Part 27

The old gardener, who, simply from a grateful attachment to "the good-souled, condescending Fräulein," had, with rare pains, forced these early blossoms from the _Cereus serpens_, stood up there already, apparently as an observer of the flowers, but in fact as an expectant of the greatest praise, with a brown, indented, pitted, and serious face, which did not challenge praise with a single smile.

Liana thanked the gardener before she came to the blossoms; then she praised them and his pains. The old man merely waited for every other one of the company to be astonished also; then he went drowsily off to bed, with a firm faith that Liana would to-morrow remember him in such a way as to make him contented.

The exotic beads of nectar-fragrance which hung in five white calyxes, crowned as it were with brown leaf-work, seized the fancy. The odors from the spring of a hotter clime drew it away into remote dreams. Liana only stroked with a soft finger, as one glides over eyelids, the little incense-vases, without touching with predatory hand the full little garden of tender stamina which crowded together in the cup. "How lovely, how very tender!" said she, with childlike happiness. "What a cluster of five little evening stars! Why come they only by night,--the dear, shy little flowers?" Charles seemed to be on the point of breaking one. "O let it live!" she begged; "to-morrow they will all have died of themselves. Charles! thus does so much else fade," she added, in a lower tone. "Everything!" said he, sharply. But the mother, against Liana's will, had heard it. "Such death-thoughts," said she, "I love not in youth; they lame its wings." "And then," replied Liana, with a maiden-like turning of the tables, "it just stays with us, that's all, like the crane in Kleist's fable, whose wings they broke, so that he could not travel with the rest into the warm land."

This gay, motley veil of deep earnestness was not transparent enough for our friend. But by and by the good maiden took pains to look just as the careful mother wished. The benumbing lily which the earth wears on her breast, the moon; and the whole dazzling Pantheon of the starry heavens; and the city, with its pierced-work of night-lights; and the high, majestic, dark avenues; and on meadows and brooks the milk-white lunar-silver, wherewith the earth spun itself into an evening-star; and the nightingales singing out of distant gardens;--did not all this stir omnipotently every heart, till it would fain confess with tears its longing? And the softest heart of all which beat at this moment below the stars, could it have succeeded in wholly veiling itself? Almost! She had accustomed herself, before her mother, to dry away with her eye, so to speak, the tear, before it grew big enough to fall.

Singular was her appearance, the next minute, to the Count. The mother was speaking with her son; Liana stood, far from the latter, with face turned half aside, and a little discolored by the moon, near a white statue of the holy Virgin, and looking out into the night. All at once she looked upon him and smiled, just as if a living being had appeared to her in the abyss of ether, and her lip would speak. Earthly form more exalted and touching had never before met his eyes; the balustrade by which he held swayed to and fro (but it was he himself who shook it), and his whole soul cried, "To-day, now, I love the heavenly one with the highest, the deepest love I have felt." So he also said lately, and so will he say oftener: can man, with the innumerable waves of love, institute measurements of altitude, and point to that one which has mounted the highest? Thus does man, whereever he may be standing, always imagine himself standing in the centre of heaven.

Ah, at this moment he was again surprised, but it was with an "Ah!" Liana went to her mother, and when _she_ felt in the hand of her darling a slight shudder, she importuned her to go out of the night-air, and would not give over till she left with her the magic spot.

The friends stayed behind. According to Albano's reckoning, it would not, of course, have been too much, if, in this frank time, wherein our holier thoughts, hidden by the common light of day, reveal themselves like stars, they had all lingered on the roof till toward morning. The two walked for a time up and down in silence. At last the incense-altar of the five flowers held them fast. Albano clasped accidentally the neighboring statue with both hands, and said: "On high places, one wants to throw something down,--even himself oftentimes; and I, too, would fain throw myself off into the world, into far-distant lands, as often as I gaze into the nightly redness yonder, and as often as I come under orangery-blossoms, as under these. Brother, how is it with thee? The heavens and the earth open out so broadly: why, then, must the spirit so creep into itself?" "Just so do I feel," said he; "and in the head, generally, has the spirit more room than in the heart." But here, by a delicate guess, he arrived, through agreeably circuitous routes, at the accidental discovery of the reason why his sister had hurried down so soon.

