy past, he arrived in
the village of his childhood, and saw the church, as well as the house
of Wehrfritz, filled with lights, the former, however, for a mournful
object, and the latter for the glad one of welcoming of guests.
146. CYCLE.
Albano found in the glorification, wherein Heaven was to him only the
magnifying mirror of a glimmering earth, and the past only the
fatherland and mother-country of holy parents,--in this splendor of the
soul he found the house of his boyhood, into which he entered, festal
and like a temple, and everything common and clumsy refined or only
represented as upon a stage. His mother Albina and his sister Rabette
came with their glad looks as higher beings to his moved heart. They
drew hastily back, Julienne flew down stairs and kissed her brother,
for the first time openly, in a silent blending of pleasure and
sadness. When she released him, the tolling began out of the gloom of
the church-tower, as a signal that the dead brother was passing into
the church; then she rushed back upon Albano, and wept infinitely. She
went up with him, without saying whom he should find up there with his
foster-father. An old flute-clock, whose laborious music was offered
from time immemorial to rare guests, welled out to welcome him, as he
opened the door, with the resonances of the days of his childhood.
A tall, black-dressed female form, with a veil falling down sidewise,
who sat talking with his foster-father, turned round towards him
as he entered. It was Idoine; but the old magic semblance passed again
over his to-day so excited soul, as if it were Liana from heaven,
arrayed in immortality, prouder and bolder in the possession of
unearthly powers, retaining nothing more of her former earth than
goodness and charms. Both met each other again here with mutual
astonishment. Julienne--conscious to herself of her little concealments
and arrangements--saw a little red cloud of displeasure flit across
Idoine's mild face; it was, however, gone below the horizon, so soon as
Idoine perceived that the sister during the tolling for her brother's
funeral could not restrain her tears, and she went kindly to meet her,
seeking her hand. Idoine, easily inclined by her severity to fits of
vexation, that little skirmish of wrath, had freed herself by long,
sharp exercise from this finest, but strongest poison of the soul's
happiness, till she at last stood in her heaven as a pure, light moon,
without a rainy and cloudy atmosphere of earth.
Albano, to whom the earth, filled with the past and the dead, had
become an air-globe that soared into the ether, felt himself free
amidst his stars, and without earthly anxiety. He approached
Idoine,--although with the consciousness of the conflicting relations
of his and her house, yet with holy courage. "Her last wish in the last
garden," he said, "had been heard by Heaven." With maiden-like decision
of perception she went through the wilderness wherein she had to bend
aside, now flowers, now thorns, in order to be neither embarrassed nor
injured. She answered him, "I rejoice from my heart that you have found
your faithful sister forever." Wehrfritz was quite as much delighted as
astonished at the frankness with which she honestly spoke the truth
against all family relations. "So must one always lose much on the
earth," Albano replied to her, "in order to gain much," and turned to
his sister, as if he would thereby guard this word against a more
ambiguous sense.
The funeral bell tolled on. The strange, happy and sad mingling of
earthly lots gave all a solemn and free tone of spirit. Albina and
Rabette came up, arrayed in festive dark dresses, for the procession to
the burial church. Julienne divided herself between two brothers, and
never did her heart, which stood at once in tears and flames, swell
more romantically. She guessed how her friend Idoine thought respecting
her brother Albano, for she knew her to have a steadier voice than
to-day's was, and her sweet confusion was most easily evident to her
from the short report which the open soul had made to her of meeting
Albano again in Liana's garden; the slight maidenly recoil, too, of her
pride to-day, when she was embarrassed to find herself taken everywhere
for a risen Liana, that beloved of the youth, made Julienne not more
doubtful, but more sure.
"On a fine evening," said Albano to Idoine, "I once looked down into
your lovely Arcadia, but I was not in Arcadia." "The name," replied
she, and her clear eyes sank again to the earth, "is nothing more than
play; properly it is an alp, and yet only with herdsmen's huts in a
vale." She raised not again her large eyes, when Julienne silently took
her hand and drew her away, because now the funeral bell sounded out
with single, sad strokes, as a sign that the funeral ceremony was
coming on, in which Julienne could not possibly deny her sisterly heart
the comfort of participating. "We are going to the church," said Idoine
to the company. "So are we all, indeed," replied Wehrfritz, quickly. As
the two maidens passed by Albano, he observed for the first time on
Idoine three little freckles, as it were traces of earth and life,
which made her a mortal. He looked after the lofty, noble form, with
the long floating veil, who, beside his sister, appeared like Linda,
quite as majestically, only more delicately built, and whose holy gait
announced a priestess, who had been wont to walk in temples before
gods.
