Part 13
Now when Albano had read himself to the flaming point upon some great idea or other, as Immortality or Deity, he had then to write upon it; because the Architect believed, and I too, that in the educational world nothing goes beyond writing,--not even reading and speaking; and that a man may read thirty years with less improvement than he would gain by writing a half. It is just in this way that we authors mount to such heights; hence it is that even the worst of us, if we hold out, become somewhat, at last, and write ourselves up from Schilda to Abdera, and from there away up to Grub Street.
But what a glowing hour then came on for our darling! What are all Chinese lantern-festivals to the high festival for which an inflamed youth lights up all the chambers of his brain, and in this illumination throws out his first essays?
In the forepart, and on the very threshold of the essay perhaps, Albano still crept along step by step, and made use merely of his head; but as he got further on, and his heart quivered with wings, and like a comet he must needs sweep along before only shimmering constellations of great truths, could he then restrain himself from imitating the rosy-red Flamingo, who, in his passage towards the sun, seems to paint himself into a flying brand, and to clothe himself in wings of fire? When at length he reached the practical application, verily every one was like the others; in each he formed and sowed an Arcadia full of human angels, who in three minutes could cross over on a Charon's pontoon thrown in for the purpose, and land in the Elysium which floated so near: in every one of these practical applications all men were saints, all saints beatified; all mornings blossoms, and all evenings fruit; Liana perfectly well, and he not far from it--her lover;--all nations ascended more easily the noonday heights; and he upon his own, like men upon mountains, saw everything good nearer to him. Ah! the whole boggy present, full of stumps and blood-suckers, had he kicked aside, and was now encircled only with floating green worlds, full of pastures, which the sun-ball of his head had projected into the ether.
Blissful, blissful time! thou hast long since gone by! O, the years in which man reads and makes his first poems and systems, when the spirit creates and blesses its first worlds, and when, full of fresh morning-thoughts, it sees the first constellations of truth come up bringing an eternal splendor, and stand ever before the longing heart, which has enjoyed them, and to which time, by and by, offers only astronomical newspapers and refraction-tables on the morning-stars, only antiquated truths and rejuvenated lies! O, then was man, like a fresh, thirsty child, suckled and reared with the milk of wisdom; at a later period he is only cured with it, as a withered, sceptical, hectic patient! But thou canst, indeed, never come back again, glorious season of _first love_ for the truth, and these sighs can only give me a warmer remembrance of thee; and if thou ever shouldst return, it certainly could not be down here in the low mine-shaft of life, where our morning splendor consists of the little flames that play upon the quartz crystals, and our sun is a mine-lamp,--no; but it may happen then, when death reveals us, and tears away from over the heads of the pale-yellow workmen the coffin-lid of the mine-shaft, and we now again stand as first men on a new, full earth, and under a fresh, immeasurable heaven!
Into this golden age of his heart fell also his acquaintance with Rousseau and Shakespeare, of whom the former exalted him above his century, and the latter above this life. I will not say here how Shakespeare ruled, sovereign, in his heart,--not through the breathing of living characters, but by lifting him up out of the loud kingdom of earth into the silent realm of infinity. When one dips his head at night under water, there is an awful stillness round about him; into a similar supernatural stillness of the under-world does Shakespeare introduce us.
What many schoolmasters may blame in Dian is this, that he gave the youth all books indiscriminately, without any exact course of reading. But Alban asked, in later years: "Is such a course anything but folly? Is it possible? For does Fate ever arrange the appearance of new books, or systems, or teachers, or outward circumstances, or conversations, so according to paragraphs, that one needs nothing more than to transcribe all that passes upon the memory, and he shall have the order into the bargain? Does not every head need and make its own? And does more depend on the order in which the meats follow each other, or on the digestion of them?"