"Even to obstinacy," said he, "she pushes her care for her mother. The last time, when she observed that mother saw her grow pale under the dance, she immediately ceased. To me alone she shows her whole heart, and every drop of blood, and all innocent tears therein; especially does she believe something in respect to the future, which she anxiously conceals from mother." "She smiled to herself just before she went away," said Albano, and drew Charles's hand over his eyes, "as if she saw up there a being from the veiled world." "Didst thou too see that?" replied Charles. "And then did her lip stir? O friend, God knows what infatuates her; but this is certain, she firmly believes she is to die next year." Albano would not let him speak further. Too intensely excited, he pressed himself to his friend's breast; his heart beat wildly, and he said: "O brother, remain always my friend!"

They went down. In the apartment which adjoined Liana's they found her piano-forte open. Now that was just what the Count had missed. In passion--even in mere fire of the brain--one grasps not so much at the pen as at the string; and in that state alone does musical fantasying succeed better than poetic. Albano, thanking, meanwhile, the muse of sweet sounds that there were forty-four transitions,[137] seated himself at the keys, with the intention now to beat a musical fire-drum, and roar like a storm into the still ashes, and drive out a clear, sparkling swarm of tones. He did it, too, and well enough, and better and better; but the instrument struggled, rebelled. It was built for a female hand, and would only speak in female tones, with lute-plaints, as a woman with a friend of her own sex.

Charles had never heard him play so, and was astonished at such fulness. But the reason was, the Lector was not there; before certain persons--and he was one of them--the playing hand freezes, so that one only labors and lumbers to and fro in a pair of leaden gloves; and, secondly, before a multitude it is easier playing than before one, because the latter stands definitely before the soul, the former floats vaguely. And, besides all that, blessed Albano, thou knowest who hears thee. The morning air of hope flutters around thee in tones,--the wild life of youth stalks with vigorous limbs and loud strides up and down before thee,--the moonlight, undesecrated by any gross earthly light, hallows the sounding apartment. Liana's last songs lie open before thee, and the advancing moonshine will let thee read them soon,--and the nightingale in the mother's neighboring chamber contends with thy tones, as if summoned by the Tuba to the field.

Liana came in with her mother, not till late, because the heavy din of tones had something in it hard and painful to both. He could see the two sitting sidewise at the lower window, and how Liana held her mother's hand. Charles, after his manner, walked up and down with long steps, and sometimes stood still near him. Albano, in this nearness of the still soul, soon came out of the wilderness of harmony into simple moonlit passages, where only a few tones moved delicately like graces, and quite as lightly linked as they. The artistical hurly-burly of unharmonious _ignes fatui_ is only the forerunner of the melodious Charites; and these alone insinuate themselves into the softer souls. It seemed to him--the illusion was complete--as if he were speaking aloud with Liana; and when the tones, like lovers, went on ever repeating the same thing from heartiness and zest, did he not mean Liana, and say to her, "How I love thee! O how I love thee!" Did he not ask her, "Why mournest thou? why weepest thou?" And did he not say to her, "Look into this mute heart, and fly not from it, O pure, innocent one, my own!"

How did the good youth blush, when suddenly the caressing friend placed his hands over _his_ friend's eyes, which hitherto, unseen in the darkness, had been overflowing for love! Charles stepped warmly to his sister, and she, of her own accord, took his hand and said words of love. Then Albano took refuge in the murmuring wilderness of sounds, until his eyes were dried enough for the leave-taking by lamp-light; by slow degrees he let the cradle of our heart cease rocking, and closed so mildly and faintly, and was silent for a little while, and then slowly rose. O, in this mute, young bosom lived every blessed thing which the most glorious love can bestow!