Hardly had the two disappeared, when Albano's old acquaintances,
especially the women, to whom Julienne's presence had always held near
in view Albano's family-tree, crowded on his heart with all signs of
long-repressed cordiality, full of wishes, joys, and tears. "Be my
parents still," said Albano. "Bravery is everything in this world,"
said the Director. "I did my part like a mother," said Albina, "but who
could have known _this!_" Rabette said nothing; her joy and love were
overpowering as her recollections. "My sister Rabette," said Albano,
"gave me, when I first went to Italy, the words embroidered on a purse,
'Think of us.' This prayer I will fulfil for you all in every
vicissitude of fortune";--and here, although too modest to say it, he
thought of things which he might perhaps do, as Prince, for his
foster-father, among which came first the restoration of his reverting
male fee. "Thus, then, is many a former sorrow of the heart, for us--"
began Albina. "O, what's to do with hearts? what's to do with sorrows?"
said Wehrfritz; "to-day all is right and smooth." But Rabette
understood her mother very well.
All betook themselves on their way to the temple of mourning. They
heard as they approached the church the music of the hymn, "How softly
they rest"; at a considerable distance bugles were essaying gladder
tones. Rabette pressed Albano's hand and said, very softly, "It has
been well with me, because I have learned all." She had, since hearing
how Roquairol had murdered a manifold happiness and himself, cast all
her love after the wretched man into his grave to moulder with him,
without shedding a tear as she did it. Her heart leaped at the thought
of Idoine's goodness, of her resemblance, with the mention of which her
father had to-day made the angel blush, and of her beautiful comforting
of Julienne, who had wept incessantly before Albano's arrival. Albina
praised Julienne more on account of her sisterly affection. Rabette was
silent about her; the two were sisterly rivals; moreover, Julienne had,
according to her sharp, inexorable system, looked upon her very coldly
as a victim of the Roquairol whom she so despised; whereas Idoine, who,
by her greater knowledge of human nature, had learned to unite mildness
toward female errors of the heart and moment with severity toward men,
had only been gentle and just.
When they stepped into the church full of mourning lamps, Albano stole
away into an unlighted corner, so as neither to disturb nor be
disturbed. At the bright altar stood the serene and venerable Spener,
with his uncovered head full of silver locks; the long coffin of the
brother stood before the altar between rows of lights. In the arch
of the church hung night, and forms were lost in the gloom; below
rays and bright shadows and people crossed each other. Albano saw the
iron-grated door of the hereditary sepulchre, through which his blessed
parents had gone down, standing open like a gate of death; and it was
to him as if once more Schoppe's tumultuous spirit stalked in, to break
into the last house of man. The thought of his brother affected him but
little, but the neighborhood of his still parents, who had so long
watched for him, and whom he had never thanked, and the incessant tears
of his sister, whom he saw in the gallery over the gate of death, took
mighty hold of his heart, out of which the deep, eternal tones of
lamentation drew tears, like the warm blood of sorrow and of love. He
saw Idoine, with her half red, half white Lancaster rose on the black
silk, standing beside his sister, drawing the veil over her eyes
against many a comparing look. Here, near such altar-lights, had once
the oppressed Liana knelt while swearing the renunciation of her love.
The whole constellation of his shining past, of his lofty beings, had
gone down below the horizon, and only _one_ bright star of all the
group stood glimmering still above the earth: Idoine.
Just then the youth was seen by his friend Dian, who came hastening
towards him. Without much ceremony, the Greek embraced him, and said,
"Hail, hail to the beautiful transformation! There stands my Chariton;
she, too, would greet thee after the manner of her speech."[158] But
Chariton was looking continually at Idoine, on account of her
resemblance. "Well, my good Dian, I have paid many a heart and fortune
for it, and I wonder that fate has spared me thee," said Albano.
Thereupon he asked him, as architect of the church, about the condition
of the hereditary sepulchre, because he wished afterward to have the
ashes of his parents uncovered, in order at least to kneel down before
them in silent gratitude. "Of that," said Dian, surprised, "I know very
little; but it is a shocking purpose, and what good is to come of it?"
