Part 35

He spoke now very seriously,--of suicidal fancies, of life's duties, of wilful blindness to the fairest signs of her recovery, among which he reckoned as well the disappearance of the optical Caroline as the blooming of her color. She heard him patiently; but through the Princess, who, notwithstanding her love, seldom left behind with him pleasant impressions, her fancy had to-day taken quite another road, far beyond herself and her grave. She stood only before Linda's image, of which Julienne had this afternoon communicated to her sharper outlines than maidens are wont to give of maidens. "She is a very good girl," they say of each other. Linda's manly spirit, her warm attachment to Gaspard in connection with her contempt of the mass of men, her inflexibility, her bold strides in manly knowledge, her masterly and often severe letters, more pithy than flowery, and, most of all, her probably approaching arrival, took a powerful hold of Liana's tender heart. "My Albano must have her," was the constant thought of this disinterested soul; and if the Princess had had the intention of humiliating comparisons, she remarked it not, but fulfilled it. The good creature found, too, so much of a higher providence here,--for example, that her brother need now no longer be the rival of her lover and of his friend,--that she herself could portray beforehand her vigorous Albano to the proud Romeiro, and that certainly, despite all opposition, all the ghostly prophecies strikingly connected and coincided with each other. All this she now said (because she concealed only her sorrows, not her hopes) right to the Count's face.

What a gnashing bite did an evil genius at this moment make into his tenderest life! That glowing love which neither divides nor is divided possessed _his_ heart, he thought, not hers. He came very near to showing up his inner being just as it was, all kindled at once, as if by a lightning stroke, into a lofty blaze. Only the innocent white brow, with festive roses in its little ringlets; the childishly bright looking-up of the pure blue pair of eyes, and the soft face, which even at a musical fortissimo, and at every vehemence in movement or laughter on the part of another, caught a sickly redness from the beating heart; and his indignant shame at the levity with which a man can abuse his omnipotence and his sex, to the terror of the tenderer, restrained him, like guardian spirits; and he said merely, in that noble anger which sounded like a tender emotion, "O Liana, thou art hard to-day!"

"And yet I am indeed so tender!" said the innocent one. The two had hitherto been standing at the window, before the dark tempest which came rolling on out of Lilar. She turned suddenly round; for since the day of her blindness, when a dark cloud had seemed to fly towards her, she had never been able to look at one long; and Albano's tall form, with his whole live-glowing face and his soul-speaking eyes, stood illumined by the evening light before her. With the hand which he left free she softly and playfully swept aside the dark hair from his defiant forehead, smoothed the contracted eyebrow, and said, as his look stung like a sun, and his mouth shut with determination, "O, joyfully, joyfully, shall this fair face one day smile!" He smiled, but sadly. "And then shall I be still more blest than to-day!" said she, and started, for a lightning-flash darted across his earnest face, as over a jagged mountain, and showed it, like that of the god of war, illuminated with war-flames.

He hurried away; would not be held back; spoke of a weather-cooling; went out into the storm; and left Liana behind in the joy that she had spoken to-day merely out of pure love. From the last house in the village Rabette flew to meet him; the torrents of the restrained tears rolled down his cheeks. "What dost thou want? why weepest thou?" she cried. "Thou art dreaming!" cried he, and hurried, without further answer, out into the tempest, which had suddenly, like a mantle-fish, flung itself stiflingly over the whole heaven. There, under the rain-drops and lightning-flashes, he began, first of all, to reckon up for himself the best proofs that Liana had saintly charms, divine sense, all virtues, especially universal philanthropy, daughterly, sisterly, friendly affection, only not, however, the glowing love for one person,--at least, not for him. She is so entirely and exclusively--such is always his conclusion--possessed and absorbed with the present object, whether it be myself or a broken arm of the little Pollux, that it hides from her heaven and earth. Hence the setting of her life's day, with all the attendant partings, is no more to her than the setting of a star. Hence it was that I stood beside her so long, with a heart full of the pangs of love, and she saw not into my love, because she found none in her own bosom. And this is what makes it so bitter, when man, pining in poverty among the common hearts of earth, is rendered by the noblest only unhappy at last.