They parted seriously. No one spoke of the music. Liana seemed transfigured. Albano dared not, in this spirit-hour of the heart, with an eye which had so recently calmed itself, rest long upon her mild blue ones. Her deeply touched soul expressed itself, as maidens are wont, to her brother only, and that by a more ardent embrace. And from the holy youth she could not, in parting, conceal the tone and the look, which he will never forget.

That night he awoke often, and knew not what it was that so blissfully rocked his being. Ah! it was the tone whose echo rang through his slumber, and the dear eye which still looked upon him in his dreams.

FOOTNOTES:

[135] He is said, in teaching, to have always looked at the spot on a student's coat where the button was gone; and was embarrassed when it was sewed on again.

[136] The evening hour, which people in southern countries shun so much.

[137] From one key to another.--TR.

TWELFTH JUBILEE.

FROULAY'S BIRTHDAY AND PROJECTS.--EXTRA-LEAF.--BABETTE.--THE HARMONICA.--NIGHT.--THE PIOUS FATHER.--THE WONDROUS STAIRWAY.--THE APPARITION.

58. CYCLE.

Happy Albano! thou wouldst not have remained so, hadst thou, on the birthday of the Minister, heard what he then proposed!

Already, for a considerable time, had Froulay been full of noticeable, stormy signs, and might any moment, one must needs fear, let the thunderbolt fly from him; that is to say, he was gay and mild. Thus, also, in the case of phlegmatic children, does great liveliness threaten an eruption of the chicken-pox. As he was a father and a despot,--(the Greeks had for both only the one word, despot,)--so was it expected of him, as connubial storm-maker,[138] that he would provide the usual storms and foul weather for his family. Connubial storm-material for the mere _troubling_ of marriage can never be wanting, when one considers how little is required even for its dissolution; for instance, among the Jews, merely that the woman scream too loud, burn the dinner, leave her shoes in the place for the man's, &c. Beside all this, there was much in the present case about which there was a good chance to thunder; e. g. Liana, upon whom one might visit the misdemeanor of the brother, because he obstinately stayed away and begged for no grace. One always loves to let his indignation loose upon wife, daughter, and son at once, and would rather be a land-rain than a transient shower; one child can more easily imbitter than sweeten a whole family.

But Froulay still continued the smiling John. Nay, did he not--I have the proofs--carry it so far, that when, on one occasion, his daughter, in taking leave of the Princess, fell upon her neck,--instead of representing to her, with flashing eyes, how one must only accept, not reciprocate, familiarities with superiors, and must take care not to forget one's self precisely then, when _they_ do forget themselves,--and instead of sternly asking whether she had ever seen him, in his warmest love toward the Prince, offend against _the Dehors_,--instead, I say, of doing this, and hailing and storming the while, did he not merely break out that once into the fair words: "Child, thou art too affectionate toward thy distinguished friend; ask thy mother; she knows, too, what friendly _liaisons_ are"?

Only Liana--although so often deceived by these calms--was full of unutterable hope and joy at the domestic peace, and believed in its permanence, especially as the paternal birthday was so near, that Olympiad and normal period upon which and by which the house reckoned so largely. During the whole year the Minister had been looking out for this day, in order, in the morning, when the congratulations came, not to forget to make believe he had forgotten it, but to be astonished on the subject,--all owing to business, he said; and at evening, when the guests came,--on account of business he never dined, he said, to astonish _them_. He was alternately the worshipper and image-breaker of etiquette, ministerial and opposition party thereof, as his vanity dictated.

Liana importuned her brother, till he promised to do something to please his father; he composed, for the purpose, a family-piece, in which he introduced the whole confession-night between himself and Albano, only he converted Albano into a sister. Liana gladly studied this part also for the birthday, although she had to deliver the blooming vest.