The music ceased; Spener, in a low tone, began his discourse. He spoke
not, however, of the Prince at his feet, nor yet of his loved ones in
the hereditary tomb, but of the real life that knows no death, and
which man must beget in himself. He said that, for himself, though an
old man, he wished neither to die nor to live, because one could
already, even here, be with God, so soon as one only had God within
him, and that we ought to be able to see without grief our holiest
wishes wither like sunflowers, because, after all, the lofty sun still
beams on, which forever raises and nourishes new ones, and that a man
must not so much prepare himself for eternity as plant in himself the
eternity which is still, pure, light, deep, and everything.
Many a human breast in the church felt the poisonous point of the past
broken off by this discourse. On Albano's rising sea it had poured
smooth oil, and all about his life was even and radiant. Julienne's
eyes had grown dry and full of serene light, and Idoine's had filled
with glimmering moisture, for her heart had to-day been stirred too
often not to weep in this sweet, devout, and exalting emotion. Once it
seemed to Albano, as he looked towards her, as if she shone
supernaturally, and as if, just as the sun from under the earth beams
upon a moon, so Liana from the other world were beaming upon her
countenance, and adorning this likeness of herself with a holiness
beyond the reach of earth.
At the close of the discourse, Albano went quietly to the two friends,
pressed his sister's hand, and begged her not to wait for the end of
the sad festival. She was comforted and willing. As they stepped out of
the church, a wondrous bright moonlight was spread over earth, like a
sweet morning light of the higher world. Julienne begged them, instead
of going in between four walls, into the prison of eyes and words, and
the midst of all the din, rather to behold first the still, bright
landscape.
All of them bore in their breasts the holy world of the serene old man
out into the fair night. Not a speck of cloud, not a breath of air,
stirred through the wide heaven; the stars reigned alone; earthly
distances were lost in the depth of white shadows; and all mountains
stood in the silvery fire of the moon. "O, how I love your serene, holy
old man!" said Idoine to Albano, when she had already often pressed
Julienne's hand. "How happy I am! Ah, life, like the water of the sea,
is not quite sweet till it rises towards heaven." Suddenly distant
bugle-tones came pealing out to them, which well-meaning country-folk
sounded as a greeting before Albano's foster-home. "How comes it," said
Julienne, "that in the open air and at night even the most
insignificant music is pleasant and stirring?" "Perhaps because our
inner music harmonizes with it more clearly and purely," said Idoine.
"And because, before the spheral music of the universe, human art and
human simplicity are, at last, equally great!" added Albano. "That is
just what I meant, for that is also, after all, only within ourselves,"
said Idoine, and looked lovingly and frankly into his eyes, which sank
before hers, as if the moon, the mild after-summer of the sun, now
dazzled him with its splendor.
Since the church festival, she had addressed herself to him oftener;
her sweet voice was more tender, though more tremulous; her maidenly
shyness of the resemblance to Liana seemed conquered or forgotten, as
on that evening in the last garden. During Spener's discourse, her
existence had decided itself within her, and on her virgin love, as on
a spring soil by one warm evening rain, all buds had been opened into
bloom. As he now looked upon this clear, mild eye, under the pure,
cloudless brow, and the fine mouth, with inexhaustible good-will
towards every living thing breathing over it, he could hardly conceive
that this delicate lily, this light incense exhaled from morning
redness and morning flowers, was the habitation of that firm spirit
which could rule life, just as the tender cloud or the little
nightingale's breast contains the thrilling peal of sound.
They stood now on the bright mountain, covered with the evergreen of
youthful remembrance, where Albano had once slumbered in dreams of the
future, as on a light and lofty island in the midst of the shadow-sea
of two vales. The mountain-ridges of the linden city, the eternal goal
of his youthful days, were snowed over by the moon, and the
constellations stood upon them gleaming and great. He looked now upon
Idoine: how truly did this soul belong among the stars! "When the world
is purged from this low day; when heaven, with its holiest, farthest
suns, looks upon this earthly land; when the heart and the nightingale
alone speak,--then only does her holy time come up in heaven; then is
her lofty, tranquil spirit seen and understood, and by day only her
charms," thought Albano.