The rain pattered and trickled through the leaves, the fire darted through the woods, and the Wild Huntsman of the storm drove his crazy chase. This refreshed and rejoiced him like the cooling hand of a friend taking his to guide him. As he ascended, not through the cavern, but outside over the back of the mountain to his high thunder-house, he saw a thick, gray night of rain settle down heavily upon the green Lilar, and on the winding Tartarus rested under the flashes the illuminated storm. He shuddered, on entering his little house, at a cry which his Æolian-harp emitted under the snatches of the wind; for it had once, gilded by the evening sun, ethereally clothed his young love like starlight, and had followed it with ever-varying tones, as it went out over this suffering life.

70. CYCLE.

On the morning after both storms were dissolved into a still cloudiness.--And out of the great griefs came only errors. Weaklings that we are! when at our sham execution fate touches us with the rod, not with the sword, we sink impotently from the block, and feel the process of dying reach far into our life! All fevers, including spiritual ones, are cooled by the freshness of a new morning, just as sad evening stirs all their embers into a glow. Who of us has not at evening,--that proper witching hour of tormenting spectres, house-haunting ghosts and hobgoblins,--caught in the threads which he himself had spun, but which he took for a web spread by other hands, entangled himself more and more deeply the more he turned about and tried to extricate himself, till in the morning he saw his turnkey before him, namely, himself?

Albano saw on the whole theatre of yesterday's war nothing left standing but a pale, kindly figure in half-mourning, who looked round after him with innocent maidenly eyes, and toward which he could not help looking over, albeit she was now more a bride of God than of a mortal. He felt now, to be sure, more strongly how high his demands upon real friends rose, than he once did, when he could heighten at pleasure the highest which he made upon the beings of his dreams, whom he always cast exactly into the temporary mould of his heart; and how he was possessed by a spirit that spared no one, that would stretch the wings of every other according to its own, because it could bear no individuality except that which was copied.

He had hitherto experienced from all his loved ones too little opposition, as Liana had too much; both extremes injure one. The spiritual as well as the physical man, without the resistance of the outer atmosphere, is blown up and burst by the inner, and without the resistance of the inner is crushed by the outer; only the equilibrium between inner resistance and outer pressure keeps a fair play-room open for life and its culture. Besides, men--since only the best of them appreciate in the best of their own sex strong conviction--can hardly tolerate it in women, and would have them not merely the reflection, but even the echo, of themselves. They want, I mean, not merely the look, but also the word, that says yes.

Albano punished himself with several days of voluntary absence, till the unclean clouds should have cleared away from within him which had overshadowed the gnomon of the sundial of his inner man. "When I am quite cheerful and good-natured," said he, "I will go back to her, and err no more." He errs at this moment. Whenever a strange, uncomfortable semitone has repeatedly intruded itself between all the harmonies of two natures, it swells more and more fatally till it drowns the key-note, and ends all. The dividing tone was, in this case, the strength of the man's pitch in connection with the strength of the woman's. But the highest love is most easily wounded by the slightest difference. O, little avails it then for man to say to himself, I will be another man! Only in the finest, only in unimpaired enthusiasm, does he propose to himself such a thing; but it is just when the feeling is impaired, when he were hardly capable of the purpose, that he has to rise to the fulfilment of it, and then he can hardly make the achievement.

The Count went in the morning, as usual, to his lecture-rooms and parlors in the city. In the former it was hard for him to fix his instruments and his eyes upon the stars of the sciences, and to take sight, sailing as he was on such a sea of emotion. In the latter he found the Lector colder than ever, the Bibliothecary warmer, the household more inflated. He went to Roquairol, whom he to-day loved and treated still more cordially, as if by way of atonement to his offended sister. Charles said at once, with his sudden and tragical flinging up of the curtain of futurity, "All was discovered,--in the highest degree of probability!" As often as lovers see that their Calypso's island--which, to be sure, lies free on the open ocean--has at length come to the eyes of the seafaring world, and that they are making sail for it, they are astonished to an astonishing degree; for is there any one Paradise which has such a loose and low palisado, allowing every passer-by to see in, as theirs?