26. CYCLE.
While Dian was causing a nobler temple to go up in the heavens than the stone one in the village, the Princess, whose _castrum doloris_ this was to be, died; they had, therefore, to deposit her remains for a time in the accommodations of a Pestitz church. This changed one or two thousand things. The Crown-prince of Hohenfliess, Luigi, must now, will he nill he, come back from Italy, to the princely chair, in which the old man, bent up with years, had, for a long time, diminutive and speechless, been rather lying than sitting,--although the Minister standing behind the princely arm-chair took off his figure and voice in a sufficiently lively manner. Don Gaspard, who had not listened to any of the previous letters of Albano, now despatched to him the following orders, which rushed like fiery wine through his veins: "On my way back from Italy we meet, in thy birthplace, _Isola Bella_. Thou wilt be sent for." Even readers who have not had a week's practice in folding and sealing letters of a diplomatic corps, will easily observe that the Knight of the Fleece is thinking to bring his son acquainted with the young prince, and to establish and insure their first Pestitz connections.
But I beg the world now to measure the Paradise of a man, who after so long seafaring at last sees the long shores of the new world stretch out into the ocean. Was not life at this moment open to him in a hundred directions? Laurel-wreaths, ivy-wreaths, flower-wreaths, myrtle-wreaths, wheat-garlands,--all these crowns overhung the great gate of Pestitz and its house-doors. Thou brother, thou sister, (I mean Roquairol and Liana,) what a full, yearning soul was marching to meet you! and what a dreaming and innocent one! Homer and Sophocles, and the ancient history and Dian, and Rousseau, that magus of youth,--and Shakespeare and the British weeklies (wherein a higher and more human poesy speaks than in their abstract poems),--all these had left behind in the happy youth an everlasting light, an unparalleled purity, wings for every Mount Tabor, and the fairest but most difficult wishes. He resembled, not the urbane French, who, like ponds, reflect the hue of the nearest bank, but those loftier men, who, like the sea, wear the color of the boundless heavens.
In fact, now was the ripest, best point of time for his change. Through Dian and his journeys, even Albano's _exterior_ man had been trained to grace in fashionable saloons. Men, like bullets, go farthest when they are smoothest; besides, there remained sticking on Zesara diamond-points enough at which mediocrity stumbles and is wounded, and even uncommon worth is an uncommon fault,--as _high_ towers, for that very reason, appear _bent over_. Zesara learned, even outside the circle of country youngsters, a readiness of ideas and words, which formerly stood at his service only in a state of enthusiasm; for wit, generally a foe of the latter, was with him merely a servant and child thereof. He did not, like witty sucklings, coquette with all ideas, but he was either beset by them or not touched at all; hence came that silent, slow, unostentatious ripening of his power; he resembled mountains of a gradual ascent, which always yield more booty than those which rise abruptly. With great trees, the seed is smaller and in spring the blossoms later than in the case of small bushes.
The time ere Gaspard's messenger came to take him away was to the detained youth an eternity, and the village a prison; it shrivelled up to the household-buildings of a convent. The hidden plan of his life, written, however, by encaustic into his brain, was, as with all such young men, this, to be and do nothing more than--everything; that is to say, to bless, to glorify, and to enlighten at once himself and a country,--to be a Frederick II. upon the throne; in other words, a storm-cloud, which should contain thunders of excommunication for the sinner, electrical light for the deaf, blind, and lame, showers for the insects, and warm drops for thirsty flowers, hail for enemies, an attraction for everything, for leaves and dust, and a rainbow for the end. Now, as he could not succeed Frederick II., he proposes to be hereafter minister at least,--especially as Wehrfritz made so much out of this by-sceptre,--this offshoot and chip of the mother sceptre,--and in his spare hours a great poet and philosopher withal.
I shall be delighted, Count, if thou shouldst become a second Frederick, the second and only; my book will profit by it and I myself mould my future thereby as a rare historiographer, compounded of Zenophon, Curtius, and Voltaire!