"How many a time, my good Albano," said the sister, "hast thou here, in
thy long-left youthful years, looked toward the mountains for thine own
ones,--for thy hidden parents and brothers and sisters,--for thou hadst
always a good heart!" Here Idoine unconsciously looked at him with
inexpressible love, and his eye met hers. "Idoine," said he,--and their
souls gazed into each other, as into suddenly rising heavens, and he
took the maiden's hand,--"I have that heart still; it is unhappy, but
unstained." Then Idoine hid herself quickly and passionately in
Julienne's bosom, and said, scarce audibly, "Julienne, if Albano
rightly knows me, then be my sister!"
"I do know thee, holy being!" said Albano, and clasped to _one_
bosom sister and bride; and from all of them there wept but _one_
joy-enraptured heart. "O ye parents," prayed the sister, "O thou God,
bless, then, both of them and me, that so it may be forever!" And as
she lifted her eyes to heaven, while the lovers lingered in the short,
holy elysium of the first kiss, innumerable immortals looked down out
of the deep-blue eternity, the distant tones and the mild rays were
blended together, and the slumbering realm of the moon resounded. "Look
up to the fair heaven!" cried the sister to the lovers, in the ecstasy
of her joy; "the rainbow of eternal peace blooms there, and the
tempests are over, and the world is all so bright and green. Wake up,
my brother and sister!"
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Jean Paul here Germanizes (or Frenchifies) the Latin word
_territio_ (a terrifying). The meaning is, that this marriage might
well be an _in terrorem_ affair to poor Luigi (as well as to the bride,
according to Schoppe's droll conceit, that all this furor of joy was a
mere noise made to scare her _back_). The only other case in which the
author uses this word is near the end of the third paragraph of Cycle
15, where the reader should have been informed that _real territion_ is
an expression borrowed from the inquisitors, who, when _verbal_
threatenings fail, bring on _ocular_ ones by showing the instruments of
torture to the victim. This is applied to Froulay's system with his
children. In this sense the rod which used to hang over the fireplace
or looking-glass when some of us were children was a _real
territion_.--Tr.]
[Footnote 2: _Schach_ means both chess and the Persian king,--the
Shah--Tr.]
[Footnote 3: In the (French and German) sense of active property,
namely, that does something, brings in something. _Active debts_ are
one's assets.-Tr.]
[Footnote 4: Referring, of course, to her refusal of him.--Tr.]
[Footnote 5: A French name for candlesticks.--Tr.]
[Footnote 6: Frightfully is this true cry of humanity echoed in Hess's
Flying Journeys, Part IV. p. 156; at present a more humane
administration has quieted it by means of the game-tax.]
[Footnote 7: It was to him a hearty pleasure to present such a
marriage-poem with the rhymes, flights, and notes of admiration and
exclamation by the very best new-year's rhymer in the world; and
the consciousness of his pure, though satirical, purpose set him
entirely at ease about any charge of being elaborate or too servile
in particular applications. [The Pereat-Carmen means, an Ode of
Anathema.--Tr.]]
[Footnote 8: Poison administered to obtain a succession or inheritance.
Adler.--Tr.]
[Footnote 9: Between every two windows stood a pier-glass, which
blended its reflection of the distant vista with those of the windows.
Opposite each mirror stood only one window; the interval between the
two was filled and concealed with foliage.]
[Footnote 10: "I am but a dream."]
[Footnote 11: "Cherished sister."]
[Footnote 12: An allusion, of course, to the theological dogma of the
procession of the Holy Spirit from Father and Son.--Tr.]
[Footnote 13: "Nor let a god interpose unless a knot occurs which is
worthy of such helper."]
[Footnote 14: "Nor let a fourth person (i. e. when you have the married
couple and friend) intrude his advice."]
[Footnote 15: Angels' Song in Faust, where the sun completes his course
with _Donnergang_.--Tr.]
[Footnote 16: _Nebelflechen_ and _Marktflecken_ are the German words;
_Flecken_, like our spot, having two meanings, as if we should say
spots of mist and dwelling-_spots_.--Tr.]
[Footnote 17: A coquetting with virtue as a virtuoso, of course Gaspard
means. The word corresponds to _religiosity_.--Tr.]
[Footnote 18: Where the Prince had died and she had been made blind.]