For a long time, he related, had the Doctor's children always had something to fetch from the Architect's wife at Lilar,--flowers, medicine-phials, &c.; certainly as spy-glasses and ear-tubes of Augusti, who again was the opera-glass of his mother. In short, his father had, at least, been at the Greek woman's yesterday, but had luckily found only an empty package[189] from Rabette to him (Charles), which, according to the liberties of the ministerial Church, he had opened and closed.

"Why _luckily_?" said Albano. "I will justify and honor my love before the world." "I referred to myself," he replied; "for never was my father more friendly to me than since he broke open my last letters. He is this afternoon in Blumenbühl, and it may well be more on my own account than my sister's."

Albano had no fear that the city could drill mining-galleries under his childhood's land, so as to blow up in one conflagration the blessed isle,--could he not trust his character and courage and Liana's own?--but it pained him now that he had so needlessly robbed the childlike Liana of the joy and merit of a childlike open-heartedness. How he longed now for the atoning and recompensing moment of the first meeting again, after the next morning!

He stayed by his friend as by a consolation, and did not go back till the evening redness floated about in the rain-clouds. When he came, he found already awaiting him a letter from Liana, written to-day.

"O good Albano, why camest thou not? How much I had to say to thee! How I trembled for thy sake on Friday, when the frowning cloud pursued thee with its thunder! Thou hast weaned me too much from sorrow, so strange and heavy has it become to me now. I was inconsolable the whole evening; at last, when night fell, the thought sank into my mind that thou hadst been oppressed as with presentiments, and that the lightning loved to strike the thunder-house. Why, indeed, art thou there? I hurried up, and knelt by my bed, and prayed to God, although the storm had long been dispersed, that he would have preserved thee. Smile at my tardy prayer; but I said to him, 'Thou knewest indeed, all-gracious One, that I would pray.' I was consoled, too, when I looked up to the stars, and the broken ray of joy trembled within me.

"But in the morning Rabette made me sad again. She had seen thee weeping on the road. A thousand times have I asked myself, whether I am to blame for that. Can it have come from this,--for she says so,--that I afflict thee too much with my death thoughts? Never more shalt thou hear them; the veil, too, is laid away; but I calculated upon thee according to my brother, to whom, as he himself says, the dusk of death is an evening-twilight, in which forms seem to him more lovely. Truly, I am quite blest; for thou art even so, and yet hast so little in having me,--only a small flower for thy heart, but I have thyself. Leave me my grave-mound; therefrom, as from a mountain, comes better, more fruitful soil into my valley. O how one loves, Albano, when all around us crumbles and sinks and melts away in smoke, and when, still, the bond and splendor of love stand firm and inviolate on the fleeting ground of life, as I have often seen with emotion, when standing by waterfalls, a rainbow hover, undisturbed and unchanged, over the bursting, impetuous floods! O, would that the nightingales were yet singing; now I could sing with them! Thy Æolian-harp, my harmonica, how gladly would I have it in my hand! My father was with us, and more cheerful and friendly toward all than ever. Lo, even he is kindly disposed! My parents surely send no tempest into our feast of roses. I readily did him the pleasure, therefore,--forgive it!--of promising him, that I would receive no visits from strangers in a strange house--because, he said, it was improper. I must go home for some days on account of the Prince's marriage; but I shall see thee soon. O forgive! When my father speaks softly, my soul cannot possibly say, No. Farewell, my noble one!

L.

"P. S. Soon a little leaf will come fluttering again over to thy mountain. Only continue in perpetual joy! O God! why am I not stronger? What beings shouldst thou then take to thy heart!--Thou dear one!"