27. CYCLE.
Zesara will never forget the spring evening, on which he saw a passenger in a greatcoat,--a little limping and covered with brown travelling-paint, to which his white eyeballs formed a shining contrast,--wade across the shallow brook beside the high bridge, and how, further, the passenger took with him a watch-man's cane which the then Lieutenant of the Beggar's Police had just leaned against his house-door, a vicarious fellow-laborer, and handed the said cane, on his way, to a cripple, with the words: "Old man, I have nothing by me smaller than the stick. If anybody asks you about it, just tell them you are keeping guard in the village against the confounded beggar tribe, but have not eyes enough." At the same time our pilgrim reached out to a rector's little son, who needed it for about three minutes, his pocket-handkerchief.
It was of course our old Librarian by title, Schoppe, whom Don Gaspard had despatched with the note of invitation for Isola Bella. Albano's delight was so great, that only some days later did the youth mistake the odd humorist, whereas the latter soon correctly weighed the light, ardent, still wildling. Did it not fare still worse with the old Provincial Director, who, merely because he rated the _body_ politic of the Empire as high as if he were the installed _soul_ therein, upon Schoppe's sallies against the constitution, came out in a patriotic fury: "Sir," said he, in an excited manner, "even if there were a flaw anywhere, still a true German would be bound to maintain a profound silence on the subject, unless he can help the matter, especially in such cursed times."
The finest of all was, that, at Luigi's request, the Architect had to set out at the same time, for the purpose of fetching casts of antiques from Rome.
And now march on, that soon ye may come back again, and we may at last for once fairly enter Pestitz! It may well be expected that thou, good child (I should rather say, wild-bee), wilt take thy flight from the rural honey-tree into the glass beehive of the city, with deeper pangs than thou hadst imagined beforehand,--has not even the old foster-father gone off on his journey without saying his farewell, only to escape thine?--and, as to thy good mother, it seems to her as if one of the angry Parcæ were tearing a son from her breast, as if his tender love-bond, woven only of childish familiarity, would not stretch out into the far future,--and thy sister locks herself up in the attic, her rustic heart raging with fiery torments, and cannot say anything to thee, nor give thee anything, but a letter-case previously and privately worked by her with the silken circumscription: "Remember us!" and even on thy laurel-seeking head will the triumphal arch or rainbow of leave-taking, when thou passest under it, fling down heavy, heavy drops, (ah, they will continue to hang longer on the eyes that look after thee!) thy honest old teacher Wehmeier will pour out upon thee the last stream of his words and tears, and say, and thy tender heart will not smile at it: "He is a worn out, old fellow, and has now nothing before him but the hole (the grave); thou, on the contrary, art a fresh, young blood, full of languages and antiquities and magnificent, god-given talents,--of course he shall not live to see thee make a famous man, but his children well may; and these poor worms,--thou must one day adopt them, young master!"
Thou pure soul, on every familiar house, on every dear garden and valley will sorrow, indeed, sharpen her clasp-knife, and tear open therewith softly gushing wounds in thy glowing, tender heart. What do I say? even from thy friendly morning- and evening-heights, the nunnery-gratings of thy holiest hopes, and from Liana herself, thou wilt seem to be stealing away.
But cast thy weeping eyes over the broad, blue Italy, and dry them in the spring breezes. Life begins,--the signals for the martial exercises and tournaments of manly youth are given, and, in the midst of the Olympic battle-games, thou wilt hear the music of neighboring concert- and dancing-halls magnificently pealing around thee.
What phantasies are these I am playing here? What! is it not more than too well known to all of us, that he has been gone this long time, ever since the very first Jubilee-period,--yes, and come back again, and has already, ever since the second--and we are now counting the fourth--been sitting in company with the Librarian and the Lector, on horseback, before Pestitz, unable to get in, on account of the barricade of the----
FOOTNOTES:
[38] In Catania, the veil of St. Agatha is the only antidote to Etna.
[39] Allusion to the torches, before which the Colosseum and the Antiques and the glaciers, which are both, are seen magically gleaming.
[40] As the Queen of Heaven, Juno is always, by the ancients, clothed in a blue veil.--_Hagedorn on Painting._
[41] An old machine that fires many shots at once.
[42] In Italy the stars look not silvery, but golden.