[Footnote 19: _Gesichts-schwester_. Visionary is here used in the sense
of _seen in vision_, as in the line where Æneas describes seeing
Hector's ghost,
"I wept to see the _visionary_ man."
The reference probably is to the scene in the dream-temple, where Liana
personated Idoine, Cycle 78.--Tr.]
[Footnote 20: _Stein-pflaster_ means _pavement_.--Tr.]
[Footnote 21: Or one might paraphrase Schoppe's half-punning and
half-proverbial saying: "Who has never known her _durance_, never
learns endurance."--Tr.]
[Footnote 22: Schoppe here alludes to the poem of Schiller, "Auch ich
war in Arcadien geboren."--Tr.]
[Footnote 23: His _Lettres sur les Aveugles_.]
[Footnote 24: _Bunt auf weiss_ is the German phrase, answering to
"_Schwarz auf weiss_" (in black and white). There seems to be no way in
English of keeping up the analogous neatness of the expression.--Tr.]
[Footnote 25: This word is in English in the original, and Jean Paul
adds in a foot-note: _Die helle Kammer_ (the bright chamber). Does he
mean the _camera obscura_?--Tr.]
[Footnote 26: This passage may throw some light for the reader on a
somewhat obscure one at the end of the first paragraph in Cycle 31,
where Jean Paul seems to intimate the wish that, as there are surgeons
employed at the rack to point out how far torture may go without
killing the victim, and so defeating the very object of the cruelty, so
there might be in regard to the enjoyments of princes, in order to
point out how far they may go without spoiling themselves and imposing
sickly, worthless, burdensome rulers upon the country.--Tr.]
[Footnote 27: Titles of the chapters respectively in "The Invisible
Lodge," in "Hesperus," and in "Quintus Fixlein."--Tr.]
[Footnote 28: Where Albano for the last time was happy with Liana.]
[Footnote 29: Jean Paul does not quote Gray's Elegy, though this
somewhat literal translation might seem to imply it.--Tr.]
[Footnote 30: The Chinese could once paint fishes and other shapes on
porcelain, which were only visible when one filled up the vessel.
_Lettres Edifiantes_, etc., XII. Recueil.]
[Footnote 31: "Strike, but hear me."--Tr.]
[Footnote 32: Linda.]
[Footnote 33: For instance, the German imperial court allows no
servants' livery.]
[Footnote 34: Buildings in Rome which appear to consist of one or the
other of these have only an outside layer thereof.]
[Footnote 35: "Pretended secret of making one's self invulnerable."
Adler.--Tr.]
[Footnote 36: These distinctions are given for the German _Princessinn_
and _Fürstinn_.--Tr.]
[Footnote 37: These distinctions are given for the German _Princessinn_
and _Fürstinn_.--Tr.]
[Footnote 38: 5. Cycle.]
[Footnote 39: The Diana-tree of the chemists is a crystallized
composition of silver, mercury, and spirits of nitre.--Tr.]
[Footnote 40: Literally, the _pastoral_, &c.--Tr.]
[Footnote 41: Symmer observed the following: White and black stockings
drawn over each other in dry, cold weather, when one draws them apart,
the outer by the lower end, the inner by the upper end, become charged
with opposite electricities, the white positive, the black negative;
when separate, they swell out toward each other, and seek each other;
when in contact, they hang down flat and broad.--Fisher's _Physical
Dictionary_, Vol. I.]
[Footnote 42: The _pastoral_ hour of sentimental love.--Tr.]
[Footnote 43: The "vant-courier" of the "thunderbolt."--Tr.]
[Footnote 44: On Wilhelmshöhe a long musical tone precedes the falling
of the water.]
[Footnote 45: Both are names of the old German God of Thunder; he means
himself, however, by this.]
[Footnote 46: The Molossi called all beautiful women Proserpines.]
[Footnote 47: Thus ought Schiller's Holy Virgin to be named.]
[Footnote 48: His Albano.]
[Footnote 49: Schoppe means very south-east.--Tr.]
[Footnote 50: So the Vandals named Death.]
[Footnote 51: Simon and Judas's day, when the weather was apt to be
stormy. See Act I. Scene 1, of Schiller's William Tell. "To-day is
Simon and Judas's day. Hark! how the deep howls!"--Tr.]
[Footnote 52: "Two of a trade can never agree."--Tr.]