The Minister, contrary to expectation, accepted the vest, the Captain and his hand-bill for the evening's performance, graciously; for he was wont, on former occasions, like some other fathers, to growl the louder the more his children stroked him. He danced away like a Polack right merrily with his family, and stuck the rod[139] behind the fur. Nothing worse at this moment revolved in his head than the question, where it would be best to open the amateur theatre, whether in the _Salon de Lecture_ or in the _Salon des bains domestiques_; for the two halls were entirely distinguished from one another, and from the other chambers, by their names.

The day came. Albano, whose invitation Charles had to extort, because the Minister, out of pride, hated his pride, brought with him, unfortunately, in his soul, the tone which Liana had given him the last time to carry home with him. His hope had hitherto lived upon this tone. O blame him not for it! The airy nothing of a sigh bears often a pastoral world or an orcus on its ephemeron's-wing. Everything weighty may, like a rock, be placed on a point, whereupon a child's finger can set it in rotation.

But the tone had died away. Liana knew no other way than that, in the visiting congregation,--of whose moral pneumatophobia,[140] after all, she was not aware in its full extent,--one should hide every religious emotion behind the church fan. Boxes, pit, and farthing gallery were, almost at the usual play-hour, set off and filled out with Gratulantes, all fit to be canons. The German gentleman was made particularly prominent by the rich and insolent ostentation of his circumstances. Of the visiting-company-lane it can, in passing, only be observed, that in it, as in the antiphlogistic system, _oxygen_[141] played the chief part, which, however, was given out less by the lungs than by the heart.

When the curtain rose, and Roquairol made that night of forgiveness and ecstasy pass by again in a still more glowing form than it had actually had; when this dreamy imitation seemed the first appearance of the actual reality, how hotly and deeply did he burn himself thereby into his friend's soul! (Good Albano! This art of being his own _revenant_, his own ghost, his mock- and mimic-self, and of counterfeiting the splendid edition of his own life, should have left thee smaller hopes!) The Count must needs, in this most grave society that ever sate around him, break out into an unseemly weeping. And why did Charles put Albano's words, of that memorable night, into the mouth of Liana, so bewitchingly interesting in her emotion, and thus make his love, wrought upon by so many charms, grow even to anguish?

The German gentleman himself gave to Liana, that white swan, floating, tinged with rosy redness, through the evening glow of Phœbus, several loud, and to the Count annoying signs of approbation. The Minister was chiefly glad that all this happened in his honor, and that the point of the last act was still going to throw a very special epigrammatic laurel-wreath on his crown.

He got the wreath. The pair of children were very favorably criticised by the Erlangen literary gazette[142] of spectators, and by the belles-lettres review, and covered over with crowns,--with noble martyrs' crowns. The German gentleman had and used the public right of ushering in the Coronation, and the Coronation-car. Base man! why should thy beetle's-eyes be permitted to creep gnawingly over the holy roses which emotion and sisterly love plants on Liana's cheeks? But how much gayer still was the old gentleman,--so much so that he flirted with the oldest ladies,--when he saw the knight bring out magnificently into full daylight his interest in Liana, not fantastically or sentimentally, but by still and steady advances and marked attention, by jokes and glances and sly addresses, and at last by something decisive! That is to say, the German gentleman drew the old man into a cabinet, and both came back out of it vehemently animated.

The lovely Liana, withdrawn into her own heart, fled from the upas-tree of the laurel away to her comforting mother. Liana had preserved, in the midst of the stormy mill-races of daily _assemblées_, a low voice and a delicate ear, and the tumult had driven her inward, and left her almost shy.