[43] In a tempestuous atmosphere, little flames are emitted by orange-lilies, gold-flowers, sunflowers, Indian pinks, &c.
[44] Probably on fluttering gold plates after the birds.
FIFTH JUBILEE?
GRAND-ENTRY.--DR. SPHEX.--THE DRUMMING CORPSE.--THE LETTER OF THE KNIGHT.--RETROGRADATION OF THE DYING-DAY.--JULIENNE.--THE STILL GOOD-FRIDAY OF OLD AGE.--THE HEALTHY AND BASHFUL HEREDITARY PRINCE.--ROQUAIROL.--THE BLINDNESS.--SPHEX'S PREDILECTION FOR TEARS.--THE FATAL BANQUET.--THE DOLOROSO OF LOVE.
28. CYCLE.
When he came to the fork of the road, of which the right prong points to Lilar, Albano, with a somewhat heavy heart, spurred his horse across, and flew up the hill, till the bright city, like an illuminated St. Peter's dome, blazed far and wide in this spring night of his fancies. It lay, like a giant, with its shoulders (the upper city) resting on the heights, and stretched its other half (the lower city) down into the valley. It was noon, and not a cloud in heaven; at noonday a city stands before you in full, white disk, whereas a village does not, until evening, come out of its first quarter into full light. It was well fortified, not by Rimpler or Vauban, but by a blooming palisade of lindens. The long wall of the palaces of the mountain-city gleamed from above a welcome to our Albano, and the statues, on their Italian roofs, directed themselves towards him as way-guides and criers of joy; over all the palaces ran the iron framework of the lightning-rods, like a throne-scaffolding of the thunder, with golden sceptre-points; down along the side of the mountain lay camped the lower city, by the side of the stream between shady avenues, with its gay façades towards the streets, and its white back turned toward Nature; carpenters were hammering away like a forge on the green-sward among the peeled trunks of trees, and the children were clattering round with the birch-bark; cloth-makers were stretching out green cloths like bird-nets in the sun; from the distance came white-covered carriers'-wagons jogging along the country-road, and by the sides of the way shorn sheep were grazing under the warm shadow of the rich, bright linden-blossoms,--and over all these groups the noonday chime of bells from the dear, familiar towers (those relics and light-houses that gleamed out of the dusk of his earlier days), floated like one all-embracing and animating soul, and called together the friendly throngs of people.
Contemplate the heated face of my hero, who at last is riding into the open streets, built up in his fancy of temples of the sun, where, who knows but that at every long window, on every balcony, Liana may be standing? where the lying or prophetic riddles of Isola Bella must be unravelled,--where all household gods and household fates of his nearest future lie hid,--where now the Mont Blanc of the Court and the Alps of Parnassus, both of which he has to climb, lie with their feet stretching close before him. All this would have oppressed me not a little; but in the young man, especially before the chandelier of the sun, a shower of light gushed down. O, when the morning-wind of youth blows, the inner mercury-column stands high, even though the external weather be not of the best.
Few of us, when we have gone on horseback to the academy, may have happened into such a refreshing stir as met my hero: chimney-sweeps were singing away overhead out of their pulpits and black holes to the passers below, and a building-orator,[45] on the ridgepole of a new house, was exorcising the future conflagration, and quenching one in his own breast, and slinging the glass fire-bucket far over the scaffolding; yes, when we have ridden with our hero through the laughing congregation of the roof-preacher, and through the ranks of blooming sons of the Muses,[46] who stand arm in arm, among whom Alban sent round his fiery eye to find his Roquairol,--after all this, when we reach his future residence, a new clamor salutes our ears.
It came from the Land-physicus[47] Sphex, his future landlord, who is to resign to him half his palace (for the Doctor is made wealthy by his cures), because the house lies exactly in the highest part of the upper city, or the Westminster of the Court; while in the lower town are domiciled the students and the _city_. The short, thick-set Dr. Sphex was standing, as our trio rode up, by the side of a tall man, who sat upon a stone bench, and held in readiness two drum-sticks upon a child's drum. At a signal from Sphex, the tall man beat a faint roll upon his drum, and the Doctor said to him, calmly, "Vagabond!" Although Sphex had turned round a little toward the loud, approaching horsemen, still he soon made him go on with his tattooing, and said, "Scoundrel!" but during the last beat he just hastily slipped in, "Scamp!"