[Footnote 53: An Englishman observed, that, among the fixed ideas of
the madhouse, that of subserviency rarely occurs; its inhabitants being
mostly gods, kings, popes, savants.]
[Footnote 54: Who and what and with what help and why and how and
when.]
[Footnote 55: Where, as is well known, the uncorrupted corpses lean
against each other.]
[Footnote 56: Who had appeared to him on Isola Bella.]
[Footnote 57: Where she had melted away from him in the cloud when he
was about to embrace her.]
[Footnote 58: The swan, with a stroke of her wing, can break an arm.]
[Footnote 59: The reader may not remember that "the little Linda" was
the cipher under which Julienne disguised in her letters the name of
Liana, as mentioned in the third paragraph of the 43d Cycle.--Tr.]
[Footnote 60: She regarded her present life as a quiet play-life, like
that of children, and only the second as the actual one.]
[Footnote 61: Here and henceforward she talks, indeed, wildly; but she
knows, nevertheless, that the wreath of wild-flowers is from Chariton's
children.]
[Footnote 62: I am only a dream.]
[Footnote 63: She sees the autumn-foliage.]
[Footnote 64: The passage reads in Cardan. Præcept. ad Filios, c. 16,
thus: "Longobardo rubro, Germano nigro, Hetrusco lusco, Veneto claudo,
_Hispano longo et procero_, mulieri barbatæ, viro crispo, Græco nulli
confidere nolite." [Let no ruddy Lombard, black German, purblind
Etrurian, limping Venetian, _long and lean Spaniard_, bearded woman,
curly-haired man, nor any Greek at all, be trusted.]]
[Footnote 65: E. g. the Leader Naumann.]
[Footnote 66: He would have said _assonance_.]
[Footnote 67: He would have said _co-secant_.]
[Footnote 68: Walkyres are charming maidens, who plan battles
beforehand, and mark out the heroes who are to fall.]
[Footnote 69: Here begins Jean Paul's fourth volume of Titan, to which
he prefixed the following note (which needs for explanation only the
statement that the Author--agreeably to an intimation in the
Introductory Programme--accompanied each of the first two volumes with
a so-called _Comic Appendix_, full of all sorts of quizzes having no
connection with the Romance):--"This volume concludes the whole Titan,
exclusive of any further comic appendices, for which, however, the
Author hopes and fears to find still time and material enough.
Wide-awake heads may perhaps take the usual learned criticisms on the
work for the regular comic appendices thereto. And, indeed, the gay,
loose dust on the poetic butterfly-wings turn out often--when more
closely examined--to be real plumage. Meiningen, December, 1802. J. P.
F. Richter."]
[Footnote 70: The corpse is borne uncovered to burial; its attendants
follow muffled up.]
[Footnote 71: Such, for instance in Hungary, is the designation of a
deacon.]
[Footnote 72: _Screaming_ and _outscreamed_ are Richter's bold words.--
Tr.]
[Footnote 73: Curiously enough, the German phrase is constructed here
so as to mean, in strict grammar, "_all tall travellers_."--Tr.]
[Footnote 74: Compact, account.--Tr.]
[Footnote 75: Ten o'clock.]
[Footnote 76: Of Jupiter Tonans.]
[Footnote 77: The body in the Pantheon, the head in St. Luke's Church.]
[Footnote 78: One is reminded here of the manner in which Macduff
receives Rosse's announcement that his wife and children were "all
well."--Tr.]
[Footnote 79: Strasburg cathedral.--Tr.]
[Footnote 80: The hall of the Pantheon seems too low, because a part of
its steps is hidden by the rubbish.]
[Footnote 81: This opening in the roof is twenty-seven feet in
diameter.]
[Footnote 82: The pole-star, as well as other northern constellations,
stands lower in the south.]
[Footnote 83: The sum and system of electric, galvanic, chemical,
anatomical experiments, tactics, a _corpus juris_, &c., may well put us
to astonishment; but humanity itself appears no greater for gigantic
structures, which are put together by millions of _elephant-ants_; but
when an elephant carries a building, when an individual shows any one
power in new degrees and relations,--Newton the power of mathematical
intuition; Raphael the plastic; Aristotle, Lessing, Fichte,
penetration; or another goodness, firmness, wit, &c,--then does
humanity gain and extend its limits.]