How was he shamed by this full-blooming love, which never rightly knows when it is misunderstood, and which presupposes no other fault than its own! How sadly did the thought of the commanded separation affect him now, after the voluntary one! He could now love her as a guarding angel _before_ Paradise, how much more as a giving angel _in_ it! But it is hard for a man, as the youth felt, clearly to distinguish in the female heart, especially in this one, intention from instinct, ideas from feelings, and in this dark, full heaven to count and arrange all the stars. Everything like hardness, every unpromising bud, arose at last as a flower; and her worth unfolded itself piece-wise like spring; whereas, generally, from other maidens, a traveller who visits them carries away with him directly at his first evening's departure a little complete flower-catalogue of all their charms and arts, as a Brocken-passenger gets at the tavern a neat nosegay of the various kinds of mosses which are found on the mountain.

He supposed she was now with her parents; and he followed, not as a pouting schoolboy, but as a harmonious man, the giant of destiny. In the garden rainy weather held sway, the crop of every heavy tempest, which, like a war, always devastates the scene of conflict.

The promised leaflet appeared: "Only be happy. We shall see each other very, very soon, and then most blissfully. Forgive me! Ah, I long exceedingly!"

Now he experienced what days they were which had _once_--that is, only a few days ago--passed before him as divine apparitions, and which now again were to come up in the East as returning stars! Why does a blessing, not till it is lost, cut its way like a sharp diamond so deeply into the heart? Why must we first have lamented a thing, before we ardently and painfully love it? Albano threw both past and future away from him, that he might dwell wholly and purely in that present which Liana had promised him.

71. CYCLE.

On Sunday morning, when all the blue heavens stood open, and the earth was festally decked with pearls and twigs, a gentle finger tapped at Albano's door, which could belong to none but a female hand. It was Liana who entered at so early an hour; Rabette and Charles without uttered a loud greeting. On his exulting breast fell the beautiful maiden, blooming from, her walk, with blessed, bright eyes, a freshly bedewed rose-bud. It was his finest morning; he had a clear feeling of Liana's love. As the Æolian-harp sounded in, she looked towards it, remembered with a blush that fairest evening of the covenant, and listened in silence, and dried her eyes when she turned them again towards Albano. But he could not enter into this temple of joy without having cleansed and healed himself by a frank confession of his late errors. What a sweet rivalry ensued between them of confessing and forgiving, when Liana lovingly exclaimed and owned that she had not understood him lately, that only she was the blamable one, and that she would begin this very moment to speak better. She could not give herself any comfort about the secret pangs which she had caused her friend. As mahogany furniture cracks in no temperature, and contracts no spots, and needs no polishing, so was it with this heart, Albano's felt, as he now swore to himself always, even when he did not understand her, to say to himself, She is right.

She solved for him the riddle of her appearing to-day with those friendly looks which a good nature redoubles, when it has anything to sweeten,--namely, she was going back to Pestitz to-day; but the carriage would not come till late, till evening, in fact, about tea-time, and so there remained a whole day before them; and she hoped her father would not take this circuitous route through Lilar as a breach of her promise. A loving maiden grows unconsciously more bold. Thereupon she sought to make him quite calm about the peaceful intentions of her father, and represented his strictness, in subjecting himself and others to convenience, as the reason of his prohibition, as well as of her being summoned back to the wedding-festival. Albano, so soon after the oath which he had just sworn to himself, kept it, and said, She is right.