The fair soul seldom guessed anything, except a fair soul: she so easily divined her like; with such difficulty her counterpart. Bouverot's advances seemed to her the usual forward and side steps of manly courtesy; and his knightly celibacy did not allow her entirely to understand him. Do not the lilies of innocence bloom earlier than the roses of shame, as the purple color, in the beginning, only dyes pale, and not till afterward puts on the red glow, when it lies before the sun? She kept herself this evening near her mother, because she perceived in her an unwonted seriousness. When Froulay had taken off from his head the birthday garland, wherein were planted more thorns and stalks than flowers,--when he had taken off the crown of thorns, and stood in his night-cap amidst his family,--he addressed himself to the business whereupon he had been thinking all the evening. "My little dove," said he to his daughter, borrowing a good expression from the Bastile,[143]--"my little dove, leave me and _Guillemette_ alone." He now laid bare his upper teeth by a characteristic grin, and said he had, as he hoped, something agreeable to communicate to her. "You know," he continued, "what I owe to the German gentleman." He meant not thanks, but money and consideration.

We love to dwell upon it as a matter of great praise in the family of the Quintii,[144] that they never possessed gold: I adduce--without arraying a thousand other families of whom the same is to be sworn--only Froulay's. Certain families, like antimony, have no chemical affinity whatever with that metal, however much they might wish it; certainly Froulay wished it: he looked very much to his interest (to nothing else), he willingly (although only in cases of collision) set conscience and honor aside; but he got no further than to great outlays and great projects, simply because he sought money, not as the end and aim of his ambition, but only as the means of ambition and enterprise. Even for some pictures which Bouverot had purchased for the Prince in Italy he still owed that individual the purchase-shilling which he had taken out of the treasury. By his bonds as if by circulars, he stood in widely-extended connections. He would gladly have transposed his marriage contract into a bond, and had, with his lady, at least that most intimate community--of goods; for, under present circumstances, divorce and bankruptcy stood in neighborly relations to each other; but, as was said, many men, with the best talons,--like the eagle of the Romish king,[145]--have nothing in them.

He continued: "Now, perhaps, this _géne_ will cease. Have you hitherto made any observations upon him?" She shook her head. "I have," he replied, "for a long time, and such as were really consoling to me,--_j'avais le nez bon quant à cela_,--he has a real liking for my Liana."

The Minister's lady here could draw no inference, and begged him, with disguised astonishment, to come to the _agreeable_ matter. Comically on his face did the show of friendship wrestle with the expectation that he should be under the necessity immediately of being exasperated. He replied: "Is not _this_ an agreeable matter? The knight means it in earnest. He wished now to be privately espoused to her; after three years he retires from the order, and her fortune is made. _Vous êtes, je l'espere, pour cette fois, un peu sur mes interêts, ils sont les vôtres._"

Her maternal heart, so suddenly and deeply wounded, wept, and could hardly be concealed. "Herr von Froulay!" said she, when she had composed herself a little; "I do not disguise my astonishment. Such a disparity in years, in tastes, in religion."[146]

"That is the knight's affair, not ours," he replied, refreshed by her angry confusedness, and, like the weather, in his coldness threw only fine, sharp snow, no hail. "As to Liana's heart, I beg you just to sound that." "O, that innocent heart? You are mocking!" "_Posito!_ so much the more gladly will the _innocent_ heart reconcile itself to make her father's fortune, if she is not the greatest egotist. I should never love to constrain an obedient daughter." "_N'epuiséz pas ce chapitre; mon cœur est en presse._ It will cost her her life, which already hangs by such frail threads." This allusion always struck the fire of wrath from his flint. "_Tant mieux_," said he; "then it will never go further than an engagement! I had almost said--_Sacre!_ and who is to blame for that? So it fares with me at the hands of the Captain too,--in the beginning my children promise everything, then they turn out nothing. But, madam," he said, swiftly and venomously collecting himself; and, instead of compressing his lips and teeth, merely pinching moderately the auditory organs of a sleeping lap-dog; "you alone indeed know, by your influence upon Liana, how to dress and redress everything. Perhaps she belongs to you by a still prior claim than to me. I am not then compromitted with the knight. The advantages I detail no further." His breast was here already warmed under the vulture-skin of rage.

But the noble lady now indignantly rose, and said: "Herr von Froulay! hitherto I have not spoken of myself. Never will I counsel or countenance or consent to it,--I will do the opposite. Herr von Bouverot is not worthy of my Liana."