[Footnote 84: In Greenland the intense cold makes people black and
blind.]
[Footnote 85: Wherein since the time of Servius Tullius all potshards
have been thrown.]
[Footnote 86: This expression seems to be borrowed from Goethe's
"Fisher":--
"Lockt dich dein eigen Angesicht,
Nicht her in _ewigen Thau_?"--Tr.]
[Footnote 87: See Titan, 3d Cycle. [_Painting_, i. e. rouging of the
cheeks.--Tr.]]
[Footnote 88: How beautiful he is!]
[Footnote 89: This is the Latin _esse_, _being_, and is defined in
German as "well-being." The phrase means here something like what we
call _being in one's element_.--Tr.]
[Footnote 90: Roquairol.]
[Footnote 91: Gaeta.]
[Footnote 92: The island Ischia, with its mountain Epomeo high as
Vesuvius, Capri, &c.]
[Footnote 93: "Die Myrte still, und hoch der Lorbeer
steht."--_Goethe_.--Tr.]
[Footnote 94: Receptions.]
[Footnote 95: Borgho d' Ischia.]
[Footnote 96: He means the vintage, which comes in thrice a year there,
in December, March, and August.]
[Footnote 97: Falsetto?--Tr.]
[Footnote 98: The island of Ischia itself.]
[Footnote 99: Day-sight (hemeralopy) is common in hot countries; the
strongest degree is, to be blind in the night even to light, and only
in the morning able to see again.]
[Footnote 100: There are metamorphosing mirrors which represent young
forms as decrepit.]
[Footnote 101: Him and Liana.]
[Footnote 102: Campania Felice.--Tr.]
[Footnote 103: Spurge is a plant which has an emetic effect.--If any
reader will try his hand at improving this desperate imitation (or
evasion) of an untranslatable pun, of which (in the mouth of the witty
Princesse herself) the author might have said, with an equally noted
_artiste_, in a smaller sphere,--"One of our failures,"--he is informed
that the German phrases are "Eine bessere Laufbahn" and "Einen bösem
Laufgraben."--Tr.]
[Footnote 104: The reader, however, will know how to explain it who
recalls the adventure which Roquairol told Albano of Linda with the
snake, when she was a young girl. See Vol. I. p. 331.--Tr.]
[Footnote 105: At Baja.]
[Footnote 106: Question her no longer, for her father will come (it is
said) on the day of the nuptials.]
[Footnote 107: A very beautiful Carthusian convent at Valencia.]
[Footnote 108: Singing-birds are rare in Italy, because they are sold
in the market for the kitchen.]
[Footnote 109: Dian did not love Virgil.]
[Footnote 110: So heavily and slowly does the broad lava-stream roll
down, that a man can travel on in advance of this glowing death-flood,
which swallows up, suffocates, and melts down everything it touches,
and can see the destruction behind him, without indulging an
apprehension of danger to himself.]
[Footnote 111: Luther's version differs here (for the better) from
ours, which makes it a negative assertion instead of a negative
question,--"I was _not_ in safety," &c.--Tr.]
[Footnote 112: Schoppe says _schellen_ (diamonds), but _laub_ means
both _leaves_ and _spades_ (in cards), and therefore a liberty has been
taken.--Tr.]
[Footnote 113: Püsterich or Püster, the well-known old German idol,
full of holes, flames, and water.]
[Footnote 114: Of course, Jean Paul himself, a great friend of
Schoppe's.--Tr.]
[Footnote 115: The Baldhead who prophesied that he would go mad in
fourteen months.]
[Footnote 116: These blanks will fill themselves out in the
sequel.--Tr.]
[Footnote 117: Of the Septuagint Old Testament.--Tr.]
[Footnote 118a and b: Similarity of nature, identity of being. Terms of
old theological controversy.--Tr.]
[Footnote 119: The uncle had lied again, for he had previously, as we
have seen, gone to Rome, where he delivered to the knight and the
Princess the letters from Pestitz.]
[Footnote 120: The German word _partie_ means a match in matrimony or
in cards.--Tr.]
[Footnote 121: A familiar and favorite German song, "Freut euch des
Lebens."--Tr.]