The horsemen dismounted; the Doctor led them, without ceremony, into the house, after he had given the drummer a hint, with his hand, not to stir. He opened them their four (or twelve) walls, and said, coldly, "Step into your three cavities." Albano marched out of the warm splendor of day into the cool, purple Erebus of the red-hung chamber, as into a picture-hall of painting dreams, into a silver-hut, as it were, for the dark mine-work of his life. He recognized therein the open hand of his rich father, from the pictures of the carpet to the alabaster statues on the wall; and in the cabinet he found, among the gifts of his foster-parents, all his poetical and philosophical text-books, which had been sent after him,--fair reflections from the still land of youth, left far behind him by his journey, in whose flower-vases only concordias had hitherto bloomed, whereas now wild rockets must be planted in them. Then (not the goddess of night her mantle, but) the goddess of twilight threw her veil over his eye, and, in the clare-obscure, made the forms of youth--many of them armed, many crowned, a troop of fates and graces--beset his heart, which had hitherto been so calm, with their arms and levers, until it became soft and languid _for three minutes_; verily, to a youth, especially this one, the sea-storms, those favorites of the painter, the laboring volcanoes of the natural philosopher, and the comets of the astronomer, are full as precious, in the moral world, as they are to them in the physical.
Albano, now separated from Liana only by streets and days, almost feared his dreamy raptures might betray their object. "Any letters?" inquired the Lector, in his short manner, abbreviated for the sake of adaptation to citizens. "Bring it up, Van Swieten!" said Sphex, to a little son, who, with two others, named Boerhave and Galen, had hitherto been acting as a corresponding deciphering-chancery to the new guests behind a curtain. "Our old Lord," added Sphex, at once, as if it had some connection with the letter, "has done lording it at last; for five days he has been dead as a mouse, as I long ago predicted." "The old Prince?" asked Augusti, with astonishment. "But why have I not yet remarked anything of funeral bells, knockers hung with black, bottles of tears, and lamentation in the city?" inquired Schoppe.
The Physicus explained. Namely, he had, as physician in ordinary, prophesied, with sufficient boldness, the third day's dying of the old prince, and happily hit it. Only as, exactly one day after the mournful event, his successor, Luigi, proposed to make his entrance into Pestitz, and, as the announcement of the high death would have extinguished, with lachrymal-vessels, the whole oil-fed illumination in honor of the son, and hung the flowery triumphal arches with mourning-weeds, the people had not been willing, although to the greatest disadvantage of the prophetic Sphex, to let matters get wind before the new prince had had his reception, just as that Greek, at the news of his son's death, postponed mourning till after the completion of his thanksgiving sacrifice. Sphex protested that he had many years before fixed, in the case of the illustrious deceased, the nativity of his consumption by his white teeth,[48] and never had he hit a death-hour better than at that time; he would, however, leave it to any and every man to decide whether a physician, who has made his prophecy everywhere known, can spin much silk in a period of such political embezzlement. "But," replied Schoppe, "if people continue to carry along their deceased monarchs, like their dead soldiers, as if they were alive, in the ranks; still they can hardly do otherwise; for as in the case of great men it is generally so plaguy hard to prove that they are living, so is it also no easy thing to make out when they are dead; coldness and stiffness and corruption prove too little. To be sure, one may, perhaps, conceal royal death-beds for the same reason which led the Persians to hide royal graves, in order to abridge as much as possible for the poor children, the people, the bitter interval between the death and the new inauguration. Yes, as according to a legal fiction the king never dies, we have to thank God that we ever learn the fact at all, and that it does not fare with his death as with the death of the quite as immortal Voltaire, which the Paris journalists were not permitted, by any means, to announce."