The Captain came in with the red-cheeked Rabette, whose eyes glistened with joy. The small apartment did not, by narrowness and confusion, make the pleasure less. Charles, generally so much like Vesuvius, which in the first hours of morning is still covered with snow, presented already a warm summit; he seated himself at the instrument and thundered into the noisy presence with a prestissimo (which lay open) of Haydn's,--that true hour-caller of rejoicing hours,--and played, to the astonishment of the females, the hardest part so easily, at sight, that he rather played into it, than from it, and kept composing much (for instance, the bass) himself; whereas Albano, with almost comic fidelity, gave you the exact truth in music quite as much as in history, which, again, always became in Charles's mouth a piece of his own personal biography. The morning added wings to all their souls, whereas noon always binds men's wings down,--hence Aurora goes with winged steeds, and the god of day with wingless ones. "But how now are our seven pleasure-stations to be made out?" inquired Charles, "for the day lies like a garden-hall, with nothing but pleasure-avenues on all sides open before us." "Charles, is it not, then, a matter of indifference _where_ a man loves?" said Albano. Blessed one, whose heart needs nothing but one heart more, no park into the bargain, no _opera seria_, no Mozart, no Raphael, no eclipse of the moon, not so much as moonlight, and no read or acted romance!

"First, I must see my Chariton," said Liana. "Yes," added her brother, immediately, "she can bring our dinner after us into the gothic temple." He proposed, namely, on this lovely day, to dine in the twelfth century, and to sit by a sombre, motley window-light, and on sharp-cornered, heavy, thick furniture, and, as it were, darkly under the earth of a green present, glistening overhead, to sit with blooming faces; for thus did he overload the fullest enjoyments with external contrasts, and enjoyed every happy present most in the near gleam and reflection of the sharpened sickle which was to mow them away.[190] "God forbid and avert it, friend!" said Rabette. Albano, too, deemed the friendly Greek, her laughing children, and the neighboring rose-fields far preferable, and, with the aid of Liana, prevailed. Before the embowered cottage the children came running to meet them, Helena, with her little apron full of orange-blossoms, which she had picked up, for the breaking of them off had been forbidden her, and Pollux, in the last, light bandage of his broken arm, the hand of which had now been obliged to work with its companion, the right hand, at puckering up and cracking the rose-leaves. Both gave notice: "Mother was not ready yet, and had dressed them first." But presently, neat and simple as a priestess destined to dance around the altar of gods of joy, sprang Chariton to meet her Liana, and, as she came, continued adjusting her hastily donned clothes by a light hitching and twitching. "This," said Roquairol, after he had easily obtained from Rabette a nodding assent thereto, because she had not understood his French request for the same, "is my spouse since yesterday,"--and he enjoyed without further circumstance the right of thouing her, which she, since the friendly encouragement of the Minister, accepted the more fondly with maidenly presentiments.

When Liana kindly announced four noonday guests for Chariton, there stood in the dark eyes of the Greek gleams of joy, and the little face, with great arched Italian eyebrows, became a stereotype smile, which was not culinary embarrassment, but merely tongueless joy; which only made her white semicircle of teeth shine more broadly, when Charles spoke right out: "Surely thou canst help her, wife!" "Of course!" said Rabette, quite delighted; because her heart had no longer any other lips than her two hands, for which, if they could only lay hold of hard work, it was full as much as if they were pressed by the hand of a lover. Did she not again and again curse her awkward, hesitating throat, when Roquairol, in her presence, poured out his sounding and fiery torrents of speech? On this occasion, when he had again set off the surroundings with artificial, shadowy refinements, he insisted upon it, of course, that Chariton should be executive secretary, and Rabette only corresponding secretary. Liana, too, out of a like womanliness, would fain do something for her darling; but since she, as a maiden of rank, could not cook anything, but only bake a little, accordingly it was assigned her,--but reluctantly on the part of her friend, who never loved to see the sweet form anywhere else than, like other butterflies, by his side among the flowers,--at a quite late moment, and for a space of ten minutes, with her eyes and in extraordinary cases with her three writing-fingers, to co-operate in making the snow-balls, which were to close and crown the dessert.

Never had kitchen ball-queen a broader canopy, or a more beautifully carved sceptre and apple, or fairer _dames d'atour_[191] than Chariton, and vessels and fire were quite thrown into the shade thereby.