[Footnote 122: This passage reminds the translator of a beautiful poem
of Lenau's, in which the postilion passing a graveyard in the mountains
at night, where an old fellow-postilion lies buried, blows an air which
the dead man used to love; and a passenger hearing the echo from the
mountain-churchyard, says:--
"And a blast upon the air
From the heights came flying:
Was the dead postilion there
To his strains replying?"--Tr.]
[Footnote 123: See Customs of the Morlacks. From the Italian. 1775.]
[Footnote 124: Go! (Done!)--Tr.]
[Footnote 125: Chant?--Tr.]
[Footnote 126: Linda had called him _unheimlich_ ("discomfortable," to
use Shakespeare's word); Roquairol, playing on the word, replies,
"_heimlich_ (close, sly) I should rather say." But the conceit seems
untranslatable.--Tr.]
[Footnote 127: The German _sonnentrunken_ (sun-drunken) is somewhat
strong for our English speech--Tr.]
[Footnote 128: Richter represents the hero of one of his shorter works
as being, when a child, afflicted with such sensitive nerves, that
when, during the Sunday sermon, some passage of peculiar eloquence
startled the congregation into silence, the awful pause would so
oppress and tempt him with the thought, "Supposing thou shouldst cry
out, 'I'm here too, Mr. Parson!'" that he absolutely had to run out of
the church.--Tr.]
[Footnote 129: See Vol. I. p. 328.]
[Footnote 130: A passage from Albano's letter to Roquairol, Vol. I. p.
280.]
[Footnote 131: _Patron_ in German.--Tr.]
[Footnote 132: Love and friendship.]
[Footnote 133: He means the yellow-dressed Athenais, enacted by his
quondam mistress, whose dress was described in Vol. I. p. 322.--Tr.]
[Footnote 134: So much prize-money does every professor get for every
best grammar and every best compend; so for every dissertation fifty
ducats, &c.--_Tychse's Supplement to Bourgoing's Travels_, Vol. II.]
[Footnote 135: One such, e. g. desired to see the king; he appeared on
the balcony, and stayed till she was satisfied.]
[Footnote 136: A Spanish inn.]
[Footnote 137: His dog.]
[Footnote 138: _Es ist zum Tollwerden and es ist zum Tollsein_ are the
two German phrases.--Tr.]
[Footnote 139: Livonian?--Tr.]
[Footnote 140: Isola Bella in Lago Maggiore (literally, greater
lake).--Tr.]
[Footnote 141: See in Howitt's "Student Life in Germany," p. 301, &c.,
an account of the ceremony at the singing of the "Landesvater," or
consecration song, the most impressive part of which is that every
student pierces his cap with his sword.--Tr.]
[Footnote 142: S--s means Siebenkäs. It is known--from the _Flower_-,
_Fruit_-, _and Thorn-pieces_--that Schoppe at an earlier period called
himself Siebenkäs,--then gave this name away to his friend Liebgeber,
who resembled him even to the face, and from whom he had taken
his,--and that the friend for show had a gravestone made and marked
"Siebenkäs."]
[Footnote 143: See Vol. I. p. 35.]
[Footnote 144: Look! look!]
[Footnote 145: This and what follows will be remembered by the reader
of the "Flower-, Fruit-, and Thorn-Pieces."--Tr.]
[Footnote 146: Or "Clavis Fichtiana," a little work of Jean
Paul's.--Tr.]
[Footnote 147: One edition has _glas_ (glass) instead of gas,--palpably
a blunder,--Tr.]
[Footnote 148: Josey! Josey!]
[Footnote 149: Vol. I. pp. 145, 146.]
[Footnote 150: Vol. I. p. 143.]
[Footnote 151: Vol. I. p. 103.]
[Footnote 152: He means Liana, whom Spener, by the solemn revelation of
Albano's birth and destiny, forced to renounce a love which had grown
up among nothing but poisonous flowers.]
[Footnote 153: He strikes before the iron is hot, makes it hot by
striking,--seizes opportunity by the forelock.--Tr.]
[Footnote 154: Never to marry beneath her rank.]
[Footnote 155: Liana became, as is well known, when her brother held
his discourse upon the breast without a heart beside the old Prince,
sick and blind.]
[Footnote 156: Portion settled on a younger son in royal families, or
on a prince foregoing the succession.--Tr.]
[Footnote 157: Vol. I. p. 82.]
[Footnote 158: Namely, rejoice!]
THE END.
* * * * *
Cambridge: Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.
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